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Symbiotic relationships among formal and informal institutions: Comparing five Brazilian cultural ecosystems

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The aim of the article is to analyse the peculiarities of teaching English with podcasts. This aim involves solving the following research tasks: to find out the stages of creating podcasts for teaching and learning English for self-education. Methodology: the aim and tasks of the research have been achieved by using such research methods as analysis of scientific pedagogical and methodological sources in teaching English using podcasts; development of a project on teaching English using podcasts for self-education of the adult generation. Scientific novelty. The article analyses the positive and negative aspects of teaching English as a foreign language using podcasts in formal, non-formal and informal education. The results of the study show that teaching English using podcasts can be implemented in formal, non-formal and informal education. Based on the research, it has been found that non-formal education in teaching English is an institutional, targeted and planned education by individuals or organisations that provide didactic, socio-pedagogical, vocationally oriented, linguistic, cultural, anagogical and distance educational services for learning English at a certain level. It is noted that in order to improve the level of English-language communicative competence for professional and everyday communication in various communication situations, it is desirable to create courses for their employees at enterprises. It is emphasised that for better mastering of the English language learning material, it is necessary to create and use podcasts. Based on the study by S. Y. Nikolaieva, their main features (efficiency, effectiveness, ergonomics and high motivation) are taken into account to increase interest in non-formal education and improve personal abilities and facilitate further learning of students in non-classroom environment. The analysis of the study on the use of podcasts in education shows that podcasts are an important and relatively new teaching tool that teachers can use to avoid standard teaching methods. Practical significance. The study reveals the peculiarities of creating and using podcasts in non-formal education, namely in teaching English language learners in non-classroom environment. Such platforms as Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are creating new opportunities for learning English. Podcasts have their own peculiarities: accessibility, presentability and independence. The article analyses the advantages and disadvantages of audio podcasts. Conclusions and further research perspectives. Creating a podcast is a complicated process that requires planning and implementation of several stages (planning a podcast, selecting educational material, editing and publishing educational material, creating a trailer and designing a podcast cover, producing podcasts). It is noted that podcasts are a kind of digital archive that stores language and speech information for a long time and makes them available to the audience. Value (originality). The value of the study is characterized by the presentation of a new vision of the peculiarities of creating and using podcasts in non-formal education, namely in teaching English language learners in non-classroom environment. Key words: podcasts, non-formal education, self-education, teaching English.
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The several meanings for the term “symbiosis” create confusion, which can be avoided when the author provides details of the interrelationships between the symbiotic organism and the “host” so that a reader can clearly understand what definition is implied in each case. For example, we, as opposed to many other mentioned readers, consider a symbiont as an organism living in an association with another regardless of whether it causes a pathologic response or not, but from our title, the reader may incorrectly infer that we consider a parasite to be different from a symbiont. A symbiont is an organism that uses another organism as a habitat. This chapter discusses the primary associations and associated conflicts involving the terminology. It also provides both differentiation between and conflicting views regarding the interpretation of the terms “infect” and “infest,” “infection” and “disease,” and other terms. Many seemingly harmless symbionts of a wide array of taxonomic groups are triggered to become pathogenic or virulent, and we provide several examples of the provoking (stimulating) triggers, with the understanding that in most cases, the conditions for the triggered activities are much more complex and complicated than presented. Examples of triggers follow: environmental ones like temperature, toxic chemicals (dose), chemotherapeutics, dietary changes, and geographic habits; internal ones like host site, host resistance or susceptibility, and host modifications; and combinations of these and other conditions. We provide examples involving multiple triggers for organisms associated with termites, for an endemic virus being affected by multiple factors and having multiple effects on its commercial penaeid shrimp hosts, and for contrasting variables associated with two exotic viruses in wild and cultured commercial penaeid shrimps with an emphasis on hypothesizing how the pathogenicity developed in these two viruses. The chapter ends by trying to answer the question of why would a symbiont become pathogenic in some hosts and not in others from an evolutionary perspective. It uses two hypotheses to explain the increased virulence.
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We believe that punctuational change dominates the history of life: evolution is concentrated in very rapid events of speciation (geologically instantaneous, even if tolerably continuous in ecological time). Most species, during their geological history, either do not change in any appreciable way, or else they fluctuate mildly in morphology, with no apparent direction. Phyletic gradualism is very rare and too slow, in any case, to produce the major events of evolution. Evolutionary trends are not the product of slow, directional transformation within lineages; they represent the differential success of certain species within a clade—speciation may be random with respect to the direction of a trend (Wright's rule). As an a priori bias, phyletic gradualism has precluded any fair assessment of evolutionary tempos and modes. It could not be refuted by empirical catalogues constructed in its light because it excluded contrary information as the artificial result of an imperfect fossil record. With the model of punctuated equilibria, an unbiased distribution of evolutionary tempos can be established by treating stasis as data and by recording the pattern of change for all species in an assemblage. This distribution of tempos can lead to strong inferences about modes. If, as we predict, the punctuational tempo is prevalent, then speciation—not phyletic evolution—must be the dominant mode of evolution. We argue that virtually none of the examples brought forward to refute our model can stand as support for phyletic gradualism; many are so weak and ambiguous that they only reflect the persistent bias for gradualism still deeply embedded in paleontological thought. Of the few stronger cases, we concentrate on Gingerich's data for Hyopsodus and argue that it provides an excellent example of species selection under our model. We then review the data of several studies that have supported our model since we published it five years ago. The record of human evolution seems to provide a particularly good example: no gradualism has been detected within any hominid taxon, and many are long-ranging; the trend to larger brains arises from differential success of essentially static taxa. The data of molecular genetics support our assumption that large genetic changes often accompany the process of speciation. Phyletic gradualism was an a priori assertion from the start—it was never “seen” in the rocks; it expressed the cultural and political biases of 19th century liberalism. Huxley advised Darwin to eschew it as an “unnecessary difficulty.” We think that it has now become an empirical fallacy. A punctuational view of change may have wide validity at all levels of evolutionary processes. At the very least, it deserves consideration as an alternate way of interpreting the history of life.
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