un periodico english no. 4

Published by Universidad Nacional de Colombia • ISSN 1657-0987 • www.agenciadenoticias.unal.edu.co/english-news

http://www.unperiodico.unal.edu.co/en • [email protected]á D.C. - Colombia • Issue 4 • December 2010

Sea sponges with potential to cure cancer

Fatty acids in sea sponges from the Colombian Caribbean react against breast, colon and lung cancer, according to a group of researchers from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellin and Universidad de Antioquia.

Special Issue: Water

Hem

is.fr

ArchaeologyAcademy InnovationBiodiversityThis is important! Colombian research has to be supported

Now the challenge is to protect the environment of the zogui-zogui monkey

Device detects signsof life under debris

Prehistoric marine predator’s fossildiscovered

92 18 20

Pág. 10


2D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Executive Director: Carlos Alberto Patiño VillaPress Chief: Carolina Lancheros Ruiz Associate English Editor: Juliana Ariza Flórez – [email protected]

Copy Editor–Translator: Wilson GarcíaProofreader: Lina Rojas Camargo

Associate Spanish Editor: Nelly Mendivelso Rodríguez Editorial Committe: Jorge Echavarría, Egberto Bermúdez, Paul Bromberg, Alexis de Greiff, Fabián Sanabria

Art Editor: Ricardo González Angulo Spanish Copy Editor: Verónica Barreto, Lina Rojas Agencia de Noticias UN Editors: Félix Enrique Blanco, Catalina Suárez

Printing: Editoriales LA REPUBLICA

Expressed opinions are those of the authors alone and don’t compel or compromise principles by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia or politics by the UN Periódico.

Web Page: http://www.unperiodico.unal.edu.co Mail: [email protected] Phones: (571) 316 5348 - (571) 316 5000 ext. 18384 / Fax: (571) 316 5232 Edificio Uriel Gutiérrez Carrera 45 Nº 26-85, piso 5º. Bogotá - Colombia ISNN1657-0987

This is important! Colombian research has to be supported

Agencia de Noticias UNIn Colombia, in many cases

people prefer to import science and technology before support-ing the country’s developments or they underestimate basic scien-ces. Researchers from Universidad Nacional de Colombia give their opinion about this issue.

Firstly, the great diversity of natural resources, biodiversity, and the mineral and water rich-ness are both at the same time a blessing and a headache for Co-lombian people. Many Colom- bians have the same question: how to take advantage of all this in a sustainable way?

Rubén Darío Godoy, chemical engineer, affirms that one of the main problems is that the govern-ment has not defined the develop-ment priorities for the country. Priorities are clear in some sectors, but in others, which are equally important, their priorities are for-gotten.

“This is the case of the pe-trochemical sector. Some decades ago, this was an incipient indus-try, but today it is completely re-duced. The contradiction is that we import petrochemical supplies, which could be produced in the country, since we have these re-sources naturally in our territory,” said Godoy.

The perfect example is the methanol, a type of alcohol used for biofuels, which is imported, although it is obtained from natu-ral gas, an energetic resource that Colombia has in 12 main produc-tion fields.

“It is illogical. If we have the raw material and we need a final product, we should have an inter-mediate step, which is research. We have the potential to do it,” asserts the Chemical Engineer from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

William Oquendo, a candidate to become a Doctor in Physics, affirms that Colombia can not keep on reproducing and buying science and technology from other parts of the world.

“Here, people sometimes copy things, but they are useless, since our geography, lands and mate-rials are very different from those in other parts of the world. We can

If research in applied science is essential to generate visible development, it is necessary to advance in basic sciences.

Universidad Nacional de Colombia has great research capaci-ties, but more support from the entrepreneurial and public sectors is needed.

According to researchers from Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia, it is important to generate local developments for our own problems; importing science and technology is risky.

not expect, for instance, that road designs for soil from Chile, which are made with different rocks from those in Colombia, will have the same behavior here,” explains Oquendo.

The young researcher is part of the Physics Systems Simula-tion Group of Universidad Na-cional de Colombia, composed by a dynamic team of scientists, led by Professor Daniel Muñoz. All of them are focused on making instruments for develop-ment from basic sciences and applied physics.

“Research in Colombia has to be supported, since we have to find a way to apply that knowledge from other parts in our context. If we manage to redesign formulas, design our own materials and use our own findings, we could im-prove our development,” affirms the researcher.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Villalo-bos, also a candidate to become a Doctor in Physics, asserts that new basic sciences have to be recon-ceived in the country.

“In many occasions, research in basic sciences is underestima-ted, since it does not provide entre-preneurs or the government results in short or mid term, however, this type of research is a priority for the country, since it brings the biggest advancements,” mentioned Villa-lobos.

“For instance, at this moment we are using a very abstract geo-metrical computational program, which, at first, could not have practical applications in other areas. But we know that at a cer-tain moment someone could have a different perspective of this tool and apply it to certain phenome-non of reality,” explained the Phy- sicist from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

The message from all the re-searchers is: this is important! Co-lombian research has to be su-pported, because it is the key to competitiveness, development and the solution of our own pro-blems, saving in importations and the generation of social richness.

Therefore, political and union leaders and, above all, the private sector have to look at the academy to effectively use the new law of Science and Technology.Ph

otos

: Uni

med

ios

Academy

3

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Academy

This year, Universidad Nacional de Colombia has been recognized not only for its academic achievements, in which students have been essential, but also because of its management as one of the most respected enterprises within the Colombian society.

Phot

o: V

ícto

r M

anue

l Hol

guín

/Uni

med

ios

Universidad Nacionalpositioned among the institutions with the best reputation in the country

News Team Unimedios

This year, the dedicated work of students, administrators and staff of Universidad Nacional de Colombia was outstanding. The academic, managerial and pro-cessing achievements are remar-kable. One of the most relevant topics is the Triple A status as an outstanding company due to its good financial management.

On one hand, the young stu-dents stand out due to their aca-demic quality. For instance, the winners of the Otto de Grieff Award given last Friday, in which the stu-dents of Universidad Nacional de Colombia obtained the first place in four of the six areas of know-ledge awarded: Natural Sciences, Appropriated Technology, Health Sciences, and Creativity for arts and writing expression. In this last category, they not only got the first place but also obtained the se-cond place, as in Social Sciences and Sustainable Development and Environment. There, the best un-dergraduate works from the Uni-versities are selected. The aim is to promote academic excellence, stimulate research and promote the conformation of academic communities.

Good results are consequence of many years efforts in which the priority has been to obtain high standards of quality. For that reason last April the Ministry of National Education, gave to the University a Institutional Accreditation for 10 years. Universidad Nacional de Colombia is the only university in the country with such a long term certification.

At some point, Fernando Chaparro, coordinator of the Na-cional Council for Accreditation (CAN for its Spanish acronym), in-dicated that “Universidad Nacional de Colombia is the strongest higher education institution in the coun-

try from any point of view: qua-lity of teachers, number of teacher with a doctorate degree, research groups in different campuses. In addition, it plays an important role in knowledge appropriation.”

CAN explained that in the case of Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia, three main points were important to obtain accreditation: the human resources quality (its teachers), the capacity of genera-ting knowledge in the contempo-rary world (research) and the ability to project it to community. It is also important to highlight that the institution owns 79 accredited aca-demic programs, which represent 85% of its academic offer.

People notice

us more

Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia is also visible in the in-ternational context. From the first semester of 2007, at the time it obtained the 1,111 position, it has climbed 590 positions in the Ranking Web of Universities in the world. This ranking is made by Laboratorio de Cibermetría del Consejo Superior de Investiga-ciones Científicas, an entity which is part of the Ministry of Science and Technology in Spain.

Currently, Universidad Nacio-nal de Colombia is on the 531st place in the world. In Latin Ame-rica, it obtained the tenth position and exceeded important universi-ties from Brazil and Mexico; coun-tries with better higher education systems. Within the country, Uni-versidad Nacional de Colombia is more recognized than Universi-ties such as Antioquia, Los Andes and Javeriana. This classification measures academic and scientific production among 20.000 institu-tions of higher education, in the five continents. For this reason, to occupy this position is a great achievement.

At the Institutional level

To be consistent to its initia-tive to be one of the best higher education institutions, Universi-dad Nacional de Colombia started working at home.

In 2010, Universidad Nacional was positioned as one of the enter-prises with the best reputation in the national context. Universidad Nacional is in the 40th place among 100 enterprises analyzed. Merco, a famous Spanish measuring com-pany with corporative reputation, conducted the survey. Merco is a well-known company for being a monitoring reference in the world, similar to Fortune in the U.S.

Merco considers that the Pre-sident of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Moisés Wasserman, is one of the principal entrepreneurs in the country. He is in the 57th place among 1.110 candidates including important opinion leaders, entre-preneurs, government representa-tives, and NGOs in Colombia.

Additionally, Universidad Na-cional de Colombia obtained the first place as the company with the best labor conditions in the country, according to an evalua-tion made by financial analysts, NGOs, consumer associations, la-bor unions and opinion leaders.

“This is a large survey about people’s perception in different so-cial sectors. In all of them, there is an excellent perception about the University. At this moment, people rely on the country, the entrepre-neurial and the economic sectors, which is positive for our graduates. This is an excellent opportunity for them to find a well paid job,” says Wasserman.

The study in Universidad Na-cional de Colombia reveals that “the University’s reputation, social and entrepreneurial commitment are evident in the academic, re-search and extension proposals. In

addition, the economic and finan-cial management, labor proceed-ings, internationalization, ethical and environmental commitment are evident, which is beneficial for the academic community and the population in general.”

Triple A

Among the education sector, Universidad Nacional de Colombia obtained the second place, just af-ter Universidad de Los Andes. Con-cerning this topic, Universidad Na-cional’s President said: “Los Andes is an important symbol for entre-preneurs. However, other symbo- lic universities for enterprises did not get good results in the survey. Universidad Nacional obtained the second place among other public and private universities, which is very positive.”

The President of Universidad Nacional de Colombia affirms that there are other two good pieces of news generated recently. The first one is the Triple A status given by Fitch Ratings, an international ratings agency. This guarantees the credit quality of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its ca-pacity to pay as a decentralized governmental entity.

The second one is the opinion given by the General Controller-ship of the Republic, which em-phasized the good management of the financial balances at the institution during 2009. “We have never had a report as good as this one. This means we belong to a non–risk category due to the good management of our figures,” said Moisés Wasserman.

This group of excellent news from Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia during 2010, according to the directives, is just the beginning of a long path the University has to walk in order to be one of the most impor-tant institutions in Latin America and one of the best in the world.

4D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

sHealth

Phot

o: A

ndré

s Fe

lipe

Cas

taño

/Uni

med

ios

A significant progressin cervical cancer research studies

Luis Miguel PalacioUnimedios

Although proteins and their structure have been studied since the beginning of the last century and better understood since the 1950’s, what have changed in the last 20 years are the methods for their study. Proteins are products generated by human genes and they are in charge of developing cellular work such as energetic metabolism, growth and reproduction.

The term “proteomics” was created in 1994 by the Australian researcher Marc Wilkins. Since its origin, this discipline has un-dertaken the study of organic substances found in cells as a collective, and has also set aside the classic method of examining cells separately.

“The collective study of pro-teins has led to a more detailed analysis of what really happens in a cell, no matter if it belongs to an animal, vegetable or a microorga-nism. The information obtained can be used to modify those cells and generate great health bene-fits,” says chemist Myriam Sán-chez, Hormone Research group director (GIH, for its acronym in Spanish) of the chemistry depart-ment at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. The group figures as a pioneer to implement this tech-nique for the study of diseases like cervical cancer in the country.

Promising advances

Cervical cancer or uterine cer-vix cancer is considered the most frequent type of cancer in women. It is commonly connected to pla-ces such as developing countries, where according to the National Cancer Centre, 80 percent of the

A group dedicated to the study of hor-mones from Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia has identified a list of the organic substances that could be implicated in cervical cancer metastasis, through pro-teomics; a technique consisting in the large—scale study of proteins.

Cervical cancer is commonly connected to places such as developing countries, where 80 percent of the registered cases in the world occur.

registered cases in the world occur.The big paradox, is that the

main cause of death in affected patients occurs due to cancer me-tastasis or dissemination towards other organs; a special charac-teristic of this malignant tumor which has led to its study using proteomics, a strong scientific tool that reveals in detail the molecular aspects of the disease.

During the last decade, the GIH, which is supported by the Nacional Cancer Center, has stu-died derivative cell lines of tumors from women with cervical cancer. Due to proteomics application, it has identified 22 proteins in the last three years related to the mi-gration and cell invasion process. From this group, six proteins had not been previously identified. These proteins could be pharma-cological targets, that is to say, they could be useful to create medi-cines to control metastasis.

To analyze the samples, the researchers had to send them to the Stockholm University (Swe-den) and the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), to which the GIH has established coopera-tion agreements due to the lack of specialized equipment for this type of studies in the country.

But, how far can Colombian sci-entists go under these conditions?

The situation in Colombia and Latin America

“In Colombia, despite the presence of suitable professio-nals for this type of analysis, there are no laboratories with the necessary equipment to perform a complete proteomic study, which includes biological sampling, pro-cessing for obtaining the proteins, and subsequently achieving their individual identification. In other words, it gives them a name and then establishes their function,” says professor Sánchez.

Sánchez considers that the main problem is the lack of a mass spectrometer (a device used to separate ions in samples that have a different charge–mass rela-tion), a situation that explains why Colombian scientists have had to send their samples to foreign labs. The fundamental unit to perform proteomics could cost between 4 to 5 billion Colombian pesos.

In Latin America, there are some labs with the necessary fa-cilities to perform these scien-tific tasks: Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas in Venezuela; the Instituto Pasteur in Montevideo, Uruguay; and the Proteomics Lab in the Universidad Católica in Chile.

Cuba, for instance, has be-come the world leader in the application of technologies in this field. Currently, the Center for Ge-netic and Biotechnology Engineer-ing, located in La Habana has one of the few research groups in the world capable of identifying al-most 100 percent of the proteins in a simple microorganism.

Just one chemist in the island, Gabriel Padrón, owns 15 patents for technological development in proteomics, which helps to increase the number of proteins identified in one study.

Padrón recently visited Co-lombia for the proteomics work-shop–course, “Fundamentals, Applications and Perspectives,” in which he mentioned the necessity of creating an international net-work to boost this type of studies in the region.

“Techniques have been per-fected to a point in which they allow the identification of more than one thousand proteins in just one hour. Twenty years ago, separating and recognizing just one protein used to take months,” said Andrés Felipe Vallejo, chemist from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Like humans, proteins have a unique characteristic which makes them different from the rest. This shows how complex proteomics is.

The proteomics process re-quires not only sophisticated tech-niques for its application, but also a big pedagogic effort to overcome scientist’s lack of information about the topic. In the opinion of Professor Myriam Sánchez, this requirements are essential in a re-gion where cervical cancer figures should be an issue from the past.

5

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Health

When enriching chicken meat with organic selenium, the antioxidant enzyme Glutation peroxidasa in charge of preventing cancer cells growth in humans is enhanced. A study on animal production corroborates this idea.

Phot

os: V

ícto

r M

anue

l Hol

guín

/Uni

med

ios

Gimena Ruiz PérezUnimedios

The project Effects of sele-nium sources and concentration in productive parameters of broiler chicken and its accumulation in the meat, directed by Carlos Au-gusto Gonzales Sepúlveda. Pro-fessor in the Animal Production Department of the Faculty of Agri-cultural Sciences at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellín, proved that when adding organic selenium to broiler chicken’s food, the mineral is accumulated in the meat, keeping the meat’s humidi-ty, improving the protein’s quality.

According to the investigation, the consumption of this enriched food contributes to neutralize free radicals, agents that cause can-cer, protecting human organisms against all type of infections, bac-teria, virus and toxins.

Selenium is a mineral the body needs for its normal functioning, since it is a vital component for different metabolic processes, in-cluding the thyroid hormone, the antioxidant defense system and the immunologic function.

As a mineral supplement, it is essential for domestic animals, since it regulates important repro-ductive functions, physiological processes and muscular tissue for-mation, helping regulation of the metabolism through promotion of normal growth and generation of successful reproductive processes.

However, selenium is fre-quently used inorganically in diets for animals; in other words, it is used as a product of industrial reac-tion and chemical processes, which meaningfully reduces the amount of mineral that can be used for ani-mal or human consumption.

What researchers did was to include organic sources of sele-nium from yeast in the chickens’ food. So, when consuming chi-cken, people would absorb the substances deposited in their meet in a better way.

Chicken with selenium helps to prevent cancer

Through consumption of en-riched chicken with selenium it is possible to stimulate the enzyme Glutation peroxidasa that protects the organism from degenerative effects of peroxides or death cells such as toxin accumulation and cell destruction. What this mineral does is helping to eliminate them through urine and transpiration.

Professor Carlos Augusto Gonzales Sepúlveda affirms that minerals such as selenium, zinc, and copper, among others, have been used for a long time as food supplement to complete human nutrition. For this reason this in-vestigation is important, since it proves that it is possible to enrich food products naturally and make them more nutritive for the con-sumer.

“The tendency is to buy highly nutritive food, which benefits the physiological functions of the or-ganism and reduces the risk of suffering from diseases, by streng-thening the immune system,” says the investigator.

Chicken’s meat is one product of animal origin with the biggest acceptance in the world. Accor-ding to Gonzales Sepúlveda, in the United States and Europe the annual consumption per capita fluctuates between 45 and 50 ki-los, whereas in Colombia there is a consumption of 22 kilos during the whole year.

Taking into account this con-sumers’ demand, researchers have modified this animal pro-duct, which not only is full of vita-mins and minerals, but also a very competitive Colombian product. “This study contributes to the Co-lombian market to start produ-cing enriched meat with the best

international standards of quality for an entirely organic production, able to participate in global mar-kets,” said Professor Gonzales.

The experiment

The experiment was conduc-ted in 400 broiler cockerels Ross 308. They were one day old and weighed 42 kilos in average when the 42 days experiment started. The study consisted in comparing 10 treatments, each with a replica, in which the influence of selenium in consumption was analyzed along with other elements such as the bird’s gain, in weight, food efficiency, and concentration of selenium in meat.

For this purpose, 2 organic (from yeast) and 2 inorganic sour-ces (selenium selenite, which is very common in the diet of ani-mals) were used. The measure-ment was made through 3 diffe-rent concentrations, 0.1, 0.0, and 0.6 parts per million, a 1 gram equivalent per ton.

For Professor González, a bi-gger functionality and efficiency are evident in the Prokel selenium sample (organic) concentrated at 0.3 ppm, since “it was possible to establish a longer length in the juiciness and humidity of the meat and, as a result, a better taste.”

The experiment proved that water retention is better after the sacrifice of the animal, which means that there is a better per-formance of the birds, in other words, more kilos are possible to be obtained from the same amount of birds when they are fed with concentrate food enriched with selenium.

Chicken with selenium helps to prevent cancer

6D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

0 hour 24 hours 30 hours

Imag

esha

ck

The cost of a cornea transplant is around $4 million COP. In Colombia there are close to 700 patients waiting for someone to donate this membrane.

Usually, collagenase bacteria can destroy the corneal tissue in 20 hours. When using genipint, it takes the bacteria around 120 hours to destroy the tissue, this gives more time to specialists to react.

Corn

ea tr

eate

d w

ith

geni

pint

Some light for those waiting for corneal transplant

Genipint is used in traditional Chinese me-dicine to relieve symptoms of type 2 dia-betes and it is also used to correct vision problems. Ophthalmologists discovered it is useful to strengthen the cornea.

Patricia Barrera SilvaUnimedios

It all happened during a nor-mal ride on the bus, when Maria Claudia looked at her son and no-ticed something was wrong with her 10 year old son’s eyes. “She noticed that my eyes were conical” says Philip, now 24 years old.

When she went to the oph-thalmologist, the diagnosis was definitive: the little child had an advanced disease on his right eye known as keratoconus. His cornea was useless; as a result, it was ur-gent to find a new one to perform a transplant.

This story began back in 1994, and got complicated due to the list of almost 200 patients, that were waiting for someone to donate this membrane. Time passed without any news, and ten years after Phi-lip suffered again when his left eye’s cornea began to fail and re-quired a transplant as well.

The cornea is a transparent structure similar to soft contact lenses. It permits the passing of light into the eye, makes possible 65 percent of the focal power of the eye, and acts as a protective shield for the iris and the lens.

Philip is part of a group of more than eleven thousand Co-lombians suffering from kerato-conus in the country (1 in 4,000 people suffer from this problem). This disease consists in structural changes within the cornea that make it thinner and changed it into a more conical shape than its normal gradual curve.

Not in all cases keratoconus patients lose this membrane and require a transplant, as in Philip’s case. In fact, there are different treatments for this disease; for instance, the insertion of intras-tromal corneal ring segments to flatten the cornea. However, this option has its own problems since the ring can be destroyed by the organism or it can get infected.

A new option was recently de-veloped: crosslinking, a chemical reaction that produces new links among the fibers of tissues and increases their endurance.

This is the method used by a research group in ophthalmology at Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia; but instead of using ribo-flavin (a type of medicine) in the cornea with ultraviolet light, they use a natural compound tradition-ally known as genipint.

Through the use of this com-pound, it is possible to strengthen

the cornea and achieve significant advances in regulating the shape of the cornea. In addition, it increases visual acuity in a great number of patients. However, the application of ultraviolet light (UV) is highly criticized.

“Despite the results obtained with this treatment, UV light could injure the corneal endothelium and epithelium, and in the worst case scenario, it can injure the lens and other intraocular tissues,” said Marcela Ávila, ophthalmologist surgeon and author of the project.

What they did

Genipint extract comes from the Chinese fruit Gardenia jasmi-noide. It has been patented and re-cognized as a useful biocompound for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. In fact, it has been studied in oph-thalmology as a tool to prevent lens capsules, lens that help the eye fo-cusing images, from getting blurry after cataract surgery.

This is the first research study published in the world in which the effect of genipint on the re-habilitation of collagen, cornea’s main component, is measured. The endurance of this protein depends on the establishment of union zones among its molecules and on an even distribution they have within the cornea. The densi-ty decrease of these unions in one person suffering from keratoco-nus is a situation that could cause 50 percent decrease in the vision quality, compared to a healthy cor-nea.

The method to establish how much endurance the cornea gets is precisely a strength test, such as the one performed by scientists at Uni-versidad Nacional de Colombia.

The study was performed in 25 healthy corneas from pigs. All of them had between 8 and 10 post mortem hours. Scientists cut two slices of cornea from each animal’s eyes with a scalpel. One piece of this membrane was kept as con-

trol and the other was treated ex-ternally with genipint, at 0,10%, 0,25% and 1%, in a balanced saline solution for 40 minutes.

Findings in biomechanics

After treatment, researchers calculated the elastic behavior of each piece of cornea by stretch-ing it to a breaking point. This procedure was performed using Young’s module, which measures the easiness or difficulty to stretch a fixed material. The stretching and strengthing figures showed an increase in the endurance of the treated corneas, depending on the concentration of genipint.

As shown in the graphic, as the control cornea (without treat-ment) reached a stretching of 8% with 100 kilopascal (KPa) (Pascal is a pressure unit of the international system of units), it was necessary to use two times more pressure to obtain the same stretching in a cornea treated with genipint at 0,1%, that is to say, 200 Kpa. It proves that with genipint cornea gets stronger.

Eventually, if 85% stretching wanted to be reached in a cornea treated with genipint at 0, 25%, the pressure should have been in-creased to 300 KPa, and if treated at 1% the pressure to reach 8% stretch-ing would have been 400 KPa. As a result, it increased the density of the cornea’s fibers and reduces the spaces between fibers.

This study also permitted to measure effects on the membrane resistance to bacterial collage-nase, a residue from microorga-nisms that destroy corneal tissue in a few hours.

Usually, if an infection occurs, collagenase diminishes the cor-neal area in 50% after 20 hours. In a cornea treated with genipint, the total destruction occurs after 220 hours. Doctor Ávila considers this to be a great improvement, since “it is possible to treat and stop the disintegration of the cornea when infected.”

“It is going to work since geni-pint use is proposed for treating diabetes, for being a compound that works for human beings with-out being toxic. In the research area it is important, since we have reached a lot, for instance, testing in humans. Now we are trying re-habilitation in the sickest corneas to avoid patients experiencing a transplant” said the researcher.

Health

7

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Phot

o: c

ourt

esy

Dor

is Va

lenc

ia

Through the use of orthopedic devices, patients with hemo-philia can improve their joints movement, affected by the constant bleeding.

With more than 10 yeas of experience, the Hemophilia Research Group from Univer-sidad Nacional de Colombia proved that children with hemophilia, a disease that affects blood’s coagulation, can live a nor-mal life. The key: interdisciplinary work based on rehabilitation along with a treat-ment technique different from the one used by insurance company.


Having Carlos running on the corridor was a big challenge for science. He is 7 years old, and since he was born he got diag-nosed with hemophilia. According to the initial prognosis, he should be on a wheelchair.

Studies carried out by the He-mophilia Research Group from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in La Misericordia Hospital and his parent’s perseverance make of Car-los the evidence that having a good quality of life is possible despite of suffering from hemophilia, a con-dition that 2.500 Colombians have, according to the last census.

Hemophilia is produced by a genetic mutation (in the X chro-mosome, one of the sex chromo-somes in humans) transmitted by the mother side and affecting men exclusively.

Blood coagulation depends on various structures such as subs-tances called “coagulation factors” from which 13 have been scientifi-cally identified.

The X chromosome contains the genetic information about the coagulation factor VIII (a funda-mental factor for clot’s creation), and if the chromosome mutates, the factor fails. Depending on the degree of mutation, hemophilia that is produced can be mild, moderate or severe. “A mild hemophi-lic can have a normal life without having symptoms of this disease, the moderate and severe cases, as Carlos’ case, do not,” says Silverio Castaño, a pediatric oncohema-tologyst at La Misericordia Hos-pital and director of the research group from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Claudia, Carlos’s mother, re-members that the symptoms began since the first moment: “Changing my son’ diapers was a torture, I re-member collecting them not with urine, but blood. He got irritated easily and that gave him hemorrhages,” she said.

It is not just blood

Problems go beyond irritation. For severe hemophilic babies, the simple act of crawling and putting some pressure on their knees pro-

duces hemorrhages. Pulling them from their arms or losing a tooth takes them to the hospital. Even vaccination produces bruises.

These bruises are result of a common phenomenon called hemarthrosis, which is an inter-nal bleeding of the joints. When this bleeding occurs, bone joints change completely. Their contact with the blood’s iron, due to hemo-rrhage, makes them swallowed producing a lot of pain and impe- ding their movement.

“One of the main risk fac-tors that hemophiliacs face is he-mophilic arthrophaty, a process –similar to arthritis in old people– in which joints and cartilages lose their functions due to hemorrha-ges,” says Oswaldo Lazala, one of the orthopedists in the group.

A successful and economical treatment

The general treatment in the country consists exclusively on the application of factor VIII (a coa-gulation substance), when hemorrhage occurs. This procedure is used regularly in emergencies and it is the one permitting blood to coagulate and the patient to stop bleeding. The medication cost ($ 3 million COP per ampoule) is co-vered by the insurance company; however, sometime patients need more than one per hemorrhage episode.

“We use a different process called prophylaxis, which has shown better social and economic results,” says Castaño.

It consists on the application of Factor VIII three times per week in children diagnosed with severe hemophilia, from the age of 2 un-til they turn 18. This treatment is

preventive and permanently used, that is to say, it is used to prevent the hemorrhages, not to stop them when they happen. Its success has been proved from the 1970s by Swedish scientists.

At first, the cost seemed to be high, but results obtained by the Swedish in an investigation that took years, showed that 50% of the children treated with this procedure never experienced bleeding again during their adult life. The other half experienced only five episodes of bleeding per year. A person with hemo-philia, without the treatment, ex-periences at least 5 episodes of bleeding per week.

Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia began this treatment with a group of twelve children in 2000 (nowadays they are seventy), and they have obtained excellent results since then. Additionally to prophy-laxis, the treatment has been com-plemented with the work of professional orthopedists and physiatrists that look after patients in each hemorrhage episode. In addition, they have nurses, nutritionists, dentists, geneticists, and psychologists to help patients suffer the least da-mage during these episodes.

Due to children’s vulnerabi-lity to this disease, many parents remove their children from school and prevent them to play or have friends. The psychological treat-ment, directed by Doctor Germán Piraquive, tries to give them a nor-mal life through informative and recreational workshops.

Besides, there is a deforma-tion of the knee joints in 50% of the cases of children with severe hemophilia. In this case conven-tional therapy does not work, for that reason Doris Valencia, a phy-

siatrist from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, has established the use of orthopedic devices to re-duce deviations in a non–invasive way with positive results.

“We work in different areas, from nutrition to odontology, since any complication in a child with hemophilia costs millions of pesos and it can ruin the work of many years,” says Castaño.

Advancements vs. costs

One of the most important

contributions to stop this disease is genetic counseling. In Car-los parent’s case was vital. “I’m the sixth of a family of ten bro- thers, I have 25 nephews and none of them have had this problem. When studying all the women in my family, the geneticist Juan Jose Yunis found that I’m a carrier. If I had another child, the baby would be like Carlos, and if I had a baby–girl, she would be a carrier too, so we decided not to have more chil-dren,” says Claudia.

Despite of scientific evi-dence, prophylaxis is not globally used in the country neither par-ticular interdisciplinary groups to treat these patients, since these professional teams are al-most inexistent.

The battle against the health system is huge, since insurance company do not provide the medi-cine, as it happened to Carlos. He was moved to a hospital where the appropriate medical equipment does not exist, and his parents were suggested to reduce the me-dicine dose since doctors consider it is exaggerated giving the medi-cine to patients as a preventive procedure.

“A patient with hemophilia, without proper treatment, gets completely rigid and doomed to live on a wheel chair. This is a rea-lly expensive situation for society. The interdisciplinary management that we have, allows us to improve life conditions for patients with hemophilia. They end up being al-most healthy, without limitations or sequels, integrated to school life and with great possibilities to be productive,” says the oncohema-tologyst from Universidad Nacio-nal de Colombia.

Health

A normal lifeis possible

despite hemophilia

8D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Amazonian macaws at risk

Agencia de Noticias UN

A study from Universidad Na-cional de Colombia indicates that the extraction of blue and yellow macaw chicks in the Amazon is above 26%, which is leading to the overexploitation of species.

“If a population is already being overexploited, any rate and extraction type would have se-rious effects on its viability and they could take the species to ex-tinction. Adult extraction, even in healthy populations, is more criti-cal, since the 3% rate is already re-ducing populations and they are experiencing chick and adult ex-traction simultaneously. The hunt rates should not be over 1% or 2% to avoid the risk of extinction,” explain Esteban Carrillo and Diego Fernando Builes Puertas, authors of this study.

The amazona (parrot) and ara (macaw) genus are especially vulnerable due to factors such as low reproductive rates, low chick survival, late reproduction, high proportion of non–reproductive adults and specific requirements for nest construction. Not to men-tion they are the favorite species people like to have as pets and that their extraction is generating bigger economic ‘profits’ to local hunters.

In particular, the blue–and–yellow macaw (ara ararauna), which lives in the low land forests

that extend from Panama to the center of Bolivia and south–east of Brazil, is very common, but its population is being reduced due to human presence, and local extinc-tions have already been registered.

The sensibility analysis of the adult hunt scenario for crafts shows that this type of extraction could have serious effects. Through a modeling program, it was de-termined that just by extracting 3% of the adults, the growth rate becomes negative, an 8% of ex-traction means high probabilities for extinction, and Rates over 10% mean that the extinction pro-bability of this population in the next 100 years is between 52% and 100%.

Researchers warn that the on-ly sustainable extraction is survival hunt, which is performed to obtain animal proteins or hunt sub–products to satisfy the needs of a group of humans linked to rural zones. Likewise, they request for the hunt rates to be reduced below 10% in order to protect the population viability.

“The recommendation is to es-tablish protected areas, which in-clude their important nesting and feeding places such as salados and cananguchales. In addition, for-bidding the trade of these species until Population Viability Analyses (PVA) are performed to establish rates and sustainable extraction means,” the researchers, said.The big majority of macaws establish stable couples during their entire lives.

New orchid species found in natural reserve in Yotoco

Epidendrum bispatulathum is the scientific name given to this new or-chid species. The new orchid is 1.7 meters and white.


Epidendrum bispatulathum is the scientific name given to the new species found by 2 graduates from Universidad Nacional in Palmira, in the Natural Reserve Bosque de Yotoco, owned by Uni-versidad Nacional de Colombia.

Óscar Pérez and Edicson Parra, agronomic engineers, have been creating a detailed orchid inventory in Yotoco’s Reserve since 2006 as part of their thesis, and after 3 years of investigations, cla-ssifying and characterizing, they established that this new species was not registered up to now.

One specimen of this new or-chid was sent to the Mexican ex-pert Eric Hagsater, who confirmed that this new flower is the first of its kind found in the world.

The new orchid has an inflo-rescence of 28.3 and is 1.7 meters high, it is fragrant and its color is white. Humanity will welcome this

new flower with a scientific article in the prestigious magazine Icones Orchidacearum.

For Óscar Pérez, this finding “has huge intrinsic and ecological values, since it tells the degree of interven-tion in which this forest reserve is, as this new species are difficult to be found.” Likewise, Pérez says: “This finding turns Yotoco into a unique diversity place with endemic species that are only found there.”

The study was supported by some professors from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Palmira, and some international advisors to study over 86 species that were reported in the forest reserve.

Now, the new orchid will be a topic to be studied by scientists and universities in the country. They will be in charge of giving a long life to this new species found by engineers from Universidad Na-cional de Colombia. Now they tell the flower: welcome to the world!

Phot

o pe

rson

al fi

le

Phot

o A

ndré

s Fe

lipe

Cas

taño

/Uni

med

ios

Biodiversity

9

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Phot

o pe

rson

al fi

le

Now the challenge is to protect the environment of the zogui-zogui monkey

The zogui-zogui monkey (Callicebus caquetensis) was seen for the first time in the 1960’s, but it is until now that it has been recognized as new species.

Marta Bueno, a biologist from Universidad Nacio-nal de Colombia and expert in cytogenetics. She is currently working with other Callicebus genus species.

Thomas Defler is an important expert in primates who has given big scientific contributions to know more about our biodiversity for more than 33 years.

Javier García, biologist from Universidad Nacio-nal de Colombia, is part of the group of scientists that defined the species. He’s from Caquetá.


The zogui–zogui monkey, a new type of primate in Colombia, which has recently been disco-vered by the science, has just been publicly recognized; however, warnings about the vulnerability of its environment have already been made.

This observation was made by a young biologist from Universidad Nacional de Colombia named Javi-er García, who is part of the group of scientist that defined the species, which is economically supported by the organization Conservación Internacional Colombia (Interna-tional Conservation Colombia). According to the biologist, the ex-cessive livestock farming, defores-tation, and forest fragmentation of Caqueta’s forests put this new spe-cies at serious risk.

“The area in Caquetá where the monkey lives is highly defo- rested, especially due to the in-tensive livestock farming and the constant colonization that has been happening for almost 40 years. This phenomenon is part of the colonization ring that affects the entire Amazon region. Besides, there are other problems caused by deforestation and bur- ning; two techniques used in the Amazon region to extend grass for livestock farming and illicit crops,” said García.

Professor Thomas Defler, ex-pert in primates from Universi-

Phot

os: V

ícto

r M

anue

l Hol

guín

/Uni

med

ios

dad Nacional de Colombia, had the initiative to study this monkey. He affirms that the first indicator about this new species appeared almost 40 years ago, when Scien-tist Martin Moynijan made an ob-servation about it.

“I arrived to Colombia in 1976 and when I read a book written by Professor Moynijan I felt curious about the existence of this mon-key. I tried to reach the zone for 30 years, but I was stopped by the law and order issues. Fortunately, I met student Javier García, who was born in Caquetá and had the con-tacts to reach the zone. In addition, the security issues improved and made possible to perform a better exploration,” explained Defler.

Professor Marta Lucía Bueno, expert in cytogenetics from Uni-versidad Nacional de Colombia, confirmed through different ge-netic studies that the zogui–zogui

monkey was indeed different form the rest of the primates located in the north and south of Caquetá region where it lives.

“We worked with the Callice-bus genus for 4 or 5 years. When we performed tests on specimens confiscated by the police, we im-mediately realized there were very particular taxonomical questions interesting to answer. We found a 16 to 44 chromosome reduction, and we thought: well, there must be a very big taxonomical pro-blem,” said Professor Bueno.

Although the zogui–zogui monkey’s appearance is similar to that of other primates in the re-gion, since its characteristics are similar, when scientists analyzed it closely and carried out genetic proves it was confirmed that this species was unique.

The monkey’s howl, the way it socializes and the places in which

it prefers to live are very particular. According to Javier García, people were not sure that the zogui-zogui monkey was a new species, “the only characteristic people in the region used to identify it by its vo-calization, which is very different from that of other monkeys.”

One of the main concerns for researchers is that the new species is not in a protected area, such as reserve or natural park. This situa-tion makes the new species more vulnerable than what it is now. “Al-though many studies are necessary, we know that this monkey prefers to live in flood zones, marshes, and closed to canyons,” says García. This is a starting point to consider new natural reserves for the future in this region where forests of Ca-quetá are constantly reduced.

According to Professor De-fler, there are 34 species of pri-mates in Colombia, including the zogui–zogui monkey. This situa-tion positions Colombia and Peru on the fifth place in the world with the biggest monkey biodiversity. “However, there are other catego-ries in consideration that could increase or diminish the number of species, depending on scientific criteria,” asserts the Professor.

The young researcher from Caquetá, who was an important part in the scientific description of the zogui–zogui monkey, says he will keep his commitment to this monkey. “My master’s degree and my PhD will be centered on this species.”

Biodiversity

10D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s Phot

os c

ourt

esy

Agu

as S

ubte

rrán

eas

Bogotá Savannah is drying upCurrently, 17 municipalities of Bogotá Sa-vannah, with more than 10 million inhabi-tants, are using subterranean water as main source for domestic, agricultural and industrial uses. Experts from Universidad National de Colombia alert on the shortage of this important resource, which is des-cending 5 meters per year.


When we think about the wa-ter we use, we think it comes from the rivers, reservoirs, high plateaus or clouds, but just a few people consider that a big amount of the water they use is extracted from the inner parts of the earth. This is the case of Bogotá Savannah and the capital of the country, which survive in big part with subterra-nean water.

Not so long ago it was thought that this water would be a reser-voir for future generations, how-ever the reality is that today it is being consumed intensely.

Bogotá Savannah, a high plain located at an approximate height of 2,600 meters in the east moun-tain chain of Colombia, represents a basin that with time has been filled with hundreds of meters of sediments that have formed a great non–uniform hydrogeologic floor. Inside this structure, there are permeable formations com-posed by sand and gravel (which store water), known as aquifers, and capable of providing a useful supply.

Subterranean water is depo-sited in these aquifers, under the surface; they can be located in the deepest part of the earth and remain hidden for thousands of years, however the process is slow and can take millions of years.

In a study made by the Dutch scientist Thomas Van der Ham-mern (1998), the precipitations that fall in the basin of Sabana are described as 3,040 Mm3 (millions of cubic meters) per year, a volume of which only 100 Mm3 filtrate in the earth and recharge the aqui-fers of Bogotá Savannah.

According to other study made by Hidrocol for DAMA (2000), the recharge process in Savannah is really slow. It was calculated that water could take 10 thousand years to travel from the hills to the center of the Savannah basin; this explains the seriousness of wast-ing subterranean water.

The most important aquifer complex in Bogotá Savannah, from the supply perspective, is Guada-lupe complex, which would be lo-cated around 1,500 meters deep, according to a study made by the Instituto Colombiano de Minería y Geología, Ingeominas (Colombian Institute of Mining and Geology) (1992).

The other important aquifer is Cuaternario, the closest to the surface (50 meters deep according to the same study), which is rela-tive continuous in its basin, but it is made of clay, a material that does not retain water. For this rea-son, the aquifer has a low recharge capacity.

“The problem with Cuaterna-rio is that it is a big clay matrix that composes the surface of the Savannah. There are sand lens, and people have drilled those lens find-ing water, so they think those lens are the main aquifer and exploit them. However, there is a moment in which they dry up since they are made of gravel, what we know as a hanging aquifer, with a low recharge capacity,” explains Luis Camacho, a civil engineer from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Up to 1990, the Corporación Autónoma Regional de Cundina-

marca, CAR, for its acronym in Spanish, had a record of 3,672 wells in El Cuaternario, with a load of 41, 6 Mm3/per year. The study divided the Savannah into 9 sub–regions from which 5 have registered defi-cit between the recharge and ex-ploitation of the aquifer complex. On this respect, Geologist Mario Valencia affirms that “there is a big decrease in the subterranean water levels, which have drop off almost 5 meters per year, it is not a general figure, but it means a big risk for all the subterranean aqui-

fer structure in the Savannah.”Being aware of the deterio-

ration of the Cuaternario, CAR regulated the use of subterranean water and prohibited the exploi-tation of more wells at this level, allowing the exploration of Guada-lupe aquifer. Currently, in average, 500 wells have been drilled in this reservoir.

The beginning of the end

At the beginning of the 21st century, the subterranean water

level in the Savannah was closer to the surface. From the 1940s, when the exploration of subterranean water started, the decrease and reduction of the hanging aquifers began as well as the first signs of dryness in the soil.

“There are some people who say that we should not extract that water, since it belongs to future generations. We don’t extract it just to store it, we do it because there are people who need it…,” said Cesar Rodríguez, a professor of the Hydrology Master Program at Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia.

Professor Rodríguez proposes to use the water from Guadalupe aquifer to provide the sectors in Bogotá where there is a deficit of the supply or the sewage sys-tems do not exist, and to have an emergency system for the city. “Bogota is not exempted from an event such as an earthquake that damages the dams which provide with this liquid to the city, and on this case an alternative plan is es-sential.”

Other geologists agree with Rodríguez about the need of ex-ploiting Guadalupe aquifer, such as Geologist Javier Zuñiga: “what is planned now for subterranean wa-ter in Savannah is to take advan-tage of Guadalupe Aquifer, but its level is to low, and I think nobody wants to drill 1,500 meters deep to find volumes of flow,” he said.

For the Hydrologist César Rodríguez, on the other hand, deepness is not the problem, since he affirms the project is feasible from the technical and economic perspective: “if a 1,500 meter well is drilled, it may cost 3 times more, but it will produce a volume of flow 6 or 8 times bigger, therefore, the relation cost–benefits is justi-fied.” The problem, according to the researcher, is that models a-dopted by DAMA to measure the decrease levels of the subterra-nean water are wrong, in addition, they are the same models that the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Jaica, is using to propose the extensive drilling scheme of Guadalupe.

Jaica’s mission proposes to drill next to the mountain; how-ever, Professor Rodríguez says that “this is the least appropriate place, because if the recharge zone is drilled, the water level is going to decrease and the wells are going to dry up faster that if they drill in the center of the basin in which con-ditions are better.” Under those circumstances, the EAAB (the aqueduct company in Bogotá) is at risk of making unsuccessful and frustrating investments, which go against the Environment Law that proposes the need to protect the recharge zones, said the expert.

Several of the researchers consulted, bet on the Guadalupe’s exploitation to ensure the water supply for the Bogotá Savannah and part of the capital city for an average time of 150 years.

The question is: what is the capital of the country, one of the biggest cities in Latin America, go-ing to do when these resources are over?

“If in 200 years or less, humans do not control the atmosphere to make it rain where they want, civi-lization will come to its end,” said Rodríguez.

The Schematic section shows Guadalupe aquifer complex. The most favor-able places for well drillings are located in the center of the basin.Taken from Publication No. 27 “ Geoenvironmental aspects of Bogotá Savannah.” Ingeominas, p 243.

Special Water

11

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

The sponges have substances of bioactive interest, such as fatty acids, with potential to be used in medicine development.

Phot

os: p

erso

nal f

ile


Fatty acids in sea sponges from the Co-lombian Caribbean react against breast, colon and lung cancer, according to a group of researchers from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellin and Universidad de Antioquia.

David Andrés CalleUnimedios

After studying 12 species, the Animal Biotechnology Research Group from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellin and the Sea Natural Products Group from Universidad de Antioquia discovered that the biggest antitumoral potential is located in the species known as demosponges (demo-spongiae), which look like scourers.

“Sea invertebrates were taxo-nomically classified by Sven Zea, biologist from Universidad Nacio-nal de Colombia, and the chemical analysis extracts were performed by researchers from Universidad de Antioquia” says Diana Marga-rita Márquez Fernández, professor at this institution.

This finding is a promising alternative to develop medicine against malign tumors, in par-ticular if around 21.4 million of new cancer cases are diagnosed in the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The results

For determining accurately the molecular structure of the sponges’ bioactive substances that avoid cancerous cells growth, the researcher Diana Márquez had to travel to the University of Nice (France), because it was not po-ssible to make this type of analysis in Colombia, due to the lack of equipment. In the European coun-try, the agreement with the multi-national biopharmaceutical com-pany PharmaMar, found in four species (of 5 promising ones), frag-ments with a complex mix of fatty acids that proved an important biological activity against breast, colon and lung cancer cells.

Fatty acids are molecules that belong to the lipids group. They are part of each living organism (humans, animals and plants) and they are important because they are energetic molecules that are meaningful in all processes that occur within a cell.

They also play an important role as regulators within an or-ganism, to be exact; they are the starting point for the formation of other molecules that partici-pate in processes of order and vital control, for example, swallow res-ponse, body temperature, blood coagulation processes and mus-cular contraction, among others, says Márquez.

In sea sponges, these fatty acids are found individually or in-

tegrated to other type of molecules such as phospholipids, glycolipids and triglycerides. In addition, they count on a lower level of citoto-xicity, which is an advantage for normal cells, since, according to researcher Juan Bautista López, genetic biologist at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellin, all anticancerous substances are toxic: “if we are capable of crea-ting a new medicine, it would have less secondary effects in human organism than the medicines we currently use” said the biologist.

Professor Márquez affirms that four fatty acids that represent new molecules were found in one of the sponges. “These are new structures that have not been re-

ported up to now in scientific lite-rature. We are planning to separate them using isolation techniques to study the way they organize and then synthesize their components, so we can study if they keep their antitumoral effect” explained the professor.

According to the professor, the biologic effect of several fatty acids against fungi and parasites have been proved through a lot of studies, for instance, against parasites and fungi involved in the production of malaria, moreover, against bacteria responsible for tu-berculosis.

“Our interest is to find those components in which we can ob-tain an active molecule against cancer” she said.

Sponges’ potential

“Sven Zea, professor at the Biology Department from the UN in Bogotá and researcher at the Centro de Estudios en Ciencias del Mar (Cecimar), in Santa Marta, ex-plained that just in superficial wa-ters in the Colombian Caribbean there are around 200 sponge spe-cies, and the taxonomy of 180 is known. He mentioned that due to the big effort of different scientific groups, the analysis of substances with therapeutical effect has been performed in around 70 species.

In opposition to what many people think, sponges are not plants but animals. They are pri-mitive organisms that live fixed on the bottom of the sea without the ability to move, so they have to face a big number of problems with predators that take advan-tage of their sedentarism. Zea affirms that the majority of spong-es have developed chemical de-fense mechanisms including toxic or bad taste substances.

These substances’ pharma-cological properties as antibiotics, antitumorals, anticoagulant and antifungal drugs have been studied by researchers from all over the world, as well as their characteris-tics as antiviral drug, antimalarian drug and in bioessays to determine whether they are active or not.

Future perspectives

The research group at UN is working on a project to cultivate the cells obtained from sponges in bioreactors. “The idea is producing the important substances without altering the ecosystem in order to obtain a pure product” said Juan Bautista López Ortiz.

It is important to mention that there is still too much to do in order to obtain a commercial medicine. After proving the species effect, it is necessarily to complete preclini-cal studies, analyzing the toxicity, the action mechanism, and finally, completing clinical studies.

As said by Sven Zea, the stu-dies require many years, and up to now, medicine from sea orga-nisms, particularly sponges, are barely a dozen.

At this moment, the efforts are concentrated on isolating a mo-lecule that really helps developing a natural alternative medicine for the treatment of cancer and, if possible, at a lower price that the existing medicines in the market.

The sponges were collected close to Urabá in the Colombian Caribbean. Around 200 sponge species were found there, and the taxonomy of 180 is al-ready known. It was mentioned that due to the big effort of different scientific groups, the analysis of substances with therapeutical effect has been performed in around 70 species.

Special Water


12D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

If the country requires big hydroelectric projects to boost development, it is also necessary to consider its social and environmental impact.

At Universidad Nacional de Colombia the consequences in fish communities of the hydroelectric project to be built in Sogamoso river, in Santander, are studied.

Phot

os c

ourt

esy

Áng

ela

Gut

iérr

ez

Colombia will start to give a good use

to its caudalsIn the country, environmental licenses for the management of caudals from rivers are issued with limited scientific and technical data that include foreign concepts that don’t reflect the reality of hydric ecosystems. This situation has not guaranteed the sustainable use of water. A new methodology proposed by Uni-versidad Nacional de Colombia, which called the Ministry of the Environment’s attention, is offering a solution to this problem.

Carlos Andrey Patiño GuzmánUnimedios

When a hydroelectric pro-ject, such as the construction of a reservoir or an irrigation district, begins, the communities and de-fenders of the environment always raise the alarms. Their main con-cerns are how to guarantee that water will not be infringed and that the environmental damage will not be severe.

Researchers from Universi-dad Nacional de Colombia found some problems when revising 13 of the big authorized projects for the use of caudals from rivers in the country. In all of them, there is a list of complains from the communities; for example, the river’s bed dried up, there is not enough water for cattle or pas-ture, fish disappeared, etc.

Sergio Andrés Redondo, a stu-dent from the Hydraulic Resour-ces Engineering Master’s program, considers in his research study the difficulty in the estimation of en-vironmental caudals due to the

Special Water

13Ciencia

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Catfish and Colombian bocachico can be affected by current changes. In Sogamoso, they are part of the survival local economy. Data from Uni-versidad Nacional de Colombia is expected to be analyzed by the constructors of Hydrosogamoso.

The community of fishermen in Sogamoso river (Santander) is worried about the future bed damming. In this area, fishing provides food to many families.

limitations in the hydrologic infor-mation.

He has found, for example, that when analyzing 10 different methodologies (from the United States, Mexico and India) to es-tablish the use of water volumes, each methodology considers very different criteria, which can vary in 700% from one to another.

In Colombian methods, it was found that the Ministry of the Environment and Housing and Regional Development (MAVDT, for its acronym in Spanish) es-timates low values in the aver-age of water, since it estimates in 25% the yearly water volume. This represents that there is an autho-rization to use 75% of the river’s water. That would be a problem, for instance, for the tributaries of the mountainous zones with little current, since they could dry up, and significant changes in the course and ecosystems in rivers such as Magdalena.

Contained water

In the east of Caldas, the

project to transfer the water from Guarinó river to La Miel river, in order to boost production of the Hydroelectric La Miel 1, has been a long conflict. There, the construc-tion of a big tunnel for this transfer has brought the inhabitants of La Dorada and closed municipalities into conflict with the company Isagén. They affirmed that Guarinó river will eventually die.

The technical concepts from different academicians and the MAVDT concur on the inconve-nience of this project in the pro-posed conditions. The project has underestimated the possible da-mage to fauna, flora, aqueducts and water subterraneous systems in the region. UN Periódico tried to contact representatives from the company, but they did not provide any response.

In Santander, there is another issue disturbing communities, especially those in fishing towns. By 2014, a hydroelectric project is planned to take advantage of the current of Sogamoso river through the construction of a dam.

Angélica Ramírez, a student of the Master in Ecology, under direction of Professor Gabriel Pini-lla, director of the Biology Depart-ment in the Faculty of Science at Universidad Nacional de Colom-bia, are analyzing data about the possible effects this construction will have.

The detailed information, co-llected in different stations located in Sogamoso river, permits biol-ogy to affirm that the project will affect the fish communities in the area, since reducing the water flow affects the connectivity of the ri-vers and swamps. This reduction makes the process of migration for reproduction more difficult for fish such as catfish and Colombian bocachico, which are affected by variations in the water level.

“To determine the impact on the river flows, many analyses must be carried out in the flood zones in big space scale. The con-ditions and the affected species must be determined in each seg-ment of the region,” says the biolo-gist from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Proposals

Luis Alejandro Camacho Bo-tero, a doctor in modeling the wa-

ter quality in the rivers, affirms that in Colombia, a few months ago, did not exist an integral me-thodology to define environmental volumes of water to guarantee the correct use of the hydric resources, since the country has little infor-mation about the specific charac-teristics of the hydric diversity in the regions (hydrology, hydraulics, water quality, ecosystems, etc.).

In most of the authorized pro-jects, the use of the water volumes is established through methodolo-gies proposed by the environmen-tal authority (MAVDT), national or international entities (from Me-xico, Brazil or the United States), without a consensus about the methodology that should be used in Colombia due to its physic and climatic diversity and the informa-tion limitations.

A couple of years ago, Univer-sidad Nacional de Colombia su-ggested MAVDT a methodology to estimate environmental volumes of water when issuing authorizations.

The objectives, according to Camacho, were to clarify the in-formation, which had to be reco-

llected, and to analyze the com-panies when asking for authori-zations. Recently, the ministries elaborated a draft of a resolution in which some concepts proposed by the University were included: “Hence, criteria for environmental volumes of water estimation are regulated in processes of issuing environmental licenses and water concession.”

“Without this definition, or objective criteria to guarantee its assessment, the process to obtain environmental licenses becomes difficult, even for those who re-quest them, since they do not know about the process,” says Camacho. New advancements on this issue are expected with the methodo-logy developed by Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

For sustainability

Other limitation of the model that is currently used to protect the environment is that in Colom-bia a fixed water volume average is established for the whole year. What is the problem? According to

Professor Camacho, the seasonal nature and the variability in the clime are not taken into account.

It is not the same having a fixed volume of water for intense summer than for raw winter. De-pending on the season of the year or climatic phenomena, such as El Niño or La Niña, it would be necessary to determine averages for volumes of water per month and year.

In the proposal made by Uni-versidad Nacional de Colombia is established the need to verify the level of the rivers at least every 2 years, using detailed measure-ments about fish populations, macro-invertebrate (insects, larva, crustaceans, and mollusks) and the community of aquatic mi-croorganisms that stick to rooted plants. The objective is to corrobo-rate that defined volumes of water do not have any adverse effects.

“In all countries, engineering projects have a post–monitoring, but not in Colombia. Here, the unions and those who use wa-ter for different purposes do not like this topic. They would prefer to have a fixed water of volume for the next 30 or 40 years,” said Camacho.

Thus, the risk is that similar situations happen, such as the complete drying up of the cu-rrents in summer seasons, which can lead to ecologic sustainabi-lity problems and not to be able to guarantee the water supply in other areas.

The perfect example is Bogotá River, in which drying up a part of its bed is allowed. This happens since an environmental license gives permission of using almost the total amount of water close to Alicachín station, where be-tween 30 and 40 cubic meters per second are pumped for hydroelec-tric uses.

“Some would say that letting water flow is a waste, since some kilometers downhill the polluted part of the river starts, however, when the tributary is cleaned, the fact of not receiving retained waters in Alicachín would be a problem,” added Luis Alejandro Camacho.

The student Sergio Andrés Re-dondo affirms that “the proposal of Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia, apart of being Creole, in-corporates the intra–annual and inter–annual variability in envi-ronmental water volumes, com-pares conditions with and without the project, and it was made con-sidering criteria from other inter-national methodologies applicable to our context”.

Professor Erasmo Alfredo Rodríguez, from the Hydric Re-sources Engineering Research Group, supports the previous idea by arguing that the proposal also focuses on licensed projects, since they are developed in previously studied river beds.

However, he says that there is a long path to walk in other type of river beds that are also used for different purposes, such as those of municipal aqueducts. “Our methodology can not be applied to those rivers since infor-mation in municipalities is scarce. There are a lot of proposals to make there,” he said.

Rodríguez affirms that the management of water is a problem of multiple purposes in conflict. As a result, society, the government and the economic sectors have to find an equilibrium that guaran-tees its adequate use.

Special Water

14D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Luis Fernando Riascos EscobarUnimedios

The Andean Region is a sys-tem of mountains in the south of the American continent that ex-tends from Chile to the northeast of Venezuela, going through Bo-livia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, countries with natural resources and biodiversity of first order in the world. This is represented by the 25% of the variety of vegetable and animal species in the world, and 20% of the total amount of the water in the world.

In this region, the most impor-tant economic activities are agri-culture; cattle farming, and fishing in a lesser extend (capture and fish farming), which in Colombia’s case contributes only with 1,34% of the food production in the region and a per capita consumption of 4,1 kg per year (a lower figure compared to that of countries such as Peru, where it represents 48,9% of its production, it means, a per capita consumption of 21,1 kg per year).

Benefits of the aquaculture

After being aware of the impact that aquiculture has on the coun-try’s economy, the Hydrobiologi-cal Resources Research Group from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Palmira decided to investigate if the Andean Region was suitable for fish farming, and if this activity could become an alternative for food security in some regions of the continent. For this reason, a study began between 2008 and 2009, with financial support of the Consulta-tive Group on International Agri-cultural Research (CGIAR), which wanted to analyze the producti-vity of the water in watersheds and their relation with poverty.

On the first stage of the pro-ject, the variables that determine suitable places for fish farming were defined: water availability, suitability of the terrain, availabil-ity of free areas, size of the reques-ting population (which lives near the rivers and lakes), and access to potential markets. On the second stage, field work was performed to the water systems in Valle del Cauca and the Jequetepeque wa-tershed in Peru, to know about the use and management of the water-sheds water in these zones.

Water, terrain, and population are essential

According to Alexa Ramírez, environmental engineer and co–author of the investigation, the first step was to determine avai-lability of water. “The distance to water sources allows establishing how easy the access to this re-source is. Therefore, an idea of the total cost for the structure of this system is defined.”

The suitability of the terrain is determined by its texture, molded by clay, which plays an impor-tant role: the more clay, the less filtration of water in the soil. This is important to maintain the wa-ter levels in the ponds, since the planned water systems in the re-search model are build directly on the soil due to its easiness and economy,” said Ramírez.

Due to its adaptability to wea-ther conditions, preference of consu-mers and easiness of its production and commercialization in any coun-try of the Andean Region, trout and tilapia were the 2 species selected for the researchers to cultivate.

When analyzing water productivity in watersheds and their relation to poverty, a study found 139,33 squa-re meters suitable for fish farming in the Andean Region. Researchers elaborated maps with the routes towards important zones for deve-loping this activity of great impact in the economy. In Colombia, the regions of Valle del Cauca, Antio-quia, Tolima and Huila are the ones with the biggest potential.

Map 1: areas in the Andean Region with the best water aptitude.

Map 2: water systems in Valle del Cauca.

Not

imex

Tilapia and trout are suitable fishfarming.

Maps to develop aquaculture in theAndean Region

The zones where these variables meet were located with the purpose of boosting and increa-sing water production in the re-gion. “Our goal is to improve the use of water to provide food secu-rity without affecting the use given in agriculture and cattle farming,” mentioned John Josephraj Selvaraj, doctor in Natural Resources Ma- nagement and director of the study.

Improve the terrains

The results of this study were maps showing clear areas with the best water aptitude in the Andean Region. This is the result of defined intervals for each variable and its pondered sum through the system of geological information (map 1). Data were validated through the information from existing water systems located in the departments of Antioquia, Valle del Cauca (map 2), Tolima and Huila, and taking into account they were located in areas with water aptitude.

According to the investiga-tion, the most accurate indicators to define the promising zones are the slopes, the distance to water sources, and the distance to ur-ban areas. “The model defined an area of 139,33 square meters along the Andean Region,” affirmed En-vironmental Engineer Alexandra Ramirez.

In Colombia’s case, the most promising departments are Valle del Cauca, Tolima and Antioquia.

According to Professor Selva-raj, the practical use for this pro-ject is that “models will allow the inhabitants of these areas knowing if their terrains are suitable for wa-ter development.” The investiga-

tion was made on a regional scale; for that reason “high resolution data is expected to be used in the future in order to identify accu-rately the aptitude and land on a local scale.”

Researchers are convinced that these results opened a new possibility for governments of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN, for its acronym in Spa- nish), entities and institutions of the country to analyze the zones with the biggest food’s need that match these areas with water ap-titude to implement programs to help giving a solution for the pro-blem.

Special Water

15

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Phot

o: V

ícto

r M

anue

l Hol

guín

/Uni

med

ios

Pers

onal

file

Water treatmentwithout chemicals

During over 100 years, developing nations have used domestic and industrial residual water to irrigate vegetable crops, without any previous treatment. However, countries such as Germany, France and Brazil, among others, use a technique called stabiliza-tion pools, a system that naturally cleans water. Colombia could use the method to treat water.


In Latin America, infectious diseases are among the main mor-tality and mobility causes in the population, especially among chil-dren under 5 years old. In addi-tion, untreated residual water has become an important factor of vi-rus and bacteria transmission.

Due to this situation, Uni-versidad Nacional de Colombia, during the Second International Course of Engineering in Bogota, included a module on stabilization pools as an alternative for residual water depuration.

Stabilization pools are reser-voirs in which residual water is stored for it to show, naturally and with the pass of time, physico-chemical changes for its recovery.

Professor Duncan Mara, from University of Leeds in Germany, introduced the advantages of this technique, that despite being known in Colombia, haven’t been used with all its potential.

It is a system to treat water recommended by the Pan Ameri-can Center for Sanitary Engineer-ing, which cleans water naturally since it does not use chemicals, but ultraviolet rays from the sun for destruction of pathogenic organisms. It is simple to oper-ate and build and it is cheaper than a treatment plant that costs even 5 times more (the construc-tion costs of one pool is close to COP 2 million, depending on the construction’s characteristics). For this reason, the researcher consi-ders this idea as viable for the country’s capital.

“Stabilization pools are the most appropriate technology and they just need a 20 percent invest-ment and 10 percent of the opera-tion costs that other options would need. In France, there are close to 2,500 pool systems, which are main-ly used in small communities of around 100 people. Germany has more than 3,000 systems, 1,500 only in Baviera,” affirmed Duncan Mara.

A harsh reality

In Bogotá, the problem is evi-dent just by going to the capital’s south–west and looking at Bogota river’s bed. There are big amounts of vegetable crops with their owners, which use water from the contaminated bed and its tributa-ries to irrigate the crops in a nau-seating scene, not only due to the odor, but also due to the mental image of knowing that the water used on tomatoes, Swiss chards and lettuce has not been previously treated.

However, this technique, apart of being a tradition, is a key fac-tor for the economy of families who live from urban agriculture, especially women, according to a report published by the United Nations in 1996 and mentioned by Professor Mara.

Likewise, irrigating crops with Bogota River’s water is more pro-fitable for farmers, since it does not generate additional costs for the treatment of water and they do not need a license to use it.

In addition, the use on re-sidual water is almost mandatory, since they do not have any other option. The river is the only avai-lable water source to supply the demand of liquid that this urban plantations have.

The paradox is that in general products cultivated in these beds and then taken to places to be sold are very popular among cus-tomers since the product’s size, color and appearance seem to be proper. However, finding small larvae and insect eggs on the leaves of lettuce or Swiss chards is

In the southwest of the country’s capital, cows eat grass along Bogota river’s bed and farmers irrigate their crops with contaminated water of this tributary.

very common. This happens since food has been in direct contact with contaminated water with to-tal and fecal coliforms.

Good experiences

In the graduation thesis by Ángela Ramírez, a Master student from Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia, called “Treatment and re-use of water from Tibanica canal by means of systems of pools,” one of the few experiences that Co-lombia has had with stabilization pools is presented.

It is a pilot project with 3 pools in series, with different depth and a capacity to store 174.8 m3 of water.

According to the thesis wri-tten by Ramírez, “there are stu-dies in which 2.2 million of fecal coliforms and 7.4 million of total coliforms in vegetables have been detected. Besides, 5.7 ppm of mer-cury in milk produced with grass irrigated with water from the Bo-gota river has been detected.”

In the three pools of the pro-ject, a monitoring water quality was performed during 20 days, and a reduction of the total and fecal coliforms was obtained. In addi-tion, the concentration of this last biological parameter reached levels

that fulfill the regulations of Decree 1594 of 1984 of Colombian legisla-tion, which determines the water quality criteria for different uses.

When the investigation star-ted in the water of Tibanica cha- nnel, total coliforms between 105 (100,000) and 107 were found. When the treatment in the series of pools finished, the total coli-forms decreased to 103 (1,000), which is the accepted number by legislation.

For now, Tibanica’s experi-ence will begin its second phase, in which investigators will analyze the reasons why this strategy works cleaning the water from coliforms, but reducing the amount of nu-trients the water has, while it is in the pool.

A way to eliminate salt and heavy metals will be analyzed using a simulated model of the wetland where experiments with plants take place to determine what the best method to achieve this purpose is.

Besides, possible variations in the depuration process of the pools will be studied, dimini- shing the storage of water to 10 days to improve its implementation in cold weather such as the one from the Bogotá Savannah, where bio-logical processes can go slower.

A new challenge has just begun

Professor Julio Collazos, associated to the Civil Engineer-ing Department of the Faculty of Engineering at Universidad Na-cional de Colombia, supports the application of this method, but he is skeptical due to the cost that it can generate to the consu-mers: “the technology exists, but everybody would have to contri-bute, (…) currently, in the coun-try, we do not have a fixed rate for the treatment, people pay for the consumption and distribution service, but they do not pay for the treatment, and that may be one of the most expensive com-ponents.”

However, Luis Camacho, professor of the Civil Engineer-ing Department of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, does not think that it is unsustainable; he affirms that “the soil of the Bo-gotá Savannah may be expen-sive, but it is not as expensive as a treatment plant. Besides, the acquisition of the terrain is a pur-chase that has to be done only once and a treatment system for many years can be built at low production costs.

Special Water

Water treatment

16D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

sInnovation

Engineers from Universidad Nacional de Colombia designed a partial hand prosthesis, which not only has an excellent mechanical function, but also excellent cosmetic cha-racteristics. This prosthesis is going to benefit people under low income. Stainless steel is the key; its mechanical and esthetical functions are its main characteristics.

Partial hand prosthesis,an applied case

at Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Phot

os c

ourt

esy

Jhon

Edi

son

Muñ

oz R

iaño

s

and

Cris

tian

Aug

usto

Silv

a C

aste

llano

s

The prosthesis designed by engineers from Universidad Nacional de Colombia adjusts to all the patient’s specific needs such as grabbing objects and food, among others.

Giovanni Clavijo FigueroaUnimedios

The case selected by the in-vestigators belonged to Danny Silva, who had an accident at the age of 8, in which he lost his poin-ting and hearth fingers and atro-phied his thumb and pinky with a machine called “piranha” in his father’s workshop of metal crafts and structure for security doors. From that moment on, Danny’s life was traumatic; the physical sequels due to the amputation and the feeling of rejection made of him an introverted person to the point of using a stuffed glove to simulate his fingers.

Danny’s case is not isolated, according to Juan Guillermo del Valle, professor School of Medi-cine from Universidad del Valle, and a specialist in Physical Me-dicine and Rehabilitation. In Colombia 40% of hand injuries that occur during labor accidents affect in big proportion the poin- ting and thumb fingers. In addition, it is necessary to add statistics of the upper limps amputations that occur due to diseases, armed con-flict –in which land mines are in-cluded– and traffic accidents.

This circumstances motivated Christian Silva and Jhon Muñoz, professionals in Mechatronics Engi-neering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and an interdiscipli-nary team of professionals to think about how to reconstruct upper limbs with prosthesis at a low cost with technology and innovation.

The initial analysis evaluated significant movement lost, the hy-pertrophy in some muscles and the weakened tissue in Danny’s hand. The diagnosis was evident, as well as the cosmetic need. The project Mechanical and cosmetic design of a partial hand prosthesis was, without any doubt, a process designed for the patient, for his needs, possibilities, residual ca-pacities, and from his perceptions, feelings and desires.

The process

Different prototypes were built to finally obtain the definitive

model that covered the patient’s needs. The first model was made with duracover, a cardboard–type material, which “helped testing if angles of the hand’s coverage were correct and if they would corres-pond to what you see in a finger,” said Silva.

The second model was de-signed in acrylic, a material thought to be more functional and applicable in this case due to its components. However, at the end, stainless steel was chosen. “The previous materials were not rigid enough to build a prosthesis that withstood the loads managed by a normal hand. Cardboard was used only to test the movements; acrylic was weak, and, at first, we thought weight was going to be a problem with steel, however, at the end, we noticed steel was perfect,” men-tioned Muñoz.

The orthopedic devices can be electrical or mechanical, nylon, surgical steel, titanium or other materials. Everything depends on the specific case; however, it is important to mention that they are expensive. Christian comments that “prosthesis with an engine and all the necessary mechanisms for their functioning could cost almost USD 10,000.” However, the mechanical prosthesis for left upper limb –as named by its in-ventors– was conceived with a so-cial purpose and it is focused on solving an specific need, the cost and material are not more than COP 1 million and a half.

In terms of esthetics, the model of prosthesis was improved through the application of science that makes artificial limbs look real. “ Through this project, it was evident that both, the cosmetic aspect and the functionality are equally important. The patient is always interested in the functio-nality and esthetics of the prosthe-sis,” said Silva.

For Nancy Landinez, physio-therapist from Universidad Nacio-nal de Colombia who was part of this project, prosthesis try to sa-tisfy not only the functional need, but also the self-image need, the self–concept of body image and the sensation of how the patient

feels in society, “knowing that in the end many people like Danny can perform an activity with his entire hand, independently of the capacity of movement, is a matter of feeling complete.”

All prosthesis need a training and adaptation phase to be used. The time spent in the con-struction of the prosthesis and the trai-ning for Danny’s prosthe-sis was 3 months. “The idea was to obtain almost 100% of the hand’s functio-nality, even when it is difficult, in this project a 90% was achieved,” ex-plained Christian.

After the amputation process and implemen-tations of any prosthesis, the roll of physiotherapy is essential. Nancy Landinez affirms that patients have to re-learn many activities and skills they left behind. In addition, a scaring process and recovery is necessary to achieve movement.

The results of the process

Among the benefits, the accessibility for the public, due to its low cost and its simplicity, are the most remarkable because it does not need to be controlled by a card, electricity or battery to func-tion, since it is completely me-chanical, that is to say, the pros-thesis works with the movement of the hand itself to perform all the normal tasks.

Likewise, it is remarkable the work of the interdisciplinary team, the interaction of members from Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia which were part of this project: engineering directed by Professor Diego Garzón, physio-therapy for controlling the organ-ism and the work of engineers Sil-va and Muñoz, who were awarded at Otto de Greiff Awards, due to their excellence.

For Danny, who motivated this project, the result of the prosthesis was positive. The basic needs were fulfilled not only in the functiona-lity, but also in its cosmetic part, which helped him not to be afraid of showing his hand in public. “He does not really care if he’s using the prosthesis or not, since he does not feel rejected or attacked,” said Jhon Muñoz.

The idea of these professionals from Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia is perfecting the prosthesis model, improving its mechanisms with a better esthetic and start new prosthesis for hands, arms, legs, etc. In addition, they want to contribute with both, the cosmetic and functional welfare, of those who need prosthesis for different reasons.

17

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Innovation

A new artefactfor saving water at home

Due to population increase, by 2025 two thirds of humanity will suffer from lack of water, points out a report by UNESCO. It also states that 20 percent of the people in the world lack of safe and reliable water resources, and over 50% do not have basic sanitary facilities. To save 30 liters of this special element at home, engineers from Universidad Nacional designed an innovative system.

Phot

o: A

ndré

s Fe

lipe

Cas

taño

/Uni

med

ios

It is a device adaptable to showers and toilets and it avoids wasting water in unnecessarily uses.

Elizabeth Vera MartínezUnimedios

In Colombia, one person spends between 40 and 50 liters of water while showering 3 minutes a day, and 15 liters more for each additional minute. In hot weather, water consumption is increased in 80 to a 100 liters since people are used to showering two or three times in the same period of time.

The expenditure of the li-quid in the toilet is similar. In cold weather, it is estimated that be-tween 30 and 40 liters are con-sumed when flushing out the toilet 2 or 3 times, which depends on the toilet’s capacity that goes from 6 to 12 liters. In hot areas, the estima-tions fluctuate from 30 to 40 liters of water when flushing out the toilet for 4 or 5 times.

For the purpose of contribut-ing to save water at home, to avoid sanctions by the Ministry of En-vironment, Housing and Territo-rial Development such as water re-strictions and paying two or three times more for the public service, as it happened at the beginning of this year (between January and May), Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics students from Universidad Nacional de Colom-bia designed a device that will allow Colombian households to decrease the expenditure.

It is a device adaptable to sho-wers and toilets and it avoids was-ting water in unnecessarily uses. Its creators are Eduardo Alarcón, Camila Beltrán and David Tum-bajoy, under direction of engineers Nelson Arzola, John Jairo Oviedo y Edwin Cárdenas.

“Unlike other systems that al-ready exist in the market, such as plastic bottles or demijohns placed in the toilet tank to regulate the amount of water used, small devices that use half of the amount of liquid, flow reducers and fill-ing valves; our system recycles the water that comes from the shower, places it directly in a tank and from there it sends it to the toilet,” says Eduardo Alarcón.

The advantages

To corroborate the advantages of its design, the students mea-sured the water flow that comes out from the shower in three di-fferent households. The results showed a consume of 6 liters per minute, it means that in average 30 liters of water are consumed in a 5 minute shower, same amount that can be used flushing a 5 liter toilet for 6 times and a 3 liter toilet for 10 times. Consequently 30 li-ters per day would be recycled.

The device consists of four sys-tems. The first one is a water collec-tor that collects the water coming out of the shower, made up of one removable collection platform and a filter for solid objects (hair, rings, and pieces of soap).

The second system is in charge of transporting the water and it consists of one electric low con-suming pump, pumping the liquid from the platform to the collection tank, which is the third system.

The electric consumption measured in this design is from 20 watts; which represents an approximate increase of $500 Co-lombian pesos per month in a 4 people household from socio–eco-nomic status 3. This percentage would be smaller in comparison to the 28.000 pesos savings on the Acueducto bill every two months.

The tank that collects the

water has the capacity of sto- ring 120 liters of water, both for flushing the toilet and regu-lated by other system that is in charge of using the necessarily liquid only.

Finally, the device has a control system that permits an autonomous functioning con-sisting of electrical and me-chanical sensors.

For instance, in the platform, a sensor detects a minimum le-vel of water in which the pump can start functioning without the risk of malfunctioning.

The second access allows the entry of potable water (in a minimum proportion com-pared to the collected and recy-cled water), as a security mea-sure in case the tank does not have water from the shower, always guaranteeing the func-tioning of the toilet. The level of potable water that enters into the tank is controlled through a valve with a floater.

The water outlet is located in the lower part of the tank and due to gravity it fills in the toilet.

Water’s course

The water coming out from the shower or from any other recipient used to shower falls into the plat-form, goes through a solids filter

and when it reaches the enough level, a pump pumps it and takes it to the storage tank where it is available for any flushing.

The pump is not always active; it depends on how fast the platform fills up according to the water flow from the user’s shower, having an efficient use of electricity.

If the tank has a low level of water, it will fill up to a certain point with potable water coming from the aqueduct, so it will al-ways have water for the toilet.

An alternative for saving water

Water price per cubic me-ter in Colombia is calculated through a price rate formula based on basic and fix prices. Social status, contributions for assistance, management costs, operation and maintenance charged by private companies in charge of the distribution of water, private and mixed, are taken into account to set the price, said Jaime de la Torre, government employee at the Water Regulatory Commission (CRA).

Carlos Costa Posada, mi-nister of environment, housing and territorial development, said prices per water cubic me-ter that reach a household vari-ation depending on the region;

in Bogotá, for instance, it can cost around $2.000 COP a month, while in other regions can be around $900 COP.

High prices and lack of water are the most common problems that population always complains about, due to environmental prob-lems such as El Niño event or to indiscriminate waste, so the de-vice proposed by the engineers from Universidad Nacional de Co-lombia turns out to be a good al-ternative to stop wasting water.

18D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Device detects signsof life under debris


A device designed by electro-nic engineers from Universidad Nacional de Colombia permits to detect life under rocks and debris in collapsed zones.

Frequently, accidents in which the victims are buried during many hours or days are registered in the world. Some of those victims do not survive. A good example of this situation is the one of the 34 miners trapped 700 meter beneath the surface, under tons of rocks, after the coal and gold mine in which they were working in San José, in the province of Copiapó (Chile), collapsed. People noticed they were alive after almost 20 days after the incident.

At the beginning of the year, an earthquake affected Haiti is-land and left close to 140.000 fatal victims under the debris, which invaded the streets, avenues and buildings in the capital, Puerto Príncipe.

In Colombia, 73 miners were trapped under debris in San Fer-nando Mine, in the city of Amagá (Antioquia).

Taking into account this rea-lity, and the necessity of rescue corps for locating victims and knowing in the minimum possible time if a victim is alive under the debris, Juan Camilo Castellanos and Diana Parra Otálora, electro-nic engineers from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, in Bogotá, designed a device that detects hu-man breathing signs in collapsed zones.

The engineers, based on the Doppler radar technique, which sends a signal when it finds an object (on this case, the victim) and then returns to the radar with key information: the distance in which the body is located and its breathing rhythm.

The rainy season leaves fatal victims in Bogotá due to landslides in some slope zones, such as Ciudad Bolívar, Chapinero Alto and San Cristobal, among others.

The risks are potential not only due to natural causes such as rainy sea-sons, landslides and earthquakes, but due to human intervention, such as quarry exploitation and construction works.

Julián Alberto Herrera demonstrating how the Doppler radar works in the lab.

The main characteristic of this device is that it detects vital signs, particularly breathing signs due to thoracic movement. This permits to know the victim’s health con-ditions for the rescue staff to esta-blish priorities in the mission.

The Doppler radar generates an electromagnetic signal that is sent and received by two antennas similar to those used by wireless phones and wireless Internet. An electronic module, made by Diana and Juan Camilo, analyzes such signal (on this case, the breathing frequency), which is represented on a screen.

This information is proces-sed in the software that the profe-ssionals created to ensure a more detailed analysis of the registered signals. This way, the detection alarms are configured to facilitate the rescue corps localizing the vic-tims effectively.

The system sends microwave signals and captures reflections coming from the bodies. “Such signals are partially returned when the device discovers breathing mo-vements in a person’s chest. The returned wave produces frequency changes, which are detected by the Doppler radar,” said the electronic engineer Julián Alberto Herrera, director of the investigation.

“The innovation of our system is that it does not need physical contact on the structure, saving lives, not only the victim’s life, but also reducing the risk for the res-cuing corps,” affirms Castellanos.

The obtained results proved that it is possible to measure brea-thing through a radar basic system, in order to obtain accurate data and to go through any obstacle, no matter how robust it is, without in-terrupting visual contact with tra-pped victims, specially with those who are unconscious and do not respond to the rescuers calling.

Phot

os: A

ndré

s Fe

lipe

Cas

taño

/Uni

med

ios

Innovation

19

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

Astronomy

Phot

o: A

FP

This artistic recreation made by the NASA shows a galaxy with a super massive black hole in the middle, which emits electromag-netic radiation.

David Berenstein, a physicist at Universidad Nacional de Colombia and professor at the University of California who studies black holes.

Pers

onal

file

Getting to the bottomof the black holes mystery

Generally, scientists study black holes with great passion, and at the same time they get impressed at the huge lack of information about this spatial “wells” that keep being a mystery for humanity. David Berenstein, a Bogotanian physicist at Univer-sidad Nacional and professor at the University of California, has created a coherent theory, along with prestigious colleagues, that has begun to explain the mystery.

Luis Miguel PalacioUnimedios

Maybe, you didn’t know! But there is a high probability that you, the entire Solar System, and the Milky Way along with its two hundred billion stars are spinning around a huge black hole capable of sucking even light, like many other black holes of the same kind.

“But relax –says David Beren-stein– our solar system is too far from a hole like that. Besides, it’s important to know that these holes do not suck everything around them. In fact, they can take mi-llions of years to do it,” says the Co-lombian scientist that has worked along with many scientists such as Willy Fischler, an important theo-rist about science and the eleven dimensions of reality.

Berenstein is a physicist at Universidad Nacional de Colom-bia and PhD from the University of Texas, where he studied the high energies topic. He is currently a professor in the Physics Depart-ment at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He is a respected investigator due to his contribu-tions to the String Theory, closely related to the black holes mystery.

The strings that move the universe

The assumption about black holes existence dates back over two centuries ago, when John Miller, an English geologist, mentioned for

the first time “black stars,” massive objects with huge gravity force. In 1916, the German astrophysicist Karl Schwarzchild explained Al-bert Einstein’s unsolved equations that gave birth to the black holes theory. Although the comprehen-sion of these black holes was still insufficient, it wasn’t until the se-venties that the existence of these black holes was finally related to Einstein’s relativity theory. Einstein studied this topic with a lot of pas-sion but he could not conclude his investigations.

Berenstein explains that black holes are part of the history of stellar evolution, since scientists consider that after the nuclear fuel keeping stars shining is finished, the starts can end their lives as a black hole. This idea is expected to be explained through the string theory.

The theory points out that ob-jects occupying a space are not composed of dots but energetic strings similar to thread lines or moving circles, no matter if they are big or small.

“If humanity had a gigantic magnifying glass in this moment, we could see that quarks (the small-est particles of the universe) are not dots but spinning strings. One of the big surprises about theo-retical physics is that those strings are closely related to gravity” said Berenstein.

Brian Greene, a physicist at Columbia University, explains that this theory has not only proved that universe is stranger than what

people thought but also that these strings would be so small that they could be almost impossible to be seen.

A dictionary to understand black holes

The study that gave interna-tional recognition to the Physicist from Universidad Nacional and his colleagues Juan Maldacena and Horatui Nastase was published in 2002. There, the duality of modern physics has led to a better compre-hension of gravity and black holes.

The duality is described in physics as two different ways to explain the problem since just one perspective can not explain the mysteries this science tries to solve; for instance, what happens inside one of these holes.

In Berenstein and his co-lleagues’ work, the duality con-sisted in understanding black holes through a theory of four di-mensions, similar to the reality in which human beings live (a reality that physicist has studied since the 1980’s), and then, through a gravity theory in which everything would be in ten dimensions.

The author of the equivalence of these two descriptions of the same physics model is Juan Mal-dacena from Argentina, who su-ggested it in November, 1997. Due to its excellence, it is becoming one of the most mentioned physics in-vestigations from all times.

In 2002, three physicists cre-

ated some sort of mathematical dictionary about particles called strings: “the objective is that they can be explained and studied from two perspectives and without con-tradictions” said Berenstein.

Since then, physicists from all over the world count on the most complete dictionary to understand gravity and black holes. “In the past, we scientists didn’t know how to describe strings in ten and four dimension theories, which was ab-solutely necessarily to understand the relation between the two con-ceptions of the physics model and in order to have a broader pers-pective about these gravitational phenomena.”

The study success is shown in the 1.200 investigations around the world, where it’s been used to advance in their research.

Currently, Berenstein and his group in California study the evo-lution and collapse of black holes using simulation techniques in computers and developing new ones to explain how these “wells” are organized inside.

“If my intuition does not fail, I would say that when crossing the boundaries of any black hole and going into the unknown side, the geometry of space disappears.”

Researchers carefully study these supergravity phenomena, since it is probable that in these black holes dwells the unifying theory that Einstein looked for: a unique law to generally explain the way in which the universe works.

20D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

World map of the Early Cretaceous Period, which shows discoveries sites of pliosaurus. Take note of the Colombian area covered by sea.

Map

sou

rce:

Uni

vers

idad

de

Ariz

ona.

Prehistoric marine

In the construction field of a new multiproduct pipeline in Villa de Leyva (Bo-yacá) a fossil was found. The big predator lived in the peaceful waters of the Cretaceous Sea, which covered a great portion of Colombia. This discovery, completed by a researcher from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, cons-titutes a step further on the promissory path of paleontology in the country.

César Moreno,Faculty of Sciences

Universidad Nacional de Colombia

One hundred and fifty mi-llion years ago, at the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, the ter-ritory where Colombia is located was submerged into a peaceful sea. At that time, a gulf filled the actual location of the Antioquia department and went further to the South and East, covering the actual zones of the Colombian Coffee–Growers Axis, Santander, Boyacá, Cundinamarca, Tolima and Huila. The coast line passed through the Llano’s Foothills.

This sea was nourished by cold and nutritious streams, which provided an extensive fish fauna that constituted the plesiosaurus’ (big marine dinosaurs) menu.

The pliosaurus, a variety of plesiosaurus, was a gigantic ma-rine reptile reaching up to 40 feet (12 meters) in length; a short and powerful neck allowed it to move vigorously its big head, equipped with strong jaws and sharp teeth.

In the municipalities area of Sutamarchán, Sáchica and Villa de Leyva , at the Boyacá department, there are several paleontological sites that allow us to document the life of vertebrate in the Cretaceous Sea, and investigate dynamics and distribution of fauna and flora du-ring this period.

Scientific literature about

these sites has generated an in-ternational expectation given the surprising fossil profusion in the area and the fragment’s state of conservation. It is even common that the skeletons are still articu-lated and conserved in three di-mensions, which contrast with the lack of fossils from the same pe-riod around the world.

The new marine dinosaur

A couple of weeks ago, re-searcher María Eurídice Páramo Fonseca, Professor at the Depart-ment of Earth Sciences from the Faculty of Sciences at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, found in the rural zone of Villa de Leyva the fossil of a pliosaurus from about 13 foot (4 meters) long. Professor Páramo was guided to the fossil through frag-ments of jaw bones and teeth, found while her team was inspecting the ground as part of a paleontological evaluation project —completed by Universidad Nacional de Colombia and a private engineering consul- ting company— of the construc-tion corridor of the multiproduct pipeline Llanos (from Ecopetrol) in the Sutamarchán, Villa de Leyva and Sáchica area.

“Being aware of the fossil rich-ness within the municipal area, Villa de Leyva authorities insisted in the fact that during the mul-tiproduct pipeline construction process, the material of paleonto-

logical interest found in the area should be conserved. This aspect was considered as part of the envi-ronmental compound of the pro-ject. For this reason, it was possible to develop the academic activities leading to the fossil’s discovery last February,” said Professor Páramo.

Studies about the characte-ristics of the stones from this Co-lombian town point out that the waters of this sea were peaceful, allowing the development of great fauna. On the other hand, studies on the Cretaceous Period reveal that there were stable conditions in the zone, favoring the appa-rition of big marine reptiles, ex-plained the scientist from Univer-sidad Nacional de Colombia.

She also mentioned the exce-llent state of conservation of the

vertebrates’ fossils: “It is possible that this sea was shallow and that there was a lack of oxygen at the bottom, which could have atte-nuated the decomposition pro-cess of these bodies, favoring their preservation until now. It is also possible that some kind of alga re-covered and protected them.”

Sixty five million years ago, Cretaceous Period ended and the Cenozoic Period began, during which the Andes mountain chain consolidated. When this mountain system, one of the most important in the world, emerged, the sea was displaced hundreds of kilometers up to the North, leaving in the actual Department of Boyacá and other sites located in Santander, Tolima and Huila, the vestiges of the life from that marine past.

Archaeology

Prehistoric marine predator’s fossil

discovered

21

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

The architectonic project of Universidad Nacional de Colombia at the Natural History Center in Villa de Leyva.

Stages of the exploration process, excavation, and extraction of the found fossil. Its parts are covered with plaster for its conservation and subsequent study.

The academic team of the paleontological evaluation project for the con-struction corridor of the Llanos polyduct in Sutamarchán, Villa de Leyva and Sáchica.

Illegal Fossil’s Trade

In regards to the new fossil María Páramo, geologist gradu-ated from the Universidad Nacio-nal de Colombia and PhD in Earth Sciences, specialized in paleonto-logy from the Poitiers University in France, says that “it is an animal with big flippers that allow him to quickly move his enormous body. The exhumed remains correspond to the hip bones, the posterior fli-ppers and the tale of an individual. The jaw fragments allow us to es-timate that the front part was well conserved, but may have suffered previously from plunders.”

The illegal fossil trade in Vil-la de Leyva is significant. Thou-sands of parts are estimated to be taken out of the region or even out of the country during decades, losing a very rich natural and cul-tural patrimony. Nevertheless, a conscience has risen among the population of the village on the value of paleontological objects, through campaigns carried by the Paleontological Museum of Villa de Leyva (belonging to the Faculty of Sciences from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia), among several institutions. In 2009, more that 1.100 children and teenagers from the area participated in pro-grams promoted by the museum.

On the other hand, Suta-marchán and Sáchica represent promissory fossil areasanalogous to Villa de Leyva and even with a greater potential, since they have not been thoroughly explored or plundered.

To Investigate, Preserve and Exhibit

The study of fossils and the zones where they have remained buried during years allows us to learn more about the living crea-tures that populated the Earth in the past, about their interaction, propagation and environment at determinate periods and areas.

Paleontologists extract the fossils in plastered blocks in or-der to protect them and conserve

the arrangement of parts. This is completed along with a detailed photographic register and a study of the area’s characteristics. Then, researchers proceed to identify anatomical elements, which are compared to other discoveries documented on scientific publi-cations. This permits to classify the new exemplar within a genre, then to find which species it co-rresponds to. The fossil’s cleaning process implies hundreds of hours of cautious work, using precise tools, chemical baths and pneu-matic drills.

It is expected that the fossil will be transferred to the Paleon-tological Museum in Villa de Leyva (see textbox). Meanwhile, using geophysical tools and under the scientific orientation of geologist Orlando Hernández, MSc profe-ssor at the Department of Geo-ciencias from the Universidad Na-cional de Colombia, the research and conservation work continues.

One of the main goals is that population of the area and the great number of tourists that visit the region could appreciate the parts, which are going to be hand-led properly from a museologic and museographic point of view. The director of the Department of Earth Sciences at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Juan Car-los Molano, affirms that “is very important that this material is kept within the region, even more if it is going to be part of t collec-tions from the Paleontological Mu-seum.”

According to Professor Pára-mo, “this kind of discoveries and the resulting studies contribute to the formation of new paleontolo-gists in the country. Paleontology covers also different fronts with high value in the hydrocarbons exploration and constitutes a use-ful work within research of new sources of energy.”

To conclude, the researcher from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia advises: “We Colom-bians are responsible from the valuable information to be studied and conserved properly in order to benefit the world.”

Forty years of the Paleontological MuseumIn 1970, the Casona del Molino de Losada, cultural heritage

of Villa de Leyva, was granted in commodate, aiming to create a Paleontological Museum, which under the direction of Professor Gustavo Huertas at the Natural Sciences Institute of the Faculty of Sciences, was inaugurated in 1972.

The museum, which accomplishes an academic and institu-tional support function for paleontology development, has a fossil collection concentrated to promote research and divulgation of Colombia’s natural and cultural patrimony. Paleontologist, locals and tourists benefit from this museum in Villa de Leyva, located at 1 kilometer from the urban area, in the road leading to Arcabuco.

Natural History Center ProjectThe Natural History Center will be an architectonic–scientific

complex that will house didactic collections from the Paleontologic Museum of Villa de Leyva and the Natural History Museum from the Faculty of Sciences of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

This center will be located at the neighboring lands of the ac-tual Paleontological Museum of Villa de Leyva, due to a donation of 13.400 square meters, which has been endorser by the Depart-ment Assembly of Boyacá (bylaw 007 de 2009), and that is yet to be formalized at the Government of Boyacá.

Thus, the role of the University will be promoted in this im-portant region, producing notorious academic, scientific, cultural and touristic benefits.

The lands that will be donated by the Department, the scien-tific capital and funds provided by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, will allow the construction of this center, which will have an auditorium with a capacity for 200 persons. The center will also be useful within the development of an academic agenda to serve educational and professional sectors of the region, and two paleontological and natural history exhibition halls.

In addition, there will be an astronomical observatory, a botanical garden (arboretum) and an alternative auditorium for cultural events.

According to John Donato, academic Vice Dean at the Faculty of Sciences, “the Natural History Center will be very important for the region. This is a great project from the University to the country; hence, the need to act hand by hand with municipal and department authorities.”

Archaeology

22D

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

sBiofuel

Bagazo and sugarcane leaves Grinded rice husk Modeling and simulation

Sugarcane leavesMicroorganisms used in lignoce-llulose fermentation

Bagazo pre-treated with carbon dioxide

Phot

os: A

ndré

s A

lmei

da/U

nim

edio

s

Rice husk and coffee zoka, possible elements to produce ethanol

After material innovation to produce ethanol, researchers from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Manizales found two plentiful and economic sources for this biofuel production: rice husk and coffee zoka, residues that are burned in the country without noti-cing their potential.

Ángela María Betancourt JaramilloUnimedios

Ethanol is an ethyl alcohol obtained through the fermenta-tion of sugar from raw materials such as sucrose, starch and cellulose. Originally, it was used in alcohol production, but recently it is a rich source for manufacturing cosmetics, medicine and specially biofuels.

In fact, it is considered a good substitute for petroleum, because it pollutes less and it is a renewable resource, since it comes from high energetic and protein products such as sugar-cane, beet, molasses, and sweet sorghum.

The only difficulty is that the amount of available soil for culti-vating these products is not suf-ficient in the country. Meanwhile, industries in the ethanol produc-tion business keep requiring it.

To overcome this trouble, re-searchers from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Maniza-les suggested using lignocellulo-sic materials (vegetables), which have not been used before and are still considered as sub–pro-ducts in the country, consequen-tly wasted, for example rice husk and coffee zoka.

These products are ligno-cellulosic, which means they are made of vegetal mass extracted from leaves and steam. They con-tain cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, substances which main characteristics are a low molecular weight and water–solublility, char-acteristics that facilitate the pro-duction of sugar for fermentation through chemical processes, and subsequently ethanol production.

Material innovation Due to the large amount of

coffee zoka (wood) and rice husk produced in the country every year that are thrown away because of their lack of use, the Chemi-cal, Catalytic and Biotechnical Processes Research Group spends its time working with these or-ganic residues and other such as raquis of palm (a layer that reco- vers its fruits), bagazo and sugar-cane leaves, to produce ethanol

through their fermentation.“Through the implementa-

tion of a modeling and simula-tion methodology, we are trying to evaluate and design the process to obtain ethanol from such lignoce-llulosic residues, which not only have a big potential, but also are cheap in comparison to conven-tional raw materials,” said Julian Quintero Suárez, an engineering PhD student and part of the re-search group.

The second stage in this study is experimentation, in which costs and time are a priority.

Steps to produce ethanol

During the first stage, consis-ting on the modeling and simula-tion, the percentage of the raw material’s composition is deter-mined; that is to say, its cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, protein, and ash contents. “That is how we know its potential to turn it into the product we want. If it contains 50 percent of cellulose and 30 percent of hemicellulose, then we know that one half can be turned into glucose and the other half into xylose (both sugars con-

sumed by microorganisms). This distinction has to be done because during fermentation is when the decision about using just one ma-terial or both is made, since not all microorganisms consume xylose,” said the PhD student.

After identifying the raw mate-rial’s composition, the substances are introduced in the simulation software to determine the amount of mass that circulates in a flow of time unit, and the variation influ-ence that the lignocellulosic com-ponents suffer to determine the energy consumption.

According to Quintero Suárez, this way all the stages of the process can be simulated, for instance, pre–treatment (breaking of the cellulose and hemicellulose polymer chains), detoxification (removing the toxins from the materials), fermentation and separation of the final product (ethanol). “This way the model let us predict a way in which the system behaves regarding variations in the flows, current composition and en-ergy consumption. Avoiding experi-mentation on this stage helps us to save months, even years of time and money,” said the PhD student.

As we obtain the results of this first stage, the environmental effect cause by each of the ligno-cellulosic materials during pre–treatment is assessed, because different chemical substances are used in each material. Data of this analyzes are soon to be revealed.

As this first part is finished, the products with the highest po-tential for ethanol production are rice husk and coffe zoka, since they have been effective on the reduc-tion of production costs, which vary between 20 and 40 dollar cents per liter of produced ethanol.

From simulation to experimentation

In the last experimentation stage, researchers will try to co-rroborate if results are accurate. “The objective is correcting all de-tails for the tool to work properly, so it can be used in a new pro-ject in which other raw materials are evaluated, for instance husk from other countries, which can be trade in the future,” said the UN researcher.

23Ciencia

Dec

embe

r 201

04

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

International Council for Science, first time in Colombia

In an event like no other before, Universidad Nacional de Colombia ga-thered last November 18th and 19th some of the most recognized scientists in the world to talk about the responsibilities regarding science communi-cation. They acknowledged the challenge of transmitting in a simple ma-nner the results of their research; while the journalists invited mentioned the need of overcoming some myths such as that science is boring.

Cesar Enrique Herrera de la HozUnimedios

Scientific and technological results that only seem to be part of the theoretical world are currently much more important than be-fore in daily life. The cure for dise-ases, computers, the food industry, the use of elevators all prove that science and technology are every-where around human beings.

However, out of the scientific world, there are just a few spaces for understanding the complexity of the experiments that have an impact on the world population welfare. The situation is paradoxi-cal in a time in which technologi-cal innovations have created from generation, processing, and tran-sition of information, essential sources of productivity and power.

Within this context, scien-tists acknowledge the challenge of transmitting their research out-comes to many people, no ma-tter their education, nationality or social position. This brings three important challenges: 1) informa-tion transparency, 2) improvement of the relation between the media and science, and 3) the use of new internet tools.

These challenges were pro-posed during the Science and Com-munication Forum: Responsibilities of the Scientific Community and the Media, which counted on a massive attendance and active participation of scientists, journalists, professors, and university students. It was orga-nized by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physic and Natu-ral Sciences (Accesfyn, for its acro-nym in Spanish), the International Center of Business and Exhibitions (Corferias) and Universidad Nacio-nal de Colombia.

Science: a different perspective of the world

In this field, several reco-mmendations were made. Andrew Pleasant, a professor from insti-tutions such as Cornel Universi-ty, Brown University and Rutgers University, asserted that scientists have to accept that science is just one perspective to understand the world among other different pers-pectives people have.

In addition, Germán Ve-lásquez, staff member of the South Centre, invited everyone to admit that science also makes mistakes. He reminded the audience that the statement made by the World Health Organization regarding the AH1N1 virus as a pandemic caused big problems to the world’s public health and economy.

Velásquez also affirmed that thousands of vaccines that govern-ments bought would have to be destroyed after the WHO reduced the alarm. “How much money has been thrown away? How many people died due to other diseases which did not receive the necessary resources?” all these ques-tions were asked during his pre-sentation at the forum.

On this regard, there is other situation which generates preo-ccupation. Sir John Sulston, a Bri-tish chemist and Nobel Prize wi-nner of Medicine and Physiology in 2002, asserted that the concept of patent has been changing pro-gressively to a point in which the protection of inventions became an industrial secret. According to Sulston, “little by little, the value of comparing one scientific develop-ment to another has been reduced gradually.”

Human genome is an example

of how intellectual property has changed. “Its shape, changes and the way it affects society are ana-lyzed. If the way in which it works and affects humans is discovered, its ‘discoverer’ will patent it im-mediately,” explains the British chemist. This can affect directly the application of the scientific disco very to the population’s welfare, inde-pendently of the economic profits.

Communication media: eliminating the myths

In the forum, it was also po-ssible to conclude that the relation between communication media and the scientists has been built on mistaken conceptions. In this sense, journalist Alejandro Santos, director of Semana magazine, syn-thesized four big myths that have to be reconceived: 1) science is bo-ring, 2) it does not produce news, 3) it is exclusive for scientists, and 4) it has nothing to do with the real world since the analysis are always theoretical.

Santos also mentioned that if science and technology news are presented with creativity and in-novation, they can easily compete with other news requested by the public, such as politics, economy and even show business scandals.

However, Roeland Jaap in’t Veld, a specialist PhD in knowledge management, emphasized that it is not necessary to eliminate the tension between journalists and scientists. He asserted that these groups are dedicated to their own and complex issues and interests, which have to be respected.

Therefore, before elimina-ting the tension, it is necessary to create tools to overcome the apparent contradictions between the simple language used by the

media and the technical language used by science.

Internet: a complex scenario

In a society of information,

web pages, virtual databases, blogs (web pages that gather and update data chronologically) and social networks are tools used to classify and offer scientific information di-rectly. Juliana Rotich, a specialist in information technology, high-lighted the importance of Twitter (a web page to share short messa- ges), since NASA’s astronauts share photos and information about their space missions in real time.

In addition, Lisbeth Fog, a SciDev.Net (Science and Develop-ment Network) correspondent in Colombia, asserted that it is im-portant for journalists to specialize and learn how to use these tools in the communication of scientific topics.

However, the use of these tools demands a great responsibility to guarantee the transmission of accurate knowledge. This is a com-plex issue in medicine since people can replace medical assessment using the Internet.

The importance of the forum

The event was divided in four sessions, each with three brilliant lectures, followed by a panel in which the lecturers discussed and answer the audience’s questions. In this event, Colombia fulfilled its objectives as host of the Interna-tional Council for Science (ICSU), conformed by 119 scientific bodies of national standing and 30 inter-national scientific unions.

Phot

o: A

ndré

s Fe

lipe

Cas

taño

/Uni

med

ios

Important scientists from Australia, India, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Israel, Canada, Sweden and Colombia, among others, analyzed the im-plications of science and technology communication in a contemporary world.

Science

24 CienciaD

ecem

ber 2

010

4

ww

w.a

genc

iaden

otici

as.u

nal.e

du.c

o/en

glish

-new

s

“We are used to recollect money for scientific research through intellectual property. The problem is that we are studying what the investor thinks that will make profits,” says John Sulston.

Phot

o: V

ícto

r M

anue

l Hol

guín

/Uni

med

ios

Genes: from worms to humans“Patents protect the integrity of scientific discoveries; however, they are also a way to make money, blocking research,” affirms Sir John Sulston, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine in 2002. After leading the British team that participated in the sequencing of the human genome, Sulston told UN Periódico that he literally “fights” against the entrepreneurial monopoly of science that wants to patent genes and become public knowledge something private.

Nelly Mendivelso RodríguezUnimedios

The first time that John Sul-ston got interested in the function-ing of living organisms was just for fun, when he was at school. He liked cutting dissected plants or animals. However, this 68 years old British chemist affirms nowadays that he has always been interested in science, but his enrolment in biology was just an accident.

Something played an im-portant role in this coincidence, the Caenorhabditis elegans, a mi-croscopic worm that Sulston has studied for years to describe its genetics, which was the basis of one of the biggest contributions of science to humanity: the sequence of the human genome.

Sulston did not know too much about the C. elegans un-til 1969, when Sydney Brenner, a South African biologist who was working in the United States, invi-ted Sulston to be part of his group at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where the worm was an experimental model of an area known as genetics in development: “This nematode was completely unknown for me. I had just finished an investigation in prebiotic chemistry (origins of life in the Earth) in California and, although I was looking for a new job, Brenner’s proposal was a big surprise,” affirms the Nobel.

It was an small group but with big expectations, something that Sulston liked, so he did not hesi-tate in joining it initially for a year; however, he remained almost 20 years with them until he studied and reviewed close to 19.000 genes contained in the worm, and until he found the way to sequence the human genome.

Cell by cell

The C. elegans is almost 1 milli-meter, and when Sulston decided to analyze its cells (in 1992), Brenner already had information about the mutations that affected its shape and behavior. “The electronic mi-croscopes from the laboratory had the capacity to cut the worm and examine its nervous system in de-tail,” affirms the scientist.

However, the technique used to illuminate cells, learned by Suls-ton in California, was the element that allowed tracing the lineage of the C. elegans, that is to say, going back to the first fertilized egg that gave origin to the worm.

“We created some sort of map that helped us to see how the worm formed each one of its hundreds of cells that constitute different parts of its body, from just one cell,” said the Nobel.

In order to identify what the important genes were, and how they worked, scientists analyzed the worms treated with chemical substances. They noticed random changes –mutations– within their deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and the consequences of this in deter-mined cells.

The next step was dividing such DNA in small pieces in order to put them in a culture (which helps their reproduction) and understand their patterns. Sulston explains that the DNA has an area close to 100 X 106, a big space in which it is difficult to locate a particular gen, so it is isolated for its study.

“We were capable of locating the gen in an area of DNA, which accelerated the process of finding

the rest ten times. This became a new scientific perspective de-nominated genomics,” asserted the researcher.

Between 1990 and 1998, it was possible to sequence the genome. Scientist deciphered the total bio-logical information in each piece. As a result, the way in which life works was discovered, in this case, the C. elegans nematode’s life.

The application in humans

The investigation of the worm’s genome has contributed to understand the development and behavior of vertebrates such as human beings. In fact, it has helped understanding the func-tioning of some genes associated to diseases such as cancer, diabe-tes and Alzheimer.

John Sulston affirms that the only difference is that humans have more control genes, since almost 50% of them regulate other genes, organize tissue, etc.

This is something the Nobel discovered after finishing his stu-dies of the worm and accepting a bigger challenge: The Public Hu-man Genome Project, which Suls-ton carried out as the leader of the scientific team Sanger Centre, in the United Kingdom.

“We worked with a small group of genomes from 6 people coming from several countries chosen at random. Using the same technol-ogy applied to C. elegans, we se-quenced the human genome. We

started in 1992, and by 2000, we had a draft (incomplete sequence), that we released for political rea-sons,” affirms Sulston.

Political reasons represented under a company: the biotech-nology company Celera, directed by the American scientists Craig Venter, who was trying to achieve the sequence for commercial rea-sons. According to Sulston, this situation was used by the media because they “love fights”, so they promoted the competition.

“Celera released press bulle-tins that mentioned their fast re-sults, which was completely a lie. The media followed the story and I had to respond. ¡That was stupid! Eventually, there was a big media event to release the information. They showed their advances, but the real intention was to privatize all the information and make pro-fits out of it.”

The artificial public announ-cement did not stop Sulston and his team to continue working and improving the sequence, which was almost finished by 2003. This project was opened and avai-lable for the public. “Since then, many studies have been carried out and more genomes have been sequenced. This is a big topic that has not been resolved completely,” affirms Sulston.

Due to this “issue”, the scien-tist has begun a campaign against those who want to privatize know-ledge. “I’ve been fighting for ten years for people to have the right to use others’ information. We have

some movements that have invali-dated some patents on the genes, which is extraordinary because it allows research to advance.

Sir John Sulston, a member of the International Council for Sci-ence (ICSU), was one of the Lec-turers in the Science Communi-cation Forum, carried out at Uni-versidad Nacional de Colombia. In his intervention, he mentioned the democratization of knowledge, the importance of intellectual pro-perty, and the commercialization of information and the effect in science progress.

“The protection of new cre-ations has become an industrial secret that creates different ba-rriers to reduce the value of com-paring one scientific development to another.”

The human gen is an example. “If the way in which it works and affects people is discovered, its discoverer immediately will patent such discoveries and at the same time all other possible ways to diagnose it,” explained the British scientist.

This situation has happened in the United States with two types of genes associated to breast can-cer. For its diagnosis, users have to pay more that USD 3.000, since they belong to a private company. Many Americans depend on pa-tents of this type, concluded the Nobel. He also mentioned that hu-manity is going through a lot of problems, and that people have to move from competence to coo-peration.

Science

un periodico english no. 4

Documents

colombia issue

colombia issn

universidad nacional

noticias unin colombia

bogot colombia isnn1657

sea sponges

colombian research

ment priorities