Cuban Science Research Articles

Vaccines and Public Trust: Containing COVID-19 in Cuba.

As 2021 drew to a close, Cuba struggled to contain the highly transmissible omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, braced for a new wave of infections and kept a close eye on other variants of concern popping up around the world-a common experience to countries everywhere as we head into the second year of the pandemic. In Cuba, however, there is one marked difference making all the difference: by early January, 87% of the population was fully vaccinated using a three-dose schedule of vaccines developed and produced on the island.[1] This massive vaccination campaign is complemented by a rapid booster rollout-also using Cuban vaccines-that began in December 2021 and was ongoing as we finalized this issue. The island nation was able to achieve the third highest COVID-19 vaccination rate in the world[2] after decades of scientific investment, research, discovery and innovation; regulatory oversight and compliance; professional training; and increased production capacity. But a vaccine is only as effective as the health system charged with administering it-in a safe and timely manner, to as many people as possible. Here too, Cuba has decades of experience, including a national pediatric immunization program where 98% of children under 5 are immunized against 13 diseases,[3] an annual polio vaccination campaign (both launched in 1962 and uninterrupted since) and campaigns to contain epidemics such as H1N1. When the first COVID-19 cases were detected on the island in March 2020, Cuba harnessed this vaccine experience, making a hard tack towards developing its own vaccines. Two of the main protagonists in the country's biotechnology development, the Finlay Vaccine Institute (IFV) and the Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center (CIGB), both with several groundbreaking preventive and therapeutic vaccines in their portfolios, led the search for a vaccine. Today, Cuba has three vaccines authorized for emergency use-Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus developed by IFV, and Abdala, developed by CIGB. Schedules with these vaccines have demonstrated more than 90% efficacy in clinical trials,[4] and after regulatory approval for emergency use, became the backbone of Cuban COVID-19 vaccination efforts. A fourth vaccine, Mambisa (CIGB), administered nasally, and a fifth, Soberana 01 (IFV) are still in clinical trials. For this installment in MEDICC Review's series spotlighting leading women of Cuban science, we sat down with Dr Verena Muzio, Director of Clinical Research at CIGB. A pioneer of Cuba's biotechnology sector, she is an immunologist with a doctorate in biological sciences. Her professional trajectory began researching the genetically engineered hepatitis B surface antigen that led to the development of Cuba's recombinant hepatitis B vaccine in 1989. The same technological platform used in this vaccine was used to develop CIGB's Abdala vaccine against SARS-CoV-2-part of the reason Cuba was able to secure a vaccine so quickly. A phase 3 clinical trial determined a 92.28% efficacy rate for Abdala, with results to appear in forthcoming publications.

Innovation and Education: lessons learned from Cuban Science, Technology and Innovation System

Innovation and Education: lessons learned from Cuban Science, Technology and Innovation System

Achievement and challenges of the Cuban Science, Technology, and Innovation System: A perspective on computational science

AbstractAn appropriate arranging of science, technology, and innovation systems (STIS) becomes essential for emerging countries. A good management of the system allows a more efficient use of the natural and human resources and a better answer to global challenges. Data about the Cuban Science, Technology, and Innovation System (CSTIS) and its characteristics are rare in the literature. This Perspective introduces a general landscape about the growth of the CSTIS focused on the development of computational sciences and its relation to the biotechnological and pharma technologies. General features, main results, and challenges of the CSTIS system are presented here. On the other hand, growth of computational sciences is crucial because they allow to save material and human resources, energy and time, and their progress become critical as a support of the applied research, mostly in the field of the biotechnology and pharma industry. In this paper, the most relevant Cuban groups that perform research in computational chemistry, computational physics and bioinformatics are reported. According to my opinion, the training of new professionals in transdisciplinary fields (like bioinformatics), new technological infrastructure available and the accumulated experience of the computational research groups is a good platform to think about a promising future of these sciences and their contribution to the Cuban economy and society. Cuba's experiences in the management of the STIS may be very useful for emerging countries, especially those with low financial resources.

Representación del cuerpo, el género y la «raza» en Vida y muerte de la mulata. Una historia que se repite

In this essay, I will focus on and deliberate about the idea of «la mulata» derived from the hegemonic narratives in Cuban art, science, and literature of the second half of the XIXth century. Here I am interested in the images, or lack thereof, fashioning the mulatto body and what was their intention behind such signifiers. I use the interpretative keys to intersectional feminism and an interdisciplinary methodology applied to the study of this sexualizing and racializing representations of bodies. I suggest that the mulatto woman is a discursive construct of otherness (re)signifying the objectification of the black body. This cultural artifice allows for the continuation of the harm inflicted on Cuban afro-descendant women by the colonialist imagery on race, class, and gender.

Forging a Regional Speleology: Publications, Friendship, and Identity in Cuban and Venezuelan Cave Science and Exploration

Forging a Regional Speleology: Publications, Friendship, and Identity in Cuban and Venezuelan Cave Science and Exploration

Conferencing Cuba's Geographies of Speleology: The Politics of Inclusion and Hospitality among Cave Explorers and Scientists

From the 13th to the 17th of April of 2015, Cuban cave explorers and scientists, or speleologists, gathered to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Sociedad Espeleológica de Cuba (SEC) in the city of Camaguëy. This organization, dedicated to the exploration, study, and conservation of the country's many caves, was founded in 1940, and was the first of its kind in the Americas. While scholars have examined the achievements of Cuba's biotechnology sector, Cuban science beyond academic institutes and laboratories has been overlooked. In this paper I present ethnographic and interview data obtained during the Camaguëy conference as an entry point into Cuba's “geographies of speleology” (Cant 2006). Such geographies emphasize the complex relations between geographic knowledge, individual and institutional identities, and the state. Moreover, these geographies, much like the sense of identification with and belonging to the Sociedad Espeleológica de Cuba, are at times conflicting and contested. I develop this argument by drawing on insights in cultural geography that emphasize the importance of presence of absence. Here I invoke absence in two senses, both in terms of those absent in the Camagüey conference and those deceased but whose memory live on embodied in the collective history and knowledge of the SEC. This research illustrates the importance of stepping out of the (biotechnological) laboratory, and even the formal spaces of institutionalized scientific practice, to assess the history and potential futures of a geographically-based amateur field science in Cuba. Moreover, this work contributes to the growing focus on Latin American geographies of science and, in particular, the importance of Science and Technology Studies in/ of Cuba that examine the fuzzy boundaries of science as practice in a complex spatial network. Finally, the ongoing dynamics of foreign scholars conducting research in Cuba are considered, dynamics that are intimately tied to the very geographies this project purports to analyze.

Diferencias entre política y ciencia en cuba

This article is the outcome of the systematic use of the application of the ethnographic method, supported in the participative observation and the interview to determine the current status of the relation between the official policies of the Cuban State and science in Cuba, demonstrating a substantial divorce between both institutions, which attempts against creativity, generates dissatisfactions in scientists, creates incongruity between the academic qualifications or scientific grades granted with the scientific quality results, allowing a proliferation of the opinion science which does not generate knowledge. On the other hand, some actions are proposed to contribute to the necessary approach between science and politics. Keywords Policy, science, policy and science, scientific policy, cuban science, cuban policy

Evaluating patterns of national and international collaboration in Cuban science using bibliometric tools

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that collaboration was a key characteristic of Cuban science to maintain their scientific capacity during a period of economic restrictions and an important feature of Cuban science policy and practice for the benefit of society.Design/methodology/approach– Collaboration was studied through Cuban scientific publications listed in PubMed for the period 1990-2010. The search was carried out using the advanced search engine of PubMed indicating < Cuba > in the affiliation field. To identify participating institutions a second search was performed to find the affiliations of all authors per article through the link to the electronic journal. A data set was created to identify institutional publication patterns for the surveyed period. Institutions were classified in three categories according to their scientific production as Central, Middle or Distal: the pattern of collaboration between these categories was analysed.Findings– Results indicate that collaboration between scientifically advanced institutions (Central) and a wide range of national institutions is a consequence of the social character of science in Cuba in which cooperation prevails. Although this finding comes from a limited field of biomedical science it is likely to reflect Cuban science policy in general.Originality/value– Using bibliometric tools the study suggests that Cuban science policy and practice ensure the application of science for social needs by harnessing human resources through national and international collaboration, building in this way stronger scientific capacity.

Science Podcast: 15 May Show

On this week's show: Cuban science looks toward the future, and a roundup of daily news stories.

Feature: Cuban science comes in from the cold

Feature: Cuban science comes in from the cold

Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice ed. by Elizabeth M. Ginway and J. Andrew Brown (review)

Reviewed by: Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice ed. by Elizabeth M. Ginway and J. Andrew Brown Samuel Manickam Ginway, M. Elizabeth, and J. Andrew Brown, eds. Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice. New York: Palgrave, 2012. Pp. 241. ISBN 978–1–137–28122–7. In the last approximately fifteen years, scholarly attention on Latin American science fiction has steadily increased. Once confined to the shadows of Hispanic literary studies, this genre is now taken seriously by scholars since it is considered to be an important window into the cultures and histories of this region. Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice, edited by M. Elizabeth Ginway and J. Andrew Brown, is a good addition to this growing field of studies since, as the editors note, if many early studies tended to be “archeological,” that is, bringing to light various lost and unknown science fiction texts, then the essays contained in this volume represent some current attempts to interpret this literature in its various cultural and historical contexts in Latin America. The ten essays are divided into three categories: “Speculating a Canon: Latin America’s SF [Science Fiction] Traditions,” “On the Periphery of the Periphery: Cyberpunk and Zombies in Latin America” and “Comics and Film: Latin American SF across Genres.” Essays on Mexican, Argentine and Brazilian science fiction constitute a majority since these three countries are the main Latin American producers of this genre. There are also essays on science fiction from Cuba, Chile and Bolivia. As will be apparent by reading these essays, science fiction has given Latin American writers, as well as filmmakers and cartoonists, the artistic license not normally afforded by more traditional approaches to questions of national identity, among other issues. The most interesting essays in this volume carefully examine science fiction texts through theories on, for example, historiographic metafiction, irony and allegory, while contextualizing them within the history and culture of their respective Latin American countries. In her essay “Islands in the Slipstream: Diasporic Allegories in Cuban Science Fiction since the Special Period,” Emily A. Maguire outlines the problematic relationship Cubans experience with technology in a country forcibly isolated by economic sanctions and a repressive government. The three stories analyzed show three authors utilizing science fiction to speak symbolically about their isolated, exiled situations. In “Time Travel and History in Carmen Boullosa’s 1991 Llanto, novelas imposibles,” Claire Taylor convincingly demonstrates how this Mexican novelist uses the SF trope of time travel to problematize the historiographic process of ascertaining the truth regarding the Aztec emperor Moctezuma’s death. Álvaro Bisama’s essay “Bolaño and Science Fiction: Deformities” creatively strays from conventional “scholarly” protocols and is therefore a true pleasure to read. Bisama weaves the narrative of Bolaño’s life with his works [End Page 328] while showing aspects of science fiction in both. Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado’s essay “Ending the World with Words: Bernardo Fernández and the Institutionalization of Science Fiction in Mexico” is perhaps the first serious critical overview of this author, who has been key in endowing science fiction with literary respect and credibility in Mexico today. The author’s thorough analysis of Fernández’s works by couching it in the post-NAFTA era is commendable. In her essay “Oesterheld’s Iconic and Ironic Eternautas,” Rachel Haywood Ferreira gives a complete overview of the evolution of this Argentine’s comic series titled Eternautas (for which he wrote the text while the drawings were done by others). Haywood Ferreira clearly contextualizes the Eternautas series in the Cold War and Dirty War eras in Argentina. Oesterheld’s “disappearance” by the military junta in the eighties sadly demonstrates how science fiction in Latin America imbued with political commitment can be considered “dangerous” by the authorities. The other five essays in this collection focus on further variations of science fiction in Latin America: a dystopian vision of Argentina in the film Sexilia, the Brazilian João Guimaráes Rosa’s early science fiction stories, the figure of the zombie as conceived in Chilean and Bolivian novels, science fiction motifs in Brazilian comics from the turn of the twentieth century, and elements of science fiction in some Brazilian films. These...

Challenges in the study of Cuban scientific output

Cuban scientific output at macro level has not been frequently studied in the literature on scientometrics. The current paper explores the different metric approaches to the Cuban scientific activity carried out by national and international authors. Also, the article develops a scientometric study of the Cuban scientific production as included in Scopus during the period 1996-2007, using socio-economic indicators combined with bibliometric indicators supported by the SCImago Journal & Country Rank. Web of Science and Scopus are compared as information sources. Results confirm the possibility to use Scopus to obtain an objective picture of the Cuban science behaviour during the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the XXI century. The SCImago Journal & Country Rank, in this case, offers an important set of indicators. The combination of these indicators with those related to socio-economic aspects of activities in Science and Technology, allow the authors to show a perspective of the Cuban science system evolution during the period analyzed. The inclusion in Scopus of less-cited journals published in Spanish language and its impact on productivity and citation-based indicators is also discussed. Our investigation found an increasing growth of the Cuban scientific production during the whole period, which is in correspondence to the country efforts and expenditures in Research and Development activities.

Riding the Brainwaves of Cuban Science: Pedro Valdés Sosa, MD, PhD, Cuban Neuroscience Center, Havana

Pedro Valdés spent his childhood in Chicago, Illinois, USA, where he says his love of science began. After his family returned to Cuba in 1961, he studied medicine, received his PhD in biological sciences, and in 1990 at the age of 40, founded the Cuban Neuroscience Center with a group of young scientists that included his brother Mitchell, now the Center's Director. Since then, the Center has accumulated an impressive record developing patented neuroimaging diagnostic equipment for national use and export, a nationwide infant screening program for hearing loss, and the Cuban Brain Mapping Project, among other pioneering efforts. The Center's recruitment of new graduates keeps the median age of its professionals at 28, and its scientists are the island's most widely published outside of Cuba.

Cuban science democratic and not tied to profit

Cuban science democratic and not tied to profit

Telecommunications technology transfer and the development of institutional infrastructure: the case of Cuba

The objective of this study is to describe the institutional infrastructure for the adaptation and transfer of telecommunications and other information technologies in Cuba. The origins and evolution of Cuban science and technology policy are reviewed. Institutional and managerial aspects of the Cuban telecommunications infrastructure are identified and the authors formulate suggestions for future telecommunications policy research on regional integration.

Cuban science: Soviet plan for joint technology

Cuban science: Soviet plan for joint technology