Questões de Concurso
Comentadas sobre interpretação de texto | reading comprehension em inglês
Foram encontradas 8.691 questões
The sentence “Perhaps that also says something about native speakers of English!” (lines 54-55) implies that
Choose the only alternative that the author does NOT mention in support of the idea that the professional environment of aircraft maintenance crews nowadays is different from that of their peers in the past.
According to paragraph 2, it is correct to say that
The main purpose of this text is to
Leia o texto para responder às questões de números 49 e 50.
Food Supply Worries ofan Agricultural Scientist — Climate Change
People involved in world agriculture have no patience with the supposed “debate” about climate change. We are already seeing the effects, and the projections for the future are not encouraging.
The most troubling feature of this phenomenon (and one that occurs even if you don't believe that it is human-driven) is that we are facing increasing variation in climatic events. The yearly changes in average temperature or even annual rainfall may not be dramatic, but what we are anticipating is that there will be more extreme weather events.
(www.sustainablog.org/category/climate-change/01.10.2009. Adaptado)
The term but in — The yearly changes in average temperature or even annual rainfall may not be dramatic, but what we are anticipating is that there will be more extreme weather events. — is correctly replaced by
Leia o texto para responder às questões de números 49 e 50.
Food Supply Worries ofan Agricultural Scientist — Climate Change
People involved in world agriculture have no patience with the supposed “debate” about climate change. We are already seeing the effects, and the projections for the future are not encouraging.
The most troubling feature of this phenomenon (and one that occurs even if you don't believe that it is human-driven) is that we are facing increasing variation in climatic events. The yearly changes in average temperature or even annual rainfall may not be dramatic, but what we are anticipating is that there will be more extreme weather events.
(www.sustainablog.org/category/climate-change/01.10.2009. Adaptado)
According to the text, the phenomenon of climate change is
Para responder às questões de números 47 e 48, leia o texto.
Petrobras" investments are guaranteed until 2013
SÃO PAULO, 6/30/09 — The financial and investor relations director of Brazilian mixed-capital oil giant Petrobras, Almir Barbassa, said Monday that the company's investment plan is guaranteed until 2013.
Barbassa also mentioned that the company has been cutting down on costs and investments in order to ensure the exploration of the subsalt reserves. The executive pointed out that Petrobras” operating costs fell by 30% in the final quarter of 2008.
“We are also trying to cut down the equipment that will be used in the subsalt platform and lower labor costs by investing in automation”, Barbassa added.
Petrobras already has over US$30 billion in financing for its future oil and gas exploration and refining and gas transport infrastructure projects. “Petrobras expects to produce 5.7 million barrels of oil equivalent a day (boed) by 2020”, he added.
The 2009 production target is 2.7 million boed.
(www.indexet.investimentosenoticias.com.br/arquivo/2009/06/30/26/Petrobras-investments-are-guaranteed-until-2013.html)
The term guaranteed in — Petrobras” investments are guaranteed until 2013 — means that the investments will be
Para responder às questões de números 47 e 48, leia o texto.
Petrobras" investments are guaranteed until 2013
SÃO PAULO, 6/30/09 — The financial and investor relations director of Brazilian mixed-capital oil giant Petrobras, Almir Barbassa, said Monday that the company's investment plan is guaranteed until 2013.
Barbassa also mentioned that the company has been cutting down on costs and investments in order to ensure the exploration of the subsalt reserves. The executive pointed out that Petrobras” operating costs fell by 30% in the final quarter of 2008.
“We are also trying to cut down the equipment that will be used in the subsalt platform and lower labor costs by investing in automation”, Barbassa added.
Petrobras already has over US$30 billion in financing for its future oil and gas exploration and refining and gas transport infrastructure projects. “Petrobras expects to produce 5.7 million barrels of oil equivalent a day (boed) by 2020”, he added.
The 2009 production target is 2.7 million boed.
(www.indexet.investimentosenoticias.com.br/arquivo/2009/06/30/26/Petrobras-investments-are-guaranteed-until-2013.html)
According to the text,
Nas questões de números 48 a 50, leia os textos e assinale a alternativa em que a tradução está adequada.
The algorithm developed to perform this task is based on the analysis of the superimposed sequence components of the currents. The DSP module compares the magnitudes and phases ofthe positive, negative and zero sequence components to determine whether the fault is single line, line to line, double line to ground or threephase.
Nas questões de números 48 a 50, leia os textos e assinale a alternativa em que a tradução está adequada.
Along a typical distribution feeder there are different cables and configurations (cross-arm and underground, for instance). Therefore, there is no linear relation between the line impedance and the distance between the fault location and the substation.
Nas questões de números 48 a 50, leia os textos e assinale a alternativa em que a tradução está adequada.
Accurate location of faults on Power distribution and transmission systems can reduce maintenance costs, improve reliability and increase the profits of the electric utility industry.
Source: www.economist.com Jul 2nd 2009 (Adapted)
The mantra in Washington, DC is simple: spend billions now, pay later. Congress has been crafting ambitious plans for energy, health care and transport. But the mood in state capitals has been different. Forty-six states had a deadline of June 0th to pass their budgets. Just as important, those budgets had to be balanced. With the sole exemption of Vermont, America ́s state governments, unlike the federal one, are not allowed to run deficits. June was an agonizing month.
On the morning of July 1st, the first day of the new fiscal year for most states, taxpayers had reason to be glum. Connecticut, North Carolina and Ohio had passed temporary extensions. California, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Illinois did not have a balanced budget as required. Most states that did pass budgets imposed painful cuts, higher taxes and fees on everything from pesticides in Minnesota to hunting licences in Maine.
Matters would be worse if it were not for Washington ́s stimulus package, which provides more than $135 billion to support state budgets. Most money, $87 billion, is for Medicaid, the government ́s health-care programme for the poor. A further $48 billion created a State Fiscal Stabilisation Fund, mostly for schools and universities.
According to paragraph 3,
New Research Advances Voice Security Technology
ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2010) — Most people are familiar with security technology that scans a person's handprint or eye for identification purposes. Now, thanks in part to research from North Carolina State University, we are closer to practical technology that can test someone's voice to confirm their identity.
"The big picture is speaker authentication by computer," says Dr. Robert Rodman, professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a new paper on the subject. "The acoustic parameters of the voice are affected by the shape of the vocal tract, and different people have different vocal tracts," Rodman explains. "This new research will help improve the speed of speech authentication, without sacrificing accuracy."
Rodman explains that speech authentication could have a host of applications in this age of heightened security and mobile electronics. "Potential users of this technology include government, financial, health-care and telecommunications industries," Rodman says, "for applications ranging from preventing ID theft and fraud to data protection."
Current computer models that are used to compare acoustic profiles, effectively evaluating whether a speaker is who he says he is, may take several seconds or more to process the information, which is still too long for the technology to gain widespread acceptance. "In order for this technology to gain traction among users," Rodman says, "the response time needs to improve without increasing the error rate."
To address this problem, Rodman and his fellow researchers modified existing computer models to streamline the authentication process so that it operates more efficiently. "This is part of the evolution of speech authentication software," Rodman says, "and it moves us closer to making this technology a practical, secure tool."
The research was co-authored by NC State's Rodman; Rahim Saeidi, Tomi Kinnunen and Pasi Franti of the University of Joensuu in Finland; and Hamid Reza Sadegh Mohammadi of the Iranian Academic Center for Education, Culture & Research.
The research, "Joint Frame and Gaussian Selection for Text Independent Speaker Verification", will be presented at the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) in Dallas, March 14-19. The research was funded, in part, by the Centre for International Mobility.
NC State's Department of Computer Science is part of the university's College of Engineering.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100308102202.htm
According to the text, all the following statements are true of Dr. Robert Rodman, EXCEPT
Source: Newsweek Magazine (Adapted) May 25th 2009
Tony Blair, Britain ́s longest-serving Labour Prime Minister, left office in 2007 as a relatively young man of 54. At his office in London, Blair spoke to NEWSWEEK ́s Stryker McGuire. Excerpts:
Question 2: How do you think President Barack Obama is doing as a leader and healer on the world scene?
He ́s created a situation where there is a possibility of a completely different form of engagement with the world of Islam and with the outside world. The single most important thing for him is that his decision to reach out is answered by the rest of the world by a decision to reach back. As I keep saying to people, he doesn ́t want cheerleaders; he wants partners. You know, he doesn ́t want people to tell him how great he is; he ́s perfectly well aware of the transient nature of all that fluff, as it were, around the new president and the first hundred days. He ́s trying to change the world in partnership, and he needs partners to do it.
In his answer to question 2, Mr Blair says that President Barack Obama is “perfectly well aware of the transient nature of all that fluff.” In other words, the US President
As Information Systems (IS) development becomes more a function of purchasing packages or assembling components, with less emphasis on programming, student enrollment in IS courses at universities continues to decline.
Sometimes it looks like the IT revolution has moved on and left many IS researchers [ADVERB].
For example, according to Nokia, the next generation of computers will be in your pocket. About 1.3 billion mobile phones are sold each year, compared to only 300 million personal computers. An increasing number of these phones come with full-blown operating systems that let users access, organize, and use much more information than older handhelds. The mobile software market may soon exceed the current software market for computers, and a wide variety of information systems will rise on top of all the new software. However, only a relatively small percentage of IS research focuses on the mobile revolution.
Actually, many IS programs in business colleges seem impervious to the wake-up call that information schools provide. Rather, they continue to offer curricula that reflect the past rather than look toward the future. Little wonder that students, whose degrees are based on a very limited number of traditional courses in one area of study, often fail to meet their employers’ expectations. With little integration across disciplines to prepare students for the complex problems they will face, organizations find it necessary to further educate those whom they hire or go abroad to seek appropriate employees with a wider range of skills and knowledge.
(Adapted from http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/homepage/2009/1009/rW_CO_ISInnovation.pdf)
De acordo com o texto
There are lots of things you can do to save energy at home, from simple things like washing at 30 °C, saving water and recycling, to insulating your loft and cavity walls. By saving energy you’ll be reducing your home’s carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and helping to fight climate change.
Why should you save energy? Over 40 per cent of the UK’s man-made CO₂ emissions actually come from energy we use every day – at home and when we travel. To generate that energy, we burn fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) that produce ‘greenhouse’ gases – in particular CO₂ – which are changing our climate and damaging the environment.
The greenhouse effect CO₂ and various other gases wrap the Earth in an invisible ‘blanket’, helping to prevent heat from escaping. Without this greenhouse effect, the average temperature on Earth would be around -18 ºC, compared with the current average of around +15 ºC. This blanket of gases has remained at a constant concentration for many thousands of years. Since the Industrial Revolution began around 200 years ago, people have been burning more fossil fuels. This has increased the heating effect of the ‘blanket’, trapping more of the sun’s energy inside our atmosphere. In turn the Earth’s temperature has increased more rapidly in a shorter period of time than it has for thousands of years.
The impact of climate change People sometimes think that climate change will be a positive thing for the UK, giving us warmer summers and fewer cold winters. But hotter summers and less rain in the south and east will mean water shortages, forest fires and damage to crops and wildlife. In the north and west there could be much heavier rain and more flooding. As the polar ice caps continue to melt, rising sea levels will threaten many coastal communities. Overall, the cost to society, the environment, our health and the economy is likely to far outweigh any benefits.
Make a difference The average UK household creates around six tonnes of CO₂ every year – that’s 6,000 kg – to heat and power their home. Making your home more energy efficient could save you up to £340 a year and reduce your home’s CO₂ emissions by up to 1,500–2,000 kg. You could save even more by switching to renewable energy sources, by walking, cycling or using public transport whenever possible, and by driving more efficiently.
(Texto introdutório ao manual “A guide to energy saving in the home”, disponível em: http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Resources/Publications.)
Among some actions to save energy at home, in the text we find:
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the c ountry's left-leaning president, is carving out a role for Brazil as spokesman for poor countries, most notably by founding the G20 group which lobbies for rich countries to open up farm trade. His government is playing a more active role across South America. And it is seeking a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. "Brazil has begun to flex its muscles as a regiona superpower," says Miguel Díaz of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think-tank.
If so, it is a paradoxical one. On the one hand, Brazil's fondest wish is to mitigate the United States' dominance of global affairs and thereby to enhance Brazil's influence. The foreign minister, Celso Amorim, calls for "a more balanced world" and justifies the Haiti mission in part as a step towards it "You can't be a supporter of multilateralism and when it comes to act say it's [too] dangerous," says Mr Amorim.
On the other hand, Brazil's new activism often, though B, coincides with the interests of the United States. Both countries want democracy and stability in places in the Americas where these seem fragile. In some of those places, Lula's Brazi has more friends and influence than George Bush's more abrasive United States. The two sometimes back rivals in these countries, but that is one source of Brazil's usefulness.
Lula did not start Brazil's international activism. In recent years, Brazilian troops have joined UN missions in Eas Timor and Angola. In 1996, Brazil acted with Argentina and the United States to forestall a coup in Paraguay – recognition that the defence of democracy in the region should take precedence over a tradition of non-intervention in the affairs o neighbours.
The search for a stable South America has long been an axiom of Brazil's foreign policy, but demographics have given it greater urgency. Brazilians, once described as clinging to the coast like crabs, have scurried westwards and northwards. The building of Brasília, which replaced Rio de Janeiro as the capital in 1960, helped to spark development of the interior, a process accelerated by an agricultural boom insuch western states as Mato Grosso. The Amazon, Brazil is learning, is both a resource and weak spot, vulnerable to guerrillas, drug traffickers and land-grabbers.
For most of its history as an independent country, Brazil saw Argentina as its chief rival and strategic threat. That changed with the formation of Mercosur, an incipient customs union also involving Paraguay and Uruguay. This has allowed Brazil to shift much of its army from its southern border to the north-western jungles near Colombia and Peru.
Brazil's sense of neighbourhood may be widening. Yet argues Mr Valladão, Brazil has not de cided what sort of neighbour to be. At times, it portrays itself as a team player. In theory, it negotiates on trade as a member of Mercosur. But Brazil also sees itself as a "whale", with the heft and appetite to act on its own. Mr Amorim's answer is that, in a world likely to be dominated by blocks, Brazil's best option is to co-operate as much as possible with its neighbours and other developing countries. Whales, he notes, "are gregarious animals.
One can infer from the text that
New Research Advances Voice Security Technology
ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2010) — Most people are familiar with security technology that scans a person's handprint or eye for identification purposes. Now, thanks in part to research from North Carolina State University, we are closer to practical technology that can test someone's voice to confirm their identity. "The big picture is speaker authentication by computer," says Dr. Robert Rodman, professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a new paper on the subject. "The acoustic parameters of the voice are affected by the shape of the vocal tract, and different people have different vocal tracts," Rodman explains. "This new research will help improve the speed of speech authentication, without sacrificing accuracy."
Rodman explains that speech authentication could have a host of applications in this age of heightened security and mobile electronics. "Potential users of this technology include government, financial, health-care and telecommunications industries," Rodman says, "for applications ranging from preventing ID theft and fraud to data protection."
Current computer models that are used to compare acoustic profiles, effectively evaluating whether a speaker is who he says he is, may take several seconds or more to process the information, which is still too long for the technology to gain widespread acceptance. "In order for this technology to gain traction among users," Rodman says, "the response time needs to improve without increasing the error rate."
To address this problem, Rodman and his fellow researchers modified existing computer models to streamline the authentication process so that it operates more efficiently. "This is part of the evolution of speech authentication software," Rodman says, "and it moves us closer to making this technology a practical, secure tool."
The research was co-authored by NC State's Rodman; Rahim Saeidi, Tomi Kinnunen and Pasi Franti of the University of Joensuu in Finland; and Hamid Reza Sadegh Mohammadi of the Iranian Academic Center for Education, Culture & Research.
The research, "Joint Frame and Gaussian Selection for Text Independent Speaker Verification", will be presented at the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) in Dallas, March 14-19. The research was funded, in part, by the Centre for International Mobility.
NC State's Department of Computer Science is part of the university's College of Engineering.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100308102202.htm
“Current computer models […] may take several seconds or more to process the information, which is still too long for the technology to gain widespread acceptance.”
In this sentence, the relative pronoun which refers to the
Conheça nossos planos