Veículo

• Home
• Veículos
• Long Room (EUA)

"Frogs emit a pungent odor. Sometimes a particular species can be recognized by its scent, but until now, the function of this odor was unknown. It was typically assumed to be an aposematic smell, meaning a chemical warning sign that served to repel predators, as in the case of skunks [Mephitis mephitis] among mammals, for example," said Célio Haddad, a professor at São Paulo State University's Rio Claro Bioscience Institute (IBRC-UNESP) in Brazil and a coauthor of the article. According to [...]

Brazilian researchers have reconstructed the evolutionary history of amoebae and demonstrated that at the end of the Precambrian period, at least 750 million years ago, life on Earth was much more diverse than suggested by classic theory. The study, which was supported by São Paulo Research Foundation—FAPESP, revealed eight new ancestral lineages of Thecamoebae, the largest group in Amoebozoa. Thecamoebians are known as testates because of their hard outer carapace or [...]

Until recently, scientists believed that the mega-swamp dried up more than 10 million years ago, before the Amazon River reversed course. During most of the Miocene, this river flowed from east to west, opposite to its present direction. The giant animals disappeared when the waters of Pebas receded. While investigating sediments associated with vertebrate fossils from two paleontological sites on the Acre and Purus Rivers, Marcos César Bissaro Júnior, a biologist affiliated with the [...]

A new version of equipment developed in Brazil—the Solar-T—will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) to measure solar flares. It is estimated that the sun-THz, the new photometric telescope, will be launched in 2022 on one of the missions to the ISS and will remain there to take consistent measurements. The photometric telescope works at a frequency of 0.2 to 15 THz, which can only be measured from space. In parallel, another telescope, the HATS, will be installed in Argentina. [...]

One of the alternatives being studied today in many parts of the world is the lithium-air battery. Some of the Brazilian efforts in the search for such device were presented on Day Two of FAPESP Week London, held February 11-12, 2019. "There is a lot of talk today about electric cars. Some European countries are also thinking about banning combustion engines. In addition, renewable sources like solar energy need batteries to store what is generated during the day through solar radiation," said [...]

The innovation, the result of a patent deposited in 2018, consists of injecting the CO2 and CH4 that comes from wells during oil extraction into salt caverns as a way to reduce the amount of carbon gas in the emissions. The first "pilot cavern" may be ready by 2022 and is the result of studies carried out at the Research Center for Gas Innovation (RCGI), established by FAPESP and Shell, headquartered at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (Poli-USP). The RCGI is one of the [...]

Brazilian researchers have discovered a new species of fungus gnat (Keroplatidae) whose larvae emit blue light. The small fly inhabits an Atlantic Rainforest reserve in São Paulo State. This is the first record of a blue bioluminescent species in the Neotropics. Many bioluminescent insects and fungi have been studied in the region, but all emit green, yellow or red light. The new species has been named Neoceroplatus betaryiensis and is described in an article in Scientific [...]

Certain phenomena that occur in black holes but cannot be directly observed in astronomic investigations can be studied by means of a laboratory simulation. This is possible due to a peculiar analogy between processes that are characteristic of black holes and hydrodynamic processes. The common denominator is the similarity of wave propagation in both cases. This possibility is explored in a new article published in Physical Review Letters. Physicist Maurício Richartz, a professor at the [...]

The study found that physically active men who were not overweight but whose waist-stature ratio (WSR) was close to the risk threshold were also more likely to develop heart disorders than individuals with lower WSRs. The study was conducted by Brazilian researchers affiliated with São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Presidente Prudente and Marília in collaboration with colleagues at Oxford Brookes University in the UK. The study resulted from a research project supported by São Paulo [...]