Sample Reading Text

Reading #1

Much of the information we have today about chimpanzees comes from the groundbreaking, long-term research of the great conservationist, Jane Goodall.
Jane Goodall was born in London, England, on April 3, 1934. On her second birthday, her father gave her a toy chimpanzee named Jubilee. Jubilee was named after a baby chimp in the London Zoo, and seemed to foretell the course Jane’s life would take. To this day, Jubilee sits in a chair in Jane’s London home. From an early age, Jane was fascinated by animals and animal stories. By the age of 10, she was talking about going to Africa to live among the animals there. At the time, in the early 1940s, this was a radical idea because women did not go to Africa by themselves.
As a young woman, Jane finished school in London, attended secretarial school, and then worked for a documentary filmmaker for a while. When a school friend invited her to visit Kenya, she worked as a waitress until she had earned the fare to travel there by boat. She was 23 years old.
Once in Kenya, she met Dr. Louis Leakey, a famous paleontologist and anthropologist. He was impressed with her thorough knowledge of Africa and its wildlife, and hired her to assist him and his wife on a fossil-hunting expedition to Olduvai Gorge. Dr. Leakey soon realized that Jane was the perfect person to complete a study he had been planning for some time. She expressed her interest in the idea of studying animals by living in the wild with them, rather than studying dead animals through paleontology.
Dr. Leakey and Jane began planning a study of a group of chimpanzees who were living on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Kenya. At first, the British authorities would not approve their plan. At the time, they thought it was too dangerous for a woman to live in the wilds of Africa alone. But Jane’s mother, Vanne, agreed to join her so that she would not be alone. Finally, the authorities gave Jane the clearance she needed in order to go to Africa and begin her study
In July of 1960, Jane and her mother arrived at GombeNational Park in what was then called Tanganyika and is now called Tanzania. Jane faced many challenges as she began her work. The chimpanzees did not accept her right away, and it took months for them to get used to her presence in their territory. But she was very patient and remained focused on her goal. Little by little, she was able to enter their world.
At first, she was able to watch the chimpanzees only from a great distance, using binoculars. As time passed, she was able to move her observation point closer to them while still using camouflage. Eventually, she was able to sit among them, touching, patting, and even feeding them. It was an amazing accomplishment for Jane, and a breakthrough in the study of animals in the wild. Jane named all of the chimpanzees that she studied; stating in her journals that she felt they each had a unique personality.
One of the first significant observations that Jane made during the study was that chimpanzees make and use tools, much like humans do, to help them get food. It was previously thought that humans alone used tools. Also thanks to Jane’s research, we now know that chimps eat meat as well as plants and fruits. In many ways, she has helped us to see how chimpanzees and humans are similar. In doing so, she has made us more sympathetic toward these creatures, while helping us to better understand ourselves.
The study started by Jane Goodall in 1960 is now the longest field study of any animal species in their natural habitat. Research continues to this day in Gombe and is conducted by a team of trained Tanzanians.
Jane’s life has included much more than just her study of the chimps in Tanzania. She pursued a graduate degree while still conducting her study, receiving her Ph.D. from CambridgeUniversity in 1965. In 1984, she received the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize for "helping millions of people understand the importance of wildlife conservation to life on this planet." She has been married twice: first to a photographer and then to the director of National Parks. She has one son.
Dr. Jane Goodall is now the world’s most renowned authority on chimpanzees, having studied their behavior for nearly 40 years. She has published many scientific articles, has written two books, and has won numerous awards for her groundbreaking work. The Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education, and Conservation was founded in 1977 in California but moved to the Washington, D.C., area in 1998. Its goal is to take the actions necessary to improve the environment for all living things.
Dr. Goodall now travels extensively, giving lectures, visiting zoos and chimp sanctuaries, and talking to young people involved in environmental education. She is truly a great conservationist and an amazing human being.

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Reading #2

Two of the most dangerous storms which afflict America are hurricanes and tornadoes. They are very much feared by anyone who may live in the path of their destruction and cause millions of dollars worth of damage to life and property every year.

Hurricanes which usually develop between July and October are similar to cyclones and originate over the waters in the Caribbean Sea. They move upwards hitting the mainland of America somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean. Once they hit land they carry tremendous power with driving rain and wind. These winds can attain speeds of over 75 mph. And cover an area of over 500 miles in diameter. At the center of the storm there is an "eye" with relatively fair weather and warm, dry air aloft. The diameter of the eye is usually about 32 kilometers. When the eye passes the relief is only temporary but soon the wind and rain will suddenly reappear from the opposite direction.

Every year homes are destroyed by their fury and often lives are lost. Most people who live near the coast are forced to evacuate their homes and to move to safer areas until the storm passes. Floods are caused along the coasts by both the heavy rain and a storm tide that is considerably above normal water level. The high winds, coastal flooding and torrential rains associated with a hurricane cause enormous damage.

People living in the wake of a storm are given ample warning to protect their homes. Flashlights or candles are be prepared in case of electric-power failures and plenty of fresh water should be saved as precautions against the pollution of water supplies by flooding.

If one should travel inland across the Great Plains and the prairie states of America, one will most likely not encounter a hurricane, but there is another kind of storm in the Midwest which is equally feared. It is called a tornado. Tornadoes are violent low-pressured storms with an intense updraft near their center which is capable of lifting quite heavy objects from the ground. A tornado, therefore, is a dark, funnel-shaped cloud containing violently rotating air. It can pick up trees and cars right into the air and even uplift heavier objects such as homes and railway cars. Like a vacuum cleaner across a rug, it sucks up into the air anything which may lie in its path. These storms occur most often during the summer months and are noticeable by their strong wind and lack of rain. The sky turns black as dust is sucked up into the air. Tornadoes travel normally at around 60 kilometers per hour and the winds can reach 800 kilometers per hours in the most violent storms. Tornadoes are most frequent in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and especially in the central plains area of the Mississippi basin where about 150 occur each year. Tornadoes may also strike the southern states in winter and have even been known to develop in the northeast.

Both hurricanes and tornadoes cause millions of dollars worth of damage each year. Today they can be predicted more easily than in the past, but they cannot be stopped or ignored. When they come they must be endured with the hope that one survives their fury and wrath

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Reading #3

Half-Truths

Beware of those who use the truth to deceive. When someone tells you something that is true, but leaves out important information that should be included, he can create a false impression.For example, someone might say, “I just won a hundred dollars on the lottery. It was great. I took that dollar ticket back to the store and turned it in for one hundred dollars!”

This guy’s a winner, right? Maybe or maybe not. We then discover that he bought two hundred tickets, and only one was a winner. He’s really a big loser!

He didn’t say anything that was false, but he deliberately omitted important information. That’s called a half-truth. Half-truths are not technically lies, but they are just as dishonest.

Untrustworthy candidates in political campaigns often use this tactic. Let’s say that during Governor Smith’s last term, her state lost one million jobs and gained three million jobs. Then she seeks another term. One of her opponents runs an ad saying, “During Governor Smith’s term, the sate lost one million jobs!” That’s true. However an honest statement would have been, “During Governor Smith’s term, the state had a net gain of two million jobs.”

Advertisers will sometimes use half-truths. It’s against the law to make false claims so they try to mislead you with the truth. An ad might boast, “Nine out of ten doctors recommend Yucky Pills to cure nose pimples.” It fails to mention that they only asked ten doctors and nine of them work for the Yucky Corporation.

This kind of deception happens too often. It’s a sad fact of life: Lies are lies, and sometimes the truth can lie as well.

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Reading #4

A database is structured collection of data. Thus, card indices, printed catalogues of archaeological artifacts and telephone directories are all examples of databases. Databases may be stored on a computer and examined using a program. These programs are often called `databases', but more strictly are database management systems (DMS). Just as a card index or catalogue has to be constructed carefully in order to be useful, so must a database on a computer. Similarly, just as there are many ways that a printed catalogue can be organized, there are many ways, or models, by which a computerized database may be organized. One of the most common and powerful models is the `relational' model (discussed below), and programs which use this model are known as relational database management systems (RDMS).

Computer-based databases are usually organized into one or more tables. A table stores data in a format similar to a published table and consists of a series of rows and columns. To carry the analogy further, just as a published table will have a title at the top of each column, so each column in a database table will have a name, often called a field name. The term field is often used instead of column. Each row in a table will represent one example of the type of object about which data has been collected. Each row is an entity, and each column represents an attribute of that entity.

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