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Old Cuba
\"From Old Havana to Santiago de Cuba, Old Cuba offers an intimate look at the historic architecture--the houses, apartments, monuments, charming public spaces, centuries old churches--of the storied country.\"--Jacket flap.
Book
Being Colonized
What was it like to be colonized by foreigners? Highlighting a region in central Congo, in the center of sub-Saharan Africa,
Being Colonized places Africans at the heart of the story. In a richly textured history that will appeal to general readers and students as well as to scholars, the distinguished historian Jan Vansina offers not just accounts of colonial administrators, missionaries, and traders, but the varied voices of a colonized people. Vansina uncovers the history revealed in local news, customs, gossip, and even dreams, as related by African villagers through archival documents, material culture, and oral interviews. Vansina’s case study of the colonial experience is the realm of Kuba, a kingdom in Congo about the size of New Jersey—and two-thirds the size of its colonial master, Belgium. The experience of its inhabitants is the story of colonialism, from its earliest manifestations to its tumultuous end. What happened in Kuba happened to varying degrees throughout Africa and other colonized regions: racism, economic exploitation, indirect rule, Christian conversion, modernization, disease and healing, and transformations in gender relations. The Kuba, like others, took their own active part in history, responding to the changes and calamities that colonization set in motion. Vansina follows the region’s inhabitants from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, when a new elite emerged on the eve of Congo’s dramatic passage to independence.
eBook
No more free lunch : reflections on the Cuban economic reform process and challenges for transformation
In September 2010, the Cuban government decided to embark on an economic reform program, unprecedented after the Revolution in 1959. This opened up opportunities for Cuban economists and scholars to participate in the development of the reform program. Thanks to grants from SSRC (Social Sciences Research Council, New York) and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, several researchers from the Cuban think tank CEEC (Center for Studies of the Cuban Economy, Havana) got an opportunity to visit countries that could be of interest for the reform process, notably Vietnam, but also Brazil, South Africa and Norway. The result of these field visits and a subsequent workshop involving contributions from Cuban as well as non-Cuban scholars, this volume showcases unprecedented new insights into the process and prospects for reform along many dimensions, including foreign direct investment, import substitution, entrepreneurship and business creation, science and technology development, and fiscal policies. The resulting analysis, in a comparative perspective, provides a framework for future research as well as for business practice and policymaking.
Book
CYGNSS data map flood inundation during the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season
The 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season was one of the most active and destructive on record, leading to significant flooding in many parts of the United States and the Caribbean. During flooding events such as these, there is an urgent need to quickly map in detail which areas have been severely affected, yet current satellite missions are not capable of sampling the global land surface at high enough spatio-temporal scales for flooding applications. Here, we demonstrate a novel approach to high-resolution flood mapping by repurposing data from the new NASA mission, CYGNSS. The CYGNSS multi-satellite constellation was designed for frequent temporal sampling of the ocean surface in the tropics. We demonstrate that CYGNSS data provide clear signals of surface saturation and inundation extent over land at higher spatio-temporal resolution than radiometers like SMAP. Using a simple thresholding technique, we are able to estimate that approximately 32,580 km
2
of land area in Texas flooded during Hurricane Harvey, and approximately 7210 km
2
of land area flooded in Cuba during Hurricane Irma, or about 7% of Cuba’s total area.
Journal Article
West African warfare in Bahia and Cuba : soldier slaves in the Atlantic world, 1807-1844
\"Examines the extent to which a series of African-led plots and armed movements that took place in western Cuba and Bahia between 1807 and 1844 were the result--or a continuation--of events that had occurred in and around the Yoruba and Hausa kingdoms in the same period.\"--Book jacket
Book
Rasa czarna a tożsamość kubańska
Afro-Cubans in the shaping of the Cuban identity Many historians point to an important role of race in the shaping of the Cuban identity and culture. Taking as a starting point the view that national identity is dynamic and negotiable, i.e. influenced by the elite’s ‘national project’ and negotiated from below, the article focuses on the role of Afro-Cubans in the formation of Cuban identity until 1959, especially on the period 1898-1940. This article looks at the concept of lo cubano as understood by the Cuban elites as well as the way in which Afro-Cubans actively negotiated their place in the Cuban society.
Journal Article
Transgenic Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes Transfer Genes into a Natural Population
In an attempt to control the mosquito-borne diseases yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika fevers, a strain of transgenically modified
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes containing a dominant lethal gene has been developed by a commercial company, Oxitec Ltd. If lethality is complete, releasing this strain should only reduce population size and not affect the genetics of the target populations. Approximately 450 thousand males of this strain were released each week for 27 months in Jacobina, Bahia, Brazil. We genotyped the release strain and the target Jacobina population before releases began for >21,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Genetic sampling from the target population six, 12, and 27–30 months after releases commenced provides clear evidence that portions of the transgenic strain genome have been incorporated into the target population. Evidently, rare viable hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature. The release strain was developed using a strain originally from Cuba, then outcrossed to a Mexican population. Thus, Jacobina
Ae. aegypti
are now a mix of three populations. It is unclear how this may affect disease transmission or affect other efforts to control these dangerous vectors. These results highlight the importance of having in place a genetic monitoring program during such releases to detect un-anticipated outcomes.
Journal Article
Hydrogen Storage for Mobility: A Review
Numerous reviews on hydrogen storage have previously been published. However, most of these reviews deal either exclusively with storage materials or the global hydrogen economy. This paper presents a review of hydrogen storage systems that are relevant for mobility applications. The ideal storage medium should allow high volumetric and gravimetric energy densities, quick uptake and release of fuel, operation at room temperatures and atmospheric pressure, safe use, and balanced cost-effectiveness. All current hydrogen storage technologies have significant drawbacks, including complex thermal management systems, boil-off, poor efficiency, expensive catalysts, stability issues, slow response rates, high operating pressures, low energy densities, and risks of violent and uncontrolled spontaneous reactions. While not perfect, the current leading industry standard of compressed hydrogen offers a functional solution and demonstrates a storage option for mobility compared to other technologies.
Journal Article
Subjectification of Highly Qualified Professionals in the Cuban Realm of Work: Analyzing a Two-Sided Process
In this article, I elaborate on discourses and discursively mediated subject positions regarding the working self in Cuba. My main objective is to analyze whether and how highly qualified professionals in Cuba position themselves relating to these discourses and subject positions. Building on the hitherto little-known conceptual framework of interpretive sutjectitication analysis, I perform the empirical analysis in two parts: First, I identify subject positions directed at Cuban workers in contemporary discourses on the Cuban realm of work. Second, based on qualitative interviews with highly qualified professionals in Havana, I reconstruct individual selfpositioning modes. I demonstrate how the interviewees described and explained their professional biographies by relating to discourses and subject positions. By indicating similarities and differences with the existing literature on the working self in Western, post-Fordist, and neoliberal contexts, I intend to enhance the understanding of subjectification processes in a new context. Simultaneously, I evaluate whether the approach of interpretive sutjectitication analysis, which was developed in a Western, market-capitalist context, is equally fruitful for understanding subjectification processes in Cuba. In doing so, I contribute to the advancement of this approach.
Journal Article
A First Comprehensive Baseline of Hydrocarbon Pollution in Gulf of Mexico Fishes
Despite over seven decades of production and hundreds of oil spills per year, there were no comprehensive baselines for petroleum contamination in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) prior to this study. Subsequent to the 2010
Deepwater Horizon
(DWH) spill, we implemented Gulf-wide fish surveys extending over seven years (2011–2018). A total of 2,503 fishes, comprised of 91 species, were sampled from 359 locations and evaluated for biliary polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations. The northern GoM had significantly higher total biliary PAH concentrations than the West Florida Shelf, and coastal regions off Mexico and Cuba. The highest concentrations of biliary PAH metabolites occurred in Yellowfin Tuna (
Thunnus albacares
), Golden Tilefish (
Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps
), and Red Drum (
Sciaenops ocellatus
). Conversely, biliary PAH concentrations were relatively low for most other species including economically important snappers and groupers. While oil contamination in most demersal species in the north central GoM declined in the first few years following DWH, more recent increases in exposure to PAHs in some species suggest a complex interaction between multiple input sources and possible re-suspension or bioturbation of oil-contaminated sediments. This study provides the most comprehensive baselines of PAH exposure in fishes ever conducted for a large marine ecosystem.
Journal Article