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

Controlling the global obesity epidemic
The challenge

    At the other end of the malnutrition scale, obesity is one of today’s most blatantly visible – yet most neglected – public health problems. Paradoxically coexisting with undernutrition, an escalating global epidemic of overweight and obesity – “globesity” – is taking over many parts of the world. If immediate action is not taken, millions will suffer from an array of serious health disorders.

    Obesity is a complex condition, one with serious social and psychological dimensions, that affects virtually all age and socioeconomic groups and threatens to overwhelm both developed and developing countries. In 1995, there were an estimated 200 million obese adults worldwide and another 18 million under-five children classified as overweight. As of 2000, the number of obese adults has increased to over 300 million. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the obesity epidemic is not restricted to industrialized societies; in developing countries, it is estimated that over 115 million people suffer from obesity-related problems.

    Generally, although men may have higher rates of overweight, women have higher rates of obesity. For both, obesity poses a major risk for serious diet-related noncommunicable diseases, including diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and certain forms of cancer. Its health consequences range from increased risk of premature death to serious chronic conditions that reduce the overall quality of life.

The response: making healthy choices easy choices

    World Health Organization began sounding the alarm in the 1990s, spearheading a series of expert and technical consultations. Public awareness campaigns were also initiated to sensitize policymakers, private sector partners, medical professionals and the public at large. Aware that obesity is predominantly a “social and environmental disease”, WHO is helping to develop strategies that will make healthy choices easier to make.

In collaboration with the University of Sydney (Australia), WHO is calculating the worldwide economic impact of overweight and obesity. It is also working with the University of Auckland (New Zealand) to analyse the impact that globalization and rapid socioeconomic transition have on nutrition and to identify the main political, socioeconomic, cultural and physical factors which promote obesogenic environments.

Global protest grows as citizens lose faith in politics and the state

[1] The demonstrations in Brazil began after a small rise in bus fares that triggered mass

protests. Within days this had become a nationwide movement whose concerns had

spread far beyond fares: more than a million people were on the streets shouting about

everything − from corruption to the cost of living to the amount of money being spent on

[5] the World Cup.

In Turkey, it was a similar story. A protest over the future of a city park in Istanbul snowballed

too into something bigger, a wider-ranging political confrontation with prime minister.

If the recent scenes have seemed familiar, it is because they shared common features: viral,

loosely organised with fractured messages and mostly taking place in urban public locations.

[10] Unlike the protest movement of 1968, or even the end of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe

in 1989, these are movements with few discernible leaders and often conflicting ideologies.

Their points of reference are not even necessarily ideological, but take inspiration from

other protests, including those of the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. The result

has seen a wave of social movements − sometimes short-lived − from Wall Street to Tel

[15] Aviv and from Istanbul to Rio de Janeiro, often engaging younger, better educated and

wealthier members of society.

In Brazil, the varied banners underlined the difficulty of easy categorisation as protesters

held aloft signs expressing a range of demands from education reforms to free bus fares,

while denouncing the billions of public dollars spent on stadiums for the 2014 World Cup

[20] and the Olympics.

“It’s sort of a Catch-22”, Rodrigues da Cunha, a 63-year-old protester told the Associated

Press. “On the one hand, we need some sort of leadership; on the other, we don’t want

this to be compromised by being affiliated with any political party.”

As the Economist pointed out, while mass movements in Britain, France, Sweden and Turkey

[25] have been inspired by a variety of causes, including falling living standards, authoritarian

government and worries about immigration, Brazil does not fit the picture, with youth

unemployment at a record low and enjoying the biggest leap in living standards in the

country’s history.

So what’s going on? “This is a very peculiar moment”, Saskia Sassen, a sociology professor

[30] at Columbia University, New York, told the Observer. She argues that one distinguishing

factor is that many of the protest movements of the past decade have been defined

by the involvement of what she calls “the modest middle class”, who have often been

beneficiaries of the systems they are protesting against, but whose positions have been

eroded by neoliberal economic policies that have seen both distribution of wealth and

[35] opportunities captured by a narrowing minority. As people have come to feel more distant

from government and economic institutions, a large part of the new mass forms of dissent

has come to be seen as an opportunity to demonstrate ideas of “citizenship”.

Sassen’s belief that many of the recent protests are middle-class-driven appeared to be

confirmed overtly − in the case of Brazil, at least.

theguardian.com

Wearable tech for kids coming from LeapFrog

By Doug Gross, CNN

updated 12:57 PM EDT, Thu May 1, 2014

(CNN) – The wearable technology movement is in full effect, and exercise-based activity trackers lead the way. Now, it’s becoming child’s play.

  LeapFrog, the maker of education-oriented tablets and apps for children, has unveiled1 LeapBand, a wearable activity tracker designed with kids in mind.

  The band fits around the user’s wrist and looks a lot like a kids version of a smartwatch. By performing actions like “walk like a crab,” “spin like a helicopter” or “pop like popcorn,” kids can unlock new games and a group of Pokemon-like “digital pets” on the device.

  The band connects to a website or app that lets parents monitor their children’s activities and choose which challenges they can select, and which they can’t.

  Moving past smartphones and tablets, wearable tech has become arguably the hottest digital trend in the past year or so.

(http://tinyurl.com/noswsfc Acesso em: 20.07.2014. Adaptado)

Glossário

¹ unveil: revelar, apresentar.

Why do we buy into the 'cult' of overwork?

By Bryan Lufkin, 9th May 2021

Although many of us associate overly ambitious workaholism with the 1980s and the finance industry, the tendency to devote ourselves to work and glamourize long-hours culture remains as pervasive as ever. In fact, it is expanding into more sectors and professions, in slightly different packaging. Overwork isn't a phenomenon exclusive to Silicon Valley or Wall Street. People work long hours all over the world, for many different reasons

In Japan, a culture of overwork can be traced back to the 1950s, when the government pushed hard for the country to be rebuilt quickly after World War Two. In Arab League countries, burnout is high among medical professionals, possibly because its 22 members are developing nations with overburdened healthcare systems, studies suggest. Reasons for overwork also depend on industry. Some of the earliest researchers on burnout in the 1970s asserted that many people in jobs geared toward helping others, like employees in clinics or crisis-intervention centers, tended to work long hours that led to emotional and physical exhaustion – a trend which is shown up in the pandemic, too. But millions of us overwork because somehow, we think it’s exciting – a status symbol that puts us on the path to success, whether we define that by wealth or an Instagram post that makes it seem like we're living a dream life with a dream job. Romanticization of work seems to be an especially common practice among "knowledge workers" in the middle and upper classes. In 2014, the New Yorker called this devotion to overwork "a cult".

According to Anat Lechner, clinical associate professor of management at New York University. "We glorify the lifestyle, and the lifestyle is: you breathe something, you sleep with something, you wake up and work on it all day long, then you go to sleep. Again, and again and again."

Adapted from: Home - BBC Worklife.