Monsanto / glifosato What some scientists say: http://naturalsociety.com/17-scientists-speak-out-monsantos-roundup-is-causing-cancer/ What happened later:http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-asks-world-health-organization-to-retract-cancer-link/

consummerism and global warming by alicia braga

HOW GLOBAL WARMING IS A FFECTED BY CONSUMMERISM

 How is consummerism effecting global warming?
Also, if you have any links to good websites, that’ll be great!
 Consumerism is the unabated purchase of products and produce whether or not it is useful to us in the long run. In North America only 1% of the products are used after 6 months after purchase. Which means 99% of the goods which have been produced are going to landfills (or languishing in the garage going a waste) and also a huge amount of pollution has been created to produce those 99% of products (which includes C02). And CO2 in atmosphere increases the temperature. So consumerism has a direct role to play in Global Warming problem.
 See the video on http://www.storyofstuff.com/ for a very elaborate description of this problem.
 Also it is important to distinguish consumerism and capitalism. Capitalism refers to free market economy. Capitalism is not bad if it takes into account the cost of pollution. But unfortunately polluters do not pay any price today and individuals do not lose money by polluting more. So pollution has not been taken into account at all. We should add this cost into our economy very soon (for example carbon cap and trade system).
Capitalism is the best way to go, but occasional corrections need to be made (in this case accounting for the cost of pollution)

FOR INTERPRETERS ON MEDICAL TRANSLATION

The Many Issues in Medical Translation Posted on June 15, 2015 Leave a Comment Image Copyright: kentoh / 123RF Stock Photo Medical translation requires great skills, because it needs to be precise and very accurate. However, medical translation has terminologies that are unique to this field, and appears in different spellings based on the target language. Added to this is the fact that abbreviations could mean different things. The main obstacles a medical translator is likely to face are medical terminology and medical knowledge. Medical terminology can present problems different and separate from other types of translation. Localization and globalization Health products and research undergo wider expansion due to the popularity of medical technology. Medical devices and products are being manufactured in different countries around the world and are made more available today to a wider consumer base. Thus there is an increase in pharmaceutical translation and medical translation, which ranges from research materials, packaging inserts, product information, brochures and user guides. Each year there is an increase in the number of scientific ideas and medical terms and it is obvious that translating and localizing scientific and medical content is more complex now than it was a few years back. Language proficiency Language proficiency as well as specialized scientific knowledge play key roles in successfully doing medical translation. It is a highly technical undertaking because of the number of specialized terms that are difficult or even not suitable to be translated into various languages. Thus only skillful and professional translators knowledgeable on the subject matter should be doing medical translations. Identifying the target audience Determination of the target audience is one of the first things that a medical translator should do. This is because this will determine if the translation should be done in medical terms or in a lay person’s (patient’s) terms, or probably both. For example, the medical term Varicella (English) or Varicelle (French) means “chicken pox.” If the translation is intended for medical practitioners, then the medical term should be used. If the translation is for patients, then the translator must use the layman’s term. The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated an International Nonproprietary Name (INN) to several substances in pharmaceutical products. The INN is the official non-proprietary and generic name for specific pharmaceutical drugs such that a unique standard name is given for each active ingredient for easier communication and to avoid errors when making prescriptions. For example “Salbutamol” is an INN for a prescription-only medicine for the treatment of asthma. One of its English trade names in “Ventolin” or “Ventoline” in French. The United States Adopted Name (USAN) for salbutamol is “albuterol.” Since there are several companies that produce one drug, adding a generic name means that it is easier to understand the drug’s chemical function in various languages. British and American English spellings differ as well, so for consistency, this should be considered. At times, the meaning of a term could be different, too. In the United States, “surgery” means an operation whereas in the UK, it could mean the doctor’s office or the opening hours of a doctor’s office. Cultural knowledge should also be taken into consideration so a translator must be able to discern when to use euphemisms and metaphors to replace unpleasant topics. This is not by any means an exhaustive list of problems related to medical translation. The fact remains that a medical translator must have sufficient background knowledge, great research skills and reliable medical journals and websites to consult when doing medical translation. Do you know of other challenges that people may face when it comes to medical translation? Join the discussion and share with us your thoughts through the comment section below. Posted by Day Translations Filed Under: Translation

CHARLESTON MASS SHOOTINGS

Charleston church shooting: 

Without gun control, racism will keep killing black people 

 Gary Younge

Mass shootings have become a banal fact of death in America. (Last year there were 283 incidents in which four or more people were shot.) The nation as a whole, meanwhile, has become newly sensitised to racial violence, with growing activism around police shootings. In April  A video of a white policeman shooting Walter Scott – an unarmed African American – eight times in the back in as he ran away in North Charleston, South Carolina, went viral. But the shooting of nine black church-goers in Charleston (not far from where Scott was killed) by a white gunman in what police are treating as a “hate crime” marks a doubling down on the nation’s twin pathologies of racism and guns.Both are deeply rooted in the nation’s history since its founding: neither are going anywhere soon.

 The timing of this particular tragedy, given the heightened consciousness and activism around the #BlackLivesMatter movement, provides a particular lens through which to view this massacre.
When Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary in 2008 a huge multiracial crowd gathered in the state capitol of Columbia and chanted “race doesn’t matter”. Charleston church shooting: 21-year-old suspect captured as 'holy city' mourns Read more With each new well-publicised account of racial violence, be it at the hands of the state or the public, claims that the arrival of a black president signals the arrival of a post-racial era collapses under the weight of its own delusion. Racism isn’t dead. We know this because it keeps killing black people. The fact that Clementa Pinckney, a state senator, was among the dead indicates that nobody is safe. The fact that it took place in a church during a prayer meeting indicates that nowhere is safe. America does not have a monopoly on racism.
But what makes its racism so lethal is the ease with which people can acquire guns.
While the new conversation around race will mean the political response to the fact of this attack will be different, the stale conversation around gun control means the legislative response to the nature of this attack will remain the same. Nothing will happen. Charleston shooting church has rich history from slave revolts to civil rights Read more After Adam Lanza shot 20 primary school children and six adults in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in 2012 before turning his gun on himself, nothing happened. Seven children and teens are shot dead every day in America and nothing happens. So these nine victims will join those who perished before them – a sacrifice to the blood-soaked pedestal erected around the constitution’s second amendment that gun lobbyists say guarantees the right of individuals to bear arms.
Where guns are concerned this is what passes for American exceptionalism – an 18th century compromise with fatal 21st century ramifications. For the parishioners of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston nothing will ever be the same again. And for those who have the power to prevent it happening again, nothing will change.

JANE EYRE- PLOT OVERVIEW

Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë ←Plot Overview→Context Character List Jane Eyre is a young orphan being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, wealthy aunt. A servant named Bessie provides Jane with some of the few kindnesses she receives, telling her stories and singing songs to her. One day, as punishment for fighting with her bullying cousin John Reed, Jane’s aunt imprisons Jane in the red-room, the room in which Jane’s Uncle Reed died. While locked in, Jane, believing that she sees her uncle’s ghost, screams and faints. She wakes to find herself in the care of Bessie and the kindly apothecary Mr. Lloyd, who suggests to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent away to school. To Jane’s delight, Mrs. Reed concurs. Once at the Lowood School, Jane finds that her life is far from idyllic. The school’s headmaster is Mr. Brocklehurst, a cruel, hypocritical, and abusive man. Brocklehurst preaches a doctrine of poverty and privation to his students while using the school’s funds to provide a wealthy and opulent lifestyle for his own family. At Lowood, Jane befriends a young girl named Helen Burns, whose strong, martyrlike attitude toward the school’s miseries is both helpful and displeasing to Jane. A massive typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, and Helen dies of consumption. The epidemic also results in the departure of Mr. Brocklehurst by attracting attention to the insalubrious conditions at Lowood. After a group of more sympathetic gentlemen takes Brocklehurst’s place, Jane’s life improves dramatically. She spends eight more years at Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher. After teaching for two years, Jane yearns for new experiences. She accepts a governess position at a manor called Thornfield, where she teaches a lively French girl named Adèle. The distinguished housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax presides over the estate. Jane’s employer at Thornfield is a dark, impassioned man named Rochester, with whom Jane finds herself falling secretly in love. She saves Rochester from a fire one night, which he claims was started by a drunken servant named Grace Poole. But because Grace Poole continues to work at Thornfield, Jane concludes that she has not been told the entire story. Jane sinks into despondency when Rochester brings home a beautiful but vicious woman named Blanche Ingram. Jane expects Rochester to propose to Blanche. But Rochester instead proposes to Jane, who accepts almost disbelievingly. The wedding day arrives, and as Jane and Mr. Rochester prepare to exchange their vows, the voice of Mr. Mason cries out that Rochester already has a wife. Mason introduces himself as the brother of that wife—a woman named Bertha. Mr. Mason testifies that Bertha, whom Rochester married when he was a young man in Jamaica, is still alive. Rochester does not deny Mason’s claims, but he explains that Bertha has gone mad. He takes the wedding party back to Thornfield, where they witness the insane Bertha Mason scurrying around on all fours and growling like an animal. Rochester keeps Bertha hidden on the third story of Thornfield and pays Grace Poole to keep his wife under control. Bertha was the real cause of the mysterious fire earlier in the story. Knowing that it is impossible for her to be with Rochester, Jane flees Thornfield. Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food. At last, three siblings who live in a manor alternatively called Marsh End and Moor House take her in. Their names are Mary, Diana, and St. John (pronounced “Sinjin”) Rivers, and Jane quickly becomes friends with them. St. John is a clergyman, and he finds Jane a job teaching at a charity school in Morton. He surprises her one day by declaring that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her a large fortune: 20,000 pounds. When Jane asks how he received this news, he shocks her further by declaring that her uncle was also his uncle: Jane and the Riverses are cousins. Jane immediately decides to share her inheritance equally with her three newfound relatives. St. John decides to travel to India as a missionary, and he urges Jane to accompany him—as his wife. Jane agrees to go to India but refuses to marry her cousin because she does not love him. St. John pressures her to reconsider, and she nearly gives in. However, she realizes that she cannot abandon forever the man she truly loves when one night she hears Rochester’s voice calling her name over the moors. Jane immediately hurries back to Thornfield and finds that it has been burned to the ground by Bertha Mason, who lost her life in the fire. Rochester saved the servants but lost his eyesight and one of his hands. Jane travels on to Rochester’s new residence, Ferndean, where he lives with two servants named John and Mary. At Ferndean, Rochester and Jane rebuild their relationship and soon marry. At the end of her story, Jane writes that she has been married for ten blissful years and that she and Rochester enjoy perfect equality in their life together. She says that after two years of blindness, Rochester regained sight in one eye and was able to behold their first son at his birth. Are you ready for the test? Quick Quiz → More Help

GLOBAL POLLINATION CRISIS by Ana Lovato

Global Pollinator Decline? Recent concerns of a global decline in pollinator abundance have been raised by the accumulation of related regional evidence, including a drop in the number of domestic honey-bee colonies in the USA [14], a reduction in the abundance and diversity of wild bees in Europe , and a plethora of studies from around the world showing local decreases in pollinators due to habitat fragmentation and agricultural intensification As a consequence, the implication that agricultural production may suffer from an intensifying pollination shortage has received much media attention, becoming an issue of widespread interest and concern As a reflection of these concerns, the term “pollination crisis” was coined to highlight the potential effects of a global pollinator decline on the human food supply Most recently, these concerns were voiced in Resolution T6-0579/2008 of the European Parliament, which stated “…whereas the beekeeping sector throughout the world, and more particularly in Europe, is encountering very serious difficulties…(and) only bees, in sufficient numbers, can guarantee pollination…it is essential to respond without delay to the crisis in bee health in an appropriate manner and with effective weapons” Regrettably, despite increasing claims of global pollinator declines , the data needed to assess global changes in the abundance and diversity of wild pollinators are not currently available. Instead, we analyze temporal trends in the total number of commercial hives of the domesticated honey bee, Apis mellifera, based on the database of the FAO of the United Nations [11]. The honey bee is managed for both honey production and pollination services and is the single most important crop pollinator . According to the FAO data, the global stock of commercial honey-bee colonies increased by ∼45% since 1961 ( Figure 1A, solid black line). The main exceptions to this global increase involve long-term declines in the USA and some European countries, but these are outweighed by rapid growth elsewhere . Thus, despite variation among countries, the overall FAO data reveal that at least domesticated honey bees are not declining globally.

POLAR BEARS ARE EATING DOLPHINS by ALEJANDRO ALTIMIR

Polar Bears Are Now Eating Dolphins by Stefan Nicola June 12, 2015 — 10:57 AM ART Share on FacebookShare on Twitter A polar bear with the remains a white-beaked dolphin covered up with snow. Source: Polar Research via Bloomberg Share on FacebookShare on Twitter Polar bears are now eating dolphins lured north by warming water. Scientists for the first time observed the bears feasting on white-beaked dolphins in Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic. They theorize the dolphins, coaxed northward by warmer waters, were trapped under the ice and killed by the bears when coming up for air through a small hole, they wrote in a new study. “This is the first record of this species as polar bear prey,” the authors led by the Norwegian Polar Institute’s Jon Aars said in the paper published this month in the Polar Research journal. “The warming of the Arctic is significantly changing the ecosystem and relations between species.” Climate change is rendering increasing areas of the Arctic ice-free during summer months. While the dolphins often visit Svalbard in warmer months, they haven’t been reported that far north in early spring. The researchers observed seven more dolphin carcasses near the area in the following months. One of the bears was so skinny his ribs were visible through the fur, they said. After the bear had eaten one dolphin, it covered up another with snow to save for later. As the Arctic warms amid changing climate and ice sheets thin, dolphins could become a more regular meal. For the bears, that’s good news as access to their more usual food supply, seals, may further decline because of the milder weather.

BIODIVERSITY OF SPECIES

If you want to know about BIODIVERSITY of species , go to HOW CAN BIODIVERITY BE PROTECTED ¿ http://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Wildlife-Conservation/Biodiversity.aspx

BYCATCH AND SUSTAINABILITY

BYCATCHING AND SUSTAINABILITY How does indiscriminate fishing attack the ecosystem ? Wherever there is fishing, there is bycatch—the incidental capture of non-target species such as dolphins, marine turtles and seabirds. Thousands of miles of nets and lines are set in the world's oceans each day. Modern fishing gear, often undetectable by sight and extremely strong, is very efficient at catching the desired fish species—as well as anything else in its path. A staggering amount of marine life—including turtles, dolphins and juvenile fish—is hauled up with the catch, and then discarded overboard dead or dying. Fishing industry leaders increasingly realize the need to reduce this phenomenon. Proven solutions do exist, such as modifying fishing gear so that fewer non-target species are caught or can escape. In many cases, these modifications are simple and inexpensive, and often come from fishers themselves. Despite new technologies and industry recognition of the issue, bycatch is still a major problem. Not only does it cause avoidable deaths and injuries, but the fishing methods can be harmful to the marine environments where they are employed. WWF aims to reduce bycatch by working with fisheries and helping develop and promote new technologies and gear for more efficient operations

animal sounds

I am attaching a link which deal with the topic we have been discussing in class. It is just an insight of the most frequent verbs used to describe animal sounds: ONe correction of the editor : a link whioch deals with ..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_sounds

REVIEWS WRITING FOR FCE AND CAE

WRITING A FILM REVIEW CONSULT THIS LINK https://teachersidiomas.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/this-week-our-fce-students-review-their-favourite-movies/ 

 Exam Tips: 

How to Write A Film or Book Review for an English Language Test Updated on July 12, 2012 Pin It Not all English as a second language exams have the option of writing a film or book review, but the Cambridge First Certificate and Proficiency exams do, and so do some others, so it is necessary to know how to write one. 

The advantage of writing a review is that most students can draw on recent memories for the subject matter. Most of us like to read books and/or watch movies. In addition, reviews are not difficult to write if you keep a few guidelines in mind. What to Write About First of all, you have to choose which film or book you want to write about, and the main thing to keep in mind is not how much you liked it but how well you remember it and feel confident that you have the vocabulary and ideas to describe it. Of course, we usually tend to remember the movies and books we liked the most. A review can be positive, negative, or balanced; what you think of the film or book is entirely up to you and doesn't influence your grade at all – unless, of course, the question specifically asks you to write about something you liked or disliked, in which case you should do whatever the question says. 

 Introduction 

 Generally a review can be divided into four paragraphs. 

The first paragraph, of course, is the introduction. In it you give the reader some general information. For a book, this would include the title, the author, and the type – that is, novel, story collection, biography, memoir. 

For a film you would give the title, the director or producer, possibly the main actors, and again the general type – action, romance, comedy, science fiction, or whatever. Plot Summary In the second paragraph you briefly describe the plot. You can't, of course, give every detail, because you usually are writing with a word limit. Just an outline will do. 

But it is very important to remember that plot summaries are always written in present tense. 

For example: "Frodo and Sam leave the Shire and go to Mordor to destroy the ring of power." 

Another point to keep in mind is that you should not give away the ending. 

Many people read reviews before they see the film or read the book. You should just tell enough of the plot in order to give them a general idea of what to expect. Special Comments In the third paragraph you can write about anything special the book or film offers. For example, for a book you might comment on the author's style. For a film, you might mention the quality of the acting or script or photography or special effects. Recommendation In the conclusion, you would sum up your opinion of the book or film and then say whether or not you would recommend it and for whom. For example, some books or films might be inappropriate for children but great for teens and adults; others teens might like but adults might not. Try It So, as I said, a film or book review is fairly simple to write, and if you follow these guidelines it is a good choice of exam essay for all of you bookworms and film buffs. You can help the HubPages community highlight top quality content by ranking this article up or down. 

 Useful language

1. introduction: say what you are reviewing. – The (film, book…etc) I would like to review is….. – The last Film I saw / book I read was…….

2. explain: give details of what you reviewing. – It’s set in………. – The story is based on (a book..) ….. – It’s about….. – There are many memorable characters including …. – The main theme of the film is….. – What the film is saying is….. 

3. opinion: give your own opinion of what you are reviewing. – I would recommend this film to anyone. – Although I enjoyed it, I would not recommend it for…. – It’s one of the best (shows) I’ve ever seen. – Although I am not normally keen on (musicals), I am glad that I decided to go. – The (film) lifts you out of your everyday life.