Questões de Concursos Vocabulário Vocabulary

An increasing body of evidence suggests that the time we spend on our smartphones is interfering with our sleep, self-esteem, relationships, memory, attention spans, creativity, productivity and problem-solving and decision-making skills. But there is another reason for us to rethink our relationships with our devices. By chronically raising levels of cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, our phones may be threatening our health and shortening our lives.

If they happened only occasionally, phone-induced cortisol spikes might not matter. But the average American spends four hours a day staring at their smartphone and keeps it within arm’s reach nearly all the time, according to a tracking app called Moment.

“Your cortisol levels are elevated when your phone is in sight or nearby, or when you hear it or even think you hear it,” says David Greenfield, professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction. “It’s a stress response, and it feels unpleasant, and the body’s natural response is to want to check the phone to make the stress go away.”

But while doing so might soothe you for a second, it probably will make things worse in the long run. Any time you check your phone, you’re likely to find something else stressful waiting for you, leading to another spike in cortisol and another craving to check your phone to make your anxiety go away. This cycle, when continuously reinforced, leads to chronically elevated cortisol levels. And chronically elevated cortisol levels have been tied to an increased risk of serious health problems, including depression, obesity, metabolic syndrome, Type 2 diabetes, fertility issues, high blood pressure, heart attack, dementia and stroke.

(Catherine Price. www.nytimes.com, 24.04.2019. Adaptado.)

INSTRUÇÃO: Responder à questão com base no texto.

Rip Van Winkle is a classic American short story written by Washington Irving based on local history _____ with influences from European folklore. It tells the story of a man who lived near the Catskill Mountains in New York before the Revolutionary War and fell asleep for twenty years. Everything he knew _____ in the town was gone. _____, he learned that he had to navigate this new world as a free citizen of the United States.

Adapted from: http://www.supersummary.com/rip-van-winkle/summary/ and https://www.bookreports.info/rip-van-winkle-summary/

T E X T

Can you learn in your sleep?

Sleep is known to be crucial for learning and memory formation. What's more, scientists have even managed to pick out specific memories and consolidate them during sleep. However, the exact mechanisms behind this were unknown — until now.

Those among us who grew up with the popular cartoon "Dexter's Laboratory" might remember the famous episode wherein Dexter's trying to learn French overnight. He creates a device that helps him to learn in his sleep by playing French phrases to him. Of course, since the show is a comedy, Dexter's record gets stuck on the phrase "Omelette du fromage" and the next day he's incapable of saying anything else. This is, of course, a problem that puts him through a series of hilarious situations.

The idea that we can learn in our sleep has captivated the minds of artists and scientists alike; the possibility that one day we could all drastically improve our productivity by learning in our sleep is very appealing. But could such a scenario ever become a reality?

New research seems to suggest so, and scientists in general are moving closer to understanding precisely what goes on in the brain when we sleep and how the restful state affects learning and memory formation.

For instance, previous studies have shown that non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep — or dreamless sleep — is crucial for consolidating memories. It has also been shown that sleep spindles, or sudden spikes in oscillatory brain activity that canbe seen on an electroencephalogram (EEG) during the second stage of non-REM sleep, are key for this memory consolidation. Scientists were also able to specifically target certain memories and reactivate, or strengthen, them by using auditory cues.

However, the mechanism behind such achievements remained mysterious until now. Researchers were also unaware if such mechanisms would help with memorizing new information.

Therefore, a team of researchers set out to investigate. Scott Cairney, from the University of York in the United Kingdom, co-led the research with Bernhard Staresina, who works at the University of Birmingham, also in the U.K. Their findings were published in the journal Current Biology.

Cairney explains the motivation for the research, saying, "We are quite certain that memories are reactivated in the brain during sleep, but we don't know the neural processes that underpin this phenomenon." "Sleep spindles," he continues, "have been linked to the benefits of sleep for memory in previous research, so we wanted to investigate whether these brain waves mediate reactivation. If they support memory reactivation, we further reasoned that it could be possible to decipher memory signals at the time that these spindles took place."

To test their hypotheses, Cairney and his colleagues asked 46 participants "to learn associations between words and pictures of objects or scenes before a nap." Afterward, some of the participants took a 90-minute nap, whereas others stayed awake. To those who napped, "Half of the words were [...] replayed during the nap to trigger the reactivation of the newly learned picture memories," explains Cairney.

"When the participants woke after a good period of sleep," he says, "we presented them again with the words and asked them to recall the object and scene pictures. We found that their memory was better for the pictures that were connected to the words that were presented in sleep, compared to those words that weren't," Cairney reports.

Using an EEG machine, the researchers were also able to see that playing the associated words to reactivate memories triggered sleep spindles in the participants' brains. More specifically, the EEG sleep spindle patterns "told" the researchers whether the participants were processing memories related to objects or memories related to scenes.

"Our data suggest that spindles facilitate processing of relevant memory features during sleep and that this process boosts memory consolidation," says Staresina. "While it has been shown previously," he continues, "that targeted memory reactivation can boost memory consolidation during sleep, we now show that sleep spindles might represent the key underlying mechanism."

Cairney adds, "When you are awake you learn new things, but when you are asleep you refine them, making it easier to retrieve them and apply them correctly when you need them the most. This is important for how we learn but also for how we might help retain healthy brain functions."

Staresina suggests that this newly gained knowledge could lead to effective strategies for boosting memory while sleeping.

So, though learning things from scratch à la "Dexter's Lab" may take a while to become a reality, we can safely say that our brains continue to learn while we sleep, and that researchers just got a lot closer to understanding why this happens.

From: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/Mar/2018

Read TEXT 1 below and answer question

TEXT 1

World Health Officials Describe Progress Against Tetanus, H.I.V. and Malaria

Infant and maternal tetanus was officially eliminated from the Americas this year, the Pan American Health Organization announced on Thursday. At one time, the infection killed about 10,000 newborns annually in the Western Hemisphere; tetanus still kills about 35,000 infants around the world. It was one of several significant global health advances, including new programs against malaria and H.I.V., announced last week in conjunction with the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Haiti was the last country in the Americas to eliminate neonatal tetanus. That does not mean complete eradication, because the bacteria that cause tetanus exist everywhere in soil and animal droppings. Rather, elimination means that thanks to vaccination of mothers and clean birth procedures — less than one case occurs per 1,000 live births.
The Americas have generally led the world in eliminating diseases for which vaccines exist. In this hemisphere, smallpox was eliminated in 1971, polio in 1994, rubella in 2015 and measles in 2016 (the diseases are sometimes reintroduced, as measles was at Disneyland in 2014, but outbreaks are usually brought quickly under control).
Also this week, the President’s Malaria Initiative said it would expand its work to new countries in West and Central Africa, protecting 90 million more people. The initiative, founded in 2005 as part of the United States Agency for International Development, has been a major force in driving down worldwide malaria deaths by about 40 percent in the past decade. The disease most often kills young children and pregnant women. The expansion in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Niger, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso was made possible because Congress increased funding for the initiative in fiscal year 2017, a representativ said
In his speech to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Trump praised the malaria initiative and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief as examples of leadership in humanitarian assistance by the United States.
A combination of aid agencies, drug companies and g cocktail totreat H.I.V. would soon be available to 92 countries, including virtually all of Africa, for about $75 a year. The new AIDS cocktail is the first available in poor countries to contain dolutegravir, which is widely used in wealthy countries because it is highly effective and has few side effects. The pill also contains lamivudine, an older but still effective drug, and tenof disoproxil fumarate, another modern drug whose inclus effects and resistance.
Almost 37 million people in the world have H.I.V., according to Unaids, the U.N.’s AIDS-fighting agency, but fewer than 20 million are now on antiretroviral medicine, which not only saves their lives but prevents them from passing on the disease.

McNEIL Jr., Donald. Disponível em: < https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/health/world-health-tetanus-infants.html?mcubz=1>. Acesso em: 22/09/2017.

TEXTO 01

CAN TECH DELIVER A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR PLANET EARTH?

Sustainability means many things to many people, but it boils down to this: saving Planet Earth.

Mankind1 , as a species, has been too successful for its own good – the global population is estimate to top nine billion by 2050, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

As a result, there is already a strain2 on the planet’s essential natural resources, particularly food and water, which population growth can only aggravate.

Meanwhile, our demand for energy has directed to the plundering3 of the earth’s hydrocarbons oil, gas and coal, producing a catastrophic climate change. In a month-long series of features on the theme of sustainability, Technology of Business will be examining the main challenges facing businesses and asking whether technology – which got us into this mess in the first place – can help get us out.

Global megatrends are affecting the business environment

Most companies are already being affected by climate change today, directly or indirectly, says *CDP, a global not-for-profit organization specializing in measuring business environmental impact.

Extreme weather, drought and flooding can disrupt production capacity and affect supply chains for a whole range of businesses. For example, in a CDP survey of 70 European companies, 83% said they had operations in “water-stressed” regions, while 73% said water shortages posed risks to their own operations or those of their suppliers.

Considering an increasingly globalised economy, few businesses can isolate themselves from the impacts of climate change, population growth and resource reduction, says Emma Price-Thomas, head of sustainability strategy at charity Business in the Community.

“The world is changing very fast. Global megatrends are markedly affecting the business environment. If companies don’t address these and think longer-term, they may end up putting themselves out of business,” she argues.

A lot of technology and research is being directed towards reducing water usage an industrial processes and designing products that need less water to work, she says.

*CDP - Carbon Disclosure Project é uma organização que opera o sistema global de divulgação para que investidores, gerenciem seus impactos ambientais

Fonte: WALL, Matthew, BBC NEWS, 2 May 2014. Disponível em: http://www.bbc.com/news/business27208569. Adaptado. Acesso em: 6 abr. 2018.

1 ManKind: Humanidade

2 Strain:Tensão

3 Plundering: Pilhagem

TEXTO

Brazil has declared an end to its public health emergency over the Zika virus, 18 months after a surge in cases drew headlines around the world.

The mosquito-borne virus was not considered a major health threat until the 2015 outbreak revealed that Zika can lead to severe birth defects. One of those defects, microcephaly, causes babies to be born with skulls much smaller than expected.

Photos of babies with the defect spread panic around the globe as the virus was reported in dozens of countries. Many would-be travellers cancelled their trips to Zika-infected places. The concern spread even more widely when health officials said it could also be transmitted through sexual contact with an infected person.

The health scare came just as Brazil, the epicentre of the outbreak, was preparing to host the 2016 Olympics, fuelling concerns the Games could help spread the virus. One athlete, a Spanish wind surfer, said she got Zika while training in Brazil ahead ofthe Games.

In response to the outbreak, Brazil launched a mosquito-eradication campaign. The health ministry said those efforts have helped to dramatically reduce cases of Zika. Between January and mid-April, 95% fewer cases were recorded than during the same period last year. The incidence of microcephaly has fallen as well.

The World Health Organization (WHO) lifted its own international emergency in November, even while saying the virus remained a threat.

“The end of the emergency doesn’t mean the end of surveillance or assistance” to affected families, said Adeilson Cavalcante, the secretary for health surveillance at Brazil’s health ministry. “The health ministry and other organisations involved in this area will maintain a policy of fighting Zika, dengue and chikungunya.”

All three diseases are carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

But the WHO has warned that Zika is “here to stay,” even when cases of it fall off, and that fighting the disease will be an ongoing battle.

(Fonte: Associated Press, Friday 12 May 2017 10.18 BST. Last modified on Friday 12 May 2017 22.00 BST)

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

There is nothing conventional about 17-year-old Michael Fuller’s relationship with music. As someone with high-functioning autism who sees the world through sound, creating melodies from the bustle of the high street or trains on the tracks feels more natural than any social interaction. This hardwired connection to sound has been with him for as long as he can remember.

By the age of 11, Michael could play Mozart by ear, having taught himself to play the piano through a mobile phone app. The app highlighted notes on a keyboard as classical music played. He describes his unusual musical talent as “downloading” music into his head. His mother, Nadine, remembers that as a child Michael would “suddenly pop up and say: ‘I’ve got a symphony’”. Michael took to the piano and found he could quickly perform complex pieces from memory.

“I liked what I was hearing, sought more music and began studying through Google and YouTube,” he remembers. “It was very organic. I would listen in great depth and the music would be implanted in my mind. I could then just play it on the piano – all without being taught.”

Growing up in a family that listened to reggae over classical music, Michael feels “very much aware” of how different his approach is to music – symbolised by the way he taught himself piano as a child. This, his mother says, came as a “surprise to the family and myself – I’d never listened to classical music in my life”.

It was not long after learning to play the piano that Michael started composing his own works. Describing this process as “making music with my mind”, Michael says composing classical symphonies “helps me to express myself through music – it makes me calm”. Michael wants to nurture his song writing to achieve his ambition of becoming a modern mainstream classical artist. He wants to control the creative process, unlike typical modern-day composers, who he says “write blobs on a page, hand it over to the musicians – then say bye-bye and stay in the background and get no recognition”. Instead, Michael is determined to take centre stage.

(Alex Taylor. www.bbc.com, 27.03.2018. Adaptado.)