Mobiles are barred, but passengers can lap away on their laptops to their hearts’ content. Is one really safer than the other? In the US, a Congressional subcommittee grilled airline representatives and regulators about the issue last month. But the committee heard that using cellphones in planes may indeed pose a risk albeit a slight …
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A Today, the quest continues. On Daphne Major-one of the most desolate of the Galápagos Islands, an uninhabited volcanic cone where cacti and shrubs seldom grow higher than a researcher’s knee-Peter and Rosemary Grant have spent more than three decades watching Darwin’s finch respond to the challenges of storms, drought and competition for food Biologists at …
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A Since cosmetics and perfumes are still in wide use today, it is interesting to compare the attitudes, customs and beliefs related to them in ancient times to those of our own day and age. Cosmetics and perfumes have been popular since the dawn of civilization; it is shown by the discovery of a great deal …
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The prospects for humanity and for the world as a whole are somewhere between glorious and dire. It is hard to be much more precise. A By ‘glorious’, I mean that our descendants – all who are born on to this Earth – could live very comfortably and securely, and could continue to do so for …
The Future Never Dies? – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
In the last century, Vikings have been perceived in numerous different ways – vilified as conquerors and romanticised as adventurers. How Vikings have been employed in nation-building is a topic of some interest. In English, Vikings are also known as Norse or Norsemen. Their language greatly influenced English, with the nouns, ‘Hell’, ‘husband’, ‘law’, and …
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A. Three generations ago, 180 young women wrote essays describing why they wanted to join a convent (a religious community of nuns). Years later, a team of psychological researchers came across these autobiographies in the convent’s archives. The researchers were seeking material to confirm earlier studies hinting at a link between having a good vocabulary …
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Olive oil has been one of the staples of the Mediterranean diet for thousands of years and its popularity is growing rapidly in other parts of the world. It is one of the most versatile oils for cooking and it enhances the taste of many foods. Olive oil is the only type of vegetable/fruit oil …
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In 1894 Dr John Kellogg and his brother. Will, were supervising a hospital and health spa in Michigan. The patients were on a restricted diet. One day, the brothers left cooked wheat untended for more than 24 hours. When they returned, they saw what they had done. It was no good to eat, but they …
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A. The story of the can begins in 1795 when Nicholas Appert, a Parisian, had an idea: why not pack food in bottles like wine? Fifteen years later, after researching and testing his idea, he published his theory: if food is sufficiently heated and sealed in an airtight container, it will not spoil. In 1810 …
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A A facial expression is one or more motions or positions of the muscles in the skin. These movements convey the emotional state of the individual to observers. Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information among aliens, but also occur in most other mammals and some …
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