Questões de Inglês

Science Without Borders Program to be Suspended
09/03/2015 - 09H02
VALDO CRUZ
FLÁVIA FOREQUE

 

Owing to lack of funds, the Planalto Palace has decided to suspend the offer of new scholarships as part of the program Science Without Borders for next year.
As Folha has learnt, the budget defined by the government’s economic team for next year, a total of R$2.1 billion (USD $559 million), is only enough to cover students who are already living abroad on the program.
The Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Students (CAPES, in its Portuguese acronym) said that the designated resources would be used to “pay for 13,330 scholarships amongst undergraduates and postgraduates” in 2016, under its supervision.
The National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPQ), another government agency that encourages research, will be allocated resources for another 22,610 scholarships.
In total, both institutions will send 14,050 undergraduates abroad in the second semester of this year. This group of students enters the program under last year’s selection process. Undergraduates account for the majority of those enrolled in the program, with 79.5% of the scholarships granted.
Advisors to President Rousseff have admitted that the government was considering an even harsher cut to the program, but the idea was rejected owing to the likely negative effects it would produce.
The cut for Science Without Borders next year is 40.3% from last year’s budget of R$3.5 billion (USD $931 million). Cutting just one percentage point more would mean disrupting the studies of those who have already been selected and left for university abroad.
Launched in July 2011, the program has become one of President Rousseff’s flagship policies. After the creation of 101,000 places by last year, the promise for her second term was to create another 100,000.
The high value of the dollar, however, has drastically increased the cost of program. The program pays foreign universities for the tuition of Brazilian students, as well as providing maintenance grants to the students themselves.

While in July 2011 the dollar was worth R$1.55, now the exchange rate is close to R$3.70. There is currently no date defined for the call of new applications to the program. Last year, the selection process began in August.
The current expectation is that if the government allocates more funds for the program next year, the main focus will be postgraduates. Questioned on this, Capes would not comment.
The agency said, “All the Ministry of Education programs will be maintained” in 2016. “The Ministry is conducting a detailed analysis of the budget in order to determine the scope of the programs for next year,” it said in a statement.

 

PRONATEC
If Science Without Borders is suspended in 2016, another federal education program will be significantly expanded next year, according to the budget provisions.
In 2016, the government is expected to offer five million places on technical courses and on the National Program of Access to Technical Education and Employment (PRONATEC), both for those enrolling in the program as well as those continuing their training.
This year, thanks to budget cuts, the numbers of offered places on the program fell to nearly a million, 66.6% less than the three million in 2014. Added to the cost of covering those already enrolled, the total cost of the program in 2015 is R$4 billion (USD $1.1 billion).
After hitting its target of enrolling eight million students, the government’s aim was to enroll 12 million new students in its second term. If 2016’s targets are reached, the government will achieve exactly 50% of the target in the first two years of its second term.

The article explains that

According to the lyrics to the song HALLELUYAH, written by Canadian singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen,

‘Nazi-Hunters’ Come to Brazil After Hitler’s Accomplices
03/10/2016 - 09H28
ANNA VIRGINIA BALLOUSSIER
SPECIAL ENVOY TO RIO

 

Steinz still “has hope” that he will find some of the people responsible for the Jewish genocide during WWII still living.

 

The Third Reich fell apart 71 years ago, leading Nazis, low to top ranking, to escape to Latin America in mass. That stampede has been compared to the escape of rodents from a sinking ship -the “rat routes”.
Delegate Uwe Steinz, 58, still “has hope” that he will find some of the people responsible for the Jewish genocide during World War II still living.
After fighting organized crime and prostitution in his country, the German lives off “hunting Nazis”-and believes there is a fistful of them in Brazil.
Since 2009, as an employee of the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, he has already made 14 trips to the National Archive in Rio. Among five million immigrant registration records, Steinz is searching for the registrations for Germans born between 1916 and 1931.
The information of those who fit the profile is sent to the headquarters in Germany, which verifies if the person served the Third Reich.
He didn’t come to hunt the “big fish” of the SS, the elite squad of Nazis -older, they are probably no longer with us. His target is the “lower clergy”, such as camp guards and accountants.
The most famous one of them, Joseph Mengele, the “Angel of Death”, was a doctor in Auschwitz responsible for prisoner triage (forced labor or gas chamber). He died at age 67, in 1979, when he drowned in Bertioga (on the coast of São Paulo), possibly a victim of cardiac arrest. He was never tried.
There are more accounts of older Nazis in Brazil, like Herbert Cukurs (who rented paddleboats in Niterói) and Franz Stangl, employed at a Volkswagen factory in ABC Paulista.

Arrested in 1967, Stangl was extradited and was targeted for the death of 900 thousand people. “My conscience is at peace”, he said at the time.
www1.folha.uol.com.br

According to the text,

Texto

 

Zika Is Coming

by Peter J. Hotez - April 8, 2016

 

Houston — IF I were a pregnant woman living on the Gulf Coast or in Florida, in an impoverished neighborhood in a city like Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Biloxi, Miss., or Mobile, Ala., I would be nervous right now. If mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus reach the United States later this spring or summer, these are the major urban areas where the sickness will spread. If we don’t intervene now, we could begin seeing newborns with microcephaly and stunted brain development on the obstetrics wards in one or more of these places.

 

There are many theories for Zika’s rapid rise, but the most plausible is that the virus mutated from an African to a pandemic strain a decade or more ago and then spread east across the Pacific from Micronesia and French Polynesia, until it struck Brazil. There, it infected more than a million people over the last one to two years. Today, the extremely poor cities of Brazil’s northeastern states make up the epicenter of the epidemic.

 

There are three reasons that Zika has slammed this particular part of Brazil: the presence of the main mosquito species that carries the virus and transmits it to humans, Aedes aegypti; overcrowding; and extreme poverty

 

The same factors are present in the poorest urban areas of coastal Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, in addition to South Florida, and an area around Tucson.

 

It’s only April, but temperatures are hitting the 80s in the afternoons, and Aedes mosquitoes are already here. By May or June we will start seeing those mosquitoes in much larger numbers.

 

Several Zika vaccines are being created, but none will be ready in time for this year’s epidemic. In place of a vaccine we need a robust program of mosquito control and environmental cleanup in the poorest neighborhoods of our Gulf Coast cities and in Florida. This should include removing garbage and debris, and installing gutters to replace drainage ditches. We need to improve access to contraception, and provide pregnant women with proper window screens for their homes and information about the risk of Zika. Finally, we will need to train teams to visit homes in poor neighborhoods and instruct occupants on how to empty water containers and spray for mosquitoes, just as we are doing now in Puerto Rico.

 

This coordination is labor intensive and will not be easy, but if we don’t start working now, by the end of the year, I am afraid we will see microcephaly cases in Houston and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast. This could be a catastrophe to rival Hurricane Katrina or other recent miseries that disproportionately affect the poor.

 

Peter J. Hotez, a pediatrician and microbiologist at Texas Children’s Hospital, is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Disponível em http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/opinion/zika-is-coming.html acesso em 09/04/2016 (texto reduzido)

Assinale a alternativa correta de acordo com o Texto.

Texto

 

Zika Is Coming

by Peter J. Hotez - April 8, 2016

 

Houston — IF I were a pregnant woman living on the Gulf Coast or in Florida, in an impoverished neighborhood in a city like Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Biloxi, Miss., or Mobile, Ala., I would be nervous right now. If mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus reach the United States later this spring or summer, these are the major urban areas where the sickness will spread. If we don’t intervene now, we could begin seeing newborns with microcephaly and stunted brain development on the obstetrics wards in one or more of these places.

 

There are many theories for Zika’s rapid rise, but the most plausible is that the virus mutated from an African to a pandemic strain a decade or more ago and then spread east across the Pacific from Micronesia and French Polynesia, until it struck Brazil. There, it infected more than a million people over the last one to two years. Today, the extremely poor cities of Brazil’s northeastern states make up the epicenter of the epidemic.

 

There are three reasons that Zika has slammed this particular part of Brazil: the presence of the main mosquito species that carries the virus and transmits it to humans, Aedes aegypti; overcrowding; and extreme poverty

 

The same factors are present in the poorest urban areas of coastal Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, in addition to South Florida, and an area around Tucson.

 

It’s only April, but temperatures are hitting the 80s in the afternoons, and Aedes mosquitoes are already here. By May or June we will start seeing those mosquitoes in much larger numbers.

 

Several Zika vaccines are being created, but none will be ready in time for this year’s epidemic. In place of a vaccine we need a robust program of mosquito control and environmental cleanup in the poorest neighborhoods of our Gulf Coast cities and in Florida. This should include removing garbage and debris, and installing gutters to replace drainage ditches. We need to improve access to contraception, and provide pregnant women with proper window screens for their homes and information about the risk of Zika. Finally, we will need to train teams to visit homes in poor neighborhoods and instruct occupants on how to empty water containers and spray for mosquitoes, just as we are doing now in Puerto Rico.

 

This coordination is labor intensive and will not be easy, but if we don’t start working now, by the end of the year, I am afraid we will see microcephaly cases in Houston and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast. This could be a catastrophe to rival Hurricane Katrina or other recent miseries that disproportionately affect the poor.

 

Peter J. Hotez, a pediatrician and microbiologist at Texas Children’s Hospital, is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Disponível em http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/opinion/zika-is-coming.html acesso em 09/04/2016 (texto reduzido)

The author says that he ‘would be nervous right now’:

           Brazil country profile

 

[1]   Brazil is South America’s most influential country, an emerging economic power, and one of the

world’s largest democracies.

  Over the past few years it has made major strides in its efforts to raise millions out of poverty.

  The discovery of major offshore oil reserves could propel the country into the top league of oil

[5] exporting nations.

  The exploitation of the Amazon rainforest, much of which is in Brazil, has been a major international

worry, since the wilderness is a vital regulator of the climate. It is also an important reservoir of plant and

animal life.

  A drive to move settlers to the Amazon region

[10] during military rule in the 1970s caused considerable

damage to vast areas of rainforest.

  Deforestation by loggers and cattle ranchers

remains controversial, but government-sponsored

migration programmes have been halted.

[15]   In 2005 the government reported that one fifth

of the Amazon forests had been cleared by

deforestation

  Deforestation has been slowed down by extra

policing and pressure from environmental and

[20] consumer groups. The government has fined illegal cattle ranchers and loggers, while the food industries

have banned products from illegally deforested areas, such as soya beans and beef.

  At a glance

  • Economy: Brazil has Latin America’s largest economy; there has been steady growth.

  • International: Brazil wants a permanent seat at the UN Security Council; relations with Bolivia

[25]   suffered in 2006 over access to Bolivian gas.

  Officials estimate that deforestation in 2010 fell to 5,000 sq km for the year, down from 7,000 sq km

the year before and a peak of 27,000 sq km in 2004.

  Brazil’s natural resources, particularly iron ore, are highly prized by major manufacturing nations,

including China. Thanks to the development of offshore fields, the nation has become self-sufficient in oil,

[30] ending decades of dependence on foreign producers. [...]

Disponível em: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19359112. Acesso em: 10 set. 2016. Adaptado.

Na oração “The discovery of major offshore oil reserves could propel the country into the top league of oilexporting nations.” (linhas 4-5), a classe gramatical de “oil” é: