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Core-shell magnetic polymer particles were synthesized by seeded suspension polymerization. The core was made of poly(methyl methacrylate-co-divinylbenzene) and a mixture of magnetite, maghemite and goethite (P(MMA-co-DVB)-M). The shell was composed of poly(glycidyl methacrylate-co-divinylbenzene) (P(GMA-co-DVB)). These particles were characterized by infrared spectrometry (FTIR), thermal analysis (TG), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS) and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM). The results showed the formation of core-shells with good magnetic properties (≈7.1 emu/g) and good thermal resistance (≈300 ºC). The light scattering experiments showed that the particle size of these materials changed from 5-90 microns (core) to 5-120 microns (core-shell). Scanning electron microscopic images were useful to show the formation of P(GMA-co-DVB) shells on P(MMA-co-DVB)-M cores. The materials synthesized in this work have potential to be modified and employed in magnetic separation processes in the biotech and environmental fields.

Open Government Data (OGD) hold great promise for transforming the efficiency and effectiveness of public services through the ease of publishing and access to government public information or through the offer of new kinds of services, such as smart cities services and applications. In this work, we analyze the Brazilian OGD current scenario and the main difficulties and challenges of developing applications using that data. First, we performed a structured analysis of Brazilian OGD repositories according to OGD definitions. Then, we analyzed the development of two similar applications that use the OGD of two main Brazilian cities and were submitted to different cities' application contests and were well evaluated in both of them. Based on the analysis, this work concludes that Brazilian OGD initiatives have to resolve some issues before being considered truly open data for use in application development at large.

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Government concerns about transparency date from 1957, but current technological advances and real-time worldwide communications hold great promise to transform accountability, transparency, citizen participation and collaboration, in addition to offering better public services, by increasing efficiency and effectiveness and decreasing corruption in government. With these goals in mind, this paper describes Meu Congresso Nacional (My National Congress), a first prize winner application developed during the First Brazilian Parliament Hackathon focused on parliamentarians transparency by obtaining and analyzing data from several sources and displaying them on a user-friendly website. In addition, based on this development experience, this paper discusses the difficulties and challenges of developing applications based on Brazilian government data.