Lego wants to replace plastic blocks with sustainable materials

      The Lego Group wants to replace the plastic in their products with a “sustainable material” by 2030, the company announced.
      The world’s largest toy company will invest $1 billion in their new LEGO Sustainable Materials Centre in Denmark, which _______(1) devoted to finding and implementing new sustainable alternatives for their current building materials. Lego plans on hiring 100 specialists for the center. There is no official definition of a sustainable material.
      Legos _______(2) made with a strong plastic known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene since 1963. The company uses more than 6,000 tons of plastic annually to manufacture its products, according to NBC News. Changing the raw material could have a large effect on Lego’s carbon footprint, especially considering that only 10% of the carbon emissions from Lego products come from its factories. The other 90% is produced from the extraction and refinement of raw materials, as well as distribution from factories to toy stores.
      The company _______(3) already taken steps to lower its carbon footprint, including a reduction of packaging size and an investment in an offshore wind farm.
                                  Adapted from http://time.com/3931946/lego-sustainable-materials/

Numa sala de aula, um professor de Geografia apresentou o seguinte texto aos seus alunos: “Quase todo mundo conhece alguém que tem certeza de que o pouso da Apolo 11 na lua, assim como os pequenos grandes passos de Neil Armstrong foram uma farsa. São pessoas que garantem que tudo foi uma produção de Hollywood (...). Agora mesmo estamos diante de gente que garante que a Terra, diferentemente de todos os outros planetas e satélites do nosso sistema solar, é na verdade plana. São os terraplanistas (...). Mas tem gente pior que os terraplanistas. Por exemplo, a sociedade que acredita – e divulga – que a Terra é oca. E habitada. Lá estariam vikings, nazistas e até uma raça superior que viveria num lugar chamado Agharta, iluminado por um sol interior.”

Fonte: Paulo Pestana. A ficção na vida real. Jornal Correio Braziliense, 27 de janeiro de 2019.

Após a leitura, o professor pediu aos seus alunos que, com base em evidências científicas, refutassem a ideia de que a Terra é oca. Três alunos apresentaram seus argumentos:

João: “Essa ideia de que a Terra é oca é um absurdo do ponto de vista da Ciência. Por meio de sismógrafos, é possível medir a velocidade de propagação das ondas no interior da Terra. Esses estudos revelam que o interior do Planeta é formado por diversas camadas, com densidade e composição de materiais variados.”

Carlos: “Impossível! As evidências científicas deixam claro que a maior parte do interior da Terra é composta por uma mistura Níquel e Ferro em estado líquido, onde a temperatura média está acima de 5.000°C.”

José: “Como a Terra poderia ser oca se já sabemos que os terremotos e os vulcões, por exemplo, originam-se da pressão exercida pelo magma encontrado na astenosfera?”

O mundo moderno é um voraz consumidor de energia. Atender a essa demanda, pressionada cada vez mais pelas economias emergentes, bem como observar as exigências de um mercado balizado pelo paradigma da eficiência, são desafios incontornáveis. Sobre as características e a participação das diversas fontes de energia, considere as seguintes afirmativas:

I – O drástico aumento do preço do petróleo causado pelas crises internacionais de 1973 e 1979/1980 teve um duplo efeito: viabilizou sua extração em locais de difícil acesso (Sibéria, Alasca e plataformas continentais) e estimulou a pesquisa de fontes alternativas.
II – Impulsionado pelas políticas de redução das emissões de CO2 adotadas pela China, o gás natural já é, desde 2010, a segunda fonte de energia mais utilizada no mundo.
III – Fontes de energia como o etanol e o biodiesel despontam atualmente como excelentes alternativas, pois apresentam os seguintes benefícios: poluem menos que os combustíveis fósseis, geram vários empregos no campo e dinamizam a economia por conta do seu efeito multiplicador.
IV – Isenta de impactos ambientais, a energia eólica vem conquistando cada vez mais espaço na matriz energética de países como China, EUA, Alemanha, Espanha e Índia.
V – Países como França, Ucrânia, Japão e Coreia do Sul continuam a ter nas usinas nucleares uma importante fonte energia, mesmo com problemas relacionados à destinação dos seus rejeitos, à pressão da opinião pública e aos altos custos de construção e manutenção.

Segundo o geógrafo Aziz Ab’Sáber, existem grandes extensões do território brasileiro em que vários elementos naturais (clima, vegetação, relevo, hidrografia e solo) interagem de forma singular, caracterizando uma unidade paisagística: são os chamados domínios morfoclimáticos. Entre eles ocorrem faixas de transição.

Sobre os domínios morfoclimáticos e as faixas de transição, considere as seguintes afirmações:

I – A exuberância da Floresta Amazônica contrasta com a pobreza de grande parte de seus solos, geralmente ácidos, intemperizados e de baixa fertilidade.
II – Tipicamente associados à Campanha Gaúcha, os campos apresentam um relevo com suaves ondulações, cobertas principalmente por gramíneas. Neste domínio, há um preocupante processo de desertificação advindo de anomalias climáticas observadas nas últimas décadas.
III – O Cerrado, adaptado à alternância do clima tropical, ocupa mais de 3 milhões de km² e apresenta solos pobres. É uma formação tipicamente latifoliada que, dentre outras características, perde as folhas durante o período de seca.
IV – A Mata dos Cocais é uma faixa de transição situada entre os domínios da Floresta Amazônica, do Cerrado e da Caatinga. Predominam as palmeiras, com destaque para o babaçu, a carnaúba e o buriti.

É inequívoca a influência do clima sobre as mais variadas atividades humanas, na diferenciação da paisagem e na biogeografia. Analise as afirmativas abaixo:

I – A célula tropical (também chamada célula de Hadley) é responsável pela transferência de calor e umidade entre as latitudes equatoriais e subtropicais. Nela podem-se identificar os ventos alísios e os contra-alísios.
II – O El Niño é uma anomalia climática com desdobramentos globais. Na costa ocidental da América do Sul, o fenômeno provoca a elevação da temperatura da água do mar e, consequentemente, um aumento da atividade pesqueira no litoral peruano.
III – No Sul e Sudeste da Ásia, a agricultura tradicional é muito influenciada pelo regime das monções, cujo mecanismo básico de alternância de centros de pressão é semelhante ao que regula as brisas marinhas e terrestres, ressalvadas a duração e as respectivas escalas de abrangência.
IV – O clima mediterrâneo, típico do sul da Europa, das extremidades norte e sul da África, de parte do litoral chileno e californiano e da porção meridional da Austrália, apresenta duas estações bem distintas: um verão quente e chuvoso e um inverno frio e seco.

Teaching English in the Brazilian countryside

      “In Brazil, countryside youth want to learn about new places, new cultures and people. However, they think their everyday lives are an obstacle to that, because they imagine that country life has nothing to do with other parts of the world”, says Rafael Fonseca. Rafael teaches English in a language school in a cooperative coffee cultivation in Paraguaçu. His learners are the children of rural workers.
      Rafael tells us that the objective of the project being developed in the cooperative is to give the young people more opportunities of growth in the countryside, and that includes the ability to communicate with international buyers. “In the future, our project may help overcome the lack of succession in countryside activities because, nowadays, rural workers’ children become lawyers, engineers, teachers, and sometimes even doctors, but those children very rarely want to have a profession related to rural work”, says Rafael.
      “That happens”, he adds, “because their parents understand that life in the countryside can be hard work and they do not want to see their children running the same type of life that they have. Their children also believe that life in the country does not allow them to have contact with other parts of the world, meet other people and improve cultural bounds. The program intends to show them that by means of a second language they can travel, communicate with new people and learn about new cultures as a means of promoting and selling what they produce in the country, and that includes receiving visitors in their workplace from abroad.”
      Rafael’s strategy is to contextualize the English language and keep learners up-to-date with what happens in the global market. “Integrating relevant topics about countryside living can be transformative in the classroom. The local regional and cultural aspects are a great source of inspiration and learning not only for the young, but for us all.”

Adapted from http://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2019/01/21/teaching-english-in-the-brazilian-classroom/

                          Prison without guards or weapons in Brazil

      Tatiane Correia de Lima is a 26-year-old mother of two who is serving a 12-year sentence in Brazil. The South American country has the world’s fourth largest prison population and its jails regularly come under the spotlight for their poor conditions, with chronic overcrowding and gang violence provoking deadly riots.
      Lima had just been moved from a prison in the mainstream penitential system to a facility run ______(1) the Association for the Protection and Assistance to Convicts (APAC) in the town of Itaúna, in Minas Gerais state. Unlike in the mainstream system, “which steals your femininity”, as Lima puts it, at the APAC jail she is allowed to wear her own clothes and have a mirror, make-up and hair dye. But the difference between the regimes is far more than skin-deep.
      The APAC system has been gaining growing recognition as a safer, cheaper and more humane answer to the country’s prison crisis. All APAC prisoners must have passed through the mainstream system and must show remorse and be willing to follow the strict regime of work and study which is part of the system’s philosophy. There are no guards or weapons and visitors are greeted by an inmate who unlocks the main door to the small women’s jail.
      Inmates are known as recuperandos (recovering people), reflecting the APAC focus ______(2) restorative justice and rehabilitation. They must study and work, sometimes in collaboration with the local community. If they do not - or if they try to abscond - they risk being returned to the mainstream system. There have been physical fights but never a murder at an APAC jail.

                          Adapted from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44056946

Teaching English in the Brazilian countryside

      “In Brazil, countryside youth want to learn about new places, new cultures and people. However, they think their everyday lives are an obstacle to that, because they imagine that country life has nothing to do with other parts of the world”, says Rafael Fonseca. Rafael teaches English in a language school in a cooperative coffee cultivation in Paraguaçu. His learners are the children of rural workers.
      Rafael tells us that the objective of the project being developed in the cooperative is to give the young people more opportunities of growth in the countryside, and that includes the ability to communicate with international buyers. “In the future, our project may help overcome the lack of succession in countryside activities because, nowadays, rural workers’ children become lawyers, engineers, teachers, and sometimes even doctors, but those children very rarely want to have a profession related to rural work”, says Rafael.
      “That happens”, he adds, “because their parents understand that life in the countryside can be hard work and they do not want to see their children running the same type of life that they have. Their children also believe that life in the country does not allow them to have contact with other parts of the world, meet other people and improve cultural bounds. The program intends to show them that by means of a second language they can travel, communicate with new people and learn about new cultures as a means of promoting and selling what they produce in the country, and that includes receiving visitors in their workplace from abroad.”
      Rafael’s strategy is to contextualize the English language and keep learners up-to-date with what happens in the global market. “Integrating relevant topics about countryside living can be transformative in the classroom. The local regional and cultural aspects are a great source of inspiration and learning not only for the young, but for us all.”

Adapted from http://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2019/01/21/teaching-english-in-the-brazilian-classroom/

                                    (Título omitido propositadamente)

      Italian children have been told not to turn up to school unless they can prove they have been properly vaccinated. The deadline follows months of national debate over compulsory vaccination. The new law came amid a surge in measles cases - but Italian officials say vaccination rates have improved since it was introduced. Children must receive a range of mandatory immunisations before attending school. They include vaccinations for chickenpox, polio, measles, mumps and rubella.
      Children up to the age of six years will be excluded from nursery and kindergarten without proof of vaccination under the new rules. Those aged between six and 16 cannot be banned from attending school, but their parents face fines if they do not complete the mandatory course of immunisations.
      Italian media report that regional authorities are handling the situation in a number of different ways. In Bologna, the local authority has set letters of suspension to the parents of some 300 children, and a total of 5,000 children do not have their vaccine documentation up to date. In other areas there have been no reported cases, while still others have been given a grace period of a few days beyond the deadline.
      The new law was passed to raise Italy’s dropping vaccination rates from below 80% to the World Health Organisation’s 95% target.
                                    Adapted from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47536981

Irregular distribuição dos recursos hídricos, uso compartilhado de bacias hidrográficas, ineficientes sistemas de tratamento, desmatamento, construção de barragens, despejo de lixo, diversidade climática, expansão da urbanização, pressão demográfica, geração de energia, projetos de irrigação, dentre outros, são fatores que potencializam o estresse hídrico e originam situações hidroconflitivas. Sobre esse último termo, considere as seguintes afirmações:

I – Um exemplo de situação hidroconflitiva é o caso da construção de barragens para projetos de irrigação na bacia do rio Nilo pelo governo Sudanês, o que tem provocado tensões com o vizinho Egito.
II – O Brasil, por dispor de uma região extremamente rica em recursos hídricos, não tem registrado problemas dessa natureza com seus vizinhos ao longo de sua história republicana.
III – O Rio Ganges atravessa quase todo o território de Bangladesh antes de se abrir no largo delta, em território indiano. A construção de barragens a montante, pelo primeiro, tem provocado desavenças entre esses dois países.
IV – No conflito entre israelenses e palestinos, há um importante componente hídrico, evidenciado pela posse e controle das escassas fontes existentes na região.

                          Prison without guards or weapons in Brazil

      Tatiane Correia de Lima is a 26-year-old mother of two who is serving a 12-year sentence in Brazil. The South American country has the world’s fourth largest prison population and its jails regularly come under the spotlight for their poor conditions, with chronic overcrowding and gang violence provoking deadly riots.
      Lima had just been moved from a prison in the mainstream penitential system to a facility run ______(1) the Association for the Protection and Assistance to Convicts (APAC) in the town of Itaúna, in Minas Gerais state. Unlike in the mainstream system, “which steals your femininity”, as Lima puts it, at the APAC jail she is allowed to wear her own clothes and have a mirror, make-up and hair dye. But the difference between the regimes is far more than skin-deep.
      The APAC system has been gaining growing recognition as a safer, cheaper and more humane answer to the country’s prison crisis. All APAC prisoners must have passed through the mainstream system and must show remorse and be willing to follow the strict regime of work and study which is part of the system’s philosophy. There are no guards or weapons and visitors are greeted by an inmate who unlocks the main door to the small women’s jail.
      Inmates are known as recuperandos (recovering people), reflecting the APAC focus ______(2) restorative justice and rehabilitation. They must study and work, sometimes in collaboration with the local community. If they do not - or if they try to abscond - they risk being returned to the mainstream system. There have been physical fights but never a murder at an APAC jail.

                          Adapted from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44056946