The arrival of the Delta variant has changed the landscape of the pandemic. Before we get into the details, the good news: vaccines work and protect us from serious consequences, hospitalization and death if we get the Delta variant (and the other variants) and it gives us COVID-19. The prevention measures that we already know also work to protect us from Delta and the other variants.

You can read the full story in the Spanish version of this post.

The RUM Air Aero Design team from the Mayagüez Campus (RUM) of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), completed a brilliant performance by obtaining first place in the technical presentation of the Micro Class; second place in the technical reports for the Regular Class, Micro Class and Advanced Class categories; and in the flight test part, they got a second place overall for the Micro Class, third place in Flight Performance for Regular Class, and overall for the Regular and Advanced Class categories, in the SAE Aero Design competition, held this summer in Lakeland, Florida.

A large scale study that included multi-ethnic participants has identified more genetic regions linked to type 2 diabetes-related traits than if the research had been conducted in Europeans alone.

The study, titled “The Trans-Ancestral Genomic Architecture of Glycemic Traits,” was published in Nature Genetics, and co-authored by Director of Clinical and Health Services Research at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, Dr. Larissa Aviles-Santa, on behalf of the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL).

Dr. Benjamín Colucci Ríos, professor of the Department of Civil Engineering and Surveying (INCI) of the Mayagüez Campus (RUM) of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), became the first Puerto Rican and Hispanic-American to receive the Wilbur S. Smith, in the 2021 edition, an award granted by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

In Puerto Rico there are several localities that are protected areas due to great biodiversity and abundance of native or endemic species that are an essential part of the island's ecosystem. The Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DNER) currently manages 59 zones, including forests, reserves and protected natural areas. Being state-protected areas, these areas are less likely to suffer disturbances caused by human actions. This provides several places throughout the country where local flora and fauna can grow and develop in their natural habitat and without human intervention. However, a large number of native and endemic plant species occur outside these protected areas.