Adolescents: health risks and solutions

Around 1.2 billion people, or 1 in 6 of the world‘s population, are adolescents aged 10 to 19. Most are healthy, but there is still substantial premature death, illness, and injury among adolescents. Illnesses can hinder their ability to grow and develop to their full potential. Alcohol or tobacco use, lack of physical activity, unprotected sex and/or exposure to violence can jeopardize not onlytheir current health, but also their health as adults, and even the health of their future children.

Promoting healthy behaviors during adolescence, and taking steps to better protect young people from health risks are critical for the prevention of health problems in adulthood, and for countries‘ future health and ability to develop and thrive.

Key facts

- Estimated 1.2 million adolescents died in 2015, over 3000 every day, mostly from preventable or treatable causes.
- Road traffic injuries were the leading cause of death in 2015. Other major causes of adolescent deaths include lower

Taking into consideration the Key facts presented on the text, judge the items below.

I - Mental health disorders in adulthood can be related to mental health disorders in adolescence.

II - Pregnancy during adolescence is a fact that can cause health problems among girls.

III - 1.2 million adolescents died in 2015 because of road traffic injuries.

IV - The death causes during adolescence can‘t be prevented.

Read the text and choose the correct option for the question

1. Comprehensive lifestyle changes including a better diet and more exercise can lead not only to a better physique, but also to swift and dramatic changes at the genetic level, U.S. researchers said on Monday. In a small study, the researchers tracked 30 men with low-risk prostate cancer who decided against conventional medical treatment such as surgery and radiation orhormone therapy.
2. The men underwent three months of major lifestyle changes, including eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and soy products, moderate exercise such as walking for half an hour a day, and an hour of daily stress management methods such as meditation. As expected, they lost weight, lowered their blood pressure and saw other health improvements. But the researchers found more profound changes when they compared prostate biopsies taken before and after the lifestyle changes. After the three months, the men had changes in activity in about 500 genes -- including 48 that were turned on and 453 genes that were turned off.

3. The activity of disease-preventing genes increased while a number of disease-promoting genes, including those involved in prostate cancer and breast cancer, shut down, according to the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

4. The research was led by Dr. Dean Ornish, head of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, and a well-known author advocating lifestyle changes to improve health. "It's an exciting finding because so often people say, Oh, it's all in my genes, what can | do? Well, itturns out you may be able to do a lot," Ornish, who is also affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco, said in a telephone interview. "In just three months, | can change hundreds of my genes simply by changing what | eat and how | live”?! That's pretty exciting,” Ornish said. “The implications of our study are not limited to men with prostate cancer”.

TEXTO

“Words like these have lost their meaning to many refugees:
home, family, work, human rights, future. Its our job to give them meaning again.” UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

Leia o texto para responder a questão.

Notre-Dame came far closer to collapsing than people knew

The security employee monitoring the smoke alarm panel at Notre-Dame cathedral was just three days on the job when the red warning light flashed on the evening of April 15: “Feu.” Fire. It was 6:18 on a Monday, the week before Easter. The Rev. Jean-Pierre Caveau was celebrating Mass before hundreds of worshipers and visitors, and the employee radioed a church guard who was standing just a few feet from the altar, and told him to go check for fire. He did and found nothing.

It took nearly 30 minutes before they realized their mistake: The guard had gone to the wrong building. The fire was in the attic of the cathedral, the famed latticework of ancient timbers known as “the forest.” The guard went to the attic of a small adjacent building, the sacristy.

Instead of calling the fire department, the security employee called his boss but didn’t reach him. The manager called back and eventually deciphered the mistake. He called the guard and told him to leave the sacristy and run to the main attic. But by the time the guard climbed 300 narrow steps to the attic, the fire was burning out of control, putting firefighters in a near impossible position. Ultimately, Notre-Dame still stands only because the firefighters decided to risk everything.

The miscommunication, uncovered in interviews with church officials and managers of the fire security company, has set off a bitter round of finger-pointing over who was responsible for allowing the fire to rage unchecked for so long. Who is to blame and how the fire started have not yet been determined and are at the heart of an investigation by the French authorities that will continue for months.

But the damage is done. What happened that night changed Paris. The cathedral — a soaring medieval structure that has captured the hearts of believer and nonbeliever alike for 850 years — was ravaged.

WE’RE THINKING ABOUT THE AMAZON FIRES ALL WRONG.

For weeks, we’ve seen headlines saying the Amazon rainforest is burning. But something unexpected happens when you map satellite data showing both the fires this year and those that have burned in the previous four years: The bulk of the forest remains almost entirely intact. Confused? That’s because the heart of the Amazon is not actually on fire. Inst ead, most of the fires are burning at the fringes of the forest. They are mostly a man -made event. These fires are set in areas that had already been deforested in previous years and are now being cleared for agriculture. Brazil nearly doubled its arable land for intensive row cropping between 2000 and 2014, according to a recent study by researchers from the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland. Much of the new cultivable land is a result of deforestation.

No início desta década, o desmatamento no Brasil diminuiu consideravelmente, porém, mais recentemente, o desmatamento e os incêndios que o acompanham aumentaram. Os incêndios foram tão massivos, que, em São Paulo, nuvens de fumaça originadas na Amazônia transformaram o dia em noite.

TEXTO

“Words like these have lost their meaning to many refugees:
home, family, work, human rights, future. Its our job to give them meaning again.” UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

TEXTO

Over the past few years as we've watched
the digital revolution help bring about political and
social revolutions around the world, it has seemed
inevitable that the Internet would set people free.
[5] But think again, say Jared Cohen of the Council on
Foreign Relations and Eric Schmidt, the chairman of

Google. "Technology doesn't just help the good guys
pushing for democratic reform. It can also provide
powerful new tools for dictators to suppress dissent,"
[10] they say. Western companies are more than happy
to help the tyrants. "Everything a regime would need
to build an incredibly intimidating digital police state"
is "commercially available right now," say Cohen and
Schmidt. And this isn't just about reading emails,
[15] tracking tweets, and checking out Facebook. Soon
dictators will be able to compile vast databases of
biometric information: DNA, fingerprints, voices.
Facial-recognition software is growing ever more
sophisticated. "With cloud computing," say Cohen and
[20] Schmidt, "it takes just seconds to compare millions
of faces." Big Brother will start to look like Tiny Tim.
Be warned: "By indexing our biometric signatures,
some governments will try to track our every move
and word."

TEXTO

“Words like these have lost their meaning to many refugees:
home, family, work, human rights, future. Its our job to give them meaning again.” UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

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