Introduction

The line “Change is must and change is accelerating” is very important in human life. There are several changes occur in each and every aspects of human civilization from the age of Homo erectus to today informational age. The main component of information age is computer which can stored a lot of information giving birth of a discipline namely Informatics. Informatics is Informatics is the discipline of science which investigates the structure and properties (not specific content) of scientific information, as well as the regularities of scientific information activity, its theory, history, methodology and organization. The science of informatics is applied indifferent field of science giving birth of different discipline namely Bioinformatics, Chemoinformatics, Geoinformatics, Health informatics, Laboratory informatics, Neuroinformatics, Social informatics.

The term “Chemoinformatics” appeared a few years ago and rapidly gained widespread use. Workshops and symposia are organized that are exclusively devoted to chemoinformatics, and many job advertisements can be found in journals. The first mention of chemoinformatics may be attributed to Frank Brown.

The use of information technology and management has become a critical part of the drug discovery process as well as to solve the chemical problems. So, chemoinformatics is the mixing of those information resources to transform data into information and information into knowledge for the intended purpose of making better decisions faster in the area of drug lead identification and organization.

Whereas we see here chemoinformatics focused on drug design. Greg Paris came up with a much broader definition Chemoinformatics is a generic term that encompasses the design, creation, organization, management, retrieval, analysis, dissemination, visualization, and use of chemical information. Clearly, the transformation of data into information and of information into knowledge is an endeavor needed in any branch of chemistry not only in drug design. The view that chemoinformatics methods are needed in all areas of chemistry and adhere to a much broader definition:

chemoinformatics is the application of informatics methods to solve chemical problems.

Why do we have to use informatics methods in chemistry?

First of all, chemistry has produced an enormous amount of data and this data avalanche is rapidly increasing. More than 45 million chemical compounds are known and this number is increasing by several millions each year. Novel techniques such as combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening generate huge amounts of data. All this data and information can only be managed and made accessible by storing them in proper databases. That is only possible through chemoinformatics.

On the other hand, for many problems the necessary information is not available. We know the 3D structure, determined by X ray crystallography for about 300,000 organic compounds. Or, as another point, the largest database of infrared spectra contains about 200,000 spectra. Although these numbers may seem large, they are small in comparison to the number of known compounds: We know from less than 1% of all compounds their 3D structure or have their infrared spectra. The question is then; can we gain enough knowledge from the known data to make predictions for those cases where the required information is not available?

There is another reason why we need informatics methods in chemistry: Many problems in chemistry are too complex to be solved by methods based on first principles through theoretical calculations. This is true, for the relationships between the structure of a compound and its biological activity, or for the influence of reaction conditions on chemical reactivity.

All these problems in chemistry require novel approaches for managing large amounts of chemical structures and data, for knowledge extraction from data, and for modeling complex relationships. This is where chemoinformatics methods can come in.

The representation of the chemoinformatics in graphical form is given below.

Source: authors

Extracting knowledge from chemical information -lots of data (structure, activities, genes, etc) i.e. called as inductive learning. When we extract data from knowledge, it is called as deductive learning.

Is it Cheminformatics or Chemoinformatics?

The name of our favourite field maybe cheminformatics or chemoinformatics chemiinformatics, molecular informatics, chemical informatics, or even chemobioinformatics. All these options have some advantages. By using short cheminformatics you are saving the keyboard of your computer, chemoinformatics sounds nice in sentences like “… our software solution seamlessly integrates chemoinformatics and bioinformatics …”, and the title “Head of chemobioinformatics” on a business card cannot miss the point. Molecular informatics or chemical informatics is less known, but this also means that you are one of the pioneers on the forefront of a new scientific field. But the name of chemoinformatics and cheminformatics are synonymous in use. In the following table frequencies of words cheminformatics and chemoinformatics in web pages are listed, as determined by a popular search engine Google. The ratio characterizes popularity of term cheminformatics over chemoinformatics.

Year Cheminformatics Chemoinformatics Ratio

2000 39 684 0.05

2001 8,010 2,910 2.75

2002 34,000 16,000 2.12

2203 58,143 32,872 1.77

2204 85,435 60,439 1.41

2005 6,58,298 2,72,096 2.41

2006 3,17,000+ 1,63,000+ 1.94

Source: Leach AR. et.al. (2003)

History of Chemoinformatics

The first, and still the core, journal for the subject, the Journal of Chemical Documentation, started in 1961 (the name Changed to the Journal of Chemical Information and computer Science in 1975). Then the first book appeared in 1971 (Lynch, Harrison, Town and Ash, Computer Handling of Chemical Structure Information). The first international conference on the subject was held in 1973 at Noordwijkerhout and every three years since 1987. The term Chemoinformatics was given by Brown in 1998.

With all the problems at hand in chemistry, complex relationships, profusion of data, lack of necessary data, quite early on the need was felt in many areas of chemistry to have resort to informatics methods. These various roots of chemoinformatics often go back more than 40 years into the 1960s.

1. Chemical Structure Representation

In the early sixties, various forms of machine readable chemical structure representations were explored as a basis for building databases of chemical structures and reactions. Eventually, connection tables that represent molecules by lists of the atoms and of the bonds in a molecule gained universal acceptance. Connection tables were also used for the Chemical Abstracts Registry System which appeared in the second half of the sixties.

A connection table stores the same information that is present in a 2D structure diagram, namely the atoms that are present in a molecule and what bonds exist between the atoms. However, it is stored in a table form which is much easier for a computer to work with. Before a connection table is produced, the atoms in the molecule must be numbered, and an atom lookup table produced. This simply stores atom information (usually just the atom type) cross referenced with the atom number. Here is a numbering and atom lookup table for acetaminophen:

Num Atom

Type

1 C

2 C

3 C

4 N

5 C

6 O

7 C

8 C

9 C

10 C

11 O

Source: authors

The atom lookup table describes the atoms present in a molecule, but says nothing about how they are connected.

The connection table describes how atoms are connected by bonds, and has a row and a column for each atom, the row and column number representing the number given to the atom.

Source: authors

For example, if a bond exists between atom 5 and atom 8, then a “1” is placed at the intersection of row 5 and column 8 (and also row 8 and column 5), otherwise a 0 is placed at the intersection. Further, we may use a 2 to represent a double bond, 3 to represent a triple bond, and so on. Here is the connection table for Acetaminophen, along with the diagram showing which numbers correspond to which atoms.

For clarity, the non-zero entries are showing in bold. Note how the table is symmetrical about the diagonal from top left to bottom right. This will always be the case since, for example, if atom 3 is bonded to atom 2, then atom 2 is also by definition bonded to atom 3. Since this connection table effectively stores each piece of information twice, it is called a redundant connection table. Normally, we just store one half of the table in a non-redundant connection table as shown below:

Source: authors

2. Structure Searching

This involves searching a database for an exact match with a specified query structure. For example, if the following is the query.

Then only an exact match to this structure would be returned by a search. The techniques used to perform the search won’t be covered here, but basically they involve treating the 2D connection table as a mathematical graph, where the nodes represent atoms and the edges represent bonds, and then a test for exact match can be done using a graph isomorphism algorithm (a standard computer science technique).

A connection table is essentially a representation of the molecular graph (A graph is a mathematical conceptualization of anything that consists of connected points).Therefore, for storing a unique representation of a molecule and for allowing its retrieval, the graph isomorphism problem had to be solved to define from a set of potential representations of a molecule a single one as the unique one.

The first solution was the Morgan algorithm for numbering the atoms of a molecule in a unique and unambiguous manner. By Morgan algorithm atoms of the same elemental type can be topologically equivalent or not is judged. Let us label the carbons C, CH and CH1H2, and the hydrogens H, H1 and H2. Obviously, only atoms of the same elemental type can be topologically equivalent. Thus, it is immediately clear that the carbon atoms can be separated from the hydrogen atoms.

The algorithm proceeds by analyzing the extended connectivity in the following way. A score is assigned to each atom. Initially, the scores are computed by counting the number of bonds formed by each atom: i.e. C = 1, CH = 3 and CH1H2 = 3. This tells us that C is unique; hence, amongst the carbons, only CH and CH1H2 can possibly be topologically equivalent. All the hydrogens have a score (i.e. sum connectivity) of 1. In the second iteration, the new score of each atom is calculated by summing the first-iteration scores of all the atoms to which it is bonded. CH gets a score of 1 (C) + 1 (H) + 3 (CH1H2) = 5. CH1H2 gets a score of 3 (CH) + 1 (H1) + 1 (H2) = 5. H gets a score of 3. H1 and H2 also get scores of 3. Scores based on summing the atomic numbers of bound atoms are also computed: CH gets a score of 13, CH1H2 gets a score of 8 and the protons all score 6. This means that CH is distinct from CH1H2. In the third cycle of iteration, the scores based on numbers of bonds become 5 for all the protons, but the scores based on atomic numbers become 13 for H, and 8 for H1 and H2. Thus, H is distinct from H1 and H2.The termination criterion for the iterative process is when no further atoms can be assigned as unique by an iteration. At this point, we know which atoms are grouped together: those that had the same score at each iteration are topologically equivalent. In this example, the fourth pass shows that H1 and H2 are equivalent. This provided the basis for full structure searching. Then, methods were developed for substructure searching, for similarity searching, and for 3D structure searching.

Substructure searching

A substructure search involves finding all the structures in a database that contain one or more particular structural fragments. For example, we might want to find all of the structures in a database which contain the nitro group:

Substructure searching requires some method of specifying a query (i.e., we want to find this and that, but not this, etc). One popular example is SMARTS, an extension to SMILES. Mathematically, substructure searching is performed, as with structure searching, using a graph representation, but this time a subgraph isomorphism algorithm finds occurrences of subgraphs (i.e. substructures) in a structure.

Similarity searching

Similarity searching involves looking for all the structures in a database that are highly similar to a given structure. The most common use is to find compounds that could exhibit similar properties (based on the similar property principle that compounds with similar structures are likely to exhibit similar biological behaviors). Note that “similarity” is a subjective thing. As an example, a similarity search might involve looking for structures with a similarity greater than 0.7 to this molecule

Obviously some method is required for measuring similarity. This is usually done using fingerprint representations and similarity coefficients as described below, which are used in various applications that involve measurement of similarity, for example cluster analysis.

Fingerprint representations

A fingerprint characterizes the 2D structure of a molecule, usually through a string of ‘1’s and ‘0’s. There are two basic types of fingerprint: structural keys and hashed fingerprints.

Structural Keys -Structural keys contain a string of bits (‘1’s and ‘0’s) where each bit is set to 1 or 0 depending on the presence or absence of a particular fragment. They usually employ a pre-defined dictionary of fragments.

Hashed fingerprints- In hashed fingerprints, there is no set dictionary or 1:1 relationship between bits and features. All possible fragments in a compound are generated. The number of fragments represented can be huge. Thus rather than assigning one bit position for each fragment, the bits are “hashed” down onto a fixed number of bits. Thus hashed fingerprints are a less precise form, but they carry more information.

Once fingerprint representations are available, similarity coefficients can be used to give a measure of similarity between two fingerprints.

3. Quantitative Structure Activity / Property Relationship (QSAR/QSPR)

Building on work by Hammett and Taft in the fifties, Hansch and Fujita showed in 1964 that the influence of substituents on biological activity data can be quantified.

In the last 40 years, an enormous amount of work on relating descriptors derived from molecular structures with a variety of physical, chemical, or biological data has appeared. These studies have established Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR) and Quantitative Structure-Property Relationships (QSPR) as fields of their own, with their own journals, societies, and conferences.

Percent Spikelet Sterility (% Ss) of N-acylanilines Tested in Winter 2001-02 at 1500 ppm Spray Concentrations on PBW 343

Source: Gasteiger J. et.al. (2006)

Modern QSAR involves applying artificial intelligence and Statistical techniques to 2D or 3D molecular representations.

SAR Application

Source: R. K. Lindsay et. al. (1980).

At the time of drug design, we have to look after these following points-

• Single therapeutic target

• Drug like chemical

• Some toxicity anticipated

• Multiple unknown targets

• Diverse Structures

• Human and ecosystems

4. Chemometrics

Initially, the quantitative analysis of chemical data relied exclusively on multilinear regression analysis. However, it was soon recognized in the late sixties that the diversity and complexity of chemical data need a wide range of different and more powerful data analysis methods. Pattern recognition methods were introduced in the seventies to analyze chemical data. In the nineties, artificial neural networks gained prominence for analyzing chemical data. The growing of this area led to the establishment of chemometrics as a discipline of its own with its own society, journals, and scientific meetings.

Source: R. K. Lindsay et. al. (1980).

An artificial neural network (ANN) or commonly just neural network (NN) is an interconnected group of artificial neurons that uses a mathematical model or computational model for information processing based on a connectionist approach to computation.

5. Molecular Modeling

In the late sixties, R. Langridge and coworkers developed methods for visualizing 3D molecular models on the screens of Cathode Ray Tubes. At the same time, G. Marshall started visualizing protein structure on graphic screens. The progress in hardware and software technology, particularly as concerns graphics screens and graphics cards, has led to highly sophisticated systems for the visualization of complex molecular structures in great detail. Programs for 3D structure generation, for protein modeling, and for molecular dynamics calculations have made molecular modeling a widely used technique. The commonly available softwares for molecular modeling are ArgusLab, Chimera, and Ghemical.

6. Computer-Assisted Structure Elucidation (CASE)

The elucidation of the structure of a chemical compound, be it a reaction product or a compound isolated as a natural product, is one of the fundamental tasks of a chemist. Structure elucidation has to consider a wide variety of different types of information mostly from various spectroscopic methods, and has to consider many structure alternatives. Thus, it is an ambitious and demanding task. It is therefore not surprising that chemists and computer scientists had taken up the challenge and had started in the 1960?fs to develop systems for computer-assisted structure elucidation (CASE) as a field of exercise for artificial intelligence techniques. The DENDRAL project, initiated in 1964 at Stanford University gained widespread interest.

Other approaches to computer-assisted structure elucidation were initiated in the late sixties by Sasaki at Toyohashi University of Technology and by Munk at the University of Arizona.

7. Computer-Assisted Synthesis Design (CASD)

The design of a synthesis for an organic compound needs a lot of knowledge about chemical reactions and on chemical reactivity. Many decisions have to be made between various alternatives as to how to assemble the building blocks of a molecule and which reactions to choose. Therefore, computer-assisted synthesis design (CASD) was seen as a highly interesting challenge and as a field for applying artificial intelligence techniques. In 1969 Corey and Wipke presented their seminal work on the first steps in the development of a synthesis design system. Nearly simultaneously several other groups such as Ugi and coworkers, Hendrickson and Gelernter reported on their work on CASD systems. Later also at Toyohashi work on a CASD system was initiated.

Basics of Chemoinformatics

The various fields outlined in the previous section have grown from humble beginnings 40 years ago to areas of intensive activities. On top of that it has been realized that these areas share a large number of common problems, rely on highly related data, and work with similar methods. Thus, these different areas have merged to a discipline of its own: Chemoinformatics.

Figure 1. The various areas of activities in chemoinformatics

Source: Lipinski, C.A et.al., (1997)

The extent of this field has recently been documented by a “Handbook of Chemoinformatics”, covering 73 contributions by 65 scientists on 1850 pages in four volumes. The following gives an overview of chemoinformatics, emphasizing the problems and solutions – common to the various more specialized subfields.

1. Representation of Chemical Compounds

A whole range of methods for the computer representation of chemical compounds and structures has been developed: linear codes, connection tables, matrices. Special methods had to be devised to uniquely represent a chemical structure, to perceive features such as rings and aromaticity, and to treat stereochemistry, 3D structures, or molecular surfaces. Earlier the chemical 2D structure representations are done by software namely Chemdraw, ISIS etc. But now, chemical structures are represented by molecular graph. A graph is an abstract structure that contains nodes connected by edges. Here nodes are represented by atoms and edges by bonds. A graph represents only topology of a molecules i.e. the ways the nodes i.e. atoms are connected.

Aspirin

Source: J. Zupan et.al.,(1999).

The aspirin structure can be represented by Graph theory, where Oxygen atom is represented by filled bullet and carbon atom is represented by vacant bullet and hydrogen atom is not represented here. So, the aspirin structure will be-

For similarities searching we can use the graph isomorphism or by any algorithm.

Linear notations

Structure linear notations convert chemical structure connection tables to a string, a sequence of letters, using a set of rules. The earliest structure linear notation was the Wiswesser Line Notation (WLN). ISI® adopted WLN to be used in some of their products in 1968 and, it is still use today. It was also adopted in the mid 1960s for internal use by many pharmaceutical companies. At that time (mid 60s to 80s), it was considered the best tool to represent, retrieve and print chemical structures. In WLN, letters represents structural fragments and a complete structure is represented as a string. This system efficiently compressed structural data and, was very useful to storing and searching chemical structures in low performance computer systems. However, the WLN is difficult for non- experts to understand. Later, David Weininger suggested a new linear notation designated as SMILESTM. Since SMILESTM is very close to the “natural language” used by organic chemists, SMILESTM is widely accepted and used in many chemical database systems. To successfully represent a structure, a linear notation should be canonicalized. That is, one structure should not correspond to more than one linear notation string, and conversely, one linear notation string should only be interpreted as one structure.

Attempt to condense all of the connectivity information into a single text string. The two most popular formats are SMILES (from Daylight) and SLN (Tripos format inspired by SMILES).

SMILES (Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry Specification)

Acetaminophen

In SMILES, atoms are generally represented by their chemical symbol, with upper-case representing an aliphatic atom (C = aliphatic carbon, N = aliphatic nitrogen, etc) and lower-case representing an aromatic atom (c = aromatic carbon, etc). Hydrogens are not normally represented explicitly. Consecutive characters represent atoms bonded together with a single bond. Therefore, the SMILES for propane would simply be: CCC or 1-propanol would be: CCCO. Double bonds are represented by an “=” sign, e.g. propene would be: C=CC. Parentheses are used to represent branching in the molecule, e.g. the SMILES for Isopropyl alcohol (2-propanol) is: CC(O)C. Atoms other than the major organic ones (C, S, N, O, P, Cl, Br, I, B) or ions must be enclosed in square brackets. Ring enclosures are represented by using numbers to signify attachment points, usually starting at 1. The first occurrence of the number defines the attachment point, and subsequent occurrences indicate that the structure joins back to the attachment point at that position. For example, the SMILES for Benzene is as follows (note the small ‘c’ for aromatic carbon): c1ccccc1. We can also use branching from the ring system, e.g.

c1cc(Br)ccc1 represents bromobenzene. Note that in many cases there can be several SMILES to represent the same structure – for example, we could alternatively represent bromobenzene as: c1cccc(Br)c1. So here is a SMILES representation for acetaminophen, the structure at the top of this document: c1c(O)ccc(NC(=O)C)c1. The great advantage of these methods is brevity – for example an entire SMILES string can be stored in a single spreadsheet cell. However, it is hard to add additional information (coordinates, properties, etc) in these formats in an elegant way.

Canonicalization

If a structure corresponds to a unique WLN or a unique SMILESTM string, then the structure search results in a string match. WLN could meet this requirement in most cases. The SMILESTM approach can do this after canonical processing. Therefore, both WLN and canonical SMILESTM are able to solve structure search problems by string matches. A molecular graph (2D structure) can also be canonicalized into a real number through a mathematical algorithm. The real number is identified as a molecular topologic index. However, two different structures can have the same topologic index. Therefore, topologic indices can only be used as screens for accelerating structure database searching. Actually, the concept of molecular index was originally proposed for QSAR and QSPR studies. Wiener reported the first molecular topological index in 1947 [25]. If a molecule and its specific topologic index had a one-to-one relationship, then structure search could be done by number comparison [25]. However, substructure search still had to use an atom-by-atom matching algorithm, which, as mentioned earlier, could be very time-consuming. In order to further enhance chemical database search performance, efforts have been on the way to seek better structural screening technologies.

Sources of 3d informations and the Representation of molecules in 3D Form.

3D information can be obtained through X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy or by computational means. The basic forms of 3D representation are the coordinate table and the distance matrix.

A coordinate table is simply an extension of the atom lookup table that also contains coordinates for each atom. These coordinates are relative to a consistent origin. Here is a sample coordinate table for Aspirin, along with a 3D structure with the atoms numbered:

Source: Gasteiger, J., (2003)

Distance matrices are similar to connection tables, except that instead of storing connectivity information, they store relative distances (in Angstroms) between all atoms.

Here is a sample distance matrix for the Aspirin molecule above. Many pattern recognition techniques require distance or similarity measurements to quantitatively measure the distance or similarity of two objects (in our case, the objects are small molecules). Euclidean distance, Mahalanobis distance and correlation coefficients are commonly used for distance measurement,

where n is the number of descriptors, D represents the absolute distance between A and B, R represents the angle of vectors A and B in multidimensional space and, is interpreted as the quantity of the linear correlation of A and B. The value range of R is between –1 to +1 that is, from 100% dissimilar to 100% similar. The Euclidian distance assumes that variables are uncorrelated. When variables are correlated, the simple Euclidean distance is not an appropriate measure, however, the Mahalanobis distance (2) will adequately account such correlations. The Tanimoto coefficient is commonly employed for similarity measurements of bit-strings of structural fingerprints (Boolean logic). The simplified form is

where ? is the count of substructures in structure A, ? the count of substructures in structure B, and ? is the count of substructures in both A and B. Many different similarity calculations have been reported. Holliday, Hu and Willett have published a comparison of 22 similarity coefficients for the calculation of inter-molecular similarity and dissimilarity, using 2D fragment bit-strings [51].

Source: Gasteiger, J., (2003)

Distance matrices are useful when comparing molecules with each other, whereas coordinate tables tend to be used for structure visualization.

2. Representation of Chemical Reactions

Chemical reactions are represented by the starting materials and products as well as by the reaction conditions. On top of that, one also has to indicate the reaction site, the bonds broken and made in a chemical reaction. Furthermore, the stereochemistry of reactions has to be handled. Searching databases of reactions is a little different to straight searching, although the kinds of search are the same (structure, substructure, similarity). However, searching may be done on reactants, products, or both, and searches may be performed for entire reactions (as opposed to single structures). Representation of reactions is by the usual means (connection tables, atom lookup tables), but with additional information about which molecules are products and reagents, and which reagent atoms map to which product atoms. A derivative of SMILES, called Reaction SMILES is available for representing reactions, along with a way for defining reaction queries called SMIRKS.

3. Data in Chemistry

Much of our chemical knowledge has been derived from data. Chemistry offers a rich range of data on physical, chemical, and biological properties: binary data for classification, real data for modeling, and spectral data having a high information density. These data have to be brought into a form amenable to easy exchange of information and to data analysis

4. Datasources and Databases

The enormous amount of data in chemistry has led quite early on to the development of databases to store and disseminate these data in electronic form. Databases have been developed for chemical literature, for chemical compounds, for 3D structures, for reactions, for spectra, etc. The internet is increasingly used to distribute data and information in chemistry. The databases of virtual molecules are available now i.e. the molecules which are not present in the nature, but by just virtually we can prepare databases with the help of databases of other molecules. The commonly available softwares for databases are Amicbase, Asinex Gold, Cheminformatics.org, FDA MRTD, NCI, Otava Dataset, PubChem, and ZINC.

5. Structure Search Methods

In order to retrieve data and information from databases, access has to be provided to chemical structure information. Methods have been developed for full structure, for substructure, and for similarity searching. Those are discussed in above.

6. Methods for Calculating Physical and Chemical Data

A variety of physical and chemical data of compounds can directly be calculated by a range of methods. Foremost are quantum mechanical calculations of various degrees of sophistication. However, simple methods such as additive schemes can also be used to estimate a variety of data with reasonable accuracy.

7. Calculation of Structure Descriptors

In most cases, however, physical, chemical, or biological properties cannot be directly calculated from the structure of a compound. In this situation, an indirect approach has to be taken by, first, representing the structure of the compound by structure descriptors, and, then, to establish a relationship between the structure descriptors and the property by analyzing a series of pairs of structure descriptors and associated properties by inductive learning methods. A variety of structure descriptors has been developed encoding 1D, 2D, or 3D structure information or molecular surface properties. The manipulation and analysis of chemical structure information is made through the molecular structure descriptors. These are the numerical values which characterizes propertities of molecules. They may represents the physiochemical properties of a molecule or may b the values derived from the algorithm technique to the chemical structures. For example, the molecular weight does not represent the whole properties of a molecule but it is very quick. In case of quantum molecular based structure descriptors, it tells about the properties of a molecule but it is time consuming.

The commonly used molecular descriptors are logP and molar refractivity. Hydrophobicity is most commonly modeled using the logarithm values of partition coefficient i.e. logP.

8. Data Analysis Methods

A variety of methods for learning from data, of inductive learning methods is being used in chemistry: statistics, pattern recognition methods, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms. These methods can be classified into unsupervised and supervised learning methods and are used for classification or quantitative modeling. The softwares are using in data analysis & statistics are ChemTK Lite, PowerMV, & GCluto.

Chemistry Based Data Mining and Exploration

For synthesis a molecule, first we have to search data with the help databases available for that molecule, then we have to search the database available for structure analogue. Now the Structure activity relationships are studied and different biological or mechanistic analogue are synthesized. The scheme is given in below……

Applications of Chemoinformatics

a.Fields of Chemistry

The range of applications of chemoinformatics is rich indeed; any field of chemistry can profit from its methods. The following lists different areas of chemistry and indicates some typical applications of chemoinformatics. It has to be emphasized that this list of applications is by far not complete!

1. Chemical Information

o storage and retrieval of chemical structures and associated data to manage the flood of data by the softwares are available for drawing and databases.

o dissemination of data on the internet

o cross-linking of data to information

2. All fields of chemistry

o prediction of the physical, chemical, or biological properties of compounds

3. Analytical Chemistry

o analysis of data from analytical chemistry to make predictions on the quality, origin, and age of the investigated objects

o elucidation of the structure of a compound based on spectroscopic data

4. Organic Chemistry

o prediction of the course and products of organic reactions

o design of organic syntheses

5. Drug Design as well as for bioactive molecules.

o identification of new lead structures

o optimization of lead structures

o establishment of quantitative structure-activity relationships

o comparison of chemical libraries

o definition and analysis of structural diversity

o planning of chemical libraries

o analysis of high-throughput data

o docking of a ligand into a receptor

Finally, small molecules can be used for docking and drug screening/discovery. Small molecules, as well as their synthetic derivatives, can be docked to a protein target and computationally filtered (e.g. by solubility) to produce a ranked list of candidates that can then be tested in the laboratory. Known ligands can also be used in similarity searches, or as scaffold for further molecular engineering. We will present several recent drug discovery efforts that leverage ChemDB and the computational tools described above. In particular, the discovery of several compounds has done that can bind to the Carboxyltransferase domain of Acyl-CoA Carboxylase, AccD5 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis:, a new TB therapeutic target.

o prediction of the metabolism of xenobiotics

o analysis of biochemical pathways

o Modeling of ADME-Tox properties.

Historically, drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADMET) studies in animal models were performed after a lead compound was identified. Now, pharmaceutical companies are employing higher-throughput, in vitro assays to evaluate the ADMET characteristics of potential leads at earlier stages of development. This is done in order to eliminate candidates as early as possible, thus avoiding costs, which would have been expended on chemical synthesis and biological testing. Scientists are developing computational methods to select only compounds with reasonable ADMET properties for screening. Molecules from these computationally screened virtual libraries can then be synthesized for high-throughput biological activity screening. As the predictive ability of ADME/Tox software improves, and as pharmaceutical companies incorporate computational prediction methods into their R&D programs, the drug discovery process will move from a screening based to a knowledge-based paradigm. Under multi-parametric optimization drug discovery strategies, there is no excuse for failing to know the relative solubility and permeability rankings of collections of chemical compounds for lead identification.

a. Absorption. Passive intestinal absorption (PIA) models have been studied by many groups, for years. The fluid mosaic model holds that the structure of a cell membrane is an interrupted phospholipid bilayer capable of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic interactions. Trans cellular passage through the membrane lipid/aqueous environment is the predominant pathway for passive absorption of lipophilic compounds, while low-molecular-weight (300) of molecular descriptors (constitutional, topological, geometrical, electrostatic, quantum-chemical and thermodynamic) calculated using quantum-chemical semi empirical methodology.

Chemo bioinformatics

Biochemoinformatics (or chemobioinformatics) is a new term to describe the research efforts on meeting the emerging needs for the integration of bioinformatics and chemoinformatics. Historically, bioinformatics and chemoinformatics have largely evolved independently from biology and chemistry. Generally speaking, bioinformatics deals with biological information, which although traditionally refers to sequences information on large biological molecules such as DNA, RNA and proteins, also refers to the more recent emergence of micro array data on gene and protein expression.

Chemoinformatics on the other hand mainly deals with chemical information of drug-like small molecules, the molecular weight of these being several hundred Daltons. The elemental data record in bioinformatics is centered on genes and their products (RNA, protein, and so on), whereas the fundamental data type in chemoinformatics is centered on small molecules.

Source: Drews,J.,(2000)

Key challenges

The key challenge for computational methods then is not traveling through chemical space per se, but rather to be able to focus traveling expeditions in a vast chemical space towards interesting regions, and to be able to recognize interesting stars and galaxies when they are encountered. The notion of what is interesting may vary of course with the task (e.g. drug discovery, reaction discovery, polymer discovery). But at the most fundamental level what is needed are tools to predict the physical, chemical, and biological properties of small molecules and reactions in order to focus searches and filter search results. Computational methods in chemistry can be organized along a spectrum ranging from Schrodinger equation, to molecular dynamics, to statistical machine learning methods. Quantum mechanical methods, or even molecular dynamics methods, are computationally intensive and do not scale well to large datasets. These methods are best applied to specific questions on focused small datasets. Statistical and machine learning methods are more likely to yield successful approaches for rapidly sifting through large datasets of chemical information. Because in the absence of large public database and datasets, chemoinformatics is in a state reminiscent of bioinformatics two or three decades ago, it may be productive to adapt the lessons learnt from bioinformatics to chemoinformatics, while maintaining also a perspective on the fundamental differences between these two relatively young interdisciplinary sciences. If this analogy is correct, two key ingredients were essential for unlocking the large-scale development of bioinformatics and the application of modern statistical machine learning methods to biological data, data and similarity measures. In bioinformatics, such as Genbank, Swissprot, and the PDB while alignment algorithms have provided robust similarity measures with their fast BLAST implementation becoming the workhorse of the field. Mutatis mutandis, the same is likely to be true in chemoinformatics.

This new drug discovery strategy, challenges cheminformatics in the following aspects: (1) cheminformatics should be able to extract knowledge from large-scale raw HTS databases in a shorter time periods, (2) cheminformatics should be able to provide efficient in silico tools to predict ADMET properties,

Conclusions

Chemoinformatics has developed over the last 40 years to a mature discipline that has applications in any area of chemistry. Chemoinformatics is the science of determining those important aspects of molecular structures related to desirable properties for some given function. One can contrast the atomic level concerns of drug design where interaction with another molecule is of primary importance with the set of physical attributes related to ADME, for example. In the latter case, interaction with a variety of macromolecules provides a set of molecular filters that can average out specific geometrical details and allows significant models developed by consideration of molecular properties alone. The field has gained so much in importance that the major topics of chemoinformatics have to be integrated into chemistry curricula, a few universities have to offer full chemoinformatics curricula to satisfy the urgent need for chemoinformation specialists. There are still many problems that await a solution and therefore we still will see many new developments in chemoinformatics.

References

Bhat K; Bock C., Howard NJ.(2002) COS and HTS design of high-performance, non-toxic chemicals for textiles, NTC Project: C00-PH01 (formerly C00-P01)

Brown F.K. (1998), Chemoinformatics: What is it and how does it Impact? Drug Discovery Ann. Reports Med. Chem., 33:375-384.

Clark, D. E. and Pickett, S. D., “Computational methods for the prediction of ‘drug likeness’”, Drug Discov. Today, 2000, 5, 49-58.

Drews J, Drug discovery: a historical perspective, Science, 287 5463: pp1,960-1,964, 2000

Gasteiger J. and Funatsu K. (2006) Chemoinformatics – An Important Scientific Discipline, J. Comput. Chem. Jpn, 5(2): 53–58

Gasteiger, Editor, Handbook of Chemoinformatics – From Data to Knowledge, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim (2003).

Gasteiger, J. T. Engel, Editors Chemoinformatics – A Textbook, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim (2003).

J. Zupan, J. Gasteiger, Neural Networks in Chemistry and Drug Design, 2nd Edition, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim (1999).

Leach AR., Gillet VJ.(2003) An Introduction to Chemoinformatics, Springer:1-57

Lipinski, C.A.; Lombardo, F.; Dominy, B.W.; Feeney, P.J. “Experimental and computational approaches to estimate solubility and permeability in drug discovery and development settings”, Adv. Drug Deliv. Rev., 1997, 23, 3-25.

Oprea, T. I., Davis, A. M., Teague, S. J., and Leeson, P. D. “Is There a Difference between Leads and Drugs? A Historical Perspective”, J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci., 2001, 41, 1308 -1315.

R. K. Lindsay, B. G. Buchanan, E. A. Feigenbaum, J. Lederberg, Applications of Artificial Intelligence for Organic Chemistry; the Dendral Project, McGraw-Hill, New York (1980).

Wild J D, Getting Started in Chemoinformatics, Version 1.0, September 2004

Woo. (1996) Environ. Carc. & Ecotox. Rev., C14:1-42

Xu J. and Hagler A. (2002) Chemoinformatics and Drug Discovery, Molecules, 7: 566-600

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

                   The unending effort to make their lives comfortable and their unquenchable thirst to probe into truth made the people to put forth strenuous trials to bring such an explosion in knowledge in various aspects.  As a result, today man has secured power to create energy, to cultivate land, to conserve water, to control diseases and to tap every source and make its effective use.  This is possible because of requisite interest on knowledge, which can be imparted though education.

          Though education was considered as paediocentric, it is a bigger process in which the personality of one person influences on others with a view to modify his behavior in order to bring about his all-round development in thought, feeling and action.  A continuous inter-play or exchange of ideas between the Teacher and the taught, central this, interaction process is the teacher.  While education is essence, the teacher still occupies a prior in essence, the teacher still occupies a priori central role in the learning of a child.

          It is evident that the effective and efficient functioning of any institute primarily depends on the quality and commitment of its human resources.  The right attitude towards the profession, involvement in teaching, concern over the profession, aptitude towards teaching zeal and enthusiasm in his profession, mental health of the teacher are essential requisite conditions to prevail in a teacher who could definitely bring success in his school programme.

          Many schemes were launched to attain total literacy before the dawn of the millennium.  Vast gulf prevails between the existing rate of literacy of our country and the rate of total literacy. It will be a mirage even after a period of ten years to attain this wish and it may not be cherished.  Education is an apprenticeship of human life and a vital need to result at natural, harmonious and progressive development of child’s latent powers and innate talents.  Thus the basic aim of education is the overall growth of an individual which in its turn enhances the growth of the society.  Hence, the classrooms have assumed a predominant position in achieving the aims and objectives of education.  In this connection this is right time to explore the need to consider the relationship between Creativity and Behaviour Problems among the Teacher community.

          Teaching is research out the pupils to make them enrich.  But do the existing teachers is competent teach all the category pupils in the class i.e., dullards, average and gifted individuals.  Teachers’ responsibility does not seize when he has satisfied the average individual in the class, though they are more in numbers.  To quench the thirst of the gifted individual the teacher should keep himself abreast with new techniques and novel strategy which is not an easy job and it is a hard task to successfully achieve.  Still baffling problem for every ideal teacher is to go down to the level of the dullard and the cater the needs of hard-to-reach individual in the class without neglecting them and enabling them to be a drop out from the class and deviant from school, which thrusters the ulterior motive of ‘national literacy mission’.  To successfully shoulder all these responsibilities the Teacher should be creative and competent.  Modern teacher is expected to shoulder the multi-dimensions responsibility to initiate desired learning and outcomes.  To suit the needs of people in this rapid scientific and technological era, the teaching learning transaction should be sensitive and sophisticated. Keeping all these trivial issues in mind the investigator decided to make a probe into the relationship between Creativity and Professional Competency.  The conceptual foundations are presented in the following pages.

CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS

          Educational is a natural harmonious development of child’s talent powers and innate talents.  Teacher’s role is pivotal in providing education and making the nation literature.  To make the nation totally literate and to attain ‘educational for all’, to improve educational standards and to increase the level of achievement teacher should not be not only a committed and devoted but also competent and creative.

Creativity:

          Creativity is defined as the ability to bring something new into existence, creativity is distinguished by novelty, originality and is unusually inventive.  Creativity was believed to be a heaven’s gift, a rare quality of distinguished individuals with inborn talent.  In the present study an individual who is flexible in thought and action, which can produce novel ideas, express his ideas fluently and long with certain personality traits is said to be creative.

          The need for more and better creative thinking and production were felt before mid century, but it was not until after that point in time that scientific research and technological development really got off grant.  Education is not at all an exception to the above fact.  It comprises of a positive science of learning and creative art of teaching.  But in most of the formal teaching is neglected.  As pointed out by Guilford (1985) ‘Teachers always want a correct answer but not clever answer’.

          In the past three decades there has been an enormous amount of research which could answer the queries – what is creativity?  What are its dimensions? How to measure and predict them?  What are the ways to foster creativity and what are the characteristics of creative persons?  What are the various creative dimensions find in various professional like poets, artists, musicians, architects etc.  Many efforts are being made by number of researches to identify and to classify the various dimensions of creativity.

Creativity Definitions:

          Generally psychologists have tried to define creativity in terms of (a) Mental ability consisting of many component abilities; (b) A capacity to do a thing or produce something of a particular nature and (c) A subjective experience or process having special characteristics.

          According to Torrence (1962) ‘Creativity thinking’ is the process of sensing gaps distributing, missing elements, forming ideas or hypotheses concerning them and testing.  These hypotheses subsequently redefined by Torrence (1966) that Creativity as….’ A process of becoming sensitive to problem, deficiencies, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmonious and so on; identifying the difficulty, searching for solutions, making guesses or formulating hypotheses and possibly modifying and retesting them and finally communicating the results.

          Wallach and Kogan (1965) viewed creativity as individual’s capacity or ability to generate cognitive associates in quality and with uniquiness.

          Whereas Peli (1988) defined ‘Creativity is a process of interacting with the organism to bring out desired learning outcome, ability to generate novel ideas spontaneously, adapting to situations, using the immediate environment for effective communication.  Provoking thought in interacting agency.

          From the above definitions creativity can be understood as art of Teaching and act of research.  The definitions of creativity given byTorrence is nothing but an act of research and the definition of Peli implies teaching.

What is Creativity?

          Creativity is a complex term and embraces many aspects.  No single definition would be able to cover all the aspects.  Following are some of the views and definitions given by pioneers in the field.

(a)         Creativity is a mental process whereby an individual produces something uniquely new to himself.

(b)         It is a capacity, which leads to innovations in various fields of knowledge.  It is an aptitude tract and a way of life.

(c)         According to Dr.E.P.Torrence (1960) defined creativity is the process of sensing gaps and discovering missing elements, forming hypotheses or ideas concerning them, testing these hypotheses and communicating their results, probably modifying and resting these hypotheses.

(d)         According to Gagne viewed it as problem-solving.

(e)         Drevdhal (1956) defined creativity is a capacity of persons to produce composition.

(f)          Whereas Peers, Damular and Quackirbush (1960) stated that Creativity is the capacity of the individual to avoid the usual routine conventional way of thinking and doing things and producing a quantity of ideas, which are original, novel and which are workable.

Creativity its Dimensions:

          To measure the Creativity three dimensions like Fluency, Originality, Flexibility are taken into account as shown in the following diagram.

CREATIVITY

                                      Flexibility                  Originality

Fluency

          Every psychological concept can be analyzed or understood basing on its dimensions.  The concept of creativity can best be explained clearly with the help of its dimensions.  The status of our information regarding the primary dimensions of creativity can perhaps be meaning fully presented by considering its major dimensions.  Psychologists addressed more than two dozen of such dimensions viz., Fluency, Originality, Flexibility, Elaboration, Divergent Thinking, Convergent Thinking, Novelty, Ability to produce greater and total number of ideas, uniqueness, usefulness, independent in judgment, resourceful, independent in thought and action etc.

          In addition Javedekar (1963) in his philosophical work mentioned ‘freedom’ openness sportily and progressiveness as dimensions of creativity.  But out of the dimensions mentioned four dimensions – fluency, originality, flexibility and personality traits are very important dimensions for which understanding and measurement of creativity is plausible.

          It is hypothesized that ‘fluency’ of thinking would be an important aspect of creativity.  This is a quantitative aspect that has to do with fertility of ideas.  There is a factor of word fluency an ability to produce words each containing a specified letter or combination of letters.  A factor of ‘associational fluency’ is indicated best in a test that requires to examine to produce as many synonyms as he can for a given word in a limited time.  A factor ‘expressional fluency’ is ability to produce phrases and sentences.  The need for rapid juxtaposition of words to meet the requirements of sentence structure seems to be the unique characteristic.  The other factor of fluency is ‘ideational fluency’.  This is the ability to produce ideas to fulfill certain requirements in a limited time.

In the area of creativity one should certainly expect to find a dimension of originality.  It is indicated by the scores of some tests in which the responses are weighed in proportion to their infrequency of occurrence in the population of examinees.  Unusualness of responses is one of the principles of measurement of originality.

          In 1950 it is hypothesized that creative thinkers are flexible thinkers.  They readily desert old ways of thinking and strike out in new directions.  There are two factors, which seems to fit into this dimension.  One of these factors has been called ‘spontaneous flexibility’.  It is defined as the ability or disposition to produce a great variety of ideas, with freedom from inertia or from preservation.  The other type of flexibility of thinking is a ‘adaptive flexibility’ for the reason that it facilitates the solution of the problems.  This is shown best in a type of problem that requires a most unusual type of solution.

Measurement of Creativity:

          Since creativity is a psychological construct, measurement of it involves psychometric principles.  The measurement is based on the principles of quantifying the quality.  In no way, it differs from the measurement of certain dimensions.  It is mentioned earlier that of creativity dimensions fluency, originality, flexibility and personality traits are major.  Hence any psychometrican would pay his labour in measuring these four major dimensions.

          Fluency can be measured by a composite measure of its four components namely word fluency, associational fluency, expressional fluency, and ideational fluency.  Because of the word fluency is ability to produce words each containing a specific letter or combination of letters, subjects may be asked to produced words with specific letters or combination of letter.

          Originality can be measured by tests in which items call for remote associations or relationships, remote either in time or in a logical sense. 

          In contrast the word ‘fluency’, where only letter requirements are to be observed, measurement of associational fluency involves a requirement of meaning for the words given.  Expressional fluency is best measure by a test calling for the production of phrases and sentences.  A test of ideational fluency may ask examinees to name objects that are hard, white a edible or to give various uses of a common brick, or to give appropriate titles for given story plot.  Flexibility can be measure by a composite measure of its two factors namely spontaneous flexibility and adaptive flexibility.  In tests of spontaneous flexibility, the subject shows his freedom to roam about in his thinking even when it is not necessary for him to do so.  In naming uses of brick is the jump readily from one category of response to another.  Rigid thinkers, on the other hand, tend to stay within one or two categories of responses.  Adaptive flexibility can be measured best in type of problem that requires a most unusual type of solution.  The problem may appear to be soluble by means of more familiar or conventional methods, but these methods will not work.

          As Guilford (1950) noted ‘the development of scoring procedure for tests of creativity presents some unusual problems especially between subjective and objective scoring methods.  Further he suggested that creativity can be measured with the help of rating scales.

Professional Competency:

          Though Teacher Professional Competency has been recognized as an important component of Teaching-learning process related, little efforts are are made to define the term.  A peep into the literature of teacher professional competency as one finds many related terms such as ‘teaching success’, ‘successful teacher’, ‘teaching efficiency’, ‘teacher performance’ and ‘teacher competency’ etc.

          As one looks through heap of investigators in this field Barr, A.S. (1961) define ‘one finds various terms used to designate or describe the successful teacher’.  Frequently the word ‘competency’ is used.  One will note to that the terms are sometimes applied to teacher as Teacher Professional Competency and sometimes in the teacher behavior as in the teaching competency.

          Donald M.Medly (1982) disclosed that the teacher professional competency as ‘those of knowledge, abilities and beliefs a teacher possesses and bring to – the teaching situation.  Teacher Professional Competency differs from Teacher Performance and Teacher in that it is a stable characteristic of the teacher that does not change appreciably when the teacher moves from the one situation to another.

          By this it is evident that the knowledge of subject matter, teaching skills, beliefs and feelings of teachers may be considered as the components of teacher professional competency that an effective teacher is supposed to possess.

          Biddle (1964) advocates that ‘disagreement and ambiguity with respect to the description of teacher professional competency are to be expected and cannot entirely be avoided because effective teaching is undoubtedly a relative matter.  The term has been used by some investigators to refer to training process properties of teachers behavior exhibited by teachers and effects produced by teacher.  The same variables have been termed by other investigators as criteria of competency ability to teacher and a host of their terms – ‘teacher success’, teacher professional competency; ‘teacher efficiency’, ‘teacher performance’, ‘teacher effectiveness’ etc., are used synonymously by investigators.

          Ryan (1960) states ‘what constitutes effective teaching?  What are the distinguishing characteristics of concept teachers?  Are provocative and recurring questions?  Unfortunately no universal acceptable definite answers can be given to those complex queries….  Embarrassing as it may be for professional educators to recognize, relatively little progress has been made.

          Similarly Biddle and Ellena (1964) accepted that nobody know what an effective teacher was.  They said ‘probably no aspect of education has been discussed with greater frequency with as much deep concern or by more educators and citizens, than has that of teacher professional competency…..how to define it, how to identify it, how to measure it, and how to detect and remove obstacles to its achievement….  Findings about the professional competency of teachers are inconclusive and piecemeal and little is presently known for certain about teacher excellence.

          Researchers studied Teacher Professional Competency is consists of three components viz., Presage, Process and Product.  Here the presage component refers to throughout processes, training, training aspect and personality factors of the teachers.  The process component refers to the teacher actions or classroom practices and the product component refers to the quality of the products i.e., students produced.

          Jangira (1979) stated ‘Teacher Professional Competency has been considered into its three separate components for convenience of profession.  It should not be taken that these components are watertight compartments.  It also flows that there are no clear cut lines to distinguish one component from the other.

Teacher Professional Competency:

1. Already mentioned earlier on the most commonly employed criteria, to evaluate teacher professional competency are presage, process and product.

          Donald M.Medley (1982) identified four types of research designs to guide the researchers, each involving one of the four independent variables – pupils learning outcomes, pupils learning experiences, teacher performance and teacher professional competency.  The four different types of research are: Type ‘L’ research, Type of ‘P’ research, Type ‘C’ research, the dependent variable is measure of teacher performance in implementation of a particular teaching strategy and the independent variables are measures of competencies in the teachers reprehensive and external context variable.  The unit of analysis is teacher.  The purpose of type ‘C” research is to discover what competencies – what knowledge, skills and values – a teacher must process in order to implement a particular teaching model (or) strategy in a particular situation.

          It may be noted that the above said four types of researches proposed by Medley (1982) are further refinement of the passage process and product variables of teacher professional competency.  According to Kyriacon and Newson (1982) there are four variables – presage, process, contextual and product.  Context variables related to a whole of other variables which may have an influence on teacher and pupil behavior during lessons.  While the other they are same as those, which are given by Barr (1961).

          Mc.Neil and Pophan (1973) tested the criteria of assessing Teacher Professional Competency as student rating, self-ratings, administrators or peer ratings, classroom environment analysis, systematic observations, personal attitude studies, student’s gains and performance tests.  In the present study the research employs composite criteria of presage and process variables of teacher professional competency, the study of these variables done by teacher-evaluation.

Dimensions of Teacher Professional Competency:

          Out of many dimensions of Teacher Professional Competency, five dimensions are considered in this study.  They are – (1) Activity based teaching, (2) Child Centered practices, (3) Teaching Learning material and display, (4) Evaluation strategies and remedial teaching and (5) Novel strategies.

         Activity based teaching includes concept teaching abilities, illustrations, practical approach etc.  Child centered practices refer to pupil needs, individual differences, interpretations, child participation etc., are included.  Teaching Learning material refers to selection and presentation of teaching learning material preparation, display etc., are included.  Evaluation strategies include remedial measures, construction of test items different types of evaluation etc.  Novel strategies refer to interpretations, teaching strategies creative ideas etc.  The above dimensions and areas of Teacher Professional Competency differently influence the Teacher Professional Competency is the conclusion drawn by most of the researchers in the field of teacher professional competency as shown in the following diagram.

Pictorial presentation of dimensions of

Teacher Professional Competency

                                                                   Activity based teaching

                           Novel Strategies                 And hurdles in teaching

TEACHER

PROFESSIONAL

COMPETENCY

                  Evaluation Strategies           

                 And Remedial Teaching                   Child centered Practices

          Measurement of Teacher Professional Competency:

          According to Barr (1961), there are four approaches to teachers evaluation contributing different ways by different versions; instructions and data gathering devices viz., (1) Evaluation make in terms of the qualities of the person as in personality ratings, (2) Evaluation, which proceed from strategies of teacher behavior; as in the rating of performance in terms of interpersonal qualities of desirable professional characteristics; (3) Evaluation develop from data collected relative to presumed from qualities to teacher professional competency and (4) Evaluation developed from studies of the product.  In the present study the investigator confined to third approach to teacher evaluation i.e., evaluate to develop from the data collected.

Relation between Teacher Creativity

And Teacher Professional Competency:

          Realization of educational goals and expectations of ancient and modern educationists and needs of the society are to be accomplished only with teachers with good value behavior and competency in their profession is undoubetedly most important.  B.R.Rao (1989) rightly pointed out that the quality of a teacher is considered to be associated with his values.  Similarly, Dr.D.S.Kothari (1964-66) advocates that ‘of all the different factors, which influence the quality of its contribution to national development, the quality, competency, and character of teachers are undoubtedly the most significant.  Delors Commission (1996) ascertained that it is the teacher whose role can help immensely in the inculcation of values.  The Mudaliar Commission (1952-53) observed that it would not be wrong to say that its teachers make a nation’s great.  This happens when besides being masters in their own disciplines and competent in communicating skills, teachers are also men and women of character. Theoretically this concept may be sound but in practice how the Teacher Creativity in related to Teacher Professional Competency.  To what extent they are related are the questions awaiting answers.

          Hence, the present researcher has taken up a piece of research work tool to find out the relationship between Teacher Creativity and Teacher Professional Competency and confined to school education.  The conceptual framework has been presented diagrammatically in the following diagram.

Relationship between Teacher Creativity

and Teacher Professional Competency

                                                                Teacher Professional

                      Teacher Creativity                       Competency

                           Flexibility                           Activity based Learning

                                                                   and hurdles in Teaching

                          Originality                           Child Centered Practices

                           Fluency                             Teaching Learning

                                                                         Material display

                                                                    Evaluation Strategies and

                                                                        Remedial teaching

                                                                    Novel Strategies     

The above diagram shows the relationship between Teacher Creativity and Teacher Professional Competency.  The related available literature is presented in the following chapter.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

          Man is only the creature that does not have to begin new in every generation, but can take the advantage of the knowledge, which has been accumulated through the centuries.  This fact is of particular interest in research which operates as a continuous function of every closer approximation to the truth.  The investigator can be sure that this problem does not exist in a vacuum and that considerable work has been done already on problems which are directly related to his proposed investigation.  The success of his efforts will depend in no small measure on the extent to which he capitalizes on the advance made by previous researcher.

          Kerlinger (1973) gives two main reasons for discussing the general and research literature related to the research problem.  The first of these is to clarify the theoretical rationale of the problem.  A second reason is to tell the reader what researches have not been done on the problem.  The underlying purpose is to locate the present research in the existing body of research on the subject and to point out what it contributes to the subject.

          The major purpose of this review of the available literature is to determine the significant facts which are essentially related to the problem under investigation.  For the knowledge emerging from the investigations would enable the investigator to avoid unintentional duplication, as well as it would also provide the understanding and insight for development of a logical frame work for the present problem under investigation.  Moreover, studies that have been done would provide for formulating research hypotheses an indicating what needs to be done will form the basis for the justification of the study under investigation.

          In this a glance at the previous investigations in the related areas will evidently through a light and make the path of the investigator illuminated with abundant information.  Previous studies regarding the two components creativity and professional competency are herewith incorporated.  These previous investigations will deliberately help the investigator to pursue his research.

Creativity – Studies Abroad:

          Taylor C.W. (1964) has described personality characteristics of creative persons.  They are autonomous, self-sufficient, independent in judgments, more open to the irrational, more stable, more feminine, dominant, self-assertive, complex, more self-accepting, more resourceful, adventurous, more radical, self-controlled, emotionally sensitive, introverted and bold.

          Mac.Kinnon D.W., (1963) has given following personality characteristics to creative people.  They are intelligent, original, independent in thought and action, open to experience both of the inner self and the outer world, infusive, aesthetically sensitive and free from crippling restraints.  They have high energy level, a persistent commitment to creative endeavour and a strong sense of destiny, which includes a degree of resoluteness and a measure of egotism.

          Mc.Guire, S. (1963) suggests three personality dimensions significant to mental health.  They are (1) relaxed outgoing optimism, (2) Creativity Intelligent autonomy and (3) Self-discipline stability. 

          Torrence E.P. (1964) found that creative children were often seen by peers as ‘naughty’ and having ‘wild and silly ideas’.

          Gatzels J.W., and Jackson P.W. (1962) corroborates that creative characterized by wide ranging interests, sense of homour and emotional stability.

          Torrence E.P.(1965) replicated this work eight times and on seven occasions shows similar results.

          Guilford, J.P. (1950) in his presidential address to the American Psychological Association emphasized the ‘appalling neglect of the study of creativity’ by indicating that of some 1,21,000 titles indexed in psychological abstracts from its beginning until 1950, only 186 were definitely related to the subject of creativity.

          One of the earliest investigations in the modern style into the personality and background of scientists was carried out by Rock 1952.  Twenty biologists, 22 physiologists and 22 social scientists were chosen by panel of experts in their respective fields.  Rock subjected them to long interviews covering their life history, family background, professional and recreational interests, way of thinking etc., as well as to intelligence tests and clinical personality tests which probed their inner preoccupations and attitudes to themselves and world around them, in short their personality structure.

          Graham Wallas (1956) gives 4 stages of creative process.  They are preparation, incubation, illuminatin and verification. 

          One of the striking traits by Getzels and Jackson (1959) among high school students who stand high in divergent thinking tests is a strong sense of humour. 

          Gouth (1961) Theoretical orientation, as well as original potential and general sophistication.

          Judith, L; Mc.Elvain, L.N; Grelwell and R.B.Lewing studied relationship between Creativity and Teacher Variability.  The objective of the study was to find a relation between creativity and teaching competency as well as to find other common characteristics of teachers in comparison to levels of creativity.

          Williams (1972) has proposed a model which emphasizes the following kinds of creative pupil behavior; fluent thinking, flexible thinking, original thinking, elaborate thinking, curiosity, risk taking, complexity and imagination. 

          Mac Kay (1970) used the science research temperament scale in an attempt to isolate those students who would perform better in a ‘discovery’ approach to a science course than an ‘authoritarian’ approach.

          Taft, Dewing and Gilchrist (1971) used experiences questionnaire to study people who were both highly creative and highly productive.  These people appeared to have the traits of rapidly changing states of consciousness; intense emotional responses and interests in novelty.

          Caspi (1972) devoted much effort to a process of fostering creativity in university students and initiated an alternative teacher training programmes at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.  In his programme emphasis is placed on promoting a creative teacher personality as well as providing a wide range of experiences aimed at helping the teacher towards a creative approach to his teaching in school.

          To facilitate a meaningful link between university and school, Butter (1974) developed a model merging pre-service and in-service of teacher.  The model aims to provide a learning situation conducive to openers to new experiences and ideas, including learning situation in requiring a creative approach from all participants.

           Jan Dean, Robert Brown Sarah Young (2009) studied ‘The Possum Story: Reflections of an early childhood drama Teacher’. This paper stems from the commitment of one drama teacher who was prepared to act as a researcher through her efforts to document, and communicate her beliefs and practices to others. It highlights the value of the reflective process as a way of articulating, informing and improving practice, a view supported by Taylor, who states that ‘if teachers can empower themselves to believe in their own capacity to act as researchers, if they can generate faith in their own ability to observe and reflect critically on their work, then they are capable of effecting change in their own educational setting’ (1998, p. 129).

An analysis of these reflections provides insight into the challenges faced by the drama practitioner working with a large group of young children. These include how to determine engaging and relevant child-centred content, how to stimulate the interests of all children in the developing story and cater for their needs, and how to promote creative problem-solving through open and responsive questioning.

In conclusion, this paper provides an illustrative and instructive example of practice that may stimulate others to engage in process drama experiences that respond to children’s interests and provide rich opportunities for children to create, act-out and reflect on significant emergent stories. (Jan Deans, Robert Brown, Sarah Young, University of Melborne, ‘The Possum Stody: Reflections of an early Childhood Drama Teacher’, Australian Journal of Early Child, 2009 (Online Publication).

John P.Myers (2007) Studied ‘Democratizing School Authority: Brazilian Teachers’ Perceptions of the election of principals’.  The objective of the study is the idea of collective decision making in schools has been a popular democratic educational reform model. One of its claims is that participation in school decision making empowers teachers and improves teaching. This research investigates this claim by exploring seven teachers’ experiences with a unique democratic school reform in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the election of principals by teachers, students, parents, and staff. Results showed that the elections reshaped the school authority relations, resulting in greater freedom for teachers to introduce democratic teaching methods, while articulating the school as a democratic institution and teachers as citizens. (John P.Myers, University of Pittsburgh, USA, ‘Democratizing School Authority: Brazilian Teachers’ Perceptions of the election of Principals’, Journal of Teaching and Teacher Education, USA, Volume 24, Issue 4, Pp.952 – 966, May, 2008).

Julie White (2008) studied ‘Sustainable Pedagogy: A Research Narrative about performativity, Teachers and possibility’.  This study disclosed that mostly theoretical paper explores an emerging conceptualization of ‘sustainable pedagogy’.  The development of this concept has drawn upon sustainability education, three interpretations of performativity as well as key concepts of professionalism and creativity.  Sustainable pedagogy involves not only acknowledgement of self and subjectivity, but professional philosophy and classroom practice that keeps fidelity with philosophy and identity.  Importantly, sustainable pedagogy also involves building and sustaining professional community.  Through its inception, an attempt is made to demonstrated that thearers’ work required nourishment and strength and that sustainable pedagogy affords a richer and more complex understanding of teacher identity and professionalism, and that creativity might provide a suitable antidote to the performtivity that unfortunately currently forms much of the broader educational landscape within Australia (Julie White, La Trobe University, Australia, ‘Sustainable Pedagogy: A Research Narrative about Performativity, Teachers and Possibility’, Journal of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, 2008 – TCI-On Line Publication)

Panagiotis Kampylis and others (2009) studied ‘In-service and Prospective Teachers’ Conceptions of Creativity’.  In this study the authors disclosed that Teachers play a crucial role in the development of primary school students’ creative potential in either a positive or a negative way. This paper aims to draw attention to in-service and prospective teachers’ conceptions of creativity and answer three main research questions: “What are the teachers’ conceptions and implicit theories of creativity in general?”, “What are the teachers’ conceptions and implicit theories of creativity in the context of primary education?”, and “How well-trained and equipped do teachers feel to play their key role in the development of students’ creative potential?” A self-report questionnaire was used as an instrument to gather qualitative and quantitative data from 132 Greek in-service and prospective teachers. According to the selected quantitative data we present in this study, the majority of the participants reported that the facilitation of students’ creativity is included in the teachers’ role, but they (teachers themselves) do not feel well-trained and confident enough to realise this particular expectation. The authors conclude that further research is needed in order to: (i) reveal more on teachers’ conceptions on creativity and (ii) understand and classify teachers’ particular needs to facilitate the creative potential of primary school students. (Panagiotis Kampylis, Eleni Berki and Pertti Saariluoma of University of Tampere, ‘In-Service and Prospective Teachers’ Conceptions of Creativity’, Journal of Thinking Skills and Creativity, Finland, Vol.4, Issue 1, Pp.15 – 29, April, 2009 – On-Line Journal).

Kaoru Yamamoto (2005) studied ‘Creativity and Higher Education : A Review’.  The author studied that Abstract  Some recent literature is reviewed to argue that institutions of higher education have made little adjustments to either their admission practices or their curricula to help nurture varied talents among their students. Diversity seems to be lacking throughout the academic community from the undergraduate level to the professional circles. The need for renewed spirit of experimentation and of tolerance of pluralism is pointed out. (Kaoru Yamamoto, Arizona State University, USA, ‘Creativity and Higher Education: A Review’, Journal of Higher Education, ISSN: 1573-174X (Online), Pp.213-225, 2005).

Linda Reichwein Zientek and others (2008) studied ‘Reporting Practices in Quantitative Teacher Education Research: One Look at the Evidence Cited in the AERA Panel Report.  The authors of this article examine the analytic and reporting features of research articles cited in Studying Teacher Education: The Report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005) that used quantitative reporting practices. Their purpose was to help to identify reporting practices that can be improved to further the creation of the best possible evidence base for teacher education. Their findings indicate that many study reports lack (a) effect sizes, (b) confidence intervals, and (c) reliability and validity coefficients. One possible solution is for journal editors to emphasize clearly the expectations established in Standards for Reporting on Empirical Social Science Research in AERA Publications -AERA, 2006. (Linda Reichwein Zientek, Mary Margaret Capraro and Robert M.Capraro, Houston State University, Texas, Journal of Educational Research, Texas, Vol.37, No.4, Pp.208-216, 2008).

Creativity Studies in India:

          Baquer Mehdi (1970) devised a battery of tests to identify creative talent in the primary and middle school stages.  The battery consists of verbal as well as non-verbal tests of creative thinking.

          Passi (1972) developed a battery of creativity tests for higher secondary school children.  The battery consists of verbal and non-verbal tests.

          Kaul (1974) developed a test of creativity for children of 14 – 16 years age group.  Ramachandra Chari (1975) developed a test to identify creative children at the school leaving age.  The sub-tests included in (1) Fluency, (2) Flexibility (3) Originality and (4) Elaboration.  Khine (1971) found that the aspect of creativity such as fluency, flexibility, originality of thinking and elaboration remain closer to one another.

          Sharma (1971) used the factorial design to study the effect of intelligence selected interests and the socio-culture variables on creativity.  His findings revealed that for both rural and urban boys creative thinking showed progressive trends with intelligence.

          Goyal (1974) focused his study on the personality correlates of creativity in secondary school teachers under training.  Findings suggest that highly creative persons do not enter teachers training colleges and highly flexible teacher trainees appear to be more guilt prone and less imaginative. 

Joshi (1974) in his study of the intellectually gifted students found that giftedness was an effective contribution to all types of creativity scores.

Gakhar (1975) observed that 1. Creativity and Intelligences are two distinguishable modes of the same intellectual functioning; (2) Personality traits of self-acceptance and self-sufficiency were distinguishing characteristics of girls high on non-verbal creativity.

Jha (1975) probed into the personality profiles of thirty five creative persons, using the centric method, he discovered four factors.  The main factor reflected national optimism, high ego strength, realistic and healthy attitude towards life, and openness to experience, assertive, self-confidence and tendency for self-actualization.

Aaron P.G., Marihal, V.G. and Maltesha A.N. (1969) in their study aimed at finding the significant differences between rural and urban high school pupils of the same socio-economic status do not differ from each other in their educational level, attitudes, creativity and other personality characteristics.  The results indicated that there is no significant difference between creativity scores of rural and urban boys.

Deshmukh (1979) in his study the major findings were generally girls performed better than boys on creativity measures indicating significant sex differences in creativity.  There was moderate positive relationship between creativity and intelligence for various creativity factors.

Singh O.P. (1982), the main findings of his study were (1) the mean creativity score of the urban students was high than that of the rural students; (2) the mean score of science students was higher than that of arts students.

Saxena’s (1972) attempt has been to discover the differences between the over and under achievers with respect to their interests, need patterns, adjustment problems, study habits and personal and other background factors.  Another group of studies has explored the relationship of intelligence, creativity, interest, neuroticism and extraversion with scholastic achievement.

Choudhry (Abstract:1085, III Survey Report, 1983) studied ‘A Study of the Relationship between the Creative Thinking Abilities of Student-Teachers and their Classroom Verbal Behaviour’.  The objectives of the study were: (1) to study the current classroom practices of teacher-trainees and to compare them with established norms; (2) to study the relationship between verbal creative thinking abilities and figural creative thinking abilities; (3) to study the relationship between verbal creative thinking abilities of teacher-trainees and their verbal classroom behavior; (4) to study the relationship between figural creative thinking abilities of teacher-trainees and their verbal classroom behavior, and (5) to predict classroom behavior on the basis of creative thinking abilities, both verbal and figural together.

Some of the important findings drawn that (1) the verbal creative thinking abilities of the teacher-trainees were positively correlated with their figural creative thinking abilities; (2) there was significant relationship between the creative thinking abilities and some of the indices of the classroom verbal behavior; the pattern of relationship between figural creative thinking abilities and the classroom behavior was the same as that between the verbal creative thinking abilities and the classroom behavior; (3) high creative teachers increased pupil’s freedom to participate by praising, accepting and developing their ideas; (4) high creative teachers processed the content and talked more at convergent, divergent and evaluative levels and less at the factual level; (5) in the classes of high creative teachers, pupils also talked less at factual and more at convergent and divergent levels.

Nirpharake, A. (Abstract:1189, III Survey Report, 1983) investigated into ‘Training in Creative Appreciation’.  The major purpose of the investigation was to develop and try out a training programme in creative appreciation.  Creative appreciation was defined as recreating the artist’s vision, involving evaluation against the criteria of relevance, effectiveness and originality.  The investigator developed a special training programme and tried out efficacy in developing creative appreciation.  The major findings of the investigation were: (i) The experimental group showed marked improvement in all aspects of creativity after receiving training over the control group as well as over its own pretest scores.  The control group did not show any significant improvement over its pretest scores.  (ii) Training in creative appreciation was especially effective educationally because it could be adapted to various classroom situations by teachers of languages and fine arts, without having to marshall any extra techniques of creative teaching.

 Research (V – Survey of Educational Research, Vol.I, 1988-92) made on relationship between figural creative thinking of the classroom (Choudhary, S.1989); role enactment of home science teachers in teaching, research and extensions for improving the quality of teachers’ performance in these areas (Pande, M. and Chandra, A. 1992); attitude of teachers towards creative learning and teaching in relation to variables like teaching experience, academic discipline, etc. (Mathur, S. 1988);

Professional Competency – Studies Abroad:

Greg Hearn and others (1996) studied ‘Defining Generic Professional Competencies in Australia: Towards a Framework for Professional Development’.  This study examines the extent to which there are competencies which are generic to professions in Australia. The seven professions of accountancy, architecture, human resource management, marketing, social work, and teaching from around Australia were surveyed using an 80-item questionnaire. The questionnaire was developed by reviewing the literature on professional competencies; work-shopping with representatives of the professional groups with nominal group technique and small group discussion; and using a preliminary study of individuals in four professional groups. A factor analysis, accounting for 51.9 percent of the total variance, extracted nine factors: Problem-solving, Others Orientation, Professional Involvement, Internal Frame of Reference, Emotional Competence, Influencing, Organizational Knowledge, Productivity, and Client Orientation. This study discusses the implications of these results for the education of professionals, for human resource managers involved in the selection, training and development of professionals, and for the transition of professionals to managers. These issues are of increasing importance to human resource managers in their role as developers of organizational capability. (Greg Hearn, Anna Close, Barry Smith and Greg Southey, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, Vol.34, No.1, Pp.44 – 62, 1996).

Robin Jones (1996) studied ‘The Professional Competencies movement and special Education’.  The author disclosed that the teacher competencies movement in Australia is part of the larger national movement which is concerned about competencies statements for all trades and professions. Special educators are not exempt so that professional competencies statements or lists either are, or will be, developed for this profession. In the formulation process several issues and challenges will need to be addressed: the definition of the term “competencies”; the question of generic versus lists re specific disabilities; the purpose(s) of these lists; their dangers and benefits. We would do well to consider these issues now. We should also consider whether such lists or statements can encapsulate the essence of what good special education teaching is about. (Robin, Jone, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Published by Australian Journal of Special Education, Australia, Vol.20, Issue 1, Pp.40 – 48, 1996).

Malm, Birgitte, Lofgren and Horst (2006) In this study, data show that students perceive teacher competence as an integrated whole. Positive evaluations in various areas are highly correlated. However, seven specific teacher competences could be identified. This study has also identified that there are often big differences between classes with regard to teaching and students’ achievement. This study also shows differences between classes in respect of attitudes, self-confidence, conflict handling strategies and teacher competence. Of these, the biggest differences were found to be those related to the seven components of teacher competence.  In testing a causal model we have been able to show that there are high correlations between teacher competence, school attitudes and self-confidence, and that these three factors are significantly related to students’ ways of handling conflict situations (Malm, Birgitte, Lofgren and Horst, ‘Teacher Competency and Students’ Conflict handling strategies’, Research in Education, Australia, November, 2006)

Burriss, Kathleen and Burriss, Larry (2004) studied ‘Competency and Comfort: Teacher Candidates’ Attitudes toward Diversity’. The purpose of this study was to identify and describe teacher candidates’ perceived levels of competency and comfort in teaching diverse student populations. For three semesters, teacher candidates (n = 221) volunteered to complete questionnaires at the beginning of their professional education courses. A second group (n = 242) completed questionnaires as they exited student teaching. Although the majority of teacher candidates have limited professional and life experiences, findings indicate both groups feel both competent and comfortable interacting with diverse populations. (Burriss, Kathleen and Burriss, Larry, ‘Competency and Comfort: Teacher Candidates’ Attitudes toward Diversity’, Journal of Research in Childhood Education, Washington, USA, April 1, 2004).

Moberly, Deborah A.; Conway, Kathleen D.; Girardeau, Cape; Ransdell, Mary (2002) studied ‘Helping Teacher candidates become reflective about their practice (Teacher Educator/Professional Standards)’.  The study disclosed that while teacher education traditionally has focused on curriculum and instruction, assessment and accountability have become just as important. Teacher candidates must be able to document their knowledge and skills, in order to meet state and national teaching standards. Through this documentation process, teacher candidates reflect upon the products of their teaching and learning. Artifacts may range from teaching portfolios, videotapes, creative projects, and conferences, to exams and papers. Reflecting and writing about these artifacts is now a critical developmental process for teacher candidates. (Moberly, Deborah A.; Conway, Kathleen D.; Girardeau, Cape; Ransdell, Mary ,’Helping Teacher candidates become reflective about their practice (Teacher Educator/Professional Standards’, Childhood Education Magazine,New York, Kentakey, USA, March 22, 2002).

Gretchen Mc.Allister and Jacqueline Jordan Irvine (2000) studied ‘Cross Cultural Competency Multicultural Teacher Education’.  The text of the article disclosed that Teachers require support as they face the challenge of effectively teaching diverse students in their classrooms. Teacher-educators have used various methods to foster change in teachers’ thinking, attitudes, and behaviors regarding cultural diversity, but these efforts have produced mixed results because they often focused on content rather the process of cross-cultural learning. The purpose of this review is to examine three process-oriented models that have been used to describe and measure the development of racial identity and cross-cultural competence. These models include Helm’s model of racial identity development, Banks’s Typology of Ethnicity, and Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity. Research using the models revealed insights for multicultural teacher education in assessing readiness to learn, designing effective learning opportunities, and providing appropriate support and challenge for teachers. (Gretchen McAllister and Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, ‘Cross Cultural Competency and Multicultural Teacher Education’, Review of Educational Research, USA, Vol.70, No.1, Pp.3-24, 2000)

Denise Trento De Souza (2008) studied ‘Teacher Professional Development and the Argument of Incompetence’.  According to Author that this work proposes that since the early eighties a specific strategy has gained increasing importance within official Education Programmes in São Paulo (Brazil) addressed to deal with the high rates of pupil repetition and dropout: the concentration on teachers professional development. We argue that this strategy is based on the idea of teacher’s incompetence as the main explanation for educational problems. This idea pervades both the conceptions of the programmes and their proposed actions and practices. The idea of teacher’s incompetence is present in the mainstream literature, and in the formulation and implementation of official Education Programmes, namely Basic Cycle (CB), Basic Cycle in a Single Shift (CB-JU) and Quality School (EP) undertaken by the São Paulo State Secretariat for Education (SSE). This paper presents some details of the fieldwork carried out in the research project on the theme of Teacher Professional Development (TPD), presented as my PhD thesis. It also presents the main conclusions of that work. The fieldwork was based on a qualitative research method in which the perceptions, expectations, and interrelations of the involved teachers, course monitors and policy makers were extracted from a number of interviews and observations. Our analysis demonstrates the presence of what we identify as the “argument of incompetence”. It takes on different forms according to the context and to the group of the individuals involved in the activities of TPD. The core of the “argument of incompetence” follows a linear logic: “we do not have a good quality school only because we lack teachers of professional competence”. The “argument of incompetence” not only undermines the relations among the main participating agents in teacher professional development, namely, policy makers, course monitors and teachers, but it also promotes a mistaken way of thinking about teacher professional development. Mistaken and simplistic as it promotes a conception of TPD that overestimates its possibilities of dealing with chronic and broader issues of low quality of Brazilian Basic Education without taking the necessary action regarding other vital elements such as suitable conditions of work in schools and teacher’s career development.(Denise Trento De Souza, Brazil – Online: www.wwwords.co.uk/EERJ/content/pdfs/6/issue6 3.asp).

David Carr (2006) studied ‘Is Understanding the Professional Knowledge of Teachers a Theory-Practice Problem?  In this study the currently fashionable professional ideal of reflective practice has focused on how good teaching might be informed by theoretical (invariably social scientific) enquiry and has been commonly construed as a matter of the effective application of theory. This paper rejects techniques assumptions underpinning the idea of applied theory, tracing them to confusion between two different sorts of practical deliberation, prognosis and techno. Understanding professional reflection primarily in term of prognosis calls into doubt both the precise role of genuine theoretical studies in professional reflection and the very status as theoretical of the sort of the principled understanding and deliberation required for the wise conduct of education.  (David Carr, Heriot-Watt University, Great Britain, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol.29, Issue 3, Pp.311 – 331, 2006)

Darrell M.Hull & Terrill F.Saxon (2009) studied ‘Negotiation of meaning and co-construction of knowledge: An experimental analysis of asynchronous online instruction’.  According to the authors that Variations in group co-construction of knowledge and the extent to which participants engaged in negotiating meaning were directly related to instruction. The authors examined social interaction resulting from controlled variation in instruction using a counter-balanced design in two professional development courses for teachers. Both courses were held at the same time, included the same content with the same instructor, and were held in an asynchronous online format. Twenty-four subjects were randomly assigned to the two courses. Using socio-historical constructivist theory to guide instruction interventions, instruction frequency and questioning were intentionally manipulated during one-half of each course. The variations in instruction were hypothesized to promote negotiation of meaning and co-construction of knowledge within both groups. Transcript analysis using a dependent measure of social interaction was applied to the 782 utterances of the participants. Multiple comparisons revealed significant differences in the dependent measure in portions of the course where modified instructional strategies were implemented. The results show that relatively simple alterations in instructional practice (e.g., increasing instructional statements from once to twice per week and engaging participants in dialogue through open-ended questioning) yields a substantially enhanced learning outcome within this environment. Strong evidence suggests that online learning groups depend heavily on instruction to facilitate negotiation of meaning and co-construction of knowledge. This research raises concerns about whether or not instructors employ instructional strategies that influence social knowledge construction and subsequent learning outcomes from asynchronous online courses. In addition, the study demonstrates the utility of a previously published measure for social interaction in CMC. (Darrell M.Hull, University of North Texas & Terrill F.Saxon, Baylor University, USA, Source: Computers & Education, Vol.52, Issue 3, Pp.624 – 639, ISSN: 0360-1315, Publisher: Elsevier Science Ltd., UK, 2009).

Compton, Lily, K.L. (2009) studied ‘Preparing Language Teachers to Teach Language Online: A look at Skills, Roles, and Responsibilities’.  This paper reviews and critiques an existing skills framework for online language teaching. This critique is followed by an alternative framework for online language teaching skills. This paper also uses a systems view to look at the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders in an online learning system. Four major recommendations are provided to help language teacher training programs prepare future language teachers for online language teaching. (Compton, Lily, K.L., ‘Preparing Language Teachers to Teach Language Online: A look at Skills, Roles, and Responsibilities’, Journal of Computer Assisted Language Learning, Vol.22, No.1, Pp.73 – 99, -2009, Online Publication by Educational Journal – 824747).

Professional Competency – Studies in India:

          Professional Competency, though quite receipt in origin with astonishing rapidity has become almost a catch word.  As the previous investigations are meager the present investigation cannot place many researches here at this juncture.

          Kaul, S. (1977) studied ‘Personality factors, Values and Interests among the most accepted and least accepted Secondary School Female Teaches of Mathura District’. The main objectives of the study were – (a) to construct a Teacher Acceptance Scale; (b) to identify Personality factors that differentiated between most accepted and low accepted teachers at Secondary School level; (c) to identify the Values that differentiated most accepted teachers from less accepted teachers; (d) to study the interests that differentiated most accepted teachers from least accepted teachers; (e) to interpret and analyze personality factors, value and interests, which were not common in the most accepted and less accepted teachers.  The findings of the study were: (1) more outgoingness denoted group acceptance. Reservedness promoted group acceptance.  Intelligence promoted group acceptance.  Assertiveness denoted acceptance.  The more conscious, more tender minded and more related were better accepted by their class students; (2) Craft pursuit denoted acceptance.  Interest in the fine arts, science, medicine, agriculture, the outdoors, sports, literatu

Fashion Design Schools

Find fashion schools offering online fashion merchandising, fashion design, fashion marketing, and other programs that can help you develop the skills you need to get your foot in the door of this stylish career. Find schools in top fashion destinations like New York City, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Chicago, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, across the US and beyond.

The field of fashion and fashion marketing is a demanding yet rewarding path. Are you ready to combine your creative talents and marketing savvy into an exciting career? Some career paths include: Fashion Buyer, Product Developer & Retail Manager. You will work closely with account executives and store managers to select appropriate merchandise to sell in stores. You are knowledgeable about current and future trends and travel to national and international fashion markets to study them.

Following schools offer online fashion courses and degrees

UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX ONLINE

• Fashion Design/Marketing

BAKER COLLEGE ONLINE

• Bachelor Degree in Web Development

• Certificate in Web Design

THE ART INSTITUTE ONLINE

• Residential Planning – Diploma

• Digital Design – Diploma

• Web Design – Diploma

• Graphic Design – Associate Degree

• Multimedia & Web Design – Associate Degree

• Advertising – Bachelor Degree

• Culinary Management BS Degree Completion Program – Bachelor Degree

• Interior Design – Bachelor Degree

• Game Art & Design – Bachelor Degree

• Graphic Design – Bachelor Degree

• Multimedia & Web Design – Bachelor Degree

CAPELLA UNIVERSITY

• Graphics and Multimedia

• Web Application Development

AMERICAN INTERCONTINENTAL UNIVERSITY ONLINE

• Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Communications

WESTWOOD COLLEGE ONLINE

• Graphic Design and Multimedia

• Visual Communications

• Animation

• Web Design & Multimedia

• CAD Courses

American InterContinental University

Fashion Design School

The fast-paced fashion industry is rich in career opportunities for individuals with an eye for color, line and texture, a keen business sense and a bold creative vision. AIU fashion school students are on the career track well before they graduate. They create a portfolio highlighting their best work for presentation to employers. Study tours to fashion centers like New York City, Paris and Milan are a great chance to network with the big names in the business. In addition, our students gain valuable experience as interns with designers, manufacturers and fashion houses.

The AIU Fashion Design School program helps new designers acquire the necessary skills to develop their personal style. Students also become familiar with the business and marketing side of the apparel industry.

Associate Degree in Fashion Design

Associate Degree in Interior Design

Associate Degree in Media Production

Associate Degree in Visual Communications

Bachelor’s Degree Fashion Design

Bachelor’s Degree in Interior Design

Bachelor’s Degree in Fashion Design & Fashion Marketing

Bachelor’s Degree in Media Production

Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Communications

Request Information – Atlanta (Buckhead), GA

International Academy of Design & Technology

Campus programs

The International Academy’s Program in Fashion Design is demanding, technical, comprehensive, and state-of-the-art. Students are given a solid foundation in fashion illustration, pattern drafting, design, draping, clothing construction, textiles, fashion history and production techniques. All of the instruction is presented using industrial grade equipment in spacious and comfortable facilities built for optimum fashion design. Students are encouraged to realize their potential with inspiration provided by visiting designers and artisans with local and/or international reputations who conduct special lectures and workshops.

Associate of Science Degree in Web Design

Associate of Science degree in Computer Animation

Associate of Science Degree in Fashion Design and Marketing

Associate of Science Degree in Interior Design

Associate of Science Degree in Graphic Design

Bachelor of Fine Arts

Degree in Fashion Design and Marketing

Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Interior Design

Brooks Fashion Design College

Associate degree in Fashion

The Fashion Design program at Brooks College provides academic and specialized practical instruction to prepare the student to enter an ever-changing and exciting world of fashion. In this growing industry, there is a constant demand for technical knowledge and creative talent. Brooks College’s Division of Manufacturing Education (D.O.M.E.) is the on-campus manufacturing facility where the major portion of the second year program is taught. Graduates of the program are qualified for the following: Designer and Assistant Designer, Fashion Stylist, Fashion Design School, Production, Pattern maker, Pattern Grader, Fabrications and trim Buyer, as well as, Fashion Illustrator and Textile Artist.

Associate of Science Degree (Graphic Design)

Associate of Arts Degree (Fashion Design)

Associate of Arts Degree (Interior Design)

Associate of Arts Degree (Fashion Merchandising)

Associate of Science Degree (Animation)

Associate of Science Degree (Multimedia)

Katharine Gibbs School New York (New York, NY)

Fashion Design School and Merchandising

Students are trained, practically and academically, in all aspects of the fashion industry. Topics include: fabric printing and print design, sketching for the designer and illustrator, industry-standard pattern drafting, showroom and retail sales, fashion design school. Through the course of the program, students will be developing their own fashion portfolio.

Associate Degree Visual Communications

Associate Degree – Fashion Design.

PCDI – Professional Career Development Institute

The Professional Fashion Merchandising Program

Have you ever wondered why certain clothes show up in fashion advertising and still others never sell? Would you like to be able to plan and produce a successful fashion show? Do you want to know how consumer fashion trends are set? Are you interested in getting in on a fast-track field by taking a fashion merchandising course? If so, you’ve come to the right place!

PCDI’s nationally accredited home study course will teach you about fashion merchandising, and much more. You’ll Receive 17 clear, beautifully illustrated lessons. First, we’ll teach you about consumer style preferences and purchasing habits. Next, we’ll take you “behind the scenes” to Find out what retail buyers, department heads, store managers, fashion directors, visual merchandisers, and sales associates do. Then, we’ll show you the secrets of staging fashion shows; planning special events; becoming a personal shopper; tracking fashion trends; and going for that first career position.

Key advantages of our school:

No campus attendance, no commuting, no deadline pressure

All exams are open-book/open notes

Learn at your own pace; graduate in as little as six months after taking the fashion merchandising courses!

Graduate with a nationally accredited diploma

Enroll any time and enjoy affordable, interest-free tuition

There are no educational prerequisites or experience requirements to enroll. Convenient, practical home study fashion merchandising courses and training from PCDI makes learning fashion merchandising easy and fun!

Materialism can no longer claim to be a scientific philosophy.

Arthur Koestler, the renowned Social Philosopher

(Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up, New York: Vintage Books, 1978, p. 250.)

How did the endless universe we live in come into being?

How did the equilibrium, harmony, and order of this universe develop?

How is it that this Earth is such a fit and sheltering place for us to live in?

Questions such as these have attracted attention since the dawn of the human race. The conclusion reached by scientists and philosophers searching for answers with their intellects and common sense is that the design and order of this universe are evidence of the existence of a supreme Creator ruling over the whole universe.

This is an indisputable truth that we may reach by using our intelligence. God declares this reality in His holy book, the Qur’an, which He inspired as a guide for humanity fourteen centuries ago. He states that He has created the universe when it was not, for a particular purpose, and with all its systems and balances specifically designed for human life.

God invites people to consider this truth in the following verse:

Are you stronger in structure or is heaven? He built it. He raised its vault high and made it level. He darkened its night and brought forth its morning light. After that He smoothed out the earth… (Surat an Naziat: 27-30)

Elsewhere it is declared in the Qur’an that a person should see and consider all the systems and balances in the universe that have been created for him by God and derive a lesson from his observations:

He has made night and day subservient to you, and the sun and moon and stars, all subject to His command. There is certainly Signs in that for people who pay heed. (Surat an-Nahl: 12)

In yet another verse of the Qur’an, it is pointed out:

He makes night merge into day and day merge into night, and He has made the sun and moon subservient, each one running until a specified time. That is God, your Lord. The Kingdom is His. Those you call on besides Him have no power over even the smallest speck. (Surah Fatir: 13)

This plain truth declared by the Qur’an is also confirmed by a number of the important founders of the modern science of astronomy. Galileo, Kepler, and Newton all recognized that the structure of universe, the design of the solar system, the laws of physics and their states of equilibrium were all created by God and they arrived at that conclusion as a result of their own research and observations.

Materialism: A 19th-Century Fallacy

The reality of the creation of which we speak has been ignored or denied since the earliest times by a particular philosophical point of view. It is called “materialism”. This philosophy, which was originally formulated among the ancient Greeks, has also made an appearance from time to time in other cultures and has been advanced by individuals as well. It holds that matter alone exists and that it has done so for an infinity of time. From these tenets, it claims that the universe has also “always” existed and was not created.

In addition to their claim that the universe exists in an infinity of time, materialists also assert that there is no purpose or aim in the universe. They claim that all the equilibrium, harmony and order that we see around us are merely the product of coincidence. This “coincidence assertion” is also put forward when the question of how human beings came into being comes up. The theory of evolution, widely referred to as Darwinism, is another application of materialism to the natural world.

We just mentioned that some of the founders of modern science were faithful people who were in agreement that the universe was created and organized by God. In the 19th century, an important change took place in the attitudes of the scientific world with respect to this matter. Materialism was deliberately introduced to the agenda of modern science by various groups. Because the 19th century’s political and social conditions formed a good basis for materialism, the philosophy gained wide acceptance and spread throughout the scientific world.

The findings of modern science however undeniably demonstrate how false the claims of materialism really are.

The Findings of 20th-Century Science

Let us recall the two assertions of materialism about the universe:

The universe exists in infinite time and, because it has no beginning or end, it was not created.

Everything in this universe is merely the result of chance and not the product of any intentional design, plan, or vision.

Those two notions were boldly advanced and ardently defended by 19th-century materialists, who of course had no recourse other than to depend upon the limited and unsophisticated scientific knowledge of their day. Both have been utterly refuted by the discoveries of 20th-century science.

The first to be laid in the grave was the notion of the universe existing in infinite time. Since the 1920s, there has been mounting evidence this cannot be true. Scientists are now certain that the universe came into being from nothingness as the result of an unimaginably huge explosion, known as the “Big Bang”. In other words, the universe came into being-or rather, it was created by God.

The 20th century has also witnessed the demolition of the second claim of materialism: that everything in the universe is the result of chance and not design. Research conducted since the 1960s consistently demonstrates that all the physical equilibriums of the universe in general and of our world in particularly are intricately designed to make life possible. As this research deepened, it was discovered each and every one of the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, of the fundamental forces such as gravity and electromagnetism, and of the details of the structure of atoms and the elements of the universe has been precisely tailored so that human beings may live. Scientists today call this extraordinary design the “anthropic principle”. This is the principle that every detail in the universe has been carefully arranged to make human life possible.

To sum up, the philosophy called materialism has been utterly refuted by modern science. From its position as the dominant scientific view of the 19th century, materialism collapsed into fiction in the 20th.

How could it have been otherwise? As God indicates “We did not create heaven and earth and everything between them to no purpose. That is the opinion of those who are disbelievers.” (Surah Sad: 27) it is wrong to suppose that the universe was created in vain. A philosophy so utterly flawed as materialism and systems based on it were doomed to failure from the very beginning.

The evolutionist claim that Homo floresiensis represents a separate species to modern-day man continues to retreat in the face of increasing objections. The Times Online, the Internet edition of The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers, summarised the latest developments on the subject in these terms:

“A find heralded as the greatest discovery in anthropology for a century has degenerated into one of its greatest rows.” (1)

The development that fuelled the flames was the way that other experts have supported the views of Indonesian scientists who object to H. floresiensis being depicted as a separate species from Homo sapiens. Heading the list of these are the Australian scientists Dr. Maciej Henneberg and Dr. Alan Thorne, and researchers from Chicago’s Field Museum in America.

The new objections, like those of the Indonesian scientists, stress that Flores Man may have suffered from the neurological disease known as microcephaly. One important piece of support for this view came from Professor Maciej Henneberg, an anatomist and expert palaeopathologist of 32 years’ standing. Henneberg, head of the Department of Anatomical Sciences, the University of Adelaide, Australia, first examined the Flores Man skull measurements published on the Nature magazine website. At that point another skull with a similar structure came to the scientist’s mind. The skull in question was a 4,000-year-old Homo sapiens specimen unearthed on the island of Crete. This skull, belonging to a H. sapiens individual, possessed rather small dimensions, and scientists examining it had already described it in terms of microcephaly.

As a result of statistical comparisons he performed on 15 skull measurements, the Australian scientist revealed that there was “no significant difference” between the two. Henneberg, whose objections were reported in the well-known US journal Science (2), concluded that the Flores Man skull measurements stemmed from microcephaly. The researcher also noted that Flores Man’s facial anatomy was within H. sapiens limits.

Another study by Henneberg that revealed striking results regarding Flores Man was his calculations regarding a forearm (radius) bone found in a cave. From the length of the bone, determined as 210 mm (8.3 inches), Henneberg calculated that its owner would have been between 151 and 162 cm (4.9 – 5.3ft) tall. These figures were rather greater than the 1 metre (3ft) attributed to Flores Man, and were within bounds considered normal for present-day human beings. Henneberg announced the conclusion he had reached as a result of these analyses:

“Until more skeletons of the purported ‘new species’ are discovered, I will maintain that a well-known pathological condition was responsible for the peculiar appearance of the skeleton.” (3)

As described by scientists, the differences in both skull size and jaw structure between Flores Man and Homo sapiens can be explained in terms of microcephaly.

Another eminent human evolution researcher, the anthropologist Dr. Alan Thorne from the Australian National University, stated that the Flores Man finding merely showed that “no one would have predicted that something like that was out there,” and noted that it was stretching the facts to claim that H. floresiensis represented a separate species. (4)

Robert Martin, a primatologist from Chicago’s Field Museum, and the archaeologist James Phillips made the following statement in support of the microcephaly theory with regard to Flores Man’s small brain volume:

“The lone skull came from a woman who had microcephaly, a rare disorder that causes a tiny head and brain. Microcephaly causes the face to grow at a normal rate, but not the head. People wind up with a sloping forehead and no chin — just like Hobbit.” (5) (Hobbit: The nickname given to Flores Man taken from the film The Lord of the Rings.)

In the face of these objections, the groundlessness of the description of Flores Man as a separate species from H. sapiens was once again revealed. Henneberg’s analyses were certainly largely responsible for this: given that the 4,000-year-old H. sapiens individual was announced to have suffered from microcephaly, why should Flores Man, with identical skull measurements, be described as a different species?

Perhaps the most striking interpretation of this debate over Flores Man came from Robert Matthews, an experienced science writer for the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph. Supporting the microcephaly view, Matthews criticised the desire to describe Flores Man as a separate species, and cited the Nebraska Man affair, one of the greatest scandals in the history of paleoanthropology, in revealing how baseless that desire was. Under the headline “Big Claims, meagre evidence; welcome to palaeontology,” Matthews wrote:

“Another week, and another spat between scientists over some old bones and claims to have found yet another new, further, different species of human. This time the controversy centres on the discovery of 18,000 year old bones belonging to a 3ft-tall type of human on Flores island in Indonesia.

… the scientists who dug them up had a paper in the journal Nature, declared them to be a new species of human, and given them a fancy-sounding Latin name: Homo floresiensis.

Then, in time-honoured tradition, other scientists lined up to dismiss the claim as premature. One leading expert on palaeoanatomy told the rival journal Science that the 18,000 year-old grapefruit-sized skull was similar to a skull found on Crete belonging to a 4,000 year-old specimen of boring old Homo sapiens with secondary microcephaly, a condition characterised by an abnormally small skull.

… Secondary microcephaly has a host of causes, from viral infection during pregnancy to injury or malnutrition shortly after birth. The specimens were found in an cave on an island. Who is to say that the island hadn’t been swept by an viral epidemic 18,000 years ago that had caused an outbreak of the condition? Or perhaps the occupants had fallen prey to it elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago, and been banished to Flores because of their odd appearance.

Nor is it inconceivable that those with secondary microcephaly could survive and even breed: the condition is not ineluctably linked to low intelligence. Indeed, neither is small brain size per se: the most important factor is the amount of grey matter. As this is not preserved in fossil remains, we have no idea whether those “hobbits” were bright, stupid or indifferent. What is clear is that palaeontologists are worryingly keen to base big claims on decidedly meagre evidence. It is a penchant that has not served them well in the past. In 1922, the American fossil expert Henry Fairfield Osborn made headlines by announcing the discovery of what he declared to be the first anthropoid ape ever found in America, which he named Hesperopithecus (“Ape from the Land of the Evening Sun”).

The distinguished anatomist Professor Grafton Elliot Smith of London University went further, insisting that Hesperopithecus was nothing less than “the earliest and most primitive member of the human family yet discovered”. And what was the basis of these dramatic claims ? A single fossilised tooth found in Nebraska.

Prof Smith’s response to those doubting the wisdom of relying on so little evidence was remarkably similar to that now being wheeled out by the discoverers of the Hobbit-Men of Flores: “One would regard so momentous a conclusion with suspicion”, Prof Smith opined, “if it were not for the fact that the American savants’ authority in such matters is unquestionable”.

Such bluster did not deter the American Museum of Natural History from searching for more evidence. It duly turned up in Nebraska, and revealed “Hesperopithecus” to be nothing more than an extinct pig. Prof Smith later distinguished himself by creating the popular image of Neanderthals as knuckle-grazing morons, while backing claims that skull fragments found in England in 1912 belonged to the earliest-known ancestor of H. sapiens. It later emerged that Smith’s “typical” Neanderthal was actually a decidedly atypical male forced to stoop by severe arthritis. As for the skull fragments, they came from a quarry in Sussex known as Piltdown; need one say more.

None of this appears to have dulled the enthusiasm of palaeontologists for dangling ever more “species” off the family tree of mankind. All one needs is some unusual bone fragments plus a decent Latin dictionary and a place in palaeontological history is assured.

It all appears to hang on whether or not the bone fragments are deemed so “unusual” that they lie outside the limits of any known species. One shudders to think what conclusion palaeontologists would reach if presented with the bones of a modern-day pygmy and a Texan oilman.” (6)

Conclusion:

The fact revealed by both the latest scientific developments regarding Flores Man and by Matthews’ warning lesson from history is this: Evolutionist scientists and media share a great desire to describe and report newly discovered fossils as new species. As a result, just about every fossil discovery is announced to the accompaniment of a huge media furore and sensationalism, although these claims are then silently refuted in the period that follows.

These words by Robert Locke, executive editor for the magazine Discovering Archaeology, regarding research in the field of palaeoanthropology are like a description of the uncertainty and fanatical propaganda that pervade studies in this sphere:

“Perhaps no area of science is more contentious than the search for human origins. Elite paleontologists disagree over even the most basic outlines of the human family tree. New branches grow amid great fanfare, only to wither and die in the face of new fossil finds.” (7)

However, the imaginary scenario of human evolution, maintained by means of propaganda, demagogy, distortion and even falsehood, is condemned to be eliminated in the face of modern scientific findings. That is because concrete scientific discoveries reveal that life is too complex to have emerged by chance, and that the mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection cannot account for the existence of the genetic information in species’ DNA. The claims of evolution in that regard are left with no foundation in the face of discoveries made on an almost daily basis. It is therefore inevitable that the endeavours of those who imagine that recounting imaginary tales regarding the past based on similarities between bones is science will end in failure.

Man is a being created by God, together with all his flawless systems. This is revealed by God in the Qur’an:

He Who has created all things in the best possible way. He commenced the creation of man from clay; then produced his seed from an extract of base fluid; then formed him and breathed His Spirit into him and gave you hearing, sight and hearts. What little thanks you show! (Qur’an, 32: 7-9)

Under the pen name of Harun Yahya, Adnan Oktar has written some 250 works. His books contain a total of 46,000 pages and 31,500 illustrations. Of these books, 7,000 pages and 6,000 illustrations deal with the collapse of the Theory of Evolution. You can read, free of charge, all the books Adnan Oktar has written under the pen name Harun Yahya on these websites www.harunyahya.com

1- Nigel Hawkes, “Kidnap marks the latest chapter in Hobbit’s story,” Times Online, December 4, 2004; online at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1386936,00.html

2- Michael Balter, “Skeptics Question Whether Flores Hominid Is a New Species,” Science, Vol 306, Issue 5699, 1116 , November 12, 2004

3- Maciej Henneberg, “Why The ‘Hobbitt’ May Not Be a New Species of Humans;” online at: http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/000884.html

4- Heather Catchpole, “Tiny Human a Big Evolutionary Tale,” October 27, 2004; online at: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20041025/tinyhuman.html

5- Jim Ritter, “Experts here knock claim of new ‘Hobbit’ species,” Chicago Sun-Times, November 16, 2004; online at: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-human16.html

6- Robert Matthews, “Big claims, meagre evidence; welcome to palaeontology,” The Telegraph, December 8, 2004; online at: http://gardening.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2004/12/08/ecrqed08.xml

7- Robert Locke, “Family Fights,” Discovering Archaeology, July/August 1999, pp. 36-39