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). 

        Many assumptions of a communicative orientation towards language teaching need questioning in a global context. Ozóg (1989) discusses the idea of the ‘information gap’, which is supposed to induce students to speak. ‘Are we as Europeans’, he asks, ‘not making a cultural assumption that speakers the world over are uneasy in silence and that they have an overwhelming desire to fill gaps which occur in natural discourse?’ (p.399). Silence is a salient feature of conversation in the Malay world, he points out, a feature that has also been noted in Japan and a number of other cultures.

       Indeed, the whole question of requiring others to speak needs to be questioned in terms of both cultural and gender differences. The point here is not to exoticize some notion of cultural difference, but rather to suggest that language is a cultural practice, that both language and thinking about language are always located in very particular social, cultural and political contexts. How language (including silence, paralanguage, and so on) is used, therefore, differs extensively from one context to another, and thus any approach to language teaching based on one particular view of language may be completely inapplicable in another context. If particular language teaching practices (advertised and exported as the best, newest and most scientific) support certain views of language, then such practices clearly present a particular cultural politics and make the English language classroom a site of struggle over different ways of thinking about and dealing with language.

       A few decades ago, professional footballers spent their nights partying. Now, they are much more aware of the benefits of a good night’s sleep.

     The change began in the mid-1990s, when mattress salesman Nick Littlehales contacted the manager of the Manchester United football team, Alex Ferguson, asking whether he had ever considered how sleep affected performance on the pitch. Interested, Ferguson arranged for Littlehales to give a presentation to his team.

        Gradually, club managers began to pay more attention to scientific sleep research, and for good reason. (...)

         Now, many teams and players are making an effort to improve their sleep patterns, using various means. James Milner from Manchester City found it hard to sleep after evening games, so would play computer games into the early hours. As a result, he was too tired to train the following morning. Since these interventions are cheap and effective, even the less well-known teams can benefit. (...)

          Whereas in the past, playing after a party and a few hours’ sleep was seen as a badge of honour, a good sleep is now considered an essential part of performance.