Eideard

Dilma Rousseff and Raul Castro
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Brazil is easing Cuba into the free market economy with a generous package of aid in cash and kind and joint projects that give the Latin American country a pre-eminent position in Havana’s heady mix of communism and experimental capitalism.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff appeared to be in the right place at the right time when she flew into Havana in a spirit of revolutionary camaraderie and clinched deals that secured Brazil’s status as the senior partner in a long-term, multifaceted relationship…

Rousseff followed in the footsteps of populist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva…The “excellent” ties secure Brazil an advantageous position in Cuba’s hugely porous economy, hungry for basic consumer goods, investment and modernization. Economic upgrading in all sectors and a phased end to Cuba’s international isolation offer lucrative opportunities for Brazil’s state and private sectors.

Brazil will invest $640 million in a $900 million modernization of the Mariel container port, west of Havana, led by the Brazilian firm Odebrecht.

Brazil is also giving Cuba $400 million in credits for food imports and investing $200 million in modernizing Cuban agriculture. Rousseff pledged Cuba a long-term commitment to help its economic regeneration…

Brazilian interest in the modernization of Cuban sugar industry is linked to Brazilian plans to promote its pioneering production of cane-derived ethanol, which has led to most new cars in Brazil being fitted with flex-fuel technology to run on ethanol or gasoline or a mixture of both.

The port modernization program also fits in with Brazil’s plan to forge fruitful partnerships that will benefit its aim of making its exports of both commodities and manufactured goods more competitive in the international markets.

Cubans say they need the Mariel port to be ready for expanded trade with the United States, whenever the U.S. embargo is lifted. The embargo, begun in 1960, is the longest on record.

Bravo!

Now, which will provide long-lasting trade and commercial relationships? Efforts like this from Brazil or the usual capitulation to Gusano voters in Florida by Congressional politicians?

Edmar Araújo still remembers the awe. As he cleared trees on his family’s land decades ago near Rio Branco, an outpost in the far western reaches of the Brazilian Amazon, a series of deep earthen avenues carved into the soil came into focus.

“These lines were too perfect not to have been made by man,” said Mr. Araújo, a 62-year-old cattleman. “The only explanation I had was that they must have been trenches for the war against the Bolivians.”

But these were no foxholes, at least not for any conflict waged here at the dawn of the 20th century. According to stunning archaeological discoveries here in recent years, the earthworks on Mr. Araújo’s land and hundreds like them nearby are much, much older — potentially upending the conventional understanding of the world’s largest tropical rain forest.

The deforestation that has stripped the Amazon since the 1970s has also exposed a long-hidden secret lurking underneath thick rain forest: flawlessly designed geometric shapes spanning hundreds of yards in diameter.

Alceu Ranzi, a Brazilian scholar who helped discover the squares, octagons, circles, rectangles and ovals that make up the land carvings, said these geoglyphs found on deforested land were as significant as the famous Nazca lines, the enigmatic animal symbols visible from the air in southern Peru…

For some scholars of human history in Amazonia, the geoglyphs in the Brazilian state of Acre and other archaeological sites suggest that the forests of the western Amazon, previously considered uninhabitable for sophisticated societies partly because of the quality of their soils, may not have been as “Edenic” as some environmentalists contend…

While researchers piece together the Amazon’s ecological history, mystery still shrouds the origins of the geoglyphs and the people who made them. So far, 290 such earthworks have been found in Acre, along with about 70 others in Bolivia and 30 in the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Rondônia.

RTFA.

Slash-and-burn deforestation is just as likely to lead to destruction of the cultures hidden by that forest. I doubt of many of those moving in to exploit the land are any more burdened with ethics about history than they are about ecology.

For 60 years, biologists have known of only two grammar-like rules that govern the language of DNA. Now they’ve found four more

The Austrian biochemist, Erwin Chargaff, is famous for the two rules he discovered that now bear his name. At the time of this discovery, in 1950, the biggest problem in biology was understanding the structure of DNA. Chargaff’s rules turned out to be an important clue in this puzzle…

But in the 60 years since Chargaff discovered his invariant patterns, no others have emerged. Until now.

Today, Michel Yamagishi at the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory in Brazil and Roberto Herai at Unicamp in Sao Paulo, say they’ve discovered several new patterns that significantly broaden the grammar of DNA.

Their approach is straightforward. These guys use set theory to show that Chargaff’s existing rules imply the existence of other, higher order patterns…

Yamagishi and Herai distil them into four equations.

Of course, it’s only possible to see these patterns in huge DNA datasets. Sure enough, Yamagishi and Herai have number-crunched the DNA sequences of 32 species looking for these new fractal patterns. And they’ve found them.

They say the patterns show up with great precision in 30 of these species, including humans, e coli and the plant arabidopsis. Only human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Xylella fastidiosa 9a5c, a bug that attacks peaches, do not conform…

That could turn out to be extremely useful for assessing the performance of new technologies for sequencing entire genomes at high speed.

One problem with these techniques is knowing how accurately they work. Yamagishi and Herai suggest that a simple test would be to check whether the newly sequenced genomes contain these invariant patterns. If not, then that’s a sign the technology may be introducing some kind of bias.

This is a bit like a checksum test for spotting accidental errors in blocks of data and a neat piece of science to boot.

I love it. Even when I don’t understand the details, that systems of validation fall into place makes scientific and mathematical constructs reproducible and extensible. We all get to move forward.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Police captured Rio de Janeiro’s most wanted alleged drug trafficker…as they prepared to occupy the city’s largest slum.

Antonio Bonfim Lopes, alleged drug lord of the teeming Rocinha slum, was found in bizarre circumstances – in the boot of a car belonging to a man who claimed to be a senior diplomat from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

TV images showed the suspect, known as Nem, looking close to tears after his arrest.

There are diplomats with all their “respect” and power, immunity and hypocrisy, who would probably carry a thug like this to safety in their briefcase – if they could fit him inside. Along with the profits from their own crimes.

Cassio Carvalho do Val is about to invest nearly $2 million to add 10,000 cattle to his ranch on the edge of the Amazon. But instead of burning down forest for his growing herd to graze freely he will break with tradition, reducing his pastureland and adding grain to their diet.

Val is one of a growing number of farmers betting on so-called integrated farming by diversifying production and revenue. His move epitomizes a quiet and fragile revolution that marks a departure from Brazil’s slash-and-burn past.

It is a trend that may also help ease the felling of the world’s largest rain forest.

Soy growers are rotating fields with more corn and cotton, planting forest and raising cattle. Ranchers are planting corn to supplement their herd’s traditional diet of grasses.

This tends toward greater and more efficient output while easing pressure for expanding area, and bodes well for the consumers struggling worldwide with higher food prices, as well as conservationists who see Brazil as a crucial battlefield…

Val, a Sao Paulo University-educated sociologist, is one of a growing number of farmers taking a more scientific view of production. He has hired consultants to help acquire a whole new set of skills in grain farming…

The keystone to large-scale integrated farming in Brazil is cattle, especially as far as preservation of the Amazon and other tropical biomes are concerned…

Inevitably, leaders in Brazilian agriculture and ranching will throw out numbers about the 137,000 square miles of pasture in Brazil that can be easily converted into farmland “without having to cut a single tree.” Brazil currently plants 66,875 square miles to crops and commercial forest.

But converting pasture into planted area is not simple. It raises the question of where the cattle will graze.

Brazil’s beef production is grass-fed, unlike in the United States and Europe where grain on feedlots is used mostly. Brazil could double or triple the cattle per hectare from the present average of nearly 1 head/ha simply by introducing grain to their diet, better breeding practices and fertilizing and replanting grasses in pastures, beef analysts say.

Then, there is the question of which sort of beef actually is healthiest for consumers? Grain-fed or grass-fed? The healthiest meat-eating cultures are France and Italy – where grass-fed is preferred.

Now, the trends in Brazil introduce a completely different accomplishment. Slowing the destruction of forest. Contradictions abound.

Pretty fancy X-Ray tech

A 20-year-old Irishman had a $200,000 lunch — and now he might have to pay.

Security personal at a Sao Paulo, Brazil airport on Monday detained a nervous traveler later allegedly found to be smuggling approximately 72 bags of cocaine in his stomach, the Irish independent reports.

Authorities with the Brazilian Federal Police released x-ray images of the suspect, identified only as F.B.B., which appear to show his belly full of drugs. The nearly two-pound stash of coke is estimated to be worth $200,000.

Police said the man was boarding a flight to Lisbon en route to Brussels. Instead of making the trip, authorities escorted the man to a nearby hospital where the capsules were removed, MSNBC reports.

The suspect is charged with international drug trafficking and could face up to 15 years in prison.

No mention of which end of the alimentary canal was utilized to remove the cocaine capsules.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

The critters were wrapped in pantyhose

Never mind ants in your pants, what about snakes and tortoises?

That’s what authorities at Miami’s international airport said they found inside the trousers of a passenger as he tried to board a flight for Brazil.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration said the man had seven exotic snakes and three tortoises wrapped in nylon bags that had been stuffed into his pants.

He was discovered as he went through a body scanner at one of the airport’s security checkpoints on Thursday and arrested by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials for violating animal trafficking laws.

I hope they checked the reptiles for radiation exposure.

Differences? Well, Mueller prefers a .40 calibre Glock

Private information about Google users was demanded by governments or police a total of 14,201 times in 26 developed countries in the last six months of last year, according to figures released for the first time by the internet giant…

In an effort to highlight the amount of online censorship that exists, Google disclosed that it had received more requests from the United States than anywhere else – and that it complied with anywhere from three-quarters to more than 90% of the requests depending on which country they were made in…

Google began releasing its half-yearly Transparency Report in April 2010 as a way to highlight state censorship of the internet. “For the first time, we’re disclosing the reasons behind requests for content removal and the percentages of user data requests we comply with, in whole or in part,” a Google spokesman said…

The figures show that Brazil still leads the way in requesting that Google removes content from its services, with 263 orders, ahead of South Korea, Germany, Libya and India…

Google also, for the first time, revealed that it had received no content removal requests from Chinese authorities in the latter part of 2010. Google began redirecting Chinese users to its uncensored Hong Kong site in June 2010 amid allegations of state spying.

No surprises here for me. Considering it’s been 47 years since the first time I had a couple of FBI agents show up where I worked in an attempt to scare me off from continued opposition to the VietNam War.

Over the years you develop a bit of a callus on the bits of your freedom that stick out and are abraded by hypocrites in and out of government who prattle about this land of liberty. The Patriot Act is only something new and threatening to those who’ve never gotten off their rusty dusty and offered public dissent to American bigotry, foreign policy and snoops in general.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that the nation should recognize same-sex unions.

The court voted 10-0 in favor of recognizing the unions. One justice abstained because he had spoken publicly in favor of same-sex unions when he was attorney general.

The court ruled that the same rights and rules that apply to “stable unions” of heterosexual couples will apply to same-sex couples, including the right to joint declaration of income tax, pension, inheritance and property sharing…

Some gay rights groups have encountered strong resistance in parts of Latin America, where the influential Roman Catholic Church often opposes measures allowing same-sex unions or adoption by same-sex couples.

Argentina became the first Latin American country to approve same-sex marriage in 2010. Mexico City approved same-sex marriage in 2009. And several other countries in the region have legalized civil unions.

Brazil’s high court ruling came in response to two lawsuits — one filed by the Rio de Janeiro state government in 2008 and another in 2009 by the Public Ministry, a group of prosecutors that is part of the federal government but independent from its executive, legislative and judicial branches.

In most cases – despite opposition from religions still stuck into the 14th Century – results like this have been accomplished by governments which recognize the responsibility to lead the way in civil rights for their citizens.

That’s not saying there weren’t similar movements in Latin America prior to government cooperation. But, the differences are dramatic.

Sugarcane grown to power Brazil’s cars and trucks as an alternative to climate-warming fossil fuels has a beneficial side effect: it also cools the local air temperature…

Researchers warned that this does not mean replacing Amazon forest or other natural vegetation with sugarcane fields. The benefit comes when sugarcane is introduced into existing agriculture, replacing pasture land or crops like soybeans.

Sugarcane manages this win-win feat by its ability to reflect sunlight and to “sweat” out cooling moisture into the air, said lead researcher Scott Loarie of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Plants draw moisture from the soil and emit it into the air in the process of photosynthesis…”We showed that with sugarcane, it was these evaporative cooling effects that were much more significant than the albedo (reflectivity),” he said, speaking of research published online in Nature Climate Change.

Sugarcane is used in biofuel that powers about a quarter of the motor vehicles in Brazil, and in that way, it helps to keep some of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which affects global climate.

However, because of its efficiency at emitting cool moisture, it also can push down local temperatures by 1.67 degrees F (0.93 degrees C) compared to other crops or pasture.

Now, if we could only figure out how to do this with kudzu?