Trends in Distance Education in South America

Author(s):  
Luis Barrera

This article reviews the history, state of the art, and future trends in distance education, in South American countries, through an overview of the main experiences in the region. South America is in the western hemisphere, connected to Central and North America by the Isthmus of Panama. Twelve countries form this continent: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. As reported by the United Nations Development Programme (2007), all of them are developing countries, characterized by a difficult social reality as a result of political and economic crisis in the course of its history.

Author(s):  
Luis Barrera

This article reviews the history, state of the art, and future trends in distance education in South American countries through an overview of the main experiences in the region.


2011 ◽  
pp. 2599-2606
Author(s):  
Luis Barrera

This article reviews the history, state of the art, and future trends in distance education in South American countries through an overview of the main experiences in the region.


2008 ◽  
pp. 2394-2400
Author(s):  
C. M. Magagula

The challenges facing the world, especially developing countries like Swaziland, are many and varied. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that over two billion people, out of a global population of six billion, do not have access to education. The majority of these people are found in developing countries. As many as 113 million children do not attend school. More than one billion people still live on less than US$1 a day and lack access to safe drinking water. More than two billion people in the world in developing countries in particular, lack sanitation. Every year, nearly 11 million young children die before their fifth birthday, mainly from preventable illnesses. The risk of dying in childbirth in developing countries is one in 48 (UNDP, 2003). In most developing countries, especially in remote areas, the situation is exacerbated by lack of electricity.


1992 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 282-282
Author(s):  
Richard K. Stucky

Paleogene vertebrate communities in North and South America show dramatic changes in taxonomic composition and ecological organization. Worldwide, mammals diversified substantially following dinosaur extinction (Fig. 1). Most families of living vertebrates appear by the end of the Paleogene. In North America, placental omnivores, herbivores and carnivores dominate mammalian communities, but in South America marsupial carnivores and omnivores and placental herbivores dominate them. Immigration from Asia and Europe to North America of taxa from several placental orders (Perissodactyla, Primates, Artiodactyla, Rodentia, Carnivora, Mesonychia, Creodonta) occurred periodically during the Paleogene. South America, however, was completely isolated from the Paleocene to the Oligocene when Rodentia and perhaps Primates first appear. Despite the independent evolutionary histories of these continents, their constituent species show remarkable convergences in morphological adaptations including body size distributions, dental morphology, and other features. Low resolution chronostratigraphic data for the Paleogene of South America precludes correlation with North American faunas. In North America, patterns of diversification and extinction appear to be related to climatic events. Morphological convergences appear to be related to climate and concomitant habitat change, but may also be a function of coevolution via predator-prey interactions and diffuse competition among guild members.


Zootaxa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4891 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-112
Author(s):  
FRANK E. KURCZEWSKI ◽  
RICK C. WEST ◽  
CECILIA WAICHERT ◽  
KELLY C. KISSANE ◽  
DARRELL UBICK ◽  
...  

New and unusual host records for 133 species and subspecies of Pompilidae predominantly from the southwestern United States, Mexico, Central America, and South America are presented in modified taxonomic order. First-time species host records are given for Calopompilus Ashmead, Pepsis Fabricius, Hemipepsis Dahlbom, Priocnessus Banks, Entypus Dahlbom, Pompilocalus Roig-Alsina, Sphictostethus Kohl, Auplopus Spinola, Ageniella Banks, Eragenia Banks, Aporus Spinola, Poecilopompilus Ashmead, Tachypompilus Ashmead, Anoplius Dufour, Priochilus (Fabricius) and Notocyphus Smith. New host spider families are introduced for Calopompilus, Pepsis, Hemipepsis, Priocnessus, Entypus, Cryptocheilus Panzer, Priocnemis Schiødte, Auplopus, Ageniella, Eragenia, Aporus, Tachypompilus, Anoplius, Priochilus and Notocyphus. Eight host spider families are reported from the Western Hemisphere for the first time: Halonoproctidae (Notocyphus dorsalis dorsalis Cresson); Dipluridae (Pepsis pretiosa Dahlbom, P. montezuma Smith, P. infuscate Spinola, P. atripennis Fabricius, P. martini Vardy, Priocnessus vancei Waichert and Pitts); Nemesiidae (Pepsis pallidolimbata Lucas, P. viridis Lepeletier, P. spp., Pompilocalus hirticeps (Guérin), Sphictostethus gravesii (Haliday), S. striatulus Roig-Alsina, Priocnemis oregona Banks); Barychelidae (Eragenia sp.); Paratropididae (Pepsis stella Montet); Trechaleidae (Hemipepsis toussainti (Banks), Entypus unifasciatus cressoni (Banks), Tachypompilus ferrugineus (Say), Tachypompilus unicolor cerinus Evans, Priochilus gloriosum (Cresson); Desidae (Ageniella accepta (Cresson), Sphictostethus isodontus Roig-Alsina) and Selenopidae (Priochilus scrupulum (Fox), Tachypompilus erubescens (Taschenberg) or xanthopterus (Rohwer)). The first known host records for the rare South American pompilid genera Chirodamus (Lycosidae: Lycosa sp.) and Herbstellus (Nemesiidae: Diplothelopsis cf bonariensis Mello-Leitão) are presented. 


2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 434-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald R. Prothero ◽  
Kenneth E. Campbell ◽  
Brian L. Beatty ◽  
Carl D. Frailey

A new dromomerycine palaeomerycid artiodactyl, Surameryx acrensis new genus new species, from upper Miocene deposits of the Amazon Basin documents the first and only known occurrence of this Northern Hemisphere group in South America. Osteological characters place the new taxon among the earliest known dromomerycine artiodactyls, most similar to Barbouromeryx trigonocorneus, which lived in North America during the early to middle Miocene, 20–16 Ma. Although it has long been assumed that the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI) began with the closure of the Isthmus of Panama in the late Pliocene, or ca. 3.0–2.5 Ma, the presence of this North American immigrant in Amazonia is further evidence that terrestrial connections between North America and South America through Panama existed as early as the early late Miocene, or ca. 9.5 Ma. This early interchange date was previously indicated by approximately coeval specimens of proboscideans, peccaries, and tapirs in South America and ground sloths in North America. Although palaeomerycids apparently never flourished in South America, proboscideans thrived there until the end of the Pleistocene, and peccaries and tapirs diversified and still live there today.


1989 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-128
Author(s):  
K. Ghebremeskel

The genesis of the problem of food production and nutrition of African, Asian and Central and South American countries can be traced back to the beginning of ‘inter-continental trade’ and the emergence of colonialism. Indigenous food patterns and social and economic orders that had evolved to befit the inhabitants and the environment were destroyed. A nutritional framework and an agricultural and economic policy designed to benefit the colonising nations were fostered. At present, millions of people in the developing countries suffer from endemic undernutrition and associated diseases. Famine is always present under the surface claiming families and individual hamlets and breaks through when the semblance of equilibrium between minimal food requirement for survival and supply is disturbed by natural or man-made disaster. Landlessness, an uneven distribution of wealth, overemphasis on cash-crop production, neglect of peasant agriculture in favour of unnecessary expenditure on military hardware and other misguided projects, and crop specialisation are some of the factors responsible for food shortage and undernutrition. Moreover, most of the staple foods of the developing countries are of low energy density and deficient in some essential nutrients. The cycle of undernutrition, hunger, disease and death can only be broken by instituting a well planned, peasant-orientated, integrated development programme based on self-reliance and self-sufficiency.


1999 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliet E. Morrow ◽  
Toby A. Morrow

This paper examines geographic variation in fluted point morphology across North and South America. Metric data on 449 North American points, 31 Central American points, and 61 South American points were entered into a database. Ratios calculated from these metric attributes are used to quantify aspects of point shape across the two continents. The results of this analysis indicate gradual, progressive changes in fluted point outline shape from the Great Plains of western North America into adjacent parts of North America as well as into Central and South America. The South American “Fishtail” form of fluted point is seen as the culmination of incremental changes in point shape that began well into North America. A geographically gradual decline in fluting frequency also is consistent with the stylistic evolution of the stemmed “Fishtail” points. Although few in number, the available radiocarbon dates do suggest that “Fishtail” fluted points in southern South America are younger than the earliest dates associated with Clovis points in western North America. All of these data converge on the conclusion that South American “Fishtail” points evolved from North American fluted points.


2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1885) ◽  
pp. 20180843 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Bona ◽  
Martín D. Ezcurra ◽  
Francisco Barrios ◽  
María V. Fernandez Blanco

Caimanines are crocodylians currently restricted to South and Central America and the oldest members are from lower Palaeocene localities of the Salamanca Formation (Chubut Province, Argentina). We report here a new caimanine from this same unit represented by a skull roof and partial braincase. Its phylogenetic relationships were explored in a cladistic analysis using standard characters and a morphogeometric two-dimensional configuration of the skull roof. The phylogenetic results were used for an event-based supermodel quantitative palaeobiogeographic analysis. The new species is recovered as the most basal member of the South American caimanines, and the Cretaceous North American lineage ‘ Brachychampsa and related forms' as the most basal Caimaninae. The biogeographic results estimated north-central North America as the ancestral area of Caimaninae, showing that the Cretaceous and Palaeocene species of the group were more widespread than thought and became regionally extinct in North America around the Cretaceous–Palaeocene boundary. A dispersal event from north-central North America during the middle Late Cretaceous explains the arrival of the group to South America. The Palaeogene assemblage of Patagonian crocodylians is composed of three lineages of caimanines as a consequence of independent dispersal events that occurred between North and South America and within South America around the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary.


Paleobiology ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 220-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. David Webb

The American interchange of land mammals reached its acme during the late Blancan and early Irvingtonian in North America and during the Chapadmalalan and Uquian in South America. It lasted about two million years and included taxa adapted to diverse habitats. It was preceded in the early Hemphillian in North America and the Huayquerian in South America by the interchange of a few heralding genera. The MacArthur-Wilson faunal equilibrium hypothesis correctly predicts a marked increase in originations, number of genera, and turnover rate for the South American fauna during the peak of the interchange. Subsequent further increases were not so predicted but closely resemble patterns also observed in late Pleistocene land mammals of Europe and North America. The continued increase in South American land mammal genera after the interchange had largely ceased resulted principally from autochthonous evolution of northern immigrant stocks. A marked decrease in South American ungulate genera (from thirteen to three) coincided with the appearance of fourteen northern ungulate genera and therefore appears to be a replacement phenomenon. The area/diversity relationship predicts no important change in generic diversity if a maximum of only nine percent of North America is occupied by the interamerican mingled fauna. At the family level, however, diversity is seriously overestimated due to the nomenclatural artifact of increased relative diversity by filtering.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document