READING PASSAGE 1
The Mozart Effect
A. Music has been used for centuries to heal the body. In the Ebers Papyrs (one of the earliest medical documents, circa 
1500 B.C.), it was recorded that physicians chanted to heal the sick (Castleman, 1994). In various cultures, we have observed singing as part of healing rituals. In the world of Western medicine, however, using music in medicine lost popularity until the introduction of the radio. Researchers then started to notice that listening to music could have significant physical effects. Therapists noticed music could help calm anxiety and researchers saw that listening to music could cause a drop in blood pressure. In addition to these two areas, music has been used with cancer chemotherapy to reduce nausea, during surgery to reduce stress hormone production, during childbirth, and in stroke recovery (Castleman, 1994 and Westley, 1998). It has been shown to decrease pain as well as enhance the effectiveness of the immune system. In Japan, compilations of music are used as medication, of sorts. For example, if you want to cure a headache or migraine, the album suggested Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song,” Dvorak’s “Humoresque,” or part of George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” (Campbell, 1998). Music is also being used to assist in learning, in a phenomenon called the Mozart Effect.
B. Frances H. Rauscher, Ph.D., first demonstrated the correlation between music and learning in an experiment in 1993. His 
experiments indicated that a 10 minute dose of Mozart could temporarily boost intelligence. Groups of students were given intelligence tests after listening to silence, relaxation tapes, or Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major for a short time. He found that after silence, the average IQ score was 110, and after the relaxation tape, scores rose a point. After listening to Mozart, however, the scores jumped to 119 (Westley, 1998). Even students who did not like the music still had an increased score on the IQ test. Rauscher hypothesized that “listening to complex, non-repetitive music, like Mozart, may simulate neural pathways that are important in thinking” (Castleman, 1994).
C. The same experiment was repeated on rats by Rauscher and Hong Hua Li from Stanford. Rats also demonstrated enhancement in their intelligence performance. These new studies indicate that rats that were exposed to Mozart showed “increased gene expression of BDNF (a neural growth factor), CREB (a learning and memory compound), and Synapsin I(a synaptic growth protein)” in the brain’s hippocampus, compared with rats in the control group, which heard only white noise (e.g. the whooshing sound of a radio tuned between stations)
D. How exactly does the Mozart affect work? Researchers are still trying to determine the actual mechanisms for the 
formation of these enhanced learning pathways. Neuroscientists suspect that music can actually help build and strengthen connections between neurons in the cerebral cortex in a process similar to what occurs in brain development despite its type. When a baby is born, certain connections have already been made – like connections for heartbeat and breathing. As new information is learned and motor skills develop, new neural connections are formed. Neurons that are not used will eventually die while those used repeatedly will form strong connections. Although a large number of these neural connections require experience, they also must occur within a certain time frame. For example, a child born with cataracts cannot develop connections within the visual cortex. If the cataracts are removed by surgery right away, the child’s vision develops normally. However, after the age of 2, if the cataracts are removed, the child will remain blind because those pathways cannot establish themselves.
E. Music seems to work in the same way. In October of 1997, researchers at the University of Konstanz in Germany found that music actually rewires neural circuits (Begley, 1996). Although some of these circuits are formed for physical skills needed to play an instrument, just listening to music strengthens connection used in higher-order thinking. Listening to music can then be thought of as “exercise” for the brain, improving concentration and enhancing intuition.
F. If you’re a little skeptical about the claims made by supporters of the Mozart Effect, you’re not alone. Many people accredit the advanced learning of some children who take music lessons to other personality traits, such as motivation and persistence, which is required in all types of learning. There have also been claims of that influencing the results of some experiments.
G. Furthermore, many people are critical of the role the media had in turning an isolated study into a trend for parents and music educators. After Mozart Effect was published to the public, the sales of Mozart CDs stayed on the top of the hit list for three weeks. In an article by Michael Linton, he wrote that the research that began this phenomenon (the study by researchers at the University of California Irvine) showed only a temporary boost in IQ, which was not significant enough to even last throughout the course of the experiment. Using music to influence intelligence was used in Confucian civilization and Plato alluded to Pythagorean music when he described is ideal state in The Republic. In both of these examples, music did not have caused any overwhelming changes, and the theory eventually died out. Linton also asks, “If Mozart’s Music were able to improve health, why was Mozart himself so frequently sick? If listening to Mozart’s music increases intelligence and encourages spirituality, why aren’t the world’s smartest and most spiritual people Mozart specialists?” Linton raises an interesting point, if the Mozart Effect causes such significant changes, why isn’t there more documented evidence?
H. The “trendiness” of the Mozart Effect may have died out somewhat, but there are still strong supporters (and opponents) of the claims made in 1993. Since that initial experiment, there has not been a surge of supporting evidence. However, many parents, after playing classical music while pregnant or when theft children are young, will swear by the Mozart Effect. A classmate of mine once told me that listening to classical music while studying will help with memorization. If we approach this controversy from a scientific aspect, although there has been some evidence that music does increase brain activity, actual improvements in learning and memory have not been adequately demonstrated.
Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
1. Music influences brain development of baby.
2. Popularity of public to the introduction of Mozart Effect
3. Description of the pioneer experiment of a person
4. Music is helpful as a healing method in some places
5. Learning needs other qualities though
Questions 6-8
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 6-8 on your answer sheet.
In the experiment carried out by Frances Rauscher, participants were immersed in the music for a …………6…………..period of time before they were tested. Rauscher suggested that enhancement of their performance is related to the…………7…………..nature of Mozart’s music. After that, another parallel experiment was also conducted on…………8…………..
Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1
In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information ừ not given in the passage
9 Music has the power to improve people’s brain performance according to the passage.
10 All neural connections are built up after a baby’s born instead of the time he or she had born.
11 There is no one who questions Mozart Effect so far.
12 Michael Linton carried out further experiment on Mozart’s life to support his viewpoint
13 Not sufficient evidence supports Mozart Effect from the very first experiment till now.
READING PASSAGE 2
London Swaying Footbridge
A. In September 1996 a competition was organized by the Financial Times in association with the London Borough of Southwark to design a new footbridge across the Thames. The competition attracted over 200 entries and was won by a team comprising Arup (engineers), Foster and Partners (architects) and the sculptor Sir Anthony Caro.
B. The bridge opened to the public on 10 June 2000. Up to 100,000 people crossed it that day with up to 2000 people on the bridge at any one time. At first, the bridge was still. Then it began to sway just slightly. Then, almost from one moment to the next, when large groups of people were crossing, the wobble intensified. This movement became sufficiently large for people to stop walking to retain their balance and sometimes to hold onto the hand rails for support. It was decided 
immediately to limit the number of people on the bridge, but even so the deck movement was sufficient to be uncomfortable and to raise concern for public safety so that on 12 June the bridge was closed until the problem could be solved.
C. The embarrassed engineers found the videotape that day which showed the center span swaying about 3 inches side to side every second. The engineers first thought that winds might be exerting excessive force on the many large flags and banners bedecking the bridge for its gala premiere. What’s more, they also discovered that the pedestrians also played a key role. Human activities, such as walking, running, jumping, swaying, etc. could cause horizontal force which in turn could cause excessive dynamic vibration in the lateral direction in the bridge. As the structure began moving, pedestrians adjusted their gait to the same lateral rhythm as the bridge. The adjusted footsteps magnified the motion – just like when four people all stand up in a small boat at the same time. As more pedestrians locked into the same rhythm, the increasing oscillations led to the dramatic swaying captured on film.
D. In order to design a method of reducing the movements, the force exerted by the pedestrians had to be quantified and 
related to the motion of the bridge. Although there are some descriptions of this phenomenon in existing literature, none of these actually quantifies the force. So there was no quantitative analytical way to design the bridge against this effect. An immediate research program was launched by the bridge’s engineering designers Ove Arup, supported by a number of universities and research organizations.
E. The tests at the University of Southampton involved a person walking ‘on the spot’ on a small shake table. The tests at Imperial College involved persons walking along a specially built, 7.2m-long platform which could be driven laterally at different frequencies (n and amplitudes. Each type of test had its limitations. The Imperial College tests were only able to capture 7-8 footsteps, and the ‘walking on the spot’ tests, although monitoring many footsteps, could not investigate normal forward walking. Neither test could investigate any influence of other people in a crowd on the behavior of the individual being tested.
F. The results of the laboratory tests provided information which enabled the initial design of a retro- fit to be progressed. However, the limitations of these tests was clear and it was felt that the only way to replicate properly the precise conditions of the Millennium Bridge was to carry out crowd tests on the bridge deck itself. These tests done by the Arup engineers could incorporate factors not possible in the laboratory tests. The first of these was carried out with 100 people in July 2000. The results of these tests were used to refine the load model for the pedestrians. A second series of crowd tests was carried out on the bridge in December 2000. The purpose of these tests was to further validate the design assumptions and to load test a prototype damper installation. The test was carried out with 275 people.
G. Unless the usage of the bridge was to be greatly restricted, only two generic options to improve its performance were considered feasible. The first was to increase the stiffness of the bridge to move all its lateral natural frequencies out of the range that could be excited by the lateral footfall forces, and the second was to increase the damping of the bridge to reduce the resonant response.
You should spend about 20 minutes on question 14-26, which are based on reading passage 2 on the following pages.
Questions 14-17
Choose FOUR letters, A-H.
Write the correct letters in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.
Which FOUR of the following situation were witnessed on the opening ceremony of the bridge?
A The frequency of oscillation increased after some time.
B All the engineers went to see the ceremony that day.
C The design of the bridge astonished the people.
D Unexpected sideway movement of the bridge occurred.
E Pedesfrians had difficulty in walking on the deck.
F The bridge fell down when people tried to retain their balance.
G Vibration could be detected on the deck by the pedestrians.
H It was raining when the ceremony began.
Questions 18-22
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage 2 using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet
After the opening ceremony, the embarrassed engineers tried to find out the reason of the bridge’s wobbling. Judged from the videotape, they thought that 18……….and 19……….might create excessive force on the bridge. The distribution of 20……….resulted from human activities could cause 21……….throughout the structure. This swaying prompted people to start adjusting the way they walk, which in turn reinforced the 22……….
Questions 23-26
Complete the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 2 for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.
Research programs launched by universities and organizations
| Universities / People | Activity |
| Test at 23…………. | Limited ability to have 7-8 footsteps |
| ‘walking on the spot’ at Southampton | Not enough data on 24………… |
| Crowd test conducted by 25…… | Aim to verify 26………… |
READING PASSAGE 3
Book review on Musiccophilia
Norman M. Weinberger reviews the latest work of Oliver Sacks
A. Music and the brain are both endlessly fascinating subjects, and as a neuroscientist specialising in auditory learning and memory, I find them especially intriguing. So I had high expectations of Musicophilia, the latest offering from neurologist and prolific author Oliver Sacks. And I confess to feeling a little guilty reporting that my reactions to the book are mixed.
B. Sacks himself is the best part of Musicophilia. He richly documents his own life in the book and reveals highly personal experiences. The photograph of him on the 
cover of the bookwhich shows him wearing headphones, eyes closed, clearly enchanted as he listens to Alfred Brendel perform Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata-makes a positive impression that is home out by the contents of the book. Sacks’s voice throughout is steady and erudite but never pontifical. He is neither selfconscious nor self-promoting.
C. The preface gives a good idea of what the book will deliver. In it Sacks explains that he wants to convey the insights gleaned from the “enormous and rapidly growing body of work on the neural underpinnings of musical perception and imagery, and the complex and often bizarre disorders to which these are prone.” He also stresses the importance of “the simple art of observation” and “the richness of the human context.” He wants to combine “observation and description with the latest in technology,” he says, and to imaginatively enter into the experience of his patients and subjects. The reader can see that Sacks, who has been practicing neurology for 40 years, is tom between the ‘ old-fashioned path o observation and the new fangled, high-tech approach: He knows that he n
eeds to take heed of the latter, but his heart lies with the former.
D. The book consists mainly of detailed descriptions of cases, most of them involving patients whom Sacks has seen in hispractice. Brief discussions of contemporary neuroscientific reports are sprinkled liberally throughout the text. Part, “Haunted by Music,” begins with the strange case of Tony Cicoria, a nonmusical, middle-aged surgeon who was consumed by a love of music after being hit by lightning. He suddenly began to crave listening to piano music, which he had never cared for in the past. He started to play the piano and then to compose music, which arose spontaneously in his mind in a “torrent” of notes. How could this happen? Was the cause psychological? (He had had a near-death experience when the lightning struck him.) Or was it the direct result of a change in the auditory regions of his cerebral cortex? Electroencephalography (EEG) showed his brain waves to be normal in the mid-1990s, just after his, trauma and subsequent “conversion” to music. There are now more sensitive tests, but Cicoria, has declined to undergo them; he does not want to delve into the causes of his musicality. What a shame!
E. Part II, “A Range of Musicality,” covers a wider variety of topics, but unfortunately, some of the chapters offer little or nothing that is new. For example, chapter 13, which is five pages long, merely notes that the blind often have better hearing than the sighted. The most interesting chapters are those that present the strangest cases. Chapter 8 is about “amusia,” an inability to hear sounds as music, and “dysharmonia,” a highly specific impairment of the ability to hear harmony, with the ability to understand melody left intact. Such specific “dissociations” are found throughout the cases Sacks recounts.
F. To Sacks’s credit, part III, “Memory, Movement and Music,” brings US into the underappreciated realm of music therapy. Chapter 16 explains how “melodic intonation therapy” is being used to help expressive aphasic patients (those unable to express their thoughts verbally following a stroke or other cerebral incident) once again become capable of fluent speech. In chapter 20, Sacks demonstrates the near-miraculous power of music to animate Parkinson’s patients and other people with severe movement disorders, even those who are frozen into odd postures. Scientists cannot yet explain how music achieves this effect
G. To readers who are unfamiliar with neuroscience and music behavior, Musicophilia may be something of a revelation. But the book will not satisfy those seeking the causes and implications of the phenomena Sacks describes. For one thing, Sacks appears to be more at ease discussing patients than discussing experiments. And he tends to be rather uncritical in accepting scientific findings and theories.
H. It’s true that the causes of music-brain oddities remain poorly understood. However, Sacks could have done more to draw out some of the implications of the careful observations that he and other neurologists have made and of the treatments that have been successful. For example, he might have noted that the many specific dissociations among components of music comprehension, such as loss of the ability to perceive harmony but not melody, indicate that there is no music center in the brain. Because many people who read the book are likely to believe in the brain localisation of all mental functions, this was a missed educational opportunity.
I. Another conclusion one could draw is that there seem to be no “cures” for neurological problems involving music. A drug can alleviate a symptom in one patient and aggravate it in another, or can have both positive and negative effects in the same patient. Treatments mentioned seem to be almost exclusively antiepileptic medications, which “damp down” the excitability of the brain in general; their effectiveness varies widely.
J. Finally, in many of the cases described here the patient with music-brain symptoms is reported to have “normal” EEG results. Although Sacks recognises the existence of new technologies, among them far more sensitive ways to analyze brain waves than the standard neurological EEG test, he does not call for their use. In fact, although he exhibits the greatest compassion for patients, he conveys no sense of urgency about the pursuit of new avenues in the diagnosis and treatment of music-brain disorders. This absence echoes the book’s preface, in which Sacks expresses fear that “the simple art of observation may be lost” if we rely too much on new technologies. He does call for both approaches, though, and we can only hope that the neurological community will respond.
Questions 27-30
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet
27 Why does the writer have a mixed feeling about the book?
A The guilty feeling made him so.
B The writer expected it to be better than it was.
C Sacks failed to include his personal stories in the book.
D This is the only book written by Sacks.
28 What is the best part of the book?
A the photo of Sacks listening to music
B the tone of voice of the book
C the autobiographical description in the book
D the description of Sacks ’s wealth
29 In the preface, what did Sacks try to achieve?
A make a herald introduction of the research work and technique applied
B give detailed description of various musical disorders
C explain how people understand music
D explain why he needs to do away with simple observation
30 What is disappointing about Tony Cicoria’s case?
A He refuses to have further tests.
B He can’t determine the cause of his sudden musicality.
C He nearly died because of the lightening.
D His brain waves were too normal to show anything.
Questions 31-36
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts with the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
31 It is difficult to give a well-reputable writer a less than totally favorable review.
32 Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata is a good treatment for musical disorders.
33 Sacks believes technological methods is of little importance compared with traditional observation when studying his patients.
34 It is difficult to understand why music therapy is undervalued
35 Sacks held little skepticism when borrowing other theories and findings in describing reasons and notion for phenomena he depicts in the book.
36 Sacks is in a rush to use new testing methods to do treatment for patients.
Questions 37-40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.
Write correct letter, A-F, in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet
37 The content covered dissociations in understanding between harmony and melody
38 The study of treating musical disorders
39 The EEG scans of Sacks’s patients
40 Sacks believes testing based on new technologies
—————
A. show no music-brain disorders.
B. indicates that medication can have varied results,
C. is key for the neurological community to unravel the mysteries.
D. should not be used in Isolation.
E. indicate that not everyone can receive good education.
F. show a misconception that there is function centre localized in the brain
to a buffet breakfast as young psychologist Sebastian Bailey enters the room to begin the morning’s framing session. But this is no ordinary training session. He’s not here to sharpen their finance or management skills. He’s here to exercise their brains.
and reach your destination without error. It’s certainly nice to have the Global Positioning System (GPS) to direct you to within a few yards of your goal. Yet if the satellite service’s digital maps become even slightly outdated, you can become lost. Then you have to rely on the ancient human skill of navigating in three-dimensional space. Luckily, your biological finder has an important advantage over GPS: it does not go awry if only one part of the guidance system goes wrong, because it works in various ways. You can ask questions of people on the sidewalk. Or follow a street that looks familiar. Or rely on a navigational rubric: “If I keep the East River on my left, I will eventually cross 34th Street.” The human positioning system is flexible and capable of learning. Anyone who knows the way from point A to point B—and from A to C—can probably figure out how to get from B to c, too.
C. If you ask passersby for help, most likely you will receive information in many different forms. A person who orients herself by a prominent landmark would gesture southward: “Look down there. See the tall, broad MetLife Building? Head for that “the station is right below it.” Neurologists call this navigational approach “guidance,” meaning that a landmark visible from a distance serves as the marker for one’s destination.
E. Whether it is trying to get back to the anthill or the train station, any animal using path integration must keep track of its own movements so it knows, while returning, which segments it has already completed. As you move, your brain gathers data from your environment—sights, sounds, smells, lighting, muscle contractions, a sense of time passing—to determine which way your body has gone. The church spire, the sizzling sausages on that vendor’s grill, the open courtyard, and the train station—all represent snapshots of memorable junctures during your journey.
will use guidance, path integration and route following in various combinations. But how exactly do these constructs deliver concrete directions? Do we humans have, as an image of the real world, a kind of road map in our heads—with symbols for cities, train stations and churches; thick lines for highways; narrow lines for local streets? Neurobiologists and cognitive psychologists do call the portion of our memory that controls navigation a “cognitive map.” The map metaphor is obviously seductive: maps are the easiest way to present geographic information for convenient visual inspection. In many cultures, maps were developed before writing, and today they are used in almost every society. It is even possible that maps derive from a universal way in which our spatial-memory networks are wired.
A. One of the world’s most famous yet least visited archaeological sites, Easter Island is a small, hilly, now treeless island of volcanic origin. Located in the Pacific Ocean at 27 degrees south of the equator and some 2200 miles (3600 kilometers) off the coast of Chile, it is considered to be the world’s most remote inhabited island. The island is, technically speaking, a single massive volcano rising over ten thousand feet from the Pacific Ocean floor. The island received its most wellknown current name, Easter Island, from the Dutch sea captain Jacob Roggeveen who became the first European to visit Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722.
settled by advanced societies of Indians from the coast of South America. Extensive archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic research has conclusively shown this hypothesis to be inaccurate. It is now recognized that the original inhabitants of Easter Island are of Polynesian stock (DNA extracts from skeletons have confirmed this, that they most probably came from the Marquesas or Society islands, and that they arrived as early as 318 AD (carbon dating of reeds from a grave confirms this). At the time of their arrival, much of the island was forested, was teeming with land birds, and was perhaps the most productive breeding site for seabirds in the Polynesia region. Because of the plentiful bird, fish and plant ‘ food sources, the human population grew and gave rise to a rich religious and artistic culture.
massive stone platforms called ahu. There are some 250 of these ahu platforms spaced approximately one half mile apart and creating an almost unbroken line around the perimeter of the island. Another 600 moai statues, in various stages of completion, are scattered around the island, either in quarries or along ancient roads between the quarries and the coastal areas where the statues were most often erected. Nearly all the moai are carved from the tough stone of the Rano Raraku volcano. The average statue is 14 feet and 6 inches tall and weighs 14 tons. Some moai were as large as 33 feet and weighed more than 80 tons. Depending upon the size of the statues, it has been estimated that between 50 and 150 people were needed to drag them across the countryside on sleds and rollers made from the island’s trees.
return, the spectre of floods is returning too. Just weeks ago, the river Rhone in south-east France burst its banks, driving 15,000 people from their homes, and worse could be on the way. Traditionally, river engineers have gone for Plan A: get rid of the water fast, draining it off the land and down to the sea in tall-sided rivers re-engineered as highperformance drains. But however big they dig city drains, however wide and straight they make the rivers, and however high they build the banks, the floods keep coming back to taunt them, from the Mississippi to the Danube. And when the floods come, they seem to be worse than ever.
may help cities prepare, but it won’t stop the floods. To do that, say hydrologists, you need a new approach to engineering not just Agency – country €1 billion – puts it like this: “The focus is now on working with the forces of nature. Towering concrete walls are out, and new wetlands are in.” To help keep London’s upstream and reflooding 10 square k outside Oxford. Nearer to London it has spent Åí100 million creating new wetlands and a relief channel across 16 kilometres.
restorations to date. Engineers are regenerating flood plains along 60 kilometres of the river Drava as it exits the Alps. They are also widening the river bed and channelling it back into abandoned meanders, oxbow lakes and backwaters overhung with willows. The engineers calculate that the restored flood plain can now store up to 10 million cubic metres of flood waters and slow storm surges coming out of the Alps by more than an hour, protecting towns as far downstream as Slovenia and Croatia.
is a matter of survival, have gone furthest. A nation built largely on drained marshes and seabed had the fright of its life in 1993 when the Rhine almost overwhelmed it. The same happened again in 1995, when a quarter of a million people were evacuated from the Netherlands. But a new breed of “soft engineers” wants our cities to become porous, and Berlin is theft governed by tough new rules to prevent its drains becoming overloaded after heavy rains. Harald Kraft, an architect working in the city, says: “We now see rainwater as giant Potsdamer Platz, a huge new commercial redevelopment by DaimlerChrysler in the heart of the city.
(10 cm) or as high as 28 inches (71 cm). The tulip’s large flowers usually bloom on scapes or sub-scapose stems that lack bracts. Most tulips produce only one flower per stem, but a few species bear multiple flowers on their scapes (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica). The showy, generally cup or star-shaped tulip flower has three petals and three sepals, which are often termed tepals because they are nearly identical. These six tepals are often marked on the interior surface near the bases with darker colorings. Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colors, except pure blue (several tulips with “blue” in the name have a faint violet hue)
question that springs to mind after reading Tulip mania: The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused by British journalist Mike Dash. In recent years, as investors have intentionally forgotten everything they learned in Investing 101 in order to load up on unproved, unprofitable dotcom issues, tulip mania has been invoked frequently. In this concise, artfully written account, Dash tells the real history behind the buzzword and in doing so, offers a cautionary tale for our times.
intense and more concentrated than those of ordinary plants.” Despite the outlandish prices commanded by rare bulbs, ordinary tulips were sold by the pound. Around 1630, however, a new type of tulip fancier appeared, lured by tales of fat profits. These “florists,” or professional tulip traders, sought out flower lovers and speculators alike. But if the supply of tulip buyers grew quickly, the supply of bulbs did not. The tulip was a conspirator in the supply squeeze: It takes seven years to grow one from seed. And while bulbs can produce two or three clones, or “offsets,” annually, the mother bulb only lasts a few years.
A. Our mother may have told you the secret to getting what you ask for was to say please. The reality is rather more surprising. Adam Dudding talks to a psychologist who has made a life’s work from the science of persuasion. Some scientists peer at things through highpowered microscopes. Others goad rats through mazes, or mix bubbling fluids in glass beakers. Robert Cialdini, for his part, does curious things with towels, and believes that by doing so he is discovering important insights into how society works.
things I didn’t want and give to causes I hadn’t heard of,” says Cialdini on the phone from London, where he is plugging his latest book.
scientist David Strohmetz, who wanted to see how restaurant patrons would respond to a ridiculously small favour from their food server, in the form of an after-dinner chocolate for each diner. The secret, it seems, is in how you give the chocolate. When the chocolates arrived in a heap with the bill, tips went up a miserly 3% compared to when no chocolate was given. But when the chocolates were dropped individually in front of each diner, tips went up 14%. The scientific breakthrough, though, came when the waitress gave each diner one chocolate, headed away from the table then doubled back to give them one more each, as if such generosity had only just occurred to her. Tips went up 23%. This is “reciprocity” in action: we want to return favours done to US, often without bothering to calculate the relative value of what is being received and given.
you set out to influence them. “You’d be surprised how many people fail to do that,” says Cialdini. “They feel it’s impolite to talk about then expertise.” In one study, therapists whose patients wouldn’t do then exercises were advised to display then qualification certificates prominently. They did, and experienced an immediate leap in patient compliance.
needed to be present before the revolution could happen. The chief conditions are to be found in history textbooks. For industry to ‘take off’, there needed to be the technology and power to drive factories, large urban populations to provide cheap labour easy transport to move goods around, an affluent middle-class willing to buy mass-produced objects, a market-driven economy, and a political system that allowed this to happen. While this was the case for England, other nations, such as Japan, Holland and France also met some of these criteria. All these factors must have been necessary but not sufficient to cause the revolution. Holland had everything except coal, while China also had many of these factors.
165D and 1740, the population was static. But then there was a burst in population. The infant mortality rate halved in the space of 20 years, and this happened in both rural areas and cities, and across all classes. Four possible causes have been suggested. There could have been a sudden change in the viruses and bacteria present at that time, but this is unlikely. Was there a revolution in medical science? But this was a century before Lister introduced antiseptic surgery. Was there a change in environmental conditions? There were improvements in agriculture that wiped out malaria, but these were small gains. Sanitation did not become widespread until the 19th century. The only option left was food. But the height and weight statistics show a decline. So the food got worse. Efforts to explain this sudden reduction in child deaths appeared to draw a blank.
When the Industrial Revolution started, it was economically efficient to have people crowded together forming towns and cities. But with crowded living conditions comes disease, particularly from human waste. Some research in the historical records revealed that there was a change in the incidence of waterborne disease at that time, the English were protected by the strong antibacterial agent in hops, which were added to make beer last. But in the late 17th century a tax was introduced on malt. The poor turned to water and gin, and in the 1720s the mortality rate began to rise again.
the doomsday scenario painted by many ecologists, and they may well be right. The trouble is we don’t know for sure because we don’t have a clear picture of how life changes between extinction events or what has happened in previous episodes. We don’t even know how many species are alive today, let alone the rate at which they are becoming extinct. A new project aims to fill some of the gaps. The Paleobiology Database aspires to be an online repository of information about every fossil ever dug up. It is a huge undertaking that has been described as biodiversity’s equivalent of the Human Genome Project. Its organizers hope that by recording the history of biodiversity they will gain an insight into how environmental changes have shaped life on Earth in the past and how they might do so in the future. The database may even indicate whether life can rebound no matter what we throw at it, or whether a human induced extinction could be without parallel, changing the rules that have applied throughout the rest of the planet’s history.
looking for global patterns that show relative changes in biodiversity. “The fossil record is the best tool we have for understanding how diversity and extinction work in normal times,” says John Alroy from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara. “Having a background extinction estimate gives US a benchmark for understanding the mass extinction that’s currently under way. It allows us to say just how bad it is in relative terms.”
points out that statistical wrangling has been known to create mass extinctions where none occurred. It is easy to misinterpret data. For example, changes in sea level or inconsistent sampling methods can mimic major changes in biodiversity. Indeed, a recent and thorough examination of the literature on marine bivalve fossils has convinced David Jablonsky from the University of Chicago and his colleagues that their diversity has increased steadily over the past 5 million years.
A. Science plays an increasingly significant role in people’s lives, making the faithful communication of scientific developments more important than ever. Yet such communication is fraught with challenges that can easily distort discussions, leading to unnecessary confusion and misunderstandings.
F. Even the word “theory” can be a problem. Unlike most people, who use the word to describe a passing conjecture that they often regard as suspect, physicists have very specific ideas in mind when they talk about theories. For physicists, theories entail a definite physical framework embodied in a set of fundamental assumptions about the world that lead to a specific set of equations and predictions — ones that are borne out by successful predictions. Theories aren’t necessarily shown to be correct or complete immediately. Even Einstein took the better part of a decade to develop the correct version of his theory of general relativity. But eventually both the ideas and the measurements settle down and theories are either proven correct, abandoned or absorbed into other, more encompassing theories.
clarify many scientific discussions. For several months, Harvard was tortured months. Harvard was tortured by empty debates over the relative intrinsic scientific abilities of men and women. One of the more amusing aspects of the discussion was that those who believed in the differences and those who didn’t used the same evidence about gender-specific special ability. How could that be? The answer is that the data shows no substantial effects. Social factors might account for these tiny differences, which in any case have an unclear connection to scientific ability. Not much of a headline when phrased that way, is it? Each type of science has its own source of complexity and potential for miscommunication. Yet there are steps we can take to improve public understanding in all cases. The first would be to inculcate greater understanding and acceptance of indirect scientific evidence. The information from an unmanned space mission is no less legitimate than the information from one in which people are on board.
