Summaries

1
Elderly people are growing healthier, happier and more
independent, say American scientists. The results of a 14-year
study to be announced later this month reveal that the diseases
associated with old age are afflicting fewer and fewer people and
when they do strike, it is much later in life.
Researchers, now analyzing the results of data gathered in 1994,
say arthritis, high blood pressure and circulation problems-the
major medical complaints in this age group-are troubling a
smaller proportion every year. And the data confirms that the rate
at which these diseases are declining continues to accelerate.
Other diseases of old-age dementia, stroke, arteriosclerosis, and
emphysema-are also troubling fewer and fewer people.
‘It really raises the question of what should be considered normal
aging,’ says Kenneth Manton, a demographer from Duke
University in North Carolina. He says that the problems doctors
accepted as normal in a 65-year-old in 1982 are often not
appearing until people are 70 or 75, clearly, certain diseases are
beating a retreat in the face of medical advances. But there may
be other contributing factors. Improvements in childhood
nutrition in the first quarter of the twentieth century, for example,
gave today’s elderly people better start in life than their
predecessors.
Key points

Elderly people are growing healthier, happier and more

independent, say American scientists.

arthritis, high blood pressure and circulation problems-the major

medical complaints in this age group

the rate at which these diseases are declining continues to

accelerate.

Improvements in childhood nutrition in the first quarter of the

twentieth century.

Sample answer

According to American scientists, elderly people are growing

healthier, happier and more independent because of the
improvement in their nutrition in the first quarter of the twentieth
century, despite of the major medical complaints like arthritis,
high blood pressure, the rate at which these diseases are
declining continues to accelerate.

49 words
2

The English have the reputation of being a nation of tea drinkers, but this
wasn’t always the case. By the end of the 17th century, the English were
the biggest coffee drinkers in the Western world, and coffee houses
became the places to be seen. For gossip also, one could pick up talk of
the latest intellectual developments in the field of science, politics, and so
on, in this age of scientific discovery and research. Coffee houses were
very simple and basic at first; one can say a room with a bar at one corner
and a few plain tables and chairs at the other end. Customers paid a penny
for a bowl – not a cup – of coffee. At that time, it was thought that the
customers didn’t use bad language just because of the presence of a polite
young woman. An added attraction was that coffee houses provided free
newspapers and journals.
But people didn’t go to the coffee houses just to drink coffee. They went to
talk. Simple cafes were converted and developed into clubs, where one
with a penny could go for a drink and a chat. Most of them started to go to
coffee houses to find other people with the same job or of same interest to
talk and conduct business.
The great popularity of coffee houses lasted about a 100 years. In the later
18th century, increased trade with other countries made such luxuries as
coffee cheaper and more easily available to the ordinary person. As a
result, people started to drink it at home. At that time more tea was
imported from abroad. The domestic tea-party replaced the century of the
coffee house as the typical English social occasion.
Key points

The English have the reputation of being a nation of tea drinkers, but this
wasn’t always the case. By the end of the 17th century, the English were
the biggest coffee drinkers in the Western world

But people didn’t go to the coffee houses just to drink coffee. They went to
talk.

The great popularity of coffee houses lasted about a 100 years

Coffee became the most popular drink among the English in the late
seventeenth century and it replaced tea, due to which coffee houses were
constructed, where people talked with each other together with drinking
coffee; moreover, coffee houses popularity prevailed for almost a century.

44 words
3

Who would have thought back in 1698, as they downed their espressos,
that the little band of stockbrokers from Jonathan’s Coffee House in
Change Alley EC3 would be the founder- members of what would become
the world’s mighty money capital?
Progress was not entirely smooth. The South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 and
the coffee house exchanges burned down in 1748. As late as Big Bang in
1986, when bowler hats were finally hung up, you wouldn’t have bet the
farm on London surpassing New York, Frankfurt, and Tokyo as Mammon’s
international nexus. Yet the 325,000 souls who operate in the UK capital’s
financial hub have now overtaken their New York rivals in the size of the
funds managed (including offshore business); they hold 70% of the global
secondary bond market and the City dominates foreign exchange trading.
And its institutions paid out £9 billion in bonuses in December. The Square
Mile has now spread both eastwards from EC3 to Canary Wharf and
westwards into Mayfair, where many of the private-equity ‘locusts’ and
their hedge-fund pals now hang out. For foreigners in finance, London is
the place to be. It has no Sarbanes-Oxley and no euro to hold it back, yet
the fact that it still flies so high is against the odds. London is one of the
most expensive cities in the world to live in, transport systems groan and
there’s an ever-present threat of terrorist attack. But, for the time being,
the deals just keep on getting bigger.
Key points

Who would have thought back in 1698, as they downed their espressos,
that the little band of stockbrokers from Jonathan’s Coffee House in
Change Alley EC3 would be the founder- members of what would become
the world’s mighty money capital?

Progress was not entirely smooth

For foreigners in finance, London is the place to be. It has no Sarbanes-

Oxley and no euro to hold it back, yet the fact that it still flies so high is
against the odds. London is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in,
transport systems groan and there’s an ever-present threat of terrorist attack. But, for the
time being, the deals just keep on getting bigger.

The success of the little band of stockbrokers from Jonathan’s Coffee House in
Change Alley EC3 was not so easy, London is the place for people from overseas in
finance, London is one of the costliest cities worldwide to live in, transport
systems groan due to which there is a threat of terrorist attack.

52 words
4

Thirty healthy adults performed a gambling task on two separate

occasions, once after receiving a drug called L-DOPA and once after
receiving a placebo. The task required subjects to choose between safe
and risky options that led to monetary gains and losses. Sometimes, the
subjects could choose between a small reward or a gamble where there
were equal chances of winning a larger reward or getting nothing. Other
times, subjects could accept a small loss or choose a gamble where there
were equal chances of losing a larger amount or losing nothing. During the
testing, subjects were repeatedly asked, “How happy are you at this
moment?”
The researchers found that:
♦ Subjects took more risks to try to get bigger rewards after receiving L-
DOPA but not placebo.
♦ After receiving L-DOPA, subjects chose more risky options regardless of
how much larger the potential reward was compared to the safe
alternative.
♦ Subjects were happier after winning a small reward while on L-DOPA
than they were winning the same reward while on a placebo, happiness
was higher after large rewards than after small rewards, but on L-DOPA
subjects were as happy about small rewards as they were about large
rewards.
 
keypoints

Thirty healthy adults performed a gambling task on two separate

occasions, once after receiving a drug called L-DOPA and once after
receiving a placebo. ♦ Subjects took more risks to try to get bigger rewards
after receiving L-DOPA but not placebo.
♦ After receiving L-DOPA, subjects chose more risky options regardless of
how much larger the potential reward was compared to the safe
alternative.
♦ Subjects were happier after winning a small reward while on L-DOPA
than they were winning the same reward while on a placebo,

In a research done on thirty adults which includes dosage of two drugs L-

dopa and placebo, researchers found that subjects were more happier after
having L-dopa and their risk taking capacity increases than receiving
placebo.

35 words
5

Humans have been cultivating chillies as food for 6000 years, but we are
still learning new things about the science behind their heat and how it
reacts with our body. In the late 1990s, scientists identified the pain nerves
that detect capsaicin: the chemical in chillies responsible for most of the
burning sensation in our mouth. But it’s only during the last few years that
scientists have also learnt why chillies evolved to be spicy in the first place,
and they have managed to cultivate new varieties that are up to 300 times
hotter than the common Jalapeno.
The hottest part of the chilli is not the seeds, as many people think, but the
white flesh that houses the seeds, known as the placenta. But why did
chillies evolve to be hot in the first place? Most scientists believe capsaicin
acts mainly as a deterrent against would-be mammal predators such as
rodents. But recent research suggests this may not be the whole story. US
scientists working in Bolivia have studied how hot and mild chillies differ in
their susceptibility to a certain harmful fungus. It turns out that the hotter
the chilli, the better its defences against the fungus, leading the
researchers to propose that heat may have evolved to help chillies deal
with harmful microbes, as well as hungry mammals.
Key points
Humans have been cultivating chillies as food for 6000 years, but we are
still learning new things about the science behind their heat and how it
reacts with our body. In the late 1990s, scientists identified the pain nerves
that detect capsaicin: the chemical in chillies responsible for most of the
burning sensation in our mouth. The hottest part of the chilly is not the
seeds, as many people think, but the white flesh that houses the seeds,
known as the placenta. It turns out that the hotter the chilly, the better its
defences against the fungus, leading the researchers to propose that heat
may have evolved to help chillies deal with harmful microbes, as well as
hungry mammals.

Chillies have been cultivated by human from 6000 years but the science
behind their heat and reaction with human body is still not over, scientists
identified that capsaicin is detected by pain nerves which gives burning
sensation in our mouth; furthermore, placenta is the hottest part of the
chilly.

49 words