Special Issue 2007

SPECIAL ISSUE2007

Science and Technology in Brazil

PE

SQ

UIS

AFA

PE

SP

HIGHLIGHTS OF BRAZILIANRESEARCH

Spe

cial

Iss

ue■

20

07

CAPA pesquisa inglesfim 12/13/07 19:49 Page 1

02_capa2_ingles 12/13/07 19:47 Page 100

PESQUISA FAPESP ■ SPECIAL ISSUE NOV 2006/SEP 2007 ■ 3

IMAGE*

DIS

CL

OS

UR

E/R

OY

AL-

EA

GL

E P

RO

JE

CT

Monitored Predator

The harpy eagle in the photo is a female chick, aged 4 months weighing 4.4 kilosand with a 1.83-meter wingspan, that still lives in its nest 32 metres up in achestnut tree in in Parintins, in the Amazon region. In the forthcoming months,when it ventures out on its maiden flight, it will become the first of its species to be monitored in Brazil by means of satellites. It was implanted by a radio-transmitter equipped with a global positioning system that will track its moves for the next three years. The technology was developed by three institutions: the National Institute of Spatial Research (Inpe), the National Institute of Research of the Amazon Region (Inpa) and the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and of Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama). Also known as the Royal Eagle, theharpy eagle is one of the world’s largest birds of prey. It lives for approximately40 years and inhabits the tropical forests of Central and South America.

Published in September 2007

03_ImgMes_139_Ing 12/10/07 19:54 Page 3

COVER MAYUMI OKUYAMA PHOTO MIGUEL BOYAYAN

NOVEMBER 2006/SEPTEMBER 2007

> INTERVIEW

10 José Sérgio Gabrielli,president of Petrobras,predicts a privilegedsituation for Brazil in the area ofbiofuels, but warns it is senseless to downgrade oil

> SCIENTIFIC AND

TECHNOLOGICAL

POLICY

16 ASSESSMENT

Studies point out 11 areas of knowledgewhere Brazilianresearch stands outworldwide

20 SCIENTIFIC

ARTICLES

The country’sacademic productionreaches a record, but its impact hasroom for growth

> SCIENCE

22 NEUROSCIENCE

Cutting edge researchinto the brain travelsfrom Duke University to the city of Natal in Brazil, along with the desire for science to help transformneedy communities

32 PSYCHIATRY

Experimental techniqueshown to be efficient in treating severepsychiatric disturbances

38 MEDICINE

Combinedchemotherapy andstem-cell treatment rids 14 patients of insulin shots

44 MALARIA

Genetic variabilityenables the Plasmodiumto circumvent thehuman body’s defenses

> SECTIONS 3 PHOTO 6 LEADER 8 MEMORY 98 CARTOON

10

22

LÉ

O R

AM

OS

RIT

A S

INIG

AG

LIA

–CO

IMB

RA

/UN

IFE

SP

16

CL

AU

DIU

S C

EC

CO

N

04-05_indice_Ing 12/10/07 21:42 Page 4

> HUMANITIES

82 SOCIOLOGY

Intellectuals advocatechanges to saveCarnival, Bahia’s most traditional popularfestival

88 ICONOGRAPHY

The arrival ofphotography in 19th century forgesimages of the blacks in Brazil

94 HISTORY

Profiles show Pedro IIwas more interested in the essence of powerthan in its appearance

48 PHARMACOLOGY

Rattlesnake venompenetrates multiplyingcells and shows itspotential as a drug andanti-tumoral carrier

52 CLIMATE CHANGE

Increase in productioncan be combined withcarbon credits to avoideconomic stagnation

56 PHYSICS

Observed for the first time ever on thesmallest possible scale,gold and silver alloysreveal unexpected atombehavior

> TECHNOLOGY

60 OPTICS

Researchers developequipment with lightemitting diodes - LEDs

66 ELECTRONIC

ENGINEERING

Ballot boxes with digitalidentifier to be used forthe first time in 2008municipal elections

72 ENERGY

What still needs to be done to establishbiodiesel as a nationalbiofuel?

78 NANOTECHNOLOGY

Nanostructured resinswork as bactericidesand fungicides inwashing machines and mattresses

WWW.REVISTAPESQUISA.FAPESP.BR> AREAS > SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL POLICY > SCIENCE > TECHNOLOGY > HUMANITIES

60

82

32

ED

UA

RD

O C

ES

AR

IBE

RÊ

CA

MA

RG

O F

OU

ND

AT

ION

FE

IRA

, C

AR

YB

É,

198

4

04-05_indice_Ing 12/10/07 21:42 Page 5

6 ■ SPECIAL ISSUE NOV 2006/SEP 2007 ■ PESQUISA FAPESP

From the brain, to biofuel and CarnivalMARILUCE MOURA – EDITOR IN CHIEF

GOVERNO DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

HIGHER EDUCATION SECRETARY

THE STATE OF SÃO PAULO RESEARCH FOUNDATION

P esquisa FAPESP magazine presentsyet another English language editi-on. This is the fourth time we have

gathered the 18 most significant arti-cles about some of the best scientificand technological research in Brazil ina magazine for those who do not readPortuguese. This time, the articles spanthe period from November 2006 toSeptember 2007.

We have tried to provide articlesfrom a wide ranging area, following thesame pattern as Pesquisa FAPESP inPortuguese. Besides science and tech-nology research, we carry articles onthe country’s scientific and techno-logical policy in all editions, and alsoaddress studies on the humanities. At

least half the texts are about researchprojects financed by the main non-federal science development agency inthe country: the São Paulo State Rese-arch Support Foundation (FAPESP -Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa doEstado de São Paulo). The other halfdeals with projects from elsewhere inthe country. This ratio reflects the factthat São Paulo is the country’s weal-thiest and most industrially developedstate. Home to some of Brazil’s bestuniversities, it accounts for more than50% of the country’s scientific pro-duction.

FAPESP publishes Pesquisa FAPESPin Portuguese every month – and sea-sonally in English, Spanish and French

November, 2006

May, 2007

December, 2006

April, 2007

CELSO LAFERPRESIDENT

JOSÉ ARANA VARELAVICE-PRESIDENT

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

CELSO LAFER, EDUARDO MOACYR KRIEGER, HORÁCIO LAFER PIVA, JOSÉ ARANA VARELA, JOSÉ DE SOUZA MARTINS, JOSÉ TADEU JORGE, LUIZ GONZAGA BELLUZZO, MARCOS MACARI, SEDI HIRANO, SUELY VILELA SAMPAIO, VAHAN AGOPYAN, YOSHIAKI NAKANO

EXECUTIVE BOARD

RICARDO RENZO BRENTANIPRESIDENT DIRECTOR

CARLOS HENRIQUE DE BRITO CRUZSCIENTIFIC DIRECTOR

JOAQUIM J. DE CAMARGO ENGLERADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR

EDITORIAL COUNCILLUIZ HENRIQUE LOPES DOS SANTOS (SCIENTIFIC COORDINATOR), CARLOS HENRIQUE DE BRITO CRUZ, FRANCISCO ANTONIO BEZERRA COUTINHO, JOAQUIM J. DE CAMARGO ENGLER, MÁRIO JOSÉ ABDALLA SAAD, PAULA MONTERO, RICARDO RENZO BRENTANI, WAGNER DO AMARAL, WALTER COLLI

EDITOR IN CHIEFMARILUCE MOURA

MANAGING EDITORNELDSON MARCOLIN

EDITORSCARLOS FIORAVANTI, CARLOS HAAG (HUMANITIES), CLAUDIAIZIQUE (POLICY), FABRÍCIO MARQUES, MARCOS DE OLIVEIRA(TECHNOLOGY), MARCOS PIVETTA (ON-LINE), MARIA DA GRAÇAMASCARENHAS, RICARDO ZORZETTO (SCIENCE)

ASSISTANT EDITORSDINORAH ERENO, MARIA GUIMARÃES

ART EDITORMAYUMI OKUYAMA

DESIGNARTUR VOLTOLINI, MARIA CECILIA FELLI

PHOTOGRAPHERSEDUARDO CESAR, MIGUEL BOYAYAN

SECRETARYANDRESSA MATIAS TEL: (11) 3838-4201

COLABORATORSALEXANDRE KERKIS, ANDRÉ SERRADAS (DATA BASE), BRAZ, BUENO, CLAUDIUS CECCON, FERNANDO SATO, GEISONMUNHOZ, GIOVANNI SERGIO, GONÇALO JÚNIOR, IRINA KERKIS, JULIA CHEREM, LÉO RAMOS, MARCELO URBANO FERREIRA,NATAL SANTOS DA SILVA, NEGREIROS, RITA SINIGAGLIA-COIMBRA AND YURI VASCONCELOS.

ENGLISH VERSION

TRANSLATIONDEBORAH NEALE, R.P. DINHAM, ROGER SKIPP (DIED, APRIL 2007)REVISIONALISON MARY EMILY ASKEW

THE SIGNED ARTICLES DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT FAPESP’S OPINION

THE TOTAL OR PARTIAL REPRODUCTION OF TEXTS OR PHOTOGRAPHS WHITHOUT PREVIOUS PERMISSION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED

OPERATION MANAGEMENTPAULA ILIADIS TEL: (11) 3838-4008e-mail: [email protected]

CIRCULATION MANAGEMENTRUTE ROLLO ARAUJO TEL. (11) 3838-4304 e-mail: [email protected]

PRINTINGPROL EDITORA GRÁFICA

ADMINISTRATION MANAGEMENTINSTITUTO UNIEMP

FAPESPRUA PIO XI, Nº 1.500, CEP 05468-901ALTO DA LAPA – SÃO PAULO – SP

ISSN 1519-8774

06-07_editorial_Ing 12/10/07 21:49 Page 6


LETTER OF THE EDITOR

June, 2007

January, 2007 February, 2007 March, 2007

July, 2007 September, 2007

– as a means of publicizing some of theresearch projects financed by the Foun-dation and to render accounts of its ac-tivities. Part of its mission is also to dis-close science, and not only to São Pau-lo readers. That is why the magazineis always found in the newsstands ofBrazilian cities with strong centers ofhigher education.

This edition discusses Brazilian the-mes, naturally, which are also currentfor readers from around the world.Cutting edge experiments involving thebrain, conducted at both Duke Univer-sity, in the United States, and the Ed-mond and Lily Safra International Ins-titute of Neuroscience in Natal, the ca-pital of the state of Rio Grande do Nor-te, draw attention to the main centersspecializing in this field. They accountfor ten pages in this issue of the maga-zine, covering details of this researchproject. A novel treatment that combi-nes chemotherapy with stem cells to

treat type 1 diabetes, conducted by agroup from the University of São Pau-lo in Ribeirão Preto, in the inner-stateregion, is a radical bet for fighting thedisease and one that may become veryuseful in the future; thus, it merits be-coming better known.

In São Carlos, another inner-statecity in São Paulo, researchers are wor-king on equipment with light emittingdiodes or LEDs. To date, they have cre-ated a new traffic light, medical-dentalmaterials, a photobiology studies ta-ble and a new optical microscope. Wetalk about all these products that arean offshoot of scientific research andabout how most of them are ready forcommercial production.

Technological innovation concer-ning biofuels is also an issue that hasgained priority status. Biofuels havebeen studied in Brazil for many yearsand excellent results have been attai-ned. We do not refer merely to ethanol,

the best known biofuel, but also tobiodiesel, the production and distri-bution of which is beginning to gainground in this country.

Where the humanities are concer-ned, it is interesting to highlight the ar-ticle on Carnival, Brazil’s most popu-lar festival. In this specific case, we aretalking about Carnival in the state ofBahia. Intellectuals demand that theevent undergoes certain changes andcriticize what one of them calls ‘the dic-tatorship of joy’. The expression is con-nected with the fact that for almost 20years the tourism, music and Carnivalindustries have heavily exploited thenotion of people and things in Bahia,while television imposes the idea of aplace where people party round theclock and where one is permanentlyhappy.

We hope that this edition pleasesthose who are interested in science andculture. Enjoy your reading.

06-07_editorial_Ing 12/10/07 21:49 Page 7


The request for funds to observe Venus gave rise to discussions about such support for research 125 years ago

NELDSON MARCOLIN

Published in August 2007

An episode that took place 125 years ago gave rise to thefirst debates regarding investment in science in Brazil.In common agreement with the emperor Dom Pedro II,the minister of the Navy, Bento de Paula Souza, askedParliament for funds amounting to 30 contos to financethree scientific expeditions which would observe thepassage of Venus over the solar disc. The observations,

on December 6, 1882, would help to determine the distancebetween the Earth and the Sun.

One of the expeditions was to Olinda, Pernambuco. However,the main ones were concentrated on the Island of Saint Thomas inthe Caribbean and in Punta Arenas, in southern Chile. “These twosites formed the base of a giant triangle with one of its vertexestouching the planet Venus”, explains Marcomede Rangel, physicistat the National Observatory, the institution that coordinated theexpeditions on that occasion in the name of Imperial Observatoryof Rio de Janeiro. “Because of the triangular similarity one arrivedat the distance of the Earth to Venus and of Venus to the Sun.”Several other countries dispatched teams to conduct observations

NA

TIO

NA

L O

BS

ER

VA

TO

RY

MEMORY

( )

Star gazing

Observatory set up in Punta Arenas, Chile: method developed by Edmund Halley

08-09_Memory_138_Ing 12/10/07 17:53 Page 8


two rich farmers and the expeditions werecarried out.

The controversy with regard to Venusrepresented an isolated factfor the times, according to Lilia Moritz Schwarcz an anthropologist at theUniversity of São Pauloand author of the book “As barbas do imperador”

(Under the nose of theEmperor) (Companhia das Letras, 1998). In 1882,scientific activity was stillin its early stages and theone most interested inpracticing it, even as anamateur, was preciselyDom Pedro II.

Dom Pedro was a patron of the arts,literature and science.Apart from wanting to give independence to the local cultural elite,the emperor also wanted to distinguish himselffrom other sovereigns,including those from thepast. “In those times, to be considered illustrious,kings and queens had tobe scientists”, states Lilia.Another aspect thathelped to avoid scientificcontroversy at that timewas the fact that DomPedro practiced scienceprivately – he was anamateur astronomer andowned an observatory atthe São Cristóvão Palace.There was also theEmperor’s Museum, whichhoused the mummiesgiven to him by Egypt,ethnographic material and Leopoldina’s gemcollection. “Access therewas granted only toscientists he invited.”

the senator. The politiciansdid not understand the benefits that theexpeditions might bring to the population.

Result: Parliament did not grant the 30 contos. Nevertheless,to comply with theEmperor, counselor Leão Velloso managed toobtain the funds from

Illustration by Angelo Agostini in his Revista Ilustrada: poking fun at Dom Pedro II and at astronomic research

at several points aroundthe globe.

The request of theemperor and of hisminister gave rise toprotests in the Chamberand in the Senate and to cartoons in the press,especially in the RevistaIlustrada (IllustratedMagazine), designed andedited by Angelo Agostini.“It became one of theliveliest debates on the use of elementary science”,states Ronaldo Rogério deFreitas Mourão, researcherat the Museum ofAstronomy and CorrelatedSciences (Mast) and ascholar on the subject.

In the Senate, Silveirada Mota, contrary to theconcession of the funds,complained: “Thepopulation wants otherthings, it is not interestedin astronomicalobservations (...) the population wantsrailways, plenty ofcoffee, tobacco, a lot ofindividual liberty,very thrifty and moralgovernments (...) thepeople want all this, andthey are not eager to knowwhat goes on in the stars… that is a luxury”. In theChamber, representativeFerreira Viana seconded

MIG

UE

L B

OY

AY

AN

/RE

VIS

TA I

LU

ST

RA

DA

/IE

B/U

SP

08-09_Memory_138_Ing 12/10/07 17:54 Page 9


José Sérgio Gabrielli de Azevedo

Let’s not downgrade petroleum now

MARILUCE MOURA

PH

OT

OS

LÉ

O R

AM

OS

INTERVIEW‘

‘

When an economist from Bahia,José Sérgio Gabrielli de Azeve-do, 57 years old, appeared onthe national political scene atthe beginning of President Lu-la`s first term, because of hisappointment to be Petrobras’s

director of finance and investor relations,some inquired, with a certain irony, not to saysarcasm, where had he been hidden for solong as, inspite of having such a good cur-riculum, he was completely unknown. Fouryears later, the last two – after the departureof José Eduardo Dutra – as President of Petro-bras, it would be hard for anyone to questionhis competence at the helm of the companythat in 2006 recorded a profit of R$ 25.9 bil-lion and reached a market value of R$ 230 bil-lion, a 33% appreciation compared to the pre-vious year.And it is to be noted that, through-out this year, the largest Brazilian companyand one of the biggest oil companies in theworld, it faced some disagreeable political tur-bulence, in particular with Bolivia. Petrobras’sPresident faced up to it gallantly.

Apparently, until arriving at Petrobras,Gabrielli had always been an academic.When25,26 years old, even before doing his doctor-ate at Boston University, which he started in1976,he had already become a professor at theFaculty of Economics at the Federal Universi-ty of Bahia (UFBA) while concluding his mas-ter’s degree there. After his stay in the UnitedStates, when with sophisticated methods ofeconometrics, he pored over the financing ofthe Brazilian state-owned companies,he wentback to his old school. After passing throughall the stages of his teaching career at the in-stitution, he became Director from 1996 –2000. His path at UFBA was to be completedwith the position of Pro-rector for Researchand Postgraduate Studies, in 2002, soon aftera spell in London for postdoctoral studies.

In fact, in parallel to his successful aca-demic life, Gabrielli had always exercised hispolitical side, having a liking for it, up to apoint,but he was certainly imbued as well witha notion of politics as a mission, which left astrong mark on a good – perhaps the best –number of the 1968 generation.As a militantin that vibrant student movement at the endof the 60s, achieving prominence in legal po-sitions, like that of president of the Central Di-rectory of Students (DCE) in Bahia, and al-so with underground connections, given hislink with Popular Action (AP in the Por-tuguese acronym), a clandestine party then intransit between the Catholic left – its placeof origin – and the Marxist domains, Gabriel-li ended up facing a period in prison in 1970.Then at the end of the decade, he found him-self naturally amongst the founders of theWorkers’ Party (PT) and, a few years later, in1990, as a disciplined member of the party, heaccepted the candidacy for Governor of theState of Bahia, an extremely arduous andwearying task, all the more so when hisstrongest adversary was the all-powerful Sen-ator Antonio Carlos Magalhães – predictablythe winner in that campaign.

There are even less known facts aboutthe past of Petrobras’s president. For exam-ple, in 1970, he spent a short time workingin journalism, as international editor of thenewly founded newspaper Tribuna da Bahia[Tribune of Bahia] which under the edito-rial command of Quintino Carvalho, fromRio de Janeiro, intended to bring some freshair to the Bahian press. And there is one sto-ry from this time, amongst so many oth-ers, that delighted the colleagues of the tem-porary journalist: one night, the fearsomeColonel Luís Artur de Carvalho, for manyyears the superintendent of the Federal Po-lice in Bahia, for some reason had gone tothe Tribuna’s newsroom. And, sighting

Gabrielli at the back of the large place ofwork, shouted:“Mr. Gabrielli, how is the APgoing?” And he, without losing his cool:“Sending lots of news, colonel”. Of course,an international news editor would then bedealing all the time with telegrams from AP,the Associated Press.

But it is the future that José SérgioGabrielli talks of in this interview for PesquisaFAPESP. He addresses the challenges that theproblem of the global climate changes bringsto an oil-producing company like Petrobras,foresees the chance of a privileged situationfor the country in the area of biofuels, thinksthat it makes no sense to downgradepetroleum, which is integrated so very deeplywith contemporary life such as it is, andmakes an extremely singular comparison be-tween Petrobras’s Research Center and the16th century School of Sagres, at the sametime as he talks, full of enthusiasm, aboutPetrobras’s research network with the Brazil-ian universities and its great potential forgenerating knowledge.

■ Isn’t it nonsense for a President of a fossil fu-el products company to speak about pro-pro-tection of the environment, as was seen, for ex-ample, when you went to the Davos Econom-ic Forum, in January?— At the forum, I took part in an event calledEnergy Summit, which brings together themain oil companies and the main electricitycompanies in the world. There are 30 peopleat the most. And, in this forum, discussionsabout climate change, prospects for growthin the demand for oil, and energy conser-vation are absolutely fundamental. What isthe position of the oil industry today? First,the understanding that the oil age will not bereplaced by another fuel because of its de-pletion, but because economically viable al-ternative fuels are going to appear.

‘

Published in March 2007

10-15_Interview_133_Ing 12/7/07 16:57 Page 10

PESQUISA FAPESP ■ SPECIAL ISSUE NOV 2006/SEP 2007 ■ 11PESQUISA FAPESP 132 ■ FEVEREIRO DE 2007 ■ 11



a short time ago.We are producing at a depthof over 1,800 meters, and we are drilling at adepth of over 6 thousand meters. We havea well in the Gulf of Mexico with a depth of11 kilometers in shallow water. And we haveevery expectation here in Brazil of explo-ration in the pre-salt, that means, below thelayer of salt that has 6 thousand meters ofrock, which is 2 kilometers of salt...

■ But does it not seem to you, in view of theequation that is being put together in envi-ronmental terms, this ultra-sophisticated tech-nology for exploration tends to be a bit useless?— It becomes viable because the price of oilis high. But given this same factor, alterna-tives are going to appear: there is growing vi-ability of energy from biofuels, from windpower, solar power, energy from the waves ofthe sea, and nuclear energy. If the price of oilfalls, many of these nascent technologiescease to be viable.

■ When one thinks of Brazil’s energy grid for2030, it is said that hydroelectric energy shouldcontinue to account for 50% of the total.— Hydroelectric energy today accounts for85% of the electricity grid and some 47% inthe energy matrix as a whole. But Brazil is anexceptional case, because it is perhaps one ofthe biggest countries in the world, and theonly one with so much renewable fuel in theenergy matrix, thanks to hydroelectric ener-gy and to alcohol. It is enough to think that40% of Brazilian gasoline, or its equivalentin terms of energy, is alcohol.

■ Even so, when one measures the futureBrazilian energy matrix, a good deal of the useof oil is raffled off, isn’t?— Yes. And that creates two great challengesin the matter of fuel replacement. One is con-nected with biofuel, both ethanol andbiodiesel. They are going to replace gaso-line and diesel, which are going to be left over,or, in the case of diesel, we are going to stopimporting.Accordingly, Petrobras has to dealwith this.

■ Does that mean that Petrobras will have toreduce its production in some way?— No, not to reduce. Petrobras has to find adestination for its production, because, unlikeothers, the oil industry is not a Ford-type in-dustry that is adjusted by the speed of thetransmission belt. It is an industry in which in-vestments are made to work at 100%. So, itis a question of finding new destinations. Forexample, here in Rio de Janeiro we are mak-ing a petrochemical complex that is going touse heavy oil directly to produce petrochem-icals,with technology that is new in the world.Nobody does that, everybody uses natural gas

or naphtha,but we are going to do it.This way,we may decrease the production of fuel oil andalso stop having a problem with gasoline anddiesel, gasoline and naphtha. The forecast isto begin production in 2012. The other alter-native is to find ways for using this kind of oiland gasoline and diesel in other markets. Theworld is going to continue to demand this fortransport. We produce 2 million barrels, theworld consumes 85 million. Our target for2011 is to produce 2.3 million barrels of oil.

■ And how does Petrobras today forecast thedestination of this production?— By 2011, we are going to construct thispetrochemical complex and a new refinery inthe Northeast, in particular to optimize theproduction of diesel.Then we are going to have350 million additional barrels of processingcapacity. We are going to increase the capac-ity of the present-day refineries by over 200thousand barrels, and, in an integrated man-ner,we are going to increase the production ofbiodiesel and alcohol.We have bought 800 mil-lion cubic meters of biodiesel, or 800 billionliters a year. And, from 2008 onwards, we aregoing to produce 150 million cubic meters.

■ With regard to transport, do Petrobras’s fore-casts establish what is the proportion of useof each one of these fuels?— It is difficult to talk precisely. Today, in themarket for gasoline, roughly 40% is alcohol,as I said, because it is 25% of anhydrous al-cohol, plus the hydrated alcohol. In diesel, wewill be between 2% and 5%.We have a grow-ing compressed natural gas fleet. The prob-lem with this gas that it has an unbalancedrelative price, meaning, it makes no senseto have that fuel which Brazil has least of,with the price sky high.

■ And there are political questions in relationto the gas that do not seem very simple— The growth in the demand for compressednatural gas is probably going to see a reduc-tion. Its share in the energy matrix as a wholewent up from 4%, 5% to 8%, in three years.The prospect is for gas in this matrix to reachperhaps 10% of the total Brazilian energy ma-trix. And I think that we will have a far largerportion of biofuel here in Brazil than in therest of the world, where it is going to come toabout 10% of the market in 2015. The oth-er alternative forms, wind power, solar en-ergy etc., really account for a very small share.

■ But then nuclear power comes on stage. Min-ister Sérgio Rezende is once again talking em-phatically about the Brazilian nuclear program.— Without a shadow of doubt, nuclear pow-er is the cleanest we have, although it is alsothe most dangerous, because it does not heat

■ Which?— Several. At this moment, biofuels are ap-pearing, along with a whole perspective ofgreater efficiency in automobiles and greaterconservation of energy. This involves an ur-ban policy that minimizes the use of the in-dividual vehicle and is also effective from thepoint of view of the main problem in theworld with regard to emissions: the loss of en-ergy in buildings, the use of fuel for generat-ing electricity, the basis for heating and cool-ing of dwellings and other buildings. Andthere we have coal, natural gas, fuel oil... Themost recent report from the UN puts vehiclesin second place in terms of emissions.And af-terwards, significantly, comes deforestationand forest fires. The sources are various, andtheir identification makes it possible to adoptthe policies required for each one of them,and, accordingly, to visualize possibilities ofthe effects and the successes in fighting themore real warming, instead of staying withone culprit, downgrading that culprit...

■ Or nurturing the fantasy that they will man-age to take all the fossil fuel out of the world’svehicle circulation system...— Yes, that is a bit of a fantasy. Today, rather,it is important to call attention to the fact thatclean water and clean air are fundamental forlife. Modern human life would not existwithout oil.

■ And, in a way, that today constitutes a para-dox. How to face up to it?— There is simply not one way how.We haveto minimize the impact of oil production onthe environment and make more efficientuse of oil by increasing the use of cleanersources to generate energy.

■ In your claim that modern life does not ex-ist without oil, the reference is to what?— I am talking about transport, generationof energy and petrochemicals. Look aroundyou, in modern life, we are going to find oilin practically everything we can think of.

■ And that will remain so, in your view, formany decades or centuries, perhaps.— Centuries, I think not. I think decades. To-day, the demand for oil in the world is moreor less balanced – 82 to 84 million barrelsof oil a day is the supply and also the de-mand, The forecast growth for demand isaround 1.6%, 1.8% a year, and that is also thegrowth in supply. So there is no reason forsaying that there is going to be a big problemin this area. The reserves known today in-dicate 70, 80 years of production. On the oth-er hand, there is a growing use of new tech-nologies to recover mature fields and to pro-duce oil in situations that were impossible



In our strategicplan prior to theIPCC panel, since2004, 2005, we have alreadybeen puttingPetrobras’s vision,for 2011, as worldleader in thebiofuel area. It is a target to be positioned like that in this market

‘

up slowly and gradually, but brutally and ex-plosively , both from the point of view of ac-cidents and from the point of view of its non-pacific use. The regulation and the follow upof any program are key elements for its bal-ance. Furthermore, nuclear power has an-other serious problem, which is the waste, itsreuse, which still has to be resolved.

■ In the meantime, in the oil industry...— In the oil industry, considering the provenreserves in the world today, those that have a90% probability of being developed com-mercially, we have 60, 70 years of productionthere. If we also look at the possible reserves,those with a 50% probability of developmentwith present-day technology and commer-cial conditions, that will be more than 150years. If we also put the probable ones, thereis an enormous production horizon.

■And if the possibility of mature fields is added...— Yes, taking into account technological de-velopment for recovering mature fields that isgoing to be induced by the high prices of oil– the so-called secondary recovery in whichCO2 is injected into the well to produce moreoil –, considering the heat technology to stepup the recovery of oil, in short, more sophis-ticated and expensive technologies, and if weinclude in the panorama of the future pro-duction the bituminous sands of Canada andthe extra-heavy oil of Venezuela, we arrive ata time horizon of 200 years of oil production...No technological challenge is very great in thelong term, and everything is going to depend,in great measure,on the behavior of oil prices.Let’s remember that our alcohol became vi-able 30 years ago based on price, and after-wards there was a crisis because of the ques-tion of price.When the price of oil rose,we es-tablished the Proálcool policy. And, from theproduction of sugarcane,we established a pol-icy in the automobile industry.When the priceof oil fell and, simultaneously, the price of sug-ar went up, Proálcool became unviable.

■ By unveiling this broad horizon, is your in-tention to allude to a possibility of burningoil less aggressive to the environment?— No, what I am saying essentially is that oilis not going to leave the stage because it is go-ing to finish, rather it may become econom-ically unviable because in the future there willbe other cleaner and more economically vi-able sources.

■ But which cleaner sources and processes ef-fectively have the volume to replace the impor-tance that oil has in the world energy matrix— Pulp, for example – the production of pulpfrom an enzymatic process using vegetablewaste. This technology is very embryonic at

the moment, both in the capacity for pro-ducing enzymes, in the capacity for capturingthis waste, in the actual processing of the pulp,or in the process of transporting its results.But it can be developed.Another example: hy-drogen, which involves a technological revo-lution, not only with the fuel. The main lim-itation that I see in this technology is that itrequires another engine, it requires a trans-formation in the fleet of automobiles, with anew conception. For me, then, it is further offthan biofuel.As to the advances in energy con-servation, we have today technologies alreadyavailable, but still expensive, for building in-telligent buildings,windowpanes adapted withnanotechnology etc., that reflect, that repel theheat and sometimes reduce by up to 60% theuse of energy in a building.

■ Does the problem concern heating more,or cooling— Both, because buildings have to be heat-ed in the winter and cooled in the summer.There is today a whole urban dynamic in thebig metropolises, aiming at minimization inusing energy for transport, a whole policy forexpanding the mass transportation network,in parallel to the development of more effi-cient engines for domestic use in refrigera-tors, more efficient stoves, light bulbs etc.There is therefore a conservation movementthat is going to diminish the impact of fossilfuels, together with a movement to expandproduction from cleaner sources.

■ Nevertheless, I insist: how does Petrobras, thecompany that at the beginning of the 1950s be-gan to construct the Brazilian dream of self-suf-ficiency in oil in the country, now attained, andthat has, besides immense economic weight, anextraordinary sociocultural importance in ournation, adjust its strategic plan to the currenttheme of risk from the climate change?— In our strategic plan prior to the IPCC pan-el, since 2004, 2005, we were already puttingPetrobras’s vision, as of 2011, as world lead-er in the biofuel area. We have as a strategictarget positioned ourselves in this market, forpro-active reasons and for defensive reasons.In the first case, we think that this market isgoing to grow. And the defensive reasons re-late to the following: as there are going to beshifts, it is better for us to do the shifting thanbeing shifted by the others. It is, incidentally,absolutely incredible, when we go to a meet-ing like the one in Davos, to see the image thatPetrobras has at that level. It is seen as a com-pany that has been taking care of this field fora long time.We have a patent in alcohol trans-port, an alcoholduct, we have technology fortreating acidity in the refinery and in the tanks,we have in the automobile industry a lot of ex-perience in producing automobiles using al-



up the Doha Round etc., and here we are notgoing to work with protection, but with effi-ciency of the productivity. But there lies an-other problem: given the scale of fuel, that hasa great impact on the planted area. And bio-fuels are going to compete with foods in someplaces, as has already happened. That is thecase of the Mexican tortilla: the price of corngoes up, the price of tortilla goes up. Accord-ingly, in the expansion of the planted area,carehas to be taken not to make food productionunviable. The second problem: deforestation.Obviously, this ought to be done in the ar-eas that have already been deforested.

■ But if we talk here about soybeans, sugarcaneetc., we have a frontier that is already very ex-tensive.— In Brazil, yes, but there’s the rest of theworld. In short, we will have to be more ef-ficient in the use of the land already defor-ested to produce more. And there’s a thirdproblem: water. Agriculture is a large user ofwater, and if it increases, we may reach stran-gulation in the supply of water. So there hasto be a global view of this problem, becausethere’s no partial solution. A State policy –and I am taking about the State nationallyand in international relations – with marketmechanisms. Policies that are clearly Statepolicies, for planning, for repression, for reg-ulation, with a policy on prices, on penalties.

■ Isn’t this a case of a difficult equation to resolve?— Very difficult. On the international plane,we have the United States, on the one handrefusing to admit that they are causers of theproblem, and, on the other hand, the po-tential producers of biofuels with a short-term view, just breaking down the trade bar-riers, without...

■ The potential producers are Brazil...— Brazil, India and China. There is a growthin the demand for unclean energy in thesecountries. Particularly in China, there is aprospect of thousands of thermal power sta-tions using coal. These are problems thatneed to be put onto the discussion table in-ternationally and in each nation. Besides this,the carbon credit mechanism is interesting,but completely insufficient for facing up tothe problem. Briefly, it means buying theright to emit CO2.You can’t count on that inthe long term. More restrictive measures,of contention, are necessary. And technolo-gy has an absolutely key role in this question,both for conservation and for biofuels andeven for carbon sequestering in the produc-tion of fossil fuels. There’s the reinjectionof CO2 and various technologies under de-velopment that sequester carbon in oil pro-duction. At an initial stage.

cohol, more than any other country in theworld, we have logistics set up for the distri-bution of alcohol, and all this puts Petrobrasin a position of great prominence. So, fromthe point of view of Petrobras, this is a sec-tor that is not going to be the main one for in-vestment, but it will be very important also inrelative terms of capital. In the case ofbiodiesel, there is another dimension to theprogram to which I would like to draw atten-tion here, which is the social dimension. Car-bon emission is predominantly from theNorthern Hemisphere, even though its growthis larger in the Southern Hemisphere. Andlook: if, amongst the various ways of reducingthis emission, it will be necessary to expandbiofuels, unless in this search a technologicalrevolution is produced in the Northern Hemi-sphere,which may happen,on the basis of pre-sent-day technology the greatest probability ofincreasing the production of biofuel sourceslies within the Southern Hemisphere. Andbased on various plants, like the castor plant,oleaginous plants, the physic nut, the sunfloweretc. etc. That is going to make the balance offuel geopolitics change a bit.

■ Do you firmly believe that?— I do believe it , and, as I said, biofuel is go-ing to represent something like 10% of theworld fuel market. So we are talking of 8 mil-lion barrels a day, and that is equivalent to fourtimes Petrobras’s current production of oil. Sothat is going to cause a change in the role ofSouth America in the geopolitics of the sector.

■ Even with disturbances on the continent?— That’s part of life, there’s no way. But therearen’t any more disturbances than in Iran,Iraq, the Middle East. But there is anothercomponent to which I’d like to call attentionhere: the agricultural production of a fuelcommodity isn’t the same thing as that of afood or industrial commodity. First, stabilityin supply has to be clear , it has to be morethan for a food commodity, because there arefewer replacements.

■ That means that whoever is in such produc-tion has a total guarantee of sale.

— Precisely, since there has to be an on-going flow of supply. Second: there has to be along-term contract structure,which isn’t com-mon in this market. So we will have special lo-gistical, distribution channels.We are going tohave a series of transformations in North-South relations,and we are going have to over-come the protection mechanisms of the Eu-ropean Community and of the United Statesfor their farmers, who are less efficient thanthose in the South. That makes this produc-tion inefficient from the point of view of over-all production. We are going to have to speed

The logic ofCenpes is theSchool of Sagres,which combinedthe skill of thesailor with theknowledge of thewise and with the dreams of the cartographers.That is a keyelement:combiningperspectives of dreams withthe interest of the industryand scientificknowledge

‘



is that the latter is based on institutional re-lations.There are contracts signed with the in-stitutions in which a specific managementstructure for these contracts is provided .

■ And can Petrobras demand results?— Yes, of course it can, by not paying in thenext period. Petrobras works on the basisof measurement bulletins, and the money is100% Petrobras’s.

■ Petrobras is accused, even though in an iron-ic and playful way, of being stronger in the coun-try’s cultural policy than the Ministry of Culture.It would thus have the know-how for doingsomething similar in science and technology...— Petrobras’s cultural programs are alignedwith the policies of the Ministry of Culture.In the case of the CNPq, of Capes etc., thepicture is different, because we are makingan investment in a subset of the areas inwhich these institutions act.

■ To close, doesn’t the discussion about glob-al changes put Petrobras before a fundamen-tal dilemma on growth? — No, I don’t see it like that. The oil indus-try in the world, in the last 150 years, has beenresponsible for the shape of modern life.With-out it, the world would not be what it is today.There wouldn’t be the planes we have, the cars,the means of transport would be different, thekinds of energy other, the means of generat-ing electricity, everything... So, you can’tdowngrade it, OK? Without oil, we wouldn’thave the petrochemical industry. It’s a goodthing to dot the i’s. In the case of Brazil, Petro-bras has had, ever since its first moments, avery intense connection with the develop-ment of the country. In its essence, it has a re-lationship with Brazilian industry, with fac-ing up to the problems of inequality, with na-tionality, national affirmation, independence.All these are fundamental values in Petro-bras’s strategy and life. It resisted and it sup-ported, it had a love / hate relationship withProálcool – without Petrobras too, Proálcoolwould probably not have been developed.Now, with biodiesel and the expansion inalcohol exports, Petrobras positions itself be-fore them as the important segments that theyare. It is important to accommodate them inPetrobras, because it is a question of a na-tional energy efficiency problem. Petrobras istoday making a carbon credit evaluation ofits emissions. And it channels 40% of its in-vestments into refining, which are US$ 23 bil-lion in four or five years, to improve the qual-ity of diesel and gasoline. Petrobras’s total in-vestment is US$ 87 billion by 2011. And allthat is perfectly integrated with Petrobras’shistory, and I see no “to be or not to be…oh!”ahead. No profound existential crisis. ■

■ I would like to address Petrobras’s researchnetworks program, which uses the so-calledspecial participations, 1% of the company’srevenue from production, to invest R$ 1 billionfor research at universities in the next few years.— There is R$ 1.4 billion in funds for thenext three years. The program covers 26 the-matic areas relating to oil, gas and biofuel –not just referring to their production – andsix regional areas, aimed at the kind of prob-lem that we have in the different regions ofthe country. This involves 72 research insti-tutions. There is very diverse research, intobacteria, for example, basic chemical reac-tions, materials, nanotechnology.

■ Nevertheless, isn’t it very tied to the tradi-tional fuels? — No, we have research on biofuels. And ifwe go back to Cenpes, we are doing researchinto pulp, with sulfur-absorbing anaerobicbacteria etc.

■ What is the view of the president of Petro-bras about Cenpes? — Petrobras has today, without any doubt,the largest technological research and devel-opment center in the country and in SouthAmerica. We have 3 thousand people work-ing there.What is the logic of Cenpes? It’s thelogic of the School of Sagres...

■ That’s an absolutely startling idea! Why areference to the 16th century? — The School of Sagres combined the op-erational expertise of the sailor with theknowledge of learned academics and withthe dreams of the cartographers. And that isa key element: combining perspectives ofdreams with the interests of the industry ingetting results and being focused, and withacademic research and with scientific knowl-edge in general – that is Cenpes.And it is suc-cessful because it combines basic knowledgewith application. It is not a university re-search center, but applied, but it has a sci-entific basis. It’s a company research center,and it works well. That means that it has avery great possibility to develop knowledge.But it never has been isolated – and that isanother important detail. Neither in relationto other company research centers, nor in re-lation to academic centers in Brazil. It hascreated a very intense research network withall the important universities in Brazil. Andso this applied research of Petrobras hasspread over Brazilian and international uni-versities. But to our mind, it has become in-sufficient, because it wasn’t institutional, itwas group to group, researcher to researcher.The idea of setting up the institutional net-work that we began in 2005 aims at increas-ing the capacity for generating research and

knowledge in this system in the entire coun-try. And it is a network, because each piecehas at least four institutions. There is gen-erally a key institution, because it is the lead-er, and others that it is going to pull in, fromAmazonas to Rio Grande do Sul.

■ Taking advantage of your associations, ifCenpes brings the School of Sagres, what is themodel for the institutional network?— The Internet. What characterizes the In-ternet is the network structure in which therupture of one node does not break the other.

■ Our own country has for some time alreadybeen experiencing the research network struc-ture to produce leaps forward in the generationof knowledge. These things happened follow-ing FAPESP’s Genome Program, launched in1997, almost ten years ago, therefore.— Precisely, that was the basis for genomics...

■ So, via Cenpes, we arrive at a marriage be-tween the classical benchmark of the School ofSagres and the more contemporary benchmarkof the virtual network. If it doesn’t work, at leastit is an idea full of humor.— Yes... The School of Sagres is concentrat-ed on a hub, and the network is diversified,fragmented and decentralized.And our chal-lenge is precisely to link one model to theother in a productive manner. There is nodoubt that we are going to carry on with ap-plied research at Cenpes, and we are going tocomplement this advance by pulling in thewhole of this network. And in some way wehope to irrigate the Brazilian business systemwith the idea of innovation.

■ Was the research network thought of follow-ing the long experience of Petrobras’s currentmanagement at university? — In part. It was a combination of that withthe experience of Cenpes and the experienceof Petrobras’s areas. In the discussion at di-rector level, university experience was im-portant – not only mine, but also the expe-rience of director Ildo Sauer, who is fromUSP. The interactive process existed and, ashappens in Petrobras, things were the resultof a collective definition process.And the net-work is nothing new or original, interna-tionally. There are various similar experi-ments from the major oil companies.

■ Should the network remain concentratedon Brazil?— At this moment we are concentrated onBrazil, but we are not closed, because this net-work has and must have contacts and relationswith the whole world, otherwise it fails towork. I insist that one great difference betweenmodels from the past and this network now


ILU

ST

RA

ÇÕ

ES

CL

AU

DIU

S

16-19_Evaluation_132_Ing 12/10/07 21:53 Page 16

Two studies published in the jour-nal Annals of the Brazilian Acade-my of Sciences have sketched anunprecedented portrait of whatBrazil has been producing ofmost relevance in the interna-tional scientific scene. Re-

searchers Rogerio Meneghini and AbelPacker, from the Latin American andCaribbean Center on Health SciencesInformation (Bireme), pored over thecream of the national academic pro-duction between 1994 and 2003: the setof 248 scientific articles cited over a hun-dred times in other publications con-nected to the Thomson-ISI (Institute forScientific Information) database. Thissample represents 0.23% of the 109,916articles by Brazilians published in mag-azines indexed in the ISI in that peri-od. The significance of a paper is usual-ly measured by the number of mentionsthat it gets in other articles.

The next step was to try to group the248 articles into areas of knowledge. Itwas possible to find common denomi-nators in 114 of them, leading the au-thors to conclude that 25 Brazilian cen-ters of excellence achieved special promi-nence in 11 different fields:

■ Amongst the 12 articles on the Ama-zon Forest, the majority about the con-sequences of the exploitation of the for-est, eight were connected to the NationalInstitute of Amazon Research (INPA),based in Manaus. “It is a positive fact,because it shows the viability of pro-ducing high level research outside thebig centers”, Meneghini says. Its close-

ness to the object of study does not ex-plain the impact. “Many institutionsfrom other countries also sponsor re-search in the Amazon”, he says.■ Cardiovascular surgeries are thetheme of 18 of the most cited articles.The majority of them are linked to largeinternational research networks, andmany have to do with the same subject:the effectiveness of techniques like an-gioplasty and the implantation of stentsto unblock arteries, carried out at in-stitutions in São Paulo like the Heart In-stitute (InCor) and the Dante PazzaneseCardiology Institute. An innovativetechnique for reducing dilated left ven-tricles invented by surgeon RandasBatista, from Pará, was also significant.■ Twenty Brazilian groups that are study-ing the oxidative mechanism of cells pro-duced ten articles that received over ahundred citations. Amongst the high-lights were the five articles by the team ofAníbal Vercesi, a professor from theSchool of Medical Sciences of the StateUniversity of Campinas (Unicamp).Their papers helped to understand therelationship between the activities of themitochondria and cell death. Anotherthree papers are from the group of OharaAugusto, at the Chemistry Institute, theUniversity of São Paulo (USP), in part-nership with Rafael Radi, a Uruguayan.The articles resulted from a research thatreported the formation of a carbonateradical, a compound hitherto unknownin living organisms.■ Seven articles about chemical catal-ysis evidence the success of the researchcoordinated by Jairton Dupont and

Roberto F. de Souza, professors from theFederal University of Rio Grande do Sul(UFRGS). In 1992, they developed newmolten salts, liquid at room temperatureand highly stable, which have found awide application in the chemical indus-try. The group managed to produce var-ious ionic liquids, ensuring applicationsin various fields of science. The workwas done in partnership with Petrobras.■ Genetic sequencing was responsiblefor three Brazilian articles of great sig-nificance. The main one was the se-quencing of the Xylella fastidiosa phy-topathogen, which merited the cover ofthe Nature journal on July 13, 2000.Xylella is responsible for the agricultur-al “yellowing” scourge. The sequencingwas fostered by a program coordinat-ed by FAPESP, which organized the net-work connecting institutions in SãoPaulo.“It’s too early to conclude whetherthat is the best way to attain excellencein molecular biology”, says Meneghini.“But there was a fundamental gain inour capacity to organize research net-works at a national level.”■ Brazilian research in neurosciencesproduced 16 high impact articles. Oneof the groups that stood out, in the fieldof experimental pharmacology, is led byFrederico Graeff, from the School of Phi-losophy, Sciences and Literature of USPin Ribeirão Preto, and it seeks to under-stand the effect of drugs that relieve orproduce anxiety in rats. The team withthe most articles is led by Iván Izquier-do, then of the Federal University of RioGrande do Sul, which investigates themechanisms of the memory. Pharma-cologist Xavier Albuquerque, from theFederal University of Rio de Janeiro(UFRJ) and the University of Maryland,in the United States, is researching thebiophysical aspects of synaptic trans-mission in neurons.One of the articles inneurosciences has a Brazilian author,Luiz Antônio Baccalá, from USP, but thework was conducted in a laboratory atDuke University, in the United States,commanded by Brazilian MiguelNicolelis, known for his work with sen-somotor connections. Meneghini andPacker observe that both Xavier Albu-querque and Miguel Nicolelis were stu-dents of César Timo-Iaria, a researcher


>SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL POLICY

EVALUATION

What are we good at?Studies indicate 11 areas of knowledge in which Brazilian research shines throughout the world

FABRÍCIO MARQUES | ILLUSTRATIONS CLAUDIUS CECCON

Published in February 2007


from USP and a pioneer in neuro-sciences in Brazil, who died in 2005.■ Particle physics was responsible for 13articles, thanks, in good measure, to col-lections of data carried out by two re-search networks, one linked to USP’sPhysics Institute, and another connect-ed to the Brazilian Center for Researchin Physics. The laurels are diluted: eachone of the articles has an average of 154authors from a dozen different countries.■ Quantum physics is the theme of sev-en articles, divided into two categories.One of them, more inclined to the the-oretical field, is captained by Con-stantino Tsallis, of the Brazilian Cen-ter for Research in Physics – responsi-ble for concepts that took his name,such as the Tsallis entropy. The other, in

experimental physics, is led by LuizDavidovich, from UFRJ.■ Fourteen articles deal with human ge-netics, the highlights being the studiesby Mayana Zatz and Maria Rita PassosBueno, from USP, who identified thegenes involved in human muscular dys-trophy. The Genetic EndocrinologyUnit of USP’s School of Medicine alsocontributed with two articles about agenetic disease, a type of pseudo-hermaphroditism.■ Research into infectious diseases, suchas toxoplasmosis, Aids and Chagas’s dis-ease, accounted for 14 articles high-lighting three institutions: the FederalUniversity of Minas Gerais, the Oswal-do Cruz Foundation, and USP’s Schoolof Medicine in Ribeirão Preto.

■ Finally, three articles on the use of oralcontraceptives and their effects on vas-cular ailments revealed the participationof the Federal University of São Paulo(Unifesp) in studies with major inter-national research networks.

The survey is useful for showing theinternational face of Brazilian research,but the authors warn that the data hasto be contextualized. The predominanceof articles in the area of medicine andbiomedicine (108 of the 248 articles)is not explained just by the performanceof the scientists, but also by the fact that,all over the world, this field is particu-larly productive. Meneghini and Packerdid another study, not yet published,in which they looked at articles that hadreceived at least 50 citations. In this uni-verse, there emerged groups of excel-lence in areas like mathematics, com-puting sciences, anthropology, engi-neering, veterinary medicine and bio-physics. In some of these areas, the worldacademic production is lower, which ex-plains the lower number of citations.Brazilian research in humanities is lesssignificant due to the fact that they dealwith regional subjects, which do notarouse international interest.

The survey brings various findingsthat inspire reflection. One of them is theconsiderable prevalence of studies doneby large international networks, in theareas of medicine, particle physics andastronomy. They are articles about theincidence of diseases or the effectivenessof drugs, or that depend on the collec-tion of data by means of accelerators ortelescopes.Amongst the 37 articles mostcited, each of which received as manyas 250 citations, 18 are of this kind. Onaverage, each one of these articles has 21authors from 9.4 different countries,against an average of 3.8 countries perarticle from the set of papers studied.“They are important researches, butsome have an almost bureaucratic scope,in which the participation of the re-searchers is limited to supplying largequantities of data”, Meneghini says.

What also called attention was thefact that only four of the 37 articles arethe exclusive responsibility of Brazil-ian authors, a demonstration of the im-portance of international cooperation,which inspired the researchers to writea second article, specific to the theme.



Could it be a symptom of dependenceor of weakness? The president of theBrazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC),Eduardo Krieger, does not see this as aproblem.“Of the research published byBrazilians, between 30% and 35% haveinternational cooperation, which is ahealthy number”, says Krieger.“This dis-tortion occurs in the ranking of the mostquoted articles because there is a ten-dency of American authors to cite theirfellow countrymen more”, he claims.

Planning the future – The idea of do-ing a survey arose in 2004, whenBritain’s David King, scientific advisorto the government of the United King-dom, did a study about the 1% mostquoted articles in the world between1993 and 2001 and published an arti-cle in Nature magazine, showing theranking of the 31 countries that producethe most significant research on theplanet. In it, Brazil appears in an hon-orable 23rd place. The study showedthat the country published 27,874 ar-ticles in the Thomson ISI database, be-tween 1993 and 1997 (0.84% of the to-tal), and 43,971 articles from 1997 to2001 (1.21% of the total). But whatBrazilian studies were these? The rank-ing did not set out to answer this, thereason Meneghini and Packer decidedto investigate the data.

Knowing the weak points and thestrong points is essential for planningthe future and stepping up the perfor-mance of research. In the opinion ofEduardo Krieger, the 11 areas of great-est impact can help the government totarget investments, but it would be amistake to bet exaggeratedly on areaswith practical applications, leaving asidebasic research. “The areas of excellencehave to be expanded, but it cannot beforgotten that each one of them wasconstructed on a solid base of uncom-mitted science”, he says.

Science, let it be said, is not producedby spontaneous generation. JairtonDupont, a professor from UFRGS andthe leader of the group that becameprominent in chemical catalysis, remindsus that the advances in their field ofknowledge result from investments madefrom 1980 onwards, by force of the firstScientific and Technological Develop-ment Support Program (PADCT), of thefederal government. “Chemistry was asort of poor cousin of the science andtechnology system,but it has managed tomake a lot of headway in the last 20years”, Dupont says. For him, his groupwas successful because it was always readyfor the unexpected – the innovative pro-cess of chemical catalysis was driven bythe difficulty of importing reagents.

Aníbal Vercesi, who is responsible forprominence in the area of oxidative stress,notes that the recognition of his field ofresearch comes from the great populari-ty that it won abroad in the last few years.“There are no secrets.Everything dependson a lot of work and on having the back-ing of good students and good collabo-rators, besides seeking interaction withother researchers. I visit various foreignlaboratories and I always leave the doorsopen for those who want to get to knowour work”, says Vercesi, although for-eigners only contributed to one of his fivearticles , with over a hundred citations.

For Eduardo Krieger, the challenge isto set aside resources capable of guaran-teeing an annual growth of 8% in the ar-ticles published, as has been happeningin the last 20 years, although the econ-omy is advancing at a far slower pace.“Our research system is young and hasevolved a lot. We have to help the coun-try to develop and root for the growth ofthe economy to allow Brazilian scienceto take further leaps forward.” ■


Who producesmost in healthand biologyThe University of São Paulo (USP) isthe leader in the production of ar-ticles on health and biology. Between2001 and 2003, it published 5,696articles indexed in the database ofthe ISI (Institute for Scientific Infor-mation) and 6,368 on the Medlinedatabase. This leadership is recordedin a study published in the BrazilianJournal of Medical and Biological Re-search, which presented a ranking ofthe 20 most productive Brazilianuniversities in this field, responsiblefor 78.7% of the some 25 thousandpapers published between 2001 and2003. The main author of the studyis journalist Ricardo Zorzetto, the sci-ence editor of Pesquisa FAPESP anda researcher in Jair Mari´s group, aprofessor from the Psychiatry De-partment of the Federal Universityof São Paulo (Unifesp). Production isconcentrated in institutions from theSoutheast of the country. The secondplace went to the Federal Universi-ty of Rio de Janeiro, with 2,476 arti-cles in the ISI and 2,318 in Medline,followed by Unifesp, USP in RibeirãoPreto and the State University ofCampinas (Unicamp). Also featuringin the ranking are the Oswaldo CruzFoundation, the Federal Universitiesof Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul,Paraná, Pernambuco, Santa Catari-na, Bahia, Ceará and Pará, three unitsof the São Paulo State University(Unesp), the Rio de Janeiro State Uni-versity, the campus of Unicamp inPiracicaba, and the University ofBrasilia (UnB).



Academic production in Brazilmarked a new record in 2006.The country was responsible for1.92% of the articles publishedin periodicals registered in thedatabase of ISI (Institute of Sci-entific Information), a collection

assembling the most noteworthy publi-cations on the planet. In absolute num-ber, Brazilian researchers published16,872 articles, approximately a thousandmore than in 2005. As a result of such aperformance, the country rose from po-sition 17 to position 15 in the rankingof the 25 most productive nations, leav-ing behind, even if by a small margin, de-veloped countries, such as Sweden andSwitzerland. The data was disclosed bythe Coordination Center for the Perfec-tion of Higher-Learning Personnel(Capes), a department of the Ministry ofEducation that evaluates post-graduationprograms. “In 2002, we were rankednumber 20; in 2005 we rose to number17. The current threshold was expectedonly in 2009”, stated Jorge AlmeidaGuimarães, president of Capes. What ismost impressive is the speed at whichBrazilian production has advanced. Be-tween 2004 and 2006, the increase repre-sented 33%.“Growth is exponential andresults, among other factors, from thestrategy of Capes to strictly demand thepublication of articles”, claims RogérioMeneghini, scientific coordinator of theelectronic library of SciELO Brazil.

The areas displaying the highest in-crease in academic production between2005 and 2006 were those of immunol-ogy (23%), medicine (17%), animal evegetable production (13%), economics(12%), ecology and environment (12%)and engineering. (11%).As expected, theUnited States leads the ranking with32.3% of global scientific production.

However, there were changes in positionwithin the highest-ranked contingentcompared to 2005. Germany outstrippedJapan and became the runner-up with8.1% of all articles. China emerged asfourth with 7.9% of all articles, for thefirst time ahead of England with 7.27%.

Capes also disclosed a second rank-ing,which takes into account the citationsof Brazilian articles in the texts of otherresearchers between 2002 and 2006 (awell known indicator of the significanceof the research) and the quality of thepublications in which they were disclosed.In the so-called “impact ranking”, thecountry’s position falls to the 20th place,being outstripped by Switzerland, whosearticles merited 551,537 citations (vis-à-vis Brazil’s 206,231) and even by coun-tries that published a significantly lowernumber of articles, such as Sweden,Poland, Belgium, Israel, Scotland , Den-mark and Austria. The Brazilian positionwas only not lower because, in terms ofimpact, it managed to outstrip countrieslike Russia, India and even China, whichpublished more articles. As regards theChinese, the number of articles publishedis four times as many as those publishedby Brazilians.“The significance of our ar-ticles is superior to that of the group ofdeveloping countries with whom wecompete”, states Jorge Guimarães ofCapes.“In a number of articles, Brazil isat a disadvantage when it comes to tech-nological areas,but in some cases, this dif-ference disappears in the impact index.”

The difference between the tworankings has given rise to the interpre-tation by means of which the Brazilianresearch seems to display more vitalityregarding the quantity rather than thequality requisite. However, according tospecialists, the truth might well be sit-uated between the two surveys.“In the-

ory, if an article does not receive citations,it is because it did not add anything toknowledge. But there could be some dis-tortion when one analyzes the impact in-dex individually, given that countrieswith a limited production may benefitfrom the extraordinary signficance of asmaller number of articles”, observes thephysicist José Fernando Perez, former sci-entific director of FAPESP.

Tradition - Rogério Meneghini observesthat Scandinavian countries outstripBrazil due to their tradition in certain ar-eas. “Sweden is strong in several areas.Denmark, for example, was home to thephysicist Niels Bohr, who helped devel-op generations of researchers”, he claims,referring to the scientist, who died in1962, and whose works contributed de-cisively to the comprehension of theatom’s structure and to that of quantumphysics. “They are countries that inher-ited science at the highest level, by meansof which they maintain their influenceand dictate directions in certain fields”,explains Meneghini.

But the principal distortion in the im-pact of such indices coud be from anoth-er origin.Various studies in the field of sci-entific method,a subject that generates in-formation to stimulate the enormouschallenges of science, have raised a "psy-chosocial effect" in the logic of such ci-tations: “North Americans tend to citeother North American, Germans cite theGermans, and so forth. The strictnesswhich scientific magazines impose on theirauthors is the same, independent of theirorigin. But the citations of articles fromcountries such as Brazil, India and Chinaare invariably less than those from devel-oped countries”, says Meneghini. ■

BU

EN

O

PAPERS

Increased vitalityAcademic production hits new highs in the country,although its impact is not yet very expressive

>

FABRÍCIO MARQUES

Published in August 2007

20-21_Increase Vitality_138_Ing 12/7/07 17:16 Page 20

20-21_Increase Vitality_138_Ing 12/7/07 17:17 Page 21

Multiple unit: group of interconnected nerve cells make upfunctional base of thecentral nerve system

22-31_Neuroscience_132_Ing 12/11/07 19:29 Page 22


Connectionwithout frontiers

NEUROSCIENCE

Yes, it is a dream. Or rather, a transposition to the real world. Andnothing seems to be more in tune with the spirit of someone whohas tried insistently, for two decades, to capture and to decodein the brain the almost invisible signals of the connections be-tween thought and movement, intention and action, desire andrealization. The name of this dream that is beginning to materi-alize with bricks, cement and high-level professionals in the Brazil-

ian Northeast is the International Institute for Neuroscience of Natal(IINN). Its dreamer-in-chief is Miguel Nicolelis, 45 years old, a respectedneurobiologist from Duke University, born in São Paulo, who in 1984 grad-uated as a physician from the University of São Paulo (USP), and is knownabove all, despite the important contributions he has made to basic neu-roscience, for his advanced experiments with neural microelectrodesimplanted in monkeys that, amongst other results, may lead to the de-velopment of prostheses for human beings, such as artificial arms and legs,that is, robotic limbs with movements commanded directly by the brain.Which is to say, by thought. Or by will. To prevent injustice, however, let

Cutting edge experiments with the brain travelfrom Duke University to Natal, along with the willto help science transform needy communities

RIT

A S

INIG

AG

LIA

-CO

IMB

RA

/UN

IFE

SP

MARILUCE MOURA, FROM DURHAM AND NATAL

>SCIENCE



us include right away in the category ofco-dreamers from the institute, two ofNicolelis´s colleagues: Sidarta Ribeiroand Cláudio Mello.

Imagined from a distance since2002, inside a laboratory that had ex-panded vigorously to its current 1,200square meters at Duke, in Durham,North Carolina, this institute began tooperate in the middle of last year.At thismoment, it occupies a rented buildingof 1,500 square meters in a simple streetin the capital of Rio Grande do Norte,very close to the Viasul shantytown,while the more ambitious and solidforms of its own premises are going upon the campus of the Jundiaí Agricul-tural School, which belongs to the Fed-eral University of Rio Grande do Norte(UFRN), in Macaíba, a small city some20 kilometers from Natal. Note thatMacaíba has no more than some 60thousand inhabitants, while Natal isaround the 800 thousand mark. LastJanuary, in the midst of the bustle ofthe workmen in three different build-ings in the institute under constructionon the campus, the expectations werehigh that part of these installations

could be inaugurated during the 2nd

Symposium of the International Insti-tute for Neurosciences of Natal, fromFebruary 23 to 25.

There are three buildings, let it be ex-plained,because one is intended to be theproject’s Mother and Child Health Cen-ter, another to be the research center it-self, and the third, a community educa-tion center. From that, you can alreadyperceive that Nicolelis and his closestcompanions are thinking of cutting edgeresearch linked to social action, and theymake no secret of that. So much so, thatin the waiting room of the IINN's pre-sent building, which also houses the Al-berto Santos Dumont Association forSupporting Research (AASDAP in thePortuguese acronym), a notice on thewall advises visitors that this Civil Soci-ety Organization of Public Interest (Os-cip in the Portuguese acronym), creat-ed on April 17,2004 precisely to make theinstitute viable, “has as its objective themanagement of its own and third partyfunds for the implantation of social andscientific research projects”. It goes on:“Itis based on the concept that cutting edgescience can, in developing countries likeBrazil, act as a powerful agent for the so-cial and economic transformation ofcommunities located in needy regions ofthe national territory”.

The first of the institute’s buildingsthat the visitor coming from the statecapital sees in Macaíba, on the campus’saccess road,on the right, is the health cen-ter. Some 500 meters further on, practi-cally at the entrance to the campus, theresearch center appears.And further on,the future installations of the communi-ty education center appear. A profusionof noticeboards in front of the works ad-vises the visitor of the political and fi-nancial support for the enterprise: thefederal government is represented by theMinistry of Health and the Ministry ofEducation, through the Council for Ad-vanced Professional Training (CAPES).Duke and UFRN appear on the notice-boards, as does the municipal govern-ment of Macaíba.What does not appearare the individual donors, like Lily Safra,the widow of banker Edmond Safra,whoat the end of 2006 gave the project a sumthat, at her request, has not been revealed, but that, according to Nicolelis, is thelargest private contribution ever intend-ed for a research venture in Brazil.


Action at adistance: Nicolelistrained nightmonkeys to movea mechanical armusing the power of the brain

Brazilian team at Duke thinks up cutting edgeresearch linked to social action

JIM

WA

LL

AC

E/D

UK

E U

NIV

ER

SIT

Y



Let us temporarily leave Macaíbato return to the beautiful campusof Duke, which occupies fifthplace in the ranking of the mostrespected research universities inthe United States. It was a rathercold late fall afternoon, on

November 17, 2006. In one of the build-ings in the biomedical area of the cam-pus, in its large, reasonably organizedroom, divided into two areas, Nicolelislooked happy with the presentationmade a few hours ago by the doctoralstudent under his supervision, NathanFitzsimmons, to qualify for his thesis.“In our specialization, everybody has todate managed to read signals that comefrom the motor areas of the brain. Ex-cept that when you move a robotic arm,you have to get signals back to under-stand where it is touching. And what wehave managed, what he found, was ba-sically the formula, an algorithm forsending back signals to the brain, in asensorial feedback! It was a very goodpresentation”, he comments.

Attention: it is very recent develop-ments in the research with cortical im-plants of electrodes in mice and mon-keys that he is commenting on. In thiscase, the work was with owl monkeys, ornight monkeys – two little female mon-keys, to be precise, Thumper and Pocie,as Nicolelis tells with wit in his blog onGlobo Online. They are one of the mod-els closest to man, and the results couldbe of utmost importance, in terms of ap-plication, precisely for the dreamt-of fu-ture prostheses commanded by thebrain. Furthermore, in terms of basic sci-ence, they could add further informationabout how learning effectively producesmicroanatomic transformations in thebrain.“In short, the same electrodes usedto record electrical signals from the mo-tor areas have allowed us to pass a digi-tal message directly into the somesthet-ic cortex, the superficial region of thebrain that identifies stimuli applied tothe surface of the body, to see whetherthe brain learns to understand what iscoming”, the researcher explains. In oth-er words, Nicolelis and his group want-ed to test whether monkeys would learnto decode – to read, shall we say – mes-sages sent to them in the form of elec-trical microstimulation, and associatethem with a movement.“We went fromsomething very simple, with a fixed pat-

In Durham, the groupwanted to test whethermonkeys could learn todecode – to read, shallwe say — the message

sent to them in theform of electrical

microstimulation andassociate it with a

movement

RIT

A S

INIG

AG

LIA

-CO

IMB

RA

/UN

IFE

SP


In the neuroscientific literature, ac-cording to Nicolelis, the commands re-garding movement are normally at-tributed to introspection,when to stop orto move is determined inside the brain it-self, and, in a pattern that the researchercalls second degree, to the external envi-ronment. So it is something cultural,learnt.One example is the immediate im-pulse of all motorists to stop the car whenthe traffic light turns to yellow,announc-ing that the red light will be next. “InBrazil, though, something very peculiarhappens, which is accelerating the carto go through on the yellow light”, the re-searcher jokes. Amongst primates, andperhaps other mammals, stopping or go-ing may also be determined by a verbalcommand “From that, I called it ‘a closeencounter of the third kind’ a messagecomes from an artificial system, a digitalcommand directly in the brain, which isarbitrary and comes to have a meaning”,he says. This abstract message connectedwith a motor command “produces a mi-croanatomic transformation”, he adds.

tern, to another more complex, mobile,with a space-time dimension.”

In a first experiment, the animalsshould learn to associate arbitrarily theelectrical stimulus in the cortex to amovement to the left or to the right thatmakes it possible for them to find foodkept in compartments on one side or onthe other. For example, if the electricalstimulus appears, it ought to go to the left,and, if not, to the right.They took 40 daysto learn. In the following experiment,witha more complex pattern, with time vari-ations, surprisingly, they took only tendays.“Probably because they generalizedthe information,and that gave them morefacility for learning”, Nicolelis observes.Afterwards, when the researchers revert-ed the pattern learnt, each monkey learntthe new pattern even more quickly: first,in four days, the simplest pattern, and inthree, the most complex. The experi-ments continue, and, last November, theresearchers were starting to use 16 elec-trodes in the experiment, instead of thefour used up until then.

And why is Nicolelis sure about that?“We saw, with different algorithms sentoff at the same time, that over the pe-riod of learning, the process of the ar-bitrary message would transform itselfinto a clear motor command. For thefirst time, we were successful, at the sametime that we were stimulating thesomesthetic cortex, in reading the sig-nals produced in another area of thebrain, the motor area, and in decodingwith precision the animals' intentions,the movement that they were going tomake, before performing it”, he details.This with a time difference of 100 to 200milliseconds.

In this field, incidentally, Nicolelis’steam has, at this point, begun even moreexciting experiments with owl monkeys,something that now appears to belongfrankly to the realms of science fictionand that he calls a “close encounter ofthe fourth kind”. There are some im-pressive results, but he prefers to remaincautious and not to reveal anything be-fore more certain confirmations.


GIO

VA

NN

I S

ÉR

GIO


In the IINN in Rio Grande do Norte,at this moment there are 12 re-searchers working under the com-mand of 35-year old Sidarta, the in-stitute’s scientific coordinator, aswell as a floating population of vis-iting researchers. On the afternoon

of January 11 last, for example, there wasto be found amongst them EduardoSchenberg, a pupil of Koichi Sameshima,a neurologist from the Syrian-LebaneseHospital, in São Paulo,an institution withwhich the IINN maintains a collabora-tion agreement that is now showing in-teresting results, particularly in studies ofParkinson’s disease. The installations inthe institute’s rented premises,despite theintention to move a good part of the lab-oratories to the new premises in Macaí-ba in the short term,are well prepared foran important part of the research withelectrodes – the rodents’ vivarium andthe surgical center, for example, seem tobe first class. And the building also hasadequate rooms for experiments on hu-man beings that are part of Sidarta’s lineof research on sleep and memory. Alsotaking into consideration employeesfrom the administrative area, there are 20

persons distributed between the insti-tute’s main building and a second build-ing aimed at community health of the lo-cal population, nearby.

Sidarta graduated from the Univer-sity of Brasilia (UnB) in 1993, took amaster’s degree in biophysics at the Fed-eral University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)and a doctorate in cognitive molecularneurobiology from Rockefeller Univer-sity (1995-2000), and was finally broughtinto Nicolelis’s laboratory at Duke in2000, first as a postdoctoral student andnext as an associate researcher, and helooks quite naturally upon his work asIINN coordinator.

On this point, let it be said that oneof the criticisms of the IINN enterprisefrom part of the Brazilian neuroscientif-ic community is precisely the way he con-ducts the coordination, which some seeas a sign of the closing up of Nicolelis’sgroup, instead of the expected openingout and interaction with various otherneurology groups in the country.“Sidar-ta is a brilliant researcher, extremelypromising, but the choice of him as sci-entific director was frustrating, becauseit does not appear to have been the result


Concrete dream:workmen erect research(above) and communityeducation centers

GIO

VA

NN

I S

ÉR

GIO


of a selection process with clear bases.The institute is now beginning to selectresearchers, postdoctoral students, but itall sounded very restricted at the outset,and that was one of the criticisms raisedat the 1st Symposium of the IINN, in2005.” The comment is by Luiz EugênioMello, pro-rector for postgraduate stud-ies at the Federal University of São Paulo(Unifesp) and a specialist in neurophys-iology, with respected contributions inthe area of epilepsy. Mello, until recent-ly a scientific advisor to FAPESP, makesclear his admiration for the work ofNicolelis, whom he classifies as “a bril-liant scientist, at the forefront of modernscience that advances towards the area ofapplication”.And he admits that now thequest for interaction of the team withother Brazilian scientists is expanding.Somuch so that he himself is taking partin a project of cooperation with the IINNcoordinated by Iván Izquierdo, of thePontifical Catholic University of RioGrande do Sul (PUC-RS), which also in-volves the group of Marco Antonio Máx-imo Prado, from the Federal Universityof Minas Gerais (UFMG).

“I think that what stirred up thecommunity a lot at the first symposiumwas the fact that the group presented it-

self as the pioneer and founder of neu-roscience in Brazil. So each one of uswondered whether what we had done inthe last 30 or 40 years was not worth any-thing”, Mello comments. Incidentally, forhim, it was possible for the IINN enter-prise to happen in Natal also because,some 30 years ago, a neuroscience groupwas set up at UFRN, led by Elisaldo Car-lini, from Unifesp.Without that, it couldhave been, as he understands it, any oth-er city.Actually, behind the disputes andjealousies that are understandable in theuniversity community, there seems to bea certain fear relating to the scarcity offunds for research in Brazil.“As resourcesare finite, Nicolelis’s group is well con-nected politically and very competentscientifically, there really is a certain fearin the air when an enterprise vaunted ascollective proves to be centralized in theprocess of defining who goes there.”

What perhaps few may know is thatSidarta considers himself, not withoutreason, as co-responsible for the idea ofthe institute. And Nicolelis leaves roomfor him to assume this condition. Ac-cordingly, to the question posed in hisroom in Natal about whether the instituteis a dream of Miguel Nicolelis with whichhe has contaminated many people,Sidar-ta replies that, in actual fact, it is not quitelike that.“This dream begins in Juqueriin the 1920s or 1930s. Juqueri, in Fran-co da Rocha, São Paulo, tried at the startto be a cutting edge research center, andto this end brought together neurosci-entists, doctors with a psychoanalytic in-fluence...As an undergraduate, I was giv-en this story by my neuroanatomy pro-fessor, Marcos Marcondes de Moura,who went so far as to be the director atJuqueri. He used to talk a lot about this,about the Juqueri’s research program forunderstanding mental illness, the brainbank etc. Both theoretically and experi-mentally, they had great ambitions”, saysSidarta.And his conclusion is that he wascontaminated by Marcondes with theidea of doing cutting edge science inBrazil in this neurological area.

“When I went to the United States,I had this idea in my head. And I wentabout passing it on. I passed it on toCláudio Mello, who was also from Brasil-ia and was my supervisor at the Rocke-feller. Then we started to create a groupof people inside the Rockefeller whowere thinking about this idea. And that


This dream began in Juqueri in the1920s or 1930s. The Juqueri, in Francoda Rocha, São Paulo,tried to be at theoutset a cutting edgeresearch center

GIO

VA

NN

I S

ÉR

GIO


reached Torsten Wiesel, the President ofthe university, who was thrilled”, he de-tails. When he got to know Nicolelis, in1998, and became enthusiastic about hiswork and his methods, Sidarta talked tohim about the idea of the institute.

“Miguel was also enchanted, but atthe beginning he was very well estab-lished at Duke. He was certainly theBrazilian neuroscientist with the great-est impact worldwide, a full professorwith an excellent laboratory, two in fact,with plenty of finance.” So his reaction,according to Sidarta, was positive, hethought that the idea was very good.Andbecause of his political commitment (hisbiography includes his struggles as a mil-itant for the re-democratization of thecountry in his youth and his presenceamongst the founders of the Workers’Party, the PT), he offered to help.At thatmoment, they were thinking about cre-ating a cutting edge institute, in a beau-tiful place that would attract people fromall over the world, where they would do

research directed by the problems, andnot by the techniques.

“It was a very romantic idea, evenwith access to the forest to study animalsin the wild “, says Sidarta.Accordingly, atthe beginning,Nicolelis’s help for the pro-ject was to lend his prestige to make it vi-able.“However, he himself went on get-ting more and more enchanted with theidea, and at a certain moment reallybrought something new to the project:giving it a social mission”, he says. So theidea, until then merely a scientific one,“with Miguel incorporated this other di-mension.That was at the end of 2002,be-ginning of 2003, in the small hours, soonafter Lula’s victory for the presidency”.And with this, Sidarta goes on,“it comestogether with a wish to bring the ludic,ethical,meritocratic and even disciplinaryvalues of science to society, within theview that knowledge really is a liberator”.But, Sidarta adds, “without the force ofNicolelis’s enterprising spirit,none of thiswould have gone ahead”.


Creator and creature:conceiver of the institutein Natal, Sidarta analyzesaction of neurons during

rodents’ sleep

RIT

A S

INIG

AG

LIA

-CO

IMB

RA

/UN

IFE

SP


In front of the computer in the areathat he occupies on the left of hisroom, Nicolelis explains that theimplants used in the animals in theexperiments, made of tungsten andresin, are 4 or 5 millimeters inlength, two millimeters of which

remain in the brain. He will soon showus the neuroengineering room of thelaboratory where the electrodes are built.Actually, it is always problematic whensomething foreign is put into the body,with one part inside and the other out-side, because this facilitates infections.But one of the laboratory’s monkeys hasnow had the electrode in his brain forsix years without any problem. Never-theless, as you have to think of the fu-ture, engineers connected to several re-search groups are working on the de-velopment of wireless implants, in moreeffective neuroprostheses, “and one ofJapan’s main robotics laboratories, theATR, has decided to participate in an in-ternational effort to search for betterrobotic arms and a vest capable of work-ing like an exoskeleton”.

The conversation turns to the im-portant experiments connected toParkinson’s disease, which have givenNicolelis good evidence that a principlethat he has been postulating for yearsis right, that is, that populations of neu-rons, and not a single neuron, constitutethe functional units of the brain. On ac-count of these experiments, neurosur-geons from Duke recently met neuro-surgeons from the Syrian-LebaneseHospital, at a workshop in São Paulo, totrain them in a technique with elec-trodes that gives more precise indica-tions, in a much shorter time, about theareas that have to be removed to preventthe disagreeable symptoms of the dis-ease. As all this is done with the patientcompletely awake, it is also possible toobserve the patient’s responses that leadto completely unexpected results.

“For example, we now know that,with only 300 cells, it is possible to pro-duce a complex motor behavior”, saysNicolelis. Of course, he says, “a givennumber of neurons are needed to sus-tain any behavior, but instead of thou-sands, it is possible for hundreds to ac-quit themselves of the task”. In actual fact,in a simplified way, what Nicolelis hasproposed is, first, that the functional unitof the brain is not the neuron, but a pop-

ulation of them. In second place, thatthis population does not always have thesame elements, but their constitutionchanges every moment, that is, certainneurons are summoned at one momentfor the task of moving an arm, and, lat-er on, others, not the same ones, may becalled on to repeat the task. That is whyyou can have traces of motor behaviorin areas of the brain that, in principle,have nothing to do with movement.“Inother words, the system is distributed,flexible, and not rigid”, he sums up. Nev-ertheless, he emphasizes,“the concept ofdistributed code does not eliminate theconcept of specialization. One does ex-clude the other”.

One proposal that all this raises isthat the human brain perhaps has mil-lions of neurons like a sort of potentialreservoir to meet, at any moment, theneed for these cells to carry out each be-havior. Moreover, in the absence of spe-cialized cells, others may handle the task.

This notion of populations of neu-rons as a functional unit of the brainsounds “very sensible and very intelli-gent” to neurologist Iván Izquierdo,who, just like Nicolelis, is among themost quoted Brazilians in scientific lit-erature. “It is obvious that, in some as-pects, the cell is a unit, but not from thisfunctional point of view”, he says. Muchrespected for his studies of the memoryand mechanism for its consolidation,Izquierdo is at this moment concludingan analysis of his collaboration with thegroup from the IINN, for studies in neu-rophysiology, neurochemistry and neu-ropharmacology in the aged. “We areawaiting funds from the National Coun-cil for Scientific and Technological De-velopment (CNPq) and we are going towork with an animal model: transgenicmice.” He says that he is rooting for theinstitute in Natal to do well and to beable to transform itself into an impor-tant center to attract scientists from thesouth and center of the country.

Luiz Eugênio Mello also finds theidea of neuronal populations interesting.“It seems to make sense, but it is difficultto have conclusive demonstrations ofthis, not least for the very question offloating populations.” He imagines amodel where floating neurons exist, butat the same time are related to a restrict-ed, specialized and always active nucle-us. As to the real application of robotic


A principle thatNicolelis has beenpostulating for years is that groupsof neurons, and not each neuron,constitute thefunctional units of the brain



arms and other prostheses, he says thathe sees a lot of future “if we succeed inovercoming some obstacles”. For exam-ple, if the implant is put totally inside thehead, to prevent infections. If it can be ac-tivated without a wire,“with radio waves,for example, as we are trying to do”.

Miguel Nicolelis shows an optimisticvideo about the institute, very close tothe River Potengi, a tributary of the Jun-diaí.When asked why in Natal, he replies“because if we manage to do it there, itbecomes clear that institutes like this canbe installed anywhere in Brazil”. On thewalls near his computer, there are manymagazine covers, from The Journal ofNeuroscience to IstoÉ (a weekly newsmagazine in Brazil), from the most spe-cialized, scientific ones, to the most gen-eral. On the walk across the campus toreach the other laboratory, in the midstof the now intense cold at the end of theafternoon, he talks about the book, morefor laymen, about the history of his ex-periments, that he needs to finish forpublication at the beginning of 2008, andof another two, more scientific. “WhatI want is to present a more comprehen-sive theory about the interaction of thebrain with the technology that our cul-ture is creating. That may perhaps helpto explain a series of phenomena that arenot restricted to one brain, but relate tomultiple brains interacting.And I advo-cate that perhaps some social behaviormay be defined in the likeness and sim-ilarity of how brains naturally work.”

It is a daring idea.About investmentsin Duke, Nicolelis says that about US$40 million is invested in his two labora-tories. And in Natal? Certainly, the fig-ure of the originally estimated US$ 25million has now passed. And, runningone of the 20 international groups incutting edge neuroscience, he dreams ofa virtual institute of the brain, integrat-ed by many units scattered all over theworld, a horizontal

Science produced in collaboration,independent of geography, based on theinteraction of talents.A sort of archipela-go of knowledge, combating the pover-ty around it – the neolithic misery, asSidarta says. He dreams of other re-search institutes in the Northeast. Real-ly dreaming, according to Sidarta’s re-search hypothesis, may perhaps be tosimulate possible futures based on a re-membered past. ■

RIT

A S

INIG

AG

LIA

-CO

IMB

RA

/UN

IFE

SP

Floating populations:distinct groups of nerve

cells may control one andthe same action atdifferent moments


A na Paula can hardly remember thelast time she saw her mother smile.Since she suffered her first crisis of de-

pression some 20 years ago, Maria spendssad days, lying on the sofa re-runningthoughts that spring from a world thatis forever grey.She has already tried all thetypes of known anti-depressants, but notone was capable of putting an end to herapathy that still accompanies her todayand made her abandon her work in thefamily’s business in the metropolitan re-gion of São Paulo. Useful in the majori-ty of cases,medicines, in the case of Maria,at best put off her next relapse. In a lastchance attempt, some six months ago, thedoctors had to resort to the application ofelectrical shocks to the patient´s brain un-der a general anesthetic, electro-convul-sion therapy, more commonly known aselectroshock – a treatment consideredto be one of the most efficient for themost serious cases, still stigmatized for

having been applied in a cruel mannerand even as a torture technique againstprisoners. This treatment can help to re-establish the normal working of the nervecells, even though it generally causes apassing loss of memory, which can lastfrom a few days to months.

Not even the electrical shocksworked, and in November Maria begantherapy at the Psychiatry Institute of theUniversity of Sao Paulo (IPq/USP)against depression that over the last fewyears has been awakening the interest ofpsychiatrists and neurologists through-out the world: repetitive TranscranialMagnetic Stimulation (rTMS), a se-quence of intense magnetic pulses ca-pable of stimulating or inhibiting the ac-tivity of nerve tissue. Until only a shorttime ago restricted exclusively to scien-tific experiments, the rTMS appears toproduce the same effects as the electro-convulsive therapy in the treatment ofdepression: readjusts the working of de-termined regions of the central nervoussystem, but with less undesirable effects.USP’s Psychiatry Institute released theuse of rTMS for the treatment of de-pression in October of 2006, after theteam led by the psychiatrist Marco An-tonio Marcolin tested the method for al-most six years against depression and aswell as the treatment of chronic pain,

>

PSYCHIATRY

An experimental technique shows itself to be efficientin the treatment of severe psychiatric disorders

RICARDO ZORZETTO

Magnetism against depression

Published in January 2007

31-37_magnetismo_131_ing 12/11/07 14:38 Page 32


Cyclists, 1989, oil on canvas by IberêCamargo: autonomyand movement

IBE

RÊ

CA

MA

RG

O I

MA

GE

S F

OU

ND

AT

ION


some forms of hallucination commonin schizophrenia and in the recovery ofpatients who had suffered a stroke.

Currently the institute is analyzinghow to ask for the inclusion of rTMS onthe list of procedures paid for by thePublic Health System for the treatmentof depression, with the object of offer-ing it freely to a greater number of pa-tients. Approved for this purpose onlyin Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Is-rael and some European countries, thistherapy is still expensive: it costs R$ 300for each of the 20 applications necessaryfor the treatment of acute depression,a problem that one in every ten peoplecan experience during their lifetime.

In general, one session per day is car-ried out for a month. Fifteen days afterthe start of treatment, Ana Paula had al-ready noted the first signs of recovery ofher mother. The dose of the anti-de-pressant, which Maria still took,dropped to a quarter of its initial valueand . Marcolin’s team began to removethe sedative that she used for sleeping.The application is truly peaceful. On themorning of the 6th of December, in asmall room on the Institute’s first floor,the psychiatrist Maria do Carmo Sar-torelli brought a bobbin in the form ofa figure of eight, about the size of anopen hand, to the left side of the head ofMaria who was seated in a recliningchair. Next she heard a series of rapidclicks for ten seconds. This was followedby 20 seconds of silence and then a new

sequence of pulses was shot off, the cy-cle being repeated a further 23 times.“My mother came out of the applica-tion speaking, and not quiet as before”,recalls her daughter Ana Paula. “I wassurprised by the change in her mood.”

During each click, an electrical cur-rent of some milliseconds and of highintensity (up to 5,000 amperes) passesthrough the bobbin. The rapid sequenceof on-off produces fluctuations in amagnetic field that crosses the craniumand generates a low intensity electriccurrent in a specific area of the cortex,the brain’s most external layer. In spiteof being low, this electric current is suf-ficient to set off the transmission of anerve pulse from one cell to another, ex-plains the physicist Oswaldo Baffa Fil-ho, from USP, Ribeirão Preto campus,who is carrying out research in this area.

Reprogramming neurons - Both therTMS and the electroshock techniquesfunction based on the same physicalprinciple – the passage of electrical cur-rent through the encephalon, thegrouping of structures of the centralnervous system that includes the brain.But there are also important differencesbetween these two resources. The maindifferences are the intensity and the cov-erage of the electric current applied tothe central nervous system. Whilst therTMS generates currents of a few mil-limeters in a restricted area of the brain,the electro-convulsive therapy producescurrents around one thousand timeshigher, of up to 2 amperes, that traverseall of the encephalon and originate con-vulsions similar to those observed inepilepsy – patients do not feel the con-vulsions nor remember them becausethey spend all of their time anesthetized.Independent of the technique used, it isbelieved that this passage of electric cur-rent reprograms some nerve cell genes,making them take on their appropriatefunction, in the same way as the anti-depressant medicines.

In the treatment of depression, therTMS’s target is a region of the brainlocated on the left side of the head, atthe side of the forehead and above theeyes. Here one can find the so-calleddorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, a regionthe size of a coin associated to shortterm memory, logical thinking and theevaluation of the goals that are desired


Studies of Cyclistsseries, 1990, Iberê Camargo


to be attained. In general this region isfound to be less active in patients withdepression than with other normal peo-ple, independent of the origin of theproblem – whether it is depressioncoming from genetic, hormonal or en-vironmental factors.

In the opinion of Marcolin, the pa-tient who goes through the rTMS ses-sions, in general, feels nothing, althoughthey can suffer from a slight headacheor contractions on the scalp, which gen-erally end as soon as the device isswitched off. It was this almost total ab-sence of side effects that caught Mar-colin’s attention almost ten years agoand gave him the motivation to changedirection in his line of research. On see-ing the results of his first experiments,he abandoned his specialization, name-ly the interactions between psychiatricdrugs and other medicines, in order toinvestigate whether the rTMS techniquewould really be efficient in combatingdepression and other maladies that usu-ally take away people´s control of reasonand control of their very own lives.

Besides the international experi-ments, two experiments carried out atUSP have attested to these benefits andhave helped to give a base to the Psy-chiatry Institute’s decision to liberate therTMS technique for the treatment ofdepression – especially for cases in whichneither medicines nor psychologicaltherapies any longer produce the desiredeffect. The most recent of these stud-

ies, published in December in the Inter-national Journal of Neuropsychophar-macology, shows that the rTMS tech-nique is just as efficient as the electro-convulsive therapy for minimizing thesigns of depression which do not yield,the so-called refractory depression. Thepsychiatrist Moacyr Rosa, a member ofMarcolin’s team, selected 42 patients be-tween the ages of 18 and 65 years, all suf-fering from refractory depression, to re-ceive one of the two possible treatments:rTMS or electroconvulsive therapy.

Randomly, Rosa treated half of thisgroup with weekly sessions of rTMS fora month, whilst the other half wentthrough 12 applications of electrocon-vulsive therapy for the same period.Throughout the study, researcher Rosameasured the degree of depression onthree occasions by way of a scale thatruns from 0 to 40 points – a point scorebelow 7 indicates the absence of de-pression and above 22 confirms severedepression, the stage generally duringwhich brutal changes of behavior occur:loss of sleep or contrary to this fre-quently oversleeping; exaggerated eat-ing or almost total loss of appetite; dis-appearance of sexual desire and a com-mon desire to commit suicide.

Other benefits - After the second weekof treatment, the average point score ofthe participants of the two groups hadgone down from 32 to almost 25. Fifteendays later the average severity was evenlower, close to 15, a depression level con-sidered moderate to slight. In a generalmanner, 40% of the patients who re-ceived electro-convulsive therapy and50% of those who had undergone mag-netic stimulation sessions respondedwell to therapy – for the doctors thismeans that they had reduced, by at leasthalf, the signs of depression that theyhad shown at the start of the study. Atthe end of the research, 20% of the peo-ple in the former group and 10% in thelatter group were no longer considereddepressed. “The proportion of partici-pants who improved is considered small,but one needs to remember that the cas-es that arrive at USP’s Psychiatry Insti-tute are always extremely serious”, saysMarcolin. The most important thingthat this study demonstrated is that therTMS produces improvement similar tothat of the electro-convulsive therapy,which demands the application of a gen-eral anesthetic during each of the threesessions that take place weekly. This wasa relevant effect but not the only one.



Two years previously Marcolin’s teamhad discovered another rTMS benefit:the stimulation of determined regions ofthe brain by means of magnetic and in-tense pulses accelerates the action of an-ti-depressant medicines. The psychiatristDemetrio Ortega Rumi, from USP, pre-scribed to 46 patients with severe de-pression five weeks of therapy based onamitriptyline, one of the most efficientanti-depressants to reestablish the equi-librium of the messenger chemicals ofthe central nervous system, which, it isbelieved, are found at less than desirablelevels in cases of depression. At the startof the second week, Rumi separated thestudy’s patients into two groups: half re-ceived 20 sessions of rTMS and the re-mainder went on to have an equal num-ber of inactive stimulant sessions, inwhich the bobbin positioned aroundtheir head made the same clicks, but didnot generate any magnetic field – dur-ing the experiment none of the groupmembers knew which treatment theywere receiving.

The effect of the true stimulant wasevident. Rumi had observed already dur-ing the first week that the intensity of thedepression had decreased: going from 32to around 20 points, on average, amongthose treated with an active bobbin,while in the other group the scale stillmarked profound depression – around30 points. By the end of the fourth weekalmost all of the group members whohad received the true stimulant had im-

proved considerably: half were no longerdepressed and the remainder had onlyslight depression. Only 12% of the pa-tients who underwent the simulatedstimulation were free of the problem ofusing medicine, according to the resultspublished in 2005 in the magazine Bio-logical Psychiatry.

Before anti-depressants - At the Uni-versity of Vita-Salute, in Milan, Italy, theteam led by Dr. Raffaella Zanardi ob-served similar effects using the rTMStechnique in patients treated with threeother more modern anti-depressants: es-citalopram and sertraline, which inhib-it the recapture of the neurotransmitterserotonin, and venlafaxine, which pre-vents the recapture of serotonin and no-radrenalin. In this study, detailed in a pa-per in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatryof December 2005, the participants whoreceived applications of the true mag-netic pulses improved more quickly thanthose treated with the inactive stimulant,although at the end of the study all ofthem no longer presented depression.“This data suggests that the magneticstimulant anticipates the action of the an-ti-depressant, which in general takes be-tween two to four weeks to produce thedesired effect”, says Marcolin.

Not everyone agrees with Marcolin.The more cautious believe that it is stilltoo soon to release rTMS for the treat-ment of depression. Those who prefer towait longer remember that, up until now,

the studies include a relatively smallnumber of participants, from 40 to 60patients, and the studies lasted only a fewweeks. But this situation is beginningto change with the conclusion of studieswith a greater number of patients.

At the beginning of December thepsychiatrist Sarah Lisanby, fromColumbia University and the New YorkState Psychiatric Institute, presented atthe annual meeting of the American Col-lege of Neuropsychopharmacology theconclusion of a study of 301 patientswith depression that she had followed at24 centers in the United States, Canadaand Australia. In this test, funded byNeuronetics, one of the companies thatmanufactures the rTMS equipment, theparticipants did not receive anti-depres-sants for four weeks and half were treat-ed with trans-cranium magnetic stimu-lation, whilst the other half received falsestimulation. The rates of improvementwere more marked in the former group.

In Sarah’s opinion, this data collab-orates the effects of the anti-depressantsof rTMS , comparable to those obtainedwith anti-depressant medicines in thetreatment of patients with moderate de-pression and a certain resistance tomedicines.“But this efficiency is still lessthan that obtained using electro-con-vulsive therapy”, explains the psychia-trist, the head of the Brain Stimulationand Therapeutic Modulation Divisionof Columbia University, in Nova York.The result of this study served as the ba-sis for a request for a re-evaluation ofrTMS sent to the Food and Drug Ad-ministration (FDA), the American agen-cy that regulates foods and medicines.At the end of January, specialists fromthe FDA should meet to evaluate themost recent evidence of safety and ef-ficiency of rTMS, before decidingwhether or not to approve its wide usein the United States, where it is still be-ing used in an experimental fashion.

There is still a lot to investigate aboutthe rTMS technique. The first experi-ments indicating its anti-depressive ac-tion were published by the neurologistAlvaro Pascual-Leone, from HarvardUniversity, in the United States, only in1996, a century after the French medi-cal doctor and physicist Jacques-ArsèneD’Arsonval had attempted for the firsttime to use magnetism to change thestate of mood of a person. For now, it is


MIG

UE

L B

OY

AY

AN

Application: the bobbin sets off an electric current of high intensity for milliseconds



not known for certain if the dorsal lat-eral pre-frontal cortex is the region bestindicated for the applications of rTMSor if other areas in the brain would pro-duce better results.Also the intensity andfrequency of the most suitable pulsesis under discussion.

In the beginning the application ofthis technique causes some epilepticcrises in people with depression whowere healthy and had participated in theexperiments. Adriana Conforto, fromUSP’s Neurology Department, investi-gated, when at the University of Bern,Switzerland, the effect of different tech-niques to define the individual´s sensi-tivity to this type of treatment, with aproposal to determine the specific, ef-ficient and safe dosage for each person.The frequency and the intensity of thestimulation are another two parametersthat define the safe use of this therapy.“The association of the techniques ofneuronavigation and functional neu-roimagery have great potential in thetherapeutic use of trans-cranium mag-netic stimulation in a safer and more ef-ficient manner”, comments Adriana.

In Ribeirão Preto, the physicists Os-waldo Baffa, Dráulio Araújo and AndréCunha Perez are working with the neu-rologist João Leite to solve another prob-lem: how to find the most suitable placeon the head to position the rTMS bob-bin. They are attempting to create acomputer program that reads nuclearmagnetic resonance images of the brainand helps in the positioning of the bob-bin in a precise manner in areas suchas the pre-frontal cortex.

“It’s crucial that things be well carriedout”, commented researcher Pascual-Leone, from Harvard.“We’re taking a lotof care of quality control, safety and theindication for its use”The team from theIPq in Sao Paulo is working on the de-velopment of directives that guide the ap-plications of rTMS in order to maintaintreatment, after the depression has beenovercome. There is a long way to go, butit is promising, recalls the team led by theSpanish neurologist Jaime Kulisevsky, ina paper published in 2003 evaluating theuse of rTMS for depression:“Many clin-ical treatments used today in psychiatrywere developed slowly, by way of a pro-cess of initial enthusiastic approval andthen almost disappearing, and, again, itsbroad and sensible clinical use”. ■


When the first electroshock was appliedin 1938, well before the manufacture ofmedicines for psychiatry, the Italian doc-tors Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini believedthat the inducing of cerebral convulsionssimilar to those observed in epilepsy wouldcure mental disorders because a personwith epilepsy could not also suffer fromschizophrenia. Later they discovered thatthis idea was false, but they had proven thatelectroshock, used under adequate condi-tions, could treat severe depression andother disorders such as schizophrenia.

Almost 70 years after having been ap-plied for the first time, electroshock con-tinues to be of the most controversial medi-cal therapies of all time. But to comparethe electroshock applied today in hospitalsto that which was carried out at the startof the 1980s is the same thing as com-paring current surgery techniques to thosein which the good surgeons were those that

made their incisions as quickly as possibleso that the patient did not feel pain.

Today the electroshock sessions area long way from scenes in films such asOneFlew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in which thecharacters come out completely incapac-itated after having been subjected to shocksmuch more intense than those of today —and without any anesthesia. Currently thedoctors administer a general anesthesiaand muscle relaxants before beginningtreatment: a sequence of very short elec-trical shocks, lasting 1 to 2 milliseconds ,which bring about a convulsion registeredby means of an electroencephalograph.The anesthesia stops the patient from feel-ing pain and the relaxant avoids the con-traction of the muscles during the convul-sion, thus avoiding possible injuries. As wellas these concerns, the patient who under-goes an electroshock receives oxygen andremains under cardiac monitoring.

The controversial electroshock


On the 13th of May of last year, dentist Jaider Furlan Ab-bud, who lives in the São Paulo state town of Pontal, 30 kmaway from Ribeirão Preto, celebrated his 31st birthday. It was a Sat-urday and, as is usually the case at these parties, the ‘birthday boy’overdid things in terms of food, especially sweets. On Sunday, whenhe went into the bathroom, he had a surprise: the toilet was sur-rounded by ants, a classic sign that someone there, probably him, hadtoo much urine sugar. On Monday he went to the doctor and his sus-picions were confirmed: he suffered from type 1 diabetes, also calledjuvenile or insulin-dependent diabetes. Still suspicious of the diag-nosis, he consulted one more specialist, whose response was the sameas that of the first doctor. In order to control the disease, he wouldhave to take, for his entire life, daily injections of insulin, the hor-mone responsible for getting glucose out of the blood, which his pan-creas had stopped producing due to inflammation that is typical ofthis type of diabetes. The unpleasant injections routine had to be im-mediately incorporated into his day-to-day life. “I could hardly be-lieve it”, recalls the dentist.

On the 29th of July of last year, less than two months after he hadbeen diagnosed, Jaider left the Clinicas Hospital of the Ribeirão Pre-to Medical School, the University of São Paulo (USP) 13 kg thinner.He was, however, extremely happy: he no longer needed two dailyshots of insulin in order to control his disease. He had been sub-mitted to an aggressive and expensive experimental treatment againsttype 1 diabetes, combining painful chemotherapy sessions with drugsthat depress the immune system and an auto-transplant of the bonemarrow, and his pancreas had started producing insulin again. Mar-ried and childless, the dentist has now been free of the injectionsfor more than nine months and is one of the 15 Brazilians aged 14to 31 who, from November 2003 to July 2006, tested this therapy, whichwas entirely developed by a team from the university’s Cellular Ther-apy Center (CTC). All the patients, save one, the first person sub-mitted to the treatment started producing insulin again.“We can’t talkabout a cure for diabetes. We must still monitor the patients for a longtime to see whether the effects are lasting, and also conduct trialson more people”, states immunologist Júlio Cesar Voltarelli, the mainproponent of this line of research.“But our work will have a great dealof impact on this area.” It was this apparent success of the unprece-dented therapeutic approach – the adjective apparent applies becauseit is not yet known whether the benefits will be temporary or last-ing – that led a team of researchers from CTC, one of the Centers ofResearch, Innovation and Dissemination (CEPIDs - Centros dePesquisa, Inovação e Difusão) financed by FAPESP, to publish a ninepage scientific paper in the April 11 edition of the Journal of the Amer-ican Medical Association (JAMA), one of the world’s most prestigiousmedical journals. The periodical recognizes the pioneering natureof the work and makes the following comments in its editorial:“Voltarelli’s study is the first of many cell therapy attempts that willprobably be tested to stop the progress of type 1 diabetes”, states JayS. Skyler, from the University of Miami Diabetes Research Institute,

A r

isky

bet

aga

inst

Experimentaltreatment with

chemo-therapy andstem cells frees 14

patients frominsulin injections

MARCOS PIVETTA

diabetes

AL

FR

ED

PA

SIE

KA

/SC

IEN

CE

PH

OT

O L

IBR

AR

Y/L

AT

IN S

TO

CK

MEDICINE>

Published in May 2007

38-43_Diabetes_135_Ing 12/10/07 18:04 Page 38


Insulin crystals: blood sugar regulating hormone is not produced by type 1 diabetics


in this JAMA editorial. What was alsonoteworthy was that the experiment wasessentially conducted by Brazilians.“It’sa national contribution to research intodiabetes”, comments Marco Antonio Za-go, CTC coordinator. Of the 13 authorsof the paper publishied in the JAMA, 11are from USP in Ribeirão Preto and on-ly two come from abroad.

There are a lot of unanswered ques-tion regarding the experimental treat-ment tested by USP in Ribeirão Preto,and the researchers themselves do notdeny these uncertainties.What causes thecombined therapy to apparently work?Did the patients recover insulin produc-tion because of chemotherapy or the au-to-transplant of their bone marrow? Orwas it the synergism between the twoprocedures? None of this is known yet.And it is precisely because of this that theBrazilians want to continue pursuingtheir research. “This first study is of anexploratory nature”, states Voltarelli. Inother words, the treatment is still shroud-ed in mystery, as is the very origin of type1 diabetes. Despite the existence of ge-netic factors favoring its appearance, thedisease manifests itself in the organismdue to contact with some external ele-ment that causes the dysfunction of theimmune system. The problem is that no-body, to date, has managed to discoverwhat causes the human body’s defensecells to attack the pancreas region, whereinsulin is produced.

And the worst thing is that there maybe more than just a single external ele-ment triggering the entire process. Thereis also speculation, which still lacksproof, that the inflammation may becaused by a virus, free radicals, or cow’smilk, among other agents.

The search for a treatment for type1 diabetes capable of doing away withthe uncomfortable daily insulin injec-tions is understandable. Though theyaccount for 10% of the total populationof diabetics, estimated at 200 million in-dividuals worldwide and some 10 mil-lion in Brazil, insulin dependent patientsare the most severe cases. Among peo-ple suffering from type 2 diabetes andpregnancy diabetes, which temporari-ly affects certain women, the disease cangenerally be kept under control just withdieting and physical exercise. For juve-nile diabetes, on the other hand, whichusually appears during childhood or at

the beginning of adult life, these mea-sures are not enough. Fighting thepathology necessarily demands externalinsulin doses. Otherwise, the sick per-son might die soon. Insulin is essentialfor life, because it removes glucose fromthe blood and pushes it into the cells,where it is transformed into energy. Thesymptoms of the three types of diabetesare the same, though normally they aremore acute in type 1 patients: thirst, aconstant need to urinate, weight losseven if the person is not dieting, blurredvision, tiredness and pains in the legs.

Three years with no insulin - The fig-ures that prove the Brazilian experi-ment’s success are impressive. One of thepatients treated has had no insulin for 37months, or more than three years. An-other four have done without their nee-dles for at least 23 months and sevenhave been free of injections for eightmonths. In two cases, the experimentaltreatment did not produce immediateresults. However, one year after beingsubmitted to the therapy, these diabeticsalso ceased to be dependent on exter-nal doses of the hormone. Of the 14 pa-tients who responded to the therapy, onesuffered a relapse, caught a virus and hadto go back to taking insulin. The side ef-fects of the new therapeutic approach,even though the latter is aggressive, haveshown themselves to be mild so far: onepatient had pneumonia and two had en-docrinal dysfunctions. However, for thechemotherapy/auto-transplant of stemcells to be able to work, the researchersbelieve that it is necessary to take greatcare selecting the patients who will besubmitted to the experiment. All thepeople who in some way benefited fromthe therapeutic scheme had been for-mally diagnosed with type 1 diabetes atmost six weeks before starting treat-ment. They were people who had onlyjust become diabetic.

This type of selection has a scien-tific justification. The researchers believethat in the early stages of the disease,there is still a small number of beta cellsin the insulin-producing islets ofLangerhans in the pancreas. As the dis-ease progresses, these remaining cellswill have the same end as the others:they will be destroyed by the immuno-logical dysfunction that causes type 1 di-abetes. The people who took part in the


MIG

UE

L B

OY

AY

AN

CN

RI/

SC

IEN

CE

PH

OT

O L

IBR

AR

Y/L

AT

IN S

TO

CK


Ribeirão Preto experiment, for instance,still had between 20% and 40% of thebeta cells normally found in a healthybody. With this clinical assumption as astarting point, namely, that at the on-set of the disease there are still pancreascells that can be saved from the inflam-mation attack that is typical of diabetes,the CTC researchers decided to test thetreatment in newly-diagnosed diabeticpatients only. Thus, they say, the thera-py would have a better chance of work-ing. The rationale is simple. If the non-destroyed beta cells are preserved, thebody, once it has been freed of the im-munological dysfunction that attacksthe pancreas, will be able to multiplythem and thus resume normal insulinproduction. This is what may have hap-pened with the patients who respondedwell to the treatment.

Unprecedented worldwide, the ther-apeutic approach used on the 15 pa-tients relies on high doses of chemother-apic and immunotherapic drugs (cy-clophosphamide and antithymocyte

globulin), followed by a transplant ofhematopoietic stem cells, capable of dif-ferentiating themselves and generatingother types of cells, such as red bloodcells, platelets and the white blood cellsof the body’s defense system, which hadpreviously been removed from the bonemarrow of the same patient and con-served in liquid nitrogen. This secondprocedure is know as an autologousbone marrow transplant (or auto-trans-plant) and is free of rejection risks.Therefore, the experimental treatmentattacked diabetes on two fronts, using ascheme that is similar to what is used tofight certain types of cancer, such as cer-tain kinds of leukemia. First, thechemotherapy practically destroys thepatient’s entire immune system, whichis the source of the inflammatory prob-lem that attacks and kills the pancreas’sbeta cells. Then, an intravenous injec-tion of the hematopoietic stem cells ismeant to speed up the reconstruction ofthe patient’s immune system. Or rather,of a new immune system that, for rea-

sons as yet unknown, seems to be free ofthe inflammatory dysfunction that at-tacks beta cells.“It’s as if we brought thebody’s defenses down to zero and thepatient went back to having a child’s im-mune system”, states Voltarelli, who al-so tests stem cell therapies on other au-toimmune diseases, such as lupus andsystemic sclerosis. Therefore, those whosubmitted to this treatment, besides los-ing their hair, vomiting and undergoingother forms of discomfort, must alsotake vaccines all over again. After all, theimmune system’s memory has appar-ently been erased or made dormant.

These encouraging results of the ex-perimental treatment of type 1 diabetes,though still preliminary, became hotnews all over the world. For better or forworse. Feature articles and more featurearticles about the study were producedboth in Brazil and abroad. Some of themresorted to a tone that bordered on sen-sationalism, as if the USP researchershad announced a cure for the disease,which they had not done. Just to men-


Detail of Langerhans islets in the pancreas: beta cells (in green and orange) produce insulin


tion some of the international media ex-amples, French newspapers such as LeMonde, the British Financial Times andthe North American The Wall StreetJournal reported the study. In these ar-ticles, certain questions arose regardingthe results achieved by the Ribeirão Pre-to team. Perhaps the most critical arti-cle was published in the April 21 editionof the New Scientist, a highly respectedBritish science magazine . Using a head-ing a full octave higher than what theCTC team had described, and using theexpression “cure for diabetes using stemcells”, the publication’s text voiced thedoubts of foreign researchers regardingtechnical and even ethical aspects of theBrazilian experiment.

Honeymoon effect - In general terms,the article, which also allowed room forVoltarelli to defend the work, questionswhether the experimental treatment re-ally did benefit the patients. It also in-sinuates that it is easier to test new, high-risk stem cell therapies in Asia and LatinAmerica, where there are allegedly few-er legal controls than in Europe and theUSA. Kevan Harold, from Yale Univer-sity (USA), one the researchers inter-viewed by the English magazine , statesthat type 1 diabetes patients can gothrough a so-called honeymoon stagein which they temporarily resume in-sulin production. According to this lineof thought, the Brazilian team might beascribing the recovery of hormone pro-duction in the pancreas to the effectsof the treatment, while everything mightbe no more than a passing and naturalbodily reaction. The CTC research teamdisagree with this type of argument.“There is no honeymoon period capa-ble of explaining the fact that 14 of our15 patients have gone back to produc-ing insulin, some of them for years”,counter-argues endocrinologist CarlosEduardo Couri, another author of thepaper in the JAMA. “It would be toomuch of a coincidence.”

One of the opinions against theBrazilian experiment was collected by theNew Scientist from Lainie Ross Friedman,a medical ethics expert from the Uni-versity of Chicago, who also talked toPesquisa FAPESP. Lainie’s sharpest ob-servation is about including children inthe study.“Brazil is one of the signatoriesof the Helsinki Declaration (a chart of


Hematopoietic trunk cells (in yellow): precursors of the immune system

ST

EV

E G

SC

HM

EIS

SN

ER

/SC

IEN

CE

PH

OT

O L

IBR

AR

Y/L

AT

IN S

TO

CK


ethical principles in scientific researchsponsored by the World Medical Associ-ation) and the initial trials of this thera-py should not have included children,on-ly adults”, states Lainie.

“Furthermore, there should havebeen a control group (patients who un-derwent conventional treatment for type1 diabetes and whose clinical evolutionwould form the basis for comparing theeffectiveness of the alternative therapy).”Eight of the fifteen people treated wereunder 18 at the time when the thera-peutic scheme was adopted. These chil-dren, to her mind, should only have tak-en part in the experiment later, once ithad been clearly demonstrated amongadults that the alternative therapy is bet-ter than the conventional one. Lainie al-so feels that the experiment is very dan-gerous for its participants and alludes tothe increased risk of cancer, infertilityand even death as a result of using suchan aggressive treatment for diabetes. InBrazil too there are researchers who ob-jected to the CTC experiment, althoughmore affably and without detractingfrom the study’s merit.“I have great ad-miration for doctor Julio’s bold andcourageous work”, ponders Mari CleideSogayar, from the USP Chemical Insti-tute, another scholar who focuses on di-abetes. “However, the proposed treat-ment is a heterodox step and one mustevaluate its cost/benefit effect well.”

The CTC team is the first to admitthe risks and limitations of the thera-peutic scheme under study. It even refersto this in the very text of the JAMA ar-ticle. Still, the scientists do not exemptthemselves from responding to the crit-icism and advocating the ethical cor-rectness of the experiment. Accordingto Voltarelli, the clinical study fulfilledall the moral and legal requirements inforce in the country and took more thanone year to gain approval from the Na-tional Commission of Research Ethics(CONEP – Comissão Nacional de Éticaem Pesquisa), a body of the Ministry ofHealth that authorizes this type of work.“The Commission is more demandingthan the US Food and Drug Adminis-tration (which is in charge of the qual-ity of food and drugs, besides regulatingclinical studies)”, argues the CTC im-munologist, giving one to understandthat part of the criticism of foreign re-searchers is driven by the fact that the

study was conducted by a group that wasnot from one of the major centers ofworld science. He considers using mi-nors in the study justified because thedisease manifests itself in different waysamong children and adults.Voltarelli al-so tells us that he tried to set up a con-trol group, but was unable to find a suf-ficient number of interested parties.“Butwe will have to form a control group forthe next studies”, he admits. Regardingthe health problems that the experi-mental treatment could cause the pa-tients, the CTC team also embraces apolicy of total transparence.“We talkedabout everything during the process ofselecting candidates for the experiment,even the possibility of death”, says Couri.“It is minimal, but it does exist. So muchso that most interviewed patients chosenot to go through with the treatment.”

One of the CTC team’s chief con-cerns is not to give false recovery hopesto type 1 diabetics. Since the positive re-sults were published by the media,Voltarelli has been receiving 200 e-mailsa day from patients interested in under-going this therapeutic scheme.“From theUSA alone there are ten a day”, the im-munologist tells us. The researchers arewell aware that the experimental treat-ment is not a definitive solution for thedisease. Besides the doubts that hauntthe therapy’s action mechanism and theissue of how long its benefits will last,Voltarelli points out that the treatmentis too expensive and risky to be pro-posed as a standard procedure for theworld’s millions of type 1 diabetics. Atpresent, each patient treated at USP inRiberão Preto costs some R$ 20 to 30thousand and must remain within anisolation unit for at least 20 days underintensive care in the bone marrowtransplant center. In other words, theprocedures that are necessary to performthe treatment that CTC is testing canonly be carried out at highly specializedhospitals. The researcher’s dream is toachieve an effective but less aggressiveand cheaper treatment for diabetes. Oneof the CTC team’s hopes center on mes-enchymal stem cells, another primitivetype of cell also found in the bone mar-row. These cells seem to be able to de-press the immune system.“Perhaps withthem we will manage to do withoutchemotherapy, the treatment’s most ag-gressive stage”, says Voltarelli. ■


MIG

UE

L B

OY

AY

AN


Mas

ter

in


It is as if it had a thousand garmentsand masks. Every two days, when itis reproduced inside the red bloodcells , the protozoon that causesmalaria manages to generate newcombinations of its genetic mate-rial and so produce extremely di-

versified proteins that allow it to escapefrom the defenses of the human organ-ism. This capacity for genetic recom-bination, shown by a research groupfrom the University of São Paulo (USP),has serious implications for the devel-opment of vaccines against this disease,because it makes them an even biggerchallenge. It also makes the symptomsvary from person to person, albeit sub-tly, but enough to make this ailment,typical of poor countries, pass on with-out being detected from the first mo-ment. The field surveys that comple-ment the research done in the laborato-ry indicate that people may become re-sistant to some of these variations, butsensitive to others, subjecting themselvesto new malarias with the same intensi-ty as the first time.

In one of the laboratories of USP’sBiomedical Sciences Institute (ICB), bi-ologist Erika Hoffmann studied the ge-netic variability of MSP-2, a proteinabundant on the surface membrane ofPlasmodium falciparum, a parasite thatcauses the more serious forms of malar-ia, with convulsions and loss of con-science, besides intense fever. Her study,published in July in the Gene journal,was based on the blood samples takenfrom eight inhabitants of Ariquemes, amunicipality in Rondônia where thisdisease was very common. As she saw,these men were infected with at least 44different variants or strains of Plasmod-ium falciparum, which brought nine dif-ferent versions of the MSP-2 protein.One of them carried nine strains, dif-ferent enough to the point of behaving

like different parasites. It was an indica-tion that both this individual as the oth-ers, to a lesser intensity, had been in-fected with Plasmodium falciparum ge-netically very different amongst them-selves, even though found in an areawith very low transmission levels. MSP-1, another protein common on the sur-face of the Plasmodium that is one ofthe main candidates to be a vaccineagainst malaria, is also much modifiedand thus fails to be recognized by theorganism. It is as if the maze, in itselfperturbing, were to spread out moreand more, without Ariadne’s thread topoint to a way out.

Some strains of the parasite can bemore aggressive than others, producinga disease of variable seriousness, or withdifferent symptoms. Just a headache, di-arrhea and dizziness may appear, insteadof the shivers and intense fever that reap-pears every 48 hours. “At least a part ofthe response of the organism dependson the specific type of the strain of theparasite”, comments physician MarceloUrbano Ferreira, the coordinator of thisgroup from the ICB. If a person had nev-er had any contact with a strain, partic-ularly the rarer ones, the disease tends tobe more serious; if a variation that is al-ready familiar to the organism appears,the malaria may develop – the parasitesreproducing themselves initially in theliver and afterwards in the red blood cells,but without any symptoms.

“The possibility of infections emerg-ing without symptoms, or with onlysome symptoms, not necessarily themost typical ones, may make the diag-nosis and treatment of the malaria verydifficult”, Ferreira says. Another reasonfor which the ailment may spread moreeasily in silence is that normally peoplethemselves turn to the medical serviceswhen the symptoms appear; withoutsymptoms, they will not go to the health

MALARIA

>

Genetic variability makes it possible for the Plasmodiumto by pass the defenses of the human organism

CARLOS FIORAVANTI

Published in November 2006

44-47_Malaria_129_Ing 12/11/07 12:02 Page 44


After the elusive protozoon: research assistantAdamílson Luís de Souza collects blood from Mercedes Andreatto da Silva, a teacherfrom a small rural community of Acrelândia

disg

uise

MA

RC

EL

O U

RB

AN

O F

ER

RE

IRA

/US

P

44-47_Malaria_129_Ing 12/11/07 12:03 Page 45

centers and therefore will not be giventreatment, but they will remain infect-ed. For this reason, they may infect themosquitoes that can transmit malariashould they sting them in search ofblood, and afterwards sting someoneelse. In a review published in May, JoséRodrigues Coura and his team from theOswaldo Cruz Institute of Rio de Janeiroestimated that one in four cases ofmalaria in Amazonia is asymptomaticand, for this reason, it makes the controlof this ailment difficult.

It is estimated that 40% of theworld population, equivalent to 2.4 bil-lion persons, is exposed to infection,particularly in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the planet. Everyyear, from 300 million to 500 millionnew cases of malaria arise, the most dis-seminated of the diseases caused by aparasite, which causes at least 1.5 mil-lion deaths, particularly of children less

than 5 years old in Africa, the most af-fected continent. In Brazil, the total ofnew cases went up from 50 thousand ayear three decades ago to the level of600 thousand cases a year, which is stillthe current figure. This leap is due tothe opening up of roads, the construc-tion of hydroelectric power plants, in-ternal migration, the formation of ru-ral settlements, and the growth of cities,which are an indication of efforts topopulate the national territory. It is forthis reason that malaria today is rare inthe major urban centers and is con-centrated in the Amazon area, whereover 90% of the cases recorded inSouth America are found.

Varied responses - One more com-plication emerged from the researchesof this team from the ICB: the humanorganism can activate different defensemechanisms in response to one strain

or another. Physician Mônica da SilvaNunes, from Ferreira’s group, evaluat-ed how one kind of defense cells, theT lymphocytes, extracted from bloodsamples of inhabitants from the ruralzone of Acrelândia, a municipality inAcre, recognized six MSP-1 variantsfrom the P. vivax, the species that cur-rently accounts for the majority of thecases of malaria registered in Brazil andin the south and southeast of Asia. Inparallel, Melissa da Silva Bastos, underthe orientation of Sandra Moraes-Ávi-la, from the Tropical Medicine Instituteof São Paulo, was investigating whetherthe variants of the MSP-1 induced theproduction of antibodies, which rep-resent another form of defense againstmicroorganisms. Comparing the results,they concluded that the most variableregions of the MSP-1 are those that ac-tivate the most intense responses of theorganism, producing more defense cellsor more antibodies. The more stable re-gions of this protein were those that mo-bilized the T lymphocytes least.

In turn, the studies under way withthe MSP-2 of Plasmodium falciparum,carried out jointly with Kézia Scopel andErika Braga, from the Federal Universi-ty of Minas Gerais, suggest that the factthat the organism has produced anti-bodies against one strain of this proteindoes not necessarily mean that it willmanage to protect itself against thisstrain when it appears. Another findingis that the defense system recognizessome variants, but pays almost no at-tention to others.“Often, a person sim-ply fails to recognize the variant of theparasite that is infecting it”, says Ferreira.


In contact with malaria

Doctors without frontiers: researchers visit inhabitants of rural communities and collect blood samples wherever they...

THE PROJECTS

Genome and post-genomeapproximation to the study of humanmalarias by Plasmodium vivax and P. falciparum in Brazilian Amazonia

MODALITY

Thematic Project

COORDINATOR

HERNANDO DEL PORTILLO — ICB/USP

INVESTMENT

R$ 3.087.101,23 (FAPESP)

Acquisition of immunity against P. vivax: longitudinal study in a rural community of Amazonia

MODALITY

Regular Line of Research Grants

COORDINATOR

MARCELO URBANO FERREIRA — ICB/USP

INVESTMENT

R$ 124.145,18 (FAPESP) and R$ 20.000,00 (CNPq)

44-47_Malaria_129_Ing 12/11/07 12:03 Page 46

“Accordingly, only a part of the vastrepertoire of MSP-2 variants is recog-nized by the immune system of peopleexposed to malaria in Brazil.”

And so, producing more defense cellsor more antibodies, the organism will re-act with greater or lesser speed, in the at-tempt to contain the parasite, whichreaches the liver 30 minutes after thesting of the transmitting mosquito.There, in the human body’s largest in-ternal organ, after ten days, each cell gen-erates 40 thousand others that invade thered cells that circulate through the veinsand arteries. During the asexual repro-duction of the parasite, which takes placeinside these cells of the blood, the DNAmolecule, which carries the genes, cre-ates another copy of itself. However, themolecule that is being formed, and thatought to be identical to the original,rebels and forms a loop, which will meanthat other DNA stretches are added orlost. Accordingly, the DNA copies turnout larger or smaller than the originalversion. And so an even greater geneticdiversity is formed in the laboratory thancan arise during sexual reproduction,which happens in the mosquito. Everytwo days, each cell of the Plasmodiumforms from eight to 32 cells, which burstthe membranes of the red cells – whichis when a high fever takes place.

One of the peculiarities of this workis the close connection between the lab-oratory activity and the field. Mônica ac-companied the reactions of the cells andantibodies to the MSP-1, working in alaboratory built in the Health Center ofAcrelândia, a municipality formed fromrural settlements. She moved there in

February 2004, and up until June 2005she studied the malaria brought or ac-quired by the 467 inhabitants in a ruralarea 50 kilometers from the town. Dur-ing her stay in this and in other regionsof Amazonia, 63% of the inhabitantsnow had malaria caused by Plasmodiumvivax and 45.8% by P. falciparum.

Every day, Mônica would visit thehealth centers after recent cases of fever,which also could be a sign of other dis-eases, like dengue. Soon after the rainyseason, when the river is low and pondsare formed that act as a breeding groundfor the transmitting mosquitoes, shewould collect blood from 10 to 15 per-sons a day – each infection, as was to beseen shortly afterwards, caused by para-site genetically different from each oth-er. Marcelo Ferreira, who coordinatedthe group and lived in Rondônia for twoyears, does everything possible for hispupils to get to know malaria close up.

“We can go far further in the scien-tific work if we don’t take malaria mere-ly as an object for study, but as some-thing that causes human suffering”, hesays. For him, the field work could alsomake more original advances possibleand a greater competitiveness for theBrazilian research groups, since Plas-modium falciparum, more common inAfrica, is now adapting to the labora-tory life, while Plasmodium vivax, pre-dominant in Brazil, still cannot be cul-tivated in vitro.

Since 2005, it is Natal Santos da Sil-va, an Acrean doctor and infectologisttrained in São Paulo, who has been rep-resenting USP’s team in Acrelândia. Bymotorcycle, he covers from 150 to 200

kilometers a day, the major part on earthroads, to find the inhabitants in the ru-ral zone of Acrelândia who have con-tracted malaria. As soon as he findsthem, he does examinations and collectsblood samples for a month, to evalu-ate the effectiveness of chloroquine andprimaquine, the two medicines mostused against Plasmodium vivax, and tounderstand why the disease reappearsafter treatment, sometimes in the samemonth. Of the 78 inhabitants fromwhom he had already brought togeth-er material to study, 14 had had up tofour relapses in one year: one 2 year oldchild, who was not included in the studybut whom he attended , had already hadmalaria four times.

“If we manage to show a pattern ofresistance of the Plasmodium vivax, wecan propose changes in the form oftreatment, or even in the medicines”,comments the doctor, who works withthe support of a malaria control team ofthe Acre State Secretariat for Health.“Itmay be that the remedies are not work-ing adequately any more, particularly inthe high risk transmission areas.”

In Brazil, he reminds us, the stan-dard dose of primaquine – used to com-bat the initial forms of Plasmodium,still in the liver, jointly with chloro-quine, which eliminates the parasitefrom the blood cells – is half that rec-ommended by the World Health Orga-nization (WHO). Silva arrived to stayfor one year, but he should remainmuch longer and help to create a per-manent research base, forging bondswith the inhabitants and the medicalservices in this municipality. ■


NA

TAL

SA

NT

OS

DA

SIL

VA

/US

P

...have to, even in the forest. They only stop the journey, often made by motorbike, when fires break out

44-47_Malaria_129_Ing 12/11/07 12:03 Page 47

Direct to the nucleus:cell division in thelungs of mice turnsgreen on producing the fluorescent proteinwhose gene crotalintransported it.

PHARMACOLOGY

>

48-51_Pharmacology_139_Ing 12/7/07 19:03 Page 48

Protein from the rattlesnake’s poisonpenetrates cells in the process of dividingand shows potential as a conveyor ofmedication and as an anti-tumoral agent

The cellular postman

AL

EX

AN

DE

R A

ND

IR

INA

KE

RK

IS/

BU

TAN

TAN

IN

ST

ITU

TE

Skilled in finding talented people who he al-lows to work as they please, chemist TetsuoYamane formed a research team in Brazil,with ramifications in other countries that injust a couple of years has led to the identi-fication of very rare properties in the pro-tein of a snake typical of the Brazilian Cer-

rado and Caatinga, the rattlesnake. Crotalin as thisprotein is called, traverses the cellular membrane andtransports genes and other molecules to the interi-or and even into the nucleus of the cells – not just anycell, but those that are multiplying. For this reason,this protein may be used in the diagnostics of dis-eases, in conveying medication and, as the latest ex-periments seem to indicate, in destroying tumors.

Yamane, currently 76, as head of the biotech-nological laboratory at the Institute of Energy andNuclear Research Institute (Ipen) at the Biotech-nology Center in the Amazon Region (CBA), beganto create new sources for the study of crotalin sometime in 1993, when he was considering the idea ofreturning to Brazil, after 40 years in the UnitedStates. Isolated in the 1950s by the biochemist JoséMoura Gonçalves, crotalin had already been thor-oughly studied, due to its capacity of paralyzing themuscles of rodents. Forty years later, it did not seemto pose major enigmas – except for a chemist, ofJapanese origin, whose boldness had been fed onday-to-day basis by his association with scientistsat the level of Richard Feyman and Linus Pauling,during his graduation and post-graduation yearsat California’s Institute of Technology (Caltech).His propensity to ask new questions perfected itselfeven more during his ten years working with physi-cists at the Bell Laboratories, where the transistor,the laser, the integrated circuit and communicationsby satellite were invented. On becoming acquaint-ed with crotalin, Yamane became intrigued aboutthe mechanisms, at that time still undeciphered, bywhich the protein acts on the system and by the pos-sible interactions of this molecule whose structurereminds one of a woollen dragon.

Could crotalin interfere with the division of cells?It was this question by Ymane, active since 1994 inthe Butantan Institute and at that time working on-ly with the biochemists Gandhi Rádis-Baptista andÁlvaro Prieto da Silva, that drew the attention of thecellular biologist Alexander Kerkis and his wife,biologist. Both are Russian. They had been active inone of the most important Russian research centersin Siberia, before perestroika fragmented the scien-tific knowledge structure there.After spending sometime at the State University of Northern Rio deJaneiro, the Kerkis came to São Paulo in 1999. Theytook up the study of mice stem cells at the Insti-



the Federal University of the State ofSão Paulo (Unifesp) and of the Univer-sity of Mogi das Cruzes (UMC). As thisgroup demonstrated in a paper by theJournal of Biological Chemistry, theaffinity between crotalin and proteo-glycan of heparin-sulfate molecules isdue, essentially, to electrostatic forces:crotalin is a molecule with a positiveelectrical charge, whereas the proteo-glycan of heparin-sulfate molecules arenegatively charged.

It so happens that crotalin is not en-tirely positive: one side is electricallyneutral. This peculiarity serves the pur-pose of connecting other molecules bothto the positive and neutral sides. How-ever, this was still only theory, as was thehypothesis of crotalin, given its positiveelectrical charge, connecting itself to thenegative DNA. There were indicationsthat this might be possible; however,crotalin might couple itself, not direct-ly to, but to some other protein associ-ated with the DNA.

To clear up the doubt, Mirian spokewith Vitor Oliveira.A chemist at the Fed-eral University of São Carlos (UFSCar),he was working on projects relative to theanalysis of protein structures in a privateuniversity. It was he who operated equip-ment at Unifesp that analyses howmolecules absorb components of a spe-cial type of light. The answer becameavailable within five minutes, by meansof a graph: yes, crotalin coupled itself di-rectly to the DNA. Soon after, an exper-iment by the group showed that crotalinmight in fact convey a form of circularDNA known as plasmid to the nucleus ofliver, lung and bone marrow cells, whichfind themselves under continuous mul-tiplication. The alien DNA functionednormally,as if natural,within one of eachfour cells: a noteworthy result.

There is also growing evidence thatcrotalin might be connected to the sys-tem’s defense – and not just because it ispart of a poison. Its three-dimensionalstructure is similar to that of beta-de-fensine, a protein found in the saliva andin the mucous (of the nose, for exam-ple) of human beings and of other an-imals.“Molecules, such as these, are partof the first defense line of organisms”,states Irina. In a manner similar to thebeta-defensines, crotalin might integratethe innate immune system, which func-tions intensely during pregnancy and


amino acids that controls the sugar lev-el in the blood. However, it is minusculewhen compared, for example, withhemoglobin, the portentous moleculeof four chains of 140 amino acids each,which conveys oxygen to all of thebody’s cells. Given that it is so small, itbecomes understandable that it wouldeasily traverse the membranes of thecells. But how?

Here is the answer: by coupling it-self to the molecules of the cellular sur-face known as proteoglycans of hep-arin-sulfates that circulate within thecell’s interior. This coupling is not for-tuitous.“The moment in which the cellsmost produce heparin-sulfates is dur-ing their reproductive cycle”, states bio-chemist Ivarne Tersariol, professor of

tute of Biomedical Sciences (ICB) at theUniversity of São Paulo USP. It was thenthat they met Yamane and, jointly, dis-covered new properties in a toxin thatseemed not to have anything further toyield. In very small doses, they verified,that crotalin very quickly reached – inonly five minutes – the nucleus not on-ly the embryonic stem-cells of mice, butalso other types of cells.

For the first time it was demon-strated that a protein until then consid-ered only as a toxin also acted as a cel-lular postman: it traversed the mem-brane of cells in the splitting up processand reached the nucleus, where thechromosomes are situated. Once there,this little protein adheres to the cen-tromeres, the agent whereby the chro-mosomes are duplicated and remainunited during the cellular division.Thereupon, the chromosomes separatethemselves into independent cells; thecrotalin leaves the cells remaining in theintercellular space, as if waiting for an-other moment to become active oncemore. The results, published by theFASEB journal in July 2004, opened newprospects for research and for the use ofthis protein. “We began to regard thetoxin from a new perspective”, statespharmacologist Mirian Hayashi, whoworked with Yamane at the Butantan In-stitute for three years on this researchproject, subsequent to another three inthe development of pharmaceuticalproducts in Japan.

Against pain and parasites - It was al-so at Butantan that another team founda substance in the rattlesnake with ananalgesic power 600 times that of mor-phine and, apparently, without relevantside effects.. In an experiment carriedout at USP, the poison of the Crotalusdurissus terrificus, which inhabits thesouth and west of Brazil, was the one toshow itself the most effective against theparasite causing da leishmaniasis, incomparison with two other subspecies,one typical of the Caatinga and the oth-er of the south western and central west-ern regions. The fractions most active intests within cells and mice were gyro-toxin and crotalin

Crotalin, the major component of arattlesnake’s poison, is a small protein.It contains 42 amino acids, almost asmany as insulin, the hormone of 51

Study of the transportation systemmediated by cationic peptides

MODALITY

Regular Line of Support to Research

COORDINATOR

TETSUO YAMANE - IPEN

INVESTMENT

R$ 65.649,56 (FAPESP)

THE PROJECT

The structure of crotalin, the major component of the rattlesnakes poison

NC

BI



they had not been patented nor relied oncorporate support, ended up being tak-en over by other research groups. Theyare aware that being the owner of apatent is only one of the requisites in thelong road to the development of a phar-maceutical product.

Further ahead, should the next lab-oratory tests confirm the crotalin’s po-tential, the group will be faced with an-other challenge: to produce the moleculein greater quantities – on a trial scale and,thereafter, on an industrial scale – so asto facilitate negotiations with companiesor institutions interested in carrying outthe final tests, prior to the molecule be-

coming a medication or a marker in can-cer diagnoses. “Those with good ideasare welcome”, states Yamane.“We are anopen group.” Little by little, Yamane hasalready attracted other groups – fromGermany, Poland, the United States andJapan – to work with crotalin.“Each onemay contribute; only in this manner doesscience advance”, he adds, without giv-ing up the daring that has marked his sci-entific career: “Linus Pauling always re-minded one that, on beginning a project,one should think of how to contributein an original manner”. ■

Crotalus: hope also against parasites and leishmaniasis

the first months after birth when the or-ganism does not yet produce antibodiesagainst microorganisms. Therefore,snakes also use something of themselves,albeit in a larger volume, to defendthemselves: the poison gland is a mod-ified salivary gland, states Mirian. How-ever, not all Crotalus durissus terrificusproduce crotalin. Gandhi Rádis-Baptistaverified that all carry the gene responsi-ble for the production of crotalin; someof the representatives of this species –measuring up to 1.5 meters in lengthand easily identified by their tail rattles– produce a protein with a similar struc-ture, called crotasin, the effect of whichis not yet known.

Rádis-Baptista is now with the Fed-eral University of Pernambuco, comply-ing with what seems to be the fate of theparticipants of this story; not to putdown roots or, at least, to go after evenmore challenging projects. Mirian leftButantan a year ago, soon after Yamane,and is now at Unifesp as a professor ofpharmacology; Vitor Oliveira left theprivate university and returned to Unife-sp as a professor of biophysics. IrinaKerkis left USP and is now at Butantan,whereas Alexander Kerkis now works inthe lab of a medical clinic. Fábio Nasci-mento, the biochemist who carried outthe heparin-sulfate experiments, is cur-rently working in a biotechnologicalcompany in Switzerland.

Uncertainties ahead - Even if at a dis-tance, apparently they did not lose en-thusiasm to work together on problemsthey might not solve alone. Extractedand purified with dexterity by Eduar-do Oliveira at USP in Ribeirão Preto,crotalin forms aggregates of two orthree units that reduce its capacity toconvey molecules. To avoid the forma-tion of these aggregates is, perhaps,more difficult than to produce a syn-thetic version of crotalin, which wouldavoid dependence on the purificationof snake poison.

Although they have a lot of workahead of them, the researchers are al-ready negotiating with companies inter-ested in employing crotalin sections asgene conveyers. In 2004, they requestedthe patent for the potential uses of thismolecule, given that they do not wish torepeat the story of other molecules dis-covered by Brazilians, which, because

ED

UA

RD

O C

ES

AR

CARLOS FIORAVANTI


52-55_Climate Change_139_Ing 12/11/07 14:47 Page 52


owner of a small furniture factory, for example, closehis doors and live only from the rent of his property: the suppliers of timber and other raw materialsfor furniture would have fewer buyers and would beobliged to produce less or to sell at lower prices. Sucha wondrous proposition, of earning without doinganything, would be far from representing develop-ment on a productive basis, given that the links inthe chain that make the economy work, generatingand distributing wealth, would have been severed.

The conclusions that he drew emerge from math-ematical simulations which reproduced the real func-tioning of the economy in the state of Pará’s south-west during 2005, to which he added a new com-ponent, air. Based on the classical methodology ofproduct inputs and outputs proposed by the Russianeconomist Wassily Leontief in the seventies, Costaanalyzed the circulation of 101 items arising out ofrural production identified in Pará’s Crop/LivestockCensus 2004 among 18 sectors of economic activi-ty and their affiliates – from crop/livestock farmingand mining to final consumption by the families –within 31 municipalities of Pará’s southwest, an area20% larger than the state of São Paulo.

The results are not encouraging at all. In the firstcase, the mechanism of compensation for the cut-back in emissions – even if by means of a fair agree-ment with the farmers at levels equivalent to whatthey were making out of faming and cattle breeding– compensates for only part of the income lost bygiving up production. If the farmers were to cut pro-duction by half, receiving 50% of the annual profitgenerated by the soil in order to maintain the for-est and to also to cutback on the emission of carbonicgas by half, the local economy would receive an ex-tra R$ 435 million, by means of carbon credits. Itdoes not really come to that much, given that thegross value of the region’s economic output, equiv-alent to the total circulation of goods, is almost 60times larger. Within this scenario, production dropsby 50% and the emission of carbonic gas only by alittle more than half (56.7%), but at a cost to thelocal economy’s contraction (9.3%) and to the salarymass (11.3%). Also on the shrinking side are prof-

Green winds CLIMATE CHANGE

Stimulating production can be coupled with carbon credits, in order to avoid economic stagnation

Marabá,Parauapebas,Curionópolis,Tucumã,Pau D’Arco, Rio Maria, Xinguara and oth-er municipalities in southwestern Pará forman economically dynamic region. Duringthe 1960s and 1970s , this region becamethe stage for major cattle-breeding projectsencouraged by the federal government.

Family-run farms took a back seat, but later on beganto expand once more, in parallel both with big min-ing concerns and thousands of anonymous prospec-tors.Cities expanded non-stop.Due to the rapid trans-formation of the Amazon Forest into crop/livestocklands, the net balance of carbonic gas (emission lesscapture) in 2004 is estimated at almost 300 milliontons, the equivalent of 35% of all the Northern Re-gion’s emissions during that year.

Carbonic gas released into the atmosphere helpsto heat up the planet and increases the pace of climatechange.At first sight, there is no reason to become dis-turbed, given that this emission may be reduced. Oneof the mechanisms envisaged to avoid deforestationand forest fires that release carbonic gas is to com-pensate farmers, by means of carbon-credits, in orderto preserve the forest. The landowners would be com-pensated by taking care of the trees instead of plant-ing crops or breeding cattle. However, this alternativemight prove to be disastrous for the region’s econo-my, given that it would lead to a dramatic cutback inactivities, the collection of taxes and jobs, accordingto a study by the economist Francisco de Assis Cos-ta, a visiting professor at the Center for Brazilian Stud-ies (CEB) at Oxford University in England.

“This strategy of cutting back on carbon emis-sion is not going to benefit the development of theAmazon Region, nor help to incorporate the regioninto the national economy, if it is going to be usedonly as a form of compensation directed solely at oneeconomic agent, namely the rural producers”, warnsCosta, a researcher at the Nucleus for Higher Ama-zon Studies (NAEA) at the Federal University of Pará,in Belém. “To be successful, the money has to enterthe economy as a productive force, not simply as in-come.” According to his viewpoint, to transformfarmers into pensioners, would be akin to having theP

HO

TO

S E

DU

AR

DO

CE

SA

R

>




its (10.5%) and, very slightly, taxes(0.1%).The number of job openings suf-fers the most,declining by at least 41.9%.

Another scenario that Costa ana-lyzed involves a strategy that would pre-serve the native forest, while, at thesame time, avoiding such losses bymeans of a profitability incentive in theareas that would remain untouched bythe carbon-credit generating mecha-nisms (the production of other farmersreplaces those who adhere to the car-bon-emission cutback program). In thiscase, the local economy would grow by5.4%, salaries by 9.8%, employment by9.9%, profits by 4.7% and taxes by3.8%. The state’s economy would gainR$ 90 million and the country’s R$ 340million. The problem would be that car-bon emissions would also increase (by6.7%). “The nonsuccess of the carbonemission cutback policy would corre-spond to a notable economic success”,concludes Costa.

His calculations indicate that theoverall income in the region’s economywould lose R$ 1.8 for each R$ 1.0 with-drawn from production; on the otherhand, the income from all productionand consumption networks gain R$ 1.8for each R$ 1.0 linked to the economy.By means of this study, he brought to-gether two areas of interest: the re-gional development of the Amazon re-gion, about which he has published 12books, (one of them in German, as a re-sult of his doctorate thesis conductedat the Freie Universitat, in Berlin), andclimate change. As a visiting profes-sor of CEB, he took part intensely inthe debates on climate change con-ducted from January to July of the cur-rent year in Oxford, the city in whichthe world’s scientific output with re-gard to this issue is concentrated.

Costa’s study also shows that the iso-lated implantation of this mechanismopens the door to an effect contrary tothe one desired: increased deforestingand atmospheric pollution, given thatnot all the farmers would gain from notplanting nor developing pastures. “Afarmer would give up deforesting andgain carbon credits, but his son wouldkeep on deforesting”, exemplifies the re-searcher. The emission of carbon diox-ide would actually only decrease in aUtopian scenario: namely, if all thethousands of farmers left the forest un-

touched, even if an agreement wasmade with only some of them.

Costa believes that the policies forholding back deforestation (and for cut-ting back on carbon emission) should becoupled with production policies whichwould reconcile local developmentstrategies, endogenous and environ-mentally sustainable, without depletingthe region’s natural resources.“We haveto create our own innovations”, he adds.“ The experiences of other countries donot always serve our purposes.”

One of the possibilities would be toemploy half of the estimated R$ 435million per year that the farmers wouldreceive for cutting back on carbon diox-ide emissions in a program consistentwith scientific research which wouldpave the way to more modern agricul-ture, with no emission balance; with theother half destined to change currentagricultural production methods, thusmaintaining the region’s economic de-velopment dynamics.

Incentive to production - If, for exam-ple, the R$ 435 million were applied to acarbon dioxide cutback program thatwould invert the productive base – fromthe most emitting systems to the leastemitting ones – by means of scientificand technological research and subsidiesmaking this conversion possible. Ac-cording to Costa, the local economywould grow by 5.6%, the salary mass by2.7% and the profit mass by 6.9%,where-as,carbon dioxide emission would dropby 32.3%. According to the researcherreciprocal gains would result: emissionsdecrease while the economy expands.

In another simulation, where othersectors of the economy grow at rateshigher than agriculture and also bymaintaining the goal of cutting backemissions by 50% in five years, em-ployment would grow by 155.3% andthe salary mass by 112.3%. However,this economic impulse independentfrom agriculture, would lead to an in-crease in carbon dioxide emissions inthe order of 60% compared to the pre-vious year: the local economy expandsand diversifies, but the strategy to con-tain emissions fails.

Maintaining the forest is not the on-ly way for developing countries to ob-tain – and to negotiate – carbon credits.There are others, defined as Clean De-

velopment Mechanisms (CDM), im-plying less polluting alternatives for theproduction of industrial goods, such aspaper or cement. However, the major-ity of the CDM projects developed inSouth Africa, Brazil, China and India,the countries with most of the world’sCDM projects, also imply income con-centration, frequent unemploymentand, paradoxically, damage to the envi-ronment, given that the impact of theseprojects is not always duly explained, ac-cording to a survey carried out by thebiologist Eduardo Ferreira, at the Envi-ronmental Change Institute (ECI) at theUniversity of Oxford.

During May, Ferreira visited eightCDM projects under way in Brazil andnoticed that not all of them manage toretain as much carbon as expected,whereas those on a small scale, precise-ly those with a higher social impact, en-counter much difficulty to obtain fi-nancing.On the other hand,companies,which have already developed CDM pro-jects, complain about governmental de-lay and red tape connected to project ap-proval. In a paper published last Febru-ary by Nature,Michael Wara, from Stan-ford University, reinforces the argumentthat, at least for the present, the globalcarbon market has not performed ac-cording to expectations: neither is it help-ing to create a market for clean, low-car-bon-consuming technologies,nor is it al-lowing that developing countries becomeactive partners in the struggle against theimpact of global warming, inasmuch asit functions as an indirect and insuffi-cient subsidy for peripheral economies.

One is not dealing with problemthat is simple even in other countries.During an interview with The Guardian,Ngaire Woods, director of the GlobalEconomic Governance Programme atthe University of Oxford, referred to thedebates on the prospects a cutback incarbon emissions in the United King-dom, and stated that government offi-cials were looking solely at parts of theproblem: some were trying to deal withprices, others with the impact of the cli-mate changes, while still others withpoverty throughout the world.Nowhere, according to her, was there acoherent strategic plan. ■

CARLOS FIORAVANTI,FROM OXFORD



Transformation in the economy of the southwestern state of Para brought about by a program cutting the CO2 emission by half in five years (compared to the amounts in 2004, in % terms)

Production with less pollution

Scenarios

Owners receive the equivalent of half the production to maintain the forest

Other farmers replace the production of those entering the program for carbonemission cutback of the previous scenario

Production migrates to less carbon emitting form

Other sectors of the economy grow at a faster pace than agriculture

AddedValue

–9,3

5,4

5,6

128,8

Salaries

–11,3

9,8

2,7

112,3

Profits

–10,5

4,7

6,9

131,5

Employment

–41,9

9,9

56,6

155,3

Taxes

–0,1

3,8

2,2

134,8

CO2 NetBalance

–56,7

8,2

–32,3

59,9

SOURCE: FRANCISCO DE ASSIS COSTA/UEPA/CEB


How metals dancePHYSICS

Observed for the first time on the smallest scale possible, an alloy of gold and silver reveals unexpected behavior in atoms

MARIA GUIMARÃES

IMAGES FERNANDO SATO

>

Published in January 2007

56-59_Physics_131_ Ing 12/11/07 15:10 Page 56


An extremely fine layer of gold and silverpulled and stretched at the ends, becomesvery fine in the middle until it can get nothinner and breaks. Observed in an electronmicroscope, this image in movement, whichrecalls melted cheese as it stretches from thebite to the ham and cheese sandwich, has

nothing banal about it. It reveals what happens withsuch a layer at the level of the atoms, the units thatmake up matter. As the layer is stretched out, thebonds between the atoms burst and others form, in asnake-like dance, until a thread only one atom thickremains. These atoms lined up one by one look likea pearl necklace – a tiny ephemeral necklace, made upof three atoms, which lasts only three seconds.

Daniel Ugarte, an experimental physicist fromthe State University of Campinas (Unicamp) andfrom the National Synchrotron Light Laboratory(LNLS), in Campinas, is one of the few who have hadthe privilege of observing such a rare and fleetingphenomenon. His collaboration with the group oftheoretical physicists led by Douglas Galvão, alsofrom Unicamp, is responsible for great advances inthe study of how metals behave on the nanometricscale, of a millionth of a millimeter. It is only afterthe workings of materials on this scale are under-

stood that it will be possible to use them for tech-nological purposes.

Ugarte and Galvão already knew that gold and sil-ver in their pure state behave in a different way justbefore breaking. Both can form a wire with the thick-ness of one atom – or suspended atomic chains –when pulled in different directions specific for eachmetal. Recently, Galvão and his doctoral student Fer-nando Sato, in collaboration with Pablo Coura andSócrates Dantas, from the Federal University of Juizde Fora, explored new frontiers by simulating the be-havior of the gold and silver alloys on a computer,with varied proportions of the two metals. When hesaw the results, Ugarte noticed something intriguing:in a good number of the cases, the alloy would behavelike pure gold. The theoretical team then went backto analyze their animations and saw that the atoms ofgold migrate to the region that keeps getting thin-ner in the stretched metal, instead of remaining spreadout homogeneously over the metal leaf. The sus-pended atomic chain thus almost contains only gold.“It is only when it constitutes at least 80% of the al-loy that silver begins to express its properties”, saysUgarte, who with his colleagues reported these un-expected results in the December issue of the Na-ture Nanotechnology journal.

Science and art:simulations show how

bonds between atoms areformed and are broken

56-59_Physics_131_ Ing 12/11/07 15:10 Page 57

Theory and practice - The collabora-tion between Ugarte and Galvão beganin 2001 and involves the rare union be-tween theoretical and experimentalminds, besides tools that make a com-plete investigation possible, such ascomputer simulations,microscopy,crys-tallography and measurement of thetransport of electric current. Each oneof these techniques makes it possible toinvestigate a different aspect of thesestructures that are so small: the image inthe microscope shows the moving atoms, but does not distinguish with certaintythe gold atoms from the silver atoms;crystallography describes the specialconformation of the atoms, but gives noinformation about the material’s elec-trical transport properties. It is theagreement between the results obtainedby the different areas and instrumentsthat gives strength to the team’s discov-eries and discloses what an isolated lookcould not manage to distinguish.

A s metallic alloys do not behave likepure metals, studying mixturesbrings new developments that may

in future help to make electronics a re-ality on the molecular scale . The great-est challenge to the production of al-loys is imposed by the atomic proper-ties of the materials, which, if they arevery different, prevent a harmoniousfit among the atoms. Sato explains that

a good relationship be-tween metals depends onthe distance between twoatoms in the pure metal,which is specific for each el-ement. As the atoms ofgold and silver organizethemselves at similar dis-tances, the alloy that unitesthese two metals is stableand easier to create, and insome proportions – such asthree atoms of gold to oneof silver – can even existspontaneously in nature.

Another unexpected ob-servation in the simulationsof Galvão and Sato was thestructure that appears in theimages on these pages. If thealloy contains less than 10%of gold, atoms of silver or-ganize themselves into pen-tagons around the gold

atoms, forming a gold thread covered bysilver that may work like a common elec-trical cable, on a scale millions of timessmaller. By being a better conductor ofelectricity than the copper in commonwire, gold is used in wire when highquality electrical transport is necessary.

For offering greater resistance to thetransport of electrons, silver works as aninsulator in the structure discovered bythe theoretical physicists. For the timebeing, this structure is merely theoret-ical, since it arose in computer simula-tions and has not yet been observed inreality, but Galvão is optimistic.“As upuntil now the experimental results haveconfirmed the theoretical suppositions,the chance of the structure in pentagonsexisting is in fact 95%.” If the discov-ery is confirmed, it may be an importantfinding for molecular electronics.

Previous experiments had already in-vestigated the behavior of the atomiccomponents of metallic alloys, but Jef-ferson Bettini, from the LNLS, was oneof the first to observe it under the mi-croscope in real time. Another advanceis that the experiments were done atroom temperature, which has only be-come possible in the last ten years, whenVarlei Rodrigues, studying for a master’sdegree, developed a device that, with ul-tra-high vacuum,creates ultra-clean con-ditions in the environment where breaksin the extremely thin metal plates are

produced. The vacuum is important be-cause the environment has to be per-fectly clean,since any intruding atom canalter the composition of the metal beingstudied. In general, this degree of clean-liness is attained when carrying out ex-periments at temperatures between mi-nus 260 and minus 270º Celsius, which,according to Ugarte, do not lead to sat-isfactory results, because the tempera-ture also affects the properties of themetal.“At such low temperatures,all ma-terials look the same”,he explains.Videosthat record the breaking up of metal atroom temperature and in liquid nitro-gen show that the cold metal does not re-do its bonds in such a dynamic way aswhen at room temperature.In these con-ditions, the process is slower, less fluid,and less representative of the day-to-day.“If a cell phone is made with nanowires,it will have to work at room tempera-ture”, he argues.

The case of the metal nanowires isa good example of how nanoscience isstill at an exploratory stage, since the mi-gration of the atoms of gold to the spotof the break and the structures in a pen-tagon that protect the gold wire werecompletely unexpected reactions. Fur-thermore,Ugarte explains,“on the atom-ic scale, objects are tacky”. A nanowiresuffers a spontaneous attraction for thesubstrate on which it is supported, likean exacerbated force of gravity, whichmakes manipulation difficult. But doc-toral student Denise Nakabayashi hasdeveloped an apparatus that makes itpossible to manipulate wires of 1 micron(one thousandth of a millimeter).

M ost of the applications of nan-otechnology are yet to come. Ac-cording to Galvão, 80% of what is

done in this area is still at the stage ofunderstanding how metals work on thenanometric scale, practical applicationsto be considered next. He believes thatnanotechnology is still between ten and15 years away from being part of theday-to-day. Galvão presumes that evenif the suspended atomic chains nor-mally do not last more than a few sec-onds, constructing stable nanowires willnot be a problem: you just have to useanother material as a support. The dif-ficulty lies in constructing wires witha known composition, in an effectiveand controlled manner. One option is


Molecules in detail: computer reveals whatescapes the microscope

56-59_Physics_131_ Ing 12/11/07 15:10 Page 58

to use synthetic molecules like the Lan-der, constructed in 2002 by Danish andFrench researchers, and is so called as itlooks like a lunar exploration module.

It is made up of atoms of carbonand hydrogen – a long axis with later-al projections that work like paws.Galvão and Sato explained, with simu-lations published in 2004 in the NatureMaterials journal, how the Landermolecule goes for a walk amongst looseatoms and leaves behind it smalllengths of copper nanowires. To con-struct other nanomaterials, made tomeasure molecules may be very useful.But Galvão stresses that many of thesekinds of discoveries happen by chance.“Luck favors them, but the eyes have tobe ready to see.”

But when – and if – the technical ob-stacles and the obstacles in knowledgeare overcome, nanocircuits may changeelectronics a lot. Not only for their size,which would make it possible to man-ufacture much smaller apparatuses, butalso for their properties. On the nano-metric scale, the conducting of elec-tricity does not follow the same rules ofthe macroscopic world. In nanowires,the energy comes in packets, insteadof being continuous as in the sockets ofa house. But the transmission is effi-cient, despite being inconstant.And en-ergy is not dissipated, according toUgarte, which would mean electricalcircuits that do not heat up.

In spite of relatively little still beingknown about the atomic behavior ofmaterial, the knowledge that exists, cou-pled with human imagination, has al-ready made it possible to create a largequantity of products that may brighten

up the Christmas of technology fans.The page on the Internet of Project onEmerging Nanotechnologies (www.nan-otechproject.org) brings a list of over300 of them, which include everythingfrom carbon nanotubes for flat monitorscreens to silver nanoparticles that fightbacteria and mold in food packaging.

T he high technology necessary forstudying atoms is costly, and for thisreason Ugarte’s projects have astro-

nomical budgets – an electron micro-scope can cost from R$ 3 million to R$ 7million. This work requires special in-stallations that make a new building nec-essary – the construction of which thephysicist is coordinating at the LNLS.But, for him, what limits the advance ofexperimental nanoscience is not the fi-nancial resources, but human resources.It is common for his pupils to have to doa master’s degree course to construct orlearn how to use a piece of equipment,and finally to be able to apply it to re-search in doctorate studies ,as Varlei Ro-drigues and Denise Nakabayashi did.

“You can’t get people who like DIY:you have to understand, to think, tohave patience, to get the measurementswrong. The students are used to find-ing immediate answers on the Inter-net”, observes Ugarte, who is doing hisbit to change this picture. The sameprinciples that guide him in the aca-demic education of his pupils, Ugarteadopts at home. His children Pedro andMaia, 6 and 4 years old, make home-made macaroni, go down hills in asoapbox car made at home, and theyhave now constructed a telescope inpartnership with their father. ■

THE PROJECTS

Multiscale theoretical study of pure and hybrid nanostructures

MODALITY

Thematic Project

COORDINATOR

MARÍLIA J. CALDAS – USP

INVESTMENT

US$ 85.268,00 and R$ 181.110,54 (FAPESP)

Analytical transmission electronmicroscope for spectroscopic nanocharacterization of materials

MODALITY

Research Grant – Regular

COORDINATOR

DANIEL UGARTE – Lnls

IINVESTMENT

US$ 2.500.000 (FAPESP)

56-59_Physics_131_ Ing 12/11/07 15:10 Page 59

Innovative traffic light: a special lensdistributes and emitsthe luminous effectfrom the LEDs

60-65_Optica_139_Ing 12/11/07 15:18 Page 60

A new concept in traffic lights, with an innovative design,

which is lighter and more compact and which, in place of

traditional incandescent bulbs, use high-brightness light-

emitting diodes as their source of light, the so-called

LEDs, has been created by researchers at the São Car-

los Research Center in Optics and Photonics (Cepof) of

the University of São Paulo (USP). The new equipment

is flat, is less than 2 centimeters thick and is easily in-

stalled. Other advantages lie in its low power consump-

tion (15% less than traditional traffic lights) and in the

fact that it keeps working even if there is a power cut

in the region. This happens because it is attached to a

set of compact batteries that keep it functioning for up

to one and a half hours if there is a blackout.


The LED revolutionResearchers from São Carlos develop equipment with light emitting diodes

OPTICS

>TECHNOLOGY

YURI VASCONCELOS | PHOTOS EDUARDO CESAR


60-65_Optica_139_Ing 12/11/07 15:18 Page 61


“The technology is cheaper thanconventional technology, it is eco-nomical in terms of energy consump-tion and has low maintenance costs”,says the professor from USP’s PhysicsInstitute in São Carlos, Vanderlei Sal-vador Bagnato, Cepof ’s coordinator.The traffic light uses four LEDs and hasa design that takes advantage of all thelight refraction. “We have already reg-istered a patent for the full equipmentand as far as we know, no other groupin Brazil or abroad is manufacturingtraffic lights like ours.”

Named ‘blackout’, in reference tothe fact that it does not go out whenthere is a power cut, the device usesfour high-brightness LEDs,(light-emit-ting diodes) in each light (red, yellowand green). A plastic lens with a specialoptical design distributes the light andemits the desired luminous effect. Ac-cording to Bagnato, one of the biggestadvantages of the new technology is thesafety factor it will bring to road sys-tems in cities. “It’s going to reduce theprobability of accidents and trafficchaos caused by small blackouts a lot,particularly in large cities, like SãoPaulo, where traffic flow is intense”, hesays. The product is in its finishingstage and the group from USP is al-ready contacting companies that oper-

ate in the traffic signal sector to nego-tiate passing on the technology.

The ‘blackout’ traffic light is just oneof the applications produced by theteam led by Bagnato that is based onLED technology. The group, compris-ing 70 fulltime researchers and anoth-er 50 collaborators or associates, has,over the last few years, been research-ing and developing a series of otherpieces of equipment that employ thislight source, which was discovered inthe 1960s (see the box on page 73).“Theprocess for producing light in LEDs is

very much more efficient that in com-mon lamps, with up to 80% of the elec-tricity used being converted into lumi-nous energy. This represents an inver-sion in the efficiency of light produc-tion, because the rate of conversion ofincandescent lamps is only 20%”, ex-plains Bagnato. “LEDs stopped beingsimply those small, normally red orgreen indicator lights on the panels ofsound systems and other electronicequipment a long time ago to becomean effective lighting source.”

An advantageous substitution – An-other application in the road signalingsector that was developed at Cepof inSão Carlos, one of 11 Innovation andDiffusion Research Centers (Cepid) fi-nanced by FAPESP, is a system called‘retrofit’, which uses six or seven LEDsand was created to substitute just theincandescent lamps used in traditionaltraffic lights. Unlike the ‘blackout’ traf-fic light, in which the LEDs are an inte-gral part of the reflective lenses, the‘retrofit’ has a shape that is similar tothat an ordinary lamp and a screw sock-et, which allows it to easily substituteconventional lights. The technology waspassed on to ‘Meng Engenharia’, in SãoPaulo and has been on sale sinceNovember 2005. “We’ve already soldnearly 15,000 lamps, which have beeninstalled in traffic lights in São Pauloand Guarulhos”, says Alberto Monteiro,the owner of Meng, a company that spe-cializes in the manufacture of devicesfor the highway, urban and industrialsignaling sector.

“The use of the LED-based lamp intraffic lights brings with it a series ofadvantages, because it’s more econom-ical, safer and more efficacious, in ad-dition to lighting better. All this with-out mentioning the fact that the‘retrofit’ has a long working life, there-by reducing the maintenance costs ofthe traffic light by up to 80% and thefrequency with which the lamps arechanged. In conventional lights thegreen and red lamps, which stay alightlonger, are changed around four timesa year and the yellow lamps, twice. Theircost varies from R$ 4 to R$ 8, totalingnearly R$ 60 annually, quite apart fromthe costs incurred with maintenanceand exchanging the lamps. With the‘retrofit’ one inspection visit a year is

Technological innovationprogram of the São CarlosOptics and Photonics Research Center (Cepof)

MODALITY

Innovation and DiffusionResearch Center (Cepid)

COORDINATOR

VANDERLEI SALVADOR BAGNATO – USP

INVESTMENT

R$ 200.000,00 per year (FAPESP)

THE PROJECT

Retrofit substitutestraditional traffic lightlamps and reducesmaintenance costs

60-65_Optica_139_Ing 12/11/07 15:18 Page 62

Odontologicalreflectordeveloped with Gnatus

by former researchers from the center,has developed two auxiliary emergen-cy lighting models using LED technol-ogy. “The first batch of 25 units wasbought by Cepof itself, which installedthem in their laboratories. The secondbatch of 100 lamps should go on sale inSeptember”, says electrical engineer,Alexandre Oliveira, one of the sevenpartners of Direct Light, which wasfounded just one year ago.

The lamp uses just one 3 watt LEDand works for one hour with 70%lighting intensity. “In addition to be-ing more compact, our lamps use anickel-metal hydride rechargeable bat-tery that lasts at least twice as long asthe sealed lead acid batteries used inthe emergency lights found in the mar-ket”, explains Oliveira. The productcosts nearly R$ 90, a similar price tothat of a quality emergency light madeby competitors. The price is still highbut the tendency is for it to fall as pro-duction increases.

The dentist’s surgery – LED technol-ogy has also been used in developingvarious products used in the medicalodontological area, such as, for exam-ple, mouth lights for dental surgeries, asegment that is also being focused onby Cepof.According to Bagnato, the de-

enough, because each lamp lasts frombetween three to five years”, Monteiroemphasizes. Each ‘retrofit’ lamp costsnearly R$ 500, which is a total of R$1,500.00, when divided by four years(on average), is R$ 375 per year. “Withthe reduction in visits to the traffic lightand the maintenance costs, the instal-lation of LEDs gives a return in aroundone and a half years”, says Monteiro.

The lighting efficiency and durabil-ity (more than 50,000 hours, 50 timeslonger than conventional lamps) aretwo important differences that LEDshave. They also have another compar-ative advantage: the low environmen-tal impact of the production process.Fluorescent lamps, always rememberedas offering an alternative that is moreeconomic than incandescent lamps, usemercury, which is a highly toxic sub-stance.“These factors have led to the ex-plosive growth in research over the lastfive years and various companies arelaunching more and more high-bright-ness LEDs and products based on them,in a great variety of combinations”,points out physicist, Henrique de Car-valho, a member of the Cepof team.

Residential and urban lighting aretwo areas that have benefited greatlyfrom the development of LED technol-ogy. Street lighting using light-emittingdiodes and planned by Cepof is alreadybeing tested in São Paulo. In New York,there is an example in the huge screenon the NASDAQ MarketSite Tower, inTimes Square, in the center of the city,which uses 18.6 million LEDs to deco-rate the front of the building and to give

the quotations of shares traded on theNorth American technology stock ex-change. According to the researchersfrom USP in São Carlos, in the resi-dential area it is possible to substituteall lighting with LEDs, both internallyand externally, without losing intensi-ty, improving illumination quality andreducing energy consumption.

Emergency lights (those that are ac-tivated when there is a power cut) arealso a promising application for LEDs.In a partnership with Cepof, DirectLight from São Carlos, which was set up

Auxiliary LEDs for lighting operating theaters


60-65_Optica_139_Ing 12/11/07 15:18 Page 63

vice, created by his team in a partner-ship with Gnatus, a manufacturer ofmedical odontological equipment, withits headquarters in São Carlos, allowsdentists to se the colors of the teeth andgums more clearly and with greater def-inition. This is because the halogenlights normally used in dental lightshave a yellowish tone, which makes per-fect visualization difficult.

Mechanical engineer, Carlos Ban-hos, Engineering Manager for Gnatus,points out other differences in the ap-paratus, which is being launched inBrazil in September.“As the light emit-ted by the LED is cold, it emits no heatand avoids causing discomfort to thepatient. Furthermore, the new light re-flector allows for a reduction in pow-er consumption of up to 90% whencompared to traditional devices”, hesays. Gnatus is banking heavily on theequipment, which will be presentedduring the second half of the year atvarious international dental congress-es in countries like Mexico, the Unit-ed States, Italy and Russia.“We expectto sell the product, called the GnatusLED Reflector, to customers abroad.Our products are already exported to

140 countries”, Banhos says. The ap-paratus is between 10% and 20% moreexpensive than conventional devicesthat use halogen lamps.

Another piece of equipment thatwas created in Cepof’s laboratories andthat has already found a market is thePDT LED, an apparatus that uses light-emitting diode technology for photo-dynamic therapy techniques, PDT, inpatients that have skin cancer, recur-rent cutaneous breast cancer and oth-er surface lesions.

Manufactured by MM Optics, an-other Cepof spin-off company, the PDTLED is an alternative to devices that uselasers for the same type of treatment.“With the difference that it is a quar-ter the price. While a laser apparatuscosts nearly US$ 40k ours is R$ 20k”,says mechanical engineer, FernandoRibeiro, one of the company’s partners.Since it was put on sale in the first halfof last year MM Optics has already sold20 photodynamic therapy apparatuses.

The equipment has a set of 21 LEDswith total voltage of 3 watts, at a wave-length of 630 nanometers. The lightemitted reacts with the sensitizingdrugs, which are applied to the patient


LEDs thatchange colorlight up a tablefor studyingmicro-organisms

and which concentrate in the tumorcells. The reaction kills the tumor.“Therobustness of the apparatus is a resultof the low maintenance that is need-ed, which gives our product yet anoth-er point of difference.And all this with-out mentioning that the LED, becauseit emits a less concentrated light, man-ages to treat a greater area of the pa-tient’s skin, while the laser is more pin-pointed”, explains Ribeiro.“This is thefirst and only device using LED tech-nology made in Brazil for photody-namic therapy.”

The equipment’s success has meantthat Bagnato and his team have devel-oped a new version of the device. Thisis a kit with three devices for treatingnot only patients that have skin cancer,but also psoriasis, a disease that caus-es the skin to peel, human genital oranal papillomaviruses (HPV), which arevisible or microscopic warts, and can-cer of the mouth. This project is beingcarried out in partnership with, amongother entities, USP’s Faculty of Me-dicine in Ribeirão Preto, the Heart Insti-tute (InCor), in São Paulo, the AmaralCarvalho Hospital in Jaú and the ESM-Sigma-Pharma pharmaceutical labora-tory in Hortolândia.

“What’s new about this project isthat it offers a kit that treats various ill-nesses at the same time. We’re gettingclose to the final, commercially viabledesign of the devices.” Cepof ’s re-searchers are so excited about the kitthat they have already asked for fi-nancing from the National Economicand Social Development Bank (BN-DES) in order to conclude the projectfor creating 100 treatment centersthroughout Brazil that will use theequipment”, says Bagnato.According tothe researcher three companies, in-cluding MM Optics and Direct Light,are already studying the possibility ofproducing the kit.

Colored microscopy – For the scien-tific area the researchers from Cepofhave created two innovative, LED-based pieces of equipment. One ofthem is an illuminated table for pho-tobiology studies, called the biotable.It works in a simple way: the scientistplaces micro-organisms on a transpar-ent plastic slide positioned on top ofthe table and checks how they react to

60-65_Optica_139_Ing 12/11/07 15:18 Page 64

A illuminating storyThe first light-emitting diode(LED) was created by NorthAmerican scientist, NickHolonyak Jr., in 1962, when hewas working in a General Electriclaboratory in Syracuse, in NewYork State. Interest in usingthese new devices for lightingpurposes, however, only arose in the 1990s, when a group ofresearchers from HewlettPackard, also in the UnitedStates, developed the first high-brightness LED. "Right after, researchers from the Japanese company, Nichia discovered the first high-brightness blue LED, whichopened up the path to white-light LEDs", says physicist,Henrique de Carvalho, from Cepof in São Carlos. "Today, LEDs cover the wholeelectro-magnetic spectrum, from ultraviolet to infrared."The LED is a light emitter, the principle of which is different from that of incandescent or fluorescentlamps. "It’s a semiconductordevice that emits visible

light when an electric current is passed through it, in a process known aselectroluminescence, with nearly 80% of the voltageapplied in it, depending on the wavelength of the emitter",says Carvalho. One of thedifferences with the LED is that, unlike ordinary lamps, it can produce light that changes color, intensity and distribution. In addition to LEDs, researchers in researchinstitutes and companies areimproving light-emitting diodesusing organic-based substances, like compound polymers with carbon molecules instead of inorganic semiconductorsmade from silicon and gallium arsenide. Called organic light-emitting diodes(OLEDs), they can be produced from malleable and transparent materials. They are already being used in cell phones and MP3 playersand the first prototypes for TV screens are being tested.

Apparatussubstitutes the laser inphotodynamictherapy for treating skin cancer

the application of different coloredlights installed inside the table. The ap-paratus, still a prototype, is being test-ed by various teaching institutions,like the Odontology schools of thePaulista State University (Unesp), at itsAraraquara campus, at USP in RibeirãoPreto and Bauru, and on USP’s Bio-chemistry course in São Carlos.

The other apparatus is an opticalmicroscope lit by LEDs. “It’s our owntechnology, which uses three LEDs:blue, red and green. By combining lightintensity, the researcher manages tohighlight some of the morphologicalstructures of the micro-organisms thatare being studied. This would be im-possible to do with a traditional opticalmicroscope”, explains the Cepof coor-dinator. The technology, known aschromatic contrast microscopy, is stillin the test phase, but already has a reg-istered patent.

“All the development done by ourgroup reveals the enormous potential forthe application of light-emitting diodes.Of the nearly 40 patents that originat-ed within Cepof, at least 15 have alreadybeen transformed into end productsand of these, half are LED-based de-vices”, Bagnato says.“After the inventionof the electric light and the laser we be-lieve that the LED represents the thirdrevolution in the optical field.” ■

60-65_Optica_139_Ing 12/11/07 15:18 Page 65

66-71_Engeneering_130_Ing 12/7/07 20:39 Page 66


In the second round of this year’s presidential elec-tions, exactly two and a half hours after the conclu-sion of voting, the electors were officially advisedby the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) that candidateLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva had been reelected. Thespeed in the tallying of the votes where almost 102million electors took part is due to the electronic vot-

ing machines, which, after ten years of use, have becomepart of the Brazilian electoral culture.“Even in indigenousvillages that do not even have a telephone, the voters knowhow to vote on an electronic voting machine”, saysGiuseppe Janino, the TSE’s Secretary for InformationTechnology. Now the voting has ended, another innova-tion is already under way that should improve the nextelections. They are machines containing a biometric read-ing device that makes the automatic recognition of theelector possible by means of his or her fingerprint.

The biometric readers have now been put into 25,538machines purchased for the 2006 elections and for-warded to the states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Rondôniaand Santa Catarina. This time, they were used as tradi-tional electronic voting machines. The expectation is thatin the 2008 municipal elections the voters in these threestates, instead of signing to confirm their presence, willput their fingers into an identification reader. For this tohappen, a register of the voters’ fingerprints has to be

ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING

>

Electronic voting machines with a digital identifier start being used in the 2008 municipal elections

DINORAH ERENO

Constantinnovation

BR

AZ

Published in December 2006


made beforehand in the TSE’s com-puters, as well as adjustments to thedatabase software. “The digital recog-nition technology has the objective ofguaranteeing more security in the iden-tification of the voters”, says Janino.

The tendency is for all the votingmachines, in the near future, to havebiometric readers. The innovation willbe incorporated in stages, as with theelectronic voting machines, which in1996, when the computerized votingsystem started, covered only munici-palities with over 200 thousand voters.In the second stage, in 1998, it was theturn of cities with 40,500 voters to adoptthe new technology, which reached thewhole electorate in 2000.

Knowledge transferred – The successof the Brazilian electoral process has re-sulted in various collaboration agree-ments with a few countries, mainlyfrom South and Central America. Brazilhas now made knowledge and technol-ogy transfer agreements with Argenti-na, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Dominican Re-public and Mexico”, Janino says. In themunicipal elections held in Paraguay inNovember this year, the technologyused was entirely Brazilian. The TSElent 17 thousand voting machines thatwere out of use, and gave all support forthe development of the software, al-lowing 3 million Paraguayan voters tochoose their new mayors by means ofelectronic voting machines. In the 2003presidential elections, the neighboringcountry had already used the Brazil-ian technology, carrying out a 50%computerized ballot.

But not only the neighboring coun-tries are interested in the Brazilian elec-toral process.The Electoral Court has nowreceived the visit of representatives fromabout 30 countries, who came to get toknow the technology developed here, in-cluding Germany, Japan, Italy, France,South Korea and the United States.

The process of computerizing thevote in Brazil began in 1983, when theElectoral Justice authorities organizedthe computer infrastructure that inter-linked all the Regional Electoral Courts(TREs) and the electoral registry officesin the country. The system was used inthe electronic re-registration of theBrazilian electorate in 1986, in the tal-lying of the results of the presidential

election in 1989, in the national plebisciteon the form of government in 1993, andin the 1994 general elections. The firstpublic bidding process for the acquisitionof electronic voting machines startedat the end of 1995. Three companiestook part, and the winner was Unisys,which delivered to the TSE the first 77thousand electronic voting machinesmanufactured in Brazil.

An electronic voting system is a setof hardware and software made up oftwo modules: the voter’s terminal, orelectronic voting machine, which in-cludes all the information processingand storage capacity, and the microter-minal used by the election judges. Theconnection between the two modules ismade by a cable connected directly tothe internal boards. The electronic vot-ing machine, which weighs a little morethan 8 kilos, has a numerical keyboardand a small liquid crystal monitor. Itsarchitecture is similar to that of a per-sonal computer, but the project pro-vides for highly differentiated hardware,which includes, for example, sensors forchecking the internal battery and theprinter, and a microcontroller used tocontrol the sensors and the keyboard ofthe voter’s terminal.

The product contains a series ofprinciples that ensure security for theprocess, such as passwords, encrypted in-formation and security methods used inbanking automation that reduces to aminimum the possibility of electronicfraud. In 2002, a team of specialists fromthe State University of Campinas (Uni-camp) did an evaluation on the securityof the electronic voting machines at therequest of the TSE. At the study’s con-clusion, some recommendations weremade to improve the security, but noitem was pointed out that might put in-to question the reliability of the system.

Public tender – Since 1995, six publictenders have been held for supplying theelectronic voting machines, two won byUnisys and four by Procomp. “We ba-sically have one model of voting ma-chine for each election”, Janino says. Thisoccurs because the voting machines areconstantly updated and perfected. In the2000 model, for example, the voting ma-chines were given an audio device bymeans of which, using headphones, thevisually impaired can hear a confirma-

tion of the numbers keyed in on the key-board, which also has identification inBraille. And they also gained autonomyfor working for over 12 hours withoutexternal power. The Brazilian electoralcourt administration currently has overa hundred large sized computers in-stalled in the TSE and in the 27 TREs,about 18 thousand desktops at the 3,009electoral zones and 407,089 electronicvoting machines.

The tranquility of the electronic vot-ing that re-elected Lula in October 2006contrasted with various incidents record-ed one week after the elections in theUnited States. In the ballot held at the be-ginning of November to renew the leg-islative positions and to choose 36 gov-ernors, voters in the states of Indiana andOhio and some of those in Florida hadto vote with paper ballots instead of us-ing the electronic voting machine.

Specialists point out that the popu-lation lacked experience, since one inthree voters was using the machine forthe first time. Furthermore, in somecounties the election judges were notprepared to use the equipment. There,each county is responsible for the elec-tion under its jurisdiction, while inBrazil it is centralized and unified for thewhole national territory.

They are two distinct realities. Here,there is the organizational structure ofthe Electoral Courts authorities, with theTSE as the highest authority and well-defined duties. As soon as the electionsend, an evaluation of the process is made,based on the records of difficulties en-countered.And the planning for the nextelections is starting immediately. “Wework in a process of ongoing improve-ment, not only with regard to the equip-ment, but in particular as to the proce-dures”, Janino explains. “The great suc-cess of our computerized process, whichis today a world benchmark, is not sim-ply focused on the electronic voting ma-chine tool, but rather on a well drawn upand concatenated process that aims atguaranteeing the security and the trans-parency of the process”, he says. The in-teresting thing is that the first BrazilianElectoral Code, in 1930, already provid-ed for a voting machine as a resource forcleaning up the electoral vices and guar-anteeing fraud-free ballots, an intentionthat,awaiting technological advance, tooka few decades to become reality. ■




Digital recognition

ED

UA

RD

O C

ÉS

AR

System developed by Griaule is amongstthe best in the world C

ontrolling the entry and exit of employees ina company, accessing bank ATMs and pro-tecting domestic or professional comput-ers against prying are some of the applica-tions for fingerprint recognition software de-veloped by Griaule, a company in Campinas,which has already won customers in the

United States, Mexico, Chile, Venezuela and Israel.Recently, the company’s technology for issuing pass-ports was bought by Costa Rica, by means of theFrench company Oberthur, which produces this kindof document for 80 countries. This year, Griaule’stechnology was incorporated into the 25 thousandelectronic voting machines with fingerprint readersdelivered to the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) byProcomp, one of the partner companies, plannedto be used in the next elections.

The program was considered the eighth best inthe world in a large-scale test – 1 billion comparisonsof fingerprints – carried out in 2003 by the Nation-


al Institute of Standards and Technol-ogy (NIST), in the United States. An en-viable position for a small company thatcompeted with giants of the sector likeMotorola and NEC. Some big ones, likeRaytheon, came behind Griaule, the on-ly company from the Southern Hemi-sphere to take part in the test. The par-ticipants selected had 21 days to com-plete the test. The ranking was done onthe basis of the quality of the fingerprintrecognition. This October, Griaule tookpart in a similar test carried out by theUniversity of Bologna, in Italy. Accord-ing to the company’s researchers, theprogram should come out in third place.

In Brazil, the digital identificationsystem is being used by the Secretari-

ats for Public Security of Tocantins,Rondônia and Goiás to issue identitycards, and by the State Traffic Depart-ment (Detran) of Pernambuco to pre-vent fraud in the issue of driver’s li-censes. The State of Tocantins was thefirst customer to adopt the company’ssoftware, when the Secretariat for Pub-lic Security decided to replace the im-ported technology used in civil andcriminal identification, on account ofthe high cost of expanding and main-taining the database.

The system currently used captureselectronically the fingerprints of the tenfingers, the photograph and the sig-nature of each person, or permits thedigitalization of this information kept

on paper. After the comparison in Gri-aule’s system, the identity card is issued,a process that takes only ten minutes.There are already today about 1 millionfingerprints registered in the databaseof the state secretariat. The State Uni-versity of Campinas (Unicamp) has al-so adopted the company’s digital recog-nition system to check the identity ofthe candidates in the entrance exami-nations, held by the institution twicea year and with about 50 thousand en-trants in each.

The conquest of so many marketniches is impressive, for the short timethat the company, created in 2002, hasbeen in existence. It was one of the firstto be housed in the Technology-Based


Digital readerreplacespasswords and name tagsE

DU

AR

DO

CÉ

SA

R


Company Incubator at Unicamp (In-camp). Before that, in 1999, Griaule’stwo partners, electrical engineer IronCalil Daher and computer engineer Al-berto Fernandes Canedo, in those daysstudents at the Federal University ofGoiás, began to work together on the de-velopment of software components fordigital recognition, one of the methodsmost used worldwide in biometric sys-tems, which replace the traditional pass-words with the analysis of parts of thebody, such as the iris, face, hands, voiceand even signature.

Access granted – Biometric authen-tication involves two stages. The firstrecords the fingerprint, the image of theiris or of the face, a voice recording andother personal peculiarities. The keycharacteristics are then converted byusing algorithms (sets of mathematicalsolutions and operations to resolve aproblem) into a unique pattern, storedas encrypted numerical data. In prac-tice, this means that the system doesnot record the photograph of the faceor fingerprint, but the value that rep-resents the biometric identity of the us-er. In the second stage, in order to beable to have his/her access granted, theuser has to show to the system his orher biometric characteristics, whichwill be compared with the patternrecorded in the database.

To improve the algorithms and toperfect the processing of the informa-tion in the computers, Griaule obtainedfunding from FAPESP in the Small Busi-ness Innovation Research Program(PIPE) modality. The company also re-ceived financial support from the Min-istry of Science and Technology’s Fi-nancier of Studies and Projects (Finep),an amount of R$ 250 thousand, for aproject approved under the auspices ofCT-Info, the Information TechnologySectorial Fund.

Annual sales, which were R$ 100thousand in 2003, are today in the re-gion of R$ 3 million. Exports corre-spond to 80% of this total, with theUnited States as the main market, whichled the company, in February, to open abranch in San José, in the state of Cali-fornia, in Silicon Valley, under the directcommand of Daher. Griaule has six cer-tifications from the Federal Bureau ofInvestigation (FBI), the American fed-

eral police, which enables it to take partin tenders held in the United States.

“Our software is not a final prod-uct”, explains André Nascimento dePaula, the company’s Institutional Co-operation manager. Griaule developssoftware components for companiesthat integrate the components into aproduct. Called integrators, these com-panies take care of the final formattingof the product, according to the needsof their customers, which include smallestablishments, large corporations andgovernments.

Last year, Griaule left the incubatorand went to a rented house near Uni-camp.At the entrance, a digital reader in-stalled in the wall alongside the dooridentifies the 20 employees, half ofwhom have a master’s or doctor’s degree.Identification works in two stages andtakes no longer than two seconds. Thefirst stage, called capture, starts when thefinger is put into the identification equip-ment and takes one second. The secondstage, the search, evaluates 30 thousanddigital records in one second.

Free version – Griaule’s commercial fo-cus is wide, covering corporate and gov-ernmental customers. For the corporatecustomers and end consumers, the com-pany has developed the Desktop Login,which replaces the password by the fin-gerprint to access the computer, theDesktop Identity, for points of sales andtimekeeping control, and the Rex 2006,an access control with a digital identifi-cation reader that works in a networkand permits easy integration with elec-tric locks and turnstiles. The DesktopIdentity, which has a version for free dis-

tribution by the Internet, can be installedin any institution to perfect the controland traffic of personnel. The full versionalso brings a development kit intendedfor computer engineers interested in cre-ating new applications around the com-pany’s digital recognition technology.

The government customers cancount on a program called AFIS (Au-tomated Fingerprint Identification Sys-tem), which makes a digital recognitionon a large scale and makes possible civ-il and criminal identification and thecontrol of frontiers and prisons, besidesthe issue of documents like identitycards, driver’s licenses, passports, vot-er ID cards and others. Even in gigan-tic databases, with hundreds of millionsof fingerprints, recognition can be donein a few seconds. As any Brazilian statehas millions of fingerprints, the com-pany has developed Speed Cluster, atechnology in which dozens of com-puters work in parallel to process thedatabase, speeding up the response tothe search carried out. Last year, thecompany was given the Finep Techno-logical Innovation Award in the smallbusiness category, given by the Fi-nancier of Studies and Projects.

At the moment, Griaule is workingon another biometry project, for digi-tal detection and recognition of the hu-man face. “By 2008, we want to makea multibiometry product, that includessignature and voice recognition”, saysDaher. A study carried out by the In-ternational Biometric Group (IBG), aconsultancy company from the sectorin the United States, indicates that theglobal sales of biometry equipment aregoing to leap from US$ 2.1 billion in2006 to US$ 5.7 billion in 2010. Finger-print recognition, the most widespreadand the cheapest of the biometric sys-tems, should account for 44% of thesector’s global market this year, whilethe authentication of the face appearsin second place, with 19%.

The market for biometric systems isgrowing continuously, but it has still notreached a peak, nor does it have oneleading company, which places Griaulein a privileged situation.“We have beenin the market for some time, we have awell-developed algorithm, customers, awell-defined distribution chain, and anorganized research and developmentstructure”, Daher says. ■


Improvement of the quality of recognition and availability (Speed Cluster) of Griaule Afis

MODALITY

Small Business InnovationResearch Program (Pipe)

COORDINATOR

IRON CALIL DAHER – Griaule

INVESTMENT

R$ 301.800,00 (FAPESP)

THE PROJECT


ED

UA

RD

O C

ES

AR

72-77_Energy_134_Ing 12/10/07 14:56 Page 72


Biodiesel on the way upWhat remains for this oil to beestablished as a national biofuel

ENERGY

MARCOS DE OLIVEIRA

The majorproduction of biodiesel is carried out usingmethanol, madefrom natural gas, but it could be produced using ethanol

Ethanol’s companion in the area of renewable fuels,biodiesel, is beginning to become established in Brazilin relation to production and distribution gas stations.By the end of the year the total production should reach750 million liters, almost the 840 million that the coun-try should produce as of 2008, in order to reach the 2%incorporation quota of this biofuel to diesel derived

from petroleum, according to the 2004 Federal Law that estab-lished the National Program of Biodiesel Production and Use.Over the last few years, almost three hundred plants have al-ready been constructed or are about to be inaugurated and newproduction technologies have sprung up. But there is still alot to do. Almost all of this biofuel produced today in Brazil isnot truly renewable because it is made with methanol, an es-sential raw material for the process of trans-sterification, thechemical reaction that transforms vegetable oil into biodiesel.

Methanol is an alcohol made from natural gas or extractedfrom petroleum, and therefore non-renewable. The alternativeis ethanol, which can be used in this type of reaction. The prob-lem is that to make biodiesel more ethanol than methanol is used.In order to produce 1,000 liters of biodiesel, the plants current-ly use up to 300 liters of methanol in the production process.In production using ethanol, this number rises to the level of 500liters of the alcohol made in Brazil from sugarcane. In the twoprocesses, however, residue is around 50% for both types of al-cohol, and in a process called excess recovery the residue is ledback to the start of the production process.With prices the same,depending on the region where the biodiesel is being produced,producers prefer methanol because of the lower costs.

One of the possibilities that could help with renewable al-cohol being incorporated into biodiesel production is a systemdeveloped by professor Miguel Dabdoub, from the Clean Tech-nology Development Laboratory (Ladetel) at the University ofSão Paulo (USP) in the town of Ribeirão Preto.“In Brazil we havethe opportunity to use ethanol, but most companies don´t have

>

Published in April 2007

72-77_Energy_134_Ing 12/10/07 14:56 Page 73


the technology for this”, says Dabdoub.“We developed a process using ethanolwith an energy efficient concept in whichless alcohol is used, with a large amountof the alcohol recovered at the end of theprocess and able to be reused.” The de-velopment of catalysts, substances thataccelerate a chemical reaction, in this casebased on copper and vanadium, helpedwith this.“We’re drafting out a patent forthe catalysts and the new process.”As wellas the use of ethanol,Dabdoub is propos-ing a complete set of effluent and residuetreatment studies.“If we imagine that theprocess of producing 2 billion liters of biodiesel in Brazil, would require more than1 billion liters of water, we must remem-ber that in some way, this water has to berecovered and returned to the process.”

But there are those who are againstthe use of ethanol. “Ethanol’s almost acommodity, it’s an end product and touse it is contrary to the industrial pointof view”, suggested the entrepreneur Ex-pedito Parente, a retired professor fromthe Federal University of Ceará, and au-thor of the first Brazilian biodieselpatent registered in 1977. Currently heis a partner in Tecbio, a company in the

state of Ceará that provides plants forthe production of biodiesel. For him,ethanol is a top product that should notbe used as a raw material. “Principallyin the northeast region methanol ischeaper, inspite of being used around50% less than ethanol”, stated professorParente. “Methanol is basically madefrom a gas that could be extracted frombiomass via the gasification of agricul-tural residues, even sugarcane bagasse –this is biomethanol.”

Invisible flame – For Dabdoub, it is im-portant not to oppose the methanolroute because currently it is, from theeconomic point of view, the most fea-sible, although it would be equally im-portant to think about a 100% renew-able fuel. “In the development processat Ladetel we’ve also made biodiesel us-ing methanol and the costs are lower,but one needs to say that methanol, aswell as not being renewable, causesproblems in the production system asthere is a greater possibility of contam-ination and it is highly dangerous: onburning, its flame is invisible, unlikethat of ethanol.”

“The trans-sterification technique isold, having been developed more than acentury ago. It mainly uses methanol be-cause it’s a technology developed in thenorthern hemisphere, where ethanol,until a short time ago, didn’t exist in largequantities. This is the moment to ̀ trop-icalize` this technology. Methanol is ex-pensive and more toxic, as well as caus-ing many accidents”, says the agrono-my engineer Décio Luiz Gazzoni, a re-searcher with Embrapa Soya, a unit, sit-uated in the city of Londrina, in the stateof Paraná, belonging to the BrazilianAgricultural Research Corporation. “Ibelieve, through the information I have,that within two years, with public andprivate investments, we will be able to goahead in the process of obtainingbiodiesel with ethanol. Various groups,– such as those at USP, the Federal Uni-versity of Paraná, the Federal Universityof Rio de Janeiro and the Technology Re-search Institute of Sao Paulo (IPT) – arestudying the use of ethanol, a technol-ogy more adaptable to the country”, hesays.“It’s a question of details.”

Gazzoni, a member of the technicalteam that drew up the National Agro-Energy Plan, launched by the Ministryof Agriculture in 2003, and also a mem-ber of the International Science Panelon Renewable Energies, which makesup part, among other entities, of the In-ternational Council for Science (ICSU),believes that the development ofbiodiesel in Brazil is still in its embry-onic phase. “On a world scale as well.The current stage of biodiesel is com-parable to that of alcohol in the 1980s.There’s still a lot of water to pass underthe bridge from the technological pointof view, and Brazil, yet again, has ad-vantages when compared to othercountries.” For him, among those ad-vantages in relation to this biofuel ismainly the strong liaison among sourcesof scientific knowledge. “We need tomake the difference now because wewere going down the wrong path, con-trary to ethanol. We weren’t capable ofunderstanding the importance ofbiodiesel in the past.`

Plant set up by thecompany Tecbio inFloriano, in Piaui state:Soya and castor bean oils

TE

CB

IO

72-77_Energy_134_Ing 12/10/07 14:56 Page 74


Gazzoni’s argument is made main-ly regarding the preparation of grow-ing crops in order to produce vegetableoil. “We need to make more productivegrowing areas with, for example, thedendê (palm), castor bean, canola, sun-flower and even the soya bean, but thistakes longer. The main point is to lookfor greater energetic density in crops be-fore being destined either for humanfood or animal feed.” Gazzoni believesthat, at the current stage of these crops,only the dendê oil production of morethan 3,000 liters per hectare (l/ha), whichcould even reach 4,000, will be sustain-able in 20 years’ time. Nothing compa-rable, as yet, with good old sugarcane,a gramineous plant, today capable ofproducing, at least , some 8,000 l/ha.

During a lecture at USP’s AdvancedStudies Institute in March, Gazzonipointed out that the world produced 6.2million tons of biodiesel in 2006 andwould need in 2011 a production of 33.5million and in 2020 some 133.8 million.The increased production comes main-ly from Europe where the percentage of

biodiesel added to normal diesel will be5.75% by 2010. Production on the con-tinent reached 3.84 million tons in 2006,previously 6.06 million in 2005, withGermany in the lead for those two years.There, the main oil used comes fromcanola, previously a European exportproduct, now confined to the continentas a fuel additive for buses, trucks andcars, which also, to a large extent, aredriven on diesel. In Europe, biodiesel hasbeen produced industrially since 1992and its use is relevant at this momentabove all because of the need to decreasepollutant gases such as carbon dioxide(CO2). Various studies indicate that theuse of 1 kilo of biodiesel reduces byaround 3 kilos the quantity of CO2 inthe atmosphere. The pollution emissionsfrom biodiesel are between 66% to 90%in relation to conventional diesel.

The reality of biodiesel produced to-day in Brazil basically comes from thesoya bean, where the supply and price at-tract producers, as well as the residue af-ter production of the oil, the so-calledsoya cake, which has a good market in

animal feed as a source of protein. It sohappens that soya has physical proper-ties that are not very appropriate or pro-ductive for biodiesel. Its seeds yield on-ly 18% of oil, resulting in a productionof 700 l/ha. The castor bean, with 47%oil reaches 1,200 l/ha, and the sunflow-er, with 40%, 800 l/ha. According to Ri-cardo Dornelles, director of the Renew-able Fuel Department of the Ministry ofMines and Energy, soya is the raw mate-rial for 55% of the national biodieselproduced up until now.“The castor beanrepresents 20% and the remainder is di-vided among other oleaginous cropssuch as the dendê and forage turnip.”Forhim there is still a long way to go in re-search, both in the process for the use ofethanol, which requires improving in or-der to contribute to the industrial costs,and in the development of crops thatshow greater oil productivity and pestcontrol.“The soya crop has an advantagebecause the oil production process is welldeveloped and totally dominated by theagro-industry”, says Dornelles.“We thinkthat it’s also necessary to program and to

Sung in prose and verse as the plant of hope for the abundant production ofbiodiesel , the pinhão-manso (JatrophaCursas), a common shrub type plant,shows that it is not so tame (manso inPortuguese means exactly that: tame). It is still wild – at least within theagricultural perspective. Its large scalecultivation is non-existent and has neverbeen studied in depth. Its domesticationis beginning, but it is still too soon tobelieve in the wonderful tales spreadthroughout the country, including the sale of seeds via the internet.

The alert was given in the form of a manifesto, in February, by a group of researchers from Embrapa and theAgricultural Research Corporation ofMinas Gerais. “We believe in the futurepotential of the plant, but our technicalknowledge is limited because we are not familiar with various plantingparameters, such as the spacing betweenplants, the production of offshoots, andprincipally pests and illnesses”, says theresearcher Liv Soares Severino, from

The Pinhão Manso is not so tame Embrapa Cotton, located in the city ofCampina Grande, in the state of Paraíba.

“One of our concerns is that manyfarmers have been investing in the plantand after two or three years will come to us so that we can resolve problemswith the crop. And as yet we don’t knowit from the agricultural point of view.”Severino, by means of a project financedby Petrobras, went with other Brazilianresearchers to India, where it was said

that the cultivation of the JatrpohaCursas had already been developed. “We discovered that they know as littleabout it as we do.” One of the problemsindicated is harvesting. The plant hasthe advantage of being long lasting, or that is, it doesn’t need to be plantedevery year, but the fruit don’t mature at the same time. One needs to harvestmanually various times and with this the cost of the crop increases.

In relation to the quantity of oil, it was estimated at more than 1,000liters per hectare, but Severino saysthat it does not go beyond 400 l/ha,although there is potential to increasethis quantity considerably. Beforebiodiesel, the pinhão-manso wasrelegated to a backyard plant or for a mere curiosity or personalappreciation. But it has previously lived through more memorable times,when in the 19th century its oil, like that of other sources, such as thewhale, for example, was used toilluminate the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

EM

BR

AP

A

72-77_Energy_134_Ing 12/10/07 14:56 Page 75


carry out the zoning of crops in such away that they become more productivein determined regions.”

The castor bean, for example, oc-cupies second place principally becauseof incentives to producers in the North-east region. The social seal establishedby the National Biodiesel Program isgiven to production that comes frominitiatives considered family agriculture,and eliminates taxes for the producersof this plant in the North, Northeast,and semi-arid regions. Petrobrás, aim-ing to perform in this sense by buyingcastor bean and sunflower seeds fromsmall farmers, has established a biodieselproduction unit at Guamaré Polo, in thestate of Rio Grande do Norte .

General extraction – Plant alternativesfor producing vegetable oils are not lack-ing throughout the world, principally inthe planet’s tropical belt. But even in coldareas such as the Patagonia region, in Ar-gentina, there are already initiatives toproduce biodiesel from the oil of sea-weed. In March, the website of the Sci-ence and Development Network, SciDe-

vNet, announced an Argentine compa-ny headed by Oil Fox, had made anagreement with the local government tocultivate seaweed in huge ponds in theprovince of Chubut. With German in-vestment of US$ 20 million, the com-pany announced that it hopes to pro-duce 240,000 tons of marine biodieselannually on only 300 hectares comparedto the 600,000 hectares that would beneeded for the production of Soya.

In Brazil many alternatives still ex-ist such as babassu, peanuts, cottonseed, souari nut and the pinhão-man-so [Jatropha Cursas] (see box), for ex-ample, not counting other Amazonianplants not yet well established. Manythings have already been tried. “Be-tween 1977 and 1980, when we testedvarious raw materials, a passion fruitjuice producer from the state of Cearánamed Agrolusa, asked us to try pro-ducing diesel using the seeds of thisfruit”, recalls Expedito Parente, fromTecbio. “It went well, and his compa-ny’s Kombi vans ran for six months onthis diesel. But after they verified thatthe price paid by the cosmetic industry

for the oil from the passionfruit seedswas worth much more .”

Another curious experience by Par-ente in the first days of biodiesel in Brazilwas the production of biofuel from sar-dine oil.“I received from a Belgian firm200 liters of fish oil that proved to begood for producing biodiesel.” Animalfat or tallow, both from bovine andchickens and pigs, are also currently onthe producers’ route using the sametrans-sterification process. “In Brazilthere is the annual availability of 700,000tons of bovine tallow for the productionof biodiesel, a product that stopped be-ing a residue and transformed itself in-to a byproduct”, says Carlos Freitas, aconsultant and partner with the firmConatus Bionergia, which is preparingto install a biodiesel plant in the northof the state of Paraná, with a productioncapacity of 200 tons per day, starting offwith soya and sunflower seeds.“Animalfat is important, but, because of thequantity offered, it will always remainon the margin of vegetal oils.”

Although so new, the biodiesel in-dustry in Brazil is already exporting tech-nology. Dabdoub, from USP, has alreadyprovided consultancy for two biodieselplants that were built in the UnitedStates. One of them in the town ofGilman, in Illinois, belongs to the Brazil-ian entrepreneur Renato Ribeiro whoproduces soya oil on American soil. It hasa capacity of 110 million liters per yearand uses ethanol extracted from corn. Inthis enterprise, US$ 2 million in equip-ment was exported from Brazil to theUnited States. At another plant in Du-rant, in Oklahoma, Dabdoub only trans-ferred knowledge in the form of consul-tancy. The plant is under constructionand will only use Brazilian equipment,possibly during a second stage.

During the elaboration of this job,Dabdoub received an offer of an agree-ment to study biodiesel between theOklahoma State University and TexasState University, in partnership with theBrazilian Chemistry Society and itsAmerican counterpart. The interactionis going to benefit students by way of

Petrobras’ experimentalproduction unit at Guamaré, in the stateof Rio Grande do Norte

PE

TR

OB

RA

S

72-77_Energy_134_Ing 12/10/07 14:57 Page 76

Dabdoub’ team in conjunction withLactec. A Peugeot 206 and a Xsara Pi-casso, with diesel motors, common inEurope, ran for more than 110,000 kilo-meters, as well as doing some labora-tory tests with 30% biodiesel, andshowed excellent results. “We used oilfrom the dendê oil, soya and castor bean,in different proportions, and ethanol inthe oil’s production.”

For Dabdoub there is still an exten-sive area of research linked to biodiesel.


traineeships between the two countries.For the researcher, this is a two-waypath. “Knowledge is not delivered, itis exchanged”, suggests Dabdoub, whois also the president of the BiofuelsChamber of the government of theState of Sao Paulo.

Pilot plant – The partnership and in-teraction with the academic world is al-so in sight of the company Marchiori,which has developed equipment, such astubing, tanks and reactors for biodieselplants made of fiberglass instead of thetraditional steel, which cost, accordingto the production engineer, AntonioMartinho Marchiori, a company part-ner, from 30 to 40% less than those cur-rently used. “We have a patent for theequipment and one for the biodiesel pro-duction process using fiberglass equip-ment”, says Marchiori, who donated a pi-lot plant, which produces 200 liters perday, to the Biofuels National Polo thatfunctions at USP’s Luiz de Queiroz Up-per School of Agriculture.“We’re doingthe same thing with the São Paulo StateUniversity (Unesp), in the town of IlhaSolteira. In both cases, we intend, withthe studies that are being carried out,to obtain improvements in our plants inareas that the university can collaboratewith, such as automation and informa-tion technology use.”

Another mega-partnership recentlyfinalized, whose results were presentedto the Ministry of Science and Technol-ogy in March, was the approval of testsfor mixing 5% biodiesel with diesel. TheNational Association of Vehicle Manu-facturers (Anfavea), car parts companies,as well as the Technology DevelopmentInstitute (Lactec) of Curitiba, in the stateof Paraná, the Technology Research In-stitute (IPT) and Unesp at Jaboticabal alltook part.With this, the government andthe vehicle manufacturers can adopt the5% programmed for 2010.“There were140 trucks, as well as tractors, which ranthousands of kilometers and, when weopened up the motors, we verified ex-cellent durability, better lubrication”, saysDabdoub, who coordinated the stud-ies.“The manufacturer of the Valtra trac-tors is already thinking about giving aguarantee of up to 20% of biodiesel.”

Similar tests were finalized in Augustof 2006 for the French group PSA Peu-geot Citroën, which were carried out by

The firm Marchiori is betting onfiberglass to bring costs down

One of them is called enzymatic cataly-sis – which is happening in the same wayas the Brazilian research studies, andthose outside the country, using sugar-cane bagasse or residues for the extrac-tion of ethanol.

In the biodiesel case, the objectiveis to remove more oil from the residuesof soya and castor bean oil productionand from the other plants used in theproduction of vegetal diesel oils.“We’vealready managed this, but the methodis not yet competitive”, says Dabdoub.He also says that glycerin – a productresulting from the trans-sterificationprocess that is sold to the chemical,pharmaceutical and cosmetic indus-tries – could be used as a new energyresource within the biodiesel plant. Itgenerates electrical energy by produc-ing steam to run turbines, as is donewith sugarcane bagasse in the sugar/al-cohol distilleries.“But it would only beviable when it falls to 70% of the cur-rent value of diesel derived frompetroleum used for burning in boilersor for heating in cold ccountries, com-pensating, in this way, the lower calorif-ic value of glycerin with a lower pricealso. In the current scenario, as the priceof glycerin has reached some US$ 700per ton, using it in boilers to generateenergy is still not viable.” ■

At Lactec, in Curitiba, inside the laboratory testing a car running on 30% biodiesel

ED

UA

RD

O C

ES

AR

LA

DE

TE

L/L

AC

TE

C

72-77_Energy_134_Ing 12/10/07 14:57 Page 77


Multiple uses NANOTECHNOLOGY

>

Nano-structured resins function as bactericides and fungicidesin washing machines and mattresses

Published in June 2007

78-81_Nanotechnology_136_Ing 12/11/07 15:27 Page 78

The main feature of the two innova-tions, according to materials engineer Cláu-dio Marcondes, the manager for develop-ment of new products at the company, istheir bactericide and fungicide property.The petrochemical company expects that,within three years, approximately 10% ofits income will derive from research in nan-otechnology. “By using this new area ofknowledge, we are adding value to ourproducts”, states Marcondes.

The new washing machine is being pro-duced in partnership with Suggar, a do-mestic household appliance manufactur-er with headquarters in Belo Horizonte.The appliance is among the first to be pro-duced in Brazil using nanotechnology inthe raw material. Nanotechnology – whichis the construction of structures and mate-rials on a nano-metric scale, with sizesequivalent to 1 millimeter divided a milliontimes – permits the manufacture of prod-ucts with differentiated characteristics, giv-en that it modifies the properties of mate-rials at the atomic level.Suzano’s polypropy-

Fabric for mattressescontaining thread withsilver nanoparticles

To invest in nanotechnology has beenone of Suzano Petroquímica’s strate-gies in recent years, with the objec-tive of embarking into new marketsand expanding its businesses. Thecompany is Latin America’s leaderin the production of polypropylene

resins and Brazil’s second ranked produc-er of thermoplastic resins, two versatileraw-materials employed in the manufactureof plastic packaging, containers for cos-metic and hygiene products, householdappliances, automotive spare parts and tex-tile products. Last May, on the occasion ofBrasilplast 2007, the 11th International Ex-hibition of the Plastic Industry staged in SãoPaulo, the company displayed two productsderived from nanotechnology research: aspecial nano-structured polypropylene withsilver particles employed in the manufac-ture of household appliances in the white-ware line, such as washing machines and anew resin with nanoparticles for the man-ufacture of threads and fibers in the pro-duction of mattresses.P

HO

TO

S E

DU

AR

DO

CE

SA

R


lene nano-structured resin with silverparticles is employed in the manufactureof washing machine tubs, the part wherethe clothing is placed, thus conferringa microbicidal property to the compo-nent. The resin’s disinfectant effect takesplace by means of positive charges (ions)of the silver – a material whose bacteri-cide property has been known for cen-turies on end – which attracts negativecharges from the bacteria causing theircellular membrane to erupt, due to thedifference in potential between the in-ternal and external part of the microor-ganism, causing its death.

According to the industrial direc-tor of Suggar, Marcelo Emrich Soares,the new technology permits the elimi-nation of 99.9% of the bacteria that de-velop in the tubs of washing machines,thereby conveying increased hygieneand quality to the clothes washing pro-cess.“The environment within the ma-chine becomes exempt of contamina-tion and ready to be used again. The newresin also confers increased resistan-ce and durability to the product”,claims Soares. For the time being, thepolypropylene accrued from silvernanoparticles is being applied only inthe line of semi-automatics washing ma-chines, a segment in which Suggar ac-counts for a large market share, repre-senting approximately 30% of its sales.But there is already an understandingbetween the two companies for the ap-plication of nanotechnology in othertypes of appliances. Until now, Suzanohas supplied 100 tons of nano-struc-tured polypropylene in the production

of washing machines. Given that eachtub weighs approximately 6 kilos, theraw material is sufficient for the pro-duction of some 17 thousand machines.

Hygienic mattresses – The special resinemployed in the manufacture of threadsand fibers for mattresses is another resultof the petrochemical company’s researchinto new silver-nanostructured materi-als. According to Suzano, the develop-ment of the product demanded one yearof research and its application is signifi-cantly diversified being used in hospitals,residential and hotel mattresses. Anoth-er advantage is that the product’s bacte-ricide property does not have a date ofvalidity. Given that rendering a mattresshygienic is not an everyday process, theproperty of the resin contributes to themaintenance of a healthy environment,preventing the dissemination of infec-tions. The resin is supplied to the SantaCatarina manufacturer of Döhler tex-tile products, which already producesthread and fibers and supplies them toCastor, the company responsible for themanufacture of mattresses with nanos-tructured frames. “We believe that theproduct will be introduced into the mar-ket within two months”, states CláudioMarcondes from Suzano.

Suzano’s nanotechnology projectsare coordinated by the chemist AdairRangel, who started the study and de-velopment of new nanostructured ma-terials just three years ago, when he wascompleting his doctorate studies at theChemistry Institute of the State Uni-versity of Campinas (Unicamp). Dur-

During Brasilplast 2007, inaddition to plastic resins withsilver nanoparticles, Suzanodisplayed other products for the polypropylene market. Oneof them was a polypropylenespecialty for the oil-drilling-at-sea sector. The new resin isused as a protection coveringfor offshore tubes deployed at great depths. “These pipesoperate under extremeconditions and need to resisthigh temperatures, high pressureand the aggressiveness of the environment”, emphasizesCláudio Marcondes, thecompany’s manager for thedevelopment of new products.They are made of special steeland sheeted with a protective,anticorrosive and thermallyinsulating layer ofpolypropylene. The thickness of this protective layer measuresbetween 20 and 50 millimeters,guaranteeing the necessarytemperature for the oil to flow.

The pipes are destined forwells situated at a depth of up to 2 thousand meters; however,Suzano is already studying thedevelopment of specializationscomprising pipes geared towardseven greater depths. The new polypropylene is sold tomanufacturers of Socorril andTermotite pipes, which, in turnsell them to Petrobras. Suzanoalready meets the demands of the domestic market and itsproducts have been employed indrilling sites in Roncador, Marlimand Albacora, off the coast ofthe state of Rio de Janeiro andhas also exported the product toAngola. The company estimatesthat the polypropyleneconsumption potential for thissector will reach 5 thousandtons in 2007.

Pipes at the bottom of the sea

Washing machinetub produced withpolypropylene andsilver: bactericideproperties



ing that period R$ 20 million was in-vested in nanotechnological research atthe company’s Technology Center. Theunit employs some 40 researchers andtechnicians. Overall, the petrochemi-cal company directs 1.5% of its billingsof approximately R$ 2.37 billion, to re-search and development of new prod-ucts. To make the manufacture of hi-tech products feasible, the company hasalready started the construction of a spe-cific production line, christened the Au-tonomous Extrusion Unit, situated inSuzano’s factory at Mauá, in greater SãoPaulo. It will begin its commercial op-eration at the end of the forthcomingyear with capacity to produce 24 thou-sand tons of special resins per year. Thecompany’s major challenge, accordingto Marcondes, is to develop not onlynew polypropylene resins with nanopar-ticles, but also to make them processableusing the machinery already installed inthe domestic manufacturing complexthat purchases Suzano’s resins.

During the past year, Suzano regis-tered its first patent in nanotechnology,directed to obtaining nanocompositeswith polypropylene and clay, resortingto a new method to render these two ma-terials compatible. The resulting mate-rial displayed considerable progress in itsmechanical properties, such as rigidityand resistance to impact, as well as a per-meability-related barrier “We have notyet introduced any product based on its

use. Our objective, at the moment, is toshow the potential of nanostructuredpolypropylene resins”, states Marcondes.

Meat chopping board – One of thecompany’s first nanotechnological prod-ucts was revealed to the public at the endof 2006 during the 2nd InternationalCongress of Nanotechnology (Nanotec)that took place in São Paulo. It was apolypropylene resin with silver nanopar-ticles – a pioneering version of the ma-terial employed in the manufacture ofwashing machines and mattresses. Theprimary application for this resin is thehousehold appliance market. For this,Suzano developed prototypes of a meatchopping board and of a plastic pot tostore foodstuffs. “The pot significantlyincreases the time the food may be kept“, claims Marcondes. The meat choppingboard, on the other hand, is free of con-tamination by bacteria lodging them-selves in the grooves produced by theknife. “We are encouraging Reflet, oneof our partners, to produce householdappliances with nanostructured resin,which is approximately 10% more ex-pensive than the conventional one”,states the executive.

Suzano is also working on the devel-opment of films nanostructured with sil-ver ions, which will be used in the pro-duction of packaging for fruits, foodstuffsand other products.Within a short time,the company expects to file for two new

patents related to other nanoparticles inareas of application with polypropylene,which for the time being cannot be ex-plained in detail. According to Marcon-des, the production volume of nanos-tructured resins is still quite small, buttends to grow as the population becomesaware of the value added to new prod-ucts manufactured with them. “Nano-technology is providing us with an un-limited potential.We are just at the tip ofthe iceberg”, he points out.

With a capacity for producing 685thousand tons of polypropylene resinsper year, Suzano sells products in the do-mestic market to more than 500 clientsand exports them to approximately 40countries. Petrochemistry relies on threeinstallations situated in Mauá, in Duquede Caxias on the Baixada Fluminense,and in the petrochemical complex of Ca-maçari in Bahia. Together, they accountfor more than 60 products. The compa-ny made up by domestic capital is con-trolled by Suzano Holding, which is al-so the major equity holder of Suzano Pa-pel e Celulose. Investments currently car-ried out in the Mauá and Duque de Ca-xias plants are expected to increase thecapacity of the petrochemical produc-tion by more than 190 thousand tons peryear by 2008, thereby guaranteeing thecompany’s leadership in the polypropy-lene business in Latin America. ■


Foodstuff conservation pot with silver nanoparticles: extended conservation period

YURI VASCONCELOS


CA

RY

BÉ

, O

PE

N-A

IR M

AR

KE

T,

198

4

82-87_Sociology_136_Ing 12/11/07 15:38 Page 82


As soon as shops close their doorsin its central region, the Salvadorof 2007 seems more like a cityunder curfew. Important thor-oughfares like avenida Sete deSetembro and rua Carlos Gomesare quickly vacated,whereas bot-

tlenecks form close to the areas whereshopping centers are concentrated at theregion of avenida Paralela giving rise totraffic as chaotic as the traffic jams in SãoPaulo. Everyone seems in a hurry to gethome.While the city’s subway developmentworks have, at last, started once more, thecity’s inhabitants convey the impression ofbeing uneasy, cornered and distressed.

Apparently, the leading motive is theday-to-day violence that confines dwellersof all ages and classes to their homes lim-iting their leisure to the shopping malls,which have sprung up like slot machinesthroughout the city. On the last Saturdayof May, for example, while the city’s beach-front was almost deserted at around 09:00p.m., at Shopping Iguatemi, the city’sbiggest mall, it was almost impossible toobtain a ticket to watch a movie or to makeit to an empty table at one of its count-less snack bars or fast-food restaurants.There are those claiming that violence hasbecome a public-calamity problem in thecity, although the number of hold-upscannot yet be considered on par with SãoPaulo and Rio de Janeiro. It was not bychance, that a survey on a local TV stationincluded the question of how many timeseach interviewee had been held up.

According to Professor Antonio Al-bino Rubim, from the Federal Universityof Bahia, the end of carlismo , brought onby the election of governor Jacques Wag-ner, has given rise to the expectation, atleast, of the beginning of a break with whathe call “the dictatorship of joy”. The ex-pression embodies several meanings. Itis related, for example, to the supposedlyinnate flair typical of the Bahian citizenwhich has been intensely exploited by thetourism industry, by music and by Carni-val for nearly 20 years. Or somewherewhere television has the strength to im-pose the idea of a place of non-stop fes-tivities and where it is possible to be hap-py forever .A condition symbolized by thelyrics of anthroposophical songs like “Weare Carnival, we are reveling, we are theworld of Carnival, we are Bahia”.

THE

JOY FUL

DICTA

TORSHIP

SOCIOLOGY

Intellectualsdefend changesto save Bahia’smost traditionalcelebration:Carnival

It should be said that the idea of Sal-vador as the “Land of Happiness”– mod-ernized to the “Land of Joy” – is not new.Back in the nineteen thirties, Ary Barrosoavailed himself of an expression to com-pose the classical Na Baixa do Sapateiro,whose lyrics glorified the beauties of theBahian woman and that of the “Boa Ter-ra”(“The Good Land”) of Senhor do Bon-fim (Our Lord of Bonfim). But what oneis experiencing in 2007 is anchored ona more updated concept of “Bahianism”,which the anthropologist Goli Guerreiro– author of the book A trama dos tam-bores – A música afro-pop de Salvador(The Plot of the Drums – Salvador’s Afro-Pop Music) (Editora 34) – claims one maydepict links between politicians, artists,members of religious orders, intellectu-als, advertising executives and tourismmanagers which meets with acceptanceamong several social classes.

The dictatorship of frolicking, contin-ues Rubim, might also be attributed to theclose ties,which the carnivalesque and mu-sical markets enjoy with the state and mu-nicipal powers by means of Bahiatursa andEmtursa, companies that promote tourism.A complicity,he claims, that would end upbeing connected with the figure of AntonioCarlos Magalhães,who,on reassuming thegovernorship of the state 1990, knew howto capitalize on the phenomenon of theBahian music that was emerging at the time– and that would be pejoratively labeledas axé-music – in order to transform it in-to a product for tourists.

Carnivalesque Blocks – According to theresearcher, at the same time that it provid-ed artists,producers and block leaders withinfrastructure and sponsorship the ACM(Antonio Carlos Magalhães) group gavethem all ample freedom for managing theCarnival.As a result, he completes the con-cern of several groups with regard to theWorkers’ Party (PT) ascension to power.Wagner (the current governor) might killtwo birds with one stone: weaken the gripof the carlista group on the city’s culturallife and bring to an end the omission ofpublic powers, which have permitted Car-nival to be manipulated detrimentally tothe tradition of the festivity.

Bahia, observes the anthropologistAntonio Risério, sells many myths that arenot true.Author of Uma história da cidade

GO NÇALO JUNIOR

>HUMANITIES

Published in June 2007


da Bahia (A history of the city of Bahia)(Versal), he cites several: one states that itis a sunny city, when in fact it rains tor-rentially throughout the year. “Caymmifostered the idea that one does not work,however, the Bahian is very hardworking”,he observes. The vision of the joyous city,reckons Risério, contrasts with the namesof ancient sites, such as Largo dos Aflitos(Park of the Distressed), Praça da Piedade(Park of Mercy) and Ladeira do Desterro(Slope of the Banished), among others.“One implanted a bizarre image, wherenobody has the right to be sad, but youonly have to talk to people, in order to en-counter a lot of loneliness.”

The sociologist Paulo Miguez couldnot agree more.“In Salvador one is not al-lowed to be sad and if this never happens,the individual becomes deeply distressed,because sadness is a dimension of humanlife that should not be disregarded”, he ob-serves. In his doctorate thesis “A organi-zação da cultura na cidade da Bahia”(Theorganization of culture in the city of Bahia),Miguez presents revealing conclusionsabout Salvador’s musical and carniva-lesque industry. “Depression, low spir-its, all this, from time to time, enriches us.A population that is permanently happybecomes boring, given that it is not pos-sible to construe happiness on a daily ba-sis within a city of serious social inequal-ities.” According to his viewpoint, a “fan-

tasy island has been created, although, attimes, such a circus comes to end, as onthe occasion of the police-officer strike [inJuly 2001], when the population becamehostage to the city’s criminals.”

To understand the complexities of Sal-vador and to defend a broad and urgentdiscussion with regard to the city’s wayforward, has been an almost exclusiveconcern in Bahian academic circles in thepast few years. Primarily at the Center ofMultidisciplinary Studies in Culture/Cult,the Post Graduation MultidisciplinaryProgram in Culture and Post-Culture So-ciety, at the UFBA. The seminar took placebetween the 23rd and 25th May at the 3rd

Meeting of Multidisciplinary Studies inCulture (Enecult), which brought to-gether almost two hundred researchersfrom Brazil, Latin America and Europe.

Carnival – The researchers claimed thatany planning for sustainable growth in Sal-vador must include the elaboration of aproject for the re-evaluation of the role ofthe state and the municipality at Carnival,to save Bahia’s most important popularfestivity. This implies, taking it out of thehands of small group of entrepreneurs,who for more than two decades have dic-tated the rules and granted privileges onbehalf of what they call the “professional-ization”of the “world’s most democratic”Carnival. In practice, however, this appa-ratus has privatized public spaces andstrangled the traditional popular events orthose associated with the afro culture.

Although one claims that Bahians arefriendly, the fact is that the fear of violencehas scared both tourists and inhabitantsaway from the festivities. Carnival 2007 re-flected, according to Rubim, the crisis inthe Carnival model and served as onemore warning: the hotels were below max-imum occupancy and it was possible topurchase fancy dresses (abadás) withoutdifficulty and during the festivities. “Onehas to create ways forward, a market log-ic that is not submissive, predatory, insearch of immediate gains, in order to givemargin to innovation”, he recommends.

A respected communications theorist,Muniz Sodré, one of the lecturers atEnecult,point out that both the Bahian car-nival and music must be rethought.“Pop-ular culture has been carried out by Sal-vador’s media,primarily due to the strengthof TV. However, it continues to have, onthe part of the population, various appro-


Although one claims

that Bahians are

friendly, the fact

is that the fear of

violence has scared

both tourists and

inhabitants away

from the festivities

CA

RY

BÉ

, C

AN

DO

MB

LÉ

, 19

83



priations and in different places.” For thisreason,he believes that the concept of placeis imperative to define diversity,“becauseit is not the place of the media, but thatof small communities, from the hinterland,with their own form of expression”.

Bahia,observes Sodré,has already beenthe place where, all of a sudden, these dif-ferentiated symbolic expressions made itto the top, but soon became commercial.If, on the one hand, the music market gaverise to a certain identity that previously hadbeen repressed, on the other hand it wasimmediately taken over by the entertain-ment industry and by the state as a tourismattraction.“I believe that, at the outset, thishad a very important political role and theproblem is to verify whether this radiationhas already ended. Personally, I believethat this influence is on the wane, giventhat it has not concerned itself with con-tinuity to a great extent.”

If it gave rise to the emergence of somegroups, Carnival, he states, has great eco-nomic limitation and does not touch up-on the issue of inequality. “The carniva-lesque blocks, which had a sense of free-

dom, are today cordoned off.” In thismanner, the concept one witnesses on thestreets during the festivities, favors the ideaof a Dionysian, free Carnival. The old ide-ology of patrimony predominates amongentrepreneurs, artists, the state and themunicipality in his opinion.“It is the ide-ology of illicitness, of favoritism. Thecountry continues to be like this, and ir-respective of how leftist the culture mightbe, one cannot infringe this logic, whichestablishes territories. It is stronger thanany leftist or rightist ideology.”

Injustice – For the journalist and revelerBob Fernandes, Carnival is just one moreof the grave phenomena that has markedBahia’s `evident`social injustice over fivecenturies of history.“A street carnival go-er”, as he defines himself, he claims thatit is not demagogy that proposes to discussthe festivity, but those that defend its con-tinuity from the comfort provided by theboxes and official grandstands.“I hang outin the middle of the people and am awarethat to meddle in the scheme is not go-ing to solve Bahia’s apartheid problem, but

it may signal the opinion of the public au-thority in this regard. If not, at least expandthe number of`` owners` of this business.``

The first step, he suggests, is to doaway with the cordons.“The cordon is thebludgeon, it is the sale of public space andthe imposition of prejudice and segre-gation.”Fernandes believes that the futureof the festival is going to depend on thecapacity of the new administration to im-pose, to discuss and to carry out somekind of a project for the city. “Salvadoris the jewel in the crown and it is not pos-sible to refrain from an in-depth debatebefore the forthcoming year’s Carnival.Given its nature as a great popular fes-tivity, a more enduring and fair policyshould be established.”

The most serious issue in his opinion,resides in the power that the blocks haveestablished over the organization of thefestivity. “It is a Carnival of persecution,with an objective limited strictly to halfa dozen men, boys and girls. Persons thatdo well in a scheme invented as a giganticlie created to sell the event: that of Sal-vador welcoming a million tourists in five

CA

RY

BÉ

, T

HE

BA

LL

ER

INA

S,

198

1


days.”How can this be possible, he asks, ifthe city has only 27 thousand hotel beds?“There are no houses or apartments forrent to accommodate such an amount ofpeople.” According to his estimates, if 30blocks should parade at the same timewith approximately 90 thousand dancers,the number of people on the street couldnot be more than 500 thousand.

Bob Fernandes identifies serious prob-lems of a cultural and political nature thatmight turn the Bahian capital into a placeunfit for living, in the medium term. Thesymptoms are already present in the chaot-ic traffic in the city’s main thoroughfares,as a result of the concessions granted toshopping malls and deluxe-condominiumconstruction companies. “Currently andat any cost, they are intent on increasingthe beachfront buildings to turn it into amodern-day Copacabana, damaging theenvironment and the quality-of-life whichwill affect the whole city.” In addition, heemphasizes his concern with regard to acertain “moral cowardice” on the part ofthe population that witnesses the takingover of public property without reacting.


“The Bahian adores to enter the fray on hisown, but has shown himself incapable ofreacting collectively against the actions ofthese small groups that do as they please inthe city”, he provokes.

Challenges – The secretary of cultureMárcio Meirelles, five months in office, isaware of the challenges and of the reformshe must carry out. One of the renovatorsof the Bahian theater during the past twodecades, he speaks out cautiously with re-gard to the challenges facing him. Amonghis priorities is the decentralization of cul-ture towards the hinterland, in order topreserve or revive rich traditions threat-ened by the steamroller which the city’smusic and carnival have become.

Meirelles laughs prior to speakingabout the hornet’s nest, into which he in-tends to put his hand: the exchange of fa-vors among Bahiatursa and Carnival en-trepreneurs and artists.“When there is nolonger a relationship with a political lead-er or colonel, things have to change.” Ac-cording to him, “there are many peoplestamping their feet because they are los-

ing their privileges. It is that old story: he,who feels threatened, reacts. And this iswhat we are beginning to witness: the at-tack of the privileged”.

Another aspect of the Bahian culturethat has awakened interest in the academyis the importance of Afro-Brazilian mu-sic, which left the ghetto to become suc-cessful on radio and on TV and to animatecarnival during the eighties. Furthermore,it brought on deep transformations, suchas the break up of the barriers of prejudiceand re-locating the blacks to their ownspace in a city where 70% of the popula-tion is of African origin. This is the posi-tive side of a predatory industry, punc-tuated by equivocacy, as Rubim explains.

Miguez emphasizes that the cutthroatcompetition for Carnival-goers had a pos-itive aspect: it led to the noncompliancewith racial and beauty parameters.“Cur-rently, I am convinced, the screening ofcarnival-goers gives priority to the eco-nomic issue.”Even the plan for setting upan agenda for off-season carnivalsthroughout the year – the micaretas –,which fill up the timetables of carniva-

CA

RY

BÉ

, C

HA

RR

EL

FIS

HIN

G,

1976



lesque blocks and artists, seems vulnera-ble in its lack of innovation.

Rubim points to the university prop-er as responsible, to a certain extent, for theonset of the afro culture valuation, such asthe creation of the Center for Afro-Orien-tal Studies (Ceao) in the 1960 decade.An-other relevant aspect, he emphasizes wasthe industrialization of the Recôncavo withthe creation of the Camaçari petrochem-ical complex and the Aratu IndustrialComplex in the seventies, which led to theappearance of black groups more con-scious of their rights and of the importanceof their culture,with new needs and in tunewith the American Black Power movementand with black music, primarily reggae.This awakening brought forth the Ilê Aiêafro block,conscientiously recalling the val-ue of the black in Bahia.

Caetano Veloso – The third element wasthe engagement of a group of composerscoming from the middle class in the 1970decade and led by Antonio Risério, Cae-tano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. The latteronly discovered the strength of black cul-ture after his experience as an exile andwith his engagement in the Sons of Gand-hi block. They would sow the seed of whatwas to become axé-music.

Risério agrees with Rubim and takesover his role in the story. He recounts thatthere was a clear political investment forwhat happened in Bahia to “a great blackturnaround, with the population beingtreated respectfully, “given that what wasinteresting in the local culture was of blackorigin”. This effort became apparent, forexample, in the recording of Beleza Pu-ra, by Caetano; and in the afoxé beat, thatMoraes Moreira managed to extract fromhis guitar. “We played a few notes andhelped transform black culture into ahegemonic ideology.”The anthropologistrecalled that with Caetano he would at-tend various events linked to black musicpromoted by blocks, such as Badauê, IlêAiê e Zamzimbá, among others.

To curious observers, the expectationremains of how the ritual of praising thepoliticians by a number of importantsingers will take place. ■

The images illustrating this article are re-productions of the book O capeta Cary-bé, published by Berlendis & VertecchiaEditores Ltda.

CA

RY

BÉ

, F

ISC

HE

R V

ILL

AG

E ,

19

81


Portrait in black and whiteICONOGRAPHY

Image of the Brazilian Negro was forged with the arrivalof photography in the 19th century

RE

PR

OD

UC

TIO

N/A

UG

US

TO

STA

HL

, M

INA

ON

DO

, C

. 18

65

RE

PR

OD

UC

TIO

N/A

UG

US

TO

STA

HL

, M

INA

BA

RI,

C.

186

5

CARLOS HAAG

>


88-91_History_132_Es 12/11/07 15:49 Page 88


If, referring to slavery,Castro Alves asks God, in O NavioNegreiro [The Slave Ship],“whether so much horrorin the eyes of the heavens is true”, it is no surprise thatsociologist Muniz Sodré, in the article A Genealogy ofthe Images of Racism, uses a horror figure to illustratehis view of the Negro point of view of our society:“Dracula is not reflected in the mirror, hence, he is im-

ageless. He is the opposite of the identity normalized by thepetit-bourgeois culture. In the society of the image (a near-anagram of magic), of the devices of sight, the subject on-ly exists if it appears in the “mirror”, that is, if it has thesociocultural conditions to have a publicly recognizable im-age”. It is worth recalling that the Count, as well as pho-tography, are “children” of the 19th century.

“The perception of those days about photography is thatit is not merely a form of ‘representing’ the world, but of“making the world visible’”, analyzes Maurício Lissovsky,a photography historian from the Federal University of Riode Janeiro. In the mid-1860s, in Brazil, the photographicportrait had become an object of desire for whites andblacks.“In the case of these latter,whether born free or freed-men, by having themselves portrayed like the whites, in theEuropean fashion and with codes and behaviors borrowedfrom the other, it was an attempt to tread a path within ademanding racist society”, observes Sandra Koutsoukos, theauthor of the doctoral thesis “In the Photographer’s Studio:representation and self-representation of free, emancipat-ed and enslaved blacks in Brazil in the second half of the19th century”, defended in October, at Unicamp, under theorientation of Iara Lis Schiavinatto.

The research “unveils the invisible”present in images ofblacks with top hats and their wives with parasols, wet nurs-es and their white “children”, as well as the controversial“types of blacks”, as in the images by the photographerChristiano Júnior, who advertised himself in the LammertAlmanac as the owner of “a varied collection of costumesand types of blacks, something very appropriate for thoseleaving for Europe”. Exhibiting half-naked black men andwomen (adored by the racist ethnologists), cataloged bytheir African origin, or in scenes produced in the studioof their work on the streets and on the farms, the imagescalled the attention of Sandra, who saw that it was “neces-sary to look at what was being framed in the photos, as wellas to discover what remained outside”. But “Dracula” doesnot appear in the mirror. So, what is there to see?

After all, as anthropologist Manuela Carneiro da Cun-ha observes, in ‘Slave Look’, being looked at,“in a portrait,one can be seen and one can offer oneself to be seen, al-ternatives connected to the relationship between the por-trayed and the portrayer: if the portrait of the master is aform of a visiting card, the portrait of the slave is a postcard,where the slave is seen,but is not offering himself to be seen”.In one, we have the preservation of the image of a singu-lar worthy person, someone who,by ordering a photograph,allows himself to be known, and is splashed over the pa-per as he would like to be seen, as he sees himself in the mir-ror; in the other, a generic picturesque character, the pro-fessor goes on.“In my studio, I discovered that, in spite of

RE

PR

OD

UC

TIO

N/A

LB

ER

TO

HE

NS

CH

EL

, P

OR

TR

AIT

, C

. 18

70

88-91_History_132_Es 12/11/07 15:49 Page 89


RE

PR

OD

UC

TIO

N/C

HR

IST

IAN

O J

ÚN

IOR

, S

IMU

LA

TIO

N B

ET

WE

EN

SA

LE

SW

OM

AN

AN

D P

UR

CH

AS

ER

, C

. 18

65

88-91_History_132_Es 12/11/07 15:49 Page 90

being taken to the photographer’s studioand posing,whether at work or as a back-drop for his master, the slave and thefreedman “offered themselves to be seen”and “showed” themselves, and that theywere, perhaps as much as the whites whoposed for their photos in private studios,the subjects of those portraits”, is Sandra’sanalysis. For the researcher, in almost allthe images, there are the eyes staring atthe lens,directly at the photographer,giv-ing the image a voice.“Many were not in-timidated before the weird machine andwould give their personal contributionby means of their expression, the suffer-ing look that looks at us and seems to tellstories. The luxury or the staging did notdisguise their condition of being a slaveor a freedman. If the slave’s body was aproperty, his personality was not.”

“Photography is a marvelous art, anart that excites the most astute minds.And an art that can be practiced by anyimbecile”, complained the great Frenchportraitist Nadar. Posterity’s good for-tune. If it took a long time to be discov-ered (only in 1839), it reached Brazilquickly, the following year, brought byAbbot Compte, a pupil of Louis Da-guerre, the inventor of photography. Be-fore Rio, the Frenchman was said to havebeen to Bahia, the pioneering spirit of

which is well presented in the recently-launched Photography in Bahia, orga-nized by Aristides Alves, and whichbrings 215 images taken, from the mid-19th century to 2006, by 107 profession-als from Bahia and abroad. (Another ex-cellent source is O negro na fotografiabrasileira do século XIX [The Black inBrazilian Photography of the 19th Cen-tury], by G. Ermakoff, from Casa Edi-torial, 306 pages, R$ 130.) Incidentally,until the arrival of photography, the eyeof the 1800’s was a foreign eye, linked tothe tradition of Franz Post, and, later on,of Frenchmen, Germans and Swiss whopainted the everyday life of the tropi-cal court, always preferring the exoticside of Indians or Blacks in a constantstate of happiness and strolling throughthe streets of Rio, as we see in Debret andRugendas. The Daguerreotype was ex-pensive and required lengthy poses ofup to 60 minutes.

Illiterates – In 1854, André Disdéri, ofFrance, created a process for small-sizedportraits (9.5 cm by 6 cm), prepared onalbuminated paper, which, being cheapand quick to shoot, were a revolutionin a country of illiterates with few pos-sessions who would like to see themselvesimmortalized like the noble owners of

the portraits. The cost of a dozen cartesde visite, as they were called, was the sameas that of a single daguerreotype andcould be offered as a souvenir to friendsand relatives to produce family albums.“It was the democratization of the self-image for less favored social groups.Withthe carte de visite, photography was tobecome a technique available to all, anobject of desire and status, a merchan-dise for exchange”, Sandra notes. Thenewspapers were full of advertisementsfor studios that sought clientele accord-ing to their prices and their ability to“give nobility” to the photographed,whether by their technique or by thetrappings that they had in the salonwhich would adorn the surroundings ofthe person photographed.“Photographygives the poor black the opportunity todistance himself from reality, to projecthimself according to an idealized image,to represent himself. The need to recordsocial climbing requires the assimilationof the current codes. Hence the repeti-tion and the uniformity of the poses andaccessories in the portraits.”

The studio, says the professor, acts asa dressing room and a stage, where thephotographer is the director and theclient, even though participating in theconstruction of his scene, the character.


RE

PR

OD

UC

TIO

N/M

AR

C F

ER

RE

Z,

BA

SK

ET

MA

KE

R,

C.

189

9

RE

PR

OD

UC

TIO

N/

UN

IDE

NT

IFIE

D P

HO

TO

GR

AP

HE

R

88-91_History_132_Es 12/11/07 15:49 Page 91

notes. “In spite of the sterility and theorder portrayed, the condition of beinga slave was not hidden; rather, its essencewas exposed.” There was also a marketfor photos of wet nurses, bringing totheir bosom the white child that theywere breastfeeding.“In this kind of pho-to, they tried to pass on an idea of har-mony and affection, in a period in whichthe use of wet nurses was being con-demned by medicine”, Sandra observes.

Moods – In an advertisement in the Jor-nal do Commercio [Trade Journal], of1875, a defense was made of NestléCream of Wheat, “the true wet nurse”,which, the ad claimed,` would free thechild from contagion by ailments inoc-ulated from the alien milk, corrupted bythe bad mood of any wet nurse”. Moder-nity called for changes, but mothers werereluctant to give up the privilege of “us-ing” the Negress to feed their children.The photos were an attempt to “holdback”the clock of the new times. In thesephotos, the researcher reckons, the forceof expression in the look of the pho-tographed, obliged to dress herself withenforced luxury, is even more striking.

“They are reminders that, for thereto be a black wet nurse, there has been a

black baby that was often separated fromits mother to enable her to bring up themaster’s child.” The invisible becomesvisible. “The social use of the slavery ofthe African peoples created in Brazil anasthetic for the useful exterior of theBlack’s body. The slave masters, as pro-fessionals in the business, knew the de-tails of their servants teeth better thanthat of their daughters’, as happens withpresent-day breeders of thoroughbredhorses. Even today we are not free of cer-tain averted looks”, analyzed the an-thropologist from Unicamp, Carlos Ro-drigues Brandão, in his article The BlackLook.“In newspapers and magazines, theblacks are more body than face, moretype, and even more performance thanperson. In a country where there aremillions of ‘pure’ blacks , it is the whiteface, whatever it is, that is seen. Theblacks and mixed races are almost all thecountry’s criminals, for almost all thephotographs of criminals are of mixedrace and blacks.” In Brazil, the image ofthe Black as a physical machine is strong,something complex in a country thathas learnt to despise manual labor.Blacks are the ones who work, the oneswho are sensual (even when revealed assportsmen), the ones that love parties,observes Paulo Bernardo Vaz, a profes-sor from the Social Communication De-partment of the Federal University ofMinas Gerais and the author of a studyabout the image of the Black.

“The visual flow that shows theBlack suffering, taking a beating, rob-bing, or exhibiting his sensual body re-updates socio-historically constructedmeanings that suggest crystallizationsthat typify the Black in a form that doesnot favor positive self-esteem. It is theexternal look that shapes the Black in-to a pejorative representation that canaffect his identity construction.After all,who wants to be identified with a sub-ject that lives in suffering?” For Vaz, thecommunication media offers the Blackthe contradictory opportunity to besomeone else and not himself.“The ‘oth-er’ represents the ghostlike threat of di-viding the space from which we talk andthink, it is the fear of losing one’s ownspace. Primitive fear, comparable to chil-dren’s nightmares. The ‘other’ ends upbecoming Dracula, without a legitimateimage”, analyses Muniz Sodré. Transyl-vania, like Haiti, may also be here. ■


A photo, even at the cost of going with-out items important for survival, was vi-sual proof for them, for friends and rel-atives that the fight was worthwhile.“The moment required that, besides be-ing free, the person born free or eman-cipated should appear free to the others,using symbols to indicate their condi-tion.”Details like wearing shoes were in-dicative of the new status of freedom.Gilberto Freyre, in Sobrados e Mucam-bos [The Mansions and the Shanties],tells how blacks, “dressed in the Euro-pean fashion”, were attacked andridiculed in the streets for their “daring”.Likewise, many slaves were taken to thestudio to play as extras in their masters’portraits and, their humiliation (“butnot their attitude”, the researcher stress-es), ensured that the master’s power wasrecorded. The staged photos, with blacksreproducing their labor in the studio,were souvenirs (whose sterile scenic or-ganization, Sandra notes, was trying topass off the idea of “civilized slavery”)and ethnographic objects, made in or-der to sustain racist theories.

In these, “evidence” was sought ofthe inferiority of the Blacks and likewisethey acted as a basis to countersign theideal of “civilized slavery”, the researcher

RE

PR

OD

UÇ

ÃO

/BA

UE

R S

Á,

CA

DE

IRA

2,

20

04

88-91_History_132_Es 12/11/07 15:49 Page 92

RE

PR

OD

UC

TIO

N/P

IER

RE

VE

RG

ER

, P

OR

TR

AIT

,19

50

S

88-91_History_132_Es 12/11/07 15:50 Page 93

When a major figure from theRepublic stated that his partywanted to stay in power for 20years (a phrase, in fact, repeat-ed by another important fig-ure who is in power today),Brazil shuddered.Two decades

in office really is too long. Brazil, how-ever, has already had a leader who was thehead of State for 49 years, 3 months and22 days. “Because of the length of gov-ernment and the transformations that oc-curred, no other head of State has everhad a deeper impact on the country’s his-tory”, says historian José Murilo de Car-valho, who has just launched a profile ofDom Pedro II (1825-1891). His capaci-ty to remain in office is, unfortunately,proportional to the academic and popu-lar ignorance about his reign. A few yearsago, when both appeared on banknotes,it was common (and still is), because ofthe son’s white beard, for people to see Pe-dro II as the father of Pedro I.

“In Brazil in the 21st century, Pedro IIis everywhere and nowhere at all. For themajority he was a real being, a governor


The citizen who smelled like a king

HISTORY

Profiles showthat Pedro IIwas more interested in theessence thanthe appearanceof power

>

whose actions, for good or evil, forged themodern Brazilian nation.What he did andhis limitations have been totally forgotten”,observes Brazilian expert, Roderick Bar-man, from Columbia University, the au-thor of another profile of the king, Citizenemperor (to be translated in 2008 by Une-sp), and who has just completed ‘Brazil:the Burdens of Nationhood, 1852-1910’, astudy about the weight of the SecondReign in national consolidation. “Themonarchy guaranteed the country’s uni-ty, which was in danger during the Re-gency, when rebel governments declaredthe independence of three provinces. It wasa school of civilized political practices, es-pecially if we compare it with neighboringrepublics. But it was slow to introduce so-cial policies, such as the abolition of slav-ery and popular education for the peo-ple and it was bogged down in political re-forms, such as political decentralizationand extending the vote”, explains Carva-lho. Who was its creator?

Neither “Pedro Banana”, an epithetcreated by republicans, nor the enlight-ened monarch, the good old man, an im-

Published in May 2007

94-97_Pedro II_135_Ing 12/11/07 16:03 Page 94

age cultivated by the monarchists of bothyesterday and today. Despite this he had aprofound effect. “The successes of PedroII, the creation of a political culture andof an ideal of citizenship, not only sur-vived his fall in 1889, but continued as thenorms and directives of public life in sub-sequent regimes (the Old Republic, theVargas Era and the Liberal Republic). Eventhe military regime of 1964 was pro-foundly influenced by Pedro’s vision ofBrazil as a Nation-state. Only in the 1980swas this set aside”, says Barman. Pedro IIreigned, governed, administered and gaveorders for five decades.“As a consequence,without the elite understanding/appreci-ating what he did, day to day and by ex-ample he molded the expectations of theelite and of the people as to the conductof a Head of State, the style of the Brazil-ian political process. These expectationsendured even after the advent of televi-sion. Anyone who doubts this shouldcompare the appearance and the electionpropaganda of candidate Lula in 1992 andthe new Lula of 2002 and 2006. The youngradical transformed himself into a fac-simile of the second emperor.”

Foreigner - With Pedro II and other re-publican “monarchs” Barman notes anuncomfortable Brazilian insistence onpointing out that “he doesn’t look Brazil-ian, he looks like a foreigner”, or, as Car-valho notes, in the case of the emperor,“aHapsburg lost in the tropics, blond andblue eyed, in a country with a minoritywhite elite, surrounded by a sea of blacksand half-castes”.“It’s almost like not want-ing/being able to accept that one can bea good head of government and at thesame time a typical Brazilian.”Hence thesomewhat ‘hick’ admiration for the cul-ture of the monarch who seemed to knoweverything. “I already know, I alreadyknow! The wise man, par excellence,knows everything. He knows more thanscience and more than the law. The Eter-nal Father, envious of such vast knowl-edge, said to him, excusingly: ‘Dom Pe-dro, succeed me! I deliver the universe toyou!’ But the wise man firmly and scorn-fully replied: ‘I already know. I alreadyknow!”, went a poem of the time abouthow Pedro II reacted when they tried totell him something.

Those who see in the emperor a manwith almost no pomp and who wore acoat, someone who was not concerned


PH

OT

OS

CO

UR

TE

SY

A Hapsburg lost in the tropics. “It is almost like notwanting/being able to accept that one can be a good headof government and at the same time a typical Brazilian”

94-97_Pedro II_135_Ing 12/11/07 16:03 Page 95

with power, are mistaken.“What he want-ed was the essence and not the trappingsof power. Above all he wanted to havecontrol. The trauma of his troubled youth(his mother died when he was 1, his fatherwhen he was 9 and he was emperor at 14)left him terrified of being protected”, notesBarman. “For him, losing control meantbeing manipulated. The intensity of Pe-dro II’s desire to control everything andeverybody was masked by his distancinghimself from the spotlight and by his self-discipline. So it was easy to underestimatethe man and the extent of his authority.He always likened the regime and thecountry to his own person.” Carvalhonotes, however, that Dom Pedro had noappetite for politics as a power game.“Hedid not measure the political cost andbenefit of his actions and neither did heplan the future of his reign. I do not praisehim as a governor but as a man of greatpublic spirit. He did not hate power; heexercised it jealously, but fulfilled an obli-gation of his position as emperor.”

Citizen – According to Barman, his ab-solute control over affairs of State wasused “to conserve and perfect society”, notto remake it. Pedro II had a notable ca-pacity for allowing problems to solvethemselves, as far as the Moderating Pow-er helped him. “He was concerned lesswith promoting actions that he covetedthan preventing others from being able toimplement policies he did not want.”Eventhough the emperor boasted of his con-dition as a citizen he never ceased beingemperor. “Pedro II never asked himselfif Brazilians wanted him to be the ‘first cit-izen’, nor if they wanted a type of progressand civilization, a la francaise, which hewanted for HIS nation”, notes the Amer-ican. In the words of one of his contem-poraries, “despite being likeable, there isin him the odor of king, of someone whobelieves he is superior to others”. So his“advisers”were not people, but books, es-pecially French dissertations.“He was re-spected by almost everyone, but was lovedby almost no one”, notes Carvalho.

He missed a great opportunity to freeslaves before 1888, because of his daugh-ter,at the time regarded by the elite and thepeople as the “blessed one”, the one mar-ried to “that Frenchman”,but someone un-fit to succeed him.Since the 1850s the slavemarket had declined and the Brazilian elitehad realized that the days of slavery were


Rare photo of theKing in formal

attire. “What hewanted was the

essence and notthe trappings ofpower. Above all

he wanted tohave control”

94-97_Pedro II_135_Ing 12/11/07 16:04 Page 96


numbered.“Pedro II shared this view and,like a good civilized person, disapprovedof slavery. But it was one thing for the em-peror to express his views on the future ofslavery to his cabinet and quite another topressure the politicians into taking astance against it. He liked to imagine thathe was incapable of initiating change”, saysBarman. With the end of the AmericanWar of Succession, Brazil was the onlycountry in the Western hemisphere withslaves. This did not fit in with his successas an enlightened king vis-à-vis his Euro-pean contemporaries. “But anyone whostudies the struggle surrounding the FreeWomb Law [of 9/29/1871, freeing chil-dren born to slave women] cannot saythat his posture was merely intellectual.He paid a high price for it. By the timehe restrained his abolitionist impulse thedamage to the dynasty had already beendone”, says José Murilo.

The conduct during the ParaguayanWar, another controversial issue, also bearsthe hallmark of the monarch “whothought he was Brazil”.“In the war, Brazilfought against the wrong enemy and thiswas undoubtedly thanks to the megalo-mania of Lopez. The emperor’s justifica-tion for continuing the fight until Lopezwas expelled were always the Triple Al-liance Treaty and defense of Brazil’s hon-or, but these do not seem to me to be suf-ficient. His insistence on not negotiatingis still an enigma”, observes Murilo. “Hetook the aggression against Brazil as a per-sonal insult. ‘They speak of peace on thePrata River but I will not make peace withLópez’, wrote Pedro II to his mistress, theCountess of Barral. The emperor’s insis-tence on destroying López was excessive”,agrees Barman. Finally, the Republic.

Republicanism sprang up around thistime, in the 1830s, and was regarded withcontempt by the elite and with benevo-lent indifference by the emperor and,notes the Brazilian expert, as the move-ment was unable to establish itself after1870, this attitude was not completelywrong. It was the new generation that wasits downfall: given the union of Brazil andits consolidated status as a Nation-statethey no longer feared the collapse of po-litical order. Nevertheless, until the finalyears of the regime the phrase,“I love myaugust Emperor” was normally used byBrazilians. “In Pedro II the elite foundsomeone who suppressed the fanaticismof the masses, a skilful monarch who

brought together liberty and order, in-ternal peace and development of thecountry (provided it was under his strictsupervision and with no excesses). He be-came, therefore, a natural part of the livesof Brazilians.”This “house in order”gaverepublicans the calm they needed to grow.“Given the lack of a credible successor(Pedro II did not see Isabel as such), andbecause of the monarch`s illness, every-thing seemed to guarantee transition toa Republic. Brazil could, therefore, haveremoved from its history the period ofterrible militarism that started in 1889”,notes Barman. “But his initial achieve-ments and his refusal to cede a little to thepoliticians and to open up the system,as well as his disregard for the interests ofthe army led to his being removed fromthe throne in a pathetic way.” The imageof the group of nobles led hurriedly in-to exile caught the national imaginationmore than the power he had exercised forhalf a century.

Pedro II, who intellectually tended to-wards a Republic, was however self-cen-tered and confident that the world re-volved around him. Although he saw thedirection that Brazil was moving in he in-sisted on maintaining the status quo, the

eternal mistake of monarchs since the En-glish cut off their king’s head in the 17th

century.The weak point of the Empire wasprecisely this confidence in exaggeratedcentralization, the desire to control every-thing personally. “The life of the Empirewas prolonged by the abolitionist cam-paign that drew attention to the paradox-ical fragility of such a consolidated regime.”With the end of the monarchy Brazil suf-fered for years under a military dictator-ship, including Canudos, the actions of “aregime without strong roots and almostwithout legitimacy”, notes Barman, forwhom the origins of the Brazil of today donot extend back to 1889, but to the firstdecade of the 20th century. It was Vargas,who was responsible for overthrowing theregime that had overthrown the emperor,who brought Pedro II back into fashion inBrazil along with his mortal remains.“Themajority of Brazilians believe that theirforefathers were innately Republican andthe monarchy was an external imposition”,a strange alienation of the importance, forbetter or for worse, of someone who,whether as king or as a “citizen”, had ruledthe country for 50 years. ■

CARLOS HAAG

94-97_Pedro II_135_Ing 12/11/07 16:04 Page 97


CARTOON…

98_Humor_Ing 12/11/07 16:10 Page 98

100_capa3_ingles 12/13/07 19:23 Page 99

100_capa4_ingles 12/13/07 19:40 Page 100

Documents

Special Issue 2007