segunda-feira, 24 de junho de 2013

Custos das Copas Atualizado

Veja Também http://copadomundo.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2013/06/24/custo-de-aeroportos-da-copa-aumenta-r-16-bi-estadios-sobem-r-600-mi.htm

quinta-feira, 20 de junho de 2013

The Guardian - A virada sobre o aumento das passagens

Brazil protesters win U-turn on fare rises

Rio and São Paulo leaders back down on public transport fare increases in face of mass unrest
Riot police Brazil
Riot police control crowds before a match between Brazil and Mexico in Fortaleza yesterday. Photograph: Robert Ghement/EPA
Authorities in Brazil's two biggest cities have made a U-turn on public transport fare increases in the face of mass protests that have overshadowed the country's build up to next year's World Cup.
In advance of major demonstrations on Thursday, the leaders of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro announced that bus and subway price rises will be rescinded, but it is far from certain that this will be enough to mollify public unrest.
Although the demonstrations began on a small scale last week in opposition to the fare rises, they have spread rapidly to encompass a variety of frustrations. A quarter of a million people took to the streets in at least 12 cities on Monday to call for better public services, an end to corruption, punishment for police brutality, and less wasteful spending on the World Cup.
Sporadic protests have continued since and spread to smaller cities, occasionally resulting in violence. Among the most recent incidents was a clash on Wednesday between police and demonstrators in the north-eastern city of Fortaleza ahead of a Confederations Cup game in the city between Brazil and Mexico. The 15,000 protestors were forced back from the Castelão stadium perimeter with pepper spray, tear gas and – by one account – rubber bullets. A police car was torched and some supporters were obstructed on their way to the game.
President Dilma Rousseff has attempted to placate the protesters by declaring her government willing to listen. She also held meetings with several regional governors, urging them to step back on fare increases and to ensure police restraint.
São Paulo's mayor Fernando Haddad reluctantly accepted, but said the loss of revenue for fares would affect other areas of the budget. "This will represent a big sacrifice and we will have to reduce investments in other areas," he said.
The organisers of the demonstrators have yet to respond, but protestgroups on Facebook and other social network sites that have rallied the public continue to call for "a million man march" on Thursday. There is also expected to be a protest near the Maracanã ahead of a Confederations Cup game in the afternoon.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter has called on Brazil's protesters to stop linking their demonstrations to the tournament, which is a dry run for the World Cup. "I can understand that people are not happy, but they should not use football to make their demands heard," Blatter said on Globo TV, a domestic station.
But several of Brazil's national team players have expressed their support for the demonstrators. "I see these demonstrators and I know that they are right," the forward Hulk told a press conference in Fortaleza on Tuesday. "We know Brazil needs to improve in many areas and must let the demonstrators express themselves."
Fifa's tournaments have become a focus for many demonstrators, who feel the 12 stadiums the country has built or renovated at huge cost show how public money is spent on projects that benefit construction companies and TV stations rather than hospital and schools. This argument has been eloquently expressed in English in a popular YouTube video titled "No, I'm not going to the World Cup", which has drawn more than 1.5m hits.
The video's narrator, Carla Dauden, said: "Suddenly there is all this money available to build new stadiums and the population is led to believe the World Cup is the change they need for their lives to get better. "But the truth is that most of the money from the games and the stadiums goes straight to Fifa and we don't see it so we don't get it and the money from tourists and investors goes to those who already have money." The government says the $13.3bn spending on the tournaments is also being used to improve roads, metro services, airports, communications and public security, all of which would help boost the country's economic and social development.
This point was emphasised by Blatter, who said Fifa did not impose the tournament on the hosts. "Brazil asked to host the World Cup," Blatter said. "They knew that to host a good World Cup they would naturally have to build stadiums.
"But we said that it was not just for the World Cup. Together with the stadiums there are other constructions: highways, hotels, airports … Items that are for the future. Not just for the World Cup."
He and Rousseff were booed by the crowd at the opening ceremony of the Confederations Cup on Saturday.

quarta-feira, 19 de junho de 2013

A vitória dos R$ 0,20 reportagem del El Pais

La primera victoria de los 20 céntimos

Si es cierto que menos es más, la primera victoria real de la protesta
callejera brasileña ha empezado por lo más pequeño: la suspensión de los 20 céntimos de aumento de los transportes en São Paulo y en Río de Janeiro.
Un menos que tiene un enorme valor simbólico, porque había sido la mecha que hizo prender el fuego. Tanto, que trajo de cabeza estos días a las autoridades de Brasil, temerosas de ceder a una protesta sin líderes que podría ponerlos de rodillas ante los gritos de la calle.
Primero aseguraron que no era posible volver atrás. Después, que el Congreso debía aprobar una ley para exonerar de no sé qué impuestos. Al final, la rendición.
Ganaron los 20 céntimos. La protesta forjará ahora un camino para que todas las demás ciudades sigan el ejemplo, aunque es solo el primer paso. Una pancarta decía ayer: “País desarrollado no es aquel donde los pobres tienen coche, sino donde los ricos usan los transportes públicos”.
Ahora exigirán la calidad de los medios de transportes, la seguridad de los que los usan, la puntualidad de sus horarios y el respeto a la dignidad de los ciudadanos que los emplean, ya que a veces parecen transportar ganado y no personas.
Varios expertos en movimientos de masas están afirmando que las reivindicaciones de un movimiento de protesta sin nombre, ambulante, con un rosario de exigencias en sus manos, va a seguir y está llamado a crecer.
Llegarán otras peticiones, que irán desde lo que los pobres sin seguro privado sufren en los hospitales o la precariedad de las escuelas públicas al cáncer de la impunidad que solo lleva a la cárcel y con rapidez a los ciudadanos de a pie y deja libres a los que les sobra nombre y poder para burlar la ley.
Será importante ahora observar la reacción de esas masas a su primera victoria, así como la de los dirigentes políticos ante lo que algunos considerarán una debilidad.
Ni el movimiento podrá querer acortar etapas ni embriagarse con su primera pequeña gran victoria, ni los administradores públicos pueden ahora sentarse tranquilos a beber una cerveza convencidos de que con ese regalo han saciado el hambre del monstruo.
Paradójicamente, esa victoria podría tanto fortalecer el movimiento como debilitarlo. Es un banco de pruebas para los responsables políticos, que deberán saber demostrar cuándo pueden y deben escuchar esas reivindicaciones y cuándo no.
De ese difícil equilibrio del que camina por encima de un hilo tenso dependerá que lo que aún no tiene nombre como fenómeno de protesta, y que es típicamente brasileño, sea capaz o no de ofrecer algo nuevo e inédito: si será una nueva primavera o si todo acabará en agua de borrajas en las que acaben ahogándose los pobres (y a la vez ricos) 20 céntimos de la discordia.

segunda-feira, 17 de junho de 2013

Como se fez a penicilina

How to discover an antibiotic: a historian's guide

Given our pressing need for new antibiotics, or a whole new class of antibiotic-like drugs, perhaps we ought to try learning lessons from the history of penicillin (it might even help someone win the new Longitude Prize!)
Female researcher taking notices while she is using a microscope.
Can history teach us how to make new discoveries?. Photograph: Radu Razvan /Alamy
Historians of science and medicine are often terrible killjoys when it comes to great stories about discovery and genius. We've been quick to point out that the apocryphal story of Fleming discovering penicillin mould 'by accident' when it blew in through a window and landed on a discarded petri dish is, well, apocryphal. We're less unanimous about the way penicillin became a drug. Although the 'Oxford Group', lead byHoward Florey and Ernst Chain developed the chemical extract as far as clinical trials, in the end it was American agricultural, pharmaceutical and military researchers who produced the first useful quantities of purified antibiotic, and who subsequently made the biggest profits from it. Scientists and historians will tell you that this shows what happens when British science is underfunded, or that it warns us how much war can retard or skew scientific research, or (as politicians at the time argued) that it shows how British scientists lack the crucial competitive commercial edge and/or that the Americans are unscrupulous and underhand profit-hunters.
You can hear very similar arguments made today about funding, commercialization and patenting, so maybe we can learn something useful about drug discovery from the history of penicillin?

Hints from History

1. Use a public/private partnership.
This might seem like an unlikely suggestion from the Guardian, but theAlmroth Wright Laboratory that Fleming worked in would probably be a sort of public/private enterprise today. It was based at the St Mary's hospital, a voluntary - that is charitable - hospital which largely served the working classes. The laboratory earned its keep by making commercially viable vaccines, sometimes using the pus and bacteria from staff and patients. In 1914 Fleming himself produced a rather expensive vaccine against acne, costing £1 5s for just 25cc.
At almost every stage penicillin was developed by mixed interest groups - from Universities, the Medical Research Council and private pharmaceutical companies in the UK, to the complicated mix of government, private, military and agricultural funding that eventually produced antibiotics in the USA.
2. Buy your vegetables locally.
Agricultural scientists at the US Department of Agriculture's Northern Regional Research Laboratory (based in Peoria, Illinois) decided to hunt out a more productive strain of penicillum mould. They initiated a global search. The most promising new strain was Penicillium chrysogenum. And where was it found? On a melon, in a vegetable market. In Peoria.
3. Concentrate on pressing contemporary problems
The death rate from wound infections for those treated on the front lines in World War One was about 12-15%. For World War Two that figure was just 3%, due in large part to penicillin. With thousands of young men being injured the pressure to reduce deaths from raging infections in otherwise non-life-threatening injuries was huge (not to mention the men who were being invalided out with venereal disease). The military support for penicillin research was crucial, not only for financing, but also facilities and human guinea pigs.
From the first grant bid to the Medical Research Council onwards, those working on antibiotics repeatedly and explicitly linked their research – whether 'basic' or 'applied' – to the immediate contemporary needs for infection control, particularly in wartime.
4. Ignore pressing contemporary problems
Why didn't Fleming 'invent' antibiotics? Possibly because he was too busy concentrating on immediate contemporary needs. Fundamentally, he was interested in vaccines. It's how he made his living, after all. His 1929 paper on the mould was titled: 

What was useful about Penicillin was not just that it killed bacteria; it was that it killed most bacteria but not influenza. B. influenzae was already immune to the mould's action. This meant that researchers could use the mould to kill off other contaminating bacteria, while letting the rather fussy B. influenzae grow on a petri dish, making it much easier to study this temperamental bug in the laboratory. It also improved the sensitivity of culture tests for influenza; it seemed that in many cases 'flu infections were missed because the bacteria in a sample were outcompeted by more robust bugs, and so never grew into identifiable colonies on a petri dish.

Although the deaths from infected wounds in World War One were shocking, this was nothing to the incredible death toll of the Influenza pandemic that followed. Fleming's understandable focus on tools to study and understand influenza and make vaccines may have stopped him seeing the other potential uses of penicillin.
5. Be imaginative and spontaneous
Sometimes you have to use something in a way its inventors never intended. The Oxford team showed great imagination in making the leap from what penicillin was (a chemical tool useful for some experiments) to what it could be (an incredible drug); they also showed great creativity with their equipment, with Norman Hartley suggesting they try usinghospital bedpans as growing tanks.
6. Be plodding and systematic (and read a lot).
There was no guarantee that the Oxford Group would ever find Fleming's 1929 paper: today researchers are swamped with publications, and even digital indexing and open access doesn't mean that the 'right' paper will find the 'right' researcher. A lot of careful, methodical reading might be necessary to find the unexpected connection in papers that don't, at a glance, seem relevant. Fleming wasn't the first, after all, there was John Tyndall's 1875 papersuggesting Penicillum acted as an antibiotic, and Ernest Duschesne'swork in the 1890s curing guinea pigs of typhoid with the cheese mouldPenicillum glaucum was waiting to be exploited...
7. Get lucky
In the 1940s, while the USA concentrated on trying to grow the mould and harvest penicillin, British researchers tended to think that the antibiotic chemical itself could be cost-effectively synthesized. If this particular type of bacteria-destroying mould had no easy-grow variant (or if that melon had never been bought in Peoria), or if the chemical produced had been easier to synthesize, then the story of the Antibiotic Wonder Drug could have been very different - with Britain the first country to successfully produce industrial quantities, not the USA. So, most importantly, remember to season your hard work with lots of lucky choices.
Vanessa tweets as @HPS_Vanessa and has learnt from the history of penicillin that a messy desk increases the chance of serendipitous discoveries.

quarta-feira, 5 de junho de 2013

Gasto em Ciência é Vital para a Economia

Science spend 'vital for economy'


Stem cell researchUK government spend on operational science is about 4.6bn a year

Related Stories

The UK scientific community has issued a broadside to the government, warning it not to cut the science budget.
Ministers are due to announce their spending plans for the next four years on 26 June.
The public research budget was frozen when the coalition came to power in 2010, but inflation has eroded its value by 10% since.
Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, said that depressing funding still further would damage the economy.
"Science is the seedcorn of growth," he told reporters. "You do not burn the seedcorn when you are in a difficult situation; you preserve it and that's our message to government."
The Nobel Prize winner was speaking at London's Science Media Centre where science academy and charity leaders had gathered to state the case for a good settlement at the end of the month.
'Public expectation'
Sir John Tooke, the president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, said no-one should doubt the benefits that accrue both to the economy and to public health from investment in medical research.
He cited the examples of MRI scanners, the novel drugs now based on monoclonal antibodies and the new DNA technologies being used for diagnosis - all UK developments that are saving lives and earning money for UK PLC.
The challenges of the coming decades required further investment, he said, and highlighted the growth in dementia (1.5 million patients by 2030) and the rise in antibiotic resistance.
"To rise to those challenges, we must preserve a fragile and interdependent ecosystem involving academia, the NHS, industry and the charitable sector; and recognise that if we disturb one element, the whole potential is at risk."

The sight of the Chancellor giving a speech at the Royal Society last November was a sign for some that the government does understand the value of science to a modern economy.
George Osborne talked of long-term commitments to building British leadership in everything from synthetic biology to regenerative medicine to energy storage. But the real test of political will comes down to hard cash. And the world of British science is worried that its pleas are not being heard clearly enough.
Having most of the science budget ring-fenced doesn't offer protection against inflation. And the real struggle is for an increase in spending to keep up with competitors.
China and South Korea are among countries that believe that aggressive boosts in research are the answer. Britain's science leaders have looked abroad and worry about what they see.




And Sir John continued: "Inadequate investment or uncertainty would lead to loss of leverage funding from charity, from overseas, and from [the pharmaceutical industry]. 'Pharma' contributes some £5 for every £1 of public investment that's made in health research. We would also lose talented mobile researchers to other economies, and there would be a decline in medical innovation, resulting in a failure to match public and patient expectation."
Money for labs
The science leaders said UK research funding had fallen behind that of major competitors in recent years.
Public science spending currently runs at about 0.65% of GDP, compared with an average of 0.8% for the G8 nations.
China is aiming to spend 2.5% of its GDP on research by 2020, South Korea is targeting 5% by 2022 and Brazil 2.5% by the same year.
Compared to the OECD group of developed nations, Britain's science spend is 7th in absolute terms but only 25th in percentage terms.
The UK government's science budget is handled by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), and is divided between operational (money for day-to-day research) and capital funding (the cost of the laboratory infrastructure).
Operational spending presently runs at about £4.6bn a year, a sum that is ring-fenced but which is eroded by inflation.
Capital spending was deeply cut in 2010 but then mostly restored by a series of initiatives adding up to a total of £1.35bn.
The Campaign for Science and Engineering (Case) estimates that a shortfall of just over £300m still remains.
Case and its supporters say the fact that the capital budget is not ring-fenced impedes long-term planning and investment, and they worry it may be targeted again when the spending review is announced on 26 June.
Museum status
The status of the UK's leading science museums is also currently in the news.
The Science Museum Group (SMG), which runs four centres across the country including the flagship Science Museum in South Kensington in London, says it has been told to prepare for a 10% cut by the ministry that oversees it - the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Director Ian Blatchford said that such a cut would force him to close one of the northern museums in the group's portfolio.
"One of our regional museums will shut, the exhibition programme will be completely destroyed and we will make massive educational cuts which is the very reason that we exist," he said.
A spokesman for the Department for Culture Media and Sport said it was an "operational issue" for the SMG.
On the wider funding issue for science, a spokesman for BIS said: "We cannot anticipate the outcome of the spending review, which will determine levels of future funding. However, the whole coalition recognises that universities and research, and the knowledge and skills they produce, are vital for economic growth.
"That's why we have protected the £4.6bn ring-fenced science and research budget since 2010 and announced an extra £1.5bn on science capital since."


Gastar em Ciência é "vital para a economia"
Por Jonathan Amos
Correspondente de ciência da BBC News

Governo do Reino Unido gasta em ciência operacional cerca de 4,6 bilhões ano

A comunidade científica Reino Unido  está advertindo que para não cortar o orçamento em ciência.

Ministros deverão anunciar seus planos de cortes/gastos para os próximos quatro anos em 26 de junho.

O orçamento público investigação foi congelado quando a coalizão chegou ao poder em 2010, mas a inflação corroeu o seu valor em 10% desde então.

Sir Paul Nurse, presidente da Royal Society, disse que o financiamento já deprimente prejudicaria a economia.

"A ciência é a semente de crescimento", disse ele a repórteres. "Você não pode queimar a semente quando você está em uma situação difícil, preservá-lo e essa é a nossa mensagem para o governo."

O ganhador do Prêmio Nobel que falava na Science Centre, em Londres, onde mídia academia de ciências e de caridade líderes se reuniram para indicar o caso para um bom acordo no final do mês.

'Expectativa Público
Sir John Tooke, o presidente da Academia de Ciências Médicas, disse que ninguém deve duvidar dos benefícios que advêm tanto para a economia e para a saúde pública de investimento em pesquisa médica.

Ele citou os exemplos de scanners de ressonância magnética, os novos medicamentos agora baseados em anticorpos monoclonais e as novas tecnologias de DNA estão sendo usados ​​para o diagnóstico - todos os desenvolvimentos do Reino Unido que estão salvando vidas e ganhar dinheiro para UK PLC.

Os desafios das próximas décadas necessário mais investimento, ele disse, e destacou o crescimento da demência (1,5 milhões de pacientes em 2030) eo aumento da resistência aos antibióticos.

"Para enfrentar esses desafios, é preciso preservar um ecossistema frágil e interdependentes envolvendo academia, o NHS, da indústria e do setor de caridade., E reconhecer que, se perturbar um elemento, todo o potencial está em risco"

Continue lendo a história principal

Análise
David Shukman
Editor de ciência da BBC News
A visão da chanceler dando um discurso na Royal Society, em novembro passado foi um sinal para alguns que o governo não entender o valor da ciência para uma economia moderna.

George Osborne falou de compromissos de longo prazo para a construção de liderança britânica em tudo, desde a biologia sintética para a medicina regenerativa para armazenamento de energia. Mas o verdadeiro teste de vontade política se resume a dinheiro vivo. E o mundo da ciência britânica está preocupada que seus fundamentos não estão sendo ouvidas com clareza suficiente.

Tendo a maior parte do orçamento de ciência autonomizado não oferece proteção contra a inflação. E a verdadeira luta é por um aumento nos gastos para manter-se com os concorrentes.

China e Coreia do Sul estão entre os países que acreditam que aumenta agressivos na investigação são a resposta. Líderes da ciência da Grã-Bretanha ter olhado no exterior e se preocupar com o que vêem.

Ler mais de David
E Sir John continuou: "A insuficiência dos investimentos ou incerteza levaria à perda de financiamento alavancagem da caridade, do exterior, e de [a indústria farmacêutica] 'Pharma' contribui com cerca de £ 5 para cada £ 1 de investimento público que é feito na pesquisa em saúde. . Também perderia talentosos pesquisadores móveis para outras economias, e não haveria um declínio na inovação médica, resultando em um fracasso para corresponder a expectativa do público e paciente. "

Dinheiro para laboratórios
Os líderes da ciência disse Unido financiamento da investigação que tinha ficado para trás seus principais concorrentes nos últimos anos.

Despesa pública da ciência atualmente é executado em cerca de 0,65% do PIB, em comparação com uma média de 0,8% para as nações do G8.

China está a tentar passar de 2,5% do seu PIB em investigação, em 2020, a Coreia do Sul é alvo de 5% em 2022 e no Brasil de 2,5% no mesmo ano.

Comparado com o grupo de países desenvolvidos da OCDE, a ciência da Grã-Bretanha gasta é sétimo em termos absolutos, mas apenas 25 em termos percentuais.

Orçamento de ciência do governo britânico é tratado pelo Departamento de Negócios, Inovação e Habilidades (BIS), e está dividido entre operacional (dinheiro para a pesquisa do dia-a-dia) e financiamento de capital (o custo da infra-estrutura de laboratório).

Despesa operacional atualmente é executado em cerca de £ 4,6 bilhões por ano, uma soma que é autonomizado, mas que é corroída pela inflação.

Os gastos de capital foi profundamente cortados em 2010, mas, em seguida, na maior parte restaurada por uma série de iniciativas que somam um total de £ 1.35bn.

A Campanha para a Ciência e Engenharia (Case) estima que um déficit de pouco mais de R $ 300 milhões ainda permanece.

Case e seus partidários dizem que o fato de que o orçamento de capital não está autonomizado impede planejamento e investimento a longo prazo, e que se preocupe, pode ser alvo de novo quando a revisão de gastos é anunciado no dia 26 de junho.

Estado museu
O estado dos principais museus de ciências do Reino Unido também está no noticiário.

O Grupo Science Museum (SMG), que corre quatro centros em todo o país, incluindo o Museu da Ciência da capitânia em South Kensington, em Londres, diz que tem sido dito para se preparar para um corte de 10% pelo ministério que supervisiona - o Departamento de Cultura, Mídia e Esporte.

Diretor Ian Blatchford disse que tal um corte iria forçá-lo a fechar um dos museus do grupo.

"Um dos nossos museus regionais vai fechar, o programa de exposição será completamente destruída e vamos fazer enormes cortes de ensino, que é a razão que nós existimos", disse ele.

Um porta-voz do Departamento de Cultura, Mídia e Esporte disse que era uma "questão operacional" para o SMG.

Sobre a questão de financiamento mais ampla para a ciência, um porta-voz do BIS disse:. "Nós não podemos antecipar o resultado da revisão de gastos, o que irá determinar os níveis de financiamento futuro No entanto, toda a coalizão reconhece que as universidades e investigação, bem como o conhecimento e as habilidades que produzir, são vitais para o crescimento econômico.

"É por isso que ter protegido a R $ 4,6 bilhões ciência autonomizados e orçamento de pesquisa desde 2010 e anunciou um extra de R $ 1,5 bilhão em capital de ciência desde então."