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Happiness If your sense of well-being fluctuates with stock market, you might be comforted to know that money can’t buy you happiness anyway. In one American study conducted in 1993, level of income was shown to have an inverse relation to happiness: The group whose income had declined was happier overall than the group whose income had increased. A soon-to-be published review of the hundreds of studies on this subject supports the 1993 findings. In developed countries, the correlation between income and happiness is close to zero and sometimes negative. With a correlation between level of income and happiness somewhere between 0.12 and 0.18, the United States is near the bottom of the list; that factors other than income are overwhelmingly more important in explaining happiness. Also, as our material wealth increases, the gap between income and satisfaction with life seems to be widening. Predictably, money has its most positive effect on the poor, but once a person has achieved a minimal standard of living level of income has almost nothing to do with happiness. Close relationship, rather than money, is the key to happiness. Indeed, the number of one’s personal friends is a much better indicator of overall satisfaction with life than personal wealth. One stands a better chance of achieving a satisfying life by spending time with friends and family than by striving for higher income. Incidentally, in the US, as people become richer, the probability of divorce increases. Our need for companionship is partly biological. All primates respond with pleasure to demonstrations of affection and with pain to loss of companionship. Isolated monkeys will sacrifice food just for the glimpses of another monkey. By ignoring our biologically programmed need for each other, we risk physical and mental distress. A recent cross-national study of mental depression in the US found that in advanced countries, there is a rising tide of major depression. Teenage suicides have increased in recent decades in almost all advanced countries. Moreover, in the US since World War II, there has been an actual decline in the proportion of people who report themselves to be "very unhappy." You can easily test the claim that companionship exceeds wealth as a source of happiness. Ask yourself which has a greater influence on your satisfaction with life: your income or the affection of your intimate companions and the well-being of your children Conversely, which would make you more depressed: a reduction in salary or a divorce and isolation from your friends Capitalism succeeds in creating material riches, but it is less successful in building companionable societies and protecting family integrity. But developing countries still have much work to do in pursuing material wealth, where a rise in productivity still greatly increases happiness. For poorer countries, the time is not yet ripe for a shift in priorities from wealth accumulation to companionship. Can we afford to believe that the pursuit of material gain will lead to self-fulfilhnent We should continue to enjoy our wealth in good company, or else we may find that it is not satisfying. Which of the following is the least likely cause of one’s unhappiness in advanced countries
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Egypt Felled by Famine Even ancient Egypt’s mighty pyramid builders were powerless in the face of the famine that helped bring down their civilization around 2180 BC. Now evidence gleaned from mud deposited by the River Nile suggests that a shift in climate thousands of kilometers to the south was ultimately to blame and the same or worse could happen today. The ancient Egyptians depended on the Nile’s annual floods to irrigate their crops. But any change in climate that pushed the African monsoons southwards out of Ethiopia would have diminished these floods. Dwindling rains in the Ethiopian highlands would have meant fewer plants to stablize the soil. When rain did fall it would have washed large amounts of soil into the Blue Nile and into Egypt, along with sediment from the White Nile. The Blue Nile mud has a different isotope signature from that of the White Nile. So by analyzing isotope differences in mud deposited in the Nile Delta, Michael Krom of Leeds University worked out what proportion of sediment came from each branch of the river. Krom reasons that during periods of drought, the amount of the Blue Nile mud in the river would be relatively high. He found that one of these periods, from 4,500 to 4,200 years ago, immediately predates the fall of the Egypt’s Old Kingdom. The weakened waters would have been catastrophic for the Egyptians. " Changes that affect food supply don’t have to be very large to have a ripple effect in societies," says Bill Ryan of the Lamont Doberty Earth Observatory in New York. "Similar events today could be even more devastating," says team member Daniel Stanley, a geoarchaeologist from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D C. " Anything humans do to shift the climate belts would have an even worse effect along the Nile system today because the populations have increased dramatically. \ The word "devastating" in the last paragraph could be best replaced by______.
Smoking Can Increase Depressive Symptoms in Teens While some teenagers may puff on cigarettes to "self-medicate" against the blues, scientists at the University of Toronto and the University of Montreal have found that smoking may actually (51) depressive symptoms in some teens. "This observational study is one of the few to examine the perceived (52) benefits of smoking among teens," says lead researcher Michael Chatom, a research associate at the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit of the University of Toronto. " (53) cigarettes may appear to have self-medicating (54) or to improve mood, in the long term we found that teens who started to smoke reported higher depressive symptoms." As part of the study, some 662 high school teenagers completed up to 20 questionnaires (55) their use of cigarettes to affect mood. Secondary schools were selected to provide a mix of French and English participants, urban and rural schools, and schools (56) in high, moderate and low socioeconomic neighborhoods. Participants were divided into three (57) : never smokers; smokers who did not use cigarettes to self-medicate, improve mood or physical (58) ; smokers who used cigarettes to self-medicate. Depressive symptoms were measured using a scale that asked how felt too fired to do things: had (59) going to sleep or staying (60) ; felt unhappy, sad, or depressed; felt hopeless about the future; felt vexed, antsy or tense; and worried too much about things. "Smokers who used cigarettes as mood (61) had higher risks of elevated depressive symptoms than teens who had never smoked," says co-researcher Jennifer O’Loughlin, a professor at the University of Montreal Department of Social and Preventive Medicine. "Our study found that teen smokers who reported emotional benefits from smoking are at higher risk of (62) depressive symptoms." (63) between depression and smoking exists (64) among teens that use cigarettes to feel better. "It’s (65) to emphasize that depressive symptom scores were higher among teenagers who reported emotional benefits from smoking after they began to smoke," says Dr. Chaiton.
More Than 8 Hours Sleep Too Much of a Good Thing 1 Although the dangers of too little sleep are Widely known, new research suggests that people who sleep too much may also suffer the consequences. 2 Investigators at the University of California in San Diego found that people who clock up 9 or 10 hours each weeknight appear to have more trouble falling and staying asleep, as well as a number of other sleep problems, than people who sleep 8 hours a night. People who slept only 7 hours each night also said they had more trouble falling asleep arid feeling refreshed after a night’s sleep than 8-hour sleepers. 3 These findings, which Dr. Daniel Kripke reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, demonstrate that people who want to get a good night’s rest may not need to set aside more than 8 hours a night. He added that "it might be a good idea" for people who sleep more than 8 hours each night to consider reducing the amount of time they spend in bed, but cautioned that more research is needed to confirm this. 4 Previous studies have shown the potential dangers of chronic shortages of sleep, for instance, one report demonstrated that people who habitually sleep less than 7 hours each night have a higher risk of dying within a fixed period than people who sleep more. 5 For the current report, Kripke reviewed the responses of 1,004 adults to sleep questionnaires, in which participants indicated how much they slept during the week and whether they experienced any sleep problems. Sleep problems included waking in the middle of the night, arising early in the morning and being unable to fall hack to sleep, and having fatigue interfere with day-to-day functioning. 6 Kripke found that people who slept between 9 and 10 hours each night were more likely to report experiencing each sleep problem than people who slept 8 hours. In an interview, Kripke noted that long sleepers may struggle to get rest at night simply because they spend too much time in bed. As evidence, he added that one way to help insomnia is to spend less time in bad. "It stands to reason that if a person spends too long a time in bed, then they’ll spend a higher percentage of time awake," he said.A. Kripke’s Research ToolB. Dangers of Habitual Shortages of SleepC. Criticism on Kripke’s ReportD. A Way of Overcoming InsomniaE. Sleep Problems of Long and Shoat SleepersF. Classification of Sleep Problems Paragraph 6______.
Smart Window Windows not only let light in to cut down an electricity use for lighting, but the light coming through the window also provides heat. However, windows are not something people typically associate with being a cutting edge technology. Researchers are now working on new technologies that enable a window to quickly change from clear to dark and anywhere in between with a flip of a switch. "It took us a long time to figure out what a window really is," says Claes Granqvist. He’s a professor of solid-state physics at Uppsala University in Sweden. "It’s contact with the outside world. You have to have visual contact with the surrounding world to feel well." So, windows and natural light are important for improving the way people feel when they’re stuck indoors. Yet, windows are the weak link in a building when it comes to energy and temperature control. In the winter, cold air leaks in. When it’s hot and sunny, sunlight streams in. All of this sunlight carries lots of heat and energy. And all of this extra heat forces people to turn on their air conditioners. Producing blasts of cold air, which can feel so refreshing, actually suck up enormous amounts of electricity in buildings around the world. Windows have been a major focus of energy research for a long time. Over the years, scientists have come up with a variety of strategies for coating, glazing, and layering windows to make them more energy efficient. Smart windows go a step further. They use chromogenic technologies which involve changes of color. electro chromic windows use electricity to change color. For example, a sheet of glass coated with thin layers of chemical compound such as tungsten oxide works a bit like a battery. Tungsten oxide is clear when an electric charge is applied and dark when the charge is removed, that is, when the amount of voltage is decreased, the window darkens until it’s completely dark after all electricity is taken away. So applying a voltage determines whether the window looks clear or dark. One important feature that makes a smart window so smart is that it has a sort of "memory." All it takes is a small jolt of voltage to turn the window from one state to the other. Then, it stays that way. Transitions take anywhere from 10 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the size of the window. The development of smart windows could mean that massive air conditioning systems may no longer need. "In the future," Granqvist says, "our buildings may look different. What will be the benefit if the research on smart windows turns out to be successful, according to the last paragraph
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