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Migrant Workers(A级)

In the past twenty years, there has been an increasing tendency for workers to move from one country to another, While some newly independent countries have understandably restricted most jobs to local people, others have attracted and welcomed migrant workers. This is particularly the case in the Middle East, where increased oil incomes have enabled may countries to call in outsiders to improve local facilities. Thus the Middle East has attracted oil-workers from the U.S.A. and Europe. It has brought in construction workers and technicians from many countries, including South Korea and Japan. In view of the difficult living and working conditions in the Middle East, it is not surprising that the pay is high to attract suitable workers. Many engineers and technicians can earn at least twice as much money in the Middle East as they can in their own country, and this is a major attraction. An allied benefit is the low taxation or complete lack of it. This increases the net amount of pay received by visiting workers and is very popular with them. Sometimes a disadvantage has a compensating advantage. For example, the difficult living conditions often lead to increased friendship when workers have to depend on each other for safety and comfort. In a similar way, many migrant workers can save large sums of money partly because of the lack of entertainment facilities. The work is often complex and full of problems but this merely presents greater challenge to engineers who prefer to find solutions to problems rather than do routine work in their home country. One major problem which affects migrant workers in the Middle East is that their jobs are temporary ones. They are nearly always on contract, so it is not easy for them to plan ahead with great confidence. This is to be expected since no country welcomes a large number of foreign workers as permanent residents. In any case, migrant workers accept this disadvantage, along with others, because of the considerable financial benefits which they receive.

Dreams(A级) Everyone can dream．Indeed, everyone does dream．Those who claim that they never dream at all actually dream just as frequently as the rest of us, though they may not remember anything about it．Even those of us who are perfectly aware of dreaming night after night very seldom remember those dreams in great detail but merely retain an untidy mixture of seemingly unrelated impressions. Dreams are not simply visual-we dream with all our senses , so that we appear to experience sound, touch, smell, and taste． One of the world's oldest known written documents is the Egyptian Book of Dreams．This volume is about five thousand years old, so you can see that dreams were believed to have a special significance even then．Many ancient civilizations believed that you should never wake a sleeping person as, during sleep, the soul had left the body and might not be able to return in time if the sleeper were suddenly awoken. F rom ancient times to the present day, people have been making attempts to interpret dreams and to explain their significance．There are many books available on the subject of dream interpretation．although unfortunately there are almost as many meanings for a particular dream as there are books．

Young Adults Who Exercise Get Higher IQ Scores(A级) Young adults who are fit have a higher IQ and are more likely to go on to university, reveals a major new study carried out at the Sahlgrenska Academy and Sahlgrenska University Hospital. The results were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study involved 1.2 million Swedish men doing military service who were born between 1950 and 1976. The research group analyses the results of both physical and IQ tests the youngsters took right after they started serving the army. The study shows a clear link between good physical fitness and better results for the IQ test. The strongest links are for logical thinking and verbal comprehension. But it is only fitness that plays a role in the results for the IQ test, and not strength. “Being fit means that you also have good heart and lung capacity and that your brain gets plenty of oxygen.” says Michael Nilsson, professor at the Sahlgrenska Academy and chief physician at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital. “This may be one of the reasons why we can see a clear link with fitness, but not with muscular strength. We are also seeing that there are growth factors that are important.” By analyzing data for twins, the researchers have been able to determine that it is primarily environmental factors and not genes that explain the link between fitness and a higher IQ. “We have also shown that those youngsters who improve their physical fitness between the ages of 15 and 18 increase their cognitive performance,” says Maria Aberg, researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy and physician at Aby health centre. “This being the case, physical education is a subject that has an important place in schools, and is an absolute must if we want to do well in maths and other theoretical subjects.” The researchers have also compared the results from fitness tests during national service with the socio-economic status of the men later in life. Those who were fit at 18 were more likely to go into higher education, and many secured more qualified jobs.

Life Expectancy in the Last Hundred Years（A级） A hundred years ago，life expectancy in developed countries was about 47；in the early 21st century, men in the United States and the United Kingdom can expect to live to about 74, women to about 80, and these ages are rising all the time. What has brought about these changes? When we look at the life span of people l00 years ago, we need to look at the greatest killers of the time. In the early 20th century, these were the acute and often highly infectious diseases such as smallpox. Many children died very young from these diseases and others, and the weak and elderly were always at risk. In the developed world these diseases are far lessdeadly today, and in some cases have almost disappeared. A number of factors have led to this: improvements in sanitation and hygiene, the discovery and use of antibiotics, which make bacterial diseases much less dangerous, and vaccinations against common diseases. In addition, people's general health has improved with improvements in our general environment: cleaner air, better means of preserving food，better and warmer housing，and better understanding of nutrition. Genetically，we should all be able to live to about 85 but while people do live longer today, there are still some big killers around that are preventing us from consistently reaching that age. The problems that affect people today are the more chronic illnesses, such as heart disease and strokes, and those spread by viruses, such as influenza and AIDS. Of course, cancer is a huge killer as well. In most cases these diseases affect older people, but there are worrying trends in the developed world with problems such as obesity leading to more heart disease and illnesses such as diabetes at younger ages. The killers today can be classed as "lifestyle diseases"，which means that it may be possible to halt their progress.