Editorial

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 341

Beyond human beings

Our treatment of animals used for research, production, and consumption, has slowly been changing over time. Science has improved our understanding of animal cognition and their capacity to feel pain, making their use in research less acceptable. Breeding them for food is also being questioned more and more. In addition to ethical concerns, people are... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 340

Coffee with pions

Coffee is the most popular drink in Brazil, after water. In a cup or glass, with or without sugar, with breakfast in the morning or after a meal, it is ubiquitous in homes, offices, factories, restaurants, and bars. In Brazil — the world’s largest producer and second largest consumer — coffee is always superlative. A... View Article

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Editorial

Palms, armspans, and blocks of sugar

The increase in the homeless population over recent years is clearly evident to anyone visiting any of Brazil’s major metropolises. Although the phenomenon is no longer restricted to large cities, that is where this acute form of social exclusion and poverty is most apparent. There are homeless people, defined as anyone who lives temporarily or... View Article

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Letter from the editor | 338

The new normal

The water cycle is one of the first science subjects that children learn about at school. An image shows the absorption of water by plants, then transpiration, condensation, precipitation in the form of rain or snow, runoff, and evaporation. The same school lesson covers the basic concepts of a very worrying question: is Brazil getting... View Article

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Letter from the editor | 337

Invisible work

In a society that is increasingly reliant on data processing, supercomputers are becoming ever more important. Characterized by their high processing speed and large memory capacity, they can perform complex calculations in minimal amounts of time. They are used in various fields of research, including climate, astronomical, and pharmacological modeling, and to support many activities... View Article

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Letter from the editor

Biomes and land use

The Tumucumaque Mountains National Park (PNMT) is one of the lesser known of Brazil’s 74 national parks, which are established by the country’s national legislation on conservation units and managed by ICMBio. Located in the states of Amapá and Pará on Brazil’s northern border, it is the largest national park in Brazil and the largest... View Article

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Letter from the Editor | 335

Medications needed

In the 1930s, pharmacologist Paulo Seabra from Rio de Janeiro developed a copper salt formulation (colloidal cupric morrhuate) that could be administered intravenously to treat tuberculosis. Sold under the brand name Gadusan, it was even exported to other countries. With the discovery of streptomycin — the first antibiotic effective against what was once known as... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Constant vigilance

The Amazon has been in the public eye this century. As one of the most important remaining biodiversity reserves, its value for life on Earth is incalculable. The region also has an essential role in climate regulation, with an influence that extends far beyond the frontiers of this biome. Fears regarding the destruction of the... View Article

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Letter from the editor | 334

Keeping an eye on the forest

The importance of the Amazon has become increasingly evident in the twenty-first century. Firstly, for its biodiversity, which has incalculable value to life on Earth. Secondly, for its influence on climate dynamics, which we now know goes far beyond its own borders. Fears about ongoing destruction of the biome have sparked discussions about its occupation... View Article

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Editorial

Chemical and symbolic elements

To “unsee” something is a term widely used on social media when a person wishes they had not seen something. This is the neologism that comes to mind when we are faced with images of grotesque “plastic rocks”: an involuntary human creation composed of minerals, polymers, and animal remains. The plastics contaminating our oceans and... View Article

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Editorial

Professors wanted

According to the high school students who signed up for USP’s Knowledge and Opportunities Competition, encouragement from teachers is an important source of recognition. The prizes included additional preparatory training for university entrance exams and for many students, the offer of a place in public higher education. Taxidermist Paulo César Balduíno, who has prepared thousands... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 331

Heating up

July was the hottest month ever recorded since the world’s leading meteorological agencies began operating decades ago. The upward trend in global temperatures, first identified many years ago, has culminated in this new record, which will soon be broken again. A rise in the planet’s average temperature, even by as little as one decimal point,... View Article

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Letter from the editor

Food on the table

Brazil is known for its agricultural activity. The country’s harvests break record after record, with growing productivity, and Brazil is a world leader in exports of various commodities. However, there is another agricultural reality that is less attractive. The area planted with rice and beans, the basis of the national diet, decreased by more than... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 330

Good questions

The Human Genome Project was a hot topic in science journalism at the turn of this century. Technological advances allowed an international consortium of 20 institutions to sequence and analyze the regions of human DNA that encode proteins — the project took 13 years of work and cost US$3 billion. To make the story even... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 329

Resilience and mobilization

The press has reported widely on the imminent repatriation of an Ubirajara jubatus dinosaur fossil illegally removed from Northeast Brazil in 1995. In more recent years, UNESCO has been discussing the ethics of the cultural goods market, trying to reach a consensus on the sale of objects with historical value. In May, Brazil joined the... View Article

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Letter from the Editor | 328

Rice, beans, and ketchup

The vigor of Brazilian agriculture is deservedly hitting the headlines: record harvests, increasing productivity, and global leadership in exports of several commodities. Other data showing a less popular agricultural situation, however, do not receive the same attention. The total area used to grow rice and beans — the foundation of Brazil’s national diet — decreased... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Independence and rights

Rape is one of the most violent and abject crimes we face. This type of aggression subjects the victim to a high level of stress that leaves psychological scars and can also cause physiological transformations. A team at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) that also offers outpatient care researched the impact of sexual... View Article

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Letter from the editor | 327

Weights and measures

Everyone knows that drinking too much alcohol is bad for you. But the question that needs to be answered by the authorities creating public policies on the matter is how much is too much? The answer is not simple and often changes in response to new knowledge. In addition to the drink’s alcohol content and... View Article

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Letter from the editor | 326

Interaction and inclusion

Anyone who has been for a routine mammogram might have thought to themselves that there is no way a woman invented the exam (and they would be right—it was Uruguayan physician Raul Leborgne [1907–1986] who discovered in the 1950s that compressing the breast tissue generated a better diagnostic image). The procedure saves lives, but there... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 325

Questions and answers

When we decided that ChatGPT would be the subject of this issue’s cover story, we could not resist asking the software to write us an editorial. The response generated by the artificial intelligence (AI) was more like a press release, highlighting the tool’s versatility and potential applications in customer service and education (“offering personalized learning... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 324

Life and death

One topic of frequent animated discussion in the Pesquisa FAPESP newsroom is obituaries. Some are not too fond of this branch of journalism, seeing it as a bit morbid; for others, it is a celebration of life and an opportunity to learn more about inspiring people. As an advocate of the latter, upon reading the... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 323

Science and society

There is growing recognition of the need to bridge the gap between science and society, to find ways of helping the public understand that the production of knowledge is behind everything we do, while at the same time ensuring scientists are aware of societal issues and include them in their research whenever possible. There are... View Article

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Letter from the editor | 322

New definitions and diagnoses

What is a museum? The question doesn’t seem particularly difficult to answer. The Merriam-Webster dictionary, for example, describes it as “an institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and display of objects of lasting interest or value.” The International Council of Museums, based in Paris, has spent the last six years coming up with a... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 321

Deforestation, demarcation, disinformation

Covering climate change in general, and the impact of deforestation of the Amazon specifically, is a difficult task because the news is rarely good. The measurements themselves are not easy to comprehend—ranging from thousands of square kilometers of deforestation to temperature variations of tenths of a degree—and real advances are few and far between. The... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

FAPESP, 60 years

It has been nearly three years since the last English edition of Pesquisa FAPESP. The pandemic and consequent suspension of face-to-face activities interrupted our periodic publication of articles originally published in Portuguese, although the English version of our website has been kept up to date (revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en). Now, we are happy to return with a new... View Article

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Letter from the editor | 320

The trauma of sexual violence

Rape is one of the most violent and abject crimes imaginable. It subjects the victim to such a high degree of stress that it results in well-known deep psychological scars, as well as causing physiological impacts. These are the findings of a recent study by a UNIFESP team that combines outpatient care for girls and... View Article

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Letter from the editor | 319

Promises in the wind

Electronic cigarettes originally hit the market with the promise of helping smokers kick their tobacco addictions. But the wide range of aromas and types—as to be expected with gadgets targeted at young people—is not suggestive of a treatment method, just as the colorful and flashy stores in countries where they are sold do not bring... View Article

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Letter from the Editor | 318

Independence, 200 years later

This issue’s letter from the editor, which usually features on page 7, has been moved to page 71, requiring a somewhat different approach. If the primary objective is to present the issue, what should be said when linear readers are already two-thirds of the way through the magazine? The Pesquisa FAPESP team meets on a... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 317

Expanding concepts

Reflecting systematically on research responsibility is a recent phenomenon in terms of the history of science. It was only at the end of the twentieth century that organized efforts to understand the problem of scientific misconduct began, focusing mainly on plagiarism, fraud, and unethical conduct in experiments on human beings, as well as on how... View Article

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | 316

Youth on the agenda

Some people say that youth is defined as anyone 20 years younger than yourself. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), however, has to work with more precise criteria than that, so it defines the category as all individuals aged 15 to 29 years old. Two years ago, there were 50 million young people... View Article

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