Saber Pensar...

Bertold Brecht


O Vosso tanque General, é um carro forte

Derruba uma floresta esmaga cem
Homens,
Mas tem um defeito
- Precisa de um motorista

O vosso bombardeiro, general
É poderoso:
Voa mais depressa que a tempestade
E transporta mais carga que um elefante
Mas tem um defeito
- Precisa de um piloto.

O homem, meu general, é muito útil:
Sabe voar, e sabe matar
Mas tem um defeito
- Sabe pensar

Pais querem escolas do 1.º ciclo abertas doze horas por dia

... e dizem que ME já deu luz verde

04.02.2009 - 09h24 Natália Faria "Público"

Algumas escolas do 1.º ciclo do ensino básico vão estar de portas abertas entre as 7h30 e as 19h, ainda este ano lectivo. A informação foi avançada por Albino Almeida, da Confederação Nacional das Associações de Pais (Confap), segundo o qual o Ministério da Educação (ME) já deu luz verde para avançar com este alargamento de horário.

Ao PÚBLICO, o secretário de Estado da Educação, Valter Lemos, disse apenas que o ME está "disponível para estudar a questão", mas Albino Almeida garante que a proposta anda há um ano a ser negociada e que o ministério "sinalizou a sua disponibilidade para avançar com o modelo".

O objectivo, segundo o responsável da Confap, "não é transformar as escolas em armazéns de crianças". Nem sequer reforçar a carga lectiva, roubando tempo para a brincadeira. "O que queremos é que as escolas funcionem numa lógica de centro educativo, deixando de estar exclusivamente centradas na instrução e com uma componente de apoio às famílias."

Na prática, o que a Confap propõe é que, entre as 7h30 e as 9h da manhã, as escolas ocupem as crianças com actividades lúdicas. As aulas deverão decorrer entre as 9h e as 15h30, com intervalo para almoço. A partir daquela hora e até às 17h30, decorrem as actividades de enriquecimento curricular, seguindo-se novo período de apoio à família "até às 19h ou 19h30". No período de férias lectivas, as escolas deverão igualmente assegurar actividades para as crianças.

Competirá às escolas definir as actividades a desenvolver, sendo que a proposta terá sempre que ser escrutinada. "Não aceitaremos propostas de mais Inglês ou mais Educação Física. Haverá um júri responsável e as propostas podem incluir canto coral ou folclore, visitas a museus, visionamento de filmes...", especificou o presidente da Confap, para quem se trata, aliás, de assegurar a sobrevivência da escola pública: "Esta coisa de despejar a matéria e depois esperar que, em casa, os pais tenham literacia suficiente e computadores para ajudar os filhos a perceber as matérias tem que acabar, porque o mundo mudou e as escolas têm que se adaptar." Claro que nenhum pai será obrigado a deixar o seu filho tanto tempo na escola. Aqueles a quem este prolongamento de horário e de oferta educativa convier terão de pagar uma quantia a definir consoante os rendimentos da família.

O investigador Manuel Sarmento, do Instituto de Estudos da Criança, não vê inconvenientes neste alargamento de horários. Desde que "o acompanhamento das crianças para lá do tempo lectivo seja fruto de um trabalho de articulação com a comunidade e não se centre demasiado nos interesses dos pais". E "porque é importante respeitar a autonomia das crianças", estas terão que "ter espaço dentro da escola para exercer as suas decisões".

Gospel of Judas Pages Endured Long, Strange Journey

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
April 6, 2006

After 1,700 years, the Gospel of Judas is lost no more. And the twisting tale of the document itself is nearly as surprising as the story it tells.

"We can consider it a real miracle that [such an ancient literary work]—especially one threatened by the hatred of the great majority of its contemporary readers, who saw it as a shame and a scandal, destined to be lost … would suddenly appear and be brought to light," said scholar Rodolphe Kasser.

Kasser is an expert in Coptic, or Egyptian Christian, history and literature. He led the effort to piece together and translate the Gospel of Judas.

The surviving copy of the gospel was written in the third or fourth century A.D., but the text was known prior to A.D. 180.

In that year St. Irenaeus—then the bishop of what is now Lyon, France—published Against Heresies, a volume intended to help unify the Christian church.

St. Irenaeus's method was to savage alternative theological views and interpretations—including the Gospel of Judas—which he referred to as "fictitious histories."

In this gospel, the Apostle Judas Iscariot is not a traitor but a hero, the chosen disciple. Jesus Christ asks Judas to betray him to the authorities. (For more on the meaning of the gospel, see "Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him.")

Diverse beliefs circulated during Christianity's early years. Many were suppressed in the early centuries A.D. as the religion coalesced into a more structured faith based on the New Testament Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Nonsanctioned texts, such as the Gospel of Judas, fell from favor. Scribes no longer copied them, and existing manuscripts were often destroyed. Those that survived were hidden for safekeeping.

The protectors of the newly revealed documents did their job well, stashing the ancient handwritten Coptic manuscripts so that it remained hidden for nearly 1,700 years.

Modern Journeys of an Ancient Book

Exactly how the manuscripts were found in the late 1970s remains somewhat unclear.

It is believed that a now dead Egyptian antiquities prospector discovered the codex, or ancient book, containing the Gospel of Judas near El Minya, Egypt.

In 1978 he sold his find to a Cairo antiquities dealer named Hanna.

Around 1980 the manuscripts and most of Hanna's other artifacts were stolen in a robbery and taken out of Egypt. Hanna later recovered the codex by coordinating with an antiquities trader in Geneva, Switzerland.

Hanna was the first to show the codex to experts who recognized its possible significance. Yet he would search for over two decades for a buyer willing to meet his steep price.

In 1983 Stephen Emmel, then a graduate student living in Rome, Italy, received a phone call.

Unknown antiquities dealers selling ancient manuscripts had approached one of Emmel's colleagues. Emmel and two other scholars agreed to meet the sellers in a Geneva hotel room.

For half an hour the trio examined a collection of papyruses that were wrapped in newspaper and stored in shoe boxes. The scholars were forbidden to take photos or notes.

Though Emmel and his colleagues quickly realized that the documents were both ancient and important, they did not know at that time that the codex contained the Gospel of Judas.

Emmel immediately noticed the damage that the fragile papyruses and leather binding had sustained—likely during the few years since their discovery. (Examine the pages for yourself online.)

"When I saw the codex in 1983 it was fragile, but the 30 or so surviving leaves were still in pretty good condition," said Emmel, now a professor of Coptic studies at the University of Münster in Germany.

"If a papyrus conservator could have gone to work on it immediately, we would have had about 30 complete, or nearly complete, leaves, which would make some 60 pages of text," he said.

"As it is, every one of those leaves broke into pieces, and many fragments are now missing—most probably lost forever."

Hanna demanded three million U.S. dollars—far more than what Emmel and the other scholars could pay—and the meeting ended. The manuscripts once again vanished from scholarly view.

In 1984 the manuscripts' Egyptian owner again offered them for sale, this time in New York City. Finding no takers, Hanna deposited them in a bank safe-deposit box in Hicksville, New York.

The codex languished there for some 16 years.

Gospel Emerges From Modern Seclusion

Finally, Zürich, Switzerland-based antiquities dealer Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos bought the codex in April 2000—though its full contents remained a mystery.

Tchacos turned the documents over to experts at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library for examination and possible sale.

Yale papyrus expert Robert Babcock discovered the startling truth—Tchacos held the Gospel of Judas, previously known only from mentions in texts like those by St. Irenaeus.

But Yale passed on purchasing the gospel because of concerns about its provenance.

Tchacos endured another failed sale attempt later that year, this time to U.S. dealer Bruce Ferrini.

Ferrini took possession of the gospel in return for two postdated checks.

In the following months Tchacos became increasingly convinced that Ferrini did not have sufficient funds and engaged several prominent antiquities dealers to pressure Ferrini to return the codex to her.

Finally, Tchacos transferred the codex to the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art, based in Basel, Switzerland.

The foundation later teamed with the Washington, D.C.-based National Geographic Society and the La Jolla, California-based Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery to restore, translate and publish the gospel. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

Pages of the gospel were unveiled at National Geographic headquarters today and will go on public view tomorrow at the National Geographic Museum.

All pages will eventually be returned to Egypt and housed permanently in Cairo's Coptic Museum.

The Real Deal?

The Gospel of Judas represents one of the great textual finds of the modern age—so it was crucial for all concerned to ensure that it was authentic.

(See how the gospel was authenticated.)

The University of Arizona's radiocarbon dating lab in Tucson—the same lab that tested the Dead Sea Scrolls—dated five tiny samples of papyrus and leather binding from the codex to between A.D. 220 and 340.

Extensive forensic ink analysis and multispectral imaging tests provided further physical evidence that placed the documents in the same time period.

Meanwhile, scholars examined contextual evidence such as content, linguistic style, and the distinctive handwriting used by ancient scribes.

Experts who have examined these aspects of the Gospel of Judas agree that the codex's theological concepts and linguistic structure are similar to manuscripts found in Nag ‘Hammâdi, Egypt, which contain Gnostic writings of a similar time period.

"Gnosticism" refers to several pre-Christian and early-Christian belief systems that hold that the physical world is corrupt and that humans can transcend it through the acquisition of esoteric spiritual knowledge.

The University of Münster's Emmel stressed that the Judas manuscript, like the Nag ‘Hammâdi texts, contains a second-century Gnostic thought process that would present a terrible challenge for forgers.

Would-be fakers would have also needed to acquire ancient papyrus and ink to duplicate period Coptic handwriting, and to master an ancient grammar known to only a small group of scholars.

Leap of Faith

Though authentic, the codex's condition is alarmingly poor, having deteriorated badly since Emmel's 1983 inspection.

By the time the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art called in Kasser and other experts to examine the codex, its leather binding had come undone. The ancient papyrus pages had been scattered into nearly a thousand fragments that crumbled at even the slightest touch. In places the pages were so blackened that the handwritten Coptic script was illegible.

The sheets had also been reorganized in a random pattern—possibly to boost buyer appeal by putting better pages on top. The original page order was lost.

"Our codex—clearly in such a fragile state that no researcher in his right mind would dare touch it in order to consult it—looked as if it were to ready to crumble, squeezed at the bottom of a box whose dimensions were barely larger that those of the manuscript itself," Kasser recalled.

Yet a team of expert preservationists became detectives to reconstruct the Gospel of Judas and the codex's other writings: a text titled James (also known as First Apocalypse of James), a Letter of Peter to Philip, and a fragment of a fourth text scholars are provisionally calling the Book of Allogenes.

(See how the team restored the manuscript.)

"It took a leap of faith, sustained by hope, with no guarantee of success, yet there was a probability of success. … It was worth trying," Kasser said.

Aided by a computer program, restoration expert Florence Darbre and Coptic scholar Gregor Wurst, were able to painstakingly reconstruct most of the manuscript, fragment by fragment, over a period of five years.

"We soon realized that the decision had been a good one," Kasser said.

"Restored and put under glass, the folios could be gingerly handled, and it was possible to photograph all the pages," he said. "Those pages could be photographed, studied, read, transcribed, and translated."

Incredibly, the team was able to recreate some 90 to 95 percent of the manuscript and produce a nearly complete translation. Some sections may be forever lost, due to holes in the original papyruses, but scholars hope to fill them in as they finish their herculean task—an additional half page recently surfaced in New York City.

Yet even the meager surviving fragments are enough to portray one of history's most notorious villians in an entirely new light—and spur debate among scholars and theologians around the globe.

Folhas Artificiais

Artificial leaves, made from semiconductors, might one day help to remove excess airborne carbon dioxide and maybe even turn it into fuel. Real leaves, the green ones deployed by plants, perform many valuable tasks, not the least being the removal of CO₂ from air and its replacement with breathable O₂. Artificial CO₂ fixation needs several ingredients: light, a catalyst (such as CdS), and organic molecules.

A new study by a Oak Ridge-Vanderbilt team of physicists suggests how this process can be made more efficient, a necessary step if artificial fixation is ever to practical on a large scale. Contrary to previous ideas, the study shows, fixation does not take place directly on the catalyst surface. Rather it's a two step process: ionization of the CO₂ occurs at the surface, creating a highly reactive radical which can later combine with other CO₂ molecules or organic molecules in the vicinity.

Stephen Pennycook (pennycooksj@ornl.gov, 865-574-5504) says that his study looks at the role of catalyst surface roughness (flat planes of CdSe don't work as photocatalysts, but nanocrystals of the same material do) and at the possibility that nanocrystal doping might obviate the need for light, which would allow some fixation to take place in dark smokestacks. (Wang et al., Physical Review Letters, upcoming.)

(ler original aqui)

Moscas Como Combustível

Wikipedia

EcoBot is short for Ecological Robot and it refers to a class of energetically autonomous robots that can remain self-sustainable by collecting their energy from (mostly) waste in the environment. The only by-product from this process is carbon dioxide, which would have been produced from biodegradation in the first place. This carbon dioxide production belongs to the immediate carbon cycle of our planet and does not impose to the already increasing problem of the greenhouse effect.

So far autonomy in robotics has been directly linked with the ability of agents to compute and execute tasks, i.e. follow a set of rules given in an algorithm, with minimum human intervention. This is classified as computational autonomy, however it does not necessarily take into account the problem of energy collection and management. Energetic autonomy, therefore, refers to the ability of artificial agents to remain self-sustainable, with minimum human intervention.

EcoBot-I

EcoBot-I, developed in 2002, by the same group of workers at BRL, UK, utilised sugar as the fuel and ferricyanide in the cathode, to perform phototaxis (i.e. move towards the light) [Ieropoulos et al. 2003a, b; 2004].

The two EcoBots do not employ any other form of conventional power supply and do not require any form of initial charging from an external source. Instead, they are powered directly by the onboard microbial fuel cells (MFCs). This is in contrast with Gastrobot, which although it was the first example of a practical application that employed MFCs, it used onboard conventional batteries and required initial charging from the mains.

EcoBot-II

EcoBot-II, developed in 2004, by Melhuish, Greenman, Ieropoulos and Horsfield at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) UK, was the first robot in the world to perform sensing, information processing, communication and actuation phototaxis, by utilising unrefined biomass. In fact, it consumed dead flies, rotten fruits and crustacean shells as the fuel and oxygen from free air as the cathode. EcoBot-II operated continuously for 12 days after having been fed with 8 houseflies of the species Musca domestica [Ieropoulos et al. 2005a, b; Melhuish et al. 2006].

EcoBot-II is the first practical example of a Symbot (symbiotic robot) that exhibited artificial symbiosis – the beneficial integration between the live microbial part and the artificial mechatronic part.

Para ler outro artigo sobre o assunto, clicar aqui