Questões de Inglês

School lets students start lessons after lunch

A high school in England has initiated a new policy to allow students to sleep longer in the mornings. The private, $25,000-a-year Hampton Court House school, is introducing a 1:30 to 7 p.m. timetable in September. It will become the only school in Britain that starts lessons in the afternoon. Head teacher Guy Holloway said the altered hours should help students get higher grades. He said research on neuroscience shows student productivity increases if they can sleep longer in the mornings. Mr. Holloway said: "We want to get students into an environment where they can get quality sleep and their bodies are functioning well." He added: "It's about what works in our community." The afternoon start is based on research by Oxford University. Researcher Dr. Paul Kelley said: "You can't train your system to get up at a practical time". He said we are not in control of choosing the best time to work because it's biological, just like we have no control over our heartbeat and liver function. Dr. Kelley added: "Anything you do to change the rhythmic systems of your body means your organs become desynchronised with each other and this is where people get ill. There is no fixing it by giving someone an alarm clock". A student at the school, Gabriel Purcell-Davis, 15, is in favour of the idea. He said students are tired all day, "but as soon as 10 o'clock hits, that's when we do all our work".

Source: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1405/140513-teenagers.html

World Health Organization Approves 15-Minute Ebola Detection Test

By Lydia Ramsey

Today, the World Health Organization gave the green light to doctors in West Africa to use the first ever rapid test for diagnosing the Ebola virus. Until now, the standard way to check for Ebola in the region was to use the nucleic acid test, which works by identifying the genetic materials of the virus from a blood sample. Yet the test requires a full lab to succeed, and it takes between 12 to 24 hours to process the results. In comparison, the ReEBOV Antigen Rapid Test gets the job done in 15 minutes by testing a patient's blood for Ebola's antigen protein, which is distinguishable from other healthy proteins found in the body. The rapid test isn't as precise as the full lab test, but it can still identify 92 percent of people infected with Ebola and 85 percent of those without the infection. This way, the quick test can easily identify who should at least enter quarantine, thus putting a damper on potential flare-ups. However, WHO does recommend following up the rapid test with a regular one to better assess if a patient has the infection. As the epidemic dissipates, being able to clearly distinguish Ebola from other diseases with similar symptoms will be key. Over the next few years, animals may reintroduce the virus to humans, and it will be important for health care providers to quickly identify which diseases they are dealing with: Is it a routine case of malaria, or Ebola? With this test, they'll have a good idea before things get worse.

Disponível em: http://www.popsci.com/who-approves-15-minute-ebola-test

Supermassive Black Hole Found Farting A Trillion Suns' Worth Of Energy

By Loren Grush

At the center of any massive galaxy, you‘ll most likely find one daunting portion of space-time: a supermassive black hole. These gigantic gravity wells are so enormous, they have a mass that‘s equal to millions or even billions of times the mass of our Sun. While extremely powerful, black holes can be relatively hard to study. But now researchers have accurately measured a substantial byproduct of supermassive black holes: winds that travel at more than 62,000 miles per second. Researchers have long theorized that when a black hole draws in matter with its large gravitational pull, the process produces huge x-ray-emitting wind gusts, which emanate from the hole and shoot out into the nearby galaxy. While this concept had been widely accepted in the scientific community, no one really knew what shape these winds took. Using NASA‘s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array and the ESA‘s XMM-Newton telescope, researchers from Caltech and Keele University of England were able to measure the speed, shape, and size of the winds blasting out from PDS 456—a super bright black hole located two billion light-years away. PDS 456 is a type of black hole known as a quasar, meaning it is extremely luminous. According to Emanuele Nardini, the lead author of the study, which published in Science, the winds are actually a result of the brightness surrounding the black hole. ―When the energy of the matter that is folding into the black hole is released, this energy is turned into heat, creating huge luminosity,‖ Nardini tells Popular Science. ―When this luminosity is high enough to counteract the black hole‘s gravitational attraction (about 10 billion times that of the Sun), it can push wind gusts outward.‖

Disponível em: http://www.popsci.com/telescopes-determine-shape-powerful-winds-birthed-black-holes

Is a Digital Gym Right for You?

By Kelsey Kloss

f you want: Personalized treatment

If ‘80s-style group classes make you shudder, check app ($10 per month for unlimited classes). You’ll access videos of an instructor leading you, not an entire class, through a workout, creating the sense of a highly personalized training session. Choose a class based on the trainer — each is taught by one of eight Gym Box coaches, who cover details like what your posture should look like and how your muscles should feel throughout the session — or your favorite exercises, which might include strength training, kickboxing, dance, step, extreme cardio, cycling, and even “Easy Does It” (small weights, gentle core training).

Disponível em <http://www.rd.com/siideshows/digitai-gym/>

Tattoo Regret? A Topical Removal Cream May Help

By Paula Mejia

Tats all, folks: A Ph.D. student has developed a cream that targets cells, not pigments, to get rid of unwanted ink. Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters

Today, before getting inked, one must have a serious think so as to avoid tattoo remorse. In the future, though, you may not have to worry about laser removal, or surgery, or a touch-up tattoo for those inky regrets anymore, though. Alec Falkenham, a Ph.D. candidate at Halifax, Nova Scotia‘s Dalhousie University, has developed a painless tattoo removal cream that causes tats to gradually fade away.

The application of the cream, which he hopes will eventually become commercially available, involves none of the inflammation, redness, blistering or scarring side effects that traditional tattoo removal procedures can have, either. He believes the procedure might even be anti-inflammatory. All you have to do is apply the topical cream to your skin.

Unlike lasers, which target the pigments in tattoos, the Bisphosphonate Liposomal Tattoo Removal (BLTR) cream targets macrophages, immune system cells that work to rid foreign agents from your body. When you tattoo your body, you are injecting ink deep into the dermis—and the macrophages recognize tattoo ink as ―foreign‖ invaders. Some of these macrophages absorb the ink and then carry it to lymph nodes, where both cells and ink are destroyed.

Scientists Figure Out How to Unboil an Egg

By Zoë Schlanger

Chemistry major Stephan Kudlacek is part of the team that has developed a way of unboiling a hen egg.

Scientists at the University of California Irvine have developed a way to unboil egg whites by ―untangling‖ their proteins, a development that has the potential to significantly reduce costs for any biotechnology process that requires the folding of proteins.

―Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg,‖ UCI biochemistry professor Gregory Weiss said in a statement. ―We start with egg whites boiled for 20 minutes at 90 degrees Celsius and return a key protein in the egg to working order.‖

Proteins are the workhorses within human cells. They copy DNA, and make it possible for the body to read the DNA. The folding of proteins is key to several fields; industrial chemists use it to make chemical reactions possible, and the medical industry needs to fold proteins for therapeutic treatments of diseases such as cancer. Often, though, when scientists attempt to fold proteins, they come out as ―scrambled messes,‖ Weiss says.

The process doesn‘t result in a gooey raw egg you would want to cook up and eat, because the egg white has been dissolved in other compounds. But one of the key proteins found in egg white is returned.

Weiss and his team have filed for a patent, and are raising funds to scale up the process to meet the needs of biotech companies. If all goes well, the invention has the potential to save several industries a lot of headache, and money.

Disponível no site: <http://www.newsweek.com/scientists-figure-out-how-unboil-egg-chemistry-301791>. Acesso em: 25 jan. 2015 (fragmento).