Questões de Inglês - Grammar - Prepositions - Gerunds after prepositions

TEXT I

 

 

"A new crop of potential antibiotics may soon help fighting antibiotic-resistant infections, such as this batch of methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria.”

 

    "Antibiotics have been taking it on the chin lately. Not only has resistance to the medications been growing, but also drug companies have been dropping antibiotic research programs because the drugs are difficult and expensive to make. Now, help is on the way. Researchers report today that they’ve found a way to churn out new members of one of the most widely used classes of antibiotics, called macrolides. The work could lead to new weapons against antibiotic-resistant infections, and possibly save millions of lives.

    Macrolides, drugs that include erythromycin and azithromycin, were first developed in the 1950s. Since then they’ve become a safeguard against bacterial and fungal infections. Chemically, macrolides are giant rings containing 14 to 16 carbon atoms, with one or more sugar appendages dangling off the side. Bacteria synthesize them to fight off their neighbors. Yet, bacteria didn’t evolve to make macrolides good drugs in people. So, medicinal chemists — the group of researchers that actually build new drugs — start with the natural versions and tweak their bonds one at a time in an effort to make them safer and more effective. But, in most cases, it’s impossible to confine the changes to just one bond on a large molecule. When multiple bonds react, the result is an unwanted broad mixture of end products, none of which contain just the one specific change desired for making a better drug.

    To solve that problem, Harvard University chemist Andrew Myers and colleagues adapted a divide-and-conquer strategy that they had applied to tetracycline antibiotics back in 2005. They started with three basic macrolide ring structures and broke each one down into eight molecular “modules.” They then carefully mapped out reactions needed to put the pieces back together. For two such linkers, they even invented new chemical reactions to forge the bonds. This allowed them to tinker with the modules individually, and then reassemble them. By repeating the strategy over and over, they forged more than 300 entirely new macrolides.

    When given to a panel of bacterial lab cultures, several of these compounds showed potent antibiotic activity against antibiotic-resistant microbes, including methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus, the team reports online today in Nature. Perhaps equally important, Myers says, is that all the reactions used for the assembly produce high yields of the final products. That’s essential, he notes, because bacteria don’t produce the starting material for the new compounds. So, if any of them proves a valuable medicine, chemists will be able to synthesize large quantities of it cheaply from scratch.

    “This is a great example of beautiful chemistry that will have a tangible societal benefit,” says Phil Baran, a synthetic organic chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California.”
(Adapted from: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/new-way-makepowerful- antibiotics)

Select the proposition that presents the CORRECT explanation for each expression bellow, as they are used in the text.

INSTRUCTION: Answer question in relation to text.

 

TEXT 

 

  UNITED NATIONS, May 11, 2015 (IPS/GIN) –
Speaking at the U.N. Security Council, Federica
Mogherini, High Representative of the European
Union for Foreign Affairs, called on the international
[5] community to take urgent steps to end the
Mediterranean crisis and dismantle the human
smuggling rings that facilitate it.
  “The EU is united and we will work, but we cannot
work alone. We need to share and act together, as it’s
[10] a EU responsibility and a global responsibility, “said
Mogherini.
  In 2014, 3,300 migrants died while fleeing their
countries of origin to enter Europe. Three people out
of four perished in the Mediterranean Sea, and 2015
[15] looks set to be even worse, added Mogherini.
  According to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR)
about 60,000 men, women and children have crossed
the Mediterranean this year, and 1,800 of them have
tragically died during the journey.
[20]   “Saving lives and preventing the loss of lives at
sea is a top responsibility that we all share, not only as
Europeans but globally,” Mogherini said at the Council
briefing, adding that an exceptional situation requires
an immediate strategy to solve the crisis.
[25]   The Mediterranean problem is a structural problem
rooted in poverty, increasing inequality, conflicts and
human rights violations in African and Middle Eastern
countries and beyond, including the situation in Syria,
Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa, said the European
[30] High Representative.
  Also speaking at the Council was Antonio Tete,
Permanent Representative Observer of the African
Union to the U.N., who underlined that smuggling of
migrants has emerged due to several factors that lead
[35] people in many African countries to escape from abject
poverty, climate change, water scarcity, insufficient
progress in employment and rising inequality.
  “This humanitarian emergency is also a security
crisis, since smuggling networks are linked to finance
[40] and terrorist activities, which contributes to instability
in a region that is already unstable enough,” Mogherini
said.
  If the international community fails to frame its
response to the crisis, it will be a “moral failure,” said
[45] Peter Sutherland, the Special Representative of the
Secretary-General for International Migration.

Ieri, Valentina. Global Information Network [New York] 11 May 2015.

In the text, the words “fleeing” (line 12), “According” (line 16), “briefing” (line 23), “smuggling” (line 33) are used as

Choose the alternative that completes the following sentence with a suitable preposition.

 

“I apologize____ being so late.”

Text below is part of the article "Everything you need to know about green technology in 2023". Some prepositions were removed from it. Mark the alternative in which the prepositions complete the blanks CORRECTLY.

Text

Upcycling — turning waste (I) _____ new, usable materials or products — has never been more popular. 

Innovative companies and organizations around the world are finding ways (II) ____ upcycle existing waste
(III) _____ everything (IV) _____ fuel and fertilizer (V)_____ clothes and bicycles.

Upcycling is part (VI)_____ the circular economy, a model where ‘waste’ doesn’t exist — it simply becomes the raw material (VII)____ something new. 

(Source: https://greenly.earth/en-us/blog/ecology-news/everything-you-need-to-knowabout-green-technology-in-2022, retrieved on August 20th).

Choose the correct alternative to complete the paragraph below.

 

Charter, Sail, Repeat: new ventures and old favorites in the Greek Ísles

By Zuzana Prochazka

 

    On our first day, we sailed southwest nearly 50 miles on a nice beam reach, winding through Kolpos Idras, or the Hydra Gulf, By the end, we were running out             daylight, so we pulled              the miniscule harbor on Spetses Island. I read the guides twice, but the most I got was a warning about the inner harbor being only 4ft deep, which made me suck in my stomach as we crept in. The harbor turned             to be a mix of private yachts, commercial boats and fishing craft, and as we were looking round I happened to notice black clouds            ​​​​​​​ the horizon. The wind was also now picking ​​​​​​​           , so out we went again, making a U-tum back to the bay to drop anchor with the other cruisers who'd opted to skip the draft headaches. We made it just before the gale overtook us.

(Adapted from: Sail Magazine, March 2020).

In the first frame, the form of the verb "missing" is mandatory because: