Questões para Concursos

Text CG2A2

A new study on physical activity that involved more than half a million participants over age 40 found that modest exercise increases life expectancy regardless of weight.
Contrary to most of the attention given to obesity as the crucial risk factor for health, the study found that an active lifestyle increased life expectancy to a greater extent than a lower body mass index (BMI), in general. In fact, participants who were active but class 1 obese lived an average of 3.1 years longer than those who were at a normal weight but didn’t engage in physical activity. This is in-line with reports from earlier this year that excessive sitting is unhealthy and that reducing excessive sitting to less than 3 hours a day alone can improve longevity by 2.0 years.
The article states low level of physical activity of moderate to vigorous intensity would confer a 1.8-year gain in life expectancy after age 40, compared with no activity. A low level of physical activity is defined as up to 75 minutes of fast walking per week.
A consequence of this study is that it calls into question the reliance on BMI to assess fitness. That isn’t to suggest that BMI isn’t a factor, but that what we’ve heard for years in the media that being overweight is “bad” for you while exercise is “good” is a flawed message. A better message would be: Regular exercise is essential to longevity and a lower BMI helps too — do the first and the other will likely follow.

Internet: (adapted).

Concerning grammar and semantics in text CG2A2, judge the following items.

Text CB1A2-I

Oppenheimer’s brief advance into astrophysics began with a 1938 paper about neutron stars, which continued in a 1939 installment that further incorporated the principles of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. He then published a third paper on black holes on September 1 st , 1939—but at the time, it was scarcely noticed because this was the very day Germany invaded Poland, launching World War II. Oppenheimer never wrote on the topic again.
Even if it hadn’t been overshadowed by war, Oppenheimer’s work on neutron stars and black holes “was not understood to be terribly significant at the time,” says Cathryn Carson, a historian of science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Each paper was written with a different member of the swarm of graduate students that Oppenheimer carefully cultivated. These protégés facilitated his ability to jump between research topics—and ultimately, helped him develop some of his most important contributions to physics.
Oppenheimer’s climactic third paper, written with his student Hartland Snyder, explores the implications of general relativity on the universe’s most massive stars. Although the physicists needed to include some assumptions to simplify the question, they determined that a large enough star would gravitationally collapse indefinitely—and within a finite amount of time, meaning that the objects we now know as black holes could exist.

Internet: (adapted).

Based on text CB1A2-I, judge the following items.

Text CB2A2
Anyone who has interacted with superbot ChatGPT or image generator DALL-E might be wondering what the future of artificial intelligence (AI) holds for humanity.
ChatGPT is an AI program that generates text in a very human-like manner when asked questions. Just ask DALL-E or similar programs to create a picture of a French bulldog driving a pink convertible and voila: you’ll see several versions in seconds.
Science fiction in the mid-20th century created good-natured AI such as the computer on Star Trek helping the Enterprise crew, as well as its evil twin set on destroying its creators like HAL in Arthur C. Clarke’s famous book (or Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film adaptation) 2001: A Space Odyssey. In 2023, however, we’re surrounded by AI that’s far more mundane than those examples. The virtual assistant in your smartphone, the airline chatbot and the robot vacuum cleaning your floors don’t seem to have any aspirations to rise above humanity and have been designed to help us.
We should be prepared for bigger things to come than games, better chatbots or photo generators. Connectivity is key: think of AI as a general-purpose innovation like electricity that powers and connects other technologies, including sensors, robots, genomic devices and 3D printers. AI’s use will only intensify and accelerate as faster computing technology is developed, along with greater sensors capturing data, often called the Internet of Things (IoT). In the future, AI will be interwoven in virtually every aspect of commercial and personal activities.
Peter Marber. Artificial Intelligence: Why Should We Care?.
Internet: (adapted).

Considering the linguistic and semantic aspects of text CB2A2, judge the following items.

Text 7A2

When it comes to the vocabulary of languages, is it true, as some suppose, that the vocabularies of so-called primitive languages are too small and inadequate to account for the nuances of the physical and social universes of their speakers? The answer is somewhat complicated. Because the vocabulary of a language serves only the members of the society who speak it, the question to be asked should be: Is a particular vocabulary sufficient to serve the sociocultural needs of those who use the language? When put like this, it follows that the language associated with a relatively simple culture would have a smaller vocabulary than the language of a complex society. Why, for example, should the Inuit people (often known by the pejorative term “Eskimo”) have words for chlorofluoromethane, dune buggy, or tae kwon do when these substances, objects, and concepts play no part in their culture? By the same token, however, the language of a tribal society would have elaborate lexical domains for prominent aspects of the culture although these do not exist in complex societies. The Agta of the Philippines, for example, are reported to have no fewer than thirty-one verbs referring to types of fishing, while in Munich, the terminology for the local varieties of beer is quite extensive, according to strength, color, fizziness, aging, and clarity, the full list exceeding seventy terms.
However, even though no language spoken today may be labeled primitive, this does not mean that all languages do all things in the same way, or are equally influential in the modern transnational world. The linguistic anthropologist Dell Hymes claims that languages are not functionally equivalent because the role of speech varies from one society to the next. According to Hymes, though all languages “are potentially equal and hence capable of adaptation to the needs of a complex industrial civilization”, only certain languages have actually done so (Hymes 1961:77). These languages are more successful than others not because they are structurally more advanced, but because they happen to be associated with societies in which language is the basis of literature, education, science, and commerce.
Zdenek SALZMANN, James M. STANLAW and Nobuko ADACHI.
Language, culture, and society: an introduction to linguistic anthropology.
Boulder (CO): Westview Press, 2012. p. 6-7 (adapted).
Judge the following items concerning text 7A2.

Text 2A7

Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the most rapidly advancing technology humans have ever developed. A year ago, you wouldn’t often hear AI come up in a regular conversation, but today it seems there’s constant talk about how generative AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E will affect the future of work, the spread of information, and more. A major question that has thus far been almost entirely unexamined is how this AI-dominated future will affect people’s minds.
There’s been some research into how using AI in their jobs will affect people mentally, but there isn’t yet an understanding of how simply living amongst so much AI-generated content and systems will affect people’s sense of the world. How is AI going to change individuals and society in the not-too-distant future?
AI will obviously make it easier to produce disinformation. That will affect people’s sense of trust as they’re scrolling on social media. AI can also allow someone to imitate your loved ones, which further erodes people’s general ability to trust what was once unquestionable.

Internet: (adapted).

TEXT 2

People who read books are nicer than those who don’t, study finds.

People often think that, yes, books make you smarter but at the same time people who read a lot struggle when it comes to social relationships. A new study reveals that this is not true. In fact, reading could actually make you a _____, _____ person. It also makes you act in a _____ acceptable manner.
The study, conducted by Kingston University in London, involved 124 participants. Participants were quizzed on their preferences for books, TV, and plays. They were also tested on interpersonal skills including how much they considered other people’s feelings and whether they acted to help others.
The study found that those who preferred books were more likely to act in a socially acceptable manner compared to those who preferred watching TV. Those who preferred watching TV, on the other hand, came across as less friendly and less understanding of others’ views.
However, not all types of books tend to have the same effect. The study shows that the type of literature you choose also has a huge impact on your emotional intelligence. In particular, the study revealed that fiction fans showed more positive social behavior while readers of drama and romance novels were found to be the most empathic. In the same vein, fans of experimental books were most able to see things from alternative perspectives, and readers who favored comedy fans were best at relating to others.
“Exposure to fiction relates to a range of empathetic abilities […] Engaging with fictional prose and comedy in particular could be key to enhancing people’s empathetic abilities,” said the researchers during the British Psychological Society conference in Brighton.
It should be borne in mind, however, that the study did not prove cause-and-effect. It may very well be that nicer people are more drawn to reading books.

Adapted from: https://thelanguagenerds.com. Accessed on: 28 Feb. 2023.