Do you have a mobile phone? It can be so useful! Mobile phones help people (34) in touch with friends and family. Many mobile phones also provide entertainment. They're full of games and (35) other apps to keep people occupied. If you were to ask most mobile phone users, they'd say their mobile phone definitely makes life easier!
(36) , most people don't know about the impact mobile phones have on our ecosystem. If you have ever looked at the inside of a mobile phone, you know they're made of many types of metals. The process of mining for these metals is one major way mobile phones affect the ecosystem. When people mine for metals, (37) waste is created. It hurts both aquatic and plant life if not disposed of properly. In addition, mining for our phones adds to deforestation as a large number of trees are cut down for mining every year. Moreover, mining for phone production puts more carbon into the air, (38) adds to climate change, another major concern for our ecosystem. The impact of mobile phones on our ecosystem is expected to grow as many people replace their phones after using them for just a few years and send their old phones straight to a landfill.

A good deal of fascinating research has been done about the reading patterns of young people, and it is surprising to discover at what early age children start expressing preferences for particular kinds of books. A recent report, which examined in detail the reading habits of primary-school children, showed that even seven-year-old boys and girls have clear views about what they want to read. Girls, in general, read more, and far more girls than boys preferred reading stories. Boys were showing a taste for the more instant appeal of picture stories, or else books about their hobbies.
These tastes continue unchanged until the children are teenagers. Apparently girls read more in general, but more fiction in particular. You could say that there are more opportunities for girls to read fiction: magazines encourage the fiction habit in girls in their early teens, and by their late teens, girls have probably moved on to the adult women’s magazines. Teenage boys tend to buy magazines about their hobbies: sports, motorcycles, heavy transport and so on.
Adult reading tastes are also the subject of research. Again the number of women who read for pleasure is considerably higher than the number of men. It seems that the majority of women still want love stories. There has also been some analysis of what men actually read. Apparently only 38 percent of men read anything, but 50 percent of what they read is fiction in the form of action-packed stories of space or gunmen.

Although bear-like, koalas are not bears. They are mammals, so feed their young milk and are marsupials, which means that their babies are born immature and they develop further in the safety of a pouch. They are tree-dwelling, herbivorous marsupials, which average about 9kg in weight and live on gum leaves. Their fur is thick and usually ash grey with a tinge of brown in places. Koalas in the southern parts of Australia are considerably larger and have thicker fur than those in the north. This is thought to be an adaptation to keep them warm in the colder southern winters.
Younger breeding females usually give birth to one joey each year, depending on a range of factors. The joey stays in its mother’s pouch for about 6 or 7 months, drinking only milk. After venturing out of the pouch, the joey rides on its mother’s abdomen or back, although it continues to return to her pouch for milk until it is too big to fit inside. The joey leaves its mother’s home range between 1 and 3 years old, depending on when the mother has her next joey.
Koalas are mostly nocturnal. They sleep for part of the night and also sometimes move about in the daytime. They often sleep for up to 18-20 hours each day. There is a myth that koalas sleep a lot because they ‘get drunk’ on gum leaves. However, most of their time is spent sleeping because it requires a lot of energy to digest their toxic, fibrous, low-nutrition diet and sleeping is the best way to conserve energy.
The koala gets its name from an ancient Aboriginal word meaning “no drink” because it receives over 90% of its hydration from the eucalyptus leaves (also known as gum leaves) it eats, and only drinks when ill or times when there is not enough moisture in the leaves i.e. during droughts, etc.
(Adapted from “blog.e2language.com”)