Teaching a child to read at a young age gives him a valuable start in life. Reading is the basic part of education and a child's reading ability will influence his school success greatly. Learning difficulties, many of which begin from poor reading skills, can damage a school child's confidence and affect his future achievement. Young children are programmed to learn and they can learn better with encouragement. Ten to twenty minutes of reading a day still leaves plenty of time for play. Many parents are concerned that learning to read is too challenging a task for a pre-school child, but they should also remember that most children learn to speak by the time they are 3. Learning a language is probably the single most challenging task any individual can undertake, yet children do it without formal instruction, achieving the fluency much better than adult language students. There is a window of opportunity in terms of IQ development, which is most open during a child's early years. A scientific study, carried out by Dr. Peter Huttenlocher at the University of Chicago, showed that the number of connectors, called synapses , between the nerve endings in a newborn baby's brain is similar to the number in the average adult brain. These synapses increase rapidly during early childhood. By 12-24 months a child's brain has about 50% more synapses than the average adult brain. After that the synapses which are not in use begin to atrophy . For most people, from age 16, the number remains steady. It begins to drop again as we move into our golden years. Doing intellectual activities at a young age, such as learning to read, can stimulate and preserve these connectors in the brain resulting in a long-term beneficial effect on IQ development. Another notable study is probably the Milwaukee project. This study took a group of babies, all of whose mothers had low IQs, and gave them special training for seven hours a day, five days a week, until they started first grade. By the age of 6 these children had an average IQ 30... How can children benefit from learning to read at a young age? A) It can build up great confidence in their mind. B) It can help preserve the connectors in their brains. C) It can help produce more connectors in their brains. D) It can help them find both their weaknesses and strengths.
B
She took up skating at age 85, made her first movie appearance at age 114, and held a concert in the neighborhood on her 121st birthday. When it comes to long life, Jeanne Calment is the world's recordholder. She lived to the ripe old age of 122. So is 122 the upper limit to the human life span ? If scientists come up with some sort of pill or diet that would slow aging, could we possibly make it to 150-or beyond? Researchers don't entirely agree on the answers. "Calment lived to 122, so it wouldn't surprise me if someone alive today reaches 130 or 135, "says Jerry Shay at the University of Texas. Steve Austad at the University of Texas agrees. "People can live much longer than we think, "he says. "Experts used to say that humans couldn't live past 110. When Calment blew past that age, they raised the number to 120. So why can't we go higher? " The trouble with guessing how old people can live to be is that it's all just guessing. "Anyone can make up a number, "says Rich Miller at the University of Michigan. "Usually the scientist who picks the highest number gets his name in Time magazine. " Won't new anti-aging techniques keep us alive for centuries? Any cure, says Miller, for aging would probably keep most of us kicking until about 120. Researchers are working on treatments that lengthen the life span of mice by 50 percent at most. So, if the average human life span is about 80 years, says Miller, "adding another 50 percent would get you to 120. " So what can we conclude from this little disagreement among the researchers? That life span is flexible , but there is a limit, says George Martin of the University of Washington. "We can get flies to live 50 percent longer, "he says. "But a fly's never going to live 150 years. "Of course, if you became a new species , one that ages at a slower speed, that would be a different story, he adds. Does Martin really believe that humans could evolve their way to longer life? "It's pretty cool to think about, "he says with a smile. Who would agree that a scientist will become famous if he makes the wildest guess at longevity? A) Jerry Shay. B) Steve Austad C) Rich Miller D) George Martin
C
Q: LONDON --- A British judge on Thursday sentenced a businessman who sold fake bomb detectors to 10 years in prison, saying the man hadn't cared about potentially deadly consequences. It is believed that James McCormick got about $77.8 million from the sales of his detectors which were based on a kind of golf ball finder to countries including Iraq, Belgium and Saudi Arabia. McCormick, 57, was convicted of cheats last month and sentenced Thursday at the Old Bailey court in London. "Your cheating conduct in selling a great amount of useless equipment simply for huge profit promoted a false sense of security and in all probability materially contributed to causing death and injury to innocent people," Judge Richard Hone told McCormick. "you have neither regret, nor shame, nor any sense of guilt." The detectors, sold for up to $42,000 each, were said to be able to find such dangerous objects as bombs under water and from the air. But in fact they "lacked any grounding in science" and were of no use. McCormick had told the court that he sold his detectors to the police in Kenya, the prison service in Hong Kong, the army in Egypt and the border control in Thailand. "I never had any bad results from customers," he said. ks5u It can be inferred from the passage that McCormick _ . A) sold the equipment at a low price B) was well-known in most countries C) did not think he had committed the crime D) had not got such huge profit as mentioned in the text
A: C