Easter Adventures

Brazil has abundant holidays, and I took full advantage of Pascoa (Easter) to travel to Belo Horizonte (BH), a city further towards the interior of Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais. A good friend of mine, Pedro, put me up in his apartment for four days and we explored new parts of the city every day.

The photo above is from the top of the "cerra" (range of large hills) to the south of BH, were I hiked on my last day. You can see almost the entire city from this vanatge, all the buildings stretching way off into the distance are part of BH. The closest neighborhood with the large fancy houses, red roofs and swimming pools is Mangabeiras, a "bairro nobre," or "noble neighborhood" which is the name they use for the wealthy regions of the city. BH is a conglomeration of noble, middle class, and a few poor neighborhoods, with several favelas scattered about, usually on hill slopes. But all the neighborhoods are unified by a well-organized system of roads and grids. Clearly the city planners knew what they were doing. All the north-south and east-west roads serve as local access to shops and apartments, while the diagonal roads are the highways. The city is foot on the foothills of the cerra, and therefore walking from north to south is a steady upward climb. Some of the steep streets with large buildings looming overhead reminded me of Seattle.

Above is a picture of the Lagoa de Pampulha. Pedro and I walked around the whole thing, which is pretty large (18km walk to get around it). In the distance of this shot you can see two stadiums. Both are being renovated now, the closer is an indoor soccer stadium, the other on the right is the soccer stadium that will be used for some of the preliminary games for the World Cup in 2014.

Climbed a tree to get a picture over the fence of the World Cup stadium being renovated. I wanted to go explore it but Pedro explained a lot about guards and video cameras and trouble so we kept walking.

 Governer's palace. Wouldn't mind staying there.

 

More or less the view from the Governer´s palace. Apparently he only stays here part of the year anyway, the rest summer he spends in his mansion up in Mangabeiras. Maybe he will pay me to house sit for him. 

 

 My friend Pedro in front on an impressive tree next to the lake. I thought it was cool that the tree had roots shooting out of its trunk and growing down into the ground.

 Clouds in the lake and capybaras in the mud.

 Bird symmetry.

Unfortunately there was a lot of trash in the lake, and when we passed downwind of it the stench was foul... It's a shame such a place of natural beuaty is maintained better. Apparently there are crocodiles in the lake, but I can't imagine how they would survive. The only animals I saw were birds, dead fish, and capybaras. Maybe they eat the capybaras.



I made two journeys up the cerra, the first with Pedro, the second alone. On the other side of the mountains I found a hidden paradise. I was genuinely shocked that such beauty could be so close to a huge metropolitan sprawl and not be tainted. But from the ruggedness of the trails I discovered I think few people know of its existence and fewer still are willing to make the journey. But what I found was worth every effort.

 

 

The hidden lake in all its glory. The lake formed as a result of water filling in an old mine site. They excavated a tremendous amount of iron ore here, and the pit has since filled with water. I think it is very very deep.

 

 

The route down the other side of the cerra, dropping down into the mine. The sides were too steep to hike but we found a storm-drain canals with a series of concrete drops that was climbable. This route took us directly to the lake.

Pedro demonstrating great scaling skills. Getting up and down some of the steps was a bit tricky. This particular step (above) was a beast. Some other explorers before us had scratched their names above this step, but we found no names further down. It seemed very few jumped down it for fear of not being able to get back out. Rock climbing skills came in handy when I had to get out the second time without Pedro's help.

 The rocks around the mine were amazing, chock full of iron ore and feldspar (I think) and super shiny. Hard to resist playing with shiny rocks so they were a major distraction as I was hiking around.

 Finally nearing the summit of the highest point on the cerra.

 Views from the top. The line of darker green signifying denser plants on the left marks where the drainage canal was. That's where we descended and ascended.

 Finally reaching the water.

Private swimming pool. The water was clean and cool, perfect for swimming around and hanging out. One would be hard pressed to find any of the nobles in Mangabeiras with a setup this plush. Although for some reason as I swam around, alone in the giant lake, I had this sense that there was some giant lake monster lurking in the depths below me, waiting to snatch me by the leg and pull me under. Kind of unsettling.

I imagine the monster of the lake looks something like this street art near Pedro's apartment.

Belo Horizonte was awesome, I enjoyed my free time immensely. I could really get used to Brazil's system of frequent holidays... Now its time to get back to work here in the lab. More to come soon on developements in the lab.

First Week in the Lab

I´ve settled in quickly to the rythm of my new job here. My researching is going well despite having no real expertise in information technology. But if there is one thing I can do better than anyone here in the lab it is speak, read, and write English, and since my searches are all in English (being the international scientific language), I feel well-qualified in that regard.

A typical day goes like this:

Wake up at 6:45 (already sunny and hot--to me at least)

Eat breakfast (some combination of bread, cheese, eggs, bananas, or yogurt)

Catch the bus (the 123, 127, or 177--I don´t know where all the rest go but apparently its not where I want). Buses here are quite different from buses in Seattle. There is no time schedule, you just flag the bus like you do a taxi, and if he´s not going too fast (they drive pretty aggressively here) than he´ll stop and you can jump on. It´s a quick transition, and if the bus starts to leave as you get to the stop a typical strategy is to slap the bus and yell as you run along side, then jump on when he slows down (just tried it yesterday, worked great). People also frequently get on and off the bus in the middle of traffic, if we hit gridlock pedestrians just navigate through the cars, and get on and off buses. Much of the way the buses run here seems common-sensical, more efficient, and more user-friendly. Yet maybe our stifling rules in the States are there for a reason; here is what happens to buses that get out of control in Brazil:

Over-excited bus driver combined with twisty road.

I found this bus while on my way up to the statue of Christ the Redeemer. The bus had completely taken out a large tree and a thick concrete+rebar telephone pole.


Arrive at work at 8:00. Here is our awesome crew at the INT lab:

 Left to right: Me, Javier, Dr. Viridiana Santana Ferreira-Letão, Cristina, Patricia, Livian, Anete, Lorraine, and Lucia. This is my whole lab except for Ana, who is in and out due to school.

Christina, Anete, Lorraine, and I are all new, so we´ve been getting all the introductory tours and meetings together.

Above is our HPLC (High Peformance Liquid Chromotographer) and Javier preparing to run some samples. We use the HPLC to find the concentrations of different molecules suspended in a liquid sample, for instance the concentration of disaccharides and monosaccharides dissolved in a sample of water. The HPLC works by pumping the samples through a steel column filled with a powder of some kind that works as an ion filter, slowing but not stopping particles with different charges and seperating particles of the same type into batches. These batches are then measured by UV reflection to determine the concentration.

Javier is currently working on a project trying to find a cheap and easy short-cut to produce disaccharides from monosaccharides for use in the ethanol production process. This part I´m still not 100% clear on but I think that the fungi grown in the lab (used to produce the enzyme which degrades sugars in the hydroloysis step) require disaccharides. These fungal enzymes normally breaks sugars down from larger to smaller components, but if added to a solution saturated with monosaccharides the reverse process can be achieved, yielding disaccharides. Afterwards Javier adds baker´s yeast, which will ideally consume only the monosaccharides, leaving the disaccharides alone, but in reality it hasn´t been working like that. Javier is testing different methods (incubation time, temperature, shaking, concentrations of inputs) to maximize the net gain of dissaccharides, and uses the HPLC to analyze the results of each trial.


Lunch break from 12 to 1. Last week I went out for lunch with a couple of my co-workers, to a couple different places where you load your own plate and pay per kilo. ~$7-8 for lunch was pretty normal, but this weekend I made a big dinner of rice, beans, and greens to take to work for lunches:

Most people here bring food and I figured it would be a more economicaly sustainable choice.

On Thursday we had Professor James Clark from York, UK, visit us here at INT in Rio and talk about his work with Green Chemistry. It was an interesting lecture, and since he presented in English I was able to understand completely, and help translate for my colleagues. The focus of his talk was the importance of finding renewable alternatives to the petroleum-based chemicals we have become so dependant on. Everything from computers to chairs contain things like flame retardents, adhesives, and other synthetic materials that we make with petroleum.

His solution is to develope biorefineries that can process waste biomass (corn husks, orange peels, green coconut shells, cofee grounds, etc) into the basic constituents of these chemicals. This would serve a number of purposes, such as limiting our reliance on non-renewable sources and therefore ensuring we won´t suddenly run out, reducing our waste, and diminishing pollution via use of "biochemicals" that will break down in the environment rather than persist like many current chemicals and biomagnify to cause damage to plants, animals, and ecosystems.

This is not a novel idea, the basic technology has been here for decades. But the status quo is becoming less and less sustainable. Pressure to change comes from increasing petroleum prices, increase costs of dealing with waste, increasing energy costs, stricter legislation, and increasing public concern. As incentive mounts to change our ways people like Dr. Clark want to be well-positioned to capture and channel the transition into "Green Chemistry." As the economic and other incentives come into play and get more people involved, the efficiency and technology will follow. Or so is the hope.

 

You can see me on the far left of the first pic and far right of the lower pic.

Other interesting ideas from Dr. Clark included tapping into our waste for valuable resources. Landfills have become more concentrated sinks for precious metals than many mines around the world, and if we took advantage of plants that naturally soak up and collect metal we could essentially mine our trash.

It was an interesting lecture and when I asked some questions at the end I think Dr. Clark was suprised to hear me speaking; the first thing he said was "that doesn´t sound like a Brazilian accent." I think I was the only foreigner present in the audience.

Catch a bus back home a little after 5:00, go for a run on Botafogo beach right next to my apartment building. Dark by the time I get back inside. I´ve moved to a different apartment building since my first blog update, my roommates Adriana and Andre were moving out and I had to go too. Now I´m staying in an apartment in the same neighborhood, Botafogo, but closer to the beach and to where I catch the bus. I have two roommates here too, Ligia and Biannca. They are both super nice and put up with my ignorance (like how I get yelled at every time I close a taxi door because apparently Americans all slam doors shut) and my odd cooking (adding red pepper flakes to beans??! and making banana bread?--I had to try but with all the ingredients so different here and no measuring devices it turned out...different).

 

My new bedroom, the permanent bed being a noticeable improvement over my last room. I even have my own bathroom and shower, which quite ingeniously have been combined into the same small space so every time I take a shower I am rinsing down my toilet.

 

Unlike my room, the living room is quite spacious.

Go to bed between 11 and 12.




My pilgrimage to the statue of Christ

I spent most of Sunday walking through Rio and then running up the switch-backing streets to the top of Corcavado, the famous statue of Christ overlooking Rio. Many cars passed me, probably wondering why the heck I was running up there. In Washington it seems quite common to hike up high places like mountains to get epic panaramic views, and the harder the hike the more enjoyable the view. Here that sentiment is not so common. But it sure was worth my run to get the views from up there.

Initiation

Trial by Immersion:

My first day in the lab got off to an early start as Adriana, Andre, and I got up at 6am to avoid the heinous rush hour traffic. The building I work at is in downtown Rio, in a large building full of offices and labs called INT: Instituto National de Tecnologia (National Institue of Technology). In total INT employs about 70 researchers. I work on the third floor, in the biocatalyst lab.

Disclamer: the quality of the following explanations and descriptions of my lab and the work we are doing is limited by my ability to comprehend technical descriptions delivered in Portuguese.

Adriana gave me a tour of floor 5, where she works in the catalyst lab. To my understanding they are working on developing efficient ways of using ethanol (because it is easily produced and readily accessable in Brazil) to produce hydrogen as an energy source. They have buses here that run off of hydrogen. The catalyst machine in the picture below is one of the tools they are using to experiment with different inputs of ethanol, water, and oxygen to achieve the greatest per-unit yields of hydrogen gas. Many of the nauances of the process were over my head, like how to minimize the accumulation of carbon on the nickel and cobalt coatings during the reactions by injecting oxygen. When I asked whether this process of ethanol to hydrogen to power is more efficient than just burning the ethanol directly the answer I got was that theoretically yes; but practically, not yet. Thats what they´re working towards.

That´s Mauro next to the catalyst machine. He is a great guy and helped explain much of the process to me. The labs here are brand shiny new and well-equiped. Of course so is the Doty lab where I work at UW but still, I was impressed.

Also like my lab in Seattle, I am part of a diverse group of researchers. My lab has 5 other people that I´ve met so far. While several are Brazilian, we have Javier the Bolivian and myself, the American. Javier and I both get harangued for our "portanhol" combo of portuguese spiced up with spanish words.

My boss, and the leader of our division at INT, is Dr. Viridiana Santana Ferreira-Leitao. She is a natural leader and has a clear vision of her work that she conveys passionately and convincingly. We sat down and she explained our mission and how it fits into the broader network of research in Brazil. INT here in Rio has three divisions: Adriana´s lab working on converting ethanol to hydrogen, my lab working on second-generation ethanol, and the mysterious "third lab" that is top secret. Not really but I just had trouble understanding Viridiana´s explanation in Portuguese and didn´t want to keep asking about it. I´ll figure it out soon.

Ethanol 2nd generation is ethanol produced from the scraps and waste of traditional ethanol production. Essentially 1st generation uses all the easily accesible sugars and tosses the leaves and spent, crushed stems (called baggase) away. 2nd generation takes the leaves and baggase and essentially recycles them, getting additional ethanol out of the waste. This may seem like common sense but the technology did not previous exist to make this second pass worthwhile. Now the tech is here and it is a promising new field where the source material (baggase and leaves) and infrastructure (ethanol producing facilities and equipment) are already in place. My lab is focusing on ways to make this process of extracting the 2nd generation ethanol more efficient. Javier, for example, is researching different strains of yeast to use in the fermentation stage of ethanol production, trying to find those that work best. In other parts of the lab we have projects going on substituting CO2 for SO2 in the steam pretreatment stage (cheaper and greener) and "farming" bacteria which give off hydrogen gas that can be harvested.

My work in particular is in information technology. Essentially I am working on publishing a paper with Viridiana on the current state of 2nd generation ethanol around the world. Who is producing it, how they do, what plants they use, what technologies they use, how efficient they are, what kind of patents they have, and so on. I will be researching these questions via online databases. But I will also participate in experiments going on in my lab. I am not running my own experiment because 2 months in the lab here is not sufficient time to complete an entire experiement and Viridiana puts a lot of stock in me having some tangible end product (i.e. published paper) to show for myself once I´m gone.

A Day in the Jungle:

I must have really done a great job at work the first day, because I was awarded a day off today. Or maybe thats a bad sign... Actually I´m just not officially starting until Monday. So I spent the day exploring, this time heading for the hills instead of the beach. I hiked up a trail to Morro de Urca, the stepping stone to the famous Sugar Loaf. I didn´t want to take any cable cars, but was determined to get some stellar views so I went branching off on little sub-trails and climbing whatever I could to get a view.

Above is what the main trail looked like. Very steep but had lots of steps, roots, and branches to facilitate navigation. I made my way to the base of Sugar Loaf and was able to climb up the rocks to get above the vegetation. Here was the view looking back towards downtown Rio (the distant cluster of large buildings in the bottom two photos) where I work at INT.

 

 

After that I hiked to the top of Morro de Urca where the first cable car arrives from the beach, and the second one takes you up to Sugar Loaf. On my way over I found an abondoned steel structure that is was either the remains of an earlier cable system or some kind of communications tower. Regardless, it made for great climbing and I scaled it to get an amazing view looking back at Sugar Loaf and the surroundings.If you look real close at the first and last photos you can see a guy rock climbing up the face of Sugar Loaf. There were anchors bolted in all the way up the thing.

Also encountered some leaf-cutter ants hard at work on the trail:

 

I found another abandoned metal structure and climbed it too, got a few more neat pics from the top.

Then I made my up to the top of Morro de Urca where I emerged in the plaza where the cable cars come and go. Lots of other people around, many tourists, heard a fair amount of english. I took some more photos of the amazing views from up there. There were helicopters giving sight-seeing tours over the city, and I caught pics of one taking off. Given my lack of funds to shell out on tourist activities that was about the best I could do. My apartment building is visible on the left side of the helicopter picture, in the neighborhood of Botafogo.

On my way out I met up with a young American couple and showed them the way down via the jungle trail. I got to speak english and for the first time in a while (since talking to Steve I guess) I actually felt articulate. As we neared the bottom of the trail they mentioned that on their cable car ride to the top of Sugar Loaf they saw some crazy guy climbing around on a metal scaffolding structure in the middle of the jungle below the car. I answered that yeah, that was me.