Questões de Inglês

  Germans make wonderful beer. Yet the productivity of the German beer industry is only 43 percent that of the U.S. beer industry. Meanwhile, the German metalworking and steel industries are equal in productivity to their American counterparts. Since the Germans are evidently capable of organizing industries well, why can’t they do so when it comes to beer?

  It turns out that the German beer industry suffers from small-scale production. There are a thousand tiny beer companies in Germany, shielded from competition with one another because each German brewery has virtually a local monopoly, and they are also shielded from competition with imports. The United States has 67 major beer breweries, producing 23 billion liters of beer per year. All of Germany’s 1,000 breweries combined produce only half as much. Thus the average U.S. brewery produces 31 times more beer than the average German brewery.

  This fact results from local tastes and German government policies. German beer drinkers are fiercely loyal to their local brand, so there are no national brands in Germany analogous to our Budweiser, Miller, or Coors. Instead, most German beer is consumed within 30 miles of the factory where it is brewed. Therefore, the German beer industry cannot profit from economies of scale. In the beer business, as in other businesses, production costs decrease greatly with scale. The bigger the refrigerating unit for making beer, and the longer the assembly line for filling bottles with beer, the lower the cost of manufacturing beer. Those tiny German beer companies are relatively inefficient. There’s no competition; there are just a thousand local monopolies.

  The local beer loyalties of individual German drinkers are reinforced by German laws that make it hard for foreign beers to compete in the German market. The German government has so-called beer purity laws that specify exactly what can go into beer. Not surprisingly, those government purity specifications are based on what German breweries put into beer, and not what American, French, and Swedish breweries like to put into beer. Because of those laws, not much foreign beer gets exported to Germany, and because of inefficiency and high prices much less of that wonderful German beer than you would otherwise expect gets sold abroad. (Before you object that German Löwenbräu beer is widely available in the United States, please read the label on the next bottle of Löwenbräu that you drink here: it’s not produced in Germany but in North America, under license, in big factories with North American productivities and efficiencies of scale).

(Diamond, J. ,2005. Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York: Norton.)

Are the statements true (T) or false (F), according to the text?
 
( ) The United States produces less beer than Germany.
( ) The German steel industry is better organized than the German beer industry.
( ) The German metalworking industry is more productive than the American metalworking industry.
( ) In Germany there are more factories producing beer than in the United States.
( ) 43% of the beer sold in the United States is produced in Germany.
 
Mark the alternative which presents the correct sequence, from top to bottom.

Lucy’s Big Brother Reveals New Facets of her Species

 

  First came Lucy. Then came Lucy’s baby, an infant of her species. Now comes Lucy’s “big brother”: the partial skeleton of a large male of Australopithecus afarensis, unveiled this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The roughly 40% complete skeleton has been nicknamed Kadanuumuu, which means “big man” in the Afar language of the Afar Depression of Ethiopia, where it was found. “It was huge – a big man, with long legs”, says lead author Yohannes Haile-Selassie, a palaeoanthropologist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio.

  Dated to 3.6 million years ago, the new skeleton is almost half a million years older than Lucy and the second oldest skeleton found of a possible human ancestor. It had long legs and a torso and a pelvis more like those of a modern human than an African ape, showing that fully upright walking was in place at this early date, Haile-Selassie says. Although headless, the skeleton also preserves parts not found before in Lucy’s species. “It is important because it provides the ribs and scapula”, says palaeoanthropologist Carol Ward of the University of Missouri, Columbia.

  In 2005, a sharp-eyed member of Haile-Selassie’s team, Alemayehu Asfaw, spotted a fragment of lower arm bone on the ground at Woranso-Mille, about 48 kilometers north of Lucy’s grave at Hadar. Over the next 4 years, the team unearthed the shoulder blade, collarbone, ribs, and neck vertebra, the first time those bones were found together in an A. afarensis adult. The team also found a pelvis, an arm, and leg bones. Although they never found the skull or teeth, which are typically used to assign species, the skeleton’s age and similarity to Lucy suggest that it belongs to her species, says co-author Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University in Ohio.

  The robust male stood between 1.5 and 1.7 meters tall, about 30% larger than Lucy. Isolated bones of other individuals suggest that some males were even larger, so the new skeleton doesn’t settle a long-standing debate over just how much sexual dimorphism there was in A. afarensis, Lovejoy says. The shoulder blade looks more like that of a gorilla and a modern human than that of a chimpanzee. The curvature of the second rib suggests a wide rib cage at the top and a barrel shape overall, similar to that of modern humans and distinct from the more funnel-shaped rib cage of a chimpanzee, the authors say.

(Science Magazine, 25 June 2010.)

Where was the skeleton found?

“Wanna” in the second square is used in informal language, during conversation. It is the short form of:

On the first square, the expression “getting on my nerves”, means:

TEXT II

Starting a new job

by Rose Walker

 

  “You just got the phone call and the position is yours. It’s been a long time since you have started a new job and you need to prepare yourself for it. Will you really like your new position? How will the people treat you and can you get along with them? These are some of the questions that might run through your mind when you start a new job.

  Before you start your new position you need to get in the right frame of mind, so you can do the best job you can do.

  The first step in preparation for this new journey is to let all your fears go. Don’t walk into a new job with fear. This will keep you from being productive. Having negative thoughts about your new job will become a reality and this will cause problems right there. Stay in the same frame of mind you had when you applied for the position. This was something that you obviously wanted to do and was excited about doing. Keep those same thoughts and attitude when you actually start working your new job. By keeping that attitude you will eliminate a lot of your problems in the beginning with this new position. Your way of thinking will become your way of acting. Do a thorough research on your new company so you can understand what they do and how you will play a part in it.

  Have a good understanding about the company in full detail so it will give you that ease you need to have for you to succeed. This will allow you to have the confidence you will need to start this new job and you won’t feel so lost when you start interacting with your co-workers. Having the right attitude will allow you to get along with your co-workers even better. Everyone when they start a new job is considered the new kid on the block. This can make you feel left out right there, since everyone usually know everyone else and already have a comfort zone with each other. You have to let them know by being in the right frame of mind when you start that you can work with each and every one of them. If you come in with that fear, it’s going to seem like you are a unfriendly person and automatically no one will want to have anything to do with you. This will be a bad way to start off on your new job. You plan to be there for awhile and communicating with your co-workers on a daily base.

  Your attitude and the way you present yourself in the beginning is very important. It will determine how your relationship will be throughout the job. Getting along with your boss and coworkers is important, it can help you to succeed or be one of the causes to make you want to leave.

  Starting a new job can be a wonderful experience. Sure all of us are nervous about stepping into a new environment and meeting and dealing with new people. That’s what’s so exciting about it, everything is new. You have to look at it as a new journey in your life and not a dreaded trip that you have to make. Erase all those negative thoughts and fears you have so you can go in with a positive attitude that will let you be a positive person. Let this be a new spectacular and fantastic time in your life. When you stop and prepare yourself mentally for your new job, you will be a success at it.”

http://www.essortment.com/all/startinganew_rbph.htm.

Read the sentences below and judge them (T) TRUE or (F) FALSE:
 
I. It’s not important to have a good understanding about the new company.
II. Your way of thinking will become your way of acting.
III. The first step in preparation for a new job is to let your fears go.

Choose the alternative that best completes the sentence:
 
Charles normally ________ water, but now he ________ coke.