PERU Activists videotape the slaughter of dolphins off the coast of Peru. t.co/GRXDLE7mrw Corruption in Peru Aids Cutting of Rain Forest here. ARGENTINA AP finds deadly consequences of pesticide use in rural Argentina, dangerously close to schools here. BRAZIL Researchers in São Paulo develop nanoparticles to detect leukemia here. A fire in Brazil’s largest port burns … Continue reading Dolphins slaughtered off Peru’s shores, leukemia therapy in Brazil and tree species in the Amazon.
Since 2006, Latin American students have been designing biological machines with specific missions: to remove nickel from contaminated drinking water in Colombia; to sense and respond to arsenic in Argentina; and to target and destroy cancer tumors in Mexico. These projects are university submissions to the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, iGEM, started in … Continue reading Engineering life in Latin America
More and more Argentine scientists are following the lead of researchers that have used DNA to store texts, audios and pictures in sequences that were then inserted into bacteria. Scientists at the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa were able to store the first verses of the Argentine national anthem in a bacterium.
The Dark Energy Survey’s 750 megapixel DECam will map one eighth of the sky from Chile to see how the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Credit: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab.
A transgenic orange plant was developed at the UBA that is resistant to citrus canker caused by the Xanthomonas bacteria. This plant bears a frog gene that confers antimicrobial properties.
CHILE
The 750 DECam megapixel camera, part of the Dark Energy Survey (DES ) and installed in the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Cerro Tololo, Chile will map one eighth of the sky to find out why there is accelerated expansion of our universe. The DES officially started August 31.
A Chilean-German diving project is forming with the aim of exploring Antarctic waters to document wildlife.
A robot has been created by scientists in Mendoza for watering gardens. The system uses a similar technology to that used to detect movement in video games and moves around the garden on three wheels.
80% of the Caribbean’s coral reefs have disappeared, thanks in part to a bacterial attack, says one researcher. Credit: Dolphin Discovery via Flickr.
The Argentine Council for Information and Development of Biotechnology (ArgenBio) celebrates ten years of continuous broadcasting about biotechnology. Its educational program “Why Biotechnology” has trained more than 13,000 teachers across the country and worked with public and private entities in developing biotechnology in Argentina and Latin America.
BRAZIL
The Boticario Foundation for Nature Protection has launched a campaign aimed at the general public to raise awareness about the endangered jaguar (Panthera onca) which inhabits the Pantanal (a wetlands shared by Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia).
The West Antarctic began to form approximately 22,000 years ago according to a study recently published in the journal Nature. They found, while analyzing a block of ice two miles deep, that a part of the white continent was formed long before the rest of the continent.
Bolivian scientists are not happy that their government has outsourced to foreign researchers the study of extremophiles in the salt flats of Bolivia. Credit: Rabbit Hole via Flickr.
ARGENTINA
The South Atlantic, specifically the Gulf of San Jorge, will be studied jointly by Argentine and Canadian scientists, says the Ministry of Science and Technology of Argentina. The project will start in January 2014, will be done aboard the ship Coriolis II and require an investment of one million dollars.
For 10 years the Faculty of Agronomy at the UBA has been working with farmers in the municipality Daireaux, located 400 km from Buenos Aires. Through tax benefits, producers are encouraged to conserve soil and rotate crops in addition to adopting traditional farming practices in the area. The producers involved in the project have seen significant improvements in organic matter content and soil stability.
A group of scientists in Cordoba has created an innovative technology that allows people with physical disabilities to switch on the lights or lower the blinds in their homes through a system that decodes their brainwaves and transforms them into intelligible orders.
