By Matin Durrani
If you’ve been keeping an eye on this blog, you’ll remember that I spent a week in Brazil last November gathering material for an upcoming Physics World
Special Report, which will examine the challenges and opportunities
facing physicists in the world’s fifth largest country. I travelled to
São Paulo, São José dos Campos and Rio de Janeiro, visiting everywhere
from the first overseas offshoot of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics to the Brazilian National Observatory, where Brazilian research pretty much began.
I’ve just been putting the finishing touches to that report, which
includes news, features and an exclusive interview with the Brazilian
science minister Marco Antonio Raupp,
who is a physicist by training. Brazil’s investment in science has more
than quadrupled over the last decade and in the interview Raupp
outlines his priorities for the Brazilian research community. Stay tuned
for the Physics World Special Report, which we’ll make
available via this website from next month. (One rather flippant
question we asked Raupp is who he thinks will win this year’s FIFA World
Cup taking place across Brazil this summer – we didn’t have room to fit
his answer into the report, but I can exclusively reveal on this blog
that the Brazilian science minister has got his money on the home
nation. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?)
Meanwhile, I received an e-mail over the
weekend from my IOP Publishing colleague Susan Curtis, who’s in Brazil
right now to kick off another project that will highlight some of the
most exciting scientific research to emerge from the country. This time
round, IOP Publishing is working in partnership with the Brazilian Materials Research Society
to produce a Science Impact report focusing on materials research in
areas as diverse as electronics, energy, and biology and medicine. It
follows IOP Publishing’s first Science Impact report on physics in Brazil, which was published last year in partnership with the Brazilian Physical Society.
During the week, Susan will be meeting some of Brazil’s leading
materials scientists to get their take on the most interesting work
currently coming out of the country. Before the serious work started,
though, she took the opportunity of a free Sunday afternoon in São
Carlos – some 200 km northeast of São Paulo – to visit the city’s
ecological park. The park boasts some exotic creatures, including
brightly coloured macaws, jaguars and pumas, spectacled bears, and the
rather magnificent llama picture above.
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