Ciclo de Conferências CoBiG² - CBA

Dia 24 de Maio na FCUL. Edifício C1, Piso 3, Anfiteatro FFCUL

Programa:

• 9:15 - 10:30 Roger Butlin, University of Sheffield
• 10:30 - 11:30 Mark Beaumont, University of Bristol
• 12:00 - 13:00 Vera Domingues, Harvard University

Python 101 Course

Python 101 Course

CoBiG² presents the first edition of Python 101.

This course aims to be an introduction to Python, especially for biologists that want to be more productive in their analysis or that need to process huge amounts of data like what is coming from hight throughput sequencing.

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On Sustainable Development...

Last Updated on Monday, 28 December 2009 23:04 Written by Vera Nunes Tuesday, 28 April 2009 00:00

Yesterday was the day of the EARTH, a good opportunity to reflect about the way we have been treating it. Presently, Humanity has an enormous problem to solve: Human population is huge and demands such a great amount of resources to sustain itself that we seriously doubt that nature can afford it much longer. Additionally, waste production and impacts resulting from Human resources exploitation is becoming too great for nature to absorb and process without visible consequences, making us finally realize a truth largely ignored until now: resources are not unlimited!

This scenario reminds me about the microbiology classes I took in college a few years ago. Human populations seem to be growing fast in a Petri dish called Earth, eagerly consuming the available resources and producing the corresponding amount of toxic waste that results from their metabolism, just as bacteria would. But normally at a laboratory, the biologist would collect some of the bacteria and transfer them to a new Petri dish, full of fresh nutritious medium, avoiding the whole population to collapse by starvation and intoxication, since they would not be able to escape the lab and colonize a new environment. What an amazing parallel (in a very different size scale, of course)!!

Like bacteria, we already explored all corners of our planet. Massive colonization movements leaving from Europe spread out quickly in 500 years through the world, growing exponentially in the presence of unexplored rich environments. But now we are reaching Earth's support capacity and we still haven't found a way to support our life outside this planet. Some are struggling hard to do so. Mars seems close enough but how devoid of life it looks!

If Mankind can live long enough to find a way to travel at light speed, maybe we can reach a nice planet far away, compatible with our needs (and again, some are already pursuing that goal but for now is just science fiction). And then we will drain it out of all it's useful resources like before... like a bacteria strain growing in a fresh Petri dish! How desolate this perspective sounds! It's like everything we touch becomes somehow destroyed and yet, we find ourselves as a very superior and special species inhabiting this planet, one that has the ability to imagine, having consciousness of themselves and their surroundings, one that is the top of the perfection and complexity, believing to be capable to live independently from nature rhythms!

Humans are arrogant enough to think that they can fix everything although history shows us otherwise. We forget frequently that we belong to a complex ecosystem where every tiny action has consequences, and because of that, put nice concepts like sustainable development in action can be very tricky. How many times we think we are fixing a problem with certain management measures but later we discover that some other problem has arisen as a consequence. It's an endless cycle! The more we try to control ecosystems, the more we realize we can't, because we don't know enough about our well intentioned actions consequences. Is just like science fiction stories where the hero travels in time and realizes that his tiniest change in the chain of events can have huge unpredicted consequences.

Am I saying that we should stand still and do nothing? No, but instead of pretending that that's okay to destroy because later we will know how to fix it, we should have a more respectful, humble and most of all preventing attitude.

More than ever the Reduce-Reuse-Recycle policy is a good road for sustainable development. Recycling has becoming a fashion and a good business, but will be useless if we continue to consume much more than we need. Our energy sources choices must be based on efficiency and availability instead of just how affordable they are. In a global economy crisis like we are facing today we need to create development models that don't rely only on the production versus consumption. Like any other species in the planet, we need to adapt to new resources, but this time we must use them wisely if we desire to keep ruling this planet for a longer period than the Dinosaurs did. We must not wish to stop or control evolution, but rather flow with it!