Maria Da Costa

Robotics and Artificial Intelligence hold the potential of significantly augmenting human cognitive and physical performance, giving light-speed and extreme accuracy to human systems and processes, contributing to overcome some of the most complex challenges that humankind faces nowadays. But intelligent technologies also pose high risks to human safety, autonomy and dignity and they can also negatively impact the environment affecting and even threatening the planet’s sustainability and the life of other species. By questioning the ontological status of intelligent tools, this book analyzes their level of efficiency and ethical performance, across distinct domains and settings, highlighting the role of standardisation, certification and governance in the production and deployment of beneficial intelligent systems. The present book is a fundamental reading both to academia and industry, i.e. to all those involved in the design, production and safe and ethical deployment of intelligent technologies.

Calls have been growing for government interventions to address diets high in ultra-processed foods (i.e., ultra-processed diets), which are associated with a large and rising burden of preventable death and disease. To date, however, government action relating to ultra-processed foods (UPFs) has been mostly insufficient. In this paper, we argue that one of the key reasons behind this lacklustre response has been the dominance of ‘UPF fetishism’ in scientific, public, and policy discussions. Adapting Marx’s concept of ‘commodity fetishism’, we refer to UPF fetishism as the tendency to view UPFs only in terms of their final qualities or characteristics at the point of purchase (e.g., price, quality, convenience), while failing to consider all the socio-ecological processes, relations, and activities involved in their provisioning (e.g., intensive agriculture, widespread value extraction). UPF fetishism, we argue, undermines efforts seeking healthy, equitable, and sustainable diets worldwide by obscuring the wide range of harms and inequities generated along the entire UPF value chain, and by undermining and potentially foreclosing discussions on alternative visions and solutions for improving population diets. Researchers and advocates can help to challenge UPF fetishism by turning their focus to the structural and systemic drivers of ultra-processed diets. Taking this critical systems-level view ultimately draws attention the need to confront the very systems – particularly corporate food systems, late capitalism, and imperialism – that structure and sustain the harmful processes, relations, and activities underpinning the current system of UPF provisioning. While some trade-offs may be required, particularly with respect to pragmatism and political feasibility, a strategic advantage of moving beyond UPF fetishism is that it may help to illuminate meaningful opportunities for collaboration within the vast ecology of values-aligned movements seeking better diets, food systems, and economies for people and planet.

Enquanto educador, Rousseau irá propor uma maneira inovadora, à sua época, de adquirir os conhecimentos tradicionalmente constituídos sobre os quais discorre entre os livros dois e três de sua obra pedagógica Emílio ou Da Educação. Partindo dessa premissa, dentro do que pode ser classificado entre os discursos educativos desse autor, o objetivo deste artigo consiste em apresentar a proposta que o filósofo de Genebra delega ao seu aprendiz, Emílio, para a relação que ele deve estabelecer com as Ciências, ou seja, com os saberes constituídos em seu processo de aprendizagem, rol da educação negativa. Para tanto, a metodologia empregada será de análise interpretativa do texto bibliográfico de Rousseau e de comentaristas sobre a temática. O filósofo procura inverter o processo de aquisição do saber ao inserir a experiência como mediadora da aprendizagem enquanto elemento fundamental entre o indivíduo e os elementos empíricos, base aquisitiva para todo conhecimento que componha os discursos científicos ou humanos. Assim, pretende-se contribuir com novas abordagens sobre a teoria do conhecimento em Rousseau e seus reflexos na educação da criança.

Este artículo tiene como objetivo analizar la participación de las mujeres en la producción de conocimiento del proyecto genoma financiado por la FAPESP (Fundación de Apoyo a la Investigación del Estado de São Paulo). Entre 1997 y 2003, FAPESP invirtió aproximadamente 33 millones de euros en el desarrollo del Proyecto Genoma Fapesp (PGF), provocando importantes cambios en la Biología Molecular brasileña: las instituciones de fomento a la investigación comenzaron a promoverla con grandes financiaciones; la bioinformática se tornó uno de los campos con mayor demanda de profesionales y, por fin, los resultados del Proyecto Genoma de la Xylella Fastidiosa, primer organismo vivo secuenciado en Brasil, se publicaron en revistas científicas internacionales, como Nature. Con ello se convierte en el primer país fuera de la tríada EUA-Europa-Japón en desarrollar proyectos genoma. Como consecuencia del proceso, las mujeres están perdiendo espacio como “portavoces de esta nueva ciencia”, ocupando papeles secundarios en el proyecto.