1.

The Khoikhoi

San, people of southern Africa, consisting of several groups and numbering

over 85,000 in all. They are generally short in stature; their skin is yellowish
brown in colour, and they feature prominent cheekbones. The San have
been called Bushmen by whites in South Africa, but the term is now
considered derogatory. Although many now work for white settlers, about
half are still nomadic hunters and gatherers of wild food in desolate areas
like the Kalahari semi-desert, which stretches between today’s Nation
States of Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Their social unit is the
small hunting band; larger organizations are loose and temporary. Grass
huts, caves, and rock shelters are used as dwellings. They possess only
what they can carry, using poisoned arrowheads to fall game and
transporting water in ostrich-egg shells. The San have a rich folklore, are
skilled in drawing, and have a remarkably complex language characterized
by the use of click sounds, related to that of the Khoikhoi. For thousands of
years the San lived in southern and central Africa, but by the time of the
Portuguese arrival in the 15th cent., they had already been forced into the
interior of southern Africa. In the 18th and 19th cent., they resisted the
encroachment on their lands of Dutch settlers, but by 1862 that resistance
had been crushed.

2.Star

The smallest star yet measured has been discovered by a team of

astronomers led by the University of Cambridge. With a size just a sliver
larger than that of Saturn, the gravitational pull at its stellar surface is about
300 times stronger than what humans feel on Earth.

The star is likely as small as stars can possibly become, as it has just
enough mass to enable the fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. If it were
any smaller, the pressure at the center of the star would no longer be
sufficient to enable this process to take place. Hydrogen fusion is also what
powers the Sun, and scientists are attempting to replicate it as a powerful
energy source here on Earth.

These very small and dim stars are also the best possible candidates for
detecting Earth-sized planets which can have liquid water on their surfaces,
such as TRAPPIST-1, an ultracool dwarf surrounded by seven temperate
Earth-sized worlds.
The newly-measured star, called EBLM J0555-57Ab, is located about six
hundred light years away. It is part of a binary system and was identified as
it passed in front of its much larger companion, a method which is usually
used to detect planets, not stars. Details will be published in the journal
Astronomy & Astrophysics.

3. Napping

A large new study has found that people who regularly took a siesta were
significantly less likely to die of heart disease.

“Taking a nap could turn out to be an important weapon in the fight against
coronary mortality,” said Dimitrios Trichopoulos of the Harvard School of
Public Health in Boston, who led the study published yesterday in the
Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study of more than 23,000 Greek adults — the biggest and best
examination of the subject to date — found that those who regularly took a
midday siesta were more than 30 percent less likely to die of heart disease.

Other experts said the results are intriguing. Heart disease kills more than
650,000 Americans each year, making it the nation’s No. 1 cause of death.

“It’s interesting. A little siesta, a little snooze may be beneficial,” said Gerald
Fletcher, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., speaking on
behalf of the American Heart Association. “It’s simple, but it has a lot of
promise.”

While more research is needed to confirm and explore the findings, there
are several ways napping could reduce the risk of heart attacks, experts
said.

“Napping may help deal with the stress of daily living,” said Michael Twery,
who directs the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s National Center
on Sleep Disorders Research. “Another possibility is that it is part of the
normal biological rhythm of daily living. The biological clock that drives
sleep and wakefulness has two cycles each day, and one of them dips
usually in the early afternoon. It’s possible that not engaging in napping for
some people might disrupt these processes.”
Researchers have long known that countries such as Greece, Italy, and
Spain, where people commonly take siestas, have lower rates of heart
disease than would be expected. But previous studies that attempted to
study the relationship between naps and heart disease have produced
mixed results. The new study is first to try to fully account for factors that
might confuse the findings, such as physical activity, diet, and other
illnesses.

4. Drone delivery

Delivering packages with drones can reduce carbon dioxide emissions in

certain circumstances as compared to truck deliveries, a new study from
University of Washington transportation engineers finds.

In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Transportation

Research Part D, researchers found that drones tend to have carbon
dioxide emissions advantages over trucks when the drones don’t have to
fly very far to their destinations or when a delivery route has few recipients.

Trucks — which can offer environmental benefits by carrying everything

from clothes to appliances to furniture in a single trip — become a more
climate-friendly alternative when a delivery route has many stops or is
farther away from a central warehouse.

For small, light packages — a bottle of medicine or a kid’s bathing suit —

drones compete especially well. But the carbon benefits erode as the
weight of a package increase since these unmanned aerial vehicles have
to use additional energy to stay aloft with a heavy load.

5.Parents’ Born Order Affect Their Parenting

Parents’ own birth order can become an issue when dynamics in the family
they are raising replicate the family in which they were raised. Agati notes
common examples, such as a firstborn parent getting into “raging battles”
with a firstborn child. “Both are used to getting the last word. Each has to
be right. But the parent has to be the grown-up and step out of that battle,”
he advises. When youngest children become parents, Agati cautions that
because they “may not have had high expectations placed on them, they,
in turn, may not see their kids for their abilities.”

But he also notes that since youngest children tend to be more social,
“youngest parents can be helpful to their firstborn, who may have a harder
time with social situations. These parents can help their eldest kids loosen
up and not be so hard on themselves. Mom Susan Ritz says her own birth
order didn’t seem to affect her parenting until the youngest of her three
children, Julie, was born. Julie was nine years younger than Ritz’s oldest,
Joshua, mirroring the age difference between Susan and her own older
brother. “I would see Joshua do to Julie what my brother did to me,” she
says of the taunting and teasing by a much older sibling.

“I had to try not to always take Julie’s side.” Biases can surface no matter
what your own birth position was, as Lori Silverstone points out. “As a
middle myself, I can be harder on my older daughter. I recall my older sister
hitting me,” she says of her reactions to her daughters’ tussles.

“My husband is a firstborn. He’s always sticking up for the oldest. He feels
bad for her that the others came so fast. He helps me to see what that feels
like, to have that attention and then lose it.” Silverstone sees birth-order
triggers as “an opportunity to heal parts of ourselves. I’ve learned to teach
my middle daughter to stand up for herself.

My mother didn’t teach me that. I’m conscious of giving my middle daughter

tools so she has a nice way to protect herself.”

Whether or not you subscribe to theories that birth order can affect your
child’s personality, ultimately, “we all have free will,” Agati notes. It’s
important for both parents and kids to realize that, despite the
characteristics often associated with birth order, “you’re not locked into any
role.

6.Cyber Bullying

Despite the growth of social media, the internet and their central role in
modern childhood, traditional bullying — such as name-calling or being
excluded by others — remains considerably more common than
cyberbullying, according to the largest study of its kind published in The
Lancet Child and Adolescent Health journal.
The study estimates that less than 1% of 15-year-olds in England report
only being bullied online regularly, while more than one in four (27%)
experience only face-to-face bullying methods.

With nine out of 10 of the teenagers who are bullied online also facing
regular traditional bullying, the researchers suggest that cyberbullying is an
additional tactic in the bullies’ arsenal, and that both forms must be tackled
together to prevent bullying and improve teenagers’ resilience.

Concerns have been raised that cyberbullying has the potential to cause
more harm than traditional bullying due to the relative anonymity of
perpetrators in many cases, larger audiences, increasing prevalence, and
permanence of posted messages. However, in the study, the experience of
only cyberbullying was found to have a very small association with well-
being and life satisfaction when compared with traditional bullying alone

7.Comparative Advantages

With an abundance of low-priced labour relative to the United States, it is

no surprise that China, India and other developing countries specialize in
the production of labour-intensive products. For similar reasons, the United
States will specialize in the production of goods that are human- and
physical capital intensive because of the relative abundance of a highly-
educated labour force and technically sophisticated equipment in the
United States.

This division of global production should yield a higher global output of both
types of goods that would be the case if each country attempted to produce
both of these goods itself. For example, the United States would produce
more expensive labour-intensive goods because of its more expensive
labour and the developing countries would produce more expensive human
and physical capital-intensive goods because of their relative scarcity of
these inputs. This logic implies that the United States is unlikely to be a
significant global competitor in the production green technologies that are
not relatively intensive in the human and physical capital.

Nevertheless, during the early stages of the development of a new

technology, the United States has a comparative advantage in the
production of the products enabled by this innovation. However, once these
technologies become well-understood and production processes are
designed that can make use of less-skilled labour, production will migrate
to countries with less expensive labour.

7. Climate change

The greatest climate change the world has seen in the last 100,000 years
was the transition from the ice age to the warm interglacial period. New
research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen
indicates that, contrary to the previous opinion, the rise in temperature and
the rise in the atmospheric CO2 follow each other closely in terms of time.
The results have been published in the scientific journal, Climate of the
Past.

In the warmer climate, the atmospheric content of CO2 is naturally higher.

The gas CO2 (carbon dioxide) is a greenhouse gas that absorbs heat
radiation from Earth and thus keeps Earth warm. In the shift between ice
ages and interglacial periods, the atmospheric content of CO2 helps to
intensify the natural climate variations.

It had previously been thought that as the temperature began to rise at the
end of the ice age approximately 19,000 years ago, an increase in the
amount of CO2 in the atmosphere followed with a delay of up to 1,000
years.

“Our analysis of ice cores from the ice sheet in Antarctica shows that the
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere follows the rise in Antarctic
temperatures very closely and is staggered by a few hundred years at
most,” explains Sune Olander Rasmussen, Associate Professor and centre
coordinator at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at
the University of Copenhagen.
8.Beauty Contest

Since Australians Jennifer Hawkins and Lauryn Eagle were crowned Miss
Universe and Miss Teen International respectively, there has been a
dramatic increase in interest in beauty pageants in this country. These wins
have also sparked a debate as to whether beauty pageants are just
harmless reminders of old-fashioned values or a throwback to the days
when women were respected for how good they looked.

Opponents argue that beauty pageants, whether it’s Miss Universe or Miss
Teen International, are demeaning to women and out of sync with the
times. They say they are nothing more than symbols of decline.

In the past few decades, Australia has taken more than a few faltering
steps toward treating women with dignity and respect. Young women are
being brought up knowing that they can do anything, as shown by inspiring
role models in medicine such as 2003 Australian of the Year Professor
Fiona Stanley.

In the 1960s and 70s, one of the first acts of the feminist movement was to
picket beauty pageants on the premise that the industry promoted the view
that it was acceptable to judges women on their appearance. Today many
young Australian women are still profoundly uncomfortable with their body
image, feeling under all kinds of pressures because they are judged by how
they look.

Almost all of the pageant victors are wafer thin, reinforcing the message
that thin equals beautiful. This ignores the fact that men and women come
in all sizes and shapes. In a country where up to 60% of young Australians.
9. Reading Skills

The oral storytelling skills of African American preschoolers make a

difference in how quickly their reading skills develop, according to a new
study from the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Researchers say the effect
is much different for girls and boys.

Knowing how to tell a clear and coherent story is an important skill for
helping young children to develop strong reading skills, which, in turn, can
help them to be successful across a number of different subjects in school,”
said FPG advanced research scientist Nicole Gardner-Neblett. “Prior
research suggests that historical and cultural factors foster strong
storytelling skills among African American children, which has implications
for their development as readers.”

Two years ago, Gardner-Neblett’s own research was the first to

demonstrate the connection between African American preschoolers’
storytelling abilities and their early reading skills in kindergarten. That study
found a link between storytelling and reading only for the African American
children, from households across income levels, but not for any other
demographic group.

Stark differences in reading achievement exist between Black and White

elementary schoolchildren, as does a gender gap in reading outcomes,
with girls outperforming boys. Because of both disparities in achievement,
Gardner-Neblett and FPG advanced research scientist John Sideris wanted
to better understand if and how gender plays a role in the link between
African American children’s storytelling skills and reading development.

10. House Mice

House Mice

According to new research, house mice (Mus musculus) are ideal

biomarkers of human settlement, as they tend to stow away in crates or on
ships that end up going where people go. Using mice as a proxy for human
movement can add to what is already known through archaeological data
and answer important questions in areas where there is a lack of artefacts,
Searle said.
Where people go, so do mice, often stowing away in carts of hay or on
ships. Despite a natural range of just 100 meters (109 yards) and an
evolutionary base near Pakistan, the house mouse has managed to
colonize every continent, which makes it a useful tool for researchers like
Searle.

Previous research conducted by Searle at the University of York supported

the theory that Australian mice originated in the British Isles and probably
came over with convicts shipped there to colonize the continent in the late
18th and 19th centuries.

In the Viking study, he and his fellow researchers in Iceland, Denmark and
Sweden took it a step further, using ancient mouse DNA collected from
archaeological sites dating from the 10th to 12th centuries, as well as
modern mice.

He is hoping to do just that in his next project, which involves tracking the
migration of mice and other species, including plants, across the Indian
Ocean, from South Asia to East Africa.

11. Galaxy

Our galaxy could have 100 billion brown dwarfs or more, according to work
by an international team of astronomers, led by Koraljka Music from the
University of Lisbon and Aleks Scholz from the University of St Andrews.

Brown dwarfs are objects intermediate in mass between stars and planets,
with masses too low to sustain stable hydrogen fusion in their core, the
hallmark of stars like the Sun. After the initial discovery of brown dwarfs in
1995, scientists quickly realized that they are a natural by-product of
processes that primarily lead to the formation of stars and planets.

All of the thousands of brown dwarfs found so far are relatively close to the
Sun, the overwhelming majority within 1500 light years, simply because
these objects are faint and therefore difficult to observe. Most of those
detected are located in nearby star-forming regions, which are all fairly
small and have a low density of stars.
12.Country Living

Live in the country and last three years longer than my city friends? Good
news indeed, more backing for a lifestyle choice made half a lifetime ago
when it seemed a good idea to exchange an Edinburgh terrace for a farm
cottage.

I knew it was a good idea because I had been there before. Born and
reared on a farm I had been seduced for a few years by the idea of being a
big shot who lived and worked in a city rather than only going for the day to
wave at the buses.

True, I was familiar with some of the minor disadvantages of country living
such as an iffy private water supply sometimes infiltrated by a range of flora
and fauna (including, on one memorable occasion, a dead lamb), the
absence of central heating in farmhouses and cottages, and a single track
farm road easily blocked by snow, broken-down machinery or escaped
livestock.

But there were many advantages as I told Liz back in the mid-Seventies.
Town born and bred, eight months pregnant and exchanging a warm,
substantial Corstorphine terrace for a windswept farm cottage on a much
lower income, persuading her that country had it over town might have
been difficult.

13. Hypothermia

Hypothermia occurs when the body’s temperature falls below 35 °C. The
human body has a number of systems that maintain a constant core
temperature of around 37 °C. A person doesn’t have to be in sub-zero
temperatures to risk hypothermia – it only requires the environmental
temperature to be less than the body temperature and a person will
“donate” heat to the atmosphere.

If the heat generated by the body – and people are constantly generating
heat through metabolic processes and muscle movements – is less than
that lost to the environment, then their temperature will begin to fall.
The four ways that the human body loses heat include:

conduction – by direct transfer from the body to an object that is cooler than
the body (for example, lying on a cold surface will pass body warmth to the
surface away from the body) convection – air or liquid flow across the skin
drawing off heat (for example, the wind will increase heat loss, as will water
that is cooler than body temperature)

radiation – electromagnetic waves distribute heat into the ambient

environment (for example, exposed skin will allow heat to be drawn off if
the air temperature is less than the body – the exposed head of a person is
a strong source of heat loss, particularly in children)

evaporation – fluid on the skin turns to vapour, drawing off heat (moist skin
will lose heat more rapidly, such as in someone who is wet, clammy or has
exposed moist skin, such as burns).

14.The Problem Of Prediction

As far as prediction is concerned, remember that the chairman of IBM

predicted in the fifties that the world would need a maximum of around half
a dozen computers, that the British Department for Education seemed to
think in the eighties that we would all need to be able to code in BASIC and
that in the nineties Microsoft failed to foresee the rapid growth of the
Internet. Who could have predicted that one major effect of the automobile
would be to bankrupt small shops across the nation? Could the early
developers of the telephone have foreseen its development as a medium
for person-to-person communication, rather than as a form of a
broadcasting medium? We all, including the ‘experts’, seem to be peculiarly
inept at predicting the likely development of our technologies, even as far
as the next year. We can, of course, try to extrapolate from the experience
of previous technologies, as I do below by comparing the technology of the
Internet with the development of other information and communication
technologies and by examining the earlier development of radio and print.
But how justified I might be in doing so remains an open question. You
might conceivably find the history of the British and French videotex
systems, Prestel and Minitel, instructive. However, I am not entirely
convinced that they are very relevant, nor do I know where you can find
information about them on-line, so, rather than take up space here, I’ve
briefly described them in a separate article.
15. Human rights

The World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 confirmed the

universality of human rights, refuting those who argued that human rights
were not universal but historically, socially and politically contextual and
contingent.

On 25 June 1993, representatives of 171 States adopted the Vienna

Declaration and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Human
Rights, thereby successfully closing the two-week conference and
presenting a plan for the strengthening of human rights work around the
world.

The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action marked the culmination

of a long process of review over the current status of human rights in the
world.

It also marked the beginning of a renewed effort to strengthen and further

implement human rights instruments that have been constructed on the
foundation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) since
1948.

16.Asking Questions

All non-human animals are constrained by the tools that nature has
bequeathed them through natural selection. They are not capable of
striving towards truth; they simply absorb information and behave in ways
useful for their survival. The kinds of knowledge they require of the world
have been largely pre-selected by evolution. No animal is capable of asking
questions or generating problems that are irrelevant to its immediate
circumstances or its evolutionarily-designed needs. When a beaver builds a
dam, it doesn’t ask itself why it does so, or whether there is a better way of
doing it. When a swallowPTE Writing – Summarize Written Text Practice
Sample 40 flies south, it doesn’t wonder why it is hotter in Africa or what
would happen if it flew still further south.

Humans do ask themselves these and many other kinds of questions,

questions that have no relevance, indeed make little sense, in the context
of evolved needs and goals. What marks out humans is our capacity to go
beyond our naturally-defined goals such as the need to find food, shelter or
a mate and to establish human-created goals.

Some contemporary thinkers believe that there are indeed certain

questions that humans are incapable of answering because of our evolved
nature. Steven Pinker, for instance, argues that “Our minds evolved by
natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our
ancestors, not to commune with correctness or to answer any question we
are capable of asking. We cannot hold ten thousand words in our short-
term memory. We cannot see the ultra-violet light. We cannot mentally
rotate an object in the fourth dimension. And perhaps we cannot solve
conundrums like free will and sentience.”

17. Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin first expounded the idea of natural selection in his 1859
book, Origin of Species. Before Darwin, the idea that evolution had taken
place was becoming widely accepted in the scientific establishment. In
Origin of Species, he demonstrated two things; that natural selection
provided the mechanism needed to drive evolution and that sufficient time
had passed for natural selection to have worked. This famous text, along
with Darwin’s 1871 work The Descent of Man, placed human beings firmly
in the animal kingdom for the first time and permanently altered our vision
of ourselves.

Darwin’s experience of animal husbandry (in particular breeding pigeons)

and selective plant breeding informed his idea of natural selection. He
noted that bloodlines could be changed fairly quickly through selective
breeding and argued that a similar process could take place in nature
whereby the attributes of individuals who were more successful at
reproducing than others would spread through the population over time.
Organisms that were better suited to a particular environment in any
generation would have an advantage that would ensure that the next
generation contained a high percentage of their offspring.

Natural selection, then, is the filter which allows only those organisms with
the best traits to produce offspring successfully. Although chance always
plays a role in deciding the fate of an individual organism, over a number of
generations advantages conferred by particular traits make it more likely
that organisms who have those traits survive for long enough to reproduce.
Over time this leads to organisms which are better adapted to the
environment they live in than their predecessors were.
18.It’ll Never Fly: The City Of London

Who would have thought back in 1698, as they downed their espressos,
that the little band of stockbrokers from Jonathan’s Coffee House in
Change Alley EC3 would be the founder- members of what would become
the world’s mighty money capital?

Progress was not entirely smooth. The South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 and
the coffee house exchanges burned down in 1748. As late as Big Bang in
1986, when bowler hats were finally hung up, you wouldn’t have bet the
farm on London surpassing New York, Frankfurt, and Tokyo as Mammon’s
international nexus. Yet the 325,000 souls who operate in the UK capital’s
financial hub have now overtaken their New York rivals in the size of the
funds managed (including offshore business); they hold 70% of the global
secondary bond market and the City dominates foreign exchange trading.
And its institutions paid out £9 billion in bonuses in December. The Square
Mile has now spread both eastwards from EC3 to Canary Wharf and
westwards into Mayfair, where many of the private-equity ‘locusts’ and their
hedge-fund pals now hang out. For foreigners in finance, London is the
place to be. It has no Sarbanes-Oxley and no euro to hold it back, yet the
fact that it still flies so high is against the odds. London is one of the most
expensive cities in the world to live in, transport systems groan and there’s
an ever-present threat of terrorist attack. But, for the time being, the deals
just keep on getting bigger.

19.French revolution

The French Revolution was caused by economic problems, inequalities in

society, the poor leadership of King Louis XVI, and Enlightenment ideas.
Leading up to 1789 France was experiencing difficult economic problems
throughout their society. Aiding the 13 colonies in the Revolutionary War
further weakened the French treasury.

King Louis XVI and the French nobility conflicted on how to increase
revenue because France had an unequal tax system. The nobility and
clergy, wealthiest of French society, were exempt from taxation. Most of the
government’s income came from the working merchant class and peasant
class. The nobility was unwilling to change their tax status leading the
French government into bankruptcy.
Along with economic problems came food shortages that arose from
several crop failures throughout the 1780’s. Bread was scarce causing
extremely high prices. Peasants not only heavily taxed, but many were
starving.

20.National Prohibition Act

In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was

enacted, creating yet another serious setback to the American wine
industry. The National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act,
prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, exportation,
delivery, or possession of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes, and
nearly destroyed what had become a thriving national industry. In 1920
there were more than seven hundred wineries in California. By the end of
Prohibition, there were 160.

If Prohibition had lasted only four or five years, its impact on the wine
industry might have been negligible. But it continued for thirteen years,
during which time grapes went underground literally and figuratively,
becoming an important commodity in the criminal economy. One loophole
in the Volstead Act allowed for the manufacture and sale of sacramental
wines, medicinal wines for sale by pharmacists with a doctor’s prescription,
and medicinal wine tonics (fortified wines) sold without a prescription.
Perhaps more importantly, Prohibition allowed anyone to produce up to two
hundred gallons of fruit juice or cider each year. The fruit juice, which was
sometimes made into concentrate, was ideal for making wine. Some of this
yield found its way to bootleggers throughout America who did just that. But
not for long, because the government stepped in and banned the sale of
grape juice, preventing illegal wine production. Vineyards stopped being
planted, and the American wine industry ground to a halt

21.Beverage

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, various factors

contributed to an epidemic of alcoholism that went hand-in-hand with
spousal abuse, family neglect, and chronic unemployment. Americans used
to drinking lightly alcoholic beverages like cider “from the crack of dawn to
the crack of dawn” began ingesting far more alcohol as they drank more of
strong, cheap beverages like rum (in the colonial period) and whiskey (in
the post-Revolutionary period).[1]Popular pressure for cheap and plentiful
alcohol led to relaxed ordinances on alcohol sales.
The Temperance movement sparked to life with Benjamin Rush’s 1784
tract, An Inquiry Into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body
and Mind, which judged the excessive use of alcohol injurious to physical
and psychological health. Apparently influenced by Dr. Rush’s Inquiry,
about 200 farmers in a Connecticut community formed a temperance
association in 1789 to ban the making of whiskey. Similar associations
were formed in Virginia in 1800, and New York State in 1808.[2] Over the
next decade, other temperance organizations were formed in eight states,
some being statewide organizations. The young movement advocated
temperance or levelness rather than abstinence. Many leaders of the
movement expanded their activities and took positions on observance of
the Sabbath and other moral issues, and by the early 1820s political in-
fighting had stalled the movement.

22.Cow & Grass

The co-evolutionary relationship between cows and grass is one of nature’s

underappreciated wonders; it also happens to be the key to understanding
just about everything about modern meat. For the grasses, which have
evolved to withstand the grazing of ruminants, the cow maintains and
expands their habitat by preventing trees and shrubs from gaining a
foothold and hogging the sunlight; the animal also spreads grass seed,
plants it with his hooves, and then fertilizes it with his manure. In exchange
for these services, the grasses offer ruminants a plentiful and exclusive
supply of lunch. For cows (like sheep, bison, and other ruminants) have
evolved the special ability to convert grass – which single-stomached
creatures like us can’t digest – into high-quality protein. They can do this
because they possess what is surely the most highly evolved digestive
organ in nature: the rumen. About the size of a medicine ball, the organ is
essentially a forty-five-gallon fermentation tank in which a resident
population of bacteria dines on grass. Living their unseen lives at the far
end of the food chain that culminates in a hamburger, these bacteria have,
just like the grasses, coevolved with the cow, whom they feed. Truly this is
an excellent system for all concerned: for the grasses, for the bacteria, for
the animals, and for us, the animals’ eaters.

There is a co-evolutionary relationship between cows and grass as the

cows, which is one of the ruminants that have a rumen to digest the grass
into high-quality protein even though the grasses already evolved to
against the grazing of ruminants, can help the grass spread seed by their
hooves and also provide manure to it.
23. Relationship

Current research into the nature of the relationship between participation in

physical activity/sport and educational performance has produced
inconsistent and often non-comparable results. For example, some cross-
sectional studies illustrate a positive correlation between participation in
sport/physical activity and academic success (eg maths, reading, acuity,
reaction times). However, critics point to a general failure to solve the issue
of direction of cause – whether intelligence leads to success in the sport,
whether involvement in sport enhances academic performance, or whether
a third factor (eg personality traits) explains both. Longitudinal studies also

Longitudinal studies also generally support the suggestion that academic

performance is enhanced, or at least maintained, by increased habitual
physical activity. However, critics suggest that these studies are not
definitive because some do not use randomised allocation of pupils to
experimental and control groups (to control for pre-existing differences),
others tend to use subjective teacher-assigned grades to assess academic
achievement, rather than standardised and comparable tests and some
programmes include parallel interventions, making it difficult to isolate
specific effects.

24.SLP Officer

Armed police have been brought into NSW schools to reduce crime rates
and educate students.

The 40 School Liaison Police (SLP) officers have been allocated to public
and private high schools across the state.

Organizers say the officers, who began work last week, will build positive
relationships between police and students. But parent groups warned of
potential dangers of armed police working at schools in communities where
police relations were already under strain.

Among their duties, the SLPs will conduct crime prevention workshops,
talking to students about issues including shoplifting, offensive behavior,
graffiti and drugs, and alcohol. They can also advise school principals.
One SLP, Constable Ben Purvis, began work in the inner Sydney region
last week, including at Alexandria Park Community School’s senior
campus. Previously stationed as a crime prevention officer at The Rocks,
he now has 27 schools under his jurisdiction in areas including The Rocks,
Redfern and Kings Cross.

Constable Purvis said the full-time position would see him working on the
broader issues of crime prevention.

“I am not a security guard,” he said. “I am not there to patrol the school.

We want to improve relationships between police and schoolchildren, to

have a positive interaction. We are coming to the school and giving them
the knowledge to improve their own safety.”

The use of fake ID among older students is among the issues he has
already discussed with principals.

Parents’ groups responded to the program positively but said it may spark
a range of community reactions.

25.Scientific revolution

The beginning of the seventeenth century is known as the “scientific

revolution” for the drastic changes evidenced in the European approach to
science during that period. The word “revolution” connotes a period of
turmoil and social upheaval where ideas about the world change severely
and a completely new era of academic thought is ushered in. This term,
therefore, describes quite accurately what took place in the scientific
community following the sixteenth century. During the scientific revolution,
medieval scientific philosophy was abandoned in favor of the new methods
proposed by Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton; the importance of
experimentation to the scientific method was reaffirmed; the importance of
God to science was for the most part invalidated, and the pursuit of science
itself (rather than philosophy) gained validity on its own terms. The change
to the medieval idea of science occurred for four reasons:

(1) Seventeenth-century scientists and philosophers were able to

collaborate with members of the mathematical and astronomical
communities to effect advances in all fields;
(2) Scientists realized the inadequacy of medieval experimental methods
for their work and so felt the need to devise new methods (some of which
we use today);

(3) Academics had access to a legacy of European, Greek, and Middle

Eastern scientific philosophy they could use as a starting point (either by
disproving or building on the theorems); and

(4) Groups like the British Royal Society helped validate science as a field
by providing an outlet for the publication of scientists’ work.

These changes were not immediate, nor did they directly create the
experimental method used today, but they did represent a step toward
Enlightenment thinking (with an emphasis on reason) that was
revolutionary for the time. Assessment of the state of science before the
scientific revolution, examination of the differences in the experimental
methods utilized by different “scientists” during the seventeenth century,
and exploration into how advances made during the scientific revolution
affected the scientific method used in science today will provide an idea of
how revolutionary the breakthroughs of the seventeenth century really were
and what impact they’ve had.

26.Night Sky

There are times when the night sky glows with bands of colour. The bands may
begin as cloud shapes and then spread into a great arc across the entire sky.
They may fall in folds like a curtain drawn across the heavens. The lights
usually grow brighter, then suddenly dim. During this time the sky glows with
pale yellow, pink, green, violet, blue, and red. These lights are called the Aurora
Borealis. Some people call them the Northern Lights. Scientists have been
watching them for hundreds of years. They are not quite sure what causes them.
In ancient times Long Beach City College WRSC people were afraid of the
Lights. They imagined that they saw fiery dragons in the sky. Some even
concluded that the heavens were on fire.

27.Electronic Trolley
Electric trolley cars or trams were once the chief modes of public transportation
in the United States. Though they required tracks and electric cables to run,
these trolley cars were clean and comfortable. In 1922, auto manufacturer
General Motors created a special unit to replace electric trolleys with cars,
trucks, and buses. Over the next decade, this group successfully lobbied for
laws and regulations that made operating trams more difficult and less
profitable.

In 1936 General Motors created several front companies for the purpose of
purchasing and dismantling the trolley car system. They received substantial
investments from Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum,
and other parties invested in the automotive industry. Some people suspect that
these parties wanted to replace trolley cars with buses to make public
transportation less desirable, which would then increase automobile sales. The
decline of the tram system in North America could be attributed to many
things—labor strikes, the Great Depression, regulations that were unfavourable
to operators—but perhaps the primary cause was having a group of powerful
men from rival sectors of the auto industry working together to ensure its
destruction.

28.Ninja

Ninjas used many different tools and weapons to get the job done: throwing
stars, bows, acid-spurting tubes to name a few, but the favourite weapon of most
ninjas was probably the katana. The katana is a long, curved sword with a single
blade and a long grip to accommodate two hands. This sword was often carried
in a sheath or scabbard on the ninja’s back. Though the sword was primarily
used for fighting and killing, the scabbard served a number of purposes too. The
ninja could remove the sword, angle the scabbard against a wall, and use it to
climb to a higher place. Or, while stealthy negotiating their way through a dark
place (such as an enemy’s residence at night), ninjas may have used the
scabbard as a walking stick, feeling or probing their way around objects so as
not to knock into anything and alert the enemy. Perhaps the ninja’s most sinister
use of the scabbard was to put a mixture of red pepper, dirt, and iron shavings at
the top of the scabbard so that when the ninja drew his sword, his opponent
would be blinded. I wonder what a ninja could have done with a Swiss Army
knife.
The katana was a powerful fighting sword, but the scabbard had additional uses
as a climbing tool, a probing tool, and a blinding weapon.

29.Bride and Groom.

As today’s bride and groom celebrate their wedding, they have every excuse for
being nervous. They exchange promises of lifelong fidelity and mutual support.
However, all around them, they can see that many people do not and cannot
keep these promises. Their own marriage has a one in three chance of divorce if
present tendencies continue. Traditional marriage is facing a crisis, at least in
Britain. Not only are there more and more divorces, but the number of
marriages is falling. Living together is more popular than before. The family is
now no longer one man, one woman and their children. Instead, there are more
and more families which include parents, half sisters and brothers, or even only
one parent on her / his own. Although Britain is still conservative in its attitudes
to marriage compared with other countries such as the USA, Sweden and

30.Denmark

Denmark, the future will probably see many more people living together before
marriage – and more divorce.

Interestingly, it is women rather than men who apply for divorce. Seven out of
ten divorces are given to the wife. Also, one of the main reasons for divorce,
chosen by ten times more women than men, is unreasonable or cruel behaviour.
Perhaps this means that women will tolerate less than they used to.

31.South Korea

South Korea is planning to move its capital from Seoul to a new site in the
middle of the country. Although Seoul has been the capital since the fourteenth
century, the city of over 20 million is now very crowded, and also close to the
hostile armies of North Korea. The new capital is planned to cost $45 billion,
with construction finishing by 2012.

There is, however, strong opposition to the project, since similar schemes in
other countries have taken far longer and cost much more than originally
planned. Australia, for example, took over 70 years to finish building Canberra,
while Nigeria has never completed its planned new capital, Abuja. Both Brazil
and Malaysia have found that the building of new capitals (Brasilia and
Putrajaya) can sharply increase the national burden of debt.
Even if the government does eventually move to the new capital, it is unlikely
that South Korea’s main businesses will follow it, so Seoul will probably
continue to be the country’s principal city.

32.Weather prediction

Indian researchers are trying to find out if there is any truth in old sayings which
claim to predict the weather. In Gujarat, farmers have the choice of planting
either peanuts, which are more profitable in wet years or castor, which does
better in drier conditions. The difference depends on the timing of the monsoon
rains, which can arrive at any time between the beginning and the middle of
June. Farmers, however, have to decide what seeds to sow in April or May.

There is a local saying, at least a thousand years old, which claims that the
monsoon starts 45 days after the flowering of a common tree, Cassia fistula. Dr
Kanani, an agronomist from Gujarat Agricultural University, has been studying
the relationship since 1996 and has found that the tree does successfully predict
the approximate date of the monsoon’s arrival.

33.Television

Television has been changing the way people live for thirty years. It influences
nearly every aspect of modern life. Whereas television could be used as an
educational tool for children, programs with little or no educational value are
shown more often.

Experts are concerned about the view of the world that youngsters are learning
from television. Parents, schools, and churches have traditionally been the
social models and teachers for children. However, because television influences
children’s attitudes and behavior, its role in society is becoming increasingly
more powerful – it is much more than a simple recreational activity. The
medium “has changed childhood more than any other social innovation in the
history of the world,” declares child psychologist Robert M. Liebert.

Exposure to excessive violence is another influence of television. According to

several studies, televised violence may cause children to become more
aggressive. Also, because so much violence is seen by children on television,
they become more used to it as the only solution to difficult situations. Children
who watch a great deal of violence on television may become apathetic toward
actual aggression. One study has shown that, compared to a control group, fifth-
graders who watched an aggressive television broadcast were slower to ask for
adult help when a fight broke out among younger children. This decreased
sensitivity to human suffering is frightening, says psychologist Ronald S.
Drabman.

Instructors at Horace Mann nursery school in New York noticed definite

improvements in pupils’ attitudes and behavior, including a decrease in their
fighting, after the instructors asked parents to limit the youngsters’ viewing to
one hour daily. Educational experts also believe that parents could help by
discussing both the good and bad aspects of television with their children and
by helping them to select beneficial programs.

34.Reality

When one hears the term “reality” applied to a television show, one might
expect that the events occurred naturally or, at the least, were not scripted, but
this is not always the case. Many reality shows occur in unreal environments,
like rented mansions occupied by film crews. These living environments do not
reflect what most people understand to be “reality.”

Worse, there have been accusations that events not captured on film were later
re-staged by producers. Worse still, some involved in the production of “reality”
television claim that the participants were urged to act out story lines
premeditated by producers. With such accusations floating around, it’s no
wonder many people take reality TV to be about as real as the sitcom.

35.Language learner

One of the most important characteristics of successful language learners is

their willingness to make mistakes. Young children learn their first language by
trying to communicate a message rather than by trying to learn grammar rules.
Children are not worried about correctness, they are concerned with the
message. The message is more important than the grammar.

In the same way, second language learners must try to communicate even when
they are not certain of the correct forms or words. By using the language to
communicate, their language skills will improve. For example, if someone else
cannot understand what the learner is trying to say, then the learner must change
the way he or she is using the language.
In this way, the learner quickly learns what is correct and what is incorrect.
Mistakes become learning opportunities. Therefore, the more learners use the
language, the more skilled they become in the language. Successful language
learners do not wait until they can speak or write perfectly before they use the
language; they use the language in order to improve their speaking and writing.

Good language learners are willing to make mistakes and use the language in
order to communicate, and as a result, they improve their language skills at the
same time

36.Knowledge vs wisdom

Do we know the difference between knowledge and wisdom? Is there a need to

know the difference between them? Are we well equipped to handle the
vagaries of existence with what is known to us? Knowledge means all that we
acquire from what we read, hear or see. Wisdom means the ability to choose
from what is available to us and then use it for our own benefit. Today, the
world has started talking about the value based education. What does it mean?
In simple terms it means two things. First, it accept that current education has
badly let down.

Secondly, it lays stress on values, and hence wisdom, instead of mere

knowledge. How do we acquire this value based education? The answer
becomes simple if we need education. We need education only to make us live
better and more joyously. Once we know this we must add only those things in
education which achieve this aim. The dictum that “a healthy mind can exist
only in a healthy body” is a time tested one. Schools, thus become sources of
healthy bodies too. This can best be achieved by yoga because games are
beyond our financial capabilities. Yoga is very beneficial. It occupies so little
space, and can be done without the least bit of fuss. One wonders why schools
have not adopted it as a mandatory subject at all levels.

37.Indian Shastras

A famous English proverb states that “a friend in need is a friend indeed.” We

have come to accept this as a definition of friendship to such a large extent that
we fail to see the inherent flaw in it. A friend who is deemed to be so only
because he comes to our help suggests that we cannot help ourselves. This
means that the friendship must benefit parasites and looters in order to be truly
divine.

The Indian Shastras have talked endlessly about the evolution of virtues before
interacting with any person. A person‟s ability, his moral and intellectual values
and his ability to walk on the path of truth must be evaluated before he is
deemed to be fit for our friendship. It would have been much better if the
proverb had read, “A friend in deed is a friend indeed”. A person whose deeds
are virtuous and pro-life in his own best friend, and hence, is primed to be our
friend as well. Friendship must not be based on mutual dependence and moral
slavery but on joyous existence and intellectual freedom.

It is obvious from the visible garbage around us that solid wastes are not being
managed properly. However, housing colonies are the most disorganized sector
as far as garbage is concerned. As a result, the legal garbage dumps are
overflowing and the number of illegal garbage dumps in the by-lanes, parks and
roadside is on the increase in most colonies of Delhi, and for that matter in all
Indian cities.

At present five percent of Delhi‟s land mass is being choked by the garbage.
This five percent has become a wasteland, its utility is steadily declining and
soil quality is deteriorating. Besides being eyesores, these garbage dumps pose
health and environment hazard for the ten million people who live in Delhi.
They are the breeding grounds for the germs of infectious diseases like plague,
tuberculosis, dysentery, diarrhoea, eye-infections and numerous skin ailments.

Scientific management of garbage thus is one of the most important services

that need to be regularized in all residential colonies. After exploring all viable
solutions to this problem, I have successfully launched an indigenous scheme
„Cleaning Brigade‟ in many colonies of Delhi. The Cleaning Brigades are
managing solid wastes for at least 25 thousand Delhites. A year and a half back
the first cleaning brigade was launched during the Asiad. Since then it has been
constantly expanding.

38.Work vs Play

“All work and no play make Jack a dull boy,” says a proverb. This dictum has
become true only if we know that what play means. The dictum incorporates
every kind of entertainment along with playing in its meaning. Playing is
immensely helpful. It builds our reflexes, stamina, strength and energy. It builds
a spirit of sportsmanship and a sense of comradeship in us. It also increases our
intelligence and memory because we inhale more oxygen while playing.

Coming to entertainment, we must first establish as to what constitutes

entertainment? Most students I have spoken to watch films or television, go to
discos or listen to violent, deafening music because they want to be entertained.
When I ask them why they don‟t read something truly worthwhile, they say it
bores them. I wonder why the stupid and the insane entertain them and the
profound bores them? I wish someone would probe the very basis of our
existence. Most of us glamorize laziness. We seek religion mainly because it is
a license to be lazy and not to think. We accumulate people for all sorts of
causes in order to fill the emptiness of our minds. Fathers retire at 60 and stop
working in offices at 35. Mothers are choked with domestic work. They may be
both do no more than three hours of creative work but they expect their child to
work for twelve. They have perhaps forgotten that best impetus for a child is
inspiration through personal example.

39.Women

Even though more and more women have started taking up full-time jobs
outside the house, they still end up doing all the housework. In spite of a
demanding career, a woman is expected to be an efficient housewife but most
men still do not make good house-husbands. When it comes to helping with the
housework many men feel totally helpless. When they decide to do a few jobs
around the house they pick the ones they enjoy. Sometimes if they are in the
mood they don‟t mind doing a bit of gardening or mending a few things but
they refuse to do many boring jobs-like cleaning the house, washing and ironing
the clothes, looking after the children or cooking dinner. Most of these jobs
have to be done immediately and regularly, while household repairs, the job that
men enjoy doing most can always wait till a more convenient time or till one
feels like doing them.

According to survey done recently, the lady of the house does three quarters of
the boring household chores even if she has a full-time job. But surprisingly,
housewives don‟t seem to mind, for most women still they see their family role
as the one that matters most. However, most women tend to use electrical
appliances to make up for male laziness. Makers of household appliances and
electrical gadgets are delighted, of course.
40.Disease

Research has shown that almost all varieties of disease can be produced by an
under supply of various nutrients. These nutritional deficiencies occur on
account of various factors, including the intense processing and refining of
foods, the time lag between the harvesting and consumption of of vegetables
and fruits, the chemicals used in bleaching, flavoring, coloring and preserving
foods and the chemical fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides and sprays used for
treating the soil. Therefore, as a first principle of nutrition one should insist on
whole meal flour and whole meal bread and avoid the white stuff.

Research has also shown that diseases produced by combinations of deficiencies

can be corrected when all the nutrients are supplied, provided the damage is not
irreparable. A well balanced and correct diet should be made up of foods which
in combination would supply all the essential nutrients.

It has been found that a diet which contains liberal quantities of i. seeds, nuts,
and grain, ii. Vegetables and, iii. Fruits would provide adequate amounts of all
the essential nutrients. These foods have, therefore, been aptly called basic food
groups and the diet containing these food groups as optimum diet for vigor and
vitality