Optimizing nitrogen fertilizer and planting density levels for maize production under current climate conditions in Northwest Ethiopian midlands

Kindie Tesfaye Dereje Ademe Enyew Adgo (2023, [Artículo])

This study determined the most effective plating density (PD) and nitrogen (N) fertilizer rate for well-adapted BH540 medium-maturing maize cultivars for current climate condition in north west Ethiopia midlands. The Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT)-Crop Environment Resource Synthesis (CERES)-Maize model has been utilized to determine the appropriate PD and N-fertilizer rate. An experimental study of PD (55,555, 62500, and 76,900 plants ha−1) and N (138, 207, and 276 kg N ha−1) levels was conducted for 3 years at 4 distinct sites. The DSSAT-CERES-Maize model was calibrated using climate data from 1987 to 2018, physicochemical soil profiling data (wilting point, field capacity, saturation, saturated hydraulic conductivity, root growth factor, bulk density, soil texture, organic carbon, total nitrogen; and soil pH), and agronomic management data from the experiment. After calibration, the DSSAT-CERES-Maize model was able to simulate the phenology and growth parameters of maize in the evaluation data set. The results from analysis of variance revealed that the maximum observed and simulated grain yield, biomass, and leaf area index were recorded from 276 kg N ha−1 and 76,900 plants ha−1 for the BH540 maize variety under the current climate condition. The application of 76,900 plants ha−1 combined with 276 kg N ha−1 significantly increased observed and simulated yield by 25% and 15%, respectively, compared with recommendation. Finally, future research on different N and PD levels in various agroecological zones with different varieties of mature maize types could be conducted for the current and future climate periods.

Maize Model Planting Density CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y BIOTECNOLOGÍA MAIZE MODELS SPACING NITROGEN FERTILIZERS YIELDS

“Mexico half way of making”: Carlos Chávez and the foundation of the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA) (1945-1947)

Ana Garduño (2023, [Artículo, Artículo])

I am focusing on the interaction between a cultural agent, Carlos Chávez, and the government elite, related to the circumstances of the enunciation of a public and official organism, INBA (The National Institute of Fine Arts), because I assume that political relations are fundamental to understand a process that endorsed the official culture as an appendage of politics. In spite of its relevance, this subject has not been studied. Based on archival documentation (at the National Archive of Mexico and the archive of INBA) I am examining the cultural policies derived from the foundation of INBA. Due to the current pandemic situation, it was not possible to consult other documental sources. I am formulating that the concept of “high culture” was at the core of a wider conflict between governmental interests and those of representative social actors, and I conclude that this obstacle would have conferred a major political and symbolical importance to the Institute, and consequently, would restrict its budget.

Carlos Chávez INBA Agentes culturales Políticas institucionales Centralización artística HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS DE LA CONDUCTA HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS DE LA CONDUCTA Foundation of the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico (INBA), Cultural agents Institutional policies Artistic centralization

Environmental Nanoparticles Reach Human Fetal Brains

LILIAN OFELIA CALDERON GARCIDUEÑAS ANGEL AUGUSTO PEREZ CALATAYUD ANGELICA GONZALEZ MACIEL RAFAEL REYNOSO ROBLES Héctor Gabriel Silva Pereyra Andrea Ramos Morales RICARDO TORRES JARDON Candelario de Jesús Soberanes Cerino Raúl Carrillo Esper JESÚS CARLOS BRIONES GARDUÑO Yazmin del Socorro Conde Gutiérrez (2022, [Artículo])

"Anthropogenic ultrafine particulate matter (UFPM) and industrial and natural nanoparticles (NPs) are ubiquitous. Normal term, preeclamptic, and postconceptional weeks(PCW) 8–15 human placentas and brains from polluted Mexican cities were analyzed by TEM and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. We documented NPs in maternal erythrocytes, early syncytiotrophoblast, Hofbauer cells, and fetal endothelium (ECs). Fetal ECs exhibited caveolar NP activity and widespread erythroblast contact. Brain ECs displayed micropodial extensions reaching luminal NP-loaded erythroblasts. Neurons and primitive glia displayed nuclear, organelle, and cytoplasmic NPs in both singles and conglomerates. Nanoscale Fe, Ti, and Al alloys, Hg, Cu, Ca, Sn, and Si were detected in placentas and fetal brains. Preeclamptic fetal blood NP vesicles are prospective neonate UFPM exposure biomarkers. NPs are reaching brain tissues at the early developmental PCW 8–15 stage, and NPs in maternal and fetal placental tissue compartments strongly suggests the placental barrier is not limiting the access of environmental NPs. Erythroblasts are the main early NP carriers to fetal tissues. The passage of UFPM/NPs from mothers to fetuses is documented and fingerprinting placental single particle composition could be useful for postnatal risk assessments. Fetal brain combustion and industrial NPs raise medical concerns about prenatal and postnatal health, including neurological and neurodegenerative lifelong consequences."

Environmental medicine Placental impairment Neurodevelopmental disorders Fetal brains Erythroblasts Preeclampsia Nanoparticles NPs extracellular vesicles Petrochemical pollution Villahermosa Tabasco BIOLOGÍA Y QUÍMICA QUÍMICA BIOQUÍMICA BIOQUÍMICA

Los médicos costarricenses formados en México durante el cardenismo: retorno e inserción laboral (1934-1961)

Costa Rican doctors trained in Mexico during the Cardenismo: return and labor insertion (1934-1961)

Marco Calderón-Blanco (2021, [Artículo])

El presente trabajo analiza el retorno de los estudiantes costarricenses que viajaron a México durante el cardenismo para cursar la carrera de medicina, con el fin de determinar su inserción laboral en el sistema de salud costarricense entre las décadas de 1940 y 1960. Se exploran las circunstancias que giraron alrededor del retorno y la inserción laboral de dichos profesionales. Al respecto, se evidencia que la integración a la fuerza de trabajo en el Hospital San Juan de Dios permitió un rápido ascenso en el escalafón médico. Esta dinámica posibilitó que un número considerable de los médicos tratados en el presente estudio ocupara puestos de poder en instituciones de salud costarricenses, situación que llevó a que se integraran al proceso de creación de la Escuela de Medicina de la Universidad de Costa Rica, la cual entró en funciones en el año de 1961.

The present work analyzes the return of Costa Rican students who traveled to Mexico during the cardenismo period to study medicine, in order to determine their labor insertion in the Costa Rican health system between the 1940s and 1960s. The circumstances surrounding the return and work insertion of these professionals are explored. In this regard, it is evident that the integration to the workforce of the San Juan de Dios Hospital allowed a rapid ascent in the medical ladder. This dynamic made it possible for a considerable number of the doctors treated in this study to hold positions of power in Costa Rican health institutions, a situation that led to their integration into the process of creating the University of Costa Rica’s School of Medicine, which became operational in 1961.

HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS DE LA CONDUCTA Medicina social Médicos costarricenses Cardenismo Retorno Inserción laboral Social medicine Costa Rican doctors Lázaro Cardenas government Return Labor insertion

Using an incomplete block design to allocate lines to environments improves sparse genome-based prediction in plant breeding

Osval Antonio Montesinos-Lopez ABELARDO MONTESINOS LOPEZ RICARDO ACOSTA DIAZ Rajeev Varshney Jose Crossa ALISON BENTLEY (2022, [Artículo])

Genomic selection (GS) is a predictive methodology that trains statistical machine-learning models with a reference population that is used to perform genome-enabled predictions of new lines. In plant breeding, it has the potential to increase the speed and reduce the cost of selection. However, to optimize resources, sparse testing methods have been proposed. A common approach is to guarantee a proportion of nonoverlapping and overlapping lines allocated randomly in locations, that is, lines appearing in some locations but not in all. In this study we propose using incomplete block designs (IBD), principally, for the allocation of lines to locations in such a way that not all lines are observed in all locations. We compare this allocation with a random allocation of lines to locations guaranteeing that the lines are allocated to

the same number of locations as under the IBD design. We implemented this benchmarking on several crop data sets under the Bayesian genomic best linear unbiased predictor (GBLUP) model, finding that allocation under the principle of IBD outperformed random allocation by between 1.4% and 26.5% across locations, traits, and data sets in terms of mean square error. Although a wide range of performance improvements were observed, our results provide evidence that using IBD for the allocation of lines to locations can help improve predictive performance compared with random allocation. This has the potential to be applied to large-scale plant breeding programs.

CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y BIOTECNOLOGÍA Bayes Theorem Genome Inflammatory Bowel Diseases Models, Genetic Plant Breeding

Big data, small explanatory and predictive power: Lessons from random forest modeling of on-farm yield variability and implications for data-driven agronomy

Martin van Ittersum (2023, [Artículo])

Context: Collection and analysis of large volumes of on-farm production data are widely seen as key to understanding yield variability among farmers and improving resource-use efficiency. Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the performance of statistical and machine learning methods to explain and predict crop yield across thousands of farmers’ fields in contrasting farming systems worldwide. Methods: A large database of 10,940 field-year combinations from three countries in different stages of agricultural intensification was analyzed. Random effects models were used to partition crop yield variability and random forest models were used to explain and predict crop yield within a cross-validation scheme with data re-sampling over space and time. Results: Yield variability in relative terms was smallest for wheat and barley in the Netherlands and for wheat in Ethiopia, intermediate for rice in the Philippines, and greatest for maize in Ethiopia. Random forest models comprising a total of 87 variables explained a maximum of 65 % of cereal yield variability in the Netherlands and less than 45 % of cereal yield variability in Ethiopia and in the Philippines. Crop management related variables were important to explain and predict cereal yields in Ethiopia, while predictive (i.e., known before the growing season) climatic variables and explanatory (i.e., known during or after the growing season) climatic variables were most important to explain and predict cereal yield variability in the Philippines and in the Netherlands, respectively. Finally, model cross-validation for regions or years not seen during model training reduced the R2 considerably for most crop x country combinations, while for wheat in the Netherlands this was model dependent. Conclusion: Big data from farmers’ fields is useful to explain on-farm yield variability to some extent, but not to predict it across time and space. Significance: The results call for moderate expectations towards big data and machine learning in agronomic studies, particularly for smallholder farms in the tropics where model performance was poorest independently of the variables considered and the cross-validation scheme used.

Model Accuracy Model Precision Linear Mixed Models CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y BIOTECNOLOGÍA MACHINE LEARNING SUSTAINABLE INTENSIFICATION BIG DATA YIELDS MODELS AGRONOMY

Teacher training in the state of Chihuahua: Between the health challenge and teacher resilience

Evangelina Cervantes Holguín Pavel Roel Gutiérrez Sandoval Cely Celene Ronquillo Chávez (2023, [Artículo, Artículo])

The article proposes to recover the response of the Teacher Training and Updating Institutions in the state of Chihuahua regarding the various challenges imposed by the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). The qualitative exercise analyzes the experience of 10 institutions based on the voice of their students, teachers, and principals regarding changes in academic, administrative, and organizational processes. It is concluded that the pandemic has affected each institution in different ways and with diverse intensity. Despite the achievements, the experience analyzed reveals the relative success of the using virtual platforms in the face of three basic conditions: connectivity, technological competencies, and socio-emotional skills of the teaching staff. It highlights the importance of implementing tutoring, resilience, or awareness actions of teachers and students' needs, feelings, and sufferings. It is opportune to recover the experiences of other institutions and to question especially students, thesis students and graduates.

Acceso a la educación Aprendizaje en línea Educación a distancia Formación de docentes Tecnología educacional HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS DE LA CONDUCTA HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS DE LA CONDUCTA Access to education online learning distance education teacher education educational technology

Risk, Covid-19 and hospital care in Mexico City: Are we moving toward a new medical practice?

Rubén Muñoz (2023, [Artículo, Artículo])

Covid-19 pandemic has entailed new challenges for health care in the Mexican public health sector, producing changes in clinical practices that are now handling patients infected with covid-19 and also outpatient consultations at tertiary-level care hospitals. Some of these challenges are related to the perception of risk held by physicians regarding the possibility of contracting or transmitting covid-19 during their work,and to the management of risk from the standpoint of biomedical organizational culture linked to the material and symbolic conditions of public health services predating the pandemic. We analyze these issues from a anthropological research based on in-depth interviews to physicians that work with covid-19 patients at “Covid-19 hospitals” or “hybrid hospitals” in Mexico City. Covid-19 has arrived in social relations and perceptions of risk in the arena of health care and involves knowing and transforming some structural and symbolic conditions, resignified with the pandemic, for proper medical care.

Covid-19 percepción de riesgo personal de salud atención médica hospitalaria cultura organizacional biomédica CIENCIAS SOCIALES CIENCIAS SOCIALES risk perception health care workers hospital care biomedical organizational culture

The impact of 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C global warming on global maize production and trade

Wei Xiong Tariq Ali (2022, [Artículo])

Future Climate Scenario Data Yield Reduction Risk CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y BIOTECNOLOGÍA CLIMATE CHANGE GREENHOUSE EFFECT MAIZE MITIGATION SIMULATION ACCLIMATIZATION ADAPTATION GLOBAL WARMING

Genomic prediction of yield performance among single-cross maize hybrids using a partial diallel cross design

Junjie Fu XUECAI ZHANG (2023, [Artículo])

Genomic Prediction Prediction Model Genetic Effects Hybrid Performance CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y BIOTECNOLOGÍA MAIZE GENETICS HYBRIDS PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT