EBS Force (Chapters 1 and 2)

Chapter 1

 

This is one kind of skill to amuse other people. There are many TV shows or contests where ordinary people can show this in front of the public. They often have others rolling with laughter. There are some celebrities who are well known especially for their distinctive features of talking and singing. People enjoy catching their unique traits of voice and showing them exactly the same way as the famous people. Also, a lot of entertainers practice this as one of their special skills to display in variety shows.

 

1. This is a great aerobic activity for lifetime fitness. Nearly all major muscle groups are exercised when you do this. This offers a total body workout to improve muscle tone and strength. This is a non-weight bearing exercise and is particularly appropriate for those who are overweight, pregnant or suffering from joint problems or injury. No other activity provides so many health benefits with so few dangers. While enjoying this, you don't have to worry about dogs, cars, potholes, curbs, bad weather, and even air pollution. Although no one expects to need it, emergency assistance from a lifeguard is usually available and never more than a few seconds away.

 

2. If you find yourself away from a city, spend an hour looking up on any clear, moonless night. You're bound to see things that move very fast in the sky. Actually, they have nothing to do with stars. If your viewing conditions are good, you can see about seven per hour on any given night. They are caused by bits of rocky material that enter our atmosphere from space, then burn up because of friction. They don't have to be big for you to see them. Surprisingly, they are most visible when they are caused by debris no larger than a single grain of sand. They burn so brightly because of tremendous friction when they hit our atmosphere at more than forty miles per second.

 

3. This was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, most fully developed in France between 1907 and 1914. This brought about a major revolution in Western painting. This overturned the rational tradition that had been built up since the Renaissance. In this, natural forms were broken down analytically into geometric shapes. No longer was a clear differentiation made between the figure and the background of a painting. In artworks of this, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form-instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint. The artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth.

 

4. This tends to spread rapidly in seasonal epidemics. Infection of this usually lasts for about a week, and is characterized by a sudden outbreak of high fever, aching muscles, headache, severe cough, and sore throat. This is transmitted easily from person to person through small particles produced when infected people cough or sneeze. Most infected people recover within one to two weeks without requiring medical treatment. However, this can be serious, even deadly, for elderly people, newborn babies and people with certain chronic illnesses. The best way to prevent this is to get a vaccination. Getting plenty of sleep, being physically active, managing your stress, drinking plenty of fluids and eating nutritious food are other key prevention measures. As the viruses causing this can be removed by soap, frequent hand washing reduces the risk of infection.

 

Chapter 2

We are reminded daily of this phenomenon. In the corner of a traditional Korean home sits a television set tuned to a baseball game in which a visiting American team is losing. A Canadian family, meanwhile, decorates their home with sculptures and paintings imported from Pakistan. Teenagers in Singapore and Hong Kong pay for American blue jeans while high school students in England and France take courses on the making of traditional Indonesian costumes. Around the planet the streams of the world's cultures merge together to form new currents of human interaction.

 

1. It was once in the best economic interests of fishermen to catchall the fish they could from the oceans. Likewise, herdsmen and farmers tried to graze as many cattle and to plant `as many crops. In the case of loggers and manufacturers, they wanted to cut down as much timber and dump as much toxic waste as they could get away with. Yet when individuals act independently to maximize profit, they ultimately lose all because every resource is limited and at some point no longer renewable. Then the yield for the individual as well as for society diminishes and may even vanish. This case is called a social trap.

 

2. We have to remember that people still lived their lives among the animals in the Medieval Age. Most farmers lived in traditional "long-houses," which combined both house and stable. Farmers and their cattle entered the house from the same entrance and were separated inside only by a lone wall. But the flowering of urban life in the fifteenth century changed this lifestyle. By the late Elizabethan era, the English expelled animals from the house altogether, separating them in stables and barns. The English despised the Irish, Welsh and Scots because they still slept under a common roof with their animals.

 

3. In a world where everyone is connected via cyberspace and information is being exchanged at the speed of light, many companies decide to adopt a new business model. For example, while Encyclopedia Britannica still charges $1,395 for its twenty-two-volume set of books, the company sells far fewer physical books. Instead, the company puts the books' contents on the World Wide Web, where information can be updated and accessed continuously. Users now pay a subscription fee to access the information over an extended period of time. The company has thus made the transition from selling a physical product to a buyer to providing the user access to a service over time.

 

4. When I met the Prime Minister, I became aware of a key ingredient in her leadership. She could narrow her focus and gaze directly into the eyes of the person with whom she is engaged, shutting out all else around her. It makes her listener feel special, chosen, for a full forty-five seconds! Then the Prime Minister's gaze shifts past that one person to the next. And she narrows her focus upon the new contact. Suddenly, someone else feels special! Then, like clockwork, that person's time is up, and the Prime Minister moves on to work the rest of the room. Everyone feels singled out and special for a fraction of a minute. The Prime Minister had the ability to turn the limited time into such momentarily meaningful contacts.

September 2012 2nd grade exam (2nd version)

25.

Surfing is often thought of as a male sport, but in fact women have been surfing in California since the early 1920s and today there are women surfers in every surfing country in the world. Like men, they range from amateurs to professionals. Though women may not have been taken seriously in surf contests, these days they compete because they have truly earned that right. One of the earliest women surfers was Mary Hawkins, who showed very graceful form in the surf. She was the first in a long line which stretched down in the 1960s, to Marge Calhoun and her daughters, and Linda Benson, followed by some of the top professional surfers today.

27.

How you address your professors depends on many factors such as age, college culture, and their own preference. Some teachers will ask you to call them by their first names, especially if they’re relatively young. They enjoy the informal atmosphere generated by having everyone in the class on the same level. Some colleges, in fact, pride themselves on having all their faculty and students on a first­name basis. But beware: one of the surest ways to upset professors is to call them by their first names against their wishes. Most professors see themselves in a position of professional authority over their students which they earned by many years of study. They no more want to be called John or Maria than does your average physician.

28.

Teeth are covered in enamel, the hardest substance found in the body. It is, however, weak against acids. Acids from food can attack the enamel. These are found not only in sweet foods like ice cream and candy, but also in healthy vegetable and fruit juices. Particularly dangerous, however, are sticky foods that cling to the teeth. These encourage the formation of plaque, which is a mixture of the remains of food and bacteria. These bacteria turn simple carbohydrates, such as those in sugar, white flour, or potatoes, into acid that damages the tooth enamel. The more frequently these bacteria get new resources, the more acid they produce. In other words, it is more harmful to your teeth to repeatedly drink lemonade than it is to eat several chocolate bars at one sitting.

31.

It’s not a real vacation if you’re reading email or calling in for messages. When Jai and I went on our honeymoon, we wanted to be left alone. My boss, however, felt I needed to provide a way for people to contact me. So, I came up with the perfect phone message: “Hi, this is Randy. My wife and I are going away for a month. I hope you don’t have a problem with that, but my boss does.” I then gave the names of Jai’s parents and their address. “If you look them up in the phone book, you can get their number. And then, if you can convince my new in­laws that your emergency merits interrupting their only daughter’s honeymoon, they have our number.” We didn’t get any calls.

32.

Walter Debner ran an old­style grocery store in Minnesota, and he was looking for a way to give his business a boost. He once remarked that people who came into the shop without a bag took a lot less food than those who came with their bags. Why? Because they simply couldn’t carry the groceries. So he set about devising a way to help them purchase more at one time. It took him four years to develop the right solution: a package which was inexpensive, easy to use, and strong enough to hold a lot of groceries. The package consisted of a paper bag with cord running through it for strength and increased customers’ carrying capacity. He patented his product and sold over a million shopping bags a year.

33.

Educating consumers is important because people can have great power over how goods are made and sold, depending on what they choose to buy. This power is sometimes shown through campaigns and boycotts, when people refuse to buy certain food products. For instance, thousands of dolphins used to be killed in tuna fishing nets, but consumer pressure helped to change this practice. Tuna that was caught without harming dolphins was labeled “dolphin friendly” so consumers wouldn’t buy other tuna products. This forced many companies to change their method of fishing. As a result, dolphin deaths decreased by over 80 percent between 1990 and 2000.

34.

When I was a child, I loved to go for car rides with my father. During such rides, I was always full of questions: What does this button do? Can I press this one? I vividly remember turning on the light inside the car, making our vehicle a motorized firefly, and flying down the night’s path. In one such instance, my father told me, “Don’t turn on the light! It makes the car a fishbowl; everyone can see inside.” It seems as though the average person has these same reservations about being revealed or exposed―emotionally, physically, or both. Most people have a certain wish to maintain privacy, which perhaps explains my father’s resistance to having the car’s inside light on while driving at night.

35.

When the going gets tough, tough people ought to thank their fathers. New research from Brigham Young University shows that dads are in a unique position to help their children develop persistence. According to the study, when children felt warmth and love from their father, were told the reasons behind rules, and were granted an appropriate level of autonomy, they were able to set a foundation to flourish and cope with the stress and pressures of life. Over time, kids with fathers involved in their lives were more likely to become persistent, which led to higher engagement in school and lower rates of delinquency. After following 325 families over several years, two professors, Laura Walker and Randal Day, concluded that dads play a big role in helping their kids set goals and complete them.

36.

Originally, a Dutch auction referred to a type of auction that starts with a high price that keeps going down until the item sells. This is the opposite process from regular auctions, where an item starts at a minimum price and bidders wrestle over it by increasing their offers. In a Dutch auction, however, the auctioneer offers the item at a certain price and waits for somebody to agree. If nobody does, then he lowers the price and asks again. This continues until a participant says “yes” and thus wins the item. There are no battles over items in a Dutch auction; the first person to accept the offered price wins the item, resulting in saving a lot of time.

37.

A paradigm is the way you see something, your point of view, or belief. Our paradigms are often way off the mark, and they create limitations. Paradigms are like glasses. When you have incomplete paradigms about yourself or life in general, it’s like wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. That lens affects how you see everything else. In other words, what you see is what you get. If you believe you’re dumb, that very belief will make you dumb. If you believe your sister is dumb, you’ll look for evidence to support your belief, find it, and she’ll remain dumb in your eyes. On the other hand, if you believe you’re smart, that belief will cast a rosy hue on everything you do.

39.

A fascinating experiment once took place in a small Australian village. For the past two years, the village had witnessed that the number of street crimes was rapidly increasing. Local residents, alarmed by the increase in street crime, got together and decided that the best way to confront the problem was to remove the offenders from the main street after nightfall. (Instead of putting more armed police in the street, they chose to play classical music.) Every single block began piping out the sounds of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. In less than a week, the town reported a dramatic decrease in crime. The experiment was so successful that the main train station in Copenhagen, Denmark adopted the same approach―with similar results, too.

40.

Order effect is the prejudicial impact that the presentation order of a question, idea, answer, or product has on a respondent. Whether the item is located in the first, last, or middle position sometimes affects the selection of or response to that item. There have been several studies that have noticed an order effect when an early stimulus acts as a frame of reference for later stimuli. Robert Ferber from Illinois University had respondents rate a list of occupations and found that the maximum or minimum ratings occurred on the one presented first, regardless of the ordering of the occupations. In another study, the subjects were asked to rate a beverage on intention to buy on a scale ranging from “definitely would not buy” to “definitely would buy.” The first beverage tasted was rated significantly higher.

 

The items presented in the initial position tend to get extreme ratings by people.

 

[41 to 42]

One of the greatest annoyances in today’s gadget­filled world is that we continuously manage to misplace them. Finding a misplaced remote control, smartphone or even our car keys is not only an annoyance, but also a time consuming endeavor, right? A brilliant new invention called Stick­N­Find will change the way forgetful people live their lives.

Stick­N­Finds are about the size of a US quarter, with each one containing a circuit board, replaceable battery, buzzer and LED light. The tags can be stuck to items that are frequently lost, such as car keys or the TV remote, and a custom app allows the tags to be assigned to specific objects. When the object is lost, accessing the app on the smartphone will display how far away the object is (up to 100 feet). Then the users can find the missing item by moving in different directions to identify its location. The tag will also sound a buzzer or illuminate its LED lights, aiding in the search. For luggage, pets, and maybe your kids if you want to make sure they don’t wander off too far from home, this thing is absolutely perfect.

September 2012 2nd grade exam

23.

Maybe you inherited some bonds from a beloved grandmother, or your best friend tipped you off to a certain mutual fund. Maybe your new job offer includes “attractive stock options” and you’re wondering just how attractive they are. But when you open the financial section of the newspaper, it looks about as familiar as an alien language from another planet. What do these words ― bear market, bull market and Dow Jones ― mean? Here is a special lecture for beginners that breaks the codes and provides quite a few examples that can be seen in the influential daily economic newspapers. The lecture explains the difficult economic vocabulary plainly. Once you take this online course 30 minutes per day for one week, reading the financial pages will be much easier.

 

24.

As globalization marches forward, the world gets smaller and smaller and collaboration technology gets better and better. Yet only a handful of these advancements like international conference calls, IP phones, and video chats allow people to speak rather than to write. Now, more information is exchanged via text than ever before, making it extremely important that you can communicate effectively in writing. If you plan on participating in this knowledge economy, which grows more and more important with each passing day, you will need to learn how to write fairly well. You don’t have to be Shakespeare, but you do need to know how to express yourself properly in written form. This is because not only is writing an important academic skill, but it is also an important skill that translates into any career field.

 

25.

The sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, from his studies of ants, showed how it was often an evolutionary advantage for a single animal to die to protect its relatives, since they too shared the same genes. Moreover, it was also sometimes an advantage for an individual animal not to have offspring directly, but instead to devote its life to taking care of siblings or cousins, which again shared the same genes. In this way, ultimately, that animal’s own genes would survive and be passed on. In ant societies, self-sacrificing behavior could sometimes become an evolutionary advantage. Ants attack their enemies by biting, stinging, often injecting or spraying chemicals, which helps to protect their societies. Survival of the fittest didn’t necessarily mean the biggest and strongest, but the one which was best able to make sure that its genes were passed on.

 

26.

It seems that new members to our reading club have decided that it is a place where extreme political views can be expressed openly. The original reason for setting up the club was to encourage a social gathering where we could discuss new and old books, and make suggestions as to the meaning behind the words. It seems that, at recent meetings though, people have spent more time discussing what is happening in the political environment rather than what is happening between the covers of the books. Political discussions are all very well in the right place, but it is just that the reading club is not the place where politics should interfere with the purpose of the meeting. This issue should be brought to everyone’s attention. Otherwise, I feel that the reading group may no longer function as it should and once did.

 

27. Climate change might hit us in the most important place of all ―the dinner plate. Why do we care about climate change? There are many environmental problems caused by climate change, but they might not be as important as the impact that it might have on the most vital function of any species: feeding itself. Since the human population broke the 7 billion mark late last year, feeding the growing population is the greatest challenge to humanity. That’s why the threat that climate change could mess with agriculture is so scary. In last week’s Science, an international group of leading investigators published an open letter urging policymakers to ensure that agriculture becomes a more vital part of global action against climate change. “Global agriculture must produce more food to feed a growing population,” they write. “Yet scientific assessments point to climate change as a growing threat to agricultural yields and food security.”

 

28. You’ve just found the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood. Of course you’re excited, but “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” No matter how much you want that house, if you don’t bring in enough income compared with your expenses, you are going to stress yourself out over paying your bills every month. To understand just what you can afford, you need to first figure out your housing expenses, such as your monthly mortgage payment, property taxes and so on. These combined housing expenses should not be more than 28 percent of your gross income. You then need to figure out all of your other debts such as car loans, credit card debt and student loans. Your total debt-to-income ratio should not exceed 36 percent. So, if you have a heavy debt load in other areas, you might have to adjust your mortgage down to compensate.

 

29. Keep your hands off the goods. That’s the conclusion of a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. Authors Joann Peck and Suzanne B Shu cite a report that warned holiday shoppers to be cautious of retailers who encourage them to hold objects and imagine the objects as their own when shopping. They find that merely touching an object increases the feelings of ownership a person has for the object. This, in turn, results in a person being willing to pay more for most objects that they touch versus objects that they cannot touch. The research may help explain the link between touch and impulse purchasing. The authors explain, “Encouraging touch in a retail store may increase the feelings of perceived ownership and influence the amount a customer is willing to pay for a product.”

 

30. Ask anyone on the street if earthworms are good for ecosystems and you will undoubtedly receive a resounding “YES!” When asked why, they may say something like “earthworms mix and enrich the soil.” It is a basic ecological concept that we may have learned as early as kindergarten. However, recent research on invasion of these seemingly benevolent creatures into previously earthworm-free hardwood forests of the Great Lakes Region has seriously challenged that belief. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have documented dramatic changes in native hardwood forest ecosystems when exotic earthworms invade. These changes include losses of native understory plant species and tree seedlings, changes in soil structure and declines in nutrient availability. There is also fascinating evidence emerging that the changes caused by exotic earthworms may lead to a series of other changes in the forest that affect small mammal, bird and amphibian populations. These results suggest that exotic earthworms may threaten the stability of the ecosystem.

 

31. Every person has his or her own phobias or fears. Most fears are harmless, but, if they actually stop you from having fun and becoming successful, you should start learning how to stop being scared. In this way, you can make yourself braver, and be able to live a more relaxed life. Here is a tip. You can overcome your phobias effectively if you gradually make yourself less sensitive to what scares you. For example, if you are frightened of roaches, it is a good idea to start staring at pictures of roaches and watch movies that show you some roaches. Next, you can try sweeping dead roaches off your floor, and then eventually look at one or two crawling cockroaches first before actually stepping on them or killing them. This process is more effective for ‘objects and animal fears’ rather than fear of failure or being afraid of rejection.

 

32.

An animal’s hunting behavior is innate and further refined through learning. Each species has a characteristic strategy. For example, wolves and jackals are chasing predators; they run after their prey in packs until the victim gets tired, then they surround the exhausted prey while several pack members attack it simultaneously. Wolves coordinate their hunting through body movements, ear positioning, and vocalization, and the leader of the group has the privilege of eating first. Cats are, in contrast, sneaky hunters. Whether they are small cats or large lions, felines approach their prey with quiet steps and then suddenly attack, using their claws to bring their victim down. A bite to the throat or back of the neck usually kills the victim.

 

33. Even if you expect the majority of your readers to understand your native language, you may be tempted to use English when writing about research work. Usually researchers all over the world know English and use it a lot, and often the relevant terminology is more well-known in English than in your own language. Thus, to maximize the number of interested people that can understand your text, you often select English even if a great number of your readers have the same native language as you. Alternatively, you might write your texts both in your native language and in English, and this reduces the work needed for writing your document and possibly maintaining it. The maintenance problem is especially important for documents on the Web ― the information system where one crucial feature is the ability to keep things really up-to-date. Consequently, the use of English in essentially national environments tends to grow.

 

34. There’s a lot of evidence that strong communities have less crime and survive disasters better. Here’s an example: the environmentalist film maker Judith Helfand is making a film about a massive heat wave in Chicago in 1995 that killed about six hundred people. She explains that the victims had one thing in common: they were socially isolated. They didn’t have friends or family or trusted neighbors to notice that they hadn’t been out of their house lately, or to check that their air conditioners were working well. In fact, three-quarters of Americans don’t know their neighbors. Judith argues that the best way to prevent deaths from future heat waves is not having a policy of handing out discount air conditioner coupons, but providing community-building activities that strengthen social ties throughout the year.

 

35. This bar chart demonstrates the percentage of Americans over the age of 12 who used various digital devices in 2001 and 2011. The device which showed the least difference between the two years was television, with an increase of only 2%. However, from 2001 to 2011, the use of online video more than doubled. No one used the smartphone in 2001, but in 2011 this device rapidly grew to have more than two thirds of Americans over 12 using it. The radio was the only device that showed a minus growth, decreasing from 93% to 87%. Users of broadband Internet more than tripled, starting from 20% in 2001 to 74% in 2011.

 

36. The basking shark is the second largest fish, surpassed only by the whale shark. A grown-up basking shark usually has a length between 8 and 10 meters and weighs about 4 tons. In spite of its size, basking sharks are not aggressive and generally harmless to people. The basking shark has a worldwide distribution and characteristically migrates with the seasons. During the summer, they feed on plankton near the surface in more coastal waters. In the winter months, rather than spending time near the surface, basking sharks spend more time in deeper water. So they are very rarely seen during the winter. The basking shark reproduces slowly. It becomes fertile at the age of four and a pregnancy lasts for about two years, resulting in not more than six “baby-sharks,” each measuring about 1.5 meters in length.

 

37. The environmental benefits of recycling are obvious. But focusing on the wrong end of the issue can point our efforts in the wrong direction. At a recycling conference, I learned about the Recycle Bank, a program that weighs residents’ recycling bins and awards people points for heavier bins. That means the neighbor who buys cases of single-serving bottled water gets points over the one who installed a filter and drinks tap water in reusable containers! Similar ridiculous situations are happening any place where people are measuring progress by an increase in recycling rather than a decrease in waste. Programs like this give recycling a bad name by encouraging more consumption and more waste. They support the generation of disposable products.

 

38. If you’ve ever driven by a wind farm, you may have noticed that the turbines most likely have three blades. Not two, not four, but three. There are a few reasons behind that. If you have too many blades on a wind turbine, each blade as it moves through the air leaves a whirlpool behind it. If these whirlpools interfere with one another, that can cause problems with efficiency. However, if you have a turbine with two blades, it can’t capture as much energy from the wind as a three-blade turbine can. It also suffers from a dynamic imbalance; the two blades may receive higher wind speeds at the top than the bottom. This causes a vibration problem and vibrations in wind turbines are undesirable. Therefore, we come to the three-blade wind turbines, which solve all the problems mentioned above.

 

39. Critical reading is a way of reading that will allow you to take a deeper look at literature. It’s an acquired skill that you will develop with some knowledge and experience. You may hear certain people referred to as being well-read, which implies that they have read many different books and other forms of literature. But there’s a difference between being well-read and knowing how to read well. In other words, it’s not quantity but quality that counts. To read critically means to read analytically, which means to question and to think about the written material in front of you. When you question something, it usually leads to finding answers, and these answers will give you insight into the author’s intentions.

 

40. For most of us, the pain of losing a dollar is far more powerful than the pleasure of winning a dollar. Marketing and advertising executives follow this principle. A study of insurance policies, for instance, found that consumers switch companies twice as often when their carrier raises rates, as opposed to when the competition decreases its rate by the same amount. In everyday life, people make poor choices when they try to avoid loss. Many home owners looking to sell their houses right now would rather keep them on the market for an extra year than drop the price to $5,000 less than they paid, even though keeping the home for an extra year will surely cost them more than $5,000. The idea of a loss was just too painful for them. In contrast, home owners facing a gain on a house often sold too early and for too little. The gain didn’t matter as much as long as there wasn’t a loss.

 

People tend to let the fear of loss overpower rational decision-making, which causes them to be worse off.

March 2013 2nd grade exam

23.

Mike Michalowicz, the author of The Pumpkin Plan, argues that comedians are the ultimate public speakers. For example, comedians have to hold an audience’s attention for an hour or more, they don’t get a break during their presentation, and they can’t rely on the audience for a Q&A. They are also expected to make the audience laugh constantly. And they don’t even get to use presentation software programs, because they want the audience looking at them, not trying to read a screen. These facts don’t mean you need to be a comedian on stage to perform well. You aren’t even required to tell jokes. To enhance your own presentations, however, start to observe the techniques comedians use, and employ them in your own speech.

24.

Ironically, it’s usually when we try to do everything right that we wind up doing something wrong. That’s because the more balls you try to juggle, the more likely you are to drop one. You hope many extracurricular activities will get you into your first choice college, so you spend hours working out with the football club, run for student government, and volunteer for hours on free afternoons. Meanwhile, you make time to try to keep your grades up. With that kind of pressure, you can misread an assignment, double book your schedule, or otherwise let people down―but it’s not your parents’ fault or your friends’. They aren’t expecting too much of you by asking for one spot in your hectic schedule. It’s up to you to recognize your limits, not sign up for too many extracurricular activities, and admit when you’ve dropped the ball.

25.

Surfing is often thought of as a male sport, but in fact women have been surfing in California since the early 1920s and today there are women surfers in every surfing country in the world. Like men, they range from amateurs to professionals. Though women may not have been taken seriously in surf contests, these days they compete because they have truly earned that right. One of the earliest women surfers was Mary Hawkins, who showed very graceful form in the surf. She was the first in a long line which stretched down in the 1960s, to Marge Calhoun and her daughters, and Linda Benson, followed by some of the top professional surfers today.

26.

Octavius went to Albania to complete his academic and military training. While there, he learned of the assassination of Julius Caesar. Octavius returned to Rome and found that Caesar’s will would make him Caesar’s adopted son and heir to his political and personal fortune. He was advised not to accept Caesar’s request because he was only 18 and unprepared to deal with the hazards of Roman power politics. Nevertheless, he did accept. Caesar’s will called for games for the entertainment of the public. Such things required funds. Octavius borrowed funds and his efforts to comply with Caesar’s will got considerable support among the troops of Caesar and the public.

27.

How you address your professors depends on many factors such as age, college culture, and their own preference. Some teachers will ask you to call them by their first names, especially if they’re relatively young. They enjoy the informal atmosphere generated by having everyone in the class on the same level. Some colleges, in fact, pride themselves on having all their faculty and students on a first­name basis. But beware: one of the surest ways to upset professors is to call them by their first names against their wishes. Most professors see themselves in a position of professional authority over their students which they earned by many years of study. They no more want to be called John or Maria than does your average physician.

28.

Teeth are covered in enamel, the hardest substance found in the body. It is, however, weak against acids. Acids from food can attack the enamel. These are found not only in sweet foods like ice cream and candy, but also in healthy vegetable and fruit juices. Particularly dangerous, however, are sticky foods that cling to the teeth. These encourage the formation of plaque, which is a mixture of the remains of food and bacteria. These bacteria turn simple carbohydrates, such as those in sugar, white flour, or potatoes, into acid that damages the tooth enamel. The more frequently these bacteria get new resources, the more acid they produce. In other words, it is more harmful to your teeth to repeatedly drink lemonade than it is to eat several chocolate bars at one sitting.

30.

Phyllium giganteum, which is called the “walking leaf,” disguises itself so that enemies often aren’t able to distinguish this insect from real leaves. It can get up to 5 inches long and 3 inches wide. The males have rear wings extending to the end of the abdomen. The females don’t have rear wings, and their front wings are narrower and shorter than the abdomen. They lay between 100 and 300 eggs which have very thick shells. They eat plants like oak, eucalyptus, raspberry, and rose. They live mainly in tropical areas of Asia. Since they have a very limited mobility, they only move the necessary distances to eat, remaining stable in very small areas and passing their lives almost motionless most of the time.

31.

It’s not a real vacation if you’re reading email or calling in for messages. When Jai and I went on our honeymoon, we wanted to be left alone. My boss, however, felt I needed to provide a way for people to contact me. So, I came up with the perfect phone message: “Hi, this is Randy. My wife and I are going away for a month. I hope you don’t have a problem with that, but my boss does.” I then gave the names of Jai’s parents and their address. “If you look them up in the phone book, you can get their number. And then, if you can convince my new in­laws that your emergency merits interrupting their only daughter’s honeymoon, they have our number.” We didn’t get any calls.

32.

Walter Debner ran an old­style grocery store in Minnesota, and he was looking for a way to give his business a boost. He once remarked that people who came into the shop without a bag took a lot less food than those who came with their bags. Why? Because they simply couldn’t carry the groceries. So he set about devising a way to help them purchase more at one time. It took him four years to develop the right solution: a package which was inexpensive, easy to use, and strong enough to hold a lot of groceries. The package consisted of a paper bag with cord running through it for strength and increased customers’ carrying capacity. He patented his product and sold over a million shopping bags a year.

33.

Educating consumers is important because people can have great power over how goods are made and sold, depending on what they choose to buy. This power is sometimes shown through campaigns and boycotts, when people refuse to buy certain food products. For instance, thousands of dolphins used to be killed in tuna fishing nets, but consumer pressure helped to change this practice. Tuna that was caught without harming dolphins was labeled “dolphin friendly” so consumers wouldn’t buy other tuna products. This forced many companies to change their method of fishing. As a result, dolphin deaths decreased by over 80 percent between 1990 and 2000.

34.

When I was a child, I loved to go for car rides with my father. During such rides, I was always full of questions: What does this button do? Can I press this one? I vividly remember turning on the light inside the car, making our vehicle a motorized firefly, and flying down the night’s path. In one such instance, my father told me, “Don’t turn on the light! It makes the car a fishbowl; everyone can see inside.” It seems as though the average person has these same reservations about being revealed or exposed―emotionally, physically, or both. Most people have a certain wish to maintain privacy, which perhaps explains my father’s resistance to having the car’s inside light on while driving at night.

35.

When the going gets tough, tough people ought to thank their fathers. New research from Brigham Young University shows that dads are in a unique position to help their children develop persistence. According to the study, when children felt warmth and love from their father, were told the reasons behind rules, and were granted an appropriate level of autonomy, they were able to set a foundation to flourish and cope with the stress and pressures of life. Over time, kids with fathers involved in their lives were more likely to become persistent, which led to higher engagement in school and lower rates of delinquency. After following 325 families over several years, two professors, Laura Walker and Randal Day, concluded that dads play a big role in helping their kids set goals and complete them.

36.

Originally, a Dutch auction referred to a type of auction that starts with a high price that keeps going down until the item sells. This is the opposite process from regular auctions, where an item starts at a minimum price and bidders wrestle over it by increasing their offers. In a Dutch auction, however, the auctioneer offers the item at a certain price and waits for somebody to agree. If nobody does, then he lowers the price and asks again. This continues until a participant says “yes” and thus wins the item. There are no battles over items in a Dutch auction; the first person to accept the offered price wins the item, resulting in saving a lot of time.

37.

A paradigm is the way you see something, your point of view, or belief. Our paradigms are often way off the mark, and they create limitations. Paradigms are like glasses. When you have incomplete paradigms about yourself or life in general, it’s like wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. That lens affects how you see everything else. In other words, what you see is what you get. If you believe you’re dumb, that very belief will make you dumb. If you believe your sister is dumb, you’ll look for evidence to support your belief, find it, and she’ll remain dumb in your eyes. On the other hand, if you believe you’re smart, that belief will cast a rosy hue on everything you do.

38.

On entering the house, I examined the framework of the hall window with my lens. I could at once see that someone had gone through it.

It was because I could distinguish the outline of a step where the wet foot had been placed while coming in. I was then beginning to be able to form an opinion as to what had occurred.

A man had waited outside the window. Someone had brought the jewels to him. The deed had been overseen by another man. He had pursued the thief and had struggled with him.

They had each pulled at the crown, their united strength causing injuries which one alone could not have made. He had returned with the prize, but had left a fragment in the grasp of the thief.

39.

A fascinating experiment once took place in a small Australian village. For the past two years, the village had witnessed that the number of street crimes was rapidly increasing. Local residents, alarmed by the increase in street crime, got together and decided that the best way to confront the problem was to remove the offenders from the main street after nightfall. (Instead of putting more armed police in the street, they chose to play classical music.) Every single block began piping out the sounds of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. In less than a week, the town reported a dramatic decrease in crime. The experiment was so successful that the main train station in Copenhagen, Denmark adopted the same approach―with similar results, too.

40.

Order effect is the prejudicial impact that the presentation order of a question, idea, answer, or product has on a respondent. Whether the item is located in the first, last, or middle position sometimes affects the selection of or response to that item. There have been several studies that have noticed an order effect when an early stimulus acts as a frame of reference for later stimuli. Robert Ferber from Illinois University had respondents rate a list of occupations and found that the maximum or minimum ratings occurred on the one presented first, regardless of the ordering of the occupations. In another study, the subjects were asked to rate a beverage on intention to buy on a scale ranging from “definitely would not buy” to “definitely would buy.” The first beverage tasted was rated significantly higher.

The items presented in the initial position tend to get extreme ratings by people.

 

High School - Doosan Kim - 2nd Grade - Chapter 5

Lesson 5 Ellis Island: A Gateway to the New World

 

The United States is known as a nation of immigrants and is called a "melting pot"

where various racial and ethnic groups live together.

 

 

 

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, more than 12 million immigrants from different countries passed through one place before officially entering the United States.

 

 

 

his place that is so dear to the hearts of many Americans is "Ellis Island."

 

 

 

This meaningful island gives these Americans an opportunity to trace their ancestry and roots.

 

 

Annie Moore, a fifteen-year-old girl then, tells the story of how she became the first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island.

 

 

 

 

It was a very cold winter day in December, 1891 when my two younger brothers and I stood in line to board the big ship.

 

 

We were about to leave our home in Ireland and take a voyage to the New World, America.

 

 

Even though I felt sad, I was also excited about seeing my parents again.

 

 

They had gone to America two years earlier to make a better life for my family.

 

 

Riding on a big ship across the Atlantic Ocean may sound like fun, but it wasn't.

 

 

Our room was way down at the bottom of the boat.

 

 

It was very uncomfortable and crowded.

 

 

On January 1st, 1892, the ship reached New York.

 

 

By the time we sailed into New York Harbor past the Statue of Liberty, everyone cheered and cried.

 

 

I was very happy that the trip was almost over.

 

 

Then the captain announced that the ship would dock at Ellis Island.

 

 

I was the first one off the ship.

 

 

I was very surprised when an official gave me a $10 gold piece.

 

 

At first I didn't understand.

 

 

I had never seen so much money, and did not know why he gave it to me.

 

 

He explained that Ellis Island was new, and the $10 was a gift to the first person off the ship.

 

 

Later I found that I became the first immigrant to land on the newly-opened Ellis Island.

 

Immigrants that came through Ellis Island had to pass a medical exam to be allowed to enter the country.

 

 

People who passed the physical exam went on to answer a long list of questions:

 

 

Have you been to prison? Can you read and write?

 

 

Do you have a job waiting for you?

 

 

Those who were accepted into the country, then exchanged whatever sort of money they had for dollars.

 

 

 

This marked the beginning of their new lives in America.

 

 

In those days, many people around the world looked upon the United States as the land of opportunity.

 

 

Some of them had built up an idealistic image of America and were faced with the reality of living in a foreign country.

 

 

It was true that the growing country needed workers, but the new jobs were just as hard as those the immigrants had left behind.

 

 

 

 

As a funny Italian story goes, "I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold.

 

 

 

When I got here, I found they weren't paved at all;

 

 

I had to pave them."

 

 

For most immigrants, Ellis Island was a gateway to America.

 

 

They came seeking a better life for their family.

 

 

Those arriving after 1886 could see the Statue of Liberty next to Ellis Island, a symbol of their new hope.

 

 

At the base of the statue are these lines from the poem The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus:

 

 

The New Colossus

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

 

 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

 

 

 

Today Ellis Island is no longer the gateway to America.

 

 

But for many Americans, it is a memorial, the entry point for the ancestors of more than 100 million people.

 

 

 

It is a precious place that will live on forever in their hearts.

 

 

YBM - Practical English - 1st Grade - Lesson 3

 

Beauty Tips

Q and A

 

Not interested in beauty advice written for moms?

Yeah, we understand. Here you will find useful beauty tips every teen should know. Experts will give you the tips you need to know.

 

Question: I’m losing my confidence because of my greasy hair. I wash my hair every day, and sometimes twice a day! The grease never goes away and it is getting worse. What should I do?

 

Answer: Your scalp produces natural oil. This is a good thing because it helps your head and hair stay healthy and shiny. Unfortunately, too much oil leads to what you call

‘greasy hair.’ Here are some tips on this problem. First, wash your hair daily with a shampoo designed for oily hair. I recommend massaging the scalp gently while shampooing hair. Second, apply the conditioner to only the mid and ends of your hair rather than to the roots. Third, brush your hair briefly and not too often. When you brush, avoid contact with the scalp. Finally, watch your diet. Oily and fatty foods can make your skin and scalp greasy. Good luck with your hair!

 

Question: Hello! I’m a 17-year-old boy. My life is miserable because of pimples. Please tell me how to treat them.

 

Answer: You get upset when you wake up and find a huge pimple on your face. The good news is that there are ways to prevent and treat pimples. First, it is important to wash your face twice a day with warm water and a mild soap made for people with pimples. Gently massage your face in a circular motion. Second, do not squeeze your pimples. Squeezing them can push dirty material further into the skin. It causes more swelling and redness, and can damage your skin permanently. Avoid touching your face with your fingers. Touching your face spreads the bacteria. To keep bacteria away, wash your hands before applying anything like treatment, creams or makeup to your face. Finally, keep your hair clean and out of your face to stop additional dirt and oil from touching your skin.

 

Question: I really want to keep my weight down. I eat as little as possible, so I am always hungry. Still, nothing happens to my weight! What am I doing wrong?

 

Answer: It is important to stay healthy and maintain a weight that is right for your body. Unfortunately, many teens turn to unrealistic diets that promise weight loss in unhealthy ways. To lose weight, you need to follow these instructions. First, do not even think about a diet that requires you not to eat. Those diets lower your body’s need for food and will reduce your energy, slowing down weight loss. If you are hungry, eat something. In particular, eat a healthy breakfast. Eating in the morning starts your body’s functions for the day. Next, keep checking how many calories you consume from liquids. Consuming juice and soft drinks can easily add up to hundreds of calories. Drink water, instead. It is also important that you find a physical activity that you can enjoy. Healthy activities include running, biking, swimming and so on. Exercise for at least 30 minutes a day. Finally, get a good night’s sleep every night. Lack of sleep contributes to weight gain because you then eat sugar-filled products to stay awake.

YBM - Practical English - 1st Grade - Lesson 2

 

A Girl Becomes a Mother Goose:

Fly Away Home

 

One rainy night in New Zealand, 13-year-old Amy Alden played by Anna Paquin is

involved in a car accident with her mother, who dies in the accident. Amy is taken to her new home in Ontario, Canada, by her father who is an inventor, Thomas Alden played by Jeff Daniels. She thinks her new life is miserable until she comes across abandoned goose eggs in a destroyed forest. She puts the eggs in her father’s old barn and they hatch while ‘imprinting’ on her as their mother. Because geese learn everything from their mother, they will not survive the winter unless Amy can teach them a migration route. Otherwise they must have their wings cut in order to stay in the house.

Amy and her father, Thomas, attempt to teach the birds to fly by making them follow him in his plane. No matter how many times they try, the geese prefer to stick close to Amy. Thomas builds a new aircraft with wings and a head that look like a goose’s for Amy. She learns how to fly the plane. To everyone’s joy, when Amy flies, the geese follow her in flight.

Amy and Thomas set off on their journey to help the geese migrate to a bird sanctuary in North Carolina, USA. After crossing Lake Ontario, low fuel makes them land on a U.S. Air Force base and almost get arrested. After they tell their story, however, they are welcomed and allowed to stay the night. The following morning, their amazing journey becomes national news. However, thirty miles before reaching the bird sanctuary, Thomas’ aircraft crashes in a field.

 

Amy: Are you okay?

Dad: (panting) Uh. Whew!

Amy: What are we gonna do now? How will we get there by sundown?

Dad: Ah! I think I’ve dislocated my shoulder. Look, you’re going to have to take them the rest of the way.

Amy: Can’t we both go in my plane?

Dad: Amy, I can’t ride with you. There isn’t enough fuel for both of us. You can do it.

Amy: I can’t find my way without you.

Dad: Yes, you can. Because you’re so much like your mother. She was brave, you know. She went off and followed her dream even when nobody helped her. You’ve got that strength in you too, Amy.

Amy: I wish she were here now.

Dad: She is. She’s right next to you. She’s in the geese. She’s in the sky. She’s all around you. And she won’t let you down.

Amy: I can’t leave you here. You’re hurt.

Dad: Yes, you can. I want you to go. You take that plane, those geese, and you fly away.

Amy: (hugging Dad) Bye, Dad.

 

Amy takes off alone and begins to head toward the sanctuary. While waiting for Amy, her father, his friends, townspeople and many environmentalists stand up to the developers who start bulldozing the sanctuary. Amy finally appears with the geese and lands safely, much to the joy of the environmentalists and Amy’s family, but to the disappointment of the developers. Her geese flock happily to their new winter home.

In the following spring, Amy’s flock took off and headed north on their own. All 16 geese returned to Amy’s home.