Questões de Inglês

Leia o texto a seguir e responda à questão.

Fatal Superbugs: Antibiotics Losing Effectiveness, WHO says.

The World Health Organization’s new report on the growing global threat adds to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report last year showing that two million people in the United States are infected annually with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and 23,000 of them die each year as a result. To understand the dangers posed by superbugs, National Geographic spoke with Stuart Levy, chair of the board of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.

What exactly are superbugs?

They are bacteria resistant to one or more antibiotics, and they make it difficult to treat or cure infections that once were easily treated. The antibiotic has lost its ability to control or kill bacterial growth. The bacteria can grow even in a sea of antibiotics because the antibiotic doesn’t touch them.

How are the bacteria able to circumvent the power of antibiotics?

The bacteria have acquired the ability to destroy the antibiotic in order to protect themselves. They’ve developed a gene for resistance to, say, penicillin, and that gene protects them. A genetic mutation might enable a bacteria to produce enzymes that inactivate antibiotics. Or [a mutation] might eliminate the target that the antibiotic is supposed to attack. A bacteria may have developed resistance to five or six antibiotics, so in treatment, you don’t know which one to choose. And the bacteria accumulate resistance by developing new genes. Genetics is working against us, almost like a science-fiction story.

Why are these superbugs spreading and the threat growing?

We’re continuing to use antibiotics in a bad way. They’re supposed to be used to combat bacteria, not viruses. The common cold is a virus. Any time you use an antibiotic when it’s not needed, you’re pushing antibiotic resistance ahead. People are misusing them in their homes. They may have a stockpile they’ve saved, and think taking [an antibiotic] will help them with a cold. They’re not helping their cold, and they’re propagating resistance.

(Adaptado de: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140501-superbugs-antibiotics-resistance-disease-medicine/. Acesso em: 1 maio 2014.)

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See someone yawn on the subway, and you know there’s a pretty high probability that you’re going to be yawning. But new research says that there’s another contagion out there that you can catch just through simple observation: Stress. A study from the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Technische Universität Dresden found that even being around a stressed person, be it a loved one or a stranger, has the power to make someone stressed in a physically quantifiable way. “The fact that we could actually measure this empathic stress in the form of a significant hormone release was astonishing”, said Veronika Engert, one of the study’s authors. During the study, test subjects paired with loved ones and strangers of the opposite sex and then divided into two groups. One group was given challenging arithmetic questions and interviewed in order to induce direct stress. The group of 211 observers simply watched the test and interviews through a one-way mirror and via video transmissions. As expected, 95% of the people placed under direct stress showed signs of, well, stress. But 26% of observers had an increase in cortisol as well as a result of empathic stress. The impact of stress was particularly high when a subject was observing a romantic partner in a stressful situation (40%) but it applied to strangers as well (10%). When observers watched stressful events through a one-way mirror, 30% experienced a stressful response. Another 24% percent of observers were stressed when they watched the events unfold on video. Lesson learned: be careful when you’re watching Breaking Bad re-runs. “Even television programs depicting the suffering of other people can transmit that stress to viewers”, Engert said. “Stress has an enormous contagion potential”.

(Adaptado de: http://time.com/84080/stress-contagious/. Acesso em: 1 maio 2014.)

Leia o texto a seguir e responda à questão.

See someone yawn on the subway, and you know there’s a pretty high probability that you’re going to be yawning. But new research says that there’s another contagion out there that you can catch just through simple observation: Stress. A study from the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Technische Universität Dresden found that even being around a stressed person, be it a loved one or a stranger, has the power to make someone stressed in a physically quantifiable way. “The fact that we could actually measure this empathic stress in the form of a significant hormone release was astonishing”, said Veronika Engert, one of the study’s authors. During the study, test subjects paired with loved ones and strangers of the opposite sex and then divided into two groups. One group was given challenging arithmetic questions and interviewed in order to induce direct stress. The group of 211 observers simply watched the test and interviews through a one-way mirror and via video transmissions. As expected, 95% of the people placed under direct stress showed signs of, well, stress. But 26% of observers had an increase in cortisol as well as a result of empathic stress. The impact of stress was particularly high when a subject was observing a romantic partner in a stressful situation (40%) but it applied to strangers as well (10%). When observers watched stressful events through a one-way mirror, 30% experienced a stressful response. Another 24% percent of observers were stressed when they watched the events unfold on video. Lesson learned: be careful when you’re watching Breaking Bad re-runs. “Even television programs depicting the suffering of other people can transmit that stress to viewers”, Engert said. “Stress has an enormous contagion potential”.

(Adaptado de: http://time.com/84080/stress-contagious/. Acesso em: 1 maio 2014.)

Read the song lyrics below to answer question.

Revolution
(Lennon-McCartney)

You say you want a revolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world.
You tell me that it's evolution,

Well, you know

We all want to change the world.

But when you talk about destruction,

Don't you know that you can count me out.

You know it's going to be all right,

all right, all right.

You say you got a real solution

Well, you know

We'd all love to see the plan.
You ask me for a contribution,

Well, you know

We all doin’ what we can.

If you want money for people with minds that

hate,

All I can tell you is brother you have to wait.

Don't you know it's going to be all right,

all right, all right, all right.

You say you'll change the constitution

Well, you know

We'd all love to change your head.

You tell me it's the institution,

Well, you know

You better free your mind instead.
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman

Mao,

You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow.

Don't you know it's going to be all right,

all right, all right.

Read the text below and answer the question.

Are all the ants as heavy as all the humans?
By Hannah Moore
BBC News

    “If we were to weigh all the ants in the world, they would weigh as much as all of the people”, said wildlife presenter Chris Packham recently in BBC Four's The Wonder Of Animals: Ants. But is this statement true?
    This claim was originally made by Harvard University professor Edward O. Wilson, and the German biologist Bert Hoelldobler, in their 1994 book Journey To The Ants.
    They based their estimate on an earlier one by British entomologist C. B. Williams, who once calculated that the number of insects alive on earth at a given moment was one million trillion.
    “If, to take a conservative figure, one percent of this host is ants, their total population is ten thousand trillion”, wrote Wilson and Hoelldobler. “Individual workers weigh on average between 1 to 5 mg, according to the species. When combined, all ants in the world taken together weigh about as much as all human beings”.
    Wilson and Hoelldobler’s calculation is based on the idea that the average human weighs a million times more than the average ant. So how well does that stand up to scrutiny? The average adult human weighs 62kg, so that would make the average ant about 60mg.
    “There are ants that weigh 60mg, but they’re really the big ants”, says Francis Ratnieks, Professor of Apiculture at the University of Sussex. “The common ants which live in British gardens weigh about 1mg or 2mg”.

(Adapted from: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29281253)

Read the text below and answer the question.

Are all the ants as heavy as all the humans?
By Hannah Moore
BBC News

    “If we were to weigh all the ants in the world, they would weigh as much as all of the people”, said wildlife presenter Chris Packham recently in BBC Four's The Wonder Of Animals: Ants. But is this statement true?
    This claim was originally made by Harvard University professor Edward O. Wilson, and the German biologist Bert Hoelldobler, in their 1994 book Journey To The Ants.
    They based their estimate on an earlier one by British entomologist C. B. Williams, who once calculated that the number of insects alive on earth at a given moment was one million trillion.
    “If, to take a conservative figure, one percent of this host is ants, their total population is ten thousand trillion”, wrote Wilson and Hoelldobler. “Individual workers weigh on average between 1 to 5 mg, according to the species. When combined, all ants in the world taken together weigh about as much as all human beings”.
    Wilson and Hoelldobler’s calculation is based on the idea that the average human weighs a million times more than the average ant. So how well does that stand up to scrutiny? The average adult human weighs 62kg, so that would make the average ant about 60mg.
    “There are ants that weigh 60mg, but they’re really the big ants”, says Francis Ratnieks, Professor of Apiculture at the University of Sussex. “The common ants which live in British gardens weigh about 1mg or 2mg”.

(Adapted from: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29281253)