Aspects of the recent development of the water buffalo husbandry in the Central Amazon region

The paper deals with the status and recent development of water buffalo husbandry on the floodplains (vârzea) in the Central Amazon region, in the vicinity of Manaus. A short introduction is given about pasture formation on the so called terra firme of the Amazon basin, in connection with the highly controversal discussion about the agronomical and ecological implications as well as a review of the history of water buffaloes in Brazil and the ungoing research activities. Five recently established water buffalo ranches near Manaus are discussed with respect to animal husbandry and pasture management. It is clearly shown that extensively managed "prestige" farms underutilize the known potential of water buffaloes in meat and milk production and working capacity. It is very unlikely that this kind of buffalo ranching will play a substantial role in the further development of water buffalo husbandry in the region. There is a gap between the promising results achieved in research trials and the reality on farm level. Recent research at the practical level of an existing farm indicates high production parameters. In order to better utilize the animal's potential and to prevent any future ecological damage of the várzea-ecosystem by large-scale land clearing for area-extensive establishments, research should focus on small holding mixed-farms

Language learning strategies: a study of older students of German at the University of the Third Age

Laslett’s (1996) concept of the Third Age identifies learning as an important part of successful ageing. As an ageing population shows growing interest in language learning, so research into ‘foreign language geragogy’ (Bemdt 1997, 2003) has expanded, although some early studies of older adult language learners proved inconclusive (Singleton 1989). The current study investigates older language learners of German and their use of language learning strategies. It modifies Graham’s (1997) strategy categorisation into cognitive, metacognitive, social/affective and communicative. A mixed method approach involved questionnaires, think-aloud protocols and interviews: 72 learners (all over 50) of German and other languages at the local University of the Third Age provided background information and reported on their strategy use. Think-aloud protocols illustrated how older learners employed learning strategies whilst working on a variety of tasks (reading, speaking, listening, writing). Interviews elicited student perspectives on learning strategies and wider issues such as motivation, beliefs, anxiety and past experiences. The study concludes that: • The research instruments were broadly suitable for exploring strategies among older learners, showing individual and general tendencies in language strategy use. Think-aloud protocols may require some participant training. • Older learners did not employ essentially different learning strategies from other adults; differences were more apparent in affective areas such as motivation. • It was possible to identify a list of typical strategies employed by older learners. • The subjects adopted mainly metacognitive and cognitive strategies, adapting them to their individual learning needs. The range of communicative and social/affective strategies was limited, perhaps because think-aloud protocols allowed fewer opportunities for them. The findings help to identify key implications for supporting the older language learner

La organización del conocimiento y la Sociedad Internacional para la Organización del Conocimiento: estado, demandas, ideales

On the 13th conference of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) 2014 in Krakow a panel was held on ‘The Future of Knowledge Organization and ISKO’. Here a synopsis with additional information and more dense presentation is given by a panelist. The main items were: What is knowledge organization (KO)? What will be the most challenging for ISKO and KO in the future? What is your ideal picture of ISKO and KO of the future? The results were inter alia that KO is a general discipline and applicable in many areas, though it is mostly perceived as part of information and library science. To ameliorate its standing not only the fundamentals have to be worked out but also its diverse application fields and openness to new objects and methods. To integrate cultural and semantic diversity has to be seen as some important points in a polytely situation.Durante la decimotercera conferencia de la Sociedad Internacional para la Organización del Conocimiento (ISKO), celebrada en 2014 en Cracovia (Polonia), tuvo lugar una discusión sobre “El futuro de la Organización del Conocimiento”. Se presenta una sinopsis crítica del panel desde la perspectiva de uno de los participantes. Los temas fundamentales fueron: ¿Qué es la organización del conocimiento? ¿Cuáles serán los retos más sobresalientes para ISKO y la organización del conocimiento en el futuro? ¿Cuál es su imagen ideal de ISKO y la organización del conocimiento en el futuro. Se concluyo, entre otras cosas, que la organización del conocimiento es una disciplina de carácter general aplicable en muchas áreas, aunque mayormente se percibe como una parte de la ciencia de la información y la biblioteconomía. Para mejorar su situación es necesario abordar no sólo sus fundamentos teóricos, sino también sus diversos campos de aplicación, abriéndose a nuevos objetos y métodos. La integración de la diversidad cultural y semántica debe verse como un aspecto importante en una situación politélica

Organization, Management and Engineering of Knowledge: Rivals or Complements?

[Abstract] Knowledge Organization is a discipline that has its origin in the library field and was extended by new documentation and information tasks. Thought it claims to encompass all kinds and aspects of knowledge storage and retrieval it is bound more or less to the idea to express the structure of knowledge which is behind a scientific collection of objects and their descriptions. Its aim is to facilitate the exchange between scientists and their knowledge. Knowledge Management instead deals with the elicitation, processing and diffusion of economically important information. Knowledge gets here the main notion of competitive intelligence for a limited target and community. Knowledge Engineering is the technique of making cognitive units and links machine readable and processable. It achieves its advantage over human interaction and understanding with the growth of the data bases and the speed of numerical based decisions. Though rather surprising information mining might be possible by Knowledge Engineering a qualitative or ethical inference remains nearly unsolved. If one contrasts Knowledge Organization, Knowledge Management and Knowledge Engineering to each other these knowledge disciplines get a clearer shape and their special claims, contributions and limitations have to be taken into account. On the other hand it becomes obvious that facing the typical problems and solutions of all knowledge disciplines will result in better outcome in each. Thus practical solutions will always have to take into account these three aspects of knowledge at least

Aspectos sociológicos informacionales y cognitivos de la organización del conocimiento

50 years ago knowledge organization, the development of scientific concepts and arrangements, has been seen as a logical and thus universal problem. Older approaches accordingly see areas of knowledge as naturally given and organically grown. At latest with the constructivism has entered a ‘turn’, which sees knowledge organization as a social convention and accordingly regards universal standards skeptical. Simultaneously in the sciences came up a stronger concern with historical and sociological studies of its foundations and in philosophy of science the return to different kinds of relativizations has gained more importance. In this paper, some single classical sociological positions are discussed, conclusions are drawn for knowledge and information as well as for science and knowledge organization and objections are designated.Desde hace cincuenta años, la organización del conocimiento —el desarrollo de conceptos científicos y su estructuración— se entiende como un problema lógico y, por tanto, universal. Los enfoques tradicionales ven las áreas del conocimiento como dadas naturalmente y regidas por un crecimiento orgánico. El constructivismo ha traido un cambio de paradigma, que contempla la organización del conocimiento como una convención social; y, consecuentemente, considera escépticamente la existencia de estándares universales. Simultáneamente, se ha producido en las ciencias un interés más intenso sus fundamentos históricos y sociológicos; y en la filosofía de la ciencia ha ganado en importancia la reconsideración de diferentes relativizaciones. En este artículo, se discuten vías de las posiciones sociológicas clásicas y se trazan sus implicaciones en la comprensión de la información y el conocimiento, así como para la ciencia de la organización del conocimiento, atendiendo especialmente a las objeciones que plantean a las perspectivas clásicas