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

Can you stop your parents sharing photos of you online?

By Helier Cheung BBC News
28 March 2019

It's a great way of staying in touch - and it's always amusing watching your parents attempt to take selfies or use
emojis. But if they share photos of you online without your permission - and have no understanding of privacy
settings - have they crossed the line? And - if you want to - how do you convince them to take the photos down?

"Sharenting" - the act of parents sharing news and pictures of their kids online - is in the news after Gwyneth
[5] Paltrow posted a picture of her and her 14-year-old daughter Apple Martin skiing. More than 150,000 people liked
the picture, but Apple wasn't so impressed, writing (from her private Instagram account): "Mom we have discussed
this. You may not post anything without my consent." Paltrow replied: "You can't even see your face!" Many of
Paltrow's fans have argued that, as the mother, she had every right to share pictures of her daughter - but others
say children deserve a right to privacy too.

[10] Ironically, children aren't technically allowed to register with most social media services until they are 13 anyway -
which means some rule-abiding teenagers get a shock when they finally get online.

Konrad Iturbe, a 19-year-old software developer in Spain, told the BBC he had a "big awakening" when he realised
his parents had been posting photos of him online. "I really don't like photos of me online anyway - I don't even
post photos of myself on my Instagram account - so when I followed my mother and saw them on her profile, I
[15] told her to 'take this down, I've not given you permission'."

Konrad says his mother understood his concerns and acted quickly to deal with the issue - as he says all parents
should. He says discovering the pictures it felt like a "breach of privacy". It particularly bothered him because there
were photos of him as a young child, and his mother's Instagram account was open to the public. "I didn't want
photos of my youth shared, it's a very intimate thing," he says, adding that he is also worried about "facial

[20] recognition algorithms" and people being able to "start tracing me when I'm older".

Sonia Bokhari, a 14-year-old in the US, had a similar experience when she first joined Twitter and Facebook.
Writing in Fast Company magazine, she says: "When I saw the pictures that she [her mother] had been posting on
Facebook for years, I felt utterly embarrassed, and deeply betrayed.

Not everyone minds "sharenting", however. Charlotte Christy, a 23-year-old studying in London, says she
[25] personally thinks it's "quite normal". She was 13 when her mum started uploading photos of her on Facebook. "She
would tag me and it would be on my news feed so everyone could see it. I thought it was embarrassing, but I
wasn't upset to the point of asking her to remove it."

"I feel like we live in a society where everyone wants their photos to be really flattering - but if my mum posts an
unflattering photo of me it doesn't really bother me. I think I share photos of my mum just as much as she shares
[30] photos of me - I think it's a natural thing to share and I don't see why she should ask for my permission - she's my
mum."

For Sarah (not her real name), a 29-year-old health professional in Hong Kong, the most worrying thing was the
privacy implications. "When I was 21, my mum tagged me on Facebook, and I saw that she'd posted a bunch of
photos of me - from when I was a baby to me in my 20s," she told the BBC.

[35] "Her settings were public, so I just found it very unsafe. I didn't want my baby photos leaked to everyone, and I
knew that with Google, you can search for someone's name using their photos. And by her contributing more
photos of me online, technology companies have more data on how I look."

Andra Siibak, a professor in media studies at the University of Tartu in Estonia, has conducted several studies into
"sharenting". In one study involving Estonian children aged nine to 13, she found that children liked "parents
[40] sharing positive things about them", but that "there were big discrepancies between what children and parents
considered to be nice photos".

"Children were not in favour of parents sharing unflattering visuals of them - for example, if their hair was messed
up or they were wearing a dress they didn't actually like. In many contexts the parents would not consider those
things to be a big problem, but for the pre-teens this could affect their self-image" or potentially lead to cyber

[45] bullying.

Another potential risk from "sharenting" is "digital kidnapping", Prof Siibak says, where strangers take publicly
available photos of children, and use them for fraudulent or sexual purposes. Prof Siibak says many parents feel
that, as the adult, they are responsible for their child's wellbeing, and don't need their child's permission as long as
they believe the photos are not doing any harm. However, she argues that parents should "absolutely" take their
[50] children's privacy concerns more seriously.

Adapted from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47722427

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.