Questões de Inglês

Answer the question based on the text below.

 

How Wastewater Testing Can help Tackle Americas’s Opioid Crisis

Wastewater can be a rich source of information about infectious diseases, like COVID-19, as well as flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), mpox and polio, since pathogens like viruses are shed in feces, urine and saliva, all of which is drained into sewage treatment plants. Sampling that water is a good way to screen for certain viruses, and, as more people bypass the medical system and labs in favor of testing themselves at home for things like COVID-19, health agencies like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have less data from which they can monitor the ebb and flow of infections. Wastewater, however, could change that and is quickly becoming the most reliable way to track diseases.

Now that same system will not only screen for infectious disease agents but for opioids as well. Biobot, the first company to offer commercial wastewater surveillance, is launching a program in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to track trends in opioid use in wastewater. In 2018, Biobot, based in Cambridge, Mass., began tracking opioids such as morphine, hydrocodone, oxycodone, codeine, heroin and fentanyl in a pilot program with several dozen cities. By highlighting areas where use of these drugs was higher, the city directed more resources to educating people about the dangers of overdose, as well as intervene with naloxone to reverse overdoses, which helped to reduce overdoses by 40% within a year.

Adaptado de: https://time.com/6315775/wastewater-testingopioids/ Acessado em 27 de setembro de 2023.

Seemingly useless, wastewater:

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If you want to know how the world is preparing for the next global pandemic, consider Rolaing, a Cambodian village on the Mekong River. For a few days in February 2023 this isolated spot became the center of public-health activity after an 11-year-old girl died of H5N1, the most virulent species of avian flu. It was Cambodia’s first fatality from the disease since 2014.

A rapid response team of health workers from the region was dispatched to the village. These health workers found a community of almost 2,000 people living side by side with their livestock and chickens. In just 24 hours they set up a temporary testing center, identified a dozen of the girl’s closest contacts, collected saliva and examined the samples for the pathogen.

The speed with which Cambodia, and other countries where novel viruses are known to emerge, can identify and react to future virus threats will determine how effectively the world can contain the next pandemic. There is a global community of experts constantly on high alert, even when threat levels subside. This time around, experts are focused on planning actions in case of any outbreak that puts human health at risk.

(Michelle Cortez and Suzi Ring. Bloomberg Businessweek, 08.05.2023. Adaptado.)

In the excerpt from the third paragraph “even when threat levels subside”, the underlined term can be replaced, without meaning change, by

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If you want to know how the world is preparing for the next global pandemic, consider Rolaing, a Cambodian village on the Mekong River. For a few days in February 2023 this isolated spot became the center of public-health activity after an 11-year-old girl died of H5N1, the most virulent species of avian flu. It was Cambodia’s first fatality from the disease since 2014.

A rapid response team of health workers from the region was dispatched to the village. These health workers found a community of almost 2,000 people living side by side with their livestock and chickens. In just 24 hours they set up a temporary testing center, identified a dozen of the girl’s closest contacts, collected saliva and examined the samples for the pathogen.

The speed with which Cambodia, and other countries where novel viruses are known to emerge, can identify and react to future virus threats will determine how effectively the world can contain the next pandemic. There is a global community of experts constantly on high alert, even when threat levels subside. This time around, experts are focused on planning actions in case of any outbreak that puts human health at risk.

(Michelle Cortez and Suzi Ring. Bloomberg Businessweek, 08.05.2023. Adaptado.)

De acordo com o primeiro e o segundo parágrafos, o vilarejo cambojano de Rolaing

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If you want to know how the world is preparing for the next global pandemic, consider Rolaing, a Cambodian village on the Mekong River. For a few days in February 2023 this isolated spot became the center of public-health activity after an 11-year-old girl died of H5N1, the most virulent species of avian flu. It was Cambodia’s first fatality from the disease since 2014.

A rapid response team of health workers from the region was dispatched to the village. These health workers found a community of almost 2,000 people living side by side with their livestock and chickens. In just 24 hours they set up a temporary testing center, identified a dozen of the girl’s closest contacts, collected saliva and examined the samples for the pathogen.

The speed with which Cambodia, and other countries where novel viruses are known to emerge, can identify and react to future virus threats will determine how effectively the world can contain the next pandemic. There is a global community of experts constantly on high alert, even when threat levels subside. This time around, experts are focused on planning actions in case of any outbreak that puts human health at risk.

(Michelle Cortez and Suzi Ring. Bloomberg Businessweek, 08.05.2023. Adaptado.)

The text

Read the ad from America’s Farmers, an association which supports the work of American farming families.

(http://grisp.org. Adaptado.)

 

In the ad, “hard work” refers to

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In almost every discipline, success comes from a combination of talent and determination. But if you listen to most famous figures describe their life journeys, you’ll soon hear them exaggerating their hard work, while strangely diminishing the role of their innate abilities.

Thomas Edison may be the most often quoted, with his claim that “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”, but many other variations exist. Just consider Octavia Butler’s advice for new writers. “Forget talent. If you have it, fine. Use it. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter. As habit is more reliable than inspiration, continued learning is more reliable than talent.” The Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo also emphasises the blood, sweat and tears that went into his training. “Talent without work is nothing,” he said, when asked about the secrets of his success.

Such narratives may be beneficial for celebrated figures who wish to appear humble and wise. But recent psychological research shows overemphasising the importance of hard work would be prejudicial in many professional situations — thanks to a phenomenon known as the “naturalness bias”. These studies suggest people have greater respect for those with an innate gift than for those who have had to strive for their success.

In consumer psychology, the term “naturalness bias” is often used to describe our preference for natural over synthetic goods. “On some fundamental level, we believe that the closer something is to its original state, the less adulterated it is, the more desirable it is,” declared Malcolm Gladwell, the author of a study on the topic. As says Chia-Jung Tsay, a professor at University College London School, “The naturalness bias is very generalizable across domains, ages and cultures.”

(David Robson. www.bbc.com, 22.05.2023. Adaptado.)

In the context of the fourth paragraph, the underlined term in “‘On some fundamental level, we believe that the closer something is to its original state, the less adulterated it is, the more desirable it is’” refers to