Inglês

Reducing food waste around the world would help curb emissions of planet-warming gases, lessening some of the impacts of climate change such as more extreme weather and rising seas, scientists said on Thursday.
Up to 14% of emissions from agriculture in 2050 could be avoided by managing food use and distribution better, according to a new study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). “Agriculture is a major driver of climate change, accounting for more than 20% of overall global greenhouse gas emissions in 2010,” said co-author Prajal Pradhan. “Avoiding food loss and waste would therefore avoid unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions and help mitigate climate change.”
Between 30 and 40% of food produced around the world is never eaten, because it is spoiled after harvest and during transportation, or thrown away by shops and consumers. The share of food wasted is expected to increase drastically if emerging economies like China and India adopt western food habits, including a shift to eating more meat, the researchers warned. Richer countries tend to consume more food than is healthy or simply waste it, they noted.
As poorer countries develop and the world’s population grows, emissions associated with food waste could soar from 0.5 gigatonnes (GT) of carbon dioxide equivalent per year to between 1.9 and 2.5 GT annually by mid-century, showed the study published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal. It is widely argued that cutting food waste and distributing the world’s surplus food where it is needed could help tackle hunger in places that do not have enough – especially given that land to expand farming is limited.
But Jürgen Kropp, another of the study’s co-authors and PIK’s head of climate change and development, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation the potential for food waste curbs to reduce emissions should be given more attention. “It is not a strategy of governments at the moment,” he said.

(www.theguardian.com. Adaptado.)

Reducing food waste around the world would help curb emissions of planet-warming gases, lessening some of the impacts of climate change such as more extreme weather and rising seas, scientists said on Thursday.
Up to 14% of emissions from agriculture in 2050 could be avoided by managing food use and distribution better, according to a new study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). “Agriculture is a major driver of climate change, accounting for more than 20% of overall global greenhouse gas emissions in 2010,” said co-author Prajal Pradhan. “Avoiding food loss and waste would therefore avoid unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions and help mitigate climate change.”
Between 30 and 40% of food produced around the world is never eaten, because it is spoiled after harvest and during transportation, or thrown away by shops and consumers. The share of food wasted is expected to increase drastically if emerging economies like China and India adopt western food habits, including a shift to eating more meat, the researchers warned. Richer countries tend to consume more food than is healthy or simply waste it, they noted.
As poorer countries develop and the world’s population grows, emissions associated with food waste could soar from 0.5 gigatonnes (GT) of carbon dioxide equivalent per year to between 1.9 and 2.5 GT annually by mid-century, showed the study published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal. It is widely argued that cutting food waste and distributing the world’s surplus food where it is needed could help tackle hunger in places that do not have enough – especially given that land to expand farming is limited.
But Jürgen Kropp, another of the study’s co-authors and PIK’s head of climate change and development, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation the potential for food waste curbs to reduce emissions should be given more attention. “It is not a strategy of governments at the moment,” he said.

(www.theguardian.com. Adaptado.)

HERE'S HOW LONG YOU CAN WORK BEFORE YOUR BRAIN 1SHUTS DOWN

I’m having a hard time starting this article. According to research out of the University of Melbourne, that might be because I’m middle-aged and work too much. Economists determined that burning the midnight oil makes you, well, dumber. “Our study highlights that too much work can have adverse effects on cognitive functioning,” they conclude.
Tell us something we didn’t know. Who hasn’t, at the end of a seemingly endless workweek, found themselves staring blankly at their computer screen or into space unable to remember what they had for lunch, let alone form a coherent thought about the task at hand?
For some employees, of course – the average resident ²physician or, these days, that “³gig economy”worker who makes ends meet by banging away at multiple projects – long hours are a fact of modern working life. And there’s a cost. Medical researchers have shown that working too much can affect emp|oyees’ physica| and mental health.
So how much is too much? For people age 40 and older, working up to roughly 25 hours per week boosts memory, the ability to quickly process information and other aspects of Cognitive function, according to the study, which drew on a longitudinal survey that tracks the well-being of 6,000 Australians. Beyond 25 hours a week, the middle-aged brain doesn’t work as well, the study indicates, noting that the findings apply to both men and women.


Glossário
^l to shut down: parar de operar/funcionar.
²physician: médico.
³gig economy: ambiente de trabalho baseado em empregos temporários e contratos de curta duração.

HERE'S HOW LONG YOU CAN WORK BEFORE YOUR BRAIN 1SHUTS DOWN

I’m having a hard time starting this article. According to research out of the University of Melbourne, that might be because I’m middle-aged and work too much. Economists determined that burning the midnight oil makes you, well, dumber. “Our study highlights that too much work can have adverse effects on cognitive functioning,” they conclude.
Tell us something we didn’t know. Who hasn’t, at the end of a seemingly endless workweek, found themselves staring blankly at their computer screen or into space unable to remember what they had for lunch, let alone form a coherent thought about the task at hand?
For some employees, of course – the average resident ²physician or, these days, that “³gig economy”worker who makes ends meet by banging away at multiple projects – long hours are a fact of modern working life. And there’s a cost. Medical researchers have shown that working too much can affect emp|oyees’ physica| and mental health.
So how much is too much? For people age 40 and older, working up to roughly 25 hours per week boosts memory, the ability to quickly process information and other aspects of Cognitive function, according to the study, which drew on a longitudinal survey that tracks the well-being of 6,000 Australians. Beyond 25 hours a week, the middle-aged brain doesn’t work as well, the study indicates, noting that the findings apply to both men and women.


Glossário
^l to shut down: parar de operar/funcionar.
²physician: médico.
³gig economy: ambiente de trabalho baseado em empregos temporários e contratos de curta duração.

HERE'S HOW LONG YOU CAN WORK BEFORE YOUR BRAIN 1SHUTS DOWN

I’m having a hard time starting this article. According to research out of the University of Melbourne, that might be because I’m middle-aged and work too much. Economists determined that burning the midnight oil makes you, well, dumber. “Our study highlights that too much work can have adverse effects on cognitive functioning,” they conclude.
Tell us something we didn’t know. Who hasn’t, at the end of a seemingly endless workweek, found themselves staring blankly at their computer screen or into space unable to remember what they had for lunch, let alone form a coherent thought about the task at hand?
For some employees, of course – the average resident ²physician or, these days, that “³gig economy”worker who makes ends meet by banging away at multiple projects – long hours are a fact of modern working life. And there’s a cost. Medical researchers have shown that working too much can affect emp|oyees’ physica| and mental health.
So how much is too much? For people age 40 and older, working up to roughly 25 hours per week boosts memory, the ability to quickly process information and other aspects of Cognitive function, according to the study, which drew on a longitudinal survey that tracks the well-being of 6,000 Australians. Beyond 25 hours a week, the middle-aged brain doesn’t work as well, the study indicates, noting that the findings apply to both men and women.


Glossário
^l to shut down: parar de operar/funcionar.
²physician: médico.
³gig economy: ambiente de trabalho baseado em empregos temporários e contratos de curta duração.

HERE'S HOW LONG YOU CAN WORK BEFORE YOUR BRAIN 1SHUTS DOWN

I’m having a hard time starting this article. According to research out of the University of Melbourne, that might be because I’m middle-aged and work too much. Economists determined that burning the midnight oil makes you, well, dumber. “Our study highlights that too much work can have adverse effects on cognitive functioning,” they conclude.
Tell us something we didn’t know. Who hasn’t, at the end of a seemingly endless workweek, found themselves staring blankly at their computer screen or into space unable to remember what they had for lunch, let alone form a coherent thought about the task at hand?
For some employees, of course – the average resident ²physician or, these days, that “³gig economy”worker who makes ends meet by banging away at multiple projects – long hours are a fact of modern working life. And there’s a cost. Medical researchers have shown that working too much can affect emp|oyees’ physica| and mental health.
So how much is too much? For people age 40 and older, working up to roughly 25 hours per week boosts memory, the ability to quickly process information and other aspects of Cognitive function, according to the study, which drew on a longitudinal survey that tracks the well-being of 6,000 Australians. Beyond 25 hours a week, the middle-aged brain doesn’t work as well, the study indicates, noting that the findings apply to both men and women.


Glossário
^l to shut down: parar de operar/funcionar.
²physician: médico.
³gig economy: ambiente de trabalho baseado em empregos temporários e contratos de curta duração.

Eu, Robô (I, Robot) é uma coletânea de contos escritos por Isaac Asimov que procura descrever, sob o ponto de vista do autor, o hipotético aumento da presença e da atuação dos robôs na sociedade.

Leia o texto, que apresenta uma entrevista com a personagem Susan Calvin, uma “robopsicóloga” e responda às questões de números 25 a 29.

Susan Calvin had been born in the year 1982, they said, which made her seventy five now. Everyone knew that. Appropriately enough, U. S. Robot and Mechanical Men, Inc. was seventy-five also, since it had been in the year of Dr. Calvin’s birth that Lawrence Robertson had first taken out incorporation papers for what eventually became the strangest industrial giant in man’s history. Well, everyone knew that, too. (...)
She went back to her desk and sat down. She didn’t need expression on her face to look sad, somehow.
“How old are you?” she wanted to know.
“Thirty-two,” I said.
“Then you don’t remember a world without robots. There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t. May I quote you?”
“You may. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven’t worked with them, so you don’t know them. They’re a cleaner, better breed than we are.”

Eu, Robô (I, Robot) é uma coletânea de contos escritos por Isaac Asimov que procura descrever, sob o ponto de vista do autor, o hipotético aumento da presença e da atuação dos robôs na sociedade.

Leia o texto, que apresenta uma entrevista com a personagem Susan Calvin, uma “robopsicóloga” e responda às questões de números 25 a 29.

Susan Calvin had been born in the year 1982, they said, which made her seventy five now. Everyone knew that. Appropriately enough, U. S. Robot and Mechanical Men, Inc. was seventy-five also, since it had been in the year of Dr. Calvin’s birth that Lawrence Robertson had first taken out incorporation papers for what eventually became the strangest industrial giant in man’s history. Well, everyone knew that, too. (...)
She went back to her desk and sat down. She didn’t need expression on her face to look sad, somehow.
“How old are you?” she wanted to know.
“Thirty-two,” I said.
“Then you don’t remember a world without robots. There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t. May I quote you?”
“You may. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven’t worked with them, so you don’t know them. They’re a cleaner, better breed than we are.”

Poverty may hinder kids’ brain development, study says

Reduced gray matter, lower test scores reported for poor children

July 20, 2015

Poverty appears to affect the brain development of children, hampering the growth of gray matter and impairing their academic performance, researchers report. Poor children tend to have as much as 10 percent less gray matter in several areas of the brain associated with academic skills, according to a study published July 20 in JAMA Pediatrics. “We used to think of poverty as a ‘social’ issue, but what we are learning now is that it is a biomedical issue that is affecting brain growth,” said senior study author Seth Pollak, a professor of psychology, pediatrics, anthropology and neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The results could have profound implications for the United States, where low-income students now represent the majority of kids in public schools, the study authors said in background information. Fifty-one percent of public school students came from low-income families in 2013.
Previous studies have shown that children living in poverty tend to perform poorly in school, the authors say. They have markedly lower test scores, and do not go as far in school as their well-off peers.
To see whether this is due to some physical effect that poverty might have on a child’s brain, Pollak and his colleagues analyzed MRI scans of 389 typically developing kids aged 4 to 22, assessing the amount of gray matter in the whole brain as well as the frontal lobe, temporal lobe and hippocampus. “Gray matter contains most of the brain’s neuronal cells,” Pollak said. “In other words, other parts of the brain – like white matter – carry information from one section of the brain to another. But the gray matter is where seeing and hearing, memory, emotions, speech, decision making and self-control occur.”
Children living below 150 percent of the federal poverty level – US$ 36,375 for a family of four – had 3 percent to 4 percent less gray matter in important regions of their brain, compared to the norm, the authors found. Those in families living below the federal poverty level fared even worse, with 8 percent to 10 percent less gray matter in those same brain regions. The federal poverty level in 2015 is US$ 24,250 for a family of four. These same kids scored an average of four to seven points lower on standardized tests, the researchers said.
The team estimated that as much as 20 percent of the gap in test scores could be explained by reduced brain development. A host of poverty-related issues likely contribute to developmental lags in children’s brains, Pollak said. Low-income kids are less likely to get the type of stimulation from their parents and environment that helps the brain grow, he said. For example, they hear fewer new words, and have fewer opportunities to read or play games. Their brain development also can be affected by factors related to impoverishment, such as high stress levels, poor sleep, crowding and poor nutrition, Pollak said.
This study serves as a call to action, given what’s already known about the effects of poverty on child development, said Dr. Joan Luby, a professor of child psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “The thing that’s really important about this study in the context of the broader literature is that there really is enough scientific evidence to take public health action at this point,” said Luby, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. “Poverty negatively affects brain development, and we also know that early interventions are powerfully effective,” Luby said. “They are more effective than interventions later in life, and they also are cost-effective.”

(www.nlm.nih.gov. Adaptado.)

Eu, Robô (I, Robot) é uma coletânea de contos escritos por Isaac Asimov que procura descrever, sob o ponto de vista do autor, o hipotético aumento da presença e da atuação dos robôs na sociedade.

Leia o texto, que apresenta uma entrevista com a personagem Susan Calvin, uma “robopsicóloga” e responda às questões de números 25 a 29.

Susan Calvin had been born in the year 1982, they said, which made her seventy five now. Everyone knew that. Appropriately enough, U. S. Robot and Mechanical Men, Inc. was seventy-five also, since it had been in the year of Dr. Calvin’s birth that Lawrence Robertson had first taken out incorporation papers for what eventually became the strangest industrial giant in man’s history. Well, everyone knew that, too. (...)
She went back to her desk and sat down. She didn’t need expression on her face to look sad, somehow.
“How old are you?” she wanted to know.
“Thirty-two,” I said.
“Then you don’t remember a world without robots. There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t. May I quote you?”
“You may. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven’t worked with them, so you don’t know them. They’re a cleaner, better breed than we are.”

Eu, Robô (I, Robot) é uma coletânea de contos escritos por Isaac Asimov que procura descrever, sob o ponto de vista do autor, o hipotético aumento da presença e da atuação dos robôs na sociedade.

Leia o texto, que apresenta uma entrevista com a personagem Susan Calvin, uma “robopsicóloga” e responda às questões de números 25 a 29.

Susan Calvin had been born in the year 1982, they said, which made her seventy five now. Everyone knew that. Appropriately enough, U. S. Robot and Mechanical Men, Inc. was seventy-five also, since it had been in the year of Dr. Calvin’s birth that Lawrence Robertson had first taken out incorporation papers for what eventually became the strangest industrial giant in man’s history. Well, everyone knew that, too. (...)
She went back to her desk and sat down. She didn’t need expression on her face to look sad, somehow.
“How old are you?” she wanted to know.
“Thirty-two,” I said.
“Then you don’t remember a world without robots. There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t. May I quote you?”
“You may. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven’t worked with them, so you don’t know them. They’re a cleaner, better breed than we are.”

Eu, Robô (I, Robot) é uma coletânea de contos escritos por Isaac Asimov que procura descrever, sob o ponto de vista do autor, o hipotético aumento da presença e da atuação dos robôs na sociedade.

Leia o texto, que apresenta uma entrevista com a personagem Susan Calvin, uma “robopsicóloga” e responda às questões de números 25 a 29.

Susan Calvin had been born in the year 1982, they said, which made her seventy five now. Everyone knew that. Appropriately enough, U. S. Robot and Mechanical Men, Inc. was seventy-five also, since it had been in the year of Dr. Calvin’s birth that Lawrence Robertson had first taken out incorporation papers for what eventually became the strangest industrial giant in man’s history. Well, everyone knew that, too. (...)
She went back to her desk and sat down. She didn’t need expression on her face to look sad, somehow.
“How old are you?” she wanted to know.
“Thirty-two,” I said.
“Then you don’t remember a world without robots. There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t. May I quote you?”
“You may. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven’t worked with them, so you don’t know them. They’re a cleaner, better breed than we are.”

Poverty may hinder kids’ brain development, study says

Reduced gray matter, lower test scores reported for poor children

July 20, 2015

Poverty appears to affect the brain development of children, hampering the growth of gray matter and impairing their academic performance, researchers report. Poor children tend to have as much as 10 percent less gray matter in several areas of the brain associated with academic skills, according to a study published July 20 in JAMA Pediatrics. “We used to think of poverty as a ‘social’ issue, but what we are learning now is that it is a biomedical issue that is affecting brain growth,” said senior study author Seth Pollak, a professor of psychology, pediatrics, anthropology and neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The results could have profound implications for the United States, where low-income students now represent the majority of kids in public schools, the study authors said in background information. Fifty-one percent of public school students came from low-income families in 2013.
Previous studies have shown that children living in poverty tend to perform poorly in school, the authors say. They have markedly lower test scores, and do not go as far in school as their well-off peers.
To see whether this is due to some physical effect that poverty might have on a child’s brain, Pollak and his colleagues analyzed MRI scans of 389 typically developing kids aged 4 to 22, assessing the amount of gray matter in the whole brain as well as the frontal lobe, temporal lobe and hippocampus. “Gray matter contains most of the brain’s neuronal cells,” Pollak said. “In other words, other parts of the brain – like white matter – carry information from one section of the brain to another. But the gray matter is where seeing and hearing, memory, emotions, speech, decision making and self-control occur.”
Children living below 150 percent of the federal poverty level – US$ 36,375 for a family of four – had 3 percent to 4 percent less gray matter in important regions of their brain, compared to the norm, the authors found. Those in families living below the federal poverty level fared even worse, with 8 percent to 10 percent less gray matter in those same brain regions. The federal poverty level in 2015 is US$ 24,250 for a family of four. These same kids scored an average of four to seven points lower on standardized tests, the researchers said.
The team estimated that as much as 20 percent of the gap in test scores could be explained by reduced brain development. A host of poverty-related issues likely contribute to developmental lags in children’s brains, Pollak said. Low-income kids are less likely to get the type of stimulation from their parents and environment that helps the brain grow, he said. For example, they hear fewer new words, and have fewer opportunities to read or play games. Their brain development also can be affected by factors related to impoverishment, such as high stress levels, poor sleep, crowding and poor nutrition, Pollak said.
This study serves as a call to action, given what’s already known about the effects of poverty on child development, said Dr. Joan Luby, a professor of child psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “The thing that’s really important about this study in the context of the broader literature is that there really is enough scientific evidence to take public health action at this point,” said Luby, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. “Poverty negatively affects brain development, and we also know that early interventions are powerfully effective,” Luby said. “They are more effective than interventions later in life, and they also are cost-effective.”

(www.nlm.nih.gov. Adaptado.)

Survey of geopolitics

Geopolitics is a product of its time, and its definitions have evolved accordingly. Rudolphh Kjellén, who coined the term in 1899, described geopolitics as “the theory of the state as a geographical organism or phenomenon in space.” For Karl Haushofer, the father of German geopolotik, “Geopolitics is the new national science of the state, (…) a doctrine on the spatial determinism of all political processes, based on the broad foundations of geography, especially of political geography”. On the eve of World War II, Derwent Whittlesey, the American political geographer, considered geopolitics “a dogma*... the faith that the state is inherently entitled to its place in the sun”. Richard Hartshorne defined it as “geography utilized for particular purposes that lie beyond the pursuit of scientific knowledge”.

ZEBRAS
Lesley Evans Ogden

Why zebras have stripes has long perplexed naturalists and continues to challenge scientists. Among the proposed explanations are that stripes promote social cohesion, regulate temperature, or confuse predators and biting flies. The matter, however, is far from settled.
2 Ecologist Brenda Larison of the University of California, Los Angeles, and six colleagues decided to have a fresh look at three hypotheses: predator evasion, thermoregulation, and biting fly avoidance. Plains zebras, Equus quagga, show a marked geographic variation in their stripes, which range from heavy black-and-white patterns covering the entire body to thinner, lighter stripes restricted to particular areas. For example, a now extinct subspecies from South Africa, E. q. quagga, had stripes on its neck, head, and torso but not on its belly or legs. The difference from region to region prompted the team to search for associations between environmental factors and striping patterns.
3 The researchers chose sixteen populations of plains zebras and photographed a minimum of eight animals per site. Using image-processing software, they noted the number of stripes and their length, thickness, and color saturation on the legs, torso, and belly. They also gathered data on twenty-nine environmental variables, including temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, leaf water content, and tree canopy cover. In addition, they used the Food and Agricultural Organization’s published distribution of tsetse flies and modeled the historic geographic distribution of lions and tsetse flies. The team then ran a computer model and looked at which variables best predicted the observed geographic variation of stripes.
4 Surprisingly, they found no clear link between striping patterns and escape from predators or avoidance of biting flies. Instead, temperature was the strongest predictor of stripe variation. Plains zebras living in warmer regions had thicker, more defined stripes than those in cooler regions. This, say the authors, seems to support the idea that contrasting black and white stripes lead to differential air currents, potentially giving the zebras an onboard air conditioner. Such a mechanism has previously been proposed but still remains to be investigated directly. Another untested possibility is that it’s not tsetse fly distribution that matters, but rather the distribution of the disease-causing parasites carried by the flies. “It’s something I want to follow up on,” says Larison, who is also studying the genetics that underlies zebra striping.
5 “We usually think about zebra stripes in terms of benefits of striping, but the fact that they lose their striping in certain areas suggests that perhaps there are also some costs,” she says. The mystery of zebra stripes is still being resolved, but for now, one possible explanation has been seriously considered.

Adapted from Natural History, March 2015.

ZEBRAS
Lesley Evans Ogden

Why zebras have stripes has long perplexed naturalists and continues to challenge scientists. Among the proposed explanations are that stripes promote social cohesion, regulate temperature, or confuse predators and biting flies. The matter, however, is far from settled.
2 Ecologist Brenda Larison of the University of California, Los Angeles, and six colleagues decided to have a fresh look at three hypotheses: predator evasion, thermoregulation, and biting fly avoidance. Plains zebras, Equus quagga, show a marked geographic variation in their stripes, which range from heavy black-and-white patterns covering the entire body to thinner, lighter stripes restricted to particular areas. For example, a now extinct subspecies from South Africa, E. q. quagga, had stripes on its neck, head, and torso but not on its belly or legs. The difference from region to region prompted the team to search for associations between environmental factors and striping patterns.
3 The researchers chose sixteen populations of plains zebras and photographed a minimum of eight animals per site. Using image-processing software, they noted the number of stripes and their length, thickness, and color saturation on the legs, torso, and belly. They also gathered data on twenty-nine environmental variables, including temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, leaf water content, and tree canopy cover. In addition, they used the Food and Agricultural Organization’s published distribution of tsetse flies and modeled the historic geographic distribution of lions and tsetse flies. The team then ran a computer model and looked at which variables best predicted the observed geographic variation of stripes.
4 Surprisingly, they found no clear link between striping patterns and escape from predators or avoidance of biting flies. Instead, temperature was the strongest predictor of stripe variation. Plains zebras living in warmer regions had thicker, more defined stripes than those in cooler regions. This, say the authors, seems to support the idea that contrasting black and white stripes lead to differential air currents, potentially giving the zebras an onboard air conditioner. Such a mechanism has previously been proposed but still remains to be investigated directly. Another untested possibility is that it’s not tsetse fly distribution that matters, but rather the distribution of the disease-causing parasites carried by the flies. “It’s something I want to follow up on,” says Larison, who is also studying the genetics that underlies zebra striping.
5 “We usually think about zebra stripes in terms of benefits of striping, but the fact that they lose their striping in certain areas suggests that perhaps there are also some costs,” she says. The mystery of zebra stripes is still being resolved, but for now, one possible explanation has been seriously considered.

Adapted from Natural History, March 2015.

ZEBRAS
Lesley Evans Ogden

Why zebras have stripes has long perplexed naturalists and continues to challenge scientists. Among the proposed explanations are that stripes promote social cohesion, regulate temperature, or confuse predators and biting flies. The matter, however, is far from settled.
2 Ecologist Brenda Larison of the University of California, Los Angeles, and six colleagues decided to have a fresh look at three hypotheses: predator evasion, thermoregulation, and biting fly avoidance. Plains zebras, Equus quagga, show a marked geographic variation in their stripes, which range from heavy black-and-white patterns covering the entire body to thinner, lighter stripes restricted to particular areas. For example, a now extinct subspecies from South Africa, E. q. quagga, had stripes on its neck, head, and torso but not on its belly or legs. The difference from region to region prompted the team to search for associations between environmental factors and striping patterns.
3 The researchers chose sixteen populations of plains zebras and photographed a minimum of eight animals per site. Using image-processing software, they noted the number of stripes and their length, thickness, and color saturation on the legs, torso, and belly. They also gathered data on twenty-nine environmental variables, including temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, leaf water content, and tree canopy cover. In addition, they used the Food and Agricultural Organization’s published distribution of tsetse flies and modeled the historic geographic distribution of lions and tsetse flies. The team then ran a computer model and looked at which variables best predicted the observed geographic variation of stripes.
4 Surprisingly, they found no clear link between striping patterns and escape from predators or avoidance of biting flies. Instead, temperature was the strongest predictor of stripe variation. Plains zebras living in warmer regions had thicker, more defined stripes than those in cooler regions. This, say the authors, seems to support the idea that contrasting black and white stripes lead to differential air currents, potentially giving the zebras an onboard air conditioner. Such a mechanism has previously been proposed but still remains to be investigated directly. Another untested possibility is that it’s not tsetse fly distribution that matters, but rather the distribution of the disease-causing parasites carried by the flies. “It’s something I want to follow up on,” says Larison, who is also studying the genetics that underlies zebra striping.
5 “We usually think about zebra stripes in terms of benefits of striping, but the fact that they lose their striping in certain areas suggests that perhaps there are also some costs,” she says. The mystery of zebra stripes is still being resolved, but for now, one possible explanation has been seriously considered.

Adapted from Natural History, March 2015.

ZEBRAS
Lesley Evans Ogden

Why zebras have stripes has long perplexed naturalists and continues to challenge scientists. Among the proposed explanations are that stripes promote social cohesion, regulate temperature, or confuse predators and biting flies. The matter, however, is far from settled.
2 Ecologist Brenda Larison of the University of California, Los Angeles, and six colleagues decided to have a fresh look at three hypotheses: predator evasion, thermoregulation, and biting fly avoidance. Plains zebras, Equus quagga, show a marked geographic variation in their stripes, which range from heavy black-and-white patterns covering the entire body to thinner, lighter stripes restricted to particular areas. For example, a now extinct subspecies from South Africa, E. q. quagga, had stripes on its neck, head, and torso but not on its belly or legs. The difference from region to region prompted the team to search for associations between environmental factors and striping patterns.
3 The researchers chose sixteen populations of plains zebras and photographed a minimum of eight animals per site. Using image-processing software, they noted the number of stripes and their length, thickness, and color saturation on the legs, torso, and belly. They also gathered data on twenty-nine environmental variables, including temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, leaf water content, and tree canopy cover. In addition, they used the Food and Agricultural Organization’s published distribution of tsetse flies and modeled the historic geographic distribution of lions and tsetse flies. The team then ran a computer model and looked at which variables best predicted the observed geographic variation of stripes.
4 Surprisingly, they found no clear link between striping patterns and escape from predators or avoidance of biting flies. Instead, temperature was the strongest predictor of stripe variation. Plains zebras living in warmer regions had thicker, more defined stripes than those in cooler regions. This, say the authors, seems to support the idea that contrasting black and white stripes lead to differential air currents, potentially giving the zebras an onboard air conditioner. Such a mechanism has previously been proposed but still remains to be investigated directly. Another untested possibility is that it’s not tsetse fly distribution that matters, but rather the distribution of the disease-causing parasites carried by the flies. “It’s something I want to follow up on,” says Larison, who is also studying the genetics that underlies zebra striping.
5 “We usually think about zebra stripes in terms of benefits of striping, but the fact that they lose their striping in certain areas suggests that perhaps there are also some costs,” she says. The mystery of zebra stripes is still being resolved, but for now, one possible explanation has been seriously considered.

Adapted from Natural History, March 2015.

ZEBRAS
Lesley Evans Ogden

Why zebras have stripes has long perplexed naturalists and continues to challenge scientists. Among the proposed explanations are that stripes promote social cohesion, regulate temperature, or confuse predators and biting flies. The matter, however, is far from settled.
2 Ecologist Brenda Larison of the University of California, Los Angeles, and six colleagues decided to have a fresh look at three hypotheses: predator evasion, thermoregulation, and biting fly avoidance. Plains zebras, Equus quagga, show a marked geographic variation in their stripes, which range from heavy black-and-white patterns covering the entire body to thinner, lighter stripes restricted to particular areas. For example, a now extinct subspecies from South Africa, E. q. quagga, had stripes on its neck, head, and torso but not on its belly or legs. The difference from region to region prompted the team to search for associations between environmental factors and striping patterns.
3 The researchers chose sixteen populations of plains zebras and photographed a minimum of eight animals per site. Using image-processing software, they noted the number of stripes and their length, thickness, and color saturation on the legs, torso, and belly. They also gathered data on twenty-nine environmental variables, including temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, leaf water content, and tree canopy cover. In addition, they used the Food and Agricultural Organization’s published distribution of tsetse flies and modeled the historic geographic distribution of lions and tsetse flies. The team then ran a computer model and looked at which variables best predicted the observed geographic variation of stripes.
4 Surprisingly, they found no clear link between striping patterns and escape from predators or avoidance of biting flies. Instead, temperature was the strongest predictor of stripe variation. Plains zebras living in warmer regions had thicker, more defined stripes than those in cooler regions. This, say the authors, seems to support the idea that contrasting black and white stripes lead to differential air currents, potentially giving the zebras an onboard air conditioner. Such a mechanism has previously been proposed but still remains to be investigated directly. Another untested possibility is that it’s not tsetse fly distribution that matters, but rather the distribution of the disease-causing parasites carried by the flies. “It’s something I want to follow up on,” says Larison, who is also studying the genetics that underlies zebra striping.
5 “We usually think about zebra stripes in terms of benefits of striping, but the fact that they lose their striping in certain areas suggests that perhaps there are also some costs,” she says. The mystery of zebra stripes is still being resolved, but for now, one possible explanation has been seriously considered.

Adapted from Natural History, March 2015.

ANTI-SEMITISM

1 In one Jewish school in London, pupils train for a possible terrorist attack. A synagogue has cancelled a children’s trip to Disneyland in France. Police and community groups have increased patrols in Jewish areas. After the murderous attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9th, British Jews are scared. Should they be?
2 Jews worried even before the killings. In a study of British Jews last year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), almost 70% said that they felt antiSemitism had increased in the past five years. Considering the atrocities in Paris, it should come as no surprise that many Jews feel uneasy in a way that they have not for some time, says Ephraim Mirvis, Britain’s chief rabbi. But he cautions against alarmism. Indeed: though some statistics suggest otherwise, anti-Semitism is not rising.
3 Research last year from the Pew Global Attitudes survey suggests that just 7% of Britons hold unfavourable views of Jews. That is a little less than in France and much lower than in Italy or Greece, where the rates are 24% and 47% respectively. The figure in Britain has been fairly stable—varying between 7% and 9%—for a decade, points out Daniel Staetsky of JPR. Levels of prejudice against Muslims are higher in Britain, as in other European countries.
4 The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors anti-Semitic incidents, calculates that there were 529 in 2013, the lowest number since 2005. None involved serious violence. But the organization calculates that there was a rise in 2014. The first half of the year saw a 36% increase on 2013. Last July the CST recorded 302 incidents, its highest ever monthly total. London’s Metropolitan Police say the numbers of hate crimes against Jews reported last year almost doubled, though they remain low.
5 That has much to do with events elsewhere in the world. Anti-Semitic incidents tend to track violence in the Middle East. A sharp rise in 2009 coincided with Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. A rise in 2014 would coincide with Israel’s summer incursion into Gaza. Criticism of Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism, and the CST is careful to distinguish between the two. But, the organisation points out, the former can be used to bash Jews more generally.
6 The CST also notes that many incidents occur around the Jewish high holy days, when more people are going to and from synagogues. In 2013 incidents most commonly involved public verbal abuse hurled at visibly Jewish people, including shouts of “Heil Hitler” and “fucking Jewish bastards”. Changes in the demography of British Jews may exacerbate this. The haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, are a growing proportion of British Jews. Their clothes mark them out clearly as Jewish, as do the schools they attend and the areas where they live. As their numbers grow, abuse could increase, even as anti-Semitism more generally does not change.

Adapted from The Economist, January 24, 2015.

ANTI-SEMITISM

1 In one Jewish school in London, pupils train for a possible terrorist attack. A synagogue has cancelled a children’s trip to Disneyland in France. Police and community groups have increased patrols in Jewish areas. After the murderous attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9th, British Jews are scared. Should they be?
2 Jews worried even before the killings. In a study of British Jews last year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), almost 70% said that they felt antiSemitism had increased in the past five years. Considering the atrocities in Paris, it should come as no surprise that many Jews feel uneasy in a way that they have not for some time, says Ephraim Mirvis, Britain’s chief rabbi. But he cautions against alarmism. Indeed: though some statistics suggest otherwise, anti-Semitism is not rising.
3 Research last year from the Pew Global Attitudes survey suggests that just 7% of Britons hold unfavourable views of Jews. That is a little less than in France and much lower than in Italy or Greece, where the rates are 24% and 47% respectively. The figure in Britain has been fairly stable—varying between 7% and 9%—for a decade, points out Daniel Staetsky of JPR. Levels of prejudice against Muslims are higher in Britain, as in other European countries.
4 The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors anti-Semitic incidents, calculates that there were 529 in 2013, the lowest number since 2005. None involved serious violence. But the organization calculates that there was a rise in 2014. The first half of the year saw a 36% increase on 2013. Last July the CST recorded 302 incidents, its highest ever monthly total. London’s Metropolitan Police say the numbers of hate crimes against Jews reported last year almost doubled, though they remain low.
5 That has much to do with events elsewhere in the world. Anti-Semitic incidents tend to track violence in the Middle East. A sharp rise in 2009 coincided with Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. A rise in 2014 would coincide with Israel’s summer incursion into Gaza. Criticism of Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism, and the CST is careful to distinguish between the two. But, the organisation points out, the former can be used to bash Jews more generally.
6 The CST also notes that many incidents occur around the Jewish high holy days, when more people are going to and from synagogues. In 2013 incidents most commonly involved public verbal abuse hurled at visibly Jewish people, including shouts of “Heil Hitler” and “fucking Jewish bastards”. Changes in the demography of British Jews may exacerbate this. The haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, are a growing proportion of British Jews. Their clothes mark them out clearly as Jewish, as do the schools they attend and the areas where they live. As their numbers grow, abuse could increase, even as anti-Semitism more generally does not change.

Adapted from The Economist, January 24, 2015.

ANTI-SEMITISM

1 In one Jewish school in London, pupils train for a possible terrorist attack. A synagogue has cancelled a children’s trip to Disneyland in France. Police and community groups have increased patrols in Jewish areas. After the murderous attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9th, British Jews are scared. Should they be?
2 Jews worried even before the killings. In a study of British Jews last year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), almost 70% said that they felt antiSemitism had increased in the past five years. Considering the atrocities in Paris, it should come as no surprise that many Jews feel uneasy in a way that they have not for some time, says Ephraim Mirvis, Britain’s chief rabbi. But he cautions against alarmism. Indeed: though some statistics suggest otherwise, anti-Semitism is not rising.
3 Research last year from the Pew Global Attitudes survey suggests that just 7% of Britons hold unfavourable views of Jews. That is a little less than in France and much lower than in Italy or Greece, where the rates are 24% and 47% respectively. The figure in Britain has been fairly stable—varying between 7% and 9%—for a decade, points out Daniel Staetsky of JPR. Levels of prejudice against Muslims are higher in Britain, as in other European countries.
4 The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors anti-Semitic incidents, calculates that there were 529 in 2013, the lowest number since 2005. None involved serious violence. But the organization calculates that there was a rise in 2014. The first half of the year saw a 36% increase on 2013. Last July the CST recorded 302 incidents, its highest ever monthly total. London’s Metropolitan Police say the numbers of hate crimes against Jews reported last year almost doubled, though they remain low.
5 That has much to do with events elsewhere in the world. Anti-Semitic incidents tend to track violence in the Middle East. A sharp rise in 2009 coincided with Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. A rise in 2014 would coincide with Israel’s summer incursion into Gaza. Criticism of Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism, and the CST is careful to distinguish between the two. But, the organisation points out, the former can be used to bash Jews more generally.
6 The CST also notes that many incidents occur around the Jewish high holy days, when more people are going to and from synagogues. In 2013 incidents most commonly involved public verbal abuse hurled at visibly Jewish people, including shouts of “Heil Hitler” and “fucking Jewish bastards”. Changes in the demography of British Jews may exacerbate this. The haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, are a growing proportion of British Jews. Their clothes mark them out clearly as Jewish, as do the schools they attend and the areas where they live. As their numbers grow, abuse could increase, even as anti-Semitism more generally does not change.

Adapted from The Economist, January 24, 2015.

ANTI-SEMITISM

1 In one Jewish school in London, pupils train for a possible terrorist attack. A synagogue has cancelled a children’s trip to Disneyland in France. Police and community groups have increased patrols in Jewish areas. After the murderous attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9th, British Jews are scared. Should they be?
2 Jews worried even before the killings. In a study of British Jews last year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), almost 70% said that they felt antiSemitism had increased in the past five years. Considering the atrocities in Paris, it should come as no surprise that many Jews feel uneasy in a way that they have not for some time, says Ephraim Mirvis, Britain’s chief rabbi. But he cautions against alarmism. Indeed: though some statistics suggest otherwise, anti-Semitism is not rising.
3 Research last year from the Pew Global Attitudes survey suggests that just 7% of Britons hold unfavourable views of Jews. That is a little less than in France and much lower than in Italy or Greece, where the rates are 24% and 47% respectively. The figure in Britain has been fairly stable—varying between 7% and 9%—for a decade, points out Daniel Staetsky of JPR. Levels of prejudice against Muslims are higher in Britain, as in other European countries.
4 The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors anti-Semitic incidents, calculates that there were 529 in 2013, the lowest number since 2005. None involved serious violence. But the organization calculates that there was a rise in 2014. The first half of the year saw a 36% increase on 2013. Last July the CST recorded 302 incidents, its highest ever monthly total. London’s Metropolitan Police say the numbers of hate crimes against Jews reported last year almost doubled, though they remain low.
5 That has much to do with events elsewhere in the world. Anti-Semitic incidents tend to track violence in the Middle East. A sharp rise in 2009 coincided with Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. A rise in 2014 would coincide with Israel’s summer incursion into Gaza. Criticism of Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism, and the CST is careful to distinguish between the two. But, the organisation points out, the former can be used to bash Jews more generally.
6 The CST also notes that many incidents occur around the Jewish high holy days, when more people are going to and from synagogues. In 2013 incidents most commonly involved public verbal abuse hurled at visibly Jewish people, including shouts of “Heil Hitler” and “fucking Jewish bastards”. Changes in the demography of British Jews may exacerbate this. The haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, are a growing proportion of British Jews. Their clothes mark them out clearly as Jewish, as do the schools they attend and the areas where they live. As their numbers grow, abuse could increase, even as anti-Semitism more generally does not change.

Adapted from The Economist, January 24, 2015.

ANTI-SEMITISM

1 In one Jewish school in London, pupils train for a possible terrorist attack. A synagogue has cancelled a children’s trip to Disneyland in France. Police and community groups have increased patrols in Jewish areas. After the murderous attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9th, British Jews are scared. Should they be?
2 Jews worried even before the killings. In a study of British Jews last year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), almost 70% said that they felt antiSemitism had increased in the past five years. Considering the atrocities in Paris, it should come as no surprise that many Jews feel uneasy in a way that they have not for some time, says Ephraim Mirvis, Britain’s chief rabbi. But he cautions against alarmism. Indeed: though some statistics suggest otherwise, anti-Semitism is not rising.
3 Research last year from the Pew Global Attitudes survey suggests that just 7% of Britons hold unfavourable views of Jews. That is a little less than in France and much lower than in Italy or Greece, where the rates are 24% and 47% respectively. The figure in Britain has been fairly stable—varying between 7% and 9%—for a decade, points out Daniel Staetsky of JPR. Levels of prejudice against Muslims are higher in Britain, as in other European countries.
4 The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors anti-Semitic incidents, calculates that there were 529 in 2013, the lowest number since 2005. None involved serious violence. But the organization calculates that there was a rise in 2014. The first half of the year saw a 36% increase on 2013. Last July the CST recorded 302 incidents, its highest ever monthly total. London’s Metropolitan Police say the numbers of hate crimes against Jews reported last year almost doubled, though they remain low.
5 That has much to do with events elsewhere in the world. Anti-Semitic incidents tend to track violence in the Middle East. A sharp rise in 2009 coincided with Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. A rise in 2014 would coincide with Israel’s summer incursion into Gaza. Criticism of Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism, and the CST is careful to distinguish between the two. But, the organisation points out, the former can be used to bash Jews more generally.
6 The CST also notes that many incidents occur around the Jewish high holy days, when more people are going to and from synagogues. In 2013 incidents most commonly involved public verbal abuse hurled at visibly Jewish people, including shouts of “Heil Hitler” and “fucking Jewish bastards”. Changes in the demography of British Jews may exacerbate this. The haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, are a growing proportion of British Jews. Their clothes mark them out clearly as Jewish, as do the schools they attend and the areas where they live. As their numbers grow, abuse could increase, even as anti-Semitism more generally does not change.

Adapted from The Economist, January 24, 2015.

ANTI-SEMITISM

1 In one Jewish school in London, pupils train for a possible terrorist attack. A synagogue has cancelled a children’s trip to Disneyland in France. Police and community groups have increased patrols in Jewish areas. After the murderous attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9th, British Jews are scared. Should they be?
2 Jews worried even before the killings. In a study of British Jews last year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), almost 70% said that they felt antiSemitism had increased in the past five years. Considering the atrocities in Paris, it should come as no surprise that many Jews feel uneasy in a way that they have not for some time, says Ephraim Mirvis, Britain’s chief rabbi. But he cautions against alarmism. Indeed: though some statistics suggest otherwise, anti-Semitism is not rising.
3 Research last year from the Pew Global Attitudes survey suggests that just 7% of Britons hold unfavourable views of Jews. That is a little less than in France and much lower than in Italy or Greece, where the rates are 24% and 47% respectively. The figure in Britain has been fairly stable—varying between 7% and 9%—for a decade, points out Daniel Staetsky of JPR. Levels of prejudice against Muslims are higher in Britain, as in other European countries.
4 The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors anti-Semitic incidents, calculates that there were 529 in 2013, the lowest number since 2005. None involved serious violence. But the organization calculates that there was a rise in 2014. The first half of the year saw a 36% increase on 2013. Last July the CST recorded 302 incidents, its highest ever monthly total. London’s Metropolitan Police say the numbers of hate crimes against Jews reported last year almost doubled, though they remain low.
5 That has much to do with events elsewhere in the world. Anti-Semitic incidents tend to track violence in the Middle East. A sharp rise in 2009 coincided with Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. A rise in 2014 would coincide with Israel’s summer incursion into Gaza. Criticism of Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism, and the CST is careful to distinguish between the two. But, the organisation points out, the former can be used to bash Jews more generally.
6 The CST also notes that many incidents occur around the Jewish high holy days, when more people are going to and from synagogues. In 2013 incidents most commonly involved public verbal abuse hurled at visibly Jewish people, including shouts of “Heil Hitler” and “fucking Jewish bastards”. Changes in the demography of British Jews may exacerbate this. The haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, are a growing proportion of British Jews. Their clothes mark them out clearly as Jewish, as do the schools they attend and the areas where they live. As their numbers grow, abuse could increase, even as anti-Semitism more generally does not change.

Adapted from The Economist, January 24, 2015.

ANTI-SEMITISM

1 In one Jewish school in London, pupils train for a possible terrorist attack. A synagogue has cancelled a children’s trip to Disneyland in France. Police and community groups have increased patrols in Jewish areas. After the murderous attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9th, British Jews are scared. Should they be?
2 Jews worried even before the killings. In a study of British Jews last year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), almost 70% said that they felt antiSemitism had increased in the past five years. Considering the atrocities in Paris, it should come as no surprise that many Jews feel uneasy in a way that they have not for some time, says Ephraim Mirvis, Britain’s chief rabbi. But he cautions against alarmism. Indeed: though some statistics suggest otherwise, anti-Semitism is not rising.
3 Research last year from the Pew Global Attitudes survey suggests that just 7% of Britons hold unfavourable views of Jews. That is a little less than in France and much lower than in Italy or Greece, where the rates are 24% and 47% respectively. The figure in Britain has been fairly stable—varying between 7% and 9%—for a decade, points out Daniel Staetsky of JPR. Levels of prejudice against Muslims are higher in Britain, as in other European countries.
4 The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors anti-Semitic incidents, calculates that there were 529 in 2013, the lowest number since 2005. None involved serious violence. But the organization calculates that there was a rise in 2014. The first half of the year saw a 36% increase on 2013. Last July the CST recorded 302 incidents, its highest ever monthly total. London’s Metropolitan Police say the numbers of hate crimes against Jews reported last year almost doubled, though they remain low.
5 That has much to do with events elsewhere in the world. Anti-Semitic incidents tend to track violence in the Middle East. A sharp rise in 2009 coincided with Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. A rise in 2014 would coincide with Israel’s summer incursion into Gaza. Criticism of Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism, and the CST is careful to distinguish between the two. But, the organisation points out, the former can be used to bash Jews more generally.
6 The CST also notes that many incidents occur around the Jewish high holy days, when more people are going to and from synagogues. In 2013 incidents most commonly involved public verbal abuse hurled at visibly Jewish people, including shouts of “Heil Hitler” and “fucking Jewish bastards”. Changes in the demography of British Jews may exacerbate this. The haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, are a growing proportion of British Jews. Their clothes mark them out clearly as Jewish, as do the schools they attend and the areas where they live. As their numbers grow, abuse could increase, even as anti-Semitism more generally does not change.

Adapted from The Economist, January 24, 2015.

ANTI-SEMITISM

1 In one Jewish school in London, pupils train for a possible terrorist attack. A synagogue has cancelled a children’s trip to Disneyland in France. Police and community groups have increased patrols in Jewish areas. After the murderous attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9th, British Jews are scared. Should they be?
2 Jews worried even before the killings. In a study of British Jews last year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), almost 70% said that they felt antiSemitism had increased in the past five years. Considering the atrocities in Paris, it should come as no surprise that many Jews feel uneasy in a way that they have not for some time, says Ephraim Mirvis, Britain’s chief rabbi. But he cautions against alarmism. Indeed: though some statistics suggest otherwise, anti-Semitism is not rising.
3 Research last year from the Pew Global Attitudes survey suggests that just 7% of Britons hold unfavourable views of Jews. That is a little less than in France and much lower than in Italy or Greece, where the rates are 24% and 47% respectively. The figure in Britain has been fairly stable—varying between 7% and 9%—for a decade, points out Daniel Staetsky of JPR. Levels of prejudice against Muslims are higher in Britain, as in other European countries.
4 The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors anti-Semitic incidents, calculates that there were 529 in 2013, the lowest number since 2005. None involved serious violence. But the organization calculates that there was a rise in 2014. The first half of the year saw a 36% increase on 2013. Last July the CST recorded 302 incidents, its highest ever monthly total. London’s Metropolitan Police say the numbers of hate crimes against Jews reported last year almost doubled, though they remain low.
5 That has much to do with events elsewhere in the world. Anti-Semitic incidents tend to track violence in the Middle East. A sharp rise in 2009 coincided with Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. A rise in 2014 would coincide with Israel’s summer incursion into Gaza. Criticism of Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism, and the CST is careful to distinguish between the two. But, the organisation points out, the former can be used to bash Jews more generally.
6 The CST also notes that many incidents occur around the Jewish high holy days, when more people are going to and from synagogues. In 2013 incidents most commonly involved public verbal abuse hurled at visibly Jewish people, including shouts of “Heil Hitler” and “fucking Jewish bastards”. Changes in the demography of British Jews may exacerbate this. The haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, are a growing proportion of British Jews. Their clothes mark them out clearly as Jewish, as do the schools they attend and the areas where they live. As their numbers grow, abuse could increase, even as anti-Semitism more generally does not change.

Adapted from The Economist, January 24, 2015.

Examine o cartum.

Examine o quadrinho para responder às questões 22 e 23.

Examine o quadrinho para responder às questões 22 e 23.

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 24 a 27.

Genetically modified foods

Genetically modified (GM) foods are foods derived from organisms whose genetic material (DNA) has been modified in a way that does not occur naturally, e.g. through the introduction of a gene from a different organism. Currently available GM foods stem mostly from plants, but in the future foods derived from GM microorganisms or GM animals are likely to be introduced on the market. Most existing genetically modified crops have been developed to improve yield, through the introduction of resistance to plant diseases or of increased tolerance of herbicides. In the future, genetic modification could be aimed at altering the nutrient content of food, reducing its allergenic potential, or improving the efficiency of food production systems. All GM foods should be assessed before being allowed on the market. FAO/WHO Codex guidelines exist for risk analysis of GM food.

(www.who.int

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 24 a 27.

Genetically modified foods

Genetically modified (GM) foods are foods derived from organisms whose genetic material (DNA) has been modified in a way that does not occur naturally, e.g. through the introduction of a gene from a different organism. Currently available GM foods stem mostly from plants, but in the future foods derived from GM microorganisms or GM animals are likely to be introduced on the market. Most existing genetically modified crops have been developed to improve yield, through the introduction of resistance to plant diseases or of increased tolerance of herbicides. In the future, genetic modification could be aimed at altering the nutrient content of food, reducing its allergenic potential, or improving the efficiency of food production systems. All GM foods should be assessed before being allowed on the market. FAO/WHO Codex guidelines exist for risk analysis of GM food.

(www.who.int

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 24 a 27.

Genetically modified foods

Genetically modified (GM) foods are foods derived from organisms whose genetic material (DNA) has been modified in a way that does not occur naturally, e.g. through the introduction of a gene from a different organism. Currently available GM foods stem mostly from plants, but in the future foods derived from GM microorganisms or GM animals are likely to be introduced on the market. Most existing genetically modified crops have been developed to improve yield, through the introduction of resistance to plant diseases or of increased tolerance of herbicides. In the future, genetic modification could be aimed at altering the nutrient content of food, reducing its allergenic potential, or improving the efficiency of food production systems. All GM foods should be assessed before being allowed on the market. FAO/WHO Codex guidelines exist for risk analysis of GM food.

(www.who.int

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 24 a 27.

Genetically modified foods

Genetically modified (GM) foods are foods derived from organisms whose genetic material (DNA) has been modified in a way that does not occur naturally, e.g. through the introduction of a gene from a different organism. Currently available GM foods stem mostly from plants, but in the future foods derived from GM microorganisms or GM animals are likely to be introduced on the market. Most existing genetically modified crops have been developed to improve yield, through the introduction of resistance to plant diseases or of increased tolerance of herbicides. In the future, genetic modification could be aimed at altering the nutrient content of food, reducing its allergenic potential, or improving the efficiency of food production systems. All GM foods should be assessed before being allowed on the market. FAO/WHO Codex guidelines exist for risk analysis of GM food.

(www.who.int

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 28 a 30.

GM wheat no more
pest-resistant than ordinary crops, trial shows

GM wheat designed to repel aphids is no more effective at repelling the bugs than standard varieties a major field trial has revealed

lan Sample
June 25, 2015

A major field trial of GM wheat that is designed to repel aphids (small insects) has found the crop is no better protected against the pests than conventional wheat. The results come from two years of trials that compared aphid attacks on standard wheat plants with those suffered by a GM version modified to release a natural aphid repellent.
Scientists created the GM wheat strain in the hope that it would deter aphids, which devour the crops and can leave them with infections. They modified the wheat to produce a natural pheromone which aphids release when under attack from predators. The “aphid alarm” makes the bugs flee to safety. Aphids are not the only organisms that release the odour though. More than 400 plants have evolved to secrete the same substance, called E-beta-farnesene, or EBF, including peppermint. The chemical doubles up as an attractant for some insects that kill aphids, such as parasitic wasps.
Prior to the field trial, lab tests at Rothamsted found that the pheromone worked as a highly-effective aphid repellent. The work bolstered researchers’ hopes that the trial would demonstrate the crop’s resilience against aphids in the wild. An aphid-resistant wheat crop could have huge benefits for farmers and the environment because the plants would no langer need to be sprayed with insecticides.
“The disappointing thing is that when we tested it in the field, we didn't find any significant reduction in aphid settlement in the test plots,” said Toby Bruce, who worked on the trial. Details of the trial are published in the journal Scientific Reports.

(www.theguardian.com.Adaptado.)

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 28 a 30.

GM wheat no more
pest-resistant than ordinary crops, trial shows

GM wheat designed to repel aphids is no more effective at repelling the bugs than standard varieties a major field trial has revealed

lan Sample
June 25, 2015

A major field trial of GM wheat that is designed to repel aphids (small insects) has found the crop is no better protected against the pests than conventional wheat. The results come from two years of trials that compared aphid attacks on standard wheat plants with those suffered by a GM version modified to release a natural aphid repellent.
Scientists created the GM wheat strain in the hope that it would deter aphids, which devour the crops and can leave them with infections. They modified the wheat to produce a natural pheromone which aphids release when under attack from predators. The “aphid alarm” makes the bugs flee to safety. Aphids are not the only organisms that release the odour though. More than 400 plants have evolved to secrete the same substance, called E-beta-farnesene, or EBF, including peppermint. The chemical doubles up as an attractant for some insects that kill aphids, such as parasitic wasps.
Prior to the field trial, lab tests at Rothamsted found that the pheromone worked as a highly-effective aphid repellent. The work bolstered researchers’ hopes that the trial would demonstrate the crop’s resilience against aphids in the wild. An aphid-resistant wheat crop could have huge benefits for farmers and the environment because the plants would no langer need to be sprayed with insecticides.
“The disappointing thing is that when we tested it in the field, we didn't find any significant reduction in aphid settlement in the test plots,” said Toby Bruce, who worked on the trial. Details of the trial are published in the journal Scientific Reports.

(www.theguardian.com.Adaptado.)

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 28 a 30.

GM wheat no more
pest-resistant than ordinary crops, trial shows

GM wheat designed to repel aphids is no more effective at repelling the bugs than standard varieties a major field trial has revealed

lan Sample
June 25, 2015

A major field trial of GM wheat that is designed to repel aphids (small insects) has found the crop is no better protected against the pests than conventional wheat. The results come from two years of trials that compared aphid attacks on standard wheat plants with those suffered by a GM version modified to release a natural aphid repellent.
Scientists created the GM wheat strain in the hope that it would deter aphids, which devour the crops and can leave them with infections. They modified the wheat to produce a natural pheromone which aphids release when under attack from predators. The “aphid alarm” makes the bugs flee to safety. Aphids are not the only organisms that release the odour though. More than 400 plants have evolved to secrete the same substance, called E-beta-farnesene, or EBF, including peppermint. The chemical doubles up as an attractant for some insects that kill aphids, such as parasitic wasps.
Prior to the field trial, lab tests at Rothamsted found that the pheromone worked as a highly-effective aphid repellent. The work bolstered researchers’ hopes that the trial would demonstrate the crop’s resilience against aphids in the wild. An aphid-resistant wheat crop could have huge benefits for farmers and the environment because the plants would no langer need to be sprayed with insecticides.
“The disappointing thing is that when we tested it in the field, we didn't find any significant reduction in aphid settlement in the test plots,” said Toby Bruce, who worked on the trial. Details of the trial are published in the journal Scientific Reports.

(www.theguardian.com.Adaptado.)

Learn ‘n’ go
How quickly can people learn new skills?
Jan 25^th 2014 – from the print edition

In 2012, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee took a ride in one of Google’s driverless cars. The car’s performance, they report, was flawless, boring and, above all, “weird”. Only a few years earlier, “We were sure that computers would not be able to drive cars.” Only humans, they thought, could make sense of the countless, shifting patterns of driving a car – with oncoming¹ traffic, changing lights and wayward² aywalkers³.
Machines have mastered driving. And not just driving. In ways that are only now becoming apparent, the authors argue, machines can forecast home prices, design beer bottles, teach at universities, grade exams and do countless other things better and more cheaply than humans. (…)
This will have one principal good consequence, and one bad. The good is bounty⁴. Households will spend less on groceries, utilities and clothing; the deaf will be able to hear, the blind to see. The bad is spread⁵. The gap is growing between the lucky few whose abilities and skills are enhanced⁶ by technology, and the far more numerous middle-skilled people competing for the remaining⁷ jobs that machines cannot do, such as folding towels and waiting at tables. (…) People should develop skills that complement, rather than compete with computers, such as idea generation and complex communication. (…)


Glossário
¹oncoming: iminente; próximo.
²wayward: desobediente; instável.
³jaywalker: pedestre imprudente.
⁴bounty: recompensa.
⁵spread: propagação; extensão.
⁶enhanced: aprimorado(a).
⁷remaining: remanescente.

Learn ‘n’ go
How quickly can people learn new skills?
Jan 25^th 2014 – from the print edition

In 2012, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee took a ride in one of Google’s driverless cars. The car’s performance, they report, was flawless, boring and, above all, “weird”. Only a few years earlier, “We were sure that computers would not be able to drive cars.” Only humans, they thought, could make sense of the countless, shifting patterns of driving a car – with oncoming¹ traffic, changing lights and wayward² aywalkers³.
Machines have mastered driving. And not just driving. In ways that are only now becoming apparent, the authors argue, machines can forecast home prices, design beer bottles, teach at universities, grade exams and do countless other things better and more cheaply than humans. (…)
This will have one principal good consequence, and one bad. The good is bounty⁴. Households will spend less on groceries, utilities and clothing; the deaf will be able to hear, the blind to see. The bad is spread⁵. The gap is growing between the lucky few whose abilities and skills are enhanced⁶ by technology, and the far more numerous middle-skilled people competing for the remaining⁷ jobs that machines cannot do, such as folding towels and waiting at tables. (…) People should develop skills that complement, rather than compete with computers, such as idea generation and complex communication. (…)


Glossário
¹oncoming: iminente; próximo.
²wayward: desobediente; instável.
³jaywalker: pedestre imprudente.
⁴bounty: recompensa.
⁵spread: propagação; extensão.
⁶enhanced: aprimorado(a).
⁷remaining: remanescente.

Learn ‘n’ go
How quickly can people learn new skills?
Jan 25^th 2014 – from the print edition

In 2012, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee took a ride in one of Google’s driverless cars. The car’s performance, they report, was flawless, boring and, above all, “weird”. Only a few years earlier, “We were sure that computers would not be able to drive cars.” Only humans, they thought, could make sense of the countless, shifting patterns of driving a car – with oncoming¹ traffic, changing lights and wayward² aywalkers³.
Machines have mastered driving. And not just driving. In ways that are only now becoming apparent, the authors argue, machines can forecast home prices, design beer bottles, teach at universities, grade exams and do countless other things better and more cheaply than humans. (…)
This will have one principal good consequence, and one bad. The good is bounty⁴. Households will spend less on groceries, utilities and clothing; the deaf will be able to hear, the blind to see. The bad is spread⁵. The gap is growing between the lucky few whose abilities and skills are enhanced⁶ by technology, and the far more numerous middle-skilled people competing for the remaining⁷ jobs that machines cannot do, such as folding towels and waiting at tables. (…) People should develop skills that complement, rather than compete with computers, such as idea generation and complex communication. (…)


Glossário
¹oncoming: iminente; próximo.
²wayward: desobediente; instável.
³jaywalker: pedestre imprudente.
⁴bounty: recompensa.
⁵spread: propagação; extensão.
⁶enhanced: aprimorado(a).
⁷remaining: remanescente.

Learn ‘n’ go
How quickly can people learn new skills?
Jan 25^th 2014 – from the print edition

In 2012, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee took a ride in one of Google’s driverless cars. The car’s performance, they report, was flawless, boring and, above all, “weird”. Only a few years earlier, “We were sure that computers would not be able to drive cars.” Only humans, they thought, could make sense of the countless, shifting patterns of driving a car – with oncoming¹ traffic, changing lights and wayward² aywalkers³.
Machines have mastered driving. And not just driving. In ways that are only now becoming apparent, the authors argue, machines can forecast home prices, design beer bottles, teach at universities, grade exams and do countless other things better and more cheaply than humans. (…)
This will have one principal good consequence, and one bad. The good is bounty⁴. Households will spend less on groceries, utilities and clothing; the deaf will be able to hear, the blind to see. The bad is spread⁵. The gap is growing between the lucky few whose abilities and skills are enhanced⁶ by technology, and the far more numerous middle-skilled people competing for the remaining⁷ jobs that machines cannot do, such as folding towels and waiting at tables. (…) People should develop skills that complement, rather than compete with computers, such as idea generation and complex communication. (…)


Glossário
¹oncoming: iminente; próximo.
²wayward: desobediente; instável.
³jaywalker: pedestre imprudente.
⁴bounty: recompensa.
⁵spread: propagação; extensão.
⁶enhanced: aprimorado(a).
⁷remaining: remanescente.

Learn ‘n’ go
How quickly can people learn new skills?
Jan 25^th 2014 – from the print edition

In 2012, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee took a ride in one of Google’s driverless cars. The car’s performance, they report, was flawless, boring and, above all, “weird”. Only a few years earlier, “We were sure that computers would not be able to drive cars.” Only humans, they thought, could make sense of the countless, shifting patterns of driving a car – with oncoming¹ traffic, changing lights and wayward² aywalkers³.
Machines have mastered driving. And not just driving. In ways that are only now becoming apparent, the authors argue, machines can forecast home prices, design beer bottles, teach at universities, grade exams and do countless other things better and more cheaply than humans. (…)
This will have one principal good consequence, and one bad. The good is bounty⁴. Households will spend less on groceries, utilities and clothing; the deaf will be able to hear, the blind to see. The bad is spread⁵. The gap is growing between the lucky few whose abilities and skills are enhanced⁶ by technology, and the far more numerous middle-skilled people competing for the remaining⁷ jobs that machines cannot do, such as folding towels and waiting at tables. (…) People should develop skills that complement, rather than compete with computers, such as idea generation and complex communication. (…)


Glossário
¹oncoming: iminente; próximo.
²wayward: desobediente; instável.
³jaywalker: pedestre imprudente.
⁴bounty: recompensa.
⁵spread: propagação; extensão.
⁶enhanced: aprimorado(a).
⁷remaining: remanescente.

NEW YEAR, NEW FEAR

1 As the New Year’s fireworks went up in German cities, a brief panic seized Munich, which had information about planned terrorist attacks at two railway stations. Those never occurred. But, much less noticed at first, a different sort of crime was occurring in Cologne and, to a lesser extent, in Hamburg and Stuttgart.
2 While partiers [foliões] gathered on the square between Cologne’s cathedral and railway station, a large group of young men, later described by the police as “looking North African or Arabic”, also massed there. Some threw fireworks into the crowd to cause panic. Then the men formed rings around individual women, so that police and onlookers could not see inside each huddle. According to over 100 women who subsequently filed complaints, the men groped the women sexually, while others stole their mobile phones, wallets or purses. One woman was raped.
3 Oddly, the Cologne police reported the following day that the festivities had been relaxed and peaceful. Only after scores of women came forward did the country react with rage. The interior and justice ministers promised to employ the full force of the law—even as the police had to admit that they as yet had no information to make individual arrests. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, called the assaults “disgusting” and demanded justice “without regard to origin or background”.
4 The assaults tapped into deep fears at a tense time, as Germany struggles with record numbers of refugees—more than 1 million in 2015, largely from Arab countries. Populist politicians were quick to infer a connection. Frauke Petry, boss of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, blamed the outrage on the “terrible consequences of a catastrophic asylum and migration policy”.
5 There is no evidence yet that any of the criminals were refugees, as Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, emphasised. Ms Reker personifies the conflicts straining German society. She ran for office as a nonpartisan candidate with a liberal and welcoming attitude toward migrants. For that, a neo-Nazi extremist stabbed her at a campaign event in October. (She was elected the next day, while still in a coma.) If it is confirmed that some of the muggers, molesters and rapists were asylum-seekers, the damage to what is left of Germany’s “Welcome Culture” could be severe.

Adapted from The Economist, January 9, 2016.

NEW YEAR, NEW FEAR

1 As the New Year’s fireworks went up in German cities, a brief panic seized Munich, which had information about planned terrorist attacks at two railway stations. Those never occurred. But, much less noticed at first, a different sort of crime was occurring in Cologne and, to a lesser extent, in Hamburg and Stuttgart.
2 While partiers [foliões] gathered on the square between Cologne’s cathedral and railway station, a large group of young men, later described by the police as “looking North African or Arabic”, also massed there. Some threw fireworks into the crowd to cause panic. Then the men formed rings around individual women, so that police and onlookers could not see inside each huddle. According to over 100 women who subsequently filed complaints, the men groped the women sexually, while others stole their mobile phones, wallets or purses. One woman was raped.
3 Oddly, the Cologne police reported the following day that the festivities had been relaxed and peaceful. Only after scores of women came forward did the country react with rage. The interior and justice ministers promised to employ the full force of the law—even as the police had to admit that they as yet had no information to make individual arrests. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, called the assaults “disgusting” and demanded justice “without regard to origin or background”.
4 The assaults tapped into deep fears at a tense time, as Germany struggles with record numbers of refugees—more than 1 million in 2015, largely from Arab countries. Populist politicians were quick to infer a connection. Frauke Petry, boss of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, blamed the outrage on the “terrible consequences of a catastrophic asylum and migration policy”.
5 There is no evidence yet that any of the criminals were refugees, as Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, emphasised. Ms Reker personifies the conflicts straining German society. She ran for office as a nonpartisan candidate with a liberal and welcoming attitude toward migrants. For that, a neo-Nazi extremist stabbed her at a campaign event in October. (She was elected the next day, while still in a coma.) If it is confirmed that some of the muggers, molesters and rapists were asylum-seekers, the damage to what is left of Germany’s “Welcome Culture” could be severe.

Adapted from The Economist, January 9, 2016.

NEW YEAR, NEW FEAR

1 As the New Year’s fireworks went up in German cities, a brief panic seized Munich, which had information about planned terrorist attacks at two railway stations. Those never occurred. But, much less noticed at first, a different sort of crime was occurring in Cologne and, to a lesser extent, in Hamburg and Stuttgart.
2 While partiers [foliões] gathered on the square between Cologne’s cathedral and railway station, a large group of young men, later described by the police as “looking North African or Arabic”, also massed there. Some threw fireworks into the crowd to cause panic. Then the men formed rings around individual women, so that police and onlookers could not see inside each huddle. According to over 100 women who subsequently filed complaints, the men groped the women sexually, while others stole their mobile phones, wallets or purses. One woman was raped.
3 Oddly, the Cologne police reported the following day that the festivities had been relaxed and peaceful. Only after scores of women came forward did the country react with rage. The interior and justice ministers promised to employ the full force of the law—even as the police had to admit that they as yet had no information to make individual arrests. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, called the assaults “disgusting” and demanded justice “without regard to origin or background”.
4 The assaults tapped into deep fears at a tense time, as Germany struggles with record numbers of refugees—more than 1 million in 2015, largely from Arab countries. Populist politicians were quick to infer a connection. Frauke Petry, boss of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, blamed the outrage on the “terrible consequences of a catastrophic asylum and migration policy”.
5 There is no evidence yet that any of the criminals were refugees, as Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, emphasised. Ms Reker personifies the conflicts straining German society. She ran for office as a nonpartisan candidate with a liberal and welcoming attitude toward migrants. For that, a neo-Nazi extremist stabbed her at a campaign event in October. (She was elected the next day, while still in a coma.) If it is confirmed that some of the muggers, molesters and rapists were asylum-seekers, the damage to what is left of Germany’s “Welcome Culture” could be severe.

Adapted from The Economist, January 9, 2016.

NEW YEAR, NEW FEAR

1 As the New Year’s fireworks went up in German cities, a brief panic seized Munich, which had information about planned terrorist attacks at two railway stations. Those never occurred. But, much less noticed at first, a different sort of crime was occurring in Cologne and, to a lesser extent, in Hamburg and Stuttgart.
2 While partiers [foliões] gathered on the square between Cologne’s cathedral and railway station, a large group of young men, later described by the police as “looking North African or Arabic”, also massed there. Some threw fireworks into the crowd to cause panic. Then the men formed rings around individual women, so that police and onlookers could not see inside each huddle. According to over 100 women who subsequently filed complaints, the men groped the women sexually, while others stole their mobile phones, wallets or purses. One woman was raped.
3 Oddly, the Cologne police reported the following day that the festivities had been relaxed and peaceful. Only after scores of women came forward did the country react with rage. The interior and justice ministers promised to employ the full force of the law—even as the police had to admit that they as yet had no information to make individual arrests. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, called the assaults “disgusting” and demanded justice “without regard to origin or background”.
4 The assaults tapped into deep fears at a tense time, as Germany struggles with record numbers of refugees—more than 1 million in 2015, largely from Arab countries. Populist politicians were quick to infer a connection. Frauke Petry, boss of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, blamed the outrage on the “terrible consequences of a catastrophic asylum and migration policy”.
5 There is no evidence yet that any of the criminals were refugees, as Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, emphasised. Ms Reker personifies the conflicts straining German society. She ran for office as a nonpartisan candidate with a liberal and welcoming attitude toward migrants. For that, a neo-Nazi extremist stabbed her at a campaign event in October. (She was elected the next day, while still in a coma.) If it is confirmed that some of the muggers, molesters and rapists were asylum-seekers, the damage to what is left of Germany’s “Welcome Culture” could be severe.

Adapted from The Economist, January 9, 2016.

NEW YEAR, NEW FEAR

1 As the New Year’s fireworks went up in German cities, a brief panic seized Munich, which had information about planned terrorist attacks at two railway stations. Those never occurred. But, much less noticed at first, a different sort of crime was occurring in Cologne and, to a lesser extent, in Hamburg and Stuttgart.
2 While partiers [foliões] gathered on the square between Cologne’s cathedral and railway station, a large group of young men, later described by the police as “looking North African or Arabic”, also massed there. Some threw fireworks into the crowd to cause panic. Then the men formed rings around individual women, so that police and onlookers could not see inside each huddle. According to over 100 women who subsequently filed complaints, the men groped the women sexually, while others stole their mobile phones, wallets or purses. One woman was raped.
3 Oddly, the Cologne police reported the following day that the festivities had been relaxed and peaceful. Only after scores of women came forward did the country react with rage. The interior and justice ministers promised to employ the full force of the law—even as the police had to admit that they as yet had no information to make individual arrests. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, called the assaults “disgusting” and demanded justice “without regard to origin or background”.
4 The assaults tapped into deep fears at a tense time, as Germany struggles with record numbers of refugees—more than 1 million in 2015, largely from Arab countries. Populist politicians were quick to infer a connection. Frauke Petry, boss of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, blamed the outrage on the “terrible consequences of a catastrophic asylum and migration policy”.
5 There is no evidence yet that any of the criminals were refugees, as Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, emphasised. Ms Reker personifies the conflicts straining German society. She ran for office as a nonpartisan candidate with a liberal and welcoming attitude toward migrants. For that, a neo-Nazi extremist stabbed her at a campaign event in October. (She was elected the next day, while still in a coma.) If it is confirmed that some of the muggers, molesters and rapists were asylum-seekers, the damage to what is left of Germany’s “Welcome Culture” could be severe.

Adapted from The Economist, January 9, 2016.

NEW YEAR, NEW FEAR

1 As the New Year’s fireworks went up in German cities, a brief panic seized Munich, which had information about planned terrorist attacks at two railway stations. Those never occurred. But, much less noticed at first, a different sort of crime was occurring in Cologne and, to a lesser extent, in Hamburg and Stuttgart.
2 While partiers [foliões] gathered on the square between Cologne’s cathedral and railway station, a large group of young men, later described by the police as “looking North African or Arabic”, also massed there. Some threw fireworks into the crowd to cause panic. Then the men formed rings around individual women, so that police and onlookers could not see inside each huddle. According to over 100 women who subsequently filed complaints, the men groped the women sexually, while others stole their mobile phones, wallets or purses. One woman was raped.
3 Oddly, the Cologne police reported the following day that the festivities had been relaxed and peaceful. Only after scores of women came forward did the country react with rage. The interior and justice ministers promised to employ the full force of the law—even as the police had to admit that they as yet had no information to make individual arrests. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, called the assaults “disgusting” and demanded justice “without regard to origin or background”.
4 The assaults tapped into deep fears at a tense time, as Germany struggles with record numbers of refugees—more than 1 million in 2015, largely from Arab countries. Populist politicians were quick to infer a connection. Frauke Petry, boss of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, blamed the outrage on the “terrible consequences of a catastrophic asylum and migration policy”.
5 There is no evidence yet that any of the criminals were refugees, as Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, emphasised. Ms Reker personifies the conflicts straining German society. She ran for office as a nonpartisan candidate with a liberal and welcoming attitude toward migrants. For that, a neo-Nazi extremist stabbed her at a campaign event in October. (She was elected the next day, while still in a coma.) If it is confirmed that some of the muggers, molesters and rapists were asylum-seekers, the damage to what is left of Germany’s “Welcome Culture” could be severe.

Adapted from The Economist, January 9, 2016.

NEW YEAR, NEW FEAR

1 As the New Year’s fireworks went up in German cities, a brief panic seized Munich, which had information about planned terrorist attacks at two railway stations. Those never occurred. But, much less noticed at first, a different sort of crime was occurring in Cologne and, to a lesser extent, in Hamburg and Stuttgart.
2 While partiers [foliões] gathered on the square between Cologne’s cathedral and railway station, a large group of young men, later described by the police as “looking North African or Arabic”, also massed there. Some threw fireworks into the crowd to cause panic. Then the men formed rings around individual women, so that police and onlookers could not see inside each huddle. According to over 100 women who subsequently filed complaints, the men groped the women sexually, while others stole their mobile phones, wallets or purses. One woman was raped.
3 Oddly, the Cologne police reported the following day that the festivities had been relaxed and peaceful. Only after scores of women came forward did the country react with rage. The interior and justice ministers promised to employ the full force of the law—even as the police had to admit that they as yet had no information to make individual arrests. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, called the assaults “disgusting” and demanded justice “without regard to origin or background”.
4 The assaults tapped into deep fears at a tense time, as Germany struggles with record numbers of refugees—more than 1 million in 2015, largely from Arab countries. Populist politicians were quick to infer a connection. Frauke Petry, boss of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, blamed the outrage on the “terrible consequences of a catastrophic asylum and migration policy”.
5 There is no evidence yet that any of the criminals were refugees, as Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, emphasised. Ms Reker personifies the conflicts straining German society. She ran for office as a nonpartisan candidate with a liberal and welcoming attitude toward migrants. For that, a neo-Nazi extremist stabbed her at a campaign event in October. (She was elected the next day, while still in a coma.) If it is confirmed that some of the muggers, molesters and rapists were asylum-seekers, the damage to what is left of Germany’s “Welcome Culture” could be severe.

Adapted from The Economist, January 9, 2016.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

1 Venoms, the debilitating chemical cocktails animals unleash to defend themselves or obtain a meal, are subject to an evolutionary arms race. Those creatures that are targets of toxins eventually develop beneficial mutations, granting them some degree of resistance. In response, animals that emit venoms undergo changes so their poisons remain effective.
2 This action-reaction narrative of venom evolution is incomplete, however, as evolutionary biologists Kartik Sunagar and Yehu Moran of Hebrew University in Jerusalem have shown in a new study. They realized that many venom studies have focused on snakes and cone snails — comparatively "young" animal groups, evolutionarily speaking, only going back roughly 50 million years. Over these groups’ histories, their venomous arsenals have expanded considerably, bolstering the arms race analogy, also known as positive, or Darwinian, selection.
3 Sunagar and Moran cast a wider net, looking at over 3,500 gene families for venom production in newer and older animal groups. The ancient animal types included spiders, scorpions, centipedes, octopus, squid, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
4 The scientists found that these ancient animals exhibited surprisingly low levels of genetic variation in their venoms. Sunagar and Moran reasoned that the venoms of primordial creatures had undergone substantial negative, or purifying, selection — evolutionary pressure to keep their potently optimized toxins roughly the same. “Negative selection filters out certain mutations that alter structure or function,” explained Moran. For species in long-established ecological niches, it makes sense to maintain what works.
5 Evolution does favor more radical experimentation, though, when creatures enter new habitats and begin adapting to the novel environment. As they find their place in local food chains, venomous animals’ toxic pharmacopeia should undergo rapid diversification — the better to catch strange new prey and withstand the attacks of previously unencountered predators. Yet over time, these adapting species settle into tried-and-true formulae.
6 The researchers call this model of venom evolution “two-speed,” with the venoms of old species evolving slowly and those of the new species evolving quickly. “Our analysis of numerous toxin families, covering the ample scope of the animal kingdom, has revealed a striking contrast between the evolution of venom in ancient and evolutionarily young animal groups,” said Sunagar.

Adapted from Natural History, February 2016.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

1 Venoms, the debilitating chemical cocktails animals unleash to defend themselves or obtain a meal, are subject to an evolutionary arms race. Those creatures that are targets of toxins eventually develop beneficial mutations, granting them some degree of resistance. In response, animals that emit venoms undergo changes so their poisons remain effective.
2 This action-reaction narrative of venom evolution is incomplete, however, as evolutionary biologists Kartik Sunagar and Yehu Moran of Hebrew University in Jerusalem have shown in a new study. They realized that many venom studies have focused on snakes and cone snails — comparatively "young" animal groups, evolutionarily speaking, only going back roughly 50 million years. Over these groups’ histories, their venomous arsenals have expanded considerably, bolstering the arms race analogy, also known as positive, or Darwinian, selection.
3 Sunagar and Moran cast a wider net, looking at over 3,500 gene families for venom production in newer and older animal groups. The ancient animal types included spiders, scorpions, centipedes, octopus, squid, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
4 The scientists found that these ancient animals exhibited surprisingly low levels of genetic variation in their venoms. Sunagar and Moran reasoned that the venoms of primordial creatures had undergone substantial negative, or purifying, selection — evolutionary pressure to keep their potently optimized toxins roughly the same. “Negative selection filters out certain mutations that alter structure or function,” explained Moran. For species in long-established ecological niches, it makes sense to maintain what works.
5 Evolution does favor more radical experimentation, though, when creatures enter new habitats and begin adapting to the novel environment. As they find their place in local food chains, venomous animals’ toxic pharmacopeia should undergo rapid diversification — the better to catch strange new prey and withstand the attacks of previously unencountered predators. Yet over time, these adapting species settle into tried-and-true formulae.
6 The researchers call this model of venom evolution “two-speed,” with the venoms of old species evolving slowly and those of the new species evolving quickly. “Our analysis of numerous toxin families, covering the ample scope of the animal kingdom, has revealed a striking contrast between the evolution of venom in ancient and evolutionarily young animal groups,” said Sunagar.

Adapted from Natural History, February 2016.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

1 Venoms, the debilitating chemical cocktails animals unleash to defend themselves or obtain a meal, are subject to an evolutionary arms race. Those creatures that are targets of toxins eventually develop beneficial mutations, granting them some degree of resistance. In response, animals that emit venoms undergo changes so their poisons remain effective.
2 This action-reaction narrative of venom evolution is incomplete, however, as evolutionary biologists Kartik Sunagar and Yehu Moran of Hebrew University in Jerusalem have shown in a new study. They realized that many venom studies have focused on snakes and cone snails — comparatively "young" animal groups, evolutionarily speaking, only going back roughly 50 million years. Over these groups’ histories, their venomous arsenals have expanded considerably, bolstering the arms race analogy, also known as positive, or Darwinian, selection.
3 Sunagar and Moran cast a wider net, looking at over 3,500 gene families for venom production in newer and older animal groups. The ancient animal types included spiders, scorpions, centipedes, octopus, squid, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
4 The scientists found that these ancient animals exhibited surprisingly low levels of genetic variation in their venoms. Sunagar and Moran reasoned that the venoms of primordial creatures had undergone substantial negative, or purifying, selection — evolutionary pressure to keep their potently optimized toxins roughly the same. “Negative selection filters out certain mutations that alter structure or function,” explained Moran. For species in long-established ecological niches, it makes sense to maintain what works.
5 Evolution does favor more radical experimentation, though, when creatures enter new habitats and begin adapting to the novel environment. As they find their place in local food chains, venomous animals’ toxic pharmacopeia should undergo rapid diversification — the better to catch strange new prey and withstand the attacks of previously unencountered predators. Yet over time, these adapting species settle into tried-and-true formulae.
6 The researchers call this model of venom evolution “two-speed,” with the venoms of old species evolving slowly and those of the new species evolving quickly. “Our analysis of numerous toxin families, covering the ample scope of the animal kingdom, has revealed a striking contrast between the evolution of venom in ancient and evolutionarily young animal groups,” said Sunagar.

Adapted from Natural History, February 2016.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

1 Venoms, the debilitating chemical cocktails animals unleash to defend themselves or obtain a meal, are subject to an evolutionary arms race. Those creatures that are targets of toxins eventually develop beneficial mutations, granting them some degree of resistance. In response, animals that emit venoms undergo changes so their poisons remain effective.
2 This action-reaction narrative of venom evolution is incomplete, however, as evolutionary biologists Kartik Sunagar and Yehu Moran of Hebrew University in Jerusalem have shown in a new study. They realized that many venom studies have focused on snakes and cone snails — comparatively "young" animal groups, evolutionarily speaking, only going back roughly 50 million years. Over these groups’ histories, their venomous arsenals have expanded considerably, bolstering the arms race analogy, also known as positive, or Darwinian, selection.
3 Sunagar and Moran cast a wider net, looking at over 3,500 gene families for venom production in newer and older animal groups. The ancient animal types included spiders, scorpions, centipedes, octopus, squid, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
4 The scientists found that these ancient animals exhibited surprisingly low levels of genetic variation in their venoms. Sunagar and Moran reasoned that the venoms of primordial creatures had undergone substantial negative, or purifying, selection — evolutionary pressure to keep their potently optimized toxins roughly the same. “Negative selection filters out certain mutations that alter structure or function,” explained Moran. For species in long-established ecological niches, it makes sense to maintain what works.
5 Evolution does favor more radical experimentation, though, when creatures enter new habitats and begin adapting to the novel environment. As they find their place in local food chains, venomous animals’ toxic pharmacopeia should undergo rapid diversification — the better to catch strange new prey and withstand the attacks of previously unencountered predators. Yet over time, these adapting species settle into tried-and-true formulae.
6 The researchers call this model of venom evolution “two-speed,” with the venoms of old species evolving slowly and those of the new species evolving quickly. “Our analysis of numerous toxin families, covering the ample scope of the animal kingdom, has revealed a striking contrast between the evolution of venom in ancient and evolutionarily young animal groups,” said Sunagar.

Adapted from Natural History, February 2016.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

1 Venoms, the debilitating chemical cocktails animals unleash to defend themselves or obtain a meal, are subject to an evolutionary arms race. Those creatures that are targets of toxins eventually develop beneficial mutations, granting them some degree of resistance. In response, animals that emit venoms undergo changes so their poisons remain effective.
2 This action-reaction narrative of venom evolution is incomplete, however, as evolutionary biologists Kartik Sunagar and Yehu Moran of Hebrew University in Jerusalem have shown in a new study. They realized that many venom studies have focused on snakes and cone snails — comparatively "young" animal groups, evolutionarily speaking, only going back roughly 50 million years. Over these groups’ histories, their venomous arsenals have expanded considerably, bolstering the arms race analogy, also known as positive, or Darwinian, selection.
3 Sunagar and Moran cast a wider net, looking at over 3,500 gene families for venom production in newer and older animal groups. The ancient animal types included spiders, scorpions, centipedes, octopus, squid, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
4 The scientists found that these ancient animals exhibited surprisingly low levels of genetic variation in their venoms. Sunagar and Moran reasoned that the venoms of primordial creatures had undergone substantial negative, or purifying, selection — evolutionary pressure to keep their potently optimized toxins roughly the same. “Negative selection filters out certain mutations that alter structure or function,” explained Moran. For species in long-established ecological niches, it makes sense to maintain what works.
5 Evolution does favor more radical experimentation, though, when creatures enter new habitats and begin adapting to the novel environment. As they find their place in local food chains, venomous animals’ toxic pharmacopeia should undergo rapid diversification — the better to catch strange new prey and withstand the attacks of previously unencountered predators. Yet over time, these adapting species settle into tried-and-true formulae.
6 The researchers call this model of venom evolution “two-speed,” with the venoms of old species evolving slowly and those of the new species evolving quickly. “Our analysis of numerous toxin families, covering the ample scope of the animal kingdom, has revealed a striking contrast between the evolution of venom in ancient and evolutionarily young animal groups,” said Sunagar.

Adapted from Natural History, February 2016.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

1 Venoms, the debilitating chemical cocktails animals unleash to defend themselves or obtain a meal, are subject to an evolutionary arms race. Those creatures that are targets of toxins eventually develop beneficial mutations, granting them some degree of resistance. In response, animals that emit venoms undergo changes so their poisons remain effective.
2 This action-reaction narrative of venom evolution is incomplete, however, as evolutionary biologists Kartik Sunagar and Yehu Moran of Hebrew University in Jerusalem have shown in a new study. They realized that many venom studies have focused on snakes and cone snails — comparatively "young" animal groups, evolutionarily speaking, only going back roughly 50 million years. Over these groups’ histories, their venomous arsenals have expanded considerably, bolstering the arms race analogy, also known as positive, or Darwinian, selection.
3 Sunagar and Moran cast a wider net, looking at over 3,500 gene families for venom production in newer and older animal groups. The ancient animal types included spiders, scorpions, centipedes, octopus, squid, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
4 The scientists found that these ancient animals exhibited surprisingly low levels of genetic variation in their venoms. Sunagar and Moran reasoned that the venoms of primordial creatures had undergone substantial negative, or purifying, selection — evolutionary pressure to keep their potently optimized toxins roughly the same. “Negative selection filters out certain mutations that alter structure or function,” explained Moran. For species in long-established ecological niches, it makes sense to maintain what works.
5 Evolution does favor more radical experimentation, though, when creatures enter new habitats and begin adapting to the novel environment. As they find their place in local food chains, venomous animals’ toxic pharmacopeia should undergo rapid diversification — the better to catch strange new prey and withstand the attacks of previously unencountered predators. Yet over time, these adapting species settle into tried-and-true formulae.
6 The researchers call this model of venom evolution “two-speed,” with the venoms of old species evolving slowly and those of the new species evolving quickly. “Our analysis of numerous toxin families, covering the ample scope of the animal kingdom, has revealed a striking contrast between the evolution of venom in ancient and evolutionarily young animal groups,” said Sunagar.

Adapted from Natural History, February 2016.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

1 Venoms, the debilitating chemical cocktails animals unleash to defend themselves or obtain a meal, are subject to an evolutionary arms race. Those creatures that are targets of toxins eventually develop beneficial mutations, granting them some degree of resistance. In response, animals that emit venoms undergo changes so their poisons remain effective.
2 This action-reaction narrative of venom evolution is incomplete, however, as evolutionary biologists Kartik Sunagar and Yehu Moran of Hebrew University in Jerusalem have shown in a new study. They realized that many venom studies have focused on snakes and cone snails — comparatively "young" animal groups, evolutionarily speaking, only going back roughly 50 million years. Over these groups’ histories, their venomous arsenals have expanded considerably, bolstering the arms race analogy, also known as positive, or Darwinian, selection.
3 Sunagar and Moran cast a wider net, looking at over 3,500 gene families for venom production in newer and older animal groups. The ancient animal types included spiders, scorpions, centipedes, octopus, squid, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
4 The scientists found that these ancient animals exhibited surprisingly low levels of genetic variation in their venoms. Sunagar and Moran reasoned that the venoms of primordial creatures had undergone substantial negative, or purifying, selection — evolutionary pressure to keep their potently optimized toxins roughly the same. “Negative selection filters out certain mutations that alter structure or function,” explained Moran. For species in long-established ecological niches, it makes sense to maintain what works.
5 Evolution does favor more radical experimentation, though, when creatures enter new habitats and begin adapting to the novel environment. As they find their place in local food chains, venomous animals’ toxic pharmacopeia should undergo rapid diversification — the better to catch strange new prey and withstand the attacks of previously unencountered predators. Yet over time, these adapting species settle into tried-and-true formulae.
6 The researchers call this model of venom evolution “two-speed,” with the venoms of old species evolving slowly and those of the new species evolving quickly. “Our analysis of numerous toxin families, covering the ample scope of the animal kingdom, has revealed a striking contrast between the evolution of venom in ancient and evolutionarily young animal groups,” said Sunagar.

Adapted from Natural History, February 2016.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

1 Venoms, the debilitating chemical cocktails animals unleash to defend themselves or obtain a meal, are subject to an evolutionary arms race. Those creatures that are targets of toxins eventually develop beneficial mutations, granting them some degree of resistance. In response, animals that emit venoms undergo changes so their poisons remain effective.
2 This action-reaction narrative of venom evolution is incomplete, however, as evolutionary biologists Kartik Sunagar and Yehu Moran of Hebrew University in Jerusalem have shown in a new study. They realized that many venom studies have focused on snakes and cone snails — comparatively "young" animal groups, evolutionarily speaking, only going back roughly 50 million years. Over these groups’ histories, their venomous arsenals have expanded considerably, bolstering the arms race analogy, also known as positive, or Darwinian, selection.
3 Sunagar and Moran cast a wider net, looking at over 3,500 gene families for venom production in newer and older animal groups. The ancient animal types included spiders, scorpions, centipedes, octopus, squid, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
4 The scientists found that these ancient animals exhibited surprisingly low levels of genetic variation in their venoms. Sunagar and Moran reasoned that the venoms of primordial creatures had undergone substantial negative, or purifying, selection — evolutionary pressure to keep their potently optimized toxins roughly the same. “Negative selection filters out certain mutations that alter structure or function,” explained Moran. For species in long-established ecological niches, it makes sense to maintain what works.
5 Evolution does favor more radical experimentation, though, when creatures enter new habitats and begin adapting to the novel environment. As they find their place in local food chains, venomous animals’ toxic pharmacopeia should undergo rapid diversification — the better to catch strange new prey and withstand the attacks of previously unencountered predators. Yet over time, these adapting species settle into tried-and-true formulae.
6 The researchers call this model of venom evolution “two-speed,” with the venoms of old species evolving slowly and those of the new species evolving quickly. “Our analysis of numerous toxin families, covering the ample scope of the animal kingdom, has revealed a striking contrast between the evolution of venom in ancient and evolutionarily young animal groups,” said Sunagar.

Adapted from Natural History, February 2016.

“If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.”

Advice for new students from those who know (old students)

The first day of college I was a ball of nerves. I remember walking into my first class and running to the first seat I found, thinking everyone would be starting at me. But nobody seemed to notice and then it hit me: The fact that nobody knew me meant nobody would judge, which, upon reflection, was what I was scared of the most. I told myself to let go. All along the year, I forced myself into situations that were uncomfortable for me – for example, auditioning for a dance piece. Believe it or not, that performance was a highlight of my freshman year. My advice: challenge yourself to try something new, something you couldn’t have done in high school. – Ria Jagasia, Vanderbilt University,’18.

Advice for new students from those who know (old students)

The first day of college I was a ball of nerves. I remember walking into my first class and running to the first seat I found, thinking everyone would be starting at me. But nobody seemed to notice and then it hit me: The fact that nobody knew me meant nobody would judge, which, upon reflection, was what I was scared of the most. I told myself to let go. All along the year, I forced myself into situations that were uncomfortable for me – for example, auditioning for a dance piece. Believe it or not, that performance was a highlight of my freshman year. My advice: challenge yourself to try something new, something you couldn’t have done in high school. – Ria Jagasia, Vanderbilt University,’18.

If apes go extinct, so could entire forests

Bonobos eat a lot of fruit, and fruit contains seeds. Those seeds travel through a bonobo’s digestive system while bonobo itself travels around the forest. A few hours later, the seeds end up being deposited far from where the fruits were plucked. And that is where the new trees come from.
According to a paper recently published, if the bonobos disappeared, the plants would also likely go extinct, for many trees and plants species in Congo rely almost exclusively on bonobos for seed dispersal.
The bonobo has two major functions here. First of all, many seeds will not germinate well unless they have been “handled” by another species. Stomach acids and intestinal processes make the seed more able to absorb water and later sprout.
Secondly, many seeds will not succeed if they remain too close to their parental trees. The seeds that fell to the ground near their parents did not survive because they were choked off by the nearby plants. The bonobos eat about 3,5 hours every day and travel a mean of 1.2 kilometers from meal sites before defecating.

We’ve modified our behavior so we can text and walk

Texting – or checking social media or reading/responding to mail or reading the news or checking the weather or watching a video – while walking is a pretty common phenomenon. It’s so common that most people who own a mobile device have become texting walkers.
Research suggests that these texters adopt protective measures to minimize the risk of accidents when walking. They’re less likely to trip because they shorten their step length, reduce step frequency, lengthen the time during which both feet are in contact with the ground, and increase obstacle clearance height. Taken together this creates an exaggerated image of walking, but it apparently slows the walker enough so that he registers some of what is happening around him and can compensate for it.

We’ve modified our behavior so we can text and walk

Texting – or checking social media or reading/responding to mail or reading the news or checking the weather or watching a video – while walking is a pretty common phenomenon. It’s so common that most people who own a mobile device have become texting walkers.
Research suggests that these texters adopt protective measures to minimize the risk of accidents when walking. They’re less likely to trip because they shorten their step length, reduce step frequency, lengthen the time during which both feet are in contact with the ground, and increase obstacle clearance height. Taken together this creates an exaggerated image of walking, but it apparently slows the walker enough so that he registers some of what is happening around him and can compensate for it.

Leia o infográfico para responder às questões 18 e 19.

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 71 a 77.

Social life in youth may impact health decades later

Having good social connections at age 20 can lead to improved well-being later in life, a new study suggests. Previous research has shown that people with poor social links are at increased risk for early death. “In fact, having few social connections is equivalent to tobacco use, and [the risk is] higher than for those who drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or who suffer from obesity,” study author Cheryl Carmichael, who conducted the study while a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester in New York, said in a university news release.
The study included 133 people who enrolled when they were 20-year-old college students in the 1970s. The participants kept track of their daily social interactions at ages 20 and 30. At age 50, they completed an online survey about the quality of their social lives and emotional well-being, including questions about loneliness and depression, and their relationships with close friends.
The findings showed that frequent social interactions at age 20 and good-quality relationships – defined as intimate and satisfying – at age 30 were associated with higher levels of well-being at age 50. The study findings were published in a recent issue of the journal Psychology and Aging.
A high number of social interactions at age 20 are beneficial later in life because they help young adults determine who they are, the researchers said. “It’s often around this age that we meet people from diverse backgrounds, with opinions and values that are different from our own, and we learn how to best manage those differences,” said Carmichael, now an assistant professor of psychology at Brooklyn College. “Considering everything else that goes on in life over those 30 years – marriage, raising a family and building a career – it is extraordinary that there appears to be a relationship between the kinds of interactions college students and young adults have and their emotional health later in life,” she concluded.

(www.nlm.nih.gov)

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 71 a 77.

Social life in youth may impact health decades later

Having good social connections at age 20 can lead to improved well-being later in life, a new study suggests. Previous research has shown that people with poor social links are at increased risk for early death. “In fact, having few social connections is equivalent to tobacco use, and [the risk is] higher than for those who drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or who suffer from obesity,” study author Cheryl Carmichael, who conducted the study while a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester in New York, said in a university news release.
The study included 133 people who enrolled when they were 20-year-old college students in the 1970s. The participants kept track of their daily social interactions at ages 20 and 30. At age 50, they completed an online survey about the quality of their social lives and emotional well-being, including questions about loneliness and depression, and their relationships with close friends.
The findings showed that frequent social interactions at age 20 and good-quality relationships – defined as intimate and satisfying – at age 30 were associated with higher levels of well-being at age 50. The study findings were published in a recent issue of the journal Psychology and Aging.
A high number of social interactions at age 20 are beneficial later in life because they help young adults determine who they are, the researchers said. “It’s often around this age that we meet people from diverse backgrounds, with opinions and values that are different from our own, and we learn how to best manage those differences,” said Carmichael, now an assistant professor of psychology at Brooklyn College. “Considering everything else that goes on in life over those 30 years – marriage, raising a family and building a career – it is extraordinary that there appears to be a relationship between the kinds of interactions college students and young adults have and their emotional health later in life,” she concluded.

(www.nlm.nih.gov)

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 71 a 77.

Social life in youth may impact health decades later

Having good social connections at age 20 can lead to improved well-being later in life, a new study suggests. Previous research has shown that people with poor social links are at increased risk for early death. “In fact, having few social connections is equivalent to tobacco use, and [the risk is] higher than for those who drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or who suffer from obesity,” study author Cheryl Carmichael, who conducted the study while a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester in New York, said in a university news release.
The study included 133 people who enrolled when they were 20-year-old college students in the 1970s. The participants kept track of their daily social interactions at ages 20 and 30. At age 50, they completed an online survey about the quality of their social lives and emotional well-being, including questions about loneliness and depression, and their relationships with close friends.
The findings showed that frequent social interactions at age 20 and good-quality relationships – defined as intimate and satisfying – at age 30 were associated with higher levels of well-being at age 50. The study findings were published in a recent issue of the journal Psychology and Aging.
A high number of social interactions at age 20 are beneficial later in life because they help young adults determine who they are, the researchers said. “It’s often around this age that we meet people from diverse backgrounds, with opinions and values that are different from our own, and we learn how to best manage those differences,” said Carmichael, now an assistant professor of psychology at Brooklyn College. “Considering everything else that goes on in life over those 30 years – marriage, raising a family and building a career – it is extraordinary that there appears to be a relationship between the kinds of interactions college students and young adults have and their emotional health later in life,” she concluded.

(www.nlm.nih.gov)

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 71 a 77.

Social life in youth may impact health decades later

Having good social connections at age 20 can lead to improved well-being later in life, a new study suggests. Previous research has shown that people with poor social links are at increased risk for early death. “In fact, having few social connections is equivalent to tobacco use, and [the risk is] higher than for those who drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or who suffer from obesity,” study author Cheryl Carmichael, who conducted the study while a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester in New York, said in a university news release.
The study included 133 people who enrolled when they were 20-year-old college students in the 1970s. The participants kept track of their daily social interactions at ages 20 and 30. At age 50, they completed an online survey about the quality of their social lives and emotional well-being, including questions about loneliness and depression, and their relationships with close friends.
The findings showed that frequent social interactions at age 20 and good-quality relationships – defined as intimate and satisfying – at age 30 were associated with higher levels of well-being at age 50. The study findings were published in a recent issue of the journal Psychology and Aging.
A high number of social interactions at age 20 are beneficial later in life because they help young adults determine who they are, the researchers said. “It’s often around this age that we meet people from diverse backgrounds, with opinions and values that are different from our own, and we learn how to best manage those differences,” said Carmichael, now an assistant professor of psychology at Brooklyn College. “Considering everything else that goes on in life over those 30 years – marriage, raising a family and building a career – it is extraordinary that there appears to be a relationship between the kinds of interactions college students and young adults have and their emotional health later in life,” she concluded.

(www.nlm.nih.gov)

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 71 a 77.

Social life in youth may impact health decades later

Having good social connections at age 20 can lead to improved well-being later in life, a new study suggests. Previous research has shown that people with poor social links are at increased risk for early death. “In fact, having few social connections is equivalent to tobacco use, and [the risk is] higher than for those who drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or who suffer from obesity,” study author Cheryl Carmichael, who conducted the study while a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester in New York, said in a university news release.
The study included 133 people who enrolled when they were 20-year-old college students in the 1970s. The participants kept track of their daily social interactions at ages 20 and 30. At age 50, they completed an online survey about the quality of their social lives and emotional well-being, including questions about loneliness and depression, and their relationships with close friends.
The findings showed that frequent social interactions at age 20 and good-quality relationships – defined as intimate and satisfying – at age 30 were associated with higher levels of well-being at age 50. The study findings were published in a recent issue of the journal Psychology and Aging.
A high number of social interactions at age 20 are beneficial later in life because they help young adults determine who they are, the researchers said. “It’s often around this age that we meet people from diverse backgrounds, with opinions and values that are different from our own, and we learn how to best manage those differences,” said Carmichael, now an assistant professor of psychology at Brooklyn College. “Considering everything else that goes on in life over those 30 years – marriage, raising a family and building a career – it is extraordinary that there appears to be a relationship between the kinds of interactions college students and young adults have and their emotional health later in life,” she concluded.

(www.nlm.nih.gov)

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 71 a 77.

Social life in youth may impact health decades later

Having good social connections at age 20 can lead to improved well-being later in life, a new study suggests. Previous research has shown that people with poor social links are at increased risk for early death. “In fact, having few social connections is equivalent to tobacco use, and [the risk is] higher than for those who drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or who suffer from obesity,” study author Cheryl Carmichael, who conducted the study while a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester in New York, said in a university news release.
The study included 133 people who enrolled when they were 20-year-old college students in the 1970s. The participants kept track of their daily social interactions at ages 20 and 30. At age 50, they completed an online survey about the quality of their social lives and emotional well-being, including questions about loneliness and depression, and their relationships with close friends.
The findings showed that frequent social interactions at age 20 and good-quality relationships – defined as intimate and satisfying – at age 30 were associated with higher levels of well-being at age 50. The study findings were published in a recent issue of the journal Psychology and Aging.
A high number of social interactions at age 20 are beneficial later in life because they help young adults determine who they are, the researchers said. “It’s often around this age that we meet people from diverse backgrounds, with opinions and values that are different from our own, and we learn how to best manage those differences,” said Carmichael, now an assistant professor of psychology at Brooklyn College. “Considering everything else that goes on in life over those 30 years – marriage, raising a family and building a career – it is extraordinary that there appears to be a relationship between the kinds of interactions college students and young adults have and their emotional health later in life,” she concluded.

(www.nlm.nih.gov)

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 71 a 77.

Social life in youth may impact health decades later

Having good social connections at age 20 can lead to improved well-being later in life, a new study suggests. Previous research has shown that people with poor social links are at increased risk for early death. “In fact, having few social connections is equivalent to tobacco use, and [the risk is] higher than for those who drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or who suffer from obesity,” study author Cheryl Carmichael, who conducted the study while a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester in New York, said in a university news release.
The study included 133 people who enrolled when they were 20-year-old college students in the 1970s. The participants kept track of their daily social interactions at ages 20 and 30. At age 50, they completed an online survey about the quality of their social lives and emotional well-being, including questions about loneliness and depression, and their relationships with close friends.
The findings showed that frequent social interactions at age 20 and good-quality relationships – defined as intimate and satisfying – at age 30 were associated with higher levels of well-being at age 50. The study findings were published in a recent issue of the journal Psychology and Aging.
A high number of social interactions at age 20 are beneficial later in life because they help young adults determine who they are, the researchers said. “It’s often around this age that we meet people from diverse backgrounds, with opinions and values that are different from our own, and we learn how to best manage those differences,” said Carmichael, now an assistant professor of psychology at Brooklyn College. “Considering everything else that goes on in life over those 30 years – marriage, raising a family and building a career – it is extraordinary that there appears to be a relationship between the kinds of interactions college students and young adults have and their emotional health later in life,” she concluded.

(www.nlm.nih.gov)

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W.H.O. calls ‘vaccine hesitancy’
an increasing concern globally

The World Health Organization warned Tuesday of what it called the growing problem of “vaccine hesitancy,” when people delay or refuse vaccines for themselves or their children. In a statement on its website, the organization called the problem “a growing challenge for countries seeking to close the immunization gap.” Globally, the organization said, one in five children still do not receive routine lifesaving immunizations, and 1.5 million children die each year of diseases that could have been thwarted by vaccines.

(www.nytimes.com)

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 78 a 80.

W.H.O. calls ‘vaccine hesitancy’
an increasing concern globally

The World Health Organization warned Tuesday of what it called the growing problem of “vaccine hesitancy,” when people delay or refuse vaccines for themselves or their children. In a statement on its website, the organization called the problem “a growing challenge for countries seeking to close the immunization gap.” Globally, the organization said, one in five children still do not receive routine lifesaving immunizations, and 1.5 million children die each year of diseases that could have been thwarted by vaccines.

(www.nytimes.com)

Leia o texto para responder às questões de 78 a 80.

W.H.O. calls ‘vaccine hesitancy’
an increasing concern globally

The World Health Organization warned Tuesday of what it called the growing problem of “vaccine hesitancy,” when people delay or refuse vaccines for themselves or their children. In a statement on its website, the organization called the problem “a growing challenge for countries seeking to close the immunization gap.” Globally, the organization said, one in five children still do not receive routine lifesaving immunizations, and 1.5 million children die each year of diseases that could have been thwarted by vaccines.

(www.nytimes.com)

Read the text and answer the question

A Housing Meltdown Looms in Brazil as Builders Seek Debt Relief

by Julia Leite and Paula Sambo

August 26, 2015

Not long ago, Brazil’s real-estate market was one of the biggest symbols of the country’s burgeoning economic might. Now, it’s fallen victim to an ever-deepening recession. PDG Realty SA, once the largest homebuilder by revenue, hired Rothschild last week to help restructure 5.8 billion reais ($1.6 billion) of debt after second-quarter net sales sank 88 percent. Earlier this month, Rossi Residencial SA, which has 2.5 billion reais in debt, also brought in advisers to “restructure operations and review strategies.” Since 2010, the builder has lost 99 percent of its stock-market value.
The real-estate industry, which is equal to about 10 percent of Brazil’s economy, is emerging as one of the latest casualties of a recession that analysts forecast will be its longest since the 1930s. To make matters worse, interest rates are the highest in almost a decade while inflation is soaring. “There is no real estate company that survives without sales,” Bruno Mendonça Lima de Carvalho, the head of fixed income at Guide Investimentos SA, said from Sao Paulo. “You can’t import or export apartments. You’re relying solely on domestic activity.”
PDG tried to boost revenue by lowering prices, financing up to 20 percent of some home purchases and even offering to buy back apartments if banks deny financing. Still, it sold just 217 units in the second quarter on a net basis, compared with 1,749 in 2014.

Negative Outlook

On Friday, Moody’s Investors Service cut PDG’s rating three levels to Caa3, citing the possibility of significant losses for bondholders and other lenders. Secured creditors may recover less than 80 percent in a default, according to Moody’s, which kept a negative outlook on the rating. “The company is facing additional liquidity pressures from a prolonged deterioration in industry dynamics, including weak sales speed, tight financing availability and declining real estate prices,” Moody’s said.
Sao Paulo-based Rossi said in an e-mailed response to questions that second quarter sales improved and that the company’s main focus is to reduce debt. Gross debt fell about 30 percent in the 12 months ended in June, Rossi said.
Home sales in Latin America’s biggest economy tumbled 14 percent in the first half of 2015, according to data from the national real estate institute. Builders cut new projects by 20 percent during that span, while available financing shrank by about a quarter

Real’s Collapse

That’s a reversal from just two years ago, when realestate prices in places like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo had surged as much as 230 percent as rising incomes, a soaring real and record-low borrowing costs ignited a wave of home buying.
Brazilians find themselves in drastically different circumstances today. The currency fell 0.4 percent Wednesday as of 3:25 p.m. in New York, extending its loss this year to 26 percent. The jobless rate climbed to a five-year high of 7.5 percent last month.
The central bank boosted its key rate to 14.25 percent in July, making it ever more expensive to finance the purchase of a home. “It’s a matter of demand, and demand is really weak,” Will Landers, who manages Latin American stocks at BlackRock, said from Princeton, New Jersey. “We may have reached a peak in interest rates, but they should continue to be at these levels for a while. Consumers will stay on the sidelines because debt levels are still high, and employment will get worse.”

(Business Week at www.bloomberg.com/news. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

A Housing Meltdown Looms in Brazil as Builders Seek Debt Relief

by Julia Leite and Paula Sambo

August 26, 2015

Not long ago, Brazil’s real-estate market was one of the biggest symbols of the country’s burgeoning economic might. Now, it’s fallen victim to an ever-deepening recession. PDG Realty SA, once the largest homebuilder by revenue, hired Rothschild last week to help restructure 5.8 billion reais ($1.6 billion) of debt after second-quarter net sales sank 88 percent. Earlier this month, Rossi Residencial SA, which has 2.5 billion reais in debt, also brought in advisers to “restructure operations and review strategies.” Since 2010, the builder has lost 99 percent of its stock-market value.
The real-estate industry, which is equal to about 10 percent of Brazil’s economy, is emerging as one of the latest casualties of a recession that analysts forecast will be its longest since the 1930s. To make matters worse, interest rates are the highest in almost a decade while inflation is soaring. “There is no real estate company that survives without sales,” Bruno Mendonça Lima de Carvalho, the head of fixed income at Guide Investimentos SA, said from Sao Paulo. “You can’t import or export apartments. You’re relying solely on domestic activity.”
PDG tried to boost revenue by lowering prices, financing up to 20 percent of some home purchases and even offering to buy back apartments if banks deny financing. Still, it sold just 217 units in the second quarter on a net basis, compared with 1,749 in 2014.

Negative Outlook

On Friday, Moody’s Investors Service cut PDG’s rating three levels to Caa3, citing the possibility of significant losses for bondholders and other lenders. Secured creditors may recover less than 80 percent in a default, according to Moody’s, which kept a negative outlook on the rating. “The company is facing additional liquidity pressures from a prolonged deterioration in industry dynamics, including weak sales speed, tight financing availability and declining real estate prices,” Moody’s said.
Sao Paulo-based Rossi said in an e-mailed response to questions that second quarter sales improved and that the company’s main focus is to reduce debt. Gross debt fell about 30 percent in the 12 months ended in June, Rossi said.
Home sales in Latin America’s biggest economy tumbled 14 percent in the first half of 2015, according to data from the national real estate institute. Builders cut new projects by 20 percent during that span, while available financing shrank by about a quarter

Real’s Collapse

That’s a reversal from just two years ago, when realestate prices in places like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo had surged as much as 230 percent as rising incomes, a soaring real and record-low borrowing costs ignited a wave of home buying.
Brazilians find themselves in drastically different circumstances today. The currency fell 0.4 percent Wednesday as of 3:25 p.m. in New York, extending its loss this year to 26 percent. The jobless rate climbed to a five-year high of 7.5 percent last month.
The central bank boosted its key rate to 14.25 percent in July, making it ever more expensive to finance the purchase of a home. “It’s a matter of demand, and demand is really weak,” Will Landers, who manages Latin American stocks at BlackRock, said from Princeton, New Jersey. “We may have reached a peak in interest rates, but they should continue to be at these levels for a while. Consumers will stay on the sidelines because debt levels are still high, and employment will get worse.”

(Business Week at www.bloomberg.com/news. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

A Housing Meltdown Looms in Brazil as Builders Seek Debt Relief

by Julia Leite and Paula Sambo

August 26, 2015

Not long ago, Brazil’s real-estate market was one of the biggest symbols of the country’s burgeoning economic might. Now, it’s fallen victim to an ever-deepening recession. PDG Realty SA, once the largest homebuilder by revenue, hired Rothschild last week to help restructure 5.8 billion reais ($1.6 billion) of debt after second-quarter net sales sank 88 percent. Earlier this month, Rossi Residencial SA, which has 2.5 billion reais in debt, also brought in advisers to “restructure operations and review strategies.” Since 2010, the builder has lost 99 percent of its stock-market value.
The real-estate industry, which is equal to about 10 percent of Brazil’s economy, is emerging as one of the latest casualties of a recession that analysts forecast will be its longest since the 1930s. To make matters worse, interest rates are the highest in almost a decade while inflation is soaring. “There is no real estate company that survives without sales,” Bruno Mendonça Lima de Carvalho, the head of fixed income at Guide Investimentos SA, said from Sao Paulo. “You can’t import or export apartments. You’re relying solely on domestic activity.”
PDG tried to boost revenue by lowering prices, financing up to 20 percent of some home purchases and even offering to buy back apartments if banks deny financing. Still, it sold just 217 units in the second quarter on a net basis, compared with 1,749 in 2014.

Negative Outlook

On Friday, Moody’s Investors Service cut PDG’s rating three levels to Caa3, citing the possibility of significant losses for bondholders and other lenders. Secured creditors may recover less than 80 percent in a default, according to Moody’s, which kept a negative outlook on the rating. “The company is facing additional liquidity pressures from a prolonged deterioration in industry dynamics, including weak sales speed, tight financing availability and declining real estate prices,” Moody’s said.
Sao Paulo-based Rossi said in an e-mailed response to questions that second quarter sales improved and that the company’s main focus is to reduce debt. Gross debt fell about 30 percent in the 12 months ended in June, Rossi said.
Home sales in Latin America’s biggest economy tumbled 14 percent in the first half of 2015, according to data from the national real estate institute. Builders cut new projects by 20 percent during that span, while available financing shrank by about a quarter

Real’s Collapse

That’s a reversal from just two years ago, when realestate prices in places like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo had surged as much as 230 percent as rising incomes, a soaring real and record-low borrowing costs ignited a wave of home buying.
Brazilians find themselves in drastically different circumstances today. The currency fell 0.4 percent Wednesday as of 3:25 p.m. in New York, extending its loss this year to 26 percent. The jobless rate climbed to a five-year high of 7.5 percent last month.
The central bank boosted its key rate to 14.25 percent in July, making it ever more expensive to finance the purchase of a home. “It’s a matter of demand, and demand is really weak,” Will Landers, who manages Latin American stocks at BlackRock, said from Princeton, New Jersey. “We may have reached a peak in interest rates, but they should continue to be at these levels for a while. Consumers will stay on the sidelines because debt levels are still high, and employment will get worse.”

(Business Week at www.bloomberg.com/news. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

A Housing Meltdown Looms in Brazil as Builders Seek Debt Relief

by Julia Leite and Paula Sambo

August 26, 2015

Not long ago, Brazil’s real-estate market was one of the biggest symbols of the country’s burgeoning economic might. Now, it’s fallen victim to an ever-deepening recession. PDG Realty SA, once the largest homebuilder by revenue, hired Rothschild last week to help restructure 5.8 billion reais ($1.6 billion) of debt after second-quarter net sales sank 88 percent. Earlier this month, Rossi Residencial SA, which has 2.5 billion reais in debt, also brought in advisers to “restructure operations and review strategies.” Since 2010, the builder has lost 99 percent of its stock-market value.
The real-estate industry, which is equal to about 10 percent of Brazil’s economy, is emerging as one of the latest casualties of a recession that analysts forecast will be its longest since the 1930s. To make matters worse, interest rates are the highest in almost a decade while inflation is soaring. “There is no real estate company that survives without sales,” Bruno Mendonça Lima de Carvalho, the head of fixed income at Guide Investimentos SA, said from Sao Paulo. “You can’t import or export apartments. You’re relying solely on domestic activity.”
PDG tried to boost revenue by lowering prices, financing up to 20 percent of some home purchases and even offering to buy back apartments if banks deny financing. Still, it sold just 217 units in the second quarter on a net basis, compared with 1,749 in 2014.

Negative Outlook

On Friday, Moody’s Investors Service cut PDG’s rating three levels to Caa3, citing the possibility of significant losses for bondholders and other lenders. Secured creditors may recover less than 80 percent in a default, according to Moody’s, which kept a negative outlook on the rating. “The company is facing additional liquidity pressures from a prolonged deterioration in industry dynamics, including weak sales speed, tight financing availability and declining real estate prices,” Moody’s said.
Sao Paulo-based Rossi said in an e-mailed response to questions that second quarter sales improved and that the company’s main focus is to reduce debt. Gross debt fell about 30 percent in the 12 months ended in June, Rossi said.
Home sales in Latin America’s biggest economy tumbled 14 percent in the first half of 2015, according to data from the national real estate institute. Builders cut new projects by 20 percent during that span, while available financing shrank by about a quarter

Real’s Collapse

That’s a reversal from just two years ago, when realestate prices in places like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo had surged as much as 230 percent as rising incomes, a soaring real and record-low borrowing costs ignited a wave of home buying.
Brazilians find themselves in drastically different circumstances today. The currency fell 0.4 percent Wednesday as of 3:25 p.m. in New York, extending its loss this year to 26 percent. The jobless rate climbed to a five-year high of 7.5 percent last month.
The central bank boosted its key rate to 14.25 percent in July, making it ever more expensive to finance the purchase of a home. “It’s a matter of demand, and demand is really weak,” Will Landers, who manages Latin American stocks at BlackRock, said from Princeton, New Jersey. “We may have reached a peak in interest rates, but they should continue to be at these levels for a while. Consumers will stay on the sidelines because debt levels are still high, and employment will get worse.”

(Business Week at www.bloomberg.com/news. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

China has created a monster it can’t control

By Jeremy Warner

3 Sep 2015

When in trouble, shoot the messenger. This timehonoured approach to dealing with unwelcome news was much in evidence in China this week when nearly 200 people were rounded up and criminally charged with spreading “false” rumours about the stock market and the economy, or otherwise profiting from their travails.
One luckless financial journalist was ritually paraded on state TV, tearfully confessing his “crimes”. Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese desk of one London-based hedge fund group was summoned to a “meeting” with regulators, and hasn’t been heard of since. Her Chinese husband says “she’s gone on holiday”. We can only hope it is not to the re-indoctrination of the asbestos mines. Despite the massive progress of recent decades, old habits die hard.
China was meant to have embraced free market reform, yet these latest actions suggest an altogether different approach. Roughly summarised, it amounts to: “Reform good, but woe betide the free market if it doesn’t do what the high command wants it to.” When the stock market was going up, the Chinese authorities were perfectly happy to tolerate what, to virtually all Western observers, looked like a dangerously speculative bubble, vaingloriously believing it to be a fair reflection of the wondrous successes of the Chinese economy.
The first rule of stock market investment – that share prices can go down as well as up – seems to have been almost wholly forgotten in the scramble for instant riches. When, inevitably, the stock market crashed, the authorities threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but they failed to halt the carnage. This was an even ruder awakening – for it demonstrated to an already disillusioned public that policy-makers were no longer in control of events. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed, but there are today more Chinese with stock trading accounts – some 90 million – than there are members of the Communist Party – “just” 80 million. In any case, powerless before the storm, the authorities have instead turned to scapegoating.
Apparently more liberal, advanced economies, it ought to be said, are by no means averse to this kind of behaviour either. A few years back, Italian prosecutors charged nine employees of Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Rating with market abuse for daring to downgrade Italy’s credit rating, while it is still commonplace in France to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators and their cronies in the London press for any financial or economic setback.
Nor are Western governments and central bankers averse to a little market manipulation when it suits them. What is “quantitative easing” other than money printing to prop up asset prices, including stocks and shares? Chinese refusal to accept the judgments of “Mr Market”, it might be argued, is just a more extreme version of the same thing. Small wonder that European officials sometimes look longingly across at the state-directed capitalism practised in China, and pronounce it a model we might perhaps aspire to ourselves.
As recent events have demonstrated, we should not. China’s stock market crash is not the work of malicious financial journalists and short-selling hedge funds, but a signal of difficult time ahead and perhaps even of an economic roadcrash to come. After nearly 35 years of spectacular progress, the Chinese economy faces multiple challenges on many fronts which are not going to be solved by denying harsh realities and imprisoning journalists.
The progress of recent decades belies an industrial sector which in truth has become quite seriously uncompetitive by international standards. Many of China’s factories need completely retooling to keep up with developments in robotics and other forms of mechanisation. Yet if industry is to get less labour intensive, this only further steepens the challenge of employment creation.
It is reckoned that China needs to create some 20 million jobs a year just to keep pace with employment demand as the population shifts from land to town, eight million of them in high-end professions to cater for the country’s burgeoning output of graduates. China’s modernisation has created a monster which it is struggling to feed.
As the export-growth story waned, China compensated by unleashing a massive investment boom, which internal demand is now struggling to keep up with, rendering many of the country’s shiny new constructs uneconomic and overburdened with bad debts.
The Chinese leadership looks to growth in consumption and service industries to plug the gap, but these new sources of demand can’t do so without further free-market reform, which in turn requires further loosening of the shackles of political control. Without growth, the Communist Party loses its political legitimacy, yet the old growth model is broken, and to achieve a new one, the authorities must cede the very power and influence that sustains them. Rumour-mongering journalists and short-selling speculators can only be blamed for so long.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

China has created a monster it can’t control

By Jeremy Warner

3 Sep 2015

When in trouble, shoot the messenger. This timehonoured approach to dealing with unwelcome news was much in evidence in China this week when nearly 200 people were rounded up and criminally charged with spreading “false” rumours about the stock market and the economy, or otherwise profiting from their travails.
One luckless financial journalist was ritually paraded on state TV, tearfully confessing his “crimes”. Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese desk of one London-based hedge fund group was summoned to a “meeting” with regulators, and hasn’t been heard of since. Her Chinese husband says “she’s gone on holiday”. We can only hope it is not to the re-indoctrination of the asbestos mines. Despite the massive progress of recent decades, old habits die hard.
China was meant to have embraced free market reform, yet these latest actions suggest an altogether different approach. Roughly summarised, it amounts to: “Reform good, but woe betide the free market if it doesn’t do what the high command wants it to.” When the stock market was going up, the Chinese authorities were perfectly happy to tolerate what, to virtually all Western observers, looked like a dangerously speculative bubble, vaingloriously believing it to be a fair reflection of the wondrous successes of the Chinese economy.
The first rule of stock market investment – that share prices can go down as well as up – seems to have been almost wholly forgotten in the scramble for instant riches. When, inevitably, the stock market crashed, the authorities threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but they failed to halt the carnage. This was an even ruder awakening – for it demonstrated to an already disillusioned public that policy-makers were no longer in control of events. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed, but there are today more Chinese with stock trading accounts – some 90 million – than there are members of the Communist Party – “just” 80 million. In any case, powerless before the storm, the authorities have instead turned to scapegoating.
Apparently more liberal, advanced economies, it ought to be said, are by no means averse to this kind of behaviour either. A few years back, Italian prosecutors charged nine employees of Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Rating with market abuse for daring to downgrade Italy’s credit rating, while it is still commonplace in France to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators and their cronies in the London press for any financial or economic setback.
Nor are Western governments and central bankers averse to a little market manipulation when it suits them. What is “quantitative easing” other than money printing to prop up asset prices, including stocks and shares? Chinese refusal to accept the judgments of “Mr Market”, it might be argued, is just a more extreme version of the same thing. Small wonder that European officials sometimes look longingly across at the state-directed capitalism practised in China, and pronounce it a model we might perhaps aspire to ourselves.
As recent events have demonstrated, we should not. China’s stock market crash is not the work of malicious financial journalists and short-selling hedge funds, but a signal of difficult time ahead and perhaps even of an economic roadcrash to come. After nearly 35 years of spectacular progress, the Chinese economy faces multiple challenges on many fronts which are not going to be solved by denying harsh realities and imprisoning journalists.
The progress of recent decades belies an industrial sector which in truth has become quite seriously uncompetitive by international standards. Many of China’s factories need completely retooling to keep up with developments in robotics and other forms of mechanisation. Yet if industry is to get less labour intensive, this only further steepens the challenge of employment creation.
It is reckoned that China needs to create some 20 million jobs a year just to keep pace with employment demand as the population shifts from land to town, eight million of them in high-end professions to cater for the country’s burgeoning output of graduates. China’s modernisation has created a monster which it is struggling to feed.
As the export-growth story waned, China compensated by unleashing a massive investment boom, which internal demand is now struggling to keep up with, rendering many of the country’s shiny new constructs uneconomic and overburdened with bad debts.
The Chinese leadership looks to growth in consumption and service industries to plug the gap, but these new sources of demand can’t do so without further free-market reform, which in turn requires further loosening of the shackles of political control. Without growth, the Communist Party loses its political legitimacy, yet the old growth model is broken, and to achieve a new one, the authorities must cede the very power and influence that sustains them. Rumour-mongering journalists and short-selling speculators can only be blamed for so long.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

China has created a monster it can’t control

By Jeremy Warner

3 Sep 2015

When in trouble, shoot the messenger. This timehonoured approach to dealing with unwelcome news was much in evidence in China this week when nearly 200 people were rounded up and criminally charged with spreading “false” rumours about the stock market and the economy, or otherwise profiting from their travails.
One luckless financial journalist was ritually paraded on state TV, tearfully confessing his “crimes”. Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese desk of one London-based hedge fund group was summoned to a “meeting” with regulators, and hasn’t been heard of since. Her Chinese husband says “she’s gone on holiday”. We can only hope it is not to the re-indoctrination of the asbestos mines. Despite the massive progress of recent decades, old habits die hard.
China was meant to have embraced free market reform, yet these latest actions suggest an altogether different approach. Roughly summarised, it amounts to: “Reform good, but woe betide the free market if it doesn’t do what the high command wants it to.” When the stock market was going up, the Chinese authorities were perfectly happy to tolerate what, to virtually all Western observers, looked like a dangerously speculative bubble, vaingloriously believing it to be a fair reflection of the wondrous successes of the Chinese economy.
The first rule of stock market investment – that share prices can go down as well as up – seems to have been almost wholly forgotten in the scramble for instant riches. When, inevitably, the stock market crashed, the authorities threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but they failed to halt the carnage. This was an even ruder awakening – for it demonstrated to an already disillusioned public that policy-makers were no longer in control of events. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed, but there are today more Chinese with stock trading accounts – some 90 million – than there are members of the Communist Party – “just” 80 million. In any case, powerless before the storm, the authorities have instead turned to scapegoating.
Apparently more liberal, advanced economies, it ought to be said, are by no means averse to this kind of behaviour either. A few years back, Italian prosecutors charged nine employees of Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Rating with market abuse for daring to downgrade Italy’s credit rating, while it is still commonplace in France to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators and their cronies in the London press for any financial or economic setback.
Nor are Western governments and central bankers averse to a little market manipulation when it suits them. What is “quantitative easing” other than money printing to prop up asset prices, including stocks and shares? Chinese refusal to accept the judgments of “Mr Market”, it might be argued, is just a more extreme version of the same thing. Small wonder that European officials sometimes look longingly across at the state-directed capitalism practised in China, and pronounce it a model we might perhaps aspire to ourselves.
As recent events have demonstrated, we should not. China’s stock market crash is not the work of malicious financial journalists and short-selling hedge funds, but a signal of difficult time ahead and perhaps even of an economic roadcrash to come. After nearly 35 years of spectacular progress, the Chinese economy faces multiple challenges on many fronts which are not going to be solved by denying harsh realities and imprisoning journalists.
The progress of recent decades belies an industrial sector which in truth has become quite seriously uncompetitive by international standards. Many of China’s factories need completely retooling to keep up with developments in robotics and other forms of mechanisation. Yet if industry is to get less labour intensive, this only further steepens the challenge of employment creation.
It is reckoned that China needs to create some 20 million jobs a year just to keep pace with employment demand as the population shifts from land to town, eight million of them in high-end professions to cater for the country’s burgeoning output of graduates. China’s modernisation has created a monster which it is struggling to feed.
As the export-growth story waned, China compensated by unleashing a massive investment boom, which internal demand is now struggling to keep up with, rendering many of the country’s shiny new constructs uneconomic and overburdened with bad debts.
The Chinese leadership looks to growth in consumption and service industries to plug the gap, but these new sources of demand can’t do so without further free-market reform, which in turn requires further loosening of the shackles of political control. Without growth, the Communist Party loses its political legitimacy, yet the old growth model is broken, and to achieve a new one, the authorities must cede the very power and influence that sustains them. Rumour-mongering journalists and short-selling speculators can only be blamed for so long.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

China has created a monster it can’t control

By Jeremy Warner

3 Sep 2015

When in trouble, shoot the messenger. This timehonoured approach to dealing with unwelcome news was much in evidence in China this week when nearly 200 people were rounded up and criminally charged with spreading “false” rumours about the stock market and the economy, or otherwise profiting from their travails.
One luckless financial journalist was ritually paraded on state TV, tearfully confessing his “crimes”. Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese desk of one London-based hedge fund group was summoned to a “meeting” with regulators, and hasn’t been heard of since. Her Chinese husband says “she’s gone on holiday”. We can only hope it is not to the re-indoctrination of the asbestos mines. Despite the massive progress of recent decades, old habits die hard.
China was meant to have embraced free market reform, yet these latest actions suggest an altogether different approach. Roughly summarised, it amounts to: “Reform good, but woe betide the free market if it doesn’t do what the high command wants it to.” When the stock market was going up, the Chinese authorities were perfectly happy to tolerate what, to virtually all Western observers, looked like a dangerously speculative bubble, vaingloriously believing it to be a fair reflection of the wondrous successes of the Chinese economy.
The first rule of stock market investment – that share prices can go down as well as up – seems to have been almost wholly forgotten in the scramble for instant riches. When, inevitably, the stock market crashed, the authorities threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but they failed to halt the carnage. This was an even ruder awakening – for it demonstrated to an already disillusioned public that policy-makers were no longer in control of events. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed, but there are today more Chinese with stock trading accounts – some 90 million – than there are members of the Communist Party – “just” 80 million. In any case, powerless before the storm, the authorities have instead turned to scapegoating.
Apparently more liberal, advanced economies, it ought to be said, are by no means averse to this kind of behaviour either. A few years back, Italian prosecutors charged nine employees of Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Rating with market abuse for daring to downgrade Italy’s credit rating, while it is still commonplace in France to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators and their cronies in the London press for any financial or economic setback.
Nor are Western governments and central bankers averse to a little market manipulation when it suits them. What is “quantitative easing” other than money printing to prop up asset prices, including stocks and shares? Chinese refusal to accept the judgments of “Mr Market”, it might be argued, is just a more extreme version of the same thing. Small wonder that European officials sometimes look longingly across at the state-directed capitalism practised in China, and pronounce it a model we might perhaps aspire to ourselves.
As recent events have demonstrated, we should not. China’s stock market crash is not the work of malicious financial journalists and short-selling hedge funds, but a signal of difficult time ahead and perhaps even of an economic roadcrash to come. After nearly 35 years of spectacular progress, the Chinese economy faces multiple challenges on many fronts which are not going to be solved by denying harsh realities and imprisoning journalists.
The progress of recent decades belies an industrial sector which in truth has become quite seriously uncompetitive by international standards. Many of China’s factories need completely retooling to keep up with developments in robotics and other forms of mechanisation. Yet if industry is to get less labour intensive, this only further steepens the challenge of employment creation.
It is reckoned that China needs to create some 20 million jobs a year just to keep pace with employment demand as the population shifts from land to town, eight million of them in high-end professions to cater for the country’s burgeoning output of graduates. China’s modernisation has created a monster which it is struggling to feed.
As the export-growth story waned, China compensated by unleashing a massive investment boom, which internal demand is now struggling to keep up with, rendering many of the country’s shiny new constructs uneconomic and overburdened with bad debts.
The Chinese leadership looks to growth in consumption and service industries to plug the gap, but these new sources of demand can’t do so without further free-market reform, which in turn requires further loosening of the shackles of political control. Without growth, the Communist Party loses its political legitimacy, yet the old growth model is broken, and to achieve a new one, the authorities must cede the very power and influence that sustains them. Rumour-mongering journalists and short-selling speculators can only be blamed for so long.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

China has created a monster it can’t control

By Jeremy Warner

3 Sep 2015

When in trouble, shoot the messenger. This timehonoured approach to dealing with unwelcome news was much in evidence in China this week when nearly 200 people were rounded up and criminally charged with spreading “false” rumours about the stock market and the economy, or otherwise profiting from their travails.
One luckless financial journalist was ritually paraded on state TV, tearfully confessing his “crimes”. Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese desk of one London-based hedge fund group was summoned to a “meeting” with regulators, and hasn’t been heard of since. Her Chinese husband says “she’s gone on holiday”. We can only hope it is not to the re-indoctrination of the asbestos mines. Despite the massive progress of recent decades, old habits die hard.
China was meant to have embraced free market reform, yet these latest actions suggest an altogether different approach. Roughly summarised, it amounts to: “Reform good, but woe betide the free market if it doesn’t do what the high command wants it to.” When the stock market was going up, the Chinese authorities were perfectly happy to tolerate what, to virtually all Western observers, looked like a dangerously speculative bubble, vaingloriously believing it to be a fair reflection of the wondrous successes of the Chinese economy.
The first rule of stock market investment – that share prices can go down as well as up – seems to have been almost wholly forgotten in the scramble for instant riches. When, inevitably, the stock market crashed, the authorities threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but they failed to halt the carnage. This was an even ruder awakening – for it demonstrated to an already disillusioned public that policy-makers were no longer in control of events. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed, but there are today more Chinese with stock trading accounts – some 90 million – than there are members of the Communist Party – “just” 80 million. In any case, powerless before the storm, the authorities have instead turned to scapegoating.
Apparently more liberal, advanced economies, it ought to be said, are by no means averse to this kind of behaviour either. A few years back, Italian prosecutors charged nine employees of Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Rating with market abuse for daring to downgrade Italy’s credit rating, while it is still commonplace in France to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators and their cronies in the London press for any financial or economic setback.
Nor are Western governments and central bankers averse to a little market manipulation when it suits them. What is “quantitative easing” other than money printing to prop up asset prices, including stocks and shares? Chinese refusal to accept the judgments of “Mr Market”, it might be argued, is just a more extreme version of the same thing. Small wonder that European officials sometimes look longingly across at the state-directed capitalism practised in China, and pronounce it a model we might perhaps aspire to ourselves.
As recent events have demonstrated, we should not. China’s stock market crash is not the work of malicious financial journalists and short-selling hedge funds, but a signal of difficult time ahead and perhaps even of an economic roadcrash to come. After nearly 35 years of spectacular progress, the Chinese economy faces multiple challenges on many fronts which are not going to be solved by denying harsh realities and imprisoning journalists.
The progress of recent decades belies an industrial sector which in truth has become quite seriously uncompetitive by international standards. Many of China’s factories need completely retooling to keep up with developments in robotics and other forms of mechanisation. Yet if industry is to get less labour intensive, this only further steepens the challenge of employment creation.
It is reckoned that China needs to create some 20 million jobs a year just to keep pace with employment demand as the population shifts from land to town, eight million of them in high-end professions to cater for the country’s burgeoning output of graduates. China’s modernisation has created a monster which it is struggling to feed.
As the export-growth story waned, China compensated by unleashing a massive investment boom, which internal demand is now struggling to keep up with, rendering many of the country’s shiny new constructs uneconomic and overburdened with bad debts.
The Chinese leadership looks to growth in consumption and service industries to plug the gap, but these new sources of demand can’t do so without further free-market reform, which in turn requires further loosening of the shackles of political control. Without growth, the Communist Party loses its political legitimacy, yet the old growth model is broken, and to achieve a new one, the authorities must cede the very power and influence that sustains them. Rumour-mongering journalists and short-selling speculators can only be blamed for so long.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

China has created a monster it can’t control

By Jeremy Warner

3 Sep 2015

When in trouble, shoot the messenger. This timehonoured approach to dealing with unwelcome news was much in evidence in China this week when nearly 200 people were rounded up and criminally charged with spreading “false” rumours about the stock market and the economy, or otherwise profiting from their travails.
One luckless financial journalist was ritually paraded on state TV, tearfully confessing his “crimes”. Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese desk of one London-based hedge fund group was summoned to a “meeting” with regulators, and hasn’t been heard of since. Her Chinese husband says “she’s gone on holiday”. We can only hope it is not to the re-indoctrination of the asbestos mines. Despite the massive progress of recent decades, old habits die hard.
China was meant to have embraced free market reform, yet these latest actions suggest an altogether different approach. Roughly summarised, it amounts to: “Reform good, but woe betide the free market if it doesn’t do what the high command wants it to.” When the stock market was going up, the Chinese authorities were perfectly happy to tolerate what, to virtually all Western observers, looked like a dangerously speculative bubble, vaingloriously believing it to be a fair reflection of the wondrous successes of the Chinese economy.
The first rule of stock market investment – that share prices can go down as well as up – seems to have been almost wholly forgotten in the scramble for instant riches. When, inevitably, the stock market crashed, the authorities threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but they failed to halt the carnage. This was an even ruder awakening – for it demonstrated to an already disillusioned public that policy-makers were no longer in control of events. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed, but there are today more Chinese with stock trading accounts – some 90 million – than there are members of the Communist Party – “just” 80 million. In any case, powerless before the storm, the authorities have instead turned to scapegoating.
Apparently more liberal, advanced economies, it ought to be said, are by no means averse to this kind of behaviour either. A few years back, Italian prosecutors charged nine employees of Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Rating with market abuse for daring to downgrade Italy’s credit rating, while it is still commonplace in France to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators and their cronies in the London press for any financial or economic setback.
Nor are Western governments and central bankers averse to a little market manipulation when it suits them. What is “quantitative easing” other than money printing to prop up asset prices, including stocks and shares? Chinese refusal to accept the judgments of “Mr Market”, it might be argued, is just a more extreme version of the same thing. Small wonder that European officials sometimes look longingly across at the state-directed capitalism practised in China, and pronounce it a model we might perhaps aspire to ourselves.
As recent events have demonstrated, we should not. China’s stock market crash is not the work of malicious financial journalists and short-selling hedge funds, but a signal of difficult time ahead and perhaps even of an economic roadcrash to come. After nearly 35 years of spectacular progress, the Chinese economy faces multiple challenges on many fronts which are not going to be solved by denying harsh realities and imprisoning journalists.
The progress of recent decades belies an industrial sector which in truth has become quite seriously uncompetitive by international standards. Many of China’s factories need completely retooling to keep up with developments in robotics and other forms of mechanisation. Yet if industry is to get less labour intensive, this only further steepens the challenge of employment creation.
It is reckoned that China needs to create some 20 million jobs a year just to keep pace with employment demand as the population shifts from land to town, eight million of them in high-end professions to cater for the country’s burgeoning output of graduates. China’s modernisation has created a monster which it is struggling to feed.
As the export-growth story waned, China compensated by unleashing a massive investment boom, which internal demand is now struggling to keep up with, rendering many of the country’s shiny new constructs uneconomic and overburdened with bad debts.
The Chinese leadership looks to growth in consumption and service industries to plug the gap, but these new sources of demand can’t do so without further free-market reform, which in turn requires further loosening of the shackles of political control. Without growth, the Communist Party loses its political legitimacy, yet the old growth model is broken, and to achieve a new one, the authorities must cede the very power and influence that sustains them. Rumour-mongering journalists and short-selling speculators can only be blamed for so long.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

China has created a monster it can’t control

By Jeremy Warner

3 Sep 2015

When in trouble, shoot the messenger. This timehonoured approach to dealing with unwelcome news was much in evidence in China this week when nearly 200 people were rounded up and criminally charged with spreading “false” rumours about the stock market and the economy, or otherwise profiting from their travails.
One luckless financial journalist was ritually paraded on state TV, tearfully confessing his “crimes”. Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese desk of one London-based hedge fund group was summoned to a “meeting” with regulators, and hasn’t been heard of since. Her Chinese husband says “she’s gone on holiday”. We can only hope it is not to the re-indoctrination of the asbestos mines. Despite the massive progress of recent decades, old habits die hard.
China was meant to have embraced free market reform, yet these latest actions suggest an altogether different approach. Roughly summarised, it amounts to: “Reform good, but woe betide the free market if it doesn’t do what the high command wants it to.” When the stock market was going up, the Chinese authorities were perfectly happy to tolerate what, to virtually all Western observers, looked like a dangerously speculative bubble, vaingloriously believing it to be a fair reflection of the wondrous successes of the Chinese economy.
The first rule of stock market investment – that share prices can go down as well as up – seems to have been almost wholly forgotten in the scramble for instant riches. When, inevitably, the stock market crashed, the authorities threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but they failed to halt the carnage. This was an even ruder awakening – for it demonstrated to an already disillusioned public that policy-makers were no longer in control of events. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed, but there are today more Chinese with stock trading accounts – some 90 million – than there are members of the Communist Party – “just” 80 million. In any case, powerless before the storm, the authorities have instead turned to scapegoating.
Apparently more liberal, advanced economies, it ought to be said, are by no means averse to this kind of behaviour either. A few years back, Italian prosecutors charged nine employees of Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Rating with market abuse for daring to downgrade Italy’s credit rating, while it is still commonplace in France to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators and their cronies in the London press for any financial or economic setback.
Nor are Western governments and central bankers averse to a little market manipulation when it suits them. What is “quantitative easing” other than money printing to prop up asset prices, including stocks and shares? Chinese refusal to accept the judgments of “Mr Market”, it might be argued, is just a more extreme version of the same thing. Small wonder that European officials sometimes look longingly across at the state-directed capitalism practised in China, and pronounce it a model we might perhaps aspire to ourselves.
As recent events have demonstrated, we should not. China’s stock market crash is not the work of malicious financial journalists and short-selling hedge funds, but a signal of difficult time ahead and perhaps even of an economic roadcrash to come. After nearly 35 years of spectacular progress, the Chinese economy faces multiple challenges on many fronts which are not going to be solved by denying harsh realities and imprisoning journalists.
The progress of recent decades belies an industrial sector which in truth has become quite seriously uncompetitive by international standards. Many of China’s factories need completely retooling to keep up with developments in robotics and other forms of mechanisation. Yet if industry is to get less labour intensive, this only further steepens the challenge of employment creation.
It is reckoned that China needs to create some 20 million jobs a year just to keep pace with employment demand as the population shifts from land to town, eight million of them in high-end professions to cater for the country’s burgeoning output of graduates. China’s modernisation has created a monster which it is struggling to feed.
As the export-growth story waned, China compensated by unleashing a massive investment boom, which internal demand is now struggling to keep up with, rendering many of the country’s shiny new constructs uneconomic and overburdened with bad debts.
The Chinese leadership looks to growth in consumption and service industries to plug the gap, but these new sources of demand can’t do so without further free-market reform, which in turn requires further loosening of the shackles of political control. Without growth, the Communist Party loses its political legitimacy, yet the old growth model is broken, and to achieve a new one, the authorities must cede the very power and influence that sustains them. Rumour-mongering journalists and short-selling speculators can only be blamed for so long.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

China has created a monster it can’t control

By Jeremy Warner

3 Sep 2015

When in trouble, shoot the messenger. This timehonoured approach to dealing with unwelcome news was much in evidence in China this week when nearly 200 people were rounded up and criminally charged with spreading “false” rumours about the stock market and the economy, or otherwise profiting from their travails.
One luckless financial journalist was ritually paraded on state TV, tearfully confessing his “crimes”. Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese desk of one London-based hedge fund group was summoned to a “meeting” with regulators, and hasn’t been heard of since. Her Chinese husband says “she’s gone on holiday”. We can only hope it is not to the re-indoctrination of the asbestos mines. Despite the massive progress of recent decades, old habits die hard.
China was meant to have embraced free market reform, yet these latest actions suggest an altogether different approach. Roughly summarised, it amounts to: “Reform good, but woe betide the free market if it doesn’t do what the high command wants it to.” When the stock market was going up, the Chinese authorities were perfectly happy to tolerate what, to virtually all Western observers, looked like a dangerously speculative bubble, vaingloriously believing it to be a fair reflection of the wondrous successes of the Chinese economy.
The first rule of stock market investment – that share prices can go down as well as up – seems to have been almost wholly forgotten in the scramble for instant riches. When, inevitably, the stock market crashed, the authorities threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but they failed to halt the carnage. This was an even ruder awakening – for it demonstrated to an already disillusioned public that policy-makers were no longer in control of events. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed, but there are today more Chinese with stock trading accounts – some 90 million – than there are members of the Communist Party – “just” 80 million. In any case, powerless before the storm, the authorities have instead turned to scapegoating.
Apparently more liberal, advanced economies, it ought to be said, are by no means averse to this kind of behaviour either. A few years back, Italian prosecutors charged nine employees of Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Rating with market abuse for daring to downgrade Italy’s credit rating, while it is still commonplace in France to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators and their cronies in the London press for any financial or economic setback.
Nor are Western governments and central bankers averse to a little market manipulation when it suits them. What is “quantitative easing” other than money printing to prop up asset prices, including stocks and shares? Chinese refusal to accept the judgments of “Mr Market”, it might be argued, is just a more extreme version of the same thing. Small wonder that European officials sometimes look longingly across at the state-directed capitalism practised in China, and pronounce it a model we might perhaps aspire to ourselves.
As recent events have demonstrated, we should not. China’s stock market crash is not the work of malicious financial journalists and short-selling hedge funds, but a signal of difficult time ahead and perhaps even of an economic roadcrash to come. After nearly 35 years of spectacular progress, the Chinese economy faces multiple challenges on many fronts which are not going to be solved by denying harsh realities and imprisoning journalists.
The progress of recent decades belies an industrial sector which in truth has become quite seriously uncompetitive by international standards. Many of China’s factories need completely retooling to keep up with developments in robotics and other forms of mechanisation. Yet if industry is to get less labour intensive, this only further steepens the challenge of employment creation.
It is reckoned that China needs to create some 20 million jobs a year just to keep pace with employment demand as the population shifts from land to town, eight million of them in high-end professions to cater for the country’s burgeoning output of graduates. China’s modernisation has created a monster which it is struggling to feed.
As the export-growth story waned, China compensated by unleashing a massive investment boom, which internal demand is now struggling to keep up with, rendering many of the country’s shiny new constructs uneconomic and overburdened with bad debts.
The Chinese leadership looks to growth in consumption and service industries to plug the gap, but these new sources of demand can’t do so without further free-market reform, which in turn requires further loosening of the shackles of political control. Without growth, the Communist Party loses its political legitimacy, yet the old growth model is broken, and to achieve a new one, the authorities must cede the very power and influence that sustains them. Rumour-mongering journalists and short-selling speculators can only be blamed for so long.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

China has created a monster it can’t control

By Jeremy Warner

3 Sep 2015

When in trouble, shoot the messenger. This timehonoured approach to dealing with unwelcome news was much in evidence in China this week when nearly 200 people were rounded up and criminally charged with spreading “false” rumours about the stock market and the economy, or otherwise profiting from their travails.
One luckless financial journalist was ritually paraded on state TV, tearfully confessing his “crimes”. Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese desk of one London-based hedge fund group was summoned to a “meeting” with regulators, and hasn’t been heard of since. Her Chinese husband says “she’s gone on holiday”. We can only hope it is not to the re-indoctrination of the asbestos mines. Despite the massive progress of recent decades, old habits die hard.
China was meant to have embraced free market reform, yet these latest actions suggest an altogether different approach. Roughly summarised, it amounts to: “Reform good, but woe betide the free market if it doesn’t do what the high command wants it to.” When the stock market was going up, the Chinese authorities were perfectly happy to tolerate what, to virtually all Western observers, looked like a dangerously speculative bubble, vaingloriously believing it to be a fair reflection of the wondrous successes of the Chinese economy.
The first rule of stock market investment – that share prices can go down as well as up – seems to have been almost wholly forgotten in the scramble for instant riches. When, inevitably, the stock market crashed, the authorities threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but they failed to halt the carnage. This was an even ruder awakening – for it demonstrated to an already disillusioned public that policy-makers were no longer in control of events. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed, but there are today more Chinese with stock trading accounts – some 90 million – than there are members of the Communist Party – “just” 80 million. In any case, powerless before the storm, the authorities have instead turned to scapegoating.
Apparently more liberal, advanced economies, it ought to be said, are by no means averse to this kind of behaviour either. A few years back, Italian prosecutors charged nine employees of Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Rating with market abuse for daring to downgrade Italy’s credit rating, while it is still commonplace in France to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators and their cronies in the London press for any financial or economic setback.
Nor are Western governments and central bankers averse to a little market manipulation when it suits them. What is “quantitative easing” other than money printing to prop up asset prices, including stocks and shares? Chinese refusal to accept the judgments of “Mr Market”, it might be argued, is just a more extreme version of the same thing. Small wonder that European officials sometimes look longingly across at the state-directed capitalism practised in China, and pronounce it a model we might perhaps aspire to ourselves.
As recent events have demonstrated, we should not. China’s stock market crash is not the work of malicious financial journalists and short-selling hedge funds, but a signal of difficult time ahead and perhaps even of an economic roadcrash to come. After nearly 35 years of spectacular progress, the Chinese economy faces multiple challenges on many fronts which are not going to be solved by denying harsh realities and imprisoning journalists.
The progress of recent decades belies an industrial sector which in truth has become quite seriously uncompetitive by international standards. Many of China’s factories need completely retooling to keep up with developments in robotics and other forms of mechanisation. Yet if industry is to get less labour intensive, this only further steepens the challenge of employment creation.
It is reckoned that China needs to create some 20 million jobs a year just to keep pace with employment demand as the population shifts from land to town, eight million of them in high-end professions to cater for the country’s burgeoning output of graduates. China’s modernisation has created a monster which it is struggling to feed.
As the export-growth story waned, China compensated by unleashing a massive investment boom, which internal demand is now struggling to keep up with, rendering many of the country’s shiny new constructs uneconomic and overburdened with bad debts.
The Chinese leadership looks to growth in consumption and service industries to plug the gap, but these new sources of demand can’t do so without further free-market reform, which in turn requires further loosening of the shackles of political control. Without growth, the Communist Party loses its political legitimacy, yet the old growth model is broken, and to achieve a new one, the authorities must cede the very power and influence that sustains them. Rumour-mongering journalists and short-selling speculators can only be blamed for so long.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Adapted)

Read the text and answer the question

China has created a monster it can’t control

By Jeremy Warner

3 Sep 2015

When in trouble, shoot the messenger. This timehonoured approach to dealing with unwelcome news was much in evidence in China this week when nearly 200 people were rounded up and criminally charged with spreading “false” rumours about the stock market and the economy, or otherwise profiting from their travails.
One luckless financial journalist was ritually paraded on state TV, tearfully confessing his “crimes”. Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese desk of one London-based hedge fund group was summoned to a “meeting” with regulators, and hasn’t been heard of since. Her Chinese husband says “she’s gone on holiday”. We can only hope it is not to the re-indoctrination of the asbestos mines. Despite the massive progress of recent decades, old habits die hard.
China was meant to have embraced free market reform, yet these latest actions suggest an altogether different approach. Roughly summarised, it amounts to: “Reform good, but woe betide the free market if it doesn’t do what the high command wants it to.” When the stock market was going up, the Chinese authorities were perfectly happy to tolerate what, to virtually all Western observers, looked like a dangerously speculative bubble, vaingloriously believing it to be a fair reflection of the wondrous successes of the Chinese economy.
The first rule of stock market investment – that share prices can go down as well as up – seems to have been almost wholly forgotten in the scramble for instant riches. When, inevitably, the stock market crashed, the authorities threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but they failed to halt the carnage. This was an even ruder awakening – for it demonstrated to an already disillusioned public that policy-makers were no longer in control of events. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed, but there are today more Chinese with stock trading accounts – some 90 million – than there are members of the Communist Party – “just” 80 million. In any case, powerless before the storm, the authorities have instead turned to scapegoating.
Apparently more liberal, advanced economies, it ought to be said, are by no means averse to this kind of behaviour either. A few years back, Italian prosecutors charged nine employees of Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Rating with market abuse for daring to downgrade Italy’s credit rating, while it is still commonplace in France to blame Anglo-Saxon speculators and their cronies in the London press for any financial or economic setback.
Nor are Western governments and central bankers averse to a little market manipulation when it suits them. What is “quantitative easing” other than money printing to prop up asset prices, including stocks and shares? Chinese refusal to accept the judgments of “Mr Market”, it might be argued, is just a more extreme version of the same thing. Small wonder that European officials sometimes look longingly across at the state-directed capitalism practised in China, and pronounce it a model we might perhaps aspire to ourselves.
As recent events have demonstrated, we should not. China’s stock market crash is not the work of malicious financial journalists and short-selling hedge funds, but a signal of difficult time ahead and perhaps even of an economic roadcrash to come. After nearly 35 years of spectacular progress, the Chinese economy faces multiple challenges on many fronts which are not going to be solved by denying harsh realities and imprisoning journalists.
The progress of recent decades belies an industrial sector which in truth has become quite seriously uncompetitive by international standards. Many of China’s factories need completely retooling to keep up with developments in robotics and other forms of mechanisation. Yet if industry is to get less labour intensive, this only further steepens the challenge of employment creation.
It is reckoned that China needs to create some 20 million jobs a year just to keep pace with employment demand as the population shifts from land to town, eight million of them in high-end professions to cater for the country’s burgeoning output of graduates. China’s modernisation has created a monster which it is struggling to feed.
As the export-growth story waned, China compensated by unleashing a massive investment boom, which internal demand is now struggling to keep up with, rendering many of the country’s shiny new constructs uneconomic and overburdened with bad debts.
The Chinese leadership looks to growth in consumption and service industries to plug the gap, but these new sources of demand can’t do so without further free-market reform, which in turn requires further loosening of the shackles of political control. Without growth, the Communist Party loses its political legitimacy, yet the old growth model is broken, and to achieve a new one, the authorities must cede the very power and influence that sustains them. Rumour-mongering journalists and short-selling speculators can only be blamed for so long.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Adapted)

Leia a charge para responder às questões de 21 a 23.

Leia a charge para responder às questões de 21 a 23.

Leia a charge para responder às questões de 21 a 23.

Experts have long known that rich people generally live longer than poor people. But a growing body of data shows a more disturbing pattern: Despite big advances in medicine, technology and education, the longevity gap between high-income and low-income Americans has been widening sharply.
The poor are losing ground not only in income, but also in years of life, the most basic measure of well-being. In the early 1970s, a 60-year-old man in the top half of the earnings ladder could expect to live 1.2 years longer than a man of the same age in the bottom half, according to an analysis by the Social Security Administration. Fastforward to 2001, and he could expect to live 5.8 years longer than his poorer counterpart.
New research released this month contains even more jarring numbers. Looking at the extreme ends of the income spectrum, economists at the Brookings Institution found that for men born in 1920, there was a six-year difference in life expectancy between the top 10 percent of earners and the bottom 10 percent. For men born in 1950, that difference had more than doubled, to 14 years. For women, the gap grew to 13 years, from 4.7 years. “There has been this huge spreading out,” said Gary Burtless, one of the authors of the study.
The growing chasm is alarming policy makers, and has surfaced in the presidential campaign. During a Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton expressed concern over shortening life spans for some Americans. “This may be the next frontier of the inequality discussion,” said Peter Orszag, a former Obama administration official now at Citigroup, who was among the first to highlight the pattern. The causes are still being investigated, but public health researchers say that deep declines in smoking among the affluent and educated may partly explain the difference. Overall, according to the Brookings study, life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent of wage earner improved by just 3 percent for men born in 1950 compared with those born in 1920. For the top 10 percent, though, it jumped by about 28 percent. (The researchers used a common measure – life expectancy at age 50 – and included data from 1984 to 2012.)

(www.nytimes.com. Adaptado.)

Experts have long known that rich people generally live longer than poor people. But a growing body of data shows a more disturbing pattern: Despite big advances in medicine, technology and education, the longevity gap between high-income and low-income Americans has been widening sharply.
The poor are losing ground not only in income, but also in years of life, the most basic measure of well-being. In the early 1970s, a 60-year-old man in the top half of the earnings ladder could expect to live 1.2 years longer than a man of the same age in the bottom half, according to an analysis by the Social Security Administration. Fastforward to 2001, and he could expect to live 5.8 years longer than his poorer counterpart.
New research released this month contains even more jarring numbers. Looking at the extreme ends of the income spectrum, economists at the Brookings Institution found that for men born in 1920, there was a six-year difference in life expectancy between the top 10 percent of earners and the bottom 10 percent. For men born in 1950, that difference had more than doubled, to 14 years. For women, the gap grew to 13 years, from 4.7 years. “There has been this huge spreading out,” said Gary Burtless, one of the authors of the study.
The growing chasm is alarming policy makers, and has surfaced in the presidential campaign. During a Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton expressed concern over shortening life spans for some Americans. “This may be the next frontier of the inequality discussion,” said Peter Orszag, a former Obama administration official now at Citigroup, who was among the first to highlight the pattern. The causes are still being investigated, but public health researchers say that deep declines in smoking among the affluent and educated may partly explain the difference. Overall, according to the Brookings study, life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent of wage earner improved by just 3 percent for men born in 1950 compared with those born in 1920. For the top 10 percent, though, it jumped by about 28 percent. (The researchers used a common measure – life expectancy at age 50 – and included data from 1984 to 2012.)

(www.nytimes.com. Adaptado.)

Experts have long known that rich people generally live longer than poor people. But a growing body of data shows a more disturbing pattern: Despite big advances in medicine, technology and education, the longevity gap between high-income and low-income Americans has been widening sharply.
The poor are losing ground not only in income, but also in years of life, the most basic measure of well-being. In the early 1970s, a 60-year-old man in the top half of the earnings ladder could expect to live 1.2 years longer than a man of the same age in the bottom half, according to an analysis by the Social Security Administration. Fastforward to 2001, and he could expect to live 5.8 years longer than his poorer counterpart.
New research released this month contains even more jarring numbers. Looking at the extreme ends of the income spectrum, economists at the Brookings Institution found that for men born in 1920, there was a six-year difference in life expectancy between the top 10 percent of earners and the bottom 10 percent. For men born in 1950, that difference had more than doubled, to 14 years. For women, the gap grew to 13 years, from 4.7 years. “There has been this huge spreading out,” said Gary Burtless, one of the authors of the study.
The growing chasm is alarming policy makers, and has surfaced in the presidential campaign. During a Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton expressed concern over shortening life spans for some Americans. “This may be the next frontier of the inequality discussion,” said Peter Orszag, a former Obama administration official now at Citigroup, who was among the first to highlight the pattern. The causes are still being investigated, but public health researchers say that deep declines in smoking among the affluent and educated may partly explain the difference. Overall, according to the Brookings study, life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent of wage earner improved by just 3 percent for men born in 1950 compared with those born in 1920. For the top 10 percent, though, it jumped by about 28 percent. (The researchers used a common measure – life expectancy at age 50 – and included data from 1984 to 2012.)

(www.nytimes.com. Adaptado.)

Experts have long known that rich people generally live longer than poor people. But a growing body of data shows a more disturbing pattern: Despite big advances in medicine, technology and education, the longevity gap between high-income and low-income Americans has been widening sharply.
The poor are losing ground not only in income, but also in years of life, the most basic measure of well-being. In the early 1970s, a 60-year-old man in the top half of the earnings ladder could expect to live 1.2 years longer than a man of the same age in the bottom half, according to an analysis by the Social Security Administration. Fastforward to 2001, and he could expect to live 5.8 years longer than his poorer counterpart.
New research released this month contains even more jarring numbers. Looking at the extreme ends of the income spectrum, economists at the Brookings Institution found that for men born in 1920, there was a six-year difference in life expectancy between the top 10 percent of earners and the bottom 10 percent. For men born in 1950, that difference had more than doubled, to 14 years. For women, the gap grew to 13 years, from 4.7 years. “There has been this huge spreading out,” said Gary Burtless, one of the authors of the study.
The growing chasm is alarming policy makers, and has surfaced in the presidential campaign. During a Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton expressed concern over shortening life spans for some Americans. “This may be the next frontier of the inequality discussion,” said Peter Orszag, a former Obama administration official now at Citigroup, who was among the first to highlight the pattern. The causes are still being investigated, but public health researchers say that deep declines in smoking among the affluent and educated may partly explain the difference. Overall, according to the Brookings study, life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent of wage earner improved by just 3 percent for men born in 1950 compared with those born in 1920. For the top 10 percent, though, it jumped by about 28 percent. (The researchers used a common measure – life expectancy at age 50 – and included data from 1984 to 2012.)

(www.nytimes.com. Adaptado.)

Experts have long known that rich people generally live longer than poor people. But a growing body of data shows a more disturbing pattern: Despite big advances in medicine, technology and education, the longevity gap between high-income and low-income Americans has been widening sharply.
The poor are losing ground not only in income, but also in years of life, the most basic measure of well-being. In the early 1970s, a 60-year-old man in the top half of the earnings ladder could expect to live 1.2 years longer than a man of the same age in the bottom half, according to an analysis by the Social Security Administration. Fastforward to 2001, and he could expect to live 5.8 years longer than his poorer counterpart.
New research released this month contains even more jarring numbers. Looking at the extreme ends of the income spectrum, economists at the Brookings Institution found that for men born in 1920, there was a six-year difference in life expectancy between the top 10 percent of earners and the bottom 10 percent. For men born in 1950, that difference had more than doubled, to 14 years. For women, the gap grew to 13 years, from 4.7 years. “There has been this huge spreading out,” said Gary Burtless, one of the authors of the study.
The growing chasm is alarming policy makers, and has surfaced in the presidential campaign. During a Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton expressed concern over shortening life spans for some Americans. “This may be the next frontier of the inequality discussion,” said Peter Orszag, a former Obama administration official now at Citigroup, who was among the first to highlight the pattern. The causes are still being investigated, but public health researchers say that deep declines in smoking among the affluent and educated may partly explain the difference. Overall, according to the Brookings study, life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent of wage earner improved by just 3 percent for men born in 1950 compared with those born in 1920. For the top 10 percent, though, it jumped by about 28 percent. (The researchers used a common measure – life expectancy at age 50 – and included data from 1984 to 2012.)

(www.nytimes.com. Adaptado.)

Leia o texto para responder a questão

“They don’t see us as a powerful economic force, which is an incredible ignorance.” – Salma Hayek, actor, denouncing sexism in Hollywood at the Cannes Film Festival; until recently, she added, studio heads believed women were interested only in seeing romantic comedies.

(Time, 01.06.2015.)

Experts have long known that rich people generally live longer than poor people. But a growing body of data shows a more disturbing pattern: Despite big advances in medicine, technology and education, the longevity gap between high-income and low-income Americans has been widening sharply.
The poor are losing ground not only in income, but also in years of life, the most basic measure of well-being. In the early 1970s, a 60-year-old man in the top half of the earnings ladder could expect to live 1.2 years longer than a man of the same age in the bottom half, according to an analysis by the Social Security Administration. Fastforward to 2001, and he could expect to live 5.8 years longer than his poorer counterpart.
New research released this month contains even more jarring numbers. Looking at the extreme ends of the income spectrum, economists at the Brookings Institution found that for men born in 1920, there was a six-year difference in life expectancy between the top 10 percent of earners and the bottom 10 percent. For men born in 1950, that difference had more than doubled, to 14 years. For women, the gap grew to 13 years, from 4.7 years. “There has been this huge spreading out,” said Gary Burtless, one of the authors of the study.
The growing chasm is alarming policy makers, and has surfaced in the presidential campaign. During a Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton expressed concern over shortening life spans for some Americans. “This may be the next frontier of the inequality discussion,” said Peter Orszag, a former Obama administration official now at Citigroup, who was among the first to highlight the pattern. The causes are still being investigated, but public health researchers say that deep declines in smoking among the affluent and educated may partly explain the difference. Overall, according to the Brookings study, life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent of wage earner improved by just 3 percent for men born in 1950 compared with those born in 1920. For the top 10 percent, though, it jumped by about 28 percent. (The researchers used a common measure – life expectancy at age 50 – and included data from 1984 to 2012.)

(www.nytimes.com. Adaptado.)