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

The pandemic is accentuating a trend seen in the last six years in Latin America’s largest economy, which is one of the world’s major food suppliers. In mid-2020, the director of the World Food Program’s Brazil office, Daniel Balaban, warned that Brazil was moving quickly toward returning to the world hunger map, which it left in 2014. Countries figure on that list when more than 5% of their population live in extreme poverty.

The World Bank said then that 5.4 million more Brazilians would fall into that category in 2020, for a total of 14.7 million. The total population is 212 million. "This is clearly the scariest moment we have been through in the fight against hunger,"said Rodrigo Afonso, director of an NGO called Accion Ciudadana.

Afonso said that when the organization was founded in 1993 to combat hunger, the problem was concentrated in the north and northeast of the sprawling country. "Today, anywhere you go you will find huge numbers of families that cannot feed themselves,"said Afonso, and "things are getting worse."

A poll in November by the Getulio Vargas Foundation found that nearly a third of those surveyed suffered from food insecurity. The government of right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, who has downplayed the pandemic, started paying a third of the population about 600 reals a month starting in April of last year. The aid was cut to 300 reals in October and eliminated in January. That money was a big help, but the neediest people in Brazil have now been without it for three months in an economy with the highest unemployment rate in nearly a decade – 13.5 percent as of the end of 2020 – steadily rising prices and the most devastating chapter yet of the pandemic.

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

One of the abiding images of any virus outbreak is people in surgical masks. Using them to prevent infection is popular in many countries around the world, most notably China during the current coronavirus outbreak where they are also worn to protect against high pollution levels.

Virologists are sceptical about their effectiveness against airborne viruses. But there is some evidence to suggest the masks can help prevent hand-to-mouth transmissions.

Dr David Carrington, of St George’s, University of London, told BBC News “routine surgical masks for the public are not an effective protection against viruses or bacteria carried in the air”, which was how “most viruses” were transmitted, because they were too loose, had no air filter and left the eyes exposed. But they could help lower the risk of contracting a virus through the “splash” from a sneeze or a cough and provide some protection against hand-to-mouth transmissions.

Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, said: “In one well controlled study in a hospital setting, the face mask was as good at preventing influenza infection as a purpose-made respirator.”

Respirators, which tend to feature a specialised air filter, are specifically designed to protect against potentially hazardous airborne particles.

“However, when you move to studies looking at their effectiveness in the general population, the data is less compelling - it’s quite a challenge to keep a mask on for prolonged periods of time,” professor Ball added.

Dr Connor Bamford, of the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine, at Queen’s University Belfast, said “implementing simple hygiene measures” was more effective. “Covering your mouth while sneezing, washing your hands, and not putting your hands to your mouth before washing them, could help limit the risk of catching any respiratory virus,” he said.

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

Humans may need to “wait for decades” to see the results of large emission cuts on global surface temperatures, scientists have said. Researchers in Norway used computer simulations to analyse various scenarios that looked at the effects of rapid reductions in several types of greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane.

They found that although large-scale emission cuts are needed to achieve the global climate goals, it may take decades before the effects of the reductions on temperatures can be measured.

The researchers estimated that even for the most optimistic scenarios, it will take at least 15 years to establish the impact of emission cuts on climate change.

Bjorn H Samset, of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (Cicero) in Oslo, said: “Humaninduced climate change can be compared with a tank ship at high speed and in big waves. If you want the ship to slow down, you will put the engine in reverse, but it will take some time before you start noticing that the ship is moving more slowly. It will also rock back and forth because of the waves.

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

Can Germans’ right to switch off survive contemporary times?

The lights were all out, the corridors were deserted. Only one computer was still working at the German Freiburg’s Institute for Advanced Studies. Newly-arrived American academic Kristen Ghodsee was working late in her office. Then there was a knock at the door, and in came the institute’s director. “He wanted to know if there was something wrong,” remembers Ghodsee. She replied she was fine, but the director looked at his watch and shook his head. It was 17:30. What seemed perfectly normal to the American, working after hours, was inconceivable to the German. After all, it was Feierabend, a German term which refers both to the end of the working day and the act of turning off from work entirely.
But then along came the smartphone, destabilizing the delicate German work-life balance. Suddenly, phones were in every pocket, laptops in every bag. All at once, everyone had access to work communication outside the office, on the go and at home. It wasn’t long before the digital revolution was invading Germans’ sacred rest time. By 2015, more than a quarter of employees said bosses wanted them to be contactable at all hours, a national survey revealed. This despite a 2003 law stating workers’ 11-hour break couldn’t be interrupted.
It seems many employees agree the idea of an uninterrupted break is too rigid. Last year, 96% of workers interviewed by Germany’s digital association Bitkom said they would like to organise their own work schedule to fit around their lives. But those responsible for employee protection are worried. “A lot of the shortening of rest periods is happening because people are working such long hours, not because they are working flexibly,” says research associate Nils Backhaus.
The 11-hour rest period is also there to protect workers from themselves. Originally intended to make sure factory workers could recover physically between shifts, Backhaus says the break is just as necessary for mental regeneration. “Worker protection is just as needed in our new world of digitalisation, home office and smartphones”, says David Markworth.

Aquestão referem-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

Since from August 1914-to November 1918 Great Britain and her Allies were fighting for civilization it cannot, I suppose, be impertinent to inquire what precisely civilization may be. “Liberty” and “Justice” have always been reckoned expensive words, but that 'Civilization” could cost as much as I forget how many millions a day came as a surprise to many thoughtful taxpayers. The story of this word's rise to the highest place amongst British war aims is so curious that, even were it less relevant, I should be tempted to tell it [...].

“You are fighting for civilization”, cried the wisest and best of those leaders who led us into war, and the very soldiers took up the cry, “Join up, for civilization's sake”. Startled by this sudden enthusiasm for an abstraction in which till then politicians and recruiting-sergeants had manifested little or no interest, I, in my turn, began to cry: “And what is civilization?” I did not cry aloud, be sure: at that time, for crying things of that sort aloud, one was sent to prison. But now that it is no longer criminal, nor unpatriotic even, to ask questions, I intend to inquire what this thing is for which we fought and for which we pay. I propose to investigate the nature of our leading war-aim. Whether my search will end in discovery and — if it does — whether what is discovered will bear any likeliness to the Treaty of Versailles remains to be seen.

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

Is it true that we only use 10 percent of our brain?

This is an urban myth: scans show that most of the brain is active even when we’re not doing much. It’s true that brains are adaptable, and we have huge potential to learn new skills, but this happens mostly via the formation of new connections and networks in the brain, not through the activation of previously inactive areas.

The brain is a huge energy consumer, and it wouldn’t make sense for us to have evolved to use a fraction of such a costly organ.

The boxer

I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told
I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises
All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

[05] When I left my home and my family, I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station, runnin’ scared, laying low,
Seeking out the poorer quarters, where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would know
[10] Lie la lie, lie la la la lie lie

Asking only workman’s wages, I come looking for a job
But I get no offers
Just a come-on from the whores on 7th Avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
[15] I took some comfort there

Now the years are rolling by me
They are rockin’ evenly
I am older than I once was
And younger than I’ll be; that’s not unusual
[20] Nor is it strange
After changes upon changes
We are more or less the same

After changes we are more or less the same
And I’m laying out my winter clothes and wishing I was gone
[25] Goin’ home
Where the New York City winters aren’t bleedin’ me
Leadin’ me
Goin’ home

In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade
[30] And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down or cut him
‘Til he cried out in his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”, but the fighter still remains

In the last stanza, there is a change in perspective, suggesting a less subjective look at what happened.

Read the text below and mark the correct option.

Inland cargo ship ran aground, damaged, may break in two, Western Scheldt

Inland cargo ship MVS SOWNENT loaded with soil ran aground at around 1750 UTC April 14 on Western Scheldt near Baalhoek, Netherlands, while sailing downstream. The ship suffered serious damages, hull is breached, understood to get cracks, but there's no immediate danger of breaking. She was refloated and taken below grounding site, to be offloaded and after that, towed to Hansweert

TEXT

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.