Can there be a world without antibiotics?

Medical experts around the globe are worried that moreand more viruses and bacteria are becoming resistant to today’s medicine. They are afraid that in a few generations antibiotics may become useless. Scientists have already discovered bacteria that do not react if treated with antibiotics. As a result medical treatment will become more expensive as new drugs have to be developed.

Doctors and other health experts criticize the fact that antibiotics are being used in a wrong way. They are often prescribed in cases in which they do not work. In some areas, especially Third World countries and densely populated areas in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh doctors have already run out of antibiotics. Prescribing wrong antibiotics or taking them for too short a time will not kill off bacteria. Some doctors prescribe antibiotics for the common flu, making it ineffective for later illnesses. The World Health Organization claims that many infectious diseases are becoming untreatable and cannot be controlled. Many patients who become resistant to drugs even die.

Another problem is that farmers in the United States and Europe are adding antibiotics to feed cattle and other animals, in order to make them grow faster and produce more meat. Also, through increased global travel, bacteria are spreading faster than ever before.

Since Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in the early 20th century antibiotics have saved hundreds of millions of lives. Many operations cannot be carried out if we are unable to treat infections. The transplantation of organs can become very risky if patients do not get medication to strengthen their immune system. Routine operations like removing an appendix or replacing a bad hip could become fatal. Childbirth may once again threaten a woman’s life and raise child mortality. Even illnesses like pneumonia, which today can be treated effectively with antibiotics, might once again turn into a mass killer. Antibiotics have made infections like tuberculosis treatable. Cancer treatment would be unthinkable without the proper treatment of the immune system to accompany it.

Health experts call for increased action to fight off diseases. Most common is the call to improve hospital hygiene, where infectious diseases start out. Especially in Third World countries, bacteria spread through dirty water and the sewage system. Even making people aware of washing their hands more often can stop the spread of infectious diseases.

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A partir da leitura da tirinha acima, percebe-se um cunho crítico no discurso da criança ao fazer comentários e indagações ao tigre sobre determinando comportamento humano.

Computers \'do not improve\' pupil results, says OECD

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34174796. Acessado em 07/10/2015. Adaptado.

According to the report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), education systems which have invested heavily in information and communications technology have seen "no noticeable improvement" in Pisa test results for reading, mathematicsor science.

Andreas Schleicher, the OECD\'s education director, says school technology had raised "too many false hopes". Commenting on the varied results of the report, he says the impact of technology on student performance is mixed at best.

Here is what the report says:

- Students who use computers very frequently at school get worse results.

- Students who use computers moderately at school, such as once or twice a week, have "somewhat better learning outcomes" than students who use computers rarely.

- The results show "no appreciable improvements" in reading, mathematics or science in the countries that had invested heavily in information technology.

- High achieving school systems such as South Korea and Shanghai in China have lower levels of computer use in school.

- Singapore, with only a moderate use of technology in school, is top for digital skills.

Would it be wrong to eradicate mosquitoes?

The mosquito is the most dangerous animal in the world, carrying diseases that kill one million people a year. Now the Zika virus, which is carried by mosquitoes, has been linked with thousands of babies born with brain defects in South America. There are 3,500 known species of mosquitoes, but only the females from just 6% of species draw blood from humans - to help them develop their eggs. Of these, just half carry parasites that cause human diseases.

More than a million people, mostly from poorer nations, die each year from mosquito-borne diseases, including Malaria, Dengue Fever and Yellow Fever. Some mosquitoes also carry the Zika virus, which was first thought to cause only mild fever and rashes. However, scientists are now worried that it can damage babies in the womb. There’s a constant effort to educate people to use nets and other tactics to avoid being bitten. But would it just be simpler to make an entire species of disease-carrying mosquito extinct?

In Britain, scientists at Oxford University and the biotech firm Oxitec have genetically modified (GM) the males of Aedes aegypti - a mosquito species that carries both the Zika and Dengue viruses. These GM males carry a gene that stops their offspring from developing properly. This second generation of mosquitoes then die before they can reproduce and become carriers of disease themselves.

So are there any downsides to removing mosquitoes? Mosquitoes, which mostly feed on plant nectar, are important pollinators. They are also a food source for birds and bats while their young - as larvae - are consumed by fish and frogs. This could have an effect further ahead in the food chain. Mosquitoes also have limited the destructive impact of humanity on nature. Mosquitoes make tropical rainforests, for humans, virtually uninhabitable. Rainforests are home to a large share of our total plant and animal species, and nothing has done more to delay man-made destruction over the past 10,000 years than the mosquito.

Adapted from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35408835

Erosion in America

Erosion of America\'s farmland by wind and water has been a problem since settlers first put the prairies and grasslands under the plow in the nineteenth century. By the 1930s, more than 282 million acres of farmland were damaged by erosion. After 40 years of conservation efforts, soil erosion has accelerated due to new demands placed on the land by heavy crop production. In the years ahead, soil erosion and the pollution problems causes are likely to replace petroleum scarcity as the nation\'s most critical natural resource problem.

TEXTO:

Chaos at USP

The chemistry institute at the University of São Paulo
(USP) has become the site of a “pilgrimage”, after the
courts reversed their decision to suspend the release of
a substance rumored to treat various types of cancer.
[5] The rush of patients to the institute began on Friday (9)
after the judge José Renato Nalini, president of the Courts
of Justice, reconsidered a request for the suspension of
the release of the substance phosphorylethanolamine.
The court’s decision was based on a Supreme Court
[10] order authorizing the provision of phosphorylethanolamine
capsules to a patient.
In the last two days, lines of people have formed at
the university in search of the drug. Some believe that it
could be the last chance to save themselves or their
[15] loved ones. However, on Tuesday (13), people were told
that the drug was not available, as USP did not have it in
stock, and because the judicial orders would first have
to be officially protocolled at the university. It is
“madness”, according to the president of the Brazilian
[20] Society of Clinical Oncology, Evanius Wiermann. “The
patients are being used as guinea pigs, without any
guarantee of safety or efficacy,” he says. The drug has
yet to be tested on humans.
In an interview with the local press in August, the
[25] retired USP professor Gilberto Chierice, who had
coordinated studies with phosphorylethanolamine, said
the substance could cure cancer. This sparked the initial
judicial appeals. He also said that the drug had only not
arrived on the market due to “lack of will” on the part
[30] of the authorities. Chierice was unavailable for comment.
In a statement, USP said that phosphorylethanolamine
is not a cancer cure. It said it has been studied as a
chemical product and that there is no “firm proof that it

is effective against the disease.” It has been neither
[35] registered nor authorized for use by the National Health
Surveillance Agency (Anvisa), a state regulatory body
similar to the Food and Drug Administration in the US.

Operation Desert Storm Was Not Won By Smart Weaponry Alone

Technology has long been a deciding factor on the battlefield, from powerful artillery to new weaponry to innovations in the seas and the skies. Twenty-five years ago, it was no different, as the United States and its allies proved overwhelmingly successful in the Persian Gulf War. A coalition of U.S. Army Apache attack helicopters, cruise missiles from naval vessels, and Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk “stealth fighters” soundly broke through Saddam Hussein’s army defenses in Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm, which became known as the “100-hour war”.

But for all the possibilities that this “Computer War” offered, Operation Desert Storm was not won by smart weaponry, alone. Despite the “science fiction”-like technology deployed, 90 percent of the pieces of ammunition used in Desert Storm were actually “dumb weapons”. The bombs, which weren’t guided by lasers or satellites, were lucky to get within half a kilometer of their targets after they were dumped from planes. While dumb bombs might not have been exciting enough to make the headlines during the attack, they were cheaper to produce and could be counted on to work. But frequency of use doesn’t change why history will remember Desert Storm for its smart weapons, rather than its dumb ones.

Adapted from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/operation-desert-storm-was-not-won-smart-weaponry-alone-180957879/

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DON’T TREAT DIVORCED CATHOLICS AS OUTCASTS, SAYS POPE

Pope Francis has declared that divorced Catholics who remarry deserve better treatment from the church, warning pastors against treating these couples as if they were excommunicated.

Speaking to pilgrims and tourists Wednesday at his first general audience after a summer break, the pope said: "People who started a new union after the defeat of their sacramental marriage are not at all excommunicated, and they absolutely must not be treated that way.

“They always belong to the church.”

Divorced Catholics who remarry are seen as living in sin and are not allowed to receive communion during church services, but some have been calling on the church to reverse that.

Francis' comments come ahead of a Synod church council meeting to be held by the Vatican in October, where the issue of divorce will be discussed in the wider topic of family.