Questões Militares

                                           Texto 3

THE DISCOVERY OF PENICILLIN—NEW INSIGHTS AFTER MORE THAN 75 YEARS OF CLINICAL USE

ABSTRACT   

        After just over 75 years of penicillin’s clinical use, the world can see that its impact was immediate and profound. In 1928, a chance event in Alexander Fleming’s London laboratory changed the course of medicine. However, the purification and first clinical use of penicillin would take more than a decade. Unprecedented United States/Great Britain cooperation to produce penicillin was incredibly successful by 1943. This success overshadowed efforts to produce penicillin during World War II in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands. Information about these efforts, available only in the last 10–15 years, provides new insights into the story of the first antibiotic. Researchers in the Netherlands produced penicillin using their own production methods and marketed it in 1946, which eventually increased the penicillin supply and decreased the price. The unusual serendipity involved in the discovery of penicillin demonstrates the difficulties in finding new antibiotics and should remind health professionals to expertly manage these extraordinary medicines.

                                                      ( . . . )

GAYNES, R. The Discovery of Penicillin—New Insights After More Than 75 Years of Clinical Use. In: Science, 2017. Disponível em: <http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/23/5/16-1556_article>. Acesso em: 26/06/2018.

                                                     Texto 1

              FROM FILM STAR TO FREQUENCY-HOPPING INVENTOR

      I’m guessing that some younger readers __(21)_ who Hedy Lamarr was. Old-timers remember her as a popular Hollywood star of the mid-20th century. Characterized by MGM studio mogul Louis B. Mayer as “the most beautiful girl in the world,” a title said to originally have been bestowed by stage director Max Reinhardt, she appeared in some 25 Hollywood films between 1938 and 1958.

       __(22)__ her fans and many of her Hollywood colleagues was her creative side. They were unaware that __(23)__ the cameras were not rolling, Ms. Lamarr might be at home at her drawing board, diligently working at some concept that might lead to a commercial product or a patentable invention.

      ___(24)_ an admirer of Hedy Lamarr the movie star (I particularly remember her in “Ziegfeld Girl,” costarring James Stewart, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, and Tony Martin, and “H. M. Pulham, Esq.,” with Robert Young and Van Heflen), I too was unaware of her innovative proclivities until 1984, when historian of cryptology David Kahn authored an article in IEEE Spectrum. It revealed to the uninitiated the existence of a 1941 patent __(25)__ to Lamarr and her co-inventor, George Antheil, based on frequency-hopping and titled “Secret Communication System.” World War II __(26)__ in Europe, and Hedy, a native Austrian, left her munitions magnate husband Friedrich Mandl and relocated to the United States in 1937. As Hitler moved relentlessly in his attempt to conquer most of northern Europe, she was appalled by the German U-boat sinking of the SS City of Benarus. (…). She considered quitting the movie business and offering her services to the newly organized National Inventors Council (NIC), __(27)__ to evaluate technology that could be useful in wartime, and chaired by inventor Charles Kettering. She did __(28)__, however.

In Hollywood, Hedy had met George Antheil, not an engineer but a composer with “a fair grasp of electronics,” as historian Kahn expressed it. Antheil joined her in her attempt to devise a jamproof guidance system for Allied torpedoes. A year before Pearl Harbor, she told Antheil she knew “a good deal about new munitions and various secret weapons,” presumably knowledge acquired while she was privy to discussions between Mandl and his munitions agents.

      While not on the movie set, Lamarr would work with Antheil in her apartment to move her idea from concept to a practical system. In her early working documents a reference is made to the 116RX, the 1939 Philco radio console that featured the first wireless remote control (termed the Mystery Control and offering the listener options to select up to eight stations, a volume control, and an off switch). This ___29__ just one among several inputs that inspired her to __30__ the idea she called “hopping of frequencies” (...)

CHRISTIANSEN, D. Adaptado de From Film Star to Frequency-Hopping Inventor. In: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Disponível em: . Acesso em: 15/06/2018.