With their economy booming, their currency at a level that makes even London prices seem cheap and their foreign policy one of the world's most ambitious, Brazilians have gotten used to going abroad for tourism, business, shopping and diplomacy. Now their students are finally getting an incentive to see the world, thanks to a major government program that aims to award 75,000 scholarships to attend the world's top universities.

That's a long-overdue agenda, not just in Brazil but all of Latin America. During the 2009–10 academic year, for example, Brazil, a nation of almost 200 million people, had fewer than 9,000 students at U.S. universities; China, by contrast, had more than 127,000, India 100,000 and South Korea 72,000. That's a big reason that more than a third of the world's research and development takes place in Asia today while less than 3% of it goes on in Latin America. As a result, countries across the region are working to get more of their best and brightest into top-flight institutions like Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and the Sorbonne.

Brazil's effort, dubbed Science Without Borders, involves the federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES), which will fund 40,000 scholarships, and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, which will fund 35,000. The country's private sector is expected to bankroll another 25,000. "It's an ambitious plan," says Denise Neddermeyer, CAPES' international-affairs director. "But this cannot be achieved alone — it requires increased international collaborative effort.‖

Disponível em: <http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2094119,00.html>. Acesso em: 16 ago. 2012. (Adaptado).

a) Write a sentence which expresses the opposite idea of:

Brazil had fewer than 9,000 students at U.S. universities.

b) Change the following sentence into the reported speech.

"It's an ambitious plan," says Denise Neddermeyer.