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Phillip Clayton, California-based philosopher and theologian: "What we are hoping for is a cross-fertilization between two of the greatest forces of the human spirit - science and religion."

It´s always very interesting for me to see all the discussions about religion. Actually, it´s the first time in my life that I listening so many discussions about religion´s issues. Coming from country that is very open and tolerant toward religion and grown up in environment when we celebrate all the religion ritual without problem. ( We have 4 religion in Albania + different sects). What is happening now in all the world about religion conflicts, starts to influence a little bit, but hope to not change in Albania. Anyway that´s another issue. I wanted to say that is very interesting to have these different approaches toward the religion and also to discover this aspect of fanaticism that I never thought before. That´s I think the religion and science need to be open toward each other to minimize the fanaticism or the superiority feeling (sometime that that exist in both side, as the result of believe they own the truth ) both have.

The exploration of the relation between science and religion is indeed a "crossing-boundary" case par excellence. We have moved from modernity where the two were totally incompatible, through postmodernity where there was questioning of every absolute truth in both. What comes to my mind as a possible meeting point of dialogue between the two is the transmodernity paradigm that professor Ateljeviç presented to us: crossing boundaries between fields of research that favour a realtional consciousness of biosphere politics, love ethics and transcendence of old dichotomies. Indeed I feel that crossing the boundaries of old dichotomies in general is very challenging and Jean-Marie's posting provides a good stimulus for reflection towards this direction.

Here is an overview about how we can gain trust within a multicultural environment. The importance of information and knowledge about other cultures and language barriers help to improve the effectiveness of multicultural team´s interaction.

thank you. I wonder what the common values are, if we are to trust each other in multicultural environment.

Thank you Anola for this article. It is very interesting and reflects a lot what is happening in companies nowadays, as well as what we went through in this Master. I follow Dora's comments when saying that this topic should be seen from someone else's point of view. It is very clear that it is only the American's point of view on how to build trust as well as how other's see it. It would be interesting to compare it, and realize that maybe we don't define the concept of 'trust' the same way depending on the culture.

This chapter describes the development of a Bahá'í international adult education program designed so that community service is both process and outcome. Particular emphasis is on the preparation of adult tutors.

This article relates the story of Canadian students who went to India for a field placement and do social work. Grounding on Bhabha's theory of "Third Space", the authors describe the different boundaries (cultural, linguistic, cognitive and emotional) that the student had to face and could or not crossed while being in India basing their research on the different feedback given by them. The Student had to continually negotiate cultural difference which leads to inner and outer tension. This article reflects perfectly what every individual lives when going and living in another country. I think that it relates perfectly to everyone of us in this Master.

Dear Cecile, I am trying to read your article, but I cant open it. I am trying to find the options to register, but I cant find it. Can you send me the text by email. Thanks

This is typical example that shows clearly that you are never prepared enough for culture differences and to find a way how to manage them. From the students discourse, you can see that they know that they will experience culture´s shock, that they are going to encounter culture difference. They have also knowledge about Indian culture. But it´s obviously they know just the top of iceberg. I was reading what the students were saying. It´s very interesting to see their reactions. You have a group of students from the same country, the same context that react differently totally different context. The barriers of culture differences can make us more or more open to know and to share with the others or the totally opposite. Of course you need time and the example of the students is very concrete one. The students were in the process of knowing the culture, exploring it. As everything new that we encounter, we react also differently toward the unknown.

a different way of doing academia, by Evelin Gerda Lindner

The World at a Crossroad

"Here we present findings from the "Religion among Academic Scientists" study, a survey (N=1,646) and initial in-depth interviews (N=150) with natural and social scientists at twenty-one elite US research universities. We examine the attitudes academic scientists at these universities have about the perceived conflict between religion and science and their personal cultural construction of the boundaries between science and religion. Using survey data, results show that field-specific differences, being in the natural or social sciences, are not significant predictors of adopting the conflict paradigm, refuting previous research. Attention to in-depth interviews reveals three mechanisms of boundary-crossing, where boundaries between religion and science are transgressed: institutional pull, boundary pioneering, and environmental push. These results contribute key mechanisms of boundary change and boundary crossing between the specific knowledge domains of science and religion to the growing sociology of culture literature on boundaries."

Werner Heisenberg. Der Teil und das Ganze: Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik. (Piper, 2001) This book is written by one of the foundator and leading scientist of quantum mechanics and physics and is a very light-speaking, anecdoting story telling about Heisenberg's life, education, personal life and development. When he mentiones his awakening interest in physicsm he talks a lot about Platon and it is very interesting to read about his attitude towards religion and the principal questions of religion. It is also him we attribute the famous sentence: The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.

merci Dora, let us look at religion & science as two sources of knowledge. In my case, I would be most familiar with the Bahai Faith (www.bahai.org) and I do believe that this Faith has a new contribution in the task of transforming society.

Unfortunately, this is not the article about the original incident, but I'll explain what happened, I think it can relate to our topics: one area of downtown Seattle is known for its large numbers of transient Native Americans, many of whom are homeless or appear so. Sadly, they are often drunk in public and associate with a drug-using underbelly of the city. Of course this is a stereotype and not all the Indians in the area are like this, but many are. A few months ago, an older First Nations male from Vancouver Island who was a respected woodcarver in his community and was known among this "drunk/drugged out" crowd in Seattle was shot and killed by a Seattle policeman. Apparently the cop approached him and asked him to put down his carving knife. He did not obey, supposedly because he didn't hear because he was listening to music and was deaf in one ear. The cop opened fire and killed the man. Obviously, this generated a lot of controversy and protest especially among the Native American community of Seattle and North America. The man had some psychological issues according to some friends, but is that a reason to have opened fire on him? Do these tragedies have to happen for us to rethink our intercultural comprehension? This opens up wounds and old racial conflicts that have been going on for 150 years. The cop's previous experience with Indians of the area coupled with stereotypes led him to act, in my opinion incredibly irrationally, which resulted in the death of a respected wood carver. Sadly, the boundary present at this conflict was crossed by the cop in a brutal way, and this has resulted in the creation of more boundaries and perhaps a further divide between law enforcement officers and the people of the area. This will create fear and mistrust among the transient community and perhaps the Indian community as a whole, which in turn could lead to even more violence and further propagation of stereotypes. If handled poorly, no positive de

Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.

I think we cannot just look at the education system alone to consider if it is successful. The overall environment and peoples' effort in making equality works in their country are also important. If education system is just a mean to an end to achieve high score in PISA, it is not so difficult to do so. However, what exactly is the function of an education system in society is important.

I admire Finland's intensive teacher-training and union collaboration. I think it is one of the important keys to the educational success. Of course, equity for students is very important. But, it is not enough to make the success. I would like to share a link which shows what Finland's Minister of Education says about their excellent teacher-training and union collaboration. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/keys-to-finnish-education_b_836802.html

I did not have time to read it completely, but it was useful for me because I could find some good resource in its reference. BUT there is something strange in the title of this paper, and the abstract did not explain it. The problem is that it seems the paper assumes that the Nash Equilibria exists in all sorts of game!!! There are many games that do not converge to Nash Equilibria. So those games never generates Convergence to NE. I don't know if there is an explanation in the paper or not, but at least the title has this problem.

I think we need to know more about how to deal with qualitative data.

thank you. did you have a look at it to see where it could fit in our research?

I think we need to have some software to facilitate the data analysis process. I've heard there are tools, but I do not know what are they and how to use them. It'd be great if we can have a class on these issues.

This a report on a very interesting conference held in May 2004 at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Some keywords for those who might be interested: gender, technology and development. The report provides an interesting insight into several studies on this field. For instance, one of the papers discussed emphasizes the role of vocational training for migrant women regarding their negotiations with the workmarket. One of the aspects discussed: "how do young [migrant] North American women perceive and understand, hear and listen, to the voices of their sisters [native women] across culture, class, status, skin, and language?" It is definitely an interesting issue, where crossing boundaries is a factor of development.

I think you have to be logged in in portail bnu

"US researchers have discovered taking a nap while studying works even better if you dream about what you are trying to learn."

I defenitely agree with Lucas. According to me, many of us are not aware of how important getting enough sleep is for our learning and creativity. I know many people,who are saying that they are 'night-people' and prefer to study until late rather than getting up an hour early in the morning to finish work. My personal experience showed me that I am not only more creative but also faster in learning after sleeping. In a world, in which everything goes faster and faster we might need to give our brains even more time to rest than some hundred years ago. I can imagine that dreaming about the task while taking a nap helps to improve the learning after waking up. However, being able to switch off completely without 'thinking' about the task within the dream might help to even better relax.

I have never experienced dreaming about what I am trying to learn while taking a nap. If it can really boost learning and creativity, I would really like to try it. But, it is something beyond my control. In spite of that, power napping is always good. I would like to share a link which shows ten benefits of power napping. Some benefits are, for example, improving memory and learning, boosting creativity and increasing cognitive functioning, etc. http://ririanproject.com/2007/09/05/10-benefits-of-power-napping-and-how-to-do-it/

Two dozen universities now have courses where students are working on Wikipedia as part of their formal coursework. Many of those campuses have "Wikipedia ambassadors" tasked with helping professors weave writing and editing Wikipedia entries into the syllabus. Even Ferriero's office at the National Archives and Records Administration now employs a "Wikipedian in residence" in charge of fostering relationships with galleries, libraries, archives and museums.

Interesting! If it is a good piece of work,it doesn't matter whether it is judged by one professor/public. It does matter what students learn during the process and how they can improve their work further.