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

This text contains a review of the book Historia de la Literatura Ramonense: desde los orígenes hasta el posmodernismo (1870-1970), by Francisco Rodríguez Cascante.

The health crisis of 2020 due to COVID 19 has become the main problem faced by governments, in this context spatial analysis is a tool that would help control the pandemic. The purpose is to identify the COVID 19 contagion risk zones, through the spatial analysis of banking and commercial equipment in the city of Puno. The banking and commercial equipment has been located in UTM WGS 84 coordinates, for the generation of response surfaces using Kernel density, adding the partial results through map algebra and also identified the spatial autocorrelation by means of the Moran I index. The high contagion risk zone COVID 19 has an area of 127 210,44 m2, representing 14% that covers 13 blocks, generating a concentric pattern in the center from Puno city, due to the proximity of banking and commercial equipment, causing inequality with other sectors of the city.

The Science Fiction drama 2001 Space Odyssey is the motive to analyse in this paper the 3 moments in human history -ascendence, decadence and transcendence- that identify homo sapiens as a transitive being, a self-realized product of evolution but in constant risk of succumbing to its own autopoietic dynamics. According to Clarke and Kubrick, the beginning and ascent of the sapiens species lies in the evolution of intelligence from an extraterrestrial induction, a premise that emerges from the characteristic imagination of SF. The article proceeds by means of an analytical reading of the object of study and appeals to complementary sources to contextualize and interpret Clarke's and Kubrick's theses, and to infer conclusions from them. The theoretical perspective of science fiction critic Julián Díez is taken. Díez, in his essay "Secession" for the Hélice Revue, applies the concept of prospective to name a category of the science fiction genre that seeks to elaborate narratives that operate as a warning about plausible but ungrateful futures; the narrative of prospective science fiction "warns about possible exacerbated developments of trends present in our society in order to denounce their inconvenience" (Díez 2008, p. 5). From this perspective, this article determines that the evolution of human intelligence is a paradoxical resource: it could be, or not, means to survival, instrument of environmental domination, objective rationality that induces self-destructive behaviors and interactions, and finally self-reflective lucidity that protects the possibility of evading extinction as destiny.

Street harassment refers to the unwanted comments, gestures, and actions that strangers address to people in public places without the consent of the affected individuals. Although all people regardless of their gender can experience street harassment, this issue has a major incidence on women. This research aimed to examine the perceptions of professional and non-professional millennial men towards the street harassment of women in San Pedro, San José, Costa Rica. The researcher surveyed fifty-two men with the purpose of proving the study’s hypothesis: professional men harass women less frequently than non-professional men. The results revealed the opposite as both male groups harass women almost evenly, and many of them ignore the definition of street harassment and their types.

This paper is a methodological proposal towards the research of the historic memory and the migratory experience from a gendered perspective, with particular interest in the study of Nicaraguan migrant women residing in Costa Rica. The research problem and context are discussed, and the approach, methodological design, suggested sources of information, instruments and strategies for analysis and interpretation are presented. The aim of this proposal is to serve as a guideline for the elaboration of this research modality, as well as to offer practical instruments for its execution.

The objective of this article is an analysis of the contributions that the human rights approach provides in the training of teachers and, therefore, an assessment of its importance and contribution in the exercise of the profession. It attends to a theoretical approach from three central axes: human rights, education in rights and the teaching role from said approach. To develop the research, a qualitative methodology was used, through which the experiences, the conceptual mastery and the points of view of practicing teachers, graduated from the University of Costa Rica and who took the course entitled " The Teaching of International Understanding and Human Rights”. Data collection was carried out through a semi-structured interview with three primary school teachers who are practicing their profession, and a qualitative questionnaire with open questions applied to fifteen teachers with the aforementioned characteristics. Among the main results is the visualization of the rights approach as a theoretical tool that allows the understanding of the context itself in relation to how respect for human rights is developed, this allows the development of skills such as critical thinking, analysis of social reality and active participation in society. In addition, it poses the teaching task as beyond a transmitter of content, positioning itself as an agent of social transformation.

In the Caribbean region, the coconut shell is an inexhaustible waste that presents uncoordinated management due to the absence of waste treatment protocols. In such a way, this work seeks to generate an alternative that can provide its reuse, taking into account aspects of the social, economic, and ecological field. This was proposed to make thermal insulation plates from coconut fiber using polylactic acid (PLA) as a binder. For this, the result of two different treatments on the coconut fiber was enhanced: acetosolve and acetone excerpt, to compare it with the untreated fibers. To make the laminas, it was used the fibers compressed at 14.7 KN and 186 °C, characterized by their thermal conductivities. Afterward, a reinforcement with PLA was carried out and the resistance in tensile tests was analyzed. The results obtained showed that the thermal conductivity of the sheets was: 0.1330 W/m°C acetosolve, 0.0792 W/m°C acetone extraction, 0.0332 W/m°C without treatment and 0.0693 W /m °C without PLA treatment. While analyzing the tensile strength, a value of 290.33 ± 48.73 N was obtained. From the integration of the results, it´s concluded that the most practical method for obtaining a thermal insulator is to use the fiber without treatment, as well as PLA as a binder is functional to improve the mechanical properties.

The objective was to evaluate the relationship between sprout production in pitahaya (Hylocereus sp.) and climatic variables.  The trial was conducted in Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, Costa Rica, from January 2017 to November 2019.  Tested variables were: number of vegetative sprouts (NVS), number of reproductive sprouts (NRS), rainfall (R, in mm), relative humidity (RH, in %), average temperature (Ta, in ° C), maximum temperature (Tmax, in ° C), minimum temperature (Tmin, in °C), wind speed (WS, in m/s), and global radiation (GR, in MJ/m2).  Spearman correlations were calculated among all variables, except NRS.  NVS did not show significant correlations with any of the other variables; nevertheless, significant correlations of NVS were obtained with the climatic variables that occurred in the months prior to sprouting.  The production of vegetative sprouts did not present a defined pattern throughout the evaluated period, while the production of reproductive sprouts occurred only in 2019, in the early stage of the rainy season.  At the time of production of reproductive sprouts, the plants did not show production of vegetative sprouts.

Nanocellulose (NC) was obtained from palm oil rachis by combination of a chemical explosion method and mechanical rupture, which was functionalized with cholic acid (AC) and trietoxy(octyl)silane (TEOS) as functionalizing agents for determining the As3+ ion adsorption capacity from water. The nanocellulose functionalized it was characterized by infrared spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis, scanning electronic microscopy and transmission electronic microscopy. Arsenic was measured by UV absorption according to molybdenum blue method. Nanofiber of cellulose was obtained with size than 19 – 24 nm, with which a functionalization of 25,96% was achieved for NC-AC and 20,50% for NC-TEOS. The adsorption tests showed a 63,6% removal of As3+ ion from the water using NC-AC and 22,6% using NC-TEOS as adsorbents respectively, with which NC-AC showed a potential adsorption capacity material for ion As3+ from water.

The purpose of this article is to present the results of using the video to promote peer and self – assessment in the first two oral English courses at University of Costa Rica, Paraiso Campus, Bachelor in English Teaching. In 2017 and 2018 students recorded three videos for each course in which they talked about some of the topics that were suggested by the instructor and were closely related to the course contents. In class, as group work, they used a guideline prepared by the instructor to review their peers’ videos. They focused on the presenter’s delivery, grammar, and pronunciation as well as in the content of the recording. During the peer evaluation activity, learners received written as well as oral responses from their partners. In the self – evaluation stage of the activity, they answered a questionnaire in which they indicated the number of times they recorded their videos before handing them to the instructor as well as their perception of their own performance as well as what they considered they needed to improve about it.  The idea behind asking them to write the number of times they had to record the video was to know if they had self – evaluated. The fourth video in each course asked pupils to value how their language competence had evolved, during the first semester and during the whole year respectively. Results show that incorporating the video in the language class was an effective strategy to promote peer and self-assessment.