Questões de Concurso

Which was a more important innovation: indoor plumbing, jet air travel or mobile phones? 

  We’re in the golden age of innovation, an era in which digital technology is transforming the underpinnings of human existence. Or so a techno-optimist might argue. 

  We’re in a depressing era in which innovation has slowed and living standards are barely rising. That’s what some skeptical economists believe.

   The truth is, this isn’t a debate that can be settled objectively. Which was a more important innovation: indoor plumbing, jet air travel or mobile phones? You could argue for any of them, and data can tell plenty of different stories depending on how you look at it. Productivity statistics or information on inflation-adjusted incomes is helpful, but can’t really tell you whether the advent of air-conditioning or the Internet did more to improve humanity’s quality of life. […]

(Source: Neil Irwin, at “The NY Times”. Retrieved at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/upshot/what-was-the-greatest-era-foramerican-innovation-a-brief-guided-tour.html)

 The fair trade movement, which aims ensure that fair prices are paid to producers in developing countries, is one of the true global success stories recent decades. The International Fairtrade Certification Mark, a guarantee that producers are getting a fair price, has become one of the most recognizable logos the world, which 91 percent of customers associate positive values. When the logo first appeared in the UK, the country where the largest number of fair-trade products are sold, nobody expected that the number of certified products would grow from only 3 to over 4,500 in just 18 years. In 2011, people around the world spent more than 6.5 billion US dollars on fair- -trade certified goods, signifying a 12 percent increase in sales from the previous year. This was at a time when most market segments in the developed world were still shrinking or stagnating from the after effects of the 2008 banking crisis. Over 1.2 million farmers and workers living in 66 countries benefit from fair- -trade certification by being able to sell their products at competitive prices, to ensure sustainability.

 Fair-trade initiatives have been growing steadily since the late 1960s, when the fair trade movement started with only a handful of committed individuals in the West who believed there was an alternative to the exploitation of farmers and workers in the developing world. Fair trade ensures fair prices for suppliers, as well as payment of a premium that can be reinvested in the local communities (for example, in schools or sanitation) or in improving productivity. In India, for instance, a group of rice farmers used the premium to buy farm machinery, which meant a 30 percent improvement in production.

 As consumers look for, and recognize, the logo and purchase fair-trade products, they put pressure on companies and governments to do more for global welfare. They also put pressure on supermarkets to sell fair-trade goods at the same price as conventional products, shifting the extra costs involved from consumers to the corporations that collect the profits.

 Critics of the fair trade movement say it is still not doing enough. They stress that the key to long-term development is not in small local improvements, but in moving the developing world from the production of raw materials into processing them, which can bring in greater profit. There are already some signs of this happening. A group of tea growers in Kenya recently set up a processing factory to deliver the final products directly to their customers in the West. By switching from the export of raw tea to boxed fair-trade products, they achieved 500 percent higher profits.

 It is important to realize that, despite all of its benefits, the fair trade movement has its limitations. Some of the poorest farmers can’t afford to pay the certification fees required for each fair-trade initiative, while others work for big, multinational employers that are excluded from participating. Fair trade is certainly a step in the right direction, but there is a lot more we must continue to do in order to help people in the world’s poorest regions.

Arecent study from Canada's University of British Columbia (UBC) suggests that eleven-month-old infants can learn to associate the language they hear with ethnicity.

The research, published by Developmental Psychobiology, found that 11-month-old infants looked more at the faces of people of Asian descent compared to those of Caucasian descent when hearing Cantonese but not when hearing Spanish.

“Our findings suggest that by 11 months, infants are making connections between languages and ethnicities based on the individuals they encounter in their environments. In learning about language, infants are doing more than picking up sounds and sentences—they also learn about the speakers of language,” said Lillian May, a psychology lecturer at UBC who was lead author of the study.

The research was done in Vancouver, where approximately nine percent of the population can speak Cantonese.

The researchers played English-learning infants of Caucasian ancestry sentences in both English and Cantonese and showed them pictures of people of Caucasian descent, and of Asian descent. When the infants heard Cantonese, they looked more at the Asian faces than when they were hearing English. When they heard English, they looked equally to Asian and Caucasian faces.

“This indicates that they have already learned that in Vancouver, both Caucasians and Asians are likely to speak English, but only Asians are likely to speak Cantonese,” noted UBC psychology professor Janet Werker, the study's senior author.

The researchers showed the same pictures to the infants while playing Spanish, to see whether they were inclined to associate any unfamiliar language with any unfamiliar ethnicity. However, in that test the infants looked equally to Asian and Caucasian faces. This suggests young infants pick up on specific language-ethnicity pairings based on the faces and languages they encounter.

“Babies are learning so much about language—even about its social use—long before they produce their first word,” said Werker. “The link between speaker characteristics and language is something no one has to teach babies. They learn it all on their own.” “The ability to link language and ethnicity might help babies with language acquisition. We are now probing this possibility. For example, does a bilingual Chinese-English baby expect Chinese words from a Southeast Asian speaker and English words from a Caucasian speaker?

Our preliminary results indicate that indeed, babies are using their expectations about language and ethnicity as another source of information in language learning,” added Werker.

Source: “Babies can link language and ethnicity”. Language Magazine Language Magazine, June 28, 2019