Questões de Inglês

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.)

Are the statements true (T) or false (F), according to the text?
 
( ) The new skeleton was really Lucy’s brother.
( ) The new skeleton is almost 100% complete.
( ) The new skeleton is larger than that of Lucy.
( ) The new skeleton is similar to a chimpanzee.
( ) The team spent four years excavating for bones.

Mark the alternative which presents the correct sequence, from top to bottom.

Texto 1

CAN A VIRUS MAKE YOU FAT?

Although the idea sounds more like the premise of a B movie than scientific theory two scientists at the University of Wisconsin in Madison believe they've found a virus that causes some people to get fat. Nikhil Dhurandhar and Richard Atkinson reported recently that when they injected a virus known as AD36 into mice and chickens, the animals' body fat increased. Because humans were unlikely to volinteer for such exiperimentation, the scientists decided to test for the presence of antibodies to the virus. Of 154

 people tested, about 15 percent of those who were obese had the antibodies. None of the lean people did.

However, the findings don't necessarily prove that the virus caused obesity in the test group. As several virologists have pointed out, obese people may simply be more susceptible to such a virus.

 

 

 

Biologists have

found a virus

that causes

obesity in

animals such as

chickens. Now

the researchers

are testing

people for it.

A palavra unlikely significa:

A tira, definida como um segmento de história em quadrinhos, pode transmitir uma mensagem com efeito de humor. A presença desse efeito no diálogo entre Jon e Garfield acontece porque

War

 

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior 

And another inferior

Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, 

Everywhere - May say war.

 

That until there is no longer 

First class and second class citizens of any nation, 

Until the color of a man's skin

Is of no more significance than the color of his eyes -   

Me say war.

[…]

 

And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes

that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique,

South Africa, sub-human bondage have been toppled,

Utterly destroyed -

Well everywhere is war -

Me say war.

 

War in the east, war in the west,

War up north, war down south -

War - war - Rumors of war.

And until that day, the African continent will not know peace.

We, Africans, will fight - we find it necessary -

And we know we shall win

As we are confident in the victory.

[…]

]

MARLEY, B. Disponível em: http://www.sing365.com. Acesso em: 30 jun. 2011 (fragmento).

 

Bob Marley foi um artista popular e atraiu muitos fãs com suas canções. Ciente de sua influência social, na música War, o cantor se utiliza de sua arte para alertar sobre

For an interesting attempt to measure cause and effect try Mappiness, a project run by the London School of Economics, which offers a phone app that prompts you to record your mood and situation.

 

The Mappiness website says: "We're particulary interested in how people's happiness is affected by their local environment - air pollution, noise, green spacess, absolutely great for investigating."

 

Will it work? With enough people, it might. But there are other problems. We've benn using happiness and well-being interchangeably. It that ok? The difference comes out in a sentiment like: "We were happier during the war." But was our well-being also greater then?

 

Disponível em: http://www.bbc.co.uk. Acesso em: 27 jun. 2011 (adaptado).

 

O projeto Mappiness, idealizado pela London School of Economics, ocupa-se do tema relacionado

Na fase escolar, é prática comum que os professores passem atividades extraclasse e marquem uma data para que as mesmas sejam entregues para correção. No caso da cena da charge, a professora ouve uma estudante apresentando argumentos para