L de Meis

The growing competition in Brazilian science: rites of passage, stress and burnout

Brazils scientific community is under pressure. Each year there is an increase in its contribution to international science and in the number of students who are trained to do research and teach at an advanced level. Most of these activities are carried out in state and federal universities, but with government funding that has decreased by more than 70% since 1996. Interviews with graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and professors in one university department with a strong research tradition illustrate the level of stress engendered by the conflict between increasing competition and diminishing resources, and serve to underscore the negative effects on creativity and on the tendency to choose science as a career.

A profile of science in Brazil

The Brazilian contribution to publications in science and humanities increased from 0.29% of the worldwide total in 1981 to 0.46% in 1993. In science, but not in humanities, Brazilian publications tend to follow the world publication trend; thus, during the period 1981–1993, 57.9% of Brazilian publications were in life sciences, 35.4% in exact sciences, 3.9% in earth sciences and 2.9% in humanities. The ten institutions with the largest number of publications are universities, which account for half of the all Brazilian publications. The total number of authors on the Brazilian 1981–1993 publications was 52,808. Among these 57.8% appear in only one publication and 17.5% have their publications cited more than 10 times.

Human resources and scientific productivity in Brazil

The number of Brazilian scientific publications increased from 0.29% to 0.56% of the worldwide total during the 1981–1993 period. There was a decrease of the funds allocated to most scientific activities, except for that allocated for training of new scientists. The numbers of research fellowships and scientific publications increased at the same ratio during the period. The pattern of scientific publications and the number of fellowship granted along the years in the different fields of research were analyzed. The data presented indicate that even in a period of economic crisis, a selective investment of funds in human resources may lead to an increase of the scientific productivity of a country in all science fields.

The importance of human relationships in scientific productivity

Fifty Brazilian scientists working in life sciences were interviewed in order to explore reasons of bursts and falls in their scientific productivity. Scientists recognize specific periods of time of their career during which they are more productive. Bursts of productivity are influenced mainly by human relationships and, to a lower extent, by material conditions (equipment, grants, etc), time dedicated to work and reasons linked to the kind of work carried out. The most productive scientists tend to attribute more importance to human relations than their colleagues with lower productivity scores. Some possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.

The concept of science among children of different ages and cultures

Schoolchildrens images of ‘the scientist’ were investigated in Brazil, USA, France, Italy, Chile, Mexico, India and Nigeria by getting them to make drawings. Even before science is taught as a separate subject in schoolchildren appeared to have a good notion of what constitutes scientific activity. The relation between ‘image’ and choice of future career is discussed.

The relationship between advisors and students

Considering the influence of graduation courses on the scientific productivity in Brazil, fifty productive Brazilian scientists working in life sciences were interviewed about their relationship with their advisors and their own experience with their students. Admired by freedom and intellectual qualities, by their love and dedication for science, advisors seem to have had a deep influence on their students. This bond is not free from either an idealized frame or from some complaints and conflicts. Interviewed scientists see in themselves lesser qualities and faults but the same respect for freedom. Some students are thought to be specially important to the intervieweds productivity. Eldest and most productive scientists seem to be intellectually more impressed by their advisors than the other groups. The emotional and sometimes strong and idealized bond between advisor and students lead us to believe that the stated frequencies of conflicts might be underestimated.

Energy Interconversion in Transport ATPases Role of Water in Ions Transport and in the Energy of Hydrolysis of Phosphate Compounds

This chapter is related to the work carried out by Kjelstrup et al. [1,2,3], describing the energy dissipation of uncoupled and coupled enzymes. Here we describe the biochemical experiments that led to a partial understanding of how energy is handled by enzymes (proteins) to transport ions across a biological membrane and how the enzyme is able to determine how much of the total energy available during transport is used to perform work (ion transport) and how much is dissipated as heat. The experiments described show that the water organized around proteins (enzymes) and reactants involved in the transport process play a key role in the mechanism of energy transduction. Most of the bibliography of this chapter is related to the biological experiments that contributed to the elucidation of the mechanism of energy transduction during Ca2+ transport, as, e.g., works pertinent to the thermodynamic process of active transport, as seen in the perspective of physics [1,2,3,4,5,6,7].