Human poisoning caused by ingestion of unripe fruit of Passiflora ade/lOpoda is he re reported, apparently for the first time. HCN is pl'Ocluced in the pericarp and aril of tbe unripe fruit, as well as in tbe primary stem, petiole, br;¡cts and stipules but not in tendrils. HCN yield has been reported previously in Passifloraceae only from vegetative parts. The pericarp and arils of complctely r...

The extent of the H1N1 pandemic has been estimated from case counts and deaths but the proportion of exposed populations with inapparent infections has not been described in detail. We analysed haemagglutination-inhibition (HI) antibody titres of pre-vaccination sera from pandemic vaccine trials conducted in six countries on four continents to provide an indication of A/CA/07/2009(H1N1)-like in...

Costa Rica, whose life expectancy was 74 years by 1985, has reached a health level comparable to a developed country. The health achievements of this country are product of political and socioeconomic circumstances as well as of right public health policies. Until about 1970 the features of Costa Rica mortality, although somewhat better than the Latin American average, evolved in a similar way ...

Zethus (Zethus) caetetus sp. nov. (Brazil) and Zethus (Zethus) flaviventris sp. nov. (Costa Rica) are described and figured. Both species belong to the Z. heydeni species group. A total of 218 species of Zethus are currently recognized for the Americas.

The diversity of tropical marine organisms has not been studied as intensively as the terrestrial biota worldwide. Additionally, marine biodiversity research in the tropics lags behind other regions. The 43,000 ha Sector Marino of Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG, Marine Sector of Guanacaste Conservation Area), on the North Pacific coast of Costa Rica is no exception. For more than four dec...

Central America is recognized as a mega diverse "hot-spot" and one of its smaller countries, Costa Rica, as one of the world's leaders in the study and conservation of tropical biodiversity. For this study, inspired by the 60th anniversary of the journal Revista de Biología Tropical, we tabulated all the scientific production on Costa Rican biodiversity published in Revista de Biología Tropical...

Researchers from a small European country have backed a project set up ten years ago in Costa Rica that has now become a major influence in conservation and research.

this case study was conducted to determine the benefits of a multi-dimensional study abroad program that included a community service component. it encompassed the following aspects of the study abroad experience: motivation for travel, language learning research, the role of autonomy in language learning, and cultural awareness, behaviors, and attitudes. the researcher acted as a participant a...

This paper presents and discusses the results from an electronic survey on the use of free and open source software (FOSS) by local governments in Costa Rica. Barriers preventing the use of this type of software are also identified. Comparison of the results from this survey with those obtained from a previous one, conducted under the same project, shows that Costa Rican local governments are i...

BACKGROUND Since 2004, the uptake of seasonal influenza vaccines in Latin America and the Caribbean has markedly increased. However, vaccine effectiveness (VE) is not routinely measured in the region. We assessed the feasibility of using routine surveillance data collected by sentinel hospitals to estimate influenza VE during 2012 against laboratory-confirmed influenza hospitalizations in Costa...