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A zoo in eastern China has denied suggestions that some of its bears were people dressed in costume after videos of a Malayan sun bear standing on its hind legs – and looking uncannily human – went viral, fueling rumors and conspiracy theories on Chinese social media.
In a statement written from the perspective of a sun bear named “Angela,” officials from a zoo in Hangzhou said people “didn’t understand” the species.
“I’m Angela the sun bear – I got a call after work yesterday from the head of the zoo asking if I was being lazy and skipped work today and found a human to take my place,” the statement read.
“Let me reiterate again to everyone that I am a sun bear – not a black bear, not a dog – a sun bear!”
In videos shared on the popular Chinese microblogging site Weibo, a sun bear was seen standing upright on a rock and looking out of its enclosure.
Many Weibo users noted the animal’s upright posture, as well as folds of loose fur on its behind – making the bear look somewhat odd and fueling speculation that a human imposter might be masquerading in its place.
It might sound like an implausible gambit. But zoos in China have courted public ridicule in the past for trying to pass off pets like dogs as wild animals.
In 2013, a city zoo in the central Henan province angered visitors by trying to pass off a Tibetan Mastiff dog as a lion. Visitors who had approached the enclosure expressed shock when they heard the “lion” bark.
Visitors at another Chinese zoo, in Sichuan province, were shocked to discover a golden retriever sitting in a cage labeled as an African lion enclosure
Disponível em: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/01/china/sun-bear-claims-china-hangzhou-zoointl-hnk (Adaptado)
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The eco-friendly glass that’s hard to crack
There's laughter over the phone as John Mauro calls out my question to one of his researchers: just how much pummelling with a mallet does it take to break the new glass they have developed? "You've got to put your body into it," says Prof Mauro, of Pennsylvania State University, as he describes how the glass must first be scratched deeply with diamond or tungsten carbide stylus - and then hammered by a post-doctoral researcher wielding a mallet.
Prof Mauro claims the invention, called LionGlass, is ten times stronger than standard glass. Imagine a wine bottle unscathed, even after falling onto a tiled kitchen floor.
However, few details about LionGlass are available as the research has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet and the team have only recently filed a patent application.
One key detail is that, unlike standard glass, the production of this glass doesn't need soda ash or limestone. The alternative ingredients are currently a closely guarded secret.
Available: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66359047. Accessed on Oct. 24th, 2023 [Adapted]
What have the team of researchers done recently?
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The first Game Developers Conference, in 1988, attracted 25 participants and took place in a programmer’s sitting room in California. This 2023 summit, which began on March 20 in a giant exhibition centre in San Francisco, demonstrates how the industry has grown. Some 3.2 billion people now play, thanks largely to the spread of the smartphone. Women are now almost as likely as men to call themselves gamers. Gaming is catching on among all age groups. In Britain, for instance, half of those aged 55-64 play video games, though for less time than the young. Worldwide there are now more console owners aged 35-44 than 16-24.
The bigger the audience, the bigger the market. Consumers will spend 185 billion dollars on games in 2023, more than half on mobile games. That is about five times the value of the cinema box office, and two-thirds more than the video-streaming business. As gaming continues to grow, it is beginning to rival television as the world’s favourite entertainment medium.
(https://view.e.economist.com, 20.03.2023. Adaptado.)
No trecho do segundo parágrafo “As gaming continues to grow, it is beginning to rival television as the world’s favourite entertainment medium”, os termos sublinhados equivalem, em português, respectivamente, a
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The first Game Developers Conference, in 1988, attracted 25 participants and took place in a programmer’s sitting room in California. This 2023 summit, which began on March 20 in a giant exhibition centre in San Francisco, demonstrates how the industry has grown. Some 3.2 billion people now play, thanks largely to the spread of the smartphone. Women are now almost as likely as men to call themselves gamers. Gaming is catching on among all age groups. In Britain, for instance, half of those aged 55-64 play video games, though for less time than the young. Worldwide there are now more console owners aged 35-44 than 16-24.
The bigger the audience, the bigger the market. Consumers will spend 185 billion dollars on games in 2023, more than half on mobile games. That is about five times the value of the cinema box office, and two-thirds more than the video-streaming business. As gaming continues to grow, it is beginning to rival television as the world’s favourite entertainment medium.
(https://view.e.economist.com, 20.03.2023. Adaptado.)
Uma interpretação matemática plausível da frase do segundo parágrafo “The bigger the audience, the bigger the market”, considerando o público e o mercado de games, é de
TEXTO PARA AS QUESTÃO
Over the last two decades, technology companies and policymakers warned of a “digital divide” in which poor children could fall behind their more affluent peers without equal access to technology. Today, with widespread internet access and smartphone ownership, the gap has narrowed sharply.
But with less fanfare a different division has appeared: Across the country, poor children and adolescents are participating far less in sports and fitness activities than more affluent youngsters are. Call it the physical divide. Data from multiple sources reveal a significant gap in sports participation by income level.
A combination of factors is responsible. Spending cuts and changing priorities at some public schools have curtailed physical education classes and organized sports. At the same time, privatized youth sports have become a multibilliondollar enterprise offering new opportunities — at least for families that can afford hundreds to thousands of dollars each season for club-team fees, uniforms, equipment, travel to tournaments and private coaching.
“What’s happened as sports has become privatized is that it has become the haves and have-nots,” said Jon Solomon, editorial director for the Aspen Institute Sports and Society Program. “Particularly for low-income kids, if they don’t have access to sports within the school setting, where are they going to get their physical activity?” Mr. Solomon said. “The answer is nowhere.”
The New York Times. 24 March 2023. Adaptado.
Conforme o texto, um dos motivos para a disparidade relativa à prática de atividades físicas por alunos, segundo o nível de renda, reside
Text
Social Media Use Is Linked to Brain Changes in Teens, Research Finds
The effect of social media use on children is a fraught area of research, as parents and policymakers try to ascertain the results of a vast experiment already in full swing. Successive studies have added pieces to the puzzle, fleshing out the implications of a nearly constant stream of virtual interactions beginning in childhood.
A new study by neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina tries something new, conducting successive brain scans of middle schoolers between the ages of 12 and 15, a period of especially rapid brain development.
The researchers found that children who habitually checked their social media feeds at around age 12 showed a distinct trajectory, with their sensitivity to social rewards from peers heightening over time. Teenagers with less engagement in social media followed the opposite path, with a declining interest in social rewards.
The study has important limitations, the authors acknowledge. Because adolescence is a period of expanding social relationships, the brain differences could reflect a natural pivot toward peers, which could be driving more frequent social media use.
“We can’t make causal claims that social media is changing the brain,” said Eva H. Telzer, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and one of the authors of the study.
But, she added, “teens who are habitually checking their social media are showing these pretty dramatic changes in the way their brains are responding, which could potentially have long-term consequences well into adulthood, sort of setting the stage for brain development over time.”
A team of researchers studied an ethnically diverse group of 169 students in the sixth and seventh grades from a middle school in rural North Carolina, splitting them into groups according to how often they reported checking Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat feeds.
At around age 12, the students already showed distinct patterns of behavior. Habitual users reported checking their feeds 15 or more times a day; moderate users checked between one and 14 times; nonhabitual users checked less than once a day.
The subjects received full brain scans three times, at approximately one-year intervals, as they played a computerized game that delivered rewards and punishment in the form of smiling or scowling peers. While carrying out the task, the frequent checkers showed increasing activation of three brain areas: reward-processing circuits, which also respond to experiences like winning money or risk-taking behavior; brain regions that determine salience, picking out what stands out in the environment; and the prefrontal cortex, which helps with regulation and control.
The results showed that “teens who grow up checking social media more often are becoming hypersensitive to feedback from their peers,” Dr. Telzer said. Social sensitivity could be adaptive, showing that the teenagers are learning to connect with others; or it could lead to social anxiety and depression if social needs are not met.
“They are showing that the way you use it at one point in your life does influence the way your brain develops, but we don’t know by how much, or whether it’s good or bad,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, who was not involved in the study. He said that many other variables could have contributed to these changes. He described the paper as “a very sophisticated piece of work,” contributing to research that has emerged recently showing that sensitivity to social media varies from person to person.
Over the last decade, social media has remapped the central experiences of adolescence, a period of rapid brain development. Researchers have documented a range of effects on children’s mental health. Some studies have linked use of social media with depression and anxiety, while others found little connection.
Without more information about other aspects of the students’ lives, “it is challenging to discern how specific differences in brain development are to social media checking,” said Adriana Galvan, a specialist in adolescent brain development at the University of California Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study.
Dr. Telzer, one of the study’s authors, described the rising sensitivity to social feedback as “neither good nor bad.” “It’s helping them connect to others and obtain rewards from the things that are common in their social world, which is engaging in social interactions online,” she said. This is the new norm,” she added. “Understanding how this new digital world is influencing teens is important. It may be associated with changes in the brain, but that may be for good or for bad. We don’t necessarily know the long-term implications yet.”
Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/
Regarding social sensitivity, Dr. Eva H. Telzer points out that some of the negative consequences might be
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