A Jargon is a loaded word. One dictionary defines it, neatly and neutrally, as ‘the technical vocabulary or idiom of a special activity or group’, but this sense is almost completely overshadowed by another: ‘obscure and often pretentious language marked by a roundabout way of expression and use of long words’. For most people, it is …
Charities, it is still widely believed, are separate from government, staffed entirely by volunteers and spend every penny donated on the cause they support. Noble stuff, but in most cases entirely wrong. Yet these misapprehensions underpin much of the trust and goodwill behind giving. And there is concern that such outdated perceptions could blow up …
Ditching That Saintly Image – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
A What would a building space look and feel like if it were designed to promote psychological and social well-being? How would it affect the senses, the emotions, and the mind? How would it affect behavioral patterns? For insights, it is useful to look not at buildings, but at zoos. Zoo design has gone through a …
Psychological Value Of Space – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
Megacities like London, New York and Tokyo loom large in our imaginations. They are still associated with fortune, fame and the future. They can dominate national economies and politics. The last fifty years has been their era, as the number of cities with more than ten million people grew from two to twenty. But with …
Unlikely Boomtowns: The World’s Hottest Cities – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
Results of interviews with corporate executives and senior innovation officers in four of the largest publicly-traded companies and one government agency in the Chicago-area, provide some insights into how businesses approach innovation. The dictionary defines innovation as ‘the introduction of something new’. Regardless of the type of innovation – whether it be product, process, or …
A Comparative Study of Innovative Practices in Business – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
A Soon, we’re told, corn crops will be as valuable as oil. This is because corn and a few other crops are being promoted as the ‘biofuels’ of the future. Biofuel is an umbrella term used to describe all fuels derived from organic matter. The two most common biofuels are bioethanol, which is a substitute for …
A recent editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), written by researchers from the University of Oxford, has called for food labels to list trans fats as well as cholesterol and saturated fat. Trans fats (or trans fatty acids) are a type of unsaturated fatty acid. They occur naturally in small amounts in foods produced …
Trans Fatty Acids – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
Over 90 years ago, Binet and Simon delineated two different methods of assessing intelligence. These were the psychological method (which concentrates mostly on intellectual processes, such as memory and abstract reasoning) and the pedagogical method (which concentrates on assessing what an individual knows). The main concern of Binet and Simon was to predict elementary school …
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Sleep apnea is a common sleeping disorder. It affects a number of adults comparable to the percentage of the population that suffers from diabetes. The term apnea is of Greek origin and means “without breath.” Sufferers of sleep apnea stop breathing repeatedly while they sleep. This can happen hundreds of times during the night, each …
Since the early 1800s, the term one hundred days has represented a political phrase, referring to a short period of concentrated political reform. In most cases, this period comes immediately after a new leader takes over a nation. The original Hundred Days took place between March and June of 1815, when Napoleon escaped from Elba, …
One Hundred Days of Reform – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
