Questões de Concursos Inglês

A deep freeze this week in the Lone Star state, which relies on electricity to heat many homes, is causing power demand to skyrocket. At the same time, natural gas, coal, wind and nuclear facilities in Texas have been knocked offline by the unthinkably low temperatures.

“The extreme cold is causing the entire system to freeze up,” said Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “All sources of energy are underperforming in the extreme cold because they’re not designed to handle these unusual conditions.”

The ripple effects are being felt around the nation as Texas’ prolific oil-and-gas industry stumbles.

It’s striking that these power outages are happening in a state with abundant energy resources. Texas produces more electricity than any other US state — generating almost twice as much as Florida, the next-closest, according to federal statistics.

Wind power is also booming in Texas, which produced about 28% of all the US wind-powered electricity in 2019, the EIA said. But the problem is that not only is Texas an energy superpower, it tends to be an above-average temperature state. That means its infrastructure is ill-prepared for the cold spell currently wreaking havoc. And the consequences are being felt by millions.

Critics of renewable energy have pointed out that wind turbines have frozen or needed to be shut down due to the extreme weather.

Even though other places with colder weather (like Iowa and Denmark) rely on wind for even larger shares of power, experts said the turbines in Texas were not winterized for the unexpected freeze.

But this is not just about wind turbines going down. Natural gas and coal-fired power plants need water to stay online. Yet those water facilities froze in the cold temperatures and others lost access to the electricity they require to operate.

It’s too early to definitively say what went wrong in Texas and how to prevent similar outages. More information will need to be released by state authorities. Still, some experts say the criticism of wind power appears overdone already. “In terms of the blame game, the focus on wind is a red herring. It’s more of a political issue than what is causing the power problems on the grid,” said Dan Cohan, associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University.

The energy crisis in Texas raises also questions about the nature of the state’s deregulated and decentralized electric grid. Unlike other states, Texas has made a conscious decision to isolate its grid from the rest of the country.

That means that when things are running smoothly, Texas can’t export excess power to neighboring states. And in the current crisis, it can’t import power either.

Internet: <www.cnn.com> (adapted).

The complex linguistic universe of

Game of Thrones

1.Game of Thrones has garnered 38 Emmy

2.awards for its portrayal of a world of sex,

3.violence and politics so real that some viewers

4.could imagine moving there. Part of that detail

5.has been the creation of the richest linguistic

6.universe since J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

7.In the field of language-creation for fictional

8.worlds, there is Tolkien, and there is everybody

9.else. But David Peterson, the language-smith

10.of Game of Thrones , comes a close second for

11.the amount of thought put into its two

12.languages, Dothraki and Valyrian. The interest

13.in these tongues is such that a textbook for

14.learning Dothraki has been published, while

15.Duolingo, a popular online language-learning

16.platform, now offers a course in High Valyrian.

17.Inspired by fictional languages such as those

18.in the Star Wars films and with a master’s

19.degree in linguistics, Peterson made Dothraki

20.and Valyrian as rich and realistic as possible.

21.Creating words is the easy part; anyone can

22.string together nonsense syllables. But

23.Peterson, like Tolkien, took the trouble to give

24his words etymologies and cousins, so that

25.the word for “feud” is related to the words

26.“blood” and “fight”. To make the languages

27.pronounceable but clearly foreign, he put

28.non-English sounds in high-frequency words

29.(like khaleesi , or queen), put the stress in

30.typically non-English places, and had words

31.begin with combinations of sounds that are

32.impossible in English, like hr .

33.Armed with a knowledge of common linguistic

34.sound changes, he gives his languages the

35kinds of irregularities and disorder that arise in

36.the real world: High Valyrian’s obar

37(“curve”) becomes Astapori Valyrian’s uvor .

38.Words’ meanings—as in real life—drift, too,

39.giving the system more realistic messiness.

40.Languages also play a prominent role in the

41.storyline. Dothraki is the guttural language of

42.a horse-borne warrior nation, but high-born

43.Daenerys Targaryen does not look down on it;

44.methodically learning it is key to her rise.

45.Tyrion Lannister is left to administer the city

46.of Mereen despite his ropy command of

47.Valyrian, leading to some comic moments.

48.And a prophecy of a future hero acquires new

49.meaning when an interpreter explains that the

50.word in question is ambiguous in Valyrian—it

51.could be “prince” or “princess”.

52.It might seem odd that a highly sexist society

53.like the one of Game of Thrones would have

54.languages where sex roles were not clearly

55.marked, but languages are not always perfect

56.vehicles for a culture. Random change can

57.leave them with too many words for one

58.concept, and not enough for another. In this

59.way, the flawed nature of language reflects

60.the foibles of flawed humans and the

61.imperfect worlds they strive to create.

Adaptado de:

<="" span="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">

21725752-dothraki-and-valyrian-are-mostconvincing-

fictional-tongues-elvish>.

Acesso em: 21 nov. 2017.

Associe as palavras da coluna da esquerda aos seus respectivos sinônimos, na coluna da direita, de acordo com o sentido que têm no texto.

 ( ) garnered (l. 01)

 ( ) look down on (l. 43)

( ) ropy (l. 46)

 ( ) strive (l. 61)

 1. despise 

 2. earned 

 3. old-fashioned

 4. observe

 5. poor

 6. endeavor

 7. celebrated 

 8. aim

Considering translation and some of the notions it envolves, judge
the following items.