Challenges in my discipline

My discipline, as the discipline of all of us, is facing challenges related to mixed areas. Some of these areas are technology, social matters and education.

In the technology area, some of the challenges for me are:

Face the new technology, and show interest on it: I'm a person who likes the new technology, but doen't knows how to use it and always needs helps to use it at the beggining. Today, the technology is increasing in all areas, and sometimes that's a little difficult for me. I think I could resolve this challenge showing more interest in learn about technology, but it's a little hard for me because I'm really not much interested in this area, I like new things in technology, but easier. The critical issue involved in this area is my interest.

In the soccial matters, some of the challenges for me are:

Accept different points of view of the things that I do or I like. I allways thought that we are free to do things and to have our opinions, but I really hate when someone tell me bad thing about what I'm doing, studing, or claiming. I think I could resolve this having more tolerance with differents opinions, and do not taking the opinions as something bad. the critical issue involved in this area is my tolerance level.

Try to not show heaviness: sometimes, i'm really apathetic with other people because I heard something bad that they said about me, or they act apathetic with me, like pass at my side and not say hi, (I mean, it's so hard to be nice??) or talking you just when they need something, and then they forget you. I really hate this attitudes, and when someones does this, I'm really heavy. I think I could resolve this ignoring to these people, or ignoring these acts, but it's hard for me.

the critical issue involved in this area is my hability to show ripeness.

In the education, some challenges for me are:

Learn as I most: sometimes I study just for the test, and not for learn about what I'm doing. I could resolve this planning better my time for study. the critical issue involved in this area is the time.

The Guardian: Can you hurt a chimp's feelings?

The article starts reflexing: it's an invasion of privacy to film an animal on it's burrow? Some people think that it is, because if an animal retreats to its burrow, obviously doesn't want to be seen. The reflexion suggests that we have to take care for not disrupt wild animal behaviour, because animals can assume emotions, as a human does.

The journal current biology shows a video were some chimps apparently mourning the death of Pansy, an elderly member of the troop. The chimps gathered around her, moving her bedding gently and checking her breathing, then stood silently their arms around each others shoulders. This video received widespread media coverage, most of it sympathetic the idea the idea that animals, especially primates, share human emotions such as grief, sadness and even empathy.

In a report, the profesor Marc Bekoff claims to have widnessed a magpie funeral, where a group of magpies brought pieces of grass to the body of one of their members killed by a bike, and the accounts of how elephants often gather around a dead or dying animal.

The author of this report show interest in this subject because she wanted to put and end to claims of human superiority based on the belief that animals doesn't feel like the human does, because humans have self-awareness. She also concerned that this attitude of belief human's superiority derives from Judeo-Christian, who claim that God created the universe and life within it for man, and the dominance, expliotation and abuse of animals it's justified. However, the author said that changing our conciousness and increasing interest in animal emotions, our relationships with other species will be better.

Doctor Stuart Semple is involved in the study of animal behaviour, and concerned that the video is a classic case of anthropomorphism, the projection of human feelings on animals, wich in chimps is easier because of their physiological resemblance to humans. The Daily Mail Coverage shows this point: in one photo (the picture of this summary), a chimp with a rather ambiguous expression is shown sitting holding a banana. The caption reads: "Chippy the chimp looks downcast while clutching a banana in an enclosure". They want to mark the difference between say this, and say: "Chippy sits in his enclosure clutching his stolen banana", because this last claim changes totally the intencion to show animals feelings.

However, the author claims that the anthropomorphism is an insult because is one of the key ways in wich the human species has been able to disregard the abuse inflicted on animals. this is because, for the author, anthropomorphism disregards animal's welfware issues and promoted the human as the center of the universe. Nevertheless, Semple is right to suggest caution, because his real issue is less a dispute about the existence of animal emotions, and more a matter of establishing what exactly it is animals might be feeling. Semple points to recent research that measured stress and social responses in baboons who had lost close relatives. Bereaved baboons showed an increase in stress hormones and in levels of social grooming: very similar responses to humans. "This kind of evidence is more compelling," says Semple. "It's rigorous and scientific. It allows us to speculate on what they are feeling or not."

Finally, the author concludes: "If we assume animals have identical emotions to humans, perhaps we will insist on treating them as human. But until we know what animals really feel and what those feelings are, then treating them as identical to humans might be just as cruel as ignoring their feelings".

"What if that study revealed the animal's dependency on a species of plant or the need for conditions that were threatened elsewhere? If we failed to study, to film and to observe, we might lose that creature altogether. All of which suggests that investigating what exactly animals are feeling is one of the most pressing areas of contemporary research".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/30/chimpanzees-emotions-ethics

Faculty Facilities

My faculty: Veterinary science and livestock, university of Chile.

Particulary, this faculty of the university of chile is ubicated at the south of Santiago, in the commune "La Pintana". This situacion has been always difficult for most of the part of students, teachers, workers, etc, because it's too far from the rest of the city and also it's placed in one of the most dangerous communes of the city. These points makes that all the ones that go to this faculty have to deal with: how to get there, and how to be safe from criminals.

Even we can't do anything for change these situations, maybe we can improvement more security measures, for example, using the buses of the faculty.

Another situation that I think that could be better is the feeding in the university. The university should improve more measures, like stablish a big casino, with lower prices and more menus for eat. I think this because the menu in the faculty is one per day and it's very expensive.

The first steps to dealing with this situacion would make formal these requests, and then, focus in the costs of improvements.

I would resolve this situacion through the center of students of veterinary medicine (CEV), because this entity represents all the students to the autorities.

The beneficts of these improvements could be: best security and better feeding.

The real impacts: the costs of improvements.

Further, we can focus in another ways to resolve these problems but with lower costs.