scholarly journals Costa Rica Central Valley gastronomic lexicon structuring from an ontological arrangement

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 5034-5053
Author(s):  
Jorge Lázaro ◽  
Hazel Barahona Gamboa ◽  
Gerardo Sierra Martínez

This paper describes how terminology and ontologies interact in a coherent and exhaustive manner, and how the neological appearance is obtained from the derivation of the specificity and functionality of a specific corpus. This research shows categories that do not exist either in the Glossary of Costa Rican popular cuisine (SEDÓ MASÍS, 2008), or in the Dictionary of Costarriquenismos (QUESADA PACHECO, 2012). The omission of some of these categories clearly shows that the terms have been historically organized taking into account only the lexical factor, but not the conceptual organization. Therefore, this study intends to play with the "disagreement" between speakers and specialists to show that a reorganization of the terms of an area is possible. For this, a corpus of 596 recipes and 4652 ingredients for ontological representation was compiled. Each ontological class was defined by means of its functionality in the recipes. The ontological architecture is formalized through the postulates of Basic Formal Ontology (SMITH, 2014) and is schematized by means of Protégé. In addition, the terminological theories of Cabré (1999), Fedor de Diego (1995) and Roche (2007, 2009) are used.

Author(s):  
Liz Harvey-Kattou

Costa Rica is a country known internationally for its eco-credentials, dazzling coastlines, and reputation as one of the happiest and most peaceful nations on earth. Beneath this façade, however, lies an exclusionary rhetoric of nationalism bound up in the concept of the tico, as many Costa Ricans refer to themselves. Beginning by considering the very idea of national identity and what this constitutes, this book explores the nature of the idealised tico identity, demonstrating the ways in which it has assumed a white supremacist, Central Valley-centric, patriarchal, heteronormative stance based on colonial ideals. Chapters two and three then go on to consider the literature and films produced that stand in opposition to this normative image of who or what is tico and their creation as vehicles of soft power which aim to question social norms. This book explores protest literature from the 1970s by Quince Duncan, Carmen Naranjo, and Alfonso Chase who narrate their experiences from the margins of society by virtue of their identity as Afro-Costa Rican, feminist, and homosexual authors. Cinema from the twenty-first century is then analysed to demonstrate the nuanced and intersectional position chosen by national directors Esteban Ramírez, Paz Fábrega, Jurgen Ureña, and Patricia Velásquez to challenge the dominant nation-image as they reinscribe youth culture, Afro-Costa Rica, a female consciousness, and trans identity into the fabric of the nation.


Author(s):  
Ricardo Sánchez-Murillo

This study presents a hydrogeochemical analysis of spring responses (2013-2017) in the tropical mountainous region of the Central Valley of Costa Rica. The isotopic distribution of δ18O and δ2H in rainfall resulted in a highly significant meteoric water line: δ2H = 7.93×δ18O + 10.37 (r2=0.97). Rainfall isotope composition exhibited a strong dependent seasonality. The isotopic variation (δ18O) of two springs within the Barva aquifer was simulated using the FlowPC program to determine mean transit times (MTTs). Exponential-piston and dispersion distribution functions provided the best-fit to the observed isotopic composition at Flores and Sacramento springs, respectively. MTTs corresponded to 1.23±0.03 (Sacramento) and 1.42±0.04 (Flores) years. The greater MTT was represented by a homogeneous geochemical composition at Flores, whereas the smaller MTT at Sacramento is reflected in a more variable geochemical response. The results may be used to enhance modelling efforts in central Costa Rica, whereby scarcity of long-term data limits water resources management plans.


Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Piscopo

Jennifer M. Piscopo examines how the crisis of representation in Costa Rica has placed a ceiling on gender equality in representation. The restructuring of the Costa Rican party system and party fragmentation has made electing multiple candidates from any one ballot more difficult. Top spots have become even more prestigious and more likely to be allocated to men, which reduces women’s electoral chances. Corruption scandals, party breakdown, citizen frustration, and economic problems tainted the administration of the nation’s first female president, Laura Chinchilla. Female legislators have often worked to promote women’s issues and feminist policies, but Chinchilla eschewed feminism, even though several of her policies did benefit women. Overall, her failed presidency may create difficulties for other women seeking top political offices and could have negative consequences for views of women in politics. These challenges notwithstanding, Piscopo concludes that Costa Rica remains at the vanguard of women’s political representation in Latin America.


2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Paulette Barberousse-Alfonso ◽  
Marie Claire Vargas-Dengo ◽  
Pamela Corrales-Bastos

From a critical and transformative approach, this essay presents inputs and relevant conclusions obtained during the first stage of the project Construyendo una propuesta de implementación del Programa Maestros Comunitarios (PMC), Code number 0166-15 DEB-UNA (UNA, DEB, s. f.), conducted in 2016. Considering our perspective as researchers and professors at División de Educación Básica, the paper addresses a current topic within the socio-educative field to face challenges of contemporary educational models in formal and non-formal areas of elementary education in the Costa Rican context. Our purpose is that students and teachers of the career program Pedagogía con énfasis en I y II ciclos de la Educación General Básica have an overview of the national, social, and educational reality in an attempt to involve them in applying pedagogical actions towards finding a solution to school dropouts at Escuela Finca Guararí, Heredia, Costa Rica. The essay describes the experience of teaching education students and their socio-educational action with the focus on the systematization of the experience in the initial stage of the project. Furthermore, the paper connects with emerging strategic knowledge areas at División de Educación Básica (DEB), such as social and community pedagogy in the context of the National University (UNA) of Costa Rica. It takes over a route already traced at DEB, which proposes more flexible and alternative pedagogic formats to promote educational equity and diversity issues. The paper describes the project background and a theoretical framework, as well as aspects that have been shared by the protagonist actors along the process: students-teachers, host teachers, supervisor professors, school children, and their parents at Escuela Finca Guararí. Conclusions address main results and facts during 2016 in order to show the viability of the project, which is conducted from a public university. Finally, the article also includes an overview of the project’s future in terms of its implementation in the Costa Rican context.


1996 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia Olander

The years following World War Two produced a strong resurgence of U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean couched in Cold War terms. Although the U.S. intervention in Guatemala to overthrow the government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 has generally been seen as the first case of Cold War covert anti-Communist intervention in Latin America, several scholars have raised questions about U.S. involvement in a 1948 Costa Rican civil war in which Communism played a critical role. In a 1993 article in The Americas, Kyle Longley argued that “the U.S. response to the Costa Rican Revolution of 1948, not the Guatemalan affair, marked the origins of the Cold War in Latin America.” The U.S. “actively interfered,” and achieved “comparable results in Costa Rica as in Guatemala: the removal of a perceived Communist threat.” Other authors have argued, even, that the U.S. had prepared an invasion force in the Panama Canal Zone to pacify the country. The fifty years of Cold War anti-Communism entitles one to be skeptical of U.S. non-intervention in a Central American conflict involving Communism. Costa Ricans, aware of a long tradition of U.S. intervention in the region, also assumed that the U.S. would intervene. Most, if not all, were expecting intervention and one key government figure described U.S. pressure as like “the air, which is felt, even if it cannot be seen.” Yet, historians must do more than just “feel” intervention. Subsequent Cold War intervention may make it difficult to appraise the 1948 events in Costa Rica objectively. Statements like Longley's that “it is hard to believe that in early 1948 … Washington would not favor policies that ensured the removal of the [Communist Party] Vanguard,” although logical, do not coincide with the facts of the U.S. role in the conflict.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Rosero-Bixby

BACKGROUND The Costa Rican vaccination program uses Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. Real-world estimates of these vaccines effectiveness to prevent hospitalizations range from 90% to 98% for two doses and from 70% to 91% for a single dose. Almost all of these estimates predate the Delta variant. OBJECTIVE To estimate the dose-dependent effectiveness of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines to prevent severe illness in real-world conditions of Costa Rica, after the Delta variant became dominant. METHODS This observational study is a secondary analysis of hospitalizations prevalence. The participants are all 3.67 million adults residents in Costa Rica by mid-2021. The study is based on public aggregated data of 5978 COVID-19-related hospital records from 14th September to 20th October, 2021 and 6.1 million vaccination doses administered to determine hospitalization prevalence by dose-specific vaccination status. The intervention retrospectively evaluated is vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech (78%) and Oxford-AstraZeneca (22%). The main outcome studied is being hospitalized. RESULTS Vaccine effectiveness to prevent hospitalization (VEH) was estimated as 93.4% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 93.0 to 93.9) for complete vaccination and 76.7% (CI: 75.0 to 78.3) for single-dose vaccination among adults of all ages. VEH was lower and more uncertain among older adults aged 58 years and above: 92% (CI: 91% to 93%) for those who had received full vaccination and 64% (CI: 58% to 69%) for those who had received partial vaccination. Single-dose VEH declined over time during the study period, especially in the older age group. Estimates were sensitive to possible errors in the population count used to determine the residual number of unvaccinated people when vaccine coverage is high. CONCLUSIONS The Costa Rican vaccination program that administered Pfizer and Oxford vaccines are highly effective to prevent COVID-19-related hospitalizations after the Delta variant had become dominant. Moreover, a single dose is reasonably effective, justifying the continuation of the national policy of postponing the application for the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine to accelerate the vaccination and increase the number of people being vaccinated. Timely monitoring of vaccine effectiveness is important to detect eventual failures and motivate the public based on information that the vaccinations are effective.


1997 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Gentili ◽  
M. Alma Solis

AbstractOmiodes Guenée is redescribed based on all New World species, including the type species O. humeralis Guenée. Four new species from Costa Rica, O. janzeni sp. n., O. hallwachsae sp. n., O. sirena sp. n., O. ochracea sp. n., are described. Ten new synonymies are established : Phostria disciiridescens Hampson is =O. croeceiceps (Walker), Phostria cayennalis Schaus is =O. grandis (Druce), Omiodes ochrosoma Felder & Rogenhofer and Phryganodes gazalis Schaus are =O. pandaralis (Walker), Nacoleia lenticurvalis Hampson, Phryganodes anchoritalis Dyar, and Phostria duplicata Kaye are =O. confusalis (Dognin), O. cervinalis Amsel is =O. martvralis (Lederer), Nacoleia indicata ab. pigralis Dognin and Botis fortificalis Möschler are =O. metricalis (Möschler). One new combination is recognized: O. pandaralis (Walker) was transferred from Coelorhynchidia Hampson. A key and an updated checklist to the neotropical Omiodes species is provided, including O. indicata (Fabricius), a worldwide pest. Ten species that do not belong in Omiodes are retained until appropriate generic placements are identified.


Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 577
Author(s):  
Héctor Zumbado-Ulate ◽  
Catherine L. Searle ◽  
Gerardo Chaves ◽  
Víctor Acosta-Chaves ◽  
Alex Shepack ◽  
...  

Treefrogs represent 22% of amphibian species in Costa Rica, but gaps in the knowledge about this group of amphibians can impede conservation efforts. In this study, we first updated the status of Costa Rican treefrogs and found that a total of 38% of treefrog species are threatened according to the most recent IUCN assessment in 2019. Additionally, 21% of Costa Rican treefrog species have a high vulnerability to extinction according to environmental vulnerability scores. Then, we predicted the historical climatic suitability of eight target species that we expected to have exhibited changes in their ranges in the last 20 years. We assessed the location of new occurrence records since 2000 to identify recovery, range expansion, or previously underestimated ranges due to methodological limitations. We also estimated the area of each species’ suitable habitat with two metrics: extent of suitable habitat (ESH) and area of minimum convex polygon (AMCP). Six declined species exhibited recovery (i.e., new occurrences across historical range after 2000), with the widest recovery found in Agalychnis annae. We also found that Isthmohyla pseudopuma appears to have spread after the decline of sympatric species and that the range of I. sukia was originally underestimated due to inadequate detection. We found that the ESH was 32–49% smaller than the AMCP for species that are slowly recovering; however, the ESH is similar or greater than the AMCP for species that are recovering in most of their ranges, as well as rare species with widespread ranges. Results of this work can be used to evaluate the risk of environmental threats and prioritize regions for conservation purposes.


Author(s):  
Jose Carranza-Rojas ◽  
Erick Mata-Montero

In the last decade, research in Computer Vision has developed several algorithms to help botanists and non-experts to classify plants based on images of their leaves. LeafSnap is a mobile application that uses a multiscale curvature model of the leaf margin to classify leaf images into species. It has achieved high levels of accuracy on 184 tree species from Northeast US. We extend the research that led to the development of LeafSnap along two lines. First, LeafSnap’s underlying algorithms are applied to a set of 66 tree species from Costa Rica. Then, texture is used as an additional criterion to measure the level of improvement achieved in the automatic identification of Costa Rica tree species. A 25.6% improvement was achieved for a Costa Rican clean image dataset and 42.5% for a Costa Rican noisy image dataset. In both cases, our results show this increment as statistically significant. Further statistical analysis of visual noise impact, best algorithm combinations per species, and best value of k , the minimal cardinality of the set of candidate species that the tested algorithms render as best matches is also presented in this research.


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