TEXTO - Lung Cancer In Non Smoker

    A group of respiratory medicine and public health experts are calling for lung cancer in never-smokers to be given greater recognition. Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, they say that lung cancer in people who have never smoked is under recognised and presents a diagnostic challenge, particularly for GPs seeking to balance overinvestigation with early diagnosis and high quality care.
    It is estimated that around 6,000 people in the UK who have never smoked die of lung cancer every year, greater than the numbers of people who die of cervical cancer (900), lymphoma (5,200), leukaemia (4,500) and ovarian cancer (4,200).
    Major contributors to lung cancers in never-smokers include second-hand smoke, occupational carcinogen exposure and outdoor pollution. Globally, the use of solid fuels for indoor cooking and second-hand smoke exposure are important contributions to lung cancer in never-smokers and disproportionately affect women
    Lead author, Professor Paul Cosford, Director for Health Protection & Medical Director, Public Health England, said: "This paper demonstrates an estimated 6,000 people who have never smoked die each year from lung cancer in the UK. This makes it, by itself, the eighth most common cause of cancer related death in the UK.
    "For too long having lung cancer has only been thought of as a smoking related disease. This remains an important association but, as this this work shows, the scale of the challenge means there is a need to raise awareness with clinicians and policy makers of the other risk factors including indoor and outdoor air pollution.
    "This is one reason why PHE published its review of the evidence and recommended specific actions local authorities can take to improve their air quality. By delivering on the promise of a clean air generation we can reduce the number of lung cancers among those who have never smoked."
    Co-author Professor Mick Peake, clinical director of the Centre for Cancer Outcomes, University College London Hospitals Cancer Collaborative, said: "Despite advances in our understanding, most people who have never smoked do not believe they are at risk and often experience long delays in diagnosis, reducing their chances of receiving curative treatment."
    Prof Peake added: "The stigma of smoking has been the major factor behind the lack of interest in, knowledge of and research into lung cancer. Therefore, in many ways, neversmokers who develop lung cancer are, as a result, disadvantaged.
    "Drawing attention to the contribution of underlying risk factors to lung cancer in never-smokers presents opportunities to reinforce efforts to tackle other major public health challenges. For example, the impact of passive smoking and air pollution on lung cancers adds weight to the government's ambitions to improve air quality and the public, clinicians and policy makers must all be aware of this relationship

(Adapted from: www.sciencedaily.com)

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  With the objective of promoting literacy all over the world, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) created, on September 8, the International Literacy Day. Nevertheless, five decades later, estimates point to a worldwide total of 738 million persons who cannot read or write. In Brazil, they were 13 million in 2015, according to data from the National Household Sample Survey (Pnad 2015).

PNAD shows that the illiteracy rate (percentage of illiterate persons by age group in the total number of persons in the same group) fell from 11.5%, in 2004, to 8%, in 2015. Illiteracy is more concentrated in the Northeast Region, where the rate reaches 16.2%, way above the figure in the South, 4.1%. Older groups record higher illiteracy rates: 25.7% among persons aged 65 and over, versus 0.8% in the group aged 15 to 19.

One of the solutions to change this situation is the Youth and Adult Education Program (Peja), attended by 26,230 students in the city of Rio de Janeiro alone, according to the Municipal Secretariat of Education. “Peja has a diversity of students”, says Fatima Valente, director of the Youth and Adult Education Municipal Reference Center (Creja). Due to that diversity, our classes fulfill different needs. “We do not have working students, we have workers who study. That’s why our schedule cannot be the same as in regular education”.

These programs have helped change the lives of many people, like Luciana Muniz, age 35, and Antônio Alves, age 65, both Peja students. Luciana states that having no education has been very humiliating. “At church I could never take part in Bible reading, and that made me sad”. Today she is very active in Church, wishes to keep on studying, to graduate in Gastronomy and dreams of opening up her own company. Antônio, in turn, quit studying to work in crops at the age of 7, and now says he will not stop again. “I study at home too. My wife finds it funny that I’m always holding a book. I can even read the small print on TV.”

(Fragment available on http://ojs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/informal_logic/article)

[1]    The press is sometimes called the fourth estate. That

is probably too grandiose a concept for most journalists’ tastes

— but it does suggest an important, coherent and independent

[4] force in society. That “apartness” is crucial. The press does not

share the same aims as those of government, the legislature, the

executive, religion or commerce. It is, or should be, an outsider.

[7]    Stanley Baldwin did not intend it as a compliment

when he said of newspapers in 1931 that they had “power

without responsibility”. But, in fact, that lack of responsibility

[10] is one of the important respects in which the press is

different. Of course, the press must be responsible for its own

standards and ethics. But it is not the job of journalists to run

[13] things: they are literally without responsibility. They don’t have

to respond to a party whip, make the compromises necessary in

politics or answer to shareholders. They are not bound by the

[16] confidentiality agreements that bind others. They are careless

of causing inconvenience or embarrassment. They do not have

to win votes. They can write things — about the economy, say,

[19] or the environment — which may need saying but which are

unsayable by politicians. They come from a different place.

Internet: <http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu> (adapted).

Based on text above, judge the item that follow.

FOR CATS, A BIG GULP WITH A TOUCH OF THE TONGUE

  It has taken four highly qualified engineers and a bunch of integral equations to figure it out, but we now know how cats drink. The answer is: very elegantly, and not at all the way you might suppose. Cats lap water so fast that the human eye cannot follow what is happening, which is why the trick had apparently escaped attention until now. With the use of high-speed photography, the neatness of the feline solution has been captured. The act of drinking may seem like no big deal for anyone who can fully close his mouth to create suction, as people can. But the various species that cannot do so — and that includes most adult carnivores — must resort to some other mechanism. Dog owners are familiar with the unseemly lapping noises that ensue when their thirsty pet meets a bowl of water. The dog is thrusting its tongue into the water, forming a crude cup with it and hauling the liquid back into the muzzle.

  Cats, both big and little, are so much classier, according to new research by Pedro M. Reis and Roman Stocker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joined by Sunghwan Jung of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Jeffrey M. Aristoff of Princeton. Writing in the Thursday issue of Science, the four engineers report that the cat’s lapping method depends on its instinctive ability to calculate the balance between opposing gravitational and inertial forces. What happens is that the cat darts its tongue, curving the upper side downward so that the tip lightly touches the surface of the water.

  The tongue is then pulled upward at high speed, drawing a column of water behind it. Just at the moment that gravity finally overcomes the rush of the water and starts to pull the column down — snap! The cat’s jaws have closed over the jet of water and swallowed it. The cat laps four times a second — too fast for the human eye to see anything but a blur — and its tongue moves at a speed of one meter per second. Being engineers, the cat-lapping team next tested its findings with a machine that mimicked a cat’s tongue, using a glass disk at the end of a piston to serve as the tip. After calculating things like the Froude number and the aspect ratio, they were able to figure out how fast a cat should lap to get the greatest amount of water into its mouth. The cats, it turns out, were way ahead of them — they lap at just that speed. To the scientific mind, the next obvious question is whether bigger cats should lap at different speeds.

WADE, Nicholas. For cats, a big gulp with a touch of the tongue. Disponível em: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/science/12cats.html?_r=1&hpw> Acesso em: 20 nov. 2010.