Questões de Concurso

Read the text below and answer the question.

Rice is a staple food for a large part of the world’s population, providing more than one fifth of the calories consumed worldwide, making it the second-most-consumed cereal grain. The rice plant grows about 2 to 5 feet high and is a flowering plant.

Rice is composed of the grain and husk. The grain is mainly used as food, but the vitamins, including Bcomplex, are found in the husk. Most people prefer to eat polished rice without the husk, but this can create a vitamin deficiency because polished rice doesn’t have many vitamins.

Much of the rice that we eat comes from southeastern Asia and grows in all countries that have a warm and moist climate, including India, China, and Japan. The traditional method for cultivating rice is to flood the fields after planting the seedlings. This simple method requires planning and maintenance of the water supply, but reduces the growth of weeds and deters vermin. Flooding is not mandatory, but all other methods of irrigation require more effort in weed and pest control and different methods of fertilization.

COOK, Ann, Grammar: American Accent Training – 2009, Page 208.

(G. Kalajdziev, et al. www.humanrights.dk. Adaptado.)

(G. Kalajdziev, et al. www.humanrights.dk. Adaptado.)

(G. Kalajdziev, et al. www.humanrights.dk. Adaptado.)

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).