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Notre Dame

People have donated over one billion dollars to help rebuild the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. The 850- year-old cathedral was badly damaged in a fire on Monday. The UNESCO World Heritage site is one of the most important cultural buildings in France. Wealthy people from all over France and around the world have given hundreds of millions of dollars to help restore the cathedral to its former glory. French president Emmanuel Macron told the nation in a televised address that he would make sure the reconstruction would be finished within five years. This would be in time for the opening of the Paris Olympics in 2024. However, architects say it could take decades to rebuild the world famous landmark.

Some of the donors that are handing over cash are French billionaires. They include the owners of the luxury brand Louis Vuitton and the cosmetics company L’Oréal. The French oil company Total is also pledging 100 million euros. Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted that his company would donate an unspecified amount. However, many people are asking whether the money would be better spent on helping the world’s poor.

TEXTO

“Words like these have lost their meaning to many refugees:
home, family, work, human rights, future. Its our job to give them meaning again.” UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

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Light and the body clock: the key to a good night’s sleep?

The cycle of sleep and wakefulness is one of the key human behaviours. We spend about a third of our lives asleep and cannot survive without it. When asleep, our brain memorises and processes information. Our body clears toxins and repairs itself, allowing us to function properly when awake. Even short-term sleep deprivation significantly affects our wellbeing. One study suggested that after 17-19 hours of staying awake, performance on cognitive tasks may be similar to having had too much to drink.

These effects worsen over time. But while scientists have long understood the importance of getting enough sleep, the key part played by light exposure can sometimes be overlooked. The reason light is so important is that it sets our body clock via specialised light sensors within the eye. Our eye detects the light and dark cycle within our environment and adjusts the body’s rhythm so that the internal and external day coincide. This is so powerful that people who have very severe eye damage can find their body clock is thrown off, leading to sleep problems.

Today, many of us miss out on these environmental cues as we work inside. We have become a light deprived species, and this has far reaching consequences for the quality of our sleep, and consequently our wellbeing.

Further research and greater awareness in this area could help individuals to make informed choices about prioritising their own sleep and getting enough sunlight. It could also influence the way that policies are developed by governments, educational institutions and workplaces. Minimising light exposure before you go to bed, and trying to get as much morning light as possible, are simple steps that could help most people to regulate and improve their sleep.

(Russell Foster. www.bbc.com, 19.05.2019. Adaptado.)

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What do nationalists believe in? (Part III)

Nationalists' primary belief is that people in similar societies benefit when they are united by shared values and a common belief system.

"Uniting people -- whether under flags, banners, anthems, or constitutions -- is conducive to a more robust civic society and stronger communities," Kassam said.

But Miller dismisses that as an "incoherent" ideology. "No one has ever been able to agree on what defines the nation. It is impractical because there is no feasible way to make governments overlap exactly with all the supposed nations in the world today," Miller said.

Nationalists are also populists and consider themselves sticking up for the common, working man against the elites and so-called globalists. There are voters in both US political parties receptive to that kind of messaging, and that's why the fiery populist rhetoric of Bernie Sanders and Trump during the 2016 campaign ended up appealing to overlapping groups of voters.

Nationalists are also extremely protectionist, preferring to look inward when it comes to matters of foreign affairs and trade. Trump's political positions have shifted all of his life, but the one constant has been his distrust of international trade agreements and his belief that they're ultimately bad for the United States.

"We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs," Trump said during his inaugural speech in January 2017. "Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength."

This type of thinking is typical of nationalists.

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FROM PARIS TO BERLIN

Public transport is increasingly becoming one of the most crucial forms of transport in the world, with most major cities having a vast network connecting millions. But, for all their perks and uses, they are often plagued with technical issues, delays and overcrowding.

Now, researchers at the Polytechnic University of Turin have ranked the world’s largest networks to find which move quickest and to identify the most sluggish.

Berlin and Paris take gold and silver, respectively, in a top ten list dominated by European capital cities. Their average speed was found to be 6.2 and 5.8 km/h whereas Mexico City, languishing at the bottom of the list with a docile 2.4km/h.

Only Melbourne (ten) and New York (eight) break up the European monopoly when it comes to average travel velocity.

The study, published in Royal Society Open Science, found that London came out at number seven.

The English capital fell behind Berlin, Paris, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Athens and Prague. The top ten was rounded out by New York, Madrid and Melbourne.

The authors Indaco Biazzo, Bernardo Monechi and Vittorio Loreto write in the study: “In the last decades, the acceleration of urban growth has led to an unprecedented level of urban interactions and interdependence”.

“This situation calls for a significant effort among the scientific community to come up with engaging and meaningful visualisations and accessible scenario simulation engines”.

“The present paper gives a contribution in this direction by providing general methods to evaluate accessibility in cities based on public transportation data”.

A subnutrição infantil é um problema em todo mundo, especialmente nos países subdesenvolvidos e naqueles em desenvolvimento.

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The idea of evolution (which is gradual change) was not a new one. The Greeks had thought of it, so Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, and also the Frenchman, Lamarck. It is one thing to have an idea; we can all of us guess and sometimes make a lucky guess.

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More Than Just Children’s Books

Krumulus, a small bookstore in Germany, has everything a kid could want: parties, readings, concerts, plays, puppet shows, workshops and book clubs.

“I knew it was going to be very difficult to open a bookstore, everyone tells you you’re crazy, there will be no future,” says Anna Morlinghaus, Krumulus’s founder. Still, she wanted to try. A month before her third son was born, she opened the store in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district.

BERLIN — On a recent Saturday afternoon, a hush fell in the bright, airy “reading-aloud” room at Krumulus, a small children’s bookstore in Berlin, as Sven Wallrodt, one of the store’s employees, stood up to speak. Brandishing a newly published illustrated children’s book about the life of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, he looked at the crowd of eager, mostly school-aged children and their parents. “Welcome to this book presentation”, he said. “If you fall asleep, snore quietly”. Everyone laughed, but no one fell asleep. An hour later, the children followed Wallrodt down to the bookstore’s basement workshop, where he showed them how Gutenberg fit leaden block letters into a metal plate. Then the children printed their own bookmark using a technique similar to Gutenberg’s, everyone was thrilled.

Read the comic strips bellow: