HAVANA - A solar research center created in the eastern Cuban province of Granma aims to instill in youth attitudes of caring for natural resources.

The educational center, in operation for two years, is sponsored by the non-governmental Cuban Society for the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources, or Cubasolar.

The Camilo Cienfuegos School, on the slopes of the Sierra Maestra, has around 6,000 students who come from that mountainous ecosystem. They use solar heaters, biomass-run boilers and electricity from a nearby hydroelectric facility, among other natural sources of energy, Cubasolar president Luis Bérriz said.

"We are working for the future, so that people learn the value of saving energy and protecting their surroundings," Bérriz told Tierramérica.

RIO DE JANEIRO - In around five years the people of the world could have the option of a "third set of teeth," formed from stem cells, if resources can be found for experiments, says Brazil's Silvio Dualibi, researcher with the Federal University of Sao Paulo.

His experiments, conducted alongside his wife Mónica Dualibi and the U.S.-based Forsyth Institute, were able to develop teeth "with all their parts" in the abdomen of mice. Achieving the same in the jaw of the mice is the research phase to be finalized this year.

"The method is viable; it uses adult stem cells from the same recipient, avoiding rejection, and establishes a path to multiply and implant them," Dualibi told Tierramérica.

An investment of a million dollars would allow them to move to human subjects, and with two million more they could create conditions for its widespread therapeutic use, which requires a laboratory free of any bacterial contamination, he said.

Twenty-six million Brazilians who are missing their own adult teeth stand to benefit from the research, he said.

GUATEMALA CITY - Archeologists led by Jonathan Kaplan, of the United States, discovered on Guatemala's southern coast a statue and a building with a 400-meter front -- part of a Mayan city corresponding to the late pre-classic period, 300 to 200 years B.C.

Juan Pablo Herrera, assistant of the Chocolá Archeological Project, told Tierramérica that in the facade they also found ceramic objects that "indicate the importance of the building," located on the property of the same name, in the municipality of San Pablo Jocopilas, Suchitepéquez, 180 km south of the capital.

They also found canals, walls and stairways that are evidence of the engineering and urbanization feats of that Mayan society.

Chocolá belonged to the Spaniard José Guardiola, who sold it in 1890 to some Germans. During World War II it was expropriated by the government, and in 1980 given over to rural farmers who turned it into a village run by the Chocolá Peasant Farmer Association.

SANTIAGO - The Chilean government has pledged to five environmental groups to promote a constitutional reform that would eliminate the obstacles to information held by public entities.

The president's office responded favorably last week to a petition from Oceana, Ciudad Vida, Defendamos la Ciudad and Terram, by overturning a 2001 decree that allowed state-run agencies to declare some of its archives confidential.

The decree was issued as a safeguard following the enactment of a law on government probity, but today there is consensus that many agencies used the legislation indiscriminately.

As part of constitutional reforms under way, only the legislative branch will have the power to hold some information in reserve, not the administrative authorities, promised the government.

"This is an advance for Chilean society," said Marcel Claude, vice-president of Ocean for Latin America. But the "remains of a culture of secrets" in the administration of President Ricardo Lagos must be eliminated he said.

CARACAS - A study of 209 artisanal miners and their families in El Callao, a town in southeast Venezuela along the Yuruari River, a source of gold and diamonds, found that 105 of them had toxic levels of mercury from inhaling the vapors of the heavy metal.

Those affected showed signs of uncoordinated movement, diarrhea, vomiting and difficulty speaking.

An estimated 12 tons of mercury is spread throughout the water, air and soil in the area each year, and across the entire southeast, in the Yuruari and Caroní river basins, some 60 tons. Mercury is used in separating out gold from ore.

"Fish, plants and humans are contaminated. With the deforestation, there is more sediment in the rivers," María Eugenia Gil, of the environmental group Aguaclara, told Tierramérica.

"But despite the evidence, the government opened up a new territory, the Sierra de Imataca forest reserve, in the far east, where several thousands more miners will go to work, and (there will be) giant loads of mercury," she added.

TEGUCIGALPA - Communities of the Río Plátano biosphere, in the northeastern departments of Olancho and Mosquitia, Honduras, have joined forces and in less than two months staved off four attacks by the northern pine weevil plague in the pine forest.

Residents of Las Marías and La Colonia, in Olancho, signed a pact to stop the 'gorgojo de pino' (Dentroctonus frontails), which has devastated more than 7,000 hectares of forest in that department, especially in the southern part of the Río Plátano biosphere, declared a heritage of humanity site by the United Nations.

They have drawn up plans to manage and to fight the gorgojo, prevent forest fires, and to conserve the pine forests, Hugo Galeano, of the Small Grants Program for the Global Environment Facility, told Tierramérica.

These communities have joined another 10 municipalities, with a population of 3,600, along with lumber companies and environmental groups. Together they aim to preserve 10,000 hectares of forest and the small watersheds that provide them with potable water.