Questões Militares Sobre sinônimos | synonyms em inglês

Why Climate Change Could Mean More Delayed Flights 

    No one enjoys a delayed flight, but as our weather gets warmer, we can expect more of them.

    That's according to experts, who say that the heat of the summer might cause more delays.

    Bloomberg looked at US data for flight delays at airports in Chicago and New York from June to August in 2022 and from January to March in 2023. It found that there were more delayed flights in the summer months at both airports. 

    When the temperature rises above 39 degrees Celsius, things get very difficult for airlines, Bijan Vasigh, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the US, told Bloomberg.

    The air is thinner when it gets hot and that makes it harder for planes to take off. In thinner air there is not as much lift, so more power is needed.

    When they need more power, it helps to have a lighter airplane.

    That might mean pilots have to make last-minute decisions to reduce the weight on board by dumping fuel, passengers or baggage — meaning the plane will probably be delayed.

    The problem gets worse at airports that are at a higher altitude where the air is already thinner, and at airports with short runways, since planes need more space to get up to a high speed.

    But thin air is not the only problem. Smoke from wildfires — that have been happening all around the world in the summer of 2023 — can also cause flights to be delayed and canceled.    

    Of course, the summer is also a busy time when millions of people fly, and weather is not the only cause of delays — but our hotter climate doesn't seem to be helping.

Internet: Engoo

Internet: BBC News  

The following text refers to question.

There have been 18 opioid-related deaths in Nova Scotia so far this year

        Paramedics in Nova Scotia used naloxone to save 165 people from opioid overdoses in 2018 and 188 people in 2019. In 2020, 102 people were saved as of July 31.

        Eight years ago, Matthew Bonn watched his friend turn blue and become deathly quiet as fentanyl flooded his body. Bonn jumped in, performing rescue breathing until paramedics arrived. That was the first time Bonn fought to keep someone alive during an overdose.

        But it wouldn't be his last. Over the years, he tried more dangerous ways to snap people out of an overdose.

        "I remember doing crazy things like throwing people in bathtubs, or, you know, giving them cocaine. As we know now, that doesn't help," said Bonn, a harm-reduction advocate in Halifax. "But ... in those panic modes, you try to do whatever you can to keep that person alive."

        This was before naloxone – a drug that can reverse an opioid overdose – became widely available to the public. In 2017, the Nova Scotia government made kits with the drug available for free at pharmacies.

        Whether used by community members or emergency crews, naloxone has helped save hundreds of lives in the province. Matthew Bonn is a program co-ordinator with the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs, and a current drug user himself.

        Almost every other day in Nova Scotia, paramedics and medical first responders in the province use the drug to reverse an opioid overdose, according to Emergency Health Services (EHS).

(Available in: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/ehs-naloxone-opioids-drug-use-emergency-care-1.5745907.)

Six things I learned from riding in a Google self-driving car

1 - Human beings are terrible drivers.

      We drink. We doze. We text. In the US, 30,000 people die from automobile accidents every year. Traffic crashes are the primary cause of death worldwide for people aged 15-24, and during a crash, 40% of drivers never even hit the brakes. We’re flawed organisms, barreling around at high speeds in vessels covered in glass, metal, distraction, and death. This is one of Google’s “moonshots” – to remove human error from a job which, for the past hundred years, has been entirely human.

2 - Google self-driving cars are timid.

        The car we rode in did not strike me as dangerous. It drove slowly and deliberately, and I got the impression that it’s more likely to annoy other drivers than to harm them. In the early versions they tested on closed courses, the vehicles were programmed to be highly aggressive. Apparently during these tests, which involved obstacle courses full of traffic cones and inflatable crash-test objects, there were a lot of screeching brakes, roaring engines and terrified interns.

3 - They’re cute.

        Google’s new fleet was intentionally designed to look adorable. Our brains are hardwired to treat inanimate (or animate) objects with greater care, caution, and reverence when they resemble a living thing. By turning self-driving cars into an adorable Skynet Marshmallow Bumper Bots, Google hopes to spiritually disarm other drivers. I also suspect the cuteness is used to quell some of the road rage that might emerge from being stuck behind one of these things. They’re intended as moderate-distance couriers, not openroad warriors, so their max speed is 25 miles per hour.

4 - It’s not done and it’s not perfect.

      Some of the scenarios autonomous vehicles have the most trouble with are the same human beings have the most trouble with, such as traversing four-way stops or handling a yellow light. The cars use a mixture of 3D laser-mapping, GPS, and radar to analyze and interpret their surroundings, and the latest versions are fully electric with a range of about 100 miles. Despite the advantages over a human being in certain scenarios, however, these cars still aren’t ready for the real world. They can’t drive in the snow or heavy rain, and there’s a variety of complex situations they do not process well, such as passing through a construction zone. Google is hoping that, eventually, the cars will be able to handle all of this as well (or better) than a human could.

5 - I want this technology to succeed, like… yesterday.

        I’m biased. Earlier this year my mom had a stroke. It damaged the visual cortex of her brain, and her vision was impaired to the point that she’ll probably never drive again. This reduced her from a fully-functional, independent human being with a career and a buzzing social life into someone who is homebound, disabled, and powerless. When discussing self-driving cars, people tend to ask many superficial questions. They ignore that 45% of disabled people in the US still work. They ignore that 95% of a car’s lifetime is spent parked. They ignore how this technology could transform the lives of the elderly, or eradicate the need for parking lots or garages or gas stations. They dismiss the entire concept because they don’t think a computer could ever be as good at merging on the freeway as they are. They ignore the great, big, beautiful picture: that this technology could make our lives so much better.

6 - It wasn’t an exhilarating ride, and that’s a good thing.

        Riding in a self-driving car is not the cybernetic thrill ride one might expect. The car drives like a person, and after a few minutes you forget that you’re being driven autonomously. You forget that a robot is differentiating cars from pedestrians from mopeds from raccoons. You forget that millions of photons are being fired from a laser and interpreting, processing, and reacting to the hand signals of a cyclist. You forget that instead of an organic brain, which has had millions of years to evolve the cognitive ability to fumble its way through a four-way stop, you’re being piloted by an artificial one, which was birthed in less than a decade. The unfortunate part of something this transformative is the inevitable, ardent stupidity which is going to erupt from the general public. Even if in a few years self-driving cars are proven to be ten times safer than human-operated cars, all it’s going to take is one tragic accident and the public is going to lose their minds. There will be outrage. There will be politicizing. There will be hashtags. I say look at the bigger picture. All the self-driving cars currently on the road learn from one another, and possess 40 years of driving experience. And this technology is still in its infancy.

(Adapted from:: <http://theoatmeal.com/blog/google_self_driving_car> . 21/08/2016.)

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        While plastic refuse littering beaches and oceans draws high-profile attention, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Assessment of agricultural plastics and their sustainability: a call for action suggests that the land we use to grow our food is contaminated with even larger quantities of plastic pollutants. “Soils are one of the main receptors of agricultural plastics and are known to contain larger quantities of microplastics than oceans”, FAO Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo said in the report’s foreword.

        According to data collated by FAO experts, agricultural value chains each year use 12.5 million tonnes of plastic products while another 37.3 million are used in food packaging. Crop production and livestock accounted for 10.2 million tonnes per year collectively, followed by fisheries and aquaculture with 2.1 million, and forestry with 0.2 million tonnes. Asia was estimated to be the largest user of plastics in agricultural production, accounting for almost half of global usage. Moreover, without viable alternatives, plastic demand in agriculture is only set to increase. As the demand for agricultural plastic continues surge, Ms. Semedo underscored the need to better monitor the quantities that “leak into the environment from agriculture”.

        Since their widespread introduction in the 1950s, plastics have become ubiquitous. In agriculture, plastic products greatly help productivity, such as in covering soil to reduce weeds; nets to protect and boost plant growth, extend cropping seasons and increase yields; and tree guards, which protect young plants and trees from animals and help provide a growth-enhancing microclimate. However, of the estimated 6.3 billion tonnes of plastics produced before 2015, almost 80 per cent had never been properly disposed of. While the effects of large plastic items on marine fauna have been well documented, the impacts unleashed during their disintegration potentially affect entire ecosystems.

(https://news.un.org, 07.12.2021. Adaptado.)