Tobacco

by Claire Powell and Dave Collett

Whats in a cigarette? Whats in a puff?
Tobacco smoke contains about 4,000 chemicals. Some of which are harmful, others deadly. Here
are three of the deadliest.

Tar
Tar, a mixture of chemicals such as formaldehyde, arsenic and cyanide, can cause serious lung
diseases. Seventy percent of the tar from tobacco smoke remains in the smokers lungs.

Nicotine
Many people are unaware that nicotine is more addictive than heroine. A powerful and fastacting drug, nicotine reaches the brain in about seven seconds. One of the major effects of
nicotine is an increased heart rate and blood pressure.

Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas formed when a cigarette is lit. The red blood cells absorb
the gas more easily than oxygen, so up to fifteen percent of a smokers blood may be carrying
carbon monoxide instead of oxygen. Breathing becomes more difficult because the heart has to
work harder to pump less oxygen around the body.

From seed to smoke

What do tomatoes and tobacco have in common? They are both a member of the same botanical
family. Tobacco is grown in more than one hundred countries with China being the largest
producer, closely followed by the USA. Tobacco can grow well in poorer soils so a typical
farmer can expect a good income from planting this crop.
Seeds and fertiliser are often provided by British American Tobacco. The seeds are so small that
they must be protected in seedbeds for sixty days before transplanting to the field. Two weeks
later, soil is carefully pushed up against the seedlings to further protect them and help to develop
a good root system. Finally, after a couple of months, the flowering plants and some of the upper
leaves are cut to allow more growth in the remaining leaves. The crop gradually grows towards
the harvesting stage.

Harvest
In most countries harvesting is done by hand. The farmer takes off a few leaves from the lower
part of each plant. A typical farmer can expect to harvest about 15,000 plants. This is quite a lot
considering each plant contains around 22 leaves.

Curing
There are four main methods.
Air-cured tobacco is hung in unheated, ventilated barns until the tobacco dries and the tobacco
leaf becomes a light to medium brown colour.
Flue-cured tobacco is made when heat is introduced into a barn through pipes from a furnace
outside. The leaves are heated until they turn yellow.
Sun-cured tobacco leaves are hung out on racks and exposed to the suns rays. The direct heat
turns the leaves a yellow to orange colour.
For fire curing, wood is burnt under the tobacco leaves, which dries the tobacco and produces a
smoky fragrance.

Processing
There are four stages in processing. Dirt is removed from the cured tobacco. The leaf is separated
from the stem (a process known as threshing). The moisture content is checked carefully. The
processed tobacco is packed into 200kg cardboard boxes, for shipping to manufacturing sites.

Manufacturing
At the factory, the matured tobacco is checked for quality and then carefully blended with other
ingredients which are needed for the brand recipe, such as flavourings.
Moisture content is crucial. Too dry and the tobacco leaf will crumble; too moist and it may spoil
during storage. The blended tobacco is treated with just the right amount of steam and water to
make it supple, and then cut into the form in which it appears in the cigarette. The cut tobacco is
then given a quality check.
Cigarette making, once done entirely by hand, is today almost fully automated with the cut
tobacco, cigarette paper and filters continuously fed into the cigarette-making machines.
Packing machines put the cigarettes into the familiar brand packs, wrap the packs in protective
film and group them into cartons and cases. The completed cases, time-dated to ensure the
freshest product possible, are then ready for distribution.

Glossary
addictive (adj): unable to stop doing something that can be dangerous.
arsenic (n): a very strong poison that can kill people.

automated (adj): from the verb automate - to make a process in a factory or office operate by
machines or computers, in order to reduce the amount of work done by humans and the time
taken to do the work.
brand (n): a type of product made by a particular company.
crumble (v): to break, or cause something to break, into small pieces.
spoil (v): when something spoils or is spoilt, it is no longer good enough to use.
cure (v): to treat food, tobacco, etc. with smoke or salt, etc. in order to stop it decaying, to
preserve food.
cyanide (n): a highly poisonous substance.
deadly (adj): very dangerous.
fertiliser (n): a natural or chemical substance used to make plants grow.
film (n): a thin layer of plastic to cover and protect an object.
formaldehyde (n): a strong smelling gas used for preservation.
fragrance (n): a smell.
stem (n): the stick-like central part of a plant which grows above the ground and from which
leaves and flowers grow, or a smaller thin part which grows from the central part and which
supports the leaves and flowers.
furnace (n): a piece of equipment for heating a building.
income (n): the money you receive from doing work.
puff (n): an amount of smoke inhaled each time a smoker puts a cigarette to his/her mouth.
seedling (n): a young plant grown from a seed.
supple (adj): bending or able to be bent easily; not stiff.
ventilated (adj): from the verb to ventilate, provide air to cause fresh air to enter and move
around an enclosed space.

Food
Do we live to eat or eat to live? That is the question.
I remember as a child growing up in Britain having fish and chips or baked beans on toast at
least twice a week on my lap while watching my favourite cartoon. Of course I enjoyed my food
but it wasnt something I often talked about. Now, Im not blaming my culture for my lack of
interest in food at an early age. Perhaps my silence was due to the fact that I didnt know
anything about food. How many children know that prawns only turn pink when they are cooked
and that tuna does not come from a can? Now after having lived in Southern Europe, Asia and
Australia I find myself talking about food all the time. The world has seduced my taste buds and
opened my mouth.
Food thats plain and simple is often the best but not always so. For many of us food is a need.
For others, food is a friend. Yet to some others food is an enemy. Cravings grip us at all the
wrong times while we struggle to follow a strict diet that turned all our favourite desserts into
mortal sins. There are others who regard food as an investment. To them, food has some kind of
special powers that can control their lives, for better or for worse. If thats the case, its time to
change and make food work for us.
Lets start by using food the way you would use a pencil or a pair of scissors. We begin using
food as a tool. Like tools, some food works well for some tasks and some is specially designed to
accomplish others.
Lets say youre feeling down. You had a tough day or a tiff with a best friend that drove you
round the bend. You decide to treat yourself to a bar of chocolate nothing like chocolate to perk
you up. Unfortunately youre setting yourself up for a higher dose of the blues. Thats because
chocolate bars have a hefty amount of fat and sugar which takes a long time to digest and can
draw energy away from your brain and caffeine which will temporarily boost your mood and
alertness but send you crashing back down as soon as its effect starts to wear off.
Does this mean snacking is a bad idea when youre feeling down? Not at all. You just have to do
it wisely. In place of a chocolate bar, have a slice of toast with chunky marmalade. Then instead
of fat and caffeine youve just given yourself a dose of vitamin C that has been shown to fight
depression. In addition, marmalade is loaded with the type of sugar that spurs the release of
mood-lifting chemicals in the brain.
In fact you can manage your mood and boost your brainpower, metabolism, even your sex life,
by eating the right food. Whatever your goals, you can custom-design a diet to help you meet
them. Heres how taking control of your food can help you take control of your life.
The next time you have an important meeting that requires mental processing, try some brain
processing food that looks like this: tuna salad on whole wheat bread, green salad with tomatoes,
a handful of nuts, bananas, a glass of skimmed milk. Tuna, bananas, nuts and whole wheat bread
are high in vitamin B6, which has been scientifically proven to help preserve cognitive skills.
Protein-rich food contains a nutrient called Tyrosine, which studies have shown, are linked to

clear thinking and alertness. Greens such as broccoli and spinach naturally contain loads of
vitamins and iron. Lack of these nutrients can lead to fatigue and difficulty in concentrating.
Having said all that, lets not be too stressed about what we eat. Many scientists these days
believe that indulging in lifes little pleasures may actually help improve your health because of
the psychological lift it gives you. There is a lot of truth in the old saying that a little of what
you fancy does you good.
Food 2
When I was at school, our teacher told the class 'You are what you eat.' My friends and I would
laugh and call each other hamburger and biscuits. Our teacher was trying to show us the
importance of eating the right food to stay healthy.
This was a few decades ago when there were big campaigns to make British people healthier. We
decided to throw out our chip pan which we had used until then to make chips every day for
dinner. We replaced our chips with boiled potatoes. We also started using semi-skimmed milk
instead of whole milk in our cups of tea and bowls of cornflakes. At first I felt like I was eating
my cornflakes in water and my potatoes had no taste at all. But after a while I started to prefer
healthier food because I felt stronger and I didnt get sick so often.
Japanese people are reputed to be the healthiest in the world because of the food they eat. The
healthiest Japanese people eat rice and fish and vegetables every day. They drink green tea or
water when theyre thirsty, and snack on dried fish, fruit or gingko nuts. The traditional Japanese
diet is famous for helping you to live a longer and healthier life.
So we have proof that you become what you eat. Can you tell what your friends eat just by
looking at them? When you know the effects of different types of food, you can use your
knowledge well and eat what you want to become.
Food has an impact on our physical and emotional health. Have you ever heard any of the
following advice?
Lettuce or milk can make you sleepy.
To stop feeling sleepy you should eat peanuts or dried fish.
To keep your teeth clean you should eat apples often.
Garlic helps you not to catch a cold.
Everyone has their own advice to give, which they have read about or have been told by older
relatives. Some of these pieces of advice seem to contradict each other.
Eating chocolate makes you fat and gives you spots.

Chocolate contains the essential minerals iron and magnesium

What we need to figure out is what type of chocolate to eat to get the benefits and how much of
it to eat. We can do this by reading the list of ingredients on the chocolate bar wrapper. Exactly
how much real chocolate is in there? And how much of that do we need to eat to get the benefits
of the minerals it contains?
Future restaurants might be named after the physical or emotional state they hope to create. Their
menus will list the benefits of each dish and drink. Some restaurants have already started this
concept, and list the nutritional content of their dishes on the menus.
Lets take the restaurant Winners as an example. Their menu would list dishes specifically
designed to help you win sports competitions. There would be 'Night-before Vegetable Lasagne',
a pasta dish with extra layers of spinach pasta for slow-burning energy, rich tomato sauce full of
vitamin C and soft, easy-to-digest vegetables. All this would be topped with a little fresh cheese
just enough to help you get a good nights sleep, but not enough to give you nightmares!
Or you could choose the 'Go-faster Salad', which is a large bowl of mixed raw vegetables in a
light salad dressing, giving you energy without making you gain weight. The vegetables are
carefully chosen to include plenty of natural vitamins and minerals.
What kind of dishes do you think would be on the menu at the Clever Caf (which sells food
thats good for your brain)?
So whats going to happen to hamburgers and biscuits? Will the concept of eating food because
its tasty go out of fashion? Of course not! Junk food is also changing. If ice cream is not good
for children, cant we give them fat-free, sugar-free tofu ice cream? Unhealthy food is going out
of fashion, so brands are changing. We are told not to drink cola because of the sugar and
caffeine content so cola companies are making sugar-free and caffeine-free drinks. We are told
dried fruit is a healthier snack than biscuits, so some biscuit companies are making biscuits with
added vitamins. Snacks might soon be changing their names to 'Skinglow' and 'Chocomineral'!
So in the future you might be able to eat your way to your idea of perfection!

Weather
by Mike Rayner
It's hardly surprising that weather is a favourite topic for so many people around the world - it
affects where we choose to live, what we wear, our moods, and perhaps even our national
characteristics. A sunny day can relieve the deepest depression, while extreme weather can
destroy homes and threaten lives.

The effects of weather

Palm trees bent double in hurricane force winds, cars stranded in snow drifts, people navigating
small boats down flooded city streets images we are all familiar with from news reports of
severe weather spells. But many of the effects of the weather are less newsworthy.
Im feeling a bit under the weather is a common complaint in Britain, especially on Monday
mornings, and it seems that weather really can be responsible for moods. Studies have shown
that changeable weather can make it hard to concentrate, cloudy skies slow down reflexes, and
high humidity with hot, dry winds makes many people irritable and snappy.
Some suggest that the weather also leaves its mark on character, giving people from the same
region similar temperaments, although it seems that economic, political and social factors are
likely to have a much stronger effect than the weather.

What causes changes in the weather?

If you live in a place like Britain, where the weather seems to change daily if not hourly, you
could be forgiven for thinking that the weather is random. In fact the weather is controlled by
systems which move around areas of the globe. In the UK the weather depends on depressions,
often called lows, and anticyclones, also known as highs. These systems start in the Atlantic
Ocean, and make their way across the British Isles from the west to the east. Highs bring sunny
weather, while lows bring rain and wind.
The weather systems in tropical climates are very different from those in mid and high latitudes.
Tropical storms develop from depressions, and often build into cyclones, violent storms featuring
hurricanes and torrential rain.
In modern times, human activity seems to be altering weather patterns. Gases produced by heavy
industry change the temperature of the Earths surface, and affect cloud formation. Some
researchers say that factories in Europe and North America may have been one of the causes of
the droughts in Africa in the 1980s.

Can we predict the weather?

The human race has always tried to guess the weather, especially in areas of the world where
there are frequent changes. Traditional rhymes point to early attempts to identify weather
patterns, popular poems include:
Red sky at night, shepherds delight; Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning
Ash leaf before the oak, then we will have a summer soak; Oak leaf before the ash, the summer
comes without a splash
Flies will swarm before a storm.
Rain before 7, clear by 11.

Two other popular traditional ways of forecasting the weather used pine cones and seaweed.
When the air has a high level of humidity there is a higher chance of rain, when the humidity is
low, there is more chance of fine weather. Pine cones and seaweed react to changes in humidity pines cones open, and seaweed feels dry when the humidity is low, while high humidity has the
opposite effect.
While folk wisdom can still provide a guide to help forecast weather, todays methods of
prediction increasingly rely on technology. Satellites, balloons, ships, aircraft and weather
centres with sensitive monitoring equipment, send data to computers. The data is then processed,
and the weather predicted. However, even this system cannot predict weather for longer than
about week.
A recent study by an Australian psychologist suggests that certain people may have a special gift
for predicting the weather. However it is possible that these people would use their talent in
another way, since the same group had considerable success in forecasting changes in another
chaotic system the stock market.
It appears that a study of weather patterns may also enable scientists to predict the outbreak of
disease. An Ebola epidemic in Uganda in the year 2000 came after the same rare weather
conditions that had been present before an outbreak 6 years earlier. Efforts to limit the spread of
airborne diseases such as foot and mouth, are also strongly dependent on favourable wind
conditions.

Extreme weather
Although people in Britain often moan about the weather, we should spare a thought for the
inhabitants of parts of the world where extreme weather regularly wreaks havoc on the
environment and population. Sandstorms, tornadoes, blizzards and flashfloods regularly kill
thousands of people and leave many others homeless.
While most of us try to avoid extreme weather, some adventurous souls actively seek out places
where extreme weather conditions exist. Sports such as surfing, kiteboarding, ice-climbing and
white-water rafting are becoming increasingly popular with people seeking relief from the
monotony of daily routine. Extreme sports are about exhilaration, skill and danger, and often
harness the weather to provide adrenaline addicts with their kicks.
Even more extraordinary are storm-chasers weather enthusiasts who risk their lives following
tornadoes and thunderstorms at high speed to witness the damage they cause at close hand.

Glossary
adrenaline (n): a hormone produced by the body when you are frightened, angry or excited,
which makes the heart beat faster and prepares the body to react to danger.
ash (n): a forest tree which has a smooth grey bark, small greenish flowers and seeds shaped like
wings.

blizzard (n): a severe snow storm with strong winds.

climate (n): the general weather conditions usually found in a particular place.
drought (n): a long period when there is little or no rain.
humid (adj): (of air and weather conditions) containing extremely small drops of water in the
air.
hurricane (n): a violent wind which has a circular movement, especially found in the West
Atlantic Ocean.
latitude (n): the position north or south of the equator measured from 0 to 90.
oak (n): a large tree that is common especially in northern countries, or the hard wood of this
tree.
pine cone (n): the hard egg-shaped part of the pine tree which opens and releases seeds.
psychologist (n): someone who studies the human mind and human emotions and behaviour,
and how different situations have an effect on them.
reflex (n): an uncontrollable physical reaction to something.
shepherd (n): a person whose job is to take care of sheep and move them from one place to
another.
tornado (plural tornados tornadoes) (n) (US INFORMAL ALSO twister): a strong
dangerous wind which forms itself into an upside-down spinning cone and is able to destroy
buildings as it moves across the ground.
torrential (adj): used to refer to very heavy rain.
Consumer society
There is enough on earth for everybodys need, but not for everyones greed. Gandhi
If we only bought things we needed, there would be enough for everybody. What do we need?
What you need depends on how old you are and your way of life. Rearrange the list of things you
can buy and put the things you think we most need at the top of the list.

A coat
A pair of trainers

Levis jeans

Water

A CD player

A pair of jeans

A dental check-up

Paper

A restaurant meal

A telephone

Jewellery

Gold-coloured laces in your trainers

Food

An appointment at the hair salon

Paracetamol

Shampoo

An iPod

Beer

Toothpaste

A packet of M&Ms

Cushion covers

Table mats which match the curtains

If we dont need to buy so much, we dont need to work so much. We can take part-time jobs or
reduce our working day from 8 hours to 6 hours. Some people are leaving very well-paid jobs to
live a healthier life in the countryside or a more exciting life abroad. This is called
downshifting. Parents can spend more time with their children and the unemployed are given
more opportunities to work.
If we start to respect saving the earth more than spending money, we will become conservers.
When we are conservers, we try to choose environmentally friendly products which are durable
and last a long time. We may find growing our own vegetables or making our own clothes more
rewarding than buying them.
What was the best thing you bought last week?
Could you choose from lots of different types? We like having a choice of what to buy. People

who buy things are called consumers. Consumers have choices. We usually choose the colour,
taste, smell or size of what we buy, but there are other choices we can make. The following
questions will help you to consider these choices.
Where was it made?
If you dont like the place it was made, you might decide not to buy that particular product. A lot
of people dont buy products from certain countries when they dont like the way the country is
run. Was it made in a factory or on a local farm? If the product was unbelievably cheap, the
people who made it might not have been paid much.
Who made it?
Do you know? If a friend made it, you probably like it more and you will want to keep it for a
long time. If it was made by somebody who enjoyed making it, the quality and the design are
probably better. Or does it look like it might have been assembled in a large factory?
There are children in Asia who make Santa Claus dolls for European children to play with. The
children who make the toys dont celebrate Christmas because they are not Christian; they think
of the dolls as work. Would it be better if the children in Europe made their own Christmas dolls?
What is it made from?
One of the places where we want to buy expensive luxuries is at the airports duty-free shop.
Next to the chocolate and cigarettes, there are beautifully shaped bottles and compact boxes full
of perfumes and creams which promise to make you look and feel more beautiful. If you look at
the ingredients you will find that the perfumes are mainly alcohol and the creams are mainly
made of petroleum!
Almost all products are sold in packaging. Some products have too much packaging, creating
more rubbish and using up resources. Some use recycled packaging, which is better for the
environment.
Next time you go shopping, think about what you really need to buy. Dont deprive yourself of
things you like, but decide what you should buy before you go out, so that you wont be
influenced by advertisements or promotions. If it is more expensive to buy goods which dont
have much packaging and things which are more durable, buy less. If you can choose to work
less, decide which things you would like to make, do or grow yourself. Even though you have
less money, your life will become richer!

AWARDS
by Chris Rose

The Nobels are the originals, of course. Alfred Nobel, the man who invented deadly explosives,
decided to try and do something good with all the money he earned, and gave prizes to people
who made progress in literature, science, economics and perhaps most importantly peace.
Not all awards are as noble as the Nobels. Even though most countries have a system for
recognising, honouring and rewarding people who have done something good in their countries,
there are now hundreds of awards and awards ceremonies for all kinds of things.
The Oscars are probably the most famous, a time for the (mostly) American film industry to tell
itself how good it is, an annual opportunity for lots of big stars to give each other awards and
make tearful speeches. As well as that there are also the Golden Globes, apparently for the same
thing.
But its not only films now there are also Grammies, Brits, the Mercury Prize and the MTV and
Q awards for music. In Britain, a writer who wins the Booker prize can expect to see their
difficult, literary novel hit the bestseller lists and compete with "The Da Vinci Code for
popularity. The Turner Prize is an award for a British contemporary artist each year it causes
controversy by apparently giving lots of money to artists who do things like display their beds,
put animals in glass cases or this year build a garden shed.
Awards dont only exist for the arts. There are now awards for Sports Personality of the Year, for
European Footballer of the year and World Footballer of the Year. This seems very strange
sometimes awards can be good to give recognition to people who deserve it, or to help people
who dont make a lot of money carry on their work without worrying about finances, but
professional soccer players these days certainly arent short of cash!
Many small towns and communities all over the world also have their own awards ceremonies,
for local writers or artists, or just for people who have graduated from high school or got a
university degree. Even the British Council has its own awards for Innovation in English
Language Teaching.
Why have all these awards and ceremonies appeared recently? Shakespeare never won a prize,
nor did Leonardo da Vinci or Adam Smith or Charles Dickens.
It would be possible to say, however, that in the past, scientists and artists could win patronage
from rich people a king or a lord would give the artist or scientist money to have them paint
their palaces or help them develop new ways of making money. With the change in social
systems across the world, this no longer happens. A lot of scientific research is now either
funded by the state or by private companies. Perhaps awards ceremonies are just the most recent
face of this process.
However, there is more to it than that. When a film wins an Oscar, many more people will go
and see it, or buy the DVD. When a writer wins the Nobel prize, many more people buy their
books. When a group win the MTV awards, the ceremony is seen by hundreds of thousands of
people across the world. The result? The group sell lots more records.

Most awards ceremonies are now sponsored by big organisations or companies. This means that
it is not only the person who wins the award who benefits but also the sponsors. The MTV
awards, for example, are great for publicising not only music, but also MTV itself!
On the surface, it seems to be a win-win situation, with everyone being happy, but let me ask
you a question how far do you think that publicity and marketing are winning here, and how
much genuine recognition of achievement is taking place?

Venomous animals

Sea wasp
Despite the glorious semi-tropical climate, nobody swims at beaches in the northern half of
Australia from September to May. For there, all but invisible as it cruises in the calm tropical
shallows, is the world's most dangerous marine stinger - the chironex jellyfish, or sea wasp. It is
blamed for the deaths of more than 60 people last century, exceeding the combined toll taken in
the same region by sharks and crocodiles. The stinging tips are astonishingly tiny and densely
packed: more than 1000 venom-injecting threads can be fired from an area about the size of a
pinhead. In total, each sea wasp has thousands of millions of these threads. A serious sting can
kill within seconds. A less serious one results, at very least, in tissue destruction and horrendous
subsequent scarring.

Funnelweb spider
Rearing up, with beads of venom already glistening at the tips of its massive fangs (which are
capable of biting through a leather boot), a big funnelweb spider is an unnerving sight. The threat
is no bluff. The monster will attack on sight, and until an antivenin was finally discovered in the
mid-1980s, dozens of people living in the city of Sydney were killed, including one victim who
died in just 15 minutes.

Fierce snake
Venom yielded in an average milking of a big fierce snake could kill 250,000 mice, making it by
far the most potent land snake venom in the world. When they strike, fierce snakes snap
repeatedly, pumping venom time after time, and can kill an adult in less than 10 minutes. There
are another 20 snakes in Australia capable of killing a human being.

Blue-ringed octopus
Stranded in rock pools after big tides anywhere on Australian coasts, the blue-ringed octopus is a
common sight. It is just the sort of pretty toy that a toddler will pick up. If not seen, it is tiny
enough to be hiding in a can of drink. But it is the most lethal octopus in the world. Its venom
includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), a component found in no other creature. Two ducts pass right
through its brain, bringing venom down to the mouth from a pair of salivary glands. Each is as

big as the brain. Each contains enough venom to inflict paralysis and eventual agonising death on
at least ten men.

Cone shell
These beautiful shells can earn collectors thousands of dollars, and so are greatly prized. But
they produce and store continuous supplies of disposable poison darts, which can be extended for
a distance as long as the shell. When its prey passes close by, the cone shell propels a dart
forward, rams it violently against the unsuspecting passer-by, and then draws the paralysed
victim back into its snout. The larger species can kill human beings.

Asthma
by John Russell
With World Health day on 7th April, this week we take a closer look at a very common health
problem.
Does your chest regularly feel tight? Do you find it difficult to breathe after light exercise? Do
you sometimes make a wheezing sound when you breathe? If so, you might be asthmatic. If you
have breathing problems please consult a doctor, but even if you do have asthma - dont worry,
you are not alone.
What is asthma?
Asthma is a condition that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide and more than 5
million people in the UK are asthmatic, about one in thirteen people. It is a lung disease that
affects your airways the tubes that carry air to and from your lungs. It causes the muscles in
these tubes to contract, the tubes themselves to swell and also causes sticky mucus to be
produced. All of these factors can make it very difficult for a sufferer to breathe properly.
Shortness of breath, especially after exercise, coughing, or difficulty breathing while sleeping,
are all common symptoms. These can be described as mild asthma attacks; however, they can
usually be controlled by medication. A severe asthma attack, on the other hand, where a sufferer
finds it very difficult to breathe, may require hospital treatment. How badly you are affected by
these symptoms depends on what type of asthma you have; from mild to chronic; and how well
you are able to control the disorder.
What causes it?
Asthma is not contagious, although its still not known precisely what causes it. People can be
born with it; develop it in childhood, or at any age. If you have asthma, its likely that someone
else in your family had it, as the illness is known to run in families. There is also some evidence

that environmental factors, such as diet, housing conditions or smoking during pregnancy, can
cause asthma.
Having the condition doesnt necessarily mean you will suffer badly from the symptoms. Mild or
moderate asthma can be easily controlled through medication or lifestyle changes. Additionally,
all attacks need a trigger, and if these triggers can be identified and avoided, the likelihood of an
attack decreases. Triggers can include: pollution, smoking, dust, animal hair, stress, pollen,
exercise, and cold air. These triggers are personal to each individual sufferer, so if you have
asthma, make sure you know what is causing your attacks, you can then better avoid these
triggers.
History
Asthma is not a recent condition, in fact there is written evidence of the condition from ancient
Egyptian times. The word asthma itself was first coined by the physician Hippocrates over 3000
years ago, and was the Greek for difficult breathing. Over the years, people have tried many
remedies both physical and mental, to combat the illness.
To alleviate the symptoms, people changed their diet, avoided polluted towns, or took herbal/folk
cures such as tobacco smoke, owls blood, chicken soup, tar fumes, or acupuncture. Blood letting
and opium were also popular treatments. Prayer and meditation were used to enable people to
better control their own breathing. Some of these remedies or breathing techniques are still being
used today.
Medicine and preventative measures
It wasnt until the mid 20th century that doctors realised asthma attacks were caused by the
swelling and contraction of the airways. Consequently, in the last 40 years there have been many
developments in the treatment of asthma. There are presently two main types of medicine:
preventers and relievers. A preventer is used every day and reduces the swelling of the airways,
cutting the risk of an attack. A reliever, such as Ventolin, is taken when breathing has become (or
is going to become) difficult, this actually relaxes the muscles of the airways, reducing
constriction and improving the airflow. The medicine is usually taken using an inhaler.
Prevention is also good treatment, so if you have asthma, remember to keep generally healthy,
take regular exercise and lots of vitamin C to avoid colds and flu which can be dangerous for
asthma sufferers. A healthy diet is also important, and do watch what you eat, as certain foods or
food additives can be asthma triggers.
By taking the right medication and making the right lifestyle choices, there is no reason why
most asthma sufferers shouldnt be able to lead perfectly healthy and active lives.
Famous sufferers
There have been many famous asthmatics past and present. These include:

Beethoven, Che Guevera, Benjamin Disraeli, Marcel Proust, Bob Hope and Martin Scorsese
There are even asthmatic sporting heroes such as:
Dennis Rodman (basketball), Paul Scholes (football - Manchester United) and Paula Radcliffe
(UK Long Distance runner)
The future
Unfortunately there is still no cure for asthma, although the development of new treatments has
led to a much better quality of life for most sufferers. However, the number of people being
diagnosed as asthmatic has increased dramatically over the past 20 years. This increase could be
due to environmental or dietary factors, but for the moment researchers are puzzled.
It is not unusual for the symptoms of asthma to diminish as sufferers get older, although
personally after 27 years Im still waiting ...

Acupuncture
The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the
medicine."William Osler, M.D
"If all the medicine in the world were thrown into the sea, it would be bad for the fish and good
for humanity" O.W. Holmes, (Professor of Medicine Harvard University)
Alternative medicine has become much more popular in the West in recent years. It seems that
people are becoming increasingly worried about the side effects of drugs, and are turning to
treatments such as homeopathy, osteopathy, yoga, reflexology and acupuncture to complement,
or sometimes even replace, Western medicine.
An event in my life three or four years ago made me examine my own attitudes towards
alternative medicine. After suffering from insomnia for a few months, I was feeling mentally and
physically exhausted. A trip to my GP, and attempts at self-medication with nightly doses of
Guinness and whisky, failed to bring any relief from my condition. My friend Tony, who was
studying acupuncture at a college near London at the time, suggested that I visit an
acupuncturist. Since I have a healthy fear of needles from waiting in line for vaccinations in
gloomy school corridors, I was reluctant to take his advice, but by this time I was so tired that I
was prepared to try almost anything.
I made an appointment with the only acupuncturist in my area, and after another nearly sleepless
night, turned up at his room in the local alternative health centre the following morning. After
taking my pulse, looking at my tongue, and asking a few questions about my diet and lifestyle,
the acupuncturist correctly deduced that I was worn-out (I found this extremely impressive since
he hadnt asked me why I had come to see him.) He then inserted a needle in my right foot
between my first and second toe, and, despite my anxiety, I fell asleep immediately. At the time I
considered the whole experience to be close to a miracle.

What is acupuncture?
Acupuncture is based on the idea that energy flows through the human body along 12 lines or
meridians. These meridians end up at organs in the body, and illness is the result of a blockage of
the energy flow to these organs. To remove the blockage, an acupuncturist inserts very fine
needles into the body at points along the meridians. This stimulates the flow of energy, and
restores the patients health.
What is the history of acupuncture?Traditional Chinese medicine has been practised for around
3000 years in the Far East, but is relatively recent in the West, and acupuncture only really
became well-known in the West in the 1970s as people began to travel more frequently between
the two areas of the world.
A significant event in the history of acupuncture came in 1971, when a journalist from the New
York Times had his appendix removed in China, when on a trip to the country with Henry
Kissinger, the Secretary of State for the USA. Surgeons used acupuncture to deaden the pain of
the operation, which greatly impressed Kissinger.
Although at first doctors in the West were often sceptical of the medical value of acupuncture, in
the last few years it has become more established as an alternative to Western medical
treatments, since clinical tests have shown that acupuncture is effective for a number of
conditions.
What can acupuncture be used to treat?
In the Far East acupuncture is used to treat a wide range of complaints, and is also used as a
preventative medicine, since it is thought to increase the bodys resistance to infection. In the
West, the treatment is often used to relieve headaches, dental pain, back pain, and arthritis, and to
treat depression, asthma, stress, high blood pressure and anxiety.
Who uses acupuncture?
Since acupuncture is known to be effective against pain, it is not surprising that many
sportspeople have experimented with acupuncture when fighting injury. Martina Hingis, the
famous tennis player, had a wrist injury cured through treatment, and English Premier Division
football club Bolton Wanderers employ an acupuncturist to keep their squad in good physical
condition. While in Korea for the World Cup in 2002, soojichim, a Korean form of acupuncture,
was very popular with the German football team.
Cherie Blair, a well-known human rights lawyer, and the wife of the British Prime Minister, was
recently spotted wearing an acupuncture needle in her ear, suggesting that she uses the treatment
to cope with stress. The Queen of England is also interested in acupuncture, although she doesnt
use the treatment herself she and many of her family rely on another alternative medical
treatment, homeopathy, to keep them healthy.
What are the risks?

Finally, if you do decide to visit an acupuncturist, it is important that you check that they are
qualified and registered to practise acupuncture. In the past some people have experienced
allergic reactions, broken needles and even punctured lungs while being treated, although this is
very uncommon.
Glossary
allergic (adj): caused by an allergy.
appendix (n): appendixes a small tube-shaped part inside the body below the stomach.
arthritis (n): an illness which causes the parts of the body where bones meet to become painful
and often big.
asthma (n): a medical condition which makes breathing difficult by causing the air passages to
become narrow or blocked.
clinical (adj): relating to medical treatment and tests.deaden (adj): to make something less
painful or less strong.
dental (adj): relating to teeth.
GP (n): abbreviation for general practitioner: a doctor who sees people in the local area and
treats illnesses that do not need a hospital visit.
homeopathy (n): a way of treating illnesses using very small amounts of natural substances.
insomnia (n): when you find it difficult to sleep.
miracle (n): something that is very surprising or difficult to believe.
organ (n): a part of an animal or plant that has a special purpose.
osteopathy (n): the treatment of injuries to bones and muscles using pressure and movement.
preventive (also preventative) (adj): Preventive action is intended to stop something before it
happens.
pulse (n): the regular movement of blood through your body when your heart is beating.
puncture (v): to make a hole in something.
reflexology (n): a treatment in which your feet are rubbed and pressed in a special way in order
to improve blood flow and help you relax.
sceptical UK (US skeptical) (adj): doubting that something is true or useful.

side effect (n): another effect that a drug has on your body in addition to the main effect for
which the doctor has given you the drug.
significant (adj): important or noticeable.
vaccination (n): a substance which contains a harmless form of a virus or bacterium (=
extremely small organism), and which is given to a person or animal to prevent them from
getting the disease which the virus or bacterium causes.
worn-out (adj): extremely tired.

Archaeology
by Paul Millard
Archaeology, like many academic words, comes from Greek and means, more or less, the study
of old things. So, it is really a part of the study of history. However, most historians use paper
evidence, such as letters, documents, paintings and photographs, but archaeologists learn from
the objects left behind by the humans of long ago. Normally, these are the hard materials that
dont decompose or disappear very quickly things like human bones and skeletons, objects
made from stone and metal, and ceramics.
Sometimes, archaeologists and historians work together. Take, for example, the study of the
Romans, who dominated the Mediterranean area and much of Europe two thousand years ago.
We know a lot about them from their writing, and some of their most famous writers are still
quoted in English. We also know a lot about them from what they made, from their coins to their
buildings. Archaeologists have worked on Roman remains as far apart as Hadrians Wall in the
north of England and Leptis Magna in Libya.
Of course, for much of human history, there are no written documents at all. Who were the first
humans, and where did they come from? This is a job for the archaeologists, who have found and
dated the bones and objects left behind. From this evidence, they believe that humans first
appeared in Africa and began moving to other parts of the world about 80,000 years ago. The
movement of our ancestors across the planet has been mapped from their remains humans went
to Australia about 70,000 years ago, but have been in South America for just 15,000 years. The
evidence of archaeology has helped to show the shared origin and history of us all.
It is very unusual to find anything more than the hard evidence of history normally, the bacteria
in the air eat away at soft organic material, like bodies, clothes and things made of wood.
Occasionally, things are different.
A mind-boggling discoveryIn 1984, two men made an amazing discovery while working in a bog
called Lindow Moss, near Manchester in the north of England. A bog is a very wet area of earth,
with a lot of plants growing in it. It can be like a very big and very thick vegetable soup walk
in the wrong place and you can sink and disappear forever. After hundreds of years, the dead

plants can compress together and make peat, which is like soil, but is so rich in energy that it
can be burned on a fire, like coal.
The men were cutting the peat when one of them saw something sticking out a human foot!
Naturally, the men called the police, who then found the rest of the body. Was it a case of
murder? Possibly but it was a death nearly two thousand years old. The two men had found a
body from the time of the Roman invasion of Celtic Britain. Despite being so old, this body had
skin, muscles, hair and internal organs the scientists who examined him were able to look
inside the mans stomach and find the food that he had eaten for his last meal!
Why was this man so well preserved? It was because he was in a very watery environment, safe
from the bacteria that need oxygen to live. Also, the water in the bog was very acidic. The acid
preserved the mans skin in the way that animal skin is preserved for leather coats and shoes.
How did he die?Understandably, archaeologists and other scientists wanted to know more about
the person that they called, Lindow Man. His hands and fingernails suggested that he hadnt
done heavy manual work in his life he could have been a rich man or a priest. They found that
he hadnt died by accident. The forensic examination revealed that he had been hit on the head
three times and his throat was cut with a knife. Then a rope was tightened around his neck. As if
that wasnt enough, he was then thrown into the bog.
So, Lindow Man was killed using three different methods, when just one would have been
sufficient. The archaeologists believe that he was sacrificed to three different Celtic gods, called
Taranis, Esus and Teutates. Each god required a different form of death. A sacrifice to Teutates
required drowning, which is why he was found in the bog. Nobody can tell the complete story of
Lindow Man. The Romans said that the Celts made sacrifices every May to make sure that there
was enough food that year. Was he a typical routine sacrifice?
An archaeologist called Anne Ross has suggested that Lindow Man was a special case. Why
would an important man be sacrificed to three gods? Perhaps it was in response to the Roman
invasion of Britain, which started in the year AD 43, close to the time that Lindow Man died. He
might have been killed to gain the help of the gods against the Romans. It didnt work. The
Romans stayed in Britain for four hundred years and Lindow Man stayed in his bog for two
thousand.
Say hello to Lindow Man. If you visit London, you can go and see Lindow Man at the British
Museum, where he is spending some time in the company of more famous mummies from
Egypt. Whereas the bodies of the Egyptian kings and queens were intentionally preserved,
Lindow Man is with us by accident. Whatever his origins, it is a fascinating experience to see
him face to face. I recommend it.

Indigenous peoples
by Richard Sidaway

'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children (Native
American proverb)
In December 2005, Evo Morales became the new President of Bolivia. He was only 46 years old
and openly supported the production and use of the coca plant. He also wanted the state to take
control of the profitable natural gas industry. But what was really significant was where he came
from. He was born into a farming family in the Andes and spent much his life campaigning for
the interests of the original inhabitants of the country. He was one of the first leaders of an
indigenous people to make it to the top.
There are perhaps 370 million indigenous peoples in 70 countries around the world. They live on
20% of the worlds land, and they contribute 80% of the worlds biological and cultural diversity.
For the last few hundred years, however, European colonialism has marginalised them.
Europeans gave them diseases against which they had no defences, suppressed their culture and
language, and tried to assimilate them into western societies.
Sometimes they almost disappeared from history. Few people today have heard of the Herero of
Namibia. Eighty per cent of their population died from starvation a century ago at the hands of
German colonisers. In 1803, there were 10,000 people living in Tasmania, but after the British
declared war on them twenty years later, only 300 survived. The last Tasman died in 1905.
The main reason for the decimation of indigenous peoples has been to get their land and natural
resources. In Colombia, a hundred years of oil extraction has resulted in the pollution of rivers,
soil and drinking water. The story is repeated in Ecuador and Peru. In Brazil, the government
plan to build five large dams on the Xingu River. These will flood thousands of square
kilometres of tribal reserves and destroy much agricultural land.
Often governments have used forced relocation to get the local inhabitants out of the way. In
Botswana today it is happening because of diamond mining and tourism. In the islands of Diego
Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, the entire population were banished forever in order to build an
airbase.
Land has a spiritual significance for indigenous people. In 1985 the Australian government
finally recognised this and returned ownership of Uluru (Ayers Rock) to the Pitjantjatjara
Aborigines. In the USA, however, the government is planning to store radioactive waste at Yucca
Mountain in Nevada, although it is a sacred site for the Shoshone nation.
Businesses often try to take possession of indigenous cultures. Multinational companies wanted
to become the owners of traditional knowledge in areas such as food, farming and health. They
have tried to create patents on plants and medicines that indigenous people have used for
centuries.
Native languages are also disappearing. They were banned in schools for decades. Parents
stopped using them to communicate in the home, and so they were no longer passed from one
generation to another.

Sometimes families have been affected in more dramatic ways. In Australia, it was government
policy from 1900-1972 to forcibly remove aboriginal children from their parents and bring them
up in institutions.
Health problems such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes are another feature of indigenous
life. The writer Paul Theroux, travelling in the Pacific, noted that most islanders diets nowadays
consisted of junk food and canned fish imported from Japan thousands of miles away - despite
the fact that they were surrounded by water, and fishing had been a way of life for millennia.
So is the election of Mr Morales, in one of the worlds poorest countries, a sign that things are
finally getting better? Various peoples around the world now have their own representation.
There is a Smi parliament in Sweden and an Assembly of First Nations in Canada.
Formal Apologies were passed in several Australian State Parliaments in 1998 for the past
mistreatment of the Aboriginal population. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the Treaty of Waitangi Act
has made it possible for Maoris to claim back land, fisheries and forest in special courts where
they have equal representation with non-indigenous people. The Miskito Indians in Nicaragua
have had similar success.
Some Native American Tribes have recently become extremely wealthy because of a change in
the law. They can now start casinos on their own land. Some people worry about the morality of
this, but some of the profit has been used for improvements in education and health.
The meeting between western and indigenous cultures has not often been a happy one, but
perhaps there is hope yet for the continued diversity of humankind.

Overpopulation
by John Kuti (written in 2003)
I come from the south of England, in the most densely-populated corner of a small island, which,
you might think, is full of people. (The UK as a whole has 2.4 people per hectare.) I have never
gone hungry. The only time when I wish there were less people is on rush-hour trains. However,
one of the most interesting findings of the census of 2001 was that a million people were
missing. Or at least there were a million people less than the authorities expected. Should we be
happy that we have more space and less mouths to feed? I dont know.
As I start writing this article the world population (according to the Office of Population
Research at Princeton University) stands at 6,315,850,431.

Doom, version 1
In 1798 Robert Malthus wrote an essay which got economics the name of the dismal science. It
was called The Principle of Population. He said that it was impossible for the number of
people to increase, and even worse, it was impossible for the standard of living to rise. The
argument went like this:

1. population naturally increases geometrically: 2, 4, 8, 16

2. food production increases arithmetically 2, 4, 6, 8
3. so, population will be controlled by lack of food, the same as it is for animals. Some people
will always be starving.
A lot of people disliked Malthus point of view. Often, because it seemed to go against the idea
of progress, which was so important for other social theories of the time. Anyway, the experience
of the next two centuries shows that something must be wrong with the theory. In the 19th
century world population rose from 1 to 1.7 billion. In the 20th, it increased to about 6 billion.

Doom, version 2
In 1961, J.G. Ballard wrote a story called Billenium. Its about a world where the population has
gone on increasing at 3% a year to reach a figure of at least 20 billion, although the true number
is kept secret. To make space for growing food, everyone lives in giant cities where the buildings
are divided into little cubicles. A single person can have 4 square metres and a married couple
six. Everyone has enough to eat, but life is certainly very inconvenient. People spend most of the
time waiting in queues for the bathroom or anywhere else they want to go.

Reality
The real situation is not as bad as these alarming predictions. A very surprising and dramatic
change is happening in the world, but it is not what Malthus or Ballard predicted. To understand
the statistics, we need first to think about the two ways the number of people can go up.

The Fertility Rate

The most obvious way to increase population is for more babies to be born. If the population is
exactly constant, the average woman has 2.1 children. This number is called the "replacement
rate". These rates are going down very fast. The peak was in the period 1965-75 at 4.9, now the
rate for the world as a whole is 2.8. However, there is still a big difference between the
developed countries, where the rate is 1.6 and poor countries where it is 3. To quote some
extreme examples, in Italy the figure is 1.2 and in Zambia 5.6.

Life expectancy
The other reason why there are more people now is that we live longer. This figure also shows a
dramatic change. The people born in 1950 could expect, on average, to live 45 years. Now the
world life expectancy at birth is 65, and the United Nations predicts this will increase to 76 in the
next 50 years.

Predictions of doom

Malthus and Ballard were still right about some things. The dismal picture painted by Malthus is
still true in poor countries where 18 million people starve every year, and more than a billion
people don't have a supply of clean drinking water. Ballard is right about the trend towards city
life. By the year 2006, the United Nations predicts that more than 50% of people will live in
cities.

City life in the developed world

At least in the rich countries, the move into cities seems to be connected with falling fertility
rates. It is more expensive to have a child in the city, and children are less useful as workers.
Women receive a better education and are able to work so they have more to lose by becoming
mothers. City life seems to encourage individualism people become more interested in getting
an education and a career. They marry later in life, and divorce more often, so producing smaller
families.
At the moment, it seems quite possible that the same pattern will be repeated everywhere. One
UN forecast now foresees a world population of about 5 billion in 2100. But, the more time you
spend looking at predictions the more you realise that the human race is a surprising
phenomenon. It looks like we will have a clearer idea of what will happen in ten or twenty years
time when the present generation of parents moves beyond child-bearing age.
Now there are 6,318,042,422 people.

Glossary
average (n): the figure you get if you add together a set of numbers and divide that total out
equally.
census (n): the official procedure for counting all the people in a country.
constant (adj): staying the same, not changing.
cubicle (n): a very small closed off space, e.g. a shower cubicle.
densely-populated (adj): with a lot of people living close together.
dismal (adj): dark, sad and depressing.
encourage (v): to make something happen or increase.
figure (n): number.
foresee (v): to predict, to see something that might happen in the future.
go on ing (v): continue.

hectare (n): the size of a square 100 metres by 100 metres.

lack (v): not having something.
peak (n): the highest point.
predictions (n): things people say about what they think will happen in the future.
starving (adj): dying from lack of food.

Parts of the body

By Richard Sidaway
There are 50 trillion cells in the human body, 206 bones, 32 teeth, and more than five and a half
litres of blood. There is also at least one part of the body for every letter of the English alphabet.
Here are 25 of them. Can you guess what they are.?
A: This is a 10cm long piece of the intestines and nobody can really work out what its for. Its
probably a leftover from the days when our ancestors were vegetarian, and many people have it
removed when it becomes infected.
B: A muscular bag which expands to collects urine from the kidneys. It can hold as much as half
a litre before you have to go to the toilet. They used to be kicked around as footballs and played
as musical instruments, although only after the animals had finished using them
C: Some people have clefts in theirs, others let hair grow on themYou keep it up to recover
from a misfortune, and use the word twice to toast someone.
D: The little depression which appears each side of your mouth when you smile is, like the
ability to make a u-shape with your tongue, genetic. Youve either got it, or you havent
E: That most perfect of organs, the biologists best argument for natural selection, the window to
the soul. In sleep, it is covered by a lid. Close one and you wink, close two and you blink. The
third is a symbol of enlightenment.
F: People paint the nails to make themselves more attractive and put rings on them to signify
alliance. They help us read if we cannot see, and help us speak when we cannot hear. They wrote
these words
G: Ive always thought that this sounds like the name of a distinguished Roman Emperor, but it
is in fact the most powerful muscle in the human body. There are two of them and chances are
youre probably sitting on them right now.

H: The size of a fist, it beats 70 times a minute without stopping for more than 60 years. So much
more than just a pump for the blood, it symbolizes love and the centre of our being. It can be
followed, broken, even worn on your sleeve!
I: It opens and closes in reaction to light and gives colour to the eye. It is now scanned to check
peoples identity. The word comes from the woman in Greek mythology who personified the
rainbow.
J: The bone that opens and closes the mouth and holds your teeth. It drops if you are shocked or
surprised. Snakes can unlock theirs if theyre having a particularly big lunch.
K: Bend it and you get shorter, get down on it and you show respect. Footballers and skiers put it
under great stress. Children and ventriloquists dummies tend to use it as a seat. It should jerk if
you hit it with a small hammer.
L: Some people fill theirs with smoke, although they are supposed to be used for getting oxygen
to the blood and removing carbon dioxide. The right one is bigger than the left one. They have
enough airways to cover a tennis court.
M: There are 650 of these and we move when they get shorter. They often work in pairs. Some
you cant control at all. One you can, supposedly, is the tongue. It takes 17 of them to make a
smile.
N: The wires which pass messages to and from the brain to all parts of the body by using
electrical pulses and chemical changes. If the blood to them gets cut off, they get irritated and the
result is pins and needles. There are over 70km of them in the skin alone.
O: About the size of a nut, there are two of these organs which produce an unfertilised human
egg every month or so for about thirty years. They also release the hormones which change girls
into women.
P: This is the part of the body that can be moved sensually while dancing and led to the invention
of Hawaiian grass skirts, rocknroll and the hula-hoop. It is larger in women for the purposes of
childbirth only because humans insist on having such big heads.
R: Twelve pairs in both men and women form a cage to protect various vital organs inside. Some
of them float because they dont meet in the middle. If you crack one, you just have to wait
until it heals.
S: This is our surface covering. It takes a month for each new cell to move through the three
layers to the top, after which it drops off. You lose about 50 kilos of it by the time you are 70. It
comes in a variety of colours to protect us from the sun, and gets more wrinkled as we get older.
T: 60,000 litres of water pass down it in the average lifetime and sometimes you get a frog in it.
It contains one pipe for food and one for air. Pressure on the outside can lead to strangulation, a
blockage inside can cause suffocation.

U: The thing that hangs down at the back of your mouth. This is what you see when you yawn,
and can sometimes cause people to snore when they are asleep.
V: This makes your blood look blue. Medical professionals use them if they need to extract a
specimen for testing. They can become inflamed or varicose if you spend too much time in one
position.
W: A joint that links fifteen separate bones. It is used to hang an accessory for telling the time, or
one to persuade you to accompany the police to the station.
X: A long continuous piece of DNA, containing around 1,000 genes, this is one of the 23 pairs
that are found in human cells. Women have two of them, men one.
Y: A long continuous piece of DNA, containing between 70 and 300 genes. Its sequence has now
been mapped by the Human Genome Project. It is found only inside the cells of the male of the
species.
Z: If youve never heard of this, then youre probably not the only one. Nor had I until I found
out its another name for the cheekbone.

Information Society
by Richard Sidaway
Once upon a time societies were organised around religion, farming, trade or industry. In many
parts of the world today this is still true, but something else is becoming more important - the
exchange of information, and the technology that we use to do this. Twenty-four hour news, ecommerce, international call-centres, mobile phones, Global Positioning Systems all these are
making the world smaller and faster.
The growth in telecommunications is now giving more and more people access to democratic
ideas, to the principles of international law and human rights, to the science that will help their
country to develop or to the medical knowledge that can fight disease. It is starting a real global
village which people only dreamed of a generation ago.
But how can everybody in the world share the recent technological advances? Millions of people
cannot read these words because they dont have access to a computer. They dont understand
English either, the language that 80% of the information is written in. They dont even have a
telephone. They are more worried about how far they will have to walk today to get clean water
or if they can feed themselves and their families. For most people on this planet, information is
not a priority.
The contrast between countries that have information technology and those that dont is called
the digital divide. Scandinavia and South East Asia have a high number of people who use
Information Communication Technologies (ICT). Central Africa and the Pacific have almost
none.

The United Nations is trying to make the information society a reality for more of the developing
world. It wants to see rich countries transfer new technology and knowledge to poorer nations.
Ten years from now, the plan is that everybody in the world will have a radio or television and
that 50% of the worlds population will have access to the internet from schools and universities,
health centres and hospitals, libraries and museums. This will improve medical care and
education, science and agriculture, business opportunities and employment. At the same time,
they say, local communities, languages and cultures will become stronger.
Just a dream? Certainly there are some contradictions. Does only good come with freedom of
information? If information is power, why will people share it? Doesnt more technology mean
fewer jobs? And how can the exchange of information keep local cultures alive if most of that
information is only in one language?
It is much easier to get people connected to broadband or put government online in Europe than
in South America or the Middle East. However, developing countries often leapfrog the process
which richer nations went through, and avoid their mistakes. Brazil collects most of its taxes
online these days. There are cyber cities in Dubai and Mauritius. And Taiwan and Hong Kong
have better access to ICT than the United Kingdom. Maybe the English language isnt so
important after all.
Perhaps the spread of technology means that the old centres of power are also changing. The
United States introduced internet technology in the 1970s. But people are asking why they
should continue to be in charge. Why should a small organisation in California tell the rest of the
world how computers talk to each other?
The US says it makes the rules, but it doesnt control the flow of information. The domain name
system (DNS) controls how internet addresses work, but not what a website or database contains.
Many want a more international approach, however. But they also want the internet to remain
open and free for all to use.

WATER sports
by Mike Rayner
We'll all be planning that route
We're gonna take real soon
We're waxing down our surfboards
We can't wait for June
We'll all be gone for the summer
We're on surfari to stay
Tell the teacher we're surfin'
Surfin' U. S. A.
(Chuck Berry, Brian Wilson)

All over the world people head for oceans, lakes, pools and rivers in search of fun, freedom and
excitement. On the water, in the water or under the water, there are a huge range of sports and
activities available to lovers of H2O. Lets take a look at some of the more colourful and
adventurous water sports.

Surfing
When Captain James Cook landed in the Polynesian islands of Hawaii in 1778, he was surprised
to find the native men and women, both royalty and ordinary citizens, riding waves standing on
wooden boards. Despite being centuries old, surfing only really took off in the rest of the world
from the 1950s, starting with the southwest coast of the USA. Nowadays surfing is enjoyed by
surfers wherever there are waves, in Bali, Australia, Japan, France and even Britain.
Contemporary surfers use lightweight fibreglass boards to catch waves of varying shapes and
sizes as they roll in towards the beach. One of the main attractions of the sport is its simplicity
all a surfer really needs is a surfboard, a wetsuit and a way of getting to the beach.
Although there has been a fiercely competitive professional tour since the 1970s, surfing
traditionally appeals to young people with a relaxed outlook on life. A whole lifestyle has built
up around the sport, and movies like Big Wednesday, Point Break and Blue Crush have
popularised surf culture. Surfing also has its own language an excited surfer is stoked, a
surfer who falls off their board wipes out, and something a surfer really likes is awesome. The
heroes of the surfing community are the soul surfers surfers who live only to travel and surf.

Windsurfing and kiteboarding

Both close cousins of surfing, windsurfing and kiteboarding use the wind to propel modified
surfboards at high speeds across the surface of the water.
Windsurfing is a hybrid of sailing and surfing invented by sailor Jim Drake, and surfer Hoyle
Schweiter in South California in the late 1960s. Windsurfing has become a hugely popular
outdoor activity, and made its first appearance at the Olympics in LA in 1984. There are many
different styles of windsurfing which include freestyle, where windsurfers do tricks, bumpand-jump in which surfers use waves to take to the air, and slalom.
Kitesurfing is an even more recent development; it has only been around since the 1980s, and is
only recently becoming an established watersport. As the name of the sport suggests, kitesurfers
are towed along by large kites, allowing them to pull-off incredible tricks in the air. The names of
the tricks give an idea of how exciting the sport is; the heart-attack, boneless and slim
chance are among the most exhilarating to watch.

SCUBA diving
Just as mankind has always had a desire to fly, the human race has wanted to swim under the
water since prehistoric times. Pictures of primitive devices to enable people to breathe
underwater have been found dating from 3000 years ago, but our dream of moving freely

beneath the ocean waves for long periods of time was only realised about 60 years ago, when
French diving legend Jacques Cousteau developed the first practical Self Contained Underwater
Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA). Since then the sport of SCUBA diving has gone from strength to
strength.
Lovers of SCUBA diving rave about the feeling of weightlessness, the peace and quiet under the
water, the ability to move in three dimensions and the sense of adventure they get while on a
dive. SCUBA divers often travel to some of the most beautiful and remote places in the world in
the search for rare underwater flora and fauna. Palau, The Red Sea, The Maldives and Hawaii
have many of the most popular diving sites, but recreational divers often have to make do with
less exotic local destinations, like the North Sea in Britain.
SCUBA diving is not without its dangers, however. The mixture of nitrogen and oxygen divers
breathe underwater, combined with the pressure under the water can be deadly if a diver rises too
quickly to the surface, causing a condition called the bends. Divers can also get lost or trapped
when diving on wrecks, and fatalities are particularly common in cave diving, where divers add
to the dangers of diving by swimming through underground caves filled with water. Diving can
also be harmful to the underwater environment in the past irresponsible divers have caused a
great deal of damage to coral reefs. However with proper precautions diving can open up a
whole new world, far from the stresses of daily life.
So what are you waiting for? Get your wetsuit on, strap your board to the roof rack, throw your
SCUBA gear in the boot and head for the beach. Ill see you there.

Glossary
contemporary (adj): existing or happening now.
coral reef (n): a bank of coral, the top of which can sometimes be seen just above the
sea.device (n): an object or machine which has been invented to fulfill a particular purpose.
establish (v) (established adj): to cause to be accepted in or familiar with a place, position, etc.
exhilarating (adj): making you feel very excited and happy.
fatality (n): a death caused by an accident or by violence, or someone who has died in either of
these ways.
fibreglass UK, US fiberglass (n): a strong light material made by twisting together small fibres
of glass and plastic, used especially for structures such as cars and boats.
flora and fauna (n): the flora and fauna of a place are its plants and animals.
hybrid (n): a plant or animal that has been produced from two different types of plant or animal,
especially to get better characteristics, or anything that is a mixture of two very different things.

modify (v): to change something such as a plan, opinion, law or way of behaviour slightly,
usually to improve it or make it more acceptable.
precaution (n): an action which is done to prevent something unpleasant or dangerous
happening.
prehistoric (adj): describing the period before there were written records.
primitive (adj): relating to human society at a very early stage of development, with people
living in a simple way without machines or a writing system.
propel (n): to push or move something somewhere, often with a lot of force.
rave (v): to praise something greatly.royalty (n): the people who belong to the family of a king
and queen.
slalom (n): a race for people on skis or in canoes (= long light narrow boats) in which they have
to follow a route that bends in and out between poles.
tow (v): to pull a car, boat, etc. along, using a rope or a chain attached to another vehicle or boat.
wetsuit (n): a piece of clothing covering the whole body that keeps you warm and d
015, then maybe the answer is yes.

Disability
by Chris Wilson
Nowadays in the west the able bodied are constantly reminded that disabled people have rights
just like everyone else and they mustnt discriminate against them in any way. Public buildings
have to have ramps and toilets big enough for wheelchairs. Bus drivers are supposed to
announce every stop so that blind people know when to get off. One is not allowed to refuse a
person a job on the grounds that he or she has only one leg, or cannot speak. We use phrases like
physically challenged instead of crippled or spastic. We avoid using the word dumb to mean
stupid - and this is not just us trying to be politically correct. Things like the Para Olympics
have done wonders to raise peoples awareness with so many positive images and perceptions of
disabled people genuinely have changed. Not that Western society doesnt still have a long way
to go, but disabled people are far less marginalised, far more integrated than in the past when
they were confined to institutions, out of sight and out of mind.
Disabled peoples own self esteem has risen enormously in recent years and they have become
far more assertive and insistent on their rights, and their ability to compete with everyone else.
Even the words disabled and handicapped are challenged. Is a blind person disabled when he
or she can function just as well as everyone else? New technology of course is making a huge
difference. Instead of clumsy wooden legs, for example, new materials and designs in prosthetic

limbs enable people to walk and run as fast as everyone else. High tech hearing aids exist for
the deaf, as well as laser surgery for the very short sighted. Cars are adapted so that people can
drive them with only one hand, or even no hands at all. Very recently a chip was inserted into
the brain of a person paralysed from the neck down enabling him to move a cursor on a screen
simply by looking at it. This means he can now do all sorts of things - switch the television and
the lights on and off, type, surf the internet, even send e-mails. Who knows what hell be able to
do next? Drive a car?
Also many things that previously were not considered disabilities now are recognised for what
they are - serious handicaps, and arrangements have been made for the people who suffer from
them. Dyslexia is a good example. Not so long ago dyslexic people were considered at school to
be slow, or stupid, and that was that. Nowadays it is seen as a serious condition and teachers
have to be aware of it.
But what is it like in the Developing World? In places where there are no facilities at all? Where
polio victims have to crawl through the traffic on their knees and elbows? Where every disabled
person is unemployed and forced to beg, or depend on relatives?
Despite all that says Anna, a Swedish Volunteer in Mozambique, it is often in these places
that disabled people are actually more integrated and happier in society. Western society is so
obsessed with beauty and physical perfection that even an overweight person feels ostracised, let
alone a person missing an entire limb. Here having one leg is no more remarkable than having a
big nose.
But is this really so?
Yes and no says Adolfo, a blind Mozambican who, as an accomplished guitar player, is
actually the only breadwinner in his family. Im lucky. I have a skill. More importantly I was
given the opportunity to acquire one. And so I am able to contribute to society and I am
respected. Most disabled people are totally unskilled and so are burdens on society whether they
like it or not. Maybe we are more generous, we dont reject people who cannot contribute. They
are not outcasts - but that doesnt mean we respect them either. I think that is too idealistic a view
of African society, how we would like it to be rather than how it really is. In reality these days,
with so much poverty and HIV Aids, its every man for himself, every woman for herself, and
disabled people are completely forgotten, left behind. I heard a story about a woman in a very
dry part of our country. She had lost both legs in a land mine explosion. Because of drought
there was no food and when a UN truck full of supplies arrived she was left behind in the
stampede, and so she got none. Later everyone had to register in order to get a ration card, then
because she didnt get one she was told that she did not officially exist and therefore was not
entitled to food! No thank you, I would rather have no legs in Europe any day than here.
I dont believe that story says Anna. People here just wouldnt behave like that.Have you
ever been really hungry? asks Adolfo.No she is forced to admit.Then how would you
know?
But Anna still thinks its worse in the West. In Africa people are much more tactile, much more

tolerant, much more accepting. Even the mentally deranged are part of society. Whats the use of
all those facilities if no one actually ever talks to you? Disabled people in Europe are dying of
loneliness. People are physically repulsed by handicapped people. The idea that disabled people
have sexual desires just like anyone else is quite shocking. Here in the market there is a young
girl who sells tomatoes. She must have been in an awful fire because one side of her is
completely burnt and her left hand has no fingers at all. Her face is terribly disfigured, she has
only one eye and just a hole for a nose. But she flirts with all the guys, and then makes bawdy
jokes about them to the other women, and has everyone in fits of laughter. That doesnt mean
they actually fancy her though says Adolfo. Unless theyre blind like me he jokes.
But going back to technology, it is making things easier here too he adds. Look at my
mobile phone. Wouldnt you like a speaking clock or a computer with software to enable it to
read aloud to you? asks Anna. Adolfo just laughs. My wife does that for me he says. She
reads the newspaper to me every day.You see! says Anna. That proves me right. Nobody
where I come from has got time to read to a blind person! And dont tell me that a machine can
do it just as well because it cant!