ELF – Engelsk läsförståelse (HPHOST2016P2)

Colic

Colic – defined as inconsolable crying in an otherwise healthy infant for more than three hours a day, for more than three days a week, for three weeks or more – has long been a puzzle for doctors and an exhausting ordeal for parents. So when Anna Zanin, a pediatrician in Paris, noticed that babies with colic and children with migraine share certain symptoms, she decided to explore a possible association between the two conditions. Her research found that 73 percent of children with migraine were colicky babies compared to 27 percent of controls. While Zanin emphasizes that further evidence is needed to determine whether there is a causal link, the numbers suggest that migraine and colic may indeed be related.

What is the main point in this text?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Can mice pass memories down several generations? It is a startling proposition and has duly provoked some strong responses. “Crazy Lamarckian shit,” exclaimed one observer. To many biologists, the dirty word here isn’t the one you might be thinking: rather, it is the reference to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who in the 18th century contended that traits acquired during life can be passed to the next generation. As there’s no genetic basis for passing on such acquired traits, Lamarck’s mechanism can’t be the basis for natural selection, and so was discredited. Now new work suggests that mice may pass on memories of a dangerous smell. It is, however, based on epigenetics: changes that tweak the action of genes, not the genes themselves. So it fits with natural selection – and may yet give Lamarck’s name a sheen of respectability.

What fits best with this description of the ideas of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck?  

What are we told about moral attitudes in 18th-century England? 

What is said about the Victorians in relation to sex?

What is implied about George III’s 1787 Proclamation? 

What are we told about the “new middle class” in 19th-century Englan?

What is the general point, emerging in the last paragraph, of the writer’s account of the moral climate in 18th- and 19th-century England?

Ecology

Arne Naess was Norway’s best-known philosopher, whose concept of deep ecology enriched and divided the environmental movement. Through his books and lectures, Naess taught that ecology should not be concerned with man’s place in nature but with every part of nature on an equal basis because the natural order has a value that transcends human values. Indeed, humans could only attain “realization of the self” as part of an entire ecosphere. Shallow ecology, he believed, meant thinking big ecological problems could be resolved within an industrial, capitalist society. Deep ecology meant understanding that society has caused the Earth-threatening ecological crisis. His concept entered the mainstream green movement in the 1980s.

What is said in relation to ecology?

Groups

Just because a group is full of intelligent individuals does not mean the group as a whole will necessarily be smart. But having more women does, according to a new study. The researchers found that a group’s collective intelligence is affected not by individual intelligence but by social sensitivity and the ability to make inferences – skills women are more likely to possess than men.

What is the main point in this text?

Iatrogenic Deaths

What is the third leading cause of death in the developed world? The answer is “iatrogenic” deaths – those caused by medical errors, adverse drug reactions, or hospital-acquired infections. For all modern medicine’s ability to alleviate suffering and prevent premature deaths, it also causes plenty of both. Many medical interventions turn out to have unintended and negative consequences that often emerge as a result of research into better treatments. None of this suggests that treatments such as chemotherapy, painkillers, or antibiotics do more harm than good overall. And the research that reveals their effects will help us to develop still more effective treatments. But it does highlight the need to think broadly about iatrogenic deaths.

What can be concluded from this text?