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Conference about “Domestic Violence”
Dictated by Dr. Aurelio Figueredo, de la Universidad de Tucson, Arizona, June 4, 9 a.m., room 3, Centro Centroamericano de Población (CCP), 2511-6978, andres.castillo@ucr.ac.cr http://www.iip.ucr.ac.cr

V Gold, Coffee and Sea Food and III Guanacastearte Festival
Including parades, arts, film shows, dance, theater, activities for children, June 3-6, Abangares, 2665-2996.

Environmental Festival
Film Festival June 4, 6 p.m., Auditorium, Law School; Theater, concerts, talks, workshops, and activities for children, June 5, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., road that connects UCR with Colegio Vargas Calvo, 8364 7178, p.sebastian@cokomal.org

Conference “Service Experience Management: Unifying Service Marketing and Operations”
Dictated by Dr. Robert Kwortnik, Cornell University, June 4, 5:30 p.m., Best Western Irazú Hotel, La Uruca, 8995-1528.

Israel Mime Show Hanoch Rosenn
Celebrating Israel 62 Anniversary, June 5, 7:30 p.m., National Auditorium, Children's Museum.

Environment Day Celebration
Including collection of recycling materials, play “A Word of Love and Peace,” and dance show “Los de Abordo,” June 5, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., Museums of the Central Bank, underneath Plaza de la Cultura.

Two Concerts by Leslie Smith
June 5, 9 p.m., Punta Leona Hotel, road to Jacó, 2231-3131. And June 6, 7 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazu.

Fair against Drugs
Organized by Hogares Crea, including concerts, souvenir sales, dances, plays, June 5-6, Templo de la Música, Morazán Park.

Drawing and Painting Contest for Children
Kids 7-12, topic “ San José gets dressed with Trees,” June 6, 8:30 a.m., Paseo Colón, across from Parque del Lago Hotel. Registration 2547-6272, josemuri2230@gmail.com

“Odyssey”
Puppet show, June 6, 7 p.m.; June 7, 3 and 7 p.m., Teatro de la Danza, Ca. 11, Av. 3/7. Info: 2222-2974.

The largest stem cell treatment clinic in Costa Rica has shut its doors, citing a letter from the Health Ministry prohibiting treatment using adult stem cells.

The Institute of Cellular Medicine said it would move all operations to Panama to continue to “promote the therapeutic science of adult stem cells.”

In a press statement circulated on Thursday afternoon, the Institute wrote that it was sorry for the people who lost their jobs, but that it had enjoyed working with a “high quality group of professionals.”

“This is very damaging to the future of medicine in Costa Rica,” said Samuel Flickier, a former member of the Institute's Advisory Board who has since lost contact with the organization. “The future of medicine is in adult stem cells and nanotechnology … which Costa Rica will be closed off from.”

Health Minister María Avila said she didn't order the clinic closed, but simply enforced Costa Rican law, which prohibits the use of adult stem cells in treatment.

“We did not close the institute. They made that decision themselves,” she said. “But what we are prohibiting is the use of adult stem cells because no place in the world recognizes the adult stem cells as a form of treatment.”

The clinic opened in 2006 with a $6 million investment under the direction of entrepreneur Neil Riordan from the U.S. state of Arizona. According to news reports, the clinic has treated over 500 patients for diseases ranging from autism to cerebral palsy to multiple sclerosis.

“The people who normally receive treatment are people who don't have any other alternative,” said Flickier. “They are looking for other options.”

The therapy, in which old diseased cells are replaced with newer, healthier ones, requires 5-10 days and involves an average of four injections. The most well-known stem cell treatment is a bone marrow transplant used in response to Leukemia.

This story is updated from it's original version.

A researcher from the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC) is working on a project to produce fermented wine from coffee beans.

Over the past five years, Patricia Arguedas, a researcher at TEC, has worked to brew a fermented, wine-like beverage from the red fruit of the coffee plant. On Monday, Arguedas, who has also found ways to make candies and energy bars from the fruit, is being assisted in her efforts to create the beverage by a grant of ₡ 86 million ($160,000) from the National Center for Biotechnological Innovation (Cenibiot). The donation by Cenibiot, which also granted funds to 24 other TEC researchers for their work, will help Arguedas complete her work on the beverage, which she said was a project that was “just scraping by.”

“People didn't understand that it was a fermented drink, like a wine,” she said. “I couldn't say that it was a wine because it was made from grapes. So, I didn't call it a wine and that confused many people.”

Arguedas, who says the creation process is “rather complicated,” will now have research materials and her salary paid for by Cenibiot, which will give her an additional 18 months to complete the project. The fermented wine is said to have more antioxidants than wine from grapes as well as other organic compounds from the coffee plant.

In all, Cenibiot has granted the equivalent of $18.4 million to 25 projects at TEC.

Jacqueline Arias was 28 years old when she met her mother.

She arrived on her sisters' doorstep in Alajuela and held the older woman in a tearful embrace for a long moment.

The last time they had seen each other was more than two decades earlier when Arias was only four. It was at that time that social workers arrived at their home and found Arias and her siblings being cared for by their 13-year-old sister.

“They saw we weren't being properly taken care of,” Arias said, piecing together the parts of the story she's managed to collect. “So they took us into foster care and told my mother it was a temporary situation until she could get a house... One day she showed up to see us and we were gone.”

Arias and her older brother had been adopted by a family in the United States, and eventually arrived in a small town in Ohio by way of Panama. An older sister was also adopted internationally and moved from Panama to Florida.

Arias had a typical U.S. upbringing - attending local schools, listening to popular radio, and dressing in the latest styles.

But she always felt different, almost as an outsider in her new home. She knew that one day she'd go looking for her birth mother.

When that moment came, it felt almost surreal. Maybe she expected all the years they spent apart to melt away, but, working through a language barrier, she felt distant from her biological family.

“I knew my mother felt a sense of guilt,” Arias said. “I knew she loved us and that she never meant to give us up.”

As a means of healing, Arias, now 39 and living in New York, turned to her skills in photography and videography as an artistic outlet. She began recording scenes from her meetings with her family, planning for an eventual film written from the perspective of her mother.

For more on this story, see the June 4 print or digital edition of The Tico Times