Poliomyelitis, or polio, is a highly infectious viral disease that mostly affects young children. Poliovirus is most often transmitted by sewage-contaminated drinking water. It can survive for two months outside the body and is particularly transmissible in areas with open sewers. About three-fourths of infections are asymptomatic, allowing the disease to spread undetected. When the virus reaches the brain and spinal cord, it can result in permanent paralysis or death. Since there is no cure for polio, public health officials have focused on mass immunization to control the disease. Two polio vaccines are widely used: the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) developed by Jonas Salk in 1954, which is administered through injection and gives immunity through one dose, and the oral polio vaccine (OPV) developed by Albert Sabin in 1961, which contains live strains of the virus and is more easily administered than the Salk vaccine. Both vaccines lose efficacy when exposed to high temperatures and therefore need to be kept cool. The OPV requires several boosters to be effective.

Once endemic in more than one hundred countries, polio today has a foothold in just two: Afghanistan and Pakistan. At its peak, the infectious disease killed or paralyzed hundreds of thousands of people annually, but breakthroughs in vaccines and public health programs have made remarkable progress. However, there are challenges to vaccinating the world’s remaining unprotected children: some communities strongly oppose vaccination efforts, and polio workers have come under attack by militants. Underscoring the dangers, polio reemerged in southern Africa in 2021, and cases of vaccine-derived polio surfaced in Israel and the United States in 2022. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has disrupted efforts to manage an outbreak in the country’s west.

According to the text,

I. Polio is as easily transmissible in the United States as it is in underdeveloped countries.
II. Most polio infections can be easily transmitted since they can show no symptoms and go undetected.
III. Although polio vaccines have been successful, thousands are dying or paralyzed in some countries.
IV. Mass immunization is the best alternative available although some still oppose vaccination strategies.
V. Although polio can only be caused by direct contact with the virus in the environment, vaccination is still a challenge.

Early in life, it is most often delaying partnering and childbearing that increases solo-living. Living alone is also common in countries where rural youth migrate to urban centers for work and form their own household. Among young adults, men take longer to get married or move in with partners compared to women. In later life, the gender trend reverses dramatically, and women live alone two to four times more often than men across 113 countries looked at in one study. This can be explained by women living longer than men on average, resulting in more widows living alone. Increasing life expectancy, dissolution of partnerships and death of a partner tend to be the main drivers behind trends in elderly one person households.

Middle-aged adults’ solo-living is more complex. According to a Canadian panel survey, employed men and those living in vulnerable communities are less likely to stay living on their own compared to unemployed men and those living in less vulnerable communities, respectively. Among women, those with poor health and medium-level of education are more likely to live alone compared to women with excellent health and lower education.

n countries with high value placed on the individual, living alone is more common than countries with high value of family co‐residence. For example, in Sweden and across the Nordics living alone has become a norm through a “culture of individualism” and a welfare state which enables people to access affordable housing and public services independent of family support.

Com base no texto, considere as afirmações abaixo.

I. Homens de meia idade desempregados e em comunidades menos vulneráveis tendem a viver sozinhos.
II. De acordo com um dos estudos, mulheres mais velhas vivem muito mais com a companhia de familiares.
III. Em alguns países, a cultura e a existência de políticas públicas favorecem viver sozinho.
IV. A migração da zona rural para as cidades contribui para o compartilhamento de habitação entre jovens.
V. Mulheres de meia idade com saúde comprometida vivem mais com companhia que outras mais saudáveis.

Leia o texto a seguir e responda à questão.

The Washington Post
Opinion: Brazil’s racist wave of mass incarceration
Fausto Salvadori is a reporter for the news site Ponte Jornalismo in Brazil.

A few days ago, my son-in-law told me that he was on a walk with my daughter and grandson in the center of São Paulo, the most populous city in Brazil, when a group of police officers approached them. My 2-year-old grandson didn’t understand why the officers were pointing a gun at his father. I am 40 years older than him, and I don’t understand it either, much less accept it, although I know that situations like this are frequent in Brazil. Unlike my son-in-law, I don’t usually go through this. But I’m White. He’s Black.

In a country that for so long has lied to itself by asserting that it is a “racial democracy”, I can say that the police have rarely approached me on the street, but my son-in-law says that at one point, he was accosted 20 times in a single year. This situation represents a real lethal threat for Black people: They constitute 56 percent of Brazilians but account for 79 percent of those killed by the police. There’s also the fear of being detained; 67 percent of the prison population is Black.

The Anti-Drug Act, approved in 2006, accelerated a mass incarceration process that mainly affects Black and poor people and that the Brazilian government had been promoting since the 1990s. Following this law, the number of people incarcerated for drug crimes increased by 156 percent, according to research by Una guerra adictiva. Now, 1 in 3 prisoners is in jail because of this law. In the case of women, that percentage is over 60. This kind of incarceration – carried out in the name of the War on Drugs – is part of the reason Brazil is the country with the third-largest prison population globally. With about 750,000 inmates, it’s behind only the United States and China.

So, to avoid listeriosis, use a fridge thermometer to check your fridge is running at a temperature below 5℃. It’s also important to not eat foods that are past their use-by dates. And follow the opened storage duration instructions, for example: “Once opened, consume within two days”. In contrast, other food poisoning is usually the result of poor food handling (such as not separating raw and cooked food, or failing to wash hands) that leads to cross-contamination, or failure to cook food to high enough temperatures to reduce the number of bacteria.

The increased cost of food and the rising cost of energy is having a significant effect on people’s finances. But people could unintentionally put themselves at risk of listeriosis when attempting to reduce their energy usage or spending on food. For example, people may be more tempted to eat foods beyond their use-by date or keep foods for longer than the recommended duration after opening to avoid wasting food and money. Also, people may be more likely to adjust the temperature of their fridge to reduce electricity usage. Although many people may be looking at different ways of saving money during this difficult time, we must remember that storing food for too long at the wrong temperature can allow listeria to grow to high numbers, enough to make us ill. Unfortunately, we can’t see, smell or taste listeria. So ensuring our fridges are running at temperatures below 5℃, and that we follow the use-by dates and the opened storage duration instructions, are essential to protect ourselves and our families from listeria, particularly during the cost of living crisis.

According to this text on listeriosis, we can state that

I. you can avoid it by not eating foods that have been opened too long or that have reached their storage dates.

II. you can also avoid eating contaminated food with listeria if it changes its appearance, smell or taste.

III. it is usually caused by cross-contamination which could result from poor food handling.

IV. keeping food under the right temperature will help protect your family against food poisoning.

V. people may be putting themselves at risk of listeriosis when trying to save money and reduce living costs.

The question refers to the text below.

The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee is a comic strip about a ten-year-old boy genius who constantly talks about the US political, and economical situation.

Leia o infográfico para responder a questão.

Question refer to the comic strip below:

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

Warm-blooded animals are changing their physiology to adapt to a hotter climate, the scientists found. This includes getting larger beaks, legs and ears to better regulate their body temperature. When animals overheat, birds use their beaks and mammals use their ears to disperse the warmth. Some creatures in warmer climates have historically evolved to have larger beaks or ears to get rid of heat more easily. These differences are becoming more pronounced as the climate warms.

If animals fail to control their body temperature, they can overheat and die. Beaks, which are not covered by feathers and therefore not insulated, are a site of significant heat exchange, as are ears, tails and legs in mammals if not covered by fur. The review, published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, found that the differences are particularly pronounced in birds.

The author of the study, Sara Ryding of Deakin University, a bird researcher, said: “Shapeshifting does not mean that animals are coping with climate change and that all is fine. It just means they are evolving to survive it — but we’re not sure what the other ecological consequences of these changes are, or indeed that all species are capable of changing and surviving.”