The 1964 Coup d\u2019\u00e9tat and the long period of dictatorship it ushered into Brazil during the second half of the 20th century constitutes a topic that is at once polysemic, complex and controversial, igniting the passions, pain, losses and deep suffering that still smolder just beneath the surface.\u00a0 At the same time, it serves as a subject of the most vitally important and challenging research that is being carried out in the field of humanities, all in an effort to achieve a creative and consistent interpretation of Brazil and Brazilian society \u2013 its recent history, its present-day and its future in the making.\u00a0 It was with the latter understanding that Pesquisa <\/i>FAPESP, faithful to its mission of providing readers with the most significant Brazilian scientific production available while remaining ever grounded by journalistic anchors, attuned always to the pulse of current thinking, chose as the cover story of the April issue the 50 years since the March 31, 1964 coup.\u00a0 And so, beginning on page 16, we provide our readers with a series of reports that bring to the fore some of the most creditable information academia has produced to date about the events in question.\u00a0 It is a substantial amount of information, but it is so very worth checking out.<\/p>\n
After that, we offer a bit of levity and freshness: in the science section, a report <\/a>by Special Editor Carlos Fioravanti, with photographs by Eduardo Cesar, provides a lively rendering of the fifth voyage \u2013 of the series of 23 trips scheduled through 2015 \u2013 by a group of researchers associated with the USP Oceanographic Institute to map the diversity and distribution of cetaceans, in other words, whales and dolphins, off the coast of S\u00e3o Paulo.\u00a0 The good news the team has for those concerned about the environment is that both the diversity and the abundance of these animals in the area studied are larger than initially thought.\u00a0 As a gift to readers in the field of biodiversity, this issue contains a DVD with 10 videos of lectures from the 2013 Biota-FAPESP Education Conference Cycle.<\/p>\n Although by mere coincidence, the highlight of this issue in the area of technology also involves animals \u2013 in this case, in the form of bugs.\u00a0 More precisely, it is about new strategies based on extracting chemical substances from insects and plants to combat pernicious agricultural pests.\u00a0 Assistant Editor Dinorah Ereno provides the details of research<\/a> being conducted in laboratories at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (Esalq-USP) to develop new pheromones from insects, as well as volatile plant substances that have proven to be effective, for example, in the fight against greening, current scourge of citrus farmers.<\/p>\n