astronomy

Lúcia Mendonça Previato

Lúcia Mendonça Previato is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lúcia Mendonça Previato rather than just read about it. In short: Lúcia Mendonça Previato (born 1949) is a Brazilian biologist. She was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2004 for her research into preventing Chagas disease.

Key takeaways

Lúcia Mendonça Previato belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lúcia Mendonça Previato to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lúcia Mendonça Previato from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lúcia Mendonça Previato (born 1949) is a Brazilian biologist. She was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2004 for her research into preventing Chagas disease.

Biography Lucia Mendonça Previato was born in 1949, in Maceió, Brazil and moved with her family to Rio de Janeiro when she was 5 years old. She graduated from Universidade Santa Úrsula in 1971 and obtained her Doctorate from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Microbiology and Immunology in 1976. She did her post-doctoral work at the National Research Council of Canada, in Saskatoon, in Carbohydrate Chemistry and then moved to the Department of Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, with biochemist Clinton E. Ballou. After returning to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1980, she set up the Surface Structure of Microorganisms Laboratory at the university's Institute of Microbiology, became a Full Professor in 1992, and directed the lab until 2001. It was then that she was named Director of the Laboratory of Glycobiology at the Institute of Biophysics Carlos Chagas Filho, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

In her research, Previato and her team discovered the mechanism that allows Trypanosoma cruzi, the protozoan that transmits Chagas disease, to bypass the immune system when it infects a human organism. This discovery earned her one of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards in 2004. She also received the TWAS Prize in Biology in 2007 and the National Order of Scientific Merit (Comendador) in 2001.

Personal life She is married to Jose Osvaldo Previato and has two children.

Selected awards and honors National Research Council of Brazil, Top Research Career Investigator, 1986 Petrobras Award, National Invention Prize, 1987 Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, 1992 International Research Scholar, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 1997 Scientist of Rio de Janeiro State Award in Biological Sciences, 1999 Editor-in-Chief of Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Science, 2003

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lúcia Mendonça Previato

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lúcia Mendonça Previato claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lúcia Mendonça Previato before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lúcia Mendonça Previato ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lúcia Mendonça Previato

In research: Lúcia Mendonça Previato appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lúcia Mendonça Previato in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lúcia Mendonça Previato is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1949 births, 21st-century Brazilian women scientists, Academic staff of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lúcia Mendonça Previato outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lúcia Mendonça Previato in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lúcia Mendonça Previato means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lúcia Mendonça Previato out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lúcia Mendonça Previato in simple terms?

Lúcia Mendonça Previato (born 1949) is a Brazilian biologist. She was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2004 for her research into preventing Chagas disease.

Why does Lúcia Mendonça Previato matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lúcia Mendonça Previato?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lúcia Mendonça Previato.