Most Popular Books by Cristina Garcia

A delightful family of pumpkins and gourds have a "pesky problem" a flock of crows with crazy feathers peck and poop on them day after day. The patch puts their heads together to solve the problem in a creative way. Readers are invited to discover how teamwork and believing in ourselves can take us far. "Together, we have everything we need to find creative solutions to any pesky problem." -Cristina G.

Timely pathogen detection is an important issue for the efficient prevention of outbreaks in the population. This book reviews the biosensor technology with a focus on its potential application to pathogen detection in the human food chain.

Seguindo a proposta do I Seminário Internacional Tecendo Redes Antirracistas: África(s), Brasil, Portugal, este livro traz uma série de textos que buscam produzir reflexões sobre o racismo experimentado em países de língua portuguesa nos continentes africano, sul-americano e europeu. Essas reflexões se posicionam como ferramentas para o enfrentamento ao fenômeno persistente do racismo que, longe de ser apenas um elemento estruturante das experiências da Modernidade, tem se intensificado nos últimos anos e mostrado que não se trata somente de um fato do passado colonial. A diversidade advinda dos três continentes faz deste livro uma ferramenta ímpar, necessária para um olhar comparativo, transnacional e transcontinental sobre as diferentes experiências com e contra o racismo, espinha dorsal do mundo moderno.

Esta es la historia de Eduardo, un hombre que supo sobreponerse a la adversidad y encontró el propósito de Dios sobre su vida.Una biografía contada desde la perspectiva de su esposa

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Palabras clave para organizar textos en español: recursos pragmáticos y discursivosestá dirigido a estudiantes de español como lengua extranjera -de nivel B2/ C1 (MCER) o Intermediate High/ Advanced Low(ACTFL)- que deseen mejorar la coherencia de sus textos hablados y escritos. En este libro el lector encontrará explicaciones teóricas acompañadas de numerosas actividades en las que pondrá en práctica una gran variedad de estructuras, estrategias y herramientas útiles para conectar frases y párrafos de manera eficaz. Palabras clave para organizar textos en españolse fundamenta en el uso de la lengua en contextos de comunicación real. El libro puede utilizarse de manera independiente o como material de clase, ya que, además de las actividades con las que el aprendiz puede autoevaluar su progreso, también incluye actividades abiertas y juegos para trabajar en grupo. tas y juegos para trabajar en grupo.

Brazil has the largest sugarcane acreage in the world (FAOSTAT, 2020) and is the world leader in the production of sugarcane-based ethanol (Sousa Junior et al., 2017). Due to the technical experience in the production of biofuels and the availability of sugarcane straw and bagasse, the country has a great potential to commercially produce second-generation ethanol (E2G) (Nyko et. al., 2010). In 2017, Brazil enacted a new National Biofuels Policy, called RenovaBio, to expand the production and use of biofuels in the country. This dissertation combines three essays that explore biofuels law and policy with a special focus on Brazil. The first essay analyzed biofuel policy uncertainty, which is one of the main issues impeding the development of biofuels globally (Tyner, 2010). Specifically, the essay systematically reviewed select public policy literature that addresses biofuel policy uncertainty, as it appears in peer-reviewed scholarly journals between 2008 and 2018 in English and in Portuguese. The 33 journal articles identified in this literature review share a common thread in that they all engage, to varying degrees, the ways that uncertainty affects biofuels. I have found that, even though biofuel policy uncertainty has increasingly been given more attention by researchers in recent years, the focus of their analyses is on the U.S., Germany, and Canada. Thus, it is suggested that more research on biofuel policy uncertainty is needed in important countries for biofuel production. The second essay analyzed the ethanol law and policy in Brazil, and the policy-making process RenovaBio, through the lenses of the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) developed by John Kingdon (2011). The factors, events, and policy actors at play in the policymaking process of RenovaBio were investigated through the use of primary and secondary sources of data comprised mainly of legal and government documents, books, journal articles, and survey data collected for this study. The separate examination of the problem, policy, and political streams within Kingdon''s MSF provided a useful framework for reconstructing the conditions for the enactment of RenovaBio. The last essay examined the current situation of second-generation ethanol (E2G) in Brazil to assess consumers'' willingness to pay (WTP) for E2G. A survey was conducted with consumers in 24 Brazilian states to collect data on consumers'' WTP for E2G, driving patterns, knowledge about biofuels, acceptance of relevant government policies in the biofuels sector, and demographic characteristics. A dichotomous-choice contingent valuation methodology was used to estimate WTP for E2G and investigate factors that affect consumer choice. The findings indicated that, on average, Brazilian consumers are willing to purchase E2G at an 11 percent premium price compared to conventional fuel. In addition, results suggested that consumers who are generally more knowledgeable about biofuels and have a higher income are more likely to pay a premium for E2G.

Open innovation platforms (web sites where crowds post ideas in a shared space) enable us to elicit huge volumes of potentially valuable solutions for problems we care about, but identifying the best ideas in these collections can be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. This paper presents an approach, called the "bag of stars," which enables crowd to filter ideas with accuracy comparable to conventional (Likert scale) rating approaches, but in only a fraction of the time.

Across the country, classrooms have increased in diversity, including those students who require individualized supports, regardless of the setting. As a result, paraeducators are designated by legislative mandates to assist teachers provide differentiated instruction in the student’s Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). Based on research findings, general education teachers lack training, knowledge, skills, preparation, or become uncertain to direct the work of special education paraeducators (Wallace, Shin, Bartholomay & Stahl, 2001; Brenton, 2010; Giangreco et al., 2010; Riggs & Mueller 2001). Paraeducators who are underutilized, misused, or receive limited training may be working without the quality supervision and direction of the teacher, which jeopardizes the effective delivery of services and is inconsistent with federal law mandates (French, 2001). In order to address the growing gap, a training manual was developed to equip teachers with skills to manage collaborative best practices, knowledge, and strategies to guide their role of managing paraeducators for delivering effective educational services. The training manual adds value to special education, general education, and provides teachers fundamental skills to efficiently work with special education paraeducators.

The family Rhodomelaceae represents a monophyletic lineage of the order Ceramiales and it is the largest within the Rhodophyta with 145 genera and over 1,000 species. The family is divided in several tribes according to morphological symmetry relationships, other vegetative features and to a lesser extent the reproductive anatomy. The tendency to shift from large inclusive systematic studies to more clade-specific phylogenetic studies have favored the largest genera, such as Laurencia and Polysiphonia, while many other remain underrepresented or without proper molecular assessment. Consequently, phylogenetic relationships of several genera and suprageneric relationships in the Rhodomelaceae remain elusive. Therefore, the main goal of this dissertation was to infer phylogenetic relationships among a wide variety of taxa in the family, focusing on small genera with doubtful phylogenetic status as well as other genera that have not been included in previous molecular phylogenetic studies. This research explored the utility of different molecular markers (rbcL, psbA, COI-5P and LSU rRNA) employing synergistically several approaches including molecular phylogenetics, Molecular Assisted Identification (MAI) through DNA Barcoding, RNA secondary structure folding and anatomical analysis. The results of these analyses have led to the emendation of the tribe Polysiphonieae by resurrecting the tribe Alsidieae to include the genera Alsidium and Digenea, the merging of Bryothamnion into Alsidium, the recognition of Digenea simplex as a species complex, the identification of two new records for the Atlantic Ocean, Laurencia natalensis and Acanthophora dendroides and the elucidation of the secondary structure of the Domain III of the LSU rRNA in several taxa of the Rhodomelaceae. This dissertation highlights the importance of an improved phylogenetic taxon sampling and MAI to uncover hidden biodiversity, especially in taxonomic groups that represent a challenge. Furthermore, the available psbA and partial LSU data for the family is greatly enriched, which may encourage their use in future phylogenetic analyses of the family and the order in general.

With the advances in social media technology, it became possible to involve large group in deliberations. Online discussion environments, such as forums and argumentation maps websites, allow solutions to be outsourced and bred from the crowd. Nevertheless, as a discussion develops, making sense of its content represents a big challenge for newcomers, thus impairing their potential participation. We claim a rhetorically organized text, automatically generated, fosters understanding by guiding participants though the content within chronological, logical and social dimensions of a discussion. An empirical experiment supports our claim. The experiment involved three groups of 16 people whose task was to answer a questionnaire on reading comprehension of a previous debate presented in one of three formats: forum, argumentation map or rhetorically organized text. We discuss the reasons that might explain the results and the implications for the design of large groups'' interaction tools.

The purpose of the current study was to examine factors that discriminated between high school students who graduated from those who did not. High school graduation was chosen as a discriminating outcome for the comparisons groups due to the positive implications graduation has on students'' future professional and emotional development. Data were collected from students enrolled in their fourth year of high school. Specifically, the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC-2) and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) were used to assess students'' internalizing and externalizing behaviors as they related to academic achievement. Seventy-eight fourth year high school students agreed to participate in the study. The current study failed to identify predictor variables due to the large discrepancy in the sizes of the two outcome groups. No significant differences were found between the groups with respect to the independent variables. Significant differences were found between gender and graduation outcome. Additionally, differences in grade point average and school attendance were significant between groups. In addition to these statistically significant findings, moderate and large effect sizes were identified among the independent variables and high school graduation.

Hydrothermal vents (HV) are deep-sea ecosystems where hypoxia/anoxia is one of the major constraints. Respiratory pigments play a key function in the adaptation to hypoxia. HV polynoids are abundant, diverse and widely distributed and are the only ones to possess hemoglobins (Hb), and these are unique among annelids. The goal of this work was to know their evolutionary history. There are 2 types of Hb in HV polynoids: 1- and 4-domains. While they are extracellular, they are more related to intracellular globins that to annelid extracellular ones, indicating a distinct origin. We studied the evolutionary history of the 4-domain gene Hb and found that originated from the tandem duplication of a myoglobin-like ancestral. Both globin types possess residues in the heme pocket that are responsible for the high oxygen affinity in other organisms'' Hb. But the adaptive value of these Hb probably resides in their expression at high levels. Plus, some amino acid sites were shown to be under positive selection (PS). Some are located in the heme pocket where they might affect functional properties. Others are in areas where they can affect interactions between subunits and domains.

Multi-class classification is the core issue of many pattern recognition tasks. Several applications require high-end machine learning solutions to provide satisfying results in operational contexts. However, most efficient ones, like SVM or Boosting, are generally mono-class, which introduces the problem of translating a global multi-class problem is several binary problems, while still being able to provide at the end an answer to the original multi-class issue. Present work aims at providing a solution to this multi-class problematic, by introducing a complete framework with a strong probabilistic and structured basis. It includes the study of error correcting output codes correlated with the definition of an optimal subdivision of the multi-class issue in several binary problems, in a complete automatic way. Machine learning algorithms are studied and benchmarked to facilitate and justify the final selection. Coupling of automatically calibrated classifiers output is obtained by applying iterative constrained regularisations, and a logical temporal fusion is applied on temporal-redundant data (like tracked vehicles) to enhance performances. Finally, ranking scores are computed to optimize precision and recall is ranking-based systems. Each step of the previously described system has been analysed from a theoretical an empirical point of view and new contributions are introduced, so as to obtain a complete mathematically coherent framework which is both generic and easy-to-use, as the learning procedure is almost completely automatic. On top of that, quantitative evaluations on two completely different datasets have assessed both the exactitude of previous assertions and the improvements that were achieved compared to previous methods.

A presente obra nasceu do interesse em se estudar a resiliência com foco na família ao longo do ciclo vital, a partir de uma perspectiva sistêmica e da psicologia da saúde. As características, advindas das diferentes etiologias que compõem a condição de portador de paraplegia dos membros de cada família estudada, quais sejam, a paraplegia em decorrência de lesão medular e de uma paralisia cerebral, buscaram ampliar o trabalho em sua complexidade. A obra busca afirmar que, conhecendo casos como esses é que teremos condições de nos depararmos e nos encantarmos, cada vez mais, com o ser humano que não se deixa reduzir a uma situação adversa e faz do pensamento e sua vontade instrumentos de superação.

(Continuação) Para a análise da existência de diferenças no nível de revelação de si entre homens e mulheres em diferentes situações de comunicação (face a face, mIRC e webchat), mensurado através da escala de revelação de si de Jourard, foram realizadas análises de variância. Os resultados indicaram que as salasde bate-papo não são ambientes preferenciais para a revelação de si íntima, tendo-se observado que a rede não suscita muita confiança nem segurança para a revelação de si. De fato, as conversas estabelecidas tendem a ser superficiais e abordam temas gerais, sendo as principais motivações para a sua realização a diversão e o estabelecimento de novas relações. Diferenças de gênero no falar de si tradicionalmente encontradas no contexto presencial parecem diminuir nesse contexto, especialmente nas salas tipo webchat, onde os níveis de revelação de homens e mulheres foram mais próximos. Conclui-se que, apesar das salas de batepapo oferecerem a possibilidade de novas formas de relacionamento e intimidade, elas são pouco utilizadas como um recurso diferenciado de exploração e revelação de si entre os adolescentes.

Herinneringen van vier vrouwelijke familieleden uit het kapitalistische New York en het communistische Cuba in de jaren zestig en zeventig.