In June, Pesquisa FAPESP was recognized in double measure, in the Brazil 2003 Award for Reporting on Biodiversity in the Atlantic Rain Forest, sponsored by the Alliance for the Conservation of the Atlantic Rain Forest, an institution that comprises Conservation International and SOS Mata Atlântica (Atlantic Rain Forest). Our science editor, Carlos Fioravanti, won second place in the awards, and our special reporter, Marcos Pivetta, was given an honorable mention. The two awards filled with happiness the whole team that produces this magazine, always with immense dedication, unquestionable rigor in ascertaining and setting out the facts in the stories, and a high level of professionalism. Naturally, external recognition of our merits fails to touch only the most hardhearted.
Here I allow myself a few words on the brave award-winning journalists, whose contribution is decisive for the quality that Pesquisa FAPESP displays every month. Fioravanti is a very discrete native of Itu, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, strict to the point of the most absolute perfectionism, and, at the same time, capable both of an impassioned dive into the stories of his own making, and of a generous patience with texts by others, that he so often has to polish up, as an editor. He is without doubt one of the best Brazilian professionals at work today in scientific journalism, to which he has devoted himself since 1989. The work that earned him this award was an article on the behavior of woolly spider monkeys, the cover story of our March issue – the cover, by the way, conceived by our art director, Hélio de Almeida, was a very fine one, over an impressive image of one of those monkeys, captured by our photographer Miguel Boyayan. As to 34-year-old Pivetta, a native to the state of São Paulo, the owner of an exuberant, noisy temperament, always ready for outbursts of an acute sense of humor and refined irony, is endowed with talent in equal measure ? or too large to be measured ? for the various journalistic labors, and, in particular, for journalistic writing. The work of his that merited an honorable mention was an article on new ways for conserving and multiplying pernambuco wood.
Having fulfilled, with pleasure, the task of sharing this victory with our readers, there is room left over only to quickly highlight the cover story of this issue. It is, incidentally, by Pivetta, and it shows, from page 80 onwards, how science and technology can be interwoven with music, so as to expand the frontiers of this art, to the point of justifying, in São Paulo, the formation of a virtual research institute in this field. Prominence, too, for the article, of the authorship of Fioravanti, that reveals new data about the chemistry behind the exercise/well-being couplet. Physical activity as something important for the human organism is something that has been known for a long time. The story that startson page 32, though, goes beyond the obvious by showing the actual mechanisms that give sportsmen in more comfortable conditions for facing up to infections caused by viruses and bacteria.
Finally, two other important news items. In Policies, we show how the taxes paid by innovative companies are now higher than the investments applied in research. And in Technology, we show a dressing of hydrogel that relieves the pain from burns and fights bacteria. Good reading.
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