Expedition investigates the scientific enigma of 80-m tall trees in Amapá, Brazil
Sustainable fuel offers a way to reduce emissions in the airline sector
Maria Cecília Minayo created methodologies for studying how violence affects health
Indigenous peoples carved marks next to dinosaur footprints in Paraíba
César Lattes: The life and legacy of the physicist born 100 years ago
PRESIDENT Marco Antonio Zago
VICE-PRESIDENT
Carmino Antonio de Souza
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Antonio José de Almeida Meirelles, Helena Bonciani Nader, Herman Jacobus Cornelis Voorwald, Marcílio Alves, Maria Arminda do Nascimento Arruda, Mayana Zatz, Mozart Neves Ramos, Pedro Luiz Barreiros Passos, Pedro Wongtschowski, Thelma Krug
EXECUTIVE BOARD
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Carlos Américo Pacheco
SCIENTIFIC DIRECTOR
Marcio de Castro Silva Filho
DMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR Fernando Menezes de Almeida
ISSN 1519-8774
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Luiz Nunes de Oliveira (President), Américo Martins Craveiro, Anamaria Aranha Camargo, Ana Maria Fonseca Almeida, Anapatrícia Morales Vilha, Carlos Américo Pacheco, Carlos Graeff, Célio Haddad, Claudia Mendes de Oliveira, Deisy de Souza, Douglas Zampieri, Eduardo Zancul, Euclides de Mesquita Neto, Fernando Menezes de Almeida, Flávio Vieira Meirelles, José Roberto de França Arruda, Jó Ueyama, Lilian Amorim, Liliam Sanchez Carrete, Marcio de Castro Silva Filho, MarianaCabral de Oliveira, Marco Antonio Zago, Maria Julia Manso Alves, Marie-Anne Van Sluys, Marta Arretche, Nina Stocco Ranieri, Paulo Schor, Reinaldo Salomão, Richard Charles Garratt, Rodolfo Jardim Azevedo, Sergio Costa Oliveira, Luiz Vitor de Souza Filho, Watson Loh
SCIENTIFIC COORDINATOR Luiz Nunes de Oliveira
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Alexandra Ozorio de Almeida
MANAGING EDITOR Neldson Marcolin
EDITORS Fabrício Marques (S&TPolicy), Carlos Fioravanti (Earth sciences), Marcos Pivetta (Exact sciences), Maria Guimarães (Biological sciences), Ricardo Zorzetto (Biomedical sciences) Ana Paula Orlandi (Humanities), Yuri Vasconcelos (Technology)
REPORTER Christina Queiroz and Sarah Schmidt
ART Claudia Warrak (Editor) Júlia Cherem Rodrigues and Maria Cecilia Felli (Designers), Alexandre Affonso (Infographics editor)
PHOTOGRAPHER Léo Ramos Chaves
IMAGE DATABASE Valter Rodrigues
TRANSLATORS Ricardo Lay (coordination & review), Tom Jamieson, Peter Hunrichs, Tiago Barnavelt, Jack Martin, Nancy Berube Lang, Mark Thompson
CONTRIBUTORS Ayana Saito, Felipe Floresti, Frances Jones, Giselle Soares, Letícia Naísa, Meghie Rodrigues
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THE REPRINTING OF TEXTS, PHOTOS, ILLUSTRATIONS AND INFOGRAPHICS IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IS PROHIBITED WITHOUT PRIOR AUTHORIZATION
ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT
FUSP – FUNDAÇÃO DE APOIO À UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO
PESQUISA FAPESP Rua Joaquim Antunes, no 727, 10o piso, 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
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Brazilian research on themes such as the Amazon and climate change is cited in documents produced in countries such as the US, the UK and Germany that present or analyze public policies. Citations from abroad are more common than those from Brazil. FAPESP, the São Paulo Research Foundation, conducted a survey to demonstrate the impact of this research outside the academic world (page 26). In addition to the themes mentioned above, SÃO
Tall trees and a small particle
CHIEF
It is highly unlikely that you have ever heard of the Tumucumaque Mountains National Park. Located in the states of Amapá and Pará at the northern border of Brazil, it is the largest national park in the country and the largest tropical forest in the world. This uninhabited tropical region has experienced the least human activity, making it an ideal location for scientific research. The exceptional park is also home to some of the tallest Brazilian trees. In the central Amazon, trees rarely surpass 60 meters; at Tumucumaque Park, however, specimens more than 80 meters tall have been sighted. These extremely tall trees represent a scientific enigma. Until the turn of the century, trees of this height were unknown in tropical regions. It was believed that hydrating and feeding a tree of these dimensions demanded a milder climate. Pesquisa FAPESP’s team accompanied an expedition to Amapá that aimed to understand the Amazon forest’s physiological reactions to climate change (page 6).
papers produced by authors based in scientific institutions in São Paulo highlight themes such as tropical diseases and ultraprocessed food.
The idea that a diet involving a high degree of processed food contributes to weight gain was presented by a Brazilian researcher in 2009. Carlos Augusto Monteiro’s research group at the University of São Paulo proposed the Nova classification. An interview with Monteiro is available on the Pesquisa FAPESP website in English (revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/).
Methodology is at the heart of the work of sociologist Maria Cecília Minayo (page 20). A socio-historical phenomenon, violence affects health in various ways, explains the FIOCRUZ researcher. In addition to causing deaths and physical trauma, it also causes mental and emotional problems, lowers quality of life, and has consequences on healthcare systems, creating new problems for preventive and curative care.
César (Cesare) Lattes was the most wellknown Brazilian scientist of his time. Using different approaches, Lattes’ work on cosmic rays and with particle accelerators allowed him to prove the existence of the pi-meson (pion), one of the subatomic particles predicted in theory. Instead of pursuing a career abroad, Lattes returned to Brazil after spells in the UK and the US. He used his prestige to support the institutionalization of science in the country. His 100th birthday was celebrated in 2024 (page 34).
Alexandra Ozorio de Almeida | EDITOR IN
3 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
6 An expedition to Amapá, in northern Brazil, sought to measure the stature of giant trees
Front Cover
A researcher observes a Dinizia excelsa tree in a forest in Amapá
PHOTO LÉO RAMOS CHAVES / PESQUISA FAPESP MAGAZINE
Back cover
COOPERATION
16 Researchers from 25 states and abroad will be brought together by the Amazon+10 Initiative to study the rainforest
INTERVIEW
20 Maria Cecília Minayo created methodologies for investigating how violence affects health
INDICATORS
26 Survey results reveal that research from São Paulo informs public policies in several other countries
Above the canopy, a drone reveals that the tree reaches 80 m in height
PHOTO DANIELLE RAMOS / UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
ENVIRONMENT
28 Almost one-third of the native Pampa grassland has been cleared since 1985
VIROLOGY
32 Chikungunya causes organ inflammation and can lead to death
CÉSAR LATTES, 100
34 The physicist carried out experiments with cosmic rays and studied the use of accelerators in particle physics
40 The discovery of the pion led to a greater understanding of atomic nucleus cohesion
COMPUTING
44 AI systems can monitor animals crossing highways
SUSTAINABILITY
46 Brazil aims to play a leading role in the production of renewable aviation fuel
ENERGY
50 The new generation of perovskite solar cells could be more efficient
NEW MATERIALS
55 Artificial human tissues offer an alternative to testing drugs and cosmetics on animals
LINGUISTICS
58 Research highlights the diversity of languages and linguistic prejudice in Brazil
ARCHAEOLOGY
64 Ancient people made engravings alongside dinosaur footprints
THE MYSTERIES OF
GIANT AMAZONIAN TREES
In Amapá, the rainforest reaches heights unexpected of a neotropical zone and has yet to be explained
(TEXT)
If you take a hike through the Tumucumaque Mountains National Park (PNMT), part of the Amazon rainforest in the northern Brazilian state of Amapá, you will very quickly notice the scaled red walls that stretch upward into the canopy as far as the eye can see, reaching heights of between 60 and 80 meters (m)—the same height as an 18-story building. These walls are actually the trunks of Dinizia excelsa, the largest tree species in the Amazon, known locally as the angelim-vermelho. There are other tall tree species in the region—such as the piquiá (Caryocar villosum), masaranduba (Manilkara huberi), and fine-leaf wadara (Couratari guyanensis)—but it is rare for them to grow to heights above 60 m.
Until approximately a decade ago, it was not believed that trees of such heights existed in the tropics. The tallest known trees in the world, reaching 115 m, are the redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) of California, USA. On the basis of the long history of research on these colossal plants, a theory emerged that only certain temperate regions with a Mediterranean climate, where it does not become too hot and there is no severe dry season, can support such tall trees.
Like other large trees in Australia and Chile, the Californian redwood lives in very particular conditions near the sea, where temperature fluctuations are small and cool ocean air forms fog, which is critical for preventing water stress during the dry season. “These trees are able to hydrate themselves through their leaves and branches, not relying so heavily on their roots,” explains Rafael Oliveira, a biologist from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). “This promotes
upward growth.” Temperature is also important because heat induces greater respiration, which leads to carbon loss and restricts growth.
“What we have is a lack of long-term knowledge about the existence of giant trees in the Neotropics. Until around the 2000s, they had been found only in Borneo, Malaysia, and a few years ago in the Amazon,” he says. Mysteriously, Amazonian conditions are very different from those in temperate regions. “The fact that we now know there are giant trees there adds a new piece to the puzzle.”
At the end of October, a team from Pesquisa FAPESP accompanied an expedition to Amapá, led by biologist Paulo Bittencourt of the University of Exeter, UK. The objective of the trip was to lay the foundations for a long-term study, with monthly monitoring of permanent plots of land covering an area of 30 to 50 hectares (ha). The researchers also plan to install a basic meteorological station to measure temperature, humidity, air pressure, precipitation, wind direction and speed, and luminosity, as well as other equipment to monitor soil humidity and certain aspects of tree physiology and growth. “Only by monitoring them year on year is it possible to know how quickly they grow,” explains the biologist.
He is part of a project led by the British ecologist Lucy Rowland that aims to shed light on the Amazon rainforest’s physiological reactions to climate change. In addition to the two scientists, the team was supported by biologist Danielle Ramos of the University of Exeter and the knowledge of local guides, forest engineer Christoph Jaster, who has been director of the PNMT for 20 years, and a drone that flew through the few
The massive trunk of Dinizia excelsa is similar to a wall in the forest
Maria Guimarães
and Léo Ramos Chaves (PHOTOS), FROM AMAPÁ | Alexandre Affonso (INFOGRAPHICS)
available clearings to rise above the canopy and locate the highest treetops.
As park manager, Jaster wants to draw public attention to the unique forest of which he is so proud. “Itatiaia National Park has the Agulhas Negras peak, Tijuca National Park has Mount Corcovado, Iguaçu National Park has the waterfalls—I have been looking for a landmark,” he says. It was only in 2016, during a biodiversity monitoring project that began in 2014, that botanist Rafaela Forzza, at the time working at the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (JBRJ), highlighted the exceptional height of the trees in Tumucumaque. “I keep the device for measuring tree heights with me at all times, constantly looking for the tallest one,” she says, revealing her dream of finding one that is 90 m tall. “The images captured by the drone, which show us the tallest trees on the horizon, can help us to make important findings.”
“The trees we found in Tumucumaque are twice the typical height of the rest of the Amazon, where the forest canopy is approximately 20 m high and even the very tallest trees reach a maximum of approximately 40 meters,” explains Bittencourt. One of the objectives of the expedition was to verify whether the giants that he and Oliveira spotted on a quick trip to the PNMT to install physiological monitoring equipment on a tree in 2019 were an exception.
The answer was no. Near the park’s base, the team found several such trees on a short after-
noon hike. At one point, they found 15 angelimvermelhos bunched together that seemed to stretch into the sky after passing through the forest canopy, which is 30 to 40 m above the ground. On another day, Jaster recommended that the team explore an area 20 kilometers (km) along the Amapari River, where they found trees of the same scale (see infographic on Page 15). “It doesn’t make sense, they’re too big,” repeated Bittencourt, trying to see through the ceiling formed by the canopies. In four days of work, the group
Navigating the rapids of the Amapari River requires the expertise of proeiros (below)
recorded more than 80 oversized trees, the majority of which (56) were angelim-vermelhos.
Even more striking was the discrepancy in biomass—the total weight of trees—compared with that of other forests. While the trees near Manaus studied by the AmazonFACE project do not usually exceed 30 m in height and 70 centimeters (cm) in diameter, those in Tumucumaque often surpass 70 meters in height and reach 2.5 m in diameter. A fallen branch from an angelim-vermelho can easily be confused with a fallen tree.
In the Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve in Borneo, where Bittencourt is involved in another research project, the giant trees reach heights similar to those found in the PNMT but do not exceed 1.5 m in diameter. They are also less dense than Amazonian wood. “In Amapá, we potentially have the highest biomass density in the tropics,” estimates Bittencourt on the basis of preliminary data. The gigantism appears to be stimulated by conditions that include a stable climate, with average temperatures between 23 degrees Celsius (°C) and 26 °C, and annual precipitation above 2,300 millimeters (mm). Areas with a lower incidence of strong winds and lightning, both of which are known to cause damage to trees, also seem to be more favorable. “Our region, especially the Jari valley, has moderately high relief, and the areas with giant trees are generally protected from strong winds by large hills,” explains Robson Borges de Lima, a forest engineer from the State University of Amapá (UEAP).
Since 2019, Lima has participated in six expeditions to record the tallest trees along the Jari River, which marks the border between Amapá and its neighboring state of Pará.
The record holder, an angelimvermelho measuring 88.5 m, is in Pará. “We traveled up the river for five days to reach the camp, from where we traveled 20 km into the forest,” he says. Lima is part of a project investigating the ecological factors that lead to the growth of giant trees, led by forest engineers Diego Armando Silva of the Federal Institute of Amapá (IFAP) and Eric Gorgens of the Federal University of Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri (UFVJM) in Minas Gerais.
The group identified the record-breaking tree, surrounded by seven others, each taller than 80 m, by flying planes equipped with Lidar technology (light detection and ranging) over almost 900 areas measuring 375 hectares each, according to an article published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment in 2019, of which Gorgens was the lead author. It is situ-
TUMUCUMAQUE
The biomass of the forest is greater than that of other tropical forests
m
m
m
m
Angelim-vermelhos (Dinizia excelsa) easily exceed 60 m, with their lowest branches usually 20 m above the ground
Diameters between 50 cm and 250 cm
The diameter of an angelim-vermelho is measured above the protrusions that help support it
AMAZONFACE
The forest surrounding Manaus is the most studied, since it is home to the Brazilian National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA)
In this central region of the Amazon, angelim-vermelhos do not exceed 40 m in height
ated 360 km from the Atlantic Ocean, far from the maritime influence that would enable its existence according to the theory that giant trees grow only in temperate climates. The study led from a project that created a tree biomass map of the Amazon based on 901 flights by Lidarequipped planes, published in the journal Scientific Data in September by agronomist Jean Ometto of the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in partnership with Gorgens and others, and intended to serve as a reference for researchers (see infographic on page 12).
In partnership with dozens of researchers from several Brazilian and international institutions, Lima analyzed data from more than 100,000 young trees with a diameter greater than 10 cm and mature trees greater than 70 cm in 65 areas of the Amazon. According to data published in Global Change Biology in September, the western Amazon is home to a greater diversity of tree species, but the Guiana Shield (a geological formation in the northern Amazon, including Amapá) has a greater variety of large trees.
Lidar data collected at the ground level can shed light on the architecture of trees and offer insight into how they react to environmental changes. “The technique is revolutionizing the ways we can measure the weight, structure, and carbon content of trees,” says Brazilian forest engineer Matheus Nunes of the University of Maryland, USA. Understanding the architecture of giant trees would be fundamental to explaining their size, argues Nunes, who is coauthor of the article that identified the record-breaking tree in Pará. “We can measure the distance be-
tween the base of the trunk and the tips of the branches, estimating the distance that water and nutrients travel; maybe taller trees need to have relatively short branches to reduce this distance,” he speculates.
This is not a guess made in a vacuum— Nunes has plenty of experience on which to base his hypotheses. In an article published in Nature Communications in December, for example, he described what happens to the architecture of trees during deforestation. He used Lidar on the ground in areas permanently monitored by the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (PDBFF) near Manaus, managed by the Brazilian National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) for 40 years. “I compared the tallest trees on the edges of the forest fragments, which were already present and survived fragmentation, with similar trees inside the plots,” he explained.
Nunes observed that the trees that survived at the fragment edges became more symmetrical—and thus more resistant to the wind—with smaller paths to be taken within the branches. “These are probably acclimatization mechanisms that reduce the risk of embolism,” he proposes. Embolisms occur when air enters the conductive vessels inside a tree’s trunk due to water stress, preventing the transport of water to the branches. Nunes suggests that something similar happens with trees that stand out above the forest canopy.
Even so, approximately 10% of the surviving trees on the fragment edges are significantly smaller than would be expected for their trunk diameter, indicating that they may have been broken by the wind. “This leads to a one-third reduction in volume,” he says. Although some trees grow larger, approximately 3 tons of carbon per ha are returned to the atmosphere as a result of the reduction in trees, which is equivalent to the effect of an extreme drought. “This is the first time that the connection between fragmentation, tree architecture, and carbon stock has been shown.”
Nunes recently joined the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI), a project run by NASA and the University of Maryland that aims to map the world's forests and their carbon dynamics. The Lidar device, in this case, is further away, orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station. The researcher's objective is to help answer ecological questions that could benefit from the mountains of data being constantly generated, and he is interested in applying this resource to the investigation of giant trees.
In 2015, Nunes was doing fieldwork in Borneo for his PhD when his advisor, ecologist David
KABILI-SEPILOK
The forest in Borneo, Malaysia, reaches the same heights as Tumucumaque. In other areas of the country, there are even taller trees
Diameters are rarely above 150 cm
A 100-meter-tall specimen of Shorea faguetiana has a narrower trunk than the angelim-vermelhos
BIOMASS CHAMPION
Considering weight and biodiversity, the Guiana Shield is the home of giants
Measurements taken via Lidar (light detection and ranging) across the Amazon rainforest show that the Guiana Shield has the greatest biomass (and consequently, the highest carbon stock), measured in tons per hectare
OMETTO, J. ET AL SCIENTIFIC DATA. 2023
Data from more than 100,000 trees indicate that Amapá has the greatest species diversity of large trees
SOURCE LIMA, A. R. B. ET AL GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY. 2023
Coomes of the University of Cambridge, UK, told him that, using Lidar, he had identified larger than expected trees in the region, measuring approximately 90 m. The Brazilian, who was near the area in question, went to check the measurements with a laser meter, confirming the surprising sizes. “I had never worked with tree heights before,” he recalls, but the experience sparked a desire to become involved in research into the giant flora.
Bittencourt, the PNMT expedition leader, is also currently studying Borneo's enormous trees as part of the project led by Rowland. According to an article published in New Phytologist in 2022, the hydraulic characteristics help explain the distribution and functioning of giant species. In areas with sandy soils that are unable to retain moisture, they are shorter and show evidence of resource conservation strategies, with short, narrow vessels that provide lower hydraulic efficiency. The xylem, through which water and nutrients flow, is resistant to air entry, preventing embolism. For trees from the dipterocarp family, such as Shorea faguetiana, to exceed 70 m in height, a robust hydraulic system is needed. By analyzing the topographic gradient of the Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve, Bittencourt’s group reported that the tallest trees exist only where water in the soil is unrestricted and nutrients are abundant.
Those that grow in the most favorable areas, however, are more susceptible to changes in soil moisture; Oliveira and Bittencourt wrote a 2021 article in New Phytologist. This theory was corroborated by another article published by Rowland's group in the journal Functional Ecology in 2022, which also indicated that forests on more fertile ground are less resistant. In poor soils, photosynthesis and respiration are limited as a way of making more efficient use of the nutrients available. In richer soils, the hydraulic system is more resilient but less resistant. “It’s as if each type of tree was designed by a different engineer,” says Bittencourt in reference to how the water transport and photosynthesis systems vary depending on the conditions. “Each one solved the problem in their own specific way.” He notes that some are more vulnerable, with vessels that cannot resist air entry during droughts, while others can—but it is not yet known how. The next step is to determine whether the strategies and varieties of resources are similar in the Amazon Basin, where there are distinct wet and dry seasons.
“The Amazon is very different from Southeast Asia,” points out Bittencourt. “The main factor is the soil, which is much older and of lower qual-
500 km
AMAZONAS Manaus
Belém
Macapá
ACRE
PARÁ
RONDÔNIA
AMAPÁ
RORAIMA
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500 km
ity, leading the trees to evolve different survival strategies than the Malaysian plants.” In Tumucumaque, Amapá, there is no range of substrate types to compare, but he expects to find a different water transport system, faster growth, and greater longevity than in the rest of the Amazon. “For a tree to become a giant, it has to grow a lot and for a long time.”
He also wants to investigate how the tree's structure varies from the ground to the top, a gradient along which it faces very different physical and physiological challenges. “There can be more than 30 meters between one branch and another,” he highlights. One way that trees might address these differences involves anatomical structures known as pit membranes, which af-
fect the passage of water and air between vessels. The properties of these membranes determine a plant's ability to resist embolism, although the mechanism is not yet known. The problem is seeing them, since their size changes when a sample of the trunk is cut—not to mention the difficulty of pruning branches 80 meters above the ground. Another mystery is how many trees resist wind, which is often lethal at certain heights.
“Redwoods have a regulatory valve mechanism that prevents the spread of embolisms.” Bittencourt likes to use the analogy of drinking through a straw to explain the process. If air enters the bottom of the straw, the mouth does not receive much of the drink. “Imagine a 90 m long straw,” he says. “The force required for this column of water to reach the leaves of these trees is practically a physical impossibility,” he emphasizes.
The feat is evidently possible, however. Some trees have determined how to do so and stretch out above their neighbors, owing to microscopic anatomical structures that pull the water up like a rope using negative pressure in relation to the external atmosphere. “Each tree can transport up to 500 liters of water from the soil to the atmosphere per day,” highlights Bittencourt. Un-
Data collection: a climber scaling a tree; Bittencourt and Oliveira measuring trees; and a drone used to search for the tallest canopies
derstanding exactly how it works could help overcome the challenges faced by forests due to climate change. In other parts of the Amazon, previous experiments created an artificial drought and showed that the largest trees are the first to succumb.
Giant Amazonian trees absorb a large amount of carbon: it is estimated that each one removes 150 tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere over the course of its lifetime. In the Carajás National Forest in the state of Pará, trunks more than 1 m in diameter represent less than 1% of all trees, but they contain a third of the forest’s carbon stock, according to a 2023 book edited by Tereza Cristina Giannini, an ecologist from the Vale Technological Institute. The record holder in the region is Erisma uncinatum, which reaches 30 m in height with a trunk diameter of approximately 2 m. Bittencourt adds that, in the tropics, trees with a diameter of more than 60 cm account for less than 4% of all forests, but they hold almost half of the carbon stored above the ground in these regions.
The death of these plants could therefore have dire consequences for the atmosphere, making it more difficult to achieve the world’s global warming targets. For this reason and because there are mechanisms at work that are yet to be understood, scientists emphasize the importance of protecting the Guiana Shield. Being in a remote region far from the agricultural frontier is an advantage. Nature reserves such as the PNMT are fundamental. In addition to protecting the forest and serving as a location for scientific research, they also provide educational and economic benefits for the region’s inhabitants.
Research results have clearly revealed that there is no universal reaction to environmental factors in rainforests, especially given that temperature increases and humidity decreases already occur. The most studied area of the Amazon Basin is highly resistant to drought, according to an article published in Nature in April by ecologist Julia Valentim Tavares, a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden. Oliveira and Bittencourt were both coauthors. The area in question is the central-eastern Amazon, near the Tapajós River, where the influence of events such as El Niño may have led to the evolution of physiological strategies linked to hydraulic resilience. The Nature article warns of the risk of underestimating the effects of climate change by assuming that what is true for the Tapajós region is true for the entire Amazon. n
Scanning the QR code to see more images from the expedition
Dinizia excelsa as a seedling and a giant: no specimens of intermediate size were found
TRAVEL ITINERARY
Tumucumaque Mountain National Park (PNMT) is isolated from urban areas, leaving the forest unaltered by human activity
DAY 1, 27/10
Arrival in Macapá
The capital of Amapá is situated on the Equator, on the banks of the Amazon River
DAY 2
Departure from Macapá
The Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) base at the PNMT is in Serra do Navio, a municipality of approximately 5,000 inhabitants. It is the last point with cell phone signal
DAY 3
Departure from Serra do Navio
With the Amapari River at a low water level due to drought, the helmsmen and the cook went alone in two bass boats with the cargo. The boats needed to travel light and navigate carefully.
5 6 1
The other members of the expedition traveled by car until it was no longer possible
Departure from Sete Ilhas
The whole group–totaling 13 people–boarded the boats with our cargo, which included food and a stove. At one point along the river, one of the boats got stuck and had to be pushed loose by its passengers
We arrived at the Jupará base after nightfall. It was a great relief to set up the hammocks where we would all sleep
DAY 4
Plot 1
In the area surrounding the base, the team identified eight enormous angelim–vermelhos, as well as other species. A prototype physiological monitor installed on a 60 m angelim-vermelho in 2019 was still available, but most of the data were corrupted
Even after traveling a long distance upriver, the forest remains gigantic
DAY 5
Plot 2
Following the same trail as the previous day, the researchers measured and marked the locations of nine more angelim-vermelhos
Plot 3
Surprisingly, 17 angelimvermelhos were found within a radius of 150 m and on sloping terrain
DAY 6
In search of the record holder
Bittencourt's objective was to find the tallest tree ever seen by Jaster; a measurement taken by drone indicated that it was 80 m tall. The stature of the forest at this remote location made it clear that the gigantism near the park base was not an exception in the region but rather the norm 1 2 3 4
Serra do Navio
River
LIFE BELOW THE FOREST CANOPY
The Amazon+10 Initiative unites researchers from 25 Brazilian states and abroad to raise awareness of the region's social and biological diversity
Fabrício Marques
Researchers from several Brazilian states and European countries will immerse themselves in the Amazon over the next three years to collect data on vegetation and climate, samples of biological and mineral material, and indigenous and traditional cultural pieces from the Amazon region in a concentrated effort to increase knowledge of the biological and social diversity in the planet's largest rainforest. A call for proposals, open until April 29, will invest approximately R$96 million to fund the organizational and logistical costs of scientific expeditions in areas of the Amazon that are largely unknown and uncharted by researchers.
This call for proposals is the second launched by the Amazon+10 Initiative, which started as a joint effort by the State Funding Agencies (FAPs) for the nine states in the Amazon region and FAPESP (hence the +10). It has since expanded
A child collects water at a community reservoir on the Transacreana highway in Acre: research impacting the region's development
to comprise funding agencies from 25 Brazilian states. The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the federal government's main state funding agency, will invest nearly R$30 million in the call for proposals. Funding agencies from countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland will contribute R$37 million, with 19 FAPs investing R$29.2 million. The expeditions will be led by multidisciplinary teams coordinated by researchers from at least two Amazonian states. Indigenous peoples and quilombolas must be involved as representatives of the holders of the traditional knowledge studied during the expeditions.
Amazon+10 was launched in 2021 and was announced in Glasgow, Scotland, during the 26 th United Nations Climate Change Conference in response to the São Paulo state government's willingness to invest funds to support research projects in the Amazon at a time when institutions in the region suffered from a lack of project and grant funding. The then-Secretary of Economic Development, Science, and Technology for the State of São Paulo, Patrícia Ellen, who oversaw the National Council of Secretaries for Science, Technology, and Innovation (CONSECTI), approached FAPESP regarding the opportunity to organize this effort. FAPESP, which in recent decades has invested over R$500 million in projects related to the Amazon, led by researchers from São Paulo, suggested the creation of research networks with institutions from various states in the Amazon region.
In December 2021, FAPESP, in partnership with CONSECTI, drafted a proposal to create
Amazon+10 and presented it at a meeting held by the National Council of State Funding Agencies (CONFAP) in Foz do Iguaçu. The proposal was enthusiastically received and unanimously approved. FAPESP had already proposed bilateral research funding agreements to CONFAP, but this was the first coordinated research funding initiative involving several FAPs.
We arrived at a model that was established in the first call for proposals to support collaborative projects with researchers from at least three states, one of which must be within the Amazon region. The projects are divided into three main areas of interest: the Amazon region, the people who live in the rainforest and the region's cities, and strengthening sustainable production chains. “The model was well received, and we ultimately got 20 FAPs to join in during the first call for proposals, each funding researchers in their state,” explains Odir Dellagostin, president of CONFAP, who coordinated the initiative with CONSECTI. He highlights that this is the first time that so many state agencies have worked together. “The FAPs have quite a bit of experience with bilateral cooperation, including with international institutions, but never with several states at the same time,” he notes. The CNPq participated in the first call for proposals by supplementing funds invested by states that lacked sufficient resources to fund all approved projects, such as Acre, Amapá, and Pará.
Rafael Andery, Executive Secretary of the Amazon+10 Initiative, says that inspiration for the framework used in the first call for proposals came from the Belmont Forum, a group comprising 27 funding institutions, including FAPESP, from several countries that jointly funds research projects on environmental change. One concern was ensuring that the projects addressed issues that impact society in Amazonian states. “One condition we established was that the projects should seek to impact development in the region,” explains Marcel Botelho, director of the Pará State Funding Agency (FAPESPA). Botelho is a member of the initiative's executive board along with Chief Executive Officer of the FAPESP Executive Board Carlos Américo Pacheco and President of the State Funding Agency of Amazonas (FAPEAM) Márcia Perales.
Selling fish at a market in Parintins, Amazonas: knowledge of natural resources can generate wealth
In response to research based on satellite images depicting the Amazon from above the treetops, Botelho says, “We believe it is vital to look below the forest canopy, which is where the Amazonians live.” Scientific expeditions will
also focus on the economic impact of the study's findings. “Today, what we know of the Amazon is what occurs on the banks of rivers and along the roads. We know of, at most, 300 fish species in the Amazon, but that is probably only 10% of what exists. Expanding this knowledge could help generate wealth for the region,” he notes.
The first call for proposals, which was open between July and August 2022, surprised us with the number of projects submitted, 152 in total. Thirtynine projects were selected that totaled almost R$42 million in investments and covered topics such as biodiversity, climate change, bioeconomy, land use, and improving living conditions in the Amazon region. Of this total, FAPESP invested R$14.6 million in 20 projects involving researchers from the state of São Paulo. The Amazonas and Pará agencies invested R$7.1 million and R$5.3 million, respectively, during the call for proposals, followed by the Rio de Janeiro State Funding Agency (FAPERJ) with R$5.2 million. “The call had three objectives that were successfully met,” says Andery. “We managed to inject emergency funds into the Amazonian science and technology network during a time of acute shortage, we mapped the research networks that existed and, despite the incredibly short deadlines for submitting proposals, we also helped form some new networks.”
Biologist Carlos Alfredo Joly of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), who led scientific analyses of the initiative's projects funded by FAPESP, says that groups already active in the
region were included in the first call for proposals. “As there was little time to submit proposals, teams with experience researching the Amazon found it easier to participate,” he explains. Some projects, notes Joly, are the offspring of another major research effort in the region: the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazônia (LBA) created in 1998.
Açaí
One example is a project focusing on the environmental consequences of the rise in aquaculture in the region compared with the carbon footprint of other types of animal production. The São Paulo-based project coordinator is agronomist Jean Ometto from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), who participated in the LBA. There are also a handful of projects in the field of public health and virology. One of the projects, which features researchers from nine states, seeks to map the diversity of protozoa, viruses, and bacteria and analyze the possible effects of environmental degradation and changes in land use patterns on the reproductive cycles of these pathogens. Another seeks to form a network of researchers to assess how deforestation around the BR-319 highway in Amazonas and mining in the Carajás region in the state of Pará may influence the spread of emerging viruses.
Studies on the impact of climate change include projects such as one focused on the possibility of using herpetofauna (turtles and other reptiles and amphibians) from the Amazon region as benchmarks for how biodiversity responds to temperature changes. Eight projects focus on studying the value chains of products gen
Flooding of the Rio Negro in a rural area of Manaus, Amazonas: Traditionally, data collection on the Amazon has concentrated on roadsides and waterways
orchards in inland Pará: different fruits from the rainforest can boost the bioeconomy
erated from the rainforest, including fish such as the pirarucu and fruit such as açaí and Brazil nuts. “None of these products, taken in isolation, seems to be strong enough to boost the bioeconomy in the Amazon, but when we see a set of eight initiatives with converging objectives, the chances increase that major contributions will emerge,” says Joly, who stresses the need to invest in training for research groups to ensure that data are collected in a standardized manner and organized properly.
With the return of investments in Brazilian science and technology, in 2023, the Amazon+10 Initiative managed to attract new sources of funding and expanded its governance. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the United Kingdom's largest funding agency, made £4 million available for calls for scientific expeditions. “It is a new opportunity for British researchers to work in partnership with their peers in Brazil, to research areas that are not very well known in the Amazon, and to work in solidarity with traditional communities and Indigenous peoples,” says Rossa Commane, Science and Innovation Director for Latin America at the British Embassy in Brazil, in a conversation with FAPESP. A call for proposals to fund workshops by Brazilian and UK researchers on topics covered by the Amazon+10 Initiative, funded by the UK government, was open between November 2023 and January 2024 and should release its results soon. Institutions such as the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Bavarian Academic Center for Latin America (BAYLAT) also invested in the new call for proposals.
The CNPq also played a leading role. “We have a history of research on the Amazon, and our national scope could be useful in driving the initiative forward,” says physicist Ricardo Galvão, president of the CNPq. “Additionally, we are responsible for authorizing foreign scientists’ participation in research in Brazil, which will be necessary during the expeditions.”
Other calls for proposals are due to be issued later this year. One such call will involve a transfer program that encourages doctors to study at research institutions in the Amazon region. “There's no point in funding studies on the Amazon without training the researchers who will remain in the region and continue to expand knowledge about the rainforest's social and biological diversity,” says Carlos Joly. “Previous programs, such as the LBA, were not concerned with this, and the researchers ended up returning to their home states when their projects concluded.” Another idea is to invest in expanding the region's scientific infrastructure. “If we want to retain researchers, we need to provide them with laboratories where they can work,” says Odir Dellagostin. The initiative should also generate spin-offs. “We already have working groups analyzing the possibility of creating a similar program focused on the Caatinga (semiarid scrublands), a biome with the potential to generate networks among researchers from the Northeast and colleagues from other states,” says CONFAP's president. n
A turtle on Bananal Island, Tocantins: studies on the effects of climate change on biodiversity
A SOCIOLOGICAL LOOK AT HEALTH
FIOCRUZ researcher emeritus created methodologies for investigating how violence affects the lives of specific groups, such as elderly individuals and police officers
Christina Queiroz | PHOTO BY Ana Carolina Fernandes
Maria Cecília de Souza Minayo is a sociologist who works on several fronts. With more than 60 years of experience as a teacher and three decades of experience as a researcher, she helped introduce the social sciences into medical and public health studies in Brazil. She observed specific groups, such as police officers and elderly individuals, and created methodologies for investigating how different types of violence impact people’s health, thus pushing the debate beyond public security. Over the course of her academic career, Minayo led more than 40 studies on the relationship between violence and health, as well as supervising approximately 80 postgraduate students studying for their master’s degrees, PhDs, or are postdocs.
Currently a professor emeritus at the National School of Public Health of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (ENSP-FIOCRUZ), Minayo, was the chair of the committee that formulated the Brazilian Ministry of Health’s National Policy for Reducing Morbidity and Mortality from Violence and Accidents in the 1990s. The policy outlines protocols for different types of violence that affect health services, such as road traffic accidents and domestic attacks against women and children. Her most recent work, yet to be published, is a INTERVIEW Maria Cecília Minayo
survey of the living conditions of elderly people incarcerated in male and female prison systems in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
At 86 years of age, Minayo continues to teach, supervise students, and lead research. She is married to a chemist and sociologist Carlos Minayo, with whom she has two daughters and four grandchildren, and she was recently awarded the International Prize from The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). The following interview was conducted in her apartment in Aterro do Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro.
What is your strongest memory of your childhood?
I was born in 1938 in a small village called Caxambu, which is located in the interior of Minas Gerais. I started school at the age of 7, by which point my mother had already taught me how to read. Dona Ruth, my teacher, taught the first, second, and third years of education all together as one class. I have great respect and gratitude for Dona Ruth because all of the children in that village knew how to read, write, and do math due to her. It was extremely important to me that I received a quality basic education in my early life. However, rural schools teach only children until the third year, and most families in villages typically do not encourage
FIELD OF EXPERTISE Sociology
INSTITUTION
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ)
EDUCATIONAL
BACKGROUND
Bachelor’s degree in sociology from Queens College, City University of New York (1979); master’s degree in social anthropology from the National Museum at UFRJ (1985), and PhD in public health from FIOCRUZ (1989)
AGE 86
their children to continue with their studies. Fortunately, my parents were different. My mother was a postal worker, and my father was a versatile and intelligent salesman as well as a well-known local politician. They had a vision of what the future should be like for women, so they enrolled my younger sister and me in a school called Nossa Senhora das Dores in the city of Itabira. I was 9-years-old, and she was 8.
Did you travel all the way to Itabira every day?
From my house to the school, it was a nine-hour journey because we had to travel on horseback or in a cart and then take a train. Currently, however, you can get there in an hour and a half by car. Because it was so difficult to get there and back, we boarded at the school, only returning home twice a year, for the holidays. I quickly became one of the best students in my class and eventually did my teacher training at the same school. This was a common route for women seeking a profession to take at that time. I finished my studies in 1955 at the age of 17, and became a teacher at the same school. Today, this school is a high school.
Why did you move to Rio de Janeiro?
I worked as a teacher at the school in Itabira for 10 years, until 1965. The Catholic group that owned that school had another school in Rio de Janeiro, and I was invited to teach there. At the end of the 1950s, owing to the changes to the Church proposed by Pope John XXIII [1881–1963], the Instituto Superior de Pastoral Católica [ISPAC] was created in Rio de Janeiro. The institution offered courses in philosophy, theology, sociology, ethics, and morality and was inspired by the papal encyclicals of Pope John XXIII, which called on Catholics to take action against poverty and misery. I enrolled at the institute, and the classes completely altered my perspective. I began questioning the fact that the group I worked for served only middle-class students and did not seem to acknowledge the poverty surrounding us.
What changed for you after this experience?
My parents had very few books at home, but they did subscribe to a newsletter called São Geraldo, which discussed the issue of poverty and reported on the suf-
fering of people in Africa. As an avid reader, this newsletter compelled me to dream. From a young age, I wanted to become a missionary. Although the coursework I studied at the Instituto Superior de Pastoral Católica opened my mind, I did not deny Catholicism nor did I lose my faith. However, I did begin to question the relatively easy life of the group of teachers who worked at the institution, a group that included me. In the late 1960s, I became involved in various social movements. While I was teaching popular education classes at the school, I also began working in the Penha favela (slum), and I took students and colleagues to see what life was like in the slums and shantytowns outside of the city. I started to do the same in other communities in Rio, such as the Guaporé housing complex in the north of the city.
Was that when you met your husband?
Yes. Carlos came to Brazil from Spain in the late 1960s to head the Chemistry Department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro [PUC-Rio]. When he saw the level of poverty in Rio de Janeiro, he, too, decided to become involved in social work. At that time, several popular education courses in Brazil
were taught in informal spaces outside of the universities. In mid-1969, while working in Guaporé, I met Carlos. He told me he was there because of the negative experience he and three of his friends had in the Rocinha favela (slum). They were living in the community so they could teach there, but with Brazil under the rule of a dictatorship, the police began causing them much trouble. Eventually, they decided that they could not stay in Rocinha, so they moved somewhere less conspicuous and slightly more under the radar. However, as the months passed, the level of repression became heavier, and one of the military’s main targets was popular educators. Many were arrested.
How did military dictatorship [1964–1985] impact your life?
My research is not about public security. I seek to understand how violence impacts the health of children, women, and elderly individuals
At the Catholic school where I taught, there was a child whose father was a federal police officer. He liked me , but he did not know that I was also working in popular education. One day, when I arrived at school, he was there to pick up his daughter, so I asked to speak to him. Being totally naïve, I told him that several of my colleagues involved in popular education were being arrested, and I asked for his advice. He asked me for their names, so I mentioned two people. At that point, he advised me to stay away from them, calling them ‘dangerous.’ He then told me I should go into hiding before they arrested me, too. I was terrified and decided to do as he suggested, but I could not go to my parents’ house in Minas Gerais because I did not want to put them at risk.
What did you do?
A friend of mine was married to one of the sons of the publisher José Olympio [1902–1990]. She also worked in popular education. I called her and explained my situation. She told me that she felt like she was being followed at all times. She lived in a large house in Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas and invited me to stay with her family for a while. I moved in with her and decided to ask the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops [CNBB] for assistance to free my friends who had been imprisoned. However, the political situation worsened. I soon left the school where I was teaching and moved to Nova Iguaçu in Baixada Fluminense, where a bishop named Dom Adriano Hipólito
[1918–1996] protected people working in popular education who were being persecuted by the authorities. A friend from the school accompanied me on this adventure, and we stayed there for a while under the protection of the bishop, each of us receiving minimum wage to work as part of a collective movement created by students and intellectuals to educate people in that vulnerable region.
How did you end up going to university?
In 1974, I enrolled in a sociology course at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro [UFRJ]. Because of the dictatorship, it was an environment where one always had to talk in code because one never knew what other teachers and students were thinking. Despite this, I learned so much. I received good grades in every discipline and helped my friends read complex books, such as works by the German philosopher Karl Marx [1818–1883].
Were you already married at that time?
No. In 1971, Carlos went back to Spain to take care of his mother, who was very ill and died soon after his arrival. He had planned to come back to Brazil, but his friends warned him not to given the fact that if he returned, there was a risk that he would be arrested. One of our peers who was in prison at the time had been interrogated and pressured into giving names, and he told them about Carlos because he knew that Carlos was out of the country. However, as a result, Carlos was in the military’s sights. Around this same time, a lawyer who defended political prisoners warned me that my name was also being mentioned in interrogations. That was when I decided to leave the country and meet up with Carlos, even though I had not finished my degree. We already had a close relationship, and in 1976, we were married in New York. We have now been married for 48 years.
What was life in exile like?
There were several renowned Brazilianists in New York who supported Brazilians. One of them was historian and anthropologist Ralph Della Cava of Queens College at City University of New York. He managed to get me a place on a course at the college. At that time, there was a group based in France, composed of intellectuals and members
Although administrations have been modernized, the police continue to follow the same rules of command and discipline
a community center in Rocinha. I also started my academic career. Carlos was rehired by PUC-Rio two years after we returned, and he also began teaching at Fundação Getulio Vargas [FGV] and was later invited to work at FIOCRUZ.
What was the topic of your master’s degree?
My dissertation was in social anthropology at the National Museum, UFRJ, between 1981 and 1985. My advisor was Victor Vincent Valla [1937–2009], an educator with a PhD in history. I studied the living conditions of workers in the iron ore mining industry in Itabira. After defending my thesis, I started teaching at PUC-Rio and joined a research team that was investigating different situations of poverty that existed in Brazil. The project was funded by Brazil’s Ministry of Planning. For three years, we conducted fieldwork in five poor areas of Rio de Janeiro, including the Rocinha and Roquete Pinto favelas, the latter of which is built on stilts. I finished my master’s degree and began my PhD studies at FIOCRUZ the same year.
of the Catholic Church, that was financially supporting people exiled in various parts of the world. This group was chaired by the pedagogue and educator Paulo Freire [1921–1997], who was exiled in Paris. My husband and I would periodically receive US$500, which allowed us to stay in the US.
And when did you return to Brazil?
In 1979, the Amnesty Law was passed. I was already pregnant with my second daughter. We were so afraid that we were going to be arrested that Carlos spent the entire plane journey back tearing up documents, worried that the police might find something to incriminate him. However, we passed through customs without any problems.
How did you reorganize your life after exile, with two young daughters and no job?
We were in the US for three years, during which time PUC-Rio canceled Carlos’s employment contract. When we came back, I spent 10 years working as a translator and engaging in some activities with the United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF], such as helping create
What was it like for a sociologist arriving at an institution that focuses on research in medicine and public health?
When I joined FIOCRUZ, I felt like I had found my place—somewhere I could combine my concern for social issues with my academic ambitions. During my PhD studies, which I defended in 1989, I created a methodology for qualitative social research in health. The approach looks at subjective aspects of social phenomena and human behavior through methods such as individual and group interviews, document analysis, and observation. I created it on the basis of my theoretical knowledge of the topic but also the various issues I was working on at that time. At FIOCRUZ, for example, I was teaching sociological research classes to postgraduate doctors who were studying for a master’s or doctorate. They were used to studying epidemiological public health in large groups, but they did not know how to look at people from a more individual perspective. In class, I showed them the importance of more individual analyses, and I was faced with questions that forced me to rethink how to explain the impact health problems can have on a person’s social life. On the basis of these experiences, my PhD thesis addressed
theories, methodologies, strategies, techniques, and practical examples for carrying out social research in the field of medicine. It was published as a book titled O desafio do conhecimento [The challenge of knowledge; Hucitec Editora, 1992], which is now in its 15th edition.
And how did violence come to be the topic of your research?
In the 1980s, the renowned Colombian scientist Saul Franco took a position at FIOCRUZ, fleeing the dangers of drug trafficking. Sérgio Arouca [1941–2003] was president of the institution at the time. He and Saul believed that FIOCRUZ needed to establish lines of research investigating how violence affects health, a subject the Colombian researcher had been studying in his home country. Franco has spent more than 40 years researching violence and armed conflict in Colombia and its impacts on people’s lives and health. Violence is a sociohistorical phenomenon and is not, in and of itself, a public health issue or a medical problem. However, it does impact health in various ways. It can cause death, injury, physical trauma, and mental and emotional problems. It reduces people’s quality of life and has consequences for health care systems, raising new problems for preventive and curative medical care. Arouca asked me to lead this line of studies at FIOCRUZ. I accepted the challenge, together with two colleagues who remain my research partners to this day, the epidemiologist Simone Gonçalves de Assis and psychologist Ednilza Ramos de Souza. They are wonderful colleagues, and we support each other in all that we do.
What did you do next?
We began investigating the situation in the municipality of Duque de Caxias, Baixada Fluminense, which had the highest violent death rate in the state of Rio. Since then, very few people have studied violence and health in Brazil. Maria Helena Prado de Mello Jorge, a jurist from USP [University of São Paulo] who specializes in public health, was one of them. Our research in Caxias demonstrated that not only did violence impact people’s health, but the health system itself was often violent. The study served as the basis for the creation of ENSP’s Latin American Center for Violence and Health Studies (CLAVES) in the late 1980s.
Your research on violence and health has played an important role in the formulation of several public policies. Can you tell us about any of them?
In 1998, the Brazilian Ministry of Health invited me to chair the committee formulating the National Policy for Reducing Morbidity and Mortality from Violence and Accidents. The policy establishes protocols for different types of violence that affect health services, but it is a difficult initiative to put into practice. Many professionals do not believe it, do not like it, or do not want to know about it. For example, when an injured child arrives at a health center or a woman comes in with a broken arm, someone needs to identify whether the case is the result of domestic violence. Doctors treat broken arms and other injuries, but rarely do they ask what happened. They need to know this information so they can to refer these individuals to a psychologist, social services, or the police.
Was this policy implemented in the 1990s?
No. It was enacted in 2001, and it took some time for it to be formalized by the government; it was named the National Policy for Reducing Morbidity and Mortality from Violence. The measures re-
lated to accidents were adopted first. It was one of the elements that contributed to the creation of the mobile emergency care service (SAMU) in 2003. Between 2003 and 2016, the policy was developed in greater depth. Training centers were set up in major cities to implement the protocols in every state. These training courses, aimed at health workers nominated by state and municipal health departments, are provided by CLAVES in partnership with the Ministry of Health. The objective is to train professionals to deal properly with this problem. However, since 2016, the process of instituting the policy has stagnated.
What is the status of the policy now?
We are seeing a recovery, but there is still much to do. At the Ministry of Health’s request, we are currently finalizing a review of the policy. We identified the area that best adopted the policy as primary health care, which is the main gateway to Brazil’s public health system [SUS]. According to the ministry’s definition, primary care encompasses a set of actions that aim to promote and protect health; prevent illness; and diagnose, treat, and rehabilitate patients. However, there is still a long way to go before the policy is fully instituted.
Could you tell us about the research bias you have encountered in terms of looking at violence beyond crime?
Violence against the elderly has historically been normalized. Elderly people have always been mistreated in our society
I always say that my research is not about public security. I seek to understand how violence and aggression impact the health of children, adolescents, women, elderly individuals, and workers. This happens both at the individual level, in every person’s life, and in the system as a whole, to the extent that this violence ends up overflowing into health services.
Was it through this approach that you studied police organizations?
Yes. Together with my colleagues, I completed two studies on police officers. The first was with civil police, and the second was with the military police. The study revealed how the police officers suffer from the effects of the violence they experience on a daily basis. Many officers complained that society tends to generalize the police force, assuming that all of them behave badly. They bemoaned the lack of recognition they
receive from society and from within the institution itself.
What challenges do police officers in Brazil face today?
It is a difficult profession worldwide, but the challenges here are even greater than those in the USA or Europe. Police officers receive insufficient training on human rights, and their salaries are very low. The world has modernized, administrations have modernized, but the police force has not. They continue to follow the same rules of command, discipline, and order as they always have. This is especially true of the military police, which is the largest branch. In São Paulo alone, there are more than 90,000 military police officers, and in Rio, there are more than 40,000 people.
How do these problems impact the mental health of these professionals?
Several commanders told me about how lonely they feel because they have to give orders and bear the consequences alone, with no support from the institution. Those in higher positions generally have more mental health problems than officers in the lower ranks. This is because officers in the lower ranks, despite earning less money, generally only follow orders, whereas those in higher positions carry the great weight of having to make decisions that can impact the lives of all police officers. They have to attend the funerals of their colleagues, which affects them greatly, often making them feel like they are confronting their own mortality. Moreover, many refuse to seek psychological care. During my research, several of them told me that they were neither women nor crazy. Often, the only person they listen to is the chaplain. If the only person they listen to is the chaplain, then the solution is for the chaplain to also be a psychologist. I follow this issue closely not only in academia but also within my family. My son-in-law is a shooting instructor and kidnapping specialist with Rio de Janeiro’s civil police. The area of training that police trainees spend the most hours on is shooting. He teaches both civil and military police officers and often says that one of the most important things about being a police officer is learning not to shoot everything you see. But what about the human issues, including their own?
During the dictatorship, I asked a student’s father, who was a police officer, to help me find some friends who had been imprisoned. He told me to go into hiding before they arrested me, too
With so many topics of interest in your work, do you have any time for hobbies? I exercise once a week, and I truly enjoy reading. During the January holidays, for example, I read five works of literary fiction. I am also very close to my daughters. I have one grandson, two granddaughters, and another granddaughter due to arrive any day now. They are the joy of my life, and they are all so intelligent. One of my granddaughters, who is 9-years-old, is writing a book for her soon-to-be-born younger sister.
What are you researching at the moment?
Recently, I have been studying the issue of dependent elderly people, who are the ones who suffer the most in this age group, regardless of social class. Be-
cause they do not have the autonomy required to lead their lives alone, they are frequently forgotten. Having conducted empirical research, I have already observed several cases of people going to work and leaving an elderly person alone, in bed, unclean, and with nothing to eat. I am committed to gathering the data necessary so Brazil can create a specific policy for dependent elderly people. Canada, the US, and Europe have policies of this type that have been implemented by central governments and that coordinate the participation of the local governments, the private sector, and the civil society. In this way, the family is not abandoned and is not left to struggle alone. I am also finalizing a study on elderly people in prisons in Rio de Janeiro. My research partner, FIOCRUZ psychologist Patrícia Constantino, has collected statements from people in every prison in the state and has conducted additional fieldwork. Her reports and findings are quite interesting. For example, the majority of elderly people incarcerated in the state left school before the fifth grade, and 15% did not know how to read or write; however, 81% of them had positive expectations for their social life in the future. Despite being a very modern research topic, I have been investigating violence against the elderly since 1995 and found that such violence has historically been normalized. In other words, the elderly have always been mistreated in our society. Decades ago, they were simply pushed aside and left without food. Thus, the notion that they were treated better in the past is a myth. Currently, Brazil has adopted the Statute for the Elderly [2003], which is an important milestone in protecting the older people in the country of Brazil
What are your plans for the future?
Because of my research regarding elderly prisoners in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’ Ministry of Health invited me to study the health conditions of the prison population as a whole in Brazil. It is an enormous challenge, but I accepted it. Although I am getting older, I continue to conduct research, teach classes, supervise students, and publish books. It is important for me to have a sense of purpose, and it gives me hope for the future. I am grateful for the things that I have in life and for the generosity of those around me.
RESEARCH
Research papers produced in Brazil—particularly in fields such as climate change, the Amazon, and biofuels—are among the most widely cited in public-policy proposals and reports in countries such as the U.S., the UK, and Germany. According to data compiled from Overton, an international database of policy documents and associated research, a total of 25,391 papers authored by São Paulo–based researchers were cited in 33,398 policy documents from 1,017 different government agencies, intergovernmental organizations, and think tanks across 123 countries from 2013 to 2022.
“Our interest is in examining the societal benefits from São Paulo’s research output beyond academia, and this database offers insights into how this research has shaped public policy for the benefit of society,” explained agricultural scientist Connie McManus, an international relations manager at FAPESP. She
conducted the study in collaboration with Niels Olsen Câmara, an immunology researcher at the University of São Paulo (USP) and an advisor to FAPESP’s Scientific Board. “Our findings underscore the significant influence that São Paulo’s researchers have over public policies in Brazil and globally,” she added.
Among the intergovernmental bodies that regularly cite research out of São Paulo are the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Commission, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Bank. Interestingly, among the top 25 sources referencing Brazilian studies, 23 are international, and only two are domestic—the Federal Government and the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA), a government-policy think tank under the Ministry of Planning. “IPEA’s core mission is precisely to produce data to inform improvements to public policies. Our research draws heavily on these data,” explained economist Fernanda De Negri, who heads the
Center for Research on Science, Technology and Society at IPEA.
Brazil trails the US, the European Union, the UK, Germany, Canada, and France in terms of the number of public–policy references to research conducted in São Paulo. McManus suggested that Brazilian government agencies may not be basing their public policies on scientific research to the same extent that organizations in other countries are. She proposed that “Perhaps our researchers should seek to publish their findings in a language that will support greater uptake by policymakers”.
The survey also explores the topics of Brazilian research that are most widely cited in foreign policy documents. In engineering and technology, subjects such as biofuels and greenhouse gas emissions are the most commonly cited. In the natural and social sciences, Amazon is a recurrent theme. In the medical sciences, studies on tropical diseases and the adverse effects of ultra-processed foods are among the most highly cited,
The countries and blocs that most frequently cite papers authored in São Paulo in their policy documents and guides–broken down by the number of papers referenced per field of knowledge (from 2013 to 2022)–are as follows:
FINDING ITS WAY INTO SOCIETY
A new survey reveals the extent to which research in São Paulo has shaped public policies around
Fabrício Marques
whereas in agriculture, research on tilapia, citrus, eucalyptus, and the genetics of pests such as Xylella fastidiosa is the most prevalent. Finally, the study identified the most widely cited researchers from institutions in São Paulo in international policy documents. At the top of the list, with 137 cited documents, is Paulo Artaxo from the USP Institute of Physics, renowned for his work on aerosols and his contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “Brazilian research holds significant influence in international reports, and there are research domains in which we are globally leading authorities,” stated Artaxo, noting, for instance, Brazil’s contributions to climate-change research. “Brazil is second only to the US in terms of the number of researchers providing inputs into IPCC reports.”
Several names on the list feature prominently in prestigious academic rankings, such as Clarivate Analytics’s annual Highly Cited Researchers list. Among these scholars are Carlos Augusto Monteiro
the world
from the School of Public Health at USP, a pioneer in research on ultra-processed foods (see interview on Page 48), with 130 citations; Pedro Henrique Brancalion, an authority in tropical forest restoration at USP’s Luiz de Queiroz School of Agriculture (ESALQ), with 82 citations; and psychiatrist André Brunoni from the School of Medicine at USP, who leads studies on depression, with 70 citations (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 310).
McManus and Olsen Câmara also compiled data on Brazil’s overall performance in the Overton database, which mirrored their findings for São Paulo in terms of citing institutions and countries and the domains in which Brazil is most influential. “This comes as no surprise, given that São Paulo researchers have accounted for over 40% of Brazil’s science output in recent years,” noted McManus. Research
produced through international collaborations had a 71% greater likelihood of being cited in reports.
Sociologist Ana Cláudia Niedhardt Capella, a public policy expert and researcher at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Araraquara, noted that, in recent years, Brazil’s science output has been increasingly targeted toward solving complex societal issues, ranging from inequality to challenges related to violence, health care access, and education. Not only has there been a surge in academic capacity, but governments are also increasingly looking to enhance their policies and return on investment.
“It’s heartening to learn that Brazilian public-policy research has garnered international acclaim, yet we still have ground to gain,” remarked Capella. “We must deepen collaborations between researchers and policymakers to ensure that the research we produce is not only increasingly used to inform policymaking in Brazil but also more attuned to public issues on governments’ agendas.” n
THE SILENT DRAMA OF THE
PAMPAS
In the past four decades, 30% of the biome’s native vegetation has been occupied by soybean cultivation and by planted eucalyptus forests
Meghie Rodrigues
The Pampas region, which is the second-smallest biome in Brazil, with an area larger than only the Pantanal, has lost 30% of its native vegetation in the past three and a half decades. The rural regions are the most affected, and their territory has been given over mainly to agricultural activity. According to experts, the damage resulting from the suppression of these areas may not be as immediately visible as in the case of forests, but it is still devastating regardless.
Recent data from the MapBiomas network—a collaborative research network formed by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), universities, and technology startups—confirm the substantial loss of nonforested regions (fields) in the Pampas region: in 1985, these areas occupied 9.3 million hectares (ha), approximately half of the total area of the biome. In 2022, the area had decreased to 6.5 million ha. On the other hand, agriculture increased in practically the same proportion: between 1985 and 2022, the area occupied by agriculture increased from 5.6 to 8.4 million ha. In the case of forested areas, there was a slight increase, i.e., from 2.2 million ha in 1985 to 2.3 million ha in 2022.
Biologist Mateus Pires observed that not much research has focused on the Pampas, which was a "recently" created official biome. “In 2024, it will mark 20 years since the IBGE [Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics] raised the category of the Pampas to a biome,” says Pires, who is currently on a postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory of Ecology and Evolution of the
University of Vale do Taquari (UNIVATES), in Lajeado, Rio Grande do Sul.
The biome is recent only on paper. “The Pampas is older than the Atlantic Forest. It is testimony to a period, approximately 40,000 to 20,000 years ago, in which the climate was colder than in the current Holocene,” explains Heinrich Hasenack, coordinator of the Graduate Program in Agribusiness at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).
Approximately 11,000 years ago, as the Holocene began, the Earth became warmer and more humid. This change favored the expansion of forests. The forest that is currently known as the Atlantic Forest expanded across the fields of the Pampas, from the lowest to the highest parts. “The fields of today are reminiscent of ancient areas that had not been occupied by forests,” says Hasenack.
The biome covers more than half of the state of Rio Grande do Sul and is spread across Argentina and Uruguay, filling the Brazilian imagination as vast expanses of fields inhabited by gauchos—figures linked to the southern border that mix Iberian and Indigenous cultures. The Pampas region is closely associated with the appreciation of the cultural identity of the region. Maintaining the landscape sustains the culture and economy of many municipalities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. “The contemplation of the landscapes and tourism in farm hotels are important economic activities, but if the fields were converted into plantations, we would no longer have access to that,” says Pires. Biologist Sandra Müller, coordinator of the Plant Ecology Laboratory of UFRGS,
Area of the Pampas in Rio Grande do Sul close to the border with Uruguay and Argentina
has the same opinion: “What would become of the gaucho without the Pampas?”
The entire system is much more complex than it appears–it is more than a set of fields with grass as far as the eye can see. “In a single square meter of ground, an average of 30 different species of grasses and herbaceous plants are found. In one record, 56 plants in one square meter were identified. There is an extremely high diversity of vegetation, even though the physiognomy does not change much in the field regions,” observes Müller.
In addition to the areas of field, the biome has other types of vegetation that cluster in different regions. According to Pires, the simplest form of classification divides the Pampas into three main parts: lowlands with short plants adapted to wet and sandy areas close to the coast; shrubby vegetation adapted to the cold and humid climate of the mountains; and low grasses and shrubs in the fields to the west of Rio Grande do Sul as a result of a dry climate and moisture stress caused by a more dispersed rainfall pattern.
According to Müller, studies have divided the biome into a maximum of 10 distinct regions. For conservation purposes, this refinement is especially important for more carefully observing the species of fauna and flora and considering their specific management needs.
“Over 3,000 herbaceous species have been identified throughout the biome,” remembers Hasenack. He observes that for a subtropical
zone, which is not normally as diverse as tropical regions, such diversity is impressive.
The natural fields, which are probably the most characteristic areas of the Pampas region, play a crucial role in terms of ecosystem services. Pires explains that these areas serve as a provision for livestock, as they offer high-quality forage for cattle. "Oxen raised in natural pastures gain weight and provide financial return more quickly than those fattened in converted fields that use exotic pastures [with grasses that are not typical of the region]," says the researcher.
The Pampas region also provides natural forage, as it maintains the typical plant diversity and the structure necessary for the development of a variety of native plant species, observes Müller. “It is something that the other biomes do not offer.” The researcher explains that grasses with C3 and C4 metabolisms grow in the Pampas. “The C3 grasses are more palatable, less tough, and they add value to the supply of forage. They are thinner and compose more productive fields in the winter,” he comments.
The loss of nonforested areas is worrisome to researchers. According to MapBiomas, agricultural land use reached 2.1 million hectares between 1985 and 2022. During the same period, silviculture, which essentially involved the plant-
Land coverage and use in the Pampas region
ing of pine and eucalyptus forests, increased by an impressive 1,667%, or by more than 720,000 hectares. “It truly worries me because the loss of habitat favors the disappearance of species of fauna with very restricted distributions,” states Müller. Varieties of emus, cats, reptiles, open field birds, and mammals, such as the tuco-tuco of the dunes (Ctenomys flamarioni)—a rodent threatened with extinction that lives in galleries below the ground—suffer from the pressure of agricultural expansion and silviculture in the biome.
“Soybeans are advancing from north to south in the Pampas and silviculture is advancing from east to west,” explains Hasenack. “Many areas currently occupied by soybeans are less suitable for this crop, which demands much more careful management and, furthermore, runs the risk of obtaining lower returns,” says Hasenack.
Soybeans have been expanding even in areas traditionally occupied by rice paddies, which adapt better to the conditions of the biome, where there are many flooded parts. “Rice has lost space for not being a commodity,” comments Hasenack.
Rio Grande do Sul is the largest rice-producing state in Brazil. According to the IBGE, an average annual production of almost 8 million tons between 2020 and 2022 was recorded by the state. In 2021, Brazil, the largest producer in the Americas, produced 11.6 million tons of rice. According to EMBRAPA, rice production on the highlands or natural floodplains plummeted from 1.6 million tons in 2013 to 0.7 million tons in 2022. Planting rice on floodplains today represents such a small fraction of the national production that EMBRAPA stopped counting it in 2018.
The use of fertilizers and pesticides is less intensive in rice cultivation than in soybean plantations. These chemical products pollute the water table. “Additionally, the wet areas of Rio Grande do Sul are large carbon sequesters. With
fewer flooded stretches, the biome's capacity to retain greenhouse gases has reduced,” ponders Pires. Like vegetation in fields, floodplains help to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Conservation of the nonforested areas of the Pampas region is also important for another reason. Part of the Guarani aquifer passes below the biome, which is one of the main known sources of underground water in Brazil. “The native vegetation plays an important role in the maintenance of underground water stocks,” highlights Müller.
According to experts on the biome, the problem is not only the advance of agricultural production in the Pampas region but also the growth of areas occupied by cultures that degrade the environment. Instead of monoculture, experts suggest that it could be better for the region to promote a mixture of different crops to avoid degrading the soil as much as is currently done and keep it productive for longer.
“Grapevines, for example, coexist with raising sheep and will never have the size of a soybean plantation. They form small parcels, a mosaic that will not conflict in such an aggressive manner with the biome. It is not necessary to remove all the vegetation from the fields where the grapes are planted,” explains Hasenack. The logic is also interesting from a touristic point of view, as already occurs in the Serra Gaúcha, where many vineyards take advantage of tourism linked to the regional landscape.
Unlike what happens in other biomes, in which forested areas are cut down to become pasture for cattle, the Pampas region has an ally in cattle farming for its maintenance. Its native fields, which provide space for soybeans, are natural pastures.
For Hasenack, the main conservation agent of the Pampas region should be the rural producer, to whom more incentives should be provided to raise cattle on natural pastures. “In Uruguay, which has the same breeds of cattle as Rio Grande do Sul, beef cattle in natural fields is highly valued,” he comments.
Conservation is important because the restoration of the Pampas region would be much more difficult. “We do not have native grass seeds in nurseries, and we are losing the opportunity to discover species that could even be commercialized,” warns Müller. “It would not be easy to restore the fields that are being converted into pine forests, an exotic and very aggressive species.” Unlike deforestation in the Amazon, which involves cutting down trees and frequently makes the news, the suppression of natural fields in the Pampas region is still not seen as an environmental issue. n
The tuco-tuco species (Ctenomys flamarioni), which is threatened by extinction and inhabits coastal dunes in the Pampas biome
MYSTERY SOLVED
Virus that causes chikungunya provokes inflammation in several organs, including the brain, and can lead to death
Felipe Floresti
Chikungunya is a highly debilitating disease caused by a virus transmitted by the bite of female mosquitoes of the genus Aedes. Chikungunya is characterized by high fever, red rashes across the body, and most notably, swelling and severe pain in the joints that can last for months and cause people to remain hunched over while walking or standing. However, few studies mention the risk of death, which is low but possible. In certain regions, the proportion of deaths from chikungunya can surpass the national average of deaths from dengue (one case in every thousand patients).
Since its arrival in Brazil in 2014, the chikungunya virus has been proven to have infected 254,000 people—the number of suspected cases of the desease has reached 1.2 million–and killed at
least 909 people. Ceará, the most affected state over the 10-year period, accounted for 31% of the deaths. “We know that chikungunya can kill, but we always wondered: why do the people die?” says Brazilian virologist William Marciel de Souza of the University of Kentucky in the USA.
To solve this mystery, Souza and researchers from several institutions in Brazil, the USA, and the UK analyzed blood and tissue samples from 32 people who died because of acute chikungunya infection in 2017 in Ceará. The results were subsequently compared with those of 39 individuals who developed milder forms of the disease and survived and those of 15 healthy blood donors. The study received funding from FAPESP, and the results were published in April in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. The conclusion of the study was that chikungunya kills because the virus, known as CHIKV,
spreads across different tissues, including the brain, and causes intense inflammation that damages the organs, preventing them from functioning properly.
An examination of the samples revealed that, in general, patients who died exhibited an increased amount of blood and an accumulation of liquid in the lungs, heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, and brain, although they did not have a greater concentration of the virus than the survivors did, nor had they been infected with a more aggressive strain of CHIKV.
The blood from patients who died also contained significantly higher levels of two types of chemical communicators than in patients from the other groups: proinflammatory cytokines, proteins that coordinate the immune defense, and chemokines, a class of cytokines responsible for attracting cells from the immune system to the sites of inflam-
mation. Associated with symptoms of hyperinflammation, these molecules alter the permeability of the internal wall of the blood vessels, allowing the liquid portion of the blood to escape and accumulate within the tissues. These molecules also facilitate the penetration of defense cells in tissues; while attempting to eliminate the virus, defense cells can sometimes destroy healthy cells.
Among the patients who died, the presence of defense cells was observed in the heart, liver, kidneys, and, most intriguingly to researchers, the brain. The blood vessels that supply the central nervous system have a unique and highly selective lining called the bloodbrain barrier. This barrier allows the passage of oxygen, nutrients, and some rare defense cells from the blood to the brain but usually prevents the entry of pathogens. Souza and colleagues reported that the virus was detected in
Intact cells from the lining of blood vessels of the brain (top), compared with CHIKV-infected cells that have been destroyed (left, in red)
the cerebrospinal fluid, the liquid that surrounds the brain and other organs of the central nervous system, in all patients who died, which indicated that CHIKV had crossed the blood-brain barrier. The virus was detected in 13% of the brain samples, 20% of the heart and kidney samples, 28% of the liver samples, 44% of the lung samples, and 52% of the spleen samples from patients who died.
All of the infected people exhibited metabolic dysregulation, which was more intense in patients who died than in the survivors. This dysregulation affects the integrity and permeability of the bloodbrain barrier, potentially facilitating the invasion of the brain by pathogens. However, metabolic dysregulation was not the only mechanism involved. Laboratory tests performed by the group revealed that the virus was also capable of infecting monocytes, which are defense cells that naturally cross the blood–brain
barrier, using them as a type of Trojan horse. “It hides inside the monocytes and, therefore, reaches the brain,” explains pharmacist Shirlene de Lima of the Central Laboratory of Public Health of the State of Ceará (LACEN/CE), one of the lead authors of the study.
By analyzing the affected organs and tissues, researchers identified extensive damage in the brain, including bleeding and cell death. They still do not know which of the factors–hemodynamic imbalance, exacerbated inflammation, or infection of the central nervous system–is the most important factor indicating a fatal outcome. “We need more studies to understand the contribution of each of these problems and why they affect some people more than others,” says Lima. “This knowledge is fundamental for developing better treatment approaches.” Currently, therapy consists of the administration of analgesics, antipyretics, and anti-inflammatories to alleviate symptoms.
“The study provides relevant information mainly about the behavior of the chemokines and about molecular signatures associated with the patients who died,” states infectologist Julio Croda of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Mato Grosso do Sul (FIOCRUZ-MS), who did not take part in the study. “The infiltration of the infected monocytes in the brain and its effect is a new finding. Now we need larger studies, with people of different ethnicities, ages, and genders, to validate these conclusions.”
Until a more effective treatment is found, hope rests on the development of a vaccine. In November 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency that regulates food and drugs in the USA, approved the use of Ixchiq, a vaccine based on the weakened virus developed by the Franco-Austrian pharmaceutical company Valneva, for adults. In Brazil, the company has a partnership with the Butantan Institute, which is currently testing the composition in phase 3 clinical trials in adolescents before submitting a request for approval by the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA). n
The research projects and scientific articles consulted for this report are listed in the online version.
THE PHYSICIST WHO SAW A BIGGER PICTURE
Lattes at the Berkeley Cyclotron in March 1948
César Lattes' studies were based on experiments with cosmic rays and the use of accelerators in particle physics
July 11 of this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of physicist Cesare Mansueto Giulio Lattes (1924–2005). Born in Curitiba to a wealthy immigrant couple from northwestern Italy, César Lattes, as he was best known, was a unique character in Brazilian science. While living in the city of São Paulo, he managed to stand out from a very young age among a generation of brilliant physicists and mathematicians trained at the newly founded University of São Paulo (USP) in the 1930s and 1940s, including Marcello Damy (1914–2009), Mário Schenberg (1914–1990), and Oscar Sala (1922–2010).
The work he conducted shortly after the end of the Second World War advanced two related fields that use different approaches to study the origin and role of subatomic (smaller than an atom) particles: research on cosmic rays that reach Earth and particle (accelerator) physics.
As an investigator of the tiny world hidden inside the atom, he proposed an improvement to nuclear emulsions, a special type of photographic plate used to detect fleeting subatomic particles that last for only fractions of a microsecond. His idea was to increase the sensitivity of the emulsions, allowing him to see phenomena that others could not.
In 1947, while working at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, Lattes co-discovered a new type of subatomic particle produced by cosmic rays hitting Earth: the pi meson (now known as a pion). The primary function of the pion is to hold the atomic nucleus together and thus prevent protons and neutrons from escaping. The improved emulsion plates made it possible to observe traces of the particles in records obtained in France and Bolivia. The following year, Lattes was the first to observe the pion itself, this time produced artificially inside a particle accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley (see page 40). In 1950, the head of his former labora-
tory in Bristol, the British physicist Cecil Powell (1903–1969), won the Nobel Prize in Physics for improvements to the photographic particle detection method and identification of the pion.
Although he did not receive the Nobel Prize himself, Lattes quickly gained respect and fame. His practical ingenuity led to his meteoric rise, and the research he conducted in his early career had repercussions at home and abroad. At the height of his popularity, he was a scientific celebrity in Brazil in the same mold as the public health doctors Carlos Chagas (1879–1934) and Oswaldo Cruz (1872–1917). He was the subject of a samba show and was pictured on magazine covers.
With his scientific prestige, he helped found the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF) in 1949 and supported the creation of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) in 1951—and he did all this before turning 27. “There is no book on the history of physics in the last century that does not mention the importance of Lattes’s work with the pion,” says the physics historian Olival Freire Junior of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), currently the scientific director of the CNPq. “Lattes is considered a genius much the same way mathematician John Nash [1928–2015] was.”
Like his American colleague, who won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contribution to game theory, Lattes suffered from mental illness. Nash had schizophrenia, a condition that caused hallucinations and at times alienated him from reality. Lattes alternated between episodes of extreme depression and euphoria, a condition that today would likely be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. “He was hospitalized several times due to his mental health, which hindered his career. He might have done more if he had not suffered from this problem,” says Antonio Augusto Passos Videira, a philosopher and science historian from Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) and
Marcos Pivetta
collaborating researcher at the CBPF. “But that takes nothing away from the merit of his work.”
Lattes was an enthusiast of experimental physics and often a critic of mathematicians and theorists (Albert Einstein was one of his favorite targets throughout his life). “The only thing that matters is what you can detect or what you can infer from what you detected,” he said in an unpublished interview that is part of the physicist’s collection at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), the last place he worked. “Lattes mastered scientific know-how,” explains Heráclio Duarte Tavares, a science historian from Mato Grosso State University (UNEMAT) who has been studying the physicist’s career.
Although he was one of the first scientists to show the potential of particle accelerators for discoveries about the subatomic world, Lattes dedicated most of his career to studies of cosmic rays. This was the field in which he began and ended his scientific career.
Before settling in São Paulo in the early 1930s, the Lattes family lived in Curitiba and Porto Alegre in addition to spending six months in Turin, Italy.
In São Paulo, César Lattes completed the equivalent of high school at Colégio Dante Alighieri in 1938. This traditional private school founded by Italian immigrants exists to this day. Through family connections, Lattes was able to secure a place in USP’s nascent undergraduate course in physics at just 15 years of age.
His father Giuseppe was a foreign exchange manager at Banco Francês e Italiano in São Paulo. One of his clients was Gleb Wataghin (1899–1986), a Ukrainian-Italian physicist who moved to São Paulo in 1934 to implement the physics course at USP’s School of Philosophy, Sciences, Languages, and Literature (FFCL)—the predecessor of what is now the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH). The bank where Giuseppe worked was responsible for handling the salary of Wataghin, who studied cosmic rays.
One day, Lattes Sr. asked the physicist if he would talk to his son, who was interested in science. The young Lattes, who had even considered becoming an elementary school teacher, spoke with Wataghin, and the two hit it off. The rules for enrolling at university were less strict at the time, and after passing several academic tests, he was accepted into the course. Another Italian account holder at the bank, Giuseppe Occhialini (1907–1993), who also taught physics at USP, soon became an inspiration for Lattes Jr.
Lattes was a precocious talent, graduating in 1943 at the age of 19. He did not defend a doctoral
César Lattes (without a jacket) poses with his brother Davide, his mother Carolina, and his father Giuseppe (above).
Portrait of Lattes aged 19 at his graduation from the physics program at USP in 1943 (right)
thesis, but that did not hold him back. In 1948, after his discovery of the pion, USP awarded him an honorary PhD. After graduating, Lattes spent some time studying cosmic rays in field experiments with two Italian colleagues who also studied physics at USP: Ugo Camerini (1925–2014) and Andrea Wataghin (1926–1984), Gleb's son. In 1946, he traveled to the United Kingdom and joined Occhialini, who was already conducting research with Powell's group at the University of Bristol.
It was the Italian's second time in the UK. Between 1931 and 1934, he worked at the respected Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physics, which was led by Patrick Blackett (1897–1974) at the time. Together they helped to improve the Wilson chamber or cloud chamber, a closed container that uses supersaturated vapor to show the path of ionizing radiation, such as particles from cosmic rays. The pair used the improved device to confirm the existence of the positron, a positively charged antielectron. In 1948, Blackett alone won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. An interesting aside: during a stay in Cambridge in the mid-1920s, a young Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), who suffered from depression, allegedly left a poisoned apple on the desk of Blackett, who was then his supervisor. Whether fictional or real, the scene appears at the beginning of the 2024 Oscar-winning biopic Oppenheimer, which tells the story of the American physicist who was dubbed the “father of the atomic bomb.”
It was the relationship Lattes established with Occhialini at USP that made it possible for him to visit Bristol in 1946. In the UK, the Brazilian
had the chance to observe nuclear emulsions exposed to cosmic rays obtained by Occhialini on a 2,800-meter mountain in the French Pyrenees called Pic du Midi. The most sensitive photographic plates seemed to capture trails produced by particles of the meson class. To be certain of his discovery, Lattes proposed a similar experiment at a higher location in the Bolivian Andes. He believed that on Mount Chacaltaya, at an altitude of 5,421 meters, the chance of recording these particles from cosmic rays with the bestsuited version of the photographic plates would be much greater. He was right.
However, a little-known episode almost put an early end to Lattes's ascending career. In April 1947, on his way to Bolivia to carry out the field experiment, Lattes had to pass through Brazil. Because the trip was funded by the British, he was advised to buy a plane ticket from a state-owned company, British South American Airways (BSAA). It would be a long and tiring flight that would take more than a day. After departing from London, there were stops in Lisbon, Dakar, and Natal before arriving in Rio de Janeiro, the final destination.
Lattes did not follow the advice. An official at the Brazilian embassy in London told him that the British aircraft were adapted war bombers and that the in-flight service left much to be desired. “His contact suggested he travel with the Brazilian airline Panair because they had brand new planes, good food, and attractive flight attendants,” said the journalist Cássio Leite Vieira
Members of the HH Wills Physics Laboratory at the University of Bristol, headed by Powell (sitting on the left in a suit and tie). Lattes is fourth from the left in the second row
in the book César Lattes – Arrastado pela História (César Lattes – Carried by History), a brief biography published by CBPF in 2017 that can be downloaded for free online. The Brazilian physicist flew by Panair and probably escaped death: the British plane crashed in Dakar. “There are reports that there were no survivors,” wrote Leite Vieira.
After confirming the discovery of the pion in the experiment in Bolivia and then at the Berkeley accelerator in 1948, Lattes returned to Brazil with a high reputation. After his involvement in the creation of the CBPF and CNPq, he remained in Rio de Janeiro for most of the 1950s. Between 1955 and 1957, he spent time at the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota in the U.S. “He didn’t publish much during this period—probably due to his mental health problems, marked by episodes of depression,” Leite Vieira explained in his book.
In 1960, Lattes returned as professor to the place where his career began: USP. Two years later, he began a major international research project called the Brazil-Japan Collaboration (CBJ), which studied cosmic rays for four decades, primarily at a physics lab in Chacaltaya, Bolivia. “Lattes could have stayed abroad,” says Climério Paulo da Silva Neto, a science historian from the UFBA Physics Institute. Always a nationalist, however, he wanted to develop Brazilian science, and he prioritized partnerships with South Americans and countries outside Europe and the U.S.
His return to the institution that trained him was not permanent, however. In 1967, after spending a year at the University of Pisa in Italy where he worked more closely with geochronology, Lattes transferred to UNICAMP, which had been founded the previous year. He chose to leave USP because of a disagreement over a position as a full professor. He moved to Campinas and took his CBJ research with him. The new university, located in the interior of São Paulo, was where Lattes spent most of his time as a professor and researcher until he retired in 1986. He died in 2005 at the age of 80.
Although he came from a wealthy family, Lattes was always seen as a down-to-earth and approachable person. He loved animals. In interviews, he said he would have liked to have been a veterinarian if he had not become a physicist. There are many stories about one of his dogs, Gaúcho, a pointer who was like his shadow at UNICAMP in the 1970s and 1980s. The dog participated in his classes, attended his lab, and accompanied him on journeys in the car. “My hus-
Traces left by mesons (above) observed on photographic plates (below) by the Bristol group
band [José Augusto Chinellato, a professor at UNICAMP] defended his doctoral thesis with Gaúcho in the room,” recalls the physicist Carola Dobrigkeit Chinellato with a smile. Chinellato, a professor at the same university, was also supervised by Lattes during her PhD, and like her husband, she went on to investigate cosmic rays.
Friends and colleagues say that although Lattes was generally kind and humble, he was not always an easy person to be around. At times he could be harsh and even unfair. One historic episode was his public attempt to debunk Albert Einstein's (1879–1955) theory of relativity in 1980. “I remember him calling me and saying he wanted to hold a conference to criticize Einstein’s work,” says the physicist Roberto Leal Lobo, director of the CBPF between 1979 and 1982. “I thought the phone call was strange. But there was no way to refuse the request from Lattes, who was the founder of the center.”
Lattes presented his controversial ideas at the CBPF, and he invited the press to the event. In an article published in the newspaper Jornal do Brasil on June 15, 1980, Lattes said, “He [Einstein] just got lucky. I think he was mentally ill. But the mentally ill sometimes see things that other people don't see. He made two lucky guesses: his theory on the photoelectric effect and his theory on black-body radiation, the basis of quantum mechanics. But in everything else, I think he’s clueless.”
In a presentation at the Brazilian Academy of Science (ABC), the physicist Jayme Tiomno (1920–2011), then at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), defended Einstein's ideas. “Lattes regretted this whole situation later,” says the physicist Edison Shibuya, a retired professor from UNICAMP who was supervised by the pion discoverer during his PhD and then studied cosmic rays and worked alongside him for almost four decades. “Lattes saw that the measurements he used to test relativity could have been affected by the equipment.”
Lattes was married and had four daughters, three of whom are still alive. None studied physics or became scientists. He also had a brother, Davide, who owned a construction company. At the universities he attended, in addition to his scientific work, he left hundreds of academic descendants: researchers whose master’s or doctoral studies were supervised by him and who, in turn, trained new postgraduate students. There is no greater legacy for a master than the success of his or her pupils. In April 2024, the Presidency of the Brazilian Republic included Lattes in the Livro dos Heróis e Heroínas da Pátria (Book of National Heroes). n
Lattes arriving in Brazil in 1948
A MAJOR CONTRIBUTION
Lattes on Mount Chacaltaya in Bolivia, where mesons were recorded in nuclear emulsions
The discovery of the pion led to a greater understanding of the cohesion of the atomic nucleus
Marcos Pivetta
Seventy-five years ago, when César Lattes played a decisive role in the discovery of the pion, one could count the number of subatomic particles known to science on one hand. At the time, three basic constituents of the atom were identified: electrons in 1897, protons in 1919, and neutrons in 1932. However, our knowledge of the inside of the atom did not go much further than that.
At the end of 1934, Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa (1907–1981) of Osaka University proposed a theory about what holds the atomic nucleus together. The integrity of the structure, which contains 99.9% of the mass of an atom, was a mystery. Formed by neutrons with no electrical charge and positive protons, the atomic nucleus should theoretically break apart due to electromagnetic forces. Because they have the same charge, the protons should repel each other, tearing the nucleus apart.
Since this is not what happens, Yukawa hypothesized that there must be a particle with an intermediate mass between that of the proton and the electron that transmits a force (now referred to as the strong nuclear force) capable of negating the electromagnetism and ensuring that the nucleus remains intact. According to the Japanese physicist's calculations, this hypothetical particle, which would later be named the meson, has a mass between 200 and 300 times greater than the electron and 6 to 9 times smaller than the proton. “Yukawa’s ideas were largely forgotten for a few years,” says Antonio Augusto Passos Videira, a philosopher and science historian
from Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) and collaborating researcher at the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF).
In 1936, while carrying out measurements of cosmic rays, American physicists Carl David Anderson (1905–1991) and Seth Neddermeyer (1907–1988), from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), discovered a particle with approximately 200 times the mass of an electron. It was originally called a mu meson, now known as the muon. Within a few years, however, other experiments showed that the muon was not related to the cohesion of the atomic nucleus and was not the meson predicted by the Japanese physicist.
The mystery only began to become clearer after the end of the Second World War, with the arrival on the scene of a scientist who was not from any of the traditional great international physics institutions, that is, the young César Lattes in his early twenties. Between 1946 and 1948, this Brazilian scholar was the first physicist to observe experimental evidence of trails produced by mesons both in nature in a shower of cosmic rays and “artificially” inside a particle accelerator. The particle identified by Lattes was originally called the pi meson. Later, it came to be known as the pion.
The pion was discovered after the use of a special photographic plate referred to as a nuclear emulsion film, which began to replace Wilson cloud chambers in cosmic ray experiments that sought evidence of unstable subatomic particles. Compared with the previous technique, the new plates were capable of much more refined results. At the University of São Paulo (USP), Lattes worked with cloud chambers, which are
closed containers that use supersaturated vapor to show the trails produced by electrically charged particles. The person who trained him, Italian physicist Giuseppe Occhialini, was one of his mentors during the years he taught at USP from 1907–1993. The trajectory of the particles appears in the form of lines in the image produced by this technique.
In the mid-1940s, Lattes had the chance to see nuclear emulsions sent to Brazil by Occhialini, who at the time was working at the HH Wills Laboratory of the University of Bristol, UK, headed by Cecil Powell (1903–1969). The Brazilian researcher was amazed by the possibility of new photographic plates, which are far more sensitive because they contain approximately ten times more silver salts (silver bromide). He later accepted an invitation to work on the other side of the Atlantic, leaving for Bristol in 1946. It was at this point in history that the key moment in identifying the pion occurred. Upon arriving at Bristol, Lattes asked the Ilford laboratory—which manufactured nuclear emulsions alongside Kodak—to produce photographic plates with an additional element in its gelatin, namely, boron. The introduction of boron increased the retention time of the images in the emulsions and extended the sensitivity period of the plates. The modification enabled the visualization of extremely fast and fleeting subatomic particles, such as pi mesons. When an ionized particle passes through an emulsion, the silver and bromine are separated. “This produces the traces we see on the plate,” explains Carola Dobrigkeit Chinellato, a physicist from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) who performed her PhD under Lattes' supervision and studied cosmic rays.
Later, in 1946, Occhialini traveled to Pic du Midi, a 2,800-meter mountain in the French Pyrenees, to record particles originating from cosmic rays via nuclear emulsions, both with and without boron. The idea for this test is attributed to Lattes. Back in Bristol, the pair found evidence of two types of unstable particles in the boron plates, that is, the pi meson, whose name originated from the fact that it is the primary particle, the decay of which gives rise to the mu meson (muon). At the time, the muon was believed to be a meson (a nuclear particle with intermediate mass), but it was later determined that it is a lepton—a heavy relative of the electron. To verify the discovery made at Pic du Midi, Lattes proposed a repeat of the experiment at a much higher location on a mountain in the Bolivian Andes. “The number of cosmic particles on Chacaltaya, at 5,500 meters, is 100,000 times greater [than in Pic du Midi],” recalled Lattes in a 1995 interview published in the magazine Ciência Hoje
The expedition to the Andean mountain left from Brazil, with Lattes taking the emulsions to the neighboring country, where he achieved his objective. A series of articles in the journal Nature describing the results from Pic du Midi and Chacaltaya confirmed the discovery of the pi meson on the basis of the observation of cosmic rays. In 1947, Lattes went to the University of California, Berkeley.
At the institution’s 184-inch cyclotron particle accelerator, Lattes observed meson trails just 10 days after his arrival, something his hosts had been unable to do. The theorized artificial mesons, produced inside an accelerator rather than by cosmic rays, also became a reality. The discovery was attributed to Lattes and the American physicist Eugene Gardner (1913–1950), a student of the American nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence (1901–1958).
NO NOBEL PRIZE
A question that always arises when recounting Lattes' career is whether the Brazilian should have won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physics for his central role in the discovery of the pion. British scientist Cecil Powell, head of the Bristol group, received honor alone. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded him the Nobel Prize “for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method.” The 1949 Nobel Prize in Physics was also awarded to a scientist studying these particles: Japanese theoretical physicist Hideki Yukawa, who predicted the existence of mesons.
Lattes was nominated for the prize seven times, but not in 1950, according to files published on the official Nobel website. In 1949 and 1952, he was
Boxes of equipment outside the CBPF headquarters, ready to be dispatched on an expedition to the Bolivian Andes in the early 1950s
nominated twice (by two different people). In 1951, 1953, and 1954, he was recommended once.
Occhialini, who taught Lattes at USP and worked alongside him in Bristol, is another name that was apparently overlooked by the Nobel Prize Committee in 1950. With the Italian researcher, however, there was an additional factor: he had already missed out on the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was awarded to the British physicist Patrick Blackett of the University of Cambridge for his development of the cloud chamber method and discoveries in nuclear physics and cosmic radiation. Between 1936 and 1969, Occhialini was nominated the Nobel Prize 32 times but never won it.
“The Nobel Prize reinforces inequalities in research,” says Climério Paulo da Silva Neto, a science historian from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). “The honor tends to be given to scientists from renowned institutions or those who already have great public recognition.” The selection of famous names amplifies the impact of the award and feeds a cycle that promotes scientific notoriety for the Nobel Prize and its recipients. Silva Neto analyzed documents from the Swedish Academy, including letters of recommendation for Lattes, and is working on a paper about the Brazilian physicist and the Nobel Prize.
For decades, there were rumors that the Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885–1962), who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 for his studies on atomic structure and radiation, had written a letter to the Swedish academy with harsh criticism of its choice not to honor Lattes. The letter was supposedly set to be published in 2012, half
a century after Bohr's death, but if it does exist, it has never come to light.
Soon after the Bristol group observed the pions, the renowned Danish physicist invited the Brazilian scholar to Copenhagen to give a series of lectures about his work. The two appeared to be compatible. However, according to Nobel’s public records, Bohr never even nominated Lattes for the prize. The person who recommended the Brazilian for the award three years in a row (in 1952, 1953, and 1954) was Croatian-Swiss chemist Leopold Ružička (1887–1976), winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939.
Interestingly, in the first 50 years of the Nobel Prize between 1901 and 1950, the physics prize was awarded to just one scientist alone 35 times, to a duo eight times, and to three people once. On six occasions, the honor was not awarded because of the two world wars. Lattes repeated several times that he was glad that he did not win the Nobel Prize, since if he had, he would have spent the rest of his life writing letters of recommendation for researchers. However, on some occasions, he took a different stance. In a statement published in the Jornal da Unicamp newspaper in 2004, he said he was “robbed twice,” a reference to missing out on the prize for his work at Bristol and at Berkeley. In an interview with the magazine Superinteressante , published after he died in March 2005, Lattes said that the Nobel Prize should have gone to Occhialini and criticized the award: “These grand prizes don’t help science.”
The Berkeley cyclotron in the 1940s, where artificial mesons were observed
CLEAR ROADS AHEAD
AI systems can be trained to identify animals crossing highways in near real time
Giselle Soares
Computer systems that use artificial intelligence (AI) to detect moving objects can be adapted and trained to identify animals crossing Brazilian roads. These adapted AI systems could be installed in roadside devices to issue almost immediate alerts when animals are spotted on highways, in addition to automatically classifying which species are most frequently hit by vehicles.
These are the main findings of a study led by scientists from the São Carlos Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of São Paulo (ICMC-USP), who analyzed the performance of 14 systems on the basis of the You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithm, which is used to identify and indicate the locations of specific objects in an image or video (in this case, animals). The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports in January.
None of the systems performed perfectly when tasked with analyzing images of five wild animal
species they had been trained to recognize: the tapir, jaguarundi (wild cat), maned wolf, cougar, and giant anteater. Some, however, such as Scaled-YOLOv4, achieved an accuracy level of more than 85% in most situations. “Comparative studies are essential to determining the response time needed for these systems to work efficiently on the roads, a scenario that involves high-speed vehicles, and to evaluate the feasibility of their implementation,” says computer scientist Rodolfo Meneguette, head of the research group.
The tests were carried out on tiny, simple Raspberry Pi 4 computers, which weigh approximately 50 grams. Because they are so small and inexpensive, this type of device could theoretically be installed on existing roadside devices with a Wi-Fi internet connection. The microcomputer would analyze and classify the images locally, transmitting only its verdict (whether or not there is an animal on the road) to a cloud-based system. The external structure would then trigger a warning almost immediately to drivers traveling on the same stretch of road.
Five million large animals are killed on Brazilian highways every year, according to the Brazilian Center for Road Ecology
According to estimates by the Brazilian Center for Road Ecology (CBEE), linked to the Federal University of Lavras (UFLA) in Minas Gerais, approximately five million large animals are killed on Brazilian roads every year, including capybaras, jaguars, monkeys, and maned wolves.
To train the YOLO models to recognize these five specific animals, the researchers created a database called the BRA-Dataset, which contains 1,458 images of these species. The database was populated by free online images found via the Google Images search engine. In addition to these online images, the team used videos they recorded themselves at São Carlos Ecological Park to test how quickly the systems could recognize the animals.
The YOLO architecture combines image processing and AI to form convolutional neural networks, which are widely used in the field of computer vision. “This approach allows the machine, when receiving new images or videos, to compare the learned characteristics against predefined classes,” explains computer scientist Gabriel Ferrante, lead author of the article, who defended his master's thesis on the topic at ICMC-USP in 2023, supervised by Meneguette.
The neural network divides a still or moving (video) image into smaller parts, sets of pixels (points) that are transformed into numerical data. Through mathematical and probabilistic calculations, these data are used to classify the type of object that appears in the image and its location with a given degree of certainty.
The images accompanying this article show the types of results provided by the YOLO system when looking for animals on roads. Boxes are drawn around the recognized species, which are
classified as belonging to one of the five classes the system had learned to recognize. At the end of the process, the name of the animal recognized by the model is shown in the image, followed by a number between 0 and 1. The expression “anta 0.90,” for example, means that the system is 90% certain that the object identified in the image belongs to the anteater class.
“We tested different models based on the YOLO architecture to try to see if one could be ideal for specific contexts,” explains computer scientist Luís Nakamura of the Federal Institute of São Paulo (IFSP) Catanduva campus, coauthor of the article. Despite being trained, the systems were inaccurate at distinguishing animals in more challenging scenarios, such as when the animals were hidden by other objects, camouflaged in the landscape, or very far from the camera.
“To understand the pixel patterns in an image, convolutional neural networks scan parts of it in sequence,” explains Ferrante. “If the environment interferes with the recognition of important visual characteristics, such as edges, textures, and colors, the software has difficulty classifying and defining the area of a possible object.”
Systems designed to analyze images taken in daylight are not suitable for night surveillance or low-visibility conditions. In these cases, the use of infrared cameras that are capable of “seeing” in the dark could serve as an alternative. This approach, however, was not tested in the present study.
Data scientist Alexandre de Siqueira, who was not involved in the research, believes that future studies could expand the number of animal species included in the database used to train the systems. “If this technology were installed in static cameras, it could even be used to observe species migrating between different regions of the country, for example,” says Siqueira, who worked at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) at the University of California between 2019 and 2022. “It is also important to test networks with models other than YOLO to assess which is the fastest or cheapest, depending on the purpose of the application.”
Screenshots of the outputs of three systems designed to identify and classify wild animals in images
The research project and scientific article consulted for this report are cited in the online version.
Aviation is responsible for 2% of
THE ROAD TO RENEWABLE FUEL
In the global race to decarbonize the airline sector, Brazil could fulfill a leading role through the production of an alternative to fossil-based kerosene
Frances Jones
At the end of 2023, British airline company Virgin Atlantic flew a Boeing 787 from London to New York, which was completely powered by sustainable fuel. As the first transatlantic flight of a major commercial aircraft without the use of fossilbased aviation kerosene, this historic event made headlines around the world. The airline stated that alternative fuel, prepared from used cooking oil, animal fat, and 12% synthetic aromatic kerosene—which does not originate from fossil sources—could reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 70% compared with those when flying the same route involving traditional jet fuel.
Virgin Atlantic obtained special authorization for this demonstration flight. Current regulations issued by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), followed by those issued by Brazil’s National Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANP), only allow airlines to use a maximum of 50% of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Various technologies and raw materials can be used to produce SAF, ranging from oilseeds to ethanol and urban solid waste. What all these inputs share in common is that they contain carbon, which is the main precursor of the hydrocarbons for preparing SAF).
The aim is for planes to be fueled with aviation kerosene, SAF, or a mixture of the two. SAF molecules are practically identical to those of fossil-based kerosene, indicating that no changes in aircraft engines and fueling infrastructure are needed.
The amount of SAF in the fuel mix is restricted to 50% for safety reasons. “Not all SAF production methods lead to a sufficient amount of aromatic hydrocarbons, which are essential to ensure that the produced fuel maintains the same viscosity and does not freeze at high altitudes,” explained Fernando Catalano, director of the São Carlos School of Engineering at the University of São Paulo (EESC-USP).
Fossil kerosene consists of a mixture of various hydrocarbon types and usually contains between 10% and 25% aromatics, which are considered pollutants but are necessary substances. “It is a problem that has not yet been resolved, but it will have to be overcome at some point,” noted Catalano, highlighting two other existing obstacles to the large-scale adoption of SAF: the global production capacity is still very low compared to the demand, and the estimated cost varies between three and five times that of aviation kerosene.
Brazilian aerospace company Embraer, headquartered in São José dos Campos, has also tested the use of SAF in its planes. In June 2022, one of its E195-E2 commercial jets completed a flight with 100% biofuel in one of its two engines. Later, in October 2023, two of the company’s executive jets completed test flights powered entirely by SAF.
BARRIERS TO DECARBONIZATION
Sustainable aviation fuel is the airline sector's best hope for quickly reducing its carbon footprint. Aviation is responsible for approximately 2% of all global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, releasing 800 million tons of gas into the atmosphere every year. It is considered one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonize, and airplanes are among the most polluting modes of transport.
In 2022, the member states of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) approved a global target of zero carbon emissions in the sector by 2050. At a meeting in the United Arab Emirates at the end of 2023, they further committed to reducing the CO2 emissions of international aviation by 5% by 2030.
More than 600 million liters of SAF was produced in 2023, which is double that in the previous year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Production is expected to triple this year. Despite this increase, the expected volume represents only 0.53% of the global demand for aviation fuel. The USA, China, Japan, Singapore, Germany, Norway, and Mexico currently manufacture SAF.
“It is still unclear who will be the major suppliers of SAF in the future, but they will most likely be the oil companies that currently produce aviation kerosene,” said Catalano, who is also a member of the independent panel for the environmental impact of aviation of the ICAO.
With growth in the airline sector expected in the coming years, which is still recovering from the pandemic, emission reductions achieved through technological innovation, new, more efficient aircraft, and optimized operations are unlikely to be enough. Alternative fuels are needed to achieve the zero-carbon target. “The IATA estimates that SAF will contribute more than 60% toward net zero emissions by 2050,” noted Catalano.
In a global industry that is still in its infancy, according to experts, Brazil exhibits an opportunity to position itself as a central player due both to the country's experience producing biofuels and the amount of biomass available to manufacture SAF.
“If there is one place in the world where the large-scale production of SAF will succeed, it’s Brazil,” emphasized Glaucia Mendes Souza, a biochemist of USP’s Chemistry Institute and one of the managers of the FAPESP Bioenergy Research Program (BIOEN).
“We have an abundance of various inputs needed to produce this fuel, including ethanol. However, for now, the method for converting ethanol into sustainable aviation fuel, known as the alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) method, is not economically competitive,” said the researcher. “The hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) method offers better value. However, the problem with this approach is sustainability. Some countries,
mainly in Europe, do not want to use palm oil, which is associated with the highest oilseed productivity in Brazil.”
The two production methods most commonly approved are the HEFA and ATJ techniques, with the former being used in the Virgin Atlantic demonstration flight, accounting for more than 80% of the total current global SAF production. Europe does not consider palm oil sustainable because it is often produced via predatory practices involving the destruction of native forests, especially in Southeast Asia.
THE AIRLINE SECTOR HAS SET A
GLOBAL
TARGET OF ZERO CARBON EMISSIONS BY 2050
Sustainable aviation fuel is not yet being produced on a commercial scale in Brazil, but several projects are making headway. In Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, the Senai Institute for Innovation in Renewable Energy (ISI-ER), launched a pilot SAF plant in September last year, called the Hydrogen and Advanced Fuels Laboratory (H2CA).
Its current aim is to increase production from 200 milliliters (mL) per day to approximately 5 liters (L) per day. “We have already produced synthetic oil in the laboratory, the composition of which contains SAF, using a method known as the Fischer‒Tropsch (FT) process,” said chemist Fabiola Correia, project coordinator at ISI-ER. “We are now optimizing the process conditions to increase the production efficiency.”
The main raw material used at the pilot plant is glycerin obtained from the production of bio -
SAF sample produced at the Senai Institute for Innovation in Renewable Energy in Natal,
diesel. “In the oil transesterification process, 90% of the output is biodiesel, with 10% glycerin. Glycerin is polluted and contains contaminants, creating a liability for the biodiesel industry. We had the idea of converting this glycerin, together with the contaminants contained in it, into a product of great industrial demand, i.e., SAF.” Currently, almost all the glycerin generated in Brazil is sold to China at very low prices.
In another project at the laboratory in Natal, the raw material for producing synthetic gas— with which SAF is produced via the FT process— is CO2 captured from air and green hydrogen (a clean fuel generated by breaking down water molecules; refer to Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 317). “We currently work with these two different processes that yield glycerin and CO2 captured from air. We chose the FT method owing to its versatility, since it can be used with a variety of raw materials,” noted Correia.
In addition to ISI-ER, at least four other companies have already announced plans to produce SAF in Brazil: Acelen in Bahia; Petrobras in Cubatão, São Paulo State; Brasil BioFuels in Amazonia; and Geo Biogás in Paraná. The Brazilian holding company ECB Group announced that its subsidiary Be8 Paraguay will build a biorefinery in the neighboring country to produce 20,000 barrels of advanced biofuels per day, including SAF.
In mid-2023, Raízen, the largest sugarcane ethanol producer in the world, announced that it had received ISCC CORSIA Plus certification, allowing the ethanol generated at one of its plants to be used to manufacture SAF. The objective of ICAO’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) is to ensure that biofuels are manufactured in a sustainable manner.
Similar to many airlines, aircraft manufacturers generally support SAF research, devel -
opment, and production. Boeing is funding the third phase of the SAF Maps project in Brazil, led by the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), which is seeking additional information to meet CORSIA's sustainability criteria. The platform includes biomass data on six agricultural crops (sugarcane, eucalyptus, soy, maize, palm oil, and macaw palm) and two biomass residues (beef tallow and steelmaking gases) in 13 Brazilian states.
Moreover, Embraer was involved in tests for the approval of HEFA and SIP (synthesized isoparaffins produced from fermented hydroprocessed sugars) technologies. The company is also engaged in projects linked to studies on the impact of land use in Brazil, thereby mapping the opportunities and challenges of the SAF chain in the country and Europe. It is also part of the BioValue initiative, led by the National Biorenewables Laboratory (LNBR) at the Brazilian Center for Energy and Materials Research (CNPEM).
Funded by FAPESP, BioValue comprises 20 Brazilian scientific and technological institutions and companies that work together with European researchers on the development of biofuels, especially for aviation. In 2023, FAPESP and Embraer opened the Engineering Research Center for Future Air Transport at the Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA), with the goal of increasing the competitiveness of the aeronautical industry of Brazil. One of the focuses of this center is the reduction in GHG emissions.
LEGISLATION
Experts in this area consider that investment in SAF production will increase after the approval of Bill 4.516/2023, which is currently being debated in the Brazilian Congress. Referred to as the “Fuel of the Future” bill, it provides for the creation of a National Sustainable Aviation Fuel Program (ProBioQAV). “The main objective is to promote the SAF industry in Brazil,” stated Darlan Santos of the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC). The bill requires airlines to reduce emissions from 2027 onward, primarily through the use of SAF. In the first year, the mandatory reduction is 1%, increasing to 10% in 2037.
“As written, the bill allows for the fuel to be stored in hubs—main airports, such as Guarulhos—near production sites. This would also minimize the emissions generated by transporting the liquid,” argued Santos. According to Santos, approximately four years are needed to build an SAF plant that is ready to start supplying fuel. Many of the plants that have already been announced will begin operating between 2025 and 2026. n
The projects consulted for this report are listed in the online version of this article.
Rio Grande do Norte
THE RACE FOR PEROVSKITE SOLAR CELLS
Brazilian research groups are helping to advance research on a promising class of materials for photovoltaic applications
Frances
Jones
In the global race to develop new materials for clean and cost-effective energy solutions, a crystalline structure has shown promise as a semiconductor; industry experts believe that this semiconductor is set to become a primary raw material for a new generation of photovoltaic solar panels. Perovskite modules developed in laboratories using chemical compounds such as lead bromide, lead iodide, and cesium bromide have proven to be highly efficient in converting photon energy into electricity. The first research exploring the unique properties of perovskites was published in 2009, when a groundbreaking paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society demonstrated their use for the first time as a component in photoelectrochemical solar cells. Since then, research groups worldwide have been studying perovskites.
Small-scale perovskite solar modules developed in a laboratory at the USP Institute of Chemistry
Due to the rapid progress in the research and development of perovskite cells, their commercial viability has been the focus of researchers and startups (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 260). In under 15 years, the conversion efficiency of these solar cells—which have the advantage that they can be made flexible, lightweight, and transparent—has increased from 3.8% to 26.1%. These levels were achieved using modules with relatively small surface areas. In comparison, the efficiency of commercial silicon-based solar panels, which currently dominate the market, ranges from 15% to 20%.
A more recent technology known as tandem solar cells—in which a perovskite solar cell is overlaid on a silicon cell—has recently demonstrated an efficiency of 33.7% in the laboratory. The new world record was set in June 2023 at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) maintains a chart of the highest confirmed conversion efficiencies achieved at various research centers worldwide over the past few years.
Companies and startups in China, the US, and Europe are set to start large-scale production of perovskite solar modules in the upcoming months. One example is British-based Oxford Photovoltaics; this is a spin-off from the University of Oxford that operates a state-of-the-art manufacturing line for perovskite-on-silicon tandem solar cells in Germany. In the US, Caelux is building a facility to upscale its production of perovskite photovoltaic glass, and the first deliveries for building solar modules are anticipated within the year. In 2023, Chinese-based GCL-SI revealed that a 320-watt perovskite solar module had an efficiency of 16% and that it is currently being produced at the pilot scale.
In Brazil, the organization closest to a commercially viable perovskite cell model is Oninn; this is a nonprofit, private organization based in Belo Horizonte, formerly named CSEM Brazil until 2022 (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 247). The initiative is a collaboration between researchers from São Paulo State University (UNESP) and the Center for Innovation in New Energies (CINE); CINE is an Engineering Research Center (CPE) established in 2018 by FAPESP and Shell Brazil. However, further improvements are still needed for the commercial-scale production of technically and economically viable perovskite cells.
Leveraging its experience from developing solar panels via organic photovoltaic cell tech-
nology, Oninn is currently working to scale up its perovskite-based cells from the laboratory scale—no larger than a few square millimeters or centimeters (cm2)—to larger modules measuring hundreds of cm2, as needed for commercial applications.
“We’ve successfully produced our first prototype perovskite panel with an area of 800 cm2. But our standard panel, which is still under development, is slightly smaller at 500 cm2,” explains Diego Bagnis, an Italian physicist and scientific director at Oninn, who has been involved in the research effort in Brazil over the past nine years. “We’re still in the prototyping phase, testing our first real-world applications to validate the technology.” Bagnis hopes to have a pilot manufacturing line set up by 2026 and to go to market in 2028, initially targeting small-scale applications.
Oninn is not currently developing tandem cells. “We are focusing on what is known as a single-junction solar cell, or a cell with only one layer of perovskite,” says Bagnis. “Making tandem cells—with perovskite overlaid on silicon—makes sense in Europe as silicon technology is well-established there and they have local production facilities to produce these cells. But this is not the case in Brazil.” Local producers in Brazil import the silicon-based materials used to make solar panels and assemble the modules locally.
Despite recent advancements and promises of soon-to-be-launched commercial models, Brazilian researchers interviewed for this article say they are still far from understanding the properties of this emerging material, especially their relationship to cell stability—and their ability to retain their mechanical integrity over an extended period—and the process to replicate the energy efficiency achieved in the lab with larger-scale modules.
“There are still scientific and technological hurdles that will require investment, time, and expert personnel to overcome,” says physicist Carlos Frederico de Oliveira Graeff from the UNESP School of Sciences, Bauru campus.
Graeff, who is developing perovskite solar cells and is a member of Oninn, explained: “From a physics and engineering standpoint, silicon is a relatively simple material with a known crystal arrangement, whereas perovskite is physically and chemically complex. It is generally composed of both organic and inorganic components, consists of multiple elements, and exhibits high
HOW SOLAR CELLS WORK
A solar cell is composed of semiconductor materials that convert sunlight into electrical current
ionic mobility.” One of Graeff's most recent projects, with funding from FAPESP, is investigating the stability of these solar cells.
Gustavo Dalpian, a physicist at the University of São Paulo (USP) Institute of Physics, noted that many fundamental properties of the material’s crystalline structure are still not effectively understood. “It’s quite different from what we see in other materials. In crystalline silicon, for example, atoms tend to stay in well-defined positions, but in perovskites, they move a lot. This is believed to be one of the reasons they are so unstable.”
Perovskite has an instability, which causes it to degrade much faster than silicon; this instability is one of the major barriers in its commercial production. While silicon modules can last up to 30 years with minimal loss of efficiency, cells made of the perovskite can barely last over a year. Early cell models degraded within hours or days. Moisture, heat, oxygen, and even sunlight could easily degrade them.
“Once we understand the structural properties of these materials and their flaws, we can develop or think of ways to prevent them from degrading as fast as they do today,” says Dalpian. The research group he leads specializes in computational modeling of materials using big data and machine learning.
He recently visited Colombia as part of a FAPESP Sprint project, where he spoke with Pesquisa FAPESP. “We are discussing new projects involving perovskites, and researchers from two universities in Medellín are expected to join the initiative,” says Dalpian. Dalpian is also collabo -
1. LIGHT ABSORPTION
Sunlight passes through the glass substrate and is absorbed by the perovskite film
2. CHARGE SEPARATION
The energy from the absorbed light (photons) separates the electric charges: the ETL layer transports the electrons (negative charges), and the HTL layer transports the holes (positive charges)
3. CURRENT GENERATION
Holes migrate to the conductive material of the cell, while the electrons are captured by the metal, generating an electrical current
rating with an experimental group at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), where he lectured until receiving tenure at USP in 2023.
SYNCHROTRON LIGHT AND PEROVSKITE
During an in-depth investigation of perovskite properties, a team at CINE was the first to observe its properties using a synchrotron light source at Sirius, operated by the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS) at the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM). CINE brings together researchers from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), USP, and the Institute for Energy and Nuclear Research (IPEN).
“Studies into the use of perovskite in photovoltaic applications have been among the fastest-growing energy research niches globally, and our experiments with synchrotron light have allowed us to gain a foothold in an extremely competitive research environment,” says chemist Ana Flávia Nogueira, CINE’s director and a professor at the UNICAMP Institute of Chemistry. She has been researching emerging photovoltaic materials since 1996, and in 2015, she began investigating perovskite materials.
With the scientific instruments available at the CNPEM, researchers are able to analyze materials at the nanoscale in real time. “We brought the equipment used to produce the perovskite film—a rotating disk called a spin-coater, which resembles a CD burner—to the X-ray beamline,” says Nogueira. This was the first experiment of this kind. But why is this kind of experiment—known as in situ X-ray diffraction—particularly useful? “As the perovskite film was forming, X-rays struck the sample, providing useful information about
the structure and how the film crystallized at each stage,” explains Nogueira.
Due to this research and other studies analyzing the degradation of perovskites and employing in situ techniques at Sirius, the researchers at CINE became well known in this field and were invited to write a review on this subject for the journal Chemical Reviews. The 77-page article was published in early 2023. “The invitation to author a review article for a high-impact journal crowns the work we have been doing in recent years,” says Nogueira. In addition to investigating the use of perovskites to make solar cells, this group is also exploring applications for materials in light-emitting devices, such as LEDs and lasers.
UNDERSTANDING HOW IT WORKS
At Sirius, the current focus of experiments is understanding how perovskite solar cells work and
not just the material itself. These experiments are termed “operando” experiments. One of the challenges in this type of analysis is that synchrotron radiation can induce undesired changes in the material.
“We are investigating the effects of the radiation dose required to study these devices and how to mitigate them. We’ve already developed devices to simulate the operating conditions of photovoltaic solar cells and have produced some initial results,” says physicist Helio Cesar Nogueira Tolentino, head of the Division of Heterogeneous and Hierarchical Matter at LNLS. “We’re working on fine-tuning the optimal working conditions for obtaining information using synchrotron light without degrading the photovoltaic material, or if degradation occurs, to ensure it is in a controlled manner.”
Tolentino explained that a perovskite’s crystalline structure typically resembles a cube but can vary depending on the preparation method or synthesis route. In their first operando experiment, the researchers observed the impact of sunlight on the material’s atomic structure. “While we have not yet come to a definitive interpretation, there is evidence suggesting that varying light levels alter the material’s structure.”
Brazilian researchers are investigating a number of potential solutions to prevent the material from developing undesirable properties for the intended application; these solutions include additives, new molecules, modifications to the film production process, and even a two-dimensional (2D) perovskite film overlayed on a three-dimensional (3D) layer. However, the material instability is just one of many technological challenges. Sustaining the energy efficiency achieved with lab-scale cells on a larger scale is also a complex issue.
“The scaled-up cells are often not homogeneous,” explains Nogueira from UNICAMP. “The crystallization process that occurs as perovskite forms differs from that of other materials used in photovoltaics.”
According to Graeff, researchers are currently working to develop formulations and processes to produce economically viable technology. “We need robust production processes that can be used on a large scale. In the meantime, we’re learning a lot about the fundamental physics and chemistry. These materials are complex, and their use in electronic devices is fairly incipient,” says Graeff. “The electronics used for current solar panels are designed for silicon, a very simple and stable material. Now we are dealing with a material composed of different chemical elements and with a complex structure.”
A perovskite cell being prepared for experiments at the Sirius particle accelerator
Research in this field provides good examples of successful collaboration between the theoretical and experimental scientists. Using computer modeling, theorists can design structures that have never been created in the lab or save time and costs in selecting elements to be tested in experiments.
“We analyze different materials and try to infer or learn about their properties,” says Dalpian, who has coauthored at least five papers with the experimental group at UFABC. “Our collaboration has been highly productive. Typically, experimental researchers make requests, and we oblige, but in our case, they also listen to our input. For instance, we once suggested that introducing iron into perovskite could impart useful magnetic properties. They tried it, and the results led to an interesting article,” recounts Dalpian.
At the CINE, theoretical and experimental researchers are collaborating on multiple research fronts.
One project is working to develop alternatives to lead (a toxic substance) in the composition of perovskites. “There are obvious benefits from reducing or completely eliminating lead content in these structures,” says Juarez L. F. da Silva, a physicist at the USP Institute of Chemistry in São Carlos (IQSC) and coordinator of the Computational Materials Science program at CINE.
“Computational modeling can be used to simulate a large number of materials to replace a given element in low-dimensional perovski-
tes—such as tin, germanium, or combinations of two chemical species,” explains Da Silva. The material needs closely match a particular set of parameters. “We use experimental information to identify materials that can meet these specifications.”
Another research program led by experimental researchers at the CINE involves the exploration of how molecules interact with perovskite surfaces. The team uses computer modeling to discover mechanisms that could contribute to cell degradation, says Da Silva. “In a solar cell, the metal wire used to carry electrical current interacts with the perovskite, causing chemical species to be carried from one side to the other. In some circumstances, they can destabilize the cell structure.”
According to Dalpian, perovskite solar cells can be used in a wide range of applications; however, for this to occur, a breakthrough in cell stability is needed. “By today’s standards, a solar cell is expected to last 20 to 25 years. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. If cells are considerably cheaper, they can be replaced when they become less efficient, as we do today with light bulbs,” says Dalpian. “But there would need to be an ecosystem in place to recycle end-of-life panels, minimizing their environmental impact.” The goal of current perovskite cell research is not necessarily to completely replace silicon modules but to provide an additional material with useful properties and characteristics for solar energy. n
The research projects and scientific articles consulted for this report are listed in the online version.
A tandem solar cell production line at the Oxford Photovoltaics facility in Germany
PRINTING HUMAN TISSUE
Artificially produced skin, livers, and intestines emerge as an alternatives for cosmetic testing on animals
Sarah Schmidt
From above, this device looks like an old cassette tape. The difference is that instead of having two holes, it can have three or four, each of which holds reconstructed human tissues: skin, intestines, and liver. A fluid with nutrients and oxygen circulates between the orifices to simulate the blood circulation, causing the tissues function as interconnected mini-organs.
Cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies in other countries have used these devices, known as human-on-a-chip or body-on-a-chip (BoC), to assess the toxicity of their products under development, and these devices are now gaining ground in Brazil. The 3D printing technique (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 276) employed to prepare skin and intestinal tissues has also been applied experimentally for other purposes (see
table on Page 57), while liver tissue is still produced manually.
“We apply the test-ready ingredient to reconstituted skin and evaluate its toxicity, simulating human body function,” explains biologist Juliana Lago, a researcher in preclinical assessment for cosmetics giant Natura, which adopted this technology in the first half of 2023.
Imported from a German corporation, BoC joins other techniques that have been used since 2006 for safety and efficacy testing of beauty, personal hygiene, and perfume products as substitutes for animals, as animal testing was prohibited in March 2023 by the Brazilian Animal Experimentation Control Board (CONCEA) of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MCTI) (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 245).
In addition to indicating that they experience harm caused by the external agents, the
This chip partially simulates the human organism for testing the efficacy and safety of cosmetics
tissues filling the chip cavities replicate certain functions of the organs themselves. “The mini-liver produces bile [a yellow–green fluid that facilitates the absorption of fats and vitamins] and carries out all the processes of detoxification [outer layer] and release of mucus [a white or yellowish fluid that facilitates the elimination of feces],” describes biologist Ana Carolina Figueira of the Brazilian Biosciences National Laboratory (LNBio), an arm of the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM) in Campinas, São Paulo State. Figueira coordinated the project, integrating the use of the chip with other tissues, in collaboration with Natura.
In 2023, CNPEM licensed the production technology and sale rights of the liver and intestinal tissues for the startup 3D Biotechnology Solutions (3DBS), which is also based in Campinas. In exchange, in addition to paying royalties, the company helped refine the process for intestinal tissue production via 3D bioprinting and shared the human skin production method.
PRODUCTION OF ARTIFICIAL TISSUES
At 3DBS, the intestinal tissue is made from cells purchased from the Rio de Janeiro Cell Bank (BCRJ), and the skin is produced from human cells isolated from tissues after phimosis surgery (removal of excess foreskin from the penis) performed on children at a hospital in Santa Bárbara D’Oeste in the interior of São Paulo State.
“Cells discarded after surgeries on children rapidly produce type-I collagen, a protein that we
need to give the skin strength and elasticity,” explains Ana Luiza Millás, the company’s research director.
A solution with different types of cells is the raw material used in the so-called bioprinters, which create three-dimensional structures composed of live cells, molecules, and biocompatible materials. In this case, instead of the plastic material that is injected by conventional 3D printers to create an object, a syringe can, for example, discharge cells mixed with a collagen solution onto a transparent tray with internal compartments, such as those used to make ice in the freezer. A computer sends information regarding the layerby-layer dimensions and format of the tissue to be constructed to the device.
Reconstructed intestinal tissue forms a circular layer 12 millimeters (mm) in diameter inside the plate compartments and is then kept in an incubator at 37 degrees Celsius (°C) for 21 days. During this time, the cells differentiate to form the intestinal lining, which absorbs nutrients and produces mucus. When ready, the tissues can be used within up to one week.
As soon as it leaves the bioprinter, the skin cell mixture needs 10 days in the incubator to adopt its final form, which is small, pinkish gelatinous discs approximately 6 mm in diameter. “In this period, the cells form five layers in the dermo-epidermal model, known as full human skin. Another simpler model, known as recon -
Manually reconstructed liver tissue (left) and human skin produced by bioprinting
syringe deposits the cell solution into the compartments of a tray
structed human epidermis (RHE), has only the epidermal layer and is used for cosmetics safety and efficacy testing,” says Millás, who has been researching human tissue reconstruction since 2010 with the initial aim of creating skin for regenerative medicine. During her doctorate studies at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), supported by FAPESP, she worked with a substance extracted from the diesel tree (Copaifera langsdorffii), native to Brazil, which, when incorporated into ultrafine fibers, can be used as a three-dimensional cutaneous substitute (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 226).
OTHER APPLICATIONS
At the National Service for Industrial Training (SENAI) Manufacturing and Technology Integrated Campus (CIMATEC) in Salvador, Bahia State, materials engineer Josiane Barbosa uses a 3DBS bioprinter to test different formulations of meat produced from bovine or vegetable protein cells. “Bioprinting facilitates the reproduction of products with the required dimensions and geometry. This also helps with cell adhesion, given the layered arrangement, which is more difficult to achieve using manual techniques,” she says.
At the beginning of October, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) Genetic Resources and Biotechnology wing in Brasília transformed vegetable-based ingredients such as soy flour, fava beans, and chickpeas into fish fillet substitutes. If successful, this research may result in the production of new foods, which would be primarily geared toward the vegetarian and vegan markets.
There have also been other advances in this area. In a study published in Science Advances in October, Brazilian and American researchers reported the development of skin tissue with structures similar to hair follicles by means of bioprinting. If this technique advances, it may provide cells that could help with wound treatment or with performing grafts, given that it is the follicle base cells that initiate healing.
New directions in this research led to skin production via bioprinting, which was developed with specialists from the University of São Paulo (USP) and Natura and described in a March 2019 article in the publication International Journal of Advances in Medical Biotechnology
“Initially, we were producing larger skin masses with twice the current diameter, but corporations and research centers prefer smaller tissues in lower quantities at a lower cost for toxicology testing,” says biologist °C Gabriela Gastaldi, a researcher at 3DBS.
The liver tissues are still produced manually using cells imported from overseas and from the Rio de Janeiro bank, which are steeped in an agarose gel and placed in molds with 81 orifices. After five days in the incubator, the cells are bound together to form circular cell aggregates known as spheroids, which were approximately 300 micrometers (µm) in diameter and visible to the naked eye.
These tissues have been sold by the company since 2022, with 80% of the turnover coming from the bioprinters and electrospinning equipment, which have been produced since 2018 at the 3DBS workshop in São Paulo. In wider Brazil, 3DBS also distributes chips and pumps that circulate nutrients, which have been manufactured since 2019 by the German corporation Tissue-Use, whom 3DBS represents in the country. “We are invested in the growth of tissue and chip use in view of the need to standardize toxicity tests and other possible applications in the early stages of emergence,” observes business administrator and Strategy and Innovation Director Pedro Massaguer. n
Ana Luiza Millás of 3DBS operates a bioprinter; in a close-up, the
LINGUISTICS
PLURAL VOICES
Research into variants of Portuguese, sign and indigenous languages indicates linguistic diversity and prejudice in Brazil
Christina Queiroz | ILLUSTRATIONS Ayana Saito
Acase identified during research by a federal appeal court judge 15 years ago illustrates the importance of the debate around linguistic diversity in the country. While the sole official language of Brazil is Portuguese, there are speakers of more than 200 languages among the population. In the abovementioned case, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) denied a motion for habeas corpus filed by a Paraguayan detainee with the justification that although comprehensible, the application had been made in “Portunhol” (a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish). According to the STF interpretation, the applicant should have communicated to the judicial branch in Portuguese. To understand and confer visibility upon the plurality of languages and Portuguese variants used in Brazil, research conducted by linguists, phonoaudiologists, and educators has moved toward deconstructing the idea that the country is monolingual. These studies, which were published prior to 2023, are exemplified by the dictionaries produced in Kaiowá, the language spoken by the Kaiowá people in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and the Cena sign language used by a deaf community in the interior of Piauí state.
The National Inventory of Linguistic Diversity (INDL), which is an official instrument for the identification, documentation, and recognition of languages used by groups in Brazilian society, was created in 2010 by the National Institute for Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) by Decree no. 7.387. According to the INDL, 180 Indigenous and 30 immigration, sign, and AfroBrazilian languages are spoken in the country.
“They all vary greatly in terms of sounds, morphology, and syntax,” explains linguist Gladis
Massini-Cagliari of the São Paulo State University (UNESP) Araraquara campus.
According to Massini-Cagliari, the first languages incorporated into the inventory were Tucano, Baniwa, and Nheengatu, all of which are of Tupi origin, with the latter considered the general language of Amazonia. The INDL also includes Talian, which is a language created from dialects spoken by Italian immigrants in the southern Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, and three other indigenous languages. In August 2022, IPHAN drafted a proposal for the inclusion—which is not yet regulated—of six new languages in the inventory, one of which is Yoruba, which is spoken in Afroreligious houses of worship of Nago or Yoruba origin, whereas Hunsrückisch was developed from a Germanic dialect base by German immigrants.
“Even when recognized by an official instrument, in practical terms, they do not offer all the communication possibilities available to Portuguese,” says Massini-Cagliari. This means, for example, that few agencies in the health care, education, and justice systems are prepared to interact with people in languages other than Portuguese. This may also occur in cities such as São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Amazonas state) and Monsenhor Tabosa (Ceará), which, through municipal legislation, have coofficialized indigenous languages. In the Amazonian municipality, with Brazil’s second-largest population of indigenous peoples, the languages of Baniwa, Nheengatu, Tukano, and Yanomami are coofficial. MassiniCagliari wrote the book Understanding Linguistic Prejudice: Critical Approaches to Language Diversity in Brazil (Springer and Editora UNESP) with fellow linguists Angélica Rodrigues and Rosane de Andrade Berlinck, who are also with UNESP. Released in 2023, the book compiles
the results of studies undertaken by a network of researchers from UNESP and the universities of Sheffield (England), Ottawa (Canada), and Amsterdam (Holland).
According to Massini-Cagliari, minority languages that survive in specific geographical areas, along with variants of Portuguese, carry a stigma that contrasts with Brazil’s official language. “During our research, we sought to evidence existing relationships between linguistic prejudice and social discrimination,” she observes. “Studies demonstrate that the ‘standard’ or ‘cultured’ Portuguese is, in fact, an idealized abstraction, in many ways distanced from the spoken and written varieties of Portuguese used in Brazil,” she comments. Massini-Cagliari explains that, from a linguistic standpoint, phrases such as “os menino trabalha” (“the [plural] boy work”: colloquialism, meaning “the boys work”), which is common in popular Portuguese, are not erroneous but instead demonstrate aspects of the language’s grammar that determine verb conjugation to be a variable rule. “In that respect only an agrammatical structure, not naturally reproduced by any native speaker, such as “o menino trabalham,” meaning “the boy work” (verb pluralized), would be considered wrong.
To understand Brazilian linguistic diversity, linguist Antonio Carlos Santana de Souza, of Mato Grosso do Sul State University (UEMS), has been studying the Portuguese spoken by Quilombolas (slave-descendant maroons) since the 1990s, in locations such as the Cafundó quilombo (settlement), Salto de Pirapora, the Sorocaba region (São Paulo), and Caçandoca within the city of Ubatuba (São Paulo). He also studies Black Afrodescendant rural and urban communities in the states of Mato Grosso do Sul and Rio Grande do Sul.
In communities of slave descendants and white settlers who lived on nearby farms, Souza reports that residents did not practice gender agreement in significantly high percentages compared with the Portuguese spoken in other communities, i.e., saying “o menina” (“the [masculine article] girl”) or “a menino” (“the [feminine article] boy”).
“Reference studies on the theme conducted by American linguist William Labov maintain that among rural Afrodescendant communities, the men normally innovate in their way of speaking, while the women are more conservative,” says Souza. However, during work in Caçandoca, he found that women have changed their way of speaking, conforming to gender agreement more frequently than men do. “I discovered that the women have become more involved in the economic life of the community, selling bananas and receiving tourists. This contact has brought about changes in the way they communicate,” says the UEMS researcher.
Discussions on the relationships between language and society are nothing new to the world of linguistic studies. The concept of linguistic prejudice, although not yet known, appeared in studies by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913); however, it was only in the 1960s that sociolinguistics, i.e., the science of language‒society relationships, emerged. In that decade, the concept of linguistic prejudice was coined primarily from the research of William Labov, who studied variants of English spoken by Afro-American communities. “He demonstrated the complexity of the language used by these people, helping to deconstruct the
GUARANI–KAIOWÁ INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, FOR EXAMPLE, HAVE DIFFERENT VERBS TO DESCRIBE THE ACT OF FISHING
idea that the spoken use of anything other than standard English was inferior or incorrect,” says Berlinck of UNESP.
Adopting Portuguese as the sole official language confers a certain linguistic unity, providing practical benefits to a country with the continental dimensions of Brazil. Nevertheless, researchers defend the notion that science can help bring other languages that are spoken across the country into the light. “There is little awareness in society about the losses that the Portuguese language monopoly cause for the country,” says indigenous history professor Graciela Chamorro of the Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD) in Mato Grosso do Sul. She considers that when a language is lost, the cultural memory and repertoire of the community in question disappears. For more than 30 years, the Kaiowá indigenous people have used different verbs to describe the act of fishing, which vary according to the size of the fish caught and the techniques used. “These different words, for example, provide information on the size of the fish and the instruments to be used and can reveal technical knowhow which could not be accessed without a mastery of the language,” Chamorro argues.
All the languages spoken by fewer than 100,000 people around the globe are endangered, according to an atlas published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2010. This is the case for all indigenous languages in Brazil. “In Mato Grosso do Sul, Kaiowá and Guarani, very closely related sister languages, have 26,500 speakers,” she says. The mother tongue of this researcher born in Paraguay is Guarani, which is practiced in that country. In 1983, when she began researching Kaiowá in Mato Grosso do Sul, she was unable to understand what was being said. This challenge led her to study Kaiowá and create glossaries, which, in 2017, gave
rise to a dictionary project; in 2023, Chamorro published a Kaiowá-Portuguese dictionary with more than 6,000 translated words, along with cultural and linguistic notes, demonstrating the Kaiowá people’s world view. The book, released by publisher Javali, is based on collaboration between indigenous and nonindigenous people. Chamorro cites historical indigenous language dictionaries, such as the vocabulary developed by Jesuit Antonio Ruiz de Montoya (1585–1652), which have served as the basis for the study of Guarani-group languages, of which Kaiowá is one. Additionally, in 2014, during her master’s research at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), Eliane Berendina Loman de Barros, of the Missionary Evangelical Linguistic Association, created a bilingual Kaiowá-Portuguese dictionary, which has not yet been published in print. “Kaiowá has been studied for over 60 years by linguists of the association, with the aim of translating the Bible, hymns, Christian teachings and concepts outside the ethnic culture. In my case, I took the reverse path,” explains Chamorro. In other words, according to the researcher, studies conducted by these religious scholars were ultimately prepared to spread their messages among indigenous peoples, using Kaiowá to translate concepts and ideas from the Portuguese. Unlike their work, Chamorro’s dictionary presents Kaiowá words “adorned with the Kaiowá culture.” Translated into Portuguese, these words seek to approximate two linguistic and cultural experiences, which often reveal profound philosophical aspects of the Kaiowá people. One of the challenges in the process was translating words such as avy’a , which is an ambivalent Kaiowá verb equivalent to “eu felizo” (“I happy” as a verb with masculine agreement) or “eu feliza” (“I happy” as a verb with feminine agreement). As this verb does not exist in Portuguese, for the dictionary, it was translated as “eu estou feliz” (“I am happy”).
“Indigenous language dictionaries contribute to obviating the risk of their extinction, encouraging their revitalization in the written form,” she says. However, she adds that the vitality of these languages depends, above all, on their use in spoken form. “In this respect, my work is a warning to the Kaiowá people about the need to use Kaiowá not just in the family environment but also in public spaces,” states the researcher (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 273).
Linguist and educator Ronice Müller de Quadros, of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), says that Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS), which is used by the Brazilian deaf community—particularly in urban areas—is in the process of being preserved as heritage by IPHAN. To facilitate this preservation, the language must be described, documented, and inventoried
by researchers. Specialists from across Brazil have been working with LIBRAS, including a 35-person-strong research group coordinated by Quadros, since 2014. One of the outcomes of the studies conducted by this network, which partners with deaf researchers around the country, was the publication of an online LIBRAS grammar by Arara Azul in 2021, which is also available on the UFSC website. This work was reedited in 2023 by the Brazilian Institute for the Education of Deaf People in two extended and updated volumes totaling more than a thousand pages. “The editing of this grammar is a significant milestone in the process of recognizing the language. However, there is much to progress,” Quadros says. The scholar explains that LIBRAS makes more use of visual and spatial resources than other languages do; it is possible, for example, to use both hands to produce multiple, simultaneous meanings. “We need to carry out studies to investigate these complex meanings,” she proposes.
Acknowledged as a legal means of communication and expression for deaf people through Law No. 10.436 of 2002, LIBRAS was consolidated as part of an academic research project starting in 2006, when early degree courses in the language were devised. Since then, the UFSC and nine other institutions, including the University of São Paulo (USP), have begun to offer this learning pathway; currently, some 40 LIBRAS courses are offered, particularly across public universities, which cover all Brazilian states. Another relevant legal landmark was the 2021 amendment of the Law of Directives and Bases (LDB), which included the bilingual education of deaf people with a separate modality in the same manner as that of indigenous education. As a consequence, all education networks are obligated to offer learning support services in line with the linguistic specificities of deaf students, including faculty members who are bilingual in LIBRAS and Portuguese and instructional materials being made available in sign language.
“This measure is now being implemented by education networks,” reports on the phonoaudiologist Cristina Broglia Feitosa de Lacerda, a professor in the Special Education postgraduate program at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar). According to the researcher, students can be enrolled in both regular schools and specific institutions for deaf people. The municipal education network of São Paulo has six exclusive units for such people.
Lacerda says that despite advances being made in the offer of courses to qualify professors to
work with bilingual education in LIBRAS, Brazil currently faces the challenge of creating instruments to measure the development of related children in the classroom. The phonoaudiologist explains that professors currently observe student evolution on the basis of subjective criteria and that institutions do not have clear parameters with which to devise specific actions and provide impetus to their learning. Consistent with this gap, Lacerda created an instrument to evaluate the progress of deaf children in the use of LIBRAS on the basis of research funded by FAPESP, which was conducted in partnership with researchers from the University of Barcelona and concluded in 2023. To this end, she analyzed the development of narratives by 100 deaf students in São Paulo schools, creating a method to set common criteria to be applied in assessing other such learners.
In addition to LIBRAS, there are at least 22 sign languages utilized among deaf communities in Brazil, as identified in doctoral research defended in 2023 by linguist Diná Souza da Silva, under the guidance of Quadros, from UFSC. “The languages were developed by isolated communities that do not have contact with LIBRAS; they created their own forms to enable communication,” expounds Quadros. One of these forms is Cena, which is used by a community of deaf people in the town of Várzea Queimada, which is located in the inland portion of Piauí state. “It is considered autochthonous, i.e., created without influence from any other languages, and has been in use for some 90 years,” recounts Anderson Almeida da Silva, of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), who has been undertaking studies within the community since 2017. With a population close to a thousand, the town is currently home to 33 deaf individuals. According to Almeida-Silva, this number is the result of several marriages between blood relations in the past. “Cena runs the risk of disappearing, as the last person born deaf in the town is now 17,” he says. Although there is a LIBRAS school in
IN ADDITION TO LIBRAS, OTHER FORMS OF SIGN LANGUAGE IN BRAZIL, SUCH AS CENA, ARE USED IN THE INTERIOR PORTION OF PIAUÍ STATE
the city, Cena is still very much used, especially by older people.
In December 2023, as an outcome of studies by Almeida-Silva and a team of specialists, including the Várzea Queimada deaf community, the first ever Cena dictionary was launched, with equivalents in LIBRAS and Portuguese for 250 words. Sponsored by the Piauí state government, 500 copies were printed, and an e-book version is set to be made available this year. “The dictionary enables the memory of the language to be safeguarded and the community identity enhanced,” he emphasizes.
To expand the comprehension of the sign languages used in small deaf Brazilian communities, in 2023, Rodrigues of UNESP embarked upon research funded by FAPESP into emerging sign languages used in the cities of Boa Vista (Roraima), Buriti dos Lopes (Piauí), Tiros (Minas Gerais), Umuarama (Paraná), Várzea Queimada (Piauí), Vila de Fortalezinha (Pará), Centro Novo do Maranhão, and Centro do Guilherme (both in Maranhão state). “We are looking to compare the age of these languages, the number of generations that use them, and the way they are linguistically set up and structured. The end goal is to compile a virtual database open for public consultation,” informs Rodrigues. “We want to expand comprehension and disseminate knowledge about Brazil’s linguistic diversity, contributing to the formulation of public policies that consider populational singularities,” he highlights.
Recent advances in these efforts have been achieved with the judicial branch in terms of recognizing Brazilian linguistic plurality. Federal appeal court judge Inês Virgínia Prado Soares
studied this diversity during her doctoral research at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), which she defended in 2007. In a 2009 book on Brazilian cultural heritage, she analyzed the legal mechanisms for protecting spoken words in Brazil. Soares explains that an article in the Federal Constitution defines Portuguese as Brazil’s official language. At the same time, another constitutional provision states that indigenous peoples, migrants, and other citizens have the right to speak in their mother tongues in their private spaces and relationships and, in certain situations, in the case of spoken words in Brazil, when dealing with the public branch. “I have written texts to analyze Brazilian standards on the theme, to understand how the constitutional edict of monolingualism coexists with the right to linguistic diversity,” she says. During her research, the judge came across the habeas corpus application filed by the Paraguayan detained in Brazil—referred to at the beginning of this article—which was rejected by the STF. An initial step to preventing such applications from being dismissed simply for not having been formulated in the official language was taken in 2023, when the Federal Justice Council published assertions approved in the First Cultural and Natural Heritage Law Round, which was held at the beginning of that year. One such assertion maintains that people should be able to express themselves to the judiciary in other languages or variants of Portuguese, i.e., through Brazilian speech. “The assertions are not enshrined in law but serve as guidelines for judges, so they contribute to extending the right of access to justice in the country,” concludes Soares. n
Markings made beside footprints left millions of years earlier may denote human interest in fossils
1
IN STEP
Thousands of years ago, Indigenous peoples made rock etchings beside dinosaur footprints in Paraíba, Brazil
Letícia Naísa
In the Paraíba State backland municipality of Sousa, dinosaurs are an attraction; abounding in preserved footprints, the Valley of the Dinosaurs conservation unit is open to visitors and home to a museum of fossils found in the area. Consequently, paleontologists were the group most interested in the region until recently. Now, archaeologists are interested in the Serrote do Letreiro site, which is located 11 kilometers (km) from the town. Here, rock art was made on the ground by people who may have lived there up to 9,000 years ago, associated with the footprints left by animals between 130 million and 145 million years ago. These primitive messages, which have never been seen before in Brazil, suggest that the parallels were intentional, according to an article published in the journal Scientific Reports in March.
“This site is a real overdose of information,” noted paleontologist Tito Aureliano, one of the study authors, a postdoctoral researcher at the Regional University of Cariri (URCA), and one of the coordinators of the Diversity, Ichnology, and Osteohistology Laboratory (DINOLAB) at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). He added, “There is a considerable temporal mix there: rocks almost 1 billion years old, then you walk 50 steps and see traces of the
Cretaceous Period (about 130 million years ago); there are dozens of different dinosaur footprints and human engravings made some thousands of years ago”.
Serrote do Letreiro has an area of 15,000 square meters (m2) in the Paraíba sertão (badlands) on private property. The site was first recorded in the late 1970s by Italian paleontologist Giuseppe Leonardi, a one-time professor at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) and the State University of Ponta Grossa (UEPG), who is now retired. At the time, he classified the markings—or petroglyphs—as “Cariri Indigenous carvings” and focused his interest exclusively on the dinosaur prints. “These human engravings attracted no attention,” remarked paleontologist Aline Ghilardi, of UFRN, also coordinator of Dinolab and coauthor of the recent study.
“It has always intrigued me that there were never any answers about what those human markings were, so I decided to recruit some help,” noted the dinosaur specialist, who has been a regular visitor to Serrote do Letreiro for almost a decade; in 2023, she invited archaeologist Leonardo Troiano, of the Brazilian National Institute for Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN), to visit the site. Troiano flew from São Paulo to Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará State, and then took a
HOME TO DINOSAURS AND PEOPLE
The people who lived in the region now part of Paraíba, Ceará, and Rio Grande do Norte States left intriguing marks
190-km bus ride to Sousa, with a further leg on a hard dirt road to the site. Toward the end of the journey, he ripped his pants on a barbedwire fence.
However, the long, eventful trip was rewarded. “At day’s end, before a magnificent sunset, the shadows of the last 15 minutes of waning sunlight bring out the footprints and engravings; it’s amazing,” the archaeologist remarked enthusiastically. During the visit, the group commissioned drone pilot Arthur Sampaio to produce high-resolution images with the goal of building a 3D digital model of the site. The etchings take the form of tridigits, grids, and circles with patterns of crossed lines, like stars.
According to the researchers’ interpretations, some of the inscriptions imitate threetoed feet. The petrified footprints enabled the identification of three different dinosaur types: theropods, sauropods, and ornithopods. Archaeologists describe the human groups that lived there as semisedentary people who camped, foraged and hunted for what they needed before moving on to the next location.
Similar markings have been observed in parts of the northeastern Brazilian states Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará close to Sousa, indicating that those civilizations inhabited all
Engravings were made dozens of millions of years after the extinction of the dinosaurs, but it seems that their side-by-side positioning was not a coincidence
João Pessoa PARAÍBA
RIO GRANDE DO NORTE CEARÁ
of the surrounding area. However, the markings found in Serrote do Letreiro are special because they were etched in the ground. “It’s curious, because normally engravings associated with that culture are found on vertical or inclined rock panels, so there is strong evidence that this ancient population made their rock art there because of the footprints; there is a direct association between the markings,” Ghilardi inferred.
Archaeologist Valdeci dos Santos Júnior, from Archaeology Laboratory O Homem Potiguar (The Potiguar Man—pertinent to the region of Rio Grande do Norte State) (LAHP), of Rio Grande do Norte State University (UERN), who did not participate in the study but authored the book A pré-história do Rio Grande do Norte (Prehistoric Rio Grande do Norte), believes that the hypothesis in Scientific Reports is worthy of attention. He noted, “It’s possible that the ancient engravers respected the space of the footprints, because the petroglyphs do not overwrite them”. For the first time, according to Santos Júnior, a study reveals evidence of a site that was inhabited by both dinosaurs and human groups. He emphasized that “The two groups did not coexist; they are from two different periods,” going on to state that other sites with the same characteristics need to be found to identify a pattern and reinforce the hypothesis that human beings liked to reproduce dinosaur footprints. He noted, “It is not so simple a question—tridigits are common engravings in the Northeast, and can represent birds, other animals’ footprints, or even plants such as cacti, a common part of the landscape.”
That said, other reports point to interactions between people and dinosaur prints in Australia, Poland, and the US. In Brazil, the association is unprecedented, although relationships with fossils have occurred frequently over the course of history. Troiano affirmed that, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, some constructions, such as older churches, were built using fossil timber, which looks different from common wood. Legends and stories from Ancient Greece were inspired by the discovery of fossils, according to the archaeologist. The bones of mammoths and other giant animals were portrayed as heroes in these stories. “The site in Pelopponessus, where they believed the Gods and Titans to have clashed, is a fossil deposit,” reported the researcher.
For specialists, finding human records beside footprints suggests that ancient Brazilian communities also valued discoveries of the past. “These peoples inhabited the Americas for 50,000 years in deep harmony with the natural world, and such discoveries most certainly had a special value for them; it was not something trivial,” noted Santos Júnior.
An understanding of dinosaurs emerged only in the nineteenth century, with the publication of On the Origin of Species by the British naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and the popularization of the theory of evolution. “Until that time, people just didn’t think about large extinct animals,” remarked Santos Júnior. These symbolic records are the vestiges of groups that predated the arrival of the colonizers in Brazil. Other research should seek out more signs to sustain this possible connection between dinosaur footprints and petroglyphs. n
The scientific article consulted for this report is listed in the online version.
Researchers examined the markings and mapped the site by drone during an expedition to Serrote do Letreiro, Paraíba
