Reading Int 5: Cycling

Cycling

What’s the furthest you have ever cycled? Perhaps you cycle to school or to work, or maybe at most a short cycling trip with friends? How would you feel about spending months on the road travelling solo from the UK to China, by bike?

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Reading Int 4: Programmable plants

Programmable plants

In electronics, even the most advanced computer is just a complex arrangement of simple, modular parts that control specific functions; the same integrated circuit might be found in an iPhone, or in an aircraft. 

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Reading Int 3: Visions of the future

Visions of the future

Humans have always speculated about what society may or should look like in the future and there is a long and honourable tradition of writers who have described their vision of the world in a future age. One possible division of these books is into utopias which paint a picture of an ideal society and dystopias in which the world is a much less desirable and often frightening place. 

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Reading Int 2: Clock-watches

Clock-watches

The first timepieces that were worn are the so-called clock-watches of the mid 16th century. They were quite different from the modern day wristwatch in several respects. They were made almost completely from brass and were not round but cylindrical in shape with a hinged metal cover instead of a glass face. This was in the form of a grill so that the hour hand – there was no minute hand or second hand – could be seen without opening it.

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Reading Int 1: Performer Houdini

Performer Houdini 

Harry Houdini (1874 to 1926) was a Hungarian-American illusionist and stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts. He first attracted attention as "Harry Handcuff Houdini" on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up. Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, and having to hold his breath inside a sealed milk can.

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Reading 164: Rising Sea

RISING SEA

Paragraph 1

INCREASED TEMPERATURES

The average air temperature at the surface of the earth has risen this century, as has the temperature of ocean surface waters. Because water expands as it heats, a warmer ocean means higher sea levels. We cannot say definitely that the temperature rises are due to the greenhouse effect; the heating may be part of a ‘natural’ variability over a long time - scale that we have not yet recognized in our short 100 years of recording. However, assuming the build up of greenhouse gases is responsible, and that the warming will continue, scientists – and inhabitants of low-lying coastal areas – would like to know the extent of future sea level rises.  

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Reading 163: Australia and the Great War, 1914–1918

Australia and the Great War, 1914–1918

Australia’s role in the First World War, or the Great War as it was known until 1939, is central to the development of modern Australia’s vision of itself in the world. In many ways it has served to create what is in some ways a second founding of the nation in the Gallipoli campaign and on the battlefields of France and Belgium. The influence of the war experience in the First, and Second, World War is evident in the way in which ANZAC day is, perhaps even more than Australia day, the country’s national day.

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Reading 162: DIABETES

DIABETES

Here are some facts that you probably didn’t know about diabetes. It is the world’s fastest growing disease. It is Australia’s 6th leading cause of death. Over 1 million Australians have it though 50% of those are as yet unaware. Every 10 minutes someone is diagnosed with diabetes. So much for the facts but what exactly is diabetes?

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Reading 161: Urban planning in Singapore

Urban planning in Singapore

British merchants established a trading post in Singapore in the early nineteenth century, and for more than a century trading interests dominated. However, in 1965 the newly independent island state was cut off from its hinterland, and so it set about pursuing a survival strategy. The good international communications it already enjoyed provided a useful base, but it was decided that if Singapore was to secure its economic future, it must develop its industry. To this end, new institutional structures were needed to facilitate, develop, and control foreign investment. One of the most important of these was the Economic Development Board (EDB), an arm of government that developed strategies for attracting investment. Thus from the outset, the Singaporean government was involved in city promotion.

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Reading 160: Experience versus speed

Experience versus speed

Certain mental functions slow down with age, but the brain compensates in ways that can keep seniors as sharp as youngsters.

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Reading 159: Robotic approach to crop breeding

Robotic approach to crop breeding

Jennifer Manyweathers takes a look at a robot that is being used to identify drought-tolerant crop varieties

A  The Australian sunflower industry is the major source of polyunsaturated fatty acids found in margarines and spreads. Recognised as the type of fatty acid most able to protect against heart disease, it is in everybody's best interest that Australia has a competitive and healthy sunflower industry, but in Australia there is a constant struggle with the harsh climate. However, thanks to one special robot, farmers may be able to win the battle against drought.

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Reading 158: How consumers decide

How consumers decide

Professor John Maule from the University of Leeds describes new research into the way that consumers choose a product.

Understanding consumers

Consumers are creatures of habit: they buy the same products time and time again, and such is their familiarity with big brands, and the colours and logos that represent them, that they can register a brand they like with barely any conscious thought process. The packaging of consumer products is therefore a crucial vehicle for delivering the brand and the product into our shopping baskets.

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Reading 157: Jumping spiders

Jumping spiders

Peter Aldhons examines how Portia spiders catch their prey

A  For a stalking predator, the element of surprise is crucial. And for jumping spiders that sneak onto other spiders' webs to prey on their owners, it can be the difference between having lunch and becoming it. Now zoologists have discovered the secret of these spiders' tactics: creeping forward when their prey's web is vibrating.

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Reading 156: The Problem of Scarce Resources

The Problem of Scarce Resources

Section A

The problem of how health-care resources should be allocated or apportioned, so that they are distributed in both the most just and most efficient way, is not a new one. Every health system in an economically developed society is faced with the need to decide (either formally or informally) what proportion of the community’s total resources should be spent on health-care; how resources are to be apportioned; what diseases and disabilities and which forms of treatment are to be given priority; which members of the community are to be given special consideration in respect of their health needs; and which forms of treatment are the most cost-effective. 

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Reading 155: The Nature and Aims of Archaeology

The Nature and Aims of Archaeology

Archaeology is partly the discovery of treasures of the past, partly the work of the scientific analyst, partly the exercise of the creative imagination. It is toiling in the sun on an excavation in the Middle East, it is working with living Inuit in the snows of Alaska, and it is investigating the sewers of Roman Britain. But it is also the painstaking task of interpretation, so that we come to understand what these things mean for the human story. And it is the conservation of the world’s cultural heritage against looting and careless harm.

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Reading 154: Obtaining Linguistic Data

Obtaining Linguistic Data

A.    Many procedures are available for obtaining data about a language. They range from a carefully planned, intensive field investigation in a foreign country to a casual introspection about one’s mother tongue carried out in an armchair at home. 

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Reading 153: Volcanoes – Earth-shattering news

Volcanoes – Earth-shattering news

When Mount Pinatubo suddenly erupted on 9 June 1991, the power of volcanoes past and present again hit the headlines

A  Volcanoes are the ultimate earth-moving machinery. A violent eruption can blow the top few kilometres off a mountain, scatter fine ash practically all over the globe and hurt rock fragments into the stratosphere to darken the skies a continent away. 

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Reading 152: Micro-Enterprise Credit for Street Youth

Micro-Enterprise Credit for Street Youth

"I am from a large, poor family and for many years we have done without breakfast. Ever since I joined the Street Kids International program I have been able to buy my family sugar and buns for breakfast. I have also bought myself decent second-hand clothes and shoes."

Doreen Soko

"We’ve had business experience. Now I’m confident to expand what we’ve been doing. I’ve learnt cash management, and the way of keeping money so we save for re-investment. Now business is a part of our lives. As well, we didn’t know each other before – now we’ve made new friends."

Fan Kaoma

Participants in the Youth Skills Enterprise Initiative Program, Zambia

Introduction 

Although small-scale business training and credit programs have become more common throughout the world, relatively little attention has been paid to the need to direct such opportunities to young people. Even less attention has been paid to children living on the street or in difficult circumstances.

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Reading 151: Effects of Noise

Effects of Noise

In general, it is plausible to suppose that we should prefer peace and quiet to noise. And yet most of us have had the experience of having to adjust to sleeping in the mountains or the countryside because it was initially too quiet. Van experience that suggests that humans are capable of adapting to a wide range-of noise levels. Research supports this view. For example, Glass and Singer (1972) exposed people to short bursts of very loud noise and then measured their ability to work out problems and their physiological reactions to the noise. The noise was quite disruptive at first, but after about four minutes the subjects were doing just as well on their tasks as control subjects who were not exposed to noise. Their physiological arousal also declined quickly to the same levels as those of the control subjects.

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Reading 150: Endless Harvest

Endless Harvest

More than two hundred years ago, Russian explorers and fur hunters landed on the Aleutian Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the North Pacific, and learned of a land mass that lay farther to the north. The islands' native inhabitants called this land mass Aleyska. the 'Great Land'; today, we know it as Alaska.

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