Depreciação do ativo humano científico brasileiro

O governo federal assinou hoje uma MP reajustando o salário mínimo que passará a valer R$ 510,00 a partir de 1º de Janeiro de 2010. Apesar do fato constituir-se uma notícia excelente para a estabilidade econômica, produtiva e social do Brasil, o mesmo, por outro lado, expõe a fragilidade do investimento em pesquisa e tecnologia e o fracasso na formação de recursos humanos no setor científico no país.

Como uma imagem vale mais do que mil palavras, desenvolvo o texto com base em um gráfico aproximado (Figura 1) compilado por mim o qual mostra a evolução da relação dos valores de bolsa de pós-graduação em instituições superiores brasileiras pagas pelo Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) versus o valor do salário mínimo no país.

Figura 1. Relação do valor das bolsas de pós-graduação do CNPq e salário mínimo no Brasil.

A inspeção visual do gráfico demonstra que tal relação vem em tendência de queda desde 1994, quando o valor da bolsa de mestrado era de R$ 724,50; a de doutorado de R$ 940,00 e o salário mínimo equivalia a R$ 70,00. Ou seja,  o valor pago ao estudante brasileiro de doutorado para dedicar-se exclusivamente aos estudos e à pesquisa equivalia a aproximadamente 13 vezes o valor do salário mínimo. Em 2010, com aumento do salário mínimo, um estudante de doutorado brasileiro passará a ganhar 3 salários e meio, enquanto que o de mestrado ganhará menos de 2 salários e meio, o que é uma absoluta vergonha.

Os ínfimos aumentos concedidos na gestão do presidente Lula, apesar de toda a boa vontade do nobre chefe de Estado brasileiro, mostraram-se insuficientes e não condizem com o discurso do governo de se tornar um "parceiro" do setor científico-tecnológico brasileiro. Se a política de investimentos na formação de recursos humanos não mudar nos próximos cinco anos, temo que o tão sonhado despertar do Brasil  no cenário internacional não passe de apenas mais um sonho frustrado. Para construirmos o futuro, devemos edificar os pilares de sustentação e, nesse cenário, ciência e tecnologia provarão serem fundamentais para a soberania nacional.

Enquanto isso, contentar-me-ei com o valor pago atualmente para dedicar-me exclusivamente ao mestrado e assistirei, paralisado, colegas ganharem o triplo (em média) no mercado de trabalho apenas com a graduação. Qual o nosso futuro? Incerto, certamente.

The Intelligent Quotient (IQ) of Evolution

I'm going through the first three chapters of the excellent 1999's "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil. So far, it has been a mix of everything: from cosmology, biology and information theory to computer science, nanoengineering and philosophy. I'm quite amazed on the way Ray was able to deliver all of those breathtaking subjects in less then one hundred pages without making things obscure or even scary to the non-initiated.

Take for instance the discussion going on chapter 2 about the IQ of evolution. He concludes that it should be no better than an infinitesimal quantity greater than zero, given the great lenght of time (in a scale of billions of years) that was needed to evolve some remarkable things such as the human brain. Of course, Ray is agreeing whith many psychologists who evaluate an intelligent process in terms of the elapsed time to reach a solution, i.e., the quicker the better.

The most interesting conclusion drawn here, though, is that all the astonishing complexity observed in Nature is a byproduct of only a slight amount of order encompassed by the emergence of extraordinarily intricate chemical and biological patterns formed apparently by chance.

I'm enjoying it so much!

Conferences vs. Journal publications in CS

This was originally posted as a comment in the GPEMJournal blog:
http://gpemjournal.blogspot.com/2009/08/journal-publication-versus-conference.html

While deadlines, as well as all the follow-up review process which is needed to have a work considered for publication in journals, might directly affect the publishing preferences of many computer scientists towards conferences and workshops, these factors alone don't help me to understand why the same effect does not occur in other related areas. In other words, if these were two of the primary causes behind, we would see the same happening among, say, physicists and mathematicians. Yet this does not seem to be the case.

I sincerely believe that there is one simpler factor that could also be considered in the specific case of CS: the relative lack of maturity of the field regarding consolidated research methodologies and data analysis. Of course, working in a scientific field with less than 60 years do not help us much. We're often borrowing ideas and methodologies from other areas and, still, there's no concensus on, say, which statistical tests are more appropriate.

So, this may perhaps explain why someone in the CS field might think that it's no use considering to fufill journal reviewers and editors' requests - who are mainly (and correctly) concerned with methodological issues - when one can bypass this process and have his/her results published immediately in somewhat respectful and prestigious conferences.

The biological and cultural ethereal conflict

To the extent Nature is conceived, marriage should never stand against our intrinsic polygamic instincts driven by our biologically pre-programmed ultimate goal of self-reproducing. Hence, it's not surprising that both men and women are following their basic instincts in the grounds of divorce, since no single life-form on Earth has been ever evolved to establish long-term matrimonial unions. However, it's well known that Humans, as highly susceptible to culture and morality, are being pushed towards the establishment of solid relationships, which in turn have been proved to play an important role in social mobility.

Based on these assumptions, it seems clear to me that there's a conflict of interests between our biological and social goals. On one hand, there's the need for each human of serving as generators of genetic diversity for the sake of continuous biological evolution, which is still happening among the human race. It's interesting to note, though, that our needs as social beings go straight in the opposite direction: we don't want to change our sexual partners all the time (at least when it comes to kinship descending) and, therefore, we end up by slowing down the diversity generation process in human race by preferring stable matrimonial engagements under social standards.

It turns out that there is a noticeable and complex interaction between genes and memes. This has been already observed by many researchers, including those working on memetic computing field. Since it seems that social evolution is surpassing biological evolution in terms of how much they affect human development (just look at how technology and culture are rapidly changing human behavior under a much higher pace than genes have done before the last decades), it's reasonable to imagine that there will come the day when the human race will transcend from its old-fashioned biological prision (i.e., the carbon-based "survival machines" of Richard Dawkins) to perpetuate itself through cultural and technological meanings.

Again, nothing new here, yet another appealing topic which should be more often discussed by academics.

Yes, You Can Change the World From Your Bedroom

There are many ways to change the world from your bedroom. One of them is to subscribe to the World Community Grid (WCG) and donate some of the idle time of your PC and/or Laptop to process valuable scientific data. For instance, you can help researchers to discover new drugs and treatments for Cancer, Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever, Hepatitis C and AIDS, only to name a few serious human diseases.

The idea behind WCG is to execute in a few months important research projects, as demanded by leading research institutions, that would take thousands of years to finish with the available computational resources in universities and research centers. Therefore, whenever someone decide to participate in such a project, this person will join the efforts of hundreds or maybe hundreds of thousands other users that have done the same, composing a huge network of computers (i.e., a grid) which provides the necessary processing power to do the hard job within the strict time constraints required by the urgent nature of the projects.

All of these is done without any interference in the way you use your PC. The only thing that is needed is to download the program which will be running on the background as a screensaver, only when you are not interacting with your desktop.

Some people complain they would like to help the world to be a better place but they don't know how, or worse, they don't have the necessary time. These must not serve as excuses anymore. Stand up now and help to change the world from your bedroom.

Learn how to help on: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org