Questões de Inglês

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 

 

Concerning the reaction of businesses to the constant need of employees’ continuing education, the text states that they 

TEXT

 

  What would it take to persuade you to exercise? A desire to lose weight or improve your figure? To keep heart disease, cancer or diabetes at bay? To lower your blood pressure or cholesterol? To protect your bones? To live to a healthy old age?

 

  You’d think any of those reasons would be sufficient to get Americans exercising, but scores of studies have shown otherwise. It seems that public health experts, doctors and exercise devotees in the media — like me — have been using ineffective tactics to entice sedentary people to become, and remain, physically active.

 

  For decades, people have been bombarded with messages that regular exercise is necessary to lose weight, prevent serious disease and foster healthy aging. And yes, most people say they value these goals. Yet a vast majority of Americans — two-thirds of whom are overweight or obese — have thus far failed to swallow the “exercise pill.”

  

  Now research by psychologists strongly suggests it’s time to stop thinking of future health, weight loss and body image as motivators for exercise. Instead, these experts recommend a strategy marketers use to sell products: portray physical activity as a way to enhance current wellbeing and happiness.

 

  “We need to make exercise relevant to people’s daily lives,” Michelle L. Segar, a research investigator at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan, said in an interview. “Everyone’s schedule is packed with nonstop to-do’s. We can only fit in what’s essential.”

 

  Dr. Segar is among the experts who believe that people will not commit to exercise if they see its benefits as distant or theoretical. “It has to be portrayed as a compelling behavior that can benefit us today,” she said. “People who say they exercise for its benefits to quality of life exercise more over the course of a year than those who say they value exercise for its health benefits.”

 

  Her idea for a public service advertisement to promote exercise for working women with families: A woman is shown walking around the block after dinner with her children and says, “This is great. I can fit in fitness, spend quality time with my kids, and at the same time teach them how important exercise is.”

 

  Based on studies of what motivates people to adopt and sustain physical activity, Dr. Segar is urging that experts stop framing moderate exercise as a medical prescription that requires 150 minutes of aerobic effort each week. Instead, public health officials must begin to address “the emotional hooks that make it essential for people to fit it into their hectic lives.” “Immediate rewards are more motivating than distant ones,” she added. “Feeling happy and less stressed is more motivating than not getting heart disease or cancer, maybe, someday in the future.”

 

  In a study of 252 office workers, David K. Ingledew and David Markland, psychologists at the University of Wales, found that while many began to exercise as way to lose weight and improve their appearance, these motivations did not keep them exercising in the long term. “The well-being and enjoyment benefits of exercise should be emphasized,” the researchers concluded.

 

  Dr. Segar put it this way: “Physical activity is an elixir of life, but we’re not teaching people that. We’re telling them it’s a pill to take or a punishment for bad numbers on the scale. Sustaining physical activity is a motivational and emotional issue, not a medical one.” 

 

  Other studies have shown that what gets people off their duffs and keeps them moving depends on age, gender, life circumstances and even ethnicity. For those of college age, for example, physical attractiveness typically heads the list of reasons to begin exercising, although what keeps them going seems to be the stress relief that a regular exercise program provides.

 

  The elderly, on the other hand, may get started because of health concerns. But often what keeps them exercising are the friendships, sense of community and camaraderie that may otherwise be missing from their lives — easily seen among the gray-haired women who faithfully attend water exercise classes at my local YMCA.

 

  In a recent study of 1,690 overweight or obese middle-aged men and women, Dr. Segar found that enhancing daily well-being was most influential factor for the women in the study. Men indicated they were motivated by more distant health benefits, although Dr. Segar suspects this may be because men feel less comfortable discussing their mental health needs.

 

  “What sustains us, we sustain,” Dr. Segar said. “We need to promote what marketers call ‘customer loyalty.’ We need to help people stay engaged with movement by teaching them how it can help sustain them in their lives.“ 

 

  Many, if not most, people start exercising because they want to lose weight. But very often they abandon exercise when the expected pounds fail to fall off. Study after study has found that, without major changes in eating habits, increasing physical activity is only somewhat effective for losing weight, though it helps people maintain weight loss and shedding even a few pounds, especially around one’s middle, can improve health.

 

  For example, researchers in Brisbane, Australia, and in Leeds, England, studied 58 sedentary overweight or obese men and women who participated in a closely monitored 12-week aerobic exercise program. Weight loss was minimal, but nonetheless the participants’ waistlines shrunk, their blood pressure and resting heart rate dropped, and their aerobic capacity and mood improved.

 

  “Exercise should be encouraged and the emphasis on weight loss reduced,” the researchers concluded. “Disappointment and low self-esteem associated with poor weight loss could lead to low exercise adherence and a general perception that exercise is futile and not beneficial.” 

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/27 

 

According to the text, the great majority of Americans nowadays 

Study Suggests Only Half Of Americans With Hepatitis C Receive Complete Testing For The Virus

Main Category: Liver Disease / Hepatitis

Article Date: 09 May 2013 - 2:00 PDT

 

CDC reinforces need for appropriate follow-up testing for current infection 

Only half of Americans identified as ever having had hepatitis C received follow-up testing showing that they were still infected, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis of data from a multi-area study published today in the CDC report Vital Signs.

 

"Many people who test positive on an initial hepatitis C test are not receiving the necessary follow-up test to know if their body has cleared the virus or if they are still infected," said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. "Complete testing is critical to ensure that those who are infected receive the care and treatment for hepatitis C that they need in order to prevent liver cancer and other serious and potentially deadly health consequences." 

 

Testing for hepatitis C includes a blood test, called an antibody test, to determine if an individual has ever been infected with the virus. For people with a positive antibody test result, a follow-up test - called an RNA test - should be given to determine whether they are still infected so they can get needed care and treatment. 

 

A small number of people with antibody-positive tests will have cleared the infection on their own, but most people with hepatitis C (about 80 percent) remain infected and can go on to develop significant health problems. 

 

For the Vital Signs study, researchers looked at data from eight areas across the nation funded by CDC to conduct enhanced surveillance for hepatitis C virus infection. Of the hepatitis C cases reported in these areas (i.e., those cases with antibody-positive results), only 51 percent of the cases also included a follow-up (RNA) test result that identified current infection. Without follow-up testing, the other half are likely unaware if they are currently infected and therefore cannot get appropriate medical care.

 

Data included in this analysis also underscore the severe impact of hepatitis C among baby boomers. In the eight areas studied, 67 percent of all reported cases of current infection were among those born from 1945 through 1965. Deaths among people with hepatitis C also were more common among those born during these years (accounting for 72 percent of all reported deaths).

 

"Hepatitis C has few noticeable symptoms, and left undiagnosed it threatens the health of far too many Americans - especially baby boomers," said John Ward, M.D., director of CDC's Division of Viral Hepatitis. "Identifying those who are currently infected is important because new effective treatments can cure the infection better than ever before, as well as eliminate the risk of transmission to others." 

 

Overall, approximately 3 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C and up to 3 out of 4 do not know they are infected. The vast majority of those affected are baby boomers, or those born from 1945 through 1965. Left untreated, hepatitis C can cause serious liver damage, including liver cancer. Hepatitis C is a leading cause of liver cancer and the most common indication for liver transplants. In fact, liver cancer is the fastest-rising cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Deaths from hepatitis C have nearly doubled over the past decade, now accounting for more than 15,000 deaths each year. 

 

In light of increasing evidence that many patients are not receiving the follow-up test, as well as recent changes in testing technologies and the availability of new effective treatments for hepatitis C, CDC is issuing updated guidance for health care providers on hepatitis C testing. These guidelines reinforce the recommended process for hepatitis C testing and underscore the importance of providers conducting follow-up RNA testing for all patients with a positive antibody test result in order to help ensure people infected with hepatitis C are properly tested and identified.

 

CDC recommends that everyone in the United States born from 1945 through 1965 be tested for hepatitis C. CDC also recommends that other populations at increased risk for hepatitis C get tested, including those who received blood transfusions or organ transplants before widespread screening of the blood supply began in 1992, or those who have ever injected drugs. 

Text: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/260283.php; Image: www.google.com/imagens (Accessed on May 9, 2013)

 

The text states that the majority of people in the United States affected with hepatitis C 

Reboot the School

 

SALMAN KHAN’S YOUTUBE LESSONS HAVE ALREADY MADE HIM A GEEK CELEBRITY.

NOW HE WANTS TO REINVENT HOMEWORK, BANISH CLASSROOM LECTURES—AND MAYBE SAVE EDUCATION

 

By Kayla Webley 

 

[1]   Fifth-graders at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, Calif., sit at their  

desks with netbooks. They're in the middle of a math lesson, listening as a teacher explains how to  

convert percentages to decimals. "If we get rid of the percent sign, we just have to move the  

decimal sign two places to the left," the instructor says. Pens scribble across notebooks.  

[5]   Eleven thousand miles away in Accra, Ghana, students at the African School for Excellence  

are studying logarithms. Their teacher is the same one firing off math tips in California–both groups  

of kids are learning by watching online videos. While the screen shows a march of equations and  

diagrams, the students never actually see the face of the lecturer. There's just a voice, deep, patient  

and unrehearsed—think NPR host crossed with Mister Rogers. His inflection rises at times to  

[10] underscore a point or when he gets really excited. "Math is not just random things to memorize and  

regurgitate on a test next week," he says. "It's the purest way of describing the universe!"  

  The voice belongs to Salman Khan, a 35-year-old hedge-fund manager turned YouTube  

professor to millions around the world. Thanks to his Khan Academy, an online repository of some  

3,250 digital lectures, he has become a celebrity to techies, educators and uncounted high  

[15] schoolers cramming for the AP biology test. His 18-minute discourse on the Krebs cycle and cell  

metabolism has been viewed more than 675,000 times.  

  But Khan isn't satisfied with being the most famous teacher ever to appear on a Web  

browser. He believes he has stumbled onto a solution to some of education's most intractable  

problems, with his video-driven teaching method at its heart. He wants to fundamentally change the  

[20] role of teachers in the classroom—and redefine the concept of homework along the way. And he  

has persuaded Bill Gates, Google's Eric Schmidt and a minor constellation of other tech billionaires  

to back this quest.  

  Education reform is notoriously difficult. K-12 schools are debating everything from teacher  

evaluations to standardized tests, with no consensus in sight. Universities, meanwhile, are  

[25] confronting massive budget cuts and new kinds of competition—as dramatized by the recent turmoil  

at the University of Virginia. Its board fired the president amid worries that UVa wasn't keeping up  

with change and embracing online education fast enough, then rehired her 16 days later after a  

backlash from students and faculty.  

  At all levels, there's plenty of skepticism about any tech-centric approach to teaching. An  

[30] estimated $65.7 billion was spent in the U.S. last year on education technology, according to  

research firm Gartner. But many educators say there is little concrete proof of its benefits.  

  Khan is already butting up against veteran teachers nervous about their roles in his brave  

new classroom. But the biggest obstacle of all may be Khan himself. For all his grassroots fandom  

and Silicon Valley cred, he's not an educator, and he's never worked with children. Are parents and  

[35] teachers ready to upend hundreds of years of precedent about how basic subjects are taught on the  

word of a guy who has spent more time analyzing financial statements than standing before a  

blackboard?  

Fonte: Time, July 9, 2012. Texto adaptado.

 

Assinale a opção correta, de acordo com o texto. 

Reboot the School

 

SALMAN KHAN’S YOUTUBE LESSONS HAVE ALREADY MADE HIM A GEEK CELEBRITY.

NOW HE WANTS TO REINVENT HOMEWORK, BANISH CLASSROOM LECTURES—AND MAYBE SAVE EDUCATION

 

By Kayla Webley 

 

[1]   Fifth-graders at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, Calif., sit at their  

desks with netbooks. They're in the middle of a math lesson, listening as a teacher explains how to  

convert percentages to decimals. "If we get rid of the percent sign, we just have to move the  

decimal sign two places to the left," the instructor says. Pens scribble across notebooks.  

[5]   Eleven thousand miles away in Accra, Ghana, students at the African School for Excellence  

are studying logarithms. Their teacher is the same one firing off math tips in California–both groups  

of kids are learning by watching online videos. While the screen shows a march of equations and  

diagrams, the students never actually see the face of the lecturer. There's just a voice, deep, patient  

and unrehearsed—think NPR host crossed with Mister Rogers. His inflection rises at times to  

[10] underscore a point or when he gets really excited. "Math is not just random things to memorize and  

regurgitate on a test next week," he says. "It's the purest way of describing the universe!"  

  The voice belongs to Salman Khan, a 35-year-old hedge-fund manager turned YouTube  

professor to millions around the world. Thanks to his Khan Academy, an online repository of some  

3,250 digital lectures, he has become a celebrity to techies, educators and uncounted high  

[15] schoolers cramming for the AP biology test. His 18-minute discourse on the Krebs cycle and cell  

metabolism has been viewed more than 675,000 times.  

  But Khan isn't satisfied with being the most famous teacher ever to appear on a Web  

browser. He believes he has stumbled onto a solution to some of education's most intractable  

problems, with his video-driven teaching method at its heart. He wants to fundamentally change the  

[20] role of teachers in the classroom—and redefine the concept of homework along the way. And he  

has persuaded Bill Gates, Google's Eric Schmidt and a minor constellation of other tech billionaires  

to back this quest.  

  Education reform is notoriously difficult. K-12 schools are debating everything from teacher  

evaluations to standardized tests, with no consensus in sight. Universities, meanwhile, are  

[25] confronting massive budget cuts and new kinds of competition—as dramatized by the recent turmoil  

at the University of Virginia. Its board fired the president amid worries that UVa wasn't keeping up  

with change and embracing online education fast enough, then rehired her 16 days later after a  

backlash from students and faculty.  

  At all levels, there's plenty of skepticism about any tech-centric approach to teaching. An  

[30] estimated $65.7 billion was spent in the U.S. last year on education technology, according to  

research firm Gartner. But many educators say there is little concrete proof of its benefits.  

  Khan is already butting up against veteran teachers nervous about their roles in his brave  

new classroom. But the biggest obstacle of all may be Khan himself. For all his grassroots fandom  

and Silicon Valley cred, he's not an educator, and he's never worked with children. Are parents and  

[35] teachers ready to upend hundreds of years of precedent about how basic subjects are taught on the  

word of a guy who has spent more time analyzing financial statements than standing before a  

blackboard?  

Fonte: Time, July 9, 2012. Texto adaptado.

 

Na sentença em que se insere “He believes he has stumbled onto a solution to some of education’s most intractable problems” (linhas 18 e 19), o verbo “stumbled onto” pode ser substituído por 

5 Ways To Turn Fear Into Fuel

 

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Jonathan Fields, author of Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel for Brilliance.

 

[1]   Uncertainty. It’s a terrifying word.  

  Living with it, dangling over your head like the sword of Damocles, day in day out, is enough to send  

anyone spiraling into a state of anxiety, fear and paralysis.  

  Like it or not, though, uncertainty is the new normal. We live in a time where the world is in a state of  

[5] constant, long-term flux. And, that’s not all. If you want to spend your time on the planet not just getting-by, but  

consistently creating art, experiences, businesses and lives that truly matter, you’ll need to proactively seek  

out, invite and even deliberately amplify uncertainty. Because the other side of uncertainty is opportunity.  

  Nothing great was ever created by waiting around for someone to tell you it’s all going to be okay or for  

perfect information to drop from the sky. Doesn’t happen that way. Great work requires you to act in the face of  

[10] uncertainty, to live in the question long enough for your true potential to emerge. There is no alternative.  

  When you find the strength to act in the face of uncertainty, you till the soil of genius.  

  Problem is, that kills most people. It leads to unease, anxiety, fear and doubt on a level that snuffs out  

most genuinely meaningful and potentially revolutionary endeavors before they even see the light of day. Not  

because they wouldn’t have succeeded, but because you never equipped yourself to handle and even  

[15] harness the emotional energy of the journey.  

  But, what if it didn’t have to be that way?  

  What if there was a way to turn the fear, anxiety and self-doubt that rides along with acting in the face of  

uncertainty—the head-to-toe butterflies—into fuel for brilliance?  

  Turns out, there is. Your ability to lean into the unknown isn’t so much about luck or genetics, rather it’s  

[20] something entirely trainable. I’ve spent the past few years interviewing world-class creators across a wide  

range of fields and pouring over research that spans neuroscience, decision-theory, psychology, creativity and  

business.  

  Through this work, a collection of patterns, practices and strategies have emerged that not only  

turbocharge insight, creativity, innovation and problem-solving, but also help ameliorate so much of the  

suffering so often associated with the pursuit of any creative quest. 

Fonte: http://zenhabits.net/fearfuel. Acesso em 07/12/2011. Texto adaptado.

 

A expressão “The head-to-toe butterflies” (linha 20), no contexto em que se insere, significa