Cats of all kinds are present in the legends, religion, mythology, and history of many different cultures. Cave paintings created by early humans display different types of wild cats (4) _______ are now extinct, or no longer around. Many of these great beasts saw humans as food, but were hunted by humans in return. Cats (5) ________ to the ones kept as pets today started showing up in artwork thousands of years ago. For example, the ancient Egyptians believed cats were the sacred, or special, animal of a goddess named Bast. They believed that Bast often appeared as a cat, so many ancient Egyptians respected and honoured cats and kittens. (6) ________, other cultures feared cats or thought that they brought illnesses and bad luck. Today, with millions kept as pets in homes around the world, cats have become important members of (7) _______ families. No one knows for sure when or how cats became very popular household pets. It's possible that people noticed how cats hunted mice and rats, so they set food and milk out to keep the cats near their homes. This helped to prevent too many of these rodents from coming into homes and eating people's food or (8) _________ sickness.

Successful students often do the followings while studying. First, they have an overview before reading. Next, they look for important information and pay greater attention to it (which often needs jumping forward or backward to process information). They also relate important points to one another. Also, they activate and use their prior knowledge. When they realize that their understanding is not good, they do not wait to change strategies. Last, they can monitor understanding and take action to correct or “fix up” mistakes in comprehension.
Conversely, students with low academic achievement often demonstrate ineffective study skills. They tend to assume a passive role, in learning and rely on others (e.g., teachers, parents) to monitor their studying, for example, low-achieving students often do not monitor their understanding of content; they may not be aware of the purpose of studying; and they show little evidence of looking back or employing “fix-up” strategies to fix understanding problems. Students who struggle with learning new information seem to be unaware that they must extent effort beyond simply reading the content to understand and remember it.
Children with learning disabilities do not plan and judge the quality of their studying. Their studying may be disorganized. Students with learning problems face challenges with personal organization as well. They often have difficulty keeping track of materials and assignments, following directions, and completing work on time. Unlike good studiers who employ a variety of study skills in a flexible yet purposeful manner, low-achieving students use a restricted range of study skills. They cannot explain why good study strategies are important for learning; and they tend to use the same, often ineffective study approach for all learning tasks, ignoring task content, structure or difficulty.
(Source: Adapted from Study Skills: Managing Your Learning — NUI Galway)

The authors noted that while other forms of pollution are decreasing, noise pollution has been increasing. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that there has been an increase in the number of people who have been complaining about excessive noise in the WHO region. Populations that are exposed to high noise levels can be afflicted by other symptoms such as: stress reactions, sleep-stage changes, and clinical symptoms like hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. All these impacts can contribute to premature mortality. It is important to note that these adverse health problems impact all age groups including children and adolescents. In fact, it has been reported that children who live and or study in an area afflicted with noise pollution tend to suffer from stress, impairments in memory and attention as well as difficulty reading.
“In Western Europe, the guidelines say, traffic noise results in an annual loss of at least one million healthy years”. Traffic noise is currently ranked second among environmental threats to public health. The danger of noise pollution is more present to us when we are asleep. Because the human ear is so sensitive, it never rests, it is always working, picking up and transmitting sounds for our brains to interpret. This always on working process is where the danger lies, though you may be sleeping, sounds are still being picked up and processed. The most common side effects of this phenomenon are sleep disturbance and tiredness, impaired memory judgment, and psychomotor skills. The other more serious outcomes of this can be the triggering of the body’s acute stress response, which raises blood pressure and heart rate as the body and brain go into a state of hyperarousal. According to the European Environment Agency, at least 10,000 cases of premature deaths from noise exposure occur each year, although incomplete data mean this number is significantly underestimated.
(Adapted from bbc.com)