Reading Test 26

I am looking at a very thick twisted trunk, rising to medium height, at which point appears a stumpy canopy of spiky needles. It's a tree, but a very special one. Ron Simonson, a park ranger explains. "It's a bristlecone pine, and it's been given the name, Methuselah". I ask the obvious question, and Ron replies, "Because like Methuselah from the bible, this tree is very old, one of the oldest living things on Earth in fact." I ask the next obvious question, and Ron replies, "Basically Methuselah has existed throughout virtually all of recorded human history." I look again at this quiet and unassuming tree, beginning to realise it is worthy of great respect. Being in a cold climate, facing limited summer seasons, rooted in nutrient poor and dry soil, and subject to high winds and withering winters, bristlecone pines mature very slowly indeed. Yet mature they do, as with all pines becoming fractionally thicker every year as another growth ring is added to their truck. By counting these, we can accurately state that, as of 2011, Methuselah was 4,842 years old, meaning that it sprouted as a seedling in 2832 BC, centuries before the ancient Egyptians began building their pyramids. And that's just one fascinating fact about that well-known species of tree - the pine. Pines trees are native to most of the Northern Hemisphere. Several species have adapted to the harsh conditions of high elevations and latitudes, including Methuselah himself, growing among the peaks of the White Mountains of Northern California. Pines can be small, such as the Siberian Dwarf Pine, or huge, such…

Agnes Milowka was one of the foremost cave divers in the world. Female, photogenic, and experienced, she had gained international recognition for her exploratory work in many underground caverns around the world. In early 2011, she entered Tank Cave, near Mount Gambier, a seven-kilometre maze of narrow tunnels - yet ones she had explored many times before. Deep inside, she parted company from her dive buddy to explore a tight passageway through which only one person could pass. What happened next will never be exactly known, but the nature of the cave suggests that she became disoriented during a ‘silt-out’. Unable to manoeuvre quickly, with visibility almost zero, she could not find her way back, and her air ran out. Thinking of these last moments is disturbing, but illustrates the obvious dangers of cave diving. When anything goes wrong, divers cannot swim vertically to the surface, but must instead navigate the entire way back. The dive is immediately abandoned, but even with the full team at hand, the return is complicated by narrow tunnels, often lined with sand, mud, or clay, all of which can be easily disturbed - the dreaded ‘silt-out’ - where, in a few seconds, the diver is in a panic-inducing soup of sediment, virtually blind. Artificial light is swallowed in the pitch blackness, and there always needs to be sufficient breathing gas. In short, cave diving seems an insanely dangerous activity. Yet the cave-diving community disputes this, arguing that their sport is actually safer than normal open-sea recreational diving. This is due to the much greater degrees of…

When convicted criminals have served long terms of imprisonment, it is obvious that, upon their release, one cannot necessarily expect them to be reformed and able to reintegrate into society. In the potentially rough and violent ganglands of prisons, quite the opposite may occur, which raises a difficult dilemma in the criminal justice system. To maintain social order, those who break the law are expected to be punished, yet that same maintenance of order means that rehabilitation must be given a high emphasis. The ethic of rehabilitation is based on the assumption that criminal tendencies are not necessarily permanent, and that former inmates can successfully lead lives in which they contribute positively to society. The ultimate goal is to prevent them from reoffending, an event technically known as criminal recidivism. Prisons therefore contain systems of education or therapy, as well as assessment to determine whether inmates have truly developed remorse for past misdeeds, an ability to reintegrate into society, and intentions to do so. Assessing this accurately is a difficult issue, and it must be accepted that there are some people who can never be rehabilitated, however much we try. The term psychopath is often used here, one of the key determiners of this condition being an inability to learn from past mistakes. Techniques towards improving their behaviour are thus unlikely to work. Obviously, recidivism is highly correlated with this condition, yet studies have shown that psychopathie prisoners are equally likely to be released from prisons as non-psychopathic…