The object of this project was to study the fertility and mortality of the people of Puerto Rico. It was found that fertility is very high and has been consistently high since 1900. It was found that mortality has declined very rapidly since 1900. Hence, the combination of these two trends is bringing about a very high rate of natural increase and making Puerto Rico one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Fertility was studied in relation to certain cultural and demographic factors such as age at marriage, length of the childbearing period, age distribution of the population, percentage of illiteracy, and occupational status. From this, it was found that: 1. Most Puerto Rican women marry at very early ages. 2. The child-bearing period is long and characterized by high-age-specific birth rates. 3. Puerto Rico's population is mostly composed of young people, with 74.6 percent under 35 years of age, reflecting a high fertility for the present and future. 4. There is a high percentage of illiterates and persons with little schooling, both of whom have higher fertility rates than highly educated persons. 5. Almost 40 percent of Puerto Rico's employed persons are laborers, who have higher fertility rates than other occupational groups. Fertility also was studied in relation to selected regional characteristics. From this, it was found that: 1. The highest fertility ratios are in the most rural regions. 2. The three regions with the highest fertility ratios have the highest percentage of young persons reflecting a high fertility for the present and the future. 3. The three regions with the highest fertility ratios have the highest percentage of laborers. 4. The region with the lowest fertility ratio has the highest percentage of females. Mortality is being affected by advances in medical science, public health, and improvement in the level of living. Life expectancy has increased from 38 years in 1900 to 61 years in 1950, mainly as a result of the decline in mortality. The five leading causes of death are tuberculosis, diarrhea enteritis, diseases of the heart, pneumonia, and cancer. Malaria was a leading cause of death in 1933 but is now almost eliminated. Diarrhea enteritis and pneumonia are responsible for high death rates among persons under five years of age. Tuberculosis, diseases of the heart, and cancer are responsible for high death rates among persons 25 years of age and over. Females have higher death rates from tuberculosis and cancer than males. Males have higher rates from diarrhea enteritis, diseases of the heart, and pneumonia than females. White people have higher death rates from diarrhea enteritis, pneumonia, and cancer than colored people. Colored people have higher death rates from tuberculosis and diseases of the heart than white people. Death rates from Diarrhea enteritis, tuberculosis, and pneumonia have declined in recent years, while the death rate from cancer has increased, and the death rate from diseases of the heart has remained about the same. The combined Spanish and United States culture systems are to a great extent responsible for the extreme case of population pressure that exists. The ADS Years of Spanish domination of the Island have left traditions and beliefs that still direct the way of thinking of most of the people. Many of these cultural traits have been affecting the Island’s basic problem, excessive population. Such things as unlimited reproduction, large families, and little emphasis on schooling are examples of the beliefs that tend toward the Island's high birth rate. On the other hand, the 50 years of American influence has provided the Island with modern ideas of sanitation, and public health programs that have made possible the reduction in the death rates from the different diseases, and as a result a higher life expectancy. Emphasis has been given to more schooling, small families, and limited reproduction, but the previous culture is still in the way. Although an attempt has been made to control the number of births, the results are nil. Besides, different historical periods have had their influence. During the depression years when there was food and money available through the different relief programs, the birth rates increased. The same thing happened during the World War II period when the birth rates were very high. On the contrary, the death rates have shown a decline every year, and in this phase the government has been successful. In view of what happens in countries where death rates have fallen more rapidly than birth rates, the future trend of population growth in Puerto Rico apparently will continue to increase. This means that population pressure will worsen unless cultural changes such as increased emphasis on schooling, industrialization, urbanization, and higher standards of living make the people more aware of the problem and cause them to change their present ideas and practices with respect to fertility. / Master of Science

M.S.

For almost 450 years the island of Puerto Rico has had an agricultural economy based on the cultivation and production of sugar. Sugar plantations became small communities within towns with distinctive structures and buildings. When large scale commercial sugar production ceased, plantation houses were abandoned and have deteriorated to the point of collapse. A small number of plantation houses are still standing in defiance of progress and their own deterioration.Plantation houses represent part of Puerto Rico's economic and social history and deserve to be preserved. As a result of their architectural significance and uncertain future, plantation houses throughout the Island, should be documented.The focus of this Creative Project is the documentation of the main house in La Monserrate sugar plantation and present recommendations for its rehabilitation and adaptive reuse. This plantation house is located in Manati, a town along the north coast of Puerto Rico. The document will cover a variety of subjects all related with the history of the development of the sugar industry and its influence in Puerto Rico's architecture. The document includes both, a comprehensive analysis of the house and preliminary recommendations for its future adaptive reuse.It is the author's hope that this document will increase public awareness about the importance of preserving this particular building as well as some of the cultural and economic advantages of historic preservation. The community needs to understand and appreciate their built heritage and restoring and rehabilitating the main house in Hacienda La Monserrate can be the first step to achieve it. / Department of Architecture

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Sociology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 263-282).

There is an underlying hope that those whom are elderly can exist in a place of happiness, comfort, security and familiarity; and can do so by aging in a place which complies with an understanding of their needs as older adults. However, along with aging comes a negative association of dependence and deterioration. Therefore, it is intuitive to have a connection between both the aging process and the design process. Creating a product which brings a positive association with senior housing and aging in place is the underlying goal within the project and overall design. With the increasing population of those 65 and older, there is a higher need for the placement of individuals who can no longer live independently or those who do not have family available to care for them. More specifically, the views of caring for elderly within Latin American cultures have a highly negative connotation towards the placement of older relatives outside of their proper family home. So how does the problem of increasing need for senior housing become solved with those who reject the idea of senior housing facilities and nursing homes? In order to change the perception of senior housing within Latin America, there needs to be an element of identity and familiarity to the home. It is that sense of identity and familiarity which will produce a product of belonging and comfort that promotes a positive lifestyle within senior housing. In order to directly address the Latin American culture, the proposed site will be located in an island which shares both United States values and views along with their own rich culture and history. Designing within the tropical conditions and cultural traditions of Puerto Rico will give its elderly a new and essential residential typology. It is extremely important to choose an environment which is beginning to acknowledge the change in demographic and economy that requires a more positive form of assisted living facilities and senior housing. Through a methodology which involves analyzing Puerto Rican cultural elements and conditions, the thesis will result into an understanding of cultural spatial traditions and customs. Accordingly, by taking these cultural conditions and implementing them into an senior housing program, it will bring a sense of home and place which is not found in the majority of elderly housing facilities within Puerto Rico.

In addition to the tragedy they cause, major natural hazard and disaster events place a large cost on the governments and aid organizations who help people prepare for and recover from them. Such organizations are in constant need of strategies for distributing aid efficiently and comprehensively. The emergence of social media in everyday life has provided a platform for such organizations to coordinate relief efforts and communicate with people affected by disasters. It also has allowed affected individuals to communicate with one another on a large scale. The present thesis examines the dynamics of Twitter during extreme climate events and their aftermath in order to shed light on potential strategies for aid providers. We begin by looking at the five most expensive natural disasters in the United States between 2011 and 2016. We isolate Twitter users for each disaster who are likely tweeting about food security or other basic needs during the event and its aftermath. We examine the follower count distributions of these users for each event. We then narrow focus to Hurricane Sandy, and look at the relationship between follower counts and relative increase in tweeting rate during the event. We find that users with fewer than 100 followers were more likely to increase their rate of tweet publication than influentials with many followers. We also use a synthetic model of Twitter's communication network to mimic the way Twitter stores and samples tweet data. We quantify the sensitivity of three measures of network centrality to these mechanisms. This provides insight relevant to those who build network representations of Twitter communication using the data Twitter provides. We see differences in the sensitivity of the centrality measures studied, differences in sensitivity to the different mechanisms, and a dependence between measure and mechanism. Finally, we construct a network representation of Puerto Rican Twitter users surrounding Hurricane Mar\'ia and its aftermath. We examine the evolution of this network over time, and communities present within the aggregate network. Using information theoretic tools, we discern differences in the body of tweets between different communities in the network and different periods of time surrounding the hurricane's landfall. We observe many differences between communities, with more focus on Puerto Rico in the community containing most local government figures, whereas major celebrities tended to talk about more general Latin American issues. We also hand-categorize Twitter users in the network as news outlets, politicians, citizens, weather stations, meteorologists, or journalists, finding that the distribution of user type has a temporal dependence.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1983. / Typescript. Title from title screen (viewed Mar. 30, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 193-201). Online version of the print original.

In 1987, Burney and collaborators (Journal of Archaeological Science (1994) 21, 273–281) recovered a ca. 8 m sediment core from the western basin of Laguna Tortuguero, Puerto Rico that spanned the last ca. 7000 calibrated years. They produced a detailed microscopic charcoal record, and from an initial peak in charcoal at ca. 5300 cal yr B.P. suggested that humans had colonized the island some 2000 years earlier than documented by the archaeological evidence then available. In 2008, two sediment cores were recovered from the eastern basin of Laguna Tortuguero. AMS dates on macrofossils indicate the profile extends to 7600 calibrated years, but it includes an interval with missing sediment marked by a layer of shell hash and bracketed by radiocarbon dates of 5144 and 1648 cal yr B.P. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic analyses show evidence for a drastic change in depositional environment following this event. Microscopic charcoal concentrations peak just below and at the contact of the shell hash, with the first of three high-charcoal levels positioned immediately above the date of 5144 cal yr B.P. The microscopic charcoal record appears to support the interpretations of Burney et al. (1994) of human colonization around 5300 cal yr B.P., although the fires recorded in the Laguna Tortuguero sediments may also be driven by regional climate shifts. Desiccation of Laguna Tortuguero, a hurricane or multiple hurricanes, or a tsunami could explain the missing sediments and the large change in depositional environment that occurs above the shell hash. AMS dating of sediment from the mud-water interface at the 2008 core site suggests a possible hard-water effect of ca. 1200 cal yr for dates on the algal gyttja above the shell hash, which if true would mean that the event that deposited the shell hash may have occurred as late as ca. 448 cal yr B.P. (A.D. 1502).

In the last thirty years, a large number of studies have researched the destination image that visitors, travel industry representatives, students, and general consumers have of tourist destinations. However, few studies have analyzed the perceptions that local residents have of their own countries as tourist destinations. Local residents can provide valuable information about their countries as tourism destinations and can help tourism marketers determine how to represent local culture in more authentic and sustainable ways. Local residents can also provide valuable information about how to improve tourism development based on their experiences living in the area. Residents can further provide information and services to visitors and are themselves an integral part of tourism at a destination. This study focused on understanding how destination marketing portrays the people and places of a destination and how residents perceive the visuals used in destination marketing and promotion. Using a visual qualitative approach, the study analyzed the images of recent promotional campaigns employed by the Puerto Rico Tourism Company. The study then interviewed Puerto Rican residents regarding their attitudes toward tourism development in general and toward the specific imagery used in the campaigns. Overall, residents had rather positive opinions of tourism in Puerto Rico. They also had largely positive attitudes toward the visual imagery used to market the destination. However, they felt the portrayal was incomplete and did not reflect the modern way of Puerto Rican daily life.

En esta investigación se aplica el análisis institucional al estudio de la creación de empresas en Puerto Rico. El estudio fue estructurado en tres niveles de análisis: 1) el marco macro económico de la estructura de los establecimientos comerciales y la creación de empresas, 2) el estudio de los factores condicionantes formales y 3) el estudio de los factores condicionantes informales. En los tres niveles de análisis se aplicó una metodología cuantitativa, aunque la fase de entrevistas personales que se incluyó en el segundo nivel de análisis proveyó un toque cualitativo al estudio. En la primera fase de la investigación se analizó la estructura de los establecimientos comerciales categorizados por tamaño según el número de empleados, así como la tendencia del nivel de actividad en la creación de empresas en las últimas dos décadas y la relación entre la creación de empresas y una serie de indicadores macro económicos seleccionados. El indicador de nivel de actividad en la creación de empresas se calculó como la tasa de crecimiento anual en el número de establecimientos. Las estadísticas de establecimientos comerciales se obtuvieron de la base de datos del censo económico para Puerto Rico.El objetivo del segundo nivel de análisis fue determinar cuál es el entorno institucional formal relacionado con la creación de empresas en Puerto Rico. En esta fase se recopiló información detallada de las leyes, los reglamentos, las entidades reguladoras y las organizaciones concernientes. Como parte de esta segunda fase también se estudió el conocimiento y valoración que tienen los empresarios fundadores de empresas nuevas sobre las organizaciones y los servicios de apoyo. Empresas nuevas fueron definidas como aquellas fundadas hace cinco años o menos. Se realizaron entrevistas a una muestra de 50 empresarios.El tercer nivel de la investigación estuvo dirigido al análisis de las percepciones y actitudes de la población puertorriqueña en torno al proceso de creación de empresas y al empresario. En esta fase se realizó una encuesta a dos muestras. El primer grupo lo compone una muestra de 500 personas representativa de la población puertorriqueña mayor de 21 años de edad. El segundo grupo lo compone una muestra de 435 estudiantes universitarios. El estudio concluye que en los últimos dos períodos estudiados se ha dado un aumento significativo en la tasa de creación de empresas en Puerto Rico. No obstante, una parte importante de dicha actividad empresarial se está llevando a cabo por los extranjeros propietarios de los establecimientos comerciales. Por otro lado, los factores condicionantes que obstaculizan el proceso de creación de empresas en Puerto Rico se hallan fundamentalmente en el entorno formal, contrario a la percepción general de que el puertorriqueño carece de espíritu empresarial. / In this research the institutional analysis is applied to the study of new venture creation in Puerto Rico. The research was structured in three levels of analysis: 1) the macroeconomic level of new venture creation; 2) the formal environmental constraints level and 3) the informal environmental constraints level. A quantitative methodology was applied in all levels of analysis although the phase of personal interviews included in the second level provided a qualitative touch to the study. In the first level of the research the structure of commercial establishments categorized by size according to the number of employees was analyzed. The trend in the business start-up activity during the last two decades and the relationship between the start-ups index and several macro economic indicators selected were also studied. The business start-ups index was calculated from 1980 to 1997 as the annual growth rate of commercial establishments. The Economic Census for Puerto Rico and the Economic Report to the Governor were used as database in the first level of analysis. The objective of the second level of analysis was to determine which are the formal environmental constraints related to new venture creation in Puerto Rico. Formal environmental constraints were studied through the compilation of detailed information of the laws and regulations related to business creation and operation in Puerto Rico. The knowledge and valuation that entrepreneurs founders of new ventures have concerning support institutions was also studied. New ventures were defined as those founded since 5 years or less. Interviews were conducted to a sample of 50 entrepreneurs. The third level of analysis was oriented towards the study of the perceptions and attitudes that Puerto Ricans have towards new venture creation and the entrepreneur. In this phase a survey was conducted to two samples of the Puerto Rican society: 500 persons from the general population older than 21 years and 435 university students majoring in business administration, economics and engineering. The research concludes that in the last two periods studied a significant increase in new venture creation has taken place in Puerto Rico. However, an important part of the entrepreneurial activity increase is being carried out by foreign owners of the commercial establishments. On the other hand, the environmental factors that inhibit the process are basically formal, opposed to the general perception that Puerto Ricans lack entrepreneurial spirit.