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READING COMPREHENSION (20) C1.Ant colonies have their own personalities, which are shaped by the environment, a US study suggests Colonies of several hundred ants show differences in the way they behave, just like individual people The study is published in the journal 'Proceedings of the Royal Society B'.According to ecologists, having a personality means showing a consistent pattern of behaviour over time Researchers from the University of Arizona studied colonies of rock ants across the western US, both by following them in the wild and by taking whole colonies back to the lab.They found that certain risky behaviours, like foraging widely for food and responding aggressively to a threat, went together, and colonies further north tended to take more of these risks The study suggests those more adventurous personalities could be an adaptation to the limited window of activity left by the long, snowy northern winter ##### C2.Scotland has voted to stay in the United Kingdom Around 85% of voters turned out to vote in the referendum A total of 2,001,926 people voted 'No' to independence, whilst 1,617,989 voted 'Yes' It's been history in the making The people of Scotland have decided to continue their 300-year union with England So the UK survives Pro-independence campaigners say they're disappointed, but insist the high turnout shows there's an appetite for change Few would disagree, and accept the result doesn't mean Britain goes back to business as usual In the hours and days ahead, the Prime Minister David Cameron and the other party leaders will now have to deliver on their promise in the last days of the campaign to give Scotland more powers And no-one believes that can be done without a wider shake-up of how the rest of the UK is governed ##### C3 Walking or cycling to work instead of driving a car can improve people's feelings of health and happiness That's what a study at the University of East Anglia in the UK suggests For many people commuting is a necessary evil Most see going by car or van as the 'least worst' option This study by the researchers at the University of East Anglia challenges that assumption It suggests walking, cycling or travelling by public transport can lift the mood Crucially, it suggests those who switch from the car to an active commute feel better across a range of psychological measures, including concentration, decision making and the ability to face up to problems The researchers say policies encouraging people to leave their cars at home could have a dramatic impact on public wellbeing ##### C4 The Earth's protective ozone layer is starting to repair itself, according to a panel of United Nations scientists The main reason behind its recovery, they say, is the fact that certain chemicals, such as those used in aerosol cans, were gradually banned in the 1980s It was in the 1980s that many of us became aware that small individual actions could harm the planet itself.Hairsprays were cited as one of the causes of the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer People were told to wear sunscreen to avoid skin cancer as the layer thinned and more UV light got through.By 1987 world governments had agreed to ban most of the ozone-eating chemicals.The World Meteorological Organisation say at last the ozone layer is showing signs of thickening, although it will be a while before they know if the hole is actually healing.The same organisation warned earlier this week that climate change was heading in the opposite direction with greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a record level ##### C5 You can live without air conditioning and indoor plumbing, but there are some true necessities of life You can't survive for long without food, water, sleep, or air Survival experts apply the ‘rule of threes’ to lasting without essentials You can go about three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter, and three minutes without air However, the ‘rules’ are more like general guidelines Obviously, you can last a lot longer outside when it's warm than when it's freezing Similarly, you can last longer without water when it's humid and cool than when it's hot and dry.The technical name for starvation is inanition It is extreme malnutrition and calorie deficiency A starving person is less sensitive to thirst, so sometimes death is from the effects of dehydration Vitamin deficiency may also lead to death If a person lasts long enough, the body starts using protein from muscles, including the heart, as an energy source Usually, the cause of death is cardiac arrest from tissue damage and electrolyte imbalance ##### C6 Water is an essential molecule for life Depending on your age, gender, and weight, you consist of around 50-65% water, which is used to digest food, carry oxygen and nutrients through the bloodstream, remove wastes, and cushion organs Since water is so critical, it should come as no surprise that dying from dehydration is an unpleasant way to go Oh, in the end, a victim is unconscious, so the actual dying part isn't so bad, but that only occurs after days of pain and misery.Lack of water causes cracked skin and a dry, raspy cough Coughing won't be the worst, though While you might be out of fluids, that won't prevent vomiting The increased acidity of the stomach can produce dry heaves Blood thickens, increasing heart rate Another unpleasant result of dehydration is a swollen tongue While your tongue swells, your eyes and brain shrink As the brain shrinks, the membrane or meninges pulls away from the bones of the skull, potentially tearing Death can result from liver failure, kidney failure, or cardiac arrest ##### C7.Any new parent can verify it's possible to go days without sleeping Yet, it's an essential process While scientists are still unraveling the mysteries of sleep, it's known to play roles in memory formation, tissue repair, and hormone synthesis Lack of sleep (called agrypnia) leads to decreased concentration and reaction time, diminished mental processes, reduced motivation, and altered perception.How long can you go without sleep? Anecdotal reports indicate soldiers in battle have been known to stay awake for four days and that manic patients have lasted three to four days Experiments have documented normal people staying awake for eight to ten days, without any apparent permanent damage after a night or two of normal sleep to recover.The world record holder was Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old high school student, who stayed awake for 264 hours, around 11 days, for a science fair project in 1965 While he was technically awake at the conclusion of the project, he was completely dysfunctional by the end.However, there are rare disorders, such as Morvan's syndrome, which can cause a person to go without sleep for several months! The question of how long people can stay awake ultimately remains unanswered ##### C8.How long a person can go without air is really a question of how long he can go without oxygen It's further complicated if other gases are present For example, breathing the same air over and over is more likely to be lethal because of the excess carbon dioxide rather than the depleted oxygen Death from removing all oxygen,like a vacuum, may occur from the results of the pressure change or possibly temperature change.When the brain is deprived of oxygen, death occurs because there is insufficient chemical energy to feed brain cells How long this takes depends on temperature, metabolic rate, slower is better, and other factors.If oxygen deprivation occurs some other way, perhaps from drowning, for example, a person loses consciousness between 30 and 180 seconds At the 60 second mark brain cells start to die After three minutes, lasting damage is likely Brain death typically occurs between five and ten minutes, possibly fifteen minutes.However, people can train themselves to make more efficient use of oxygen The world record holder for free diving held his breath for 22 minutes and 22 seconds without suffering brain damage! ##### C9 Studies suggest that teenagers often sacrifice their sleep time when it comes to making choices about time management The problem is, studies also show that they need a lot more sleep than they probably get More and more studies are showing that there is a direct link between sleep and academic success.According to a study by sleep expert Mary Carskadon, PhD, teens should receive more than nine hours of sleep every night.Dr Carskadon's study suggests biology might be the cause for sleep deprivation among teens Their internal time clocks are just a little different during teenage years and late nights and sleep-ins are a natural part of growing into adulthood.Lack of sleep makes it more difficult for students to concentrate in school, especially during those early-morning classes.A more recent study shows that sacrificing sleep to study actually does more harm than good The sleep that you miss when you stay up late to study will cause ‘academic problems’ the following day It's just not worth sacrificing sleep to study! ##### C10 What can you if you know you aren't getting enough sleep?Turn off the TV at night The TV noises and flashing lights will only keep you from getting a sound sleep If you can remember anything you hear during your sleep, it's a sure sign you're not sleeping well.Reduce caffeine by switching to something healthier, like bottled water.Limit after-school activities It's hard to do, but try to limit your extracurricular activity Sometimes you just have to make a hard choice and stick to it.Don't think too hard right before bed time Turn off the cell phone Keep track of time Often, students have great intentions, but other tasks seem to keep them up late, time after time Play music if you want, but not too loud Many people play music at night If it doesn't bother you, go ahead Do you really need that after-school job? This might be a really tough decision, too Some students need to work so they can pay for car insurance or save up for college You'll just have to decide on your own, what's necessary and what's not ##### C11 Sleeping in the ocean is definitely different than sleeping on land As we learn more about sleep in marine life, we're learning that marine animals don't have the same requirements for long periods of undisturbed sleep that we Here you can learn more about how different types of marine animals sleep.Cetaceans,i.e whales, dolphins and porpoises are voluntary breathers, meaning they think about every breath they take A whale breathes through the blowholes on top of its head, so it needs to come up to the water surface to breathe But that means the whale needs to be awake to breathe How's a whale going to get any rest? The answer may surprise you Research on captive animals shows that cetaceans rest one half of their brain at a time, while the other half stays awake and makes sure the animal breathes.Sharks need to keep water moving over their gills so that they receive oxygen So that means they need to keep moving all the time or they? Some sharks need to move all the time, and these sharks seem to be ‘sleep swimming,’ with some parts of their brain more active than others Other sharks can rest, using spiracles to draw in oxygenated water ##### C12 Money doesn't have any inherent value Unless you enjoy looking at pictures of deceased national heroes, money has no more use than any other piece of paper until, as a country and an economy, we assign value to it At that point, it does have value, but the value isn't inherent; it's assigned and generally agreed upon by users worldwide It didn't always work this way In the past, money generally took the form of coins composed of precious metals such as gold and silver.The value of the coins was roughly based on the value of the metals they contained, because you could always melt the coins down and use the metal for other purposes Until a few decades ago paper money in different countries was based on the gold standard or silver standard or some combination of the two This meant that you could take some paper money to the government, who would exchange it for some gold or some silver based on an exchange rate set by the government The gold standard lasted until 1971 when President Nixon announced that the United States would no longer exchange dollars for gold This ended the Bretton Woods system, which will be the focus of a future article Now the United States is on a system of fiat money, which is not tied to any other commodity So these pieces of paper in your pocket are just that: pieces of paper ##### C13.If we print more money, prices will rise such that we’re no better off than we were before Why will prices go up after a money supply increase?In short, prices will go up after a drastic increase in the money supply because:If people have more money, they’ll divert some of that money to spending Retailers will be forced to raise prices, or run out of the product.Retailers who run out of product will try to replenish it Producers face the same dilemma of retailers that they will either have to raise prices, or face shortages because they not have the capacity to create an extra product and they cannot find labor at rates which are low enough to justify the extra production.Inflation is caused by a combination of four factors: The supply of money goes up.The supply of goods goes down.Demand for money goes down.Demand for goods goes up.This gets us to why drastically increasing the money supply on the surface seems like a good idea When we say we’d like more money, what we’re really saying is we’d like more wealth The problem is if we all have more money, collectively we’re not going to be any more wealthy Increasing the amount of money does nothing to increasing the amount of wealth or more plainly the amount of stuff in the world Since the same number of people are chasing the same amount of stuff, we cannot on average be wealthier than we were before ##### C14.Between 2000 and 2012, deforestation occurred on 888,000 square miles globally This was partially offset by 309,000 square miles where forests grew back The net result is an average forest loss of 31 million acres per year during that period – that’s about the size of the state of Mississippi, each year.This forest loss trend is not distributed evenly over the planet Several areas are experiencing important reforestation, the regrowth of recently cut forest, and afforestation, the planting of new forests were none were in recent history, i.e., less than 50 years.Intensive forestry in subtropical areas and in boreal forests is a major agent of forest loss The vast majority of forest loss in tropical areas occurs when forests are converted to agriculture production and pastures for cattle Forests are not logged for the commercial value of the wood itself, but instead they are burned as the fastest way to clear land Cattle are then brought in to graze on grasses that now replace the trees In some areas plantations are put in, notably large palm oil operations In other places, like Argentina, forests are cut to grow soybeans, a major ingredient in pig and poultry feed ##### C15.The loss of forests means disappearing habitats for wildlife and degraded watersheds, but it also impacts our climate in a multitude of ways Trees absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, the number one greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change By cutting down forests we reduce the planet’s capacity to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and achieve a balanced carbon dioxide budget Slash from forestry operations is often burned, releasing in the air the carbon stored in the wood In addition, the soil left exposed after the machinery is gone continues to release stored carbon into the atmosphere.Forest loss affects the water cycle, too The dense tropical forests found along the equator release phenomenal amounts of water in the air through a process called transpiration This water condenses into clouds, which then release the water further away in the form of torrential tropical rains It is too soon to really understand how deforestation’s interference with this process affects climate change, but we can be assured that it has consequences within and outside tropical regions ##### C16.Behavior is what we humans Behavior is observable and measurable Whether it is walk from one place to another or to crack our knuckles, behavior serves some ‘function’ or the other.Applied Behavior Analysis, the research based approach to modifying behavior, seeks to find the ‘function’ of an inappropriate behavior in order to find a replacement behavior to replace it Every behavior serves some function, and provides a consequence, reinforcement, for the behavior.When we successfully identify the ‘function’ of the behavior we can reinforce an alternate, acceptable behavior that will replace it When the student has that particular ‘need’ or function fulfilled by an alternate means, the mal-adaptive or unacceptable behavior is less likely to reappear If a child needs attention, and we give them attention in an appropriate way because of appropriate behavior, we cement the appropriate behavior and make the inappropriate or unwanted behavior less likely to appear ##### C17 The clearest evidence of how a behavior functions for a child is seen in the Antecedent and the Consequence The Antecedent is everything that happens immediately before the behavior occurs It is sometimes also referred to as ‘the Setting Event’ but a setting event may be part of the antecedent, but not the whole The teacher/ABA practitioner needs to ask ‘Is there something in the environment that may lead to the behavior i.e., escaping loud noises, a person who always presents demand, a change in routine that might seem frightening to a child?’ Is there something that happens in that environment that seems to have a causal relationship, like the entrance of a pretty girl, attention, or a loud noise? The Consequence In ABA, the term consequence has a very specific meaning, which at the same time is broader than the use of ‘consequence’, as it usually is, to mean ‘punishment’ The consequence is what happens as the result of the behavior That consequence is usually the ‘reward’ or ‘reinforcement’ for the behavior ##### C18.During Grace Abbott’s early childhood in Grand Island, Nebraska, her family was fairly well off Her father was the Lieutenant Governor of the state, and her mother was an activist who had been an abolitionist and advocated women’s rights including woman suffrage.But the 1893 financial depression, plus the drought afflicting the rural part of Nebraska where the family lived, meant that plans had to change Grace studied at and graduated in 1898 from Grand Island College, a Baptist school She moved to Custer County to teach after graduation, but then returned home to recover from a bout of typhoid In 1899, when Edith left her teaching position at the high school in Grand Island, Grace took her position.Grace was able to study law at the University of Nebraska from 1902 to 1903 She was the only woman in the class She taught at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration from 1934 to 1939, where her sister was the dean She also served, during those years, as editor of The Social Service Review which her sister had founded in 1927 with Sophonisba Breckenridge In 1935 and 1937, she was a United States delegate to the International Labor Organization In 1938, she published the 2volume treatment of federal and state laws and programs protecting children, The Child and the State ##### C19 The name ‘Canada’ comes from ‘kanata’,the Iroquois-Huron word for village Aboriginal people used the word to describe the village of Stadacona (present-day Quebec City) to French explorer Jacques Cartier during his trip along the St Lawrence River in 1535 Cartier used the word Canada to refer to both the settlement of Stadacona as well as the surrounding area, which was then under the purview of Iroquois Chief Donnacona.By 1547, maps were showing the name Canada applied to everything north of the St Lawrence River Cartier referred to the St Lawrence River as the ‘riviere du Canada’ and the name began to take hold Even though the French called the region New France, by 1616 the area along the great river of Canada and the Gulf of St Lawrence was still called Canada As the country expanded to the west and the south in the 1700s, ‘Canada’ was the unofficial name of an area spanning the American midwest, extending as far south as what is now the state of Louisiana After the British conquered New France in 1763, the colony was renamed the Province of Quebec As British loyalists began heading north during and after the American Revolutionary War, Quebec was divided into two separate parts ##### C20.Socialism is a political term applied to an economic system in which property is held in common and not individually, and relationships are governed by a political hierarchy Common ownership doesn't mean decisions are made collectively, however Instead, individuals in positions of authority make decisions in the name of the collective group Regardless of the picture painted of socialism by its proponents, it ultimately removes group decision making in favor of the choices of one all-important individual.Socialism originally involved the replacement of private property with a market exchange, but history has proven this ineffective socialism cannot prevent people from competing for what is scarce Socialism, as we know it today, most commonly refers to ‘market socialism,’ which involves individual market exchanges organized by collective planning.People often confuse ‘socialism’ with the concept of ‘communism’ While the two ideologies share much in common, in fact, communism encompasses socialism, the primary difference between the two is that ‘socialism’ applies to economic systems, whereas ‘communism’ applies to both economic and political systems ##### ... sound sleep If you can remember anything you hear during your sleep, it's a sure sign you're not sleeping well.Reduce caffeine by switching to something healthier, like bottled water.Limit after-school... ozone layer is showing signs of thickening, although it will be a while before they know if the hole is actually healing.The same organisation warned earlier this week that climate change was... nothing to increasing the amount of wealth or more plainly the amount of stuff in the world Since the same number of people are chasing the same amount of stuff, we cannot on average be wealthier