How does cuba look

Baseball came to Cuba from the United States in the s. Many international baseball stars have come from Cuba, and the Cuban national team is one of the best in the world. Cuba has many different habitats, from mountain forests to jungles and grasslands. There are even small deserts. These different ecosystems are home to unique plants and animals found only in Cuba. Many interesting creatures live in Cuba's thick forests. Most famous is the bee hummingbird, the world's smallest bird.

Adult bee hummingbirds grow to only two inches five centimeters long. The world's smallest frog also lives in Cuba. Cuba is a socialist state run by the Cuban Communist Party. Cubans vote for their leaders, but the communist party is the only legal party. Fidel Castro was president, prime minister, and commander of the armed forces until February , when he stepped down due to a lengthy illness. The United States had been hostile toward Cuba since the communists took power in , but in the United States reopened its embassy in Cuba—where American diplomats live to work with the Cuban government.

Soon after, Cuba did the same in the United States. The monthly wages would seem to suggest so. Before we move on, we should make sure that we are on the same page in defining poverty. There are several definitions of poverty. Access to education and medical services is universal. The state also provides a subsidy for citizens to buy staples such as eggs, sugar and rice.

The constitution ensures everyone has access to music and art, and going to see concerts or plays is either free or very cheap. Life in Cuba is expensive, and people are always looking for a way to make extra money.

The houses are in a dilapidated state and the furniture inside is at least years old. For instance, you are a farmer, and you have cows. Cuba today has two official currencies — CUC used by tourists and Peso used by locals. The dependency of the locals on state subsidies for their basic needs has created an alternate economy, resulting in the need to have another currency for foreigners. As an example, a tourist at a store would be charged 2 CUC for water, while a local would get it for 15 Pesos, around 0.

This has changed not only day-to-day life in Cuba, but also has caused skilled workers such as nurses, doctors and teachers to leave their professions to pick up tourism. Some work two jobs.

However, this wealth was not dispersed equally. The American mafia and their Cuba partners began making more and more money from its various business ventures, such as casinos, nightclubs, brothels and hotels. The growing discontent with this inequality was the thing that ignited the Cuban revolution. After the revolution, all American products and business were nationalized, and economic reforms ensured that revenue made by these ventures was distributed nationwide.

However, the economy never recovered. Food rations and product distributions were cut by half. Even years after the special period, in , desperate mothers could be seen asking for money to buy milk powder for their children.

Today, there are still many things that the Cubans need, however, the economy is doing significantly better. Former Venezuelan president Chavez played an important role in helping recover the economy. Fidel and Chavez are known to have been good friends.

They made a deal for Cuba to train Venezuelan doctors in exchange for cheap oil and financial support. Even though both Chavez and Fidel have passed away, economic and political relations between the two countries remains strong.

From where we stand, being satisfied and being happy are two different things. We interpreted young people dressing up to gather in a square and loud music blaring out of houses as its own joi de vivre.

Opportunities are rare; life in Cuba is hard. However, income is only one of the many indicators on the happiness index. Interpretation is personal, but numbers will be a better judge. According to the World Health Organization, Cuba ranks 84 out countries in the suicide index. As opportunities are few and far between, people have learned to rely on each other. For instance, one house in the neighborhood has a radio, the other a scooter, another a sewing machine, and they survive by borrowing from each other.

This also means that people are forced to tolerate one another because everyone understands that they might have to cross that bridge again. Life in Cuba is rapidly changing. This was the first thing that Raul Castro did to signal that he was more moderate than Fidel. In , local farmers were given the right to own land, opening the door to foreign investment. Foreign tourism investors are seizing every opportunity to open hotels.

Every year, 3. Spanish, French, Canadian and UK firms have already purchased land. American chains such as Hilton and Marriott are likely ready to pounce on Cuba as an investment destination; however, the US and Cuba have yet to fully patch up their relationship. American firms are still not allowed to enter Cuba. This gives companies in other countries a chance to enter the Cuban market, which is why the US is working quickly on resolving their issues with Cuba.

Massive cruises are routing through Havana. The Tallapiedra Electric plant is being renovated and will have a gallery similar to the Tate Modern in London, and the Nico Lopez Refinery is slated to be made into a science center. Foreign companies are competing for a share of the Cuban market.

Cubans living abroad who want to invest in the country are sending money to their families in Cuba to make investments and purchase property. The locals who are already involved in the tourism sector are aware of future opportunities. The money has started flowing to both the government and the people. Change is inevitable. After 50 years of not being able to leave the country with a few exceptions, such as academics and artists , the government lifted the ban in The flavors in the movie stood for different sexual preferences: for example, someone who bought only strawberry ice cream was signaling that they wanted to meet only gay men.

In his later years, also Fidel began to soften his tone. So Cuba today is more tolerant than it was in the past. Internet — Access to the internet continues to be extremely limited in Cuba today. There is no internet in houses; it is only available in some public squares. Even in the sprawling metropolis that is Havana, there are only 5 parks where you can purchase internet access.

Moreover, internet costs are high; it costs 1. Even when you can find internet and pay for it, your exposure is limited because it is too slow to watch something or to make a call on WhatsApp.

Your GSM mobile operator will provide internet services to you as a foreigner, but not to Cubans. There are a couple reasons for having a Revolution Committee in every neighborhood in Cuba today: To provide support for the elderly, to put together entertainment activities and street parties, to assist with anything related to security and to monitor any activity against the revolution.

Six citizens who wanted to flee Cuba drove a car through the gates of the embassy of Peru, killing a Cuban guard in the process. After hearing that Peru refused to give up these 6 asylum seekers, Fidel removed the Cuban police from the Peru Embassy and announced that Cuba will be withdrawing its security forces from embassies and consulates refusing to cooperate with Cuba.

It was a strategic mistake. Now that there were no gatekeepers, thousands of Cubans who wanted to apply for asylum fled to the Peruvian embassy in a matter of a couple of days. Upon hearing the news that so many people wanted to leave the country, Castro announced that anyone who wanted to leave through the Mariel port was free to do so.

The US announced it would be welcoming Cuban refugees. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans showed up to flee the country. The crisis was getting bigger and bigger. Each departure encouraged others to leave too. The US took in , Cuban political refugees during this time. Fidel had a plan in mind to make the US stop taking Cubans. He began sending criminals and people with mental health problems from prisons, and the US had no other choice but to close its borders.

On the other hand, Cubans overall feel a great amount of admiration for figures such as Fidel Castro — as well as his comrades Raul Castro, Che Guevara, and Camillo Cienfuegos — and regard them as founding fathers of the country.

When Fidel passed away in , the entire country went into a state of mourning. Fidel continued to be president until , 49 years of popular rule. It is one thing that has really affected life in Cuba overall. Here is a summary of some of the advancements Cuba has made in education:. Subject Geog. Type Category. Format Medium. Format Media Type. Creator Maker. Language ISO Type ARC. Title Folder. Rights Copyright Status. Relation Container Digid.

Rights Access Restrictions. Rights Access Restriction Note. Subseries Name. Series Name. Description Historical Note.

Subject Organization. The complete list of regions and their correlations can be found in eAppendix 11 and eTable 6 in the Supplement. Several regions with non—statistically significant differences in microstructure also showed correlation. Details are shown in eAppendix 11 and eTable 7 in the Supplement. For functional connectivity, there were no significant correlations between prespecified subnetworks and clinical scores.

There were no significant differences in whole-network structural connectivity eAppendix 8 in the Supplement , or functional connectivity eAppendix 9. There was no significant difference in white matter hyperintensity ratings eAppendix 10 in the Supplement. Correlations were not undertaken with structural connectivity measures, full-network functional connectivity measures, or white matter hyperintensity counts, as no significant differences in these measures were found. Advanced brain neuroimaging of a group of US government personnel potentially exposed to directional phenomena while working in Havana, Cuba, showed significant differences in whole brain white matter volume, regional gray and white matter volume, cerebellar tissue microstructural integrity, and functional connectivity in the auditory and visuospatial subnetworks compared with controls.

These findings suggest that there may be differences in brain structure involving several different brain regions as well as in some functional brain networks. The finding of significantly less white matter volume in patients compared with controls was also reflected in some regional differences. Voxel-wise white matter volumetric differences also differed between projection and association fibers.

This may indicate that there were differences in axonal volume, myelin-to-axon ratio, or free water volume fraction. These patterns of volumetric differences do not conform readily to any established mechanisms of pathogenesis, nor do they form an anatomical basis for a specific behavioral dysfunction observed in other brain disorders. In the microstructural measures derived from DTI, patients demonstrated differences compared with controls in both cerebellar and cerebral regions, with lower mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity, and axial diffusivity and higher fractional anisotropy in patients.

This is in contrast to the increased mean diffusivity and decreased fractional anisotropy observed in other brain disorders, such as traumatic brain injury. Notably, the latter has been observed in experimental models of traumatic brain injury due to ultrastructural changes. The presence of cerebellar differences in terms of tissue volume and microstructure in the patients may have important clinical implications because involvement of this region is associated with vestibular and oculomotor dysfunction, which was observed in a subset of the patients.

The prominently different cerebellar areas included the vermis, which receives visual and auditory inputs, and the vestibulocerebellum, which receives vestibular inputs. These differences may be associated with the differences observed in volumetric changes between association and projection fibers, due to the preferential involvement of deep white matter projection fibers in the vestibular system and association fibers in integrating oculomotor function.

In the analysis of tissue microstructure of the cerebellum, the significant differences in mean diffusivity and free water volume fraction point to lower water content in patients compared with controls. Although little is known about how changes in cellular water are reflected in volume, the pattern of higher superficial gray matter volume, lower deep gray matter volume, and lower white matter volume could be explained by differential changes in water content in the molecular, Purkinje, and granular layers of the cerebellum.

In addition to the anatomical view of the cerebellum, analysis of an imaging-based functional parcellation of the cerebellum revealed significantly lower mean diffusivity in regions linked to motor, frontoparietal, and default mode network functionality.

Significantly lower functional connectivity was observed in the auditory and visuospatial networks in patients compared with controls. These functional imaging differences were supported by the lower tissue integrity measures of mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity, axial diffusivity, and free water volume fraction in the inferior colliculi, which are linked to auditory and vestibular function.

Although some patients demonstrated clinical deficits in executive functioning, no significant difference was found in the executive control subnetwork. A focused investigation of the visuospatial network showed involvement of the frontal supplemental and parietal eye fields and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which are implicated in vergence and vestibular and saccade functioning. In exploratory analyses, some correlations were observed between neuroimaging metrics and quantitative measures of vestibular and oculomotor dysfunction that were obtained clinically for a subset of 28 patients with neurological signs and symptoms that required subspecialty evaluation.

In the right and left ventral diencephalon, where there was a significant group difference in volume, worse scores on near point of convergence correlated with greater volume in patients compared with controls. In the Neuromorphometrics atlas, 7 the ventral diencephalon is the anatomical name given to a group of structures that are difficult to distinguish from each other in standard MRI images, including the hypothalamus, mammillary body, subthalamic nuclei, substantia nigra, red nucleus, lateral geniculate nucleus, and medial geniculate nucleus.

White matter areas such as the zona incerta, cerebral peduncle crus cerebri , lenticular fasciculus, and medial lemniscus are also included in this area. The optic tract is also included in this area in the most anterior extent. In the cerebellum, lower mean diffusivity in patients compared with controls correlated with a worse score on the Sensory Organization Test, and higher fractional anisotropy in patients correlated with a worse positive fusional vergence score.

The strength of correlation R 2 of these diffusion-based tissue integrity measures with clinical scores was relatively weak. These correlations suggest a potential neuroanatomical basis of the observed neurological manifestations in these patients. However, this analysis must be interpreted in light of the limitation that numerous clinical and imaging correlations were evaluated, including clinical findings that showed no correlation with the imaging metrics or that showed correlation with imaging metrics that were not significantly different between groups.

Thus, given issues related to multiple comparisons in the absence of predefined hypotheses, the relatively weak correlations observed for some metrics, and the absence of correlation with functional connectivity metrics entirely, the clinical implications of the neuroimaging differences remain uncertain. Imaging-based correlative studies need specifically hypothesized regions for clinical correlation and are rendered challenging by the complex nature of networks that could also be involved in the observed neurological dysfunction, as is the case for vestibular and oculomotor dysfunction.

The diffuse nature of imaging differences, compounded by the heterogeneity of the clinical scores and their nonspecificity, may be confounding factors in any such correlation. This is especially challenging in a clinical sample in which patients did not receive clinical testing uniformly.

This study has several limitations. First, the effort was not designed as a research study but was undertaken retrospectively, using clinically acquired data and measures of deficit assessment.

Second, the ideal control cohort, composed of unaffected personnel who were identical to those deployed in Cuba, was not feasible to obtain. A second independent control cohort was used to further ensure reproducibility of the results and mitigate any sampling bias that may have affected control set 1.

Third, the analysis involved a small sample with high heterogeneity, compounded by clinical as opposed to research neuroimaging acquisition. In the absence of a common clinical severity score due to varied symptomatology, the cohort cannot be subdivided. Therefore, the findings represent group-level statistical differences as opposed to individual changes that may be highly variable. Additionally, it cannot be determined whether the differences among the patients are due to individual differences between patients or differences in level and degree of exposure to an uncharacterized directional phenomenon.

Fourth, because the patients have undergone neurological rehabilitation, the imaging findings may be representative of brain changes associated with the rehabilitation or compensatory changes in a recovering brain. Although this hampers future replication studies, complementary findings across various MRI measures, as undertaken in this study, are in themselves a form of replication in such a unique and small sample. Fifth, the tissue integrity measures of fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity, and axial diffusivity are gross representations of tissue microstructure, to the extent that microstructural tissue properties can be captured by in vivo MRI protocols.

However, these measures have been used for investigating various pathologies, as described above. Investigation of other microstructure measures, like axon diameter, requires advanced dMRI acquisition commonly acquired in dedicated research MRI acquisitions, and is therefore beyond the scope of the current clinical acquisition.

In DTI, the macroresolution of acquisition means that the indexes are only a representation of the underlying microstructural changes and tissue integrity. The underlying mechanisms of axonal injury, myelin changes, or free water changes are challenging to disentangle in group-based statistical results.

Sixth, image analysis methods have limitations. Although the former is known to correlate strongly with neuronal cell bodies and the latter to reflect axonal and myelin volumes, various pathological processes like axonal death, demyelination, and dehydration, among other processes, affect them.

Among US government personnel in Havana, Cuba, with potential directional phenomena exposure, compared with healthy controls, advanced brain MRI techniques revealed significant neuroimaging differences in whole brain white matter volume, regional gray and white matter volume, cerebellar tissue microstructural integrity, and functional connectivity in the auditory and visuospatial subnetworks but not in the executive control subnetwork.

Author Contributions: Drs Verma and Smith had full access to all of the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. No other disclosures were reported. Disclaimer: The findings and conclusions are those of the authors and should not be construed as officially reflecting the views of the US government or the US Department of State.

Our website uses cookies to enhance your experience. By continuing to use our site, or clicking "Continue," you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy Continue. Figure 1. Volumetric Differences Between Patients and Controls. View Large Download. Figure 2. Differences in Tissue Microstructural Integrity in the Cerebellum.

Figure 3. Differences in Tissue Microstructural Integrity in the Cerebrum. Figure 4. Figure 5. Ages of Patient and Control Cohorts. Acquisition Details eAppendix 2. Creation of Imaging Measures eAppendix 4. Combination of Control Cohorts eAppendix 5. Additional Analysis of Volumetric Maps eAppendix 6. Structural Connectivity Analysis eAppendix 9. Additional Functional Connectivity Analysis eAppendix Analysis of WM Hyperintensities eAppendix Exposure Descriptions of the Directional Phenomena eTable 3.

Subcommittee hearing: attacks on US diplomats in Cuba. January 9, Accessed January 10,