The dynamics of Brazilian protozoology over the past century.

Brazilian scientists have been contributing to the protozoology field for more than 100 years with important discoveries of new species such as Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania spp. In this work, we used a Brazilian thesis database (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) covering the period from 1987-2011 to identify researchers who contributed substantially to protozoology. We selected 248 advisors by filtering to obtain researchers who supervised at least 10 theses. Based on a computational analysis of the thesis databases, we found students who were supervised by these scientists. A computational procedure was developed to determine the advisors' scientific ancestors using the Lattes Platform. These analyses provided a list of 1,997 researchers who were inspected through Lattes CV examination and allowed the identification of the pioneers of Brazilian protozoology. Moreover, we investigated the areas in which researchers who earned PhDs in protozoology are now working. We found that 68.4% of them are still in protozoology, while 16.7% have migrated to other fields. We observed that support for protozoology by national or international agencies is clearly correlated with the increase of scientists in the field. Finally, we described the academic genealogy of Brazilian protozoology by formalising the "forest" of Brazilian scientists involved in the study of protozoa and their vectors over the past century.

Identification of protein coding regions using the modified Gabor-wavelet transform.

An important topic in genomic sequence analysis is the identification of protein coding regions. In this context, several coding DNA model-independent methods, based on the occurrence of specific patterns of nucleotides at coding regions, have been proposed. Nonetheless, these methods have not been completely suitable due to their dependence on an empirically pre-defined window length required for a local analysis of a DNA region. We introduce a method, based on a modified Gabor-wavelet transform (MGWT), for the identification of protein coding regions. This novel transform is tuned to analyze periodic signal components and presents the advantage of being independent of the window length. We compared the performance of the MGWT with other methods using eukaryote datasets. The results show that the MGWT outperforms all assessed model-independent methods with respect to identification accuracy. These results indicate that the source of at least part of the identification errors produced by the previous methods is the fixed working scale. The new method not only avoids this source of errors, but also makes available a tool for detailed exploration of the nucleotide occurrence.

Analysis of an advisor-advisee relationship: an exploratory study of the area of exact and Earth sciences in Brazil.

Scientific collaboration has been studied by researchers for decades. Several approaches have been adopted to address the question of how collaboration has evolved in terms of publication output, numbers of coauthors, and multidisciplinary trends. One particular type of collaboration that has received very little attention concerns advisor and advisee relationships. In this paper, we examine this relationship for the researchers who are involved in the area of Exact and Earth Sciences in Brazil and its eight subareas. These pairs are registered in the Lattes Platform that manages the individual curricula vitae of Brazilian researchers. The individual features of these academic researchers and their coauthoring relationships were investigated. We have found evidence that there exists positive correlation between time of advisor-advisee relationship with the advisee's productivity. Additionally, there has been a gradual decline in advisor-advisee coauthoring over a number of years as measured by the Kulczynski index, which could be interpreted as decline of the dependence.

BraX-Ray: an X-ray of the Brazilian computer science graduate programs.

Research productivity assessment is increasingly relevant for allocation of research funds. On one hand, this assessment is challenging because it involves both qualitative and quantitative analysis of several characteristics, most of them subjective in nature. On the other hand, current tools and academic social networks make bibliometric data web-available to everyone for free. Those tools, especially when combined with other data, are able to create a rich environment from which information on research productivity can be extracted. In this context, our work aims at characterizing the Brazilian Computer Science graduate programs and the relationship among themselves. We (i) present views of the programs from different perspectives, (ii) rank the programs according to each perspective and a combination of them, (iii) show correlation between assessment metrics, (iv) discuss how programs relate to another, and (v) infer aspects that boost programs' research productivity. The results indicate that programs with a higher insertion in the coauthorship network topology also possess a higher research productivity between 2004 and 2009.

The dynamics of Brazilian protozoology over the past century

Brazilian scientists have been contributing to the protozoology field for more than 100 years with important discoveries of new species such asTrypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania spp. In this work, we used a Brazilian thesis database (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) covering the period from 1987-2011 to identify researchers who contributed substantially to protozoology. We selected 248 advisors by filtering to obtain researchers who supervised at least 10 theses. Based on a computational analysis of the thesis databases, we found students who were supervised by these scientists. A computational procedure was developed to determine the advisors’ scientific ancestors using the Lattes Platform. These analyses provided a list of 1,997 researchers who were inspected through Lattes CV examination and allowed the identification of the pioneers of Brazilian protozoology. Moreover, we investigated the areas in which researchers who earned PhDs in protozoology are now working. We found that 68.4% of them are still in protozoology, while 16.7% have migrated to other fields. We observed that support for protozoology by national or international agencies is clearly correlated with the increase of scientists in the field. Finally, we described the academic genealogy of Brazilian protozoology by formalising the “forest” of Brazilian scientists involved in the study of protozoa and their vectors over the past century.

O envelhecimento na Sociologia brasileira contemporânea: notas preliminares / Aging in contemporary Brazilian Sociology: preliminary notes

Este artigo propõe caracterizar algumas contribuições bibliográficas da Sociologia brasileira contemporânea sobre envelhecimento. Tendo por questões norteadoras: quais são os grupos de pesquisas e o que priorizam em suas investigações sobre o tema envelhecimento, realizou-se um estudo exploratório sobre os dados disponibilizados no Diretório de Grupos de Pesquisa do CNPq. A partir dos descritores envelhecimento e gerontologia, na grande área de Ciências Humanas, identificaram-se 53 grupos (Antropologia n=9; Educação n=13; Filosofia n=1; Psicologia n=25; Sociologia n=5). Utilizou-se o software Script Lattes para caracterização dos grupos de pesquisa. Ao todo, identificaram-se 440 pesquisadores entre líderes e membros. Observou-se que 20% desses pesquisadores atuam em mais de um grupo. A análise dos resultados aponta aspectos relevantes para refletir o espectro da sociologia e sua capilarização nas Ciências Humanas, com indicadores expressivos nos recursos humanos, nas produções científicas, bem como a localização geográfica dos pesquisadores e redes de coautoria.(AU)

This article proposes to characterize some bibliographic contributions of contemporary Brazilian Sociology of aging. Having as guiding questions: hat are the research groups and to prioritize in their investigations on the topic aging, there was an exploratory study on the data available in the CNPq Research Groups Directory. From the descriptors aging and gerontology, in the area of Humanities, they identified 53 groups (n = 9 Anthropology, Education n = 13; n = 1 Philosophy Psychology n = 25; Sociology n = 5). We used the Script Lattes software for characterization of the research groups. Altogether, they identified 440 researchers between leaders and members. It was observed that 20% of researchers working in more than one group. The results point to reflect the relevant aspects of sociology spectrum and its capillarity in the Humanities, with significant indicators of human resources, scientific productions, as well as the geographical location of researchers and co-authorship networks. (AU)

O envelhecimento na Sociologia brasileira contemporânea: notas preliminares / Aging in contemporary Brazilian Sociology: preliminary notes

Este artigo propõe caracterizar algumas contribuições bibliográficas da Sociologia brasileira contemporânea sobre envelhecimento. Tendo por questões norteadoras: quais são os grupos de pesquisas e o que priorizam em suas investigações sobre o tema envelhecimento, realizou-se um estudo exploratório sobre os dados disponibilizados no Diretório de Grupos de Pesquisa do CNPq. A partir dos descritores envelhecimento e gerontologia, na grande área de Ciências Humanas, identificaram-se 53 grupos (Antropologia n=9; Educação n=13; Filosofia n=1; Psicologia n=25; Sociologia n=5). Utilizou-se o software Script Lattes para caracterização dos grupos de pesquisa. Ao todo, identificaram-se 440 pesquisadores entre líderes e membros. Observou-se que 20% desses pesquisadores atuam em mais de um grupo. A análise dos resultados aponta aspectos relevantes para refletir o espectro da sociologia e sua capilarização nas Ciências Humanas, com indicadores expressivos nos recursos humanos, nas produções científicas, bem como a localização geográfica dos pesquisadores e redes de coautoria.

This article proposes to characterize some bibliographic contributions of contemporary Brazilian Sociology of aging. Having as guiding questions: hat are the research groups and to prioritize in their investigations on the topic aging, there was an exploratory study on the data available in the CNPq Research Groups Directory. From the descriptors aging and gerontology, in the area of Humanities, they identified 53 groups (n = 9 Anthropology, Education n = 13; n = 1 Philosophy Psychology n = 25; Sociology n = 5). We used the Script Lattes software for characterization of the research groups. Altogether, they identified 440 researchers between leaders and members. It was observed that 20% of researchers working in more than one group. The results point to reflect the relevant aspects of sociology spectrum and its capillarity in the Humanities, with significant indicators of human resources, scientific productions, as well as the geographical location of researchers and co-authorship networks.