A new concept for the analysis of the sustainability conditions of urban and rural areas has been used by researchers in recent years. It is the "food-water-energy nexus" test, which seeks to examine the interrelationships of these three essential components of environmental and human quality. The subject was addressed in a public event on March 29, at the seminar Use of geographic methods to characterize social inequalities.

The seminar was organized by the IEA in partnership with the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of Birmingham (UoB). Both Institutes are members the network University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS) and have been carrying out several activities together in recent years.

Researchers from the UoB, and the universities of Leicester and Northampton participated as exhibitors. The commentator was Thais Mauad, a professor at USP's School of Medicine and coordinator of IEA's Study Group on Urban Agriculture (GEAU). The meeting was coordinated by Ligia Vizeu Barrozo, a professor at USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), and coordinator of IEA's Study Group on Urban Space and Health.

The first panel of the meeting addressed the research (Re)Connect the Nexus: Young Brazilians' Experiences of and Learning about Food, Water and Energy, developed by researchers from the three British universities and the São Paulo State University (UNESP).

The research is underway and aims to analyze the experiences of young people (10 to 24 years) in the Paraíba River Valley and the North Coast of the State of São Paulo with questions related to food, water resources and energy sources, as well as to verify what they know about the relationship between these three factors.

Peter Kraftl

Project coordinator Peter Kraftl, from the UoB, talked about the objectives and methodology of the research, the concept of food-water-energy nexus and the questioning of this approach. According to him, the notion of nexus has been advocated primarily by researchers and policy makers in the US and the UK. "One of the questions we want to evaluate is whether this idea is relevant to Brazil."

While nexus-based thinking may be useful for policy-making groups, "it involves creating connections and examining trade-offs that end up in an imposed holism, reducing complex social and material processes to mere components of the nexus, such as food and water," commented Kraftl. In his view, many researches ignore the reality of life of individuals and communities, and how they engage in the nexus.

Kraftl said that one of the main problems for formulating public policies from the nexus analysis is to minimize the trade-off as much as possible, such as in the dilemma between planting to produce food or biofuels. He asked: "Who makes these decisions? How are they made? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each option?"

However, he considers that examining how young people and policy makers see the interweaving of the components of the nexus influences people's lives and work, and can favor sustainability education.

Besides Kraftl, the research was commented by Catherine Walker, from the University of Leicester, who dealt with interviews with leaders and professionals, and Cristiana Zara, from the UoB, who talked about the interviews with young people from the Paraíba River Valley.

Detailed reference interviews with 5,000 young people in the region began in March. In the same period, qualitative interviews began with 50 young people. A mobile application has been provided to respondents to record their daily experiences regarding food, water, and energy. By June, 50 policy makers, including educators and representatives of the private sector and government agencies, will also be interviewed.

The project is also holding a video contest. Ten videos will be online on YouTube for young people around the world to vote for their favorites.

Walker said that the interviews with leaders and professionals is helpful in understanding the context in which young people are growing, their access to resources, restrictions on access, and what they know about natural resources. One of the highlights of these interviews, she says, is the issue of rural exodus. "The young do not find opportunities for development and education in the countryside, and are attracted to cities by a variety of factors. This is worrying, since there are already large concentrations of people in the Paraíba River Valley. And as small food producers move to the city, the land ends up being occupied by intensive agriculture, which demands more water."

Safety in regard to water has also appeared prominently in the interviews, with many references to the water crisis of 2014/2015. "Several respondents pointed out that people are aware of the importance of resources when they become scarce, but they end up reverting to pre-crisis consumption habits when the supply normalizes."

Zara, in turn, pointed out that in the interviews that are being held with 5,000 youngsters they reveal their strong cultural involvement with food, with great appreciation for the role of food in favor of sociability. In the case of water, she said that there is an expansion of concepts about the various uses of the resource (food, sanitation, agriculture, energy production and industrial use), with the incorporation of the theme in education for sustainability," although this does not happen uniformly in the education system."

According to Zara, young people show a strong sense of individual responsibility for the proper use of natural resources. "For many of them, if everyone does their small part, this will encourage sustainable practices in the community. At the same time there is a strong sense of the political dimension of the issue, with the demand that the state should also play its part."

The project led by Kraftl is funded by the National Council of the State Research Support Foundations (via FAPESP) and two UK institutions: the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Newton Fund.

Sophie Hadfield-Hill

Urbanism in India

The second part of the event dealt indirectly with aspects related to the nexus, but in the specific context of the Indian urban growth. The theme was the project New Urbanisms in India: Urban Life, Sustainability and Everyday Life, also supported by the ESRC. The speaker was coordinator Sophie Hadfield-Hill, from the UoB.

According to her, 590 million Indians will be living in cities by 2030, with 91 million middle-class families and 61 cities with more than 1 million inhabitants." The demands for this urban growth will require an investment of US$ 1.2 trillion.

Hadfield-Hill spoke about new housing developments under construction on the outskirts of Indian cities and threats to urban areas. "There is the pressure of population growth and migration on urban services, access to sanitation, water and energy, as well as impacts on land and other consequences of social inequality."

The main challenges are the provision of quality water, sewage collection and electricity supply. "According to the World Bank, only 16% of households have sewage collection. No Indian city has 24-hour water supply and only 1/4 of the population has access to electricity."

Despite all these difficulties for urban life in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, upon taking office in May 2014, proposed the creation of 100 smart cities, with the adaptation of existing cities and construction of entirely new cities, commented Hadfield-Hill. The proposal received several criticisms, she said, but 20 cities have already been selected through a national competition.

The Indian government defines smart cities as those that "care first about their most pressing needs and the best opportunities for improving the quality of life." They should use a range of approaches that include "digital and information technologies, best practices in urban planning, public-private partnerships, political change and thinking of people first," Hadfield-Hill said.

Among other initiatives, proposals for Indian smart cities include paving that captures the energy of moving cars, online water connections systems and smart bus stops.

As a case study she spoke about the construction of the city of Lavasa by a private enterprise. It will have five hubs (the first one is ready), house 300,000 inhabitants and receive 2 million tourists a year.

According to her, Lavasa is being built following the principles of new urbanism. Some of them are: sustainability; planned growth of density (population decreases as households move away from the center); mix of housing types, including income groups; ease of access to general services (10 minute-walk from home or work to most of them); architectural quality and urban design.

Photos: Marcos Santos/Jornal da USP

The first edition of IEA's Sabbatical Year Program was marked by the enthusiasm of the six participating professors. In addition to producing articles, chapters of books, music and communications at international meetings, they have assiduously attended the Institute, participating in various activities not necessarily related to their research. The sabbatical period ended in February, but several of the professors intend to maintain academic ties with the IEA.

The vast production of the group is a direct consequence of the intense work of data collection, methodological detailling and theoretical reflection undertaken by the researchers. But the results are not only those that have already been produced. Research projects will also give rise to new articles, books, two theses and an opera.

Perhaps the most unusual contribution of this first edition is the composition of an opera by professor Rodolfo Nogueira Coelho de Souza, from the Department of Music of USP's Ribeirão Preto Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences, and Languages and Literature (FFLCRP). During his sabbatical period he wrote the libretto of the work in partnership with a researcher from UFPR, and composed part of the music.

Lúcia Maciel Barbosa de Oliveira, from the School of Communications and Arts (ECA), and Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araujo, from the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, carried out research related to the future elaboration of their theses to become full professors at USP.

Oliveira's project addresses emerging cultural dynamics in the city of São Paulo. She had the opportunity to do the necessary bibliographical survey, to know the performance of diverse urban culture groups and to write an article for a specialized journal.

For Araujo, the program served to deepen the aspects of interdisciplinarity through specific literature and analyses of meetings held by the IEA on the subject. His project discusses archeology as a paradigm of interdisciplinarity. He has presented the first results of the work at a world congress in Japan.

Besides being present in the methodology used by Souza in the composition of the opera, mathematics plays a central role in the research of Flavio Ulhoa Coelho, from the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME), who has already written some chapters of a book on the influence of philosophical and social issues in the evolution of algebraic thinking. Another planned work is an article in partnership with a UFABC researcher on the importance of highlighting this philosophical and social influence in teaching algebra to students in elementary education.

In Maria de los Angeles Gasalla's research, the social aspects are foreseen in the uncertain future of fishing communities due to ocean warming because of global climate change. During the sabbatical period, the professor of USP's Oceanographic Institute (IO) produced several texts and participated in meetings in South Korea, Thailand and Madagascar.

The uncertainty about the professional future was not part of the plans of Brazilian visual artists who self-exiled themselves in New York in the 1960s and 1970s at the invitation of American institutions. However, they ended up facing immense difficulties in working, exhibiting and living with the local artistic community. This is the theme of Dária Gorete Jaremtchuk's research. Throughout 2016, the professor of USP's School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH) published an article for a specialized journal and presented papers at meetings in Brazil and the United States.

It may be said that the sabbatical year of the six researchers officially ended in February, but the studies will continue for a long time with the production of new works, including articles that will be submitted to the IEA's journal Estudos Avançados and developments in new projects. Of course, several of these future activities will have the hallmark of living together among the six in the Institute, a fact highlighted by all as one of the best benefits provided by the program.

Photo: IEA-USP Archive

The footage of the online course that the participants of the first edition of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) are producing on the theme "Time" started this Monday, March 6. In Ubatuba, at the "Clarimundo de Jesus" Research Base of USP's Oceanographic Institute (IO), five young researchers who are part of the project will be focused until March 10 to record the lessons of the four sections that make up their Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). With a total of two hours, the course shall be hosted at Coursera's database.

MOOC recording backstage
Nikki Moore prepares to start filming

The group of 13 participants is being represented by David Gange, from the University of Birmingham; Eduardo Almeida and Helder Nakaya, both from USP; Nikki Moore, from Rice University; and Valtteri Arstila, from the University of Turku. During this week, they will be supervised by members of the ICA Senior Committee Martin Grossmann, from USP's School of Communications and Arts (ECA), and Regina Markus, from USP's Institute of Biosciences (IB).

The ICA is a program of the University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS), a network that brings together 36 institutes of advanced studies from universities of all continents. The IEA-USP and Nagoya University's Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) are responsible for the first edition. The meeting in São Paulo took place from April 17 to 30, 2015, and the second phase in Nagoya, between March 6 and 18 of last year.

The project brings together young researchers from different nationalities and areas of knowledge to develop studies on a common subject. Its accomplishment was possible thanks to the partnership and support of the Deans for Research of USP and Nagoya University, besides Itaú Cultural, which finances a major part of the costs through the programme Global Networks of Young Investigators of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Art, Culture and Science.

The researchers arrived in Ubatuba after having prepared the scripts to be filmed by a video producer. After the recordings, the course is expected to be completely ready to air in June.

Photo 1: IO-USP; Photos 2 and 3: Richard Meckien / IEA-USP

How could one use computational modeling to apply a theory on the diffusion of matter as a reference for the analysis of biological, socioeconomic and ecological phenomena, and at the same time use this approach as a stimulus to interdisciplinary cooperation?

This task will be carried out by the new visiting professor of the IEA, engineer Luiz Bevilacqua, professor emeritus from the Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute of Engineering Graduation and Research of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (COPPE), and member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

He will develop his research project at the Institute for a year, beginning February 1. With his hiring, the IEA will once again count on a Brazilian visiting professor. This has been possible with a change in USP's legislation, which from 2011 to 2016 permitted the hiring of foreign researchers only.

Theoretical research

Bevilacqua's project is called "Complex processes of diffusion with applications in physical-chemical, socioeconomic and evolutionary-reactive phenomena. Motivation for the development of interdisciplinary cooperation". According to him, the proposal is based on the use of applied mathematical-computational models, "increasingly important for the simulation of certain phenomena coming mainly from the biological, socioeconomic and ecological areas, a range that demonstrates their importance for interdisciplinary convergence."

The central activity of the new visiting professor will be the deepening of the research on a new theory that he proposes for the representation of mass transport processes. Bevilacqua argues that the current theoretical models are incomplete, considering that this flow is unimodal, "however being plausible that in certain cases the process is bimodal."

The professor states that the stage reached in this theoretical research "opens great perspectives of deepening the theory and its applications in the modeling of physical and socioeconomic phenomena."

Due to these possible applications, he intends to count on the cooperation of USP's faculty and students to define and test the models in different areas of knowledge. Therefore, his proposal foresees the holding of seminars and discussions with the participation of small groups of stakeholders in each area.

The first activities will deal with three phenomena: capital flow, considering the presence of sources and sinks; population dynamics influenced by external factors; and epidemiology and infectious diseases.

Interdisciplinary cooperation

Bevilacqua will also lend his vast experience in academic management, and scientific and technological policy to stimulate interdisciplinary cooperation with the use of computational modeling. The tool for this will be the holding of seminars on:

• the spread of epidemics (dengue, malaria, etc.), taking the flow of infected and recovered humans into account;
• the population dynamics of endangered species;
• the diffusion of knowledge and information conveyed by traditional media.

He also foresees meetings on other topics to be proposed by USP's faculty and students interested in the project.

Book

In addition to the production of works to be published in scientific and engineering journals, Bevilacqua intends to prepare the production of the book "Applied Mathematical-Computational Models", which will be edited by the IEA. The work should have about 300 pages and count on contributions from at least 10 researchers.

The first chapter will be an introduction to computational mathematical modeling and the others will deal with specific problems explored in the seminars. Whenever possible, the emphasis will be on applications that can assist the solving of concrete problems. The idea is that the work should be written in such a way as to be accessible to graduate students willing to face new challenges.

Profile

Throughout his career, Bevilacqua has carried out innumerable professional activities besides teaching and researching in the academy, having participated in several engineering projects, research institutions and the coordination of scientific and technological policies, the governance of universities, and other research institutions and scientific societies.

Bevilacqua is a civil engineer graduated from the National School of Engineering of the University of Brazil (current UFRJ), having specialized in structures by the Sttugart College of Technology and holding a Ph.D. in applied mechanics from Stanford University.

He has already been dean of the Federal University of ABC, director of the COPPE, academic vice-president of PUC-SP, secretary general of the Ministry of Science and Technology, scientific director of FAPERJ and president of the Brazilian Space Agency.

Photo: Leonor Calasans/IEA-USP

A project hosted by the IEA and led by pathologist Paulo Saldiva, director of the Institute and professor of USP's School of Medicine (FM), has been contemplated with funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through the Grand Challenges Exploration program.

The project is aimed at designing and validating methods that allow the identification of people's causes of death where there is a shortage of professionals or training for this goal. Saldiva explains that these methods will allow to determine the immediate cause and the underlying cause (main disease) of death. "Without these indicators it is not possible to define public health policies or verify their efficiency."

Entitled "Evaluation of New Alternatives to Increase Accuracy in Determining the Cause of Death: An Autopsy-Based Approach," the project has received US$ 100,000 from the Foundation for its pilot phase, in which the methods to be developed will be applied. One thousand autopsies should be carried out in São Paulo during one year.

If the methodology of this initial phase presents high reliability indicators, the project could receive another US$ 100,000 for its continuity and expansion of research areas, since the initiatives supported by the entity should be of worldwide application. Saldiva informs that in case of continuity the research will be applied in other regions of Brazil and in some African countries, possibly Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde.

Interdisciplinarity

Under the coordination of Saldiva, the project team is made up of researchers from the Departments of Pathology and Radiology of the FM, from USP's Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME), and from the São Paulo Death Verification Service, where the exams will be carried out.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of the project and its intent to impact health policies in other developing countries, Saldiva believes that the IEA is the most appropriate research institution to host the work.

The results will be reported and published in the most prestigious scientific journal feasible, according to Saldiva. "The idea is that this report can subsidize the formulation of public policies, hence the importance of the participation of the Ministry of Health in the project. In addition, the work may result in a course for professionals to collect information with biopsies guided by portable ultrasound devices."

Research

According to Saldiva, the difficulties in collecting information on cause of death due to illness are due to several factors, among them the lack of a doctor to determine the cause or the lack of training of professionals.

There are also situations in which the body has been examined by a physician with no recording and collection of samples, or with the information not being concentrated in a database, or even with a non-transparent system.

One strategy is the development of ultrasound sampling methods: "A biopsy of the lung, liver or spleen and of noble organs can be performed. It would not be possible to extract samples with a living body without opening it and having the guidance of an ultrasound device connected to the cell, and with external supervision". If relevant, this biopsy may result in the dispatch of a health team to make the diagnosis and accelerate the process of identification of new pathogens.

The other utility of the project will be to allow the improvement of hospital services through the use of ultrasound: "No one else is willing to do an autopsy. If you want to know what a person has died from, you can ask the family for permission to donate knowledge in a non-invasive, immediate and non-mutilating way."

With this, it is possible to identify therapeutic targets for tumors of breast and stomach, for example. Then, with techniques of molecular biology, it is possible to clarify how the disease came about.

This line of research will be complemented by another project already underway at the FM and also coordinated by Saldiva: the Verbal Autopsy. It consists of the development and validation of questionnaires applied by health agents to family members. "The collected information will be compared for the formulation of algorithms that can more accurately determine the underlying and the immediate causes of death, using as reference standard what will be verified in real autopsies," he explains.

Foundation

Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Seattle, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest charitable institution in the world. It is run by the founder and former president of Microsoft and his wife, and by investor Warren Buffett.

In addition to its own initiatives, the foundation also supports projects in partnership with other charitable institutions, non-governmental organizations, development agencies, universities, research institutes and governments of several countries.

In developing countries, actions are directed toward improving the health of the population and initiatives that enable people to leave the condition of extreme poverty and food insecurity. In the USA, the foundation seeks to ensure that people - especially the poorest - have access to opportunities that enable them to achieve better schooling and better quality of life in general.

The Grand Challenges Exploration is one of the foundation's several sponsorship lines. The project coordinated by Saldiva has been selected in the 17th round of the program, called Explore New Solutions in Global Health Priority Areas. In the Brazilian case, it consists of a partnership of the Gates Foundation with 17 state foundations to support the research.

Photo: Philips

Saldiva remembers that "air pollution can not be solved with medication or health campaigns." It involves urban planning, issues related to mobility, studies on land use and occupation.

According to the researcher, while cigarette smoking is seen as a public health issue, air pollution is still not, even though about 14,000 people die early because of it only the city of São Paulo every year.

Saldiva's research integrates the USP Global Cities Program, which aims to draw scientifically sound proposals that can improve the quality of life in cities.

Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski took office as a member of the institution's board

The promotion of high-level interdisciplinary research advances in Latin America with the creation of the Espacio Universitario de Estudios Avanzados at the University of Costa Rica. The institution held commemorative seminars between September 5 and 7. Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski, deputy director of the IEA-USP, took office as a member of the institution's board.

Plonski gave the lecture 'Advanced studies: an international perspective', in which he showed a bit of the 30-year history of the IEA and the context for the creation of the network University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS). Formed in 2010 by advanced research institutes based in universities all around the world, the network discusses the production of knowledge and conducts joint scientific activities with the presence of prominent researchers.

"I see this invitation as a way to bring to the University of Costa Rica the lessons of a little more experienced institute, as there are few of its kind in Latin America. The concept of a center of advanced studies with interdisciplinary research characteristics in which students, professors and researchers feel comfortable to dare border issues is something important for Latin America to become increasingly included in the map of the international networks of advanced studies," said the deputy director.

Plonski points out that the UBIAS network has a large concentration of institutes in Europe, is gaining visibility in Asia and showing some growth in Africa. The United States have different mechanisms of fostering border research, he says. "With this, I realize that we are institutionally responsible for stimulating this model in which we believe, in order to reproduce it with its own characteristics in Latin America, since we are brothers and can assist with 30 years of experience of the IEA-USP."

The Espacio Universitario de Estudios Avanzados began to be formatted about a year ago. The new center has academic proposals similar to other institutes of the kind. But it will not operate independently, since it is linked to the dean of research at the University of Costa Rica.

On the other hand, due to the structure of research financing in Costa Rica, the center shall be free to launch tenders and calls for research and collaboration, unlike what happens in Brazil, where notices and processes for research funding are launched by agencies of development.

Seen as a threat to global health, the Zika virus can be an indicator of the inequality that persists in Brazil, since its impact is greater in poorer areas. The topic has been discussed in the article The Social Geography of Zika in Brazil, by Jeffrey Lesser, a professor at Emory University and visiting professor at the IEA-USP. The article is co-authored by Uriel Kitron, head of the department of environmental sciences at Emory, and has been published in the 48th issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas.

Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and Chair at Emory's Department of History, Lesser specializes in Brazilian Studies and is the author of several books published in Brazil, including three for which he has won international awards: A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980 (Duke University Press, 2007; Editora Paz e Terra, 2008), Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (University of California Press, 1994; Imago Editora, 2005; Tel Aviv University Publishing Projects, 1997) and Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Duke University Press, 1999; Editora UNESP, 2001).

While taking a sabbatical year from Emory, Lesser is conducting research on a project entitled Metropolis, Migration and Mosquitoes: Historicizing Health Outcomes in São Paulo, Brazil. His most recent book is Immigration, Ethnicity and National Identity in Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 2013; Editora UNESP, 2015).

Approaches to public health in Brazil, the attitudes of the population on how to contain the mosquito that primarily transmits the Zika virus (Aedes aegypti), government campaigns on the insect and the socioeconomic conditions of the areas that Lesser has visited for his research are some of the topics covered in the article. The analysis combines interdisciplinary methods of history, anthropology and epidemiology, as proposed in the project financed partly by Emory and partly by the IEA-USP.

When São Paulo was still undergoing the impacts of the most critical drought in its history in March 2016, Lesser visited the Capão Redondo neighbourhood in the company of health officials in charge of orienting the population and fumigating possible sources of the mosquito. At that time, most part of the city was supplied by tanker trucks. The problem was that the water stored by families usually ended up turning into breeding sites of mosquito larvae due to very poor storage conditions.

Aedes aegypti is not the only vector of the Zika virus, which causes microcephaly in newborns

According to Lesser, the community residents (with an average monthly income of about two minimum wages and a half) had few resources to repair the water tanks or buy equipment to seal the storage tanks. In a region where most of the civil works is semi-finished and access to basic services such as garbage collection and sewage treatment is irregular or non-existent, the population ends up with an unequal burden to carry.

Poor and pregnant women living in areas where there is an outbreak of fever caused by Zika are also more penalized, both in relation to men and in relation to women who can afford private medical care or even leave the danger zone while pregnant. "Health officials recommend that women at risk areas should prevent pregnancy and avoid sexual intercourse, but generally ignore the men's role in this matter," says the author.

Government campaigns showing "monster mosquitoes" with fangs and bad guy expressions can be "remnants" of educational materials used in the 19th century, as analyzed by Lesser. This type of image has been criticized by experts, since it can lead people to believe that any type of mosquito can be an imminent danger.

Furthermore, the way to conduct mosquito containment campaigns assumes widely paternalistic characteristics, as in the past. The use of the military in public health operations also brings distrust of a population that is used to dealing with the police force especially in confrontational situations. Many people end up seeing health workers as state social agents responsible for monitoring individuals rather than prioritizing the community's health.

"The Vaccine Revolt", by Leonidas, published in the O Malho magazine in 1904

Such approaches of government campaigns and "brigades" against the mosquito resemble the practices of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which led to episodes that culminated in clashes, as the Vaccine Revolt, held against compulsory vaccination for smallpox in Rio de Janeiro in 1904.

Crucial factors for transmission

The concentration of people in poor areas, public health planning by managers attuned to the past century policies and the uneven distribution of water, which makes the poor more dependent on storage in water tanks, are three crucial factors for the transmission of Zika as evidenced in the survey.

These factors show that the geography of inequality in Brazil persists, making the poor more susceptible to a problem that is not new, since the epidemics caused by mosquitoes date back to the "age of discovery" of America, concludes Lesser.

In March, same month of the article's publication, it was discovered that the Culex quinquefasciatus, known as the southern house mosquito, can also transmit the Zika virus, which causes microcephaly and malformations in babies. The discovery of biologist Constância Ayres, from the Fiocruz Pernambuco, has the potential to provide a leap in knowledge about the virus and radically change the Brazilian strategy of prevention, since there are no Culex control strategies in Brazil.

Unlike the Aedes, the Culex is more active at night, which would imply in awareness campaigns on the use of repellents and long clothing also at this period of the day, especially for pregnant women. In addition, the mosquito prefers to lay its eggs in extremely polluted places such as sewers, drains and channels. Thus, basic sanitation measures can be even more urgent to prevent the spread of cases of Zika and microcephaly in more precarious neighbourhoods.

Chronobiologist Till Roenneberg talked about interdisciplinarity and the humanities on July 19

"Certain issues in the academic environment must be considered when we think about promoting interdisciplinarity. There is a political decision to be taken by development agencies. We need to finance those wishing to work with those who do not belong to the natural sciences. Hence we will have a new world." The comment by chronobiologist Till Roenneberg closed the conference Why Science needs more than Interdisciplinarity, held by the IEA on July 19.

Trained in medicine, biology and physics, Roenneberg has shown his concern when talking about the lack of communication and mutual understanding between the natural sciences and the humanities. "All the resentment and arrogance among disciplines have only brought confusion. We know we should start talking. Philosophy and science were together in the beginning but then split apart. We must go back to the beginning, to the basic questions," he said. "We only know ourselves from criticism by others. So if we get rid of the human sciences, as many universities are doing, natural scientists will increase the ignorance of what they are doing."

Roenneberg lamented the fact that many humanists have no knowledge about crucial issues of biology, such as advances in molecular biology or the evolution of living beings. "Unfortunately, without a minimum knowledge about the importance of all this one can not build criticism about it. The biological sciences dominate science today and, therefore, we must understand this field if we want to put their scientists where they should be," he said.

"We need the humanities back into the science boat, but not in the way as it is currently happening. It has to be more communicative and more critical regarding other areas.“ Roenneberg, a professor and vice-president of the Institute of Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU), said that the term 'interdisciplinarity' has not been used properly.

Atomium, in Brussels. The structure is analogous to the interdisciplinarity as practiced in science, says the scientist

"The word reminds me of the Atomium in Brussels, where the spheres are connected to each other but nothing happens. It is as if we were hand in hand without getting anywhere. I like to think of interdisciplinarity when I think of what bacteria do. They exchange information and actually become infected. We have to change this word if we expect something more from interdisciplinarity. We have to think of a fusion of different kinds of knowledge," he said.

But the proposed fusion would not mean the abandonment of disciplinary fields. "It is not possible for everyone to be purely interdisciplinary, as this would result in bad science. I believe that everyone should have their specialties but also learn to understand and interact with other fields," he said.

Roenneberg is a disciple of physicist, biologist and physiologist Jürgen Walther Ludwig Aschoff (1913 - 1998), one of the founders of chronobiology, which studies the circadian rhythm, also called biological clock or circadian cycle. It is the period of about 24 hours which the life cycle of almost all living beings is based on. So it is a cycle influenced by variations of light, temperature, tides and winds between day and night.

The professor has spent two weeks in Brazil developing activities related to research on the quality of sleep in quilombolas. The studies should cover remote communities in several states. The aim is to deepen the findings on the influence of the external environment and artificial light on sleep quality.

According to the scientist, the modern man lives with little light during the day by getting locked in offices and is exposed to many stimuli at night due to artificial light. This not only changes the quality of sleep but also produces what he calls "social jet lag", or a physical and mental strain caused by the disagreement between the biological clock and the social clock. Sleep disorders are responsible for most of the diseases of modernity. "People smoke more, drink more coffee, suffer more from depression, anxiety, metabolic problems and diabetes," he said.

On science, gender and brain

Audience at the conference Why Science needs more than Interdisciplinary

Roenneberg resumed the topics discussed during the workshops In Search of Interdisciplinary Dialogue, held by the Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS) at Waseda University on March 14, during the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia.

He noted that regardless of the "knowledge box" or area that we deal with the entire academic enterprise relates to human beings. On the one hand we have the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, Fukushima, the terrorist events of 2011, while on the other hand there is penicillin, the abolition of slavery, equal rights, photovoltaic cells, immunization. In short, the good and the bad. "So all the products of each one of the disciplines we know will impact humans. So science must always be attentive to the direction it is taking and it seems that lately we have not given due attention to this," he said.

To understand the phenomena produced by science requires a kind of thinking "outside the box", he said. "What is central in everything we do is our brain. He is the microscope, the principle of our thinking. The world is full of data and everything is processed in our brain according to our personal experiences. The reflection on the future of science leads to questions about the actors that drive science. The understanding of the world is done by the brain and science is dominated by male brains."

The issue of gender and equity is relevant because all science, in general, has been done by men, he said. "And men like big and expensive toys. Perhaps this explains our tendency to invest in large, expensive machines. But this way we will produce more and more data we are not yet able to analyze properly. Therefore, we should invest in young brains capable of inventing algorithms and intelligent mathematical strategies that allow us to analyze gene networks, brain cell networks or other interactive elements. The brain is the most interactive instrument that exists," he said.

Roenneberg compared the Brazilian behaviour with the attitude of scientists who insist on staying in their comfort zone. "I do not understand why this huge country refuses to speak English. I went to a big bank and had difficulties because not even the manager spoke English. Many do know but are shy or do not want to leave the comfort zone because it generates anguish. People in general and scientists need to leave the comfort zone and dare to make mistakes," he said.

The restructuring of the UBIAS network's governance during the 4th Directors' Meeting, held in Birmingham between June 20 and 22, led the IEA-USP's deputy director Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski to take over a position of deputy coordinator. It has also been decided that São Paulo will host the fifth edition of the meeting. According to Plonski, a professor of the business and engineering schools at USP, the event will take place in the first semester of 2018.

"The meeting in Birmingham has brought important prospects on the future of the network, including the restructuring of its governance. A debate has raised topics that concern us directly, such as research funding from the EU, interdisciplinarity linking science and art, gender issues in the academic environment and others," Plonski said.

The UBIAS network has now two deputy coordinators, represented by the Freiburg University's Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and by the IEA-USP. The coordinator is Professor Morten Kyndrup, from the Danish Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS).

Formed in 2010, the UBIAS network brings together 34 institutes based on universities from around the world, and discusses the production of knowledge and conducts joint scientific activities with the presence of prominent researchers. The Intercontinental Academia (ICA), one of its leading programs, provides scientific exchange between generations, disciplines, cultures and continents, especially for young scientists aged between 30 and 40.

Professor Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA-USP, gave an overview of the ICA on a panel on June 20. The same session has been attended by researchers Valtteri Arstila and Vanessa Hellmann, both participants of the project, who joined the discussion on results and future prospects. Two editions of the ICA have already been developed, the first one on the subject "Time" and the second one on "Human Dignity". The content of the research on "Time", on which the participants have been working since the meeting in São Paulo, will support the creation of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), to be available for free on the Coursera platform.

Methodologies to assess the work of the ICA, privacy, and new social and international media have been some of the further issues discussed by the directors.

Proposed and organized by the Institute of Advance Studies of the University of Birmingham, the directors' meeting has been planned in order to share experiences, promote cultural and scientific exchanges, and articulate inter-institutional partnerships.

According to Till Roenneberg, "we are loosing our critical view into how we make science.”

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"It seems like they are trying to eliminate the humanities because there is an idea that apparently this field does not bring much money or many students to the institutions. This is the worst direction we could take. There is a crisis in the way we deal with the humanities and we should change it."

The quote by chronobiologist Till Roenneberg seeded his conference on interdisciplinarity given at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS) during the 1st Intercontinental Academia (ICA). The dialogue between different kinds of knowledge, or what academia calls interdisciplinarity, will be the topic discussed by Roenneberg on July 19, in the IEA Events Room, from 10 am.

Invited by the IEA to revisit the presentation of the ICA, the scientist from the Institute of Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) will give the conference Why Science needs more than Interdisciplinarity. The event will be broadcast live on the web.

The IEA, an interdisciplinary body par excellence, is revisiting the issue of interdisciplinarity from meetings with renowned experts. German sociologist Peter Weingart, board member and director of the Bielefeld University's Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), has shown that the achievement of interdisciplinary model will only be effective through an institutional restructuring in teaching and research institutions. Despite being fashionable in academia for over 20 years, interdisciplinarity was still a concept "empty of meaning" until recently, he said during his lecture at the IEA.

In Roenneberg's vision, science needs more than interdisciplinarity. "Modern science uses objective methods and criteria to find the ‘true’ mechanistic causes behind observed associations. While we have made great advances in explaining extended putative causal networks, we are loosing our critical view into how we do this," he says.

For the scientist, not biological dogmas or physical theories, not genes or quarks are at the centre of our scientific endeavours. "Only one thing is the central commonality of every scientific discovery: our own brain, which is basically a story-telling machine," he says.

At this meeting, Roenneberg will remember the necessity that we have to fuse as many different brains as possible to make larger jumps in our scientific insights.

The conferencist

Till Roenneberg is a professor of chronobiology at the Institute of Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in München, Germany. He explores the impact of light on human circadian rhythms, focusing on aspects such as chronotypes and social jet lag in relation to health benefits. Roenneberg attended both the University College London and LMU, where he began by studying physics. He switched to medicine in order to focus on the science of the human body, but ended up studying biology. As a postdoctoral fellow, he studied again under Jurgen Aschoff, studying annual rhythms in the body, then moved to the United States to study the cellular basis of biological clocks under Woody Hastings at Harvard University. In 1991, he began the tradition of giving the Aschoff’s Ruler prize to a chronobiologist who has advanced the field. He is currently the vice-chair of the Institute for Medical Psychology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the head of the Centre for Chronobiology, the president-elect of the European Biological Rhythms Society, the president of the World Federation of Societies for Chronobiology, and a member of the Senior Common Room of Brasenose College, University of Oxford. From 2005 to 2010 he was the coordinator of "EUCLOCK" and coordinator of the Daimler-Benz-Foundation network "ClockWORK", and from 2010 to 2012 was the member at large of the Society for Research of Biological Rhythms.

The University of Birmingham's Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) will host the meeting.

Hosted by the University of Birmingham's Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), the 4th UBIAS Directors' Meeting will be held from June 20 to 22. The IEA will be represented by its deputy director, Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski, from the USP'S Faculty of Economics, Management and Accounting (FEA).

The University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (Ubias) network brings together 34 advanced research institutes based in universities around the world, including the IEA, which is also a member of the Steering Committee. The directors' meeting has been planned in order to share experiences, promote cultural and scientific exchanges, and articulate inter-institutional partnerships.

UBIAS into impact: networking our academics to meet global challenges will be the theme of the meeting. According to the organizers, the impact on research is a key issue in the educational system of the UK and that has been carefully dealt with in many other countries. Thus, the meeting will be an opportunity for the network to explore this topic, consider its benefits and risks, and establish action plans and contributions.

The opening session of the meeting will be conducted by the directors Mike Hannon, from the Birmingham IAS, and Bernd Kortmann, from the FRIAS (Freiburg University). Then, each attendee will present their institute and the actions taken to strengthen the UBIAS network.

The main sessions will bring topics such as the importance of the UBIAS network and its potential benefits, the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), interdisciplinarity and impacts in the arts and science, media, engagement and data control in the 21st century, the creation of intellectual environments, higher education in the UK and the European Union, and the internationalization of research.

Professor Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA, will present an overview of the ICA on a panel on June 20. The same session will be attended by researchers Valtteri Arstila and Vanessa Hellmann, both participants of the project. Results and future prospects will be discussed. Two editions of the ICA have already been developed, the first one on the subject "Time" and the second one on "Human Dignity".

The former directors' meeting was held in Taipei, in November 2014, and discussed the theme Breaking Through Boundaries and Old Paradigms in the New Age of Globalization with a special focus: Rising East Asia in the New Age of Globalization.

At the end of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) in Nagoya, on March 18, the 13 participants presented the details of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on "Time" they have been working on since the first phase of the project in São Paulo.

The MOOC is the practical activity that has been asked to the participants as outcome of the ICA and was inspired by conferences, debates and workshops on the subject "Time", held both in São Paulo and in Nagoya.

The MOOC will be called 'Frontiers of Time: Exploring the Last Great Mystery' and will be hosted at Coursera's database, an online course platform created by five major American universities, of which USP is a partner.

There will be five lessons plus a video about the production of the course. Each lesson will take about one hour and have a text with approximately 7,000 words. The topics of the classes will be:

1. Introduction: Aspects of Time

2. Is the Present Special?

3. Time, Change and Cultural Differences

4. Is Time Different for Humans and Non-Humans?

5. How Do We Evaluate Time?

Each class will be divided into thematic sections. The first of them (Introduction: Aspects of Time), for example, will have four sections: 1) What is Time? 2) How do we perceive time? 3) How Do We Think About Time? 4) How do we use Time?.

The scripts will be ready in June and the filming is scheduled for August. One of the proposals is that the filming - with the performance of some of the participants - occurs at the research base of USP's Oceanographic Institute in Ubatuba, on the north coast of the State of São Paulo. Other alternative locations for the class production will still be considered.

Photo: IAR / Nagoya University

Related material

Videos:

History of Time and Calendar in Japan

Circadian Clock System in Peripheral Tissues of Mice

Truth and Time in Brouwer’s Intuitionism

More information:

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During the workshop In Search of Interdisciplinary Dialogue, sponsored by the Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS) as part of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), several experts met in Tokyo on March 14 to discuss interdisciplinarity between different kinds of knowledge.

Abe: "Japanese punctuality is not restricted to trains."

Professor Masashi Abe, from the WIAS, has addressed aspects of the Japanese calendar and the relationship of the Japanese people with time. History of Time and Calendar in Japan was the title of the lecture, which focused on how the modernization of the calendar has transformed the temporal culture in Japan, leading to one of the most punctual people in the world.

Abe said that foreigners visiting Japan get very impressed by how everything there is timely. In fact, this is true. To confirm this assumption, one just has to cite the high-speed rail network (shinkansen) between Tokyo and Osaka as an example. Despite having a territory that is usually battered by earthquakes, the transport has an average delay of 30 seconds, according to the professor.

"But punctuality is not restricted to trains. The Japanese are also very punctual. People are always anxious not to be late to their appointments. In general, they arrive 10 or 15 minutes before the scheduled time. Therefore, time regulates the life of the modern Japanese citizen. But it has not been like this forever," said Abe. By the end of the 19th century or during the Edo Period (1603-1868), many Europeans visited Japan and always complained about the Japanese being late.

There was a reason for it. Ordinary citizens had no mechanical watches. The clocks of the temples or towers had to beat 12 times a day to announce time. Time was measured by incense clocks, never by mechanical ones. This was a type of clock traditionally used in China, and then adopted by Japan and some Asian countries. It consisted of burning incense that allowed to have an idea of minutes, hours or days at a particular rate of combustion.

In the Edo Period, day and night were sectioned into six parts, with each part of the evening having a different length in relation to the day. In addition, the duration of each period of time also changed depending on the different seasons. There was no precise division of seconds and minutes. The smallest unit of time was the shihamtoki, representing a quarter of a session (tokki), or approximately 30 seconds, said Abe.

The Japanese abandoned the traditional calendar and the old time system in 1872. The week was divided into seven days and the day into 24 hours. The smallest units of time such as minutes and seconds were also introduced.

"From that, through the educational, social and military systems, the Japanese began to be taught how to be punctual. Moreover, in the Meiji Era, citizens adopted mechanical watches," the professor said.

Abe also showed a brief history of the old systems used in a more distant past. During the Kofun Period (centuries 3-7) the Chinese calendar was introduced in the country. This system was used in China since the 2nd century B.C. In 554, a Chinese expert was sent to introduce the calendar among the Japanese. In 602, the Chinese calendar was taught to children of the Japanese elite. In 604, the system was being used on a large scale, introduced by Empress Suiko (554- 628). In 660, Emperor Tenchi reached to build a water clock. But to modern times, the Chinese system prevailed.

Biological clock and the relationship with the genes

Tahara studies oscillations of the biological clock in mice via a non-invasive method.

Circadian Clock System in Peripheral Tissues of Mice was the theme of the presentation by Professor Yu Tahara, also from the WIAS. Tahara presented the results of research conducted in the laboratory led by Professor Shigenobu Shibata at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology of the School of Advanced Science and Engineering at Waseda University.

Tahara studies the expression of genes in biological clocks of mice. He has established a methodology to capture in vivo images from the bioluminescence in genetically modified tissues. A special high-resolution camera captures images of different tissues and organs.

His research group has developed an imaging protocol that easily measures the biological rhythms in individual mice in a non-invasive and longitudinal way. Thus, it is possible to detect the circadian oscillations (or biological rhythm) of tissues such as kidney, liver and submaxillary gland.

"It used to be necessary to sacrifice mice after an injection of luciferin in order to remove the tissues and carry out the analysis. Now this is no longer necessary. The method also allows longitudinal studies," he said. Luciferin is the substrate of luciferase, an enzyme capable of catalyzing biological reactions, transforming chemical energy into light energy. Thus, it is possible to record images of the behavior of cells and tissues of interest.

The researcher said that he puts the mice in a dark place and injects the enzyme every four hours throughout the day. After 10 minutes of each application he takes photos of the tissue, obtaining a series of images which indicate the increase and the decrease of biomass in different regions of the body according to the lightness at which the mice are submitted.

In this study, Tahara verifies the importance of light to the biological clock, or the incidence of what he calls "entrainment". The concept relates to adjusting the biological clock phases to different environmental conditions for the organism's survival. The researcher also studies the action of insulin, caffeine, physical exercise and stress on the circadian clock. Studies of insulin are associated with fish oil administration in the diet of mice. According to him, this improves the sensitivity of the metabolic substance.

The research has shown that caffeine has a high impact on the modulation of the biological clock, according to the scientist. The administration of caffeine in the morning showed no change of the biological cycle of mice compared to the control group. But eating at night before sleeping prolonged the awake cycle, ie, caused a delayed biological clock. The scientist cited research showing that this change also occurs in humans. "Coffee has the ability to wake up and also change the circadian clock. So the message is do not drink coffee at night before bed," he joked.

The effects of food on the biological clock make up a branch of study called chrono-nutrition. According to Tahara, research on nutrition conducted so far have focused on what and how much we eat, that is, the necessary items and the proper amount of food for each meal. "But now new research tell us when to eat, that is, the right time for meals. This is the new strategy with regard to nutrition," he said.

Tahara studied the same variables taking the age factor into account. With age there was a decrease of the REM-sleep period. The results also indicate that none of those factors influenced the biological rhythm of aged mice as much as food.

Akiyoshi has spoken of the relation of mathematics to other fields of knowledge, such as philosophy.

Brouwer's Intuitionism

The philosophy of mathematics from the point of view of Dutch mathematician Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer (1881-1966) was the subject presented by Professor Ryota Akiyoshi, from the WIAS.

In the lecture Truth and Time in Brouwer's Intuitionism, Akiyoshi analyzed the tension between what is mathematical truth and what is a mind construct. He explained conceptual problems on logic and philosophy, and interdisciplinary aspects.

According to the professor, the object of philosophy can be anything: language, knowledge, mathematics, physics, biology and so on. Mathematics or logic, therefore, have been a central topic in philosophy since Aristotle. With the development of language and, consequently, mathematics, philosophy of mathematics deals essentially with the origin of mathematical objects.

Platonism seeks to address this issue by showing that there is an abstract and immutable world that contains all the mathematical elements. As assumption, all mathematical objects already exist, but not all have been discovered yet. The role of the mathematician would be to find objects that have not been discovered yet in this abstract and unchanging world.

On the other hand, part of the mathematical community did not accept the ideas of Platonism and disagreed with classical mathematics. The antagonism to Plato was called constructivism, the intuitionism being the best known branch of this intellectual tradition. It was believed that a mathematical object exists from the moment when a mathematician can build it in their mind.

Professor Akiyoshi also showed some essential concepts of intuitionistic logic, including the sequence of choices and the notion of creative subject.