Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The production and use of stem cells, especially embryonic human stem cells (hESC), is one of the most relevant socio-scientific issues of our time. Due to the fact that to obtain these cells it is generally necessary to destroy human embryos, a whirlpool of controversies are created that need to be studied and analyzed using tools provided by the integration of multiple disciplines. Different authors discuss the ethical/moral value of these embryos and the impact of their use for these investigations. We can find diverse positions ranging from those that ascribe embryos with a moral value equal to a fully developed person, to those that consider them merely as groups of cells with minimal or no moral value at all. The moral disharmony surrounding this issue is deeply rooted in the polysemic definition of the person concept and accounts for the difficulty to assign an ontological or moral value to the human embryos. The social, political, religious and scientific debates intertwine seeking common grounds and also, pointing out their differences in the perception of what is morally correct when human embryos are the subjects of scientific research. The embryo is an epiphenomenon that impacts, and is also impacted, by societal and cultural forces struggling in relation to this controversy and the limitations to reach a consensus about the ethical/moral value of the human embryo.

With the broad adoption of information technologies in academic institutions it is now imperative for teachers to strengthen or develop those skills that will help students search information, and manage it effectively and ethically, not only during their academic years but throughout their lives. This article focusses in the assessment of student information skills in a general education course at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus which discusses current controversies in biological sciences. The paper presents the incorporation of strategies to strengthen the use of information skills, based on student academic needs assessment over several academic semesters. The strategies and the evaluation instruments as well as the results of assessment activities carried out with a group of students throughout one semester will also be presented. The success of those strategies will be evaluated and the importance of information literacy in a General Studies Faculty will be discussed.

We present a series of examples in which due credit for the discoveries that advanced genetics and genomics during the twentieth century were not given or given after a long time of unneeded controversy. The article explores the consequences that this approach has in the education and training of future scientists.

Close readings and critical analyses of several contemporary diasporic writers' works demonstrate an increasing tendency to complicate the presumption of homogeneity at the heart of most nationalist discourses on Caribbean migration. These writings showcase a multiplicity of representations of national identities while focusing on how these identities are construed and interpreted. This article analyzes the works of two Puerto Rican authors, living and writing in the US, who deter from depictions of traditional Caribbean migrant stories of identity politics and socio-economic upward mobility in the host culture. Rather, they interrogate the very meaning of the term diaspora and delineate their particular insertion as writers whose literary range crosses national, cultural, and linguistic borders to embrace a more eclectic experiential mode of living and a multi-faceted literary tradition.

Ongoing discussions within the geographical area known as the Virgin Islands on who is a native Virgin Islander bring forth constructions of identity, space, and place in the Caribbean, a region that keep challenging its transnational nature. Following the theoretical frameworks proposed by Nora (1989) and Hannerz (1992) on sites of memory, complex cultures, and deterritorialization of identity in cultural communities, this essay explores the foundational narrative of "pioneer families/familias pioneras" used by generations of Puerto Ricans who live in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It also contextualizes these claims by exploring cultural perceptions of natives vs. foreigners in a context profoundly marked by ongoing, circular migration between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

The accelerated progress in DNA technologies, during the 1970‘s and 1980‘s had a great impact not only in the Biosciences but also in the areas of Anthropology and Forensic Sciences. For the latter, it has been developed an innovative instrument that has caused a breakthrough in subjects identification, the forensic DNA analysis. Through a set of procedures and techniques which conform the DNA typing, it is expected to analyze the polymorphism concerning to the length of certain repetitive regions of the chromosomes known as minisatellites (VNTR) and/or microsatellites (STR). This work includes the analysis of mitochondrial DNA hypervariable sequences. The discoveries of DNA profiles from British, Alex Jeffreys and the convergence with the polymerase chain reaction technique (PCR) developed by the north-American Kary Mullis are described . This convergence results in the birth of a new discipline, the forensic genetic. Each advance in technology drives a new stage into forensics. As an effect, every new stage originates a controversy in legal, social and ethical aspects. In this account of "DNA test" the most relevant technological innovations and polemics are discussed. It is also exposed how was integrated the DNA typing as part of the criminalistics in Puerto Rico and the expectatives for its role in case resolution.

The paper presents an analysis of Diego Conde's photographic collection called"The Papa Them." Conde is the only photographer of the Puerto Rican migration to the island of St. Croix, USVI. Fuentes Rivera, the author of this paper, uses a literary perspective where everything is a representation. The discussion is geared around migration, photography and memory. Fuentes Rivera emphasizes that the collection creates a family album for the migrant community, and points out (as Conde states) that its cultural transformation is always from a Puerto Rican standpoint (Papa Them/ CrucianRican/ PortoCrucian). This article includes a table with a description of the photo collection, which is narrated by HIM.