Children Raised in Greener Areas Have Higher IQ

Growing up in a greener urban environment boosts children’s intelligence and lowers levels of difficult behaviour, a study has found.

The analysis of more than 600 children aged 10 to 15 showed that a 3% increase in the greenness of their neighborhood raised their IQ score     1     an average of 2.6 points. The effect was seen in both richer and poorer areas.

There is already significant evidence for green spaces’ effects on improving various aspects of children’s cognitive development but this is the first research     2     (examine) IQ. The cause is uncertain but may     3     (link) to lower stress levels, more play and social contact or a quieter environment.

The increase in IQ points was particularly significant for those children at the lower end of the spectrum,     4     small increases could make a big difference, the researchers said.

“Evidence has built up over time     5     green surroundings are associated with improved cognitive functioning, such as memory skills and attention,” said Tim Nawrot, a professor of environmental epidemiology at Hasselt University in Belgium, where the study was conducted.

“    6     this study adds by including IQ is a more rigorous, well-established clinical measure. It is really of value to create an optimal environment for children to develop their full potential,     7     is why I think city builders or urban planners should prioritize investment in green spaces.”

The study, published in the journal Plos Medicine, used satellite images to measure the level of greenness in neighborhoods, including parks, gardens, street trees and all other vegetation.

The average IQ score was 105 but the scientists found 4% of children in areas with low levels of greenery scored below 80,     8     no children scored below 80 in areas with more greenery.

The benefits of more greenery     9     (record) in urban areas were not replicated in suburban or rural areas. Nawrot suggested this might be because those places had enough greenness for all children living there to benefit.

Behavioral difficulties such as poor attention and aggressiveness were also measured in the children     10     (use) a standard rating scale, and the average score was 46. In this case, a 3% rise in greenery resulted in a two-point reduction in behavioral problems, in line with previous studies.

Quake Strikes Chile

On the night of February 27, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck in Chile, damaging over 500,000 homes and killing more than 800 people.

The earthquake released much more energy than the one that devastated Haiti in January (Richter scale: 7.0), but left 200 times fewer fatalities – the death toll in Haiti has topped 230,000.

To say that Santiago looks far better today than Port-au-Prince is     1     no comfort to the people of Chile. Yet the comparison is unavoidable, as Anne Applebaum pointed out in the Washington Post. After all, two large earthquakes have struck not far from the capital cities of two Latin American countries within a very short space of time. Why did the more serious quake cause much less death?

One answer is that the Haitian quake had a shallow hypocenter. The earthquake near Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, was only about 15km below the surface,     2     (compare) to about 35km below the ocean floor in Chile.

There was also an element of chance. So much depends on what time of a day an earthquake happens.

“In Chile, a lot of car parks collapsed, but there was nobody in them because it was the middle of the night,” David Galloway, a seismologist (地震学家) at the British Geological Survey, told AFP.

On the other hand, the earthquake in Haiti happened in the afternoon     3     people were outside and there was busy traffic.

But the deadly destruction and huge loss of life in January cannot only     4     (attribute) to time and proximity, experts pointed out.

“The quality of construction and building codes in Haiti were obviously not as strong as     5     in Chile,” said Galloway.

Chile had regulations in place     6     the quake that required all new buildings to use earthquake-resistant standards. Not every structure met the standards, but many     7    .

Haiti, by contrast, the poorest country in the Latin America, has no building codes     8     (speak) of. Even the Presidential Palace was built from unreinforced (无钢筋的) concrete and collapsed with the earthquake.

Also, Chile’s government is far     9     (corrupt) than Haiti’s. Immediately after the earthquake, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet declared a “state of catastrophe” in quake-hit areas and sent troops to do rescue work and keep order. Yet Haitians didn’t even know if their president was alive after the earthquake.

No one ever expects an earthquake, and in that sense it’s always a piece of bad luck,     10     David Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post. But the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti have taught us a lesson - the damage can be reduced by adopting higher quake-resistant standards for buildings and improving people’s awareness of disaster prevention and rescue. Both depend on government investment. Luck has nothing to do with that.

In a bid to control the nation’s growing problem with food wastage, the South Korean government has started a unique initiative – “Pay as You Trash”. As of now, the South Korean government has three methods     1     place to charge citizens for the food thrown away. One is through a RFI card. When users tap this card over a specially designed food waste bin, the lid (盖子) will open, allowing them to dump their waste. The waste     2     (weigh) automatically and a bill is recorded in the user’s account which the user needs to settle on a monthly basis. Each RFI bin costs $1,500 and     3     serve 60 households.

The second billing method is through pre-paid garbage bags. These specially designed bags are priced based on volume. There’s also an electronic management system,     4     residents put food waste directly into the bin and pay for it by purchasing a special tag     5     (attach) to the bin.

Every household in South Korea is subject to one of these payment systems.     6     the new payment method affects you depends totally on how much food you throw away. Whatever system you use, you are sure to feel the pain of food waste. The more food you throw out, the more you end up     7     (pay).

And it’s working. Residents like Seoul housewife Ms. Kwan have found it necessary to adopt innovative methods to avoid food waste. She picks     8     wet out of leftover food before throwing it away. She also separates fresh produce and other food items into     9     (small) portions so that only the required amount is used up per meal. “     10     the fees can be reduced, I’m willing to adopt any innovative method to avoid food waste,” she said.

Beethov-hen’s first symphony

On a grey Friday morning at a Hawke’s Bay farm, members of New Zealand’s symphony orchestra dressed in black to perform their latest composition in front of a large crowd.

The music contained many marks of traditional classical music, but as it began, the instruments started to make loud, rough sounds more commonly     1     (hear) in chicken coops than in an auditorium.

However, no feathers were angered by this departure from tradition,     2     the audience that gathered to listen to the concert last week was, in fact, a couple of thousand chickens.

The piece of music – Chook Symphony No.1 –     3     (create) specifically for the birds out of an unlikely partnership between the orchestra and an organic free-range chicken farm which wanted a piece of chicken-friendly music to enrich its flocks’ lives.

“We’ve been playing classical music for the chickens for some years now because     4     is well researched that the music can calm the chickens down,” says Ben Bostock, one of the two brothers who     5     (own) the Bostock Brothers farm.

Research has shown animals can respond positively to classical music, and chickens are particularly responsive to baroque (巴洛克风格), according to some studies.

The composer, Hamish Oliver,     6     used the baroque tradition as a starting point and drew inspiration from composers such as Corelli, Bach, and Schnittke, wanted the piece to be playful by including sounds from a chicken’s world. “The trumpet imitates the chicken… the woodwind instruments are the cluckiest, especially if you take the reeds off.”

The early stages of composition were spent     7     (test) out which instruments and sounds the chickens responded to best.

“They didn’t like any big banging,” Bostock said, adding that when the birds respond positively to the music, they tend     8     (wander) farther among the trees. Bostock now hopes chicken farmers around the world will use the piece of music to calm their own birds.

For Oliver, having input from the farmers about     9     the chickens were responding to particular sounds and instruments was a highlight of the project.

The symphony has searched exhaustively     10     any other examples of orchestras making music specifically for chickens and believes this to be a world-first, says Peter Biggs, the orchestra’s chief executive.

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word,fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word;for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall:

Can Animals Recognize Their Reflection at All?

Daniel Povinelli was in high school when he first read about an experiment published in 1970. It left a deep impression     1     him as it showed that chimpanzees, rather than monkeys, can recognize themselves in mirrors. All it took was a simple mirror    2     (reveal) that our close chimpanzee relatives are self-aware.

This famous mirror self-recognition experiment was conducted in the 1960s by scientist Gordon Gallup, Jr. No such tests had been done before     3     people had long observed animals interacting with mirrors. In this experiment, the chimps originally tried to attack the image in the mirror. But after a couple of days, they began using the mirror to examine parts of their bodies such as their teeth. He then anesthetized(使麻醉) them and put red dye on their face. The chimps later woke up and reacted to the unexpected mirror image as if they     4     understand that the marks were on their own faces. In Gallup’s view, passing this test proved that the chimps had self-awareness, which was an evolutionary leap     5     (make) only by humans and their close relatives and led to empathy and higher-level thinking.

Though convinced at first, Povinelli now holds a different view on what animals may be doing after spending years     6     (commit) himself to studying mirrors and higher-order consciousness for years. He holds that animals may have a     7     (complicated) sense of their own body’s movement than we imagine. With that kind of physical self-concept, a chimp could use a mirror as a tool to examine its body. But that wouldn’t indicate anything about the richness of the animal’s inner life. Recent research also shows monkeys can actually learn to perform this skill, if they     8     (give) the proper training.

Povinelli says people     9     live with cats and dogs tend to project their own understanding of the world onto their pets. Since they can’t directly ask     10     their pets are experiencing, their projection is very likely to be wrong.