According to Till Roenneberg, "we are loosing our critical view into how we make science.”

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"It seems like they are trying to eliminate the humanities because there is an idea that apparently this field does not bring much money or many students to the institutions. This is the worst direction we could take. There is a crisis in the way we deal with the humanities and we should change it."

The quote by chronobiologist Till Roenneberg seeded his conference on interdisciplinarity given at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS) during the 1st Intercontinental Academia (ICA). The dialogue between different kinds of knowledge, or what academia calls interdisciplinarity, will be the topic discussed by Roenneberg on July 19, in the IEA Events Room, from 10 am.

Invited by the IEA to revisit the presentation of the ICA, the scientist from the Institute of Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) will give the conference Why Science needs more than Interdisciplinarity. The event will be broadcast live on the web.

The IEA, an interdisciplinary body par excellence, is revisiting the issue of interdisciplinarity from meetings with renowned experts. German sociologist Peter Weingart, board member and director of the Bielefeld University's Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), has shown that the achievement of interdisciplinary model will only be effective through an institutional restructuring in teaching and research institutions. Despite being fashionable in academia for over 20 years, interdisciplinarity was still a concept "empty of meaning" until recently, he said during his lecture at the IEA.

In Roenneberg's vision, science needs more than interdisciplinarity. "Modern science uses objective methods and criteria to find the ‘true’ mechanistic causes behind observed associations. While we have made great advances in explaining extended putative causal networks, we are loosing our critical view into how we do this," he says.

For the scientist, not biological dogmas or physical theories, not genes or quarks are at the centre of our scientific endeavours. "Only one thing is the central commonality of every scientific discovery: our own brain, which is basically a story-telling machine," he says.

At this meeting, Roenneberg will remember the necessity that we have to fuse as many different brains as possible to make larger jumps in our scientific insights.

The conferencist

Till Roenneberg is a professor of chronobiology at the Institute of Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in München, Germany. He explores the impact of light on human circadian rhythms, focusing on aspects such as chronotypes and social jet lag in relation to health benefits. Roenneberg attended both the University College London and LMU, where he began by studying physics. He switched to medicine in order to focus on the science of the human body, but ended up studying biology. As a postdoctoral fellow, he studied again under Jurgen Aschoff, studying annual rhythms in the body, then moved to the United States to study the cellular basis of biological clocks under Woody Hastings at Harvard University. In 1991, he began the tradition of giving the Aschoff’s Ruler prize to a chronobiologist who has advanced the field. He is currently the vice-chair of the Institute for Medical Psychology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the head of the Centre for Chronobiology, the president-elect of the European Biological Rhythms Society, the president of the World Federation of Societies for Chronobiology, and a member of the Senior Common Room of Brasenose College, University of Oxford. From 2005 to 2010 he was the coordinator of "EUCLOCK" and coordinator of the Daimler-Benz-Foundation network "ClockWORK", and from 2010 to 2012 was the member at large of the Society for Research of Biological Rhythms.

The University of Birmingham's Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) will host the meeting.

Hosted by the University of Birmingham's Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), the 4th UBIAS Directors' Meeting will be held from June 20 to 22. The IEA will be represented by its deputy director, Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski, from the USP'S Faculty of Economics, Management and Accounting (FEA).

The University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (Ubias) network brings together 34 advanced research institutes based in universities around the world, including the IEA, which is also a member of the Steering Committee. The directors' meeting has been planned in order to share experiences, promote cultural and scientific exchanges, and articulate inter-institutional partnerships.

UBIAS into impact: networking our academics to meet global challenges will be the theme of the meeting. According to the organizers, the impact on research is a key issue in the educational system of the UK and that has been carefully dealt with in many other countries. Thus, the meeting will be an opportunity for the network to explore this topic, consider its benefits and risks, and establish action plans and contributions.

The opening session of the meeting will be conducted by the directors Mike Hannon, from the Birmingham IAS, and Bernd Kortmann, from the FRIAS (Freiburg University). Then, each attendee will present their institute and the actions taken to strengthen the UBIAS network.

The main sessions will bring topics such as the importance of the UBIAS network and its potential benefits, the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), interdisciplinarity and impacts in the arts and science, media, engagement and data control in the 21st century, the creation of intellectual environments, higher education in the UK and the European Union, and the internationalization of research.

Professor Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA, will present an overview of the ICA on a panel on June 20. The same session will be attended by researchers Valtteri Arstila and Vanessa Hellmann, both participants of the project. Results and future prospects will be discussed. Two editions of the ICA have already been developed, the first one on the subject "Time" and the second one on "Human Dignity".

The former directors' meeting was held in Taipei, in November 2014, and discussed the theme Breaking Through Boundaries and Old Paradigms in the New Age of Globalization with a special focus: Rising East Asia in the New Age of Globalization.

At the end of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) in Nagoya, on March 18, the 13 participants presented the details of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on "Time" they have been working on since the first phase of the project in São Paulo.

The MOOC is the practical activity that has been asked to the participants as outcome of the ICA and was inspired by conferences, debates and workshops on the subject "Time", held both in São Paulo and in Nagoya.

The MOOC will be called 'Frontiers of Time: Exploring the Last Great Mystery' and will be hosted at Coursera's database, an online course platform created by five major American universities, of which USP is a partner.

There will be five lessons plus a video about the production of the course. Each lesson will take about one hour and have a text with approximately 7,000 words. The topics of the classes will be:

1. Introduction: Aspects of Time

2. Is the Present Special?

3. Time, Change and Cultural Differences

4. Is Time Different for Humans and Non-Humans?

5. How Do We Evaluate Time?

Each class will be divided into thematic sections. The first of them (Introduction: Aspects of Time), for example, will have four sections: 1) What is Time? 2) How do we perceive time? 3) How Do We Think About Time? 4) How do we use Time?.

The scripts will be ready in June and the filming is scheduled for August. One of the proposals is that the filming - with the performance of some of the participants - occurs at the research base of USP's Oceanographic Institute in Ubatuba, on the north coast of the State of São Paulo. Other alternative locations for the class production will still be considered.

Photo: IAR / Nagoya University

Related material

Videos:

History of Time and Calendar in Japan

Circadian Clock System in Peripheral Tissues of Mice

Truth and Time in Brouwer’s Intuitionism

More information:

Full programme

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During the workshop In Search of Interdisciplinary Dialogue, sponsored by the Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS) as part of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), several experts met in Tokyo on March 14 to discuss interdisciplinarity between different kinds of knowledge.

Abe: "Japanese punctuality is not restricted to trains."

Professor Masashi Abe, from the WIAS, has addressed aspects of the Japanese calendar and the relationship of the Japanese people with time. History of Time and Calendar in Japan was the title of the lecture, which focused on how the modernization of the calendar has transformed the temporal culture in Japan, leading to one of the most punctual people in the world.

Abe said that foreigners visiting Japan get very impressed by how everything there is timely. In fact, this is true. To confirm this assumption, one just has to cite the high-speed rail network (shinkansen) between Tokyo and Osaka as an example. Despite having a territory that is usually battered by earthquakes, the transport has an average delay of 30 seconds, according to the professor.

"But punctuality is not restricted to trains. The Japanese are also very punctual. People are always anxious not to be late to their appointments. In general, they arrive 10 or 15 minutes before the scheduled time. Therefore, time regulates the life of the modern Japanese citizen. But it has not been like this forever," said Abe. By the end of the 19th century or during the Edo Period (1603-1868), many Europeans visited Japan and always complained about the Japanese being late.

There was a reason for it. Ordinary citizens had no mechanical watches. The clocks of the temples or towers had to beat 12 times a day to announce time. Time was measured by incense clocks, never by mechanical ones. This was a type of clock traditionally used in China, and then adopted by Japan and some Asian countries. It consisted of burning incense that allowed to have an idea of minutes, hours or days at a particular rate of combustion.

In the Edo Period, day and night were sectioned into six parts, with each part of the evening having a different length in relation to the day. In addition, the duration of each period of time also changed depending on the different seasons. There was no precise division of seconds and minutes. The smallest unit of time was the shihamtoki, representing a quarter of a session (tokki), or approximately 30 seconds, said Abe.

The Japanese abandoned the traditional calendar and the old time system in 1872. The week was divided into seven days and the day into 24 hours. The smallest units of time such as minutes and seconds were also introduced.

"From that, through the educational, social and military systems, the Japanese began to be taught how to be punctual. Moreover, in the Meiji Era, citizens adopted mechanical watches," the professor said.

Abe also showed a brief history of the old systems used in a more distant past. During the Kofun Period (centuries 3-7) the Chinese calendar was introduced in the country. This system was used in China since the 2nd century B.C. In 554, a Chinese expert was sent to introduce the calendar among the Japanese. In 602, the Chinese calendar was taught to children of the Japanese elite. In 604, the system was being used on a large scale, introduced by Empress Suiko (554- 628). In 660, Emperor Tenchi reached to build a water clock. But to modern times, the Chinese system prevailed.

Biological clock and the relationship with the genes

Tahara studies oscillations of the biological clock in mice via a non-invasive method.

Circadian Clock System in Peripheral Tissues of Mice was the theme of the presentation by Professor Yu Tahara, also from the WIAS. Tahara presented the results of research conducted in the laboratory led by Professor Shigenobu Shibata at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology of the School of Advanced Science and Engineering at Waseda University.

Tahara studies the expression of genes in biological clocks of mice. He has established a methodology to capture in vivo images from the bioluminescence in genetically modified tissues. A special high-resolution camera captures images of different tissues and organs.

His research group has developed an imaging protocol that easily measures the biological rhythms in individual mice in a non-invasive and longitudinal way. Thus, it is possible to detect the circadian oscillations (or biological rhythm) of tissues such as kidney, liver and submaxillary gland.

"It used to be necessary to sacrifice mice after an injection of luciferin in order to remove the tissues and carry out the analysis. Now this is no longer necessary. The method also allows longitudinal studies," he said. Luciferin is the substrate of luciferase, an enzyme capable of catalyzing biological reactions, transforming chemical energy into light energy. Thus, it is possible to record images of the behavior of cells and tissues of interest.

The researcher said that he puts the mice in a dark place and injects the enzyme every four hours throughout the day. After 10 minutes of each application he takes photos of the tissue, obtaining a series of images which indicate the increase and the decrease of biomass in different regions of the body according to the lightness at which the mice are submitted.

In this study, Tahara verifies the importance of light to the biological clock, or the incidence of what he calls "entrainment". The concept relates to adjusting the biological clock phases to different environmental conditions for the organism's survival. The researcher also studies the action of insulin, caffeine, physical exercise and stress on the circadian clock. Studies of insulin are associated with fish oil administration in the diet of mice. According to him, this improves the sensitivity of the metabolic substance.

The research has shown that caffeine has a high impact on the modulation of the biological clock, according to the scientist. The administration of caffeine in the morning showed no change of the biological cycle of mice compared to the control group. But eating at night before sleeping prolonged the awake cycle, ie, caused a delayed biological clock. The scientist cited research showing that this change also occurs in humans. "Coffee has the ability to wake up and also change the circadian clock. So the message is do not drink coffee at night before bed," he joked.

The effects of food on the biological clock make up a branch of study called chrono-nutrition. According to Tahara, research on nutrition conducted so far have focused on what and how much we eat, that is, the necessary items and the proper amount of food for each meal. "But now new research tell us when to eat, that is, the right time for meals. This is the new strategy with regard to nutrition," he said.

Tahara studied the same variables taking the age factor into account. With age there was a decrease of the REM-sleep period. The results also indicate that none of those factors influenced the biological rhythm of aged mice as much as food.

Akiyoshi has spoken of the relation of mathematics to other fields of knowledge, such as philosophy.

Brouwer's Intuitionism

The philosophy of mathematics from the point of view of Dutch mathematician Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer (1881-1966) was the subject presented by Professor Ryota Akiyoshi, from the WIAS.

In the lecture Truth and Time in Brouwer's Intuitionism, Akiyoshi analyzed the tension between what is mathematical truth and what is a mind construct. He explained conceptual problems on logic and philosophy, and interdisciplinary aspects.

According to the professor, the object of philosophy can be anything: language, knowledge, mathematics, physics, biology and so on. Mathematics or logic, therefore, have been a central topic in philosophy since Aristotle. With the development of language and, consequently, mathematics, philosophy of mathematics deals essentially with the origin of mathematical objects.

Platonism seeks to address this issue by showing that there is an abstract and immutable world that contains all the mathematical elements. As assumption, all mathematical objects already exist, but not all have been discovered yet. The role of the mathematician would be to find objects that have not been discovered yet in this abstract and unchanging world.

On the other hand, part of the mathematical community did not accept the ideas of Platonism and disagreed with classical mathematics. The antagonism to Plato was called constructivism, the intuitionism being the best known branch of this intellectual tradition. It was believed that a mathematical object exists from the moment when a mathematician can build it in their mind.

Professor Akiyoshi also showed some essential concepts of intuitionistic logic, including the sequence of choices and the notion of creative subject.

The novelty of integrating an interdisciplinary activity in which a series of conferences and discussions should lead to the production of a concrete product was one of the main challenges of the Intercontinental Academia, according to the interactions of the participants in the evaluation panel of the project's second phase in Nagoya, on March 11.

The need to get used to 13 different academic languages, corresponding to the areas of expertise of the participants, has also been highlighted. However, the challenges are not obstacles to the gains that the project will offer, according to the researchers. Some of them said they have benefited from participating in the Intercontinental Academia since they have adopted a new approach with their students, seeking to incorporate the views of other areas to usual and new problems of their disciplines.

The general expectation is that the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on "Time" and the documentary on the project let students, researchers and institutions intereseted in organizing and participating in similar interdisciplinary activities.

Several suggestions for the improvement of future editions of the Intercontinental Academia have been presented: the importance of achieving a greater balance of gender, areas of expertise and cultural representation, and the organization of joint activities for participants and senior researchers.

Eduardo Almeida, a professor at USP, said that the big issues, such as time, are very important for discussions and experiments like the Intercontinental Academia. "It is good to be relatively young, but when we are in our 30s we are a bit matured and end up losing the link with these major issues."

He also pointed out the convenience of a group of people with eclectic education and able to build bridges between them. Almeida believes that the philosophers are the best ones to play this role. He said he learned this in practice thanks to the interaction with the representative of the University of Turku, Finnish philosopher Valtteri Arstila, and two other members "with philosophical inclinations": neuroscientist André Cravo Mascioli, from UFABC, and architect and art historian Nikki Moore, from Rice University.

Education

German oceanographer Marius Müller, a researcher in postdoctoral studies at USP, said that one of the results that he is already experiencing is to have started to deal with new issues with his students without leaving behind the view of other disciplines. Müller believes that the project stimulates thinking research as a process applicable to various fields, "something that natural scientists tend to forget given the emphasis on obtaining results in the academic world."

Biologist Norihito Nakamishi, from the Nagoya University, also said to have benefited in his teaching activities. "In my case, this is not a big increase for research, but it is a great contribution to my work as a professor."

Communication

Mathematician Adriano De Cezaro, from UFRGS, highlighted the communicational development of who takes part in such a project: "Here we have 13 different "languages" and to learn them is something extraordinary." Specialist in medieval narrative Eva von Contzen, from the Ruhr University of Bochum, also considers communication as one of the key ingredients of the Intercontinental Academia: "We learned to communicate with each other, to listen to other 'languages', not only from other disciplines, but also from other cultures."

What has let communication easier was the possibility of the researchers to spend a good time together, according to Arstila. For him, this has been the differential in relation to other interdisciplinary projects in which he participated and that have not been very successful.

Interdisciplinarity

Boris Roman Gibhardt, a researcher at the University of Bielefeld's Center for Interdisciplinary Research, said that the project's emphasis on interdisciplinarity is important but not enough. "We should have greater ambitions and concern ourselves with critical thinking, for example," he said. For him, the Intercontinental Academia is a great project, but not something that lasts: "In academic life there is not much interest in supporting interdisciplinarity, unless in specific projects. This is a problem. In the humanities, the disciplines were established in the early 19th century. We must question whether they are still updated. There will only be interdisciplinarity when disciplines are dissolved."

Interdisciplinarity is a challenge, but its perspective is important for researchers and students, according to Kazuhisa Takeda, from Waseda University, one of the project's supporters. He said he shared the experience of participating in the São Paulo workshop with his students and noticed how this approach is attractive to young people. "Maybe the young researchers will be able to continue this approach and attract new students to it in the future."

Academic reflections

Mediator of the panel, von Contzen said that the project presented two common problems in academic life: the disproportion between genders in the group with only two women among the 13 participants, and the tiering among researchers: juniors (participants) and seniors (coordinators and speakers).

Mascioli added two further aspects that have emulated the academic routine: many workshops instead of more time to work and the need for a final product. "But here we have the freedom to question these things, which does not happen in academia and in other experiences that I took part in."

MOOC

On the other hand, Mascioli considers it important that the project has the production of a MOOC as practical activity, for "doing an introductory course is good in order to bring the discourse to an understandable level to everyone." Arstila also enhanced the production of the course as a way to create a commitment between the participants."

Helder Nakaya, from USP, said he supported the MOOC from the beginning, "not because it is something new, but because it is something modern and a good way to communicate, as well as a great exercise." Moreover, he believes that society deserves to have access to such a product in exchange of the "investment to be in extraordinary places with extraordinary people." He believes that the MOOC can encourage many young people to try to attend university.

Three other possible changes have been suggested during the panel: Moore proposed that in future editions each participant should have the opportunity to present a paper at the beginning, for everyone to know them better and for them to be questioned by senior researchers; Arstila said that perhaps the work would be more productive if the number of involved disciplines were minor; Nakaya suggested that the speakers are asked to make more accessible presentations to all researchers in all areas.

Comments

At the end of the panel, the interventions of the participants were commented by Till Roenneberg, Eliezer Rabinovici and Martin Grossmann, members of the Senior Committee, and by Carsten Dose, general secretary of the project.

Roenneberg expressed his admiration for the commitment of the participants and agreed that during the immersions in São Paulo and Nagoya, given the need to build the scientific background (workshops and conferences) for the production of the MOOC, there was little time left to work directly for the outcome. The difficulty, he said, is how to get time to do this work at the same time as the participants return to their normal academic activities.

The merit of the project, according to Rabinovici, has been to provide the participants with knowledge of quality and the possibility of creating a network. "I do not know how much the created links are strong and durable, but the possibility of them lasting a few years is valuable. The project to be developed (MOOC) may succeed or not, but it will work as a test for the participants."

He considered the gender imbalance a major problem to be solved in the future, but stressed how the process of selection of participants was hard. He admitted, however, that there could have been made additional efforts to more women to sign up."

Dose reported that the feedback from the participants of this first edition of the Intercontinental Academia and the first phase (in Jerusalem) of the ongoing second edition (on human dignity) will be an important part of the discussion at the UBIAS directors' meeting next June at the University of Birmingham.

Theme

He considered it curious that the participants have discussed almost every aspect of the project but the central theme: time. For him, this shows that the theme was an appropriate intellectual challenge to work with.

Dose wanted to know what alternative theme could have been chosen; something that considered one of the great problems of society, as some of the participants commented. He also asked about another outcome of the project: some of the participants wanted to create a website together, accessible to a wide audience.

De Cezaro said that few issues are as comprehensive as time. For him, discussing time in specific societies would be more appropriate, however, restrictive. Regarding the usefulness to society, he said it occurs in the form of pure knowledge.

Part of the group aims to develop a parallel project, according to von Contzen, who cited the established connections: "The idea is to make a website that functions as a platform for publishing content in various formats, including academia and art, addressing a different topic on each update, and produced by people linked to the UBIAS."

Grossmann said that since the beginning of the planning of the project, the idea was to invest in risk and that the only concern with regard to the selection of the 13 participants was the quality of their work. The challenge now, he said, is the continuation of the cooperation network between researchers. In this regard, "the creation of a joint website is great news."

Critical thinking

Grossmann asked Gibhardt to talk more about his advocacy of greater concern to produce critical thinking. The representative of the University of Bielefeld said that this is a special issue for the humanities: "They can contribute to the future of academia particularly through critical thinking. We should be more intellectual and try to develop ideas in different contexts, such as the political and the social ones. The development of the right ideas, and at the right places and the right times, would be more important than developing a MOOC, a book or something similar. My idea has to do with education, which is not a specific product. It is invisible. This is idealism, I know, but I think it is a matter of attitude."

Roenneberg: "It seems like they (universities and governments) are trying to eliminate the humanities."

The existence of "biological clocks" is increasingly being accepted by the scientific community. The study of core temperature - or the arterial blood in the central regions of the body - is one example of how chronobiology is discovering how, when and why the brain and hormones are modulated by natural cycles. The interaction of organisms with the environment has been giving clues to many scientific discoveries and this shows that many scientific facts can not be studied in isolation but require a broader context.

The dialogue between different kinds of knowledge, or what academia calls interdisciplinarity, has been identified as a method to revolutionize teaching and research in the future. The theme took a full day of discussions during the programme of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA).

The workshop In Search of Interdisciplinary Dialogue, sponsored by the Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS), at Waseda University, was held on March 14, in Tokyo, with the participation of speakers coming from different fields of knowledge.

Till Roenneberg, a professor of chronobiology at the Institute of Medical Psychology of the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU), has been invited for the opening lecture due to his diversified education, which includes physics, medicine and biology.

For Roenneberg, science needs more than interdisciplinarity. He sees a "tragic development" taking place especially in universities and governments around the world as they are guiding their research under the monetary focus, which leads them to forget the importance of the humanities.

"It seems like they are trying to eliminate the humanities because there is an idea that apparently this field does not bring much money or many students to the institutions. This is the worst direction we could take. There is a crisis in the way we deal with the humanities and we should change it," he said.

Brussels Atomium.

Roenneberg compared the currently practiced interdisciplinarity with the Brussels Atomium. Composed of interconnected spheres, the steel structure is a kind of giant wheel that provides a unique view to visitors.

“These spheres are incredibly proud to belong to a network. But what they do, though connected, is to stay in the same place. In fact, they only connect in order to stay in the circle. This is not interdisciplinarity. But interdisciplinarity today comes down to this," he said.

For Roenneberg, the UBIAS network, which brings together 34 institutes for advanced studies linked to universities, has enabled the realization of interdisciplinary science. In his view, the biggest advantage of these institutes in relation to other research institutions is that they have contact to the international community while maintaining the link with the academic community and the university environment.

For the biologist, every academic endeavor is related to human beings, and all that relates to humans is linked to basic biological and psychosocial motivations. "In my opinion, besides food and reproduction, humans also seek to reduce their anxiety and get rewards or social approval through behavior. That is what makes us exist."

To reduce anxiety and gain social approval, Roenneberg says that people turn to religion or science. However, the theoretical, philosophical and experimental knowledge that leads to scientific knowledge is full of arrogance and, thus, there is no understanding among scientists.

"This is shameful, because we know that we need others to be critical with ourselves and with our own thinking. It is also to overcome this that we need philosophy and the humanities," he said.

On the other hand, there is no way to replace the brain. The world's data become accessible thanks to the brain, which turns data into information. In this case, it refers to memory and expectations. As an example, Roenneberg showed a laboratory experiment using ducklings. The animals repeatedly go up and down a kind of slide in search for food and social interaction.

"One might think that the ducklings are sliding and chasing each other for fun. But the truth is that they are in a nerve-racking looping for food and social interaction, as these animals can not live alone. They are like people playing slot machines and seeking resources that can never be achieved," he said.

So everything can be a matter of narrative, summarized Roenneberg. Disciplinary knowledge as physics, culture, biology and others, also have to do with narratives, he said. "Apparently, the disciplines have nothing to do with people. But in fact they have profound impact on us for all the knowledge that is produced returns to humanity." Scenes of the atomic bomb, the concentration camps and attacks on the World Trade Center in New York were shown at this point of the lecture.

Modern life, science and religion

Another "subtle" example with enormous impact on humanity was the advent of artificial light, he said. He cited the experiments of Jürgen Walther Ludwig Aschoff  (1913 - 1998), a German physicist, biologist and behavioral physiologist who built underground bunkers to investigate the relationship of daily habits of people and the incidence of sunlight. Alongside other scientists he was one of the founders of chronobiology by inaugurating the research on circadian rhythms. The circadian clock (or cycle) is the period of approximately 24 hours which is the basis of the life cycle of almost all living beings. So it is a cycle influenced by variations of light, temperature, tides and winds, day and night.

In the first weeks living in the bunkers people were still in contact with the outside world. Then they remained inside the shelter, allowed to use artificial light according to their internal rhythms of waking up, sleeping and eating, for example. After studying the cycles of sleep, body temperature, urine output and other physiological and behavioral issues, the researchers concluded that what regulates the time schedule and peoples' lives is an endogenous clock that varies due to light and darkness. This discovery helped to understand the source of many health problems related to aging, sleep disorders and symptoms called jet lag, such as nausea, irritation, fatigue, insomnia, constipation and other physiological discomforts.

"Sleep in the pre-industrial era was regulated by sunlight. People would stay awake when there was light outside and slept when the day ceased. But now, with the electric light, we are always in an indoor environment which is just a little illuminated if compared to what would be offered by an external environment. And at night, at home, people do almost never run out of light. There is insufficient light during the day and too much light at night," said Roenneberg.

"We have created a short circuit in our brain at the cost of more people getting sick. People victimized by what we call social jet leg smoke more, drink more coffee, suffer more from depression and metabolic problems," said the scientist.

The consequence of living out of the circadian clock sync brings not only individual losses. The direct and indirect costs resulting from sleep disorders and problems related to the biological clock represent 1% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of countries, something like US$ 185 trillion in the European Union, US$ 173 trillion in the United States and US$ 103 trillion in China.

Science can also not ignore the method of hypotheses, Roenneberg said. "We must not become conceited. A molecular biologist once said she did not need hypotheses to investigate the gene and what it does. But nature is not a set of Lego pieces. Scientific information is generated by many abstract steps involving different methods and machinery. Scientific research depends on a chain of steps that need to be checked and one can not do this without hypotheses. The hypothesis is necessary to make sure that we are not going in the wrong direction. And for that we need the humanities," he emphasized.

Another warning: science must overcome the male mentality that still prevails in academia, Roenneberg said. "Boys like huge toys and maybe this explains our taste for large and expensive machines. But if we continue to invest in expensive machines we will process more and more data that we can not analyze properly. Therefore, we should invest in young brains able to discover intelligent mathematical strategies to analyze networks of genes and brain cells, for example," he said.

The professor also warned about concepts related to religion, science and knowledge in an environment that is increasingly related to science. "Science is becoming a new religion. Take the Salk Institute as an example: a beautiful building that looks like a temple. We must not confuse things. Even to deal with this we need the humanities and perhaps the religious to tell us what religion actually is. After all, we have to respect the ideas and advancements in science. But at the same time, we should try a litte "disrespect" in order to prove them wrong," he finished.

The original motivations for the creation of institutes for advanced studies can be identified from the late 19th century, when discussions on the role of universities started questioning whether they should be primarily devoted to research and knowledge advancement or mainly to the spread of knowledge through education and the development of technological applications.

The first proposal in support of a distinguished research institution, similar to what would become the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton Univesity (IAS), was brought up exactly a hundred years ago in the book The Higher Learning in America, by sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), according to Peter Goddard, former director of the IAS. He gave the conference The Development of Institutes for Advanced Study and their Role in the Contemporary University on March 11 during the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia's first edition, in Nagoya.

The subtitle of Veblen's book is The Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men, a reference to the replacement of clerics by businessmen in the governance of American universities during the 19th century. According to Goddard, Veblen believed that this change led to the introduction of standardization systems, accountability and payment for production, meaning the replacement of the academic ideal of a "mediocrity perfunctory routine."

The first institute for advanced studies

Educator Abraham Flexner (1866-1959), one of those responsible for the reform in the teaching of medicine and higher education in general in the United States has been the proponent of the creation of the first institute for advanced studies.

According to Goddard, Flexner was approached by Louis and Caroline Bamberger at the end of 1929. The couple had made a fortune with department stores and were searching for guidance to create a medical school. In a few months they were convinced by Flexner to sponsor the creation of the Princeton IAS, of which he became the founding director.

Goddard said that the essay The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge was written by Flexner to argue that advancements in the most practical value of knowledge do not come from research guided by goals, but from those motivated by intellectual curiosity. The best example of this attitude could not be another than the first hired person by Flexner in 1932: Albert Einstein.

In 1958 the then director of the IAS, Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), attributed the emergence of new institutes for advanced studies to the impacts of the increasing complexity of research and the expansion of higher education, since these two restricted the opportunities for scholars to devote themselves to intense intellectual issues, Goddard reported.

Present time

For Goddard, the institutes can offer a lot in relation to the challenges faced by universities in spite of consisting a relatively small part of academia.

Besides the impacts mentioned by Oppenheimer there are also the contemporary culture of auditing, managerialism, and institutional evaluation and analysis systems. This framework has increased the need for research environments where the short-term production of tangible results must not interfere with the fundamental research activity, Goddard said.

Within this context, institutes for advanced studies have been created by universities "as sanctuaries for eminent scholars to give them respite from the demands of the evaluation exercises, and as international standard frameworks", serving for the aspirations of universities to obtain such visibility.

Another important aspect highlighted by Goddard is that the institutes promote the intersection of research topics, allowing them to "establish scenarios to overcome the boundaries between disciplines, institutionalized within the administrative structures of universities since the 19th century and now often seen as inhibitors of scientific progress."

Goddard pointed out four main reasons for the emergence of institutes for advanced studies today:

• opportunities for academics to conduct research led by curiosity and distant from the intense pressures of the modern university;
• international environments within the increasingly international academia;
• success in terms of research output and impact on long-term development of the researchers who work in them;
• they are a benchmark of the universities' institutional and status aspirations.

According to Goddard, the typical characteristics of an institute for advanced studies are to focus on research rather than education, to work at the intersections of disciplines and to offer programs for visiting researchers. However, they differ in several ways, especially when it comes to:

• number of addressed subjects;
• level of constitutional independence (governance);
• level of financial independence;
• permanent researchers (or not);
• specific thematics and programs (or not).

Photo: IAR/Nagoya University

Deputy Sibá Machado, rapporteur of the project that gave rise to the Innovation Law

This is the Brazilian reality because "we are very poor in terms of patents," said Helena Nader, president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC), one of the exhibitors at the seminar The New Innovation Law: Expectations, Perspectives and Initiatives, held on April 4 at the USP's Faculty of Economics, Management and Accounting (FEA).

The poor performance in patents is an indicator of the country's difficulties in producing innovation, an activity surrounded by legal, institutional, financial and even cultural impediments.

"Brazil has 20% of the world's biodiversity but an archaic legislation on the issue. In the last 10 years we have only allowed 300 researches in this area. The result is that companies prefer to patent their products abroad." The example was given by Paulo Mól, national superintendent of the Euvaldo Lodi Institute (IEL) of the National Industry Confederation (CNI) and coordinator of the Business Mobilization for Innovation (MEI).

Legal advancement

While there is still much to be done, the spirit of the actors involved in science, technology and innovation in Brazil is renewed. This is a result of the new legal framework established for the sector in recent years.

Helena Nader: a perspective of the scientific community

The most recent achievement was the adoption of a constitutional amendment (Emenda Constitucional nº 85 - in Portuguese), amending and adding devices in the Federal Constitution to update the treatment of activities in science, technology and innovation. The amendment has led to the final law project presented by various members of the Parliament in 2011 and resulted in the new innovation law, enacted on January 11 by President Dilma Rousseff.

The new law provides for incentives to scientific development, research, scientific and technological capacity, and innovation. It also amends various legal provisions.

In addition to the law and the constitutional amendment, deputy Sibá Machado also addressed a set of legal texts from which science, technology and innovation benefit, and which deals with the supporting foundations; a law on the access to biodiversity; a provisional measure on the imports by supporting foundations; and a proposed constitutional amendment that regulates professional and graduation courses.

Vahan Agopyan, vice-president of USP, and Guilherme Ary Plonski (left) during the opening of the seminar

Machado was the rapporteur of the project that gave rise to the law. He said that the idea of establishing a National Code of Science, Technology and Innovation was dropped because something like that would head the standards to a relatively inflexible way, which would be inappropriate for an area in constant transformation.

One of the great achievements of the process that led to the new legislation was the fact that it is the result of consensus among the scientific community, companies, the Brazilian congress and the government (including the effort for the overthrow of vetoes), according to the speakers at the seminar.

At the opening of the seminar, Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski, organizer of the event and scientific coordinator of the USP's Center for Policy and Technology Management (PGT), said that the five-year work that resulted in the constitutional amendment and in the Innovation Law has involved 53 academic, entrepreneurial and government institutions, 19 of them taking a more active role.

Maria Paula Dallari Bucci: initiatives for effectiveness

USP's vice-president Vahan Agopyan cited the problem of legal uncertainty, which hinders many companies to invest in innovation. According to him, a 2010 survey indicated that only 0.25% of the companies in the State of São Paulo able to invest in innovation had the courage to use the Law of Innovation. FEA's deputy director, Joaquim José Martins Guilhoto, highlighted the national and regional impact of the new law. The opening of the seminar has also been attended by the University's provost for research, José Eduardo Krieger, who has moderated the seminar.

Regulation

According to the exhibitors, the immediate steps are the overthrow of the eight partial vetoes and the regulation of the new law, whose proposal will be drawn up by a working group of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), and submitted to public consultation.

The regulation will be a crucial stage in the process in order to resolve doubts and disagreements, and again try to reach a consensus. At the seminar, it was up to the USP's legal superintendent, Maria Paula Dallari Bucci, a professor at the University's Law School, to detail the legal aspects involved in the new legislation and the precautions to be taken in its implementation. Bucci took the point of view of the public sector, giving special attention to the peculiarities of the State of São Paulo.

Paulo Mól: perspective of the business community

For her, instead of talking about regulation, one must speak of "regulations for specific points." The first priority, she said, is to define a legal concept that gives support to the managing entity of technology parks and incubators. She recalled that the qualification of private law's legal entities as social organizations whose activities are directed to science, technology and innovation is allowed, but by law the government of the State of São Paulo is not. This prohibition places the future of many São Paulo institutions at risk, according to the professor.

Further topics that have been discussed: the need to set limits to the possibility of researchers in exclusive dedication to participate in paid private projects so that there is no prejudice to their teaching and research activities; the clarification of how the support of foundations can manage their own revenues from science and technology public institutions; and how to deal with the issue of reciprocity in the case of incentives for foreign companies to settle research and development centers in Brazil.

For Bucci, one amendment inserted by the new law is a setback: the repeal of the Innovation Law devices that dealt explicitly with consolidated information that should be annually passed on by the science and technology institutions to the MCTI (intellectual property policy, developed creations; required and granted protection, and licensing agreements or technology transfer signed).

The event has been a partnership between the USP's Dean of Research, the IEA, the USP's Center for Policy and Technology Management (PGT), based on FEA, and the Centre for Research Innovation and Competitiveness Observatory (NAP- OIC), based on the IEA.

Deputy Sibá Machado, rapporteur of the project that gave rise to the Innovation Law

The seminar will examine the main aspects of the new law, exploring the perspectives of the main drivers for innovation and outlining the actions that should be undertaken to make the law to become effective.

The central exhibition will be made by deputy Sibá Machado, rapporteur of the project that gave rise to the law. The meeting will be opened by the FEA's director, Adalberto Américo Fischmann, and will feature the following speakers:

• José Eduardo Krieger, provost for research at the USP (institutional view);
• Helena Nader, president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC) (perspective of the scientific community);
• Paulo Mol, national superintendent of the Euvaldo Lodi Institute (IEL) of the National Industry Confederation (CNI) and coordinator of the Business Mobilization for Innovation (MEI) (perspective of the business community);
• Maria Paula Dallari Bucci, legal superintendent of the USP (initiatives for effectiveness).

Advancements

Just over a year the Boards of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate promulgated a constitutional amendment (Emenda Constitucional nº 85 - in Portuguese), amending and adding devices in the Federal Constitution to update the treatment of activities in science, technology and innovation. The amendment has lead to the final law project presented by various members of the Parliament in 2011 and resulted in the new innovation law, enacted on January 11 by President Dilma Rousseff.

The new law provides for incentives to scientific development, research, innovation, and scientific and technological capacity. It also amends several existing legal provisions, in particular Law No. 10.973 / 2004, known as the Innovation Law.

According to Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski, organizer of the seminar, these advancements in legislation are the result of a "laborious and tense" construction, to which numerous academic, business and government institutions have devoted their efforts over five years. He considers "particularly auspicious the fact that this work has made it to term even in this delicate national context."

The event is a partnership between the USP's Dean of Research, the IEA, the USP's Center for Policy and Technology Management (PGT), based on FEA, and the Centre for Research Innovation and Competitiveness Observatory (NAP- OIC), based on the IEA.

Photo: Gustavo Lima/Chamber of Deputies

Neuroscientist Kazuhiko Kume, from the Nagoya City University.

Researcher in neuroscience and molecular biology, Kazuhiko Kume, from the Department of Neuropharmacology of the Nagoya City University, spoke to the participants of the Intercontinental Academia as one of the pioneers to introduce the study of neuroethics in Japan. "Time in the brain" was the theme of the lecture given during the Biology Workshop, on March 8.

Kume studies sleep patterns and the molecular interaction in the circadian cycle, and calls himself a "weekend philosopher". This is how he has introduced his vision on the relationship between the brain and the cells over time.

The professor showed an image that, when stared at, makes the viewer have the illusion that it moves. "If your brain sees the movement, this happens by the time the brain takes to produce movement. So your brain produces time to a static figure," he said.

Kume initially addressed some concepts of neuroscience and bioethics, which he introduced in Japan from a textbook produced in 2006. In the original sense of the word it means "the ethics of neuroscience" or the behaviour that defines what is good or bad in the study of the brain." For example, is the erasure of negative memories or the improvement of cognitive activity through the use of drugs good or bad?," he pointed out.

Bioethics can also be seen as the neuroscience of ethics. "For example, there is a difference in individual decisions on ethics because of structural differences in the brain." Or: "Can you tell who would say yes or no in a moral dilemma just by looking at the structure of the person's brain?," he asked. Discussing the brain and the mind incites some very common questions such as "What is mind or consciousness?" or "Do I really know why I want a certain thing?"

According to Kume, philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596-1650) proposed the idea of a center in the brain where the spirit (mind) would dwell; a kind of home to the soul or the thought. He believed that this center would be in the pineal body (or pineal gland), since it is a unique structure located in the central area of the brain. It is as if our mind stayed there, as if sitting in a theater watching us and deciding what we should do. As if there was a person inside the brain. But this would be impossible, Kume said, because it leads to an endless definition that within that person there would be another center inhabited by another person and so on.

Thus, the arguments against the beliefs of Descartes show that no region is particularly essential to consciousness, for any part can be deleted without the loss of consciousness. However, there are exceptions in the case of major head injuries. On the other hand, the disconnection through sleep or anesthesia induces a reversible loss of consciousness. The brain and the body continue to work, but without consciousness. Furthermore, it is philosophically impossible to conceive the "center of the human being" as this would lead to an endless recursive redefinition, according to Kume.

When two brains of different people share the same feelings, perceptions and emotions then the idea gets a bit more complicated. Kume brought this issue up by showing twins connected by the brain. They have identical genes but different tastes and personalities. They can control their own hands and often fight with each other but they have connections that provide them with the same sensations. One does not like broccoli while the other one eats it and makes the first feel the taste. They also have the ability to communicate without talking out loud. For example, moving towards a particular direction or decide to watch TV.

"We can assume a human being as a set of different personalities. In the contemporary view, it is as if there were several dwarves acting within the brain," he said. Hence Kume's view of what the mind is: like a government without a president in which the mouth is the spokesman representing the government but does not decide and does not know everything. It is like a place of many ministries, each of which is headed by a minister who decides and executes different projects, and reports to the spokesman. In this logic, not even the minister knows everything that is done in their ministry, as each ministry is made of many parts, he compared.

Kume proposes an analysis of the brain from the time classification created by English metaphysicist John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1866 - 1925), plus Naoki Nomura's view on the author. (read the article below)

Nomura uses the temporal structure of McTaggart and adds a new time series to the theory, the E-series, based on the synchronization and communication between agents. This series emerges when there is a synchronization between the objective time and the subjective time.

Kume showed that there are different times which vary depending on the instrument used to measure them. The clock, a programmed series, the seasons of the year, the calendar, the period of digestion, the menstrual period, the lunar period, breathing, the heart beat, eye blinking. All these are measures that give a notion of biological time. In this type of time, synchronization is important. For a tadpole to become a frog, for example, a specific objective time is not required, but rather an optimal temperature for the growth of the body and the atrophy of the tail, he exemplified.

Living beings are not exactly governed by a clock, but by a daily metabolic cycle that establishes the so-called circadian cycle. The circadian clock or circadian cycle is the period of approximately 24 hours, which is the base of the life cycle of almost all living beings. So it is a cycle influenced by variations of light, temperature, tides and winds, day and night.

According to Kume, there is a central region in the brain that regulates the mechanism, but experiments show that only a cell or a neuron can acquire the ability to complete the circadian cycle. Thus, the keyword is synchrony between cells. Likewise, considering the body as a whole, each cell operates at a different rhythm (an imperfect synchronism). The final result, however, is a perfect sync.

Metronomes adjust the beat and the time by synchronizing their movements

To illustrate this phenomenon, Kume used a video showing the beating of 32 metronomes that after being placed on a movable table at different rhythms end up getting in sync after one minute and 45 seconds. The same example was used by Professor Nomura.

For Kume, the reasoning of the E-series refers to the Integrated Information Theory (ITT), proposed by Giulio Tononi. A comatose patient regains consciousness when parts of the brain gradually connect the information of the environment, integrating them fully to the brain. Likewise, living beings adjust to the rhythm of the physical environment.

E-Series of Nomura, a new approach to McTaggart

Cultural anthropologist Naoki Nomura, a professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Nagoya City University, talked about his study on assumptions developed by McTaggart about time.

"It is still an ongoing work and therefore what I bring here is unfinished, but still a good view of McTaggart's time," he said. A part of Nomura's study is available online in the article "E-series Time As Prolegomena to McTaggart’s A- and B-series Time", which he signs with Koichiro Matsuno, from the Nagaoka University of Technology.

"The Unreality of Time" is the best-known philosophical work by McTaggart, originally published in 1908 in the journal "Mind". The author presents arguments to demonstrate the unreality of time. For McTaggart, the descriptions we know about time are either contradictory, circular or insufficient.

Cultural anthropologist Naoki Nomura speaks about the synchrony of biological time and physical time.

McTaggart basically proposes three time series to describe time. The A-Series is temporal and represents the subjective, psychological time, consisting of past, present and future. The B-Series is timeless. It is the objective, physical time, characterized by events occurred "earlier than" and "later than" another event. The C-series and the D-Series also have static temporal characteristics.

"The A-Series is a very important division for us because it represents the subjective or psychological time. But when we look at the clock we realize that it marks the hours and not whether it is past, present or future. The B-Series means the time without the division past-present-future, representing the objective time. In the B-Series the clock functions as a global timer or a common device that synchronizes the clocks of the world," Nomura said.

The C-Series is a sequence without order, with static temporal characteristics. The calendar may be viewed as a sequence of numbers and the clock as a mechanism that rotates around its axis. So these time objects can be viewed as a still image, a painting, a drawing of time, he said. "The musical score also marks the time, but we see it as a painting," he compared.

"But the biological clock does not seem to fit into any of these series. So my question is where the biological clock would fit under these descriptions," Nomura said.

For the scientist, the answer lies between the A-Series and B-Series. Or in their communication. This combination results in the E-Series, which he created and characterized by synchronization or communication between different times. To illustrate the idea, Nomura showed what happened to the 32 metronomes.

"Their movement allowed them to fit together, all coming to the same rhythm. We see that material bodies may have an openness, interacting with each other and coordinating time. The synchronization of the metronomes happens due to the mutual adjusting movement and the displacement on the table. Where does the measure of time disappear? All come to a constant adjustment by trial and error until the time matches the beat. The communication between them makes the difference," Nomura said.

Similarly, Nomura says, it is possible to think that the flow of materials between cells occurs in the communication between them. The balance, therefore, is by synchronization. They enter a preset rhythm following the pulse of the rhythm given by walking, dancing, speaking. Thus, the synchronization establishes a kind of time which is different from the clock time.

Hideo Iwasaki presents papers on the interface between science and art during the biology workshop.

Synthetic biology is a new approach to bioengineering. It involves modeling and the construction of organisms at the molecular scale, or the redesign of parts, devices or natural biological systems. It is a technology that seeks specific objectives through an intentional design. Instead of evolutionary pressures, the world of the living beings becomes a product of design choices. Through a fast progress, it has generated expectations to produce new biological applications in medicine, agribusiness, genomics, energy and other areas.

"It is a field that offers a new insight on how to relate to life. Its rapid advancement has resulted in many scientific and philosophical debates because it produces advances that lead to some exaggerations. Therefore, synthetic biology causes interest in some designers and artists involved in biotechnology," said biologist and artist Hideo Iwasaki, from the Waseda University, at the Biology Workshop of the second day of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA).

Grossmann and Iwasaki debating.

Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA-USP and member of the Senior Committee for the ICA, chaired the debates of Iwasaki's presentation and drew attention to the unusual union between biology and art. According to Grossmann, Iwasaki has innovated with the presented theme, a mix of science, technology and design.

Coordinator of the Laboratory for Molecular Cell Network & Biomedia Art at Waseda University, Iwasaki talked about the work of the Synthetics Aesthetics, an experimental project run by the University of Edinburgh and Stanford University. In 2010 the most renowned synthetic biologists, artists and social scientists gathered to explore collaborations focused on the conception, construction and understanding of the living world.

At the time, Iwasaki developed the project "Biogenic Timestamp" in partnership with Oron Catts, from the Aalto University of Helsinki. The work was defined by the microbiologist as a "critique to the hype of synthetic biology, a provocation on the link between the scale of geological time and the biological one."

They worked with tissue culture from cyanobacteria, a group of bacteria that obtains energy by photosynthesis and is among the most primitive forms of life. The community was applied to a computer board, which has undergone the action of these organisms to date. The work was exhibited in Austria and Japan. According to the creators, the experiment shows that the bacteria are able to internalize our technologies and creations, and modify them as they please.

Engineering principles applied to the complexity of living systems: biology transformed into a new design material.

Another project, no less surreal by Western standards, is inspired by a relatively ancient habit in Japan, which is to create monuments in memory of insects, snails, plants, various objects and even the spirit of sperms.

Iwasaki showed that in some medical and research institutions, such as the Department of Human Sciences at the Waseda University, there is the habit of annual celebrations held in honor of animals used in experiments. In zoos there are funeral ceremonies for animals that have died. In 1971 a monument was created to honor the spirit of sperms.

Iwasaki thought of a memorial for artificial cells. "I am a microbiologist, so I can finally pray for the bacteria we use in experiments," he compared.

“The memorial service for synthetic cells” is the name of the technical and artistic work by Iwasaki, which will be displayed during the Kenpoku Art Festival 2016, a great show that dialogues with nature and art, incorporating science and technology. It is held in six cities in the northern Ibaraki Prefecture.

According to Iwasaki, his work is scientifically "stimulating, because it forces to think what life is in fact." The two projects that the scientist presented at the workshop seem to handle different things, but they actually "deal with the issue of time and how humans are involved with life," he said.

He cited a paper on the establishment of a bacterial cell from a chemically synthesized genome. "There is no common sense among scientists to answer if it is a living organism or a type of synthetic life. So I see that each one's subjective criterion of what life is is required for this kind of judgment," he added.

Photos: IAR/Nagoya

syntheticaesthetics.org

Scientific research and technological development in Japan should be guided by the social use of knowledge, innovation and cooperation between scientists, institutions and countries. The recommendation has been given by the president of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Michinari Hamaguchi.

His was the final exhibition of the first day (March 7) of conferences at the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), in Nagoya. The theme of his speech was Higher Education and Academic Research From the View Point of Funding.

Hamaguchi said that humanity must face the depletion of natural resources, the food crisis, the global warming, the environmental degradation and the population growth. According to him, these challenges can not be solved separately by institutions, sectors of research or even by a specific country.

To this scenario he adds the changes in life and society resulting from rapid technological development, such as information and communication technologies: "We live in a totally different world than 30 years ago. Jobs are disappearing and more and more people consider that we live in a false industrial revolution, being ours a critical time indeed."

Concerning the Japanese context, Hamaguchi said that there is an additional social component: the aging of the population due to increased longevity and low birth rate.

Science for society

He recalled that in the Declaration on Science and the use of scientific knowledge, drawn up at a world conference organized by Unesco and the International Council for Science (ICSU) in Budapest, in 1999, the role of science was defined based on four objectives:

• science for knowledge, knowledge for progress;
• science for peace;
• science for development;
• science in society and science for society.

Tragedy

Regarding the contribution of science to society, Hamaguchi highlighted the urgency of efforts in Japan to overcome the consequences of the earthquake followed by a tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, when more than 18,000 people died: "How can we contribute through scientific and technological development so that the survivors rebuild their lives and regain their joy?".

The tragedy had also a profound impact on the credibility of Japanese scientists. Before the tsunami, almost 80% of the Japanese trusted the scientists, but this percentage dropped to 40% after the tragedy, now reaching 60%.

Japan must prepare for similar events. Most importantly, he said, is to seek solutions to issues as infrastructure, education, urban areas, nourishment and communication networks.

According to Hamaguchi, the JST's actions support the communities affected by the tsunami and the radioactive leak in Fukushima. One of the cited examples has been the development of an equipment to quickly verify if the rice being produced in the region is or not contaminated by radiation.

Universities

The speaker stressed that the technological revolution, besides deeply affecting the industry, employability and various aspects of the society's life, also leads to drastic changes in the university and the production of knowledge.

For him, the traditional forms of education will no longer function as a means of transmitting knowledge to new generations, and professors are losing their special role in society and may become ordinary citizens in a network. Therefore, Hamaguchi considers essential that Japan creates a new academic system and a new way of setting up university networks based on cooperative work.

JST programs

Hamaguchi said that the main programs of the JST for research funding are designed to stimulate innovation, including those related to basic research. One of the concerns is to support the intellectual property and train professionals working in the interaction between companies and academia.

According to him, the main program focused on innovation considers three assumptions: an aging population, an intelligent society and sustainability. The initiative has three development guidelines: 1) "backcast approach": to imagine a future society and what needs it will have in 10 to 20 years, and to plan the steps to be taken so that the objectives are achieved; 2) "under the same roof": to put together researchers from industry and from universities to harmonize their differences in performance, such as the time dedicated to a long-term research, for example; 3) a longer period of funding: the JST funds projects for 9 years, something unusual in Japan, where the projects are usually supported for 3 to 5 years.

Changes

After the conference, Hamaguchi answered some questions from the audience. Carsten Dose, executive director of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and General Secretary for the ICA, asked about the expectations in relation to changes in Japanese universities for them to become better in terms of innovation, given Hamaguchi's experience as president of the Nagoya University from 2009 to 2015. He said that Japan needs to change the style of doing science, paying greater attention to the needs of society.

In his view, another important aspect to demand changes is the fact that Japan has 2018 undergraduate programs and is facing the problem of reducing the Japanese population. One indicator of this gap is the reduction in competition in entrance exams at universities this year, he said. "The 18 year-old generation is decreasing rapidly. By 2025, Japan will be reduced by 103,000 (10%) in the number of people at that age. Currently, this population represents less than 60% from what it was in the peak period. This means that the system will collapse."

He added that there are 760 universities in Japan and 40% of them have problems. "We expect a kind of disaster in a few years. So we need to figure out how to reform higher education, but at the moment no one knows how to do this."

Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA-USP and member of the Senior Committee for the ICA, wanted to know if there is a crisis of the social sciences and humanities in Japanese universities, since the news have been reporting that the country's institutions will give less attention to them.

Hamaguchi said that, the important is to incorporate social scientists from the beginning of projects related to the natural sciences and also to harmonize the styles of both fields: "The social sciences generally work with long periods of the past and Japan needs to think about the future. In addition, natural scientists work in groups, while social science research is often carried out by a single researcher."

Group photo on the first day of the ICA's second phase.

The activities of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) have started in Nagoya. This second stage, to be held from March 6 to 18, continues the work begun in 2015, in São Paulo. Thirteen young researchers are preparing an online course on the subject "Time." The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) will be available for free on a virtual platform, possibly Cousera.

The opening ceremony, held on March 7 at the Nagoya University, was chaired by Hitoshi Sakakibara, and had the participation of the institution's president, Seiichi Matsuo. Further attendees were Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA-USP and member of the Senior Committee for the ICA, Carsten Dose, executive director of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and General Secretary for the ICA, and Hisanori Shinohara, director of the Institute for Advanced Research (IAR), co-organizer of the project and host of its second phase in Nagoya. After the welcome remarks, the research team conducted an acquaintance tour on the Higashiyama campus.

Physicist Hideyo Kunieda, advisor and vice president of the Nagoya University, gave the opening speech. He highlighted the motto of the University of São Paulo, "Sciencia Vinces" (Latin for "conquer by science"), drawing attention to the importance of this message to the present day. By presenting an overview of the research conducted at the Nagoya University, Kunieda stressed out the fact that six professors of the institution have recently been awarded the Nobel Prize. Kunieda was in São Paulo participating in the first phase of the Intercontinental Academia from April 17 to 29 last year, and gave a lecture on the theme time in astronomy.

Physicist Hideyo Kunieda presenting an overview of the research conducted at the Nagoya University.

Award-winning research

Ryoji Noyori won the Nobel Prize in 2001 and Osamu Shimomura in 2008, both in Chemistry. Also in 2008, professors Makoto Kobayashi e Toshihide Maskawa shared the award in Physics with Yoichiro Nambu, from the University of Chicago.

In 2014, another Nobel in Physics for the Nagoya University: Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano shared the award with Shuji Nakamura, from the University of California in Santa Barbara. The white LED, popular for being an economical source of light, was a creation of this trio of scientists.

Kunieda drew attention to the fact that some studies take decades to get to be a relevant invention. Hence the importance of young researchers to build the future. "But the role of a great mentor is also important," he said.

Attracting young talent is among the Nagoya University internationalization strategies, according to Kunieda. The institution promotes student symposiums, offers short and medium-term courses, short and long-term visits, exchanges between researchers, cooperative agreements and other actions.

Among the innovative projects of the Nagoya University there is the Center for Integrated Research of Future Electronics (CIRFE), whose research has resulted in savings of 7% in electricity costs in Japan, and the Institute of Innovation for Future Society, focused on applied research involving several areas.

Intellectual courage

Martin Grossmann thanked whoever has contributed to bring the ICA to life. The project of gathering young researchers from around the world to a work that lasts a whole year was released in 2012 during a meeting of the UBIAS Steering Committee held at Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study, in New Delhi.

Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA-USP and member of the Senior Committee for the ICA.

Grossmann remembered the master classs given by Professor José Goldemberg, former president of USP and current president of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), during the first meeting of the ICA, in São Paulo. Goldemberg was asked what a young researcher profile should be to meet the challenges of career and the university of the future. "They should be aggressive," he said.

Grossmann pointed out that the meaning of "being aggressive" in the world of science could be translated to "being bold" or "having intellectual courage", which coincides with the motto of the Nagoya University: "cultivate the intellectual courage."

Interdisciplinary approach is fundamental to the university of the future, according to Grossmann, speaking of the research at the IEA-USP. "To listen to the others, even if from different disciplines, is fundamental to the advancement of science," he said.

"How can a network of young researchers have some relevance when there is a secular institution like university? The answer is to promote research and interdisciplinary encounters that allow to associate science, culture and technology," said Grossmann.

Facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue

"The Nagoya University has been playing a leading role and giving decisive support for the activities of the UBIAS," said Carsten Dose. "This is a leading institution on a global scale and, therefore, to be here in the second phase of the ICA is a privilege."

Carsten Dose, from the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and General Secretary for the ICA.

Dose recalled the origins of the ICA and the UBIAS network, thanked the hospitality of the host university and the partnerships that enabled all the activities. "The ICA reminds us of what is essential for our institutions, which is to bring together young researchers in a work that facilitates dialogue between different disciplines and different countries," he said.

He remembered the advantages of having institutes for advanced studies related to universities, because these units have bases for producing science more freely, in a way that conventional institutions can not.

In a direct message to the young researchers of the ICA, Dose said he wanted "ambition" to be maintained, as well as the search for "new ideas to make the ICA keep advancing."

The IAR in expansion

Hisanori Shinohara presented the principles, activities and structure of the IAR. "We work with a small staff, as required by the modern institutions, but we intend to expand during my management, not only in terms of human resources but also in terms of budget," he said.

Hisanori Shinohara, from the IAR-Nagoya, presenting the Institute's activities

Shinohara highlighted that the principles governing the IAR are reporting research excellence produced at Nagoya University and the IAR to the academic community, giving substantial support to research excellence and promoting the independence of prominent researchers.

The academic advisory board of the IAR has 13 members, including the six scientists that have been awarded with the Nobel Prize. The institute currently has six research projects in progress. It seeks to encourage and promote informal interdisciplinary activities, promote meetings between young researchers and renowned academics, promote research exchanges with international institutions and manage a research fellowship program.

Directors of the IEA and board members host the professors on sabbatical

At the first meeting of researchers on sabbatical, held on January 7, the professors presented a brief summary of their projects and talked about their expectations for the program.

Mathematics, music, art history, archeology, sociology, oceanography and the interfaces of these with many other disciplines are some of the research areas of the sabbatical period in 2016. The studies will result in the publication of works such as books, public policy proposals or artistic works.

The initiative is unprecedented at USP and the Brazilian academic environment. By having the institutional and financial support of the University's Dean of Research, which will allocate a specific amount of aid for each selected proposal, the program will allow the selected professors to leave their original educational units in order to develop their individual projects.

In addition to the researchers, the meeting has been attended by the director and deputy director of the IEA, professors Martin Grossmann and Paulo Saldiva; USP's provost for research, Professor José Eduardo Krieger; journalist Eugenio Bucci, member of the Institute's board and a professor of USP's School of Communications and Arts (ECA); and Hamilton Brandão Varela de Albuquerque, vice-coordinator of IEA's São Carlos Center, technical adviser to the office of USP's Dean of Research and a professor at the Institute of Chemistry in São Carlos.

On their first meeting, the researchers talked about their projects and expectations for the sabbatical year

The researchers and their projects

Professor Flávio Ulhoa Coelho, from USP's Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, was the first to present his topic of study: "History of Algebraic Thinking and its Didactic Splits." "There is a moment of rupture between the concrete and the abstract in the history of algebraic thinking, with philosophical developments that impact our societies. Until today, this has not been very well studied and with this program it will be possible to deepen this subject," he said.

Dária Gorete Jaremtchuk, a professor at the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH-USP), spoke about her work "Artistic Exile: Movement of Brazilian Artists to New York during the 1960s and 1970s" via videoconference. "I started wanting to understand that movement of our artists to the United States and I was led by the findings. The work has grown to unexpected directions. I needed to study the Cold War, cultural diplomacy, diplomatic relations and other subjects. This sabbatical will be a good opportunity to consolidate these studies," Jaremtchuk said.

Lúcia Maciel Barbosa de Oliveira, a professor at USP's School of Communications and Arts (ECA), believes that there is a mismatch between academy theories about the current artistic scene and the dynamics of cultural movements involving especially youngsters and new technologies. To understand the subject, she proposes to study the "Contemporary Cultural Dynamics: Overlapping of Singularities, Collectives, Technologies and Cultural Institutions in the Common Perspective". "The time for research demands a dreamy thought, which then shapes into something more concrete. But this is a little bit on the side of everyday life and I believe that it will be possible to exercise this dream during this sabbatical period. Interaction with people from different areas will be very important and I believe the program consolidates the IEA as an interdisciplinary interaction platform," she says.

To consolidate data from several surveys conducted throughout the career is also the goal of Maria de los Angeles Gasalla, from USP's Institute of Oceanography (IO), during her sabbatical leave. She will develop the study "The Future of marine-dependent societies: climate change, innequalities and cooperation in complex socio-ecological systems". According to Gasalla, there are many data generated from previous studies; diverse issues between natural, social and physical sciences; models for natural populations and the researcher's own experience with people who depend on the sea for their livelihoods. "I have drawn incredible knowledge of the fishermen's experience of the sea and learned a great deal about the social and cultural aspects of these communities. I will be able to develop a deeper reflection on the future of ocean-dependent societies in view of the scenarios of climate change impacts," she said. For the professor, it is feasible to establish relations on the context of inequalities in Latin America and the cooperation that emerges as social technology for the benefit of the planet. "The goals of the research are ambitious, but I believe that it will be possible to achieve them due to the time this program gives us."

A former professor of the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH-USP), and current professor of the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (MAE), Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araújo proposes archeology as a case study to understand interdisciplinarity. "We see that interdisciplinarity in the University does not really exist. I saw it happen at EACH, but overall it is still very much shallow. Archeology is the most interdisciplinary field I know and my idea is to scrutinize the process vision and how this discipline operates in time and space," said Araújo. "Ontology and epistemology of an (inter)discipline: Archaeology as a Paradigm of Interdisciplinarity and its Theoretical and Practical Implications" is the title of Araújo's work, who sees in the experience of the sabbatical year program the opportunity "to think new things." For him, acting in an interdisciplinary way "is the possibility of returning to a context similar to what I had at EACH," he said.

Professor Rodolfo Nogueira Coelho de Souza, a civil engineer from USP's Polytechnic School (POLI), ended up directing his career to music. He is a professor at the Music Department of the Faculty of Philosophy of Literature at the USP campus in Ribeirão Preto. He will develop the project "Invention of an Opera: Pascal's machine in Pernaguá". Coelho de Souza says that his invention is still a work of research. He will work on set theory looking for an algorithmic composition that is not motivated by human desire. However, human desire is projected into music through something abstract, which is the algorithm. The way to do this is to operate in the cinematographic dimension, making sound clippings, he said. "Few operas have been composed in a year and I know the project is ambitious. But it is the chance to develop more creative and technological, and essentially interdisciplinary work. It is like a dream to have a place where interdisciplinarity is well seen, unlike what happens in our departments," he said.

“Out of the box”

For IEA's director Martin Grossmann, the experience of the sabbatical program represents the discovery of a "missing link with the Dean of Research". The institutional relationship of these units comes to exist concretely with the support given by the provost to the program. In addition, the presence of Professor Hamilton Varela, who is an adviser to the Dean of Research and chair of IEA's Research Committee, is helping to structure that relationship, he said.

José Eduardo Krieger, Paulo Saldiva and Hamilton Varela

The provost for research, José Eduardo Krieger, recalled the importance of "inductive mechanisms to make think outside the box, or outside the comfort environment." Providing support and contributing with resources even in times of crisis is something managers need to see to enable even more important advancements than routine allows, Krieger said.

The institutes of advanced studies founded in various universities around the world in recent years represent an experimental tip; a transdisciplinary attempt and an outpost by definition, which runs "very interesting risks" precisely because of their methods and approaches, said journalist Eugênio Bucci, who is a member of the IEA's Board and responsible for the Superintendence of Social Communication (SCS) of USP.

"The necessary innovation and experimentation need to be considered at a time when the university in Brazil and in the world rethinks its role. We have to think about the next decades, what relationship the university will have with society and in what perspectives it will contribute to the future. The IEA is a fringe of contact with the future. You need to get out of disciplinary rigor and try different paths," said Bucci.

IEA's deputy director recalled the variety of topics covered at the IEA. "Particle physics, water, philosophy, urbanity, the Amazon, well, everything happens here. I come from a very dense, relatively monothematic area. In contrast, the IEA is very free and independent. And freedom is fascinating, but it is frightening. You who now start the sabbatical year will have the chance to give the program a keynote. Complex systems are now dominating the real world. Maybe the IEA could become a point where a real-world exercise is possible," said Saldiva.

Regina Pekelmann Markus, a member of the Institute's Board and of the Scientific Committee which has coordinated the work of the Intercontinental Academia, said the sabbatical "rest" is "loaded of clouds; a way to carry dreams forward." For the scientist, "it is good to have a provost who believes we have to work outside the box."

Faced with the difficulties of instrumentalizing and practicing transdisciplinarity, perhaps the IEA can be a platform capable of adapting to this approach, because it is an "institute of free thinking, without frontiers or departments," said Varela.

Photos: Mauro Bellesa/IEA