Questões de Inglês - UFMG 2004 | Gabarito e resoluções

(UFMG -2004) Why is the South Pole colder than the North Pole? Robert Bindschadler, a senior fellow and glaciologist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, explains. Both polar regions of the earth are cold, primarily because they receive far less solar radiation than the tropics and mid-latitudes do. At either pole the sun never rises more than 23.5 degrees above the horizon and both locations experience six months of continuous darkness. Moreover, most of the sunlight that does shine on the polar regions is reflected by the bright white surface. What makes the South Pole so much colder than the North Pole is that it sits on top of a very thick ice sheet, which 1itself sits on a continent. The surface of the ice sheet at the South Pole is more than 9,000 feet in elevation - more than a mile and a half above sea level. Antarctica is by far the highest continent on the earth. In comparison, the North Pole rests in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, where the surface of floating ice rides only a foot or so above the surrounding sea. The Arctic Ocean also acts as an effective heat reservoir, warming the cold atmosphere in the winter and drawing heat from the atmosphere in the summer. http://www.sciam.com The word itself (ref. 1) refers to

(UFMG - 2004) TEXTO PARA A PRXIMA QUESTO: Dispatches from the Vanishing World 50 acres of tropical rainforest are said to be disappearing every minute. Millions of species of animals and plants around the world are going extinct at an ever-accelerating rate, many of them before they can even be identified or their existence is even known. (This particularly unfortunate type of extinction is known as Sentinelan extinction.) 2000 of the worlds 6000 remaining languages have less than 12 speakers and will be lost within this generation. The worlds cultural and biological diversity is under assault as never before in recorded history. What is the cause of the greatest extinction event in the last ten thousand years? Not a meteor strike or a volcanic eruption, or the advance or retraction of an ice sheet, but our very success as a species. Human population growth and the spread of modern culture are 1doing in the planet. Rapidly multiplying local people need land and its resources - wood for fuel, water, wild animals to eat, gold and diamonds and other minerals for income. Dispatches from the Vanishing World is a forum for documenting and raising consciousness about the worlds fast-disappearing biological and cultural diversity. It provides first-hand, in-depth reporting from the last relatively pristine places on earth, identifies who and what is destroying them, and who is engaged in the heroic and often life-threatening struggle to save them. It provides foundations involved in environmental or cultural preservation with two services: 1) a full, independent assessment of their program or cause, and 2) publicity by adapting the assessment for publication in one of the top American magazines or as a book. This is a readers website. The Dispatches will be long and thorough, because often these places where species and/or cultures are down to the wire are remote and hard to get to and dangerous to move around in, and this may be the only detailed treatment they get. http://www.dispatchesfromthevanishingworld.com/index.html The expression doing in (ref. 1) means

(UFMG - 2002) TEXTO PARA A PRXIMA QUESTO: T R E N D S After Some Sleepy Years, Yo-yos Are Back Up LIKE INFLUENZA, 1THE YO-YO rage seems 2to break out, inexplicably and virulently, every decade or so. 3The current craze began in Australia in 1995 before leaping to Japan (where 45,000 players competed in this years nationals). U.S. teachers have been confiscating them in record numbers since spring. In 4the latest incarnation, the junk-drawer toy has evolved into a giddily intricate machine. Industry leader Duncan will soon add a clutch model to match Yomegas popular Brain, which yanks itself up. Champs prefer the faster-spinning, longer sleeping transaxles. Got the bug bad? Try 5the SB-2, fashioned from aircraft aluminum in cool colors. Cost: $100 a pop. Newsweek, November 18, 1998. p. 4. GLOSSARY: Craze: modismo Rage: furor The expression TO BREAK OUT (ref. 2) means