Questões de Inglês

Ethanol by the Numbers

    Even those who regard ethanol as the holy grail of energy policy concede that there is a right way and a wrong way to produce it. Done right, ethanol could help wean the country from its dependence on foreign oil while reducing the emissions that contribute to climate change. Done wrong, ethanol could wreak havoc on the environment while increasing greenhouse gases.

    Congress was sufficiently excited about ethanol’s promise to order a fivefold increase in production by 2022, as part of the 2007 energy bill. Less than half would come from corn ethanol, which has been on the market for years. The rest would come from other sources, like small trees and plants. These advanced biofuels are nowhere near commercial production.

    The final bill correctly included environmental safeguards. The most important is a requirement that ethanol, regardless of its source, achieve at least a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases compared with conventional gasoline. Congress gave the necessary job of calculating emissions from various forms of ethanol to the Environmental Protection Agency.

(The New York Times, Editorials, February 24, 2008.)

Ethanol by the Numbers

    Even those who regard ethanol as the holy grail of energy policy concede that there is a right way and a wrong way to produce it. Done right, ethanol could help wean the country from its dependence on foreign oil while reducing the emissions that contribute to climate change. Done wrong, ethanol could wreak havoc on the environment while increasing greenhouse gases.

    Congress was sufficiently excited about ethanol’s promise to order a fivefold increase in production by 2022, as part of the 2007 energy bill. Less than half would come from corn ethanol, which has been on the market for years. The rest would come from other sources, like small trees and plants. These advanced biofuels are nowhere near commercial production.

    The final bill correctly included environmental safeguards. The most important is a requirement that ethanol, regardless of its source, achieve at least a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases compared with conventional gasoline. Congress gave the necessary job of calculating emissions from various forms of ethanol to the Environmental Protection Agency.

(The New York Times, Editorials, February 24, 2008.)

Making it happen

Technology is only half the battle

    The municipal administration of America’s District of Columbia was once a byword for bad government, with a cocainesnorting mayor, corrupt police and incompetent and demoralised bureaucrats. Now, under a go-ahead mayor, Adrian Fenty, it has become a model practitioner of e-government. The public face of this is a single portal, dc.gov, which allows residents to do almost anything that in the past would have involved either picking up the phone (and hanging on and on) or going to an office and waiting. The site not only lets them find out about every imaginable aspect of the city, but also provides them with a means of acting on the information. This is not just a matter of printing out forms, but often of filling them in and submitting them online too. It is possible to renew a driving licence, pay a parking fine, report broken traffic lights, request a visit from the rubbish-collection service, get all manner of permits, see planning applications and pay local taxes.

(The Economist, Feb 16th, 2008.)

Reaching the poor with eye services. Experiences from the family practice unit, Manaus County, Brazil
Paulo Roberto de Magalhães Silva

Blindness is often concentrated in poor areas and socially deprived communities, making blindness prevention a social and political challenge. The blindness prevention program at the Family Practice Unit in Manaus County, Brazil, has developed a model to reach patients through the public health system. The approach aims to detect patients in the community and refer them to ophthalmologists based at the clinic. Two ophthalmologists work with family practitioners and community health workers to whom they provide training on how to screen and refer patients. Barriers such as distance, culture, costs, and lack of information are broken down with this approach.

Between the years 2000 and 2003, 15.129 patients were seen at the ophthalmology service of the Family Practice Programme in the city of Manaus. The projection for the year 2004 is 8.640 consultations among the four centers distributed at the north, south, east and west areas of the city. In 2003, 110 diabetic patients sent by family practitioners and community health workers were evaluated, demonstrating the need to improve the screening of diabetic patients in the city. Refractive errors were the reason for consultation in 80 per cent of the patients during 2000-2003. Conjunctivitis, eyelid problems, cataract, and glaucoma were other frequent causes of consultation. Only 6.8 per cent of the patients seen at the unit were referred to the general hospital for further diagnosis and treatment.

Demand for eye care services in this area has increased continuously since the start of this programme. The location of the unit in the community, the focus of the clinic on the poor, and the emphasis on information, seem to have created an efficient and popular service. Brazil has about 50 million people assigned to these Family Practice Units by the Public Health System. If each unit had an ophthalmology service like Manaus, Brazil could make a great impact on prevention of blindness at the community level. The model might also be applicable to other countries.

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F.D.A. Panel Votes to Continue Use of Anemia Drugs

ANDREW POLLACK

A federal advisory panel, in response to mounting safety concerns, called Thursday for additional restrictions on the use of anemia drugs by cancer patients.

The recommendation by a committee that advises the Food and Drug Administration could lead to an additional decline in sales for the drugs: Aranesp, made by Amgen, and Procrit, made by Johnson & Johnson.

But the manufacturers avoided the outcome they most feared — a recommendation that the drugs not be used by any cancer patients. That probably would have cost each company at least $1 billion in sales.

"They dodged the really big bullet, but they still took some damage," said Geoffrey C. Porges, a biotechnology analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

The F.D.A. is expected to revise the drugs' labels in consultation with the manufacturers. The agency does not have to adhere to the recommendations of its committees, though it usually does.

Patients take the drugs to counter the anemia caused by chemotherapy. The meeting was held because clinical trials have suggested the drugs might worsen some cancers. However, those studies involved doses higher than those typically used by patients.

The companies argued that it was not clear the drugs were dangerous and that they should remain available because they help patients avoid blood transfusions, which carry their own risks.

From: Times Digest, March 14, 2008.

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