Questões de Inglês

School lets students start lessons after lunch

 

A high school in England has initiated a new policy to allow students to sleep longer in the mornings. The private, $25,000-a-year Hampton Court House school, is introducing a 1:30 to 7 p.m. timetable in September. It will become the only school in Britain that starts lessons in the afternoon. Head teacher Guy Holloway said the altered hours should help students get higher grades. He said research on neuroscience shows student productivity increases if they can sleep longer in the mornings. Mr. Holloway said: "We want to get students into an environment where they can get quality sleep and their bodies are functioning well." He added: "It's about what works in our community." The afternoon start is based on research by Oxford University. Researcher Dr. Paul Kelley said: "You can't train your system to get up at a practical time". He said we are not in control of choosing the best time to work because it's biological, just like we have no control over our heartbeat and liver function. Dr. Kelley added: "Anything you do to change the rhythmic systems of your body means your organs become desynchronised with each other and this is where people get ill. There is no fixing it by giving someone an alarm clock". A student at the school, Gabriel Purcell-Davis, 15, is in favour of the idea. He said students are tired all day, "but as soon as 10 o'clock hits, that's when we do all our work".

Source: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1405/140513-teenagers.html

Sobre a primeira linha do texto, “A high school in England has initiated a new policy to allow students to sleep longer in the mornings”, pode-se compreender que

Uk School Replaces Library Cards For Kids With Fingerprint Scans

By Clay Dillow

 

We already know that biometrics could provide some useful new tools for identifying approaching threats or tracking people moving through crowds. But what about checking out books from a children's library? A Manchester UK primary school is testing out just such a scheme, having children as young as four years old scan their fingerprints as ID for checking books in and out of the school's library. Not surprisingly, parents and privacy groups have a huge problem with children's biometric data being so cataloged ― not to mention the precedent it sets. To check out a book, students swipe a bar code placed inside the book at a computer station, which then asks for them to press their thumb on a fingerprint scanner. Books are checked back into the library the same way: no library card or identification required. School officials say the fingerprints are converted to and saved as digital electronic codes that are recognized by the computer, so that no actual fingerprint images are kept on file or shared. Critics of the system, however, find the use of such biometric systems with children so young a breach of privacy and a dangerous overreach by authorities, conditioning children to treat their personal biometric information as something trivial. And it's worth noting this isn't the first biometric identifying scheme hatched by UK schools; a fingerprint identifier introduced as part of a cashless school cafeteria system has previously drawn the ire of UK parents who don't like the idea of their kids being fingerprinted without permission. But the library system is purely voluntary, and parents are allowed to opt their kids in or out. (…)

Disponível em: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-06/uk

According to the text

I. Scanning fingerprints at primary schools has avoided theft of books at libraries.
II. Teens had their fingerprints scanned as ID for checking books in and out of the library.
III. This new way of checking books can be characterized as a card free system.
IV. Fingerprints are kept safe by converting and saving them as digital eletronic codes.
V. The biometric system has been criticized because it is the first experience in UK.

Assinale a alternativa que apresenta apenas afirmativas corretas.

 

The Case of the Sleepy Spy

By Jeff Stein

The lobby of the CIA Headquarters Building in McLean, Virginia in August 2008.

 

The case of the sleepy spy is not over. Although a federal judge ruled in favor of the CIA this week in a discrimination suit brought by an employee who claimed he was harassed out of his job because of his narcolepsy and race, the African-American man is back in court with another complaint.

―Jacob Abilt,‖ the pseudonym for the CIA ―technical operations officer‖ ― the bland description for someone who works in bugging, photo surveillance and similar clandestine operations--claimed in a February 2014 suit that his medical ailment, which causes him to fall into a deep sleep with little warning, and his race led his supervisors to treat him differently than they would a white employee.

The CIA chose not to argue the case in court, but instead invoked the ―state secrets privilege‖ ― a legal ploy that critics claim has been routinely used to cover up human rights and other abuses during the so-called war on terror ― claiming that ―Abilt's case would expose classified information about the National Clandestine Service, a branch of the CIA which oversees foreign and counter intelligence affairs within the agency,‖ according to Courthouse News, which first reported on the decision.

According to the scant personnel information listed in his complaint, Abilt was hired in 2006 as an ―applications developer,‖ and ―at or around the time plaintiff was hired, he informed his superiors of his disability narcolepsy.‖ The CIA and Abilt worked out a plan that accommodated his forced naps, his suit suggests, which included making up for time lost in deep sleep.

Disponível no site: http://www.newsweek.com/cia-narcolepsy-race-african-american-lawsuit-308494. Acesso em 22 fevf. 2015 (fragmento).

According to the text about ―The Case of the Sleepy Spy‖, it is correct to say that Jacob Abilt

I. worked with secretly listening to or recording conversations using a hidden electronic device.
II. was fired because he unveiled classified information about the National Clandestine Service
III. sued the CIA because he felt discriminated due to his disease and to his race.
IV. disregarded the agreement he made with the CIA to compensate for the working hours he missed.
V. omitted information about his disability narcolepsy when he was first hired by the CIA.

Assinale a alternativa que apresenta apenas afirmativas corretas.

Technology isn’t working

The digital revolution has yet to fulfil its promise of higher productivity and better jobs 

 

  If there is a technological revolution in progress, rich economies could be forgiven for wishing it would go away. Workers in America, Europe and Japan have been through a difficult few decades. In the 1970s the blistering growth after the second world war vanished in both Europe and America. In the early 1990s Japan joined the slump, entering a prolonged period of economic stagnation. Brief spells of faster growth in intervening years quickly  petered out. The rich world is still trying to shakeoff the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. And now the digital economy, far from pushing up wages across the board in response to higher productivity, is keeping them flat for the mass of workers while extravagantly rewarding the most talented ones. 

  It seems difficult to square this unhappy experience with the extraordinary technological progress during that period, but the same thing has happened before. Most economic historians reckon there was very little improvement in living standards in Britain in the century after the first Industrial Revolution. And in the early 20th century, as Victorian inventions such as electric lighting came into their own, productivity growth was every bit as slow as it has been in recent decades. 

http://tinyurl.com/lv6rj7b Acesso em: 18.02.2015. Adaptado.

De acordo com o texto, os efeitos da tecnologia notados na América, Europa e Japão

The comic above says that:

The next north-European ice age

 

There are still a few people in northern Europe …………… think that global warming

might not be such a bad thing. …………..Britain, ……………. summer can sometimes

seem to last little more than a few weeks, many would ……………….. the idea of it

getting a bit …………………….. 

Unfortunately things are not so simple. Global warming doesn't just mean that the world

will slowly get warmer. Paradoxically, it could cause certain areas to get colder – a lot

colder. The latest predictions are that northern Europe could even be plunged into an

ice age. While areas of south-eastern Europe, such as Greece, would continue to get

hotter and drier, Britain could find itself, in the winter months at least, surrounded by

sea ice.

The reason for this concerns the Greenland ice sheet. This is one of the biggest

expanses of ice in the world – around 1,500km long and 600km wide. It is so big that if

it all melted sea levels would rise by 7 metres. Due to rising emissions of greenhouse

gases, such as carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels, this ice sheet is

melting at an alarming rate. But how could the melting of the Greenland ice sheet

threaten to plunge northern Europe into a new ice age?

The link in the chain of events is what some call the Gulf Stream and others call the

Atlantic Conveyor. This is the stream of warm water that comes up from central

America and flows across the Atlantic to northern Europe. It is this huge mass of warm

water which accounts for the relatively high temperatures enjoyed by Britain, for

instance, compared with parts of Canada and Russia which are equally far north of the

equator. Warm water is conveyed across to Europe near the surface of the Atlantic,

and at its northernmost point it cools and sinks because the water from the tropics has

a higher salt content, making it denser and so heavier than the water near the arctic.

The cold, dense water then flows south close to the ocean floor, back towards central

and south America to complete the cycle.

Scientists are beginning to make bleak predictions of an impending ice age in the

northern hemisphere because they have observed that the water flowing from the

melting Greenland ice sheet is flowing into the path of the Gulf Stream. The water from

the melted ice will reduce the density of the water in the Gulf Stream, stopping the

water sinking in the north, thereby cutting off the deep southerly current, which, in turn,

will cut off the northerly flow of warmer water. At that point the seas around Britain will

begin to freeze.

http://fullspate.digitalcounterrevolution.co.uk/archive/globalwarming (seen on 19th/03/2015)

Mark the correct alternative which can be answered according to the text above.