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What are the rules for parallel-connection of XS 2-wire inductive, XT capacitive and XU photoelectric detectors?

Relevant products
The relevant products are XS inductive and XT capacitive sensors, and XU photoelectric detectors.

Electrical Connection
Parallel connection of a 2-wire output sensor and/or mechanical switching devices is not advisable.
In fact, if one of the two sensors connected in parallel is in the "OFF" state, the second sensor will no longer be supplied with power. When the contact changes to the "ON" state, the sensor will not be available immediately because it is being powered up.
Operation may be acceptable if the sensors are activated alternately one after the other.
Otherwise, they may be damaged.
This type of connection should therefore be avoided.

When connected in series, XS and XU products do not generate conducted or radiated electromagnetic phenomena likely to disturb their environment.
Their immunity to electromagnetic disturbance is also compliant with IEC standard 947-5-2
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vol.9 issue1Legitimidade política em novas democraciasAs cotas fazem diferença? Ações positivas no parlamento Belga author indexsubject indexarticles search
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LEONI, Eduardo; PEREIRA, Carlos  and  RENNO, Lúcio. Estratégias para sobreviver politicamente: escolhas de carreiras na Câmara de Deputados do Brasil. Opin. Publica [online]. 2003, vol.9, n.1, pp.44-67. ISSN 0104-6276.

The Brazilian incumbent legislators have five major choices of political career: to withdraw from the elected political game (to retire); to run for local legislative position (regressive ambition); to run for re-election (static ambition); and to run for higher offices (progressive ambition). This paper built a model to explaining the features of incumbent legislators choices regarding their career's decisions in 1998's Brazilian election. We argue that it is not the "nature" of political ambition that determines legislators' choice, but the evaluation of the risks and costs entailed in the decision. The main findings suggest that incumbents with different career's choices present distinct strategies during their mandates, which have decisive influences on their preferences of what they do in order to survive politically.

Keywords : political carrer; mandate; chamber of deputies; political strategy; reelection.

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vol.12 issue3Oaks reeds, trees and rhizomes: paradigms in teacher educationBuilding didactic projects of reading and writing as result of a proposal for cooperative continuing education author indexsubject indexarticles search
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Rev. bras. linguist. apl. vol.12 no.3 Belo Horizonte July/Sept. 2012

Zones of conflicts and potentialities in the process of becoming an EFL teacher1

Zonas de conflitos e potencialidades no processo de se tornar professor de inglês como LE

Paula Tatianne Carréra Szundy

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro - Rio de Janeiro / Brasil.;

For shifting the focus from completed maturational processes to those that can be potentially developed in the interaction with other(s) and for proposing that while interacting with the varied cultural artifacts people are not only transformed but able to transform the activity, the vygotskian notion of ZPD has indeed become a revolutionary analysis tool in several educational spheres. After drawing the characteristics of ZPD that have contributed to my reflection concerning the construction of knowledge in EFL pre-service teacher education processes, the present paper aims at discussing the zones of potential development revealed in the reports written by three future EFL teachers during English Methodology classes. Framed on the notion of ZPD and on the concepts of ideology, authoritative and persuasive discourse proposed by Bakhtin's circle, the analysis focuses mainly on the conflicts related to the process of becoming an EFL teacher.

Keywords: ZPD; critical reflection; ideology; authoritative and persuasive discourse.

Ao mudar o foco de processos maturacionais completos para aqueles que podem ser potencialmente desenvolvidos na interação com outrem e propor que ao interagir com os variados artefatos culturais somos transformados pela atividade e capazes de transformá-la, a noção vygotskiana de ZPD tornou-se uma ferramenta de análise revolucionária na esfera educacional. Após delinear as características da ZPD que têm contribuído para minha reflexão sobre a construção do conhecimento no processo de formação pré-serviço de professores de língua inglesa, este artigo pretende discutir as zonas potenciais de desenvolvimento reveladas em relatórios escritos por três futuros professores de inglês como LE durante um curso de Prática de Ensino da Língua Inglesa. Alicerçado na noção de ZPD e nos conceitos de ideologia, discurso autoritário e discurso internamente persuasivo propostos pelo círculo de Bakhtin, a análise foca principalmente nos conflitos vivenciados no processo de se tornar professor de língua inglesa.

Palavras-chave: ZPD; reflexão crítica; ideologia; discurso autoritário e internamente persuasivo.

Based on the vygotskian notion that when we engage in different activities in which we interact with varied instruments, we are not merely influenced by these activities and instruments but also able to transform them in the course of history, Newman and Holzman (1993) assume the zone of proximal development (ZPD) as a revolutionary zone that leads to the unit learning-and-development.

Bearing this conception of ZPD in mind, I propose that the activities in which students are engaged in English Methodology classes to become EFL teachers should somehow revolutionize their views on the teaching-learning processes in order to trigger a potential zone in which learning-and-development are really paired. Revolutions are historically marked by conflicts and these are very likely to happen when future teachers reflect about their activities in the EFL classroom. In this reflective process the theoretical conceptions do not simply represent a set of crystallized ideologies used to analyze actions in the classroom. Most of all, they can become the instruments through which activities are both understood and transformed, leading to transformations in all the participants involved.

Through the analysis of excerpts from reports written by students in an English Methodology class after teaching a thirty-hour course for elementary and high school students, this paper aims at reflecting about the potential learning-and-development that can be grasped of the future teachers' reflection on the experienced EFL classroom practices. In order to do so, the analysis will focus mainly on the discussion concerning the authoritative or persuasive relations (BAKHTIN, 1975) kept with the theoretical constructs that framed the target teaching experience.

As detailed in other articles (SZUNDY, 2007; 2009; 2010), the target teaching experience was part of a project entitled Didactic Sequences for the construction of reading comprehension in English: elaboration and application carried out in a public university in the state of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon from 2006 to 2009. This project had as its main foundation the idea that English Methodology classes constitute a privileged space for the development of projects that lead to the theoretical and methodological framed construction of knowledge about the future pedagogical practice so as to engage the student-future-teacher in a continuous critical reflection about his/her and about others' actions.

In the focused project the future teachers elaborated didactic sequences2 aimed at the development of written comprehension in English and later used these sequences in a thirty-hour extracurricular course offered to elementary and high school students of a state school in Rio Branco, Acre, Brazil. The didactic sequences were elaborated and applied by last year English Language graduate students under my supervision based on proposals postulated by official documents (PCN, OCEM)3 and on theories about speech genres and teaching.

After this brief contextualization of the project, the second part of this paper is dedicated to the discussion of the theoretical conceptions that have framed my reflection on the construction of knowledge that takes place in pre-service EFL teachers' reflective processes. This discussion will focus mainly on vygotskian and newvygotskian views of ZPD and on the bakhtinian notions of ideology, authoritative and persuasive discourse. Finally, the third and final part of the paper is oriented towards the analysis of future EFL teachers' report excerpts so as to draw conclusions about the processes of knowledge construction involved in the activity of becoming a teacher.

ZPD as a revolutionary zone: creating spaces for the persuasive discourse

Based on his critical view about the psychological positions of his epoch in what concerns the complex relationship between learning and development, Vygotsky (1930, 1934) proposes a new instrument to analyze this relationship - the zone of proximal development (ZPD). Opposite to the criticized dualist positions, which either saw the learning process as subordinated to the development (maturation) of mental functions or reduced development and learning to habit formation, the ZPD focuses on the activities children can potentially accomplish in collaboration with more experienced partners. By doing so, the vygotskian notion of ZPD underlines the revolutionary role of instruction in developmental processes.

As Vygotsky (1934, p. 188) points out:

In the child's development imitation and instruction play a major role. They bring out the specifically human qualities of the mind and lead the child to new developmental levels. In learning to speak, as in learning school subjects, imitation is indispensable. What the child can do in cooperation today he can do alone tomorrow. Therefore the only good kind of instruction is that which marches ahead of development and leads it; it must be aimed not so much at the ripe as at the ripening functions.

For shifting the focus from the ripened to the ripening processes that can be potentially developed in cooperation, the conception of ZPD has in fact become, as Vygotsky (1930) foretold, a revolutionary method in the analysis of the interrelations between learning-and-development for both psychologists and educators, method which has been largely used in varied contexts to seek comprehension about the processes involved in knowledge construction in the most diverse educational spheres.

According to Moll (1990), it was Vygotsky's dissatisfaction with traditional psychological tests to measure intelligence quotient that partly led to the development of a different method - the ZPD. Whereas these tests, for measuring only the matured functions, have a static nature, the ZPD allows looking at development prospectively since it focuses on the mental functions that can be potentially developed in interaction with other people in semiotic mediated activities that take place in different social institutions.

When discussing the concept of ZPD, several authors (MOLL [1990]; BERNSTEIN [1993]; DANIELS [1993, 1996, 2001]; NEWMAN; HOLZMAN [1993]; SCHNEUWLY [1994]) underline the focus placed by Vygotsky in the socially semiotic mediated activity, which, as suggested by Newman and Holzman (1993) can be considered revolutionary because at the same time it transforms man, man is also able to transform and, therefore, revolutionize activity. Since our semiotic mediated engagement in several activities in the social world is marked by conflicts, it is reasonable to propose that these activities function as arenas, as stages for ideological battles (BERNSTEIN, 1993), for the learning-and-development processes that start the very moment we are born and last throughout our lifetime.

If the ZPD is figured out as an arena or, quoting Bernstein's words, as stage for ideological battles, the widely quoted vygotskian definition of the ZPD as "the distance between the real level of development, determined through the independent solution of problems, and the potential level of development, determined through the solution of problems under the supervision of an adult or in cooperation with more skilled partners" (VYGOTSKY, 1930, p. 112) as well as the scaffolding metaphor Bruner (1986) proposed based on this definition minimize the idea of conflict inherent to the ZPD. This is so because the scaffolding presupposes that learning leads to development in a linear and vertical way and not spirally, as probably presupposed Vygotsky.

The scaffolding metaphor suggests that in cooperation with more skilled partners the knowledge in the proximal level of development is gradually internalized and ends up becoming part of the real level of development. On the other hand, the spiral image, according to Schneuwly (1994), takes into account that the construction of knowledge in socially semiotic mediated interactions occurs in constant conflict between the two levels of development. Due to this continuous conflict, knowledge construction involves both regression and progression, spiraling several times at the same point as it advances in complexity.

Vygotsky (1930, p. 74) himself, when discussing the internalization of superior psychological functions, emphasizes that "development does not take place in a circle, but in a spiral, passing by a same point at every new revolution, as it advances to a superior level". It is this spiraled movement metaphor I use to describe the construction of knowledge that takes place in teacher pre-service education projects in which the activities future teachers are engaged may function as arenas where crystallized ideologies about EFL teaching-learning practices are at the same time transmitted, deconstructed and reconstructed in order to reconfigure and revolutionize action in the classroom.

Newman and Holzman (1993) point up that as a sociohistorical unit developed to the study and comprehension of specifically human activities, the ZPD represents the unit learning-and-development and, therefore, the historical psychological unit, the space for the revolutionary activity. The authors support the conception of ZPD as a revolutionary unit under the vygotskian premise that mind is historical, "literally created or produced through the participation in (and the internalization of) sociocultural-historical forms of activities" (NEWMAN; HOLZMAN, 1993, p. 82). In order to become a revolutionary unit in which learning-leads-to-development, the ZPD cannot be merely understood as the transmission of knowledge from less to more experienced partners, a simplistic comprehension of the ZPD that, according to Moll (1990), has been used to support any kind of instructional practice. Instructional practices in pre-service teacher education just spiral to more complex levels if future teachers are dialectically engaged in activities that transform and are at the same time transformed by them (SZUNDY, 2009).

When Vygotsky (1930; 1934) proposed the unit learning-and-development in the ZPD, he emphasized the major role played by the systematic contact with scientific concepts in formal schooling in the development of superior mental processes. Taking into consideration that the reflective process in which future teachers are engaged involve both the construction of scientific concepts and the use of these concepts to frame their practices and reflect about them, the issue concerning the transmission and revoicing of other people's words stands as an important one in teacher pre-service and in-service education.

Based on the conception that meaningful dialogues can be established between vygotskian historically founded psychology and the bakhtinian historical philosophy of language (WERTSCH [1990]; FREITAS [1997]; ROJO [2000, 2006]; SZUNDY, [2004, 2006]), I use the bakhtinian concepts of ideology, authoritative and persuasive discourse to discuss how the apprehension and comprehension of the scientific concepts used to reflect about the practices experienced in the target pre-service education activity contributed to create zones of conflicts and potentialities that led to learning-and-development in the ZPD.

According to Voloshinov (1929) and Bakhtin (1953), the ideological as well as the dialogical nature of language is related to the fact that every single utterance is linked to other utterances in the complex chain of verbal communication and to the proposition that each utterance is directed towards an active other and not a passive listener. This means that the other(s) to whom our utterance is directed always take an active responsive attitude towards it, which can be materialized in the form of a non verbal action, an agreement, disagreement and so forth. The speaker expects this active responsive attitude and his/her utterance is oriented by it.

Although this active responsive attitude is more clearly noticed within the rejoinders of a dialogue, every single utterance, including all the complex genres such as the literary and scientific ones, is oriented toward an addressee, having, consequently, a dialogical character. Like the rejoinders of an everyday dialogue, secondary genres produced by literary, educational, sociopolitical spheres are oriented toward an active response, which can assume various forms: educational influence on the readers, persuasion of them, critical responses, influence on followers and successors, and so on (BAKHTIN, 1953, p. 76)

As both addresser and addressee construct their utterances from a specific situation and are, at the same time, part of a broad sociohistorical context, the structure of the utterance is determined both by the immediate situation and the broader social milieu. Based on the assumption that it is in the process of social interaction that our consciousness is filled with ideological content and constituted as such, Voloshinov (1929) suggests that every apprehension, no matter how simple it may be, is subject to ideological evaluation, reflecting and refracting a reality outside itself.

Since everything ideological possesses meaning: it represents, depicts, or stands for something lying outside itself being, therefore, a sign (VOLOSHINOV, 1929, p. 9), the notion of ideology is a central one to understand the meanings constructed and the evaluations carried out in all our semiotic mediated interactions in the social milieu. As signs and their inherent ideological evaluations are only constituted in interindividual territories, that is, in socially organized activities, each social unit creates its medium of signs through which the ideological life of that social group takes shape and is submitted to appreciation.

Each field of ideological creativity reflects and refracts reality in its own way, having a distinct function in the unit of social life. The aggregate of life experiences and the outward expression linked to it is referred to by Voloshinov (1929) as behavioral ideologies, whereas the heterogeneous set of utterances originating from the more complex and structured activities of the artistic, scientific, political and religious spheres are placed within the limits of what the author classifies as established ideological systems, which are considered to be crystallizations of behavioral ideology.

While the established ideological systems of moral, ethics, religion, law, science, etc, have been organized into systems in sociohistorical processes of crystallization, the behavioral ideologies represent the domain of the spontaneous and unsystematic interior and exterior words used to give shape to our conscience and convey meanings in each one of our attitudes and/or gestures. Being historical crystallizations of behavioral ideologies, the conceptions transmitted by established ideological systems are understood, accepted, denied and transformed under the scrutiny of behavioral ideologies. Thus, in an always dialogical movement, the crystallized ideological systems influence and are influenced, transform and are transformed by the behavioral ideologies.

In research that focuses on teacher critical education, it is fundamental that participants understand the complex interplay between behavioral and crystallized ideologies on their practices so that they can comprehend their actions in the classroom and engage in the search for transformation. Such an engagement is made possible in pre or in-service teacher education programs when participants' conceptions about the teaching-learning processes, initially framed by the behavioral ideologies they constructed along their experiences as students, professionals, parents, etc, are understood, analyzed and evaluated through the prism of the crystallized ideological systems transmitted by determined scientific concepts, which reflect and refract specific theoretical affiliations and social expectations concerning the teaching-learning activities.

If, in teacher education programs, the most experienced interlocutor proposes activities that do engage teachers in a continuous reflective process about current pedagogical practices aiming at creating zones for learning-and-development and, ultimately, transforming and reforming both thought and action, the construction of knowledge will take place in an arena, presupposing a conflicting relationship between behavioral and crystallized ideologies, everyday and scientific discourse. Taking into consideration that in this knowledge construction process, the didactic practices are framed and interpreted by the scientific discourses revoiced by the most experienced interlocutor, the issues concerning both the transmission and analysis of other people's discourses constitute a central issue in the reflective process.

Frequently, the established ideological systems that constitute the scientific concepts are transmitted through the authoritative discourse in teacher education practices. Since the authoritative word is filled with dogmatism and receives a status of absolute truth in the interior of discourse, it does not open spaces for arguments, refutation, disagreement, transformation and, therefore, for critical reflection. Bakhtin (1975) underlines that the authoritative word - religious, political, moral, the word of science, the father's word, the director's word, etc. - lacks interior persuasion and, therefore, demands of us unconditional recognition and assimilation. Because it is connected to authority, the authoritative word requires distance in relation to itself, what can make the relationship established with it positive or negative, fervent or hostile. Although it is usually surrounded by masses of other words, which interpret, exalt or apply it, the authoritative word establishes with these other words a relation of isolation and inertia, not intermingling with them for the negotiation and construction of new meanings.

To the authoritative word, Bakhtin (1975) opposes the persuasive word. Contrary to that one, the persuasive word does not submit itself to any authority, what makes it many times unknown or even deprived of legality. The zones for potential learning-and-development revealed by the persuasive discourse in teacher education are also qualitatively different since it allows that our words interconnect and intermingle with other people's words. This interconnection is determining in the process of ideological conscience transformation and, consequently, in the search for an independent ideological life.

Given the dialogical and ideological nature of discourse in the bakhtinian philosophy of language, it seems reasonable to suggest that both the authoritative and persuasive words are characterized by conflicting ideological positions. The main difference between them lies in the fact that while the first one, impregnated with dogmatic value, tries to silence these conflicting positions and echo an absolute truth, the second recognizes the variety, the complexity, the conflict and the historical character of social values and, by making them object of appreciation, discussion and negotiation, enables the ideological transformation of participants.

Taking into consideration the apprehension of other people's discourse that can be observed in the evaluations about an EFL teaching-learning project written by future teachers in final reports as part of the evaluation carried out during an English Methodology course, the next part of this paper focuses on the zones of conflicts and potentialities involved in the reflective process of becoming an EFL teacher.

The reflective process as a zone of learning-and-development

In order to get their degrees in English or in any other school subject, it is compulsory that Brazilian teachers go through a training period both in elementary and high school, which usually involves observation of other teachers' practices and/or teaching a group of students for a certain period of time, both under the supervision of a teacher educator. The excerpts analyzed in this section were written by three future EFL teachers in the beginning of 2007 after the end of the teaching practices they experienced during the probation period I supervised in English Methodology classes.

In this particular supervision experience, the teaching practices in which a total of eight EFL future teachers were engaged are characterized by two distinct moments. In the first one, the future teachers replaced a teacher who had quit her job in fifth, sixth and seventh elementary school classes due to the legal impossibility for public schools to hire new teachers during electoral periods in Brazil.4 Finally, in the second one, the future teachers taught an optional extracurricular course aimed at developing high school students' reading comprehension in English.

Despite the fact that the future teachers were oriented to focus on the construction of reading comprehension in elementary school as well,5 the circumstances in which the two practices took place were qualitatively different and so were the appreciations carried out about them. While the teaching practice with elementary school students involved a daily selection and preparation of didactic material, the extracurricular course offered to high school students was part of a teacher education research project that involved the elaboration and application of didactic sequences focusing on a specific genre. The genres modeled in the didactic sequences to develop reading comprehension capacities in this second moment of the target teaching experiences were fables, biographies and news.

The choice to reflect about some excerpts from the final reports in this paper is justified by the fact they depict the future teachers' appreciations about both experiences. Nevertheless, it is important to clear up that as the product of a formative evaluation, these reports dialogue with several other instruments used to engage future teachers in critical reflection about their practices: reflective diaries, reflective discussion sessions, reviews of theoretical and methodological texts, oral seminars, assessments and self assessments.

As pointed up in Szundy (2009, p. 175):

To write the reports, the future teachers received a set of instructions that, in addition to providing information on format (paragraph, space, font, size, number of pages), detailed in topics what to discuss in each part that compounds the report: Introduction, Methodology (Context and Teaching Methodology), Teaching Practice Analysis, Final Remarks and References. In the topic referring to Teaching Practice Analysis it is underlined the necessity of carrying out a theoretically framed analysis of the teaching practices experienced based on reflective diaries, discussions with the supervisor and peers, students' and self assessments. The expectations concerning a critical reflection about their actions in the classroom on the light of conceptions discussed in English Methodology, especially the ones postulated by official documents (PCN and OCEM) and the studies on speech genres and teaching are also specified in the instructions.

As the product of a formative process in which the reflection about teaching practices is supposed to be constructed through the future teacher's comprehension of crystallized ideological systems, the final reports can be considered an important instrument to discuss the potential zones of learning-and-development that characterizes the target pre-service teacher education.

The following excerpts reveal that the conflict between the two experienced practices was fundamental for Mar's6 potential learning-and-development, which did seem to have taken place in a stage of ideological battles.

Excerpt 17 - Mar's final report

This time, framing my practice in the sociointeractionist views advocated by the National Curricular Parameters (PCN), the methodology was characterized by being democratic. The teacher (I will refer to the trainees as teachers) was not the only authority in the classroom, the only withholder of knowledge. The student acquired the right to speak, to debate, to share their formal knowledge with their peers and with the teachers themselves. In general, every student had some information about the genre biography and about the people in the selected biographies.

Excerpt 2 - Mar's final report

In the classroom we practiced the interaction among students and between teachers and students. Student's voice, his/her opinion, guided the approach used in the didactic sequences. This time, it was not the student who waited for the first word, that is, the teacher's word, to know what he/she was supposed to do. It was us, the teachers, who listened to students, took their opinion under consideration to construct or reconstruct ours. The student abandoned his/her stereotype of information deposit. It was not required of them to memorize facts, formulas and rules. He/she was free to criticize, suggest, add. From apparently simple practices like these, it is possible to create a citizen conscious of his/her rights and duties, aware of the importance of education, not only a utilitarian importance (to get a better job and salary), but for intellectual development.

The time marker this time used by Mar in both excerpts indicate that her evaluations about the teaching practices were constructed through the confrontation of actions experienced in the two moments detailed above. After confronting her practice in the fifth grade of elementary school with the one experienced with second year high school pupils, Mar evaluates that a dialogue with the sociointeractionist views postulated by National Curricular Parameters (PCN), which was supposed to frame both experiences, was just put into practice in the high school teaching experience. It is this meaningful dialogue with the theoretical framework that seems to be the responsible for the success of the second experience compared to the failure of the first one.

It is possible to note that the mediation of other people's words revoiced in the crystallized ideological systems that support both target teaching experiences allowed Mar to establish a conflicting relationship between the two experiences that, in her evaluation, triggered a change of paradigm in practice. Mar's negative appreciation of the experience in the 5th grade was fundamental to modify her comprehension of the interplay between theory and practice, creating a zone for learning-and-development where transformations were not just possible but desirable. The two excerpts from Mar's final report suggest that the two experiences functioned as stages of ideological battles leading the future teacher to evaluate her actions in the first experience as authoritarian and in the second one as more persuasive. Opposite to the experience with 5th grade pupils, the application of the didactic sequence of the genre biography at high school was characterized by being democratic since the teacher was not the only withholder of knowledge and students' voice guided the approach used in the didactic sequences. The changes constructed through confrontation become desirable under the argument that from apparently simple practices like these, it is possible to create a citizen conscious of his/her rights and duties, aware of the importance of education.

A more persuasive relation with other people's word that allows the theory to penetrate into practice and vice-versa can be noticed in the excerpt below, also from Mar's report.

Excerpt 3 - Mar's final report

As someone whom I do not remember exactly said once a pedagogical practice that is not framed in a theory, even if it is unconsciously applied, cannot exist. It is there, in need of revelation, or, if it is the case, of acquisition of a formal status. After stating this view, it is necessary to expose and discuss the theories that support this second phase of my training at Colégio de Aplicação. Considerable part of this theory had been introduced in the partial report, however, as it is known, the theories discussed there were not transposed to reality. This "detail" modifies my view on the theories. The view now is that theory can and must penetrate in the classroom space.

Although the theoretical framework that supported the teaching practices both in elementary and high school was the same, Mar admits that a pedagogical transposition in which practice was really informed by the ideological systems advocated by the specific theoretical principles that framed the target pre-service teacher education experience just happened with the application of the didactic sequence in high school. In the learning-and-development process Mar went through, the confrontation of traditional crystallized EFL practices that focus on the decontextualized teaching of systemic and lexical components with a contextualized practice that aims at developing the knowledge about genres that circulate in the social milieu was crucial to modify the future teacher's views concerning theory and provoke changes into practice.

Like Mar, other two future teachers - Ra and Se - who participated in the same pre-service teacher education project, emphasize in their final reports the importance of a theoretical framed reflection about practice so as to change their actions in the classroom.

Excerpt 4 - Ra's final report

In the perspective of associating the methodology of English for Specific Purpose (ESP) to the approach of teaching reading comprehension through the conception of textual genre, according to the orientation of the National Curricular Parameters (levels of knowledge), the production of didactic material for the classes, instead of adopting a didactic book - became a considerably relevant exercise since it allowed the real and effective comprehension of the gears that support the activities proposed, making it possible to cover almost all the communicative competences in English.8 This demonstrated the viability of activities based on these constructs allowing at the same time the adaptation of the activities to the specific demand of each context.

Excerpt 5 - Se's final report

There were moments in which I noticed a discrepancy between my practice and the theory that guides it. Then I told my friends and myself that we got that right but we need to change this. There lies the importance of reflecting about our own practices. Only through reflection we can avoid that mistaken teaching practices become crystallized in us and intermingle with the theory we advocate when they diverge completely from it.

I believe we accomplished our main purpose, that is, to approach the reading comprehension in English exploring students' world, systemic and textual knowledge so as to increase their future knowledge always in the perspective that knowledge is a social construct. In high school our practice was enriched by a more systematic work with the notion of textual genres.

In addition to depicting the future teachers' evaluations on how a systematic reflection about the teaching practice supported by specific theoretical and methodological conceptions is fundamental to planning, understanding and transforming actions, the five excerpts above also reveal that Mar, Ra and Se were able to establish persuasive relations with other people's discourse in the sense that the several voices that constitute the theoretical framework intermingled in the process of constructing knowledge about the future practice. However, it is also possible to observe that while the confrontation of a teaching experience evaluated as negative with another perceived as positive constituted the material that led to Mar's learning-and-development, Ra's and Se's potential learning-and-development is characterized by a complementary relationship between the practices experienced in elementary and high school.

Opposite to Mar, Ra and Se do not seem to have experienced an initial rejection to the theoretical frameworks that supported both practices. On the contrary, their reflections indicate that they agreed from the beginning with the ideological principle that the combination of ESP principles with the notion of textual genres can be viably combined in the development of activities to construct reading comprehension in EFL teaching practices (Ra) since these theoretical principles share the idea that knowledge is a social construct (Se). Instead of leading to a complete rupture, as observed in Mar's reflection, the initial theoretical affiliation and engagement into a practice that sought to construct reading comprehension relating the text to the context and working with the three levels of knowledge proposed by the PCN - world, systemic and textual knowledge - made Ra's and Se's practices with reading in elementary school to spiral in complexity in high school where the didactic modeling of speech genres allowed an effective comprehension of the gears that support the activities proposed (Ra) and the enrichment of practice with a more systematic work with the notion of speech genres.

Among all the crystallized ideological concepts that contributed to frame Mar's, Ra's and Se's appreciations about the experienced practices and create zones for their potential learning-and-development in the activity of becoming EFL teachers, it can be noted in the excerpts below that the concept of ZPD itself was crucial in their evaluation concerning both the progression of knowledge construction and the role of interaction.

Excerpt 6 - Mar's final report

Before beginning the issue of evaluation, I feel it is necessary to report a problem detected in the didactic sequence. I refer to the progression of contents. There was a moment in which new knowledge concerning the structural properties of biographies was not added. As a result, the construction of these properties in the biography got repetitive and students noticed it. I believe there was a small flaw relating to the position of certain items in the sequence. They could have been better distributed so as to constantly offer a new peculiarity, a new detail about the genre.

Excerpt 7 - Ra's final report

The notion of Vygotsky's knowledge construction and the definition of ZPD helped to understand the phases involved in the student knowledge construction process. As classes followed and activities were recaptured, students gradually became independent to carry out determined activities, which had been observed in other contexts. Underestimate students' comprehension skill was, certainly, the greatest flaw. The encouragement and valorization of students' strategic competence reduced the level of anxiety and increased self-confidence. Without the use of dictionary and translation imposition, they could make reading more efficient and autonomous.

Excerpt 8 - Se's final report

It is precisely in the Zone of Proximal Development that teaching professionals may act, inviting their pupils to participate actively in the teaching-learning process, expressing their ideas and sharing their difficulties with peers and teachers so as to make learning a reciprocal process in which teacher and student learn and feel co-authors in the knowledge construction process.

Unlike Ra and Se, it can be noticed that Mar does not explicitly name the notion of ZPD to establish appreciations about the phases involved in the student knowledge construction process (Ra) or to construct considerations on how professionals may act in the teaching-learning process (Se). Instead, Mar seems to be worried in pointing out problems she perceived in the didactic sequence in what concerns the (lack of) knowledge progression. Nevertheless, in spite of not naming it, it is the concept of ZPD as a zone aimed at providing situations in which knowledge should progress in complexity that supports her critical evaluation that the sequence of activities proposed did not account for an interesting progression of the structural properties of biographies, making knowledge construction be perceived by students as rather repetitive.

The idea of progression can also be noticed in Ra's transposition of the ZPD notion to seek comprehension about the knowledge construction process she experienced. Through the appreciation established by this future teacher, it is possible to suggest that progression took place through retaking. Therefore, recapturing is posed as a fundamental process that led to students' gradual independence and fostered self-confidence, allowing knowledge in the proximal level of development to be internalized in collaborative activity.

Collaboration also represents an important aspect of the ZPD in Se's evaluation, who underlines the fact that it is precisely in the Zone of Proximal Development that teaching professionals may act, inviting their pupils to participate actively in the teaching-learning process. The fact of establishing collaboration and participation as key elements of the ZPD leads Se to the conclusion that learning is a reciprocal process in which teacher and student learn and feel co-authors in the knowledge construction process.

The capacity to transpose the crystallized concept of ZPD to interpret concretely experienced teaching-learning practices constitute a revelation of the three future teachers learning-and-development processes and an indication that the transmission and apprehension of other people's discourse represents an important issue in teacher education programs. It is specifically on this issue I concentrate in the concluding remarks of this paper.

Concluding Remarks

The brief analysis of the eight excerpts from Mar's, Ra's and Se's final reports intended to reflect on the zones of learning-and-development that characterizes the process of becoming an EFL teacher. In this complex process, the transmission and apprehension of other people's discourses play a fundamental role since all the activities involved in the teaching-learning process are evaluated and eventually transformed through participants' comprehension of determined historically crystallized scientific concepts and their capacity to transpose these concepts to concrete teaching-learning situations involving both the elaboration and implementation of didactic sequences to develop reading comprehension in English as a foreign language.

Through the evaluations carried out by the three future teachers in their final reports, it is possible to outline some considerations about their responsive attitude towards the scientific concepts that framed the teaching practices experienced. Based on the bakhtinian presuppose that every utterance reflects and refracts reality, it is possible to suggest that the appreciations delineated by Mar, Ra and Se in their reports both reflect their responsive attitude towards other people's words and refract broader social expectations concerning EFL teaching-learning process.

The fact that the three future teachers approve practices in which students contributions and voices are valued, interaction play an essential role and teachers and pupils are co-authors in knowledge construction processes while historically crystallized practices in which teachers are the only withholder of knowledge and the EFL instruction is focused on the teaching of decontextualized grammar with no connections established between language and its functions in the real world are condemned, reflects the teachers' responsive attitude towards theoretically informed practices and refracts broader social expectations concerning the roles and actions involved in teaching languages, expectations systematically organized into crystallized ideological principles revoiced in several academic genres and in the Brazilian national curricular parameters.

Finally, I conclude the present reflection using once more the spiral shape as a metaphor to portray the transmission and apprehension of other people's discourse involved in the process of becoming an EFL teacher. This complex process involves reconsideration and deconstruction of certain paradigms so as to understand and transpose to practice current crystallized ideologies in order to reconstruct actions according to certain social expectations. Thus, as it happens in the movement of a spiral, reflecting about practice involves constant reconsideration and reconstruction of other people's discourse in order to spiral to a more complex understanding of one's own action; and in this learning-and-development continuous process both actions and participants are transformed.

BAKHTIN, M. M. (1953). The problem of speech genres. In: BAKHTIN, M. M. Speech genres and other late essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee. Texas: University of Texas Press, 1986. p. 60-98.         [ Links ]

BAKHTIN, M. V. (1975). Questões de Literatura e de Estética: a teoria do romance. São Paulo: Editora da UNESP, 1998.         [ Links ]

BERNSTEIN, B. Prefácio. In: DANIELS,Harry (Org.). Vygotsky em foco: pressupostos e desdobramentos. Campinas: Papirus Editora, 1993.         [ Links ]

BRASIL, SEF/MEC. Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais - 3º e 4º ciclos do Ensino Fundamental - Língua Portuguesa. Brasília, DF: SEF/MEC, 1998.         [ Links ]

BRASIL, SEB/MEC. Orientações Curriculares para o Ensino Médio: linguagens, códigos e suas tecnologias. Brasília, DF: SEB/MEC, 2006.         [ Links ]

BRUNER, J. S. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.         [ Links ]

DANIELS, H. Apresentação. In: DANIELS, Harry (Org.). Vygotsky em foco: pressupostos e desdobramentos. Campinas: Papirus Editora, 1993.         [ Links ]

DANIELS, H. (1996). Uma Introdução a Vygotsky. Tradução de Marcos Bagno. São Paulo: Edições Loyola, 2002.         [ Links ]

DANIELS, H. (2001). Vygotsky e a Pedagogia. Tradução de Milton Camargo Mota. São Paulo: Edições Loyola, 2003.         [ Links ]

FREITAS, M. T. A. Bakhtin e Vygotsky: um encontro possível. In: BRAIT, B. (Org.) Bakhtin, Dialogismo e Construção do Sentido. São Paulo: Editora da Unicamp, 1997. p. 311-330.         [ Links ]

DOLZ, J.; SCHNEUWLY, B.; NOVERRAZ, M. Seqüências didáticas para o oral e a escrita: apresentação de um procedimento. In: SCHNEUWLY, B.; DOLZ, J. et al. Gêneros orais e escritos na escola. Campinas, SP: Mercado de Letras, 2004. p. 95-128.         [ Links ]

MOLL, L. C (1990). Vygotsky e a educação: implicações pedagógicas da psicologia sócio-histórica. Tradução de Fani A. Tesseler. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas, 1996.         [ Links ]

NEWMAN, F.; HOLZMAN, L. (1993). Lev Vygotsky: cientista revolucionário. São Paulo: Edições Loyola, 2002.         [ Links ]

ROJO, R. H. R. Interação em sala de aula e gêneros escolares do discurso: um enfoque enunciativo. In: CONGRESSO DA ABRALIN, 2. Anais... Florianópolis: UFSC/ABRALIN, 2000. CD-ROM.         [ Links ]

ROJO, R. H. R. Fazer lingüística aplicada em perspectiva sócio-histórica: privação sofrida e leveza de pensamento. In: MOITA LOPES, L. P. (Org.) Por uma lingüística aplicada indisciplinar. São Paulo: Parábola Editorial, 2006. p. 253-276.         [ Links ]

SCHNEUWLY, B.; DOLZ. J. Gêneros e progressão em expressão oral e escrita - elementos para reflexões sobre uma experiência suíça (francófona). In: ROJO, R.; CORDEIRO, G. S. (Org. e tradutoras) Gêneros Orais e Escritos na Escola. São Paulo: Mercado de Letras, 2004. p. 41-70.         [ Links ]

SAVIGNON, S. J. (1983). Communicative Competence. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1983.         [ Links ]

SCHNEUWLY, B. Contradiction and development: Vygotsky and paedology. European Journal of Psychology of Education, v. 9, n. 4, p. 281-291, 1994.         [ Links ]

SZUNDY, P. T. C. Gêneros do discurso no processo de ensino-aprendizagem de LE: a construção do conhecimento por meio do discurso internamente persuasivo. The ESPecialist, v. 25, n. 2, p. 153-175, 2004.         [ Links ]

SZUNDY, P. T. C. Scientific and spontaneous concepts, primary and secondary genres, behavioral and crystallized ideologies: possible interrelations and educational implications. The ESPecialist, v. 27, n. 2, p. 213-233, 2006.         [ Links ]

SZUNDY, P. T. C. Seqüências didáticas para desenvolvimento da habilidade de leitura em língua inglesa: elaboração e aplicação. Signum Estudos da Linguagem, v. 10, n. 2, p. 43-263, 2007.         [ Links ]

SZUNDY, P. T. C. Construção do conhecimento sobre a futura prática pedagógica: reflexões de alunos-professores sobre um projeto de prática de ensino da língua inglesa. In: TELLES, J. A. (Org.). Formação inicial e continuada de professores de línguas: dimensões e ações na pesquisa e na prática. Campinas, SP: Pontes, 2009. p. 167-181.         [ Links ]

SZUNDY, P. T. C. Modelização didática de gêneros e a formação do futuro professor de língua inglesa: implicações no processo de construção do conhecimento. Revista Letras, v. 20, n. 40, p. 217-237, 2010.         [ Links ]

VOLOSHINOV, V. N. (1929). Marxism and the philosophy of language. Translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.         [ Links ]

VYGOTSKY, L. S. (1930). Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. Edited by Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner, Ellen Souberman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.         [ Links ]

VYGOTSKY, L. S. (1934). Thought and language. Translated by Alex Kozulin. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1986.         [ Links ]

WERTSCH, J. V. A voz da racionalidade em uma abordagem sociocultural da mente. In: MOLL, L. C. (Org.). Vygotsky e a educação: implicações pedagógicas da psicologia sócio-histórica. Tradução de Fani A. Tesseler. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas, 1990/1996, p. 107-121.         [ Links ]

Recebido em 13/2/2012
Aprovado em 7/4/2012

1 A version of this paper was presented in the 16th World Congress of Applied Linguistics - Harmony in Diversity: Language, Culture, Society - held at Beijing Foreign Studies University in Beijing, China, in August 2011. I thank FAPERJ - Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro for the financial support for my participation in this conference.
2 Dolz, Noverraz and Schneuwly (2004, p. 97) define a didactic sequence as "a set of school activities systematically organized around an oral or written textual genre". Unlike other didactic materials in which different genres circulate as a pretext to develop reading, writing, listening or oral competences, in a didactic sequence the construction of these competences demands knowledge about the target genre characteristics and, therefore, the skill to manipulate the several capacities (action, discursive and linguistic capacities) required to comprehend and produce texts in a determined genre. It is in this sense that Schneuwly (2004), based on the vygotskian notion of instrument, suggests that speech genres can be considered complex semiotic instruments in the teaching-learning process.
3 These documents are published by the Ministry of Education with the intention of setting national parameters for the teaching of the several curricular components of basic education (elementary and high school). While the PCN (Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais [BRASIL, 1998]) establishes curricular parameters for the second cycle of elementary school (from the 5th to the 8th grade), the OCEM (Orientações Curriculares do Ensino Médio [BRASIL, 2006]) aims at orientating the curriculum for the three-year high school in Brazil.
4 It is important to clarify that the public school where the teacher was replaced by senior students belongs to the university and has as one of its purposes the creation of spaces for applying methodological and theoretical issues discussed in the teacher education courses offered by the federal university where the project took place.
5 The orientation to focus on reading comprehension is supported by curricular parameters established for EFL teaching in Brazil, which argue for the focus on reading both on the grounds of the social and academic importance of this skill and of the conditions of EFL teaching in most public schools in Brazil.
6 The future teachers are identified by the initial letters of their names.
7 All the excerpts used in this analysis are extracted from final reports written in Portuguese and were translated into English for this paper.
8 The notion of communicative competence proposed by Ra does not refer to the traditional skills involved in language learning (reading, writing, listening and speaking), whereas it is related to the four competences involved in language learning postulated by Savignon (1983): linguistic, sociolinguistic, discursive and strategic competences.

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International Journal of Morphology

versión On-line ISSN 0717-9502

IDOWU, O. E; SHOKUNBI, M.T; MALOMO, A. O  y  AKANG, E. E. U. Anomalies, Aneurysm and Histology of the Middle Cerebral Artery in Nigerian Africans. Int. J. Morphol. [online]. 2008, vol.26, n.4, pp.1023-1027. ISSN 0717-9502.

The histology of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) in Nigerian Africans has not been previously studied. One hundred MCAs obtained at autopsy from fifty adult Nigerians were studied. The vessels were processed and stained with Ehrlich's haematoxylin and eosin, elastic Van Gieson and Masson's trichrome stains. Early branches were given off before the perforators in two middle cerebral arteries, and there was one accessory MCA, making an incidence of anomalies of 3%. No aneurysm was observed in any of the cases. The internal elastic laminas were well developed but the external elastic laminas of the vessels were poorly developed. Cióse to the bif urcations the túnica media tapered gradually and at the bif urcations, the túnica media was completely deficient being replaced by the túnica adventitia (Forbus raphé). The túnica adventitia was thicker at the bifurcations (0.21mm) compared to other sites of the vessel. The average thickness of the MCA túnica media atits origin was 0.12mm while thatof the túnica adventitia was O.lOmm. Theseresults are similar to what has been described in the literature for Caucasians. It buttresses the assertion that anatomical anomalies of the MCA are rare. The seemingly low frequency of MCA aneurysms in Nigerian Africans is not due to its anomalies or histology.

Palabras clave : Anomalies; Histology; Middle cerebral artery.

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A phenomenon has long been believed in psychology: traumatic experiences induce behavioral disorders that are passed down from one generation to the next, a kind of psychological epigenetics.

Recently, neuroscientists have set out to understand what physiological processes might underlie this hereditary trauma. "There are diseases such as bipolar disorder, that run in families but can't be traced back to a particular gene", explains Isabelle Mansuy, professor at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. With her research group at the Brain Research Institute of the University of Zurich, she has been studying the molecular processes involved in non-genetic inheritance of behavioural symptoms induced by traumatic experiences in early life.

Mansuy and her team have succeeded in identifying a key component of these processes: short RNA molecules. These RNAs are synthetized from genetic information (DNA) by enzymes that read specific sections of the DNA (genes) and use them as template to produce corresponding RNAs. Other enzymes then trim these RNAs into mature forms. Cells naturally contain a large number of different short RNA molecules called microRNAs. They have regulatory functions, such as controlling how many copies of a particular protein are made.

Small RNAs with a huge impact

The researchers studied the number and kind of microRNAs expressed by adult mice exposed to traumatic conditions in early life and compared them with non-traumatized mice. They discovered that traumatic stress alters the amount of several microRNAs in the blood, brain and sperm – while some microRNAs were produced in excess, others were lower than in the corresponding tissues or cells of control animals. These alterations resulted in misregulation of cellular processes normally controlled by these microRNAs.

After traumatic experiences, the mice behaved markedly differently: they partly lost their natural aversion to open spaces and bright light and had depressive-like behaviours. These behavioural symptoms were also transferred to the next generation via sperm, even though the offspring were not exposed to any traumatic stress themselves.

Even passed on to the third generation

The metabolism of the offspring of stressed mice was also impaired: their insulin and blood-sugar levels were lower than in the offspring of non-traumatized parents. "We were able to demonstrate for the first time that traumatic experiences affect metabolism in the long-term and that these changes are hereditary", says Mansuy. The effects on metabolism and behaviour even persisted in the third generation.

According to the hereditary trauma hypothesis, the consequences of traumatic experiences can be passed on from one generation to the next. Credit: Isabelle Mansuy / UZH / ETH Zurich

"With the imbalance in microRNAs in sperm, we have discovered a key factor through which trauma can be passed on", explains Mansuy. However, certain questions remain open, such as how the dysregulation in short RNAs comes about. "Most likely, it is part of a chain of events that begins with the body producing too much stress hormones."

Importantly, acquired traits other than those induced by trauma could also be inherited through similar mechanisms, the researcher suspects. "The environment leaves traces on the brain, on organs and also on gametes. Through gametes, these traces can be passed to the next generation."

Mansuy and her team are currently studying the role of short RNAs in trauma inheritance in humans. As they were also able to demonstrate the microRNAs imbalance in the blood of traumatized mice and their offspring, the scientists hope that their results may be useful to develop a blood test for diagnostics.

Citation: Gapp K, Jawaid A, Sarkies P, Bohacek J, Pelczar P, Prados J, Farinelli L, Miska E, Mansuy IM: Implication of sperm RNAs in transgenerational inheritance of the effects of early trauma in mice. Nature Neuroscience, April 13, 2014, DOI:10.1038/nn.3695. Source: ETH Zurich


text:
Healthy attitude delivers endless wealth of opportunities

PUBLISHED : Friday, 12 December, 2003, 12:00am
UPDATED : Friday, 12 December, 2003, 12:00am

For 2002 Young Entrepreneur Award winner Raju Harilela, achieving the right balance in life is the key to both contentment and success.

'The older you get, the more you work towards things of value, not materially, but internal values,' he says.

That said, Mr Harilela has just bought Soho Delivery, a restaurant food delivery company.

Already the owner of Dial-a-Dinner, which includes 30 restaurants in its programme and delivers all over Hong Kong island and Kowloon, this latest purchase brings the number of food outlets under the umbrella of the Harilela Strategic Group to 93, with a target of achieving 100 restaurants early next year.

'This has all happened in a matter of three days' Mr Harilela enthuses. 'Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and the deal was done. Only in Hong Kong can business move with this sort of speed. There really is no other city in the world like this.

'I do think though that as this world moves at a faster speed, we forget what peace there is in silence, what strength we get from inside of ourselves and my interest in yoga centres me and has taught me to look within myself, and this relates to business as well.

'I believe every business we enter into must be a fair business, that every set-up we have, whether it's a relationship with other departments, suppliers or our employees, must be a fair relationship, and to me that is more of a criteria for success than profitability.

'The primary goal should be to enjoy the process of life, and if you do, that is already success for today, regardless of what success results in the future.

'As the recipient of the Young Entrepreneur Award, I can look back on the past year with hindsight and appreciate the enormous prestige associated with winning this award and the positive acknowledgement and recognition it has, not only in Hong Kong but throughout the international business community.'

Mr Harilela is also a great believer in leading by example. He also believes it is through life's difficulties that we learn and achieve wisdom. 'I believe people who are going to be successful acknowledge that life is a journey of learning and experience,' he says. 'If people look at me as a successful person today, they should realise that it is a result of my life experience and learning to date.'

On November 3, Mr Harilela established a new company, Pure Spa Asia, which incorporates total spa solutions and everything to do with the wellness industry. The new company will include 15 brands covering everything from treatment tables, aromatherapy oils, clays, wraps, bath salts and body scrubs.

'I established this business some 15 years ago, and looking to the future I see that we will continue to expand,' Mr Harilela says. 'The rapid development of the hotel industry in China and the growing awareness of everything pertaining to the wellness industry presents us with myriad opportunities for the foreseeable future.'

Over the past year, Mr Harilela has been reviewing the restaurant arm of his business.

'We have been reorganising our assets and the company and bringing in certain levels of quality and standards with regard to everything from human resources to management. My hope would be to look at an eventual public offering for the Harilela Strategic Group.'

One of Mr Harilela's personal goals is to open a totally holistic health centre.

'I would love to open a place where people with any sort of illness could come before a board of experts from all segments of the wellness industry, so we could treat both the body and mind, and they could have the attention that would enable them to truly heal as a whole person, mentally, physically and spiritually.'


text:
Mainland executions up 260pc, report says

PUBLISHED : Friday, 29 May, 2009, 12:00am
UPDATED : Friday, 29 May, 2009, 12:00am

Related topics

At least 1,700 people were executed on the mainland last year, up 260 per cent from the year before, and more than 7,000 death sentences were handed down by the mainland courts, Amnesty International said yesterday in its annual human rights report.

The mainland accounted for more than 70 per cent of the 2,390 executions worldwide, it said. Twenty-four other countries still use capital punishment.

The Supreme People's Court resumed the power to review death sentences in late 2006, and there was a significant drop in executions in 2007, with 470 executions and 1,860 death penalties handed down.

The report said Beijing had vetoed a UN resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions, but was making increased use of lethal injections, said to be a 'more humane' method of execution.

It said human rights defenders, petitioners, religious practitioners, ethnic minorities, lawyers, and journalists had risked being subjected to torture and other ill-treatment by the authorities and unidentified individuals in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in August. Beijing was also accused of tightening its grip on free expression last year.

The report also cited Tibetan organisations as saying that hundreds of Tibetans remained in detention at the end of last year for their alleged connection with unrest in March 2008. The authorities say very few remain in detention and that more than 1,000 people detained in relation to the protests were released last year.

Amnesty said several Tibetans were suspected to have been tortured to death in detention centres or labour camps. Meanwhile, the suppression of Uygurs had been stepped up in the name of fighting terrorism, it said.


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All those responsible shall be brought to justice for Crimea

A. Yatseniuk: All those responsible shall be brought to justice in Ukrainian and international courts for the situation in Crimea

03.03.2014 | 12:56
Department of Information and Communication of the Secretariat of the CMU

"There have been and never will be any grounds for the use of force against civilians and for the brining Russian troops. Price has to be paid for the actions," Prime Minister of Ukraine Arsenii Yatseniuk said at a press conference after a meeting with UK Foreign Secretary William Hague Monday, March 3.

The Prime Minister stressed that the common position of the West on the situation in Ukraine demonstrates not only by visits of our Western partners, but also "by a clear demonstration that Ukraine is the united state and that is happening in the Crimea is a violation of all international norms and standards."

According to Arsenii Yatseniuk after in fact Western world has abolished the meeting G8 (in Sochi - ed.), the assets of Russian companies fell by 12% this morning. "Today Gazprom is by 12% cheaper than it was worth yesterday."

"We realize that Russia has its own interests, but we address to Russia: you have no right to disrupt our rights pursuing yours," he emphasized.

"Moreover, there have been and never will be any reason to use force against the Ukrainians and against civilians in Ukraine, bring the Russian troops to our state. Price has to be paid for the actions," Arsenii Yatseniuk stressed.

The Prime Minister stressed that no one gives away Crimea: "That is happening in Crimea, when the self-proclaimed illegitimate authorities are trying to nationalize the Ukrainian state property and try to disarm the Ukrainian Armed Forces - all those responsible shall be brought to justice in Ukrainian and international courts for the situation in Crimea."

Arsenii Yatseniuk also informed that during his meeting with UK Foreign Secretary it was discussed the United Kingdom assistance in search of stolen assets by former government, "UK will help with experts to prosecutor’s offices, law enforcement agencies, security agencies to find all assets immediately that the former government had stolen in the people of Ukraine."

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Gordon Campbell: On The US Election Home Stretch

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Record applications for entrepreneurs scheme

Have your say

Record numbers of budding young entrepreneurs have applied for places on the Saltire Foundation’s undergraduate internship programme.

The scholarship scheme, which offers students the chance to experience life in some of the world’s top companies, has attracted nearly 100 people, a rise of more than 30 per cent on a year earlier.

Sandy Kennedy, chief executive of the Saltire Foundation, said: “These numbers are a clear indication of the increasing value that is being placed on the Foundation’s scholarship programme and the recognition within the business community of its intrinsic worth.

“We have been very impressed so far by the quality of the candidates who are coming forward. I am confident of another very fulfilling year.”

The scholarship scheme attracted 34 undergraduates in 2009, rising to 68 in 2011.

Meanwhile, applications are still being invited for the Foundation’s fellowship programme, which is aimed at “talented and hard-working mid–level professionals”, offering “an innovative and exciting way to fast-track their careers”.

An intensive study period at Babson College in Boston – one of the world’s top-ranked business schools – is followed by three months of international and Scotland-based placements.

The fellowship programme is a partnership between the Saltire Foundation and the US-UK Fulbright Commission, which was created in 1948 by US senator William Fulbright. There are two routes to becoming a fellow – through open enrolment and via employer sponsorship.

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How a Scot’s portrait inspired Belgian artist Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans' John Playfair

Luc Tuymans' John Playfair

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SINCE being shocked by a Henry Raeburn portrait more than 40 years ago, Belgian artist Luc Tuymans has found enlightenment through reinvention

LUC Tuymans first discovered the work of Scottish portraitist Sir Henry Raeburn when he was 16 years old. It was a moment of epiphany for the 58-year-old Belgian, now a renowned artist in his own right.

Belgian artist Luc Tuymans. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

Belgian artist Luc Tuymans. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

On a visit to the Museum of Fine Art in Ghent, Tuymans saw Raeburn’s “beautiful” portrait of Scottish landowner and Jamaican plantation owner Alexander Edgar. Tuymans, whose first Scottish exhibition opens in Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery this week, was “shocked”. He reveals this while he accompanies critics and arts journalists around his recent, disquieting exhibition, The Shore, at the David Zwirner gallery in Mayfair.

The teenage Tuymans was shocked “by the blue of Edgar’s eyeballs”. That blue still shocks him today, he adds, standing in front of three small, ghostly, bleached-out portraits of Scottish Enlightenment figures originally painted by Raeburn, but which Tuymans has made entirely his own, although each faux-digital image is suffused with a chilly light as blue as those eyeballs. The trio are now “in disguise, so to speak”, he tells me later. They are historian and university rector William Robertson, scientist and mathematician John Playfair and physicist John Robison and the Raeburn originals will be seen in Birds Of A Feather, Tuymans’ Edinburgh exhibition.

“What shocked me even more about that first painting was its unfinished nature, the accuracy of the brushwork,” says Tuymans, over coffee as black as his clothes when we talk in Zwirner’s office. “The strokes are persistent, very decisive, very modern, very dry, not lyrical like Hogarth. Raeburn painted with immediacy and urgency. Like Caravaggio, he just paints – he didn’t draw.”

Sparking up the first of a chain of cigarettes, Tuymans adds: “Raeburn has a very rigid approach. He’s harsh and unforgiving, quite Calvinist, I suppose, but very humanist. That first portrait still intrigues me and I had heard a lot about Scotland from my friend, the artist Douglas Gordon, so I visited Edinburgh, in the summer of 2014, during the run-up to Scotland’s independence referendum, and saw lots of Raeburns. I photographed them on my iPhone, printed them out, then photographed them again and blew them up, zooming in on the subjects’ faces until you get a real face that doesn’t feel of that time, a face you might encounter in the street in Edinburgh today. Open faces, faces that intrigue, faces that are funky.

Orange Red Brown  by Luc Tuymans

Orange Red Brown by Luc Tuymans

“The portraits are very Scottish so there’s a feeling of splendid isolation, as well as an element of class.”

His Birds Of A Feather show marks not only Tuymans’ engagement with Raeburn, but also the Enlightenment. During his stay in Edinburgh, he watched the run-up to the referendum with interest. “I was fascinated by the political climate in Scotland, so I wanted to make paintings that give the idea that there’s an element of disruption to the isle, hence these portraits.

“I began reading a lot about the Enlightenment, which was enlightening to me. I was shocked to discover that I had not known how important Scottish people were in the world. These thinkers who believed in the ability of humans to shape their future rationally and whose influence extended as far as the American constitution. Also I was moved by their belief that you can be poor but not illiterate. Yet the class system still prevails. It was a revelation.”

The ethics of the Enlightenment, which prioritised reason, science, tolerance, rule of law, trade and individualism over traditional lines of authority, is therefore juxtaposed with notions of impending horror of today’s world in other recent works, such as his monumental painting The Shore, which depicts people the moment before they are shot, alluding to Goya’s Black Paintings. Meanwhile, a major retrospective of Tuymans’ work has just opened in Doha. For the biggest exhibition of his career, he has made a new group of paintings that references, albeit obliquely, Isil’s atrocities in the Middle East, again influenced by Goya’s “pinturas negras”.

A profoundly political, provocative artist, Tuymans has addressed Belgian colonialism in Congo, the Holocaust, serial killers and post-9/11 America in his work, interrogating the way that facts are filtered down to us. He remains unapologetic about his love of figurative painting. “Painting fascinates me and gives me a lot of pleasure. Painting is powerful,” he says.

He always paints from pre-existing imagery, ranging from internet images, newspaper articles and magazine pictures to TV footage and old movies. In Edinburgh he even found inspiration from the wallpaper in the Balmoral Hotel while having afternoon tea with his wife. His painting, Cloud, is based on the pattern, showing an obelisk in a wooded landscape, with a single puffy cloud in the sky, “a big, floating croissant – that’s the disgust we have for the class society”.

He has never made any secret of the fact that he appropriates found imagery, although when I met him, he was trailing clouds of controversy. He had just been found guilty of plagiarism, in a Belgian civil court, after using a newspaper photograph by Katrijn Van Giel to paint the politician Jean-Marie Dedecker. The case was settled out of court this month. In a joint statement the confidential agreement was described as “amicable.”

So why call his Edinburgh exhibition Birds Of A Feather?

“I wanted to make new work for Edinburgh, so the [Raeburn] portraits will be juxtaposed with same-size paintings of yellow canaries, very colourful. Edinburgh University has the largest collection of stuffed birds in the world – a natural, historical, scientific connection with the Enlightenment. But the title comes from a book, The American Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Home Decorating, so I hope that engaging with the domestic and the mundane might prompt consideration of the role of women in the Enlightenment or even the Highland Clearances. My fascination with Scotland and the Scots is only just beginning.”

• Luc Tuymans: Birds Of A Feather is at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, from Saturday until 19 December.

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Practice Observations

Today was practice one for the Florida Gators and here are some of my observations regarding Florida's young QBs, receivers and more.

The first day of fall practice brought two groups of Gator players, the first led by Ingle Martin and Chris Leak, while the second group was led by Gavin Dickey and Justin Midgett. Ed Zaunbreaker threw a lot at the young QB's with the offense and the play calling. All four QB's had their moments with the first group looking collectively better. One reason may have been the fact that the first group had more experienced wide receivers and tight end Ben Troupe. Defensively, Keiwan Ratliff led the way going the distance at defensive back and looking very comfortable at his corner position.

Offense worked on their patent gun three wide formation mostly in the passing game. Ingle Martin used the middle of the field well in pass skeleton finding Ben Troupe four times. Chris Leak looked vertical more, especially in man coverages to Dallas Baker who made a catch off a defensive players back. Baker and Leak hooked up four times in skeleton alone. The offense used the same scripts in both practices with the main emphasis on their screen package, the option, inside zone in the run game and their boot or play action series. All four quarterbacks seemed very comfortable on the edge with the ball in their hands. The receivers in the first group that really stood out were Dallas Baker and Ben Troupe. Kelvin Kight and Carlos Perez were solid not flashy. In the second session Andre Caldwell looked really talented. Defensivel,y I was impressed with Demetrice Webb in the first session and Reynaldo Hill looked very good in the second session.

Day One - Quarterback Evaluation:

Ingle Martin: Ingle was solid but not flashy. In skeleton he was 7-12 and worked the middle of the field like he did in the spring. He only attempted one real deep ball but did do a nice job of finding his reads. He suffered some drops in team period. Overall day one was a lot like the spring, solid and efficient.

Chris Leak: Chris made some sensational throws but also pressed a bit during drills. In skeleton he was 7-13 with four passes to Baker. Chris needs to work on taking some steam of his short throws especially in the quick passing game. He seemed very comfortable and has a strong arm. Overall, a very good first day.

Gavin Dickey: Gavin did not have as much to work with as the other two QB's and it showed. He still throws the prettiest long ball of any of the quarterbacks. He finshed 5-12 during skeleton with two drops. One throw should have been caught. He did however make a bad decision on a coverage sack in which he forced an interception. He tried to find Vernell Brown deep a couple of times but it did not connect. Overall, an average first day but he had young receivers and new tight ends.

Justin Midgett: He seems to be clearly behind the other three right now in my mind. That said, he finished 6-8 when he went third with the afternoon group behind Matt Kynes. He hooked up on a nice vertical route with Andre Caldwell which was in coverage. He is not as savvy as Leak but had typical first day for an incoming freshman. Overall, decent first day but I can see him being a redshirt candidate unless he gets a better feel for the offense.

Ack's First Day Thoughts:

Andre Caldwell may force Zook to leave Keiwan on defense. Joe Cohen seemed hobbled by a pulled groin. Earl Everett looks athletic but a little undersized. Guss Scott looks bigger and faster and had a solid practice. Matt Jackson had a solid day at corner. I like Reynaldo Hill in man coverage where he seems very comfortable. It's tough to read the interior lineman on both sides until they get the pads on. Jonathon Colon was back at right tackle and Kenny Parker looked good on the hoof. The running backs seem healthy and ready to go. Reggie Vickers is not on the roster and was not at practice.

Do you want this kind of Fall Practice coverage on a daily basis? Then is your source! Sign up today and don't miss a single pass, catch or interception as the Gators prepare for the 2003 season! Click here to become a club member today!

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TOC Video Clips: Tyreke Evans

Tyreke Evans was one of the Tournament of Champions' most impressive performers, leading the age group in scoring (27.0 points), highlighted by the Saturday game in which he had 23 points in the first half and the game-tying three and game-winning assist in the second half -- and then said in the postgame interview that UNC was his favorite school. Inside Carolina recorded exclusive footage from that game ...

#12 Tyreke Evans
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* TOC: Tyreke Evans Spotlight
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Practice report, Tuesday

The Rebels held their third two-a-days workout of thhe fall camp today. Read inside what Ole Miss Coach Ed Orgeron thought of the workouts.

The Rebels woprked out twice today and the results put a smile on Ole Miss Coach Ed Orgeron's face.

Coach O: We had an excellent today. We had one of our better practices this morning and then followed that up with our best practice of two-a-days this afternoon. We really challenged them coming off yesterday, which was one of our worst practices to this point. They came back today hard, which is the sign of a good team. We had several individuals who showed up well. Jerrell Powe was more active than he has been and he made some dominating plays this afternoon in the backfield. So did Peria Jerry. This morning, we got after the offense with the blitz. This afternoon the offense made som adjustments and we threw the ball well this afternoon, especially in third-down situations. Seth Adams did a nice job throwing today. Mike Wallace made some big plays as well as Dexter McCluster, Robert Lane and Marshay Green. We threw it a lot better this afternoon. Joshua Shene was excellent in placements. We worked on punt block in special teams and we are excited about what we are seeing there with some special things we are putting in. It was a very tough day today, but they responded very well.

Q: Any eligibility news yet?

Coach O: We are getting a little feedback, but no final "yes" or "no" yet.

Q: How is Chris Strong doing in making checks and reading defenses at this point?

Coach O: He made a couple of mistakes today, but he still has the physical tools. What we like is his ability to play downhill. Obviously he's not going to get everything yet - the reads and such - but we are seeing some things we really like. Let me say we are excited about him but there are a lot of things he has to get better at and he has to lose some weight. He can't play at the weight he's at right now, but we feel we can get him down.

Q: What is a good weight for him?

Coach O: Patrick Willis was 245. I think Chris at 250 would be a pretty comfortable weight, I'm sure. This was Chris and Jerrell's first day in full pads and they handled it well. Jerrell made a play about seven yards deep in the backfield, kind of like the dominating plays I have seen before in coaching the DL at other schools. Chris made plays too. Their plays brought some spirit to the team and gave the offensive line somethig to think about as well. The OL is now going against a better level of football player in practice and it will give them a good taste of what they will face in the SEC.

Q: What about the other three freshmen DL?

Coach O: Teddy is coming along fine. Lawon has some good movement skills. Justin Sanders is tough. They are coming along, but they have a lot to work on too. I haven't seen any freshmen hit the wall yet, but you can sense the pace is getting to them a little bit. All the isntallationa nd practice and everything is time-consuming, but they are hanging in there.

Q: Talk a little about Jamison Hughes.

Coach O: Jamison is not practicing right now. He has a jaw problem from a big hit. I don't know when he will be back, but we want him back because he's one of the better saafeties we signed. I really like his athletic ability and his attention to detail. He has good knowledge and he's a big kid for a safety.

Q: Hypothetically, if Chris won the MLB job, would he be in a position to make your defensive calls or would someone like Cornell do that?

COach O: He's making them now. It's not hard to get our signals down. We're not very complicated. Go get the ball. It will still be a challenge for him. We have to get them all qualified by Saturday, that's their last day, or things could change quickly out there. And what everyone has to understand, he has to earn the Red (first team ) jersey. He doesn't have it permanently yet. It could change tomorrow.

Coach O: Talk about the depth in the backfield.

Coach O: We need all three of our tailbacks to keep them fresh. I want to play all three. I would like to play two at once sometimes to give our opponents something to think about and give us another weapon. They are doing well.

Q: You mentioned Mike Wallace today. How much are you challenging him to be on the same level with Green and McCluster?

Coach O: Always challenging him, always. We want him to use his strengths. He's becoming a better blocker, a better short route runner and he's catching the ball better. He's come along. He has to.

Q: Is Lionel Breaux still progressing like you want?

Coach O: He's doing very well. He's a nice athlete. Smooth and shifty. He has a little something extra about him. Good kid too.

Q: Did Seth throw a lot better today than yesterday?

Coach O: Seth made some real good throws this afternoon, a lot better than yesterday. I think he was trying to fool the media yesterday. He did a good job of it. (laughs)

Q: What will you do in the scrimmage tomorrow?

Coach O: We'll be pretty basic. The ones will go 48 plays. It will be preseason game number two. We will also go over a lot of special teams stuff.

Q: was one of the problems with the offense yesterday that John Jerry and Reid Neely were not in the OL?

Coach O: Yes. That's big. We were playing with Rishaw Johnson and Mark Jean-Louis. They are going to be good but those guys are nowhere near John and Reid, not even close yet. We will be fine.

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Monday Podcast: Harvey Hyde talks about USC vs. Oregon

Coach Harvey Hyde shares his thoughts on what went wrong for the Trojans up in Eugene plus he answers all of your questions about this Trojan football team.

Click here for previous episodes of the Peristyle Podcast.

We have new episodes of the Peristyle Podcast every week, covering USC Trojan football and recruiting in podcast form since 2008.

Not a member? Sign up now and you'll get a seven day FREE trial! Join the Peristyle Family and get all the great information from USC football practices, Trojan football games, access to the Peristyle and all of the premium recruiting updates on! Become a member today!

Ryan Abraham has been the publisher of since 1996. You can follow him on Twitter at @InsideTroy or email him at Top Stories


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Downey hopes to highlight its role in space history

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On the surface, Downey, California, looks like any other L.A. suburb. It has strip malls, wide streets and block after block of homes.

But from the early 1960s to the late '90s, Downey's Rockwell plant helped America explore space by designing and building lunar capsules and space shuttles.

The plant closed in 1999 and since then, much of that story has faded. But residents like Andrew Wahlquist hope to bring it back to the forefront.

"Downey's slogan has been 'Future Unlimited' because we always kind of held this idea that we reach for stars," he said. "So when we lost our plant, we kind of lost that larger goal."

Wahlquist founded the Downey Arts Coalition and this month, the organization is putting on a play called "Defying Gravity." It tells the story of the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster.

Even though it's a sad story, Wahlquist says the city should take pride in the fact that that shuttle, and all other space shuttles, came from designs made in Downey.

At its peak, the city's Rockwell plant employed 30,000 workers. President Reagan and Queen Elizabeth both visited the sprawling 200 acre facility.

But few in Downey's younger generation know of the city's role in the space race.

"I just thought Downey was like a boring city," said 19-year-old Baselaya Martinez, hanging out at Downing Landing, a shopping mall built where the Rockwell plant once stood.

She says no one she knows talks about the "Space Age" history of her hometown, but once she heard about the important things that happened right where she was standing, she got really excited.

"That's crazy!" she laughed. "It's called 'Downey Landing' for a reason, I guess."

In addition to the mall, a science center also stands in the footprint where the Rockwell plant once was. It's called the Columbia Memorial Space Center and is dedicated to the memory of the crew of the Columbia Space Shuttle that perished in 2003.

Downey Mayor Mario Guerra calls the spot "sacred ground" because so many historic NASA missions got their start there.

Exhibits at the space center highlight many of those missions. Kids who visit can build robots, learn about gravity and operate a replica of a NASA mission control center.

The center opened in late 2009. It cost $10 million to build and requires more than $600,000 a year to operate. Guerra says the city made a choice to prioritize the center, even when it had to cut $11 million from its budget two years back.

Still, Downey doesn't yet have all the funds it needs to build a proper exhibit for the full-size space shuttle prototype it keeps in a tent across the street.

The wooden structure is dubbed Inspiration because it was the model that all space shuttles were based on. Rockwell built the prototype to win a contract from NASA in 1972.

"This is the first, the only one that exists," Guerra said.

Downey city officials are looking to raise $3 million to build a permanent home for the Inspiration.

That amount pales in comparison to the $200 million currently being raised by the California Science Center to house the Endeavour space shuttle. The flight-weathered craft has helped bring more than a million visitors to the Science Center, where it remains a blockbuster attraction.

Still, Mayor Guerra says Inspiration offers something Endeavour can't: a truly hands-on experience.

"It's made out of wood," he said while knocking on the model's side. "You can touch it."

Guerra hopes that exhibits like this will bring attention to Downey's past and inspire a new generation of local kids to associate their hometown with America's race for the stars.

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Film critic Roger Ebert dies aged 70

The world renowned critic died on Thursday [Apr 4] in Chicago following a long battle with cancer. He was 70.

Throughout a career in which he gained fame both in print and as a broadcaster, Ebert was never afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve, championing both commercial and erudite films.

The Illinois native was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize – in 1975 – and became a household name in the US through his review show, Sneak Previews. He reviewed films for the Chicago Sun-Times for 47 years and eventually became the first film critic to earn a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

Ebert’s health declined in the last 10 years and he suffered from cancers of the thyroid and salivary glands.

When he lost part of his lower jaw in 2006 he refused to become a recluse and embarked upon a candid chronicle of his health that reached a new audience.

In what would be his final blog earlier this week as he prepared to embark on radiation treatment following a recurrence of cancer, Ebert wrote: “I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers hand-picked and greatly admired by me.”

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert started his reporting career at the age of 15 as a high school sportswriter at the News-Gazette in Champaign-Urbana. As well as writing books on film, he wrote several screenplays including Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls for B-movie maestro Russ Meyer.

The Toronto International Film Festival issued a statement on Thursday evening that read: “We are terribly saddened by the news of the passing of our friend Roger Ebert. More than a friend, Roger was family. He knew us from our humble beginnings, stuck by us, and helped us grow, as only family can do.

“It is no exaggeration to say that Roger, through his championing, had a large hand in making us who we are today on the world stage. He was a pioneer, a true lover of film. His passing is a huge loss for cinema. He inspired us and will continue to inspire generations. We are taking this opportunity to remember and celebrate our beloved friend, Roger Ebert. Our hearts go out to Chaz and to their family and friends.”

Ebert is survived by his wife Chaz Hammelsmith, step-daughter and two step-grandchildren.

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Research & Collaboration

The memory wall has become a significant factor in the performance of many scientific applications. Time-to-solution for an application may primarily depend on how efficiently it uses the memory subsystems of the machines on which it runs. MultiMAPS, parameterized by cache hit rates, and specifically designed to fit into a framework for predicting the performance of memory-bound applications is a simple memory benchmark. MultiMAPS measures the achievable bandwidths of memory operations on a machine as a function of cache hit rates.

Download a copy of the MultiMAPS source code distribution: MultiMAPS (revision 3153).

See the README contained within this package for information on how to get started configuring and running MultiMAPS.