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Famous Quotations about Change

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future”. (John Kennedy, American president)

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find how you yourself have altered”. (Nelson Mandela, South African president)

“Certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone”. (Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, American novelist)

“Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change”. (Confucius, Chinese teacher)

“Everything is in a process of change, nothing endures; we do not seek permanence”. (Masatoshi Naito, Japanese photographer)

“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present”. (Jan Glidewell. American journalist)

“To change and to change for the better are two different things”. (German proverb)

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts”. (Arnold Bennett, English novelist)

“That's the risk you take if you change: that people you've been involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do will come along”. (Lisa Alther, American novelist)

EARLE-CARLIN, S. Skills for Success. 2^nd edition, 2015.

Answer the questions below according to text.

Are wild animals afraid of humans?

Crocodiles, sharks, snakes, tigers, lions are but a few of the animals that evoke a sense of fear in humans.
Attacks by these animals are always widely splashed across the media, giving further merit to these fears.
But are we actually more scared of them than they are of us? And do we perhaps have reason to be?
Wild animals are afraid of humans. Studies have shown that even apex predators change their eating
[5]   patterns and habits when they perceive humans to be around. We are the only super predator that exists
on this planet. Through conditioning, animals have come to instinctually fear our very existence.
In Santa Cruz, California, a study was directed. The scientists wished to determine how much impact
the perception of human presence would have on the predators in the area, namely the mountain lion,
bobcat, opossum and skunk. The scientists broadcasted human voices in certain areas while they used
[10]   the sound of tree frogs in other regions as a control. The results were alarming in that the predators
changed their habits more than expected, when they perceived humans to be present. Mountain lions
would leave their kill if they heard voices and deliberately avoided the areas where they believed there
was human activity. The skunk and opossum foraged less, and the bobcat became solely nocturnal.
Some might suggest that our upright stance and forward-facing eyes have animals understanding that
[15]   we are a predator and a threat, but it is more than just how we look that has them running for the hills.
Through centuries of hunting and destroying their habitat their fear of us has become instinctual. We
are the annihilators, super destroyers of the earth and its wildlife. We have taught animals that we are the
most destructive and deadly species on the planet and this conditioned them to fear us.
The human population kills nine times as many carnivores as they kill each other and four times more
[20]   middle food web animals than large carnivores do. We are one of the few animals capable of distorting
ecosystem functioning and eradicating species. In most scenarios, the mere presence of a human will
have wild animals darting away. Even in some extreme situations where animals show aggression, if
humans stand their ground and make noise, the result is often the animal showing one final act of
defiance before they move off back into their natural habitat.
[25]   But although wild animals will choose to run away most of the time, rather than standing against or going
after us, this is not always the case. A threatened animal will fight against us to defend itself, and chances
are you, with your lack of claws, blunt teeth and squishy body, will come off second best. Despite our
destructive behavior, an unarmed human has almost no defense against an animal. Fear incites violence
and animals will react aggressively if they feel threatened. We might be the mighty super predator, but
[30]   ultimately we are no match for Mother Nature when she chooses to fight back.

Adaptado de nayturr.com.

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    They power tiny phones and two-tonne electric cars. They form the guts of a growing number of grid-storage systems1 that smooth the flow of electricity from wind and solar power stations. Without them, the electrification needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming would be unimaginable.

    But lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have downsides. Lithium is scarce, for one. And the best Li-ion batteries, those with layered-oxide cathodes, also require cobalt and nickel. These metals are scarce, too — and cobalt is also problematic because a lot of it is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where working conditions leave much to be desired. A second sort of Li-ion battery, a so-called polyanionic design that uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP), does not need nickel or cobalt. However, such batteries cannot store as much energy per kilogram as layered-oxide ones.

    A group of companies, though, think they have an alternative: making batteries with sodium instead. Unlike lithium, sodium is abundant: it makes up most of the salt in the oceans. And chemists have found that layered-oxide cathodes which use sodium rather than lithium can get by without cobalt or nickel to increase their quality. The idea of making sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries at scale is therefore gaining traction. Engineers are adjusting designs. Factories, particularly in China, are springing up. For the first time since the Li-ion revolution began, lithium’s place on the electrochemical pedestal is being challenged.

(www.economist.com, 25.10.2023. Adaptado.)

¹grid-storage system: sistema de armazenamento de energia elétrica.

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    Paul McCartney is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with The Beatles, a rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. He has collaborated with countless artists over his 60-year career, from Rihanna to Michael Jackson. Now, the former Beatle has teamed up with artificial intelligence (AI). In a recent interview, the 80-year-old revealed that AI has made it possible to release one “last Beatles record.”

    McCartney said that during the creation of the docuseries “The Beatles: Get Back”, produced in 2021 by Peter Jackson, they found an old demo tape that John Lennon had recorded. Through the use of artificial intelligence, they were able to start the process of taking the decades-old recording and turning it into something usable.

    “Peter Jackson was able to extricate John’s voice from an old cassette tape,” McCartney said. “He could tell the machine ‘That’s the voice. This is the guitar. Lose the guitar.’ We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI,” McCartney continued. “Then we could mix the record as you would normally do.”

    Though McCartney called recent uses of AI in music “kind of scary” — in April, a rap song featuring AI-generated voices mimicking Drake and The Weeknd was yanked from streaming services — the “Let It Be” singer admitted that the technology is “exciting, because it’s the future. There’s a good side to it, and then a scary side. And we’ll just have to see where that leads,” he said.

(Nicolas Vega. www.cnbc.com, 14.06.2023. Adaptado.)

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