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The business of climate change

A UN assessment published this week on the progress made in stemming the global loss of species made depressing reading. Not one of the 20 targets adopted by 196 countries in a convention on biodiversity in 2010 has been met. And the latest biennial Living Planet Report from the WWF, an environmental group, found that animal populations worldwide shrank by an average of two-thirds between 1970 and 2016. The falls were greatest in the tropics. In Latin America and the Caribbean animal populations fell by 94%, on average, during the period. It is some comfort that around the world biodiversity and climate change have become big political issues. In Australia koala bears have almost brought down a state government.

THE THINGS THAT MAKE US WHO WE ARE

Our cultural values get baked into the materials we create, changing humanity along the way

Humans spend a lot of time and effort making stuff. At last count, humanity has created more than 100,000 different materials from which we build our cities, our clothing, our smartphones, our world. Without our stuff, we would be naked, vulnerable, and, arguably, not very human. The question of how much of our humanity is due to this material wealth and how our cultural values are baked into the materials we create is the subject of Ainissa Ramirez’s fascinating new treatise, The Alchemy of Us.[…] The book’s central thesis is that we make materials and materials make us. […]

Ramirez’s meditation on the materials that have facilitated community (“share”) is particularly illuminating. Here, she writes about the phonograph’s impact on how music was enjoyed. The ability to record music meant that the experience of listening to it no longer had to be a communal one. […] – but it also opened up uncharted horizons. The recordings allowed a cross-fertilization of musical culture between jazz, blues, and rock and roll, even as the musicians themselves remained segregated by race politics.

On the subject of race and racial discrimination, Ramirez argues that a society that is racist will reflect racism in the substances that it makes. For example, photographic film, she writes, was largely developed by white people for white people. Because dark skin absorbs more light than white skin, early photographs of black people were often underexposed, rendering images that were barely recognizable. […]

Ramirez is particularly keen to debunk the idea that materials arise from flashes of insight experienced by extraordinary individuals, instead painting a picture of a diverse range of people from all walks of life driven by love, passion, and intellect. The culture of innovation, she maintains, does not belong only to privileged elites, it can be found in all those who care enough to reinvent the material world and, as a result, themselves.

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In food-rich Brazil, people go hungry as pandemic rages (Part III)

Because of the swelling ranks of the new poor, city officials now give out 10,000 free meals a day, an increase of one-third. In Rio, too, "The issue of food is one of extreme urgency,"said Bruno Dauaire, the secretary of social development and human rights in the state of Rio. "Not long ago we did not even talk about poverty and hunger in the city of Rio, and now we are confronting this issue,"said Dauaire.

NGOs try to make up for governments that are struggling financially and overwhelmed by the pandemic, but they are faced with much lower donations. "Those who help are helping less,"said Claudia Carletto, secretary of human rights and citizen issues in Sao Paulo. The Red Cross of Sao Paulo, which hands out 2,000 food baskets a day, says the cash donations it receives are down 99 percent. "People need more help and for longer stretches of time,"said Bruno Semino, head of that branch of the Red Cross. The lack of donations, he said, "has a major impact on our operations."

In 2020, Accion de la Ciudadania used to distribute 80, 000 to 100, 000 food baskets a month all over Brazil. This year, it is down to 8, 000 to 10, 000. "We operate where the government is absent,"said Afonso of Accion Ciudadana. "Unfortunately, in recent years the government is absent from many places."

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Cindy is a very clever girl. She is twelve years old and she has got an older brother and a baby sister. She goes to school in the morning and she helps her father in his office in the afternoon. In the evening, she studies the flute with a private teacher. She loves classical music; she listens to music all day long and, on Friday night, she plays the flute in a gospel band. Her brother doesn’t like to listen to music, but he loves playing video games. He plays video games all night long. He doesn’t help his family at home neither in his father’s office. But, he studies Computer Science at a very good university and he wants to be a video game designer. His father always tells him that it is necessary to study a lot achieve his goals.

Qual é o tempo verbal predominante nas seguintes frases?

“Her brother doesn’t like music, but he loves playing video games.

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The changing role of teachers and technologies amidst the COVID 19 pandemic: key findings from a cross-country study

Despite the overwhelming consequences of the pandemic, this global crisis has also been an extraordinary time for learning. We are learning how adaptable and resilient educational systems, policy makers, teachers, students and families can be. In this blog (which is part of a series highlighting key lessons learned from a study to understand the perceived effectiveness of remote learning solutions, forthcoming) we summarize lessons learned in different countries, with special focus on teachers and how they had to quickly reimagine human connections and interactions to facilitate learning. The role of teachers is rapidly evolving becoming in many ways more difficult than when learning took place only in person.

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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.

Influenced by high levels of technology in many areas of life, people forget about how important it is to be in contact with nature. That’s what we read in the next text:

[…]
You’re just not getting out enough. Really. Author and environmentalist Richard Louv has been warning theworld about nature-deficit disorder, loosely described as a state in which humans lose their connection with the outdoors.
“An expanding body of scientific evidence suggests that nature-deficit disorder contributes to a diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, conditions of obesity, and higher rates of emotional and physical illnesses”, Louv writes on the website of the organization he founded, the Children & Nature Network (childrenandnature.org). […]

Um projeto de grande magnitude, como a construção de um Cristo Redentor, sempre há quem o idealize como qualquer outro projeto na área da construção civil, tanto de pequena dimensão, como de larga estrutura.

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BBC News
Published July 20, 2021.

With new homes being built with eco-friendly design in mind, older properties can prove the worst offenders when it comes to their carbon footprint. […] The costs of reducing your home's carbon footprint can vary from a few pounds for better draught proofing or using low-energy lightbulbs, to hundreds of pounds for loft insulation or a larger investment of thousands of pounds for renewable generation such as whole-house insulation systems.

Look at the pictures of the advertising campaign created by Calvacade agency.