READ THE FOLLOWING TEXT AND CHOOSE THE OPTION WHICH BEST COMPLETES EACH QUESTION ACCORDING TO IT:

                 Technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed

      The battle between men and machines goes back centuries. Are they taking our jobs? Or are they easing our workload? A study by economists at the consultancy Deloitte seeks to shed new light on the relationship between jobs and the rise of technology by searching through census data for England and Wales going back to 1871.

      Their conclusion is that, rather than destroying jobs, technology has been a “great job-creating machine”. Findings by Deloitte such as rise in bar staff since the 1950s or a surge in the number of hairdressers this century suggest to the authors that technology has increased spending power, therefore creating new demand and new jobs. Their study argues that the debate has been twisted towards the job-destroying effects of technological change, which are more easily observed than its creative aspects.

      Going back over past figures paints a more balanced picture, say authors Ian Stewart and Alex Cole. “The dominant trend is of contracting employment in agriculture and manufacturing being more than balanced by rapid growth in the caring, creative, technology and business services sectors,” they write. “Machines will take on more repetitive and laborious tasks, but they seem no closer to eliminating the need for human labor than at any time in the last 150 years.” 

      According to the study, hard, dangerous and dull jobs have declined. In some sectors, technology has quite clearly cost jobs, but they question whether they are really jobs we would want to hold on to. Technology directly substitutes human muscle power and, in so doing, raises productivity and shrinks employment. “In the UK the first sector to feel this effect on any scale was agriculture,” says the study. 

      The study also found out that ‘caring’ jobs have increased. The report cites a “profound shift”, with labor switching from its historic role, as a source of raw power, to the care, education and provision of services to others.

Technological progress has cut the prices of essentials, such as food, and the price of bigger household items such as TVs and kitchen appliances, notes Stewart. That leaves more money to spend on leisure, and creates new demand and new jobs, which may explain the big rise in bar staff, he adds. “_______ the decline in the traditional pub, census data shows that the number of people employed in bars rose fourfold between 1951 and 2011,” the report says.

      The Deloitte economists believe that rising incomes have allowed consumers to spend more on personal services, such as grooming. That in turn has driven employment of hairdressers. So, while in 1871 there was one hairdresser or barber for every 1,793 citizens of England and Wales; today there is one for every 287 people.

                                  (Adapted from: https://goo.gl/7V5vuw. Access: 02/02/2018.)

INSTRUCTIONS – Read the following text carefully and then choose the correct alternatives that answer the questions.

SOUTHERN HUMPBACK WHALE

INTRODUCTION

During the Australian winter, these ocean leviathans journey 3,100 miles north from their Antarctic feeding grounds to the warm tropical waters near Australia´s Whitsunday Islands. At the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, the 40-ton female humpbacks give birth to calves measuring 14 feet long and weighing over one ton. The Whitsundays´ sheltered bays keep the calves warm and safe from predators. During the next few months, the whales rest, sing, play and mate. The calves nurse, but the one thing the adult whales don´t do while in the tropical seas is eat. By winter´s end, adults are famished, and they head south.

This life cycle is repeated throughout the Southern Hemisphere: one group migrates along the western coast of Australia, others to southern Africa and South America.

SIGHT UNSEEN

Underneath the blue Australian ocean, film crews captured the elegant rituals of southern humpbacks as they swim, sing, nurse, and play. A mother humpback whale supported her young calf from underneath, so it could breathe easier near the surface. Calves drink 130 gallons of milk a day! While baby grows fat, the mother starves for five months, her blubber stores depleting daily. Unlike the cold Antarctic waters, the seas here don´t grow rich with krill that humpbacks filer through their baleen plates. But she provides her calf with rich milk that contains some of the highest fat content of any mammal´s milk – 45 percent.

UNIQUE BEHAVIOR

Humpback males sing a unique melody, full of high-pitched chirps and whistles interspersed with deeper gurgles and moans. Each male repeats his song for hours, which likely plays a role in courtship. The song may change over time, with males singing a modified melody in consecutive years.

Whale-watching tours take advantage of the humpback´s playful and curious nature. They often approach boats and put on quite a show. As whales journey south along the eastern coast of Australia, many stop in sheltered Platypus Bay around Fraser Island – a World Heritage Site – where they display the charismatic behaviors loved by whale-watchers. The crystal blue waters give a perfect window to watch the whales twist, roll and swim upside down, emerging to breathe, slap their tails or pectoral fins on the water´s surface. Breaching whales jump nearly all the way out of the water. “Spyhopping” means their head emerges, and they peer at the surroundings with their large eyes.

STATUS/CONSERVATION

Commercial hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries decimated most whale species. Because they migrate close to shore and swim slowly, humpbacks became a popular whalers´ target, and were hunted down to a few hundred animals in the Southern Hemisphere. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) implemented a moratorium on harvesting all species starting in 1986, and in 1994, declared Antarctica´s Southern Ocean a whale sanctuary. Now numbering over 10,000 in the Southern Hemisphere, humpbacks have shown incredible resilience, but their numbers still remain a fraction of their historic abundance. Recovery of regional populations varies, and the World Conservation Union (IUCN) lists the humpback as vulnerable.

Humpbacks also have two Northern Hemisphere populations that number around 11,500 in the North Atlantic and 6,000 in the North Pacific. Northern humpbacks are genetically differentiated from the Southern Hemisphere population, and have dark bellies, while the southern humpbacks have all-white bellies. They don´t interbreed, because while the southern populations are mating and calving in the warm tropical seas, northern populations are near the polar Arctic.

OUTLOOK

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) allows hunting by indigenous cultures but bans hunting of humpback whales. Japan has long engaged in IWC-sanctioned “scientific whaling” of minke and other whales, and plans to start hunting humpbacks in 2007. “We are all concerned about Japan´s plans to add this species to the scientific whaling quota”, says Dr. Scott Baker, a renowned cetacean conservation biologist. Iceland also just started commercial whaling in 2006.

Some Asian countries allow the sale of whale meat from incidental bycatch, and a whale´s value of $100,000 provides incentive for illegal harvest. Baker and colleagues used DNA to show that the whale meat being sold in South Korean shops did not match that reported to the IWC. Illegal harvest and sale of whale meat is occurring.

Australia and New Zealand have petitioned the IWC to create a South Pacific Sanctuary adjoining the Southern Ocean Sanctuary where whaling would be illegal. Thus far, it has not been approved by IWC.

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/planet-earth/animals/animals.html

Read the article and answer the following three questions.

Trump aide cites 'massacre' that never occurred to defend immigrant ban

A Trump administration aide corrected herself on Friday after a wave of criticism for referencing a 2011 "massacre" in Kentucky that never occurred to defend President Donald Trump's temporary ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.

During an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday, White House counselor and spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway said Trump's recent executive order was justified in part because of the "Bowling Green massacre" of 2011, which never took place.

Conway corrected herself on Friday in a post on Twitter, saying: "Honest mistakes abound."

The phrase "Bowling Green massacre" was the top trending topic on Twitter on Friday morning as thousands of social media users mocked Conway's error.

On television late on Thursday, Conway spoke about two Iraqis who came to the United States and were radicalized, adding, erroneously, "and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre."

She then said: "Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered."

In fact, in May 2011, two Iraqi men were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and charged with attempting to send weapons and money to al Qaeda in Iraq. They admitted to using improvised explosive devices against U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life in prison and to 40 years in prison, respectively. Neither was charged with plotting attacks within the United States, prosecutors said.

Conway said on Twitter that she meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists" on the show. She also slammed a network reporter for criticizing her.

"NBC reporter texted me at 632am re:a diff story; never asked what I meant on @Hardball b4 slamming me on @TODAYshow Not cool, not journalism," Conway (@KellyannePolls) wrote.

TEXT II

Like Castles In An Aquarium, Offshore Drilling Platforms Are Sprawling With Residents

Just beneath the ocean’s surface, there’s an unseen world that most people will never have the opportunity to witness firsthand. A place where nature and mankind have struck a balance – a mutual respect, a friendship of sorts.

Offshore drilling platforms have become home to vast communities of sea life. Florid carpets of coral encrust their massive pylons, along with sponge, sea urchins, crabs, and snails. Swimming in the sanctuary of their enormous risers are schools of rockfish, bright orange garibaldi and angel fish. And splashing about on the surface is the occasional sea lion.

Now scientists have confirmed what some had suspected all along. Most of the sea life was actually created at the rig rather than having come from other parts of the ocean and settled there, according to the National Academy of Sciences. And fish that would otherwise perish in vast expanses of open ocean, settle within the safety of the structures.

Like castles in an aquarium, offshore platforms are sprawling with underwater residents. Scientists say these are the richest marine ecosystems on the entire planet. They are even more productive than coral reefs and estuaries, according to marine biologists.

The first thing anyone – trained scientist or casual recreational diver – notices around a rig is the big fish -- lots of them, say marine researchers and divers, alike.

For a decade and a half, researchers used submersibles to survey fish at 16 different platforms. When the researchers tabulated the data, they were surprised to discover that, by one standard, California’s oil rigs are among the most productive marine habitats ever recorded.

At the end of their production, however, the offshore rigs must be decommissioned. Scientific insight is adding momentum to efforts to convert some of these rigs into artificial reefs […].

(From http://thesurge.com/stories/like-castles-aquarium-offshore-drilling-platformssprawling-residents. Accessed July 18th, 2017)

TEXT I

Breaking the habit: From oiloholics to e-totallers

What changes in driving habits and improved batteries might do to oil demand

It has been a bad couple of years for those hoping for the death of driving. In America, where cars are an important part of the national psyche, a decade ago people had suddenly started to drive less, which had not happened since the oil shocks of the 1970s. Academics started to talk excitedly about “peak driving”, offering explanations such as urbanisation, ageing baby-boomers, car-shy millennials, ride-sharing apps such as Uber and even the distraction of Facebook.

Yet the causes may have been more prosaic: a combination of higher petrol prices and lower incomes in the wake of the 2008-09 financial crisis. Since the drop in oil prices in 2014, and a recovery in employment, the number of vehicle-miles travelled has rebounded, and sales of trucks and SUVs, which are less fuel-efficient than cars, have hit record highs.

This sensitivity to prices and incomes is important for global oil demand. More than half the world’s oil is used for transport, and of that, 46% goes into passenger cars. But the response to lower prices has been partially offset by dramatic improvements in fuel efficiency in America and elsewhere, thanks to standards like America’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), the EU’s rules on CO₂ emissions and those in place in China since 2012.

The IEA says that such measures cut oil consumption in 2015 by a whopping 2.3m b/d. This is particularly impressive because interest in fuel efficiency usually wanes when prices are low. If best practice were applied to all the world’s vehicles, the savings would be 4.3m b/d, roughly equivalent to the crude output of Canada. This helps explain why some forecasters think demand for petrol may peak within the next 10-15 years even if the world’s vehicle fleet keeps growing.

Occo Roelofsen of McKinsey, a consultancy, goes further. He reckons that thanks to the decline in the use of oil in light vehicles, total consumption of liquid fuels will begin to fall within a decade, and that in the next few decades driving will be shaken up by electric vehicles (EVs), self-driving cars and car-sharing. […]

(Dated Nov 24th, 2016. From https://www.economist.com/news/specialreport/21710635-what-changes-driving-habits-and-improved-batteries-might-dooil-demand-coming. Accessed July 18th, 2017)

Read the news below and answer the following five questions:

THE INNOVATORS OFFERING EXPATS CHEAPER SCHOOLS

A few years ago, competition for places in Dubai’s best international schools was so intense that British expat Jemma Schilbach felt she had to get her two children on the waiting lists for her preferred schools before they were even out of nappies.

Work ended up taking the family away from Dubai for a couple of years. When they returned in 2014, they were relieved to discover there were plenty more schools to choose from, but there was another issue: cost.

Both Schilbach and her husband, who’d previously worked in jobs where companies paid for children’s schooling, were now self-employed, and would need to pay for their children’s education themselves.

Schilbach, 43, who now runs expat community website BritishMums.com, enrolled both her children at Foremarke Dubai, which is affiliated with the UK independent school Repton.

She was impressed with the small class sizes and Foremarke’s reputation, but with tuition fees there starting at 65,000 AED ($18,000) a year, it meant the family had to be more careful about spending to ensure they had the money to send their children, aged five and seven, to the school.

“We economize on other costs during the year,” says Schilbach, adding that ordering some household items from the UK and closely watching what the family spends on weekends have helped to save pennies. “In our opinion, the money is better spent on educating our children to a high standard.”

(Fonte: bbc.com)

The Operations Function

Although somewhat ‘invisible’ to the marketplace the operations function in a typical company accounts for well over half the employment and well over half the physical assets. That, in itself, makes the operations function important. In a company’s organization chart, operations often enjoys parity with the other major business functions: marketing, sales, product engineering, finance control (accounting), and human resources (personnel, labor relations). Sometimes, the operations function is organized as a single entity which stretches out across the entire company, but more often it is embedded in the district, typically product-defined divisions into which most major companies are organized.

In many service businesses, the operations function is typically more visible. Service businesses are often organized into many branches, often with geographic responsibilities – field offices, retail outlets. In such tiers of the organization, operations are paramount.

The operations function itself is, often divided 

.................two major groupings .................tasks:

line management and support services. Line management generally refers.................those managers directly concerned................the manufacture of the product or the delivery of the service. They are the ones who are typically close enough to the product or service that they can ‘touch’ it. Line management supervises the hourly, blue-collar workforce. In a manufacturing company, line management frequently extends to the stockroom (where material, parts, and semi-finished products – termed ‘work-in-process inventory – are stored), materials handling, the tool room, maintenance, the warehouse (where finished goods are stored), and distribution, as well as the so-called ‘factory floor’. In a service operation, what is considered line management can broaden considerably. Often, order-taking roles, in addition to orderfilling roles, are supervised by service line managers.

Support services for line management’s operations can be numerous. Within a manufacturing environment, support services carry titles such as quality control, production planning and scheduling, purchasing, inventory control, production control (which determines the status of jobs in the factory and what to do about jobs that may have fallen behind schedule), industrial engineering (which is work methods oriented), manufacturing engineering (which is hardware-oriented), on-going product engineering, and field service. In a service environment, some of the same roles are played but sometimes under vastly different names.

Thus, the managers for whom operational issues are central can hold a variety of titles. In manufacturing, the titles can range from vice-president – manufacturing, works manager, plant manager, and similar titles at the top of the hierarchy, through such titles as manufacturing or production manager, general superintendent, department manager, materials manager, director of quality control, and down to general foreman or foreman. Within service businesses, ‘operations manager’ is sometimes used but frequently the title is more general – business manager, branch manager, retail manager, and so on.

SCHMENNER, Roger W. Production/Operations Management. 5th Edition. Prentice-Hall, 1993.

The Pros and Cons of Nuclear Power

Since the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011, a debate has been raging (1) the future of atomic energy. Consequently, the safety risks have been well publicized in the global media. But do the risks outweigh the damage that could be done to the planet because of our ongoing addiction to fossil fuels?

Even environmentalists don’t have the answer. They are split over nuclear (2) , and its pros and cons. Some say it is neither safe nor economical because it produces potentially (3) radioactive waste, and reactors are so costly to build. However, others believe nuclear energy is a necessary evil. They say we should continue using it until (4) energy sources, like wind turbines and solar panels, can meet global demand. Supporters also argue that nuclear energy helps cut down on carbon emissions from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, which are linked to global warming and pollute the environment. They say this is because nuclear reactors produce a tiny fraction of the carbon dioxide generated by burning coal.

But perhaps the biggest hurdle for atomic energy to overcome is its image problem. Despite industry claims of a strong safety record, critics remain unconvinced because each reactor annually produces up to 30 tons of nuclear waste, which can continue to be radioactive and hazardous for thousands of years. Furthermore, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 left the public with vivid images of the impact of a nuclear meltdown, including deformed babies, mutated vegetables, and abandoned towns.

While nuclear reactors may continue to be installed in some countries for decades to come, after Fukushima others have decided to rethink their energy policies. For example, the German government has revealed plans for a “green” renewable energy plan, even though it has relied on nuclear power for up to 23 percent of its consumption in the past. It has been announced that all seventeen nuclear power plants would be phased out by 2022. The policy will also promote energy-saving measures encouraging people to insulate their homes, recycle, and reduce waste. Experts argue it could be a risky strategy because Germany doesn’t have natural gas or oil supplies, and coal supplies have been depleted.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, there is just one nuclear plant at Angra dos Reis. Nuclear power represents only three per cent of Brazil’s energy production. After sharp oil price rises in the 1970s, the country’s leaders anticipated future energy supply problems. So they concentrated on developing alternative energy sources including biofuel, hydroelectric schemes, and wind power. 

This approach seems to be working because by May 2012 plans to build more nuclear reactors were shelved by Brazilian officials. The move was welcomed by environmental lobby groups, which had feared a potential ecological catastrophe in case of an accident. If a big country like Brazil, which is the tenth largest energy consumer in the world, can survive and improve its economy without much nuclear power, maybe others can do so, too.