“Putin’s assertions about Nazis in Kyiv are baseless, but there are striking analogies between the way the USSR’s Red Army operated during World War II and the way the Russian army is operating currently against Ukraine. These analogies, far from reflecting favorably on either the Red Army or today’s Russian army, underscore the deeply immoral nature of Russia’s war in Ukraine…Soviet soldiers were notorious for raping women in the territories they occupied during and immediately after World War II. When Joseph Stalin learned that his soldiers were engaging in mass rape in occupied areas, he made light of it, saying that they were merely “having a little fun.” https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/russia-repeating-its-brutal-history-ukraine

The phrase used for the title of this post was taken from the article “The business of our future” published in TIME Magazine International Edition on April 25 and written by the Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal.

On it, we can read about the challenges faced by our Planet “a war in which all nations must be allies“. And also about “ecopreneurs”, environmentally focused entrepreneurs taking risks that will be integral to the planet´s future. Certainly not by chance I had already mentioned this TIME edition in the post scriptum of a previous post https://pachecotorgal.com/2022/04/27/the-economist_saving-the-planet-through-litigation/

PS – The aforementioned TIME edition has also an interesting essay about Bloodymir Putin titled “Follow the money” adapted from Browder´s Freezing Order: A true story of money laundering, murder, and surviving Putin´s wrath. The very same greedy Putin who has billions at the same time that 19 million Russians live in poverty. In the post scriptum of another previous post I ridiculed Russia’s ability to attract world-class talent when compared to the EU, US, and China. And I didn’t even need to compare the ridiculous amount Russia spends on research, just 1% of its GDP, with the much higher percentage spent by China. Not to mention while in China companies are advised to support basic research (Tencent will put up $1.5 billion in biology, math, medicine, and physics) in Russia companies support Putin’s luxury addiction instead.

Still following a previous post about a paper published in Nature whose authors found that junior researchers who coauthor work with top scientists enjoy a persistent competitive advantage throughout the rest of their careers, see a recent paper by two researchers of Bar-Illan University in Israel:

“We harnessed three genealogical and scientometric datasets to identify 3 distinct groups of computer scientists: Highly independent, who cease collaborating with their advisors (almost) instantly upon graduation; Moderately independent, who (quickly) reduce the collaboration rate over ~5 years; and Weakly independent who continue collaborating with their advisors for at least 10 years post-graduation. We find that highly independent researchers are more academically successful than their peers …In addition, both highly and moderately independent researchers are found to have longer academic careers” https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.08103

Still following a recent Call by the European Commission seeking outstanding scientists for the ERC Scientific Council that required the nominations to disclose the H-index of the candidates its worth mentioning that just two weeks ago, an article was published in the Elsevier journal Heliyon, regarding faculty who were promoted from assistant professors to associate professors and/or associate professors to full professors in the period of 2006-2021.

Perhaps due to distraction or even ignorance, the authors of that article seem to be unaware that when assessing professors from those areas where articles with hundreds and thousands of co-authors became routine the fractional h-index must be used. https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2021/11/evaluating-researchers-in-fast-and.html

A recent article authored by German researchers published in the Elsevier journal Research Policy shows that, at least in the area of Psychology, there is no discrimination against female researchers:

“Theories on gender bias argue that women in academia benefit less from their academic achievements than men do; women, as a result, show lower rates of success in becoming tenured professors. Based on longitudinal data from CVs of virtually all psychologists in German academia, we analyze factors that lead to a first permanent professorship in German psychology departments….Among tenured professors, women show a 32% higher chance of becoming a professor than men”

Moreover, this phenomenon does not occur only in the field of Psychology, but also in Political Science, as one can read in another article that was published in 2021, entitled “Publishing, signaling, social capital, and gender: Determinants of becoming a tenured professor in German political science“.

PS – Fortunately, the promotion to a professorship position does not depend on the biased student opinions that favor the better-looking ones https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2019/11/paperyou-dont-look-like-lecturer-dress.html

https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2021/07/o-h-index-e-os-premios-de.html

Ainda na sequência do post acima, é interessante constatar que há apenas duas semanas atrás foi publicado um artigo na revista Heliyon, respeitante à promoção académica de Professores-Auxiliares a Associados e de Associados a Professores catedráticos, numa universidade dos EUA, que se baseia no valor do h-index dos candidatos, obtido na Web of Science

Talvez por distracção ou mesmo desconhecimento, os autores do referido artigo, parecem não saber que o h-index fraccionado possui um valor superior à versão simples https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2021/11/evaluating-researchers-in-fast-and.html

É verdade que para muitas áreas cientificas (onde ainda não pegou a “moda” dos artigos com centenas ou milhares de co-autores), o valor obtido em ambos os casos não é muito diferente, porém a área científica, analisada no tal artigo recentemente publicado não se encontra entre aquelas áreas em que isso sucede.

An article in The Economist´s edition of April 30 informs that “Mr. Putin has been splashing out cash to encourage women to have babies“. But since that has been proved incapable of increasing the number of Russian children to compensate for the high mortality rate (increased by Covid-19 at a rate of 1,000 a day) and since an article published in the Financial Times three days ago states that the Ukraine war threatens to deepen Russia’s demographic crisis, so it’s just a question of how long will it take before the Russian army starts raping Russian women on a massive scale in order to increase the number of Russian children?

Be there as it may, it is perfectly clear that even this brutal tactic will not prevent an increase in the number of Russians abandoning a country that is heading towards world irrelevance. The same irrelevance that is now the watermark of its scientific production, exponentiated due to the international boycott that has already caused Russia’s scientific production to fall by more than 30%.

Yuval Noah Harari wrote that Russia is nothing more than “a gas station with nukes“. No wonder then that in the same article mentioned at the beginning of this post one can also read the following words: “Thousands of well-educated Russians have left a country which they now believe offers them no future”

The authors of the paper published in Research Integrity and Peer Review found that, in 2020, reviewers worldwide spent over 100 million hours on peer reviews—equivalent to more than 15,000 years of labor. The estimated monetary value of the time contributed by reviewers in the US, China, and the UK alone exceeded $2 billion.

Also worth examining is a ranking of 28 European countries based on the ratio of reviewers with more than 400 confirmed peer reviews (from journals indexed in Web of Science) per million inhabitants. The data reveals that researchers in Germany and France are among the least inclined to donate their time. At the top of the list, however, is my own country, Portugal, where researchers show the greatest willingness to engage in pro bono peer review activities, with a ratio significantly higher than that of the UK, US, or China.

Declaration of competing interests – I declare that, to date, I have reviewed over 1,200 papers. Last year, Web of Science highlighted my personal profile as an exemplary case of peer review contributions. https://publons.com/announcement/#your-review-contributions-in-web-of-science

Informou ontem o jornal Público que o famoso juiz negacionista voltou a ser ouvido pelo Conselho Superior da Magistratura, mas embora não seja minha intenção comentar as enormidades que ele proferiu, pois é evidente que pelo menos na parte em que apelidou de verme viscoso e verme pançudo, dois membros da policia, afirmações essas que sem dúvida lhe valerão processos por injúrias e difamação, tenho porém que lamentar e condenar que durante essa audição, um dos membros desse Conselho, tenha dito que ele era “apenas um gajo a ladrar”, pois a lei deste país criminaliza essas afirmações, exactamente da mesma forma como também criminaliza que se chame cabra a uma mulher, vide Acórdão do Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa Nº10790/2007-8. Resta por isso saber se o Conselho Superior da Magistratura é consequente e da mesma forma que puniu o magistrado negacionista, também irá agir disciplinarmente contra o magistrado Conselheiro que agora o qualificou como sendo apenas um cão.

Declaração de interesses – Em 16 de Outubro de 2021 já tinha comparado as acções do supracitado juiz negacionista com as do juiz Ivo Rosa https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2021/10/quel-e-pior-para-imagem-da-justica-o.html

The evil genius who love Joseph Stalin and who´s ashamed of his father’s legacy (the very same who recently said Adolph Hitler had Jewish blood) just decided to share his cynical perspectives on how the Western countries are allegedly imposing oppression on the global stage https://tass.com/politics/1445755

And, undoubtedly, a compelling illustration of this “oppression” lies in the fact that every Syrian escaping their homeland and every African attempting the perilous journey across the Mediterranean harbor a singular dream – to reside in Russia. In their eyes, Russia stands as the sole nation in the world where oppression has never existed.

The real truth is that the country of Orc Putin wants every piece of land it can grab. And if he could he would no doubt also invade China, just like when Russia invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1894, and again in 1945, when more than a million Russian soldiers engage in a special military operation to liberate Manchuria from the oppression of the West (also known as special operation to denazify China). And they also tried (unsuccessfully) once again in 1969 in the Sino-Soviet border conflict.

Regrettably for Russia, China has now emerged as a bona fide global power. Consequently, Russia’s options for expansion are limited, with the primary focus shifting westward towards Ukraine and the Baltic countries (if only they were not under the protection of evil NATO).

Ironically, the prospect of China invading Russia would be quite a twist of fate. However, such a scenario seems unlikely, given that China may not need to resort to invasion. Instead, Russia could find itself in a vulnerable position, eventually turning to China, cap in hand, to purchase its gas and oil. For China, this approach could prove more advantageous than an invasion, aligning with the wisdom imparted by Sun Tzu “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting“

PS – Contrary to the childish (and even moronic) opinions of the “genius” Sergei Lavrov, we do not inhabit a world characterized by multiple powers. True powers, akin to Black Holes, possess a remarkable ability to attract talent. In our current reality, only the EU, USA, and China exhibit such magnetic prowess, standing as the foremost talent attractors. Regrettably, Russia and other nations display a lackluster performance in this regard, trailing even behind my own country, Russia finds itself unable to retain its own talents, witnessing a mass exodus to Turkey and Western countries over the past two months. This deficiency contributes to Russia’s evident frustration, manifesting in behavior reminiscent of a discontented and petulant child