Graduated with Distinction



FEBRUARY, 2023. These graduate students completed their program with a high cumulative grade point average, which reflects the quality of performance within their respective major. Congratulations!

DISTINCTION
Francisco Torres Lebrón
Doctor of Science
Public Health

DISTINCTION
Juan Francisco Mogollón Castillo
Post-Doctorate of Legal Sciences
Legal Sciences

DISTINCTION
Mohamad Ayach
Doctor of Philosophy
Sustainable Parametricism Architecture

Workshop: Gender and Human Development



Call for Papers. As part of an International Scientific Conference, this workshop will be held April 23–26 2023 at Universidad de Holguín, Holguín, Cuba. Official languages: Spanish/ English. Some themes: Impacts of public policies and equity strategies based on gender • Gender perspective: opportunities and mirages • Gender and STEAM • Gender and local development • Gender and race • Empowerment of women • Gender studies and international cooperation • Sexuality education from a gender perspective • Inclusive, equitable and quality education • Employment and equity • Gender and religion. Send your summary and any questions you have to: Dr. C. Anabel Naranjo Paz anabelnaranjopaz@gmail.com +5352111531 (WhatsApp) Dr. C. Lidia Romero Pupo pupomarialidia@gmail.com +5351693336 (WhatsApp) Abstract reception deadline: March 17, 2023. Notification of admission: March 31, 2023. For more information, visit the University website: https://uho.edu.cu

18 TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON Design principles and practices



Call for Papers This Conference will be held 11–13 March 2024 at Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain + Online. We invite proposals for paper presentations, workshops/ interactive sessions, posters/ exhibits, colloquia, focused discussions, innovation showcases, virtual posters, or virtual lightning talks. 2024 Special Focus: “Cultures of Transformative Design”

Theme 1: Design Education.
Theme 2: Design in Society
Theme 3: Designed Objects
Theme 4: Visual Design
Theme 5: Design Management
and Professional Practice Theme 6: Architectonic, Spatial, and Environmental Design Become a Presenter:

1. Submit a proposal
2. Review timeline
3. Register
Advance proposal deadline May 11, 2023 Advance registration deadline June 11, 2023 Visit the website: https://designprinciplesandpractices.com




Elias Chipilica
Doctor of Business Administration
Business Administration
Angola
Ian Ramon Noble
Master of Education
Education
Belize
Carolyn L. Crawford
Bachelor of Science
Supply Chain and Logistics
Belize
Mbiydzenyuy Yvonne Fola
Master of Business Administration
Accounting
Cameroon
Gordon Ikome E Udalor
Doctor of Science
Public Health
Cameroon
Ewang Ahone Brenda Agnes
Doctor of Science
Public Health
Cameroon
           
Luanna Lavenna Clemetson
Doctor of Philosop hy
Educational Administration and Leadership
Canada
Kamariza Francine
Master of Business Administration
Business Administration
Canada
Mahamat Lamine Yacoub
Doctor of Economics
Business and Economics
Chad
Luis Hernan Morales Fuenzalida
Doctor of Education
Education
Chile
Donal Guerrier
Bachelor of Economics
Economy and Business
Chile
Colleen Jennifer Shepherd
Bachelor of Andragogy
Andragogy
China
           
Eridania Rodriguez Peguero
Doctor of Education
Education
Dominican Republic
Candy Rosario De Euler
Bachelor of Science
Psychology
Dominican Republic
Odali Santana Vicente
Doctor of Legal Studies
Legal studies
Dominican Republic
Francisco Torres Lebrón
Doctor of Science
Public Health
Dominican Republic
Ana Carolina Barragan Borja
Bachelor of Science
Gastronomy
Ecuado
Afomya Deksyos
Bachelor of Human Nutrition
Nutrition Science
Ethiop ia
           
Samuel Feargod Nna
Bachelor of Arts
Leadership
Germany
Daniel Sukra
Master of Science
Psychology and Leadership
Guyana
Jose Francisco Salinas Andino
Doctor of Philosop hy
Food Security and Climate Change
Honduras
Fredis Naul Lopez Escober
Bachelor of Business Administration
Business Administration
Honduras
Angie Carolina Calderón Lagos
Bachelor of Science
Electrical Engineering
Honduras
Reina Leticia Rodríguez Zúniga
Doctor of Finance
Finance
Honduras
           
Hazel Wright O'Connor
Doctor of Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship
Jamaica
Tamalee Renea Dwyer
Bachelor of Business Administration
Business Administration
Jamaica
Shekeilia Francis-Solomon
Master of Business Management
Business Management
Jamaica
Alfonce Mwendwa Musyoka
Bachelor of Management
Business Management
Kenya
Brother Frank Lackwell Mwambucha
Doctor of Education
Education
Malawi
Mohd Farhan Bin Mohd Basri
Doctor of Science
Renewable Energy
Malaysia
           
Alejandro Villarreal Aldaz
Doctor of Science
Political Science
Mexico
Marie Laetitia Kayisire
Doctor of Sociology
Sociology
Mozambique
Delita Krauze
Bachelor of Accounting
Accounting
Namibia
Larai Wazhi Aku-Akai
Doctor of Science
Public Health
Namibia
Princewill Chukwuemeka Opara
Bachelor of Accounting
Accounting
Nigeria
Afolabi Akeem Boladale
Doctor of Philosop hy
Accounting and Auditing
Nigeria
           
Josephine Eweinumua Gbobbo
Doctor of Philosop hy
Human Resource Management
Nigeria
Mojisola Esther Olubummo
Doctor of Social and Human Studies
Human Resources
Nigeria
Sunday Awoyemi
Doctor of Science
Business Management
Nigeria
Ibrahim Aderemi Adebayo
Doctor of Science
Telecommunications Engineering
Nigeria
Simidu Stephen Adeshina
Doctor of Science
Occupational Health Safety and Environment
Nigeria
Ilupeju, Thomas Omotayo
Doctor of Philosop hy
Social and Human Development
Nigeria
           
Juan Francisco Mogollón Castillo
Post-Doctorate of Legal Sciences
Legal Sciences
Peru
Alice Rose Kany
Bachelor of Proj ect Management
Project Management
Poland
Glenda Khodra-Momorelle
Master of Social Work
Social Work
Saint Lucia
Mohamed Siddiq Raja Abdul Razack
Doctor of Education
Higher Education
Singapore
Amir Singh
Doctor of Education
Higher Education
Singapore
Kgatale Siko Alec Malatse
Doctor of Healthcare Administration
Healthcare Administration
South Africa
           
Victor Chipane Maleka
Doctor of Science
Renewable Energy
South Africa
Butrous Gabriel Kamelo Lado
Master of Business Management
Business Management
South Sudan
Kumara Wanasinghe
Doctor of Legal studies
Legal Studies
Sri Lanka
Shernel Constancia Mayou Evans
Bachelor of Science
Architecture
St. Kitts
Levina Apolinary Kikoyo
Doctor of Philosop hy
Human Resource Management
Tanzania
Yassin Ali Haji
Doctor of Philosop hy
Counseling Psychology
Tanzania
           
Teodósio Mendonça
Master of Education
Education and Social Sciences
Timor Leste
Mürüvvet Uygun
Doctor of Arts
Human Behavior
Türkiye
George Kyemba Kitamirike
Master of Arts
Sociology
Uganda
Michael Rees
Doctor of Psychology
Educational Psychology
United Kingdom
Sofia Lopez-Pumarejo
Bachelor of Arts
Interior Design
United Kingdom
Mohamad Ayach
Doctor of Philosop hy
Sustainable Parametricism Architecture
United Kingdom
           
Gloria Amira Vargas Saavedra
Master of Human Develop ment
Human Development Psychology
USA
Abbarah Anita Brown
Bachelor of Arts
Governance and Public Administration
USA
Joël Lorquet
Doctor of Communications
Communications
USA
Raul Raboso Ortega
Bachelor of Education
Education
USA
Yimmi Javier Chara Zamora
Bachelor of Science
Architecture
USA
Ivan Alberto Barillas
Bachelor of Science
Computer Science
USA
           
Robert Joseph Marek
Doctor of Sociology
Clinical Sociology
USA
Christopher Pierre
Master of International Relations
International Relations
USA
Victor Daniel Rosenthal
Doctor of Philosop hy
Epidemiology
USA
Matthew Lowe
Doctor of Education
Educational Leadership
USA
Ana Maria Vicuña Palacios
Bachelor of Business Administration
Business Administration
USA
Karen M. Purpura
Doctor of Theology
Theology
USA
           
Maria Jose Diaz Buitron
Master of International Business
International Business
USA
Viviana Carriles Escudero
Master of Science
Psychology Sciences
USA
Denise Caltum Saadia
Master of Science
Psychotherapy for Couples
USA
Tamara Raquel Sacal Gimbel
Master of Science
Psychotherapy for Couples
USA
Nachume Balas Cojab
Master of Science
Psychometrics
USA
Yosef Chaim Ben Chimol
Master of Science
Psychotherapy for Couples
USA
           
Karla Ixmucané Mejía Muñoz
Doctor of Education
Adult Education
USA
Gustavo Adolfo Assing Gomez
Bachelor of Science
Petroleum Engineering
Venezuela
Andres Maica
Bachelor of Science
Information Technology
Venezuela
Pham The Hung
Doctor of Science
Psychology
Vietnam
Shem Kabesha
Doctor of Science
Health Informatics
Zambia
Evans Chilekwa
Master of Science
Mining Engineering and Management
Zambia
           
Olindah Mashingaidze
Bachelor of Business Administration
Business Administration and Management
Zimbab we
         

Find More Graduates

Gallery: aiu.edu/Graduation/grids/currentgallery.html
Interviews: www.aiu.edu/Graduation/grids/interviews.html
This month we have graduates from: Angola · Belize · Cameroon · Canada · Chad · Chile · China · Dominican Republic · Ecuador · Ethiopia · Germany · Guyana · Honduras · Jamaica · Kenya · Malawi · Malaysia · Mexico · Mozambique Namibia · Nigeria · Peru · Poland · Saint Lucia · Singapore · South Africa · South Sudan · Sri Lanka · St. Kitts · Tanzania · Timor Leste · Türkiye · Uganda · United Kingdom · USA · Venezuela · Vietnam · Zambia · Zimbabwe


TESTIMONIALS

FIND MORE TESTIMONIALS FROM A I U STUDENTS HERE: www.aiu.edu/Testimonials.aspx



Bartlomiej Cech
Bachelor of Biotechnology
and Project Management
September 28, 2022

“My Journey at Atlantic International Univerity has been so much more than I ever anticipated prior to beginning my studies. I have studied at several universities as well as having completed many online courses and each one was a different experience. I can now confidently say AIU was definitely the best out of all of them. The system that AIU has integrated into their online degrees is by far the most user-friendly- with a great support structure around it. The support staff has always been very helpful throughout my journey. I have had access to many different online libraries from other universities but I think the AIU online library has been most useful in terms of finding relevant materials for my papers. The AIU community is also very warm and supportive, I am proud to be part of it, Atlantic International Univerity is a learning experience that I would highly recommend. ... READ TEXT: https://www.aiu.edu/testimonialdetail.html?ItemID =1902&rcid=73&pcid=63&cid=73

Leonard Boyinza Wawa
Master of Business Administration
October 6, 2022

“I learned about the Atlantic International Univerity through a friend. This is how I requested my registration with this University and the answer was not long in receiving it. After submitting all the documents and fulfilling the conditions that were asked, I will receive my registration letter and the scholarship offered to me. As a French speaker, I almost did my master’s degree in French, but with the advice of my Tutor at the University level, I decided to take the courses in English. I appreciate the interexchanges with my Tutor, the speed in their feedback and the course materials have contributed to facilitate my understanding of the courses and how these different courses have positively impacted my personal growth and my professional performance. Today, I am proud to have devoted my time and imposed sacrifices on myself because this University has added value to my private and active life. As an example, I will cite my personal case concerning the expenses that I once incurred without thinking but after the ... READ FULL TEXT: https://www.aiu.edu/testimonialdetail.html?It emID=1906&rcid=73&pcid=63&cid=73

Alain Ngoy
Doctor of Human Resources
October 14, 2022

“I have got a good experience with Atlantic International Univerity, an educational institution aiming at promoting human rights around the world. Through its distance learning programs, it has allowed me to further my studies up to the doctoral level. I was wondering how I could make it, since getting a scholarship in my country is not an easy thing. Now, I may be called doctor thanks to AIU. AIU organizes business, human and social, as well as engineering studies, responding to everybody’s profesional and academic needs. As far as I am concerned, I have dealt with the School Of Business and Economics to be in tune with my master’s major in Economic Management and Human Rights, a new trend brought into the scientific area by Chaire UNESCO of Human Rights at the University of Kinshasa. Therefore, I decided to doctorate in Human Resources Management, the domain where managers should lead people by respecting human rights. I have selected courses in connection to Management and Human Rights ... READ FULL TEXT: https://www.aiu.edu/testimonialdetail.html?It emID=1909&rcid=73&pcid=63&cid=73
Collins Agaba
Doctor of Public Health
October 03, 2022

“This is to attest that it’s been a humbling experience from the time I enrolled at Atlantic International Univerity way back in 2018. The enrollment process was smooth. The choice of courses was exciting given that its customized to a student’s priorities focusing on building a career path. I should state that The andragogy structure of the course encouraged me juggle studies and office work. The regular communication from the tutor is so good and supportive to keep one updated on what is happening at the University and provides reminders on what to expect. The financial support / scholarship has been a blessing given the financial challenges and the flexible payment/ instalment modality is commendable. In sum, it’s been worth an education journey that remains unique yet addressing the current and future issues that impact communities around the world. ... READ TEXT: https://www.aiu.edu/testimonialdetail.html?ItemID =1904&rcid=73&pcid=63&cid=73

Studying in this 2023

By Dr. Rosa Hilda Lora M. Advisor at AIU | rosa@aiu.edu


We started this 2023 and many of us thought about what to do to make us grow as human beings: start studies or continue our training. It comes to mind: What do we do that gives us good results? To see what we can do that works for us, we have to see, what world we are living in. We have a pandemic that we can’t say is over: there are people who continue to get infected, so we still have to be careful. Yes, it’s not like it was at the beginning, but we can’t say yet that it’s a thing of the past. In what world are we living to study what makes us feel satisfied? What to study to get ahead financially? The world we are living in is what seems like the end of two years of an extreme pandemic plus armed conflict. Congresses and Congresses, Forums and more Forums are held and what is seen is that the agreements are very far from materializing.

We can look for what to do to feel like we grow in this world. Not to mention politicians; we already know what they spend their time on. Of the latest agreements we have those of the Davos Forum. UNESCO has also presented studies on Education after the pandemic and what we have pending for this 2023 and following. What is the Davos Forum? The Davos Forum was held from january 16 to 20, 2023. The Forum headquarters is always in Davos, Switzerland, in the canton of Grisons. The Forum is held annually and brings together politicians, academics, businessmen and civil society leaders. The topics that were discussed and that we considered very necessary were the following: 1. The future and the 8 ways in which technology will affect life. With the development of technology, the world will be cleaner, the facts more intelligent, efficient and productive. We will talk about smart glasses, fusion of physical and digital spaces and Quantum Computing.

2. Latin America and global Risks. It will have problems growing due to the lack of consensus due to its political division. 3. Entrepreneurs and food security. Nutritious food must be produced and consumed. 4. Innovation in obtaining water. Creating smart roofs and living seawalls. 5. The labor challenges of the Metaverse or great Information Platform. It would solve the problems of staff training, talent shortages, employee engagement and recruitment. 6. Reduction of Inflation. Digital and green financing must be reduced. 7. More Sustainable World Economy. Build data quickly to be able to solve problems.

8. Climate Transformation. We are with 1.5 C of global warming and as we go, we will reach 2.5 C. we have to work hard to stay at least at 1.5 C. 9. Improve Trade. Disconnect real data from political narratives. 10. Food Safety. Seek to sustainably feed 8,000 million people through the application of biotechnology models with an agri-food system instead of animal origin because feeding of that order generates more than a third of greenhouse gases. Biotechnology will help us create plant-based proteins. We have Singapore as the first country in the world to produce cultured meat. The group gathered in Davos represents the community that organizes the world economically and financially. Services for education are derived from the above aspects.

UNESCO —United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization— created The World Education Coalition to respond to the global crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic where 1,600 million students from all countries saw their classes interrupted. The closure of the schools created problems in the learning of the children in terms of most of what they should have acquired in the year. Going back to school at the end of 2022 hasn’t been easy, the Coalition is currently focused on organizing a teaching that allows to recover the delay. According to the State of the Global Education Crisis —A Path to Recovery Report from UNESCO, UNICEF and The World Bank, millions of children and young people are at risk of not returning to their schools. The Report analyzes the learning lost and what must be done so that children and young people can recover what was lost. “Now is the time to trade crisis for recovery: and, beyond recovery, for transformative and resilient education systems that truly deliver learning and well-being for all children and youth.” UNESCO, UNICEF and The World Bank. 2021, Executive Summary. https://www.unicef.org/ media/112166/file/The%20State%20of%20 the%20Global%20Education%20Crisis.pdf We are starting 2023 and the analyzes carried out by the large organizations that we have dealt with indicate that there are problems that we must solve: 1. A shortage of talent. 2. Lack of employee commitment.

3. The problems of learning lost due to the closure of schools. 4. Global warming. 5. The creation of agri-food due to the greenhouse effect caused by food of animal origin. 6. Scarcity of water for which it is necessary to develop agriculture for arid lands. Given the aforementioned facts we have to dedicate ourselves to studying the disciplines, the careers that make life possible for us instead of the society of such false narratives that only serve to enrich certain groups that only think about their interests. The great thing about all this narrative is that there will be nothing left for those who think that by following his speech they will become masters of the world. If we continue on the path marked out, by these narratives without scientific truth, we will have a lot to regret for not looking for the right path and making this world a possible world for everyone.

What to study in this 2023? Atlantic International University (AIU) makes proposals for the studies you can do that will give you the human and economic growth you need in the world order in which we are living. Science is showing us the way to go. What Hempel said is more notorious every day: “Obviously, the advances in scientific technology of which we are proud and which have imprinted their characteristics on all aspects of that “age of science” have simultaneously raised many new and serious problems that require urgent solution. It is quite natural that, in his desire to deal with these new problems, man turns again to science and scientific technology for help. But a moment’s reflection will show us that the problems that need to be addressed are not simply technological, but an intricate complex of technological and moral problems. (Hempel, 2005, p. 118) We have to study to live better: it’s the only solution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Davos Forum. Retrieved from: https://www.weforum.org/ events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-JHFvsjt_ AIVgBqtBh2zRwIOEAAYASAAEgJXc_D_BwE Retrieved from: https://es.weforum.org/events/ world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023 | Reimers, Fernando. Educación y COVID-19: Recuperarse de la pandemia y reconstruir mejor. Retrieved from: http://www.ibe.unesco.org/sites/default/files/resources/34_educacion_y_covid-19_spa. pdf | UNESCO: Retrieved from: https://www.unesco.org/es/articles/respuesta-de-la-unescola- crisis-mundial-de-la-educacion-provocada-por-la-covid-19 | UNICEF: Retrieved from: https://www.unicef.org/media/112166/file/The%20State%20of%20the%20Global%20Education% 20Crisis.pdf

Retention of key population living with HIV on treatment in the CHAMP Project in Cameroon from January to December 2021

Brenda Agnes Ewang Ahone | Doctorate in Public Health | Abstract


Background
• Antiretroviral treatment significantly reduces the risk of developing HIV-related complications. • Delayed linkage to care is a major barrier to “treatment as prevention” to reduce HIV transmission rates. • The ability to remain in care is critical to achieving good health outcomes (suppressed viral load) and preventing HIV transmission. • The CHAMP project contributes to the fight against HIV/ AIDS in Cameroon by working with key populations to achieve the 95-95-95 goal.

Methods
• The analysis presents the achievements of the viral load cascade among MSM and FSW in the CHAMP project. • This cascade is made up of an indicator that allows for the evaluation of adherence to treatment (TX_CURR) and indicators that allow for the assessment of adherence to ARV treatment, monitoring of therapeutic failures and evaluation of the effectiveness of the HIV program (VL_Eligible, VL_Done, VL_Documented, VL_Suppressed). • Treatment initiation and adherence monitoring are ensured by the “case managers of community-based organizations”, who, after a treatment period of six months (VL_Eligible), take blood samples from the beneficiaries being monitored in order to evaluate their viral load; the samples taken (VL_Done) are sent to the approved laboratories for analysis and reporting of the results (VL_Documented). • The result is considered as suppressed viral load (undetectable) if its value is lower than 1000 copies/ml.

Results
• As of December 2021, viral load suppression rate was at 96% among MSM and FSW, with a blood sample collection rate of 89% and a coverage rate of 77%. • A further breakdown of this viral load cascade per key population (FSW and MSM) reveals for FY21 that among female sex workers (FSW), out of the 6121 persons eligible for VL, samples were collected and 4349 results were suppressed, giving a VL suppression rate of 96%. • With respect to men who have sex with men (MSM), they had a treatment current of 4514, of which 3434 were eligible for VL in 2021, and 2958 blood samples were collected. Results obtained after calculation of the suppression rate gave 95%.

Discussion
• Communitybased monitoring of Key Populations on ART has a significant effect on viral load suppression. • With a viral load suppression rate of 96%, the CHAMP project’s achievements are above the 95% target defined in the 95-95-95 goal. • Efforts still need to be made to achieve a 100% viral load sample collection rate as required by the CHAMP standard. • If we intensify the collection of community samples for viral load, we can easily close the gap.

Conclusion
• The result of the viral load allows us to assess the success and adherence to the ART treatment. • A plea is therefore made to the partners in charge of the timely delivery of viral load results.

REFERENCES. Cameroon Country Operational Plan (COP) 2021. (2021). Strategic Direction Summary. Yaounde: PEPFAR. | CARE Cameroon. (2019). Fiche dossier client: etapes de vie. Yaounde, Cameroun: Care International. | CARE Cameroon. (2019). Key Population-led Health Services: Achieving and Sustaining HIV Epidemic Control in Cameroon. CARE, 11. | CARE Cameroon. (2020, Décembre). Continuum de prévention, de soins et de traitement du VIH/SIDA (CHAMP): Procédures Opérationnelles Standard: Le Lien entre le Client et la Thérapie ARV, son Initiation et son Maintient dans la Thérapie. Yaoundé, Centre, Cameroun: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2020). Continuum of prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS with most at-risk populations in Cameroon (CHAMP) Q1FY20 Report. Yaounde: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2020). Continuum of prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS with most at-risk populations in Cameroon (CHAMP) Q2FY20 Report. Yaounde: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2020). Continuum of prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS with most at-risk populations in Cameroon (CHAMP) Q3FY20 Reports. Yaounde: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2020). Continuum of prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS with most at-risk populations in Cameroon (CHAMP) Q4FY20 Report. Yaounde: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2020, Octobre). Procédures Opérationnelles Standard: Charge Virale. Continuum of Prevention, Care and Treatment of HIV/AIDS with Most-At-Risk Populations in Cameroon (CHAMP Project). Yaoundé, Centre, Cameroun: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2021). Continuum of prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS with most at-risk populations in Cameroon (CHAMP) Q1FY21 Report. Yaounde: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2021). Continuum of prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS with most at-risk populations in Cameroon (CHAMP) Q2FY21 Report. Yaounde: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2021). Continuum of prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS with most at-risk populations in Cameroon (CHAMP) Q3FY21 Report. Yaounde: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2021). Continuum of prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS with most at-risk populations in Cameroon (CHAMP) Q4FY21 Report. Yaounde: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2022). Continuum of prevention, care and treatment of HIV/ AIDS with most at-risk populations in Cameroon (CHAMP) Q1FY22 Report. Yaounde: CARE International. | CARE Cameroon. (2022). Continuum of prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS with most at-risk populations in Cameroon (CHAMP) Q2FY22 Report. Yaounde: CARE International. | US Agency for International Development (USAID). (2017). 2016 Integrated Biological and Behavioural Survey (IBBS) among Key Populations in Cameroon : Female Sex Workers and Men who have Sex with Men. Yaounde: USAID. | USAID. (2020, June 15). USAID Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control. Central Asia: USAID.GOV. Retrieved from https://www.usaid.gov/central-asia-regional/factsheets/ usaid-meeting-targets-and-maintaining-epidemic-control | USAID. (2021, May 7). Global Health. Retrieved March 4, 2022, from Google: https://www.usaid.gov/global-health/ health-areas/hiv-and-aids/technical-areas/local-partner-transition

Learning

Play

Six stages during early childhood.

Problem solving, creativity, and willingness to take risks are just a few of the skills developed through play. There are 6 stages of play during early childhood, which involve exploring, being creative, and having fun. [To avoid putting pressure on children, it is best to allow each child to go through these stages at their own pace]. 1. Unoccupied Play. At this stage baby is just making a lot of movements with their arms, legs, hands, feet, etc. They are learning about and discovering how their body moves. 2. Solitary Play. This is the stage when a child plays alone. 3. Spectator/Onlooker. During this stage children begin to watch others playing but do not play with them. 4. Parallel Play. When a child plays alongside or near others but does not play with them this stage is referred to as parallel play. [Some neurodivergent children continue to prefer this type of play as they grow up]. 5. Associate Play. When a child starts to interact with others during play, but there is not a large amount of interaction at this stage. A child might be doing an activity related to the kids around him, but might not actually be interacting with another child. ... 6. Cooperative Play. When a child plays together with others and has interest in both the activity and other children involved in playing they are participating in cooperative play. As your child starts playing with family members and friends, make sure to teach them about sharing and winning and losing. Read full text:

All-women hunt

A success in Northern Quebec.

An all-female caribou hunting party returned home [January 21] to a heroine’s welcome in the Naskapi community of Kawawachikamach in northern Quebec. The seven-woman group left the community on Jan. 13 with three male guides and travelled, in total, more than 1,500 kilometres by snowmobile, over eight days from Kawawachikamach to the far eastern reaches of Cree territory near Caniapiscau and back again. “This is something that I’ve always wanted to do,” said Louise Shecanapish, who organized the expedition. She had been on a men’s hunting trip about 10 years earlier as the expedition cook. “I’m a strong believer that … if men can do it, women can too.” In total, the group harvested 28 caribou between Jan. 13 and Jan. 21. Shecanapish works as the cultural co-ordinator for Kawawachikamach, a community of approximately 650 people north of Sept-Îles on the north shore of Quebec. She admits to being anxious initially, as the expedition was taking shape. “It’s a really tough trip. I know how these trips are and they’re very challenging,” said Shecanapish, adding there can be hours lost in the slush and very demanding physical issues to deal with. None of the women were experienced hunters and two of them had never been on a snowmobile expedition before. The group was given five of the harvested caribou to be used as part of some local traditional-skill workshops. All parts of the animal will used, said Annie Vollant. ... Read full text:


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Soybean protein

A particular one blocks LDL cholesterol production.

Consuming soy flour rich in the protein B-conglycinin has the potential to reduce LDL cholesterol levels and lower the risk of metabolic diseases such as atherosclerosis and fatty liver disease, said Elvira de Mejia, a professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the corresponding author of the study. Published in the journal Antioxidants, the study was co-written by Neal A. Bringe, a food scientist with Benson Hill Company; and Miguel Rebollo Hernanz, who at the time of the research was a visiting scholar at the U. of I. Rebollo Hernanz is the first author of the paper. Scientists have long known of soybeans’ cholesterol-lowering properties and lipid-regulating effects, and the current project investigated two soy proteins thought to be responsible for these outcomes —glycinin and Bconglycinin— and found the latter to be particularly significant. ... The team defatted and ground into flour 19 soybean varieties, each of which contained differing proportions of the two proteins. The proportion of glycinin in these varieties ranged from 22%-60% while the B-conglycinin ratio ranged from 22%-52%. Using a simulation of the human digestive process validated by other studies, the team sequentially mixed the defatted soybean flours with various fluids and enzimes ... ...
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Telomeres

...encode two proteins, potentially transforming cancer research.

Telomeres —the protective caps at the tips of chromosomes— can encode two proteins, something that was previously thought impossible, new research has suggested. The discovery of genetic information coding for these proteins, one of which is elevated in some human cancers, could have huge ramifications for the fields of health, medicine, and cell biology. “Discovering that telomeres encode two novel signaling proteins will change our understanding of cancer, aging, and how cells communicate with other cells,” study author Jack Griffith, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said in a statement. “Based on our research, we think simple blood tests for these proteins could provide a valuable screen for certain cancers and other human diseases,” Griffith added. “These tests also could provide a measure of ‘telomere health,’ because we know telomeres shorten with age.” Telomeres are regions of repetitive DNA sequences found at the ends of chromosomes that play an important part in the aging process. When a cell divides, telomeres shorten, eventually becoming so stubby that division ceases and the cell dies. This mechanism ensures that cells cannot build up enough mutations over their lifespan to become problematic, and is a neat defense against cancer, which is characterized by rapid cell division. ... Read full text


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David Wudel

Painting with pride.

As the world went into lockdown in March 2020, David Wudel, 33, picked up a brush and started painting. He called it a hobby out of necessity. Not only was the Calgary, Alberta (Canada), native with cerebral palsy feeling pent up and depressed as his world was suddenly restricted to his apartment, but he was still dealing with mixed emotions and anxiety stemming from his coming out as a gay man just a year earlier in June 2019. His family was very supportive when he came out and it was actually his older sister’s wedding to her girlfriend that inspired him to tell them his own truth. But it was painting that helped him deal with his own residual feelings of self-acceptance. “Now I was out to the world, and it was up to me to accept who I was because for so long I suppressed it. Having cerebral palsy and being a full-time wheelchair user is a label within itself, and for many years I didn’t want to be known as the disabled gay guy,” says Wudel. “Not that I’m ashamed of my CP, but there’s still a stigma around disability and being part of one minority was hard enough.” When Wudel picked up a paint brush on a whim, all that emotion started to flow out of it. That first painting, called Colourful Chaos, was marked by what would become his trademark going forward: bright colors, bold strokes and abstract, interpretive forms. It fit exactly how he felt as the world entered lockdown. Its description reads in part, “This painting seeks to express the idea that no matter how chaotic things are, there are always colourful nuances and beauty everywhere, even if hidden under the surface.” ... He put that first painting on Instagram and within the first week, he’d sold it for $50. He has only sold a few since then, ranging from $50 to $200, but he now has his own website, Wheel Painting Co. —named after the six wheels of his wheelchair he gets around on everyday — and 14,900 followers on Instagram. ... Read full text:

Walking assist

By Honda

Honda Walking Assist Device, originally Honda Walking Assist– Stride Manager, is a hip only powered exoskeleton. Its goal is to facilitate walking by providing additional force to swing the legs with each step. In 2015, the Honda Walking Assist Device (temporarily?) went on lease sale to businesses in Japan. In 2022, this is the most asked/sought-after exoskeleton on ExR (Exoskeleton Report). The Honda Walking Assist Device (Stride Manager) builds on the company’s experience with walking robots (example ASIMO).The Walking Assist Device has been in research since 1999. This exo is based on the inverted pendulum model, which is a theory of bipedal walking and is designed as a device to be used in the training of walking. The onboard controller activates motors based on data obtained from hip angle sensors. The main goal is to improve the symmetry of the timing of each leg lifting from the ground and extending forward. It also promotes a longer stride for easier walking. The Honda wearable robot weights 2.7 kg (6 lb). It is built using proprietary motors and control system. It is a minimalistic design attached to the body with simple straps. The device is made to be highly adaptable to various body sizes. ... Read full text

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Fat, sugar, salt

You’ve been thinking about food all wrong.

In the late 2000s, Carlos Monteiro noticed ... Brazilians were buying way less oil, sugar, and salt than they had in the past. Despite this, people were piling on the pounds. ... Brazilians hadn’t really cut down on fat, salt, and sugar —they were just consuming these nutrients in an entirely new form. People were swapping traditional foods ... for prepackaged bread, sweets, sausages, and other snacks. ... Monteiro created a new food classification system —called NOVA— that breaks things down into four categories. Minimally processed foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed meats. Processed culinary ingredients (oils, butter, and sugar). Processed foods (tinned vegetables, smoked meats, freshly baked bread, and simple cheeses). And then there are Ultraprocessed foods. ... There are a bunch of reasons why a product might fall into the ultraprocessed category. It might be made using “industrial processes” like extrusion, interesterification, carbonation, hydrogenation, molding, or prefrying. It could contain additives designed to make it hyper-palatable, or preservatives that help it stay stable at room temperature. Or it might contain high levels of fat, sugar, and salt in combinations that aren’t usually found in whole foods. What all the foods share, Monteiro says, is that they are designed to displace freshly prepared dishes and keep you coming back for more, and more, and more. ... Read full text:

Dissociative disorders

There are three types.

Dissociative disorders (DD) involve problems with memory, identity, emotion, perception, behavior and sense of self, and can disrupt every area of mental functioning. Such as the experience of detachment or feeling as if one is outside one’s body, and loss of memory or amnesia. DD are frequently associated with previous experience of trauma. 1 Dissociative identity disorder. It is associated with overwhelming experiences, traumatic events and/or abuse that occurred in childhood. Dissociative identity disorder was previously referred to as multiple personality disorder. 2 Dissociative amnesia. It involves not being able to recall information about oneself (not normal forgetting). This amnesia is usually related to a traumatic or stressful event and may be Localized (unable to remember an event or period of time; most common type), Selective (unable to remember a specific aspect of an event or some events within a period of time), and Generalized (complete loss of identity and life history; it is rare). 3 Depersonalization/derealization disorder. It involves significant ongoing or recurring experience of one or both conditions: Depersonalization (experiences of unreality or detachment from one’s mind, self or body; people may feel as if they are outside their bodies), Derealization (experiences of unreality or detachment from one’s surroundings; people may feel as what is around them is not real. ... Read full text:


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Global warming ‘accelerators’

Scientists examine some dangerous ones.

Recent climate projections may be underestimating the pace of global warming in an atmosphere damaged by greenhouse gas emissions, because the interaction of powerful climate feedback loops that can accelerate warming are not well-represented in key climate models, an international team of scientists concluded in a study published [February 17, 2023] in the journal One Earth. Their findings suggest that efforts to reduce emissions require even more urgency to avoid worst-case climate outcomes, the team reported. “If amplifying feedbacks are strong enough, the result is likely tragic climate change moving beyond anything humans can control,” said co-author Bill Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University, and co-founder of the Alliance of World Scientists, which has 26,000 members in 180 countries urging decisive implementation of policies to curb global warming and meet the commitments governments made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. ... Recent evaluations conclude that, if countries meet the emissions-reduction targets they’ve set for themselves, the average global temperature would warm 2.7 degrees Celsius from preindustrial temperatures by 2100, which would have catastrophic impacts for people and ecosystems. But if some of the feedback loops shown in the new paper accelerate, warming could soar well above that level, toward 4 degrees Celsius, by the end of the century. ...
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Renewable power

Its big mistake was a promise to always get cheaper.

William Mathis wrote in an article for Bloomberg that renewableenergy producers have long touted the promise of cheap electricity, an assurance that’s helped them eat into the dominance of fossil fuels. But the pledge has gone too far, according to the world’s biggest wind-turbine maker. Manufacturers such as Vestas Wind Systems A/S are seeing losses pile up as orders collapse at a time when they should be capitalizing on the turmoil in natural-gas markets. To blame —at least in part— is the industry’s insistence that clean electricity can only get cheaper, according to Henrik Andersen, chief executive officer of the Danish wind giant. “It made some people make the wrong assumption that energy and electricity should become free,” Andersen said in an interview in London. “We created the perception to some extent. So we are to blame for it. That was a mistake.” While wind-power costs have steadily declined, to the point where many people concluded prices would eventually hit zero, technological advances can only go so far. Now the industry needs to charge more so that it can deliver the massive scale-up needed for countries to achieve ambitious climate goals. Soaring commodity costs and supplychain bottlenecks have wiped out profits for much of the wind industry this year. Vestas expects its profit margin to be around -5% in 2022. ... Read full text:

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Jason Arday

Youngest black professor at Cambridge University.

Diagnosed with autism and global development delay in his early years, Jason Arday was unable to speak until he was 11 years old and could not read or write until he was 18. Now aged 37, he is about to become the youngest black person ever appointed to a professorship at the University of Cambridge. Young Jason fervently questioned the world around him. “Why are some people homeless?” “Why is there war?” Born and raised in Clapham, south-west London, Prof Arday, a sociologist, says formative moments included watching Nelson Mandela’s release from prison on television ... His mother played a critical role in developing his self-confidence and skills. She introduced him to a wide range of music in the hope this would aid his conceptualisation of language. ... Supported by his mentor, Sandro Sandri, Prof Arday finally began to read and write in his late teens. ... He then studied Physical Education and Education Studies at the University of Surrey before training as a PE teacher. Growing up in a relatively disadvantaged area and then working as a school teacher gave him first-hand insight into the systemic inequalities that youngsters belonging to ethnic minorities faced in education. ... At the age of 22, Prof Arday became interested in the idea of carrying out postgraduate study. ... During the day, Prof Arday worked as a PE lecturer in higher education. In the evening and night, his hours were filled drafting academic papers and studying sociology.
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Rohingya refugees

Ration cuts leave them reeling.

On March 1, just before Ramadan, the UN World Food Program (WFP) will slash monthly food rations for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar by almost 20 per cent, from $12 vouchers to $10. The reason: a US$125 million funding shortfall. Now, $2 less per month may not seem much for you and me. But for the nearly one million Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, who have largely relied on humanitarian assistance since they fled genocidal attacks on their villages by Myanmar’s army more than five years ago, $2 less a month might mean a meal less a day. Already, the refugees’ living conditions were precarious, with malnutrition affecting one out of eight children. More than a third have stunted growth as a result and 40 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women are anaemic. Even before the ration cuts, families had been forced to take out loans to pay for food. Making matters worse is the Bangladesh government’s determination to restrict refugees from seeking paid work. ... Even WFP fears the consequences of its decision, warning that with “each ration cut, malnutrition will certainly rise. With each ration cut, families will increasingly resort to dangerous strategies to cope.” But seeing that its pledges for funding for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis received less than half the US$881 million needed for the year, WFP was left with no choice, it says. Compare this with the billions of dollars that have been pledged in humanitarian aid alone to Ukraine ...
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Bird flu among mink

What such an outbreak could mean for humans.

A new variant of avian influenza appears capable of spreading among mammals, highlighting the need for more proactive surveillance, experts said. Early last October, the mink on a fur farm in Spain suddenly began to fall ill. They stopped eating and began salivating excessively. They became clumsy, started to experience tremors and developed bloody snouts. At first, experts suspected that the coronavirus might be to blame. It was a reasonable assumption; since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the virus has repeatedly found its way onto mink farms, sparking large animal outbreaks, triggering mass mink culls and prompting temporary moratoriums on mink farming. But it was not the coronavirus that had infiltrated the Spanish mink farm, scientists soon discovered. It was H5N1, a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza. ... The outbreak “confirmed a fear that I had” that the virus could spread efficiently among mammals, said Dr. Thijs Kuiken, a veterinary pathologist at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. There is no evidence that the mink, which were all culled, transmitted the virus to humans, and experts stressed that the outbreak was not a cause for panic. But it is a reminder of some of the risks posed by mink farms —places in which large numbers of susceptible animals are housed in facilities with porous borders to the outside world ...
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Iceberg cowboys

They wrangle the purest water on earth.

From May to August, [in Iceberg Alley, from the coast of Labrador to the southeast coast of the island of Newfoundland] the sun breaks through the clouds and warms the freezing waves swirling off the coast. In this brief window, ... icebergs fill the Labrador Sea. The Arctic ice pack undergoes its seasonal melt and Baffin Bay thaws, allowing the frozen mountains to continue their journey toward the Atlantic. Most break off of glaciers on the west coast of Greenland —what glaciologists call “calving.” Speakers of a variety of languages, from Afrikaans to Uzbek, use the same word to define the process, as if the icy masses are the living offspring of glaciers. In Albanian, Farsi, and Italian, it is even more explicit: Glaciers “give birth.” Across cultures and languages, icebergs are conceptualized like wild cattle or horses roaming the maritime frontier in our rhetorical imagination. ... This is when iceberg cowboys head to sea. These rough-and-tumble mariners earn their living wrangling icebergs — sometimes to subdue and capture the leviathans, other times to herd the ice in new directions. They are undaunted by warnings issued by the International Ice Patrol. ... Every time an iceberg floats by, an ancient piece of the past is carried along with it. Iceberg ice is not just primeval; it is also pristine. Glaciologists talk about “singing” icebergs, too. Once an Arctic iceberg calves, it will typically live for three to six years, depending on its ...
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Campus

But… Cities?

A very typical response to my writing can be summarized as: “But… cities?!?” How are we going to fit cities into this future world? My feeling is that we can’t. Mostly.

I’ve never explicitly said that cities are not optimal, but I think it’s fairly obvious what my biases are. I will be honest, I don’t like urban environments. I don’t like the noise. I don’t like the smell. I don’t like the mess. Just everywhere mess! I’m not fond of the pace or the congestion. In 24-hour places like New York City, I can’t sleep. I am generally uncomfortable (translate: nauseous) in structures that I can feel moving, and I can feel the sway in tall buildings. I absolutely hate elevators. In the city, one can’t have goats. Rarely chickens. There’s no horizon. Few healthy old trees. Utterly insufficient gardens. And there are no stars. Now, I know there are cities that are not this bad. Or I know one, anyway. Albuquerque is a city of about 750,000 people with maybe a half dozen moderately tall buildings downtown. Yet it’s not too horizontally sprawling, being held in check by mountains and volcanoes and Indigenous lands. And a water supply that is strictly tied to the river valley. But within the city, there are many farms and gardens and a wide wetlands, the bosque, along the banks of the Rio Grande. Chickens and goats and alpacas are everywhere (except in the Rio Rancho suburb, which is also the ugliest, sprawlingest part of New Mexico). The skies are brilliant all day, all night, all through the year.

You can go wandering at 2am and feel safe. Nothing is open past 10pm, so apart from a sporadic teen in a loud car, it’s quiet. Sleepy even. There is never a rush. It’s called the land of mañana only somewhat jokingly. It is also a place where everyone knows everyone else; it’s the largest small town in the world. And it smells like chile, rain on parched earth, cedar smoke, and sage brush. With the odd dash of manure… So cities can be accommodating places. It depends on the people, I suppose. Burqueans are Westerners — laconic and lazy and not terribly interested in your issues. But I haven’t been in many cities like that. And maybe Albuquerque doesn’t actually count as a city. There are horse hitches outside buildings. With hitched horses. But my preferences are hardly average nor all that important. What is important is that cities make no ecological or biophysical sense. And to get out of this mess we need to bring our living back within the realm of good sense. I could begin by pointing to the ridiculously fragile locations of many of the largest urban centers. No amount of techno-magical thinking is going to keep Boston above water. Or New York. Or Miami. I could fill pages with that list. Then add on those that might be marginally above water but currently rely upon groundwater or coastal rivers for drinking water —which will be contaminated with seawater long before the streets turn into canals. Ought to toss extreme fire danger onto the list also, taking out much of California, Greece, perhaps most of the Australian continent. And then there’s Phoenix which may quite literally run out of water. Of course, many other US Sunbelt cities —including Albuquerque— are going to discover that a desert location can not, by definition, provide water for millions of people. Once fossil groundwater is pumped dry (in about, oh, ten years…) there won’t be water coming out of the taps. Same goes for most of the cities in the two bands around 25-30° latitude away from the equator that get little moisture because planetary air flow is uncooperative (though this may change… in ways that might be good… maybe). Then there’s just pure heat. Adding a degree or so to the global average —which is inevitable at the current level of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere even if we were to miraculously stop emissions today— will turn urban areas that are merely hot now into uninhabitable ovens, with atmospheric heat magnified by urban heating. Just for completeness, there are quite a few places that will simply collapse as ground water is depleted or as permafrost melts. Oh, and then there’s Detroit and other urban disaster zones —places so completely degraded by industrial mess-making that soil, water and air in these locations will be toxic to most life-forms for many human generations. So. Yeah. There are problems.

Let’s give it a different framing. There are large areas —most of which contain large cities— in which property is no longer insurable for at least one type of disaster. You can’t buy flood insurance in broad swaths of New Jersey or Florida. You can’t buy fire insurance in Orange County, California. Some actuary —a person whose job is calculating odds and putting a monetary value on risk— has determined that the odds are not in your favor. Full stop. More precisely the probability of an insurance claim paid by the company being greater than all the money you pay that company to buy the insurance is too high for the company to even begin taking your money. (And they really want to take your money!) There will be a disaster that creates a claim, and it will happen before you can pay much into your policy. Best you open a bank account and start dumping all your paychecks in there because that’s what it will cost to live in these uninsurable areas. (Though for now in this country, taxpayers are serving as the bank account for the most costly uninsurable properties.) The risk of a flood happening in New Jersey is so high and immediate that you (and the insurance industry) can count on having a flooded house. And there are many houses that will be flooded. New Jersey is a densely populated region, especially so where risk of flood is greatest. This is not an anomaly. New Jersey is not unusually silly in siting urban areas. The urban areas in New Jersey grew up near water, rather than in a less flood-prone area further inland, just as urban areas grow near water everywhere else in the world —because water makes for easy transport of large volumes of stuff, lowering the costs of trade. There is and always was risk of flooding in these urban areas. But the floods happened infrequently before ocean warming made energetic storms that could throw large volumes of water up on the coast a regular —and predictable— occurrence. The same sort of calculations can be made for fire, for structural damages and I would imagine for sheer uninhabitability — though I doubt actuaries will have much to say about that. There are no insurance policies for putting property where humans simply can’t survive.

Because we’re supposed to be smarter than that. No, we’re supposed to be above all that, able to engineer our way forward in any unfavorable circumstance. (Witness the “let’s move to Mars” idiocy.) And in much urban development it’s not even about overcoming the likely risks. Riskprone and degraded properties are developed by corporations who have no intention of owning the property long term. They build structures and sell those “improved properties” to others as quickly as they can. If they even bother to investigate the risks of living in that area, they don’t broadcast that information. They often take steps to conceal any qualities in a property that will lower the sale price. This is such a commonplace it’s a clichéd plot point in movies and novels. Cities are located in the best places to move goods around and in the easiest, cheapest places to develop property for sale. This last is more a feature of former colonies which made wealth through this process of appropriating, “improving” and selling land. In the hearts of former empires, cities existed before wealth extraction turned to development of land. But a good number of them have caught up with their former colonies. Los Angeles has nothing on London sprawl.

This method of making money —acquire, build and sell quickly at the highest profit— will necessarily create concentrated development in places that historically were either farmland or empty land. In the latter case, there were reasons that humans had not built things there. Many of those reasons were ecological. It made no sense to put a structure there, let alone a whole city of them. But empty lands are cheapest to develop, so the reasons were ignored. Wetlands were drained. Forests were cleared. Grasslands were paved over. Wells were drilled deep into desert rock to pull up the remnants of the last glacial meltwaters. Homes and businesses were plopped onto newly laid roads with no concern for long term durability. That was the point of building in this way. If the costs of locating structures in ecologically sustainable places were paid, then there would be no profit. So the last few hundred years has seen cities grow in places where they would always be under threat from natural processes and in fact magnify those threats by ignoring them. By cutting those costs. But then cities have never been great. They’re good for concentrating and controlling the labor pool. That’s it. A city is now and always has been a warehouse for laborers. It is the cheapest warehouse. People are packed into cities with no accommodation for their actual lives. No space for anything. No way to produce anything except through market mechanisms of centralized production. This is by design. Because the laborers are also the market. If they are meeting their own needs, they aren’t buying stuff. Cities are very good at stripping all agency from a large group of humans, making them completely dependent on the market for every need. You can’t sneeze in a city without it profiting someone who is not you. And you can’t even begin to feed or house or clothe yourself. There are no resources for you to do any of this in a city. Cities may be marginally better at leveraging concentrated capital into cultural institutions than a more dispersed settlement pattern. Maybe. Not that rich folk won’t fund their favorite arts wherever they live. Witness the magnificent theatre, music, and visual arts thriving in the wilds of Western Massachusetts.

But cities absolutely suck at meeting our biophysical needs —from food to companionship to a non-toxic environment. Call me what you will, but when the choice is between a secure food supply and cultural attractions, I’m going with food. Some people have noted this conflict between urban living and actual living. There are efforts to clean up the toxic messes we’ve created (created, again, by design… toxicity happens because business will not pay the full costs of doing things safely and cleanly). There are urban gardens sprouting in empty lots. There are calls for less car traffic and more travel by bike and foot. There is a return to the idea of neighborhood. People are attempting to meet their physical and emotional needs within the structures of a city. I am not sure any of this is going to work. Because that is not how a city works. A city works by depriving most of its inhabitants of the means to meet their basic needs, forcing them to work for wages so that they can buy those needs and produce profits. That is what cities are designed for and that is what they do best. There is not even the space in a city to allow its citizens to provide for themselves. Everything must be produced elsewhere and shipped into the city. And shipping is increasingly a problem both because we have to stop spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and because it is increasingly expensive to acquire fossil fuels.

All the plans I’ve seen so far do not address this basic problem. Here is one example: vertical gardens, growing food in a tower to maximize growing area but minimize the horizontal footprint so that a “farm” will fit within the confines of a city. I don’t think these are well conceived. Half a minute’s thought on what actually goes into growing healthy plants reveals several fatal flaws in the design. Attempts to produce food where there is no soil, where water has to be pumped, and where sunlight has to be synthesized with electricity are costly if not futile. And all these tools and raw materials still have to be sourced and produced elsewhere and then shipped in. It may be that we use more resources in building a vertical farm than if we just grew a real farm. And we won’t be producing very much food in this resource-sucking system. We may be able to grow some leafy vegetables, but those vegetables will be lacking in nutrition relative to food grown in a living ecosystem. There isn’t even space for grains and pulses in a vertical garden unless it’s very vertical. Which seems expensive. Not a project we’re going to be able to maintain in a contracting economy that is generally out of resources.

Even if it were not expensive though, vertical farming is not producing food. Synthesizing a growing environment will always fail because we can’t make living systems, and that’s what is needed to grow food. Human attempts to manufacture biology fail because we don’t fully understand how biology works and maybe can’t know being embedded within biology. Further, I suspect most synthesized foods will not meet human nutrition needs even if all the building blocks we know about are included. There are emergent properties and interdependencies and entanglements that we can’t begin to understand, never mind create. The chemical compounds in a berry do not make a berry. A berry is a particular arrangement of its chemical composition along with a large number of microbes and other non-berry materials all of which make up the nutritional content of the berry when you pop the whole living thing in your mouth. And we don’t know what of all that berry and non-berry stuff is essential to our digestive tract to turn that berry into food for our cells. We can’t make a berry because we don’t know what a berry is. What we do know is that it is always more than the sum of its broken down parts. And that is what synthesizing is, a sum of brokenness.

But these ideas keep manifesting because we think rather highly of ourselves. We believe that we can engineer our way over any problem. We really haven’t done that though. We’ve thrown a huge wealth of the planet’s energy and resources into creating this style of living. Our technologies are useless without that resource flow. Just as importantly, our technologies are useless at containing the waste flowing out of that system. And most importantly, our technologies are designed to work within a profit-driven system. When that breaks down, when there is no profit, there is no technology. We aren’t going to put scarce resources and effort into maintaining the tools; we’ll produce what we need directly at scales that don’t require those costly tool systems. And that’s the main reason I believe that we will be abandoning cities. They will break down. They are a technology that only works while there are abundant resources, while there is capacity for waste absorption, and while there are profits to be made on all those flows. We aren’t going to put effort into maintaining this tool if it no longer serves us. We won’t have the time or the wherewithal. We will need to produce what we need to live.

Some are bemoaning the idea of humans dispersing into the countryside. And maybe that’s a problem if those dispersed humans are also bringing along their wasteful, resource-sucking lifestyles. But I’m not sure that will be possible. There won’t be resources to waste or suck. Not only that, but most people are not inclined toward messing up their own homes. Degradation of the land happens when those resources are sucked out of the land to be used by people living elsewhere. Humans have lived in dispersed settlement patterns, integrated within our ecosystems, for a very long time, much longer than we’ve been “civilized”. This idea that we need to set aside places for wilderness comes from the idea that humans are not part of this world. That humans are above nature and generally destructive of nature. That humans uniquely have the potential to transcend nature and invent their way toward meeting biophysical needs independent of nature. None of this is in any way real. Putting a lot of humans in a confined space will not magically rewild the rest of the world. We will still be sucking those resources. More resources than if we lived in a place where we didn’t need to maintain an artificial living environment through transport and tools. More resources than if we lived within the carrying capacity of the lands we fully inhabit —as we have for most of our existence. And make no mistake, the land is going to see that we do that. This is what is happening. We have exceeded carrying capacity at all scales. There are mechanisms in living systems that prevent this. We are experiencing those mechanisms. We are experiencing the consequences of exceeding carrying capacity for the planet. This will be fixed. And it will be completely out of our hands. Cities will be abandoned because we will be dealing with all the consequences of cities and returning to a way of living that we know works within nature. Lots of smallish towns and settlements surrounded by and interpenetrated with land that can produce our needs. I suspect our urban centers will be very much like Albuquerque…

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My first musical menagerie.

Five animal-shaped wooden instruments: Big Cat Harmonica, Songbird Kazoo, Leaping Fish Rain Stick, Big Jaguar Shaker, and Blue Bird Whistle. www.uncommongoods.com

Bird buddy.

This AI-powered camera feeder notifies you of bird visitors, captures their photos and organizes them. mybirdbuddy.com

Farfalloni pasta pot grips.

Made from heavy-duty, heat-resistant silicone. store.moma.org

I forgot my hat.

Hand made figure dolls by Mokko Kumakichi. Beautiful pieces of woodcarving. Instagram: mokko_kumakichi

Hayao Miyazaki. (1941).

“Yet, even amidst the hatred and carnage, life is still worth living. It is possible for wonderful encounters and beautiful things to exist.”

Hayao Miyazaki. (1941). Japanese animator, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and manga artist. Co-founder of Studio Ghibli.

Say what?

what? “I used to sell furniture for a living. The trouble was, it was my own.” —Les Dawson


BACHELOR’S DEGREE in Real Estate Management

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

The Bachelor of Real Estate Management program is offered online via distance learning. After evaluating both academic record and life experience, AIU staff working in conjunction with Faculty and Academic Advisors will assist students in setting up a custom-made program, designed on an individual basis. This flexibility to meet student needs is seldom found in other distance learning programs. Our online program does not require all students to take the same subjects/ courses, use the same books, or learning materials. Instead, the online Bachelor of Real Estate Management curriculum is designed individually by the student and academic advisor. It specifically addresses strengths and weaknesses with respect to market opportunities in the student’s major and intended field of work. Understanding that industry and geographic factors should influence the content of the curriculum instead of a standardized one-fits-all design is the hallmark of AIU’s unique approach to adult education. This philosophy addresses the dynamic and constantly changing environment of working professionals by helping adult students in reaching their professional and personal goals within the scope of the degree program.

Important:

Below is an example of the topics or areas you may develop and work on during your studies. By no means is it a complete or required list as AIU programs do not follow a standardized curriculum. It is meant solely as a reference point and example. Want to learn more about the curriculum design at AIU? Go ahead and visit our website, especially the Course and Curriculum section: http://aiu.edu/course-curriculum.html

Orientation Courses:

Communication & Investigation (Comprehensive Resume)
Organization Theory (Portfolio)
Experiential Learning (Autobiography)
Academic Evaluation (Questionnaire)
Fundament of Knowledge (Integration Chart)
Fundamental Principles I (Philosophy of Education)
Professional Evaluation (Self Evaluation Matrix)
Development of Graduate Study (Guarantee of an Academic Degree)

Core Courses and Topics

The Urban Context
Foundations of Accounting
Foundations of Business Finance
Real Estate Fundamentals
Real Estate Development Analysis
History of Planning and Development
Designing Livable Communities
Analyzing Real Estate Markets
Construction Engineering
Sustainable Design and Construction
Real Estate Law
Urban and Regional Economics
Local Economic Development
Housing and Community Development
Strategic Management
Financial accounting
Marketing Management
Management of Information Systems
Organization Performance
Recruitment and Selection
Human Resource Issues and Strategy
International Management
Business Law
Environmental Management
Marketing Research

Research Project

Bachelor Thesis Project
MBM300 Thesis Proposal
MBM302 Bachelor Thesis (5,000 words)

Publication

Each graduate is encouraged to publish their research papers either online in the public domain or through professional journals and periodicals worldwide.

Contact us to get started

Each graduate is encouraged to publish their research papers either online in the public domain or through professional journals and periodicals worldwide

aiu.edu/apply-online.html

Pioneer Plaza/900 Fort Street Mall 410
Honolulu, HI 96813
800-993-0066 (Toll Free in US)
808-924-9567 (Internationally)


About Us

Accreditation

Atlantic International University offers distance learning degree programs for adult learners at bachelors, masters, and doctoral level. With self paced program taken online, AIU lifts the obstacles that keep professional adults from completing their educational goals. Programs are available throughout a wide range of majors and areas of study. All of this with a philosophically holistic approach towards education fitting within the balance of your life and acknowledging the key role each individual can play in their community, country, and the world. Atlantic International University is accredited by the Accreditation Service for International Schools, Colleges and Universities (ASIC). ASIC Accreditation is an internationally renowned quality standard for colleges and universities. Visit ASIC’s Directory of Accredited Colleges and Universities. ASIC is a member of CHEA International Quality Group (CIQG) in the USA, an approved accreditation body by the Ministerial Department of the Home Office in the UK, and is listed in the International Directory of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). The University is based in the United States and was established by corporate charter in 1998.

Our founding principles are based on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights; per article 26, AIU believes that Higher Education is a Human Right. The University has implemented a paradigm shifting educational model for its academic programs that have allowed it to move closer to this goal through the self-empowerment of its students, decentralization of the learning process, personalized open curriculum design, a sustainable learning model, developing 11 core elements of the Human Condition within MYAIU, and utilizing the quasi-infinite knowledge through the use of information technology combined with our own capacity to find solutions to all types of global issues, dynamic problems, and those of individuals and multidisciplinary teams. Due to these differentiations and the university’s mission, only a reputable accrediting agency with the vision and plasticity to integrate and adapt its processes around AIU’s proven and successful innovative programs could be selected. Unfortunately, the vast majority of accrediting agencies adhere to and follow obsolete processes and requirements that have outlived their usefulness and are in direct conflict with the university’s mission of offering a unique, dynamic, affordable, quality higher education to the nontraditional student (one who must work, study what he really needs for professional advancement, attend family issues, etc.). We believe that adopting outdated requirements and processes would impose increased financial burdens on students while severely limiting their opportunities to earn their degree and advance in all aspects. Thus, in selecting the ASIC as its accrediting agency, AIU ensured that its unique programs would not be transformed into a copy or clone of those offered by the 10,000+ colleges and universities around the world. Since ASIC is an international accrediting agency based outside the United States, we are required by statute HRS446E to place the following disclaimer: ATLANTIC INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IS NOT ACCREDITED BY AN ACCREDITING AGENCY RECOGNIZED BY THE UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF EDUCATION. Note: In the United States and abroad, many licensing authorities require accredited degrees as the basis for eligibility for licensing.

In some cases, accredited colleges may not accept for transfer courses and degrees completed at unaccredited colleges, and some employers may require an accredited degree as a basis for eligibility for employment. Potential students should consider how the above may affect their interests, AIU respects the unique rules and regulations of each country and does not seek to influence the respective authorities. In the event that a prospective student wishes to carry out any government review or process in regards to his university degree, we recommend that the requirements of such are explored in detail with the relevant authorities by the prospective student as the university does not intervene in such processes. AIU students can be found in over 180 countries, they actively participate and volunteer in their communities as part of their academic program and have allocated thousands of service hours to diverse causes and initiatives. AIU programs follow the standards commonly used by colleges and universities in the United States with regards to the following: academic program structure, degree issued, transcript, and other graduation documents. AIU graduation documents can include an apostille and authentication from the US Department of State to facilitate their use internationally.

The AIU Difference

It is acknowledged that the act of learning is endogenous, (from within), rather than exogenous.

This fact is the underlying rationale for “Distance Learning”, in all of the programs offered by AIU. The combination of the underlying principles of student “self instruction”, (with guidance), collaborative development of curriculum unique to each student, and flexibility of time and place of study, provides the ideal learning environment to satisfy individual needs.

AIU is an institution of experiential learning and nontraditional education at a distance. There are no classrooms and attendance is not required.

Mission & Vision

MISSION:

To be a higher learning institution concerned about generating cultural development alternatives likely to be sustained in order to lead to a more efficient administration of the world village and its environment; exerting human and community rights through diversity with the ultimate goal of the satisfaction and evolution of the world.

VISION:

The empowerment of the individual towards the convergence of the world through a sustainable educational design based on andragogy and omniology.

Organizational Structure

Dr. Franklin Valcin
Presi den t/Academic Dean
Dr. José Mercado
Chief Executive Officer
Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Ricardo González, PhD
Provost
     
Dr. Ricardo Gonzalez
Chief Operation Officer
and MKT Director
Linda Collazo
Logistics Coordinator

AIU Tutors Coordinators:

Deborah Rodriguez
Amiakhor Ejaeta
Amanda Gutierrez
William Mora
Miriam James



Admissions Coordinators:
Amalia Aldrett
Sandra Garcia
Junko Shimizu
Veronica Amuz
Alba Ochoa
Jenis Garcia
Judith Brown
Chris Soto
René Cordón
Dr. Anderas Rissler



Academic Coordinators:
Dr. Adesida Oluwafemi
Dr. Emmanuel Gbagu
Dr. Lucia Gorea
Dr. Edgar Colon
Dr. Mario Rios
Freddy Frejus
Dr. Nilani Ljunggren
De Silva
Dr. Scott Wilson
Dr. Mohammad Shaidul Islam
   
Dr. Miriam Garibaldi
Vice provost for Research
Carolina Valdes
Human Resource Coordinator
   
Dr. Ofelia Miller
Director of AIU
Carlos Aponte
Teleco mmunications Coordinator
   
Clara Margalef
Director of Special Projects
of AIU
David Jung
Corporate/Legal Counsel
   
Juan Pablo Moreno
Director of Operations
Bruce Kim
Advisor/Consultant
   
Paula Viera
Director of Intelligence Systems
Thomas Kim
Corporate/
Accounting Counsel
   
Felipe Gomez
Design Director / IT Supervisor
Maricela Esparza
Administrative Coordinator
   
Kevin Moll
Web Designer
Chris Benjamin
IT and Hosting Support
   
Daritza Ysla
IT Coordinator
Maria Pastrana
Accounting Coordinator
   
Daritza Ysla
IT Coordinator
Roberto Aldrett
Communications Coordinator
   
Nadeem Awan
Chief Programming Officer
Giovanni Castillo
IT Support
   
Dr. Edward Lambert
Academic Director
Antonella Fonseca
Quality Control & Data Analysis
   
Dr. Ariadna Romero
Advisor Coordinator
Adrián Varela
Graphic Design
   
Jhanzaib Awan
Senior Programmer
Vanesa D’Angelo
Content Writer
   
Leonardo Salas
Human Resource Manager
Jaime Rotlewicz
Dean of Admissions
   
Benjamin Joseph
IT and Technology Support
Michael Phillips
Registrar’s Office
   
Rosie Perez
Finance Coordinator
 
     

FACULTY AND STAFF PAGE: www.aiu.edu/FacultyStaff.html


School of Business and Economics

The School of Business and Economics allows aspiring and practicing professionals, managers, and entrepreneurs in the private and public sectors to complete a self paced distance learning degree program of the highest academic standard. The ultimate goal is to empower learners and help them take advantage of the enormous array of resources from the world environment in order to eliminate the current continuum of poverty and limitations. Degree programs are designed for those students whose professional experience has been in business, marketing, administration, economics, finance and management.

Areas of Study:

Accounting, Advertising, Banking, Business Administration, Communications, Ecommerce, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Home Economics, Human Resources, International Business, International Finance, Investing, Globalization, Marketing, Management, Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Public Administrations, Sustainable Development, Public Relations, Telecommunications, Tourism, Trade.

School of Social and Human Studies

The School of Social and Human Studies is focused on to the development of studies which instill a core commitment to building a society based on social and economic justice and enhancing opportunities for human well being. The founding principles lie on the basic right of education as outlined in the Declaration of Human Rights. We instill in our students a sense of confidence and self reliance in their ability to access the vast opportunities available through information channels, the world wide web, private, public, nonprofit, and nongovernmental organizations in an ever expanding global community. Degree programs are aimed towards those whose professional life has been related to social and human behavior, with the arts, or with cultural studies.

Areas of Study:

Psychology, International Affairs, Sociology, Political Sciences, Architecture, Legal Studies, Public Administration, Literature and languages, Art History, Ministry, African Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Asian Studies, European Studies, Islamic Studies, Religious Studies.

School of Science and Engineering

The School of Science and Engineering seeks to provide dynamic, integrated, and challenging degree programs designed for those whose experience is in industrial research, scientific production, engineering and the general sciences. Our system for research and education will keep us apace with the twenty-first century reach scientific advance in an environmentally and ecologically responsible manner to allow for the sustainability of the human population. We will foster among our students a demand for ethical behavior, an appreciation for diversity, an understanding of scientific investigation, knowledge of design innovation, a critical appreciation for the importance of technology and technological change for the advancement of humanity.

Areas of Study:

Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, Communications, Petroleum Science, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Nutrition Science, Agricultural Science, Computer Science, Sports Science, Renewable Energy, Geology, Urban Planning.

Online Library Resources

With access to a global catalog created and maintained collectively by more than 9,000 participating institutions, AIU students have secured excellent research tools for their study programs.

The AIU online library contains over 2 billion records and over 300 million bibliographic records that are increasing day by day. The sources spanning thousands of years and virtually all forms of human expression. There are files of all kinds, from antique inscribed stones to e-books, form wax engravings to MP3s, DVDs and websites. In addition to the archives, the library AIU Online offers electronic access to more than 149,000 e-books, dozens of databases and more than 13 million full-text articles with pictures included. Being able to access 60 databases and 2393 periodicals with more than 18 million items, guarantees the information required to perform the assigned research project. Users will find that many files are enriched with artistic creations on the covers, indexes, reviews, summaries and other information.

The records usually have information attached from important libraries. The user can quickly assess the relevance of the information and decide if it is the right source.

Education on the 21st century

AIU is striving to regain the significance of the concept of education, which is rooted into the Latin “educare”, meaning “to pull out”, breaking loose from the paradigm of most 21st century universities with their focus on “digging and placing information” into students’ heads rather than teaching them to think. For AIU, the generation of “clones” that some traditional universities are spreading throughout the real world is one of the most salient reasons for today’s ills. In fact, students trained at those educational institutions never feel a desire to “change the world” or the current status quo; instead, they adjust to the environment, believe everything is fine, and are proud of it all.

IN A WORLD where knowledge and mostly information expire just like milk, we must reinvent university as a whole in which each student, as the key player, is UNIQUE within an intertwined environment. This century’s university must generate new knowledge bits although this may entail its separation from both the administrative bureaucracy and the faculty that evolve there as well. AIU thinks that a university should be increasingly integrated into the “real world”, society, the economy, and the holistic human being. As such, it should concentrate on its ultimate goal, which is the student, and get him/her deeply immersed into a daily praxis of paradigm shifts, along with the Internet and research, all these being presently accessible only to a small minority of the world community. AIU students must accomplish their self-learning mission while conceptualizing it as the core of daily life values through the type of experiences that lead to a human being’s progress when information is converted into education. The entire AIU family must think of the university as a setting that values diversity and talent in a way that trains mankind not only for the present but above all for a future that calls everyday for professionals who empower themselves in academic and professional areas highly in demand in our modern society. We shall not forget that, at AIU, students are responsible for discovering their own talents and potential, which they must auto-develop in such a way that the whole finish product opens up as a flower that blossoms every year more openly.

THE AIU STANCE is against the idea of the campus as a getaway from day-to-day pressure since we believe reality is the best potential-enhancer ever; one truly learns through thinking, brainstorming ideas, which leads to new solutions, and ultimately the rebirth of a human being fully integrated in a sustainable world environment. Self-learning is actualized more from within than a top-down vantage point, that is to say, to influence instead of requesting, ideas more than power. We need to create a society where solidarity, culture, life, not political or economic rationalism and more than techno structures, are prioritized. In short, the characteristics of AIU students and alumni remain independence, creativity, self-confidence, and ability to take risk towards new endeavors. This is about people’s worth based not on what they know but on what they do with what they know.

Read more at: www.aiu.edu

AIU Service

AIU offers educational opportunities in the USA to adults from around the world so that they can use their own potential to manage their personal, global cultural development. The foundational axis of our philosophy lies upon self-actualized knowledge and information, with no room for obsoleteness, which is embedded into a DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEM based on ANDRAGOGY and OMNIOLOGY. The ultimate goal of this paradigm is to empower learners and help them take advantage of the enormous array of resources from the world environment in order to eliminate the current continuum of poverty and limitations.

This will become a crude reality with respect for, and practice of, human and community rights through experiences, investigations, practicum work, and/ or examinations. Everything takes place in a setting that fosters diversity; with advisors and consultants with doctorate degrees and specializations in Human Development monitor learning processes, in addition to a worldwide web of colleagues and associations, so that they can reach the satisfaction and the progress of humanity with peace and harmony.

Contact us to get started

Now, it’s possible to earn your degree in the comfort of your own home. For additional information or to see if you qualify for admissions please contact us.

Pioneer Plaza / 900 Fort Street Mall 410 Honolulu, HI 96813
800-993-0066 (Toll Free in US) info@aiu.edu
808-924-9567 (Internationally) www.aiu.edu

Online application:

https://www.aiu.edu/apply3_phone.aspx