Practice Test

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

The End of an Era

(1) In 2004, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) landed a rover, or robotic vehicle, named Opportunity on the surface of Mars. (2) The rover’s mission was to search for evidence of water and life on the planet. (3) The rover was designed to gather data on Mars for about 90 days, but Opportunity’s assignment did not come to an end until nearly 15 years later in 2019.

(4) During the rover’s mission, a high-resolution camera on the rover’s robotic arm took magnified photographs of the surface of Mars. (5) The photographs revealed small round rocks scattered across the surface of the planet. (6) The scientists nicknamed these rocks “blueberries” based on the rocks’ resemblance to the fruit. (7) These rocks were important because their spherical shape suggested that liquid water may have flowed over them for a substantial amount of time.

(8) Opportunity continued to provide valuable data about craters and other surface features. (9) Throughout the mission, the rover traveled a total of 28.06 miles across Mars’ surface. (10) When Opportunity had traveled nearly the length of a marathon, scientists celebrated the accomplishment by naming the valley that the rover was in Marathon Valley. (11) However, in 2018, a dust storm spread all over the planet, putting the rover’s progress on hold.

(12) Prior to this planet-wide dust storm, minor dust storms had periodically deposited a layer of dust onto the solar panels of the rover. (13) These prevented it from charging its batteries. (14) Scientists then had to rely on the passing winds and dust devils to clean off the solar panels. (15) After the massive 2018 dust storm subsided, scientists expected to be able to reestablish communication with Opportunity. (16) They made repeated attempts but to no avail. (17) In 2019, NASA finally declared Opportunity’s mission complete.

(18) Opportunity was an important asset in scientists’ study of Mars; it returned valuable data about our neighbor planet and survived powerful dust storms. (19) NASA described the mission of Opportunity as “one of the most successful and enduring feats of interplanetary exploration.” (20) Even though this rover’s journey ended, other rovers still roam the surface of Mars.

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.

Excerpt from “Growing Peppers on the ISS Is Just the Start of Space Farming”

by Melanie Canales

The author, Melanie Canales, is a first-generation Peruvian American farmer and beekeeper based in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, on lands of the indigenous Monacan and Manahoac tribes. Her work focuses on creating healthy relationships between people and their surrounding ecosystems.

Unburdened by the constraints of gravity, red and green peppers jut out at 45-degree angles inside the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), a sort of space terrarium not much larger than a microwave. Four chile pepper plants stand effortlessly upright, despite the dozens of glossy fruits weighing them down. These plants have lived entirely in space; their leaves have never been chewed on by insects or rustled by a summer breeze, [and] their stems are unfamiliar with bending toward the sun’s arc across the sky. Scissors glint under the tank’s white and blue lights as astronaut Mark Vande Hei and his team snip the stems of those that are ready for harvest. The peppers whirl around their heads until the astronauts catch them and tape them against a board to photograph.

Back on Earth, the Plant Habitat-04 team of engineers and plant scientists are observing and conferring with the astronauts. Of the 26 peppers in this batch, only the 14 finest will stay on the International Space Station [ISS] for consumption. The rest will be wrapped in foil, sealed in a Ziploc bag, then frozen at a brisk −80 degrees, until they can come roaring back to Earth in the next cargo capsule to be studied later. Now, after a 137-day growth cycle, the astronauts remove the plants from the module and trash them. Project Plant Habitat-04 is complete. It’s taco night on the ISS.

Since 2014, NASA¹ has experimented with growing lettuces, brassicas,² and zinnias³ in space, an endeavor that relies on highly specialized technology over 50 years in the making. [Fall 2021’s] two successful pepper harvests . . . will provide data on the nutritional and psychological benefits of growing vegetables on-craft, as well as a crop’s ability to reliably produce long-term in microgravity. While controlled environmental agriculture is not new, the APH experiment represents an evolution in specialized growth habitats. It doesn’t aim to re-create Earth’s conditions, but to perfect each isolated variable of plant growth in the clinical environment of a spaceship.

“The Advanced Plant Habitat is the most complex plant growth system on orbit today,” says Lashelle Spencer, a plant scientist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Its more than 180 sensors control and monitor temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide. The astronauts can adjust the color and intensity of the light, and how much moisture the plants’ roots are getting. It waters itself.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and Spencer has been at Kennedy since 5 a.m. to facilitate the peppers’ final harvest. As part of the project team, she played a crucial role in preparing the seeds that were sent hurtling into space in June and guiding the astronauts through maintaining the plants in orbit. . . . Though astronauts can spend upwards of 100 days in space, their on-mission meals come dehydrated and pre-packaged; their vitamins and minerals are isolated in supplements, which lose nutritional value the longer they’re stored. Spencer’s goal is to create the conditions necessary for cultivating healthy plants in space, so those plants can sustain healthy astronauts on long-term missions. Astronaut food is great, she says—“especially the shrimp cocktail. But you’re missing that crunch. You’re missing that fresh pop of flavor, the green flavor that’s not there in that packaged food.”

The sensory experience of growing productive crops can also help mitigate⁴ the psychological effects of long-term space travel. . . . Spencer says the team cracked open the door of the APH every day to observe their vegetable companions with all the tenderness of home gardeners. When harvest day came, they batted their bounty around the ISS, taking selfies and delighting in watching the fruits pirouetting around the spacecraft. . . .

“We were thinking no heat, so that [the peppers] wouldn’t be dangerous, but maybe the astronauts need a little spice in their life,” says Paul Bosland, who along with his colleagues at the Chile Pepper Institute genetically engineered⁵ the NuMex Española Improved chile pepper seeds grown in Plant Habitat-04. . . .

Working with NASA, Bosland cultivated a variety that could accommodate both the nutritional needs of astronauts as well as the logistics of growing a plant in space. . . .

. . . The experiment is helping gather the data necessary to determine the nutritional content of crops grown in space, and therefore how many people they can feed, and for how long. Though much is still unknown, Spencer is certain of one thing that future astronauts will need to do: “I think in an optimal world, a scientist like me would say that they would be growing plants from day one. From the day they left to the day they came back, they would be growing them.”

From “Growing Peppers on the ISS Is Just the Start of Space Farming” by Melanie Canales from WIRED, December 21, 2021. Copyright © 2021 Condé Nast. All rights reserved.

¹NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

²brassicas: a large genus of herbs, such as broccoli and cabbage

³zinnias: a genus of herbs and low shrubs that have flowers at their heads

⁴mitigate: to make something less severe or harmful

⁵genetically engineered: combined parts of DNA from different plants to produce a new plant

Excerpt from “How We Made the First Flight”

by Orville Wright

In 1903 brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright conducted experiments related to flying machines. These experiments would eventually lead to air travel becoming a reliable form of transportation.

During the night of December 16, 1903, a strong cold wind blew from the north. When we arose on the morning of the 17th, the puddles of water, which had been standing about camp since the recent rains, were covered with ice. The wind had a velocity of 10 to 12 meters per second (22 to 27 miles an hour). We thought it would die down before long, and so remained indoors the early part of the morning. But when ten o’clock arrived, and the wind was as brisk as ever, we decided that we had better get the machine out and attempt a flight. We hung out the signal for the men of the Life Saving Station.¹ We thought that by facing the flyer into a strong wind, there ought to be no trouble in launching it from the level ground about camp. We realized the difficulties of flying in so high a wind, but estimated that the added dangers in flight would be partly compensated for by the slower speed in landing.

Final Preparations

We laid the track on a smooth stretch of ground about one hundred feet north of the new building. The biting cold wind made work difficult, and we had to warm up frequently in our living room, where we had a good fire in an improvised stove made of a large carbide² can. By the time all was ready, J. T. Daniels, W. S. Dough and A. D. Etheridge, members of the Kill Devil³ Life Saving Station; W. C. Brinkley of Manteo, and Johnny Moore, a boy from Nags Head,⁴ had arrived.

We had a “Richard” hand anemometer with which we measured the velocity of the wind. Measurements made just before starting the first flight showed velocities of 11 to 12 meters per second, or 24 to 27 miles per hour. . . .

Audacity—and Calculation

Wilbur having used his turn in the unsuccessful attempt on the 14th, the right to the first trial now belonged to me. After running the motor a few minutes to heat it up, I released the wire that held the machine to the track, and the machine started forward in the wind. Wilbur ran at the side of the machine, holding the wing to balance it on the track. Unlike the start on the 14th, made in a calm, the machine, facing a 27-mile wind, started very slowly. Wilbur was able to stay with it till it lifted from the track after a forty-foot run. One of the Life Saving men snapped the camera for us, taking a picture just as the machine had reached the end of the track and had risen to a height of about two feet. The slow forward speed of the machine over the ground is clearly shown in the picture by Wilbur’s attitude. He stayed along beside the machine without any effort.

Flight

The course of the flight up and down was exceedingly erratic, partly due to the irregularity of the air, and partly to lack of experience in handling this machine. The control of the front rudder was difficult on account of its being balanced too near the center. This gave it a tendency to turn itself when started; so that it turned too far on one side and then too far on the other. As a result the machine would rise suddenly to about ten feet, and then as suddenly dart for the ground. A sudden dart when a little over a hundred feet from the end of the track, or a little over 120 feet from the point at which it rose into the air, ended the flight. As the velocity of the wind was over 35 feet per second and the speed of the machine over the ground against this wind ten feet per second, the speed of the machine relative to the air was over 45 feet per second, and the length of the flight was equivalent to a flight of 540 feet made in calm air. This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started.

From “How We Made the First Flight” by Orville Wright—Public Domain/Federal Aviation Administration

¹Life Saving Station: one of the rescue stations along the Atlantic coastline that provided assistance to mariners in distress

²carbide: a very hard material composed of carbon and other heavy metals

³Kill Devil: the town of Kill Devil Hills in eastern North Carolina

⁴Nags Head: a town in eastern North Carolina

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.

Martial Arts for the Mind and Body

(1) The martial arts blend a series of physical movements with strategic mental discipline so that practitioners can defend themselves, physically defeat an opponent, or both. (2) Historians are unsure of exactly when and where martial arts were first used. (3) Martial arts have been practiced by several different societies for many centuries. (4) Martial arts such as karate, kung fu, tae kwon do, and judo are still taught and practiced as methods of self-defense, but they offer students more than that. (5) The study of martial arts can provide students with a way to enhance their mental discipline as well as their physical fitness.

(6) Discipline, focus, and respect are important qualities for everyone to have. (7) However, for most people these qualities are not innate; they must be learned and practiced. (8) The study of martial arts can provide an opportunity to develop these skills. (9) Students are rewarded for their dedication by passing tests and advancing to higher ranks or levels. (10) For example, in a typical tae kwon do class, students learn discipline by diligently practicing moves, improve focus by listening carefully, and demonstrate respect by bowing to the instructor and following directions.

(11) For teenagers, martial arts classes provide a safe and structured environment for gaining physical skills, building confidence, and enjoying a sense of community. (12) A lot of teens go through hard situations as they try to do well in school and in life. (13) A martial arts class can provide teens with a physical outlet for stress while also challenging them mentally. (14) Participating in a martial arts program also helps children and teens focus on self-improvement rather than on competition. (15) Progressing through levels of achievement involves mastering more physically demanding techniques. (16) It requires students to take responsibility and be accountable for achieving set goals. (17) Students gain confidence and experience companionship with other students who are progressing through the ranks.

(18) Adults who practice martial arts can experience many of the same benefits that younger people do, but perhaps the greatest of these is health and fitness. (19) Adult martial arts students often see changes in their body within weeks of beginning a program.

(20) For people interested in studying a martial art, there are many ways to learn and practice. (21) In addition to private studios, community recreation centers often offer low-cost or free martial arts classes. (22) There are even online videos that introduce students to the basic concepts. (23) People should study martial arts.

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

A Miracle Mile

In the 1950s people compared running one mile in four minutes to scaling Mount Everest and nicknamed the feat a “dream mile.” Although such an accomplishment was considered humanly impossible, several elite runners aimed to break that supposedly impenetrable barrier. One of them was a twenty-five-year-old medical student named Roger Bannister.

Roger Bannister had tasted failure during the 1952 Olympics. There, he was favored to win the 1,500-meter competition, a distance slightly shorter than a mile, but he finished in a dismal fourth place instead. Bannister’s performance was a disappointment for him and his country, Great Britain. Determined to redeem himself, Bannister postponed his plans to retire from racing and focused on the ultimate prize—breaking the four-minute-mile barrier.

Bannister attacked the elusive milestone with a positive attitude and logical planning. The amateur athlete decided to use intensive interval training to develop endurance and speed. For these workouts, Bannister ran an interval of ten consecutive laps on a quarter-mile track, aiming for sixty seconds each lap. In between intervals, he let his body recover for two minutes.

By early 1954, Bannister had succeeded in lowering his quarter-mile pace to sixty-one seconds, but he had to shave off at least one more second in order to reach his target. Frustrated by the plateau he had reached, Bannister took a break from training and went mountain climbing for three days. The rest from running permitted his muscles to recuperate and left him feeling refreshed. When Bannister returned to the track, he completed ten quarter-mile-long intervals at fifty-nine seconds each. He finally felt prepared to attempt to break the world record.

As a member of the Amateur Athletic Association (AAA), Bannister joined the AAA team for a track meet against Oxford University. The event took place on a cinder track in Oxford on May 6, 1954. Bannister and his two AAA teammates, Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher, were close friends and frequent running partners. Chataway and Brasher agreed to help Bannister accomplish his goal by being his “rabbits.”

In track and field, rabbits are runners who enter the race solely to pace a teammate for a segment of the course. Typically, a runner settles in behind the rabbit and allows the rabbit to set an appropriate tempo. Additionally, by running behind the rabbit, the runner conserves about 15 percent of his or her effort. When the starting pistol fired, Brasher pounced into the lead, and Bannister followed behind his first rabbit.

Propelled by the excitement, Bannister lost his instinctive feel for his pace and shouted “Faster!” at Brasher. Brasher, however, remained composed and maintained his current steady but grueling pace, completing the first two laps in a desirable one minute and fifty-eight seconds. Then Chataway surged forward, leading Bannister at this same punishing rate for another lap and a half. At the beginning of the back straightaway of the track, Bannister bolted past Chataway. Bannister said, “I felt that the moment of a lifetime had come. There was no pain, only a great unity of movement and aim.” Bannister crossed the finish line in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. The ecstatic crowd erupted the moment the timekeeper announced the word “three.”

Soon after Bannister’s achievement, four other athletes matched his performance. A new mindset had taken root among runners. Over the years, the record continued to fall. However, the current record, 3 minutes 43.13 seconds, has stood unbroken since 1999. Some question whether this record represents the limits of human ability. But perhaps there is another Bannister, an athlete who, with willpower and dedication, will accomplish the miraculous.

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

Champion of the Channel

In 1926 an editor at the London Daily News predicted that Gertrude Ederle, an American swimmer with eighteen world records and three Olympic medals, would fail in her attempt to swim across the English Channel. He claimed that “even the most uncompromising champion of the rights and capacities of women must admit that in contests of physical skill, speed and endurance they must remain forever the weaker sex.” Yet, at only nineteen years old, Ederle not only became the first woman to accomplish this feat, she also broke the men’s record by two hours. Gertrude Ederle’s triumphant swim across the English Channel was a testimony to her determination, innovative spirit, and passion for swimming.

Crossing the English Channel is a daunting task for any swimmer. At its narrowest point, the channel measures twenty-one miles across. Its icy waters hover around sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and its unruly tides and currents toss swimmers about like bobbing corks. Stinging jellyfish, seaweed, and floating debris from shipwrecks and lost cargoes present added hazards.

For decades the channel’s perils have defeated countless swimmers. Ederle, too, failed in her first attempt to cross the channel in 1925. Just six miles short of finishing, she became ill, and her coach had to haul her out of the water. Undeterred, Ederle decided to try again. Ederle knew that if she did not complete the challenge this time, she might never get the opportunity to set this record, because a rival female swimmer was preparing to make her second attempt at the crossing as well.

To prepare for the marathon swim, Ederle found ways to improve her equipment. She and her sister Meg discovered that melted candle wax perfectly sealed goggle edges, effectively waterproofing Ederle’s goggles against hammering waves. The sisters also designed a two-piece silk swimsuit for Ederle. During her first channel-crossing attempt she had worn a standard one-piece swimsuit that, after the lengthy hours of swimming across the channel, had stretched out, filling with water and creating drag, making an already challenging task almost insurmountable. Unlike the cumbersome typical bathing suit, this silk invention weighed little and allowed for easy movement.

On August 6, 1926, Ederle waded into the channel near Cape Gris-Nez, France. At first she shivered in the bone-chilling water even though she had covered her body in eight layers of grease for insulation. Her limbs felt stiff. Her strokes were irregular. Driving forward, she fought to clear her mind and find what she called her “sphere,” a place where the sea became her only companion and the shrieks of gulls and the humming of boat engines faded away. Using a new overhand stroke called the American crawl, Ederle eventually settled into a steady pace, briskly breaking through waves.

Throughout Ederle’s swim, two tugboats accompanied her. One carried newspaper reporters who wired dispatches of her progress to shore. The other, displaying a sign that read “This way, ole kid!” with an arrow pointing forward, transported her coach, family, and friends. Her coach played songs, such as “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” on a phonograph so that Ederle could time her strokes to the rhythm. Using a net, her coach also passed her baby bottles of broth for nourishment.

For hours Ederle swam, dodging debris with an amused smile. However, as she neared the English shore, a sudden fierce storm erupted. The tides and waves forced Ederle backward, and she fought the stubborn swells for several hours. The salty water caused her tongue to swell and inflamed her ears. Yet Ederle felt indescribably happy as she churned through the sea. Finally, as she neared the English shore, the storm abated, and the tide turned. No longer fighting against her, the sea pushed her toward the shore and victory.

After fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes, Ederle, on wobbly legs, stepped onto the English shore. The waiting crowd roared, honked their automobile horns, blasted their tugboat whistles, and set off flares that flashed in the sky. Ederle had swum into history.

When Ederle returned to New York, she received a parade, where thousands of people shouted “Trudy!” Not only were everyday American citizens proud of Ederle, but she also inspired them to be more active. Over the next few years, more than 60,000 people credited her with motivating them to earn their American Red Cross swimming certificates. Gertrude Ederle’s accomplishment proved to the world that with determination and passion, it was possible for a person to achieve his or her goals.

SOLO SWIMS ACROSS THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

Earliest Speed Records
Year	Swimmer	Time
1875	Matthew Webb (M)	21 hours, 45 minutes
1923	Enrico Tiraboschi (M)	16 hours, 33 minutes
1926	Gertrude Ederle (F)	14 hours, 31 minutes
1926	Arnst Vierkotter (M)	12 hours, 38 minutes
Current Speed Records
Year	Swimmer	Time
2012	Trent Grimsey (M)	6 hours, 55 minutes
2006	Yvetta Hlavacova (F)	7 hours, 25 minutes

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