Questões de Inglês - Grammar

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Can Germans’ right to switch off survive contemporary times?

    The lights were all out, the corridors were deserted. Only one computer was still working at the German Freiburg’s Institute for Advanced Studies. Newly-arrived American academic Kristen Ghodsee was working late in her office. Then there was a knock at the door, and in came the institute’s director. “He wanted to know if there was something wrong,” remembers Ghodsee. She replied she was fine, but the director looked at his watch and shook his head. It was 17:30. What seemed perfectly normal to the American, working after hours, was inconceivable to the German. After all, it was Feierabend, a German term which refers both to the end of the working day and the act of turning off from work entirely.
    But then along came the smartphone, destabilizing the delicate German work-life balance. Suddenly, phones were in every pocket, laptops in every bag. All at once, everyone had access to work communication outside the office, on the go and at home. It wasn’t long before the digital revolution was invading Germans’ sacred rest time. By 2015, more than a quarter of employees said bosses wanted them to be contactable at all hours, a national survey revealed. This despite a 2003 law stating workers’ 11-hour break couldn’t be interrupted.
    It seems many employees agree the idea of an uninterrupted break is too rigid. Last year, 96% of workers interviewed by Germany’s digital association Bitkom said they would like to organise their own work schedule to fit around their lives. But those responsible for employee protection are worried. “A lot of the shortening of rest periods is happening because people are working such long hours, not because they are working flexibly,” says research associate Nils Backhaus.
    The 11-hour rest period is also there to protect workers from themselves. Originally intended to make sure factory workers could recover physically between shifts, Backhaus says the break is just as necessary for mental regeneration. “Worker protection is just as needed in our new world of digitalisation, home office and smartphones”, says David Markworth.

(Josie Le Blond. www.bbc.com, 24.02.2020. Adaptado.)

TEXT

The end of life on Earth?

    It weighted about 10,000 tons, entered the
atmosphere at a speed of 64,000 km/h and exploded
over a city with a blast of 500 kilotons. But on 15
February 2013, we were lucky. The metereorite that
[05] showered pieces of rock over Chelyabinsk, Russia, was
relatively small, at only about 17 metres wide. Although
many people were injured by falling glass, the damage
was nothing compared to what had happened in Siberia
nearly one hundred years ago, when a relatively small
[10] object (approximately 50 metres in diameter) exploded in
mid-air over a forest region, flattening about 80 million
trees. If it had exploded over a city such as Moscow or
London, millions of people would have been killed. 

    By a strange coincidence, the same day that the
[15] meteorite terrified the people of Chelyabinsk, another
50m-wide asteroid passed relatively close to Earth.
Scientists were expecting that visit and know that the
asteroid will return to fly close by us in 2046, but the
Russian meteorite earlier in the day had been too small
[20] for anyone to spot.

    Most scientists agree that comets and asteroids
pose the biggest natural threat to human existence. It
was probably a large asteroid or comet colliding with
Earth which wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million
[25] years ago. An enormous object, 10 to 16 km in diameter,
struck the Yucatan region in Mexico with the force of 100
megatons. That is the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb
for every person alive on Earth today

    Many scientists, including the late Stephen
[30] Hawking, say that any comet or asteroid greater than
20km in diameter that hits Earth will result in the
complete destruction of complex life, including all
animals and most plants. As we have seen even a much
smaller asteroid can cause great damage.

 [35]   The Earth has been kept fairly safe for the last 65
million years by good fortune and the massive
gravitational field of the planet Jupiter. Our cosmic
guardian, with its stable circular orbit far from the sun,
sweeps up and scatters away most of the dangerous
[40]comets and asteroids which might cross Earth’s orbit. 

    After the Chelyabinsk meteorite, scientists are now
monitoring potential hazards even more carefully but, as
far as they know, there is no danger in the foreseeable
future.

 [45]   Types of space rocks

    • Comet – a ball of rock and ice that sends out a
tail of gas and dust behind it. Bright comets only appear
in our visible night sky about once every ten years. 

    • Asteroid – a rock a few feet to several kms in
[50] diameter. Unlike comets, asteroids have no tail. Most
are to small to cause any damage and burn up in the
atmosphere.

    • Meteoroid – part of an asteroid or comet.
    • Meteorite – what a meteoroid is called when it
[55] hits Earth.

Taken from: http://learningenglishteens.britishcouncil.org - Access on 29/06/2020

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    RUBIÃO found a rival in the heart of Quincas Borba, - a dog, a beautiful dog, half size, lead-colored fur, spotted black. Quincas Borba took it everywhere they slept in the same room. In the morning, it was the dog that woke him up, in bed, where they exchanged their first greetings. One of the owner's extravagances was giving it his own name; but, he explained it for two reasons, one doctrinal, another particular (...).

    - You should laugh, my dear. Because immortality is my lot or my dowry, or as best name there is. I will live perpetually in my book. Those who, however, do not can read, charlatan Quincas Borba to the dog, and ...

    The dog, hearing the name, ran to the bed. Quincas Borba, touched, looked at Quincas Borba.

    - My poor friend! my good friend! my only friend!

    - Unique!

    - Excuse me, you are too, I know, and I thank you very much; but to a sick person everything is forgiven. Perhaps my delusion is beginning. Let me see the mirror.

Trecho traduzido a partir de: http://www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/b v000243.pdf. Acesso em: 15 dez. 2020.

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Cindy is a very clever girl. She is twelve years old and she has got an older brother and a baby sister. She goes to school in the morning and she helps her father in his office in the afternoon. In the evening, she studies the flute with a private teacher. She loves classical music; she listens to music all day long and, on Friday night, she plays the flute in a gospel band. Her brother doesn’t like to listen to music, but he loves playing video games. He plays video games all night long. He doesn’t help his family at home neither in his father’s office. But, he studies Computer Science at a very good university and he wants to be a video game designer. His father always tells him that it is necessary to study a lot achieve his goals.

Texto para a questão

Samsung developing technology to create fake videos from one single photo.

With new technology like this in development, seeing will no longer mean believing.

news.com.au MAY 28, 2019

Researchers at Samsung’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Centre in Moscow have created an algorithm that can generate videos using only one image.

The development has caused some worry among technology experts and commentators, ¹who see it as a worrying step towards making fake content creation easier.

In a paper published in the preprint journal ArXiv, and in an accompanying video demo, the algorithm creates a video using a single still image, such as the Mona Lisa painting or a photo of Salvador Dali.

The video can be created using one single image but the more images are used, the better the quality.

A sample of 32 images produces a video of near lifelike accuracy

Current AI systems usually require the algorithm to scan large sets of data of a body and face before it can produce a moving picture based on it.

With this new technology, however, creating fake videos will become a lot easier.

The Samsung algorithm was trained using the publicly available VoxCeleb database which has more than 7000 images of celebrities from YouTube videos.

Since the algorithm recognises common characteristics of a person’s face and body, as opposed to specific traits of a subject, it’s able to quickly extrapolate images with little input.

This method also means that the technology is applicable toward non-celebrities and can be used on anyone, even people ²who died a long time ago and were never captured on video.

The AI is currently only able to produce “talking head” style videos from the shoulders up.

Skeptics of deepfake technology, as it is referred to, worry it will be used to spread misinformation and fake news or to steal people’s identity.