Mediated territoriality: rural workers and the efforts to scale out agroecology in Nicaragua

The Spanish word formación can be translated as ‘training’ or ‘education’, but Latin American social movements use it as inspired by Che Guevara’s notion of ‘molding’ the values of the new woman and new man for egalitarian, cooperative social relations in the construction of a ‘new society’. This contribution presents findings on the dialectical linkages between the formación processes led by the Rural Workers’ Association (ATC) and the gradual transformation of the Nicaraguan countryside by peasant families choosing to grow food using agroecological practices. We use Vygotsky’s sociocultural historical theory to explore the developmental processes of formación subjects and the pedagogical mediators of their transformation into movement cadre. The motivations of active learners to develop new senses and collective understandings about their material reality become a counterhegemonic process of internalization and socialization of agroecological knowledges and senses. In this paper, we further explore the formación process by identifying territorial mediators: culturally significant elements within and outside of individuals that facilitate the rooting of agroecological social processes in a given territory where the social movement is active. By placing the territory, rather than the individual, at the center of popular education processes, new synergies are emerging in the construction of socially mobilizing methods for producing and spreading agroecological knowledge.     

The Effects of Child Physical Maltreatment on Nutritional Outcomes: Evidence from Peru

Do children whose parents use physical punishment as a disciplinary method have lower anthropometric measures? Using data for Peruvian children aged 0–5 years, we employ instrumental variables for physical punishment to overcome endogeneity problems common to the household violence literature. Across varying levels of controls, children exposed to physical punishment have significantly poorer short-term nutritional outcomes; although there is no effect on long-term nutrition. We explore heterogeneous effects and potential mechanisms. Children exposed to physical maltreatment fall ill more frequently and are less likely to access preventive and curative healthcare.     

Knowledge,communication, development: a perspective from Latin America

Knowledge in development has been perceived as a one-way commodity that developed nations could bring ‘down to’ the level of ‘developing countries’. Sharing knowledge is generally seen as a North–South operation. This vertical approach to knowledge in development echoes the vertical approach to development in general, whereby knowledge is perceived as an ingredient of the technical assistance given by those who have it to those who do not. However, no organisation can offer social transformation or knowledge sharing if it is not itself engaged in an internal learning process that systematically questions certainties, authorities, and decision making. Learning is a complex process of acquiring knowledge, both within the organisation that facilitates social change and among the subjects of and partners in social change.     

Variability of the Entire Mitochondrial DNA Control Region in a Human Isolate from the Pas Valley (Northern Spain)

Abstract: In this study, we analyzed the entire mtDNA control region in 61 unrelated individuals from the Pas Valley (Cantabria), a human isolate from northern Spain, to evaluate the suitability of this analysis to increase the power of discrimination of this locus for forensic purposes in human isolates. Low values obtained for the diversity parameters confirmed the relative isolation of this human group. The main findings of this study indicated that even the analysis of the entire mtDNA control region may have important limitations for use in forensic casework when dealing with human isolates: none of the 44 individuals who exhibited identical HVI‐HVII haplotypes could be further differentiated by analysis of segment HVIII. Nevertheless, analysis of the entire mtDNA control region proved to be useful to determine the ancestry of the samples examined, by contributing to the confirmation, and, on occasion, even to the refinement of the haplogroup assignment.     

Population data of new Y-chromosome STRs GATA C4, DYS438, DYS437, GATA A7.2, GATA H4, DYS439 and GATA A10 in males from Colombia

Two hundred twenty-five unrelated males were typed for 7 over 8 loci Y-chromosome STRs proposed in a collaborative study by The Spanish and Portuguese ISFG Working Group. The markers amplification were in two multiplex reactions GEPY I with GATA C4, DYS438, DYS437, DYS461 (GATA A7.2) and GEPY II with GATA H4, DYS439, GATA A10 and DYS460 (GATA A7.1). All gene diversities were upper 0.5 with the highest value in DYS439 with 0.64. Furthermore, 152 haplotypes from 7 loci Y-chromosome STRs were found within studied population and a high haplotype diversity 0.9902 was found. The DYS460 (GATA A7.1) marker can not be studied because its diverse alleles were not able for interpret.     

Genetic profiling of a central Venezuelan population using 15 STR markers that may be of forensic importance

The AmpFlSTR Identifiler kit has recently been accepted for use in DNA databasing of forensic samples in the FBI's National DNA Index System. In the present study, we used this kit to analyze the allele distribution of 15 short tandem repeat markers (STR) in individuals living in Caracas city, Venezuela. The allele frequencies of two of these STR, D2S1338 and D19S433, have not previously been reported for this or any other Latin American population. The results indicate that for the population here studied, the 15 STR tested are useful markers for paternity testing and forensic casework.     

HPLC-DAD determination of opioids, cocaine and their metabolites in plasma

High performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection (HPLC-DAD) was used to develop a method for the simultaneous determination of morphine, codeine, 6-acetylmorphine (6AM), cocaine, benzoylecgonine (BEG), cocaethylene, methadone and its metabolite, 2-ethylidene-1,5-dimethyldiphenylpyrrolidine (EDDP), in plasma. Following solid-phase extraction with Bond Elut Certify cartridges, chromatography was performed on an X-Terra RP8 column (250 mm x 4.6 mm i.d., 5 microm particle size), using acetonitrile-phosphate buffer pH 6.53 as mobile phase and elution in the gradient mode. The detector response was linear at concentrations over the range 0.1-10 microg/mL in plasma, and the correlation coefficients for the eight drugs studied were all higher than 0.99. The average extraction recoveries from plasma ranged from 60% for BEG to 95% for methadone. The precision was acceptable, with coefficients of variation oscillating between 2.55% and 6.45%. The accuracy was found to be within satisfactory limits (+/- 8.1%). Finally, the method was applied to 21 plasma samples from fatal overdoses, obtaining positive results for two or more drugs.