uid
stringlengths 4
7
| premise
stringlengths 19
9.21k
| hypothesis
stringlengths 13
488
| label
stringclasses 3
values |
|---|---|---|---|
id_2900 | Healthcare workers are at an increased risk of both fatal and non fatal injuries, due to a number of various factors ranging from violence within the workplace to apparatus being placed carelessly such as syringes and needles. However, recent research has found that there has been a decrease in medical and mental healthcare, and instead there is a high increase in the use of hospitals for severely disturbed violent cases, severe mental illness, drug abuse, or other types of out-of-the- ordinary behaviours by some patients. This form of violence is increasing in severity and frequency, in areas such as pharmacies, hospitals and community care facilities, and has now become a seemingly never-ending problem. It has been proposed that a resolution to such a problem would be to restrict the premature discharge of the chronically mentally ill from professional care services. | Individuals who show atypical behaviours have been shown to be hospitalised | e |
id_2901 | Healthcare workers are at an increased risk of both fatal and non fatal injuries, due to a number of various factors ranging from violence within the workplace to apparatus being placed carelessly such as syringes and needles. However, recent research has found that there has been a decrease in medical and mental healthcare, and instead there is a high increase in the use of hospitals for severely disturbed violent cases, severe mental illness, drug abuse, or other types of out-of-the- ordinary behaviours by some patients. This form of violence is increasing in severity and frequency, in areas such as pharmacies, hospitals and community care facilities, and has now become a seemingly never-ending problem. It has been proposed that a resolution to such a problem would be to restrict the premature discharge of the chronically mentally ill from professional care services. | Increased risk of injury to healthcare workers is wholly due to an increase in healthcare and a decrease in the hospitalisation of those with mental health problems | c |
id_2902 | Healthcare workers are at an increased risk of both fatal and non fatal injuries, due to a number of various factors ranging from violence within the workplace to apparatus being placed carelessly such as syringes and needles. However, recent research has found that there has been a decrease in medical and mental healthcare, and instead there is a high increase in the use of hospitals for severely disturbed violent cases, severe mental illness, drug abuse, or other types of out-of-the- ordinary behaviours by some patients. This form of violence is increasing in severity and frequency, in areas such as pharmacies, hospitals and community care facilities, and has now become a seemingly never-ending problem. It has been proposed that a resolution to such a problem would be to restrict the premature discharge of the chronically mentally ill from professional care services. | If hospitalised patients remain in specialist care for longer periods, a decrease in injuries may be seen | n |
id_2903 | Healthcare workers are at an increased risk of both fatal and non fatal injuries, due to a number of various factors ranging from violence within the workplace to apparatus being placed carelessly such as syringes and needles. However, recent research has found that there has been a decrease in medical and mental healthcare, and instead there is a high increase in the use of hospitals for severely disturbed violent cases, severe mental illness, drug abuse, or other types of out-of-the- ordinary behaviours by some patients. This form of violence is increasing in severity and frequency, in areas such as pharmacies, hospitals and community care facilities, and has now become a seemingly never-ending problem. It has been proposed that a resolution to such a problem would be to restrict the premature discharge of the chronically mentally ill from professional care services. | All mentally ill patients show violent behaviours | c |
id_2904 | Healthy Food? THE shelves of every supermarket are packed with probiotic yogurts that can supposedly ease constipation and fend off infections, butter substitutes that claim to reduce cholesterol, tomato extracts said to keep skin looking young while warding off cancer, infant cereals enhanced with micronutrients essential for development, and so on. Have food companies taken on a higher level of morality or are there other motives for this concern over the health value of their produce? Food companies have taken to trumpeting the supposed health and nutritional benefits of their products for several reasons. Such products may appeal both to health-conscious buyers and to people who know they eat unhealthily, but hope that some vitamins here and some probiotics there might compensate for the junk. Best of all, from the food companies point of view, these functional foods, which blur the line between foods and drugs, hold out the promise of higher margins and faster growth. In western Europe All this has attracted the attention of regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. They are concerned that some of these health claims may be misleading or unsupported by evidence, and are tightening the rules. On October 20th Americas Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it would overhaul the rules for nutritional claims on food labels and issue new standards early next year. It has already rebuked General Mills, the maker of Cheerios, a popular breakfast cereal, for claiming that it is clinically proven to lower cholesterol. The European Food Safety Authority is also cracking down, requiring companies to back up health and nutrition claims with scientific studies. Hundreds of applications submitted to its scientific panel sales of functional foods grew by 10.2% a year between 2006 and 2009, for example, whereas sales of packaged food grew by 6.3%. That is why Nestle, the worlds biggest food company, is making a big bet on functional foods as a source of future growth. Many in the industry are howling that these rules are heavy-handed, given that most of their products are perfectly safe and that some health claims go back decades or more. Demanding expensive studies to justify such claims will stifle innovation, they argue, and tilt the playing field against smaller firms, which will be unable to afford them. Surely, they say, firms that find profit in adding iron, iodine, zinc and vitamins to their products, or cutting levels of high-fructose corn syrup or saturated fat, ought to be applauded, not denounced. Many food brands started off as a means of reassuring customers that products were trustworthy. The desire to defend their brands gives food firms a strong incentive to ensure that their products are safe. The situation now however is that food companies are claiming their products provide specific benefits-not merely that they are safe to eat. Ordinary folk cannot tell whether health claims made by food marketers are scientifically valid, so there is a case for regulatory scrutiny of such claims. Whats more, even though it is difficult to imagine someone being harmed by eating too much breakfast cereal or yogurt, say, there is a risk of harm if health claims made about functional foods encourage people to see them as substitutes for drugs or lifestyle changes they may need. A few helpings of vegetables will do more good than any probiotic yogurt. A lesson from the drugs industry is that industry-funded studies have a clear tendency to produce results that please their sponsors. So food companies should have to register all studies and publish even those with unfavourable results. Clear guidelines on labelling are also important. To its credit, the FDA recently proposed rules that would force food companies to publish all the important components of their products on the front of their packages, rather than picking out the healthy ones and keeping quiet about the fat, salt and sugar. The industrys claim that greater scrutiny will kill innovation is off the mark. Those firms making misleading claims will suffer; those prepared to invest in proper scientific studies to back up their supposed breakthroughs will benefit. And in pharmaceuticals, smaller firms seem to be more innovative than bigger ones. If food companies wish to make the sorts of claims about their products that pharmaceutical companies do, they must be prepared to submit to similar scrutiny. Extraordinary claims, after all, require extraordinary evidence. | The food industry welcomes the regulators new demands. | c |
id_2905 | Healthy Food? THE shelves of every supermarket are packed with probiotic yogurts that can supposedly ease constipation and fend off infections, butter substitutes that claim to reduce cholesterol, tomato extracts said to keep skin looking young while warding off cancer, infant cereals enhanced with micronutrients essential for development, and so on. Have food companies taken on a higher level of morality or are there other motives for this concern over the health value of their produce? Food companies have taken to trumpeting the supposed health and nutritional benefits of their products for several reasons. Such products may appeal both to health-conscious buyers and to people who know they eat unhealthily, but hope that some vitamins here and some probiotics there might compensate for the junk. Best of all, from the food companies point of view, these functional foods, which blur the line between foods and drugs, hold out the promise of higher margins and faster growth. In western Europe All this has attracted the attention of regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. They are concerned that some of these health claims may be misleading or unsupported by evidence, and are tightening the rules. On October 20th Americas Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it would overhaul the rules for nutritional claims on food labels and issue new standards early next year. It has already rebuked General Mills, the maker of Cheerios, a popular breakfast cereal, for claiming that it is clinically proven to lower cholesterol. The European Food Safety Authority is also cracking down, requiring companies to back up health and nutrition claims with scientific studies. Hundreds of applications submitted to its scientific panel sales of functional foods grew by 10.2% a year between 2006 and 2009, for example, whereas sales of packaged food grew by 6.3%. That is why Nestle, the worlds biggest food company, is making a big bet on functional foods as a source of future growth. Many in the industry are howling that these rules are heavy-handed, given that most of their products are perfectly safe and that some health claims go back decades or more. Demanding expensive studies to justify such claims will stifle innovation, they argue, and tilt the playing field against smaller firms, which will be unable to afford them. Surely, they say, firms that find profit in adding iron, iodine, zinc and vitamins to their products, or cutting levels of high-fructose corn syrup or saturated fat, ought to be applauded, not denounced. Many food brands started off as a means of reassuring customers that products were trustworthy. The desire to defend their brands gives food firms a strong incentive to ensure that their products are safe. The situation now however is that food companies are claiming their products provide specific benefits-not merely that they are safe to eat. Ordinary folk cannot tell whether health claims made by food marketers are scientifically valid, so there is a case for regulatory scrutiny of such claims. Whats more, even though it is difficult to imagine someone being harmed by eating too much breakfast cereal or yogurt, say, there is a risk of harm if health claims made about functional foods encourage people to see them as substitutes for drugs or lifestyle changes they may need. A few helpings of vegetables will do more good than any probiotic yogurt. A lesson from the drugs industry is that industry-funded studies have a clear tendency to produce results that please their sponsors. So food companies should have to register all studies and publish even those with unfavourable results. Clear guidelines on labelling are also important. To its credit, the FDA recently proposed rules that would force food companies to publish all the important components of their products on the front of their packages, rather than picking out the healthy ones and keeping quiet about the fat, salt and sugar. The industrys claim that greater scrutiny will kill innovation is off the mark. Those firms making misleading claims will suffer; those prepared to invest in proper scientific studies to back up their supposed breakthroughs will benefit. And in pharmaceuticals, smaller firms seem to be more innovative than bigger ones. If food companies wish to make the sorts of claims about their products that pharmaceutical companies do, they must be prepared to submit to similar scrutiny. Extraordinary claims, after all, require extraordinary evidence. | The FDA is going to revise the legislation on food labels next year. | e |
id_2906 | Healthy Food? THE shelves of every supermarket are packed with probiotic yogurts that can supposedly ease constipation and fend off infections, butter substitutes that claim to reduce cholesterol, tomato extracts said to keep skin looking young while warding off cancer, infant cereals enhanced with micronutrients essential for development, and so on. Have food companies taken on a higher level of morality or are there other motives for this concern over the health value of their produce? Food companies have taken to trumpeting the supposed health and nutritional benefits of their products for several reasons. Such products may appeal both to health-conscious buyers and to people who know they eat unhealthily, but hope that some vitamins here and some probiotics there might compensate for the junk. Best of all, from the food companies point of view, these functional foods, which blur the line between foods and drugs, hold out the promise of higher margins and faster growth. In western Europe All this has attracted the attention of regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. They are concerned that some of these health claims may be misleading or unsupported by evidence, and are tightening the rules. On October 20th Americas Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it would overhaul the rules for nutritional claims on food labels and issue new standards early next year. It has already rebuked General Mills, the maker of Cheerios, a popular breakfast cereal, for claiming that it is clinically proven to lower cholesterol. The European Food Safety Authority is also cracking down, requiring companies to back up health and nutrition claims with scientific studies. Hundreds of applications submitted to its scientific panel sales of functional foods grew by 10.2% a year between 2006 and 2009, for example, whereas sales of packaged food grew by 6.3%. That is why Nestle, the worlds biggest food company, is making a big bet on functional foods as a source of future growth. Many in the industry are howling that these rules are heavy-handed, given that most of their products are perfectly safe and that some health claims go back decades or more. Demanding expensive studies to justify such claims will stifle innovation, they argue, and tilt the playing field against smaller firms, which will be unable to afford them. Surely, they say, firms that find profit in adding iron, iodine, zinc and vitamins to their products, or cutting levels of high-fructose corn syrup or saturated fat, ought to be applauded, not denounced. Many food brands started off as a means of reassuring customers that products were trustworthy. The desire to defend their brands gives food firms a strong incentive to ensure that their products are safe. The situation now however is that food companies are claiming their products provide specific benefits-not merely that they are safe to eat. Ordinary folk cannot tell whether health claims made by food marketers are scientifically valid, so there is a case for regulatory scrutiny of such claims. Whats more, even though it is difficult to imagine someone being harmed by eating too much breakfast cereal or yogurt, say, there is a risk of harm if health claims made about functional foods encourage people to see them as substitutes for drugs or lifestyle changes they may need. A few helpings of vegetables will do more good than any probiotic yogurt. A lesson from the drugs industry is that industry-funded studies have a clear tendency to produce results that please their sponsors. So food companies should have to register all studies and publish even those with unfavourable results. Clear guidelines on labelling are also important. To its credit, the FDA recently proposed rules that would force food companies to publish all the important components of their products on the front of their packages, rather than picking out the healthy ones and keeping quiet about the fat, salt and sugar. The industrys claim that greater scrutiny will kill innovation is off the mark. Those firms making misleading claims will suffer; those prepared to invest in proper scientific studies to back up their supposed breakthroughs will benefit. And in pharmaceuticals, smaller firms seem to be more innovative than bigger ones. If food companies wish to make the sorts of claims about their products that pharmaceutical companies do, they must be prepared to submit to similar scrutiny. Extraordinary claims, after all, require extraordinary evidence. | Food companies are investing in functional foods because they are healthier. | c |
id_2907 | Healthy Intentions One hundred years ago, the leading causes of death in the industrial world were infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza and pneumonia. Since then, the emergence of antibiotics, vaccines and public health controls has reduced the impact of infectious disease. Today, the top killers are non-infectious illnesses related essentially to lifestyle (diet, smoking and lack of exercise). The main causes of death in the United States in 1997 were heart disease, cancer and stroke. Chronic health problems, such as obesity, noninsulin-dependent diabetes and osteoporosis, which are not necessarily lethal but nonetheless debilitating, are steadily increasing. It is clear that economic and technical progress is no assurance of good health. Humans are qualitatively different from other animals because we manipulate the flow of energy and resources through the ecosystem to our advantage, and consequently to the detriment of other organisms. That is why we compete so successfully with other species. But with this success come some inherent failings, particularly in terms of our health. According to physician Boyd Eaton and his anthropologist colleagues, despite all our technological wizardry and intellectual advances, modern humans are seriously malnourished. The human body evolved to eat a very different diet from that which most of us consume today. Before the advent of agriculture, about ten thousand years ago, people were hunter-gatherers, the food varying with the seasons and climate and all obtained from local sources. Our ancestors rarely, if ever, ate grains or drank the milk of other animals. Although ten thousand years seems a long time ago, 99.99 percent of our genetic material was already formed. Thus we are not well adapted to an agriculturally based diet of cereals and dairy products. At least 100,000 generations of people were hunter-gatherers, only 500 generations have depended on agriculture, only ten generations have lived since the onset of the industrial age and only two generations have grown up with highly processed fast foods. Physicians Randolph Nesse and George Williams write: Our bodies were designed over the course of millions of years for lives spent in small groups hunting and gathering on the plains of Africa. Natural selection has not had time to revise our bodies for coping with fatty diets, automobiles, drugs, artificial lights and central heating. From this mismatch between our design and our environment arises much, perhaps most, preventable modern disease. Do we really want to eat like prehistoric humans? Surely cavemen were not healthy? Surely their life was hard and short? Apparently not. Archaeological evidence indicates that these hunter-gatherer ancestors were robust, strong and lean with no sign of osteoporosis or arthritis even at more advanced ages. Paleolithic humans ate a diet similar to that of wild chimpanzees and gorillas today: raw fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetation, fresh untreated water, insects and wild- game meat low in saturated fats. Much of their food was hard and bitter. Most important, like chimpanzees and gorillas, prehistoric humans ate a wide variety of plants an estimated 100 to 300 different types in one year. Nowadays, even health-conscious, rich westerners seldom consume more than twenty to thirty different species of plants. The early human diet is estimated to have included more than 100 grams of fiber a day. Today the recommended level of 30 grams is rarely achieved by most of us. Humans and lowland gorillas share similar digestive tracts in particular, the colon but, while gorillas derive up to 60 percent of their total energy from fiber fermentation in the colon, modern humans get only about 4 percent. When gorillas are brought into captivity and fed on lower-fiber diets containing meat and eggs, they suffer from many common human disorders: cardiovascular disease, ulcerative colitis and high cholesterol levels. Their natural diet, rich in antioxidants and fiber, apparently prevents these diseases in the wild, suggesting that such a diet may have serious implications for our own health. Not all agricultural societies have taken the same road. Many traditional agriculturalists maintain the diversity of their diet by eating a variety of herbs and other plant compounds along with meat and grains. The Huasa people of northern Nigeria, for example, traditionally include up to twenty wild medicinal plants in their grain-based soups, and peoples who have become heavily reliant on animal products have found ways of countering the negative effects of such a diet. While the Masai of Africa eat meat and drink blood, milk and animal fat as their only sources of protein, they suffer less heart trouble than Westerners. One reason is that they always combine their animal products with strong, bitter antioxidant herbs. In other words, the Masai have balanced the intake of oxidising and antioxidising compounds. According to Timothy Johns, it is not the high intake of animal fat or the low intake of antioxidants, that creates so many health problems in industrial countries; it is the lack of balance between the two. Eating the right foods and natural medicines requires a sensitivity to subtle changes in appetite. Do I fancy something sweet, sour, salty, stimulating or sedating? What sort of hunger is it? And after consumption, has the need been satisfied? Such subtleties are easily overridden by artificially created superstimuli in processed foods that leave us unable to select a healthy diet. We need to listen more carefully to our bodies cravings and take an intentional role in maintaining our health before disease sets in. | Gorillas that live in the wild avoid most infectious diseases. | n |
id_2908 | Healthy Intentions One hundred years ago, the leading causes of death in the industrial world were infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza and pneumonia. Since then, the emergence of antibiotics, vaccines and public health controls has reduced the impact of infectious disease. Today, the top killers are non-infectious illnesses related essentially to lifestyle (diet, smoking and lack of exercise). The main causes of death in the United States in 1997 were heart disease, cancer and stroke. Chronic health problems, such as obesity, noninsulin-dependent diabetes and osteoporosis, which are not necessarily lethal but nonetheless debilitating, are steadily increasing. It is clear that economic and technical progress is no assurance of good health. Humans are qualitatively different from other animals because we manipulate the flow of energy and resources through the ecosystem to our advantage, and consequently to the detriment of other organisms. That is why we compete so successfully with other species. But with this success come some inherent failings, particularly in terms of our health. According to physician Boyd Eaton and his anthropologist colleagues, despite all our technological wizardry and intellectual advances, modern humans are seriously malnourished. The human body evolved to eat a very different diet from that which most of us consume today. Before the advent of agriculture, about ten thousand years ago, people were hunter-gatherers, the food varying with the seasons and climate and all obtained from local sources. Our ancestors rarely, if ever, ate grains or drank the milk of other animals. Although ten thousand years seems a long time ago, 99.99 percent of our genetic material was already formed. Thus we are not well adapted to an agriculturally based diet of cereals and dairy products. At least 100,000 generations of people were hunter-gatherers, only 500 generations have depended on agriculture, only ten generations have lived since the onset of the industrial age and only two generations have grown up with highly processed fast foods. Physicians Randolph Nesse and George Williams write: Our bodies were designed over the course of millions of years for lives spent in small groups hunting and gathering on the plains of Africa. Natural selection has not had time to revise our bodies for coping with fatty diets, automobiles, drugs, artificial lights and central heating. From this mismatch between our design and our environment arises much, perhaps most, preventable modern disease. Do we really want to eat like prehistoric humans? Surely cavemen were not healthy? Surely their life was hard and short? Apparently not. Archaeological evidence indicates that these hunter-gatherer ancestors were robust, strong and lean with no sign of osteoporosis or arthritis even at more advanced ages. Paleolithic humans ate a diet similar to that of wild chimpanzees and gorillas today: raw fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetation, fresh untreated water, insects and wild- game meat low in saturated fats. Much of their food was hard and bitter. Most important, like chimpanzees and gorillas, prehistoric humans ate a wide variety of plants an estimated 100 to 300 different types in one year. Nowadays, even health-conscious, rich westerners seldom consume more than twenty to thirty different species of plants. The early human diet is estimated to have included more than 100 grams of fiber a day. Today the recommended level of 30 grams is rarely achieved by most of us. Humans and lowland gorillas share similar digestive tracts in particular, the colon but, while gorillas derive up to 60 percent of their total energy from fiber fermentation in the colon, modern humans get only about 4 percent. When gorillas are brought into captivity and fed on lower-fiber diets containing meat and eggs, they suffer from many common human disorders: cardiovascular disease, ulcerative colitis and high cholesterol levels. Their natural diet, rich in antioxidants and fiber, apparently prevents these diseases in the wild, suggesting that such a diet may have serious implications for our own health. Not all agricultural societies have taken the same road. Many traditional agriculturalists maintain the diversity of their diet by eating a variety of herbs and other plant compounds along with meat and grains. The Huasa people of northern Nigeria, for example, traditionally include up to twenty wild medicinal plants in their grain-based soups, and peoples who have become heavily reliant on animal products have found ways of countering the negative effects of such a diet. While the Masai of Africa eat meat and drink blood, milk and animal fat as their only sources of protein, they suffer less heart trouble than Westerners. One reason is that they always combine their animal products with strong, bitter antioxidant herbs. In other words, the Masai have balanced the intake of oxidising and antioxidising compounds. According to Timothy Johns, it is not the high intake of animal fat or the low intake of antioxidants, that creates so many health problems in industrial countries; it is the lack of balance between the two. Eating the right foods and natural medicines requires a sensitivity to subtle changes in appetite. Do I fancy something sweet, sour, salty, stimulating or sedating? What sort of hunger is it? And after consumption, has the need been satisfied? Such subtleties are easily overridden by artificially created superstimuli in processed foods that leave us unable to select a healthy diet. We need to listen more carefully to our bodies cravings and take an intentional role in maintaining our health before disease sets in. | Food additives can prevent people from eating what their bodies need. | e |
id_2909 | Healthy Intentions One hundred years ago, the leading causes of death in the industrial world were infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza and pneumonia. Since then, the emergence of antibiotics, vaccines and public health controls has reduced the impact of infectious disease. Today, the top killers are non-infectious illnesses related essentially to lifestyle (diet, smoking and lack of exercise). The main causes of death in the United States in 1997 were heart disease, cancer and stroke. Chronic health problems, such as obesity, noninsulin-dependent diabetes and osteoporosis, which are not necessarily lethal but nonetheless debilitating, are steadily increasing. It is clear that economic and technical progress is no assurance of good health. Humans are qualitatively different from other animals because we manipulate the flow of energy and resources through the ecosystem to our advantage, and consequently to the detriment of other organisms. That is why we compete so successfully with other species. But with this success come some inherent failings, particularly in terms of our health. According to physician Boyd Eaton and his anthropologist colleagues, despite all our technological wizardry and intellectual advances, modern humans are seriously malnourished. The human body evolved to eat a very different diet from that which most of us consume today. Before the advent of agriculture, about ten thousand years ago, people were hunter-gatherers, the food varying with the seasons and climate and all obtained from local sources. Our ancestors rarely, if ever, ate grains or drank the milk of other animals. Although ten thousand years seems a long time ago, 99.99 percent of our genetic material was already formed. Thus we are not well adapted to an agriculturally based diet of cereals and dairy products. At least 100,000 generations of people were hunter-gatherers, only 500 generations have depended on agriculture, only ten generations have lived since the onset of the industrial age and only two generations have grown up with highly processed fast foods. Physicians Randolph Nesse and George Williams write: Our bodies were designed over the course of millions of years for lives spent in small groups hunting and gathering on the plains of Africa. Natural selection has not had time to revise our bodies for coping with fatty diets, automobiles, drugs, artificial lights and central heating. From this mismatch between our design and our environment arises much, perhaps most, preventable modern disease. Do we really want to eat like prehistoric humans? Surely cavemen were not healthy? Surely their life was hard and short? Apparently not. Archaeological evidence indicates that these hunter-gatherer ancestors were robust, strong and lean with no sign of osteoporosis or arthritis even at more advanced ages. Paleolithic humans ate a diet similar to that of wild chimpanzees and gorillas today: raw fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetation, fresh untreated water, insects and wild- game meat low in saturated fats. Much of their food was hard and bitter. Most important, like chimpanzees and gorillas, prehistoric humans ate a wide variety of plants an estimated 100 to 300 different types in one year. Nowadays, even health-conscious, rich westerners seldom consume more than twenty to thirty different species of plants. The early human diet is estimated to have included more than 100 grams of fiber a day. Today the recommended level of 30 grams is rarely achieved by most of us. Humans and lowland gorillas share similar digestive tracts in particular, the colon but, while gorillas derive up to 60 percent of their total energy from fiber fermentation in the colon, modern humans get only about 4 percent. When gorillas are brought into captivity and fed on lower-fiber diets containing meat and eggs, they suffer from many common human disorders: cardiovascular disease, ulcerative colitis and high cholesterol levels. Their natural diet, rich in antioxidants and fiber, apparently prevents these diseases in the wild, suggesting that such a diet may have serious implications for our own health. Not all agricultural societies have taken the same road. Many traditional agriculturalists maintain the diversity of their diet by eating a variety of herbs and other plant compounds along with meat and grains. The Huasa people of northern Nigeria, for example, traditionally include up to twenty wild medicinal plants in their grain-based soups, and peoples who have become heavily reliant on animal products have found ways of countering the negative effects of such a diet. While the Masai of Africa eat meat and drink blood, milk and animal fat as their only sources of protein, they suffer less heart trouble than Westerners. One reason is that they always combine their animal products with strong, bitter antioxidant herbs. In other words, the Masai have balanced the intake of oxidising and antioxidising compounds. According to Timothy Johns, it is not the high intake of animal fat or the low intake of antioxidants, that creates so many health problems in industrial countries; it is the lack of balance between the two. Eating the right foods and natural medicines requires a sensitivity to subtle changes in appetite. Do I fancy something sweet, sour, salty, stimulating or sedating? What sort of hunger is it? And after consumption, has the need been satisfied? Such subtleties are easily overridden by artificially created superstimuli in processed foods that leave us unable to select a healthy diet. We need to listen more carefully to our bodies cravings and take an intentional role in maintaining our health before disease sets in. | An increase in material resources leads to improved physical health. | c |
id_2910 | Healthy Intentions One hundred years ago, the leading causes of death in the industrial world were infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza and pneumonia. Since then, the emergence of antibiotics, vaccines and public health controls has reduced the impact of infectious disease. Today, the top killers are non-infectious illnesses related essentially to lifestyle (diet, smoking and lack of exercise). The main causes of death in the United States in 1997 were heart disease, cancer and stroke. Chronic health problems, such as obesity, noninsulin-dependent diabetes and osteoporosis, which are not necessarily lethal but nonetheless debilitating, are steadily increasing. It is clear that economic and technical progress is no assurance of good health. Humans are qualitatively different from other animals because we manipulate the flow of energy and resources through the ecosystem to our advantage, and consequently to the detriment of other organisms. That is why we compete so successfully with other species. But with this success come some inherent failings, particularly in terms of our health. According to physician Boyd Eaton and his anthropologist colleagues, despite all our technological wizardry and intellectual advances, modern humans are seriously malnourished. The human body evolved to eat a very different diet from that which most of us consume today. Before the advent of agriculture, about ten thousand years ago, people were hunter-gatherers, the food varying with the seasons and climate and all obtained from local sources. Our ancestors rarely, if ever, ate grains or drank the milk of other animals. Although ten thousand years seems a long time ago, 99.99 percent of our genetic material was already formed. Thus we are not well adapted to an agriculturally based diet of cereals and dairy products. At least 100,000 generations of people were hunter-gatherers, only 500 generations have depended on agriculture, only ten generations have lived since the onset of the industrial age and only two generations have grown up with highly processed fast foods. Physicians Randolph Nesse and George Williams write: Our bodies were designed over the course of millions of years for lives spent in small groups hunting and gathering on the plains of Africa. Natural selection has not had time to revise our bodies for coping with fatty diets, automobiles, drugs, artificial lights and central heating. From this mismatch between our design and our environment arises much, perhaps most, preventable modern disease. Do we really want to eat like prehistoric humans? Surely cavemen were not healthy? Surely their life was hard and short? Apparently not. Archaeological evidence indicates that these hunter-gatherer ancestors were robust, strong and lean with no sign of osteoporosis or arthritis even at more advanced ages. Paleolithic humans ate a diet similar to that of wild chimpanzees and gorillas today: raw fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetation, fresh untreated water, insects and wild- game meat low in saturated fats. Much of their food was hard and bitter. Most important, like chimpanzees and gorillas, prehistoric humans ate a wide variety of plants an estimated 100 to 300 different types in one year. Nowadays, even health-conscious, rich westerners seldom consume more than twenty to thirty different species of plants. The early human diet is estimated to have included more than 100 grams of fiber a day. Today the recommended level of 30 grams is rarely achieved by most of us. Humans and lowland gorillas share similar digestive tracts in particular, the colon but, while gorillas derive up to 60 percent of their total energy from fiber fermentation in the colon, modern humans get only about 4 percent. When gorillas are brought into captivity and fed on lower-fiber diets containing meat and eggs, they suffer from many common human disorders: cardiovascular disease, ulcerative colitis and high cholesterol levels. Their natural diet, rich in antioxidants and fiber, apparently prevents these diseases in the wild, suggesting that such a diet may have serious implications for our own health. Not all agricultural societies have taken the same road. Many traditional agriculturalists maintain the diversity of their diet by eating a variety of herbs and other plant compounds along with meat and grains. The Huasa people of northern Nigeria, for example, traditionally include up to twenty wild medicinal plants in their grain-based soups, and peoples who have become heavily reliant on animal products have found ways of countering the negative effects of such a diet. While the Masai of Africa eat meat and drink blood, milk and animal fat as their only sources of protein, they suffer less heart trouble than Westerners. One reason is that they always combine their animal products with strong, bitter antioxidant herbs. In other words, the Masai have balanced the intake of oxidising and antioxidising compounds. According to Timothy Johns, it is not the high intake of animal fat or the low intake of antioxidants, that creates so many health problems in industrial countries; it is the lack of balance between the two. Eating the right foods and natural medicines requires a sensitivity to subtle changes in appetite. Do I fancy something sweet, sour, salty, stimulating or sedating? What sort of hunger is it? And after consumption, has the need been satisfied? Such subtleties are easily overridden by artificially created superstimuli in processed foods that leave us unable to select a healthy diet. We need to listen more carefully to our bodies cravings and take an intentional role in maintaining our health before disease sets in. | Cereals were unknown to our hunter-gathering ancestors. | n |
id_2911 | Healthy Intentions One hundred years ago, the leading causes of death in the industrial world were infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza and pneumonia. Since then, the emergence of antibiotics, vaccines and public health controls has reduced the impact of infectious disease. Today, the top killers are non-infectious illnesses related essentially to lifestyle (diet, smoking and lack of exercise). The main causes of death in the United States in 1997 were heart disease, cancer and stroke. Chronic health problems, such as obesity, noninsulin-dependent diabetes and osteoporosis, which are not necessarily lethal but nonetheless debilitating, are steadily increasing. It is clear that economic and technical progress is no assurance of good health. Humans are qualitatively different from other animals because we manipulate the flow of energy and resources through the ecosystem to our advantage, and consequently to the detriment of other organisms. That is why we compete so successfully with other species. But with this success come some inherent failings, particularly in terms of our health. According to physician Boyd Eaton and his anthropologist colleagues, despite all our technological wizardry and intellectual advances, modern humans are seriously malnourished. The human body evolved to eat a very different diet from that which most of us consume today. Before the advent of agriculture, about ten thousand years ago, people were hunter-gatherers, the food varying with the seasons and climate and all obtained from local sources. Our ancestors rarely, if ever, ate grains or drank the milk of other animals. Although ten thousand years seems a long time ago, 99.99 percent of our genetic material was already formed. Thus we are not well adapted to an agriculturally based diet of cereals and dairy products. At least 100,000 generations of people were hunter-gatherers, only 500 generations have depended on agriculture, only ten generations have lived since the onset of the industrial age and only two generations have grown up with highly processed fast foods. Physicians Randolph Nesse and George Williams write: Our bodies were designed over the course of millions of years for lives spent in small groups hunting and gathering on the plains of Africa. Natural selection has not had time to revise our bodies for coping with fatty diets, automobiles, drugs, artificial lights and central heating. From this mismatch between our design and our environment arises much, perhaps most, preventable modern disease. Do we really want to eat like prehistoric humans? Surely cavemen were not healthy? Surely their life was hard and short? Apparently not. Archaeological evidence indicates that these hunter-gatherer ancestors were robust, strong and lean with no sign of osteoporosis or arthritis even at more advanced ages. Paleolithic humans ate a diet similar to that of wild chimpanzees and gorillas today: raw fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetation, fresh untreated water, insects and wild- game meat low in saturated fats. Much of their food was hard and bitter. Most important, like chimpanzees and gorillas, prehistoric humans ate a wide variety of plants an estimated 100 to 300 different types in one year. Nowadays, even health-conscious, rich westerners seldom consume more than twenty to thirty different species of plants. The early human diet is estimated to have included more than 100 grams of fiber a day. Today the recommended level of 30 grams is rarely achieved by most of us. Humans and lowland gorillas share similar digestive tracts in particular, the colon but, while gorillas derive up to 60 percent of their total energy from fiber fermentation in the colon, modern humans get only about 4 percent. When gorillas are brought into captivity and fed on lower-fiber diets containing meat and eggs, they suffer from many common human disorders: cardiovascular disease, ulcerative colitis and high cholesterol levels. Their natural diet, rich in antioxidants and fiber, apparently prevents these diseases in the wild, suggesting that such a diet may have serious implications for our own health. Not all agricultural societies have taken the same road. Many traditional agriculturalists maintain the diversity of their diet by eating a variety of herbs and other plant compounds along with meat and grains. The Huasa people of northern Nigeria, for example, traditionally include up to twenty wild medicinal plants in their grain-based soups, and peoples who have become heavily reliant on animal products have found ways of countering the negative effects of such a diet. While the Masai of Africa eat meat and drink blood, milk and animal fat as their only sources of protein, they suffer less heart trouble than Westerners. One reason is that they always combine their animal products with strong, bitter antioxidant herbs. In other words, the Masai have balanced the intake of oxidising and antioxidising compounds. According to Timothy Johns, it is not the high intake of animal fat or the low intake of antioxidants, that creates so many health problems in industrial countries; it is the lack of balance between the two. Eating the right foods and natural medicines requires a sensitivity to subtle changes in appetite. Do I fancy something sweet, sour, salty, stimulating or sedating? What sort of hunger is it? And after consumption, has the need been satisfied? Such subtleties are easily overridden by artificially created superstimuli in processed foods that leave us unable to select a healthy diet. We need to listen more carefully to our bodies cravings and take an intentional role in maintaining our health before disease sets in. | Many people in developed countries have a less balanced diet than early humans. | e |
id_2912 | Healthy Intentions One hundred years ago, the leading causes of death in the industrial world were infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza and pneumonia. Since then, the emergence of antibiotics, vaccines and public health controls has reduced the impact of infectious disease. Today, the top killers are non-infectious illnesses related essentially to lifestyle (diet, smoking and lack of exercise). The main causes of death in the United States in 1997 were heart disease, cancer and stroke. Chronic health problems, such as obesity, noninsulin-dependent diabetes and osteoporosis, which are not necessarily lethal but nonetheless debilitating, are steadily increasing. It is clear that economic and technical progress is no assurance of good health. Humans are qualitatively different from other animals because we manipulate the flow of energy and resources through the ecosystem to our advantage, and consequently to the detriment of other organisms. That is why we compete so successfully with other species. But with this success come some inherent failings, particularly in terms of our health. According to physician Boyd Eaton and his anthropologist colleagues, despite all our technological wizardry and intellectual advances, modern humans are seriously malnourished. The human body evolved to eat a very different diet from that which most of us consume today. Before the advent of agriculture, about ten thousand years ago, people were hunter-gatherers, the food varying with the seasons and climate and all obtained from local sources. Our ancestors rarely, if ever, ate grains or drank the milk of other animals. Although ten thousand years seems a long time ago, 99.99 percent of our genetic material was already formed. Thus we are not well adapted to an agriculturally based diet of cereals and dairy products. At least 100,000 generations of people were hunter-gatherers, only 500 generations have depended on agriculture, only ten generations have lived since the onset of the industrial age and only two generations have grown up with highly processed fast foods. Physicians Randolph Nesse and George Williams write: Our bodies were designed over the course of millions of years for lives spent in small groups hunting and gathering on the plains of Africa. Natural selection has not had time to revise our bodies for coping with fatty diets, automobiles, drugs, artificial lights and central heating. From this mismatch between our design and our environment arises much, perhaps most, preventable modern disease. Do we really want to eat like prehistoric humans? Surely cavemen were not healthy? Surely their life was hard and short? Apparently not. Archaeological evidence indicates that these hunter-gatherer ancestors were robust, strong and lean with no sign of osteoporosis or arthritis even at more advanced ages. Paleolithic humans ate a diet similar to that of wild chimpanzees and gorillas today: raw fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetation, fresh untreated water, insects and wild- game meat low in saturated fats. Much of their food was hard and bitter. Most important, like chimpanzees and gorillas, prehistoric humans ate a wide variety of plants an estimated 100 to 300 different types in one year. Nowadays, even health-conscious, rich westerners seldom consume more than twenty to thirty different species of plants. The early human diet is estimated to have included more than 100 grams of fiber a day. Today the recommended level of 30 grams is rarely achieved by most of us. Humans and lowland gorillas share similar digestive tracts in particular, the colon but, while gorillas derive up to 60 percent of their total energy from fiber fermentation in the colon, modern humans get only about 4 percent. When gorillas are brought into captivity and fed on lower-fiber diets containing meat and eggs, they suffer from many common human disorders: cardiovascular disease, ulcerative colitis and high cholesterol levels. Their natural diet, rich in antioxidants and fiber, apparently prevents these diseases in the wild, suggesting that such a diet may have serious implications for our own health. Not all agricultural societies have taken the same road. Many traditional agriculturalists maintain the diversity of their diet by eating a variety of herbs and other plant compounds along with meat and grains. The Huasa people of northern Nigeria, for example, traditionally include up to twenty wild medicinal plants in their grain-based soups, and peoples who have become heavily reliant on animal products have found ways of countering the negative effects of such a diet. While the Masai of Africa eat meat and drink blood, milk and animal fat as their only sources of protein, they suffer less heart trouble than Westerners. One reason is that they always combine their animal products with strong, bitter antioxidant herbs. In other words, the Masai have balanced the intake of oxidising and antioxidising compounds. According to Timothy Johns, it is not the high intake of animal fat or the low intake of antioxidants, that creates so many health problems in industrial countries; it is the lack of balance between the two. Eating the right foods and natural medicines requires a sensitivity to subtle changes in appetite. Do I fancy something sweet, sour, salty, stimulating or sedating? What sort of hunger is it? And after consumption, has the need been satisfied? Such subtleties are easily overridden by artificially created superstimuli in processed foods that leave us unable to select a healthy diet. We need to listen more carefully to our bodies cravings and take an intentional role in maintaining our health before disease sets in. | In the future, human bodies will adapt to take account of changes in diet. | n |
id_2913 | Healthy mind. Mental health problems are the second-largest cause of people taking time off work, outnumbered only by muscle-related problems like back injuries. Depression and anxiety are the most common problems. Less well-known, less common ailments include bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and paranoia. Stressful life events, suppression of feelings or a difficult family background can lead to neuroses like depression and anxiety. A family history of mental illness or an imbalance in the body's chemicals may be associated with psychoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (formerly manic depression). The first point of contact with the NHS is usually the doctors surgery. The patients GP will try to identify the cause of the problem and treat it. Only 5 per cent of people are referred to a consultant psychiatrist and, of these, many are seen at the outpatient clinic. Psychiatric wards are under the control of a consultant psychiatrist, who works with a team that includes psychiatric nurses, social workers and occupational therapists. Psychotic illness can be treated with psychotropic drugs that alter mood, perception and behaviour. With neurosis, psychotherapy sessions encourage a person to talk freely about his or her feelings, and to relate to the experiences that lie behind the distressed state. Most people recover completely from mental distress, but some become chronically ill and will always require medication. Emphasis is placed on care in the community either in peoples own homes or in supported housing. Community psychiatric nurses (CPNs) visit people at home to provide support through difficult times and to help with medication regimes. Social workers can assist with housing and financial issues as well as transport, meals and daily chores. Self-help groups and mental health charities like MIND and SANE provide free services for people with mental health problems. | Psychotherapy could be described as a talking treatment. | e |
id_2914 | Healthy mind. Mental health problems are the second-largest cause of people taking time off work, outnumbered only by muscle-related problems like back injuries. Depression and anxiety are the most common problems. Less well-known, less common ailments include bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and paranoia. Stressful life events, suppression of feelings or a difficult family background can lead to neuroses like depression and anxiety. A family history of mental illness or an imbalance in the body's chemicals may be associated with psychoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (formerly manic depression). The first point of contact with the NHS is usually the doctors surgery. The patients GP will try to identify the cause of the problem and treat it. Only 5 per cent of people are referred to a consultant psychiatrist and, of these, many are seen at the outpatient clinic. Psychiatric wards are under the control of a consultant psychiatrist, who works with a team that includes psychiatric nurses, social workers and occupational therapists. Psychotic illness can be treated with psychotropic drugs that alter mood, perception and behaviour. With neurosis, psychotherapy sessions encourage a person to talk freely about his or her feelings, and to relate to the experiences that lie behind the distressed state. Most people recover completely from mental distress, but some become chronically ill and will always require medication. Emphasis is placed on care in the community either in peoples own homes or in supported housing. Community psychiatric nurses (CPNs) visit people at home to provide support through difficult times and to help with medication regimes. Social workers can assist with housing and financial issues as well as transport, meals and daily chores. Self-help groups and mental health charities like MIND and SANE provide free services for people with mental health problems. | A psychiatrist is a qualified medical doctor who works with a team of healthcare professionals. | n |
id_2915 | Healthy mind. Mental health problems are the second-largest cause of people taking time off work, outnumbered only by muscle-related problems like back injuries. Depression and anxiety are the most common problems. Less well-known, less common ailments include bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and paranoia. Stressful life events, suppression of feelings or a difficult family background can lead to neuroses like depression and anxiety. A family history of mental illness or an imbalance in the body's chemicals may be associated with psychoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (formerly manic depression). The first point of contact with the NHS is usually the doctors surgery. The patients GP will try to identify the cause of the problem and treat it. Only 5 per cent of people are referred to a consultant psychiatrist and, of these, many are seen at the outpatient clinic. Psychiatric wards are under the control of a consultant psychiatrist, who works with a team that includes psychiatric nurses, social workers and occupational therapists. Psychotic illness can be treated with psychotropic drugs that alter mood, perception and behaviour. With neurosis, psychotherapy sessions encourage a person to talk freely about his or her feelings, and to relate to the experiences that lie behind the distressed state. Most people recover completely from mental distress, but some become chronically ill and will always require medication. Emphasis is placed on care in the community either in peoples own homes or in supported housing. Community psychiatric nurses (CPNs) visit people at home to provide support through difficult times and to help with medication regimes. Social workers can assist with housing and financial issues as well as transport, meals and daily chores. Self-help groups and mental health charities like MIND and SANE provide free services for people with mental health problems. | In the NHS, most people with mental health problems attend an outpatient clinic. | c |
id_2916 | Healthy mind. Mental health problems are the second-largest cause of people taking time off work, outnumbered only by muscle-related problems like back injuries. Depression and anxiety are the most common problems. Less well-known, less common ailments include bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and paranoia. Stressful life events, suppression of feelings or a difficult family background can lead to neuroses like depression and anxiety. A family history of mental illness or an imbalance in the body's chemicals may be associated with psychoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (formerly manic depression). The first point of contact with the NHS is usually the doctors surgery. The patients GP will try to identify the cause of the problem and treat it. Only 5 per cent of people are referred to a consultant psychiatrist and, of these, many are seen at the outpatient clinic. Psychiatric wards are under the control of a consultant psychiatrist, who works with a team that includes psychiatric nurses, social workers and occupational therapists. Psychotic illness can be treated with psychotropic drugs that alter mood, perception and behaviour. With neurosis, psychotherapy sessions encourage a person to talk freely about his or her feelings, and to relate to the experiences that lie behind the distressed state. Most people recover completely from mental distress, but some become chronically ill and will always require medication. Emphasis is placed on care in the community either in peoples own homes or in supported housing. Community psychiatric nurses (CPNs) visit people at home to provide support through difficult times and to help with medication regimes. Social workers can assist with housing and financial issues as well as transport, meals and daily chores. Self-help groups and mental health charities like MIND and SANE provide free services for people with mental health problems. | Schizophrenia can run in families. | e |
id_2917 | High blood pressure or hypertension is caused by poor diet, drinking too much alcohol and obesity. It can be reduced by losing weight, improving ones diet, taking exercise and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol. Hypertension is believed to be the single most common contributor to early death in adults worldwide as it causes heart and kidney disease. It is estimated that 1 billion people suffer from high blood pressure and that the number of sufferers is forecast to increase further still both in developed and developing countries. | Hypertension is irreversible. | c |
id_2918 | High blood pressure or hypertension is caused by poor diet, drinking too much alcohol and obesity. It can be reduced by losing weight, improving ones diet, taking exercise and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol. Hypertension is believed to be the single most common contributor to early death in adults worldwide as it causes heart and kidney disease. It is estimated that 1 billion people suffer from high blood pressure and that the number of sufferers is forecast to increase further still both in developed and developing countries. | The incidence of high blood pressure is on the rise around the world. | e |
id_2919 | High blood pressure or hypertension is caused by poor diet, drinking too much alcohol and obesity. It can be reduced by losing weight, improving ones diet, taking exercise and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol. Hypertension is believed to be the single most common contributor to early death in adults worldwide as it causes heart and kidney disease. It is estimated that 1 billion people suffer from high blood pressure and that the number of sufferers is forecast to increase further still both in developed and developing countries. | One billion people will die worldwide from high blood pressure. | n |
id_2920 | High blood pressure or hypertension is caused by poor diet, drinking too much alcohol and obesity. It can be reduced by losing weight, improving ones diet, taking exercise and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol. Hypertension is believed to be the single most common contributor to early death in adults worldwide as it causes heart and kidney disease. It is estimated that 1 billion people suffer from high blood pressure and that the number of sufferers is forecast to increase further still both in developed and developing countries. | The rise in cases of high blood pressure will be more marked in developed countries. | n |
id_2921 | High-tech crime-fighting tools. Crime-fighting technology is getting more sophisticated and rightly so. The police need to be equipped for the 21st century. In Britain we've already got the world's biggest DNA database. By next year the state will have access to the genetic data of 4.25m people: one British-based person in 14. Hundreds of thousands of those on the database will never have been charged with a crime. Britain is also reported to have more than 4 million CCTV (closed circuit television) cameras. There is a continuing debate about the effectiveness of CCTV. Some evidence suggests that it is helpful in reducing shoplifting and car crime. It has also been used to successfully identify terrorists and murderers. However, many claim that better lighting is just as effective to prevent crime and that cameras could displace crime. An internal police report said that only one crime was solved for every 1,000 cameras in London in 2007. In short, there is conflicting evidence about the effectiveness of cameras, so it is likely that the debate will continue. Professor Mike Press, who has spent the past decade studying how design can contribute to crime reduction, said that, in order for CCTV to have any effect, it must be used in a targeted way. For example, a scheme in Manchester records every licence plate at the entrance of a shopping complex and alerts police when one is found to belong to an untaxed or stolen car. This is an effective example of monitoring, he said. Most schemes that simply record city centres continually often not being watched do not produce results. CCTV can also have the opposite effect of that intended, by giving citizens a false sense of security and encouraging them to be careless with property and personal safety. Professor Press said: 'All the evidence suggests that CCTV alone makes no positive impact on crime reduction and prevention at all. The weight of evidence would suggest the investment is more or less a waste of money unless you have lots of other things in place. ' He believes that much of the increase is driven by the marketing efforts of security companies who promote the crime-reducing benefits of their products. He described it as 'a lazy approach to crime prevention' and said that authorities should instead be focusing on how to alter the environment to reduce crime. But in reality, this is not what is happening. Instead, police are considering using more technology. Police forces have recently begun experimenting with cameras in their helmets. The footage will be stored on police computers, along with the footage from thousands of CCTV cameras and millions of pictures from numberplate recognition cameras used increasingly to check up on motorists. And now another type of technology is being introduced. It's called the Microdrone and it's a toy-sized remote-control craft that hovers above streets or crowds to film what's going on beneath. The Microdrone has already been used to monitor rock festivals, but its supplier has also been in discussions to supply it to the Metropolitan Police, and Soca, the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The drones are small enough to be unnoticed by people on the ground when they are flying at 350ft. They contain high- resolution video surveillance equipment and an infrared night vision capability, so even in darkness they give their operators a bird's-eye view of locations while remaining virtually undetectable. The worrying thing is, who will get access to this technology? Merseyside police are already employing two of the devices as part of a pilot scheme to watch football crowds and city parks looking for antisocial behaviour. It is not just about crime detection: West Midlands fire brigade is about to lease a drone, for example, to get a better view of fire and flood scenes and aid rescue attempts; the Environment Agency is considering their use for monitoring of illegal fly tipping and oil spills. The company that makes the drone says it has no plans to license the equipment to individuals or private companies, which hopefully will prevent private security firms from getting their hands on them. But what about local authorities? In theory, this technology could be used against motorists. And where will the surveillance society end? Already there are plans to introduce 'smart water' containing a unique DNA code identifier that when sprayed on a suspect will cling to their clothes and skin and allow officers to identify them later. As long as high-tech tools are being used in the fight against crime and terrorism, fine. But if it's another weapon to be used to invade our privacy then we don't want it. | Technology should not be used to check on people's private affairs. | e |
id_2922 | High-tech crime-fighting tools. Crime-fighting technology is getting more sophisticated and rightly so. The police need to be equipped for the 21st century. In Britain we've already got the world's biggest DNA database. By next year the state will have access to the genetic data of 4.25m people: one British-based person in 14. Hundreds of thousands of those on the database will never have been charged with a crime. Britain is also reported to have more than 4 million CCTV (closed circuit television) cameras. There is a continuing debate about the effectiveness of CCTV. Some evidence suggests that it is helpful in reducing shoplifting and car crime. It has also been used to successfully identify terrorists and murderers. However, many claim that better lighting is just as effective to prevent crime and that cameras could displace crime. An internal police report said that only one crime was solved for every 1,000 cameras in London in 2007. In short, there is conflicting evidence about the effectiveness of cameras, so it is likely that the debate will continue. Professor Mike Press, who has spent the past decade studying how design can contribute to crime reduction, said that, in order for CCTV to have any effect, it must be used in a targeted way. For example, a scheme in Manchester records every licence plate at the entrance of a shopping complex and alerts police when one is found to belong to an untaxed or stolen car. This is an effective example of monitoring, he said. Most schemes that simply record city centres continually often not being watched do not produce results. CCTV can also have the opposite effect of that intended, by giving citizens a false sense of security and encouraging them to be careless with property and personal safety. Professor Press said: 'All the evidence suggests that CCTV alone makes no positive impact on crime reduction and prevention at all. The weight of evidence would suggest the investment is more or less a waste of money unless you have lots of other things in place. ' He believes that much of the increase is driven by the marketing efforts of security companies who promote the crime-reducing benefits of their products. He described it as 'a lazy approach to crime prevention' and said that authorities should instead be focusing on how to alter the environment to reduce crime. But in reality, this is not what is happening. Instead, police are considering using more technology. Police forces have recently begun experimenting with cameras in their helmets. The footage will be stored on police computers, along with the footage from thousands of CCTV cameras and millions of pictures from numberplate recognition cameras used increasingly to check up on motorists. And now another type of technology is being introduced. It's called the Microdrone and it's a toy-sized remote-control craft that hovers above streets or crowds to film what's going on beneath. The Microdrone has already been used to monitor rock festivals, but its supplier has also been in discussions to supply it to the Metropolitan Police, and Soca, the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The drones are small enough to be unnoticed by people on the ground when they are flying at 350ft. They contain high- resolution video surveillance equipment and an infrared night vision capability, so even in darkness they give their operators a bird's-eye view of locations while remaining virtually undetectable. The worrying thing is, who will get access to this technology? Merseyside police are already employing two of the devices as part of a pilot scheme to watch football crowds and city parks looking for antisocial behaviour. It is not just about crime detection: West Midlands fire brigade is about to lease a drone, for example, to get a better view of fire and flood scenes and aid rescue attempts; the Environment Agency is considering their use for monitoring of illegal fly tipping and oil spills. The company that makes the drone says it has no plans to license the equipment to individuals or private companies, which hopefully will prevent private security firms from getting their hands on them. But what about local authorities? In theory, this technology could be used against motorists. And where will the surveillance society end? Already there are plans to introduce 'smart water' containing a unique DNA code identifier that when sprayed on a suspect will cling to their clothes and skin and allow officers to identify them later. As long as high-tech tools are being used in the fight against crime and terrorism, fine. But if it's another weapon to be used to invade our privacy then we don't want it. | Microdrone is currently not used to check drivers. | e |
id_2923 | High-tech crime-fighting tools. Crime-fighting technology is getting more sophisticated and rightly so. The police need to be equipped for the 21st century. In Britain we've already got the world's biggest DNA database. By next year the state will have access to the genetic data of 4.25m people: one British-based person in 14. Hundreds of thousands of those on the database will never have been charged with a crime. Britain is also reported to have more than 4 million CCTV (closed circuit television) cameras. There is a continuing debate about the effectiveness of CCTV. Some evidence suggests that it is helpful in reducing shoplifting and car crime. It has also been used to successfully identify terrorists and murderers. However, many claim that better lighting is just as effective to prevent crime and that cameras could displace crime. An internal police report said that only one crime was solved for every 1,000 cameras in London in 2007. In short, there is conflicting evidence about the effectiveness of cameras, so it is likely that the debate will continue. Professor Mike Press, who has spent the past decade studying how design can contribute to crime reduction, said that, in order for CCTV to have any effect, it must be used in a targeted way. For example, a scheme in Manchester records every licence plate at the entrance of a shopping complex and alerts police when one is found to belong to an untaxed or stolen car. This is an effective example of monitoring, he said. Most schemes that simply record city centres continually often not being watched do not produce results. CCTV can also have the opposite effect of that intended, by giving citizens a false sense of security and encouraging them to be careless with property and personal safety. Professor Press said: 'All the evidence suggests that CCTV alone makes no positive impact on crime reduction and prevention at all. The weight of evidence would suggest the investment is more or less a waste of money unless you have lots of other things in place. ' He believes that much of the increase is driven by the marketing efforts of security companies who promote the crime-reducing benefits of their products. He described it as 'a lazy approach to crime prevention' and said that authorities should instead be focusing on how to alter the environment to reduce crime. But in reality, this is not what is happening. Instead, police are considering using more technology. Police forces have recently begun experimenting with cameras in their helmets. The footage will be stored on police computers, along with the footage from thousands of CCTV cameras and millions of pictures from numberplate recognition cameras used increasingly to check up on motorists. And now another type of technology is being introduced. It's called the Microdrone and it's a toy-sized remote-control craft that hovers above streets or crowds to film what's going on beneath. The Microdrone has already been used to monitor rock festivals, but its supplier has also been in discussions to supply it to the Metropolitan Police, and Soca, the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The drones are small enough to be unnoticed by people on the ground when they are flying at 350ft. They contain high- resolution video surveillance equipment and an infrared night vision capability, so even in darkness they give their operators a bird's-eye view of locations while remaining virtually undetectable. The worrying thing is, who will get access to this technology? Merseyside police are already employing two of the devices as part of a pilot scheme to watch football crowds and city parks looking for antisocial behaviour. It is not just about crime detection: West Midlands fire brigade is about to lease a drone, for example, to get a better view of fire and flood scenes and aid rescue attempts; the Environment Agency is considering their use for monitoring of illegal fly tipping and oil spills. The company that makes the drone says it has no plans to license the equipment to individuals or private companies, which hopefully will prevent private security firms from getting their hands on them. But what about local authorities? In theory, this technology could be used against motorists. And where will the surveillance society end? Already there are plans to introduce 'smart water' containing a unique DNA code identifier that when sprayed on a suspect will cling to their clothes and skin and allow officers to identify them later. As long as high-tech tools are being used in the fight against crime and terrorism, fine. But if it's another weapon to be used to invade our privacy then we don't want it. | The British authorities use too much technology to monitor their citizens. | n |
id_2924 | Highlands and Islands A Off the west coast of Scotland, in the Atlantic Ocean, lies a chain of islands known as the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. The main inhabited islands are Lewis, Harris, North Uist and South Uist, Benbecula, Berneray and Barra. The Isle of Lewis is the most northern and largest of the Western Isles, and to its south, a small strip of land connects it to the Isle of Harris, making the two islands one land mass. To the south west of Harris are the two Uists with Benbecula wedged in between them. These three islands are connected by bridges and causeways. The small island of Berneray is connected to North Uist by a causeway and it is the only populated island in the waters around Harris. Eriskay is a tiny island, also populated, lying between South Uist and Barra. Off the tip of Barra lie the Barra Isles, formerly known as the Bishops Isles, comprising a group of small islands which include Mingulay, Sandray, Pabbay and Vatersay, and at the southernmost tip of the chain, lies an island by the name of Berneray, not to be confused with the island of the same name observed across the bay from Harris. B Lewis is low-lying and covered in a smooth blanket of peatland. Harris is an island of contrasts. It displays a rocky coast to the east, yet white, sandy beaches to the west, backed by fertile green grassland (machair), pockmarked with freshwater pools (lochans). North Uist is covered with peatland and lochans, whilst South Uist is mountainous to the east with machair and sandy beaches to the west. Benbecula is relatively flat and combines machair, peatland and lochans, with sandy beaches and deeply indented sea lochs. Like Harris, Benbecula and Barra exhibit a rocky coast land to the east and low-lying machair to the west with sandy beaches similar to those seen on Berneray, which is a flat isle, except for a few hills, and sand dunes. C Although part of Scotland, the Western Isles have a distinctive culture. Whilst English is the dominant language of mainland Scotland, Gaelic is the first language of more than half the islanders, and visitors to the islands can expect a Gaelic greet ing. Gaelic signing and labelling reinforces the unique identity of the islands and helps to promote tourism and business. Place names on road signs are in Gaelic with only the main signs displaying English beneath. Visitors to the Western Isles may be surprised to find that the shops are closed on Sundays. The strong Christian tradition of the islands means that for the most part, the Sabbath is respected as a day of rest and leisure, especially on Lewis and Harris. D There are approximately 27,000 people in the Western Isles and one-third of these live in and around the capital town of Stornoway, on the east coast of the Isle of Lewis. The town is served by an airport and ferry terminal making it the hub for Western Islands travel. Stornoway is best known for its world-famous Harris Tweed industry, which developed from a Murray tartan commissioned by Lady Dunmore in the 1850s. Only wool that has been hand-woven and dyed in the Outer Hebrides is permitted to carry the Harris Tweed logo. Other areas of economic activity include fishing, tourism, transport and renewable energy. Almost two-thirds of the population live on a croft, which is a particular type of smallholding peculiar to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Crofters are tenants of a small piece of agricultural land, typically a few hectares, that usually includes a dwelling which the crofter either owns or rents from the landowner. The land must be used for the purposes of crofting, which can be described as small-scale mixed farming. Crofting activities include grazing sheep (lamb) and to lesser extent cattle (beef), growing potatoes, vegetables and fruit, keeping chickens, and cutting peat for burning on the house fire. Crofting can be likened to subsistence living, that is to say, living off what you can rear, grow and make, with anything spare going to market or shared with the community. Some people see crofting as a means of escaping the rat race and getting closer to nature, though this romanticized view is naive. It is difficult to survive from crofting alone and most crofters have to supplement their incomes with a part-time job. Crofting as a way of life has been in decline. However, this trend may be about to reverse, led by consumer demand for high-quality produce, grown sustainably with the least environmental impact. | Approximately 9,000 people live in or near Stornoway. | e |
id_2925 | Highlands and Islands A Off the west coast of Scotland, in the Atlantic Ocean, lies a chain of islands known as the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. The main inhabited islands are Lewis, Harris, North Uist and South Uist, Benbecula, Berneray and Barra. The Isle of Lewis is the most northern and largest of the Western Isles, and to its south, a small strip of land connects it to the Isle of Harris, making the two islands one land mass. To the south west of Harris are the two Uists with Benbecula wedged in between them. These three islands are connected by bridges and causeways. The small island of Berneray is connected to North Uist by a causeway and it is the only populated island in the waters around Harris. Eriskay is a tiny island, also populated, lying between South Uist and Barra. Off the tip of Barra lie the Barra Isles, formerly known as the Bishops Isles, comprising a group of small islands which include Mingulay, Sandray, Pabbay and Vatersay, and at the southernmost tip of the chain, lies an island by the name of Berneray, not to be confused with the island of the same name observed across the bay from Harris. B Lewis is low-lying and covered in a smooth blanket of peatland. Harris is an island of contrasts. It displays a rocky coast to the east, yet white, sandy beaches to the west, backed by fertile green grassland (machair), pockmarked with freshwater pools (lochans). North Uist is covered with peatland and lochans, whilst South Uist is mountainous to the east with machair and sandy beaches to the west. Benbecula is relatively flat and combines machair, peatland and lochans, with sandy beaches and deeply indented sea lochs. Like Harris, Benbecula and Barra exhibit a rocky coast land to the east and low-lying machair to the west with sandy beaches similar to those seen on Berneray, which is a flat isle, except for a few hills, and sand dunes. C Although part of Scotland, the Western Isles have a distinctive culture. Whilst English is the dominant language of mainland Scotland, Gaelic is the first language of more than half the islanders, and visitors to the islands can expect a Gaelic greet ing. Gaelic signing and labelling reinforces the unique identity of the islands and helps to promote tourism and business. Place names on road signs are in Gaelic with only the main signs displaying English beneath. Visitors to the Western Isles may be surprised to find that the shops are closed on Sundays. The strong Christian tradition of the islands means that for the most part, the Sabbath is respected as a day of rest and leisure, especially on Lewis and Harris. D There are approximately 27,000 people in the Western Isles and one-third of these live in and around the capital town of Stornoway, on the east coast of the Isle of Lewis. The town is served by an airport and ferry terminal making it the hub for Western Islands travel. Stornoway is best known for its world-famous Harris Tweed industry, which developed from a Murray tartan commissioned by Lady Dunmore in the 1850s. Only wool that has been hand-woven and dyed in the Outer Hebrides is permitted to carry the Harris Tweed logo. Other areas of economic activity include fishing, tourism, transport and renewable energy. Almost two-thirds of the population live on a croft, which is a particular type of smallholding peculiar to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Crofters are tenants of a small piece of agricultural land, typically a few hectares, that usually includes a dwelling which the crofter either owns or rents from the landowner. The land must be used for the purposes of crofting, which can be described as small-scale mixed farming. Crofting activities include grazing sheep (lamb) and to lesser extent cattle (beef), growing potatoes, vegetables and fruit, keeping chickens, and cutting peat for burning on the house fire. Crofting can be likened to subsistence living, that is to say, living off what you can rear, grow and make, with anything spare going to market or shared with the community. Some people see crofting as a means of escaping the rat race and getting closer to nature, though this romanticized view is naive. It is difficult to survive from crofting alone and most crofters have to supplement their incomes with a part-time job. Crofting as a way of life has been in decline. However, this trend may be about to reverse, led by consumer demand for high-quality produce, grown sustainably with the least environmental impact. | The Isles of Lewis and Harris are joined together. | e |
id_2926 | Highlands and Islands A Off the west coast of Scotland, in the Atlantic Ocean, lies a chain of islands known as the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. The main inhabited islands are Lewis, Harris, North Uist and South Uist, Benbecula, Berneray and Barra. The Isle of Lewis is the most northern and largest of the Western Isles, and to its south, a small strip of land connects it to the Isle of Harris, making the two islands one land mass. To the south west of Harris are the two Uists with Benbecula wedged in between them. These three islands are connected by bridges and causeways. The small island of Berneray is connected to North Uist by a causeway and it is the only populated island in the waters around Harris. Eriskay is a tiny island, also populated, lying between South Uist and Barra. Off the tip of Barra lie the Barra Isles, formerly known as the Bishops Isles, comprising a group of small islands which include Mingulay, Sandray, Pabbay and Vatersay, and at the southernmost tip of the chain, lies an island by the name of Berneray, not to be confused with the island of the same name observed across the bay from Harris. B Lewis is low-lying and covered in a smooth blanket of peatland. Harris is an island of contrasts. It displays a rocky coast to the east, yet white, sandy beaches to the west, backed by fertile green grassland (machair), pockmarked with freshwater pools (lochans). North Uist is covered with peatland and lochans, whilst South Uist is mountainous to the east with machair and sandy beaches to the west. Benbecula is relatively flat and combines machair, peatland and lochans, with sandy beaches and deeply indented sea lochs. Like Harris, Benbecula and Barra exhibit a rocky coast land to the east and low-lying machair to the west with sandy beaches similar to those seen on Berneray, which is a flat isle, except for a few hills, and sand dunes. C Although part of Scotland, the Western Isles have a distinctive culture. Whilst English is the dominant language of mainland Scotland, Gaelic is the first language of more than half the islanders, and visitors to the islands can expect a Gaelic greet ing. Gaelic signing and labelling reinforces the unique identity of the islands and helps to promote tourism and business. Place names on road signs are in Gaelic with only the main signs displaying English beneath. Visitors to the Western Isles may be surprised to find that the shops are closed on Sundays. The strong Christian tradition of the islands means that for the most part, the Sabbath is respected as a day of rest and leisure, especially on Lewis and Harris. D There are approximately 27,000 people in the Western Isles and one-third of these live in and around the capital town of Stornoway, on the east coast of the Isle of Lewis. The town is served by an airport and ferry terminal making it the hub for Western Islands travel. Stornoway is best known for its world-famous Harris Tweed industry, which developed from a Murray tartan commissioned by Lady Dunmore in the 1850s. Only wool that has been hand-woven and dyed in the Outer Hebrides is permitted to carry the Harris Tweed logo. Other areas of economic activity include fishing, tourism, transport and renewable energy. Almost two-thirds of the population live on a croft, which is a particular type of smallholding peculiar to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Crofters are tenants of a small piece of agricultural land, typically a few hectares, that usually includes a dwelling which the crofter either owns or rents from the landowner. The land must be used for the purposes of crofting, which can be described as small-scale mixed farming. Crofting activities include grazing sheep (lamb) and to lesser extent cattle (beef), growing potatoes, vegetables and fruit, keeping chickens, and cutting peat for burning on the house fire. Crofting can be likened to subsistence living, that is to say, living off what you can rear, grow and make, with anything spare going to market or shared with the community. Some people see crofting as a means of escaping the rat race and getting closer to nature, though this romanticized view is naive. It is difficult to survive from crofting alone and most crofters have to supplement their incomes with a part-time job. Crofting as a way of life has been in decline. However, this trend may be about to reverse, led by consumer demand for high-quality produce, grown sustainably with the least environmental impact. | There are two islands called Berneray in the sea around Harris. | c |
id_2927 | Highlands and Islands A Off the west coast of Scotland, in the Atlantic Ocean, lies a chain of islands known as the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. The main inhabited islands are Lewis, Harris, North Uist and South Uist, Benbecula, Berneray and Barra. The Isle of Lewis is the most northern and largest of the Western Isles, and to its south, a small strip of land connects it to the Isle of Harris, making the two islands one land mass. To the south west of Harris are the two Uists with Benbecula wedged in between them. These three islands are connected by bridges and causeways. The small island of Berneray is connected to North Uist by a causeway and it is the only populated island in the waters around Harris. Eriskay is a tiny island, also populated, lying between South Uist and Barra. Off the tip of Barra lie the Barra Isles, formerly known as the Bishops Isles, comprising a group of small islands which include Mingulay, Sandray, Pabbay and Vatersay, and at the southernmost tip of the chain, lies an island by the name of Berneray, not to be confused with the island of the same name observed across the bay from Harris. B Lewis is low-lying and covered in a smooth blanket of peatland. Harris is an island of contrasts. It displays a rocky coast to the east, yet white, sandy beaches to the west, backed by fertile green grassland (machair), pockmarked with freshwater pools (lochans). North Uist is covered with peatland and lochans, whilst South Uist is mountainous to the east with machair and sandy beaches to the west. Benbecula is relatively flat and combines machair, peatland and lochans, with sandy beaches and deeply indented sea lochs. Like Harris, Benbecula and Barra exhibit a rocky coast land to the east and low-lying machair to the west with sandy beaches similar to those seen on Berneray, which is a flat isle, except for a few hills, and sand dunes. C Although part of Scotland, the Western Isles have a distinctive culture. Whilst English is the dominant language of mainland Scotland, Gaelic is the first language of more than half the islanders, and visitors to the islands can expect a Gaelic greet ing. Gaelic signing and labelling reinforces the unique identity of the islands and helps to promote tourism and business. Place names on road signs are in Gaelic with only the main signs displaying English beneath. Visitors to the Western Isles may be surprised to find that the shops are closed on Sundays. The strong Christian tradition of the islands means that for the most part, the Sabbath is respected as a day of rest and leisure, especially on Lewis and Harris. D There are approximately 27,000 people in the Western Isles and one-third of these live in and around the capital town of Stornoway, on the east coast of the Isle of Lewis. The town is served by an airport and ferry terminal making it the hub for Western Islands travel. Stornoway is best known for its world-famous Harris Tweed industry, which developed from a Murray tartan commissioned by Lady Dunmore in the 1850s. Only wool that has been hand-woven and dyed in the Outer Hebrides is permitted to carry the Harris Tweed logo. Other areas of economic activity include fishing, tourism, transport and renewable energy. Almost two-thirds of the population live on a croft, which is a particular type of smallholding peculiar to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Crofters are tenants of a small piece of agricultural land, typically a few hectares, that usually includes a dwelling which the crofter either owns or rents from the landowner. The land must be used for the purposes of crofting, which can be described as small-scale mixed farming. Crofting activities include grazing sheep (lamb) and to lesser extent cattle (beef), growing potatoes, vegetables and fruit, keeping chickens, and cutting peat for burning on the house fire. Crofting can be likened to subsistence living, that is to say, living off what you can rear, grow and make, with anything spare going to market or shared with the community. Some people see crofting as a means of escaping the rat race and getting closer to nature, though this romanticized view is naive. It is difficult to survive from crofting alone and most crofters have to supplement their incomes with a part-time job. Crofting as a way of life has been in decline. However, this trend may be about to reverse, led by consumer demand for high-quality produce, grown sustainably with the least environmental impact. | Most crofters earn their living entirely from crafting. | c |
id_2928 | Highlands and Islands A Off the west coast of Scotland, in the Atlantic Ocean, lies a chain of islands known as the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. The main inhabited islands are Lewis, Harris, North Uist and South Uist, Benbecula, Berneray and Barra. The Isle of Lewis is the most northern and largest of the Western Isles, and to its south, a small strip of land connects it to the Isle of Harris, making the two islands one land mass. To the south west of Harris are the two Uists with Benbecula wedged in between them. These three islands are connected by bridges and causeways. The small island of Berneray is connected to North Uist by a causeway and it is the only populated island in the waters around Harris. Eriskay is a tiny island, also populated, lying between South Uist and Barra. Off the tip of Barra lie the Barra Isles, formerly known as the Bishops Isles, comprising a group of small islands which include Mingulay, Sandray, Pabbay and Vatersay, and at the southernmost tip of the chain, lies an island by the name of Berneray, not to be confused with the island of the same name observed across the bay from Harris. B Lewis is low-lying and covered in a smooth blanket of peatland. Harris is an island of contrasts. It displays a rocky coast to the east, yet white, sandy beaches to the west, backed by fertile green grassland (machair), pockmarked with freshwater pools (lochans). North Uist is covered with peatland and lochans, whilst South Uist is mountainous to the east with machair and sandy beaches to the west. Benbecula is relatively flat and combines machair, peatland and lochans, with sandy beaches and deeply indented sea lochs. Like Harris, Benbecula and Barra exhibit a rocky coast land to the east and low-lying machair to the west with sandy beaches similar to those seen on Berneray, which is a flat isle, except for a few hills, and sand dunes. C Although part of Scotland, the Western Isles have a distinctive culture. Whilst English is the dominant language of mainland Scotland, Gaelic is the first language of more than half the islanders, and visitors to the islands can expect a Gaelic greet ing. Gaelic signing and labelling reinforces the unique identity of the islands and helps to promote tourism and business. Place names on road signs are in Gaelic with only the main signs displaying English beneath. Visitors to the Western Isles may be surprised to find that the shops are closed on Sundays. The strong Christian tradition of the islands means that for the most part, the Sabbath is respected as a day of rest and leisure, especially on Lewis and Harris. D There are approximately 27,000 people in the Western Isles and one-third of these live in and around the capital town of Stornoway, on the east coast of the Isle of Lewis. The town is served by an airport and ferry terminal making it the hub for Western Islands travel. Stornoway is best known for its world-famous Harris Tweed industry, which developed from a Murray tartan commissioned by Lady Dunmore in the 1850s. Only wool that has been hand-woven and dyed in the Outer Hebrides is permitted to carry the Harris Tweed logo. Other areas of economic activity include fishing, tourism, transport and renewable energy. Almost two-thirds of the population live on a croft, which is a particular type of smallholding peculiar to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Crofters are tenants of a small piece of agricultural land, typically a few hectares, that usually includes a dwelling which the crofter either owns or rents from the landowner. The land must be used for the purposes of crofting, which can be described as small-scale mixed farming. Crofting activities include grazing sheep (lamb) and to lesser extent cattle (beef), growing potatoes, vegetables and fruit, keeping chickens, and cutting peat for burning on the house fire. Crofting can be likened to subsistence living, that is to say, living off what you can rear, grow and make, with anything spare going to market or shared with the community. Some people see crofting as a means of escaping the rat race and getting closer to nature, though this romanticized view is naive. It is difficult to survive from crofting alone and most crofters have to supplement their incomes with a part-time job. Crofting as a way of life has been in decline. However, this trend may be about to reverse, led by consumer demand for high-quality produce, grown sustainably with the least environmental impact. | In the Western Isles most road signs are bilingual. | c |
id_2929 | Highlands and Islands A Off the west coast of Scotland, in the Atlantic Ocean, lies a chain of islands known as the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. The main inhabited islands are Lewis, Harris, North Uist and South Uist, Benbecula, Berneray and Barra. The Isle of Lewis is the most northern and largest of the Western Isles, and to its south, a small strip of land connects it to the Isle of Harris, making the two islands one land mass. To the south west of Harris are the two Uists with Benbecula wedged in between them. These three islands are connected by bridges and causeways. The small island of Berneray is connected to North Uist by a causeway and it is the only populated island in the waters around Harris. Eriskay is a tiny island, also populated, lying between South Uist and Barra. Off the tip of Barra lie the Barra Isles, formerly known as the Bishops Isles, comprising a group of small islands which include Mingulay, Sandray, Pabbay and Vatersay, and at the southernmost tip of the chain, lies an island by the name of Berneray, not to be confused with the island of the same name observed across the bay from Harris. B Lewis is low-lying and covered in a smooth blanket of peatland. Harris is an island of contrasts. It displays a rocky coast to the east, yet white, sandy beaches to the west, backed by fertile green grassland (machair), pockmarked with freshwater pools (lochans). North Uist is covered with peatland and lochans, whilst South Uist is mountainous to the east with machair and sandy beaches to the west. Benbecula is relatively flat and combines machair, peatland and lochans, with sandy beaches and deeply indented sea lochs. Like Harris, Benbecula and Barra exhibit a rocky coast land to the east and low-lying machair to the west with sandy beaches similar to those seen on Berneray, which is a flat isle, except for a few hills, and sand dunes. C Although part of Scotland, the Western Isles have a distinctive culture. Whilst English is the dominant language of mainland Scotland, Gaelic is the first language of more than half the islanders, and visitors to the islands can expect a Gaelic greet ing. Gaelic signing and labelling reinforces the unique identity of the islands and helps to promote tourism and business. Place names on road signs are in Gaelic with only the main signs displaying English beneath. Visitors to the Western Isles may be surprised to find that the shops are closed on Sundays. The strong Christian tradition of the islands means that for the most part, the Sabbath is respected as a day of rest and leisure, especially on Lewis and Harris. D There are approximately 27,000 people in the Western Isles and one-third of these live in and around the capital town of Stornoway, on the east coast of the Isle of Lewis. The town is served by an airport and ferry terminal making it the hub for Western Islands travel. Stornoway is best known for its world-famous Harris Tweed industry, which developed from a Murray tartan commissioned by Lady Dunmore in the 1850s. Only wool that has been hand-woven and dyed in the Outer Hebrides is permitted to carry the Harris Tweed logo. Other areas of economic activity include fishing, tourism, transport and renewable energy. Almost two-thirds of the population live on a croft, which is a particular type of smallholding peculiar to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Crofters are tenants of a small piece of agricultural land, typically a few hectares, that usually includes a dwelling which the crofter either owns or rents from the landowner. The land must be used for the purposes of crofting, which can be described as small-scale mixed farming. Crofting activities include grazing sheep (lamb) and to lesser extent cattle (beef), growing potatoes, vegetables and fruit, keeping chickens, and cutting peat for burning on the house fire. Crofting can be likened to subsistence living, that is to say, living off what you can rear, grow and make, with anything spare going to market or shared with the community. Some people see crofting as a means of escaping the rat race and getting closer to nature, though this romanticized view is naive. It is difficult to survive from crofting alone and most crofters have to supplement their incomes with a part-time job. Crofting as a way of life has been in decline. However, this trend may be about to reverse, led by consumer demand for high-quality produce, grown sustainably with the least environmental impact. | On the island of South Uist, there are fertile green grasslands and sandy beaches to the west and many islanders can speak Gaelic. | e |
id_2930 | Highlands and Islands A Off the west coast of Scotland, in the Atlantic Ocean, lies a chain of islands known as the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. The main inhabited islands are Lewis, Harris, North Uist and South Uist, Benbecula, Berneray and Barra. The Isle of Lewis is the most northern and largest of the Western Isles, and to its south, a small strip of land connects it to the Isle of Harris, making the two islands one land mass. To the south west of Harris are the two Uists with Benbecula wedged in between them. These three islands are connected by bridges and causeways. The small island of Berneray is connected to North Uist by a causeway and it is the only populated island in the waters around Harris. Eriskay is a tiny island, also populated, lying between South Uist and Barra. Off the tip of Barra lie the Barra Isles, formerly known as the Bishops Isles, comprising a group of small islands which include Mingulay, Sandray, Pabbay and Vatersay, and at the southernmost tip of the chain, lies an island by the name of Berneray, not to be confused with the island of the same name observed across the bay from Harris. B Lewis is low-lying and covered in a smooth blanket of peatland. Harris is an island of contrasts. It displays a rocky coast to the east, yet white, sandy beaches to the west, backed by fertile green grassland (machair), pockmarked with freshwater pools (lochans). North Uist is covered with peatland and lochans, whilst South Uist is mountainous to the east with machair and sandy beaches to the west. Benbecula is relatively flat and combines machair, peatland and lochans, with sandy beaches and deeply indented sea lochs. Like Harris, Benbecula and Barra exhibit a rocky coast land to the east and low-lying machair to the west with sandy beaches similar to those seen on Berneray, which is a flat isle, except for a few hills, and sand dunes. C Although part of Scotland, the Western Isles have a distinctive culture. Whilst English is the dominant language of mainland Scotland, Gaelic is the first language of more than half the islanders, and visitors to the islands can expect a Gaelic greet ing. Gaelic signing and labelling reinforces the unique identity of the islands and helps to promote tourism and business. Place names on road signs are in Gaelic with only the main signs displaying English beneath. Visitors to the Western Isles may be surprised to find that the shops are closed on Sundays. The strong Christian tradition of the islands means that for the most part, the Sabbath is respected as a day of rest and leisure, especially on Lewis and Harris. D There are approximately 27,000 people in the Western Isles and one-third of these live in and around the capital town of Stornoway, on the east coast of the Isle of Lewis. The town is served by an airport and ferry terminal making it the hub for Western Islands travel. Stornoway is best known for its world-famous Harris Tweed industry, which developed from a Murray tartan commissioned by Lady Dunmore in the 1850s. Only wool that has been hand-woven and dyed in the Outer Hebrides is permitted to carry the Harris Tweed logo. Other areas of economic activity include fishing, tourism, transport and renewable energy. Almost two-thirds of the population live on a croft, which is a particular type of smallholding peculiar to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Crofters are tenants of a small piece of agricultural land, typically a few hectares, that usually includes a dwelling which the crofter either owns or rents from the landowner. The land must be used for the purposes of crofting, which can be described as small-scale mixed farming. Crofting activities include grazing sheep (lamb) and to lesser extent cattle (beef), growing potatoes, vegetables and fruit, keeping chickens, and cutting peat for burning on the house fire. Crofting can be likened to subsistence living, that is to say, living off what you can rear, grow and make, with anything spare going to market or shared with the community. Some people see crofting as a means of escaping the rat race and getting closer to nature, though this romanticized view is naive. It is difficult to survive from crofting alone and most crofters have to supplement their incomes with a part-time job. Crofting as a way of life has been in decline. However, this trend may be about to reverse, led by consumer demand for high-quality produce, grown sustainably with the least environmental impact. | The sea around Benbecula is deep. | n |
id_2931 | His recent investment in the shares of Company A is only a gamble. | He may incur loss on his investment | n |
id_2932 | His recent investment in the shares of Company A is only a gamble. | He may gain form his investment. | n |
id_2933 | Home-schooling A Introduction In developed countries, compulsory education is the norm for children aged from around 6 to 16. Even so, in most cases this does not mean that the child has to attend a school. Increasing numbers of parents are choosing to educate their children at home. In the UK it is estimated that up to 100,000 pupils are being taught in this way, which equates to about 1% of the UK school population. In the USA, home education, or home schooling as it is known, has reached unprecedented levels with approximately 2 million children, or 4% of the compulsory age group, now receiving tuition at home. Parents cite various reasons for keeping their children away from school, ranging from a lack of satisfaction with the school environment to a wish to provide their own religious instruction. Home-schooling is a controversial issue surrounded by misgivings, with supporters emphasizing its benefits and detractors pointing to its limitations and risks. B The reasons why parents elect to educate their children at home are often linked to emotionally charged issues rather than rational arguments that reflect the pros and cons of home-schooling. Typically, a child is removed from a school following negative experiences, for example bullying, or exposure to bad influences such as drugs, discrimination, bad language, or falling in with the wrong crowd. Consequently, home-schooling is ardently defended by its proponents who are not necessarily best placed to consider its downsides dispassionately. Whilst the popularity of home- education is on the increase, it remains an oddity, associated more with problems at school rather than a positive decision to provide a real alternative. C Whilst home-schooling of a child is unusual, learning from parents is not, so formal teaching at home can be regarded as an extension of the parents normal role. However, education in the home environment can have its limitations; for example, when there are gaps in the parents knowledge in key subject areas such as fractions or algebra. Moreover, teaching is not merely the dispensing of knowledge acquired, but rather a skill that has to be taught, practised and mastered. Parents are not professional teachers and if the outcomes are poor then the parents can only blame themselves. Home-schooling is both time-consuming and demanding. Parents can lose out financially and socially when they are obliged to spend the entire day at home. D Lack of socialization is perhaps the main criticism of home-schooling. When children are taken out of school they cannot interact with other pupils or engage in school activities, including team sports. Later, a young person may find it difficult to integrate in ordinary social settings or lack the coping skills to deal with the demands of everyday life. Socialization outside of the home can negate some of these short comings, bearing in mind that the home-educated child is likely to have more free time to engage in recreational activities. Indeed, it might be argued that the socialization experienced in the natural setting of a community is preferable to that within the confines of a school. E Whilst home-schooling has its shortcomings it also offers several advantages. Tuition is on a one-to-one basis so it can be personalized to meet an individual childs needs. There is no strict curriculum so the teaching can be readily adapted for those with special educational needs or learning disabilities. Children are allowed to develop at their own rate, and attention can be focussed on subjects that a child enjoys or has a particular aptitude for. Parents can provide religious education and impart moral values consistent with their own beliefs, and they can also include subjects that may not be available in their local schools, for example Latin or Archaeology. The timetable is entirely flexible with no time wasted travelling to and from school, no lack of educational continuity when moving home, and no restric tions on when to take family holidays. It should come as no surprise that with all these benefits, home-educated children usually outperform their schooled counterparts academically. However, this is not conclusive proof of the effectiveness of home- schooling. Parents who home-school their children tend to be well-educated and in a higher than average income bracket. Consequently, these parents are more likely to show an interest in their childs education, encouraging compliance with home work and offering support, meaning that the child would probably have performed well had they remained within the school system. F Parents who educate their children at home may choose to shun school com pletely. Despite this, local schools should offer parents and children support and guidance, extending access to school trips, library resources, recreational facilities, syllabus information, assessments and examinations. The future of home-schooling and its position in the education system are uncertain. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the state and the parents to ensure that home-educated children are given an education that affords them opportunities in life and equips them for the world of work. | Pupils in school achieve higher grades than home-school children. | c |
id_2934 | Home-schooling A Introduction In developed countries, compulsory education is the norm for children aged from around 6 to 16. Even so, in most cases this does not mean that the child has to attend a school. Increasing numbers of parents are choosing to educate their children at home. In the UK it is estimated that up to 100,000 pupils are being taught in this way, which equates to about 1% of the UK school population. In the USA, home education, or home schooling as it is known, has reached unprecedented levels with approximately 2 million children, or 4% of the compulsory age group, now receiving tuition at home. Parents cite various reasons for keeping their children away from school, ranging from a lack of satisfaction with the school environment to a wish to provide their own religious instruction. Home-schooling is a controversial issue surrounded by misgivings, with supporters emphasizing its benefits and detractors pointing to its limitations and risks. B The reasons why parents elect to educate their children at home are often linked to emotionally charged issues rather than rational arguments that reflect the pros and cons of home-schooling. Typically, a child is removed from a school following negative experiences, for example bullying, or exposure to bad influences such as drugs, discrimination, bad language, or falling in with the wrong crowd. Consequently, home-schooling is ardently defended by its proponents who are not necessarily best placed to consider its downsides dispassionately. Whilst the popularity of home- education is on the increase, it remains an oddity, associated more with problems at school rather than a positive decision to provide a real alternative. C Whilst home-schooling of a child is unusual, learning from parents is not, so formal teaching at home can be regarded as an extension of the parents normal role. However, education in the home environment can have its limitations; for example, when there are gaps in the parents knowledge in key subject areas such as fractions or algebra. Moreover, teaching is not merely the dispensing of knowledge acquired, but rather a skill that has to be taught, practised and mastered. Parents are not professional teachers and if the outcomes are poor then the parents can only blame themselves. Home-schooling is both time-consuming and demanding. Parents can lose out financially and socially when they are obliged to spend the entire day at home. D Lack of socialization is perhaps the main criticism of home-schooling. When children are taken out of school they cannot interact with other pupils or engage in school activities, including team sports. Later, a young person may find it difficult to integrate in ordinary social settings or lack the coping skills to deal with the demands of everyday life. Socialization outside of the home can negate some of these short comings, bearing in mind that the home-educated child is likely to have more free time to engage in recreational activities. Indeed, it might be argued that the socialization experienced in the natural setting of a community is preferable to that within the confines of a school. E Whilst home-schooling has its shortcomings it also offers several advantages. Tuition is on a one-to-one basis so it can be personalized to meet an individual childs needs. There is no strict curriculum so the teaching can be readily adapted for those with special educational needs or learning disabilities. Children are allowed to develop at their own rate, and attention can be focussed on subjects that a child enjoys or has a particular aptitude for. Parents can provide religious education and impart moral values consistent with their own beliefs, and they can also include subjects that may not be available in their local schools, for example Latin or Archaeology. The timetable is entirely flexible with no time wasted travelling to and from school, no lack of educational continuity when moving home, and no restric tions on when to take family holidays. It should come as no surprise that with all these benefits, home-educated children usually outperform their schooled counterparts academically. However, this is not conclusive proof of the effectiveness of home- schooling. Parents who home-school their children tend to be well-educated and in a higher than average income bracket. Consequently, these parents are more likely to show an interest in their childs education, encouraging compliance with home work and offering support, meaning that the child would probably have performed well had they remained within the school system. F Parents who educate their children at home may choose to shun school com pletely. Despite this, local schools should offer parents and children support and guidance, extending access to school trips, library resources, recreational facilities, syllabus information, assessments and examinations. The future of home-schooling and its position in the education system are uncertain. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the state and the parents to ensure that home-educated children are given an education that affords them opportunities in life and equips them for the world of work. | Children from better-off homes are more likely to complete their homework. | e |
id_2935 | Home-schooling A Introduction In developed countries, compulsory education is the norm for children aged from around 6 to 16. Even so, in most cases this does not mean that the child has to attend a school. Increasing numbers of parents are choosing to educate their children at home. In the UK it is estimated that up to 100,000 pupils are being taught in this way, which equates to about 1% of the UK school population. In the USA, home education, or home schooling as it is known, has reached unprecedented levels with approximately 2 million children, or 4% of the compulsory age group, now receiving tuition at home. Parents cite various reasons for keeping their children away from school, ranging from a lack of satisfaction with the school environment to a wish to provide their own religious instruction. Home-schooling is a controversial issue surrounded by misgivings, with supporters emphasizing its benefits and detractors pointing to its limitations and risks. B The reasons why parents elect to educate their children at home are often linked to emotionally charged issues rather than rational arguments that reflect the pros and cons of home-schooling. Typically, a child is removed from a school following negative experiences, for example bullying, or exposure to bad influences such as drugs, discrimination, bad language, or falling in with the wrong crowd. Consequently, home-schooling is ardently defended by its proponents who are not necessarily best placed to consider its downsides dispassionately. Whilst the popularity of home- education is on the increase, it remains an oddity, associated more with problems at school rather than a positive decision to provide a real alternative. C Whilst home-schooling of a child is unusual, learning from parents is not, so formal teaching at home can be regarded as an extension of the parents normal role. However, education in the home environment can have its limitations; for example, when there are gaps in the parents knowledge in key subject areas such as fractions or algebra. Moreover, teaching is not merely the dispensing of knowledge acquired, but rather a skill that has to be taught, practised and mastered. Parents are not professional teachers and if the outcomes are poor then the parents can only blame themselves. Home-schooling is both time-consuming and demanding. Parents can lose out financially and socially when they are obliged to spend the entire day at home. D Lack of socialization is perhaps the main criticism of home-schooling. When children are taken out of school they cannot interact with other pupils or engage in school activities, including team sports. Later, a young person may find it difficult to integrate in ordinary social settings or lack the coping skills to deal with the demands of everyday life. Socialization outside of the home can negate some of these short comings, bearing in mind that the home-educated child is likely to have more free time to engage in recreational activities. Indeed, it might be argued that the socialization experienced in the natural setting of a community is preferable to that within the confines of a school. E Whilst home-schooling has its shortcomings it also offers several advantages. Tuition is on a one-to-one basis so it can be personalized to meet an individual childs needs. There is no strict curriculum so the teaching can be readily adapted for those with special educational needs or learning disabilities. Children are allowed to develop at their own rate, and attention can be focussed on subjects that a child enjoys or has a particular aptitude for. Parents can provide religious education and impart moral values consistent with their own beliefs, and they can also include subjects that may not be available in their local schools, for example Latin or Archaeology. The timetable is entirely flexible with no time wasted travelling to and from school, no lack of educational continuity when moving home, and no restric tions on when to take family holidays. It should come as no surprise that with all these benefits, home-educated children usually outperform their schooled counterparts academically. However, this is not conclusive proof of the effectiveness of home- schooling. Parents who home-school their children tend to be well-educated and in a higher than average income bracket. Consequently, these parents are more likely to show an interest in their childs education, encouraging compliance with home work and offering support, meaning that the child would probably have performed well had they remained within the school system. F Parents who educate their children at home may choose to shun school com pletely. Despite this, local schools should offer parents and children support and guidance, extending access to school trips, library resources, recreational facilities, syllabus information, assessments and examinations. The future of home-schooling and its position in the education system are uncertain. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the state and the parents to ensure that home-educated children are given an education that affords them opportunities in life and equips them for the world of work. | Only children who attend school can be favourably socialized. | c |
id_2936 | Home-schooling A Introduction In developed countries, compulsory education is the norm for children aged from around 6 to 16. Even so, in most cases this does not mean that the child has to attend a school. Increasing numbers of parents are choosing to educate their children at home. In the UK it is estimated that up to 100,000 pupils are being taught in this way, which equates to about 1% of the UK school population. In the USA, home education, or home schooling as it is known, has reached unprecedented levels with approximately 2 million children, or 4% of the compulsory age group, now receiving tuition at home. Parents cite various reasons for keeping their children away from school, ranging from a lack of satisfaction with the school environment to a wish to provide their own religious instruction. Home-schooling is a controversial issue surrounded by misgivings, with supporters emphasizing its benefits and detractors pointing to its limitations and risks. B The reasons why parents elect to educate their children at home are often linked to emotionally charged issues rather than rational arguments that reflect the pros and cons of home-schooling. Typically, a child is removed from a school following negative experiences, for example bullying, or exposure to bad influences such as drugs, discrimination, bad language, or falling in with the wrong crowd. Consequently, home-schooling is ardently defended by its proponents who are not necessarily best placed to consider its downsides dispassionately. Whilst the popularity of home- education is on the increase, it remains an oddity, associated more with problems at school rather than a positive decision to provide a real alternative. C Whilst home-schooling of a child is unusual, learning from parents is not, so formal teaching at home can be regarded as an extension of the parents normal role. However, education in the home environment can have its limitations; for example, when there are gaps in the parents knowledge in key subject areas such as fractions or algebra. Moreover, teaching is not merely the dispensing of knowledge acquired, but rather a skill that has to be taught, practised and mastered. Parents are not professional teachers and if the outcomes are poor then the parents can only blame themselves. Home-schooling is both time-consuming and demanding. Parents can lose out financially and socially when they are obliged to spend the entire day at home. D Lack of socialization is perhaps the main criticism of home-schooling. When children are taken out of school they cannot interact with other pupils or engage in school activities, including team sports. Later, a young person may find it difficult to integrate in ordinary social settings or lack the coping skills to deal with the demands of everyday life. Socialization outside of the home can negate some of these short comings, bearing in mind that the home-educated child is likely to have more free time to engage in recreational activities. Indeed, it might be argued that the socialization experienced in the natural setting of a community is preferable to that within the confines of a school. E Whilst home-schooling has its shortcomings it also offers several advantages. Tuition is on a one-to-one basis so it can be personalized to meet an individual childs needs. There is no strict curriculum so the teaching can be readily adapted for those with special educational needs or learning disabilities. Children are allowed to develop at their own rate, and attention can be focussed on subjects that a child enjoys or has a particular aptitude for. Parents can provide religious education and impart moral values consistent with their own beliefs, and they can also include subjects that may not be available in their local schools, for example Latin or Archaeology. The timetable is entirely flexible with no time wasted travelling to and from school, no lack of educational continuity when moving home, and no restric tions on when to take family holidays. It should come as no surprise that with all these benefits, home-educated children usually outperform their schooled counterparts academically. However, this is not conclusive proof of the effectiveness of home- schooling. Parents who home-school their children tend to be well-educated and in a higher than average income bracket. Consequently, these parents are more likely to show an interest in their childs education, encouraging compliance with home work and offering support, meaning that the child would probably have performed well had they remained within the school system. F Parents who educate their children at home may choose to shun school com pletely. Despite this, local schools should offer parents and children support and guidance, extending access to school trips, library resources, recreational facilities, syllabus information, assessments and examinations. The future of home-schooling and its position in the education system are uncertain. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the state and the parents to ensure that home-educated children are given an education that affords them opportunities in life and equips them for the world of work. | School children with disabilities are the most discriminated against. | n |
id_2937 | Home-schooling A Introduction In developed countries, compulsory education is the norm for children aged from around 6 to 16. Even so, in most cases this does not mean that the child has to attend a school. Increasing numbers of parents are choosing to educate their children at home. In the UK it is estimated that up to 100,000 pupils are being taught in this way, which equates to about 1% of the UK school population. In the USA, home education, or home schooling as it is known, has reached unprecedented levels with approximately 2 million children, or 4% of the compulsory age group, now receiving tuition at home. Parents cite various reasons for keeping their children away from school, ranging from a lack of satisfaction with the school environment to a wish to provide their own religious instruction. Home-schooling is a controversial issue surrounded by misgivings, with supporters emphasizing its benefits and detractors pointing to its limitations and risks. B The reasons why parents elect to educate their children at home are often linked to emotionally charged issues rather than rational arguments that reflect the pros and cons of home-schooling. Typically, a child is removed from a school following negative experiences, for example bullying, or exposure to bad influences such as drugs, discrimination, bad language, or falling in with the wrong crowd. Consequently, home-schooling is ardently defended by its proponents who are not necessarily best placed to consider its downsides dispassionately. Whilst the popularity of home- education is on the increase, it remains an oddity, associated more with problems at school rather than a positive decision to provide a real alternative. C Whilst home-schooling of a child is unusual, learning from parents is not, so formal teaching at home can be regarded as an extension of the parents normal role. However, education in the home environment can have its limitations; for example, when there are gaps in the parents knowledge in key subject areas such as fractions or algebra. Moreover, teaching is not merely the dispensing of knowledge acquired, but rather a skill that has to be taught, practised and mastered. Parents are not professional teachers and if the outcomes are poor then the parents can only blame themselves. Home-schooling is both time-consuming and demanding. Parents can lose out financially and socially when they are obliged to spend the entire day at home. D Lack of socialization is perhaps the main criticism of home-schooling. When children are taken out of school they cannot interact with other pupils or engage in school activities, including team sports. Later, a young person may find it difficult to integrate in ordinary social settings or lack the coping skills to deal with the demands of everyday life. Socialization outside of the home can negate some of these short comings, bearing in mind that the home-educated child is likely to have more free time to engage in recreational activities. Indeed, it might be argued that the socialization experienced in the natural setting of a community is preferable to that within the confines of a school. E Whilst home-schooling has its shortcomings it also offers several advantages. Tuition is on a one-to-one basis so it can be personalized to meet an individual childs needs. There is no strict curriculum so the teaching can be readily adapted for those with special educational needs or learning disabilities. Children are allowed to develop at their own rate, and attention can be focussed on subjects that a child enjoys or has a particular aptitude for. Parents can provide religious education and impart moral values consistent with their own beliefs, and they can also include subjects that may not be available in their local schools, for example Latin or Archaeology. The timetable is entirely flexible with no time wasted travelling to and from school, no lack of educational continuity when moving home, and no restric tions on when to take family holidays. It should come as no surprise that with all these benefits, home-educated children usually outperform their schooled counterparts academically. However, this is not conclusive proof of the effectiveness of home- schooling. Parents who home-school their children tend to be well-educated and in a higher than average income bracket. Consequently, these parents are more likely to show an interest in their childs education, encouraging compliance with home work and offering support, meaning that the child would probably have performed well had they remained within the school system. F Parents who educate their children at home may choose to shun school com pletely. Despite this, local schools should offer parents and children support and guidance, extending access to school trips, library resources, recreational facilities, syllabus information, assessments and examinations. The future of home-schooling and its position in the education system are uncertain. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the state and the parents to ensure that home-educated children are given an education that affords them opportunities in life and equips them for the world of work. | There is much disagreement about the merits of home-schooling. | e |
id_2938 | Home-schooling A Introduction In developed countries, compulsory education is the norm for children aged from around 6 to 16. Even so, in most cases this does not mean that the child has to attend a school. Increasing numbers of parents are choosing to educate their children at home. In the UK it is estimated that up to 100,000 pupils are being taught in this way, which equates to about 1% of the UK school population. In the USA, home education, or home schooling as it is known, has reached unprecedented levels with approximately 2 million children, or 4% of the compulsory age group, now receiving tuition at home. Parents cite various reasons for keeping their children away from school, ranging from a lack of satisfaction with the school environment to a wish to provide their own religious instruction. Home-schooling is a controversial issue surrounded by misgivings, with supporters emphasizing its benefits and detractors pointing to its limitations and risks. B The reasons why parents elect to educate their children at home are often linked to emotionally charged issues rather than rational arguments that reflect the pros and cons of home-schooling. Typically, a child is removed from a school following negative experiences, for example bullying, or exposure to bad influences such as drugs, discrimination, bad language, or falling in with the wrong crowd. Consequently, home-schooling is ardently defended by its proponents who are not necessarily best placed to consider its downsides dispassionately. Whilst the popularity of home- education is on the increase, it remains an oddity, associated more with problems at school rather than a positive decision to provide a real alternative. C Whilst home-schooling of a child is unusual, learning from parents is not, so formal teaching at home can be regarded as an extension of the parents normal role. However, education in the home environment can have its limitations; for example, when there are gaps in the parents knowledge in key subject areas such as fractions or algebra. Moreover, teaching is not merely the dispensing of knowledge acquired, but rather a skill that has to be taught, practised and mastered. Parents are not professional teachers and if the outcomes are poor then the parents can only blame themselves. Home-schooling is both time-consuming and demanding. Parents can lose out financially and socially when they are obliged to spend the entire day at home. D Lack of socialization is perhaps the main criticism of home-schooling. When children are taken out of school they cannot interact with other pupils or engage in school activities, including team sports. Later, a young person may find it difficult to integrate in ordinary social settings or lack the coping skills to deal with the demands of everyday life. Socialization outside of the home can negate some of these short comings, bearing in mind that the home-educated child is likely to have more free time to engage in recreational activities. Indeed, it might be argued that the socialization experienced in the natural setting of a community is preferable to that within the confines of a school. E Whilst home-schooling has its shortcomings it also offers several advantages. Tuition is on a one-to-one basis so it can be personalized to meet an individual childs needs. There is no strict curriculum so the teaching can be readily adapted for those with special educational needs or learning disabilities. Children are allowed to develop at their own rate, and attention can be focussed on subjects that a child enjoys or has a particular aptitude for. Parents can provide religious education and impart moral values consistent with their own beliefs, and they can also include subjects that may not be available in their local schools, for example Latin or Archaeology. The timetable is entirely flexible with no time wasted travelling to and from school, no lack of educational continuity when moving home, and no restric tions on when to take family holidays. It should come as no surprise that with all these benefits, home-educated children usually outperform their schooled counterparts academically. However, this is not conclusive proof of the effectiveness of home- schooling. Parents who home-school their children tend to be well-educated and in a higher than average income bracket. Consequently, these parents are more likely to show an interest in their childs education, encouraging compliance with home work and offering support, meaning that the child would probably have performed well had they remained within the school system. F Parents who educate their children at home may choose to shun school com pletely. Despite this, local schools should offer parents and children support and guidance, extending access to school trips, library resources, recreational facilities, syllabus information, assessments and examinations. The future of home-schooling and its position in the education system are uncertain. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the state and the parents to ensure that home-educated children are given an education that affords them opportunities in life and equips them for the world of work. | There is nothing unusual about children learning from their parents at home. | e |
id_2939 | Home-schooling A Introduction In developed countries, compulsory education is the norm for children aged from around 6 to 16. Even so, in most cases this does not mean that the child has to attend a school. Increasing numbers of parents are choosing to educate their children at home. In the UK it is estimated that up to 100,000 pupils are being taught in this way, which equates to about 1% of the UK school population. In the USA, home education, or home schooling as it is known, has reached unprecedented levels with approximately 2 million children, or 4% of the compulsory age group, now receiving tuition at home. Parents cite various reasons for keeping their children away from school, ranging from a lack of satisfaction with the school environment to a wish to provide their own religious instruction. Home-schooling is a controversial issue surrounded by misgivings, with supporters emphasizing its benefits and detractors pointing to its limitations and risks. B The reasons why parents elect to educate their children at home are often linked to emotionally charged issues rather than rational arguments that reflect the pros and cons of home-schooling. Typically, a child is removed from a school following negative experiences, for example bullying, or exposure to bad influences such as drugs, discrimination, bad language, or falling in with the wrong crowd. Consequently, home-schooling is ardently defended by its proponents who are not necessarily best placed to consider its downsides dispassionately. Whilst the popularity of home- education is on the increase, it remains an oddity, associated more with problems at school rather than a positive decision to provide a real alternative. C Whilst home-schooling of a child is unusual, learning from parents is not, so formal teaching at home can be regarded as an extension of the parents normal role. However, education in the home environment can have its limitations; for example, when there are gaps in the parents knowledge in key subject areas such as fractions or algebra. Moreover, teaching is not merely the dispensing of knowledge acquired, but rather a skill that has to be taught, practised and mastered. Parents are not professional teachers and if the outcomes are poor then the parents can only blame themselves. Home-schooling is both time-consuming and demanding. Parents can lose out financially and socially when they are obliged to spend the entire day at home. D Lack of socialization is perhaps the main criticism of home-schooling. When children are taken out of school they cannot interact with other pupils or engage in school activities, including team sports. Later, a young person may find it difficult to integrate in ordinary social settings or lack the coping skills to deal with the demands of everyday life. Socialization outside of the home can negate some of these short comings, bearing in mind that the home-educated child is likely to have more free time to engage in recreational activities. Indeed, it might be argued that the socialization experienced in the natural setting of a community is preferable to that within the confines of a school. E Whilst home-schooling has its shortcomings it also offers several advantages. Tuition is on a one-to-one basis so it can be personalized to meet an individual childs needs. There is no strict curriculum so the teaching can be readily adapted for those with special educational needs or learning disabilities. Children are allowed to develop at their own rate, and attention can be focussed on subjects that a child enjoys or has a particular aptitude for. Parents can provide religious education and impart moral values consistent with their own beliefs, and they can also include subjects that may not be available in their local schools, for example Latin or Archaeology. The timetable is entirely flexible with no time wasted travelling to and from school, no lack of educational continuity when moving home, and no restric tions on when to take family holidays. It should come as no surprise that with all these benefits, home-educated children usually outperform their schooled counterparts academically. However, this is not conclusive proof of the effectiveness of home- schooling. Parents who home-school their children tend to be well-educated and in a higher than average income bracket. Consequently, these parents are more likely to show an interest in their childs education, encouraging compliance with home work and offering support, meaning that the child would probably have performed well had they remained within the school system. F Parents who educate their children at home may choose to shun school com pletely. Despite this, local schools should offer parents and children support and guidance, extending access to school trips, library resources, recreational facilities, syllabus information, assessments and examinations. The future of home-schooling and its position in the education system are uncertain. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the state and the parents to ensure that home-educated children are given an education that affords them opportunities in life and equips them for the world of work. | In the USA there are four times as many home-educated children as in the UK. | c |
id_2940 | Honey bees in trouble Can native pollinators fill the gap? Recently, ominous headlines have described a mysterious ailment, colony collapse disorder(CCD), that is wiping out the honeybees that pollinate many crops. Without honeybees, the story goes, fields will be sterile, economies will collapse, and food will be scarce. But what few accounts acknowledge is that whats at risk is not itself a natural state of affairs. For one thing, in the United States, where CCD was first reported and has had its greatest impacts, honeybees are not a native species. Pollination in modem agriculture isnt alchemy, its industry. The total number of hives involved in the U. S. pollination industry has been somewhere between 2.5 million and 3 million in recent years. Meanwhile, American farmers began using large quantities of organophosphate insecticides, planted large-scale crop monocultures, and adopted clean farming practices that scrubbed native vegetation from field margins and roadsides. These practices killed many native bees outrighttheyre as vulnerable to insecticides as any agricultural pestand made the agricultural landscape inhospitable to those that remained. Concern about these practices and their effects on pollinators isnt newin her 1962 ecological alarm cry Silent Spring, Rachel Carson warned of a Fruitless Fall that could result from the disappearance of insect pollinators. If that Fruitless Fall, has notyetoccurred, it may be largely thanks to the honeybee, which farmers turned to as the ability of wild pollinators to service crops declined. The honeybee has been semi-domesticated since the time of the ancient Egyptians, but it wasnt just familiarity that determined this choice: the bees biology is in many ways suited to the kind of agricultural system that was emerging. For example, honeybee hives can be closed up and moved out of the way when pesticides are applied to a field. The bees are generalist pollinators, so they can be used to pollinate many different crops. And although they are not the most efficient pollinator of every crop, honeybees have strength in numbers, with 20,000 to 100,000 bees living in a single hive. Without a doubt, if there was one bee you wanted for agriculture, it would be the honeybee, says Jim Cane, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The honeybee, in other words, has become a crucial cog in the modem system of industrial agriculture. That system delivers more food, and more kinds of it, to more places, more cheaply than ever before. But that system is also vulnerable, because making a farm field into the photosynthetic equivalent of a factory floor, and pollination into a series of continent-long assembly lines, also leaches out some of the resilience characteristic of natural ecosystems. Breno Freitas, an agronomist, pointed out that in nature such a high degree of specialization usually is a very dangerous game: it works well while all the rest is in equilibrium, but runs quickly to extinction at the least disbalance. In effect, by developing an agricultural system that is heavily reliant on a single pollinator species, we humans have become riskily overspecialized. And when the human-honeybee relationship is disrupted, as it has been by colony collapse disorder, the vulnerability of that agricultural system begins to become clear. In fact, a few wild bees are already being successfully managed for crop pollination. The problem is trying to provide native bees in adequate numbers on a reliable basis in a fairly short number of years in order to service the crop, Jim Cane says. Youre talking millions of flowers per acre in a two-to three-week time frame, or less, for a lot of crops. On the other hand, native bees can be much more efficient pollinators of certain crops than honeybees, so you dont need as many to do the job. For example, about 750 blue orchard bees (Osmia lignaria) can pollinate a hectare of apples or almonds, a task that would require roughly 50,000 to 150,000 honeybees. There are bee tinkerers engaged in similar work in many comers of the world. In Brazil, Breno Freitas has found that Centris tarsata, the native pollinator of wild cashew, can survive in commercial cashew orchards if growers provide a source of floral oils, such as by interplanting their cashew trees with Caribbean cherry. In certain places, native bees may already be doing more than theyre getting credit for. Ecologist Rachael Winfree recently led a team that looked at pollination of four summer crops (tomato, watermelon, peppers, and muskmelon) at 29 farms in the region of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Winfirees team identified 54 species of wild bees that visited these crops, and found that wild bees were the most important pollinators in the system: even though managed honeybees were present on many of the farms, wild bees were responsible for 62 percent of flower visits in the study. In another study focusing specifically on watermelon, Winfree and her colleagues calculated that native bees alone could provide sufficient pollination at 90 percent of the 23 farms studied. By contrast, honeybees alone could provide sufficient pollination at only 78 percent of farms. The region I work in is not typical of the way most food is produced, Winfree admits. In the Delaware Valley, most farms and farm fields are relatively small, each fanner typically grows a variety of crops, and farms are interspersed with suburbs and other types of land use which means there are opportunities for homeowners to get involved in bee conservation, too. The landscape is a bee-friendly patchwork that provides a variety of nesting habitat and floral resources distributed among different kinds of crops, weedy field margins, fallow fields, suburban neighborhoods, and semi natural habitat like old woodlots, all at a relatively small scale. In other words, pollinator-friendly farming practices would not only aid pollination of agricultural crops, but also serve as a key element in the over all conservation strategy for wild pollinators, and often aid other wild species as well. Of course, not all farmers will be able to implement all of these practices. And researchers are suggesting a shift to a kind of polyglot agricultural system. For some small-scale farms, native bees may indeed be all thats needed. For larger operations, a suite of managed beeswith honeybees filling the generalist role and other, native bees pollinating specific cropscould be augmented by free pollination services from resurgent wild pollinators. In other words, theyre saying, we still have an opportunity to replace a risky monoculture with something diverse, resilient, and robust. | The blue orchard bee is the most efficient pollinator among native bees for every crop. | c |
id_2941 | Honey bees in trouble Can native pollinators fill the gap? Recently, ominous headlines have described a mysterious ailment, colony collapse disorder(CCD), that is wiping out the honeybees that pollinate many crops. Without honeybees, the story goes, fields will be sterile, economies will collapse, and food will be scarce. But what few accounts acknowledge is that whats at risk is not itself a natural state of affairs. For one thing, in the United States, where CCD was first reported and has had its greatest impacts, honeybees are not a native species. Pollination in modem agriculture isnt alchemy, its industry. The total number of hives involved in the U. S. pollination industry has been somewhere between 2.5 million and 3 million in recent years. Meanwhile, American farmers began using large quantities of organophosphate insecticides, planted large-scale crop monocultures, and adopted clean farming practices that scrubbed native vegetation from field margins and roadsides. These practices killed many native bees outrighttheyre as vulnerable to insecticides as any agricultural pestand made the agricultural landscape inhospitable to those that remained. Concern about these practices and their effects on pollinators isnt newin her 1962 ecological alarm cry Silent Spring, Rachel Carson warned of a Fruitless Fall that could result from the disappearance of insect pollinators. If that Fruitless Fall, has notyetoccurred, it may be largely thanks to the honeybee, which farmers turned to as the ability of wild pollinators to service crops declined. The honeybee has been semi-domesticated since the time of the ancient Egyptians, but it wasnt just familiarity that determined this choice: the bees biology is in many ways suited to the kind of agricultural system that was emerging. For example, honeybee hives can be closed up and moved out of the way when pesticides are applied to a field. The bees are generalist pollinators, so they can be used to pollinate many different crops. And although they are not the most efficient pollinator of every crop, honeybees have strength in numbers, with 20,000 to 100,000 bees living in a single hive. Without a doubt, if there was one bee you wanted for agriculture, it would be the honeybee, says Jim Cane, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The honeybee, in other words, has become a crucial cog in the modem system of industrial agriculture. That system delivers more food, and more kinds of it, to more places, more cheaply than ever before. But that system is also vulnerable, because making a farm field into the photosynthetic equivalent of a factory floor, and pollination into a series of continent-long assembly lines, also leaches out some of the resilience characteristic of natural ecosystems. Breno Freitas, an agronomist, pointed out that in nature such a high degree of specialization usually is a very dangerous game: it works well while all the rest is in equilibrium, but runs quickly to extinction at the least disbalance. In effect, by developing an agricultural system that is heavily reliant on a single pollinator species, we humans have become riskily overspecialized. And when the human-honeybee relationship is disrupted, as it has been by colony collapse disorder, the vulnerability of that agricultural system begins to become clear. In fact, a few wild bees are already being successfully managed for crop pollination. The problem is trying to provide native bees in adequate numbers on a reliable basis in a fairly short number of years in order to service the crop, Jim Cane says. Youre talking millions of flowers per acre in a two-to three-week time frame, or less, for a lot of crops. On the other hand, native bees can be much more efficient pollinators of certain crops than honeybees, so you dont need as many to do the job. For example, about 750 blue orchard bees (Osmia lignaria) can pollinate a hectare of apples or almonds, a task that would require roughly 50,000 to 150,000 honeybees. There are bee tinkerers engaged in similar work in many comers of the world. In Brazil, Breno Freitas has found that Centris tarsata, the native pollinator of wild cashew, can survive in commercial cashew orchards if growers provide a source of floral oils, such as by interplanting their cashew trees with Caribbean cherry. In certain places, native bees may already be doing more than theyre getting credit for. Ecologist Rachael Winfree recently led a team that looked at pollination of four summer crops (tomato, watermelon, peppers, and muskmelon) at 29 farms in the region of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Winfirees team identified 54 species of wild bees that visited these crops, and found that wild bees were the most important pollinators in the system: even though managed honeybees were present on many of the farms, wild bees were responsible for 62 percent of flower visits in the study. In another study focusing specifically on watermelon, Winfree and her colleagues calculated that native bees alone could provide sufficient pollination at 90 percent of the 23 farms studied. By contrast, honeybees alone could provide sufficient pollination at only 78 percent of farms. The region I work in is not typical of the way most food is produced, Winfree admits. In the Delaware Valley, most farms and farm fields are relatively small, each fanner typically grows a variety of crops, and farms are interspersed with suburbs and other types of land use which means there are opportunities for homeowners to get involved in bee conservation, too. The landscape is a bee-friendly patchwork that provides a variety of nesting habitat and floral resources distributed among different kinds of crops, weedy field margins, fallow fields, suburban neighborhoods, and semi natural habitat like old woodlots, all at a relatively small scale. In other words, pollinator-friendly farming practices would not only aid pollination of agricultural crops, but also serve as a key element in the over all conservation strategy for wild pollinators, and often aid other wild species as well. Of course, not all farmers will be able to implement all of these practices. And researchers are suggesting a shift to a kind of polyglot agricultural system. For some small-scale farms, native bees may indeed be all thats needed. For larger operations, a suite of managed beeswith honeybees filling the generalist role and other, native bees pollinating specific cropscould be augmented by free pollination services from resurgent wild pollinators. In other words, theyre saying, we still have an opportunity to replace a risky monoculture with something diverse, resilient, and robust. | Cleaning farming practices would be harmful to farmers | n |
id_2942 | Honey bees in trouble Can native pollinators fill the gap? Recently, ominous headlines have described a mysterious ailment, colony collapse disorder(CCD), that is wiping out the honeybees that pollinate many crops. Without honeybees, the story goes, fields will be sterile, economies will collapse, and food will be scarce. But what few accounts acknowledge is that whats at risk is not itself a natural state of affairs. For one thing, in the United States, where CCD was first reported and has had its greatest impacts, honeybees are not a native species. Pollination in modem agriculture isnt alchemy, its industry. The total number of hives involved in the U. S. pollination industry has been somewhere between 2.5 million and 3 million in recent years. Meanwhile, American farmers began using large quantities of organophosphate insecticides, planted large-scale crop monocultures, and adopted clean farming practices that scrubbed native vegetation from field margins and roadsides. These practices killed many native bees outrighttheyre as vulnerable to insecticides as any agricultural pestand made the agricultural landscape inhospitable to those that remained. Concern about these practices and their effects on pollinators isnt newin her 1962 ecological alarm cry Silent Spring, Rachel Carson warned of a Fruitless Fall that could result from the disappearance of insect pollinators. If that Fruitless Fall, has notyetoccurred, it may be largely thanks to the honeybee, which farmers turned to as the ability of wild pollinators to service crops declined. The honeybee has been semi-domesticated since the time of the ancient Egyptians, but it wasnt just familiarity that determined this choice: the bees biology is in many ways suited to the kind of agricultural system that was emerging. For example, honeybee hives can be closed up and moved out of the way when pesticides are applied to a field. The bees are generalist pollinators, so they can be used to pollinate many different crops. And although they are not the most efficient pollinator of every crop, honeybees have strength in numbers, with 20,000 to 100,000 bees living in a single hive. Without a doubt, if there was one bee you wanted for agriculture, it would be the honeybee, says Jim Cane, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The honeybee, in other words, has become a crucial cog in the modem system of industrial agriculture. That system delivers more food, and more kinds of it, to more places, more cheaply than ever before. But that system is also vulnerable, because making a farm field into the photosynthetic equivalent of a factory floor, and pollination into a series of continent-long assembly lines, also leaches out some of the resilience characteristic of natural ecosystems. Breno Freitas, an agronomist, pointed out that in nature such a high degree of specialization usually is a very dangerous game: it works well while all the rest is in equilibrium, but runs quickly to extinction at the least disbalance. In effect, by developing an agricultural system that is heavily reliant on a single pollinator species, we humans have become riskily overspecialized. And when the human-honeybee relationship is disrupted, as it has been by colony collapse disorder, the vulnerability of that agricultural system begins to become clear. In fact, a few wild bees are already being successfully managed for crop pollination. The problem is trying to provide native bees in adequate numbers on a reliable basis in a fairly short number of years in order to service the crop, Jim Cane says. Youre talking millions of flowers per acre in a two-to three-week time frame, or less, for a lot of crops. On the other hand, native bees can be much more efficient pollinators of certain crops than honeybees, so you dont need as many to do the job. For example, about 750 blue orchard bees (Osmia lignaria) can pollinate a hectare of apples or almonds, a task that would require roughly 50,000 to 150,000 honeybees. There are bee tinkerers engaged in similar work in many comers of the world. In Brazil, Breno Freitas has found that Centris tarsata, the native pollinator of wild cashew, can survive in commercial cashew orchards if growers provide a source of floral oils, such as by interplanting their cashew trees with Caribbean cherry. In certain places, native bees may already be doing more than theyre getting credit for. Ecologist Rachael Winfree recently led a team that looked at pollination of four summer crops (tomato, watermelon, peppers, and muskmelon) at 29 farms in the region of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Winfirees team identified 54 species of wild bees that visited these crops, and found that wild bees were the most important pollinators in the system: even though managed honeybees were present on many of the farms, wild bees were responsible for 62 percent of flower visits in the study. In another study focusing specifically on watermelon, Winfree and her colleagues calculated that native bees alone could provide sufficient pollination at 90 percent of the 23 farms studied. By contrast, honeybees alone could provide sufficient pollination at only 78 percent of farms. The region I work in is not typical of the way most food is produced, Winfree admits. In the Delaware Valley, most farms and farm fields are relatively small, each fanner typically grows a variety of crops, and farms are interspersed with suburbs and other types of land use which means there are opportunities for homeowners to get involved in bee conservation, too. The landscape is a bee-friendly patchwork that provides a variety of nesting habitat and floral resources distributed among different kinds of crops, weedy field margins, fallow fields, suburban neighborhoods, and semi natural habitat like old woodlots, all at a relatively small scale. In other words, pollinator-friendly farming practices would not only aid pollination of agricultural crops, but also serve as a key element in the over all conservation strategy for wild pollinators, and often aid other wild species as well. Of course, not all farmers will be able to implement all of these practices. And researchers are suggesting a shift to a kind of polyglot agricultural system. For some small-scale farms, native bees may indeed be all thats needed. For larger operations, a suite of managed beeswith honeybees filling the generalist role and other, native bees pollinating specific cropscould be augmented by free pollination services from resurgent wild pollinators. In other words, theyre saying, we still have an opportunity to replace a risky monoculture with something diverse, resilient, and robust. | In the United States, farmers use honeybees in a large scale over the past few years. | e |
id_2943 | Honey bees in trouble Can native pollinators fill the gap? Recently, ominous headlines have described a mysterious ailment, colony collapse disorder(CCD), that is wiping out the honeybees that pollinate many crops. Without honeybees, the story goes, fields will be sterile, economies will collapse, and food will be scarce. But what few accounts acknowledge is that whats at risk is not itself a natural state of affairs. For one thing, in the United States, where CCD was first reported and has had its greatest impacts, honeybees are not a native species. Pollination in modem agriculture isnt alchemy, its industry. The total number of hives involved in the U. S. pollination industry has been somewhere between 2.5 million and 3 million in recent years. Meanwhile, American farmers began using large quantities of organophosphate insecticides, planted large-scale crop monocultures, and adopted clean farming practices that scrubbed native vegetation from field margins and roadsides. These practices killed many native bees outrighttheyre as vulnerable to insecticides as any agricultural pestand made the agricultural landscape inhospitable to those that remained. Concern about these practices and their effects on pollinators isnt newin her 1962 ecological alarm cry Silent Spring, Rachel Carson warned of a Fruitless Fall that could result from the disappearance of insect pollinators. If that Fruitless Fall, has notyetoccurred, it may be largely thanks to the honeybee, which farmers turned to as the ability of wild pollinators to service crops declined. The honeybee has been semi-domesticated since the time of the ancient Egyptians, but it wasnt just familiarity that determined this choice: the bees biology is in many ways suited to the kind of agricultural system that was emerging. For example, honeybee hives can be closed up and moved out of the way when pesticides are applied to a field. The bees are generalist pollinators, so they can be used to pollinate many different crops. And although they are not the most efficient pollinator of every crop, honeybees have strength in numbers, with 20,000 to 100,000 bees living in a single hive. Without a doubt, if there was one bee you wanted for agriculture, it would be the honeybee, says Jim Cane, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The honeybee, in other words, has become a crucial cog in the modem system of industrial agriculture. That system delivers more food, and more kinds of it, to more places, more cheaply than ever before. But that system is also vulnerable, because making a farm field into the photosynthetic equivalent of a factory floor, and pollination into a series of continent-long assembly lines, also leaches out some of the resilience characteristic of natural ecosystems. Breno Freitas, an agronomist, pointed out that in nature such a high degree of specialization usually is a very dangerous game: it works well while all the rest is in equilibrium, but runs quickly to extinction at the least disbalance. In effect, by developing an agricultural system that is heavily reliant on a single pollinator species, we humans have become riskily overspecialized. And when the human-honeybee relationship is disrupted, as it has been by colony collapse disorder, the vulnerability of that agricultural system begins to become clear. In fact, a few wild bees are already being successfully managed for crop pollination. The problem is trying to provide native bees in adequate numbers on a reliable basis in a fairly short number of years in order to service the crop, Jim Cane says. Youre talking millions of flowers per acre in a two-to three-week time frame, or less, for a lot of crops. On the other hand, native bees can be much more efficient pollinators of certain crops than honeybees, so you dont need as many to do the job. For example, about 750 blue orchard bees (Osmia lignaria) can pollinate a hectare of apples or almonds, a task that would require roughly 50,000 to 150,000 honeybees. There are bee tinkerers engaged in similar work in many comers of the world. In Brazil, Breno Freitas has found that Centris tarsata, the native pollinator of wild cashew, can survive in commercial cashew orchards if growers provide a source of floral oils, such as by interplanting their cashew trees with Caribbean cherry. In certain places, native bees may already be doing more than theyre getting credit for. Ecologist Rachael Winfree recently led a team that looked at pollination of four summer crops (tomato, watermelon, peppers, and muskmelon) at 29 farms in the region of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Winfirees team identified 54 species of wild bees that visited these crops, and found that wild bees were the most important pollinators in the system: even though managed honeybees were present on many of the farms, wild bees were responsible for 62 percent of flower visits in the study. In another study focusing specifically on watermelon, Winfree and her colleagues calculated that native bees alone could provide sufficient pollination at 90 percent of the 23 farms studied. By contrast, honeybees alone could provide sufficient pollination at only 78 percent of farms. The region I work in is not typical of the way most food is produced, Winfree admits. In the Delaware Valley, most farms and farm fields are relatively small, each fanner typically grows a variety of crops, and farms are interspersed with suburbs and other types of land use which means there are opportunities for homeowners to get involved in bee conservation, too. The landscape is a bee-friendly patchwork that provides a variety of nesting habitat and floral resources distributed among different kinds of crops, weedy field margins, fallow fields, suburban neighborhoods, and semi natural habitat like old woodlots, all at a relatively small scale. In other words, pollinator-friendly farming practices would not only aid pollination of agricultural crops, but also serve as a key element in the over all conservation strategy for wild pollinators, and often aid other wild species as well. Of course, not all farmers will be able to implement all of these practices. And researchers are suggesting a shift to a kind of polyglot agricultural system. For some small-scale farms, native bees may indeed be all thats needed. For larger operations, a suite of managed beeswith honeybees filling the generalist role and other, native bees pollinating specific cropscould be augmented by free pollination services from resurgent wild pollinators. In other words, theyre saying, we still have an opportunity to replace a risky monoculture with something diverse, resilient, and robust. | It is beneficial to other local creatures to protect native bees. | e |
id_2944 | Hormone levels - and hence our moods -may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that crimes against the person rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water - before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become less sceptical and more optimistic when the weather is sunny However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasnt, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption of stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals behaviour - changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. Peoples moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counselling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being heavy and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air can become slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected - and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds. In the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | Melatonin levels increase at certain times of the year. | e |
id_2945 | Hormone levels - and hence our moods -may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that crimes against the person rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water - before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become less sceptical and more optimistic when the weather is sunny However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasnt, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption of stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals behaviour - changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. Peoples moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counselling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being heavy and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air can become slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected - and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds. In the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | Seasonal Affective Disorder is disrupting childrens education in Russia. | n |
id_2946 | Hormone levels - and hence our moods -may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that crimes against the person rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water - before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become less sceptical and more optimistic when the weather is sunny However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasnt, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption of stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals behaviour - changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. Peoples moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counselling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being heavy and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air can become slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected - and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds. In the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | Positively charged ions can influence eating habits. | n |
id_2947 | Hormone levels - and hence our moods -may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that crimes against the person rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water - before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become less sceptical and more optimistic when the weather is sunny However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasnt, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption of stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals behaviour - changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. Peoples moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counselling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being heavy and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air can become slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected - and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds. In the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | A link between depression and the time of year has been established. | e |
id_2948 | Hormone levels - and hence our moods -may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that crimes against the person rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water - before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become less sceptical and more optimistic when the weather is sunny However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasnt, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption of stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals behaviour - changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. Peoples moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counselling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being heavy and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air can become slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected - and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds. In the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | Scientific evidence links happy associations with weather to human mood. | c |
id_2949 | Hormone levels - and hence our moods -may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that crimes against the person rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water - before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become less sceptical and more optimistic when the weather is sunny However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasnt, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption of stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals behaviour - changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. Peoples moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counselling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being heavy and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air can become slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected - and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds. In the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | Serotonin is an essential cause of human aggression. | c |
id_2950 | Hormone levels and hence our moods may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings' moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that 'crimes against the person' rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become and more optimistic when the weather is sunny. However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasn't, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption or stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals' behaviour changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. People's moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counseling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being 'heavy' and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air became slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds, in the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | Serotonin is an essential cause of human aggression. | c |
id_2951 | Hormone levels and hence our moods may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings' moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that 'crimes against the person' rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become and more optimistic when the weather is sunny. However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasn't, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption or stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals' behaviour changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. People's moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counseling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being 'heavy' and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air became slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds, in the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | Positive charged ions can influence eating habits. | n |
id_2952 | Hormone levels and hence our moods may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings' moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that 'crimes against the person' rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become and more optimistic when the weather is sunny. However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasn't, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption or stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals' behaviour changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. People's moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counseling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being 'heavy' and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air became slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds, in the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | Scientific evidence links 'happy associations with weather' to human mood. | c |
id_2953 | Hormone levels and hence our moods may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings' moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that 'crimes against the person' rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become and more optimistic when the weather is sunny. However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasn't, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption or stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals' behaviour changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. People's moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counseling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being 'heavy' and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air became slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds, in the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | Melatonin levels increase at certain times of the year. | e |
id_2954 | Hormone levels and hence our moods may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings' moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that 'crimes against the person' rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become and more optimistic when the weather is sunny. However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasn't, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption or stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals' behaviour changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. People's moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counseling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being 'heavy' and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air became slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds, in the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | A link between depression and the time of year has been established. | e |
id_2955 | Hormone levels and hence our moods may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings' moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that 'crimes against the person' rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5C with others in water at 20C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become and more optimistic when the weather is sunny. However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasn't, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption or stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels. In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals' behaviour changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. People's moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counseling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains. When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being 'heavy' and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air became slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds, in the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air. | Seasonal Affective Disorder is disrupting children's education in Russia. | n |
id_2956 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out of dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to sprout. | The rate at which seeds sprout can decline after the first year of being packaged | e |
id_2957 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out of dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to sprout. | The reproduction of flora involves many aspects for horticulturalists to consider | e |
id_2958 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out of dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to sprout. | All seeds will germinate, given the right environmental conditions. | c |
id_2959 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to Sprout. | The vigilant management of external factors can bring a seed out of its quiescent state. | e |
id_2960 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to Sprout. | The rate at which seeds sprout can decline after the first year of being packaged. | e |
id_2961 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to Sprout. | The production of flora involves many aspects for horticulturalists to consider. | e |
id_2962 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to Sprout. | Most horticulturalists are reluctant to plant seeds that have been preserved for more than a year. | n |
id_2963 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to Sprout. | Reproducing plants by seed is the most common activity for gardeners. | n |
id_2964 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to Sprout. | All seeds will germinate, given the right environmental conditions. | c |
id_2965 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to sprout. | All seeds will germinate, given the right environmental conditions. | c |
id_2966 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to sprout. | Most horticulturalists are reluctant to plant seeds that have been preserved for more than a year. | n |
id_2967 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to sprout. | The vigilant management of external factors can bring a seed out of its quiescent state. | e |
id_2968 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to sprout. | The reproduction of flora involves many aspects for horticulturalists to consider. | e |
id_2969 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to sprout. | Reproducing plants by seed is the most common activity for gardeners. | n |
id_2970 | Horticulturalists must take into account many factors when planning the reproduction of plants. Propagation by seed is the most common method employed as it is relatively easy and has a good expected rate of germination, although this can drop if the seed has been packaged for more than a year. Many seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years if properly stored, as their protective coats prevent sprouting until ideal growing conditions exist. External conditions can be manipulated in order to bring seeds out or dormancy and hasten germination. However, even in optimal conditions, some seeds are reluctant to sprout. | The rate at which seeds sprout can decline after the first year of being packaged. | n |
id_2971 | How Babies learn Language During the first year of a childs life, parents and carers are concerned with its physical development; during the second year, they watch the babys language development very carefully. It is interesting just how easily children learn language. Children who are just three or four years old, who cannot yet tie their shoelaces, are able to speak in full sentences without any specific language training. The current view of child language development is that it is an instinct-something as natural as eating or sleeping. According to experts in this area, this language instinct is innate something each of us is born with. But this prevailing view has not always enjoyed widespread acceptance. In the middle of last century, experts of the time, including a renowned professor at Harvard University in the United States, regarded child language development as the process of learning through mere repetition. Language habits developed as young children were rewarded for repeating language correctly and ignored or punished when they used incorrect forms of language. Over time, a child, according to this theory, would learn language much like a dog might learn to behave properly through training. Yet even though the modern view holds that language is instinctive, experts like Assistant Professor Use Eliot are convinced that the interaction a child has with its parents and caregivers is crucial to its developments. The language of the parents and caregivers act as models for the developing child. In fact, a babys day-to-day experience is so important that the child will learn to speak in a manner very similar to the model speakers it hears. Given that the models parents provide are so important, it is interesting to consider the role of baby talk in the childs language development. Baby talk is the language produced by an adult speaker who is trying to exaggerate certain aspects of the language to capture the attention of a young baby. Dr Roberta Golinkoff believes that babies benefit from baby talk. Experiments show that immediately after birth babies respond more to infant-directed talk than they do to adult-directed talk. When using baby talk, people exaggerate their facial expressions, which helps the baby to begin to understand what is being communicated. She also notes that the exaggerated nature and repetition of baby talk helps infants to learn the difference between sounds. Since babies have a great deal of information to process, baby talk helps. Although there is concern that baby talk may persist too long, Dr Golinkoff says that it stops being used as the child gets older, that is, when the child is better able to communicate with the parents. Professor Jusczyk has made a particular study of babies ability to recognise sounds, and says they recognise the sound of their own names as early as four and a half months. Babies know the meaning of Mummy and Daddy by about six months, which is earlier than was previously believed. By about nine months, babies begin recognizing frequent patterns in language. A baby will listen longer to the sounds that occur frequently, so it is good to frequently call the infant by its name. An experiment at Johns Hopkins University in USA, in which researchers went to the homes of 16 nine-month-olds, confirms this view. The researchers arranged their visits for ten days out of a two week period. During each visit the researcher played an audio tape that included the same three stories. The stories included odd words such as python or hornbill, words that were unlikely to be encountered in the babies everyday experience. After a couple of weeks during which nothing was done, the babies were brought to the research lab, where they listened to two recorded lists of words. The first list included words heard in the story. The second included similar words, but not the exact ones that were used in the stories. Jusczyk found the babies listened longer to the words that had appeared in the stories, which indicated that the babies had extracted individual words from the story. When a control group of 16 nine-month-olds, who had not heard the stories, listened to the two groups of words, they showed no preference for either list. This does not mean that the babies actually understand the meanings of the words, just the sound patterns. It supports the idea that people are born to speak, and have the capacity to learn language from the day they are born. This ability is enhanced if they are involved in conversation. And, significantly, Or Eliot reminds parents that babies and toddlers need to feel they are communicating. Clearly, sitting in front of the television is not enough; the baby must be having an interaction with another speaker. | Children can learn their first language without being taught. | e |
id_2972 | How Babies learn Language During the first year of a childs life, parents and carers are concerned with its physical development; during the second year, they watch the babys language development very carefully. It is interesting just how easily children learn language. Children who are just three or four years old, who cannot yet tie their shoelaces, are able to speak in full sentences without any specific language training. The current view of child language development is that it is an instinct-something as natural as eating or sleeping. According to experts in this area, this language instinct is innate something each of us is born with. But this prevailing view has not always enjoyed widespread acceptance. In the middle of last century, experts of the time, including a renowned professor at Harvard University in the United States, regarded child language development as the process of learning through mere repetition. Language habits developed as young children were rewarded for repeating language correctly and ignored or punished when they used incorrect forms of language. Over time, a child, according to this theory, would learn language much like a dog might learn to behave properly through training. Yet even though the modern view holds that language is instinctive, experts like Assistant Professor Use Eliot are convinced that the interaction a child has with its parents and caregivers is crucial to its developments. The language of the parents and caregivers act as models for the developing child. In fact, a babys day-to-day experience is so important that the child will learn to speak in a manner very similar to the model speakers it hears. Given that the models parents provide are so important, it is interesting to consider the role of baby talk in the childs language development. Baby talk is the language produced by an adult speaker who is trying to exaggerate certain aspects of the language to capture the attention of a young baby. Dr Roberta Golinkoff believes that babies benefit from baby talk. Experiments show that immediately after birth babies respond more to infant-directed talk than they do to adult-directed talk. When using baby talk, people exaggerate their facial expressions, which helps the baby to begin to understand what is being communicated. She also notes that the exaggerated nature and repetition of baby talk helps infants to learn the difference between sounds. Since babies have a great deal of information to process, baby talk helps. Although there is concern that baby talk may persist too long, Dr Golinkoff says that it stops being used as the child gets older, that is, when the child is better able to communicate with the parents. Professor Jusczyk has made a particular study of babies ability to recognise sounds, and says they recognise the sound of their own names as early as four and a half months. Babies know the meaning of Mummy and Daddy by about six months, which is earlier than was previously believed. By about nine months, babies begin recognizing frequent patterns in language. A baby will listen longer to the sounds that occur frequently, so it is good to frequently call the infant by its name. An experiment at Johns Hopkins University in USA, in which researchers went to the homes of 16 nine-month-olds, confirms this view. The researchers arranged their visits for ten days out of a two week period. During each visit the researcher played an audio tape that included the same three stories. The stories included odd words such as python or hornbill, words that were unlikely to be encountered in the babies everyday experience. After a couple of weeks during which nothing was done, the babies were brought to the research lab, where they listened to two recorded lists of words. The first list included words heard in the story. The second included similar words, but not the exact ones that were used in the stories. Jusczyk found the babies listened longer to the words that had appeared in the stories, which indicated that the babies had extracted individual words from the story. When a control group of 16 nine-month-olds, who had not heard the stories, listened to the two groups of words, they showed no preference for either list. This does not mean that the babies actually understand the meanings of the words, just the sound patterns. It supports the idea that people are born to speak, and have the capacity to learn language from the day they are born. This ability is enhanced if they are involved in conversation. And, significantly, Or Eliot reminds parents that babies and toddlers need to feel they are communicating. Clearly, sitting in front of the television is not enough; the baby must be having an interaction with another speaker. | From the time of their birth, humans seem to have an ability to learn language. | e |
id_2973 | How Babies learn Language During the first year of a childs life, parents and carers are concerned with its physical development; during the second year, they watch the babys language development very carefully. It is interesting just how easily children learn language. Children who are just three or four years old, who cannot yet tie their shoelaces, are able to speak in full sentences without any specific language training. The current view of child language development is that it is an instinct-something as natural as eating or sleeping. According to experts in this area, this language instinct is innate something each of us is born with. But this prevailing view has not always enjoyed widespread acceptance. In the middle of last century, experts of the time, including a renowned professor at Harvard University in the United States, regarded child language development as the process of learning through mere repetition. Language habits developed as young children were rewarded for repeating language correctly and ignored or punished when they used incorrect forms of language. Over time, a child, according to this theory, would learn language much like a dog might learn to behave properly through training. Yet even though the modern view holds that language is instinctive, experts like Assistant Professor Use Eliot are convinced that the interaction a child has with its parents and caregivers is crucial to its developments. The language of the parents and caregivers act as models for the developing child. In fact, a babys day-to-day experience is so important that the child will learn to speak in a manner very similar to the model speakers it hears. Given that the models parents provide are so important, it is interesting to consider the role of baby talk in the childs language development. Baby talk is the language produced by an adult speaker who is trying to exaggerate certain aspects of the language to capture the attention of a young baby. Dr Roberta Golinkoff believes that babies benefit from baby talk. Experiments show that immediately after birth babies respond more to infant-directed talk than they do to adult-directed talk. When using baby talk, people exaggerate their facial expressions, which helps the baby to begin to understand what is being communicated. She also notes that the exaggerated nature and repetition of baby talk helps infants to learn the difference between sounds. Since babies have a great deal of information to process, baby talk helps. Although there is concern that baby talk may persist too long, Dr Golinkoff says that it stops being used as the child gets older, that is, when the child is better able to communicate with the parents. Professor Jusczyk has made a particular study of babies ability to recognise sounds, and says they recognise the sound of their own names as early as four and a half months. Babies know the meaning of Mummy and Daddy by about six months, which is earlier than was previously believed. By about nine months, babies begin recognizing frequent patterns in language. A baby will listen longer to the sounds that occur frequently, so it is good to frequently call the infant by its name. An experiment at Johns Hopkins University in USA, in which researchers went to the homes of 16 nine-month-olds, confirms this view. The researchers arranged their visits for ten days out of a two week period. During each visit the researcher played an audio tape that included the same three stories. The stories included odd words such as python or hornbill, words that were unlikely to be encountered in the babies everyday experience. After a couple of weeks during which nothing was done, the babies were brought to the research lab, where they listened to two recorded lists of words. The first list included words heard in the story. The second included similar words, but not the exact ones that were used in the stories. Jusczyk found the babies listened longer to the words that had appeared in the stories, which indicated that the babies had extracted individual words from the story. When a control group of 16 nine-month-olds, who had not heard the stories, listened to the two groups of words, they showed no preference for either list. This does not mean that the babies actually understand the meanings of the words, just the sound patterns. It supports the idea that people are born to speak, and have the capacity to learn language from the day they are born. This ability is enhanced if they are involved in conversation. And, significantly, Or Eliot reminds parents that babies and toddlers need to feel they are communicating. Clearly, sitting in front of the television is not enough; the baby must be having an interaction with another speaker. | According to experts in the 1950s and 60s, language learning is very similar to the training of animals. | e |
id_2974 | How Babies learn Language During the first year of a childs life, parents and carers are concerned with its physical development; during the second year, they watch the babys language development very carefully. It is interesting just how easily children learn language. Children who are just three or four years old, who cannot yet tie their shoelaces, are able to speak in full sentences without any specific language training. The current view of child language development is that it is an instinct-something as natural as eating or sleeping. According to experts in this area, this language instinct is innate something each of us is born with. But this prevailing view has not always enjoyed widespread acceptance. In the middle of last century, experts of the time, including a renowned professor at Harvard University in the United States, regarded child language development as the process of learning through mere repetition. Language habits developed as young children were rewarded for repeating language correctly and ignored or punished when they used incorrect forms of language. Over time, a child, according to this theory, would learn language much like a dog might learn to behave properly through training. Yet even though the modern view holds that language is instinctive, experts like Assistant Professor Use Eliot are convinced that the interaction a child has with its parents and caregivers is crucial to its developments. The language of the parents and caregivers act as models for the developing child. In fact, a babys day-to-day experience is so important that the child will learn to speak in a manner very similar to the model speakers it hears. Given that the models parents provide are so important, it is interesting to consider the role of baby talk in the childs language development. Baby talk is the language produced by an adult speaker who is trying to exaggerate certain aspects of the language to capture the attention of a young baby. Dr Roberta Golinkoff believes that babies benefit from baby talk. Experiments show that immediately after birth babies respond more to infant-directed talk than they do to adult-directed talk. When using baby talk, people exaggerate their facial expressions, which helps the baby to begin to understand what is being communicated. She also notes that the exaggerated nature and repetition of baby talk helps infants to learn the difference between sounds. Since babies have a great deal of information to process, baby talk helps. Although there is concern that baby talk may persist too long, Dr Golinkoff says that it stops being used as the child gets older, that is, when the child is better able to communicate with the parents. Professor Jusczyk has made a particular study of babies ability to recognise sounds, and says they recognise the sound of their own names as early as four and a half months. Babies know the meaning of Mummy and Daddy by about six months, which is earlier than was previously believed. By about nine months, babies begin recognizing frequent patterns in language. A baby will listen longer to the sounds that occur frequently, so it is good to frequently call the infant by its name. An experiment at Johns Hopkins University in USA, in which researchers went to the homes of 16 nine-month-olds, confirms this view. The researchers arranged their visits for ten days out of a two week period. During each visit the researcher played an audio tape that included the same three stories. The stories included odd words such as python or hornbill, words that were unlikely to be encountered in the babies everyday experience. After a couple of weeks during which nothing was done, the babies were brought to the research lab, where they listened to two recorded lists of words. The first list included words heard in the story. The second included similar words, but not the exact ones that were used in the stories. Jusczyk found the babies listened longer to the words that had appeared in the stories, which indicated that the babies had extracted individual words from the story. When a control group of 16 nine-month-olds, who had not heard the stories, listened to the two groups of words, they showed no preference for either list. This does not mean that the babies actually understand the meanings of the words, just the sound patterns. It supports the idea that people are born to speak, and have the capacity to learn language from the day they are born. This ability is enhanced if they are involved in conversation. And, significantly, Or Eliot reminds parents that babies and toddlers need to feel they are communicating. Clearly, sitting in front of the television is not enough; the baby must be having an interaction with another speaker. | Repetition in language learning is important, according to Dr Eliot. | n |
id_2975 | How Babies learn Language During the first year of a childs life, parents and carers are concerned with its physical development; during the second year, they watch the babys language development very carefully. It is interesting just how easily children learn language. Children who are just three or four years old, who cannot yet tie their shoelaces, are able to speak in full sentences without any specific language training. The current view of child language development is that it is an instinct-something as natural as eating or sleeping. According to experts in this area, this language instinct is innate something each of us is born with. But this prevailing view has not always enjoyed widespread acceptance. In the middle of last century, experts of the time, including a renowned professor at Harvard University in the United States, regarded child language development as the process of learning through mere repetition. Language habits developed as young children were rewarded for repeating language correctly and ignored or punished when they used incorrect forms of language. Over time, a child, according to this theory, would learn language much like a dog might learn to behave properly through training. Yet even though the modern view holds that language is instinctive, experts like Assistant Professor Use Eliot are convinced that the interaction a child has with its parents and caregivers is crucial to its developments. The language of the parents and caregivers act as models for the developing child. In fact, a babys day-to-day experience is so important that the child will learn to speak in a manner very similar to the model speakers it hears. Given that the models parents provide are so important, it is interesting to consider the role of baby talk in the childs language development. Baby talk is the language produced by an adult speaker who is trying to exaggerate certain aspects of the language to capture the attention of a young baby. Dr Roberta Golinkoff believes that babies benefit from baby talk. Experiments show that immediately after birth babies respond more to infant-directed talk than they do to adult-directed talk. When using baby talk, people exaggerate their facial expressions, which helps the baby to begin to understand what is being communicated. She also notes that the exaggerated nature and repetition of baby talk helps infants to learn the difference between sounds. Since babies have a great deal of information to process, baby talk helps. Although there is concern that baby talk may persist too long, Dr Golinkoff says that it stops being used as the child gets older, that is, when the child is better able to communicate with the parents. Professor Jusczyk has made a particular study of babies ability to recognise sounds, and says they recognise the sound of their own names as early as four and a half months. Babies know the meaning of Mummy and Daddy by about six months, which is earlier than was previously believed. By about nine months, babies begin recognizing frequent patterns in language. A baby will listen longer to the sounds that occur frequently, so it is good to frequently call the infant by its name. An experiment at Johns Hopkins University in USA, in which researchers went to the homes of 16 nine-month-olds, confirms this view. The researchers arranged their visits for ten days out of a two week period. During each visit the researcher played an audio tape that included the same three stories. The stories included odd words such as python or hornbill, words that were unlikely to be encountered in the babies everyday experience. After a couple of weeks during which nothing was done, the babies were brought to the research lab, where they listened to two recorded lists of words. The first list included words heard in the story. The second included similar words, but not the exact ones that were used in the stories. Jusczyk found the babies listened longer to the words that had appeared in the stories, which indicated that the babies had extracted individual words from the story. When a control group of 16 nine-month-olds, who had not heard the stories, listened to the two groups of words, they showed no preference for either list. This does not mean that the babies actually understand the meanings of the words, just the sound patterns. It supports the idea that people are born to speak, and have the capacity to learn language from the day they are born. This ability is enhanced if they are involved in conversation. And, significantly, Or Eliot reminds parents that babies and toddlers need to feel they are communicating. Clearly, sitting in front of the television is not enough; the baby must be having an interaction with another speaker. | Dr Golinkoff is concerned that baby talk is spoken too much by some parents. | c |
id_2976 | How Babies learn Language During the first year of a childs life, parents and carers are concerned with its physical development; during the second year, they watch the babys language development very carefully. It is interesting just how easily children learn language. Children who are just three or four years old, who cannot yet tie their shoelaces, are able to speak in full sentences without any specific language training. The current view of child language development is that it is an instinct-something as natural as eating or sleeping. According to experts in this area, this language instinct is innate something each of us is born with. But this prevailing view has not always enjoyed widespread acceptance. In the middle of last century, experts of the time, including a renowned professor at Harvard University in the United States, regarded child language development as the process of learning through mere repetition. Language habits developed as young children were rewarded for repeating language correctly and ignored or punished when they used incorrect forms of language. Over time, a child, according to this theory, would learn language much like a dog might learn to behave properly through training. Yet even though the modern view holds that language is instinctive, experts like Assistant Professor Use Eliot are convinced that the interaction a child has with its parents and caregivers is crucial to its developments. The language of the parents and caregivers act as models for the developing child. In fact, a babys day-to-day experience is so important that the child will learn to speak in a manner very similar to the model speakers it hears. Given that the models parents provide are so important, it is interesting to consider the role of baby talk in the childs language development. Baby talk is the language produced by an adult speaker who is trying to exaggerate certain aspects of the language to capture the attention of a young baby. Dr Roberta Golinkoff believes that babies benefit from baby talk. Experiments show that immediately after birth babies respond more to infant-directed talk than they do to adult-directed talk. When using baby talk, people exaggerate their facial expressions, which helps the baby to begin to understand what is being communicated. She also notes that the exaggerated nature and repetition of baby talk helps infants to learn the difference between sounds. Since babies have a great deal of information to process, baby talk helps. Although there is concern that baby talk may persist too long, Dr Golinkoff says that it stops being used as the child gets older, that is, when the child is better able to communicate with the parents. Professor Jusczyk has made a particular study of babies ability to recognise sounds, and says they recognise the sound of their own names as early as four and a half months. Babies know the meaning of Mummy and Daddy by about six months, which is earlier than was previously believed. By about nine months, babies begin recognizing frequent patterns in language. A baby will listen longer to the sounds that occur frequently, so it is good to frequently call the infant by its name. An experiment at Johns Hopkins University in USA, in which researchers went to the homes of 16 nine-month-olds, confirms this view. The researchers arranged their visits for ten days out of a two week period. During each visit the researcher played an audio tape that included the same three stories. The stories included odd words such as python or hornbill, words that were unlikely to be encountered in the babies everyday experience. After a couple of weeks during which nothing was done, the babies were brought to the research lab, where they listened to two recorded lists of words. The first list included words heard in the story. The second included similar words, but not the exact ones that were used in the stories. Jusczyk found the babies listened longer to the words that had appeared in the stories, which indicated that the babies had extracted individual words from the story. When a control group of 16 nine-month-olds, who had not heard the stories, listened to the two groups of words, they showed no preference for either list. This does not mean that the babies actually understand the meanings of the words, just the sound patterns. It supports the idea that people are born to speak, and have the capacity to learn language from the day they are born. This ability is enhanced if they are involved in conversation. And, significantly, Or Eliot reminds parents that babies and toddlers need to feel they are communicating. Clearly, sitting in front of the television is not enough; the baby must be having an interaction with another speaker. | The first word a child learns to recognise is usually Mummy or Daddy. | c |
id_2977 | How Children Learn The way in which children learn is an ever-growing area of study. It is obvious that children differ from adult learners in many ways, but what is interesting is that there are also quite a number of surprising commonalities across all learners of all ages. A study of young children fulfils two purposes: it helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the learners who populate a nations schools, and it offers a window into the development of learning that cannot be seen if one considers only well-established learning patterns and expertise. When an observer studies the development of children over time, a dynamic picture of learning unfolds. An understanding of infant thinking mental processes or cognition and how young children from 2 to 5 years old add information to their knowledge data base helps child psychologists to better equip students for their transition into formal school settings. For much of the 20th century, most psychologists accepted the traditional thesis that a newborns mind is a tabula rasa or blank slate upon which the record of experience is gradually impressed. It was further thought that verbal communication was a prerequisite for abstract thought and so, in its absence, a baby could not have comprehension. Since babies are born with a limited range of behaviours and spend most of their early months asleep, they certainly appear passive and unknowing. Therefore, it was commonly thought that infants lack the ability to form complex ideas. Until recently, there was no obvious way for them to demonstrate anything to the contrary to researchers. In time however, challenges to this view arose. It became clear that with carefully designed scientific procedures, psychologists could find ways to pose rather complex questions about how much infants and young children know and what they are capable of doing. Psychologists began to employ new methodologies and began to gather a substantial amount of data about the remarkable abilities that young children possess. Their research stood in great contrast to the older emphases which focussed almost entirely on what children lacked. The mind of young children came to life through this research, it became clear that very young children are both competent and active when it comes to their conceptual development. A major move away from the earlier tabula rasa view of the infant mind was taken by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Beginning in the 1920s, Piaget argued that the young human mind could best be described in terms of complex cognitive or thinking structures. From close observations of infants and careful questioning of children, he concluded that the development of the mind proceeds through certain stages, each involving radically different thinking processes. Piaget observed that infants actually seek stimulation from their surroundings thus promoting their intellectual development. He showed that their initial representations of such things as space and time as well as awareness of objects and self are constructed only gradually during the first 2 years. He concluded that understanding in young infants is built up through the gradual coordination of sight, sound and touch. After Piaget, perceptual learning theorists studied how newborns begin to integrate sight and sound and explore their surroundings. They saw that learning in infants proceeded rapidly when they were given the opportunity to explore the objects and events they encountered. Theories were developed which attempted to describe how the brain processes information. It was around this time that the metaphor of the mind as computer came into wide usage. In order to study what babies know and can learn about readily, researchers needed to develop techniques of asking infants what they know. Because infants are so limited physically and verbally, experimenters interested in finding out how babies think had to find methods suitable to an infants motor capabilities. New ways were developed for measuring what infants prefer to look at and detecting changes in events to which they are sensitive. Three such methods that were used were sucking, habituation, and visual expectation. Although theories put forward during this time differed in many ways, they shared an emphasis on considering children as active learners, those who actually assemble and organise information. Therefore, primarily cognitive development involves the acquisition of organised knowledge such as, an early understanding of basic physics, some biological concepts and early number sense. In addition, cognitive development involves gradually learning strategies for solving problems, understanding and remembering. The active role of learners was also emphasized by Vygotsky, who focused on the role of social support in learning. According to Vygotsky, all cognitive skills and patterns of thinking are not primarily determined by the skills people are born with; they are the products of the activities practiced in the social environment in which the individual grows up. From Vygotskys research into the role of the social environment in the development of thinking came what he called a zone of proximal development. This zone which refers to tasks learners can do with the assistance of others, had a big impact upon developmental psychology. This line of work has drawn attention to the roles of parents, and teachers in challenging and extending childrens efforts to understand. It has also contributed to an understanding of the relationship between formal and informal teaching as well as learning situations and cognition. | Vygotskys research has had a positive impact upon many primary school teachers. | e |
id_2978 | How Children Learn The way in which children learn is an ever-growing area of study. It is obvious that children differ from adult learners in many ways, but what is interesting is that there are also quite a number of surprising commonalities across all learners of all ages. A study of young children fulfils two purposes: it helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the learners who populate a nations schools, and it offers a window into the development of learning that cannot be seen if one considers only well-established learning patterns and expertise. When an observer studies the development of children over time, a dynamic picture of learning unfolds. An understanding of infant thinking mental processes or cognition and how young children from 2 to 5 years old add information to their knowledge data base helps child psychologists to better equip students for their transition into formal school settings. For much of the 20th century, most psychologists accepted the traditional thesis that a newborns mind is a tabula rasa or blank slate upon which the record of experience is gradually impressed. It was further thought that verbal communication was a prerequisite for abstract thought and so, in its absence, a baby could not have comprehension. Since babies are born with a limited range of behaviours and spend most of their early months asleep, they certainly appear passive and unknowing. Therefore, it was commonly thought that infants lack the ability to form complex ideas. Until recently, there was no obvious way for them to demonstrate anything to the contrary to researchers. In time however, challenges to this view arose. It became clear that with carefully designed scientific procedures, psychologists could find ways to pose rather complex questions about how much infants and young children know and what they are capable of doing. Psychologists began to employ new methodologies and began to gather a substantial amount of data about the remarkable abilities that young children possess. Their research stood in great contrast to the older emphases which focussed almost entirely on what children lacked. The mind of young children came to life through this research, it became clear that very young children are both competent and active when it comes to their conceptual development. A major move away from the earlier tabula rasa view of the infant mind was taken by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Beginning in the 1920s, Piaget argued that the young human mind could best be described in terms of complex cognitive or thinking structures. From close observations of infants and careful questioning of children, he concluded that the development of the mind proceeds through certain stages, each involving radically different thinking processes. Piaget observed that infants actually seek stimulation from their surroundings thus promoting their intellectual development. He showed that their initial representations of such things as space and time as well as awareness of objects and self are constructed only gradually during the first 2 years. He concluded that understanding in young infants is built up through the gradual coordination of sight, sound and touch. After Piaget, perceptual learning theorists studied how newborns begin to integrate sight and sound and explore their surroundings. They saw that learning in infants proceeded rapidly when they were given the opportunity to explore the objects and events they encountered. Theories were developed which attempted to describe how the brain processes information. It was around this time that the metaphor of the mind as computer came into wide usage. In order to study what babies know and can learn about readily, researchers needed to develop techniques of asking infants what they know. Because infants are so limited physically and verbally, experimenters interested in finding out how babies think had to find methods suitable to an infants motor capabilities. New ways were developed for measuring what infants prefer to look at and detecting changes in events to which they are sensitive. Three such methods that were used were sucking, habituation, and visual expectation. Although theories put forward during this time differed in many ways, they shared an emphasis on considering children as active learners, those who actually assemble and organise information. Therefore, primarily cognitive development involves the acquisition of organised knowledge such as, an early understanding of basic physics, some biological concepts and early number sense. In addition, cognitive development involves gradually learning strategies for solving problems, understanding and remembering. The active role of learners was also emphasized by Vygotsky, who focused on the role of social support in learning. According to Vygotsky, all cognitive skills and patterns of thinking are not primarily determined by the skills people are born with; they are the products of the activities practiced in the social environment in which the individual grows up. From Vygotskys research into the role of the social environment in the development of thinking came what he called a zone of proximal development. This zone which refers to tasks learners can do with the assistance of others, had a big impact upon developmental psychology. This line of work has drawn attention to the roles of parents, and teachers in challenging and extending childrens efforts to understand. It has also contributed to an understanding of the relationship between formal and informal teaching as well as learning situations and cognition. | The focus of early research methods in child development have been similar to those conducted more recently. | c |
id_2979 | How Children Learn The way in which children learn is an ever-growing area of study. It is obvious that children differ from adult learners in many ways, but what is interesting is that there are also quite a number of surprising commonalities across all learners of all ages. A study of young children fulfils two purposes: it helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the learners who populate a nations schools, and it offers a window into the development of learning that cannot be seen if one considers only well-established learning patterns and expertise. When an observer studies the development of children over time, a dynamic picture of learning unfolds. An understanding of infant thinking mental processes or cognition and how young children from 2 to 5 years old add information to their knowledge data base helps child psychologists to better equip students for their transition into formal school settings. For much of the 20th century, most psychologists accepted the traditional thesis that a newborns mind is a tabula rasa or blank slate upon which the record of experience is gradually impressed. It was further thought that verbal communication was a prerequisite for abstract thought and so, in its absence, a baby could not have comprehension. Since babies are born with a limited range of behaviours and spend most of their early months asleep, they certainly appear passive and unknowing. Therefore, it was commonly thought that infants lack the ability to form complex ideas. Until recently, there was no obvious way for them to demonstrate anything to the contrary to researchers. In time however, challenges to this view arose. It became clear that with carefully designed scientific procedures, psychologists could find ways to pose rather complex questions about how much infants and young children know and what they are capable of doing. Psychologists began to employ new methodologies and began to gather a substantial amount of data about the remarkable abilities that young children possess. Their research stood in great contrast to the older emphases which focussed almost entirely on what children lacked. The mind of young children came to life through this research, it became clear that very young children are both competent and active when it comes to their conceptual development. A major move away from the earlier tabula rasa view of the infant mind was taken by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Beginning in the 1920s, Piaget argued that the young human mind could best be described in terms of complex cognitive or thinking structures. From close observations of infants and careful questioning of children, he concluded that the development of the mind proceeds through certain stages, each involving radically different thinking processes. Piaget observed that infants actually seek stimulation from their surroundings thus promoting their intellectual development. He showed that their initial representations of such things as space and time as well as awareness of objects and self are constructed only gradually during the first 2 years. He concluded that understanding in young infants is built up through the gradual coordination of sight, sound and touch. After Piaget, perceptual learning theorists studied how newborns begin to integrate sight and sound and explore their surroundings. They saw that learning in infants proceeded rapidly when they were given the opportunity to explore the objects and events they encountered. Theories were developed which attempted to describe how the brain processes information. It was around this time that the metaphor of the mind as computer came into wide usage. In order to study what babies know and can learn about readily, researchers needed to develop techniques of asking infants what they know. Because infants are so limited physically and verbally, experimenters interested in finding out how babies think had to find methods suitable to an infants motor capabilities. New ways were developed for measuring what infants prefer to look at and detecting changes in events to which they are sensitive. Three such methods that were used were sucking, habituation, and visual expectation. Although theories put forward during this time differed in many ways, they shared an emphasis on considering children as active learners, those who actually assemble and organise information. Therefore, primarily cognitive development involves the acquisition of organised knowledge such as, an early understanding of basic physics, some biological concepts and early number sense. In addition, cognitive development involves gradually learning strategies for solving problems, understanding and remembering. The active role of learners was also emphasized by Vygotsky, who focused on the role of social support in learning. According to Vygotsky, all cognitive skills and patterns of thinking are not primarily determined by the skills people are born with; they are the products of the activities practiced in the social environment in which the individual grows up. From Vygotskys research into the role of the social environment in the development of thinking came what he called a zone of proximal development. This zone which refers to tasks learners can do with the assistance of others, had a big impact upon developmental psychology. This line of work has drawn attention to the roles of parents, and teachers in challenging and extending childrens efforts to understand. It has also contributed to an understanding of the relationship between formal and informal teaching as well as learning situations and cognition. | Piaget showed that each new stage of learning builds upon the previous one. | c |
id_2980 | How Children Learn The way in which children learn is an ever-growing area of study. It is obvious that children differ from adult learners in many ways, but what is interesting is that there are also quite a number of surprising commonalities across all learners of all ages. A study of young children fulfils two purposes: it helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the learners who populate a nations schools, and it offers a window into the development of learning that cannot be seen if one considers only well-established learning patterns and expertise. When an observer studies the development of children over time, a dynamic picture of learning unfolds. An understanding of infant thinking mental processes or cognition and how young children from 2 to 5 years old add information to their knowledge data base helps child psychologists to better equip students for their transition into formal school settings. For much of the 20th century, most psychologists accepted the traditional thesis that a newborns mind is a tabula rasa or blank slate upon which the record of experience is gradually impressed. It was further thought that verbal communication was a prerequisite for abstract thought and so, in its absence, a baby could not have comprehension. Since babies are born with a limited range of behaviours and spend most of their early months asleep, they certainly appear passive and unknowing. Therefore, it was commonly thought that infants lack the ability to form complex ideas. Until recently, there was no obvious way for them to demonstrate anything to the contrary to researchers. In time however, challenges to this view arose. It became clear that with carefully designed scientific procedures, psychologists could find ways to pose rather complex questions about how much infants and young children know and what they are capable of doing. Psychologists began to employ new methodologies and began to gather a substantial amount of data about the remarkable abilities that young children possess. Their research stood in great contrast to the older emphases which focussed almost entirely on what children lacked. The mind of young children came to life through this research, it became clear that very young children are both competent and active when it comes to their conceptual development. A major move away from the earlier tabula rasa view of the infant mind was taken by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Beginning in the 1920s, Piaget argued that the young human mind could best be described in terms of complex cognitive or thinking structures. From close observations of infants and careful questioning of children, he concluded that the development of the mind proceeds through certain stages, each involving radically different thinking processes. Piaget observed that infants actually seek stimulation from their surroundings thus promoting their intellectual development. He showed that their initial representations of such things as space and time as well as awareness of objects and self are constructed only gradually during the first 2 years. He concluded that understanding in young infants is built up through the gradual coordination of sight, sound and touch. After Piaget, perceptual learning theorists studied how newborns begin to integrate sight and sound and explore their surroundings. They saw that learning in infants proceeded rapidly when they were given the opportunity to explore the objects and events they encountered. Theories were developed which attempted to describe how the brain processes information. It was around this time that the metaphor of the mind as computer came into wide usage. In order to study what babies know and can learn about readily, researchers needed to develop techniques of asking infants what they know. Because infants are so limited physically and verbally, experimenters interested in finding out how babies think had to find methods suitable to an infants motor capabilities. New ways were developed for measuring what infants prefer to look at and detecting changes in events to which they are sensitive. Three such methods that were used were sucking, habituation, and visual expectation. Although theories put forward during this time differed in many ways, they shared an emphasis on considering children as active learners, those who actually assemble and organise information. Therefore, primarily cognitive development involves the acquisition of organised knowledge such as, an early understanding of basic physics, some biological concepts and early number sense. In addition, cognitive development involves gradually learning strategies for solving problems, understanding and remembering. The active role of learners was also emphasized by Vygotsky, who focused on the role of social support in learning. According to Vygotsky, all cognitive skills and patterns of thinking are not primarily determined by the skills people are born with; they are the products of the activities practiced in the social environment in which the individual grows up. From Vygotskys research into the role of the social environment in the development of thinking came what he called a zone of proximal development. This zone which refers to tasks learners can do with the assistance of others, had a big impact upon developmental psychology. This line of work has drawn attention to the roles of parents, and teachers in challenging and extending childrens efforts to understand. It has also contributed to an understanding of the relationship between formal and informal teaching as well as learning situations and cognition. | In many ways, children learn the same way adults learn. | e |
id_2981 | How Children Learn The way in which children learn is an ever-growing area of study. It is obvious that children differ from adult learners in many ways, but what is interesting is that there are also quite a number of surprising commonalities across all learners of all ages. A study of young children fulfils two purposes: it helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the learners who populate a nations schools, and it offers a window into the development of learning that cannot be seen if one considers only well-established learning patterns and expertise. When an observer studies the development of children over time, a dynamic picture of learning unfolds. An understanding of infant thinking mental processes or cognition and how young children from 2 to 5 years old add information to their knowledge data base helps child psychologists to better equip students for their transition into formal school settings. For much of the 20th century, most psychologists accepted the traditional thesis that a newborns mind is a tabula rasa or blank slate upon which the record of experience is gradually impressed. It was further thought that verbal communication was a prerequisite for abstract thought and so, in its absence, a baby could not have comprehension. Since babies are born with a limited range of behaviours and spend most of their early months asleep, they certainly appear passive and unknowing. Therefore, it was commonly thought that infants lack the ability to form complex ideas. Until recently, there was no obvious way for them to demonstrate anything to the contrary to researchers. In time however, challenges to this view arose. It became clear that with carefully designed scientific procedures, psychologists could find ways to pose rather complex questions about how much infants and young children know and what they are capable of doing. Psychologists began to employ new methodologies and began to gather a substantial amount of data about the remarkable abilities that young children possess. Their research stood in great contrast to the older emphases which focussed almost entirely on what children lacked. The mind of young children came to life through this research, it became clear that very young children are both competent and active when it comes to their conceptual development. A major move away from the earlier tabula rasa view of the infant mind was taken by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Beginning in the 1920s, Piaget argued that the young human mind could best be described in terms of complex cognitive or thinking structures. From close observations of infants and careful questioning of children, he concluded that the development of the mind proceeds through certain stages, each involving radically different thinking processes. Piaget observed that infants actually seek stimulation from their surroundings thus promoting their intellectual development. He showed that their initial representations of such things as space and time as well as awareness of objects and self are constructed only gradually during the first 2 years. He concluded that understanding in young infants is built up through the gradual coordination of sight, sound and touch. After Piaget, perceptual learning theorists studied how newborns begin to integrate sight and sound and explore their surroundings. They saw that learning in infants proceeded rapidly when they were given the opportunity to explore the objects and events they encountered. Theories were developed which attempted to describe how the brain processes information. It was around this time that the metaphor of the mind as computer came into wide usage. In order to study what babies know and can learn about readily, researchers needed to develop techniques of asking infants what they know. Because infants are so limited physically and verbally, experimenters interested in finding out how babies think had to find methods suitable to an infants motor capabilities. New ways were developed for measuring what infants prefer to look at and detecting changes in events to which they are sensitive. Three such methods that were used were sucking, habituation, and visual expectation. Although theories put forward during this time differed in many ways, they shared an emphasis on considering children as active learners, those who actually assemble and organise information. Therefore, primarily cognitive development involves the acquisition of organised knowledge such as, an early understanding of basic physics, some biological concepts and early number sense. In addition, cognitive development involves gradually learning strategies for solving problems, understanding and remembering. The active role of learners was also emphasized by Vygotsky, who focused on the role of social support in learning. According to Vygotsky, all cognitive skills and patterns of thinking are not primarily determined by the skills people are born with; they are the products of the activities practiced in the social environment in which the individual grows up. From Vygotskys research into the role of the social environment in the development of thinking came what he called a zone of proximal development. This zone which refers to tasks learners can do with the assistance of others, had a big impact upon developmental psychology. This line of work has drawn attention to the roles of parents, and teachers in challenging and extending childrens efforts to understand. It has also contributed to an understanding of the relationship between formal and informal teaching as well as learning situations and cognition. | 20th century psychologists thought infants were unintelligent because they were usually asleep. | e |
id_2982 | How Private Universities Could Help to Improve Public Ones There are many rich Germans. In 2003 private assets are estimated to have been worth 5 trillion ($5.6 trillion), half of which belongs to the richest tenth of the population. But with money comes stinginess, especially when it comes to giving to higher education. America devotes twice as much of its income to universities and colleges as Germany (2.6% of GDP, against 1.1%) mainly because of higher private spendingand bigger donations. Next year's figures should be less embarrassing. In November Klaus Jacobs, a German-born billionaire living abroad, announced that he would donate 200m to the International University Bremen ( IUB )the biggest such gift ever. It saved the IUB , Germany's only fully fledged private and international university (with 30 programmes and 1,000 students from 86 countries) from bankruptcy. It may also soften the country's still rigid approach to higher education. German higher education has long been almost entirely a state-run affair, not least because universities were meant to produce top civil servants. After 1945 the German states were put in charge, deciding on such details as examination and admission rules. Reforms in the 1970s made things worse by strengthening, in the name of democracy, a layer of bureaucracy in the form of committees of self-governance. Tuition fees were scrapped in the name of access for all. But ever-rising student numbers then met ever-shrinking budgets, so the reforms backfired. Today the number of college drop-outs is among the highest in the rich world, making tertiary education an elite activity: only 22% of young Germans obtain a degree, compared with 31% in Britain and 39% in America. German universities come low in world rankings, so good students often go abroad. In the 1980s it was hoped that private universities might make a difference. Witten-Herdecke University, founded in 1980, was the first. Teaching at IUB, which will change its name to Jacobs University soon, began in 2001. Today, there are 69 (non-faith-based) private institutions of higher learning, up from 24 a decade ago. There is growing competition, particularly among business schools. At the same time the states have been introducing private enterprise into higher education. In 2003 Lower Saxony turned five universities into foundations, with more autonomy. Others have won more control over their own budgets. Some states have also started to charge tuition fees. And in October a jury announced the winners of the first round of the excellence initiativea national competition among universities for extra cash. Yet all this has led to only small improvements. Private universities educate only 3% of Germany's 2m-odd students, which may be why they find it hard to raise money. It also explains why many focus on lucrative subjects, such as the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. Others have come to depend on public money. Only recently have rich individuals' foundations made big investments, as at IUB or at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Public universities, meanwhile, still have not been granted much autonomy. There is less direct control, but far more administered competition: a new bureaucracy to check the achievement of certain goals. This might all be avoided through price competition, but tuition fees, now 1,000 a year on average, are fixed centrally by each state. The excellence initiative is a mere drop in the bucket. That is why Mr. Jacobs's donation matters. For the first time, Germany will have a private university worth the name and with a solid financial footing (if it keeps up its academic performance, that is: Mr Jacobs has promised to donate 15m annually over the next five years and another 125m in 2011 to boost the endowment, but only if things go well) If it works, other rich Germans may be tempted into investing in higher education too. Even so, private universities will play a small part in German higher education for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that public universities should be privatised. But they need more autonomy and an incentive to compete with one anotherwhether for students, staff or donors. With luck, Mr Jacobs's gift will not only induce other German billionaires to follow suit, but also help to persuade the states to set their universities free. | Mr. Jacobs donation to the IUB is more likely to result in a firmer approach to the managemnt of German higher education. | c |
id_2983 | How Private Universities Could Help to Improve Public Ones There are many rich Germans. In 2003 private assets are estimated to have been worth 5 trillion ($5.6 trillion), half of which belongs to the richest tenth of the population. But with money comes stinginess, especially when it comes to giving to higher education. America devotes twice as much of its income to universities and colleges as Germany (2.6% of GDP, against 1.1%) mainly because of higher private spendingand bigger donations. Next year's figures should be less embarrassing. In November Klaus Jacobs, a German-born billionaire living abroad, announced that he would donate 200m to the International University Bremen ( IUB )the biggest such gift ever. It saved the IUB , Germany's only fully fledged private and international university (with 30 programmes and 1,000 students from 86 countries) from bankruptcy. It may also soften the country's still rigid approach to higher education. German higher education has long been almost entirely a state-run affair, not least because universities were meant to produce top civil servants. After 1945 the German states were put in charge, deciding on such details as examination and admission rules. Reforms in the 1970s made things worse by strengthening, in the name of democracy, a layer of bureaucracy in the form of committees of self-governance. Tuition fees were scrapped in the name of access for all. But ever-rising student numbers then met ever-shrinking budgets, so the reforms backfired. Today the number of college drop-outs is among the highest in the rich world, making tertiary education an elite activity: only 22% of young Germans obtain a degree, compared with 31% in Britain and 39% in America. German universities come low in world rankings, so good students often go abroad. In the 1980s it was hoped that private universities might make a difference. Witten-Herdecke University, founded in 1980, was the first. Teaching at IUB, which will change its name to Jacobs University soon, began in 2001. Today, there are 69 (non-faith-based) private institutions of higher learning, up from 24 a decade ago. There is growing competition, particularly among business schools. At the same time the states have been introducing private enterprise into higher education. In 2003 Lower Saxony turned five universities into foundations, with more autonomy. Others have won more control over their own budgets. Some states have also started to charge tuition fees. And in October a jury announced the winners of the first round of the excellence initiativea national competition among universities for extra cash. Yet all this has led to only small improvements. Private universities educate only 3% of Germany's 2m-odd students, which may be why they find it hard to raise money. It also explains why many focus on lucrative subjects, such as the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. Others have come to depend on public money. Only recently have rich individuals' foundations made big investments, as at IUB or at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Public universities, meanwhile, still have not been granted much autonomy. There is less direct control, but far more administered competition: a new bureaucracy to check the achievement of certain goals. This might all be avoided through price competition, but tuition fees, now 1,000 a year on average, are fixed centrally by each state. The excellence initiative is a mere drop in the bucket. That is why Mr. Jacobs's donation matters. For the first time, Germany will have a private university worth the name and with a solid financial footing (if it keeps up its academic performance, that is: Mr Jacobs has promised to donate 15m annually over the next five years and another 125m in 2011 to boost the endowment, but only if things go well) If it works, other rich Germans may be tempted into investing in higher education too. Even so, private universities will play a small part in German higher education for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that public universities should be privatised. But they need more autonomy and an incentive to compete with one anotherwhether for students, staff or donors. With luck, Mr Jacobs's gift will not only induce other German billionaires to follow suit, but also help to persuade the states to set their universities free. | The reforms in the sector of German tertiaray education in the 1970s produced the opposite result to the one which it intended. | e |
id_2984 | How Private Universities Could Help to Improve Public Ones There are many rich Germans. In 2003 private assets are estimated to have been worth 5 trillion ($5.6 trillion), half of which belongs to the richest tenth of the population. But with money comes stinginess, especially when it comes to giving to higher education. America devotes twice as much of its income to universities and colleges as Germany (2.6% of GDP, against 1.1%) mainly because of higher private spendingand bigger donations. Next year's figures should be less embarrassing. In November Klaus Jacobs, a German-born billionaire living abroad, announced that he would donate 200m to the International University Bremen ( IUB )the biggest such gift ever. It saved the IUB , Germany's only fully fledged private and international university (with 30 programmes and 1,000 students from 86 countries) from bankruptcy. It may also soften the country's still rigid approach to higher education. German higher education has long been almost entirely a state-run affair, not least because universities were meant to produce top civil servants. After 1945 the German states were put in charge, deciding on such details as examination and admission rules. Reforms in the 1970s made things worse by strengthening, in the name of democracy, a layer of bureaucracy in the form of committees of self-governance. Tuition fees were scrapped in the name of access for all. But ever-rising student numbers then met ever-shrinking budgets, so the reforms backfired. Today the number of college drop-outs is among the highest in the rich world, making tertiary education an elite activity: only 22% of young Germans obtain a degree, compared with 31% in Britain and 39% in America. German universities come low in world rankings, so good students often go abroad. In the 1980s it was hoped that private universities might make a difference. Witten-Herdecke University, founded in 1980, was the first. Teaching at IUB, which will change its name to Jacobs University soon, began in 2001. Today, there are 69 (non-faith-based) private institutions of higher learning, up from 24 a decade ago. There is growing competition, particularly among business schools. At the same time the states have been introducing private enterprise into higher education. In 2003 Lower Saxony turned five universities into foundations, with more autonomy. Others have won more control over their own budgets. Some states have also started to charge tuition fees. And in October a jury announced the winners of the first round of the excellence initiativea national competition among universities for extra cash. Yet all this has led to only small improvements. Private universities educate only 3% of Germany's 2m-odd students, which may be why they find it hard to raise money. It also explains why many focus on lucrative subjects, such as the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. Others have come to depend on public money. Only recently have rich individuals' foundations made big investments, as at IUB or at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Public universities, meanwhile, still have not been granted much autonomy. There is less direct control, but far more administered competition: a new bureaucracy to check the achievement of certain goals. This might all be avoided through price competition, but tuition fees, now 1,000 a year on average, are fixed centrally by each state. The excellence initiative is a mere drop in the bucket. That is why Mr. Jacobs's donation matters. For the first time, Germany will have a private university worth the name and with a solid financial footing (if it keeps up its academic performance, that is: Mr Jacobs has promised to donate 15m annually over the next five years and another 125m in 2011 to boost the endowment, but only if things go well) If it works, other rich Germans may be tempted into investing in higher education too. Even so, private universities will play a small part in German higher education for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that public universities should be privatised. But they need more autonomy and an incentive to compete with one anotherwhether for students, staff or donors. With luck, Mr Jacobs's gift will not only induce other German billionaires to follow suit, but also help to persuade the states to set their universities free. | Mr. Jacob would like to donate 125 million annually over the next five years to IUB on the condition that things go well . | c |
id_2985 | How Private Universities Could Help to Improve Public Ones There are many rich Germans. In 2003 private assets are estimated to have been worth 5 trillion ($5.6 trillion), half of which belongs to the richest tenth of the population. But with money comes stinginess, especially when it comes to giving to higher education. America devotes twice as much of its income to universities and colleges as Germany (2.6% of GDP, against 1.1%) mainly because of higher private spendingand bigger donations. Next year's figures should be less embarrassing. In November Klaus Jacobs, a German-born billionaire living abroad, announced that he would donate 200m to the International University Bremen ( IUB )the biggest such gift ever. It saved the IUB , Germany's only fully fledged private and international university (with 30 programmes and 1,000 students from 86 countries) from bankruptcy. It may also soften the country's still rigid approach to higher education. German higher education has long been almost entirely a state-run affair, not least because universities were meant to produce top civil servants. After 1945 the German states were put in charge, deciding on such details as examination and admission rules. Reforms in the 1970s made things worse by strengthening, in the name of democracy, a layer of bureaucracy in the form of committees of self-governance. Tuition fees were scrapped in the name of access for all. But ever-rising student numbers then met ever-shrinking budgets, so the reforms backfired. Today the number of college drop-outs is among the highest in the rich world, making tertiary education an elite activity: only 22% of young Germans obtain a degree, compared with 31% in Britain and 39% in America. German universities come low in world rankings, so good students often go abroad. In the 1980s it was hoped that private universities might make a difference. Witten-Herdecke University, founded in 1980, was the first. Teaching at IUB, which will change its name to Jacobs University soon, began in 2001. Today, there are 69 (non-faith-based) private institutions of higher learning, up from 24 a decade ago. There is growing competition, particularly among business schools. At the same time the states have been introducing private enterprise into higher education. In 2003 Lower Saxony turned five universities into foundations, with more autonomy. Others have won more control over their own budgets. Some states have also started to charge tuition fees. And in October a jury announced the winners of the first round of the excellence initiativea national competition among universities for extra cash. Yet all this has led to only small improvements. Private universities educate only 3% of Germany's 2m-odd students, which may be why they find it hard to raise money. It also explains why many focus on lucrative subjects, such as the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. Others have come to depend on public money. Only recently have rich individuals' foundations made big investments, as at IUB or at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Public universities, meanwhile, still have not been granted much autonomy. There is less direct control, but far more administered competition: a new bureaucracy to check the achievement of certain goals. This might all be avoided through price competition, but tuition fees, now 1,000 a year on average, are fixed centrally by each state. The excellence initiative is a mere drop in the bucket. That is why Mr. Jacobs's donation matters. For the first time, Germany will have a private university worth the name and with a solid financial footing (if it keeps up its academic performance, that is: Mr Jacobs has promised to donate 15m annually over the next five years and another 125m in 2011 to boost the endowment, but only if things go well) If it works, other rich Germans may be tempted into investing in higher education too. Even so, private universities will play a small part in German higher education for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that public universities should be privatised. But they need more autonomy and an incentive to compete with one anotherwhether for students, staff or donors. With luck, Mr Jacobs's gift will not only induce other German billionaires to follow suit, but also help to persuade the states to set their universities free. | Private universities will continue to play a small role in German higher education for quite a long period of time in the future. | e |
id_2986 | How Private Universities Could Help to Improve Public Ones There are many rich Germans. In 2003 private assets are estimated to have been worth 5 trillion ($5.6 trillion), half of which belongs to the richest tenth of the population. But with money comes stinginess, especially when it comes to giving to higher education. America devotes twice as much of its income to universities and colleges as Germany (2.6% of GDP, against 1.1%) mainly because of higher private spendingand bigger donations. Next year's figures should be less embarrassing. In November Klaus Jacobs, a German-born billionaire living abroad, announced that he would donate 200m to the International University Bremen ( IUB )the biggest such gift ever. It saved the IUB , Germany's only fully fledged private and international university (with 30 programmes and 1,000 students from 86 countries) from bankruptcy. It may also soften the country's still rigid approach to higher education. German higher education has long been almost entirely a state-run affair, not least because universities were meant to produce top civil servants. After 1945 the German states were put in charge, deciding on such details as examination and admission rules. Reforms in the 1970s made things worse by strengthening, in the name of democracy, a layer of bureaucracy in the form of committees of self-governance. Tuition fees were scrapped in the name of access for all. But ever-rising student numbers then met ever-shrinking budgets, so the reforms backfired. Today the number of college drop-outs is among the highest in the rich world, making tertiary education an elite activity: only 22% of young Germans obtain a degree, compared with 31% in Britain and 39% in America. German universities come low in world rankings, so good students often go abroad. In the 1980s it was hoped that private universities might make a difference. Witten-Herdecke University, founded in 1980, was the first. Teaching at IUB, which will change its name to Jacobs University soon, began in 2001. Today, there are 69 (non-faith-based) private institutions of higher learning, up from 24 a decade ago. There is growing competition, particularly among business schools. At the same time the states have been introducing private enterprise into higher education. In 2003 Lower Saxony turned five universities into foundations, with more autonomy. Others have won more control over their own budgets. Some states have also started to charge tuition fees. And in October a jury announced the winners of the first round of the excellence initiativea national competition among universities for extra cash. Yet all this has led to only small improvements. Private universities educate only 3% of Germany's 2m-odd students, which may be why they find it hard to raise money. It also explains why many focus on lucrative subjects, such as the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. Others have come to depend on public money. Only recently have rich individuals' foundations made big investments, as at IUB or at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Public universities, meanwhile, still have not been granted much autonomy. There is less direct control, but far more administered competition: a new bureaucracy to check the achievement of certain goals. This might all be avoided through price competition, but tuition fees, now 1,000 a year on average, are fixed centrally by each state. The excellence initiative is a mere drop in the bucket. That is why Mr. Jacobs's donation matters. For the first time, Germany will have a private university worth the name and with a solid financial footing (if it keeps up its academic performance, that is: Mr Jacobs has promised to donate 15m annually over the next five years and another 125m in 2011 to boost the endowment, but only if things go well) If it works, other rich Germans may be tempted into investing in higher education too. Even so, private universities will play a small part in German higher education for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that public universities should be privatised. But they need more autonomy and an incentive to compete with one anotherwhether for students, staff or donors. With luck, Mr Jacobs's gift will not only induce other German billionaires to follow suit, but also help to persuade the states to set their universities free. | German higher education is a mainly state-run affair primarily because universities were intended to train top civil servants. | e |
id_2987 | How Private Universities Could Help to Improve Public Ones There are many rich Germans. In 2003 private assets are estimated to have been worth 5 trillion ($5.6 trillion), half of which belongs to the richest tenth of the population. But with money comes stinginess, especially when it comes to giving to higher education. America devotes twice as much of its income to universities and colleges as Germany (2.6% of GDP, against 1.1%) mainly because of higher private spendingand bigger donations. Next year's figures should be less embarrassing. In November Klaus Jacobs, a German-born billionaire living abroad, announced that he would donate 200m to the International University Bremen ( IUB )the biggest such gift ever. It saved the IUB , Germany's only fully fledged private and international university (with 30 programmes and 1,000 students from 86 countries) from bankruptcy. It may also soften the country's still rigid approach to higher education. German higher education has long been almost entirely a state-run affair, not least because universities were meant to produce top civil servants. After 1945 the German states were put in charge, deciding on such details as examination and admission rules. Reforms in the 1970s made things worse by strengthening, in the name of democracy, a layer of bureaucracy in the form of committees of self-governance. Tuition fees were scrapped in the name of access for all. But ever-rising student numbers then met ever-shrinking budgets, so the reforms backfired. Today the number of college drop-outs is among the highest in the rich world, making tertiary education an elite activity: only 22% of young Germans obtain a degree, compared with 31% in Britain and 39% in America. German universities come low in world rankings, so good students often go abroad. In the 1980s it was hoped that private universities might make a difference. Witten-Herdecke University, founded in 1980, was the first. Teaching at IUB, which will change its name to Jacobs University soon, began in 2001. Today, there are 69 (non-faith-based) private institutions of higher learning, up from 24 a decade ago. There is growing competition, particularly among business schools. At the same time the states have been introducing private enterprise into higher education. In 2003 Lower Saxony turned five universities into foundations, with more autonomy. Others have won more control over their own budgets. Some states have also started to charge tuition fees. And in October a jury announced the winners of the first round of the excellence initiativea national competition among universities for extra cash. Yet all this has led to only small improvements. Private universities educate only 3% of Germany's 2m-odd students, which may be why they find it hard to raise money. It also explains why many focus on lucrative subjects, such as the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. Others have come to depend on public money. Only recently have rich individuals' foundations made big investments, as at IUB or at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Public universities, meanwhile, still have not been granted much autonomy. There is less direct control, but far more administered competition: a new bureaucracy to check the achievement of certain goals. This might all be avoided through price competition, but tuition fees, now 1,000 a year on average, are fixed centrally by each state. The excellence initiative is a mere drop in the bucket. That is why Mr. Jacobs's donation matters. For the first time, Germany will have a private university worth the name and with a solid financial footing (if it keeps up its academic performance, that is: Mr Jacobs has promised to donate 15m annually over the next five years and another 125m in 2011 to boost the endowment, but only if things go well) If it works, other rich Germans may be tempted into investing in higher education too. Even so, private universities will play a small part in German higher education for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that public universities should be privatised. But they need more autonomy and an incentive to compete with one anotherwhether for students, staff or donors. With luck, Mr Jacobs's gift will not only induce other German billionaires to follow suit, but also help to persuade the states to set their universities free. | The Bucerius Law School in Hamburg offers profitable business opprtunities for its students to make money for tuition fees. | n |
id_2988 | How a Frenchman is reviving McDonald's in Europe When Denis Hennequin took over as the European boss of McDonald's in January 2004, the world's biggest restaurant chain was showing signs of recovery in America and Australia, but sales in Europe were sluggish or declining. One exception was France, where Mr Hennequin had done a sterling job as head of the group's French subsidiary to sell more Big Macs to his compatriots. His task was to replicate this success in all 41 of the European countries where anti-globalisers' favourite enemy operates. So far Mr Hennequin is doing well. Last year European sales increased by 5.8% and the number of customers by 3.4%, the best annual results in nearly 15 years. Europe accounted for 36% of the group's profits and for 28% of its sales. December was an especially good month as customers took to seasonal menu offerings in France and Britain, and to a promotion in Germany based on the game of Monopoly. Mr Hennequin's recipe for revival is to be more open about his company's operations, to be locally relevant, and to improve the experience of visiting his 6,400 restaurants. McDonald's is blamed for making people fat, exploiting workers, treating animals cruelly, polluting the environment and simply for being American. Mr Hennequin says he wants to engage in a dialogue with the public to address these concerns. He introduced open door visitor days in each country which became hugely popular. In Poland alone some 50,000 visitors came to McDonald's through the visitors' programme last year. The Nutrition Information Initiative, launched last year, put detailed labels on McDonald's packaging with data on calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and salt content. The details are also printed on tray-liners. Mr Hennequin also wants people to know that McJobs, the low-paid menial jobs at McDonald's restaurants, are much better than people think. But some of his efforts have backfired: last year he sparked a controversy with the introduction of a McPassport that allows McDonald's employees to work anywhere in the European Union. Politicians accused the firm of a ploy to make cheap labour from eastern Europe more easily available to McDonald's managers across the continent. To stay in touch with local needs and preferences, McDonald's employs local bosses as much as possible. A Russian is running McDonald's in Russia, though a Serb is in charge of Germany. The group buys mainly from local suppliers. Four-fifths of its supplies in France come from local farmers, for example. (Some of the French farmers who campaigned against the company in the late 1990s subsequently discovered that it was, in fact, buying their produce. ) And it hires celebrities such as Heidi Klum, a German model, as local brand ambassadors. In his previous job Mr Hennequin established a design studio in France to spruce up his company's drab restaurants and adapt the interior to local tastes. The studio is now masterminding improvements everywhere in Europe. He also set up a food studio, where cooks devise new recipes in response to local trends. Given France's reputation as the most anti-American country in Europe, it seems odd that McDonald's revival in Europe is being led by a Frenchman, using ideas cooked up in the French market. But France is in fact the company's most profitable market after America. The market where McDonald's is weakest in Europe is not France, but Britain. Fixing Britain should be his priority, says David Palmer, a restaurant analyst at UBS. Almost two-thirds of the 1,214 McDonald's restaurants in Britain are company-owned, compared with 40% in Europe and 15% in America. The company suffers from the volatility of sales at its own restaurants, but can rely on steady income from franchisees. So it should sell as many underperforming outlets as possible, says Mr Palmer. M. Mark Wiltamuth, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, estimates that European company-owned restaurants' margins will increase slightly to 16.4% in 2007. This is still less than in the late 1990s and below America's 18-19% today. But it is much better than before Mr Hennequin's reign. He is already being tipped as the first European candidate for the group's top job in Illinois. Nobody would call that a McJob. | McDonald was showing the sign of recovery in all European countries except France after Denis Hennequin took office as the boss of Euro-markets. | c |
id_2989 | How a Frenchman is reviving McDonald's in Europe When Denis Hennequin took over as the European boss of McDonald's in January 2004, the world's biggest restaurant chain was showing signs of recovery in America and Australia, but sales in Europe were sluggish or declining. One exception was France, where Mr Hennequin had done a sterling job as head of the group's French subsidiary to sell more Big Macs to his compatriots. His task was to replicate this success in all 41 of the European countries where anti-globalisers' favourite enemy operates. So far Mr Hennequin is doing well. Last year European sales increased by 5.8% and the number of customers by 3.4%, the best annual results in nearly 15 years. Europe accounted for 36% of the group's profits and for 28% of its sales. December was an especially good month as customers took to seasonal menu offerings in France and Britain, and to a promotion in Germany based on the game of Monopoly. Mr Hennequin's recipe for revival is to be more open about his company's operations, to be locally relevant, and to improve the experience of visiting his 6,400 restaurants. McDonald's is blamed for making people fat, exploiting workers, treating animals cruelly, polluting the environment and simply for being American. Mr Hennequin says he wants to engage in a dialogue with the public to address these concerns. He introduced open door visitor days in each country which became hugely popular. In Poland alone some 50,000 visitors came to McDonald's through the visitors' programme last year. The Nutrition Information Initiative, launched last year, put detailed labels on McDonald's packaging with data on calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and salt content. The details are also printed on tray-liners. Mr Hennequin also wants people to know that McJobs, the low-paid menial jobs at McDonald's restaurants, are much better than people think. But some of his efforts have backfired: last year he sparked a controversy with the introduction of a McPassport that allows McDonald's employees to work anywhere in the European Union. Politicians accused the firm of a ploy to make cheap labour from eastern Europe more easily available to McDonald's managers across the continent. To stay in touch with local needs and preferences, McDonald's employs local bosses as much as possible. A Russian is running McDonald's in Russia, though a Serb is in charge of Germany. The group buys mainly from local suppliers. Four-fifths of its supplies in France come from local farmers, for example. (Some of the French farmers who campaigned against the company in the late 1990s subsequently discovered that it was, in fact, buying their produce. ) And it hires celebrities such as Heidi Klum, a German model, as local brand ambassadors. In his previous job Mr Hennequin established a design studio in France to spruce up his company's drab restaurants and adapt the interior to local tastes. The studio is now masterminding improvements everywhere in Europe. He also set up a food studio, where cooks devise new recipes in response to local trends. Given France's reputation as the most anti-American country in Europe, it seems odd that McDonald's revival in Europe is being led by a Frenchman, using ideas cooked up in the French market. But France is in fact the company's most profitable market after America. The market where McDonald's is weakest in Europe is not France, but Britain. Fixing Britain should be his priority, says David Palmer, a restaurant analyst at UBS. Almost two-thirds of the 1,214 McDonald's restaurants in Britain are company-owned, compared with 40% in Europe and 15% in America. The company suffers from the volatility of sales at its own restaurants, but can rely on steady income from franchisees. So it should sell as many underperforming outlets as possible, says Mr Palmer. M. Mark Wiltamuth, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, estimates that European company-owned restaurants' margins will increase slightly to 16.4% in 2007. This is still less than in the late 1990s and below America's 18-19% today. But it is much better than before Mr Hennequin's reign. He is already being tipped as the first European candidate for the group's top job in Illinois. Nobody would call that a McJob. | Starting from last year, detailed labels are put on McDonalds packaging and detailed information is also printed on tray-liners. | e |
id_2990 | How a Frenchman is reviving McDonald's in Europe When Denis Hennequin took over as the European boss of McDonald's in January 2004, the world's biggest restaurant chain was showing signs of recovery in America and Australia, but sales in Europe were sluggish or declining. One exception was France, where Mr Hennequin had done a sterling job as head of the group's French subsidiary to sell more Big Macs to his compatriots. His task was to replicate this success in all 41 of the European countries where anti-globalisers' favourite enemy operates. So far Mr Hennequin is doing well. Last year European sales increased by 5.8% and the number of customers by 3.4%, the best annual results in nearly 15 years. Europe accounted for 36% of the group's profits and for 28% of its sales. December was an especially good month as customers took to seasonal menu offerings in France and Britain, and to a promotion in Germany based on the game of Monopoly. Mr Hennequin's recipe for revival is to be more open about his company's operations, to be locally relevant, and to improve the experience of visiting his 6,400 restaurants. McDonald's is blamed for making people fat, exploiting workers, treating animals cruelly, polluting the environment and simply for being American. Mr Hennequin says he wants to engage in a dialogue with the public to address these concerns. He introduced open door visitor days in each country which became hugely popular. In Poland alone some 50,000 visitors came to McDonald's through the visitors' programme last year. The Nutrition Information Initiative, launched last year, put detailed labels on McDonald's packaging with data on calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and salt content. The details are also printed on tray-liners. Mr Hennequin also wants people to know that McJobs, the low-paid menial jobs at McDonald's restaurants, are much better than people think. But some of his efforts have backfired: last year he sparked a controversy with the introduction of a McPassport that allows McDonald's employees to work anywhere in the European Union. Politicians accused the firm of a ploy to make cheap labour from eastern Europe more easily available to McDonald's managers across the continent. To stay in touch with local needs and preferences, McDonald's employs local bosses as much as possible. A Russian is running McDonald's in Russia, though a Serb is in charge of Germany. The group buys mainly from local suppliers. Four-fifths of its supplies in France come from local farmers, for example. (Some of the French farmers who campaigned against the company in the late 1990s subsequently discovered that it was, in fact, buying their produce. ) And it hires celebrities such as Heidi Klum, a German model, as local brand ambassadors. In his previous job Mr Hennequin established a design studio in France to spruce up his company's drab restaurants and adapt the interior to local tastes. The studio is now masterminding improvements everywhere in Europe. He also set up a food studio, where cooks devise new recipes in response to local trends. Given France's reputation as the most anti-American country in Europe, it seems odd that McDonald's revival in Europe is being led by a Frenchman, using ideas cooked up in the French market. But France is in fact the company's most profitable market after America. The market where McDonald's is weakest in Europe is not France, but Britain. Fixing Britain should be his priority, says David Palmer, a restaurant analyst at UBS. Almost two-thirds of the 1,214 McDonald's restaurants in Britain are company-owned, compared with 40% in Europe and 15% in America. The company suffers from the volatility of sales at its own restaurants, but can rely on steady income from franchisees. So it should sell as many underperforming outlets as possible, says Mr Palmer. M. Mark Wiltamuth, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, estimates that European company-owned restaurants' margins will increase slightly to 16.4% in 2007. This is still less than in the late 1990s and below America's 18-19% today. But it is much better than before Mr Hennequin's reign. He is already being tipped as the first European candidate for the group's top job in Illinois. Nobody would call that a McJob. | France is said to be the most anti-American country in Europe, but the ideas of the open door visiting days and McPassport are invented in the French market. | n |
id_2991 | How a Frenchman is reviving McDonald's in Europe When Denis Hennequin took over as the European boss of McDonald's in January 2004, the world's biggest restaurant chain was showing signs of recovery in America and Australia, but sales in Europe were sluggish or declining. One exception was France, where Mr Hennequin had done a sterling job as head of the group's French subsidiary to sell more Big Macs to his compatriots. His task was to replicate this success in all 41 of the European countries where anti-globalisers' favourite enemy operates. So far Mr Hennequin is doing well. Last year European sales increased by 5.8% and the number of customers by 3.4%, the best annual results in nearly 15 years. Europe accounted for 36% of the group's profits and for 28% of its sales. December was an especially good month as customers took to seasonal menu offerings in France and Britain, and to a promotion in Germany based on the game of Monopoly. Mr Hennequin's recipe for revival is to be more open about his company's operations, to be locally relevant, and to improve the experience of visiting his 6,400 restaurants. McDonald's is blamed for making people fat, exploiting workers, treating animals cruelly, polluting the environment and simply for being American. Mr Hennequin says he wants to engage in a dialogue with the public to address these concerns. He introduced open door visitor days in each country which became hugely popular. In Poland alone some 50,000 visitors came to McDonald's through the visitors' programme last year. The Nutrition Information Initiative, launched last year, put detailed labels on McDonald's packaging with data on calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and salt content. The details are also printed on tray-liners. Mr Hennequin also wants people to know that McJobs, the low-paid menial jobs at McDonald's restaurants, are much better than people think. But some of his efforts have backfired: last year he sparked a controversy with the introduction of a McPassport that allows McDonald's employees to work anywhere in the European Union. Politicians accused the firm of a ploy to make cheap labour from eastern Europe more easily available to McDonald's managers across the continent. To stay in touch with local needs and preferences, McDonald's employs local bosses as much as possible. A Russian is running McDonald's in Russia, though a Serb is in charge of Germany. The group buys mainly from local suppliers. Four-fifths of its supplies in France come from local farmers, for example. (Some of the French farmers who campaigned against the company in the late 1990s subsequently discovered that it was, in fact, buying their produce. ) And it hires celebrities such as Heidi Klum, a German model, as local brand ambassadors. In his previous job Mr Hennequin established a design studio in France to spruce up his company's drab restaurants and adapt the interior to local tastes. The studio is now masterminding improvements everywhere in Europe. He also set up a food studio, where cooks devise new recipes in response to local trends. Given France's reputation as the most anti-American country in Europe, it seems odd that McDonald's revival in Europe is being led by a Frenchman, using ideas cooked up in the French market. But France is in fact the company's most profitable market after America. The market where McDonald's is weakest in Europe is not France, but Britain. Fixing Britain should be his priority, says David Palmer, a restaurant analyst at UBS. Almost two-thirds of the 1,214 McDonald's restaurants in Britain are company-owned, compared with 40% in Europe and 15% in America. The company suffers from the volatility of sales at its own restaurants, but can rely on steady income from franchisees. So it should sell as many underperforming outlets as possible, says Mr Palmer. M. Mark Wiltamuth, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, estimates that European company-owned restaurants' margins will increase slightly to 16.4% in 2007. This is still less than in the late 1990s and below America's 18-19% today. But it is much better than before Mr Hennequin's reign. He is already being tipped as the first European candidate for the group's top job in Illinois. Nobody would call that a McJob. | Britain possesses the weakest McDonald market among European countries and approximately 1214 McDonalds restaurants are company-owned. | c |
id_2992 | How a Frenchman is reviving McDonald's in Europe When Denis Hennequin took over as the European boss of McDonald's in January 2004, the world's biggest restaurant chain was showing signs of recovery in America and Australia, but sales in Europe were sluggish or declining. One exception was France, where Mr Hennequin had done a sterling job as head of the group's French subsidiary to sell more Big Macs to his compatriots. His task was to replicate this success in all 41 of the European countries where anti-globalisers' favourite enemy operates. So far Mr Hennequin is doing well. Last year European sales increased by 5.8% and the number of customers by 3.4%, the best annual results in nearly 15 years. Europe accounted for 36% of the group's profits and for 28% of its sales. December was an especially good month as customers took to seasonal menu offerings in France and Britain, and to a promotion in Germany based on the game of Monopoly. Mr Hennequin's recipe for revival is to be more open about his company's operations, to be locally relevant, and to improve the experience of visiting his 6,400 restaurants. McDonald's is blamed for making people fat, exploiting workers, treating animals cruelly, polluting the environment and simply for being American. Mr Hennequin says he wants to engage in a dialogue with the public to address these concerns. He introduced open door visitor days in each country which became hugely popular. In Poland alone some 50,000 visitors came to McDonald's through the visitors' programme last year. The Nutrition Information Initiative, launched last year, put detailed labels on McDonald's packaging with data on calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and salt content. The details are also printed on tray-liners. Mr Hennequin also wants people to know that McJobs, the low-paid menial jobs at McDonald's restaurants, are much better than people think. But some of his efforts have backfired: last year he sparked a controversy with the introduction of a McPassport that allows McDonald's employees to work anywhere in the European Union. Politicians accused the firm of a ploy to make cheap labour from eastern Europe more easily available to McDonald's managers across the continent. To stay in touch with local needs and preferences, McDonald's employs local bosses as much as possible. A Russian is running McDonald's in Russia, though a Serb is in charge of Germany. The group buys mainly from local suppliers. Four-fifths of its supplies in France come from local farmers, for example. (Some of the French farmers who campaigned against the company in the late 1990s subsequently discovered that it was, in fact, buying their produce. ) And it hires celebrities such as Heidi Klum, a German model, as local brand ambassadors. In his previous job Mr Hennequin established a design studio in France to spruce up his company's drab restaurants and adapt the interior to local tastes. The studio is now masterminding improvements everywhere in Europe. He also set up a food studio, where cooks devise new recipes in response to local trends. Given France's reputation as the most anti-American country in Europe, it seems odd that McDonald's revival in Europe is being led by a Frenchman, using ideas cooked up in the French market. But France is in fact the company's most profitable market after America. The market where McDonald's is weakest in Europe is not France, but Britain. Fixing Britain should be his priority, says David Palmer, a restaurant analyst at UBS. Almost two-thirds of the 1,214 McDonald's restaurants in Britain are company-owned, compared with 40% in Europe and 15% in America. The company suffers from the volatility of sales at its own restaurants, but can rely on steady income from franchisees. So it should sell as many underperforming outlets as possible, says Mr Palmer. M. Mark Wiltamuth, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, estimates that European company-owned restaurants' margins will increase slightly to 16.4% in 2007. This is still less than in the late 1990s and below America's 18-19% today. But it is much better than before Mr Hennequin's reign. He is already being tipped as the first European candidate for the group's top job in Illinois. Nobody would call that a McJob. | According to David Palmer, a restaurant analyst at UBS, David Hennequin should treat the problem about McDonald in Britain as the most important thing. | e |
id_2993 | How a Frenchman is reviving McDonald's in Europe When Denis Hennequin took over as the European boss of McDonald's in January 2004, the world's biggest restaurant chain was showing signs of recovery in America and Australia, but sales in Europe were sluggish or declining. One exception was France, where Mr Hennequin had done a sterling job as head of the group's French subsidiary to sell more Big Macs to his compatriots. His task was to replicate this success in all 41 of the European countries where anti-globalisers' favourite enemy operates. So far Mr Hennequin is doing well. Last year European sales increased by 5.8% and the number of customers by 3.4%, the best annual results in nearly 15 years. Europe accounted for 36% of the group's profits and for 28% of its sales. December was an especially good month as customers took to seasonal menu offerings in France and Britain, and to a promotion in Germany based on the game of Monopoly. Mr Hennequin's recipe for revival is to be more open about his company's operations, to be locally relevant, and to improve the experience of visiting his 6,400 restaurants. McDonald's is blamed for making people fat, exploiting workers, treating animals cruelly, polluting the environment and simply for being American. Mr Hennequin says he wants to engage in a dialogue with the public to address these concerns. He introduced open door visitor days in each country which became hugely popular. In Poland alone some 50,000 visitors came to McDonald's through the visitors' programme last year. The Nutrition Information Initiative, launched last year, put detailed labels on McDonald's packaging with data on calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and salt content. The details are also printed on tray-liners. Mr Hennequin also wants people to know that McJobs, the low-paid menial jobs at McDonald's restaurants, are much better than people think. But some of his efforts have backfired: last year he sparked a controversy with the introduction of a McPassport that allows McDonald's employees to work anywhere in the European Union. Politicians accused the firm of a ploy to make cheap labour from eastern Europe more easily available to McDonald's managers across the continent. To stay in touch with local needs and preferences, McDonald's employs local bosses as much as possible. A Russian is running McDonald's in Russia, though a Serb is in charge of Germany. The group buys mainly from local suppliers. Four-fifths of its supplies in France come from local farmers, for example. (Some of the French farmers who campaigned against the company in the late 1990s subsequently discovered that it was, in fact, buying their produce. ) And it hires celebrities such as Heidi Klum, a German model, as local brand ambassadors. In his previous job Mr Hennequin established a design studio in France to spruce up his company's drab restaurants and adapt the interior to local tastes. The studio is now masterminding improvements everywhere in Europe. He also set up a food studio, where cooks devise new recipes in response to local trends. Given France's reputation as the most anti-American country in Europe, it seems odd that McDonald's revival in Europe is being led by a Frenchman, using ideas cooked up in the French market. But France is in fact the company's most profitable market after America. The market where McDonald's is weakest in Europe is not France, but Britain. Fixing Britain should be his priority, says David Palmer, a restaurant analyst at UBS. Almost two-thirds of the 1,214 McDonald's restaurants in Britain are company-owned, compared with 40% in Europe and 15% in America. The company suffers from the volatility of sales at its own restaurants, but can rely on steady income from franchisees. So it should sell as many underperforming outlets as possible, says Mr Palmer. M. Mark Wiltamuth, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, estimates that European company-owned restaurants' margins will increase slightly to 16.4% in 2007. This is still less than in the late 1990s and below America's 18-19% today. But it is much better than before Mr Hennequin's reign. He is already being tipped as the first European candidate for the group's top job in Illinois. Nobody would call that a McJob. | David Palmer suggested that the management of McDonalod in Italy should sell as many its outlets which lose money in business as possible for revival. | n |
id_2994 | How are deserts formed? A desert refers to a barren section of land, mainly in arid and semi-arid areas, where there is almost no precipitation, and the environment is hostile for any creature to inhabit. Deserts have been classified in a number of ways, generally combining total precipitation, how many days the rainfall occurs, temperature, humidity, and sometimes additional factors. In some places, deserts have clear boundaries marked by rivers, mountains or other landforms, while in other places, there are no clear-cut borders between desert and other landscape features. In arid areas where there is not any covering of vegetation protecting the land, sand and dust storms will frequently take place. This phenomenon often occurs along the desert margins instead of within the deserts, where there are already no finer materials left. When a steady wind starts to blow, fine particles on the open ground will begin vibrating. As the wind picks up, some of the particles are lifted into the air. When they fall onto the ground, they hit other particles which will then be jerked into the air in their turn, initiating a chain reaction. There has been a tremendous deal of publicity on how severe desertification can be, but the academic circle has never agreed on the causes of desertification. A common misunderstanding is that a shortage of precipitation causes the desertificationeven the land in some barren areas will soon recover after the rain falls. In fact, more often than not, human activities are responsible for desertification. It might be true that the explosion in world population, especially in developing countries, is the primary cause of soil degradation and desertification. Since the population has become denser, the cultivation of crops has gone into progressively drier areas. Its especially possible for these regions to go through periods of severe drought, which explains why crop failures are common. The raising of most crops requires the natural vegetation cover to be removed first; when crop failures occur, extensive tracts of land are devoid of a plant cover and thus susceptible to wind and water erosion. All through the 1990s, dryland areas went through a population growth of 18.5 per cent, mostly in severely impoverished developing countries. Livestock farming in semi-arid areas accelerates the erosion of soil and becomes one of the reasons for advancing desertification. In such areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses, the breeding of livestock is a major economic activity. Grasses are necessary for anchoring barren topsoil in a dryland area. When a specific field is used to graze an excessive herd, it will experience a loss in vegetation coverage, and the soil will be trampled as well as be pulverised, leaving the topsoil exposed to destructive erosion elements such as winds and unexpected thunderstorms. For centuries, nomads have grazed their flocks and herds to any place where pasture can be found, and oases have offered chances for a more settled way of living. For some nomads, wherever they move to, the desert follows. Trees are of great importance when it comes to maintaining topsoil and slowing down the wind speed. In many Asian countries, firewood is the chief fuel used for cooking and heating, which has caused uncontrolled clear-cutting of forests in dryland ecosystems. When too many trees are cut down, windstorms and dust storms tend to occur. Whats worse, even political conflicts and wars can also contribute to desertification. To escape from the invading enemies, the refugees will move altogether into some of the most vulnerable ecosystems on the planet. They bring along their cultivation traditions, which might not be the right kind of practice for their new settlement. In the 20th century, one of the states of America had a large section of farmland that had turned into desert. Since then, actions have been enforced so that such a phenomenon of desertification will not happen again. To avoid the reoccurence of desertification, people are encouraged to find other livelihoods which do not rely on traditional land uses, that are not as demanding on local land and natural resources, but can still generate viable income. Such livelihoods include but are not limited to dryland aquaculture for the raising of fish, crustaceans, and industrial compounds derived from microalgae, greenhouse agriculture, and activities that are related to tourism. Another way to prevent the reoccurrence of desertification is improving the economic prospects of life in city centres and places outside of drylands. Changing the general economic and institutional structures that generate new chances for people to support themselves would alleviate the current pressures accompanying the desertification processes. In society nowadays, new technologies are serving as a method to resolve the problems brought by desertification. Satellites have been utilised to investigate the influence that people and livestock have on our planet Earth. Nevertheless, this does not mean that alternative technologies are not needed to help with the problems and process of desertification. | People in Asian countries no longer use firewood as the chief fuel. | c |
id_2995 | How are deserts formed? A desert refers to a barren section of land, mainly in arid and semi-arid areas, where there is almost no precipitation, and the environment is hostile for any creature to inhabit. Deserts have been classified in a number of ways, generally combining total precipitation, how many days the rainfall occurs, temperature, humidity, and sometimes additional factors. In some places, deserts have clear boundaries marked by rivers, mountains or other landforms, while in other places, there are no clear-cut borders between desert and other landscape features. In arid areas where there is not any covering of vegetation protecting the land, sand and dust storms will frequently take place. This phenomenon often occurs along the desert margins instead of within the deserts, where there are already no finer materials left. When a steady wind starts to blow, fine particles on the open ground will begin vibrating. As the wind picks up, some of the particles are lifted into the air. When they fall onto the ground, they hit other particles which will then be jerked into the air in their turn, initiating a chain reaction. There has been a tremendous deal of publicity on how severe desertification can be, but the academic circle has never agreed on the causes of desertification. A common misunderstanding is that a shortage of precipitation causes the desertificationeven the land in some barren areas will soon recover after the rain falls. In fact, more often than not, human activities are responsible for desertification. It might be true that the explosion in world population, especially in developing countries, is the primary cause of soil degradation and desertification. Since the population has become denser, the cultivation of crops has gone into progressively drier areas. Its especially possible for these regions to go through periods of severe drought, which explains why crop failures are common. The raising of most crops requires the natural vegetation cover to be removed first; when crop failures occur, extensive tracts of land are devoid of a plant cover and thus susceptible to wind and water erosion. All through the 1990s, dryland areas went through a population growth of 18.5 per cent, mostly in severely impoverished developing countries. Livestock farming in semi-arid areas accelerates the erosion of soil and becomes one of the reasons for advancing desertification. In such areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses, the breeding of livestock is a major economic activity. Grasses are necessary for anchoring barren topsoil in a dryland area. When a specific field is used to graze an excessive herd, it will experience a loss in vegetation coverage, and the soil will be trampled as well as be pulverised, leaving the topsoil exposed to destructive erosion elements such as winds and unexpected thunderstorms. For centuries, nomads have grazed their flocks and herds to any place where pasture can be found, and oases have offered chances for a more settled way of living. For some nomads, wherever they move to, the desert follows. Trees are of great importance when it comes to maintaining topsoil and slowing down the wind speed. In many Asian countries, firewood is the chief fuel used for cooking and heating, which has caused uncontrolled clear-cutting of forests in dryland ecosystems. When too many trees are cut down, windstorms and dust storms tend to occur. Whats worse, even political conflicts and wars can also contribute to desertification. To escape from the invading enemies, the refugees will move altogether into some of the most vulnerable ecosystems on the planet. They bring along their cultivation traditions, which might not be the right kind of practice for their new settlement. In the 20th century, one of the states of America had a large section of farmland that had turned into desert. Since then, actions have been enforced so that such a phenomenon of desertification will not happen again. To avoid the reoccurence of desertification, people are encouraged to find other livelihoods which do not rely on traditional land uses, that are not as demanding on local land and natural resources, but can still generate viable income. Such livelihoods include but are not limited to dryland aquaculture for the raising of fish, crustaceans, and industrial compounds derived from microalgae, greenhouse agriculture, and activities that are related to tourism. Another way to prevent the reoccurrence of desertification is improving the economic prospects of life in city centres and places outside of drylands. Changing the general economic and institutional structures that generate new chances for people to support themselves would alleviate the current pressures accompanying the desertification processes. In society nowadays, new technologies are serving as a method to resolve the problems brought by desertification. Satellites have been utilised to investigate the influence that people and livestock have on our planet Earth. Nevertheless, this does not mean that alternative technologies are not needed to help with the problems and process of desertification. | Farming animals in semi-arid areas will increase soil erosion. | e |
id_2996 | How are deserts formed? A desert refers to a barren section of land, mainly in arid and semi-arid areas, where there is almost no precipitation, and the environment is hostile for any creature to inhabit. Deserts have been classified in a number of ways, generally combining total precipitation, how many days the rainfall occurs, temperature, humidity, and sometimes additional factors. In some places, deserts have clear boundaries marked by rivers, mountains or other landforms, while in other places, there are no clear-cut borders between desert and other landscape features. In arid areas where there is not any covering of vegetation protecting the land, sand and dust storms will frequently take place. This phenomenon often occurs along the desert margins instead of within the deserts, where there are already no finer materials left. When a steady wind starts to blow, fine particles on the open ground will begin vibrating. As the wind picks up, some of the particles are lifted into the air. When they fall onto the ground, they hit other particles which will then be jerked into the air in their turn, initiating a chain reaction. There has been a tremendous deal of publicity on how severe desertification can be, but the academic circle has never agreed on the causes of desertification. A common misunderstanding is that a shortage of precipitation causes the desertificationeven the land in some barren areas will soon recover after the rain falls. In fact, more often than not, human activities are responsible for desertification. It might be true that the explosion in world population, especially in developing countries, is the primary cause of soil degradation and desertification. Since the population has become denser, the cultivation of crops has gone into progressively drier areas. Its especially possible for these regions to go through periods of severe drought, which explains why crop failures are common. The raising of most crops requires the natural vegetation cover to be removed first; when crop failures occur, extensive tracts of land are devoid of a plant cover and thus susceptible to wind and water erosion. All through the 1990s, dryland areas went through a population growth of 18.5 per cent, mostly in severely impoverished developing countries. Livestock farming in semi-arid areas accelerates the erosion of soil and becomes one of the reasons for advancing desertification. In such areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses, the breeding of livestock is a major economic activity. Grasses are necessary for anchoring barren topsoil in a dryland area. When a specific field is used to graze an excessive herd, it will experience a loss in vegetation coverage, and the soil will be trampled as well as be pulverised, leaving the topsoil exposed to destructive erosion elements such as winds and unexpected thunderstorms. For centuries, nomads have grazed their flocks and herds to any place where pasture can be found, and oases have offered chances for a more settled way of living. For some nomads, wherever they move to, the desert follows. Trees are of great importance when it comes to maintaining topsoil and slowing down the wind speed. In many Asian countries, firewood is the chief fuel used for cooking and heating, which has caused uncontrolled clear-cutting of forests in dryland ecosystems. When too many trees are cut down, windstorms and dust storms tend to occur. Whats worse, even political conflicts and wars can also contribute to desertification. To escape from the invading enemies, the refugees will move altogether into some of the most vulnerable ecosystems on the planet. They bring along their cultivation traditions, which might not be the right kind of practice for their new settlement. In the 20th century, one of the states of America had a large section of farmland that had turned into desert. Since then, actions have been enforced so that such a phenomenon of desertification will not happen again. To avoid the reoccurence of desertification, people are encouraged to find other livelihoods which do not rely on traditional land uses, that are not as demanding on local land and natural resources, but can still generate viable income. Such livelihoods include but are not limited to dryland aquaculture for the raising of fish, crustaceans, and industrial compounds derived from microalgae, greenhouse agriculture, and activities that are related to tourism. Another way to prevent the reoccurrence of desertification is improving the economic prospects of life in city centres and places outside of drylands. Changing the general economic and institutional structures that generate new chances for people to support themselves would alleviate the current pressures accompanying the desertification processes. In society nowadays, new technologies are serving as a method to resolve the problems brought by desertification. Satellites have been utilised to investigate the influence that people and livestock have on our planet Earth. Nevertheless, this does not mean that alternative technologies are not needed to help with the problems and process of desertification. | The most common cause of desertification is the lack of rainfall. | c |
id_2997 | How are deserts formed? A desert refers to a barren section of land, mainly in arid and semi-arid areas, where there is almost no precipitation, and the environment is hostile for any creature to inhabit. Deserts have been classified in a number of ways, generally combining total precipitation, how many days the rainfall occurs, temperature, humidity, and sometimes additional factors. In some places, deserts have clear boundaries marked by rivers, mountains or other landforms, while in other places, there are no clear-cut borders between desert and other landscape features. In arid areas where there is not any covering of vegetation protecting the land, sand and dust storms will frequently take place. This phenomenon often occurs along the desert margins instead of within the deserts, where there are already no finer materials left. When a steady wind starts to blow, fine particles on the open ground will begin vibrating. As the wind picks up, some of the particles are lifted into the air. When they fall onto the ground, they hit other particles which will then be jerked into the air in their turn, initiating a chain reaction. There has been a tremendous deal of publicity on how severe desertification can be, but the academic circle has never agreed on the causes of desertification. A common misunderstanding is that a shortage of precipitation causes the desertificationeven the land in some barren areas will soon recover after the rain falls. In fact, more often than not, human activities are responsible for desertification. It might be true that the explosion in world population, especially in developing countries, is the primary cause of soil degradation and desertification. Since the population has become denser, the cultivation of crops has gone into progressively drier areas. Its especially possible for these regions to go through periods of severe drought, which explains why crop failures are common. The raising of most crops requires the natural vegetation cover to be removed first; when crop failures occur, extensive tracts of land are devoid of a plant cover and thus susceptible to wind and water erosion. All through the 1990s, dryland areas went through a population growth of 18.5 per cent, mostly in severely impoverished developing countries. Livestock farming in semi-arid areas accelerates the erosion of soil and becomes one of the reasons for advancing desertification. In such areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses, the breeding of livestock is a major economic activity. Grasses are necessary for anchoring barren topsoil in a dryland area. When a specific field is used to graze an excessive herd, it will experience a loss in vegetation coverage, and the soil will be trampled as well as be pulverised, leaving the topsoil exposed to destructive erosion elements such as winds and unexpected thunderstorms. For centuries, nomads have grazed their flocks and herds to any place where pasture can be found, and oases have offered chances for a more settled way of living. For some nomads, wherever they move to, the desert follows. Trees are of great importance when it comes to maintaining topsoil and slowing down the wind speed. In many Asian countries, firewood is the chief fuel used for cooking and heating, which has caused uncontrolled clear-cutting of forests in dryland ecosystems. When too many trees are cut down, windstorms and dust storms tend to occur. Whats worse, even political conflicts and wars can also contribute to desertification. To escape from the invading enemies, the refugees will move altogether into some of the most vulnerable ecosystems on the planet. They bring along their cultivation traditions, which might not be the right kind of practice for their new settlement. In the 20th century, one of the states of America had a large section of farmland that had turned into desert. Since then, actions have been enforced so that such a phenomenon of desertification will not happen again. To avoid the reoccurence of desertification, people are encouraged to find other livelihoods which do not rely on traditional land uses, that are not as demanding on local land and natural resources, but can still generate viable income. Such livelihoods include but are not limited to dryland aquaculture for the raising of fish, crustaceans, and industrial compounds derived from microalgae, greenhouse agriculture, and activities that are related to tourism. Another way to prevent the reoccurrence of desertification is improving the economic prospects of life in city centres and places outside of drylands. Changing the general economic and institutional structures that generate new chances for people to support themselves would alleviate the current pressures accompanying the desertification processes. In society nowadays, new technologies are serving as a method to resolve the problems brought by desertification. Satellites have been utilised to investigate the influence that people and livestock have on our planet Earth. Nevertheless, this does not mean that alternative technologies are not needed to help with the problems and process of desertification. | Technology studying the relationship of people, livestock and desertification has not yet been invented. | c |
id_2998 | How are deserts formed? A desert refers to a barren section of land, mainly in arid and semi-arid areas, where there is almost no precipitation, and the environment is hostile for any creature to inhabit. Deserts have been classified in a number of ways, generally combining total precipitation, how many days the rainfall occurs, temperature, humidity, and sometimes additional factors. In some places, deserts have clear boundaries marked by rivers, mountains or other landforms, while in other places, there are no clear-cut borders between desert and other landscape features. In arid areas where there is not any covering of vegetation protecting the land, sand and dust storms will frequently take place. This phenomenon often occurs along the desert margins instead of within the deserts, where there are already no finer materials left. When a steady wind starts to blow, fine particles on the open ground will begin vibrating. As the wind picks up, some of the particles are lifted into the air. When they fall onto the ground, they hit other particles which will then be jerked into the air in their turn, initiating a chain reaction. There has been a tremendous deal of publicity on how severe desertification can be, but the academic circle has never agreed on the causes of desertification. A common misunderstanding is that a shortage of precipitation causes the desertificationeven the land in some barren areas will soon recover after the rain falls. In fact, more often than not, human activities are responsible for desertification. It might be true that the explosion in world population, especially in developing countries, is the primary cause of soil degradation and desertification. Since the population has become denser, the cultivation of crops has gone into progressively drier areas. Its especially possible for these regions to go through periods of severe drought, which explains why crop failures are common. The raising of most crops requires the natural vegetation cover to be removed first; when crop failures occur, extensive tracts of land are devoid of a plant cover and thus susceptible to wind and water erosion. All through the 1990s, dryland areas went through a population growth of 18.5 per cent, mostly in severely impoverished developing countries. Livestock farming in semi-arid areas accelerates the erosion of soil and becomes one of the reasons for advancing desertification. In such areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses, the breeding of livestock is a major economic activity. Grasses are necessary for anchoring barren topsoil in a dryland area. When a specific field is used to graze an excessive herd, it will experience a loss in vegetation coverage, and the soil will be trampled as well as be pulverised, leaving the topsoil exposed to destructive erosion elements such as winds and unexpected thunderstorms. For centuries, nomads have grazed their flocks and herds to any place where pasture can be found, and oases have offered chances for a more settled way of living. For some nomads, wherever they move to, the desert follows. Trees are of great importance when it comes to maintaining topsoil and slowing down the wind speed. In many Asian countries, firewood is the chief fuel used for cooking and heating, which has caused uncontrolled clear-cutting of forests in dryland ecosystems. When too many trees are cut down, windstorms and dust storms tend to occur. Whats worse, even political conflicts and wars can also contribute to desertification. To escape from the invading enemies, the refugees will move altogether into some of the most vulnerable ecosystems on the planet. They bring along their cultivation traditions, which might not be the right kind of practice for their new settlement. In the 20th century, one of the states of America had a large section of farmland that had turned into desert. Since then, actions have been enforced so that such a phenomenon of desertification will not happen again. To avoid the reoccurence of desertification, people are encouraged to find other livelihoods which do not rely on traditional land uses, that are not as demanding on local land and natural resources, but can still generate viable income. Such livelihoods include but are not limited to dryland aquaculture for the raising of fish, crustaceans, and industrial compounds derived from microalgae, greenhouse agriculture, and activities that are related to tourism. Another way to prevent the reoccurrence of desertification is improving the economic prospects of life in city centres and places outside of drylands. Changing the general economic and institutional structures that generate new chances for people to support themselves would alleviate the current pressures accompanying the desertification processes. In society nowadays, new technologies are serving as a method to resolve the problems brought by desertification. Satellites have been utilised to investigate the influence that people and livestock have on our planet Earth. Nevertheless, this does not mean that alternative technologies are not needed to help with the problems and process of desertification. | The media is uninterested in the problems of desertification. | c |
id_2999 | How are deserts formed? A desert refers to a barren section of land, mainly in arid and semi-arid areas, where there is almost no precipitation, and the environment is hostile for any creature to inhabit. Deserts have been classified in a number of ways, generally combining total precipitation, how many days the rainfall occurs, temperature, humidity, and sometimes additional factors. In some places, deserts have clear boundaries marked by rivers, mountains or other landforms, while in other places, there are no clear-cut borders between desert and other landscape features. In arid areas where there is not any covering of vegetation protecting the land, sand and dust storms will frequently take place. This phenomenon often occurs along the desert margins instead of within the deserts, where there are already no finer materials left. When a steady wind starts to blow, fine particles on the open ground will begin vibrating. As the wind picks up, some of the particles are lifted into the air. When they fall onto the ground, they hit other particles which will then be jerked into the air in their turn, initiating a chain reaction. There has been a tremendous deal of publicity on how severe desertification can be, but the academic circle has never agreed on the causes of desertification. A common misunderstanding is that a shortage of precipitation causes the desertificationeven the land in some barren areas will soon recover after the rain falls. In fact, more often than not, human activities are responsible for desertification. It might be true that the explosion in world population, especially in developing countries, is the primary cause of soil degradation and desertification. Since the population has become denser, the cultivation of crops has gone into progressively drier areas. Its especially possible for these regions to go through periods of severe drought, which explains why crop failures are common. The raising of most crops requires the natural vegetation cover to be removed first; when crop failures occur, extensive tracts of land are devoid of a plant cover and thus susceptible to wind and water erosion. All through the 1990s, dryland areas went through a population growth of 18.5 per cent, mostly in severely impoverished developing countries. Livestock farming in semi-arid areas accelerates the erosion of soil and becomes one of the reasons for advancing desertification. In such areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses, the breeding of livestock is a major economic activity. Grasses are necessary for anchoring barren topsoil in a dryland area. When a specific field is used to graze an excessive herd, it will experience a loss in vegetation coverage, and the soil will be trampled as well as be pulverised, leaving the topsoil exposed to destructive erosion elements such as winds and unexpected thunderstorms. For centuries, nomads have grazed their flocks and herds to any place where pasture can be found, and oases have offered chances for a more settled way of living. For some nomads, wherever they move to, the desert follows. Trees are of great importance when it comes to maintaining topsoil and slowing down the wind speed. In many Asian countries, firewood is the chief fuel used for cooking and heating, which has caused uncontrolled clear-cutting of forests in dryland ecosystems. When too many trees are cut down, windstorms and dust storms tend to occur. Whats worse, even political conflicts and wars can also contribute to desertification. To escape from the invading enemies, the refugees will move altogether into some of the most vulnerable ecosystems on the planet. They bring along their cultivation traditions, which might not be the right kind of practice for their new settlement. In the 20th century, one of the states of America had a large section of farmland that had turned into desert. Since then, actions have been enforced so that such a phenomenon of desertification will not happen again. To avoid the reoccurence of desertification, people are encouraged to find other livelihoods which do not rely on traditional land uses, that are not as demanding on local land and natural resources, but can still generate viable income. Such livelihoods include but are not limited to dryland aquaculture for the raising of fish, crustaceans, and industrial compounds derived from microalgae, greenhouse agriculture, and activities that are related to tourism. Another way to prevent the reoccurrence of desertification is improving the economic prospects of life in city centres and places outside of drylands. Changing the general economic and institutional structures that generate new chances for people to support themselves would alleviate the current pressures accompanying the desertification processes. In society nowadays, new technologies are serving as a method to resolve the problems brought by desertification. Satellites have been utilised to investigate the influence that people and livestock have on our planet Earth. Nevertheless, this does not mean that alternative technologies are not needed to help with the problems and process of desertification. | It is difficult to ascertain where the deserts end in some areas. | e |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.