Questões de Inglês - Adjetivos | Adjectives para Concurso

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Mining tourism in Ouro Preto

Ouro Preto is surrounded by a rich and varied natural environment with waterfalls, hiking trails and native vegetation partially protected as state parks. Parts of these resources are used for tourism. Paradoxically, this ecosystem contrasts with the human occupation of the region that produced, after centuries, a rich history and a cultural connection to mining, its oldest economic activity which triggered occupation. The region has an unlimited potential for tourism, especially in specific segments such as mining heritage tourism, in association or not with the existing ecotourism market. In fact, in Ouro Preto, tourism, history, geology and mining are often hard to distinguish; such is the inter-relationship between these segments.

For centuries, a major problem of mining has been the reuse of the affected areas. Modern mining projects proposed solutions to this problem right from the initial stages of operation, which did not happen until recently. As a result, most quarries and other old mining areas that do not have an appropriate destination represent serious environmental problems. Mining tourism utilizing exhausted mines is a source of employment and income. Tourism activities may even contribute to the recovery of degraded areas in various ways, such as reforestation for leisure purposes, or their transformation into history museums where aspects of local mining are interpreted.

Minas Gerais, and particularly Ouro Preto, provides the strong and rich cultural and historical content needed for the transformation of mining remnants into attractive tourism products, especially when combined with the existing cultural tourism of the region. Although mining tourism is explored in various parts of the world in extremely different social, economic, cultural and natural contexts, in Brazil it is still not a strategy readily adopted as an alternative for areas affected by mining activities.

(Lohmann, G. M.; Flecha, A. C.; Knupp, M. E. C. G.; Liccardo, A. (2011). Mining tourism in Ouro Preto, Brazil: opportunities and challenges. In: M. V. Conlin; L. Jolliffe (eds).Mining heritage and tourism: a global synthesis. New York: Routledge, pp. 194-202.)

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                                      What is hunger?

      Acute hunger or starvation are often highlighted on TV screens: hungry mothers too weak to breastfeed their children in drought-hit Ethiopia, refugees in war-torn Syria queuing for food rations, helicopters airlifting high energy biscuits to earthquake victims in Haiti or Pakistan.

      These situations are the result of high profile crises like war or natural disasters, which starve a population of food. Yet emergencies account for less than eight percent of hunger's victims.

      Daily undernourishment is a less visible form of hunger – but it affects many more people, from the shanty towns of Jakarta in Indonesia and the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh to the mountain villages of Bolivia and Nepal. In these places, hunger is much more than an empty stomach.

      For weeks, even months, its victims must live on significantly less than the recommended 2,100 kilocalories that the average person needs to lead a healthy life.

      The body compensates for the lack of energy by slowing down its physical and mental activities. A hungry mind cannot concentrate, a hungry body does not take initiative, a hungry child loses all desire to play and study.

      Hunger also weakens the immune system. Deprived of the right nutrition, hungry children are especially vulnerable and  become too weak to fight off disease and may die from common infections like measles and diarrhea. Each year, almost 7 million children die before reaching the age of five; malnutrition is a key factor in over a third of these deaths


                            (Source: Levels and Trends in Child Mortality, IGME, 2012 in http://www.wfp.org).

                        Gravity, review: “heartachingly tender”

            Starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts adrift in
                  space, Alfonso Cuarón’s astonishing thriller is one of the films of
                                           the year, says Robbie Collin

      Watch an astronaut drifting through space for long enough and eventually you notice how much they look like a newborn baby. The oxygen helmet makes their head bigger, rounder and cuter; their hands grasp eagerly at whatever happens to be passing; their limbs are made fat and their movements simple by the spacesuit’s cuddly bulk. They tumble head-over-heels like tripping toddlers or simply bob there in amniotic suspension. Even the lifeline that keeps them tethered to their ship has a pulsing, umbilical aspect.
      Gravity, the new Alfonso Cuarón picture, is a heart- achingly tender film about the miracle of motherhood, and the billion-to-one odds against any of us being here, astronauts or not. It’s also a totally absorbing, often overpowering spectacle - a $100 million 3D action movie in which Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play two Hollywood-handsome spacefarers, fighting for their lives 375 miles above the Earth’s crust.
      A series of captions over the opening titles reminds us that this is a dead zone: no oxygen or air pressure, and nothing to carry sound. “Life in space is impossible,” the final message tells us, as the cinema shakes with Steven Price’s resonant score, and then suddenly falls quiet.
      For Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock), a mission specialist in orbit for the first time, the lack of noise is welcome. She’s a medical engineer called up by NASA to install new software on to the Hubble Telescope, but also a mother in mourning for her four- year-old daughter, whom she lost in a senseless accident, and the silence enfolds her like a comfort blanket.

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

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NASA Researchers Studying Advanced Nuclear Rocket Technologies

January 9, 2013

By using an innovative test facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., researchers are able to use non-nuclear materials to simulate nuclear thermal rocket fuels - ones capable of propelling bold new exploration missions to the Red Planet and beyond. The Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage team is tackling a three-year project to demonstrate the viability of nuclear propulsion system technologies. A nuclear rocket engine uses a nuclear reactor to heat hydrogen to very high temperatures, which expands through a nozzle to generate thrust. Nuclear rocket engines generate higher thrust and are more than twice as efficient as conventional chemical rocket engines.

The team recently used Marshall’s Nuclear Thermal Rocket Element Environmental Simulator, or NTREES, to perform realistic, non-nuclear testing of various materials for nuclear thermal rocket fuel elements. In an actual reactor, the fuel elements would contain uranium, but no radioactive materials are used during the NTREES tests. Among the fuel options are a graphite composite and a “cermet” composite - a blend of ceramics and metals. Both materials were investigated in previous NASA and U.S. Department of Energy research efforts.

Nuclear-powered rocket concepts are not new; the United States conducted studies and significant ground testing from 1955 to 1973 to determine the viability of nuclear propulsion systems, but ceased testing when plans for a crewed Mars mission were deferred.

The NTREES facility is designed to test fuel elements and materials in hot flowing hydrogen, reaching pressures up to 1,000 pounds per square inch and temperatures of nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit - conditions that simulate space-based nuclear propulsion systems to provide baseline data critical to the research team.

“This is vital testing, helping us reduce risks and costs associated with advanced propulsion technologies and ensuring excellent performance and results as we progress toward further system development and testing,” said Mike Houts, project manager for nuclear systems at Marshall.

A first-generation nuclear cryogenic propulsion system could propel human explorers to Mars more efficiently than conventional spacecraft, reducing crews’ exposure to harmful space radiation and other effects of long-term space missions. It could also transport heavy cargo and science payloads. Further development and use of a first-generation nuclear system could also provide the foundation for developing extremely advanced propulsion technologies and systems in the future - ones that could take human crews even farther into the solar system.

Building on previous, successful research and using the NTREES facility, NASA can safely and thoroughly test simulated nuclear fuel elements of various sizes, providing important test data to support the design of a future Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage. A nuclear cryogenic upper stage - its liquid- hydrogen propellant chilled to super-cold temperatures for launch - would be designed to be safe during all mission phases and would not be started until the spacecraft had reached a safe orbit and was ready to begin its journey to a distant destination. Prior to startup in a safe orbit, the nuclear system would be cold, with no fission products generated from nuclear operations, and with radiation below significant levels.

“The information we gain using this test facility will permit engineers to design rugged, efficient fuel elements and nuclear propulsion systems,” said NASA researcher Bill Emrich, who manages the NTREES facility at Marshall. “It’s our hope that it will enable us to develop a reliable, cost-effective nuclear rocket engine in the not-too-distant future."

The Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage project is part of the Advanced Exploration Systems program, which is managed by NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate and includes participation by the U.S. Department of Energy. The program, which focuses on crew safety and mission operations in deep space, seeks to pioneer new approaches for rapidly developing prototype systems, demonstrating key capabilities and validating operational concepts for future vehicle development and human missions beyond Earth orbit.

Marshall researchers are partnering on the project with NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio; NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls; Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M.; and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The Marshall Center leads development of the Space Launch System for NASA. The Science & Technology Office at Marshall strives to apply advanced concepts and capabilities to the research, development and management of a broad spectrum of NASA programs, projects and activities that fall at the very intersection of science and exploration, where every discovery and achievement furthers scientific knowledge and understanding, and supports the agency’s ambitious mission to expand humanity’s reach across the solar system. The NTREES test facility is just one of numerous cutting-edge space propulsion and science research facilities housed in the state-of- the-art Propulsion Research & Development Laboratory at Marshall, contributing to development of the Space Launch System and a variety of other NASA programs and missions.

Available in: http://www.nasa.gov