Another Maveba conference, organized by Claudia Manfredi together with a meeting of the COST 2103 project. This was the edition commemorating the 10th anniversary of this biennial meeting dedicated to voice that brings together medical doctors and engineers. My current occupation leave me little time for sightseeing in the cities that I travel on business and Florence was no exception. Fortunately, and as in previous editions, Claudia organized private visits by the end of the day to some of the city monuments. This year we visited the Palazzo Davanzati, in which the welcome reception was held, and the Palazzo Pitti which hosted the gala dinner. On Wednesday I managed a few hours for wandering in the maze of the historical center, passing along the Arno River on a beautiful sunny morning. I crossed the Ponte Vecchio and bought another pair of Madova gloves, which is becoming a tradition. The almost winter sun produced some interesting photographs of the Arno bridges and of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. The photographs can be viewed with greater resolution in the picasa album.Ponte alla CarraiaPonte Santa Trinita Ponte Vecchio Ponte alle Grazie 

Some time ago, I read a Time magazine article on the science of romance that referred to several scientific results seeking to explain the mating rituals of the human species. One of those was published in the journal of “Evolution and Human Behavior” that I now decided to look for. Fortunately this work, included in the November 2007 issue, is available for free.

It is a fascinating work. Researchers at the University of New Mexico proposed to register the tips received by lap dancers along the days of their menstrual cycle. As the authors assume that the scholars are unfamiliar with the gentleman’s club subculture, they begin by describing the operation of these clubs and what the dancers have to do to bring customers to spend the usual US$10 tip for lap dance in the main room or US$20 for the comfort of a VIP room.

For this study 18 dancers were recruited for 60 days, covering a total of 5300 dances, on 296 daily shifts lasting for an average of 5 hours. The woman’s hormonal cycle was divided into 3 phases: the menstrual phase (days 1 to 5), the fertile phase (days 9 to 15) and the luteal phase (days 18 to 28). The results show that the dancers that were not taking the pill received on average US$335 per shift in the fertile phase, 260 in the luteal phase and 180 in the menstrual phase. The dancers taking the pill had significant difference between the income in the fertile phase and the luteal phase. These results contradict the view that the human estrus have evolved to be lost or hidden from males as a result of the monogamous social organization that characterizes our species. Furthermore, these results are particularly relevant for being based on the economic value assigned by the customers.

In addition to the various issues raised in the article, an additional got my attention: how to justify the costs of a such a study to the funding entity? I can imagine the astonishment of the auditors of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology while examining the eligibility of the receipts of payment to gentleman’s club dancers. Anyway one thing seems certain to me: there would be no difficulty in finding research assistants to work in the project.

I do not know if someone told me to do so or if I just copied the habit of my colleagues, but since I joined a research group at INESC (1984), I have kept a log book where I write my daily activities and the problems that I am working on. In 1991, when I started working at the AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray-Hill, I realized the importance of these books because there was a special notebook model for this this purpose which could be requested in the lab’s storage room. The notes taken in these books could be used as evidence in judicial cases regarding intellectual property issues.

In those distant years, in which the term “mobile computing” meant a computer that did not required a crane to be moved, we worked mainly in the laboratory, in front of a computer terminal. At that time, the log book was kept on the desk. With the advent of the modem, the personal computer and, much later, the laptop, the workplace was no longer confined to the laboratory and the log book had to be carried in one’s the briefcase in order to be able to continue the work at home. The size of the log book had become a problem.

In December 2003, in a meeting break at the Catholic University of Lisbon, I saw for the first time a Moleskine notebook in the University’s stationery shop. It was the original pocket model, 9×14 cm, with its characteristic elastic to keep it closed, a ribbon marker, cover bound in cardboard, with sewn-bound sheets of acid free paper and with the famous internal pouch made of cardboard and fabric. Since then, all my daily records were made in Moleskine notebooks.

The problem of log books is that they run out and a new notebook brings mixed emotions. On the one hand there is the pleasure of starting a blank notebook but on the other there is a sense of loss of the recent past. The advantage of Moleskine notebooks is also its greatest drawback: they fill up too quickly. I was browsing my collection of Moleskine notebooks and noticed that the first lasted for 19 months, the second 12, the third of 9 and the last only 7 months. I started my fifth Moleskine notebook last December.

I do not know whether if it is by being more busy or if I am writing more, but this growing consumption of notebooks is becoming a problem. It is increasingly frequent the need to check the contents of an older notebook. The solution that I found was to virtualize the notebooks using the ScanSnap S510.

I started by removing the cardboard covers of the notebooks. Then I used an electric guillotine to cut the margin of stitched spine. The result was the post-French revolution Moleskine which can be seen here:

The next step was to put the loose leafs in the scanner to convert them in a PDF format document.

Using the possibility of bookmarking the PDF document, I finished the conversion process by bookmarking the beginning of each month to facilitate the location of a specific date.

My problem after reading a letter or any other document that I received in paper is: what to do with it now? Although it is very difficult to resist to the call of the waste-paper basket, there are some documents that require the passage of time for a more responsible evaluation of their importance. Scanning is a solution that I use with a less than desirable frequency due to the slowness of the full process. Most of the times I choose the corner of my desk, where that paper can enjoy the company of its peers.

Fortunately I am not the only one with this problem and based on the recommendations of people who have more experience than me in this subject, I bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510. Although the price is a bit high (about EUR 500) it includes a version of Adobe Acrobat 8 (standard edition), that allows the manipulation of PDF files.

The usage instructions are idiot proof: place the paper document like in a fax machine, press the green button and wait for the PDF document to appear on the computer screen. All this at the speed of 18 pages per minute. After that, it is not longer necessary to resist to the call of the waste-paper basket.

“I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

This final note of the speech of President John F. Kennedy to the US Congress on May 25, 1961 mobilized a nation and its resources for a very specific purpose. This note has 6 features: it is simple (let’s take a man to the Moon), it is surprising (in 1961 this was an unexpected challenge), it is concrete (its success is easily measurable), it is credible (it was announced by President of the USA), it is emotional (it announced sending a man and not an automatic probe ) and is also a good story (everyone could imagined the adventure of going to the Moon)

Why is that ideas like this stick and others do not? That is the basis of the book “Made to Stick ‘written by the brothers Chip and Dan Heath. According to the authors the 6 attributes highlighted the Kennedy’s speech are common to ideas that stick:

1. Simplicity (S)
2. Unexpectedness (U)
3. Concreteness (C)
4. Credibility (C)
5. Emotional (E)
6. A good Story (Ss).

These 6 attributes can be ordered to create the word SUCCESs

The simplicity rule forces us to focus on the main point of the idea. This is important because if everything is important , than nothing important. A message must be effectively reduced to its essence and it cannot be lost on what is secondary.

Surprise is a way to get people’s attention, but it is necessary to stimulate their curiosity to keep them alert. Asking questions makes people aware of gaps in their knowledge. The ideas that answer those questions have a better chance to be remembered.

Although it is often be necessary to convey abstract concepts, concretizing them in simple examples has usually a greater chance of success. A good example are proverbs like “Better a bird in the hand that two in the bush”, giving the listener the chance to find the abstract message conveyed by the concrete example.

The stickness of an idea is also associated with the credibility of the messenger or the facts that support the message. However the use of statistics or survey results can be difficult to visualize. For example, to say that the battery of an MP3 player lasts an average of 5 hours is less effective than announcing that you can listen to music continuously on a flight from Lisbon to New York .

Humans are emotional beings and the degree of emotion of the message is an important factor in its effectiveness. Being known that the rationality and emotion are associated with different brain regions, mixing them in the same message diminishes its relevance. For example, the anti-smoking campaign that the American tobacco industry was forced to conduct was based on the phrase: “Think. Do not smoke.”. The competing campaign in which teenagers piled up bags of body bags in front of the headquarters of a tobacco company had, understandably, more impact.

Telling a story is one of the most effective ways to convey an idea. The fable “The Fox and the Grapes” is still told 2500 years after Aesop’s death, and the meaning of the expression “sour grapes” is still well understood. Any teacher knows that she can quickly grab the attention of her students, even in the middle of the explanation an abstract mathematical concept, if she tells a related story. In the minds of the students the history and the concept will be linked together and will be remembered for a longer time.

The major obstacle in designing a winning message is the so called “Knowledge Curse“. If the message of President Kennedy was announced by an space scientist he would probably say: “We think that, within a period of 9 years, we will be able to develop the technology needed to build a rocket weighting about 6 billion pounds that can reach the speed of 11 km per second, the escape speed of the planet Earth, which can carry a passenger compartment with the capacity to sustain human life in space and with a lunar landing vehicle, with enough fuel to return back to Earth.”

I am a fan of New Year’s resolutions. It was in the beginning of a new year that I stopped adding sugar to my coffee, finding new flavours in one of my favourite beverages. In another new year I started using the GTD methodology for the organization of my personal life. It was also in the transition from 2007 to 2008 that I started this blog.

These resolutions can be viewed has opportunities to change or introduce new habits that usually correspond to a break in the daily routine. The transition period until the internalization of the new habit can be long and it is often difficult to maintain one’s determination. The New Year is a good opportunity to start this period, given the energy and emotional recharge of the Christmas period and the provision for change associated with the start of something new. In my case, the end of holiday resolutions work equally well.

In one of the blogs that I regularly read, Cal Newport sets three rules for resolutions that stick:

1. The resolution must be to follow a system, not achieve a goal. For example, the resolution should not be to keep the e-mail inbox empty, but to starting using a system to handle the e-mail: never open the mail right in the beginning of each working day, reserve a some time in the morning and in the afternoon to process all messages received and apply to each message one of the 5 verbs of the “Inbox Zero” system (delete/archive, delegate, respond, and do differ).
2. The resolution should include an exception policy. In the previous example, if an e-mail processing session is missed, the following session must be extended. It is also good to have a mechanism to re-boot the system for more serious cases of prevarication (declare “e-mail bankruptcy“, for example).
3. The resolution must respect the rule of three. There are a limited number of things that we change at the same time. We should limit the simultaneous change of habits to a maximum of 3. We should only commit to a new change after the new habit is well internalized. Even if it takes more than one year.

Personally I would add one more rule: The resolution must be written or shared with someone else. Besides helping maintaining the commitment, in the following year we can know whether if the trouble of taking new resolutions is worthwhile.
Link

I have just finished reading the book “One Person / Multiple Careers” by Marci Alboher, a contributor to the New York Times. I bought this book because, as the author, I know a growing number of people who accumulate several different professional carrers. Besides the traditional division work/private life , there are now more complex combinations: teacher / manager / researcher / consultant / etc. This book calls this the “slash” effect where each different career is a “slash”.

This multitude of roles is not new: the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, already had his heteronyms. What is new is its generalization to a growing number of professionals. According to the author, this generalization is due not only with the increasing entrepreneurship spirit, but also to a need for personal fulfilment that goes beyond the limits imposed of the traditional job. The “slash” effect can originate in an attempt for financial autonomy, in a volunteer activity, or in a hobby that turns into something more than that.

This effect differs from a traditional career change since slashes do not abandon their initial vocation, but they extend it. The various “slashes” are developed in parallel and often complement each other as in the case of writer / teacher / speaker / consultant that can go with any other kind of work. The book deals with the various conflicts and difficulties in the management of the multiples slashes (employers, business cards, curricula, time management, etc.). The author interviewed several people who she presents as examples and describes the solutions that they have adopted. This kind of professional life has the advantage of being more adaptable to an ever-changing world in which the labour market can change radically in a few months. If a given “slash” has less demand, the person can develop one of the other slashes.

Not being an extraordinary book, it shows us a possibility for what could a professional life be in the future.

I was recently in Sunderland for a 3 day meeting in the scope of an European project. The city of Sunderland is located in the north-east coast of England and is crossed by the River Wear. During the Second War, it was heavily bombed and it was reconstructed in the architectural grey style of industrial post-war British towns. Since then, the heavy industries have been disappearing and with the consequent increase in the level of unemployment that, despite recent progress, is still significantly higher than the average for the entire United Kingdom.

Although the distance to Lisbon is not very large (about 1900 km or 1200 miles) it is not possible to make it in less than 18 hours, including flights and airports. During this time we had the opportunity to enjoy some of the many troubles that a twenty-first century traveller has to endure. On the way to Sunderland, our flight from London to Newcastle was cancelled which resulted in the loss of my student’s bag. In the return trip, after an aborted landing attempt, we found the Heathrow airport in an absolute chaos, as a result of the malfunction of all information boards, which lasted for the three hours we had to wait for the flight to Lisbon. The airport worked as a small town railway station with the station master announcing the planes and their gates.

The most relevant fact of this trip was, however, the story of my Sunderland colleagues about the Saturday sessions that the University organizes to present research projects results to High School students. With the decline of the student population, these activities are very common in the majority of European Universities. I found in Sunderland some unexpected similarities with Portugal in the difficulty of showing to potential students the benefits of a university degree. The lack of jobs for recent graduates raises the question whether it is worth studying for 3 more years to become unemployed, but, more worrying, is the low self-esteem that they show when they say: “besides, we don’t have enough brains to go to the University … ”

Being involved in a project with the collaboration of researchers in the field of psychology is certainly changing my view of the world.

I spent a memorable week-end in Barcelona to celebrate the birthday of a friend with a group of guests that he invited. The success of the event was obviously due to his genial and crazy idea, but I think that there was also a less obvious contribution of the autobiographical memory’s “reminiscence bump” effect.

Psychology tells us that the temporal distribution of the autobiographical memory (the memory of a person’s history) is not uniform. There is the childhood amnesia effect, that describes the lack of memories from our first years of life, and the recency effect that emphasizes our recollection of the most recent events. There is also the “reminiscence bump” effect, naming the fact that we tend to recall more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood, than from other periods of our lives. This explains our preference for music we use to listen at those ages and that our most pleasant memories are typically associated with this period of life.

It happened that this group of people was characterised by having theirs reminiscence bump coincide not only in time (we were all more or less the same age) but also geographically: almost all of us spent our youth in the same Lisbon neighbourhood and many of us went to the same High-school.

These coincidences and common memories created an atmosphere of complicity that will mark this week-end in my autobiographical memory well beyond the recency effect .

As a child, completing the 4th grade, seemed to mean that we had reached sufficient maturity to use a watch. My case was not an exception and I was offered my first watch after being approved in the written and oral examination to get my clearance, which required a visit to a public school. My first watch, a “Cauny” whose fate I ignore, served me during middle school and in the first years of high school until I became fascinated with the technology of the first digital watches with red LEDs, that required the push of a button to be able to read the time. The battery lasted between six months and one hour, depending on the user’s willingness to show off his new gadget. But I had no idea of the change that had occurred in my life.

Until then my life was controlled by the oscillating movement of a balance wheel driven by the energy stored in a coiled spring. It required continuous care and was inherently imprecise, sensitive to position, movement and temperature. By getting a digital watch time was now measured by counting the number of oscillations of a Quartz crystal resulting from the piezoelectric effect. Since then, my whole life has been governed by the oscillations of Quartz cristals, not only inside my watch, but also in my computer, cell phone, microwave oven and even to the dishwasher. Time, measured with this precision, runs clearly faster. At least, up until this Christmas.

Fed up with this tyranny, I asked for Christmas a time measuring device that could be worn on the wrist and whose movement was not controlled by such a vulgar mineral (the Quartz is, after Feldspar, the most common mineral in the continental crust of the Earth). And it was thus that on December 25th, I received my second clock with a balance wheel, this time automatic and manufactured in Russia. Now I have an excuse for being late on cold days.