Questões de Inglês

Welcome to Oxford


Many periods of English history are impressively
documented in Oxford’s streets, houses, colleges and chapels.
Within one square mile alone, the city has more than 900
buildings of architectural or historical interest. For the visitor
this presents a challenge — there is no single building that
dominates Oxford, no famous fortress or huge cathedral that
will give you a short-cut view of the city. Even Oxford’s
famous University is spread amidst a tangle of 35 different
colleges and halls in various parts of the city centre, side by
side with shops and offices. Nor does Oxford flaunt its
treasures; behind department stores lurk grand Palladian
doorways or half-hidden crannies of medieval architecture. The
entrance to a college may me tucked down a narrow alleyway,
and even then it is unlikely to be signposted.

H. Cory. Advanced writing with English in use: CAE.

Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 135 (adapted).


Judge the following items according to the text.

The preposition "amidst" (l.8) can be synonymous with among.

A resposta correta é:

House G.O.P. Leaders Agree to Extension of Payroll Tax Cut

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: December 22, 2011

WASHINGTON -Under a deal reached between House and Senate leaders, the House will now approve as early as Friday the two-month extension of a payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits approved by the Senate last Saturday, and the Senate will appoint members of a House-Senate conference committee to negotiate legislation to extend both benefits through 2012.
House Republicans -. who rejected an almost identical deal on Tuesday -collapsed under the political rubble that has accumulated over the week, much of it from their own party, worried that the blockade would do serious damage to their appeal to voters.
The House speaker, John A. Boehner, announced the decision over the phone to members on Thursday, and did not permit the usual back and forth that is common on such calls, enraging many of them.
After his conversation with lawmakers, the speaker conceded to reporters that it might not have been "politically the smartest thing in the world" for House Republicans to put themselves between a tax cut and the 160 million American workers who would benefit from it, and to allow President Obama and Congressional Democrats to seize the momentum on the issue.
The agreement ended a partisan fight that threatened to keep Congress and Mr. Obama in town through Christmas and was just the latest of the bitter struggles over fiscal policy involving House conservatives, the president and the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Under the deal, the employee"s share of the Social Security payroll tax will stay at the current level, 4.2 percent of wages, through Feb. 29. In the absence of Congressional action, it would revert to the usual 6.2 percent next month. The government will also continue paying unemployment insurance benefits under current policy through February. Without Congressional action, many of the long-term unemployed would begin losing benefits next month.
In addition, under the agreement, Medicare will continue paying doctors at current rates for two months, averting a 27 percent cut that would otherwise occur on Jan. 1.
The new deal makes minor adjustments to make it easier for small businesses to cope with the tax changes and prevents manipulation of an employee"s pay should the tax cut extension fail to go beyond two months.
Mr. Obama, who has reaped political benefits from the standoff, welcomed the outcome.
"This is good news, just in time for the holidays," he said in a statement. "This is the right thing [VERB 1] to strengthen our families, grow our economy, and create new jobs. This is real money that will [VERB 2] a real difference in people"s lives."

(Adapted from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/us/politics/senate-republican-leader-suggests-a-payroll-tax-deal.html?_r=1&nl=
todays hea dlines & emc=tha2&pagewanted=all)



The correct verb forms of VERB 1 and VERB 2 in the last paragraph are

a) to do - do
b) to make - make
c) to make - do.
d) do - to make.
e) to do - make.

A resposta correta é:

Welcome to Oxford


Many periods of English history are impressively
documented in Oxford’s streets, houses, colleges and chapels.
Within one square mile alone, the city has more than 900
buildings of architectural or historical interest. For the visitor
this presents a challenge — there is no single building that
dominates Oxford, no famous fortress or huge cathedral that
will give you a short-cut view of the city. Even Oxford’s
famous University is spread amidst a tangle of 35 different
colleges and halls in various parts of the city centre, side by
side with shops and offices. Nor does Oxford flaunt its
treasures; behind department stores lurk grand Palladian
doorways or half-hidden crannies of medieval architecture. The
entrance to a college may me tucked down a narrow alleyway,
and even then it is unlikely to be signposted.

H. Cory. Advanced writing with English in use: CAE.

Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 135 (adapted).


Judge the following items according to the text.

The word "tangle" (l.8) can be correctly replaced by line.

A resposta correta é:

Welcome to Oxford


Many periods of English history are impressively
documented in Oxford’s streets, houses, colleges and chapels.
Within one square mile alone, the city has more than 900
buildings of architectural or historical interest. For the visitor
this presents a challenge — there is no single building that
dominates Oxford, no famous fortress or huge cathedral that
will give you a short-cut view of the city. Even Oxford’s
famous University is spread amidst a tangle of 35 different
colleges and halls in various parts of the city centre, side by
side with shops and offices. Nor does Oxford flaunt its
treasures; behind department stores lurk grand Palladian
doorways or half-hidden crannies of medieval architecture. The
entrance to a college may me tucked down a narrow alleyway,
and even then it is unlikely to be signposted.

H. Cory. Advanced writing with English in use: CAE.

Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 135 (adapted).


Judge the following items according to the text.

"Nor" (l.10) means not either.

A resposta correta é:

Stanford physicists make new form of matter

The laser-cooled quantum gas opens exciting new

realms of unconventional superconductivity.

By Max McClure

Stanford University News



Within the exotic world of macroscopic quantum
effects, where fluids flow uphill, wires conduct without
electrical resistance and magnets levitate, there is an
even stranger family of “unconventional” phenomena:
strongly interacting fermions, a class of particles that
are often very difficult to understand on the quantum
level. These materials often defy explanation by
current theoretical physics, but hold enormous
promise for the development of futuristic technologies
as room-temperature superconductors, ultrasensitive
microscopes and quantum computation.

Last week the scientific world was appalled when
a Stanford team made the announcement in Physical
Review Letters that they had created the world’s first
dipolar quantum fermionic gas– “an entirely new
form of quantum matter,” as Stanford applied physics
Professor and lead author Benjamin Lev puts it. Lev
affirmed that this development represents a major
step toward understanding the behavior of these
systems of particles. Until now, research efforts had
focused on cooling bosons – fundamentally different
from fermions, and much easier to work with. But
now the Stanford team extended these techniques to
gases made of the most magnetic atom: a fermionic
isotope of dysprosium with magnetic energies 440
times larger than previously cooled gases.

He explained that when the thermal energy of
some substances drops below a certain critical point,
it used to be impossible to consider its component
particles separately since the material becomes
strongly correlated and its quantum effects become
difficult to understand and study. Nevertheless,
making the material out of a gas of atoms allows it
to become visible. These quantum gases, the coldest
objects known to man, are where researchers can
observe zero-viscosity fluids – superfluids – that are
mathematical cousins of superconductors.

Thus far, the result of the Lev lab’s high-tech efforts
is a tiny ball of ultracold quantum dipolar fluid. But the
researchers have reason to believe that the humble
substance will exhibit the seemingly contradictory
characteristics of both crystals and superfluids. This
combination could lead to quantum liquid crystals.
Or it could yield a supersolid – a hypothetical state
of matter that would, in theory at least, be a solid with
superfluid characteristics.

The researchers have already begun developing a
microscope to make use of the dipolar quantum fluid’s
unique characteristics. It is the “cryogenic atom chip
microscope”, a magnetic probe that should measure
magnetic fields with unprecedented sensitivity and
resolution. “This kind of probe may even allow for a
more stable form of quantum computation that uses
exotic quantum matter to process information, known
as a topologically protected quantum computer”,
said Lev. “So this new approach is really incredibly
exciting.”

Available at: . Retrieved on: 5 June 2012. Adapted.



In the second paragraph of the text, it is clear that

a) Benjamin Lev developed a gas boson.
b) Stanford physicists created the first dipolar quantum gas in the world.
c) a boson particle was identified and cooled.
d) an entirely solid form of quantum matter was developed.
e) the first quantum matter had been created by a team from Physical Review.

A resposta correta é:

Welcome to Oxford


Many periods of English history are impressively
documented in Oxford’s streets, houses, colleges and chapels.
Within one square mile alone, the city has more than 900
buildings of architectural or historical interest. For the visitor
this presents a challenge — there is no single building that
dominates Oxford, no famous fortress or huge cathedral that
will give you a short-cut view of the city. Even Oxford’s
famous University is spread amidst a tangle of 35 different
colleges and halls in various parts of the city centre, side by
side with shops and offices. Nor does Oxford flaunt its
treasures; behind department stores lurk grand Palladian
doorways or half-hidden crannies of medieval architecture. The
entrance to a college may me tucked down a narrow alleyway,
and even then it is unlikely to be signposted.

H. Cory. Advanced writing with English in use: CAE.

Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 135 (adapted).


Judge the following items according to the text.

The relative pronoun "that" (l.6) can be correctly replaced by whose.

A resposta correta é:

Welcome to Oxford


Many periods of English history are impressively
documented in Oxford’s streets, houses, colleges and chapels.
Within one square mile alone, the city has more than 900
buildings of architectural or historical interest. For the visitor
this presents a challenge — there is no single building that
dominates Oxford, no famous fortress or huge cathedral that
will give you a short-cut view of the city. Even Oxford’s
famous University is spread amidst a tangle of 35 different
colleges and halls in various parts of the city centre, side by
side with shops and offices. Nor does Oxford flaunt its
treasures; behind department stores lurk grand Palladian
doorways or half-hidden crannies of medieval architecture. The
entrance to a college may me tucked down a narrow alleyway,
and even then it is unlikely to be signposted.

H. Cory. Advanced writing with English in use: CAE.

Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 135 (adapted).


Based on the text above, it can be inferred that

Oxford University consists of 35 colleges which are located in different parts of the town.

A resposta correta é:

Welcome to Oxford


Many periods of English history are impressively
documented in Oxford’s streets, houses, colleges and chapels.
Within one square mile alone, the city has more than 900
buildings of architectural or historical interest. For the visitor
this presents a challenge — there is no single building that
dominates Oxford, no famous fortress or huge cathedral that
will give you a short-cut view of the city. Even Oxford’s
famous University is spread amidst a tangle of 35 different
colleges and halls in various parts of the city centre, side by
side with shops and offices. Nor does Oxford flaunt its
treasures; behind department stores lurk grand Palladian
doorways or half-hidden crannies of medieval architecture. The
entrance to a college may me tucked down a narrow alleyway,
and even then it is unlikely to be signposted.

H. Cory. Advanced writing with English in use: CAE.

Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 135 (adapted).


Based on the text above, it can be inferred that

Oxford can be said to be a city which ostentatiously exhibits its treasures.

A resposta correta é:

Stanford physicists make new form of matter

The laser-cooled quantum gas opens exciting new

realms of unconventional superconductivity.

By Max McClure

Stanford University News



Within the exotic world of macroscopic quantum
effects, where fluids flow uphill, wires conduct without
electrical resistance and magnets levitate, there is an
even stranger family of “unconventional” phenomena:
strongly interacting fermions, a class of particles that
are often very difficult to understand on the quantum
level. These materials often defy explanation by
current theoretical physics, but hold enormous
promise for the development of futuristic technologies
as room-temperature superconductors, ultrasensitive
microscopes and quantum computation.

Last week the scientific world was appalled when
a Stanford team made the announcement in Physical
Review Letters that they had created the world’s first
dipolar quantum fermionic gas– “an entirely new
form of quantum matter,” as Stanford applied physics
Professor and lead author Benjamin Lev puts it. Lev
affirmed that this development represents a major
step toward understanding the behavior of these
systems of particles. Until now, research efforts had
focused on cooling bosons – fundamentally different
from fermions, and much easier to work with. But
now the Stanford team extended these techniques to
gases made of the most magnetic atom: a fermionic
isotope of dysprosium with magnetic energies 440
times larger than previously cooled gases.

He explained that when the thermal energy of
some substances drops below a certain critical point,
it used to be impossible to consider its component
particles separately since the material becomes
strongly correlated and its quantum effects become
difficult to understand and study. Nevertheless,
making the material out of a gas of atoms allows it
to become visible. These quantum gases, the coldest
objects known to man, are where researchers can
observe zero-viscosity fluids – superfluids – that are
mathematical cousins of superconductors.

Thus far, the result of the Lev lab’s high-tech efforts
is a tiny ball of ultracold quantum dipolar fluid. But the
researchers have reason to believe that the humble
substance will exhibit the seemingly contradictory
characteristics of both crystals and superfluids. This
combination could lead to quantum liquid crystals.
Or it could yield a supersolid – a hypothetical state
of matter that would, in theory at least, be a solid with
superfluid characteristics.

The researchers have already begun developing a
microscope to make use of the dipolar quantum fluid’s
unique characteristics. It is the “cryogenic atom chip
microscope”, a magnetic probe that should measure
magnetic fields with unprecedented sensitivity and
resolution. “This kind of probe may even allow for a
more stable form of quantum computation that uses
exotic quantum matter to process information, known
as a topologically protected quantum computer”,
said Lev. “So this new approach is really incredibly
exciting.”

Available at: . Retrieved on: 5 June 2012. Adapted.



According to the text, this new material has the opposing qualities of being

a) hot and cold
b) liquid and fluid
c) solid and fluid
d) solid and light
e) hypothetical and real

A resposta correta é:

Armenia : prisoner of history


ARMENIA tends to feature in the news because of its problems (history, geography, demography and economics to name but a few). But a new report says not all is doom and gloom. The parliamentary elections in May showed significant improvement. Media coverage was more balanced, and the authorities permitted greater freedom of assembly, expression and movement than in previous years. That bodes well for the future.
The economy is still recovering from the global financial crisis, which saw GDP contract by 14.2% in 2009. In the same period, the construction sector contracted by more than 40%. Remittances from the diaspora dropped by 30%. That led Forbes magazine to label Armenia the world"s second worst performing economy in 2011. Over one-third of the country lives below the poverty line. Complaints of corruption are widespread, and inflation is high.
Low rates of tax collection-19.3% of GDP, compared with a 40% average in EU countries–limit the government"s reach. Cracking down on tax evasion could increase government revenue by over $400 million, says the World Bank. A few, high-profile businessmen dominate the economy. Their monopolies and oligopolies put a significant brake on business development. Their influence also weakens political will for the kind of reforms that the country sorely needs.

[From The Economist print edition June 24, 012]



In paragraph 3 line 8, the word "sorely" could best be replaced by

a) usually.
b) obviously.
c) scarcely.
d) badly.
e) painfully.

A resposta correta é: