Questões Militares

         Chagas disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a potentially life-threatening illness caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. About 6-7 million people worldwide are estimated to be infected with T. cruzi. The disease is found mainly in endemic areas of 21 continental Latin American countries, where it has been mostly transmitted to humans and other mammals by contact with feces or urine of triatomine bugs (vector-borne), known as kissing bugs, among many other popular names, depending on the geographical area.

        Chagas disease is named after Carlos Ribeiro Justiniano Chagas, a Brazilian physician and researcher who discovered the disease in 1909. Chagas disease was once entirely confined to continental rural areas of the Region of the Americas (excluding the Caribbean islands). Due to increased population mobility over previous decades, most infected people now live in urban settings and the infection has been increasingly detected in the United States of America, Canada, and many European and some African, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Pacific countries.

           Chagas disease’s transmission is caused by T. cruzi parasites, which are mainly transmitted by contact with feces/urine of infected blood-sucking triatomine bugs. Normally they hide during the day and become active at night when they feed on animal blood, including human blood. They usually bite an exposed area of skin such as the face (hence its common name, kissing bug), and the bug defecates or urinates close to the bite. The parasites enter the body when the person instinctively smears the bug’s feces or urine into the bite, other skin breaks, the eyes, or the mouth. T. cruzi can also be transmitted by consumption of food or beverages contaminated with T. cruzi through, for example, contact with feces or urine of infected triatomine bugs or common opossums. This kind of transmission typically causes outbreaks with more severe cases and mortality; passage from an infected mother to her newborn during pregnancy or childbirth; blood or blood product transfusion from infected donors; some organ transplants using organs from infected donors; and laboratory accidents.

Internet: <who.int>  (adapted). 

      Um conceito essencial para o trabalho com gêneros de texto é o de capacidades de linguagem. A primeira delas é a de ação. A capacidade de ação trata das representações que o agente produtor do texto tem sobre o contexto em que o gênero será produzido.

       A segunda capacidade de linguagem envolvida na produção textual é a discursiva. Pode-se dizer que ela diz respeito aos tipos de discurso e aos tipos de sequências predominantes que um determinado gênero apresenta. A terceira capacidade é a linguístico-discursiva. É com ela que o aluno desenvolverá seu texto lançando uso correto das coesões nominais e verbais, da coerência ao longo da produção, da modalização do discurso e do paralelismo presente na sua construção.

        Most teachers recognise the need for the students’ awareness about the potential relevance and utility of the language and skills they are teaching. And researchers have confirmed the importance of this need.

        In ESP (English for specific purposes) materials, for example, it is relatively easy to convince the learners that the teaching points are relevant and useful by relating them to known learner interests and to ‘real-life’ tasks, which the learners need or might need to perform in the target language. In general English materials this is obviously more difficult; but it can be achieved by researching what the target learners are interested in and what they really want to learn the language for. An interesting example of such research was a questionnaire in Namibia which revealed that two of the most important reasons for secondary school students to wish to learn English were so they would be able to write love letters in English and so that they would be able to write letters of complaint for villagers to the village headman and from the village headman to local authorities.

        Perception of relevance and utility can also be achieved by relating teaching points to challenging classroom tasks and by presenting them in ways which could facilitate the achievement of the task outcomes desired by the learners. The ‘new’ learning points are not relevant and useful because they will help the learners to achieve longterm academic or career objectives, but because they could help the learners to achieve short-term task objectives now. Of course, this only works if the tasks are begun first and the teaching is then provided in response to discovered needs. This is much more difficult for the materials writer than the conventional approach of teaching a predetermined point first and then getting the learners to practise and then produce it.

The Associated Press

    A French astronaut has used a video call from space to sound the alarm about worsening repercussions from climate change that he can see ______ the International Space Station.

       Entire regions of Earth in flames. Storms trailing destruction in their wake. And the haunting fragility of humanity’s only home floating like a blue — but also tarnished — pearl in the vastness of space.

      Through the portholes ______ the International Space Station, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet has an arresting view of global warming’s repercussions. He used a video call from space to sound the alarm Thursday, as negotiators, government officials and activists continued meeting at a U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

        “We see the pollution of rivers, atmospheric pollution, things like that.”

        “We saw entire regions burning from the space station, ______ Canada, in California,” he said. “We saw all of California covered ______ a cloud of smoke and flames with the naked eye from 400 kilometers (250 miles) up.”