Violence and schools should not mix. But unfortunately, they are overlapping more than ever in various ways. Conflicts between students or between teachers and students; external violence that infiltrates the school environment from the surroundings; and institutional violence, which includes exclusionary behavior. There are also the extreme cases of premeditated attacks. Every violence indicator has increased in recent years, reflecting a deterioration of the institutional climate, established by the shared expectations of the school community and arising from their collective experience. In the report , reporter Christina Queiroz provides more detail on this concerning situation, presenting the results of recent studies and opinions on the dysfunction undermining the academic environment.
In the editorial of issue 326, I wrote that mammography could not have been invented by a woman. Now, two years later, I am happy to return to the topic to highlight a proposal—led by a man—for an imaging system that aims to perform this much-needed exam in a way that causes less pain. Still in the development phase, the cone-shaped equipment does not require any compression of the tissue and uses microwaves as a technological route, rather than X-rays. As a partnership between Poli-USP and IFSP, the project benefited from the team’s prior experience with Sampa, a miniature integrated circuit that is part of a particle detector at CERN, in Europe.
Vincent Debat / MNHNIridescent color of Morpho butterflies is important to survival of the speciesVincent Debat / MNHN
The habit of writing letters to the press has long been a declining trend, much to the dismay of newsrooms. Some people, however, continue to send in their criticism, praise, or simple comments. One reader who occasionally writes to us about content we publish in their field of expertise (energy) once complained that a particular issue did not cover anything about insects. They explained that they find it incredible that some people dedicate their lives to researching a single type of insect. A report on blue butterflies whose iridescence helps them elude predators should attract readers interested in insects and ingenious experiments.
In March of this year, the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation celebrated its 40th anniversary. Created during the country’s redemocratization process, this division of the Executive Branch has experienced institutional and budgetary instability over the years, but it continues coordinating the government’s science and technology actions and federal policymaking, in addition to funding research projects and institutions both directly and through its various agencies. Against a bleak international landscape, with the USA dismantling science institutions and policies at an astonishing rate, the anniversary offers an opportunity to reflect on the importance of such institutions and the ministry in particular.
In the context of science as an international activity in which crossing geographical borders broadens a person’s perspective of the world and of research, a Brazilian woman choosing to settle in a country where she did not have the right to drive at the time, among other restrictions, is not easy to understand. But after seeing its microscopy infrastructure, chemical engineer Suzana Nunes transferred to King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia, 15 years ago. Nunes gave a video interview to biological sciences editor Maria Guimarães from the university campus where she lives, an international microcosm located 80 km from Jeddah. It is from there that she likes to set off in her jeep to explore the region in her free time.
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