Flexible working hours, homeworking opportunities and cover for emergencies or school holidays are the top concerns for working mothers, according to a British survey on Thursday. The survey of 1,677 people by specialist employment advice website workingmums.co.uk showed that despite a tougher job climate, in which redundancies had risen dramatically during the crisis, mothers demanded for a more flexible schedule. Flexible hours for full-time jobs came top of the list for 85 percent of respondents who were asked what they thought made for a family-friendly employer. That came just ahead of homeworking opportunities. "Flexibility is really key and able to help achieve an element of work/life balance," workingmums.co.uk founder Gillian Nissim told reporters. She said the crisis had not reduced the urgency of this issue for working mums and that employers who want to be prepared for the eventual upturn would do well to listen to them rather than risk losing them to more forward-thinking rivals. Many women said they had considered setting up their own business as a way around the flexibility problem and nearly half (45 percent) of respondents said they had looked into it. Nissim said the workingmums.co.uk database alone showed that on average working mums have more than 15 years of work experience and a range of valuable skills picked up in the workplace and from their parenting experiences. "So the benefits to employers of being able to accommodate a degree of flexibility is significant," she said. Part-time work, flexibility around emergency cover or school holidays were the next highest concerns with extended maternity pay as well on the list of concerns.More than half (54 percent) of respondents said they would accept a less well-paid job in return for flexibility, with 40 percent prepared to consider this option. The passage mainly discuss the problem of _ . A) working mothers requiring flexible working hours. B) working mothers planning to set up their own businesses. C) well-paid jobs. D) unemployment at the time of financial crisis.
A
(Question)
We have seen that humor and laughter positively influence our body in many ways, but little research has been done on whether a better sense of humor actually helps keep you from getting sick. However, since people with a better sense of humor have higher IgA levels, and since research has shown that those with higher levels of salivary IgA are less likely to get colds or be infected with Streptococcus, humor should reduce the frequency of colds. The only study to directly examine this question found that the impact of one's sense of humor upon colds depends on the kind of sense of humor you have. It was only individuals whose sense of humor took the form of seeking out and appreciating humor who had fewer and less severe colds/flu than their low humor counterparts. Surprisingly, those whose sense of humor took the form of initiating humor more often did not have fewer or less severe colds/flu. The researchers argued that being a person who likes to tell jokes or otherwise initiate humor takes them into more frequent contact with other people, which serves to expose them to infectious agents more often, robbing them of the advantage that a more active sense of humor otherwise offers. Obviously, more research is required to clear up this confusing picture. The importance of active use of one's sense of humor in producing humor's health benefits was confirmed in another study in an unusual way. It found that among a group of mothers with newborn infants, those who actively used humor to cope with the stress in their lives had fewer upper respiratory infections and their infants also had fewer infections. This seemed to be because these mothers had higher levels of immunoglobulin A (A) in their breast milk. Among adults, if we look at bodily symptoms alone, independent of any diagnosed illness, there is some evidence that individuals who have more negative reactions to humor report more bodily symptoms and complaints. Students complaining of cardiovascular symptoms and gastroenterological symptoms also have... According to the passage, IgA is _ . A) a medicine B) enzyme C) factor D) measure
(Answer)
B
Ques: It's not just great minds that think alike. Dozens of the genes involved in the vocal learning that _ human speech are also active in some songbirds . And knowing this suggests that birds could become a standard model for investigating the genetics of speech production and speech disorders. Complex language is a uniquely human trait, but vocal learning -- the ability to pick up new sounds by imitating others -- is not. Some mammals, including whales, dolphins and elephants, share our ability to learn new vocalizations . So do three groups of birds: the songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds. The similarities between vocal learning in humans and birds are not just superficial. We know, for instance, that songbirds have specialised vocal learning brain circuits that are similar to those that mediate human speech. What's more, a decade ago we learned that FOXP2, a gene known to be involved in human language, is also active in "area X" of the songbird brain -- one of the brain regions involved in those specialised vocal learning circuits. Andreas Pfenning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have now built on these discoveries. They compared maps of genetic activity in brain tissue taken from the zebra finch, budgerigar and Anna's hummingbird, representing the three groups of vocal-learning birds. They then compared these genetic maps with others taken from birds and primates that can't learn new vocalisations, and with maps taken from the brains of six people who donated tissue to the Allen Brain Institute in Seattle. Their results showed that FOXP2 is just one of 55 genes that show a similar pattern of activity in the brains of humans and the vocal-learning birds. Those same genes show different patterns of activity in the brains of animals incapable of vocal learning. "The similarities are beyond one or a handful of genes," says Pfenning. "There are just systematic molecular similarities between song-learning birds and humans." "There's potential for songbirds to be used to study... What can we infer from the passage? A) FOXP2 was involved in human language about 12 years ago. B) Six people donated brain tissue to the Allen Brain Institute in Seattle. C) Experiments with songbirds are likely to help cure Huntington's disease. D) Constance Scharff discovered at the Free University of Berlin.
Ans: C
Ques: When Paul was a boy growing up in Utah, he happened to live near a copper smelter , and the chemicals that poured out had made a wasteland out of what used to be a beautiful forest. One day a young visitor looked at this wasteland and called it an awful area. Paul knocked him down. From then on, something happened inside him. Years later Paul was back in the area, and he went to the smelter office. He asked if they had any plans or if they would let him try to bring the trees back. The answer from that big industry was "No." Paul then went to college to study the science of plants. Unfortunately, his teachers said there weren't any birds or squirrels to spread the seeds. It would be a waste of his life to try to do it. He was told everyone knew that even if he was knowledgeable as he had expected, he wouldn't get his idea accepted. Paul later got married and had some kids. But, his dream would not die. And then one night he did what he could with what he had. Under the cover of darkness, he went secretly into the wasteland and started planting. And every week, he made his secret journey into the wasteland and planted trees and grass. For fifteen years he did this against _ . Slowly rabbits appeared. Later, as there was legal pressure to clean up the environment, the company actually hired Paul to do what he was already doing. Now the place is fourteen thousand acres of trees and grass and bushes, and Paul has received almost every environmental award Utah has. It took him until his hair turned white, but he managed to keep that impossible vow he made to himself as a child. The message of the passage is that _ . A) perseverance will work wonders B) action speaks louder than words C) God helps those who help themselves D) many hands make light work.
Ans:
A