The assistant we didn’t ask for, but can’t live without

“Weird.” “Curious.” “Baffling.” “Quite Stupid.” These words all once described Alexa, the voice-activated digital assistant on Amazon’s Echo device. But Amazon says the Echo Dot, a smaller, less expensive version of the Echo, was its “top-selling device” during the holiday season.

In 2014, it was odd to even consider owning an Echo — and impossible to buy without an invitation from Amazon. Today, you can pick from five Echo models. Or, you can try Google’s version: the Google Home, Google Home Mini or Google Home Max. Apple has also released a digital assistant device, the HomePod, which is fully capable with Siri. You can have your pick of digital assistants — each with varying capabilities of improving your life.

Alexa now has more than 15,000 skills, meaning any Echo device can go beyond describing the weather or playing music. The Google Assistant, first released in 2016, is catching up.

So why buy one now? First, they’re relatively inexpensive and far easier to use and understand than they were when first released. Think back to MP3 players or early smartphones: people learned a lot about using the products and became so adjusted to them that they didn’t know how to go back. Second, the future is paved with smart home devices, and voice-activated assistants to control them are becoming ubiquitous. The Echo and Google Home are no longer “test products” — the companies behind them want them to last.

Com base no texto, afirma-se que

I. existem vários modelos de assistentes digitais ativados por voz no mercado.

II. Alexa ainda é bastante limitada, mas descreve o tempo e toca músicas.

III. Google, Apple e Amazon desenvolveram assistentes digitais em parceria.

IV. há justificativas para a compra de um Echo Dot ou de um Google Home.

V. alguns dos assistentes digitais mencionados ainda se encontram em fase de testes.

Use the comic strip bellow to answer question:

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

Sleep is important, so dreams must be, too, right?

Over the last few days, I’ve shared stories of how aggravating dreams about work can be. But sometimes good things happen. “As a computer engineer for over 40 years, sometimes my work does find its way into my dreams,” wrote Fred Myers of South Bend, Ind. “Occasionally, I’ll work out an approach to solving a problem in a dream, wake up, write it down, and then it actually pans out when I get to work.”
Sleep: There’s a reason we spend a third of our lives doing it, even if we aren’t sure what that reason is. “It must be important,” said Rachel Salas, a Johns Hopkins Medicine neurologist who studies sleep and treats sleep disorders. “And if sleeping is important, that would suggest that dreaming is important.”
However, scientists aren’t sure exactly why. “There are a lot of theories out there,” Salas said. “The bottom line is we just don’t know. There is some research suggesting that dreams are the brain processing or getting rid of unwanted memories, kind of consolidating memories as we’re sleeping.” Also, some scientists think they can play a role in creativity. “There’s some research showing that musicians have been inspired during their dreams and have actually composed music during sleep,” Salas said. So maybe those job dreams aren’t so bad!

Death of The Death Care Industry
Death is a dying industry with an economic phenomenon. As Americans perceived value of “traditional” funerals diminish, the cost of funerals have increased nearly 1,328% in just four decades. In 1960 the average cost of a funeral was $706 when only 3.56% of bodies were cremated. Today the average traditional funeral costs between $8,000 and $10,000, and about 42% of people are cremated. The US funeral industry accounts for about $20 billion in annual economic activity, with around 130,000 employees that make a living on the 1.5 million people that go to rest each year.
Many communities have turned a blind eye to what goes on inside funeral homes, as many people prefer not to know the ins and out of the business. In addition, grieving customers in need of funeral goods and services may not be in a healthy state of mind to make financial decisions. Grief has similar side effects of alcohol consumption, such as numbness, guilt, and depression, resulting in less alert and price sensitive customers. In addition, the funeral industry is somewhat taboo in the sense that communities in general don’t communicate with one another about what are acceptable practices in this industry.
Some funeral service providers have taken advantage of this by encouraging the lack of transparency in the industry, charging exorbitant prices for funeral goods and services and charging people who appear to be wealthy higher prices. After Jessica Mitford published The American Way of Death in 1963, to expose the abuses in the funeral industry, a groundswell of support for government intervention followed. Under President Ronald Reagan The Funeral Rule was first enacted to protect consumers from deceptive practices, but the rule has yet to put the nail in the coffin.
Adaptado de: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/perianneboring/2014/04/25/thedeath-of-the-death-care-industry-and-eternal-lifeonline/#60f53eb1c1ae> Acessado em 13 de outubro de 2017

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Germany prepares adaptation of the TV Series “Merlí”

“Merlí”, the new TV3 series produced by Nova Veranda, based on an original idea and script by Héctor Lozano, directed by Eduard Cortés and starring Francesc Orella, will soon arrive Germany. A deal selling rights to the “Merlí” format will allow German audiovisual group Beta to adapt the adventures of this peculiar philosophy teacher and his favorite pupils, the Peripatetics.
The series “Merlí” finished shooting its third and last season last week, and its plot revolves around philosophy professor Merlí Bergeron (Francesc Orella). Like a modern-day Aristotle, Merlí chooses a group of High School students whom he teaches to reflect upon and question all aspects of life. This atypical, multifaceted professor confounds everyone around him as he encourages his students to set goals and objectives, sometimes using questionable methods.
The series continues to reap huge international success and is now preparing its arrival in Germany hand-in-hand with Beta thanks to an agreement with its international distributor Lagardère Studios Distribution, a strategic partner for Nova Veranda’s parent company Boomerang TV. This is not the first time the series has crossed borders. It has already aired through Netflix in the Spanish-speaking U.S. and in Latin America as well as on Canal Plus France’s Cinema+ Famillie network.
In this most recent agreement, the Beta Group has acquired the rights to adapt “Merlí” for the German market. In Spain, Movistar+ acquired broadcast rights for the series, which airs on the platform. The series is available nationwide for all of the platform’s subscribers and can be seen in its original (Catalonian) version with Castillian subtitles. “Merlí” has also been acquired by ETB for the Basque Country, where it will be dubbed into Euskera.

From: https://goo.gl/UcYXP9. Accessed on 04/25/2018

Can plants hear?

Flora may be able to detect the sounds of flowing water or munching insects

Pseudoscientific claims that music helps plants grow have been made for decades, despite evidence that is shaky at best. Yet new research suggests some flora may be capable of sensing sounds, such as the gurgle of water through a pipe or the buzzing of insects.

In a recent study, Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Western Australia, and her colleagues placed pea seedlings in pots shaped like an upside-down Y. One arm of each pot was placed in either a tray of water or a coiled plastic tube through which water flowed; the other arm had dry soil. The roots grew toward the arm of the pipe with the fluid, regardless of whether it was easily accessible or hidden inside the tubing. “They just knew the water was there, even if the only thing to detect was the sound of it flowing inside the pipe,” Gagliano says. Yet when the seedlings were given a choice between the water tube and some moistened soil, their roots favored the latter. She hypothesizes that these plants use sound waves to detect water at a distance but follow moisture gradients to home in on their target when it is closer.

The research, reported earlier this year in Oecologia, is not the first to suggest flora can detect and interpret sounds. A 2014 study showed the rock cress Arabidopsis can distinguish between caterpillar chewing sounds and wind vibrations – the plant produced more chemical toxins after “hearing” a recording of feeding insects. “We tend to underestimate plants because their responses are usually less visible to us. But leaves turn out to be extremely sensitive vibration detectors,” says lead study author Heidi M. Appel, an environmental scientist now at the University of Toledo.