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Text 2
Pandemic disease
Never again
As the Ebola epidemic draws gradually to its close, how should the world arm itself against the risks of insurgent infections?
Mar 21st 2015 | From the print edition
THE outbreak of Ebola fever brought to the world’s attention on March 22nd 2014 by Médecins Sans Frontières, an international charity, has infected some 25,000 people and killed more than 10,000 of them—almost all in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. It is abating. Liberia is close to declaring itself free of the virus and infection rates are falling in Sierra Leone. But it is not over yet, for in Guinea Ebola still kills dozens of people a week.
Moreover, the aftermath will harm the three countries’ economies, costing at least $1.6 billion in forgone economic growth this year, according to the World Bank.
Though it could have been a lot worse (at the height of the crisis some epidemiologists were talking of hundreds of thousands of deaths) it might also have been a lot better.
Previous Ebola outbreaks killed dozens or hundreds. The whole episode therefore suggests that the world’s defences against epidemics, though they have been strengthened since the rapid spread of SARS in 2002 and 2003 demonstrated their weaknesses, could do with reinforcing still further.
The prime directive of epidemic prevention is early detection. That means good surveillance. Unfortunately, only 64 of the 194 members of the World Health Organisation (WHO) have surveillance procedures, laboratories and data-management capabilities good enough to fulfil their obligations under an agreement known as the International Health Regulations. This, though, is changing. In Africa, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda have sharpened up. So has Vietnam. America is now helping 30 other countries, including the three affected by Ebola, to follow suit while, at the same time, improving their networks of clinics. Groups of neighbours are also coming together to form regional surveillance networks that can follow outbreaks across borders. Researchers in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, for example, have formed what they call the Asian Partnership on Emerging Infectious Diseases Research.
Along with early detection, the world needs to get better at responding—both institutionally and technologically. The WHO, notoriously slow off the mark when it came to Ebola, is widely regarded as too ponderous and bureaucratic to react with the speed needed to nip an emerging epidemic in the bud. There is talk of setting up a specialist international epidemic-prevention organisation. Bill Gates, a philanthropist whose foundation does a lot of work on disease control in poor countries, encourages this idea in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine. He notes that epidemics and war are similarly costly of blood and treasure, but that only war is taken seriously by politicians—at least in terms of preparations such as standing armies. As if to prove the point, the threat of bioterrorism has been one motive for what preparations have been put in place.
An army, of course, needs weapons. And, in the case of epidemics, it is important to think about what those might be. The temptation is to put money into high-profile areas like vaccines and drugs. It may, though, be more useful to concentrate on diagnosis, because this can stop people spreading a disease. The science of diagnostic testing is advancing rapidly, making it easier to come up quickly with a test for a new pathogen. That, Mr Gates believes, presents an opportunity. But it is one, he says, which requires the establishment of a rapid approval and procurement process, so that diagnostic tests can be made available quickly during outbreaks. They also need to be portable, like pregnancy tests, to keep people out of clinics where they might otherwise spread infection.
Drugs and vaccines are still important, of course. Research is going on into ways to make new vaccines quickly, so trials can start within days of an outbreak. Modern biological techniques mean a pathogen’s genome can be copied and stuck into other cells to turn out proteins which might be used as a vaccine’s active ingredients. Once a vaccine has been identified, the same techniques could be used to make it quickly, and possibly locally if a portable factory were shipped to an affected area.
The sinews of war
But none of this rapid response can happen without cash. One lesson of an earlier incident, the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”) pandemic of 2009, was the lack of a contingency fund to deal with such things. This is a problem Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, is determined to solve. He has been meeting with politicians and the private sector to advance the case for a “global pandemic emergency financing facility”.
One more modest possibility is that pools of research funding could be set up in advance, along with agreed research protocols, allowing health studies to start more quickly. An existing example of this is a fund created by the Wellcome Trust, a British medical charity.
Even on the coldest of calculations, a contingency fund would be a wise precaution. The damage caused by Ebola to west Africa’s economy is trivial compared with the cost of, say, a global influenza pandemic. The World Bank reckons that might reduce global economic activity by almost 5%. How many would die would depend on the virus’s virulence. But even a 1% death rate, for something that was truly worldwide, would add up to millions. That is too much blood, and too much treasure, for politicians to ignore.
From the print edition: Science and technology
We understand from the text that:
Item 4 - China has decided not to join the Asian partnership on Emerging Infectious Diseases Research.
Provas
Questão presente nas seguintes provas
Text 2
Pandemic disease
Never again
As the Ebola epidemic draws gradually to its close, how should the world arm itself against the risks of insurgent infections?
Mar 21st 2015 | From the print edition
THE outbreak of Ebola fever brought to the world’s attention on March 22nd 2014 by Médecins Sans Frontières, an international charity, has infected some 25,000 people and killed more than 10,000 of them—almost all in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. It is abating. Liberia is close to declaring itself free of the virus and infection rates are falling in Sierra Leone. But it is not over yet, for in Guinea Ebola still kills dozens of people a week.
Moreover, the aftermath will harm the three countries’ economies, costing at least $1.6 billion in forgone economic growth this year, according to the World Bank.
Though it could have been a lot worse (at the height of the crisis some epidemiologists were talking of hundreds of thousands of deaths) it might also have been a lot better.
Previous Ebola outbreaks killed dozens or hundreds. The whole episode therefore suggests that the world’s defences against epidemics, though they have been strengthened since the rapid spread of SARS in 2002 and 2003 demonstrated their weaknesses, could do with reinforcing still further.
The prime directive of epidemic prevention is early detection. That means good surveillance. Unfortunately, only 64 of the 194 members of the World Health Organisation (WHO) have surveillance procedures, laboratories and data-management capabilities good enough to fulfil their obligations under an agreement known as the International Health Regulations. This, though, is changing. In Africa, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda have sharpened up. So has Vietnam. America is now helping 30 other countries, including the three affected by Ebola, to follow suit while, at the same time, improving their networks of clinics. Groups of neighbours are also coming together to form regional surveillance networks that can follow outbreaks across borders. Researchers in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, for example, have formed what they call the Asian Partnership on Emerging Infectious Diseases Research.
Along with early detection, the world needs to get better at responding—both institutionally and technologically. The WHO, notoriously slow off the mark when it came to Ebola, is widely regarded as too ponderous and bureaucratic to react with the speed needed to nip an emerging epidemic in the bud. There is talk of setting up a specialist international epidemic-prevention organisation. Bill Gates, a philanthropist whose foundation does a lot of work on disease control in poor countries, encourages this idea in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine. He notes that epidemics and war are similarly costly of blood and treasure, but that only war is taken seriously by politicians—at least in terms of preparations such as standing armies. As if to prove the point, the threat of bioterrorism has been one motive for what preparations have been put in place.
An army, of course, needs weapons. And, in the case of epidemics, it is important to think about what those might be. The temptation is to put money into high-profile areas like vaccines and drugs. It may, though, be more useful to concentrate on diagnosis, because this can stop people spreading a disease. The science of diagnostic testing is advancing rapidly, making it easier to come up quickly with a test for a new pathogen. That, Mr Gates believes, presents an opportunity. But it is one, he says, which requires the establishment of a rapid approval and procurement process, so that diagnostic tests can be made available quickly during outbreaks. They also need to be portable, like pregnancy tests, to keep people out of clinics where they might otherwise spread infection.
Drugs and vaccines are still important, of course. Research is going on into ways to make new vaccines quickly, so trials can start within days of an outbreak. Modern biological techniques mean a pathogen’s genome can be copied and stuck into other cells to turn out proteins which might be used as a vaccine’s active ingredients. Once a vaccine has been identified, the same techniques could be used to make it quickly, and possibly locally if a portable factory were shipped to an affected area.
The sinews of war
But none of this rapid response can happen without cash. One lesson of an earlier incident, the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”) pandemic of 2009, was the lack of a contingency fund to deal with such things. This is a problem Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, is determined to solve. He has been meeting with politicians and the private sector to advance the case for a “global pandemic emergency financing facility”.
One more modest possibility is that pools of research funding could be set up in advance, along with agreed research protocols, allowing health studies to start more quickly. An existing example of this is a fund created by the Wellcome Trust, a British medical charity.
Even on the coldest of calculations, a contingency fund would be a wise precaution. The damage caused by Ebola to west Africa’s economy is trivial compared with the cost of, say, a global influenza pandemic. The World Bank reckons that might reduce global economic activity by almost 5%. How many would die would depend on the virus’s virulence. But even a 1% death rate, for something that was truly worldwide, would add up to millions. That is too much blood, and too much treasure, for politicians to ignore.
From the print edition: Science and technology
We understand from the text that:
Item 3 - America is helping the three countries affected by Ebola to improve their networks of clinics;
Provas
Questão presente nas seguintes provas
Text 2
Pandemic disease
Never again
As the Ebola epidemic draws gradually to its close, how should the world arm itself against the risks of insurgent infections?
Mar 21st 2015 | From the print edition
THE outbreak of Ebola fever brought to the world’s attention on March 22nd 2014 by Médecins Sans Frontières, an international charity, has infected some 25,000 people and killed more than 10,000 of them—almost all in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. It is abating. Liberia is close to declaring itself free of the virus and infection rates are falling in Sierra Leone. But it is not over yet, for in Guinea Ebola still kills dozens of people a week.
Moreover, the aftermath will harm the three countries’ economies, costing at least $1.6 billion in forgone economic growth this year, according to the World Bank.
Though it could have been a lot worse (at the height of the crisis some epidemiologists were talking of hundreds of thousands of deaths) it might also have been a lot better.
Previous Ebola outbreaks killed dozens or hundreds. The whole episode therefore suggests that the world’s defences against epidemics, though they have been strengthened since the rapid spread of SARS in 2002 and 2003 demonstrated their weaknesses, could do with reinforcing still further.
The prime directive of epidemic prevention is early detection. That means good surveillance. Unfortunately, only 64 of the 194 members of the World Health Organisation (WHO) have surveillance procedures, laboratories and data-management capabilities good enough to fulfil their obligations under an agreement known as the International Health Regulations. This, though, is changing. In Africa, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda have sharpened up. So has Vietnam. America is now helping 30 other countries, including the three affected by Ebola, to follow suit while, at the same time, improving their networks of clinics. Groups of neighbours are also coming together to form regional surveillance networks that can follow outbreaks across borders. Researchers in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, for example, have formed what they call the Asian Partnership on Emerging Infectious Diseases Research.
Along with early detection, the world needs to get better at responding—both institutionally and technologically. The WHO, notoriously slow off the mark when it came to Ebola, is widely regarded as too ponderous and bureaucratic to react with the speed needed to nip an emerging epidemic in the bud. There is talk of setting up a specialist international epidemic-prevention organisation. Bill Gates, a philanthropist whose foundation does a lot of work on disease control in poor countries, encourages this idea in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine. He notes that epidemics and war are similarly costly of blood and treasure, but that only war is taken seriously by politicians—at least in terms of preparations such as standing armies. As if to prove the point, the threat of bioterrorism has been one motive for what preparations have been put in place.
An army, of course, needs weapons. And, in the case of epidemics, it is important to think about what those might be. The temptation is to put money into high-profile areas like vaccines and drugs. It may, though, be more useful to concentrate on diagnosis, because this can stop people spreading a disease. The science of diagnostic testing is advancing rapidly, making it easier to come up quickly with a test for a new pathogen. That, Mr Gates believes, presents an opportunity. But it is one, he says, which requires the establishment of a rapid approval and procurement process, so that diagnostic tests can be made available quickly during outbreaks. They also need to be portable, like pregnancy tests, to keep people out of clinics where they might otherwise spread infection.
Drugs and vaccines are still important, of course. Research is going on into ways to make new vaccines quickly, so trials can start within days of an outbreak. Modern biological techniques mean a pathogen’s genome can be copied and stuck into other cells to turn out proteins which might be used as a vaccine’s active ingredients. Once a vaccine has been identified, the same techniques could be used to make it quickly, and possibly locally if a portable factory were shipped to an affected area.
The sinews of war
But none of this rapid response can happen without cash. One lesson of an earlier incident, the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”) pandemic of 2009, was the lack of a contingency fund to deal with such things. This is a problem Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, is determined to solve. He has been meeting with politicians and the private sector to advance the case for a “global pandemic emergency financing facility”.
One more modest possibility is that pools of research funding could be set up in advance, along with agreed research protocols, allowing health studies to start more quickly. An existing example of this is a fund created by the Wellcome Trust, a British medical charity.
Even on the coldest of calculations, a contingency fund would be a wise precaution. The damage caused by Ebola to west Africa’s economy is trivial compared with the cost of, say, a global influenza pandemic. The World Bank reckons that might reduce global economic activity by almost 5%. How many would die would depend on the virus’s virulence. But even a 1% death rate, for something that was truly worldwide, would add up to millions. That is too much blood, and too much treasure, for politicians to ignore.
From the print edition: Science and technology
We understand from the text that:
Item 1 - Good surveillance is essential;
Provas
Questão presente nas seguintes provas
Based on your interpretation of the texts that follow, determine if each alternative is true of false.
Text 1
Germany, Greece and history
Pointing fingers
With the euro zone on the brink again, neither childish squabbles nor historical arguments are helpful to Germany or Greece
Mar 21st 2015 | BERLIN | From the print edition
THE level of debate between Germany and Greece, protagonists in a drama that could make or break the euro zone, could hardly be called edifying. Take, for example, the YouTube video from 2013 which shows Yanis Varoufakis, then a left-leaning economics professor, arguing that Greece should simply default on its debts and “stick the finger to Germany”, and making an appropriate hand gesture for emphasis. When Mr Varoufakis, now Greece’s finance minister, was confronted with the clip on March 15th during a talk show on German television, he claimed the footage was doctored. The ensuing “Fingergate” lasted days, as the German media proved that the video was genuine, albeit taken out of context. Germany’s pundits spluttered with rage: the Greeks were mendacious as well as impertinent.
This week marked a nadir in relations between Greece and its largest creditor. The tone has been deteriorating ever since January when Alexis Tsipras, leader of the far-left Syriza party, took over as Greek prime minister. It is clear that Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, and Mr Varoufakis no longer trust each other as partners in negotiations to extend Greece’s bail-out. When Mr Schäuble called his counterpart “foolishly naive”, Greece’s ambassador in Berlin filed a diplomatic protest.
Greece’s defence minister has threatened to let masses of Syrian refugees, possibly including terrorists, pass through to Germany. Europe has only itself to blame if that happens, he said. The Greek justice minister suggested that, as part of his country’s ongoing claims against its old oppressor, he might even seize the Athens property of the Goethe Institute, Germany’s cultural agency.
Arguments over a tactless hand gesture might be called a childish spat. But historically based threats to seize German assets carry a heavier payload because they recall some dark spectres that have never ceased to haunt both countries. Between 1941 and 1944 the Nazis occupied Greece with a brutality exceeded only in Slavic countries. Greece has never formally dropped claims on Germany which date from that time. Now, in the midst of a debate about recently incurred Greek debts, the government in Athens suddenly wants Germany to settle some much older obligations, both financial and moral, as well.
Germans don’t like being reminded of the past by others, because they have their own very formal rituals of recollection. Remembering and drawing lessons from the past is baked into the German approach to politics, psychologically and even physically. When legislators walk to debates in Berlin’s Reichstag building, they see walls covered in Cyrillic graffiti. These were scribbled by Red Army soldiers after they stormed to victory in 1945, and meticulously preserved as silent exhortations to responsible governance. Germany’s politicians generally go out of their way to be sensitive to countries which the Nazis invaded or occupied.
(…)
According to the text:
Item 0 - Germany and Greece are involved in discussions about the joint construction of a power plant;
Provas
Questão presente nas seguintes provas
Sobre relações trabalhistas e política salarial, podemos dizer que:
Item 2 - Em 1979, a mudança do regime de reajuste salarial, de semestral para trimestral contribuiu para acelerar a inflação.
Provas
Questão presente nas seguintes provas
Um economista deseja avaliar o consumo de carne bovina em 2 estados brasileiros: Rio Grande do Sul (RS) e Rio Grande do Norte (RN). Para tanto, ele seleciona uma amostra de 50.000 unidades de consumo, 35.000 localizadas no Rio Grande do Sul (primeira sub-amostra) e 15.000 no Rio Grande do Norte (segunda sub-amostra). Inicialmente, o economista preferiu trabalhar com as sub-amostras em separado.
Para as duas sub-amostras ele estima a Curva de Engel para o consumo de carne bovina pelo método de Mínimos Quadrados Ordinários. Os resultados das regressões estão abaixo, em que os erros-padrão estão entre parênteses:
[Para a resolução desta questão talvez lhe seja útil saber que se Z tem distribuição normal padrão, então P(|Z|>1,645)=0,10 e P(|Z|>1,96)=0,05]
In (consumo) = 0,30 + 1,15 ln(renda) - RS (1)
(0,25) (0,04)
R2 = 0,45 e n=35.000
In (consumo) = 0,80 + 0,67 ln(renda) - RN (2)
(0,65) (0,07)
R2 = 0,38 e n=15.000 ,
em que ln(consumo) é o logaritmo natural do consumo de carne bovina, em quilogramas, e ln(renda) é o logaritmo natural da renda total do domicílio, em milhares de reais. Todas as suposições usuais acerca do modelo de regressão linear clássico são satisfeitas.
Com base nos resultados acima, e supondo que a amostra é suficientemente grande para que aproximações assintóticas sejam válidas, é correto afirmar que:
Item 2 - É possível afirmar, ao nível de significância de 10%, que no Rio Grande do Norte a carne bovina depende exclusivamente do nível de renda, portanto, não é um bem de primeira necessidade;
Provas
Questão presente nas seguintes provas
O consumidor B, proprietário da dotação !$ w \, = \, (x, \, y) \, = \, (10, \, 10) !$, apresenta função utilidade dada por !$ U_b(x, \, y) \, = \, x.y. !$ O preço do bem x é representado por P e o preço do bem y é fixo em $1. Se B pode negociar livremente sua dotação aos preços de mercado, responda:
Item 3 - Se A for um monopolista, escolherá P = $0,50, pois, a esse preço, a escolha de B, na sua curva preço-consumo, ocorre na curva de indiferença mais alta que A pode obter via trocas voluntárias;
Provas
Questão presente nas seguintes provas
Sobre o desempenho da agricultura brasileira no século XX, podemos afirmar que:
Item 4 - A política de preços mínimos agrícolas, aplicada a partir do final dos anos 1960, ao causar distorções dos preços de mercado, acabou por prejudicar o avanço de algumas culturas de exportação cuja dinâmica dependia da competitividade no mercado internacional.
Provas
Questão presente nas seguintes provas
Com relação a uma função de utilidade com dois bens, q1 e q2, do tipo U(q1, q2) = u(q1) + q2, é correto afirmar que:
Item 0 - Como as curvas de indiferença são deslocamentos paralelos uma da outra, tais preferências são homotéticas;
Provas
Questão presente nas seguintes provas
Based on your interpretation of the texts that follow, determine if each alternative is true of false.
Text 1
Germany, Greece and history
Pointing fingers
With the euro zone on the brink again, neither childish squabbles nor historical arguments are helpful to Germany or Greece
Mar 21st 2015 | BERLIN | From the print edition
THE level of debate between Germany and Greece, protagonists in a drama that could make or break the euro zone, could hardly be called edifying. Take, for example, the YouTube video from 2013 which shows Yanis Varoufakis, then a left-leaning economics professor, arguing that Greece should simply default on its debts and “stick the finger to Germany”, and making an appropriate hand gesture for emphasis. When Mr Varoufakis, now Greece’s finance minister, was confronted with the clip on March 15th during a talk show on German television, he claimed the footage was doctored. The ensuing “Fingergate” lasted days, as the German media proved that the video was genuine, albeit taken out of context. Germany’s pundits spluttered with rage: the Greeks were mendacious as well as impertinent.
This week marked a nadir in relations between Greece and its largest creditor. The tone has been deteriorating ever since January when Alexis Tsipras, leader of the far-left Syriza party, took over as Greek prime minister. It is clear that Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, and Mr Varoufakis no longer trust each other as partners in negotiations to extend Greece’s bail-out. When Mr Schäuble called his counterpart “foolishly naive”, Greece’s ambassador in Berlin filed a diplomatic protest.
Greece’s defence minister has threatened to let masses of Syrian refugees, possibly including terrorists, pass through to Germany. Europe has only itself to blame if that happens, he said. The Greek justice minister suggested that, as part of his country’s ongoing claims against its old oppressor, he might even seize the Athens property of the Goethe Institute, Germany’s cultural agency.
Arguments over a tactless hand gesture might be called a childish spat. But historically based threats to seize German assets carry a heavier payload because they recall some dark spectres that have never ceased to haunt both countries. Between 1941 and 1944 the Nazis occupied Greece with a brutality exceeded only in Slavic countries. Greece has never formally dropped claims on Germany which date from that time. Now, in the midst of a debate about recently incurred Greek debts, the government in Athens suddenly wants Germany to settle some much older obligations, both financial and moral, as well.
Germans don’t like being reminded of the past by others, because they have their own very formal rituals of recollection. Remembering and drawing lessons from the past is baked into the German approach to politics, psychologically and even physically. When legislators walk to debates in Berlin’s Reichstag building, they see walls covered in Cyrillic graffiti. These were scribbled by Red Army soldiers after they stormed to victory in 1945, and meticulously preserved as silent exhortations to responsible governance. Germany’s politicians generally go out of their way to be sensitive to countries which the Nazis invaded or occupied.
(…)
We can infer from text that:
Item 3 - Germany is Greece's largest creditor;
Provas
Questão presente nas seguintes provas
Cadernos
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