Questões de Vestibular de Inglês - Advérbios e conjunções | Adverbs and conjunctions
Foram encontradas 117 questões
Ano: 2010
Banca:
Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie
Órgão:
MACKENZIE
Prova:
Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie - 2010 - MACKENZIE - Vestibular |
Q1336278
Inglês
Texto associado
The Boom Is Nigh
Why the coming recovery will hurt like hell.
By Gregg Easterbrook
Home prices keep falling, but productivity is rising fast. GDP
grew 5.6 percent in the fourth quarter, yet unemployment remains
stubbornly high. Inflation is nonexistent, while the consumer
confidence index just rose to 55.9 from 53.6—whatever that
means. Can’t make sense of these economic indicators? Don’t worry,
because nobody else can, either.
Here is what you really need to know: a Sonic Boom is coming. It will be caused by globalization. And while globalization may be driving you crazy, it’s just getting started. Thirty years ago, Shenzhen, China, did not exist; today, it has nearly 9 million residents, roughly the same as New York City. In a single generation, it has grown from a village of tarpaper shacks into an important urban center. It has become the world’s fourth-busiest port, busier than Los Angeles and Long Beach combined. Never before has a great city been built so fast, nor a productive economy established from so little.
The international recession that began in 2008 has made the Sonic Boom quieter, but history shows that when a crisis ends, the larger trends in place before the crisis usually resume. Shenzhen represents the larger trend of growth, change, and transformation at unprecedented velocity. Thanks to vast increases in productivity, worldwide economic growth soon will pick up, creating rising prosperity and higher living standards for most people in most nations. The world will be far more interconnected, leading to better and more affordable products, as well as ever better communication among nations.
But there’s a big catch: just as favorable economic and social trends are likely to resume, many problems that have characterized recent decades are likely to get worse, too. Job instability, economic insecurity, a sense of turmoil, the fear that even when things seem good a hammer is about to fall—these are also part of the larger trend. As world economies become ever more linked by computers, job stress will become a 24/7 affair. Frequent shakeups in industries will cause increasing uncertainty. The horizon has never been brighter, but we may not feel particularly happy about it.
Here is what you really need to know: a Sonic Boom is coming. It will be caused by globalization. And while globalization may be driving you crazy, it’s just getting started. Thirty years ago, Shenzhen, China, did not exist; today, it has nearly 9 million residents, roughly the same as New York City. In a single generation, it has grown from a village of tarpaper shacks into an important urban center. It has become the world’s fourth-busiest port, busier than Los Angeles and Long Beach combined. Never before has a great city been built so fast, nor a productive economy established from so little.
The international recession that began in 2008 has made the Sonic Boom quieter, but history shows that when a crisis ends, the larger trends in place before the crisis usually resume. Shenzhen represents the larger trend of growth, change, and transformation at unprecedented velocity. Thanks to vast increases in productivity, worldwide economic growth soon will pick up, creating rising prosperity and higher living standards for most people in most nations. The world will be far more interconnected, leading to better and more affordable products, as well as ever better communication among nations.
But there’s a big catch: just as favorable economic and social trends are likely to resume, many problems that have characterized recent decades are likely to get worse, too. Job instability, economic insecurity, a sense of turmoil, the fear that even when things seem good a hammer is about to fall—these are also part of the larger trend. As world economies become ever more linked by computers, job stress will become a 24/7 affair. Frequent shakeups in industries will cause increasing uncertainty. The horizon has never been brighter, but we may not feel particularly happy about it.
www.newsweek.com
In the title of the article, the word nigh
Q1335936
Inglês
Texto associado
Pseudoscientific claims that music helps plants grow have been made for decades, despite evidence that is shaky at best. Yet new research suggests some flora may be capable of sensing sounds, such as the gurgle of water through a pipe or the buzzing of insects.
In a recent study, Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Western Australia, and her colleagues placed pea seedlings in pots shaped like an upside-down Y. One arm of each pot was placed in either a tray of water or a coiled plastic tube through which water flowed; the other arm had dry soil. The roots grew toward the arm of the pipe with the fluid, regardless of whether it was easily accessible or hidden inside the tubing. “They just knew the water was there, even if the only thing to detect was the sound of it flowing inside the pipe,” Gagliano says. Yet when the seedlings were given a choice between the water tube and some moistened soil, their roots favored the latter. She hypothesizes that these plants use sound waves to detect water at a distance but follow moisture gradients to home in on their target when it is closer.
The research, reported earlier this year in Oecologia, is not the first to suggest flora can detect and interpret sounds. A 2014 study showed the rock cress Arabidopsis can distinguish between caterpillar chewing sounds and wind vibrations – the plant produced more chemical toxins after “hearing” a recording of feeding insects. “We tend to underestimate plants because their responses are usually less visible to us. But leaves turn out to be extremely sensitive vibration detectors,” says lead study author Heidi M. Appel, an environmental scientist now at the University of Toledo.
Leia o texto para responder à questão.
Can plants hear?
Flora may be able to detect the
sounds of flowing water or munching insects
Pseudoscientific claims that music helps plants grow have been made for decades, despite evidence that is shaky at best. Yet new research suggests some flora may be capable of sensing sounds, such as the gurgle of water through a pipe or the buzzing of insects.
In a recent study, Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Western Australia, and her colleagues placed pea seedlings in pots shaped like an upside-down Y. One arm of each pot was placed in either a tray of water or a coiled plastic tube through which water flowed; the other arm had dry soil. The roots grew toward the arm of the pipe with the fluid, regardless of whether it was easily accessible or hidden inside the tubing. “They just knew the water was there, even if the only thing to detect was the sound of it flowing inside the pipe,” Gagliano says. Yet when the seedlings were given a choice between the water tube and some moistened soil, their roots favored the latter. She hypothesizes that these plants use sound waves to detect water at a distance but follow moisture gradients to home in on their target when it is closer.
The research, reported earlier this year in Oecologia, is not the first to suggest flora can detect and interpret sounds. A 2014 study showed the rock cress Arabidopsis can distinguish between caterpillar chewing sounds and wind vibrations – the plant produced more chemical toxins after “hearing” a recording of feeding insects. “We tend to underestimate plants because their responses are usually less visible to us. But leaves turn out to be extremely sensitive vibration detectors,” says lead study author Heidi M. Appel, an environmental scientist now at the University of Toledo.
(Marta Zaraska. www.scientificamerican.com, 17.05.2017.)
No trecho do terceiro parágrafo “The research, reported
earlier”, o termo em destaque indica
Q1300891
Inglês
Texto associado
Leia o texto a seguir para responder à questão.
Artificial intelligence and the future of medicine
Washington University researchers are working to develop artificial intelligence (AI) systems for health care, which
have the potential to transform the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, helping to ensure that patients get the
right treatment at the right time.
In health care, artificial intelligence relies on the power of computers to sift through and make sense of reams of
electronic data about patients—such as their ages, medical histories, health status, test results, medical images,
DNA sequences, and many other sources of health information. AI excels at the complex identification of patterns
in these reams of data, and it can do this at a scale and speed beyond human capacity. The hope is that this
technology can be harnessed to help doctors and patients make better health-care decisions.
Where are the first places we will start to see AI entering medical practice?
One of the first applications of AI in patient care that we currently see is in imaging, to help improve the diagnosis
of cancer or heart problems, for example. There are many types of imaging tests —X-rays, CT scans, MRIs and
echocardiograms. But the underlying commonality in all those imaging methods is huge amounts of high-quality
data. For AI to work well, it's best to have very complete data sets—no missing numbers, so to speak—and digital
images provide that. Plus, the human eye is often blind to some of the patterns that could be present in these
images—subtle changes in breast tissue over several years of mammograms, for example. There has been some
interesting work done in recognizing early patterns of cancer or early patterns of heart failure that even a highly
trained physician would not see.
In many ways, we already have very simple forms of AI in the clinic now. We've had tools for a long time that
identify abnormal rhythms in an EKG, for example. An abnormal heartbeat pattern triggers an alert to draw a
clinician's attention. This is a computer trying to replicate a human being understanding that data and saying,
"This doesn't look normal, you may need to address this problem." Now, we have the capacity to analyze much
larger and more complex sources of data, such as the entire electronic health record and perhaps even data
pulled from daily life, as more people track their sleep patterns or pulse rates with wearable devices, for example.
What effect will this have on how doctors practice medicine?
It's important to emphasize that these tools are never going to replace clinicians. These technologies will provide
assistance, helping care providers see important signals in massive amounts of data that would otherwise remain
hidden. But at the same time, there are levels of understanding that computers still can't and may never replicate.
To take a treatment recommendation from an AI, even an excellent recommendation, and decide if it's right for the
patient is inherently a human decision-making process. What are the patient's preferences? What are the patient's
values? What does this mean for the patient's life and for his or her family? That's never going to be an AI
function. As these AI systems slowly emerge, we may start to see the roles of physicians changing—in my
opinion, in better ways. Doctors' roles may shift from being data collectors and analyzers to being interpreters and
councilors for patients as they try to navigate their health.
Right now, the challenges we need to address as we try to bring AI into medical practice include improving the quality of the data that we feed into AI systems, developing ways to evaluate whether an AI system is actually better than standard of care, ensuring patient privacy and making sure not only that AI doesn't disrupt clinical work flow but in fact improves it. But if doctors do their jobs right and build these systems well, much of what we have described will become so ingrained in the system, people won't even refer to it separately as informatics or AI. It will just be medicine.
Right now, the challenges we need to address as we try to bring AI into medical practice include improving the quality of the data that we feed into AI systems, developing ways to evaluate whether an AI system is actually better than standard of care, ensuring patient privacy and making sure not only that AI doesn't disrupt clinical work flow but in fact improves it. But if doctors do their jobs right and build these systems well, much of what we have described will become so ingrained in the system, people won't even refer to it separately as informatics or AI. It will just be medicine.
Disponível em: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-12-artificial-intelligence-future-medicine.html. Acesso em: 02 maio 2019.
Analisando-se os aspectos linguísticos e estruturais do texto, constata-se que
Ano: 2014
Banca:
UECE-CEV
Órgão:
UECE
Prova:
UECE-CEV - 2014 - UECE - Vestibular - Língua Inglesa - 2ª fase |
Q1285446
Inglês
Texto associado
Brazil plowed billions of dollars into building a
railroad across arid backlands, only for the longdelayed project to fall prey to metal scavengers.
Curvaceous new public buildings designed by the
famed architect Oscar Niemeyer were abandoned
right after being constructed. There was even an illfated U.F.O. museum built with federal funds. Its
skeletal remains now sit like a lost ship among the
weeds.
As Brazil sprints to get ready for the World
Cup in June, it has run up against a catalog of
delays, some caused by deadly construction
accidents at stadiums, and cost overruns. It is
building bus and rail systems for spectators that will
not be finished until long after the games are done.
But the World Cup projects are just a part of a
bigger national problem casting a pall over Brazil’s
grand ambitions: an array of lavish projects
conceived when economic growth was surging that
now stand abandoned, stalled or wildly over budget.
Some economists say the troubled projects
reveal a crippling bureaucracy, irresponsible
allocation of resources and bastions of corruption.
Huge street protests have been aimed at
costly new stadiums being built in cities like Manaus
and Brasília, whose paltry fan bases are almost sure
to leave a sea of empty seats after the World Cup
events are finished, adding to concerns that even
more white elephants will emerge from the
tournament.
“The fiascos are multiplying, revealing
disarray that is regrettably systemic,” said Gil
Castello Branco, director of Contas Abertas, a
Brazilian watchdog group that scrutinizes public
budgets. “We’re waking up to the reality that
immense resources have been wasted on
extravagant projects when our public schools are
still a mess and raw sewage is still in our streets.”
The growing list of troubled development
projects includes a $3.4 billion network of concrete
canals in the drought-plagued hinterland of
northeast Brazil — which was supposed to be
finished in 2010 — as well as dozens of new wind
farms idled by a lack of transmission lines and
unfinished luxury hotels blighting Rio de Janeiro’s
skyline.
Economists surveyed by the nation’s central
bank see Brazil’s economy growing just 1.63 percent
this year, down from 7.5 percent in 2010, making
2014 the fourth straight year of slow growth.
President Dilma Rousseff’s supporters contend
that the public spending has worked, helping to keep
unemployment at historical lows and preventing
what would have been a much worse economic
slowdown had the government not pumped its
considerable resources into infrastructure
development.
Still, a growing chorus of critics argues that
the inability to finish big infrastructure projects
reveals weaknesses in Brazil’s model of state capitalism. First, they say, Brazil gives
extraordinary influence to a web of state-controlled
companies, banks and pension funds to invest in
ill-advised projects. Then other bastions of the
vast public bureaucracy cripple projects with audits
and lawsuits.
“Some ventures never deserved public
money in the first place,” said Sérgio Lazzarini, an
economist at Insper, a São Paulo business school,
pointing to the millions in state financing for the
overhaul of the Glória hotel in Rio, owned until
recently by a mining tycoon, Eike Batista. The
project was left unfinished, unable to open for the
World Cup, when Mr. Batista’s business empire
crumbled last year. “For infrastructure projects
which deserve state support and get it,” Mr.
Lazzarini continued, “there’s the daunting task of
dealing with the risks that the state itself creates.”
The Transnordestina, a railroad begun in
2006 here in northeast Brazil, illustrates some of
the pitfalls plaguing projects big and small.
Scheduled to be finished in 2010 at a cost of about
$1.8 billion, the railroad, designed to stretch more
than 1,000 miles, is now expected to cost at least
$3.2 billion, with most financing from state banks.
Officials say it should be completed around 2016.
But with work sites abandoned because of audits
and other setbacks months ago in and around
Paulistana, a town in Piauí, one of Brazil’s poorest
states, even that timeline seems optimistic. Long
stretches where freight trains were already
supposed to be running stand deserted. Wiry
vaqueiros, or cowboys, herd cattle in the shadow
of ghostly railroad bridges that tower 150 feet
above parched valleys. “Thieves are pillaging metal
from the work sites,” said Adailton Vieira da Silva,
42, an electrician who labored with thousands of
others before work halted last year. “Now there
are just these bridges left in the middle of
nowhere.”
Brazil’s transportation minister, César
Borges, expressed exasperation with the delays in
finishing the railroad, which is needed to transport
soybean harvests to port. He listed the
bureaucracies that delay projects like the
Transnordestina: the Federal Court of Accounts;
the Office of the Comptroller General; an
environmental protection agency; an institute
protecting archaeological patrimony; agencies
protecting the rights of indigenous peoples and
descendants of escaped slaves; and the Public
Ministry, a body of independent prosecutors. Still,
Mr. Borges insisted, “Projects get delayed in
countries around the world, not just Brazil.”
Some economists contend that the way
Brazil is investing may be hampering growth
instead of supporting it. The authorities
encouraged energy companies to build wind farms,
but dozens cannot operate because they lack
transmission lines to connect to the electricity grid.
Meanwhile, manufacturers worry over potential
electricity rationing as reservoirs at hydroelectric
dams run dry amid a drought.
Then there is the extraterrestrial museum in
Varginha, a city in southeast Brazil where residents claimed to have seen an alien in 1996. Officials
secured federal money to build the museum, but
now all that remains of the unfinished project is the
rusting carcass of what looks like a flying saucer.
“That museum,” said Roberto Macedo, an economist
at the University of São Paulo, “is an insult to both
extraterrestrials and the terrestrial beings like
ourselves who foot the bill for yet another project
failing to deliver.”
Adapted from www.nytimes.com/April 12, 2014.
The sentences “Officials secured federal
money to build the museum, but now all that
remains of the unfinished project is the rusting
carcass of what looks like a flying saucer.” and
“While an economic crisis here still seems like a
remote possibility, investors have grown
increasingly pessimistic” contain, respectively,
Ano: 2014
Banca:
UECE-CEV
Órgão:
UECE
Prova:
UECE-CEV - 2014 - UECE - Vestibular - Língua Inglesa - 2ª fase |
Q1285443
Inglês
Texto associado
Brazil plowed billions of dollars into building a
railroad across arid backlands, only for the longdelayed project to fall prey to metal scavengers.
Curvaceous new public buildings designed by the
famed architect Oscar Niemeyer were abandoned
right after being constructed. There was even an illfated U.F.O. museum built with federal funds. Its
skeletal remains now sit like a lost ship among the
weeds.
As Brazil sprints to get ready for the World
Cup in June, it has run up against a catalog of
delays, some caused by deadly construction
accidents at stadiums, and cost overruns. It is
building bus and rail systems for spectators that will
not be finished until long after the games are done.
But the World Cup projects are just a part of a
bigger national problem casting a pall over Brazil’s
grand ambitions: an array of lavish projects
conceived when economic growth was surging that
now stand abandoned, stalled or wildly over budget.
Some economists say the troubled projects
reveal a crippling bureaucracy, irresponsible
allocation of resources and bastions of corruption.
Huge street protests have been aimed at
costly new stadiums being built in cities like Manaus
and Brasília, whose paltry fan bases are almost sure
to leave a sea of empty seats after the World Cup
events are finished, adding to concerns that even
more white elephants will emerge from the
tournament.
“The fiascos are multiplying, revealing
disarray that is regrettably systemic,” said Gil
Castello Branco, director of Contas Abertas, a
Brazilian watchdog group that scrutinizes public
budgets. “We’re waking up to the reality that
immense resources have been wasted on
extravagant projects when our public schools are
still a mess and raw sewage is still in our streets.”
The growing list of troubled development
projects includes a $3.4 billion network of concrete
canals in the drought-plagued hinterland of
northeast Brazil — which was supposed to be
finished in 2010 — as well as dozens of new wind
farms idled by a lack of transmission lines and
unfinished luxury hotels blighting Rio de Janeiro’s
skyline.
Economists surveyed by the nation’s central
bank see Brazil’s economy growing just 1.63 percent
this year, down from 7.5 percent in 2010, making
2014 the fourth straight year of slow growth.
President Dilma Rousseff’s supporters contend
that the public spending has worked, helping to keep
unemployment at historical lows and preventing
what would have been a much worse economic
slowdown had the government not pumped its
considerable resources into infrastructure
development.
Still, a growing chorus of critics argues that
the inability to finish big infrastructure projects
reveals weaknesses in Brazil’s model of state capitalism. First, they say, Brazil gives
extraordinary influence to a web of state-controlled
companies, banks and pension funds to invest in
ill-advised projects. Then other bastions of the
vast public bureaucracy cripple projects with audits
and lawsuits.
“Some ventures never deserved public
money in the first place,” said Sérgio Lazzarini, an
economist at Insper, a São Paulo business school,
pointing to the millions in state financing for the
overhaul of the Glória hotel in Rio, owned until
recently by a mining tycoon, Eike Batista. The
project was left unfinished, unable to open for the
World Cup, when Mr. Batista’s business empire
crumbled last year. “For infrastructure projects
which deserve state support and get it,” Mr.
Lazzarini continued, “there’s the daunting task of
dealing with the risks that the state itself creates.”
The Transnordestina, a railroad begun in
2006 here in northeast Brazil, illustrates some of
the pitfalls plaguing projects big and small.
Scheduled to be finished in 2010 at a cost of about
$1.8 billion, the railroad, designed to stretch more
than 1,000 miles, is now expected to cost at least
$3.2 billion, with most financing from state banks.
Officials say it should be completed around 2016.
But with work sites abandoned because of audits
and other setbacks months ago in and around
Paulistana, a town in Piauí, one of Brazil’s poorest
states, even that timeline seems optimistic. Long
stretches where freight trains were already
supposed to be running stand deserted. Wiry
vaqueiros, or cowboys, herd cattle in the shadow
of ghostly railroad bridges that tower 150 feet
above parched valleys. “Thieves are pillaging metal
from the work sites,” said Adailton Vieira da Silva,
42, an electrician who labored with thousands of
others before work halted last year. “Now there
are just these bridges left in the middle of
nowhere.”
Brazil’s transportation minister, César
Borges, expressed exasperation with the delays in
finishing the railroad, which is needed to transport
soybean harvests to port. He listed the
bureaucracies that delay projects like the
Transnordestina: the Federal Court of Accounts;
the Office of the Comptroller General; an
environmental protection agency; an institute
protecting archaeological patrimony; agencies
protecting the rights of indigenous peoples and
descendants of escaped slaves; and the Public
Ministry, a body of independent prosecutors. Still,
Mr. Borges insisted, “Projects get delayed in
countries around the world, not just Brazil.”
Some economists contend that the way
Brazil is investing may be hampering growth
instead of supporting it. The authorities
encouraged energy companies to build wind farms,
but dozens cannot operate because they lack
transmission lines to connect to the electricity grid.
Meanwhile, manufacturers worry over potential
electricity rationing as reservoirs at hydroelectric
dams run dry amid a drought.
Then there is the extraterrestrial museum in
Varginha, a city in southeast Brazil where residents claimed to have seen an alien in 1996. Officials
secured federal money to build the museum, but
now all that remains of the unfinished project is the
rusting carcass of what looks like a flying saucer.
“That museum,” said Roberto Macedo, an economist
at the University of São Paulo, “is an insult to both
extraterrestrials and the terrestrial beings like
ourselves who foot the bill for yet another project
failing to deliver.”
Adapted from www.nytimes.com/April 12, 2014.
The sentence “…immense resources have
been wasted on extravagant projects when our
public schools are still a mess and raw sewage is
still in our streets” contains a/an