Practice Test

The Best Laid Plans of Ravens

In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven,” a raven visits a lonely man’s home and responds to the man’s pleading questions with only the word “nevermore.” The poem’s narrator interprets the word as a prediction of doom for his future. A talking, prophetic raven may seem to be the wild imaginings of the poet, but a new study published in the journal Science hints that one particular idea behind the poem might not be as far-fetched as it seems. For most of human history, people assumed that animals do not understand the passage of time in the same way people do. Some people believed that animals might remember events from the past and that instinct might drive them to make preparations in order to guarantee survival, but most people did not think that animals had the ability to plan. At Lund University in Sweden, researchers argue that ravens may be able to think ahead and even plan for the future.

It can be difficult to test an animal’s ability to plan because human observers must be certain they are not mistaking instinctual behavior for intentional planning. For example, many animals hoard food so that they will not run out later, but scientists who study animals would not call hoarding a decision to plan for the future. This action is merely instinctual. Cognitive scientists argue that in order for an animal’s behavior to qualify as preparing for the future, the animal must use specific decision-making skills to solve a problem.

To avoid mistaking instinctual behavior for evidence of decision-making, the Lund University researchers designed two experiments to test ravens’ ability to plan. Ravens belong to the corvid family, a group of birds known for their intelligence. A study in 2007 showed that corvids have the tendency to save only certain types of food, which suggests that they are planning for the future rather than acting on instinct. In order to investigate that theory, the researchers had to design experiments that would achieve results that could not be explained by an instinctual behavior of food hoarding. Therefore, the ravens were taught two behaviors that they do not normally perform in the wild.

For the first experiment, the researchers showed the birds how to use a small stone to open a box and get treats. Once the ravens learned the behavior, the researchers presented the birds with four stones. Only one stone was the right size to open the box. The birds learned to select that stone and set it aside until the researchers presented the box. The second experiment involved bartering. A researcher would trade the ravens a large treat for a bottle cap. Later, the researchers presented the ravens with a group of items, including small treats and the bottle cap. The ravens chose the bottle cap over the treats and waited for the original researcher to trade with them again so that they could get more treats. In both experiments, the ravens waited patiently for up to seventeen hours for the researcher to return.

The results of these experiments are exciting, but more evidence needs to be gathered before scientists can fully conclude that ravens can plan for the future. Some scientists argue that the ravens might be choosing the stone and bottle cap because the ravens have been trained to do so, not necessarily because the ravens are thinking ahead. Regardless, like other recent advances in animal science, these experiments show that ravens could be much smarter than first believed, and scientists now believe that ravens do actually think about their own future.

Excerpt from A Voice in the Wilderness

by Grace Livingston Hill

With a lurch the train came to a dead stop and Margaret Earle, hastily gathering up her belongings, hurried down the aisle and got out into the night.

It occurred to her, as she swung her heavy suit-case down the rather long step to the ground, and then carefully swung herself after it, that it was strange that neither conductor, brakeman, nor porter had come to help her off the train, when all three had taken the trouble to tell her that hers was the next station; but she could hear voices up ahead. Perhaps something was the matter with the engine that detained them and they had forgotten her for the moment.

The ground was rough where she stood, and there seemed no sign of a platform. Did they not have platforms in this wild Western land, or was the train so long that her car had stopped before reaching it?

She strained her eyes into the darkness, and tried to make out things from the two or three specks of light that danced about like fireflies in the distance. She could dimly see moving figures away up near the engine, and each one evidently carried a lantern. The train was tremendously long. A sudden feeling of isolation took possession of her. Perhaps she ought not to have got out until some one came to help her. Perhaps the train had not pulled into the station yet and she ought to get back on it and wait. Yet if the train started before she found the conductor she might be carried on somewhere and he justly blame her for a fool.

There did not seem to be any building on that side of the track. It was probably on the other, but she was standing too near the cars to see over. She tried to move back to look, but the ground sloped and she slipped and fell in the cinders$^1$, bruising her knee and cutting her wrist.

In sudden panic she arose. She would get back into the train, no matter what the consequences. They had no right to put her out here, away off from the station, at night, in a strange country. If the train started before she could find the conductor she would tell him that he must back it up again and let her off. He certainly could not expect her to get out like this.

She lifted the heavy suit-case up the high step that was even farther from the ground than it had been when she came down, because her fall had loosened some of the earth and caused it to slide away from the track. Then, reaching to the rail of the step, she tried to pull herself up, but as she did so the engine gave a long snort and the whole train, as if it were in league against her, lurched forward crazily, shaking off her hold. She slipped to her knees again, the suit-case, toppled from the lower step, descending upon her, and together they slid and rolled down the short bank, while the train . . . ran giddily off into the night.

The horror of being deserted helped the girl to rise in spite of bruises and shock. She lifted imploring hands to the unresponsive cars as they hurried by her—one, two, three, with bright windows, each showing a passenger, comfortable and safe inside, unconscious of her need.

A moment of useless screaming, running, trying to attract some one’s attention, a sickening sense of terror and failure, and the last car slatted itself past with a mocking clatter, as if it enjoyed her discomfort.

Margaret stood dazed, reaching out helpless hands, then dropped them at her sides and gazed after the fast-retreating train, the light on its last car swinging tauntingly, blinking now and then with a leer in its eye, rapidly vanishing from her sight into the depth of the night.

She gasped and looked about her for the station that but a short moment before had been so real to her mind; and, lo! on this side and on that there was none!

The night was wide like a great floor shut in by a low, vast dome of curving blue set with the largest, most wonderful stars she had ever seen. Heavy shadows of purple-green, smoke-like, hovered over earth darker and more intense than the unfathomable blue of the night sky. It seemed like the secret nesting-place of mysteries wherein no human foot might dare intrude. It was incredible that such could be but common sage-brush, sand, and greasewood wrapped about with the beauty of the lonely night.

No building broke the inky outlines of the plain, nor friendly light streamed out to cheer her heart. Not even a tree was in sight, except on the far horizon, where a heavy line of deeper darkness might mean a forest. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the blue, deep, starry dome above and the bluer darkness of the earth below save one sharp shaft ahead like a black mast throwing out a dark arm across the track.

As soon as she sighted it she picked up her baggage and made her painful way toward it, for her knees and wrist were bruised and her baggage was heavy.

A soft drip, drip greeted her as she drew nearer; something plashing down among the cinders by the track. Then she saw the tall column with its arm outstretched, and looming darker among the sage-brush the outlines of a water-tank. It was so she recognized the engine’s drinking-tank, and knew that she had mistaken a pause to water the engine for a regular stop at a station.

$^1$cinders: track bed made from the residue of burnt coal

From A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS by Grace Livingston Hill—Public Domain

Massachusetts: Lowell National Historical Park

During the first half of the 19th century, Lowell, Massachusetts, quickly transformed itself from a farm town to a bustling industrial city. In time, Lowell became a model of industry, gaining global recognition for its state-of-the-art technology, innovative canal and dam system, mill architecture, boardinghouses, churches, and ethnic neighborhoods. Young Yankee women, immigrant families, and European tourists all flocked to Lowell to find work at one of the many textile mills, or visit the industrious city that was becoming a popular tourist destination. As one Scottish traveler observed during his visit to America, “Niagara and Lowell are the two objects I will longest remember in my American journey, the one the glory of American scenery, the other of American industry.” Today, Lowell National Historical Park welcomes visitors to enjoy the sights of Lowell and learn about the history of one of America’s most significant industrial cities.

The Boston merchants who founded Lowell in 1821 and named it after Francis Cabot Lowell chose to locate the town along Massachusetts’s Merrimack River to take advantage of the kinetic energy offered by the Pawtucket waterfalls. Over six miles of canals powered the waterwheels of Lowell’s mills, whose massive five- and six-story brick buildings dominated the city’s landscape. . . . The most recognized of these buildings are the Lowell Manufacturing Company chartered in 1821, the Suffolk or Wannalancit Mill completed around the 1880s, the Boott Mill Company established in 1835, and the Boott Mill Boardinghouse that opened in 1838. By the 1850s, 40 textile mills employing over 10,000 workers stretched for about a mile along the river. . . .

The city’s female workforce was significant in the history of Lowell. From the early to mid-1800s, women left the constricted lifestyle of small rural towns and rural areas for independent industrial city life. Most were young single Yankee girls, who were tired of the limited opportunities offered by their domestic work. Women found that Lowell’s mills offered monthly wages for their services and provided them room and board. Although these women gained economic independence in Lowell, the mill boardinghouse keepers constantly supervised their social activities, for which they hardly had any time, considering their daily 12- to 14-hour work schedules. At the end of the day, the factory bell signaled the “mill girls” to return to their boardinghouses. They were expected to adhere to the strict code of conduct respecting curfew and attending church.

Yankee “mill girls” continued to dominate the Lowell workforce until the 1840s, when the city began to find it difficult to compete with the growing industrial development in other New England communities. As profits fell, the mill industry cut wages. These wage cuts, deteriorating working conditions, and long workdays led the “mill girls” to protest and organize strikes. When their demands went unheard, the women left Lowell, and immigrant groups replaced them in the workforce. Despite the low wages and unhealthy work conditions, immigrants were eager to find work.

The immigrants replacing the Yankee “mill girls” during the 1840s were predominantly Irish Catholics, who traveled to America during the Great Potato Famine. Although Lowell received an influx of Irish families during this time, the Irish were a part of the city’s history from its birth, and before the “mill girls” arrived, they built Lowell’s historic canals, mills, and boardinghouses. Initially, Lowell’s Protestant community was slow to welcome Irish immigrants, but the hostility between Yankee Protestants and Irish Catholics eventually disappeared. Irish immigrants dominated the industrial scene until the Civil War, when other immigrant groups began to work in the city mills.

Like the Irish, the French-Canadians, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese, Russian Jews, and Armenians who came to work in Lowell’s mills faced long work hours, low wages, and poor living conditions in the city’s crowded tenements. By the time Lowell’s industry declined, the city had become an ethnic melting pot, where each group claimed its own distinct neighborhood, like the Irish immigrants’ “New Dublin” or “Acre,” and the French-Canadians’ “Little Canada.” The city officially began to close down its mills in the 1920s and ’30s after Lowell’s outdated mills could no longer compete against the state-of-the-art cotton mills in other communities and working conditions continued to decline as Lowell’s companies stopped reinvesting in their mills. . . . Despite a brief resurgence during World War II, the city shut down its last surviving mill by the mid-1950s.

From “Massachusetts: Lowell National Historical Park”—Public Domain/National Park Service

Yankee: native to New England
Niagara: a town in northwestern New York State well known as the location of Niagara Falls, a series of waterfalls on the Canadian border
domestic work: household duties like cooking and cleaning

The Benefits of Indoor Plants

(1) In an age of endless media content, it is easy to see why people might prefer to stay inside. (2) According to a study sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans spend an average of 87 percent of their time indoors. (3) Scientists say that this separation between people and nature puts people at risk for physical and psychological issues.

(4) During the process of photosynthesis, plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and remove many harmful toxins from the air. (5) Spending prolonged periods of time indoors, away from plants, deprives people of these benefits. (6) Air that is not regularly detoxified can lead to a condition known as sick building syndrome. (7) This disorder first came to light in the 1970s when many office workers in the United States began to complain of unexplained flu-like symptoms. (8) Researchers determined the cause to be volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. (9) VOCs are harmful chemicals that are emitted by everyday objects such as carpet, furniture, cleaning products, and computers. (10) The NASA Clean Air Study found a simple way to remove a significant number of VOCs within a 24-hour period: add plants to indoor spaces.

(11) Adding plants to indoor spaces has psychological benefits too. (12) Research has long linked time spent in natural environments with increased energy and feelings of contentment. (13) While being outdoors is an excellent option for improving a person’s mental health, recent research has indicated that encountering natural elements while indoors can also help. (14) To experience the maximum benefit of natural elements, experts suggest placing at least one live plant per 100 square feet of home or office space.

(15) Connecting with nature, even just by being near an indoor plant, is a significant factor in a person’s well-being. (16) Sitting in front of an electronic screen all day isn’t natural, and today’s workers need to get up and get outdoors. (17) Richard Ryan, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester, puts it this way: “Nature is something within which we flourish, so having it be more a part of our lives is critical, especially when we live and work in built environments.”

Excerpt from In Search of the Unknown

by Robert W. Chambers

It was at that time the policy of the trustees and officers of the Zoological Gardens neither to employ collectors nor to send out expeditions in search of specimens. The society decided to depend upon voluntary contributions, and I was always busy, part of the day, in dictating answers to correspondents who wrote offering their services as hunters of big game, collectors of all sorts of fauna, trappers, snarers, and also to those who offered specimens for sale, usually at exorbitant rates.

To the proprietors of . . . mangy lynxes, moth-eaten coyotes, and dancing bears I returned courteous but uncompromising refusals—of course, first submitting all such letters, together with my replies, to Professor Farrago.

One day towards the end of May, however, just as I was leaving Bronx Park to return to town, Professor Lesard, of the reptilian department, called out to me that Professor Farrago wanted to see me a moment; so I . . . retraced my steps to the temporary, wooden building occupied by Professor Farrago, general superintendent of the Zoological Gardens. The professor, who was sitting at his desk before a pile of letters and replies submitted for approval by me, pushed his glasses down and looked over them at me with a whimsical smile that suggested amusement, impatience, annoyance, and perhaps a faint trace of apology.

“Now, here’s a letter,” he said, with a deliberate gesture towards a sheet of paper impaled on a file—“a letter that I suppose you remember.” He disengaged the sheet of paper and handed it to me.

“Oh yes,” I replied, with a shrug; “of course the man is mistaken—or—”

“Or what?” demanded Professor Farrago, tranquilly, wiping his glasses.

“—Or a liar,” I replied.

After a silence he leaned back in his chair and bade me read the letter to him again, and I did so with a contemptuous tolerance for the writer, who must have been either a very innocent victim or a very stupid swindler. I said as much to Professor Farrago, but, to my surprise, he appeared to waver.

“I suppose,” he said, with his near-sighted, embarrassed smile, “that nine hundred and ninety-nine men in a thousand would throw that letter aside and condemn the writer as a liar or a fool?”

“In my opinion,” said I, “he’s one or the other.”

“He isn’t—in mine,” said the professor, placidly.

“What!” I exclaimed. “Here is a man living all alone on a strip of rock and sand between the wilderness and the sea, who wants you to send somebody to take charge of a bird that doesn’t exist!”

“How do you know,” asked Professor Farrago, “that the bird in question does not exist?”

“It is generally accepted,” I replied, sarcastically, “that the great auk has been extinct for years. Therefore I may be pardoned for doubting that our correspondent possesses a pair of them alive.”

“Oh, you young fellows,” said the professor, smiling wearily, “you embark on a theory for destinations that don’t exist.”

He leaned back in his chair, his amused eyes searching space for the imagery that made him smile.

“Like swimming squirrels, you navigate with the help of Heaven and a stiff breeze, but you never land where you hope to—do you?”

Rather red in the face, I said: “Don’t you believe the great auk to be extinct?”

“Audubon saw the great auk.”

“Who has seen a single specimen since?”

“Nobody—except our correspondent here,” he replied, laughing.

I laughed, too, considering the interview at an end, but the professor went on, coolly:

“Whatever it is that our correspondent has—and I am daring to believe that it is the great auk itself—I want you to secure it for the society.”

When my astonishment subsided my first conscious sentiment was one of pity. Clearly, Professor Farrago was on the verge of dotage—ah, what a loss to the world!

I believe now that Professor Farrago perfectly interpreted my thoughts, but he betrayed neither resentment nor impatience. I drew a chair up beside his desk—there was nothing to do but to obey, and this fool’s errand was none of my conceiving.

Together we made out a list of articles necessary for me and itemized the expenses I might incur, and I set a date for my return, allowing no margin for a successful termination to the expedition.

“Never mind that,” said the professor. “What I want you to do is to get those birds here safely. Now, how many men will you take?”

“None,” I replied, bluntly; “it’s a useless expense, unless there is something to bring back. If there is I’ll wire you, you may be sure.”

“Very well,” said Professor Farrago, good-humoredly, “you shall have all the assistance you may require. Can you leave to-night?”

The old gentleman was certainly prompt. I nodded, half-sulkily, aware of his amusement.

“So,” I said, picking up my hat, “I am to start north to find a place called Black Harbor, where there is a man named Halyard who possesses, among other household utensils, two extinct great auks—”

We were both laughing by this time. I asked him why on earth he credited the assertion of a man he had never before heard of.

“I suppose,” he replied, with the same half-apologetic, half-humorous smile, “it is instinct. I feel, somehow, that this man Halyard has got an auk—perhaps two. I can’t get away from the idea that we are on the eve of acquiring the rarest of living creatures. It’s odd for a scientist to talk as I do; doubtless you’re shocked—admit it, now!”

But I was not shocked; on the contrary, I was conscious that the same strange hope that Professor Farrago cherished was beginning, in spite of me, to stir my pulses, too.

“If he has—” I began, then stopped.

The professor and I looked hard at each other in silence.

“Go on,” he said, encouragingly.

But I had nothing more to say, for the prospect of beholding with my own eyes a living specimen of the great auk produced a series of conflicting emotions within me which rendered speech profanely superfluous.

From IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN by Robert W. Chambers—Public Domain

Audubon: John James Audubon, an ornithologist and artist who created scientific illustrations of birds
dotage: a loss of reasoning brought about by old age

Looking for the Smallest Spark of Everything

Located underground near Geneva, Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) helps scientists study and understand how the smallest particles of matter interact with one another. The LHC propels atomic particle beams along a 17-mile-long ring.

There are the things the world is made of,
things we can see and feel, and then
there are the things even smaller, things that seem
to exist only when we are looking right at them.

So beneath the level of molecules are atoms,
and beneath the level of atoms, we find
protons, electrons, neutrons; and beneath that—
what, exactly? Because we are talking about
everything here: your fingernail,
the candy at the back of your mouth,
the coffee your teacher drank this morning,
your little sister, and the stuffed dog
she used to carry around with her everywhere.
And everywhere.

Everything and everywhere
are made up of the same stuff, whatever
it is. How do we find it? We can listen for it
in the wavelengths from deep space,
talking back to us from unimaginable
distances. Or we can build long,
deep circular tunnels beneath the surface
of this Earth and race particles
(like racing cars, only very tiny cars
flashing along at close to the speed of light)
until everything we think we know
bangs against everything else we know.

And there, in the explosion, in the darkness,
briefly incandescent, they appear:
the quarks, the leptons, and the bosons;
the baryons and the mesons. Their names
sound like dinosaurs or maybe bands
playing terrible music in someone’s garage.

The one thing we know for sure
is that they spin. This is how gravity
enters our world, how our world is held
both together and apart, what keeps
together the pencil in your hand right now
as well as separate from, say,
Jupiter. They spin, and it is only down there
in the darkness—in the vast garage
where physicists jot down
what they can, whatever seems most real—
that they let us perceive their wild dancing,
combusting to the music they make.

Using Fire to Keep a Prairie Healthy

Inside the 40,000-acre Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northern Oklahoma, herds of bison roam on the scenic land that is home to hundreds of different species of plants and animals. While one of the greatest threats to the prairie is wildfire, the use of controlled fires is actually an effective way to protect this idyllic landscape.

Fires that are started by lightning or other natural circumstances are inevitable, and the results can be disastrous. However, hundreds of years ago the American Indian people who inhabited the Great Plains area between Minnesota and Texas realized that these fires could also be helpful. The bison in the area seemed to prefer grazing on tender new grass on the recently burned land rather than on grass in the unburned areas. The American Indian people began to deliberately burn areas of land for bison to graze on, which enticed the herds away from the people’s crops.

Today conservationists at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and farmers in the Great Plains continue to use controlled burns for land management. Intentionally burning a portion of land can dramatically improve the quality of the vegetation that regrows there. The fires burn away weedy undergrowth and help limit the overcrowding of shrubs and trees in the burn area, creating less competition for water and nutrients. Additionally, the process of burning excess plant matter adds nitrogen, an essential element for plant growth, to the soil.

One common target of controlled burns at the preserve and the surrounding area is the invasive red cedar tree. A single red cedar tree can consume up to 40 gallons of water per day, taking this vital resource away from other plant life. These tall trees also cast shade that prevents sunlight from reaching the plants beneath them. The fast-growing red cedar trees tend to crowd out prairie grasses, the primary food source for wild and domestic animals that make the prairie their home. An imbalance in one component of the prairie’s ecosystem affects the entire web of life. Controlled burns help maintain this ecosystem’s delicate balance.

Of course, these controlled fires are intended to burn only a portion of an area. A total burn, which is a risk with an uncontrolled wildfire, would destroy all wildlife as well as the crops farmers plant for income. The key to using controlled fires is knowing which areas of land to burn and when. Conservation experts at the preserve employ the “patch-burn” approach, meaning they rotate which portion of land is burned each year. They study the land to find out which areas would most benefit from being burned, and then they arrange about a dozen burns over one-third of the land. This patch burning contains the fire within a specific area and allows animals in the burn area to safely relocate. The following year, conservationists will burn a different section of the preserve, while the land burned the previous year regrows healthier than before.

Researchers have tracked and studied the variety of plant species and animals that live on the preserve, and their studies show that the patch-burn approach has restored biodiversity to the area by promoting the growth of species that were at risk of being crowded out. The patch-burn system is so successful that the conservationists at the preserve provide training to prairie farmers about conducting controlled burns on their own land. Burning land to make it healthy may seem counterintuitive, but strategic controlled fires have helped the prairie sustain life for hundreds of years and, with careful management, will continue to do so.

Letter from Brooklyn

by Jacob Scheier

I can already see how this will end.
How I will grow tired of the bridge’s
steep incline, and the absent-minded tourists
wandering into the bicycle path.
The weather will turn cold.
But that all happens later.
For now it is the early edge of fall,
leaves green still while the air narrows,
is slightly crisp, almost grazing
the hair of my arm like a passing stranger,
as though the air has been forced into intimacy
by the brevity of daylight.
But when it starts darkening at 4,
this closeness, I know, will be a felt distance,
like someone drawing your attention
to their lack of intimacy.
These days I am still walking at a cathedral pace
beneath the branches bending across avenues,
brownstones like rows of lived-in chapels,
like a pop-up picture book I could have had as a child,
but didn’t. How Brooklyn makes me nostalgic
for the moment I am walking inside of.
These late afternoons filled
with a loneliness that makes me feel
distinctly myself, and an awareness
of how rare that is.

“Letter from Brooklyn” from LETTER FROM BROOKLYN: POEMS by Jacob Scheier, published by ECW Press. Copyright © 2013 by Jacob Scheier All rights reserved.

brevity: briefness
cathedral: meditative
chapels: private places of prayer or worship
nostalgic: yearning for the past

Bird Talk

by Carl Sandburg

And now when the branches were beginning to be heavy,
It was the time when they once had said, “This is the
  beginning of summer.”
The shrilling of the frogs was not so shrill as in the
  first weeks after the broken winter;
The birds took their hops and zigzags a little more
  anxious; a home is a home; worms are worms.
The yellow spreads of the dandelions and buttercups
  reached across the green pastures.
Tee whee and tee whee came on the breezes, and the grackles
  chuzzled their syllables.
And it was the leaves with a strong soft wind over them
  that talked most of all and said more than any others
  though speaking the fewest words.
It was the green leaves trickling out the gaunt nowhere
  of winter, out on the gray hungry branches—
It was the leaves on the branches, beginning to be heavy,
  who said as they said one time before, “This is the be-
  ginning of summer.”

We shall never blame the birds who come
  where the river and the road make the Grand Crossing
  and talk there, sitting in circles talking bird talk.
If they ask in their circles as to who is here
  and as to who is not here and who used to be here,
Or if instead of counting up last year as against
  this year, they count up this year as against next
  year, and have their bird chatter about who is here
  this year who won’t be here next year,
We shall never blame the birds.

If I have put your face among leaf faces, child,
Or if I have put your voice among bird voices,
Blame me no more than the bluejays.

“Bird Talk” by Carl Sandburg—Public domain.

A Memory Revolution

A high school senior logs on to a computer at the library to double-check the application due date listed on a college admissions website. Nearby, a librarian helps a group of biology students use a database to search for recent studies about mammals. In the past few decades, the Internet has become an integral component of daily life for many people. The seemingly limitless power of search engines made the Internet search extremely common, and today people increasingly rely on the Internet’s vast accumulation of sources to access all types of information. Scientists are beginning to examine how this reliance is modifying the strategies people use to store and prioritize information in their mind.

A Dependable and Valuable Asset

Psychologist Benjamin Storm from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and researchers Sean Stone and Aaron Benjamin devised an experiment to study students’ tendency to depend on the Internet for facts. To begin, the scientists divided sixty participants into multiple groups, including an “Internet” group and a “memory” group, and placed them in front of computers. The Internet group was required to use the search engine Google to answer eight challenging trivia questions. In contrast, participants in the memory group were permitted to use only their personal knowledge to answer the questions. In the second round, the researchers administered notably easier questions. This time, they allowed each group the option of using Google as they answered. Their results showed that 83 percent of the Internet group continued to consult Google in the second round, while only 63 percent of the memory group chose to do so.

People’s growing inclination to rely on the Internet in order to retrieve information, particularly facts and figures, is called cognitive offloading. Canadian researcher Evan F. Risko and British researcher Sam Gilbert, who have written extensively about the topic, say a similar process has been taking place for centuries. In the past, people used resources like encyclopedias to assist their memories; however, today the Internet, serving as a vast extended memory, allows people to digitally access and retrieve much larger volumes of information. Consequently, people’s minds are free for other cognitive feats, such as connecting data, learning new information, or solving problems.

Filing Information Away

The use of the Internet also appears to be modifying the strategies people use to store information in their mind. Researchers Betsy Sparrow from Columbia University, Jenny Liu from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Daniel Wegner from Harvard University conducted several studies to discover how people efficiently manage their information intake.

To begin, the researchers examined how people evaluate which information deserves their effort to remember. For this experiment, participants read forty trivia facts, such as “An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain,” and typed the statements into a computer file. Half the participants had been previously told the file would be saved, while half believed it would be erased. Next, the participants wrote down every fact they could recall. Those who believed the information would be erased and no longer available could recall 40 percent more facts than those who thought the information would be saved.

In another experiment, the same researchers tested the ability of study participants to remember where to access information. For this trial, participants read and typed trivia statements, which they saved in folders with generic names such as “Facts” and “Items.” After spending ten minutes writing down all the facts they could recall from memory, participants were asked which folder contained a particular fact based on a keyword. For example, “Which folder has the fact about ostriches?” Overall, participants recalled the information’s location more often than the content itself, correctly identifying 49 percent of the folders for specific facts while remembering only 23 percent of the actual trivia. The researchers concluded that our memory is adapting to the Internet age by prioritizing where to locate information even when the specific details are forgotten. According to Sparrow, the Internet has become an important form of transactive memory, an external source of the recollections and associative networks that constitute memory.

As the Internet’s resources continue to expand our “external” memory, some question whether the process may cause people to depend too heavily on technology. However, Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, says, “Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not. Fortunately, the Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.”

Ode to Fireworks

In autumn my mother drove us to the edge of the field
where the fair was set up year after year:
the carousel, the bumper cars, the long, low sheds
filled with prizewinning animals.
We—my sister, my cousin, and I—were ready for bed,
already in our pajamas. This was a treat we waited
all year for. We waited in the darkness
for the first low, dull thwumps, like someone
beating an old, filthy rug hung on a wash line.
Then we counted the seconds between the lightning
and thunder, as we also used to do, until the sky
lit up: red, blue, green, gold. In my mind’s eye
I can still see the straggly, ancient oak whose branches
reached up past the exhibition halls, silhouetted
against the spectrum of stars that cascaded behind it.

It was one thing to look up into the sky
and imagine yourself in it or to make out pictures
among the clouds, which my sister liked to do.
No, I would tell her, that cloud
does not look like an elephant, a hat, an umbrella.
But it was another thing to see
the sky at night written upon
with those jewels. (We lived in the country:
night was night.) All around us, crickets
stridulated in the stubble of what had been
somebody’s cornfield, their song rising and falling.
You could smell winter on the air’s edge.

Now, in the city, when the sky dips into shadow
at New Year’s or on the Fourth of July, I find myself
craning my neck upward at odd moments.
The city sky is always lit up. This is where we live now,
and it is how we live now, awash in light
of every hue. Everything is a constant celebration:
picking up washing at the cleaner’s or stopping by
the corner market for a loaf of heavy bread.
And the music around me is the music of people,
their voices rising and falling in a hundred languages.
But beneath the yellowish glow deep in the sky
of all our city lights pelting out into the universe,
I remember the feel of the pickup truck bumping
across the ridged field, as I kept waiting for those
childhood bursts, watching as they escorted us home.

Excerpt from “Scribe Like an Egyptian”

by Hilary Wilson

In ancient Egypt, literacy was the key to success. However, contrary to popular belief, not all Egyptian scribes understood hieroglyphs. Many relied instead on the simpler hieratic script for the multitude of everyday documents generated by the Egyptian bureaucracy.

Hieroglyphs—“the Words of God”—compose a writing system with more than 1,000 distinct characters, the meanings of which were lost for 1,500 years before they were deciphered by Jean-François Champollion in 1822. Including both ideograms (which convey a whole word or idea, either concrete or abstract, in a single sign) and phonograms (representing either an alphabetic sound or a group of consonants), [the writing system] was used in formal inscriptions on tomb and temple walls as well as on elaborate funerary papyri. For everyday purposes, however, scribes used a shorthand version of the hieroglyphic script known as hieratic, which was quicker to write and more economical of space. The two writings existed side by side for at least 2,500 years.

Scraps of ancient hieratic writing, mostly penned by student scribes on limestone flakes called ostraca, suggest that no matter how humble his origins, an educated Egyptian could achieve almost anything. Horemheb (d.1292 B.C.) is a good example. Born of middle-ranking parents, his scribal training led to an army career. From Scribe of Recruits, during the reign of Akhenaten (1353–1336 B.C.), Horemheb rose through the military ranks and, by the rule of Tutankhamun (1332–1323 B.C.), he was commander in chief of the Egyptian forces. As a close adviser of the young Pharaoh, Horemheb was appointed “Deputy of the King throughout the Two Lands,” and might have expected to succeed to the throne should the king die childless. He had to wait a few years, but eventually Horemheb achieved the pinnacle of his career by becoming the last king of the 18th Dynasty, making his mark by instituting dramatic reforms to the organisation of the army, the judiciary and administration in general. The lasting success of these changes owed much to his scribal background. . . .

But education was not available to all. Government departments and major temples supported schools, where boys commenced their training at six or seven, sometimes earlier. To these boarding establishments . . . family or household servants delivered the students’ food and drink rations daily for several years, during which time the student was not contributing to the family’s income. Boys from poorer families could only hope to be educated with support from a wealthier relative or patron, or through apprenticeship to an older scribe, perhaps the local clerk or land agent, who would teach them the basics of the scribe’s craft. This limited the scope for employment but such “on the job” training allowed apprentices to help out at home while learning. . . .

Scribal education began with the elementary principles of the hieratic script. The lowliest scribes, who trained for just five or six years, probably learned only the rudiments of the hieroglyphic script. Students were set exemplar documents and extracts from popular texts to copy, to practice their hieratic handwriting on basic-format letters, reports and contracts, while absorbing the good advice contained in the texts. Surviving examples of copy-work sometimes include tutors’ corrections added in red. Some significant Egyptian literary works survive almost exclusively from student copies.

A schoolboy “dictionary” of hieroglyphs with their hieratic equivalents shows that a knowledge of more than 450 signs was required for everyday writing purposes. Lessons in record-keeping and filing and labelling enabled any half-competent scribe to perform that most essential of all scribal functions: the making and updating of lists. For professions such as those of government official, priest or lawyer, a scribe would train for several more years, increasing his vocabulary to perhaps a thousand or more signs. Those with the best handwriting or drawing skills might follow the craft of creating beautifully illustrated copies of funerary texts, commonly called Books of the Dead. Others could become draughtsmen, artists or architects. Doctors compiled their own collections of medication recipes, treatments and associated incantations, many copied from texts found in the House of Life, the temple library. Lawyers had to be familiar with the corpus of civil and religious laws and precedents found in the official records, which were administered by archivists. Egypt’s bureaucratic society depended on the skills of an army of scribes of all ranks from filing clerk to tax assessor. For young Egyptians, “be a scribe” was the best of career advice.

From “Scribe Like an Egyptian” by Hilary Wilson from HISTORY TODAY, August 8, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by History Today Ltd. Company.

bureaucracy: an administrative staff of government officials
funerary papyri: a sheet or scroll of papyrus containing religious images and hieroglyphs meant to help the deceased be reborn in the afterlife
rudiments: basics
schoolboy: slang that refers to materials used during the course of receiving an education
draughtsmen: people who draw plans of machinery or structures
corpus: a collection of writings

Excerpt from Winter Wheat

by Mildred Walker

Ellen, the narrator, is preparing to leave her parents and the family farm for college the next day.

I love Dad’s way of talking that makes him seem different from other ranchers. He’s lived here twenty-three years, but he still says “back East where I come from.” He’s the one who gets excited when I do about spring coming or a serial running in the magazine we’re both reading, but it’s what Mom says that I depend on. When Mom used to say “Don’t worry” about my pet chicken or dog or new calf, it always got well. Dad is always talking of going some place, not now, but next year, maybe. Mom seems to think of nothing farther away than today or perhaps yesterday or tomorrow morning.

Mom folded the ironing board and put it inside their bedroom that was just off the kitchen. She carried in the freshly ironed clothes. Dad went back to his paper. When Mom came back she took beans from the cupboard to soak for tomorrow. Dad always said Mom could make all the dishes he’d had back in Vermont as well as though she were a New Englander herself, instead of a Russian. All of a sudden, I realized that tomorrow when those beans would be ready to eat I’d be going away. It gave me a funny feeling.

“I’ll be taking the train tomorrow night,” I said aloud, more to hear it myself.

“We can drive you into town in the afternoon,” Dad said, dropping his paper on the floor.

“There’s no need to go to town; she can catch the train at Gotham just as well. We haven’t nothing to take us into town for,” Mom said.

“Well, we don’t have to decide tonight,” Dad said, but I knew he wanted to go into Clark City. It wouldn’t be so flat as just seeing me go off on the train from Gotham. My going away was hard on both of them; they were so different—and I was part of them both. It made me uncomfortable to think of leaving them.

While I was getting ready for bed in my room that’s off the front room, I saw how it would be if I left from town. We’d go in right after dinner and go around to the stores, Dad going one way and Mom and I another. Dad would probably have his hair cut at the barbershop and stop in the bank and meet someone he knew to talk to. Then we’d meet at the big store on the corner and go to the cafeteria for supper. The train stops ten minutes or so at the station in town and there are other people and excitement and you have time to wave from the platform and then again from your window by your seat. We went to the station in Clark City to see the Goodals off when they went back to Iowa.

If I left from Gotham, we’d just drive down in the truck and wait till the train came. It only stops long enough for you to get on and you hardly have time to taste the flavor of going away.

I sat on the bed in my pyjamas with my arms around my knees. I couldn’t keep from thinking of that time Dad went back East. I tried to, and then I just sat still and looked straight at it. Sometimes that’s better than working so hard to keep from looking at what’s in your mind.

Dad went all the way back to Vermont. . . . It was in November and it was already dark when the train came through Gotham. Even now, I could feel how cold and dark it was. I held Mom’s hand. Dad was so dressed-up he seemed strange. . . . We stood there without saying anything until Dad told Mom to remember to call Mr. Bardich, our neighbor, if the cow didn’t calve tomorrow.

“I’ll manage,” Mom snapped back.

“I wish you could go, Anna,” Dad said to Mom, “and we could take Ellen.” . . .

“Good-by, Anna Petrovna,” he said, looking at Mom. I had never heard him call her by two names before.

“Good-by,” Mom said, standing still, without smiling.

Then he was gone and the crossroads were darker than ever. The train light shone on the high window in the top of the grain elevator for a moment and then that too was dark. We got into our old Ford and Mom drove back to the house. My throat ached all the way. The name Dad had called Mom kept saying itself in my ears: “Anna Petrovna, Anna Petrovna.” . . .

Our house seemed lonely when we came back to it. It seemed to be hiding under the coulee. I went with Mom to put the truck in the barn that was bigger than the house. I think Mom was prouder of our barn than the house, anyway. We walked back to look at the cow that was going to calve. She was just a big light blob in the dark, waiting. I had thought she was exciting this morning, but now she seemed sad, too.

The wind blew when we walked across the open space to the house and I couldn’t help shivering with the cold. Inside the house it was warm, but empty.

“Bring your nightgown in here and I heat you some milk,” Mom said.

I drank the milk sitting on a stool in front of the stove. It tasted good, but the lonely ache in my throat was still there. I picked up my clothes and hung them neatly behind the stove and put my cup on the sink board. Mom was fixing oatmeal for tomorrow morning.

“Good night, Mom,” I said almost timidly, standing beside her. She seemed wrapped around in a kind of strangeness. Then she turned around and drew me to her. The front of her dress was warm from the stove. I felt the comfortable heat through my gown. She laid her hand against my face and it felt rough and hard but firm. I dared ask her something I wanted to know.

“Mom, was that really your name—what Dad called you?”

Her voice sounded surprised. “Why, Yeléna, you know that; Anna Petrovna. You know I am born in Russia, in Seletskoe.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know your other name,” I said.

“Anna Petrovna Webb.” She pronounced it slowly. “Once I think what a funny name Ben Webb is!” She laughed. Her laugh was warm and low like our kitchen, and comfortable. The house seemed natural and right again. . . .

But now that I am grown, I feel the wall of strangeness between them, more than when I was a child. I wondered how they would get along without me.

From WINTER WHEAT by Mildred Walker, published by University of Nebraska Press. Copyright © 1944 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. Copyright renewed 1971 by Mildred Walker. All rights reserved.

serial: story published in short segments at regular intervals
coulee: small gulch or ravine

The Free College Debate

(1) A college degree has become an essential tool in an increasingly competitive job market. (2) Yet the price of higher education, at both private and public universities, continues to rise. (3) Helping students cover the cost of attending college is an important issue.

(4) Many people agree that a college education should be a financially realistic option for those who aspire to obtain a degree. (5) For example, in 2017, the New York State legislature passed a bill creating a program to cover the tuition costs for nearly one million students. (6) The state of Tennessee also has a program that offers all students scholarships and mentoring services if they attend one of the state’s community colleges. (7) Proponents generally believe that these programs are a step in the right direction for making college affordable for students who would have had to take out loans or who would have decided not to pursue higher education at all.

(8) On the other hand, some people oppose bills like the ones in New York and Tennessee because they believe “free” college programs are unsustainable. (9) In order to implement these types of programs, a state pays the college on behalf of the students using funds from the state’s budget, which primarily comes from state taxes. (10) As more students choose to attend college, more funds will be needed to cover the costs. (11) Additionally, many students do not finish college within four years because they switch majors or because they have to work. (12) Critics believe that these circumstances will inevitably lead to an increase in taxes, a decline in the quality of the education offered by the schools, or both. (13) They think narrower college-affordability efforts that target the students who need the most support, such as first-generation college students, may be more effective and viable solutions.

(14) Faculty and students at higher-education institutions can work to keep costs down. (15) In light of increased access to computers, mobile devices, and the Internet, there are more opportunities for students to take courses online, thus reducing the need for and cost of maintaining physical classrooms. (16) Additionally, colleges should account for experience by allowing students to demonstrate their knowledge in order to avoid having to pay to sit through classes on subjects they have already mastered. (17) Similarly, college-bound high school students need to be prepared for college-level work so that they do not have to spend money on remedial classes.

(18) The solutions to the problems associated with rising college costs are not simple. (19) Passing legislation that boosts college affordability will take time, input from experts with different ideas, and careful planning.

Excerpt from “Impressions of an Indian Childhood”

by Zitkala-Sa

Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) was a Native American writer, musician, teacher, and political activist who was raised on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. In 1900 she published “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” (the term Indian was commonly used at the time to refer to Native American people) to expose readers to what life is like on a reservation.

Soon after breakfast Mother sometimes began her beadwork. On a bright, clear day, she pulled out the wooden pegs that pinned the skirt of our wigwam¹ to the ground, and rolled the canvas part way up on its frame of slender poles. Then the cool morning breezes swept freely through our dwelling, now and then wafting the perfume of sweet grasses from newly burnt prairie.

Untying the long tasseled strings that bound a small brown buckskin² bag, my mother spread upon a mat beside her bunches of colored beads, just as an artist arranges the paints upon his palette. On a lapboard she smoothed out a double sheet of soft white buckskin; and drawing from a beaded case that hung on the left of her wide belt a long, narrow blade, she trimmed the buckskin into shape. Often she worked upon small moccasins for her small daughter. Then I became intensely interested in her designing. With a proud, beaming face, I watched her work. In [my] imagination, I saw myself walking in a new pair of snugly fitting moccasins. I felt the envious eyes of my playmates upon the pretty red beads decorating my feet.

Close beside my mother I sat on a rug, with a scrap of buckskin in one hand and an awl in the other. This was the beginning of my practical observation lessons in the art of beadwork. From a skein³ of finely twisted threads of silvery sinews my mother pulled out a single one. With an awl she pierced the buckskin, and skillfully threaded it with the white sinew. Picking up the tiny beads one by one, she strung them with the point of her thread, always twisting it carefully after every stitch.

It took many trials before I learned how to knot my sinew thread on the point of my finger, as I saw her do. Then the next difficulty was in keeping my thread stiffly twisted, so that I could easily string my beads upon it. My mother required of me original designs for my lessons in beading. At first I frequently ensnared many a sunny hour into working a long design. Soon I learned from self-inflicted punishment to refrain from drawing complex patterns, for I had to finish whatever I began.

After some experience I usually drew easy and simple crosses and squares. These were some of the set forms. My original designs were not always symmetrical nor sufficiently characteristic, two faults with which my mother had little patience. The quietness of her oversight made me feel strongly responsible and dependent upon my own judgment. She treated me as a dignified little individual as long as I was on my good behavior; and how humiliated I was when some boldness of mine drew forth a rebuke from her!

In the choice of colors she left me to my own taste. I was pleased with an outline of yellow upon a background of dark blue, or a combination of red and myrtle-green. There was another of red with a bluish-gray that was more conventionally used. When I became a little familiar with designing and the various pleasing combinations of color, a harder lesson was given me. It was the sewing on, instead of beads, some tinted porcupine quills, moistened and flattened between the nails of the thumb and forefinger. My mother cut off the prickly ends and burned them at once in the centre fire. These sharp points were poisonous, and worked into the flesh wherever they lodged. For this reason, my mother said, I should not do much alone in quills until I was as tall as my cousin Warca-Ziwin.

Always after these confining lessons I was wild with surplus spirits, and found joyous relief in running loose in the open again. Many a summer afternoon a party of four or five of my playmates roamed over the hills with me. We each carried a light sharpened rod about four feet long, with which we pried up certain sweet roots. When we had eaten all the choice roots we chanced upon, we shouldered our rods and strayed off into patches of a stalky plant under whose yellow blossoms we found little crystal drops of gum. Drop by drop we gathered this nature’s rock-candy, until each of us could boast of a lump the size of a small bird’s egg. Soon satiated with its woody flavor, we tossed away our gum, to return again to the sweet roots.

From “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” by Zitkala-Sa—Public Domain

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BEADWORK IN SOUTH DAKOTA

Date	Event
1500s	The Dakota use beads made from bones, shells, stones, and animal teeth. European traders bring glass beads to North America.
Late 1600s	The Dakota begin trading with the French in Minnesota.
1830s	The Dakota begin using glass beads in clothing, artwork, and decorations in place of Native-made beads.
1862–1865	The Dakota are expelled from their homelands in Minnesota as a result of the U.S.-Dakota War.
1900s–1920s	The Dakota create items to sell outside their community.

Source: MNopedia

¹wigwam: hut with an arched framework of poles covered with bark, mats, or animal hides

²buckskin: leather made from the skin of a male deer

³skein: coiled length of yarn or other thread loosely wound on a reel

At Dusk

by Natasha Trethewey

At first I think she is calling a child,
my neighbor, leaning through her doorway
at dusk, street lamps just starting to hum
the backdrop of evening. Then I hear
the high-pitched wheedling¹ we send out
to animals who know only sound, not
the meanings of our words—here here—
nor how they sometimes fall short.
In another yard, beyond my neighbor’s
sight, the cat lifts her ears, turns first
toward the voice, then back
to the constellation of fireflies flickering
near her head. It’s as if she can’t decide
whether to leap over the low hedge,
the neat row of flowers, and bound
onto the porch, into the steady circle
of light, or stay where she is: luminous
possibility—all that would keep her
away from home—flitting before her.
I listen as my neighbor’s voice trails off.
She’s given up calling for now, left me
to imagine her inside the house waiting,
perhaps in a chair in front of the TV,
or walking around, doing small tasks;
left me to wonder that I too might lift
my voice, sure of someone out there,
send it over the lines stitching here
to there, certain the sounds I make
are enough to call someone home.

“At Dusk” from NATIVE GUARD by Natasha Trethewey, published by Houghton Mifflin Company. Copyright © 2006 by Natasha Trethewey. All rights reserved.

¹wheedling: speaking in a flattering manner

5 Reasons Physical Books Might Be Better Than E-Books

by Shaunacy Ferro

Though e-book¹ readers have become a more common sight around town, traditional books still have their evangelists.² According to The New York Times, e-book sales have been falling in 2015. Print definitely isn’t dead. In fact, according to some research, it may actually be a better choice for some readers. While scientists are still trying to tease out exactly how digital reading affects us differently, here are five ways e-books might be inferior to their dead-tree cousins.

E-books can reduce reading comprehension.

In a study of middle schoolers, West Chester University researchers found that students who read on iPads³ had lower reading comprehension than when they read traditional printed books. They discovered that the kids sometimes skipped text in favor of interactive features in the e-books, suggesting that certain multimedia in children’s e-books can be detrimental to the practice of reading itself. However, the researchers noted that some interactive features in e-books are designed to enhance comprehension, and that those might be more helpful than game-type interactive graphics.

Young kids can get distracted by e-books.

Similar results were found by a small study by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center that consisted of 32 kids reading e-books and print books with their parents. It found that “enhanced” e-books might be distracting. Kids who read enhanced e-books—ones with interactive, multimedia experiences—were more engaged with them physically, but in the end they remembered fewer narrative details than those who read print books or basic e-books.

You remember less about a book’s timeline.

Another study of adults also found that e-books can be hard to absorb. The researchers asked 25 people to read a 28-page story on a Kindle⁴ and 25 to read the story in paperback, then asked the readers to put 14 events from the story in chronological order. Those who read the story on a Kindle performed worse on the chronology test than the book readers, though they performed about the same as print readers in other tests. Earlier research by the same scholars, from Stavanger University in Norway, found that Norwegian 10th graders also remembered more about texts if they read them in print rather than on a computer screen.

They’re not great as textbooks.

While e-book textbooks are often cheaper (and easier to carry) than traditional door-stop⁵ textbooks, college students often don’t prefer them. In some surveys of college kids, the majority of students have reported preferring print books. However, a 2012 study from the UK’s National Literacy Trust of kids ages 8 to 16 found that more than 50 percent of children reported preferring screen reading.

They’re tiring.

Staring at a lit screen can be tiring for the eyes and the brain. A 2005 study from Sweden found that reading digitally required a higher cognitive workload than reading on paper. Furthermore, staring at LED⁶ screens at night can disrupt sleep patterns. A 2014 Harvard study found that people who used e-readers with LED screens at night slept worse and were more tired the next day. So, if you’re going to go for an e-book, go for one without the backlight.

The take-away message? If you’re really trying to absorb material, you might want to go for a physical book. And if you’re going to be up all night studying, turn off the backlight.

However, all this may not mean that reading on a Kindle is really going to melt your brain. For instance, reading an e-book on a computer is a much different experience than reading on a Kindle, which is specifically designed for consuming books. So, too, is playing with an interactive e-book on an iPad, compared to using a simpler e-book device that only presents the text, with no opportunities to click away into digital distractions.

And some studies have found that part of the difference between the way people absorb information from e-books versus paper might be due to approaching e-books differently—in one test, participants didn’t regulate their study time with digital books like they did with paper texts, leading to worse performances. It’s possible that our expectations of e-book reading—as well as the different designs of the digital reading experience on a computer or iPad or Kindle—might affect how we approach the text and how much effort we put into studying them. As generations of e-book readers evolve, and people become more accustomed to the idea of sitting down with a digital textbook, these factors could change—for better or for worse.

“5 Reasons Physical Books Might Be Better Than E-Books” by Shaunacy Ferro from MENTAL FLOSS, October 2, 2015. Copyright © 2015 Mental Floss, Inc.

¹e-book: an electronic book, a publication made available digitally for reading on a computer or other device

²evangelists: advocates or supporters

³iPads: tablet computers

⁴Kindle: device for reading e-books

⁵door-stop: a reference to the idea that some textbooks are large and heavy enough to hold a door open

⁶LED: Light-emitting diode; LEDs are often used as a backlight for electronic devices such as smart phones and tablets.

Excerpt from “It’s Time to Stop Thinking That All Non-Native Species Are Evil”

by Emma Marris

The author of this opinion article attended a symposium, or conference, in Missoula, Montana, at which biologists and other scientists discussed species of plants and animals that are not native to the areas in which they live.

Invasive species are scary. It was ecologist Charles Elton, back in the 1950s, who introduced the militaristic “invasion” metaphor to describe exotic plants and animals—but there’s no question some can be extremely destructive.

The brown tree snake has eaten a dozen kinds of forest birds in Guam to extinction; zebra mussels clog pipes around the Great Lakes; the common house cat turns out to be, in Australia, a mercilessly effective killer of cute, fluffy marsupials like the bilby and the numbat.

As scientists have sounded the alarm about these pests, the public has gotten the message. Citizen groups rip out non-native plants. Native gardens have become increasingly popular, both as ways to celebrate the unique flora of each region and as tiny hot spots of diversity. Native trees provide food for native bugs, which feed native birds. Food chains developed over thousands of years of co-evolution unfold in our backyards. . . .

So we’ve learned, scientists and laypeople alike, that native species are good and non-natives are bad.

Julian Olden, a biologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, who co-organized the symposium, recently polled nearly 2,000 ecologists. Among his findings: a substantial number of them said they would immediately eradicate a hypothetical non-native forest plant, even if it were shown to have no effect on the forest. Olden calls this the “guilty even when proven innocent” approach.

That kind of approach is not very useful on a rapidly changing planet.

Exotics Are Everywhere

Climate change is making it harder even to decide who the invaders are.

How, scientists at the symposium wondered, do you define “native” on a warming planet, when plants and animals are already moving toward the poles or up mountainsides in search of climate conditions they can tolerate? Should we consider them “invasive” in their new homes? Regardless of what we label them, conservationists will be reluctant to remove them from their new environs—to do so would stymie¹ their chances of adapting to the warmer future we’re creating.

And then there are the non-natives that we actually like. Most domestic crops are exotic in most of the places they’re grown, but there are even wild exotics that “do good,” forming useful relationships with native species.

Edwin Grosholz of the University of California, Davis, told the recent symposium about one such relationship. On beaches in his state, non-native spartina grass has become important habitat for the endangered California clapper rail, a plump shorebird with a downward curving bill more at home on land than in the air. A project to rip out and poison the spartina—which grows in dense swaths that exclude many other shorebirds—saw clapper rail numbers go tumbling downward.

There are other examples like that. The endangered southwestern willow flycatcher nests in “invasive” tamarisk shrubs. Many native (and beautiful) Hawaiian flowers are now pollinated by the Japanese white-eye bird—because the native pollinators have been driven extinct by other non-native species.

Should we impose further risk on already endangered natives by severing these relationships? Or should we admire the resilience of nature and let such “well-behaved” exotics stay? . . .

Leave them alone, more and more conservationists are arguing, and stop focusing obsessively on categorizing species as native or non-native. Mark Davis, an ecologist at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, once considered himself an “invasion biologist”—but not anymore. “I am actively trying to get the field to retire the invader narrative,” he said in Missoula.

A Good Thing, Not the Only Thing

After all, nativeness is just one environmental value, and arguably not as important as preventing extinctions and preserving biodiversity. In some cases we can best serve biodiversity by leaving the non-natives alone or even—brace yourself, now—introducing them on purpose.

This is the thinking behind, for example, installing the Aldabra tortoise on the islands of Mauritius. The islands lost their own large tortoises, and the fruiting plants that formerly had their seeds moved around by these fruit-loving reptiles have been on the decline. A tortoise that’s related to the island’s large tortoises—a non-native from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean that was intentionally introduced in 2004—is now handling some of that work.

Most of the time, for the time being, conserving species still means focusing on supporting them in their historical habitats, planting natives and removing non-natives. We can and should do that in places where it is feasible and important to us.

From “It’s Time to Stop Thinking That All Non-Native Species Are Evil” by Emma Marris from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, July 24, 2014. Copyright © 2014 by National Geographic Society.

¹stymie: hinder or interfere with