Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won his bid for re-election on 25 October, to the relief of many scientists who feared for the future of Brazilian research if right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro prevailed. In recent weeks, some of Brazil's leading scientific organizations, including the Brazilian Academy of Sciences in Rio de Janeiro, circulated an open letter endorsing Lula, a leftist former labour leader. It received more than 20,000 signatures. 'It's hard to express just how happy the scientific community and the Brazilian society is with Lula's victory,' says Paulo Artaxo, a physicist at the University of Sao Paulo. Many worried that, if Bolsonaro were elected, he might slash support for Brazilian science and undermine it in the way that his father, Jair Bolsonaro, did. Jair was Brazil's president from 2019 to 2023, and during that time, he cut science funding and expressed anti-science rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic, casting doubt on vaccines and promoting unproven treatments. The former president could not run for office again because he was sentenced to prison over a coup plot that he instigated after he lost his bid for re-election to Lula in 2022. He is currently serving the sentence at home because of health concerns....
Around the world, many people report distrusting their government. In some places, such as Latin America, North America, and Africa, trust in government has declined in recent decades. How can governments rebuild this trust' New research from the MIT Governance Lab and the behavioral science research organization Busara examines how government partnerships with trusted private organizations can shape public trust in government. In Kenya, county governments have worked with a telecommunications company to develop an online public service portal. A survey of people in and around the capital city of Nairobi found that highlighting the role of the company increased people's willingness to use the portal, but hurt their trust in government. The results of this work, published in the September issue of the journal Government Information Quarterly, can help researchers understand how government digitization projects and relationships with technology companies affect public trust. Studies have suggested that without public trust in government, people are less likely to follow rules and laws, and governments have a harder time solving problems that require public cooperation. Research has linked low levels of trust to people not paying taxes, lower voter turnout, lower Covid-19 vaccination rates, and higher Covid-19 infection rates....
RNA vaccines, which have been proven effective against Covid-19, are now being developed for many other diseases, including cancer. One of the drawbacks to these vaccines is that they require ultracold storage, but researchers from MIT have found a promising way to overcome that limitation. With help from an AI algorithm, the researchers tweaked the formulation surrounding the lipid nanoparticles that are typically used to deliver mRNA vaccines, making the vaccines more heat-resistant. Using this approach, they formulated vaccines that could remain stable even when stored at room temperature for up to a year, or at nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit for two months. When Covid-19 vaccines carried by these particles were administered to mice, they generated just as strong an immune response as an RNA Covid-19 vaccine similar to one developed by Moderna. By using the AI algorithm to predict the optimal formulations for the particles, the researchers were able to cut down the number of experiments they needed to do, which rapidly sped up the development process....
RNA vaccines, which have been proven effective against Covid-19, are now being developed for many other diseases, including cancer. One of the drawbacks to these vaccines is that they require ultracold storage, but researchers from MIT have found a promising way to overcome that limitation. With help from an AI algorithm, the researchers tweaked the formulation surrounding the lipid nanoparticles that are typically used to deliver mRNA vaccines, making the vaccines more heat-resistant. Using this approach, they formulated vaccines that could remain stable even when stored at room temperature for up to a year, or at nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit for two months. When Covid-19 vaccines carried by these particles were administered to mice, they generated just as strong an immune response as an RNA Covid-19 vaccine similar to one developed by Moderna. By using the AI algorithm to predict the optimal formulations for the particles, the researchers were able to cut down the number of experiments they needed to do, which rapidly sped up the development process....
