VIP PLUS - ĐỀ SỐ 10

THE IMPORTANCE OF FRIENDSHIP
It is undeniable that friendship is important for just about everyone. Individuals with several close friends are usually happier than those without. Good friends often know things (26) ________ family members may not be aware of, even if they have lived together for years. This is probably because when in the (27) ________ of a good friend we share our secrets and dreams. Friends turn to one another for suggestions on how to solve their problems.
There is a tendency for close friends to be very honest, sometimes saying things the (28) ________ person may not want to hear! Good friends (29) ________ together, and the best relationships may last a lifetime. It is little surprise that most friends have similar personalities, which reduces the risk of conflict. (30) ________, people don’t always have an accurate picture of who their true friends are. Research shows that in a surprising number of cases a person someone considers a good friend doesn’t feel the same about them.
(Adapted from Exam Booster by Helen Chilton, Sheila Dignen, Mark Fountain and Frances Treloar)

Many scientists believe our love of sugar may actually be an addiction. When we eat or drink sugary foods, the sugar enters our blood and affects parts of our brain that make us feel good. Then the good feeling goes away, leaving us wanting more. All tasty foods do this, but sugar has a particularly strong effect. In this way, it is in fact an addictive drug, one that doctors recommend we all cut down on.

"It seems like every time I study an illness and trace a path to the first cause, I find my way back to sugar," says scientist Richard Johnson. One-third of adults worldwide have high blood pressure, and up to 347 million have diabetes. Why? "Sugar, we believe, is one of the culprits, if not the major culprit," says Johnson.

Our bodies are designed to survive on very little sugar. Early humans often had very little food, so our bodies learned to be very efficient in storing sugar as fat. In this way, we had energy stored for when there was no food. But today, most people have more than enough. So the very thing that once saved us may now be killing us.

So what is the solution? It's obvious that we need to eat less sugar. The trouble is, in today's world, it's extremely difficult to avoid. From breakfast cereals to after dinner desserts, our foods are increasingly filled with it. Some manufacturers even use sugar to replace taste in foods that are advertised as low in fat. But there are those who are fighting back against sugar. Many schools are replacing sugary desserts with healthier options like fruit. Other schools are growing their own food in gardens, or building facilities like walking tracks so students and others in the community can exercise. The battle has not yet been lost.
(Adapted from Reading Explorer by Paul Macintyre and David Bohlke)

The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture by Professor Alan Short is the culmination of 30 years of research and award-winning green building design by Short and colleagues in Architecture, Engineering, Applied Maths, and Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge. ‘The crisis in building design is already here,’ said Short. ‘Policymakers think you can solve energy and building problems with gadgets. You can’t. As global temperatures continue to rise, we are going to continue to squander more and more energy on keeping our buildings mechanically cool until we have run out of capacity.’

Short is calling for a sweeping reinvention of how skyscrapers and major public buildings are designed – to end the reliance on sealed buildings that exist solely via the ‘life support’ system of vast air conditioning units. Instead, he shows it is entirely possible to accommodate natural ventilation and cooling in large buildings by looking into the past, before the widespread introduction of air conditioning systems, which were ‘relentlessly and aggressively marketed’ by their inventors.

Short’s book highlights a developing and sophisticated art and science of ventilating buildings through the 19th and earlier-20th centuries, including the design of ingeniously ventilated hospitals. Of particular interest were those built to the designs of John Shaw Billings, including the first Johns Hopkins Hospital in the US city of Baltimore (1873-1889). ‘We spent three years digitally modeling Billings’ final designs,’ says Short. ‘We put pathogens in the airstreams, modeled for one patient with tuberculosis (TB) coughing in the wards and we found the ventilation systems in the room would have kept others safe from harm. Much of the ingenuity present in the 19th-century hospital and building design was driven by a panicked public clamoring for buildings that could protect against what was thought to be the lethal threat of miasmas – the toxic air that spread disease. Miasmas were feared as the principal agents of disease and epidemics for centuries and were used to explain the spread of infection from the Middle Ages right through to the cholera outbreaks in London and Paris during the 1850s. Foul air, rather than germs, was believed to be the main driver of ‘hospital fever’, leading to disease and frequent death. The prosperous steered clear of hospitals. While miasma theory has been long since disproved, Short has for the last 30 years advocated a return to some of the building design principles produced in its wake.

Today, huge amounts of a building’s space and construction cost are given over to air conditioning. ‘But I have designed and built a series of buildings over the past three decades which have tried to reinvent some of these ideas and then measure what happens. ‘To go forward into our new low-energy, low-carbon future, we would be well advised to look back at design before our high-energy, high-carbon present appeared. What is surprising is what a rich legacy we have abandoned.’
(Adapted from Cambridge English IELTS Academic by Cambridge University Press)