Reading 2026-05 Test 5

A The working day has just started at the head office of Barclays Bank in London. Seventeen staff are helping themselves to a buffet breakfast as young psychologist Sebastian Bailey enters the room to begin the morning’s training 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. B Today’s workout, organized by a company called the Mind Gym in London, is entitled “having presence”. What follows is an intense 90-minute session in which this rather abstract concept is gradually broken down into a concrete set of feelings, mental tricks and behaviours. At one point the bankers are instructed to shut their eyes and visualize themselves filling the room and then the building. They finish up by walking around the room acting out various levels of presence, from low-key to over the top. C It’s easy to poke fun. Yet similar mental workouts are happening in corporate seminar rooms around the globe. The Mind Gym alone offers some 70 different sessions, including ones on mental stamina, creativity for logical thinkers and “zoom learning”. Other outfits draw more directly on the exercise analogy, offering “neurobics” courses with names like “brain sets” and “cerebral fitness”. Then there are books with titles like Pumping Ions, full of brainteasers that claim to “flex your mind”, and software packages offering memory and spatial-awareness games. D But whatever the style, the companies’ sales pitch is invariably the same—follow our routines to shape and sculpt your brain or mind, just as you might tone and train your body. And, of course, they nearly all claim that their mental workouts draw on serious scientific research and thinking into how the brain works. E One outfit, Brainergy of Cambridge, Massachusetts (motto: “Because your grey matter matters”) puts it like this: “Studies have shown that mental exercise can cause changes in brain anatomy and brain chemistry which promote increased mental efficiency and clarity. The neuroscience is cutting-edge.” And on its website, Mind Gym trades on a quote from Susan Greenfield, one of Britain’s best known neuroscientists: “It’s a bit like going to the gym, if you exercise your brain it will grow.” F Indeed, the Mind Gym originally planned to hold its sessions in a local health club, until its founders realized where the real money was to be made. Modern companies need flexible, bright thinkers and will seize on anything that claims to create them, especially if it looks like a quick fix backed by science. But are neurobic workouts really backed by science? And do we need them? G Nor is there anything remotely high-tech about what Lawrence Katz, coauthor of Keep Your Brain Alive, recommends. Katz, a neurobiologist at Duke University Medical School in North Carolina, argues that just as many of us fail to get enough physical exercise, so we also lack sufficient mental stimulation to keep our brain in trim. Sure we are busy with jobs, family and housework. But most of this activity is repetitive routine. And any leisure time is spent slumped in front of the TV. H So, read a book upside down. Write or brush your teeth with your wrong hand. Feel your way around the room with your eyes shut. Sniff vanilla essence while listening intently to orchestral music. Anything, says Katz, to break your normal mental routine. It will help invigorate your brain, encouraging its cells to make new connections and pump out neurotrophins, substances that feed and sustain brain circuits. I Well, up to a point it will. “What I’m really talking about is brain maintenance rather than bulking up your IQ,” Katz adds. Neurobics, in other words, is about letting your brain fulfill its potential. It cannot create super-brains. Can it achieve even that much, though? Certainly the brain is an organ that can adapt to the demands placed on it. Tests on animal brain tissue, for example, have repeatedly shown that electrically stimulating the synapses that connect nerve cells thought to be crucial to learning and reasoning, makes them stronger and more responsive. Brain scans suggest we use a lot more of our grey matter when carrying out new or strange tasks than when we’re doing well-rehearsed ones. Rats raised in bright cages with toys sprout more neural connections than rats raised in bare cages—suggesting perhaps that novelty and variety could be crucial to a developing brain. And neurologists have proved time and again that people who lose brain cells suddenly during a stroke often sprout new connections to compensate for the loss—especially if they undergo extensive therapy to overcome any paralysis. J Guy Claxton, an educational psychologist at the University of Bristol, dismisses most of the neurological approaches as “neuro-babble”. Nevertheless, there are specific mental skills we can learn, he contends. Desirable attributes such as creativity, mental flexibility, and even motivation, are not the fixed faculties that most of us think. They are thought habits can be learned. The problem, says Claxton, is that most of us never get proper training in these skills. We develop our own private set of mental strategies for tackling tasks and never learn anything explicitly. Worse still, because any learned skill—even driving a car or brushing our teeth—quickly sinks out of consciousness, we can no longer see the very thought habits we’re relying upon. Our mental tools become invisible to us. K Claxton is the academic adviser to the Mind Gym. So not surprisingly, the company espouses his solution that we must return our thought patterns to a conscious level, becoming aware of the details of how we usually think. Only then can we start to practice better thought patterns, until eventually these become our new habits. Switching metaphors, picture not gym classes, but tennis or football coaching. L In practice, the training can seem quite mundane. For example, in one of the eight different creativity workouts offered by the Mind Gym—entitled “creativity for logical thinkers”—one of the mental strategies taught is to make a sensible suggestion, then immediately pose its opposite. So, asked to spend five minutes inventing a new pizza, a group soon comes up with no topping, sweet topping, cold topping, price based on time of day, flat-rate prices and so on. M Bailey agrees that the trick is simple. But it is surprising how few such tricks people have to call upon when they are suddenly asked to be creative: “They tend to just label themselves as uncreative, not realizing that there are techniques that every creative person employs.” Bailey says the aim is to introduce people to half a dozen or so such strategies in a session so that what at first seems like a dauntingly abstract mental task becomes a set of concrete, learnable behaviours. He admits this is not a short cut to genius. Neurologically some people do start with quicker circuits or greater handling capacity. However, with the right kind of training he thinks we can dramatically increase how efficiently we use it. N It is hard to prove that the training itself is effective. How do you measure a change in an employee’s creativity levels, or memory skills? But staff certainly report feeling that such classes have opened their eyes. So, neurological boosting or psychological training? At the moment you can pay your money and take your choice. Claxton for one believes there is no reason why schools and universities shouldn’t spend more time teaching basic thinking skills, rather than trying to stuff heads with facts and hoping that effective thought habits are somehow absorbed by osmosis.

Rain-forest trees growing anew on Central American farmland are helping scientists find ways for monkey and agriculture to benefit one another. A Hacienda La Pacifica, a remote working cattle ranch in Guanacaste Province of northern Costa Rica, has for decades been home to a community of mantled howler monkeys. Other native primates—white-faced capuchin monkeys and spider monkeys—were once common in this area too, but vanished after the Pan-American Highway was built nearby in the 1950s and most of the surrounding land was cleared for cattle-raising. At Hacienda La Pacifica, however, an enlightened ranch owner chose to leave some strips of native trees growing. He used these as windbreaks to protect both cattle and their food crops from dry-season winds. In the process, the farmer unwittingly founded a unique laboratory for the study of monkeys. B Ken Glander, a primatologist from Duke University in the USA, is studying La Pacifica’s monkeys in an effort to understand the relationship between howlers and regenerating forests at the edges of grazing lands. Studying such disturbed woodlands is increasingly important because throughout much of the New World Tropics, these are the only forests left. In the 18th century, tropical dry forests once covered most of Central America, but by the 1980s less than two percent remained undisturbed, and less than one percent was protected. C Howlers persist at La Pacifica, Glander explains, because they are leaf-eaters. They eat fruit when it is available but, unlike capuchin and spider monkeys, do not depend on large areas of fruiting trees. Glander is particularly interested in howlers’ ability to thrive on leaves loaded with toxins—poisonous substances designed to protect the plants. For leaf-eaters, long-term exposure to a specific plant toxin can increase their ability to neutralise the poisonous substances and absorb the leaf nutrients. Watching generations of howlers at La Pacifica has shown Glander that the monkeys keep their systems primed by sampling a variety of plants and then focusing on a small number of the most nutritious food items. The leaves that grow in regenerating forests, like those at La Pacifica, are actually more howler-friendly than those produced by the centuries-old trees that survive farther south. In younger forests, trees put most of their limited energy into growing wood, leaves and fruit, so they produce much lower levels of toxin than do well-established, old-growth trees. D The value of maturing forests to primates is also a subject of study at Santa Rosa National Park, about 35 miles northwest of La Pacifica. Large areas of Santa Rosa’s forests had at one time been burnt to make space for cattle ranching and coffee farming, thereby devastating local monkey habitat. But in 1971 the government protected the area by designating it a national park, and species of indigenous trees which had been absent for decades began to invade the abandoned pastures. Capuchins were the first to begin using the reborn forests, followed by howlers. Eventually, even spider monkeys, fruit-eaters that need large areas of continuous forest, returned. In the first 28 years following protection of the area, the capuchin population doubled, while the number of howlers increased seven-fold. E Some of the same traits that allow howlers to survive at La Pacifica also explain their population boom in Santa Rosa. Howler reproduction is faster than that of other native monkey species. They give birth for the first time at about 3.5 years of age, compared with seven years for capuchins, and eight or more for spider monkeys. Also, while a female spider monkey will have a baby about once every four years, well-fed howlers can produce an infant every two years. Another factor is diet. Howlers are very adaptable feeders and need only a comparatively small home range. Spider monkeys, on the other hand, need to occupy a huge home range. Also crucial is the fact that the leaves howlers eat hold plenty of water, so the monkeys can survive away from open streams and water-holes. This ability gives them a real advantage over capuchin and spider monkeys, which have suffered during the long, ongoing drought in the area. F Alejandro Estrada, an ecologist at Estación de Biología Los Tuxtlas in Veracruz, Mexico, has been studying the ecology of a group of howler monkeys that thrive in a habitat totally altered by humans: a cacao plantation in Tabasco State, Mexico. Cacao plants need shade to grow, so 40 years ago the owners of Cholula Cacao Farm planted figs, monkey-pod and other tall trees to form a protective canopy over their crop. The howlers moved in about 25 years ago after nearby forests were cut. This strange habitat seems to support about as many monkeys as would a same-sized patch of wild forest. The howlers eat the leaves and fruit of the shade trees, leaving the valuable cacao pods alone. G Estrada believes the monkeys bring under-appreciated benefits to such plantations, dispersing the seeds of fruits such as fig and other shade trees, and fertilising the soil. Spider monkeys also forage for fruit here, though they need nearby areas of forest to survive in the long term. He hopes that farmers will begin to see the advantages of associating with wild monkeys, which could include potential ecotourism projects. ‘Conservation is usually viewed as a conflict between farming practices and the need to preserve nature,’ Estrada says. ‘We’re moving away from that vision and beginning to consider ways in which commercial activities may become a tool for the conservation of primates in human-modified landscapes.’

Why do howlers have an advantage over other Central American monkeys? Howler monkeys have a more rapid rate of 18 ________ than either capuchin or spider monkeys. Unlike the other local monkey species, howlers can survive without eating 19 ________ and so can live inside a relatively small habitat area. Their diet is more flexible, and they are able to tolerate leaves with high levels of 20 ________. Howlers can also survive periods of 21 ________ better than the other monkey species can.

A. Planet Earth is today circled by scores of satellites, orbiting like tiny moons after being sent aloft by rockets to perform a variety of useful tasks. Their story began long ago but rocket technology has progressed considerably since the days when bamboo poles filled with gunpowder were first used in China as fireworks around 500 BC, and since the Sung dynasty when rockets were first used to repel invaders at the battle of Kaifeng (Kai-fung-fu) in AD 1232. In Asia in recent years there has been a dramatic growth in space activities both in the utilisation of space-based services and the production of satellites and launchers. This rapid expansion has led many analysts to predict that Asia will become an important provider of services in space. B. Worldwide there have been dramatic developments in space technology, and these have been eagerly embraced by Asian nations, which have found them to be especially adaptable for their particular problems. Asia, and Southeast Asia in particular, experiences recurrent large-scale environmental problems including storms and flooding, forest fires, and crop failures. The space application that has attracted the most attention in this region, therefore, is remote sensing. Remote sensing satellites, equipped with instruments to take photographs of the ground using different wavelengths, provide essential information about natural ground cover and planted crops, and this information facilitates work in environmental management, disaster prevention, and sustainable planning. C. Imaginative and innovative applications of satellites are constantly being explored, with potentially revolutionary effects. To take a specific example, small antennas no more than 40 cm across and 15 cm high are embedded in slabs of stone, which are themselves embedded in the earth. Every 15 seconds a global positioning system measures the distance between each antenna and a satellite. The data is transferred to one of 200 monitoring stations around the world and provide a constant flow of information invaluable for the prediction of earthquakes. Asian nations have also eagerly embraced satellite technology in the field of health and telemedicine: patients in remote rural communities can be diagnosed and carers can be advised on medical treatment. Such things as pictures of the patient, pulse rate temperature, blood pressure and blood oxygen can be monitored and transmitted to doctors thousands of kilometres away for reliable diagnosis and advice. There have also been beneficial advances in distance education programs, and agricultural planning and production have improved. D. Access to the benefits of satellites was not always as straightforward as it might seem today. For decades, Japan has been the dominant space power in Asia. To achieve its pre-eminence, however, Japan had to face serious time-consuming technological challenges and high risks through many trials. This experimentation was problematic at first because Japan based its satellite manufacturing on traditional and very expensive Western military technological practices. E. In more recent times, fundamental changes in satellites have dramatically reduced costs. ‘Small satellites’ have given Asian countries a way to develop low-cost satellite technology and rapidly establish a space capability of their own. The new entrants in the industry are able to shorten the time for trials by as much as a decade or more. Small satellites, which have opened the space age to developing countries, are classified in three groups: nano satellites have a mass less than 10 kg, micro satellites range from 10 to 100 kg and mini satellites are between 100 and 500 kg. Such is the appeal of small satellites that low-cost launcher rockets are being developed exclusively for mini satellites. The saving is even greater for nano and micro satellites, which can be launched as secondary passengers, hitching a ride on large launchers with pay-load to spare. Small satellites allow individual countries to select more convenient orbits for their own particular purposes. A low polar orbit is good for mapping. As the earth rotates from west to east, the satellite orbits north and south allowing it repeatedly to photograph any chosen parts of the Earth’s surface. F. Space technology in Asia has been facilitated by the competitive commercial sector and its production of low-cost mini satellites. The globalisation of industrial and financial markets has improved avenues for transferring technological innovation, and the availability of ready-made commercial technology may well result in a highly competitive Asian satellite industry. The laws of physics are the same all over the world, and the principles of electronics and mechanics know no political or cultural boundaries. However, engineering practice and management practice are not so readily transferable but are influenced by education, culture and history. These practices have an effect on costs, lead times, product designs and, eventually, international sales. Nevertheless, it can be expected that the acquisition of technical expertise, combined with the world-renowned Japanese manufacturing and management techniques, will soon produce world-class satellites at reduced costs.

A. they are seeking plants with medicinal value B. they can take pictures of any area required C. They depend on what has happened in the past D. they do not take up a lot of space abroad rockets E. they have locations that are difficult to reach F. they help students with their studies G. they suffer from such things as forest fires