Questões de Inglês

Genetic Fortune-Telling

One day, babies will get DNA report cards at birth. These reports will offer predictions about their chances of suffering  a Neart attack or cancer, of getting hooked on tobacco, and of being smarter than average.

Though the new DNA tests offer probabilities, not diagnoses, they could greatly benefit medicine. For example, if women at high risk for breast cancer got more mammograms and those at low risk got fewer, those exams might catch more real cancers and set off fewer false alarms. The trouble is, the predictions are far from perfect. What if someone with a low risk score for cancer puts off being screened, and then develops cancer anyway? Polygenic scores are also controversial because they can predict any trait, not only diseases. For instance, they cannow forecast about 10 percent of a person's performance on IQ tests. But how will parents and educators use that information?

(Adaptado de Derek Brahney, Genetic Fortune-Telling. MIT Technology Review, Março/Abril 2018)

De acordo com o texto, um dos riscos do prognóstico genético dos indivíduos desde o nascimento seria o de

Love is not all

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

lt well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by need and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution's power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

lt may well be. I do not think I would.

(Disponível em https://www.poemhunter.com/. Acessado em 28/05/2018.)
 

De acordo com o poema,

“Yes, Im Italian — but I'm not loud, I don't gesticulate and I'm not good with pizza”

Elena Ferrante

I love my country, but I have no patriotic spirit and no national pride. What's more, I digest pizza poorly, I eat very little spaghetti, I don't speak in a loud voice, I dont gesticulate, I hate all mafias, I don't exclaim “Mamma mia!” National characteristics are simplifications that should be contested. Being Italian, for me, begins and ends with the fact that I speak and write in the Italian language.

Put that way it doesn't seem like much, but really it's a lot. A language is a compendium of the history, geography material and spiritual life, the vices and virtues, not only of those who speak it, but also of those who have spoken it through the centuries. When I say that I'm Italian because I write in Italian, I mean that Im fully Italian in the only way that I'm willing to attribute to myself a nationality. I don't like the other ways, especially when they become nationalism, chauvinism, and imperialism.

(Adaptado de Elena Ferrante, “Yes, I'm Italian — but I'm not loud, | don't gesticulate and I'm not good with pizza”, The Guardian, 24/02/2018.)

Transcrevem-se, a seguir, versos de canções brasileiras e de um poema de Vinícius de Moraes.

Assinale a alternativa que melhor exemplifica as afirmações de Elena Ferrante.

We raise girls to cater to the fragile egos of men. We teach girls do shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We tell girls “You can have ambition, but not too much". “You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man”. (...) We teach girls shame — 'Close your legs, cover yourself!'. We make them feel as though by being born female, they're already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot see they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up — and this is the worst thing we do to girls — to be women who tum pretense into an art form.

(Adaptado da palestra “We should all be feminists”, 15/07/2009. Disponível em https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU qWc&t=797s. Acessado em 14/05/2018.)

O texto anterior reproduz trechos de uma palestra proferida pela escritora nigeriana Chimamanda Adichie em 2009.

Segundo a autora, o fato de serem criadas para agradar aos homens faz com que as mulheres

Largest prime number discovered: with more than 23m digits
 

Known simply as M77232917, the figure is arrived at by calculating two to the power of 77,232,917 and subtracting one, leaving a gargantuan string of 23,249,425 digits. The result is nearly one million digits longer than the previous record holder discovered in January 2016. The number belongs to a rare group of so-called Mersenne prime numbers, named after the 17th century French monk Marin Mersenne. Like any prime number, a Mersenne prime is divisible only by itself and one, but is derived by multiplying twos together over and over before taking away one. The previous record-holding number was the 49th Mersenne prime ever found, making the new one the 50th.

(Adaptado de lan Sample, “Largest prime number discovered: with more than 23m digits”. The Guardian, 04/ 01/2018.)

Considerando as informações contidas no excerto anterior, qual dos números a seguir é um primo de Mersenne?

Touching thermal-paper receipts could extend BPA retention in the body

When people handle receipts  printed on thermal paper containing the endocrine disruptor bisphenol A (BPA), the toxic chemical could linger in the body for a E week or more. Jonathan W. Martin of Stockholm University and Jiaying Liu of the University of Alberta asked six male volunteers to handle paper containing isotopically labeled BPA for five minutes. The volunteers then put on nitrile gloves, wore them for two hours, removed them, and washed their hands with soap. Afterward, the researchers measured the labeled BPA and its metabolites in the volunteers' urine regularly for two days and then once again a week later. The study only traced the isotopically labeled (deuterated) BPA and its metabolites, so any additional BPA exposure from other sources was not monitored.

(Deirdre Lockwood, Touching thermal-paper receipts could extend BPA retention in the body. Chemical & Engineering News, 04/09/2017.)

O texto discorre sobre uma pesquisa cujo objetivo foi