The researcher will report the importance of interdisciplinary research and her experience in the field of digital humanities with the 1641 Depositions project, a collaboration of researchers from the arts, humanities, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Ohlmeyer will also present an institutional overview as director of the Trinity Long Room Hub.

Guilherme Ary Plonski, deputy director of the IEA, will open the conference, which will be moderated by José Teixeira Coelho Netto, a professor at USP's School of Communications and Arts (ECA) and coordinator of the IEA's Study Group on Computational Humanities. Martin Grossmann, also a professor at ECA and academic coordinator of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, will make the final comments.

The Trinity Long Room Hub is the Arts and Humanities Research Institute of Trinity College Dublin. It is one of five flagship research institutes of the University, and the one dedicated to promoting and facilitating innovative research across its nine Arts and Humanities member Schools. It is a member of the UBIAS network of university-based institutes for advanced study.

The restructuring of the UBIAS network's governance during the 4th Directors' Meeting, held in Birmingham between June 20 and 22, led the IEA-USP's deputy director Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski to take over a position of deputy coordinator. It has also been decided that São Paulo will host the fifth edition of the meeting. According to Plonski, a professor of the business and engineering schools at USP, the event will take place in the first semester of 2018.

"The meeting in Birmingham has brought important prospects on the future of the network, including the restructuring of its governance. A debate has raised topics that concern us directly, such as research funding from the EU, interdisciplinarity linking science and art, gender issues in the academic environment and others," Plonski said.

The UBIAS network has now two deputy coordinators, represented by the Freiburg University's Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and by the IEA-USP. The coordinator is Professor Morten Kyndrup, from the Danish Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS).

Formed in 2010, the UBIAS network brings together 34 institutes based on universities from around the world, and discusses the production of knowledge and conducts joint scientific activities with the presence of prominent researchers. The Intercontinental Academia (ICA), one of its leading programs, provides scientific exchange between generations, disciplines, cultures and continents, especially for young scientists aged between 30 and 40.

Professor Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA-USP, gave an overview of the ICA on a panel on June 20. The same session has been attended by researchers Valtteri Arstila and Vanessa Hellmann, both participants of the project, who joined the discussion on results and future prospects. Two editions of the ICA have already been developed, the first one on the subject "Time" and the second one on "Human Dignity". The content of the research on "Time", on which the participants have been working since the meeting in São Paulo, will support the creation of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), to be available for free on the Coursera platform.

Methodologies to assess the work of the ICA, privacy, and new social and international media have been some of the further issues discussed by the directors.

Proposed and organized by the Institute of Advance Studies of the University of Birmingham, the directors' meeting has been planned in order to share experiences, promote cultural and scientific exchanges, and articulate inter-institutional partnerships.

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

The panel discussion The Future of UBIAS, held during the Intercontinental Academia's second phase, in Nagoya, on March 11, did not deal with the agenda for the coming years of the University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study network, but with the specific characteristics of associated institutes for advanced study (IASs) and how they contribute to the advancement of knowledge and to the revitalization of the academic environment.

The concern of the panelists is natural once that the strengthening of the IASs leads directly to the consolidation of the UBIAS as an international collaborative network.

The event has brought together directors and representatives of IASs, as well as coordinators, participants and some of the lecturers of the Intercontinental Academia. Much of the discussion revolved around the importance and peculiarities of interdisciplinary research. Issues such as freedom of research, the variety of institutional profiles, the thematic diversity of each institute, the emphasis on internationalization, the participation of young researchers and the barriers that the IASs must overcome within the universities in which they are based have also been addressed.

However, according to most of the debaters, all these aspects are subordinated to the primary mission of the IASs: the research of key issues for the natural, social and human sciences.

To Eliezer Rabinovici, from the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton is an important parameter, "but one should not emulate it totally because each IAS reflects the academic culture in which it appears."

He hopes that the IASs that have arisen in various universities around the world do not end up being experiments doomed to disappear in 10 or 15 years. To avoid this, he said, universities should think of long-term activities and lay the basis for the IASs' perpetuation.

Rabinovici advocated an international participation of the institutes: "An IAS can be evaluated by the quality of its international participation and one of the ways to undergo a quality control is to expose, to be known by others and to meet them."

A strong international presence can also be a safeguard to certain risks that are inherent to the importance of the IASs, according to Rabinovici. One of these risks is to be controlled by groups with power in universities, drawn to it by the "ability the IASs have to become powerful tools in academia."

As for the role of interdisciplinarity, Rabinovici exemplified the case of his institute, of which he has been director: "Interdisciplinarity is not the goal; the goal is to study interesting problems."

To Hisanori Shinohara, director of the Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) of the Nagoya University, the current academic trends give more emphasis on scientific applications, while his institute gives more importance to the fundamental questions of the natural and social sciences.

Peter Goddard, former director of the IAS in Princeton, has also participated in the panel discussion and agreed to Rabinovici's view that the IASs should be devoted to fundamental issues in science. As an example, he cited the work of a group at the IAS whose theme is the boundaries of immigration. "The group is not interested in providing guidance on how to deal with immigration, but in studying it in its fundamental aspects," he said.

The diversity between the institutes and their research topics was commented by Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA-USP and a member of the Senior Committee for the Intercontinental Academia. As an example, he explained the profile of the Brazilian institute: "Sometimes people ask me why we are not forming future Nobel prize winners or why we do not discuss the reasons for Brazil not having a Nobel. The institute is inserted in USP's context and what differentiates us is to work with public policies, a very important issue for developing countries."

Still regarding the mission of the institutes, Goddard said that whenever he is asked to evaluate an IAS he questions whether they are doing things that can not be done in other parts of the university. "To serve as a funding mechanism or to provide additional income to some researchers is important, but this is not what an IAS should be," he said.

To Shinohara, one of the important things to which an IAS can help is to enable an environment of freedom for reflection and research. "We are always busy with classes, administration, meetings, among others. It would be great if we could provide a space with freedom, particularly to promising young researchers. Is it possible to provide freedom to scientists? At the Nagoya University this is a very difficult task."

Rabinovici agreed that this is another difficulty of the UBIAS and that, therefore, when a researcher enters their institute they must commit to stop teaching, participating in committees and getting involved in administrative activities.

Carsten Dose, general secretary of the Intercontinental Academia and moderator of the panel, said that universities in general are made up of people that respect each other, but when an IAS creates a possibility for some to have a freer activity this is seen as a privilege. "Granting privileges tends to lead to some envy in the academic environment."

Grossmann agreed with Dose's comment. He said that university administrators know how to think the university and would like to go on with it. However, they are constrained by the obligation of managing a large institution. According to him, in addition to managers, other members of the teaching body of the university see the IEA-USP as a privileged place since it has a light structure, no students or permanent researchers and a completely different atmosphere from what they experience.

Opening the discussion to the participants of the Intercontinental Academia, Shinohara asked them if young researchers should engage in interdisciplinary themes or focus on a specific field.

Philosopher Valtteri Arstila, from the University of Turku, said that before obtaining a PhD one should be devoted to a specific area. "I do not think anyone can do a good interdisciplinary work before doing a good job in a specific discipline."

The disciplinary restriction for postgraduates defended by Arstila is not shared by historian Kazuhisa Takeda, from the Waseda University. In his view, interdisciplinarity is a global trend and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science somehow encourages it to constantly improve their methods of evaluating research proposals by adopting broader criteria that involve close fields of knowledge.

Biologist Eduardo Almeida, a professor at USP, agreed with Arstila, but stressed that in Brazilian and American institutions there is a certain stimulus for undergraduate students to get interested in what is happening in areas different from their own. "However, this is difficult to do, because we receive a lot of information by e-mails, brochures and other materials. Maybe the IASs could help in this quest for knowing what is happening in other fields."

Competition in the disciplinary context was questioned by historian David Gange, from the University of Birmingham. He said that the most uncomfortable moment during the first phase of the Intercontinental Academia in São Paulo was when physicist José Goldemberg, professor emeritus from the USP's Institute of Physics and an honorary professor of the IEA-USP, advised the young researchers to be aggressive. "We are not competing against each other. If we think so, we will be contributing to the problems that universities increasingly face. As young researchers we must understand the university as well as understand our disciplines. And the only way to understand the university is being interdisciplinary," he said.

The discussion on interdisciplinarity is misconceived, according to Goddard, for whom the confluence of disciplines should always result from the topic chosen to study. "If a researcher wants to study the movement of people in the past they will need to involve biologists, study the information obtained in burials and understand the genetics of those people."

Hideaki Miyajima, director of the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, agreed with the requirement cited by Goddard, but thinks that there are some risks in recommending young people to undertake interdisciplinary work, for "issues with this feature are difficult to identify" .

Shinohara argued that the IASs seek to connect areas of knowledge that are distant from each other: "There are numerous variations on interdisciplinarity in terms of distance between the research fields. This group at the Intercontinental Academia, for example, is quite challenging, but when talking about physics and mathematics these are relatively close fields. "

Dose said that everyone agrees with this view of Goddard, but what happens is an intersection of disciplines, careers and institutions, "complicating choices, especially for young researchers."

The situation is also difficult for the institutions, according to Dose, since "they have responsibilities both in the production of advanced research and in relation to young researchers, to whom they need to provide opportunities not found elsewhere in the disciplinary environment while establishing safeguards to follow not only one single path (even if interdisciplinary) and to stay disconnected from the disciplinary structure of the university."

The IASs need to deal with old and new academic and institutional challenges, as one can infer from the discussion. However, to Grossmann, the main issues to be addressed are related to "glocal" (global + local) aspects. "We have to worry about the challenges faced by our universities and how they correspond to global change," he said.

Photo: IAR/Nagoya University

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

Can someone be tortured to save the lives of hundreds of people in imminent danger? Would you accept that someone was tortured to save your children in danger? Can torture be justified for national security protection? Who has dignity? What does "human dignity” mean? Is it an absolute or a relative concept? Does religion favor or hinder human dignity? Is dignity a value or a right? Do all people have dignity?

These and other questions were discussed during the first phase of the second edition of the Intercontinental Academia on Human Dignity, held at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS) of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, from March 6 to 18.

18 young researchers gathered for two weeks of master classes, academic debates and other activities related to the central theme. In August, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University (ZiF) will be the host of the second phase while more classes, debates and discussions will be held in order to build a collective and interdisciplinary project on the subject. The program of the first phase is available at: http://www.as.huji.ac.il/ias/public/121/intercontinentalAca201586/program.pdf

The group is formed by young researchers from various countries (Israel, Germany, USA, Italy, Romania, South Africa / Nigeria, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, Brazil) and backgrounds (law, philosophy, theology, political science, anthropology, spatial planning, history, linguistics).

Experience

Perhaps because of having worked in projects and programs with multi / interdisciplinary approach regarding the defense of human rights, the proposal of the Intercontinental Academia on Human Dignity to "promote an unprecedented interdisciplinary dialogue and start cooperation between participants with different scientific and cultural backgrounds" has inspired me to dream of building something with researchers from around the world.

2nd edition of the Intercontinental Academia: 18 young researchers have met in Jerusalem to address human dignity

To promote human dignity, to alleviate human suffering and to combat human right violations, besides strengthening a culture of human dignity in Brazil and worldwide. To meet different people and realities, to contribute for a collective and interdisciplinary project on human dignity, and perhaps for the promotion of human dignity in an intercontinental academia. With all this in mind, I went to Israel willing to learn and discuss the topic.

But the path towards an intercontinental academia and a culture of human dignity is long and complex, and certainly does not depend on academic debates and conferences only. Theory and practice need to interact and dialogue with consistency.

One of the first activities was a round of presentations and a brief discussion on the understanding of each participant on the concept of human dignity. Is human dignity an open concept that would comprehend every and any value or ideal to be protected? Is it a tool for social transformation? Is there an "essential core" of human dignity? Does human dignity enshrine an individual or collective conception? Does human dignity include a sense of autonomy? What is the meaning of human dignity? Who has dignity?

Human dignity as a research theme has brought young scholars with different scientific, cultural and social backgrounds together. But the common theme of research does not mean a shared understanding of dignity by itself. This has been evidenced during the first discussion. Human dignity seemed to have different shapes, colors and forms for each participant.

A sum of different opinions and views does not necessarily reflect a consensus on the term and a collective construction - which requires time, dedication and joint efforts. But we were still getting to know each other, and a common concept of human dignity and an interdisciplinary collective project would be developed in the course of two weeks in Jerusalem or in the second phase in Bielefeld.

The lack of a common concept on human dignity was even more evident in the second week, with discussions of human dignity at the end of life (which brings up dignity throughout life), and on human dignity and the defense of national security based on the Israeli experience in jurisprudence and relative social (and sometimes institutional) acceptance of torture as a research method in "time bomb" situations or scenarios.

In Israel, torture is used as a method of investigation in certain cases of defense "necessity" in "time bomb" scenarios with relative approval of state institutions, including the Supreme Court. Is the protection of national security above human dignity?

For some, the practice of torture could be justified to "save lives" in a "time bomb" scenario. Thus, one would not question the violation of human dignity if torture was practiced to save "other lives". Is "life" the most supreme good of human dignity? Is one human life more worth than another? Is torture acceptable in a "time bomb" scenario? May torture be acceptable?

It seemed increasingly essential to have greater clarity on what the group meant by human dignity in order to develop an interdisciplinary collective project and a final product of this journey. How to build a common, collective and interdisciplinary project on human dignity if we do not even have a minimum common sense on the subject? How to discuss human dignity if some may have more dignity than others?

But perhaps human dignity will only prevail in theory and practice, without borders or possibilities for torture under any circumstances when each person starts being able to imagine themself in other roles and filling the shoes of the "enemies" under torture or their families.

If an interdisciplinary approach invites each discipline to have doubts and questions for a collective construction, it becomes evident that to deliver a joint project on human dignity we must have a solid, well-defined and interdisciplinarily built foundation of concepts. But before that it seems even more necessary to go through some personal reflections, show humility, openness and maturity to questions and dialogue, to enable a common and collective understanding of human dignity, so we can move towards a collective and interdisciplinary construction. Debating human dignity in an intercontinental academia seems to require that each participant makes a constant exercise of otherness and questioning, and not only discuss academic concepts of each discipline or the daily practices of institutions and societies. It is necessary that the other is seen and considered with equality of human dignity.

In the logic of war, the other is seen as an enemy. In an authoritarian past, the other should be watched and punished, if not "deleted". A slave story: the other as an object. In everyday life, is it worth questioning whether the other is worthy of dignity? Who decides who can (or should) live or die? Who has human dignity? Is this intrinsic or conquered? Is dignity absolute or can it be relativized? How to foster a culture of human dignity? What is the role of academia?

But even these questions also seem to have been carefully prepared by the organization and the coordination. In addition to master classes and lectures with experts and important figures of the Israeli scenario (see material: http://www.as.huji.ac.il/HM-brochure), visits and social activities have allowed an acquaintance with the social, cultural and religious identity of Israel, and has promoted greater interaction among the participants. In conversations during meals and tours we could know each other, discuss situations and issues that contributed to a sense of mutual trust and community that favor a joint project and a collective construction.

Even with the differences, the dialogue, reflection and discussion have prevailed among the participants. Opinions have been respectfully heard and debated. The limits of performance and arguments began to be outlined and reflected.

Participants of the 2nd Intercontinental Academia

Social activities have allowed us an overview of Israel from the Holocaust memory at Yad Vashem to the promise of rebirth, reconstruction and return of the Jews to the promised land, represented by the works of the Israel Museum. We have got to know the role of the Supreme Court and the proposal of the current government for social integration, the narratives of the institutional practice of national security, and the representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through documentaries. Bombings and terror news, fear and insecurity reactions, relative ease of everyday life: "just another day..."

The individual questioning may probably also take part of an interdisciplinary collective construction on human dignity: it requires from us to exit the comfort zone provided by the training and academic discipline to discuss possibilities of common and collective projects. Although we have not returned from Jerusalem with a clear idea of the contours of this collective and interdisciplinary project, our discussions and conversations have led to a proposal for a third phase, still to be defined: a publication, a workshop, or some other format to contribute with the debate on human dignity, and perhaps for its implementation and execution.

But it may still be necessary for each participant to return to their daily activities so that the intense reflections and discussions decant a bit and we can boost a collective and interdisciplinary project on human dignity, with a solid common base grounded in interdisciplinary dialogues. It might take place in Bielefeld, or on a third stage, wherever it is.

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

Rabinovici has directed the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an institution linked to the UBIAS network, which brings together 34 IASs based in universities around the world. The IEA-USP is also a member.

The Israeli physicist is a member of the Senior Committee of the Intercontinental Academia, a project proposed by him with the objective to promote scientific exchange between generations, disciplines, cultures and continents. The first edition of the project is being conducted by the IEA-USP in partnership with the University of Nagoya's Institute for Advanced Research.

Rabinovici has visited the IEA-USP and gave lectures on the role of the UBIAS network and on his specialty, particle physics. On one occasion, he showed his vision of the SESAME project, of which he is a co-founder. It is a cooperative venture that brings together scientists and governments of several Middle Eastern countries in order to create a third generation light source.

At the election of the CERN, the physicist received the majority of the 21 votes by the member countries of the Board. Rabinovici had been elected to the position of Vice President of the SESAME project in 2013, when he also became its spokesman.

Israel is an associate member of the CERN since September 2014. Since 1991, the country has invested in research in Central Europe after being granted the observer status by the Board. Currently, Israel is involved in the Atlas experiment, as well as on the premises of CERN Isolde and other experiences.

The Scientific Committee for the second edition of the Intercontinental Academia gathered in late October and chose lawyer and human rights activist Akemi Kamimura to be one of the 21 young researchers members of the project.

The Intercontinental Academia is a program of the University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS), a network that brings together 36 institutes of advanced studies from all continents. The first edition of the program, organized by the IEA-USP and the Institutes for Advanced Research of the University of Nagoya, is still ongoing and focuses on Time.

The second edition's theme will be Human Dignity. The organizers are the University of Bielefeld's Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) and the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Both meetings of the projects will take place in 2016: Jerusalem will host the first phase in March while Bielefeld will host the second one in August.

According to the organizers, the theme of the second edition is related to ethical and practical debates, which are crucial in several disciplines: "Human dignity is referred in research on terrorism, torture, war, big data and data protection, care in the long term, poverty reduction, social security, minorities, history of human rights, assisted suicide, border control and genetic engineering, just to name a few areas."

Each phase of the Academia will feature three or four master classes given by prominent intellectuals. Some of the topics to be addressed are:

Profile

Kamimura holds a Masters in Human Rights from the USP's Faculty of Law, where she has also completed her bachelor's degree. In 2014 she was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law in Heidelberg. In 2010 she was a student of the course Human Rights and Women: Theory and Practice at the Universidad de Chile's Faculty of Law.

She has been working in projects and institutions linked to human rights since 2000. In 2013/2014 she was a consultant of UNESCO for the coordination of a systematic project on human rights recommendations made by UN agencies and the Organization of American States (OAS). The aim of this study is to propose a monitoring mechanism for the implementation of these guidelines by the Brazilian government.

Kamimura hopes that her academic and professional experience can contribute to the debate about the international legal framework on human rights to be discussed at the Intercontinental Academia, especially with regard to equality and non-discrimination of gender.

Photo: Camila Rodrigues/SJESP

Some foreign universities have adopted new organizational frameworks to meet the peculiarities of interdisciplinary research. More than necessary, this restructuring is essential to consolidate the interdisciplinary model, according to the German sociologist Peter Weingart.

Weingart is an adviser and former director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF, in the German acronym) at Bielefeld University (Germany). The ZiF is a partner of the IEA in the Ubias network (University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study).

For him, in addition to adopting new ways to organize scholars, disciplines and teaching & research units, interdisciplinarity requires a solid epistemological foundation: “Without the good internal reasons pertaining to the development of science and without a willingness to deal with problems outside specific areas, it will not succeed.”

Weingart made these remarks at the conference Interdisciplinarity and the New Governance of Universities he gave at the IEA on July 28.

For him, “interdisciplinarity has been fashionable in academia for more than 20 years, with research development agencies in every country advocating it as a goal to be achieved; until recently, however, the term was devoid of meaning.”

Kinds of interdisciplinarity and ways to achieve it

Weingart said that during his term at the helm of the ZiF (1989-1994), the Center classified interdisciplinary relations into two types: small – when, for example, mathematicians and physicists get together, because “they can understand each other rather easily” – and large, as when a biologist and a sociologist discuss the biological foundations of culture and must overcome greater differences between their disciplines.

He also sees two ways that interdisciplinarity can be achieved. One is through the combination of disciplines, resulting in areas such as biophysics. “However, it does not take long for the new area to become a new major field, with the same dynamics and traditional format of a discipline, namely, ‘turf’ protection, demarcation of outside areas and internalization of communication, characterized by the interaction of peers with similar ideas and attitudes.”

The other way of achieving interdisciplinarity is “driven by a demand, often political, from outside the disciplines.” An example is environmental research, which according Weingart “has yet to succeed in becoming a discipline, because it is made up of a conglomerate of different disciplines cooperating among themselves.”

According to the sociologist, these two types of interdisciplinarity may face resistance in universities from well-established departments with whom it competes for funds. “Departments are interest groups and, of course, the strongest ones claim that only they are able to judge the quality and competence of scholars enrolling in the units and institutes of a university.”

Experiences

Weingart mentioned the University of Siegen (Germany) as an example of an institution that is striving to move away from departmental model and pursue interdisciplinarity. He acknowledges, however, that the case in point is not really persuasive, because it is a small and somewhat obscure university.

“The university regrouped its 12 departments into four faculties that, although maintaining the structure of disciplines, work on issues that arise from outside themselves.”

A more radical example mentioned by Weingart is Arizona State University (United States): “Because this university cannot join the elite echelon of American institutions, president Michael Crow decided to follow a different path and adopt a strategy he calls ‘scientific entrepreneurship’: he dissolved all the departments and created a completely new, interdisciplinary mix between the areas.”

Public demand

Weingart stressed that the euphoria over interdisciplinary research can also be justified politically, with research responding to issues external to the university, fulfilling public demands and being accountable to taxpayers. “It’s best that science do things that are valued by society rather that doing only what is valued by scientists,” he added.

Even with all the changes toward interdisciplinarity, he warns that “the democratization of science is not something that will abolish the trend toward specialization that we have witnessed over the last two centuries. The evolution of science depends on ever-increasing specialization and penetration, on plunging into unexplored territories, but the question we must ask is whether the model of disciplines, as created in the early 19^th century, herald the end of their own history or whether it is possible that something else replace them.”

Various questions from the audience have been made to Peter Weingart regarding his ideas

DEBATE

Weingart’s statements led to several questions from the audience in the IEA Event Room and from those who followed the conference via Internet.

The debate began with a question from IEA director Martin Grossmann, who asked the sociologist’s opinion regarding the role of institute of advanced studies (IAS) in expanding university interdisciplinarity.

Weingart said there are various ways to understand what IASs should do. One of them is that this kind of institute should promote a gathering of brilliant minds. For him, no one today still believes this is enough: “It’s great to have these people accomplishing things in the same place, but this only works to a certain point. Furthermore, it is a somewhat lavish solution, feasible only for those with large budgets; if you don’t have that kind of money, you’re better off considering systemic solutions.”

In his view, the first step towards establishing an IAS is to ensure that it has its own budget and research stations, with leeway to hire whoever it wants. With regard to their work properly, he believes these institutes should identify issues that cannot be studied in the departments, and also reflect on the relationship between scientific production and other spheres of social life.

The director of the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Biosciences, Gilberto Fernando Xavier, asked Weingart if the difficulty to establish interdisciplinary groups in a competitive environment was not more a sociological problem than an organizational one, “because to create such a group there has to be trust and a cooperative attitude among people.”

Weingart said this difficulty is not actually a sociological problem, but rather psychological: “Many academics are afraid and seek security; people like that are not good partners in groups, which require scholars resilient enough to sit down with someone and ask silly questions, because they know that silly questions need to be asked, that they need to learn, to start from scratch.”

Carlos Graeff Teixeira, from the School of Biosciences at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, asked by e-mail how university administrators may identify relevant social programs and if special groups are needed to accomplish this task.

According to Weingart, there is a no recipe to identify societal problems that deserve to be studied, but that creating groups of social scientists dedicated to this work or seeking information from concerned people elsewhere may be one course of action.

Leandro Giatti, from the School of Public Health, said we live amidst uncertainties and that experts do not have all the answers. He asked Weingart whether society shouldn’t participate more in discussions by scientists on matters of great uncertainty.

According to Weingart, we must overcome the model in which politicians pose questions to scientists who are well informed on all the evidence and the issue is thereby resolved: “We know that public policy makers are very opportunistic with regard to scientific evidence, accepting what they like and discarding the rest; furthermore, there is no way eliminate insecurity from the process, leaving us the alternative of establishing mechanisms that reduce the risks of receiving information or that allow postponing decisions, in keeping with the principle of precaution.”

Marcos Buckeridge, from the Institute of Biosciences, asked Weingart whether the systems of a university need both interdisciplinary workgroups using systemic tools and, at the same time, individuals doing basic science by themselves, and whether it would not be the case to create better connections between basic science and the systemic view.

Weingart said that the notion of system is very different in each context and that a common ground – a prerequisite for interdisciplinary work – will always be at a level above two or three connected disciplines: “It will be a set of problems competing with each other or trying to fit the findings of what is above the disciplines.”

According to Buckeridge, the University of São Paulo has mechanisms for this, but there is the problem of different language between different areas and the consequent need for “translators” (not people, but mechanisms that facilitate understanding).

Weingart said that specialization is the touchstone and this implies highly specialized languages: “It would be impossible to use ‘translators’ to make each discipline translatable; the best would be for different disciplines to confront one specific problem with the help of one ‘translator’.” As an example of this “translation” work, Buckeridge mentioned the books on popular science that many American and British scientists produce. Weingart agreed that this is a possible mechanism.

Silvio Salinas, from USP’s Institute of Physics and former adviser to the IEA, said that departments in the University of São Paulo are strong, well-established and productive, and that he considers concern with the comprehensive training of undergraduate students more important.

Weingart said that with the expansion of the contents of disciplines it is impossible to know everything. In his view, curricula in every discipline are expanding and, therefore, “we need a constant process of rethinking the curricula and deciding which skills are absolutely crucial and which should be abandoned.”

During the debate, the director of USP’s School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, Maria Cristina Motta de Toledo, who followed the event over the Internet, sent an invitation for Weingart to visit the school on his next trip to São Paulo. She said the school adopts an interdisciplinary, not departmental, approach to undergraduate studies, based on integrated subjects and activities, with the freshman year being a common basic cycle for all courses.

Photos: Leonor Calazans/IEA-USP

Neuroscientist Ruud Buijs

In a conference at the Intercontinental Academia on April 21, Buijs discussed this interaction, illustrating his exposition with numerous examples from studies of animals and humans.

He initially gave a schematic overview of the workings of the hypothalamus, a part of the brain highly connected to primitive parts of that organ and, via the autonomic nerves of the spinal cortex, to other parts of the body, sending them commands from the brain. “In addition to being essential for us to move our hand and other actions, the spinal cortex is also indispensable for the proper functioning of physiological processes. To achieve this type of physiological control we need the hypothalamus.”

The biological clock, which receives information about light and dark directly from the retina, is located in the hypothalamus, near the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the primary center for regulating circadian rhythms.

According to Buijs, it is now possible to remove the biological clock of the brain of a guinea pig and keep it functioning in vitro, maintaining electrical activity in a cycle of approximately 24 hours, autonomously, without having to do anything else.

Accuracy

To illustrate the accuracy of this mechanism, he said that forensic medicine can determine with great precision the time that someone was murdered by analyzing the expression of the biological clock in their organs, especially if the victim is found within 48 hours of death.

The moment when someone comes into the world is likewise determined by the biological clock. He showed a graph showing that the birth of the first child of pregnant residents of Amsterdam peaks at around 8:00 am. (In the Netherlands, babies are generally born with the help of a midwife.) Another chart showed that the peak time was between 4:00 and 5:00 am for the second or subsequent children, something that Buijs attributes to the fact that women become more savvy regarding labor. A third chart, however, shows a peak around noon and refers to births with obstetricians, when “babies are born in the doctor’s time, who induces labor or performs a cesarean section.”

In some cases, the moment of an individual’s death can also be determined by the biological clock, as shown by the fact that the peak of heart attacks occurs in the early part of the morning, with greater incidence on Mondays (perhaps due to the deregulation of schedules over the weekend, ventured Buijs).

Hormones

In Buijs’ view, the biological clock resorts to several mechanisms to enforce rhythms upon the body, using in many cases the hormone corticosterone. “In experiments with mice, corticosterone peak occurs soon after the night period (we know that mice are active at night), while the peak of the hormone melatonin occurs at night, indicating it induces activity in animals.” In humans, melatonin also peaks at night, but unlike what happens to mice, melatonin promotes sleep in humans.

To study this process in an animal antithetical to the mouse, one with diurnal habits, Buijs used the Arvicanthis ansorgei, a wild African rodent. These animals are active in early and late daytime. “We say that the biological clock prepares our body for the onset of the active period. When measuring corticosterone in the animal, it was found that the peak occurs just before active periods, so there are two corticosterone peaks in 24 hours. This means that, somehow, the biological clock adapts to the animal’s life style and adopts two peaks of activity.”

The hypothalamus contains specific areas that control temperature, heart rate and food intake. The biological clock imposes a temporal pattern to them all. “These connections are strong and there is no escaping the biological clock.”

Buijs said that the areas of the hypothalamus linked to food intake exert a type of influence similar to that of the biological clock, and work in harmony with it. He cited as an example the role of temporal and metabolic factors in modulating body temperature. In animals with nocturnal habits, the temperature is higher at night, then lowers and finally rises again, anticipating the active period.

The metabolism influences temperatures, so that, during the daytime period (of repose), they are low. If the biological clock is injured, the rhythm of temperature variation disappears and remains unaffected even by the metabolic factor, confirming the relationship between metabolism and biological clock.

To produce corticosterone, the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus produces a hormone that leads to the production, in another part of the hypothalamus, of the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which stimulates the production of corticosterone in the adrenal glands. Therefore, it was to be expected that upon examining the daytime and nighttime levels of corticosterone in an animal, we would find a relationship with the levels of ACTH. But that is not what happens.

To investigate this, Buijs inserted a virus similar to that of rabies in the adrenal glands of mice. Because this virus has the property of being absorbed by nerve terminals, reproducing itself in the body of the cell and migrating to other cells via the nerve terminals, it is possible to follow the chain of command from the brain to the glands.

Thus, it was possible to establish that neurons in the spinal cortex communicate with the adrenals. It was also possible to follow the impulses of the biological clock, proving that it uses not only hormones to send commands to the organs, but also autonomic pathways. This is advantageous, because something introduced into the bloodstream will take a certain amount of time to reach the organs. With a direct connection to the organs, the biological clock prepares them for what is coming in the blood and also for the arrival of hormones.

If the biological clock uses these means to communicate with the body, what means do the organs use to respond to biological clock? “Many scientists still think the biological clock is an autonomous timepiece that requires no feedback. Of course, this is not true. We have evidence that it needs feedback. The biological clock is in constant interaction with the body.”

In mammals and many other animals, this response is regulated by melatonin, which leads the body to bypass the biological clock cycle. Buijs displayed graphs showing the increased production of melatonin in a reindeer in Finland in the autumn, when the duration of night increases from less than one hour at the end of July to more than 11 hours in mid-September. Also in Finland, where the temperatures of certain periods of the year make the night flight of mosquitoes impossible, bats begin making diurnal flights to hunt for food. “Each organism makes manifold efforts to get in balance with the environment, where the length of the day/night cycle will determine the standard daily rhythm and the pace that the animal will adopt.”

According to Buijs, different areas of the brain produce the same neurotransmitter. The biological clock is one of the areas that produce vasopressin, an antidiuretic hormone with vasoconstrictive effects that also acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain. The biological clock produces vasopressin for an area that is also influenced by gonadal hormones.

Buijs showed images of two areas in the brain of a mouse with vasoconstrictive innervation, one that is influenced by gonadal hormones and another sensitive to the biological clock. When the mouse is neutered, vasoconstriction in the first area disappears, but remains in the area that is sensitive to the biological clock. This would indicate the possibility of an eventual loss of vasoconstrictive innervation for physiological or functional reasons. According to Buijs, this possibly occurs through the reduction of gonadal hormones, e.g., during preparation for winter, when the animal hibernates.

The size of the testicles and the testosterone levels of the European hamster (an animal that hibernates) are much greater in summer than in winter. Both the size and the level decrease abruptly between late July and late August, apparently preparing the animal to survive the coming winter. “The hamster goes into hibernation for four or five days, wakes up for 24 hours and eats, drinks and urinates a little, then goes back into hibernation, in a very well-organized process in temporal terms. If testosterone is given to the animal during this period, it will not hibernate, will attempt live in open spaces and will die.”

Images of certain area of the hamster’s brain (the same one observed in the mouse of the previous example) are completely different in the summer and in winter, indicating how the animal’s rhythm influences the central nervous system. The decrease of gonadal hormones prepares the animal for winter. The loss of vasoconstriction in the septum allows it to adapt its physiology and plummets its temperature to 5°C.

Type 2 diabetes and obesity

Two other examples of disordered physiological processes possibly caused by a desynchronization between the biological clock and the physiological mechanisms themselves are, according to Buijs, the onset of type 2 diabetes and the development of obesity.

In the case of type 2 diabetes, this might have to do with the fact that the brain needs more glucose for the active period of the individual’s daily cycle. The amount of sugar (glucose) consumed by the brain in 24 hours is 100 g and the quantity available for the rest of the body is 5 g. “The selfish brain competes with the rest of the body for energy. ‘Compete,’ however, is not a good verb, because the brain is the boss and orders that the sugar be given to it.”

An experiment was carried out with people suffering from type 2 diabetes and had twice the glucose levels of people without the disease. Although the level of glucose is already quite high in patients, it begins to rise even further around 5:00 am, preparing the body for the active period of the day.

The explanation for this, according to Buijs, is that the brain becomes more active and requires more energy in the beginning of the period of greater activity. To meet the demands of the brain, the biological clock prepares the body to make more glucose available.

When the body provides more glucose, it peak in the bloodstream quite rapidly, but then the level drops in a short time. By observing this phenomenon throughout the day, it was found that peaks in blood glucose levels decrease until the onset of the active period.

Interestingly, if you compare both phenomena, you’ll see that the glucose peak in the blood corresponds to lowest glucose peak in the muscles. “This means that the biological clock is doing two things at once: on the one hand, it is stimulating the production of glucose; on the other, it is making the brain absorb more glucose. A perfect preparation for the active period of the day.”

What is the role of the biological clock in obesity? Buijs said one of the correlations has to do with the period of sleep: the shorter the period, the greater the chances of developing obesity. But there’s another correlation, related to factors that promote the growth of fatty tissue.

Actually, the autonomic nervous system involves two systems (the sympathetic and the parasympathetic), by means of which the brain sends commands for the fatty tissues to grow. By injecting a virus similar to that of rabies in retroperitoneal fat (the back of the abdominal cavity) of mice, it is possible to identify the area of the brain that controls the parasympathetic system – which is, in general, the system for repose. “When cutting the innervation of the system, the uptake of glucose decreases, indicating that a command from the brain is required for the fatty tissue to absorb it.”

By analyzing the abdominal fat of two 14-year old boys, one non-diabetic and the other diabetic, the clinical finding was that the accumulation of fatty tissue in the gastrointestinal compartment is associated with the disease. According to Buijs, understanding that the parasympathetic system is important for the accumulation of fat suggests that the system’s commands for the gastrointestinal compartment may be stronger than the commands for the subcutaneous area. This might mean that both regions need other body signals; otherwise, the brain will not be able to distinguish between the compartments.

To resolve this doubt, markers were injected in abdominal tissue of mice and it was found that in the autonomic center (which commands the fatty tissues) there is a pair of different nerves to command the fat of each compartment. The differentiation of nerves may be followed up to the hypothalamus, where the differentiation can actually be seen in one of the structures that receive information from the biological clock. Thus, we find that the biological clock has nerves that communicate only with some part of the body not with another.

The conclusion of these experiments is that different controls for different tissues is what enables the centralized control of fat distribution. According to Buijs, this can be seen in the fact that individuals who accumulate abdominal fat suffer an imbalance in the body’s fat compartments, suggesting that some cases of diabetes and hypertension may involve this type of imbalance in the commands of the autonomic nervous system – not only in commands stemming from the hypothalamus, but in those from the biological clock itself.

Buijs’ working hypothesis for future research is that disarray in the reciprocal relationship between the biological clock and the organs – at any level and at any stage of life – can result in illness. “The disease can be induced, for instance, by ingesting food at the wrong moments during the 24 hour cycle.”

The Senior Committee that coordinates the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) has completed the final stage of the selection process of the 13 young researchers who will participate in the pilot-project initiative. The result is the composition of a plural group, which includes the geographic diversity and the dialogue between East and West pursued by the ICA's creators for this first edition. Among the scientists there are representatives from three continents and seven countries: Germany, England, Finland, Japan, China, the United States and Brazil.

The selection began in the Senior Committee Meeting held in September 2014 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Freiburg (FRIAS), when the first names were chosen. In order to ensure the participation of young researchers from different countries, cultures and academic traditions, the decision on the other scientists was postponed until there was time for new candidates from other regions of the world to sign up.

The process was resumed in the 3rd Meeting of Directors of University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS) - a network which brings together 34 institutes for advanced studies based in universities around the world, to which the ICA is bound. During the event, held in November 2014 in Taipei, there was agreement on the appointment of four new candidates, all from Asia. The process was finalized in February 2015, when the last two researchers were chosen.

INTERCONTINENTAL ACADEMIA

Synthesized in the concept 2+2+2, the ICA is an international academic cooperation project which aims to bring together two institutes of UBIAS from two different continents to develop, over two interdisciplinary workshops, a joint research focused on a cross-thematic topic.

Synthesized in the concept 2+2+2, the ICA is an international academic cooperation project which aims to bring together two institutes of UBIAS from two different continents to develop, over two interdisciplinary workshops, a joint research focused on a cross-thematic topic.

PARTICIPANTS

	América
	André Mascioli Cravo - Brazil A psychologist graduated from USP, where he also received his PhD in neurophysiology and did a post-doctoral internship at the Medical School. Cravo is a professor for cognitive neuroscience at the Math, Computing and Cognition Center of the Federal University of ABC (UFABC).
	Eduardo de Almeida - Brazil A biologist graduated from the University of Minas Gerais and a PhD in entomology from Cornell University. Almeida is a professor of the Department of Biology at USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Sciences of Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP).
	Adriano De Cezaro – Brazil A mathematician graduated from the Federal University of Rio Grande (FURG), PhD in mathematics by the National Pure and Applied Mathematics Institute (IMPA) and postdoctoral fellow at the Computer Science Institute of the University of British Columbia. Cezaro is a professor at FURG’s Mathematics, Physics and Statistics Institute.
	Helder Nakaya - Brazil A biologist graduated from USP, where he also received his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology. Post-doctor from Emory University. Nakaya is a professor at the Department of Clinical and Toxicological Analysis of USP’s School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (FCF), and at the Department of Pathology of Emory University‘s School of Medicine.
	Marius Müller - Brazil (in spite of being German, USP is supporting him at the ICA) A biologist graduated from the Christian-Albrechts-University and PhD in marine biogeochemistry from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences. Müller is a post-doctor from the Oceanography Laboratory of Villefranche-sur-mer and from the Institute of Marine Studies of the University of Tasmania. He is a post-doctorate fellow at USP’s Institute of Oceanography (IO).
	Nikki Moore - United States A bachelor of Arts from Baylor University and master in History, Theory, and Art and Architecture Criticism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Moore is a doctoral student in art history at Rice University.
	Asia
	Norihito Nakamichi — Japan Graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture of the Nagoya University, where he also received his PhD in the same area. Nakamichi is an associate professor at the Institute of Biomolecules Manufacturing (ITBM) of the Nagoya University.
	Kazuhisa Takeda — Japan A bachelor in literature from the Reitaku University that has obtained his PhD in area studies from the Sophia University. Takeda is an assistant professor of the Institute for Advanced Study and a researcher at the Institute of Latin American Studies, both at Waseda University.
	Saitya Das — India A bachelor in letters (English language) from the Gauhati University that has obtained his PhD in semiotics and structure philosophy from the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Das is a post-doctor in philosophy of literature from the Unit of Philosophy Training and Research of the Université de Marc Bloch Strasbourg 2. He is a professor at the English Studies Center of the Jawaharlal Nehru University.
	Christian Hein — Taiwan A bachelor and a doctor in English and German comparative literature from the University of Hannover. Hein is a professor at the Languages Center of the Free Arts College of the National Taiwan University.
	Liu Yangyang — China A bachelor from the Nanjing University that holds a PhD from the University of the Southwest, both in China. Yangyang is an associate professor at the Department of Psychology of the Nanjing University.
	Europe
	Boris Roman Gibhardt — Germany A bachelor of general and comparative literature, history of art and musicology from the Johannes Gutenberg Mainz University that has obtained his PhD in general and comparative literature from Free University of Berlin. Gibhardt is a professor for art history at the University of Bielefeld and a visiting researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies / Interdisciplinary Research Center at the same institution.
	David Gange — UK A historian graduated from the Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he also obtained his PhD in history and was a post-doctoral fellow. Gange is a senior professor of modern history at the University of Birmingham.
	Eva von Contzen — Germany A bachelor of English and Classical Art from the Ruhr-University Bochum that holds a PhD in theory of English medieval narrative. She has been a junior visiting researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Freiburg (FRIAS). At the Ruhr-University Bochum she is currently a professor for culture, literature, and medieval and ancient English language.
	Valtteri Arstila — Finland A social scientist graduated from the University of Turku, where he has also obtained his PhD in philosophy. Arstila is a researcher of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Turku.