Read the comic strip and check the correct meaning of the following expression:

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Children experience basic training and mock deployment

The 460th Force Support Squadron (FSS) hosted the 6th Annual Operation Future Forces (OFF) Sept. 13, 2014, at Camp Rattlesnake. OFF allows children ages 8-18 to experience what military members endure from basic training to technical school to a mock deployment, ending with a homecoming party.

“The youth mock deployment was developed to alleviate many of the stresses commonly experienced by young family members when one or both parents are deployed,” said Thomas Cox, 460th FSS youth program chief. “Everything from basic training, tech schools, camp activities and accomplishing their mission as a team made the event a one of a kind opportunity for military kids.”

A few of the boys had their heads shaved before heading off to “Basic Military Training.” The training consisted of doing push-ups and sit-ups, jumping through hula-hoops and running through an inflatable castle. They were also taught how to stand at attention, salute and do an about-face.

After basic training, each child attended “technical school” and was taught a specific Air Force Specialty Code to help them in their mock deployment. Some children were taught lifesaving self-aid and buddy care skills while others learned about the importance of radio communications while on a deployment.

The tech-school graduates were then issued water pistols before heading out. During their deployment, the children encountered hostile and non-hostile citizens, a water-balloon fight and injured allies who needed help along the way.

At the end of a long day, loved ones waited outside the youth center on base with homemade signs welcoming the “troops” back home.

“This event was great,” said Senior Airman Jasmine Madison, 460th FSS Force Support Force Management technician. “It’s a way for kids to get a hands-on understanding of what their parents do when they are separated from them during deployments.”

Garfield é criação de Jim Davis, em 1978. A tira de Garfield ironiza pessoas que transformam os animais de estimação nos “donos da casa”. Também mostra um gato atuando como homem (inclusive, andando em 2 patas) e enfrentando problemas humanos (dieta, tédio, aversão às segundas-feiras etc.).

Leia o texto abaixo para responder à questão.

The Biological Basis of Learning and Individuality

Elementary aspects of the neuronal mechanisms important for several different types of learning can now be studied on the cellular and even on the molecular level. Researchers agree that [some] forms of learning and memory require a conscious record. These types of learning are commonly called declarative or explicit. Those forms of learning that do not utilize conscious participation are referred to as non-declarative or implicit.

Explicit learning is fast and may take place after only one training trial. It often involves association of simultaneous stimuli and permits storage of information about a single event that happens in a particular time and place; it therefore affords a sense of familiarity about previous events. In contrast, implicit learning is slow and accumulates through repetition over many trials. It often involves association of sequential stimuli and permits storage of information about predictive relations between events. Implicit learning is expressed primarily by improved performance on certain tasks without the subject being able to describe just what has been learned, and it involves memory systems that do not draw on the contents of the general knowledge of the individual.

The existence of two distinct forms of learning has caused the reductionists among neurobiologists to ask whether there is a representation on the cellular level for each of these two types of learning process. Canadian psychologist Donald O. Hebb boldly suggested that associative learning could be produced by a simple cellular mechanism. He proposed that associations could be formed by coincident neural activity: “When an axon of cell A ... excite[s] cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficacy, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.” According to Hebb’s learning rule, coincident activity in the presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons, is critical for strengthening the connection between them (a so-called pre-post associative mechanism).

Texto

Understanding Addiction
How Addiction Hijacks the Brain

[1] Key Points
- Addiction involves craving for something intensely, loss of control over its use, and continuing
involvement with it despite adverse consequences.
- Addiction changes the brain, first by subverting the way it registers pleasure and then by corrupting
[5] other normal drives such as learning and motivation.
- Although breaking an addiction is tough, it can be done.
What causes addiction?
The word “addiction” is derived from a Latin term for “enslaved by” or “bound to.” Anyone who has
struggled to overcome an addiction – or has tried to help someone else to do so – understands why.
[10] Addiction exerts a long and powerful influence on the brain that manifests in three distinct ways:
craving for the object of addiction, loss of control over its use, and continuing involvement with it despite
adverse consequences.
For many years, experts believed that only alcohol and powerful drugs could cause addiction.
Neuroimaging technologies and more recent research, however, have shown that certain pleasurable
[15] activities, such as gambling, shopping, and sex, can also co-opt the brain.
Although a standard U.S. diagnostic manual (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, Fourth Edition or DSM-IV) describes multiple addictions, each tied to a specific substance or
activity, consensus is emerging that these may represent multiple expressions of a common underlying brain
process.
(Disponível em: <http://www.helpguide.org>. Acesso em: 2 nov. 2015. Adaptado.)

How many steps does it take to avoid a heart attack?

Researchers find out.

Walking can lower your risk of having a heart attack, as any doctor will tell you. Now scientists have found out exactly how many steps it takes to keep your ticker healthy.

Even people who are at risk for diabetes can cut their risk for heart-related events like a heart attack or stroke by 8%.

In new research published in the journal Lancet, scientists report that among people with early signs of pre-diabetes, taking an extra 2,000 steps a day – the equivalent of 20 minutes of moderate-paced walking – helped them lower their chances of heart problems.

The research team looked at data from 9,306 adults from 40 countries participating in a trial called NAVIGATOR. All of the volunteers were assigned to a program to lose weight and exercise 150 minutes a week. They were given pedometers that they wore for a week at the beginning of the study, and again a year later.

Using statistical modeling, the researchers studied the association between the number of steps the participants took on average and their relative risk for heart events in that year, accounting for potentially confounding factors that could influence heart disease rates such as diet and the participants’ previous history of heart issues.

Two thousand steps seemed to be the magic number. Even before the study began, for every 2,000 steps a day one participant tended to walk on average compared to another, he enjoyed a 10% lower rate of heart problems by the end of the year. During the study year, there was an additional 8% lower risk of heart disease for every 2,000 steps walked a day.

Brittany Maynard, the terminally ill cancer patient whose viral YouTube video reignited the debate on assisted-suicide, ended her life on Saturday.

Mrs Maynard and her husband moved from California to Oregon, where assisted-suicide has been legal since 1997.

Oregon's Death with Dignity Act allows terminally ill residents to obtain lethal prescriptions from doctors.

Since 1997, 1,173 people were granted lethal prescriptions and 752 patients used it to end their own lives.

Mrs Maynard, 29, who was suffering from a terminal brain cancer, died at home after administering lethal drugs on Saturday.

She died "in the arms of her loved ones," a spokesman for the campaign group Compassion & Choices said.

Sean Crowley said Mrs Maynard was suffering from increasingly severe seizures and head and neck pains which had at times limited her ability to speak.

THE MAN IN THE CONVERTIBLE

[1] One morning, well after I was diagnosed with cancer, I got an email from Robbee Kosak, Carnegie

Mellon’s vice president for advancement. She told me a story.

She said she had been driving home from work the night before, and she found herself behind a man

in a convertible. It was a warm, gorgeous, early-spring evening, and the man had his top down and all his

[5] windows lowered. His arm was hanging over the driver’s side door, and his fingers were tapping along to the

music on his radio. His head was bobbing along, too, as the wind blew through his hair.

Robbee changed lanes and pulled a little closer. From the side, she could see that the man had a

slight smile on his face, the kind of absentminded smile a person might have when he’s all alone, happy in

his own thoughts. Robbee found herself thinking: “Wow, this is the epitome of a person appreciating this day

[10] and this moment.”

The convertible eventually turned the corner, and that’s when Robbee got a look at the man’s full face.

“Oh my God,” she said to herself. “It’s Randy Pausch!”

She was so struck by the sight of me. She knew that my cancer diagnosis was grim. And yet, as she

wrote in her email, she was moved by how contented I seemed. In this private moment, I was obviously in

[15] high spirits. Robbee wrote in her email: “You can never know how much that glimpse of you made my day,

reminding me of what life is all about.”

I read Robbee’s email several times. I came to look at it as a feedback loop of sorts.

It has not always been easy to stay positive through my cancer treatment. When you have a dire

medical issue, it’s tough to know how you’re really faring emotionally. I had wondered whether a part of me

[20] was acting when I was with other people. Maybe at times I forced myself to appear strong and upbeat. Many

cancer patients feel obliged to put up a brave front. Was I doing that, too?

But Robbee had come upon me in an unguarded moment. I’d like to think she saw me as I am. She

certainly saw me as I was that evening.

Her mail was just a paragraph, but it meant a great deal to me. She had given me a window into

[25] myself. I was still fully engaged. I still knew life was good. I was doing OK.

The Road Not Taken

[1] Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

[5] To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

[10] Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

[15] I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

[20] And that has made all the difference.