Reading Test 18

The invention of the microchip in the 1960s revolutionised the computer industry. Microchips are also used in thousands of other products, including smart cards. These look and function like the familiar magnetic-stripe credit cards, but they have a microchip embedded inside them that can store information. The smart card was the brainchild of two French inventors, Roland Moreno and Michel Ugon, who developed the technology in the mid-1970s. The first cards were tested in several French cities in the early 1980s and the technology was subsequently adopted by banks throughout Europe. Smart cards are now a part of everyday life in Europe, where they are used for a wide range of purposes, including paying for public transport, making small purchases over the counter, and banking by telephone. The European Union has adopted the technology as the standard for all its future credit cards. Smart cards are only just beginning to be introduced in the United States, where the older magnetic-stripe technology is still the norm. The new technology is considered to be much more secure than the magnetic-stripe card, which is vulnerable to fraud. The microchip embedded in the smart card can be programmed to allow the cardholder to access many different systems. One card can be used for various types of banking transactions, for example, and as a phone card. It can also serve as an electronic purse, storing a cash balance for small purchases and recording phone and ATM transactions. It can also be used as a security pass to give the cardholder access to restricted areas. The smart card…

Gene therapy is the introduction of genes into existing cells to prevent or cure a wide range of diseases. The most common form of gene therapy involves using DNA that encodes a functional, therapeutic gene to replace a mutated gene. Gene therapy was first conceptualised in 1972, with the authors urging caution before commencing human gene therapy studies. The first attempt, an unsuccessful one, at modifying human DNA was performed in 1980 by Martin Cline. The first successful nuclear gene transfer in humans, approved by the National Institutes of Health, was performed in May 1989. The first therapeutic use of gene transfer as well as the first direct insertion of human DNA into the nuclear genome was performed by French Anderson in a trial starting in September 1990. The first commercial gene therapy, Gendicine, was approved in China in 2003 for the treatment of certain cancers. In 2011, Neovasculgen was registered in Russia as the first-in-class gene-therapy drug for treatment of peripheral artery disease, including critical limb ischemia. In 2012, Glybera, a treatment for a rare inherited disorder, lipoprotein lipase deficiency, was approved by the European Commission. Although the technology is still in its infancy, it has been used with some success. It is a potential therapy for a number of diseases (such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anaemia, adrenoleukodystrophy and haemophilia) as well as several inherited retinal diseases. Current gene therapy has primarily focused on treating individuals by targeting the therapy to somatic (body) cells, such as bone marrow…

The idea that teaching methods should match a student’s particular learning style — their personal way of learning — is popular with teachers and students alike. But the evidence suggests it may not be helpful. The concept of learning styles is one of the most influential — and widely criticized — theories in education. It is the idea that each person finds it easier to learn through a particular method of instruction. Some people, for example, are thought to learn better when they’re taught visually; others, when instruction is auditory, or through movement, and so on. The idea is popular in part because it reflects the intuition of teachers and students. Everyone knows from personal experience that some kinds of learning feel easier than others, and that they may prefer one way of learning over another. And it is also popular because it claims to be based on science. The idea of learning styles was developed in the 1970s, as psychologists and educational theorists were trying to understand how people learn. The idea that different people learn information in different ways was appealing, and it soon became clear that many people had strong preferences about how they liked information to be presented. In a typical research study, one group of students might be classified as ‘visual learners’, while another group would be classified as ‘auditory learners’. All the students would then be asked to learn something, with half the visual learners being taught visually, and half being taught aurally. The auditory learners would also be split into the two groups. If the theory…