ELECTRIC-CAR BATTERY CHARGES IN FIVE MINUTES
Car makers are spending a lot of money on electric cars. In the future, electric cars will replace petrol cars. Environmentalists believe this will reduce the amount of CO2 (34) into the atmosphere. A big problem for electric cars is charging the battery. Some batteries in today's electric cars can take up to 12 hours to charge fully. (35) , a company in Israel says it has created a lithium-ion battery that people can charge in just five minutes. This is the same amount of time it takes to fill a tank of gas with petrol. The new lithium-ion batteries (36) were developed by the Israeli company StoreDot are being manufactured by a Chinese company called Eve Energy.
The new batteries could totally transform driving. They would mean electric cars would be able to travel as far as petrol cars. (37) people with electric cars today suffer from "range anxiety". This is stress caused by worrying about the battery running out of electricity. The new batteries would end this anxiety. A StoreDot spokesperson said: "We're at the point of (38) a revolution in the electric vehicle charging experience".
(Adapted from https://breakingnewsenglish.com/2101/210124-car-battery.html)

Most of us have a sweet tooth. We love to eat a cookie, a donut or a piece of chocolate. But have you noticed what often happens when you eat one? When we eat or drink sugary foods, the sugar enters our blood and affects part of our brain. We may feel better, but the good feeling stops and we just want another one. All tasty foods do this, but sugar has a particularly strong effect. This is why many scientists believe that our love of sugar might be an addiction. In the body, sugar acts like an addictive drug, one that doctors recommend we all cut down.
It seems obvious now that too much sugar can harm us, but why is it harmful? In early human history, the body began storing sugar as fat to use as energy. Our bodies are efficient, so they need very little sugar. Today, the Western diet has the highest amount of sugar in history. There are also more high blood pressure and diabetes in the world. Some researchers believe that too much sugar may be the culprit.
How do we battle our sweet tooth? Doctors advise us to cut down on sweets. They recommend that we choose healthy foods for snacks. Nuts, dark chocolate and yogurts are some of them. Yet even healthy foods can have too much sugar. Yogurts that are advertised as low-fat can have 17 grams, about half the daily allowance. However, the less sugar you eat, the less you want. Exercise helps, too. Using facilities such as walking tracks and gymnasiums can help control our desire.
(Adapted from Reading Explorer 2, Paul MacIntyre et al., 2015)

Photographic evidence suggests that liquid water once existed in great quantity on the surface of Mars. Two types of flow features are seen: runoff channels and outflow channels. Runoff channels are found in the southern highlands. These flow features are extensive systems of interconnecting, twisting channels that seem to merge into larger, wider channels. They bear a strong resemblance to river systems on Earth, and geologists think that they are dried-up beds of long-gone rivers that once carried rainfall on Mars from the mountains down into the valleys. Runoff channels on Mars speak of a time 4 billion years ago, when the atmosphere was thicker, the surface warmer, and liquid water widespread.
Outflow channels are probably relics of catastrophic flooding on Mars long ago. They appear only in equatorial regions and generally do not form extensive interconnected networks. Instead, they are probably the paths taken by huge volumes of water draining from the southern highlands into the northern plains. The onrushing water arising from these flash floods likely also formed the odd teardrop-shaped "islands" that have been found on the plains close to the ends of the outflow channels. Judging from the width and depth of the channels, the flow rates must have been truly enormous – perhaps as much as a hundred times greater than the 105 tons per second carried by the great Amazon River. Flooding shaped the outflow channels approximately 3 billion years ago, about the same time as the northern volcanic plains formed.
Some scientists speculate that Mars may have enjoyed an extended early period during which rivers, lakes, and perhaps even oceans adorned its surface. A 2003 Mars Global Surveyor image shows what mission specialists think may be a delta – a fan-shaped network of channels and sediments where a river once flowed into a larger body of water, in this case a lake filling a crater in the southern highlands. Other researchers go even further, suggesting that the data provide evidence for large open expanses of water on the early Martian surface. A computer-generated view of the Martian north polar region shows the extent of what may have been an ancient ocean covering much of the northern lowlands. The Hellas Basin, which measures some 3,000 kilometers across and has a floor that lies nearly 9 kilometers below the basin's rim, is another candidate for an ancient Martian sea.
(Source: https://www.ets.org/toefl/rpdt/prepare/reading)