TEXT I

"A new crop of potential antibiotics may soon help fighting antibiotic-resistant infections, such as this batch of methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria.”

    "Antibiotics have been taking it on the chin lately. Not only has resistance to the medications been growing, but also drug companies have been dropping antibiotic research programs because the drugs are difficult and expensive to make. Now, help is on the way. Researchers report today that they’ve found a way to churn out new members of one of the most widely used classes of antibiotics, called macrolides. The work could lead to new weapons against antibiotic-resistant infections, and possibly save millions of lives.

    Macrolides, drugs that include erythromycin and azithromycin, were first developed in the 1950s. Since then they’ve become a safeguard against bacterial and fungal infections. Chemically, macrolides are giant rings containing 14 to 16 carbon atoms, with one or more sugar appendages dangling off the side. Bacteria synthesize them to fight off their neighbors. Yet, bacteria didn’t evolve to make macrolides good drugs in people. So, medicinal chemists — the group of researchers that actually build new drugs — start with the natural versions and tweak their bonds one at a time in an effort to make them safer and more effective. But, in most cases, it’s impossible to confine the changes to just one bond on a large molecule. When multiple bonds react, the result is an unwanted broad mixture of end products, none of which contain just the one specific change desired for making a better drug.

    To solve that problem, Harvard University chemist Andrew Myers and colleagues adapted a divide-and-conquer strategy that they had applied to tetracycline antibiotics back in 2005. They started with three basic macrolide ring structures and broke each one down into eight molecular “modules.” They then carefully mapped out reactions needed to put the pieces back together. For two such linkers, they even invented new chemical reactions to forge the bonds. This allowed them to tinker with the modules individually, and then reassemble them. By repeating the strategy over and over, they forged more than 300 entirely new macrolides.

    When given to a panel of bacterial lab cultures, several of these compounds showed potent antibiotic activity against antibiotic-resistant microbes, including methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus, the team reports online today in Nature. Perhaps equally important, Myers says, is that all the reactions used for the assembly produce high yields of the final products. That’s essential, he notes, because bacteria don’t produce the starting material for the new compounds. So, if any of them proves a valuable medicine, chemists will be able to synthesize large quantities of it cheaply from scratch.

    “This is a great example of beautiful chemistry that will have a tangible societal benefit,” says Phil Baran, a synthetic organic chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California.”
(Adapted from: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/new-way-makepowerful- antibiotics)

INSTRUCTION: Answer question in relation to text.

TEXT 

  UNITED NATIONS, May 11, 2015 (IPS/GIN) –
Speaking at the U.N. Security Council, Federica
Mogherini, High Representative of the European
Union for Foreign Affairs, called on the international
[5] community to take urgent steps to end the
Mediterranean crisis and dismantle the human
smuggling rings that facilitate it.
  “The EU is united and we will work, but we cannot
work alone. We need to share and act together, as it’s
[10] a EU responsibility and a global responsibility, “said
Mogherini.
  In 2014, 3,300 migrants died while fleeing their
countries of origin to enter Europe. Three people out
of four perished in the Mediterranean Sea, and 2015
[15] looks set to be even worse, added Mogherini.
  According to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR)
about 60,000 men, women and children have crossed
the Mediterranean this year, and 1,800 of them have
tragically died during the journey.
[20]   “Saving lives and preventing the loss of lives at
sea is a top responsibility that we all share, not only as
Europeans but globally,” Mogherini said at the Council
briefing, adding that an exceptional situation requires
an immediate strategy to solve the crisis.
[25]   The Mediterranean problem is a structural problem
rooted in poverty, increasing inequality, conflicts and
human rights violations in African and Middle Eastern
countries and beyond, including the situation in Syria,
Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa, said the European
[30] High Representative.
  Also speaking at the Council was Antonio Tete,
Permanent Representative Observer of the African
Union to the U.N., who underlined that smuggling of
migrants has emerged due to several factors that lead
[35] people in many African countries to escape from abject
poverty, climate change, water scarcity, insufficient
progress in employment and rising inequality.
  “This humanitarian emergency is also a security
crisis, since smuggling networks are linked to finance
[40] and terrorist activities, which contributes to instability
in a region that is already unstable enough,” Mogherini
said.
  If the international community fails to frame its
response to the crisis, it will be a “moral failure,” said
[45] Peter Sutherland, the Special Representative of the
Secretary-General for International Migration.

Ieri, Valentina. Global Information Network [New York] 11 May 2015.

INSTRUCTION: Answer question according to text.

TEXT

Reading the work of Jorge Luis Borges for the first time is
like discovering a new letter in the alphabet, or a new note in
the musical scale. His writings are fictions filled with private
jokes and esoterica, historiography and sardonic footnotes.
[5] They are brief, often with abrupt beginnings. Borges’ use
of labyrinths, mirrors, chess games and detective stories
creates a complex intellectual landscape, yet his language is
clear, with ironic undertones. He presents the most fantastic
of scenes in simple terms, seducing us into the forking
[10] pathway of his seemingly infinite imagination.

Half a century ago, when Borges’ ground-breaking collection
Ficciones was first published in English translation, he was
virtually unknown outside literary circles in Buenos Aires,
where he was born in 1899, and Paris, where his work was
[15] translated in the 1950s. In 1961, he was catapulted onto the
world stage when international publishers awarded him the
first Formentor Prize for outstanding literary achievement.
He shared the prize with Samuel Beckett (the other authors
on the shortlist were Alejo Carpentier, Max Frisch and Henry
[20] Miller). The award spurred English translations of Ficciones
and Labyrinths and brought Borges widespread fame and
respect.

Over the decades since his death in 1986, Borges’ global
stature has continued to grow. “Today one could consider
[25] Borges the most important writer of the 20th Century,” says
Suzanne Jill Levine, translator and general editor of the
Penguin Classics five-volume Borges series. Why? “Because
he created a new literary continent between North and South
America, between Europe and America, between old worlds
[30] and modernity. In creating the most original writing of his
time, Borges taught us that nothing is new, that creation is
recreation, that we are all one contradictory mind, connected
amongst each other and through time and space, that human
beings are not only fiction makers but are fictions themselves,
[35] that everything we think or perceive is fiction, that every
corner of knowledge is a fiction.”

Adapted from http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140902-the-20thcenturys-best-writer (acessado em setembro 2014).