Special Issue April 2011

Special Issue April 2011

Special Issue April 2011

Ethanol from sugar cane bagasse

PESQUISA FAPESP

Peptide inhibts vascular spreading

BRAZILIAN SCIENCE OPEN TO THE WORLD The state of S達o Paulo seeks to increase collaboration overseas and attract talent

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YOUNG INVESTIGATORS AWARDS in São Paulo, BRAZIL FAPESP, the São Paulo Research Foundation, is one of the main research funding agencies in Brazil.

With a 2010 budget of US$ 450 million, it supports more than 11,000 scholarships and 8,000 research awards. FAPESP’s Young Investigators Awards envisage creating new research groups led by highly promising early-career scientists in any field of knowledge and from any country. Selected candidates receive competitive fellowships and sizable research funds. Candidates are encouraged to develop their projects with higher education and research institutions from the State of São Paulo, Brazil. Highlighted research areas are: biodiversity, bioenergy, climate change, neurosciences, cancer, urban studies, materials science, optics and photonics, urban studies and violence. Proposals in other fields will be considered and all will be selected through a peer-reviewing process.

For guidance and further information: yi@fapesp.br Additional information: http://www.fapesp.br/en/materia/4479

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MAY 2009 / DECEMBER 2010

SECTIONS 5 Letter from the editor 6 Memory 98 Art

WWW.REVISTAPESQUISA.FAPESP.BR

INTERVIEW 10 In José Roberto Mendonça de Barros’s opinion, infrastructure and the production of knowledge will help the state to drive growth in Brazil

COVER 18 Initiatives seek to make research from São Paulo more competitive abroad

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL POLICY 28 COOPERATION Thesis discusses the reasons for the lack of growth in Brazilian research in international networks

32 ENERGY An abundant by-product of the sugar cane industry provides Brazil with a competitive edge in the search for second generation ethanol

37 INTERVIEW The US researcher Lee Lynd says that cellulose ethanol and sugar cane ethanol promise to be more complementary than their competitors

SCIENCE 42 PHYSIOLOGY Attacking undesirable veins and arteries could fight cancer and blindness

46 IMMUNOLOGY Inflammation unleashed by sepsis damages the heart

50 ENVIRONMENT Mathematical models help predict the effects of global warming in Brazil

56 ECOLOGY Volatile compounds control the interaction between vegetables and insects

60 BIOCHEMISTRY Mechanism that makes mushrooms glow leads to a method for detecting contamination

66 PHYSICS Group from Rio de Janeiro proposes equation that describes a reduction in the quantum phenomenon due to environmental influence

TECHNOLOGY 68 ASTRONOMY Astronomical instruments made in Brazil equip the SOAR telescope in the Chilean Andes

76 OPTICS Researcher publishes article in leading international journal on the new generation of optic fibers

80 OIL Petrobras and Unicamp are studying bacteria from oil wells that break down oil

82 AEROSPACE ENGINEERING New monitoring camera made by Opto for Cbers-3 to be tested in China

HUMANITIES 84 LITERATURE Project reviews Mário de Andrade’s creative path

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90 SOCIOLOGY Seminar discusses the dilemmas of social segregation in Brazil

94 HISTORY Database maps out the migratory flow of qualified labor that furthered São Paulo’s post-1945 industrial development

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letter of the editor

São Paulo Research Foundation

Celso Lafer

President

eduardo moacyr krieger

vice-President

Increasing collaboration, attracting talent

Executive Board Celso Lafer, eduardo moacyr krieger, Horácio Lafer Piva, herman jacobus cornelis voorwald, Maria josé soares mendes giannini, josé de souza martins, JOSÉ TADEU JORGE, Luiz gonzaga belluzzo, sedi hirano, Suely Vilela Sampaio, Vahan Agopyan, Yoshiaki Nakano Administrative Board Ricardo Renzo Brentani

President Director

CARLOS HENRIQUE DE BRITO CRUZ

Scientific Director

Joaquim J. de Camargo Engler

Administrative Director

issn 1519-8774

Editorial Board Carlos henrique de brito cruz (president), Caio Túlio Costa, Eugênio Bucci, Fernando Reinach, José Arana Varela, José Eduardo Krieger, Luiz Davidovich, Marcelo Knobel, Marcelo Leite, Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida, Mariza Corrêa, Maurício Tuffani, Monica Teixeira Scientific Committee LUIZ HENRIQUE LOPES DOS SANTOS (president), cylon gonçalves da silva, FRANCISCO ANTôNIO BEZERRA COUTINHO, joão furtado, Joaquim J. de Camargo Engler, josé roberto parra, luís augusto barbosa cortez, luis fernandeZ lopez, marie-anne van sluys, mário josé abdalla saad, PAULA MONTERO, Ricardo Renzo Brentani, sérgio queiroz, wagner do amaral, Walter Colli Scientific Coordinator luiz henrique lopes dos santos Editor in Chief mariluce moura Managing Editor neldson marcolin Executive Editors Carlos Haag (Humanities), fabrício marques (Policy), Marcos de Oliveira (Technology), Ricardo Zorzetto (Science) Special Editors Carlos Fioravanti, Marcos Pivetta Editorial Assistant Dinorah Ereno Reviewer and Translator Deborah Neale Reviewer Alison Mary Emily Askew Art Editor Laura daviña e Mayumi okuyama (Coordinator) ART maria cecilia felli and Júlia cherem rodrigues Photographer eduardo cesar On-Line Editor maria guimarães webmaster Danielle Gomes Fortunato Colaborators André Serradas (Data Bank), Braz, Gonçalo Junior, Salvador Nogueira, Yuri Vasconcelos

The articles do not necessarily reflect the opinion of FAPESP The reprinting of texts and photos, either in total or partially, are prohibited, without prior authorization

To contact the Editors or send a letter (55 11) 3087-4210 cartas@fapesp.br To advertise (55 11) 3087-4212 mpiliadis@fapesp.br Subscriptions (55 11) 3038-1434 fapesp@acsolucoes.com.br Printers RR Donnelley Editora e Gráfica Ltda.

Distribution Dinap Administration management INSTITUTO UNIEMP PESQUISA FAPESP RUA JOAQUIM ANTUNES, Nº 727 - 10º ANDAR, CEP 05415-012 PINHEIROS - São Paulo – SP FAPESP Rua Pio XI, nº 1.500, CEP 05468-901 Alto da Lapa – São Paulo – SP Secretaria de Desenvolvimento Econômico, Ciência e Tecnologia Governo do Estado de São Paulo

instituto verificador de circulação

Mariluce Moura - Editor in Chief

T

his is the sixth special English version Pesquisa Fapesp magazine.

The first was published in 2002; the second, in early 2004; the third, in late 2005; the fourth, in September 2007; and the fifth, in late 2009. In this edition, we are bringing together 18 of the most important articles published in our monthly issues in Portuguese from May 2009 to December 2010, in order to provide English speaking readers with an overview of Brazilian scientific and technological production during this period.

We have maintained basically the same editorial structure as in our domestic issues. Thus, the magazine opens with texts on scientific and technological policy, followed by articles on science, then on technology and finally on the humanities.

A quick-witted interview with an expert on Brazilian development, economist José Roberto Mendonça de Barros (page 10), and the issue’s cover story (page 18) precede this set of articles. Mendonça de Barros talks about the new Brazilian economic geography in which the state of São Paulo and the Southeast region of the country will push ahead the process of national development from 2011 on.

He recognizes that other regions and states were more decisive for Brazilian growth in the last few years, but now, he says, São Paulo will lead Brazilian growth at annual rates of 4% or 4.5%, because of its infrastructure and system of knowledge production. Both are fundamental factors to support investment in dynamic and high technology sectors, such as agribusiness linked to second generation ethanol and oil exploration in the pre-salt layer.

As for the cover feature, our magazine relates important strategic steps and some interesting stories for São Paulo scientific research to increase its internationalization. With FAPESP at the head, the state is taking measures to

stimulate collaboration among scien­ tists from São Paulo and their colleagues from other countries and to attract talent from abroad to improve the Brazilian scientific environment. If São Paulo contributes almost 50% of the Brazilian production of scientific knowledge and if it is true that in this part of Brazil there are thousands of researchers producing science at the frontier of their fields, this knowledge should have a corresponding impact on world science. The internationalization of research seems to be the best way.

From the total of 10 articles in the science and technology sections, I would like to highlight, first, the one on the development of a peptide that brings significant qualities in a potential pharmaceutical substance and the possibility of exterminating blood vessels that develop in the wrong place and in an untimely fashion at the same time. As I talked about collaboration, curiously this achievement results from the collaboration between the biochemist Ricardo Giordano, from the Chemistry Institute at the University of São Paulo (USP) and a couple of Brazilian researchers who jointly coordinate a laboratory at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, USA: the molecular biologist Renata Pasqualini and the oncologist physician and researcher Wadih Arap.

In second place, I would like to draw our readers’ attention to the article on the astronomical instruments made in Brazil that equip the SOAR telescope in the Chilean Andes. It is a real and beautiful demonstration of the capacity of Brazilian industry incorporating technological innovations to advance the process of knowledge.

And finally I propose to our readers a short dive into Brazilian culture in the text about Mário de Andrade, one of the main writers of modernism in our country, and his process of creativity.

Enjoy your reading!

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Fundação Oswaldo Cruz - Casa de Oswaldo Cruz - DAD, imagem FOC (F)7-3

memory

Chagas observes Rita, the child from Lassance, one of the first identified cases of the disease.

In the background is the train that was both lodging and laboratory

Chagas 100 years ago, a Brazilian physician discovered the full cycle of the disease named after him Neldson Marcolin Published in September 2009

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octor Carlos Ribeiro Justiniano Chagas arrived in Lassance in June 1907, with a mission to battle an outbreak of malaria that had interrupted the work on the extension of the Central do Brasil Railway in the northern part of the State of Minas Gerais. This was a very poor region, where most of the people lived in houses made of wattle and daub. While spending time there, Chagas would live in a train carriage parked near the train station. The carriage was also used as a doctor’s office and a laboratory. The doctor was interested not only in the prophylaxis but also in disease-causing insects and parasites. He would collect specimens of animals and investigate patients that apparently had symptoms that were not related to malaria.

The results of his research work were published in the form of a note in the periodical Brazil Medico on April 14, 1909. In the article, he announced the discovery of an unknown disease, the parasite that causes it and the insect that transmits it. Ever since then, this finding has been considered as a unique feat in the history of medicine – because it described the full cycle of the malady, Chagas Disease – and the finding was the result of one person’s work.

Carlos Chagas, a native of the town of Oliveira, State of Minas Gerais, had always been interested in malaria. The

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Fundação Oswaldo Cruz - Casa de Oswaldo Cruz - DAD, imagem FOC (VPCC-F) 4-11

The last photograph of Oswaldo Cruz (sitting, in the middle), surrounded by Adolfo Lutz (left) and Chagas (right), in 1916

malaria in the Baixada Fluminense region, together with entomologist Arthur Neiva. In June, he went to the north of Minas Gerais with the same objective. This time he went with Belisário Penna, a physician from the Diretoria Geral de Saúde Pública, Public Health

Department. The two physicians set up base in Lassance and started to work. An enthusiastic student of tropical diseases, Chagas would analyze the blood of local animal species during his free time. In one of these tests, he identified a new protozoa of the

Trypanosoma genus in a marmoset. He named this protozoan Trypanosoma minasense. The species was not pathogenic.

The chief railway engineer, Cantarino Motta, introduced the researchers to a blood-sucking bug commonly found in the region. As the nights in that region are cold, the face is the only uncovered part of the body, and prone to being bitten by the insect. Hence the nickname “barbeiro” (barber); this insect hides in the cracks of the walls of the wattle and daub houses during the day and roams at night to feed. Chagas knew the importance of blood-sucking insects as transmitters of parasitic diseases and started dissecting the “barbeiros”. He found a protozoa that could either be the insect’s natural parasite or the evolutionary phase of a disease-causing trypanosoma.

There was no good laboratory available in Lassance to clarify

Fundação Oswaldo Cruz - Casa de Oswaldo Cruz – DAD - IOC(AC-E) 6-33.1-1

disease was the object of his doctorate thesis, the advisor of which was Oswaldo Cruz, at the then Instituto Soroterápico de Manguinhos (renamed Instituto Oswaldo Cruz) institute in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1905, a malaria epidemic occurred in the city of Itatinga, State of São Paulo.

Cruz, who was also the head of the Diretoria Geral de Saúde Pública, Public Health Department, recruited Chagas to battle the disease. “This was the first anti-malaria campaign conducted in Brazil, based on the knowledge of the role of the mosquitoes as transmitters of the disease,” says Simone Petraglia Kropf, a professor and researcher in the history of health and science at the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz institute at the Fiocruz foundation.

In February 1907, the young doctor was once again summoned to deal with an outbreak of

On the banks of the Negro River: expedition to the Amazon Region, in 1913 (the scientist is the one with the tie) PESQUISA FAPESP

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memory

the doubt, so Chagas sent some insects to Manguinhos for experiments. Oswaldo Cruz performed an experimental infection on lab animals and told Chagas that he had found forms of the trypanosoma in one of the animals that had gotten sick. Chagas went back to the institute and confirmed his suspicions: the protozoa was unknown, with a different morphology than that of the T. minasense.

The parasite was named Trypanosoma cruzi in honor of Cruz.

But the sick people still had to be found. Chagas went back to Lassance and discovered the trypanosoma in the blood of a two-year old girl called Berenice, who was sick with a fever. The child’s illness led the doctor to describe the clinical symptoms of the disease for the first time: acute anemia, general edemas, swollen lymph nodes, among others. This work resulted in the note published in Brazil Medico in April and soon thereafter in Germany’s Archiv für Schiff und Tropenhygiene, and in 8

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France’s Bulletin de la Société de Pathologie Exotique.

The discovery of the American trypanosomiasis, as Chagas called it, had an extraordinary impact on the doctor’s scientific, institutional and political life. In 1910, he was accepted as full member of the Academia Nacional de Medicina (ANM, National Academy of Medicine), and was the winner of the competitive selection, by

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merit, for “head of service” at Manguinhos. In 1912, he was granted the Schaudinn Award, from the Tropical Medicine Institute in Hamburg, Germany.

The Schaudinn Award was granted every four years for the most important contribution to protozoology.

When Oswaldo Cruz passed away in 1917, at the age of 54, Chagas was appointed as director of

Manguinhos three days later, a post he would hold until his death in November 1934, at the age of 56. In 1918, when the Spanish flu was assailing Brazil, he organized a special service to set up emergency hospitals and sent an appeal to doctors and medical students to aid the population of Rio de Janeiro. His action was one of the factors that led him to the position of director of the National Public Health Department (DNSP) in 1920.

“Chagas had already been talking about the poor sanitary conditions in

Fundação Oswaldo Cruz - Casa de Oswaldo Cruz – DAD - FOC(VPCC-F)4-9

Fundação Oswaldo Cruz - Casa de Oswaldo Cruz - DAD(FFC(F) 6-2)

Chagas, Penna and Motta (seated, from right to left): this is the house where the doctor first became acquainted with the “barbeiro,” in 1908

Albert Einstein (middle) was hosted by Chagas in Manguinhos when visiting Rio de Janeiro in 1925

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there were very few patients who had proved to be infected, unlike that which had been stated by the discoverer of the disease.

In 1922, Afrânio Peixoto, writer and full professor of hygiene, said at a plenary session of the ANM that nobody knew those sick people and called the disease “Lassance disease.” Deeply offended, Chagas asked the academy to set up a committee to evaluate his studies. In 1923, the scientist from Manguinhos obtained a favorable opinion.

Such issues could have caused less disappointment to Chagas if he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. In 1999, Marília Coutinho, who was at the University of Florida at that time, Olival Freire Jr., from the Federal University of Bahia, and João Carlos Pinto Dias, from the Centro de Pesquisas René Rachou, a research center in Minas Gerais, published an article on the Nobel Prize nominees who were unknown in Brazil. The first formal nomination requested by the Nobel Prize committee, made in 1911, nominated Pirajá da Silva, a scientist who was widely respected in Europe.

The nomination was valid for the award to be granted in 1913. However, the winner was France’s Charles Richet. The second official nomination was in 1920 for the award in 1921, nominating Manoel Augusto Hilário de Gouvêa, from the ANM. Although Chagas had been the only scientific nominee that year, once again he

Fundação Oswaldo Cruz - Casa de Oswaldo Cruz – DAD - FFC(F)1-29

Brazil’s hinterland since 1909, when he started studying the disease, and continued drawing attention to this issue during his entire life,” says Simone Kropf, who recently launched the book Doença de Chagas, doença do Brasil: ciência, saúde e nação (1909-1962), published by Editora Fiocruz. The scientist remained in this post until 1926. During his term in office, he prepared the extensive sanitary code that modernized the existing Brazilian sanitary laws, and launched a battle against endemic diseases in rural regions. “Other important actions included the opening of the first professional nursing school in Brazil and investments in the training of medical doctors specialized in public health, who were hired after concluding their training program.”

As a member of the Health Committee of the League of Nations, he suggested the creation of the International Leprology Center in 1922; the center was inaugurated in 1934, and was housed in the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz until 1939. In 1925, he became full professor of tropical medicine at the Medical School in Rio de Janeiro, on merit.

Chagas’ scientific production and public health management were applauded. However, he was also greatly criticized. In 1919, researcher Henrique Aragão suggested that Chagas Disease was not as serious and widespread as had been announced, and

With his sons Evandro (left) and Carlos. Both sons also became leading researchers

was disregarded and nobody was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine that year. Two other informal nominations were put forward, but there are no details on them.

Nobody knows why the Brazilian was not chosen. “Chagas achieved recognition and success very early on, held government positions that were sought by other people, and attracted a lot of bad feelings,” says João Carlos Pinto Dias. There is an unproven hypothesis that the Nobel Prize commission had consulted the scientist’s enemies and had been advised not to nominate him. In the opinion of biochemist Walter Colli, from the Chemistry Institute of the University of São Paulo, and a specialist on Chagas Disease, there is no PESQUISA FAPESP

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doubt that Chagas deserved the Nobel Prize. “I am convinced that he did not win because Brazil is on the sidelines. It would have been different if the same work had been conducted in the United States or in Europe,” he believes.

“When I presented our article in Manguinhos in 1999, the most interesting fact was the surprise and emotion of Carlos Chagas Filho, who was 89 years old at the time, and of other very elderly researchers who knew nothing about the nominations,” says Marília Coutinho. When she concluded her speech, she says she felt that the prize had been awarded. “Those old gentlemen were so happy when they learned this that it seemed as though Carlos Chagas had actually been awarded the Nobel Prize.”

Scientific articles All the papers by Carlos Chagas are available at the site http://carloschagas.ibict.br/ Special issue may 2009 / dec 2010

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Interview

José Roberto Mendonça de Barros

São Paulo and the new economic geography In the economist’s opinion, infrastructure and the production of knowledge will help the state to drive growth in Brazil

Mariluce Moura and Neldson Marcolin Published in August 2010

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gains (78%, from December 2000 to May 2010), to the dizzying growth of Social Security expenses and to the enormous expansion of income transfer programs – all of which produced an extraordinary impact on the economy of the Northeast.

“It is widely known that the economic life of countless communities only moves forward when the population gets the family benefit and social security checks,” the economist wrote in the article.

On June 20, three weeks later, O Estado de S. Paulo published the following headline on the first page of its Sunday issue: “Industry brings the Southeast back to its leading position in terms of growth,” followed by the explanation “Less dependent on income transfer programs, the Southeast outdoes the Northeast as a hub of expansion.” This statement had been voiced in a study prepared by the MB Associados consulting firm, which had provided the empirical basis for the article’s analysis.

José Roberto Mendonça de Barros is a founding partner of the consulting firm.

However, his curriculum goes beyond his work as a consultant. Barros has a doctorate in Economics from the University of São Paulo (USP) and did his post-doctoral studies at Yale’s Economic Growth Center. He is a former professor at USP’s

School of Economics and Management and was the Ministry of Finance’s Economic Policy Secretary (1995-1998) during the first term of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. In 1998, he was named Economist of the Year by Brazil’s Economists Association.

In the interview below, Mendonça de Barros explores the new economic geography that he envisions for the country and tries to establish the relationship between scientific research conducted in São Paulo (i.e., one half of the knowledge produced in Brazil) and the reorganization of the economy’s dynamics. n The notion of the new economic geography that you refer to is broader than just the Brazilian case, right? This new geography has an international dimension.

— [When writing the article for O Estado de S. Paulo] I was focusing on Brazil, even though the economic geography is always changing. In these terms, an existing universal phenomenon is the emergence of the Asian world, although the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are not an analytical category as such because these countries have some similarities – in spite of their gigantic differences.

Their similarity is their great potential to absorb people from the rural sector,

Photos eduardo cesar

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n the last Sunday of May, economist José Roberto Mendonça de Barros published an article in O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper with the title “Nova geografia econômica” [New Economic Geography], in which he argued that from 2011 onwards, the Southeast Region – and particularly São Paulo – would drive the country’s growth in the forthcoming years at estimated rates of 4% to 4.5%. He explained in detail the main reasons for the state to become the epicenter of this change, which include the infrastructure available in São Paulo and the quality of the state’s system of the production of knowledge. These are two fundamental factors that support investments in the technology-driven dynamic sectors that are about to boom, such as agribusiness linked to the production of second-generation ethanol or the exploitation of oil in the pre-salt layer.

The positive prognosis for São Paulo and the Southeast region followed an analysis of why the Northeast Region, “where the country’s highest poverty rates are concentrated,” was the winner in the national growth process from 2003 to date. He explained that the incomerelated improvement of the E, D and C classes was linked to real minimum wage

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who become integrated into the productive system. This leads to the growth of consumption and to the creation of a consumer market with huge potential.

This was thought about mostly in terms of Asia, especially China and India, the world’s two most populous countries; but the phenomenon of emergence exists. n Is it the same view of economic geography that Paul Krugman, the Economics Nobel Prize laureate, originally developed?

— He wrote a famous book on economic geography, but before Asia became so important. He wrote this book about ten years ago. Economist Jim O’Neill, from Goldman Sachs, was the person responsible for the notoriety of this concept. So, although the BRICs lack an organic relationship among themselves, they have a basic similarity: the capacity to incorporate people and to transform this capacity into a huge domestic market.

And this is the opposite of the rest of the world – even prior to the 2008 crisis – in the sense that this region is a center of growth and of changes in power, on account of the dynamic domestic market, which is exploited better in some places and less in others. In short, very strong leverage results from the domestic market, generating deep changes in the productive system, which in turn leads to the generation of wealth. The BRICs issue was ultimately erroneously interpreted, when people said that the BRIC countries would grow as if their growth were independent from the rest of the world.

When the crisis blew up, the reaction was something like this: ‘See? The idea of the BRICs doesn’t work,’ because they were not supporting the world as a whole. But in my opinion, this was never the idea; the concept behind this issue is much more modest: it is the potential to grow quickly, at a given moment, which will produce transformations. The geography is new in the sense that the world is growing toward Asia, from the Pacific, so to speak, as opposed to the Atlantic – I think there is something really important here that will generate dynamism for a long time. Brazil is somewhat distant from this model. We now have a major relationship basically with suppliers of natural resource chains, whether they are foodstuffs or industrial raw materials. But this was the initial part: as time goes by, economic relationships, especially with China, will grow stronger and this year Chinese investments in Brazil began to show. To some extent

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similar to what happened between Japan and South Korea, a country first begins as a supplier of exports to a given country; the domestic market starts to grow until at a certain point it makes sense to start producing goods locally. The exporting of capital becomes increasingly important as countries become wealthier. This does not happen to the detriment of the exporting of goods, but the exporting of capital becomes more apparent. This happened in England, the United States, Japan; it is now happening in South Korea, and is beginning to happen in China. These are important relationships, hence my current perception that economic growth with a double base has consolidated in the country – the two bases add up and do not exclude each other. Many of my peers believe that there is a dynamic of exclusion between the exporting of products of the so-called natural resources chains and the domestic market. n Does the domestic market grow on the basis of the leverage provided by currently existing re-distribution programs?

— In principle, not only because of the re-distribution programs but, more recently, the domestic market has grown on its own. Now, more than ever, leveraged by the real possibility that Brazil will grow – and this is where productivity and technological innovation come in... This is not only growth in terms of extension, but also in terms of depth, which is the result of these new activities, of productivity gains. And, by doing so, we are transferring this potential to buy, and this willingness to buy, to the domestic market. I think Brazil has this plurality; it’s nothing new. Continental-sized countries tend to have strong domestic markets – only rarely does a continental-sized country depend on imports, as might be the case of Holland, Belgium, Singapore, tiny countries that import and export...

It’s different in continental-sized countries – most of the local needs, by far, are met by domestic production.

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n The paper that we mentioned, prepared

by MB Associados, identifies three factors that might cause the shift of the dynamic center of the Brazilian economy in forthcoming years to the Southeast, with special focus on São Paulo: the exploitation of the pre-salt layer, the availability of infrastructure in general, and a broad educational system that results in the generation of knowledge. Could you please provide more details on this?

— The stabilization process was a long one, because the increase in foreign imbalances started years ago, as evidenced by inflation. I’m talking about the 1990s onwards and not about the 1986 Cruzado monetary stabilization plan, an unsuccessful experiment. The opening of the economy to foreign investments, initiated

by Fernando Collor, broke away from the import substitution model, which had become obsolete. The academic community will spend the rest of their lives discussing why that model became outdated, but some things cannot be explained by anyone in definitive terms. The increase in inflation rates was the most visible sign of this obsolescence; the State crisis had reached an absurd level and the fiscal crisis was also part of the inflationary process. To this was added a drastic drop in growth from the 1980s onwards. All of this is somewhat interconnected and, if we look at the sequence of the break with the old model, I think that the first step, still in the 1980s, was the perception that there was no solution with such high inflation. I was once on a TV show with Vicentinho [Vicente Paulo da Silva], at the time the president of the then powerful Steelworkers Union in São Bernardo do Campo; during the break, he told me something like this “Zé Roberto, I’m the president of the most powerful labor union in Brazil,” which was true, “and I deal with the most powerful industry in Brazil,” the automotive industry, which was also true at that time, “I negotiate the best collective labor agreements in Brazil,” which was equally true, “but I lose

everything to daily inflation,” also true. I was quite impressed by these words and after the TV show, I asked myself, “did Vicentinho really say that?” Inflation generated a race that he knew he was losing...

This perception by society created room for stabilization. The Bresser, Cruzado and Verão monetary stabilization plans were feeble attempts. n When did this conversation take place?

— In 1989. The lesson learned from this period led us economists to professionally add two more things that were the basis for what came later on. The first was to exorcize monetary adjustment – and the three plans were clumsy measures that sought to undo the view everybody had of monetary adjustment and which was definitively eliminated by the Plano Real, the monetary stabilization plan. And finally, a definition was given to the inflationary coalition; this definition was largely based on the experience of Argentina, which had also dealt with hyperinflation in the period, and it was exactly what Vicentinho had described: even though he had managed to negotiate attractive salary increases, the automobile industry raised its prices accordingly and thus the inflationary process was constantly being fueled. n That was the major discussion on the Brazilian economy from 1985 to 1990, wasn’t it? How to effectively break inflation and the factors that fueled it?

— Exactly. Two things were perceived in the late 1980s: one was that monetary adjustment could not be eliminated by measures that could be fought over in court – this would have meant a huge step backwards. The various attempts at doing so were unsuccessful. The second was that the economy had to open up so that competition with imported goods would take place. This is a quality-related shock.

Easy to say, difficult to do. The fact is that, given the world’s situation at that time – the crises in Asia, Russia, etc., it took ten years for the stabilization process to take off. And what happened in 2008, the global economic meltdown, when the US dollar to the real exchange rate suddenly shot up from R$ 1.60 to R$ 2.40 – without provoking inflation –, that was the best stabilization we could have had. For this to happen, it was necessary to open up the economy, eliminate indexation, align prices, improve the State’s fiscal matters, reduce the foreign debt... And in the meantime, we experienced very

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limited growth for 20 years, because in the pre-1990s we were going through hyperinflation and after 1990, 1993, we were exorcizing everything, eliminating all the deep-rooted barriers in the economy. n So your evaluation at that time was that it was impossible for the country to grow during the 1990s?

— I think so. Of course, economic policies make many errors. The positive point for those who look back afterwards is that they realize what was wrong. Today, for example, the economy is booming. But the fact remains that certain things take a long time to work out. Fiscal adjustment, for example. It is far harder for the economy to grow when the budget is being cut back than when it is expanding.

Now, all our budgets are growing – the state and city budgets and certainly the federal budget; for the last eight years, these budgets have been openly expanding. One can discuss whether the expenditures are appropriate or not, but when expenditure is higher, the economy moves ahead. The opposite happens in the case of fiscal adjustment. Therefore, it was difficult for the economy to grow more, because of these major crises abroad.

In short, it has been a long stabilization process that has not ended yet because we still have some indexation residuals.

But most of the work has been done, such as the fiscal adjustment processes, the opening up of the economy, and the reduction of the foreign debt. The income gap becomes even more perceptible when we take away inflation. Shortly before the readjustments, the minimum wage stood at US$ 60, or R$ 100 in today’s currency.

But the truth is that it was such a tough battle to readjust, readjust, readjust, that nobody had a clear perception of this. One of the discussions of the stabilization plan [which created the real, the new currency] was that stabilization in itself is akin to income redistribution. This is illustrated by the fact that the country’s economy grew quite significantly in 1995 and 1996.

However, as income distribution was so unequal, this was merely the beginning of a process that had to continue. n But weren’t there any problems related to the policies for the opening of the economy and to privatization during this long, drawn-out stabilization process, problems that postponed stabilization itself?

— There were some mistakes made in the privatization process, and the best example of this is the electric power

The association that is always made between natural resources and underdevelopment and low productivity is false. This might have been true in the past, but today it certainly is not

sector. But in general, the privatization process was highly successful; the fact that the State withdrew from situations that only generated deficits is something that very few people remember nowadays. The state-owned steel industry had wasted US$ 20 billion. Privatization doesn’t only mean paying taxes – it means that no deficits are generated. Although the privatization of the electric power sector was less successful, the telephony industry is a good example of successful privatization. However, in my opinion, the most complicated issue at that time was maintaining the overvalued exchange rate of the real relative to the US dollar for a long time, which implied keeping real interest rates high for too long, because one held back the other. During my term in government, this was one of the issues that the Central Bank grappled with and, unfortunately, the bank dealt with it inappropriately, with the 1999 currency devaluation. This devaluation was unplanned; it happened and I think this – more than anything else – is what delayed the process. Once inflation dropped, the second issue that needed to be addressed was income distribution. This is when the social network issue grew enormously.

This, in my opinion, ultimately resulted in the construction of two pillars of growth: the first was the competent production of the so-called natural resource chains, of which agribusiness is a component, minerals and metals are another component, and, more recently, oil and gas. And all of these are the result of a construction process that took 30, 40 years. The technology developed here – deep water offshore drilling for oil, the ability to farm in the Cerrado savannas, the work with highquality minerals – all of this requires a lot of knowledge. I would like to add something to destroy the link that everybody makes between natural resources and underdevelopment and low productivity.

This may have been true in the past, but today it definitely isn’t. All these chains have very significant knowledge embedded in them, most of which comes from research. I think it is unfair to say that the states had no part in agricultural research, especially as regards São Paulo. Embrapa was instrumental in the development of grain and in the agricultural development of the Cerrado region; yet Embrapa never dealt with sugar cane, oranges, or coffee.

Embrapa recently started doing research on fruit and vegetables. If we consider the major crops, all the technology for at least three such crops was generated in the State of São Paulo. n Transgenic soya, the use of biotechnology in so many crops – all of this was crucial in the last five years, wasn’t it?

— They were decisive. One of the examples I often draw on to contradict the commonly voiced opinion that natural resources mean underdevelopment is the existence of an international evaluation according to which there are four sectors that have witnessed the most significant R&D efforts and advanced the most in the last ten years: aeronautics/astronautics, information technology, deep water oil drilling, whose technological paradigm is entirely different from land technology, and biotechnology. Two of these four sectors are related to natural resource chains. n If we take the example of citrus fruit crops in São Paulo, we are talking about investments in studies that began in the 1960s, or even earlier, with research into the citrus greening disease in the 1950s.

— That’s right – 50, 60 years; this is not a project that started now. The same thing happened in the case of sugar cane and coffee. Soyabeans are a newer crop. I be-

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gan writing my doctoral thesis in 1971 and submitted it in 1973. In my thesis, I argued that Brazil’s soya exports could reach US$ 300 million, which at the time was considered insane; this was a time when only people familiar with Japanese cuisine knew what soyabeans were. Today, soya is a huge business. Soya was responsible for the trilogy – farming in the Cerrado; direct planting; and grain rotation – that produced a revolution: this work was done by Embrapa from the 1970s onwards. n Why was soya included in your thesis?

— Affonso Celso Pastore, who had some contact with agriculture, was my advisor. From 1968 to 1973, commodities boomed; however, this ended on a sour note because of the 1973 oil crisis. We had some familiarity with agriculture and Pastore suggested, “Why don’t we study non-traditional exports?” I studied several crops: rice, peanuts...I didn’t know much about soya when I started, but I realized that something extraordinary had happened. In the 1950s, the Americans had developed technology to produce battery hens. Poultry production needs animal feed and animal feed is produced by mixing minerals and corn, to provide bulk, plus some protein. The protein came from fishmeal, basically from anchovies fished off the coast of Peru. But a meteorological phenomenon occurred in that region and the anchovies disappeared.

The market lacked a source of protein for animal feed and, as soyabeans are a good-quality vegetable protein, farmers began to use soya meal. In Brazil, soyabeans were planted mainly to replenish nitrogen in the soil, in the middle of the coffee crop. And the renowned researcher Johanna Döbereiner started to conduct pioneering research studies on the fixation of nitrogen in the soil. n Going back to the natural resource chains...

— In the early 2000s, this chain of natural resources became stronger due to the exporting of these products and to the creation of growth centers. Why? First, the 1999 currency devaluation allowed the export sector to reorganize itself more efficiently, with a floating exchange rate and everything else. Second, the supply side had already been strengthened through technology, knowledge, etc. Third, the 2001 recession was short and intense, and the world entered a growth phase, and – more than ever, China consolidated 14

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São Paulo is much less susceptible to sudden fluctuations because it has a mature institutional structure that is the basis of its research studies, which actually began in the nineteenth century

that quick growth. The world’s growth, together with that of Asia, produced this phase that is now consolidated. I think there are two erroneous perceptions: one concerns the level of technology involved in these chains, which is much greater than people realize. People think of a farm and of soya, of a mining company and of iron ore. However, if we look at the chain, we realize that we have increasingly sophisticated products. The fact is that we have renewable energy, because of water, and because we burn sugar cane bagasse thanks to increasingly improved technological development (high pressure). Not to mention oil drilling technology, which is highly sophisticated. n Here we can see a great amount of accrued competency, including that resulting from the relations between research centers and the universities.

— Exactly. I think the second erroneous perception is when one believes that natural resource chains are restricted to agricultural and mineral production. They go way beyond these and, therefore, the level of employment that they generate

directly and indirectly is enormous. In the soya chain, estimates indicate that we are getting close to 1 million jobs. As for sugar cane, I prepared a flow chart (see page 18) to illustrate exactly the chain’s sophistication. n But why did São Paulo grow less than the national average, even though it has experienced a stable scenario since the year 2000 and the country is prepared to grow?

— Just to conclude what I was saying: once exports and agribusiness were consolidated, we could focus on the entire economy in greater detail. On the other hand, also mostly due to stabilization, some things began happening right from the start. First came the sound re-distribution of certain economic activities, a result of the move to regions where salaries were lower. Thus, a substantial part of the footwear industry, previously concentrated in Franca and in Vale dos Sinos, relocated to the Northeast. The footwear industry is now based in the states of Bahia, Paraíba, Ceará, etc. The same thing happened with the textile industry, the best example of which is Coteminas, which has an industrial complex in the city of Campina Grande.

Concurrently, production costs in São Paulo began to grow significantly, one of the reasons why activities were relocated.

The ABC [the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo] was totally occupied and, during the industrial expansion phase, which began when the Real monetary stabilization plan went into effect, industry was able to spread nationwide. Tax incentives consolidated the industrial complex in the State of Minas Gerais, took Ford to the State of Bahia and General Motors to the State of Rio Grande do Sul. When a car assembly plant relocates, the company must have its suppliers in the same region, according to the just-in-time production technology. n This coincides with the moment when São Paulo’s GDP share began to decrease. ­— The downturn had started earlier, but these events drove it. This is when the income redistribution programs stepped in, leading to the dizzying growth of consumer goods markets. The Northeast is the prime example, but it wasn’t the only region. What I mentioned previously concerning the textile, footwear and automotive industries – refers to the rationale of production. And now we are witnessing the rationale of demand: the consumption growth rocketed and this

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has made the Northeast Region grow even faster, though it is still importing many of the goods consumed there. This is the peak of the process. This kind of growth naturally results in an investment boom in commercial expansion to meet the needs of the new emerging class. It is important to point out that the growth was primarily a growth of demand rather than of production. n Does the money that drives demand come from the government? ­— Yes, it comes from the government, in the form of INSS social security benefits, minimum wage, and the Bolsas Escola, Família, etc. allowance programs. I would like to add a comment: in the chart that I prepared [see www.revistapesquisa. fapesp.br], the exporting of soyabeans, beef, forest products, sugar, ethanol and some individually smaller industries in 2009 accounted for US$ 17.2 billion. Meat exports generated US$ 11.7 billion; forest products, US$ 7.2 billion; sugar and ethanol, US$ 9.7 billion; and coffee, US$ 4.2 billion. I wanted to show the sugar cane industry. We analyzed its production, the industry’s relation to the machinery and equipment industry, inputs, services, and the technological gains that result from research and from the interaction of research with machines, fertilizers, and everything else. Extraction from sugar cane is higher than it was 20 years ago, which is related to the nature of the equipment.

The industry that only produced sugar in the past now makes juice, bagasse, and straw. Juice is used to make sugar, ethanol, bio-plastics – when the appropriate microorganisms are used –, and now we are witnessing research on second-generation fuels that come from cellulose. n And this is unique to Brazil, correct?

— Yes, there is nothing else like it in terms of size. In India, the sugarcane industry is small and basically produces sugar. Africa is at the very beginning of the process.

Brazil is the only place in the world with a fleet of millions of ethanol-fuelled vehicles, which is an innovation. The dual fuel automobile, even the simple kind, is an innovation that has helped us deal with the crisis. There is an endless demand for bioplastics, if we look at it from the current standpoint. Existing projects in this respect are still rather expensive and future bioplastics will have to come from a renewable source and be biodegradable six months after being buried in the ground.

n Bioen, the Bioenergy Research Program, is one of FAPESP’s top priority programs.

— As it should be, because this is a real breakthrough. In the said chart, I show the production gains in the sugar cane chain, which is linked to variety, the regional nature of research, optimization of research (the sugar cane that generates energy is different from the sugar cane that produces sugar), transgenic varieties, new players, production system, outsourcing, mechanical harvesting, irrigation, extension of the harvest, organic sugar cane, relationship with equipment, list of inputs, biological control of pests...

All of this adds gains. Let me resume what I was saying earlier; to summarize the first part, the combination of stability, credit, and income transfer programs generated an expansion in consumption that was far stronger in the North and in the Northeast. And now comes the second line of reasoning: why would the growth of the Southeast and of São Paulo rebound naturally? There are two sets of reasons. The first is simple: this movement, which we can refer to as inclusion, is reaching its limits. There are

no longer 12 million families to enroll in the Bolsa Família, family allowance, program. Second, if I am right, the Treasury will no longer have the leeway in terms of funds that it has enjoyed so far, because expenditures have increased significantly and the government plans raise the minimum wage, which has a positive effect, but increases costs, Social Security, and all the rest. In this sense, the Bolsa Família program is the least problematic program: R$ 12 billion a year is not that much. But it’s the combination of things.

So I believe it will be difficult to maintain the same income transfer growth rate because there will be less money available and because most of the population that qualified for inclusion has already been included. From now onwards, our needs will be much more closely related to education and incorporation into the job market. In my opinion, the North and the Northeast – the regions to which most of the inclusion program funds are allocated – will no longer benefit as much as they did in the past. A second point that one must add to this situation is that the traditional growth centers of the Northeast have matured.

This doesn’t mean that they will be moving backwards, but they are mature, as is the case of the petrochemical complex in the State of Bahia, or the fruit-growing complex in the region of Petrolina, which took a great leap forward. However, now, the pace of growth has slowed down; the chlorine chemical complex in the State of Alagoas, another traditional industry is also growing slowly nowadays. The Ford business in the State of Bahia, for example: either Ford decides to build another plant or its business will not expand. There is one exception to this in the State of Pernambuco. n Linked to the port.

— Yes – to the Suape Industrial and Port Complex. Recife was already dynamic, because of its reputation as the leading medical center in the Northeast; it also has a mature IT complex, but Suape and everything that revolves around it is the most important thing. The world’s biggest PET resin manufacturing plant, owned by the Italian group Mossi & Ghisolfi, is there. Suape houses an enormous shipyard, one of the biggest owned by the Camargo Correa company; the first of the new Petrobras refineries is being built there. There are many significant business activities taking place in Pernambuco, but this is not true across the

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The expansion of sugar cane The GDP of the sugar/ethanol industry amounted to US$ 28.2 billion in 2008, or nearly 2% of Brazil’s GDP

Sugarcane production Technological gains Industry

Juice

Sugar Bioplastics

Ethanol

Yeast

Second-generation biofuels

n Have you analyzed projects that are about to start or that have already started?

— We have analyzed many projects, some of which are already under way.

The Transnordestina Project is running behind and changing the course of the São Francisco River is apparently not going anywhere. We believe that the oil refinery in São Luís and the other refineries basically involve political decisions and are unlikely to materialize. The Luís Eduardo Magalhães agricultural production complex in the western part of the State of Bahia still has room to grow. n Let us concentrate now on the reasons for the probable growth of the Southeast.

— Why is the Southeast– particularly São Paulo – going to grow more? First of all, because of nature: the pre-salt layer is concentrated in the region that extends from the State of Espírito Santo to the State of São Paulo. If we analyze the Petrobras projects, most of the related investn

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Residues

Bagasse

entire Northeast. In my opinion, demand will no longer be as buoyant as it has been and, in terms of supply, according to various studies we have conducted on this, there is nothing going on at the moment – other than Suape – that will drive supply significantly.

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Machines Equipment Inputs Services

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Electric power

Second-generation biofuels

ments are to be made in Santos. Not only because of the oil wells, but also because – and rightly so, in my opinion – Petrobras doesn’t want to depend too much on the State of Rio de Janeiro. The company was strongly affected by the two administrations of the two Garotinho governors [state governors Anthony Garotinho and later Rosinha Garotinho], who increased state taxes and threatened to levy higher VAT tax on equipment, which would have made many projects unfeasible... Strategically, the company increased its expenses in the State of Espírito Santo. The Southeast as a whole will grow because of the pre-salt layer, but the major leap will occur in São Paulo. Petrobras is building a huge office facility and is investing enormously in human resources. And oil is not only oil, but everything that comes with it. The impact on universities, on research, on capital goods producers, on vessels... And then the impact on the software industry. The oil business is based on massive hardware, but hardware is run on software. Norway is the benchmark reference in this respect: the country had never produced any oil until it was found in its territory, but the country’s oil supplies are declining and today Norway exports oil technology. Petrobras is doing the right thing in this sense.

Filter cakes

Slops

Animal nutrition

n Given that more than more than 50 theme-related research projects are supported by Petrobras at Brazilian universities, this will probably be disseminated more extensively and deepen knowledge on oil.

— Exactly. Concurrently, the perception nowadays is that one must train intermediary-level technicians, besides supporting research projects conducted by universities. The platform operator needs to undergo specific training because he deals with a complicated system. This is not manual labor; it is something much more sophisticated.

Therefore, the impact of the pre-salt layer should be huge. In fact, I think this impact is already being felt, in anticipation of an important new activity.

For example, the real estate market in the city of Santos has already changed.

Santos is going to become a city where big business deals will be conducted. n Will this situation extend to the entire southern coast of the state?

— Yes; this will affect the town of Caraguatatuba as well, where the gas fields are located; Santos, however, will be the main hub. The state government set up a committee nearly two years ago to discuss how to maximize the benefits to be

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had from the Petrobras investments. And this is not only related to infrastructure, but also entails human resources. As a result, many courses are being created at colleges. The core of this major research effort will be at the UFRJ [Federal University of Rio de Janeiro], but there will be more action in this respect. Regardless of how quickly the pre-salt layer is developed, this is a huge business and it is primarily located in the Southeast. And the innovation is in São Paulo. I repeat: Petrobras is interested in diversifying its three areas: Vitoria, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, to dilute risk. n How much of the R$ 110 billion that Petrobras plans to invest in the pre-salt layer will be allocated to São Paulo?

— At least 40%. Fund allocation is never a sure thing, because Petrobras makes slight changes from one document to the next. n Is this what is going to drive São Paulo’s move to the geographic center of the new economic geography?

— No. The move stems from a combination of three or four concurrent factors.

First, there is the pre-salt layer issue. Second, still in terms of natural resources, comes the growth in added value of the sugar cane chain. Because of this new reality, Santos will be consolidated as an exporting complex. Three ethanol pipelines are being planned, all of them running to Santos, because São Paulo State has the infrastructure and the center of information. n About exporting?

— Yes. Nowadays, most of the sugar is exported through Santos. And most of the ethanol will also be exported through Santos. Going back to the new economic geography, another fact is the growth of the sophisticated service industry in São Paulo, and this growth will intensify. I am referring to healthcare, for example. The Brazilian population is growing older and there is a growing demand for these kinds of services. This is not only related to hospitals, but to healthcare clusters, including software, equipment, maintenance, hospitals, and pre- and post-surgery facilities.

And this extends to the concept of wellbeing, prevention, which involves physical fitness... This is a huge business and a highly productive one. We have prepared some studies about this and undoubtedly São Paulo is the hub, because of the concentration of knowledge, of new services,

excellent hospitals, etc. That doesn’t mean that these services aren’t available elsewhere; but São Paulo is the hub. n Does this have a major impact on the service industry?

— This has a considerable impact; the latest survey conducted by IBGE on this issue was done in 2007. This survey still doesn’t encompass everything that has been going on in this respect. If it were possible to include real estate construction linked to this impact, we would see that this is concentrated in São Paulo. n São Paulo is becoming a hub for a part of the world.

— That’s right, and this generates high quality employment and income. The internationalization of healthcare services is beginning to take hold here. This means that an individual comes from abroad for health treatment here – medical treatment, dental treatment – at accredited hospitals, because healthcare here is less expensive; this treatment is covered by the individual’s American health insurance.

Nowadays, the Sírio-Libanês Hospital and the Albert Einstein Hospital have international directors for the sole purpose of increasing their international services. Costa Rica has a huge business of this kind, but the biggest business is in Malaysia. More than one million people go to Malaysia for healthcare services, which are generally basic ones, but much less expensive. And this business doesn’t stop at healthcare; the post-surgery part turns into a tourism industry, as is the case in Costa Rica. Of course, the hospitals have to be competent, be accredited in the United States, and so on. São Paulo has more and more people in this line of business. Another example concerns creative activities in general. I recently read an article in the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, which stated that São Paulo had become the world’s foremost center for comic books. However, other activities such as advertising, films, internet production, fashion and architecture can be included. n The production of a global city, right?

—That’s right. This is what we call creative economics. And this doesn’t only occur in São Paulo; Rio de Janeiro has this status as well, because of the Rede Globo television network, especially when it comes to creative activities. But the epicenter is here, because of the sophistication of demand, income level, technical skills... Infrastructure is the

third element that will lead São Paulo to being the center of the new economic geography. Relative to the rest of the nation’s precarious infrastructure, São Paulo is slightly better off in terms of the transportation of goods. n What about the research-related infrastructure in São Paulo, within the new role that the study attributes to the state?

— I think that all these highly productive activities – whether related to services or to natural resources – obviously demand and are supported by the ability to generate knowledge, in terms of training people and especially in terms of the research sector. I think São Paulo is a pioneer and has maintained its leadership in this respect. This includes biological, agronomy and agricultural research. This is what makes São Paulo special – first, the institutional scenario is very powerful and FAPESP is one of its pillars. The state is less susceptible to sudden fluctuations; it has a mature institutional structure that is the basis of its research studies, which actually began in the nineteenth century with agricultural research. The research conducted by the Polytechnic School led to the creation of IPT, the Institute of Technological Research. Research studies have been conducted for one hundred years already.

Therefore, we have a tradition and a sound institutional model for funding that runs parallel to open-mindedness regarding new forms. The network of laboratories, the projects developed by networks, such as those on the yellowing disease exemplify this ability. n Isn’t it necessary to invest in personnel training to keep up the growth that your study has projected?

— I think that economists have learnt that the strong or weak points of a country are nowadays measured by two characteristics: infrastructure (it’s impossible to import a highway) and talent. I mean talent in general, encompassing the simplest to the most sophisticated training programs. You can import a thousand, 2 thousand, 5 thousand, 10 thousand talented professionals but you can’t import 5 million talented professionals – it’s impossible. This means that the State, companies, everybody has to focus on training talent. The hardware is in the infrastructure but the real battle is a software battle, which means people.

This is a software world and that is where the value is. n

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cover

Combined efforts Initiatives seek to make research from São Paulo more competitive abroad Fabrício Marques Published in September 2010

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esearch from the state of São Paulo is taking measures to stimulate collaboration among scientists from São Paulo and their colleagues from other countries and to attract talent from abroad to improve the Brazilian scientific environment. One example of this strategy was seen in São Paulo, in early August, when 350 Brazilian and foreign graduate students plus 20 experts of several nationalities met, to honor the American mathematician John Nash and to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Nash Equilibrium, the theorem that forms the cornerstone of game theory. The speakers included four Nobel Prize laureates: John Nash himself, who was awarded the prize in 1994, Robert Aumann, the 2005 laureate, and Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson, the 2007 laureates. This was the fourth event held as part of the ESPCA program (São Paulo School of Advanced Science Program), a form of FAPESP aid designed to increase the international exposure of those areas in which São Paulo research has achieved competitiveness of a world standard. Released last year, the program enables São Paulo researchers to organize short courses that are one or two weeks long, to which professors from around the world and from São Paulo state should be invited. It is a requirement that the courses be attended by a certain number of students, at least half of whom must be from abroad. “In this way, we plan to garner global exposure for these research areas, in order to awaken foreign students’ interest in working as scientists here in São Paulo,” said the scientific director of FAPESP, Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, in an interview to Pesquisa Brasil [Brasil Research], a Pesquisa FAPESP radio program. “We want to show them what is best here in São Paulo. The public calls establish that each event is to include a reserved session in which someone from FAPESP presents the Foundation and the research opportunities available in São Paulo state. I made this presentation at three such events and had an excellent reception. There were lots of questions and the students from several places abroad, such as Chile, the United States, France, China and India, seemed genuinely

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interested” he states. The program provides for two public calls a year.

To attract foreign researchers, opportunities for FAPESP post-doctoral grants are offered in monthly advertisements in the journal Nature and in the Foundation’s website, in Portuguese and English. The Foundation’s major initiatives, such as the Biota program, which studies São Paulo state biodiversity, the Bioen program, which researches bioenergy, and the Program of Research into Global Climate Change have been holding workshops and seminars attended by foreign researchers, in order to encourage the participation of São Paulo state researchers in international networks and to keep them in contact with the state of the art in their respective fields of knowledge. “There’s no silver bullet to solve complicated problems, because their solution depends on combined efforts. That’s why, when it comes to the issue of making São Paulo research more international, it’s important to maintain several linked initiatives,” stated Brito Cruz.

The Foundation’s internationalization strategy brings together a set of other efforts, such as cooperation agreements with agencies, companies and/or scientific institutions in Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Mexico, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Switzerland (see list of agreements at www.pesquisadores. fapesp.br/materia/102/a-instituicao/ convenios-e-acordos-de-cooperacao-

Foreign institutions are showing a growing interest in partnering São Paulo researchers da-fapesp.htm). One such example is the cooperation agreement signed in 2004 with France’s CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), which aims to encourage an interchange of scientists and the submission of joint projects of researchers from São Paulo institutions and their French colleagues. To date, this has given rise to four calls for proposals and has provided grants for 27 projects.

Likewise, FAPESP has an agreement with DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), Germany’s main research promotion agency. In 2009, the Foundation established a bridge to British research, when it signed cooperation agreements with RCUK (the Research Councils of the United Kingdom) and with King’s College London, which became the first British university to partner FAPESP.

In 2009, among the 3,953 grants and the 5,995 new scholarships from the Regu­lar Line of research by FAPESP, 1,214 were characterized as scientific exchanges for research: 904 were grants to take part in scientific meetings abroad, 202 were grants for overseas researchers coming from abroad, 92 were Research Scholarships and 16 were from New Frontiers, a program which supports long term study visits in centers of excellence abroad, in areas of research not yet available in the state of Sao Paulo, by researchers who completed their doctorates more than ten years ago. Of the total projects, 309 are exchange programs with the United States, followed by Europe (170 projects) and Latin American and Caribbean countries (122). By country, those which had the greatest number of projects were Portugal (100) France (77) Spain (74) Italy (70) and Germany (61).

The total number of projects with Asian countries was 79.

Foreign institutions have been showing a rising interest in partnering São Paulo researchers. Last month, for instance, six representatives of CAS (the Chinese Academy of Sciences) visited FAPESP headquarters in São Paulo with the aim of initiating scientific collaboration. “We wanted to find out how agencies such as FAPESP operate,” commented Pan Jiaofeng, the CAS secretary-general.

“We are especially interested in biomass, biodiversity and the neurosciences.” According to him, this was the first visit to Brazil. “There is concern as to how we select the priority areas,” said Celso Lafer, the FAPESP chairman. “We talked about the possibility of future cooperation and agreed to explore this at a later date.” n

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AttrACtinG tALent Fabrício Marques Published in September 2010

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t a time when the importance of becoming international for Brazilian science is being increasingly discussed, the group of researchers led by physicist, Marcelo Knobel, a full professor at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), is showing how the interchange of experiences between postgraduate students from different nationalities has the ability to breathe new life into a research environment and attract more researchers from outside, in a virtuous circle. Since 1990, Knobel, 42, has been coordinating a group dedicated to research into new magnetic materials that is based in the Laboratory of Magnetism and Low Temperatures (LMBT) of the Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics, at Unicamp. As the group has collaboration agreements with scientists from several countries and is internationally recognized, Knobel often receives messages from foreign students interested in doing Master’s degrees, PhDs and post-doctoral studies at Unicamp. He always assesses requests with interest and with the help of the university and research funding agencies, has managed to attract people from various countries to his laboratory – currently it has PhD students and post-doctoral fellows from India, Spain, Chile,

Group from the institute of physics at unicamp distinguishes itself by bringing researchers from other countries

Colombia and Canada. “In addition to the interest of researchers, it helps a lot that we have scholarships that provide amounts that are very competitive internationally,” says Knobel. “They come to Brazil stimulated by the chance of working in an environment where it is possible to carry out cutting edge research and even build up a little nest egg,” said the professor, who is now also Unicamp’s Undergraduate Studies pro-dean.

Canadian Fanny Beron is one of the post-doctoral fellows working in Knobel’s group. She did undergraduate and Master’s degrees and her PhD in engineering physics at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and in 2007 she was looking for a university in a foreign country to do post-doctoral studies. It was her tutor, Arthur Yelon, who was collaborating with Knobel, who suggested Unicamp. “I didn’t want to go to the US, because I already knew the way of American life very well and I couldn’t find place in Europe that had a good laboratory in an interesting city,” says Fanny, who does not regret her choice. “I have easy access to equipment that I didn’t have in Montreal, I’m working with a good group that produces a lot and I have the opportunity to collaborate with several highlevel researchers,” she says. Recently, she exchanged PESQUISA FAPESP

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the post-doctoral scholarship she received from a Canadian institution for one from FAPESP, which is worth R$ 5,028.90 a month. “The amount was similar but FAPESP provides a very useful technical reserve for going to conferences,” she explains. “I know that research conditions at Unicamp are better than elsewhere in Brazil. Brazil is not a traditional choice for young foreign researchers, who generally prefer the United States and Europe, but here I found everything I needed and I also had the opportunity to get to know South America better,” she concludes.

Another foreign researcher who is satisfied with his experience at Unicamp is Spaniard Jacob Torrejón Diaz, who has just completed a year-long postdoctoral program in Knobel’s group and is preparing to undertake new post-doctoral studies at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in Paris, at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). In 2009, when he finished his PhD in nanostructured materials at the Autonomous University of Madrid, he saw that the alternatives for post-doctoral study in Europe were limited. “It was the beginning of the economic crisis and most of the scholarship programs and research contracts were drastically cut,” he recalls. He knew Professor Kleber Pirota, from Marcelo Knobel’s group, who suggested Unicamp to him. “He told me about open flow research grants from FAPESP, which were approved very quickly, within one or two months, while in Europe most agencies take a year to award a scholarship. I thought the research project, the equipment in the Laboratory of Magnetism and Low Temperatures and the economic conditions of the scholarship were all very attractive and interesting.

So, I came to Brazil,” he says. On the eve of leaving the country, he considers his time at Unicamp to have been very useful to him. “I learned different magnetic characterization techniques, cryogenics, measurement techniques in the Synchrotron and the use of powerful apparatus, in addition to learning Portuguese and about the wonderful Brazilian culture,” he says. He also developed work in different areas, from ferromagnetic resonance to isolated 22

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and become

getting a post-doctoral grant in biology, also from FAPESP,” he states. The group also has students like Chilean, Lenina Valenzuela, a physicist from the University of Santiago, who since 2007, with Knobel as her tutor, has been doing a PhD in magnetoimpedance, with a grant from the Coordinating Office for the Improvement of People with Higher Education (Capes). All foreigners work with Brazilian Master’s and basic scientific undergraduate research students, who, according to Knobel, benefit not only from the shared knowledge and experience but also from the opportunity to become acquainted with other languages and with an international research environment.

acquainted with

Bureaucratic tasks – Knobel says that

Brazilian students benefit from the shared knowledge and experience

an international environment

nanowires, which is being published in international journals. “I’m happy to have contributed to improving the equipment in the laboratory. I played an active part in assembling the nanostructures manufacturing lab. My time here served to establish a collaboration that I hope will be long-lasting,” he states.

According to Marcelo Knobel, the concentration of students from Latin America has meant that two languages have been adopted in the laboratory: in addition to English, which is the lingua franca of science, “portunhol” can also be heard. Fanny and Torrejón Diaz worked with researchers, like Indian, Surender Kumar Sharma, who did his first degree, Master’s and PhD in physics at the Himachal Pradesh University, and who, since 2007, has been at Unicamp, with a grant from FAPESP. “I started collaborating with Surender when he was doing his PhD and then he decided to come here,” recalls Knobel. “There’s an interesting aspect in his case. He has just managed to bring his wife here, who has also succeeded in

it is not enough to be willing to bring in foreign researchers; institutional support is also fundamental. “In other countries, the leader of a research group receives a grant and has the autonomy to manage the funds and bring people from outside. Here in Brazil that is not how it happens. It has only worked because Unicamp has strong globalization goals and actively looks for new partnerships for student exchanges,” he says. The researcher warns, however, that there are still several hurdles to be overcome, which often end up overloading the group leader with bureaucratic tasks, such as obtaining visas and even helping guest students find a place to live. The pro-dean of Research at Unicamp, Ronaldo Pilli, confirms that there are still difficulties. “I had to be the guarantor of the rent for a foreign guest researcher I brought into my group,” he said.

Knobel’s group attracts attention because of the diversity of its foreign researchers, but his is far from being an isolated example at Unicamp. A PhD grant program established by the CNPq in partnership with the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) has brought in groups of Pakistani students who are interested in doing a PhD at the university’s Institute of Chemistry (IQ). “The interesting thing is that this process has a knock-on effect and I’m getting more and more requests from Pakistanis interested in

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coming to Brazil,” says Pilli, who is a professor at the IQ. There is another successful example in the field of basic undergraduate scientific research, also in the area of chemistry. This is a pilot program from FAPESP and the National Science Foundation (NSF), which promotes the exchange of undergraduate students in chemistry from universities in São Paulo and the US. The opportunity, in this case is two way: students from Unicamp do internships in the US and American students come to Brazil to do the same. One of the students who participated in the program, Ricardo Barroso Ferreira, 21, was recently the co-author of an article in the journal, Science. Because of the internship he did at the University of California, in Los Angeles, he participated in a project that resulted in the creation of a three-dimensional synthetic crystal capable of capturing carbon dioxide emissions, which was the theme of the Science article.

Unicamp has a strategy to expand its globalization. According to the prodean, Ronaldo Pilli, in 2009 a project started that aims to attract foreign visiting professors to teach short courses.

A public bid notice, issued last year in partnership with the Undergraduate Pro-Dean’s office, received 60 proposals from departments interested in

It is not enough to be willing to bring in foreign researchers; institutional support is also fundamental

bringing visiting professors to teach on post-graduate courses lasting at most two months. Twenty-seven proposals were selected and Unicamp is going to invest R$ 400,000 in the first year.

There is also an effort to attract visiting researchers for longer periods. The goal is to offer scholarships for one to two years for people who are of interest to departments, with the chance of the person becoming a candidate for a teaching position at the end of the

scholarship period. Advertisements in international scientific journals, like Nature and Science, attracted more than 50 interested people, who sent their résumés to Unicamp, which were scrutinized by the departments.

Those selected were invited to visit the university and there are already two of them, a Canadian and a Frenchman, who will spend up to two years at Unicamp as from March. “We are not only interested in bringing foreigners here, but also in repatriating Brazilian researchers who are working abroad,” says Pilli. To facilitate the inclusion of these researchers, Unicamp is planning to change the selection rules for certain categories of teachers, to allow the tests to be done in a foreign language.

Also in the education field, Unicamp is working hard towards globalization.

Each semester the institution receives about 100 foreign undergraduate and post-graduate students, most of them from Latin American countries with which the university has agreements; the total number of foreigners studying at Unicamp ranges between 800 and 1,000 students. “Demand is great from students from countries like Peru and Colombia, who see Unicamp as a reference point in the exact sciences and engineering,” says physicist Leandro Tessler, who is responsible for the Institutional and International Relations Coordination Office (Cori). He said that the university has made efforts to establish agreements with American and European universities. “There is room to grow, especially with the United States,” he says. The idea, according to Tessler, is to apply in education the same strategy that is used in research. “The university shows its credentials when it gets exposure in the outside world. In research, we adopt international standards and we have become recognized. We are now doing the same with education,” he says.

One of the advantages is having students from Unicamp make contact with different ideas. “Brazilian university groups are very homogeneous and it is good to have more diversity,” he says. But the fundamental goal is to ensure a globalized higher education. “Students become more competitive when they have international experience,” Tessler states. n

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Glass tower of Babel Federal University of São Carlos attracts foreigners to research materials engineering Fabrício Marques Published in December 2010

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he network of collaborators from abroad of the Vitreous Materials Laboratory (LaMaV) at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), coordinated by materials engineering professor Edgar Dutra Zanotto, comprises researchers from France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia, Colombia, and Argentina. The basis of this international inclusion is the scientific and technical production of this 34-year old laboratory, one of the world’s five most productive groups in the field of glass nucleation and crystallization, according to the Scopus database. The group has a strong partnership with the private sector for product development.

This explains why researchers of five different nationalities are currently working at LaMaV in São Carlos. This group comprises visiting professors and students. “Many doctoral and post-doctoral students, along with renowned visiting professors from abroad, apply for research positions and internships at LaMaV. Several of them have already worked with us.

This on-going exchange is important because science is universal,” says the 56-year old Zanotto, a native of the city of Botucatu in São Paulo State. Zanotto founded the research center in 1977, when he was doing his master’s degree at the Physics Institute of USP São Carlos. Currently, he shares his lab coordination duties with two colleagues, Ana Cândida Martins Rodrigues and Oscar Peitl Filho.

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One of the visiting professors, invited thanks to financial aid from FAPESP, is France’s Jean-Louis Souquet. A retired professor from France’s Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, Souquet has maintained a long collaborative partnership with Ana Cândida Rodrigues, ever since she did her doctorate at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Électrochimie et Électrométallurgie de Grenoble. When he retired, the French professor donated the glass melting furnace – the technology of which was not available in Brazil at the time – that he had used in his laboratory to LaMaV. “The furnace is still here and working,” says Zanotto. In 2007 and in 2009, Souquet spent some time at the Brazilian laboratory. He has been back in São Carlos since August, and is currently working on a research project run by LaMaV, “Mecanismos de transporte elétrico em vidros e vitrocerâmicas” [Electrical transport mechanisms in glass and glassceramics]. The research project is coordinated by Ana Cândida. Nowadays, visiting professors get a monthly stipend of as much as R$ 8,536.50, in the case of researchers with qualifications equivalent to that of full professors at São Paulo State universities.

Russia’s Vladimir Mikhailovich Fokin, a researcher at the Vavilov State Optical Institute in St. Petersburg, will come in January 2011, also thanks to FAPESP financial aid. Fokin has been a long-time LaMaV collaborator. This will be his sixth time as a visiting professor at the laboratory – the first was in 1998. “We’ve worked together on about 30 papers,”

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gested that Dyamant insist on contacting Zanotto again, because his research interests were tailor-made to the work being done at this UFSCar laboratory.

“I told him that I would only make an effort to submit a project to FAPESP if he promised he would come. Dyamant came with his wife, having paid for the trip and the hotel accommodations, and stayed in São Carlos for a week. He enjoyed his stay and so we submitted the project to FAPESP,” says Zanotto. At present, FAPESP provides a monthly stipend of R$ 5,028.90 for post-doctoral students in Brazil.

José Luis Narvaez Semanate, from Colombia, has a degree from the University of Cauca. He has been at UFSCar since 2007. He had been recommended by a professor who had studied in Brazil and came on his own to this country to take the entrance examinations. He was given a grant from Coordinating Office for the Improvement of People with Higher Education (Capes) after he had passed the tests. “I studied for one term as a special student before I entered the master’s degree program,” he recalls. He concluded his degree in 2009 with a grant from Capes and is now attending a doctoral program, with CNPq grant. Professor Ana Cândida Rodrigues is his advisor. “It would be almost impossible to attend a graduate program in Colombia, because no such grants are available there,” he says. “Brazil offers many opportunities and LaMaV is one of the best labs in the world in this field. It has excellent infrastructure and a highly qualified

edUaRdO CeSaR

says Zanotto. “He is one of the most highly experienced and prolific researchers in our field. If you type in the words “nucleation” or “crystal growth in glass” in the Scopus database, you will see that he ranks among the world’s five most productive researchers in this field,” Zanotto states.

“Fokin likes Brazil very much and is highly motivated to work in São Paulo because we have modern and up-to-date lab equipment. In addition to the equipment at our lab and at various other labs at UFSCar, he can also use the equipment at USP, Unicamp, Unesp and the Synchrotron Laboratory,” says Zanotto. “The research conditions in Brazil are better than in Russia, especially when it comes to salaries and equipment, which makes us competitive and thus able to attract him,” he adds. Vladimir Fokin praises the dynamic aspects of Brazilian research, which is the opposite of the inflexibility of many traditional institutions in Europe that he is acquainted with. “I’m always deeply impressed by the enthusiasm and the will of Brazilian students to learn and do their best,” he states. “One of the most attractive aspects of my research work at LaMaV is the excellent opportunity to come into contact and establish collaborations with young researchers and students.” In his opinion, his visits to Brazil have helped him implement his scientific ideas. “And this has been possible not only because of the excellent technical conditions to conduct experiments, but also because of the friendly and productive environment in the lab,” he adds.

Israel’s Itay Dyamant, who attended a post-doctoral program with a grant from FAPESP, arrived on November 1st and is the latest newcomer at LaMaV. Dyamant, who has a doctorate in chemical engineering from Ben Gurion University in Negev, had written to Zanotto asking for a post-doctoral scholarship. “I have to admit that I never answered his letter. Many young researchers send these letters of request to various places. We make an effort to bring them here and they end up accepting offers from US labs,” says Zanotto. Professor Kenneth Kelton, of Washington University, in Saint Louis, was a recipient of such letters. He sug-

Edgar Zanotto: focused research

technical staff that allows you to work productively,” he adds. In principle, he plans to return to Colombia to work in research after he concludes the doctoral program. “But I want to maintain my ties with LaMaV,” he says.

Source of knowledge – Jonas Kjeldsen,

a Danish student, came to São Carlos for six months for his master’s degree in chemical engineering, on a Danish government grant. He had heard about the São Carlos group from a German professor, Ralf Keding, who taught at his university in Denmark. “Keding had spent two years in São Carlos at the beginning of his career and knew the

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research and

ness occurred only because of defects in the manufacturing of the glass.

In the field of applied research, the laboratory has made important contributions to the development of glass-ceramics, a sophisticated material with a non-porous crystalline structure that is based on glass and can be used to manufacture artificial bones and teeth, substrates of hard disks for laptops, mirrors for giant telescopes, luxury flooring, transparent, heatresistant cooking pans, and plates for modern electric stoves that replace the traditional gas burners (see Pesquisa FAPESP nº 76).

technological

Industries – LaMaV also has close

The group has focused on the same field of study for the last 34 years, having made progress in basic

applications place and the people,” says Kjeldsen. “I had the impression that the university was very serious, and sometime after I had arrived here, I knew I was right.

LaMaV is a source of knowledge and I’m happy to be part of it,” he says. This is a two-way street. At present, two LaMaV undergraduate students are on an internship program in Germany; in 2011, a doctoral student will spend some time in the United States and a post-doctoral student will go to Portugal and Spain.

In Zanotto’s opinion, the consistency of his group is related to dedication in the same field for the last 34 years.

“We have a focus – we study glass, especially the nucleation and crystallization process. We have solid, consolidated know-how in this matter, which ranks us among the world’s major groups in the field,” he states. “Things here are different from other similar groups, which change their fields of interest every two or three years: they migrate from the study of ceramic toughness to superconductors, from fine films and nanotechnology to graphene; the result is that they lack specific knowledge in these fields and have no real expertise,” says the professor. He adds that his international network is the result of the contacts he made while he was abroad.

In the early 1980s, he did his PhD at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. He also attended research

internship programs at the University of Arizona, in the United States (1987), at the International School of Advanced Studies in Polymer Science of the University of Ferrara, in Italy (1993), and at the University of Florida, also in the United States (2005). “In addition, I made international contacts during congresses and incorporated contacts made by my fellow colleagues and students,” he says.

LaMaV has made several important contributions to the fields of basic research – nucleation and the growth of crystals in glass and the physical and chemical properties of glass – all of which are applied in glass-ceramics.

Examples of basic research include two papers by Zanotto, published in the American Journal of Physics in 1998 and 1999. The topic of the first paper, commented on in Science, deconstructed the myth that medieval churches such as Notre-Dame, are proof that glass can flow at room temperature because the glass on their stained glass windows is thicker on the base than at the top. He does not disagree that glass is a viscous liquid. However, he proved that it would take millions of years for glass to flow to the point of achieving the thickness observed in the churches. Based on his analysis of the composition of 350 medieval stained glass windows, he concluded that the differences in the given thick-

cooperation ties with industries. Two dozen research and development projects were conducted in the last 20 years in conjunction with more than 40 companies, including Pirelli, Usiminas, Companhia Baiana de Pesquisas Minerais (CBPM), Alcoa, Nadir Figueiredo, Saint-Gobain (France) and Optigrate (USA). The latest research project involving corporate research concerns biosilicate, a bio-active material than can bond with tooth enamel and prevent the hypersensitivity of dentine (see Pesquisa FAPESP nº 158). The biosilicate research led to the creation of a company in São Carlos.

Recently, international recognition of the research work conducted in the lab came in the form of an invitation from the Elsevier Publishing Company for Zanotto to become one of the editors of the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids (JNCS), the leading publication in the field of research into vitreous materials. As of October, Zanotto has become one of the journal’s editors, along with B. G. Potter, from the University of Arizona, and J. W. Zwanziger, from Dalhousie University. This is the first time that a foreigner has taken on this position. The five former editors of the journal in the last 50 years were all Americans. According to Zanotto, the fact that he was invited for this reflects the reputation of LaMaV, “which is on par with that of the most reputable international labs specializing in this field. We hope that this will help attract more funding and bright students and collaborators from Brazil and abroad.” n

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scientific and technological

policy

Network building Fabrício Marques Published in March 2010

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hereas several nations have managed to expand their scientific production in international networks, the articles of Brazilian researchers written jointly with foreigners have stabilized at the level of about 30% and have been growing, in absolute terms, more slowly than domestic collaborations, i.e., the joint work of scientists of the same nationality.

This is one of the highlights of a PhD thesis on Brazil’s scientific collaboration networks, defended last year by Samile Vanz, a researcher and professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and produced under the guidance of Ida Stumpf. Samile analyzed 49,046 Brazilian articles published in journals indexed on the Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science base from 2004 to 2006, and found that 95% of these were based on some type of collaboration. Partnering arrangements within the country itself has accounted for about two thirds of the articles and has remained stable in broad terms, having posted only a slight growth, from 69.2% of the total in 2004 to 70.1% in 2006. As for the level of international collaborations, it dropped slightly.

The proportion of Brazilian articles with at least one foreign author, which stood at 30.8% of the total in 2004, slipped to 30.1% in 2005 and to 30% in 2006. Stability at this level drew this researcher’s attention, given that, during this period, Brazilian scientific output rose by as much as 8% annually, currently accounting for 2% of global production and for 45% of Latin American production, and considering also that policies were put in place to expand international participation: in the early 2000s, Capes (the Coordinating Office for the Improvement of People with Higher Education) started to rank more highly grades (6 and 7) only those graduate programs that maintained international collaboration.

“Collaborative work is rising in Brazil and accounts for

[ COOPERATION ]

Thesis discusses the reasons for the lack of growth in Brazilian research in international networks

almost all the indexed scientific production; the international partnering agreements, however, fluctuate but don’t really advance,” concludes Samile Vanz.

The number of co-authored articles is used as an indication of scientific collaboration among countries, institutions and researchers or among sectors (academia, government and private-sector enterprises). Although there are ways of increasing the international contribution to research without this necessarily leading to the publication of articles, such as graduate student exchange programs and participation in congresses and workshops, the importance of the co-authorship indicator for Brazilian research has been observed in several studies. One of these, published in 2006 by Abel Packer and Rogério Meneghini, from Bireme (the Latin-American and Caribbean Center of Health Sciences Information), analyzed the Brazilian articles with more than 100 citations on the Web of Science base from 1994 to 2003. It found that 84.3% of them resulted from partnering with other countries. Another study by Rogério Meneghini, published in 1996, showed that articles resulting from international collaboration have, on average, four times more citations than those that only involve domestic collaborations, which, in turn, have a 60% greater impact than those published by a single author. “Brazil needs to fight for its research to achieve greater international participation, because this will lend more visibility to the country’s output and will mean gaining access to resources and equipment that are not available when one conducts research in isolation,” states researcher Samile, whose work had the collaboration of a group from China that specializes in bibliometry – she did a one-year PhD internship in the lab at the Technological University of Dalian, where she learned data treatment and analysis techniques that she used in her thesis.

According to the literature, several factors explain the trend toward collaborative work. These range from the nePESQUISA FAPESP

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ed to share equipment costs and maintain contact with researchers from other fields of knowledge for interdisciplinary studies to expanding access to financing and the desire to expand one’s academic credentials, learning new methodologies and developing skills through contact with more experienced people. The advent of the Internet and of wireless networks have made it easier for researchers who are far apart to maintain contact. The drivers of collaboration, says Samile, are not the same in all fields of knowledge. In Mathematics, as it is a theoretical discipline, partnerships tend to result from the need to exchange ideas and debate problems. In physics, on the other hand, the need to share expensive equipment, such as particle accelerators, heavily underscores collaboration.

T

he roughly 30% of collaborations achieved by Brazil are far from being a trivial figure. “These figures’ stability shows that we have a consolidated scientific community, with strong groups that are able to advance on their own in several areas,” says Jacqueline Leta, a professor from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who was on the examining board of Samile’s thesis. “One possible explanation is that the formal scientific community, which is the one that establishes partnering, is fairly stable. What has been rising is not the number of researchers, but of graduate students, for whom collaborative production is harder,” she states. According to Jacqueline, small countries tend to have very high collaboration ratios, indicating the dependence of their scientific community. Brazil’s 30% exceeds the 25% of the United States, a country that accounts for one third of worldwide scientific production. However, these figures are lower than those of other Latin American countries such as Chile, Argentina and Mexico. Europe too has been raising its collaboration ratios, which now stand at 50% of its production, twice the figure of two decades ago, thanks to European Union policies designed to bring together the scientists of its member countries. The European level is twice as high as that of countries such as the United States and Japan, whose level, nevertheless, has also been rising, indicating the growing internationalization of research.

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Lea Velho, a professor at Unicamp’s Department of Scientific and Technological policy, says it is hard to assess the meaning of the 30% figure. “There isn’t any clear theory yet, to interpret data of this type,” she says. However, she states that the level can be useful to reflect on the reason why Brazil is unable to increase these indicators. “There is a lack of encouragement for our scientific community to be more involved with the foreign community,” she says. “On one hand, we stopped sending PhD students abroad, which used to be a potential source of future collaborations, as we turned toward ‘sandwich’ doctorates [in which the doctoral candidate only spends a segment of his/her time abroad] or post-doctoral studies abroad, which do not establish such strong bonds. On the other hand, we have a financing system that has increasingly been providing good opportunities for grants and project funding in Brazil itself. This is rather different from what occurs in other countries, where taking part in international networks and the struggle for funding are crucial for the researcher to be able to continue to pursue his or her work,” she states.

According to Lea, it is fundamental in Europe for a researcher to get funding from the European Union network based framework programs. “European univer-

International collaboration is justifiable, amongst other reasons, for the opportunity to share costs on large projects and to learn from those with more experience

sities go so far as to hire people to format the presentations of projects, such is their importance. Here in Brazil there is no such encouragement for partnerships.”

The internationalization of Brazilian research is an important element in the strategy of FAPESP, which maintains cooperation agreements with agencies, enterprises and institutions in Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Mexico, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. One example is the cooperation agreement signed in 2004 with France’s CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), focused on encouraging the exchange of scientists and the submission of joint projects involving researchers from São Paulo institutions and their French colleagues. These have already given rise to four calls for proposals and have funded 27 projects. Similarly, FAPESP also has an agreement with DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), Germany’s main research promotion agency. Last year, the Foundation established a link with British research, when it signed cooperation agreements with RCUK (the Research Councils of the United Kingdom) and with King’s College London, which became the first British institution of higher education to enter into partnership with FAPESP. Additionally, FAPESP’s internationalization strategy includes bringing scientists from abroad to Brazil. Therefore, opportunities for post-doctoral grants are offered in monthly advertisements in the journal Nature as well as on the foundation’s website in Portuguese and in English. Some of the Foundation’s major initiatives, such as the Biota program (which studies São Paulo state biodiversity), Bioen (which concerns bioenergy research), and its global climate change research program have been holding workshops and seminars with the participation of foreign researchers, to encourage the participation of São Paulo researchers in international networks and to keep them in contact with cutting-edge science in their fields of knowledge.

One of the aims of Samile’s work was to update the study on co-authoring, which had already been the subject matter of prior research. One such example is an article by Wolfgang Glänzel (a Hungarian), Jacqueline Leta

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(a Brazilian) and Bart Thijs (a Belgian), published in 2006 in the journal Scientometrics. This provided an overview of Brazilian science on the ISI base from 1999 to 2003 and showed that Brazil had the lowest percentage of publications with at least one international partner relative to other Latin American countries such as Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela. Ten years earlier, Jacqueline Leta and Hernan Chaimovich had analyzed Brazilian scientific production from 1981 to 1990. They found international collaborations rose during this time from 21.6% to 26.7%.

This percentage, however, stabilized as from 1993, becoming divorced from scientific production. According to Samile’s thesis, the areas with the highest ratio of partnering are the geosciences, with more than 50% of articles involving international collaboration, followed by mathematics and physics, with some 40% each. Brazil’s most frequent partner is the United States, with 22% of the coauthoring. This is followed by France (with 8.2%), Germany and Great Britain (with 7.3%), Italy (with 4.3%), Canada (with 4%), Spain and Argentina (with 3.8%). As for the relative analysis of these data, which compares co-authored articles with total country production, it showed, according to Samile, that Brazil’s chief partners are the United States and Argentina. Collaborations with the United States are concentrated in fields such as clinical and experimental medicine, biology and biosciences. In the case of France, the priority areas are physics and chemistry. Collaborations with Chile stand out in geosciences and space sciences (15.7% of the total), probably because of Brazilian participation in consortiums responsible for the building of major telescopes in Chile.

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espite this stability on the international level, there is plenty of evidence that research as part of a network has been growing in Brazil.

The thesis’ data show that the mean number of authors of Brazilian articles reached 6.3, far above the global average of the year 2000, which was 4.16. Moreover, this indicator has been trending up: the mean was 5.9 authors in 2004, 6.4 in 2005 and 6.5 in 2006. According to Samile, this can be explained by the Brazilian scientific community embracing cooperative work. Alternatively, it might be researchers’ response to the requirement that they publish more – increased co-authoring might help them fulfill this requirement.

An analysis of the web of domestic collaboration among the 16 Brazilian institutions with the highest scientific productivity showed several regional networks. São Paulo institutions, such

as USP (the most productive of all), Unicamp and Unesp clearly form a network. USP, for instance, produced 1,157 articles with Unicamp and 1,291 with Unesp. One exception is Unifesp; according to the author of the thesis, it is the most isolated, even though it produced 730 articles with USP. Samile ascribes the performance of São Paulo institutions to the state’s investment in science. In the South Region, the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) also seems to stand alone, whereas the Federal Universities of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and of Paraná (UFPR) form a group that tends to collaborate with the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in inner-State São Paulo.

Another group comprises the Federal Universities of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and Minas Gerais (UFMG), plus the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz).

In the Northeast, the federal universities of Ceará (UFCE) and of Pernambuco (UFPE) are frequent collaborators. However, Samile Vanz warns that it is necessary to advance into longer series to draw more in-depth conclusions. She is committed to this task and plans to continue analyzing data from more recent years about collaboration n in Brazilian research.

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Bagasse is the target An abundant by-product of the sugar cane industry provides Brazil with a competitive edge in the search for second generation ethanol

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[ energy ]

Fabrício Marques Published in September 2009

HÉLVIO ROMERO / ae

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razilian research on second generation ethanol has achieved outstanding networking capacity. Restricted until a short time ago to isolated experiences conducted by companies and research groups, the search for ethanol extracted from cellulose is mobilizing a growing number of researchers, encouraged by research policies focused on increasing the productivity of Brazilian sugar cane ethanol. The target is to take advantage of sugar cane bagasse and trash, sources of cellulose that account for two-thirds of the plant’s energy, yet are not converted into biofuels. “A global race is taking place to develop second generation ethanol,” says Rubens Maciel Filho, a professor at the School of Chemical Engineering of the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), and one of the coordinators of the FAPESP Program for Research on Bioenergy (Bioen), the driver of the scientific community’s networking in São Paulo. “This kind of research is relatively new in Brazil; nonetheless, it has comparative advantages in this race, such as the availability of an enormous quantity of cheap raw material, which is the pre-harvested bagasse, and an installed infrastructure prepared to produce ethanol,” he states.

Residues such as wood chips, sugar cane bagasse and corn cobs contain cellulose and can be transformed into biofuel when submitted to hydrolysis, a chemical molecule-breaking process. A major advantage of this approach would be to reduce the competition between biofuels and food, to produce – in the case of using bagasse – more ethanol per plantation. One challenge is to make ethanol production less expensive – in the United States, corn-extracted ethanol is strongly subsidized, unlike Brazilian sugar cane ethanol. From the technical point of view, several hydrolysis pathways have already been tested, but the current yields and investments do not make these operations economically feasible.

The networking involves initiatives such as the construction of several pilot plants to develop the techno-

logical pathways of cellulose ethanol. The Dedini Indústrias de Base company is building a new acid hydrolysis plant – this is a process in which acid is used as a catalyst to break cellulose molecules. This plant will incorporate innovations related to materials and processes based on knowledge gained from 2003 to 2007, the period during which another plant owned by the company was in operation inside the Usina São Luiz mill in the city of Pirassununga, in São Paulo State. “The experience showed that we need to lighten some of the severe conditions under which the unit had been operating,” says José Luiz Olivério, vice president of Dedini. “We’re testing more resistant materials, because the abrasive conditions of the process resulted in wear-and-tear that jeopardized the continuous functioning of the unit,” he states. According to Olivério, Dedini has maintained its belief in the commercial feasibility of its technology, which has been studied since the 1980s; this technology uses the Dedini Hidrólise Rápida (DHR), Rapid Hydrolysis Process, which was a pioneering process in the country. The company has a scientific cooperation agreement with FAPESP, involving the research of industrial processes for the manufacturing of ethanol.

Oxiteno, one of the biggest Brazilian chemical companies, has shown interest in dominating the hydrolysis process of bagasse and trash to manufacture products used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Oxiteno partnered with FAPESP in November 2006 to launch a bidding invitation – focused on 16 research theme areas – for the selection of projects in the field of sugar, ethanol and by-products production.

The majority of the seven winning projects in course, which involve partnerships with researchers from the University Bagasse in sugar of São Paulo (USP), the Institute mill in the State for Technological Research (IPT), of São Paulo: and the Laboratório Nacional promising raw de Luz Síncrotron, Synchrotron material for Light Laboratory, are working on cellulose ethanol PESQUISA FAPESP

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processes related to cellulose ethanol.

The Foundation’s partnerships with Dedini and Oxiteno are part of the Bioen program.

Petrobras is investing in enzyme hydrolysis, which uses enzymes instead of acids. These enzymes are produced by microorganisms that break the sugar from the cellulose, which is then transformed into fuel ethanol after the fermentation process. A pilot plant installed at Cenpes, the company’s research center located in Rio de Janeiro, went into operation in 2007. The company’s intention is to master this technology and export cellulose ethanol in the forthcoming decade.

A pilot plant in Campinas, in the State of São Paulo, will be built by mid 2010. This pilot plant will be available to researchers from all states. A symbol of the networking efforts, the plant will be installed in the recently created Centro de Ciência e Tecnologia do Bioetanol (CTBE), Bioethanol Science and Technology Center, linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology. The center’s infrastructure will comprise six modules, ranging from the physical treatment of lignocellulose to the production of microorganisms, fermentation, and enzymatic hydrolysis. The idea is to allow researchers to conduct experiments using specific parts of the same platform. “The objective is to move forward simultaneously and thus overcome several technological bottlenecks linked to second generation ethanol,” explains Carlos Eduardo Vaz Rossell, coordinator of the CTBE’s pilot plant.

Basic research linked to second generation ethanol is also moving forward.

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gia, for example, are working on studies to describe the cell walls of sugar cane.

The studies are on course at the Laboratório de Genética Molecular, Molecular Genetics Lab, at the Embrapa Recursos Genéticos e Biotecnologia, Genetic and Biotechnology Research Center, in partnership with USP’s Botanic Institute. The objective is to gain a better understanding of the composition and cell wall structure of sugar cane, to manipulate it in a specific way, aiming at increasing the production of second generation ethanol.

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ountries such as the United States, Canada and Sweden have more outstanding scientific production than Brazil, in terms of the development of second generation ethanol.

The United States, the world’s foremost ethanol producer, is being criticized because it is depending heavily on corn, a source of human food, to extract biofuel; in addition, US corn is heavily subsidized and, as such, it can be sold at a reasonable price. The objective of the search for cellulose ethanol, explored from farming residues or inedible plants, is to guarantee the supply of renewable fuel without jeopardizing the country’s food safety.

Brazil’s interest in cellulose ethanol has a different background. Brazil’s objective is to become even more competitive in terms of sugar cane ethanol, by increasing production without increasing the land necessary for sugar cane plantations in the same proportion. Studies conducted within the scope of the Projeto Bioetanol project, a research network funded by the federal government, show that a distillery

that nowadays produces one million liters of ethanol from sugar cane juice could initially produce an additional 150 thousand liters of bagasse ethanol if it used the hydrolysis technology. In 2025, with improved technology, this same production would provide an additional 400 thousand liters from recovered bagasse. Sugar cane trash is another potential source for ethanol extraction. As slashing and burning of sugar cane becomes less frequent, the trash will tend to be used as a source of cellulose.

In Brazil, the existing technology has to reduce costs to offset the change in the currently efficient use of sugar cane bagasse, which is burned to generate electricity at the sugar and ethanol mills. Rubens Maciel Filho, from Unicamp, points out that it is not enough to find technologically feasible solutions – they must also be low cost technologies. “It is no easy task to justify huge investments to improve first generation ethanol, because the productivity of the existing process is quite high; an additional challenge is to produce second generation ethanol at a competitive price,” he says. However, it is important to point out that the first generation technology still has space for improvement. In spite of investing in the development of the hydrolysis process, Dedini has not stopped focusing on incremental technologies, that range from the creation of self-sufficient – in terms of water – ethanol plants to the production of a biofertilizer that incorporates several residues, such as vinasse and soot. “Sugar cane is unbeatable in terms of storing energy,” says Olivério, from Dedini.

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t is difficult to predict how long it is going to take before second generation ethanol becomes economically feasible, given the difficulties in learning about the details of the progress achieved by companies, as such progress is protected by non-disclosure. “However, if a truly competitive process to transform sugar cane bagasse into ethanol actually existed, it would already be available for the market and the mills would already be using it,” says Rubens Maciel, from Unicamp. The researcher says that Brazil has five years to overcome the technological challenges. “Otherwise, we are going to depend on imported processes and inputs. But the effort is worthwhile because our advantage lies in the fact that we have the raw material – the bagasseavailable at the ethanol producing unit,” he says, referring to the price of a ton of dry sugar cane bagasse, which costs approximately US$ 15, in comparison to the US$ 35 that the same quantity of the available residue costs in the United States. Even transportation costs are a competitive advantage, as the bagasse does not have to be transported to the plant – it is available on site.

Bagasse and trash are comprised of cellulose, a glucose polymer formed by six carbons, the hexoses; of hemicellullose, comprised of five-carbon sugars, called pentoses, which are not used in sugar production; and of lignin, a structural material of the plant, and an integral part of the secondary cell walls of plants. Lignin is responsible for the plant’s hardness and impermeability and provides resistance to attacks on plant tissues. In order for the biomasses to be used as raw material for chemical and biological processes, they have to be submitted to a pre-treatment able to disorganize the recalcitrant lignocellulose complex. Lignin is a major obstacle in this process. The breakdown of lignin releases substances that inhibit fermentation.

Several bottlenecks have to be overcome to achieve an economically feasiOne ton of ble process. The first dry bagasse bottleneck is related costs US$ 15, to the pre-treatment less than half of bagasse and trash. the price of “The raw materials the sources decompose slowly. available in the USA The challenge is to

pre-treat this structure to increase its lability. The early processes were very destructive and led to significant sugar loss,” says Rossell, from CTBE. “We still do not dominate the chemical, physical, and mechanical properties of bagasse, trash and their fractions. We need to become more familiar with the raw material to then develop more efficient processes in the future,” he states.

The second bottleneck is related to the catalysts used to decompose the cellulose. In the case of hydrolic acid, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of the process, which does not allow a very accurate control of the breaking of the chemical bonds. “While sulphuric acid

destroys part of the sugar that is formed, the more efficient chloridic acid has a problem related to corrosiveness, which requires high-cost metal alloys,” says Rossell. In the case of the enzymatic hydrolysis process, the bottleneck is the cost of the enzymes and the exaggerated quantity needed to provoke the splitting of the cellulose into glucose.

One of the challenges of the research studies is to find microorganisms able to produce more productive enzymes.

In the United States, research is focused on a technique called consolidated bioprocessing, in which the four biological transformations involved in the production of bioethanol (production

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of enzymes, saccharification, fermentation of the hexoses and fermentation of the pentoses) happen in a single phase.

Genetically modified microorganisms anaerobically produce enzymes with better activity than the ones used by other processes (read the interview on page 37). “These microorganisms need to be tested because even if they work well in the laboratory, they can be attacked by other enzymes that survive better in the environment,” says Maciel.

“We cannot be left out of the development process of sophisticated microorganisms, because they can help us understand the process better and work in our favor.”

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ther bottlenecks include taking advantage of the five-carbon sugars, the so-called pentoses. “There is no efficient pathway to transform these sugars into ethanol. Most of the yeasts do not have this pathway or the pathway is so small that it does not produce any impact,” says Rossell. “The creation of new yeasts or microorganisms is critical for the transformation of pentose into ethanol. Nowadays, from the commercial point of view, we would only have ethanol obtained from hexoses.” There are other pending issues to resolve, such as the need for high water consumption in the pre-treatment process and the disposal of vinasse, the residue that is left over from the distillation to recover the ethanol. When the production of ethanol comes from hydrolysis, the residue does not contain potassium or phosphorus and thus cannot be used as a fertilizer. As vinasse is polluting, another safe destination is an issue.

Rossell views the perspectives optimistically. “The number of researchers and technicians involved in research tends to grow exponentially,” he states.

In the opinion of Maciel, from Unicamp, the networking of efforts is fundamental to benefit the country’s competitive edge. “There has to be a certain amount of redundancy in any line of research so that the different ways of approaching a problem can be compared. However, in the case of cellulose ethanol, we might not need many pilot plants. With some plants and the integrated mobilization of many researchers, we can achieve betn ter results,” he concludes.

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Uniting for sustainability Workshop brings together North Americans, Brazilians and Argentines to debate the impact of biofuels on water and land use There is a wide field in which researchers from Brazil, Argentina and the United States can join efforts to understand and reduce the impact of biofuel production technologies on the use of water and land. But in order to make these collaborations feasible, it will be necessary to overcome obstacles such as the lack of a data standard that tracks comparative studies, the need to build a model able to explain the effects of complex phenomena, or the need to find ways to scientifically analyze correlations, such as the ones suggesting the influence of the increase in the size of the corn-planted area in the United States, on the deforesting of Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest. This conclusion was voiced during the final discussions of a workshop held in August, which drew scientists from three countries with great interest in biofuels – while Brazil and the United States are the leading producers of bioethanol, one a by-product of sugar cane and the other a by-product of corn, Argentina has huge potential to produce both ethanol and biodiesel.

“Together, these countries from the American continent want to define high-quality scientific strategies so that natural resources are used in a sustainable manner,” says Marcos Buckeridge, a professor at the University of São Paulo/USP’s Biosciences Institute and coordinator of the workshop. The event, held within the scope of the FAPESP Program for Research on Bioenergy (Bioen), was organized and sponsored by funding agencies such as FAPESP, the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), and the US’s National Science Foundation, as well as such institutions as the University of São Paulo, the University of Buenos Aires and Iowa State University.

“Water and land use, associated with the production of biofuels, has significant social, economic and environmental consequences and entails complex technological issues.

New models, with multidisciplinary and multinational teams are necessary to address this issue,” said Robert Anex, a professor at Iowa State University.

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Interview with Lee Lynd

The transition will be smooth The US researcher says that cellulose ethanol and sugar cane ethanol promise to be more complementary than competitive

Published in September 2009

dartmouth college

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ee Rybeck Lynd is a pioneering researcher in the field of biomass used for the production of energy. His interest in this matter began in the late 1970s, when the possibility of converting cellulose into biofuels inspired his graduate course dissertation – and this interest has never waned. For the last 22 years, this professor of engineering and biology has led a research group at the Thayer School of Engineering, at Dartmouth College, a 240-year old university located in Hanover, New Hampshire. His team has already produced more than one hundred scientific articles and a dozen patents; this team is responsible for an important part of US research studies on second generation ethanol, extracted from cellulose, which includes the promise of producing biofuels from wood, agricultural residues and various kinds of plants, without jeopardizing the production of food.

While most biological routes being studied for the processing of cellulosic biomass focused on the separate production of enzymes, in a process which comprised several stages, Lynd’s group identified a simpler and potentially less expensive manner of achieving the same result by using another technique. The name of this process is consolidated bioprocessing (CBP), in which the four transformations involved in the production of bioethanol (production of enzymes, saccharification, fermentation of hexoses and fermentation of pentoses) take place in a single phase. In this technique, microorganisms produce anaerobically complex enzymes with higher activity than the enzymes used by other processes. Lynd’s group is one of the world’s most active groups using this approach.

In 2005, the researcher partnered with venture capital investors to create Mascoma, a company in the field of biofuel research; investment capital was provided by such PESQUISA FAPESP

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The keynote speaker at a workshop organized by the Programa FAPESP de Pesquisa em Bioenergia, Bioenergy Research Program, scheduled for September 10, Lynd gave the following interview to Pesquisa FAPESP: How close are we to producing cel­ lulosic ethanol on a large scale? What are the major technical challenges that remain to be solved?

— The purchase price of cellulosic biomass at anticipated prices, about US$ 60/ tonne, is competitive on an energy basis with oil at U$ 20/barrel. Thus, the obstacle is the cost of processing, rather than the cost of raw material. Conversion of sugars to ethanol is done now at a very low cost using mature technology on a large scale in both Brazil and the US, so that is not the barrier. A cellulosic ethanol industry would exist today if it were not for the difficulty of producing reactive intermediates, notably sugars, from this low-cost starting material.

Low cost technology to overcome the recalcitrance of cellulosic biomass is the key, with the cost of cellulase enzymes the single largest component. Very recently, Mascoma Corporation has shown that the requirement for added cellulase can be reduced several fold, and eliminated for some cellulosic feedstocks, using an approach called consolidated bioprocessing or CBP. In light of this advance, I believe it is now clear that the recalcitrance barrier will fall, leading to a commercial cellulosic biofuel industry. There are paths by which this could occur quite quickly, but this will require alignment of interests and resources involving multiple parties. n

n What are the most viable resources for

lignocellulose conversion? What about sugar cane bagasse?

— A broad range of lignocellulosic feedstocks are potentially attractive for conversion to ethanol, including grasses and other herbaceous plants, woody plants, and various process residues. Bagasse is one of the most attractive feedstocks for the emergent cellulosic biofuels industry as it is available precollected in large quantities and could be processed using infrastructure available at an existing mill producing cane ethanol and/or sugar. Bagasse, of course, has value now as a source of heat and, increasingly, electricity.

Incorporating biofuels needs to add value beyond current options for baggase processing. Although I have not analyzed this in detail, my preliminary assessment and that of others with relevant expertise with whom I have spoken is that this is probably achievable. Conversion of sugar cane trash is another potential opportunity for lignocellulose processing that is worthy of evaluation. n Why do you believe that consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) is better than other routes to obtain cellulosic ethanol? Could you explain the advantages?

— The CBP strategy achieves low operating and capital costs through elimination of costly added enzymes and process simplification, resulting in less equipment. As stated by an expert panel convened by the US Department of Energy (DOE Joint Task Force – 2006), CBP is “widely considered the ultimate low-cost configuration for

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investors as Vinod Khosla, the founder of Sun Microsystems. The company owns the patent on enzyme producing microbes and, according to Lynd, will soon receive commercial application for this process.

In addition to his work as a researcher and entrepreneur, Lynd also acts as an advisor to government authorities.

He testified at a congressional hearing on biofuels at the US Senate and was a member of the committee on biofuels during the Clinton Administration.

He has also prepared reports together with non-governmental organizations, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council. His latest venture is acting as one of the leaders of the Global Sustainable Bioenergy: Feasibility and Implementation Paths, an international team of scientists who plan to explore the possibilities of using biofuels on a global level and on a large scale in order to achieve scientific consensus on the matter. The group will meet in five different countries – the United States, South Africa, Malaysia, Holland and Brazil (see Pesquisa FAPESP nº 162).

Physicists José Goldemberg, former dean of the University of São Paulo (USP), from 1986 and 1990, and Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, scientific director of FAPESP, are members of the committee that organizes the project’s meetings. This study is important for Brazil because it provides an opportunity to discuss scientific evidence on the feasibility of producing biofuels on a large scale, including sugar cane ethanol, a field in which Brazil is the leader, and cellulose ethanol, which could put other countries on the biofuels map.

Ethanol producing unit in the USA: Option for corn is being questioned

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cellulose hydrolysis and fermentation.”

Although there is broad agreement on the transformative benefits of CBP, there has been until recently a greater diversity of opinion on whether CBP represents a prospect for the near term or long-term. In CBP, cellulase enzymes are produced by the same microbe that ferments sugars to ethanol so that all biologically-mediated processes occur in a single process step. Because CBP is carried out under anaerobic conditions, costly and energy-intensive aeration is avoided and the metabolic energy for cellulase production is provided by fermentation resulting in ethanol. With CBP, producing ethanol from lignocellulose looks a lot like ethanol production from cane, except that pretreated lignocellulose is fed to cellulose-fermenting microbes instead of cane juice being fed to sugar-fermenting microbes. Alternative biological routes to cellulosic ethanol other than CBP involve multiple process steps with one of these devoted to cellulase production, and require aerobic cellulase production in which the metabolic energy for cellulase production is provided by respiration resulting in CO2, water, and loss of feedstock heating value as heat. There are non-biological ways to overcome the recalcitrance of cellulosis biomass, such as acid hydrolysis or gasification. Whereas CBP is enabled by transformative emergent advances in biotechnology and has only recently been demonstrated for the first time under near-industrial conditions, acid hydrolysis and gasification have been practiced industrially for decades and I have never seen a case for innovationdriven advances for these technologies with impacts comparable to CBP. n Did your senior thesis already suggest this solution?

— CBP was the central focus of my senior thesis completed as an undergraduate in 1979, although this processing strategy was referred to by a different name then, and I have been working on it ever since. I am delighted that this long journey appears close to fruition. n What is the forecast for the technology patented by Mascoma? Is venture capi­ tal helping foster research for cellulosic ethanol?

ral and promising strategy by which to achieve a rapid market impact.

Bagasse is used as a source of heat and electricity. It is necessary to aggregate value beyond these options, in order to incorporate it to the production of biofuels

— I anticipate that Mascoma’s CBP technology, including both in-hand advances as well as those in the pipeline, will enable commercial cellulosic ethanol plants in the near future, while also providing a new value proposition for farmers and a platform from which to produce a diversity of products from lignocellulosic feedstocks. It is important to realize that the CBP approach is enabling for production of all fuels and commodity products from cellulosic biomass, and not only for ethanol. Venture capital has played a vital role in bringing Mascoma to where it is today, and I expect Mascoma’s early investors to reap handsome rewards.

Looking forward, I anticipate further investment from strategic partners and institutional investors as well as VCs. Mascoma favors a “franchise” business model where we take an equity stake in a plant owned and operated by partners as opposed to a “build-own-and-operate” model. For this reason, as well as opportunities stemming from linking Mascoma’s front-end technology with expertise of others involving conversion of sugars to a variety of products, strategic partnerships represent a natu-

Sugar cane has a good energetic bal­ ance and its production could expand in degraded lands or pastures in Brazil and in Africa. Its productivity has raised 4% per year in the last 30 years in Brazil.

What, in your opinion, will be the future of sugar cane ethanol? Why not keep on investing in first generation ethanol re­ search?

— The growing worldwide demand for renewable, low GHG fuels necessitates that we explore and develop multiple feedstocks, including those that readily yield simple sugars and those that do not. Feedstock diversification will improve the overall business predictability for ethanol producers, by mitigating the impact of price fluctuations for feedstocks, such as cane sugar, that have alternative markets – witness the recent doubling of worldwide sugar prices. Sugar cane ethanol is increasingly recognized as combining low greenhouse gas emissions, high fuel yields per hectare, and modest impacts on water pollution to a greater extent than other established biofuels. Cane ethanol will thus be among the leading options considered by countries looking to increase biofuel production. Cane ethanol and experience gained from its production is also important with respect to emergent technologies that produce biofuels from lignocellulose.

Sugar cane bagasse is a logical point of entry and proving ground for such technologies. As well, close relatives of sugar cane including but not limited to Miscanthus have potential as feedstocks for lignocellulose conversion and can be produced in temperate climates where cane is not grown today. In addition to the broad collective geographical range of cellulosic feedstocks, a further driving force for cellulosic biofuel feedstocks in some parts of the world is the range of opportunities they offer for addressing concerns over land availability. However lignocellulose processing will need to advance a lot before it is cost competitive with cane ethanol production. For the near term, cellulosic ethanol and cane ethanol are much more likely to be complimentary than competitive. In the longer term, any transition to cellulosic ethanol from n

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cane ethanol is likely to be smooth rather than disruptive and to occur only to the extent that processes and feedstocks offer improvements over current practice. As far as research, clearly we need to improve worthy things we are doing now while we also enable worthy things we are not yet doing. Consistent with this, it makes sense to continue research on cane ethanol, but also to include aggressive research to establish lignocellulosic ethanol, especially now that commercial implementation is within reach. n In an article written by you and Natha­

nael Greene, you stated that “Biofuels are a modest part of the food price picture, consuming only 4% of world grain, and there is little evidence that food prices would be much lower if we did not pro­ duce biofuels.” What is the real size of the risk regarding food security?

— Although issues involving food security, biofuels and their interaction are complex, some salient observations can be made. I see increasingly compelling evidence supporting a recent statement made by a diverse group in Science that “We cannot afford to miss out on the global greenhouse benefits and the local environmental and societal benefits realizable through biofuels done right.

But we also should not accept the undesirable impacts of biofuels done wrong.”

It is particularly important in this context to understand two points: 1) land use and environmental risks associated with biofuels done wrong are avoidable rather than necessary consequences of biofuel production; and 2) there are risks to the environment and other important interests associated with not pursuing biofuels. With respect to the latter, likely results of not pursuing biofuels include increased production of petroleum from shale oil and tar sands, diversion of green electricity away from coal displacement, and lost opportunities in rural economic development and energy security. Because of the dearth of foreseeable alternatives to liquid fuels for heavy-duty vehicles, achieving a sustainable transportation sector without biofuels is substantially easier with biofuels than without them.

What do you expect from the Global Sustainable Bioenergy (GSB) project? n

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the present, addressing transition paths and policies, ethical and equity issues, and local-scale analysis. To achieve global viability, relevance and impact, it is essential that the GSB project involve analysts and reach decision makers from around the world.

What contribution can the Brazilian researchers give to the project?

— Brazilian participation in the Global Sustainable Bioenergy (GSB) project is important for several reasons. First, Brazil has a lot to teach the world in light of its trail-blazing role in the biofuels field, leading to a larger share of transport fuel coming from biomass in Brazil than in any other country.

Second, in the course of informal discussions associated with planning the GSB project, knowledgeable persons from Brazil have commented: “Concern over land availability is a distinctive concern to persons in the US and EU, but the world looks much different from the perspective of those of us in South America and Africa’ and ‘The issues of ultimate resource availability and domestic energy security are easily and often mistaken for one another.

We need to develop better clarity on the relative importance of national and global concerns, and realities, with respect to biomass resource availability.’ Clearly, perspectives such as these are essential to include in order for the objectives of the GSB project to be realized. Finally, as a country that combines a large biofuels industry, a modern infrastructure and a substantial poor population, Brazil is in a distinctive position to provide muchneeded understanding and experience relative to the important matter of the impact of biofuels on the world’s poor and poverty alleviation efforts. n

bioenergy is leading us to invest less in its potential than its merits recommend

What contribution could researchers from Brazil, the Netherlands, South Afri­ ca and Malaysia offer?

— There is currently great confusion and uncertainty about whether the world should look to bioenergy (biofuels, electricity) to play a prominent role in the future and, if so, what policy frameworks are needed to ensure a sustainable result. This is too bad, because it means that we are either distracted by an inflated view of the potential of bioenergy, or our ambivalence is causing us to under-invest in bioenergy relative to its merits, or – in light of the diversity of bioenergy technologies – both. At the most general level, I hope that the GSB project will bring clarity and consensus to these issues.

A key focus of the project, and stage 2 in particular, is to actively look for future land use scenarios that are not continuous with current trends. Such scenarios are, by definition, improbable today. However, currently improbable futures are exactly what is needed, since we cannot expect to achieve a sustainable and secure world by continuing the practices that have resulted in the unsustainable and insecure present.

Motivated and informed by analysis of the possibility of bioenergy-intensive futures carried out in stage 2, stage 3 of the GSB project will work back to

Will the group analyze only second generation technologies or will it also evaluate the progress in first generation technologies? Which resources will be considered?

— The project will take a feedstockneutral, performance-based approach, considering first generation feedstocks and technologies, to the extent that they are responsive to project objectives.

Decisions have not been made with respect to specific feedstocks. n

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n Will the group evaluate gas emissions and other problems related to the “land use changes”?

— In contrast to many other studies, our primary emphasis will be on avoiding undesirable impacts associated with indirect land use change assuming motivation to do so rather than quantifying such changes assuming the absence of such motivation. n What are your expectations about investments and advances for green technologies, like cellulosic ethanol, in president Obama’s government?

— As a result of both their insight and the times in which they find themselves, President Obama, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and others in the administration have given a higher priority to green technologies than prior administrations. How this will be translated into action remains to be seen, but I am hopeful , based on the administration’s awareness of the importance of renewable energy as well as on positive initial steps, such as US$ 2 billion in stimulus money devoted to supporting research on sustainable energy production and energy conservation. I believe that the US, and other developed countries have both a moral obligation and a pragmatic interest in modifying our resource use toward practices that would be viable if emulated by the developing world.

What is your opinion about new ap­ proaches to obtain biofuels, like green gasoline?

— In general, I believe that we need to consider all conversion technolo-

can afford to invest in is not the best way to ensure successful navigation of the sustainable resource transition.

Following broad investment in innovation, the winners that are adopted on a large scale should be determined by consumers in response to performance and price dictated by both cost of production and also governmental policies to capture societal values that would not otherwise be represented by market forces. n You once said that “It seems to me that

when, in a few hundred years, people look back on our time, one of the very key things that they will judge us on is how well we did or did not deal with that transition. So I can’t think of any­ thing more important to devote my pro­ fessional life to.” Are we doing fine? Are you optimistic?

— Well, I think our situation is still grim in absolute terms but the trend with respect to increased awareness and urgency is positive. Currently probable trajectories are not sustainable, and we must thus we must look beyond these trajectories to find viable futures. In this context, we need to realize that “business as usual,” although a term of art in scenario planning, is in fact a fantasy rather than a baseline. The first step toward realizing currently improbable futures is to show that they are possible.

I am devoting my career to developing this understanding of possibility at the level of both technology as well as resource and environmental issues. n

Fabrício Marques

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gies that are capable of producing acceptable transportation fuels so long as they pass the ‘sniff test’ of potential for being cost-effective and scaleable.

There clearly is interest from multiple parties, including multinational oil companies, in developing biofuels for both light duty and heavy duty vehicles. Indeed, I think a stronger longterm case can be made for the necessity of biofuels for the heavy duty sector as compared to personal vehicles. Compatibility with the existing petroleum fuel infrastructure is an important consideration, although price and performance will be the deciding factors in the long run. Elaborating on this a bit, I think that a three-step approach makes sense with respect to new energy technologies. Step one is a ‘sniff test’ to determine whether the idea has potential to be cost-effective and scaleable.

We want technologies to pass the sniff test, because we need multiple paths to success. However, we should avoid pursuing ideas that do not have any realistic hope of making a significant impact. In my opinion, not all energy technologies that are currently being pursued by both governments and the private sector have passed this test. In step 2, innovation-focused activities should be supported pursuant to a very broad range of technologies that pass the sniff test. Like the successful venture capitalist, we need a diversified portfolio such that, of ten investments, five might fail utterly, three might succeed marginally, and two would succeed such that they pay for all the rest. Wringing our hands over single options we

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science

[ physiology ]

Unraveling the web Attacking undesirable veins and arteries could fight cancer and blindness

Maria Guimar達es Published in July 2010

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magine veins and arteries that branch out, grow, split and spread. Normal during embryo development, in adulthood this formation and proliferation of blood vessels might be at the source of serious problems, such as blindness and cancer. The biochemist Ricardo Giordano, from the Chemistry Institute at the University of São Paulo (USP), has been finding ways of localizing and exterminating these blood vessels that sprout out of place and in an untimely fashion.

He has developed a peptide (protein fragment) that brings together highly desirable qualities in a potential pharmaceutical substance to fight these problems: the molecule is able to find blood vessels that should be created – and it does this circumventing the body’s defenses, which are unable to recognize the peptide as an intrusive substance to be fought. The molecule, known as D(LPR) because it is made out of leucine, proline and arginine, was the result of the work of a couple of Brazilian researchers that jointly coordinate a laboratory at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Institute in Texas, USA: the molecular biologist Renata Pasqualini and the oncologist physician and researcher Wadih Arap. During the course of 10 years of post-doctoral work in this lively environment full of equipment, minds and motivation to discover proteins that can have an impact on human diseases, Giordano used the ZIP cold concept developed by Renata and Arap: each type of cell, in each of the body’s tissues, has a unique molecular signature that can be recognized by

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specific peptides, just like the number 05415-012 designates a two-block area in which postmen will find the offices of this journal.

And this worked, as shown in the article in the March issue of the journal PNAS. To build trackers capable of overriding the radar of the immune system, Giordano used a conceptually simple trick based on the two categories of peptides, characterized for having certain chemical groups that go toward the right (D) or the left (L). “Nature chose to make proteins in the L form,” explains the biochemist.

Therefore, he chose their mirror image, D. As this is not found in nature, the body’s immune system does not recognize it. It is as if the peptides that go around the blood and the cells were all left-handed. The enzymes in charge of destroying impurities, which are akin to left-hand gloves, do not fit on right hands and therefore allow them to escape. Thus, D(LPR) goes undetected, yet it does not fail to fulfill the role of its mirror twin, RPL.

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he task, in this case, is to inhibit the production of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which is the substance mainly responsible for the proliferation of blood vessels. “However, one can’t totally inhibit the activity of this growth factor: the VEGF’s basal function is important in order to maintain the blood vessels,” Giordano states. He therefore looked for a right hand that might affect only the generation of new vessels, which was successfully achieved by D(LPR) on premature retinopathy, as the PNAS article shows, This is the cause of the musician Stevie Wonder’s visual handicap.Premature retinopathy mainly affects those babies that had to spend some time in an incubator when they were born. As the oxygen pressure is very high (about 70%) inside this type of equipment, when the child is taken into the natural atmosphere, with about 20% of oxygen, the retina cells interpret this as a shortage of oxygen and produce more VEGF. The outcome is a vascular web in the retina density so that it obstructs vision. Giordano showed that the peptide D(LPR) can find such a formation of undesirable blood vessels, recognizing

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Besides retinopathy among premature babies, vascular proliferation in the retina also causes wet macular degeneration, the main cause of partial loss of vision connected with aging. A D(LPR) drug might perhaps be applied in the form of eye drops, which would be a relief as compared to the current macular degeneration treatment, which consists of injections applied directly on the eye.

Wadih Arap has already had to have an eye injection due to a detached retina and has warned that it is awful.

Tracking a bomb - In the laboratory

specific molecules in the membrane of the vascular cells. “Because it’s small, the peptide is cheaper to produce and the likelihood of causing side-effects is small, because the cell’s exterior is the most selective part; therefore, the action is localized.”

When it fits into the cell’s surface, D(LPR) interferes with the VEGF activation chain, thus inhibiting exaggerated vascular proliferation. In Giordano’s trials, the system worked on culture cells and on live mice. Because it is small, stable and water-soluble, the peptide developed by the biochemist has everything to be successful in the eyes of those who suffer from this type of eyesight problems, if it eventually does, indeed, result in a medical drug.

The Project Identification of new molecular markers in angiogenic retinas and rational design of new therapeutic agents for eye diseases with a vascular component no. 2008/54806-8 type

Young Researcher Coordinator

Ricardo José Giordano – IQ/USP investment

R$ 774,669.76

that he created last year upon returning from Texas and being hired by USP, Giordano is looking for new VEGF regions in mice that could function as therapeutic targets. The benefits of this could extend way beyond eyesight illnesses. Vascular proliferation or angiogenesis, stimulated by VEGG, is also what characterizes malignant tumors, which secrete angiogenesis factors to encourage the production of blood vessels that, in turn, feed the masses of cancerous cells. “If we manage to fight this process, which normally doesn’t occur in adults, we will have yet one more weapon to fight cancer,” predicts the researcher.

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ttacking VEGF is not a new idea.

There are some drugs against these factors, based on antibodies, that have been already approved and are in use, but, according to Giordano, they have proven to be less effective than scientists hoped and cause unpleasant side effects, a problem that he hopes to avoid with the targeted peptide that he has developed. “There are hundreds of labs worldwide trying to develop this type of medication; it’s a race.” For him, more important than getting there first is to develop a pharmaceutical product in Brazil. Not only to have more accessible drugs, but also to own the intellectual property for them, as this might aid further research.

One of Renata’s and Arap’s priorities now is to continue the tests to develop a drug based on the peptide developed by the collaborator from USP. “We want to establish in São Paulo a branch of the company to which the M.D. Anderson intellectual property is being licensed, in order to get partnerships and invest-

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ment to develop drugs,” the researcher tells us. One advantage of conducting the clinical trials here is testing the drug’s effectiveness on the Brazilian population, a validation that is independent from the effects of the drug on a larger number of patients. In the future, D(LPR) may also prove effective against tumor irrigating blood vessels, but the group has prioritized the study of eye diseases to avoid the huge competition around the war on cancer, whereas, in Renata’s words, “there’s a vacuum surrounding retina treatments.”

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he two researchers are in the right place. M. D. Anderson is a huge research center and hospital that specializes in cancer. Here, one of the world’s benchmark reference centers where cancer treatment is concerned, and therefore a place that gets the toughest cases, the researchers have access to a large number of patients and huge scientific challenges. Besides doing research, Arap sees hospital patients. In the Texan laboratory, the two scientists that graduated from USP have been using the ZIP code idea to fight cancer and obesity. They have developed a prostate cancer drug that is in the initial stage of clinical trials on humans. “We have already treated six patients,” Renata told us. This initial stage, with only a few patients, after the drug has been tested on other species – generally mice, dogs or monkeys – is mandatory in order to assess the treatment’s possible toxic effects. By finding the drug in tumor biopsies,

“If we could fight angiogenesis, we’d have one more weapon against cancer,” Giordano says

the study validates the notion of using ZIP codes against cancer and other diseases – a method that appears to be effective against fat cells, according to an article published by the group in 2004, in Nature Medicine.

The peptide finds the specific molecular signature of the tumor or the fat and carries along with it a bomb – the klaklac molecule (see Pesquisa FAPESP nº 115). “It’s a corkscrewshaped structure rich in negative charges, which attach to the membrane of mitochondria,” Giordano describes.

Upon destroying the mitochondria, the cells’ power plant, klaklak specifically eliminates the undesirable cells, such as the blood vessels that irrigate tumors. In an earlier research stage, Marina Cardó-Vila, a Catalan researcher, worked together with Giordano at the M. D. Anderson center, using similar techniques on different molecules. She showed, in an article also published in the March issue of PNAS, that an inverted peptide (D shaped) system, such as that produced by her colleague, effectively inhibits the growth of mammary tumors in female mice.

Breathing space – Besides pharma-

ceutical potential, Giordano’s tracking peptide has also been shown to be an effective research tool. In collaboration with Rubin Tuder, a Lithuanian pathologist who graduated from USP and now teaches at the University of Colorado, he showed, in 2008, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, that the technique allows one to find and

destroy blood vessels that maintain the structure of the lungs’ alveoli and cause lesions similar to those found in the lungs of smokers with emphysema. In this case, the peptides work as an antidrug. The idea of this is to produce, in labs, mice with emphysema pulmonary characteristic, in order to study the disease in greater depth.

Tuder is now looking into using the method to help to diagnose pulmonary hypertension, characterized by the proliferation of cells in the vessels of the lungs. This, in Brazil, is linked with schistosomiasis (see Pesquisa FAPESP nº 158). Today, in order to look inside blood vessels, one must insert a catheter through the groin. The researcher’s plan is to bind gold particles, for instance, with tracking peptides. Gold is recognized by CAT scanners, a far less invasive test than catheterization. “I’m trying to identify peptides that locate these lung lesions to aid diagnostic imaging,” explains the pathologist. He has already found, in patients’ cell cultures, promising molecules for this role and in another two months, he hopes to have further details to relate.

Although the method seems promising to treat major diseases, the researchers do not expect it to be a panacea and they certainly are not planning to inject klaklac loaded peptides to attack undiagnosed tumors preventively. “Cancer is a very difficult disease,” comments Renata. “Steps taken are small, the benefits, incremental; but if one doesn’t try, nothing will be achieved.”

■ » See infograph on our website: www.revistapesquisa.fapesp.br

Scientific articles 1. GIORDANO, R. J. et al. “From combinatorial peptide selection to drug prototype (I): Targeting the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor pathway.” PNAS. v. 107, n. 11, p. 5.112-17. 16 Mar. 2010.

2. CARDÓ-VILA, M. et al. “From combinatorial peptide selection to drug prototype (II): Targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor pathway.” PNAS. v. 107, n. 11, p.

5.118-23. 16 Mar. 2010.

3. GIORDANO, R. J. et al. “Targeted induction of lung endothelial cell apoptosis causes emphysema-like changes in the mouse.”

Journal of Biological Chemistry. v. 283, n.

43, p. 29.447-60. 24 Oct. 2008.

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[ immunology ]

Out of control Inflammation unleashed by sepsis damages the heart

Salvad or No gueira illustrations Laura Dav i単a Published in June 2010

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efending the organism from itself when it launches a desperate attack against its own cells is the main challenge facing doctors in cases of sepsis, a generalized infection caused by bacteria or a virus, accompanied by aggressive inflammation that attacks the organs it should protect. Assessing the health of patients with sepsis, a problem that every year affects 18 million people worldwide, doctors in Brazil and from other countries have observed that the risk of dying increases a lot when the most damaged organ is the heart: the death rate reaches 80% if the heart muscle is affected and starts pumping oxygen-rich blood less efficiently to the rest of the body, compared to 20% when there is no heart damage.

Now researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Ribeirão Preto have gone a step further. Analyzing the hearts of people and animals that died from sepsis, the team, coordinated by pathologist Marcos Rossi and by pharmacologist Fernando Cunha, has characterized the type of damage that causes sepsis-related inflammation in cardiac cells. More importantly, it also found a promising way to protect the heart and thus gain time for the body to regain control of the situation.

The main advance of the group from Ribeirão Preto was to see what happens with the heart cells on a molecular scale. In studies with laboratory animals the researchers discovered that molecules of nitric oxide released in the inflammation damaged cell walls making them more permeable to calcium. The consequence of this alteration is an overdose of this particular chemical element that leads to cell death – if the number of cells affected is very large, it reduces the capacity of the heart to pump blood. Published in March 2010 in the scientific journal Shock, this finding is significant because it suggests ways of slowing down the process of wear and tear in the heart. There are drugs on the market that block the absorption of calcium and that are used to control blood pressure and to regulate the heartbeat.

Currently, Cunha and Rossi’s group, in partnership with researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, are evaluating if these drugs really help keep the heart functioning when administered during sepsis. The study is still ongoing, but preliminary results are fairly expressive. In one of the experiments the researchers administered compounds that prevent the absorption of calcium – the so-called calcium channel blockers – to mice that had suffered a perforation of the intestines and had developed a generalized infection. Then, they compared what happened with a group of animals with untreated sepsis and with a group of healthy rodents.

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The calcium channel blockers provided some degree of survival to the sick mice. Without the medication most of the animals with sepsis died in less than 24 hours. When treated, however, all survived the first day. “The death rate of animals with sepsis that received the calcium blocker was similar to that of mice in the control group that had no infection,” explains Rossi. “We’re enthusiastic about the results.”

M

The projects 1. Mediators involved in the genesis of pain and the migration of leucocytes and in sepsis – nº 2007/51247-5 2. Sepsis and septic shock: functional and morphological alterations in the heart: experimental study in mice – nº 2004/14578-5 3. In vitro assessment of the expression of dystrophin in cardiomyocytes submitted to different stimuli – nº 2009/53544-2 type

1 and 2. Thematic Project 3. Regular Aid for Research Project Coordinators

1 and 2. Sergio Henrique Ferreira – USP/RP 3. Marcos Antonio Rossi – USP/RP investment

R$ 2,303,227.35 R$ 153,565.78 R$ 310,920.30

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any more tests are still needed – and possibly years of work – to prove whether this strategy is efficient and can be adopted safely on a daily basis in hospitals. However, one fact makes the researchers optimistic: it will be simpler to carry out tests on humans, since calcium channel blockers are already used to treat heart problems. Rossi remembers, however, that it is premature to suppose that everything is going to work out all right, because the circumstances to which the animals were subjected are quite different from those involving patients in hospitals.

As a pathologist, Rossi performed many autopsies on patients who had died from sepsis and found that almost always their hearts had undergone radical changes. “The heart of a patient with sepsis was different, somewhat flaccid, indicating that during its life it had had functioning problems,” he says. Analysis of material obtained from autopsies in fact indicated morphological changes in the cardiac muscle. Presented in Shock in 2007, these changes were like a picture of the final moment.

In order to know how sepsis-associated heart damage begins and evolves the researchers had to resort to an experimental model of the problem – they chose to work with mice, because the organism of these rodents functions in a similar way to that of humans. By means of an incision in the animal’s intestine bacteria from the digestive tract reach the thoracic cavity and cause a generalized infection.

Right from the start the researchers noted an important change in the structure of the heart of the animals that developed sepsis: there was a significant reduction in the number of proteins responsible for keeping the heart cells strongly united. As a result, these cells, known as cardiomyocytes, separated from each other, Rossi observed when analyzing the tissue under an electronic microscope. It was as if, at the cell level, the heart muscle had been ‘dismantled’.

Even if this transformation, which was described in 2007 in Critical Care Medicine, were to occur at the microscopic level, the ‘dismantling’ produced easily observable consequences. For the heart to beat regularly, its cells need to be firmly attached to one another in such a way that they contract or relax in harmony. With the cells disconnected the heart rhythm became irregular and the heart quickly stopped.

More sophisticated chemical ana­ lyses, using a technique (immune-fluo­ rescence) that makes certain proteins shine when present in a sample, reinforced the suspicion that cardiac re-

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structuring occurred at the molecular level, but not inside cells. The problem was outside, in the so-called extracellular environment. The group noted that a protein structure, the dystrophinglycoprotein complex (DGC), which serves as support and shapes the cells, seemed to dissolve in the hearts of animal victims of sepsis, the researchers from Ribeirão Preto revealed in an article published in Laboratory Investigation in April 2010.

If this heart damage is indeed caused by the inflammation associated with sepsis, the solution for increasing the survival rate of those who develop the most serious forms might be in controlling the inflammation and the damage caused by it. According to the researchers from Ribeirão Preto, this would be an important transformation in the way of dealing with the problem, since attempts are generally only made to fight the infectious agents with antibiotics and antiviral drugs. “The changes identified are therapeutic targets, whose modulation may reduce morbidity and mortality in sepsis,” says Rossi.

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hey are not the only ones who think so. At the University of Utah, in the United States, the group led by cardiologist Dean Li, of which Brazilian physician, Fernando Augusto Bozza, from the Evandro Chagas Institute of Clinical Research, in Rio de Janeiro forms part, tried to control inflammatory reactions resulting from sepsis or bird flu in an unusual way. Researchers gave the mice a compound that prevented the chemical communicators that feed the inflammation from leaving the bloodstream and reaching the tissue. In this way they managed to reduce the level of damage to the organism of the rodents, according to an article published in Science Translational Medicine on March 17. “By blocking the harmful effects of the inflammation in the host and stabilizing the blood vessels, we identified a totally different strategy for treating these in-

Inflammatory

was 80%. In the article in which they presented these data in Nature Medicine on May 16, the researchers suggest that the effect the IL-33 produced in mice is likely to be also observed in humans, since neutrophils are less active in people who develop more serious cases of sepsis.

molecules make the membrane of heart cells

L

more permeable to calcium, leading to an overdose and cell death

fections,” said Li. “In essence, we show that instead of attacking the pathogen, we can target the host to help it fight the infection.”

Adequate control of sepsis, however, should demand more of an action strategy. In a recent study made in partnership with researchers from the University of Glasgow, in Scotland, pharmacologist José Carlos Alves Filho, from Cunha’s team, gave mice with sepsis a protein, which is naturally produced by cells in the defense system, which acts as a chemical communicator of anti-inflammatory action: interleukin 33 or IL-33. Besides reducing inflammation in the organism without eliminating it in the original center of infection, this protein stimulated the migration of a specific type of defense cell – neutrophils – which eliminate bacteria efficiently.

The results of this experimental therapy were clear. Only 20% of the rodents treated with IL-33 died of sepsis, while the mortality rate in the group that received an innocuous compound

ess than a month before, another member of Cunha and de Rossi’s team, pharmacologist Fernando Spiller, had shown that the use of hydrogen sulfide, or hydrosulfuric acid (H2S), the gas responsible for the stench of rotten eggs, induces a migration of neutrophils and another defense cell group, the leucytes, to the initial infection area (see Pesquisa Fapesp nº 146).

This cellular reinforcement eliminated the bacteria and reduced the mortality rate among the mice receiving the compound to 13%, compared to nearly 80% among those not treated, according to an article published in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Despite being encouraging these advances only represent the initial step on a long journey towards improving the control of sepsis, a public health problem that is especially serious in developing countries, where resources are scarcer. A survey done years ago by the Latin American Institute for Sepsis Studies showed that of the R$ 41 billion spent in 2003 on intensive therapy by the Brazilian health system, more than R$ 17 billion was used to treat 400,000 patients with sepsis, of which 227,000 died. n Scientific articles 1. ROSSI, M.A. et al. Myocardial structural changes in long-term human sepsis/septic shock may be responsible for cardiac dysfunction. Shock. v. 27 (1), p. 1-18. Jan. 2007.

2. CELES, M. R. et al. Disruption of sarcolemmal dystrophin and beta-dystroglycan may be a potential mechanism for myocardial dysfunction in severe sepsis.

Laboratory Investigation. v. 90, p. 531-42.

Feb. 2010.

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[ environment ]

The future of nature and agriculture Mathematical models help predict the effects of global warming in Brazil

eduardo cesar

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hundred years from now climate change may cause major alterations in the natural landscape and in Brazilian agriculture. It’s possible that the jaguar, the largest feline in the Americas, will find no suitable living areas in the Amazon. In turn, the Cerrado [savannah] may disappear once and for all from the west of the State of São Paulo and losses in the soybean crop in Brazil run the risk of reaching 40%, i.e., an annual loss of R$ 4.3 billion. These are just some of the estimates of researchers who are concerned with climate change, as forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). What is enabling environmentalists and agronomists to take their eyes off the present and look at the future are mathematical models that try to sum up, in a few parameters, the essential environmental conditions for each species and to simulate what might happen to the climate in different scenarios depending on the concentration of gas in the atmosphere.

“Current conservation units may not serve to preserve species,” warns Paulo De Marco Júnior, of the Federal University of Goiás (UFG). Along with José Alexandre Diniz-Filho he heads the Laboratory of Theoretical Ecology and Synthesis, one of the main Brazilian

Maria Guimarães Published in October 2009

research groups using environmental models. For the environmentalist from UFG, it is useless choosing a forest area to be protected if it has little chance of containing the biological diversity that the country wants to maintain in the future. Such is the case with the jaguar (Panthera onca), the theme of the PhD of Natália Torres, whose thesis advisor was Diniz-Filho.

From the 1,053 records of jaguars on the database of the Jaguar Institute, based on rainfall and temperature parameters, Nátalia has defined the ideal weather conditions for jaguars.

Although they can live in very varied environments – ranging from the thick, damp and dark vegetation in the heart of the Amazon Region to the arid expanses of the Caatinga scrubland and thorn forests – studies involving photographic traps and monitoring these big cats reveal that they prefer more enclosed areas near water, with temperatures between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius (°C) and rainfall most of the year. The model, which was produced based on the current distribution of jaguars and then applied to weather conditions from the past, passed its first test. The distribution found in this assessment of a past forecast coincides with the historical data – from when panthers covered almost all of Brazil, an PESQUISA FAPESP

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It is useless to protect an area of forest if it has few chances in the future of harboring the biological diversity that we would like to keep

area twice as large as today, and looming large in popular imagination.

Natalia’s data were published in late 2008 in Cat News and predict that during the course of the next 100 years there will be a large reduction of areas suitable for jaguars. In the Amazon Region, for example, these ideal zones may be restricted to the so-called arc of deforestation, which includes the north of the State of Mato Grosso and the south of the State of Pará, where there is greater pressure for planting soybeans and sugar cane. The challenge now is to find areas that can be preserved and that are capable of sustaining populations of these large predators.

“It’s important to point out that the model indicates the occurrence potential of this species, not necessarily where it will be found,” Natália reminds us. She is going to add more detailed information to the climate model, such as the size of the patches of vegetation. With this she intends to indicate priority areas for preserving the jaguar. In the south of the Amazon, one promising area is along the Araguaia River, the source of which lies on the border between Mato Grosso and Goiás and which flows north into the Tocantins River, where the States of Maranhão, Pará and Tocantins meet. “There are still very well preserved areas there,” says Natália, “and it’s an important corridor for the jaguar because it connects the Amazon Region and the Cerrado.”

It also coincides with part of the area that is expected to continue being ideal for it in the future, a forecast that may improve with more detailed analyses. Climatologist Carlos Nobre, from the National Space Research Institute (Inpe), is surprised that the model does not highlight the permanence of jaguars in the west of the Amazon. “All the models forecast that there will be dense and humid forests there,” he says.

The researcher is not overlooking the fact that jaguars can live in very different environments and that, therefore, a reduction in ideal areas does not necessarily mean the end of these big cats.

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“Climate change is unlikely to affect the general distribution,” she reflects, “but, if the quality of the environment has an effect on the abundance of the animals, it may be worrying for the long-term persistence of populations.” She is now trying to gather information to suggest areas for preservation, which must take into account the size of remaining areas – large predators need a lot of space to get sufficient resources.

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mphibians, which are more sensitive to environmental conditions and less mobile, are good indicators of what happens with forests.

“They depend on the temperature and humidity of their surroundings and that’s why they are restricted to their particular environment,” says João Giovanelli, from Paulista State University (Unesp) in Rio Claro, who used environmental models to investigate future distributions of amphibians from the Atlantic Rainforest – toads restricted to the tops of mountains and a frog with more flexible preferences.

Considering a scenario for 2100 with double the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) than there was in the pre-industrial period (one of the possibilities forecast by other researchers), some species of small toads of the genus Brachycephalus, which are the size of a person’s thumbnail, may disappear. They only live in the humid areas of the Mata Atlantica rain forest at a high altitude, where the rise in temperature may alter the cloud system and eliminate a large part of the forests, which would start growing dozens or hundreds of meters higher up the mountains – provided they find suitable conditions. Even if this happens, this migration process of the forest will take a long time and the minute toads, which look like drops of gold on the leaves that form a carpet on the forest floor, may have nowhere to wait. So, Brachycephalus may lose more than half its distribution and various species may become extinct, accord-

ing to a chapter written by the Unesp group, which includes zoologist Célio Haddad, for the book A biologia e as mudanças climáticas no Brasil [Biology and climate change in Brazil], edited by Marcos Buckeridge, of the University of São Paulo, and published last year by the RiMa publishing house.

Giovanelli also shows that not all species will come out of this as losers.

The tree frog, Hypsiboas bischoffi, for example, may benefit from fewer cold spells in some areas of Rio Grande do Sul, leading to a growth of 57% in its distribution.

Mobile environments – Environmen-

tal modeling may help forecast the destiny of entire ecosystems. That is what Carlos Nobre’s group is doing. “We define the biome by a set of climate parameters, which include soil humidity, temperatures, the evapotranspiration of plants and resistance to fire, among other things,” explains the climatologist. The group estimates, for example, that at the end of this century Uruguay, which today is very cold, will be able to support Atlantic rainforests. The results, published in 2007 in Geophysical Research Letters, also indicate that in certain regions of the Amazon Region only plants adapted to savannah conditions will survive. “But the model does not allow us to talk about biome migration, which is a very complex and slow process,” he advises.

In her PhD, tutored by Giselda Durigan, from the State of São Paulo Forest Institute, botanist Marinez Siqueira, from the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, concentrated on the effect of climate change on trees from the Cerrado, which is the typical vegetation of Central Brazil. One outcome of this work was the article published in 2003 in Biota Neotropica, in which Marinez modeled the distribution of 162 species of trees and forecast that in 50 years time there will be a drastic reduction in the area occupied by most of them.

The best conditions for the Cerrado are

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rafael oliveira

Cerrado savanna: increasingly less suitable climate in the central region

likely to be displaced to the south of the region currently occupied by this ecosystem, coming close to the border between the states of São Paulo and Mato Grosso do Sul. Marinez is now detailing what is likely to happen in São Paulo, a panel presentation she gave at the International Conference on Biodiversity IT, held in London this year. In projections for 2020 and 2080, she shows that the ideal climate conditions for the Cerrado are likely to move to the east of the state, close to the coastal range of hills – today the domain of the Mata Atlântica rainforest. “But this does not mean that the Cerrado is going to invade Mata Atlântica areas.”

The fact is that, at the regional and local level, the distribution of species is not only defined by the climate.

“Temperature and rainfall alone do not determine the occurrence of Cerrado species,” says the researcher from the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden.

The species that manage to survive in a certain region are partly determined by the soil’s capacity to retain water – a

category of data not taken into account in the models she used. Changing this will be the next step.

M

ore complete models will help imagine the destiny of birds from the Cerrado. Environmentalist Miguel Ângelo Marini, from the University of Brasília (UnB), led a study that estimated where the 26 species will be in 2030, 2065 and 2099. According to the results, published in June on the Conservation Biology website, most of these birds are likely to move to the southeast by an average of 200 km – precisely the country’s most urban region. In the State of São Paulo, for example, it is estimated that less than 1% of the original Cerrado remains.

“It’s no use if the climate is good for birds if the Cerrado vegetation takes a long time to arrive,” says Marini, who estimates a reduction in areas occupied by all the species he studied, which may make the birds whose distribution is already restricted even rarer. By analyzing the conserved areas, in an article accepted by Biological Conservation, he

showed that birds from the Cerrado are already poorly protected today – and in the future they will be even less protected. “We’re identifying possible locations for new conservation units in regions of Minas Gerais where there is an overlap between today’s climate and the climate 50 years ahead.”

Planning preservation with an eye to the future seems essential – perhaps the areas defined as priority in the State of São Paulo, during a workshop of specialists in 2007, may not have the climate necessary for accommodating the Cerrado in 2080, according to Marinez’s projections. “The Cerrado areas that already existed in the east of the state are beginning to take on a greater importance,” she says. Such is the case of the Cerrado enclaves in the Paraíba Valley in the northern part of the State of São Paulo, between the Mar and Mantiqueira ranges of hills, a region that has already been heavily altered by human activity and where few fragments of natural vegetation remain. Even so, Marinez believes that it is worth establishing areas of preservation there.

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Sunflower: sufficient area to escape from an inhospitable climate and from pests

flowering has been more and more compromised by heat waves in normally not very hot months, like September. This causes the flowers to abort. But the damage is not generalized. “Sugar cane likes high temperatures and higher levels of CO2,” he recalls. According to his calculations, even if nothing is done to adapt this crop to the new conditions, the area suitable for its production may increase by about 150% as early as 2020.

T

he group is now estimating how much Brazil will need to invest in the production of plants adapta­ ble to the new conditions. According to the engineer from Unicamp, each new cultivar costs R$ 1 million a year.

The data are in a new publication, to be launched this month, that focuses on mitigation and adaptation. As it takes at least ten years to develop a new variety, the cost will rise to R$ 10 million for each of them.

The projections may have a direct application in practice through Climate Risk Zoning, which estimates the risk of planting each crop for each municipa­ lity in the country – a success probabi­ lity of at least 80% qualifies the farmer for financing. It is a system that is worth R$ 19 billion in financing for family farming,” comments the researcher.

Though the production of sunflowers in Brazil is small, they are among the plants with the greatest planting potential, almost 4.4 million square kilometers – an area that is likely to shrink by up to 18% by 2070, mainly in the northeastern Agreste area of dry, stony soil and Cerrado regions. Over and above climate change, another threat to this crop is the caterpillar of the Chlosyne lacinia butterfly that eats the leaves and reduces productivity by as much as 80%. This insect, known in Brazil as the sunflower pest, was the theme of work by biologist Juliana Fortes, from the Federal University of Viçosa, in a partnership with De Marco. In the work, a Master’s Degree dissertation, under the guidance of Evaldo Vilela, the researcher adopted a scenario that forecasts a temperature rise of 2.6°C over the next 100 years. Juliana realized that producing a model taking into account the species as a whole might lead to errors in the forecast distribution, because in the case of these butterflies each subspecies has different environmental needs – and only C. lacinia saundersii, the commonest in Brazil, is known as the sunflower pest.

If climate change comes true, it might be good news for the sunflower: the overlap between the caterpillar and

eduardo cesar

principles may help plan the planting of the main Brazilian crops. This is just what Embrapa, the Brazilian Company of Agricultural and Livestock Farming Research, has done in a partnership with the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and Inpe, with support from the British Embassy. According to a publication released last year and coordinated by agronomist Hilton Silveira Pinto, from Unicamp, and by agricultural engineer Eduardo Assad, from Embrapa, if nothing is done global warming may be responsible by 2020 for losses of R$ 7.4 billion a year in grain harvests. By 2070, this figure could reach R$ 14 billion a year. The report analyzed where the ideal conditions for Brazil’s nine most important crops will be located. These crops – cotton, rice, coffee, sugar cane, beans, sunflowers, cassava, corn and soybeans – account for 86% of the country’s planted area.

The group considered two scenarios.

The pessimistic one estimates a temperature rise of 2°C to 5.4°C by 2100, which is plausible if nothing is done to reduce emissions. The more optimistic scenario foresees a temperature rise of 1.4°C to 3.8°C by 2100, if human population growth stabilizes, natural resources are preserved and greenhouse gas emission are reduced. “If Brazil’s inaction remains the same,” Hilton Pinto states provocatively, “this is what the losses will be.”

Losses in soybean production, the crop that is likely to suffer the most, may exceed R$ 7 billion a year by 2070, with the loss of areas that can be cultivated, mainly in the south and in the northeastern Cerrado region. At less than 10°C, plants hardly grow at all and from 40°C they do not flower normally and tend to lose their beans. Furthermore, during germination and the period between flowering and grain production, soybeans need a lot of water.

Changes are already happening.

“Coffee in the west of São Paulo has moved to the northeast of the state, to the region of Mogi,” says Hilton Pinto.

In conversations with coffee growers he discovered that from 1995 until today

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areas suitable for planting the yellow flowers that are rich in oil is likely to shrink. But the dissertation, which was accepted this year, also warns: if the C. lacinia lacinia subspecies, which is typical of Central America, were to be introduced into Brazil, it could take advantage of the climate change and adapt to a large part of the center and northeast of the country. “If this were to happen, instead of a future area reduction, the possible hybridization of the lacinia subspecies with might mean an increase in the species’ area in Brazil,” imagines Juliana, fearing greater damage for the sunflower.

Future under construction – The use

Charles Duca/Vila Velha University Center

of models is becoming increasingly disseminated and may be an essential tool for facing up to climate change, but as knowledge grows they are still being improved. There are dozens of different models and each one attributes a different weight to the various climate variables. What many researchers do is apply several of these models and use their points in common to produce future distribution maps. “Our work is to supply projections of the future climate,” says climatologist José Antonio Marengo, coordinator of the climate change group at the Terrestrial System Science Center at Inpe. There, an interdisciplinary team is constantly improving the models, inserting more

data and improving the mathematical representation of the complex processes that happen in nature. “The models are mathematical tools and all models have their uncertainties.” For Marengo, one must take this uncertainty into account in order to find out where the safest projections lie – including looking for ways to improve the model where it does not function. His team uses data and information – both Brazilian and international – to develop regional models that supply more details about the climate of Brazil and South America. However, it has not been possible, to date, to reach the desired level of detail for the country as a whole. “The reliability of the projections tends to be relatively smaller in the Midwest and Southeast, because some continental zone processes have not been properly represented in the models yet,” he says. “And the Pantanal poses even greater difficulties, because the models do not handle emissions and the hydrological representation of a swamp that size very well.”

Marengo say that Inpe works with models that he knows in detail, but it is difficult to obtain top quality climate data for certain regions covering a long time span, as required for studying climate extremes. “If we had finer databases, we could carry out more detailed analyses – on the scale of a basin in the State of São Paulo, for example,” says De Marco. Furthermore, one must be

conversant with the various models in depth. “It’s no good just pressing the button and looking at the output,” says Giovanelli. “One must understand how the model functions and the database available on the species to know if they’re going to be compatible with the question we asked.”

A

nother difficulty that the models face is environmental: the places where a species exists are not necessarily the only ones where they could exist. Just as Marinez Siqueira cannot be sure that the Cerrado will invade the areas of Atlantic rainforest, so the jaguars may manage to live well in less favorable areas and the mountain toads will perhaps not suffer from climate change as much as expected – according to Haddad, there are already records of amphibians typical of the Cerrado being found in the Atlantic rainforest. For Paulo De Marco, this is not a problem as such. “We make projections for the future using species for which we have sufficient data to allow us to represent their distribution and their ecology,” he states. “Furthermore, the current work shows that the current environmental niche of a species offers a good estimate of its future niche,” under normal circumstances. The environmentalist from Goiás explains that these invading species, which suddenly change habitat, quickly adapt to their new conditions.

The knowledge derived from these projections makes the tools more reliable to deal with the environmental changes caused by man, which also include the heightened effects of deforestation, as the article that follows will show. n

Scientific articles

Cigarra-do-campo cicada: migration to the southeast and less suitable habitat

1. MARINI, M.A. et al. “Predicted climatedriven distribution changes and forecast conservation conflicts in a neotropical savanna.” Conservation Biology. 2009.

2. SALAZAR, L. F. et al. “Climate change consequences on the biome distribution in tropical South America.” Geophysical Research Letters. v. 34. 2007.

3. SIQUEIRA, M. F. de; PETERSON, A. T. “Consequences of global climate change for geographic distributions of Cerrado tree species.” Biota Neotropica. v. 3, n. 2. 2003.

4. TORRES, N. M. et al. “Jaguar distribution in Brazil: past, present and future.”

Cat News. Autumn 2008.

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An ant visits the inflorescence of the para-tudo-do-campo or perpĂŠtua (Gomphrena macrocephala) 56

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[ Ecology ]

Chemistry in the air Volatile compounds control the interaction between vegetables and insects Carlos Fioravanti, from Pratânia Published in December 2009

eduardo cesar

T

he abacaxizeiro-do-cerrado [the Cerrado savanna pineapple plant] is one of the few red spots in the midst of the dried-out grayness of the trees on a savanna reservation surrounded by sugar cane and eucalyptus plantations on an estate in Pratânia, in central São Paulo State. The pale-blue flowers and the leaves of this pineapple plant (Ananas ananassoides) release volatile compounds that attract hummingbirds, bees and butterflies in their quest for nectar or pollen. “The pineapple maintains a closer relationship with the hummingbirds, but this doesn’t mean that other animals don’t visit it,” says biologist Juliana Stahl, who is heading a study under the guidance of Sílvia Rodrigues Machado and Elza Guimarães, both of them professors from Paulista State University (Unesp) at Botucatu. The aromas that permeate the air in woods, plantations or gardens express ongoing battles for survival and show that plants are definitely not passive. After millions of years of natural selection, the only ones to grow are those that can interact with animals and other plants, releasing natural compounds that enable defense, or establish agreements that often involve mutual advantage.

“Plants ‘manipulate’ their visitors,” explains Sílvia. Her group’s research is detailing why certain plants attract specific groups of pollinators. They are also explaining the formation of chemical compounds that are of interest to humans.

Tatiane Rodrigues, one of the biologists in Sílvia’s team, found that the elongated and rounded secreting structures of the stalk and the root of the copaíba tree produce an oil that people use to treat inflammation, wounds and mycoses, and to treat plants against insects. “Even plants that have just germinated have oilsecreting cells that protect them from predators,” she says. Her colleague Shelley Favorito has identified five types of glands on the surface of the leaves of PESQUISA FAPESP

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Clívia Possobom/Elza Guimarães/UNESP

A bee reaches Diplopterys pubipetala in search of oil

Lippia stachyoides; they produce a strong smelling oil that waterproofs the leaves and repels predators.

Learning more about this interaction helps to define the species of plants and animals that are more important for the continuity of natural environments. The Croton glandulosus, a one-meter bush that grows in abandoned pieces of land, is one of them. Lucia Maria Paleari, a researcher from Unesp in Botucatu does not cease to be amazed at the diversity of millimetric bees, aphids, flies, butterflies, beetles and ants that satiate themselves with the secretions of secreting structures in roots, stalks, leaves and flowers. One of the visitors is the jataí bee (Teragonisca angustula), which feeds on the nectar of the croton flowers, producing honey that can cost as much as R$ 120 a liter. For Lucia, this bush, which does not compete for light and nutrients with farmable plants, should be kept in agricultural areas rather than being eliminated as a negligible weed, its usual fate. “The croton feeds insects that could work as natural enemies of agricultural pests,” she says.

Opportunity – Brazil’s wealth of plants

and animals is driving researchers from Brazil and the USA to interact. One of the centers to house international collaborations is the National Institute of Science and Technology - Center of Energy, Environment and Biodiversity, coordinated by José Rodrigues 58

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and Tetsuo Yamane, headquartered at the University of the State of Amazonas (UEA), in Manaus. At the institute’s inauguration, in April, Jerrold Meinwald, one of the pioneers in this area, stressed Brazil’s potential in this field in a talk. “The Amazon Region, with its broad diversity that has been studied very little, offers a unique research opportunity,” he notes. “If Brazil were to consistently invest in this area it might be able to produce world-class research and an institute capable of attracting and training scientific leaders.”

One of the members in this group, which is beginning to take shape, is Brazilian biologist Consuelo de Moraes, a researcher from Pennsylvania State University, who showed that messages

The project The role of the glandular structure of the Croton glandulosus in tritrophic interactions type

Regular Research Project Aid Coordinator

Sílvia Machado – Unesp investment

R$ 183,752.02 (FAPESP)

from plants may have specific addressees. “Many researchers did not believe in the specificity of the interactions of plants with other species,” she says. As explained in detail in her article published in 1998 in Nature, the Cardiochiles nigriceps wasp distinguished between the composition of compounds released by tobacco, cotton and corn attacked by caterpillars of the species Heliothis virescens and Helicoverpa subflexa – and only looks for plants with caterpillars of the first species.

Now working on her doctorate, Clívia Possobom lent strength to the hypothesis of specific messages when she found that a creeper from the Cerrado savanna, the Diplopterys pubipetala, maintains quite a close relationship with bees from the Centridini tribe.

Glands at the base of the flower produce an oil that only seems to be of use to the bees: they use it to line their nests and as food for their larvae. “I know of no other function of this oil, which only appears when the bee scrapes the gland,” says Clívia. According to her, this oil “may be a kind of reward for the pollinators that the Diplopterys depend on, because the plant is autoincompatible” (the grains of pollen of a given plant, even if produced by a hermaphroditic flower, can only germinate if they reach the feminine structure of the flower of a different plant from the same species). “There is an exchange at play, a co-evolution,” comments Sílvia.

“The Dyplopteris and the bees depend on each other.”

Substances released by the plants may guide other plants, though the latter may not always be welcome. In an issue of Science from 2006, Justin Runyon, Mark Mescher and Consuelo showed that the cipó-chumbo (fiveangled dodder) or Cuscuta pentagona, through volatile compounds, selects hosts, growing in their direction. It is a parasite of tomato, alfalfa, potato, soy and onion plants, but not of wheat, which releases compounds that repel it. “After germinating, Cuscuta has 10 days in which to find a host plant,” says Consuelo. “Because it lacks roots and leaves, if it doesn’t find one, it dies.”

Another type of parasitic plant, the Cuscuta racemosa, lives in the Mata Atlântica forest and should have similar behavior. We are not dealing with an

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Eduardo Cesar

isolated example here, because at least 4,500 species of plants with flowers, or 1% of the total, are parasites that live off the water and nutrients extracted from other plants.

“Chemical signaling is nature’s dominant means of communication,” says Meinwald. The number of types of interactions is practically unlimited. To complicate matters further, flowers and leaves may produce different types of compounds as they grow. In 2006, Sílvia, Elza and Elisa Gregório, from Unesp in Botucatu, showed that the flowers of a Cerrado savanna bush, the Zeyheria montana, produced alkaloids, which repel visitors, during their early development, and terpenes, which attracts them, when the grains of pollen are ready to fertilize other flowers.

Message for other leaves – At least 1,000 species

of plants resort to chemical language, according to a study by Christopher Frost, from Consuelo’s team, in Plant Physiology. The plants release at least three types of compounds that give woods their typical smell.

Identified by the abbreviations z3HAL, z3HOL and z3HAC, they trigger a response to parasites, inducing the release of substances with a nasty taste. In 2008, in New Phytologist, Consuelo and her group described the biochemical reactions through which one of these substances, z3HAC, released by leaves that are being devoured by insects, activates the production of compounds that strengthen the defense of leaves that are still intact in a type of poplar, a cold-weather tree. “If a leaf is being attacked, the neighboring leaf prepares to defend itself when it perceives the volatile compounds,” says Consuelo. “The leaves that are not connected amongst themselves communicate through these compounds.”

Lucia Paleari decided to present these interactions in a more exciting manner and proposed an exhibition about the croton to a group of students from Unesp in Botucatu, last November. According to her, two thousand children, youths and teachers from an elementary school and high school in Botucatu became acquainted with the plant and were amazed at the immense models and expanded photos of insects and their heads on show at the school’s sports gym. “They asked how insects could have so many structures on their head and how could a plant that they referred to as a weed be so interesting and capable of attracting so many different little animals,” she recalls. “We are n learning to look at such things more slowly.”

Scientific articles 1. FROST, C. J. et al. “Plant defense priming against herbivores: getting ready for a different battle.” Plant Physiology. v. 146. p. 818-24. 2008.

2. RODRIGUES, T. M.; Machado, S. R. “Developmental and structural features of secretory canals in root and shoot wood of Copaifera langsdorffii Desf. (Leguminosae Caesalpinioideae).” Trees. v. 23 (5). p. 1013-18. 2009.

Insects copulate under the fluff of the paineirinha-do-cerrado (Eriotheca gracilipes) PESQUISA FAPESP

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[ biochemistry ]

Living lights Published in February 2010

I

n the cartoon movie A Bug’s Life all the inner lighting for the ants’ nest comes from luminous mushrooms. “There’s a large degree of poetic license in the work,” comments Cassius Stevani, from the Chemistry Institute of the University of São Paulo (USP), “but in essence it’s true.” There really are mushrooms that emit light, or are bioluminescent, and many ants grow fungi in their nests – but not of this type.

Stevani is putting a lot of effort into understanding the chemical mechanism that generates this luminosity and what its function in the organism is. On the way, he has already discovered a practical use: detecting metal contamination in the soil.

It only took 5 years for Stevani and his colleagues to discover 12 species of luminescent fungi in Brazil. Among them are the Amazonian Mycena lacrimans, found by Ricardo Braga-Neto from the National Re-

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search Institute of the Amazon (Inpa), and a species that looks like an inverted umbrella that grows at the foot of palm trees, like the piaçava [piassaba], or the babaçu, in Piauí.

Worldwide there are 71 species, according to a review article written by Stevani in collaboration with North American biologist, Dennis Desjardin, from the São Francisco State University, in California, which in March will grace the front cover of the journal Mycology. “There must be many more species to discover,” the chemist imagines, “that have not yet been described because they’re difficult to find; few people walk around in the forest without a torch on a moonless night.”

Until 2002 there were no reports of bioluminescent fungi in Brazil; or rather, there was one species, described in the nineteenth century by Britain, George Gardner, the scientific name of which was Agaricus phos-

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photos cassius stevani/usp

Mechanism that makes mushrooms glow leads to a method for detecting contamination | Maria Guimarães

phorescens (later renamed Pleurotus some work she was doing in collabogardneri), but today fungi specialists ration with primatologist, Patrícia Izar, from the Psychology Institute at USP question this classification, based on – whom he immediately contacted in similar species in Europe, and it was difficult to correct the mistake behis search for a the whereabouts of the cause the only preserved sample is in mushroom. It is one of these stories of chance, in which information needs a herbarium in England.

A mushroom that seems to be of to go round the world before arriving the same species was recently found back in almost the same place. glowing at the foot of a piassaba palm It turned out well: the owner of tree by North American primatolothe property where Dorothy and Patrícia were working, Marino Gomes gist, Dorothy Fragazy, who was out de Oliveira, dried 4 kg of the glowing later than usual at the end of a day mushroom in the sun and sent them she had spent looking for monkeys in Piauí. Fascinated, she showed her to Stevani. Now the researchers are photos to a fellow countryman at the close to correcting the identificaBotanical Gardens in New York, who tion, with the detailed examination got in touch with Dennis Desjardin, of the mushrooms by mycologists considered to be one of the greatest (fungi specialists) Marina Capelari, specialists when it comes to identifyfrom the Botanical Institute of São ing these organisms. He, in Paulo, and Desjardin. He turn, advised Stevani. The has dedicated himself to ex“Pleurotus” Brazilian only had to search ploring little known forests gardneri: all over the world, including the Internet to discover that rediscovered Dorothy was in Brazil for in Brazil, and says that the in Piauí

pioneering efforts of his group have been responsible for many discoveries. “Recently I led an expedition to an island in Micronesia, in the Pacific, where mushrooms had never before been documented; of the 128 species we found 7 were luminescent,” he says, making it clear that glowing fungi are in the minority.

Brazil is promising because it has an immense forest area, the fungi of which have not yet been studied, says Desjardin. “We know very little about Brazil’s mushrooms, so we hope to find many new species, whether luminescent or not.” He explains also that in order to find luminous fungi you have to think about it. Most of the mycologists who study fungi diversity describe mushrooms during the day (when they also emit light, but the researcher cannot see it) and dry them immediately to preserve them; they need to be examined first in the dark to determine if there is

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Mycena luxaeterna: light concentrated on the stalks, or stipes

The projects

any luminescence and only then should they be dried.

“Because of this I guess that several rare tropical fungi are luminescent, but we’ve not yet noticed it.”

Despite being little known, there have been reports of luminous mushrooms for a long time. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, was the first to report the phenomenon more than two thousand years ago, when he described the living glow and decided that it was different from fire. However, scientific studies on this phenomenon only started in the 1950s and only now are they beginning to contribute to our understanding of the bioluminescence in these organisms that are specialists in decomposing wood and other types of organic matter.

1. Study of the bioluminescence of fungi and its applications in environmental chemistry 2. Bioluminescence and the pharmacological activity of mushrooms type

1. Regular Research Project Aid 2. Young Researcher Coordinator

Cassius Stevani – IQ/USP investment

1. R$ 328,413.09 2. R$ 457,741.18

Signaling – Stevani’s interest in fungi

grew out of his previous work with fireflies and other insects. In 2002, during a trip for collecting material with Etelvino Bechara, a renowned specialist in the bioluminescence of fireflies, now at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), he took advantage to look for the mushrooms that Bechara had talked to him about. He found them: while he

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was looking in the dark at an area of damp vegetation close to a waterfall in the middle of the Cerrado [scrubland, savannah vegetation] in Mato Grosso do Sul, he saw a different green light that was constant, unlike the flashing light of the fireflies.

They were mushrooms and gave rise to the project that the researcher from USP became involved with as from 2002 with the help of FAPESP and its Young Researcher program. Even before the work began, the luminous fungi proved not to be restricted to Mato Grosso do Sul. During fieldwork in the State Tourist Park of Alto Ribeira (Petar), in the south of São Paulo state, ecologist João Godoy, now a professor at the São Paulo School of Engineering, was led by his forest guide to a luminous fungus.

Surprised, he told his chemist friend, who can now concentrate his field activities in the Petar, which is closer to his laboratory.

Some of these species are helping unveil the minute details of the bioluminescence of fungi and for this Stevani relies on the help of three PhD students, funded by FAPESP. By means of exhaustive chemical trials PhD student, Anderson Oliveira, analyzed three

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species from the Petar’s Atlantic rainforest – Gerronema viridilucens, Mycena lucentipes and Mycena luxaeterna –, as well as the “Pleurotus” gardneri fungus, found in a region of the Cerrado in the Piauí municipality of Gilbués. In an article published in 2009 in Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences, the results show that the light production mechanism is similar to that seen in fireflies and in bioluminescent bacteria: enzymes called luciferases oxidam, a substance – or substrate, as chemists prefer to call it – known as luciferin that releases energy in the form of light.

Oliveira used the very latest equipment in chemistry labs, but the basis of the trial for characterizing the enzymatic reaction was discovered more than a century ago. In 1885, French physiologist, Raphaël Dubois, crushed the luminous organs of a Pyrophorus firefly and mixed them with cold water. The solution gave off a green glow which little by little faded away. It was luciferin being consumed by the chemical reaction, he concluded. Then Dubois heated a similar solution, disintegrating the enzymes present that are sensitive to heat.

On mixing the two solutions – the cold one, where the enzymes survived but no longer with luciferin, and the hot

one that only had luciferin –, he saw the mixture emit light. This story is in the book, Bioluminescence, published in 2006 by Japanese pharmacist, Osamu Shimomura, a researcher in the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, in the United States.

Shimomura won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008, precisely for his studies on bioluminescence: he isolated

the green, fluorescent protein (GFP) from jellyfish, which indicates the activity of specific genes when attached to the DNA of an organism studied in the laboratory. The luminous protein has become essential in many genetic laboratories, an aspiration that is not far from Stevani’s mind, given that bioluminescence mechanisms are similar, even among very different organisms.

Mycena fera: mushrooms glow all the time, but are only seen in the dark

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This does not mean, however, that the chemical composition of luciferin is similar in insects and fungi. “Luciferin is the name we give to any substrate that is luminescent, but the luciferins of different organisms may be completely different molecules,” explains Stevani. All the fungi studied by his group, however, shine by means of the same substrates and the same enzymes, suggesting a common origin for all of them. However not all bioluminescent fungi are close relatives, warns Desjardin. “Today, we know that there are four families of fungi with bioluminescent species, but they don’t always have the same close relationship between them,” he says. “Some shining species of Myconstellations in the bedrooms of chilcena are more like species that don’t dren of all ages. So far, Oliveira has shine than other shining species of the managed to separate from the fungus same genus.” extract a solution containing luciferin The group from USP is now hunt– it shines when mixed with an enzying down the structure of the molecule matic solution. However, the substance that makes these tiny mushrooms, must be in very low concentrations, sometimes only 0.5 cm in circumferbecause chemist Antonio Gilberto Ference, resemble glow-in-the-dark star reira, from the Federal University of stickers, stuck to the trunk of a tree, or São Carlos (Ufscar), has not managed as if they were sprinkled in the midst to detect it by the nuclear magnetic of the leaves that cover the forest floor. resonance of protons. “We need to exUnlike fungi, which produce tract a larger amount, or use more sensitive equipment,” their own light, glow-in-theStems dark stars are phosphorescent plans Stevani. covered by stickers that store environThe chemist from USP hyphas that mental light and consequently started on this undertaking are invisible only shine at night, creating out of pure scientific curiosity, in daylight

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but considers it essential to find practical uses that bring benefits for other researchers and for society. He seems to be on the right track: the glow of the Gerronema viridilucens fungi may help detect high levels of soil contamination by various types of metal, as Luiz Fernando Mendes, another PhD student of Stevani’s, showed in an article going to press in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

Biological sensors - Mendes grows the

fungus on 35 mm diameter glass plates, on a gelatin base of algae, known as agar, the most commonly used culture medium in biological laboratories. After growing for 10 days, the fungi still do

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Mycena asterina: luminescence restricted to the cap of mushrooms

not attain the shape of a mushroom. In this phase, they comprise microscopic filaments, hyphas, which represent the major part of the life cycle of any fungus and, in some species, they also produce the green glow. The researcher measures the luminosity emitted by each of these plates and deposits on them a small soil extract sample to be analyzed. After 24 hours in a cold chamber the fungus starts emitting less light if the sample is contaminated, which the chemists interpret as a form of damage that the organism has suffered.

Mendes got graphs that represent the intensity of light emitted in the presence of different concentrations of 11different metals – calcium, sodium, magnesium, cadmium, cobalt, manganese, potassium, lithium, zinc, copper and nickel – and that indicate the toxicity of the sample analyzed. The work has already provided a patent registered in Brazil on the use of fungi in environmental toxicity trials. It is enough just to measure the intensity of the light that emanates from the fungus to estimate how much of these metals is in a form that can be absorbed and used by living beings. “This is not a matter of measuring the total concentration of chemical substances; that would have no biological significance and be of no practical use,” points out Stevani. The problem is that Gerronema viridilucens is not very

sensitive, perhaps precisely because it lives in the soil and is adapted even to adverse conditions. “What matters is that the biotrial works; now we need to find more sensitive species that can be tested in the same way,” says the chemist.

Strategies – Because it consumes

oxygen in its chemical reactions, bioluminescence may be able to perform an antioxidant role that would protect fungi and other organisms, even fireflies, from reactive species produced from the oxygen consumed in breathing. This protection of the organism possibly explains the benefits of glowing in the middle of the forest. However when it is necessary to take up arms against intense oxidative stress, Stevani’s group has shown that the organism of fungi favor more specialist reactions in accomplishing this function, and switches off its luminescence. This is what the as yet unpublished work of Olívia Domingues indicates; she is also a PhD student of Stevani’s. She saw that in the presence of metals in high concentrations cells give preference to using the co-enzyme, NADPH, for producing reduced glutathione, which avoids the harmful action of the metals. As reduced glutathione competes for resources with the enzymes that produce the luminescence, little by little the fungus switches off. That is why the fungi in Mendes’

bio-trials lost their luminosity in soil contaminated by metals.

Olívia’s results help explain why bioluminescent fungi serve as a toxicity bio-trial, but do not explain the benefit to the fungus in emitting a greenish glow. Stevani is betting on ecological hypotheses, showing photographs of flies landing on mushrooms. Like a lamp around which various insects fly, the green glow perhaps helps attract insects. It may seem that there is no advantage in announcing your presence to the hungry hoards that are on duty, but the function of mushrooms in the life cycle of fungi is ephemeral, like the fruit of trees: when an animal eats part of the mushroom it takes away its spores, microscopic structures that are going to generate new fungi if they are deposited in suitable locations. Or perhaps the light is a danger signal in the case of poisonous mushrooms, as happens with brightly colored venomous animals. “What isn’t probable is that the bioluminescence of fungi has evolved to illuminate anthills or to serve as an indication of the flight path, as in A Bug’s Life,” he jokes.

The chemists’ discoveries make it clear that many mysteries will remain lost among the leaves until more biologists and chemists resolve to put out their torches and gaze at the darkness of the forest, which is sometimes n sprinkled with green.

Scientific articles 1. Desjardin, D. et al. “Luminescent Mycena: new and noteworthy species.”

Mycologia. In press 2. Mendes, L. F. Stevani, C. V. “Evaluation of metal toxicity by a modified method based on the fungus Gerronema viridilucens bioluminescence in agar medium.”

Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. v. 29, p. 320-26. 2010.

3. Oliveira, A.G. and Stevani, C.V. “The enzymatic nature of fungal bioluminescence.” Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences. v. 8, p. 1.416-21.

Oct. 2009.

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[ Physics ]

The entanglement formula

Marcos Pivet ta Published in June 2009

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n April 20, 2006, a team from the Quantum Optics Group of the Physics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) published an article in the UK journal Nature that reported the first direct measuring of one of the weirdest and most fascinating phenomena in the quantum world, the so-called entanglement or interlacing of particles, such as atoms, electrons or photons, the elementary light particles. On April 27, 2007, Brazilian researchers published yet another important paper on this complex field of physics.

On the pages of Science, an American periodical, they explained how entanglement, an essential property for the development of a quantum computer, can disappear abruptly, suffering a sort of sudden death. Now the same team, comprised of researchers Luiz Davidovich, Paulo Henrique Souto Ribeiro and Steve Walborn, has added a further, major contribution to the question, in an article published on May 14, 2009, on the Science website.

They formulated and experimentally

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Group from Rio de Janeiro proposes equation that describes a reduction in the quantum phenomenon due to environmental influence

demonstrated a law that describes the dynamics of entanglement.

In more colloquial language, what the physicists from Rio de Janeiro did was to create a general equation that allows them to estimate, simply and precisely, the loss of entanglement of a two-particle system, when one of the particles is adversely affected by the environment. Factors outside such a system, such as attrition or temperature, may cause entanglement to drop off or even disappear altogether. The new method can do without the reconstruction of the final state of an entangled system, a difficult task that sometimes yields inaccurate results.

“Up until now, there has only been one equation, proposed in a theoretical study published last year in the journal Nature Physics, for describing the dynamics of entanglement in a highly particular and idealized case: a system whose initial state was fully known,” explains Davidovich, the study’s main author, who had collaboration from two graduate students, Camille Latune and Osvaldo Jiménez Farías. “Our equation is a generalization of the previous one

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ufrj

Illustration of photons with entanglement (full circular lines) and without entanglement

and also works in situations that are closer to reality, when there is uncertainty about the system’s initial state.”

The environment’s influence on one of the entangled system’s particles was demonstrated by the Brazilian scientists in an experiment with photons, using a method known among physicists as the “quantum process tomography.”

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efined by Albert Einstein as something wrapped up in “phantasmagoric action at a distance,” quantum entanglement is a phenomenon that is alien to the world of classic, Newtonian physics in which we live.

As if by magic, it causes a set of elementary particles to share certain characteristics even though there is no physical connection between them.

The problem is that it is impossible to determine the properties of each one of the entangled particles, but only of the overall system. If, instead of two

elementary particles, the reader can imagine a system comprised of two entangled dice, this disconcerting concept from the world of quantum physics becomes easier to understand. Because they have this strong correlation, when they are thrown, the dice always produce the same result: for instance, their sum is ten. The end result of the system is known and easy to measure, but one does not know what combination of numbers (five plus five, seven plus three, eight plus two, etc.) yield this sum. However, as the dice are entangled, when the number of one is determined, the number of the other is automatically discovered.

In the experiment now described in Science, Davidovich’s team, by shining a laser beam onto a crystal, generated pairs of photons entangled with regard to one of their physical parameters: polarization (the spatial direction – vertical or horizontal – in which its electromagnetic field vibrates). Another parameter of the photons, momentum (connected with their propagation direction, i.e., their trajectory in space) acted as the system’s external environ-

ment in the experiment. The researchers realized that, when they produced interaction between the photons’ momentum and polarization, there was a reduction in the degree of entanglement in the system . They also found that their equation could account for this loss in the entaglement. “We took a small step towards understanding the dynamics of entanglement, which can help to build more stable and robust quantum systems,” comments Davidovich, whose team is part of the National Science and Technology Institute for Quantum Information.

Storing, transmitting and processing information by exploring the quantum world’s peculiar properties is one of the likely bets for IT in the 21st century. But there is still a lot of basic and applied research to be done before an atom- or photon-driven PC can materialize in people’s homes. n Scientific article Farías, O. J. et al.“Determining the dynamics of entanglement.” Science Express Reports, published online on May 14, 2009.

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ricardo zorzetto

White and silver: the elegant SOAR building and its Gemini Sul neighbor, in the background

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technology

[ astronomy ]

Astronomical instruments made in Brazil equip the SOAR telescope in the Chilean Andes

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Ricard o Zorzet to, from Cerro Pachón Published in March 2010

hysicist Antônio César de Oliveira barely saw the light of day in the last week in January. He, astronomer Flávio Ribeiro and mechanical engineer Fernando Santoro spent five consecutive days at the top of a bare, rocky, mountain in the Chilean Andes. They left their dormitory in the morning, traveled 3 km. on a narrow, dusty dirt road and only returned late at night, when an uncountable number of stars were already twinkling in the sky. There was little time and a lot to do. With the help of Chilean technicians they connected the biggest and most complex astronomical equipment ever made in Brazil to the telescope of the Southern Astrophysics Research Observatory (SOAR), constructed with Brazilian and North American funding, close to Vicuña, in northern Chile.

With around 3,000 parts and weighing a little more than half a ton the equip-

ment the Brazilians installed at the end of January is a spectrograph, a device that decomposes light into the different colors (spectra) that constitute it – some of them are invisible to the human eye, like ultraviolet and infrared. Inside the spectrograph the light from close or distant stars explodes in a succession of all the colors in the rainbow, but in proportions that vary according to the chemical composition of the object observed.

The instrument installed at SOAR, however, is not just any spectrograph.

The device that reached the observatory building in Cerro Pachón on December 10, after travelling 3,500 km overland from the workshops of the National Astrophysics Laboratory (LNA) in Itajubá, Minas Gerais, is a spectrograph with technological innovations that make it unique. One of the characteristics that make the SOAR Integral Field Spectrograph (SIFS) a special instrument is its capacity to fraction the

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image of a heavenly body into 1,300 equal parts and in one go record the spectrum of them all. In some months, when it is working at full potential, the SIFS will allow, for example, an evaluation of the chemical composition of 1,300 points of a galaxy in one measurement that will take few minutes, a task that until now has required hundreds of different measurements.

“For astronomers that is a lot of information”, explained physicist Clemens Gneiding last October during the final stage of the assembly of the SIFS in the laboratories of LNA, before embarking for Chile. And that’s not all. This spectrograph was planned to have extremely high spatial resolution power. “It can distinguish objects very close in the sky, separated by 1 arc-second [a unit of angle measurement]”, he added. In more concrete terms this corresponds to the size of a soccer ball seen from 50 km away – something absurdly small.

On the afternoon of January 28 the Brazilian team was running from one side to the other in the white shining SOAR building that can be seen from afar by passengers on flights that 70

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Threads of light: 1,300 fibers connect the telescope to the SIFS spectrograph

land in the region. They tried to finish the SIFS connection before the week ended. “A week is very little time to complete the installation and make the necessary adjustments”, said Santoro, who is responsible for the mechanical part of the project.

“The most complicated thing is installing the cable with the optical fibers that join together the two parts of the spectrograph”, commented Oliveira, while he assessed the best way to fit the 8 centimeter in diameter and 14 meter long flexible tube to the base of the telescope; this tube contains the superfine glass fibers – half the thickness of a hair – which has to conduct the light from the first to the second module of the instrument. “We have to be care-

ful because these fibers are going to move a few centimeters to accompany the movements of the telescope, but they can’t be stretched”, explained the physicist, who is a specialist in optics, and coordinator of the LNA’s Optical Fibers Laboratory. If the fibers are pulled taut they may break and leave the US$ 1.8 million spectrograph, financed by FAPESP, ‘blind’.

With the SIFS in activity the light collected by SOAR’s 4.1 meter mirror will be focused on the so-called preoptical module of the spectrograph, a rectangular black box a little bigger that a desk-top computer, attached to the base of the telescope. Inside this module a set of lenses amplifies the intensity of the light by 10 to 20 times and reflects it onto 1,300 microlenses.

Each microlens, in turn, guides the light it receives to one of the 1,300 optical fibers which, like the electricity wires in a house, conduct it to the second and bigger module of the equipment: the bench spectrograph, which installed two meters below, in the telescope’s supporting column. There, a further 18 lenses – some of them can turn up to 130 degrees with the precision of

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Never resting: SOAR’s instrumentation team makes adjustments to the equipment received in December

thousandths of a millimeter – either disperse, align or make the luminous beams converge until they reach the sensor where they are recorded.

Photos Ricardo Zorzetto

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he choice of such delicate and fine optical fibers was a risky bet by the Brazilian researchers. The nucleus of the fibers, through which in fact the light passes, is only 50 micrometers (thousandths of a millimeter) thick and, at the time, different research groups stated that fibers less than 100 micrometers thick would cause a loss of most of the light that should reach the second module of the spectroscope.

Basing it on good results from a piece of equipment constructed in Australia, the team that planned the SIFS decided to experiment with finer fibers. But it was a well calculated risk. Before exerting a great deal of effort and investing so much money in the equipment they built a smaller version of the spectrograph in partnership with the Australians, which for two years has been functioning – and very well, as a matter of fact – in the telescope on the Pico dos Dias Observatory in Brasópolis, a town in Minas Gerais, close to Itajubá.

There were plenty of reasons to justify the investment in the innovation – one of them economic. The smaller the diameter of the fibers the closer they can be aligned where they enter the equipment’s second module. As a consequence they also reduce the dimensions of the lenses and of other optical components, the price of which increases proportionally with their size. “The use of fibers with twice the diameter would make the spectrograph double in size”, says astronomer Jacques Lépine, from the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of São Paulo (IAG-USP), the first coordinator of the project that developed the SIFS in partnership with Gneiding, from LNA. In the case of this spectrograph, doubling the size of the second module – an octagon 70 cm tall and 2.4 meters at its widest – would have meant making it almost as tall as a person and as wide as a good-sized bedroom in an apartment.

In the 15 meters that separate the focus of the telescope from the sensor of the spectrograph the already weak light from the stars, galaxies or planets undergoes a series of deviations and

The projects 1. Construction of two optical spectrographs for the SOAR telescope – nº 1999/03744-1 2. Steles: high resolution spectrograph for SOAR – nº 2007/02933-3 3. Evolution and activity of galaxies – nº 2000/06695-0 4. New physics in space – formation and evolution of structures in the Universe – nº 2006/56213-9 type

1. Regular Aid for Research Project 2., 3. and 4. Theme Project Coordinators

1. Beatriz Leonor Silveira Barbuy – IAG/USP 2. Augusto Damineli Neto – IAG/USP 3. Ronaldo Eustáquio de Souza – IAG/USP 4. Reuven Opher – IAG/USP investment

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1. R$ 3,254,030.59 (FAPESP) 2. R$ 1,373,456.33 (FAPESP) 3. R$ 1,520,687.31 (FAPESP) 4. R$ 1,926,187.91 (FAPESP)

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reflections and loses intensity; and the less intense it is the worse the definition of the spectrum produced by the equipment. The researchers reduced this loss using mirrors with a greater reflective capacity and anti-reflective coated lenses that avoid light loss. So they managed to guarantee that 80 − 85% of the light captured by the telescope would reach the SIFS sensor.

Planned a little over a decade ago the SIFS belongs to the first generation of equipment at SOAR, which will only be complete in 2011, with the installation of the fourth and last instrument that Brazil has undertaken to supply. “In creating the consortium that administers the telescope the country became responsible for producing these pieces of equipment”, says Beatriz Barbuy, astrophysicist from IAG-USP and coordinator of the Thematic Project that financed the construction of the spectrograph.

It took almost 10 years of work from the conception of the equipment to its installation, which used the labor and knowledge of at least 20 researchers and highly specialist technicians. Execution

‘

First generation equipment will only be ready in 2011, with the installation of the fourth and last instrument that the country undertook to supply for the telescope

of the project also demanded the formation of a not-so-frequent partnership in Brazil, between universities, research institutes and private companies.

“In Brazil there was no culture and expertise for producing such a large piece of astronomical equipment”, comments Keith Taylor, the English astrophysicist who coordinated the optical group of the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Australia and who for two years has been managing the development of SOAR’s instruments.

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he researchers say that it would have taken much less time to produce the SIFS if they had had easier access to the materials, which needed to be imported. Part of the delay was due to complications in the importing of parts, like calcium fluoride lenses supplied by North American company, Harold Johnson, which took nine months to reach Brazil, and the optical fibers bought from Polymicro Technologies, also in the United States.

In mid-2009, a few months before the SIFS was sent to Chile, another piece

Made in Brazil: the SIFS spectrograph, already installed in the telescope; and alongside the BTFI imager, will soon be on its way to Chile 72

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Photos Eduardo Cesar

of equipment, planned and constructed with the participation of Brazilians, had been connected to the SOAR: the Spartan camera, which specializes in producing images in infrared – a form of electromagnetic radiation perceived by human beings as heat and capable of crossing the gigantic interstellar dust clouds that hide the galaxies and the nurseries of the stars. As part of the first group of instruments manufactured specifically for this telescope, the Spartan substituted a camera on loan from the Blanco telescope of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, located 10 km to the northwest of SOAR on one of the countless reddish peaks on the mountain range.

Almost 8 years ago, astronomer Sueli Viegas, an USP retiree, started a project in cooperation with the University of Michigan, in the United States that led to development of the Spartan. “Brazil participated in preparing the optical and mechanical project for this camera and bought two of the four infrared detectors”, says Ronaldo de Souza, an astronomer from the IAG, who took

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over coordination of the project after Sueli moved to the United States.

The two detectors alone cost almost US$ 700,000, half paid with money from the Sueli Viegas project and half with funds from the Millennium Institute, coordinated by Beatriz Barbuy, from the IAG-USP, and Miriani Pastoriza, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Since September, 2009, the Spartan has been functioning experimentally. In this phase, the astronomers are learning to deal with the equipment, which may still undergo adjustments and there is no guarantee that the observations will be very accurate. “SOAR was planned to present high performance, with equipment of the highest optical quality”, says Keith Taylor.

A

little more than five months after the conclusion of the building and assembly of the telescope, SOAR is coming to life and becoming independent. It is planned to deliver the Brazilian Tunable Filter Imager (BTFI), equipment that costs US$ 2.2 million and that will allow for identification of the chemical composition of these celestial objects and for measurement of their relative internal movements.

“This instrument will be attached to a module that corrects the effects of turbulence in the atmosphere”, says Claudia Mendes de Oliveira, from USP. “Allied to the quality of the image from the BTFI, this correction will result in images of unprecedented sharpness, giving SOAR the capacity that other telescopes of the same size do not have”, says the astrophysicist who coordinated the teams from Brazil, France and Canada that constructed the BTFI. “The production of these instruments inaugurated a new era in Brazil-

Side by side: arrangement of optical fibers demanded precision and a lot of patience

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The birth of a telescope

In 1998, two years after the project was approved, the building work started with an explosion on the summit of Cerro Pachón, in Vicuña, in northern Chile, and the extraction of 13,000 m3 of rock to create a flat area for the headquarters of SOAR

A year later the building that will house the telescope and the control room began to take shape, built on a piece of land 2,701 meters above sea level and 80 km from the Pacific

ian astronomy and boosted national astronomical instrumentation”, says Beatriz Barbuy. These expensive devices, devised with the objective of expanding human comprehension of the Universe, consume a large number of very small parts that fit together and move with extremely high precision. “Just for the BTFI, we supplied some 1,500 parts”, says Paulo Silvano Cardoso, director of the optomechnical material company, Metal Card, from São José dos Campos, in São Paulo State.

“In 10 years, Brazil has managed to establish an international level instrumentation program”, says João Steiner, the astrophysicist from the IAG-USP who was a member of the management board of SOAR for 12 years and took part in the telescope project right from its conception in 1993 (see Pesquisa Fapesp nº 98). He says that Brazilian researchers even tried to begin producing astronomical instruments years ago 74

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In the 2002 the building received the 14-meter metal dome made by Equatorial, from São José dos Campos, in São Paulo State, which protects the telescope when night time humidity increases

when the country was first part of the Gemini Observatory consortium, which has two telescopes with 8.2-meter diameter mirrors, one installed in Hawaii and the other, 350 meters from SOAR, on the Cerro Pachón, 2,701 meters above sea-level. But the project never got off the ground. “It was too big a step”, explains Steiner, who even ended up in hospital because of the stress levels during construction of the telescope.

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y the start of 2011 a fourth instrument should be ready: the échelle spectrograph of the SOAR telescope (Steles), which the team of astronomer Bruno Vaz Castilho is currently building in LNA’s laboratories.

Similar to SIFS, the spectroscope that the Brazilians installed in January in the building at Cerro Pachón, the Steles, will also analyze the colors of light emitted by stars and galaxies. The difference is that it will see a greater pro-

The 4.1-meter mirror and light-capturing power, 350,000 times greater than that of the human eye, reached SOAR in January 2004, after traveling almost 10,000 km from the place it was built in the United States

‘

In ten years Brazil managed to establish an international level astronomical instrumentation program, with benefits also for industry

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Photos SOAR/lna/mct

On the night of April 17, 2004 the telescope made its first observation or, as astronomers say, saw its first light, still using equipment on loan from other observatories

portion of the spectrum of visible light – and with better resolution. The use of two instruments from the same family may seem redundant, but it is not. Each one has specific applications. While the SIFS generates 1,300 spectra in a single exposure, Steles produces just one. “As the Steles will record the whole of the visible light spectrum in one go it’ll allow us to analyze different characteristics of the object observed, such as its chemical composition, temperature, speed of rotation or the speed at which it is moving away”, says Castilho.

“When these pieces of equipment have been delivered the first and second generation of instruments defined in the initial project will be complete”, says Alberto Rodriguez Ardila, national manager of the SOAR. This does not mean, however, that the telescope will be fully equipped. “Scientific advance always generates the need to develop new instruments”, he says. In the opin-

ion of this astrophysicist from LNA, the result of so much work should be noticed in a few years time in the scientific projects that will be developed at the SOAR. “The use of these instruments is likely to increase the dispute for observation time and improve the quality of research”, says Ardila.

Before its own set of equipment had even arrived the white telescope at Cerro Pachón was not idle. Since it received the first light from a star in 2004 until December last year, the SOAR has been responsible for generating 36 scientific articles that have been published in international periodicals. Nineteen of the articles (53%) were produced by Brazilian researchers, who have only 34% of the telescope’s observation time.

But recognition from the international scientific community really came about in 2007, when the result of an observation made at SOAR by a Brazilian was published in the coveted pages of the journal, Nature. Almost two years before, in the early hours of the morning of September 25, 2004, the space observatory Swift, from the North American Space Agency (Nasa), issued a warning with the coordinates of what could be an explosion of gamma rays – the death of a star, the mass of which was dozens of times greater than the Sun, which is transformed into a black hole, one of the most energetic events known to man – that had occurred within the Pisces constellation (see Pesquisa Fapesp nº 116). Eduardo Cypriano, one of the first resident astronomers at SOAR, a type of telescope ‘tamer’, was working that night and detected the first signals from the explosion.

At the request of Daniel Reichart, a North American academic who studies these phenomena, Cypriano pointed his telescope at the same point in the sky for a few more days. A week later came the official announcement: the images taken by Cypriano and analyzed with the help of his wife, astronomer Elysandra Figueredo, had captured the explosion of a star 12.7 billion light years away from Earth. SOAR had been the only telescope on the planet to accompany this rare phenomenon, which was later confirmed by other observatories. “It was the most distant and oldest object so far observed at that

time”, says Cypriano, who believes that as soon as the adjustments have been finalized in the SOAR equipment Brazilian astronomers will be well served for at least a decade.

While they await the conclusion of the last pieces of equipment – SOAR has eight pieces in all –, the Brazilians are planning the next steps. A group coordinated by João Steiner and Beatriz Barbuy is assessing the possible participation of Brazil in the next generation of telescopes. These are grandiose projects that are likely to cost between US$ 700 million to US$ 1.4 billion to erect telescopes with a mirror up to 40 meters in diameter, four times bigger than the biggest telescopes now in use.

In comparison SOAR cost US$ 28 million, of which US$ 14 million was paid

by Brazil, divided between the National Council for Scientific and Technological development (US$ 12 million) and FAPESP (US$ 2 million).

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ntering astronomy’s first division, however, is not cheap. Brazil is negotiating to pay 10% of the total amount to have access to the Thirty Meter Telescope, with a 30 meter mirror, or 5% to have the right to use the Giant Magellan Telescope or the European Extremely Large Telescope, of 22 meters and 42 meters, respectively. But it is demanding a counterpart. “We’ll not go into any project unless at least 70% of these funds are earmarked for manufacturing of the equipment by Brazilian industry”, says Steiner.

The astronomers have at least two good reasons for justifying such a large investment. The first and more abstract: access to these mega telescopes will guarantee Brazilian researchers at least the chance to look increasingly further into the Universe in their search for convincing answers to one of the simplest and most fundamental of questions that any human being ever posed: how did it all begin? The second is more pragmatic: Brazilian astronomy, a young area that grew very quickly in the 1990s, cannot stagnate if it wants to remain internationally competitive. “If we stop”, says Steiner, “we’ll condemn the next generation of astronomers to remaining outside cutting edge research as from 2025. We’d be the only n emerging country to do so”.

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[ Optics ]

Multiplied beams Researcher publishes article in leading international journal on the new generation of optic fibers

I Photonic crystal fibers are a new moment in the era of optical communication

n the mid 1990s, researchers from England’s University of Bath, created a new kind of optic fiber and revealed it to the world. This new optic fiber was named Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF). According to the inventors, this innovation had several advantages over existing fibers and its properties were much more interesting than those of conventional optic fibers.

Optic fibers are filaments made from silica or from polymer material; these filaments are as thin as a strand of hair. Optic fibers are capable of providing high-speed data transmission in the form of light. Nearly 15 years after their discovery, PCFs are already being used in a number of applications – ranging from signal amplifiers in data transmission networks to computerized optic tomography, laser devices, ultra-sensitive sensors and light sources. However, they have not totally substituted traditional fibers. This January, electrical engineer Arismar Cerqueira Sodré Júnior, a professor at the College of Technology (FT) at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Limeira campus, published an article called “Recent progress and novel applications of photonic crystal fibers”, in the Report on Progress in Physics, journal, in which he writes about the applications and this state-of-the-art technology.

At the beginning of the article, the 31-year old Cerqueira refers to a question asked by Irish physicist Philip Russell, from Germany’s University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Russell was the inventor of this new class of optic fibers. The question was: could photonic crystal fibers be the beginning of a new era in optic communications? In the

Yuri Vasconcelos Published in March 2010

conclusion of his 21-page article, Cerqueira left another provocative question unanswered: can PCF technology make conventional optic fibers obsolete? The paper was written at the invitation of the publishers of the journal, considered one of the world’s most prestigious publications in the field of photonics. The referred article’s impact factor corresponded to 12.9; this factor is related to the number of times the articles published in the journal are quoted in papers written by other authors. According to the publishers of Report on Progress in Physics, the electronic version of the paper – technically a revised copy, because it does not contain any new discovery and merely revises everything that exists on the given topic – had more than 250 downloads in the first 11 days after the paper was published in January 2010. This goal had been achieved by only 10% of all the articles divulged in journals published by England’s Institute of Physics (IOP).

The PCFs have raised many questions, but have also provided many answers. To better understand the future perspectives of this new kind of fiber, it is essential to understand how they work, their potential, what kind of equipment they are used in and how they differ from traditional technology. Conventional optic fibers, which are much more efficient than copper wires, have an outer layer and a core, usually made of silica. The functioning principle is very simple: a laser beam is launched from one end of the fiber and, according to the material’s optic characteristics, travels through the fiber by means of successive reflections.

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The ability to confine light and make it travel inside the fiber is because the core’s refractive index is higher than that of the outer layer. To achieve a higher refractive index, the inner silica is enriched – or doped – with atoms from another material, such as germanium. One of the differences between phonic crystal fibers and conventional fibers is that the former do not necessarily have to contain doping elements in their core. The refractive difference between the outer coating and the fiber’s core is due to the existence of a regular set of small apertures in the form of tunnels that run parallel to the fiber’s axis, along the entire length of the fiber. The diameter of these apertures corresponds to one micrometer, which is equivalent to one millimeter divided by one thousand.

Another specific characteristic of photonic crystal fibers – manufactured by such giant corporations as France’s Alcatel-Lucent, Japan’s Sumitomo, the US’s, Corning, and Holland’s Draka – is that they can have varied geometries and are made from several different materials, among which are pure or doped silica, polymers, liquids, metals, other kinds of glass and even air and gases. The possibility of varying geometries and raw materials is an advantage because manufacturers can design the 78

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fiber’s microstructure in a way that provides the fiber with properties defined according to the specific need. Thus, it is possible to guide the light by means of different propagation mechanisms in a variety of wave lengths. “The PCFs meet the requirements of the global market, which demands small, energy-saving, lightweight devices. PCFs take better advantage of the light and this increases the performance of optic devices and the precision of such equipment as temperature and pressure sensors, biosensors, electric field detectors and gas sensors, among others,” says Cerqueira.

Thousands of fibers – In the researcher’s

opinion, the invention of the PCF technology and its entry into the market represent a new period in the era of optic communication. But he does not believe that this new technology will make traditional optic fibers obsolete. “There are currently hundreds of thousands of kilometers of optic fibers installed all around the world. These optic fibers go across continents, across the bottom of the sea, and have many applications in telecommunications. The substitution of all these optic fibers with PCFs would be unfeasible. The new fibers represent a complementary technology and can be used in applications in a variety

Unicamp and University of Bath

Various forms of photonic crystal fibers in images captured by electronic scanning microscope.

The first fiber is a hybrid fiber, with two kinds of laser light guides

of fields, such as medicine, sensors, telecommunications, and metrology, among others,” he says.

In the article, Cerqueira describes new kinds of photonic crystal fibers, among them the hybrid PCFs that he helped invent during his doctorate studies at Italy’s Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. Cerqueira also spent some studying at the University of Bath, where he joined the team headed by professor Jonathan Knight, who had produced the world’s first PCF. The hybrid fibers combine the light guidance of two categories of existing PCFs. In the first category, the guidance is obtained in manner similar to that of traditional technology, by means of the internal reflection of the light in the core of the fiber. In the second category, the light is guided by a new effect, called photonic bandgaps, and travels through specific frequency windows specified in the design of the fiber. According to the professor from Unicamp, the hybrid PCF was the first optic wave guide to make it feasible to guide light simultaneously by means of two propagation mechanisms. The professor says that one of the most promising fields for the use of PCFs is the development of the so-called nonlinear optical devices, used in telecommunications and produced from dozens of meters of optic

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frequency region, a frequency which is prohibitive for traditional fibers. In Cerqueira’s opinion, the propagation of light in this band is the key technology to solve existing data transmission bottlenecks between microelectronics and optical communication. “Nowadays, the data transmission capacity of optical systems is infinite, or at least, much higher than the current traffic demands of communication systems. However, due to the limitations of electronic components, the transmission band is underused. With light guiding in the THz frequency, the data transmission limit can increase several dozen terabytes per second, which would multiply the performance of the world’s communication systems by up to one thousand times.”

Brazil’s contribution – Brazil is one

of the world’s most advanced centers for research on PCFs. Important research projects on optical fibers have been conducted by professor Cerqueira and other colleagues at Gleb Wataghin Physics Institute, at Unicamp, for more than 30 years. The physics institute is part of the Centro de Pesquisa em Óptica e Fotônica (CePOF), optics and photonics research center in Campinas, which, in turn, is one of the Centros de Pesquisa, Inovação e Difusão (Cepid) research centers of FAPESP. In addition to the CePOF, Unicamp is taking part in another major project which includes PCFs as one of the lines of research. More specifically, this is the Fotonicom project being developed at one of the Institutos Nacionais de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) national science and technology centers supported by FAPESP and by the National

Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) research foundation. One of the innovations that came from Unicamp was a photonic crystal fiber with integrated electrodes (copper wires). This makes it possible to apply voltage to the fiber or make it go through a beam of light that can be shaped with the electric current, thus opening up new possibilities to use the fiber in gas detection sensors and optical modulators used in data transmission networks. It is also important to highlight the experiments conducted under the coordination of professor Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, scientific director of FAPESP, at the Laboratório de Fenômenos Ultrarrápidos, laboratory on ultra rapid phenomena. An article published by Cerqueira and Brito in the Optics Letters, journal in 2008, explains the development of a frequency converter for the transfer of energy between photonic bandgaps. More articles on the experiments conducted with PCF fibers at Unicamp are available in issues 106 n and 147 of Pesquisa Fapesp.

Scientific articles 1. CERQUEIRA S. JR., A. “Recent progress and novel applications of photonic crystal fibers.” Reports on Progress in Physics. v. 73. 2010. On-line.

2. CERQUEIRA S. JR., A.; CORDEIRO, C. M. B.; BIANCALANA, F.; ROBERTS, P. J.; HERNANDEZ-FIGUEROA, H. E.; BRITO CRUZ, C. H. “Nonlinear interaction between two different photonic bandgaps of a hybrid photonic crystal fiber.”

Optics Letters. v. 33, p. 2.080-82. 2008.

3. CERQUEIRA S. JR., A; LUAN, F.; CORDEIRO, C. M. B.; GEORGE, A. K.; KNIGHT, J. C. “Hybrid photonic crystal fiber.” Optics Express. v. 14, p. 926-31. 2006.

Unicamp

fibers. He adds that some of the related equipment, such as supercontinuum sources, is already being sold in the market. Supercontinuum is an effect characterized by the generation of very intense laser light and extensive wavelength. “Supercontinuum is used in computerized tomography, fiber characterization equipment, and optical devices, as well as in multiple wavelength systems for communication equipment called Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM), which exists in all telecommunication systems,” he says. Fianium, a British company, and RPMC Lasers, an American company, are two of the main manufacturers of supercontinuum sources with photonic crystal fibers.

This technology could also be used for the development of the so-called frequency combs, multiple length wave sources with a variety of applications, such as frequency measurements for the generation of ultra short pulses.

They can also be used in metrology and high resolution optical spectroscopy equipment. None of these are commercially available yet. In addition, the PCFs can also be used as light guides in close and distant infrared regions and in sensors, to detect gas leaks in industrial processes and in terrorist attacks.

“In this region, traditional fibers don’t work because of massive optical loss.

Light does not travel along more than one meter with traditional technology, while the PCF can travel for dozens of meters,” says the researcher from Unicamp. NKT Photonics, a Danish company, sells products based on the PCF technology to the infrared area.

The PCFs can also guide light in the terahertz (THz) electromagnetic

Demonstration of hybrid photonic crystal fibers: a fiber without filter and, on the left, a fiber with blue and orange filter. Multiple electromagnetic wavelengths

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[ OIL ]

Challenge at the bottom of the sea

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il exploration in the depths of the ocean includes a littleknown obstacle and one that is capable of causing a lot of difficulties for oil companies: the presence of microorganisms that break down oil. In addition to the forces of nature, like sea currents and the pressure at the bottom of the sea that force the use of state of the art technology when it comes to installing oil rigs, they are yet another challenge to be overcome. Various species of bacteria live both in reservoirs as well as in the water found in oil wells and feed on oil breaking it down; they even secrete biofilms, molecular structures that they use to protect themselves against toxic agents and attach themselves to rocks and sediment.

With the start of underwater production, biofilms, which can also be formed by the agglutination of the bacteria themselves, are beginning to become attached to plastic and metal.

These micrometric-sized structures accumulate and reach a thickness of up to 4 millimeters (mm). “The problem is that these biofilms hamper oil exploration because they stick to the inside of tubing and corrode pipelines, which are difficult to clean”, says Professor Anita Marsaioli, from the Institute of Chemistry (IQ) at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), who is taking

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part in several projects with Petrobras to identify and study these bacteria and the enzymes that produce them.

When it breaks down some of the highly valuable oil is partially or totally destroyed, thus reducing its commercial value. “The bacteria transform the hydrocarbons into fatty acids, making the oil heavier and of poorer quality”, says Anita. Better knowledge of this population of bacteria and the conditions that are favorable to them is going to contribute to the preparation of strategies for the company to reduce the exploration risk and act to detect and anticipate the problems they will encounter in the production process.

There is also an immense potential for the future use of some of these microorganisms for cleaning up oil spills using biotechnology. “We know of the existence of bacteria, for example, that produce biosurfactants that have a dual function, to inhibit the growth of other bacteria species, which is good, and at the same time dissolve the oil.” Biosurfactants are molecules produced by bacteria that reduce the surface tension at the interface between the water and oil in the reservoirs, which facilitates the mixture of these liquids and the subsequent breaking down of the oil.

The studies being carried out at Unicamp in partnership with the Petrobras Research and Development

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NONONONONONONON

Petrobras and Unicamp are studying bacteria from oil wells that break down oil | Marcos de Oliveira Published in May 2009

THE PROJECTS 1. Expansion of the analytical infrastructures in chemistry, metagenomics and biocatalytics by the organic geochemistry group of the Chemistry Institute and the Microbial Resources Division of the CPQBA at the State University of Campinas 2. Multidisciplinary study into biodegradation TYPE

1 and 2 Thematic Network COORDINATOR

1 and 2 Francisco Machado Reis – Unicamp INVESTMENT

1. R$ 3,504,189.57 (Petrobras) 2. R$ 3,101,932.51 (Petrobras)

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in Campinas we grow these bacteria in various environments”, says Anita.

One of the scientific reasons for studying these bacteria is to find out if they are aerobic or anaerobic; the former need oxygen to live while the latter do not. This is fundamental for understanding the formation of these bacteria and the way of dealing with them in oil exploration. “Oil reservoirs are an anaerobic environment, but we believe that there may be micro-environments where oxygen is produced, mainly because of water that enters the wells or through chemical reaction”, says Anita. In the work being done by the group, which includes geologist Eugênio dos Santos Neto, from Petrobras, 29 bacteria of both types have already been identified and assessed; most of these bacteria showed a tendency to biodegrade oil. So far, the studies show that the strains of bacteria that produce a lot of biofilm, from the aerobic group, do not break down oil.

The researchers are working on the hypothesis that the coexisting relationship between the aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, such as, for example, the biofilm that is produced by the former, may serve as an oxygen “sponge” and act to increase or reduce the degradation activity of the others. All of the bacteria found in the wells and analyzed, many of them unknown to sci-

ence, form part of a Petrobras collection that is kept

by Unicamp.

The research group’s activities include the participation of Professors Luzia Koike and Francisco Machado Reis, from the Unicamp IQ, and Professor Valéria Maia de Oliveira, from the Chemical, Biological and Agricultural Research Center (CPBQA), at the same university. Since 2003, the group has received more than R$ 10 million for research from the Oil Sector Fund (CTPetro) and the Geochemical Theme Network, one of the Petrobras technology networks, supported with company funds that are the equivalent of 0.5% of the oil it produces from its highly productive fields, which by federal law, must be used for research purposes in part■ nerships with universities.

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Center (Cenpes) are done with water and oil taken from the Campos Basin.

The bacteria live both in the area between the oil and water in the wells, as well as separately in either of these environments, at depths of 2,800 meters, according to studies carried out so far, in temperatures close to 80° Celsius, as in the Pampo Field, which is almost 100 km offshore from the coast of Rio de Janeiro. “To study these materials we receive samples of water and oil direct from the rigs in sealed glass vessels. Here in our laboratories

Scientific article CRUZ, Georgiana F. da; SANTOS NETO, E.V.; MARSAIOLI, A.J. Petroleum degradation by aerobic microbiota from the Pampo Sul Oil Field, Campos Basin, Brazil.

Organic Geochemistry. v. 39 p. 1.204-209, 2008.

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[ Aerospace Engineering ]

A brazilian perspective New monitoring camera made by Opto for Cbers-3 to be tested in China Dinorah Ereno Published in August 2009

I

ntegrated into the Chinese-Brazilian land resources satellite, at an altitude of 800 km, a camera entirely developed and manufactured in Brazil by Opto Eletronica, from the city of São Carlos, inner-state São Paulo, is to record deforestation and urban expansion, as well as crop and livestock farming in Brazil and abroad, among other uses, starting in 2011, when the Cbers-3 satellite is scheduled for launch. On July 21, the camera’s second version was delivered to Inpe, Brazil’s National Space Research Institute, to be sent to China, where it is to undergo tests, the so-called qualification trial. The first version, that was ready in December 2007 and was shipped to China in June 2008, had to be entirely redesigned after the United States and other countries restricted the importing of several of the components used in it. This final obstacle turned into an opportunity for the development of national technology to make the parts used. For this reason, the new version was dubbed MUX Free.

“The camera is the first of its kind and purpose to be entirely designed and made in Brazil,” says engineer Mário Stefani, Opto’s R&D director and coordinator of the multispectral camera project. The device records images in four colors – blue, green, red and infrared – in well defined narrow bands. The previous camera, made by China and attached to Cbers-2, which is currently in orbit, worked with only three colors (the above minus blue). “The combination of the four spectral bands enables one to see the quality of river water, whether the soil is exposed or degraded, and whether vegetation is degraded, or areas occupied irregularly. The blue is useful mainly to assess water resources,” says Stefani. The Brazilian camera has 4 lines of 6 thousand pixels; each pixel covers a 20-meter area on the ground. The width of the strip pictured, the extension of the territory seen on one line of the image, is 120 km.

The process of making a camera capable of withstanding the rocket launcher, operating in outer space at zero gravity, in a vacuum and under a constant bombardment of radiation, comprises several stages. “We made two engineering models and one more qualification model is to be made, to be followed by the three flight models.” However, before beginning to develop

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the project, the firm had to win an international tender bid held by Inpe in December 2004. The camera’s preliminary project was presented in October 2005 and, in December 2007, the first engineering model was delivered. This had to be totally redone following the boycott. The new engineering model delivered to Inpe is to undergo several trials, for its functionality and its capacity to withstand the space environment to be confirmed. Only after this stage will the qualification model made, to be followed by the actual flight models, expected to be ready in July 2010.

These will form part of the payload of the Cbers-3 and Cbers-4 satellites, the latter scheduled for launch in 2014.

photos Eduardo Cesar

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pto is also a member of the consortium for the development of a second camera that is to be part of the Chinese-Brazilian satellites numbers 3 and 4. This camera is a WFI (for wide field imager) and is being developed in partnership with the firm Equatorial Sistemas, from the city of São José dos Campos, in inner-state São Paulo. In this project, Opto is responsible for the optical and electronic part, while Equatorial is in charge of the processing and video signal, as well as for thermal control. The WFI camera has a wider coverage angle, but a lower resolution than the MUX. “The WFI is to be delivered in October for the qualification trials,” says Stefani. Besides the two cameras made by these Brazilian enterprises, the satellites will carry another two, made by the Chinese. “All in all, we will deliver three sets of MUX plus WFI cameras for flying, totaling six cameras,” says Stefani. Of these sets, one is for Cbers-3, one is for Cbers -4, and the third is the replacement set, should any problems arise. Stefani heads a team of 56 professionals who are working simultaneously on the development of three cameras: two for the ChineseBrazilian satellites and the third one for the Amazonia-1 satellite. The latter is an AWFI (advanced wide field imager), with a spatial resolution of 40 meters

and imaging capacity covering a 780 km strip of land.

Ever since Opto was established back in 1985 by professors Milton Ferreira de Souza and Jarbas Caiado de Castro, the firm and its affiliates have been granted aid by FAPESP’s Pipe Program (Innovative Research in Small Firms), which financed, in particular, studies in the fields of industrial applications and ophthalmic equipment for medical use. The first aid grant, that dates back to 1988, was for the development of a laser measuring device for long distances, for industrial use, under Stefani’s coordination. The product was ready two years later but it never took off commercially. Only eight of these devices were ever sold: seven to Vale do Rio Doce (mining company) and one to Firestone. “Despite this commercial failure, the project helped the company to develop both its human and its instrumental capabilities, giving rise to technological knowhow that resulted in the development of a highly competitive laser device for retina surgery,” says Stefani. The company still makes this laser device – a major commercial success that has assured the company a strong position in the international

market – with the same people and equipment used in the first FAPESP-financed project. At present, Opto, which is active in the fields of ophthalmological medical equipment, anti-reflection treatments for lenses, measurement, control and defense instruments, and aerospace products, has 450 employees, 58 of whom are researchers. Its R&D investment is, on average, equal to about 15% of its sales, which last year amounted to R$50 million.

Once the cameras are up in space, Opto will help Brazil to join the limited group of countries that make orbital imaging systems, currently comprising the United States, Russia, France, Israel, India and China. Its participation in the MUX project plus the Pipe projects has enabled the firm to acquire cuttingedge infrastructure, with a secure room and machines for space trials. As a result, Opto was able to develop a second generation of retina scanners, devices that map the retina and that are on a par with those made by international giants. “The space program worked as a powerful indication of the country’s industrial capabilities, helping it to become competitive in important fields,” says Stefani. n

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[ literature ]

Within the entrails of invention Published in February 2010

Project reviews Mário de Andrade’s creative path Carlos Haag

Reproductions from the book A imagem de Mário; photobiography of Mário de Andrade / Mário, 1938

‘T

his ran through the month of April. I took the blank pages at the end of a notebook and, in the manicured lettering of the calm beginnings of a book, started to write. However soon the handwriting became hasty, speedy, illegible to others, magically spelt phrases that stopped in the middle, in which I included both a y in the word ‘notebook’ and a hyphen in ‘garden’; I was writing with fire. Everything was gentle in coming, foretelling an impassioned ardor, in an adoration of myself, of my possible intelligence, such as I have only rarely enjoyed as easily in this life,” described Mário de Andrade (1893-1945) in relation to his creative process. How equally easy the life of the researchers involved in recreating this process would be, had there been more texts such as this one, so explicit about the labor of creating a book. Hence the importance of the theme project headquartered at the Brazilian Studies Institute of the University of São Paulo (IEB-USP), Estudo do processo de criação de Mário de Andrade nos manuscritos de seu arquivo, em sua correspondência, em sua marginália e em suas leituras [Study of Mário de Andrade’s creation process in the manuscripts of his files, in his correspondence, in his marginalia and in his readings], which has FAPESP support and is coordinated by professor Telê Ancona Lopez. “We plan to discover how the entire organization of an invention took place, in search of the creative process. IEB centralizes most of the dossiers of folios left by the writer. Based on all of this material, it will be possible to recover the path of such creation,” explains the researcher.

The subject matter of the research consists of 102 manuscripts at IEB-USP. The classification is to be divulged on a database, an analytical catalogue of the literary manuscripts and an index of the titles of all the areas, along with a chronology of their creation and publication. “The catalog’s novel aspect is that we will try to reassemble the creative path. Researchers will be able to examine a facsimile of the manuscript and to resort to the path reassembled in the dossier, as well as to the research notes that explain the organization’s pathways and all the other information found,” warns Telê. “A research powerhouse will be formed.” The classification in the catalog and in the index extends to the production of scanned facsimiles and to the microfilming of all the folios, as an extra resource to safeguard the documents from being used by researchers. Everything will be offered in detail: the dimension of the paper used, the type of pen employed to write the poem or to correct a text, the color, etc. “There is even the interesting case of a poem in which the paper folds indicate that Mário carried it in his pocket, which points to his having shown it to other people, to his being concerned about his writing and so on and so forth, a mystery that may be solved by a researcher interested in genetic critique and in the life of the document. This type of analysis also allows one to date documents by comparing the paper’s texture, etc.” states Telê. Another result of this project is the partnering agreement with the Agir publishing house, which is publishing the complete works of Mário de Andrade based on the editing provided by the theme project team, which has already PESQUISA FAPESP

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resulted in new versions of the works Amar, verbo intransitivo, Macunaíma, Obra imatura, and Os contos de Bela­ zarte, among others. The collection will also include, in a new edition of Poesies completas to be released in May, a series of hitherto unpublished poems by the author, which he had thought about publishing but discarded in the final version of his collected poems.

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ário de Andrade was a constant reviewer of himself in his works, forever busy with adding the final touches to his writings while leaving room for yet one more future touchup. Hence his huge personal archive of folios left for posterity, which reveal a creation always in action and never completed, and carefully kept. “The writer, an archivist of his own work, identified and separated sets of background documents that he composed in the course of his lifetime, storing them on a shelf and a large chest of drawers in his home in Lopes Chaves Street in São Paulo. In the series Manus­ critos Mário de Andrade, the documents of the creative process include pathways to be decoded in the dossiers of the unpublished materials, the largest and richest stored by the writer in green envelopes and cardboard folders, the latter, in turn, reused, as one can tell from the sequence of crossed out headlines,” says Telê. “Itineraries are decoded or established via an analysis and interpretation that is subject to setbacks and mistakes. Actually, such work must always keep in mind that the dossiers do not materially integrate the creative process, both that of the craftsman of literature and the arts and the humanities essayist. The creation overcomes the dossier, the file and, above all, materialness itself, by toying, concerning the last point, with the writer’s psyche.”

Hence the team’s work of crossing any given manuscript with other archive sources, such as letters (IEB-USP has the largest collection of correspondence sent and received by Macunaíma’s author), interviews, other manuscripts and books’ marginalia; in sum, everything that might cast some light upon the reading of a given work and clarify Mário de Andrade’s creative pathways,

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thus transforming the writer’s library into a site of creation, a creative space par excellence, the cauldron into which he cast all the ingredients that might generate the “ideal” mixture, no matter how ephemeral.

One important concept in Andrade’s creation process was the “working copy,” as he called the printed text of books or periodicals in which he crystallized new versions of his works by adding creative corrections in black ink, or in regular, red or blue pencil. The working copies are added to his notes, versions, plans, etc. in the dossiers in which these were kept. After sending to the publishing house his written text and getting the proofs back, the writer would write on his working copies the changes he wanted to make. “A severe critic of his own work, Mário, in these working copies, embraced to his dying day a fate akin to that of Sisyphus.

In 1944, on the cover of an edition of Macunaíma published that year by the Martins publishing house, over whose segments he had not even run a spatula, he writes hurriedly, closing the parentheses that he had failed to open: ‘Copy corrected to use for future editions/M.’,” says the researcher. At the same time, the efforts involved in the working copies did not always go any further. “It is odd to see that by sparing the working copies, while making clean copies of the corrections in another copy of the book, this one addressed to the printers, Andrade the copyist, perhaps acting thus through an interest in the comparison with the new edition, is careless about the task. The comparison of the corrections in the working copies of Amar, verbo intransitivo and Macunaíma with the respective texts of the second editions highlights the absence of certain reformulations,” notes Telê.

Here one witnesses Andrade’s idea of his creation of adjustments not as actual corrections (other than when grammar or coherence are faulty), but rather as a new possibility discovered during the creative process, above and beyond the pragmatic notion of right or wrong, especially in literary projects such as his, in which movement and the inability to reach an end form essential traits. In such cases, the working copy

Mário de Andrade, in his working copies, assumes the fate of Sisyphus to the end of his life

Mário de Andrade’s office in Rua Lopes Chaves, São Paulo, October 1945

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SPHAN Archives, São Paulo, photo by Germano Graeser

becomes a manuscript of the work, encompassing the typology and dynamics in all fields of action of a multi-faceted writer such as the author of Macunaí­ ma. An outstanding example of this is, once again, Amar, verbo intransitivo, created and recreated between 1927 and 1944 by Andrade and the fruit of his correspondence and friendship with Pio Lourenço Correa, uncle Pio, who was actually a cousin and a friend with whom he maintained intense correspondence from 1917 to 1945. The corrections of the working copy of the book, which had been released during the heroic stage of the modernistic movement, reflect an author less concerned about advocating Freudianism and scientism and more flexible in regard to uncle Pio’s suggestions about elements such as using “pra” [an ab­ breviated, phonetically correct but gram­ matically incorrect form of ‘for’ in Portu­

guese], which the friend preferred in its standard form, “para.” On the first page of the corrected copy, he writes: “The edition is to comply with the official Brazilian orthography… of the time,” in the same ink he used to correct the word “intransitivo” [intransitive], now spelt with an “s” rather than a “z.” Thus, the second stage of the whole creation takes place in this corrected copy, between 1942 and 1943, when Mário de Andrade was already a highly regarded figure in Brazilian literature. “A friend stops by for us to go over the proofs of Amar, verbo intransitivo again and it comes out quite remodeled. Let’s see if it has turned out rather better,” he writes to the critic Álvaro Lins in 1944, showing yet again the importance of correspondence in the consolidation of the understanding of the pathways of his creation, as had been the case of uncle Pio.

“The letters are the area where he finds the understanding of processes, pathways and choices; they are something like a production diary for Andrade. At the same time, upon disclosing something about the work, he elicits a reaction from the other party: it is work in progress. His work is not a sealed system; to the contrary, there is room for the other party in the dialogue to provide suggestions and to intervene in Andrade’s creative process,” explains Marcos Antonio de Moraes, from IEB-USP, the associate coordinator of the theme project, who is in charge of the correspondence of the author of Macunaíma. “It is clear that certain expressions, certain vocative words come from I don’t know where, no matter how much I psychoanalyze myself. However they vibrate as words, they are word-expressions that are suggestive to me and that is why I left them

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as they are,” wrote Andrade in a letter to Carlos Lacerda. “He acknowledges that he doesn’t know why he did this or that, but the wish to understand the creation mechanism imposes itself upon the writer, the idea of a domesticated creative process being refused.

Andrade seems to impose the moral of the true artist: the fatal being, aware of his expressive technique and insatiable for knowledge about the inner works of his own person and of his art or, as Drummond wrote, ‘It’s been about two years or a little more since I fell in love with the phenomenon of esthetic creation’,” explains the researcher. The most intense dialogue started with Bandeira and was then transferred to Drummond, when the conversation with the former about the mysteries of creation seemed to be reaching its end. “I started by paying more attention to my creative processes. Not to modify anything at all, not because I recognize the tiniest insincerity in my creative processes, but to verify them,” he wrote to Lacerda.

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n Mário de Andrade’s correspondence one finds a constellation of statements that allow the student of genetic criticism to monitor the several stages of the tortuous process of producing a text,” notes Marcos. At the same time, the researcher adds, Andrade had direct impact upon the creative process of artists such as Di Cavalcanti, Brecheret, Mignone, Guarnieri, Anita Malfatti and Cícero Dias, among others. “He and the artists planted in the field of correspondence the essential expression of their work, with drawings as a playful expression and drafts of works in progress or completed, wishing to share the work of invention while also aspiring to eventual suggestions from the friend that was often active as an art critic in the press. Letters thus become a creative territory and the process of authorship falls apart in the collaborative creation, in the exchange of experiences, verses, ideas, etc. This is totally modern and the tools are the letters,” says Marcos.

However, as Andrade was an exemplary polygraph, his archives also harbor his passion for music, with anno-

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tated scores, letters to composers, and texts on musical critique, among other manuscripts that reveal his dialogues with composers and, more importantly, his co-authorship, his veritable partnering of musical works, such as the opera Malazarte and the unfinished Café, where his involvement was not limited to the libretto, but was also reflected on the musical construction. “Just as there is a space that was taken up by literary writing, there is a Mário that is occupied with musical writing, Mário the musicologist who, besides creating verse, also creates music and aims to get a national esthetic developed,” comments Flávia Toni, from IEB-USP, joint coordinator of the thematic project in charge of the musical manuscripts.

Besides co-authoring major musical projects by composers such as Camargo Guarnieri or Mignone, Andrade also expressed his creativity through music.

“There is a score in which one can see the drawing of what would come to be the Pequena história da música [Small history of music]; in another one, there is an unpublished poem, composed after he read the music. There are three popular tunes written by Mário, all of them timid attempts, but there might be others,” says Flávia.

It is in his letters, however, that the writer inspires friends to create. In one of them, the researcher tells us, he devised a unique way of “extracting” the Cirandas out of Villa-Lobos, “on purpose, knowing it would work out,” by resorting to the argument that a Chilean composer, Humberto Allende, had written Doze Tonadas, popular music arranged for the piano and to be played by students. “I know that this is quite elementary for you and I wouldn’t dare to ask a composer of your stature for something like this, but I cannot imagine who in Brazil, other than our great Villa, would be capable of composing in the style of Allende.” The musical fish took the bait and soon the Ciran­ das appeared along the lines sought by Andrade. His nationalism, running in the opposite direction taken by Villa, was inclined to folklore-based melodies, such as the Cirandas, and this was difficult to extract from the composer from Rio de Janeiro. The dialogue was much

more fluid with Camargo Guarnieri, a native of São Paulo and Andrade’s favorite musician, with whom he enjoyed listening to records at home and with whom he also maintained a privileged dialogue. Pedro Malazarte, as mentioned above, included in its conception, and not only in its libretto, the co-authorship of Andrade and, now, thanks to the theme project research conducted

by Flávia, it has come to light that this partnership became even stronger in two unpublished melodies collected by the writer in 1927, on his first trip through Brazil, which were offered to the musician (who kept them in his archive in Andrade’s originals) and used them in the opera.

“There are also many analyses of almost all the operas by Carlos Gomes, which shows Mário’s desire not only to have an impact on the present, but also to try to understand the past, to track the creation of opera in Brazil,” says Flávia. According to the researcher, Andrade seemed to repeat in music the same quest he had conducted in the 1920s, at the time when he wrote Gramatiquinha da fala brasileira. “He had planned to cover the Brazilian musical past and future, to build, one day, a ‘grammar’ of Brazilian musical construction; in other words, to use certain sound constructions to create music, just like one uses words to create verse.” The theme project also plans to recover a dialogue lost in the letters.

Whenever Andrade received letters with information for his Dicionário de música, in the 1930s, he would place the correspondence in the manuscripts section, rather than the letters section, as they would later be used in the process of creation. Now this flow is being reestablished.

Finally, we have the books’ marginalia as a manuscript. “What one sees is a dialogue, given that Andrade’s annotated readings, a movement in the artist’s research that unfolds in line with his obsessions, implied in criticism, selection or assimilation. His marginalia is the tilled land and the granary that coexist in parallel or that are merged in the archives of creation,” analyzed Telê. “The handwritten marginal notes are part of the pathway of

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Andrade, 1932 / photo by Gilda de Moraes Rocha

the creative universe of other texts and, in so far as they fit the writing process’ pathway, they duplicate the documental nature of the book. Thus, to the printed library text, one can add the manuscript. By transforming or selecting, in the margins, the subject matter of the author, weaving comments in critical lateral reading, the writer established a coexistence of discourses.

This dialogue shows the nascent text that faces a creation in its final stage, i.e., an alien book offered to the public.”

The marginalia can function in the case of a writer as implicit matrix, in the fa­ce of a book of handwritten annotations, but that, even so, one knows influenced the work of Andrade, such as Les villes tentaculaires precedées de Les campagnes hallucinées, by Emile Verhaeren, the confessed matrix, according to the letters, not only of the title, but of the contents of Paulicéia desvairada.

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ll of this would be no more than cold and impersonal investigation if it were not of use to the author and his readers. To this end, there is the fine story behind Os contos de Be­ lazarte, which reveals Andrade’s need to track creation that is always moving, that is never completed, in the several and endless samples of his work. In 1968, during the military dictatorship, Valentim Faccioli, a law student and editor for a publishing company, saw a little wine-colored book propped up on his desk at work. Upon picking it up, he realized it was a mock-up for Belazarte (which, among other short stories, had O besouro e a rosa), full of notes penciled in what he thought had been written by the author. Having later been jailed, he lost his job and abandoned the university. Years later, by which time he had become a professor at USP, he decided to deliver the little book to IEB-USP. We now know that it is very important document, a working copy with Mário de Andrade’s notes. To the writer’s happiness, the corrections n arrived in time.

Andrade in 1932 photo: always correcting his works

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[ Sociology ]

Unequalled inequality

Seminar discusses the dilemmas of social segregation in Brazil Carlos Haag Published in March 2010

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riter F. Scott Fitzgerald had no qualms about stating that the rich are different from us poor mortals, simply because they have much more money than we do.

But is money enough to explain everything? Income inequality indicators have shown that the gap between the rich and the poor has been narrowing, but are these indicators enough to provide us with a more accurate image of national social segregation? “Income is a very important indicator to analyze poverty and it is no surprise that international comparisons focus on this issue. However, our efforts at the Centro de Estudos da Metrópole (CEM), Metropolis Study Center, have focused on analyzing poverty and inequality from many aspects, because an individual’s poverty is the result of a combination of factors besides income. These factors include: access to the formal job market, to public services, and to social and associative bonds.

An unprotected individual is the result of all these factors,” explains political scientist Marta Arretche, director of CEM. Thus, she adds, although it is important to base ourselves on recent studies that show that income distribution has improved recently as a way of understanding what is going on in the country, one must also take into account other aspects of poverty and inequality which have an equally strong impact on people’s well-being.

The studies conducted by CEM attempt to expand this vision.

This is the reason for holding the international seminar on Metrópole e Desigualdades (The Metropolis and Inequality Seminar) was held in March 2010. This is another step in the internationalization process of FAPESP’s Centros de Pesquisa, Inovação e Difusão (Cepid), Research Center, which is also an Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia, National Institute of Science and Technology.

The seminar will focus on discussing these three pillars of research and the peculiarities of Brazil’s recent development process.

“Our research studies are based on the theoretical presupposition that work, social services and sociability are decisive mechanisms for the overcoming or mitigation of situations of poverty.

You can have two individuals with the same nominal income, but if one of them has access to state-subsidized housing, health care, etc., and the other does not, then the latter is poorer and more segregated than the former. It is always necessary to analyze factors other than income, and this is what this seminar proposes to do. In fact, this is in line with recent international studies in this respect,” n

A portrait of inequality: building in the high-income neighborhood of Morumbi and the favela (shanty town) in Paraisópolis

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Tuca Vieira/Folha Imagem

says Marta. “Poverty might have been reduced, but, on the other hand, inequality might be being reproduced.”

The first pillar of the seminar will focus on access to the job market and will begin with an unusually “optimistic” interpretation of the current status of the city of São Paulo. “Migration flows changed direction in the 1990s and began to show signs that they were slowing down, after decades of accelerated growth; this tendency is explained by local factors, such as the loss of dynamism in the unskilled labor market and the high cost of housing, as well as by external signs, such as the creation of new development centers in other regions of Brazil,” explains sociologist Álvaro Comin, from CEM. In other words, São Paulo, contrary to general opinion, has stopped growing and migration from other regions has slowed down; more people are leaving the city than coming in, especially the unskilled labor force. “The lower-income and uneducated, or poorly educated, segment of the population now corresponds to a smaller part of the city’s overall population.” Moreover, says the researcher, in the period from 2003 to 2007, the growth of the formal labor market corresponded to 4.15% a year, and for the first time in twenty years, the number of workers holding a Work Card corresponded to more than 50%.

“The city has gained more sophisticated services and the demand is for a more elite workforce, which suggests that the city is becoming a ‘ middle-class’ metropolis,” Comin explains. At the

same time, the educational level is also improving, in line with this evolution.

“Formally employed individuals have many more opportunities to remain updated on recent developments in their professional fields, thus reducing their risk of unemployment and increasing their chances of professional growth.”

All of this seems to indicate a perfect world. But this is when inequality arises, through a new pattern of segregation: the poorer segments of the population do not fit into this new structure, but they still depend on the city to survive, (domestic servants and other kinds of employees); they’re obliged to live further and farther away, because they no longer fit into the city, either because of the lack of affordable housing or because of the new profile in demand.

“This is a complex cycle: the city has closed its doors to a specific kind of worker, who has been expelled from the

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metropolis and is thus obliged to live in surrounding regions. This leads to such major problems as transportation, floods, etc. What initially seemed to be a reason for celebration has become a reason for enormous concern, when the issue is considered more profoundly,” the researcher points out. These issues are gaining a metropolitan scope, as the problems encompass poorer, distant regions and with less ability to resolve them than a metropolis like São Paulo, adds Comin. “In addition, you only work on two government levels: the State of São Paulo and the local governments, that do not collaborate with each other; this is exemplified by the tax issues and by issues related to the political parties.”

Even São Paulo’s industrial profile has changed, although the state still concentrates 50% of the industrial output in the city of São Paulo. “Traditional industries that employed ordinary workers have relocated to the hinterland, and the city now has the technology-intensive industries. The city’s economy is more capital-intensive and less labor-intensive.”

‘

Expulsion - “In general terms, poverty is

being invited to leave the city, and we are exporting problems such as the favelas (shanty towns), extreme poverty, lack of health care, and the like. Concurrently, the ‘expelled’ population is being banned from using the public services in other places, because this population needs to show proof of work and residence.

Twenty years from now, when we look at São Paulo, we might even think that everything is all right, but problems will be ahead of us – beyond the river, in the surrounding cities, with the difference that these cities will have very little chances, like we do, to implement policies and make changes,” says Comin.

The research work conducted by Nadya Guimarães, from CEM, shows another cruel reality. “Any job nowadays requires a high school or college diploma. A street sweeper employed by the local government, for example, has to have a high school diploma to get this job. This is how distorted the situation has become. It is the perverse effect

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of making the city more ‘elite.’ An office worker has to have a college diploma, no matter in what field, but he has to have one. The question is: what is the reward for having finished high school or college and working as a telemarketing employee earning a pitiful salary?

This confirms a common axiom in our culture: a good education does not get you anywhere.” “Everything nice about the image of São Paulo seems to have a negative element,” Comin points out.

Another pillar of inequality focused on by CEM lies in the so-called social networks. “Poverty has a territorial dimension: poor people tend to be spatially segregated, but they might be united spatially to fight the effect of segregation.

The issue of unequal access to social policies leads individuals to have different conditions and futures,” explains sociologist Eduardo Marques, from CEM. Based on maps that show individuals’ social networks, Marques showed

that these relationships with neighbors, family members, friends, colleagues, etc., are very important, and are more important than educational level and other factors, such as whether the individual is employed or not, the quality of the job and the income. Based on this data, the researcher prepared proposals for the State that could take advantage of the inevitable relationship between individuals and their interpersonal relationships, an efficient manner of providing help when the time comes to try and get a job.

A survey conducted by Nadya Guimarães on unemployed respondents looking for jobs at public or private employment agencies revealed that 80% of the respondents had found jobs through their network of friends in other periods, to the detriment of the employment agencies (which, of course, does not stop them from trying to get a job at such agencies, as a

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“In the specific case of employment, the development of employment agencies that provide integrated information on jobs and are located in radically decentralized forms in the communities, might help reduce the effect of the migrant’s initial location and the entry of young people into the job market, distributing access to information and local relationship structures in a more equitable manner.”

Favor – Although a job might still de-

MARCOS D’PAULA/AGÊNCIA ESTADO

Reflections: work, social networks and public services to explain segregation

manner of reinforcing their search for employment). “This reveals that people with friends have a better chance of getting a job and increasing their income, thus narrowing the inequality gap, by means of their personal relationships, which proves that these networks are more effective than public policies in this respect,” Marta analyzes.

“The fight against poverty cannot do without traditional social policies, or without macroeconomic policies that promote more good quality jobs.

But given that some networks have important penetration patterns in the relationship fabric of communities, its integration with the policies of the State may help solve problems more easily, by allowing policies to reach out to the users more efficiently, and customizing them, including the language, which would thus culturally mediate the relationship between the State and the communities,” Marques points out.

pend on that friendly information from a friend, the good news is found in the third pillar of the seminar’s research study on public services. “Imagine an individual in a very difficult situation: this person is jobless in a metropolis.

What is this person’s life like? In spite of all his difficulties, this person’s children can still stay in school and he can still depend on health care services. He has access to this without having to depend on favors or the blessing of any politician,” says Marta Arretche. “His situation in a metropolis is certainly much better than if he were living elsewhere.”

According to the researcher, the metropolitan regions are not the worse places in Brazil. “I classified all the cities in Brazil according to this expanded poverty indicator criterion that characterizes the studies conducted by CEM: income, health, education, and housing. All of the cities were classified according to an index ranging from 1 to 6, where 1 indicates the best cities in terms of income and social levels and 6 indicates the worst cities in this respect.

Most of the cities in the metropolitan regions scored between 1 and 2, that is, they were among the cities with the best indicators,” she explains.

In her opinion, the main problems seem to be urban mobility conditions, that is, the urban and transportation infra structure. Another positive data that was revealed by Nadya Guimarães’ survey was that 98% of the people from the big metropolises (Rio, Salvador, Belo Horizonte, São Paulo) have direct access to public services, which indicates the near-extinction of political cronyism in this respect. Comparative studies indicate that inequality in access

to public services has been falling around the world, while income inequality has been increasing.

“In this respect, Brazil seems to be following a specific path, because Brazilian democracy has been able to reduce income inequality, together with inequality regarding access to public services,” says the director of CEM. Inequality demands political reflection and not only an economic one.

“The expectation of the majority of social scientists at the beginning of the 1990s was that the Brazilian state would be unable to deal with the social inequalities inherited from the military regime. More extensive political participation combined with the State’s inability to meet demands for social integration were seen as being a serious threat to democracy,” says Marta. “These expectations proved to be groundless, because Brazilian democracy has gradually revealed its social incorporation capacity; that is, Brazil is following the classic path of modern democracies in which political participation creates opportunities and institutional incentives for the progressive social integration of the masses.”

Brazilian political institutions allowed voters to become incorporated and demands to be met, “ including the lower segments of the population. Governments that followed the dictatorship regimes moved forward in terms of their re-democratization agenda through the redemption of the social debt inherited from the dictatorship. There is no doubt that income concentration and the limited access of the poorer segments of the population stemmed from the configuration of the political forces and the political priorities prioritized by those gover­nments,” states political scientist Argelina Figueiredo. “Ever since the advent of re-democratization in the 1980s, this social panorama has started to chan­ge and has been changing with increasing intensity. The dimension of this change shows that it is highly significant if we compare it to the timing of the processes of social change equivalent to that in countries whose democracies are today considered as being “consolidated.” n

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[ History ]

São Paulo, Inc.

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Database maps out the migratory flow of qualified labor that furthered São Paulo’s post-1945 industrial development

ão Paulo’s fast industrialization following World War II (1939-1945) was one of the most important chapters in the history of the state and can now be better told. What few people know is that the presence of large contingents of qualified immigrants coming from Europe and Japan, two of the regions most affected during the conflict, was fundamental to this process. What happened was not merely an increase in the number of workers entering industry in the Greater São Paulo. They also embraced agriculture, which became modernized and was characteristic of the “new immigrants” in that these formed a more specialized work force, not in formal terms, but concerning their technical and practical qualifications.

Gonçalo Junior Published in November 2009

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ith the data readily available, the project team felt that their work had ended, having made a collective contribution to other researchers.

However, the group is still together for what is called a continuation of its commitment to information and dialogue with other interested parties. It is headed by the researchers Maria do Carmo Carvalho Campello de Souza (USP and Idesp, coordinator from 2003 to 2006), Teresa Sales de Mello Suarez (Nepo/Unicamp), Célia Sakurai (Museum of Japanese Immigration and Nepo/Unicamp), Odair Paiva (Unesp and the Memorial to Immigrants Museum), José Renato de Campos Araújo (USP and Idesp) and Maria do Rosário Rolfsen Salles (Unesp and Idesp, coordinator from 2006 to 2008).

Sociologist Maria do Rosário Rolfsen Salles, who devised the project along with Célia Sakurai, explains that in the first stage they tried to identify, organize, catalogue, computerize and archive the documents deposited in the Memorial to Immigrants Museum in São Paulo that concerned the arrival of about 500,000 foreigners, many of whom were lodged in the then Immigrant Hostel in São Paulo. The second stage of the project consisted in conducting the thematic studies that led to work that discussed aspects that had been ill explored by the historiography of immigration in the period.

“Our project’s chief merit, if we can say that, is providing new research with the possibility of accessing the documentation that is now computerized and that can guide countless pieces of research on the period, such as nationalities, international organisms,

refugees, the stateless, etc.,” From European believes Maria do Rosário. Acimmigrants’ cording to her, what stands out train to arrival in the work is the special profile with their of people from the European families at countries that had traditionally the national supplied immigrants to Brazil, centers in addition to other nationalities from Central and Eastern Europe. This was in marked contrast to the less qualified immigrant profile that characterized the large immigration wave of the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. “The origins of the immigrants are also interesting,” she points out. For example, concerning the Italians, they came from western Italy, contrary to what one might expect, since these areas were less developed and their workforce was more technically specialized than formally.

To understand the process better, the professor recommends going back to the nineteenth century.

As from the 1870s, one can identify very significant periods during which immigrants entered the country; there were longer periods that had a stronger impact on the growth of the Brazilian population, such as the expansion of coffee farming in western São Paulo, the start of the subsidy policy and the en masse arrival of immigrants, mainly Italians. “This period ended in 1902, with the prohibition of subsidized emigration by Italy - the well-known Prinetti decree – and the redirection of Italian emigration to the USA,” she says. The second cycle was characterized by the Agreement of Taubaté (1906), by the arrival of more Portuguese and Spaniards and the beginning of the influx of Japanese (1908); this period lasted until World War I. The second period is characterized by a smaller inflow of immigrants due to factors such as the re-

photos Divulgement

This new view is just beginning to be outlined thanks to the project “The new immigrants – Migratory flows and industrialization in São Paulo (19471980)”, from the Center for Population Studies at the State University of Campinas (Nepo/Unicamp); from 2003 to 2008 the project recorded more than 60,000 documents that now form a database with some 200,000 records of people who arrived in Brazil and became part of the workforce. This vast collection, which promises to make researchers both in Brazil and abroad happy, was assembled in such a way that the information can be explored in various ways: by name, nationality, profession, region of origin, employer, etc.

And this is not all. Data that are more detailed can be crosschecked, such as all German automobile mechanics who were unmarried or people with higher education – in the latter case, regardless of nationality. It is also possible to prepare graphs, tables and other types of data consolidation, which can be of great help in demographic studies, to name just one possibility. The database is already available at Nepo/Unicamp and the Memorial do Imigrante (the Memorial to Immigrants Museum) in São Paulo.

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The last migratory cycle began when Brazil reopened its immigration policy at the end of WWII

nese who went to the inner-state to work in agricultural concerns and in the city of São Paulo. They also found that these immigrants tended to be concentrated in industrial neighborhoods in the east and south of the city, besides other areas, such as the Center, the north, Vila Leopoldina, Lapa and the west. “In fact, each of these nationalities needs to be researched in order to determine the direction they took in São Paulo.”

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or Célia Sakurai, who has a PhD in social sciences from Unicamp, the database that resulted from the research makes it possible to reflect more clearly on the influence of immigrants in São Paulo. She notes that she was unaware of the extent of post-war immigration, especially where the profile of the immigrants is concerned, as it was markedly different from those who came before World War II. “The variety of occupations also drew her attention, as did the profile of the companies, from the Japanese multinationals which came in the late 1950s, to the small, sometimes family concerns, which welcomed these im-

Divulgement

strictions that were already in place in the 1920s, like the end of the subsidy policy, or the coffee crisis, which peaked in 1930. The phase was typified by the entry of the Portuguese and those classified as having “other nationalities” (Polish, Russian, Romanians, Jews, etc.). The final migratory cycle began when Brazil reopened its immigration policy at the end of World War II, thanks to the political opening that materialized with the ending of the New State period. The inflow during this cycle was much smaller than the previous one and consisted mainly of Italians, Spaniards and “other nationalities,” as we have seen, from Central and Eastern Europe, in addition to the Japanese as from the 1950s. One of the characteristics of this contingent, says Maria do Rosário, was the presence of refugees between 1947 and 1951 and of stateless individuals who had lost their nationality for various reasons during the war and who were unable or unwilling to return to their home countries.

During the work, the researchers had countless surprises, such as the large number of Italians, Spaniards and Japa-

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migrants.” Regarding the Japanese, what drew her attention was the large number of farmers who came to work in agricultural projects.

The researcher believes that the profile of Japanese immigrants changed after World War II; they were young, unmarried men who were professionally qualified, in contrast to their fellow countrymen who immigrated before the War. These new immigrants, she continues, fitted into the São Paulo industrialization process in positions that required qualifications. They came as technicians in new sectors, such as electronics, metallurgy and project design for air conditioning circuits. “The contribution that this type of information will add to the study of immigration in Brazil will present a different and little known facet of these people in our country.”

The total cost of the project was about R$ 130,000, expended on creating a program for building the database, setting-up the data input teams, treating and laminating the documents, the purchase of permanent material, and a domestic and international bibliography on the post-war migration processes and the constitution of international organisms, such as the International Refugees Organization (IRO), the International Committee for European Migration (Cime) and Japan Migration and Colonization (Jamic). According to Maria do Rosário, what helped to consolidate the project was having two teams of researchers involved, one from the Institute of Economic, Political and Social Research of São Paulo (Idesp) and the other from the Memorial to Immigrants Museum itself, which subsequently also incorporated a researcher from Nepo/Unicamp.

Professor Odair da Cruz Paiva, who has a PhD in social history from USP, came into the project while working at the Memorial to Immigrants Museum. One of his jobs was to organize the document collection. At the time,

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aiva was also responsible for the database, a task he shared with IT technician Paulo Eduardo de Vicente. “We initially wanted to insert the information from the documentation about immigration at this time. Most of it comprises individual records with the personal, professional and family data of the European, Japanese and the Middle Eastern immigrants.” They continued in this vein throughout the project, as this was its main objective.

“What happened during the course of the four years it lasted was the need to adapt and change the working system we used for inserting the information and even the database structure; this was largely due to the multiplicity of available supporting documents.”

Paiva believes that the system that was assembled means that the data now reveal much more accurate information about this period in the Brazilian

Divulgement

everything on post-World War II immigration was dispersed throughout the collection and disorganized, rendering research into the subject unfeasible.

He recalls that the idea of “The New Immigrants” Project was born out of conversations with professors Célia and Maria do Rosário. “Little by little, we determined its chief objective: to organize and computerize the data in that documentation.” When preparing the project, the team was already formed and had held some discussions about what direction to take.

The functions were divided into two core functions. The first involved organizing the collection and inputting the data in the computerized database. “A team of trainees hired by the Memorial to Immigrants Museum was charged with this task.” The group of researchers – in which Paiva included himself – supervised and guided the work of the trainees, while also correcting the database and collecting information. Each researcher prepared and developed his or her own project, which was fed with data that was being entered. “In my case, I researched the incorporation of these immigrants into the São Paulo industrial market from the 1940s to the 1970s.” Célia embraced Japanese immigration and Maria do Rosário took the war refugees who came to São Paulo from 1947 to 1951.

immigration process.

“In my case, for example, one can now fully map out the enterprises that received this labor force, the professional profile of the workers and their past experience in Europe.” He adds that this is very rich and varied information. “I believe that the project still has the potential for helping many researchers and producing knowledge about immigration in this period that is fundamental.”

At present, the coordinators of “The New Immigrants” want to publicize the initiative as much as possible, so as to encourage other researchers to work with the information gathered. The Application to Brazilian authorities for a visa: flow of refugees

team, Paiva points out, is fully aware that many other points of view are fundamental to drawing the most out of the large amount of available data.

The idea is to continue the information analysis work and gradually make it public. This year, the book Migrações pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial [PostWorld War II Migration] was compiled and edited with FAPESP aid. “In this text, some of the issues that arose when carrying out the research were noted, particularly the contributions of experts working with the topic of migration in that period.”

In a way, the researcher concludes, this is essentially unprecedented documentation that has the potential to unveil the many dimensions of immin gration in São Paulo.

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© sheila goloborotko | The Day We Bomb the Moon. Oil, asphalt, marble dust, gauze on canvas, 1.23 x 1.53 m, 2009

art

Anti-romantic

attack

In October 2009, Nasa sent a rocket onto the Moon. It was part of the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, and proved that water is more abundant and more widespread on Earth’s natural satellite. The sediments collected are also a glimpse into the evolution of the solar system.

Upsetting news, though, for artist Sheila Goloborotko: “We are bombing the Moon!”

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st Brazilian

BBEST

BioEnergy Science and Technology Campos do Jordão, São Paulo, Brazil August, 14th-18th, Conference2011

First Brazilian Bioenergy Science and Technology Conference

Submit abstract for Oral or Poster presentation http://bbest.org.br Infotmation: bbest@bbest.org.br

Campos do Jordão - August 14 to 18, 2011

We are pleased to announce a schedule of VISITS following the 1st Brazilian Bioenergy Science and Technology Conference The 1st Brazilian Bioenergy Science and Technology Conference will be an outstanding, state-ofthe-art event in the field of bioenergy. A privileged forum will be available for experts to present their latest scientific as well as technological achievements and to discuss business and policy for the development of the sector.

We offer three visits to complement a strong scientific program.

Visits will be in two sugarcane production areas in São Paulo state: Ribeirão Preto and Araras.

We will visit São Martinho and São João Mills, and also important Research Centers as CTBE, Ridesa, IAC, Canavialis and Amyris.t.

Visit schedule: August 18th and 19th, 2011 Breeding

Deadline for submissions: May 15th, 2011 – Submissions for poster presentations

Biotechnology

Submit your abstract online

Molecular biology

Submissions are invited for poster presentations on the following areas: • Biomass • Biofuel Technologies • Alcoholchemistry and Biorefineries • Engines and other conversion devices • Process Integration • Sustainability

Mills, sugar production, ethanol and electric energy processes Agronomical management of sugarcane production Harvest and plant mechanization Wastes uses in sugarcane productionSustainability II Socio-Economics of Biofuels

Please submit abstracts using the Online Form.

For the complete meeting details including sponsorship opportunities, visit: http://www.bbest.org.br A selection of papers will be published as full papers in a special issue of the Global Change Biology Bioenergy Journal.

Special hotel options available

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Eduardo Cesar

POST DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS in São Paulo, Brazil

affiliated to higher education and research institutions in the state of São Paulo.

FAPESP’s PD Fellowships are granted for 24 months and can be renewed for 12 months.

It includes a monthly stipend, travel to and from Brazil expenses for the selected candidate and his family, and an overhead for small research expenses.

For additional information, see http://www.fapesp.br/en/materia/ 5427/scholarships/post-doctorate-fellowship.htm For guidance write to pd@fapesp.br

Gustavo Tílio / LNLS

The São Paulo Research Foundation, FAPESP, one of the main research funding agencies in Brazil, invites talented researchers with a recent PhD degree and a successful research track record to apply for postdoctoral fellowships. In 2010, 66 positions were opened, in virtually all fields of knowledge (see http://www.oportunidades.fapesp.br/en/) Fellowships may also be requested through specific proposals presented by a candidate and a supervisor from any research group

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