CASTINE, Maine—Maine Maritime Academy Professor of Marine Transportation Daniel Parrott, of Blue Hill, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant to work at the University of Costa Rica’s new School of Nautical Engineering and Maritime Transport (Ingeniería Náutica y Transporte Marítimo) in Limón, Costa Rica. The university’s program in marine transportation was established in 2012. Parrott will ...

Flickr Commons Sportsbooks in Costa Rica are currently busy handling the NBA playoffs, but these are not the only places where number crunching and statistical probability models are being developed. At the University of California, Merced, students of applied mathematics are working on advanced algorithms and stochastic models to predict outcomes of NBA games. According to a recent article...

Source: York University TORONTO, April 25, 2016 – The Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University opened its new Lillian Meighen Wright Centre and EcoCampus today in southern Costa Rica, offering students hands-on experiential learning from deep within a rainforest. The 400-square-metre Lillian Meighen Wright Centre overlooks the Peñas Blancas River from its prime location on York U...

Pixabay Commons By Nardy Baeza Bickel ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan will launch a new partnership that enables MBA students from one of Latin America's top business schools earn a master of public administration degree at the Ford School of Public Policy. The dual-degree program, which begins August 2016, is designed for students in the one-year MBA section with exemplary English-...

Wikimedia Commons By Steve Carr — University of New Mexico Throughout the centuries, volcanic eruptions have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives due in part to the lack of accurate signs indicating imminent eruptions. One type of a volcanic eruption, a phreatic eruption, which involves external water, is particularly energetic causing a disproportionate number of fatalities. Phreatic eru...

Flickr Commons The 2016 World Press Freedom Index reflects the intensity of the attacks on journalistic freedom and independence by governments, ideologies and private-sector interests during the past year. Thankfully, Costa Rica enjoys a great degree of press freedom; for this reason, Reporters Without Borders ranks our country as number six on the Index. Seen as a benchmark throughout the...

Source: ACAE The first space program for satellite development in Central America is being developed in Costa Rica with the help of small, private donations. According to a news report published in March by international news agency EFE, the Central American Aeronautics and Space Association, or ACAE, has kicked off a Kickstarter campaign to collect the $75,000 needed to launch the first sa...

(Wikimedia Commons) Chicago, Apr 15 (EFE).- The anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has invaded schools and universities across the United States, where the magnate's followers shout his name to intimidate Latinos and other people of color. "Trump has become a synonym for hate and his name is used to threaten minorities," the Midwest regional...

(ICR-CRS archive/stock) Cannabis has overtaken tobacco as one of the recreational substances of choice among high school students in Costa Rica. Such was the conclusion reached by the Institute on Liquor and Substance Abuse Research (Spanish acronym: IAFA) following its Fourth National Survey in secondary schools. The longitudinal survey, which was conducted in 2015, has been put through va...

Wikimedia Commons London, Apr 12 (EFE).- Observations from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope have revealed the existence outside the solar system of planets whose atmosphere has been completely stripped off by radiation from the star they orbit, an article in the journal Nature Communications said. Scientists from Britain's University of Birmingham used a technique known as asteroseismology to ...

Universidad Latina in Heredia New York, NY (PRWEB) April 06, 2016 - Abroad101, producers of America's first and largest study abroad review website, released the fifth annual Study Abroad Rankings today highlighting the success of international education. The rankings recognize the study abroad programs and locations rated highest by American students who have studied abroad in the last year. ...

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL (PRWEB) APRIL 08, 2016 - In San Jose, Costa Rica, the CENCATEC institute educational training center was inaugurated on Wednesday and Thursday 30/31 March 2016. The training sessions began on Wednesday with Trane air conditioning units and Ecox VRF units. This was followed by a product overview given by Uniweld on Thursday, and the introduction of Uniweld’s latest product intro...

Source: York University York University News Release - Over the past three years, Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) Professor Felipe Montoya and his family have been waiting for a response from Citizenship & Immigration Canada (CIC) on their application for permanent residency. However, the Montoya family was recently deemed inadmissible for permanent residency because 13-year-old ...

Flickr Commons - Activ Solar SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica--(BUSINESS WIRE) -- The first face-to-face module of the distance learning programme Especialización en Energías Renovables took place from the 22nd to the 26th February 2016. The Especialización is offered jointly by the EARTH University in Costa Rica and the German expert in capacity building Renewables Academy AG (RENAC). This one-year inter...

Waco Mammoth Museum - Photo By Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 3.0 Washington, Mar 29 (EFE).- Archaeologists have found a mammoth skull and two tusk fragments in a sand pit in northeastern Oklahoma, media reports said. The Oklahoma Archeological Survey, or OAS, identified the animal as a Columbian mammoth, one of the last species of that giant mammal to inhabit both North America and Central Ameri...

Wikimedia Commons HACU News Release - Officials from the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) will travel to San José, Costa Rica, for several key meetings on March 30, 2016, to discuss international collaboration in higher education. HACU president and CEO Antonio R. Flores is set to meet with the President of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera, and will attend sep...

Wikimedia Commons Miami, Mar 17 (EFE).- SeaWorld Entertainment, Inc. said Thursday it was ending its killer whale shows and would offer visitors new "natural orca encounters" at its theme parks. The marine mammals will not be released in the wild because "these orcas could not survive in oceans that include environmental concerns such as pollution and other man-made threats," SeaWorld said ...

Source: NUS Earlier this month, the National University of Singapore (NUS) welcomed Costa Rica's Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs Manuel González Sanz. Minister Gonzalez was in Singapore on an official visit to the NUS start-up incubator, Blk71. Minister González was hosted by NUS Enterprise CEO Dr Lily Chan, who gave a presentation on Blk71’s inception and the entrepreneurial pro...

Jurassic footprints. Source: Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Mar 15 (EFE).- A team of scientists headed by geologist Herman Bermudez working on the Colombian island of Gorgonilla, in the Pacific, has found fragments of the meteorite that 66 million years ago caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, sources close to the investigation said Tuesday. "(We have) evidence of the impact of the meteorite,...

Wikimedia Commons British Embassy Costa Rica News Release - On Wednesday 2 March, the Deputy Head of Mission of the British Embassy, Melanie Smart, attended a workshop organised by the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) at its headquarters in Turrialba, which was also attended by more than 90 Costa Rican livestock producers. The workshop was organised as part...

Leo and Zana Finkenbinder. Source: Olivet Nazarene University Olivet Nazarene University Press Release - An innovative educational and research facility in a Costa Rica cloud forest has been named for Dr. Leo Finkenbinder, zoology professor at Olivet Nazarene University, and his wife, Zana. The couple has worked for more than three decades in that region to advance scientific knowledge and eco...

Source: UCI University of California Press Release - Irvine, Calif., March 7, 2016 — On a cool, fog-shrouded mountain of Costa Rica, University of California, Irvine biologist Caitlin Looby is finding that warming temperatures are becoming an increasing problem for one of the most ecologically diverse places on Earth. Seeking to determine how shifts in the tropical mountain cloud forest eco...

By Carol Blair Vaughn John Ward Flickr Commons The Godfather of Email Has Died Ray Tomlinson, known worldwide as the inventor of email, has died of a reported heart attack at the age of 74.  Tomlinson leaves behind a wife and two children – but more famously – a method for all of us living outside our home countries to communicate with each other any time, day or night: email.   ...

Dr Franklin Chang-Diaz Earlier today, President of Costa Rica Luis Guillermo Solis opened the United Nations Workshop on Human Space Technology, a five-day international workshop on human space technology that will take place in  San José until March 11th.   Keynote speeches were delivered by Dr. Franklin Chang Diaz, CEO of the Ad Astra Rocket Company and Hall of Fame NASA astronaut...

Pixabay Public Domain Widener University Press Release - The lush, coffee-producing landscape of Costa Rica has been a destination for Widener University students and faculty to conduct research and participate in learning experiences for a decade, but the university now has a permanent hub in the Central American country to call home. The university has purchased a four-bedroom villa outfi...

Wikimedia Commons Foreign house hunters looking at real estate options in Costa Rica often inquire about local schools that offer international and bilingual curricula. According to the real estate professionals of RE/MAX Ocean Surf and Sun in Guanacaste, the Tamarindo Beach housing market is ideal for families looking to enroll their school-age children in programs that focus on bilingual educa...

File photo BARCELONA, Spain--(BUSINESS WIRE) -- Tackling digital literacy and ensuring that locally relevant content and services are available will be key to connecting the estimated 363 million citizens in Latin America and the Caribbean that are covered by mobile broadband networks but not yet connected. According to a series of new reports commissioned by GSMA’s Connected Society and pr...

Source: Sloth Institute Nature’s Miracle Orphans, a special program produced for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), has twice visited Costa Rica to tell the story of Monster, a female sloth rescued by primatologist Sam Trull of the Sloth Institute, located in Manuel Antonio. The BBC program is an observational documentary series following orphaned baby animals and the dedicated peo...

WirelessDevNet.com Press Release - ICT professionals and government policy makers wanting to present their strategies for progressing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals at the IFIP World Information Technology Forum (WITFOR) 2016 have two weeks to submit their papers and demo proposals for review. March 1st 2016 is the deadline for submissions, with the event scheduled to be held...

President Chinchilla Listens to Minister Cruz MEXICO CITY, Feb. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and GBM Corporation, a leading IT integration company in the Central American and Caribbean region, today announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the use of IBM's Watson cognitive computing capabilities in Latin America. GBM has created a new company, Cognitiva, for this purpose in ...

Source: US Embassy United States Ambassador S. Fitzgerald Haney awarded an AFS Scholarship to Jesús Vallejos, a student at the Science High School in Limón, during the opening ceremony of the National System of Science and Technology High Schools class of 2016. This brilliant student will travel to the United States for a year of studies. Author’s Note: The use of the noun and adjective “Am...

Wikimedia Commons According to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, which we all learned in school as a way of understanding how gravity works, bodies moving through space are affected by deformation, or warping.  Amazingly, last Thursday a team of scientists announced that they had recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light years away, thereby providing scientific pro...

Ana Helena Chacon Echeverria, Vice President of the Republic of Costa Rica witnessed the signing of the document. Source: Cisco Cisco Press Release - SAN JOSE, Costa Rica 11 February 2016 – In order to exchange information and share best practices to support the digital agenda for Costa Rica, the Telecommunications Vice Ministry, a specialized unit from MICITT (Ministerio de Ciencia Tecnología...

Press Advantage - The Costa Rica School of Massage Therapy has announced the presence of the Costa Rica School of Yoga on their Playa Samara campus. With this addition students will be able to take part in yoga teacher training. Those who sign up now will be able to enjoy a free week of teacher training in Nicoya. "We have focused on various elements of fitness for some time now and are so happ...

The New York Times in Spanish New York, Feb 8 (EFE).- The New York Times launched Monday a Spanish-language Web site, a new platform for expanding its presence in the Spanish-speaking market with articles translated from English and others originally written in Spanish. The project comes in addition to a weekly print edition that has been distributed for several years in the Hispanic world....

Upper left: Ringed kingfisher. Bottom left: Strawberry poison-dart frog. Center left: A bunch of bananas and a black-cheeked woodpecker. (Aforementioned photos by Kenshiro Imamura.) Center-right top: Agouti. Center-right bottom: Baird's tapir. Right: Brown-throated tree-toed sloth. Source: JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency News Release - In the biodiversity hot spot of Costa Rica...

Wikimedia Commons BOGOTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance has announced its first confirmed speakers for its annual Global Summit, which will be held in Bogota, Colombia (April 26-28 2016). A recent report published by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), titled “Working Together to Connect the World by 2020” notes that only 3.2 billion people are online, while 4.2 ...

Rain forest in Costa Rica OSU Press Release. CORVALLIS, Ore. – As tropical forests become increasingly broken up by roads, farm fields, pastures and other developments, corridors of trees provide vital pathways for pollinators and contribute to a rich diversity of plant species, scientists have confirmed. A study at the Las Cruces Biological Station in Costa Rica shows that when forests are...

Wikimedia Commons London, Jan 27 (EFE).- A team of U.S. researchers has developed a method for screening thousands of chemicals for toxicity without testing them on animals, an article in the scientific journal Nature Communications said. A team led by Ruili Huang, of the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, or NCATS, conducted the Tox21 stud...

Lindblad's National Geographic Islander Seattle, Wash. (PRWEB) January 26, 2016 - Jensen Maritime, Crowley Maritime Corp.’s Seattle-based naval architecture and marine engineering company, was recently selected to provide detailed design and production engineering services for two, 100 passenger, U.S. flagged, coastal cruise ships for Lindblad Expeditions Holdings, Inc. The twin screw diese...