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Airborne particles cause more than 3m early deaths a year

    Governments are worried over traffic and other local nuisances that create filthy air. But research just published in Nature by Zhang Qiang, of Tsinghua University in Beijing, and an international team including environmental economists, physicists and disease experts, suggests the problem has a global dimension, too. Dr Zhang’s analysis estimates that in 2007 — the first year for which complete industrial, epidemiological and trade data were available when the team started work — more than 3m premature deaths around the world were caused by emissions of fine particulate matter (known as PM2.5, because the particles in question are less than 2.5 microns across).

    Of these, the team reckon just under an eighth were associated with pollutants released in a part of the world different from that in which the death occurred, thanks to transport of such particles from place to place by the wind. Almost twice as many (22% of the total) were a consequence of goods and services that were produced in one region (often poor) and then exported for consumption in another (often rich, and with more meticulous environmental standards for its own manufacturers).

    In effect, such rich countries are exporting air pollution, and its associated deaths, as they import goods. As far as China is concerned, that phenomenon is probably abating. Chinese coal consumption has been on the wane since 2013, so premature deaths there from toxic air are now probably dropping. But other industrialising countries, such as India, may yet see an increase.

(www.economist.com, 01.04.2017. Adaptado.)

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    Knowing your genetic code could lengthen your life

    Fifteen years ago this month, the full human genome sequence was published for the first time. Since then technology has markedly speeded up genomic sequencing and reduced the cost. But have those hoped-for medical breakthroughs materialised?
    Sequencing the human genome took 10 years and cost about $30 billion. Now advances in computing power have seen the cost fall to under $500. A British firm has even developed a hand-held reader that can sequence genetic material in minutes. Dr Gordon Sanghera, the firm’s chief executive, talks about creating “the internet of living things – real time connection of live DNA information” using such portable devices. And the applications won’t just be for healthcare, he argues, but for establishing the provenance of food in restaurants, or the presence of dangerous microbes in water supplies. It could also be used for analysing DNA evidence at crime scenes.
    Dr Sanghera believes the device could eventually be used to diagnose common infections at home and so reduce needless trips to the doctor. Within the next 10 years, “everyone will get sequenced at birth”, he says, and we’ll be able to assess whether we have genetic dispositions to particular diseases and take preventative steps accordingly.
    More than 500,000 human genomes have now been sequenced worldwide. But it is how this data will be combined with other data and analysed that is causing excitement. The UK Biobank has enlisted 500,000 volunteers who’ve shared their medical data anonymously in the hope of improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illnesses. Scientists at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, used Biobank data to highlight the increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes among shift workers¹. The researchers found that people who worked irregular shift patterns were 44% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than people working permanent day shifts. Now, genetic data will be added to the mix.
    We are at the beginning of a revolution in healthcare. But dramatic medical breakthroughs have been tougher to come by than many had hoped at the start of the genomics era. “The completion of the human genome project held out much hope for the better understanding and treatment of diseases. But as is usually the case, we had underestimated the complexity of the relationship of genome to disease and health,” concludes IBM’s Laxmi Parida.
    Yet this is only the beginning – in the genomics era, healthcare is irrevocably changing.

(Adi Gaskell e Matthew Wall. www.bbc.com, 27.04.2018. Adaptado.)

¹ shift workers: those whose work takes place on a schedule outside the traditional 9 am-5 pm day.

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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.)

TEXT

The end of life on Earth?

    It weighted about 10,000 tons, entered the
atmosphere at a speed of 64,000 km/h and exploded
over a city with a blast of 500 kilotons. But on 15
February 2013, we were lucky. The metereorite that
[05] showered pieces of rock over Chelyabinsk, Russia, was
relatively small, at only about 17 metres wide. Although
many people were injured by falling glass, the damage
was nothing compared to what had happened in Siberia
nearly one hundred years ago, when a relatively small
[10] object (approximately 50 metres in diameter) exploded in
mid-air over a forest region, flattening about 80 million
trees. If it had exploded over a city such as Moscow or
London, millions of people would have been killed.
    By a strange coincidence, the same day that the
[15] meteorite terrified the people of Chelyabinsk, another
50m-wide asteroid passed relatively close to Earth.
Scientists were expecting that visit and know that the
asteroid will return to fly close by us in 2046, but the
Russian meteorite earlier in the day had been too small
[20] for anyone to spot.
    Most scientists agree that comets and asteroids
pose the biggest natural threat to human existence. It
was probably a large asteroid or comet colliding with
Earth which wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million
[25] years ago. An enormous object, 10 to 16 km in diameter,
struck the Yucatan region in Mexico with the force of 100
megatons. That is the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb
for every person alive on Earth today.
    Many scientists, including the late Stephen
[30] Hawking, say that any comet or asteroid greater than
20km in diameter that hits Earth will result in the
complete destruction of complex life, including all
animals and most plants. As we have seen even a much
smaller asteroid can cause great damage.
[35]    The Earth has been kept fairly safe for the last 65
million years by good fortune and the massive
gravitational field of the planet Jupiter. Our cosmic
guardian, with its stable circular orbit far from the sun,
sweeps up and scatters away most of the dangerous
[40] comets and asteroids which might cross Earth’s orbit.
    After the Chelyabinsk meteorite, scientists are now
monitoring potential hazards even more carefully but, as
far as they know, there is no danger in the foreseeable
future.
[45]    Types of space rocks
    • Comet – a ball of rock and ice that sends out a
tail of gas and dust behind it. Bright comets only appear
in our visible night sky about once every ten years.
    • Asteroid – a rock a few feet to several kms in
[50] diameter. Unlike comets, asteroids have no tail. Most
are to small to cause any damage and burn up in the
atmosphere.
    • Meteoroid – part of an asteroid or comet.
    • Meteorite – what a meteoroid is called when it
[55] hits Earth.

Taken from: http://learningenglishteens.britishcouncil.org  - Access on 29/06/2020

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Switzerland’s mysterious fourth language

    Despite Romansh being one of Switzerland’s four national languages, less than 0.5% percent of Swiss can answer that question – “Do you speak Romansh?” – with a “yes”. Romansh is a Romance language indigenous to Switzerland’s largest canton, Graubünden, located in the south-eastern corner of the country. In the last one hundred years, the number of Romansh speakers has fallen 50% to a meagre 60,000. Travellers in the canton can still see Romansh on street signs, or hear it in restaurants when they’re greeted with “Allegra!” (Welcome in). But nearly 40% of Romansh speakers have left the area for better job opportunities and it’s rare that you will see or hear Romansh outside the canton. In such a small country, can a language spoken by just a sliver of the population survive, or is it as doomed as the dinosaur and dodo?

    Language exists to convey a people’s culture to the next generation, so it makes sense that the Swiss are protective of Romansh. When the world loses a language, as it does every two weeks, we collectively lose the knowledge from past generations. “Language is a salient and important expression of cultural identity, and without language you will lose many aspects of the culture,” said Dr Gregory Anderson, Director of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.

    Without the Romansh language, who is to say if customs like Chalandamarz, an ancient festival held each 1 March to celebrate the end of winter and coming of spring, will endure; or if traditional local recipes like capuns – spätzle wrapped in greens – will be forgotten? “Romansh contributes in its own way to a multilingual Switzerland,” says Daniel Telli, head of the Unit Lingua. “And on a different level, the death of a language implies the loss of a unique way to see and describe the world.”

(Dena Roché. www.bbc.com, 28.06.2018. Adaptado.)