Questões de Inglês - Grammar - Adverbs - Comparison
THE BRAIN
The brain controls all the body’s functions – from
consciousness and heart rate to thinking, memory
and emotion. It is the most complex thing we know of,
and the gaps in our knowledge about how it works are
vast. Neuroscientists have the daunting job of making
sense of this complicated organ – to provide insights
into our minds and behaviour and to find ways to
tackle debilitating brain diseases and injuries. Brain
injuries can occur in many ways, such as through
accidents, stroke or infections. The rehabilitation
group at the Medical Research Council Cognition
and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge specialises
in helping people with brain injuries to compensate
for cognitive problems and to cope with everyday life.
Its work includes developing new ways to measure
the problems faced by people with brain injuries and
developing new treatments. The scientists are also
interested in finding out more about how people
recover from brain injury and related memory loss.
The brain stem controls our core body functions –
the things our body must do unconsciously to keep us
alive, such as altering our heart beat and regulating
our blood pressure and body temperature. It also
controls functions such as alertness, swallowing,
digestion and breathing.
Consciousness is part of what makes each of us
unique. It encompasses many of our ideas, thoughts,
feelings, plans and memories. Conscious thought is
different from the unconscious workings of the brain
– which enable us to breathe, walk and talk and our
hearts to beat automatically. There are two aspects to
consciousness: awareness and wakefulness.
— Awareness refers to our internal, subjective
experience. It includes self awareness – the ability to
understand that you exist, as an individual, separate
from other people and with private thoughts. It also
includes awareness of the relationship between
oneself and one’s environment through use of our
senses and by thinking about ideas and acting upon
them using judgement.
— Wakefulness refers to different levels of
conscious awareness. Each day we experience a
spectrum of wakefulness, from full attentiveness, such
as if we are involved in an interesting conversation,
through inattentiveness, drowsiness and normal
sleep. Following some types of brain injury or during
anaesthesia people can’t be woken: they have a lower
level of wakefulness. Brain death lies at the far end of
this spectrum.
These two aspects of consciousness normally go
hand-in-hand; we don’t expect to have an interesting
conversation with someone who is asleep. However,
we can possess awareness when we are asleep, for
example when we dream.
Where does consciousness come from?
Scientists have amassed much evidence linking
different aspects of consciousness to our brain. We
now know that consciousness requires many parts of
the brain to work together. Parts of the cerebral cortex
act together to produce our thoughts and experiences.
A functioning thalamus is also required to produce
wakefulness – we know this because if a part of the
thalamus called the centromedian nucleus becomes
damaged, we become unconscious.
Unconsciousness can also be caused by
anaesthesia, or changes to the body’s internal
environment such as a rise or drop in core body
temperature or a lack of oxygen. A prolonged period
of unconsciousness is known as a coma. Sometimes,
after a severe brain injury, a person can enter a
vegetative state (VS). Unlike coma patients, VS
patients show normal wake/sleep cycles, but even
when they are awake they show no external sign of
awareness. When all electrical activity in the brain
stops irreversibly, this is known as brain death.
Scientists at the MRC Cognition and Brain
Sciences Unit in Cambridge study patients with
disorders of consciousness. Their work recently
revealed that a woman who was diagnosed as
being in a persistent vegetative state following
a car accident was aware of her surroundings.
Working with colleagues in Belgium, the scientists
used functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) to map the woman’s brain activity. She was
physically unresponsive and fulfilled all the criteria
for a diagnosis of vegetative state according to
international guidelines. But scans showed that her
brain responded to speech. Her brain also actively
processed the meaning of sentences, becoming
more active when she heard sentences containing
words with several meanings, like ‘rain’ and ‘reign’.
When asked to imagine playing tennis or moving
around her home, brain scans showed that the
woman could do this, activating various areas of her
brain in the same way as healthy volunteers. “These
are startling results. They confirm that, despite the
diagnosis of vegetative state, this patient retained
the ability to understand spoken commands and
to respond to them through her brain activity,” said
one of the researchers. “Her decision to work with
us represents a clear act of intent which confirmed
beyond any doubt that she was consciously aware of
herself and her surroundings.”
Doctors use different levels of sedation to reduce
people’s awareness of their bodies and surroundings.
For example, high levels of anaesthetic drugs cause
general anaesthesia: a complete loss of consciousness.
Another team of scientists at the MRC Cognition and
Brain Sciences Unit used fMRI to study how sedation
affects the brain’s processing of speech. Working with
researchers at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre in
Cambridge, they found that during heavy sedation,
volunteers’ brains still responded to the sounds of
speech but they were unable to process or remember
it. The findings have important implications for the care
of patients undergoing general anaesthesia or coming
out of a coma.
Available at: <http://www.mrc.ac.uk/publications/browse/the-brain-mrc- -research-for-lifelong-health/>. Retrieved on: 28 June 2016. Adapted.
In the fragment “we don’t expect to have an interesting conversation with someone who is asleep. However, we can possess awareness when we are asleep” (lines 51-53), the word However is associated with the idea of
Read the text to answer question.
Escaping from destruction
Almost 80 years ago Snowdonia, a mountainous region in northwestern Wales, United Kingdom, prepared to keep a welcome in the hillside for some of the world’s most treasured paintings. Across Europe the advancing Nazis had already looted or destroyed millions of pounds worth of art. As bombs fell on London and a German invasion seemed inevitable, attention turned to how to protect the National Gallery’s collection. In 1940, Winston Churchill famously said of the nation’s art treasures: “Hide them in caves and cellars, but not one picture shall leave this island.”
Experts scoured the UK for a hiding place — until they found Manod Quarry. Manod Mountain had been a working quarry1 for over a century. Its excavations created a cavernous space at the heart of the mountain, and covered with hundreds of feet of slate and granite it was virtually impregnable to bombing. Also, its very remoteness made it easier to keep the mission top secret.
Suzanne Bosman, author of The National Gallery in Wartime, explains that moving almost 2,000 works by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and Turner proved to be quite an undertaking. “Cold, damp quarries aren’t really good storage places for priceless works of art, so before they were moved in, six air-tight climate-controlled brick huts were built inside the mountain,” she explained. “In fact the conditions in which they were stored at Manod were considerably better than those in which they were exhibited at the National Gallery before the war, and the evacuation taught staff a lot about preservation, even after the war”, says Bosman.
The largest paintings were packed in specially designed “elephant cases” and transported by road. The smaller paintings were transported in Post Office vans and delivery trucks in order to avoid attracting attention. However, Ms Bosman said, it did not always run that smoothly. “Van Dyck’s Equestrian Portrait of Charles I is a monster, at 12ft by 9.5ft, and in its case, loaded on the back of the truck, it was considerably taller. On the approach to the quarry there is a tight S-bend, just where the road passes under the arch of a railway bridge. I liken it to trying to get a sofa around a corner on the stairs; there was enough height, but only if you could hit precisely the right angle.”
Nowadays the quarry is in a poor state of repair and access is strictly controlled. Inside you can still see the marks on the wall where the paintings hung, and the floor is littered with the hygrometers and thermometers which would have controlled every aspect of the conditions. It’s such a shame that very few people will get to see it in the future. We’ve let a piece of our national heritage slip away.
(This article was inspired by a question from reader Doug Cormack who got
in touch to ask how the National Gallery’s collection came to be evacuated
to Wales during the war, and whether the paintings would ever come back
to Wales for a commemorative exhibition.)
(Neil Prior. www.bbc.com, 19.05.2019. Adaptado.)
1quarry: an open excavation, usually for obtaining building material.
In the fragment from the fourth paragraph “I liken it to trying to get a sofa around a corner on the stairs; there was enough height, but only if you could hit precisely the right angle”, the underlined term could be correctly replaced, without any change in meaning, by
The verb “to flee” can be replaced by:
Can plants hear?
Flora may be able to detect the sounds of flowing water or munching insects
Pseudoscientific claims that music helps plants grow have been made for decades, despite evidence that is shaky at best. Yet new research suggests some flora may be capable of sensing sounds, such as the gurgle of water through a pipe or the buzzing of insects.
In a recent study, Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Western Australia, and her colleagues placed pea seedlings in pots shaped like an upside-down Y. One arm of each pot was placed in either a tray of water or a coiled plastic tube through which water flowed; the other arm had dry soil. The roots grew toward the arm of the pipe with the fluid, regardless of whether it was easily accessible or hidden inside the tubing. “They just knew the water was there, even if the only thing to detect was the sound of it flowing inside the pipe,” Gagliano says. Yet when the seedlings were given a choice between the water tube and some moistened soil, their roots favored the latter. She hypothesizes that these plants use sound waves to detect water at a distance but follow moisture gradients to home in on their target when it is closer.
The research, reported earlier this year in Oecologia, is not the first to suggest flora can detect and interpret sounds. A 2014 study showed the rock cress Arabidopsis can distinguish between caterpillar chewing sounds and wind vibrations – the plant produced more chemical toxins after “hearing” a recording of feeding insects. “We tend to underestimate plants because their responses are usually less visible to us. But leaves turn out to be extremely sensitive vibration detectors,” says lead study author Heidi M. Appel, an environmental scientist now at the University of Toledo.
(Marta Zaraska. www.scientificamerican.com, 17.05.2017.)
In the excerpt from the second paragraph “Yet when the seedlings”, the word “yet” indicates
Which of the options completes the excerpt below correctly?
You're dehydrated - and your skin
Most of us tend to think of dehydration as a short term problem solved by a glass of water, but board-certified dermatologist Dr. Janet Prystowsky encourages viewing skin dehydration as a long-term problem, as consistently failing to get your skin the water it needs can have lasting results.
(Abridged from https ://www.goodhousekeeping.com/beauty/anti- aging/a36993/dull-skin-causes/)
TEXT
A library tradition is being refashioned to emphasize early literacy and better prepare young children for school, and drawing many new fans in the process.
Among parents of the under-5 set, spots for story time have become as coveted as seats for a hot Broadway show like “Hamilton.” Lines stretch down the block at some branches, with tickets given out on a first-come-first-served basis because there is not enough room to accommodate all of the children who show up.
Workers at the 67th Street Library on the Upper East Side of Manhattan turn away at least 10 people from every reading. They have been so overwhelmed by the rush at story time — held in the branch’s largest room, on the third floor — that once the space is full, they close the door and shut down the elevator. “It is so crowded and so popular, it’s insane,” Jacqueline Schector, a librarian, said.
Story time is drawing capacity crowds at public libraries across New York and across the country at a time when, more than ever, educators are emphasizing the importance of early literacy in preparing children for school and for developing critical thinking skills. The demand crosses economic lines, with parents at all income levels vying to get in.
Many libraries have refashioned the traditional readings to include enrichment activities such as counting numbers and naming colors, as well as music and dance. And many parents have made story time a fixture in their family routines alongside school pickups and playground outings — and, for those who employ nannies, a nonnegotiable requirement of the job.
In New York, demand for story time has surged across the city’s three library systems — the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Queens Library — and has posed logistical challenges for some branches, particularly those in small or cramped buildings. Citywide, story time attendance rose to 510,367 people in fiscal year 2015, up nearly 28 percent from 399,751 in fiscal 2013.
“The secret’s out,” said Lucy Yates, 44, an opera coach with two sons who goes to story time at the Fort Washington Library every week.
Stroller-pushing parents and nannies begin to line up for story time outside some branches an hour before doors open. To prevent overcrowding, tickets are given out at the New Amsterdam and Webster branches, both in Manhattan, the Parkchester branch in the Bronx, and a half-dozen branches in Brooklyn, including in Park Slope, Kensington and Bay Ridge.
The 67th Street branch keeps adding story times — there are now six a week — and holds sessions outdoors in the summer, when crowds can swell to 200 people.
In Queens, 41 library branches are scheduled to add weekend hours this month, and many will undoubtedly include weekend story times. As Joanne King, a spokeswoman for the library explained, parents have been begging for them and “every story time is full, every time we have one.”
Long a library staple, story time has typically been an informal reading to a small group of boys and girls sitting in a circle. Today’s story times involve carefully planned lessons by specially trained librarians that emphasize education as much as entertainment, and often include suggestions for parents and caregivers about how to reinforce what children have learned, library officials said.
Libraries around the country have expanded story time and other children’s programs in recent years, attracting a new generation of patrons in an age when online offerings sometimes make trips to the book stacks unnecessary. Sari Feldman, president of the American Library Association, said such early-literacy efforts are part of a larger transformation libraries are undergoing to become active learning centers for their communities by offering services like classes in English as a second language, computer skills and career counseling.
Ms. Feldman said the increased demand for story time was a product, in part, of more than a decade of work by the library association and others to encourage libraries to play a larger role in preparing young children for school. In 2004, as part of that effort, the association developed a curriculum, “Every Child Ready to Read,” that she said is now used by thousands of libraries.
The New York Public Library is adding 45 children’s librarians to support story time and other programs, some of which are run in partnership with the city government. It has also designated 20 of its 88 neighborhood branches, including the Fort Washington Library, as “enhanced literary sites.” As such, they will double their story time sessions, to an average of four a week, and distribute 15,000 “family literacy kits” that include a book and a schedule of story times.
“It is clear that reading and being exposed to books early in life are critical factors in student success,” Anthony W. Marx, president of the New York Public Library, said. “The library is playing an increasingly important role in strengthening early literacy in this city, expanding efforts to bring reading to children and their families through quality, free story times, curated literacy programs, after-school programs and more.”
For its part, the Queens Library plans to expand a “Kick Off to Kindergarten” program that attracted more than 180 families for a series of workshops last year. Library officials said that more than three-quarters of the children who enrolled, many of whom spoke a language other than English at home, developed measurable classroom skills.
From: www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02
The sentence “Among parents of the under-5 set, spots for story time have become as coveted as seats for a hot Broadway show like Hamilton.” contains conjunctions that are classified as
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