as recently as the 1980's

adverb He came to see me recently.) recientemente

recently adv últimamente / recientemente / hace poco

tr['riːsəntlɪ]

adverb

1 (lately) recientemente, últimamente

■ I've seen a lot of her recently últimamente la he visto bastante

2 (a short time ago) hace poco

■ until recently everyone thought it was impossible hasta hace poco todos pensaron que era imposible

• recientemente adv.

• recién adv.

• últimamente adv.

adverb recientemente

['riːsntlɪ]

1) (=not long ago) recientemente, hace poco, recién (LAm)

2) (=lately) últimamente, recientemente

3) (before pp) recién

* * *

adverb recientemente

(1934-1980)

   Important political leader in the early years of post-1974 Portugal. Trained and educated as a lawyer at the University of Lisbon Law School, he was an up-and-coming young lawyer and liberal Catholic activist in the 1960s. A practicing lawyer in Oporto, Sá Carneiro was selected to be one of a number of younger deputies in the National Assembly during the brief "opening" phase of Prime Minister Marcello Caetano's period of the Estado Novo. He became a deputy upon consenting to adhere to two conditions for his selection; namely, maintaining Portugal's colonial policy in Africa and advocating "social peace" through reforms. But he refused to join the regime's official movement, the União Nacional. Soon discouraged by the continued intransigence of the conservative forces still controlling regime policy, despite the efforts of Caetano during 1968-70, Sá Carneiro and several others of the recently appointed deputies resigned their posts and went into opposition.

   Following the Revolution of 25 April 1974, Sá Carneiro and colleagues founded the Social Democrat Party (PSD). The highly respected lawyer and spokesman for centrist views became fully involved in the unstable politics of the early Revolutionary period. Named prime minister in January 1980, Sá Carneiro became the political man of the hour in Portugal. The PSD under Sá Carneiro leadership formed the core of a right of center electoral coalition named the Democratic Alliance (AD), which was composed of the PSD, Christian Democratic Party (CDS), and PPM during the

   December 1979 interim parliamentary elections. The AD won the election and Sá Carneiro became prime minister. The regular October 1980 legislative elections, which the AD won, reaffirmed the AD's strength as a coalition. Anxious to consolidate political power by having a president who favored AD policies in office and eager to have the AD candidate, General Soares Carneiro, defeat the incumbent, President Ramalho Eanes, Sá Carneiro undertook a vigorous campaign in the presidential elections set for 7 December 1980. On 4 December, bound for Oporto campaign stops, Sá Carneiro's plane crashed and burned only a short distance from the Lisbon airport. Seven official investigations of the crash have not reached definitive conclusions, and the cause of the crash remains a mystery.

    See also Political parties.

   Portugal is a small Western European nation with a large, distinctive past replete with both triumph and tragedy. One of the continent's oldest nation-states, Portugal has frontiers that are essentially unchanged since the late 14th century. The country's unique character and 850-year history as an independent state present several curious paradoxes. As of 1974, when much of the remainder of the Portuguese overseas empire was decolonized, Portuguese society appeared to be the most ethnically homogeneous of the two Iberian states and of much of Europe. Yet, Portuguese society had received, over the course of 2,000 years, infusions of other ethnic groups in invasions and immigration: Phoenicians, Greeks, Celts, Romans, Suevi, Visigoths, Muslims (Arab and Berber), Jews, Italians, Flemings, Burgundian French, black Africans, and Asians. Indeed, Portugal has been a crossroads, despite its relative isolation in the western corner of the Iberian Peninsula, between the West and North Africa, Tropical Africa, and Asia and America. Since 1974, Portugal's society has become less homogeneous, as there has been significant immigration of former subjects from its erstwhile overseas empire.

   Other paradoxes should be noted as well. Although Portugal is sometimes confused with Spain or things Spanish, its very national independence and national culture depend on being different from Spain and Spaniards. Today, Portugal's independence may be taken for granted. Since 1140, except for 1580-1640 when it was ruled by Philippine Spain, Portugal has been a sovereign state. Nevertheless, a recurring theme of the nation's history is cycles of anxiety and despair that its freedom as a nation is at risk. There is a paradox, too, about Portugal's overseas empire(s), which lasted half a millennium (1415-1975): after 1822, when Brazil achieved independence from Portugal, most of the Portuguese who emigrated overseas never set foot in their overseas empire, but preferred to immigrate to Brazil or to other countries in North or South America or Europe, where established Portuguese overseas communities existed.

   Portugal was a world power during the period 1415-1550, the era of the Discoveries, expansion, and early empire, and since then the Portuguese have experienced periods of decline, decadence, and rejuvenation. Despite the fact that Portugal slipped to the rank of a third- or fourth-rate power after 1580, it and its people can claim rightfully an unusual number of "firsts" or distinctions that assure their place both in world and Western history. These distinctions should be kept in mind while acknowledging that, for more than 400 years, Portugal has generally lagged behind the rest of Western Europe, although not Southern Europe, in social and economic developments and has remained behind even its only neighbor and sometime nemesis, Spain.

   Portugal's pioneering role in the Discoveries and exploration era of the 15th and 16th centuries is well known. Often noted, too, is the Portuguese role in the art and science of maritime navigation through the efforts of early navigators, mapmakers, seamen, and fishermen. What are often forgotten are the country's slender base of resources, its small population largely of rural peasants, and, until recently, its occupation of only 16 percent of the Iberian Peninsula. As of 1139—10, when Portugal emerged first as an independent monarchy, and eventually a sovereign nation-state, England and France had not achieved this status. The Portuguese were the first in the Iberian Peninsula to expel the Muslim invaders from their portion of the peninsula, achieving this by 1250, more than 200 years before Castile managed to do the same (1492).

   Other distinctions may be noted. Portugal conquered the first overseas empire beyond the Mediterranean in the early modern era and established the first plantation system based on slave labor. Portugal's empire was the first to be colonized and the last to be decolonized in the 20th century. With so much of its scattered, seaborne empire dependent upon the safety and seaworthiness of shipping, Portugal was a pioneer in initiating marine insurance, a practice that is taken for granted today. During the time of Pombaline Portugal (1750-77), Portugal was the first state to organize and hold an industrial trade fair. In distinctive political and governmental developments, Portugal's record is more mixed, and this fact suggests that maintaining a government with a functioning rule of law and a pluralist, representative democracy has not been an easy matter in a country that for so long has been one of the poorest and least educated in the West. Portugal's First Republic (1910-26), only the third republic in a largely monarchist Europe (after France and Switzerland), was Western Europe's most unstable parliamentary system in the 20th century. Finally, the authoritarian Estado Novo or "New State" (1926-74) was the longest surviving authoritarian system in modern Western Europe. When Portugal departed from its overseas empire in 1974-75, the descendants, in effect, of Prince Henry the Navigator were leaving the West's oldest empire.

   Portugal's individuality is based mainly on its long history of distinc-tiveness, its intense determination to use any means — alliance, diplomacy, defense, trade, or empire—to be a sovereign state, independent of Spain, and on its national pride in the Portuguese language. Another master factor in Portuguese affairs deserves mention. The country's politics and government have been influenced not only by intellectual currents from the Atlantic but also through Spain from Europe, which brought new political ideas and institutions and novel technologies. Given the weight of empire in Portugal's past, it is not surprising that public affairs have been hostage to a degree to what happened in her overseas empire. Most important have been domestic responses to imperial affairs during both imperial and internal crises since 1415, which have continued to the mid-1970s and beyond. One of the most important themes of Portuguese history, and one oddly neglected by not a few histories, is that every major political crisis and fundamental change in the system—in other words, revolution—since 1415 has been intimately connected with a related imperial crisis. The respective dates of these historical crises are: 1437, 1495, 1578-80, 1640, 1820-22, 1890, 1910, 1926-30, 1961, and 1974. The reader will find greater detail on each crisis in historical context in the history section of this introduction and in relevant entries.

   LAND AND PEOPLE

   The Republic of Portugal is located on the western edge of the Iberian Peninsula. A major geographical dividing line is the Tagus River: Portugal north of it has an Atlantic orientation; the country to the south of it has a Mediterranean orientation. There is little physical evidence that Portugal is clearly geographically distinct from Spain, and there is no major natural barrier between the two countries along more than 1,214 kilometers (755 miles) of the Luso-Spanish frontier. In climate, Portugal has a number of microclimates similar to the microclimates of Galicia, Estremadura, and Andalusia in neighboring Spain. North of the Tagus, in general, there is an Atlantic-type climate with higher rainfall, cold winters, and some snow in the mountainous areas. South of the Tagus is a more Mediterranean climate, with hot, dry, often rainless summers and cool, wet winters. Lisbon, the capital, which has a fifth of the country's population living in its region, has an average annual mean temperature about 16° C (60° F).

   For a small country with an area of 92,345 square kilometers (35,580 square miles, including the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and the Madeiras), which is about the size of the state of Indiana in the United States, Portugal has a remarkable diversity of regional topography and scenery. In some respects, Portugal resembles an island within the peninsula, embodying a unique fusion of European and non-European cultures, akin to Spain yet apart. Its geography is a study in contrasts, from the flat, sandy coastal plain, in some places unusually wide for Europe, to the mountainous Beira districts or provinces north of the Tagus, to the snow-capped mountain range of the Estrela, with its unique ski area, to the rocky, barren, remote Trás-os-Montes district bordering Spain. There are extensive forests in central and northern Portugal that contrast with the flat, almost Kansas-like plains of the wheat belt in the Alentejo district. There is also the unique Algarve district, isolated somewhat from the Alentejo district by a mountain range, with a microclimate, topography, and vegetation that resemble closely those of North Africa.

   Although Portugal is small, just 563 kilometers (337 miles) long and from 129 to 209 kilometers (80 to 125 miles) wide, it is strategically located on transportation and communication routes between Europe and North Africa, and the Americas and Europe. Geographical location is one key to the long history of Portugal's three overseas empires, which stretched once from Morocco to the Moluccas and from lonely Sagres at Cape St. Vincent to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is essential to emphasize the identity of its neighbors: on the north and east Portugal is bounded by Spain, its only neighbor, and by the Atlantic Ocean on the south and west. Portugal is the westernmost country of Western Europe, and its shape resembles a face, with Lisbon below the nose, staring into the

   Atlantic. No part of Portugal touches the Mediterranean, and its Atlantic orientation has been a response in part to turning its back on Castile and Léon (later Spain) and exploring, traveling, and trading or working in lands beyond the peninsula. Portugal was the pioneering nation in the Atlantic-born European discoveries during the Renaissance, and its diplomatic and trade relations have been dominated by countries that have been Atlantic powers as well: Spain; England (Britain since 1707); France; Brazil, once its greatest colony; and the United States.

   Today Portugal and its Atlantic islands have a population of roughly 10 million people. While ethnic homogeneity has been characteristic of it in recent history, Portugal's population over the centuries has seen an infusion of non-Portuguese ethnic groups from various parts of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Between 1500 and 1800, a significant population of black Africans, brought in as slaves, was absorbed in the population. And since 1950, a population of Cape Verdeans, who worked in menial labor, has resided in Portugal. With the influx of African, Goan, and Timorese refugees and exiles from the empire—as many as three quarters of a million retornados ("returned ones" or immigrants from the former empire) entered Portugal in 1974 and 1975—there has been greater ethnic diversity in the Portuguese population. In 2002, there were 239,113 immigrants legally residing in Portugal: 108,132 from Africa; 24,806 from Brazil; 15,906 from Britain; 14,617 from Spain; and 11,877 from Germany. In addition, about 200,000 immigrants are living in Portugal from eastern Europe, mainly from Ukraine. The growth of Portugal's population is reflected in the following statistics:

   1527 1,200,000 (estimate only)

   1768 2,400,000 (estimate only)

   1864 4,287,000 first census

   1890 5,049,700

   1900 5,423,000

   1911 5,960,000

   1930 6,826,000

   1940 7,185,143

   1950 8,510,000

   1960 8,889,000

   1970 8,668,000* note decrease

   1980 9,833,000

   1991 9,862,540

   1996 9,934,100

   2006 10,642,836

   2010 10,710,000 (estimated)

   1) A Unitary Search Process for All the Phenomena of Memory

   To what extent can we lump together what goes on when you try to recall: (1) your name; (2) how you kick a football; and (3) the present location of your car keys? If we use introspective evidence as a guide, the first seems an immediate automatic response. The second may require constructive internal replay prior to our being able to produce a verbal description. The third... quite likely involves complex operational responses under the control of some general strategy system. Is any unitary search process, with a single set of characteristics and inputoutput relations, likely to cover all these cases? (Reitman, 1970, p. 485)

   2) Semantic Memory Is a Mental Thesaurus

   [Semantic memory] Is a mental thesaurus, organized knowledge a person possesses about words and other verbal symbols, their meanings and referents, about relations among them, and about rules, formulas, and algorithms for the manipulation of these symbols, concepts, and relations. Semantic memory does not register perceptible properties of inputs, but rather cognitive referents of input signals. (Tulving, 1972, p. 386)

   3) The Development of Mnemonic Codes

   The mnemonic code, far from being fixed and unchangeable, is structured and restructured along with general development. Such a restructuring of the code takes place in close dependence on the schemes of intelligence. The clearest indication of this is the observation of different types of memory organisation in accordance with the age level of a child so that a longer interval of retention without any new presentation, far from causing a deterioration of memory, may actually improve it. (Piaget & Inhelder, 1973, p. 36)

   4) The Logic of Some Memory Theorization Is of Dubious Worth in the History of Psychology

   If a cue was effective in memory retrieval, then one could infer it was encoded; if a cue was not effective, then it was not encoded. The logic of this theorization is "heads I win, tails you lose" and is of dubious worth in the history of psychology. We might ask how long scientists will puzzle over questions with no answers. (Solso, 1974, p. 28)

   5) The Constituent Elements of Memory Theory

   We have iconic, echoic, active, working, acoustic, articulatory, primary, secondary, episodic, semantic, short-term, intermediate-term, and longterm memories, and these memories contain tags, traces, images, attributes, markers, concepts, cognitive maps, natural-language mediators, kernel sentences, relational rules, nodes, associations, propositions, higher-order memory units, and features. (Eysenck, 1977, p. 4)

   6) The Problem with the Memory Metaphor

   The problem with the memory metaphor is that storage and retrieval of traces only deals [ sic] with old, previously articulated information. Memory traces can perhaps provide a basis for dealing with the "sameness" of the present experience with previous experiences, but the memory metaphor has no mechanisms for dealing with novel information. (Bransford, McCarrell, Franks & Nitsch, 1977, p. 434)

   7) The Results of a Hundred Years of the Psychological Study of Memory Are Somewhat Discouraging

   The results of a hundred years of the psychological study of memory are somewhat discouraging. We have established firm empirical generalisations, but most of them are so obvious that every ten-year-old knows them anyway. We have made discoveries, but they are only marginally about memory; in many cases we don't know what to do with them, and wear them out with endless experimental variations. We have an intellectually impressive group of theories, but history offers little confidence that they will provide any meaningful insight into natural behavior. (Neisser, 1978, pp. 12-13)

   8) The Structure and Function of a Schema in Memory

   A schema, then is a data structure for representing the generic concepts stored in memory. There are schemata representing our knowledge about all concepts; those underlying objects, situations, events, sequences of events, actions and sequences of actions. A schema contains, as part of its specification, the network of interrelations that is believed to normally hold among the constituents of the concept in question. A schema theory embodies a prototype theory of meaning. That is, inasmuch as a schema underlying a concept stored in memory corresponds to the mean ing of that concept, meanings are encoded in terms of the typical or normal situations or events that instantiate that concept. (Rumelhart, 1980, p. 34)

   9) Competence and Performance in Theories of Memory

   Memory appears to be constrained by a structure, a "syntax," perhaps at quite a low level, but it is free to be variable, deviant, even erratic at a higher level....

   Like the information system of language, memory can be explained in part by the abstract rules which underlie it, but only in part. The rules provide a basic competence, but they do not fully determine performance. (Campbell, 1982, pp. 228, 229)

    10) Metaphors of Memory

   When people think about the mind, they often liken it to a physical space, with memories and ideas as objects contained within that space. Thus, we speak of ideas being in the dark corners or dim recesses of our minds, and of holding ideas in mind. Ideas may be in the front or back of our minds, or they may be difficult to grasp. With respect to the processes involved in memory, we talk about storing memories, of searching or looking for lost memories, and sometimes of finding them. An examination of common parlance, therefore, suggests that there is general adherence to what might be called the spatial metaphor. The basic assumptions of this metaphor are that memories are treated as objects stored in specific locations within the mind, and the retrieval process involves a search through the mind in order to find specific memories....

   However, while the spatial metaphor has shown extraordinary longevity, there have been some interesting changes over time in the precise form of analogy used. In particular, technological advances have influenced theoretical conceptualisations.... The original Greek analogies were based on wax tablets and aviaries; these were superseded by analogies involving switchboards, gramophones, tape recorders, libraries, conveyor belts, and underground maps. Most recently, the workings of human memory have been compared to computer functioning... and it has been suggested that the various memory stores found in computers have their counterparts in the human memory system. (Eysenck, 1984, pp. 79-80)

    11) Comparison of Primary Memory and Secondary Memory

   Primary memory [as proposed by William James] relates to information that remains in consciousness after it has been perceived, and thus forms part of the psychological present, whereas secondary memory contains information about events that have left consciousness, and are therefore part of the psychological past. (Eysenck, 1984, p. 86)

    12) Semantic Memory and Episodic Memory

   Once psychologists began to study long-term memory per se, they realized it may be divided into two main categories.... Semantic memories have to do with our general knowledge about the working of the world. We know what cars do, what stoves do, what the laws of gravity are, and so on. Episodic memories are largely events that took place at a time and place in our personal history. Remembering specific events about our own actions, about our family, and about our individual past falls into this category. With amnesia or in aging, what dims... is our personal episodic memories, save for those that are especially dear or painful to us. Our knowledge of how the world works remains pretty much intact. (Gazzaniga, 1988, p. 42)

    13) The Relation of Memory to Thinking

   The nature of memory... provides a natural starting point for an analysis of thinking. Memory is the repository of many of the beliefs and representations that enter into thinking, and the retrievability of these representations can limit the quality of our thought. (Smith, 1990, p. 1)

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

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The Wylam wagonway passed Newburn, and Hedley, who went to school at Wylam, must have been familiar with this wagonway from childhood. It had been built c.1748 to carry coal from Wylam Colliery to the navigable limit of the Tyne at Lemington. In 1805 Hedley was appointed viewer, or manager, of Wylam Colliery by Christopher Blackett, who had inherited the colliery and wagonway in 1800. Unlike most Tyneside wagonways, the gradient of the Wylam line was insufficient for loaded wagons to run down by gravity and they had to be hauled by horses. Blackett had a locomotive, of the type designed by Richard Trevithick, built at Gateshead as early as 1804 but did not take delivery, probably because his wooden track was not strong enough. In 1808 Blackett and Hedley relaid the wagonway with plate rails of the type promoted by Benjamin Outram, and in 1812, following successful introduction of locomotives at Middleton by John Blenkinsop, Blackett asked Hedley to investigate the feasibility of locomotives at Wylam. The expense of re-laying with rack rails was unwelcome, and Hedley experimented to find out the relationship between the weight of a locomotive and the load it could move relying on its adhesion weight alone. He used first a model test carriage, which survives at the Science Museum, London, and then used a full-sized test carriage laden with weights in varying quantities and propelled by men turning handles. Having apparently satisfied himself on this point, he had a locomotive incorporating the frames and wheels of the test carriage built. The work was done at Wylam by Thomas Waters, who was familiar with the 1804 locomotive, Timothy Hackworth, foreman smith, and Jonathan Forster, enginewright. This locomotive, with cast-iron boiler and single cylinder, was unsatisfactory: Hackworth and Forster then built another locomotive to Hedley's design, with a wrought-iron return-tube boiler, two vertical external cylinders and drive via overhead beams through pinions to the two axles. This locomotive probably came into use in the spring of 1814: it performed well and further examples of the type were built. Their axle loading, however, was too great for the track and from about 1815 each locomotive was mounted on two four-wheeled bogies, the bogie having recently been invented by William Chapman. Hedley eventually left Wylam in 1827 to devote himself to other colliery interests. He supported the construction of the Clarence Railway, opened in 1833, and sent his coal over it in trains hauled by his own locomotives. Two of his Wylam locomotives survive— Puffing Billy at the Science Museum, London, and Wylam Dilly at the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh—though how much of these is original and how much dates from the period 1827–32, when the Wylam line was re-laid with edge rails and the locomotives reverted to four wheels (with flanges), is a matter of mild controversy.

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See also: Stephenson, George

the generation of new ideas by approaching problems or existing practices in innovative or imaginative ways. Psychologists have disagreed on the nature of creativity. Until about 1980, research concentrated on identifying the personality traits of creative people, but more recently psychologists have focused on the mental processes involved. Creativity involves reexamining assumptions and reinterpreting facts, ideas, and past experience. A growing interest in creativity as a source of competitive advantage has developed in recent years, and creativity is considered important, not just for the development of new products and services, but also for its role in organizational decision making and problem solving. Many organizations actively seek a corporate culture that encourages creativity. There are a number of techniques used to foster creative thinking, including brainstorming and lateral thinking. Creativity is linked to innovation, the process of taking a new idea and turning it into a market offering.

(b. 1947) Gen Mgt

U.S. academic and consultant. Known for his theories such as the value chain designed to help businesses examine their competitive capabilities. In Competitive Strategy (1980), Porter argued that to gain competitive advantage, an organization needs to perform the activities in the value chain more cheaply or in a better way than its competitors. More recently, in response to thinkers such as Gary Hamel, he advised on using the value chain to achieve differentiation from other players in a market.

     Porter studied at Harvard, and at the age of 26 he became one of the youngest tenured professors in the school’s history. He has served as a counselor on competitive strategy to many leading U.S. and international companies and plays an active role in economic policy with the U.S. Congress, business groups, and as an advisor to foreign governments.