Question: Is there anything I can do to train my body to need less sleep?

Karen Weintraub

June 17, 2016

   Many people think they can teach themselves to need less sleep, but they’re wrong, said Dr. Sigrid Veasey, a professor at the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. We might feel that we’re getting by fine on less sleep, but we’re deluding ourselves, Dr. Veasey said, largely because lack of sleep skews our self-awareness. “The more you deprive yourself of sleep over long periods of time, the less accurate you are of judging your own sleep perception,” she said.

   Multiple studies have shown that people don’t functionally adapt to less sleep than their bodies need. There is a range of normal sleep times, with most healthy adults naturally needing seven to nine hours of sleep per night, according to the National Sleep Foundation. Those over 65 need about seven to eight hours, on average, while teenagers need eight to 10 hours, and school-age children nine to 11 hours. People’s performance continues to be poor while they are sleep deprived, Dr. Veasey said.

   Health issues like pain, sleep apnea or autoimmune disease can increase people’s need for sleep, said Andrea Meredith, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. A misalignment of the clock that governs our sleep-wake cycle can also drive up the need for sleep, Dr. Meredith said. The brain’s clock can get misaligned by being stimulated at the wrong time of day, she said, such as from caffeine in the afternoon or evening, digital screen use too close to bedtime, or even exercise at a time of day when the body wants to be winding down.

(http://well.blogs.nytimes.com. Adaptado.)

A new planet in our neighborhood - how likely is life there?

By Don Lincoln, August 24, 2016

Scientists working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), using the La Silla telescope, claim to have discovered the closest exoplanet to Earth. Exoplanet means planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. Most of them are huge planets orbiting very near their star. The newly discovered planet, which orbits Proxima Centauri, a star within the so-called “habitable zone”, has been named Proxima b.

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, which is the most common type of star in the galaxy. Red dwarfs are much smaller than our Sun, and are very dim. For instance, in the visible spectrum that we use to see, Proxima Centauri gives off 0.0056% as much light as the Sun.

So what about life? Are there any chances that an alien lizard might bask in Proxima Centauri’s light or try to find shade under an alien tree? Dr. Guillem Anglada-Escudé, co-author of the research from London University, believes that “there is a reasonable expectation that this planet might be able to host life”

But this belief is not consensual as other scientists think the prospect of life is improbable. Although the temperature of the planet is thought to be such that liquid water could exist, it is unlikely that Proxima b is habitable, as the planet is subject to stellar wind pressures of more than 2000 times those experienced by Earth from the solar wind. These winds would likely blow any atmosphere away, leaving the undersurface as the only vaguely habitable location on that planet. You shouldn’t imagine, thus, a lush and verdant world, with lovely blue waters, sandy beaches and green plants.

So, what’s the bottom line? First, the discovery is extremely exciting. The existence of a nearby planet in the habitable zone will perhaps increase the interest in efforts like Project Starshot, which aims to send microprobes (instruments that apply a stable and wellfocused beam of charged particles -electrons or ions- to a sample) to Proxima Centauri. On the other hand, Proxima b is unlikely to be a haven for people trying to escape the ecological issues of Earth, so we should not view this discovery as a way to ignore our own ecosystem.

Adapted from: < http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/24/opinions/nearbyplanet-opinion-lincoln/> Access Oct. 2016.

Glossário:

claim: afirmar; dwarf: anão; dim: opaco; give off: emitir; lizard: lagarto; bask: aquecer-se; belief: crença; wind: vento; undersurface: camada inferior; lush: viçoso; bottom line: aspecto fundamental; aim: visar/ter por objetivo; sample: amostra; haven: refúgio.

Question based on Text.

Adapted from: <http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/oct/13/fighting-corruptionzombies-development-anti-corruption >.Access on: 03/11/2015.

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Disparity in life spans of the rich and the poor is growing

Sabrina Tavernise

February 12, 2016

      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. Fast-forward 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 earners 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.)

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Nobel winner Malala opens school for Syrian refugees

Sylvia Westall

July 13, 2015

Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

  Malala Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, celebrated her 18th birthday in Lebanon on Sunday by opening a school for Syrian refugee girls and called on world leaders to invest in “books not bullets”. Malala became a symbol of defiance after she was shot on a school bus in Pakistan in 2012 by the Taliban for advocating girls’ rights to education. She continued campaigning and won the Nobel in 2014.

   “I decided to be in Lebanon because I believe that the voices of the Syrian refugees need to be heard and they have been ignored for so long,” Malala told Reuters in a schoolroom decorated with drawings of butterflies. The Malala Fund, a non-profit organization that supports local education projects, provided most of the funding for the school, set up by Lebanon’s Kayany Foundation in the Bekaa Valley, close to the Syrian border. The Kayany Foundation, established by Syrian Nora Joumblatt in response to Syria’s refugee crisis, has already completed three other new schools to give free education to Syrian children in Lebanon. The Malala school can welcome up to 200 girls aged 14 to 18.

   “Today on my first day as an adult, on behalf of the world’s children, I demand of leaders we must invest in books instead of bullets,” Malala said in a speech. Lebanon is home to at least 1.2 million of the 4 million refugees that have fled Syria’s war to neighboring countries. There are about 500,000 Syrian school-age children in Lebanon, but only a fifth are in formal education. “We are in danger of losing generations of young Syrian girls due to the lack of education,” Joumblatt said in a speech at the opening of the school. “Desperate and displaced Syrians are increasingly seeing early marriage as a way to secure the social and financial future of their daughters. We need to provide an alternative: Keep young girls in school instead of being pressured into wedlock.”

    Lebanon, which allows informal settlements on land rented by refugees, says it can no longer cope with the influx from Syria’s four-year conflict. More than one in four people living in Lebanon is a refugee. The United Nations says the number of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries is expected to reach 4.27 million by the end of the year. “In Lebanon as well as in Jordan, an increasing number of refugees are being turned back at the border,” Malala said. “This is inhuman and this is shameful.”

    Her father Ziauddin said he was proud she was carrying on her activism into adulthood. “This is the mission we have taken for the last 8-9 years. A small moment for the education of girls in Swat Valley: it is spreading now all over the world,” he said.

(www.reuters.com. Adaptado.)

By Becky Oskin, Senior Writer. Adapted from http://www. livescience.com/49262-indian-ocean-tsunami-anniversary. html. December 26, 2014.