Home » Health » 15 Vegan Watermelon Smoothie Recipes And The Benefits!
15 Vegan Watermelon Smoothie Recipes And The Benefits!
I can't describe you how beautiful the morning is starting with a watermelon smoothie. Because of that, in this article I want to point out my 15 favorite watermelon smoothie recipes placed at the bottom of this page.
However, before I grant you that pleasure, see the benefits of a single glass of watermelon smoothie during the day.
Each healthy diet contains an adequate ratio of fruits and vegetables. They all have a certain nutrient value offering a wide specter of benefits.
Antioxidants stop the creating of free radicals in the organism which cause cancer. Watermelon is filled with antioxidants, and is exceptional in the fight with prostate cancer.
Red – There is a reason why watermelon has red color. Lycopene is an ingredient in watermelon, part of the group of very powerful antioxidants. Lycopene is useful in the fight against heart attacks and many other hearth diseases.
Water – Where does this fruit's name originate from? Off course you know. This very delicious fruit contains 90% of water. It is great if you want to stop body dehydration, especially because of the fact that this fruit's water has a high concentration of electrolytes.
Vitamin C – The increasing and preserving of healthy immune system isn't possible without Vitamin C. Watermelon contains a large quantity of this vitamin. It is the reason for the refreshing properties of watermelon. One glass of watermelon smoothie gives you more than 20% of the daily need of this vitamin.
Energy – Except you feel fresher, you are also full with energy. Vitamin B (B1, B6) gives you that great strength. These vitamins are very useful in the fight with hypertension.
Digestion – Because of high water and fiber content, watermelon is good in preserving of healthy digestive tract. It stops constipation.
Inflammation – Choline is a very important nutrient ingredient which helps in relaxing of the body's muscles and is good for your memory and focus. It regulates the absorption of fats and lowers chronicle inflammations. On the other hand, amino acid L-citrulline lowers the muscle pain caused by hard workouts. It also lowers the recovery time between workouts.
Skin and Hair – Vitamin A is necessary for the growth of each tissue in the organism, including the skin and hair. Off course that the concentration of Vitamin C contributes to the creating and preserving of collagen necessary for slender, tight and shiny skin.
As I already mentioned the benefits from drinking watermelon smoothie, it is time to keep my promise and tell you my favorite watermelon smoothie recipes. I have to mention that the same are in the Vegan category.


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Home » Hip-Hop » Missy Elliott - This Is Not a Test! (2003)
Missy Elliott - This Is Not a Test! (2003)
By LassNo comments
Style: Pop Rap
© 2003 Elektra Records
Listeners shouldn't blame Missy Elliott for slipping into a holding pattern for her fifth album, This Is Not a Test! Early on she arrived at a distinctive sound -- the confident, clubbed-up jam with little melodic power but endless reserves of kinetic energy, courtesy of Timbaland's rubbery productions -- and she refined it well with hits like 2001's "Get Ur Freak On" and the following year's "Work It" and "Gossip Folks." Still, although she remains by far the most interesting figure in hip-hop, This Is Not a Test! has more filler than Elliott's allowed on a record since 1999's Da Real World. (Little surprise considering it appeared just over a year after 2002's Under Construction.) Granted, listeners and club fans looking for hit material will certainly find plenty on display. While the single "Pass That Dutch" is little more than a warmed-up "Work It" rewrite (albeit one studded with auditory change-ups from alarm clocks to car alarms to audience noise to the whinnying of a horse), she compensates nicely with the blazing electro shock of "I'm Really Hot" and the down-and-dirty moaning of her Nelly duet, "Pump It Up." And Timbaland's productions are still above and beyond any others on earth, with a dizzying roster of next-generation beats -- conceived in ring modulators, echo chambers, torpedo tubes, rusty pipes; anywhere except a standard drumkit -- matched to dark, technoid effects capable of raising the eyebrows of even the most experimental laptop programmers. However, most of the guest features fall flat: Fabolous wastes an excellent opportunity to match wits with Missy, giving her the shy-guy routine on "Is This Our Last Time," while Jay-Z is uninvolved on his feature, "Wake Up." Elephant Man's bounce track, "Keep It Movin," works well, but the R. Kelly duet, "Dats What I'm Talkin About," has Elliott playing -- perhaps too agreeably -- the inexperienced young girl to Kelly's mature lover. There's no need to blame Missy for not making a record that's tight all the way through, especially since few artists in the R&B world are held to such scrutiny. Still, an album like This Is Not a Test! is an effective argument for song-by-song downloads.
tags: missy elliott, this is not a test, 2003, flac,
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Al Kessel has come a long way since being on episode of Dreamers Podcast and his voice acting career is alive, well, and advancing towards commercials!
Connect with Al Kessel!
TalesCast.com
LostFlight815.com
JustBecausePodcast.com
TalesPodcast.blogspot.com
StoryTellerPodcasts.com
It is also fun having a familiar face back on the show to catch up and see just how far their dreams have come, as well as changed! Al Kessel has been a huge part of Dreamers Podcast. Being the voice you hear at the beginning and end of every show is only one way Al Kessel has left his mark on the show. Al was vital in the role of helping me get this show out of my head and onto the internet in only two weeks, and I can't thank him enough for his advice from beginning till even today!
Al Kessel has started to make his way into the world of voice acting and shows no signs of slowing down! I hope that Al keeps up the great work and pushing for his dream so he and his wife Joyce can move to California and live happily just outside of the walls of Disneyland. 🙂
Check out Al Kessel's first appearance on Dreamers Podcast, which was way back on episode 1!
Al Kessel also joined me on episode 100 of Dreamers Podcast, taking over the show as the host!


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Antonio Mateu Lahoz Net Worth | Age, Height, Weight, Dating And More
The name of Antonio Mateu Lahoz is now a globally renowned individual. Effort and perseverance have assisted him to achieve success. His rise to the status of one of the world's wealthiest people is a direct result of this success. The way to sit here was not a simple process. His working skills and creativity are rapidly reaching everyone.
He has had a profound impact on the lives of millions of individuals throughout the globe. He began his life from a position of weakness. He made the right decision and worked very hard to get to this point. In this article, we are going to share Antonio Mateu Lahoz net worth, age, height, weight and more.
What Is Antonio Mateu Lahoz Net Worth?
Among celebrities, Antonio Mateu Lahoz is one of the wealthiest persons in the world. In a few years, he will have advanced to a new level of success and popularity. A variety of revenue streams has allowed him to achieve this point so swiftly, and he now sits with the most prominent celebrities on the planet.
According to Forbes and industry experts' latest study, Antonio Mateu Lahoz estimated net worth is more than a couple of million USD. Day by day the total earnings of Antonio Mateu Lahoz are increasing and by the side he is getting popular.
Family & Early Life
Originally from the United States, Antonio Mateu Lahoz is well-known. Not so long ago, his mother and father were not rich. Then Antonio Mateu Lahoz was born, which was a very important time for any of them to be real. He had to manage his child's life to pay for his schooling.
Later he moved to another city in purpose of receiving higher education. He and his siblings developed an incredible relationship during the course of their childhood schooling. Antonio Mateu Lahoz has been married for a long time, and this is not a secret to anybody. His children are recognized by their surnames.
Antonio Mateu Lahoz gives off the impression of being a solitary person, but in reality, he is a married man. He has been married for a long time, and his wife is so helpful. They've traveled and adore marriage. We have high hopes that they will have a wonderful life together and that they will share the splendor of their love with us.
It was at home that Antonio Mateu Lahoz began his formal schooling. Here, he got a good foundational education. Then he finished pre-school. After then, he finished his pre-school education. He returned to high school after receiving a degree from there. After completing his secondary education, he pursued a post-secondary education.
In that place, he learnt how to deal with people. University provided him with an additional degree as well. The life the spend during the education, he learned few more things which has made a huge upgradation in his later life. To get to where he is now, Antonio Mateu Lahoz has a variety of degrees from several fields under his belt.
Antonio Mateu Lahoz started his business right after he got his degree. His career was incredibly difficult. He had to juggle his life so crazily that he had trouble falling asleep at night. He lacked a college degree and worked full-time at a clothes business. After some thought, He chose to keep using his managerial expertise. He was aware of the skills needed to be an executive assistant, but he wasn't sure how to get his desired position.
He enjoyed working for the firm and had positive relationships with his coworkers, but he yearned for a position with more responsibility. Despite he has not yet landed at his target, he has begun the journey there and is making progress toward his goal. Now, everyone on earth is familiar with this individual. The purpose of his career was therefore realized, as was his desire to impact a wide audience.
Real Name Antonio Mateu Lahoz
Nick Name Antonio Mateu Lahoz
Height 5 feet 10 Inch
Relationship Not available
Children Not Found
Parents Coming Soon
Antonio Mateu Lahoz has earned a number of accolades in a variety of categories. As a result of his amusing contributions to humanity, he has been awarded many degrees from universities with a global reputation. He is also quite fortunate to have received many epoch-making prizes from different presidents and noble individuals, which is quite outstanding. At the pinnacle of success, it is so frequent that he accomplished the best in his field.
People from all around the world have heard of him because of his unique brand of modern-day levity. Additionally, Antonio Mateu Lahoz has earned several prestigious accolades, which is a source of great satisfaction.
Antonio Mateu Lahoz has shared his phone number on different platforms. The office phone number is the best way to get in touch. His social media accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter, and email, are also available for communication. He is presently living in the most prominent city, although it is not where he was born and raised. For a variety of welcome presents, you may send them to his workplace or home address, which he has made available to you.
Phone Number: Unavailable
Email Address: Not available on Internet
Telegram Number: Coming Soon
Personal Website: Info Not available
Facebook: Not available
Instagram: Unavailable
Twitter: Not Found
TikTok: Not Found
Snapchat: Info Not available
In the whole globe, Antonio Mateu Lahoz is a well-known figure. To get here, he'd traveled quite a distance. His impact to the media and to the people of the globe has been extraordinary. Successfulness cannot be achieved in a short amount of time; it needs a lengthy journey to get at the next level.
Antonio Mateu Lahoz has become an icon to his followers. He is not simply a well-known celebrity, but also a kind human being who has contributed much to society. Young people look up to him because of his success.


E-Z UP, known as the #1 Best Selling Instant Shelter in the World™, seeks a dynamic person to fill the role of Reseller Support Associate. E-Z UP® has always set itself apart from other canopy makers with their innovative & highest quality products. E-Z UP® created the original Instant Shelter® in 1983 and is known worldwide as the market leader and innovator. E-Z UP desires to find a Reseller Support Associate to be a key contributor in assuring our products meet or exceed our customers' expectations.
As the Reseller Support Associate you will provide support to our network of Authorized Distributors of E-Z UP product. The ideal candidate is an experienced professional with knowledge of sales and customer service best practices. We expect you to perform well in a team environment, have exceptional people skills and be goal oriented. This individual will play a fundamental role in achieving our ambitious customer acquisition and revenue growth objectives. Ultimately, you should be able to contribute to creating and maintaining good customer relationships ensuring new and existing customers have smooth sales transactions.
Support our Dealers by processing quotes, orders and assisting via phone and email.
Excellent interpersonal, communication and teamworking skills.
Good PC skills including knowledge of MS Word, MS Excel, Outlook or similar e-mail program.


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Kid's Birthday Party Cancels – But Then He Received These
Covid-19 affected plans for a boy who had expected to celebrate his 9th birthday with friends. Yet his mum pulled a surprise— she requested people celebrate Jack, the birthday boy with birthday cards and the response she got was enormous.
With her son expecting a birthday party, his first in three years as Jack was unable to celebrate the last two years due to his ordeal with Osteogenesis Imperfacta, otherwise called, Brittle Bone disease.
Thus, he looked forward to having a party this year, but that had to be canceled due to the pandemic restrictions. Ruth was devastated when she opened up to him about the cancellation, however she came up with a plan by asking people to send Jack birthday cards.
"The response has been unbelievable," she said.
She's since gotten over 1,000 cards with some coming in for Ruth. It's unbelievable some of these cards have come in from far places like France, Switzerland, Ireland and the UK.
She's overwhelmed with the reach out and it means "Jack is having a birthday he will never forget"
Residing in Raphoe, county Donegal, Ruth said "We have had cards and parcels from Dublin , Carlow, Mayo, Donegal, Monaghan, Derry and London and that's not even half of them opened."
"I'd like to thank each and everyone that took the time to make/send a card/parcel to Jack. It has been a very emotional and overwhelming few days to watch the delight in Jack's face. This will be a birthday never to forget."
She speaks about the feedback. "Unbelievable. I never imagined this response. I'm actually very emotional this last few days to see everyone come together at such difficult times."
"I set out to do this thinking that my Facebook family would send cards to make Jack's birthday special (and) not expecting it to go viral."
The support shown by the charity organization, Little Blue Heroes was immense as Jack is a member as an honorary Garda. "Ever since he was made an honorary Garda in January 2018 up in Garda Headquarters, he has the full uniform and goes on duty in Letterkenny Garda Station from time to time," she said.
"All I can say is this is a birthday Jack will never forget. I had one wish to make him happy and my wish definitely came true."
Overall, she's filled with gratitude and appreciated everyone who's sent in cards "I will be forever grateful to each and every one of them."
A Serviceman Bonds With Dog Aboard and Fights To Bring Her Home
When a soldier gets stationed overseas, he or she ends up seeing and experiencing a lot of different stuff. In the case of Patrick Brady, his "stuff" came in a four-legged package with a tail and about the size and behavior of a genuine puppy. The day it happened was like any other on base, Brady was going through his regular duties and checking an inventory list when someone piped up there was a puppy outside his building. As Brady looked out the window to see what was going on, sure enough there was a small little ball of fur wandering around.
Somehow, the puppy had managed to get into the base and wander around, probably looking for food or anything familiar. However, the base was anything but familiar, based in Eastern Georgia on the Russian front. Brady automatically bonded with the dog and took her in.
Giving the puppy a bath, getting her cleaned up and checked as well as making sure the dog had her shots, he dubbed the little canine Marshmallow. It seemed good for a few days, but then a week into the new visit, the young dog disappeared. Brady guesses the dog might have decided to wander again, but eventually she came back after being out in the wild, realizing the base was probably as good it was going to get for her with a shelter and a regular meal. Brady was thanking his stars she came back. Caked in mud and filthy from head to paw, she had definitely been out in the woods and wild for a while on her own again. Of course, this was a prediction too; Marshmallow it would turn out was a dedicated mud-bather every chance she got even when older. The dog also isn't much of fan of baths and getting cleaned up, which might have been a habit she learned early on wandering around on her own.
However, aside from the fact that she required lots of baths and as soon as Brady knew the dog was going to stick, he started working on how to get the dog back halfway around the world to New York. Marshmallow was absolutely essential to the soldiers on the base keeping their wits once Coronavirus arrived, especially with the required isolation that was needed. However, the same virus also made it far more difficult to get the dog back to the U.S. as well.
By breed, Marshmallow was a mix, but it was clear the animal had some Georgian mountain dog in her genes. Looking for help, Brady reached out to the SPCA International on how he could get assistance in bring the dog home. The SPCA had been instrumental in helping other soldiers in Iraq bring back pups and dogs picked up in Baghdad and similar, and they were adept at dealing with all the formalities of moving an animal between countries. The timing worked out. Marshmallow was given the green light to be transported when Brady's tour ended.
One last minute glitch almost caused Marshmallow to be left behind when an airport official found a flaw in the dog crate being used. Fortunately, although Marshmallow was left behind, the SPCA staff worked tirelessly to get things straightened out and the issues was ultimately resolved with a bit of ingenuity and cooperation from the airport as well. Brady started breathing easy when the SPCA called him and confirmed the dog was indeed boarded and on the plane in her crate.
Brady had picked the right organization to work with too; the SPCA International has been responsible for keeping dogs and their service member owners together in at least 1,000 cases since 2008. The red tape was finished though. To make sure the dog wasn't carrying any pests, Marshmallow was quarantined at the arrival U.S. base for two weeks before being released to Brady. Fortunately, it all worked out, and Brady and the dog were reconnected stateside in full excitement and party.
Now, fully grown and settled into home in the U.S., Marshmallow makes it a point that her favorite spot in Brady's house is the couch. Not to mention, she has no issue sharing the domicile with Brady's other dog, Bear, a chow chow.
Long-Time Shelter Cat Gets Major Donation
Dozens of cats end up in cat shelters around the country all the time. These entities help keep discarded cats alive, taken care of, and fed, as well as hopefully adopted, when not otherwise adopted. One particular cat, Grace, became a well-known member of the Colonial Capital Humane Society when she was a kitten. Located in New Bern, NC, the CCHS became Grace's home for a long-standing eight years, odd for a kitten which typically end up getting adopted quickly. Part of the issue may have had to do with Grace's pickiness.
Unlike many cats, Grace didn't cozy up to humans very well. She favored cats and welcomed any newcomers like a mother cat, helping them adapt to the shelter. However, when it came to humans, Grace wasn't keen on being petted much. Note, she has no problem doing the petting, being very famous for her forceful head-butts and heavy purring when she does like someone.
As a result, the CCHS Shelter resigned itself that Grace was going to end up being one of those cats that they took care of for her lifetime instead of adopting out. And, with her notoriety, someone thought eventually it would be a good idea to have Grace be the entrant for a recent Arm & Hammer Cat Litter's "Purrfectly Impurrfect" contest, designed to help get the older cat noticed and adopted. Surprisingly, it worked. In mid-December, Grace made it to one of the three finalists, and the cat was declared a winner, generating a $10,000 donation to the CCHS for its work. Ideally, the organization hopes that in addition to the money, Grace might actually get noticed finally for a home too.
The overall goal, of course, it to help people understand there are more than just kittens that need to be adopted. Ideally, adult cats need safe, loving homes as well, and they are frequently passed up because people worry that they might take too much work or have behavioral issues. For Grace in particular, the win confirmed how unique and special her story was, as confirmed by the contest judges.
CCHS is not the only shelter by any means. Hundreds of shelters operate year-round, trying to maintain a safe environment for unwanted cats that are completely domesticated to live in safely. Arm & Hammer made a point to help with another $50,000 for cat shelters, emphasizing the importance of the mission decentralized through hundreds of charities and outfits.
As for Grace, she continues to be the mama cat at the CCHS Shelter, taking in the new entries as they arrive and teaching the scared felines the ropes in the Shelter. And when she's not keeping watch on the rookies, Grace is busy sneaking up on an unsuspecting volunteer and giving him or her an affection head-butt again. The $10,000 Grace brought home for the CCHS shelter will go a long ways in additional care and support for her and the other cats, even if she is never adopted. In short, Grace has more than earned her keep and will be taken care of for the rest of her days.
Adorable Corgi From Texas Plays Mom After Adopting Four Labrador Puppies!
Amanda J
The average adult corgi will stand roughly 12 inches tall while weighing just 25 pounds or so. The average Labrador retriever will stand at twice the height and more than twice the weight, so you can see our surprise when we heard about a Corgi that adopted four Lab puppies!
Angela is a Corgi from Texas that made headlines around the community when she adopted four Labrador Retriever puppies. Angela is a 2-year-old rescue who found her way to the Dog Ranch Rescue in Texas last October after spending the first year of her life in a puppy mill.
Renee Eden of Dog Ranch Rescue told the news team at KSAT that Angela had given birth at the rescue to four corgi puppies. The puppies were healthy and taken care of, and Angela happily stayed with the Rescue. Not too long after her own litter was birthed, a pregnant Labrador ended up at the Dog Ranch Rescue. Tragically, the mother dog named Autumn would give birth to a healthy litter before passing away from complications herself.
While the team at Dog Ranch Rescue was understandably upset at the loss of Autumn Dove, they knew they had to take care of her four Labrador pups. Renee stated that she thought the Dog Ranch Rescue team would be forced to perform around-the-clock bottle feedings for the pups. Instead, Angela decided to leap into action to become a hero in their time of need.
Eden had introduced Angela to the Lab puppies under the assumption that the Corgi would turn away from the pups. Eden told reporters, "Most of the time dogs turn their back, but that she didn't was pretty magical." Eden would go on to describe how Angela and her puppies were introduced to the Lab puppies. The eight pups from wildly different backgrounds became fast friends. Eden said, "It was absolutely fabulous."
The Labrador puppies were birthed on December 1st of 2020 and they have been under the guidance of Angela ever since. While the story has quickly gone viral, dog lovers looking to take home their own adopted Labrador from Angela's second litter will have to wait in line. According to Eden, the team has families lined up to take each and every puppy from the litter. This isn't exactly uncommon for Eden and the team at Dog Ranch Rescue. In fact, Dog Ranch Rescue has helped to house more than 1,600 dogs since they first opened their doors in 2014.
According to the most recent update from Dog Ranch Rescue, Autumn Dove's puppies as well as Angela are fit, happy, and healthy. They continue to thrive with one another as Angela continues to provide for the litter as a surrogate mother. The social media team for Lone Star Dog Ranch and Dog Ranch Rescue would say in an Instagram post, "Angela has not hesitated for even a moment to take these little orphans in as her own!"
The Case of the Missing Russian Blue Cat
Losing a pet can be an anxiety-ridden experience. That was the case for Trish who lost her Russian Blue cat when the feline up and disappeared. Aptly named Bleu, her cat didn't come back, and by the fifth day Trish was actively trying to use social media and neighborhood postings to find her pet. Eventually, Trish found herself asking about and trying to find out more about pet detectives. Her first discussion struck out, however, it wasn't a total loss; Trish was referred to Bonnie McCririe-Hale who had a strong reputation among pet detectives in the area for quality work and reliable service.
Located in Grapevine, Bonnie technically can investigate all sorts of things, including humans. However, by trade she likes to focus on finding missing animals. With most of her activity based on the Dallas-Fort Worth market, Bonnie generally likes to stay local, but she's willing to handle cases in Houston and Austin on occasion, and even will go for an odd case in Baton Rouge or Oklahoma City.
There is a reasonable expectation of success with Bonnie's cases. If the pet has been gone for more than two weeks, Bonnie will take a pass on the offer unless the pet owner can provide proof of very recent witnesses who've seen the animal in passing. Otherwise, it's a cold case and she lets others take on those difficulties.
With Trish's cat, however, Bonnie was focused on the feline's behavior. Was there anything recently noticeable that would have caused the pet to disappear or purposely leave the home? Bleu generally lived indoors most of the time but the cat did have the freedom to roam around outside if it desired. Bonnie took Trish's information and scanned the immediate area around the home via search engine satellite photos. Then the detective tracked all known predator types in the area as well as any recent, significant changes like construction.
By the time Bonnie arrived with her specially trained dogs, Trish had already given her neighbors a heads-up what was going to happen. Bonnie was going to need to let the dogs locate the last locations of Bleu's presence by smell, including immediately nearby sheds, culverts, bushes and garages.
Fortunately, Trish was able to connect with her cat finally due to a neighbor. While Bonnie was unable to apply her skills to find the cat, although her and her dogs combed the area for four hours, the activity did heighten the attention of Trish's neighbors. This triggered a question from a nearby retiree about whether a cat he had was in fact Bleu. I turned out Bleu was indeed the cat, and Trish asked the neighbor to just entertain the cat and keep being friendly until she could get there and claim the errant feline. While Bonnie refuses to claim the finding as a result of her work, everybody including Trish disagree and credit her presence for being the catalyst in solving the case of the missing Russian Blue cat.
Little Boy Has Missing Pet Returned — After a Day of Pampering
Children don't just treat their stuffed animals as toys, but as loved and cared for comfort items that fulfill many of their emotional needs. They take them everywhere, making sure their every need is met, treating them as their own children. It can even be said that caring for their stuffed animals allows them a needed sense of control, giving them a level of responsibility they can handle as practice before they start having bigger responsibilities. They pretend to feed them and put them to bed, and children learn empathy as they care for their loved stuffed animals, often keeping them in a safe place as they grow up and giving them to their own children.
That is why losing a stuffed animal can be so upsetting and even tragic to a young child, and the people at the Lavish Dog Day Spa understood how important it was to take care of a lost stuffed animal and help get it back to the child. The spa is already special in that it treats each dog as an individual, giving them one on one attention. The stylists have 2 and a half decades of experience but they believe that what makes their place special is how relaxing the experience is. They do it all, including nail grinding, ear cleaning, tooth brushing, and hair cleaning with premium products.
The staff at the Lavish Dog Day Spa found the lost stuffed puppy outside on a bench, and they decided to put him on their social media so people would know he was there. The lost pup was a very distinctive looking stuffed animal, with green and blue ears and paws. There would be no mistaking this one with another. While they waited for his owner to show up, the staff gave the stuffed puppy his own spa day. That way his owner would know that he was well taken care of while he was away!
Among the services received by the lost puppy were: a relaxing bubble bath, a nice shampoo, and a good comb out. After he was dry and looking clean and shiny, the lost pup got a pretty blue bow All of this was posted on Facebook so the pup's owner would know that during the time he was lost, he was with people who were caring for him.
All the efforts paid off! The lost dog's owner saw the posts online. His mom took him to pick up the pup as soon as possible, and they were happy to be reunited. The mom thanked the spa for not just returning the lost "pet," but for taking such good care of him. The lesson in all this is that there are some really good people in the world, and just because you have lost something very dear to you, that doesn't mean that it will be lost forever. If you are lucky, your lost items will be cared for by caring people like the ones at the Lavish Dog Day Spa.


Mr. Magic Pencil to Flower is a great effect that is easy to do AND the magic happens in the spectator's hands.
The magician shows a wooden pencil.
He places the pencil inside a metal tube, puts the cap on it and gives it to a spectator to hold.
After a few moments, the spectator is asked to take the pencil out.
Upon opening the cap, the spectator finds the pencil is inexplicably gone and, in its place, is a small feather flower! Perfect for intimate magic and completely self-working.


text:
Q: How to set delimiter while exporting html table to xls file, so that it won't ask for delimiter separately when opening file with openOffice calc? Javascript code to generate xls file
// string to be obtained in xls file in different columns
var exportString = 'Source1; 240; A/V Signal drop out; 15';
// creating anchor tag
var a = document.createElement('a');
    a.href = 'data:attachment/xls,' + exportString;
    a.target = '_blank';
    a.download = 'filename.xls';
    document.body.appendChild(a);
    a.click();

A: You may have different delimiters so you are probably not doing anything wrong open office just needs to know what should be used as delimiter.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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He filled that the only starting was armed paying, even as a matrimonial gesture. The personnel sheep being led to slaughter Korean american in Eastern Europe in the The Fair Last opens by debunking the "contradictory cities" behind exists such as "Why did the Bridges go till sheep to the field. The swot bejng simply read among Zionists in Nature Europe.
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Tec strongly criticized the idea that "the victims themselves were partly to blame for their own destruction".
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[What's the meaning of the phrase 'Lamb to the slaughter'?


text:
Simon Schwartzman: The science critic
Former IBGE president analyzes the social impact of the provincial notions of Brazilian universities
Carlos Fioravanti
Issue # 140
LÉO RAMOSSociologist Simon Schwartzman is about to complete yet one more study about the state, impasses and prospects for Brazilian science. The first, Um espaço para a ciência (A space for science) resulted in a book that is indispensable for one to understand how Brazil's earliest research groups were set up: A formação da comunidade científica no Brasil (The development of the scientific community in Brazil), first published in 1979, revised and published in English in 1991, and then reedited in Portuguese in 2001. In the early 90's, Schwartzman belonged to a group that produced work with international repercussions about new ways of producing knowledge (The new production of knowledge – The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, coordinated by Michael Gibbons), which showed that contemporary science in more developed nations tended toward breaking the barriers between academic research and applied research, the world of universities, industry and government agencies, as well as among traditional scientific disciplines. This approach, which implies a deep reconfiguration of the way in which government agencies, industries, research centers and universities are organized, may provide a way out for many of Brazil's impasses, as proposed by Schwartzman after a broad study about the alternatives for scientific and technological policies in this country. His most recent work compares 16 groups and university research centers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, all of which, in different ways, combine high-grade scientific work with effective applications that are socially and economically relevant. At the age of 68, Schwartzman, now a researcher at the Institute of Studies about Work and Society (IETS – Instituto de Estudos do Trabalho e Sociedade), reviews in this interview the function of universities, which could be more active in leading innovation; he also reassesses the role of companies and recognizes the value of the government`s contribution, a crucial agent of scientific and technological development, provided it stops being merely a financier of research and assumes the role of user and requester of scientific and technological knowledge.
What are the great lessons derived from this work, which compares the strategies of the transfer of technology in four countries?
We're still at the stage of digesting all this material. In the four countries, to a greater or lesser extent, there have been major initiatives designed to strengthen academic science, through systems that evaluate and reward performance. Brazil was the country that advanced the most, thanks to the work of Capes – Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Ensino Superior (the Coordinating Office for the Upgrading of Higher Education Staff), which has historically held this role of setting standards, using scientific publications as criterion of quality, evaluating courses, etc. This allowed the country to develop an important postgrad education and university research system, the most advanced one in Latin America. Now, however, it's beginning to feel the limitations of its exaggerated emphasis on type 1 scientific work, which is more academic. Mexico established a similar system, through the Padrón Nacional de Posgrado (National Postgraduate Standards), added to the previously established Padrón de Excelência para la Ciencia y Tecnologia (Science and Technology Excellence Standards) of Conacyt, its National Science and Technology Council. Chile and Argentina have less developed systems. Chile created a system in which the universities are more strongly driven to find their own resources. They have to charge annual fees and they don't get all their money from the state, regardless of whether they are public or private. Argentina is a bit different, because it hasn't put in place a deliberate strategy of looking for external resources in the market, unlike Chile; but it also hasn`t developed a public support system as strong as Brazil's or Mexico's.
What examples would you highlight in each country?
In Brazil, the IT Department of PUC-Rio (the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro). It's a pioneering group that was involved with the project of creating the first computers here. PUC used to get public funding, but now it hasn't received anything for many years and has to find funds in the market. And it does this thanks to the scientific competence it has accrued over the years. Of Brazil's private institutions, it's probably the most advanced one from the standpoint of scientific and technological research, and within it, the IT area is probably one of the most outstanding. PUC is fairly aggressive (in the American, rather than Brazilian, sense of the word) where looking for resources is concerned, as it enters into agreements and works as an incubator for companies. Another interesting example is the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV – Fundação Getúlio Vargas). Its postgrad economics program, one of the most important in Brazil, has a very strong system of academic incentives and all of its professors are highly rewarded for publishing work in high grade international journals. On the other hand, FGV also engages in fund raising, through other sectors, such as the Brazilian Economics Institute (Instituto Brasileiro de Economia) and in particular through its extended education courses, whose recognition is derived largely from the prestige of its postgraduate school. However, FGV keeps the two things separate: those who are in the postgrad program don't have to look for funding elsewhere; and those who go looking for funding are not normally in this program. We can compare this situation with that of the Center for Mathematical Modeling of the University of Chile. This is a high-level group in the field of mathematics, with the status of a CNRS (National Scientific Research Center) lab in Santiago. They do applied work in mathematical modeling in fields connected with copper leaching, a separation process that uses a type of bacteria, and there's a whole issue regarding mathematical models about the genetic variability of these bacteria. Depending on the bacteria's development, productivity can be greater or smaller. From the mathematical point of view, this calls for novel research that lies somewhere on the border between molecular biology and mathematics. These applications are very important, as Chile is one of the world's greatest copper producers. Codelco, the Chilean Copper Company, finances the project. They are, at one and the same time, producing cutting-edge scientific knowledge and applied work. This is the example we should follow: a combination of research and application – one thing is not the opposite of the other. Frequently, people in academia fear having to look for funding through projects with external partners, as if this would lead to a loss in the quality of academic work. In some cases this actually happens, but the Chilean case is a good example where not only does it not occur, but the two things encourage each other.
How did they manage to achieve this?
First, they have to. The available resources there don't allow them to make much progress without external funding. At the same time, they maintain academic control over the work. They don't accept just anything, they have their own criteria and the work must have innovative intellectual content. We asked a young researcher how he managed to combine the two things, academic work and applied work, to which he answered: "We work twice as hard". One of the points all the cases have in common is that they have to set their own relationship rules regarding the non-academic world. And this has to do with the flow of money, with how they receive and manage resources, with autonomy where selecting the people for the work is concerned? The researchers in these groups, especially their leaders, are very entrepreneurial; they are always pursuing something greater, a world that isn't only that of academic research. Another common characteristic is the need for strong academic leadership. This is the case of the chemistry group at Unicamp, the State University of Campinas, headed by Fernando Galembeck, who has an excellent scientific education and a lot of experience in the field of applied work, in addition to having taken out a number of patents.
Are the other countries also concerned about patents?
Only on a few occasions did this subject arise as something important. It's a paradox, because one tends to imagine that patents are the high point of applied research of industrial interest. One of the core problems is the registration process and especially the costs of maintaining and protecting patents. If someone uses the patent without paying for it or registers a similar one, one has to go to court to safeguard one's rights in Europe, the USA, or Asia, depending on the case. The cost of an actual patent can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. So who's going to take one out? A large firm with clearly defined commercial interests. Without a strong commercial partner, the patent is useless. As these outward links are weak, patents aren't actually transformed into profitable products, or only very rarely.
Comparatively speaking, how does Brazil stand?
Academically speaking, where publications are concerned, Brazil has advanced a lot, but not that much from the standpoint of applications, of using science. Generally speaking, our incentive system is still very academic. Take the case of Capes, an institution that everybody regards as highly successful, but that is getting close to exhausting its model: its set up is designed to recognize academic work, it has a lot of trouble providing support for interdisciplinary areas and it discourages any type of activity that involves a benefit connected to results, with applications. Capes tries to rank all of the country's postgrad programs within a unified and coordinated evaluation system, but this system is starting to unravel. Brazil still hasn't managed to make any progress where the awarding of professional master's degrees is concerned, although they are the predominant kind worldwide, simply because these programs wouldn't do well in the Capes evaluations. On the other hand, there are a lot of postgrad courses that, in order to avoid the Capes system, call themselves continuing education courses, or MBAs. Capes is a federal agency, but state universities are autonomous; they don't need to be evaluated by Capes and they can enter into agreements with foreign universities to provide advanced courses and research without undergoing the Capes evaluation. Furthermore, we have international institutions that offer courses and academic titles through long distance education, or that are establishing themselves in Brazil? We have to move forward, not in the sense of abandoning quality research, but of creating stronger incentives for institutions to build links and cooperation agreements, and to look for added funding, among other reasons because the scale of funds that an institution may have depends a lot on its own capacity to be valued overseas. I headed IBGE, the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute, for five years and I discovered that IBGE, like Ipea [the Applied Economics Research Institute], was not listed as an institution in the Ministry of Science and Technology's surveys. It had an annual budget of about US$ 500 million for its ongoing activities, not to speak of a far greater budget during periods when the census was conducted. Is this or is this not research spending on social sciences? The quality of IBGE's research could be much better, because at present it doesn't really think like a research institute, but as a bureaucracy that produces data, an old idea. It's high grade staff is only small, whereas it has a bureaucracy of thousands of employees spread all over the country. With the same resources or even less, plus the appropriate institutional reform, it could take a quantum jump and advance a lot in terms of the quality and relevance of the work it produces regarding crucial issues such as poverty, inequality, the job market, migrations, health, national accounts, and many other subjects.
The third Pintec [Industrial Research on Technological Innovation], released in July, showed that the number of innovative firms didn't grow much from 2003 to 2005; only one out of every three in 91,000 Brazilian firms engages in some sort of R&D activity. At the same time, a survey conducted by Fiesp [the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo] shows that 80% of the state's firms are not aware of the lines of support for innovation, and that 70% of them use their own funds. How should these results be interpreted?
A common complaint from the business area is that it's very complicated to use the government's innovation funding. As the procedures are slow and one doesn't know when the money is going to be released, many firms feel it's not worth the effort. If innovation financing is highly subsidized, there is the risk that firms will get the money and use it for other purposes. Another issue is motivation, the necessity for companies innovate.This issue doesn't belong to the realm of science, but of economics. Some firms compete in the world based on innovation and efficiency, whereas others work on the basis of quantity, lowering prices, because they can get cheaper labor, and they are unable to compete at a higher technological level. It's also important to say that the main high technology firms in Brazil are multinationals whose R&D labs are abroad. Many multinationals are scattering research centers around the world, but Brazil hasn't been chosen much due to its lack of personnel, a suitable environment and, among other things, personal safety for its researchers.
Do you see any possibility of this overall picture changing?
I don't expect much and I don't believe that dynamism will come from the business sector. The bulk of this dynamism must come from the public sector, whose purchasing capacity is very large in fields that require intense and permanent research and innovation work, such as energy, the climate, natural resources, the environment, healthcare and the entire social area. In the United States, for instance, social research has developed greatly in connection with the attempts to implement public policy in this area. This has already happened in Brazil to some extent, and some of the federal government's sectors maintain their own research centers, such as Embrapa, the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Ipea, Inep [the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research], IBGE, CTA [the Aerospace Technical Center] and others, all of which regularly hire research to provide support for their work.?
Is the public sector as demanding as it could be?
Not yet, and one of the problems is that the researcher does not always say what the hiring party wants. The hiring party who wants someone that will evaluate and legitimize its projects will chose someone it knows won't say anything disagreeable. This may alienate more independent researchers and research centers and lead to the development of centers and of research groups that produce overly financed, poor quality work with little credibility. Research centers have to be truly independent rather than totally controlled, directly or indirectly, by their clients so that hiring processes are public and transparent.?
What can be done to improve this situation?
Concerning academic research centers, it's important to develop incentive systems that will favor the application and the search for results, rather than only academic quality criteria. The university foundations, which exist within USP and in many public universities, are an interesting way to build more effective links with the outside world. There is a movement, to my mind highly reactionary, that is trying to do away with these links, arguing that public universities shouldn't get money from anywhere other than their own budgets and that professors mustn't supplement their pay. It ought to be the other way round. A competent IT professor that can make important contributions shouldn't earn the same as a professor of history, geography, sociology or political science, which is my field. The market is different. Either universities provides these people with the same sort of advantages that the market would give them, or they will lose them. These changes envisage real university autonomy in the personnel and remuneration areas, which aren't always the way they should be.
As you yourself wrote in a recent article, the university reform finished before it ever got off the ground. Why is it that sometimes prospects for change seem so difficult and remote?
You must be referring to Tarso Genro's reform project, which was very poorly conceived, having elicited a lot of reactions, and which in practice seems to have been abandoned by minister Fernando Haddad. At the time of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration, Paulo Renato de Souza, as the Minister of Education, tried to deal with the issue of public universities, giving them more autonomy and responsibility for the quality of their results and the appropriate use of resources. There was a very strong reaction against this and nothing was done. At the time of Itamar Franco, everyone in the universities liked the minister of Education, Murilo Hingel, who always praised the universities but had no policy for the sector. The current government also does a bit of this. The Lula government has an explicit policy of increasing resources for public universities; at the same time, it weakened the sector's chief evaluation tool, the old provão ("big test"). The federal government's chief policies for higher education have been in the area of social inclusion, through race quotas and through ProUni, the University for All Program. In both cases the expansion of access has been carried out with no policies designed to ensure the quality of the courses and the capability of the students to make up for their educational deficiencies and complete their courses. Now there's beginning to be some concern about this, and some interesting experiences, such as the attempt, in certain federal universities like the Bahia State one, and the new ABC federal university, to introduce a format similar to the European Bologna process, that postpones the point at which students who enter higher education have to make a professional choice. Brazilian public universities are small relative to the country's needs, cost a lot of money in terms of spending per student, lack a clearly defined quality control system and subsidize a lot of middle and upper class students who could afford to pay for their education. However, almost 80% of Brazil's higher education is private, with both good and bad aspects, and there are no positive policies for this sector, just the permanent suspicion that it isn't legitimate and shouldn't exist. One must start discussing in greater depth why we are financing the entire system, what we should expect from public universities, including those that concentrate on research, and what is the role of higher private education. Governments have been complacent and prefer to meet short-term requirements without making waves, rather than thinking about a long-term project.
What is your take on the issue?
I currently see no serious attempt to deal with research or higher education issues. Many researchers' ideas about scientific policies are limited to putting pressure on the government to provide more money for their projects. But money alone is not enough. In Europe and in many Asian countries, there's a major movement toward concentrating research resources in some universities that reach international standards of quality in their research, innovation and training, and that can work as a benchmark reference for the others and a real bridge to the scientific and intellection production in the rest of the world. In Brazil, USP could play this role, due to its budget and its mass of quality human resources. But, for instance, if we look at the famous ranking of universities published by the Jiao Tong University in China, USP, which is the best in Latin America, appears in 102-120 position; in other words, it has no international standing. In Brazil, at present, there's no deliberate policy aiming at excellence, whether in the government of the state of São Paulo or of the federal government; and there are many who think that talking about excellence and about competing for quality is not politically correct. Universities that have high standards of excellence attract talent, resources and knowledge from everywhere, and create international circuits of contact and prestige for their country. Why don't institutions like USP or Unicamp open their postgrad programs more to students from other Latin American countries' One of the reasons is that, as they are public, they have no means of charging these students for their tuition . They also might not be clear about how to select these students, because the selection is entirely in Portuguese and formal. The entire system is very inflexible. The international dimension ends up being lame because we have a very provincial and closed idea of what a university is.
Now tell us about your own education, please, and how you have developed this view of Brazilian science and of higher education in Brazil.
I graduated in the city of Belo Horizonte, in 1961, and spent two years in Chile at Flacso, the Latin American School of Social Sciences. Most of the professors there were European and students came from all over Latin America. That was my first contact with modern sociology. I returned to Brazil in early 1964, but was arrested, accused of the crime of subverting the minds of youth. When I went to Chile I was a researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais and when I got back they gave me the responsibility of teaching political science. I gave two lessons and was arrested. Before traveling I had taken part in the student movement of 1959 and 1960.
How long did you stay in prison?
One month, more or less, not knowing what was going to happen, whether there was going to be a lawsuit? One month after they let me go, I left the country and went to Norway. One of my professors in Chile had been Johan Galtun, a Norwegian researcher who invited me to work with him at an institute he headed in Oslo. I spent one year there and another year in Argentina. Afterwards I went to the United States to do a doctorate in political science. Up to this time, my themes were mainly politics, political parties and political system, and international systems. I did my doctorate at Berkeley and my thesis was published under the title of São Paulo e o Estado Nacional (São Paulo and the National State); it was later revised and published as Bases do autoritarismo brasileiro (The foundations of Brazilian authoritarianism). During the 70's I worked for FGV, at Iuperj [the Social Sciences Research Institute in Rio de Janeiro], from where I moved to Finep [the Studies and Project Finance Agency]. That was when I started getting involved with science and technology and when the idea of doing historical research about Brazilian Science occurred to me. This was later published as a book, Formação da comunidade científica no Brasil (The Establishment of the Scientific Community in Brazil). With Finep funding, I got a good team together and we interviewed about 70 researchers and leaders from the main research institutions in Brazil for several hours. At the time, we brought one of the main international experts in the field of studies regarding science, sociologist Joseph Ben-David, with whom we discussed our project at length and who left us a very interesting text about Brazilian science, which can be found on my website (http://www.schwartzman.org.br/simon/). It was an opportunity to look at international literature about the history and sociology of science and to do a broad survey of what was already available in Brazil on this subject. At that time there was a lot of resentment, mistrust and hostility between scientists and the military regime. But José Pelúcio Ferreira, Finep president at the time, had a totally different view and a lot of interest in getting exiled scientists to come back to Brazil and strengthen its institutions. On the other hand, there was already some discussion about the subject of applied vs. non-applied science and the autonomy of scientific work. Pelúcio's view, as an economist, was highly applied. The very project designed at the time for the Science and Technology sector, which reflected his strong influence, was like that. CNPq, which was an organization linked to the Office of the President of the Republic, was transformed into the National Scientific and Technological Development Council and, together with Finep, it was transferred to the Ministry of Planning. There was an idea that science is part of planning , therefore, as the economy should be planned, science also should.
Did you like this point of view?
No. I have never believed in planning the economy and even less in planning science. To have science one must have a free scientific community. It must be free, academic, and have independent institutions. In his studies, Ben-David clearly showed that was how western science developed. Besides him, Robert Merton, one of the chief names in American sociology, had developed an idea of science as a free community of scholars; this was a contradiction to attempts to attach science to the political regimes that, in the 30's and 40's, tried to bind science to authoritarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany, at first, and Stalin's Soviet Union, afterwards. These authors were opposed to the tradition that one might call Bernalistic, after John Desmond Bernal. He was an Englishman who developed original research in the field of crystallography and who actively contributed to the war effort of his country against Germany. He was fascinated by the Soviet Union, which he cited as a major example of how one can put science at the service of society. Concerning this, he followed the tradition of Jean Perrin, a French physicist and Nobel Prize winner, who together with Irène Joliot-Curie, was responsible for organizing the French scientific system during the Front Populaire period of the 30's. Science, according to them, must stay within the State, at the service of planning, and help organize society in accordance with scientific criteria.
These are two radical views…
And totalitarian too. Bernal has a famous book, Science in History, in four volumes. In three of them he produced a very interesting history of science whereas the fourth volume was dedicated to showing how the Soviet Union was the apex of applied social science. Many famous Brazilian scientists, especially from the generations that were educated during the 40's and 50's, adopted the ideas of Bernal and Perrin and were active militants in the communist movement, the best known one was Mario Schenberg. I never saw any texts in which these scientists discussed these issues explicitly; they were things they regarded as natural. Their views of science were Socratic: "The scientist is the one who's going to govern". Their conflict with the military was less of a conflict about the role and place of science within society and more about the recognition of the role they ought to play in the planning system. The objective of the research about the Brazilian scientific community, reflected in the very title of the book, was to redeem the importance of the notion of an autonomous "republic of science", which nevertheless would not be isolated or indifferent to what went on in society. Science can be useful, it should be important and applied, but we have to have science with freedom as the starting point, science with autonomy, with the capacity to have independent universities. Economists have always looked at science from the productive point of view, lacking a more sociological view about how science is organized, how institutions are created. In the 70's there was a genuine intention to bring scientists back, to strengthen postgrad studies and research. In 1979, when the Geisel government came to an end, Pelúcio left Finep and so did I. In 1985, with the political opening, I took part in a presidential commission that was meant to propose a reformulation of Brazil's higher education and that produced the earliest ideas about the evaluation and effective autonomy of universities; those were controversial propositions promptly filed away by the Sarney government. In the late 80's I was invited to take part, together with Eunice Durham, in the establishment of the Center for Research into Higher Education, at USP, when José Goldenberg was the university's president. At that time I began studying more of what was going on in higher education and research abroad. My participation in the group that prepared the book about the new production of knowledge and the coordination of the team in charge of proposing a new scientific and technological policy for Brazil dates back to this time. The proposals, as is often the case, were never implemented by the Ministry of Science and Education, which had financed the study. In 1994 I became president of IBGE, where I remained for five years. That was when I started to become more conversant and involved with the issues of social inequality, poverty and social policies, as well as with the problems of elementary education. Those are the themes that currently interest me the most.
<br><p>This work first appeared on <a href="http://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/">Pesquisa FAPESP</a> under a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license</a>. Read the <a href="https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/the-science-critic/" target="_blank">original here</a>.</p><script>var img = new Image(); img.src='https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/republicacao_frame?id=25700&referer=' + window.location.href;</script>
LÉO RAMOSSociologist Simon Schwartzman is about to complete yet one more study about the state, impasses and prospects for Brazilian science. The first, Um espaço para a ciência (A space for science) resulted in a book that is indispensable for one to understand how Brazil's earliest research groups were set up: A formação da comunidade científica no Brasil (The development of the scientific community in Brazil), first published in 1979, revised and published in English in 1991, and then reedited in Portuguese in 2001. In the early 90's, Schwartzman belonged to a group that produced work with international repercussions about new ways of producing knowledge (The new production of knowledge – The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, coordinated by Michael Gibbons), which showed that contemporary science in more developed nations tended toward breaking the barriers between academic research and applied research, the world of universities, industry and government agencies, as well as among traditional scientific disciplines. This approach, which implies a deep reconfiguration of the way in which government agencies, industries, research centers and universities are organized, may provide a way out for many of Brazil's impasses, as proposed by Schwartzman after a broad study about the alternatives for scientific and technological policies in this country. His most recent work compares 16 groups and university research centers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, all of which, in different ways, combine high-grade scientific work with effective applications that are socially and economically relevant. At the age of 68, Schwartzman, now a researcher at the Institute of Studies about Work and Society (IETS – Instituto de Estudos do Trabalho e Sociedade), reviews in this interview the function of universities, which could be more active in leading innovation; he also reassesses the role of companies and recognizes the value of the government`s contribution, a crucial agent of scientific and technological development, provided it stops being merely a financier of research and assumes the role of user and requester of scientific and technological knowledge. What are the great lessons derived from this work, which compares the strategies of the transfer of technology in four countries? We're still at the stage of digesting all this material. In the four countries, to a greater or lesser extent, there have been major initiatives designed to strengthen academic science, through systems that evaluate and reward performance. Brazil was the country that advanced the most, thanks to the work of Capes – Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Ensino Superior (the Coordinating Office for the Upgrading of Higher Education Staff), which has historically held this role of setting standards, using scientific publications as criterion of quality, evaluating courses, etc. This allowed the country to develop an important postgrad education and university research system, the most advanced one in Latin America. Now, however, it's beginning to feel the limitations of its exaggerated emphasis on type 1 scientific work, which is more academic. Mexico established a similar system, through the Padrón Nacional de Posgrado (National Postgraduate Standards), added to the previously established Padrón de Excelência para la Ciencia y Tecnologia (Science and Technology Excellence Standards) of Conacyt, its National Science and Technology Council. Chile and Argentina have less developed systems. Chile created a system in which the universities are more strongly driven to find their own resources. They have to charge annual fees and they don't get all their money from the state, regardless of whether they are public or private. Argentina is a bit different, because it hasn't put in place a deliberate strategy of looking for external resources in the market, unlike Chile; but it also hasn`t developed a public support system as strong as Brazil's or Mexico's. What examples would you highlight in each country? In Brazil, the IT Department of PUC-Rio (the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro). It's a pioneering group that was involved with the project of creating the first computers here. PUC used to get public funding, but now it hasn't received anything for many years and has to find funds in the market. And it does this thanks to the scientific competence it has accrued over the years. Of Brazil's private institutions, it's probably the most advanced one from the standpoint of scientific and technological research, and within it, the IT area is probably one of the most outstanding. PUC is fairly aggressive (in the American, rather than Brazilian, sense of the word) where looking for resources is concerned, as it enters into agreements and works as an incubator for companies. Another interesting example is the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV – Fundação Getúlio Vargas). Its postgrad economics program, one of the most important in Brazil, has a very strong system of academic incentives and all of its professors are highly rewarded for publishing work in high grade international journals. On the other hand, FGV also engages in fund raising, through other sectors, such as the Brazilian Economics Institute (Instituto Brasileiro de Economia) and in particular through its extended education courses, whose recognition is derived largely from the prestige of its postgraduate school. However, FGV keeps the two things separate: those who are in the postgrad program don't have to look for funding elsewhere; and those who go looking for funding are not normally in this program. We can compare this situation with that of the Center for Mathematical Modeling of the University of Chile. This is a high-level group in the field of mathematics, with the status of a CNRS (National Scientific Research Center) lab in Santiago. They do applied work in mathematical modeling in fields connected with copper leaching, a separation process that uses a type of bacteria, and there's a whole issue regarding mathematical models about the genetic variability of these bacteria. Depending on the bacteria's development, productivity can be greater or smaller. From the mathematical point of view, this calls for novel research that lies somewhere on the border between molecular biology and mathematics. These applications are very important, as Chile is one of the world's greatest copper producers. Codelco, the Chilean Copper Company, finances the project. They are, at one and the same time, producing cutting-edge scientific knowledge and applied work. This is the example we should follow: a combination of research and application – one thing is not the opposite of the other. Frequently, people in academia fear having to look for funding through projects with external partners, as if this would lead to a loss in the quality of academic work. In some cases this actually happens, but the Chilean case is a good example where not only does it not occur, but the two things encourage each other. How did they manage to achieve this? First, they have to. The available resources there don't allow them to make much progress without external funding. At the same time, they maintain academic control over the work. They don't accept just anything, they have their own criteria and the work must have innovative intellectual content. We asked a young researcher how he managed to combine the two things, academic work and applied work, to which he answered: "We work twice as hard". One of the points all the cases have in common is that they have to set their own relationship rules regarding the non-academic world. And this has to do with the flow of money, with how they receive and manage resources, with autonomy where selecting the people for the work is concerned? The researchers in these groups, especially their leaders, are very entrepreneurial; they are always pursuing something greater, a world that isn't only that of academic research. Another common characteristic is the need for strong academic leadership. This is the case of the chemistry group at Unicamp, the State University of Campinas, headed by Fernando Galembeck, who has an excellent scientific education and a lot of experience in the field of applied work, in addition to having taken out a number of patents. Are the other countries also concerned about patents? Only on a few occasions did this subject arise as something important. It's a paradox, because one tends to imagine that patents are the high point of applied research of industrial interest. One of the core problems is the registration process and especially the costs of maintaining and protecting patents. If someone uses the patent without paying for it or registers a similar one, one has to go to court to safeguard one's rights in Europe, the USA, or Asia, depending on the case. The cost of an actual patent can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. So who's going to take one out? A large firm with clearly defined commercial interests. Without a strong commercial partner, the patent is useless. As these outward links are weak, patents aren't actually transformed into profitable products, or only very rarely. Comparatively speaking, how does Brazil stand? Academically speaking, where publications are concerned, Brazil has advanced a lot, but not that much from the standpoint of applications, of using science. Generally speaking, our incentive system is still very academic. Take the case of Capes, an institution that everybody regards as highly successful, but that is getting close to exhausting its model: its set up is designed to recognize academic work, it has a lot of trouble providing support for interdisciplinary areas and it discourages any type of activity that involves a benefit connected to results, with applications. Capes tries to rank all of the country's postgrad programs within a unified and coordinated evaluation system, but this system is starting to unravel. Brazil still hasn't managed to make any progress where the awarding of professional master's degrees is concerned, although they are the predominant kind worldwide, simply because these programs wouldn't do well in the Capes evaluations. On the other hand, there are a lot of postgrad courses that, in order to avoid the Capes system, call themselves continuing education courses, or MBAs. Capes is a federal agency, but state universities are autonomous; they don't need to be evaluated by Capes and they can enter into agreements with foreign universities to provide advanced courses and research without undergoing the Capes evaluation. Furthermore, we have international institutions that offer courses and academic titles through long distance education, or that are establishing themselves in Brazil? We have to move forward, not in the sense of abandoning quality research, but of creating stronger incentives for institutions to build links and cooperation agreements, and to look for added funding, among other reasons because the scale of funds that an institution may have depends a lot on its own capacity to be valued overseas. I headed IBGE, the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute, for five years and I discovered that IBGE, like Ipea [the Applied Economics Research Institute], was not listed as an institution in the Ministry of Science and Technology's surveys. It had an annual budget of about US$ 500 million for its ongoing activities, not to speak of a far greater budget during periods when the census was conducted. Is this or is this not research spending on social sciences? The quality of IBGE's research could be much better, because at present it doesn't really think like a research institute, but as a bureaucracy that produces data, an old idea. It's high grade staff is only small, whereas it has a bureaucracy of thousands of employees spread all over the country. With the same resources or even less, plus the appropriate institutional reform, it could take a quantum jump and advance a lot in terms of the quality and relevance of the work it produces regarding crucial issues such as poverty, inequality, the job market, migrations, health, national accounts, and many other subjects. The third Pintec [Industrial Research on Technological Innovation], released in July, showed that the number of innovative firms didn't grow much from 2003 to 2005; only one out of every three in 91,000 Brazilian firms engages in some sort of R&D activity. At the same time, a survey conducted by Fiesp [the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo] shows that 80% of the state's firms are not aware of the lines of support for innovation, and that 70% of them use their own funds. How should these results be interpreted? A common complaint from the business area is that it's very complicated to use the government's innovation funding. As the procedures are slow and one doesn't know when the money is going to be released, many firms feel it's not worth the effort. If innovation financing is highly subsidized, there is the risk that firms will get the money and use it for other purposes. Another issue is motivation, the necessity for companies innovate.This issue doesn't belong to the realm of science, but of economics. Some firms compete in the world based on innovation and efficiency, whereas others work on the basis of quantity, lowering prices, because they can get cheaper labor, and they are unable to compete at a higher technological level. It's also important to say that the main high technology firms in Brazil are multinationals whose R&D labs are abroad. Many multinationals are scattering research centers around the world, but Brazil hasn't been chosen much due to its lack of personnel, a suitable environment and, among other things, personal safety for its researchers. Do you see any possibility of this overall picture changing? I don't expect much and I don't believe that dynamism will come from the business sector. The bulk of this dynamism must come from the public sector, whose purchasing capacity is very large in fields that require intense and permanent research and innovation work, such as energy, the climate, natural resources, the environment, healthcare and the entire social area. In the United States, for instance, social research has developed greatly in connection with the attempts to implement public policy in this area. This has already happened in Brazil to some extent, and some of the federal government's sectors maintain their own research centers, such as Embrapa, the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Ipea, Inep [the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research], IBGE, CTA [the Aerospace Technical Center] and others, all of which regularly hire research to provide support for their work.? Is the public sector as demanding as it could be? Not yet, and one of the problems is that the researcher does not always say what the hiring party wants. The hiring party who wants someone that will evaluate and legitimize its projects will chose someone it knows won't say anything disagreeable. This may alienate more independent researchers and research centers and lead to the development of centers and of research groups that produce overly financed, poor quality work with little credibility. Research centers have to be truly independent rather than totally controlled, directly or indirectly, by their clients so that hiring processes are public and transparent.? What can be done to improve this situation? Concerning academic research centers, it's important to develop incentive systems that will favor the application and the search for results, rather than only academic quality criteria. The university foundations, which exist within USP and in many public universities, are an interesting way to build more effective links with the outside world. There is a movement, to my mind highly reactionary, that is trying to do away with these links, arguing that public universities shouldn't get money from anywhere other than their own budgets and that professors mustn't supplement their pay. It ought to be the other way round. A competent IT professor that can make important contributions shouldn't earn the same as a professor of history, geography, sociology or political science, which is my field. The market is different. Either universities provides these people with the same sort of advantages that the market would give them, or they will lose them. These changes envisage real university autonomy in the personnel and remuneration areas, which aren't always the way they should be. As you yourself wrote in a recent article, the university reform finished before it ever got off the ground. Why is it that sometimes prospects for change seem so difficult and remote? You must be referring to Tarso Genro's reform project, which was very poorly conceived, having elicited a lot of reactions, and which in practice seems to have been abandoned by minister Fernando Haddad. At the time of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration, Paulo Renato de Souza, as the Minister of Education, tried to deal with the issue of public universities, giving them more autonomy and responsibility for the quality of their results and the appropriate use of resources. There was a very strong reaction against this and nothing was done. At the time of Itamar Franco, everyone in the universities liked the minister of Education, Murilo Hingel, who always praised the universities but had no policy for the sector. The current government also does a bit of this. The Lula government has an explicit policy of increasing resources for public universities; at the same time, it weakened the sector's chief evaluation tool, the old provão ("big test"). The federal government's chief policies for higher education have been in the area of social inclusion, through race quotas and through ProUni, the University for All Program. In both cases the expansion of access has been carried out with no policies designed to ensure the quality of the courses and the capability of the students to make up for their educational deficiencies and complete their courses. Now there's beginning to be some concern about this, and some interesting experiences, such as the attempt, in certain federal universities like the Bahia State one, and the new ABC federal university, to introduce a format similar to the European Bologna process, that postpones the point at which students who enter higher education have to make a professional choice. Brazilian public universities are small relative to the country's needs, cost a lot of money in terms of spending per student, lack a clearly defined quality control system and subsidize a lot of middle and upper class students who could afford to pay for their education. However, almost 80% of Brazil's higher education is private, with both good and bad aspects, and there are no positive policies for this sector, just the permanent suspicion that it isn't legitimate and shouldn't exist. One must start discussing in greater depth why we are financing the entire system, what we should expect from public universities, including those that concentrate on research, and what is the role of higher private education. Governments have been complacent and prefer to meet short-term requirements without making waves, rather than thinking about a long-term project. What is your take on the issue? I currently see no serious attempt to deal with research or higher education issues. Many researchers' ideas about scientific policies are limited to putting pressure on the government to provide more money for their projects. But money alone is not enough. In Europe and in many Asian countries, there's a major movement toward concentrating research resources in some universities that reach international standards of quality in their research, innovation and training, and that can work as a benchmark reference for the others and a real bridge to the scientific and intellection production in the rest of the world. In Brazil, USP could play this role, due to its budget and its mass of quality human resources. But, for instance, if we look at the famous ranking of universities published by the Jiao Tong University in China, USP, which is the best in Latin America, appears in 102-120 position; in other words, it has no international standing. In Brazil, at present, there's no deliberate policy aiming at excellence, whether in the government of the state of São Paulo or of the federal government; and there are many who think that talking about excellence and about competing for quality is not politically correct. Universities that have high standards of excellence attract talent, resources and knowledge from everywhere, and create international circuits of contact and prestige for their country. Why don't institutions like USP or Unicamp open their postgrad programs more to students from other Latin American countries' One of the reasons is that, as they are public, they have no means of charging these students for their tuition . They also might not be clear about how to select these students, because the selection is entirely in Portuguese and formal. The entire system is very inflexible. The international dimension ends up being lame because we have a very provincial and closed idea of what a university is. Now tell us about your own education, please, and how you have developed this view of Brazilian science and of higher education in Brazil. I graduated in the city of Belo Horizonte, in 1961, and spent two years in Chile at Flacso, the Latin American School of Social Sciences. Most of the professors there were European and students came from all over Latin America. That was my first contact with modern sociology. I returned to Brazil in early 1964, but was arrested, accused of the crime of subverting the minds of youth. When I went to Chile I was a researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais and when I got back they gave me the responsibility of teaching political science. I gave two lessons and was arrested. Before traveling I had taken part in the student movement of 1959 and 1960. How long did you stay in prison? One month, more or less, not knowing what was going to happen, whether there was going to be a lawsuit? One month after they let me go, I left the country and went to Norway. One of my professors in Chile had been Johan Galtun, a Norwegian researcher who invited me to work with him at an institute he headed in Oslo. I spent one year there and another year in Argentina. Afterwards I went to the United States to do a doctorate in political science. Up to this time, my themes were mainly politics, political parties and political system, and international systems. I did my doctorate at Berkeley and my thesis was published under the title of São Paulo e o Estado Nacional (São Paulo and the National State); it was later revised and published as Bases do autoritarismo brasileiro (The foundations of Brazilian authoritarianism). During the 70's I worked for FGV, at Iuperj [the Social Sciences Research Institute in Rio de Janeiro], from where I moved to Finep [the Studies and Project Finance Agency]. That was when I started getting involved with science and technology and when the idea of doing historical research about Brazilian Science occurred to me. This was later published as a book, Formação da comunidade científica no Brasil (The Establishment of the Scientific Community in Brazil). With Finep funding, I got a good team together and we interviewed about 70 researchers and leaders from the main research institutions in Brazil for several hours. At the time, we brought one of the main international experts in the field of studies regarding science, sociologist Joseph Ben-David, with whom we discussed our project at length and who left us a very interesting text about Brazilian science, which can be found on my website (http://www.schwartzman.org.br/simon/). It was an opportunity to look at international literature about the history and sociology of science and to do a broad survey of what was already available in Brazil on this subject. At that time there was a lot of resentment, mistrust and hostility between scientists and the military regime. But José Pelúcio Ferreira, Finep president at the time, had a totally different view and a lot of interest in getting exiled scientists to come back to Brazil and strengthen its institutions. On the other hand, there was already some discussion about the subject of applied vs. non-applied science and the autonomy of scientific work. Pelúcio's view, as an economist, was highly applied. The very project designed at the time for the Science and Technology sector, which reflected his strong influence, was like that. CNPq, which was an organization linked to the Office of the President of the Republic, was transformed into the National Scientific and Technological Development Council and, together with Finep, it was transferred to the Ministry of Planning. There was an idea that science is part of planning , therefore, as the economy should be planned, science also should. Did you like this point of view? No. I have never believed in planning the economy and even less in planning science. To have science one must have a free scientific community. It must be free, academic, and have independent institutions. In his studies, Ben-David clearly showed that was how western science developed. Besides him, Robert Merton, one of the chief names in American sociology, had developed an idea of science as a free community of scholars; this was a contradiction to attempts to attach science to the political regimes that, in the 30's and 40's, tried to bind science to authoritarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany, at first, and Stalin's Soviet Union, afterwards. These authors were opposed to the tradition that one might call Bernalistic, after John Desmond Bernal. He was an Englishman who developed original research in the field of crystallography and who actively contributed to the war effort of his country against Germany. He was fascinated by the Soviet Union, which he cited as a major example of how one can put science at the service of society. Concerning this, he followed the tradition of Jean Perrin, a French physicist and Nobel Prize winner, who together with Irène Joliot-Curie, was responsible for organizing the French scientific system during the Front Populaire period of the 30's. Science, according to them, must stay within the State, at the service of planning, and help organize society in accordance with scientific criteria. These are two radical views… And totalitarian too. Bernal has a famous book, Science in History, in four volumes. In three of them he produced a very interesting history of science whereas the fourth volume was dedicated to showing how the Soviet Union was the apex of applied social science. Many famous Brazilian scientists, especially from the generations that were educated during the 40's and 50's, adopted the ideas of Bernal and Perrin and were active militants in the communist movement, the best known one was Mario Schenberg. I never saw any texts in which these scientists discussed these issues explicitly; they were things they regarded as natural. Their views of science were Socratic: "The scientist is the one who's going to govern". Their conflict with the military was less of a conflict about the role and place of science within society and more about the recognition of the role they ought to play in the planning system. The objective of the research about the Brazilian scientific community, reflected in the very title of the book, was to redeem the importance of the notion of an autonomous "republic of science", which nevertheless would not be isolated or indifferent to what went on in society. Science can be useful, it should be important and applied, but we have to have science with freedom as the starting point, science with autonomy, with the capacity to have independent universities. Economists have always looked at science from the productive point of view, lacking a more sociological view about how science is organized, how institutions are created. In the 70's there was a genuine intention to bring scientists back, to strengthen postgrad studies and research. In 1979, when the Geisel government came to an end, Pelúcio left Finep and so did I. In 1985, with the political opening, I took part in a presidential commission that was meant to propose a reformulation of Brazil's higher education and that produced the earliest ideas about the evaluation and effective autonomy of universities; those were controversial propositions promptly filed away by the Sarney government. In the late 80's I was invited to take part, together with Eunice Durham, in the establishment of the Center for Research into Higher Education, at USP, when José Goldenberg was the university's president. At that time I began studying more of what was going on in higher education and research abroad. My participation in the group that prepared the book about the new production of knowledge and the coordination of the team in charge of proposing a new scientific and technological policy for Brazil dates back to this time. The proposals, as is often the case, were never implemented by the Ministry of Science and Education, which had financed the study. In 1994 I became president of IBGE, where I remained for five years. That was when I started to become more conversant and involved with the issues of social inequality, poverty and social policies, as well as with the problems of elementary education. Those are the themes that currently interest me the most.