Partnerships
View our list of current university partners to see the list for Mexico
The Sterling Evans Library is a collaborator in the project “Los Primeros Libros de las Américas: Impresos mexicanos y peruanos del siglo XVI en las Bibliotecas del Mundo”, a collaboration of institutions in Mexico, the United States, Spain, Chile, and Peru whose goal is to digitize, preserve, and increase the academic interest in books printed in the sixteenth century in Mexico and Peru. To date, this partnership has facilitated the scanning of important documents from six Mexican libraries.
Texas A&M University has one of the most sustained efforts among university collections to accumulate insect material from Mexico. Texas A&M systematists have participated in numerous cooperative activities with Mexican entomologists, many of whom have visited the collection to pursue joint or individual research projects. Texas A&M and Mexican systematists have conducted joint workshops on various aspects of the Mexican fauna and on methods for studying insect biodiversity.
Gabriel Eckstein, professor at Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth, and Rosario Sanchez Flores, Program Coordinator at Texas A&M University’s Department of Water Management and Hydrological Science in College Station, have teamed up to create opportunities for increased cooperation between Texas and Mexico to share water resources and lessen the impact of the drought.
Dr. Gretchen Miller from the Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M investigates the use of water in agriculture in the different municipalities of Mexico to determinate the amount and type of water used in crops
Dr. Gretchen Miller from the Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M investigates the use of water in agriculture in the different municipalities of Mexico to determinate the amount and type of water used in crops
In March 2015, the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) was inducted into the Yucatán’s research consortium, SIIDETEY, to expand research collaborations. Currently, there are about 20 faculty in College Station and 20 in Yucatán working on projects in the areas of sustainable energy, aquifers, coastal dynamics, early warning systems and logistics/supply chain management. TEES is also in the process of expanding collaboration opportunities among other Texas A&M System members.
Since 1991, when the Texas Legislature created the Colonias program, Texas A&M’s University's College of Architecture has been engaged with people of these Texas-Mexico border communities, helping them to build better lives through the conception, development, and delivery of integrated, sustainable, scalable, flexible, evidence-based, outcome-driven, and technology enabled solutions.
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) is working with the Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transportes and other institutions in Mexico. A TTI researcher based in Mexico works with private and governmental transportation research projects.
Research Highlights
Texas A&M University School of Law studies the legal mechanisms relating to groundwater along the Texas-Mexico border
Written by Jessica Foster ’16 (J.D., Texas A&M University School of Law)
Across Mexico’s border with Texas in the United States lie numerous aquifers on which both countries rely. Yet, there is no international agreement or formal basis for cooperation for using groundwater from these underground resources. Users on both sides of the boundary often withdraw groundwater without monitoring rate of extraction, knowledge of the available reserve or natural and artificial recharge rates, or constraints designed to protect groundwater quality. Moreover, the two nations apply disparate rules and regulations, at the federal, state, and local levels, to their respective portions of the aquifers for both quantity and quality issues. As a result, aquifers on both sides of the international boundary are susceptible to over-withdrawal and contamination, as well as other risks that users of shared subsurface water resources often face when they operate independently. The purpose of this project is to present a factual picture of the multiple groundwater governance frameworks that cover the same transboundary aquifers on the Texas-Mexico border. It examines, catalogs, and compares the various approaches that communities along the Texas–Mexico border take toward managing and allocating groundwater resources. It also presents a comprehensive survey of the existing rules, regulations, practices, and guidelines – from the federal, to the state, to the local level – that users and institutions on both sides employ to govern ground water usage within their various jurisdictions. The goal of this study is to lay a foundation for additional research and even coordination across the frontier in an effort both to improve knowledge and information about groundwater on the Texas-Mexico border, as well as to ensure that these critical resources are governed and managed in a manner that ensures their availability into the future.
To download the report, please go to: https://law.tamu.edu/docs/default-source/facultydocuments/texas-mexico-ground-water.pdf?sfvrsn=2
Aggie researchers seek to better understand Mexico’s mangroves
Written by Rachel Holanda Contributing author: Natalie Zielinski November 29, 2017
Mangroves are not only found in Mexico, but also along the coastline of other Gulf of Mexico provinces, particularly in Florida and the Caribbean, as well as within the rest of the equatorial belt around the world. The critical role of a healthy mangrove on the local environment is trifold. They reduce coastal erosion by absorbing wave energy and stabilizing the soil, filter salt from the local surface water and are home to various wetland species. The main threats to these, and most mangroves around the world, are the results of human interaction through changes to land cover and pollution. Such an impact has been observed in the Rio Celestun Biosphere Reserve as groundwater reserves have beennslowly diverted from their natural flow or depleted from over extraction, increasing stress on the local mangroves. Currently, researchers at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (CINVESTAV) are actively working to revive a stretch of mangroves along the western coast of Yucatan within the Rio Celestun Biosphere Reserve. Earlier this year, Dr. Zenon Medina-Cetina, and Natalie Zielinski, research assistant in Medina-Cetina's Stochastic Geomechanics Laboratory, and Dr. John Walewski traveled to Yucatan, Mexico, where they met with leading government representatives and scientists to discuss collaborative opportunities within research and the community. Medina-Cetina is an associate professor in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering with joint appointments in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering and the Department of Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University. The visit was conducted in alignment with Medina-Cetina’s Yucatan Initiative Project, which seeks to further develop Texas A&M’s research and academic relations within Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.
Texas A&M researchers were able to gain an up-close look at current mitigation operations in Celestun, beginning with a tour through the reserve to various sites of ongoing revival, a process that involves different phases from initial reestablishing of native wetland species to well-developed ecosystems. The impact of the revival process over the past decade is evident in the transformation of the land from dry wasteland to an abundant and thriving green haven. In Rio Celestun, researchers toured a site for the monitoring of biomass accumulation and ground water level. To catch the falling leaves and biomass, scientists have placed nets near the ground in order to estimate the rate of soil accumulation. Various pipes have also been driven into the ground to measure the level of water available for the mangroves. As the work in Rio Celestun continues, the health of the mangroves and the understanding for their impact on the local communities improves. With threats, such as increased pressure on freshwater resources and land cover alteration for human use, the survival of the mangroves in a changing climate will remain an important research area on which local communities and governments depend for future mitigation and management of natural resources. The Yucatan Initiative looks forward to the collaborative projects and efforts that are being developed within CINVESTAV and Texas A&M. Engaged faculty hope to further contribute to the body of knowledge on dynamic nature or mangroves and its restoration.
Texas A&M Researchers Develop and Lead Activities at Field Station in Hidalgo, Mexico
Texas A&M faculty Gil Rosenthal (Biology) and Rhonda Struminger (Ecosystems Science & Management) operate the CICHAZ field station (Centro de Investigaciones Científicas de las Huastecas “Aguazarca”, A.C.,) on the outskirts of Calnali, a small town in the Sierra Madre of Hidalgo. In addition to hosting hundreds of researchers from institutions in Mexico, the USA, and other countries, Struminger and Rosenthal run their own research programs centered at CICHAZ. Struminger’s research focuses on developing best practices for STEM education and outreach at field stations throughout the Americas. In recent years she has worked with visiting scientists and a Calnali-based NGO to implement a STEM-focused summer camp for younger children, with high school aged counselors trained at CICHAZ on STEM activities and concepts. The signature outreach event is CICHAZ’s annual Day of Science (Jornada Científica), where community members hike along an agroforest mosaic dotted with “science stations” on various topics led by academic experts and community naturalists.
CICHAZ is located on the banks of the Río Calnali, an important field site for Rosenthal’s research on mate choice and evolutionary genomics in natural hybrid zones of swordtails, small freshwater fish unique to the region. Until about 25 years ago, two species of swordtails coexisted in the area. Now, local streams abound with hybrids between the two species. Research at CICHAZ has shown that hybridization stems from a breakdown in mating behavior, since females can’t smell species-specific male pheromones in polluted water. Rosenthal’s current work, along with collaborators in the US and Mexico, is funded by a long-term grant from the National Science Foundation and focuses on using next-generation genomic tools to identify how natural and sexual selection on hybrids shapes the genomes, and on using natural hybrids to gain insight into the genetic underpinnings of biological phenomena ranging from skin cancer to personality disorder.
Rosenthal and Struminger were recently awarded a grant through the Field Station and Marine Laboratories program of the National Science Foundation. The grant supports renovations at CICHAZ to create a state-of-the-art facility for field science, including improvements to energy, informatics, and animal facilities, as well as a laboratory for molecular genomics. Mexico Partnership Services (mexico.tamu.edu) will be assisting in implementing this grant.
Permission to reprint obtained by Public Partnership and Outreach from Dr. Gil Rosenthal grosenthal@bio.tamu.edu
Annual eBeam Workshop Gives Attendees Access to Technology
Written by Adam Russell, 903-834-6191, adam.russell@ag.tamu.edu
Contact: Dr. Suresh Pillai, 979-845-2994, spillai@tamu.edu
The National Center for Electron Beam Research at Texas A&M University in College Station hosted its seventh annual workshop recently to address the needs of the food, phytosanitary, agribusiness, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. More than 30 attendees from five countries, including China, Mexico, France, Canada and Switzerland, attended the 2016 workshop. Electron Beam, or eBeam, technology uses electrons from commercial electricity for a variety of purposes that could have paradigm-shifting applications in numerous areas, according to the center’s website. Some of these include public health, agriculture, medicine, environment and defense and aerospace industries. The center’s week-long workshop gave people interested in the technology access and knowledge about the mechanics and possible applications. Participants attended morning lectures and afternoon labs where they were given hands-on instruction. Dr. Suresh Pillai, director of the center’s eBeam food research, said the annual workshop is a chance to inform entrepreneurs and industry professionals about the practical commercial uses of eBeam technology. “There is a great deal of interest about the technology because much of the existing technology is limited,” he said.
Electron beam technology has been used in the United States for decades by plastic manufacturers and food producers to medical providers and pharmaceutical companies. Hospitals use it to sterilize medical equipment. Low doses can delay maturation in fruits and vegetables for producers who export products. High doses can harden plastics and make them more durable. The diversity of uses has increased its interest globally, Pillai said, noting eBeam technology is used extensively in China and is growing rapidly in India. Pillai said there is growing interest in the technologies application in various fields and industry because it can be plugged into a standard electrical outlet and used. Other technology, such as Cobalt 60, which is used in the medical industry to sterilize equipment, is becoming cost prohibitive, produces radioactive waste and could be a security concern because the material could be used for harm.
Mickey Speakmon, the eBeam facility manager, said much of the technology’s use is focused in the medical industry. The food industry has eased into using the technology because marketing “irradiated” products can be tricky. “People associate that word with radiation and isotopes but it’s 100 percent electrons and 100 percent electrical,” he said. “It’s controllable and can’t be used as a detrimental object, but getting that across to consumers with take education about the technology.” David Dominguez, of Becton-Dickinson, a medical device company based in New Jersey, attended the workshop and said his company is looking at the feasibility of eBeam technology for sterilization of its products. He said the workshop had been very informative about the process. There are eight ongoing programs at the eBeam center that focus on applications such as sterilization and pasteurization, vaccine development, environmental treatment, phytosanitary as well as consumers and marketing. Studies at the center have shown the technology eliminates a variety of pathogens in a variety of foods effectively, and Speakmon said it is the premier emerging technology in the fight against pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella. One center study showed eBeam treated tomatoes’ appearance and odor were preferred by consumers while treated grapes’ flavor was preferred over non-treated. Attendees were given a taste-test at the workshop – slices of treated and untreated hamburger patties. The eBeam patties were more flavorful and moist by many accounts.
Additionally, Dominguez and other attendees participated in a dose-mapping trial on various medical supplies, from latex gloves to tracheal tubes, to determine the distribution of doses on a medical device and to demonstrate how eBeam doses, if not adequately optimized, could have an adverse effect on the product, such as change its color or make it brittle. Dominguez said the technology could make his company’s sterilization operations more efficient and effective. “It’s definitely something we’re interested in,” Dominguez said.
Permission to reprint obtained from Dr. Suresh Pillai by Public Partnership & Outreach
The First Books of the Americas: Mexican and Peruvian Prints from the Sixteenth Century in the Libraries of the World
The project "The First Books of the Americas" (http://primeroslibros.org) is a collaboration of institutions in Mexico, the United States, Spain, Chile, and Peru with the goal to digitize, preserve, and foster academic interest in books printed in Sixteenth Century Mexico and Peru. The project was announced to the public in August 2010 in the historic José María Lafragua Library (Puebla, Mexico) and has grown to include more than 25 institutions and 400 book exemplars, with plans for further growth. A major goal of the project is to build a model of cross-border collaboration, which shows the potential of technology to facilitate the retrieval, examination, and exchange of historical and cultural heritage of the first New World imprints.
The project website, available in English and Spanish, has digital copies of these important books in a variety of formats (JPG, JPF, PDF), images viewers, navigational aids, download capabilities, and metadata describing the specimens. In addition, ancillary material as bibliographies and biographies of their printers are available on the site. The collection of books and ancillary materials are offered free to the world. It is anticipated that this collection will become the definitive resource for the 16th Century imprints.
To develop the project, the Texas A&M University Libraries purchased a portable archival scanner in October 2009 to be used in Mexico to assist with the digitalization of the materials. The scanner’s first location was the Palafox Library in Puebla, Mexico. Later, the scanner was transferred to the Lafragua Library, also in Puebla. The following libraries or historical documentation centers are some that have used the scanner to digitize and subsequently display their 16th Century New World books on the project website:
- Biblioteca Palafoxiana del Ministerio de Cultura del Estado de Puebla
- Biblioteca Histórica José María Lafragua de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla
- Centro de Documentación Histórica Vito Alessio Robles del Instituto Coahuilense de Cultura
- Centro de Documentación Histórica Rafael Montejano y Aguiñaga de la Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí
- Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa de la Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca
Texas A&M University faculty have many partnerships with Mexican researchers, business, and industry. This project is one example for which Mexico Partnership Services provided administrative assistance. If you would like additional information about this or other partnership activities or opportunities between Texas A&M University and Mexican institutions, please contact Mexico Partnership Services at http://mexico.tamu.edu.
Permission to reprint this article obtained from Anton duPlessis by Public Partnership and Outreach
Galveston Scientists Discover New Crustacean Species in Saltwater Caves
May 11, 2017 By Bob Wright, Texas A&M University at Galveston Marketing and Communications
An international team consisting of scientists from Texas A&M University at Galveston, Denmark, Norway and Mexico have discovered a new species of remipede, a rare group of crustaceans exclusively inhabiting saltwater caves. Crustaceans are a large and diverse group, including familiar animals such as crabs, shrimp, lobsters and barnacles.
While exploring a 6-mile long underwater cave on the Mexican island of Cozumel, Texas A&M Galveston marine biologists Dr. Tom Iliffe and Dr. Pete van Hengstum noticed shallow pools of saltwater on floor of the submerged cave passage. Although this long cave primarily functions as an underground river, carrying freshwater to the Caribbean Sea, in a few places it is deep enough to intersect underlying saltwater. In these saltwater pools, the scientists collected several small, inch long animals that have been identified as a new remipede species.
Remipedes are slender, multi-segmented crustaceans, lacking eyes and body pigmentation. They continuously swim in an inverted position and superficially resemble a swimming centipede. With their unique venom injecting fangs they have been observed to seize small shrimp as their prey.
“Quite unexpectedly, recent molecular genetic studies have found a close relationship between remipedes and insects suggesting that further studies of remipedes are critical to understanding the early evolution of insects and the movement of life out of the sea to land’, said Iliffe. “With 28 species of remipedes identified in the past 36 years, discovery of a new species is a relatively rare event.”
Most remipedes are found in the Caribbean region. The Bahama Islands appear to be the center of diversity with 20 species, but two species inhabit Canary Island caves on the opposite side of the Atlantic and one species occurs in a cave on the Indian Ocean coastline of Australia.
“This new species is the first remipede recorded from Cozumel,” said van Hengstum. “Two related species inhabit caves along the adjacent mainland coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, while another comes from a seafloor cave off Belize.”
Together, these four species belong to the genus, Xibalbanus, derived from the name for the underworld in ancient Mayan mythology. The new species was named cozumelensis, referring to the island where it was discovered.
The body of Xibalbanus cozumelensis consists of up to 39 segments with each, except the last, having paddlelike limbs for swimming. Sexes in remipedes are combined such that each individual simultaneously has male and female reproductive organs. Mating has never been observed and little is known of their life history, with the exception of multiple larval stages observed for only one species.
Another unusual observation was the presence of suctorian ciliates. These tiny, single-celled protozoans live on a stalk, attached to the outer surface of limbs and antennae of the new species. The suctorians likely benefiting from their attachment to a swimming host, but don’t harm it.
Geological evidence indicates that the Yucatan Peninsula has been separated from Cozumel by a deepwater channel for perhaps as long as 65 million years. Such long-term geographic isolation might explain the existence of remipede species in both areas. “Genetic similarities between Cozumel and mainland Yucatan remipedes hint that a more recent migration might have occurred, possibly through deep-water cave systems extending beneath the Cozumel channel,” says
Iliffe. “Underwater caves, along with the deep sea, are vast, unexplored frontiers for exploration and discovery. Who knows what other strange lifeforms await discovery.”
Description of the new species was published in the European Journal of Taxonomy and can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2017.316
Additional information on Iliffe’s cave studies can be found on his website: http://www.tamug.edu/cavebiology/
Permission to reprint obtained by Public Partnership and Outreach from Dr. Tom Iliffe
Widlife and Fisheries Sciences PhD student Xochitl de La Rosa and professors Luis A. Hurtado and Mariana Mateos are studying conservation genetics aspects of the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle with cutting edge genomics methodologies. The Kemp’s ridley is the world’s most endangered sea turtle, and has one of the smallest distributions among sea turtles, confined mainly to the Gulf of Mexico. Most (> 90%) of the Kemp’s Ridley nesting occurs along a short (~78-mile) shoreline stretch in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, where the 16-mi long Rancho Nuevo site alone hosts the highest number of nests per season (~80%). In the US, most nesting occurs on the Texas coast, with Padre Island National Seashore (PAIS) hosting the highest number of nests (~1000 between 2002 and 2015). After experiencing a severe and sustained bottleneck that put this species on the verge of extinction, it appeared to be rebounding successfully, following decades (since 1978) of Mexico-US binational efforts aimed at its recovery. Unfortunately, nesting was severely reduced by ~ 35% during 2010, the year of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as compared to 2009. Although nesting rebounded in 2011 and 2012 to levels similar to 2009, nesting declined drastically again during 2013 and experienced a further drop during 2014. Should nesting continue to decline, long-term species recovery efforts will be compromised.
Therefore, there is deep concern about the future of the Kemp’s ridley, and data to inform and assess bi-national management and conservation measures are urgently needed. Population genetics information crucial to the long-term conservation of the Kemp’s ridley, including baseline data required for monitoring its future status, is lacking.
These studies, however, have been severely limited, due to: (1) the complex logistics associated with sampling in the remote main nesting beaches and the burden of securing related permits; and (2) the paucity of informative genetic markers. Last year, we used cutting edge genomics methods and discovered >30,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that represent genome-wide variation in the Kemp’s ridley. We will apply this powerful technique to hundreds of specimens we sampled during 2014 and 2015, as well as new samples we will collect in the next nesting seasons. This conservation genomics study will gather important baseline information for long-term monitoring of this critically endangered sea turtle, including estimations of genomic diversity, effective population size, number of breeders, assessment of levels of population differentiation, and detection of genomic signatures of bottlenecks. The research involves collaborations from multiple institutions and agencies in Mexico and the US and is funded by grants from Texas Sea Grant and the TAMU-CONACyT Program.
The governmental institution in Mexico in charge of conserving the most representative ecosystems of Mexico and its biodiversity is the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP).
Permission to reprint obtained from Dr. Luis Hurtado by Public Partnership and Outreach.
Therefore, there is deep concern about the future of the Kemp’s ridley, and data to inform and assess bi-national management and conservation measures are urgently needed. Population genetics information crucial to the long-term conservation of the Kemp’s ridley, including baseline data required for monitoring its future status, is lacking.
These studies, however, have been severely limited, due to: (1) the complex logistics associated with sampling in the remote main nesting beaches and the burden of securing related permits; and (2) the paucity of informative genetic markers. Last year, we used cutting edge genomics methods and discovered >30,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that represent genome-wide variation in the Kemp’s ridley. We will apply this powerful technique to hundreds of specimens we sampled during 2014 and 2015, as well as new samples we will collect in the next nesting seasons. This conservation genomics study will gather important baseline information for long-term monitoring of this critically endangered sea turtle, including estimations of genomic diversity, effective population size, number of breeders, assessment of levels of population differentiation, and detection of genomic signatures of bottlenecks. The research involves collaborations from multiple institutions and agencies in Mexico and the US and is funded by grants from Texas Sea Grant and the TAMU-CONACyT Program.
The governmental institution in Mexico in charge of conserving the most representative ecosystems of Mexico and its biodiversity is the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP).
Permission to reprint obtained from Dr. Luis Hurtado by Public Partnership and Outreach.