Программа курса «Обучение студентов начального этапа академическим навыкам просмотрового и поискового чтения»
Online searches for future linked to economic success
Download 0.74 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- BEFORE READING Ask yourself some questions .
- Inferential For example
- DURING READING Use color effectively
Online searches for future linked to economic successPeople in wealthier nations are far more likely to search for information about the future compared with citizens of poorer states, a study of 45 billion Google search queries has revealed. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports today, a team from University College London reveals a "striking correlation" between a country's per-capita gross domestic product "and its inhabitants' predisposition to look forward". "Our results are consistent with the intriguing possibility that there is a relationship between the economic success of a country and the information-seeking behaviour of its citizens online," the authors write. UCL mathematician Steven Bishop and colleagues Tobias Pries, Helen Moat and Eugene Stanley used Google Trends to analyse search queries made in 45 countries in 2010. Their methodology for sifting past and future searches was to count how many 2010 searches included the term "2009" and how many mentioned "2011". In order to see how "future oriented" each nation was, the team then worked out the ratio of the number of searches for 2011 to those for 2009. They called that ratio the "future orientation index" (FOI). When they checked these indices against the relative wealth of each nation - its per-capita GDP - as listed in the CIA World Factbook of July 2010, they found a strong correlation. For instance, Russia (with 2010 GDP per capita at $15,900 in 2010) has a future orientation index of 0.6. Higher up the graph Italy ($30,100) has an FOI of 1.0. Even higher are France ($35,000), the UK ($35,900) and Germany ($37,900), which are all at around 1.2. The same correlation between wealth and FOI was seen in further analyses that centred on 2009 (measuring searches for 2008 and 2010) and 2008 (2007 and 2009). Preis - a visiting professor from Boston University – suggests an explanation for the relationship between search activity and GDP: focusing on the future may be one of the factors that lead to economic success. The findings may also "reflect international differences in the type of information sought online, perhaps due to economic influences on available internet infrastructure," he says in the paper. Counting year mentions is clearly an imperfect way to check feelings about the past and future, and to avoid statistical noise in the Google Trends data the study eliminated nations with less than 5 million internet users - many of which will be at the poorer end of the GDP scale where the correlation may falter. But Greg Taylor, an economist at the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK, says the UCL work is certainly a novel type of study. "Most of what I see goes the other way - there's been work on what searches can tell us about. For example, economic factors like an impending recession, or the spread of flu." But Taylor hasn't seen a study that uses economic data to assess a nation's feel-good factor. "These results have a certain intuitive appeal. I guess in the developed world, you have a lot more to search for in the future in terms of the cultural experiences available - such as upcoming movie releases."
Skim the text. How many ways to categorize volcanoes does it give? What types of volcanoes are mentioned? The text mentions two examples of volcanoes. What classification do they belong to? Which method of classification is preferred by scientists? Why? There are different ways in which volcanoes are classified. Perhaps the most common and certainly the one used by non-specialists is the division of volcanoes into the categories of active, dormant or extinct. This classification is problematical as there is no clear definition of what makes a volcano active, dormant or extinct. Typically, a volcano is said to be extinct if it has not erupted in historical times, or at least since written records began, and it is dormant if it is known to have erupted in historical times but is now quiet. The difficulty with this is that man has been on the planet for a comparatively short period of time and our historical records are a rather inaccurate predictor of volcanic activity and dormant, and even extinct, volcanoes have been known to erupt. This can be exemplified by one of the most notorious episodes in the annals of volcanology, the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD. When Vesuvius did erupt, it caused massive loss of life in the nearby towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii for the simple reason that the locals had not just settled in towns near to the volcano but they had even gone so far as to build vineyards on its slopes. An assumption had been made that just because it had not erupted in memory, it would not erupt. Indeed, this is by no means an isolated example of humans deciding to settle near volcanoes: another famous instance is how Edinburgh Castle is likewise built on a volcano. The one difference being that the castle is still with us and has not disappeared in a cloud of ash and a torrent of lava produced by a volcanic eruption. Scientists tend to categorize volcanoes not by their probable activity, but by their features, size, location and form. Hence volcanologists refer to stratovolcanoes or composite volcanoes, shield volcanoes, submarine volcanoes, cone volcanoes, mud volcanoes, supervolcanoes and subglacial volcanoes. The most dangerous of these are the supervolcanoes which should they erupt would not merely threaten the existence of a town such as Pompeii but could even call into question the future of entire continents for human habitation. They are of such magnitude that the sulphur and ash produced by an explosion could adversely affect air temperature globally. Some of the largest, and least known, volcanoes are the submarine volcanoes found on the ocean floor. Their activity often goes unnoticed by non-specialists because the sheer amount of water pressing down on them means that the gases do not escape into the atmosphere. Though, occasionally they do erupt so massively that new islands are formed above the level of the ocean. Likewise, subglacial volcanoes that form beneath the icecap escape general notice until the icecap melts and table top mountains appear. Stratovolcanoes, cone, shield and mud volcanoes are simply volcanoes classified by being formed of different materials and forming different shapes.
IELTS Reading Multiple Choice Questions Начало формы 1. Young children are making criminologists nervous because (a) they are committing too much crime.
2. The general crime rate in the US is (a)increasing
3. The age group which commits the highest rate of crime is (a)14 - 17.
4. James Fox believes that the improvement in crime figures could (a)make us complacent in the fight against crime.
5. According to paragraph 3, the government (a)is doing everything it can to solve the problem.
6. In comparison with James Fox, Michael Tonry is (a)more pessimistic.
7. Jonathan Kozol believes that (a)there is no solution to the problem.
8. Professor DiIulio thinks that spending on social programs (a) should continue as it is
UNIT 5
Approaches to active reading FOCUS ON THEORY It is very important to be an ACTIVE reader as this will help you retain information in a text and help you make the right kind of notes – it is essentially reading for a purpose rather than just browsing. Before you launch into reading a chapter or section or journal article, you may need to ask yourself to Preview and Predict. Do this by asking yourself the following: Why Am I Reading This? What do I Want to Find? What information do I already know and will the text ‘fill in the gaps’ for me? Is this the most appropriate text for my purpose? BEFORE READING Ask yourself some questions.When you start to read you should be asking yourself what type of information you need/want. This can fall into three categories: Literal, Inferential or Critical. Literal For example:Who was responsible for making Laws? Inferential For example:Can you find evidence in your reading that a specific Law is effective? What do different people say? Whose arguments are stronger? Critical For example:-Has the author given enough evidence to be convincing? (think of your own reading of a topic) Are the results reliable and valid? Is the author’s interpretation sound? DURING READING Use color effectivelyMany students find that it is useful to color code information. To do this most effectively you will need to photocopy sections of text which you think are most relevant and crucial to your work. As you are reading you will have to make decisions about what sort of information it is in order to code it. This means that you will be interacting more with the text rather than being a surface reader. Decisions about color coding can only be made effectively if you know your purpose for reading and what it is that you are looking for. For example, you may want to code the main ideas in one color in a section or paragraph and the evidence or examples or subsidiary information in another color. You may want to pick out key references and names and use codes to categorize these. Some students find that they like to code the author’s opinions in one colour and the inferred information in another. As you can see there are many ways in which you can be creative to make you question what you are reading and to help you make more effective notes. Directory: data -> 2013 data -> By Fel (aka James Galloway) Table of Contents Chapter 1 data -> Vitaly Goldshteyn data -> Hurricane Katrina, a climatological Perspective October 2005, Updated August 2006 Introduction data -> 1997 Atlantic Tropical Storms data -> Introduction data -> The Impact of Saharan dust aerosols on tropical cyclones using wrf-chem: Model framework and satellite data constraint technique data -> Earth-Atmosphere Interactions: Tropical Storm and Hurricane Activity in the Caribbean and Consequent Health Impacts data -> Meeting Of September 16, 2010 today’s meeting 2013 -> David Dunham(1,3), Natan Eismont(2,3), Michael Boyarsky Download 0.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
|