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 Brazilian scientists have jumped to 15th position worldwide in scientific production. With 19,428 articles published in 2007, the country, exceeding Switzerland and Sweden, now answers to 2.02% of total global scientific production. And the Brazilian area that was most prominent in the global studies was Agriculture, with 4,139 articles produced between 2003 and 2007, 4% of total global production.
Within the country, medicine is most prominent. In 2007, a total of 3,745 articles were published. In the balance of the last four years, of all the texts published, 71% were about neuroscience.
According o the Ministry of Education, among the Latin-American countries, Brazil is the most prominent. In second place comes Mexico, in the 28th position in the world, with 7,469 articles published in the same period, which answers to 0.78% of global production.
When territory (countries with over four million square kilometers), population (countries with over 100 million inhabitants) and economy (countries with GDPs over 400 million dollars) are considered, Brazil is in the fourth position, only behind Russia, the United States and China.
Giving the Poor a Chance
A report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) shows the part played by three Brazilian companies in the inclusion of the poorest layers of the population into productive processes. According to the study, Natura, Sadia and VCP (Votorantim Celulose e Papel) have projects that help communities to produce raw material while generating income and helping the environment.
The economy's power to generate decent work depends, largely, on the private sector. And the private sector, as it supplies consumer goods and services, brings other chances of opportunities to the poor, according to the report. The study presents examples of business initiatives that managed to expand the access of the poor to consumer goods and also took them on in some phase of the productive process.
According to the report, these are ways of reducing poverty and helping reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) - a series of social and economic targets that the countries in the UN engaged to reach by 2015.
Milking
Brazil has 1.3 million producers of milk and 80% use manual milking. Aware of the needs of small and medium producers, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation Dairy Cattle department has developed a milking kit made up of simple utensils, associated to a booklet of technical guidance regarding manual milking.
The bacterial count, one of the factors that determines the quality of the product, is usually high in this kind of milking. This is due to the incorrect procedures that cause deficient hygiene, both on the cow's teats and on the hands of the milker and of the objects used.
Studies developed in Brazilian states in which the kit is being used show that adequate procedure may reduce the bacteria count by 40% to 85%. Quality milk guarantees prices at least 10% greater for producers.
The whole kit costs around 150 Brazilian reais (US$ 93). The success of the initiative was so great that the idea is going to be exported to tropical countries like Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. There is also a possibility of sending it to Angola and Uganda, in Africa, and India and Pakistan, in Asia.
Golden Peanut
Peanuts are the appetizer that Brazilians consume most with beer. But for many farmers from the interior of São Paulo, they are much more than that: they are a luxury article, raw material for fine biscuits in Europe and their main source of income.
Unshelled peanuts have never been so appreciated, and the price on the foreign market has reached US$ 1,700 a ton. Furthermore, production in the last harvest, 2007/2008, is the largest in recent times.
In the state of São Paulo, which answers to 80% of the Brazilian production, 70% of the cropland and 98% of exports, production this year should reach 200,000 tons. In the first quarter of the year alone, 5,400 tons of unshelled peanuts were exported.
Explosive Growth
Today, the Arab countries are the third main consumers of Brazilian food products. What attracts attention, on analyzing trade figures with the Arabs in the first half of the year, is that apart from traditional products in the agribusiness trade basket, like meats, other Brazilian products are also gaining space in that region of the world.
This is the case with eggs, dairy products and honey. In the first half of this year, sales of eggs to the Arabs registered growth of 551%, revenues generated totaled US$ 22.6 million. In the period, with imports of US$ 48 million, the Arab market has become the second most import destination for Brazilian dairy products.
The performance of exports of grain in this first quarter of the year was also impressive. With the shipment of 230,000 tons and revenues of US$ 68 million, grain has taken over the third position among the food products most exported to the Arab world.
The partnerships between Arabs and Brazilians are not just in the most common sectors like trade. Few people know, for example, that there are already joint-ventures between Brazilians and Arabs in cinema. Brazilian cinema director Ari Cândido, from the city of Londrina, worked on a production with Tunisian sponsorship in the 1980s.
It was the movie "Por que a Eritréia?" ("Why Eritrea?"), that received the People's Award at the 1984 São Paulo Cinema Exhibit. That is, Arabs and Brazilians had already met way before most people imagine.
The film by Cândido was produced in partnership with the Tunisian Mohamed Charbagi, and was sponsored by Tunisian state-owned production company Satpec. In June, Cândido won the "Toronto International Portuguese Film Festival", but for film "The Kid".
You may contact the author writing to joel.guimaraes@anba.com.br or joel@agenciameios.com.br.
Anba - www.anba.com.br
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
Switzerland 7,5 millions
Sweden 9 millions
And the quantity of articles written...has certainly NOOOOOOO value as to its quality...and applications !
Feel free to write as many as you wish.
Brazil is and remain a backward country.
And as a simple proof in 2008 " Brazil has 1.3 million producers of milk and 80% use manual milking" It says it all about your agriculture state of development !!!!!!
Concerning the pharmaceutical sector what is the name of a Brazilian Company listed in the Bovespa ? Market Capitalization ?Annual revenues ?
There is NOOOOOOO pharmaceutical company in the Bovespa...to my knowledge !
It says it all for the Brazilian Medicine state of development.
Even the Embrapa prowess that we read about so many times on grains seeds development is more than suspicious.
Especially knowing that 90 % of your grains seeds market is supplied by FOREIGN COMPANIES !!!!!!
And about peanuts : in Europe very few biscuits are made with peanuts. Furthermore in bars......they offer SHELLED NOT UNSHELLED peanuts. Better yet....peanuts are not considered as luxury....contrary to your wealthiest farm state that SP is !!!!!
Laugh....laugh....laugh....laugh....laugh !