Object of desire

Pesquisa FAPESP special issue 2015

special issue 2015 www.revistapesquisa.fapesp.br

Teeth from a deer suggest that humans were present in the state of Piauí over 20,000 years ago Visible light of the Sun, in addition to UV rays, may cause skin cancer Middle and lower classes are living closer to each other while elites occupy more exclusive zones in São Paulo city Brazilian Artur Ávila wins the Fields Medal, the most important prize in mathematics

Object of desire An abundance of water depends on intact forests to form rain and maintain the quality of aquifers

2 | SEPTIEMBRE DE 2015

special issue November 2015 www.revistapesquisa.fapesp.br

6 COVER The water shortage alarming Brazil is closely related to its rainforests photo léo ramos

SCIENCE

TECHNOLOGY

30 Botany

52 Computer Science

Vines are remodeling the Amazon Region, and bamboos are remodeling the Atlantic Forest

14 INTERVIEW

34 Biochemistry

Artur Ávila The Brazilian receives the Fields Medal, the most important international mathematics award

Visible light, in addition to ultraviolet radiation, may also cause skin cancer

SECTIONS 4 Letter from the Editor 74 Art

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL POLICY 20 Bioenergy A conference shows that biofuel expansion requires the support of public policies to be sustained at a global level

24 Scientometrics A scientific paper describes the methodology used to evaluate the Biota-FAPESP Program

26 Collaboration Researchers discuss partnerships in search of drugs to treat diseases that are of little interest to pharmaceutical companies

37 Archeology Teeth from a deer found alongside human bones inside a cave in the state of Piauí suggest that humans were present in the region more than 20,000 years ago

Advances in eScience are changing the traditional way of conducting scientific research

56 New materials Foam consisting of graphene oxide and boron nitride is lightweight and tough and returns to its original shape after compression

58 Biotechnology Skin substitutes could be used as grafts to treat burns and severe lesions

40 Obituary

62 Agriculture

Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva was one of the most respected parasitology experts in the world

Using leguminous plants as fertilizer can increase sugarcane production by 35%

42 Geology Great blocks of rock from different ages and origins combined to form the South Atlantic margins

46 Astronomy

HUMANITIES 64 Society

Meteorologists want to know why winds are so strong on Venus and Titan

A study of 100 years of social housing in Brazil uncovers high-quality projects during the Vargas era

48 Physics

70 Sociology

Brazilians discover how to measure energy variations in atomic nuclei

Population figures show that communities on the periphery of Greater São Paulo have become more heterogeneous, with the middle and lower classes living closer to each other, while the elites still occupy the more exclusive zones pESQUISA FAPESP | 3

Letter from the Editor São Paulo Research Foundation

José Goldemberg President Eduardo Moacyr Krieger vice-President Board of trustees Carmino Antonio de Souza, Eduardo Moacyr Krieger, fernando ferreira costa, João Fernando Gomes de Oliveira, joão grandino rodas, José Goldemberg, Maria José Soares Mendes Giannini, Marilza Vieira Cunha Rudge, José de Souza Martins, Pedro Luiz Barreiros Passos, Pedro Wongtschowski, Suely Vilela Sampaio Executive board José Arana Varela President director Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz Scientific director

Water, math and neglected diseases

Joaquim J. de Camargo Engler Administrative director

issn 1519-8774

Editorial board Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz (President), Caio Túlio Costa, Eugênio Bucci, Fernando Reinach, José Eduardo Krieger, Luiz Davidovich, Marcelo Knobel, Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida, Marisa Lajolo, Maurício Tuffani, Mônica Teixeira Scientific committee Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos (President), Anamaria Aranha Camargo, Carlos Eduardo Negrão, Fabio Kon, Francisco Antônio Bezerra Coutinho, Joaquim J. de Camargo Engler, José Arana Varela, José Goldemberg, José Roberto de França Arruda, José Roberto Postali Parra, Lucio Angnes, Marie-Anne Van Sluys, Mário José Abdalla Saad, Paula Montero, Roberto Marcondes Cesar Júnior, Sérgio Robles Reis Queiroz, Wagner Caradori do Amaral, Walter Colli

Alexandra Ozorio de Almeida editor in chief

Scientific coordinator Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos Editor in chief Alexandra Ozorio de Almeida Managing editor Neldson Marcolin

Translator TransConsult, Fairfax, VA – Kim Olson art Mayumi Okuyama (Editor), Ana Paula Campos (Infographic editor), Alvaro Felippe Jr., Júlia Cherem Rodrigues and Maria Cecilia Felli (Assistents) Photographers Eduardo Cesar, Léo Ramos Eletronic media Fabrício Marques (Coordinator) Internet Pesquisa FAPESP online Maria Guimarães (Editor) Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade (Reporter) Renata Oliveira do Prado (Social media) Rádio Pesquisa Brasil Biancamaria Binazzi (Producer) Contributors Catarina Bessel, Evanildo da Silveira, Fabio Otubo, Gilberto Stam, Igor Zolnerkevic, Jayne Oliveira, Pedro Franz, Pedro Hamdan, Sandro Castelli, Valter Rodrigues, Yuri Vasconcelos, Zé Vicente Printer Editora Gráficos Burti Ltda.

The reprinting of texts and photos, in whole or in part, is prohibited without prior authorization

PESQUISA FAPESP Rua Joaquim Antunes, no 727, 10o andar, CEP 05415-012, Pinheiros, São Paulo-SP – Brasil FAPESP Rua Pio XI, no 1.500, CEP 05468-901, Alto da Lapa, São Paulo-SP – Brasil

DEPARTMENT FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SÃO PAULO STATE GOVERNMENT

4 | special issue November 2015

W

e are pleased to present this special issue of Pesquisa FAPESP in English. This edition is composed of a selection of reports that were originally published in the Portuguese version of our monthly magazine between September 2014 and February 2015 (issues 223 to 228).

The lead article (p. 6) discusses the water shortage that currently affects southeastern Brazil, which is an increasingly global problem.

Research shows the role of the Amazon in creating a ‘vertical river’ that extracts water from the Atlantic Ocean and the soil, feeding the clouds and helping to change the direction of the winds that circulate water across South America. Research from the INPE (National Institute for Space Research) shows a different circulation pattern that deviates from the predicted weather pattern. Deforestation adds to the complexity of this problem, altering pressure patterns and possibly causing a decline in the moisture-laden winds that blow from the ocean to the continent.

This edition offers a profile of the mathematician Artur Ávila (p. 14), the first Brazilian and the first South American to receive the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics. A specialist in dynamical systems, Ávila is based at the IMPA (Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics) in Rio de Janeiro and the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) in Paris. This carioca shared the award with three other winners, one of whom is the first woman to receive this honor.

Gerard Moss / flying rivers design

Editors Fabrício Marques (Policy), Márcio Ferrari (Humanities), Marcos de Oliveira (Technology), Ricardo Zorzetto (Science); Carlos Fioravanti and Marcos Pivetta (Special editors); Bruno de Pierro (Assistant editor)

Currents of water vapor that form over the Amazon rain forest export rains to southern Brazil

In the interview featured here, ﾃ」ila explains his working process. Reading books and papers are not a priority for him; he prefers to work in collaboration with other researchers who are specialists in certain areas of interest. He learns what is most important from them and applies this knowledge toward tackling the given problem that he is trying to solve.

Potential cooperation in the development and delivery of new treatments for neglected diseases such as Chagas disease, visceral leishmaniasis, malaria and sleeping sickness was discussed at the FAPESP headquarters in November 2014 (p. 26). In addition to FAPESP, the other participants were the Royal Society of Chemistry of the United Kingdom and international organizations, such as the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative and the Medicines for Malaria Venture. Among the conclusions of the meeting were that Brazil has a great deal to offer in finding new drugs, in areas such as organic chemistry and molecular biology. However, a considerable effort is still necessary to build

connections between research groups and to create incentives for international collaboration in this area in Brazil.

On the subject of neglected diseases, Pesquisa FAPESP pays homage to the memory of a great scientist, Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva, one of the most respected parasitologists specialized in tropical medicine worldwide (p. 40). Luiz Hildebrando, as he was known, spent most of his career at the Pasteur Institute in Paris as a political exile, where he conducted important research on the molecular biology of malaria.

After retiring from the Pasteur Institute in 1996, he returned to Brazil and continued to manage research programs in the Amazon, where he was also successful in reducing the number of malaria cases in the region. Luiz Hildebrando passed away in September of 2014, at the age of 86, having lived a full life that was dedicated to science and to improving the well-being of humankind.

Various other features can also be found in this issue. Enjoy! pESQUISA FAPESP | 5

COVER

Rain dance The water shortage alarming Brazil is closely related to its forests Text

Maria Guimarães

Photos

PUBLISHED in December 2014

Changes in the volume and frequency of rainfall and the misuse of water supplies are among the factors drying up the pipes in parts of Brazil 6 | special issue November 2015

Léo Ramos

T

he Amazon is not just the largest tropical rain forest remaining in the world. This endless span of green intersected by winding rivers of varying sizes and colors is also not just the home of an incredible diversity of animals and plants.

The Amazon rain forest is also an engine capable of changing the direction of the winds and a pump that sucks water from the air over the Atlantic Ocean and the soil, circulating it over South America and carrying for a long distance the rainfall the residents of São Paulo now long for. How well this pump operates, however, depends on the maintenance of the forest, the Brazilian portion of which, by 2013, had lost 763,000 square kilometers (km2) of its original area, which is the equivalent of the three states of São Paulo. Antonio Donato Nobre, a researcher at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), is not pointing a finger at the culprits. What matters to him is the reversal of this process and not just stopping deforestation but restoring the forest.

In the report The Future Climate of the Amazon (released in late October, 2014), he states that the only reason not to take immediate action to reduce deforestation is ignorance of scientific knowledge. For him, the way forward is to educate the public. “Now is a good time because the taps are running dry,” he says.

In his report, drawn from the analysis of approximately 200 scientific works, he shows that every day, the Amazon

Basin forest produces 20 billion metric tons of water (20 trillion liters). That amount is more than the 17 billion metric tons that the Amazon River pours into the Atlantic Ocean each day. This “vertical river” is what feeds the clouds and helps to change the direction of the winds. Nobre says that maps of the winds over the Atlantic show that, in the Southern Hemisphere and at low altitudes, the air moves northwest toward the Equator. “In the Amazon, the forest deviates from that order,” he says. “During part of the year, the moistureladen trade winds come from the Northern Hemisphere and converge to the west/southwest, entering South America.”

This circulation pattern violates a weather paradigm that says that winds should blow from regions with colder surfaces to those with warmer surfaces. “In the Amazon, all year they go from warm, the equatorial Atlantic, to cold, the forest,” he says. A partnership with Anastasia Makarieva and Victor Gorshkov, two scientists with the Nuclear Physics Institute of Petersburg, has helped to explain the meteorological phenomena of the Amazon from a physical point of view. In an article published in the February 2014 issue of the Journal of Hydrometeorology, they assert, based on theoretical analyses confirmed by empirical observations, that deforestation is altering the pressure patterns and may be causing a decline in the moisture-laden winds coming from the ocean to the continent. The group analyzed data from 28 weather stations in two areas of Brazil and noted that the winds coming from

pESQUISA FAPESP | 7

T

he reasoning behind the influence of condensation on winds was presented in an article published in 2013 by Anastasia and Gorshkov, in partnership with Nobre and other collaborators, in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, one of the most important journals in the field. Through a series of equations, they demonstrated that the water vapor released into the atmosphere through forest transpiration generates, upon condensation, a flow capable of propelling winds over large distances. According to Nobre, the new physics of condensation they proposed generated a dispute among meteorologists, even during the review of the article. The principal equation of the work was furiously discussed on scientific blogs. These attempts to discredit the new model failed, and the work was published. Nobre can explain the controversy.

“The new physics attributes to condensation a basic and central phenomenon of how the atmosphere operates, an effect contrary to what was previously believed,” he says. “Textbooks on the subject will have to be rewritten.”

To explain the scope of the problematic dialogue between theoretical physicists and meteorologists, Nobre says that physics develops its understanding of atmospheric phenomena based on the fundamental laws of nature, while meteorology does it largely based on observations of past climate patterns, whose statistical data are absorbed into mathematical models. Such models are very good at representing observations of climate fluctuations but fail when there are significant changes in the pattern.

This is now the case, when a new context— caused by deforestation, global changes in climate or other factors—is generating unexpected weather phenomena for certain regions, such as more torrential rains and more extensive droughts.

Physical theory is correct where past extrapo8 | special issue November 2015

lations err; therefore, it is necessary, he says, to build new climate models that collect the physical data at the center of meteorological efforts.

The timing is now crucial because the Amazon’s climate is changing. The years 2005 and 2010 were marked by major droughts in this region. “Prior to this, the Amazon had a wet season and a wetter season, but now there is a dry season,” says Nobre. The damage to the forest caused by these droughts was not a fatal blow because the Amazon can regenerate, but the accumulated damage could gradually erode this regenerative capacity. An important effect previously noted (predicted 20 years ago by climate models) is an extended dry season, which has undermined agricultural production in parts of Mato Grosso State. The major concern is when the forest reaches a tipping point, where it can no longer produce enough rain to supply itself.

Models that take into account climate and vegetation indicate that the tipping point will be reached when 40% of the original forest is lost, a number about which there is no consensus. According to Nobre’s report, 20% of the forest has been cut and 20% has been altered to the point of losing some characteristic properties.

If the biotic pump theory is correct, the effects of this tipping point are likely to be more severe than the savannization proposed by Carlos Nobre, also a climatologist and the older brother of Antonio Nobre (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue No. 167). “If the forest loses its ability to bring moisture from the ocean, rain in the region may cease altogether,” says Antonio Nobre. Without water to sustain a savannah, desertification could occur in the Amazon. If this occurs, the scenario he envisions for Brazil’s South and Southeast could be similar to other regions at the same latitude, turning them into deserts.

Antonio Nobre does not say too much about Sao Paulo. “My report is about the Amazon.”

However, he believes that the drought in São Paulo is not isolated from what is happening in the North. In his view, it was possible to devastate much of the Atlantic Forest without experiencing a reduction in rainfall because the Amazon was able to make up for the lack of water in the local atmosphere. However, that no longer seems to occur. His report is an opportunity for him to urge that not only the Amazon rain forest but also almost all of the coastal forest area of Brazil must be immediately recovered. If for no other reason, the depletion of the dams that feed much of the São Paulo population should suffice as an argument.

The export of water from the Amazon to other regions of Brazil, especially the Southeast and the South, is a reality and occurs through the phenomenon known as flying rivers (see Pesquisa

Infographic ana paula campos Illustration fabio otubo

the Amazon rain forest carry more water and are associated with higher rainfall rates than winds coming from deforested areas that arrive at the same station.

This phenomenon occurs, the researchers say, because of the biotic pump of moisture, a theory proposed by the Russian duo in 2007 to explain the dynamics of winds driven by forests. This idea complements the description by José Antonio Marengo (a climatologist and, at the time, an INPE researcher) of how the Amazon exports rain to the more southern regions of South America. The biotic pump theory applies an unusual physics to meteorology and postulates that the condensation of water, promoted by the transpiration of the forest, reduces the atmospheric pressure that sucks the air currents laden with water from sea to land.

Pathways to the tap Air, surface and ground sources are added to the supply

FLYING RIVERS The Amazon rain forest sits atop a huge amount of water, the Alter do

3 RECIRCULATION OF WATER VAPOR

Chão aquifer. Its vegetation absorbs

2

moisture from the groundwater and

TRANSPIRATION AND CONDENSATION

1

the ocean and releases it into the

OCEAN EVAPORATION

atmosphere in the form of vapor, creating air currents that export rains to distant places

Alter do Chão Aquifer

SÃO PAULO AQUIFERS The overlap of underground sources in

4

Guarani Aquifer

FORMATION OF THE HEADWATERS OF THE RIVERS OF THE AMAZON REGION

the state of São Paulo is an example of the system’s complexity; the aquifers

Bauru Aquifer

are used as the only or partial source of water in 75% of its municipalities

Andes

Sedimentary aquifers n Tubarão n Guarani n Bauru Crystalline aquifers n Precambrian n Serra Geral Aquiclude n Passa Dois

5 FLYING RIVERS: MIDWEST, SOUTHEAST, SOUTH AND NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES

IN RURAL AND URBAN AREAS

A

B

A

The presence of native forest

B

is essential to the health of watersheds. The planting of intensive crops and forest species such as eucalyptus can

Atmospheric water

reduce the recharge of the aquifers, which is greater in urban areas Public supp

ly

NATIVE VEGETATION

Irrigation

Recharge Recharge

Rural Area

Sedimentary Aquifer Recharge

Recharge

Crystalline aquifer

Source ricardo hirata / igc-usp

Public and private wells

Fractures with water

Gerard Moss / flying rivers design

FAPESP Issue No. 158). One indication of this direct connection was the heavy rains in southwestern Amazonia in early 2014, which were almost double the usual volume, while São Paulo experienced a historic drought. “The rain was trapped in Rondônia, Acre and Bolivia because of atmospheric blocking, similar to an air bubble that prevented the passage of moisture. This created an atmospheric stability, inhibited the formation of rain and elevated temperatures,” says Marengo, now a researcher at the National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alerts (CEMADEN).

He is the co-author of a lead article by Jhan Carlo Espinoza, of the Geophysical Institute of Peru, which is slated for publication by Environmental Research Letters and is part of the results of the Green Ocean Amazon (GOAmazon) program that has the support of FAPESP. However, it is impossible to say how much this relationship affects the São Paulo drought.

“Calculating how much of the Southeast’s rain comes from the Amazon and how much of it is brought by cold fronts coming from the South, moisture carried by sea breezes or local evaporation is still an inexact science,” he says. Marengo believes that deforestation may have a long-term 10 | special issue November 2015

impact, but it is still impossible to say whether it is related to the current drought. “The Southeast may not turn into a desert,” he adds, “but weather extremes may become more intense.” Studies using climate models created by the Marengo group already forecast a redistribution of total rainfall, with a very heavy volume over a few days and longer droughts, which is something that has already been observed in Brazil’s Southeast and South in the last 50 years.

In addition to this effect-at-a-distance on a national scale, the relationship between vegetation and water resources also occurs on a more local scale, according to Walter de Paula Lima, an agronomist and professor at the Luiz de Queiroz School of Agriculture (ESALQ) of the University of São Paulo (USP) and the scientific coordinator of the Cooperative Environmental Monitoring Program on Microbasins (PROMAB) of the Institute of Forestry Research and Studies. In his studies on the effect of forests (or their removal) on microbasins, he showed that the riparian forest bordering watercourses helps to maintain the health of small rivers. “The Cantareira system, which supplies São Paulo, consists of thousands of microbasins,” he says. “Those that are more de-

Flying rivers: currents of water vapor that form over the Amazon rain forest export rains to southern Brazil

graded do not contribute to the watershed.” This assessment, however, lacks concrete experimental data. According to Lima, to discover exactly how riparian forests affect watersheds, it would be necessary to study an experimental microbasin where the properties of watercourses could be measured with and without forest protection, and absent any other factors—a virtually unattainable scenario.

A practical experience that reinforces the importance of preserving riparian forests to maintain water resources has been reported by Ricardo Ribeiro Rodrigues, an ESALQ biologist and recovery specialist of native forests. He says that Forests 24 years ago, the water disapaffect water peared from the microbasin in Iracemápolis, a city locatresources 1 ed in São Paulo State. The city sought help from ESALQ, and through their Rodrigues’ group implemented a soil conservation project for influence on the microbasin and recovery rainfall and of the riparian vegetation that should be there. “I was recently groundwater there and was very surprised,” he says. The level of the dam is recharge a little lower, but it has enough water to continue supplying Iracemápolis, whose population has tripled since then. “The whole region is experiencing water shortage problems but not Iracemápolis.”

Forests affect the health of water resources through their influence on rainfall but are also important in regard to their relationship with groundwater. Edson Wendland, an engineer and professor in the Department of Hydraulics and Sanitation, São Carlos School of Engineering (EESC-USP), is studying precisely what happens to the Guarani aquifer recharge when the Cerrado is replaced with pasture and crops such as sugarcane, citrus or eucalyptus. The work is being conducted in the Ribeirão da Onça Basin, city of Brotas, São Paulo State, which has been studied since the 1980s.

Through monitoring wells and weather stations, the idea is to detail how the Guarani aquifer recharges under different land use systems before there is no more of the Cerrado’s original vegetation left. “It is impossible to manage what we don’t know,” says Wendland about one of Brazil’s most important groundwater sources.

The aquifer is a porous layer of rocks infiltrated by rainwater, which is then slowly released into rivers. This time difference between supply and discharge, a result of the slow path of the water through the underground aquifer, is what en-

sures the continuity of rivers, which depend on this water reserve.

Wendland’s group has shown, for example, that water availability decreases when the small twisted trees of the Cerrado, which have adapted to living under water stress, are replaced by eucalyptus trees, which consume a lot of water and reach cutting size within a few years. Measurements made between 2004 and 2007 show that recharge rates are closely related to the intensity of the rainfall and the size of the crop in this region where the Cerrado is virtually extinct, according to an article accepted for publication in the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

However, this does not mean that eucalyptus trees are unconditional villains. The impact of large trees depends, in part, upon the depth of the aquifer at the location where they are planted. According to Lima, trees that PROMAB has continuously monitored for a period of more than 20 years showed that the relationship between forest species and water is not constant. “Where availability is critical, a new element can dry the microbasins,” he says. “However, where water and climate balance is good, the water reduction is not even felt.” These findings make it clear that a zoning plan is needed to indicate where planting would be good and where the practice would be harmful—something that does not exist in Brazil.

T

o Wendland, the importance of understanding the relationship between the Cerrado and the aquifers is crucial, because the sources of most of Brazil’s major river basins are in the domain of this biome. In addition to their importance as water resources, some of these basins—Paraná, Tocantins, Parnaíba and São Francisco—are the main providers of water for power generation in Brazil.

In just over half a century, half of the Cerrado area was cleared and given over to agricultural activities. To evaluate the effect of this change in land use on water availability, Paulo Tarso de Oliveira, a doctoral student in the São Carlos group, conducted a study using remote sensing data from the entire area of the Cerrado biome.

With the sensors, it is possible to not only evaluate the changes in vegetation but also measure the rainfall and the evapotranspiration rates of plants and estimate the variation of water storage. According to an article published in the September 2014 issue of Water Resources Research, the data indicate a flow reduction because of more intense agricultural activities.

Deforestation and the agricultural use of soil are important, but Wendland says the biggest problem affecting aquifer recharge today is the reduction in rainfall. “The aquifer can make up for the lack of rainfall for two or three years, but after that it pESQUISA FAPESP | 11

can no longer maintain the base flow in rivers,” he says. In recent years, the rainfall of the rainy season has been below average, according to observational data. It also explains, he says, alarming phenomena, such as the depletion of the headwaters of the São Francisco River, which remained dry for about three months and only returned to a flow stage at the end of November.

The challenge of managing groundwater, repre­senting 98% of the planet’s fresh water, has other peculiarities in urban areas, where it can be a crucial resource. According to Ricardo Hirata, a geologist with the Geosciences Institute (IGc-USP), 75% of São Paulo’s municipalities are supplied in whole or part by groundwater. This includes major cities of the state, especially Ribeirão Preto, where 100% of more than 600,000 residents are served. Nationwide, there are other cities completely supplied by groundwater, such as Juazeiro do Norte (Ceará State), Santarém (Pará State), and Uberaba (Minas Gerais State), according to the book Águas subterrâneas urbanas no Brasil [Urban Groundwater in Brazil], slated for publication by IGc and the Research Center for Groundwater (Cepas).

S

urprisingly, in the cities, it is the water lost by the public supply that will stop the aquifer. “The impermeability of the soil reduces rain water penetration, but the losses offset and overcome this reduction and on balance there is greater recharge where there are cities, compared to other areas,” says Hirata. “If we analyze the water from a well anywhere in São Paulo, half will be from the aquifer and half from Sabesp (water and sewage management company owned by the state of São Paulo).” He estimates that the state capital has nearly 13,000 private wells, and many of them are illegal. “There is a law to manage this resource, but it is not followed,” he says.

A problem caused by the cities is groundwater contamination by nitrate due to leaks in the sewer system. As decontamination is expensive, the affected wells are abandoned. In cities where the aquifers are used for the public water supply, the solution is to mix the polluted water with water from clean wells so that the overall quality is acceptable. “In Natal (capital of Rio Grande do Norte State) there is insufficient water to mix,” says Hirata. Groundwater is the source of 70% of its supply.

Another significant source of pollution comes from industry, such as the pollution caused by chlorinated solvents. Reginaldo Bertolo, an IGc geologist and director of Cepas, studies how this pollutant behaves in the aquifer below Jurubatuba, in the south São Paulo area, which has been an industrial region since the 1950s. “It is a contaminant with problematic behavior in the 12 | special issue November 2015

aquifer,” he says. In this hard rock, where the water flows into fractures, the compound, which is denser than water, goes deeper and only stops when it encounters an impermeable stratum.

“Chlorinated solvents are toxic and carcinogenic products.” Pollution prevents the use of groundwater in a region where the demand is strong.

In collaboration with researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada, the Bertolo group is mapping these pollutants in order to understand how the chlorinated solvent compound behaves and to propose strategies to eliminate it from the aquifer. To achieve this, the next step is to use a system developed by the Canadian researchers to take rock samples and install special monitoring wells. “The equipment allows us to collect water from more than 20 different fractures in the same drilling,” he says. “We’re going to do a mathematical model to reproduce what happens and make some forecasts.”

Bertolo says it is important to better map the groundwater and analyze its quality, because it is a resource that can supplement city water supplies. “Groundwater is a little-known resource.”

In late November, the Cantareira system had water in the Paiva Castro reservoir (right), while the drought was evident at the Jacarei and Jaguari reservoirs

> See videos on our website: revistapesquisa.fapesp.br

Monica Porto, an engineer at the USP Polytechnic School (Poli/USP), does not believe it is possible to greatly expand the use of these waters in the São Paulo Metropolitan Region. In her opinion, to go beyond a flow rate of approximately 10 cubic meters per second (m3/s) extracted from thousands of existing wells would take thousands of new drillings. “However, we can not do without these 10 m3/s; we need to take care of them.”

Porto, who was a past president and is still a member of the advisory board of the Brazilian Association of Water Resources, is considering ways to ensure a secure water supply for the population. Lack of water is, in fact, among the most serious things that can happen to a city.

“We are forced to work with a very low probability of failure.” According to Porto, in 2009 the São Paulo state government commissioned a consulting firm to do a study on what would need to be conducted to guarantee the water supply. The study was completed in October 2013, when the state was already in the midst of the most severe water crisis in its history. Porto says it is impossible to consider Greater São Paulo in isolation because there is nowhere else to draw water from without a dispute with neighbors.

Therefore, the study covers the mega-metropolis, which includes more than 130 municipalities and a population of 30 million people.

The development of the public works needed to improve water security has began, with a system to collect water from the Juquiá River in the Ribeira Valley, which should be completed by 2018. Construction of the Pedreira and Duas Pontes dams, which should supply the Campinas region, is in the environmental licensing phase.

“Manaus and Campinas are the only cities in Brazil with more than one million people and no water reservoir,” says Porto. Manaus does not

need a reservoir, as it is situated on the banks of the Amazon River; however, Campinas, which relies on the Cantareira system, does need one.

Porto, who “makes a great effort” to save water at home, says the current crisis is important for raising public awareness about the need to reduce consumption. It also highlights the importance of the set of measures that need to be reviewed on an emergency basis. “We have to learn from the pain,” she says, and jokingly adds that it is better if it does not rain enough to drive away the instructive crisis. “However, if it does not rain very soon, I will stop joking: we need rain.” n

Projects 1. Understanding the causes of the biases that determine the onset of the rainy season in Amazonia in climate models using GoAmazon-CHUVA [rain project] measurements (No. 13/50538-7); Principal investigator José Antonio Marengo Orsini (CEMADEN); Grant mechanism Regular Line of Research Project Award - GoAmazon; Investment R$57,960.00 (FAPESP).

2. Establishment of the hydrogeological conceptual model and fate and transport of chlorinated organic compounds in the fractured aquifer of Jurubatuba region, São Paulo (No. 13/10311-3); Principal investigator Reginaldo Antonio Bertolo (IGc-USP); Grant Mechanism Regular Line of Research Project Award; Investment R$502,715.27 (FAPESP).

Scientific articles MAKARIEVA, A.M. et al. Why does air passage over forest yield more rain? Examining the coupling between rainfall, pressure and atmospheric moisture content. Journal of Hydrometeorology. V. 15, No. 1, p. 411-26. February 2014.

MAKARIEVA, A.M. et al. Where do winds come from? A new theory on how water vapor condensation influences atmospheric pressure and dynamics. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. V. 13, p. 103956. January 25, 2013.

ESPINOZA, J. et al. The extreme 2014 flood in South-western Amazon basin: The role of tropical-subtropical South Atlantic SST gradient.

Environmental Research Letters. In press.

WENDLAND, E. et al. Recharge contribution to the Guarani Aquifer System estimated from the water balance method in a representative watershed. Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. In press.OLIVEIRA, P.T.S. et al. Trends in water balance components across the Brazilian Cerrado. Water Resources Research. V. 50, No. 9, p. 7100-14. September 2014.

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Interview

Artur Ávila

The man who calculates Marcos Pivetta Published in September 2014

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rtur Ávila, a Rio de Janeiro-based specialist in a field called dynamical systems in which the objective is to develop a theory capable of predicting the longterm evolution of natural and human phenomena, received the Fields Medal, the most important international mathematics award, on August 13, 2014. At 35, he became the first Brazilian and South American to be granted such an honor, which is given every four years by the International Mathematics Union (IMU) to researchers under 40. In addition to Ávila, who works at the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) in Rio de Janeiro and is head of research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, the medal was also awarded to the Austrian Marnin Hairer, the Canadian Manjul Bhargava, and the Iranian Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the award.

Of the four winners, who also received €10,000 in cash, Ávila was the youngest. “For the other candidates, this was the last chance to win the medal because of the age limit. Due to circumstances at the time, I thought I had little chance of being recognized this year,” Ávila said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro, after traveling to Seoul to receive the award at the 27th International Congress of Mathematicians.

The excellence of this Brazilian, who also gained French citizenship last year, manifested itself early. The only child of divorced parents (he has a half-sister through his father), he had a middle-class upbringing and attended good schools.

In 1995, at the age of 16, Ávila won the gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad. Two years later, while

14 | special issue November 2015

AGE 35 SPECIALTY Dynamic systems EDUCATION Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) INSTITUTION IMPA and National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris

leonardo pessanha

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still a student at the traditional Santo Agostinho High School and without having enrolled in a university, he completed a Master’s degree at IMPA. In 2001, at the age of 21, he finished his Doctorate, also at IMPA, along with an undergraduate degree at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). “Smart students usually like to show off and ask many questions,” says researcher Welington Celso de Melo, Ávila’s PhD advisor. “Arthur was different. He did not talk much, but when he asked questions I was unable to answer them immediately. I would have to go home and think about the answer.”

Married to a researcher in economics, with no children, Ávila lives in both Paris and Rio de Janeiro, the two cities that let him do what he likes best: solve big mathematical problems. Among his achievements are solutions for the Schrödinger operators, mathematical tools that help describe the evolution of vector states in quantum systems. Even before winning the Fields Medal, Ávila, who has over 50 published papers, enjoyed enormous prestige in mathematical circles. His way of conducting research is unusual. He does not read much, he does not teach, and he can work at home, in his office, or even on the beach if he is in Rio. He prefers to learn a new research topic by establishing partnerships with colleagues who are specialists in the field in question. “You are talking, and the person explains what is most important.

You do not necessarily need to read all of the literature on a problem,” he said.

Averse to interviews, Ávila says he has no vocation for communicating mathematics to the general public, a duty that will be difficult to avoid after receiving the greatest international award ever granted to a Brazilian researcher.

It is true that, unlike the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal winners are notified in advance that they were chosen to receive the award?

We knew before the announcement. I knew five months in advance and had to keep it secret. It was a long time, but I contained myself.

Your name was already under consideration to receive the medal four years ago. Did you expect to win the award this time?

I didn’t expect to win this time due to 16 | special issue November 2015

the existence of another strong candidate in a similar subarea and the fact that I was younger than the other candidates.

I still had one more chance and could win the medal in 2018. For the others, this was the last chance to win because of the age limit. Due to circumstances at the time, I thought I had little chance of being recognized this year.

Who was the other candidate in your subarea?

The Iranian Maryam Mirzakhani, who also won the award, was the other candidate. It was exceptional that they gave the medal to both of us. We work in neighboring subareas, and that made it unlikely that both of us would be honored in the same year. For this reason, and because it was the last chance for her but not for me, I thought that I would not win.

Have you and Maryam worked together?

No. However, I have worked with people who have worked with her. She has already used results from my work and vice-versa. She works in a subarea that intersects with mine, and we have common interests. So, we could work together in this subarea, and we are certainly working in the same direction with common co-authors. For some reason, we have never even met.

Normally, do the organizers of the award avoid giving the medal to mathematicians in similar subareas?

There are no rules. However, I understand that if there is a situation in which one candidate could wait four years until the next award, they might prefer to award the medal to people from a greater variety of subareas. It was what I would think and what could have happened to me. I could certainly have been a candidate in 2018, too. I was not in a hurry.

In 2018, the International Congress of Mathematicians will be in Rio de Janeiro. Do you think the choice of Brazil to host the meeting influenced your candidacy for the medal?

The decision on where to hold the congress is separate from the award committee decision. They are quite different issues. The meeting involves mathematical development questions and organization issues. The fact that Brazil has demon-

strated its ability to organize major events helped its candidacy. Many countries that have hosted the event have never won a medal, such as South Korea, India and Spain. The medal is for recognition of mathematical research, a purely scientific issue. It is the first time a prize winner has completed all of his education through the doctoral level in a developing country, rather than in Japan, parts of Europe, the United States or Israel. I studied only in Brazil, and this did not hold me back. The quality of the PhD I did at IMPA was the same as whatever I could have done abroad. It is a clear demonstration of the quality of what can be done here in Brazil. This, of course, is due to the teaching and research IMPA has been carrying out for decades.

How did you see yourself at 21, finishing your PhD? Did you feel you were special because you were a prodigy?

I was younger than most PhD students.

However, I knew that I could finish my PhD early but still not become a great researcher. You can be an excellent math student and have excellent grades but not have the ability to do research. Even if, in this context, you are able to do PhD research, you could have difficulty continuing in a research-oriented career.

Sometimes, you cannot continue to produce the same quality of work. You could also not demonstrate any exceptional abilities at the start of your career, and then at some point things could click.

That is how I saw things, and my goals were very basic. During my PhD, my goal was to perform research to obtain basic results. I intended to follow the normal path of a researcher when he wants a career, without lofty future goals. I had reasonable ambitions because I knew that obstacles could arise and probably would.

You started studying at IMPA very early. How did that happen?

That was because IMPA sometimes accepts younger students who are still in high school. They do this if they perceive that the student is able to do the work. I knew about this, and this aroused my interest in doing the same thing. This wish was granted when I returned from the 1995 International Mathematical Olympiad, at which I won the gold medal.

IMPA suggested that I take one of the level 1 courses shortly before starting

leonardo pessanha

that the system follows, new laws that can be used by the system. These laws are no longer deterministic but rather statistical and probabilistic. We then have to ask questions and try to give answers in terms of probabilities and system behaviors instead of having absolute certainty.

We try to model the system stochastically [using a probabilistic description of the processes]. We try to treat the system in whatever way possible.

Fields Medal awards ceremony during the International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul

the Master’s degree. If everything went well, I would enroll. In fact, that is what I did while still in the last year of high school. I started at the Master’s level, and after a while I continued on to the Doctorate more or less normally, taking courses at IMPA. At one point, I began to talk with researchers, with Welington, and that was how I got my start in the field of dynamical systems.

Why did you become interested in mathematics and not science?

I don’t know. I always liked math, even before I understood the difference between the fields, since I was 5, for no special reason. I also liked other fields that I thought were science. But, in mathematics, you can advance much faster on your own and I had this contact with the mathematics Olympiads, which gave me encouragement and focus and also served to transition me to IMPA. How did you become interested in dynamical systems?

I have certain characteristics as a researcher that adapt well to research in dynamical systems and that would also adapt to other areas. I am an analyst. I work with analyses, statistics, and geometry. In my case, I was more exposed to the area of dynamical systems because I was at IMPA and in direct contact with Welington. That is why I chose dynamical systems, where these characteristics are very important. You can treat this topic using these techniques or others. I like the area, but the choice of dynamical

systems was due to the historical chance of my being at IMPA. How would you explain the area of dynamical systems to a layperson?

In general, dynamical systems is the study of systems that change over time, with a rule that describes the transition from one moment in time to the next; between today and tomorrow, for example. This rule could be very simple. But, over a long period of time, you see complicated behavior emerging. We call some systems chaotic. The study of this chaotic behavior that emerges in the long term is one of the principal concerns in the area of dynamical processes. [The results and methods originating from the area of dynamical systems are used to explain complex phenomena in fields such as chemistry (reactions, industrial processes), physics (turbulence, phase transitions, optics), biology (species competition, neurobiology) and economics (growth models, financial market behavior).]

Superficially, people associate chaos with disorganization, but there are rules within the chaos, right?

We have become able to better describe good-quality chaotic systems, which have certain characteristics. They are sensitive to initial conditions, and in them, small changes create large effects. At first glance, on the one hand, it seems to be something that prevents us from saying anything useful about the system that destroys the possibility of forecasts. But, on the other hand, it introduces new rules

It is correct to think of the Sun and its planets as an example of a chaotic dynamical system?

In the planetary system, it is difficult to describe the emergence of chaos. This is still very complex and is not very well understood. However, an event in which chaotic phenomena appear could be due to the interaction of quadratic functions [second-order polynomials], which every child learns about in school. After a long time, what would be the effect of the repeated application of the same quadratic law? It could result in the emergence of chaos. This is a very simple example of what happens.

Some people say that you’re a great problem solver, perhaps more so than a formulator of theories. Do you agree with this statement?

Many times in my career I have sought out known difficult problems and worked hard to solve them. Because I did this several times, it is certainly true that I solved many problems. But, to a lesser extent, I also worked on building and developing these theories, which sometimes involve not only solving but also formulating the problem. In the beginning, I resolved a problem related to Schrödinger operators, but later, I also constructed a theory and solved problems related to it. However, certainly, the most visible aspect of my work is my many solutions of dynamical systems problems in different contexts.

Your PhD advisor, Professor de Melo, said that you have always been very selective in your choice of projects and became interested in the great problems of mathematics, trying to avoid being sidetracked by smaller questions. Was that your strategy?

I work on things I like, with problems that particularly interest me, that I consider beautiful. Often, the problems pESQUISA FAPESP | 17

considered difficult are fundamental because some aspect of them is of great interest. Theories also develop around these problems. The mathematician is usually attracted by the richness of the theory around these objects. Working with these problems allows us to explore more pleasurable things. However, I do not discard a problem because others think it is not important. I also worked on questions that I knew would not have a monumental impact. I solve these simpler problems faster. I do not spend most of my time working on them because they can be solved quickly. They are simpler.

You did various projects with colleagues.

Do you like to work as part of a team?

I mainly like it when I want to learn something. I do not tend to read.

What do you mean?

I read very few mathematics books and papers.

How can you do research like that?

In mathematics, you can advance without having a deep knowledge of the literature; it is more important to have a very precise understanding of the fundamentals.

I learn these important things more easily by talking to other researchers. That is when collaboration is useful. You are talking, and the person explains what is most important. You do not necessarily need to read all of the literature on a problem.

Is this unique to you or do many mathematicians work this way?

It is not a completely unique characteristic. Mathematicians work in different ways. Some mathematicians like to read a lot. I do not. I know a lot because I have already solved many problems.

I often begin to work in an area, doing research, even before studying the area.

Before studying, I try to solve a problem. However, it is very difficult to start from nothing, without knowing anything.

So, I begin a collaboration, and before I even learn a topic in depth, I have already solved an important problem; that motivates me more. I have changed subareas several times, and each time, I solved an important problem right away and only later understood what the theory said about that problem. It involves a bit of the technical characteristic of the person and their intuition, too. For me, it works.

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How does intuition help the mathematician?

The most difficult parts of mathematical work are those that involve creativity, which lead to discovering things that are, obviously, different from the basic rules.

Every top mathematician has excellent technical skills and can follow known paths without difficulty. This is certainly true in my case. What trips up research is having to go outside established methods, discover something and try to identify a way to attack the problem. Faced with the unknown, there is no rule as to how to approach something. You must rely on your intuition to decide how to attack a problem. This involves a bit of experience, which helps a lot in developing intuition on a topic. You go in one direction because you hope it will work, but you cannot formalize it mathematically yet.

Why did you become a French citizen?

I completed my PhD in Brazil and went to France in 2001. My first positions were in France, and I spent five years there before returning to Brazil. After that, I spent three years in Brazil, and then started spending half of my time here and half there. The time I spent in France complemented my training as a mathematician, and I extended my areas of research. I finished my PhD with the ability to conduct research at a high level. My results were recognized as important, but I had a restricted view of the area and its position within the whole of mathematics. In Paris, I had contact with the largest community of mathematicians in the world and unparalleled activity. This forced me beyond my area of expertise at the time, onedimensional dynamics, and made me look for other things to be able to interact with these people who were not necessarily interested in the same things that I was. In this search with such good professionals, with so many possible coauthors, I started working in other areas, and my work was lauded due to what I did in these areas. The mathematician that I am today is a result of my time in France and my training in Brazil. Thus, I thought it was more accurate to consider myself a French-Brazilian mathematician. If I am a French-Brazilian mathematician, it makes sense to have French nationality too, which also leads to practical benefits for my life there.

What is your work schedule like, in Rio and Paris?

I go back and forth. I do not spend six whole months here or there, it is much more broken up. I spend some months there, others here. I try to avoid winter in Paris, but there are some exceptions.

The details of the trips are decided at the last minute and, depending on the circumstances, I choose the specific dates.

I have a great deal of flexibility because I only research and do not teach. It is one of my characteristics. I prefer to spend my time on research, and I do not think I have great teaching skills. I have PhD students, but basically, I do not teach. So, I do not have to follow a calendar, which I would have to do if I had to teach.

It is true that you wake up late and usually work more at night?

I certainly continue waking up late, at 11:00 or even at 13:00. However, this varies a lot. It depends on the previous day and on things that could be more engrossing. At night, I work before going to bed or, if I wake in the middle of the night, I can think about mathematics.

However, I try to work in the afternoons too. I often work with colleagues and I am not going to work with them after midnight. I have worked in various situations. Most recently on the beach or walking along the beach, for example.

Not so much at night.

Are your routines in Paris and Rio similar?

Not at all. To begin with, I do not have a set routine. There, I tend to go to my office more often. There is no beach there, of course. So I meet co-authors, colleagues and students. I try to have several meetings during the day, not necessarily in my office. Some days I stay at home, too. In France, this occurs more frequently. In Brazil, I usually invite people to meet me near my home. When I work alone, I tend to stay at home or go to the beach. I am not always working intensely. When I am not working on a very specific line of research or when I am a bit lost, unsure of how to approach a problem—which happens most of the time—working intensely doesn’t help much, and there is no way I can work for many hours at a time. I don’t work many hours a week then. It is different from some situations, which occur now

and then, in which I hope, know or imagine that something is going to work and involve a lot of technical but directed work. In these cases, I work very intensely, for many hours a day.

Brazil’s math and science teaching is poor. Do you consider yourself an exception, given this?

I think that I am more a natural consequence of the evolution of science, especially mathematics, which is perhaps the most developed field in Brazil in terms of international impact. This is due to the inherent properties of mathematics but also to the people who work in the field.

Mathematics depends more on human resources than on material resources.

Having focused people can be enough to go far. When one depends on many material resources, such as laboratories, the will of the researchers will not be enough, no matter how competent they are. [Brazil’s prestige is evidenced by the fact that there are currently four Brazilian voting representatives at the IMU general assembly, one less than powers like the United States and France. At the International Conference in Seoul, four mathematicians from IMPA gave talks.]

to winning the medal. What do you think of this possibility?

I think that Brazil and IMPA have been producing excellent mathematicians for some time. I am a bit reluctant to put pressure on any one person. It is not supernatural to win an award. What was considered impossible occurred. It occurred within a continuum of improvement in Brazilian mathematics. It is not a unique event that cannot be repeated. However, it really is a rare award.

Not receiving it does not mean your research is of poor quality. I like to remind people that Germany—which has 100 Nobel prizes to Brazil’s none—has only one Fields Medal winner. You can see how rare this award is. This does not diminish the quality of the research car-

ready well-known. So, it is not so important that I play this role. I think that to a slight extent, I have the role of helping promote mathematics to people who are not mathematicians and who do not know that we do high-level mathematics in Brazil.

Do you intend to give talks in schools?

I will probably do something along those lines, but the objective is to play this role alongside people who have more of a calling for it. I am very limited in various aspects related to explaining math to a more general public. It is not one of my skills. I already find it difficult to talk to non-PhD students in mathematics, even in my subarea. On the other hand, I have greater visibility. We still have not decided how we are going to reconcile this. However, in practice, due to my limitations, I will not be communicating directly with people.

The Fields Medal is a clear demonstration of the quality of the research that can be conducted in Brazil

What could be done in the schools to awaken interest in mathematics?

Given my background, I did not have contact with teaching in schools. I went to very select schools, I went directly to IMPA and did not spend much time at a university.

I formally attended a university, but I studied at IMPA. I did not have contact with the reality of teaching in Brazil. If I talk about education, it is more about what I imagine it is like. I do not teach at a university, so I do not have daily contact with that reality. I prefer to let other people who have more contact with and ideas on this topic discuss it.

There are high-level mathematicians who have much better ideas about this that I do.

Another Brazilian at IMPA, Fernando Codás, has been mentioned in relation

But wouldn’t it be natural for people to expect you to have greater contact with non-specialists?

They can ask, but I have a choice. I think I can do something positive indirectly.

There are many competent people who communicate much better than I do. I do not need to be the person speaking. I can be next to him or her.

ried out by German mathematicians and their contributions in any way. You cannot measure things by these awards; it would create immense distortions. The analysis is much more complicated. With the medal, it is easy to show people that Brazil did something at the highest international level. Before, Brazil already did so, but it was harder to demonstrate it. People could even say “so, where is the award?” However, now they can’t.

However, things should not be measured in that way because that is not the focus.

What is your life like outside of mathematics?

In Brazil, I try to go to the gym often and, when possible, to the beach. I live on Leblon beach. I like to walk in the neighborhood and do typical things, like going to juice cafés. In Rio, I have childhood friends with whom I maintain contact, and I organize get-togethers. Everything I do is very normal. I don’t do anything very odd, no highrisk sports, no trips unrelated to mathematics. In Paris, I meet with a group of math colleagues after work and we go to bars and such.

Do you think that, from now on, you will be a sort of ambassador for Brazilian science and mathematics abroad?

Among mathematicians, IMPA was al-

Paris is famous for its cultural life, its museums. Do you go to these places often?

No. n pESQUISA FAPESP | 19

Policy BIOENERGY y

The challenge of scaling up A report shows that biofuel expansion requires the support of public policies to be sustained at a global level Bruno de Pierro

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he current state of scientific and technological development already allows for large-scale, worldwide bioenergy production. However, public policies that encompass the entire renewable energy production chain must be adopted for this goal to become a reality; these policies include land use and the efficiency of technologies for converting biomass into power, in addition to environmental, economic and social challenges. This finding is one of the primary conclusions of a report on the implementation of bioenergy systems worldwide, about which some aspects were presented during the opening of the second edition of the Brazilian BioEnergy Science and Technology Conference (BBEST) held October 20-24, 2014 in Campos do Jordão (São Paulo State). The report, entitled, “Quick Evaluation Process on Biofuels and Sustainability,” was prepared by researchers who participated in FAPESP’s special programs, specifically the Program for Research on Bioenergy (BIOEN), the Research Program in Identification, Conservation, Recovery 20 z special issue November 2015

and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity in the State of São Paulo (Biota) and The FAPESP Research Program on Global Climate Change (RPGCC).

“Global public policies are beginning to reflect that we need to triple our production of modern bioenergy by 2030,” says Glaucia Mendes Souza, a researcher at the Chemistry Institute of the University of São Paulo (USP) and the coordinator of BIOEN. She was responsible for organizing the report, which was compiled in collaboration with scientists from 24 countries under the auspices of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), a partner of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The final document was released on April 14-15, 2015 during a FAPESP seminar, and it also included the launch of a summary to guide public policy.

The report highlights the role of bioenergy in food security. According to the document, modern bioenergy may have the ability to increase land productivity by integrating the production of maize and sugarcane, for example, to produce

ethanol or soy and palm oil for biodiesel, with agriculture connected to the food supply. “Bioenergy production in the poorest rural areas can also boost the local economy by creating jobs and markets,” says Souza.

However, the report does note that we must have a better understanding of the impact of the land-use measures that are adopted for bioenergy production. The same type of biomass, such as sugarcane, may be used for different purposes, namely liquid fuel for heating or electricity generation, and it would then have different impacts. Monitoring these impacts is essential. “If planting sugarcane deposits tons of nitrogen into the soil, this can increase greenhouse gas emissions such as nitrous oxide. We have to be very careful with the technologies we use,” says Reynaldo Victoria, a USP researcher and a coordinating member of the RPGCC. A BIOEN study shows that direct greenhouse gas emissions from sugarcane cultivation in Brazil are lower than those estimated in the international scientific literature. “The conditions under

eduardo cesar

Published in November 2014

Sugarcane: Bioenergy power plant efficiency in Brazil is internationally recognized; the next step is to leverage new technologies to increase ethanol production

pESQUISA FAPESP  z 21

Experts from around the world gathered in Campos do Jordão (São Paulo State) for the second edition of BBEST. The challenge of articulating policies for the bioenergy sector was on the agenda

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which we produce sugarcane here do not lead to large emissions of nitrous oxide,” says Heitor Cantarella, a researcher at the Campinas Agronomy Institute (IAC) and the study coordinator. However, the ideal is for sugarcane growers to adopt solutions to reduce or mitigate gas emissions, he says. Some strategies are beginning to be evaluated by Cantarella’s research group in São Paulo. One such strategy is to avoid applying fertilizer and vinasse (vinasse is a byproduct of the industrial processing of alcohol) at the same time because the combination of these items leads to the production of nitrous oxide in the soil. “The current planting practice is to apply them simultaneously to speed up the process.

We need to change that mindset,” says Cantarella. “The sugarcane remains sustainable. Our goal now is to improve its indicators in relation to greenhouse gas emissions,” he says.

ETHANOL VERSATILITY

Bioenergy production from biomass can also contribute to the recovery and increase of environmental resources for the fauna of degraded soils. “In some circumstances, when degraded pastures are replaced with sugarcane or eucalyptus, this results in soil recovery and even an increase of resources for fauna in this area,” says Luciano Verdade, a USP professor and coordinating member of 22 z special issue November 2015

“Bioenergy production in the poorest rural areas can boost the local economy,” says Glaucia Mendes Souza

the Biota-FAPESP Program, who also helped to prepare the report.

The experts at BBEST presented specific cases throughout the week to illustrate the potential of biomass utilization.

One such case is the use of sugarcane ethanol to obtain hydrogen, which may be used in cars powered by fuel cells.

This project is underway at the Hydrogen Laboratory at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), which seeks to develop small hydrogen extraction stations in partnership with the Hytron company by using the ethanol sold at gas stations. “The idea is to show that ethanol is versatile and the form in which it is sold today at gas stations could be used more efficiently,” says Carla Cavaliero, a professor at Unicamp and a laboratory researcher.

Some manufacturers, such as Honda, Toyota and Hyundai, recently launched models powered by fuel cells. However,

the cost of producing these cars is still high. In Europe and the United States, hydrogen extraction is performed directly at some gas stations, not from ethanol but through the electrolysis (decomposition) of water. “The advantage of using ethanol to obtain hydrogen is that Brazil already has a competitive advantage in producing fuel from sugarcane, which makes the process cheaper,” says Cavaliero.

The possibilities of producing advanced liquid biofuels were also discussed at BBEST. The participants had the opportunity to learn about advances in the production of cellulosic ethanol that was made in Brazil from agricultural waste such as sugarcane bagasse.

In 2014, two companies began the commercial production of second-generation ethanol, which is another name for cellulosic ethanol. One is GranBio, which opened a production plant in Alagoas

State. Approximately US$190 million was invested by GranBio in addition to ano­ther R$300 million from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). The factory has the capacity to produce 82 million liters of anhydrous ethanol per year and will be fully operational by 2015.

Another initiative is the Sugarcane Technology Center (CTC), which was created in 1969 by Copersucar and began opera­ ting a demonstration plant for secondgeneration ethanol, which is located in São Manoel, São Paulo State. The plant is capable of processing 100 tons of sugar­ cane biomass per day. The aim of the unit is to showcase the potential of the technology that has been developed by the center, which can multiply the production of ethanol without expanding the area planted with sugarcane.

In 2008, the process that was deve­ loped by CTC to obtain cellulosic etha­ nol from sugarcane was patented; it re­ presents a strategic difference in comparison with the methods adopted by other companies that were competing in the race to develop second-generation ethanol in Brazil. The enzymatic hydrolysis process of the cellulose present in bagasse and straw will be fully integrated into the existing structure of the production plant (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue No 208).

Photos 1 eduardo cesar 2 wikimedia commons

ENZYMES

However, there are still barriers that prevent the production of second-generation ethanol from advancing to an industrial scale. “The most difficult problem is related to enzymes,” says Jaime Finguerut, a technical advisor to CTC’s president. The production of secondgeneration ethanol depends on the enzymes used to break down the lignin and hemicellulose of the sugarcane cells to obtain cellulose and then glucose, thus enabling the fermentation of the sugar to obtain ethanol. “There are few suppliers of these enzymes and their cost is very high, which makes producing cellulosic ethanol very expensive,” says Finguerut. In partnership with Embrapa and the Brazilian Bioethanol Science and Technology Laboratory (CTBE), the CTC is currently seeking new supplies for this process.

The BBEST program schedule was not limited to a discussion of biofuels, such as ethanol. The future of renewable

Wind turbines in Parnaíba, Piauí State: the future of renewable energy was discussed at the conference

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energy such as wind and solar was also featured during one of the days of the event. The idea was to show that there are other forms of electricity generation that complement the production of bioenergy made from biomass. “Photovoltaic films, for example, are flexible and can be used in the construction of houses and buildings or change the configuration of windows, decreasing or increasing the incidence of light,” says Helena Li Chum, a Brazilian who has lived in the United States for 30 years and is a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy. According to Chum, the process of differentiating the capture and distribution of energy is a way to meet the specific demands of different industry sectors.

An example of renewable energy interactions was presented by Danny Krautz of the Berlin Partner for Business and Technology, a German agency that supports innovation. He demonstrated the advantages of crystalline photovoltaic cells, a technology that is used in the manufacture of very thin polymer films capable of converting sunlight into electricity more efficiently than silicon solar panels. “Crystalline photovoltaic cells are already used in Asia, particu-

larly in rural areas. They are light and easy to install,” says Krautz.

Just like photovoltaic film, wind minimills have also emerged as alternatives for generating electricity in a decentralized way. These mini-mills are made of small propellers that are five meters in height; they weigh approximately 800 kilos and can be installed in homes, factories or small communities. Jon Samseth of the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences in Norway says that the idea of these projects, many of which are still under development, is to present an alternative to the centralized power distribution model that exists today.

“Producing electricity in a decentralized manner is meant to meet specific needs, which avoids waste and high costs,” he says. One example cited by Samseth is the NuScale SMR, a small nuclear reactor developed by the American company NuScale Power. This equipment will not be commercially available until 2020; it can be transported by truck or train and aims to meet the immediate needs of customers, such as industries and hospitals.

Capable of generating 540 megawatts of power for 60 years, this mini-reactor can be built quickly, and if there is an accident, the environmental and economic damages are more easily controlled. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 23

Scientometrics y

Innovative calculations Scientific paper describes methodology used to evaluate the Biota-FAPESP Program Fabrício Marques Published in october 2014

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paper published by Brazilian researchers in the journal Scientometrics demonstrates how a certain method can be used to evaluate the impact of research programs, especially when the number of projects to be analyzed is limited and the control group – the reference group used as a basis for comparison – has characteristics that differ from those of the group targeted by the study. The paper, which was authored

by Fernando Colugnati of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Sergio Firpo of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), and Paula Drummond and Sergio Salles-Filho of the University of Campinas (Unicamp), provides a detailed description of this innovative method that was designed to evaluate the Biota-FAPESP Program, which has been studying the biodiversity of São Paulo State since 1999.

To gather data about the program's impact, the group compared Biota-FAPESP projects with others that have equivalent characteristics but are not part of the program. Contradicting certain biases from confounding the results was a major challenge. The higher number of projects in the control group – not to mention their characteristics, which differed somewhat from the target group – was just one of

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these biases. Whereas the Biota-FAPESP Program sponsors a significant number of thematic projects, which receive large amounts of funding and human resources and can last for up to five years, many projects in the control group were standard research projects, whose duration and resources are more modest.

Thus, the researchers designed a method that could statistically dissociate the effects of Biota's thematic projects. To estimate the probability that each project in the control group could be compared with a Biota Program project, they employed a statistical theory designed in the 1980s. A group of variables that could be potential sources of bias in the study was defined. These variables – including the age of the principal investigator, the number of papers published and the size of the research team – could increase a project's probability of belonging to the Biota group. This probability, which is called the propensity score (PS), was calculated for each project in the control group.

The inverse of the PS provides a type of weighting factor that can be used to correct distortions. As additional challenges, the researchers needed to compensate for the two groups' differences in terms of size and composition and the small size

of the sample universe from which the projects were selected. “Once the PS had been estimated, the thematic projects in the control group were assigned a higher weight because they were relatively rare.

By doing this, we were able to achieve a more uniform and balanced distribution, permitting a less biased comparison between the groups, using statistical models,” says Colugnati.

To select projects for the control group, the researchers accessed approximately 1,400 biological sciences projects in FAPESP's database that were not included in the Biota-FAPESP Program. A search based on keywords (such as “biodiversity” or “biomes”) reduced the sample to approximately 300 projects, and a case-bycase analysis led to a final sample of 117 projects within this group, including thematic, regular research, and young investigator projects. Adding the 66 projects in the Biota group, the total sample universe consisted of 183 projects. The respective principal investigators were encouraged to complete an online questionnaire to support the assessment. A total of 142 researchers responded, representing 56 Biota-FAPESP Program projects and 86 control group projects. Propensity scoring and statistical modeling were then applied to these data.

Illustration catarina bessel

Prospecting

The final judgment was positive for Biota-FAPESP, both in terms of its scientific productivity and ability to support new public policies, although the program still produces modest results in regard to prospecting for compounds that could potentially be used in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and other industries (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue No. 210).

Designing new methods gives evaluation processes the opportunity to generate new knowledge

This evaluation of the Biota-FAPESP Program was supported by a grant from FAPESP and was conducted by the Study Group for Organization of Research and Innovation (GEOPI), which is affilia­ ted with the Department of Science and Technology Policy (DPCT) of the Institute of Geosciences at Unicamp. The group is coordinated by Professor Sergio Salles-Filho, member of FAPESP's Special Programs Panel, including fellowships, Young Investigator and Multi-user Equipment Program (EMU) grants, and the Innovative Research in Small Businesses Program (PIPE), among others.

Salles-Filho, who is a supervising member of the FAPESP Area Panel of Special Programs, for program evaluations, says that the particular characteristics of each program mean that they can only be evaluated after a specific method has been designed. “And this is sometimes not necessary, but we take the opportunity to test new hypotheses and methods,”

he says. “The biggest challenge, when evaluating the impact of a program, is guaranteeing the attribution of causality; in other words, making sure that the measurements obtained will be effectively attributed to the investment made by the program, attempting to isolate other factors that may influence a program's impact. Whenever possible, we recommend using a control group, but the control group must be reliable, which explains the usefulness of the methodology based on propensity scores,” he explains. The method has very well-defined applications. “Our group worked on an evaluation of companies that used incentives from Brazil's legislation on information technology, but no control group was possible because the vast majority of Brazilian companies use these incentives, and so there was no way to build a reliable control group,” he says.

According to Salles-Filho, designing new methods gives evaluation processes the opportunity to generate knowledge.

The scientific contribution generated by the Biota-FAPESP evaluation will not be limited to the paper in Scientometrics. The research group at GEOPI expects to complete another study that will compare two distinct methods using the results from the Biota evaluation. One is the method that relies on a control group, as described in the article.

The other method, which known as additionality with verification of causality, aims to measure a project’s impact without using a control group by comparing data from the start and end of a project. “Our goal is to see whether the two methodologies produce equivalent results, or if differences will emerge,” says Salles-Filho. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 25

COLLABORATION y

Bringing into evidence Researchers discuss partnerships in search of drugs to treat diseases that are of little interest to pharmaceutical companies

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esearchers from several countries met on November 13-14, 2014 at FAPESP headquarters to discuss potential cooperation in the development and delivery of new treatments for so-called neglected diseases, those that attract little interest from pharmaceutical companies because they affect mainly poor populations and countries. The list includes Chagas disease, visceral leishmaniasis, malaria and human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). The meeting was organized in conjunction with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) of the United Kingdom and international organizations such as the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) and the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV); it demonstrated that Brazil has much to offer, particularly in the areas of organic chemistry and molecular biology, in finding new drugs, even though articulation between research groups and 26 z special issue November 2015

incentives for international collaboration in this area are rare in Brazil. “The event helped us understand how Brazil could be included in large studies of neglected diseases. We are interested in strengthening this relationship, because Brazil has a strong foundation in chemistry, and many diseases discussed at the meeting are endemic here,” says Alejandra Palermo, RSC’s open innovation manager.

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), neglected diseases affect about one billion people worldwide. Of the 17 diseases of this type listed by WHO, 14 are present in Brazil.

Last year, RSC signed an agreement with two international organizations that are based in Switzerland, with the aim of developing new drugs. The Society has offered access to a network of collaboration in the field of organic chemistry and software to facilitate the exchange of information. According to Palermo, much work done by Brazilian research-

ers could continue to be conducted in consultation and in partnership with the two international organizations whose mission is to develop drugs that are affordable by poor populations.

An initiative underway involves the Synthetic Organic Chemistry Laboratory of the University of Campinas (Unicamp), with which the DNDi maintains an unprecedented program in Latin America entitled Lead Optimization Latin America (Lola). “The goal is to improve and conduct in vivo testing of chemical compounds to fight Chagas and Leishmaniasis,” says Luiz Carlos Dias, the laboratory coordinator at Unicamp. He says that working in a network, promoted by the international organization, enables the same molecule to be tested under different scenarios in various countries, thus accelerating the production process of a drug. In the last decade, the Society has been able to provide two new treatments for malaria, one

eduardo cesar

Published in December 2014

Children playing in a stream in Rondônia in the late afternoon, which is the optimum time for malaria-causing mosquitoes to bite

for sleeping sickness, and one for visceral leishmaniasis as well as a combination of drugs against visceral leishmaniasis specific to Asia and a pediatric treatment with a dose adapted for Chagas disease.

The task of analyzing and preparing a new Chagas compound has been divided among the Unicamp laboratory; the University of São Paulo’s Center for Structural Molecular Biotechnology, coordinated by Professor Adriano Adricopulo; and the Physics Institute at São Carlos (São Paulo State). The project involves pharmaceutical companies, including AbbVie and Pfizer, and international research institutes including the Swiss Tropical Institute, in Switzerland, and the Drug Discovery Unit of the University of Dundee, in Australia.

In another pioneering initiative in Latin America, the Dias team is cooperating on MMV projects in Brazil Heterocycles, which is a program that has synthesized two promising molecules for the treatment of malaria. This project has collaborations with international centers, including the Imperial College London, Monash University of Australia, Glaxo Smith Kline in Spain, and Astra Zeneca and Syngene in India.

OBSTACLES

“The most expensive stages in the development of new drugs are the discovery of the molecule and preclinical and toxicity tests,” says Glaucius Oliva, coordinator of the Center for Research and Innovation in Biodiversity and Drug Discovery (CIBFar), which is one of FAPESP’s Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDC), involved in one of the molecular synthesis projects coordinated

by Carlos Dias’s team at Unicamp. "With the financial support of large global organizations at precisely that stage, the pharmaceutical industry is then ready to begin clinical trials and large-scale production. That begins to pique the interest of the pharmaceutical industry in relation to neglected diseases,” says Oliva, who was president of the National pESQUISA FAPESP z 27

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“We need to form a large critical mass in the area of synthetic chemistry,” says Vanderlan Bolzani

1 The Anopheles gambiae mosquito, the vector for malaria 2 In the digitally treated images, the compound extracted from fluorescent flowers permeates two erythrocyte membranes, one infected with plasmodium malaria

Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). Oliva suggests that the partnership between the DNDi, MMV and Unicamp should serve as an example for other initiatives.

However, he notes other hurdles that Brazilian research must overcome to contribute more vigorously to studies of neglected diseases. One of these obstacles relates to pharmacokinetics, which concerns the mechanism by which a molecule travels in the body after administration. “Brazil still has very few people working in toxicology and synthetic and medicinal chemistry to create new molecules,” says Walter Colli, a biochemist and professor at the University of São Paulo (USP) and member of FAPESP's Supervising Panel on Life Sciences.

A group of USP researchers has shown that the chemical synthesis of natural 28 z special issue November 2015

compounds could improve the performance of existing drugs until new drugs are developed. The researchers were able to synthesize a molecule from betalains, which are pigments found in fluorescent flowers and beets. The compound has the ability to easily permeate animal cell membranes and serve as a fluorescent probe and marker for cell biology. “The fluorescent molecule can be functional, acting like a taxi, which only turns off its light when the drug is in the right place at the right time,” says Erick Bastos, a researcher with the Chemistry Institute at USP and the coordinator of the study.

The new molecule is in the testing phase. New drug development and pharmacological analyses are expensive, and Bastos’s group suggests that the compound could be used initially to improve the action of malaria drugs already avail-

able on the market. “Through in vitro tests we proved that betalains synthesized in the laboratory are able to overcome the malaria parasite membrane barrier. By using this technique, the usual dose of the drug can be reduced.

Treatment efficiency improves because, by tracking the drug, we can find new ways to get the drug to the parasite,” Bastos says.

Research of this type could play an important role in the process of eradicating some diseases. “By improving what we already have, we can increase the efficacy of a treatment in the short term,” says Dr. Carolina Batista, the Latin America medical director of the DNDi. One example cited by her is the treatment of Chagas disease using benznidazole, the drug most frequently used to treat the disease, through a method created in the 1970s.

Between 2012 and 2013, the DNDi commissioned a large study comparing benznidazole with E1224, a new molecule that showed promise in the fight against Chagas disease. Although it had performed well in in-vitro tests, E1224 was inefficient in clinical trials with patients. One part of the study conducted with benznidazole, however, was shown to be effective in the treatment of patients chronically ill with the disease. Another study, published in 2014

by Spanish research institutions, found that benznidazole remains the most effective compound for treating Chagas.

“Still, benznidazole has complicated side effects, such as allergic reactions and headaches. This shows that even an old and widely used drug still needs to be improved and researched,” says Dr. Batista.

Photo s 1 CDC / James Gathany 2 Erick Bastos Collection (Chemistry Institute-USP) - images published in the journal PLOS One

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One of the studies currently assessing the action of benznidazole involves the Dante Pazzanese Institute in São Paulo, WHO and institutions in Canada and Argentina. More than 3,000 patients were recruited from various countries, and the first results will be released in 2015.

“We’ve already been able to analyze the effect of the drug on children with Chagas and have reached the conclusion that we can decrease the dosage of benznidazole in children,” says Sergio SosaEstani, a DNDi member and director of the National Institute of Diagnostics and Research on Chagas disease, based in Buenos Aires.

“By improving what we already have, we can increase the efficacy of a treatment,” says Dr. Carolina Batista

WIDENING THE SEARCH

Event participants emphasized, however, that new molecules to strengthen the fight against neglected diseases are needed. In 2012, the WHO released new guidelines for the control and elimination of these diseases by 2020. According to the organization, Chagas and leishmaniasis pose enormous challenges. In the case of Chagas disease, today approximately 7.6 million people are infected worldwide. However, when taking into account its risk factors, including inadequate housing in poorer regions, there are approximately 100 million people at risk of contracting the disease in Latin America alone, according to data from the DNDi. According to the WHO report, only 4.3% of total funding for research on neglected diseases is designated for Chagas and leishmaniasis research.

To correct this gap, the MMV and DNDi signed an agreement in London for the purpose of expanding research in this area. These institutions receive donations from governments,

companies and foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Jeremy Burrows, head of the MMV’s drug discovery department, explained that the organization's goal is to develop new compounds to treat malaria, which each year affects 80 million to 100 million people worldwide. “We are now collaborating with more than 300 partners and with the help of Brazilian science we can make enormous contributions to the fight against malaria,” says Burrows.

The DNDi is the result of a partnership between public research institutions and the pharmaceutical industry.

The organization was established with funds from the humanitarian organization, Doctors Without Borders, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 and today manages a network of 350 collaborative initiatives in 43 countries. “We

put universities and industry in contact; if they worked alone, they could not develop new products,” says Robert Don, the DNDi’s director of discovery and preclinical development.

For the British chemist, Simon Campbell, an RSC member and advisor for the two entities in collaborative projects with the Unicamp team, the Brazilian scientific community is known among those who conduct research on neglected diseases and has good laboratories and adequate levels of funding. However, he suggests that Brazil should invest more in the areas of synthetic and medicinal chemistry, to transform its knowledge base of biology into new treatments. “We need more effective treatments with fewer side effects. One way to speed up this process is to work in collaboration, and so we rely on the help of Brazilian scientists,” Campbell says.

This view is shared by Vanderlan Bolzani, a Chemistry Institute researcher at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP).

“We need to form a large critical mass in the area of synthetic chemistry, to encourage more young rese­a r­c hers to work with preparing molecules that can contribute to the eradication of diseases such as malaria and Chagas,” she says. Opening the meeting, FAPESP’s scientific director, Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, emphasized that the workshop is an opportunity to bring together researchers from São Paulo and elsewhere in the world as well as two important scientific foundations, FAPESP and the Royal Society of Chemistry. “The institutions involved are interested in sharing research information, so that results can be achieved more quickly,” says Brito Cruz. n Bruno de Pierro pESQUISA FAPESP z 29

Science Botany y

Forests in transformation Vines are remodeling the Amazon Region, and bamboos are remodeling the Atlantic Forest Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade Published in October 2014

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merican ecologist Robyn Burnham gets up a little before dawn in a forest encampment 80 kilometers from the city of Manaus.

She emerges from her hammock, takes two quick gulps of coffee and enters the dense forest in search of lianas, a type of climbing vine that winds around trees.

Unfazed by the constant heat and sweat, she uses red bands to mark the species she finds among tangles of leaves, branches and trunks; the marks will enable her to monitor their growth over the years.

Burnham and her assistants then measure 30 z special issue November 2015

the stems of the plants that are larger than one centimeter (cm) in diameter, collect a few samples of branches and transport them to the laboratory for species identification and analysis.

On the basis of 35 years of field observations, Burnham and other researchers are seeing that liana populations are expanding in the midst of intact forests in the Amazonian interior. It is the first time that this phenomenon has been reported. According to previous research, lianas normally proliferate only in areas of degraded vegetation, such as forest

fragments surrounded primarily by pastures and roads.

Although the census conducted in the Atlantic Forest has not been as extensive, bamboos appear to be remodeling forest fragments, according to studies by researchers from the Botanical Institute of São Paulo (IBt). Both bamboos and lianas benefit from the fragile nature of environments that have been disturbed for landclearing purposes. These two observations suggest that both Amazonia and the Atlantic Forest may now be subject to previously unknown environmental pressures.

eduardo cesar

It has long been known that burnoffs, the clearing of vast stretches of native forest for farming and fishing, and even selective logging interfere with forest dynamics by altering the variety and growth rates of plant species. Now researchers are beginning to realize that other factors may also affect these dynamics. American biologist William Laurance, the principal author of two 2014 papers published in the journal Ecology on liana behavior in the Amazon, thinks that one possible explanation for the increasing proliferation of these plants in non-degraded areas is the rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

Although lianas are abundant and diverse in forests worldwide, they are found in greater abundance, richness and variety of shapes and sizes in the tropics. Some lianas have fragile green-

environments by promoting ish stems that are nearly inIn the Amazon, liana populations the survival of some species visible in forest interiors; othare gaining to the detriment of others. ers have tree-like bark and ground in areas of In connection with her lounge moodily atop the forcontinuous forest work on the identification est canopy. without any history of disturbance of liana species, Burnham is Lianas are distributed gradually mapping the disacross a variety of environments. They can produce up to 40% tribution of these plants in some parts of the leaves that cover trees, in addi- of the Amazon. She has now identified tion to producing seeds and small fruits 300 species, many of which have not yet that provide food for birds and small been described. “We found more than mammals. Lianas generally climb the 80 species in half a hectare!” says the trunks of trees in a spiral pattern, wind- University of Michigan-based ecologist, ing around as if to strangle them. Lia- who visits the Amazon at least twice a na-covered trees grow more slowly, are year. “We hope this census will help us less reproductive and die sooner, and identify which liana species are benefitmany trees cannot support the weight ing most from this scenario and gaining more ground,” says Burnham, who, along of these vines.

In light of this behavior, researchers with Laurance, is working on the Biologare now finding that lianas can recon- ical Dynamics of Forest Fragments Projfigure tree communities and remodel ect (PDBFF) at Brazil’s National Institute pESQUISA FAPESP z 31

for Research in the Amazon (INPA). For over 30 years, this project has monitored developments in more than a thousand square kilometers (km²) of fragmented and continuous forests in Amazonia. Burnham’s work is also broadening other researchers’ understanding of the composition of liana communities and helping them to achieve a more in-depth understanding of the proliferation of these plants.

Over the course of 35 years, researchers involved in this program have gone into the field to analyze the growth and death rates of 60,000 trees and 178,295 saplings (less than 10 cm diameter at chest height) in 55 hectares of continuous forest and 39 hectares of fragmented forest. The continuous monitoring has resulted in a sophisticated database of information pertaining to the behavior of these forests. More recently, the researchers have also kept records of the populations of lianas, which represent a significant portion of the forests’ biomass and diversity but were not targeted in earlier forest censuses. They have monitored the growth of 35,000 lianas in 66 one-hectare plots of continuous forest and in fragments that vary in size from one to 100 hectares.

Through computer simulations, the researchers Ecologist Robyn have observed that Burnham and her assistant, João Batista liana populations da Silva, during field are expanding in work in 2013, when forested areas with they collected and no history of dismeasured liana specimens turbance. “This

Higher levels of atmospheric CO2 appear to accelerate the growth of trees and, to a greater extent, that of lianas, in Amazonia

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was a surprise,” says José Luís Camargo, an ecologist based in São Paulo State who is the scientific coordinator of the PDBFF. “Liana proliferation is common in areas adjacent to the edges of fragmented forests.”

Over the past 14 years, the population of lianas in intact forests near Manaus has increased at a rate 1% higher than expected each year, according to Camargo.

The researchers believe that these plants have proliferated in this area because of higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

CO2 appears to act as a fertilizer that accelerates the growth of both lianas and 1

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trees, but especially lianas, thereby promoting forest remodeling. In the case of lianas, the rising concentrations of CO2 may be partly responsible for lower light levels in these environments, causing them to proliferate at a faster pace. In addition, the trees may be facing fiercer competition for space. “The competition for water, nutrients and light in continuous forests is also more intense between trees and lianas,” says Camargo. Under this scenario, trees of some species die earlier, while others succumb to liana proliferation. “It makes forest behavior more dynamic,” explains Laurance, who 2

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Photos 1 & 2 léo ramos 3 Maria tereza guarantini / ibt 4 pdbff / inpa

Shoot of the bamboo

species Aulonemia of São Paulo, is located 14 km lived in Brazil for five years aristulata, which is from the center of the state and now works at James native to the Atlantic capital. In this area, they alCook University in Australia.

Forest (left) so observed something unLianas generally adapt Specimen of the liana expected: the lianas have to better to disturbed forests, species Bauhinia contend with the troubleowing in part to a phenomguianensis in some presence of bamboos, enon known as the edge efAmazonia (above) which similarly require light fect, which creates 32,000 and space to occupy the enkm of new forest edge in vironment. “In this competithe Amazon each year (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue No. 205). In the tion, bamboos have an advantage over transitional areas between dense forest lianas,” says Grombone-Guaratini.

In this study, Grombone-Guaratini and open fields, trees fall, dry up and die more easily as a result of excessive light, and her colleagues observed that woody heat and wind. With more light, lianas— bamboos of the species Aulonemia ariswhich are more drought-resistant and tulata, which is native to the Atlantic grow more efficiently—proliferate and Forest, release chemical compounds ineasily reach the treetops. “These changes to the soil that inhibit tree growth and can reduce carbon storage, alter several even the germination of lianas. Without aspects of forest ecology and reduce the trees, there is no support medium for diversity of tree species,” Camargo says. lianas in their search for light, and they For this reason, he explains, lianas gen- cannot wind around the smooth stems erally help researchers understand the of bamboos. The researchers identified a total of 1,031 liana specimens more degree of disturbance in forests. than 1 cm in diameter, of which 277 were located in areas dominated by bamboos INTENSE COMPETITION Every day from November 2008 to Au- and 754 were found elsewhere. Many of gust 2009, biologist Maria Tereza Grom- the lianas observed in environments bone-Guaratini and her team from the with A. aristulata had thick stems, Botanical Institute of São Paulo mea- which, according to Grombone-Guarasured and counted the lianas they found tini, suggests that these plants existed in sites, with and without bamboos, one there prior to the invasion of bamboo. kilometer apart in Fontes do Ipiranga As in Amazonia, the bamboo prolifState Park. The park, the third largest eration may be related to rising confragment of Atlantic Forest in the state centrations of atmospheric CO2. In 2013,

Grombone-Guaratini put this hypothesis to the test by growing young specimens of the species A. aristulata in two types of chambers: one with a high concentration of CO2 and one with normal conditions.

After seven weeks, the bamboos grown in the chamber with higher CO2 levels showed a 70% increase in photosynthesis, were 92% taller and displayed a 104% larger leaf area than those grown in the other chamber. Under a global climate-change scenario, bamboos could dominate increasingly higher numbers of environments and affect the composition of tree species, Grombone-Guaratini says. Her observations among bamboos in the Atlantic Forest may also hold true for lianas in Amazonia. n

Project Influence of Paradiolyra micrantha on the regeneration of an urban fragment of the Atlantic Forest (No. 05/51747-2); Grant mechanism Regular Line of Research Project Award; Principal Investigator Maria Tereza Grombone Guaratini (IBt-SP); Investment R$45,219.86 (FAPESP).

Scientific articles LAURANCE, W. F. et al. Long-term changes in liana abundance and forest dynamics in undisturbed Amazonian forests. Ecology. V. 95, No. 6, pp. 1604–11. 2014.

GROMBONE-GUARATINI, M. T. et al. Atmospheric CO2 enrichment markedly increases photosynthesis and growth in a woody tropical bamboo from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. New Zealand Journal of Botany. V. 51, No. 4, pp.

275-85. December 2013.

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Design and photo léo ramos

BIOCHEMISTRY y

34 z special issue November 2015

Further danger from the sun Visible light, in addition to ultraviolet radiation, may also cause skin cancer Gilberto Stam Published in January 2015

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his finding is bad news for those who like to sunbathe, even if they slather on sunscreen. The currently available sunscreens protect against the effects of ultraviolet radiation, which is invisible to the human eye, but they cannot prevent the damage caused by visible light. This damage can be severe. A study conducted

by São Paulo and Paraná researchers has recently demonstrated that visible light can also cause skin cancer, the most common form of cancer in Brazil. According to Brazil’s National Cancer Institute, skin cancer accounts for 25% of cases of malignant tumors.

Maurício Baptista, a biochemist at the University of São Paulo (USP) and the study’s coordinator, is not surprised by this finding, which was published in November 2014 on the journal PLoS ONE. Indeed, from a physical standpoint, the light that the human eye can detect has much in common with ultraviolet (UV) rays. Both types of light result from the same form of energy, electromagnetic radiation, which has different names – gamma rays, X-rays, visible light and infrared radiation – based on the frequency. “To skin, the distinction be-

tween visible and invisible light is arbitrary,” says Baptista, a researcher at USP’s Chemistry Institute and at the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDC).

He and his team have shown that visible light can indirectly damage the genetic material (DNA) of cells by interacting with melanin. This dark pigment, which is responsible for skin color, absorbs some of the energy of visible light and transfers it to oxygen molecules, thus generating highly reactive forms of oxygen known as singlet oxygen. In turn, this excited oxygen molecule reacts with organic molecules such as DNA and degrades them. When this type of damage affects a gene that regulates cell proliferation, the cell can begin to multiply uncontrollably, causing cancer.

This finding can help us to better understand the origin of some forms of skin cancer. “The group’s contribution, which is very rigorous in scientific terms, helps us to understand the mutation profiles we found in human melanomas, where evidence of DNA oxidation events is often observed,” says Roger Chammas, a researcher at the University of São Paulo

School of Medicine and at the São Paulo State Cancer Institute. “In the past these events were attributed to UVA radiation, but now, as it turns out, it could also be the effect of visible light.”

The mechanism producing these more reactive molecules observed by Baptista’s group confirms melanin’s dual role: it protects the skin from damage caused by certain types of light while at the same time facilitating the damage caused by others. Like the current experiment, previous studies had shown that exposure to ultraviolet type B (UVB) rays caused melanocytes (melanin-producing cells) to increase their synthesis of the pigment.

The studies also showed that a greater proportion of these cells survived under this form of radiation. The mortality rate, however, was much higher when more pigmented cells were subjected to ultraviolet type A (UVA) radiation, a result that is similar to the current findings for visible light.

The protection that melanin offers against UVB rays is not sufficient to prevent skin cancer. This form of radiation is associated with sunburn, an acute inflammatory response to excessive exposure to sunlight, and UVB was the first pESQUISA FAPESP z 35

Melanin is protective or harmful depending on the type of light

Epidermis

Melanocytes

Dermis

DIRECT ACTION

INDIRECT ACTION

UVB rays

Melanin DNA Damage

Nucleus

MELANOCYTE

Source maurício Baptista / usp

UVA rays UVB rays, upon reaching melanocytes, stimulate the production of melanin.

In excess, this radiation acts directly on DNA and can damage it

radiation proven to be carcinogenic. It penetrates the skin slightly, but the UVB rays that are not absorbed by melanin go directly to DNA – particularly melanocyte DNA – and can damage it and cause a rare and very aggressive form of cancer: melanoma, which is more common in adults with a fair complexion and represents 4% of the malignant skin tumors found in Brazil.

UVA radiation, like visible light, penetrates more deeply and causes DNA damage through the production of excited and more reactive forms of oxygen.

Research in the 1980s revealed that UVA rays cause another form of cancer – nonmelanoma, which is more common after age 40 – originating in cells known as basal or squamous cells. After the harmful effects of UVA and UVB rays were proven, the pharmaceutical industry developed compounds that effectively block these two bands of radiation. However, we are now beginning to see that this may not be sufficient. “Sunscreens only protect against ultraviolet rays, so the information about what protects the skin is incomplete,” says Baptista. “One important aspect is the regulation of packaging and advertising, so as not to disseminate misleading information.”

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Visible light

Singlet oxygen DNA Damage

Nucleus

MELANOCYTE

UVA radiation and visible light, upon interacting with melanin, generate excited and more reactive forms of oxygen, which can damage cellular DNA

Sunscreens currently on the market protect against UV radiation, but not the effects of visible light

This is an issue yet to be resolved. Baptista recalls the case of UVA radiation.

Although its harmful effect had been established for approximately 30 years, it was not until 2013 that manufacturers were required to indicate on the packaging whether a product protected against one or both types of UV radiation.

Baptista obtained the first evidence that visible light could also be harmful in 2011, when tests showed that singlet oxygen appeared when it interacted with pure melanin or the melanin found in

hair. “The discovery of the harmful effects of UVA a few decades ago shattered the dogma that UVB was the only band of the solar spectrum that caused damage to the skin,” says Baptista. “Now we need to shatter the dogma that these harmful effects are only due to UV rays.”

To fully demonstrate the carcinogenic effect of visible light, however, at least one more step is needed. It must be shown that the DNA damage caused by visible light leads to profound genetic changes (mutations). “Tests will need to be done on animals and then in humans, and, if confirmed, this will be an important discovery,” says João Duprat Neto, an oncology surgeon and director of the Skin Cancer Group of the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center. “It is possible that this data will stimulate the development of more effective skin protectors.”

While waiting for sunscreens that also filter out visible light, the best way for people to protect against skin cancer is to avoid overexposure to the sun. However, only excessive exposure must be prevented because another factor must be considered: sunlight is essential to the skin’s ability to synthesize vitamin D, which is important in prevention of osteoporosis and other bone diseases.

According to Marco Antônio Oliveira, a dermatologist, who also works at the A.C. Camargo Skin Cancer Group, those who have a higher risk of developing skin cancer should replace sun exposure with vitamin D supplementation. The body’s production of vitamin D decreases after age 40, as the skin ages. “It's important to remember that the use of sunscreen is essential,” says Dr. Oliveira. “In the younger generations, which are better informed about the effects of the sun and use more sunscreens, the incidence of cancer has dropped significantly.” n Projects 1. Photosensitization in the life sciences (No. 12/506805); Grant mechanism Thematic Project; Principal investigator Maurício da Silva Baptista (Chemistry Institute/ USP); Investment R$3,067,571.88 (FAPESP).

2. Redoxoma (No. 13/07937-8); Grant mechanism Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDC); Principal investigator Ohara Augusto (Chemistry Institute/USP); Investment R$20,674,781.25 (for the entire project) (FAPESP).

Scientific article CHIARELLI NETO, O. et al. Melanin photosensitization and the effect of visible light on epithelial cells. PLoS One. November 18, 2014.

Infographic ana paula campos ilustration pedro hamdan

Dual role

Pre-History y

New pieces

fumdham

of the puzzle Teeth from a deer found alongside human bones inside a cave in the state of Piauí suggest that humans were present in the region more than 20,000 years ago Marcos Pivetta Published in January 2015

External view of Toca do Serrote das Moendas in São Raimundo Nonato

T

wo teeth from a large deer discovered at a prehistoric site in the vicinity of the Serra da Capivara National Park in São Raimundo Nonato, southern Piauí State, will likely add fuel to the debate regarding the date of modern man’s arrival in the Americas.

Two different laboratories independently dated these giant mammal remains, which were discovered at a depth of slightly over half a meter in the same geological layer of Toca do Serrote das Moendas in which human bones were recovered. One tooth was analyzed at the Department of Physics of the Riberão Preto Faculty of Philosophy, Science, Languages and Literature, which is part of the University of São Paulo (FFCLRP/USP); the other tooth was examined at the Department of Chemistry of Williams College in Massachusetts. The results of both tests indicate similar results: 29,000 years in the first case and 24,000 in the second. At the Baixada Santista campus of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), a pESQUISA FAPESP z 37

Piauí

Serra da Capivara National Park

third group ascertained the age of the concretion, that is, a compact layer rich in carbonates capping the sediments, in which the animal teeth and human skeleton fragments were discovered. As expected, the latter test confirmed that the concretion layer was younger than the layer that contained the animal remains: the soil sample was 21,000 years old. Equipment purchased with FAPESP funding was used in the two dating measurements performed in Brazil.

Based on the results of these three tests, the researchers believe that they have gathered indirect evidence of human presence at least 20,000 years ago in what is today the semi-arid northeast region of Brazil, which is well before the date that traditional archeology posits for the peopling of the Americas. “The three dates line up,” says physicist Oswaldo Baffa, coordinator of the Ribeirão Preto/ USP group and one of the study’s authors.

“To mitigate any possible criticism, we were careful to have the samples analyzed at three different places, where they worked blind, without knowing exactly what they were analyzing.” The classic view, as advocated by US groups, posits that the first Homo sapiens arrived on the continent approximately 13,000 years ago by crossing the Bering Strait, which separates Asia from Alaska. The conclusions derived from the tests on the material collected in the semi-arid Northeast cave were published in an article in the Journal of Human Evolution in December 2014. “There was no collagen that could be used to directly date the human bones from the cave using carbon 14,” says archeologist Niède Guidon, another author of the paper and president of the Museum of the American Man Foundation (Fumdham). “But the results of the dating of 38 z special issue November 2015

Marsh deer: animal depicted in the region’s rock paintings 1

Niède Guidon believes that Homo sapiens may have reached Piauí by sea

the deer teeth and the concretion layer, obtained by three different laboratories, point to very ancient human occupation of the region.” Fumdham manages the park in conjunction with the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), a government agency within the Ministry of the Environment.

Guidon and her collaborators have been conducting research in the vicinity of the park—a UNESCO World Heritage site—since the 1970s, particularly in the fields of archeology and paleontology. Her team has catalogued 1,400 prehistoric sites in the Capivara Mountains, which has the largest concentration in the Americas; 900 of these sites have rock paintings created thousands of

years ago. In addition to human figures, the drawings on the rocks depict animals, including marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus), which is the species whose teeth were found at Toca do Serrote das Moendas. Although there are numerous sites in the semi-arid state of Piauí, those sites have never provided human remains that could be carbon dated, which is the method that is generally employed to ascertain the age of organic matter (i.e., bones, shells, wood, coal, fabric) from as long ago as 50,000 years and in some cases even 100,000. Collagen, the organic portion of the bones that is indispensable to this dating technique, is a protein that is rarely preserved in the skeletons discovered in this region.

2

Human bones were found 35 cm away from two deer teeth (below) in the same geological layer

Photographs 1 Jonathan Wilkins / Wikimedia Commons 2 & 3 fumdham

B

ecause it was impossible to determine the age of the bones discovered at what are potentially the oldest of the Capivara Mountains sites, Guidon has almost always endeavored to establish an acceptable timeline for the environment in which human bone fragments have been unearthed and for the artifacts and remains that may have been produced by human hands. Over the past three decades, she has dated the remains of stone hearths and artifacts attributed to H. sapiens, along with ubiquitous rock paintings, a mark of human presence.

Her results, which are still questioned by a significant portion of the scientific community, suggest a human presence in the region between 30,000 and 100,000 years ago; the hypothesis is that man arrived this early by way of an Atlantic sea route. The new study at Toca do Serrote das Moendas, a site located approximately five kilometers from the park, has afforded the archeologist additional data, based on other dating techniques, which can be applied to the controversial puzzle regarding when man first set foot in the Brazilian Northeast and, accordingly, in the Americas.

This prehistoric site generates new potential for analysis. The sizeable cave, which measures 35 meters by 23 meters at its greatest width, has supplied the remains of paleofauna, stone artifacts, ceramic fragments, and portions of three human skeletons, two of children and one of an adult. The two teeth of the marsh deer lay side by side, 35 centimeters away from the fragments of the adult skeleton and located at the same depth. This sce-

3

nario is an indication—although not irrefutable proof—that man and animal may have co-existed during the same era.

Electron spin resonance (ESR)—also known as electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy—was used to date the teeth. The technique measures the amount of ionizing radiation incident on a sample using the spin concentration prompted by energy deposited in the material. “In principle, the older a tooth, the greater the dose deposited in it,” says physicist Angela Kinoshita of Sacred Heart University (USC) in Bauru, São Paulo, and a post-doctoral researcher at the USP Department of Physics in Ribeirão Preto, who examined one of the teeth using the technique. When dating a sample, in addition to recording the level of radiation stored in the tooth’s enamel and dentine, scientists must consider the specific conditions at the site in which the material being analyzed was discovered (i.e., local levels of radiation emitted by elements such as uranium, thorium, and potassium) as well as cosmic radiation.

A different technique was used to date the carbonate-rich concretion layer that practically sealed off the sediment stratum in which the teeth and human remains

were found: optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). This method measures levels of this type of light in the quartz crystals of a geological layer. “Theoretically, the more intense the OSL signal, the older the sample,” explains Sonia Tatumi, the Unifesp physicist who analyzed two samples from the concretion layer at Toca do Serrote das Moendas. “Quartz absorbs blue light and emits OSL in the ultraviolet region,” she says. The data derived from a sample taken from the most central portion of the concretion were inconclusive.

However, examination of a more external piece of the layer provided the results that appear in the scientific article: an age of 21,000 years, with a degree of accuracy of nearly 94%, according to Tatumi. n

Project Advances in electron spin resonance dosimetry, archeological dating and biomaterials characterization (No. 2007/06720-4); Grant mechanism Regular Grant; Principal investigator Oswaldo Baffa (USP/Ribeirão Preto); Investment R$507,101.73 (FAPESP).

Scientific article KINOSHITA, A. et al. Dating human occupation at Toca do Serrote das Moendas, São Raimundo Nonato, Piauí-Brazil by electron spin resonance and optically stimulated luminescence. Journal of Human Evolution. V. 77, p. 187-95. Dec. 2014.

pESQUISA FAPESP z 39

OBITUARY y

The tropical disease scientist Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva was one of the most respected parasitology experts in the world Published in October 2014

1

R

esearcher and public health physician Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva died on September 24, 2014, in São Paulo at the age of 86. He had been previously hospitalized for pneumonia at the Heart Institute (InCor) in São Paulo. Hildebrando did not respond to treatment and suffered multiple organ failure. The researcher's coffin was available for viewing only by family and friends, as reported by one of his closest friends, parasitologist Erney Plessmann de Camargo, researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of São Paulo (USP). “I met Hildebrando at the USP School of Medicine in 1959, and we worked together on many research projects,” said Camargo, who collaborated with Hildebrando on malaria research in the state of Rondônia.

A professor emeritus at USP and at the Federal University of Rondônia, Luiz Hildebrando was one of the most respected specialists in tropical medicine in the world. He spent most of his career 40 z special issue November 2015

at the Pasteur Institute in France, where he moved after being persecuted by the military government established in Brazil in 1964, when he was an associate professor at the USP School of Medicine.

He returned to Brazil in the 1990s and began research on malaria in Rondônia.

He completed his degree in Medicine at USP in 1953, and the following year he traveled with parasitologist Samuel Pessoa to Misericórdia de Piancó, in the scrublands of the state of Paraíba, where he helped organize the Parasitology Laboratory and taught classes in the field at the new João Pessoa School of Medicine.

There he studied the epidemiology of schistosomiasis and Chagas disease from 1954 to 1956. It was in this location that, through the lens of a microscope and the light of an amateurish electrical connection, he saw the parasite Schistosoma mansoni, which was very common along the northeastern coast, but until then had never been seen in the scrublands.

For the first time, he felt "the aesthetic

thrill of discovery," as he recounted in an interview in 2013 when he won an award from the Conrado Wessel Foundation in the Medicine category, the twelfth time that the honor had been given.

Invited to become an assistant professor of parasitology at the University of São Paulo School of Medicine (FMUSP), he returned to São Paulo and carried out research on chemotherapy for American trypanosomiasis from 1956 to 1960. After passing the exam to become an associate professor, he obtained a grant from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) to carry out post-doctoral research. He spent a year at the Free University in Brussels. In 1962 and 1963 he worked at the Pasteur Institute with researcher François Jacob, who, along with Jacques Monod, had just published their model for the regulation of gene expression in prokaryotes that would earn them the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1965. He returned to Brazil in late 1963 and set

photos 1 léo ramos 2 Family archives

2

up the Laboratory for Protozoa Genetics at the USP School of Medicine with researcher Erney Camargo.

Then came the military coup. A militant communist since adolescence, Luiz Hildebrando was imprisoned for three months on the ship Raul Soares after having been reported for collecting money and giving asylum to individuals being hunted. He was fired from his university post by an act of Governor Ademar de Barros on the last day on which Institutional Act No. 1 was in force. He returned to Paris and to the Pasteur Institute, but in 1967, spurred by a campaign to repatriate scientists, sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he taught a course in Brazil on molecular genetics at the USP Biochemistry Department. The following year, he accepted a position as professor in the Genetics Department at the USP Ribeirão Preto campus, researching the genetics of unicellular eukaryotes.

In 1969, he was again discharged, this time by Institutional Act No. 5, and he returned to Paris and his positions at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Pasteur Institute. During his exile, he became a key well-known intellectual for Brazilian exiles in France as the political secretary of the Brazilian Communist Party in Paris.

When he saw Schistosoma mansoni in the scrublands for the first time, when it had previously been found only along the coast, he felt “the aesthetic thrill of discovery” In 1971, he was appointed Head of the Cell Differentiation Unit in the Molecular Biology Department of the Pasteur Institute. In 1976, he was invited

by Jacques Monod, director of the Pasteur Institute to organize a new unit for Experimental Parasitology. The unit was established in 1978 to carry out research on the molecular biology of malaria para-

sites, especially Plasmodium falciparum.

It was a period of intense activity, with a team that carried out studies in experimental models and human volunteers on malaria vaccine candidate molecules.

In 1990, while still in Paris, he organized a research team in Rondônia in collaboration with Erney Camargo. He retired from the Pasteur Institute in 1996 and decided to return to Brazil. He was hired as a full professor of parasitology by USP in 1997, and assumed management of the research programs in Rondônia, in USP’s active front in the Amazon. Over the course of a decade, under his capable direction the percentage of malaria cases reported in Rondônia decreased from 40% to 7% of the total number of cases of disease in the Amazon region.”

He went on to establish the Center for Research in Tropical Medicine (Cepem) under the Rondônia Health Department, and founded the Tropical Pathology Research Institute (Ipepatro), which brings together specialists and researchers trained in the graduate programs at the Federal University of Rondônia. Ipepatro was absorbed by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and became one of the five new Fiocruz units in 2009. Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva was married and had five children. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 41

OBITUARY y

The tropical disease scientist Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva was one of the most respected parasitology experts in the world Published in October 2014

1

R

esearcher and public health physician Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva died on September 24, 2014, in São Paulo at the age of 86. He had been previously hospitalized for pneumonia at the Heart Institute (InCor) in São Paulo. Hildebrando did not respond to treatment and suffered multiple organ failure. The researcher's coffin was available for viewing only by family and friends, as reported by one of his closest friends, parasitologist Erney Plessmann de Camargo, researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of São Paulo (USP). “I met Hildebrando at the USP School of Medicine in 1959, and we worked together on many research projects,” said Camargo, who collaborated with Hildebrando on malaria research in the state of Rondônia.

A professor emeritus at USP and at the Federal University of Rondônia, Luiz Hildebrando was one of the most respected specialists in tropical medicine in the world. He spent most of his career 40 z special issue November 2015

at the Pasteur Institute in France, where he moved after being persecuted by the military government established in Brazil in 1964, when he was an associate professor at the USP School of Medicine.

He returned to Brazil in the 1990s and began research on malaria in Rondônia.

He completed his degree in Medicine at USP in 1953, and the following year he traveled with parasitologist Samuel Pessoa to Misericórdia de Piancó, in the scrublands of the state of Paraíba, where he helped organize the Parasitology Laboratory and taught classes in the field at the new João Pessoa School of Medicine.

There he studied the epidemiology of schistosomiasis and Chagas disease from 1954 to 1956. It was in this location that, through the lens of a microscope and the light of an amateurish electrical connection, he saw the parasite Schistosoma mansoni, which was very common along the northeastern coast, but until then had never been seen in the scrublands.

For the first time, he felt "the aesthetic

thrill of discovery," as he recounted in an interview in 2013 when he won an award from the Conrado Wessel Foundation in the Medicine category, the twelfth time that the honor had been given.

Invited to become an assistant professor of parasitology at the University of São Paulo School of Medicine (FMUSP), he returned to São Paulo and carried out research on chemotherapy for American trypanosomiasis from 1956 to 1960. After passing the exam to become an associate professor, he obtained a grant from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) to carry out post-doctoral research. He spent a year at the Free University in Brussels. In 1962 and 1963 he worked at the Pasteur Institute with researcher François Jacob, who, along with Jacques Monod, had just published their model for the regulation of gene expression in prokaryotes that would earn them the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1965. He returned to Brazil in late 1963 and set

photos 1 léo ramos 2 Family archives

2

up the Laboratory for Protozoa Genetics at the USP School of Medicine with researcher Erney Camargo.

Then came the military coup. A militant communist since adolescence, Luiz Hildebrando was imprisoned for three months on the ship Raul Soares after having been reported for collecting money and giving asylum to individuals being hunted. He was fired from his university post by an act of Governor Ademar de Barros on the last day on which Institutional Act No. 1 was in force. He returned to Paris and to the Pasteur Institute, but in 1967, spurred by a campaign to repatriate scientists, sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he taught a course in Brazil on molecular genetics at the USP Biochemistry Department. The following year, he accepted a position as professor in the Genetics Department at the USP Ribeirão Preto campus, researching the genetics of unicellular eukaryotes.

In 1969, he was again discharged, this time by Institutional Act No. 5, and he returned to Paris and his positions at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Pasteur Institute. During his exile, he became a key well-known intellectual for Brazilian exiles in France as the political secretary of the Brazilian Communist Party in Paris.

When he saw Schistosoma mansoni in the scrublands for the first time, when it had previously been found only along the coast, he felt “the aesthetic thrill of discovery” In 1971, he was appointed Head of the Cell Differentiation Unit in the Molecular Biology Department of the Pasteur Institute. In 1976, he was invited

by Jacques Monod, director of the Pasteur Institute to organize a new unit for Experimental Parasitology. The unit was established in 1978 to carry out research on the molecular biology of malaria para-

sites, especially Plasmodium falciparum.

It was a period of intense activity, with a team that carried out studies in experimental models and human volunteers on malaria vaccine candidate molecules.

In 1990, while still in Paris, he organized a research team in Rondônia in collaboration with Erney Camargo. He retired from the Pasteur Institute in 1996 and decided to return to Brazil. He was hired as a full professor of parasitology by USP in 1997, and assumed management of the research programs in Rondônia, in USP’s active front in the Amazon. Over the course of a decade, under his capable direction the percentage of malaria cases reported in Rondônia decreased from 40% to 7% of the total number of cases of disease in the Amazon region.”

He went on to establish the Center for Research in Tropical Medicine (Cepem) under the Rondônia Health Department, and founded the Tropical Pathology Research Institute (Ipepatro), which brings together specialists and researchers trained in the graduate programs at the Federal University of Rondônia. Ipepatro was absorbed by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and became one of the five new Fiocruz units in 2009. Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva was married and had five children. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 41

GEOLOGY y

ES

MG SP

RJ

PR

SC RS 1.300 km

42 z special issue November 2015

Rio Grande Rise

ECHOS of SEPARATION Great blocks of rock from different ages and origins combined to form the South Atlantic margins Carlos Fioravanti Published in October 2014

N

photo JAMSTEC map sandro castelli

o, it wasn’t a mistake. In 2011, geologists collected samples of granite, a type of continental rock, from the Rio Grande Rise, a chain of submerged mountains approximately 1,300 kilometers (km) off the coast of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Scientists had thought that these mountains were the result of formation of the ocean floor and volcanic eruptions and that they therefore were composed of a different type of rock. Two years later, using a submersible craft, researchers collected additional samples of continental rock, and the resulting analysis supported the hypothesis that this region of the South Atlantic was actually a piece of a continent submerged when South America and Africa separated—a process that began 120 million years ago.

This finding is economically valuable for the Rio Grande Rise. In July 2014, the Brazilian government received the green light to implement its plan to explore cobalt deposits in the region, which lie in international waters; hence, finding reserves of The Rio Grande Rise: now, other minerals, such as nickel, fragments manganese and rare earths, has of a continent become more likely. The sci-

entific value of the formation has also increased inasmuch as it offers additional arguments supporting the hypothesis that the separation of South America from Africa is a more fascinating and complicated process than earlier thought. Geologists from Brazil, the United States, Germany and France met in Rio de Janeiro in April 2014 and concluded that the great blocks of rock, or microplates, that composed the two continents and seabed did not separate like two parts of a torn sheet of paper; rather, the continents stretched out, broke apart and were chaotically repositioned.

Certain portions may have been repositioned in the middle and submerged, while others separated and combined, forming an immense mosaic that is now becoming clearer.

Researchers believe that rocks collected from the Rio Grande Rise—granites, granulites, gneisses and pegmatites—are 500 million to 2.2 billion years old, according to analyses conducted by teams from the University of Brasília and the Geological Survey of Brazil (CPRM).

“The ages are not outside what we usually find in South America and Africa,” says Roberto Ventura Santos, director of pESQUISA FAPESP z 43

Rocks of many ages

Collection sites n Quaternary sediments (1.8 million years ago to the present) n Basalt spills of the Paraná Basin from the Cretaceous (134 million years) n Alkaline intrusions from the Cretaceous n Sedimentary rocks from the Jurassic (206 to 142 million years) to the Cretaceous n Sedimentary rocks from the Permian (290 to 248 million years) n Sedimentary rocks from the Permian to the Carboniferous (354 to 290 million years) n Sedimentary rocks from the Ordovician (495 to 443 million) and Devonian (417 to 354 million years) n Precambrian basement (4.6 billion to 545 million years)

“The identification of continental rocks from the Rio Grande Rise changes the evolutionary picture of the South Atlantic, which was formed by the break-up of the two continents,” explains geologist Peter Christian Hackspacher, a professor at São Paulo State University (Unesp) in Rio Claro. Some 20 years ago, when doing field research in southeastern and southern Brazil, Namibia, and Angola, he studied signs of possible forces that led to the separation of South America and Africa. His findings support the traditional model, in which the coastlines of the two continents, representing the blocks of rock that formed them, fit together. The coastline of northeastern Brazil fits with that of West Africa, but in other regions, such as the coast of Rio de Janeiro State, parts appear to be missing from the jigsaw puzzle of rocks.

Serra do Mar rejuvenated

Source Adapted from Karl M. et al.

geology at CPRM. Ventura says that the seismic uplifts indicate that the thickness of the crust in this area is nearly 30 km, “typical of continental rather than oceanic crust,” further supporting the theory that it is a part of a continent.

This discovery, one of the most spectacular in Brazilian geology in recent times, has raised a number of questions.

According to earlier thinking, the two mountain chains in the South Atlantic— the Rio Grande and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge—formed during the same period, but now scientists think that this may

not be the case. In addition, what are the effects of the Rio Grande Rise? A chain of mountains 3,200 meters high at the bottom of the South Atlantic, the top of which is only 800 meters beneath the surface of the ocean, should create barriers to ocean circulation, but researchers do not understand the underlying mechanism. Ventura believes that analysis of a 70-meter column of sediment from the seabed will provide some answers, which he hopes will enable reconstruction of the climatic and geological phenomena of the past seven million years.

The blocks of rock that once made up a single continent fragmented and aligned with older or newer blocks to form the mountainous region of southeastern Brazil and West Africa, concludes Hackspacher, whose research is carried out in collaboration with teams headed by Ulrich Glasmacher in Germany, Antonio Olímpio Gonçalves in Angola and Ana Olívia Magalhães at the Federal University of Alfenas in the state of Minas Gerais. Contrary to expectations, older blocks—such as the Mantiqueira and Bocaina mountain ranges, which were uplifted 120 million years ago—are in the continental interior, and more recent blocks that are 35 to 20 million years old are on the margins, such as the coastline between the states of Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul (see map).

“I’m not discovering the wheel, I’m just measuring by using other techniques,” he says, acknowledging the conceptual baselines offered by professors at the University of São Paulo (USP), such as Fernando Almeida, Umberto Cordani and Benjamim Bley Brito Neves, who had already recognized that

Effects of uplift after the opening of the Atlantic: valley of a river in West Central Angola with rocks formed 2 billion years ago...

44 z special issue November 2015

South America was formed from micro- tiqueira ranges,” she says. In a series of plates of rocks of different ages and var- “spectacular discoveries” (Hackspachied origins (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue er’s description), they found blocks of No. 188). Claudio Ricommini, also from rock, uplifted 60 to 90 million years ago, USP, challenged the customary view of that did not fit the classic model of the the continent’s formation somewhat fur- formation of South America separation ther when he ascertained that the age from Africa.

Hundreds of measurements led to of rocks from the Taubaté sedimentary basin was between 33 million and 55 mil- conclusions that are helping scientists lion years—far from the 120 million years break down old notions. One example is that had been hypothesized because of the probable age of the Serra do Mar, a mountain chain that stretches for nearly their proximity to the coastline.

Almost 10 years ago, with equipment 1,500 km along the Brazilian coast, beon hand to measure the age and tem- tween the states of Espírito Santo and perature variation of rocks according Santa Catarina. “Until 10 years ago, when to depth—the lower the temperature, we began to zone in on the problem and the closer to the surface and the more challenge some of the assumptions about recent the rock is—Magalhães proposed the geological evolution of the South to Hackspacher, her thesis advisor at Atlantic,” Hackspacher says, “everyone the time, that they examine the ages of understood that the Serra do Mar was rocks distant from the coast in south- formed 120 million years ago. But now ern and southeastern Brazil. They start- we are seeing that the chain is only 35 ed from the assumption that older and million years old and is not a consemore recent blocks of rock rise and sink quence of the continental separation.” and become exposed on the surface in The fact that the Tietê River flows an alternating manner. From there, “It westward is an indication of a more was possible to develop very good, geo- recent geological phenomena. Aclogically consistent findings cording to Hackspacher, with a reasonable degree of if the range had formed ... and the Florianópolis-São statistical reliability about 120 million years ago, the Joaquim road, which the processes responsible river would probably flow crosses the Rio do for the crustal uplift of the toward the ocean rather Rastro mountain Serra do Mar and Manthan inland. Today, the range in the state of

most widely probed hypothesis is that this mountain chain resulted from the formation of the Andes, beginning about 60 million years ago, which may have generated large waves that affected the topography, creating depressions such as the Pantanal wetlands in the state of Mato Grosso and peaks such as the Mantiqueira and Serra do Mar. “I don’t find it hard to accept that possibility, but there is not yet sufficient evidence,” he says.

Hackspacher and his colleagues are seeing similar phenomena in Namibia and Angola. In research conducted in June 2014 that complements the landbased surveys, a German oceanographic vessel recorded signs of rock plates near the coast of Namibia that are similar in age to the Rio Grande Rise. n

Project History of exhumation of the South American platform in Southeastern Brazil: thermochronology by fission track analysis and ar/ar and sm/nd systematics (N o.

2000/03960-5); Grant mechanism Thematic project; Principal investigator Peter C. Hackspacher (Unesp); Investment R$1,282,335.65 (FAPESP).

Scientific articles KARL, M. et al. Evolution of the South Atlantic passive continental margin in southern Brazil derived from zircon and apatite (U–Th–Sm)/He and fission-track data. Tectonophysics. V. 604, pp. 224-44. 2013.

SALOMON, F. et al. Major paleostress field differences on complementary margins of the South Atlantic. EGU 13, p. 10894. 2013.

photos Peter C. Hackspacher/UNESP ilustration sandro castelli

Santa Catarina and consists of volcanic rocks that were formed 134 million years ago

pESQUISA FAPESP z 45

ASTRONOMY y

Perturbed atmosphere Meteorologists want to know why the wind is so strong on Venus and Titan Igor Zolnerkevic Published in November 2014

T

he days pass slowly on Venus.

The planet rotates notably slowly. Venus is approximately the size of Earth but takes 243 Earth days to make a complete rotation.

Because of its slow rotation, meteorologists expected that Venus' atmosphere would be among the calmest in the Solar System. However, the probes that were sent to the planet observed constant wind in the upper atmosphere, where the wind speeds reach 400 km/h. Such intense winds only occur on Earth during hurricanes or sporadically at high altitudes. On Venus, it is always windy, particularly around the equator.

To try to solve this mystery, João Rafael Dias Pinto, a meteorologist at the University of São Paulo (USP), and Jonathan Lloyd Mitchell, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, created a simplified computer model of a planet with an atmosphere. Simulations using this model, which were published in August 2014 in the journal Icarus, are the first to correctly describe how the winds that sweep Venus are maintained.

This phenomenon, which is known as atmospheric superrotation, is also ob46 z special issue November 2015

served on Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

“We identified new, important mechanisms that help us understand these winds better,” says Mitchell.

According to the new model, the secret of superrotation is the manner in which heat is distributed in the atmospheres of Venus and Titan. Through vertical circulation, the heat spreads more slowly upward and toward the poles on Venus and Titan than on Earth.

Additionally, a special type of ripple in the atmosphere affects the gas currents.

Venus and Titan are so different from each other that the similar behaviors of their atmospheres appear strange.

Venus’ surface temperature can reach 477°C because of the greenhouse effect of its atmosphere, which is rich in carbon dioxide gas. On Titan, the temperature is -180°C, and methane rain feeds the lakes on its surface. However, when the space probe Huygens descended to the surface of Titan in 2005, it discovered that the wind profile was almost identical to that on Venus, which was previously observed by the Venera-series Soviet probes in the 1970s and 1980s.

Although the winds are weak on the sur-

Planet Venus, photographed by the European probe Venus Express: its size is similar to the Earth's, and its winds travel at 400 km/h

As the wind blows The air current regimes on Earth and Mars are milder than those on Venus and Titan

Superwinds, which are caused by atmospheric waves at the equator, sweep Titan and Venus

Titan

Intense gusts arise in narrow bands of the atmosphere, which are driven by the planet's rotation

VEnus

face, the winds at the equators of Venus and Titan reach 360 km/h at an altitude above 50 km, whereas the winds at the identical altitude at the Earth’s equator are under 15 km/h.

Photos 1 ESA/MPS/DLR/IDA, M. Pérez-Ayúcar & C. Wilson 2, 3, 4 and 5 nasa Infographic Marina oruÊ

Beyond rotation

Dias Pinto explains that on Earth, the mass of air that circles the globe is driven by the difference in temperature between the equator and the poles and is dragged along by the rotation of the planet. Thus, meteorologists expected weaker winds on planets and satellites that rotate more slowly. Researchers have been seeking an explanation for superrotation since the 1970s and concluded that in addition to slower rotation, there is probably a specific oscillation pattern in the motion of the atmosphere. This pattern of atmospheric waves helps create an intense air jet that is concentrated at the equator and covers almost all of the celestial body. “It is as if the entire atmosphere moved in a single direction,” explains Pinto, “the problem is that most atmospheric models of Venus and Titan, including the most realistic, find it difficult to reproduce superrotation.”

Earth

Pinto decided to study superrotation during his PhD studies. At a conference in 2011 in France, he met Mitchell, an expert on Titan and Venus who was interested in attacking the problem with a simpler model. “With a more idealized model, I can better control the dynamics of the atmosphere,” says Pinto. He worked under the guidance of Mitchell and the Brazilians Rosmeri Porfírio da Rocha and Tércio Ambrizzi, of the USP Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences (IAG), and he could simulate superrotation using an atmospheric model for weather forecasting.

By modifying some parameters in this model, Pinto discovered that decreasing the planet rotation was not sufficient to accelerate the rotation of the atmosphere. “João demonstrated that the model only develops superrotation if it transports heat from the equator to the poles more slowly,” explains Mitchell, noting that on Venus and Titan, despite the strong winds, the air circulates notably slower in the vertical direction.

Pinto also identified a special form of planetary wave in his simulations, which arises from the oscillations in

Mars

the air currents at the planet's equator.

“These planetary waves are the main drivers and maintainers of superrotation,” explains Mitchell.

“These aspects of superrotation have never been analyzed in detail,” says Sebastien Lebonnois, a planetary scientist of the National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France who studies the superrotation of Venus and Titan. “To confirm this analysis, we would need wind and temperature observations with a resolution that is difficult to obtain even on Earth.” Despite the difficulty, he hopes to obtain evidence from the Venus Express probe data, which is orbiting Venus, or the Cassini orbiter, which is near Titan. n

Project Wave-mean flow interaction and atmospheric superrotation in terrestrial planets (No. 12/13202-8); Grant Mechanism Doctoral Fellowship – Research Internships Abroad; Principal investigator Tercio Ambrizzi (IAG/USP); Grant recipient João Rafael Dias Pinto; Investment R$40,381.84 (FAPESP).

Scientific article DIAS PINTO, J. R. and MITCHELL, J. L. Atmospheric superrotation in an idealized GCM: Parameter dependence of the eddy response. Icarus. V. 238. p.93-109. Aug. 2014.

pESQUISA FAPESP z 47

Physics y

Spins engines Brazilians discover how to measure energy variations in atomic nuclei

I

n an experiment thought to be impossible until last year, a team coordinated by physicist Roberto Sierra, of the Federal University of the ABC (UFABC), determined how much energy an atomic nucleus can gain or lose when it is hit by a radio wave pulse.

Most researchers were convinced that the behavior of the nucleus would be unpredictable. It was believed that we would never know the probability that the nucleus would absorb the wave’s energy and thus become hotter or, conversely, transmit some of its energy to the wave and thus become cooler.

The new experiments, carried out at the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF) in Rio de Janeiro, demonstrate that this energy exchange obeys physical laws never before tested on the subatomic level. These laws could help us better understand chemical reactions such as plant photosynthesis and determine how much energy quantum computers will need to operate. “This is the first experiment in a new area of physics called quantum thermodynamics,” says Serra.

Quantum computers are expected to exponentially surpass the computational 48 z special issue November 2015

power of conventional computers by taking advantage of the laws of quantum mechanics. But how much power will this new type of computing need in practice?

How much heat will these machines produce? Will they need refrigeration? One of the goals of quantum thermodynamics is to answer these questions.

Similar questions abounded during in the nineteenth century. For steam engines to reach their maximum efficiency, what is the minimum amount of coal that furnaces require, and at what temperature should boilers be maintained?

Scientists of the era realized that both heat and the ability of machines to work are different forms of the same physical quantity, energy, which is neither created from nothing nor destroyed, only transformed. When investigating the conversion of one form of energy into another, they discovered the laws of classical thermodynamics.

According to these laws, energy flows spontaneously from a hotter body to a cooler one. A machine, even if ideal, can only convert part of the available energy in the form of heat into energy able to perform mechanical movements, that is,

to perform what is known in physics as work. “Thermodynamics imposes limits on any technology,” says Serra.

Victorian engineers solved their problems, but at the expense of a little trick.

Their calculations only worked when machines were assumed to be insulated from the rest of the world, exchanging little heat with the environment. The processes also had to be slow. However, these approximations do not apply to most situations that occur in nature—for example, in many chemical reactions. When an object cannot be thermally isolated from its environment for a long time, its temperature rises and falls in a seemingly unpredictable manner, contrary to what occurs in isolated systems, in which everything tends toward equilibrium.

It was only in 1997 that the physical chemist Christopher Jarzynski discovered a mathematical expression for calculating the variations in energy and mechanical work when out of equilibrium.

“Jarzynski’s equation and other theorems on fluctuations allowed chemists to measure, in a laboratory, the variation in energy of a molecule before and after a reaction,” explains Serra.

Illustration zé vicente

Published in December 2014

pESQUISA FAPESP z 49

The quantum engine Experiment extracts energy from chloroform molecules

A

B

PREPARATION

Chloroform molecules diluted in water

OPERATION

H

25ºC

C-13 Cl

Cl Cl C-13

C-13

+ Energy

C-13

– Energy

C-13

C-13

C-13

C-13

C-13

C-13 C-13

Antenna

1ST PULSE

Radio

EQUILIBRIUM

2ND PULSE

EQUILIBRIUM

In the presence of a magnetic field,

Low-amplitude radio

Another sequence of pulses, now with

carbon-13 nuclei in chloroform behave

wave pulses lasting less than

greater amplitude, destabilizes

like a magnetic compass, with the spin

1 microsecond transfer

the spins again and absorbs part

direction pointing up or down.

energy to the carbon nuclei,

of the energy from the carbon nuclei.

Radio waves control the spin directions

forcing the atomic spins

The spins are manipulated and

until they reach thermal equilibrium

out of equilibrium

return to their initial state

Jarzynski, in collaboration with a team in California, confirmed his equation in 2005 by observing the mechanical work of an RNA molecule stretched and compressed like a spring. Serra notes, however, that despite being microscopic, the movement of the RNA molecule was sufficiently large to be calculated using the famous formula derived from the laws of Newtonian mechanics: “Work is equal to force times displacement.”

The equations of thermodynamics, whether in equilibrium or not, were derived using Newtonian mechanics. However, Newton’s laws lose their meaning for various processes that take place in molecules and for anything that occurs within atoms because forces and displacements cannot be measured precisely. On these scales, the laws of quantum mechanics apply. Serra wanted to know whether equations such as Jarzynski’s are still applicable at the subatomic scale. This knowledge will help us understand chemical reactions such as photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, molecules in the cells of leaves act like quantum machines that absorb energy from light particles and store it in the form of sugar molecules. “The process 50 z special issue November 2015

In photosynthesis, molecules inside the cells of leaves act like quantum machines

is very efficient, and generates almost no heat,” says Serra. “Studies suggest that it is a quantum process.”

Serra and his students and colleagues at UFABC, along with the team of physicists Alexandre Souza, Ruben Auccauise, Roberto Sarthour and Ivan Oliveira, who work with nuclear magnetic resonance techniques at CBPF, have tried for some

time to study quantum thermodynamics in the laboratory. The partnership between the two groups has already resulted in several discoveries (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue No. 193).

A small test tube containing a solution of pure chloroform diluted in water is located at the heart of the equipment in the CBPF laboratory. Each of the approximately 1 trillion chloroform molecules in the solution contains a carbon-13 atom. The nucleus of this type of carbon has a quantum property called spin, which is represented like the arrow of the needle of a magnetic compass. Under a strong magnetic field parallel to the tube, pointing upward, the spin arrows of the carbon atoms tend to align with the field, with half of them pointing down and half pointing up. The magnetic field also causes the atoms with spins pointing downward to have more energy than those with spins facing upward.

Physicists manipulate the spin directions using electromagnetic fields that oscillate at a frequency of 125 megahertz (the equipment must be electro-magnetically insulated such that it is not influenced by FM radio stations that transmit

C

results

The energy that the carbon nuclei transfer to the radio wave is greater than that which they received from it, generating a positive energy balance. The extra energy could be used to perform work

The experiment recorded temperature variations of billionths of a degree in carbon atoms with spin

Infographic ana paula campos

Source roberto serra / ufabc

at that frequency). This manipulation is performed using wave pulses that last no more than a few microseconds. The experiment takes place so quickly that it is as if each carbon atom in the test tube were isolated from the rest of the universe for a brief moment and subjected to a temperature close to absolute zero (-273º Celsius). The researchers are able to increase or decrease the energy difference between the atoms with up and down spin by reducing or increasing the amplitude of the radio waves. When the amplitude changes very quickly, the carbon atoms are no longer thermally isolated and begin to both absorb energy from radio waves— which is when the waves do work on the atoms—and transmit part of their energy to the waves, thereby performing work on them. “This is very difficult to measure because carbon atoms with spin can exchange energy in one of four ways, all happening at once, in a probabilistic manner,” says Serra. “I know of a group in Germany that tried to carry out the same experiment for five years without success.”

What hindered the success of the German group, according to Serra, was

the fact that the physicists tried to directly measure how many times energy was emitted or absorbed by the atoms. “The cumulative error in these measurements was so great that, in the end, they were unable to determine anything,” he explains.

Intelligent measurement

The solution came earlier for Serra, in February 2013, when the physicist Mauro Paternostro, of Queen’s University in Belfast, Ireland, gave a seminar at UFABC on unpublished proposals to observe the work produced by light particles indirectly. Shortly after that, Paternostro, currently a visiting professor at UFABC, and Laura Mazzola, his colleague in Belfast, began discussing with Serra, Auccauise and UFABC doctoral student Tiago Batalhão how to adapt these techniques to observe the work due to carbon atom spin indirectly. With John Good, of the University of Oxford, England, the team discovered a clever way to use the spin of the hydrogen nuclei in chloroform molecules to indicate what happens to the spin of carbon atoms while performing work without interfering in the process.

The precision of the experiment was sufficient to record temperature variations in the carbon spin on the order of billionths of a degree and verify that the Jarzinsky equation is valid on the subatomic scale. Another interesting result is that the atomic spins had a greater tendency to extract energy from the radio waves when the amplitude of the wave pulse was smaller. The opposite happened when the wave amplitude was increased: the spin of the atoms tended to transfer energy to the waves; in other words, the atoms performed work on the waves.

“We could exploit this difference to create a quantum heat engine,” says Serra. The engine would work by alternating low- and high-amplitude pulses between two states in thermal equilibrium, each with a different temperature (see infographic). The engine would work in a manner similar to that of a combustion engine, which performs mechanical work with some of the chemical energy transformed into heat through combustion of the fuel.

Such a spin engine would not be very useful: the work produced would supply such a small amount of energy to the radio waves that it would be sufficient only to alter the spin of an atomic nucleus.

Serra is more interested in measuring how much energy it uses and how much heat it dissipates during operation.

“The technique applied in this experiment has great potential,” says physicist Lucas Céleri, of the Federal University of Goiás, who intends to observe the thermodynamics of a single photon together with physicists Paulo Souto Ribeiro and Stephen Walborn, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, at the beginning of 2015. “Experimental advances are very rare in quantum thermodynamics because of the need to control the quantum system and isolate it from the environment.” n Igor Zolnerkevic

Project National Institute of Quantum Information Science and Technology (No. 2008/57856-6); Grant Mechanism Thematic Project; Principal investigator Amir Caldeira (Unicamp); Investment R$1,384,811.24 (FAPESP) and R$5,700,000.00 (CNPq).

Scientific article BATALHÃO, T. B. et al. Experimental reconstruction of work distribution and study of fluctuation relations in a closed quantum system. Physical Review Letters.

V. 113 (14). Oct. 3, 2014.

pESQUISA FAPESP z 51

52 z special issue November 2015

TECHNOLOGY COMPUTER SCIENCE y

Avalanche of data Advances in eScience are changing the traditional way of conducting science Yuri Vasconcelos Published in November 2014

Illustrations Pedro Franz

T

here was a time when it was a problem for scientists to obtain the necessary data required for progress in their research. However, in many fields of knowledge, recent advances in information technology, along with the democratization of computing, the expansion of computer networks and the proliferation of information sources, have directly resulted in massive production of data.

This is occurring in fields as diverse as astronomy, which is inundated daily with thousands of images and data from celestial bodies captured by powerful telescopes; to molecular biology, which has benefited from the emergence of high-performance genetic sequencing instruments; to ecology, which is aided by a variety of technologies and sensors that can precisely document changes occurring in different biomes. All of these advances have left researchers with a new problem: how to process, organize and view the avalanche of data that is obtained through such diverse means. In response to this dilemma, a new branch of science has gained much attention. Known as eScience, it uses mathematical models and computational tools to analyze information and increase research speed in other areas of knowledge.

“The idea of connecting traditional scientific practice with the access, use and processing of large amounts of data will change the way we do science and increase its potential.

FAPESP is at the forefront of this process; at the end of 2013 we launched the eScience Program,” said Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, the Scientific Director of the Foundation, during the Microsoft eScience Workshop 2014, held October 20-22, 2014 pESQUISA FAPESP z 53

in Guarujá, on the coast of São Paulo.

The objective of the eScience Program is to organize or integrate groups that are involved in research on algorithms, computational modeling and data infrastructure with teams of scientists working in other fields of knowledge, such as biology, social sciences, medicine and the humanities.

Global challenge

“One of the principal barriers we could face is communication problems among scientists on the teams needed to do science in this way, which is heavily based on data or large amounts of data. This requires very effective communication between researchers in the computer science field and scientists in other fields.

It’s a challenge in Brazil, as it would be anywhere,” Brito said. He was a participant in the roundtable on “The Strategic Importance of eScience,” which also included scientists Jason Rhody, Senior Program Officer in the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Chris

Mentzel, Program Director at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, two U.S.-based organizations that operate programs supporting science.

“At the present time, every field of research is affected by the modern scale of data production,” said Mentzel, emphasizing the importance of data scientists, which is the name given to those professionals who pour over the enormous volumes of data generated by researchers, and use it as a foundation to produce new knowledge. “They are researchers who work between disciplines. They are bridge builders,” he said. At the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Mentzel heads a $60 million program designed to incentivize eScience initiatives. Rhody believes that scientists are witnessing a paradigm shift. “We are moving from a culture of data scarcity to a culture of data abundance.” eScience, named as such in 1999 by John Taylor, Director of the Office of Science and Technology of the United Kingdom, is also known by other names, such as data-driven science or data-in-

Connecting computer science applications to phenology, which studies cyclical phenomena in plants

54 z special issue November 2015

tensive computing. Some countries, such as the United States and England, already have government-supported programs focused on developing this new area of science. In Brazil, the Center for eScience Research at the University of São Paulo (USP), which was formally established in 2012, is worth special mention. The center has 20 researchers under the coordination of Roberto Marcondes Cesar Junior of the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME) and one of FAPESP’s Supervising Panel on Exact Sciences and Engineering of the Scientific Directorate.

The Microsoft eScience Workshop 2014 was held in conjunction with the 10th IEEE International Conference on eScience, organized by the Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which was founded in the United States by electrical and electronics engineers. During the event, a panel discussion was held with researchers who have received grants from the FAPESP-Microsoft Virtual Research Institute and who connect computer science applications to the challenges posed by basic science in areas related to climate change and other fields associated with the environment. One of the studies presented explores innovative solutions for monitoring plants in the tropics, combining computer science research and phenology. Phenology, which is one of the oldest branches of science, is an area of ecology that studies the cyclical phenomena of plants, such as the emergence of leaves, buds, flowers and fruit,

and the ways in which these phenomena are related to environmental conditions.

Under the coordination of researcher Leonor Patricia Morellato of the Phenology Laboratory at the Institute of Biosciences at São Paulo State University (Unesp) in Rio Claro, the project seeks to combine technologies to monitor the long-term changes undergone by plants native to the Cerrado, the Atlantic Forest, the rupestrian grasslands, and even the Caatinga. The central area of research is in Itirapina, in inland São Paulo State. “In addition to directly observing the plants at ground level, we installed a camera on top of an 18-meter tower to take daily photographs of the vegetation, and set up a meteorological station. We’re also going to have an unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) equipped with a hyperspectral sensor and a camera to add a spatial scale to the data collection,” the researcher says. With high spatial resolution, hyperspectral sensors can provide details about the physical and chemical properties and physiological responses of the plants shown in the images. Morellato views phenology as one of the best tools for understanding the effects of climate change on plants. “This has already been established in temperate regions, where the phenological triggers are ambient temperature and length of day. But we know little about what happens in tropical plants. With the data from the cameras and the hyperspectral sensor, we want to determine what the triggers are for phenology in the tropics, i.e., what causes flowers, fruits and leaves to emerge at certain times,” she says.

Analyzing images

According to Morellato, without the help of computer science researchers and resources, it would be impossible to conduct the research. “The volume of data we will collect is enormous. One digital camera alone takes 60 photos per day. We have 11 cameras monitoring six types of vegetation, and we need to observe developments for at least one growing season in order to go back and connect them with the climate data. Then we need to process and analyze all the images, which would be impossible to do with a simple electronic spreadsheet. We need help to work with this big data. That is why we enlisted a masters student to create a database especially for the project, and

Wireless sensors installed in forests generate large amounts of data on natural processes

a post-doc to work on software for viewing and organizing the images.”

The research collaborator for the Unesp professor is scientist Ricardo Silva Torres, Director of the Institute of Computing at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), who is also working on a project under the FAPESP-Microsoft Research agreement. He is heading a study aimed at developing new analytical techniques and computational tools for processing remote sensing images to enable scientists to analyze the dynamics of some biomes on regional and continental scales. The research is being conducted in partnership with Professor Marina Hirota of the Department of Physics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), and it focuses on South American tropical biomes.

Another study presented at the event in Guarujá is led by Unicamp ecologist Rafael Silva Oliveira, collaborating with researchers Antonio Alfredo Ferreira Loureiro of the Computer Science Department at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and Stephen Burgess of the University of Western Australia. “The goal of our study is to investigate the water and carbon dynamics in cloud forests, pastures, and the transition areas between them,” says Oliveira.

Cloud forests are found at the tops of tropical mountains. “We want to understand how key processes, such as carbon

absorption and storage, transpiration of trees and the way plants capture water from fog, are affected by changes in land use and climate variations.”

The field studies are being conducted in a section of forest along the Mantiqueira Range, in the region of Campos do Jordão in inland São Paulo State. According to Oliveira, a network of wireless sensors is being implemented there to monitor three layers of the ecosystem, the atmosphere, vegetation and soil, to determine the microclimatic parameters of plant metabolism and water dynamics in the soil. “These data could improve the forecasting of environmental impacts caused by changes in land use, and at the same time will make it possible to develop hydrological models and models of biosphere-atmosphere circulation with greater predictive capability,” Oliveira explains. n Projects 1. Towards an understanding of tipping points within tropical South American biomes (N o. 2013/50169-1); Grant mechanism Research Partnership for Technological Innovation (PITE) and FAPESP-Microsoft Agreement; Principal Investigator Ricardo da Silva Torres (Unicamp); Investment R$384,838.38 (FAPESP).

2. Combining new technologies to monitor phenology from leaves to ecosystems (No. 2013/50155-0); Grant mechanism FAPESP Research Program on Global Climate Change – Research Partnership for Technological Innovation (PITE) and FAPESP-Microsoft Agreement; Principal Investigator Leonor Patrícia Cerdeira Morellato (Unesp); Investment R$1,115,752.48 and $535,902.72 (FAPESP).

3. Soil-plant-atmosphere interactions in a changing tropical landscape (No. 2011/52072-0); Grant mechanism Research Partnership for Technological Innovation (PITE) and FAPESP-Microsoft Agreement; Principal Investigator Rafael Silva Oliveira (Unicamp); Investment R$644,800.74 and $663,429.82 (FAPESP).

pESQUISA FAPESP z 55

New materials y

Malleable and bounces back

Foam consisting of graphene oxide and boron nitride is lightweight and tough and returns to its original shape after compression Marcos Pivetta

W

hen associated with other molecules, the sheets of carbon atoms that form graphene can attain surprising properties. A team of researchers at Rice University collaborated with physicists at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) to develop a type of sponge that is extremely light, tough, and malleable. They made use of a chemical reaction that bonds graphene oxide (GO), a variant of graphene, to the hexagonal form of boron nitride (BN), a synthetic compound used as a lubricant and additive in cosmetics. When small samples of this sponge were compressed with one or two pennies, they easily bounced back to their original shape. The nanometric structure of the new material, known as GO-0.5BN, is similar to the framework of a building under construction, with floors and walls that are self-assembled from a base of graphene oxide sheets reinforced with boron nitride platelets. GO-0.5BN is 400 times less dense than graphite.

Composed solely of boron and nitrogen atoms, boron nitride molecules are arranged in a hexagonal configuration similar to that of graphene. The two compounds combine seamlessly, which produces a tougher material with greater mechanical malleability. “The new material is chemically and thermally stable and can be used in energy-storing sys56 z special issue November 2015

tems, such as supercapacitors and battery electrodes, and it can also absorb gases,” says Douglas Galvão of the Gleb Wataghin Physics Institute at Unicamp, who participated in the study. “Boron nitride reinforces the structure of graphene oxide, which has a few gaps and can become brittle in certain points,” explains theoretical physicist Pedro Alves da Silva Autreto, who is conducting post-doctoral research at Unicamp on a FAPESP fellowship and has spent time at Rice, where he performed computer simulations to predict the characteristics of GO-0.5BN. The process used to obtain the sponge and its properties was presented in a scientific paper published on July 29, 2014 in Nature Communications.

Graphene oxide has essentially the same properties as pure graphene but is simpler and less expensive to produce, which explains why researchers prefer to use this variant of graphene in their experiments. It can be produced in large amounts by chemically exfoliating oxidized graphite. The presence of oxygen atoms in the hexagonal lattice of the graphene carbons provides the compound with an additional advantage: compared with pure graphene, it is easier to stack graphene oxide sheets and thus create layers that are both extremely tough and extremely thin. “We expected that adding boron nitride to graphene oxide

would generate a new structure but not exactly one that had the ordered layered structure that we ended up with,” says electrical engineer Soumya Vinod from Rice University, first author of the report published in Nature Communications.

The hexagonal boron nitride platelets are uniformly distributed across the walls and floors that compose the internal structure of the sponge. The platelets bind together the graphene oxide sheets that serve as a type of skeleton for GO-0.5BN. According to Vinod, the platelets absorb stress from compression and stretching and prevent the graphene oxide floors from crumbling or becoming cracked, in addition, they increase the compound's thermal stability.

No patent

Before discovering the chemical formulation of the sponge described in the paper, the researchers tested other versions of the new material containing different percentages of the two ingredients. Whereas the group at Rice University combined different quantities of powdered graphene oxide and boron nitride, Autreto ran computer simulations to predict the properties of the materials under development in order to provide parameters that could be used by his colleagues to refine their experiments. “I was the only theoretical physi-

photos Ajayan Research Group / Rice University ILLUSTRATION Pedro Alves da Silva Autreto

Published in October 2014

Boron Nitride Graphene Oxide

● Oxygen ● Carbon ● Nitrogen ● Boron

The sponge is internally composed of floors and walls that are self-assembled from a base of graphene oxide layers reinforced with sheets of boron nitride

Structural reinforcement Hexagonal boron nitride makes the graphene oxide sheets less brittle and prevents the inner layers of the material from crumbling

Electron microscopy images show the layered internal structure (above) and a close-up of a supporting wall between sheets of graphene oxide and boron nitride

cist among 50 experimental researchers in Professor Pulickel Ajayan's group,” says Autreto, referring to his stint at the American university. The most stable version of the sponge was the one that had boron nitride accounting for half its final weight. The graphene oxide interacts with boron nitride via the action of chemical catalysts. The spongy material produced by the reaction is freeze-dried, and it loses its moisture through sublimation. The resulting foam takes the shape of its container. “Once we had the necessary amounts of graphene oxide and hexagonal boron nitride in hand, we took two or three days to produce the foam,” Vinod explains.

The nanostructured sponge, which retains its shape and can be used to store energy or absorb gas, has not yet been protected by a commercial patent. The partnership between Unicamp and Rice is expected to continue and to generate new projects. “Two post-doctoral researchers from our group will join Professor Ajayan's team in order to continue the collaboration,” says Galvão, who advised Autreto in his master's and doctorate work and is now supervising his post-doctoral research. n

Project Structural, mechanical and transport properties of graphene and related structures (No. 11/13259-7); Grant mechanism Post-doctoral research grant; Principal investigator Douglas Soares Galvão (IFGW/Unicamp); Fellowship Pedro Alves da Silva Autreto; Investment R$ 139,310.43 (FAPESP).

Scientific article VINOD, S. et al. Low-density three-dimensional foam using self-reinforced hybrid two-dimensional atomic layers. Nature Communications. 29 Jul. 2014.

pESQUISA FAPESP z 57

fabio colombini

BIOTECHNOLOGY y

Artificial skin Skin replacements could be used as grafts to treat burns and severe lesions

Published in December 2014

A

pproximately one million burn injuries are recorded in Brazil each year. Of these individuals, 10% seek medical attention at hospitals and 2,500 die.

Accidents involving fire are the second leading cause of infant death in Brazil and the United States. Therefore, the production of skin replacements in the laboratory for use as skin grafts has been a major focus of research in the last 30 years. Scientists in many countries are attempting to develop a type of artificial skin that can be successfully applied to individuals with severe injuries. Here, in Brazil, the work conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) is noteworthy. In laboratory tests they have proved the effectiveness of a threedimensional skin replacement produced using a substance extracted from a tree native to Brazil, the copaiba (Copaifera langsdorffii). Its development began during the course of doctoral studies in biology by Ana Luiza Garcia Millás, who is with the Department of Materials and Bioprocess Engineering at Unicamp’s School of Chemical

58 z special issue November 2015

Engineering. She has a FAPESP fellowship and in September her study was awarded first prize for innovation at the 8th National Innovation Meeting on Drugs and Medicines sponsored by the Institute of Research and Development in Drugs and Medicines in conjunction with the Brazilian Pro-Technological Innovation Society (PROTEC).

“The treatment of burns and extensive and severe skin lesions is a challenge for regenerative medicine. There are some skin replacement alternatives, but none meets 100% of the demand and the need for proper healing of scars. Our goal is to create an artificial skin that can be absorbed by the body and solve chronic problems such as ulcers, deep scars and third-degree burns,” says Millás. “We want to develop a 3D skin replacement, which, in addition to its reparative role, also has a regenerative function, is aesthetically pleasing, and helps the healing process.”

The new artificial skin is produced from a solution consisting of the absorbable polymer PLGA (poly-lactic-co-glycolic acid), copaiba oleoresin

Copaiba trunk: raw material for oleoresin, which facilitates skin regeneration in the treatment of burns

pESQUISA FAPESP z 59

Synthetic graft Principal stages of the development of the graft to be used in skin implants

1

2

Syringe

3

4

5

High voltage

Collector

GRAFT

20 to 30 days

PLGA, copaiba oil and solvent

FIBROUS MATRIX

POLYMER SOLUTION

ELECTROSPINNING

CELL CULTURE

GROWTH

IMPLANT

The first step is

The polymer solution is

In an oven at 37

The pore size of the

Finally, the artificial

the preparation of a

placed in a syringe and

degrees Celsius that

fibrous matrix allows

skin (or replacement

solution consisting of

converted into fiber via

allows gas exchange,

fibroblasts to migrate

skin) formed by the

bioreabsorbable

the electrospinning

the patient’s

and proliferate within

combined polymeric

polymer pellets of poly

technique.

fibroblasts—the cells

it, through

scaffold and dermal

(lactic-co-glycolic

The result is a fibrous

responsible for collagen

connection to each

cells is ready to be

acid) (PLGA), copaiba

matrix (or scaffold)

synthesis—are placed

other and growing in

implanted in patients

oleoresin and a

formed by filaments.

on the scaffold. After

layers to form a

with severe skin

solvent

The fibrous polymeric

attaching to the

three-dimensional

lesions, such as

scaffold is sterilized

substrate, they grow,

structure. This

third-degree burns,

with gamma or

proliferate and

process takes 20 to

ulcers and bedsores

ultraviolet rays

differentiate

30 days

Source Ana Luiza Garcia Millás / UNICAMP

and a solvent. PLGA, which is widely used in the manufacture of implants, is gradually degraded and absorbed by the body. Once the polymer solution is ready, it is converted into a fiber through a technique known as electrospinning. The structure resulting from this process, referred to as a scaffold, will serve as a support or a three-dimensional cellular frame mimicking the architecture of the skin. Then, fibroblasts, a type of cell found in the dermis (the deepest part of the skin) are withdrawn via biopsy from the burned patient and grown on the fibrous structure, which a few days later is implanted in the patient.

According to Benedicto de Campos Vidal, emeritus professor at Unicamp’s Institute of Biology and an expert on collagen, the in vitro results achieved to date are very promising and have led to important findings: the cells are ad60 z special issue November 2015

hering, proliferating, differentiating and apparently producing collagen, a key protein in the healing process. “Everything indicates that fibroblasts are resulting in a collagen matrix. This is key to the success of the research,” says Vidal.

The new cell structure functions as a support that allows the epidermis, the uppermost component of the skin, to proliferate. In addition to working with the patient’s own cells, Millás also plans to use fibroblasts from third parties. “The advantage of using cells taken from others is the ability to produce artificial skin on a large scale for a skin bank. The downside is the increased risk of rejection.”

A key aspect of this research is the electrospinning technique, which has attracted interest in the field of tissue engineering owing to its ability to produce ultrafine fibers with a high surface-

Infographic ana paula campos Illustration alexandre affonso

to-volume ratio without the need for expensive duced by Forticell Bioscience. Both use bovine and complex instrumentation. It is applicable collagen and human fibroblasts. Millás’s reto a wide variety of both natural and synthetic search grew out of a study begun during work polymers and is also noteworthy for allowing toward her master’s degree in 2010, entitled control of the diameter, porosity and topogra- “Using Electrospinning Technology for the phy of the filaments. Furthermore, it improves Production and Characterization of Cellulose Nanofibers Embedded with the efficiency of the transport Natural Oil.” This work led of nutrients between the fiber to a patent that calls for the matrix and the external enviuse of fibers produced via ronment. electrospinning technology Another research innovaand embedded with essention involves embedding a In vitro tests tial oils not only as artificial natural substance with provhave shown skin and dressings but also en, but insufficiently studied, filters, fabrics and packtherapeutic properties in the that the material as aging for food and cosmetskin replacement. Copaiba oleoresin, which has been is biocompatible. ics. The development of the skin replacement was aided used for medicinal purposes by a team of chemical engisince the 16th century, acts as The next step neers, including Professor a healing agent with analgesic, is clinical trials Edison Bittencourt of Unianti-inflammatory and anticamp’s School of Chemical microbial properties. “This in humans Engineering, who is Millás’s is an innovative aspect of the doctoral adviser, and John work, along with using a polyVinícios Silveira, in addition mer to produce the matrix that to professors Maria Beatriz will be applied to the lesion,” Puzzi and Benedicto Vidal, says Dr. Beatriz Puzzi, a deralso of Unicamp. matologist and coordinator of A portion of the development of the artificial the Skin Cell Culture Laboratory of Unicamp’s School of Medicine and Millás’s doctoral super- skin was carried out abroad. In 2012, Millás revisor. Embedding the copaiba oil into the matrix ceived funding for her graduate studies from the has a functional aim: to facilitate skin regenera- international mobility scholarship program of tion in the burn area. According to Millás, the Banco Santander; she completed a sandwich prosubstance collected from the trunk of the tree is gram, in which part of her studies were conducted referred to as an oleoresin because its composi- in England. “Bob Stevens was my adviser. He’s tion is approximately 45% volatile essential oils a scientist and professor at Nottingham Trent University and a research collaborator at The and 55% resin.

Electrospinning Company. This company uses an electrospinning platform to develop fibrous SKIN PRINTER Preclinical testing in animals and clinical trials biomaterials for regenerative medicine. While I in humans have not yet been performed, but the was at the company, I made the decisions about group already sees an opportunity to produce which polymer to use and established all the crithe material on a larger scale, using 3D digital teria for the solutions and electrospinning equipprinters in combination with the electrospinning ment for producing the scaffolds. I also performed technique. The idea of using such printers arose preliminary in vitro tests using primary lung fifrom the need to scale up production of the mate- broblasts.” In 2013, Millás completed another rial and to handle the requirements of the scaf- sandwich program, this time with the Science fold for the implant. “We have done some tests Without Borders program at Cornell University combining the two techniques, 3D printing and in the United States. n Yuri Vasconcelos electrospinning. It may be an alternative because the matrices are extremely fragile and difficult to Project handle,” says Millás. “In vitro tests have already Development of bioactive scaffolds embedded with vegetable oils for shown that the material is biocompatible and skin tissue regeneration using electrospinning technology (No. 2012 / has great potential. I believe that clinical trials 09110-0); Grant mechanism Scholarship in Brazil - Regular - Doctorate; Principal investigator Edison Bittencourt (Unicamp); Fellowship Ana can be started within two years, and, if successLuiza Garcia Millás (Unicamp); Investment R$116,615.19 (FAPESP). ful, marketing can begin in five.”

The Unicamp innovation is similar to two Scientific article products from American companies: Apligraf®, Yusuf, M. et al. Platinum blue staining of cells grown in electrospun scaffolds. Biotechniques. V. 57, No. 3, p. 137-41. September 2014. produced by Organogenesis, and OrCel®, propESQUISA FAPESP z 61

Agriculture y

Natural fertilizer Using leguminous plants as fertilizer can increase sugarcane production by 35%

Evanildo da Silveira Published in December 2014

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lthough farmers throughout the world have long used socalled ‘green manure’– making use of the biomass of one type of plant as a fertilizer for another type of plant – few scientific studies have investigated how this approach functions and quantified its results. The search for those answers inspired agronomist Edmilson José Ambrosano, a researcher at the São Paulo Agency for Agribusiness Technology (APTA), affiliated with the São Paulo State Department of Agriculture and Supply, to conduct two projects supported by FAPESP. The research showed that sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea) can completely replace chemical nitrogen fertilization in sugar62 z special issue November 2015

cane fields, resulting in a 35% increase in productivity and a financial gain of approximately 150%.

Originally from Asia, sunn hemp grows very quickly and vigorously. This species produces a high volume of biomass in a short period of time. In addition, sunn hemp is a fibrous plant that is also use in the manufacture of special types of paper.

One of the principal advantages of using sunn hemp as a fertilizer is the fact that it is leguminous. Legumes are members of a family whose species are able to fix nitrogen, i.e., incorporate nitrogen from the air into organic molecules.

“With rare exceptions, legumes are the only plants in the vegetable kingdom that can accomplish such fixation from

atmospheric air. They do it with the help of bacteria found in their roots,” Ambrosano explains. “Sunn hemp not only supplies nitrogen but can be used to restore degraded soils as well.”

Sugarcane is one of Brazil’s most important crops. This semi-perennial plant can be grown from four to eight years on the same tract of land and can be harvested every year. At the end of that period, the cane field is renewed by destroying the old plants and planting new ones. In Brazil, 1.9 million hectares of cane fields are renewed each year. “It is in those areas, or in new fields, that green manure is sown to restore the soil by incorporating nitrogen,” Ambrosano says. “We have been doing this in Brazil since 1934.”

Nuclear Method

Plots planted with sunn hemp yield more biomass in less time than plots without sunn hemp (left)

photos 1 Fabio colombini 2 Edmilson Ambrosano / apta

Experiment conducted at CENA, in Piracicaba, where 15N compounds were applied to sunn hemp (below)

The purpose of the study, which began in 2003 and continued until very recently, was to study the effect of green manure on sugarcane. “We already knew that sunn hemp was a good fertilizer that functioned well as a source of nitrogen,” he recalls. “What we wanted to determine was how much of that element comes out of the plant and enters the sugarcane. We used the opportunity to verify the transfer of nitrogen found in ammonium sulfate, a very popular type of chemical fertilizer.

Our idea was to compare the efficiency of the two types of fertilizer, the green one and the chemical one.”

To conduct the study, Ambrosano designed an experiment using a technique known as isotopic labeling of nitrogen.

Nitrogen is the most abundant element in the Earth’s atmosphere, accounting for approximately 78% of all of the gas that surrounds our planet, whereas oxygen accounts for 21% of this gas. In air, nitrogen is present in the form of N2 molecules that are composed of two atoms in an extremely strong triple covalent (electron-sharing) bond. For this reason, animals and plants are unable to metabolize nitrogen.

Nature uses nitrogen through leguminous plants with the aid of bacteria, especially bacteria of the genus Rhizobium. These microorganisms associate with plants in a symbiotic relationship, forming nodules on their roots where they capture gas from the air through the porous soil and convert it into nitrogenous compounds such as amino acids that plants can use in their metabolism. Fertilizer 2 manufacturing represents another way to convert nitrogen into a form that plants can exploit. However, the manufacturing process uses a large amount of energy, making manufactured fertilizer expensive for farmers.

In nature, nitrogen is found as two isotopes, nitrogen-14 (14N), which accounts for 99.634% of all nitrogen in the atmosphere, and nitrogen-15 ( 15N), which accounts for the remaining 0.366% of all nitrogen in the atmosphere. Isotopes are variants of a single chemical element that have the same properties and the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. And so 14N has seven protons and seven neutrons, and 15N has an extra neutron, making it heavier. “That is why we had to think of a way to label what is present in sunn hemp so that we could verify how much of it would be used by the cane,” Ambrosano explains.

The study, conducted at the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture

(CENA) at the University of São Paulo (USP), produced a nitrogen compound that contained 70% 15N and 30% 14N. The next step was to prepare two plots of land, one measuring 2.80 m by 2.0 m and the other measuring 1.40 m by 1 m.

Sunn hemp was planted in both plots.

The first plot was sprayed with urea rich in 15N. The crop in the second plot received ammonium sulfate, also rich in 15N. The plants were then allowed to grow to a height of approximately 2 m, after which they were cut down and sugarcane was planted in their place. The cane was cultivated for five years and harvested three times. The amount of 15N recovered was measured at the time of the first two harvests.

To carry out the assessment, Ambrosano collected leaves from the experimental sugarcane plots and took them to the laboratory, where he used a mass spectrometer to determine the amount of labeled nitrogen, i.e., the amount of 15N from the sunn hemp. “The transfer of those elements from the sunn hemp to the cane in the first two (consecutive) harvests varied from 19% to 21%, and the transfer of nitrogen applied with ammonium sulfate was 46% to 49%,” says Ambrosano. “We concluded that the nitrogen from the application of fertilizer met the needs of the sugarcane, equivalent to using 70 kg of that element per hectare.”

Although the ammonium sulfate transferred more nitrogen to the sugarcane, the green manure has other benefits that make up for the difference. “In addition to being cheaper, sunn hemp protects the soil from heavy rains and decompacts it, thereby improving the infiltration of water,” says Ambrosano. n

Projects 1.Dynamics of nitrogen in sugarcane after green manure fertilization with Crotalaria juncea (No. 2006/597050); Grant mechanism Regular Line of Research Project Award; Principal Investigator Edmilson José Ambrosano (APTA); Investment R$36,860.00 (FAPESP).

2. Dynamics of nitrogen in sugarcane after green manure fertilization with Crotalaria juncea (No. 1998/16446-6); Grant mechanism Regular Line of Research Project Award; Principal investigator Edmilson José Ambrosano (APTA); Investment R$26,309.10 and US$701.02 (FAPESP).

Scientific article Ambrosano, E. J. et al. 15N-labeled nitrogen from green ma­ nure and ammonium sulfate utilization by the sugarcane ratoon. Scientia Agricola. V. 68, n. 3, p. 361-8. June 2011.

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humanities SOCIETY y

Architecture for all A study of 100 years of social

64 z special issue November 2015

housing in Brazil uncovers high-quality projects during the Vargas era Márcio Ferrari Published in November 2014

Inês Bonduki

The Gávea Housing Project in Rio, by Affonso Eduardo Reidy, who also designed the Pedregulho Housing Project in Rio in the early 1950s: social projects of historical and aesthetic significance

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hile Brazil produced influential, world-renowned architects and architectural landmarks during the twentieth century—Oscar Niemeyer and Brasília being at the top of the is list—a large body of work in the area of social housing is less known and lies largely along the margins of official history. However, these works are not invisible or numerically insignificant.

They are located in cities throughout Brazil, and their histories form a narrative with breaks, but also with a strong degree of continuity, going through current public policy in addition to creating a valuable repertoire of technical and formal experiments in architecture and urban planning.

The desire to illuminate and catalog the history of social housing in Brazil,

which has existed in this country for just over 100 years (since 1912), led to the preparation of the recently released three-volume book entitled Os pioneiros da habitação social (The pioneers of social housing) by Nabil Bonduki, an architect and professor at the University of São Paulo School of Architecture and Urban Planning (USP-FAU) and a São Paulo city councilor who is a member of the Workers’ Party (PT). The core of the work, which is found in volume 2, is dedicated to the period stretching from 1930 to 1964, which spans from the time of President Getúlio Vargas’ first term to the military coup. “Back then there was a social housing cycle linked to the principles of modern urban planning,” says Bonduki.

While the 100-year period of social housing began with a federal governpESQUISA FAPESP 2XX z 65

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Paquetá housing project in Rio (left), built in 1952, and a building from the early years of Brasília: past attempts to harmonize housing projects and their environments

ment project in Marechal Hermes, a neighborhood in the city of Rio de Janeiro, that managed to complete 165 houses despite the presence of significant opposition, the upcoming Vargas era established a new culture and a different approach. “The idea of the social function of housing was established; the State took on the role of addressing urban issues, and modernism became the language of this new period,” says Bonduki.

and documents 322 projects (in 24 states) of the period and includes figures of each on comparative scales. Volume 3, Onze propostas de morar para o Brasil moderno (Eleven housing proposals for modern Brazil), examines 11 of these projects in depth and presents three-dimensional models of the original designs and photo essays by Bob Wolfenson.

The basis of this study is rooted in Bonduki’s master’s and PhD research

Advances and setbacks

Overall, Os pioneiros da habitação social addresses both the foundations and practices of a century of Brazilian housing policies and architectural advances and setbacks characteristic of the same period. The work, published jointly by Editora Unesp and Edições Sesc SP, includes 1,208 pages illustrated with photos and figures. Volume 1, Cem anos de política pública no Brasil (100 years of public policy in Brazil), recounts and comments on the history of public housing in Brazil.

Projects built by social security institutes, which were responsible for public housing during the Vargas era, are addressed at length in the second section.

Volume 2, Inventário da produção pública no Brasil entre 1930 e 1964 (Catalog of public projects in Brazil between 1930 and 1964), coauthored by architect and urban planner Ana Paula Koury, surveys 66 z special issue November 2015

According to Le Corbusier, housing projects include public spaces, such as squares and schools

conducted at FAU, which was submitted in the 1990s and supported by FAPESP, and led to the publication of the book As origens da habitação social no Brasil (The origins of social housing in Brazil) published by Estação Liberdade in 1998 and now in its 6th edition. That book explores the transformation of Brazilian cities during the Vargas era. Throughout his research career, Bonduki identified important architectural works built during this period that had rarely been studied previously. His interest in expanding historiography on the topic grew from this observation and focused on “studying Brazilian modern architecture, especially from the 1940s and 1950s, and how it related to social housing.”

The research project spanned 17 years (1997-2013) and was held at USP, initially at the São Carlos School of Engineering and later at FAU. It involved approximately 40 researchers, several of whom eventually carried out their own studies on research topics that arose throughout the process. The key phase of the study involved a complete field survey of social housing production from 1930 to 1964 —the second of the three book volumes and the first to be finalized. The two major study projects received support from FAPESP, and the second, conducted after the survey, was selected through a public call for proposals promoted by

Photos 1 Bob Wolfenson / Os pioneiros da Habitação Social 2 Archives Projeto Pioneiros

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Petrobras in the area of cultural heritage and documentation.

The research was carried out in collaboration with Professor Carlos Ferreira Martins, director of the Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning at USP São Carlos (cited on the inner flap of volume 2), and his team. Martins questioned traditional historical approaches to Brazilian modernist architecture, as they excluded certain themes and architects.

According to both Martins and Bonduki, the trajectory of “more traditional” architecture, that focuses on housing for the masses, represents historical contributions that are as important as those of established names such as Niemeyer, Lúcio Costa, Rino Levi and Lina Bo Bardi.

Even an architect normally included in this group, Affonso Eduardo Reidy, was not well known for his work on social housing, despite being the designer of projects of great historical and aes-

thetic significance, such as the serpentine Gávea and Pedregulho projects in Rio, which were both inaugurated in the early 1950s. Reidy was married to engineer and theorist Carmen Portinho, another cardinal name in the history of Brazilian social housing. Portinho was director of the Department of Public Housing, which was linked to the office of the mayor of the Federal District (Rio de Janeiro at the time) and which served as one of the few regional agencies that carried out major projects during Vargas’ first term (1937-1945). Later, during Vargas’ second term (1952-1954), Portinho was a member of the Central Board of the Public Housing Foundation.

Forgotten by historiography

One architect “missing from the dominant historiography,” according to Bonduki, is Carlos Frederico Ferreira, who spent his entire career at the Industrial

Retirement and Pension Institute (IAPI), the public agency that was most prominent in producing housing during the Vargas period. He led the Architecture and Design Sector and, later, the Engineering Division. “I was able to talk to him in 1994, six months before his death. No one knew where he was until I located him in the hills of Nova Friburgo, in the state of Rio de Janeiro,” says Bonduki.

During their conversation, Ferreira defined the IAPI’s central aim as “putting housing units within the reach of the majority of its members with modest salaries, that is, establishing the lowest price without sacrificing necessary hygiene and comfort levels.” This advanced concern was in consonance with the principles established by Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1933 at the International Congress for Modern Architecture, including, in the words of Bonduki, the pESQUISA FAPESP z 67

Concentration of housing projects in São Paulo’s east side (right) and Iguaçu Park, in Curitiba: low quality both in terms of urban planning and architectural design

notion that housing “was not just a living unit,” but also included public spaces such as squares and schools. However, according to the researcher from FAU, this concept encountered considerable resistance in Brazil, beginning in the construction industry. “The issues that had to be addressed were basic, such as a lack of standards for producing a simple brick—whose size depended on the origin—which made it difficult to build large-scale projects,” writes Bonduki.

Another influential architect of this period was Rubens Porto, who was an advisor to the National Labor Council and who established general directives for social security institutes and recommendations on housing project construction.

In 1938, Porto published a book that presented a series of solutions for such buildings that involved streamlining all processes, eliminating all superfluous decorations and in turn delivering furnished homes, four-story multifamily buildings with stilts and two-story apartments. In practice, even when not following these precepts, most of projects developed by the institutes followed clear guidelines on urban integration and on the rational and industrial use of materials.

“It’s difficult to pinpoint the existence of a housing policy during the period, but

there were simultaneous actions that fit together,” says Bonduki. “The scenario consisted of several institutes with their own characteristics and teams, trying to ensure modernization and lower costs.” A “specialized techno-bureaucracy” formed together with engineering departments capable of formulating solutions to the challenges of creating low-cost, high-quality popular housing. At a time when today’s construction companies did not exist and when architecture schools were new, these departments acted, according to Bonduki, like “large architectural firms” and “practical laboratories.”

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first, the effect was positive for the lowincome population, as this significantly decreased the percentage of salaries spent on housing.

However, this situation, combined with intense urbanization throughout Brazil (eight million city dwellers in 1930 grew to 32 million in 1960) led to a shortage of housing, swelling along the city fringes, a lack of public services and a wave of evictions. In short, a serious housing crisis ensued. At the end of this period, social security institutes did not come close to meeting the population’s housing needs, having built only 175,000 units. “The solution for the low-income

Low-income population

According to Bonduki’s study, notable advances in architecture and urban planning and the development of an inspiring legacy did not result in corresponding achievements in lowincome family housing access. In the context of a transition from an agrarian society based mainly on the export of agricultural goods to an urban industrial, capitalist era, wherein the government’s role became to protect the worker, private initiatives in the field of housing were discouraged by the Tenant Act of 1942, which froze rents. At 2

Bonduki believes that the government must seriously address land-ownership issues 68 z special issue November 2015

population was to take construction into their own hands, on the outskirts of large cities, establishing the model we see now,” says Bonduki.

Challenging the notion that Brasília, inaugurated in 1960, was a revolutionary project, Bonduki believes it represented the “end point” of experiments of the 1930s to 1950s, with its superblocks resembling housing projects designed in the 1940s. Additionally, social security institutes played a key role in building these residential areas.

Photos 1 Inês Bonduki / Os pioneiros da Habitação social 2 Ministry of Cities / CEF

New programs

From a political point of view, the new capital’s inauguration took place during a wave of vitality in the fields of architecture and urban planning, achieved during Vargas’ first term. At the end of this period, a proposal called for the unification of social security institutes into a single agency and the transfer of part of its resources to an institution that would be established specifically to meet universal housing needs: the Popular Housing Foundation (FCP). Management teams of the institutes themselves and other sectors of society opposed the change, which would have deprived them of resources and privileges. In turn, the FCP was established without funds and, according to Bonduki, “its failure

set the formulation of a consistent housing policy back by 20 years.”

The plans were resumed soon after the 1964 military coup, when pension funds were abolished upon the creation of the Brazilian Social Pension Institute (INPS, later replaced by the INSS) and National Housing Bank (BNH), which focused on housing construction and financing. It was a second-tier bank, meaning that it worked directly with other banks rather than with the public.

It existed until 1986, when it was incorporated into the Federal Savings Bank.

However, inaction during the FCP period together with the dismantling of structures by the 1964 coup removed those institutions dedicated to social housing policy that really met the needs of the population. At that time, housing units were sold to future inhabitants and, while there was an emphasis on efficient mass production (4.2 million residences), project quality levels suffered greatly. By the conclusion of the BNH’s operations, during the period of redemocratization, the bank was related to ugly and poorly finished buildings.

Beginning in the 1990s, pivotal experiences at the municipal level foreshadowed a series of advances in urban and housing policy, several of which were attributable to popular initiatives. This

was when the Statute of the City of the Ministry of Cities and National Housing Fund was instituted. This framework was auspicious and was strengthened by favorable demographic conditions, such as the diminishing of migration from the countryside to the cities and decline in the rate of population growth.

Political issues, however, led to the 2009 establishment of the My House, My Life federal program, which Bonduki feels is very limited. He stresses the current existence of “a very robust, healthy system of financing and subsidies with its own sources.” However, he affirms that “they tried to tie job creation and economic growth to the housing agenda, without dealing with land-ownership and urban questions, generating contradictory results.” Bonduki forecasts increasing problems related to mobility, safety and the environment as a result.

He believes that the government must urgently prioritize quality over quantity as the “pioneers” did and that in order to do this, land-ownership problems must be adequately addressed. n Project The pioneers of social housing in Brazil (No. 2012/50030-0); Grant Mechanism Publication grant; Principal investigator Nabil Bonduki (FAU-USP); Investment R$40,000.00 (FAPESP).

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SOCIOLOGY y

Rearrangements in the Metropolis Population figures show that communities on the periphery of Greater São Paulo have become more heterogeneous, with middle and lower classes living closer to each other while the elites still occupy the more exclusive zones

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he 21 st century changes in patterns of residential segregation in Metropolitan São Paulo did not occur as it was anticipated at the end of the last century. Residents of the metropolis are still highly segregated, but the way it happened has not followed the expected trend that pointed to polarization of spaces and social structures. While the areas inhabited by elites have become more exclusive than ever, the rest of the city has undergone a change, becoming more heterogeneous. “The hypothesis of social polarization, expressed in famous metaphors such as ‘a divided city,’ is still alive, but did not prove true in São Paulo,” says Eduardo Marques, a researcher in the Political Science Department at the USP School of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences (FFLCH-USP) and researcher at the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CEM), one of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) supported by FAPESP. “The dynamics of the social structure did in fact point to the occupational polarization of the 1990s, but that trend was completely 70 z special issue November 2015

reversed in the first decade of the 2000s. but rather because factories have reloCompared with forecasts, the metropolis cated to other regions, such as the macrohas changed less, and in a different way.” metropolises of Campinas and São José The research confirms the picture that dos Campos. Furthermore, the effect of emerged during the 1990s and associates continued Ford-style mass production the major urban trends with transforma- has been that these workers (skilled mantions that have taken place in capitalism ual labor) are the most numerous social since the 1970s, such as the formation class in the metropolis according to the of a social group of the super-rich and 2000 Census, although they are “in a dethe creation of protected compounds cline associated with the growth of the as homes for the captains of business. professional class and the middle strata.”

However, studies of changes in São Paulo These trends have a significant impact on in the last few decades did not conform the map of social segregation: the classes with the effects of de-industrialization that have grown the fastest proportionthat began during the period, such as the ally tended to disperse during the first curtailment of intermediate scale pro- decade of the century, while those that duction activities, particularly the Ford declined in number (the wealthiest class) increased their exclusivity. model of industrial mass production.

Marques arrived at these conclusions The presence of industry in Greater through a study that São Paulo has diminished in In downtown São Paulo, used census data from relative terms in favor of rea building occupied 1991, 2000, and 2011. tail trade and services, a secby the homeless (at rear), An article on the subject, tor that generated 800,000 close to a Metro stop, is reflected on the windows entitled “Social structure jobs regionally during the of a recently renovated and segregation in São 2000s. This trend was not building: the city Paulo: Transformations because of the dwindling has changed less during the decade of the of industrial activity as obthan anticipated and in a different way 2000s,” was published served in other countries,

photos Léo Ramos

Published in February 2015

pESQUISA FAPESP z 71

in December 2014 in the journal Dados by the Institute of Social and Political Studies (Iesp) at Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) and will make up several chapters of a forthcoming book São Paulo 2010: Espaços, heterogeneidades e desigualdades na metrópole (São Paulo 2010: Spaces, Heterogeneities and Inequalities in the Metropolis), scheduled to be released by Editora Unesp in May 2015.

With respect to the distribution of housing throughout the metropolis, the study detects both a pattern of social avoidance confirmed by the index of dissimilarity and the Moran’s I Index value (measures of residential segregation) and a proportional distribution of classes in the metropolitan region. “It’s not simply a group that isolates itself, although the elites really are the most segregated groups; rather it is a characteristic of the very structure of segregation,” says Marques. “The data suggest, rather eloquently, that the greater the social distance between classes, the greater the degree of segregation, suggesting a pattern of avoidance in the residential choices made by groups who can pay higher prices for the land.” This conclusion is consistent with anthropological and sociological studies that address subjects such as the use of public spaces in cities, gated communities, and the rise of shopping malls.

In addition to its high intensity, segregation is also strongly hierarchical,

Houses in Paraisópolis, with buildings in Morumbi in the background: enclaves of manual workers in the territory of the elite

72 z special issue November 2015

as evidenced by the data measured by the index of dissimilarity. “The degree of differentiation is arranged perfectly by class,” says Marques. That progression results in minor dissimilarity between any one group and its contiguous groups, but much greater dissimilarity between groups that are distant in the structure. Another significant deduction found in a chapter by Danilo França in the upcoming book is that segregation is not only socioeconomic, but also ethnicracial, with the latter superimposed on the former, in much the same way as a combined hierarchy appears when simultaneously considering social class and skin color.

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his apparently paradoxical phenomenon is one of the factors behind the increasing heterogeneity of the outskirts of the city, which has already been studied in the literature as “physical proximity and social distance.” For example, this process occurred due to the increased popularity of gated communities in peripheral zones, which themselves were already heterogeneous because they served the people in the variable income strata found between those at the top of the income structure and those in the middle class.

In Greater São Paulo, this phenomenon had a tremendous impact on peripheral areas such as the municipalities of Barueri, Cotia, and Santana de Parnaíba.

In terms of dissimilarity indices, the spatial distributions of the middle class closely resemble those of the lower classes, thus reinforcing the finding of a mixed fabric in Greater São Paulo with the exception of the intense segregation of the classes at the top of the structure.

Overall, the elites exhibit the highest indices of segregation and the middle classes exhibit the lowest.

This analysis provides evidence to support the limitations of the social polarization hypothesis: the local effects of global processes are not always the same.

“In Brazil, after the restructuring of the 1990s, the current century has brought the return of employment, growth in the formal labor force, and the improvement of wages,” says Marques. “That, added to changes in the patterns of demographic growth and the government’s investment in infrastructure, accompanied by a better distribution of construction activity, contributed to the heterogenization of the periphery.” Marques observed that the studied period predated the launch of the federal program My House, My Life, which has produced approximately 130,000 housing units in Metropolitan São Paulo since 2009.

As a statistical parameter, Marques used the EGP (Erikson, Goldthorpe and Portocarrero) classification, adapted to Brazilian circumstances. The EGP classification is a method of grouping occupational categories to observe “milder, more continuous and durable” fluctuations than those based solely on education or income, for example. Another advantage of the EGP classification is that it provides common ground for international discussions. One of the activities of the CEM is to perform comparative research on international patterns of public policies and governance among São Paulo, Paris, London, Mexico City, and Milan. The main CEM offices are at two sites: one at FFLCH-USP and the other at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap).

In the foreground, the skeleton of a building in Vila Leopoldina in the western zone of São Paulo.

In the background, new buildings that rose during the real estate boom of the early years of this century

Using the EGP classification, in the mixed middle/low class spaces characteristic of the heterogeneity observed in the peripheral regions, 71.6% of the population belongs, on average, to the classes of manual laborers (both skilled and unskilled), low-level manual laborers performing routine tasks, and technical and supervisory personnel. Relative incomes in those areas fall between middle and low. This population features a high percentage (40%) of blacks and browns (pretos and pardos) who live predominately in houses (only 9% lived in apartments). Infrastructure conditions were close to the average conditions for the metropolis (sometimes even better, depending on the indicator).

In the geographical configuration of Greater São Paulo as revealed by the 2010 census, the mixed-middle-low class spaces are situated in the peripheral regions, “although with spatial discontinuities and a substantial presence of mixed-middle class spaces, especially

in the eastern zone (Zona Leste) of the city of São Paulo.” The historical center of the city is predominately mixed-middle class, demonstrating how the region has changed since the 2000 census due to an influx of lower-income individuals. The expanded city center occupied by the elite is situated southwest of the historical downtown, including neighborhoods such as Higienópolis, Pinheiros, Jardins, and Morumbi. Between 2000 and 2010, that area came to include regions located in the direction of São Paulo’s industrial area known as the “ABC” due to the expansion of Morumbi and Vila Leopoldina, areas that have experienced a construction boom in the new century.

T

hat southwestern region contains two enclaves of manual laborers situated in the midst of the territory of the elite. These are the only two large slums (favelas) located within the limits of the expanded center—namely, Paraisópolis to the west and the Heliópolis-São Jóão Clímaco complex to the southeast. In sharp contrast, the regions of Tatuapé and Santana are now also occupied by the elite. Both are rather small and lie to the east and north of the territory where the elite are concentrated. The centers of Guarulhos and Mogi

das Cruzes, to the northeast and east, respectively, are now home to the upper middle class. Areas near downtown Guarulhos have experienced an influx of lower class individuals.

Marques’ study is part of a more comprehensive, longer-term research project under way at the CEM. The book scheduled to come out in May 2015 complements São Paulo: Segregação, pobreza, e desigualdade (São Paulo: Segregation, Poverty, and Inequality), edited by Marques and economist Haroldo Torres and published in 2005 by Senac. Based on 2000 census data, that volume, like the future one, consists of coordinated chapters on subjects such as population growth, segregation, and access to public policies. Additional material has now been included to discuss aspects associated with the labor market, race, and urban mobility. n Márcio Ferrari Project CEM – Center for Metropolitan Studies (No. 13-07616-7); Grant Mechanism Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDC); Principal Investigator Marta Arretche (FFLCH-USP); Investment R$7,124,108.20 (for the entire project) (FAPESP).

Scientific article MARQUES, E. Estrutura social e segregação em São Paulo: transformações na década de 2000. DADOS-Revista de Ciências Sociais. V. 57, No. 3, pp. 675-710. 2014.

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Art

Stars of zinc A cluster of tiny blue stars reveals zinc oxide that crystallized in the presence of gold nanoparticles. In the expanded image, a star’s broken arms (blue) and gold at the center (yellow) are visible. The images are of field-effect transistors and were obtained using a scanning electron microscope. Images were magnified 80,000x and digitally colored by Eder Guidelli, doctoral candidate at the School of Philosophy, Science, and Languages and Literature (FFCLRP), University of São Paulo (USP) at Ribeirão Preto. Guidelli, under his advisor, Oswaldo Baffa, is studying the applications of nanotechnology in medical physics to develop nanomaterials for use in X-ray detection.

The images were finalists in the Science as Art competition at the 2013 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting in Boston.

Images submitted by Eder Guidelli of FFCLRP-USP

Published in September 2014

74 | special issue November 2015