WATER

Water is one of our most precious resources; to (31) it simply, without water there would be no life. Unfortunately many of us seem to have forgotten this fact, and as a result the world is facing the danger of running out of water. The actual amount of water on earth has changed (32) since the time of the dinosaurs. The problem has been caused by people’s misuse of our water supply. This not only means that we have polluted our rivers and seas, but also that we are (33) a great deal of this precious resource.

Unfortunately, the destruction of the rain forests has made this problem worse since much of the rain (34) falls is lost because it runs off into the sea. The population of the earth is increasing daily (35) it is vital that we find a solution to this problem before it is too late.

Hi – tech maps of the mind that computer games are damaging brain development and could lead to children’s being unable to control violent behaviour. Computer games are creating a dumbed-down generation of children far more disposed to violence than their parents, according to a controversial new study.The tendency to lose control is not due to children’s absorbing the aggression involved in the computer game itself, as previous researchers have suggested, but rather to the damage done by stunting the developing mind.

Some experts used the most sophisticated technological devices available to measure the level of brain activity of hundreds of teenagers playing a Nintendo game and compared to the brain scans of other students doing a simple, repetitive arithmetical exercise. To the surprise of brain-mapping expert Professor Ryuta Kawashima and his team at Tohoku University in Japan, it was found that the computer game only stimulated activity in the parts of the brain associated with vision and movement. In contrast, arithmetic stimulated brain activity in both the left and right hemispheres of the frontal lobe, which is the area of the brain most associated with learning, memory and emotion. The most worrying of all was that the frontal lobe, which continues to develop in humans until the age of about 20, also has an important role to play in keeping an individual’s behaviour in check. Whenever you use self-control to refrain from lashing out or doing something you should not, the frontal lobe is hard at work.

The students who played computer games were halting the process of brain development and affecting their ability to control potential anti-social elements of their behaviour. “The importance of this discovery cannot be underestimated”, Kawashima said, “there is a problem we will have with a new generation of children, who play computer games that we have never seen before.” The implication are very serious for an increasingly violent society and these students will be doing more and more bad things if they are playing games and not doing other things like reading aloud or learning arithmetic.”

When he was nine years old, Felix Finkbeiner gave a class presentation on climate change. The young German spoke about deforestation and its effect on the planet. At the end of his talk, he challenged the people of his country to help by planting one million trees. Nobody thought much would come of a nine – year – old’s school project. Before he was 20, however, Finkbeiner’s efforts had resulted in the planting of more than 14 billion trees around the world.

Finkbeiner and his classmates began the project – named “Plant – for – the – Planet” – by planting the first tree outside their school. Other schools followed the example, and news of the one – million challenge spread. As a result, Finkbeiner was asked to speak at the European Parliament. Other invitations soon followed, and when he was just 13, he spoke at a United Nations conference in New York. “We cannot trust that adults alone will save our future,” he said in the speech. “We have to take our future in our hands.” Finkbeiner is ow in his twenties, and “Plant – for – the – Planet” is an organization with around 70,000 members. It works to teach people about climate change and to encourage the planting of more trees. Germany’s one millionth tree was planted long ago. The goal now is one trillion – 150 for every person on Earth.

Finkbeiner continues to give talks on climate change to world leaders. “I don’t think we can give up on this generation of adults,” he says, “and wait 20 or 30 years for our generation to come to power. We don’t have that time. All we can do is push [current world leaders] in the right direction.”