domingo, 31 de outubro de 2010

Dilma é a próxima presidente do Brasil


Comemorar agora e trabalhar logo amanhã de manhã. Qualquer analista de plantão sabe que os desafios e problemas pela frente são muitos. A oposição está unida e elegeu muitos governadores.

Ser a primeira mulher e ser eleita presidente com suporte de um presidente com alta popularidade traz desafios enormes; governar sem interferência e mostrar que é capaz de uma liderança politica e ainda manter uma economia e as reformas necessarias. Tem ainda que conseguir se livrar dos petistas radicais que estão de plantão.

veja reportagem do The Guardian

Dilma Rousseff wins Brazil's presidential election
Dilma Rousseff wins election in Brazil with 55% of the vote, beating José Serra, who trailed on 44%

Dilma Rousseff, who has won the election for president of Brazil, greets supporters in the city of Porto Alegre. Photograph: Nabor Goulart/AP
A former Marxist rebel who was jailed and tortured during Brazil's military dictatorship last night became the first female president in her country's history.

With 96% of votes counted, Dilma Rousseff had 55.72% of the vote while her rival, José Serra from Brazil's Social Democracy Party (PSDB), trailed on 44.28%.

"I thank Brazilian men and women for this moment," said 62-year-old Rousseff as she left her home in Brasilia last night en route to celebrations.

"I promise to honour the trust they have shown in me."

An estimated 135 million Brazilians went to the polls yesterday to choose between Rousseff, the handpicked successor of Brazil's Workers' Party (PT) president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Serra, a 68-year-old former health minister who was running for president for the second, and almost certainly last, time.

Rousseff had looked badly deflated after being forced into a second-round run-off with Serra earlier this month but recent polls showed her pulling away, largely thanks to Lula's growing involvement in her campaign.

She won a landslide victory in Brazil's impoverished northeast, where Lula was born, polling nearly 66% compared to Serra's 27.5% and also dominated much of the Amazon region.

Rousseff takes power in a country on the rise, which is expected to be the world's fifth-largest economy by the time it hosts the 2016 Summer Olympics.

In the lead-up to the election José Eduardo Dutra, the president of the PT, said voters had been offered the choice of "a model that attempted to include all Brazilians" and one that promoted "income concentration and … the growth of one group of Brazilians".

"Dilma's government will advance further in terms of reducing inequality," he said.

In a televised debate on Friday night, Rousseff, a notoriously tough technocrat who underwent plastic surgery in a bid to boost her appeal, said: "I promise to create a country filled with opportunities for everyone, where millions of Brazilians are able to enjoy access to the material benefits of civilization."

"Twenty-eight million Brazilians have been lifted out of poverty and I will remove the remaining 20 million."

Despite the buoyant mood among PT leaders last night, the race for Brazil's presidency has inspired few voters on either side, with neither candidate enjoying Lula's flair or wit.

Observers described the vote as more of a referendum on Lula, while the front-page headline of one Rio newspaper yesterday exclaimed: "Phew! It's over."

Many supporters hope Lula, who is likely to leave power on January 1 with approval ratings of over 80%, will attempt a comeback, possibly as early as 2014, the year Brazil hosts the World Cup.

"There is a big possibility of … president [Lula] being a candidate again either in 2014 or in 2018," admitted Marcia Carvalho Lopes, Brazil's social development and hunger minister and a PT member.

Before then the new government will face a barrage of issues, not least fighting what the country's finance minister recently called a global "currency war".

The value of Brazil's currency, the real, has ballooned since president Lula took power, leaving exporters despondent and leading Goldman Sachs to classify it as the most overvalued currency on earth.

Public security remains a major problem, despite some advances, with nearly 50,000 homicides per year. South America's largest nation is also facing a growing crack-cocaine crisis. A recent study by the Cebrid thinktank claimed nearly 9% of 9-18-year-old Brazilians use the drug.

With Brazil's economy booming, analysts say investment in infrastructure and education is needed to sustain growth .

"Brazil will only leave behind its position as an emerging power and become a developed country if we guarantee quality education to our children," Rousseff admitted last week.

sábado, 30 de outubro de 2010

Estatistica!!!!!!




October 29, 2010, 3:35 PM
The Dark Art of Statistical Deception
By TARA PARKER-POPE

Will sprinters one day break the sound barrier? Do Olympic athletes win more medals if they wear red? And can a simple formula predict happiness?


Sigrid Estrada
Charles Seife
While those questions may sound absurd, various studies have found a way to prove them true through statistical manipulation of numbers and data. The tendency of academics, politicians and pundits to generate such numerical falsehoods from data — and the tendency of the public to believe the results — is a phenomenon cleverly explored in the new book “Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception,” by Charles Seife.

Mr. Seife, a writer and professor of journalism at New York University, makes a compelling case that numbers have a unique hold on the human mind, and that we are routinely bamboozled by phony data, bogus statistics and bad math. I recently spoke with Mr. Seife, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Economist and elsewhere, about the role that proofiness plays in health and medical research. Here’s our conversation.

Q.
What is “proofiness?”

A.
It’s the mathematical analog of Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness.” It’s using numbers to prove what you know in your heart is true, even when you know it’s not. Numbers have a particular ability to fool us. It’s using that ability to turn nonsense into something that is believable with numbers.

Q.
Was there any particular case or event that inspired you to dedicate an entire book to this phenomenon?

A.
I’ve been gathering thread about the book since my college days. I was always a split personality, studying to be a mathematician but drawn to writing and journalism. One of the things that drove me to journalism was my annoyance at how innumerate the media seemed to be. We just don’t seem to be able to handle numbers. I wound up picking out little stories where people were deceived by numbers. I thought initially it would be a fun little book about the silly ways people’s thinking can go wrong, but it turned into something much more sinister — the idea that mathematical deception is playing a large role in the way our society was run.

Q.
You write about the fact that numbers have enormous power over our thinking. Why is that?

A.
From school days, we are trained to treat numbers as platonic, perfect objects. They are the closest we get to absolute truth. Two plus two always equals four. Numbers in the abstract are pure, perfect creatures. The numbers we deal with in the real world are different. They’re created by humans. And we humans are fallible. Our measurements have errors. Our research misses stuff, and we lie sometimes. The numbers we create aren’t perfect platonic ideals. They are mixed with falsehood, but we don’t recognize that.

Q.
In the book you make the point that bad math can undermine both the political and judicial process. How can it affect medicine and health?

A.
One of the things our minds are designed to do is pick up patterns. If you eat a bit of bad shrimp and get sick, your mind makes that association and you get an aversion to that food. We are extraordinary pattern-matchers. Anytime there is something that is happening, we try to find a cause. But sometimes in medicine, sometimes things are absolutely random. Our minds don’t accept that. We must find a cause for every effect.

A really good example is the autism issue. Whenever a parent has a child who ends up being autistic, the parent more than likely says, “What caused it? How did it happen? Is there anything I could have done differently?” This is part of the reason why people have been so down on the M.M.R. vaccine, because that seems like a proximate cause. It’s something that usually happened shortly before the autism symptoms appeared. So our minds immediately leap to the fact that the vaccine causes autism, when in fact the evidence is strong that there is no link between the M.M.R. vaccine or any other vaccines and autism.

Q.
In the chapter titled “Rorschach’s Demon,” you coin the term “causuistry.” Can you explain the word?

A.
Casuistry is using bogus arguments through seemingly sound principles. Causuistry is my shorthand for wrongly implying causation. The issue is that in medicine or any other field of study, it’s really easy to show that two things are linked in some manner. Something rises, something else falls. As energy consumption rises, so does life expectancy. However, it’s a fallacy to say without other evidence that one is causing the other. You can’t say building more power plants will cause us to live longer. In fact, what’s going on in this example, there is an underlying cause affecting both. The more technological a society is, the more power plants it has, the longer its people live. It’s very easy for a researcher to mistake a correlation for causation. It’s very hard to show that one thing causes the other.

Q.
Can you give me another example of causuistry?

A.
A number of years ago there was a study that showed the higher your credit card debt, the worse your health. The conclusion seemed to be “Don’t carry a balance on your credit card, otherwise you’ll get sick.” It’s probably just the opposite. People who are sick are running up medical bills, missing work or maybe have lost their jobs. It’s not that credit cards cause bad health. It’s that bad health causes unpaid bills on your credit card.

Q.
Another word you use is “randumbness.” Can you explain it?

A.
We’re hard wired to reject the idea that there’s no reason for something happening. This is how Las Vegas makes its money. You’ll have people at the craps table thinking they’re set for a winning streak because they’ve been losing. And you’ll have people who have been winning so they think they’ll keep winning. Neither is true. These events are completely random. The universe doesn’t care if you’ve been winning or losing, but our minds see these pattens we think we can exploit, and this leads us to phony beliefs.

Randumbness is our stupidity about true randomness. We are unable to accept the fact that there’s not a pattern in certain things, so we project our own beliefs and patterns on data, which is pattern-free. In the journal Nature a few years ago, some researchers analyzed a number of Olympic sports and saw that people who wore red were winning more than people who wore blue. They concluded that red confers an advantage. This is nonsense. It was a random event. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, you can analyze the same events in the same way, and you find just the opposite. People who wore blue had a statistically significant advantage over people who wore red.

Q.
One of the tools researchers use to find patterns in data is the regression analysis. Why do you call this “regression to the moon?”

A.
A regression analysis is a tool for taking a set of data, a collection of points, and making sense of it with a formula. It’s a powerful technique because it allows you to present data in terms of things you think are relevant.

A good example is in economics. If you think elections are affected by the inflation rate and G.D.P. and the unemployment rate, you turn all of these things into a regression model, and you come up with a formula that predicts the president based on these variables. The problem is that if your initial assumptions don’t have a basis in reality, then it’s going to come up with an answer that makes it look like there’s a connection when in fact there isn’t. This straight regression analysis assumes everything is linear, that there’s a very simple equation that relates to these variables. But the real world isn’t linear. It’s complex.

Q.
How are we harmed by “causuistry,” “randumbness” and “regression to the moon?”

A.
There’s harm in bad research, and there’s harm in biased research. This is a problem the medical research community has been dealing with. We tend to think things work better or work at all when they in fact don’t. It’s undermining not just the information that doctors and consumers use, but also the scientific process in general. As people recognize that scientific studies are often not as objective and scientific as they seem, that they include biases and bad numbers, it undermines the credibility of an evidence-based medicine system.

Q.
So should we be skeptical of all scientific research? Can we believe anything we read?

A.
I think the biggest thing to take home is that you have the right to question research, the right to think this number doesn’t make sense. I think the best thing to do is if something doesn’t make sense to you, you’re going to learn something by examining it. Sniff it. Figure out where it’s coming from. A little degree of skepticism is usually warranted, especially when there is a number that doesn’t make sense.

sexta-feira, 29 de outubro de 2010

esqueça tudo o que voce aprendeu sobre como aprender




Este artigo do New York Times foi mencionado no blog Limi Lip
É interessante pois mostra que muitas dicas de como aprender ensinadas estão erradas

Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits
By BENEDICT CAREY

Every September, millions of parents try a kind of psychological witchcraft, to transform their summer-glazed campers into fall students, their video-bugs into bookworms. Advice is cheap and all too familiar: Clear a quiet work space. Stick to a homework schedule. Set goals. Set boundaries. Do not bribe (except in emergencies).

Ellen Weinstein
Well


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And check out the classroom. Does Junior’s learning style match the new teacher’s approach? Or the school’s philosophy? Maybe the child isn’t “a good fit” for the school.

Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how.

Yet there are effective approaches to learning, at least for those who are motivated. In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.

The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.

For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.

“We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”

Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.

Ditto for teaching styles, researchers say. Some excellent instructors caper in front of the blackboard like summer-theater Falstaffs; others are reserved to the point of shyness. “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”

But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.

The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.

“What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” said Dr. Bjork, the senior author of the two-room experiment.

Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.

The advantages of this approach to studying can be striking, in some topic areas. In a study recently posted online by the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, Doug Rohrer and Kelli Taylor of the University of South Florida taught a group of fourth graders four equations, each to calculate a different dimension of a prism. Half of the children learned by studying repeated examples of one equation, say, calculating the number of prism faces when given the number of sides at the base, then moving on to the next type of calculation, studying repeated examples of that. The other half studied mixed problem sets, which included examples of all four types of calculations grouped together. Both groups solved sample problems along the way, as they studied.

A day later, the researchers gave all of the students a test on the material, presenting new problems of the same type. The children who had studied mixed sets did twice as well as the others, outscoring them 77 percent to 38 percent. The researchers have found the same in experiments involving adults and younger children.

“When students see a list of problems, all of the same kind, they know the strategy to use before they even read the problem,” said Dr. Rohrer. “That’s like riding a bike with training wheels.” With mixed practice, he added, “each problem is different from the last one, which means kids must learn how to choose the appropriate procedure — just like they had to do on the test.”

These findings extend well beyond math, even to aesthetic intuitive learning. In an experiment published last month in the journal Psychology and Aging, researchers found that college students and adults of retirement age were better able to distinguish the painting styles of 12 unfamiliar artists after viewing mixed collections (assortments, including works from all 12) than after viewing a dozen works from one artist, all together, then moving on to the next painter.

The finding undermines the common assumption that intensive immersion is the best way to really master a particular genre, or type of creative work, said Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College and the lead author of the study. “What seems to be happening in this case is that the brain is picking up deeper patterns when seeing assortments of paintings; it’s picking up what’s similar and what’s different about them,” often subconsciously.

Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out.

“With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”

When the neural suitcase is packed carefully and gradually, it holds its contents for far, far longer. An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.

No one knows for sure why. It may be that the brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself self-reinforcing.

“The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” said Dr. Kornell. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively, the next time you see it.”

That’s one reason cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.

Dr. Roediger uses the analogy of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, which holds that the act of measuring a property of a particle (position, for example) reduces the accuracy with which you can know another property (momentum, for example): “Testing not only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the direction of more certainty, not less.

In one of his own experiments, Dr. Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke, who is now at Purdue University, had college students study science passages from a reading comprehension test, in short study periods. When students studied the same material twice, in back-to-back sessions, they did very well on a test given immediately afterward, then began to forget the material.

But if they studied the passage just once and did a practice test in the second session, they did very well on one test two days later, and another given a week later.

“Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”

Of course, one reason the thought of testing tightens people’s stomachs is that tests are so often hard. Paradoxically, it is just this difficulty that makes them such effective study tools, research suggests. The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget. This effect, which researchers call “desirable difficulty,” is evident in daily life. The name of the actor who played Linc in “The Mod Squad”? Francie’s brother in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”? The name of the co-discoverer, with Newton, of calculus?

The more mental sweat it takes to dig it out, the more securely it will be subsequently anchored.

None of which is to suggest that these techniques — alternating study environments, mixing content, spacing study sessions, self-testing or all the above — will turn a grade-A slacker into a grade-A student. Motivation matters. So do impressing friends, making the hockey team and finding the nerve to text the cute student in social studies.

“In lab experiments, you’re able to control for all factors except the one you’re studying,” said Dr. Willingham. “Not true in the classroom, in real life. All of these things are interacting at the same time.”

But at the very least, the cognitive techniques give parents and students, young and old, something many did not have before: a study plan based on evidence, not schoolyard folk wisdom, or empty theorizing.


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 8, 2010


An article on Tuesday about the effectiveness of various study habits described incorrectly the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics. The principle holds that the act of measuring one property of a particle (position, for example) reduces the accuracy with which you can know another property (momentum, for example) — not that the act of measuring a property of the particle alters that property.das

quinta-feira, 28 de outubro de 2010

Preços das comodities- Milho, trigo etc sobem




Bom para o Brasil que é exportador, mas espera-se também uma elevação dos preços nacionais e internacionais dos principais alimentos. Você já deve ter notado o aumento do etanol decorrente do preço do açúcar . Vários são os fatores, seca enchentes e especulação nas bolsas

Crisis forecast as prices reach record highs




Cost of meat, sugar, rice, wheat and maize soars as World Bank predicts five years of price volatility

• Six casualties of the world food crisis
• UN warned of major new food crisis at emergency meeting in Rome

Rising food prices and shortages could cause instability in many countries as the cost of staple foods and vegetables reached their highest levels in two years, with scientists predicting further widespread droughts and floods.
Although food stocks are generally good despite much of this year's harvests being wiped out in Pakistan and Russia, sugar and rice remain at a record price.
Global wheat and maize prices recently jumped nearly 30% in a few weeks while meat prices are at 20-year highs, according to the key Reuters-Jefferies commodity price indicator. Last week, the US predicted that global wheat harvests would be 30m tonnes lower than last year, a 5.5% fall. Meanwhile, the price of tomatoes in Egypt, garlic in China and bread in Pakistan are at near-record levels.
"The situation has deteriorated since September," said Abdolreza Abbassian of the UN food and agriculture organisation. "In the last few weeks there have been signs we are heading the same way as in 2008.
"We may not get to the prices of 2008 but this time they could stay high much longer."
However, opinions are sharply divided over whether these prices signal a world food crisis like the one in 2008 that helped cause riots in 25 countries, or simply reflect volatility in global commodity markets as countries claw their way through recession.
"A food crisis on the scale of two or three years ago is not imminent, but the underlying causes [of what happened then] are still there," said Chris Leather, Oxfam's food policy adviser.
"Prices are volatile and there is a lot of nervousness in the market. There are big differences between now and 2008. Harvests are generally better, global food stocks are better."
But other analysts highlight the food riots in Mozambique that killed 12 people last month and claim that spiralling prices could promote further political turmoil.
They say this is particularly possible if the price of oil jumps, if there are further climatic shocks – suchas the floods in Pakistan or the heatwave in Russia – or if speculators buy deeper into global food markets.
"There is growing concern among countries about continuing volatility and uncertainty in food markets," said Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank. "These concerns have been compounded by recent increases in grain prices.
"World food price volatility remains significant and in some countries, the volatility is adding to already higher local food prices."
The bank last week said that food price volatility would last a further five years, and asked governments to contribute to a crisis fund after requests for more than $1bn (£635m) from developing countries were made.
"The food riots in Mozambique can be repeated anywhere in the coming years," said Devinder Sharma, a leading Indian food analyst.
"Unless the world encourages developing countries to become self-sufficient in food grains, the threat of impending food riots will remain hanging over nations.
"The UN has expressed concern, but there is no effort to remove the imbalances in the food management system that is responsible for the crisis."
Mounting anger has greeted food price inflation of 21% in Egypt in the last year, along with 17% rises in India and similar amounts in many other countries. Prices in the UK have risen 22% in three years.
The governments of Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil and the Philippines have all warned of possible food shortages next year, citing floods and droughts in 2010, expected extreme weather next year, and speculation by traders who are buying up food stocks for release when prices rise.
Food prices worldwide are not yet at the same level as 2008, but the UN's food price index rose 5% last month and now stands at its highest level in two years.
World wheat and maize prices have risen 57%, rice 45% and sugar 55% over the last six months and soybeans are at their highest price for 16 months.
UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, says a combination of environmental degradation, urbanisation and large-scale land acquisitions by foreign investors for biofuels is squeezing land suitable for agriculture.
"Worldwide, 5m to 10m hectares of agricultural land are being lost annually due to severe degradation and another 19.5m are lost for industrial uses and urbanisation," he says in a new report.
"But the pressure on land resulting from these factors has been boosted in recent years by policies favouring large-scale industrial plantations.
"According to the World Bank, more than one-third of large-scale land acquisitions are intended to produce agrofuels."
But the World Development Movement (WDM) in London warned that food speculation by hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks was likely to prompt further inflation.
According to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, speculators on the trading floor of the Chicago Exchange bought futures contracts for about 40m tonnes of maize and 6m tonnes of wheat in the summer.
Longtime hedge fund manager Mike Masters, who has worked with WDM, said: "Because there is already much more capital available in the world than hard commodities, speculators can increase the price of consumable commodities, like foodstuffs or energy, much higher than traditional consumers and producers can react.
"When derivative markets are linked to commodity markets, this nearly unlimited capital from the financial sector can cause excessive price volatility."
US government reports of much cooler-than-normal water temperatures in the Pacific, which traditionally lead to extreme weather around the world, last week added to food price uncertainties.


quarta-feira, 27 de outubro de 2010

Ficha limpa está valendo





27/10/2010 - 21h05
Empate no Supremo mantém Lei da Ficha Limpa em vigor
Rosanne D'Agostino
Do UOL Eleições

Após mais de seis horas de discussão e diante de um novo impasse, o STF (Supremo Tribunal Federal) decidiu nesta quarta-feira (27) que o empate sobre a validade da Lei da Ficha Limpa deve ser interpretado em favor da decisão questionada. Continua valendo, desse modo, o entendimento do TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral) que aplicou a norma para as eleições 2010.

Peluso diz que solução é artificial
Supremo arquiva ação de Roriz, e Ficha Limpa continua sem decisão
Supremo não escapa de decisão sobre Ficha Limpa, dizem especialistas
Todos os ministros mantiveram os votos, e a análise sobre a aplicação da lei terminou novamente com um placar de 5 votos a 5. O plenário julgou recurso do candidato ao Senado Jader Barbalho (PMDB-PA), que foi definitivamente barrado por ter renunciado ao mandato em 2001.

Em debate acalorado, os ministros rejeitaram desempatar a questão com voto de qualidade do presidente da Corte, Cezar Peluso, ou esperar até que um novo ministro fosse nomeado para a vaga do aposentado Eros Grau.

Somente a discussão sobre o desempate durou mais de duas horas. A maioria, sete contra três, seguiu a proposta de Celso de Mello, de que o empate significa que prevalece a lei impugnada. Quatro ministros, no entanto, manifestaram preocupação com a solução encontrada.

“Tenho para mim que qualquer que seja a alternativa adotada para solucionar este caso, é sempre uma solução ficta”, repudiou Cezar Peluso, que fez questão de salientar que, contra sua opinião pessoal, proclamaria o resultado. “Eu disse que era uma decisão artificial, e de fato o é. (...) E é simplesmente pelo fato óbvio que não há maioria que decidiu. A solução aqui é recorrer à ficção. É como se houvesse uma maioria que decidiu. Mas não a há. Estamos num conjunto de impasses sucessivos. (...) Me parece que o prestígio da Corte está sendo posto em xeque. (...) A história nos julgará."

O que você achou da atuação do Supremo?
Dê sua opinião!
“O voto de qualidade pode ser inconveniente, mas não há nenhuma base para declará-lo inconstitucional”, defendeu Gilmar Mendes, que ironizou a discussão. “Daqui a pouco par ou ímpar, jogar dado, chamar um mago.”

“Para mim processo não tem capa, tem conteúdo. Não haverá decisão no caso concreto”, completou Marco Aurélio. Segundo ele, é como se o STF não tivesse recebido o recurso. “Que o Supremo não lave as mãos, que não deixe de se pronunciar”, apelou aos colegas.

O recurso de Barbalho, que teve o registro de candidatura barrado pelo TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral), é semelhante ao de Joaquim Roriz (PSC-DF), que terminou em impasse entre os ministros. O Supremo já havia reconhecido a repercussão geral, e o entendimento no caso deverá ser seguido pelos tribunais inferiores em processos idênticos.

Casos como o de Paulo Maluf (PP-SP), barrado por ter uma condenação judicial, não se enquadram no entendimento e terão de ser decididos um a um, o que pode trazer novamente a discussão ao Supremo. Até lá, um 11º ministro pode ser nomeado pelo presidente Lula, encerrando o empate.

Votos
Como relator do caso, o ministro Joaquim Barbosa, votou para aplicar a lei imediatamente. Ele afirmou que o tema já foi “exaustivamente discutido” no recurso de Roriz e manteve o voto que proferiu naquele julgamento.

Tenho para mim que qualquer que seja a alternativa adotada, é sempre uma solução ficta. (...) E é simplesmente pelo fato óbvio que não há maioria que decidiu. Me parece que o prestígio da Corte está sendo posto em xeque. (...) A história nos julgará
Cezar Peluso, presidente do Supremo Tribunal Federal
A comparação à liberação de Valdemar Costa Neto, decidida na noite desta terça (26) pelo TSE, provocou a primeira discussão no plenário. Envolvido em denúncias de participação no esquema do mensalão, ele renunciou ao cargo de deputado federal para evitar ser cassado.

Durante o voto de Marco Aurélio de Mello, Gilmar Mendes chamou a decisão do TSE de “casuísmo jurisprudencial”. O presidente do TSE, Ricardo Lewandowski, e a ministra Cármen Lúcia, relatora, defenderam a decisão. “Repilo qualquer insinuação de que o TSE esteja fazendo casuísmo jurisprudencial”, disse Lewandowski.

“Dificilmente vai se encontrar um caso de mais escancarada, de mais escarrada, desculpem a expressão, de retroatividade”, disse Gilmar Mendes, para quem há a possibilidade de “manipulação das eleições, porque vai se escolher candidato”. “Devemos ficar advertidos desses excessos de moralismos. Em geral, descambam em abusos quando o são notória e notoriamente falsos.” O ministro, em seu voto, classificou a aplicação imediata da norma de “convite para um salão de horrores”.

Assim, a votação sobre o caso terminou em 5x5 novamente. Ricardo Lewandowski, Cármen Lúcia, Ellen Gracie, Joaquim Barbosa e Ayres Britto voltaram a se manifestar pela aplicação imediata da lei. Foram contra Marco Aurélio, Dias Toffoli, Gilmar Mendes, Celso de Mello e Cezar Peluso.

Seria possível alguém que renunciou para não sofrer um processo ético, que usou o direito de não se autoincriminar, agir contrariamente ao direito, ter praticado um ato contrário à probidade administrativa ou a moralidade por exercício do cargo?
José Eduardo Alckmin, advogado de
Jader Barbalho
Leia mais
O advogado de Jader Barbalho, José Eduardo Alckmin, chegou a pedir a suspensão do julgamento até que outro ministro fosse nomeado. “Essa Corte não pode ficar paralisada”, rebateu Celso de Mello. “O tribunal deve procurar meios para superar esse impasse.” A maioria também rejeitou o adiamento.

Entenda a decisão sobre a Ficha Limpa
O STF começou a julgar a aplicação da norma em setembro, mas um impasse adiou a decisão até que outra contestação chegasse à Corte. Diante da indefinição e de decisões conflitantes da Justiça Eleitoral, candidatos mantiveram-se na disputa e, sub judice, receberam votos -que permanecem zerados enquanto não há decisão final sobre seus registros.

Jader Barbalho, segundo candidato ao Senado mais votado no Pará, foi barrado pela Lei da Ficha Limpa porque renunciou ao mandato de senador em 2001, para escapar de possível cassação por quebra de decoro.

A diferença com relação a Roriz é que Barbalho obteve o deferimento de seu registro de candidatura por duas vezes após ter renunciado. E foi eleito, em 2002 e 2006. Assim, sua defesa alegou que a retroatividade da lei iria prejudicar o candidato.

Fica muito evidente neste caso, talvez até mais que em outros, que a gravidade das denúncias objeto das representações oferecidas no Senado era tamanha que dificilmente haveria como impedir-se a cassação do mandato do senador Jader Barbalho. Não se tratava apenas de uma opção de conveniência política
Roberto Gurgel, procurador-geral da República
Leia mais
Caso o Supremo decidisse não aplicar a lei para estas eleições, ele e outros candidatos na mesma situação estariam eleitos. Os votos seriam contabilizados às legendas, e o quadro de vencedores, alterado.

Pela Lei da Ficha Limpa, o político que renunciar para não ser cassado fica inelegível por oito anos após o fim do mandato que cumpriria. Antes, eram três anos. A legislação também barra candidatos com condenação por decisão colegiada (por mais de um desembargador).

Demora
A divisão da Corte provocou desgaste. Os ministros foram unânimes em considerar a lei constitucional, mas cinco votaram para aplicar a norma nestas eleições, enquanto outros cinco entenderam que a aplicação imediata fere direitos dos candidatos, pois não entrou em vigor um ano antes da eleição como exige a Constituição.

Com a aposentadoria do ministro Eros Grau, para cuja vaga o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ainda não nomeou substituto, coube aos ministros decidirem se haveria desempate. Uma das possibilidades seria o voto de desempate do presidente, que votaria duas vezes. Sem consenso, o julgamento foi adiado.

Roriz contestou o mesmo ponto da legislação, mas o recurso perdeu o objeto depois que o candidato desistiu de concorrer ao governo do Distrito Federal para indicar a mulher, Weslian Roriz, em seu lugar na chapa.

Escolha do editor -Imunologia




By Edyta Zielinska
Auto-ups and -downs

The paper
S. Tsai et al., “Reversal of autoimmunity by boosting memory-like autoregulatory T cells,” Immunity, 32:568-80, 2010.
The finding
Autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis develop over many years and result in chronic diseases that flare and subside. While trying to kill the cells responsible for the disease in mice, Pere Santamaria at the University of Calgary and colleagues activated a set of mysterious immune cells—and in the process, potentially offered both a new explanation for why inflammation comes and goes, and a new way to reverse the disease.
The surprise
The plan was to create nanoparticles that would only kill the T cells attacking healthy tissue in mice, leaving the normal immune system intact. “But it didn’t work,” says Santamaria—at least, not how he expected.
The clues
Rather than killing immune cells, Santamaria found that his nanoparticles activated a population of autoreactive CD8 T cells that were present in diseased tissue, but whose function was unknown. They showed that the cells, when activated by the nanoparticles, suppressed the activation of more aggressive T cells that attack healthy tissue, thereby reducing autoimmune inflammation. The cells’ function defined, the authors reasoned that these autoreactive cells may become activated after each flare-up of autoimmunity, causing inflammation to wax and wane.



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Brasil Índice de prosperidade







Insegurança e baixa educação seguram Brasil em ranking de prosperidade

"Cristo Redentor"
Para relatório, Brasil é tolerante mas tem problemas de segurança

A falta de segurança, a qualidade da educação e a percepção de debilidade institucional impediram que o Brasil melhorasse em um ranking internacional de prosperidade elaborado pelo Instituto Legatum, que promove o desenvolvimento sustentável.

Pela segunda vez consecutiva, o país ficou na posição número 45 entre 110 países e territórios analisados (108 nações mais os territórios de Taiwan e Hong Kong), a mesma colocação do ano passado.

O índice de prosperidade procura medir não apenas o crescimento econômico de um país no sentido material, mas aquele crescimento que se traduz em bem-estar para a população e, no longo prazo, traz a felicidade para os cidadãos.

Para tanto, o cálculo condensa informações em oito subíndices: economia, empreendedorismo, governança, saúde, educação, segurança, liberdade e capital social.

O Brasil aparece como país "mediano" na maioria deles, à exceção do índice de liberdade, onde está no terço superior do grupo de 110 países.

Mas nas áreas de segurança o país fica na posição 76, em educação, 75, e governança, 60.

Apenas dois em cada cinco brasileiros se sentem seguros ao caminhar para casa, colocando o país no número 96 entre os 110 países pesquisados, e mesmo na questão da violência política a colocação brasileira é a 90ª.

Na questão do ensino, o relatório aponta uma "insatisfação com um sistema educacional percebido como baixo em qualidade e escasso em oferta".

Além disso, a percepção de governança no país permanece "medíocre" e a confiança nas instituições democráticas, "baixa", nas palavras do relatório. Os níveis de confiança da sociedade em seus próprios cidadãos é uma das mais baixas entre os países analisados.

Material x subjetivo

Noruega, Dinamarca, Finlândia, Austrália e Nova Zelândia lideram o ranking, no qual Zimbábue, Paquistão, República Centro-Africana, Etiópia e Nigéria aparecem em últimos.

Para o instituto, a questão da prosperidade não é simplesmente material, assim como a felicidade não é apenas subjetiva. "Escolha e oportunidades são mais importantes para a felicidade que ganhar dinheiro rapidamente", exemplifica o relatório.

Um bom exemplo é a parte do documento que analisa os países do chamado grupo Bric (Brasil, Rússia, Índia e China), que têm se destacado como vetores do crescimento econômico internacional.

Para o relatório, "crescimento econômico não é suficiente" para os Bric.

"A China tem se avançado muito nos quesitos de economia, empreendedorismo e oportunidade, governança e capital social. No entanto, a sua melhora tem sido abafada pela perda nas áreas de educação, liberdade pessoal, saúde e segurança", avalia o documento.

"A Índia regrediu mais de dez posições desde 2009, principalmente devido à sua queda no subíndice de liberdade pessoal. Após os ataques de Mumbai em 2008, a percepção de tolerância dos indianos em relação aos imigrantes tem caído substancialmente, contribuindo para uma queda nos níveis de liberdade pessoal."

Já Rússia e Brasil pouco mudaram do ano passado para cá, as razões da Rússia sendo a conturbada situação das liberdades pessoais e a liberdade de expressão no país.

Na linha com o senso comum, o estudo afirma que "não é fácil ser próspero em países grandes".

"Os dez países do mundo com mais de 125 milhões de pessoas têm de lidar com desafios à prosperidade sustentável que são menos significativos em países menores", diz o relatório.

"Apenas um país neste grupo, os Estados Unidos, estão incluídos entre os dez países com maior índice de prosperidade."

BBC Brasil - Todos os direitos reservados. É proibido todo tipo de reprodução sem autorização por escrito da BBC.

Avalie este conteúdo: Ruim

Brasil e Corrupção

Melhora discreta no rank entre os países


Para ONG, percepção de corrupção é alta em 75% dos países

O relatório anual da ONG Transparência Internacional, divulgado nesta terça-feira, indica que a percepção de corrupção no setor público do Brasil se manteve inalterada desde o ano passado, embora o país tenha subido em um ranking sobre o tema.

A pontuação dada ao país no relatório permaneceu a mesma de 2009 - 3,7 numa escala de zero a dez, em que dez indica que os servidores são percebidos pela população como pouco corruptos e zero corresponde à percepção de corrupção disseminada.

O Brasil ocupava no ano passado o 75º lugar entre 180 países no Ranking de Percepção da Corrupção da Transparência Internacional. Na lista deste ano, em que foram relacionados apenas 178 países, o Brasil ocupa a 69ª posição, juntamente com Cuba, Montenegro e Romênia.

Dinamarca, Nova Zelândia e Cingapura, dividem a primeira colocação, com 9,3 pontos.

O ranking da TI mede a percepção de corrupção nos setores públicos dos países, a partir de avaliações de fontes como fundações, ONGs, centros de estudos e bancos de desenvolvimento.

Piora em outros países

A subida do Brasil no ranking seria apenas um reflexo da deterioração de outros países e não deve ser interpretada como um avanço do país, explicou à BBC Brasil Alejandro Salas, diretor regional para as Américas da Tarnsparência Internacional.

"A pontuação (3,7) mostra que não houve melhora ou piora no Brasil e, assim como em outros países, reflete contradições entre modernizações e práticas antigas", opinou Salas.

"Em alguns setores, temos sofisticados sistemas de compras públicas eletrônicas, que reduzem as oportunidades de corrupção, e sinais importantes como a lei da Ficha Limpa. Por outro lado, em muitos espaços de poder temos esquemas de compras de voto e nepotismo."

Ainda que a metodologia da Transparência Internacional não permita observar se houve mudanças radicais na percepção da corrupção no mundo como um todo, é possível notar quais países avançaram e quais deram sinais de retrocesso.

Salas cita o Chile, país sul-americano mais bem colocado no ranking, como exemplo positivo: subiu de 6,7 pontos em 2009 para 7,2.

O motivo é que "no Chile há a percepção de autonomia da Justiça e de uma polícia livre de corrupção", diz o diretor, citando também uma recente lei chilena que permite o acesso de cidadãos a informações de contas e contratações públicas.

Os Estados Unidos, por outro lado, são exemplo de retrocesso: perderam pontos e posições no ranking, em mais um desdobramento da crise em seu sistema financeiro.

"Os Estados Unidos sofreram uma queda importante. É um efeito dos escândalos financeiros, como o de Bernard Madoff, que mostraram ao mundo falta de transparência (no sistema). Por outro lado, medidas positivas, como a abertura de contas públicas promovida por Barack Obama, têm efeito negativo sobre a percepção da corrupção no curto prazo, justamente por colocar a corrupção em evidência."

Mudanças individuais

Dos 178 países avaliados no ranking de 2010 da TI, a vasta maioria - 75% - não obteve nota superior a 5.

"Os resultados mostram que são necessários esforços significativamente maiores para fortalecer a governança no mundo", disse em comunicado Huguette Labelle, presidente da Transparência Internacional.

Salas opina que melhoras no panorama global dependem de mudanças individuais. "Em muitos países os indivíduos tendem a se ver como vítimas do sistema. Mas o indivíduo pode ser proativo e sair do ciclo da corrupção. Enquanto só esperarmos grandes mudanças por parte de governos, teremos essa pontuação baixa na maioria dos países."

A percepção de corrupção é maior em países instáveis e com um histórico de conflitos, como Iraque (apenas 1,5 ponto no ranking) Afeganistão (1,4), Mianmar (1,4) e Somália (1,1, última colocada).

O Haiti configura uma exceção: obteve melhora no ranking (de 1,8 ponto em 2009 para 2,2 em 2010) apesar do terremoto que devastou o país em janeiro.

Para Salas, a percepção de corrupção pode ter diminuído no Haiti "porque todas as atenções globais se voltaram para o país e para o dinheiro doado (após o tremor), e essa atenção desestimula ações corruptas". BBC Brasil - Todos os direitos reservados. É proibido todo tipo de reprodução sem autorização por escrito da BBC.

blogging ajuda The scientist




-Ter e manter um blog pode ajudar na carreira Científica. Veja os comentários DE reportagem do The Scientist
By Bob Grant
You Aren’t Blogging Yet?!?
Maintaining a blog can be a boon to your career, increasing your profile in the scientific community, connecting you to collaborators, and helping you land new grants or jobs.

© TOMASZ WALENTA
Microbial genomicist Jonathan Eisen had racked up an impressive publication record and thousands of citations long before he ever launched his über-popular evolutionary science blog, The Tree of Life, in February 2005. He had worked with Craig Venter at the Institute for Genomic Research, where he collaborated on early genome sequencing projects such as Arabidopsis thaliana and the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.
Based on those scientific accomplishments alone, Eisen was doing quite well for himself. But in early 2005, he started a blog after hearing about the virtual world, Second Life. Eisen says that his eyes were opened to the nearly endless possibilities to be explored by taking scientific discussions to cyberspace. He started blogging that week, initiating his own collaborative discussion about science.
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Publish or Post?

Blogging Biology

Go Online to Get Your Job On

Fast forward to today—Eisen is the toast of the science blogosphere and the recipient of a new $1.3 million grant from the Sloan Foundation, which has tasked him with creating Web tools that cultivate a network of researchers working on the molecular biology of microbes that inhabit man-made environments such as homes and offices. The Sloan Foundation contacted Eisen and asked if he’d like to submit a proposal for the grant, in part because of his blog, he says.
Blogging may seem like just another extra task to add to your busy schedule, with its own pitfalls to navigate. But creating a site and finding compelling topics to write about (that won’t damage your image) can provide real benefits to your scientific career. Below, successful scientist-bloggers reveal the secrets.
WHAT BLOGGING CAN DO FOR YOU
Connect with collaborators
With a robust readership, blogging can be like commanding the podium at a conference attended by thousands of your colleagues, scattered across the globe. Massimo Pigliucci, former evolutionary biologist, now a philosopher of science at the City University of New York, says that his blog, Rationally Speaking, helped connect him with a grad student who would become his coauthor of a book about the philosophy of pseudoscience. “One post led to a couple of comments, which led to a paper, which possibly has led to at least one book.”
Generate ideas
Eisen has used his blog as an idea generator to great effect. When the evolutionary biologist and his research group couldn’t figure out how to assess the diversity of a sample of organisms by comparing nonoverlapping short reads of specific genes, Eisen posed the question to his Internet readers. “We’d been working on this for, like, six months,” he remembers. “I said, ‘Screw this. I’m posting this to my blog.’ ” Eisen says that he was instantly bombarded with useful suggestions from evolutionary biologists who were considering the exact same dilemma. “I probably got 60 responses from hard-core evolution people,” he says. “In a week we had gotten more useful ideas than we would have come up with in a year.”
Affect change
These days blogs can impact current events as much or more than traditional media coverage. University College London pharmacologist David Colquhoun illustrated this in 2002 when he started a crude precursor to his popular blog, Improbable Science, where he devotes much of his blogging energy to exposing what he calls the “quackery” that is homeopathy. Colquhoun’s blog has already led to the dismantling of several UK university degree programs in homeopathy. “Ten or 15 years ago you could write a letter to a newspaper and it may or may not have been published,” he adds. “Now you can just sit in front of the television your laptop and post something that the whole world can see. It could be the savior of democracy.”
Sell yourself
Self-promotion is one of the key benefits of having your own blog. P.Z. Myers probably wouldn’t be nearly so well-known in his capacity as a biologist studying zebrafish development at the University of Minnesota, Morris if not for his wildly popular blog Pharyngula. Posting entries about your own papers and those written by your students is an excellent way to generate excitement about the work going on in your lab. Publicizing his lab’s work is “a responsibility that’s part of running my lab,” says Eisen.
Land jobs
In 2006, Bora Zivkovic was posting regularly at A Blog Around the Clock and coming off a graduate school stint, studying circadian rhythm biology when he heard of a job opening for an online community manager at PLoS. One weekend Zivkovic posted the job description on his blog under a heading that read, “I want this job,” and asked for comments on what he should do. His readers responded en force. “My commenters starting piling on about how I was the perfect candidate,” Zivkovic recalls. “Some addressed PLoS directly, saying they’d be crazy not to hire me.” By Monday morning, the comments had mounted, and an e-mail from a PLoS editor, Chris Surridge, topped Zivkovic’s inbox. “Should we consider this a formal application?” read the message from Surridge. Weeks later, Zivkovic had the job. “They told me that my commenters pretty much gave me the job,” he says. “It demonstrated to them that I already had a community and that I knew how to create one.”
Fulfill service requirements
Faculty members typically have to demonstrate that they’re engaging with the public as part of tenure reviews and grant applications. Blogs can be a great way to document and quantify the impact you’re having before review boards. Several of the authors who post on the evolution blog The Panda’s Thumb “have included [their blogging] in the service component of their tenure review,” says the blog’s system administrator Reed Cartwright, a University of Houston computational evolutionary geneticist.
SO YOU HAVE DOUBTS ABOUT BLOGGING…
Time suck
Blogging can demand a lot of your valuable time. Striking the right balance between blogging and conducting your research can be tricky. Post too often and you risk neglecting students and projects in your lab; too seldom, and you run the risk of losing readers. One or two posts per week can keep readers engaged while not diverting too much of your attention away from your science. Some popular blogs, such as Colquhoun’s Improbable Science, are updated even less frequently. The University College London pharmacologist says that although sometimes he’ll spend an entire day working on his blog, he typically posts new entries “less than once a week, maybe every two.”
Negative perceptions from within

© TOMASZ WALENTA
As a relatively new phenomenon—especially in the halls of academia—blogging can still rile administrators and some colleagues who strive to assemble productive, efficient faculties. “Your older colleagues and administrators are probably not going to look at it favorably,” Pigliucci warns. “There is a rift, but my sense is that that situation is changing pretty rapidly.” A good way to dispel negative perceptions, if they should arise, is to highlight the interesting work of your colleagues in your blog. Eisen, for example, once posted an interesting video that his UC Davis colleagues had made for an intro biology course. After science blogger Carl Zimmer reposted the video, it went viral on YouTube. “I write about stuff at Davis all the time,” Eisen says. “I confess, I do that in part not just because it’s interesting, but because it’s politically smart.”
Giving up punch lines
Eisen says that even journal editors are getting accustomed to the concept of research being discussed before it’s published, but he still urges caution. Though you want to provide readers with unique insights into your work, don’t give the whole story away on your blog. Eisen suggests that sharing incremental advances in your research is a good way to generate interest and possible collaboration. “I generally don’t discuss fine-scale details of ongoing work that people in my lab are doing. I talk in generalities,” he says, adding that he ultimately relies on his lab mates to tell him what they’re comfortable sharing on the blog. “I hope that they err on the side of openness,” he adds.
CHOOSING A STYLE
Topical. Pick a particular topic that interests you (the workings of fluorescence-activated cell sorting machines, or your experiences in grant writing, for instance). Your audience will be smaller, but more focused and probably more valuable to you. The secret here is to write about what you know best—your corner of the scientific enterprise—while still encouraging expansive comments from other disciplines that might broaden your research.
In a week we had gotten more useful ideas than we would have come up with in a year. —Jonathan Eisen
Group Blogs. These are blog sites where several authors contribute posts, usually on a rotating basis. Normally these blogs are focused on a specific topic, evolution or climate change, for example. The advantage of group blogs is that you can assemble several authoritative voices under one roof, which may be attractive to readers. They’re also great places to begin your foray into the blogosphere and avoid the pressure of starting your own blog.
Confessional. This is a tone employed by many nonprofessional blogs, where writers keep readers up-to-date on their lives. Using a conversational writing style can work in the scientific arena if you stick to happenings in your lab and professional life. But be careful: venturing too far into the personal realm can lead to unintended consequences, such as being perceived as a fluffy site that’s light on science or attracting fringe elements and stalkers, a problem reported by a few of the scientist-bloggers The Scientist spoke with.
Confrontational. Using your blog to expose inaccuracies or ineptitude can be a great way to incite changes in policy, academic administration, and other areas. But be sure to keep any criticisms you have on a professional level. Eisen says that he learned this lesson the hard way, after receiving angry letters from scientists whose research he criticized on his blog. “I still write things that are critical,” he says, “but now I’m much more careful about it.”
Instructive. Science blogs are excellent vehicles to make your research relevant to the general public and to deliver that message directly to the masses, fulfilling those service requirements. “To the extent that scientists want to communicate their science without the filter of the media, I think [having a blog is a] good idea,” says physicist Joseph Romm, editor of Climate Progress and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.
TIPS FOR MAKING YOUR BLOG WORK FOR YOU
Post when publishing and speaking
Self-promotion is probably the most important service your blog can provide. Post a brief entry with appropriate links as soon as your latest paper is published or in advance of conference presentations. Here, a simple post works best. A brief note to your readers that says, “Hey, check out this new study I just got published!” with a link to the journal’s site will suffice. Blogs can also be used as virtual CVs, with links and information updated on a constant basis. Pigliucci links to all his work, including the several books he’s written, on his blog. “It’s now become sort of a portal or gateway to all the other things I do,” he says.
Post links to other blogs
Linking to other blogs that you find interesting is an important piece of blogosphere etiquette. Though it may seem counterintuitive to direct your readers to other authors writing in the same field, links are typically reciprocated. The more you link to the blogs of others, the more your own blog will get linked.
Encourage interaction
Urging readers to add their own two cents engenders a sense of community. “What I like to do is make it very obvious that I’m playing devil’s advocate and pushing things to the next logical conclusion,” Zivkovic says, adding that when writing about research, he’ll resist his urge to answer all the questions that spring to his mind and instead prod his readers for help. “One of the tricks is to leave some hole open, point it out in the post and ask ‘Does any one else know about this?’ Everybody has gaps, and use those gaps and instead of studying yourself to death, ask your readers to fill you in.”


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Comment on this article


I completely agree. The value of a public profile online can improve your chances of funding your research
by Borya Shakhnovich

[Comment posted 2010-10-25 15:24:14]
We run a public profile tool for scientists where researchers, engineers and physicians can come online, create a profile and attract opportunities. You can see the tens of thousands that have already joined at LINK and the 60B in opportunities we've aggregated at LINK


Be very carefull. Review!!!
by Billy Tail

[Comment posted 2010-10-14 12:53:26]
Be very careful. Review everthing you write. Ask other people to take a look.

Some people have lost jobs beacause of Blog Posts.

here is a list of handy Blog sites:-
LINK


blogging + open access = transparency
by Chris Tachibana

[Comment posted 2010-10-12 02:13:33]
Eisen is one of the scientists promoting open access journals, and he and his brother started the PLoS journals, correct?

Blogging and publishing in open access journals not only helps communication between scientists, but also makes research more visible to the general public. I'm for anything that shows that science is something that ordinary people work on, struggle with, benefit from, and have fun with.

Thanks for the practical tips and advice about the pros and cons of blogging. Are you working on a followup about Twitter?!


Different types of communication Compliment each other
by Steven Pace

[Comment posted 2010-10-09 03:34:28]
One of the ideas was to blog at the same time as other communication; this makes a lot of sense to me because different types compliment each other. If you mention your blog in a speech or publication, the blog benefits; and the speech benefits from having the supporting material.


Not every post on a blog directed towards scientists needs to be scientific
by jeanne garbarino

[Comment posted 2010-10-08 09:07:57]
I absolutely agree with you that blogging is an excellent tool allowing us to extend our voices beyond that of the lab or scientific journal, whether it is for the purpose of getting suggestions or for finding a collaborator. However, there are many aspects that affect the daily lives of scientists and venturing in to the realm of the "confessional" blogosphere shouldn't necessarily be labeled as "fluffy" just because someone does not talk about the latest scientific breakthrough. As someone who writes about being a scientist-mom, I feel that it is important to talk about my work-life balance as it might provide encouragement to others. Some might label this as fluffy but, personally, I think that having a grasp on life beyond the bench is just as important as life behind the bench.

Thanks for the article, it certainly grabbed my attention!


And another thing...
by Russell Neches

[Comment posted 2010-10-06 04:03:45]
I'm a graduate student Jonathan's lab. I joined, in large, part because of his blog.

Many of the labs I was interested in had websites with publication listings, pictures of the lab members, and a few paragraphs about the research objectives. A good lab website gives a nice picture of the science that is going on in the lab. That's all well and good, but it leaves out a lot of very important pieces of information.

Jonathan's blog has all of the usual things one finds on a lab website, but it also gave me a clear picture of what sort of researcher he is and what he is like personally. A blog is also a good place to discuss ideas you are pursuing, as opposed to ideas you have pursued in the past. There is no venue for such musings more appropriate than a blog.

For a student looking for a lab, all of this is absolutely invaluable information. In most cases, this information is extremely hard to get, and a lot of graduate students have to rely on rumors and innuendo (and perhaps a conversation or two over coffee) when choosing a lab.

Because Jonathan was open about this stuff, I was able to make a much more informed decision. I didn't have to guess about how my interests might mesh with the lab, or about how well I would get along with the PI. I was able to answer that question to near certainty before I scheduled my first meeting.


domingo, 24 de outubro de 2010

Aquecimento desestabiliza Rios - Preocupante




Preocupante o efeito do aquecimento Global sobre as aguas e vidas dos rios.
É preciso divulgar e pressionar por ações que pelo menos retarde esses efeitos.
Consciência e educação ambiental focada sobre a preservação de agua e rios são fundamentais.
veja reportagem de Pesquisa

22 October 2010 Last updated at 09:53 GMT Share this pageFacebookTwitterShareEmailPrint
Warming 'destabilises aquatic ecosystems'
By Mark Kinver
Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Rising temperatures could result in major changes in freshwater ecosystems, the study suggests Future warming could have "profound implications" for the stability of freshwater ecosystems, a study warns.Researchers said warmer water affected the distribution and size of plankton - tiny organisms that form the basis of food chains in aquatic systems.

The team warmed plankton-containing vessels by 4C (7F) - the temperature by which some of the world's rivers and lakes could warm over the next century.

The findings appear in the journal Global Change Biology.

"Our study provides almost the first direct experimental evidence that - in the short-term - if a [freshwater] ecosystem warms up, it has profound implications for the size structure of plankton communities," said lead author Gabriel Yvon-Durocher from Queen Mary, University of London.

"Essentially, what we observed within the phytoplankton (microscopic plants) community was that it switched from a system that was dominated by larger autotrophs (plants that photosynthesise) to a system that was dominated by smaller autotrophs with a lower standing biomass."

Dr Yvon-Durocher added that a greater abundance, but lower overall biomass, of smaller phytoplankton had "very important implications for the stability of plankton food webs".

"This meant that the distribution of biomass between plants and animals changed from a... situation where you had a large amount of plants and a smaller amount of animal consumers to an 'inverted pyramid' where you have a smaller quantity of plant biomass and a larger amount of animal biomass," he told BBC News.

"Systems that tend to have larger consumer biomass relative to the resource biomass tend to be less stable over time."


The image on the left shows an abundance of smaller phytoplankton in the warmed water, compared with just a few larger specimens in the control sample
Dr Yvon-Durocher explained that phytoplankton played a key role in the food webs of oceans, rivers
The make-up of ecological communities are likely to profoundly change as a result of warming”

Dr Gabriel Yvon-Durocher
Queen Mary University of London
"An inordinate amount of the primary productivity and carbon draw-down in ocean and freshwater ecosystems are carried out by microscopic planktonic organisms."

Because the tiny plants are able to produce their own food by using energy from sunlight, they are an important food source for zooplankton - microscopic animals that are not able to synthesise their own food.

The zooplankton are also a vital food for other creatures higher up the the food chain.

"Understanding the dynamics of these communities is going to be crucial in understanding how marine and freshwater ecosystems will respond to changes in temperature."

Fresh insight

For their experiment, the team of UK and Spanish researchers used 20 mesocosms, which are containers that allow scientists to study freshwater ecosystems in a controlled environment.


The study provides the first experimental data on the impact of warming on freshwater ecosystems
"We were able to, in a relatively small plot of land, have 20 replicated ecosystems - half of which we warmed, and the other half we kept at an ambient year-round temperature," explained Dr Yvon-Durocher.

"The great advantage of using the mescosm set-up is that it allows the manipulation of an entire ecosystem.

"There is an absolute wealth of literature on the effects of warming and climate change on single species, but we understand very little about what happens at a community level."

Commenting on their results, the team said: "These findings could provide some novel insights into how future warming might change the distribution of organism size and biomass in freshwater ecosystems.

"The size structure of plankton communities is a key driver of rates of carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling."

They added that warming waters could have an impact on a global scale.

However, Dr Yvon-Durocher said that it did not mean that the future for aquatic ecosystems was looking bleak.

"What it means is that the make-up of ecological communities are likely to profoundly change as a result of warming," he suggested.

"It may mean that the species' composition might change, but what we don't understand is how those changes are going to affect the functions of the ecosystems.

22 October 2010 Last updated at 09:53 GMT Share this pageFacebookTwitterShareEmailPrint
Warming 'destabilises aquatic ecosystems'
By Mark Kinver
Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Rising temperatures could result in major changes in freshwater ecosystems, the study suggests
Future warming could have "profound implications" for the stability of freshwater ecosystems, organisms that form the basis of food chains in aquatic systems.

The team warmed plankton-containing vessels by 4C (7F) - the temperature by which some of the world's rivers and lakes could warm over the next century.

The findings appear in the journal Global Change Biology.

"Our study provides almost the first direct experimental evidence that - in the short-term - if a [freshwater] ecosystem warms up, it has profound implications for the size structure of plankton communities," said lead author Gabriel Yvon-Durocher from Queen Mary, University of London.
Related stories

Plankton declining across oceans
Photos reveal stunning plankton
"Essentially, what we observed within the phytoplankton (microscopic plants) community was that it switched from a system that was dominated by larger autotrophs (plants that photosynthesise) to a system that was dominated by smaller autotrophs with a lower standing biomass."

Dr Yvon-Durocher added that a greater abundance, but lower overall biomass, of smaller phytoplankton had "very important implications for the stability of plankton food webs".

"This meant that the distribution of biomass between plants and animals changed from a... situation where you had a large amount of plants and a smaller amount of animal consumers to an 'inverted pyramid' where you have a smaller quantity of plant biomass and a larger amount of animal biomass," he told BBC News.

"Systems that tend to have larger consumer biomass relative to the resource biomass tend to be less stable over time."


The image on the left shows an abundance of smaller phytoplankton in the warmed water, compared with just a few larger specimens in the control sample
Dr Yvon-Durocher explained that phytoplankton played a key role in the food webs of oceans, rivers and lakes.

Continue reading the main story

Start Quote

The make-up of ecological communities are likely to profoundly change as a result of warming”

Dr Gabriel Yvon-Durocher
Queen Mary University of London
"An inordinate amount of the primary productivity and carbon draw-down in ocean and freshwater ecosystems are carried out by microscopic planktonic organisms."

Because the tiny plants are able to produce their own food by using energy from sunlight, they are an important food source for zooplankton - microscopic animals that are not able to synthesise their own food.

The zooplankton are also a vital food for other creatures higher up the the food chain.

"Understanding the dynamics of these communities is going to be crucial in understanding how marine and freshwater ecosystems will respond to changes in temperature."

Fresh insight

For their experiment, the team of UK and Spanish researchers used 20 mesocosms, which are containers that allow scientists to study freshwater ecosystems in a controlled environment.


The study provides the first experimental data on the impact of warming on freshwater ecosystems
"We were able to, in a relatively small plot of land, have 20 replicated ecosystems - half of which we warmed, and the other half we kept at an ambient year-round temperature," explained Dr Yvon-Durocher.

"The great advantage of using the mescosm set-up is that it allows the manipulation of an entire ecosystem.

"There is an absolute wealth of literature on the effects of warming and climate change on single species, but we understand very little about what happens at a community level."

Commenting on their results, the team said: "These findings could provide some novel insights into how future warming might change the distribution of organism size and biomass in freshwater ecosystems.

"The size structure of plankton communities is a key driver of rates of carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling."

They added that warming waters could have an impact on a global scale.

However, Dr Yvon-Durocher said that it did not mean that the future for aquatic ecosystems was looking bleak.

"What it means is that the make-up of ecological communities are likely to profoundly change as a result of warming," he suggested.

"It may mean that the species' composition might change, but what we don't understand is how those changes are going to affect


A esquerda ve se a multiplicação de planctons em água aquecida e Direita em agua em temperatura normal

sábado, 23 de outubro de 2010




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Queda da miséria no Brasil - Blog LIMI LIP

Publicação Do Blog LIMI LIP enfatiza a queda da miséria no Brasil nos ultimos 17 anos. Embora o gráfico mostre uma queda substancial, ainda existem 15,54 % da população em situaçao de miséria. As politicas de combate à pobreza, associadas ao aumento do emprego é um forte indicativo que a miséria no Brasil pode ser, em breve, coisa do passado.





Erradicação da miséria no Brasil


O gráfico acima é da Fundação Getúlio Vargas (original aqui).
Vejam que a partir do Plano Real, há uma queda da miséria no Brasil, mas que este processo é interrompido de 1995 a 2003. Ou seja durante todo o governo FHC, inclusive no ano de 2003 cujo orçamento foi elaborado no governo FHC, não houve redução da miséria.
Ao clicar no ano 1995, aparece uma manchete de jornal: "Renda dos pobres cresce 30% no Real."
O click em 1999, exibe: "IPEA mostra que miséria volta a crescer no Brasil"
Em 2003: "Miséria cresceu no primeiro ano de Lula" (volto a lembrar com orçamento elaborado no governo FHC).
De 2004 em diante, todas as manchetes ressaltam a acentuada queda da miséria no Brasil.

Muitos têm argumentado que o sucesso do governo Lula se deve às condições criadas nos governos anteriores. O ponto que permanece sem explicação é porque não continuou a redução dos níveis de miséria durante o governo FHC, se as condições do Plano Real, no governo Itamar, já haviam levado ao início da redução. Para mim, trata-se de falta de prioridade para políticas sociais, do mesmo modo que faltou prioridade para o investimento em C&T (aqui).

Reproduzo abaixo o comentário de Paulo Beirão, no post anterior, pois se aplica também ao tema atual :
"Acho curioso o argumento que todo o sucesso do governo Lula se deve à estabilidade econômica do plano Real. Vamos aos fatos!
O plano Real foi iniciado no ano de 1994 (a moeda começou oficialmente no dia 1o de julho), no governo Itamar. Depois disso o FHC teve 8 (oito!) anos para mostrar que a estabilidade econômica poderia ser seguida de crescimento econômico e redução das desigualdades sociais. Pelo contrário, só aconteceu crescimento da dívida externa, da divida interna e da carga tributária, apesar do arrocho econômico e da privatização de várias estatais (a propósito, para onde foi o dinheiro dessas privatizações?).
Há alguns que dizem que o cenário econômico era desfavorável. Nesse período tivemos 3 crises financeiras, uma da Coréia, outra da Argentina e outra do México. Em todas elas o Brasil quebrou e tivemos que ficar de quatro para o FMI (vocês se lembram dos chamados efeito Orloff e efeito tequila?). No final do governo FHC o dólar tinha disparado e estávamos na iminência de ter que recorrer novamente ao FMI (vocês se lembram do empréstimo standby de US$ 30 bi?).
Pouco depois do início do governo Lula começamos a pagar as dívidas, o dólar caiu e os juros internos caíram, contrariando a tendência do final do governo FHC. A conjuntura externa foi favorável? Em 2008 iniciou-se a maior crise financeira internacional depois da Grande Depressão de 1929, que afetou países (seriam periféricos?) como os EUA e a Europa. Contrariamente ao preconizado pelos “especialistas” tucanos, o governo Lula apostou no mercado interno e fomos os últimos a entrar e os primeiros a sair da crise (é importante lembrar que vários países ainda não saíram da crise!). É isso que os tucanos chamam de “conjuntura internacional favorável”?"
POSTADO POR MANOEL BARRAL ÀS 05:01 ENVIAR POR E-MAILBLOGTHIS!COMPARTILHAR NO TWITTERCOMPARTILHAR NO FACEBOOKCOMPARTILHAR NO GOOGLE BUZZ
MARCADORES: BRASIL, MISERIA
REAÇÕES:


sexta-feira, 22 de outubro de 2010

Imunoterapia para Câncer -Science

Novas possibilidades terapêuticas aplicando células e anticorpos tem tido êxito no controle de alguns tumores. Nesse artigo menciona esse progresso, mas também comenta as dificuldades dessa terapia mais individualizada


Immune Therapy Steps Up the Attack
Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
After years of trying, cancer researchers say they are finally having success enlisting the body's own defenses to destroy tumors.




Reinforcements! After the immune system tries and fails to fight tumors (first two panels), new therapies help these T cell knights get the job done.
CREDIT: RYAN SNOOK, WWW.RYANSNOOK.COM

[Larger version of this image]

BETHESDA, MARYLAND—On a corner of Steven Rosenberg's desk rests a small, gold figurine representing Sisyphus, its arms straining to push a boulder forward. A gift from his wife when he joined the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) here as chief of surgery back in 1974, it is uncannily apt: Rosenberg has spent 3 decades rolling metaphorical boulders uphill, only to see them tumble back down again.

Rosenberg's specialty is immunotherapy; he tries to harness a patient's own immune system to fight cancer. He and others have seen remnants of immune system attacks on tumors, but the cancer recovers and takes off. Efforts to lend the immune system a hand have raised hopes, leading to large clinical trials of cancer vaccines. But all have flopped. And year after year, nearly all of Rosenberg's patients, recipients of radical experimental treatments, succumbed to their cancer.

Nearly all, that is, until recently.

Slowly, new immune-based therapies are registering successes. In some people riddled with the aggressive skin cancer melanoma, immunotherapy has not only eliminated disease but also kept it at bay for years. Such outcomes are virtually unheard of in patients with metastatic disease that has spread through the body. Last month, NCI awarded $14 million to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, so it could launch a new national network of immunotherapy clinical trials.

From a patient's perspective, the achievements are still tenuous. Some individuals respond dramatically. But only a fraction are treated successfully—about 15% at most, though some small trials have hints of higher numbers. What excites immunotherapists is that this modest group of responders—the "tail end of the curve"—keeps showing up in recent studies. This year, it appeared in trials of two antibodies used against several different cancers, and in data from Rosenberg's cell therapy recently published or presented at meetings. With more tinkering, cancer specialists hope to shift additional patients into the responder category and devise more powerful combination treatments. Accustomed to disappointment, they have rarely been so confident.

At the same time, their successes are raising deep questions about where cancer therapy is headed. Integrating immunotherapy into clinical care will pose challenges of its own. Patients may take months to respond, making it difficult to assess whether treatment is helping. Furthermore, some treatments are highly personalized and impossible to administer outside of specialized settings. This makes them extraordinarily expensive. Many specialists wonder whether they can really become part of standard cancer care.

Rosenberg is a believer. "The goal right now is to find things that work," he says. "When you find things that work, industry finds ways to make it happen."

Rocky start
One patient has never left Rosenberg's thoughts. As a junior resident in a Boston hospital in 1968, Rosenberg met James DeAngelo, then in his 60s, who had been admitted for gallbladder surgery. Twelve years earlier, DeAngelo had developed a stomach cancer that spread to his liver and was sent home to die. Instead, his cancer spontaneously regressed without treatment—"one of the rarest events in all of medicine," Rosenberg says now.

One of Rosenberg's first surgery cases became part of an experiment. At the time, Rosenberg recalls, "there was someone else in the hospital who had gastric cancer" and whose blood type matched DeAngelo's. Following the wild theory that something in DeAngelo's blood could help this desperately ill man, Rosenberg transfused blood from DeAngelo into the second patient. Nothing happened, and that man later died of his cancer.

But Rosenberg couldn't shake the memory of that gallbladder surgery, where he ran his hands across DeAngelo's liver and found no hint of disease. Had DeAngelo's body fought off cancer on its own?

In some ways, the notion didn't make sense. Cancer cells are a patient's own, so why would the body perceive them as invaders? The answers are now clear. Among them: Tumor cells are genetically unstable and pile on new mutations that render them distinct from the host. In 2007, oncologist Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues reported in Science that breast and colon cancers can harbor hundreds of gene mutations—an "unexpectedly high number," says Suzanne Topalian, a Johns Hopkins melanoma specialist who was not involved in the work. And those mutations "should be recognized by the immune system," she says. Studies have confirmed it: Tumor cells often display antigens not found elsewhere in the body that prompt immune reactions.

Immunotherapists targeted melanoma because primary melanoma tumors—as opposed to metastatic ones—are among the few that can spontaneously disappear. Doctors also identified antibodies to melanoma in the blood of patients and a higher incidence of the cancer in those who'd received organ transplants and had suppressed immunity. All of these clues suggested that the immune system engaged in an elaborate dance with the disease.

Given that roughly 8 million people around the world will die of cancer this year, it's clear that the immune system alone is no match for cancer's wiles. Robert Schreiber of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, advanced a framework in 2001 that's often cited to explain why. Schreiber argued that the immune system does go after the tumor initially: He called it the elimination phase. This may destroy many cancers before they're detected. But he argued that other tumors develop an immunosuppressive barrier, expressing proteins on their surface that dampen immune attacks. In this equilibrium phase, the tumor and the person with cancer coexist. At some point, the cancer slips into the escape phase, where the balance tips in its favor.

In the past 2 decades, dozens of therapies have tried to stimulate the immune system against cancer, including about 20 vaccines that reached mid- and late-stage clinical trials. "We've been excited by every single one of these," says Mario Sznol, an oncologist at the Yale School of Medicine who focuses on melanoma and kidney cancer. But, he concedes, "for the most part, none of those things really did much."

Because tumors evolve to prevent the body from recognizing them as foreign, vaccines need to trigger a massive immune response. Most cancer vaccines just haven't been potent enough, says Jeffrey Weber, a melanoma specialist at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Florida: "We've been giving very wimpy immunizations, in my view." They may have been ineffective for another reason: Researchers had only a rudimentary understanding of how the immune system and tumors interact. Slowly, that is changing.

Antibody breakthroughs
"The science is now guiding the medicine," says Jedd Wolchok, a melanoma specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "The paths that we are taking are built upon a much more solid understanding of what is going on molecularly."

Empowering T cells is a key part of the new strategy. One breakthrough came in 1996, when Wolchok's colleague James Allison reported in Science that a protein called CTLA-4 makes T cells less active (22 March 1996, p. 1734). In mice, Allison found that blocking CTLA-4 with an antibody killed tumors. A biotechnology company called Medarex picked up anti-CTLA-4, which now goes by the generic name ipilimumab, in hopes of turning it into a cancer therapy. Wolchok, Rosenberg, and others began testing it in people.

In a small number of patients, the results were dramatic. "I do remember those early days; we were looking at CT scans and saying, ‘Oh my goodness, this thing's really working,’" says Topalian. In the summer of 2009, the pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb purchased Medarex for $2.4 billion, gaining rights to both antibodies.

In August 2010, the company and its academic collaborators reported on the phase III results of an ipilimumab trial with 676 melanoma patients. For the first time ever, a randomized trial found that people with stage 4 melanoma benefited from a new treatment. The advantage was modest: Treated patients survived 10 months, on average, compared with 6.4 months for controls. "What is exciting is when you look at the tail of the curve," says Allison. "Very few patients survive more than 2 years with metastatic melanoma," and in this trial, just under a quarter of those treated did. Many still have tumors, however, but their disease is stable and they don't need treatment, says Allison. Only three out of the 540 who received the therapy were free of cancer altogether.

Just as chemotherapy comes with risks, so does ipilimumab. Side effects included severe diarrhea, colitis, and endocrine disruption; 14 patients died from the treatment. Still, researchers believe that ipilimumab will gain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the coming months.





Summit. Steven Rosenberg says his 30-year push for an immune-based assault on melanoma is working at last.
CREDIT: RHODA BAER/NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE

[Larger version of this image]

Medarex had also been working on another naturally occurring protein called PD-1 that dampens immune responses. Whereas mice without CTLA-4 die of immune defects, those without PD-1 are healthier, suggesting that an antibody against PD-1 could have fewer side effects.

The response rate for anti-PD-1 looks hopeful. Results from a small trial published in July in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and additional data presented at a cancer meeting in June suggest that about one-third of melanoma and kidney cancer patients responded—that is, their tumors shrank. "The most amazing thing of all," says Drew Pardoll of Johns Hopkins, who has been involved in the development of anti-PD-1, is that up to 3 years after treatment, "not a single responder has yet relapsed. ... That's eye-popping." Many of them still harbor tumors, but "they're just sitting there" and not growing, says Pardoll.

Both antibodies are being tested in other cancers. Responses to ipilimumab have shown up in ovarian, prostate, and lung cancer, in addition to melanoma, says Allison. In theory, if a patient's T cells are reacting to tumor antigens, this approach "can be used for any kind of cancer."

Narrow success
Antibodies like ipilimumab are valuable, Rosenberg says, but in his mind, they're not nearly enough. If the cancer doesn't completely disappear, "everybody dies" eventually, he says. Rosenberg wants a cure, and he is willing to go to great lengths to get it.

He's testing a different approach at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center here, which draws people from all over who are running out of options and treats them free of charge. Rosenberg estimates his budget for immunotherapy at about $3 million a year, far higher than virtually anywhere else.

On this day he drops in on a cheerful woman in her mid-40s with reddish-brown hair and chunky black glasses. She will be the first person to receive Rosenberg's immunotherapy for colorectal cancer. If it fails, he guesses she has between 4 and 6 months to live.

Unlike antibody therapy, which is administered intravenously in an outpatient setting, Rosenberg's method requires hospitalization and a research clinic, at least for now. He focuses on finding T cells activated to attack cancer, usually in tumor tissue. His goal is to extract these T cells, grow them into the tens of billions outside the body over several weeks, and give them back. To make this work, Rosenberg discovered several years ago that he first needs to destroy a patient's existing immune cells with high doses of chemotherapy and sometimes total-body irradiation.

Rosenberg's approach is not an option for many patients. T cells can't be harvested from those with inaccessible tumors, about one-fifth of melanoma patients. For another fifth, the cells don't grow well outside the body. Many can't wait the month it takes to expand cells in the lab. And the pretreatment chemotherapy, as well as a drug given during treatment, is so toxic that most people over 70 can't tolerate it.

But for those lucky enough to have that precious bag of T cells returned to them, the likelihood of success is impressive. Out of 93 patients with metastatic melanoma who have received the treatment and been followed long-term, 20 saw their cancer disappear completely. Nineteen have remained cancer-free for 3 to 8 years. In another 32, tumors shrank. Nearly all of these patients had failed every available therapy, including, in many cases, ipilimumab.

In his office, Rosenberg clicks through a series of CT scans on his computer screen from one of his success stories, a police officer coming in for a follow-up visit. Like most of Rosenberg's patients, the policeman had metastatic melanoma. Although suffering long-term effects from radiation he received when Rosenberg treated him, he's been free of cancer since T-cell therapy 4 years ago.

Rosenberg is now trying to get around one big limitation of his strategy: the need for tumor tissue as a source of T cells. He's experimenting with removing T cells directly from the blood of patients and genetically engineering them to recognize antigens on tumors. This would potentially open up the therapy to people with all sorts of cancers, especially those with hard-to-reach tumors that can't be surgically removed for the T-cell hunt. Rosenberg is also beginning to extend his therapy to lymphoma and sarcoma as well as colon cancer. So far, the few patients treated are doing well.

Several large academic medical centers in Seattle, Houston, and elsewhere have also been working on refining the therapy, called adoptive T cell transfer (ACT). All report roughly comparable success rates, but none is doing as much as Rosenberg at NCI—largely, they say, because of the cost.





CREDIT: (SOURCE) BRISTOL-MYERS SQUIBB, GLAXOSMITHKLINE, AND STEVEN ROSENBERG
[Larger version of this image]

Although the results are compelling, ACT "is 100 times as hard to export, to do in a reproducible fashion, and it's also a lot more expensive than" antibodies, says Pardoll. "Companies essentially have no interest in it. It really right now is a purely academic exercise."

ACT has taught us a great deal, says Wolchok at Sloan-Kettering—for example, that people with heavy cancer burdens can be helped just by expanding and reintroducing their T cells. But ACT faces daunting hurdles in "being able to produce the cell product for every patient who needs it," he says. Even in Rosenberg's lab, the cells don't always grow, says Wolchok, who has referred patients to the program. Sznol at Yale has looked into setting up an ACT program there, but the logistics have made it too difficult to pull off yet.

Although Rosenberg agrees that companies haven't invested in ACT, he is frustrated by those who critique its practicality. He has a lab member working full-time with NIH's blood bank to determine whether it can grow patients' cells more efficiently. NCI recently began a randomized clinical trial of ACT in melanoma. The hope is that if ACT proves superior, payers might cover its cost, which depends on the protocol but can exceed $100,000 per patient.

Even doubters recognize that what's dismissed as impossible in medicine is always changing. "Monoclonal antibodies had the same stones thrown at them 20 years ago," with everyone questioning their feasibility, says Wolchok. With ACT, "it may just be time for the technology to catch up with the need."

After much hesitation, pharmaceutical companies have expressed growing enthusiasm for cancer immunotherapy. In April, FDA approved the first cancer vaccine, called Provenge, for metastatic prostate cancer, made by the company Dendreon in Seattle. Treatment consists of three infusions for a total cost of $93,000. Many oncologists are underwhelmed by its effectiveness. The vaccine extends survival by 4 months; it does not stop cancer. But just the fact that Dendreon pushed ahead with the vaccine, which is custom-made for every patient, is heartening to some immunotherapists.

Bristol-Myers Squibb has its antibodies—ipilimumab and anti-PD-1—while another pharma giant, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), is running several large trials of a new cancer vaccine for lung cancer and melanoma. Unlike Provenge, the GSK vaccine is an off-the-shelf mix. It includes an antigen, MAGEA3, that commonly appears on cancer cells, and an adjuvant to boost immune reactions; introduced together, these aim to stimulate the immune system to go after cells expressing MAGE-A3. GSK is trying to use gene profiling of tumors to carefully pick patients most likely to respond. "We do not want to have the clinical efficacy diluted because we don't select the right patients," says Vincent Brichard, head of immunotherapeutics at GSK Biologics in Rixensart, Belgium. "This could explain why previous trials have failed."

Skill and subtlety
As immunotherapy edges into the clinic, it's likely to challenge oncologists' expertise. When chemotherapy works, it works quickly; immunotherapy is very different. "You might not see responses right away, and they may get worse before they get better," says Cassian Yee of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. "It does take a little bit of insight for the person managing the patient to say, ‘OK, your tumor's only grown by 10%, 20%—we think that you should continue" on ipilimumab.

No one yet knows why tumors might grow before they dissipate. Indeed, there's still much that remains a mystery about how antibodies and ACT behave in the body, how to predict who they'll help, and how to make them more effective.

A subset of patients might have what Thomas Gajewski of the University of Chicago in Illinois calls the "inflamed phenotype": They are capable of "making some smoldering immune response against their tumor that you can tip over" in their favor, shrinking the cancer or erasing it altogether. Gajewski estimates that at least 30% of patients fall into this category. He's looking for ways to coax the other 70% to respond: "How do you make the noninflamed tumors inflamed?" he wonders.

Most cancer specialists believe the solution will come from combination therapies. Like Gajewski, Allison theorizes that immunotherapy is most effective when an immune response is already under way, with T cells activated and tumor cells dying. One way to tip more patients into this category might be by supplementing immunotherapy with direct killing of tumor cells. Bristol-Myers Squibb is running a large prostate cancer trial that combines ipilimumab with a single dose of radiation to do just that. In theory, the antibody might also enhance the potency of T cells given in ACT, says Yee.

Which treatments will go mainstream? "Everybody's goals are the same: Let's try to cure cancer patients," says Rosenberg. But is it reasonable to set up expensive cell growth facilities, as some want NCI to do, especially if they'll help only a subset of patients? And who will pay? With immunotherapy, no matter which approach you take, says Yee, "you're going to start off with high expenses." The hope is that long term, the payoff will be worth it.