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News from Latin America

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 27-Oct-2026 10:17 ET (27-Oct-2026 14:17 GMT/UTC)

Predators are real lowlifes

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

By deploying green clay caterpillar models across six continents, researchers unmasked an important global pattern. Their discovery that predation is most intense near sea level in the tropics provides a foundation for understanding biological processes from crop protection and carbon storage to the effects of climate change on biodiversity.

Journal: Science
Funder: Finnish Cultural Foundation, Instituto de Ecología, Academy of Finland, and Societas Entomologica Helsingforsiensis, A.C., National Environment Research Council (NERC), Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse sr, European Science Foundation

Discovering the brain mechanisms to diagnose diseases and prescribe treatments

University of São Paulo Medical School
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Development of approaches to reduce medical errors.

Journal: Scientific Reports

Study investigates collapse of natural or social systems

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A tipping point is a critical threshold at which a dynamical system undergoes an irreversible transformation, typically owing to a small change in inputs or parameters. A numerical simulations of tipping points did at the University of São Paulo's Physics Institute (IF-USP) in Brazil provide a better understanding of the characteristics of this point of no return and what happens to a system after its occurrence.

Journal: Scientific Reports
Funder: São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Brazil). Geochronologic research at the MIT Isotope Lab

The Earth sank twice, flooding the Western Amazon

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A tiny shark tooth, part of a mantis shrimp and other microscopic marine organisms reveal that as the Andes mountains rose, the Western Amazon sank twice, each time for less than a million years.

Journal: Science Advances
Funder: NSF Division of Earth Sciences and Colciencias Jovenes AQ57AQ58 Investigadore, AQ56 Anders Foundation, Smithsonian Institution

Antibiotic doxycycline may offer hope for treatment of Parkinson's disease

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A study published in the journal Scientific Reports, an online journal published by Springer Nature, suggests that doxycycline, an antibiotic used for over half a century against bacterial infections, can be prescribed at lower doses for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

Journal: Scientific Reports
Funder: São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Brazil). Geochronologic research at the MIT Isotope Lab

Astronomers perform largest-ever survey of high-mass binary star systems

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international group of astronomers led by researchers at the University of São Paulo's Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics & Atmospheric Sciences (IAG-USP) in Brazil, have just identified and characterized 82 new high-mass binaries located in the Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus, in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Funder: São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Brazil). Geochronologic research at the MIT Isotope Lab

Scientists tag humpback whales in southeast Pacific

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Whales from both poles migrate long distances to breed in tropical waters. Smithsonian scientist Hector M. Guzman and Fernando Félix at the Salinas Whale Museum in Ecuador, tagged 47 humpbacks with satellite transmitters to understand how the humpbacks' Southeastern Pacific population moves within breeding areas.

Journal: Aquatic Mammals
Funder: Panama's National Office of Science and Technology, Candeo Fund, Whale Museum, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, International Community Foundation

Device boosts interaction between light and motion

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Novel design developed by Brazilian researchers couples light waves and mechanical waves at higher intensity levels. One of its potential applications is in telecommunications as an optical modulator, because the device can sense and excite mechanical vibration, it could be used as an optical switch, turning on or off a laser beam that passes through it far more efficiently than the modulating technologies used today in optical telecommunications networks.

Journal: Optics Express
Funder: São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Brazil). Geochronologic research at the MIT Isotope Lab

Method identifies epileptic patients who can benefit from surgery

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Model based on genetic information can be used to improve early prediction of the response to drugs in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) candidates for surgery.

Journal: PLOS One
Funder: São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Brazil). Geochronologic research at the MIT Isotope Lab

Study detects doubly accelerated electrons in collisions of galaxy clusters

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A cosmic phenomenon resulting from the acceleration of a gas cloud by a black hole and its reacceleration by the shock waves from the merging of two galaxy clusters, has been described by an international collaboration of astronomers. The study enriches scientists' understanding of the universe on the largest scale.

Journal: Nature
Funder: São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Brazil). Geochronologic research at the MIT Isotope Lab