Questões de Inglês

POR QUE TEMOS PESADELOS?

    Você já acordou assustado, com o coração quase saindo pela boca? Se você já ficou em pânico por causa de um pesadelo, você não é o único. Na verdade, os pesadelos podem até ser bons para nós, dizem alguns psicólogos. Uma teoria é de que eles ajudam o nosso cérebro a processar experiências intensas. Especialistas dizem que os pesadelos também nos ajudam a lidar com situações ruins.

Disponível em: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/geral-47547416. Acesso 13 mar 2019.

 

Cerca de 90% de nós temos pesadelo em algum momento de nossas vidas. Quando nos sentimos sobrecarregados, nosso cérebro inventa cenários que coincidem com essa sensação.

 

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Does a lipstick threaten the future of one of our closest living relatives?

    Pizza, biscuits, and beauty treatments are some of the thousands of products that contain palm oil, which threaten iconic species through deforestation. And a new study says that planting alternative oils could pose an even bigger danger to living things.
    Palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil on the planet and is believed to be in about 50% of products found in supermarkets and shops. It is important for lipstick for example because it holds colour well, has no taste and doesn’t melt at high temperatures. It’s found in shampoos, soaps, ice cream and instant noodles amongst thousands of others.
    Over the past 20 years, growing demand has seen thousands of hectares of old, tropical forests chopped down to make way for the oily palm tree plantations. But these forests are home to some of the most threatened species in the world, including the orangutan. “Orangutans are a lowland species on Bornean Sumatra and that’s where palm oil is grown. The two often clash, palm oil displaces orangutans, they are pushed into gardens where they generate conflicts with locals and that’s where you get the killings. They are incredibly versatile, but what an orangutan can’t deal with is killing. Because they are such slow breeding species, the killing has a really big impact”, the report’s lead author Erik Meijaard, told BBC News.
    Palm makes up 35% of the world’s vegetable oil supply but only takes up 10% of the world’s land allocated to producing the greasy stuff. To replace it with rapeseed, soy or sunflower seed oil would take far larger amounts of land, in fact up to nine times the amount needed for palm. It’s likely that such a move would see a displacement of diversity loss, with many more species in different places under threat. “If palm oil didn’t exist you would still have the same global demand for vegetable oil,” said Erik Meijaard.

(Matt McGrath. www.bbc.com, 26.06.2018. Adaptado.)

In the excerpt from the fourth paragraph “up to nine times the amount needed for palm”, the underlined expression can be replaced by

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    Knowing your genetic code could lengthen your life

    Fifteen years ago this month, the full human genome sequence was published for the first time. Since then technology has markedly speeded up genomic sequencing and reduced the cost. But have those hoped-for medical breakthroughs materialised?
    Sequencing the human genome took 10 years and cost about $30 billion. Now advances in computing power have seen the cost fall to under $500. A British firm has even developed a hand-held reader that can sequence genetic material in minutes. Dr Gordon Sanghera, the firm’s chief executive, talks about creating “the internet of living things – real time connection of live DNA information” using such portable devices. And the applications won’t just be for healthcare, he argues, but for establishing the provenance of food in restaurants, or the presence of dangerous microbes in water supplies. It could also be used for analysing DNA evidence at crime scenes.
    Dr Sanghera believes the device could eventually be used to diagnose common infections at home and so reduce needless trips to the doctor. Within the next 10 years, “everyone will get sequenced at birth”, he says, and we’ll be able to assess whether we have genetic dispositions to particular diseases and take preventative steps accordingly.
    More than 500,000 human genomes have now been sequenced worldwide. But it is how this data will be combined with other data and analysed that is causing excitement. The UK Biobank has enlisted 500,000 volunteers who’ve shared their medical data anonymously in the hope of improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illnesses. Scientists at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, used Biobank data to highlight the increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes among shift workers¹. The researchers found that people who worked irregular shift patterns were 44% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than people working permanent day shifts. Now, genetic data will be added to the mix.
    We are at the beginning of a revolution in healthcare. But dramatic medical breakthroughs have been tougher to come by than many had hoped at the start of the genomics era. “The completion of the human genome project held out much hope for the better understanding and treatment of diseases. But as is usually the case, we had underestimated the complexity of the relationship of genome to disease and health,” concludes IBM’s Laxmi Parida.
    Yet this is only the beginning – in the genomics era, healthcare is irrevocably changing.

(Adi Gaskell e Matthew Wall. www.bbc.com, 27.04.2018. Adaptado.)

¹ shift workers: those whose work takes place on a schedule outside the traditional 9 am-5 pm day.

Como os dois últimos parágrafos do texto respondem à pergunta “But have those hoped-for medical breakthroughs materialised?” feita no primeiro parágrafo?

Choose the option which states a reasonable conclusion we can draw after reading this news.

 

Older fathers associated with increased birth risks

From the data of more than 40 million births, scientists at Stanford have linked paternal age to birth risks, and even risks to the mother’s health.

A decade of data documenting live births in the United States links babies of older fathers with a variety of increased risks at birth, including low birth weight and seizures, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The data even suggest that the age of the father can sway the health of the mother during pregnancy, specifically her risk for developing diabetes.

“We tend to look at maternal factors in evaluating associated birth risks, but this study shows that having a healthy baby is a team sport, and the father’s age contributes to the baby’s health, too,” said Michael Eisenberg, MD, associate professor of urology.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/10/older-fathers-associated-with-increased-birth-risks.html Access: March,2019.

About the text, it is CORRECT to state that:

 

Procedure May Delay Menopause for 20 Years: Here’s What the Experts Think

A new medical procedure designed to delay menopause for up to 20 years is now being offered by the in vitro fertilization (IVF) firm ProFam in the United Kingdom.

The procedure — which costs about £7,000 to £11,000 ($8,500 to $13,300) — involves removing and then freezing a small portion of ovarian tissue, which can later be thawed out and reimplanted to delay the onset of menopause.

The procedure itself isn’t novel, as it’s successfully been used for years to preserve the fertility of young women with cancer.

However, this is the first time it’s been used to potentially delay menopause.

“As women, for the first time in human history, are living so much longer in the post-fertile phase, they may be suffering much longer,” Professor Simon Fishel, the CEO of ProFam and founder of the CARE Fertility Group, told Healthline.

It’s too early to know how effective the surgery is, but the doctors behind it hope by administering the experimental procedure now, they can, hopefully, one day routinely be able to delay menopause.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/uk-clinic-tries-out-new-procedure-to-delay-menopause-for-20-years

 

I. It is a new and modern procedure.
II. The reason to start this medical procedure is to avoid the symptoms of menopause.
III. The procedure is effective since it has been happening for over 20 years.
IV. It may raise the fertility rates of old women.
V. It involves a surgical protocol.

INSTRUCTION: Answer question according to the text below.

 

In France, a film taps into a desire for change

By Celestine Bohlen

The New York Times - May 2, 2016

 

    In France, as in the United States, there is no "politics as usual" this year. With popular
disaffection on the rise, traditional parties and candidates have been thrown off course as voters look
for alternatives to the status quo. The restless, sometimes incoherent, clamor for change has taken
many forms in France — support for the extreme-right National Front; recurring strikes by hard-left
[05] labor unions; and a protest movement known as Nuit Debout, or Up All Night, which for the last month
has gathered young people in Paris and several other cities to vent their frustration with the "system."
If there is one thing these various dissatisfied voters would agree upon, it is the failure of the French
political establishment, on the left and on the right, to solve the country’s persistent problems — high
unemployment, low growth and the social cleavage created by immigration and inequality.
[10]    This frustration helps explain the unlikely success of "Demain," or "Tomorrow," a French
documentary. Since its release in December, the film has drawn almost one million viewers. The 80-
minute film was made as a road movie with a budget of 1.3 million euros, about $1.5 million, one-third
of it collected through crowdfunding. With a chatty narration by Mélanie Laurent, a well-known French
actress, it tracks a global quest for workable initiatives in places as disparate as Detroit, Finland,
[15] Iceland and India, where people have found ways to move away from dependence on fossil fuels,
mobilize grass-roots democracy, grow their own food and inspire children to learn. According to Cyril
Dion, who, along with Ms. Laurent, directed the film, "Demain" reconnects people to something
positive and gives them hope. The movie opened at a propitious moment, after a difficult year that
included two terrorist attacks in Paris and a persistent economic crisis.
[20]    The response has been enthusiastic and sustained: The film is playing in 122 French cinemas,
for longer than some recent Hollywood blockbusters. Audiences have been known to stand up and
applaud as the credits appear on the screen. Mr. Dion said some viewers have written to tell him that it
changed their lives. When he showed the movie on April 17 at the Place de la République, in central
Paris, where the Nuit Debout protesters have been camping out every night since March 31, a crowd
[25] of some 2,500 people — mostly young — braved unusually temperatures and occasional technical
difficulties. "They, too, are looking for solutions that can work," said Mr. Dion, 37, a former actor with a
long history of civic activism. According to Mr. Dion, this success is proof that optimism, fueled by
positive can- do energy, can be a force for change.

Adapted from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/world/europe/france-activismelections.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer Acessed on October 14th, 2018.

According to the text, what is the message of the French documentary "Tomorrow"?