Nominal Groups – Simulado Enem Online de Inglês com 10 questões

(Enem/2013)

National Geographic News
Christine Dell’Amore
Published April 26, 2010
Our bodies produce a small but steady amount of natural morphine, a new study suggests. Traces of the chemical are often found in mouse and human urine, leading scientists to wonder whether the drug is being made naturally or being delivered by something the subjects consumed. The new research shows that mice produce the “incredible painkiller” — and that humans and other mammals possess the same chemical road map for making it, said study co-author Meinhart Zenk, who studies plant-based pharmaceuticals at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri.

Ao ler a matéria publicada na National Geographic, para a realização de um trabalho escolar, um estudante descobriu que

(FUVEST/2012)

Although robots have made great strides in manufacturing, where tasks are repetitive, they are still no match for humans, who can grasp things and move about effortlessly in the physical world.
Designing a robot to mimic the basic capabilities of motion and perception would be revolutionary, researchers say, with applications stretching from care for the elderly to returning overseas manufacturing operations to the United States (albeit with fewer workers).
Yet the challenges remain immense, far higher than artificial intelligence obstacles like speaking and hearing. “All these problems where you want to duplicate something biology does, such as perception, touch, planning or grasping, turn out to be hard in fundamental ways,” said Gary Bradski, a vision specialist at Willow Garage, a robot development company based in Silicon Valley. “It’s always surprising, because humans can do so much effortlessly.”

http://www.nytimes.com, July 11, 2011. Adaptado

De acordo com o texto, o especialista Gary Bradski afirma que

(ACAFE SC/2016) 

A couple of weeks ago I was asked what I thought the future of technology in education was. It is a really interesting question and one that I am required to think about all the time. By its very nature, technology changes at a fast pace and making it accessible to pupils, teachers and other stakeholders is an ongoing challenge. So what is the future? Is it the iPad? No, I don’t think it is. For me, the future is not about one specific device. Don’t get me wrong, I love the iPad. In fact, I have just finished a trial to see if using them really does support teaching and learning – and they have proved effective. I’ve written about the trial in more detail on my blog. iPads and other mobile technology are the ‘now’. Although, they will play a part in the future, four years ago the iPad didn’t even exist. We don’t know what will be the current technology in another four. Perhaps it will be wearable devices such as Google Glass, although I suspect that tablets will still be used in education. The future is about access, anywhere learning and collaboration, both locally and globally. Teaching and learning is going to be social. Schools of the future could have a traditional cohort of students, as well as online only students who live across the country or even the world. Things are already starting to move this way with the emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs). For me the future of technology in education is the cloud. Technology can often be a barrier to teaching and learning. I think the cloud will go a long way to removing this barrier. Why? By removing the number of things that can go wrong. Schools will only need one major thing to be prepared for the future. They will not need software installed, servers or local file storage. Schools will need a fast robust internet connection. Infrastructure is paramount to the future of technology in education. We don’t know what the new ‘in’ device will be in the future. What we do know is that it will need the cloud. Schools and other educational institutions will need to futureproof their infrastructure the best they can.

(Source: The Guardian, Author: Matt Britland, 2013)

What are the correct translations for the nominal groups in the text?

( 1 ) wearable devices – dispositivos usáveis
( 2 ) fast pace – ritmo acelerado
( 3 ) mobile technology – tecnologia móvel
( 4 ) local file storage – arquivo de armazenamento local

The correct sequence is:

(UNIFOR CE/2011) 

Germany nuclear shutdown by 2022 may mean blackouts, Merkel warned

As chancellor mulls Germany’s nuclear future, energy firms say solar and wind power may not make up shortfall in winter
Helen Pidd
Guardian.co.uk.Monday 23 May 2011

Germany could face widespread winter blackouts following Angela Merkel’s “knee-jerk” decision to decommission the country’s nuclear power stations, according to German power grid operators.
The warning from four energy providers _________¹ the German chancellor suggested she agreed with a proposal to _________² all of Germany’s 17 nuclear power plants by 2022.
Seven nuclear power stations have been off-grid ever since Merkel announced in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima disaster a “threemonth moratorium” on her controversial decision last year to extend the lives of the plants.
Merkel ordered safety checks on all reactors and _________³ two commissions – one on safety and another on ethics – to look at whether Germany had a nuclear future.
The resultant safety report will be evaluated by the German government, along with a separate report by an ethics commission due on May 28, before it makes a final decision on nuclear power.
But over the weekend, Merkel said the year 2022 was “the right space of time” to set as a goal for Germany’s total withdrawal from nuclear power. She was speaking after the CSU – the Bavarian sister party of her Christian Democratic CDU – voted for all German nuclear power plants to come off-grid by 2022. Merkel did not herself commit to a firm date for nuclear decommissioning.
The timetable is too slow for many of Merkel’s opponents. Claudia Roth, co-head of the national Green party, which beat the chancellor’s CDU in elections in Bremen on Sunday, insists it would be feasible to close down all plants by 2017.
According to a report in Monday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, four firms which operate Germany’s network of high-voltage power cables and pylons – 50Hertz, Tennet, EnBW Transportnetze and Amprion – believe Germany cannot currently _________ (4) nuclear power. The companies say that the grid is already “largely exhausted” during winter months when solar power is at a minimum and when wind cannot be ________(5) to keep turbines in motion.
The firms warned in a statement that calm winter days with no wind could result in “large-scale supply disruptions”, particularly in Germany’s affluent and industry-heavy south, which guzzles much of the country’s electricity. “A safe supply to customers in these cases could be severely compromised,” they said.
There are no current problems because good weather in Germany has meant that solar panels have been able to compensate for the shortfall left by the decommissioned nuclear plants.
The industry group German Atomic Forum cautioned against abandoning nuclear power without careful consideration.
“A quick and rash exit from German nuclear power would raise costs for the whole economy, make us miss climate goals, raise our reliance on fossil fuels and make our power supply less secure, meaning more power imports and problems with network stability,” said president Ralf Gueldner. “It would also spark intense debate in the European Union,” he added.
Nuclear power has long been unpopular in Germany and Merkel’s decision last year to extend the life of nuclear plants was a major factor in her party’s loss of power after 60 years in Baden-Württemberg – a prosperous conservative state – in March. Her about-turn on nuclear policy was derided as “knee-jerk” by many of her critics.
Currently, nuclear energy supplies 22.3% of Germany’s electricity while coal provides 42%, natural gas 13.6% and renewable energies 16.5%, according to the environment ministry.

Match the following nominal groups with their corresponding definitions and mark the correct answer:

1. knee-jerk decision
2. the immediate aftermath
3. nuclear decommissioning
4. large-scale supply disruptions
5. fossil fuels

( ) The period of time in which the consequences of an accident are dealt.
( ) Situations in which things are prevented from continuing in their normal way due to problems and difficulties.
( ) Stop using a weapon or reactor and prepare to take it to pieces.
( ) The result of what is produced by the very gradual decaying of animal or plants over millions of years.
( ) What you feel or say about a situation from habit, without thinking about it.

(UEPB/2008) 

Patrolling the Border
With each major surge in immigration to the United States, Congress has curtailed new arrivals and tightened the borders. With reference to the current crackdown, first the House passed an immigration bill.
Now the Senate is debating two proposals. Can they compromise?
Passed : The House bill, which calls for a 698-mile wall along the border, would make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally and would penalize employers for hiring illegals.
Proposed : Sen. Bill Frist’s measure also focuses on border security, but adds a call for temporary work visas.
It doesn’t deal with illegal workers.
The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to implement the McCain-Kennedy plan. It would institute a temporary guest-worker program and allow illegals to work toward citizenship.
On the Horizon: Speaker Dennis Hastert hinted the House might soften its bill to reconcile with the Senate.

Newsweek, April 10th,2006

The underlined words in TEXT  are:

(UNESP SP/2006) 

Knee repair
New ways of fixing the most troublesome joint
By Daren Briscoe.
Knees are the bane of all athletes, but they’re particularly nettlesome to aging amateurs, whose joints have endured years of pounding. Fortunately, some of the technology inspired by doctors who treat professional athletes is trickling down to weekend warriors. Scientists are working on a number of strategies to coax the body’s healing powers to hasten the repair of damaged knee cartilage.
The knee is particularly tricky because it gets such little blood from the circulatory system, so it’s slow to heal. A technique called microfracture surgery is designed to draw blood to the injury. It involves making tiny holes in the bone on either side of the knee socket so that blood from inside the bone can seep up and nourish torn cartilage, supplying it with stem cells needed to repair. Doctors have been refining the technique for the past decade or so, and it’s now achieving its mainstream. The problem is that it’s difficult to control exactly where cartilage is replaced. With a new technique, called chondrocyte-transplant therapy, doctors avoid this problem by removing cartilage cells from the knee, growing them in a culture and transplanting the new tissue directly in the knee. This procedure, though, calls for opening up the knee twice, which is costly and makes for a long recovery. […]

O grupo nominal this procedure, em negrito no segundo parágrafo do texto, refere-se à idéia de

(UNESP SP/2008)

Here is the first part of a letter, written by a 98-year-old pensioned lady to her bank manager.

Dear Sir,
I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three ‘nanoseconds’ must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Pension, an arrangement, which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years.
You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account to the tune of £30 by way of a penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.
My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways.
I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by that impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity, which your bank has become.
From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-andblood person. My mortgage and loan payment will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate. Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope. Please find attached an Application Contact Status, which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative.
Please note that a Solicitor must countersign all copies of his or her medical history, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.

(Adapted from: forums.film.com/showthead.php?t=15516)

Escolha a alternativa correta, de acordo com o texto.

(UEPG PR/2016)

THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE

In December 1914 invading German troops and the defending Allies were dug in along battle lines in Belgium and France. From sodden trenches soldiers shot at each other across a no-man’s- land strewn with injured and dead comrades. But on December 24, at points along that western front, Germans placed lighted trees on trench parapets and the Allies joined them in an impromptu peace: the Christmas truce of World War I, a hundred years ago this month.
The truce “bubbled up from the ranks” despite edicts against fraternization, says historian Stanley Weintraub, whose book Silent Night tells the story. After shouted exchanges promising, “You no shoot, we no shoot,” some erstwhile enemies serenaded each other with carols. Others emerged from trenches to shake hands and share a smoke. Many agreed to extend the peace into Christmas Day, so they could meet again and bury their dead. Each side helped the other dig graves and hold memorials; at one, a Scottish chaplain led a bilingual recitation of the 23rd Psalm. Troops shared food and gifts sent from home, traded uniform buttons as souvenirs, and competed in soccer matches.
“No one there wanted to continue the war,” Weintraub says. But the top brass did, and threatened to punish troops shirking duty. As the new year began, both sides “went on with the grim business at hand,” Weintraub says. But they fondly recalled the truce in letters home and diary entries: “How marvelously wonderful,” a German soldier wrote, “yet how strange.”

Adaptado de: Patricia Edmonds. National Geographic. December 2014.

Vocabulário: shoot – atirar; truce – trégua; grim – horrível, repugnante; erstwhile – antigo.

No que se refere à fala do soldado alemão: “How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange”, que encerra o texto, assinale o que for correto.

(UEPG PR/2011)

Effects of global warming

Over the last hundred years or so, the instrumental temperature record has shown a trend in climate of increased global mean temperature, i.e., global warming. Other observed changes include Arctic shrinkage, Arctic methane release, releases of terrestrial carbon from permafrost regions and Arctic methane release in coastal sediments, and sea level rise. Global average temperature is predicted to increase over this century, with a probable increase in frequency of some extreme weather events, and changes in rainfall patterns. Moving from global to regional scales, there is increased uncertainty over how climate will change. The probability of warming having unforeseen consequences increases with the rate, magnitude, and duration of climate change. Some of the physical impacts of climate change are irreversible at continental and global scales. With medium confidence, IPCC (2007) concluded that with a global average temperature increase of 1-4ºC, partial deglaciation of the Greenland ice sheet would occur over a period of centuries to millennia. Including the possible contribution of partial deglaciation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, sea level would rise by 4-6m or more.
The impacts of climate change across world population will not be distributed evenly. Some regions and sectors are expected to experience benefits while others will experience costs. With greater levels of warming, it is very likely that benefits will decline and costs increase. Low-latitude and less-developed areas are probably at the greatest risk from climate change. With human systems, adaptation potential for climate change impacts is considerable, although the costs of adaptation are largely unknown and potentially large. According to Schneider et al. (2007), climate changes would likely result in reduced diversity of ecosystems and the extinction of many species.

Adaptado de: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Acesso em Abrl/2010.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming

Com relação aos adjetivos compostos low-latitude e less-developed, presentes no último parágrafo do texto, assinale o que for correto, no que se refere ao que essas palavras expressam.

(UFU MG/2007)

HOW BRAILLE WORKS
BY TRACY V. WILSON

In 1828, Charles Barbier, a visitor to Royal Institution for Blind Youth, introduced Louis Braille to a tactile dot code known as night writing. Barbier had invented the code to allow soldiers to communicate with one another in the dark, but his idea hadn’t caught on. It used dots to represent 36 phonetic sounds rather than the letters of the alphabet. Some of its characters were six dots tall.

Louis Braille realized that the same basic idea could give blind people an efficient method for reading and writing. Through trial and error, he figured out that a six-dot cell was small enough to fit under a fingertip but had enough possible dot combinations to represent a wide range of letters and symbols. He used this cell to create an alphabet using tactile dots and dashes.
The Braille cells used today are two dots wide and three dots tall, and they no longer use dashes. You can represent each dot’s position within the cell with a number.
Dots one, two and three are on the left side of the cell, and dots four, five and six are, one the right side. A cell with one dot in position six indicates that the next cell represents a capital letter, and a cell marked with dots three through six signifies that the next cell represents a number. The Braille characters for the numbers zero through nine are the same as for the letters “a” through “j.”
A typical line of Braille is about 40 characters long, and a typical page of Braille is about 25 lines long. In other words, Braille takes up significantly more room than standard-sized print. Braille pages are also thicker and heavier than ordinary paper, and they have to be bound in a loose format so that pages can lie flat and people can reach the cells near the book’s binding. This leads to relatively bulky books. For example, the Braille version of “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” is eight volumes long. Its longer predecessor, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” is fourteen volumes long.
To conserve space and make the reading process a little faster, many people learn to read contracted Braille, previously known as Grade 2 Braille. Uncontracted Braille, uses characters to represent single letters, numbers and symbols. Contracted Braille uses characters to represent letter combinations or whole words. There are close to 200 contractions in the American version of English Braille. These include commonly-used words like “and,” “you” and “for” as well as letter combinations like “ing” and “ed.”
There are opposing theories about whether it is better for a person to learn contracted or uncontracted Braille. Some educators argue that uncontracted Braille is an important foundation for learning contracted Braille. In addition, learning characters for individual letters and symbols may be easier for young children who are beginning to learn to read.
Opponents argue that uncontracted Braille is more time- and space- consuming than contracted Braille and that teaching the contracted version first requires people to learn two codes.

http://PEOPLE. HOWSTUFFWORKS.COM/BRAILLE.HTM

Sobre o código tátil conhecido como “escrita noturna”, mencionado no texto, é correto afirmar que