Every month, I open my laptop to write an editorial for the next issue of Pesquisa FAPESP. The screen lights up and the cursor flashes as I type each character. I create the “editorial_xyz” file, which I save on a virtual storage service, although this service requires a physical structure like the one depicted on the cover of this issue, which could be located thousands of kilometers away. I read the reports that will be included in the new issue, which are hosted on another cloud service, and I search the internet to check words, concepts, and references. I share the articles with colleagues via an online project management platform and then email them for review. All of the final files are then transferred to the servers of the printing company, which prints physical copies of the magazine that will be read across the country and beyond.
Activities like this occur billions of times every day, and individually they consume little energy (if the editorial were produced by generative AI, the energy expenditure would be greater). But the sum of them all, in an increasingly digital world, is placing an ever-growing burden on the planet. It is estimated that between 5% and 9% of global electricity consumption is used for information and communication technology infrastructure. This demand comes from the power needed to run the equipment and to keep it cool, which also requires significant volumes of water. Our technology editor, Yuri Vasconcelos, shines a light on this little-known side of the digital world and describes an emerging field of research known as sustainable computing, which seeks to reduce the environmental impacts of computing worldwide.
Brazil has more than 23,000 caves registered by the National Center for Cave Research and Conservation, many of which were mapped by Ivo Karmann, from USP. Karmann explains that to study these natural caves, he has to map the region’s water circulation system, which is an essential element in the dissolution and corrosion of rocks. He lightheartedly defines himself as a geologist of nothing, since his work involves explaining the absence of rock, rather than its presence.
Personal archiveThe Coqueiros team (c. 1962) on a soccer field in an industrial area of Santo André, São Paulo; Queiroz is in the back row on the far rightPersonal archive
Onomastics is the study of another type of formation: proper names. Investigating the origin of the names of people and places is an interdisciplinary field of linguistics. It involves elements of geography, history, law, and psychology. The report describes the genesis of this branch of knowledge, revealing that the Brazilian practice of combining different parts of personal names to create original results comes from a Germanic approach inherited via Portuguese colonization.
Lourenço Queiroz played amateur soccer from a young age, joining an organized team at the age of 13. His local soccer field was near a manufacturing region in Santo André, Greater São Paulo. It was common at the time for companies in the region to support local teams, buying uniforms and balls and organizing championships. Lourenço recalls that the games were the most fun part of his weekend, even though they were taken very seriously. There were fans, fights, rivalries, and unforgettable scorelines. Many of these soccer fields no longer exist, having given way to residential and commercial developments. More than 60 years after her father’s soccer-playing days, our reporter Christina Queiroz writes about the transformations amateur football has undergone in response to urban growth.
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