Questões de Inglês - Vocabulário | Vocabulary para Concurso

Text CB1A7 

    Whenever a global economic transformation takes place, a single city usually drives it forward. Ghent, in modern-day Belgium, was at the core of the burgeoning global wool trade in the 13th century. The first initial public offering took place in Amsterdam in 1602. London was the financial centre of the first wave of globalisation during the 19th century. Today the city is San Francisco. 

    California’s commercial capital has no serious rival in generative artificial intelligence (AI), a breakthrough technology that has caused a bull market in American stocks and which, many economists hope, will power a global productivity surge. Almost all big AI start-up companies are based in the Bay Area, which comprises the city of San Francisco and Silicon Valley (largely based in Santa Clara county, to the south). OpenAI is there, of course; so are Anthropic, Databricks and Scale AI. Tech giants, including Meta and Microsoft, are also spending big on AI in San Francisco. According to Brookings Metro, a think tank, last year San Francisco accounted for close to a tenth of generative AI job postings in America, more than any other city of the country. New York, with four times as many residents, was second. 

Internet: <www.economist.com> (adapted). 

O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder às questões de 11 a 22.

Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata

(1º§) The World Heritage property includes three different archaeological areas: the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum together with the Villa of the Mysteries (to the west of Pompeii) and the Villa of the Papyri (to the west of Herculaneum), and the Villa A (Villa of Poppaea) and Villa B (Villa of Lucius Crassius Tertius) in Torre Annunziata. The vast expanse of the commercial town of Pompeii contrasts with the smaller but better-preserved remains of the smaller Herculaneum, while Villa A in Torre Annunziata gives a vivid impression of the opulent lifestyle enjoyed by the wealthier citizens of the early Roman Empire.

(2º§) When Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, it engulfed the two flourishing Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as the many wealthy countryside villas in the area. Pompeii was buried largely by a thick layer of volcanic ash and lapilli and Herculaneum disappeared under pyroclastic surges and flows. These sites have been progressively excavated and made accessible to the public since the mid-18th century. However, in the case of Herculaneum large areas of the ancient town still lie under the modern town and have only been explored and surveyed by the network of 18th-century tunnels that drew the attention of Grand Tour visitors, the basis still today for visiting the Herculaneum's underground ancient theatre. These areas are mostly not currently included in the World Heritage property.

(3º§) Pompeii, with its well-preserved buildings in an excavated area of 44 ha, is the only archaeological site in the world that provides a complete picture of an ancient Roman city. The main forum is flanked by a number of imposing public buildings, such as the Capitolium, the Basilica and temples and within the city there are also many public bath complexes, two theatres and an amphitheatre.

(4º§) In Herculaneum several impressive public buildings are well preserved, including a spacious palaestra accessed through a monumental gateway, two sets of public baths, one of which (Central Thermae) is monumental and vividly decorated, the College of the Priests of Augustus, and a theatre of standard form. The Villa of the Papyri, outside the city walls, is an opulent establishment. The town is also noteworthy for the completeness of its shops, still containing equipment such as enormous wine jars.

(5º§) Herculaneum's urban districts and seafront display a higher level of preservation with noteworthy conservation of upper floors thanks to the pyroclastic material that buried the town. Organic matter was often carbonized by the high temperatures and exceptionally preserved finds include everyday objects such as foodstuffs, architectural elements and wooden furniture.

(6º§) Both Pompeii and Herculaneum are renowned for their remarkable series of residential and commercial buildings, built along well-paved streets. The earliest is the atrium house, entirely inward-looking with a courtyard at its centre: the House of the Surgeon at Pompeii is a good example. Under Hellenistic influences, this type of house was enlarged and decorated with columns and arcades and equipped with large representative rooms. In its highest form, this type of Roman house, known from towns all over the Empire, developed into a veritable mansion, richly decorated and with many rooms, of which the House of the Faun and the House of the Chaste Lovers are outstanding examples.

(7º§) The suburban villas across the Vesuvian area are perhaps even more exceptional in terms of the scale of their buildings and grounds, as well as their lavish decorations. The Villa of the Mysteries is an enormous residence just outside Pompeii's city walls, developed from a modest house built in the 3rd century BC, named from the remarkable wall paintings in the triclinium, which depict the initiation rites ('mysteries') of the cult of Dionysus.

(8º§) The two villas in Torre Annunziata are both extraordinary examples of suburban buildings in the countryside of Pompeii. The villa A, so-called "of Poppaea", is a huge maritime residence built in the middle of the 1st century BCE, enlarged during the Imperial period and under restoration at the moment of the eruption. It is especially well known for its magnificent and well-preserved wall paintings, one of the most important examples of Roman painting with their superb illusionistic frescos of doors, colonnades and garden views. On the other hand, villa B is an excellent example of villa rustica provided with rooms and spaces designated for market activities such as storage of amphoras and trading of locally produced foodstuffs, especially wine.

(9º§) There were many changes to these buildings over time in response to changing circumstances of the owners; these include repairs and adjustments that were a response to the seismic events that led up to the AD 79 eruption and reflect a community living with changing environmental and economic conditions.

(10º§) A special feature of Pompeii is the wealth of graffiti on its walls. An election was imminent at the time of the eruption, and there are many political slogans scrawled on walls, as well as others of a more personal nature, often defamatory. At Herculaneum, the volcanic deposits preserved hundreds of wax tablets, some of which conserve legal documents, and more than 1,800 papyri scrolls containing Greek philosophical texts were found at the Villa of the Papyri.

(11º§) The diverse range of literary sources available in Pompeii and Herculaneum provides a picture of the final decades of these ancient cities and the image of socially complex and dynamic communities, representing exceptional evidence of typical ways of life in Roman society in the first century AD and the importance of texts in political and private life.

(12º§) Other important sources of archaeological evidence are the human remains of those who died in the eruption. Pompeii witnessed an early archaeological experiment when plaster was poured into voids found in the volcanic material and which allowed casts to be made of the forms of the human and animal victims and other organic material. At Herculaneum, on the other hand, about 300 skeletons were discovered along the ancient shoreline. The study of these significant samples of victims from the towns provides insight into their health, lifestyles and death and a chance to compare the two data sets. The casts themselves are important resources as they contain both skeletal remains and evidence of 19th- and 20th-century archaeological practice.

(13º§) Another important legacy of the twentieth century was the presentation of Herculaneum to the public as an 'open-air museum', perhaps Europe's first, with buildings reconstructed based on archaeological evidence and displays of original objects within the archaeological site. This concept of 'open-air museum' had already been adopted in some buildings in Pompeii, as a medium to communicate the meaning of ancient spaces, at the end of the 19th century.

(14º§) The impressive remains of the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and their associated villas, destroyed and yet preserved by Mount Vesuvius, provide a complete and vivid picture of society and daily life at a specific moment in the past that is unparalleled elsewhere. The rediscovery and history of these places as archaeological sites has captured the collective imagination century after century, shaping archaeological, art historical, conservation and interpretation practices in Europe and beyond.

(adapted) https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/829/

Sorry for the delayed response

01 Have ___ (1) e-mail you’ve been meaning (but not really) to reply to? Read below for some

02 reasons why your response has been delayed:

03 • I totally meant to respond to this earlier, but I didn’t know ___ (2) answer to your question

04 and I kept not caring enough to ask anyone. Now ___ (3) weird amount of time has passed,

05 so I’m going to loop Laura (cc’d) into this e-mail thread to see if she can handle this. Laura?

06 • Sorry for ___ (4) delay! I put off answering your e-mail until I had ___ (5) even more tedious

07 task that I wanted to avoid. Thanks!

08 • So sorry that I’m just getting to this now. There were six other people on this e-mail thread

09 and I was hoping that one of them would answer your question and I could just go on living

10 my life.

(Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/CsHm2YnteFa/ – text especially adapted for this test).

Instruction: answer questions 31 to 40 based on the following text. The highlights throughout the text are cited in the questions.

He donated blood and saved the lives of 2.4 million babies

01 Most people get a gold watch when they retire. James Harrison deserves so much more than

02 that. Known as the “Man With the Golden Arm,” Harrison has donated blood nearly every week

03 for 60 years, and after all those donations, the 81-year-old Australian man “retired” Friday.

04 According to the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, he has helped save the lives of more than

05 2.4 million Australian babies because his blood has unique, disease-fighting antibodies.

06 Harrison’s antibodies have been used to develop an injection called Anti-D, which helps

07 fight against rhesus disease. This disease is a condition where a pregnant woman has rhesus-

08 negative blood (RhD negative) and the baby in her womb has rhesus-positive blood (RhD

09 positive), inherited from its father. If the mother has been sensitized to rhesus-positive blood,

10 usually during a previous pregnancy with a rhesus-positive baby, she may produce antibodies

11 that destroy the baby’s “foreign” blood cells. In the worst cases, it can result in brain damage,

12 or death, for the babies.

13 Harrison’s remarkable gift of giving started when he had major chest surgery when he was

14 just 14. Blood donations saved his life, so he pledged to become a blood donor. A few years

15 later, doctors discovered his blood contained the antibody which could be used to create Anti-D

16 injections, so he switched over to making blood plasma donations to help as many people as

17 possible. Doctors aren’t exactly sure why Harrison has this rare blood type, but they think it

18 might be from the transfusions he received when he was 14, after his surgery. He’s one of no

19 more than 50 people in Australia known to have the antibodies, according to the blood service.

20 “In Australia, up until about 1967, there were literally thousands of babies dying each year,

21 doctors didn’t know why, and it was awful.” Jemma Falkenmire, of the Australian Red Cross

22 Blood Service, told CNN. “Australia was one of the first countries to discover a blood donor with

23 this antibody, so it was quite revolutionary at the time.”

24 The blood service estimates Harrison saved more than two million lives, and for that, he is

25 considered a national hero in Australia. He’s won numerous awards for his generosity, including

26 the Medal of the Order of Australia, one of the country’s most prestigious honors. Now that

27 Harrison has given his last blood donation (in Australia you can’t donate blood past the age of

28 81), Falkenmire and others hope people with similar antibodies in their blood will step up and

29 donate.

(Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/11/health/james-harrison-blood-donor-retires-trnd/index.html – text especially adapted for this test).

Read the Text I and answer the five questions that follow it.

Text I

Correspondence

Human genome editing: potential seeds of conflict

Recently, The Lancet published an important declaration regarding the necessity of regulating and legislating for human genome editing. We agree with their opinions that the human genome editing technology and resulting research can have both positive and negative effects on human society. The use of genome editing for research and commercial purposes has sparked debates in both biological and political realms. However, most of them have mainly focused on the effects of human genome editing on the patients themselves, and little attention has been paid to their offspring.

Several films, such as Gattaca and Gundam SEED, have addressed the conflicts that arise from human genome editing. Such conflicts not only exist within the generation who have experienced editing but are also transmitted to their offspring. For example, in these films, the offspring of people without genome editing felt a sense of unfairness regarding the inferiority of their physical (or other non-edited domains) status, whereas the offspring of people with genome editing grew up in a biased, discriminated against, and ostracized environment. They could have lived in peace with a strong and well regulated government; however, when the tenuous grip of government weakens, jealousy and resentment can lead to ruins. Although these scenes still exist in films, they might become increasingly plausible in decades to come. Using the concept of preparedness, access, countermeasures, tools, and trust, we should prepare legitimate human genome editing, establish access to deal with imminent or potential discrimination, develop countermeasures and tools for prevention and resolution of conflict, and entrust future generations with the responsibility to use them wisely.

Bing-Yan Zeng, Ping-Tao Tseng, *Chih-Sung Liang

Adapted from: www.thelancet.com, vol. 401, June 24, 2023 athttps://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2823%2901084-X