Questões de Concurso
Sobre palavras conectivas | connective words em inglês
Foram encontradas 632 questões
“In fact” (l.12) means As a matter of fact.
honest-to-goodness android, so lifelike that it seems like
a real person. It has moist lips, glossy hair and vivid
eyes that blink slowly. Seated on a stool with hands
5 folded primly on its lap at the 2005 World Exposition in
Japan's Aichi prefecture, it wore a bright pink blazer and
gray slacks. For a mesmerizing few seconds from several
meters away, Repliee was virtually indistinguishable from
an ordinary woman in her 30s. In fact, it was a copy of
10 one.
Japan is proud of the most advanced humanoids in
the world, which are expected to eventually be used as
the workforce diminishes among the decreasing and aging
population. But why build a robot with pigmented silicone
15 skin, smooth gestures and even makeup? To Repliee's
creator, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Director of Osaka University's
Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, the answer is simple:
"Android science."
Besides the justification for making robots
20 anthropomorphic and bipedal so they can work in human
environments with architectural features such as stairs,
Ishiguro believes that people respond better to very
humanlike automatons. Androids can thus elicit the most
natural communication. "Appearance is very important
25 to have better interpersonal relationships with a robot,"
says the 42-year-old Ishiguro. "Robots are information
media, especially humanoid robots. Their main role in
our future is to interact naturally with people."
Mild colorblindness forced Ishiguro to abandon his
30 aspirations of a career as an oil painter. Drawn to
computer and robot vision instead, he built a guide robot
for the blind as an undergraduate at the University of
Yamanashi. A fan of the android character Data from the
Star Trek franchise, he sees robots as the ideal vehicle
35 to understand more about ourselves.
To imitate human looks and behavior successfully,
Ishiguro combines robotics with cognitive science. In turn,
cognitive science research can use the robot to study
human perception, communication and other faculties.
40 This novel cross-fertilization is what Ishiguro describes
as android science. In a 2005 paper, he and his
collaborators explained it thus: "To make the android
humanlike, we must investigate human activity from the
standpoint of cognitive science, behavioral science and
45 neuroscience, and to evaluate human activity, we need
to implement processes that support it in the android."
One key strategy in Ishiguro's approach is to model
his artificial creations on real people. He began research
four years ago with his then four-year-old daughter,
50 casting a rudimentary android from her body, but its
mechanisms resulted in strange, unnatural motion.
Humanlike robots run the risk of compromising
people's comfort zones. Because the android's
appearance is very similar to that of a human, any subtle
55 differences in motion and responses will make it seem
strange. Repliee, though, is so lifelike that it has
overcome the creepiness factor, partly because of the
natural way it moves.
Ishiguro wants his next android, a male, to be as
60 authentic as possible. The model? Himself. The scientist
thinks having a robot clone could ease his busy schedule:
he could dispatch it to classes and meetings and then
teleconference through it. "My question has always been,
Why are we living, and what is human?" he says. An
65 Ishiguro made of circuitry and silicone might soon be
answering his own questions.
adapted from www.scientificamerican.com - May 2006
on many factors - how the energy is being used, where
it is being used, what energy sources are available,
which sources are most convenient and reliable, which
5 are easiest to use, what each costs, and the effects on
public safety, health, and the environment. Making smart
energy choices means understanding resources and their
relative costs and benefits.
Some energy sources have advantages for specific
10 uses or locations. For example, fuels from petroleum
are well suited for transportation because they pack a
lot of energy in a small space and are easily transported
and stored. Small hydroelectric installations are a good
solution for supplying power or mechanical energy close
15 to where it is used. Coal is widely used for power
generation in many fast-developing countries - including
China, India, and many others - because domestic
supplies are readily available.
Efficiency is an important factor in energy costs.
20 How efficiently can the energy be produced, delivered,
and used? How much energy value is lost in that process,
and how much ends up being transformed into useful
work? Industries that produce or use energy continually
look for ways to improve efficiency, since this is a key to
25 making their products more competitive.
The ideal energy source - cheap, plentiful, and
pollution-free - may prove unattainable in our lifetime,
but that is the ultimate goal. The energy industry is
continuing to improve its technologies and practices, to
30 produce and use energy more efficiently and cleanly.
Energy resources are often categorized as
renewable or nonrenewable.
Renewable energy resources are those that can be
replenished quickly - examples are solar power,
35 biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric, wind power, and
fast-reaction nuclear power. They supply about seven
percent of energy needs in the United States; the other
93 percent comes from nonrenewables. The two largest
categories of renewable energy now in use in the U.S.
40 are biomass - primarily wood wastes that are used by
the forest products industry to generate electricity and
heat - and hydroelectricity.
Nonrenewable energy resources include coal, oil,
natural gas, and uranium-235, which is used to fuel
45 slow-reaction nuclear power. Projections of how long a
nonrenewable energy resource will last depend on many
changeable factors. These include the growth rate of
consumption, and estimates of how much of the remaining
resources can be economically recovered. New exploration
50 and production technologies often increase the ability of
producers to locate and recover resources. World
reserves of fossil energy are projected to last for many
more decades - and, in the case of coal, for centuries.
In: http://www.classroom-energy.org/teachers/energy_tour/pg5.html
In the text above,
Your answers to questions 33 to 37 must be based
on the text below, which is entitled "Young, liberal
and in command":
Young, liberal and in command
Source: www.economist.co.uk
April 16, 2004 (Adapted)
On Thursday April 15th, the challengers won a
crucial battle in their bid to overturn South Korea's
conservative, elitist and business-driven political
system. . (1) the country's voters . (1.1) able to
choose their leaders freely since the late 1980s, many
of them, especially younger ones, still consider their
brand of democracy to be corrupt, outdated and unfair.
Many of the discontented admit . (2) enjoyed the
comforts that decades of market-friendly policies and
high growth have delivered. But they resent the . (3)
and . (3.1) dominance of giant family-controlled
business conglomerates, known as chaebol. Their
feelings towards the United States, a crucial ally, range
from ambivalent to hostile, and they would rather . (4)
with North Korean threats by placating its prickly regime
than by standing up to it. And now, they have convinced
mainstream voters to let them . (5) the country for the
next four years.
Analyze the following grammatical alternatives in order
to choose the appropriate one to fill in each of the
numbered gaps:
The hard cell
Thanks to politics, stem cell research in the United States is suffering. But not so in Sweden, which is poised to capture what could be the biggest new market to hit biotech in a decade.
By Stephan Herrera
February 13, 2003
New York, January 1, 2006:
Sweden announces that one of its biotechnology companies is the first in the world to enter clinical trials with a new drug that could cure Alzheimer's disease. Four years ago this type of research was all but stopped in the United States by political and ethical questions − which is ...61... Sweden now seems in the best position to capture a $25 billion market.
Any day now, the U.S. Congress is expected to pass a sweeping new law that could dramatically inhibit researchers from working with stem cells taken from human embryos. Such cells, which can be used to grow a whole host of new cells and organs, could fundamentally change the way we treat heretofore intractable maladies like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, cancer, stroke, liver failure, and heart disease. The only problem is that these cells by definition are derived from human embryos, many of which are cloned or come from unused fetuses collected at fertility clinics. The argument, from a certain segment of the American political spectrum, is that ...62... methods are morally wrong. They are ...63... a form of abortion or an activity that could eventually lead to human cloning.
Those working in stem cell research say the short-term effect of the legislation will be to further chill all forms of scientific inquiry and commercialization efforts in the field. Entrepreneurs and investors are already eschewing such research − in large part because of the additional uncertainty and risk that politics introduce.
Of the nearly 50 private stem cell companies in the United States, only a handful are still viable. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Sweden has avoided many of the political and ethical quagmires surrounding this type of research. It currently has 40 private stem cell companies, a number that's growing. Sweden's leading research universities have 32 percent of the world's stem cell inventory, close on the heels of the United States' 35 percent.
Sweden, say analysts, is now in the best position to
capture a worldwide market for drugs based on stem cell
therapies that could grow to $25 billion in the next three to five
years − nearly equal to the whole biotech industry at present.
This estimate doesn't even address the market for stem cells
capable of repairing damaged vital organs like the brain, heart,
and kidneys. If the United States offers an object lesson of what
can happen when scientific inquiry and investment capital fall victim to politics, Sweden and its leading stem cell startup,
NeuroNova, offer the opposite example. How odd that the
United States, which for generations has been the envy of the
world for its progressive views of science and commercialization,
should now have a biomedical climate chillier than a Swedish
winter.
One company feeling a lot of pain is StemCells, which at first glance seems to have it all: founding scientists include Stanford's Dr. Weissman and Fred Gage of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. An equally well-regarded expert in the treatment of Alzheimer's, Dr. Gage spent five years in Sweden as a researcher and now sits on a national committee on stem cell research there. The firm's chairman is Roger Perlmutter, Amgen's head of research.
Yet over the past two years, none of management's efforts to help investors and even critics reconsider the stem cell field have worked. At press time, the stock was thinly traded and sitting in the neighborhood of 50 cents. With less than $15 million in cash, the company likely won't exist at this time next year. (CEO Martin McGlynn, who joined the firm in January 2001, would not talk to Red Herring, despite repeated efforts.)
Some observers on Wall Street are asking, If StemCells can't make it, who can? Geron, the only other publicly held stem cell firm to speak of, is in a fix, too. The company's stock price is also moribund, at $3.85 per share. Thanks to some capital infusions a few years ago, when money came easy, Geron still has $40 million on hand, but by the end of next year, that too will likely be gone. Once a media darling, Geron focuses on diagnostic tests and drugs derived from stem cells, a strategy that's not going well. For the nine months ended last September, revenue fell 68 percent to $955,000 and net loss widened 18 percent to $26.7 million. The company's financials were also hit hard after it terminated an agreement with Pharmacia and acquired research technology from Lynx Therapeutics, which Geron bought in a desperate attempt to be seen as something more than just a stem cell company.
The situation is quite different, however, for Sweden's NeuroNova, which has 30 academic partners and a staff of 20. NeuroNova is working on ways to inject stem cells into the human brain to trigger a process called neurogenesis (the growth of new neural cells), which could combat diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and even schizophrenia.
If NeuroNova is the first to develop a drug capable of
treating one of several central nervous system disorders − by far
the most lucrative after heart disease products − it will have
done so not because it raised more money or got more media
buzz than the rest. It will have succeeded because the science
is solid, and academe, government, and the investment
community are supportive. Meanwhile, the United States will
look on with envy and wonder how it, a country known for its
entrepreneurial innovation, ever got so short-sighted.
(Adapted from
http://www.redherring.com/investor/2003/02/biotech021303.html)
The hard cell
Thanks to politics, stem cell research in the United States is suffering. But not so in Sweden, which is poised to capture what could be the biggest new market to hit biotech in a decade.
By Stephan Herrera
February 13, 2003
New York, January 1, 2006:
Sweden announces that one of its biotechnology companies is the first in the world to enter clinical trials with a new drug that could cure Alzheimer's disease. Four years ago this type of research was all but stopped in the United States by political and ethical questions − which is ...61... Sweden now seems in the best position to capture a $25 billion market.
Any day now, the U.S. Congress is expected to pass a sweeping new law that could dramatically inhibit researchers from working with stem cells taken from human embryos. Such cells, which can be used to grow a whole host of new cells and organs, could fundamentally change the way we treat heretofore intractable maladies like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, cancer, stroke, liver failure, and heart disease. The only problem is that these cells by definition are derived from human embryos, many of which are cloned or come from unused fetuses collected at fertility clinics. The argument, from a certain segment of the American political spectrum, is that ...62... methods are morally wrong. They are ...63... a form of abortion or an activity that could eventually lead to human cloning.
Those working in stem cell research say the short-term effect of the legislation will be to further chill all forms of scientific inquiry and commercialization efforts in the field. Entrepreneurs and investors are already eschewing such research − in large part because of the additional uncertainty and risk that politics introduce.
Of the nearly 50 private stem cell companies in the United States, only a handful are still viable. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Sweden has avoided many of the political and ethical quagmires surrounding this type of research. It currently has 40 private stem cell companies, a number that's growing. Sweden's leading research universities have 32 percent of the world's stem cell inventory, close on the heels of the United States' 35 percent.
Sweden, say analysts, is now in the best position to
capture a worldwide market for drugs based on stem cell
therapies that could grow to $25 billion in the next three to five
years − nearly equal to the whole biotech industry at present.
This estimate doesn't even address the market for stem cells
capable of repairing damaged vital organs like the brain, heart,
and kidneys. If the United States offers an object lesson of what
can happen when scientific inquiry and investment capital fall victim to politics, Sweden and its leading stem cell startup,
NeuroNova, offer the opposite example. How odd that the
United States, which for generations has been the envy of the
world for its progressive views of science and commercialization,
should now have a biomedical climate chillier than a Swedish
winter.
One company feeling a lot of pain is StemCells, which at first glance seems to have it all: founding scientists include Stanford's Dr. Weissman and Fred Gage of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. An equally well-regarded expert in the treatment of Alzheimer's, Dr. Gage spent five years in Sweden as a researcher and now sits on a national committee on stem cell research there. The firm's chairman is Roger Perlmutter, Amgen's head of research.
Yet over the past two years, none of management's efforts to help investors and even critics reconsider the stem cell field have worked. At press time, the stock was thinly traded and sitting in the neighborhood of 50 cents. With less than $15 million in cash, the company likely won't exist at this time next year. (CEO Martin McGlynn, who joined the firm in January 2001, would not talk to Red Herring, despite repeated efforts.)
Some observers on Wall Street are asking, If StemCells can't make it, who can? Geron, the only other publicly held stem cell firm to speak of, is in a fix, too. The company's stock price is also moribund, at $3.85 per share. Thanks to some capital infusions a few years ago, when money came easy, Geron still has $40 million on hand, but by the end of next year, that too will likely be gone. Once a media darling, Geron focuses on diagnostic tests and drugs derived from stem cells, a strategy that's not going well. For the nine months ended last September, revenue fell 68 percent to $955,000 and net loss widened 18 percent to $26.7 million. The company's financials were also hit hard after it terminated an agreement with Pharmacia and acquired research technology from Lynx Therapeutics, which Geron bought in a desperate attempt to be seen as something more than just a stem cell company.
The situation is quite different, however, for Sweden's NeuroNova, which has 30 academic partners and a staff of 20. NeuroNova is working on ways to inject stem cells into the human brain to trigger a process called neurogenesis (the growth of new neural cells), which could combat diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and even schizophrenia.
If NeuroNova is the first to develop a drug capable of
treating one of several central nervous system disorders − by far
the most lucrative after heart disease products − it will have
done so not because it raised more money or got more media
buzz than the rest. It will have succeeded because the science
is solid, and academe, government, and the investment
community are supportive. Meanwhile, the United States will
look on with envy and wonder how it, a country known for its
entrepreneurial innovation, ever got so short-sighted.
(Adapted from
http://www.redherring.com/investor/2003/02/biotech021303.html)
In the continuation of Text 3, choose the option that best completes it to answer the question.
we may find new models of education that can be used in _____________ parts of the world - rich and poor, urban and rural.
Conheça nossos planos