Questões de Inglês

FLORIDA HURRICANES

1 Before Hurricane Sandy tore through New York and New Jersey, it stopped in Florida. Huge waves covered beaches, swept over Fort Lauderdale’s concrete sea wall and spilled onto A1A, Florida’s coastal highway. A month later another series of violent storms hit south Florida, severely eroding Fort Lauderdale’s beaches and a section of A1A. Workers are building a new sea wall, mending the highway and adding a couple of pedestrian bridges. Beach erosion forced Fort Lauderdale to buy sand from an inland mine in central Florida; the mine’s soft, white sand stands out against the darker, grittier native variety.

2 Hurricanes and storms are nothing new for Florida. But as the oceans warm, hurricanes are growing more intense. To make matters worse, this is happening against a backdrop of sharply rising sea levels, turning what has been a seasonal annoyance into an existential threat.

3 For around 2,000 years sea levels remained relatively constant. Between 1880 and 2011, however, they rose by an average of 0.07 inches (1.8mm) a year, and between 1993 and 2011 the average was between 0.11 and 0.13 inches a year. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast that seas could rise by as much as 23 inches by 2100, though since then many scientists have called that forecast conservative. Seas are also expected to warm up, which may make hurricanes and tropical storms more intense.

4 Even as seas have risen over the past century, Americans have rushed to build homes near the beach. Storms that lash the modern American coastline cause more economic damage than their predecessors because there is more to destroy. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, a Category 4 storm, caused $1 billion-worth of damage in current dollars. Were it to strike today the insured losses would be $125 billion, reckons Air Worldwide, a catastrophe-modelling firm. In 1992 Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm, caused $23 billion in damage; today it would be twice that.

5 Most Floridians live in coastal counties. Buildings cluster on low ground; more people than in any other state live on land less than four feet (1.2 metres) above the high-tide line. Florida’s limestone bedrock makes it easy for salt water from surging seas to contaminate its freshwater aquifers. And it relies heavily on canals for flood control, which a sea-level rise of just six inches would devastate.

Adapted from The Economist, June 15^th, 2013

FLORIDA HURRICANES

1 Before Hurricane Sandy tore through New York and New Jersey, it stopped in Florida. Huge waves covered beaches, swept over Fort Lauderdale’s concrete sea wall and spilled onto A1A, Florida’s coastal highway. A month later another series of violent storms hit south Florida, severely eroding Fort Lauderdale’s beaches and a section of A1A. Workers are building a new sea wall, mending the highway and adding a couple of pedestrian bridges. Beach erosion forced Fort Lauderdale to buy sand from an inland mine in central Florida; the mine’s soft, white sand stands out against the darker, grittier native variety.

2 Hurricanes and storms are nothing new for Florida. But as the oceans warm, hurricanes are growing more intense. To make matters worse, this is happening against a backdrop of sharply rising sea levels, turning what has been a seasonal annoyance into an existential threat.

3 For around 2,000 years sea levels remained relatively constant. Between 1880 and 2011, however, they rose by an average of 0.07 inches (1.8mm) a year, and between 1993 and 2011 the average was between 0.11 and 0.13 inches a year. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast that seas could rise by as much as 23 inches by 2100, though since then many scientists have called that forecast conservative. Seas are also expected to warm up, which may make hurricanes and tropical storms more intense.

4 Even as seas have risen over the past century, Americans have rushed to build homes near the beach. Storms that lash the modern American coastline cause more economic damage than their predecessors because there is more to destroy. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, a Category 4 storm, caused $1 billion-worth of damage in current dollars. Were it to strike today the insured losses would be $125 billion, reckons Air Worldwide, a catastrophe-modelling firm. In 1992 Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm, caused $23 billion in damage; today it would be twice that.

5 Most Floridians live in coastal counties. Buildings cluster on low ground; more people than in any other state live on land less than four feet (1.2 metres) above the high-tide line. Florida’s limestone bedrock makes it easy for salt water from surging seas to contaminate its freshwater aquifers. And it relies heavily on canals for flood control, which a sea-level rise of just six inches would devastate.

Adapted from The Economist, June 15^th, 2013

FLORIDA HURRICANES

1 Before Hurricane Sandy tore through New York and New Jersey, it stopped in Florida. Huge waves covered beaches, swept over Fort Lauderdale’s concrete sea wall and spilled onto A1A, Florida’s coastal highway. A month later another series of violent storms hit south Florida, severely eroding Fort Lauderdale’s beaches and a section of A1A. Workers are building a new sea wall, mending the highway and adding a couple of pedestrian bridges. Beach erosion forced Fort Lauderdale to buy sand from an inland mine in central Florida; the mine’s soft, white sand stands out against the darker, grittier native variety.

2 Hurricanes and storms are nothing new for Florida. But as the oceans warm, hurricanes are growing more intense. To make matters worse, this is happening against a backdrop of sharply rising sea levels, turning what has been a seasonal annoyance into an existential threat.

3 For around 2,000 years sea levels remained relatively constant. Between 1880 and 2011, however, they rose by an average of 0.07 inches (1.8mm) a year, and between 1993 and 2011 the average was between 0.11 and 0.13 inches a year. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast that seas could rise by as much as 23 inches by 2100, though since then many scientists have called that forecast conservative. Seas are also expected to warm up, which may make hurricanes and tropical storms more intense.

4 Even as seas have risen over the past century, Americans have rushed to build homes near the beach. Storms that lash the modern American coastline cause more economic damage than their predecessors because there is more to destroy. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, a Category 4 storm, caused $1 billion-worth of damage in current dollars. Were it to strike today the insured losses would be $125 billion, reckons Air Worldwide, a catastrophe-modelling firm. In 1992 Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm, caused $23 billion in damage; today it would be twice that.

5 Most Floridians live in coastal counties. Buildings cluster on low ground; more people than in any other state live on land less than four feet (1.2 metres) above the high-tide line. Florida’s limestone bedrock makes it easy for salt water from surging seas to contaminate its freshwater aquifers. And it relies heavily on canals for flood control, which a sea-level rise of just six inches would devastate.

Adapted from The Economist, June 15^th, 2013

Woman grows a nose on her spine after stem cell experiment

By Sarah Fecht

07.18.2014

  Eight years ago, doctors took nasal tissue samples and grafted them onto the spines of 20 quadriplegics. The idea was that stem cells within the nasal tissue might turn into neurons that could help repair the damaged spinal cord, and the experiment actually worked for a few of the patients, who regained a little bit of sensation. But it didn’t go well for one woman in particular, who not only didn’t experience any abatement in her paralysis, but recently started feeling pain at the site of the implant. When doctors took a closer look, they realized she was growing the beginnings of a nose on her spine, New Scientist reports. 

  The surgeons removed a 3-centimeter-long growth, which was found to be mainly nasal tissue, as well as bits of bone and tiny nerve branches that had not connected with the spinal nerves. The growth wasn’t cancerous, but it was secreting a “thick copious mucus-like material”, which is probably why it was pressing painfully on her spine, says Brian Dlouhy at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, the neurosurgeon who removed the growth.

  This is hardly the first case of adverse side effects from a stem cell transplant. The New Scientist article points to several cases where people developed tumors after participating in clinical trials – including one 50-year-old man who, after receiving an experimental treatment for Parkinson’s disease, developed a brain tumor with hairs and cartilage embedded within it.

  The nasal tissue experiment took place at a mainstream hospital in Portugal, and there are thousands of legitimate stem cell trials taking place all over the world, but so far only a few stem cell therapies have been approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Stem cells have the potential to treat everything from baldness and diabetes to cardiovascular disease and Parkinson’s. But stem cells, some of which can differentiate into almost any cell in the body, also have the potential to cause harm.

(www.popsci.com. Adaptado.)

How many steps does it take to avoid a heart attack?

Researchers find out.

  Walking can lower your risk of having a heart attack, as any doctor will tell you. Now scientists have found out exactly how many steps it takes to keep your ticker healthy.

  Even people who are at risk for diabetes can cut their risk for heart-related events like a heart attack or stroke by 8%.

  In new research published in the journal Lancet, scientists report that among people with early signs of pre-diabetes, taking an extra 2,000 steps a day – the equivalent of 20 minutes of moderate-paced walking – helped them lower their chances of heart problems.

  The research team looked at data from 9,306 adults from 40 countries participating in a trial called NAVIGATOR. All of the volunteers were assigned to a program to lose weight and exercise 150 minutes a week. They were given pedometers that they wore for a week at the beginning of the study, and again a year later.

  Using statistical modeling, the researchers studied the association between the number of steps the participants took on average and their relative risk for heart events in that year, accounting for potentially confounding factors that could influence heart disease rates such as diet and the participants’ previous history of heart issues.

  Two thousand steps seemed to be the magic number. Even before the study began, for every 2,000 steps a day one participant tended to walk on average compared to another, he enjoyed a 10% lower rate of heart problems by the end of the year. During the study year, there was an additional 8% lower risk of heart disease for every 2,000 steps walked a day.

(www.time.com. Adaptado.)

Texto 1

Doctors, Patients Embrace Technology in Medicine

By Brenda Goodman, MA

WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Arefa Cassoobhoy, MD, MPH

Sept. 22, 2014 -- Technology is quickly changing many parts of medicine, giving people more power to take charge of their health care. Many patients and doctors are embracing these changes, a new Medscape/WebMD survey finds.

The findings are part of the WebMD/Medscape Digital Technology Survey, which included more than 1,100 patients and 1,400 health professionals, including 827 doctors. Questions focused on issues related to the evolution of medical care -- including using smartphones to assist in the diagnostic process, clearness about what a procedure costs, the right to review medical records, radiation risks from imaging tests, and genetic testing.

Eric Topol, MD, editor-in-chief of Medscape and the chief academic officer of Scripps Health, says the report is unique. There hasn’t been a large survey that’s asked the same questions of doctors and patients. “Technology is really democratizing all aspects of the doctor’s visit,” Topol says. Today, people can use smartphones to track their blood sugar. And soon, apps and accessories may be available that check cholesterol or track the heart’s electrical activity. Instead of the doctor’s office or lab being a place to begin gathering information about their health, people could soon be showing up for checkups with the info already in hand.