An epidemic is the name given to     1     infectious disease that rapidly spreads over a short period of time,     2    (cause)large number of deaths,the number of which differs for different diseases.

Professor Jim Smith conducted a study     3    (compare)the bird flu which occurred in 1997 with other     4    (dead)epidemics in our history. He found that the earliest epidemics took place as early as to 550 CE     5     killed half of the population in that particular area. The same epidemic     6    (call) “The Black Death” returned in the 1330s in Asia and spread quickly to Europe. Some hundred years later, the Great Flu Epidemic broke out in 1918, also known     7     the Spanish Flu, killing 50 million people. This was considered the most severe epidemic in human history. The 1997 bird flu which claimed over 100 lives was an     8    (adapt)of the 1918 Spanish Flu.

At the start of the 21st century there were two major epidemics SARS and, EVD. The more recently     9    (discover) SARS disease infected about 8,000 people. According to official records, EVD has killed more than 11,310 people in West Africa alone.

Globally, researchers are coming together to try to find out the causes and help to find     10    (effect)treatments for epidemics.

A couple had been married for 25years and were celebrating their 60th birthdays, which fell     1     the same day. During the celebration, a fairy appeared and     2     (say) that because they had loved each other for all 25 years, she would give them one wish each .

    3     (hear) this, the husband announced shily:“well, I would like to have a woman 30 years younger than me.”The fairy picked up her wand, and Boom! He was ninety.

In 1944, I started my first project     1     (increase) wheat production in Mexico. There I learned a very important lesson     2     you can’t bring the new wheat to farmers without good roads.

After     3     (authority) failed to persuade farmers to plant the new wheat     4     (develop) by me, I decided to upgrade the largely unusable farm-to-market roads that linked the villages.

After we     5     (rebuild) the roads, I could see the amazing effect immediately. Wherever the new roads went, farmers adopted     6     new crop with surprising speed. Since the new wheat produced much more than the varieties that had been planted for hundreds of years and had provided barely enough grain for survival, the farmers could afford to build new houses and purchase better clothing and healthier food for their children. The children stayed in school longer, thanks to the little ”taxis“ that carried them between the school and their homes over the new roads. Child death rate dropped     7     (remarkable), as mothers with sick children could get medical help on time. Villages once troubled by     8     (violent) now became safe to travel both day and night. As the new road opened the way for commerce, information and opportunities, young people no longer     9     (attract) to join local criminal groups.

I carried this lesson with me through the rest of my career, increasingly convinced that there was a direct relation     10     the absence of quality roads and poverty.