Questões de Inglês - Grammar

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    Researchers in the US have developed a technological aid: a chest-mounted video camera — linked to a processing unit involving a computer-vision algorithm — and a pair of vibrating wristbands. When the system detects a hazard that the wearer is set to collide with, the wristband on the same side as the hazard vibrates. If the obstacle is straight ahead, both wristbands vibrate. The researchers said the device was not designed to replace canes or guide dogs but rather to provide additional benefits, including helping wearers to avoid hazards above ground level.

     Writing in the journal Jama Ophthalmology, the researchers reported that a study of 368 hours of walking video data from 31 blind or partially sighted participants indicates that the approach could be helpful.

    After a period of training, each participant used the system for about four weeks, in addition to their cane or guide dog. During this time the system switched unannounced between “active” mode — during which the wristbands vibrated when a hazard was detected — and “silent” mode, where they did not. The researchers then analysed the data to see whether the rate of contacts between the user’s body or cane and the objects identified by the system differed between the two scenarios.

    When they looked at a random sample of collision warnings for each participant, they found that such contacts were reduced by 37% when the system was in active mode, taking into account factors including participants’ level of visual acuity.

(Nicola Davis. www.theguardian.com, 22.07.2021. Adaptado.)

    Redu, Belgium — Nearly 40 years ago, books saved this village.

    The community was shrinking fast. Farming jobs had disappeared and families were moving away from this pastoral patch of French-speaking Belgium. But in the mid-1980s, a band of booksellers moved into the empty barns and transformed the place into a literary lodestone. The village of about 400 became home to more than two dozen bookstores — more shops than cows, its boosters liked to say — and thousands of tourists thronged the winsome streets.

    Now, though, more than half the bookstores have closed. Some of the storekeepers died, others left when they could no longer make a living. Many who remain are in their 70s and aren’t sure what’ll happen after they’re gone.

    It’s not just the businesses at risk. It’s Redu’s identity.

Reis Thebault. This village was a book capital. What happens when people stop buying so many books? In: The Washington Post. Internet: www.washingtonpost.com (adapted).

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What Does It Mean to Tear Down a Statue?

Protesters throwing the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston into a harbour.

    Statues of historical figures, including slave traders and Christopher Columbus, are being toppled throughout the U.S. and around the world. This follows years of debate about public display of Confederate symbols. We interviewed the art historian Erin L. Thompson about the topic. Read the excerpt from the interview.

    Q. What are some of the issues that arise when we talk about statues being torn down?

    A. We have as humans been making monuments to glorify people and ideas since we started making art, and since we started making statues, other people have torn them down. So it’s not surprising that we are seeing people rebelling against ideas that are represented by these statues today.

    Q. What do the recent attacks on statues tell us about the protests themselves?

    A. The current attacks on statues are a sign that what’s in question is not just our future but our past, as a nation, as a society. These attacks show that we need to question the way we understand the world, even the past, in order to get to a better future.

    Q. What’s a statue?

    A. I think a statue is a bid for immortality. It’s a way of solidifying an idea and making it present to other people. It’s not the statues themselves but the point of view that they represent. And these [the ones being destroyed] are statues in public places, right? So these are statues claiming that this version of history is the public version of history.

    Also, many Confederate statues are made out of bronze, a metal that you can melt down. The ancient Greeks made their major monuments out of bronze. Hardly any of these survived because as soon as regimes changed, as soon as there was war, it got melted down and made into money or a statue of somebody else.

    We have been in a period of peace and prosperity — not peace for everybody, but the U.S. hasn’t been invaded, we’ve had enough money to maintain statues. So our generation thinks of public art as something that will always be around. But this is a very ahistorical point of view. I wish that what is happening now with statues being torn down didn’t have to happen this way. But there have been peaceful protests against many of these statues which have come to nothing. So if people lose hope in the possibility of a peaceful resolution, they’re going to find other means.

(www.nytimes.com, 11.06.2020. Adaptado.)