There’s a reason fire squads now battling more than a dozen blazes in southern California are having such difficulty containing the flames, despite better preparedness than ever and decades of experience fighting fires fanned by the notorious Santa Ana winds. The wildfires themselves, experts say, generally are hotter, move faster, and spread more erratically than …

California’s Age of Megafires – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A During July 2003, the Museum of Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts exhibited what Honda calls ‘the world’s most advanced humanoid robot’, ASIMO (the Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility). Honda’s brainchild is on tour in North America and delighting audiences wherever it goes. After 17 years in the making, ASIMO stands at four feet tall, weighs around …

Man or Machine – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

The world is about to run out of oil. Or perhaps not. It depends whom you believe… Members of Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC) recently met in London and presented technical data that support their grim forecast that the world is perilously dose to running out of oil. Leading lights of this movement, including Colin …

Sunset For The Oil Business – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A. Everybody now knows that malaria is carried by mosquitoes. But in the 19th century, most experts believed that the disease was produced by “miasma” or “poisoning of the air”. Others made a link between swamps, water and malaria, but did not make the further leap towards insects. The consequences of these theories were that …

The Conquest Of Malaria In Italy – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

Many animals seem able to treat their illnesses themselves. Humans may have a thing or two to learn from them. For the past decade Dr Engel, a lecturer in environmental sciences at Britain’s Open University, has been collating examples of self-medicating behaviour in wild animals. She recently published a book on the subject. In a …

Health In The Wild – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A In my view, it is perfectly possible for many species of animals living in zoos or wildlife parks to have a quality of life as high as, or higher than, in the wild. Animals in good zoos get a varied and high-quality diet with all the supplements required, and any illnesses they might have will …

Why zoos are good – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

Pheidole dentata, a native ant of the south-eastern U.S., isn’t immortal. But scientists have found that it doesn’t seem to show any signs of aging. Old worker ants can do everything just as well as the youngsters, and their brains appear just as sharp. ‘We get a picture that these ants really don’t decline,’ says …

The secret of staying young – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

Virtually every child, the world over, plays. The drive to play is so intense that children will do so in any circumstances, for instance when they have no real toys, or when parents do not actively encourage the behavior. In the eyes of a young child, running, pretending, and building are fun. Researchers and educators …

The power of play – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A More drugs than you might think are derived from, or inspired by, compounds found in living things. Looking to nature for the soothing and curing of our ailments is nothing new – we have been doing it for tens of thousands of years. You only have to look at other primates – such as …

Saving bugs to find new drugs – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A Looked at in one way, everyone knows what intelligence is; looked at in another way, no one does. In other words, people all have unconscious notions – known as ‘implicit theories’ – of intelligence, but no one knows for certain what it actually is. This chapter addresses how people conceptualize intelligence, whatever it may actually …

The concept of intelligence – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »