ATIVIDADE 3 – LET – LÍNGUA INGLESA II – 53_2024

Digital archaeologists find occasional gems in the vast European information repository. Taken from the mountain of uncatalogued ephemera, this text is written in a style suggesting composition in the early 21st century, possibly even on paper.

Diary fragment 1: Dear Diary, Day 1 of our boating holiday on the Sûre in Luxembourg! Up at the crack of dawn to get to the departure point. Ten minutes to learn the ropes and then off we set in our canoes! There was not a breath of wind as we drifted downstream, sometimes passing an angler staring intently at his float, or a group of children paddling. When I commented that the signs on the two sides of the river looked like they were written in different languages, Dad grinned: “They’re two different countries – Germany on our left and Luxembourg on our right! We’re navigating pretty much along the border!”

Analytical note 1:

In this period, geographical information was provided in the form of metal panels or ‘signs’ mounted on poles. Numerous examples can now be found in museums.

Diary fragment 2:

I couldn’t get over that – I mean, if we want to go abroad we have to get on a plane or a ferry, but here you can cross to another country without even having to show a passport. The joy of Schengen!

Analytical note 2:

Schengen was an early, and highly significant, stage in the dismantling of European border barriers. European union was long and complex, encountering frequent obstacles. Indeed many predicted that it would not survive the Covid pandemic.

(…)

Adapted from: https://commission.europa.eu/system/files/2020-11/juvenes-translatores_2020_text_en.pdf. Accessed on June 20th 2024.

Majella Moynihan has spoken about her pregnancy while in the gardai, who she says forced her to give up her child.

As a young recruit, she and another young garda had a sexual relationship.

Ms Moynihan became pregnant in the 1980s and was charged for having pre-marital sex with another garda.

She was forced to give up her child for adoption and had to face gossip from her force in the Store Street garda station, Dublin.

Ms Moynihan said she was ‘shunned’ by the Guards but said they were ‘there the best they could’.

(…)

She added that a higher up garda told her: ‘If you had had an abortion, you wouldn’t have brought discredit on the force.’

Speaking to Sean O’Rourke on RTE Radio One, Ms Moynihan revealed that she had tried to take her life five times.

She said: ‘I’m strong, they thought they’d break me. They didn’t. I’m a very strong woman.

‘I have done counselling for years and years, they no longer have a hold over me, today I’m free.’

Ms Moynihan said the superiors looked down on her having a relationship within the force but they ‘weren’t the only couple’.

When she thought she may have been pregnant, the former garda went to a Well Woman clinic where they confirmed her pregnancy.

‘I stayed on the beat until I was 17 weeks and then I told a female inspector who told me to tell my superior,’ she recalled.

Ms Moyihan went to Cura, a pregnancy crisis agency at the time, who she said were ‘very supportive’.

She continued: ‘I would have been lost without them. As I said on many occasions, no one knew about my pregnancy.’

(…)

Ms Moynihan said she was never once told by her superiors that she was not to have a sexual relation with another Garda.

When asked if she thought to go to the Garda Representative Association, the mother said she was never made aware of the organisation.

‘No one ever told me that I could have had someone beside me to support me, no one came forward to support me,’ she insisted.

‘It was [GRA’s] job to come to me, not me to go to them.

‘The welfare officers in the Gardai at the time didn’t apporach me, I was very much alone in that period of darkness. It was horrific.

‘Every day I put on my uniform and thought of my unborn child. What if I was assaulted and couldn’t tell my story to anyone?’

Ms Moynihan said she had no support from the Gardai or GRA.

(…)

When Ms Moynihan welcomed her son, David, at Galway Regional Hospital where she was refused an epidural and her child was taken out of her arms.

She recalled: ‘I was in horrific pain. I ripped myself. I felt I was nothing to them.’

Speaking through tears, Ms Moynihan said: ‘When David was born, they just took him. They just took him.’

Ms Moynihan wonders if she had come from a strong family, would she have been treated in such a way?

(…)

‘I often wonder if I had come from a strong family, would they have done this. I don’t think so.’

She said: ‘From the first time I told the authorities, it was adoption, adoption, adoption.

‘I often wonder if I had been supported [by the Gardai] would I have kept my baby.

‘It’s a decision I regret to this day.’

Following her interview, a Garda spokesman told Extra.ie: ‘Arrangements will be made today Monday, June 17 2019, to provide Ms Moynihan with a personal apology from the Commissioner.’

The FDA says no, and the American Medical Association has a policy against it.

[…]

Pregnancy is a crazy time when it comes to changes in the body. Growing a whole new human is a massive undertaking, and there are waves of triggered hormones at various stages in order to cue up the right developments.

Researchers have studied those hormones, and then they naturally take the next step of asking: what else could those hormones do?

[…]

There have been some stranger attempted applications of human pregnancy-linked hormones, as well. And one hormone that’s seen plenty of use (and abuse) is human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG.

It’s used by bodybuilders as a counterpart to steroids. And, for a while, it was offered at weight loss clinics and on late-night infomercials… until it eventually landed some of its promoters in jail.

Today, let’s take a quick look at what HCG is, what it normally does, and what it may — or may not — do to the waistline of someone who isn’t carrying around a developing fetus.

What is human chorionic gonadotropin?

[…]

HCG is a hormone that’s produced by cells that surround a growing embryo and eventually form the placenta.

In early pregnancy, it’s HCG that signals to the ovary that “hey, there’s a fetus here! Don’t run your monthly cleaning cycle!”. This encourages the corpus luteum (…) to stick around and release progesterone. Progesterone, in turn, signals for the uterus to thicken and support the growing fetus.

In other words, the flow looks something like this:

– HCG is released by cells that will become the placenta.

– The HCG tells the ovary to make progesterone.

– The progesterone makes the uterus thicken and grow blood vessels.

[…]

The 1954 book that pushed HCG for weight loss

Back in 1954, a British endocrinologist named Albert T. W. Simeons published a book called Pounds and Inches, describing his studies on pregnant Indian women and overweight boys with pituitary problems. He treated both of these groups with HCG and observed weight loss. He concluded that HCG must help burn excess fat, in order to protect the developing fetus.

[…]

For more than 20 years, Simeons recommended low-dose daily HCG injections, along with a very low-calorie diet (500 calories or less) (…) for weight loss.

But was HCG actually doing anything?

Other researchers didn’t think so. By 1976, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stepped in and insisted that Simeons include a disclaimer, stating that there was no conclusive evidence showing that HCG increased weight loss or that it helped decrease the hunger pangs associated with being on an extremely low-calorie diet.

This isn’t to say that people didn’t lose weight — but they almost certainly lost weight only because they were on an extremely low-calorie diet, not because of any effect of the HCG injections.

And the final nail in the coffin for HCG as a weight-loss aid came in 1995, when researchers from the Netherlands published a meta-analysis looking at all studies on weight-loss and HCG.

[…]

The researchers found that:
Most of the studies on HCG for weight loss were uncontrolled, meaning that the subjects receiving HCG weren’t compared to individuals receiving a placebo injection.

The methodological scores for most studies were pretty low, indicating poor quality experiments (…).

Out of 24 studies, only 12 of them scored above 50/100 for methodology. Of those 12 studies, only one of them showed any benefit to HCG.

The conclusion of the meta-analysis is pretty stark:

We conclude that there is no scientific evidence that HCG is effective in the treatment of obesity; it does not bring about weight-loss of fat-redistribution, nor does it reduce hunger or induce a feeling of well-being.

[…]

In summary: HCG is vital for pregnancy, but won’t help you shed non-baby-reated pounds

[…] HCG, is a vital hormone in women during early pregnancy; without it, the cascade isn’t kicked off to support the growth in the uterus needed to feed the fetus.

But we’ve also found other uses for HCG beyond what biology originally evolved; it (…) was even explored for weight loss, although that link has been thoroughly disproven.

[…]

Fonte: https://medium.com/a-microbiome-scientist-at-large/clinics-offered-this-pregnancy-hormone-for-weight-loss-a478fa9dc80. Acesso em: 6 abr. 2023. Adaptado.

by Phil Longwell on 14/11/2018 in Events

On 9 November, the LTSIG teamed up with TESOL CALL-IS for an online webinar entitled, ‘The Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in English Language Teaching, Learning and Assessment: Either Friend or Foe?’ which took place in the Learning Technologies SIG Adobe connect room.

[…]

Dr. Ron Chang Lee presented the award-winning ESL Robot ‘Tutor’ which he developed. He first gave his background of its development and why it is successful – namely, that its creator is an ESL teacher and the ‘final patterns script’ which any chatbot developer can use to shorten the time spent on developing one. ESL ‘Tutor’, as Dr Lee referred to it, can give advice on language learning, answer grammar questions, correct students’ grammatical and spelling errors, answer general knowledge questions an even tell jokes and solve riddles. Dr Lee explained how students can interact and practice the citizenship interview, for a suggested 15 minutes per day, with either the website or the ‘tutor’ app.

My initial reaction was that a lot of this is not actually particularly new, but the explanation of the final patterns script showed how it was programmed. English sentences have patterns and are grouped according to the meaning they express. All the patterns in the group are converted to the Final Pattern, he stated. A chatbot developer only needs to write answer to the question using the Final Pattern. The limitations included that it is a challenge for AI to understand English learners and is far from perfect and too expensive, as he later claimed in the World Cafe debate. He announced a new award, The Ron Chang Lee Award for Excellence in Classroom Technology. Language instructors need to be creative in applying new technology to language teaching, he concluded.

Josh: “Hey Mike, what is the most difficult thing to teach?”

Tutor Mike’s Answer: Sorry, it just slipped my memory.

Shen: How can I improve my pronunciation?

Answer: First, you need to listen to correct pronunciation. There are online exercises to help you correct your pronunciation. Go to Ron Lee’s website for more

Carol: ‘Have you seen [the new Queen biopic] Bohemian Rhapsody?’

Answer: No, I haven’t.

and ‘What is your favourite book?

Answer: Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’.

Gulnur: Do you think flipped classroom is effective in teaching?

Answer: I think the answer is ‘no’.

Phil: Do you think the flipped classroom is effective for LEARNING?

Answer: Yes.

Hyang Lee: Can you speak korean or other language?

Answer: Yes, I can. (This was later tested with the Korean for hello – 안녕하세요)

Pawel: Will robots take over the world?

Answer: According to the Bible, God Is In control of the universe, and nothing will ever take His place.

While some of the answers seemed to suggest a pre-programmed list, there was some intelligence going on and how it worked out the meaning of what was being answered, as it was able to deal with the grammar correctly and, in some cases, produced some great responses.

[…]

Fonte: https://ltsig.iatefl.org/the-role-of-ai-in-english-language-teaching-learning-and-assessment. Acesso em: 4 abr. 2023. Adaptado.

(…)

A group of economists recently performed an experiment on around 100 of the largest companies in the country, applying for jobs using made-up résumés with equivalent qualifications but different personal characteristics. They changed applicants’ names to suggest that they were white or Black, and male or female — Latisha or Amy, Lamar or Adam.

(…)

Two companies favored white applicants over Black applicants significantly more than others. They were AutoNation, a used car retailer, which contacted presumed white applicants 43 percent more often, and Genuine Parts Company, which sells auto parts including under the NAPA brand, and called presumed white candidates 33 percent more often.

(…)

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/upshot/employment-discrimination-fake-resumes.html. Accessed on: June 20th 2024.

April 3 (UPI) — A territorial turkey that has been causing chaos in the carpool line at a North Carolina elementary school was caught on camera being chased off by the principal.

Parents at Alston Ridge Elementary School in Cary said the wild turkey, dubbed Mr. Tom by locals, has been planting himself in the carpool line for the past several days, refusing to move and pecking at any cars or people who dare to approach him.

(…)

Adapted from: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2024/04/03/turkey-Alston-Ridge-Elementary-School-Cary-North-Carolina/4631712163095/. Accessed on: June 20th 2024.

But young women whose exchequers are in a parlous condition cannot be choosers. Jane was lucky to be able to order a poached egg and a pot of tea. It seemed unlikely that she would be able to do so tomorrow. That is unless—

She turned once more to the advertisement columns of the Daily Leader. To put it plainly, Jane was out of a job, and the position was becoming acute. Already the genteel lady who presided over the shabby boarding-house was looking askance at this particular young woman.

‘And yet,’ said Jane to herself, throwing up her chin indignantly, which was a habit of hers, ‘and yet I’m intelligent and good-looking and well educated. What more does anyone want?’

According to the Daily Leader, they seemed to want shorthand typists of vast experience, managers for business houses with a little capital to invest, ladies to share in the profits of poultry farming (here again a little capital was required), and innumerable cooks, housemaids and parlourmaids—particularly parlourmaids.

(…)

Adaptado de: CHRISTIE, A. Jane in Search of a Job. In: CHRISTIE, A. The Golden ball and Other Stories. New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1971. Disponível em: https://esl-bits.eu/ESL.English.Listening.Short.Stories/Short.Stories.html. Acesso em: 20 jun. 2024.