Experts are questioning whether diet drinks could raise 
depression risk, after a large study has found a link.

The US research in more than 250,000 people found 
depression was more common among frequent consumers 
of artificially sweetened beverages. The work, which will be 
presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual 
meeting, did not look at the cause for this link.
Drinking coffee was linked with a lower risk of depression.
People who drank four cups a day were 10% less likely to 
be diagnosed with depression during the 10-year study period 
than those who drank no coffee. But those who drank four cans 
or glasses of diet fizzy drinks or artificially sweetened juice a 
day increased their risk of depression by about a third. Lead 
researcher Dr Honglei Chen, of the National Institutes of Health 
in North Carolina, said: “Our research suggests that cutting 
out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with 
unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression 
risk.”
But he said more studies were needed to explore this. There 
are many other factors that may be involved. And the findings 
– in people in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s and living in the US – 
might not apply to other populations. The safety of sweeteners, 
like aspartame, has been extensively tested by scientists and is 
assured by regulators.
Gaynor Bussell, of the British Dietetic Association, said: 
“Sweeteners used to be called ‘artificial’ sweeteners and 
unfortunately the term ‘artificial’ has evoked suspicion. As a 
result, sweeteners have been very widely tested and reviewed 
for safety and the ones on the market have an excellent safety 
track record. However, the studies on them continue and this one 
has thrown up a possibly link – not a cause and effect – with 
depression.”

By Michelle Singletary, Published: January 15, 2013 
 
It’s not nice to tell people “I told you so.” But if anybody has the right to say that, it’s Nina E. Olson, the national taxpayer advocate. 
Olson recently submitted her annual report to Congress and top on her list of things that need to be fixed is the complexity of the tax 
code, which she called the most serious problem facing taxpayers. 
Let’s just look at the most recent evidence of complexity run amok. The Internal Revenue Service had to delay the tax-filing season so it 
could update forms and its programming to accommodate recent changes made under the American Taxpayer Relief Act. The IRS won’t start 
processing individual income tax returns until Jan. 30. Yet one thing remains unchanged − the April 15 tax deadline. 
Because of the new tax laws, the IRS also had to release updated income-tax withholding tables for 2013. These replace the tables 
issued Dec. 31. Yes, let’s just keep making more work for the agency that is already overburdened. Not to mention the extra work for 
employers, who have to use the revised information to correct the amount of Social Security tax withheld in 2013. And they have to make that 
correction in order to withhold a larger Social Security tax of 6.2 percent on wages, following the expiration of the payroll tax cut in effect for 
2011 and 2012. 
Oh, and there was the near miss with the alternative minimum tax that could have delayed the tax filing season to late March. The AMT 
was created to target high-income taxpayers who were claiming so many deductions that they owed little or no income tax. Olson and many 
others have complained for years that the AMT wasn’t indexed for inflation. 
“Many middle- and upper-middle-class taxpayers pay the AMT, while most wealthy taxpayers do not, and thousands of millionaires pay 
A income tax at all,” Olson said. 
As part of the recent “fiscal cliff” deal, the AMT is now fixed, a move that the IRS was anticipating. It had already decided to program its 
systems on the assumption that an AMT patch would be passed, Olson said. Had the agency not taken the risk, the time it would have taken to 
update the systems “would have brought about the most chaotic filing season in memory,” she said in her report. 
The tax code contains almost 4 million words. Since 2001, there have been about 4,680 changes, or an average of more than one 
change a day. What else troubles Olson? Here’s what: 
− Nearly 60 percent of taxpayers hire paid preparers, and another 30 percent rely on commercial software to prepare their returns. 
− Many taxpayers don’t really know how their taxes are computed and what rate of tax they pay. 
− The complex code makes tax fraud B to detect. 
− Because the code is so complicated, it creates an impression that many taxpayers are not paying their fair share. This reduces trust 
in the system and perhaps leads some people to cheat. Who wants to be the sucker in this game? So someone might not declare 
all of his income, rationalizing that millionaires get to use the convoluted code to greatly reduce their tax liability. 
− In fiscal year 2012, the IRS received around 125 million calls. But the agency answered only about two out of three calls from 
people trying to reach a live person, and those taxpayers had to wait, on average, about 17 minutes to get through. 
“I hope 2013 brings about fundamental tax simplification,” Olson pleaded in her report. She urged Congress to reassess the need for 
the tax breaks we know as income exclusions, exemptions, deductions and credits. It’s all these tax advantage breaks that complicate the 
code. If done right, and without reducing revenue, tax rates could be substantially lowered in exchange for ending tax breaks, she said.

By Michelle Singletary, Published: January 15, 2013 
 
It’s not nice to tell people “I told you so.” But if anybody has the right to say that, it’s Nina E. Olson, the national taxpayer advocate. 
Olson recently submitted her annual report to Congress and top on her list of things that need to be fixed is the complexity of the tax 
code, which she called the most serious problem facing taxpayers. 
Let’s just look at the most recent evidence of complexity run amok. The Internal Revenue Service had to delay the tax-filing season so it 
could update forms and its programming to accommodate recent changes made under the American Taxpayer Relief Act. The IRS won’t start 
processing individual income tax returns until Jan. 30. Yet one thing remains unchanged − the April 15 tax deadline. 
Because of the new tax laws, the IRS also had to release updated income-tax withholding tables for 2013. These replace the tables 
issued Dec. 31. Yes, let’s just keep making more work for the agency that is already overburdened. Not to mention the extra work for 
employers, who have to use the revised information to correct the amount of Social Security tax withheld in 2013. And they have to make that 
correction in order to withhold a larger Social Security tax of 6.2 percent on wages, following the expiration of the payroll tax cut in effect for 
2011 and 2012. 
Oh, and there was the near miss with the alternative minimum tax that could have delayed the tax filing season to late March. The AMT 
was created to target high-income taxpayers who were claiming so many deductions that they owed little or no income tax. Olson and many 
others have complained for years that the AMT wasn’t indexed for inflation. 
“Many middle- and upper-middle-class taxpayers pay the AMT, while most wealthy taxpayers do not, and thousands of millionaires pay 
<img src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/mapastatic/52292b2fdee2c151d7000003/imgs_Conhec_Basicos_Prova-B02-Tipo-001/A....png'/> income tax at all,” Olson said. 
As part of the recent “fiscal cliff” deal, the AMT is now fixed, a move that the IRS was anticipating. It had already decided to program its 
systems on the assumption that an AMT patch would be passed, Olson said. Had the agency not taken the risk, the time it would have taken to 
update the systems “would have brought about the most chaotic filing season in memory,” she said in her report. 
The tax code contains almost 4 million words. Since 2001, there have been about 4,680 changes, or an average of more than one 
change a day. What else troubles Olson? Here’s what: 
− Nearly 60 percent of taxpayers hire paid preparers, and another 30 percent rely on commercial software to prepare their returns. 
− Many taxpayers don’t really know how their taxes are computed and what rate of tax they pay. 
− The complex code makes tax fraud <img src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/mapastatic/52292b2fdee2c151d7000003/imgs_Conhec_Basicos_Prova-B02-Tipo-001/B.....png'/> to detect. 
− Because the code is so complicated, it creates an impression that many taxpayers are not paying their fair share. This reduces trust 
in the system and perhaps leads some people to cheat. Who wants to be the sucker in this game? So someone might not declare 
all of his income, rationalizing that millionaires get to use the convoluted code to greatly reduce their tax liability. 
− In fiscal year 2012, the IRS received around 125 million calls. But the agency answered only about two out of three calls from 
people trying to reach a live person, and those taxpayers had to wait, on average, about 17 minutes to get through. 
“I hope 2013 brings about fundamental tax simplification,” Olson pleaded in her report. She urged Congress to reassess the need for 
the tax breaks we know as income exclusions, exemptions, deductions and credits. It’s all these tax advantage breaks that complicate the 
code. If done right, and without reducing revenue, tax rates could be substantially lowered in exchange for ending tax breaks, she said.

Atenção: As questões referem-se ao texto apresentado abaixo. As cores originais dos mapas 2, 3 e 4 foram alteradas para visualização em tons de cinza. 
 
 
Using analysis, we can feel confident in the spatial patterns we see, and in the decisions that we make. 
Putting your data on a map is an important first step for finding patterns and understanding trends. Here we’re looking at crimes 
that happened in San Francisco, about 37,000 of them. Looking at the points on a map, can you find the clusters or patterns in this 
point data? Can you decide where the police department should allocate its resources? Just looking at points on a map is often not 
enough to answer questions or make decisions using this kind of point data. That’s where the spatial analysis tools in ArcGIS come in. 
 
 
<img src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/mapastatic/57fbb066533f6005f1f5a6af/imgs_analista_tecnolog_an_geoprocessamento/56_1.png'/> 
 
We’ve all seen heat maps on TV or in web application-beautiful maps that show high-density areas in bright red, and low-density 
areas in blue. These maps are used to visualize crime, disease, and a whole host of other types of data and information. These heat 
maps can be a great first step in a visual analysis of your data, <img src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/mapastatic/57fbb066533f6005f1f5a6af/imgs_analista_tecnolog_an_geoprocessamento/i.png'/> they can also be very subjective. What does that mean? Well, 
the two heat maps shown below reflect the same San Francisco Crime data, and were created using the same tool. The only difference 
is the criteria that were used to decide what appears very dark (high density) and what appears very light (low density). These types of 
cartographic elements that we incorporate into our maps can have a huge impact on the story that the map tells. 
 
<img src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/mapastatic/57fbb066533f6005f1f5a6af/imgs_analista_tecnolog_an_geoprocessamento/56_2.png'/> 
 
If the decisions that you’re trying to make as a result of your analyses are important, and they usually are, you’ll want to 
minimize subjectivity as much <img src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/mapastatic/57fbb066533f6005f1f5a6af/imgs_analista_tecnolog_an_geoprocessamento/ii.png'/> . A great way to minimize the subjectivity in your pattern analysis is to use a hot spot analysis, 
which incorporates a simple spatial statistic to determine if the patterns that you’re seeing are statistically significant or not. The hot 
spot map is shown here. 
 
<img src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/mapastatic/57fbb066533f6005f1f5a6af/imgs_analista_tecnolog_an_geoprocessamento/56_4.png'/> 
 
So what makes this type of map any less subjective than density-based heat maps? The very dark areas on hot spot maps are 
statistically significant clusters of high values (hot spots), and the very light areas are statistically significant clusters of low values (cold 
spots). What’s dark and what’s light is always based on statistical significance. Using hot spot analysis, we can feel confident in the 
spatial patterns that we see, and in the decisions that we make.

Governments have always been keen to achieve 
results, but calls to improve public sector performance 
in OECD  countries have become particularly  loud  and 
insistent over the last couple of decades. 
Reasons  include  increasing  claims  on  public 
expenditure,  particularly  pensions,  healthcare  and 
education,  expectations  of  higher  quality  public 
services in line with rising living standards and, in many 
cases,  reluctance  on  the  part  of  citizens  to  pay  ever 
higher  taxes.  Government  also  has  to  be  more 
competitive  in  the  face of other potential suppliers  in 
areas  like  transport,  communications  and  energy.  It 
must show it can do the job it sets out to do. 
That  is why  governments  across  the OECD  have 
responded by setting goals and shifting  the emphasis of 
government management and budgeting away from how 
much money  to  spend  towards  what  is  actually  being 
achieved. New Zealand was among the first to adopt this 
results‐oriented budgeting and management approach in 
the late 1980s, and was followed in the 1990s by Canada, 
Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and 
the US. Later, Austria, Germany and Switzerland launched 
similar  moves,  and  Turkey  has  recently  begun  a  pilot 
phase of this process. 
At  the  same  time,  these  developments  have 
pushed governments to modernise their accountability 
and control procedures.  In particular, over  the  last 15 
years or so, OECD governments have been engaged  in 
reviewing and  reforming  the ways  in which  they keep 
control  over  large  and  complex  operations  in  public 
services  and  how  those  responsible  are  held  to 
account. Technological  innovation  and  changes  in  the 
size  and  structure  of  government,  in  part  reflecting 
privatisation  and decentralisation,  are  also playing  an 
important role in fostering these developments. 
But these initiatives have by no means run their 
course, and their widespread implementation gives rise 
to  some  fundamental  questions.  What  is  meant  by 
performance in the public service context, and how can 
it  best  be measured?  Should  a  service  be  judged  by, 
say, its accessibility or its financial cost, and who should 
do  the  judging?  How  can  moves  to  increase  the 
managerial  responsibilities  and  decision‐making 
powers  of  public  servants  be  reconciled  with 
democratic control and effective auditing procedures? 
It  is  clearly not enough  to argue  that a  reform 
works because  it  is based on sound research, or on an 
accepted  procedure,  or  indeed  that  the  government 
spent  billions  on  its  implementation.  The  main 
challenge  is how  to make  reforms  achieve  their  goal. 
This  is the basic  idea underlying performance‐oriented 
budgeting  and  management:  to  shift  the  emphasis 
away  from  controlling  inputs  and  towards  achieving 
results.  However,  OECD  countries  are  at  different 
stages  in  this  process  and  approaches  to 
implementation vary.
Note: The  Organisation  for  Economic  Co‐
operation  and  Development  (OECD)  is  celebrating  its 
50th anniversary, but its roots go back to the rubble of 
Europe  after World War  II.  Determined  to  avoid  the 
mistakes  of  their  predecessors  in  the wake  of World 
War  I, European  leaders  realised  that  the best way  to 
ensure  lasting  peace  was  to  encourage  co‐operation 
and reconstruction, rather than punish the defeated.

Questões de Elementos gramaticais