International Issue 2014 - Edition 1

Pesquisa FAPESP 2014_ edition 1

2014_ edition 1 www.revistapesquisa.fapesp.br

Cell Biology

A special type of RNA plays a role in the spread of cancer Biokerosene

Companies develop renewable fuel for civil aviation Anthropology

How to have a rewarding sex life in old age

Interview helena nader

More funding for science

The Brazilian Biota Hundreds of institutions are mobilizing to expand knowledge about Brazil’s biodiversity

2014_EDITION 1

WWW.REVISTAPESQUISA.FAPESP.BR

6 COVER A program mobilizes hundreds of institutions to expand the knowledge of Brazilian biodiversity PHoto léo ramos

10 INTERVIEW Helena Bonciani Nader The molecular biologist and president of the SBPC discusses the success enjoyed by the institution and asks for more funding and less bureaucracy for science programs

SECTIONS 4 Letter from of the Editor 66 Art

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL POLICY

TECHNOLOGY

16 Mobility

Study encourages the production of biokerosene for use in civil aviation

The internationalization of research in São Paulo is enhanced by the arrival of FAPESP grantee post-doctoral researchers from abroad

22 Workshop The Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory includes innovative companies in the construction of its new light source

SCIENCE 24 Cell Biology A new study reveals the role of a special type of ribonucleic acid in the spread of cancer

26 Physics Collisions between grains are the main driver of sandstorms, Igor Zolnerkevic

28 Optics A new technique alters light beam wavefronts, allowing for the manipulation of microscopic objects and the transmission of greater quantities of information

30 Biota Lack of water and a semi-arid climate have elicited sophisticated adaptive responses among species in the Caatinga

36 Energy

42 Innovation Companies seek out universities in a bid to create more competitive products

46 Computer Engineering A small company develops artificial intelligence software to control industrial production

48 Industrial Research The creation of innovative products makes Mahle’s Brazilian technology center stand out

HUMANITIES 52 Sociology Inefficiencies of the police and courts destroy faith in democratic institutions

58 Aging An anthropologist looks at the argument for a rewarding sex life in old age

64 Philosophy Study Center reveals the latest on Hannah Arendt’s thoughts about the responsibility of thinking

34 Climate Change Coffee plants grow larger and produce more when there is more CO2 in the atmosphere pESQUISA FAPESP z 3

Letter from the Editor

São Paulo Research Foundation Celso Lafer President Eduardo Moacyr Krieger Vice-President Board of trustees Alejandro Szanto de Toledo, Celso Lafer, Eduardo Moacyr Krieger, Fernando Ferreira Costa, Horácio Lafer Piva, Herman Jacobus Cornelis Voorwald, João Grandino Rodas, Maria José Soares Mendes Giannini, José de Souza Martins, Luiz Gonzaga Belluzzo, Suely Vilela Sampaio and Yoshiaki Nakano Executive board José Arana Varela 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 (Presidente), Caio Túlio Costa, Eugênio Bucci, Fernando Reinach, José Eduardo Krieger, Luiz Davidovich, Marcelo Knobel, Marcelo Leite, Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida, Marisa Lajolo, Maurício Tuffani and Mônica Teixeira Scientific committee Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos (Presidente), Adolpho José Melfi, Carlos Eduardo Negrão, Douglas Eduardo Zampieri, Eduardo Cesar Leão Marques, Francisco Antônio Bezerra Coutinho, Joaquim J. de Camargo Engler, José Arana Varela, José Roberto de França Arruda, José Roberto Postali Parra, Luís Augusto Barbosa Cortez, Marcelo Knobel, Marie-Anne Van Sluys, Mário José Abdalla Saad, Marta Teresa da Silva Arretche, Paula Montero, Roberto Marcondes Cesar Júnior, Sérgio Luiz Monteiro Salles Filho, Sérgio Robles Reis Queiroz, Wagner do Amaral and Walter Colli

Advancing knowledge through long-term financing Mariluce Moura Editor in Chief

Scientific coordinator Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos Editor in chief Mariluce Moura Managing editor Neldson Marcolin editors Fabrício Marques (Policy), Marcos de Oliveira (Technology), Ricardo Zorzetto (Science); Carlos Fioravanti e Marcos Pivetta (special editors); Bruno de Pierro and Dinorah Ereno (assistant editors) Translator TransConsult, Fairfax, VA – Kim Olson Art Mayumi Okuyama (editor), Ana Paula Campos (infographic editor), Maria Cecilia Felli and Alvaro Felippe Jr. (assistant) Photographers Eduardo Cesar, Léo Ramos Eletronic media Fabrício Marques (coordinador) Internet Pesquisa FAPESP online Maria Guimarães (editor) Júlio Cesar Barros (assistant editor) Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade (reporter) Radio Pesquisa Brasil Biancamaria Binazzi (producer) Contributors Abiuro, Daniel das Neves, Igor Zolnerkevic, Pedro Hamdan; Valter Rodrigues (image bank) and Yuri Vasconcelos Printer RR Donnellley

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

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

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

4 z special issue February 2014

T

he cover story of this first international issue of Pesquisa FAPESP in 2014 (page 6) examines the National Biodiversity Research System (Sisbiota). Sisbiota comprises 38 networks of researchers scattered among 14 Brazilian states.

It is coordinated by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), a federal agency that sponsors research, and brings together bodies from three ministries and 14 state research foundations. With the objective of increasing knowledge of Brazilian biodiversity, it is currently involved in 39 projects, 14 of which are led by scientists from the state of São Paulo and co-financed by FAPESP. The projects encompass all the Brazilian biomes. The report by assistant editor Bruno de Pierro in this issue demonstrates the richness and variety of the research, which ranges from seeking plant extracts with cancer-fighting ability to cataloguing fungi that produce enzymes that may be used in the production of bioethanol.

The inspiration for Sisbiota came from the Biota-FAPESP program launched in São Paulo in 1999. Over the past 15 years, the program has brought together 1,200 professionals focused on studying the biodiversity of São Paulo. During its first decade, Biota-FAPESP lent its support to more than a hundred research projects and promoted advances in measurable knowledge, including the identification of 1,766 species; the database registry of 640 natural products; and the publication of 1,145 scientific articles, books and maps that have been used to guide public policy. The future of Sisbiota is under discussion, but the consensus among scientists is

that maintaining its financing is essential because increasing the knowledge of biodiversity requires long-term research, as demonstrated by the success of the Biota-FAPESP program. **** Another example of long-term financing of studies with ambitious goals involves the Center for Cell-Based Therapy (CTC) at the Ribeirão Preto School of Medicine of the University of São Paulo (FMRP-USP). A study conducted by a team from that institution has characterized the role that a special type of ribonucleic acid (RNA) plays in spreading cancer (page 24). A gene located on human chromosome 12 and known as HOTAIR generates a very long RNA transcript, comprising 2,200 nucleotides, but it does not give rise to any protein. However, recent studies indicate that this region of the genome appears to play an important role in regulating metastasis, and research performed by a team from São Paulo has shown in detail how HOTAIR RNA is involved in this process. The CTC is one of the 17 Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) through which FAPESP provides funding for up to 11 years to interdisciplinary teams investigating topics on the cutting edge of knowledge. The CTC, which is coordinated by the recently named

dean of USP, Marco Antonio Zago, was included in the first round of the RIDC program in 2001.

It later gained international recognition for advances in the use of cell therapy to treat diabetes.

During the second round of the RIDC program announced in 2013, another project presented by the CTC was approved, thereby ensuring a new period of funding.

Finally, I would like to highlight the report that describes the research and development efforts by Brazil and other countries to develop a renewable source of aviation kerosene that will release fewer harmful gases into the atmosphere (page 36). Known as biokerosene, this fuel could once again make Brazil a reference center for the development and production of biofuel, as it was for ethanol back in the 1970s.

This trend is highlighted in a study sponsored by two of the largest aircraft manufacturers in the world – Boeing and Embraer – with FAPESP funding and coordination by the Interdisciplinary Center for Energy Planning (NIPE) at the University of Campinas (Unicamp). The study presents several technological routes to biokerosene production from raw materials such as sugarcane, algae, animal fats, vegetable oils, cellulose, starches and urban waste.

Enjoy!

PHOTO eduardo cesar

Scinax machadoi tadpole, found in Minas Gerais by a research group of the Sisbiota network

pESQUISA FAPESP z 5

cover

Diverse

networks A program mobilizes hundreds of institutions to expand the knowledge of Brazilian biodiversity Bruno de Pierro

A

national network of researchers dedicated to expanding the knowledge of Brazilian biodiversity has begun to take shape, as demonstrated by the first evaluation meeting of the National Biodiversity Research System (Sisbiota). The initiative is coordinated by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and brings together bodies from three ministries and 14 state research foundations known as FAPs. The meeting was held from June 3 - 6 in Brasília, with 356 institutions and 1,127 researchers in attendance from all over the country. “There are projects that are being carried out in all the Brazilian biomes using networking and decentralized research,” explains Roberto Berlinck, professor at São Carlos Institute of Chemistry at the University of São Paulo (USP). Berlinck is a member of the team that coordinates the BIOTA-FAPESP program, established in São Paulo in 1999 and used as a benchmark for the 6 z special issue February 2014

national Sisbiota. Berlinck coordinated the team of eight professors who evaluated 39 Sisbiota projects, consisting of 38 research networks and one knowledge synthesis project.

FAPESP co-financed 14 projects in the program led by researchers from institutions in the state of São Paulo. Vanderlan Bolzani, professor at the Chemistry Institute of Araraquara, Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp), coordinates one of the projects; she is also a member of the BIOTA-FAPESP coordination team.

The study, which should be completed

by January 2014, focuses on the exploration of bioactive molecules and the study of the variability of plants and microorganisms in the Cerrado and Caatinga.

Like other Sisbiota projects, Bolzani’s project required the establishment of a network. The network consists of 26 researchers, 15 laboratories and eight institutions, such as the federal universities of Ceará, Piauí and Minas Gerais.

“The more we collaborate with other states, the better our work is. In Brazil,

there is a substantial amount of quality research,” says Bolzani. Among her group’s results, the professor highlights the collection of historical information, searching for plant extracts with cytotoxic (tumor-fighting) activity, the characterization of active ingredients and the use of genomic information to control medicinal plants. The professor explains that 28 samples were found that are related to plant species unknown to science that are sold in public markets. “People use these samples without knowing the risk they face when they consume them.”

The network, coordinated by Professor Maria de Lourdes Teixeira de Moraes Polizeli of the Ribeirão Preto School of Philosophy, Science and Language and Literature at USP, is an example of how the work of cataloging new species can generate developments with market applications. For example, the research, which is still in progress with 123 researchers across the country, searches for enzyme-producing filamentous fungi

PHOTO miguel boyayan INFOGRAPHIC ana paula pontes

Published in July 2013

Sisbiota by the numbers Distribution of program funding by country

Projects by state (networks)

1

2

AM

1

PA

2

RN

PE

15,9

1

2

SE

BA

3

DF

3

1

MG

ES

14

1

SP

1

RJ

PR

Funding sources in millions of reais

4

SC

2

Total budget

RS

12

FNDCT * 7,9

FAPESP 6

MMA **

Total invested

by FAPs

4,9

Capes ***

4,5

CNPq 1,8

Fapemig

in millions of reais

1,36

Fapesc

7,9

Fapeam

1

Fapergs

1 0,9

Fapespa Fapesb

3,59

0,8

Faperj

0,54

Fapes

0,5

FAPDF

0,5

Facepe

0,5

Fap-PR

0,4

Other

0,33

* National Science and Technology Development Fund ** Ministry of the Environment *** Coordinating Agency for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel

3,48 2,72

2,65

2,54 2

1,8

1,87

1,8

1,36 1 0,5

SP

mg

DF

1

0,8

0,9

0,5

0,5

SC

AM

BA

RS

PE

1

PA

ES

0,54

0,8 0,4 PR

0,54

0,4

0,25 0,2

RJ

RN

pESQUISA FAPESP z 7

0,13 SE

that can be used in biorefineries to produce bioethanol from bagasse and sugarcane straw. To date, approximately 1,000 fungi have been isolated, 40% of which showed good levels of enzyme production.

“If we are cataloging fungi, why not explore their biotechnological potential,” she wonders, as she explains the procedures of her work. Polizeli notes that the potential of the fungus for producing enzymes varies with the biome.

Aspergillus niger, for example, is found in many ecosystems. However, its enzymatic potential is different depending on whether it is in the Amazon or the Caatinga.

The amount financed for the threeyear project was R$2 million, and Sisbiota agreed to extend it until March 2015. According to the professor, networking was an opportunity for her to learn about unfamiliar realities. “In the state of Amazonas, the team had to collect fungi on horseback because many areas are still virgin forest. In many cases, primitive methods must be used to create cutting-edge science,” she says.

Polizeli stresses the importance of continuing the program because it is about more than just producing papers: the discoveries should also be worthwhile for 1 Scinax machadoi tadpole, found in industry and generMinas Gerais by ate patents.

Rossa-Feres team The sustainabilfrom Unesp ity of the long-term program, by means 2 Bombacaceae (Eriotheca of new requests for gracilipes), pasture proposals, has yet flower in Pratânia, to be determined.

São Paulo

“The more collaboration we have with other states, the better the work is,” says Vanderlan Bolzani

According to Denise de Oliveira, a science and technology analyst at CNPq and manager of the first Sisbiota funding opportunity announcement, the evaluation committee recommended extending the current projects for another year. “The projects have received many compliments for the way they are being run, but some were hampered by the lack of rain in the northeast, for example. Because of this, deadlines are being extended,” says de Oliveira. “Incorporating research into networks takes a considerable amount of time. The knowledge of biodiversity requires long-term studies.”

The fact that long-term financing is assured helps explain the success of the BIOTA-FAPESP program. As indicated in the Sisbiota background paper, the experience of the São Paulo program helped

1

8 z special issue February 2014

“develop a program with a broad geographic base.” “After its tenth anniversary in 2009, BIOTA-FAPESP served as an inspiration for the federal government. It was a successful strategy of the Foundation, which even provided Sisbiota with nearly R$8 million in project funding,” Roberto Berlinck explains. “With Sisbiota, it was possible to form networks that look at different issues in different biomes, working on a complementary basis and avoiding redundancies, which gives us a more complete framework of knowledge of national biodiversity,” says the professor, who also believes that three years is not much time for consolidating research. “Biota has been around for 14 years, and ideally, Sisbiota would also last that long,” he adds.

Another Sisbiota project co-funded

by FAPESP is led by Antonio Carlos Marques, a professor at the USP Biosciences Institute. Marques coordinates a study on the synthesis of knowledge of organisms in Brazilian marine and coastal areas. The project’s name is Sisbiota-Mar, and the network is connected to 15 states and 35 institutions, including the Tamar Project and the National Biosecurity Commission (CTNBio). More than 100 researchers are involved in the project, and 26 of them are responsible for coordinating the network in eight states, including São Paulo, Pernambuco, Bahia and Santa Catarina. The project has also established partnerships with universities in the United States, Germany and Australia.

Compilation

Based on research conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Marques is able to make a historical comparison. “Much has changed in our perception of marine diversity in the last ten years. We have better frameworks for our work and the collections are more structured, although we have yet to reach the ideal level,” says Marques. One goal of Sisbiota-Mar is ambitious: move at top speed to compile records of all the marine species along the Brazilian coastline. Brazil joined the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), a global platform that has already recorded 140,000 points in Brazilian seas. At every point at least one marine species can be found. Marques’ project added over 105,000 points to the OBIS database in just two years

“If we want to learn about our maritime area, we must also investigate our marine biota. This data record of marine organisms will be important for strategic planning, computerization and developing policies for better exploration, and it will also help in proposing and more efficiently setting up conservation units,” the professor says.

PHOTO 1 tiago pezzuti 2 eduardo cesar

Decentralization

To organize the different goals of each network, three major lines of research were organized. The first was to summarize and fill the gaps in the knowledge of Brazilian biodiversity with projects from R$150,000 to R$600,000. The second line organized the research into thematic networks to expand knowledge of the biota, the functional role, and the use and conservation of Brazilian biodiversity, with projects of up to R$2 million.

The third dealt with understanding and forecasting responses to climate change and land use by financing projects of up to R$650,000.

“The Sisbiota evaluation was important for us, the researchers, to learn about work that we had no idea was being done. There is a great wealth of data,” says Vanderlan Bolzani. According to Bolzani, in addition to research on plants, there are many other projects underway on insects and fish, including tadpoles. This work is being conducted in the FAPESP-supported network that is studying tadpoles of anurans (amphibians in the adult stage that have no tails, such as frogs or toads) in nine different biomes and associated vegetation types, such as the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado. Coordinated by Professor Denise de Cerqueira Rossa-Feres, from the Institute of Biosciences, Literature and Exact Sciences at Unesp, the project consists of 14 public universities in 10 states, including the federal universities of Alagoas, Paraná and São Paulo, and cooperating international institutions such as the University of South Florida in the United States and the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Care Centre in Canada.

Altogether, there are 25 researchers, two of whom are non-Brazilians.

Rossa-Feres explains that at first, the plan was to collect samples of tadpoles in 320 bodies of water, including ponds, wetlands, lakes and streams. The number soared to 784 as the research pro-

2

“In the state of Amazonas, the team had to collect fungi on horseback,” says Polizeli gressed and is expected to reach nearly a thousand bodies of water by the end of the project. As of now, more than 300 species of tadpoles have been recorded, and many are still being identified. “The most important thing is that sampling is being carried out in a standardized manner, from the characterization of the environment to the method and work of collecting tadpoles. The database will be fully integrated and comparable, so that countless analyses of processes and tests of assumptions can be performed,” the researcher explains. The main objective is to understand what factors “assemble” a community and determine which and how many species occur.

Interdisciplinary research

One point that the network coordinators discussed at length during the evaluation meeting was the specific opportunity to conduct interdisciplinary research. According to Denise de Oliveira from the CNPq, because most networks are composed of experts from various fields such as ecology, biology, chemistry and climate, the interdisciplinary knowledge that Sisbiota generates is unique. “But, we have received recommendations to further decentralize the networks because financial management is still problematic for

researchers,” she says. Because each network is composed of subprojects, some coordinators argue that it would be easier if each one were autonomous to deal directly with the funding from CNPq and the research foundation. The problem, says de Oliveira, is that there are legal restrictions on the funding from the FAPs being spent outside their state.

“This discussion is a double-edged sword,” Polizeli thinks. In her opinion, one of the advantages of centralized funding is the possibility of obtaining discounts by purchasing a large amount of equipment all at once. “For the whole group, I bought seven instruments that read enzymatic activity. The fact that I bought everything at the same time made us eligible for the discounted price.

If each regional coordinator had bought the instruments on their own, the price would have been much higher.” The downside of centralization, she notes, is that the coordinator is burdened with administrative and logistical issues. “In São Paulo, FAPESP has insisted that institutions have their own offices to manage project funds, such as the Biosciences Institute at USP, which created this unit that can relieve the coordinator of some of the burden,” says Antonio Carlos Marques. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 9

INTERVIEW

Helena Bonciani Nader

She fights for science Fabrício Marques Published in July 2013

H

elena Bonciani Nader, full professor at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), was re-elected president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC) last month. As the most representative body of Brazil’s scientific community, the SBPC has approximately 110 affiliated societies and over 4,000 active members. After serving two terms as vice president and one as president, Nader will continue leading the association until July 2015. In recent years, she has been a salient force in the organization of successful campaigns, such as the effort to overturn a provision of the law that defines the career plan for federal university faculty; the clause in question would have abolished the requirement that all candidates applying for the post of professor hold a doctorate. Other crusades still underway include the battle to have a portion of the royalties earned on oil production assigned to science and another campaign to boost funds for science and technology. Nader did her undergraduate work and obtained her doctorate at Unifesp, when it was still the Paulista School of Medicine; she did post-doctoral work at the University of Southern California (USC). She is the lead investigator of a group that has set the world benchmark for research on heparin, a polysaccharide known for its role as a blood thinner. The group was created by Carl Peter von Dietrich (1936-2005), Nader’s doctoral advisor. The two later married and had a daughter. Nader has trained nearly 100 researchers at the master’s and doctoral levels, and she is quite happy to continue teaching at the undergraduate level, where, she says, it is easier to instill values in students. She is also biology coordinator at FAPESP and is an honorary professor of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), where she helped establish a biochemistry research group.

In this interview, she looks back over her career and her work with the SBPC and discusses the organization’s plans.

10 z special issue February 2014

SPECIALTY Glycobiology EDUCATION Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) – bachelor’s degree and doctorate University of Southern California (USC) – post-doctorate INSTITUTE Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC) SCIENTIFIC OUTPUT 248 scientific articles indexed in the Thomson Reuters database; advisor for 43 doctoral and 45 master’s candidates

léo ramos

pESQUISA FAPESP z 11

In the SBPC’s view, what are the main challenges facing Brazilian science?

Brazil is going through a new phase in education and science that is marked by both greater demand and a demand for higher qualifications. When the SBPC was founded 65 years ago, Brazilian science was still very limited; it was restricted to some fields of knowledge and to some places in the country. Today, science is being conducted all over Brazil, and I see this as a victory for the entire scientific community. The overall picture is very good, but we need investment. That’s why we’re fighting for more funds for science. Investments have risen, but they still fall short of our needs. The private sector has been investing, but at a lower rate than the business sectors in China or Korea, for example.

Is there still an imbalance between states within Brazil?

There are differences. There’s one scenario here in São Paulo. The picture is also extremely favorable in Rio de Janeiro. Minas Gerais is now investing more than Rio, proportionately speaking. I’m very proud because the state of São Paulo plays a very valuable role in Brazil’s scientific world. We have led the pack. The state constitution of 1947 provided for the establishment of a research funding agency, whose growth has kept pace with the confidence of the scientific community and, quite notably, of the political community.

FAPESP managed to become a force in the political arena, and this has been fundamental. When the new Brazilian constitution was written in 1988, it stipulated that all states should have such agencies and should support science, research, and technology. Our FAPESP has been fundamental. I remember how Flávio Fava de Moraes, who was FAPESP’s scientific director at that time, traveled the country. Prof.

Dietrich and I were setting up a graduate program at the UFRN in the 1980s, and we ran into Moraes at a hearing in the legislative assembly there, where he was showing the impact that a research agency can have. Science had been around longer here. We already had the Campinas Institute of Agronomy and the Butantan Institute, which are over 100 years old.

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The establishment of the University of São Paulo (USP) was perhaps the major milestone.

The fact that we lost the Constitutionalist Revolution in 1932 had a huge impact on São Paulo society. The establishment of USP in 1934 – almost a type of compensation for our defeat – attracted European scientists who were being persecuted for political, religious, and ideological reasons. São Paulo was already a strong state, but its coffee plantations were in crisis. If our young people wanted to study medicine, they’d go off to Rio or Bahia, because São Paulo had only one school of medicine, which was not yet part of USP, located on Dr. Arnaldo Avenue. There were no federal investments. Another institution, the Paulista School of Medicine, was born in 1933 as a private institution and remained so until the mid-1950s. Our state infected the others. As a native of both the city and state of São Paulo and as a Brazilian, I’m proud to say that São Paulo State helped with this process. However, I also recognize that São Paulo needs to have a greater presence, given the dimension of its science, and should not distance itself for reasons related to party politics.

This hurts dialogue. There was a time when you could have seated people from different tendencies at the same table, but now you can’t because they criticize each other. It shouldn’t be like that. I think this is changing, and that’s good.

Thank goodness we’re a democracy; thank goodness power changes hands.

We have to present common grievances; this is essential to Brazil.

The SBPC recently led the campaign to overturn some provisions of the law on the career plan for federal university faculty. Were the results satisfactory?

After we read the draft of the law, we sent a document – signed by Jacob Palis, President of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, and me – in which we clearly explained the harm that this law would do; unfortunately, it fell on deaf ears.

The law was passed on December 28, 2012. After it was approved, I’m proud to say that the SBPC was the key agent behind President Rousseff’s provisional measure, which re-instates the requirement that a candidate to a professorship at a federal university must hold a doctorate – because the law had done away

with it. That was absurd. Brazil’s graduate schools are being copied abroad, and, just like that, they pass a law saying, “Look, you want to be a professor at a federal university, all you need is an undergraduate degree.” It was overturned. However, one important item still hasn’t been reversed: the new law must be brought in line with the Technological Innovation Act so that professors working under the so-called ‘exclusive commitment regimen’ can undertake projects at private companies, as long as this doesn’t get in the way of their teaching duties. At São Paulo’s state universities, professors working under this regimen can allot one day a week to this type of work.

Two causes taken up under your administration were the reaction to the 2012 budget cuts and the question of petroleum royalties….

We now have a partnership with the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. We complement each other; together, we represent the whole scientific community. Some view academia as a restricted world.

They think we academics sit on our thrones up here, with the masses down there, but that’s not true. Academia represents the elite, and in Brazil, ‘elite’ is a worn-out word. However, the SBPC represents all of the country’s scientific associations. That’s 110 scientific societies.

When Jacob Palis and I sign a document, it carries tremendous weight. One cause that we took up was the restructuring of the budget after the 2012 cuts. This year, according to Marco Antonio Raupp – the Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation– President Rousseff said that one can no longer trim the budget by downsizing allocations to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) or to the Ministry of Education.

We’ve managed to show our leaders the importance of science and education.

Do you think the MCTI budget is satisfactory?

Science and technology saw an increase in funding, and there was a substantial increase for innovation. The partnerships between the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and the Brazilian Innovation Agency (Finep) also yielded an important increase in budget. Could it be greater? Of course it could.

But how are funds from the perspective of university research?

In our opinion, funds are still limited.

We’ve spoken to Minister Raupp about this. We put it on the table at a recent meeting chaired by the Minister. He noted that they had boosted funds for the so-called universal grants available through the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), which are open to any field of science, technology, and innovation, but we had seen that financing for individuals had dropped. I said, “Minister, in the past, we could ask for up to R$150,000 over two years. That was R$75,000 a year. For the most senior scientists, the total is now R$120,000, divided over three years.” He hadn’t realized that.

There was an improvement, with a greater number of grants based on outstanding scholarship. New universities were created, and a greater number of doctorates were awarded. Unless investments are guaranteed, you end up doing away with researchers. We have to fight for more funding. Partnerships between the federal and state governments have proven successful and should be more commonplace because this means resources are combined and there are savings in the end. For example, we need the continuity of the National Institutes of Science and Technology (INCTs), which are financed by the CNPq and by state research support agencies. We want this July’s evaluation of the current INCTs to be transparent and to identify which INCTs have been successful, or else the initiative will lose credibility. If something’s not working, you don’t continue funding it. There’s pent-up demand, and the solution is not to take away from one and give to another. We have to go after funding to meet everyone’s needs. The evaluation of the Science Without Borders program must be just as clear.

sion. There were undergraduates, and there were post-doctoral fellows. Their enthusiasm was remarkable. Unfortunately, what comes out in the newspapers is that we’ve got recipients in Portugal. Not that Portugal isn’t a good place to go. They’ve got the immunologist Antonio Coutinho’s laboratory, which publishes its work in nothing but Nature and Science. The SBPC would like this program to be evaluated, as we here in São Paulo would also like the FAPESP Research Internships Abroad (Bepe) program to be. We’ve been sending many students abroad, from the undergraduate to post-doctoral levels.

What’s the impact? The SBPC feels that Science Without Borders is a daring program that is a challenge to administer

Is English still an obstacle?

I don’t want to generalize, but it’s not a problem only for students. Our scientists have language problems. Many people wonder why Brazilians don’t get published in the top journals. It’s because of the language barrier. The Chinese didn’t use to publish in the top journals either. Now they publish in Nature and Science all the time. However, they hired people with training to write according to the journal model. Fifteen years ago, the Chinese spoke English all wrong. Today, they don’t even have an accent. However, they have an educational tradition that we lack. You can forget about freedom there – something I refuse to give up – but they’ve got education. Children really go to school; they’re learning. There they decide which university will do science. Our researchers don’t know English like they should. It would be good to have people at our universities who could help write articles because it just keeps getting worse. They’re selling this service now. I’ll give you an example. I recently sent an article to a journal.

Since everything’s online, they saw that the IP address was from Brazil. One reviewer praised the paper, the second one made some critical comments, and the third said it needed extensive English editing by a native speaker. I replied that I trained in the United States and that the article has two other authors, one English and one American. It’s become a habit to complain about the quality of the English, even if there’s no problem with it.

Sometimes articles are turned down and then similar data appear in the same journal. Is this a coincidence?

What is your evaluation of Science Without Borders?

I met students with fellowships in the United States. I had a fantastic impres-

but might have an impact on Brazilian education and science. Our universities are obsolete. We’re offering undergraduate courses based on a nineteenth-century model, not even a twentieth-century one. A student comes back changed after spending time abroad. Here, professors give a general class and then tell their students, “Now go study.” When it comes time for teacher evaluations, the student writes, “The professor didn’t fulfill his workload.” Students want classes on theory; they want to study from their notes. I talked with students abroad, and they said, “I never thought it could be like that.” The professors tell them to go study and then call the students in to discuss.

Why is that?

They’re selling these services. It’s a business. This issue gets into the question of scientific ethics. Today, there’s a lot of talk about the integrity of the researcher and his or her relationship with students. However, integrity goes beyond that. Sometimes, the editors of journals and their reviewers lack integrity. I’ve seen this happen; an article is turned down, and then similar data appears in the same journal. Is this a coincidence? pESQUISA FAPESP z 13

It’s easy to blame someone for lacking ethics when the results aren’t reproducible. Plagiarism is harder. How can you prove that someone didn’t have the same idea? The pressure for funding is great.

The number of articles that repeat the same finding is amazing.

The campaign over petroleum royalties was unsuccessful. Why was that?

We’ve lost the royalties from new petroleum contracts, but we’re still fighting so that part of the funds that go to education will be allocated to science.

It doesn’t do any good to invest only in basic education. I remember what happened under the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration. There was investment in basic education, but federal universities were left to starve. That’s wrong. You’ve got to invest in the whole system. That’s the only way to raise the bar. Unfortunately, the government today is looking at royalties only as a way of obtaining 10% of GDP for education.

What we’ve apparently managed to do is ensure that CTPetro funds – which support research in oil and natural gas – will not be cut in the case of oil fields where bids have already been made.

However, it hasn’t been voted on yet; we have to stay on top of it. We’re also paying close attention to the science, technology, and innovation code. I’ve been attending the public hearings. The law that governs universities is number 8.666, which wasn’t written with science in mind. It’s actually anti-science.

What do you mean?

Here at Unifesp, we had to return money to Finep because it was impossible to use the funds. We were the first university to create translational medicine.

We submitted a project, which was approved by Finep, but we couldn’t use the money. Every single construction tender ran into trouble with the Office of the Prosecutor for the Public Interest and with the Federal Audit Court (TCU).

The way the law is now, it blocks spending. At a public hearing of the committee chaired by Rep. Gabriel Chalita, which I attended in Brasília, there were representatives of the Audit Court and the Office of the Attorney General. I offered a number of examples. I noted that it had been necessary to devise specific legislation for the World Cup and the 14 z special issue February 2014

Olympics, without which these events could not possibly be hosted. Are the World Cup and the Olympics more important than education and science?

I’m going to keep asking this question.

We’re also fighting for more streamlined laws on biodiversity. Look at how companies such as Natura have been penalized and how they’ve been showered with lawsuits. There are more publications on Brazilian biodiversity abroad than here in Brazil, and we keep seeing this. I think this trend is anti-Brazil. If the young people who have taken to the streets want some causes, I can give them several. We are also paying close attention to enforcement of the National Education Plan (PNE). The salary that teachers had been promised hasn’t come through.

I’d like to talk a little about your career.

You spent some periods in the United States, but you didn’t want to settle there. Why not?

I went to the United States for the first time when I received a scholarship from the American Field Service. I went to Pennsylvania, where I spent my senior year of high school. When I got to the United States, I took a test, and they put me in advanced placement (AP) math, which is equivalent to the first year of college math. I studied differential and integral calculus, AP chemistry, and AP English. I got a lot out of it, and I graduated there. My grades were very good, and I received a scholarship to go to college in Pennsylvania, room and board included. However, by the time I found out about it, I’d just returned to Brazil, and I said, “I’m not going.” I don’t regret it. I went to college here, at the Paulista School of Medicine. I was in the second class of the biomedical sciences course.

I could have gone on to study medicine; this was guaranteed. However, I didn’t want to because at some point I decided, “I want to do science.”

When did you realize you wanted to be a researcher?

Early on in my coursework, because of the challenges in the laboratory. We had a lot of laboratory experience. Nobody taught classes. They told us to study: “Here it is. It’s this chapter.” Nobody asked if we knew how to read English.

It was all in English. It was an innovative

course. The more they demanded of us, the more we liked it. It was a small, very close-knit class.

You met Prof. Dietrich in your fourth year, correct?

I was already doing an internship in biochemistry, working with Prof. Leal Prado, when Prof. Dietrich returned from Canada, where he had spent six years and even become a citizen. He was a young prodigy, headed towards a full professorship at the age of 33. Prado didn’t ask me what I wanted. He just said, “Look, you’re going to work with Prof. Dietrich,” and gave me a bunch of papers to read. I did an internship with him in my fourth year of biochemistry and then went straight on to my doctorate. I defended my PhD in 1974 and then spent a year and a half doing a post-doc at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles and at the Veterans Administration Hospital in San Fernando Valley on a Fogarty grant from the National Institutes of Health.

My résumé was already very strong. I had published a lot. I published one paper as an undergraduate and, I think, ten or twelve as a doctoral candidate.

Curiously enough, I decided to work with Walter Marx, who had conducted pioneering research in the study of the biosynthesis of heparin. I’ve always been involved with glycosaminoglycans, especially heparin. I chose this laboratory because of the references I’d seen in the literature, but I didn’t know that it had been practically shut down. They called me in for a meeting at the Fogarty Center and told me: “Do you know we’ve talked a lot about your case here?

Given your résumé, which is not run of the mill, we were struck by the choice you made.” I said: “I didn’t know. If you were aware of this, it was your obligation to tell me.” They replied that they wanted to see how I’d handle it. I paid a high price, having to set up a laboratory, when what I wanted as a post-doctoral student was to take advantage of the structure of a large laboratory. However, I proved that I’m capable. I arranged to collaborate with a researcher who was developing mastocytomas, which resulted in a paper. I had to start from scratch. I cut acrylic – people would come around to watch – and I made my electrophoresis boxes.

And then you came back to Brazil.

I came back in 1977. Then, in 1978, I spent three or four months in Modena, Italy, because an industry asked for help identifying all of the components in a natural product of animal origin that was being sold throughout Europe. The challenge was not only identifying the ingredients but also obtaining 100 grams of each component. Ninety percent was nucleic acid. Just think – I had to get 100 grams from each of them. I acquired recognized experience in analyzing heparin. We are providing a model here. Prof.

Dietrich set it up. I had the privilege of starting with him and of continuing as his partner. Before he passed away, many people thought that I produced scientific research because I was with Dietrich. This always upset him a lot. We got married and had a daughter. After that, whatever I produced was because he was a leading scientist.

He’d then say, “These people don’t understand anything; I’m the privileged one.” I’d reply, “Then that makes two of us.” We complemented each other. I miss him very much. Very much indeed.

He was my friend. We exchanged ideas. However, I keep on producing.

the first laboratory to show that biological heparin activity has nothing to do with pharmacological activity.

We published a paper. By that time, I was already serving as an advisor, and in this case, my advisee was Anita Straus Takahashi, who showed the distribution of heparin in some tissues.

There was also a publication with folks from the Biological Institute. Osvaldo Sant’Anna had the mice, which he selected by immune response. A mouse that produces lots of antibodies has little heparin in its skin, and the one that makes few antibodies has lots of heparin. Moreover, female mice have twice as much heparin as males. We even showed the distribution related to gender. It was a very nice piece of

Where is this research now?

In terms of heparan sulfate, we have a very large focus on its role in endothelial cells, because the endothelium in itself is an antithrombotic system because blood has to go through it.

Heparan, heparin, and our compounds have turned into stars; things have actually gone a bit overboard. There’s a great deal of collaboration in Brazil and within our university. I’m proud of this. Many medical students and doctors are here conducting their work. I have a collaborative effort with ophthalmology. The student who did his doctorate with me won an international award; he then went to the New England Eye Institute and Tufts Medical School. Today, he’s an assistant physician at the Paulista School of Medicine and a lecturer at Tufts Medical School.

Using a choroidal neovascularization model that he set up, we demonstrated the role of a glycosaminoglycan (that we isolated from shrimp head waste) as an angiogenesis inhibitor. I’m working with cancer cells through angiogenesis. I have a collaborative effort going with orthopedics and with plastic surgery, morphology, nephrology, cardiac surgery, and urology, among others.

In my undergraduate studies, I had a lot of laboratory experience.

The more they demanded, the more we liked it

Speaking of your contribution in the area of heparin, when did it start?

It started with my doctoral dissertation. Prof. Prado had brought Prof. Gordon to Brazil from a London university.

He was one of the pioneers in isoelectric focusing (IEF), a technique that is still used today to separate proteins and peptides based on their isoelectric point. You have a mixture of proteins, and you see them separate. They stop at different times during electrophoresis. So I said, “Gosh, I’m going to do that with heparin.” It was the first piece of literature that showed that heparin has different components with different molecular weights, and it is the only compound among the glycosaminoglycans that displays these characteristics. The method was used in industry to characterize heparin.

This work dates back to 1974. We were

research. We saw that the distribution of heparin was associated with the organism’s defense mechanisms against pathogens. In one experiment, we administered endotoxin, and the mouse that produced large quantities of antibodies died quickly, while our little buddy who didn’t know how to make antibodies survived. Then, we got to examining heparin in invertebrates.

The clams that you eat in pasta are full of heparin, with the same tissue distribution as in vertebrates – if you substitute ‘lungs’ for ‘branchia’. Our laboratory drew up the phylogenetic tree of glycosaminoglycans. Heparin and heparan sulfate are our lab’s two flagships.

How many researchers have you trained?

Almost one hundred, including master’s and doctoral students, but not counting post-doctorates and undergraduates. A number of those who did only their master’s degree with me are now working at laboratories in private enterprise. Those with doctorates are at research laboratories and universities around Brazil and abroad. It’s good to see their success and see that they’re outdoing you.

I was thrilled when Selma Jerônimo, who did both her master’s and doctorate under me, was recently published in Nature Genetics. I said, “The daughter has surpassed her mother.” The paper has international co-authors, but the experiments were conducted at Selma’s laboratory in Rio Grande do Norte. I think that this is a legacy. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 15

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Internationalization of São Paulo research is enhanced by the arrival of FAPESP grantee post-doctoral researchers from abroad Bruno de Pierro Published in August 2013

16 z special issue February 2014

ecent FAPESP data show that the flow of post-doctoral researchers from other countries to São Paulo State institutions is undergoing significant changes. The most significant example is observed in the field of physical and earth sciences; in 2007, 16% of the Foundation’s post-doctoral grants were made to researchers who had earned their undergraduate degrees in other countries. Among new grants awarded in 2012, that figure has jumped to 34%.

The change is also observed in other fields between 2007 and 2012, such as biological sciences, where the increase was from 6% to 11%, and applied social sciences, where grants rose from zero to 6%. The only area that experienced a reduction in the proportion of grants awarded annually to post-doctoral candidates who had performed their undergraduate work abroad was agricultural sciences, which declined from 2% in 2007 to 1% in 2012 (see graph).

Illustration fabio otubo Infographics ana paula campos

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More and more brains are being lured to São Paulo because of factors such as international recognition of a growing number of Brazilian research groups engaged in competitive science and an increase in incentives to internalize Brazil’s research efforts, a process in which FAPESP has played a major role by offering grants to researchers from other countries. Another influential factor is the economic crisis afflicting Europe and the United States that has led to budget cuts in science. In certain fields, these factors are augmented by supervisors’ efforts to establish lasting partnerships with research groups in other countries, which have favored the increased international presence of laboratories in the past decade.

“Supervisors are usually key figures in attracting foreign researchers. They are selected by the grant recipients because they frequently attend international conferences or are becoming known

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Countries of origin of post-doctoral researchers Number of post-doctoral grants awarded by FAPESP to researchers who had completed undergraduate studies abroad, by country of origin (2007-2012) Peru Argentina Colombia France India United States Italy Spain Germany England Cuba Portugal Chile Russia China Uruguay Iran Mexico Pakistan Venezuela

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2 2 Chile Uruguay 9 Argentina

because of the quality of the articles they publish,” notes Edgar Dutra Zanotto, a researcher at the Center for Science and Technology at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCAR). Zanotto, who received the Admiral Álvaro Alberto Prize for Science and Technology this year, is known internationally as a leader in the study of kinetic processes in glass and vitroceramics; he has already welcomed dozens of grantees from various countries to his laboratory. However, scientific progress is not the only decisive factor in attracting the attention of good researchers from other countries. The structure in place for the researchers work must also satisfy their expectations. These individuals usually trained at well-regarded universities and research institutions. “In physical sciences, laboratory structure is vital if one is to receive researchers from abroad,” Vanderlei Bagnato agrees. He is a professor at the São Carlos Institute of Physics (IFSC) at the University of São Paulo (USP). “Along with organizational structure, we see that the size of our grants is also considered to be high and competitive,” says Bagnato, who recently helped organize an event at IFSC that was attended by five Nobel Price recipients (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue Nº 205).

In the context of internationalization, in 2009, FAPESP created the São Paulo School of Ad18 z special issue February 2014

Biological sciences Physical and earth sciences Agricultural sciences Human sciences Health sciences Engineering sciences Linguistics, letters, and arts Applied social sciences Interdisciplinary studies

296 232 130 127 124 104 90 25 7

vanced Science program, a type of support that seeks to increase the international exposure of areas of São Paulo research that are already competitive on the world scene. The program offers opportunities for São Paulo researchers to organize short courses to which they invite researchers from São Paulo and different parts of the world. The audience for the courses must be made up of undergraduate and graduate students as well as young PhDs, at least half of whom are to be recruited from outside Brazil. One objective is to showcase the opportunities for research in São Paulo and attract the best students and researchers from abroad.

The prominence achieved by the physical sciences can be explained by the pioneering efforts of certain groups, such as Bagnato’s, which study quantum turbulence in Bose-Einstein condensates – the name given to a group of atoms or

11 Scotland

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10 97 Denmark England 25 3 The Netherlands 3 Wales 11 73 Poland Belgium Germany 1 Czech 108 12 Republic France Switzerland 2 Austria

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84 Spain

“The size of our grants is high and competitive,” says Vanderlei Bagnato

43 Italy 2 Greece

molecules that, when cooled to temperatures near absolute zero, begin to behave like a single entity. Because of these pioneering efforts, U.S. researcher Kyle Joseph Thompson, after completing his doctorate at the University of Florida in Gainesville, asked Bagnato to supervise him in his post-doctoral work in Brazil. “I decided to study turbulence in quantum fluids and after an exhaustive search, I discovered that Professor Bagnato’s group at USP was the most renowned in that subject,” says Thompson. “Here, in Brazil, I am working alongside people from various parts of the world using the most modern methods and technologies that exist,” he adds.

In areas such as health sciences, although the number of researchers from other countries is rising, the percentage of grant recipients who had completed their undergraduate work abroad is still low. Of the 61 post-doctoral grants awarded by FAPESP in 2007 in health sciences, two were given to researchers from other countries. However, in 2012, the number of grants awarded had risen to 111, of which six were for post-doctoral researchers from abroad.

“The truth is there is repressed demand. There are many more young PhDs in other countries who could benefit from the experience of working in Brazil,” argues Carlos Augusto Monteiro, professor and researcher in the field of nutri-

tion at USP’s School of Public Health and one of the people in São Paulo responsible for recruiting researchers from other countries to the health field. Currently, Monteiro is supervising the post-doctoral work of a young Canadian anthropologist, a graduate of the University of Montreal. Monteiro is also waiting for an answer from FAPESP on the grant application filed by a Colombian, who finished his PhD at the University of Washington. According to Monteiro, the health sciences are receiving few researchers from other countries because, perhaps, the Brazilians have not been active enough in publicizing the availability of openings and grants at events and doctoral programs in other countries.

Aggressive promotion

Among the steps taken by Monteiro to attract good candidates from abroad is a more aggressive publicity campaign that clearly communicates his willingness to welcome grant recipients. His group has developed a singular line of research that explores relations between changes in the global food system, diet quality, and the current pandemic of obesity. Canadian Jean-Claude Moubarac, who holds a PhD in public health, was uncertain what his post-doctoral research subject would be or where it would be performed until he read an article by Monteiro in an interpESQUISA FAPESP z 19

Research networks

“Traditionally, human sciences are marked more by the departure of Brazilians for foreign shores than by the arrival of researchers from elsewhere”, observes Paula Montero, president of the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap) and an assistant coordinator at FAPESP. She explains that in anthropology, for example, internationalization is vital to ensure that progress is made through the establishment of comparative research networks. In the past ten years, this internationalization has enabled Brazil to advance in collaborative research by increasing its participation in global debates surrounding anthropology. “The hardest part, however, is to cause these reflections that are typical of peripheral countries to have an impact on the dominant countries,” says Paula Montero.

According to Zingano, recruiting researchers from abroad must continue to be an objective because it has a positive impact on the research groups that receive them. “Brazilian students and researchers in training who live and work with post-docs learn new procedures and come to realize that they need to be more professional,” 20 z special issue February 2014

he says. The economic crisis in the United States and in Europe has favored the arrival of researchers in the humanities who, if conditions at home were more favorable, perhaps would not end up in Brazil. This is the case of Evan Keeling, an American from West Virginia, who came to do research alongside Zingano in 2011. Escaping the economic crisis in his own country, he unexpectedly found very good conditions for researching and taking part in discussions about ancient philosophy at USP. “São Paulo is becoming more attractive to academicians from other countries. With respect to ancient philosophy, Professor Zingano’s published works are respected both in the United States and in Europe and that also influenced my choice,” says Keeling, who believes that Brazil would attract more researchers if it invested in publicizing grants and found ways to reduce the bureaucracy involved. Venezuelan Simon Noriega Olmos, another researcher supervised by Zingano, recalls that the process of obtaining documents from the Federal Police was discouraging. When Canadian Jean-Claude Moubarac needed to rent an apartment as soon as he arrived in São Paulo, he encountered obstacles that made it difficult to obtain permission to live on his chosen property.

Help came from his supervisor, researcher Carlos Augusto Monteiro. “I had to rent the apartment in my name,” says Monteiro.

With regard to agricultural sciences, José Roberto Postali Parra, professor at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture at USP and assistant coordinator in life sciences at FAPESP, says that although Brazil is considered to be a leader in tropical agriculture and has developed its own technologies, so much progress is being made today in biotechnology and biochemistry worldwide that Brazil is forced to seek out researchers and obtain knowledge from other countries. However, the field of agricultural sciences receives the fewest post-doctoral FAPESP research grantees

Post-doctoral researchers Evan Keeling, American, and Jean-Claude Moubarac, Canadian, were attracted by the quality of research being conducted in ancient philosophy and nutrition at the University of São Paulo

Photos léo ramos

national scientific journal. “From that moment on, I realized that we shared interests and common world views about health and nutrition,” he says. In São Paulo since 2011, Moubarac now recognizes that he chose the right place to do his work. “Researchers in public health in other countries would benefit from learning more about the Brazilian experience,” he says.

In other cases, the secret to attracting intelligence is to maintain active communications with research institutions and groups in other countries, even if the fruits of those relationships take a while to appear. “Two years ago, I put out a call for three post-doctoral grants. I received 16 proposals from applicants. Incredibly, all were from outside Brazil,” reports Marco Antonio de Avila Zingano, professor at the USP Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences. Now, Zingano is supervising four post-doctoral research grantees from abroad. His group, devoted to ancient philosophy, is now part of the core international academic group that is studying the subject and participating in networks of dissemination and publication on the Internet that connect Latin America, Europe, and the United States. “This active participation in the international scene was crucial when it came time to publish the request for proposals years ago,” Zingano says. In 2007, FAPESP awarded 50 post-doctoral grants in human sciences, and three of the researchers came from abroad. By 2012, 69 grants were awarded, six of them to post-doctoral researchers from other countries.

Omar Mertins learned new methods abroad that he can apply in Brazilian laboratories

mentary to the work already done in Brazil,” he explains. With respect to engineering, José Roberto Arruda, professor at the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) and an assistant coordinator at FAPESP in physical sciences and engineering, says the Bepe program enables the researchers to enrich their training, particularly by working in the context of scientific practices that are often more objective and well-established. “The program also fulfills the function of attracting good students by giving them the chance to grow as researchers and as individuals through the experience of an internship in a foreign country,” Arruda says.

When Omar Mertins, a post-doctoral researcher at USP’s Institute of Physics, decided to embark in June 2012 for Strasbourg in eastern France, the objective was to learn new procedures without which he would be unable to move forward with his research on systems that simulate biologfrom abroad. Only 22 grants ical membranes. During the were awarded to researchers seven months that he was an from other countries between “Sao Paulo intern at the Charles Sadron 2005 and 2012. During the is becoming Institute, Mertins became acsame period of time, this numquainted with the pipette miber is less than the grants given more attractive cromanipulation technique, to foreign researchers in fields which is indispensable for such as human sciences, which to researchers evaluating physical aspects of recorded 41, and engineering, the lipid membrane studied with 77 post-doctoral grants. from other under luminous irradiation. countries,” “We brought that technolIn the opposite direction ogy to Brazil; it was unheard The arrival of researchers from says Evan of here,” the researcher says. other countries is accompanied He accumulated additional by a departure of Brazilian stuKeeling experiences abroad when he dents and researchers, who are interned first in France durheaded for internships in other ing his doctoral work then in countries. Between October Germany as a post-doctoral 2011 and May 2013, FAPESP researcher. awarded 1,135 grants through Doctoral student Aline Silva Mello Cesar, at the the Research Internships Abroad (Bepe), a program designed to encourage undergraduate, mas- Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture at USP, ters, doctoral and post-doctoral researchers from benefited from a previous partnership between São Paulo to internationalize their research. The her advisor in Brazil and the laboratory in the primary destination for these internships, which United States where she spent a year as an intern. vary from one month to six years, is the United Mello Cesar returned in June from her experience States. Between October 2011 and May 2013, the at Iowa State University, where she encountered a U.S. received 420 grantees from São Paulo who new technology for RNA sequencing and genomic were funded by FAPESP; 136 worked in the bio- association. “Here in Brazil we have equipment logical sciences and 80 in the physical sciences. for performing that procedure but not for organizFrance received 108 grantees, with most (27) from ing the results,” the student explains. She studies the identification and characterization of genes the field of human sciences (see graph).

According to Walter Colli, professor at USP associated with the deposition and composition and an assistant coordinator in life sciences at of intramuscular fat in Nelore cattle. Thanks to FAPESP, the most successful element of the Bepe the internship, Mello Cesar was able to present program is that it requires grant recipients to de- the preliminary findings of her project at intervelop their work abroad in accordance with the national conferences. “Every researcher should line of research they are conducting here in Brazil. have the chance to go abroad and bring back new “FAPESP requires the internship to be comple- knowledge to Brazilian science,” she says. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 21

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Computer representation of future LNLS installations: first third-generation source in Latin America

Sirius' partners The Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory involves innovative companies in the construction of its new light source Fabricio Marques and Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade Published in July 2013

T

he Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS) is inviting innovative Brazilian companies to help build Sirius, a new, thirdgeneration synchrotron light source that will replace the current source, which has been in operation since 1997. The project will cost R$650 million, to be funded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) and other partners. On June 28, 2013, LNLS held a Sirius Partnerships workshop, in which it presented a list of the technological challenges involved in building the new source to about 50 company representatives. The estimate is that at least 70% of the project will be carried out with the 22 z special issue February 2014

assistance of partners. The workshop was a response to a 2009 suggestion by FAPESP, which gave the MCTI the idea of using the construction of Sirius as an opportunity to mobilize the research and development capacity of companies in the state of São Paulo.

Peter Wongtschowski, president of the Board of Directors of the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), the organization responsible for managing the LNLS, said the initiative is an opportunity to strengthen Brazilian companies. "Importing will always be our second option. Our goal is to meet the demands of science and technology in Brazil and generate opportunities for

domestic companies to invest in innovation." According to physicist Antonio José Roque da Silva, director of the LNLS, this type of partnership has differing impacts on businesses. "For a large company, the interaction is advantageous because it involves their teams in sophisticated challenges and qualifies them as suppliers in the accelerator market," says Silva.

Two companies have already begun work: WEG, in Santa Catarina, is building the electromagnets, and Termomecanica, in São Bernardo do Campo, will provide copper pipes that require a different kind of lamination. Silva says that for start-ups, signing a significant contract is a challenge for a business that is still seeking to establish itself.

WEG's manufacture of electromagnets is a challenge, since they are not common production line products, says Antonio Cesar da Silva, the company’s director of marketing and institutional relations.

"We’ve always been driven by technological challenges. So much so that, in addition to an administrative board, we also have a science and technology board," he says.

According to Luis Carlos Rabello, Termomecanica board member, the chance to participate in the Sirius project will yield more than financial benefits: "The partnership will be productive for our company and for the country, which still lags behind in technological innovation.”

Technological challenges The LNLS is seeking companies to develop the following equipment, devices and systems AREA

PRODUCTS

Optics

Masks for beamlines RMonochrome beamline slits

Power Electronics

High-power current sources

Selection

The LNLS selected a set of challenges to be presented to companies (see box).

They include, for example, "fluorescent monitors for electron beam profiles" and "development of low-power current sources," identified by mapping the set of systems and components needed for the ring. Some are expected to be delivered next year, while others only need to be ready later. In the case of the electromagnets from WEG, delivery will be staggered over time – more than a thousand parts need to be manufactured. Other components, such as the monitoring train, only need to be delivered when the tunnel is ready in 2016. In the coming weeks, the companies that show interest will be assessed based on their technical capacity.

After the selection is made, the companies must keep to a tight schedule, which includes prototyping, testing and manufacturing. Some of the components will be produced abroad. "Some sophisticated systems require a long production process, such as the manufacture of mirrors.

There would not be time to produce them in Brazil," said Silva.

Involving companies in the construction of large scientific facilities is common practice in Europe and the United States, but still rare in Brazil. The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) uses the competence of Brazilian aerospace technology companies in various projects. The construction of the dome for the SOAR telescope in the Chilean Andes, and the development of cosmic ray detectors for the Pierre Auger Observatory, in Argentina – projects supported by FAPESP – used domestic high-technology companies as suppliers (see Pesquisa FAPESP Nº 188).

"The LNLS provides an opportunity for companies in the state of São Paulo to develop and train their personnel. They can submit projects for funding through FAPESP programs, such as the Innovative Research in Small Businesses Program (Pipe)," said Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, FAPESP Scientific director, who attended the workshop. "A country can-

Low-power current sources

Digital source-regulation modules Ultra-high vacuum

All-metal vacuum valves Metal chambers for ultra-high vacuum conditions Chambers for optical elements in vacuum conditions

Automation/Robotics

Robots Gamma Shutter (equip. to block gamma rays) Photon Shutter (equip. to block photons) Sample holder for experiments

Data control and supervision

Connectivity equipment Universal Control Board (UCB)

Mechanics and heat transfer

Nitrogen supply source Helium supply source

Beam diagnosis electronics

RF Front End (assembly and testing of boards) FMC Digitizer (assembly and testing of boards) Digital Back End (assembly and testing of boards) Photon position detector electronics

Beam diagnosis mechanical equipment

mechanical equipment for electron position measurement Fluorescent monitors

Materials

Heating tape

Mechanical

Mixers for RF amplifiers Waveguide systems Racks Mounts Mount alignment sockets Hutch (for experiments)

Control and automation

Tunnel monitoring train Interlock exchanges

Electronics

not be strong in science and research in academia unless it is also has companies that are strong in these areas," he stated.

During construction of the first accelerator, from 1987 to 1997, there was little partnership with companies. "The first accelerator was built almost entirely inhouse, in part because of the social environment at that time, such as high inflation, the difficulty in importing anything and financial uncertainties," said Silva.

Synchrotron radiation is generated by electrons produced in an accelerator, which circle in a large ring at nearly the speed of light and, when they pass by magnets, deflect due to the magnetic field. Photons are emitted, resulting in

Cables

synchrotron light. The electromagnetic waves at the LNLS are used by researchers all over the country, at end stations or beamlines at different points around the ring, in studies of the atomic structure of materials such as polymers, rocks, and metals, in addition to proteins, molecules for drugs and cosmetics, or even threedimensional images of fossils or even cells.

Based on technical specifications Sirius will be the only third-generation device in Latin America. "The partnership with industry is crucial because it will give us this perspective of innovation and scientific and technological development in Brazil," said Luiz Antônio Elias, the executive secretary of the MCTI. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 23

Science CELL BIOLOGY y

Metastatic RNA A new study shows the role of a special type of ribonucleic acid in spreading cancer Marcos Pivetta Published in September 2013

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he sequences of the human genome that do not encode proteins, which a decade ago were considered to be junk DNA, have been shown to be important in understanding the cellular machinery involved in certain biological processes and diseases. HOTAIR, a gene located on human chromosome 12, generates a very long RNA comprising 2,200 nucleotides. However, it does not encode a protein. Recent studies indicate that this portion of the genetic sequence appears to play an important role in regulating metastasis, the cellular mechanism that allows cancer cells to spread from one organ to another, thus leading to tumors in other parts of the body. A new study by researchers at the Center for Cell-Based Therapy (CTC) at the Ribeirão Preto School of Medicine of the University of São Paulo (FMRP-USP) details the important role of HOTAIR RNA in the metastatic process.

This study indicates that HOTAIR is responsible for activating the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in tumors. EMT is a 24 z special issue February 2014

process that alters the morphology and functionality of a subset of cancer cells. “Thus, the tumor’s epithelial cells are transformed into mesenchymal cells and start to behave as if they were cancer stem cells,” says Wilson Araújo da Silva Junior, a CTC geneticist and one of the authors of the study that was published in the September 2013 issue of Stem Cells. “Cancer cells gain the ability to detach from the original tumor, migrate

Epithelial cells (in red) and mesenchymal cells (in green): the green are capable of migration, while the red are not

The role of HOTAIR in tumor migration RNA stimulates some cancer cells to gain the ability to spread to other organs

EPITHELIAL-MESENCHYMAL TRANSITION (EMT)

PRIMARY TUMOR Epithelial tumor cells

METASTASIS

TGF-ß1 Bloodstream TGF -ß1 Receptor

Fibroblasts RNA Hotair

Epithelial tumor cell

Stem cell

Cells begin to act like

Leukocytes Tumor stem cells

The USP study shows that, when

stem cells of the original tumor.

stimulated by the transformation factor

They are capable of migrating

TGF-ß1, HOTAIR RNA promotes EMT.

through the blood, settling

Some epithelial tumor cells become

in other organs, and generating

mesenchymal cancer cells

new cancers (metastases)

PHOTO christina scheel / whitehead institute ILLUSTRATION pedro hamdan

SOURCE wilson araújo da silva junior

through the bloodstream and adhere to other organs and generate new cancers.”

In addition to promoting the spread of the disease throughout the body via metastasis, EMT also helps to perpetuate the cells of the original tumor.

EMT is a transformation that typically occurs in the early stages of embryonic development and is involved in generating various types of body tissue. It is also associated with healing processes such as fibrosis and wound regeneration. In these normal processes, EMT is beneficial to the preservation of life. However, EMT also contributes to the development of tumors. Epithelial cells form the both the skin and the internal lining (mucosa) of its cavities. They are unable to break away from other cells and cannot spread throughout the body or become other cell types. Their appearance and functions differ from those of mesenchymal cells, which are able to spread throughout the body and transform into other cell types. Therefore, without EMT, it would be difficult for a tumor to spread throughout the body.

Cellular reprogramming

Chemotherapy and radiation are able to kill most cancer cells, but not those that are part of the EMT, such as cancer stem cells. Cancer stem cells are thought to be responsible for the return of the original tumor and its appearance elsewhere in the body. “Tumor cells are heterogeneous," says Marco Antonio Zago, another author of the article and coordinator of the CTC, one of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) maintained by FAPESP. “In the experiment, when we suppressed the HOTAIR, we saw that EMT did not occur.” While the data are only preliminary, evidence suggests that blocking the action of HOTAIR may be a way to combat metastasis.

The USP researchers worked with human tumor cells from the breast and colon. “These forms of cancer are widely used models in this type of study,” says Cleidson Pádua Alves, a biologist who did his postdoctoral studies at the USP center and is the primary author of the article. Dr. Alves and colleagues discovered that by administering the transformation factor TGF-ß1 to cancer cells

grown in vitro, the HOTAIR RNA was activated. This led to changes in the functions of several genes, and EMT occurred. Increased HOTAIR activation further intensified this process. However, neutralization of the gene that produces the HOTAIR RNA blocked EMT. “This RNA is part of the cellular programming required for metastasis to occur,” says Silva. Prior to this study, there was evidence that both HOTAIR, which belongs to a new class of RNAs termed lincRNAs (long intergenic non-coding RNAs), and the EMT mechanism were related to cancer progression. However, it was not known that HOTAIR played an essential role in activating EMT. n Project Center for Cell-Based Therapy (CTC) (No. 2013/08135-2); Grant Mechanism Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDC); Coordinator Marco Antonio Zago / FMRP-USP; Investment R$4.5 million per year for the entire RIDC (FAPESP).

Scientific article ALVES, C.P. et al. The lincRNA HOTAIR is required for the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and stemness maintenance of cancer cell lines. Stem Cells. In press.

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PHYSICS y

The power of collisions Collisions between grains is the main driver of sandstorms Igor Zolnerkevic

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he basic ingredients of a sandstorm are, obviously, strong wind and lots of sand. Still, until recently, no researcher had ever managed to create a physical model based on these two elements that was able to fully explain the strength of these storms. An article written by Brazilian and foreign physicists and published in the August 2013 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters (PRL) now allows us to understand why these storms reach colossal dimensions in regions near the great deserts of the Earth, such as the Gobi in Asia and the Sahara in Africa. Millions of tons of sand and dust can be blown thousands of kilometers, blocking roads, impeding air traffic, burying structures and eroding topsoil.

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Before, researchers thought that computer simulation of the trajectory of each grain of sand in a storm would be impossible. Therefore, the models used simplified assumptions. One was that when blown by the wind, the virtual grains never collided with each other. This assumption was applied because it was believed that collisions between grains in the air hindered the progress of a storm, shortening the trajectory of the grains.

Now, an international team led by Brazilian physicist Marcus Carneiro of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) has concluded otherwise.

By comparing simulations with and without collisions between the grains, the researchers have shown that air collisions are key to the increase in the number of particles involved in a storm.

“To take the collisions into account, one must develop very efficient mathematical programs and use advanced computing power,” says Portuguese physicist Nuno Araújo, also at ETH and the second author of the PRL paper describing the results. The new simulations followed the trajectory of only a handful of grains of sand – approximately 4,000 grains blown by wind using a simplified model – but they were the first to describe the air collisions realistically.

DAVID EAST / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Published in September of 2013

Stormy weather: dust storm on the road connecting the cities of Melbourne and Geelong, in Australia

Saltons

The results of the new simulations demonstrate that collisions more than double the wind’s capacity to transport sand. It was already widely known that a storm begins when the wind lifts a layer of sand several centimeters above the ground. Some of these grains – known as saltons – fly much higher than the others, gaining more energy from the wind, whose speed increases with height. Sometimes, saltons fall and

create more saltons when they collide with the grains in the layer closer to the ground. The new simulations indicate, however, that before approaching the ground, a salton may collide with several other grains that are flying just slightly above average height, transferring some of its energy to them. These collisions in midair generate additional saltons, thickening sandstorm clouds.

In addition to more accurately predicting the intensity of storms, the new

model should change what is understood about the formation and movement of sand dunes. According to Araújo, the theory can be verified in laboratory tests by observing the movement of artificial grains with different elastic properties. n

Scientific article CARNEIRO, M.V. et al. Midair collisions enhance saltation.

Physical Review Letters. v. 111, n. 5. 2013.

pESQUISA FAPESP z 27

OPTICS y

Whirls of light A new technique alters light beam wavefronts, allowing the manipulation of microscopic objects and the transmission of greater quantities of information Published in September 2013

T

he geometric figures projected by a laser beam in the laboratory of physicist Cid Bartolomeu de Araújo at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) may appear to be a trivial trick. However, these light patterns, only a few micrometers in size, are not made of simply any type of light; they are true whirls of light known as optical vortices. When they strike a microscopic object, such as a speck of dust or a living cell, these vortices cause the object to move and follow the shape of the projected figure continuouslyut there are many technological applications of optical vortices. Already used in physics and biology experiments to manipulate matter at the submicroscopic level, the vortices promise to increase the volume of information transmitted through optical fibers several hundred-fold. They can also serve as a basis for a new generation of optoelectronic circuits with nanometric dimensions. One advantage of the technique, developed by a trio of physicists at UFPE, is that it gives researchers and engineers the freedom to shape the optical vortices into the form they need for their applications.

This effect still may not seem significant, but there are many technological applications for optical vortices. While currently used in physics and biology experiments to manipulate matter at the submicroscopic level, the vortices could also potentially increase the volume of information transmitted through optical fibers by several hundred-fold.

28 z special issue February 2014

They could serve as a basis for a new generation of optoelectronic circuits with nanometric dimensions. One advantage of the technique, developed by a trio of physicists at UFPE, is to give researchers and engineers the freedom to shape the optical vortices into the form needed for their applications.

The techniques for creating optical vortices were first developed in the early 1990s by a group of physicists led by Les Allen and Han Woerdman at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands, who produced vortices that formed circular circuits. Vortices with other geometries have been obtained, but they were generated using more complicated techniques or techniques that generated only certain types of shapes. "We found a way to get any shape with the same experimental setup used to generate the circular vortices," explains physicist Anderson Amaral, first author of the article describing the discovery published in the May 2013 issue of the journal Optics Letters).

Corkscrew

To produce an optical vortex, the researchers point a conventional laser beam at a liquid crystal screen. Before reaching the screen, the wave of light from the laser propagates as a series of plane wavefronts. When the wavefronts penetrate the liquid crystal, they are reflected according to the geometric pattern of light and dark bands created by rearranging the molecules of the computer-controlled liquid crystal screen.

Dark areas reflect light instantly, while light bands delay reflection. Thus, the geometric pattern slows certain parts of the light wavefronts, resulting in the plane wavefronts taking on the shape of a corkscrew (see illustration).

When the spiral light beam is projected onto a wall, one sees a ring of light instead of a bright spot. The twisting of the wave cancels its intensity on the beam's axis and creates a dark area at its center.

At the same time, the remaining light ring gains the power to move particles or small objects sensitive to the subtle power of light. Thus, the particles affected by the beam travel the circuit formed by the ring. The greater the twisting of the light, that is, the shorter the distance between the turns of the corkscrew-shaped wave, as determined by the number of dark and light bands in the liquid crystal display, the faster the particles rotate.

Amaral began investigating ways to control the twisting of light last year when he started his Ph.D. under the supervision of Araújo and the physicist Edilson Falcão Filho, also at UFPE. Amaral's objective was to use optical vortices to manipulate the electrons in a metal. Currently, electronic circuits cannot be smaller than a few micrometers (thousandths of a millimeter). However, many researchers are working to create circuits up to a thousand times smaller that would operate based on nanometric oscillations of electrons, called plasmons, created and controlled by special light beams, such as optical vortices.

Dynamic Mirror Patterns generated on liquid crystal screens shape light beams, causing them to move small objects

1

PLANE WAVE

2

LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY

3

SPIRAL WAVE

4

PARTICLE TRAJECTORY

molding the light

A part of the plane waves (1) is delayed when reflected by light bands in a liquid crystal display (2). The reflected waves take the shape of a spiral corkscrew (3). The spiral wave makes microscopic particles rotate and traverse a circuit (4).

Brazilian physicists have discovered a new way to change the pattern of shadows in the crystal and to control the light beam and the trajectory

Images amaral et al. optics letters (2013) Illustration fabio otubo

of the particles

Physicists from the state of Pernambuco explored a property of optical vortices called topological charge. Roughly speaking, this charge is a number that determines how many turns the light corkscrew possesses. "Everyone calls this quantity topological charge, but its topological [geometric] properties are rarely discussed," says Amaral. Mathematicians state that two geometric figures have the same topology if one can be molded into the other without cutting or pasting their points. A sphere can be transformed into a cube using this technique, while a cup can generate a donut and vice versa. Similarly, the researchers noted that it would be possible to change the shape of the light vortices without changing their topology. In other words, the ring of light could take different shapes, the letter L, for example, and maintain the ability to transmit its rotation to a particle.

Circles and triangles

The novelty of the technique developed

by Araújo's team is the shaping of the vortex ring by changing the format in the center of the black and white pattern on the liquid crystal screen. In the article in Optics Letters, Araújo's team demonstrated the technique by creating L-shaped vortices, elongated circles and triangles. "We are extending the technique to create more complex shapes," says Araújo.

"This is a very efficient approach for molding optical vortices," says Johannes Courtial, a physicist in Miles Padgett's group at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, one of the most important groups studying optical vortices in the world. According to Courtial, the way the dark central portion of the vortex acts as a sort of mold for the bright part of the vortex is very interesting.

Although focused on the application of the vortices to plasmon circuits, the UFPE group believes the technique could also be useful in telecommunications. Current optical fibers carry messages simultaneously by means of laser beams of different wavelengths traveling together inside the fibers. The limit on information flow is on the order of 10 gigabits per second. An international group of engineers demonstrated in an article published June 28, 2013 in the journal Science that encoding information using optical vortices would expand this limit beyond a thousand gigabits per second. "This limit would increase even more if we could change the shape of the vortices," explains Falcão Filho. n Igor Zolnerkevic

Scientific article AMARAL, A.M. et al. Shaping optical beams with topological charge. Optics Letters. v. 38, n. 9. May 2013.

pESQUISA FAPESP z 29

BIOTA y

Fazenda Dona Soledade, in the Brazilian state of Paraíba: environmental diversity is a distinguishing feature of the Caatinga

30 z special issue February 2014

The many faces of the sertão Lack of water and a semi-arid climate have elicited sophisticated adaptive responses among species in the Caatinga Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade Published in July 2013

ILLUSTRATIONS fernando vilela PHOTO Fernando Rosa

D

uring an 1818 Austrian expedition to Brazil – a scientific investigation that brought over researchers and artists to study and depict species and landscapes characteristic of Brazilian biodiversity – two naturalists, Carl Friedrich von Martius and Johann Baptiste von Spix, were struck by the diversity of vegetation in a forest that was theoretically rare for the region around the banks of the São Francisco River, in what is now the municipality of Januária, Minas Gerais State. Their fascination largely arose from the fact that the vegetation was in an area that was part of the Caatinga, an ecosystem identified by a predominantly semi-arid climate and scarce, highly variable water availability. Like many others, the two German naturalists probably thought that the Caatinga was a homogeneous environment, but that is not the case. “The region has a wide variety of environmental conditions that are essential to the emergence and sustenance of a number of species well adapted to the regional climate,” said biologist Bráulio Almeida Santos of the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), in a lecture he presented at the fifth BIOTA-FAPESP Education Conference Cycle, on June 20, 2013 in São Paulo.

The Caatinga, he explained, presently occupies 11% of Brazilian territory, an area approximately 845,000 square kilometers (km2) in size.

It is divided into eight ecoregions – each having very distinct landscapes, soil types and vegetation – that can receive rainfall of less than 1,000

millimeters over a year. “In some areas, a dry spell can last as long as 11 months,” he said. The region is currently experiencing its worst drought in 30 years, affecting the lives of 27 million people. In the state of Bahia alone, over 214 municipalities have declared a state of emergency this year.

During the course of thousands of years, these environmental factors have elicited specific adaptive responses from the local plants, enabling them to survive in an increasingly hot and dry environment. One response in certain species involves an adjustment in leaf retention – and for good reason: the fewer leaves on a plant, the less water it loses during the driest seasons. Some of these plants are able to fix carbon dioxide (CO2) at night and use it for photosynthesis during the day when their stomata-structures in the leaves that enable water and gas exchange – are closed. “These are just some of the mechanisms these species have found for preventing water loss via transpiration through the leaves. [This is] a simple strategy, but it enables them to retain water for the driest periods,” said biologist Luciano Paganucci de Queiroz of the Federal University of Feira de Santana in Bahia, a guest speaker for the conference cycle.

According to Queiroz, this type of rationing is a determining factor in the size of these plants and their leaves because this mechanism not only enables them to better adapt to the semi-arid climate but also limits the emergence of large trees. “The plants in the Caatinga do not grow pESQUISA pESQUISA FAPESP FAPESP 209 z 31

Left to right, biologists Bráulio Almeida Santos, Luciano Paganucci de Queiroz and Adrian Garda

continuously because sufficient water is not available to them throughout the entire year,” the biologist noted.

Another adaptive response of these plant species to the varied semi-arid environments is the protection they have developed for their leaves. Protection is afforded by means of thorny or pointy protrusions on the surface of the plant stem and trichomes, small “hairs” containing itchy or stinging substances that can cause allergic reactions upon contact with skin. Many plants in the Caatinga, such as cactus, are armed with these natural shields. “It is a very interesting defense mechanism against herbivorous animals,” Queiroz commented. “These species retain their leaves for only a short time during the year, and consequently they are very precious and need to be protected.”

The conditions to which these plant species have been subjected, he says, are becoming an important environmental filter, influencing the evolutionary process of the species in this ecosystem over time.

Abundance of species

Despite these unfavorable circumstances, the Caatinga has an enormous variety

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3

2

1

of plants – about 6,000 species, including 1,333 genera, of which 18 are native (endemic) to the region. Of the 87 species of cactus in the Caatinga, 83% are exclusive to this ecosystem. Examples include mandacaru (Cereus jamacaru) and xique-xique (Pilosocereus gounellei), species that are threatened primarily “because they are removed from their environment when they are still small and sold as souvenirs at road-side restaurants,” Queiroz warned.

Leguminosae, the most diverse plant family in the Caatinga, includes several species exclusive to the semi-arid region, such as mucunã (Dioclea grandiflora) and jurema-preta (Mimosa tenuiflora). Many of these plants perform important ecological functions. Owing to their association with some types of bacteria, these plants help fix nitrogen in the soil, thereby raising the available nutrient levels. However, even with the progress achieved in identifying new species such as Prosopanche caatingicola, a parasitic plant catalogued in 2012, data on the floristic biodiversity of this ecosystem is still very limited.

This knowledge gap also extends to the fauna of the Caatinga, particularly the invertebrates. The point was emphasized by biologist Adrian Garda of the Federal Uni-

5

versity of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), one of the June 2013 conference speakers.

According to Garda, it was long held that the Caatinga was an ecosystem devoid of character, with low rates of endemism and species diversity. “It was thought that the Caatinga was a subsample of other ecosystems,” he said. Today, we know that it is the world’s most diverse semi-arid region.

Threat to diversity

According to data from the Ministry of the Environment (MMA), the semi-arid region of Caatinga has 591 bird, 241 fish and 178 mammalian species. According to estimates, 41% of species in the Caatinga are still unknown, and 80% have been insufficiently studied. “There is a shortage of data on animal diversity in this ecosystem,” Garda noted. However, the rates of endemism recorded there suggest that the fauna have gone through an independent local evolutionary process, with many species adapted to the region.

For example, Corythomantis greeningi, a tree frog typical of the region, spends months during the drought periods hiberLizards of the species Rubricauda parna and Ameiva ameiva (below) and a tree frog (Corythomantis greeningi): complex adaptations to climate adversities

6

PHOTOS 1, 2 & 3 léo ramos 4, 5, 6 & 7 Adrian Garda 8 fernando rosa

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nating in small rocky niches shielded by its highly modified skull, protecting itself from predators and storing water. Scriptosaura catimbau, a lizard adapted to regions with sandy soils, “literally buries itself and ‘swims’ beneath the sand,” he commented.

Other species, such as Pleurodema diplolister, a type of frog, can bury themselves over 1.5 meters deep to look for water during drought periods. “But we still need a better understanding of what we are trying to preserve,” Garda concluded.

According to the MMA’s Department of Biodiversity and Forests, 15,000 km² were deforested in the semi-arid region between 2002 and 2008, amounting to a little more than 2,000 km² per year. Today, just 54% of the original vegetation in the Caatinga remains. According to Santos, of the 364 conservation units registered with the MMA, 113 are designated for ecosystem protection and preserva-

Above, a snake of the species Epicrates assisi, which is common in regions such as Cabaceiras, in Paraíba State (right)

8

tion, but these account for only 7.5% of the Caatinga’s total area of 845,000 km².

Santos believes that the principal cause of deforestation in the Caatinga region is energy production. When cut down, a native forest yields wood and charcoal for steel plants in the states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo or for the gypsum and ceramics industries operating within the semi-arid region. In his assessment, the consequences of misuse of the region’s natural resources are loss of habitat and fragmentation of ecosystems. “It is not a question of ceasing to use the Caatinga’s natural resources but rather of identifying to what extent we can use them without compromising the region.”

Santos noted that the unregulated raising of goats and sheep has also contributed to degradation of the vegetation in the Caatinga. Approximately 17 million goats and sheep consume the local veg-

Unprotected semi-arid region Conservation units account for only 7.5% of the Caatinga

MA

CE RN PB

PI PE

TO

AL SE BA

Deforested area Vegetation remaining SOURCE MMA

MG

etation each day. “Often the fencing needed to keep the herd confined within an area costs more than the land. As a result, many farmers let their animals run free, and they consume vegetation indiscriminately.” He believes that unplanned use of natural resources is already leading to desertification in the Caatinga.

“The remaining vegetation needs to be preserved by expanding the network of protected areas,” Santos said. “It is important to promote proper management of areas influenced by human activity, and to educate everyone who lives among the region’s natural resources or uses them, to promote the idea that these resources belong to the Caatinga.” To achieve that goal, he concluded, it is critical that we expand support for research and education as well as oversight, so that we can preserve the biological diversity of the Caatinga that German naturalists discovered long ago. “We imagine ourselves transported to an entirely different country. Instead of dry, defoliated forests or high, open wilderness, we find ourselves surrounded on all sides by verdant forests that border extensive lakes abundant with fish,” they wrote in the narrative Reise in Brasilien (Travels in Brazil) in which they recount their 1817-1820 excursions there.

The BIOTA-FAPESP Education Conference Cycle is an initiative of the BIOTA-FAPESP program in partnership with Pesquisa FAPESP, focused on discussing the challenges involved in preserving Brazil’s principal ecosystems, Pampa, Pantanal, Cerrado, Caatinga, Atlantic Forest and Amazonia, in addition to the marine and coastal environments and biodiversity in anthropic environments, urban and rural. The lectures are intended to present knowledge gathered by researchers throughout Brazil and are aimed at improving the quality of environmental and science education for high school teachers and students in Brazill. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 33

CLIMATE CHANGE y

Coffee with more gas Coffee plants grow larger and produce more when there is more CO2 in the atmosphere Carlos Fioravanti Published in September 2013

34 z special issue February 2014

were taller and had longer branches, a thicker stem, and larger leaves.

The coffee plants that received more CO2 also produced more coffee cherries, according to Raquel Ghini, coordinator of the project entitled Effects of high atmospheric CO2 concentration in open-top chambers and Free Air CO2 Enrichment ( face) systems on photosynthesis and natural resistance mechanisms of coffee plants to coffee rust. According to Ghini, it is too soon to announce the final gain in productivity because it represents the results from only one harvest. Because coffee plants alternate years of high and low productivity, “we need at least two harvests to obtain more consistent values,” she says. The quality of the beans is being assessed by experts from the Campinas Institute of Agronomy.

The coffee plants grew larger in an atmosphere enriched with CO2 because the photosynthesis rate increased by 60%, from 10 to 16 micromoles of CO2 per foliar square meter per second.

“More CO2 in the atmosphere means more substrate on which the plant can perform photosynthesis,” says Emerson da Silva, a researcher at the Botanic Institute of São Paulo, which is responsible for the analysis.

It is through photosynthesis that plants transform sunlight and CO2 into carbohydrates. With more carbohydrates in its tissues, a plant will be able to grow larger and produce more fruit or, as we have already observed with soy, synthesize more chemical compounds that will help the plant defend itself against disease-causing microorganisms. In coffee plants kept in open-top greenhouses with a 760 ppm concentration of CO2, the Botanic Institute team observed an increase in the capacity to resist light, the light saturation point, from 600 to 800 micromoles of photons per square meter per second. “The plants became more capable of receiving more light,” says Silva.

The example from Minas

Fabio DaMatta, professor at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), believes that the benefits obtained from a high atmospheric concentration of CO2 could neutralize many of the harmful effects produced by higher temperatures and changes in precipitation. According to a recent study, the effect could be the same as that for soybean, rice, and wheat, for which a significant decline in production is predicted to occur in the coming de-

Photos eduardo cesar

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n atmosphere richer in carbon dioxide (CO2) – as our atmosphere is expected to be in the coming decades as a consequence of continued gas emissions from the burning of forests and fossil fuels – could benefit the production of coffee, one of Brazil’s principal agricultural crops, and perhaps neutralize the loss in productivity caused by the increase in temperature and the intensification of droughts and floods, according to the initial results obtained from an experimental crop grown at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) facility in Jaguariúna.

For two years, coffee plants maintained in six octagons measuring 10 meters in diameter received doses of CO2 at a concentration of 550 parts per million (ppm), simulating the atmosphere as it might be at the end of this century, when atmospheric CO2 could be as high as 760 ppm.

Coffee plants grown in six other octagons received only the level of atmospheric CO2 prevailing today, a concentration of 440 ppm (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue Nº 198). Comparatively, the plants that received more CO2 – controlled by sensors that activated automatically according to the direction and speed of the wind –

Precocious blooms: the coffee plant grows larger and produces more cherries in an atmosphere richer in CO2 (below)

cades, even when considering only the rise in temperature.

If these optimistic predictions prove true, it would be possible to prevent crops such as coffee from migrating to more temperate regions in the south of Brazil. “The new zoning pattern for coffee-growing cannot be determined unless we also consider the increase in CO2 concentration,” DaMatta says. The increase in atmospheric concentration of CO2 could explain “some results that were unthinkable not that long ago,” as he puts it. For example, it could explain why coffee plants are growing and producing in some regions of Minas Gerais

State, where the average annual temperature is 24.5o Celsius, 1.5 degrees above the limit that the plant is supposed to withstand. “Some of the success of cultivation in those regions may, possibly, be due to the increase in CO2 content in the atmosphere.”

The studies conducted so far – and presented in early September in Jaguariúna – indicate that this coffee plant may be susceptibleto fewer diseases; however, the scenario is uncertain. “Some pests and diseases will probably increase and others decrease because when plants grow bigger, they may create a more humid and cooler microclimate, which

would be more favorable to fungi and bacteria,” Ghini says.

The pasture grass known as Surinam grass (Brachiaria decumbens), the principal food of cattle in Brazil, grew taller and exhibited more biomass and fiber when subjected to an atmosphere richer in CO2 than at present levels – among the coffee plants – than the same grass that did not receive extra doses of CO2. However, “the nutritive value is not as high,” observes Adibe Abdalla, a researcher from the University of São Paulo (USP). In addition, the fiber was of lower quality, meaning that when digested by cattle, it might produce more methane, one of the gases associated with climate change. n

Projects 1. Effects of high atmospheric CO2 concentration in open top chambers and Free Air CO2 Enrichment (face) systems on photosynthesis and natural resistance mechanisms of coffee plants to coffee rust (12/08875-3); Grant mechanism Regular Line of Research Project Award; Coordinator Emerson Alves da Silva – Botanic Institute; Investment R$198,255.31 (FAPESP).

2. Impact of the increase in concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and availability of water on the growing of coffee in a Face (“Free Air CO2 Enrichment”) experiment; Coordinator Raquel Ghini – Embrapa Meio Ambiente; Investment R$2,627,048.96 (Embrapa).

pESQUISA FAPESP z 35

technology ENERGY y

Green Flight Study encourages biokerosene production for civil aviation Marcos de Oliveira Published in July 2013

B

y the year 2050, commercial aviation is expected to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 50% compared to the amount emitted by aircraft engines in 2005. To accomplish this, institutions and companies in a number of countries are conducting a great deal of research and development to produce a nonpetroleum-based kerosene from renewable sources, one that will release fewer harmful gases into the atmosphere. Biokerosene, as it is being called, is likely to once again make Brazil a major world center for the development and production of a biofuel, as it was with ethanol and biodiesel. This trend is highlighted in the study “Flightpath to Aviation Biofuels in Brazil: Action Plan” presented in early June in São Paulo, which was sponsored by two of the three largest aircraft manufacturers in the world, Boeing and Embraer,

36 z special issue February 2014

with FAPESP funding, and was coordinated by the University of Campinas (Unicamp) Interdisciplinary Center for Energy Planning (NIPE). Thirty-three other partners, including national and international companies, universities and research institutes, also participated in the study, which was developed in eight workshops that occurred over the course of a year.

The study presents several technological methods that begin with raw materials, such as traditional sugarcane, algae, animal fats, vegetable oils, lignocellulosic material, starches and urban waste, and use different conversion and refining technologies to obtain biokerosene. At this stage, the study concludes that there are still many significant gaps that need to be closed with regard to technology and cost. Technical difficulties will require the participation of all those involved, air-

Embraer fleet: the company has partnered with Boeing to find alternatives to petroleum-based kerosene

Consumption and future projection Commercial aviation in Brazil is expected to grow 5% a year on average between now and 2020

12

VOLUME millions of m3/ano

11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 20

00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 20 19 20 20

Brazilian refineries produce 75% of the kerosene consumed

n Kerosene production in Brazil

by aviation in Brazil

n Kerosene consumption in Brazil ➔ Projected production in Brazil ➔ Projected consumption of the National Fuel

and Lubricant Distributors Union (Sindicom) ➔ Projected consumption of the

Energy Research Company (EPE) SOURCE ANP 2012

62,000 international flights take off from Brazil each year.

There are 1,000,000 domestic flights

On average worldwide, fuel represents 34% of airline

Embraer

operating costs

pESQUISA FAPESP z 37

1

craft manufacturers and aviation companies, developers and suppliers of fuel, in addition to the world’s certifying bodies. Another factor to be taken into consideration is the logistics of biofuel production and distribution to the 108 domestic airports where large aircraft operate, representing 1 million scheduled flights in Bra-

Current comparison Fuel used today still has advantages in terms of price and distribution logistics, which is worldwide

KEROSENE

BIOKEROSENE

Nonrenewable

Renewable

Produced with oil

Produced primarily with sugarcane and vegetable oils

More polluting

Less polluting

Unique production process

Several technological production methods

Well-established production and distribution worldwide

No industrial-scale production, only experimental

Market price

Price still high

38 z special issue February 2014

zilian airspace alone, and the need to service the 62,000 international flights that depart each year from Brazil and are bound for 58 airports in 35 countries. These outgoing flights use 60% of the kerosene consumed by aviation in -Brazil.

To prove itself an acceptable addition to the aviation industry, biokerosene must meet certain rigorous criteria. It must have the same technical specifications as the currently used fuel to be considered a drop-in fuel (one that can be mixed with conventional jet fuel) that ensures a ready supply for current engines and those that are still under development. “The consensus is that in the coming decades there will not be huge technological changes in commercial aviation fuel, such as the incorporation of solar energy, or fuel cells that run on hydrogen or lithium batteries, for example. Such equipment takes up too much space and is heavy, which requires a greater expenditure of fuel,” says Professor Luís Augusto Cortez, vice president of international relations at Unicamp and the study’s coordinator. “There is no way to reduce emissions just by improving engine efficiency, and so we are encouraging the search for new biofuels,” says Mauro Kern, Embraer’s executive vice president of engineering and technology. In June, the company announced its new line of jets, the E2, which will begin flying in 2018 with a lower fuel expenditure and fewer emissions.

Among the most advanced technologies under development in Brazil and cited when the study was announced are the biokerosenes from Amyris and Solazyme, two California-based bioenergy

PHOTOS 1 boeing 2 embraer

1 Boeing 747 engines: biokerosene for international flights

2

companies. Both companies are part of the group of partners that conducted the FAPESP-coordinated study. The first, founded by University of California at Berkeley researchers, has been in Brazil since 2007. Since December 2012, the company has been producing farnesene, which is a liquid made from sugarcane juice that uses genetically modified Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast strains, in the city of Brotas, São Paulo State. Such transformed microorganisms act in the fermentation process to produce farnesene instead of ethanol. Using specific refining processes, it is possible to manufacture biokerosene from this product for the chemical industry and even diesel, which was the first goal of the company in Brazil (see Pesquisa FAPESP Nº 153) and has been used experimentally by some bus fleets in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

“With a minimum hydrogenation process, farnesene becomes farnesane, which is nothing more than biokerosene,” says Joel Velasco, senior vice president of Amyris. “Our patents and technology are mainly in the yeast strains developed by Amyris, but farnesane is not a transgenic product,” says Velasco. “Until now, farnesene was produced on a relatively small scale, which obviously led to higher costs than traditional kerosene. However, these costs are already coming down as we increase the scale of production,” says Velasco. Founded in 2003, Amyris received an investment in the form of a partial purchase of shares by Total, the fifth largest oil and gas company in the world, which is based in France and is currently the largest

2 E2 Design: new Embraer jet engines will be more economical

distributor of aviation fuel in Europe. “Once we are operating on an industrial scale, we expect to be a more competitive alternative among the renewable aviation kerosenes,” says Velasco.

To be a supplier of biokerosene, companies developing this biofuel must receive approval from the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). As part of this process, test flights were performed using a maximum of 50% biofuel mixed with an equal portion of traditional fuel. This occurred on June 20, when Amyris, The Solazyme along with Total, supplied biokerosene process to an Airbus 321 for the Paris Air Show.

“The fuel was produced from Braziltransforms ian sugarcane,” says Velasco. Earlier, in June 2012, the company had supplied the sugarcane biokerosene for a flight in Rio de Janeiro for the Rio +20 Conference. In this juice into case, the aircraft was an Azul Linhas high-added-value Aéreas E195 jet that had been manufactured by Embraer. In June of this year, oil by means the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) published the Brazilian specifications of microalgae for aviation biokerosene, aligned with international procedures, which enables commercial flights to use biofuel in Brazil.

More than 1,500 commercial and military flights have used mixtures of renewable and fossil kerosene. The Solazyme product is also worth testing in aircraft, not only for certification purposes but also for verification and analysis by aircraft manufacturers. The first pESQUISA FAPESP z 39

commercial flight using biokerosene that was produced by the company occurred in 2011 on a United Airlines Boeing 737-800 between the cities of Houston and Chicago, a distance of 1,700 km. According to data from Solazyme, the flight released 10-12 fewer metric tons of CO2 than it typically does into the atmosphere. This quantity is equivalent to the amount released by the average passenger automobile using gasoline and driven 48,000 kilometers in the United States.

The company, founded in 2003 and present in Brazil since 2011, produces bio-jet fuels from sugar-fed microalgae. After “fattening up” in fermenters, the microalgae produce oil internally. The oil is extracted by crushing; after a refining process similar to that used by the petrochemical industry, the oil is fractionated into various types of biofuels and products for the chemical industry. “We crack the oil produced by the algae. This is followed by the hydrogenation and isomerization phase, which results in, among other products, a biokerosene that meets the specifications for aviation,” relates Rogério Manso, Solazyme’s global sales director. “To develop our process, we selected microalgae specimens from nature that are more likely to produce oil. Then, by traditional means of se40 z special issue February 2014

lection, we induced mutations; finally through genetic engineering, we made the final selection for our microalgae strains,” says Manso.

Solazyme, in Brazil, has partnered with Bunge, a producer of vegetable oils for the biodiesel and food markets, which has sugarcane production plants. Thus, Solazyme Bunge Renewable Products is building a production facility next to a plant in the town of Orindiúva, in São Paulo State. Production of the essential oil is based on a process whereby the sugar found in sugarcane juice is fermented by means of microalgae, the nature of which the company will not disclose. “Our process transforms the sugarcane juice into an oil with high added value,” says Walfredo Linhares, manager of Solazyme in Brazil. He says the company now has partnerships with Volkswagen and a supply contract with the US Navy, which no longer wants to rely exclusively on petroleum derivatives. Production in Brazil should begin in late 2013, and Solazyme Bunge has an investment of R$246 million from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). Biokerosene manufacturing in Brazil still depends on an arrangement with another company that specializes in refining or even building its own unit. Both Solazyme

PHOTOS 1 amyris 2 solazyme

1

“There is a global demand by airlines for a fuel that emits less CO2,” says Luiz Nogueira

1 Amyris Plant in Brotas (SP) 2 Growing Solazyme’s microalgae

2

and Amyris can adapt their own technologies to other types of sugar, such as beets in Europe, or the starch from corn in the United States and also bagasse from sugarcane.

Another renewable biokerosene manufacturing technology, from the Unicamp School of Chemical Engineering (FEQ), developed under the coordination of Professor Rubens Maciel Filho, is at the laboratory scale and is ready to move to a pilot production line (see Pesquisa FAPESP Nº 164). “We have reached the maximum production we can make in a laboratory environment; we are now working to raise funds to expand production and do an economic evaluation of our biokerosene and a parallel study of sustainability,” says Maciel Filho, who is also one of the coordinators of the FAPESP Bioenergy Research Program (Bioen). “A trade agreement is being negotiated,” he states, without revealing the name of the company. This process uses various fats and oils, depending upon local availability, which means that raw material logistics can have a significant impact on production costs.

“Biofuel is made from vegetable oils, ethanol, and a specific catalyst, which initiates a reaction without the need for genetically modified organisms,” Filho says.

These examples of renewable biokerosene production processes that are under development in Brazil show that Brazil is seeking to carve out a leading position for itself in the world of biofuels.

“The country has significant advantages and is in a different place than it was with ethanol and biodiesel, whose acceptance by companies resulted from government incentives. Now is different.

There is a global demand by airlines for a fuel that emits less CO2,” relates Professor Luiz Horta Nogueira of the Federal University of Itajubá (Unifei), Minas Gerais State, a study participant.

Still, the path to success is a long way off-even allowing biokerosene trucks to enter airports to service the aircrafts can be an obstacle. The chance for success also depends on having to prove how much less CO2 and other pollutants each biofuel releases in comparison to oil. “We still have difficulty establishing and analyzing the life cycle of biokerosene emissions. Reliable data do not exist, as was apparent from our study,” says Cortez. n

Project Technological roadmap for sustainable biofuels for aviation - Opportunities for Brazil (No. 2012/50009); Grant Mechanism Partnership Program for Technological Innovation (PITE); Coordinator Luís Augusto Cortez / Unicamp; Investment R$565,550.00 (FAPESP).

pESQUISA FAPESP z 41

INNOVATION y

Knowledge on the market Companies seek out universities in a bid to create more competitive products Dinorah Ereno

U

niversity-designed innovations are becoming increasingly common on the Brazilian market. These innovations are one of the possible alternatives for companies in search of additional technology for their products and processes, as shown by the growing number of intellectual property licenses that have been transforming the knowledge of universities into innovative products. One example of these promising technologies, on the market since late 2012, is a fuelanalyzing photometer developed by the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) and licensed to Tech Chrom, a company born at the university’s Technology Business Incubator (Incamp). The tests conventionally performed by gas stations to check for fuel adulteration are multi-step processes whose results must be interpreted by qualified personnel, whereas the photometer – which measures near infrared radiation – displays the results directly on the device’s screen after about seven seconds. In addition, the traditional tests for gasoline and ethanol require 50 milliliters (ml) and one liter of the tested fuels, respectively. However, 42 z special issue February 2014

the photometer needs just 5 ml of fuel, which is inserted into a designated container. “You just need to indicate whether the analysis will be for ethanol or gasoline,” says Ismael Pereira Chagas, who developed the prototype of the fuel analyzer during his doctorate and who currently works as a researcher at Tech Chrom.

An investment by FAPESP’s Innovative Research in Small Businesses Program (Pipe) allowed Chagas to continue his research at the company and turn the prototype into a product.

“The biggest challenge was creating a small, robust device that anyone can operate,” says Valter Matos, company director. The instrument, called Xerloq, has enough memory capacity to store the results of up to 98 analyses. “We also developed a software that prints out the fuel analysis results for gas station customers,” says Chagas. With the Pipe project, Tech Chrom was able to lower the device’s selling price from R$6,800.00 to R$4,950.00. So far, more than 50 Xerloq devices have been sold to fuel retailers and distributors. “There is a potential market to explore, as there are about 39,000 gas stations across Brazil,” says Matos.

ILLUSTRATIONS raul aguiar

Published in July 2013

By licensing a fat with low levels of saturated fatty acids and no trans fats, which was developed at the Unicamp School of Food Engineering in partnership with Cargill Agrícola (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue Nº 182), the university earned a record-breaking R$724,000 in royalties in 2011.

The product is used in cookie fillings and other applications. The research that resulted in the new fat was started at Unicamp in the 1990s, but only in 2008 did effective results begin to appear and catch the eye of the food industry.

Since the creation of the Unicamp Innovation Agency (Inova) in 2004, this agency has filed a growing number of patents as well as technology licenses, an indication that companies want these innovations. In 2012, Unicamp filed 73 patents, signed 13 licensing agreements, and registered 29 computer programs – the highest numbers for a single year since the university filed its first patent in 1984. A total of 63 licensing agreements are now in effect.

To delve deeper into advanced innovation systems, the agency entered into a partnership with the University of Cambridge in 2009. Cambridge Enterprise is a subsidiary of the British university in charge of patents and technology transfers. “After more than 20 years working as an innovation agency for the university, in 2006 we became a company that can invest in other businesses. We invest resources and hold shares in 63 companies already,” said Cambridge Enterprise marketing director Shirley Jamieson at the XIII National Conference hosted by the Association for Research and Development at Innovative Companies (Anpei) in the city of Vitória (state of Espírito Santo) in June 2013.

Brazilian companies in search of technology have also been approaching universities. A special outfit that corrects a wearer’s posture was created at the School of Physical Education, Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy (EEFFTO) of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). The suit was developed at the request of physical therapist Renato Loffi, owner of Treini Biotecnologia, and this garment will be released to the market in approximately 12 months. “A web of interconnected elastic straps tightens the outfit, correcting posture and preventing injuries,” says Professor Pedro Vidigal, director of the Innovation and Technology Transfer Office (CTIT), UFMG’s innovation agenpESQUISA FAPESP z 43

R$724,000 Royalties paid to Unicamp in 2011

A small manufacturer of sports shoes contacted UFMG to develop a line of shock-absorbing sneakers

cy. After working for more than eight years in Brazil’s National Healthcare System (SUS), Loffi decided to seek out Professor Sérgio Fonseca, an EEFFTO professor and expert on human movement, to create an outfit that could be worn both by people with functional difficulties and by athletes. Treini, the company that licensed the technology, is thinking of offering the outfit in four different versions: therapeutic, occupational, military, and sports.

A vaccine against canine visceral leishmaniasis is the result of the most noteworthy licensing agreement by UFMG, and this product is already available on the Brazilian market. The product, called Leish-Tec, was developed by the School of Pharmacy and the Institute of Biological Sciences, in collaboration with the Spanish laboratory Hertape Calier. The vaccine is expected to arrive on European shores by 2014. Vidigal mentions one more example of company-university cooperation that he considers emblematic. More specifically, Crômic is a small company in the sports shoes manufacturing complex of Nova Serrana, near the Minas Gerais State capital of Belo Horizonte. The company was looking for an innovative product that would enable the company to stand out in the market and compete with Chinese imports. “They wanted to develop an innovative line of sports shoes,” says Vidigal. Nobody at the university was working on this problem at the time, so a group

44 z special issue February 2014

2

of researchers from EEFFTO began working with researchers at the Bioengineering laboratory at UFMG’s School of Engineering.

The goal of the group, coordinated

by CTIT, was to develop a shockabsorbing system to be used in the soles of sports shoes. The research from this partnership was incorporated into a line of sneakers called Aerobase, which is now Crômic’s second highest-grossing product.

In 2012, CTIT was the owner of 661 intellectual property assets – including patents, trademarks, industrial designs, and computer programs. Of that total, patents singlehandedly accounted for 547 assets. By May 2013, the office had 43 technology licensing agreements in effect, with 101 technologies licensed.

M

uch of that technology is licensed by university researchers, such as an innovative, faster fermentation process for beer production designed by Éverton Estracanholli during his doctorate at the University of São Paulo’s São Carlos Institute of Physics (IFSC-USP). Estracanholli got the idea of using LED lights (light emitting diodes) during fermentation, and this enabled him to shorten the total time the process takes by 15% to 20%, with no change in final product quality (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue Nº 204). The results drove the researcher to transform his artisanal-scale beer brewing hobby into the Kirchen microbrewery in São Carlos. “It’s a small business that is going to grow, since it’s also attracting major brewers,” says Professor

PHOTOS 1 ufscar 2 leo ramos 3 treini

1

from FAPESP. As soon as he returned to Brazil, the researcher filed a patent application for a device that employs a biomagnetic technique called BAC, which is Physicist invents used for gastrointestinal tract imnon-invasive stomach aging with no need for radioactive contrast dyes. Paixão’s invention diagnostic instrument during allows BAC to be incorporated into medical equipment at a lower cost. doctorate at Unesp Established only four years ago, the Unesp Innovation Agency has already licensed 51 technologies. In 2012, the agency held 133 patents, Vanderlei Bagnato, director of USP’s innovation six industrial designs, and 53 software programs.

Sugarcane cultivars are a prominent part of the agency and advisor to Estracanholli. “We have been observing that students who participate in research conducted at the Federal University of research are potentially interested in licensing São Carlos (UFSCar). “We have 16 cultivars litheir own patents, by such means as opening a censed to more than 150 sugarcane mills,” says company and getting support from Pipe,” he says. Professor Ana Lúcia Vitale Torkomian, UFSCar An average of 100 patent applications are filed Innovation Agency director. “Their distinguishevery year by the USP Innovation Agency, and 80 ing feature is a higher production of ethanol and licensing agreements have been completed so far. sugar, in addition to being more resistant to pests and better adapted to our climate.” The university hysicist Fabiano Carlos Paixão is another recently debuted a lettuce cultivar called Brunela, example of a student who converted knowl- whose leaves are curly like the Brazilian variety edge into a product. During his doctorate at of the plant and crunchy like American iceberg the Institute of Biosciences at Universidade Es- lettuce, and this plant is adapted to grow under tadual Paulista (Unesp) in the city of Botucatu, very hot, very rainy conditions.

Agribusiness is not the only area in which he devised a non-invasive stomach diagnostic instrument that is about to be released in the U.S. UFSCar’s projects have met with success. One of market. “In partnership with other researchers, these projects in particular drew a lot of attention Paixão organized a start-up in the United States to when the product became available on the mardevelop the equipment,” says Professor Vanderlan ket: synthetic paper made from post-consumer Bolzani, director of the Unesp Innovation Agency. plastic waste, developed under the leadership A portion of Paixão’s doctorate on biomagnetism, of Professor Sati Manrich and produced by Vias applied to gastroenterology, was completed topel since 2010 (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue Nº at Vanderbilt University with financial support 155). Released under the trade name Vitopaper, the synthetic paper does not tear or get wet, and the paper absorbs 20% less printer ink. After a little more than five years in operation, UFSCar’s innovation agency owns 93 patents (12 of these patents are licensed), one trademark, and one computer program, in addition to the university’s sugarcane cultivars. n

P 1 Brunela lettuce from UFSCar 2 Fuel analyzer from Unicamp 3 Special suit created at UFMG

Projects 1. Low trans fat production and applications in food (2005/54796-4); Grant Mechanism Regular Line of Research Project Award; Coordinator Lireny Guaraldo Gonçalves – Unicamp; Investment R$267,760.00 (FAPESP).

2. Enabling large-scale production of a photometer for ethanol content measurement in fuel ethanol and gasoline (2011/51061-4 and 2011/52004-4); Grant Mechanism Innovative Research in Small Businesses Program (Pipe) and Program to Support Research in Small Business (Pappe); Coordinator Ismael Pereira Chagas – Tech Chrom; Investment R$205,667.29 (FAPESP) and R$195,930.00 (Finep).

3

3. Studies on multilayer films of virgin and recycled thermoplastic composites for writing and printing applications (2003/06113-0); Grant Mechanism Regular Line of Research Project Award; Coordinator Sati Manrich – UFSCar; Investment R$69,518.53 (FAPESP).

pESQUISA FAPESP z 45

COMPUTER ENGINEERING y

Market logic A small company develops artificial intelligence software to control industrial production Evanildo da Silveira

A

small company founded just six years ago has been able to attract clients as important as Coca-Cola, Rhodia, Villares and Ajinomoto by developing an algorithm based on fuzzy logic knowledge.

Fuzzy logic is an area of artificial intelligence research related to the expansion of set theory that addresses, for example, whether elements belong to a particular group. "In this approach, something can be partially contained in a system," says computer engineer Igor Santiago, executive director of I.Systems, which is headquartered in Campinas (SP). "That is, a person is neither tall nor short, but 80% tall, for example.

This differentiation results in a very large number of practical applications that were previously impossible using classical logic." In classical binary logic, the result can only be yes or no, right or wrong. In practice, the electronic system created by I.Systems reduces losses and makes industrial processes and equipment more efficient. These include machines for packaging liquids or powders, steam boilers, distillation towers, power generation from biomass and sewage treatment. The software, called Leaf, automatically generates thousands of rules using fuzzy logic to ensure the stability of the industrial control process.

46 z special issue February 2014

Fuzzy logic is used for handling modes of reasoning that are approximate rather than exact. "It is used for developing intelligent systems that make use of imprecise or vague knowledge in decision making," explains electrical engineer Ricardo Gudwin, professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Campinas (Unicamp).

"Today, fuzzy logic has a large number of applications, from focus control in video cameras to industrial controllers, elevators and robots, for example." The difference between the controllers currently on the market and the one developed

by I.Systems is that in the latter fuzzy rules are created automatically, using an algorithm that the company developed.

"This enables laypeople to quickly generate complex industrial control systems, resulting in substantial operational gains such as cost reductions and productivity increases," says Santiago says.

Fast reading

According to the businessman, who was aAccording to Santiago, who was a master's student under Gudwin, Leaf represents an advance of approximately 100 years over the technological process known as Proportional, Integral and Derivative (PID), which was created in the late nineteenth century and is still used

today in nearly all automated manufacturing systems. He explains that PID technology was designed to read only one parameter at a time, such as temperature, pressure, or flow, to be used in planning how pumps, valves, and other equipment should operate so that production proceeds as desired. Santiago explains, "The fact that PID monitors only one parameter at a time means that it always has to wait for a problem to happen before it can react and try to fix it." By contrast, Leaf can monitor several parameters simultaneously. It can anticipate changes and prevent them from affecting production. An example can be seen in systems for filling bottles with a precise volume of liquid. Because of fluctuations of liquid in bottling systems, it is very difficult to fill bottles with the exact amount noted on the label. To circumvent this problem, companies regulate their filling machines to add 5% more liquid to ensure that oscillations do not leave the bottles with less than what is promised. Leaf, however, creates and implements fuzzy rules that reduce variations and make it possible to regulate the machines to inject only 1% more than the liquid promised, saving 4% of the volume of each bottle.

Leaf was implemented in 2010 at the Coca-Cola plant in Jundiaí, 60 kilometers

léo ramos

Published in September 2013

Profound differences TRADITIONAL SYSTEM Binary logic

Analyzes one piece of information at a time

Pre-established rules

FUZZY SYSTEM Artificial intelligence

Analyzes multiple parameters simultaneously

Automatically generates thousands of rules

from the capital of São Paulo. The Jundiaí plant is the largest bottler of the brand in Latin America, producing 2 billion bottles per year. The challenge is to constantly control the internal pressure and the volume of soft drink inside the filling equipment. The problem encountered by the plant was that one PID system was used to control volume and another was used to control pressure. Because each system was not informed of the other's actions – because they can monitor only one information stream at a time – they ended up interfering with each other.

The solution was to implement the Fuzzy Multivariable Control program, which simultaneously controls pressure and flow valves on the bottling line, enabling finer and more precise adjustments to the quantity and speed of liquid injected into the bottles. "We stabilized the process of filling soft drink bottles, and the company has been saving

500,000 liters of soft drink and 100,000 PET bottles per year since 2010," Santiago says. "We managed to reduce losses from rejection due to variations in the level of injected liquid by 31% and rejections due to bubbling, which is the formation of bubbles of carbon dioxide, by 42%. Waste due to bubbling was reduced from 64 to 37 liters of soft drink per hour, and rejections due to liquid level dropped from 685 to 465 bottles per day."

The story that led to the formation of I.Systems began in 2004, when three computer engineers and a mathematician decided to take a course in artificial intelligence offered at Unicamp. That was when they started the research that led to the development of Leaf. The first business plan was written in 2006 as the final report for a course on entrepreneurship.

They founded the company in the following year. In 2009, I.Systems secured financing through the FAPESP Innovative

Research in Small Businesses Program (Pipe). "We used the funds to develop a soft drink bottler simulator and convince the Coca-Cola plant manager that our solution would generate benefits," says Santiago. "In 2010, we got further Pipe funding and used the money to make our technology viable."

Earlier this year, the company received funds from the Pitanga investment fund, which specializes in investing in technology-based companies, provided by eight investors: biologist and Pitanga administrator Fernando Reinach; the founders of Natura, Guilherme Leal, Luiz Seabra and Pedro Passos; and Itaú Unibanco bankers Pedro Moreira Salles, Candido and Fernão Bracher, and Eduardo Vassimon. "The Pitanga fund decided to invest in I.Systems because the company developed a new way of using fuzzy logic in a process to regulate industrial automation. It’s an innovative solution that exists nowhere else," Reinach explains. "Some companies provide industrial automation, but none have this kind of solution. In the case of I.Systems' product, the potential market is any factory in the world."

The Pitanga investment, whose value has not been disclosed, will be used to develop new products and increase the sales team. In Brazil, I.Systems does not yet have competitors, but at the global level it will face major companies such as Siemens and General Electric. Santiago says, "we are evaluating whether to apply for a patent for our technology in Brazil or abroad, or if it is better to rely on industrial secrets in markets in the United States, Asia and Europe. n

Projects 1. Control of industrial processes: An approach through computational intelligence (Nº 2007/56398-1); Grant Mechanism Innovative Research in Small Businesses Program (Pipe); Coord. Igor Bittencourt Santiago/I.Systems; Investment R$10,592.26 (FAPESP).

2. Application of Hourus platform for industrial automation and equipment (Nº 2010/51286-3); Grant Mechanism Innovative Research in Small Businesses Program (Pipe); Coord. Igor Bittencourt Santiago / I.Systems; Investment R$95,888.22 and $1,210.71 (FAPESP).

pESQUISA FAPESP z 47

INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH y

Worldwide competence Creation of innovative products makes Mahle’s Brazilian technology center stand out Dinorah Ereno Published in September 2013

T

he Mahle Metal Leve technology center is located in an environmental protection area in the Japi Mountains in the city of Jundiaí, 60 kilometers from the capital of São Paulo. In this facility, engine components such as pistons, rings, sleeves, bearings, air filters and fuel filters are developed and tested in large rooms with glass panels so that visitors and customers can tour the facilities without disturbing the testing and research routines.

The center consists of three independent buildings that follow the precepts of sustainable architecture, including a reflecting pool on the roof that serves as thermal insulation, large skylights that allow natural light in and a design that preserves the natural slope of the land. Approximately 300 people work at the site, including technicians, engineers and interns, and more than 200 of these employees are directly involved in research.

“This is the second largest Mahle technology center in the world,” says mechanical engineer Ricardo Simões de Abreu, 56, an alumnus of the University of Mogi das Cruzes (UMC) and global vice president of research and development (R&D) of the company established more than 90 years ago in Germany to manufacture alloy engine pistons. The technology center model was established by Abreu in 2005 after he took over

48 z special issue February 2014

From top left, researchers Andrew Ferrarese, Fernando Yoshino, Eduardo Tomanik. From bottom left, Carlos Roberto Camargo, Samantha Uehara, and Paulo Mordente

léo ramos

global responsibility for the group’s development of metallic components. Each of the seven centers, including four with worldwide competence, has a general manager, product experts and engineers who are responsible for the technologies. “I established a model in which all centers can work with all engine components, but one of them leads the process,” says Abreu, who taught for several years at the Mauá Institute of Technology, the Ignatian Educational Foundation (FEI) and UMC before joining Mahle, where he has remained for 17 years.

The main technology center is in Stuttgart, Germany, and is responsible for pistons, pins, camshafts and other components. The Brazilian center is responsible for rings and sleeves for engine cylinders and is being a world reference in flex fuel engines. The Northampton, England center is responsible for en-

gineering services, while the Detroit center is responsible for connecting rods. The two centers in Japan and China serve customers in their respective countries. Approximately 48,000 people work in 100 plants around the world and in the seven R&D centers. In 2012, the Mahle Group had worldwide revenues (net sales) of approximately R$19.7 billion, and its investments in R&D totaled approximately R$930 million (4.7% of net revenue). Mahle Metal Leve had revenues of R$2.2 billion last year and invested R$67 million (3.02% of net sales) in R&D. The innovations developed by the Brazilian research center include items ranging from a new generation of filters for use in flex fuel engines to the use of chromium carbonitride (a chemical compound composed of carbon and chromium) as a nanoscale coating for

piston rings that results in reduced friction and thus greater part durability, as well as a reduction in fuel burned and carbon dioxide emissions. This innovation will replace the galvanized material currently used for this purpose.

“Carbon in the form of graphite has no mechanical resistance, but it has a very important function, which is to reduce friction,” says mechanical engineer Paulo Mordente, 37, who has been at the company for 14 years. He is a materials science researcher and project coordinator. The reduction in friction – which is between 10% and 20%, according to the researcher – is obtained by distributing islands of graphite on the order of 5 to 10 nanometers in size throughout the ceramic coating of piston rings. As a result, cars fitted with piston rings with this coating will use 1% less fuel.

The nanotechnology project origipESQUISA FAPESP z 49

Investments in R&D in Brazil reached R$67 million in 2012

1

nated in 2004 within a European consortium formed by companies interested in surface protection coatings and universities such as one in Basel, Switzerland, with government support. “After three and a half years, the consortium was terminated, but Mahle decided to continue the research, which resulted in three patent filings and a product expected to enter the market in 2017,” says Mordente, who graduated from the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU) in Minas Gerais and holds a master’s degree from the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (Poli/USP). The new product will initially be applied to engines of European cars.

“The demand for engines is greater in Europe and the United States, but that does not mean that innovative compo-

nents are developed there,” says mechanical engineer André Ferrarese, 35, coordinator of the innovation department.

He has been with the company since 1999, when he started as an intern. “Today, 70% of diesel engines for passenger cars supplied by Mahle to Europe use a piston ring that was developed here.”

It is an oil control ring called X-taper and is able to reduce force and therefore friction without losing the power to seal and scrape. “Thus there is a gain in fuel consumption,” says Ferrarese, who graduated and obtained a master’s from Poli/USP. In 2012 alone, the company filed 28 original patents in Brazil, meaning that all of the innovations were generated in Brazil. This figure is nearly double the 16 patents that were filed in 2011. “We

NAMES OF INSTITUTIONS FROM WHICH MAHLE RESEARCHERS GRADUATED Fernando Yoshino, mechatronic engineer, responsible for filtration system product engineering

USP – undergraduate degree

Paulo Mordente, mechanical engineer, materials science researcher

Federal University of Uberlândia – undergraduate degree USP – master’s degree

Eduardo Tomanik, mechanical engineer, R&D technical consultant in the product technology department

USP – undergraduate, master’s, and PhD degrees

Carlos Roberto Camargo, mechanical engineer, manager of experimental test engineering

FEI – undergraduate degree USP – MBA

Ricardo Simões de Abreu, mechanical engineer, global vice president of R&D

University of Mogi das Cruzes – undergraduate degree

André Ferrarese, mechanical engineer, coordinator of the innovation department

USP – undergraduate and master’s degrees

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have targets for the number of patents filed, designs turned into products on the market, and scientific articles published,” reports mechatronic engineer Fernando Yoshino, 38, who graduated from Poli/USP and is responsible for filtration systems product engineering.

In just the first half of this year, his team, which is composed of 11 people, filed nine patents in Brazil. The innovations developed by his group are already on the market and include a system to remove water from diesel fuel tank filters because the accumulation of water in the reservoir is a serious problem for injection systems. His team also creates innovations related to flex fuel engines such as a new-generation fuel filter that has a greater capacity for removing impurities and durability that will result in an extension of the service interval.

Diversified portfolio

Mahle began its activities in Brazil in 1975 by manufacturing pistons for the automotive industry and, over time, has purchased other companies, including a competitor, Metal Leve, which also manufactured bearings. Together with Magneti Marelli, it bought Cofap, a company that makes shock absorbers and piston rings. “With these acquisitions, Mahle diversified its portfolio, adding more parts to its development capability,” says Ferrarese. “It started as a manufacturer of pistons and trans-

fotos léo ramos

2

1 Architecture of the technology center integrated into the Japi mountain range in Jundiaí 2 Monitoring of tests conducted in the engine laboratory 3 Equipment for measuring piston rings

4

formed itself into an engine component producer.” In June 2008, the technology center in Jundiaí continued the research that was initiated in Santo Amaro, a neighborhood in the southern part of the city of São Paulo, and added new activities and research groups.

Examples of these groups include the automotive component laboratories located on the second floor and the engine laboratory that occupies the third floor of the building. The 52-member group was assembled by mechanical engineer and manager of experimental test engineering, Carlos Roberto Camargo, age 48. “When I came here, there were only technicians, I was the first engineer in the group,” says Camargo, an alumnus of FEI. He recruited the experimental engineering team and reorganized the laboratories.

4 Components laboratory: piston testing

Different types of projects are part of the researchers’ daily routines. They are divided into the following areas: product portfolios, where there is a commitment to quickly placing a part on the market at a competitive cost; systems, where the demand is for a systemic solution based on existing products; basic tools, where methods are developed for analysis, simulation, and testing that result in new components; and incubation technology, which handles ideas that are not associated with a specific product at first due to their degree of innovation. “Some concepts or ideas become part of the company’s portfolio only after we are certain about their technical performance and production capacity,” says Ferrarese. The innovation department is responsible for four processes: idea management, intellec-

3

tual property, image (the technological and technical promotion of a new product), and competitive intelligence.

The Brazilian Mahle currently has more than 100 projects under development, of which 70 have some type of government support. One of the projects funded by FAPESP through the Partnership for Technological Innovation (Pite) involves a consortium of companies and universities focusing on biofuel engines (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue No.196).

Volkswagen, Fiat, Renault, Mahle, Petrobras, and Fundição Tupy are participating in the study, as are USP, the Federal University of the ABC (UFABC) and the University of Campinas (Unicamp).

“The idea of studying the problems related to the use of ethanol in engines emerged during discussions in a tribology group at Poli, to which I belong,” says mechanical engineer Eduardo Tomanik, 55, an R&D technical consultant in the Mahle product technology department and company employee for almost 30 years. Tribology involves the study of phenomena related to friction, wear, and lubrication. Throughout his career, Tomanik has worked on different projects including piston rings that are coated using a technique called PVD (physical vapor deposition), which results in a product with lower friction. In 2004, PVD rings began to be produced in Portugal for the European market and are now being manufactured in Brazil. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 51

Humanities SOCIOLOGy y

Police inspect cells at Cianorte jail, Paraná State, after prisoners escape

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The justice of

Inefficiency of the police and the courts destroys faith in democratic institutions

impunity Carlos Haag

DIRCEU PORTUGAL/AE

Published in July 2013

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sentence from Cesare Beccaria’s 1764 classic On Crimes and Punishments is remarkably fitting today: “The certainty of a chastisement, even if it be moderate, will always make a greater impression than the fear of a more terrible punishment that is united with the hope of impunity.” Beccaria’s foresight captures current trends. “There’s a strong feeling in Brazil that irrespective of class, wealth, or power, crime has increased and grown more violent but that there is impunity. At times like this, people think the solution is to have stiffer laws and longer prison terms,” says sociologist Sérgio Adorno, coordinator of the Center for the Study of Violence of the University of São Paulo (NEV-RIDC/USP), which is one of the 17 Research, Innovation, and Dissemination Centers funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).

“The feeling that impunity exists feeds distrust in the democratic institutions that are entrusted with enforcing law and order and with protecting civil rights, as provided for under the constitution, especially the right to safety,” says the researcher. What are the true dimensions of this impunity? With this question in mind, NEV-RIDC conducted the research study Police investigations and the judicial process in São Paulo: the case of homicides, which is an outgrowth of the project Research on criminal impunity. The aim of the study was to analyze the flow of homicide cases from police reports to sentencing. In addition to measuring criminal impunity, the study sought to identify the judicial and extrajudicial factors and the institutional mechanisms that favor the non-application of sentences for these crimes.

The basic numbers reveal the magnitude of this impunity: only 60.13% of reported homicides were investigated. Consequently, no police investigations were on file for approximately 40% of the reports.

Although homicides rose 15.51%, the number of police investigations increased only 7.48%. “This means the gap between the potential for more violence and the ability of the police force to investigate these crimes has widened, and this may find expression in people’s lack of confidence in the institutions entrusted with safeguarding the public order and enforcing law and order,” the sociologist notes. pESQUISA FAPESP z 53

1

Military Police search and question young men at random on Rio Branco Avenue in central São Paulo in 2006

The most striking finding involves whether the suspect was known to the victim. Only 19.58% of reported homicides are committed by known suspects, whereas the vast majority – 76.65% – are committed by someone the victim does not know. Yet, 90.36% of the reported crimes that are actually investigated involve homicides committed by a known suspect. “In short, every report should generate an investigation, but there is a blatant selection bias centered on the 10% committed by a known suspect, that is, the crimes committed by a neighbor, a relative, a colleague from work, a drinking buddy, and so forth. If the perpetrator is caught in the act, this figure rises to 97.64%. Biased selection based on whether the suspect was known to the victim has grown entrenched as a criterion in police culture,” says Adorno. If, for example, there is the slightest suspicion that the crime is linked to drug trafficking, the chances that the crime will not be investigated increase even further. “The police claim that it’s very complicated to mess with this or that there’s a special group for such cases,” the researcher explains. Consequently, only a small percentage of homicides are investigated and, as we will see, almost none end in prison terms. It is only when the perpetrator has been caught in the act that the likelihood increases.

“The problem is that the arrest is made by the Military Police, but the Civil Police are responsible for the investigation. So we have some random arrest that will then be investigated by a different group. The system operates precariously and irrationally,” argues Adorno. The sociologist further observes that because police precincts have not adopted uniform investigation practices, this selection bias is even more arbitrary than might be suspected. “The study identified seven perfor-

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mance groups, ranging from those displaying a low homicide rate and low production of investigations to those displaying high numbers of homicides and of investigations.” Police investigations are apparently not an institutional policy priority in the sphere of public safety.

“The police investigation model used in Brazil should not be confused with the model used elsewhere because here, we combine typical police force responsibilities with responsibilities handled by public prosecutors in other countries,” cautions sociologist Michel Misse, professor at the Department of Sociology of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and author of Inquérito policial no Brasil: uma pesquisa empírica (Police investigation in Brazil: an empirical study) (2010).

According to the sociologist, this makes the Brazilian investigation model an important instrument of power in the hands of the police and a document that tends to hold sway throughout the process of criminal charges. “Here we have the most reticent and problematic core of resistance to the modernization of the Brazilian justice system. This is why it has also become an irreplaceable part – the key that opens all the doors to the proceedings and decreases the workload for the other agents involved, that is, for the prosecutors and judges,” he says. In Misse’s opinion, the police investigation becomes a mechanism for selection bias by the police; the power to decide whether to open an investigation transforms this tool into a kind of “political merchandise.”

“If the police investigation model adopted in Brazil contributes to the system’s feeble ability to bring conflict and crime to a legal resolution, it is true that it also works to effectively preserve and reproduce an ‘archipelago system’ where proprietors of competing types of knowledge do not

PHOTOGRAPHS 1 EDUARDO NICOLAU / AE 2 Carol Carquejeiro/Folhapress

see eye to eye,” in Misse’s evaluation. According to the researcher, the investigation wends its way about this archipelago, which ends up looking like a continent. However, there is no ultimate result, and the denouement is often that those who no longer believe in the justice of the state take it into their own hands.

In the opinion of sociologist Joana Domingues Vargas, professor at the University Research Institute of Rio de Janeiro (Iuperj) and author of the research study Control and ceremony: the police investigation within a poorly regulated criminal justice system, the current model only remains in place because the police cling to the old instruments of investigation and have a powerful lobby in Congress to ensure their continuation.

“Proposals to simplify and modernize criminal investigations and similar matters have been making their way through the channels for more than 10 years, but to no avail. The rise in violent crime over the past 30 years has done further damage to the criminal justice system in terms of its efficacy,” Vargas observes. There are new brands of crime, a growing volume of police investigations, and ever greater delays in their processing, which only serves to discredit the system. “We can easily imagine how hard it is to transform or do away with the instruments that reproduce the social order in Brazil, one of whose central features is the disconnect between the state’s legal provisions and the actual practices as experienced by society.

The result is general distrust of these practices.”

The anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares – former secretary of the Rio de Janeiro State Department of Safety (SESEG), professor of the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), and author of Violência política no Rio de Janeiro (Political violence in Rio de Janeiro) (1996) – notes that Brazil ranks fifth in murder rates in Latin America, recording 50,000 per year. “However, of this total, only 8% are solved, even if they don’t reach the courtroom, while the other 92% go unpunished.

Does this mean we’re a country of impunity? Yes and no. Because we have 540,000 people in jail, the third highest prison population in the world, and the fastest rate of incarceration on the planet,” Soares offers as an analysis. What accounts for this contradiction? “Over the past four years, more than 65% of those behind bars have been poor black youth who were unarmed, had no ties to criminal organizations, and were arrested in the act of buying or selling illegal substances,” explains the anthropologist, who is critical of this system that locks young people away without equipping them to return to life outside of prison.

According to Adorno, “in short, the biggest bottleneck to ensuring that someone accused of homicide will be prosecuted and judged pursuant to due process of law is found in the phase of

police work.” When we move to the second phase – the legal system – we encounter another bottleneck. “It’s virtually impossible to do research The within the Brazilian justice system non-investigation because we spend years searching for legal files without ever finding them, of cases involving among other problems. However, in the files that we do locate, we find unknown suspects that only one-third of the perpetrators were sentenced for the crime of is the prime homicide, while the fate of the rest factor behind was either suspension of the case, acquittal, summary dismissal, or disimpunity missal,” the sociologist reports. Contrary to what the specialized literature says, the process is equally prone to frank selection bias during the legal phase, although this phase is more restricted by the controls over criminal proceedings.

Once again, the fact that cases involving unknown suspects are most often not investigated is the prime factor behind impunity, and the lack of any progress in solving the cases that are investigated was the reason that 84.5% of these cases were shelved. Add to all this the sluggishness of the criminal system: it took an average of 25.8 months to definitively close the investigations that had been suspended. In cases in which charges were brought, the police work was completed in 4.3 months. The more time that is spent on the initial stage of police work, the less likely it is that there will be an investigation. “It’s notable that extrajudicial factors related to the biographical traits Detainee at the station of the offenders or accused, like color, apparently house’s modular jail in don’t influence impunity rates. The profile of the the neighborhood defendant or the accused is quite similar among of Novo Horizonte, acquittals, summary dismissals, and suspended municipality of Serra, Espírito Santo State, cases when we compare those who were only

in 2006

2

pESQUISA FAPESP z 55

56 z special issue February 2014

for stiffer sentences as well as the debate about lowering the age of criminal “The accused responsibility. often bears the “Every society has to decide who its young peoburden of proving ple are – that is, whether someone who can legally his innocence, drive should be sent to prison or not – but many although he doesn’t misunderstandings have have the same to be corrected before any decision is made,” says resources as the Adorno. One fallacy is that crime is on the rise among state,” says Adorno minors. “It’s actually falling. What has increased is the cruelty of the crimes committed by young people, which is something that needs to be investigated.” Another issue is the prison to which these teens would be sent.

“Today, the criminal gang First Command of the Capital (PCC) is in control of Brazilian prisons as well as of the minutest aspects of prisoner behavior. Homosexual prisoners, for instance, are discriminated against. The more prisons the government builds, the more the PCC profits from the rooming houses, grocery stores, and commerce inside these institutions and nearby. You can’t simply throw someone in jail without wondering how he’ll leave the place a few years later – a ‘soldier’ trained by the PCC,” cautions the researcher.

Adorno feels that the nature of crime has changed but that the same solutions are persistently offered without taking into account that there is a new “crime economy” organized in the form of a network of collectives. The answer is not to be found simply in an obsessive thirst for puniStaff member at work amidst piles of tive law and order and for more prisons. “Neither court documents in the legal system nor people are prepared for this a records office at type of crime. It’s no longer just a question of arthe São Paulo State Supreme Court

PHOTOGRAPHS 1 Bruno Miranda / Folhapress 2 Moacyr Lopes Junior / Folhapress

charged with those who appeared before a jury.

The reasons for this are not clear. Theoretically, this discovery implies that the prejudices and value judgments of actors in the legal system do not influence judicial rulings or sentences. However, our qualitative analysis often picked up prejudice and value judgments in the arguments used by both prosecution and defense,” notes Adorno.

“Technical evidence is always subject to error, and in most cases, everything is centered on evidence and oral testimony, although what predominates in documents is the law of silence. Furthermore, over the course of a case, which can go on for five years, many witnesses can no longer be located, which increases the production of inconsistent evidence,” the researcher states. We also do not find the predictability that is expected in properly functioning legal systems. “It’s very common to catch the defense and the prosecution using moral portraits of those involved – something of an extrajudicial nature – in an attempt to influence rulings and sentences. A reversal of the burden of truth is also common. Under Brazilian law, the state must prove the guilt of the accused by bringing together solid material evidence.

However, the accused often bears the burden of proving his innocence, although he doesn’t have the same resources as the state.”

The sociologist believes it is difficult to know whether faith in public safety institutions has been shaken because, as he explains, faith in all institutions seems to have been lost. “This is why the central goal in public safety concerns should be to curtail impunity. This doesn’t imply punishing criminals more harshly, as people generally would like, but reinforcing the certainty that punishment will come. There’s no need for stiffer sentences or even a broader definition of heinous crimes. We have to increase the chances that someone who has committed a criminal act will be identified, arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced. Once he has been sentenced, he should really go to prison,” asserts sociologist Flavio Sapori of the Center for Studies and Research in Public Safety of the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (CepespPUC/MG) and author of Segurança pública no Brasil: desafios e perspectivas (Public safety in Brazil: challenges and outlook) (2007).

Sapori feels that impunity is the fundamental weak point in the Brazilian criminal justice system. “Targets of criminal action have broadened, as has the availability of firearms, but the system’s ability to prevent crime has not kept pace with these trends. If levels of impunity haven’t climbed, they’ve remained at the same high levels. I’m using impunity in the sense of a low degree of certainty that someone will be punished and not a belief that the punishment will be too lax,” Sapori observes. This is what spurs the continued calls

The numbers behind impunity Survey pinpoints two bottlenecks responsible for the system’s inefficacy: the police and the courts (1991-1997) JUSTICE PHASE

POLICE PHASE

Magnitude of the impunity 60% of homicides

Perpetrator of the homicide 76,65% unknown to victim

were investigated

19,58% known to victim

CRIMES vs.

INVESTIGATIONS

Processing of the cases 59,11% an investigation was opened 90,36% an investigation was opened

The lack of any progress in solving cases is responsible for the shelving of 84.5% of cases

Homicides rose 15,51% Investigations rose 7,48%

40% of homicides were not investigated

SOURCE NEV-Cepid/USP

RATES OF SOLVED CRIMES IN OTHER COUNTRIES (2002)

96% Germany

95% Canada

90% United Kingdom

INFOGRAPHIC ana paula campos

88% Australia

64% United States SOURCE NEV-Cepid/USP

bitrariness, which should of course be combated, but of what works in regard to keeping citizens safe and what doesn’t,” says the researcher.

The book PCC: hegemonia nas prisões e monopólio da violência (PCC: hegemony in prisons and monopoly over violence), released last month, was a byproduct of the doctorate of sociologist Camila Nunes Dias of the Federal University of ABC (UFABC). Dias, whose former advisor was Adorno, shows that this criminal gang controls 90% of the prisons in the state of São Paulo, which hold a total of 200,000 offenders. The PCC is now expanding nationwide, opening branches in the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná, Sergipe, and Pernambuco. An important point is that the PCC has grown in tandem with the increase in violence, prisons, and, above all, impunity. “There was a sharp drop in the state’s homicide rate starting in the first decade of 2000; the trend began in 2001 and intensified in 2005, when the PCC expanded beyond prison walls to establish itself in the poor neighborhoods on the periphery and attain veritable hegemony outside the prison system,” the researcher explains.

In Dias’ opinion, an 80% plunge in the homicide rate cannot be accounted for solely by factors such as the expansion of the prison system or the increased presence of NGOs on the poor urban outskirts, factors that are often cited to explain the phenomenon. “When the PCC starts mediating and regulating disputes in the world of crime, especially on the drug market, the former anarchic process of revenge and violence comes under the control of the PCC,” Dias notes. The PCC takes the role of the mediating agency that halts the cycles of revenge. The same thing allegedly happens inside prisons, where there are ever fewer riots – although this does not mean that living

conditions have improved but only that order is being maintained to avoid trouble with the state.

This situation evinces the hegemony enjoyed by the PCC and is the reason one no longer hears about prison riots.

“The crime world proved capable of devising a mechanism that provides behavioral parameters and that defines agents and jurisdictions of oversight to judge and punish violations and violators – and these are seen as legitimate,” Dias says. Of course, all of this comes in the name of power, business deals, and an ideology of opposition to the state. The PCC engaged in an effort to break the cycle of “kill-and-be-killed” logic that assailed poor outlying neighborhoods in the 1990s – that is, to end the chain of revenge battles behind most of the homicides. This is one of the most meaningful aspects of the sense of justice implicit in the debates promoted to solve interpersonal conflicts within the sphere of PCC power, and it has had a direct impact in reducing homicide rates in São Paulo.

It is obvious that the flip side of this social order, achieved through enforcement of the peace by the PCC, is the emergence of zones of exclusion, where one finds the “pariahs” that have been left with no place in the body forged through this entrenchment of power, as Dias notes. At the same time, no one knows how long or under what conditions this so-called peace will last because it lies wholly in the hands of criminals. “The perception that state agencies are ineffective in regard to promoting democracy because of criminal impunity has fostered the adoption of extremely violent individual solutions that help fuel a sensation of collective insecurity and allow for the emergence of a power that is able to control the conflicts, albeit in a spurious, authoritarian, and criminal fashion,” says Adorno. n pESQUISA FAPESP z 57

AGING y

Politically correct eroticism An anthropologist looks at the argument for a rewarding sex life in old age

Márcio Ferrari Published in September 2013

W

ith the increase in longevity, old age is becoming the longest phase of life. Generally considered to begin at age 60 (but not infrequently at 50), this period can amount to nearly half of a person’s existence. Now, there is no such thing as only one period of old

58 z special issue February 2014

age; rather, there are several periods of old age depending on the age group and the elderly person’s social environmental and individual circumstances. Because longer life expectancy is a sudden recent phenomenon, public policies, medical ideas, and common sense concepts about aging are many and varied, and they intertwine and often overlap.

Changes and contradictions in gerontological arguments in recent decades are the subject of the study titled Aging, Violence and Sexuality by Professor Guita Grin Debert of the Anthropology Department at the University of Campinas (Unicamp). The work is part of a series of studies that Grin Debert has conducted throughout her academic career. The

Photos léo Ramos

latest findings are in the field of sexuality or, more precisely, “the eroticization of old age” observed in recent decades.

The study was based on an analysis of documents and official statements, articles published in the press and selfhelp literature, as well as ethnographic data obtained at venues where older people socialize. What we observe, says

Grin Debert, is a marked change from the 1970s. We have moved away from a notion of old age characterized as a period of “physical decay and the loss of social roles,” in which sexual activity virtually disappears, to a different understanding in which an active and rewarding sex life is a prerequisite for a healthy and happy life.

pESQUISA FAPESP z 59

In this way, the idea that sex “is almost an obligation” for the elderly has begun to predominate. Borrowing an expression coined by sociologist Maria Filomena Gregori, this is what the researcher calls “politically correct eroticism.” Not surprisingly, in discussions about old age, physicians are losing ground to psychologists.

“Old age has become the age of leisure and personal fulfillment,” says Grin Debert. This notion, which is not limited to Brazil, directly influences definitions of old age and the parameters of the “management of aging.” “Also, this is still a new market because, of all the social groups, the elderly are the biggest spenders,” she says.

The myth of asexual old age has been debunked in many areas. Studies in several areas have shown that sexual ac60 z special issue February 2014

tivity does not end as the years go by.

Although there is clearly a decline in the frequency of sexual relations, there is also a perception that the quality of these relations may improve. Encounters can become freer, with more affection. In this regard, it is observed that traditional gender roles tend to reverse: women become less reserved, and men become more affectionate. Moreover, it seems that sensations change. Pleasure appears to spread all over the body, and a process of “degenitalization” occurs.

I

n 2008, psychiatrist and sexologist Carmita Abdo, in the Sexuality Project (Pro-Sex) at Hospital das Clínicas of the University of São Paulo, coordinated Mosaic Brazil, a comprehensive study on Brazilian sexuality. The results showed that sexual activity continues in

old age, but not without setbacks. “The advent of menopause in women, with the end of hormone production, has a great physical and psychological impact, especially in a country in which great importance is placed on both beauty and vitality,” says Abdo. In men, fertility continues, but beginning with the fifth decade of life, there is a growing incidence of health issues that impair sexual potency.

However, desire persists. “The sexual repertoire changes with age. It becomes toned down due to limitations of physical mobility,” says the sexologist. “The act is faster than in the past, but the affection continues for some time after.

The more involved a couple is, the greater the pleasure.” Extramarital relations are also on the rise in men and women, often with younger partners.

Photos léo Ramos

Therefore, “unhurried sex” seems to be the hallmark of this stage of life.

However, the emergence of drugs that address erectile dysfunction makes it necessary to modify the discussion that is underway. “The triumph of the emphasis on gains in old age, even though they may have overshadowed the need for attention to physical losses, has made a positive contribution to breaking down prejudices and has brought about an acceptance of diversity related to age,” says Grin Debert. According to Abdo, the idea that an active sex life promotes good health is accurate, albeit indirectly, through the satisfaction it brings.

In an apparent paradox, the new configuration of our understanding of old age has even liberated women from the “requirements” of a regular sex life that are characteristic of marital relations.

Many elderly women who are widows, unmarried, or separated or whose husbands suffer from disabling diseases attend dances for seniors. This phenomenon has been studied separately by anthropologists Mirian Goldenberg of the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Andrea Moraes Alves from the School of Social Work at the same institution. Both scholars identified an ongoing investment in the sexuality of the body. Vanity and beauty treatments persist, but they are not linked to the exercise of seduction. On the contrary, they are now accompanied by freedom: the freedom to refrain from having sex.

This is what Goldenberg defines as the replacement of “I Need” (to be a mother, a wife, or a lover) with “I want” (fun, pleasure, and friendship with other women).

The dance partner is usually younger but is not necessarily a sexual partner. For many analysts, including Grin Debert, Abdo, and Moraes Alves herself, this abstinence also reveals the burden of conservative morality “linked to the stereotype of the woman who must obey,” in the words of Moraes Alves. Nonetheless, Goldenberg stresses that the people who go to these dances resist “the images of a body that has aged.” She notes one revealing feature in her research: the only social group that disagrees with the widely held idea that men age better is women over the age of 60.

The research conducted by Goldenberg, which was the source of the recent book entitled A bela velhice (Beautiful Old Age), published by Record, shows that when women reach old age, they feel inclined to distance themselves from pESQUISA FAPESP z 61

a family life that takes more than it gives, whereas men, after years dedicated to business obligations, are looking for a welcoming family that is new and rewarding. Professionally, there is also a contrast between the genders. “While older men find fulfillment in new studies and new work, both of which are more about pleasure than financial gain, women seek to do only the things that they enjoy, usually in the area of socialization and reciprocity,” says Goldenberg. Grin Debert perceives a similar phenomenon: women seek friendship with other women, and men engage in activities with other men, such as retirees’ associations.

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ccording to Grin Debert, the hallmark of gerontology ideas of the 1970s was that retirement is a social status symbol of the elderly, and this idea was used “to sensitize the government and society to the importance of studies and activities to make aging successful.” Grin Debert notes, however, that no emphasis on a negative view of old age was found in the research, and most elderly people themselves agree.

Even more so today, many people say that their golden years are the best phase of their lives, as evidenced by the accounts collected by Goldenberg. The accounts

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of the elderly who attend universities and join other groups for seniors reveal an optimism that is inconsistent with the idea of a phase of life marked by decline.

Such associations, including those established by government entities such as the federal government’s Office of Human Rights, rail against official arguments that hold the welfare systems for the elderly responsible for government overspending. “Fighting prejudices toward aging routinely showed that those in the group remained lucid and knew how to criticize governments, politicians and the media’s misinterpretations of all the different aspects of Brazilian social life,” Grin Debert wrote in the article titled Frontiers of Gender and Sexuality in Old Age. “Many of the associations were critical of programs for ‘seniors’, which some called the ‘playground of the elderly’, for diverting the attention of retirees from their real interests.”

The disconnect between perceptions of aging in hegemonic arguments, on the one hand, and the experience of the elderly themselves, on the other hand, also prevails in the area of sexuality. The “official” version considers eroticism in old age from the standpoint of holding on to youth. “I have no intention of promoting bodies that have aged from the aes-

The dance partner is usually younger, but not a sexual partner thetic point of view,” says Grin Debert.

The new myth of a happy old age with eroticism is also paying dividends. In elderly women, anthropologist Moraes Alves detects different “strategies” for how to deal with their own bodies. One strategy is to constantly “negotiate” the boundaries of rejuvenation. On the one hand, women invest in plastic surgery, cosmetics, and clothing to prolong a youthful appearance. On the other hand, they remain vigilant (and tense) so that they do not run the risk of appearing to be “ridiculous and vulgar old ladies.”

Yet there are a few women who, even in the early years of old age, deal with the taboo of gray hair without resorting to the dye that is “so universal in Brazil.” n Project Sexuality, Gender and Violence in Old Age Policies (2011/10537-6); Grant Mechanism Regular Research Awards; Coordinator Guita Grin Debert/Unicamp; Investment R$36,208.15 (FAPESP).

Postdoc and research

opportunities in Brazil

Fifty percent of all science created in Brazil is produced in the State of São Paulo. The state hosts three of the most important Latin American universities: USP, UNICAMP and UNESP. Other universities and 19 research institutes are also located in São Paulo, among them the renowned Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA), Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE) and Laboratório Nacional de Luz Síncrotron, besides most of Brazilian Industrial P&D. The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), one of the leading Brazilian agencies dedicated to the support of research, has ongoing programs and support mechanisms to bring researchers from abroad to excellence centers in São Paulo.

The Young Investigators Awards is part of FAPESP’s strategy to strengthen the State research institutions, favoring the creation of new research groups. See more about it at www.fapesp.br/en/yia FAPESP Post-Doctoral Scholarship is aimed at distinguished researchers with a recent doctorate degree and a successful research track record.

The fellowship enables the development of research within higher education and research institutions in São Paulo. Postdoc fellowships are available when calls for applications are issued internationally, or as individual scholarships requested on demand.

In the first case, positions are advertised at www.fapesp.br/oportunidades and candidates are selected through international competition. In the second, the proposal must represent an addition to a pre-existent research group and should be developed in association with faculty in higher education and research institutions in São Paulo.

More information at www.fapesp.br/en/postdoc

YEARS

www.fapesp.br/en

PHILOSOPHY y

Hannah Arendt in 1944

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© Fred Stein Archive / Archive Photos / Getty Images

The passion for freedom

Study Center reveals the latest on Hannah Arendt’s thoughts about the responsibility of thinking Published in September 2013

I

n an age of extremes, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was courageous and wise enough to use the classical world as a basis for supporting her moral and political beliefs. Although well known today, until a few decades ago, she was only known to political factions on the right and left, which considered her a controversial figure. It is because of her work, however, that totalitarianism, the human condition, and the “banality of evil” have become key concepts in understanding modern times. Hence it is important to disseminate her perennially relevant body of work, and this is one of the most important purposes of the recently opened Hannah Arendt Study Center (www.hannaharendt.org. br), which is linked to the Norberto Bobbio Institute. Both are managed by Raymundo Magliano Filho, former president of the BM&FBovespa, and organized

by Cláudia Perrone-Moisés, professor of the School of Law at the University of São Paulo (USP).

“Arendt is a classic in line with Bobbio’s own thinking: she is an author whose concepts, although developed in the past,

The writings of Hannah Arendt still serve as food for thought when approaching today’s problems

still offer something that helps us understand the world today,” says Celso Lafer, president of FAPESP and a student of Arendt during the 1960s at Cornell University. “All of her work remains utterly relevant today. During the 1950s, she was already discussing the consumer society, and she used her work to examine the now essential question of responsibility in the relationship between thinking and judging,” says Perrone-Moisés. The center grew out of one of FAPESP’s Research, Innovation, and Diffusion Centers (RIDCs), the Center for the Study of Violence (NEV-USP), which housed the Hannah Arendt Study Group and Archives between 2004 and 2010. “This month, the first set of studies on Responsibility and judgment, a collection of essays, courses, and talks produced during the 1960s and 1970s, are slated to begin,” says PerroneMoisés. It was in these works that Hannah Arendt first proposed that ethics be visible in public actions and policies, underscoring yet again the decisive role of reflection and criticism.

“She is a provocative writer who always incites us to new readings. Every generation feels the need to interpret her in its own way,” notes Lafer. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Arendt describes the process by which human rights, inherited through the tradition of revolution, began to be put to the test after the peace treaties that ended the First World War. “Considered to be nonexistent for a whole group of people perceived to have no rights because they were stateless, human rights proved to be ineffective when not tied to citizenship,” explains Perrone-Moisés.

According to Perrone-Moisés, Arendt’s criticism of the question of human rights

refers to human rights in the abstract but becomes concrete at the moment when the support of citizenship ceases. Human rights had been defined as inalienable because they were presumed to be independent of any government, but when individuals cease to have their own government, no authority is left to protect human rights, and no institution is prepared to guarantee them. “According to Arendt, the emergence of totalitarianism only became possible because it was preceded by a process, in the period between the wars, that she called human destitution,” concludes the researcher.

In The Human Condition (1958), Arendt focuses on the destruction of the conditions for human existence in the modern world by society as a whole. In 1961, one event would determine Arendt’s intellectual path: her trip to Jerusalem to attend the trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann and cover it for the New Yorker magazine, an experience she later recalled in the book Eichmann in Jerusalem – A Report on the Banality of Evil (1961). That experience resulted in her return to philosophy. The expression “banality of evil,” coined by her in Eichmann in Jerusalem was another point of contention because it was seen as a trivialization of what had happened. “For some, Arendt had betrayed the idea of ‘radical evil’ she had previously defended, considering it simply ‘banal.’ What happened, however, is that Arendt did not abandon ‘radical evil’ – rather, what she saw in Jerusalem did not fit that definition. The banality of evil was linked to the inability to think and to the automatic carrying out of the tasks of modern bureaucracy,” says Perrone-Moisés. Nothing is more 21st-century than that. n c.h. pESQUISA FAPESP z 65

Art

Hidden beauty Beauty is seen as a registered trademark of flowers, but some flower parts can also have a surprising esthetic dimension. The larger photo above shows a grain of pollen from the flower of a rare passion fruit species: Amazonia (Passiflora tholozanii). Marcelo Carnier Dornelas, a scholar of flower formation evolution and molecular mechanisms from the University of Campinas (Unicamp), used a scanning electron microscope to take the image and then colored it using computer software.

Published in July of 2013

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