The Joy of Good Manners

When I was in my teens and twenties, I despised manners. Why would you say words to other people without really feeling them?. Why would you go through routines, using fixed words, instead of expressing the spontaneous emotion of the moment?

In this, as in so much else, I was influenced by the degraded Romanticism which pervades our culture, in which emotion is raised above reason, and the individual will must be at the centre of everything.

It didn’t do me any good, of course. I missed out on many cheerful words and many ceremonies which would have enriched my life. I graduated from university three times without once attending a graduation ceremony. I was often crippled by a lack of spontaneous words to utter, and would even avoid my friends at times when I felt uninspired. I remember crossing the road to avoid people I liked well, just because I couldn’t think of anything original or interesting to say to them.

Thank goodness, the burden of originality and spontaneity has been lifted. I’m sure it’s something to do with having been married for almost two decades. I’m not the slightest bit concerned that the words ‘I love you’ are unoriginal or lacking in the spark of divine genius, and I enjoy being married more and more as the years go on, and the words become more and more well-worn.

But lately, I’ve made yet another discovery about just how wrong and how miserable were the Romantically-inclined beliefs of my youth. I’ve started working at Great Yarmouth Charter Academy, where the headmaster, Barry Smith, has been training all of the staff in manners. You might think we, as grown ups, didn’t need such training, but I can tell you that in my own case, it’s done me the world of good, because it has created a community in which there is a simple expectation: every time you walk past someone, you greet them. You never ignore them. You never keep your head down. You look towards them and bid them ‘good morning sir / miss’, or if there are many of them, ‘good morning ladies and gentlemen’.

Whether or not you’re feeling cheerful, you can be cheerful in this simple way, and it makes every day happier and brighter. It also means that pupils know that staff are around and paying attention to them. Staff are not invisible because they are audible. Staff can be heard greeting pupils cheerfully as you go around the school. No one is sulky or withdrawn, because that’s just rude. Teenagers do not retreat into themselves, as I often did when I was that age.

It’s a simple and beautiful thing, and it’s something everyone can do. It doesn’t depend upon the individual, but upon a communal expectation, and it becomes a habit after you’ve been doing it for a few days. Like all of the best things in life, it’s just normal, and it doesn’t gain me the slightest bit of glory. What a glorious relief for everyone!

Reasonable Hope

However much our opponents may wish to portray us as gloomy Gradgrindian schoolmasters, traditional approaches give us grounds for reasonable hope. The positive, practical outworking of a coherent, knowledge-rich curriculum and a consistent culture of discipline is not gloom but a cheerful commitment to hard work and a resilient reaction to setbacks. This is because traditional approaches are based not on how we might wish human beings are, but how they actually are.

A traditional teacher doesn’t get downhearted when a pupil forgets something they studied yesterday. She is fully prepared for this. In fact, she expects it, and she has a plan for review of material, spaced out over time, so that the sharp forgetting curve can be overcome. Instead of complaining or blaming herself, she gets on with applying that programme so that pupils can truly master the knowledge that will enable them to think creatively and critically.

A traditional teacher doesn’t despair when pupils don’t share her love for classic literature. She knows that this love will build slowly over time, as their familiarity with the great stories and characters increases. She knows that curiosity is not immanent but emergent: it is a property that must be cultivated in pupils by giving them ever greater knowledge, so that they can make connections and comparisons, and enter into worlds that they would never encounter without her expert guidance. So she presses on with her programme of rich cultural capital, confident that pupils will one day come to appreciate the inheritance which she is passing on. Some will appreciate it sooner than others, but their ability to appreciate it at the age of thirteen in no way affects its intrinsic value.

A traditional teacher doesn’t take it personally when some pupils misbehave, because she knows that good habits take time to form, and that it is her responsibility to form them in her pupils, by consistent discipline over time. Their poor behaviour is a reflection of their imperfect moral formation, which she and her colleagues are striving to improve. She knows that she will be letting her pupils down if she gives in to the desire to be liked, and fails to apply sanctions consistently. So she perseveres, day in, day out, applying rewards and punishments, and knowing that over time, as part of a whole school culture, her pupils will be given the priceless gift of good habits that will serve them well throughout life.

Traditional ideas give us the strength to be cheerful, positive and persevering, because we know that our pupils are on a long journey towards responsible, knowledgeable adulthood, which will take many years of consistent effort to achieve. We’re not looking for instant results or flashy gimmicks. We’re just looking for steady, faithful effort, in ourselves, and in our pupils.

And we know it isn’t personal. We know that there is something outside ourselves which is worth striving for: we know the value of knowledge and good habits, which do not come naturally, but which must be formed in young minds by our efforts and theirs. Nothing worthwhile comes easily to anyone. We’re ready for the setbacks, and the remedies are already accounted for in our planning.

The fantasy land of progressive ideology is what brings gloom, because its bubbles are bound to burst, and its delights will always be temporary. When you break free into the light of reality, then you can actually begin to make progress towards worthwhile goals.

Don’t Be Yourself

Achilles sacrificing to Zeus, from the Ambrosian Iliad

‘Just be yourself’. We’ve all been advised in this way, when we’re feeling nervous about something, or facing a new challenge. It’s worse than useless, as a piece of moral advice. It’s as futile as the teacher who tells her pupils to ‘use your own knowledge’. The teacher’s role is to impart knowledge that pupils did not previously have. It is also to instil self-discipline so that her pupils will not be stuck in the circular trap of ‘being themselves’.

The conceited, pompous Polonius offers this advice to his son Laertes as he returns to university: ‘To thine own self be true’. Having promoted such licence, he sends spies to check up on his son’s behaviour. That’s our situation. Fatally weakened by the widespread idea that freedom means following the whim of the moment, we are at once licensed to do whatever we please, and placed under close surveillance by the government, which has to deal with citizens who cannot be trusted to act responsibly.

Telling people that freedom means following the whim of the moment betrays a deep pessimism about the human race, a pessimism perhaps expressed most eloquently by Joseph Conrad in The Secret Agent, where every character follows their predestined path in the urban hive: ‘We can never cease to be ourselves’. Somehow, the Romantic proclamation of individual freedom had turned, a century later, into the modernist proclamation of social, psychological or evolutionary determinism. We had become gods, only to be relegated soon afterwards to rats in a laboratory maze.

The descent from the divine to the animal was inevitable, because the Romantics had rejected the traditional understanding of human nature, which is at war with itself. ‘I have quelled my passion, as I must’, says Achilles to his mother Thetis, reflecting on the way he had allowed himself to be enslaved by his anger following his quarrel with Agamemnon. Achilles had not been master of himself. He had not fought against the selfish inclination to sulk petulantly, and his friend Patroclus had died as a consequence. Because he had not done his duty and fought with his comrades, but had become the slave of his emotions, he had become a ‘useless burden to the earth’.

The traditional understanding is far more optimistic, because of its faith in human freedom, based on the possibility of self-mastery. Our pupils are rational, and capable of mastering their emotions. They can be trained in doing so, under the caring authority of teachers who do not want them to become the slaves of their whims. Then, when it comes to challenges such as job interviews, they won’t be doomed to ‘be themselves’. They will be able to do battle with laziness and get up early, then do battle with anxiety and remain calm, presenting themselves in a confident, professional manner, and thereby proving to prospective employers that they are masters of themselves, and ready to take on responsibility.

Is Poor Behaviour Widespread?

Hoop jumpingFollowing my post yesterday about troublemakers in education, and how important they are, I debated with two people on Twitter who objected to the claim that there is a widespread behaviour problem in England’s schools. They objected on the grounds that I could not provide them with convincing evidence that this problem exists. They were particularly unimpressed with any evidence based on the experiences of classroom teachers. You may not be surprised to learn that neither of these individuals are classroom teachers themselves.

Consider the evidence from Ofsted. The overall picture appears positive: according to Ofsted, behaviour is good or outstanding in 92% of schools. But when we consider this evidence more closely, the picture is not so rosy.

Firstly, visitors to a school, especially when they are preannounced, will not see the reality. Pupils usually behave better for visitors, especially when they are important. However badly behaved they are, they usually have a certain loyalty to their school. I have seen this over and over again during my years as a teacher. Most pupils who would normally be disruptive and rude become polite when visitors from outside the school enter the classroom.

Secondly, there are all the tricks that schools play to avoid Ofsted’s seeing bad behaviour, such as sending home the worst pupils or organising special trips for them. By definition, of course, these tricks will not find their way into official evidence.

After considering these factors, it’s amazing that the figure for good or outstanding behaviour is not 100%. It’s amazing that there are 8% of schools where behaviour is so appalling that they couldn’t put on a good show for Ofsted.

And in any case, what about the 8%? Even if Ofsted’s overall assessment were accurate, that 8% amounts to tens of thousands of children. Are we satisfied with a system where so many must suffer disruption and fear every day of their school lives? Can we afford to be complacent? Would we be happy if 8% of hospitals failed to provide adequate care to children? These tens of thousands of youngsters are required by law to go every day to a place that is often unsafe and frightening.

Now let’s consider the evidence of the first hand witnesses: the classroom teachers. They see the reality of school life, day in, day out. They are not sheltered from it in the way that senior leaders, consultants and inspectors inevitably are. Because Ofsted will never get the real picture, because official research will never reveal it, it is classroom teachers who must tell us what is really going on in England’s classrooms.

So here’s my witness statement. None of the schools I have worked in previously have had good behaviour across the board. In all of them, there were classes where disruption was frequent. In all of them, there was a significant minority of pupils who were rude, disrespectful and uncooperative. In all of them, these pupils were usually allowed to remain in classes and damage the learning of others, unless they did something really outrageous. In all of them, there were many areas of the school that were not properly policed, and because the dangerous pupils were allowed to roam free and did not fear serious consequences, such places were not safe.

The other first hand witnesses are the pupils themselves, of course. My wife was talking to a friend recently, both of whose children have avoided going to the toilet at school because they are afraid of the people who hang around them. Neither of these children go to schools where Ofsted considers behaviour to be poor. But whatever Ofsted says, these are not civilised places.

Meanwhile, in the same city, while most children are finding ways of surviving varying degrees of disorder and danger, there are sixty applicants for every place in the schools of a multi-academy trust which, like Michaela, tackles behaviour through school wide discipline and thorough training to build a culture of kindness and respect. Sixty applicants to every place. There’s some evidence for you. Large numbers of parents are sick of the bog-standard, complacent norm, where disruption and disorder are common in the classroom, and danger lurks in the corners of playgrounds, avoided by teachers who know they will not be backed up by senior staff.

This is the most criminal thing of all. There are schools which demonstrate clearly that it doesn’t have to be like this. They show that it is possible for all schools, whatever their intake, to be ordered, civilised places. But for most parents and children in that city where my wife’s friend lives, they can only dream of a place in such a school. Meanwhile, the daily battle goes on.

Discipline Must Be School-Wide

Copy of a lost bronze bust of Aristotle made by Lysippos (4th century BCE)‘By doing just actions we become just; by doing the actions of self-mastery we come to be perfected in self-mastery; and by doing brave actions brave [ . . . ] So then, whether we are accustomed this way or that straight from childhood, makes not a small but an important difference, or rather I would say it makes all the difference.’ – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

It takes a school to discipline a child. Good moral habits, like any other habits, can only be formed with repeated practice, and children will not gain the practice necessary if they behave differently in different parts of the school, or with different teachers. Consistency is essential, for practical and for moral reasons.

Doing the right thing needs to be a habit. If you are a polite person, you are in the habit of acting politely. You don’t have to think about such questions as ‘Shall I interrupt this person, or allow them to finish what they are saying?’ or ‘Shall I respond to this person’s points with personal insults, or with reasoned critique?’ Interrupting and insulting are alien to you, because you are in the habit of being polite.

How did you become polite? You weren’t born that way. Small children do not have good manners. They learn them, through the culture in which they mature. If that culture does not exemplify and demand politeness, then they will not get the practice necessary to form the habit. In fact, they will be practising rudeness, not politeness. If they are not reprimanded for interrupting, they will continue to interrupt. If only one adult in their life reprimands them for interrupting, but the rest tolerate it, they will grow up with bad habits.

For good habits to be formed, those in authority over children must act consistently, so that they don’t have to ask themselves how to behave with each adult. This is abundantly clear in schools where there is no consistent culture of good behaviour. Children will behave politely for one member of staff, and rudely for another. In this situation, they are not developing the habit of politeness, because they are not practising it consistently. It’s equivalent to having to give different answers to sums for different teachers. It’s confusing, it’s ineffective, and most importantly, it’s wrong.

It’s wrong because it does not teach children that there is simply a polite way of behaving which should be used in all circumstances. It is not okay to be rude to certain people, when those people are perceived to be weaker, or unable to exert their power over you. It is simply right to be polite, whether to the headteacher, the classroom teacher, the caretaker or the cleaner. Politeness is not something which is only required in relation to the power and position of the person; it is something that is always required.

When there is no consistent school-wide behaviour policy that is centrally determined and enforced by centrally controlled sanctions, children are learning the poisonous lesson that you can mistreat some people, as long as they don’t have the power to make you treat them well. Weaker members of the community can be abused, whether they are less experienced teachers or less popular pupils.

Without a thorough and consistent school-wide discipline system, we are not only allowing bullying, we are promoting it, because we are refusing, in practice, to insist that there is only one right way of treating other people, whoever they are.

Further reading:

Our Pupils Need Discipline, Not Management

Freedom Requires Discipline

(Image from Wikimedia).

The Teacher’s Authority

Martin Luther King Jr, who challenged authority on the basis of objective truth.

The Teacher’s Moral Authority

No community can function without the rule of law. In a classroom, it is the teacher who maintains order. He must enforce rules, or there will be chaos. The weak will suffer tyranny from the strong. There may even be physical threats to the safety of both pupils and teachers. Both teachers and pupils have been violently assaulted in British classrooms where there is a lack of proper order and discipline.

The teacher has a grave responsibility to ensure that the classroom is a safe and ordered place. In order to fulfil that grave responsibility, he must have authority. Pupils must obey the teacher’s instructions for the sake of maintaining an ordered community, which will be of benefit to everybody.

Are there any exceptions to this? Are there any times when pupils have a right to disobey a teacher’s instructions? Yes, but they would be exceptional. They would be occasions where it would actually be immoral to obey the teacher.

This is analogous to the rule of law in society. We are obliged to obey the law, unless there are grave reasons for not doing so. Martin Luther King Jr articulated these reasons in his letter from Birmingham Jail in 1964, in which he said:

King could only make such statements because he was judging the law based on objective standards. He measured the laws of the USA against objective standards of justice, and found them wanting. Thus he deliberately broke the law in order to draw attention to its injustice. He had no wish to express an ‘personal opinion’ or exert his ‘individual voice’. He considered that both he and the law must submit to higher principles which were not matters of opinion, but of truth.

It would be a grave and extreme case indeed if a pupil found similar reasons for disobeying their teacher’s authority. And the pupil would not even be capable of acting this way unless he had sufficient knowledge to measure his situation against objective standards. He will be enabled to acquire this knowledge if his classroom is ordered and his teacher takes his responsibility for forming minds seriously.

The Teacher’s Intellectual Authority

Intellectual authority is related to moral authority, but distinct. In most cases, the teacher knows more than the pupil, and if the pupil is going to learn, he needs to recognise this, so that he can move towards the expertise which the teacher has.

There will be times, however, when the pupil genuinely knows more than the teacher. An older pupil may have a special interest in a topic and have done considerable extra reading and study, and have acquired greater knowledge than the teacher in that particular area. This is conceivable, but it is a special case. In these cases, the pupil may realise that the teacher has made a factual error. For example, he may have given an incorrect date for an historical event.

What should the pupil do in this circumstance? He may raise his hand and, after having obtained permission to speak, point out the error to the teacher. The teacher may be convinced that he is right nevertheless. In this case, the pupil should drop his objection until such a time as it can be pursued without publicly undermining the authority of his teacher.

Promoting Critical Thinking

To think critically about any topic, a large store of knowledge is required, so that relevant examples can be compared and reasoned judgements made. The main task of the school teacher is to transmit this knowledge to pupils, so that eventually, once they have attained sufficient expertise, they will be able to think critically. The more knowledge pupils have, the better they will be able to judge the accuracy of the information which they encounter, not only in school, but in the media and in politics.

Therefore, the goal of being able to ask reasonable questions and make rational judgements is best served by the recognition of the teacher’s moral and intellectual authority. Pupils will learn much more in a safe and ordered classroom where they can listen and learn from those who know more than they do. Not that they will be silent in such a classroom, but when they do speak, they will do so in a respectful and rational way, and their comments will be based on knowledge, not ignorance, and on the humble quest for truth, not the arrogant assertion of opinion.

It is liberating to realise that education is not about the glorification of subjective self-expression, but about the acquisition of objective knowledge. Once pupils have realised this, they are on the road to developing genuine critical thinking.

What Is a Traditional Teacher?

Illustration of the twelve teachers of wisdom in Dante’s Paradiso, by Giovanni di Paolo (1403-1482)

I was once asked to provide a definition of traditional teaching in one tweet, and I described it as ‘knowledge for the mind, and discipline for the will’. A traditional teacher sees their role as primarily the transmission of valuable knowledge and secondarily the formation of good habits. These two goals involve a struggle against the natural ignorance and arrogance of the human race. Education is a battle against nature, not an embracing of its providential designs. The philosophy that Hirsch has labelled ‘providential individualism’ must be rejected.

Forming Good Habits

Knowledge cannot be acquired without good habits. A pupil who does not concentrate, who does not work hard, who interrupts teachers and peers, will remain both ignorant and arrogant. In order for knowledge to be acquired, egotism must be overcome; the pupil must begin to realise how ignorant he is and that others know far more than he does; he must realise that in order to obtain the knowledge which his superiors have mastered, a long, hard struggle will be needed.

A rigorous programme of academic study develops all four of the great human virtues: prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. A pupil must make prudent decisions about how to spend his time best; he must do justice to his teacher by obeying instructions and showing gratitude for the gift of knowledge; he must be temperate, especially in his speech; he must show fortitude if he is to persevere in mastering academic subjects thoroughly.

These virtues are not acquired overnight, any more than a thorough knowledge of history is to be obtained by reading a few articles on Wikipedia. They are acquired by a persistent effort to overcome egotism, by repeated practice under the guidance of authoritative instruction. To stand much chance of acquiring them, we need a community in which these virtues are viewed as the norm, and in which there are public consequences for being imprudent, unjust, intemperate or cowardly.

Humanity is something which we must struggle to acquire under the guidance of an authoritative community, not something we are born with. This is much easier to understand when one is involved in the raising of children, especially when they are younger. It is abundantly clear to a parent of young children that they are struggling to acquire the habits of their tribe. They are imitating the speech and the actions of their elders. Without an authoritative example to follow and without the struggle to imitate that example, they would not reach maturity.

Transmitting Knowledge

Walking and talking are universal accomplishments for ordinary members of the human race. They are remarkable accomplishments; they are cognitive feats which are achieved through much struggle and repeated practice. They can be learned by most people without formal instruction, however, because the normal child is surrounded by examples and receives rapid feedback on mistakes, either because his words are not understood or because he falls flat on his face.

Even these most universal of human accomplishments cannot be described as natural. To be human is to learn from others, to depend upon others, to submit to the authoritative example of others within a community, in order to grow and mature.

This is even more true when we come to formal academic instruction, which opens new vistas to the mind which are outside immediate experience. Reading and writing are not universal accomplishments; they are more artificial than speaking and walking; that is to say, they are more uniquely human. Writing with an alphabet which represents the sounds of speech is quite a recent invention in the whole span of human history. It is a remarkably flexible and useful one, which opens up vast new possibilities for knowledge and understanding. But in order to acquire it, formal instruction is required. Children may prefer to run around and play with mud and sticks. They should certainly have time for doing such things. But they will never learn to read and write by doing them. To learn to read and write, they must submit to authority and work hard under the guidance of instructors.

The traditional teacher recognises the importance of formal instruction, but also recognises its limits. He makes a clear distinction between work and play. Work requires self-discipline and effort. There is a place for play, once work has been completed. But they must not be muddled with each other, or neither one will be properly appreciated.

The traditional teacher works intensively to transmit the knowledge which the child requires to be inducted into the adult community. He sees in the child a human being who is not yet fully formed, and accepts the responsibility of forming the mind of that child by introducing him to the great human accomplishments in literature, history, science and mathematics.

Life is so much simpler when one recognises that hard work is needed to accomplish anything of value. Hard work can then be embraced wholeheartedly, and this leads to a deeper happiness than mere diversion or entertainment can ever bring.

A traditional understanding of education means that both teacher and pupil know that they are doing something serious and important, on which the continuation of human civilisation depends. Everything they are doing has a purpose, and it is a purpose which goes beyond mere individual gratification, and raises every person to real human dignity, as a member of a community who makes a contribution to its present health and its future existence.


Design Innovation

All of our design and product development is based on the philosophy of Thoughtful Design. This is a holistic approach, rooted in the Scandinavian design tradition, where the aim is to develop and apply consumer insights into all aspects of the brand experience.

Design has to generate emotion and desire in the user, but it must also ensure that the rational/functional aspects of the user experience live up to the user's emotional and functional expectations. That's what we mean when we say "Thinking of You".


Jacksonville Florida Shooting Ends Life of Child Outside of Convenience Store

A Jacksonville Florida shooting killed Kiersten Ross outside of the Family Food Store shortly after 6:00 p.m. His mother, Pamela Ross, had last seen Kiersten riding his bike and playing with his toddler brother. Kiersten went to the Family Food Store to get a snack of donuts. As he was walking out of the store, he was shot by a drive by shooter. It is uncertain if Kiersten was the target. Investigation is under way to try to identify and locate the shooters.

The death of Kiersten, who was just 17 years old, is a tragedy for the family and the community. Kiersten was just at the store to buy donuts in the early evening hours.

Hopefully, the shooter and accomplices are located and prosecuted. You can read more about this tragic incident at From Bike to Bullet – Drive By Shooting at Jacksonville Florida Convenience Store.

Is there a civil case to pursue? Maybe, it depends on the facts of the case. Florida does not require armed guards outside of every convenience store; however, there is a line of negligent security cases that hold a property owner liable if there is a history of crime in the area and the property owner fails to implement reasonable and necessary security measures. Each case is judged on its own facts. The negligent security cases are detail oriented cases that require a statistical crime analysis of the area over a period of time, a detailed analysis of the facts, and thorough legal research to make sure that the law supports the facts and details obtained through the investigation.

If you have any questions about an assault, battery, shooting, injury, or death that took place at a convenience store or other business, you should consult with an Florida injury attorney to review the facts and your respective rights.


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The main concept

main conceptThe  P2P aims to be an iconic architectural prototype that combines living wall, aSi-PV solar panels and plant-BES technologies in a single structure

  1. The sun shines on the P2P hub
  2. The solar panels use some of the solar light (mainly UV, blue and green) for generating negative and positive charges. These charges are then recombined through an external circuit to create electrical current (see ① on diagram)
  3. The living walls of plants photosynthesise, grow and release organic compounds into the soil.
  4. These organic compounds feed bacteria living in the soil around the plant roots.
  5. The bacteria in the soil oxidise the organic compounds, producing electrons which are collected by an anode, and protons which are collected by a cathode.
  6. These electrons and protons are recombined and travel  through an external circuit to produce electrical current (see ② on diagram)
  7. The electrical current generated in ① and ② are monitored
  8. By integrating a-Si PV solar panels, living walls and plant-BES the P2P demonstrates how solar light can be used to generate electrical current by using and combining several different biological and non-biological technologies in a self-powering, sustainable system.  It is demonstrated here as a bus shelter concept.


Recursos de colección

UTL Repository Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (37.000 recursos)

Mostrando recursos 1 - 20 de 37

  1. Ichthyiological collection of the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I

    Silva, Ana Serra; Groz, Maria Pitta; Leandro, Paula; Assis, Carlos A.; Figueira, Rui
    Data Paper

    Salako, Kolawole Valère; Moreira, Francisco; Gbedomon, Rodrigue Castro; Tovissodé, Frédéric; Assogbadjo, Achille Ephrem; Kakai, Romain Lucas Glèlè

  3. Population persistence in landscapes fragmented by roads: disentangling isolation, mortality and the effect of dispersal

    Ceia-Hasse, Ana; Navarro, Laetitia M.; Borda-de-Água, Luís; Pereira, Henrique M.
    Linear infrastructures, one of several forms of land-use, are a major driver of biodiversity loss. Roads impact populations at many levels, with direct road mortality and barrier effect contributing to decreased population abundance, higher isolation and subdivision, and therefore to increased extinction risk. In this paper, we compared the effect of road mortality and of the barrier effect on population isolation, persistence and size, and assessed the interaction of these effects with dispersal. We used a spatially explicit, process-based model of population dynamics in landscapes fragmented by varying levels of road density. We modelled a barrier effect independently from road mortality by varying the probability with...

  4. Growing old, yet staying young: the role of telomeres in bat's exceptional longevity

    Foley, Nicole M.; Hughes, Graham M.; Huang, Zixia; Clarke, Michael; Jebb, David; Whelan, Conor V.; Petit, Eric J.; Touzalin, Frédéric; Farcy, Olivier; Jones, Gareth; Ransome, Roger D.; Kacprzyk, Joanna; O'Connell, Mary J.; Kerth, Gerald; Rebelo, Hugo; Rodrigues, Luísa; Puechmaille, Sébastien J.; Teeling, Emma C.
    Research Article - Genetics

  5. Networks of global bird invasion altered by regional trade ban

    Reino, Luís; Figueira, Rui; Beja, Pedro; Araújo, Miguel B.; Capinha, César; Strubbe, Diederik
    Research Article - Ecology

  6. Stakeholders perceptions of endangered Egyptian vulture: insights for conservation

    Cortés-Avizanda, Ainara; Martín-López, Berta; Ceballos, Olga; Pereira, Henrique M.
    The inclusion of perceptions, interests and needs of stakeholders in biodiversity conservation is critical for the long-term protection of endangered species. Yet, the social dimensions of endangered species conservation are often overlooked. We examined the social perceptions of the conservational importance of the globally endangered Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) in one of the most important breeding areas worldwide: the Bardenas Reales Protected Area, northern Spain. We assessed the factors that influence the stakeholders' views of its conservation importance and identified the management strategies that would have social support. We found that the understandings of the Egyptian vulture differed among stakeholders. Hunters had the highest level of knowledge...

  7. A insídia das formas - ensaio semiótico relativo a "Rio Timor" no atlas Vallard e "Brasilia inferior" no globo de Schoner

    Casquilho, José Pinto
    Neste ensaio, partindo-se da menção “Rio timor” no Atlas Vallard datado de 1547, procura-se reconstituir a origem primeva da informação, sustentando-se a hipótese de que os portugueses foram os primeiros europeus a fazer o reconhecimento da linha de costa do que hoje designamos como Austrália. Nessa demanda, conclui-se que existem relatos de cronistas e outros, que permitem situar Francisco Serrão como uma fonte de informação na região das Molucas – mencionando, em cartas, um “um novo mundo” com vasta extensão - que teria sido encaminhada para Portugal, aí chegando cerca de 1515, incluindo padrão. Infere-se que terá sido essa uma origem provável da representação cartográfica de Brasilie Regio...

  8. The collection of birds from Mozambique at the Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical of the University of Lisbon (Portugal)

    Monteiro, Miguel; Figueira, Rui; Melo, Martim; Mills, Michael Stuart Lyne; Beja, Pedro; Bastos-Silveira, Cristiane; Ramos, Manuela; Rodrigues, Diana; Neves, Isabel Queirós; Consciência, Susana; Reino, Luís
    The Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical of the University of Lisbon, which resulted from the recent merger (in 2015) of the former state laboratory Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical in the University of Lisbon, holds an important collection of bird skins from the Portuguese-speaking African Countries (Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde), gathered as a result of several scientific expeditions made during the colonial period. In this paper, the subset from Mozambique is described, which was taxonomically revised and georeferenced. It contains 1585 specimens belonging to 412 taxa, collected between 1932 and 1971, but mainly in 1948 (43% of specimens) and 1955...

  9. The orthoptera of Castro Verde special protection area (Southern Portugal): new data and conservation value

    Pina, Sílvia; Vasconcelos, Sasha; Reino, Luís; Santana, Joana; Beja, Pedro; Sánchez-Olivier, Juan S.; Catry, Inês; Moreira, Francisco; Ferreira, Sónia
    With the increasing awareness of the need for Orthoptera conservation, greater efforts must be gathered to implement specific monitoring schemes. Despite recent surveys, little is known about Portuguese Orthoptera populations. This study was performed in 2014 and 2015 mainly in Castro Verde Special Protection Area (SPA), southern Portugal, and is the first Orthoptera inventory conducted in the area. A total of 35 Orthoptera species was recorded, with two new species reported for Portugal. We provide species’ habitat occurrences within the protected area and use information on the conservation status and the Iberian distribution of each documented species to discuss the importance of Castro Verde SPA for...

  10. Match between soaring modes of black kites and fine-scale distribution on updrafts

    Santos, Carlos D.; Hanssen, Frank; Muñoz, António-Román; Onrubia, A.; Wikelski, Martin; May, Roel; Silva, João P.

  11. Fungal infestation boosts fruit aroma and fruit removal by mammals and birds

    Peris, Josep E.; Rodriguez, Ana; Peña, Leandro; Fedriani, José Maria
    For four decades, an influential hypothesis has posited that competition for food resources between microbes and vertebrates selects for microbes to alter these resources in ways that make them unpalatable to vertebrates. We chose an understudied cross kingdom interaction to experimentally evaluate the effect of fruit infection by fungi on both vertebrate (mammals and birds) fruit preferences and on ecologically relevant fruit traits (volatile compounds, toughness, etc). Our well-replicated field experiments revealed that, in contrast to previous studies, frugivorous mammals and birds consistently preferred infested over intact fruits. This was concordant with the higher level of attractive volatiles (esters, ethanol) in infested fruits. This investigation suggests that...

  12. Dispersal ability determines the scaling properties of species abundance distributions: a case study using arthropods from the Azores

    Borda-de-Água, Luís; Whittaker, Robert J.; Cardoso, Pedro; Rigal, François; Santos, Ana M.C.; Amorim, Isabel R.; Parmakelis, Aristeidis; Triantis, Kostas A.; Pereira, Henrique M.; Borges, Paulo A.

  13. Conservation status of a recently described endemic land snail, Candidula coudensis, from the Iberian Peninsula

    Moreira, Francisco; Calado, Gonçalo; Dias, Susana
    Research Article

  14. Estimation of productivity in pine and oak forests in northern Portugal using Biome-BGC

    Nunes, Leónia; Gower, Stith T.; Peckham, Scott D.; Magalhães, Marco; Lopes, Domingos; Rego, Francisco Castro
    Studies about the productivity of forest ecosystems help to quantify sequestered carbon and provide data that are used in forest management. Forests in northern Portugal are an important economic resource, but their productivity in scenarios of future climate change is not yetwell understood. The objectives of this study were to evaluate and compare simulated net primary production (NPP) andNPPbased onmeasured data of twotree species located in the Vila Real district forests, pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton) and oak (Quercus pyrenaica Willd.) and assess their simulatedNPPin diverse climate conditions, including future climate scenariosandincreasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. An ecosystem process model, Biome-BGC, which simulates carbon, nitrogen and water cycles...

  15. Mixed effects of long-term conservation investment in Natura 2000 farmland

    Santana, Joana; Reino, Luís; Stoate, Chris; Borralho, Rui; Carvalho, Carlos Rio; Schindler, Stefan; Moreira, Francisco; Bugalho, Miguel N.; Ribeiro, Paulo Flores; Santos, José Lima; Vaz, Alexandre; Morgado, Rui; Porto, Miguel; Beja, Pedro
    Evaluating the effectiveness of conservation funding is crucial for correct allocation of limited resources. Here we used bird monitoring data to assess the effects of long-term conservation investment in a Natura 2000 (N2000) bird protection area (PA), which during two decades benefited from protection regulations, conservation projects, and agri-environment schemes. Variation between 1995–1997 and 2010–2012 in richness and abundance of flagship (Otis tarda, Tetrax tetrax, and Falco naumanni) and specialized fallow field species were more favorable (i.e., increased more or declined less) inside the PA than in a nearby control area. However, the reverse was found for total bird species, farmland, ground-nesting and steppe species, species associated to ploughed fields,...

  16. Modeling stream fish distributions using interval-censored detection times

    Ferreira, Mário; Filipe, Ana Filipa; Bardos, David C.; Magalhães, Maria Filomena; Beja, Pedro
    Controlling for imperfect detection is important for developing species distribution models (SDMs). Occupancy-detection models based on the time needed to detect a species can be used to address this problem, but this is hindered when times to detection are not known precisely. Here, we extend the time-to-detection model to deal with detections recorded in time intervals and illustrate the method using a case study on stream fish distribution modeling. We collected electrofishing samples of six fish species across a Mediterranean watershed in Northeast Portugal. Based on a Bayesian hierarchical framework, we modeled the probability of water presence in stream channels, and the probability of species occupancy conditional on water...

  17. Predicting bat distributions and diversity hotspots in southern Africa

    Cooper-Bohannon, Rachael; Rebelo, Hugo; Jones, Gareth; Cotterill, Fenton; Monadjem, Ara; Schoeman, M.Corrie; Taylor, Peter; Park, Kirsty
    Species distribution models were used to predict bat species richness across southern Africa and to identify potential drivers of these spatial patterns. We also identified species richness within each biotic zone and the distributions of species considered of high conservation priority. We used this information to highlight conservation priorities for bats in southern Africa (defined here as between the latitudes of 8° S, slightly north of Zambia, to the southern tip of Africa 34° S, an area of approximately 9781840 km2). We used maximum entropy modelling (Maxent) to model habitat suitability for 58 bat species in order to determine the key eco-geographical variables influencing their distributions. The...

  18. High unexpected genetic diversity of a narrow endemic terrestrial mollusc

    Madeira, Pedro M.; Chefaoui, Rosa M.; Cunha, Regina L.; Moreira, Francisco; Dias, Susana; Calado, Gonçalo; Castilho, Rita
    The Iberian Peninsula has an extensive record of species displaying strong genetic structure as a result of their survival in isolated pockets throughout the Pleistocene ice ages. We used mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data to analyze phylogeographic patterns in endemic land snails from a valley of central Portugal (Vale da Couda), putatively assigned to Candidula coudensis, that show an exceptionally narrow distributional range. The genetic survey presented here shows the existence of five main mitochondrial lineages in Vale da Couda that do not cluster together suggesting independent evolutionary histories. Our results also indicate a departure from the expectation that species with restricted distributions have low genetic variability. The putative...

  19. Wired: impacts of increasing power line use by a growing bird population

    Moreira, Francisco; Encarnação, Vitor; Rosa, Gonçalo; Gilbert, Nathalie; Infante, Samuel; Costa, Julieta; D'Amico, Marcello; Martins, Ricardo C.; Catry, Inês
    Power lines are increasingly widespread across many regions of the planet. Although these linear infrastructures are known for their negative impacts on bird populations, through collision and electrocution, some species take advantage of electricity pylons for nesting. In this case, estimation of the net impact of these infrastructures at the population level requires an assessment of trade-offs between positive and negative impacts. We compiled historical information (1958–2014) of the Portuguese white stork Ciconia ciconia population to analyze long-term changes in numbers, distribution range and use of nesting structures. White stork population size increased 660% up to 12000 breeding pairs between 1984 and 2014. In the same period,...

  20. Regional bans on wild-bird trade modify invasion risks at a global scale

    Cardador, Laura; Lattuada, Matteo; Strubbe, Diederik; Tella, José L.; Reino, Luís; Figueira, Rui; Carrete, Martina
    Wildlife trade is currently the most important and increasing source of vertebrate invasive species. However, exhaustive analyses of potential side effects of trade regulations on this pathway of introduction are lacking. We addressed this by combining environmental niche models and global trade data on parrots (Psittaciformes), one of the most widely traded and worldwide invasive taxa. We used the wild bird trade bans of United States (1992) and Europe (2005) as case-studies. Results showed that regional bans can generate geographic redirections in trade, with important consequences on worldwide invasion risk. While the amount of parrots traded internationally remained largely constant, changes in trade destination occurred. Consequently, the world surface predicted...


C2 Management is a technology recycling company that breaks down old technology into its valuable metal components to be sold. If technology can be reused, the company resells the products on EBay. Not only did we learn about the products that C2 can recycle, but we also saw some of the recycling and reselling in process. Special tables are set up to clean and take pictures of the items that will be put online to sell, while hard drives are crushed in a machine permanently destroying the information collected on them. C2 Management is currently working with Frederick County to recycle tons of technology that would be going to the landfill. Our tour taught us that there is a way help reduce to amount of Ewaste going into our landfills.


Indecopi lanza “Patenta Universidad”

El Instituto Nacional de Defensa de la Competencia y de la Protección de la Propiedad Intelectual (Indecopi) ha puesto a disposición del sector académico y de investigación, la herramienta “Patenta Universidad”.

El propósito es incentivar el conocimiento y uso del sistema de patentes entre los centros superiores de estudio que apuestan por la innovación.

El programa “Patenta Universidad” está abierto a todas las universidades del país, centros académicos superiores o entidades de investigación que no hayan usado de manera recurrente el sistema de patentes en los últimos cinco años, pero que cuenten con una importante cantidad de  proyectos de investigación o de innovación tecnológica.

Las instituciones que deseen participar en “Patenta Universidad” deben ingresar a  www.indecopi.gob.pe/din/pu y seguir las indicaciones establecidas en los ‘Lineamientos del  Programa’. La fecha límite para acceder es el 19 de agosto de 2016.

Todas las actividades que comprende “Patenta Universidad” serán desarrolladas gratuitamente.

Más información aquí.

Academic Misconduct, plagiarism, copyright infringement or just an electoral fight

This month Peru’s newspapers have been busy reporting about an alleged plagiarism done by Mr César Acuña Peralta who is running for the Peruvian Presidency (here and here)

Image result for plagiarismMr Acuña has been accused of copying his doctoral thesis submitted at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid in 2009. Added to this accusation, now it emerges that he also copied his master’s thesis submitted at the Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. In the latter, news referred to the fact that some paragraph were well attributed to the author and using quotations marks but others were not. The alleged paragraphs were taken from the book authored by Cruz Cardona.

Accusations are so strong that the Peruvian National Institute for the Defence of Competition and Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi) has decided to investigate the accusation (in line with its Organization and Functions Act and Decree Legislative 822 that gives to it powers to investigate acts affecting copyright and related rights within the country). Moreover, the Universidad Complutense has announced that “it will initiate an investigation to determine whether Acuña committed academic fraud.”

Image result for plagiarismThe Spaniard newspaper El Pais noted that Universidad Pontificia Catolica del Peru passed the thesis through Turnitin, a software which is widely used in academia that matches the document against a database, and so detecting originality or similarity to other sources. The said academic “found in the first 165 pages an average of 80 % similarity to other Internet sources not necessarily cited in the investigation.” Declarations in this newspaper refers to pages after pages of textual copying without been either attributed or using quotation marks. In many educational institutions, plagiarism is treated as strict liability (as copyright primary infringement) while others require intention. In any case, plagiarism is a disciplinary offence.

A more recent accusation was brought by the newspaper El Comercio noting that it has transpired that in 2002 Mr Acuña authored and published a book which is an identical copy of the book authored by Peruvian Professor Otoniel Oyarce Alvarado.

Wow! Wow! Wow! These are really strong accusations. A master, a PhD and a book?! I am indeed amazed how these could have happen…I presume the University in Madrid did not have or use any software to check the originality of the work, -- possibly. However, we are talking pages after pages. How the supervisors and the examiners did not notice this matter? As an academic sometimes we read students work and we stop to think, uh? I have read something like this somewhere. But we are humans, and mistakes could have happen…but in a PhD there is so many people involved, and no one noticed it? The other issue that comes into my attention is the book that he allegedly copied. If it is claimed that is a copy of another one...how did anyone not notice this before? Both books are published in Peru and written by academics in Peru – surely a student or a person in the same fora could have noticed something.

Will Mr Acuña resign from his Presidency postulation? Or will he wait for the University in Madrid and the Indecopi to give a verdict?

Peru is adding to its list: WIPO administered treaties

On 02 February Peru ratified the Marrakesh Agreement at the headquarters of WIPO.

Image result for blind readingThe news are published by the Peruvian National Institute for the Defence of Competition and Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi) which welcomes the recent ratification. The Marrakesh Agreement obliges signatory states to make changes and exceptions to the rules on copyright for the benefit of the blind, visually impaired, and otherwise print disabled (VIPs).

Peru became the fourteenth country to ratify the treaty, and the seventh Latin American country to do so. The others are: Argentina(April 1, 2015), Brazil (December 11, 2015), El Salvador (October 1, 2014), Mexico (July 29, 2015), Paraguay (January 20, 2015), Uruguay (December 1, 2014).

The Treaty, which forms part of the body of international copyright treaties administered by WIPO, will enter into force three months after 20 Contracting countries deposited their instruments of ratification or accession. Peru joined WIPO in 1980 and have signed many treaties not only in the area of copyright e.g. UPOV Convention, Budapest Treaty, Patent Cooperation Treaty and the Trade Mark Law Treaty.

Finally, INDECOPI refers to data brought by the World Blind Union (WBU), and notes that “over 90% of all published material is inaccessible to the blind and visually impaired.”

Ecuador: repealing its IP law for a code of social economy

Ecuador is fully engaging in its debate over the proposed ‘Código Orgánico de Economía Social del Conocimiento, la Creatividad y la Innovación (Organic Code of Social Economy of Knowledge, Creativity and Innovation) -- known as ‘Codigo Ingenios’ (Intellects Code).

The bill went to the Ecuadorian Assembly back in June 2015 as an initiative of the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology (Senescyt ) supported and drafted with the help of different sectors including the Ecuadorian Intellectual Property Office (IEPI). The current Intellectual Property Law will be repealed when the new bill is approved. The proposed code comprises four books and over 500 articles. According to the newspaper ‘El Comercio’, its strengths are in intellectual property, access to the Internet and protection of ancestral knowledge.

Image result for codigo ingeniosSeveral conferences inviting students from different Universities, the legal profession, the civil society and civil servants are taken place. Moreover, the IEPI promotes the code as aiming to move “from a primary export economy to a social economy of infinite resources” and thus, noting the need to protect “the Ecuadorian knowledge and human talent”. The aims are on 11 principles: “right to share knowledge, economic incentives to encourage innovation, cheaper drugs, boost domestic inventions, internet as a basic service, support and enhancement of research, long life technology, promotion of free software, combat biopiracy, profitable mining, and the right to traditional knowledge that belong to indigenous peoples and nationals.”

According to IEPI’s director, the bill targets knowledge and entrepreneurship, but ensuring the protection of the creators’ rights. You may ask: isn’t this the purpose of their own current IP legislation? It appears that it does not. In the words of Senescyt’s secretary, the current IP “law has failed, because it is excessively private and excessively commercial and has produced nothing of innovation" [has there been any national investment on research --you will reap if you have sown, right?]. He continues saying that the code will guarantee all IPRs in all lucrative activities in academia or research and help to circulate their works and products, which I do concur. But, I am afraid I cannot see how the present IP legislation does not already protect these.

There are two other matters that I would like to address. It is asserted that the change of law is needed and that there is a need to have this code on social economy. I do wonder: is IP and IP law a legislation for social economy? The propanga surrounding the Code re-emphasizes that the current IP law only protect the rich, transnational companies, big pharmaceutical companies, foreigners and does nothing for ‘the people’ (referring to those of not enough resources). I am afraid IP protects inventions, creation, works of art, brands, regardless of nationality or wealth. In practice, it is true that in developing countries and less developed ones the majority of patents would be granted to foreigners, but this is not because there is something wrong with the law. It is because the world's most innovative countries are high-income countries (full stop - see INSEAD's report and also WIPO’s latest report which explores the role of IP at the link between innovation and economic growth). Would it be ok to say that the propaganda appears to be more political sided?

There are two issues that also capture my attention in this ‘advertisement’ of principles 1) right to traditional knowledge (TK) and combat bio-piracy and 2) cheaper drugs.
1) Ecuador legislation protects TK and genetic resources. Ecuador is part of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), and it has one common IP system through CAN Decision 486 - a supranational law. In this regards:
Image result for doha declarationa) PATENT: when a product or process is obtained or developed using TK of indigenous, African American or local communities, protection is only granted if the applicant has a certificate, or license or authorization from the originating source (CAN Decision 391).
b) Trade Marks: applications that contain the name of indigenous, African American, or local communities, are not allowed.

2) Cheap Medicines
a) In 2009 Ecuador amended its IP law to use the TRIPS flexibility (Doha Declaration) in favour of developing countries i.e. compulsory licensing. At the end of 2014 the IEPI had received 32 applications for compulsory patent licenses- some were refused or abandoned, but nine were granted.
b) Decision 486: second use patents known as the ‘Swiss formula’ are not allowed.

In the last five years some Latin American countries like Brazil, Mexico and Chile, have more than doubled its international patents but this is seen because governments and organizations invests in projects. In Colombia we see a ‘National Innovation Strategy’ by the Director of the National Planning Department. In 2013 Medellin won against New York and Tel Aviv, the most innovative city title. In Brazil there is also a Science & Technology Action Plan giving incentives to bio-tech patents. It also looks deeper into what they call ‘critical mass’ population studying masters and PhDs, how can they help to increase these. Chile is examining a Bill to amend its Constitution i.e. art.19 to: (1) assert ownership over the country's genetic resources; (2) protect against the unauthorized use of these resources or the traditional knowledge (TK) of indigenous communities; and (3) promote the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits derived from the exploitation of these resources or TK. Peru has a National Anti-bio-piracy Commission. In all these countries the message is clear, innovation may attract (foreign) investments in the form of trade and/or R&D, but if the country does nothing to promote and to launch programs to help its people to innovate, legislation alone does nothing.

We also see projects in the sector of trade marks, collective and certification marks and GIs. Colombia has a running project through the ‘Intellectual Property and Crafts’ which supports the artisans in the legal process together with ‘Artesanias de Colombia’; Chile has another one called ‘Sello de Origen’ (Label of Origin) developed by the Ministry of Economy together with the IP national office (INAPI). All of these projects are helping the communities and sectors with are rich in knowledge but may not have the tools (economic and legal advice) and/or do not know what exist or is available for them to protect their IPRs.

Image result for socialism venezuela
Is it me, or is a tendency for Latin American Governments of the left wing to always accuse the develop world?
The idea of Ecuador enhancing national products and knowledge is to be applauded and focus ought to be on what they can do to improve. We (Latinos) need to find a way to promote and protect agriculture, biodiversity, science, and also culture.  The Government ought to work on how to provide conditions that stimulate innovation, needs to provide supportive institutions, incentive tertiary education and fund research.

Will Ecuador find this by repealing the current IP law? At the moment there are a few projects that help to promote and protect national knowledge e.g. the Ecuadorian Resolution No 004-2015 CD-IEPI which grants full discount on charges related to requests to register, record or assign rights related to GIs-- free until December 31, 2017. This week, we hear from the Ecuadorian Institute for the Promotion of Exports and Imports (Pro Ecuador )good stories of their campaign which promotes the inclusion of local brands abroad.

The proposed Code will provide investment for creations, promising 0.57% of gross domestic product  but, is there a need to repeal its IP law for this? There has been so much time and investment in this 'code' that expectations are getting higher by the minute. We now need to wait and see.


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topblog Ivoire blogs

Adolescent Nutrition and Vision

(1) selenium supplement: animals on Earth, Eagle eye is most sensitive. In this regard, biologists have found that after a long period of research: Its secret lies in the Hawkeye contains very rich in selenium,dental turbine, a hundred times higher than the human race. Selenium on the function of the visual organ is extremely important, dominant eye movements muscle contraction of the pupil to expand and shrink, the normal eye color vision require the involvement of selenium. Selenium is also a non-specific in vivo antioxidant glutathione peroxidase is one of the important ingredients, and this substance can remove the body (including the eyes) of peroxides and free radicals, so that the eyes from damage. If the human eye for long-term lack of selenium intake, decreased vision occurs and many eye diseases such as cataract, retinopathy, night blindness, etc. Therefore,dental loupes uk, the daily dietary supplement selenium should be noted, such as the multi-purpose animal liver meal, meat, corn, onion, garlic, oysters, fish, mussels, can increase selenium intake.

(2) Eat more foods rich in vitamin A: Vitamin A is an indispensable material the eye, which is directly involved in the retina to form rhodopsin, which is the sense of weak light substances, vitamin A also has the protection of the cornea moist eyes The role of non-drying, if the lack of vitamin A, the lacrimal gland epithelial tissue damage, secretion stops, can cause dry eye. For the body is not a lack of vitamin A, can be more intake of a variety of animal liver, as well as cattle and sheep milk, egg yolk and all kinds of carotene-rich foods. Carotene, vitamin A is generated based on the human body can be converted into vitamin A,dental instruments for sale, these foods are carrots, pumpkin, tomatoes and green vegetables.

(3) an adequate supply of vitamin B1 and niacin-rich foods: Eye lack of these two vitamins prone to eye flutter, visual retardation and other symptoms. And rich in vitamin B1 and niacin food, mainly wheat, corn, fish, meat and other foods.

(4) to ensure the supply of Vitamin B2: Vitamin B2 can guarantee the normal metabolism of the retina and cornea, in the absence prone to tearing, redness, itching, eye spasms and other symptoms. Vitamin B2 often found in milk, goat's milk, eggs, lean meat, kidney, liver, lentils.

(5) Proteins are the basis of visual development: the eyes are important organs of the body, the normal function of the eye, the organization's updates without protein, if the protein is in the lack of long-term status, functional decline may cause eye, decreased vision, and the occurrence of each kinds of eye diseases and even blindness. Adolescence to protect the eyes, should be taken from the daily dietary start with a reasonable variety of meals, good eye health.

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Antietam: A Failure To Achieve Victory 2006 1703 The paper, "Antietam: A Failure to Achieve Victory," is an insight into the events that occurred during the Maryland Campaign of the American Civil War. It examines key events that altered both the course of battle and American history. The Battle o...


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Donald Trump’s administration is gearing up for another possible round of missile strikes against regime targets in Syria. This could trigger an explosive chain of events potentially leading to a more serious military conflagration between major international and regional powers in the Middle East. Moscow has responded to Trump’s open...

New movements for change will need to arm themselves with the lessons of the Syrian tragedy.
The military victory in Aleppo by Assad’s regime and its foreign backers was a turning point in the war in Syria. It has put the Syrian government once more in formal control of the country’s main urban centres. But is...

What should be the attitude of the socialist left?

Will there be ’Geneva II’ negotiations?

Polls show majority opposition to imperialist military action

Regime causes untold civilian suffering and death… rebels’ carry out sectarian massacres - No to imperialist intervention

Committee for a workers' International publications

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What happens to our spirits/souls after out last incarnation?

johntoh's picture

What is the determining factor? I'd assume it's after the Universe feels our spirits are evolved enough, and has learned all the lessons to learn.

What happend later? Do we get to create our own Universe else where? Do we become spirit guides?

I guess the possibilities are endless...

Care to share??

Love & Light!

De Maria's picture

re: Reply to DeMaria's question

QUOTE: But I have a question. You claim that something I said was an insult to Buddhists. What was it?

I think you are being sincere so in the spirit of peace let us try to understand each other.

But first I want to apologize for the baby Jesus comment which was totally inappropriate.

No need. I never understood that one at all. And I was hoping it was true.

I am not anti-RCC. My heart is open to all who follow Christ. I also think the person who started this thread should have responded to you, but unfortunately that doesn’t appear to be happening. Many people believe in reincarnation, so he may not be Buddhist.

I’m beginning to think I misunderstood your original intent, but in my mind it was still a blunder. How would you feel if someone said to you in the past I have found Catholics to be very caring people; HOWEVER, I ALSO FIND THAT THEY BELIEVE NOT WHAT THEY CAN PROVE BUT WHAT THEY CAN IMAGINE

That is my opinion of their beliefs. Lets take the example for which I believe they're most famous, reincarnation. Is there any objective proof that anything like that can happen? They also accompany that with a doctrine of being perfected by frequent reincarnations. Has anyone ever presented any evidence for such a thing? I've not seen any.

Therefore I conclude that they believe in what they can imagine. Not in anything what they can prove.

HOWEVER, I ALSO FIND THAT THEY BELIEVE NOT WHAT THEY CAN PROVE BUT WHAT THEY CAN IMAGINE in reference to your Blessed Mother. That her relevance in the church is unsubstantiated in the Bible. That your novenas and prayer beads are useless because you are praying to an imaginary person?

That has actually happened to me quite often. And I have taken it as a challenge. I simply ask them to compare their doctrines to the doctrines of the Catholic Church.

For instance and just for purposes of illustration. I have had much more experience talking to Muslims than I have with Buddhists. And one of their claims is that the Gospels would be kicked out of court because of insufficient evidence.

So, I ask them to compare.

1. They have Mohammed, claiming that he spoke to an angel who revealed to him the Quran. No one else saw the angel.

2. We have four eyewitnesses, who not only heard Jesus Christ's sermons, but witnessed His signs and miracles, lived with Him for several years and were given the power to effect signs and miracles themselves.

So, I respond, if the Gospels will be kicked out of court, the Quran will be thrown in the trash. Compared to the Gospels, the Quran has absolutely no evidential value.

That is just one example. I respond similarly to any challenge, be it Protestant, Muslim, atheist or whatever.

Also, to be honest your attitude in debates seems a bit unfair. Do you like politicians taking unfair swings at each other to avoid the real political issues? I don’t and I find it much more distasteful when it pertains to religion. I hope that answers your question without offense.

Can you give me an example of an unfair swing that I have taken on anyone?

De Maria


Information Technology Book Store

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Understanding Context: Environment, Language, and Information Architecture

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To make sense of the world, we're always trying to place things in context, whether our environment is physical, cultural, or something else altogether. Now that we live among digital, always-networked products, apps, and places, context is more complicated than ever--starting with "where" and "who" we are.

This practical, insightful book provides a powerful toolset to help information architects, UX professionals, and web and app designers understand and solve the many challenges of contextual ambiguity in the products and services they create. You'll discover not only how to design for a given context, but also how design participates in making context.

  • Learn how people perceive context when touching and navigating digital environments
Author: Hinton, Andrew
O'Reilly Media


Anyone who has been in a hospital for any length of time knows that they are noisy places. Alarms call, beepers beep, trays rattle, nurses deliberate, and TVs blare. The net result is that a hospital can be downright inhospitable and a tough place to rest, sleep, heal, and convalesce. In addition, these conditions also affect healthcare workers by interfering with their work and by increasing their already high levels of stress. It is no wonder that a 1993 study of this problem was famously entitled “Pandemonium in the Modern Hospital.”

What can be done? The standard acoustical method for reducing noise consists of three elements: to quiet the source, to disrupt the noise path from the source to the receiver, and to reduce the sensitivity at the receiver (e.g., with earplugs). This usually sensible approach runs into unique challenges in hospitals. For example, alarms have to be loud enough to be heard outside a patient room. Path-reducing materials such as acoustical absorbing tiles may be too susceptible to bacterial growth. Earplugs are not what the doctor ordered for nurses who need to be tuned in to the important sounds present (e.g., the alarms) and to be able to communicate with the patients, the doctors, and each other.

There is another approach that is well suited to hospitals that at first sounds paradoxical: adding sound to the environment. How can adding sound make a hospital seem less noisy? This is precisely what sound masking—an approach used for decades in open offices (think Dilbert cubicles)—does. By introducing a steady broadband sound background (sounding like air conditioning) into a space with a series of speakers typically mounted in the ceiling, at the right loudness an interesting perceptual phenomenon occurs. The level of sound in the space becomes less variable in time, people’s threshold of hearing goes up a bit, and they no longer become aware of all the individual sounds—all the while unaware of the presence of the sound masking itself. The bottom line is that a space seems quieter. Psychological and physiological functions improve so that, for example, people are less aware of and annoyed by the noise environment and are able to rest and sleep better. All this occurs without any interference with medical staff being able to hear alarms in patients’ rooms, as the masking levels are much lower than those of the alarms. Another advantage of masking is an increase in “speech privacy.” With masking present, the distance at which a conversation can be overheard becomes shorter, which creates a more private environment for a patient and makes it less likely that his or her private information will be disclosed.

So we see that a technology originally developed for open space offices can add just the right kind and amount of noise to an already noisy environment to solve several of the problems brought on by the noise. Pioneering efforts to install masking in hospitals, including some very big ones, have been carried out and more are anticipated. Let’s hope that masking can truly put a dent in this pandemonium.


US Military Presence Overseas Mushrooming: Here, There and Everywhere

The SOF play a special role to implement the «here, there and everywhere» policy. In 2016, the US SOF teams conducted missions in 138 countries – roughly 70 percent of the nations on the planet. The Special Operations Command is tasked with carrying out 12 core missions. Last year, US SOF were deployed to 32 African nations, about 60 percent of the countries on the continent. Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and other special operators are now conducting nearly 100 missions across 20 African countries at any given time. They are deployed in Libya – the country, which has its future uncertain after the 2011 US-led NATO involvement.

The US war footprint grows in the Middle East with no endgame in sight. In his remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Donald Trump said that the last 15 years of US military action in the Middle East had been an almost incomprehensible waste of money – six trillion dollars – and that after all that US war and meddling the region was actually in a worse shape than before the operations were launched. So, the policy was wrong, the president understands that and…keeps on doing the very same thing on a larger scale!

The presence in Europe is on the rise. Troops are being deployed to countries they had no presence in before, such as Norway and Estonia. It’s not forces only but also the costly logistics infrastructure. The military wants more large-scale exercises in Europe to further boost the presence and expand infrastructure there. During his recent foreign trip, Vice President Mike Pence said the US Air Force would deploy twice as many jets during the Russian exercise Zapad-2017 to be held in September.

The US military is calling for even greater presence in Europe. Air Force Brigadier General John Healy, the director of US exercises in Europe, says he wants one comprehensive training maneuver would be crucial in testing NATO’s preparedness for a global showdown with Russia. As he put it, «What we’re eventually going toward is a globally integrated exercise program so that we (are) … all working off the same sheet of music in one combined global exercise». The military leader believes the exercise should encompass all domains of war – land, sea, air, space and cyber and involve all nine US combatant commands.

Under President Trump, drone strikes worldwide grew 432 percent as of mid-March. Civilian death toll is significant in Iraq and Syria as a result of US bombardment.

A war with Iran appears to be imminent. An attack against North Korea is on the cards. There is a plan to spend $8 billion on bulking up the US presence in the Asia-Pacific region over the next five years by upgrading military infrastructure, conducting additional exercises and deploying more forces and ships.

All these facts make one recall the events that took place just a few months ago. President Trump said he would avoid interventions in foreign conflicts. Instead of investing in wars, he would spend money to build up America’s aging roads, bridges and airports. But there was a loophole. He promised to stay away from all other conflicts except Islamic State militancy.

Everybody thought he meant only airstrikes in the Middle East. Now it looks like the president meant the other regions as well. The Islamic State is present in Afghanistan and Africa. The IS terrorists have recently staged a terrorist act in Iran. They take responsibility for terrorist attacks in Europe. Jihadists operate in Russia and Central Asia. Their presence is menacing in the Asia-Pacific region. They are almost everywhere to serve as a pretext for US invasions or war preparations in almost any corner of the globe.

The United States in actually one way or another involved in all hot spots on the world map. No doubt, it will expand the involvement in the Philippines, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, and boost the naval and air force presence in the Asia Pacific to oppose China – a move not related to the IS by any stretch of imagination as well as the beefing up of forces in Europe.

So, it’s Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa! It feels like the United States is always at war or preparing for a war somewhere. Yemen on August 4, the Philippines on August 7, perhaps some other place a few days later, you never know what to expect. It’s like the «perpetual war for perpetual peace» described by Charles Beard.

No matter how high the military expenditure is, the US military is doomed to be stretched thin until the policy is not changed. One cannot square the circle or embrace the boundless. The nation has a huge national debt. If the enemy is the Islamic State than the intelligence and military efforts should be concentrated on the mission to strike the group, not a number of tall orders to be accomplished by and large at the very same time.

With one mission accomplished, the US could review the priorities. The thing is – it will never be accomplished because the IS is not only militants, but rather the ideology that drives them. This evil cannot be defeated by the people in uniform alone. But that’s a different story to talk about in another article. Anyway, stretching the resources thin is not an effective policy. The United States will be following two hares catching neither instead of setting the priorities straight and focusing on what is the primary mission.

By Alex Gorka
Source: Strategic Culture


research group| publications| bio| cv
professional activities | twitter

The Bayou project is in the news (1, 2, 3) ! We have an opening for a postdoctoral researcher in this project. If interested, send me email!

I am a programming languages (PL) researcher with a particular interest in the intersection of PL and artificial intelligence. Much of my recent work is on program synthesis, the problem of automatically discovering programs that fit a data set or implement a procedural task. This problem, originally proposed in the 1960s, is one of the big open challenges in computer science. In my view, an alternative name for the problem is "high-level machine learning", i.e., learning functions in a high-level, programmatic representation with the goals of facilitating human understanding and symbolic analysis. I believe that progress in program synthesis is key to the development of robust and reliable artificial intelligence.

A general solution to program synthesis will imply Artificial General Intelligence, which is another way of saying that such a solution is unlikely any time soon. However, there has been a lot of recent progress on the problem in specific domains. Here are some instantiations of the problem that my collaborators and I have recently studied:

  • Synthesizing example programs that show a developer how to use a set of APIs, given a small amount of ambiguous information about what the developer has in mind. [ICLR18]. Our solution to this problem is implemented in the Bayou system. Here's an online demo.
  • Generating scripts that accomplish various end-user tasks, from a small number of examples of what these scripts should do. [PLDI15, PLDI16, PLDI17]
  • Generating a program that controls a robot, given a set of constraints that the robot must satisfy and a logical model of the robot's environment. [ICRA14, RSS16, ICAPS16, AAMAS18]
  • Learning functions, written in a high-level, human-interpretable, analyzable, modular programming language, that perform the sort of classification, regression or control tasks for which neural nets are typically used. [Arxiv18-a, ICML18]

My work approaches program synthesis using a broad range of tools, ranging from automated deduction [POPL14-a] to functional programming language abstractions [PLDI15] to deep learning [ICLR18, Arxiv18-a, ICML18] to symbolic optimization [POPL14-b] to heuristic search.

Before I began working on program synthesis, I worked for many years on the related problem of program verification. My Ph.D. work was on the logical and automata-theoretic foundations of software model checking [TOPLAS11], and I spent a number of subsequent years working on analysis of quantitative program properties such as robustness [POPL10, CACM12]. I remain interested in program verification and analysis — for example, two of our recent efforts study analysis of robustness of neural networks [S&P18] and neural methods for program debugging [FSE17].

Chris Jermaine and I co-direct the Intelligent Software Systems Laboratory (ISSYL) at Rice. The mission of our lab is to bring together symbolic and statistical methods to solve a range of problems in programming systems, data management and analytics systems, and cyber-physical systems, including but not limited to program synthesis. I am a member of the Programming Languages and Software Engineering group at Rice CS, as well as Rice's cross-disciplinary Machine Learning group.

(Spring 2018) COMP 403/503: Reasoning about software

(Spring 2015) COMP 607: Seminar on Program Synthesis


US Videos

A Fund for Income Seekers

Alec Lucas, Ph.D.

Alec Lucas: Silver-rated American Funds Capital Income Builder (CAIBX) is a strong option to consider for investors who'd like to begin living off of their savings. The fund aims to be an endowment for individuals by investing in a global mixture of stocks and bonds that will produce an above-average and rising income stream.

As long as interest rates remain low, investors should expect the fund to have a heavy footprint in equities. Indeed, since late 2013, its equity weighting has hovered around 80%, in contrast to its 60% weighting in early 2009. While the fund is more prone to a downturn in the equity market than it has been in the past, it boasts experienced managers who are skilled stock-pickers.

American's multimanager system of separately run portfolio sleeves allows them to play to their strengths and damps volatility. The fund's conservative bond portfolio also helps in that regard. It has largely avoided junk bonds in recent years and serves primarily as ballast. The fund has a strong long-term track record, and it has consistently delivered a high payout while keeping risk in check.


Brighten up your strategic value

SmartCompany /

Good businesses will always fetch a fair price – outstanding businesses have already sold at a premium. How can you put your enterprise in the latter? By TOM McKASKILL.

By Tom McKaskill

Sell a business strategic value

If you have something that is attractive to a large corporation, then you should take the time to work out how you can make it more valuable before you put yourself on the auction block.

Large corporations are especially interested in assets or capabilities that they can leverage quickly to create large revenue gains.

To secure a premium for such an asset or capability, however, you need to be able to provide the buyer with some reasonable proven period of competitive advantage during which this has been exploited.

Remember, something that can be readily copied, negated, created or purchased has little strategic value.

Once you have identified that you do have something that can be leveraged in a strategic sale, spend some time to work out how you can make it more valuable to the buyer and thereby increase your potential premium on sale.

Something would be worth more to a buyer if they could exploit it earlier and faster. Thus, if there were less issues to resolve post-acquisition, before the underlying asset or capability could be exploited, this would have a positive impact on the sale price.

A business that is well managed, efficient, with good governance and with few outstanding problems to resolve would clearly be more valuable. At the same time, a business that could be readily absorbed or integrated into the corporation’s organisation would be more attractive.

The major objective of the buyer is to exploit the opportunity. Where the underlying asset or capability has been structured so that it can be readily replicated or scaled, the opportunity can be more aggressively exploited. Where this results in higher growth revenue generation and earlier profits, the buyer generates an earlier payback on the acquisition investment. This in turn means that the investment has a higher present value and thus the seller has the opportunity of securing a higher premium on sale in a competitive bid.

When you have a specific buyer in your sights, you might spend some time working out how you can increase the strategic value of the assets and capabilities for that buyer. If the sales value to their customer has a certain price, what can you do to increase the price?

If your product has a number of features or components, can you add more to increase its revenue generating capability? If there is an after market for services, spare parts or complementary products, can you find additional services or products to add to the list?

If the product has an implementation or consulting requirement, can you increase the value of the revenue associated with that part of the sale? Your objective is to increase the revenue per unit and thus increase the revenue generating power of your offering.

The key to maximising the premium on sale with a strategic buyer is to confront them with a compelling opportunity to generate high levels of revenue and profits as soon as possible after the acquisition. The premium is, however, normally only secured by having multiple bidders after that opportunity.

This is especially effective if the revenue is either new revenue to all the bidders and provides them with a growth advantage or is a competitive weapon that will take market share away from the losing bidders.

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