Intercontinental Academia's Programme

8:30 am

Master class with José Goldemberg

The 80 years of the University of São Paulo: a critical review

10:30 am

Talk with Matthew Kleban

Cosmic History and Time’s Arrow

Kleban will begin by outlining what we know of the cosmological history of the universe.  He will discuss theories of the big bang - whether it was the “beginning” of time, or whether there were events that preceded it - and their implications for the ultimate fate of the universe.  Lastly, he will discuss the “arrow” of time - why there is a difference between past and future - and how this difference relates to cosmology.

2 pm

Talk with Laymert Garcia dos Santos

Myth and Technoscience in Transcultural Amazonas

The talk will focus on the transcultural experiment of conceiving and staging a multimedia opera whose subject is the Amazonian rainforest as seen from the shamanistic and the technoscientific perspectives.

4 pm

Talk with René Nome

Playing with Time in Chemistry

Technological developments allowing us to observe molecules in real time will be summarized. Along the way, several examples of how we play with time in chemistry will be presented.

6 pm

Talk with Eliezer Rabinovici

Constructing Time In Physics- Attempts

How physicists have been attempting to come to grips with the experience of a time and it's flow. This will involve glimpses at the concepts discovered and developed to study large and small time scales. Such ideas includes Unified theories and String theory. This lecture will be at a popular level while touching upon basic problems in Physics.

9:30 am

Talk with Sami Pihlström

Time and Eternity

A brief philosophical talk on the philosophy of time from this specific perspective, with a connection to the philosophy of religion.

10:30 am

Talk with Carolina Escobar

Adjustment to temporal cycles and the dangers of disrupted biological rhythms

Organisms living on Earth are exposed to geographical cycles which require rhythmic adjustments in behavior and physiology in order to anticipate these cyclic changes. In this talk temporal cycles and their impact on individuals will be discussed, as well as the mechanisms that allow temporal adaptation. Next, the relevance of a correct synchrony between the biological timing and the external cycles will be discussed as a factor for health and wellbeing. Finally experimental models for temporal disruption will be presented and the results obtained with such models indicating the loss of homeostasis and of behavioral adaptation.

2 pm

Talk with Ruud Buijs

The timing of brain and body physiology

In our conversation I will aim to cover the mechanisms that our brain is using to synchronize our physiology to the requirements of the day. The importance of such synchronization for our health has been demonstrated in many different studies. The first task of our brain is that it needs to take care of itself, for that it has an elaborate system that provides it continuously with information about the state of our body. Naturally the state of energy in our body is of the utmost importance because our brain uses up to 20% of the available energy most in the form of glucose. Only if that is available in sufficient amounts then the brain can think of reproducing itself. Because the available energy depends for all organisms on the energy of the sun many systems have developed that take into account the day night cycle and thus the availability of food. This appears to be the main organizational principle in most organisms. Therefore we will see a very close association between time energy and physiology.  Therefore time is important for the functioning temperature regulation, reproduction, metabolism, circulation and immune system. Therefore the mechanisms of this interweaving of time with these different physiological systems will be the topic of our conversation.

4 pm

Talk with Hideyo Kunieda

Time in Astronomy

How time is related to astronomy, specially discussing time delay surrounding the black holes (the effect of the general theory of relativity)

6 pm

Talk with Till Roenneberg

Circadian behaviour and sleep in the real world

8:30 am

Talk mediated by Vera Imperatriz Fonseca with Tiago Quental and Luiz Gylvan Meira Filho

Earth's time and the Anthropocene

Tiago Quental - The dynamics and drivers of biodiversity in geological time

The history of biodiversity is characterized by a recurrent extinction of species and by a continual replacement of different branches in the tree of life. This replacement dynamics is ultimately determined by changes in speciation and extinction rates. The fossil record offers an unprecedented opportunity to understand the deep time history of biodiversity because it directly preserves this unfolding dynamics. Here I will present how we can use the fossil record of mammals to discuss the history of biodiversity and the potential factors that might drive changes in speciation and extinction rates at a geological time scale. I show that the wax and wane in diversity has a deterministic component, that the decline of diversity is equally controlled by a failure to originate a new species as by a rise in extinction rate, and that biotic interactions might be equally relevant as climate change on controlling changes in biodiversity at deep time.

Luiz Gylvan Meira Filho - Time scales of and climate change

Climate is defined as the statistics of the variables that describe the instantaneous state of the climate system (atmosphere, oceans and biosphere).  The use of proxy variables allows us to retrace the history of the main climate variables as far back as 70 million years before present.  A summary of our presente knowledge will be presented, showing variability of climate in all time scales.  Of particular interest is the history of atmospheric carbono dioxide concentration and temperature over the last eight hundred thousand years, which are closely correlated, the records over the past twelve thousand years, called the Holocene of Anthropocene, when civilization developed.  In the recente period since the industrial revolution, human activities resulted in the emission of carbono dioxide and other greenhouse gases in a time scale shorter than that of the natural feedback mechanisms;  This inbalance of time scales is driving the global climate into regions of the phase space not occupied before.

10:30 am

Talk with Karl-Heinz Kohl

Concepts of time across the cultures: an anthropological view

What people understand by “time” – if an equivalent to the English term exists at all – is always culturally embedded. How time is conceptualized depends strongly from each society’s mode of production and forms also a central part of its religious worldview. In my paper, I will compare the linear time concept of modern industrial societies to the time concepts of early agrarian, pastoral and hunter-gatherer societies to show the differences as well as some surprising similarities.

2 pm

Wrap-up of the four previous talks

4 pm

Talk with Course Success Team of Coursera

6 pm

Talk with Takao Kondo

Circadian clock: Chronometry of living organism to live on the Earth

As we depend on mechanical/electrical clock, living organisms have accurate chronometer in the cells to fit their life to the 24 hour cycle in environment of the Earth. Kondo will report recent progress of the biochronometry and discuss it with chronometer that our industry developed to understand a principle of time of the day.

8:30 am

Resting day with social-cultural activities

10 am

Workshop with Brazilian Minister of Education, Renato Janine Ribeiro (for oficial participants and other guests)

The University of the future

3 pm

The Future of the Universities

with Marco A. Zago, Carlos Vogt, Naomar de Almeida Filho, Luiz Bevilacqua, John Heath and Klaus Capelle. Debaters: Helena B. Nader and Marcelo Knobel. Moderation: Sabine Righetti

6 pm

Report by Marcelo Knobel

8:30 am

Talk with Leopold Nosek

Birth and myth: A reflection on temporality

10:30 am

Plenary

2 pm

Talk with Till Roenneberg about his experience with Coursera

Circadian clocks: how rhythms structure life

4 pm

Raising questions

6 pm

Talk with Vera Lucia Imperatiz-Fonseca

Biodiversity and Global Policies

8:30 am

Raising questions

2 pm

Plenary

6 pm

Talk with Regina P. Markus

STOP, STOP... A necessary pause in the flow of time

The crosstalk on synchronization of the internal and environmental time is an universal concept and is associated to adaption of life on earth. Gene clocks, special neuronal pathways and hormonal outputs regulate and sinchronize all the biological funcions, and the relationship between living organisms. But, there is a moment, when stoping internal timing is essential. There is a moment when synchronization of body function are secondary. How and why internal timing needs to be transiently stopped will be discussed.

8:30 am

Designing a MOOC on time

2 pm

Designing and Proposals

6 pm

Talk with Massimo Canevacci

The ethnographic  experiences of digital cultures and the syncretic mix of spacetimes

My paper will present an anthropological perspective on time through the key-concept of ubiquity: ubiquitimes. Digital cultures and communication are going to transform the classical distinction of space-and-time, favouring a decentred and non-linear experiences of spacetimes. A strong metaphorical use of this term has been used recently on web-culture. A shared affirmation is that the web is ubiquitous and so ubiquities characterizes internet´s space-time (human and not-human) relations. Ubiquitimes also expands a restless montage of syncretic concepts and polyphonic methods in digital culture. I’ll discuss the differences between the traditional avant-garde concepts of simultaneity and of the theological one of ubiquity. Than I’ll present the digital emergence and the contemporary different meanings of ubiquity as immanent inter-connections and inter-sections  on  times-and-spaces. Ubiquitimes play a logical-sensorial immanence of material/immaterial character; express tensions beyond hegemonic dualism or regressive dichotomous ratio. Ubiquitimes is the exact imagination potentiality connected to digital every-day life. I’ll select some empirical cases in order to demonstrate my hypotheses on auto-generative experiences of ubiquitous times (ubiquitimes) in different cultures and persons: a mythical Greek divinity (Kairos), a Swatch advertising, a Bororo funeral ritual, a post-Euclidean architect (Zaha Hadid), and finally the subjective experiences with digital technologies (multividual).

8:30 am

Presentation

2 pm

Plenary

6 pm

Talk with Scientific Committe

8:30 am

Closing report

2 pm

Time off

7 pm

Closing dinner with Neka Menna Barreto (for oficial participants and other guests)