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Ex9: Rsub7
Less Television, Less Violence and Aggression

Cutting back on television, videos, and video games reduces acts of aggression
among schoolchildren, according to a study by Dr. Thomas Robinson and others
from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The study, published in the
January 2001 issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, found
that third- and fourth-grade students who took part in a curriculum to reduce their
TV, video, and video game use engaged in fewer acts of verbal and physical
aggression than their peers. The study took place in two similar San Jose,
California, elementary schools. Students in one school underwent an 18-lesson,
6-month program designed to limit their media usage, while the others did not.
Both groups of students had similar reports of aggressive behavior at the
beginning of the study. After the six-month program, however, the two groups had
very real differences. The students who cut back on their TV time engaged in six
fewer acts of verbal aggression per hour and rated 2.4 percent fewer of their
classmates as aggressive after the program.

Physical acts of violence, parental reports of aggressive behavior, and

perceptions of a mean and scary world also decreased, but the authors suggest
further study to solidify these results.

Although many studies have shown that children who watch a lot of TV are more
likely to act violently, this report further verifies that television, videos, and video
games actually cause the violent behavior, and it is among the first to evaluate a
solution to the problem. Teachers at the intervention school included the program
in their existing curriculum. Early lessons encouraged students to keep tract of
and report on the time they spent watching TV or videos, or playing Video
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games, to motivate them to limit those activities on their own. The initial lessons
were followed by TV-Turnoff, an organization that encourages less TV viewing.
For ten days, students were challenged to go without television, videos, or video
games. After that, teachers encouraged the students to stay within a media
allowance of seven hours per week. Almost all students participated in the
Turnoff, and most stayed under their budget for the following weeks. Additional
lessons encouraged children to use their time more selectively, and many of the
final lessons had students themselves advocate reducing screen activities.

This study is by no means the first to find a link between television and violence.
Virtually all of 3,500 research studies on the subject in the past 40 years have
shown the same relationship, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Among the most noteworthy studies is Dr. Leonard D. Eron’s, which found that
exposure to television violence in childhood is the strongest predictor of
aggressive behavior later in life—stronger even than violent behavior as children.
The more violent television the subjects watched at age eight, the more serious
was their aggressive behavior even 22 years later. Another study by Dr. Brandon
S. Centerwall found that murder rates climbed after the introduction of television.
In the United States and Canada, murder rates doubled 10 to 15 years after the
introduction of television, after the first TV generation grew up.

Centerwall tested this pattern in South Africa, where television broadcasts were
banned until 1975. Murder rates in South Africa remained relatively steady from
the mid-1940s through the mid- 1970s. By 1987, however, the murder rate had
increased 130 percent from its 1974 level. The murder rates in the United States
and Canada had leveled off in the meantime. Centerwall's study implies that the
medium of television, not just the content, promotes violence and the current
study by Dr. Robinson supports that conclusion. The Turnoff did not specifically
target violent television, nor did the following allowance period. Reducing
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television in general reduces aggressive behavior. Even television that is not

“violent” is more violent than real life and may lead viewers to believe that
violence is funny, inconsequential, and a viable solution to problems. Also,
watching television of any content robs us of the time to interact with real people.
Watching too much TV may inhibit the skills and patience we need to get along
with others without resorting to aggression. TV, as a medium, promotes
aggression and violence. The best solution is to turn it off.

Questions 1-7

Complete the summary using words from the box below. Write your
answers in boxes 1-7 on your Answer Sheet

A study that was published in January 2001 found that when children 1
_________ less, they behaved less 2 _________.

Students in a California elementary school participated in the study, which lasted

3 _________.

By the end of the study, the children’s behavior had changed.

For example, the children’s 4_________ reported that the children were acting
less violently than before.

During the study, the children kept a record of the 5_________ they watched TV.
Then, for ten days, they 6_________.

Near the end of the study, the students began to suggest watching 7_________.

parents eighteen days

teachers classmates
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six months nonviolent programs

violently time of day

watched TV number of hours

scared avoided TV

less TV favorite programs

Questions 8-11

Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage

2? in boxes 8-11 write

TRUE if the statement is true according to the passage.

FALSE if the statement contradicts the passage.

NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage.

8 Only one study has found a connection between TV and violent behavior.

9 There were more murders in Canada after people began watching TV.

10 The United States has more violence on TV than other countries.

11 TV was introduced in South Africa in the 1940s.

Questions 12-13

For each question, choose the correct letter A-D and write it in boxes 12
and 13 on your Answer Sheet

12 According to the passage,

A only children are affected by violence on TV.

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B only violent TV programs cause violent behavior.

C children who watch too much TV get poor grades in school..

D watching a lot of TV may beep us from learning important social shills.

13 The authors of this passage believe that

A some violent TV programs are funny.

B the best plan is to stop watching TV completely.

C it’s better to watch TV with other people than on your own.

D seven hours a week of TV watching is acceptable.

Ex10: Rsub8
The World Wide Web from its origins
Science inspired the World Wide Web, and the Web has responded by
changing science.

'Information Management: A Proposal'. That was the bland title of a document

written in March 1989 by a then little- known computer scientist called Tim
Berners-Lee, who was working at CERN, Europe’s particle physics laboratory,
near Geneva. His proposal, modestly called the World Wide Web, has achieved
far more than anyone expected at the time.

In fact, the Web was invented to deal with a specific problem. In the late 1980s,
CERN was planning one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever, the Large
Hadron Collider*, or LHC. As the first few lines of the original proposal put it,
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'Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC end with the
question "Yes, but how will we ever keep track of such a large project?" This
proposal provides an answer to such questions.

The Web, as everyone now knows, has many more uses than the original idea of
linking electronic documents about particle physics in laboratories around the
world. But among all the changes it has brought about, from personal social
networks to political campaigning, it has also transformed the business of doing
science itself, as the man who invented it hoped it would.

It allows journals to be published online and links to be made from one paper to
another. It also permits professional scientists to recruit thousands of amateurs to
give them a hand. One project of this type, called GalaxyZoo, used these unpaid
workers to classify one million images of galaxies into various types (spiral,
elliptical and irregular). This project, which was intended to help astronomers
understand how galaxies evolve, was so successful that a successor has now
been launched, to classify the brightest quarter of a million of them in finer detail.
People working for a more modest project called Herbaria@home examine
scanned images of handwritten notes about old plants stored in British museums.
This will allow them to track the changes in the distribution of species in response
to climate change.

Another new scientific application of the Web is to use it as an experimental

laboratory. It is allowing social scientists, in particular, to do things that were
previously impossible. In one project, scientists made observations about the
sizes of human social networks using data from Facebook. A second
investigation of these networks, produced by Bernardo Huberman of HP Labs,
Hewlett-Packard's research arm in Pato Alto, California, looked at Twitter, a
social networking website that allows people to post short messages to long lists
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of friends.

At first glance, the networks seemed enormous - the 300,000 Twitterers sampled
had 80 friends each, on average (those on Facebook had 120), but some listed
up to 1,000. Closer statistical inspection, however, revealed that the majority of
the messages were directed at a few specific friends. This showed that an
individual's active social network is far smaller than his 'clan'. Dr Huberman has
also helped uncover several laws of web surfing, including the number of times
an average person will go from web page to web page on a given site before
giving up, and the details of the 'winner takes all' phenomenon, whereby a few
sites on a given subject attract most of the attention, and the rest get very little.

Scientists have been good at using the Web to carry out research. However, they
have not been so effective at employing the latest web-based social-networking
tools to open up scientific discussion and encourage more effective collaboration.
Journalists are now used to having their articles commented on by dozens of
readers. Indeed, many bloggers develop and refine their essays as a result of
these comments.

Yet although people have tried to have scientific research reviewed in the same
way, most researchers only accept reviews from a few anonymous experts.
When Nature, one of the world's most respected scientific journals, experimented
with open peer review in 2006, the results were disappointing. Only 5% of the
authors it spoke to agreed to have their article posted for review on the Web -
and their instinct turned out to be right, because almost half of the papers
attracted no comments. Michael Nielsen, an expert on quantum computers,
belongs to a new wave of scientist bloggers who want to change this. He thinks
the reason for the lack of comments is that potential reviewers lack incentive.

adapted from The Economist

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* The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest particle accelerator and
collides particle beams. It provides information on fundamental questions of
physics.

Questions 1-6

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading
passage?

Write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1 Tim Berners-Lee was famous for his research in physics before he invented
the World Wide Web.

2 The original intention of the Web was to help manage one extremely complex
project.

3 Tim Berners-Lee has also been active in politics.

4 The Web has allowed professional and amateur scientists to work together.

5 The second galaxy project aims to examine more galaxies than the first.

6 Herbaria@home’s work will help to reduce the effects of climate change.

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Questions 7-10

Complete the notes below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Social networks and Internet use

Web used by Social scientists (including Dr Huberman) to investigate the 7
___________ of social networks.

Most 8 ___________ intended for limited number of people - not everyone on

list. Dr Huberman has also investigated: 9 ___________ to discover how long
people will spend on a particular website, why a small number of sites get much
more 10 ___________ than others on same subject.

Questions 11-13

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

11 Whose writing improves as a result of feedback received from readers

12 What type of writing is not reviewed extensively on the Web?

13 Which publication invited authors to publish their articles on the World Wide
Web?