Questões de Inglês

Taking a Cue From Bernanke a Little Too Far


Financial advisers have been fielding calls from
shaken investors in recent weeks, particularly retirees, who are
nervous that a bond market crash is on the horizon.
You can hardly blame them. Investors have been
fleeing bonds in droves; a record $ 76.5 billion poured out of
bond funds and exchange-traded funds since June. That
exceeds the previous record, according to TrimTabs, when
$ 41.8 billion streamed out of the funds in October 2008 and
the financial crisis was in full force.
But the rush for the exits really means one thing:
investors are betting that interest rates are about to begin their
upward trajectory, something that’s been expected for several
years now.

Their cue came from the Federal Reserve chairman,
Ben Bernanke, who recently suggested that the economic
recovery might allow the central bank to ease its efforts to
stimulate the economy. That includes scaling back its bondbuying
program beginning later this year.
So the big fear is that interest rates are poised to rise
much further, driving down bond prices; the two move in
opposite directions.
A Barclays index tracking a broad swath of
investment-grade bonds lost 3.77 percent from the beginning
of May through Thursday, according to Morningstar. United
States government notes with maturities of 10 years or longer,
however, lost an average of 10.8 percent over the same period.

Making a bet on interest rates is no different from
trying to predict the next big drop in stocks, or jumping into
the market when it appears to be poised to surge higher. These
sort of emotional moves are exactly why research shows that
investors’ returns tend to trail the broader market.

And it’s also why many financial advisers suggest
ignoring the noise, as long as you have a smart assortment of
bond funds that will provide stability when stocks inevitably
tumble once again.

“It’s a futile game to base portfolio moves on interest
rate guesses,” said Milo Benningfield, a financial adviser in
San Francisco. “We don’t have to look any further than highly
regarded Pimco manager Bill Gross, whose horrible interest
rate bet against Treasuries in 2011 landed him in the bottom 15
percent of fund managers in his category that year. Investors
should take a strategic approach designed around the reason
they hold bonds — and then sit tight whenever hedge funds
and other institutions shake the ground around them.”

The main reason longer-term investors hold bonds, of
course, is to provide a steadying force. And though today’s
lower yields provide less of a cushion — the 10-year Treasury
is yielding about 2.5 percent — bonds still remain the best, if
imperfect, foil to stocks.

“The role of bonds in a portfolio has always been to
be a ballast or a diversifier to equity risk,” said Francis
Kinniry, a principal in the Vanguard Investment Strategy
Group. “And that is very true today. Yields are low, but this is
what a bear market in bonds looks like.”

Internet: (adapted).


Regarding the text, judge if the items below are right (C) or wrong (E).

In the sentence "Their cue came from the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, who recently suggested that the economic recovery might allow the central bank to ease its efforts to stimulate the economy." [l.14- the relative pronoun "who" may be replaced by whom in more formal contexts.

A resposta correta é:

Taking a Cue From Bernanke a Little Too Far


Financial advisers have been fielding calls from
shaken investors in recent weeks, particularly retirees, who are
nervous that a bond market crash is on the horizon.
You can hardly blame them. Investors have been
fleeing bonds in droves; a record $ 76.5 billion poured out of
bond funds and exchange-traded funds since June. That
exceeds the previous record, according to TrimTabs, when
$ 41.8 billion streamed out of the funds in October 2008 and
the financial crisis was in full force.
But the rush for the exits really means one thing:
investors are betting that interest rates are about to begin their
upward trajectory, something that’s been expected for several
years now.

Their cue came from the Federal Reserve chairman,
Ben Bernanke, who recently suggested that the economic
recovery might allow the central bank to ease its efforts to
stimulate the economy. That includes scaling back its bondbuying
program beginning later this year.
So the big fear is that interest rates are poised to rise
much further, driving down bond prices; the two move in
opposite directions.
A Barclays index tracking a broad swath of
investment-grade bonds lost 3.77 percent from the beginning
of May through Thursday, according to Morningstar. United
States government notes with maturities of 10 years or longer,
however, lost an average of 10.8 percent over the same period.

Making a bet on interest rates is no different from
trying to predict the next big drop in stocks, or jumping into
the market when it appears to be poised to surge higher. These
sort of emotional moves are exactly why research shows that
investors’ returns tend to trail the broader market.

And it’s also why many financial advisers suggest
ignoring the noise, as long as you have a smart assortment of
bond funds that will provide stability when stocks inevitably
tumble once again.

“It’s a futile game to base portfolio moves on interest
rate guesses,” said Milo Benningfield, a financial adviser in
San Francisco. “We don’t have to look any further than highly
regarded Pimco manager Bill Gross, whose horrible interest
rate bet against Treasuries in 2011 landed him in the bottom 15
percent of fund managers in his category that year. Investors
should take a strategic approach designed around the reason
they hold bonds — and then sit tight whenever hedge funds
and other institutions shake the ground around them.”

The main reason longer-term investors hold bonds, of
course, is to provide a steadying force. And though today’s
lower yields provide less of a cushion — the 10-year Treasury
is yielding about 2.5 percent — bonds still remain the best, if
imperfect, foil to stocks.

“The role of bonds in a portfolio has always been to
be a ballast or a diversifier to equity risk,” said Francis
Kinniry, a principal in the Vanguard Investment Strategy
Group. “And that is very true today. Yields are low, but this is
what a bear market in bonds looks like.”

Internet: (adapted).


Regarding the text, judge if the items below are right (C) or wrong (E).

The word "from" in the excerpt "Making a bet on interest rates is no different from trying to predict the next big drop in stocks, or jumping into the market when it appears to be poised to surge higher." [l.27- may be replaced by the word then with no interference in the grammar correction of the sentence.

A resposta correta é:

An Economic History of Patent Institutions



Scholars such as Max Weber and Douglass North have suggested that intellectual property systems had an important
impact on the course of economic development. However, questions from other eras are still current today, ranging from
whether patents and copyrights constitute ideal policies toward intellectual inventions and their philosophical rationale to the
growing concerns of international political economy. Throughout their history, patent and copyright regimes have confronted
and accommodated technological innovations that were no less significant and contentious for their time than those of the
twenty-first century.
The British Patent System

Britain is noted for the establishment of a patent system which has been in continuous operation for a longer period than
any other in the world. English monarchs frequently used patents to reward favorites with privileges, such as monopolies over
trade that increased the retail prices of commodities. It was not until the seventeenth century that patents were associated
entirely with awards to inventors, when Section 6 of the Statute of Monopolies repealed the practice of royal monopoly grants
to all except patentees of inventions.
The British patent system established significant barriers in the form of prohibitively high costs that limited access to
property rights in invention to a privileged few. Patent fees provided an important source of revenues for the Crown and its
employees, and created a class of administrators who had strong incentives to block proposed reforms.
In addition to the monetary costs, complicated administrative procedures that inventors had to follow made transactions
costs also high. Thus nation-wide lobbies of manufacturers and patentees expressed dissatisfaction with the operation of the
British patent system. However, it was not until after the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851 that their concerns were finally
addressed, in an effort to meet the burgeoning competition from the United States. In 1852 the efforts of numerous societies
and of individual engineers, inventors and manufacturers that had been made over many decades were finally rewarded.
Parliament approved the Patent Law Amendment Act, which authorized the first major adjustment of the system in two
centuries.

However, the adjustments made at that time were not completely satisfactory. One source of dissatisfaction that endured
until the end of the nineteenth century was the state of the common law regarding patents. British patents were granted "by the
grace of the Crown" and therefore were subject to any restrictions that the government cared to impose. According to the
statutes, as a matter of national expediency, patents were to be granted if "they be not contrary to the law, nor mischievous to
the State, by raising prices of commodities at home, or to the hurt of trade, or generally inconvenient." The Crown possessed
the ability to revoke any patents that were deemed inconvenient or contrary to public policy. […]

The Patent System in the United States

The United States stands out as having established one of the most successful patent systems in the world. American
industrial supremacy has frequently been credited to its favorable treatment of inventors and the inducements held out for
inventive activity. The first Article of the U.S. Constitution included a clause to "promote the Progress of Science and the
useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries." Congress complied by passing a patent statute in April 1790. In 1836 the United States created the first modern
patent institution in the world, a system whose features differed in significant respects from those of other major countries.

The primary feature of the "American system" is that all applications are subject to an examination for conformity with
the laws and for novelty. An examination system was set in place in 1790, when a select committee consisting of the Secretary
of State (Thomas Jefferson), the Attorney General and the Secretary of War scrutinized the applications. These duties proved to
be too time-consuming for highly ranked officials who had other onerous duties, so three years later it was replaced by a
registration system. The validity of patents was left up to the district courts, which had the power to set in motion a process that
could end in the repeal of the patent.

Another important feature of the American patent system is that it was based on the presumption that social welfare
coincided with the individual welfare of inventors. Accordingly, legislators rejected restrictions on the rights of American
inventors.

Nevertheless, economists such as Joseph Schumpeter have linked market concentration and innovation, and patent rights
are often felt to encourage the establishment of monopoly enterprises. Thus, an important aspect of the enforcement of patents
and intellectual property in general depends on competition or antitrust policies. The attitudes of the judiciary towards patent
conflicts are primarily shaped by their interpretation of the monopoly aspect of the patent grant. The American judiciary in the
early nineteenth century did not recognize patents as monopolies, arguing that patentees added to social welfare through
innovations which had never existed before, whereas monopolists secured to themselves rights that already belong to the
public.[…]

B. Zorina Khan. In: Internet: (adapted).


According to the information provided by text, judge the items below.

The new class of administrators that emerged from the patent fees system would not agree with the high costs of the patent procedure.

A resposta correta é:

An Economic History of Patent Institutions



Scholars such as Max Weber and Douglass North have suggested that intellectual property systems had an important
impact on the course of economic development. However, questions from other eras are still current today, ranging from
whether patents and copyrights constitute ideal policies toward intellectual inventions and their philosophical rationale to the
growing concerns of international political economy. Throughout their history, patent and copyright regimes have confronted
and accommodated technological innovations that were no less significant and contentious for their time than those of the
twenty-first century.
The British Patent System

Britain is noted for the establishment of a patent system which has been in continuous operation for a longer period than
any other in the world. English monarchs frequently used patents to reward favorites with privileges, such as monopolies over
trade that increased the retail prices of commodities. It was not until the seventeenth century that patents were associated
entirely with awards to inventors, when Section 6 of the Statute of Monopolies repealed the practice of royal monopoly grants
to all except patentees of inventions.
The British patent system established significant barriers in the form of prohibitively high costs that limited access to
property rights in invention to a privileged few. Patent fees provided an important source of revenues for the Crown and its
employees, and created a class of administrators who had strong incentives to block proposed reforms.
In addition to the monetary costs, complicated administrative procedures that inventors had to follow made transactions
costs also high. Thus nation-wide lobbies of manufacturers and patentees expressed dissatisfaction with the operation of the
British patent system. However, it was not until after the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851 that their concerns were finally
addressed, in an effort to meet the burgeoning competition from the United States. In 1852 the efforts of numerous societies
and of individual engineers, inventors and manufacturers that had been made over many decades were finally rewarded.
Parliament approved the Patent Law Amendment Act, which authorized the first major adjustment of the system in two
centuries.

However, the adjustments made at that time were not completely satisfactory. One source of dissatisfaction that endured
until the end of the nineteenth century was the state of the common law regarding patents. British patents were granted "by the
grace of the Crown" and therefore were subject to any restrictions that the government cared to impose. According to the
statutes, as a matter of national expediency, patents were to be granted if "they be not contrary to the law, nor mischievous to
the State, by raising prices of commodities at home, or to the hurt of trade, or generally inconvenient." The Crown possessed
the ability to revoke any patents that were deemed inconvenient or contrary to public policy. […]

The Patent System in the United States

The United States stands out as having established one of the most successful patent systems in the world. American
industrial supremacy has frequently been credited to its favorable treatment of inventors and the inducements held out for
inventive activity. The first Article of the U.S. Constitution included a clause to "promote the Progress of Science and the
useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries." Congress complied by passing a patent statute in April 1790. In 1836 the United States created the first modern
patent institution in the world, a system whose features differed in significant respects from those of other major countries.

The primary feature of the "American system" is that all applications are subject to an examination for conformity with
the laws and for novelty. An examination system was set in place in 1790, when a select committee consisting of the Secretary
of State (Thomas Jefferson), the Attorney General and the Secretary of War scrutinized the applications. These duties proved to
be too time-consuming for highly ranked officials who had other onerous duties, so three years later it was replaced by a
registration system. The validity of patents was left up to the district courts, which had the power to set in motion a process that
could end in the repeal of the patent.

Another important feature of the American patent system is that it was based on the presumption that social welfare
coincided with the individual welfare of inventors. Accordingly, legislators rejected restrictions on the rights of American
inventors.

Nevertheless, economists such as Joseph Schumpeter have linked market concentration and innovation, and patent rights
are often felt to encourage the establishment of monopoly enterprises. Thus, an important aspect of the enforcement of patents
and intellectual property in general depends on competition or antitrust policies. The attitudes of the judiciary towards patent
conflicts are primarily shaped by their interpretation of the monopoly aspect of the patent grant. The American judiciary in the
early nineteenth century did not recognize patents as monopolies, arguing that patentees added to social welfare through
innovations which had never existed before, whereas monopolists secured to themselves rights that already belong to the
public.[…]

B. Zorina Khan. In: Internet: (adapted).


According to the information provided by text, judge the items below.

The word "patentees" (l.12) can be understood as patent holders.

A resposta correta é:

Stocks and the Stock Market

The stock exchange is a marketplace where brokers buy and
sell stocks and bonds for other people. Many countries have
one or more stock exchanges. Smaller stock exchanges often
handle only national stock, whereas the big stock exchanges
handle the stock of big international corporations. (…)
A person who buys stock becomes one of the company’s
owners. They buy a share of a company. A bond is an
agreement to lend money to a company for a certain period of
time. Companies sell stocks and bonds to people because
they need money and want to expand. Sometimes they want
to build more factories or develop more products.
If a company makes profits it can use the earned money in a
few ways. It may decide to invest more into the company and
expand. Most of the time the shareholders of the company get
a dividend, which is a part of the yearly profit. This dividend is
not always the same and can change from year to year.
Most corporations offer two kinds of stock. Owners of common
stock can go to the annual meetings of stockholders, present
their own ideas there, ask questions about the company and
have a right to vote for the board of directors.Owners of
preferred stock usually do not have voting rights or the right to
attend stockholders’ meetings. However, they get dividends.
A person who buys a bond is not buying ownership in a
company but lending the company money. It promises to give
back the money to the bondholder after a certain time, such
as ten or twenty years. In return for the money, the companies
pay interest. Not only companies but also governments can
issue bonds if they need money.
People buy stocks and bonds because they hope that a
corporation will earn money as it grows. As time goes on
shareholders usually earn more money by owning stock than
by saving their money in a bank or investing in other things.
Buying stock is also a risky business. If you buy a share of a
certain company and it does well over the years the value of
your shares will go up. You could sell them at a much higher
price than when you bought them. Sometimes, however,
things happen that make the value of certain stocks go down.
If a company does badly or goes bankrupt the value of your
shares goes down too and you actually lose money.
There are many reasons why the price of a company’s stock
rise or fall. For example if people are afraid that prices will go
down, they may start selling their shares. If many people sell a
large number of stocks, they can actually make prices go
down. If this continues for a longer time it may lead to a crash.
Prices of stocks fall so low that people don’t want to buy them
anymore because they are afraid they won’t get their money
back. (…)
Each year investors trade billions of shares worth hundreds of
billions of dollars. But not all companies are listed on the stock
market. You must be pretty big and have a lot of power. You
must also show the stock exchange that you are in a good
financial position and that you company is doing well. The
world’s biggest stock exchange in New York has about 30000
companies listed.
To see how well or badly stocks are doing most stock
exchanges have an index. This is a number that shows the
average share prices of the major companies. The most
important indices are the Dow Jones (New York), FTSE
(London), DAX (Frankfurt), Nikkei (Tokyo), Hang Seng
(Hongkong). (…)
The first European stock exchange was founded in Antwerp,
Belgium in 1531. The first stock exchange in England was
formed by a group of brokers in London in 1773. Until that
time people usually went to coffee houses to buy and sell
stocks because they found the brokers there.
In New York City brokers met under an old tree on Wall
Street. They organized the New York stock exchange in 1792.
For many years only rich people bought and sold stock. It was
not until World War I that more and more private investors
started investing their money in stocks. There was a huge rise
in value and investors made a lot of money.
The worst crash happened in the United States in October
1929. Over many days investors sold so many stocks that the
whole market collapsed. This affected the economy not only in

America but in Europe as well. Farmers could not sell their
crops, factories couldn’t sell their products, banks had to close
and workers earned very little money. This lasted for almost
ten years and became later known as the Great Depression.

Acesso em 16/07/2013

NOTA: De acordo com site economywatch.com, stocks e shares são

basicamente a mesma coisa: “Stocks and Shares are the two sides of the

same coin. Basically, they both mean the same thing. (...)
Stock is a general term for Shares. Stock is the ownership of certificate (either
in physical or dematerialized form) of any company. Hence we can say that
Stock is the share of any company.” (…)


Dos trechos a seguir, qual o único cujo termo grifado está exercendo a função de adjetivo?

a) "This lasted for almost ten years" […]
b) "You must be pretty big and have a lot of power."
c) […] "became later known as the Great Depression."
d) "If this continues for a longer time it may lead to a crash."
e) "The stock exchange is a marketplace where brokers buy" […]

A resposta correta é:

Margarine vs. butter: are synthetic spreads toast?



Sales of margarine are in decline, due to a combination of
reformulated recipes, price, health and taste. Do you defend
margarine, or is butter simply better?

Butter vs. margarine: it’s a fight that has gone on for
decades. On one side, there’s butter – rich, creamy, defiantly
full-fat and made for millennia by churning the milk or cream
from cattle. On the other, there’s margarine: the arriviste spread
invented in the 1860s. It might not taste delicious, and it doesn’t
sink into your toast like butter, but for decades margarine has
ridden a wave of success as the “healthy” alternative.

No longer. Sales of margarine have plummeted in the last
year, according to Kantar, with “health” spreads dropping 7.4%
in sales. Flora has been particularly badly hit, losing £24m in
sales, partly due to reformulating its recipe.

Meanwhile, butter is back in vogue. Brits bought 8.7%
more blocks of butter last year, and 6% more spreadable tubs.
This is partly due to the “narrowing price gap between butter and
margarine”, Tim Eales of IRI told The Grocer, but also to the
home baking revival led by Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood and co.
We’re all sticking unsalted butter in our sponges these days.

A yen for natural, unprocessed produce could also be a
factor. “Since all the food scandals of the last 10 years, people
are thinking about where their food comes from – butter is
perceived as ‘pure’”, says food writer Signe Johansen. But is
margarine really out for the count? Big brands are owned by
powerful multinationals such as Unilever, with huge marketing
budgets. Don’t rule spreads out just yet.

Margarine was invented in 1869 by a French food scientist,
Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, who responded to a challenge by
Napoleon III. Napoleon wanted to find a long-life alternative to
butter to feed troops in the Franco-Prussian war. Mège-Mouriès
mixed skimmed milk, water and beef fat to create a substance
similar to butter in texture, if not in taste. He called it
“oleomargarine” after margarites, the Greek word for pearls – a
reference to its pearly sheen. In 1871 he sold the patent to
Jurgens, a Dutch firm now part of Unilever.

Beef fat was soon replaced by cheaper hydrogenated and
non-hydrogenated vegetable oils. “Margarine gained a foothold
during the first world war”, says food writer and historian Bee
Wilson. “George Orwell wrote of the ‘great war’ that what he
remembered most was not all the deaths but all the margarine.
But at this stage people recognized it was an inferior substitute
for butter: an ersatz food, like drinking chicory instead of coffee.”

In the second world war, British margarine brands were
legally required to add vitamins to their recipes. “The move in
status to margarine as a health food, marketing itself as a
superior alternative, happened after the war”, says Wilson.
Added “healthy” extras – vitamins, omega-3s, unpronounceables
that lower your cholesterol – are still a mainstay of the market.

But while margarine has spent decades fighting butter on
the health front, what about taste? “Margarine has never been
able to replicate the flavour of true butter”, says Johansen. This
despite the fact many brands add milk and cream to their
spreads. “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”? Really? I can.

Unsurprisingly, it’s hard to find a defendant of margarine
among food writers and chefs. One of the few exceptions is
Marguerite Patten, who is a fan of baking with Stork®. Indeed,
Stork® does make for wonderfully crisp shortcrust pastry.

Margarine has taken a bashing on the health front in
recent years, too. Negative press about trans fats in the 00s saw
many brands remove hydrogenated fats from their spreads and
reformulate their recipes. Growing suspicion of processed foods
has led many consumers to return to butter. As Johansen puts it:
“If you want a healthy heart, eat more vegetables.”

And yet, and yet. I’m looking at a tub of Pure Dairy-Free
Soya Spread. It contains 14g saturated fat per 100g, compared
to butter’s 54%. For many consumers, such stats still outweigh
taste when it comes to deciding what’s on their toast. And what
about vegans, and those with lactose intolerance? Margarine
can fulfill needs that butter can’t.

It will never win any taste awards, but there is still a place
for margarine on the supermarket shelves – even if there isn’t
one for it in most food lovers’ fridges.

Margarine vs. butter: are synthetic spreads toast? Adapted.

Available in:http://www.guardian.co.uk


According to the text, read the following assertions.

I. According to Signe Johansen, nowadays, people are more concerned with what they consume, looking for unprocessed food.
II. Although margarine and butter have a difference in taste, margarine still beats butter when it comes to sales.
III. Marguerite Patten doesn"t stand for margarine.

The correct assertion(s) is(are)

a) I and II, only.
b) I, only.
c) II and III, only.
d) III, only.
e) I, II and III.

A resposta correta é:

Margarine vs. butter: are synthetic spreads toast?



Sales of margarine are in decline, due to a combination of
reformulated recipes, price, health and taste. Do you defend
margarine, or is butter simply better?

Butter vs. margarine: it’s a fight that has gone on for
decades. On one side, there’s butter – rich, creamy, defiantly
full-fat and made for millennia by churning the milk or cream
from cattle. On the other, there’s margarine: the arriviste spread
invented in the 1860s. It might not taste delicious, and it doesn’t
sink into your toast like butter, but for decades margarine has
ridden a wave of success as the “healthy” alternative.

No longer. Sales of margarine have plummeted in the last
year, according to Kantar, with “health” spreads dropping 7.4%
in sales. Flora has been particularly badly hit, losing £24m in
sales, partly due to reformulating its recipe.

Meanwhile, butter is back in vogue. Brits bought 8.7%
more blocks of butter last year, and 6% more spreadable tubs.
This is partly due to the “narrowing price gap between butter and
margarine”, Tim Eales of IRI told The Grocer, but also to the
home baking revival led by Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood and co.
We’re all sticking unsalted butter in our sponges these days.

A yen for natural, unprocessed produce could also be a
factor. “Since all the food scandals of the last 10 years, people
are thinking about where their food comes from – butter is
perceived as ‘pure’”, says food writer Signe Johansen. But is
margarine really out for the count? Big brands are owned by
powerful multinationals such as Unilever, with huge marketing
budgets. Don’t rule spreads out just yet.

Margarine was invented in 1869 by a French food scientist,
Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, who responded to a challenge by
Napoleon III. Napoleon wanted to find a long-life alternative to
butter to feed troops in the Franco-Prussian war. Mège-Mouriès
mixed skimmed milk, water and beef fat to create a substance
similar to butter in texture, if not in taste. He called it
“oleomargarine” after margarites, the Greek word for pearls – a
reference to its pearly sheen. In 1871 he sold the patent to
Jurgens, a Dutch firm now part of Unilever.

Beef fat was soon replaced by cheaper hydrogenated and
non-hydrogenated vegetable oils. “Margarine gained a foothold
during the first world war”, says food writer and historian Bee
Wilson. “George Orwell wrote of the ‘great war’ that what he
remembered most was not all the deaths but all the margarine.
But at this stage people recognized it was an inferior substitute
for butter: an ersatz food, like drinking chicory instead of coffee.”

In the second world war, British margarine brands were
legally required to add vitamins to their recipes. “The move in
status to margarine as a health food, marketing itself as a
superior alternative, happened after the war”, says Wilson.
Added “healthy” extras – vitamins, omega-3s, unpronounceables
that lower your cholesterol – are still a mainstay of the market.

But while margarine has spent decades fighting butter on
the health front, what about taste? “Margarine has never been
able to replicate the flavour of true butter”, says Johansen. This
despite the fact many brands add milk and cream to their
spreads. “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”? Really? I can.

Unsurprisingly, it’s hard to find a defendant of margarine
among food writers and chefs. One of the few exceptions is
Marguerite Patten, who is a fan of baking with Stork®. Indeed,
Stork® does make for wonderfully crisp shortcrust pastry.

Margarine has taken a bashing on the health front in
recent years, too. Negative press about trans fats in the 00s saw
many brands remove hydrogenated fats from their spreads and
reformulate their recipes. Growing suspicion of processed foods
has led many consumers to return to butter. As Johansen puts it:
“If you want a healthy heart, eat more vegetables.”

And yet, and yet. I’m looking at a tub of Pure Dairy-Free
Soya Spread. It contains 14g saturated fat per 100g, compared
to butter’s 54%. For many consumers, such stats still outweigh
taste when it comes to deciding what’s on their toast. And what
about vegans, and those with lactose intolerance? Margarine
can fulfill needs that butter can’t.

It will never win any taste awards, but there is still a place
for margarine on the supermarket shelves – even if there isn’t
one for it in most food lovers’ fridges.

Margarine vs. butter: are synthetic spreads toast? Adapted.

Available in:http://www.guardian.co.uk


Read the sentence below taken from the text and analyze the assertions below.
"Sales of margarine have plummeted in the last year, according to Kantar, with "health" spreads dropping 7.4% in sales. Flora has been particularly badly hit, losing £24m in sales, partly due to reformulating its recipe."

I. The possessive pronoun "its" refers to Flora"s new recipe.
II. "Due to" establishes a relation of cause to the situation exposed.
III. "Badly" has the same gramar classification as "wooly".

The correct assertion(s) is(are)

a) I and II, only.
b) III, only.
c) II and III, only.
d) II, only.
e) I, II and III.

A resposta correta é:

Margarine vs. butter: are synthetic spreads toast?



Sales of margarine are in decline, due to a combination of
reformulated recipes, price, health and taste. Do you defend
margarine, or is butter simply better?

Butter vs. margarine: it’s a fight that has gone on for
decades. On one side, there’s butter – rich, creamy, defiantly
full-fat and made for millennia by churning the milk or cream
from cattle. On the other, there’s margarine: the arriviste spread
invented in the 1860s. It might not taste delicious, and it doesn’t
sink into your toast like butter, but for decades margarine has
ridden a wave of success as the “healthy” alternative.

No longer. Sales of margarine have plummeted in the last
year, according to Kantar, with “health” spreads dropping 7.4%
in sales. Flora has been particularly badly hit, losing £24m in
sales, partly due to reformulating its recipe.

Meanwhile, butter is back in vogue. Brits bought 8.7%
more blocks of butter last year, and 6% more spreadable tubs.
This is partly due to the “narrowing price gap between butter and
margarine”, Tim Eales of IRI told The Grocer, but also to the
home baking revival led by Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood and co.
We’re all sticking unsalted butter in our sponges these days.

A yen for natural, unprocessed produce could also be a
factor. “Since all the food scandals of the last 10 years, people
are thinking about where their food comes from – butter is
perceived as ‘pure’”, says food writer Signe Johansen. But is
margarine really out for the count? Big brands are owned by
powerful multinationals such as Unilever, with huge marketing
budgets. Don’t rule spreads out just yet.

Margarine was invented in 1869 by a French food scientist,
Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, who responded to a challenge by
Napoleon III. Napoleon wanted to find a long-life alternative to
butter to feed troops in the Franco-Prussian war. Mège-Mouriès
mixed skimmed milk, water and beef fat to create a substance
similar to butter in texture, if not in taste. He called it
“oleomargarine” after margarites, the Greek word for pearls – a
reference to its pearly sheen. In 1871 he sold the patent to
Jurgens, a Dutch firm now part of Unilever.

Beef fat was soon replaced by cheaper hydrogenated and
non-hydrogenated vegetable oils. “Margarine gained a foothold
during the first world war”, says food writer and historian Bee
Wilson. “George Orwell wrote of the ‘great war’ that what he
remembered most was not all the deaths but all the margarine.
But at this stage people recognized it was an inferior substitute
for butter: an ersatz food, like drinking chicory instead of coffee.”

In the second world war, British margarine brands were
legally required to add vitamins to their recipes. “The move in
status to margarine as a health food, marketing itself as a
superior alternative, happened after the war”, says Wilson.
Added “healthy” extras – vitamins, omega-3s, unpronounceables
that lower your cholesterol – are still a mainstay of the market.

But while margarine has spent decades fighting butter on
the health front, what about taste? “Margarine has never been
able to replicate the flavour of true butter”, says Johansen. This
despite the fact many brands add milk and cream to their
spreads. “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”? Really? I can.

Unsurprisingly, it’s hard to find a defendant of margarine
among food writers and chefs. One of the few exceptions is
Marguerite Patten, who is a fan of baking with Stork®. Indeed,
Stork® does make for wonderfully crisp shortcrust pastry.

Margarine has taken a bashing on the health front in
recent years, too. Negative press about trans fats in the 00s saw
many brands remove hydrogenated fats from their spreads and
reformulate their recipes. Growing suspicion of processed foods
has led many consumers to return to butter. As Johansen puts it:
“If you want a healthy heart, eat more vegetables.”

And yet, and yet. I’m looking at a tub of Pure Dairy-Free
Soya Spread. It contains 14g saturated fat per 100g, compared
to butter’s 54%. For many consumers, such stats still outweigh
taste when it comes to deciding what’s on their toast. And what
about vegans, and those with lactose intolerance? Margarine
can fulfill needs that butter can’t.

It will never win any taste awards, but there is still a place
for margarine on the supermarket shelves – even if there isn’t
one for it in most food lovers’ fridges.

Margarine vs. butter: are synthetic spreads toast? Adapted.

Available in:http://www.guardian.co.uk


Read the sentence below and choose the alternative that presents a synonym to the underlined verb.
"Margarine can fulfill needs that butter can"t."

a) Represent.
b) Miss.
c) Satisfy.
d) Fail.
e) Lose.

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A cooling consensus

Global warming has slowed. The rate of warming over the past 15 years has been lower than that of the preceding 20 years. There is no serious doubt that our planet continues to heat, but it has heated less than most climate scientists had predicted. Nate Cohn of the New Republic reports: "Since 1998, the warmest year of the twentieth century, temperatures have not kept up with computer models that seemed to project steady warming; they’re perilously close to falling beneath even the lowest projections".
Mr Cohn does his best to affi rm that the urgent necessity of acting to retard warming has not abated, as does Brad Plumer of the Washington Post, as does this newspaper. But there"s no way around the fact that this reprieve for the planet is bad news for proponents of policies, such as carbon taxes and emissions treaties, meant to slow warming by moderating the release of greenhouse gases. The reality is that the already meagre prospects of these policies, in America at least, will be devastated if temperatures do fall outside the lower bound of the projections that environmentalists have used to create a panicked sense of emergency. Whether or not dramatic climate-policy interventions remain advisable, they will become harder, if not impossible, to sell to the public, which will feel, not unreasonably, that the scientific and media establishment has cried wolf.

(Source: The Economist, June 20th, 2013)

The text starts by citing data revealing that

a) the planet has not been getting warmer in the past 15 years.
b) average temperatures are lower now than they were 20 years ago.
c) the rate of temperature rises has eased off in recent years.
d) 20 years ago temperatures were significantly higher.
e) in the past 15 years temperatures have leveled off.

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An Economic History of Patent Institutions



Scholars such as Max Weber and Douglass North have suggested that intellectual property systems had an important
impact on the course of economic development. However, questions from other eras are still current today, ranging from
whether patents and copyrights constitute ideal policies toward intellectual inventions and their philosophical rationale to the
growing concerns of international political economy. Throughout their history, patent and copyright regimes have confronted
and accommodated technological innovations that were no less significant and contentious for their time than those of the
twenty-first century.
The British Patent System

Britain is noted for the establishment of a patent system which has been in continuous operation for a longer period than
any other in the world. English monarchs frequently used patents to reward favorites with privileges, such as monopolies over
trade that increased the retail prices of commodities. It was not until the seventeenth century that patents were associated
entirely with awards to inventors, when Section 6 of the Statute of Monopolies repealed the practice of royal monopoly grants
to all except patentees of inventions.
The British patent system established significant barriers in the form of prohibitively high costs that limited access to
property rights in invention to a privileged few. Patent fees provided an important source of revenues for the Crown and its
employees, and created a class of administrators who had strong incentives to block proposed reforms.
In addition to the monetary costs, complicated administrative procedures that inventors had to follow made transactions
costs also high. Thus nation-wide lobbies of manufacturers and patentees expressed dissatisfaction with the operation of the
British patent system. However, it was not until after the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851 that their concerns were finally
addressed, in an effort to meet the burgeoning competition from the United States. In 1852 the efforts of numerous societies
and of individual engineers, inventors and manufacturers that had been made over many decades were finally rewarded.
Parliament approved the Patent Law Amendment Act, which authorized the first major adjustment of the system in two
centuries.

However, the adjustments made at that time were not completely satisfactory. One source of dissatisfaction that endured
until the end of the nineteenth century was the state of the common law regarding patents. British patents were granted "by the
grace of the Crown" and therefore were subject to any restrictions that the government cared to impose. According to the
statutes, as a matter of national expediency, patents were to be granted if "they be not contrary to the law, nor mischievous to
the State, by raising prices of commodities at home, or to the hurt of trade, or generally inconvenient." The Crown possessed
the ability to revoke any patents that were deemed inconvenient or contrary to public policy. […]

The Patent System in the United States

The United States stands out as having established one of the most successful patent systems in the world. American
industrial supremacy has frequently been credited to its favorable treatment of inventors and the inducements held out for
inventive activity. The first Article of the U.S. Constitution included a clause to "promote the Progress of Science and the
useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries." Congress complied by passing a patent statute in April 1790. In 1836 the United States created the first modern
patent institution in the world, a system whose features differed in significant respects from those of other major countries.

The primary feature of the "American system" is that all applications are subject to an examination for conformity with
the laws and for novelty. An examination system was set in place in 1790, when a select committee consisting of the Secretary
of State (Thomas Jefferson), the Attorney General and the Secretary of War scrutinized the applications. These duties proved to
be too time-consuming for highly ranked officials who had other onerous duties, so three years later it was replaced by a
registration system. The validity of patents was left up to the district courts, which had the power to set in motion a process that
could end in the repeal of the patent.

Another important feature of the American patent system is that it was based on the presumption that social welfare
coincided with the individual welfare of inventors. Accordingly, legislators rejected restrictions on the rights of American
inventors.

Nevertheless, economists such as Joseph Schumpeter have linked market concentration and innovation, and patent rights
are often felt to encourage the establishment of monopoly enterprises. Thus, an important aspect of the enforcement of patents
and intellectual property in general depends on competition or antitrust policies. The attitudes of the judiciary towards patent
conflicts are primarily shaped by their interpretation of the monopoly aspect of the patent grant. The American judiciary in the
early nineteenth century did not recognize patents as monopolies, arguing that patentees added to social welfare through
innovations which had never existed before, whereas monopolists secured to themselves rights that already belong to the
public.[…]

B. Zorina Khan. In: Internet: (adapted).


According to the information provided by text, judge the items below.

It is believed that the outstanding performance of the US industry is due to the efficiency of this country"s patent system.

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