Questões de Concursos Inglês

Text VII questions 38 through 40World Bank Brazil country brief1 With an estimated 167 million inhabitants, Brazil has thelargest population in Latin America and ranks sixth in the world. Themajority live in the south-central area, which includes industrial cities4 such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte. 80% of thepopulation now lives in urban areas. Rapid growth in the urbanpopulation has aided economic development but also created serious7 problems for major cities.Brazils miracle years were in the late 1960s and early 1970swhen double digit-annual growth rates were recorded and the structure10 of the economy underwent rapid change.In the 1980s, however, Brazils economic performance waspoor in comparison with its potential. Annual Gross Domestic Product13 (GDP) growth only averaged 1.5 percent over the period from 1980to 1993. This reflected the economys inability to respond tointernational eventsin the late 1970s and the 1980s: the second oil16 shock; increase in international real interest rates; the Latin Americanexternal debt crisis and the ensuing cutoff of foreign credit and foreigndirect investment. This lack of responsiveness reflected the largely19 inward-looking policy orientation that had been in place since the1960s.Economic flexibility was further impaired by provisions of the22 1988 Constitution, which introduced significant rigidities in budgetingand public expenditure. An outcome of these pressures was a steadyrise in the rate of inflation, which reached monthly rates of 50% by the25 middle of 1994.Internet: <http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/Exter/abe36259ca656c4985256914005207e3?OpenDocumen> (with adaptations).The sentence "Rapid growth in the urban population has aided economic development but also created serious problems for major cities" (R.5-7) means the same as

Mark Zuckerberg’s 650 Million Friends (and counting)

    Back in June 2009, the globe’s potpourri of social-networking sites was extremely diverse: Google’s Orkut dominated India and Brazil; Central and South America preferred Hi5; Maktoob was king in the Arab world. The Vietnamese liked Zing, the Czechs loved Lidé, South Koreans surfed Cyworld. Two years after that, and Facebook has stolen users away from its rivals very fast. It’s completely knocked Hi5 off the map in former strongholds such as Peru, Mexico, and Thailand. After a tense back-and-forth with Orkut in India, Facebook has emerged victorious. And it’s becoming more popular in Armenia, Georgia, and the Netherlands, where local providers are making a desperate last stand.
   There are some glaring exceptions to Facebook’s colonization kick. Russians continue to use Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, with Facebook a distant fourth in the rankings. China remains highly committed to domestic sites such as Qzone and Renren. But for the rest of us, we’re living in Zuckerberg’s world.

(endereço eletrônico omitido propositadamente)

From "Conclusion on Global Warming":

One of the big questions of today is whether global warming and climate change can be stopped or whether it is inevitable. Though worried, most scientists believe that if we act now, “serious” climate change and global warming can be avoided. A few, such as James Lovelock who created the GAIA theory of the Earth as a living organism, believes that is far too late to stop the changes that
are now unfolding. Politicians either deny that there is a problem or act as if there is plenty of time to do something. After weighing the arguments we in The GAIA-Movement have had to conclude the following:

• Global Warming and Climate Change are unavoidable as they are already going on and have been so for quite some time;

• they constitute an inevitable catastrophe that will unfold in the years and decades to come;

• this fact cannot be reversed as the politicians in power will not provide the leadership needed to implement the monumental changes needed to reduce greenhouse gas emission and

• the processes set in motion are of such magnitude that they by now can only be postponed or prolonged so as to allow more time for adaptation.

We have reached our conclusions on global warming, climate change and the consequences thereof for food production and a number of other issues after studying books, films, websites, radio interviews, scientific magazines and reports.
The information we have found points in a clear direction and has thus enabled us to make a clear conclusion.
A basic book has been “Six Degrees” by Mark Lynas, a journalist who has studied many scientific reports and from that has been able to describe what may happen to the Earth as it warms 1-2-3-4-5 and even 6 degrees.
Elizabeth Kolbert has written “Field Notes from a Catastrophe”. She has met many scientists working on global warming and the book has much dramatic information.
Several other authors have written books that give many details on global warming and climate change such as “The Last Generation” by Fred Pierce, “The Weather Makers” by Tim Flannery,“A Rough Guide to Climate Change” by Robert Henson, “The Revenge of GAIA” by James Lovelock and “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his effort to inform about climate change. The last book is also on film and there are several other films that tell about different aspects of climate change and what can be done to build a world on renewable energy.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN working group, which also received the Nobel Peace Prize made their latest report in 2007. We have studied the report which presents several models for how the climate may change during the next 100 years.

Text taken from the Gaia Movement: http://www.gaia-movement.org/
On: 10/23/2009
“Gaia” is the name of a Greek goddess of Earth.

INSTRUÇÃO: Responder à questão com base no texto 2. 

TEXTO 2

 

STATELESSNESS

NEWSLETTER

#IBELONG CAMPAIGN

Celebrating its 6th anniversary

UNHCR 2020 Youth With Refugees Art Contest.

©UNHCR/Faida

 

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)

ARE YOU A FACEBOOK ADDICT?  

Are you a social media enthusiast or simply a Facebook addict? Researchers from Norway have developed a new instrument to measure Facebook addiction, the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale.

"The use of Facebook has increased rapidly. We are dealing with a subdivision of Internet addiction connected to social media," Doctor of Psychology Cecilie Schou Andreassen says about the study, which is the first of its kind worldwide. 

Andreassen heads the research project  "Facebook Addiction" at the University of Bergen (UiB). An article about the results has just been published in the renowned journal Psychological Reports. She has clear views as to why some people develop Facebook dependency. 

"It occurs more regularly among younger than older users. We have also found that people who are anxious and socially insecure use Facebook more than those with lower scores on those traits, probably because those who are anxious find it easier to communicate via social media than face-to- face," Andreassen says.  

People who are organised and more ambitious tend to be less at risk from Facebook addiction. They will often use social media as an integral part of work and networking. 

"Our research also indicates that women are more at risk of developing Facebook addiction, probably due to the social nature of Facebook," Andreassen says. 

Six warning signs

As Facebook has become as ubiquitous as television in our everyday lives, it is becoming increasingly difficult for many people to know if they are addicted to social media. Andreassen’s study shows that the symptoms of Facebook addiction resemble those of drug  addiction, alcohol addiction and chemical substance addiction. 

The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale is based on six basic criteria, where all items are scored on the following scale: (1) Very rarely, (2) Rarely, (3) Sometimes, (4) Often, (5)Very often, and (6) Always. 

• You spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook or planning to use of Facebook.
• You feel an urge to use Facebook more and more.
• You use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems.
• You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success.
• You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using Facebook.
• You use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies.  

Andreassen’s study shows that scoring “often” or “very often” on at least four of the six items may suggest that you are addicted to Facebook. 


Disponível em: Acesso em: Acesso em: 3 jun. 2013 (Texto adaptado)