Pesquisa FAPESP reaches\u00a0its third print edition in\u00a0English. This issue brings\u00a0together what we believe to\u00a0be some of the most important\u00a0stories of the Brazilian\u00a0scientific and technological\u00a0production published in Portuguese\u00a0by the magazine during\u00a0the last two years.<\/p>\n
A careful search among\u00a0the texts published from February\u00a02004 to December\u00a02005 allowed us to select 20 delightful stories on science,\u00a0technology, humanities and scientific and technological policy.\u00a0They provide an overview of the vigor and the diversity\u00a0of the Brazilian scientific production, that has been on the\u00a0rise since the \u00a0980\u2019s \u2013 it leaped from 0.44% of the world production\u00a0in 1981 to 1.55% in 2003. A comprehensive story\u00a0about how the Brazilian research has changed scale and has\u00a0become professional is on page 18.<\/p>\n
This special issue of Pesquisa FAPESP also reports the\u00a0discovery of a new neurodegenerative syndrome. Named\u00a0SPOAN (acronym for Spastic Paraplegia, Optic Atrophy and\u00a0Neuropathy), this genetic disorder stiffens the joints and weakens\u00a0first the legs and then the arms, affecting posture in general,\u00a0and to a lesser degree, vision and speech. It was identified\u00a0in a small town in the northeastern region of the\u00a0country by the group lead by the geneticist Mayana Zatz, coordinator\u00a0of the Human Genome Research Center, in the\u00a0city of S\u00e3o Paulo. Besides this discovery, Mayana actively\u00a0participated of the campaign for the approval of the Biosafety\u00a0Bill in the Chamber of Deputies in Bras\u00edlia in 2005 \u2013read the interview with her on page 12.<\/p>\n
A recent technological breakthrough in Brazil is the production\u00a0of carbon nanotubes, tiny tubes that possess excellent\u00a0electrical conductivity and a mechanical resistance one\u00a0hundred times greater than that of steel. Since 2005, laboratories\u00a0of the Federal University of Minas Gerais have been\u00a0producing and selling carbon nanotubes, material of important\u00a0applications in science and technology, to other universities,\u00a0research institutes or Brazilian companies.\u00a0In S\u00e3o Paulo researchers at the Applied Toxinology Center\u00a0(CAT) synthesized molecules of the rattlesnake (Crotalus terrificus<\/em>) and of the jararaca (Bothrops jararaca<\/em>) venom that have shown great pharmacological potential for alleviating pain and controlling blood pressure.\u00a0These achievements results from solid scientific bases brought to existence by the effort of many Brazilian researches during the last 60 years. In this sense, a remarkable example is the one of C\u00e9sar Lattes. This internationally known physicist developed a method to detect a subatomic particle called pi meson and was the Brazilian scientist closest to winning a Nobel Prize. But his genius went far beyond: he worked to set up competitive team anda laboratories for physics work in Brazil, as one can read on page 8.<\/p>\n There is no doubt that these recent scientific accomplishments definitely contribute to the country’s image – here and abroad – as much as some singular creations of the Brazilian people. This connection between science and culture becomes more noticeable when one analyzes – with the help of scientific methods of the humanities, in this case – powerful and singular expressions of the Brazilian soul, such as samba. On page 102 a study that analyzed 7,000 sambas tries to understand how this musical genre became the most important one of Brazilian music in the 20th century.<\/p>\n Enjoy Pesquisa FAPESP, <\/em>the science news magazine of the state of S\u00e3o Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), one of the most important research funding agencies in Brazil. We talk from science to samba – scientifically, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From genomics to samba, a scientific view","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[158],"tags":[],"coauthors":[373],"class_list":["post-69424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69424"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=69424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}