Questões de Inglês

TEXT B

 

INBOX HEROES NO HARM DONE?

A majority of teens see marijuana as risk-free

    Although teen smoking rates are at a record low, more of them are smoking pot and fewer than ever believe it is bad for them. Data released last December show that only 44.1% of 12th graders believe regular marijuana use is harmful. That may explain why more than one third of high school seniors tried pot in 2012, and one in 15 smoked it daily.

    The growing acceptance of medical marijuana may be behind teens’ changing attitudes. Since 1996, 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, have made it legal for adults to obtain pot with a doctor’s prescription.

     But pot poses a higher risk for teens than for adults. In August investigators at Duke University and other institutions published the results of a 25-year study suggesting that heavy use among adolescents can do permanent cognitive damage. Subjects who were diagnosed with marijuana dependence as teens and adults suffered IQ declines of up to eight points between the ages of 13 and 38, even after the researchers controlled for other drug dependence, schizophrenia and education. (Abstainers’ IQs rose slightly). Moreover, the IQs of teen users did not recover even if they quit in adulthood.

    How much marijuana is too much? It is hard to find out. There is no accurate way to measure consumption because marijuana joints are rarely identical and potency varies. What is clear is that adolescent brains are particularly vulnerable to marijuana’s effects, so teens would be smart to abstain – and may stay smarter for it, too.

Scientific American, March 2013

TEXT B informs us that the percentage of high school seniors who tried pot in 2012 is

TEXT B

 

INBOX HEROES NO HARM DONE?

A majority of teens see marijuana as risk-free

    Although teen smoking rates are at a record low, more of them are smoking pot and fewer than ever believe it is bad for them. Data released last December show that only 44.1% of 12th graders believe regular marijuana use is harmful. That may explain why more than one third of high school seniors tried pot in 2012, and one in 15 smoked it daily.

    The growing acceptance of medical marijuana may be behind teens’ changing attitudes. Since 1996, 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, have made it legal for adults to obtain pot with a doctor’s prescription.

     But pot poses a higher risk for teens than for adults. In August investigators at Duke University and other institutions published the results of a 25-year study suggesting that heavy use among adolescents can do permanent cognitive damage. Subjects who were diagnosed with marijuana dependence as teens and adults suffered IQ declines of up to eight points between the ages of 13 and 38, even after the researchers controlled for other drug dependence, schizophrenia and education. (Abstainers’ IQs rose slightly). Moreover, the IQs of teen users did not recover even if they quit in adulthood.

    How much marijuana is too much? It is hard to find out. There is no accurate way to measure consumption because marijuana joints are rarely identical and potency varies. What is clear is that adolescent brains are particularly vulnerable to marijuana’s effects, so teens would be smart to abstain – and may stay smarter for it, too.

Scientific American, March 2013

TEXT B points out that

TEXT B

 

INBOX HEROES NO HARM DONE?

A majority of teens see marijuana as risk-free

    Although teen smoking rates are at a record low, more of them are smoking pot and fewer than ever believe it is bad for them. Data released last December show that only 44.1% of 12th graders believe regular marijuana use is harmful. That may explain why more than one third of high school seniors tried pot in 2012, and one in 15 smoked it daily.

    The growing acceptance of medical marijuana may be behind teens’ changing attitudes. Since 1996, 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, have made it legal for adults to obtain pot with a doctor’s prescription.

     But pot poses a higher risk for teens than for adults. In August investigators at Duke University and other institutions published the results of a 25-year study suggesting that heavy use among adolescents can do permanent cognitive damage. Subjects who were diagnosed with marijuana dependence as teens and adults suffered IQ declines of up to eight points between the ages of 13 and 38, even after the researchers controlled for other drug dependence, schizophrenia and education. (Abstainers’ IQs rose slightly). Moreover, the IQs of teen users did not recover even if they quit in adulthood.

    How much marijuana is too much? It is hard to find out. There is no accurate way to measure consumption because marijuana joints are rarely identical and potency varies. What is clear is that adolescent brains are particularly vulnerable to marijuana’s effects, so teens would be smart to abstain – and may stay smarter for it, too.

Scientific American, March 2013

TEXT B affirms that few teenagers believe that marijuana can be bad for them because

TEXT  

 

  Hundreds of studies have assessed leadership styles, mainly by having employees report on how their managers typically behave. Researchers have also collected information on how effective managers are. After large numbers of such studies became available, reviewers aggregated them quantitatively to discover what kinds of leadership are effective. 

  One conclusion that has emerged based on the research of the past 30 years is that a hybrid style known as transformational leadership is highly effective in most contemporary organizational contexts. 

  A transformational leader acts as an inspirational role model, motivates others to go beyond the confines of their job descriptions, encourages creativity and innovation, fosters good human relationships, and develops the skills of followers. This type of leadership is effective because it fosters strong interpersonal bonds based on a leader’s charisma and consideration of others. These bonds enable leaders to promote high-quality performance by encouraging workers rather than threatening them, thus motivating them to exceed basic expectations.

  By bringing out the best in others, transformational leaders enhance the performance of groups and organizations. 

  Transformational leadership is androgynous because it incorporates culturally masculine and feminine behaviors. This androgynous mixing of the masculine and feminine means that skill in this contemporary way of leading does not necessarily come naturally. It may require some effort and thought. 

  Men often have to work on their social skills and women on being assertive enough to inspire others. It is nonetheless clear that both women and men can adapt to the demands of leadership in the transformational mode.

  One of the surprises of research on transformational leadership is that female managers are somewhat more transformational than male managers. In particular, they exceed men in their attention to human relationships. Also, in delivering incentives, women lean toward a more positive, reward-based approach and men toward a more negative and less effective, threat-based approach. In these respects, women appear to be better leaders than men, despite the double standard that can close women out of these roles.  

  Why are women leaders more transformational when they are less likely to become leaders in the first place? One reason is that the double standard that slows women’s rise would work against mediocre women while allowing mediocre men to rise. As a consequence, the women who attain leadership roles really are better than the men on average. 

  It is also true women generally avoid more domineering, “command and control” behavior because of the backlash they receive if they lead in this way. Men can often get away with autocratic behavior that is roundly disliked in women. Ironically, this backlash against domineering women may foster good leadership because the androgynous middle ground is more likely to bring success. Leaders gain less from ordering others about than from forming teams of smart, motivated collaborators who together figure out how to solve problems and get work done. 

From: http://www.nytimes.com/ 2013/03/20 

 

Further exploring the apparently paradoxical reasons why women leaders are more successful in transformational leadership than men, the text mentions the fact that 

TEXT

 

The need to constantly adapt is the new reality for many workers, well beyond the information technology business. Car mechanics, librarians, doctors, Hollywood special effects designers — virtually everyone whose job is touched by computing — are being forced to find new, more efficient ways to learn as retooling becomes increasingly important not just to change careers, but simply to stay competitive on their chosen path. 

 

Going back to school for months or years is not realistic for many workers, who are often left to figure out for themselves what new skills will make them more valuable, or just keep them from obsolescence. In their quest to occupy a useful niche, they are turning to bite-size instructional videos, peer-to-peer forums and virtual college courses. 

 

Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at the London Business School, has coined a term for this necessity: “serial mastery.” 

 

“You can’t expect that what you’ve become a master in will keep you valuable throughout the whole of your career, and you want to add to that the fact that most people are now going to be working into their 70s,” she said, adding that workers must try to choose specialties that cannot be outsourced or automated. “Being a generalist is, in my view, very unwise. Your major competitor is Wikipedia or Google.” 

 

Businesses have responded by pouring more money into training, even in the current economic doldrums, according to several measures. They have experimented by paying employees to share their expertise in internal social networks, creating video games that teach and, human resources consultants say, enticing employees with tuition help even if they leave the company. 

 

Individuals have also shouldered a lot of responsibility for their own upgrades. Lynda.com, which charges $25 a month for access to training videos on topics like the latest version of Photoshop, says its base of individual customers has been growing 42 percent a year since 2008. Online universities like Udacity and Coursera are on pace to double in size in a year, according to Josh Bersin of Bersin & Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in learning and talent management. The number of doctors participating in continuing education programs has more than doubled in the last decade, with the vast majority of the growth stemming from the increased popularity of Internet-based activities, according to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education in Chicago. 

 

The struggle is not just to keep up, but to anticipate a future of rapid change. When the AshevilleBuncombe Technical Community College in North Carolina wanted to start a program for developing smartphone and tablet apps, the faculty had to consider the name carefully. “We had this title Mobile Applications, and then we realized that it may not be apps in two years, it may be something else,” said Pamela Silvers, the chairwoman of the business computer technologies department. “So we changed it to Mobile Development.” 

 

As the metadata and digital archivist at Emory University, Elizabeth Russey Roke, 35, has had to keep up with evolving standards that help different databases share information, learn how to archive “born digital” materials, and use computers to bring literary and social connections among different collections to life. The bulk of her learning has been on the job, supplemented by the occasional course or videos on Lynda.com. 

 

“For me, it’s easier to learn something in the classroom than it is on my own,” she said. “But I can’t exactly afford another three years of library school.” 

 

Rapid change is a challenge for traditional universities; textbooks and even journals often lag too far behind the curve to be of help, said Kunal Mehta, a Ph.D. student in bioengineering at Stanford University. His field is so new, and changing so rapidly, he said, that there is little consensus on established practices or necessary skills. “It’s more difficult to know what we should learn,” he said. “We have advisers that we work with, but a lot of times they don’t know any better than us what’s going to happen in the future.”  

 

Instead, Mr. Mehta, 26, spends a lot of time comparing notes with others in his field, just as many professionals turn to their peers to help them stay current. The International Automotive Technicians Network, where mechanics pay $15 a month to trade tips on repairs, has more than 75,000 active users today, up from 48,000 in 2006, said Scott Brown, the president.  

 

In an economy where new, specialized knowledge is worth so much, it may seem anticompetitive to share expertise. But many professionals say they don’t see it that way. 

 

“We’re scattered all over the country, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., so it never really bothered us that we were sharing the secrets of what we do,” said Bill Moss, whose repair shop in Warrenton, Va., specializes in European cars, and who is a frequent user of peer-to-peer forums. 

 

Mr. Moss, 55, said technological advances and proprietary diagnostic tools had forced many garages to specialize. Ten years ago, if his business had hit a slow patch, he said, he would have been quicker to broaden his repertory. “I might have looked at other brands and said, ‘These cars aren’t so bad.’ That’s much harder to do now, based on technology and equipment requirements.” His training budget is about $4,000 a year for each repair technician. 

 

Learning curves are not always driven by technology. Managers have to deal with different cultures, different time zones and different generations as well as changing attitudes. As medical director of the Reproductive Science Center of New England, Dr. Samuel C. Pang has used patient focus groups and sensitivity training to help the staff adjust to treating lesbian couples, gay male couples, and transgendered couples who want to have children. This has given the clinic a competitive advantage. 

 

“We have had several male couples and lesbian couples come to our program from our competitors’ program because they said they didn’t feel comfortable there,” Dr. Pang said.

 

On top of that, he has to master constantly evolving technology. “The amount of information that I learned in medical school is minuscule,” he said, “compared to what is out there now.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22 

 

In the text, the function of the words retooling, turning, training, consulting, and stemming is respectively

TEXT

 

The need to constantly adapt is the new reality for many workers, well beyond the information technology business. Car mechanics, librarians, doctors, Hollywood special effects designers — virtually everyone whose job is touched by computing — are being forced to find new, more efficient ways to learn as retooling becomes increasingly important not just to change careers, but simply to stay competitive on their chosen path. 

 

Going back to school for months or years is not realistic for many workers, who are often left to figure out for themselves what new skills will make them more valuable, or just keep them from obsolescence. In their quest to occupy a useful niche, they are turning to bite-size instructional videos, peer-to-peer forums and virtual college courses. 

 

Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at the London Business School, has coined a term for this necessity: “serial mastery.” 

 

“You can’t expect that what you’ve become a master in will keep you valuable throughout the whole of your career, and you want to add to that the fact that most people are now going to be working into their 70s,” she said, adding that workers must try to choose specialties that cannot be outsourced or automated. “Being a generalist is, in my view, very unwise. Your major competitor is Wikipedia or Google.” 

 

Businesses have responded by pouring more money into training, even in the current economic doldrums, according to several measures. They have experimented by paying employees to share their expertise in internal social networks, creating video games that teach and, human resources consultants say, enticing employees with tuition help even if they leave the company. 

 

Individuals have also shouldered a lot of responsibility for their own upgrades. Lynda.com, which charges $25 a month for access to training videos on topics like the latest version of Photoshop, says its base of individual customers has been growing 42 percent a year since 2008. Online universities like Udacity and Coursera are on pace to double in size in a year, according to Josh Bersin of Bersin & Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in learning and talent management. The number of doctors participating in continuing education programs has more than doubled in the last decade, with the vast majority of the growth stemming from the increased popularity of Internet-based activities, according to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education in Chicago. 

 

The struggle is not just to keep up, but to anticipate a future of rapid change. When the AshevilleBuncombe Technical Community College in North Carolina wanted to start a program for developing smartphone and tablet apps, the faculty had to consider the name carefully. “We had this title Mobile Applications, and then we realized that it may not be apps in two years, it may be something else,” said Pamela Silvers, the chairwoman of the business computer technologies department. “So we changed it to Mobile Development.” 

 

As the metadata and digital archivist at Emory University, Elizabeth Russey Roke, 35, has had to keep up with evolving standards that help different databases share information, learn how to archive “born digital” materials, and use computers to bring literary and social connections among different collections to life. The bulk of her learning has been on the job, supplemented by the occasional course or videos on Lynda.com. 

 

“For me, it’s easier to learn something in the classroom than it is on my own,” she said. “But I can’t exactly afford another three years of library school.” 

 

Rapid change is a challenge for traditional universities; textbooks and even journals often lag too far behind the curve to be of help, said Kunal Mehta, a Ph.D. student in bioengineering at Stanford University. His field is so new, and changing so rapidly, he said, that there is little consensus on established practices or necessary skills. “It’s more difficult to know what we should learn,” he said. “We have advisers that we work with, but a lot of times they don’t know any better than us what’s going to happen in the future.”  

 

Instead, Mr. Mehta, 26, spends a lot of time comparing notes with others in his field, just as many professionals turn to their peers to help them stay current. The International Automotive Technicians Network, where mechanics pay $15 a month to trade tips on repairs, has more than 75,000 active users today, up from 48,000 in 2006, said Scott Brown, the president.  

 

In an economy where new, specialized knowledge is worth so much, it may seem anticompetitive to share expertise. But many professionals say they don’t see it that way. 

 

“We’re scattered all over the country, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., so it never really bothered us that we were sharing the secrets of what we do,” said Bill Moss, whose repair shop in Warrenton, Va., specializes in European cars, and who is a frequent user of peer-to-peer forums. 

 

Mr. Moss, 55, said technological advances and proprietary diagnostic tools had forced many garages to specialize. Ten years ago, if his business had hit a slow patch, he said, he would have been quicker to broaden his repertory. “I might have looked at other brands and said, ‘These cars aren’t so bad.’ That’s much harder to do now, based on technology and equipment requirements.” His training budget is about $4,000 a year for each repair technician. 

 

Learning curves are not always driven by technology. Managers have to deal with different cultures, different time zones and different generations as well as changing attitudes. As medical director of the Reproductive Science Center of New England, Dr. Samuel C. Pang has used patient focus groups and sensitivity training to help the staff adjust to treating lesbian couples, gay male couples, and transgendered couples who want to have children. This has given the clinic a competitive advantage. 

 

“We have had several male couples and lesbian couples come to our program from our competitors’ program because they said they didn’t feel comfortable there,” Dr. Pang said.

 

On top of that, he has to master constantly evolving technology. “The amount of information that I learned in medical school is minuscule,” he said, “compared to what is out there now.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22 

 

The sentences “We had this title Mobile Applications, and then we realized that it may not be apps in two years, it may be something else.” and “Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at the London Business School, has coined a term for this necessity: ‘serial mastery’.” should be classified, respectively, as