Thorium instead of Uranium?

Brazilian nuclear scientists are considering investing in research for substituting enriched Uranium in its power plants in Angra. The Center for Mineral Technology (CETEM / MCT) held on December 9 the Mini Forum Iberoeka Torio for scientists and business men from Brazil and Latin America. The use of thorium for energy isn't new even for the young Brazilian nuclear energy program (see reference IAEA) but it is still very hard to evaluate the amount if the mineral available for extraction.

Brazillian weather super-computer

INPE (National Institute for Space Research) has developed a computer (Tupã is its name) that has been considered to be among the most powerful in the World. With 258 trillion calculations per second, Tupã is now the third most powerful supercomputer dedicated to operational numerical prediction of weather and climate seasonality.

This XT6, from the company Cray, will improve accuracy and help with the Brazilian Model for Global Climate System that should help evaluate the effects of anthropogenic activities (eg, emissions of greenhouse gases, changes in vegetation, urbanization, etc.) on Natural Systems, extremely important for countries in development.

40 billion for Brazilian nuclear energy program

Brazil will try to reignite its nuclear energy program with an investment of R$40 billion (around US$20 billion) over the course of one year. There are today three power-plants in operation and the self sufficiency in enrichment of Uranium will receive a make over with the new program. Liliane Rank completed, in November 2009, the final report of this first phase of development, the "Study of the Supply Chain of the Brazilian Nuclear Program: background and prospects of the sector of nuclear power generation in Brazil" sees future growth in demand.

Will Brazil supply Uranium to Iran? Recently there was a global discussion whether Brazil should provide enriched Uranium to the controversial need for nuclear power of Iran in the Middle-East. There is no sign of advances in this subject since Iran is already enriching it themselves and so I don't think the new Brazilian program considers this issue at this point. I will provide updates on this in the future.

Germany recently in Brazil

Two things have happened recently between Germany and Brazil: The event "The year of Germany in Brazil" organised by the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) in partnership with Leopoldina - German National Academy of Sciences - and the visit of an IT delegation made to discuss the current scientific exchange and educational differences between these countries.

11 million dollars in search for European partnership

Brazil is investing U$11 million for creating partnerships between research institutions of this country and EU. The objective is to create an infrastructure for research and development of laboratories and to gather human resources for a better effective use of advanced technologies, with efficiency and international competitiveness. People and companies interested should submit the projects until the 8th of February 2011 and the maximum period for the execution of such project is 30 months. Take a look at the CNPq website http://www.cnpq.br/editais/ct/2010/066.htm

Burger King is now Brazilian?

Today, Wednesday the 2nd of September 2010, the Brazilian group 3G Capital based in New York have settled an agreement to purchase 46% of Burger King for U$4 billions. 3G Capital was founded by Marcel Telles, Jorge Paulo Lemann and Carlos Alberto Sicupira, currently major share holders of Imbed, biggest beer factory in the World, also Brazilian.

Green plastic? What is that?

The green plastic could come from Brazil. Green polymers is the focus of this ground-breking research that promisses to put Brazil in the fore front of the ecological development with the partnership between Braskem (privatly owned petrochemical company) and LNBIO (National Laboratory of Biosciences). The objective is to develop an economically competitive and sustainable "plastic" using raw materials from renewable sources after Braskem bought Quattor and part of Sunoco Chemicals, both frmo the U.S., earlier this year.

Rio Info 2010

Rio de Janeiro becomes the Brazilian national IT city with Rio Info 2010, the political event that gathers together 1500 people from hundreds of private companies and representatives of 10 states. For more information please visit www.rioinfo.com.br

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