Cambridge IELTS 05

The effects of light on plant and animal species

Light is important to organisms for two different reasons. Firstly it Is used as a cue for the timing of daily and seasonal rhythms in both plants and animals, and secondly it is used to assist growth in plants...

Sep 25,2017
The impact of wilderness tourism

The market for tourism in remote areas is booming as never before. Countries all across the world are actively promoting their 'wilderness' regions - such as mountains, Arctic lands, deserts, small islands and wetlands - to high-spending tourists...

Sep 25,2017
Flawed beauty: The problem with toughened glass

On 2nd August 1999, a particularly hot day in the town of Cirencester in the UK, a large pane of toughened glass in the roof of a shopping centre at Bishops Walk shattered without warning and fell from its frame. When fragments were analysed by experts at the giant glass manufacturer Pilkington w..

Sep 25,2017
Johnson's dictionary

For the century before Johnson's Dictionary was published in 1775, there had been concern about the state of the English language. There was no standard way of speaking or writing and no agreement as to the best way of bringing some order to the chaos' of English spelling...

Sep 25,2017
The return of artificial intelligence

It is becoming acceptable again to talk of computers performing human tasks such as problem-solving and pattern-recognition. After years in the wilderness, the term ‘artificial intelligence' (Al) seems poised to make a comeback...

Sep 25,2017
The truth about the environment

For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears: that natural resources are running out; that the population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat; that species are becoming extinct in vast numbers, and that the planet's air a..

Sep 25,2017
The birth of scientific English

World science is dominated today by a small number of languages, including Japanese, German and French, but it is English which is probably the most popular global language of science. This is not just because of the importance of English- speaking countries such as the USA in scientific re..

Sep 25,2017
BAKELITE : The birth of modern plastics

In 1907, Leo Hendrick Baekeland, a Belgian scientist working in New York, discovered and patented a revolutionary new synthetic material. His invention, which he named 'Bakelite', was of enormous technological importance, and effectively launched the modern plastics industry...

Sep 25,2017
What's so funny?

The joke comes over the headphones: 'Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left. Which side of a dog has the most hair? The outside. ..

Sep 25,2017
Nature or Nurture?

A few years ago, in one of the most fascinating and disturbing experiments in behavioural psychology, Stanley Milgram of Yale University tested 40 subjects from all walks of life for their willingness to obey instructions given by a ‘leader’ in a situation in which the subjects might feel a perso..

Sep 25,2017