Questões de Inglês - Advérbios e conjunções | Adverbs and conjunctions para Concurso

Try these expert tips for a safer solo trip

(Available at: https://news.airbnb.com/try-these-expert-tips-for-a-safer-solo-trip/ – text especially adapted for this text).

Text 2 – Computers

(Text adapted from History of Computing. Retrieved from

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~mitra/csFall2006/cs 303/lectures/history.html)

When you hear the term computers, it’s difficult to imagine different devices from a laptop or a small desktop. Believe it or not, they weren’t always like they are today. They used to be very large and heavy, sometimes as big as an entire room. Some technology professors historically define computers, as “a device that can help with computations”. The word computation involves counting, calculating, adding, subtracting, etc. The modern definition of a computer is a little wider, because in our day and age, computers store, compile, analyze and compute an enormous amount of information. Ancient computers were very interesting. Actually, the first computer may have been located in Great Britain, at Stonehenge. It is a man-made circle of large stones. Citizens used it to measure the weather and forecast the change of seasons. Some specialists say that another ancient computer is the abacus. It was used by the early Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians to count and calculate. Even though they are no longer in use, certainly, these early devices are fascinating. Computers are embedded in our history and some people say that we are completely dependent of them. No matter the complexity of the task, easy or difficult, some people can’t do anything without them. Do you contest or share this opinion? 

Text CB1A2-I  

   Although an oft-cited poll showed that 85% of Americans approve of organ donation, less than half had made a decision about donating, and fewer still (28%) had granted permission by signing a donor card, a pattern also observed in Germany, Spain, and Sweden. Given the shortage of donors, the gap between approval and action is a matter of life and death. 

    What drives the decision to become a potential donor? Within the European Union, donation rates vary by nearly an order of magnitude across countries and these differences are stable from year to year. Even when controlling for variables such as transplant infrastructure, economic and educational status, and religion, large differences in donation rates persist. Why?

   Most public policy choices have a no-action default, that is, a condition is imposed when an individual fails to make a decision. In the case of organ donation, European countries have one of two default policies. In presumed-consent states, people are organ donors unless they register not to be, and in explicitconsent countries, nobody is an organ donor without registering to be one.

   We examined the rate of agreement to become a donor across European countries with explicit and presumed consent laws. If preferences concerning organ donation are strong, we would expect defaults to have little or no effect. However, defaults appear to make a large difference: the four opt-in countries (Denmark, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany) had lower rates than the six opt-out countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Sweden). The two distributions have no overlap, and nearly 60 percentage points separate the two groups

    Our data suggest changes in defaults could increase donations in the United States of additional thousands of donors a year. Because each donor can donate for about three transplants, the consequences are substantial in lives saved. Our results stand in contrast with the suggestion that defaults do not matter. Policy-makers performing analysis in this and other domains should consider that defaults make a difference.

Eric J. Johnson; Daniel Goldstein. Do Defaults Save Lives?

Internet: <www.dangoldstein.com> (adapted).