Subways: The New Urban Status Symbol
Business Week - December 5, 2007
by Jennifer Fishbein

It seems like everywhere you turn these days, a new
high-speed train is whisking more passengers across longer
distances faster than ever before. A [NOUN] to Paris from
London is quicker than flying; Japanese bullet trains traverse the
320 miles from Tokyo to Osaka in two and a half hours; and
magnetic levitating trains in Shanghai cut through the city at 268
miles per hour. But while high-speed trains may grab all the
glamour, the more mundane business of subway construction is
what's driving the biggest growth for transportation companies.
Indeed, the world is seeing an unprecedented boom in new
subways and expansion to existing systems. Thanks to surging
economic growth and urban populations, demand for subways is
soaring in China and India. Lots of other places around the
world also are building new lines, from Dubai to Santo Domingo,
capital of the Dominican Republic. And many European and
American cities ? including even such improbable locales as Los
Angeles and Phoenix ? have caught the transit bug.

Problem-Solving and Prestige

Some cities build out of necessity. Rising prosperity
prompted Dubai residents to buy so many cars that they realized
they could [ADVERB] longer drive these cars because they
were stuck in traffic. Others are keen on the environmental
benefits of metros, which produce far less pollution and
encourage drivers to leave cars at home. Some places, mainly
in the Middle East, are looking to diversify their oil-dependent
economies. And others, to be honest, are chasing an urban
status symbol. Building a metro won't turn any old town into
Paris or London, but it does tell the world that you've arrived.

"You have in some cases a prestige issue, which is more
the case in young cities in need of an image," says Jean-Noël
Debroise, vice-president for product and strategy at Alstom
(ALSO.PA), the French transport company that has built a
quarter of the world's metros.

Rennes is an example of the new trend. The city of about
212,000 people in northwestern France was looking to raise its profile when it installed a metro in 2002. It raised the bar by
opting for a driverless system made by Siemens ? just like the
shiny new No. 14 line in Paris ? protecting passengers from the
French penchant for transit strikes. Turin, Italy, did the same to
help win its bid for the 2006 Winter Olympics; its driverless
system opened just before the games. Even the Spanish island
of Mallorca inaugurated a short metro line in April in hopes of
luring even more tourists to its capital, Palma. Alas, it closed
indefinitely in September due to flooding, amid charges of
mismanagement.

A Boon for Transit Builders

The world's three largest metro manufacturers, Montrealbased
Bombardier (BBDB.TO), Alstom, and Munich-based
Siemens (SI) report high demand for mass transit, including
tramways and light-rail systems that run both under and
[PREPOSITION] ground. The global subway market was worth
9.3 billion dollars in 2005 and is projected to grow at a rate of
2.7% per year until 2015, according to a 2007 study by the
European Railway Industry Assn. Subway lines [TO BUILD] or
extended in 20 European cities and five Middle Eastern ones,
and dozens of towns are constructing light-rail systems, reports
the Brussels-based International Association of Public
Transport.

The size of a city determines its need for a metro system.
Cities of a few million people ? or those anticipating huge
population growth ? really can't do without a mass transit
system. But cities of one or two million inhabitants can choose
between a subway and a surface tramway, which costs far less
but also runs more slowly. [CONJUNCTION] funding is an issue,
cities usually will spring for a subway, says Debroise. "The
tramway has a very old image of the 19th century, with horses in
the streets," he says.

(Adapted from http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/
content/dec2007/gb2007125_600001.htm?chan=top+news_
top+news+index_global+business)

When I talk with librarians about thinking of themselves
as designers, sometimes they demur. "Designer? I can't even
draw a stick figure!" But you don't need to. Whether you know it
or not, you're already a designer.

Every time librarians create a bookmark, decide to house
a collection in a new spot, or figure out how a new service
might work, they're making design decisions. This is what I like
to call design by neglect or unintentional design. Whether library
employees wear name tags is a design decision. The length of
loan periods and whether or not you charge fines is a design
decision. Anytime you choose how people will interact with your
library, you're making a design decision. All of these decisions
add up to create an experience, good or bad, for your patrons.

When we are mindful of our roles as library experience
designers, we can make more informed design choices. This
awareness can provide better experiences for our patrons and
demonstrate that we care about them.

Really. People will notice, [CONJUNCTION] not
necessarily consciously, if we [VERB] the time to think about
them when we're developing our services. The secret here is not
to think of library patrons, users, or customers: we need to think
of people. We need to consider their lives and what they're trying
to accomplish. This act, which can only be done by cultivating
the skill of empathy, is the most important ? and perhaps the
most difficult ? part of user experience design.

(Adapted from
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6713142.html?nid=2673
&source=title&rid=1105906703)

Subways

Posted on Friday March 27th, 2009 by Jebediah Reed
To give some sense of the pace of public works
construction in China, the city of Guangzhou is planning to open
83 miles of new subway lines by the end of next year.
Meanwhile, New York ? a city of about the same size ? has
been playing around with the 1.7-mile Second Avenue line for
decades now. China also builds subways rather cheaply ? $100
million per mile versus $ 2.4 billion per mile in the Big Apple.

Not surprisingly, projects there are more aggressive in all
respects: there are 60 tunnel boring machines operating in
Guangzhou, while only one is slated for the Second Avenue
project; workers put in five 12-hour shifts a week (and if they
don't like it, they can go pound glacial till); and seizing property
is a breeze.

An article in the Business section of today's NY Times
(Clash of Subways and Car Culture in Chinese Cities by Keith
Bradsher) [VERB] a smart look at the forces at play as China
goes on a transit infrastructure spending spree while it
simultaneously becomes evermore sprawling and car-centric.

Here's one interesting passage, [CONJUNCTION] the
story is worth reading in its entirety:

Western mass transit experts applaud China for investing
billions in systems that will put less stress on the environment
and on cities. But they warn that other Chinese policies, like
allowing real estate developers to build sprawling new suburbs,
undermine the benefits of the mass transit boom.

Mr. Chan Shao Zhang , a 67-year-old engineer in charge
of the works in Guangzhou, defended Guangzhou's combination
of cars and subways, saying that the city built a subway line to a new Toyota assembly plant to help employees and suppliers
reach it.

Subways have been most competitive in cities like New
York that have high prices for parking, and tolls for bridges and
tunnels, discouraging car use. Few Chinese cities have been
willing to follow suit, other than Shanghai, which charges a fee of
several thousand dollars for each license plate.

The cost and physical limitations of subways have
discouraged most cities from building new ones. For instance,
only Tokyo has a subway system that carries more people than
its buses. The buses are cheaper and able to serve far more
streets but move more slowly, pollute more and contribute to
traffic congestion.

China has reason to worry. It surpassed the United
States in total vehicle sales for the first time in January, although
the United States remained slightly ahead in car sales. But in
February, China overtook the United States in both, in part
because the global downturn has hurt auto sales much more in
the United States than in China.

There are many countervaling forces ..X.. China has
passed its own stimulus package and the government is eager
to put people to work, create economic activity, and build
modern infrastructure. The Guangzhou project is part of major
national transit buildout. But the nation's cities are also sprawling
beasts, and in that sense, more suited to cars than trains. Not
shockingly, many Chinese prefer the former.

(Adapted from http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/03/27/-
building-a-subway-is-96-percent-cheaper-in-china/)

Read the book review below and answer questions 7,
8, 9 and 10.

YOUTH PROLONGED: OLD AGE POSTPONED
by Robert Weale (King's College London, UK)
What exactly is human ageing? Can it be slowed down?
These questions have puzzled scientists and laymen alike
for generations, and continue to do so today. The author
addresses these thought-provoking issues by challenging
pre-conceived notions of age-perception, age-acceptance
and inter-age relations. Pertinent matters of age-related
communication are dealt with, and the reader is treated to
a grand tour of the latest theories of ageing, age-related
biological changes and age-related diseases, such as
Alzheimer's Disease. Here, the author's expertise in agerelated
eye diseases truly comes into its own.
Weale's unique work not only underlines important
genetic and avoidable risk factors but gives ample
consideration to possible consequences stemming from
different early lifestyles. Readers will re-consider their
ideas of what it means to age, and gain a better
understanding of what can and cannot slow down the
process of ageing.

Fonte: http://www.worldscibooks.com/ December, 2009.

Windows 7 gets the basics right. Here's what you need to know
about the new OS.
Harry McCracken, PC World
Monday, October 19, 2009 2:00 pM


The Windows experience occurs mainly in its Taskbar ?
especially in the Start menu and System Tray. Vista gave the
Start menu a welcome redesign; in Windows 7, the Taskbar and
the System Tray get a thorough makeover.

Windows 7's revamped Taskbar introduces several new
features and gives users much more control over how it looks.

The new Taskbar replaces the old small icons and text
labels for running apps with larger, unlabeled icons. If you can
keep the icons straight, the new design painlessly reduces
Taskbar clutter. If you don't like it, you can shrink the icons
and/or bring the labels back.

In the past, you could get one-click access to programs
by dragging their icons to the Quick Launch toolbar. Windows 7
eliminates Quick Launch and folds its capabilities into the
Taskbar. Drag an app's icon from the Start menu or desktop to
the Taskbar, and Windows will pin it there, so you can launch
the program without rummaging around in the Start menu. You
can also organize icons in the Taskbar by moving them to new
positions.

To indicate that a particular application on the Taskbar is
running, Windows draws a subtle box around its icon ?
subtle, in fact, that figuring out [CONJUNCTION] the app is
running can take a moment, especially if its icon sits between
two icons for running apps.

In Windows Vista, hovering the mouse pointer over an
application's Taskbar icon produces a thumbnail window view
known as a Live Preview. But when you have multiple windows
open, you see only one preview at a time. Windows 7's version of this feature is slicker and more efficient: Hover the pointer on
an icon, and thumbnails of the app's windows glide into position
above the Taskbar, so you can quickly find the one you're
looking for. (The process would be even simpler if the
thumbnails were larger and easier to decipher.)

Also new in Windows 7's Taskbar is a feature called
Jump Lists. These menus resemble the context-sensitive ones
you get when you right-click within various Windows
applications, except that you don't have to be inside an app to
use them. Internet Explorer 8's Jump List, for example, lets you
open the browser and load a fresh tab, initiate an InPrivate
stealth browsing session, or go directly to any of eight frequently
visited Web pages. Non-Microsoft apps can offer Jump Lists,
too, if their developers follow the guidelines for creating
them.

Other Windows 7 interface adjustments are minor, yet so
sensible that you may wonder why Windows didn't include them
all along. Shove a window into the left or right edge of the
screen and it'll expand to fill half of your desktop. Nudge another
into the opposite edge of the screen, and it'll expand to occupy
the other half. That makes comparing two windows' contents
easy. If you nudge a window into the top of the screen, it will
maximize to occupy all of the display's real estate.
(Adapted from
http://www.pcworld.com/article/172602/windows_7_review.html)

Para responder às questões de números 32 a 45, considere o texto abaixo.

The uses for oil
Oil is the largest source of liquid fuel and, in spite of attempts to develop synthetic fuels, world consumption of oil
products in increasing.
The oil industry is not much more than a hundred years old. It began when the first oil well was drilled in 1859. In the
early days, oil was used to light houses because there was no electricity and gas was very scarce. Later, people began to use oil
for heating too.
Most industries use machinery to make things. Every machine needs oil in order to run easily. Even a small clock or watch
needs a little oil from time to time.
The engines of many machines use oil fuels petrol, kerosene or diesel. Cars, buses, trucks, tractors, and small aircraft use
petroleum chemicals: synthetic rubber, plastics, synthetic fiber materials for clothes and for the home, paints, materials which
help to stop rust, photographic materials, soap and cleaning materials (detergents), drugs, fertilizers for farms and gardens, food
containers, and may others.
In 1900 the world’s oil production was less than 2 million tons a year. Today the oil industry is one of the world’s largest
and most important suppliers of raw materials.