Switzerland-Brazil Symposium - Challenges of Cities in the 21st Century Metropolis

The event is part of the agenda of the High Level Mission of Switzerland to Brazil, which takes place 26-30 August to deal with the deepening of bilateral scientific and technological relations issues of higher education in both countries and international cooperation in health.

How science and technology can help with the challenges modern cities face in this century? This is the question researchers, students, scientists, businessmen, representatives of civil society organizations and municipal government, state and federal are trying to answer.

Attended the opening ceremony of the Federal Councillor of Switzerland, Didier Burkhalter, president of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Carlos Aragon, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, the Swiss Ambassador Wilhelm Meier and chairman IAB / RJ, Sérgio Magalhães.

Brazil and Israel Partnership

Brazil and Israel are in the search for commercial partnership. Small and medium sized companies from both countries have until the 3rd of Novembre to submit their list of requirements for finding a business partner. IF partnership is successful, governments will finance import and export. BNDES, BNB and FINEP are the Brazilian departments to run the financial support; OCS is the Irealy investment department responsible.

$500 million for small business innovation projects

Innovation rate is one of the aspects highly considered for the RS$500 million invested by the Brazilian Government into private sector high-tech research projects.

The Financier of Studies and Projects (Finep) will invest the above sum into projects of up to RS$500,000 budget in 6 main areas: information technology and communication, energy, biotechnology, health, defence and social development. 40% of the total amount must go to micro and small companies and 30% must be invested on the poorest areas: North, Northeast and Midwest.

The focus of this investment is, among other things:

• Development of integrated circuits
• Projects for improvement of optoelectronic devices and microelectromechanical
• Systems, software or hardware, with great impact in the 2014 World Cup and the Olympics in 2016, able to leverage Brazilian companies to work on the foreign market in the areas of public safety, urban mobility and systems for e-gov
• Developing solutions for exploration and development fields in the offshore oil or gas, including basin modelling, seismic imaging and data acquisition and processing
• Innovations in bio products for nitrogen fixation in grasses and legumes
• Development of bio products for use in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, which use active ingredients and essences taken from the Brazilian biodiversity, and for rapid diagnosis of infectious, degenerative and genetic diseases
• Integrated solutions for autonomous flight, including takeoff and landing and automatic optical and infrared systems for unmanned air vehicles
• Systems for widespread access to broadband Internet, to meet the digital inclusion public policies in urban and rural areas

(See the official announcement in Portuguese.)

Good news: there is an active community for information systems professionals

Searching for Investment on Information Systems (IS) in South (or Latin) America I found this great resourceful web siter: The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries.

Search for "Brazil" and you will find the most relevant academic papers published about Brazilian's IS market and research results in English. It is so interesting and large that people interested would take days (if not week) to read it all. It is a blessing for me as an Systems Analyst who rely on these subjects to feed this blog and my curiosity.

Reading through so paper I found this: The Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) that will take place in Peru this year, 2010. This is a global initiative from The Association for Information Systems (AIS) that envisages, among other things:

• creating a professional identity for IS educators, researchers and professionals
• promoting communications and interaction among members
• establishing standards of practice, ethics, and education in the IS community

I will study this community a bit further and hopefully I will be able to participate and add value to it.

Flavio Pinto independent journalist in need for clicks

Attention everyone: independent journalists from South America need you support!

Please take a look at Flavio Pinto's web site for which he was assault on the streets by a corrupt politician. This is serious and very useful to know.

* http://www.lucioflaviopinto.com.br/

$7 million for research on yeast, fermentation taken seriously.

Brazilian government wants to create the National Network for Yeast Research because of its super-important usage in biotechnology and genetics. The goal with the investment of R$7 million (about US$4 million) is to increasing scientific knowledge on wild yeasts in Brazil and its potential application; discover new routes and fermentation technology products based on yeast, increase efficiency and technological innovation in industrial bioprocesses based on yeast; articulate and integrate more effectively the groups that research yeast in Brazil, and increase integration between research institutions and the industry.

National Council of Scientific Development (CNPq) is the responsible for this proposal and the investment comes from the Biotechnology Sector Fund (FSB).

Innovation Support Program is the new set of investments Brazilian IT will get

R$500 million (about US$280 million) are to be invested in untaxed incentives for the private section of all markets to improve IT development and research. This means that companies willing to develop technologies for:

• Information Technology
• Nanotechnology / Biotechnology
• Health
• Defence
• Social Development
• Renewable Energy
• Electric Car

The President and the Ministry responsible have also agreed on further R$100 million (about US$60 million) for the Brazilian companies to improve preparation of plans and projects for Innovation Management.

These public resources will be managed by the Financier of Studies and Projects (FINEP), are part of the Productive Development Policy (PDP) and count with the partnership of the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), the Brazilian Service of Support to Micro and Small Enterprises (Sebrae), the National Development Bank (BNDES) and the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade (MDIC).

Governmental Research Units of Brazil

List of researching units managed and represented by the Ministry of Science and Technology:

	CBPF - Brazilian Center for Physics Research		CEITEC S.A. - Center of Excellence in Advanced Electronic Technology		CETEM - Mineral Technology Center
	CETENE - Center for Strategic Technologies of Northeast		CTI - Center for Information Technology Renato Archer		IBICT - Brazilian Institute of Information Science and Technology
	IDSM - Institute for Sustainable Development Mamirauá		IMPA - National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics		INPA - Institute of Amazonian Research
	INPE - National Institute for Space Research		INSA - National Institute for the Semi-Arid		INT - National Institute of Technology
	LNA - National Laboratory of Astrophysics		LNCC - National Laboratory for Scientific Computing		LNLS - National Laboratory of Synchrotron Light
	MAST - Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences		MPEG - Goeldi Museum		ON - ational Observatory
	RNP - National Education and Research

Society for the Advancement of Science: What Nuclear Energy is for?

The ExpoT&C 2010 is the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC) will present the applications for nuclear energy in the event that occur between 25 and 30 July 2010.

The National Commission of Nuclear Energy (CNEN) stand will show to the visitor of the city Natal, capital of the state Rio Grande do Norte, that Brazil, since 1956, has been widely using this type of energy for medicine, industry, electricity generation, agriculture (food irradiation to sterilize it), environmental area and in research activities.

Synchronization of Chaotic Systems and the Dynamic Systems Theory

Brazil is hosting, at the Brazilian's National Institute for Space Research (INPE), one of the most intriguing scientific forum in the World: the Dynamics Days. Started in 1980 this annual meeting aims to discuss Dynamic Systems, chaos and nonlinear phenomena, exploring these theories in natural fields such as biology, chemistry, astronomy, physics, mechanics and electronics.

Some of the most important researchers in the area attended, including some pioneers like the professor Edward Ott, the Brazilian researcher Celso Grebogi, the Unitedstatian James Yorke and Louis Pecora.

The Dynamics Days South America 2010 will happen between 25th and the 30th of July 2010.

National development index to improve innovation in Brazil

Big news: "national development" is now requirement to all governmental purchases and bids.

Currently the bids are made not just on cheapest prices but it is also based on something called "The Preference Margin" which takes into account if the purchase (or acquisition) will generate jobs and collect taxes. Now the development of technological innovation is part of the math and must count 25% of the preference margin index.

According to the Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT), Luiz Antonio Rodrigues Elias, "The measure looks at the power of the purchase of the government as an inductive tool of innovation in Brazil."

Well done Lula!

One more profitable partnership between Brazil and Spain

Spain is tightening ties with Brazilian booming scientific society. Yesterday (19th July 2010) the Minister for Science and Innovation in Spain met up with The Brazilian Minister of Science and Technology Sergio Rezende to discuss how to profit on on Science and Technology.

Spain is on top of Solar Power research and Brazil has the Brazilian Technology System (Sibratec) that reward small and medium companies that invest in technological research. Joining these two governmental initiatives both countries hope to find a way to improve National Health and Renewable Energy, something that the ministers believe will set a good foundation for a better competitiveness.

Sergio Rezende handed over a copy of the PACT report and both agreed that, apart from the sectors of health and energy, biotechnology, nanotechnology and biofuels should also be benefited with a bilateral agreement.

In the past Spain has enjoyed partnering with Brazil's top scientists:

• Small companies investments
• Nanotechnology research

See also the project of Satellite for Oceans Study, project that Spain didn't want to participate in the past

Analyzing gases of big cities is serious business

Grid computing (technology used in the integration of different computational resources) is going to be used by several South-American countries to monitor the quality of the air in mega-cities.

The infrastructure of this project consists of clusters located in the Centre for Modeling Mathematics, University of Chile, Santiago, and at CPTEC, Cachoeira Paulista (SP), connected to networks Assemble (Chile), RNP (Brazil) and Clara (Latin America). The project is called South American Emissions, Megacities and Climate (Saemc) and the goals are to measure and predict the quality of the air of four cities in South America: Santiago, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The gases that will be analyzed are carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and aerosol particles from burning and urban and industrial emissions, ozone and its precursors.

Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research now counts with the help of Brazilian researchers

Brazil is now part of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (Scor) where the vice president now is Ilana Wainer, professor of the Institute of Oceanography of the University of São Paulo (USP). She is specialized in Ocean-Atmosphere Interaction with Climate and will be representing Brazilian interest in this committee which is directly responsible for defining the direction of international oceanographic research.

She points out that the South Atlantic and Southern oceans, in particular, are objects of most interest since they directly influence the climate of Brazil. Brazil is at the vanguard of this type of scientific knowledge and should be of great help to gather data and to keep the ocean 'under control'.

Younger people have much to contribute to an Electronic Government

"First we must change the hierarchical culture within institutions. Who occupies a higher office must understand that younger people have much to contribute. The participation of all employees and the public is key", said Bertucci.

These wise words were part of Bertucci's presentation on 15th July 2010 at the conference "The Future of Electronic Government" that happened in Brazil. Bertucci is Executive-Director of the International Governance Solutions (IGS) and their knowledge is very important to keep a third world country competitive through investments in Information Technology.

The main barrier to create a nation wide communication scheme is to have one single database and structure a governmental company to provide on-line services and to develop applications that opens up the public expenses and help standardize people's access to important (vital) public information.

It is the first step towards a better place, but it is still 20 years late...

Biology and Computer Science? You must be talking about DNA scan

The Brazilian National Laboratory for Scientific Computation (LNCC) opened up its Bioinformatics Laboratory (LABINFO) for the first course on Metagenomic Analysis With the Use of Second Generation Platform for DNA Sequencing.

40 South-American students benefited from the 10 days tuition that aimed to upgrade the general scientific knowledge of the mechanisms for bioinformatics and database analysis adopted today in metagenomics (the study of populations different from microorganisms). The advanced platform presented as the latest in DNA sequencing was 454 da Roche.

According to Gustavo Gregocci, PhD in Biology from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP): "Computer science is crucial in the selection of data taken after a race over a sequence."

I hope this promotes the use of technology on a field traditionally no so 'into it', like Biology.

Improving competitiveness through energy efficiency

Energy efficiency is a topic of debate in the Brazilian government right now. Its incredible natural resources allowed this country to have cheap hydroelectric power-plants but also stopped technological development of renewable energy research. This week though, the Center for Management and Strategic Studies (CGEE / MCT), in Brasilia, is the place where the Technological Development and Innovation (Setec) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT) meet up to discuss the energy's future.

The challenge for government is to achieve the 2030 target of 10% of electrical energy conservation. Some say that this is only doable with the complete substitution of incandescent light-bulbs and the development of long-term policy aiming energy efficiency improvements.

The day that car manufacturers' lobby failed

The first fast train of Brazil is due to be ready by 2016, when the Olympic Games occur. It will connect Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo (the biggest business axis) and it represents the revitalization of the train system of a country with continental proportions. The Congress must pass a law to create the High Speed Rail SA (Etaves), a state owned company under the Ministry of Transport.

For many years the lack of investment in trains in Brazil was said to be a result a of a well sponsored lobby of the car manufacturers to make this massive country depend on 4 wheel vehicles to distribute its goods. If this is true or not I don't know but it certainly sounds like right. Now the left-wing government has decided to ignore such "sponsorship" and actually help the people to have a better life.

51st International Mathematical Olympiad

51st International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), which takes place until tomorrow (14) in the city of Astana, Kazakhstan, has already granted Brazil with 2 Silver medals and 1 Bronze.

The 6 students participating of the Brazilian delegation had to resolve 3 math problems in under 4 hours and 30 minutes. Since 1979 Brazil has won 8 gold, 23 silver and 59 bronze. The entities involved in this competition are:

• Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad (OBM)
  
• Brazilian Mathematical Society (SBM)
  
• National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (Impa / MCT)
  
• National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq / MCT) -- supported by
  
• National Institute of Science Technology Mathematics (INCT - Mat) -- supported by
  

I certainly hope trend carries on and education becomes a major investment concern to the government there.

Small actions can bring big institutions together

Educational institutions of Brazil that are promoting post-graduation courses can apply to receive Techno-Kit, which is a Linux Server with Apache, MySQL, PHP, DSpace and Seer installed.

This is a small initiative (part of the "Projects for Implementation of Institutional Repositories") that will help small, but creative, institutions to develop web systems and services that could help improving the spectrum of the subjects researched, help with project micro-management and improve visibility of scientific results.

Governmental departments involved are:

• Foundation for Science, Technology and Space Applications (FUNCATE), 
• In agreement with the Financier of Studies and Projects (FINEP / MCT), 
• Executed by the Brazilian Institute of Information Science and Technology (Ibict).

Some of the institutions beneficiary are:

• University of Brasilia
• Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
• National Institute of Technology
• National Institute of Metrology, Standardization and Industrial Quality
• Foundation for the Technological Center of Minas Gerais
• Goeldi Museum
• University of São Paulo