Questões de Inglês

A questão se referem ao texto a seguir:

Aeroponics: feeding tomorrow's world?

     If our world is to survive for much longer, we have no choice but to reduce the use of natural resources and cut out wastage. Compared to traditional agriculture, aeroponics does both. The world's population is expected to continue growing until the end of the twenty-first century; that at least was the consensus of experts until 2019. Maybe in the new post-Covid reality, the rate of growth will slow; but even so, unless Covid-19 or some other new virus causes millions more deaths than initially predicted, the world's population will continue to grow, putting everincreasing pressure on the natural environment, on resources, on living space, and most critically on food and water. Aeroponics will be part of the solution. According to United Nations reports published in 2011, half of the fruit and vegetables produced in the world go to waste – they never get consumed by the humans for whom they are grown. Wastage occurs throughout the production and distribution cycle, during production, during transformation, during transport, and even – notably in developed economies after purchase by the final customer. Fifty percent of all fruit and vegetables going to waste, that is an enormous amount of wastage, and not just in economic terms. This wastage has a huge impact in terms of natural resources, particularly space and water, which in turn have huge implications for the global environment. Cutting out all waste in the production and distribution of food is an impossible goal. Even people living in small eco-sustainable communities generate waste. Even in organic crop production, pests and disease cause wastage; and even if harvested and distributed locally, part of a crop will always be wasted. But there is a large difference between wasting fifty percent of all fruit and vegetables produced worldwide, and the unreachable goal of achieving no waste at all. Between 50% and zero, there is plenty of scope for significantly reducing the volume of food waste worldwide simply through the use of new more efficient production methods. Studies have shown that packaging and distribution systems account for about 25% of total wastage of fresh fruit and vegetables, leaving plenty of opportunity for improvement. In an ideal world, and as in the past, much of the food consumed in cities would be produced locally, not shipped thousands of miles as happens today. In 1998, the US Department of Agriculture released a study into fruit and vegetables arriving at the Chicago Terminal Market, the main point of distribution for the American Middle West. The report showed that basic vegetables including lettuce, broccoli, peas or cauliflowers all traveled over 2000 miles (over 3000 km) before reaching the market... and before being shipped on to supermarkets across the region. Yet Chicago is in the heart of a massive agricultural area. Granted it can get pretty cold in winter, but with modern agricultural techniques, the Midwest could be self-sufficient for many types of fruit and vegetables, cutting out the massive environmental cost of shipping tons of vegetables halfway across a continent. Since 2011, Chicago's O'Hare airport has been home to an aeroponic garden, where people can see how vegetables can be grown in an environment that is not only without soil but even without any permanent medium in which to grow. In this experimental garden, plants are grown, as the name suggests, ... in the air, their roots hanging down in nothing. Hydroponics, growing plants in troughs of nutrient-rich water, has been developing since the 1970's. Aeroponics takes things one step further, by removing the water and replacing it with air. Not just air, obviously; while plants are grown with roots hanging in the air, these roots are regularly sprayed with a nutrient-rich solution that gives them just what they need for optimum growth. It's very high-tech, it's not cheap, and it's a long way from currently popular organic farming techniques. Yet in many ways, aeroponics is actually more environment-friendly than even the most strictly managed traditional organic farming methods. And it's down to one factor: waste. Traditional farming is wasteful; modern intensive agriculture relies on large inputs of external resources, notably heat, water and nutrients. The vast amounts of water used by agriculture are already causing serious problems in many parts of the world; beneath California's San Joaquim Valley, the world's most productive agricultural area, water tables have been dropping for almost a century, and scientists estimate that the land... not the water table below it... has sunk by over 8 meters in some parts. NASA calculate that Southern California had a "water deficit" of 4.2 gigatons per year from 2002 to 2015.Aeroponic agriculture reduces water waste to zero. The only water used is what is actually taken up by the roots of plants when they are sprayed. Any water not used can be collected and reused. The same goes for nutrients; in traditional agriculture, plants only extract a small proportion of nutrients from the ground, and good ground will have many nutrients in it that will not be used at all by the crops grown on it. In an age of diminishing natural resources, traditional agriculture uses millions of tons of chemical fertilizer each year, much of which goes to waste. In Brittany, France, many streams, and beaches have been seriously polluted by nutrient-rich water running off fields, causing "algal bloom" along the seashore and covering some beaches in green slime. With aeroponic agriculture, no nutrients are lost, so there is no risk of unintended pollution. One big advantage of traditional agriculture is that it almost always uses natural heat and light, even if under glass or plastic. Aeroponic agriculture, by contrast, may require artificial heat and light, especially if practiced indoors. But with the development of smallscale locally sited renewable energy production, and highly energy-efficient buildings and lighting systems, large-scale indoor aeroponic vegetable growing units are liable to be a feature of tomorrow's cities. If all the lettuces consumed in Chicago in winter could be grown locally, in carbon-neutral zero-waste aeroponic "farms", instead of being brought in by truck from California, that would lead to a huge reduction in the use of water, minerals, landspace and transportation costs. Reproduced on a global scale, reduced use of natural resources will be vital for ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come, even when the global population goes above 10 billion.

Fonte: https://linguapress.com/advanced/aeroponics.htm. Acessado em 27 de março de 2022.

A questão se referem ao texto a seguir:

Aeroponics: feeding tomorrow's world?

     If our world is to survive for much longer, we have no choice but to reduce the use of natural resources and cut out wastage. Compared to traditional agriculture, aeroponics does both. The world's population is expected to continue growing until the end of the twenty-first century; that at least was the consensus of experts until 2019. Maybe in the new post-Covid reality, the rate of growth will slow; but even so, unless Covid-19 or some other new virus causes millions more deaths than initially predicted, the world's population will continue to grow, putting everincreasing pressure on the natural environment, on resources, on living space, and most critically on food and water. Aeroponics will be part of the solution. According to United Nations reports published in 2011, half of the fruit and vegetables produced in the world go to waste – they never get consumed by the humans for whom they are grown. Wastage occurs throughout the production and distribution cycle, during production, during transformation, during transport, and even – notably in developed economies after purchase by the final customer. Fifty percent of all fruit and vegetables going to waste, that is an enormous amount of wastage, and not just in economic terms. This wastage has a huge impact in terms of natural resources, particularly space and water, which in turn have huge implications for the global environment. Cutting out all waste in the production and distribution of food is an impossible goal. Even people living in small eco-sustainable communities generate waste. Even in organic crop production, pests and disease cause wastage; and even if harvested and distributed locally, part of a crop will always be wasted. But there is a large difference between wasting fifty percent of all fruit and vegetables produced worldwide, and the unreachable goal of achieving no waste at all. Between 50% and zero, there is plenty of scope for significantly reducing the volume of food waste worldwide simply through the use of new more efficient production methods. Studies have shown that packaging and distribution systems account for about 25% of total wastage of fresh fruit and vegetables, leaving plenty of opportunity for improvement. In an ideal world, and as in the past, much of the food consumed in cities would be produced locally, not shipped thousands of miles as happens today. In 1998, the US Department of Agriculture released a study into fruit and vegetables arriving at the Chicago Terminal Market, the main point of distribution for the American Middle West. The report showed that basic vegetables including lettuce, broccoli, peas or cauliflowers all traveled over 2000 miles (over 3000 km) before reaching the market... and before being shipped on to supermarkets across the region. Yet Chicago is in the heart of a massive agricultural area. Granted it can get pretty cold in winter, but with modern agricultural techniques, the Midwest could be self-sufficient for many types of fruit and vegetables, cutting out the massive environmental cost of shipping tons of vegetables halfway across a continent. Since 2011, Chicago's O'Hare airport has been home to an aeroponic garden, where people can see how vegetables can be grown in an environment that is not only without soil but even without any permanent medium in which to grow. In this experimental garden, plants are grown, as the name suggests, ... in the air, their roots hanging down in nothing. Hydroponics, growing plants in troughs of nutrient-rich water, has been developing since the 1970's. Aeroponics takes things one step further, by removing the water and replacing it with air. Not just air, obviously; while plants are grown with roots hanging in the air, these roots are regularly sprayed with a nutrient-rich solution that gives them just what they need for optimum growth. It's very high-tech, it's not cheap, and it's a long way from currently popular organic farming techniques. Yet in many ways, aeroponics is actually more environment-friendly than even the most strictly managed traditional organic farming methods. And it's down to one factor: waste. Traditional farming is wasteful; modern intensive agriculture relies on large inputs of external resources, notably heat, water and nutrients. The vast amounts of water used by agriculture are already causing serious problems in many parts of the world; beneath California's San Joaquim Valley, the world's most productive agricultural area, water tables have been dropping for almost a century, and scientists estimate that the land... not the water table below it... has sunk by over 8 meters in some parts. NASA calculate that Southern California had a "water deficit" of 4.2 gigatons per year from 2002 to 2015.Aeroponic agriculture reduces water waste to zero. The only water used is what is actually taken up by the roots of plants when they are sprayed. Any water not used can be collected and reused. The same goes for nutrients; in traditional agriculture, plants only extract a small proportion of nutrients from the ground, and good ground will have many nutrients in it that will not be used at all by the crops grown on it. In an age of diminishing natural resources, traditional agriculture uses millions of tons of chemical fertilizer each year, much of which goes to waste. In Brittany, France, many streams, and beaches have been seriously polluted by nutrient-rich water running off fields, causing "algal bloom" along the seashore and covering some beaches in green slime. With aeroponic agriculture, no nutrients are lost, so there is no risk of unintended pollution. One big advantage of traditional agriculture is that it almost always uses natural heat and light, even if under glass or plastic. Aeroponic agriculture, by contrast, may require artificial heat and light, especially if practiced indoors. But with the development of smallscale locally sited renewable energy production, and highly energy-efficient buildings and lighting systems, large-scale indoor aeroponic vegetable growing units are liable to be a feature of tomorrow's cities. If all the lettuces consumed in Chicago in winter could be grown locally, in carbon-neutral zero-waste aeroponic "farms", instead of being brought in by truck from California, that would lead to a huge reduction in the use of water, minerals, landspace and transportation costs. Reproduced on a global scale, reduced use of natural resources will be vital for ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come, even when the global population goes above 10 billion.

Fonte: https://linguapress.com/advanced/aeroponics.htm. Acessado em 27 de março de 2022.

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    Team sports are much more than something to do while growing up. Participation alone could lower the likeliness of children having mental health issues, according to a study from California State University. Researchers analyzed 11,235 children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 13, in the United States, and found that football, basketball, volleyball and other team sports can be very beneficial.

    “Specifically, children and adolescents who played team sports were less likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression, social problems, thought problems, attentional problems, and rule-breaking behavior (among females only),” the study reads. But when it comes to individual sports, like golf, tennis and gymnastics, there is a major difference.

     “Children and adolescents who participated in individual sports had greater levels of mental health difficulties across several syndromes compared to those who did not participate in organized sports,” the study reads. In general, the results suggest that the sport in question — whether it be a team or individual sport — could be an important factor in the correlation between sport participation and mental health.

(Dominic Genetti. https://thetelegraph.com, 07.06.2022. Adaptado.)

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

    Team sports are much more than something to do while growing up. Participation alone could lower the likeliness of children having mental health issues, according to a study from California State University. Researchers analyzed 11,235 children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 13, in the United States, and found that football, basketball, volleyball and other team sports can be very beneficial.

    “Specifically, children and adolescents who played team sports were less likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression, social problems, thought problems, attentional problems, and rule-breaking behavior (among females only),” the study reads. But when it comes to individual sports, like golf, tennis and gymnastics, there is a major difference.

     “Children and adolescents who participated in individual sports had greater levels of mental health difficulties across several syndromes compared to those who did not participate in organized sports,” the study reads. In general, the results suggest that the sport in question — whether it be a team or individual sport — could be an important factor in the correlation between sport participation and mental health.

(Dominic Genetti. https://thetelegraph.com, 07.06.2022. Adaptado.)

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

    Team sports are much more than something to do while growing up. Participation alone could lower the likeliness of children having mental health issues, according to a study from California State University. Researchers analyzed 11,235 children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 13, in the United States, and found that football, basketball, volleyball and other team sports can be very beneficial.

    “Specifically, children and adolescents who played team sports were less likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression, social problems, thought problems, attentional problems, and rule-breaking behavior (among females only),” the study reads. But when it comes to individual sports, like golf, tennis and gymnastics, there is a major difference.

     “Children and adolescents who participated in individual sports had greater levels of mental health difficulties across several syndromes compared to those who did not participate in organized sports,” the study reads. In general, the results suggest that the sport in question — whether it be a team or individual sport — could be an important factor in the correlation between sport participation and mental health.

(Dominic Genetti. https://thetelegraph.com, 07.06.2022. Adaptado.)

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     The United Nations (UN) agency interviewed its followers on Twitter and LinkedIn to find out what worries them most about children being active online. They were asked to rank three common online fears: cyberbullying, data protection lapses, and the threat of grooming, which refers to abusers deliberately exploiting children online. Roughly 40 per cent listed cyberbullying as the chief concern, with the two other choices at 27 per cent and 26 per cent respectively.

     Respondents also cited other fears that were not featured in the survey, such as the risk of excessive screentime, or whether children are aware of mechanisms for reporting online threats. That cyberbullying emerged as the top concern is hardly surprising, considering how the internet permeates nearly every facet of life. Young people spend more time online than the rest of the population, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said — an estimated 71 per cent of people aged 15 to 24 using the internet, compared to just 57 per cent for all other age groups. The internet has also evolved over time, giving rise to the emergence of new threats, making the protection of children and youth online even more critical.

    ITU recalled that the problem of cyberbullying inspired Gitanjali Rao, TIME magazine’s first-ever Kid of the Year, to use technology to tackle the issue. Ms. Rao, now 16, conceptualized Kindly, an open-source Application Programming Interface (API) that uses machine learning algorithms to detect “toxic” language in text messages, emails, or social media posts before they are sent. Speaking to UN News, she described it as like “the spellcheck of bullying.” Children receive instantaneous feedback on their draft messages, thus allowing them to reconsider or modify what they have written. As the Kindly website puts it, the goal is to “end cyberbullying one message at a time.”

(https://news.un.org, 08.02.2022. Adaptado.)