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SAINT PATRICK'S DAY



    Saint Patrick's Day, also known as The Feast of Saint Patrick, is a traditional holiday celebrated every year on March 17th, the day the patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick, died. 

      Patrick, who was born in the fourth century, lived in the British Isles, a land that had been invaded and conquered first by the Romans and then by Germanic tribes. At the age of 16, Patrick was captured and taken as a slave from the British Isles to what is now Ireland. He lived there for several years herding sheep. He was a religious boy, and he prayed that he would someday return to his homeland.

     Legend has it that one night while he was praying, a voice told him to escape from the farm, and find a ship that was waiting for him in a harbor two hundred miles aways. Patrick got to the ship, sailed to Europe, and disembarked in what is now probably France. He ---1--- several of the ship's crew through a dangerous forest, praying all the time. Neither Patrick nor any member of his crew was captured. When some of the men were about to die of starvation, wild animals appeared to them to eat. Events such as these appeared to be miracles and gave rise to later legends surrounding Patrick.

    Finally finding his way home, Patrick felt that he was called by God to perform an important mission. He believed it was his duty to go back to Ireland and convert the Celtic people to the Christian Religion.

      Patrick arrived in England and became a missionary, traveling from village to village and talking about his faith. Once, several members of a tribe approached Patrick and told him that they found it difficult to understand and believe in the Holy Trinity. Patrick thought a moment, then stooped down and picked one of the plentiful shamrocks growing wild around Ireland. “Here are three leaves", he said, “yet it is one plant. Imagine the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit as each of these leaves. Here they are, yet they are one plant." The tribesmen understood, because Patrick had used a familiar object to explain. From that time on, the shamrock has been a revered symbol of Ireland.

    There are lots of stories about Patrick. One of them is about him forcing snakes out of the entire country of Ireland. Even though there are many different stories about how he accomplished such a task, it is probably not true. Patrick died on March 17th, and the Irish people set aside the day to mourn. He became the patron saint of Ireland. Mourning turned to commemorating him and celebrating his life. 

    Because of Saint Patrick, lots of cities around the world with a large population of Irish have parades. Green is one of the national colors of Ireland. Green stripes are painted on the streets where the parade will travel. People wear green shirts, ties, hair ribbons, and hats. There are even pubs which serve green beer on that day. 

   Saint Patrick's Day was made an official Christian holiday in the early seventeenth century. It is now observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Eastern Orthodox Church and Lutheran Church. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. Not only that, but it also celebrates the heritage and culture of the Irish in general.

Source: adapted from http://www.inglesnapontadalingua.com.br/2014/03

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                                      What is hunger?

      Acute hunger or starvation are often highlighted on TV screens: hungry mothers too weak to breastfeed their children in drought-hit Ethiopia, refugees in war-torn Syria queuing for food rations, helicopters airlifting high energy biscuits to earthquake victims in Haiti or Pakistan.

      These situations are the result of high profile crises like war or natural disasters, which starve a population of food. Yet emergencies account for less than eight percent of hunger's victims.

      Daily undernourishment is a less visible form of hunger – but it affects many more people, from the shanty towns of Jakarta in Indonesia and the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh to the mountain villages of Bolivia and Nepal. In these places, hunger is much more than an empty stomach.

      For weeks, even months, its victims must live on significantly less than the recommended 2,100 kilocalories that the average person needs to lead a healthy life.

      The body compensates for the lack of energy by slowing down its physical and mental activities. A hungry mind cannot concentrate, a hungry body does not take initiative, a hungry child loses all desire to play and study.

      Hunger also weakens the immune system. Deprived of the right nutrition, hungry children are especially vulnerable and  become too weak to fight off disease and may die from common infections like measles and diarrhea. Each year, almost 7 million children die before reaching the age of five; malnutrition is a key factor in over a third of these deaths


                            (Source: Levels and Trends in Child Mortality, IGME, 2012 in http://www.wfp.org).

                                                                                                                Clues to How an Electric Treatment for Parkinson’s Work

In 1998, Dr. Philip A. Starr started putting electrodes in people’s brains. A neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Starr was treating people with Parkinson’s disease, which slowly destroys essential bits of brain tissue, robbing people of control of their bodies. At first, drugs had given his patients some relief, but now they needed more help. After the surgery, Dr. Starr closed up his patients’ skulls and switched on the electrodes, releasing a steady buzz of electric pulses in their brains. For many patients, the effect was immediate. “We have people who, when they’re not taking their meds, can be frozen,” said Dr. Starr. “When we turn on the stimulator, they start walking.” First developed in the early 1990s, deep brain stimulation, or D.B.S., was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating Parkinson’s disease in 2002. Since its invention, about 100,000 people have received implants. While D.B.S. doesn’t halt Parkinson’s, it can turn back the clock a few years for many patients. Yet despite its clear effectiveness, scientists like Dr. Starr have struggled to understand what D.B.S. actually does to the brain. “We do D.B.S. because it works,” said Dr. Starr, “but we don’t really know how.” In a recent experiment, Dr. Starr and his colleagues believe they found a clue. D.B.S. may counter Parkinson’s disease by liberating the brain from a devastating electrical lock-step.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/science/ (adapted)

                        Gravity, review: “heartachingly tender”

            Starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts adrift in
                  space, Alfonso Cuarón’s astonishing thriller is one of the films of
                                           the year, says Robbie Collin

      Watch an astronaut drifting through space for long enough and eventually you notice how much they look like a newborn baby. The oxygen helmet makes their head bigger, rounder and cuter; their hands grasp eagerly at whatever happens to be passing; their limbs are made fat and their movements simple by the spacesuit’s cuddly bulk. They tumble head-over-heels like tripping toddlers or simply bob there in amniotic suspension. Even the lifeline that keeps them tethered to their ship has a pulsing, umbilical aspect.
      Gravity, the new Alfonso Cuarón picture, is a heart- achingly tender film about the miracle of motherhood, and the billion-to-one odds against any of us being here, astronauts or not. It’s also a totally absorbing, often overpowering spectacle - a $100 million 3D action movie in which Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play two Hollywood-handsome spacefarers, fighting for their lives 375 miles above the Earth’s crust.
      A series of captions over the opening titles reminds us that this is a dead zone: no oxygen or air pressure, and nothing to carry sound. “Life in space is impossible,” the final message tells us, as the cinema shakes with Steven Price’s resonant score, and then suddenly falls quiet.
      For Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock), a mission specialist in orbit for the first time, the lack of noise is welcome. She’s a medical engineer called up by NASA to install new software on to the Hubble Telescope, but also a mother in mourning for her four- year-old daughter, whom she lost in a senseless accident, and the silence enfolds her like a comfort blanket.

                                                            Available in: http://www.telegraph.co.uk

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Teaching English as a foreign language teacher: job description

Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) involves teaching adults and children whose first or main language is not English. This can be done in the UK or abroad and the students may be learning English for either business or leisure reasons.

Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) is also a widely used term and often means the same thing as TEFL. It’s sometimes specifically used to refer to teaching English to people who are living in the UK but who do not speak English as a first language. These students are most commonly refugees and immigrants and need to learn the language in order to help them settle into the UK society.Their courses are often government funded.

Teaching English as a second language (TESL) or teaching English as an additional language (TEAL) may also be terms that are used but they generally all refer to the same thing - teaching English to someone whose native language is not English.

Teachers of English as a foreign language can work in a variety of settingswith different age ranges. This can include commercial language schools, schools and institutions of further and higher education throughout the UK and overseas. Some may also teach in industry, while others are self-employed. Classes are usually taught in English, evenwith beginners. Teaching English as a foreign language teacher: job description

Adapted from: < www.prospects.ac.uk/case-studies-working- abroad>

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Indique as alternativas que preenchem corretamente as
lacunas.

As questões de números 31 a 35 baseiam-se no texto seguinte.

Making Performance Budgeting Work: New IMF Book

October 04, 2007

Member countries will find valuable advice on how to reform their budgeting practices to improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of public expenditure in a major new work on performance budgeting produced by the Fiscal Affairs Department. The book,
Performance Budgeting: Linking Funding and Results (500pp), came off the presses of the top UK publisher Palgrave Macmillan in
September.

Edited by FAD staff member Marc Robinson, the book contains a comprehensive treatment of contemporary performance
budgeting practice and theory. In a series of thematic chapters and case studies, the book discusses:
- The key forms of performance budgeting which [TO IMPLEMENT] around the world - how they differ, and what they have in
common points.
- Lessons from the experience of governments around the world - ranging from OECD nations to developing, middle-income
and transition countries - about what forms of performance budgeting work, under what circumstances, and with what
implementation strategies.
- How successful performance budgeting can improve aggregate fiscal discipline.
- The information requirements of performance budgeting, and
- The links between performance budgeting and other budgeting and public management reforms.
Many of the contributors to this work are leaders in performance budgeting implementation in their countries. Others are
respected academics and technical experts from the International Monetary Fund and other international organizations. Countries
covered in the case studies include the UK, USA, Australia, France, Chile, Spain, Russia, Colombia and Ethiopia.
One major focus of the book is performance budgeting as a tool for improved expenditure prioritization - that is, for helping to
shift limited public resources to the services of greatest social benefit. A key finding is that this type of performance budgeting will only
work if the budget process is fundamentally changed so that top politicians and bureaucrats systematically consider expenditure
priorities when formulating the budget. This means more than just considering the priorities for new spending. It requires also having
mechanisms to systematically review existing spending programs to identify what is ineffective and low priority and can, therefore, be
cut. This is what countries such as Chile and the United Kingdom have successfully done, and the United States is currently attempting
to achieve with its Program Assessment Rating Tool instrument. Conversely, it is a mistake to believe that merely changing the budget
classification and developing performance indicators will in itself improve the allocation of resources in the budget.
(Adapted from http://blog-pfm.imf.org/pfmblog/2007/10/making-performa.html)

GadgetDesigners Push the Limits of Size, Safety
By Brian X. Chen, August 28, 2008

Just as small, fast-moving mammals replaced lumbering
dinosaurs, pocketable gadgets are evolving to fill niches that
larger, deskbound computers can't reach. But as they shrink,
these gadgets are faced with problems mammals face, too,
such as efficiently dissipating heat.

The recent example of Apple's first-generation iPod nanos
causing fires in Japan raises the question of whether
increasingly innovative product designs are impinging on
safety. The nano incident illustrates how risk can increase as
devices decrease in size, says Roger Kay, an analyst at
EndpointTechnologies.

"As [gadgets] get smaller, the tradeoffs become more difficult,
the balance becomes more critical and there's less room for
error," Kay said. "I'm not surprised it's happening to the nano
because that's the small one. You're asking it to do a lot in a
very, very small package and that's pushing the envelope.”

There's no question that industrial designers' jobs have
become much more difficult as the industry demands ever
more powerful and smaller gadgets. With paper-thin
subnotebooks, ultrasmall MP3 players, and pinkie finger-
sized Bluetooth headsets becoming increasingly popular, it's
questionable where exactly designers draw the line between
innovation and safety.