TEXTO:

     Since the early 21st century, numerous studies
have shown how aerobic exercise promotes the
generation of new brain cells and white matter
integrity in people who exercise regularly. However,
[5] there’s still a lot of uncertainty about the exact “doseresponse” related to how much time people should
spend being physically active in their daily lives. And
nobody is certain about what intensity (easy, moderate,
vigorous, or intense) of physical exercise is ideal
[10] for optimizing brain structure and functional connectivity
across a lifespan.

    A recent study, conducted by researchers in
California and in Japan, shows that a single 10-minute
bout of very light physical activity can increase the
[15] connectivity between brain regions linked to memory
formation and storage. What makes this study unique
is that the researchers have demonstrated a more
immediate impact related to the strengthening of
communication lines between memory-focused parts
[20] of the brain after a single 10-minute bout of light activity
that wasn’t aerobic. 

     For this study, the researchers recruited 36 healthy
young adults and had them perform 10 minutes of very
easy physical movements such as tai chi or gentle yoga.
[25] Immediately after the brief session of physical
movement was completed, each person’s brain was
scanned using high-resolution functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI). In comparison to a control
group that hadn’t done any physical activity, those who
[30] had gently moved their bodies for 10 minutes prior to
the brain scan showed better connectivity between the
hippocampal dentate gyrus as well as cortical areas
linked to detailed memory processing and storage. “The
hippocampus is critical for the creation of

      new memories; it’s one of the first regions of the brain
to deteriorate as we get older — and much more
severely in Alzheimer’s disease,”they said.

CHRISTOFER, Bergland. Disponível em: <https://www.psychol ogytoday.com/intl/blog/the-athletes-way/201809/more-evidence-littlebit-exercise-goes-long-way>. Acesso em: 1 dez. 2018.

Medical information on the web has pros and cons

By Christian Vey

Jan 2, 2012

You feel a twinge in your stomach and there is no
obvious explanation. Or maybe, for no apparent
reason, you get a stabbing headache. To whom - or to
what - do you turn first? According to various studies,
there is a good chance it is the internet.

'About 65 per cent of respondents now state that they
have recently searched for health content on the
internet,' said Marie-Luise Dierks, co-director of the
Hanover Patients' University, an independent
education institution at Hanover Medical School in
Germany. Some, though by no means all of them, try
to diagnose themselves.

Independently researching a health-related matter on
the internet can indeed be useful, said Dierks, who
said it is a good way to boost one's self-reliance and
confidence in dealing with illnesses, doctors and
medicine. But she added a caveat: 'It's important,
however, that information from the web always be
called into question.'

Health care professionals are divided on the internet
as a source of medical information. 

'There is nothing wrong with informing oneself,' said
Ursula Marschall, medical director of a German public
health insurance company. But she said it is
dangerous to regard the internet as more credible than
one's doctor. Noting that 'patients always have their
own notions about their illness,' she said those who
did internet research were at risk of latching onto
information that supports their preconceptions, even if
these latter ones are completely wrong.

Maria Gropalis, a psychologist at Mainz University's
Department of Psychology, also sees risks. 'The
danger of misinformation is very high on the internet.
The overabundance of information can be a problem
as well' - particularly for hypochondriacs, she said.
'There's the risk that the internet will intensify existing
fears.'

A word has even been coined for unfounded anxiety
concerning the state of one's health brought on by
visiting medical websites: 'cyberchondria.' While
Gropalis views the neologism as mainly a vogue word,
she said the phenomenon it described was definitely a
modern variety of hypochondria. 

www.monstersandcritics.com/news/health/news/article_1683515.php/Medical-information-on-the-web-has-pros-and-cons. Adaptado.

TEXT

New Translations Explore Brazil’s ‘Endless and Unfinished’ Character

    Mário de Andrade’s novel
“Macunaíma: The Hero With No Character”
follows a shape-shifting, rule-flouting, race-

switching trickster as he roams the vast nation of
[5] Brazil, meeting historical characters, folkloric
figures, and outrageously satirized stereotypes
along the way.
    Rich with words and references from
Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cultures, the
[10] modernist novel was hailed as a classic upon its
publication in 1928, and has long been seen as an
allegory for Brazil’s unique cultural blend. Faced
with criticism of the book’s uncredited reliance on
anthropological research, Andrade offered up, in
[15] an open letter, a typically insouciant response: “I
copied Brazil.”
    Some scholars have deemed the book’s
complexity virtually untranslatable — but this
week, New Directions published a new translation
[20] of “Macunaíma” by Katrina Dodson that aims to
transport Andrade’s idiosyncratic prose into
English. Over six years of research, Dodson
familiarized herself with every aspect of the
novel. She chased down obscure flora and fauna
[25] on two trips to the Amazon, waded through
reams of critical commentary, immersed herself
in Andrade’s archives in São Paulo and discussed
the book’s continued relevance with
contemporary Brazilians. While she found that for
[30] some readers the book continues to represent
the “endless and unfinished” national spirit of
Brazil, she also met many Afro-Brazilian and
Indigenous artists who have set out to reclaim the
folkloric roots that Andrade drew on.
[35]    Inspired by her research, Dodson hopes
that her new translation will emphasize just how
deeply personal, and multifaceted, the concept of
Brazil was for Andrade. “He had African heritage
on both sides. Once you know more about him
[40] and more about the context of how he wrote this
book, you understand that there are a lot of very
sincere and serious questions at the heart of it.”
    The notion that the book and its main
character are a stand-in for the country and its
[45] “amalgamation of different races and ethnicities”
has helped establish “Macunaíma” as a canonical
novel, read in every classroom devoted to
Brazilian literature, said Pedro Meira Monteiro,
chair of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton
[50] University. But it would be a mistake to read it as
a nationalist project, he said. “Mário is so
profoundly charmed by the endless and
unfinished character of Brazil,” he said, referring
to the author by his first name, with the
[55] familiarity common to Andrade’s readers in
Brazil.“ He is seeing something that he recognizes
as his and at the same time not,” he said. “There’s
a problematic sense of belonging in his work that
is profound.”
[60]    A more personal register is on full
display in “The Apprentice Tourist,” the first
translation of another Andrade book by Flora
Thomson-DeVeaux that was also published this
week by Penguin Classics. Compiled from notes
[65] Andrade made during his first trip to the Amazon
shortly before “Macunaíma” was released, “The
Apprentice Tourist” shows Andrade’s fascination
with Amazonian cultures — and his utter
boredom with the government officials and elites
[70] who welcomed the group of travelers along the
way.
    Andrade was born in São Paulo, the
country’s industrial capital, in 1893. He enrolled
in São Paulo’s Dramatic and Musical Conservatory
[75] at age 11 to train as a concert pianist, taught
himself French and became enamored with the
poetry of the Symbolists. By his mid-20s he was
traveling throughout Brazil, publishing poetry and
essays on folklore along the way.
[80]    Andrade’s fascination with the
multiplicities of Brazilian culture placed him at the
center of the modernist movements that were
sweeping the country in the 1920s. “Macunaíma”
was first excerpted in the Revista de
[85] Antropofagia, the journal edited by Oswald de
Andrade (no relation), whose 1928 manifesto
proclaimed that Brazilian thinkers needed to
reject European artifice and “cannibalize” native
forms of storytelling to produce a new Brazilian
[90] art. Antropofagia, or anthropophagy in English,
refers to the eating of human flesh.
    The book found an admiring readership
among the Brazilian intelligentsia, but even they
were struck by its incongruities. One critic, João
[95] Ribeiro — a prominent folklorist himself — called
it “voluntarily barbarous, primeval, an assortment
of disconnected fragments put together by a
commentator incapable of any coordination.”
    Dodson approached the book because
[100] she felt the existing English translation, E.A.
Goodland’s 1984 version for Random House, had
smoothed over the “joy and poetry of the 

language, and the cultural politics of the
particular mix of languages.”
[105]    Take the book’s first line, which half a
dozen Brazilian artists and scholars interviewed
by The New York Times quoted, unprompted,
from memory: “No fundo do mato-virgem nasceu
Macunaíma, herói da nossa gente.” Goodland’s
[110] translation of the first line ignores Andrade’s
sentence structure. It starts: “In a far corner of
Northern Brazil” — words that do not exist in the
original — then continues, “at an hour when so
deep a hush had fallen on the virgin forest….”
[115] Goodland, a retired technical director for a sugar
company in Guyana, was “well-versed in all of the
natural history foundation of the book,” Dodson
said, “but he completely missed the spirit of what
the book is trying to do.”
[120]     Dodson decided to essentially
transliterate the line, despite the grammatical
awkwardness it introduces in English: “In the
depths of the virgin-forest was born Macunaíma,
hero of our people.” The importance of the line,
[125] she said, is not in establishing where the action is
taking place, as Goodland had done, but in
bringing the reader into the fold of the people at
hand. “Macunaíma is our hero,” she said.
As her knowledge of the book
[130] deepened, Dodson said, she found herself
walking back some of her own interventions to
maintain the “music” of the original. “A lot of the
words in the book are not in the regular Brazilian
Portuguese dictionaries,” Dodson noted. “Or if
[135] they are, the meanings are ambiguous. My goal
was to make you feel the joy of language in the
book, to be carried along by all the humor and
the colloquial ways in which people speak, but
also by the beautiful sounds of the Indigenous
[140] words.”
For the Brazilian artists behind the
book’s many adaptations into film, theater, and
art, Andrade’s insistence on maintaining the
complex vernacular that he overheard on his
[145] travels is precisely what makes the book so vital.
“The book’s difficulty is its genius,” said Iara
Rennó, a São Paulo-based musician. Shortly after
reading the book for the first time and becoming
enamored by its musicality, Rennó began writing
[150] her 2008 album, “Macunaíma Ópera Tupi.”
“‘Macunaíma’ puts the reader, who is used to so

called ‘well-written’ Portuguese, into a state of
transgression,” she said. “And that transgression
is so important. It feeds culture.”
[155]    Some scholars have compared
“Macunaíma” to James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” another
totemic modernist novel from the 1920s whose
allusive, wide-ranging play with language is as
central to its identity as its plot. “The elites in
[160] Brazil love to think of themselves as dislocated

Europeans,” said Caetano Galindo, whose
innovative 2012 translation of “Ulysses” into
Brazilian Portuguese won the prestigious Jabuti
prize. Andrade, he added, “had a huge role in
[165] facing the fact that this is not a true monolingual
country.”
Nearly a century after its publication,
many of the novel’s Brazilian admirers are unsure
of how it will be received in the United States.
[170] “Macunaíma is always on the verge of being
canceled,” said Meira Monteiro, the Princeton
professor.

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/07