quarta-feira, 31 de outubro de 2012


Move Over, BRICs. Here Come the MISTs


In 2001, Jim O’Neill kicked off a decade-long investment boom with a catchy acronym for the four largest emerging-market economies—Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The Goldman Sachs (GS) Asset Management chairman is now promoting a new foursome of fast-track countries: Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Turkey.




In terms of GDP and fund holdings, the MIST nations are the biggest markets in Goldman Sachs’s N-11 Equity Fund. Launched in February 2011, the fund has $113 million in assets (as of June 30) spread out across 73 stocks. So far this year, N-11 has outperformed Goldman Sachs’s $410 million Brazil, Russia, India, and China fund, climbing 12 percent, compared with a 3.2 percent gain for the BRICs. “We see steady inflows into the Next 11 fund each week,” says O’Neill, who isn’t involved in managing either fund.Besides the MIST countries, N-11 includes Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Iran is also a member, though U.S. sanctions strictly limit how banks invest there. With populations generally younger than those of the U.S. and Europe, N-11 nations are getting more attention from investors.

“You’ve seen a rotation in the leadership based on rate of economic growth,” says Paul Christopher, chief international strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors (WFC). Investors poured about $67 billion into BRIC stocks from 2001 through 2010, during which period they beat the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index by 281 percentage points. They withdrew about $15 billion last year as those economies cooled, according to Cambridge (Mass.)-based research firm EPFR Global.
Not to be outdone, Citigroup (C) last year introduced CARBS—a designation that stands for Canada, Australia, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa. As a group, these countries supply 25 percent to 50 percent of the world’s commodities. Analysts at BlackRock (BLK) came up with the fiscally strong CASSH economies, as in Canada, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. And then there are the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain). O’Neill has resisted requests from Goldman Sachs salespeople to start a MIST fund for two reasons. It would be somewhat redundant, since the four countries already account for three-quarters of the N-11 fund. In addition, says O’Neill: “I’m also quite cognizant of not going down in history as being the guy that just constantly created acronyms.”
The bottom line: As investor ardor for the BRICs cools, Goldman Sachs is romancing clients with a new emerging-markets acronym, the MISTs.

terça-feira, 30 de outubro de 2012

Nanoparticulas é aplicada em teste para HIV

Cheap New Nanoparticle HIV Test Gives Fast Results Visible To The Naked Eye
The highly sensitive test turns blue for a positive result and red for a negative one. It could be altered to detect other diseases, such as malaria and sepsis.
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Red and blue test tubes Armin Kübelbeck
Researchers at Imperial College London have created a simple and quick HIV test that is both more sensitive and 10 times cheaper than existing methods. The new test, which uses nanotechnology to produce results visible to the naked eye, could be invaluable in poorer countries that lack sophisticated laboratory equipment.

To detect the AIDS-causing virus using the new method, researchers add serum from a patient's blood sample to a solution of gold nanoparticles. If the nanoparticles come into contact with an HIV biomarker called p24, they clump together into an irregular pattern that turns the mixture blue--indicating a positive test result. If p24 is absent, the gold nanoparticles separate into ball shapes, and the mixture turns red, signaling a negative result.

Lead investigator Molly Stevens said the test could be altered to detect other diseases, including malaria, sepsis, prostate cancer, tuberculosis, and leishmaniasis.



segunda-feira, 29 de outubro de 2012

Sandy, nome bonito para um furacão devastador


Sandy Grounds More Than 10,000 Flights, Train Traffic Derailed

PHOTO: Passengers wait for their flight at LaGuardia airport, Oct. 28, 2012 in New York.


Traffic in and out of airports and train stations from North Carolina to Boston have virtually shut down today, and may not be back in service until later this week.
At least 13,785 flights have been cancelled as a result of Hurricane Sandy, according to FlightAware, effectively shutting down commercial air traffic along the East Coast.
These cancellations are creating a ripple effect that is being felt across the entire country, forcing delays as far west as Seattle and San Francisco. Sandy is even grounding planes in Europe where flights to the U.S. are being canceled because their destination airports are shut down.
Plans to travel via train have been derailed, as Amtrak has shut down all East Coast service. On a typical day, over 300 trains would be running.
"You prepare, you prepare, you prepare, and then they can change," Kelly Bab, a traveler in Philadelphia, told ABC News.
Some air traffic control towers are already closed. They are New Haven Brainard and Groton-New London in Connecticut; Northeast Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; Atlantic City in New Jersey and Wilmington in Delaware.
PHOTO: Passengers wait for their flight at LaGuardia airport, Oct. 28, 2012 in New York.
Mary Altaffer/AP Photo
Passengers wait for their flight at LaGuardia... View Full Size
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"The FAA's top operational priority is to quickly re-establish air traffic service to support disaster relief efforts," the FAA told ABC News today.
"Following the storm, the FAA will conduct a damage assessment of air traffic facilities and navigational aids and set priorities to quickly repair or re-establish any damaged critical navigational aids or facilities," it said.
On a normal Monday there are approximately 10,000 airline flights in the states on the eastern seaboard from North Carolina to Massachusetts. Today flightaware.com has tracked 700 so far, and expects no more than 3,000.
The eye of Sandy is forecast to make landfall late Monday night in Atlantic City, N.J., bringing with it life-threatening storm surges and intense winds and rain, all of which will cripple transportation.
The passengers who have become stranded as the storm slowly makes its way north are for the most part taking the delays in stride.
"It's not the airlines' fault, you can't really control the weather," one passenger in San Francisco said. "Just go with the flow."
On Sunday, Jet Blue and United Airlines moved their planes out of the strike zone, where they will remain until Tuesday. But at low-lying airports like New York's LaGuardia and Kennedy International Airport, which are located next to water, there is also concern about the storm's surge.
"The thing we're going to be watching very, very closely is the flooding and the flood potential here in New York," Jet Blue COO Rob Maruster said. "With these airports basically at sea level, that poses a major risk to us."
Maruster said that the delays at the airport are likely to last through later of this week.
"It'll take us a couple days, probably until at least Thursday, if not Friday, to get back to normal with something this large," he said.
For now, travelers are just going to have to wait.

terça-feira, 16 de outubro de 2012

LinkedIn no Brasil


Brasil chega a 10 milhões de contas no LinkedIn e se torna 3º maior país no site

COLABORAÇÃO PARA A FOLHA
O LinkedIn, rede social voltada para o mercado corporativo, anunciou nesta terça (16) ter chegado à marca de 10 milhões de contas brasileiras, o que alçou o Brasil à terceira posição de maiores nações dentro do site, junto com o Reino Unido e atrás de EUA e Índia.
O número representa um crescimento de 66% em relação ao ano passado e dez vezes a quantidade de registros brasileiros que havia em abril de 2010 (quando foi introduzida a versão lusófona da rede).
A ideia do site é facilitar contatos profissionais. Nele, é possível compartilhar arquivos, criar grupos de discussão e oferecer vagas de emprego.
CRESCIMENTO 'INCRÍVEL'
"Nosso crescimento neste mercado tem sido realmente incrível de testemunhar", disse Osvaldo Barbosa de Oliveira, gerente de operação do LinkedIn no Brasil, por meio doblog da rede.
No Facebook, há cerca de 59,6 milhões de contas brasileiras, segundo o site de pesquisa em redes sociais "Socialbakers".
Segundo o IBGE, o Brasil tem 193,9 milhões de habitantes.
Divulgação
Gráfico sobre o uso do LinkedIn no Brasil, divulgado pelo site nesta terça (16)

ENFIM OS CUBANOS COMEÇAM A TER A LIBERDADE

Aos poucos a ditadura cubana vai cedendo...veja

Cuba vai acabar com autorização prévia para viagens ao exterior

Aguardada reforma migratória começa a vigorar em 14 de janeiro de 2013.
Passaporte será necessário; exigência do visto dependerá do destino.

Do G1, com agências internacionais
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O governo de Cuba anunciou nesta terça-feira (16) que seus cidadãos não vão mais precisar pedir permissão para fazer viagens ao exterior e que vai eliminar o requisito da chamada carta de convite a partir de 14 de janeiro de 2013. As medidas fazem parte de uma aguardada reforma migratória que começará a vigorar nesta data.
A permissão para sair da ilha é exigida desde os primeiros anos do regime de Fidel Castro. Desde a década de 1960, Cuba exige de todos os cidadãos uma permissão de saída, que autoridades podem aceitar ou negar, ao custo de US$ 150, um valor alto em um país no qual o salário mensal médio equivale a US$ 20.
Também exige uma carta de convite, emitida a pedido de parentes e amigos residentes em outros países. O custo atual do texto é de quase US$ 200 na média, dependendo do país que o cubano pretende visitar.
Como consequência, muitos cubanos escolhem sair do país de maneira ilegal, muitas vezes utilizando barcos clandestinos e pouco seguros com destino à Flórida, nos Estados Unidos.
Os sites oficiais Cubadebate e do Ministério de Relações Exteriores do país, além da edição digital do diário "Granma", divulgaram a atualização da política migratória vigente para "ajustá-la às condições do presente e do previsível futuro".
"O governo cubano, no exercício de sua soberania, decidiu eliminar o procedimento de solicitação de permissão de saída para viagens ao exterior e deixar sem efeito o requisito da carta de convite", afirma a nota publicada.
Desse modo, a partir de 14 de janeiro de 2013, o governo só exigirá a apresentação do passaporte corrente atualizado e do visto do país de destino, quando necessário. "Serão credores do dito passaporte os cidadãos cubanos que cumpram os requisitos estabelecidos na Lei de Migração".
Cubanos leem nesta terça-feira (16) em Havana o noticiário sobre a reforma na imigração (Foto: AFP)Cubanos leem nesta terça-feira (16) em Havana o noticiário sobre a reforma na imigração (Foto: AFP)
Também ficará sem efeito a necessidade de entregar a carta de convite, outro dos passos que os cubanos deviam vencer para viajar para o exterior temporariamente e voltar em segurança para a ilha.
A regra também estendeu de 11 para 24 meses a "estada no exterior dos moradores de Cuba que viajam a negócios, contados a partir da data de saída do país". Caso o cubano exceda esse tempo, ele poderá solicitar uma prorrogação.
"Quando o prazo terminar [24 meses], devem obter, com carimbo no passaporte, a constância da prorrogação do prazo correspondente, concedido por um consulado cubano", segundo o comunicado.
Os emigrados cubanos devem visitar o país com passaporte nacional expedido nos consulados cubanos, mesmo no caso de cidadania no país que residem, e devem ter ainda um visto de duração limitada a 30 dias.
A reforma migratória cubana também eleva a 24 meses o período máximo de permanência no exterior dos cubanos que viajarem por motivos particulares.
A reforma migratória foi anunciada há dois anos pelo presidente Raúl Castro, que em 2006 substituiu o irmão Fidel, afastado por doença, e acontece como parte das mudanças ocorridas gradualmente, desde o ano passado, para "atualizar" o modelo cubano.
Mas, como explicou o próprio Raúl Castro em ocasiões posteriores, essa é uma questão complexa em consequência das tensões de meio século com os Estados Unidos, onde vivem 80% do 1,5 milhão de cubanos que residem no exterior.
LimitadoNo entanto, as autoridades pretendem colocar limites para alguns setores ainda não especificados. Atualmente, médicos, cientistas e militares têm fortes restrições que tornam quase impossível deixar o país temporariamente a trabalho, turismo ou para viagens de reencontro com a família no exterior.
O governo de Raúl Castro afirmou nesta terça que "o roubo de cérebros" praticado, segundo ele, pelos Estados Unidos obrigou Cuba a "defender-se nesta frente", o que explica os limites da abertura migratória.
"Enquanto persistirem as políticas que favorecem o 'roubo de cérebros', dirigidas a despojar-nos dos recursos humanos imprescindíveis para o desenvolvimento econômico, social e científico do país, Cuba estará obrigada a manter medidas para sua defesa neste sentido", afirma um editorial do jornal oficial "Granma".
Vários decretos publicados no Diário Oficial suprimem os requisitos para as viagens a partir de 14 de janeiro. A medida teria sido solicitada por moradores, acadêmicos e artistas, como Silvio Rodríguez, pois representam um alto custo em trâmites burocráticos.
O "Granma" considera que "qualquer análise do problema migratório cubano passa inexoravelmente pela política de hostilidade que o governo dos Estados Unidos tem desenvolvido contra o país por mais de 50 anos".
De acordo com o jornal oficial do regime, "o caráter desumano desta política, que estimula por um lado as saídas ilegais do país e de outro obstrui a possibilidade de emigrar de maneira legal, ordenada e segura, tem a clara intenção de transformar os cubanos que desejam morar em outros países em supostos opositores políticos e em um fator de desestabilização interna".
O "Granma" argumenta que as fugas em massa de Camarioca (1965), Mariel (1980) e a crise dos balseiros (1994), durante as quais dezenas de milhares de pessoas abandonaram Cuba, são "consequência desta irracional e irresponsável política" de Washington.
As novas medidas anunciadas "são parte do processo irreversível de normalização das relações da emigração com sua pátria", conclui o editorial.
tópicos:

segunda-feira, 15 de outubro de 2012

Comunidade França-Brasil | Notícias

09/10/2012
Primeiros bolsistas do Programa Ciência sem Fronteiras são recebidos na França

A Embaixada do Brasil na França organizou uma recepção para os primeiros bolsistas brasileiros na França.  O evento aconteceu na Maison du Brésil, na Cidade Internacional Universitária de Paris.

Ao todo são 1.600 bolsistas brasileiros -- provenientes dos programas Ciência sem Fronteiras, Brafitec e Brafagri -- estudando  na França neste semestre.


Confira a notícia no site da Radio France Internationale.

Próxima Chamada para a França

O próximo edital para graduação sanduíche na França será lançado em novembro.

Poderão se candidatar estudantes que tenham concluído no mínimo 20% e no máximo 80% de sua graduação no Brasil, em uma das áreas prioritárias do programa. Será exigido um comprovante de nível intermediário de francês.
Acompanhe as informações sobre a chamada pelos portais www.cienciasemfronteiras.gov.br e:

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domingo, 14 de outubro de 2012

Os prêmios Nobel 2012


The 2012 Nobel prizes

Good eggs

Prizes are awarded for work on stem cells, quantum mechanics and cell signalling

Oct 13th 2012 | from the print edition
THIS year’s Nobel prize for medicine went to Sir John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka (both pictured above) for a crucial discovery in stem-cell science: how to make what are known as pluripotent stem cells from ordinary body cells. What the citation did not say was that this work also allows clones to be made from adult animals, potentially including people.
A stem cell is one that can differentiate into daughter cells specialised for particular functions, and all the cells in a body are thus derived from stem cells. That includes the stem cells themselves, which derive from “ur” stem cells found in embryos. These embryonic stem cells are the pluripotent ones, meaning they can turn into many (sometimes all) other sorts of cell.
Pluripotent embryonic stem cells are of great value to researchers but, if the embryos they come from are human, their use is controversial. This controversy, indeed, was what had originally stimulated Dr Yamanaka to start his investigations, in the hope that embryonic cells might no longer be needed. Also, if such cells are ever to play a useful role in medicine (perhaps for repairing damaged tissue), then they will have to be available in bulk—and ideally in a form whose DNA matches that of the recipient. Sir John and Dr Yamanaka have both conducted work that should help make this possible.
Sir John’s prize-winning study, published half a century ago, in 1962, when he was at Oxford, was to transplant the nuclei of cells from adults of a frog called Xenopus laevis into enucleated eggs of that species. The eggs in question then developed into healthy adults.
This showed that DNA is not altered during embryonic development, at least in Xenopus. (That was subsequently shown to be true in other species, too.) It therefore suggested it might be possible to get an entire adult cell to perform a similar trick, without involving an egg at all.
That was what Dr Yamanaka did. He and his colleagues at Kyoto University managed to insert extra copies of four crucial genes into adult mouse cells. These genes each encode a protein of a type known as a transcription factor. Such factors control the expression of DNA. Together, these particular four can trick a cell into thinking it is part of an embryo.
In the first experiment, conducted in 2006, Dr Yamanaka did not produce complete mice, but he did turn the adult cells into pluripotent stem cells. Subsequent work has produced embryos which, if transplanted into the womb of a female mouse, will go all the way to adulthood. And in 2007 Dr Yamanaka managed to activate the same four genes in adult human cells, thus generating pluripotent human stem cells.
In principle, that opens the door to human cloning, though no one (as far as is known) has yet tried this—and in most countries such an experiment would be illegal. It also opens the door, though, to bespoke tissue repair, since it could allow cells of whatever type were desired to be grown from, say, a few skin cells and then transplanted back into the donor without risking an adverse reaction from his immune system.
How that would work in practice remains to be seen. But if it works well then Sir John and Dr Yamanaka may turn out to have been the pioneers of a whole, new field: regenerative medicine.
Trappings of success
Serge Haroche
David Wineland
The physics prize went to two cat hunters. The feline in question is Schrödinger’s cat, and the prize-winners are Serge Haroche of the Collège de France, in Paris, and David Wineland of America’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Erwin Schrödinger’s famous puss—famous for being both alive and dead at the same time—was born in 1935. It was part of a thought experiment intended to illustrate the bizarre nature of the quantum world, in which particles can persist in two states at once and, as a consequence, a cat can be both dead and alive. However, the cat (or, rather, subatomic particles that behave like the cat) has proved hard to hunt down in practice because such superpositions of states are fragile and easily disrupted phenomena.
Superposition is, nevertheless, crucial to the idea of building what is known as a quantum computer. Such a device would be able to carry out many calculations in parallel, with each of the superposed states acting as part of the calculation. But the computer would work only if the operator could interact with it without destroying the superposition.
Dr Haroche and Dr Wineland led independent teams which, beginning in the 1980s, devised ways to measure and manipulate particles while preserving superposition. Dr Haroche worked on photons (the particles of light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation). Dr Wineland worked on atoms.
Dr Haroche trapped his photons by getting them to bounce back and forth between two tiny superconducting mirrors. He then “entangled” them (another weird quantum process) with what are known as Rydberg atoms. A Rydberg atom is one whose outer electrons have been tweaked to make it about 1,000 times bigger than a normal atom, and the process of entanglement means that measuring the atom reveals the quantum state of the photon (just how dead and alive the “cat” is), while leaving the photon itself intact and thereby preserving its superposition.
Dr Haroche thus used atoms to probe photons. Dr Wineland, meanwhile, did the opposite. He used photons (in the form of carefully calibrated pulses of laser light) to probe atoms. The atoms in question were stripped of their outer electrons and trapped in an electric field, in a vacuum, at extremely low temperatures. The pulses served to cool them even further, by settling them into their lowest possible energy states, and then to nudge them into a superposition of two different energy states. This let them stand in for the mythical cat.
Quantum computers remain science fiction, though Dr Wineland’s group and others have managed to perform a few primitive calculations with trapped atoms, in order to prove the point. Dr Wineland has, however, built a working clock with his atoms—and it is the most accurate clock in history.
The escapement of this clock consists of two entangled atoms, one of which is used to read the inherent vibrations of the other. Those vibrations can be measured so precisely (and without interruption, because entanglement is not broken) that Dr Wineland’s clock would, had it been set running at the beginning of the universe, 13.7 billion years ago, be off today by only about five seconds.
Robert Lefkowitz
Brian Kobilka
The chemistry prize, as is now almost a Nobel tradition, went for work that might equally have won one of the other two—in this case the medicine prize. The laureates were Robert Lefkowitz of Duke University and Brian Kobilka of Stanford, who between them laid the groundwork for the study of what are known as G-protein-coupled receptors.
A G-protein-coupled receptor is a protein that floats in a cell’s surface membrane. Its job is to pass signals from the outside world to the cellular interior. It does this by interacting with a small molecule such as adrenalin (known as a ligand), in a way that causes its shape to change. That shape-change releases into the cell a piece of a second protein, known as a G-protein (because it likes to bind to molecules containing a substance called guanine), that had previously been attached to the part of the receptor that is inside the cell, below the membrane.
This release, in turn, stimulates a chain of chemical reactions which cause the cell to change its behaviour in some way. Exactly which way depends on which G-protein is released, which depends on which receptor was tickled, which depends on which ligand did the tickling. Given that around 1,000 different G-protein-coupled receptors have (thanks to the Human Genome Project) now been discovered, the result is a sophisticated system whereby cells can regulate each other by secreting appropriate ligands.
Hitting the G-spot
This web of receptors also provides a rich supply of drug targets. For example, nine sorts of G-protein-coupled receptor respond (in different ways) to adrenalin or its cousin noradrenaline. By crafting drugs known as beta-blockers, which interact mainly with just one of these (a version of the beta adrenergic receptor), pharmacologists have devised a way of mimicking some of adrenalin’s functions (those concerned with regulating the heart) without stimulating others, such as the fight-or-flight reaction in the brain. Knowing all of the receptors affected by adrenalin enables researchers to tailor drugs in ways that minimise undesired interactions, and thus to reduce the risk of side effects.
Dr Lefkowitz’s roles in this story were first to identify several receptors using radioactive ligands, and then to clone, in 1986, the gene for beta adrenergic receptors—the first time this had been done for any G-protein-coupled receptor gene. The other eight quickly followed.
Dr Kobilka, who worked alongside Dr Lefkowitz before he moved to Stanford, then discovered the structure of beta receptors using X-ray crystallography. He confirmed that their amino-acid chains weave in and out of the cell seven times, a pattern repeated in all G-protein-coupled receptors (the molecules are sometimes also referred to as seven-transmembrane receptors). The consequence has been a revolution in medical understanding, for it is now known that about half the drugs on the market work by interacting with G-protein-coupled receptors.