The professor who seeks help to study PhD in Argentina - Barranquilla - Colombia

A breast cancer suffered by his mother motivated the math and physics teacher Eder Antonio Linares Vargas to initiate studies that contribute to the understanding of this pathology that comes to life for many women in the world every day.

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“My mother has ductal breast cancer and they had to remove her left breast plus some lymph nodes in her left arm. she was in chemotherapy”, says the teacher from Barranquilla.

It is in this moment of adversity where he confesses that his desire to understand how a normal cell it becomes cancerous.

“That is my greatest motivation to start this research,” explains this professor who has spent months fighting and knocking on doors for help to start his project.

Linares has a degree in mathematics and physics from the Atlantic University. Master in Applied Physics from the University of Zulia (Venezuela).

“I was in Mexico at the University of Sonora working on the Physicochemistry of triple negative breast cancer,” he says that he has also been a professor at the Uniatlantico, the CUC, ITSA and the uninorte from Barranquilla.

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My mother has breast cancer. She was in chemotherapy. That is when my desire to understand how a normal cell becomes cancerous is born.

For his study of cancer cells has consulted scientific articles and assures that he found that “as based on the partial failure of medical oncologists, biologists, biochemists, etc., in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer in early stages, physicists and mathematicians begin to contribute to the understanding of this pathology,” he says.

“Undoubtedly, in order to improve the diagnosis of cancer in its early stages, monitor the disease and carry out adequate treatment, it is necessary to resort to new technologies such as nanomedicine. A very new and cutting-edge technological trend is based on the use of nanomaterials for theranostic purposes”, he indicates.

He won a scholarship to study in Argentina

Linares applied for a scholarship for a doctorate in Argentina with the Conicet, the counterpart of Colciencias in Colombia. It is an international scholarship, where the academic averages of the courses studied are evaluated, especially in the master’s degree. The resume of each student and the possible lines of research to be followed are also evaluated. “Thank God I managed to get the scholarship.”

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But its economy is not the best. “I have a contract with the Secretary of Education of Barranquilla, I asked them for financial support for paperwork and air tickets and the response was not favorable.

Professor Linares is married and has a four-month-old baby, whom he cannot leave alone to study in Argentina.

“The Institute of Atomic and Nuclear Physics of Bariloche where I would carry out my initial study, has a kind of nursery for the care of the young children of researchers and doctoral students with families and there is the possibility that she will also start a professional career in that country” explains the professor who is applying help for document procedures: The Mercosur visa as a family nucleus and the one-way air tickets to Bariloche Argentina.

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“I hope and seek the help of some entity or person who understands the importance of a Colombian being linked to this type of investigation,” says a resident of Vivo en el Barrio New Colombia in Barranquilla. People interested in helping him can contact him at 3052814445.

LEONARDO HERRERA DELGANS
Correspondent of EL TIEMPO Barranquilla
@leoher69
Write me at leoher@eltiempo.com

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The Venezuelan professor who looked for students in the streets of Pereira - Other Cities - Colombia

The presence of Venezuelans in the country and, of course, in Pereira and its surroundings, generates mixed feelings in the community. There are people who seem to understand their situation, but in other communities they only generate rejection and hatred. Headlines such as “16% of the homeless in Colombia are Venezuelans”, “Pereira Personnel alert for sexual exploitation of migrant minors”, “Venezuelans are begging in Pereira”, “Venezuelans involved in robberies”, are continuously reported in this capital and lead some Risaraldenses to engage in xenophobic behavior.

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Despite these situations, which overshadow the relations between Pereirans and Venezuelans, there are other citizens who show the Risaraldian idiosyncrasy based on help, empathy and resilience for the other. So you can also read headlines, such as: “Campaign to donate dinner to Venezuelan families”, “Schools must guarantee places for migrants”, “Venezuelans received humanitarian protection”. This whole situation shows that, despite bad times and difficult situations, the Venezuelan community has also received help.

The phrase “the good are more” is not a lie. It is demonstrated by José Luis Antonio Gavazut, a 54-year-old man born in Caracas (Venezuela), who, due to the situation in his country, made the decision, like many of his countrymen, to migrate to another nation. He arrived in Colombia four years ago. A math teacher, he has experienced adversity, but what he did not expect is that his story would be replicated by a photograph of him at the traffic lights in Pereira, where he asked for help to find a job. It went viral on social networks and so many people, fortunately for him, were able to contact him.

This image of the teacher asking for help at traffic lights went viral on social networks.

Photo:

Private Archive / The Newspaper – Pereira

“In Venezuela I studied pure mathematics and dedicated myself to teaching for almost 20 years. Then I was in a car accident, which is why they fitted me with a prosthesis. Due to the situation in my country, I had to migrate, more than half of the professionals left. The workload is a minimum of eight hours a day, but you have to add the hours of correcting tasks, evaluations. In what time can a person go out to search to round up their salary? Not to mention that they only paid us two dollars a month, that’s how no one can support themselves,” José told El Diario.

Faced with so much difficulty, looking for an opportunity for his family, José came to Colombia to try to support himself and send something to his country: “I arrived in Pereira in 2018. I never thought he would ever teach again.”

I started selling fast food in the park in Cuba. For a year I sold delicious products, stuffed potatoes, empanadas, pork rinds, that’s how I defended myself. With the arrival of the pandemic, the authorities talked to the vendors and made us evict. Understandable, due to sanitary conditions. That led us to stay in the air, not knowing what to do or how to hold on. But a friend I met reached out to me, helped me to have a roof over my head, he didn’t leave me alone. Now came the rummage to get the meal.

To classes with teacher José

His friend asked him what his strength was, what his profession was, and he replied: “mathematics teacher”. Then they distributed posters around Pereira. Little by little, mothers appeared to help. “I have to point out that the first people who called me were Doña Teresa and Doña Lorena. Thanks to them I survived. They are the mothers of some of my students. So I started teaching classes. When I realized it, I already had a large group and I was able to help them with their work. Everything was going well, but in January of this year, the prosthesis that I handle broke, it opened, I made a repair, but it is not the same and that was the problem. Most of the students that he had obtained in Pereira, Dosquebradas, La Virginia, could not visit them, they could not stand long walks. The rubbing of the prosthesis bothers me, because I can’t stand one more patch and it is seriously affecting me. So I was left with no way to continue with the work that I had already been developing, which gave me to sustain myself”.

The Venezuelan teacher who teaches in Pereira and asked for money on the streets

Photo:

The Daily – Pereira

José, desperate and not knowing what to do, once again invented something for himself. “Even if I fall a thousand times I come back and stop. Seeing that everything was complicated, I made a banner to recruit students virtually. Since I had no way to publish it, I went to the stoplight, not to ask, but to make it known that I work and needed to do it. Someone came, took a picture of me, I didn’t realize when, but it ended up on Facebook and this went viral in record time. They have called me a lot and it is very satisfying that they believe in my work, also because I do it with great pleasure. I came to this country to work, to improve my quality of life and that of my family.”

The incredible thing about this story is that many have turned to help him. They state that these are welcome Venezuelans and that it is excellent to see a community that is hardworking and moving forward. José says that Pereira is a paradise and that he thanks life for coming here. “Everything has been a blessing, I don’t think I’ll leave here, I planted my heart in this territory. I love to show that we are good people, that we like to work, achieve what is ours, but without a doubt the best thing is to meet citizens with such kindness and affection, this city is characterized precisely by that”. Like José, there are many Venezuelans who have come to the Coffee Region to support the growth and development of the region.

Fact

Clever León, associate of the UNHCR office, highlighted the importance of joining efforts to serve this population that is significant in Risaralda: “according to figures from Migration Colombia, at the end of October 2021 51,351 Venezuelans were reported in the Coffee Region, of which 35% in Pereira and 13% in Dosquebradas. According to the Secretary of Social Development of Pereira, the number of Venezuelans amounts to 21,000 in the city.

ALEXANDRA MONCADA*
The Daily – Pereira
United Colombia

Barranquilla: assassination of professor Frank Morales of Uniatlantico - Barranquilla - Colombia

A hitman murdered this Saturday the professor of Philosophy at the Universidad del Atlántico, Frank Moralesin the El Pueblito neighborhood, in the Suroccidente locality, in Barranquilla.

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According to the Metropolitan Police, the individual arrived accompanied by another subject in a taxi to the home of the teacher and researcher. He waited for him to leave the house and took the opportunity to shoot him repeatedly.

According to relatives, the victim was going to go to the Ernesto Cortissoz airport to travel to Mexico, where he was scheduled to give a lecture.

After committing the crime in Carrera 11 with Calle 119, the individuals fled in an unknown direction. The assassin was hooded.

Authorities carry out investigations

The citizen in question had been captured and was in a prison for acts related to drug trafficking

The operational commander of the Barranquilla Metropolitan Police, Lieutenant Colonel Luis Sandoval, reported that the authorities are investigating with intelligence units the criminal act.

“We have a very clear line of investigation, ruling out theft. It should be noted that the citizen in question had been captured and was in a prison for acts related to drug trafficking, “said the officer.

He added that they have clues, information from the community and technological resources that can bring them closer to identifying those responsible for this case.

Universidad del Atlántico regretted the fact

We ask the authorities to act promptly

The rector of the Universidad del Atlántico, Danilo Hernandez, lamented the murder of Professor Frank Morales. The manager spoke about it through his Twitter account.

“We ask the authorities to act promptly and diligently to do justice for this horrible crime,” Hernández said.

Very unfortunate the murder of Professor Frank Morales of the @udeatlantico ,God rest his soul. We ask the authorities to act promptly and diligently to bring justice for this horrible crime.

— Danilo Hernandez (@danilohernandez) February 19, 2022

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Likewise, the educational institution rejected the event and confirmed that it was assigned to the Philosophy program of the Faculty of Human Sciences.

“In his work, Frank Morales always stood out for his contributions to philosophical research and publications in recognized scientific journals, he had several years of service in the institution and was currently linked as an occasional part-time teacher,” reported Uniatlantico.

BARRANQUILLA

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Arkansas Professor Pleads Guilty to Lying About China Patents

FAYETTEVILLE, ARKANSAS — 

A University of Arkansas professor pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about patents he had for inventions in mainland China.

Simon Saw-Teong Ang pleaded guilty in federal court in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to one count from a 58-count federal indictment.

Prosecutors say that 24 patents bearing Ang’s name were filed with the Beijing government but that he failed to report the patents to the university and denied having them when questioned by the FBI.

The university requires disclosure of all faculty patents, which the university would own. The plea deal calls for a one-year prison sentence, but the crime could be punishable by up to five years in prison.

The 64-year-old Fayetteville resident was suspended from the university faculty when he was initially indicted in July 2020. The university website no longer lists him on its faculty directory.

US Drops Case Against MIT Professor Accused of Ties to China

WASHINGTON — 

The Justice Department dropped charges Thursday against a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor accused of concealing ties to the Chinese government, a further setback to a federal initiative that was set up to prevent economic espionage and theft by Beijing of trade secrets and academic research.

The department revealed its decision in the case against Gang Chen in a filing in federal court in Boston, saying it could no longer meet its burden of proof.

U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins, the top federal prosecutor in Massachusetts, said the move was “in the interests of justice” and was the result of new information the government had received about the allegations.

“After a careful assessment of this new information in the context of all the evidence, our office has concluded that we can no longer meet our burden of proof at trial,” Rollins said. “As prosecutors, we have an obligation in every matter we pursue to continually examine the facts while being open to receiving and uncovering new information.”

The outcome, which had been expected and was earlier recommended by prosecutors in Boston, is a blow to a Justice Department effort known as the China Initiative, which was set up in 2018 to crack down on Chinese economic espionage and trade secret theft. A key prong of the initiative has focused on academics in the U.S. accused of concealing research ties to China on grant applications. But critics have long said the effort unduly targets researchers based on ethnicity and that it chills academic collaboration.

The Justice Department is reviewing the future of the program, a process expected to be completed in the coming weeks, said spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle.

In a statement, Chen thanked his supporters and said he would have more to say soon.

“While I am relieved that my ordeal is over, I am mindful that this terribly misguided China Initiative continues to bring unwarranted fear to the academic community and other scientists still face charges,” Chen said.

Accusations against Chen

Chen, a mechanical engineering professor, was arrested in January 2021 in the final days of the Trump administration and charged with concealing ties to Beijing while also collecting U.S. payment for his nanotechnology research.

Prosecutors accused him at the time of entering into undisclosed contracts and appointments with Chinese entities, including acting as an “overseas expert” for the Chinese government at the request of the People’s Republic of China Consulate Office in New York. Many of those roles were “expressly intended to further the PRC’s scientific and technological goals,” authorities in court documents.

He was accused of failing to disclose information about connections to China in an application for an Energy Department grant. Chen’s lawyers have consistently said that he did nothing wrong and that he disclosed what he needed to disclose.

The case began to wobble as the government received new information, including from the Energy Department, a person familiar with the matter said last week.

In a statement Thursday, defense attorney Robert Fisher called the case a “wayward prosecution” and said his client was eager to return to work. He thanked the “many witnesses who came forward and told the government how badly they misunderstood the details surrounding scientific and academic collaboration.”

“Our defense was this: Gang did not commit any of the offenses he was charged with. Full stop. He was never in a talent program. He was never an overseas scientist for Beijing. He disclosed everything he was supposed to disclose, and he never lied to the government or anyone else,” Fisher said in a statement.

Other China Initiative cases

Many of the China Initiative cases against academics and professors have centered on false statement or fraud allegations, rather than accusations of espionage or passing along academic research or technical or scientific expertise to China.

The initiative has resulted in some significant guilty pleas and convictions and did score a high-profile win last month with the conviction of a Harvard University professor on charges that he hid his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program.

But other big cases brought as part of the China Initiative have faltered.

A federal judge in September, for example, threw out all charges against a University of Tennessee professor accused of hiding his relationship with a Chinese university while receiving research grants from NASA, and the university has since offered to reinstate him.

Critics of the China Initiative have called for the Justice Department to shut the program down. The department’s top national security official, Matthew Olsen, met Wednesday with members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, who expressed their concerns.

Andrew Lelling, who was the U.S. attorney in Boston when Chen was charged, wrote in a LinkedIn post several weeks ago that the China Initiative was created in response to “concerns about economic espionage involving an emerging political rival.”

Now, he wrote, the “initiative has drifted, and in some significant ways, lost its focus. DOJ should revamp, and shut down, parts of the program, to avoid needlessly chilling scientific and business collaborations with Chinese partners.”