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Euclides da Cunha (1866-1909) was an important politician, journalist and soldier in the late 19th century. His best known work was “Backlands, the Canudos Campaign” (1902), a report on the War of Canudos, waged by the Brazilian federal government against a rebellion of settlers in the town of Canudos, in Bahia state, who protested against excessive taxation and repressive local officials. Government propaganda at the time tried to depict the rebels as monarchists trying to upset the new republican order, but Euclides’ observations on the field dispelled this narrative, laying bare the repressive response of the Brazilian army to the impoverished population of Canudos.

What is itabout Serena that inspires such vitriol? Is it that she dominates in a sport that was once considered to be for the upper crust at country clubs? One would think that Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe had put that idea to rest decades ago. Is it that she is considered too aggressive on the court? John McEnroe and Boris Becker seem to take the prize for that. Is it because she wins too much? To hate someone merely because he or she is great only speaks to one's own insecurity. To attempt to and fault with someone because you cannot figure out how or why they win so often only shows that you have already lost. Or is it that she is unapologetically black? A #CarefreeBlackGirl who speaks her mind, supports her people, and whose only real opponent is herself.

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The idea of comfort food sounds great in theory, but many of society’s favourite feel-good foods lack ideal nutrients. This leaves eaters feeling cranky, not comforted. “Some of the main dietary contributors to low or bad mood are too much sugar and too many starchy and refined carbohydrates,” British nutritional therapist Claudia Smith told Huffington Post. “If you eat too much of these foods, you can end up with blood sugar spikes and crashes, which can lead to symptoms such as low mood, irritability, brain fog, anxiety, fatigue and difficulty concentrating.”

Common comfort foods such as cookies or french fries activate reward triggers in our brains, Smith said. They give us something to look forward to or get excited about. Psychologist and well-being consultant Lee Chambers told Huffington Post that comfort foods do provide a hit of pleasureinducing dopamine, but that pleasure is fleeting.

“Emotional eating is a cyclical process where low mood leads to eating foods likely to spike your blood sugar, giving us a dose of dopamine, but then it drops at the same time as we start to feel guilty,” Chambers told Huffington Post. “This combination often makes us feel a lack of satisfaction, with feelings of guilt, shame and regret.”

Even worse? Comfort foods often lead to overeating. “Over time, high consumption of highly palatable foods may actually lead to a reduced sensitivity of this brain-reward response,” Smith said. “You may find yourself needing to eat more and more to experience the same effect.”

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Average westerner’s eating habits lead to loss of four trees every year

The average western consumer of coffee, chocolate, beef, palm oil and other commodities is responsible for the felling of four trees every year, many in wildlife-rich tropical forests, research has calculated.

Destruction of forests is a major cause of both the climate crisis and plunging wildlife populations, as natural ecosystems are razed for farming. The study is the first to fully link highresolution maps of global deforestation to the wide range of commodities imported by each country across the world.

The research lays bare the direct links between consumers and the loss of forests across the planet. Chocolate consumption in the UK and Germany is an important driver of deforestation in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the scientists found, while beef and soy demand in the US, European Union and China results in forest destruction in Brazil.

Consumption in G7 states accounts for an average loss of four trees a year per person, the research says; the US is above average with five trees being lost per capita. In five G7 countries — the UK, Japan, Germany, France, and Italy — more than 90% of their deforestation footprint was in foreign countries and half of this was in tropical nations.

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Is Listening to Music Good For Your Health?

Studies have shown that music can buoy your mood and fend off depression. It can also improve blood flow in ways similar to statins, lower your levels of stress-related hormones like cortisol and ease pain. Listening to music before an operation can even improve post-surgery outcomes.

How can music do so much good? Music seems to “selectively activate” neurochemical systems and brain structures associated with positive mood, emotion regulation, attention and memory in ways that promote beneficial changes, says Kim Innes, a professor of epidemiology at West Virginia University’s School of Public Health.

Innes coauthored a 2016 study that found music-listening could boost mood and well-being and improve stress-related measures in older adults suffering from cognitive decline. Her study compared the benefits of music to those of meditation—a practice in vogue for its mental-health perks. She found that both practices were linked to significant improvements in mood and sleep quality. “Both meditation and music listening are potentially powerful tools for improving overall health and well-being,” Innes says. If the idea of listening to music seems a lot more practicable to you than meditating, these findings are great news.

But music can also agitate and unsettle, experts have learned.

“Silence can be better than random listening,” says Joanne Loewy, an associate professor and director of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York. “Some of our data show that putting on any old music can actually induce a stressful response.”

Along with inducing stress, Loewy says, the wrong music can promote rumination or other unhelpful mental states. One 2015 study from Finland found that music can bolster negative emotions—like anger, aggression or sadness— much the same way it can counteract these feelings. Why? The rhythm and other characteristics of the songs we select can modulate our heart rates and the activity of our brain’s neural networks.

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When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade. My mother made friends with one of the neighbors, but one seemed enough for her. Within a year we would move again and, as she explained, there wasn't much point in getting too close to people we would have to say good-bye to. Our next house was less than a mile away, and the short journey would hardly merit tears or even good- byes, for that matter. It was more of a 'see you later” situation, but still I adopted my mother's attitude, as it allowed me to pretend that not making friends was a conscious choice. I could if I wanted to. It just wasn't the right time.

Back in New York State, we had lived in the country, with no sidewalks or streetlights; you could leave the house and still be alone. But here, when you looked out the window, you saw other houses, and people inside those houses. I hoped that in walking around after dark I might witness a murder, but for the most part our neighbors just sat in their living rooms, watching TV. The only place that seemed truly different was owned by a man named Mr. Tomkey, who did not believe in television [...].

To say that you did not believe in television was different from saying that you did not care for it. Belief implied that television had a master plan and that you were against it. It also suggested that you thought too much. When my mother reported that Mr. Tornkey did not believe in television, my father said, *Well, good for him. I don't know that I believe in it, either”. “That's exactly how I feel” my mother said, and then my parents watched the news, and
whatever came on after the news.

It might not be the slickest thing on four wheels, and it definitely won’t win any time trials, but Chinese logistics firm Cainiao’s new Xiao G delivery cart could be the future.

Every hour, the three-foot by five-foot automated vehicle picks up packages from Cainiao’s depot in Hangzhou—a city of 10 million people in China’s booming east—and tours a nearby neighborhood. Locals in pajamas pop down to meet the driverless cart at their nearest delivery point and type in a reference number. A door in the vehicle’s side flips open and the customer’s parcel can be retrieved. Xiao G heads onto the next stop, weaving ponderously through traffic via 360-degree sensors. “It sends a message to customers after setting off and another when it arrives at a pick-up point so they know to come down,” says Cainiao engineer Long Fei. “Some models allow customers to drop off as well as pick up packages.”

In terms of innovations in logistics, Xiao G may not be as earth-shaking as the shipping container or the cargo jet. But it is the most visible aspect of a stealthy revolution powered by Cainiao, which was founded in 2014. The $10 billion subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba says it is poised to transform worldwide trade.

Based on this text about the Chinese logistics firm Cainiao’s new delivery cart, we can infer that

I. customers may pick up their product and also send packages using Xiao G.

II. it may influence how businesses in other parts of the world deliver products.

III. it will probably be more impactful in logistics than shipping containers.

IV. it can move fast through heavy city traffics using 360-degree sensors.

V. it relies on mobile technology and driverless vehicles to make its deliveries.

TEXTO PARA A QUESTÃO

I knew TikTok existed, but I didn't fully understand what it was until a few months ago. I also realized that something radical, yet largely invisible, is happening on the internet — with implications we still don't understand.

When I was growing up, I took it for granted that the people who became famous enough to be listened to by a crowd had worked hard for that accolade and generally operated with the support of an institution or an established industry.

The idea that I as a teenager in my bedroom, might sudden!y communicate with 100,000 people or more, would have seemed bizarre.

Today's kids no longer see life in these hierarchical and institutional terms. Yes, their physical worlds are often constrained by parental controls, a lack of access to the outdoors and insane over-scheduling.

But despite that (or, more accurately, in reaction to that), they see the internet as a constantly evolving frontier, where it is still possible for a bold and lucky pioneer to grab some land or find a voice. Most voices on the internet never travel beyond a relatively small network, and much of the content that goes viral on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube or Instagram does so because of unseen institutions at work (for example, a public relations team aiming to boost a celebrity's profile).

Fame can suddent!y appear — and then just as suddenly be taken away again, because the audience gets bored, the platform's algorithms change or the cultural trend that a breakout video has tapped into goes out of fashion.

For a teenager, social media can seem like a summer garden at dusk filled with fireflies: spots of lights suddently flare up and then die down, moving in an unpredictable, capricious display.

Is this a bad thing” We will not know for several years.

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As superbugs spread, researchers are turning to microbes that kill bacteria

This year the world awakened to the fact that the most powerful and sophisticated species on earth is tragically vulnerable to the tiniest and most basic of creatures. Infectious disease specialists have been warning about this for decades. And the threat comes not only from novel viruses, such as the one causing COVID-19, that jump from animals to humans but also from microbial monsters that we have helped to create through our cavalier use of antibiotics […]

But in a splendid irony, it may turn out that viruses, so often seen as nemeses, could be our saviors in fighting a host of killer infections. As the threat from drugresistant bacteria has grown and the development of new antibiotics has stalled, researchers have turned their attention to bacteriophages—literally, bacteria eaters. Viruses in this class are believed to be the oldest and most numerous organisms on earth. And like guided missiles, each type has evolved to seek and destroy a specific type of bacteria. […] With modern techniques, virologists can precisely match just the right phages to a specific strain of superbug—with sometimes astonishing results. […]

For now phage therapy remains experimental. In most cases, it involves making custom cocktails of several phages shown to be active in vitro against an individual patient’s bug. […]

The effort that is furthest along, however, relies on a phage enzyme called a lysin rather than on whole phages. After multiplying inside a bacterium, phages use lysins to break through the cell wall of their host, instantly killing it. […]

Lysins work synergistically with standard antibiotics, […], they can pierce the walls of superbugs, enabling the drugs to do their job. Lysins also clear up biofilms

– slimy layers of bacteria, carbohydrates and gunk

– that cause lasting infections not readily cured by antibiotics. Another advantage is specificity: lysins kill their target without collateral damage to the microbiome.

Phage and lysin therapies still have a way to go, but at a time when much of the world is besieged by a virus, it’s good to know that these tiny invaders may someday save us.