|
 Which is the largest river in the world? Would it be the Nile, in Africa, or the Amazon, in Brazil? Seeking an answer, the scientific expedition "To the Riverhead of the Amazon" has left last Sunday to Peru, in order to measure the extension of the river.
During the ten days of the expedition, Brazilian researchers and documentary filmmakers will count on the support of Peruvian scientists.
The team wants to identify the true head of the Amazon River, the place where it actually starts to run. They are going to collect data of the main streams that originate the Amazon waters.
To accomplish the task, the team will have 4x4 vehicles, and in some areas it will have to travel by foot. The adventure will demand a bit more from the team: in order to go up the mountains, they will have to do mountain climbing or alpinism. They will be guided by Peruvians specialized on the Andes.
Paulo Roberto, a researcher at the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), considers the expedition to be important. "I believe it is important because we will get to know our planet better. In the case of the Amazon River, for instance, we know that the snowies (the snowy peaks of the Andes) indicate climate change."
The researcher claims that the work includes the development of a universal measurement method that allows for the use of new technologies, such as satellite images and geo-processing. This new method may be applied to any river in the planet.
The existing measurements adopt procedures that follow the river stream that has the highest rate of flow, and not the highest length. By that token, the Amazon River, according to data provided by the INPE, may reach over 6,800 meters of length.
After the expedition, the participants will meet Peruvian scientists in order to reach a consensus about the extension of the Amazon River.
ABr
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.