When a disease of epidemic proportions rips into the populace, scientists immediately get to work, trying to locate the source of the affliction and find ways to combat it. Oftentimes, success is achieved, as medical science is able to isolate the parasite, germ or cell that causes the problem and finds ways to effectively kill or contain it. In the most serious of cases, in which the entire population of a region or country may be at grave risk, it is deemed necessary to protect the entire population through vaccination, so as to safeguard lives and ensure that the disease will not spread. The process of vaccination allows the patient’s body to develop immunity to the virus or disease so that, if it is encountered, one can ward it off naturally. To accomplish this, a small weak or dead strain of the disease is actually injected into the patient in a controlled environment, so that his body’s immune system can learn to fight the invader properly. Information on how to penetrate the disease’s defenses is transmitted to all elements of the patient’s immune system in a process that occurs naturally, in winch genetic information is passed from cell to cell. This makes sure that, should the patient later come into contact with the real problem, his body is well equipped and trained to deal with it, having already done so before. There are dangers inherent in the process, however. On occasion, even the weakened version of the disease contained in the vaccine proves too much for the body to handle, resulting in the immune system succumbing, and, therefore, the patient’s death. Such is the case of the smallpox vaccine, designed to eradicate the smallpox epidemic that nearly wiped out the entire Native American population and killed massive numbers of settlers. Approximately 1 in 10,000 people who receives the vaccine contract the smallpox disease from the vaccine itself and dies from it. Thus, if the entire population of the United States were to receive the Smallpox Vaccine today, 3,000 Americans would be left dead. Fortunately, the smallpox virus was considered eradicated in the early 1970’s, ending the mandatory vaccination of all babies in America. In the event of a re-introduction of the disease, however, mandatory vaccinations may resume, resulting in more unexpected deaths from vaccination. The process, winch is truly a mixed blessing, may indeed hide some hidden curses.The best title for the text may be ______. Vaccinations: A Blessing or A Curse Principles of Vaccinations Vaccines: Methods and Implications A Miracle Cure under Attack

What does the conversation mainly discuss?K: Dr. Smith? This is Keet Bradley from the Daily News. I’d like to ask you some questions about the new official standard weight that you purchased. S: I’d be happy to help you. What would you like to know? K: First of all, how is the standard weight used? S: Well, the people in our department use it to check the scales all over the country. As the department of weights and measures, we are a government agency. It’s our responsibility to see that all the scales measure a kilogram accurately so this is the way we use to adjust the scales. K: How did you check the scales before? S: We have an old standard weight that we used to use. It had to be replaced because it was imprecise. You see it was made of poor quality metal that was too porous. It absorbed too much moisture. K: Oh. So when the weather was humid it weighed more and when it was dry it weighed less. S: Exactly. And that variation can affect the standards of the whole country. So our department had the new weight made out of higher quality metal. K: How much did it cost? S: About 45 thousand dollars. K: 45,000 dollars? For one kilogram weight? That’s more expensive than gold. Is it really worth that much? S: I’m sure it is. Industries depend on our government agency to monitor the accuracy of scales so that when they buy and sell their products there is one standard. Think of the drug industry, for example, those companies rely on high accuracy scales to manufacture and package medicine. How to care for precious metals. A standard unit for measuring weight. The value of precious metals. Using the metric system.

How long did the debate last?Reporter: And now we’ll switch to highlights of last night’s debate between the city’s two candidates for mayor, Bella Porter and Dan Shmankie. The debate lasted more than an hour and was at times rather loud and contentious. The crowd interrupted the speakers several times showing their strong disagreement. Here’s what the candidates had to say on some of the issues. The first point that was hotly debated was in response to a question regarding the current homelessness problem in our city. Bella Porter, who has been active in city politics for over a decade and is currently serving as president of the city council, answered the question first. B. Porter: I feel that Mr. Shmankie’s solution to the homeless problem is to sweep it under the rug. Mr. Shmankie believes that putting the homeless in jail will solve the problem. If we don’t see homeless people sleeping on our streets the problem doesn’t exist, right? Wrong! Mr. Shmankie appears to be more concerned with the comfort of tourists and visitors to our city than with actually helping some of our poorest and neediest citizens. A night in jail will not help a homeless person get his or her life back together. We need to provide real job training for these people in addition to affordable housing and medical services. Reporter: Dan Shmankie, a local businessman for over twenty years, then gave his response to the homeless question. D. Shmankie: As usual, Councilwoman Porter’s solution to any problem is to throw money at it. The people we see on the streets are for the most part lazy drunks or drug addicts who don’t want to get a job and contribute to society. We hear stories every day from good hard-working citizens who are constantly harassed by panhandlers who come up to them and demand spare change. People have been attacked in front of stores and waiting in their cars at stop lights. Storeowners are losing business because dirty, scary-looking people are sitting with their shopping carts and sleeping bags in front of their stores. We need to feel safe on our streets again. These people don’t need programs. They need a kick in the pants! Reporter: The two candidates also had very different opinions concerning education. Shmankie: Once again Ms. Porter seems to believe that money will fix all problems. Our schools do not need more money. They need teachers who can get the job done. In the last five years we have seen student test scores plummet and I blame the teachers. Now hear me out. Some of my best friends are teachers. I certainly know of many hard-working and dedicated teachers who deserve our respect. But we need to think about education more like a business. If you are the president of a company that builds cars and half of these cars have serious problems, would you give your workers higher salaries and better benefits? Of course not, what we need to do is to make sore that our teachers receive raises if and only ff their students get higher test scores. And for those teachers who fail to get results, we need to replace them with teachers who can get the job done. Porter: Here’s a news flash for you Mr. Shmankie. Education is not a business. We are not cranking out on an assembly line; five per hour, one blue, one red, one green—each one exactly the same as the last. Education is a completely different process. We are preparing our young people to become productive citizens capable of making intelligent choices in life. Each student we serve has different needs. Our teachers are doing the best they can with overcrowded classrooms, limited resources, and little community support. Do you realize that most teachers cannot afford to live in this ’city because their salaries are so low? I hear stories every day about teachers who spend their own money on supplies such as chalk and paper because the school district does not have the funds to supply these basic needs. Our biggest problem is that we lose many of our finest teachers each year because of the poor working conditions and low salaries. Mr. Shmankie, we don’t need to fire more teachers. We need to raise salaries so that we can find the best and brightest people. Reporter: The next topic covered was the issue of affordable housing. Shmankie: Last time I checked we were living in a free country. In a free country, buyers and sellers have choices. If a buyer does not agree with the price, he or she can go to a different store. Even if the price is ridiculously high, the government does not step in and demand that the seller lower his or her price. Why, then, do people such as Ms. Porter insist that city government try to control how much landlords charge for rents? Rent control is downright un-American! If you don’t want to pay what the landlord wants to charge, you are free to look somewhere else. Porter: Mr. Shmankie, with all due respect, have you lost your mind? Are you saying that anyone who advocates rent control or supports other laws that protect people is a bad American? Give me a break! Are you aware that in the last three years 56 percent of the poor and elderly in this city have been forced to leave their apartments because they couldn’t afford to keep up with skyrocketing rent increases? In many cases, this has contributed to the very serious homeless problem we just discussed. We need rent control in this town to protect everybody’s right to affordable housing. What’s un-American about that, Mr. Shmankie? Reporter: You have been listening to highlights of last night’s mayoral debate. Be sure to ture in next week at this same time when the candidates will discuss other important issues. Thank you and good night.

If your waist is expanding, so (31) your chances of coming down with diabetes, even if you think you’re (32) young to get sick. Researchers have found that extreme obesity raises the risk of the disease to levels usually faced only by older people. But there’s hope for fat people (33) about their health. “Even a loss of just 10～15 pounds can make a big (34) in their risk for developing diabetes or improving the diabetes that they’ve developed“, Hillier says. Type II diabetes, in (35) the body either doesn’t make enough insulin to regulate blood sugar (36) can’t properly handle the insulin it does make, generally has (37) considered a disease of senior citizens, especially people over 50. But rates of Type II, which (38) up 95 percent of the diabetes cases, skyrocketed (39) the 1990s among young people, even teenagers. Experts estimate the rates went up by 70 percent among people (40) 30～39. Type II diabetes usually (41) be controlled by with diet and exercise, (42) sufferers also may need drugs. (43) seems to cause diabetes in two ways, says Dr. Larry Wu, a family physician in Durham, N.C. First, obese people usually aren’t active, which means that glucose, or blood sugar, remains in the blood-stream (44) of going to muscles where it’s needed during exercise. In this (45), it does damage to multiple areas, (46) the eyes, the kidneys, the blood vessels and the nerves. (47), people with lots of fat tissue become more resistant to insulin, which pushes glucose (48) of the blood stream, he says. A recent study found modest weight (49) and modest exercise—30 minutes of walking a day—can dramatically (50) the risk of Type Ⅱ diabetes.

Readers used to visit the British Library to borrow sound recordings.The British Library bolds a huge and ever growing archive of sound recordings. Access to these recordings, however, can be problematic, usually requiting a visit to the Library, with pre-booked appointment to hand. This can be a shame, for as well as providing factual insight, sound can also augment learning by adding intrigue, color and depth. A joint CSR2 funded digitisation project, between JISC and the British Library, could begin to meliorate what could be perceived as barriers to access of archived sound recordings, and ensure that the UK Further and Higher Education Community will soon have the opportunity to get to content previously unavailable to the broader community outside of actually making a trip to the Library. The following interview outlines which areas of the archive will be digitised and what can be expected over the duration of the project and beyond. Host: How do you choose which material to digitise? Guest: We have put together a package of ten specific areas that we will focus on. The question which I guess you are asking is how we decided upon those. There are over 3 million separate recordings in the Archive, which add up to 550,000 hours. The way in which our work is organised is through curatorial sections. They work within particular subject fields, which has enabled us, over the years, to build up a series of relationships with departments within the community. Host: Could you explain a little about the digitisation process itself? How are you undertaking that? Guest: We have an in-house team, essentially responsible for putting together the packages and then checking them for their issues, qualities and so forth. The notion is to marry up their work flow with an external contractor who will undertake the actual digitisation work. Ultimately the outputs will be archival master copies and access copies for mounting on the web. Host: How much material are you digitising, in terms of hours? Guest: The target is 4,000 hours, a substantial mount. In relation to the total amount of material we have in the Sound Archive, it could be considered a drop in the ocean. But in terms of material mounted on the web, it is significant. Host: What are the timescales we are looking at with this project? Guest: We plan to have everything ready by September 2006, and a user panel will be involved in the development of a pilot due by September this year. Host: Do you see this project as informing the British Library strategy on digitisation? Guest: It fits in very well with the British Library strategy, and we are doing digitisation in other areas. There are other projects which we are doing which will integrate well. We are updating our on-site listening service, and there are going to be interactions with that. For the licensed ASR material, which is the majority, only authenticated users will be able to listen to it off-site. However, for the material that does not require a license, anyone in the public domain will be able to listen regardless of authentication. Host: Have you thought about how you are going to promote this material? Guest: Conferences, through our curators and our involvement with academic departments, as well as through JISC mailing lists. The British Library Press Office will also be closely involved. Right Wrong

What is the reason given for using less sugar?Welcome to the Food We Eat, sponsored by Safeway. Increasingly, we know more about the effects of our eating habits and lifestyles on our health. While new information can change old ideas, the new stories can often be confusing. At Safeway we try to help customers not only in the range and types of food offered, but also by providing up-to-date reliable information in areas we know are of interest and which relate to the diet we eat. Today we are going to talk about sugar. Recently, doctors have been advising us to eat less sugar. The health recommendation to use less sugar is for two masons. Firstly, for the sake of our teeth: since the mount and frequency of sugar consumption links to decay. Secondly, as sugar is a good source of calories, it can easily be a problem ff we tend to be overweight. The dental risk is because bacteria which occur naturally in our mouth feed on carbohydrates—sugar and starch—to form plaque and acid. Plaque is a sticky coating that prevents the bacteria from being removed by saliva. The acid attacks the tooth itself. This takes time, however, so the trick is to avoid sticky foods like sweets which stay around in crevices feeding the bacteria. Regular brushing, preferably with a fluoride tooth-paste, helps remove particles and resist acid. The worst thing you can do is nibble sweet things between meals—it puts your teeth under constant attack. A sweet tooth develops gradually and you might be surprised at how you can steadily “unlearn“ the taste, taking in fewer calories, and saving your teeth. Hem’s some ways: A. Gradually cut down the sugar in tea and coffee till you can stop altogether, or switch to sweeteners. B. Choose snacks with a lower sugar content—fresh fruit, mw vegetables, crackers, milk or low-fat, natural yogurt. Remember some fruits, like raisins, have lots of sugar. C. Look for reduced sugar alternatives: there are more and more around, from diet drinks to yogurts, even jams and sauces. D. Try gradually to cut back on the sugar you use in cooking—especially in baking. For the sake of our eyes. For the sake of hair. For the sake of our livers. For the sake of our weight.

Survey results indicate that smoking and alcohol and marijuana use increased among residents of Manhattan during the 5～8 weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center winch took place on September 11, 2001. Almost one-third of the nearly 1,000 persons interviewed reported an increased use of alcohol, marijuana, or cigarettes following the September 11th attacks. The largest increase was in alcohol use. About one-fourth of the respondents said they were drinking more alcohol in the weeks after September 11; about 10% reported an increase in smoking, and 3.2% said they had increased their use of marijuana. The investigators found survey participants by randomly dialing New York City phone numbers and screened potential respondents for Manhattan residents living in areas close to the World Trade Center. Interviews were conducted with 988 individuals between October 16 and November 15, 2001. Participants were asked about their cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, and marijuana use habits before and after September 11. During the week prior to September 11, 2001, 22.6% of the participants reported smoking cigarettes, 59.1% drinking alcohol, and 4.4% using marijuana. After September 11th, 23.4% reported smoking cigarettes, 64.4% drinking alcohol, and 5.7% smoking marijuana. Among those who smoked, almost 10% reported smoking at least an extra pack of cigarettes a week and among those who drank alcohol, more than 20% reported imbibing at least one extra drink a day. The researchers found that people who reported an increase in substance abuse were more likely to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and from depression. People who reported an increase in cigarette smoking or marijuana use were also more likely to have both PTSD and depression, while those who reported an increase in alcohol use were more likely to have depression only. Persons who were living closer to the World Trade Center were more likely to increase their cigarette smoking, but other factors such as being displaced from home, losing possessions during the attacks, or being involved in the rescue efforts were not consistently associated with increased substance use. Symptoms of panic attack were associated with an increase in the use of all substances. Increase in substance abuse did not differ significantly between men and women or among racial or ethnic groups. Demographic factors such as age, marital status, and income seemed to play a more critical role in determining if the events of September 11th led to an increase in substance use.The survey results suggest that the largest increase in substance use should be ______. alcohol. marijuana. cigarettes. cocaine.

The virus came to official attention in a bag of dead chickens. Early in March 1997, a farmer from Hong Kong’s New Territories carried them into the Agriculture and Fisheries Department laboratory. Something had caused their internal tissues to hemorrhage. The result in some cases was hideous and bloody. By the time inspectors reached his farm, most of the birds were dead. Cultures of their organs revealed they had died of avian influenza, type H5N1. 66.______ Then came more bad news. A three-year-old boy died of flu complications in a Hong Kong hospital. The virus was diagnoses as H5N1. Flus of the H5 subtype had never been known to infect humans. It wasn’t over. In the next seven months, 168 Hong Kong residents fell ill with H5N1 and six died. In late December, public-health officials took a drastic step, ordering the slaughter of every chicken in every farm and marketplace in Hong Kong. The H5N1 virus seemed to disappear—but for how long? Flu is one of the most changeable viruses known to man. After we’ ye been sick with one strain, it can mutate to infect us again. We are only immune to flus our bodies have seen before. 67.______ Birds carry the flu virus in their intestines and excrete it in their feces. In all likelihood, shopper who got sick with H5 touched surfaces contaminated with chicken feces. Humans, however, carry flus in their respiratory tracts and usually spread them in a cough of sneeze. Flus that travel this way are highly contagious. The H5 virus in Hong Kong was different. It sickened very few, but killed a third of them. Most who got sick with H5 seemed to catch it directly from a bird they bought in a live-poultry market. 68.______ That was the peak year of the greatest pandemic in recorded history, which in less than two years took at least 21 million lives. Three waves of Spanish flu—so named because it was at first erroneously thought to have started in Spain w swept the globe. Virtually everyone was infected, and up to 3 percent of them died. 69.______ Geographic isolation was no protection. In the Alaska Territory, the mortality in some villages was as high as 90 percent. All told, at least 500,000 Americans perished. The virus that became Spanish flu probably came from a bird, although experts disagree slightly about how it may have happened. Avian-flu expert Dr. Robert Webster of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., believes the virus may have leapt straight from birds to humans, possibly a year or two before the pandemic began. Once lodged in human lungs, it quickly passed from person to person in a simple cough or sneeze. 70.______ “We may never have another pandemic“, notes Dr. Edwin D. Kilbourne of New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y. “But it’s only right to plan for one as if it were going to happen tomorrow“. If it did, we could be caught by surprise and quickly overwhelmed. To avoid that grim possibility, here are three measures all nations need to take: Better surveillance. When a pandemic starts, every day will count. More vaccines and flu shots. A strong pandemic plan. A. A flu can also “jump“ to an animal it has never infected before. Once such a flu moves into humans, if it can “learn“ to pass easily between them, it can spark a pandemic—a global outbreak. B. After the Hong Kong outbreak, flu experts feared that H5—already deadly to humans—might learn to move between them as well. That “raise the specter of 1918“, says Nancy Cox, Chief of the Influenza Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). C. In April there were outbreaks at two more farms. Mortality was nearly 100%. D. An avian flu infected humans recently. It could combine with human flu to produce a lethal new virus. The H5 and N1 spikes help the virus invade cells that line the gastrointestinal tract of chickens. The virus is deadly. E. Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, asks the critical question: “What if what happened in Hong Kong in 1997 was what happened somewhere in the world before 19187“ The first wave of the Spanish flu traversed the globe in four months. Today, a flight from Hong Kong to London takes 14 hours. Up to 225 international flights leave daily, each carrying as many as 400 passengers to as many as 110 locations around the world. F. The toll was frightful. In Philadelphia, for example, some 2600 perished in the second week of October and 4500 in the third week. The city’s only morgue had several hundred bodies piled three and four deep, unembalmed, in the corridors.

Answer questions by referring to the introductions of three universities from a guidebook of Australian universities. A = Melbourne University B = La Trobe University C = Monash University Which university... Melbourne University Established in 1853, the University is Australia’s second oldest university. There is now a student population of over 34,000 including some 8,500 full- or part-time postgraduates and almost 4,000 full-time international students from over 70 countries. The University offer high-quality courses delivered in a stimulating learning environment. Services which have been designed for postgraduate students can indeed be considered world class. The Graduate Centre in the historic “1888 Building“ is aimed at complementing and enhancing postgraduate student life. The University has achieved top ranking for international citations among Australian universities by the Institute for Scientific Information (SI) covering the years 1993—1997. In that period, the number of scientific papers published is 11,634, that of citations is 58,590 and the citation impact is 5.04. The University’s close links and partnerships with business and industry, government and other research institutes, promote collaboration across a wide range of disciplines. Located in the city of Melbourne, the campus is like a self-contained village with easy access to Melbourne’s city Centre with just a five-minutes tram ride or a 15 minutes walk. The University also provides high-quality sports and recreational facilities: tennis and squash courts, gymnasiums, weight training rooms, hockey fields, basketballs, a swimming pool and athletics track. Off-campus facilities include the rowing sheds on the Yarra river, which flows through the city centre. Staff in the University International Centre are always ready to help you make your involvement in the University community easy and enjoyable, and will provide you with assistance and further information as required. We look forward to welcoming you to the University of Melbourne. La Trobe University La Trobe University is named after Charles Joseph La Trobe, the first Superintendent of Port Phillip District from 1839 to 1850 and first Lieutenant-Governor of the new colony of Victoria from 1851 to 1854. The University has more than 22,000 students, including over 1,600 international students and approximately 3, 400 staff. The student population at La Trobe is diverse and represents many different ethnic groups and a wide range of backgrounds. This diversity provides an exciting background for students who wish to experience the Australian way of life. Established in 1964, La Trobe University has three campuses offering undergraduate courses to international students: the Bundoora campus in metropolitan Melbourne, one in Albury, Wodonga and one in Bendigo. The University has received a high level of government funding and its buildings and facilities are among the best in Australia. All the University courses are recognised by the Victorian and Australian Governments. This ensures high-quality courses, which are recognized by major Australian professional bodies and equal the standard of the finest university courses internationally. The University provides facilities to enable students to pursue a range of recreational and sporting activities which cater for all levels of ability and interest. Sports facilities include gymnasiums, tennis, basketball and badminton courts and an indoor heated swimming pool and squash courts. There are also golf courses close to each of the University campuses. In recognition of the University’s excellent sporting facilities, La Trobe was awarded the honor of being the host institution for the Australian University Games in 1997. We warmly invite you to join our university. Monash University With its 43,000 students in its six Australian campuses located in and around Mcibourne and one in Malaysia, Monash University is a truly diverse teaching and research institution. The students are from more than 120 countries and regions, with international students comprising about 15% of our total student population. Its tradition of academic excellence along with its internationally recognized awards give you, the learner, wonderful opportunities to study in. It is able to offer a full and comprehensive range of courses from university preparation and English language program through to postgraduate research programs. The University, established in 1962, has achieved remarkably for international citations. Based on the latest data provided by the Institute for Scientific Information (SI), from 1993 to 1997, the number of papers published is 6,475, that of citations is 26,545, and the citation impact is 4.10, ranking the third among all the Australian universities. The Monash University Community Service can assist enrolled students with a variety of financial matters ranging from student loans and financial advice to basic taxation information. The Housing Service provides prospective and enrolled students with information on a range of accommodation options, both on and off campus. The Monash Postgraduate Centre is located on the Clayton campus. Students have 24 hour access to the Centre which otters state-of-the-art facilities including well-equipped computer laboratories, student lounges and tea rooms, resource libraries, photocopiers and meeting rooms. We extend to you our invitation to join us and share the truly multicultural learning environment of which we are so proud.______is located in metropolitan Melbourne?

After reading in a magazine an article entitled “Y2K Bug, a Fly Is Magnified to an Elephant“, you decided to write an article, either for or against the opinion for the same magazine. You should use your own ideas, knowledge or experience to generate support for your argument and include an example. You should write no less than 250 words.

What kind of animals is Anna asked to look after?Anna: Hello. Peter: Hi, Anna. Look, I’m sorry to bother you so late. I just wanted to ask you a little favor. Anna: Oh, sure. Well, I’d like to help out. Anything you want. Peter: Look, I’m going to London for a week. Anna: Oh, how wonderful. I wish I could get away on holiday. Peter: Look, I have got a problem though, you know, I have got some cats and I need a home for them. Anna: Oh, er well, the only thing is, how many of them are there? Peter: Well, there’re only two. Anna: Oh, well, that’s okay then. I think I still have a box. But it’s pretty worn out and a bit dirty, not too nice, you know. Peter: Well erm, I think that’ll be all right. I’m sure it’ll be fine as long as you didn’t. I didn’t want to mention this earlier, perhaps, but er well, I didn’t want to mention this earlier, perhaps, but er one of them is pregnant, you see. One of the cats is pregnant and she’s going to be delivering er pretty soon. Anna: Oh, no I’m a little nervous about it now. I mean er I don’t know if I can cope with that. Peter: Of course you can. Look, I mean, they’re okay. She looks after her babies. She had six the last time. You’ll love them. Anna: Six? Wow, that’s just a little too many. I mean, I don’t think I could cope with that, I mean. And how do I tell when they are due, you know, when they’re going to be delivered? Peter: Very simple. You see, the mother starts spending more time in her box and starts meowing a lot. You will know that she’s ready to have the babies. Anna: Well, what kind of food do I have to give them? Peter: Very simple. They don’t need anything and the mother nurses them for about five to six weeks. You just give the mother cat food and milk. Anna: Well, does it have to be hot? Peter: No, just fresh milk. Anna: Anyway, why do you keep them? I mean, don’t they cause you an awful lot of work and trouble? Peter: Oh, no. They’re so sweet. You’re going to just love them when you see them. They’re so nice. Anna: Well, here’s an idea. Why don’t you bring what they need, and I’ll just have—then I won’t have to worry about it anything. Peter: Okay, I could do that. I’ll bring a big bottle of fresh milk and a large box of cat food, then that should be okay. Anna: A large box? How long did you say you were going to be away? Peter: Now look, don’t start worrying too much. She may not produce these little cats this week at all. Anna: Well, I certainly hope not. I mean, I’m not used to this sort of thing, you know. Rabbits. Birds. Cats. Dogs.

Before a big exam, a sound night’s sleep will do you more good than poring over textbooks. That, at least, is the folk wisdom. And science, in the form of behavioral psychology, supports that wisdom. But such behavioral studies cannot distinguish between two competing theories of why sleep is good for the memory. One says that sleep is when permanent memories form. The other says that they are actually formed during the day, but then “edited“ at night, to flush away what is superfluous. To tell the difference, it is necessary to look into the brain of a sleeping person, and that is hard. But after a decade of painstaking work, a team led by Pierre Maquet at Liege University in Belgium has managed to do it. The particular stage of sleep in which the Belgian group is interested in is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when brain and body are active, heart rate and blood pressure increase, the eyes move back and forth behind the eyelids as if watching a movie, and brainwave traces resemble those of wakefulness. It is during this period of sleep that people are most likely to relive events of the previous day in dreams. Dr. Maquet used an electronic device called PET to study the brains of people as they practiced a task daring the day, and as they slept during the following night. The task required them to press a button as fast as possible, in response to a light coming on in one of six positions. As they learnt how to do this, their response times got faster. What they did not know was that the appearance of the lights sometimes followed a pattern—what is referred to as “artificial grammar“. Yet the reductions in response time showed that they learnt faster when the pattern was present than when there was not. What is more, those with more to learn (i.e., the “grammar“, as well as the mechanical task of pushing the button) have more active brains. The “editing“ theory would not predict that, since the number of irrelevant stimuli would be the same in each case. And to eliminate any doubts that the experimental subjects were learning as opposed to unlearning, their response times when they woke up were even quicker than when they went to sleep. The team, therefore, concluded that the nerve connections involved in memory are reinforced through reactivation during REM sleep, particularly if the brain detects an inherent structure in the material being learnt. So now, on the eve of that crucial test, maths students can sleep soundly in the knowledge that what they will remember the next day are the basic rules of algebra and not the incoherent talk from the radio next door.Researchers in behavioral psychology are divided with regard to ______. how dreams are modified in their courses. the difference between sleep and wakefulness. why sleep is of great benefit to memory. the functions of a good night’s sleep.

When a disease of epidemic proportions rips into the populace, scientists immediately get to work, trying to locate the source of the affliction and find ways to combat it. Oftentimes, success is achieved, as medical science is able to isolate the parasite, germ or cell that causes the problem and finds ways to effectively kill or contain it. In the most serious of cases, in which the entire population of a region or country may be at grave risk, it is deemed necessary to protect the entire population through vaccination, so as to safeguard lives and ensure that the disease will not spread. The process of vaccination allows the patient’s body to develop immunity to the virus or disease so that, if it is encountered, one can ward it off naturally. To accomplish this, a small weak or dead strain of the disease is actually injected into the patient in a controlled environment, so that his body’s immune system can learn to fight the invader properly. Information on how to penetrate the disease’s defenses is transmitted to all elements of the patient’s immune system in a process that occurs naturally, in winch genetic information is passed from cell to cell. This makes sure that, should the patient later come into contact with the real problem, his body is well equipped and trained to deal with it, having already done so before. There are dangers inherent in the process, however. On occasion, even the weakened version of the disease contained in the vaccine proves too much for the body to handle, resulting in the immune system succumbing, and, therefore, the patient’s death. Such is the case of the smallpox vaccine, designed to eradicate the smallpox epidemic that nearly wiped out the entire Native American population and killed massive numbers of settlers. Approximately 1 in 10,000 people who receives the vaccine contract the smallpox disease from the vaccine itself and dies from it. Thus, if the entire population of the United States were to receive the Smallpox Vaccine today, 3,000 Americans would be left dead. Fortunately, the smallpox virus was considered eradicated in the early 1970’s, ending the mandatory vaccination of all babies in America. In the event of a re-introduction of the disease, however, mandatory vaccinations may resume, resulting in more unexpected deaths from vaccination. The process, winch is truly a mixed blessing, may indeed hide some hidden curses.The best title for the text may be ______. Vaccinations: A Blessing or A Curse Principles of Vaccinations Vaccines: Methods and Implications A Miracle Cure under Attack

What does the example of the Smallpox Vaccine illustrate?

The phrase “ward it off naturally“ (Paragraph 2) most probably means ______.

Which of the following is true according to the text?

The purpose of the author in writing this passage is ______.