Premise: When discussing his famous character Rorschach, the antihero of Watchmen, Moore explains, I originally intended Rorschach to be a warning about the possible outcome of vigilante thinking. But an awful lot of comic readers felt his remorseless, frightening, psychotic toughness was his most appealing characteristic not quite what I was going for. Moore misunderstands his own heros appeal within this quotation: it is not that Rorschach is willing to break little fingers to extract information, or that he is happy to use violence, that makes him laudable. The Comedian, another superhero within the alternative world of Watchmen, is a thug who has won no great fan base; his remorselessness (killing a pregnant Vietnamese woman), frightening (attempt at rape), psychotic toughness (one only has to look at the panels of him shooting out into a crowd to witness this) is repulsive, not winning. This is because The Comedian has no purpose: he is a nihilist, and as a nihilist, denies any potential meaning to his fellow man, and so to the comics reader. Everything to him is a joke, including his self, and consequently his own death could be seen as just another gag. Rorschach, on the other hand, does believe in something: he questions if his fight for justice is futile? then instantly corrects himself, stating there is good and evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise in this. Jacob Held, in his essay comparing Rorschachs motivation with Kantian ethics, put forward the postulation perhaps our dignity is found in acting as if the world were just, even when it is clearly not. Rorschach then causes pain in others not because he is a sadist, but because he feels the need to punish wrong and to uphold the good, and though he cannot make the world just, he can act according to his sense of justice - through the use of violence.

Hypothesis: The Comedian is a misnomer - the character that goes by this title should not, logically, be called this.


Premise: When each year an average of 500,000 immigrants entered the country the Home Office calculated that the fiscal benefit of this level of inward migration was 2.5 billion a year. This calculation was used extensively by the government of the day to support their immigration policies. The findings of the Home Office stood out against the findings of other western nations which found the benefits of large-scale inward migration to be so small as to be close to zero. The difference in the findings arose because the Home Office figure was based only on the effect of inward migration on the country's total Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while the other studies measured the effect on GDP per head. However, the Home Office calculation was obviously flawed, and they have since stopped using it, because immigration manifestly increases both the total GDP and the population. While the overall effect of inward migration may be negligible nationally in fiscal terms, the indigenous low paid and low skilled stand to lose out because as a consequence of the inward migration they face greater competition for work. Some employers have much to gain from the improved supply of labour and savings made from not having to train young people.

Hypothesis: The authors intended meaning when he wrote However, the Home Office calculation was obviously flawed, and they have since stopped using it, because immigration manifestly increases both the total GDP and the population would be better served if instead of immigration he wrote inward migration.


Hypothesis: There are no clear winners in an economy experiencing large-scale inward migration.


Hypothesis: It is no longer the case that half a million immigrants enter the country.


Premise: When evolution runs backwards Evolution isnt supposed to run backwards - yet an increasing number of examples show that it does and that it can sometimes represent the future of a species. The description of any animal as an evolutionary throwback is controversial. For the better part of a century, most biologists have been reluctant to use those words, mindful of a principle of evolution that says evolution cannot run backwards. But as more and more examples come to light and modern genetics enters the scene, that principle is having to be rewritten. Not only are evolutionary throwbacks possible, they sometimes play an important role in the forward march of evolution. The technical term for an evolutionary throwback is an atavism, from the Latin atavus, meaning forefather. The word has ugly connotations thanks largely to Cesare Lombroso, a 19th-century Italian medic who argued that criminals were born not made and could be identified by certain physical features that were throwbacks to a primitive, sub-human state. While Lombroso was measuring criminals, a Belgian palaeontologist called Louis Dollo was studying fossil records and coming to the opposite conclusion. In 1890 he proposed that evolution was irreversible: that an organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realised in the ranks of its ancestors. Early 20th-century biologists came to a similar conclusion, though they qualified it in terms of probability, stating that there is no reason why evolution cannot run backwards -it is just very unlikely. And so the idea of irreversibility in evolution stuck and came to be known as Dollos law. If Dollos law is right, atavisms should occur only very rarely, if at all. Yet almost since the idea took root, exceptions have been cropping up. In 1919, for example, a humpback whale with a pair of leglike appendages over a metre long, complete with a full set of limb bones, was caught off Vancouver Island in Canada. Explorer Roy Chapman Andrews argued at the time that the whale must be a throwback to a land-living ancestor. I can see no other explanation, he wrote in 1921. Since then, so many other examples have been discovered that it no longer makes sense to say that evolution is as good as irreversible. And this poses a puzzle: how can characteristics that disappeared millions of years ago suddenly reappear? In 1994, Rudolf Raff and colleagues at Indiana University in the USA decided to use genetics to put a number on the probability of evolution going into reverse. They reasoned that while some evolutionary changes involve the loss of genes and are therefore irreversible, others may be the result of genes being switched off. If these silent genes are somehow switched back on, they argued, longlost traits could reappear. Raffs team went on to calculate the likelihood of it happening. Silent genes accumulate random mutations, they reasoned, eventually rendering them useless. So how long can a gene survive in a species if it is no longer used? The team calculated that there is a good chance of silent genes surviving for up to 6 million years in at least a few individuals in a population, and that some might survive as long as 10 million years. In other words, throwbacks are possible, but only to the relatively recent evolutionary past. As a possible example, the team pointed to the mole salamanders of Mexico and California. Like most amphibians these begin life in a juvenile tadpole state, then metamorphose into the adult form except for one species, the axolotl, which famously lives its entire life as a juvenile. The simplest explanation for this is that the axolotl lineage alone lost the ability to metamorphose, while others retained it. From a detailed analysis of the salamanders family tree, however, it is clear that the other lineages evolved from an ancestor that itself had lost the ability to metamorphose. In other words, metamorphosis in mole salamanders is an atavism. The salamander example fits with Raffs 10million-year time frame. 82More recently, however, examples have been reported that break the time limit, suggesting that silent genes may not be the whole story. In a paper published last year, biologist Gunter Wagner of Yale University reported some work on the evolutionary history of a group of South American lizards called Bachia. Many of these have minuscule limbs; some look more like snakes than lizards and a few have completely lost the toes on their hind limbs. Other species, however, sport up to four toes on their hind legs. The simplest explanation is that the toed lineages never lost their toes, but Wagner begs to differ. According to his analysis of the Bachia family tree, the toed species re-evolved toes from toeless ancestors and, what is more, digit loss and gain has occurred on more than one occasion over tens of millions of years. So whats going on? One possibility is that these traits are lost and then simply reappear, in much the same way that similar structures can independently arise in unrelated species, such as the dorsal fins of sharks and killer whales. Another more intriguing possibility is that the genetic information needed to make toes somehow survived for tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of years in the lizards and was reactivated. These atavistic traits provided an advantage and spread through the population, effectively reversing evolution. But if silent genes degrade within 6 to million years, how can long-lost traits be reactivated over longer timescales? The answer may lie in the womb. Early embryos of many species develop ancestral features. Snake embryos, for example, sprout hind limb buds. Later in development these features disappear thanks to developmental programs that say lose the leg. If for any reason this does not happen, the ancestral feature may not disappear, leading to an atavism.

Hypothesis: Evolutionary throwbacks might be caused by developmental problems in the womb.


Hypothesis: The temporary occurence of longlost traits in embryos is rare.


Hypothesis: Wagner was the first person to do research on South American lizards.


Hypothesis: Wagner believes that Bachia lizards with toes had toeless ancestors.


Premise: When evolution runs backwards. Evolution isnt supposed to run backwards yet an increasing number of examples show that it does and that it can sometimes represent the future of a species The description of any animal as an evolutionary throwback is controversial. For the better part of a century, most biologists have been reluctant to use those words, mindful of a principle of evolution that says evolution cannot run backwards. But as more and more examples come to light and modern genetics enters the scene, that principle is having to be rewritten. Not only are evolutionary throwbacks possible, they sometimes play an important role in the forward march of evolution. The technical term for an evolutionary throwback is an atavism, from the Latin atavus, meaning forefather. The word has ugly connotations thanks largely to Cesare Lombroso, a 19th-century Italian medic who argued that criminals were born not made and could be identified by certain physical features that were throwbacks to a primitive, sub-human state. While Lombroso was measuring criminals, a Belgian palaeontologist called Louis Dollo was studying fossil records and coming to the opposite conclusion. In 1890 he proposed that evolution was irreversible: that an organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realised in the ranks of its ancestors. Early 20th-century biologists came to a similar conclusion, though they qualified it in terms of probability, stating that there is no reason why evolution cannot run backwards it is just very unlikely. And so the idea of irreversibility in evolution stuck and came to be known as Dollos law. If Dollos law is right, atavisms should occur only very rarely, if at all. Yet almost since the idea took root, exceptions have been cropping up. In 1919, for example, a humpback whale with a pair of leg-like appendages over a metre long, complete with a full set of limb bones, was caught off Vancouver Island in Canada. Explorer Roy Chapman Andrews argued at the time that the whale must be a throwback to a land-living ancestor. I can see no other explanation, he wrote in 1921. Since then, so many other examples have been discovered that it no longer makes sense to say that evolution is as good as irreversible. And this poses a puzzle: how can characteristics that disappeared millions of years ago suddenly reappear? In 1994, Rudolf Raff and colleagues at Indiana University in the USA decided to use genetics to put a number on the probability of evolution going into reverse. They reasoned that while some evolutionary changes involve the loss of genes and are therefore irreversible, others may be the result of genes being switched off. If these silent genes are somehow switched back on, they argued, long-lost traits could reappear. Raffs team went on to calculate the likelihood of it happening. Silent genes accumulate random mutations, they reasoned, eventually rendering them useless. So how long can a gene survive in a species if it is no longer used? The team calculated that there is a good chance of silent genes surviving for up to 6 million years in at least a few individuals in a population, and that some might survive as long as 10 million years. In other words, throwbacks are possible, but only to the relatively recent evolutionary past. As a possible example, the team pointed to the mole salamanders of Mexico and California. Like most amphibians these begin life in a juvenile tadpole state, then metamorphose into the adult form except for one species, the axolotl, which famously lives its entire life as a juvenile. The simplest explanation for this is that the axolotl lineage alone lost the ability to metamorphose, while others retained it. From a detailed analysis of the salamanders family tree, however, it is clear that the other lineages evolved from an ancestor that itself had lost the ability to metamorphose. In other words, metamorphosis in mole salamanders is an atavism. The salamander example fits with Raffs 10-million-year time frame. More recently, however, examples have been reported that break the time limit, suggesting that silent genes may not be the whole story. In a paper published last year, biologist Gunter Wagner of Yale University reported some work on the evolutionary history of a group of South American lizards called Bachia. Many of these have minuscule limbs; some look more like snakes than lizards and a few have completely lost the toes on their hind limbs. Other species, however, sport up to four toes on their hind legs. The simplest explanation is that the toed lineages never lost their toes, but Wagner begs to differ. According to his analysis of the Bachia family tree, the toed species re-evolved toes from toeless ancestors and, what is more, digit loss and gain has occurred on more than one occasion over tens of millions of years. So whats going on? One possibility is that these traits are lost and then simply reappear, in much the same way that similar structures can independently arise in unrelated species, such as the dorsal fins of sharks and killer whales. Another more intriguing possibility is that the genetic information needed to make toes somehow survived for tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of years in the lizards and was reactivated. These atavistic traits provided an advantage and spread through the population, effectively reversing evolution. But if silent genes degrade within 6 to 10 million years, how can long-lost traits be reactivated over longer timescales? The answer may lie in the womb. Early embryos of many species develop ancestral features. Snake embryos, for example, sprout hind limb buds. Later in development these features disappear thanks to developmental programs that say lose the leg. If for any reason this does not happen, the ancestral feature may not disappear, leading to an atavism.


Hypothesis: The temporary occurrence of long-lost traits in embryos is rare.


Premise: When the American War of Independence started, the Americans had no regular army. But one was soon formed under the command of George Washington. However, this army was badly equipped and lacked proper training. The war lasted for six years, from 1775 to 1781, and the Americans drew up the formal Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. This stated that the United States would be an independent republic.

Hypothesis: The war lasted for six years and the Declaration of Independence was made shortly after the end of the war.


Hypothesis: The first regular American army was commanded by Washington.


Hypothesis: The highly trained American army quickly won the war.


Premise: When the Tulip Bubble Burst Tulips are spring-blooming perennials that grow from bulbs. Depending on the species, tulip plants can grow as short as 4 inches (10 cm) or as high as 28 inches (71 cm). The tulip's large flowers usually bloom on scapes or sub-scapose stems that lack bracts. Most tulips produce only one flower per stem, but a few species bear multiple flowers on their scapes (e. g. Tulipa turkestanica). The showy, generally cup or star-shaped tulip flower has three petals and three sepals, which are often termed tepals because they are nearly identical. These six tepals are often marked on the interior surface near the bases with darker colorings. Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colors, except pure blue (several tulips with "blue" in the name have a faint violet hue) A. Long before anyone ever heard of Qualcomm, CMGI, Cisco Systems, or the other high-tech stocks that have soared during the current bull market, there was Semper Augustus. Both more prosaic and more sublime than any stock or bond, it was a tulip of extraordinary beauty, its midnight-blue petals topped by a band of pure white and accented with crimson flares. To denizens of 17th century Holland, little was as desirable. B. Around 1624, the Amsterdam man who owned the only dozen specimens was offered 3,000 guilders for one bulb. While there's no accurate way to render that in today's greenbacks, the sum was roughly equal to the annual income of a wealthy merchant. (A few years later, Rembrandt received about half that amount for painting The Night Watch. ) Yet the bulb's owner, whose name is now lost to history, nixed the offer. C. Who was crazier, the tulip lover who refused to sell for a small fortune or the one who was willing to splurge. That's a question that springs to mind after reading Tulip mania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused by British journalist Mike Dash. In recent years, as investors have intentionally forgotten everything they learned in Investing 101 in order to load up on unproved, unprofitable dot- com issues, tulip mania has been invoked frequently. In this concise, artfully written account, Dash tells the real history behind the buzzword and in doing so, offers a cautionary tale for our times. D. The Dutch were not the first to go gaga over the tulip. Long before the first tulip bloomed in Europe-in Bavaria, it turns out, in 1559-the flower had enchanted the Persians and bewitched the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. It was in Holland, however, that the passion for tulips found its most fertile ground, forreasons that had little to do with horticulture. E. Holland in the early 17th century was embarking on its Golden Age. Resources that had just a few years earlier gone toward fighting for independence from Spain now flowed into commerce. Amsterdam merchants were at the center of the lucrative East Indies trade, where a single voyage could yield profits of 400%. They displayed their success by erecting grand estates surrounded by flower gardens. The Dutch population seemed tom by two contradictory impulses: a horror of living beyond one's means and the love of a long shot. F. Enter the tulip. "It is impossible to comprehend the tulip mania without understanding just how different tulips were from every other flower known to horticulturists in the 17th century, " says Dash. "The colors they exhibited were more intense and more concentrated than those of ordinary plants. " Despite the outlandish prices commanded by rare bulbs, ordinary tulips were sold by the pound. Around 1630, however, a new type of tulip fancier appeared, lured by tales of fat profits. These "florists, " or professional tulip traders, sought out flower lovers and speculators alike. But if the supply of tulip buyers grew quickly, the supply of bulbs did not. The tulip was a conspirator in the supply squeeze: It takes seven years to grow one from seed. And while bulbs can produce two or three clones, or "offsets, " annually, the mother bulb only lasts a few years. G. Bulb prices rose steadily throughout the 1630s, as ever more speculators into the market. Weavers and farmers mortgaged whatever they could to raise cash to begin trading. In 1633, a farmhouse in Hoorn changed hands for three rare bulbs. By 1636 any tulip-even bulbs recently considered garbage-could be sold off, often for hundreds of guilders. A futures market for bulbs existed, and tulip traders could be found conducting their business in hundreds of Dutch taverns. Tulip mania reached its peak during the winter of 1636-37, when some bulbs were changing hands ten times in a day. The zenith came early that winter, at an auction to benefit seven orphans whose only asset was 70 fine tulips left by then father. One, a rare Violetten Admirael van Enkhuizen bulb that was about to split in two, sold for 5,200 guilders, the all-time record. All told, the flowers brought in nearly 53,000 guilders. H. Soon after, the tulip market crashed utterly, spectacularly. It began inHaarlem, at a routine bulb auction when, for the first time, the greater fool refused to show up and pay. Within days, the panic had spread across the country. Despite the efforts of traders to prop up demand, the market for tulips evaporated. Flowers that had commanded 5,000 guilders a few weeks before now fetched one-hundredth that amount. Tulip mania is not without flaws. Dash dwells too long on the tulip's migration from Asia to Holland. But he does a service with this illuminating, accessible account of incredible financial folly. I. Tulip mania differed in one crucial aspect from the dot-com craze that grips our attention today: Even at its height, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, well- established in 1630, wouldn't touch tulips. "The speculation in tulip bulbs always existed at the margins of Dutch economic life, " Dash writes. After the market crashed, a compromise was brokered that let most traders settle then debts for a fraction of then liability. The overall fallout on the Dutch economy was negligible. Will we say the same when Wall Street's current obsession finally runs its course?

Hypothesis: In 1624, all the tulip collection belonged to a man in Amsterdam.


Hypothesis: From 1630, Amsterdam Stock Exchange started to regulate Tulips exchange market.


Hypothesis: Holland was the most wealthy country in the world in 17th century.


Hypothesis: Popularity of Tulip in Holland was much higher than any other countries in17th century.


Hypothesis: Tulip was first planted in Holland according to this passage.


Premise: When they saw that it was snowing, Sheila and Bob Crandall decided to take the train to visit Sheila's Aunt Janet. Aunt Janet lives 218 miles from Sheila and Bob. The roundtrip train tickets cost $32.50 each. On all their other trips to visit Aunt Janet, Sheila and Bob had driven their car.

Hypothesis: For Sheila and Bob, taking the train is cheaper than driving the car.


Hypothesis: Sheila and Bob will have to buy four different train tickets.


Hypothesis: Based on the weather, Sheila and Bob made a decision to take the train.


Hypothesis: Aunt Janet persuaded Sheila and Bob to take the train.


Premise: When was the last time you saw a frog? Chances are, if you live in a city, you have not seen one for some time. Even in wet areas once teeming with frogs and toads, it is becoming less and less easy to find those slimy, hopping and sometimes poisonous members of the animal kingdom. All over the world, and even in remote parts of Australia, frogs are losing the ecological battle for survival, and biologists are at a loss to explain their demise. Are amphibians simply oversensitive to changes in the ecosystem? Could it be that their rapid decline in numbers is signaling some coming environmental disaster for us all? This frightening scenario is in part the consequence of a dramatic increase over the last quarter century in the development of once natural areas of wet marshland; home not only to frogs but to all manner of wildlife. However, as yet, there are no obvious reasons why certain frog species are disappearing from rainforests in Australia that have barely been touched by human hand. The mystery is unsettling to say the least, for it is known that amphibian species are extremely sensitive to environmental variations in temperature and moisture levels. The danger is that planet Earth might not only lose a vital link in the ecological food chain (frogs keep populations of otherwise pestilent insects at manageable levels), but we might be increasing our output of air pollutants to levels that may have already become irreversible. Frogs could be inadvertently warning us of a catastrophe. An example of a species of frog that, at far as is known, has become extinct, is the platypus frog. Like the well-known Australian mammal it was named after, it exhibited some very strange behaviour; instead of giving birth to tadpoles in the water, it raised its young within its stomach. The baby frogs were actually born from out of their mother's mouth. Discovered in 1981, less than ten years later the frog had completely vanished from the crystal clear waters of Booloumba Creek near Queensland's Sunshine Coast. Unfortunately, this freak of nature is not the only frog species to have been lost in Australia. Since the 1970s, no less than eight others have suffered the same fate. One theory that seems to fit the facts concerns the depletion of the ozone layer, a well documented phenomenon which has led to a sharp increase in ultraviolet radiation levels. The ozone layer is meant to shield the Earth from UV rays, but increased radiation may be having a greater effect upon frog populations than previously believed. Another theory is that worldwide temperature increases are upsetting the breeding cycles of frogs.

Hypothesis: Frogs and toads are usually poisonous.


Hypothesis: The frogs' natural habitat is becoming more and more developed.


Hypothesis: Frogs are disappearing only from city areas.


Hypothesis: Biologists are unable to explain why frogs are dying.


Hypothesis: Attempts are being made to halt the development of wet marshland.


Hypothesis: Frogs are important in the ecosystem because they control pests.


Hypothesis: The platypus frog became extinct by 1991.


Hypothesis: Frogs usually give birth to their young in an underwater nest.


Hypothesis: Eight frog species have become extinct so far in Australia.


Hypothesis: There is convincing evidence that the ozone layer is being depleted.


Hypothesis: It is a fact that frogs' breeding cycles are upset by worldwide in creases in temperature.


Premise: When you think about it, kissing is strange and a bit icky. You share saliva with someone, sometimes for a prolonged period of time. One kiss could pass on 80 million bacteria, not all of them good. Yet everyone surely remembers their first kiss, in all its embarrassing or delightful detail, and kissing continues to play a big role in new romances. At least, it does in some societies. People in western societies may assume that romantic kissing is a universal human behaviour, but a new analysis suggests that less than half of all cultures actually do it. Kissing is also extremely rare in the animal kingdom. So whats really behind this odd behaviour? If it is useful, why dont all animals do it and all humans too? It turns out that the very fact that most animals dont kiss helps explain why some do. According to a new study of kissing preferences, which looked at 168 cultures from around the world, only 46% of cultures kiss in the romantic sense. Previous estimates had put the figure at 90%. The new study excluded parents kissing their children, and focused solely on romantic lip-on-lip action between couples. Many hunter-gatherer groups showed no evidence of kissing or desire to do so. Some even considered it revolting. The Mehinaku tribe in Brazil reportedly said it was gross. Given that hunter-gatherer groups are the closest modern humans get to living our ancestral lifestyle, our ancestors may not have been kissing either. The study overturns the belief that romantic kissing is a near-universal human behaviour, says lead author William Jankowiak of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Instead it seems to be a product of western societies, passed on from one generation to the next, he says. There is some historical evidence to back that up. Kissing as we do it today seems to be a fairly recent invention, says Rafael Wlodarski of the University of Oxford in the UK. He has trawled through records to find evidence of how kissing has changed. The oldest evidence of a kissing-type behaviour comes from Hindu Vedic Sanskrit texts from over 3,500 years ago. Kissing was described as inhaling each others soul. In contrast, Egyptian hieroglyphics picture people close to each other rather than pressing their lips together. So what is going on? Is kissing something we do naturally, but that some cultures have suppressed? Or is it something modern humans have invented? We can find some insight by looking at animals. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, do kiss. Primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has seen many instances of chimps kissing and hugging after conflict. For chimpanzees, kissing is a form of reconciliation. It is more common among males than females. In other words, it is not a romantic behaviour. Their cousins the bonobos kiss more often, and they often use tongues while doing so. Thats perhaps not surprising, because bonobos are highly sexual beings. When two humans meet, we might shake hands. Bonobos have sex: the so-called bonobo handshake. They also use sex for many other kinds of bonding. So their kisses are not particularly romantic, either. These two apes are exceptions. As far as we know, other animals do not kiss at all. They may nuzzle or touch their faces together, but even those that have lips dont share saliva or purse and smack their lips together. They dont need to. Take wild boars. Males produce a pungent smell that females find extremely attractive. The key chemical is a pheromone called androstenone that triggers the females desire to mate. From a females point of view this is a good thing, because males with the most androstonene are also the most fertile. Her sense of smell is so acute, she doesnt need to get close enough to kiss the male. The same is true of many other mammals. For example, female hamsters emit a pheromone that gets males very excited. Mice follow similar chemical traces to help them find partners that are genetically different, minimising the risk of accidental incest. Animals often release these pheromones in their urine. Their urine is much more pungent, says Wlodarski. If theres urine present in the environment they can assess compatibility through that. Its not just mammals that have a great sense of smell. A male black widow spider can smell pheromones produced by a female that tell him if she has recently eaten. To minimise the risk of being eaten, he will only mate with her if she is not hungry. The point is, animals do not need to get close to each other to smell out a good potential mate. On the other hand, humans have an atrocious sense of smell, so we benefit from getting close. Smell isnt the only cue we use to assess each others fitness, but studies have shown that it plays an important role in mate choice. A study published in 1995 showed that women, just like mice, prefer the smell of men who are genetically different from them. This makes sense, as mating with someone with different genes is likely to produce healthy offspring. Kissing is a great way to get close enough to sniff out your partners genes. In 2013, Wlodarski examined kissing preferences in detail. He asked several hundred people what was most important when kissing someone. How they smelled featured highly, and the importance of smell increased when women were most fertile. It turns out that men also make a version of the pheromone that female boars find attractive. It is present in male sweat, and when women are exposed to it their arousal levels increase slightly. Pheromones are a big part of how mammals chose a mate, says Wlodarski, and we share some of them. Weve inherited all of our biology from mammals, weve just added extra things through evolutionary time. On that view, kissing is just a culturally acceptable way to get close enough to another person to detect their pheromones. In some cultures, this sniffing behaviour turned into physical lip contact. Its hard to pinpoint when this happened, but both serve the same purpose, says Wlodarski. So if you want to find a perfect match, you could forego kissing and start smelling people instead. Youll find just as good a partner, and you wont get half as many germs. Be prepared for some funny looks, though.

Hypothesis: Wlodarski surveyed several men to figure out the importance of kissing.


Hypothesis: Scent might be important in choosing your partner.


Hypothesis: Both Easter and Wester societies presume that kissing is essential for any part of the world.


Hypothesis: Our ancestors were not likely to kiss.


Hypothesis: Chimpanzees and bonbons kiss not for the romance.


Hypothesis: There are other animal, rather than apes, that kiss.


Hypothesis: According to a Hindu text, kissing is a means to exchange souls.


Hypothesis: Majority of the microorganisms passed by kissing are beneficial for the body.


Premise: Whereas mvertebrates have an external exoskeleton, humans and other vertebrates have an mternal endoskeleton. The human endoskeleton is comprised of cartilage and the bodys 206 bones, which are connected to each other by ligaments. As well as protecting and supporting the bodys internal organs, the human endoskeketon also works in conjunction with muscles, joints and the nervous system to enable movement. Jomts occur between bones, making the skeleton flexible by acting as hinges or pivots. Tendons attach muscles to bones and contract in response to a stimulus from the bodys nervous system. Those muscles that are under conscious control, the skeletal muscles, act by pullmg against the bones of the skeleton.

Hypothesis: Bones contract skeletal muscles m response to signals from the nervous system.


Hypothesis: Unlike invertebrates, humans have an mternal exoskeleton.


Hypothesis: The human skeleton is comprised mamly of bone.


Hypothesis: The human endoskeleton provides connection pomts for the bodys muscles.


Hypothesis: Physical activity requires the muscles and bones to synchronise.


Premise: Which of the following can be concluded from the above statement?

Hypothesis: Indoor air is 10 to 30 times more polluted than outdoor air, and pollutants include dust mites, bacteria, fungi, viruses and pollen.


Hypothesis: The highest demand for air purifiers is from Delhi.


Hypothesis: The sales of air purifier increase due to rise in air pollution.


Hypothesis: Delhi has been market as the most polluted city in the country by several reputed bodies.


Premise: While most forms of discrimination in the workplace have been outlawed, discrimination or bias against some employees seeking career advancement still happens. This discrimination is both unwritten and unacknowledged. A glass ceiling is the term used to describe this type of discrimination and refers to the invisible barrier that people hit when they try to progress beyond a certain level in some businesses and organisations. Originally coined to illustrate the hidden use of sexual discrimination against women in professional environments, it is now used to describe any form of discrimination, such as racism or ageism, which prevents qualified or experienced employees reaching even basic levels within their organisation. Some reports and studies now suggest that change is happening and that cracks are beginning to appear in the glass. The studies also claim however that change is happening slowly and that the cracks are small.

Hypothesis: A glass ceiling can prevent qualified people from getting to the top of their field.


Hypothesis: Males are less likely to experience the glass ceiling effect than females.


Hypothesis: There is no legislation covering discrimination at work so employers have to develop their own ways of preventing it.


Premise: Whilst Mr Black, Mr Saul and Mr Hardy travel to work by bus, Mr Jones and Mr Peters travel by train. Mr Black and Mr Saul also walk part of the way. Mr Saul, Mr Peters and Mr Hardy have season tickets.

Hypothesis: one people have neither a season ticket nor walk


Hypothesis: Mr Black travels by bus, but does not have a season ticket


Hypothesis: Mr Saul has a season ticket, but also walks


Hypothesis: Mr Peters lives closest to a bus stop


Hypothesis: Mr Jones does not have a season ticket and does not walk


Premise: Whilst having similar effects on employees, there tend to be major difference between a merger and an acquisition. In an acquisition, power is substantially assumed by the new parent company. Change is often swift and brutal as the acquirer imposes its own control systems and financial restraints. Parties to a merger are likely to be evenly matched in terms of size, and the power and cultural dynamics of the combination are more ambiguous, integration is a more drawn out process. During an acquisition, there is often more overt conflict and resistance and a sense of powerlessness. In mergers, because of the prolonged period between the initial announcement and full integration, uncertainty and anxiety continue for a much longer time as the organization remains in a state of limbo.

Hypothesis: Mergers yield a shorter period of anxiety and uncertainty amongst employees.


Hypothesis: Mergers and acquisition tend to have distinctly different impacts on employees.


Hypothesis: There tends to be a major power difference between parties in an acquisition.


Premise: Whilst high visibility crime such as night-time drunken disturbance has increased, total urban and rural crime, both reported and unreported, has fallen over the last two years, yet paradoxically people feel less safe, believing that the converse is the case. This fall in crime has coincided with a drop in the number of police officer on the street. A citizens fear of crime seems not to be a matter of reality at all- the visibility of law enforcement officials has a greater impact on their view of reality than hard facts.

Hypothesis: Reducing the number of police officer has led to a reduction in crime.


Hypothesis: Crime statistics support popular belief about the level of crime.


Hypothesis: People feel safer when there are more police on the street.


Premise: Whilst high visibility crime such as night-time drunken disturbance has increased, total urban and rural crime, both reported and unreported, has fallen over the last two years, yet people feel less safe, believing that the converse is the case. This fall in crime has coincided with a drop in the number of police officer on the street. A citizens fear of seems not to be a matter of reality at all; the visibility of law enforcement officials has a greater impact on their view of reality than hard facts.


Premise: Whiskers weighs less than Paws. Whiskers weighs more than Tabby.

Hypothesis: Of the three cats, Tabby weighs the least.


Premise: Why Pagodas Dont Fall Down In a land swept by typhoons and shaken by earthquakes, how have Japans tallest and seemingly flimsiest old buildings 500 or so wooden pagodas remained standing for centuries? Records show that only two have collapsed during the past 1400 years. Those that have disappeared were destroyed by fire as a result of lightning or civil war. The disastrous Hanshin earthquake in 1995 killed 6,400 people, toppled elevated highways, flattened office blocks and devastated the port area of Kobe. Yet it left the magnificent five-storey pagoda at the Toji temple in nearby Kyoto unscathed, though it levelled a number of buildings in the neighbourhood. Japanese scholars have been mystified for ages about why these tall, slender buildings are so stable. It was only thirty years ago that the building industry felt confident enough to erect office blocks of steel and reinforced concrete that had more than a dozen floors. With its special shock absorbers to dampen the effect of sudden sideways movements from an earthquake, the thirty-six-storey Kasumigaseki building in central Tokyo Japans first skyscraper was considered a masterpiece of modern engineering when it was built in 1968. Yet in 826, with only pegs and wedges to keep his wooden structure upright, the master builder Kobodaishi had no hesitation in sending his majestic Toji pagoda soaring fifty-five metres into the sky nearly half as high as the Kasumigaseki skyscraper built some eleven centuries later. Clearly, Japanese carpenters of the day knew a few tricks about allowing a building to sway and settle itself rather than fight natures forces. But what sort of tricks? The multi-storey pagoda came to Japan from China in the sixth century. As in China, they were first introduced with Buddhism and were attached to important temples. The Chinese built their pagodas in brick or stone, with inner staircases, and used them in later centuries mainly as watchtowers. When the pagoda reached Japan, however, its architecture was freely adapted to local conditions they were built less high, typically five rather than nine storeys, made mainly of wood and the staircase was dispensed with because the Japanese pagoda did not have any practical use but became more of an art object. Because of the typhoons that batter Japan in the summer, Japanese builders learned to extend the eaves of buildings further beyond the walls. This prevents rainwater gushing down the walls. Pagodas in China and Korea have nothing like the overhang that is found on pagodas in Japan. The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to overhang the sides of the structure by fifty per cent or more of the buildings overall width. For the same reason, the builders of Japanese pagodas seem to have further increased their weight by choosing to cover these extended eaves not with the porcelain tiles of many Chinese pagodas but with much heavier earthenware tiles. But this does not totally explain the great resilience of Japanese pagodas. Is the answer that, like a tall pine tree, the Japanese pagoda with its massive trunk-like central pillar known as shinbashira simply flexes and sways during a typhoon or earthquake? For centuries, many thought so. But the answer is not so simple because the startling thing is that the shinbashira actually carries no load at all. In fact, in some pagoda designs, it does not even rest on the ground, but is suspended from the top of the pagoda hanging loosely down through the middle of the building. The weight of the building is supported entirely by twelve outer and four inner columns. And what is the role of the shinbashira, the central pillar? The best way to understand the shinbashiras role is to watch a video made by Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr Ishida, known to his students as Professor Pagoda because of his passion to understand the pagoda, has built a series of models and tested them on a shake- table in his laboratory. In short, the shinbashira was acting like an enormous stationary pendulum. The ancient craftsmen, apparently without the assistance of very advanced mathematics, seemed to grasp the principles that were, more than a thousand years later, applied in the construction of Japans first skyscraper. What those early craftsmen had found by trial and error was that under pressure a pagodas loose stack of floors could be made to slither to and fro independent of one another. Viewed from the side, the pagoda seemed to be doing a snake dance with each consecutive floor moving in the opposite direction to its neighbours above and below. The shinbashira, running up through a hole in the centre of the building, constrained individual storeys from moving too far because, after moving a certain distance, they banged into it, transmitting energy away along the column. Another strange feature of the Japanese pagoda is that, because the building tapers, with each successive floor plan being smaller than the one below, none of the vertical pillars that carry the weight of the building is connected to its corresponding pillar above. In other words, a five- storey pagoda contains not even one pillar that travels right up through the building to carry the structural loads from the top to the bottom. More surprising is the fact that the individual storeys of a Japanese pagoda, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, are not actually connected to each other. They are simply stacked one on top of another like a pile of hats. Interestingly, such a design would not be permitted under current Japanese building regulations. And the extra-wide eaves? Think of them as a tightrope walkers balancing pole. The bigger the mass at each end of the pole, the easier it is for the tightrope walker to maintain his or her balance. The same holds true for a pagoda. With the eaves extending out on all sides like balancing poles, says Mr Ishida, the building responds to even the most powerful jolt of an earthquake with a graceful swaying, never an abrupt shaking. Here again, Japanese master builders of a thousand years ago anticipated concepts of modern structural engineering.

Hypothesis: Only two Japanese pagodas have collapsed in 1400 years.


Hypothesis: The Hanshin earthquake of 1995 destroyed the pagoda at the Toji temple.


Hypothesis: The builders of pagodas knew how to absorb some of the power produced by severe weather conditions.


Hypothesis: The other buildings near the Toji pagoda had been built in the last 30 years.


Premise: Why are so few tigers man-eaters? As you leave the Bandhavgarh National Park in central India, there is a notice which shows a huge, placid tiger. The notice says, You may not have seen me, but I have seen you. There are more than a billion people In India and Indian tigers probably see humans every single day of their lives. Tigers can and do kill almost everything they meet in the jungle, they will kill even attack elephants and rhino. Surely, then, it is a little strange that attacks on humans are not more frequent. Some people might argue that these attacks were in fact common in the past. British writers of adventure stories, such as Jim Corbett, gave the impression that village life in India in the early years of the twentieth century involved a stage of constant siege by man-eating tigers. But they may have overstated the terror spread by tigers. There were also far more tigers around in those days (probably 60.000 in the subcontinent compared to just 3000 today). So in proportion, attacks appear to have been as rare then as they are today. It is widely assumed that the constraint is fear; but what exactly are tigers afraid of? Can they really know that we may be even better armed than they are? Surely not. Has the species programmed the experiences of all tigers with humans its genes to be inherited as instinct? Perhaps. But I think the explanation may be more simple and, in a way, more intriguing. Since the growth of ethology in the 1950s. we have tried to understand animal behaviour from the animals point of view. Until the first elegant experiments by pioneers in the field such as Konrad Lorenz, naturalists wrote about animals as if they were slightly less intelligent humans. Jim Corbetts breathless accounts of his duels with a an-eaters in truth tell us more about Jim Corbett than they do about the animals. The principle of ethology, on the other hand, requires us to attempt to think in the same way as the animal we are studying thinks, and to observe every tiny detail of its behaviour without imposing our own human significances on its actions. I suspect that a tigers afraid of humans lies not in some preprogramed ancestral logic but in the way he actually perceives us visually. If you think like a tiger, a human in a car might appear just to be a part of the car, and because tigers dont eat cars the human is safe-unless the car is menacing the tiger or its cubs, in which case a brave or enraged tiger may charge. A human on foot is a different sort of puzzle. Imagine a tiger sees a man who is 1.8m tall. A tiger is less than 1m tall but they may be up to 3m long from head to tail. So when a tiger sees the man face on, it might not be unreasonable for him to assume that the man is 6m long. If he meet a deer of this size, he might attack the animal by leaping on its back, but when he looks behind the mind he cant see a back. From the front the man is huge, but looked at from the side he all but disappears. This must be very disconcerting. A hunter has to be confident that it can tackle its prey, and no one is confident when they are disconcerted. This is especially true of a solitary hunter such as the tiger and may explain why lions-particularly young lionesses who tend to encourage one another to take risks are more dangerous than tigers. If the theory that a tiger is disconcerted to find that a standing human is both very big and yet somehow invisible is correct, the opposite should be true of a squatting human. A squatting human is half he size and presents twice the spread of back, and more closely resembles a medium-sized deer. If tigers were simply frightened of all humans, then a squatting person would be no more attractive as a target than a standing one. This, however appears not to be the case. Many incidents of attacks on people involving villagers squatting or bending over to cut grass for fodder or building material. The fact that humans stand upright may therefore not just be something that distinguishes them from nearly all other species, but also a factor that helped them to survive in a dangerous and unpredictable environment.

Hypothesis: Some writers of fiction have exaggerated the danger of tigers to man.


Hypothesis: The fear of humans may be passed down in a tigers genes.


Hypothesis: Konrad Lorenz claimed that some animals are more intelligent than humans.


Hypothesis: Ethology involves applying principles of human behaviour to animals.


Hypothesis: Tigers in the Bandhavgarh National Park are a protected species.


Premise: Why companies should welcome disorder Organisation is big business. Whether it is of our lives - all those inboxes and calendars - or how companies are structured, a multi-billion dollar industry helps to meet this need. We have more strategies for time management, project management and self-organisation than at any other time in human history. We are told that we ought to organise our company, our home life, our week, our day and even our sleep, all as a means to becoming more productive. Every week, countless seminars and workshops take place around the world to tell a paying public that they ought to structure their lives in order to achieve this. This rhetoric has also crept into the thinking of business leaders and entrepreneurs, much to the delight of self-proclaimed perfectionists with the need to get everything right. The number of business schools and graduates has massively increased over the past 50 years, essentially teaching people how to organise well. Ironically, however, the number of businesses that fail has also steadily increased. Work-related stress has increased. A large proportion of workers from all demographics claim to be dissatisfied with the way their work is structured and the way they are managed. This begs the question: what has gone wrong? Why is it that on paper the drive for organisation seems a sure shot for increasing productivity, but in reality falls well short of what is expected? This has been a problem for a while now. Frederick Taylor was one of the forefathers of scientific management. Writing in the first half of the 20th century, he designed a number of principles to improve the efficiency of the work process, which have since become widespread in modern companies. So the approach has been around for a while. New research suggests that this obsession with efficiency is misguided. The problem is not necessarily the management theories or strategies we use to organise our work; it's the basic assumptions we hold in approaching how we work. Here it's the assumption that order is a necessary condition for productivity. This assumption has also fostered the idea that disorder must be detrimental to organisational productivity. The result is that businesses and people spend time and money organising themselves for the sake of organising, rather than actually looking at the end goal and usefulness of such an effort. What's more, recent studies show that order actually has diminishing returns. Order does increase productivity to a certain extent, but eventually the usefulness of the process of organisation, and the benefit it yields, reduce until the point where any further increase in order reduces productivity. Some argue that in a business, if the cost of formally structuring something outweighs the benefit of doing it, then that thing ought not to be formally structured. Instead, the resources involved can be better used elsewhere. In fact, research shows that, when innovating, the best approach is to create an environment devoid of structure and hierarchy and enable everyone involved to engage as one organic group. These environments can lead to new solutions that, under conventionally structured environments (filled with bottlenecks in terms of information flow, power structures, rules, and routines) would never be reached. In recent times companies have slowly started to embrace this disorganisation. Many of them embrace it in terms of perception (embracing the idea of disorder, as opposed to fearing it) and in terms of process (putting mechanisms in place to reduce structure). For example, Oticon, a large Danish manufacturer of hearing aids, used what it called a 'spaghetti' structure in order to reduce the organisation's rigid hierarchies. This involved scrapping formal job titles and giving staff huge amounts of ownership over their own time and projects. This approach proved to be highly successful initially, with clear improvements in worker productivity in all facets of the business. In similar fashion, the former chairman of General Electric embraced disorganisation, putting forward the idea of the 'boundaryless' organisation. Again, it involves breaking down the barriers between different parts of a company and encouraging virtual collaboration and flexible working. Google and a number of other tech companies have embraced (at least in part) these kinds of flexible structures, facilitated by technology and strong company values which glue people together. A word of warning to others thinking of jumping on this bandwagon: the evidence so far suggests disorder, much like order, also seems to have diminishing utility, and can also have detrimental effects on performance if overused. Like order, disorder should be embraced only so far as it is useful. But we should not fear it - nor venerate one over the other. This research also shows that we should continually question whether or not our existing assumptions work.

Hypothesis: Google was inspired to adopt flexibility by the success of General Electric.


Hypothesis: Innovation is most successful if the people involved have distinct roles.


Hypothesis: Both businesses and people aim at order without really considering its value.


Premise: Why dont you go to the court if the employer does not pay you the Provident Fund contribution?

Hypothesis: It is obligatory for the employer to pay the Provident Fund contribution to the Employees.


Hypothesis: Courts can intervene in matters of dispute between employer and employees


Premise: Why pagodas don't fall down In a land swept by typhoons and shaken by earthquakes, how have Japan's tallest and seemingly flimsiest old buildings 500 or so wooden pagodas remained standing for centuries? Records show that only two have collapsed during the past 1400 years. Those that have disappeared were destroyed by fire as a result of lightning or civil war. The disastrous Hanshin earthquake in 1995 killed 6,400 people, toppled elevated highways, flattened office blocks and devastated the port area of Kobe. Yet it left the magnificent five-storey pagoda at the Toji temple in nearby Kyoto unscathed, though it levelled a number of buildings in the neighbourhood. Japanese scholars have been mystified for ages about why these tall, slender buildings are so stable. It was only thirty years ago that the building industry felt confident enough to erect office blocks of steel and reinforced concrete that had more than a dozen floors. With its special shock absorbers to dampen the effect of sudden sideways movements from an earthquake, the thirty-six-storey Kasumigaseki building in central Tokyo Japan's first skyscraper was considered a masterpiece of modern engineering when it was built in 1968. Yet in 826, with only pegs and wedges to keep his wooden structure upright, the master builder Kobodaishi had no hesitation in sending his majestic Toji pagoda soaring fifty-five metres into the sky nearly half as high as the Kasumigaseki skyscraper built some eleven centuries later. Clearly, Japanese carpenters of the day knew a few tricks about allowing a building to sway and settle itself rather than fight nature's forces. But what sort of tricks? The multi-storey pagoda came to Japan from China in the sixth century. As in China, they were first introduced with Buddhism and were attached to important temples. The Chinese built their pagodas in brick or stone, with inner staircases, and used them in later centuries mainly as watchtowers. When the pagoda reached Japan, however, its architecture was freely adapted to local conditions they were built less high, typically five rather than nine storeys, made mainly of wood and the staircase was dispensed with because the Japanese pagoda did not have any practical use but became more of an art object. Because of the typhoons that batter Japan in the summer, Japanese builders learned to extend the eaves of buildings further beyond the walls. This prevents rainwater gushing down the walls. Pagodas in China and Korea have nothing like the overhang that is found on pagodas in Japan. The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to overhang the sides of the structure by fifty per cent or more of the building's overall width. For the same reason, the builders of Japanese pagodas seem to have further increased their weight by choosing to cover these extended eaves not with the porcelain tiles of many Chinese pagodas but with much heavier earthenware tiles. But this does not totally explain the great resilience of Japanese pagodas. Is the answer that, like a tall pine tree, the Japanese pagoda with its massive trunk-like central pillar known as shinbashira simply flexes and sways during a typhoon or earthquake? For centuries, many thought so. But the answer is not so simple because the startling thing is that the shinbashira actually carries no load at all. In fact, in some pagoda designs, it does not even rest on the ground, but is suspended from the top of the pagoda hanging loosely down through the middle of the building. The weight of the building is supported entirely by twelve outer and four inner columns. And what is the role of the shinbashira, the central pillar? The best way to understand the shinbashira's role is to watch a video made by Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr Ishida, known to his students as 'Professor Pagoda' because of his passion to understand the pagoda, has built a series of models and tested them on a 'shake-table' in his laboratory. In short, the shinbashira was acting like an enormous stationary pendulum. The ancient craftsmen, apparently without the assistance of very advanced mathematics, seemed to grasp the principles that were, more than a thousand years later, applied in the construction of Japan's first skyscraper. What those early craftsmen had found by trial and error was that under pressure a pagoda's loose stack of floors could be made to slither to and fro independent of one another. Viewed from the side, the pagoda seemed to be doing a snake dance with each consecutive floor moving in the opposite direction to its neighbours above and below. The shinbashira, running up through a hole in the centre of the building, constrained individual stories from moving too far because, after moving a certain distance, they banged into it, transmitting energy away along the column. Another strange feature of the Japanese pagoda is that, because the building tapers, with each successive floor plan being smaller than the one below, none of the vertical pillars that carry the weight of the building is connected to its corresponding pillar above. In other words, a five-storey pagoda contains not even one pillar that travels right up through the building to carry the structural loads from the top to the bottom. More surprising is the fact that the individual stories of a Japanese pagoda, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, are not actually connected to each other. They are simply stacked one on top of another like a pile of hats. Interestingly, such a design would not be permitted under current Japanese building regulations. And the extra-wide eaves? Think of them as a tightrope walker's balancing pole. The bigger the mass at each end of the pole, the easier it is for the tightrope walker to maintain his or her balance. The same holds true for a pagoda. 'With the eaves extending out on all sides like balancing poles, ' says Mr Ishida, 'the building responds to even the most powerful jolt of an earthquake with a graceful swaying, never an abrupt shaking. ' Here again, Japanese master builders of a thousand years ago anticipated concepts of modern structural engineering.


Premise: Why pagodas dont fall down. In a land swept by typhoons and shaken by earthquakes, how have Japans tallest and seemingly flimsiest old buildings 500 or so wooden pagodas remained standing for centuries? Records show that only two have collapsed during the past 1400 years. Those that have disappeared were destroyed by fire as a result of lightning or civil war. The disastrous Hanshin earthquake in 1995 killed 6,400 people, toppled elevated highways, flattened office blocks and devastated the port area of Kobe. Yet it left the magnificent five-storey pagoda at the Toji temple in nearby Kyoto unscathed, though it levelled a number of buildings in the neighbourhood. Japanese scholars have been mystified for ages about why these tall, slender buildings are so stable. It was only thirty years ago that the building industry felt confident enough to erect office blocks of steel and reinforced concrete that had more than a dozen floors. With its special shock absorbers to dampen the effect of sudden sideways movements from an earthquake, the thirty-six-storey Kasumigaseki building in central Tokyo Japans first skyscraper was considered a masterpiece of modern engineering when it was built in 1968. Yet in 826, with only pegs and wedges to keep his wooden structure upright, the master builder Kobodaishi had no hesitation in sending his majestic Toji pagoda soaring fifty-five metres into the sky nearly half as high as the Kasumigaseki skyscraper built some eleven centuries later. Clearly, Japanese carpenters of the day knew a few tricks about allowing a building to sway and settle itself rather than fight natures forces. But what sort of tricks? The multi-storey pagoda came to Japan from China in the sixth century. As in China, they were first introduced with Buddhism and were attached to important temples. The Chinese built their pagodas in brick or stone, with inner staircases, and used them in later centuries mainly as watchtowers. When the pagoda reached Japan, however, its architecture was freely adapted to local conditions they were built less high, typically five rather than nine storeys, made mainly of wood and the staircase was dispensed with because the Japanese pagoda did not have any practical use but became more of an art object. Because of the typhoons that batter Japan in the summer, Japanese builders learned to extend the eaves of buildings further beyond the walls. This prevents rainwater gushing down the walls. Pagodas in China and Korea have nothing like the overhang that is found on pagodas in Japan. The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to overhang the sides of the structure by fifty per cent or more of the buildings overall width. For the same reason, the builders of Japanese pagodas seem to have further increased their weight by choosing to cover these extended eaves not with the porcelain tiles of many Chinese pagodas but with much heavier earthenware tiles. But this does not totally explain the great resilience of Japanese pagodas. Is the answer that, like a tall pine tree, the Japanese pagoda with its massive trunk-like central pillar known as shinbashira simply flexes and sways during a typhoon or earthquake? For centuries, many thought so. But the answer is not so simple because the startling thing is that the shinbashira actually carries no load at all. In fact, in some pagoda designs, it does not even rest on the ground, but is suspended from the top of the pagoda hanging loosely down through the middle of the building. The weight of the building is supported entirely by twelve outer and four inner columns. And what is the role of the shinbashira, the central pillar? The best way to understand the shinbashiras role is to watch a video made by Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr Ishida, known to his students as Professor Pagoda because of his passion to understand the pagoda, has built a series of models and tested them on a shake-table in his laboratory. In short, the shinbashira was acting like an enormous stationary pendulum. The ancient craftsmen, apparently without the assistance of very advanced mathematics, seemed to grasp the principles that were, more than a thousand years later, applied in the construction of Japans first skyscraper. What those early craftsmen had found by trial and error was that under pressure a pagodas loose stack of floors could be made to slither to and fro independent of one another. Viewed from the side, the pagoda seemed to be doing a snake dance with each consecutive floor moving in the opposite direction to its neighbours above and below. The shinbashira, running up through a hole in the centre of the building, constrained individual stories from moving too far because, after moving a certain distance, they banged into it, transmitting energy away along the column. Another strange feature of the Japanese pagoda is that, because the building tapers, with each successive floor plan being smaller than the one below, none of the vertical pillars that carry the weight of the building is connected to its corresponding pillar above. In other words, a five-storey pagoda contains not even one pillar that travels right up through the building to carry the structural loads from the top to the bottom. More surprising is the fact that the individual stories of a Japanese pagoda, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, are not actually connected to each other. They are simply stacked one on top of another like a pile of hats. Interestingly, such a design would not be permitted under current Japanese building regulations. And the extra-wide eaves? Think of them as a tightrope walkers balancing pole. The bigger the mass at each end of the pole, the easier it is for the tightrope walker to maintain his or her balance. The same holds true for a pagoda. With the eaves extending out on all sides like balancing poles, says Mr Ishida, the building responds to even the most powerful jolt of an earthquake with a graceful swaying, never an abrupt shaking. Here again, Japanese master builders of a thousand years ago anticipated concepts of modern structural engineering.


Premise: Why zoos are good Scientist David Hone makes the case for zoos In my view, it is perfectly possible for many species of animals living in zoos or wildlife parks to have a quality of life as high as, or higher than, in the wild. Animals in good zoos get a varied and high-quality diet with all the supplements required, and any illnesses they might have will be treated. Their movement might be somewhat restricted, but they have a safe environment in which to live, and they are spared bullying and social ostracism by others of their kind. They do not suffer from the threat or stress of predators, or the irritation and pain of parasites or injuries. The average captive animal will have a greater life expectancy compared with its wild counterpart, and will not die of drought, of starvation or in the jaws of a predator. A lot of very nasty things happen to truly 'wild' animals that simply don't happen in good zoos, and to view a life that is 'free' as one that is automatically 'good' is, I think, an error. Furthermore, zoos serve several key purposes. Firstly, zoos aid conservation. Colossal numbers of species are becoming extinct across the world, and many more are increasingly threatened and therefore risk extinction. Moreover, some of these collapses have been sudden, dramatic and unexpected, or were simply discovered very late in the day. A species protected in captivity can be bred up to provide a reservoir population against a population crash or extinction in the wild. A good number of species only exist in captivity, with many of these living in zoos. Still more only exist in the wild because they have been reintroduced from zoos, or have wild populations that have been boosted by captive bred animals. Without these efforts there would be fewer species alive today. Although reintroduction successes are few and far between, the numbers are increasing, and the very fact that species have been saved or reintroduced as a result of captive breeding proves the value of such initiatives. Zoos also provide education. Many children and adults, especially those in cities, will never see a wild animal beyond a fox or pigeon. While it is true that television documentaries are becoming ever more detailed and impressive, and many natural history specimens are on display in museums, there really is nothing to compare with seeing a living creature in the flesh, hearing it, smelling it, watching what it does and having the time to absorb details. That alone will bring a greater understanding and perspective to many, and hopefully give them a greater appreciation for wildlife, conservation efforts and how they can contribute. In addition to this, there is also the education that can take place in zoos through signs, talks and presentations which directly communicate information to visitors about the animals they are seeing and their place in the world. This was an area where zoos used to be lacking, but they are now increasingly sophisticated in their communication and outreach work. Many zoos also work directly to educate conservation workers in other countries, or send their animal keepers abroad to contribute their knowledge and skills to those working in zoos and reserves, thereby helping to improve conditions and reintroductions all over the world. Zoos also play a key role in research. If we are to save wild species and restore and repair ecosystems we need to know about how key species live, act and react. Being able to undertake research on animals in zoos where there is less risk and fewer variables means real changes can be effected on wild populations. Finding out about, for example, the oestrus cycle of an animal or its breeding rate helps us manage wild populations. Procedures such as capturing and moving at-risk or dangerous individuals are bolstered by knowledge gained in zoos about doses for anaesthetics, and by experience in handling arid transporting animals. This can make a real difference to conservation efforts and to the reduction of human-animal conflicts, and can provide a knowledge base for helping with the increasing threats of habitat destruction and other problems. In conclusion, considering the many ongoing global threats to the environment, it is hard for me to see zoos as anything other than essential to the long-term survival of numerous species. They are vital not just in terms of protecting animals, but as a means of learning about them to aid those still in the wild, as well as educating and informing the general population about these animals and their world so that they can assist or at least accept the need to be more environmentally conscious. Without them, the world would be, and would increasingly become, a much poorer place.

Hypothesis: Improvements in the quality of TV wildlife documentaries have resulted in increased numbers of zoo visitors.


Hypothesis: There are some species in zoos which can no longer be found in the wild.


Hypothesis: An animal is likely to live longer in a zoo than in the wild.


Hypothesis: Zoos have always excelled at transmitting information about animals to the public.


Hypothesis: Studying animals in zoos is less stressful for the animals than studying them in the wild.


Premise: Wildlife expert Dr Ellen Boyle spoke at this years Wildlife Conservation Conference about the lack of a strategy to prevent the immment extinction of a number of primate species across Asia. Her talk focused on the dangers of hunters and the clearing of tropical ramforests across the continent. Several species of Asian monkey, some only recently discovered, are facing these dual threats to their natural habitats. Dr Boyle differentiated the most at-risk primates as critically endangered, but the talk stressed that other species were also living under constant threat. Dr Boyles scientific paper Several species of Asian monkey, some only recently discovered, are facing these dual threats to ther natural habitats. Dr Boyle differentiated the most at-risk primates as critically endangered, but the talk stressed that other species were also living under constant threat. Dr Boyles scientific paper presented compelling evidence of the need to halt deforestation, but in some developing Asian economies, where wood 1s collected for fuel and for sale and land 1s cleared for farming, human Interests currently take precedence over the fate of the regions lower- order primates.

Hypothesis: The deforestation of ramforests is the only threat to Asian primates.


Hypothesis: Dr Boyle suggests that all Asian countries prioritise economs over the survival of monkeys.


Hypothesis: The passage gives three reasons for the destruction of tropical ramforests.


Hypothesis: Dr Boyles talk at the Wildlife Conservation Conference explained the strategy for protecting Asian primates.


Hypothesis: All Asian primates are threatened by extinction.


Premise: Will the electric vehicle known as the Segway alter the ways that individuals get around? Dean Kamer, the inventor of the Segway, believes that this revolutionary vehicle will someday substitute for the bicycles and automobiles that now crowd our cities. When he introduced the Segway in 2001, he believed it would change our lives. Although the Segway uses up-to-the-minute technology, it looks very ordinary. The metal framework of the Segway consists of a platform where an individual stands. Attached to the front of the platform is a tall post with handles for the driver to hold. On each side of the platform is a wide, rubber wheel. Except for these two wheels, there are no mechanical parts on the Segway. It has no engine, no brakes, no pedal power, no gears, and no steering wheel. Instead it uses a computer system that imitates the ability of humans to keep their balance. This system seems to move to the driver's thoughts. For example, when the driver thinks "Go forward", the Segway moves forwards, and when the driver thinks, "Stop", it stops. The Segway is not really responding to the driver's thoughts, but to the tiny changes in balance that the driver makes as he prepares his body to move forward or to stop. For example, when the driver thinks about moving forward, he actually leans slightly forward, and when he thinks of stopping or slowing, the driver leans slightly back. The Segway is powered by batteries that allow it to travel about 17miles on one battery charge. It is designed for short-range, low-speed operation. It has three speed settings. The slowest is the setting for learning, with speeds of up to miles per hour. Next is the sidewalk setting, with speeds of up to 9 miles , per hour. The highest setting allows the driver to travel up to 12.5 miles per hour in open, flat areas. At all three speed settings, the Segway can go wherever a person can walk, both indoors and outdoors. Workers who must walk a lot in their jobs might be the primary users of Segways. For example, police officers could drive Segways to patrol city streets, and mail carriers could drive from house to house to deliver letters and packages. Farmers could quickly inspect distant fields and bams, and rangers, or parks. Security guards could protect neighborhoods or large buildings. Any task requiring a lot of walking could be made easier. In cities, shoppers could leave their cars at home and ride Segway from store to store. Also, people who cannot comfortably walk due to age, illness, or injury could minimize their walking but still be able to go many places on a Segway. Why is it, then, that our job sites, parks, and shopping centers have not been subsequently filled with Segways since they were introduced in 2001? Why hasn't the expected revolution taken place? Studies have shown that Segways can help workers get more done in a shorter time. This saves money. Engineers admire Segways as a technological marvel. Business, government agencies, and individuals, however, have been unwilling to accept the Segway. Ves, there have been some successes. In a few cities, for example, mail carriers drive Segway on their routes, and police officers patrol on Segways. San Francisco, California, and Florence, Italy, are among several cities in the world that offer tours on Segways for a small fee. Occasionally you will see golfers riding Segways around golf courses. Throughout the world more than 150 security agencies use Segways, and China has recently entered the overseas market. These examples are encouraging, but can hardly be called a revolution. The primary reason seems to be that people have an inherent fear of doing something new. They fear others will laugh at them for buying a "toy". They fear losing control of the vehicle. They fear being injured. They fear not knowing the rules for using a Segway. They fear making people angry if they ride on the sidewalk. All these fears and others have kept sales low. The inventor explained why people have been slow to accept the Segway. He said, "We didn't realize that although technology moves very quickly, people's mind-set changes very slowly. " Perhaps a hundred years from now millions of people around the world will be riding Segways.

Hypothesis: The driver can alter the direction of the Segway by leaning to the left or right


Hypothesis: The Segway's framework consists of a platform and a post with handles


Hypothesis: The Segway was primarily designed for student to make their travel much more comfortable


Premise: William Gilbert and Magnetism 16th and 17th centuries saw two great pioneers of modem science: Galileo and Gilbert. The impact of their findings is eminent. Gilbert was the first modem scientist, also the accredited father of the science of electricity and magnetism, an Englishman of learning and a physician at the court of Elizabeth. Prior to him, all that was known of electricity and magnetism was what the ancients knew, nothing more than that the: lodestone possessed magnetic properties and that amber and jet, when rubbed, would attract bits of paper or other substances of small specific gravity. However, he is less well-known than he deserves. Gilberts birth predated Galileo. Born in an eminent local family in Colchester county in the UK, on May 24,1544, he went to grammar school, and then studied medicine at St. Johns College, Cambridge, graduating in 1573. Later he traveled in the continent and eventually settled down in London. He was a very successful and eminent doctor. All this culminated in his election to the president of the Royal Science Society. He was also appointed the personal physician to the Queen (Elizabeth I) , and later knighted by the Queen. He faithfully served her until her death. However, he didnt outlive the Queen for long and died on December 10, 1603, only a few months after his appointment as a personal physician to King James. Gilbert was first interested in chemistry but later changed his focus due to the large portion of the mysticism of alchemy involved (such as the transmutation of metal). He gradually developed his interest in physics after the great minds of the ancient, particularly about the knowledge the ancient Greeks had about lodestones, strange minerals with the power to attract iron. In the meantime, Britain became a major seafaring nation in 1588 when the Spanish Armada was defeated, opening the way to the British settlement of America. British ships depended on the magnetic: compass, yet no one understood why it worked. Did the pole star attract it, as Columbus once speculated; or was there a magnetic mountain at the pole, as described in Odyssey which ships would never approach because the sailors thought its pull would yank out all their iron nails and fittings? For nearly 20 years William Gilbert conducted ingenious experiments to understand magnetism. His works include On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, Great Magnet of the Earth. Gilberts discovery was so important to modem physics. He investigated the nature of magnetism and electricity. He even coined the word electric. Though the early beliefs of magnetism were also largely entangled with superstitions such as that rubbing garlic on lodestone can neutralize its magnetism, one example being that sailors even believed the smell of garlic would even interfere with the action of the compass, which is why helmsmen were forbidden to eat it near a ships compass. Gilbert also found that metals can be magnetized by rubbing materials such as fur, plastic or the like on them. He named the ends of a magnet north pole and south pole. The magnetic poles can attract or repel, depending on polarity. In addition, however, ordinary iron is always attracted to a magnet. Though he started to study the relationship between magnetism and electricity, sadly he didnt complete it. His research of static electricity using amber and jet only demonstrated that objects with electrical charges can work like magnets attracting small pieces of paper and stuff. It is a French guy named du Fay that discovered that there are actually two electrical charges, positive and negative. He also questioned the traditional astronomical beliefs. Though a Copernican, he didnt express in his quintessential beliefs whether the earth is at the center of the universe or in orbit around the sun. However, he believed that stars are not equidistant from the earth, but have their own earth-like planets orbiting around them. The earth is itself like a giant magnet, which is also why compasses always point north. They spin on an axis that is aligned with the earths polarity. He even likened the polarity of the magnet to the polarity of the earth and built an entire magnetic philosophy on this analogy. In his explanation, magnetism was the soul of the earth. Thus a perfectly spherical lodestone, when aligned with the earths poles, would wobble all by itself in 24 hours. Further, he also believed that suns and other stars wobble just like the earth does around a crystal core, and speculated that the moon might also be a magnet caused to orbit by its magnetic attraction to the earth. This was perhaps the first proposal that a force might cause a heavenly orbit. His research method was revolutionary in that he used experiments rather than pure logic and reasoning like the ancient Greek philosophers did. It was a new attitude toward the scientific investigation. Until then, scientific experiments were not in fashion. It was because of this scientific attitude, together with his contribution to our knowledge of magnetism, that a unit of magnetomotive force, also known as magnetic potential, was named Gilbert in his honor. His approach of careful observation and experimentation rather than the authoritative opinion or deductive philosophy of others had laid the very foundation for modem science.

Hypothesis: He was famous as a doctor before he was employed by the Queen


Hypothesis: He lost faith in the medical theories of his time.


Hypothesis: He is less famous than he should be.


Premise: William Henry Perkin The man who invented synthetic dyes William Henry Perkin was born on March 12,1838, in London, England. As a boy, Perkins curiosity prompted early interests in the arts, sciences, photography, and engineering. But it was a chance stumbling upon a run-down, yet functional, laboratory in his late grandfathers home that solidified the young mans enthusiasm for chemistry. As a student at the City of London School, Perkin became immersed in the study of chemistry. His talent and devotion to the subject were perceived by his teacher, Thomas Hall, who encouraged him to attend a series of lectures given by the eminent scientist Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution. Those speeches fired the young chemists enthusiasm further, and he later went on to attend the Royal College of Chemistry, which he succeeded in entering in 1853, at the age of 15. At the time of Perkins enrolment, the Royal College of Chemistry was headed by the noted German chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann. Perkins scientific gifts soon caught Hofmanns attention and, within two years, he became Hofmanns youngest assistant. Not long after that, Perkin made the scientific breakthrough that would bring him both fame and fortune. At the time, quinine was the only viable medical treatment for malaria. The drug is derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America, and by 1856 demand for the drug was surpassing the available supply. Thus, when Hofmann made some passing comments about the desirability of a synthetic substitute for quinine, it was unsurprising that his star pupil was moved to take up the challenge. During his vacation in 1856, Perkin spent his time in the laboratory on the top floor of his familys house. He was attempting to manufacture quinine from aniline, an inexpensive and readily available coal tar waste product. Despite his best efforts, however, he did not end up with quinine. Instead, he produced a mysterious dark sludge. Luckily, Perkins scientific training and nature prompted him to investigate the substance further. Incorporating potassium dichromate and alcohol into the aniline at various stages of the experimental process, he finally produced a deep purple solution. And, proving the truth of the famous scientist Louis Pasteurs words chance favours only the prepared mind, Perkin saw the potential of his unexpected find. Historically, textile dyes were made from such natural sources as plants and animal excretions. Some of these, such as the glandular mucus of snails, were difficult to obtain and outrageously expensive. Indeed, the purple colour extracted from a snail was once so costly that in society at the time only the rich could afford it. Further, natural dyes tended to be muddy in hue and fade quickly. It was against this backdrop that Perkins discovery was made. Perkin quickly grasped that his purple solution could be used to colour fabric, thus making it the worlds first synthetic dye. Realising the importance of this breakthrough, he lost no time in patenting it. But perhaps the most fascinating of all Perkins reactions to his find was his nearly instant recognition that the new dye had commercial possibilities. 28Perkin originally named his dye Tyrian Purple, but it later became commonly known as mauve (from the French for the plant used to make the colour violet). He asked advice of Scottish dye works owner Robert Pullar, who assured him that manufacturing the dye would be well worth it if the colour remained fast (i. e. would not fade) and the cost was relatively low. So, over the fierce objections of his mentor Hofmann, he left college to give birth to the modern chemical industry. With the help of his father and brother, Perkin set up a factory not far from London. Utilising the cheap and plentiful coal tar that was an almost unlimited by product of Londons gas street lighting, the dye works began producing the worlds first synthetically dyed material in 1857. The company received a commercial boost from the Empress Eugenie of France, when she decided the new colour flattered her. Very soon, mauve was the necessary shade for all the fashionable ladies in that country. Not to be outdone, Englands Queen Victoria also appeared in public wearing a mauve gown, thus making it all the rage in England as well. The dye was bold and fast, and the public clamoured for more. Perkin went back to the drawing board. Although Perkins fame was achieved and fortune assured by his first discovery, the chemist continued his research. Among other dyes he developed and introduced were aniline red (1859) and aniline black (1863) and, in the late 1860s, Perkins green. It is important to note that Perkins synthetic dye discoveries had outcomes far beyond the merely decorative. The dyes also became vital to medical research in many ways. For instance, they were used to stain previously invisible microbes and bacteria, allowing researchers to identify such bacilli as tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax. Artificial dyes continue to play a crucial role today. And, in what would have been particularly pleasing to Perkin, their current use is in the search for a vaccine against malaria.

Hypothesis: Perkin was still young when he made the discovery that made him rich and famous.


Hypothesis: The trees from which quinine is derived grow only in South America.


Hypothesis: Michael Faraday was the first person to recognise Perkins ability as a student of chemistry.


Hypothesis: Michael Faraday suggested Perkin should enrol in the Royal College of Chemistry.


Hypothesis: Perkin was inspired by the discoveries of the famous scientist Louis Pasteur.


Hypothesis: Perkin employed August Wilhelm Hofmann as his assistant.


Hypothesis: Perkin hoped to manufacture a drug from a coal tar waste product.


Premise: William Henry Perkin, The man who invented synthetic dyes. William Henry Perkin was born on March 12, 1838, in London, England. As a boy, Perkins curiosity prompted early interests in the arts, sciences, photography, and engineering. But it was a chance stumbling upon a run-down, yet functional, laboratory in his late grandfathers home that solidified the young mans enthusiasm for chemistry. As a student at the City of London School, Perkin became immersed in the study of chemistry. His talent and devotion to the subject were perceived by his teacher, Thomas Hall, who encouraged him to attend a series of lectures given by the eminent scientist Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution. Those speeches fired the young chemists enthusiasm further, and he later went on to attend the Royal College of Chemistry, which he succeeded in entering in 1853, at the age of 15. At the time of Perkins enrolment, the Royal College of Chemistry was headed by the noted German chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann. Perkins scientific gifts soon caught Hofmanns attention and, within two years, he became Hofmanns youngest assistant. Not long after that, Perkin made the scientific breakthrough that would bring him both fame and fortune. At the time, quinine was the only viable medical treatment for malaria. The drug is derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America, and by 1856 demand for the drug was surpassing the available supply. Thus, when Hofmann made some passing comments about the desirability of a synthetic substitute for quinine, it was unsurprising that his star pupil was moved to take up the challenge. During his vacation in 1856, Perkin spent his time in the laboratory on the top floor of his familys house. He was attempting to manufacture quinine from aniline, an inexpensive and readily available coal tar waste product. Despite his best efforts, however, he did not end up with quinine. Instead, he produced a mysterious dark sludge. Luckily, Perkins scientific training and nature prompted him to investigate the substance further. Incorporating potassium dichromate and alcohol into the aniline at various stages of the experimental process, he finally produced a deep purple solution. And, proving the truth of the famous scientist Louis Pasteurs words chance favours only the prepared mind, Perkin saw the potential of his unexpected find. Historically, textile dyes were made from such natural sources as plants and animal excretions. Some of these, such as the glandular mucus of snails, were difficult to obtain and outrageously expensive. Indeed, the purple colour extracted from a snail was once so costly in society at the time only the rich could afford it. Further, natural dyes tended to be muddy in hue and fade quickly. It was against this backdrop that Perkins discovery was made. Perkin quickly grasped that his purple solution could be used to colour fabric, thus making it the worlds first synthetic dye. Realising the importance of this breakthrough, he lost no time in patenting it. But perhaps the most fascinating of all Perkins reactions to his find was his nearly instant recognition that the new dye had commercial possibilities. Perkin originally named his dye Tyrian Purple, but it later became commonly known as mauve (from the French for the plant used to make the colour violet). He asked advice of Scottish dye works owner Robert Pullar, who assured him that manufacturing the dye would be well worth it if the colour remained fast (i. e. would not fade) and the cost was relatively low. So, over the fierce objections of his mentor Hofmann, he left college to give birth to the modern chemical industry. With the help of his father and brother, Perkin set up a factory not far from London. Utilising the cheap and plentiful coal tar that was an almost unlimited byproduct of Londons gas street lighting, the dye works began producing the worlds first synthetically dyed material in 1857. The company received a commercial boost from the Empress Eugenie of France, when she decided the new colour flattered her. Very soon, mauve was the necessary shade for all the fashionable ladies in that country. Not to be outdone, Englands Queen Victoria also appeared in public wearing a mauve gown, thus making it all the rage in England as well. The dye was bold and fast, and the public clamoured for more. Perkin went back to the drawing board. Although Perkins fame was achieved and fortune assured by his first discovery, the chemist continued his research. Among other dyes he developed and introduced were aniline red (1859) and aniline black (1863) and, in the late 1860s, Perkins green. It is important to note that Perkins synthetic dye discoveries had outcomes far beyond the merely decorative. The dyes also became vital to medical research in many ways. For instance, they were used to stain previously invisible microbes and bacteria, allowing researchers to identify such bacilli as tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax. Artificial dyes continue to play a crucial role today. And, in what would have been particularly pleasing to Perkin, their current use is in the search for a vaccine against malaria.


Premise: With increased demands on business executives to travel in the globalised economy, how do globe-trotting executives manager their travel demands? A highly invaluable resources tapped by senior executives is the use of one or more personal assistants. More than glorified receptionists, PAs hold considerable power in the work place, deciding who gains access to their employer and when, being privy to highly sensitive information and maintaining order in the executives absence. Having this extra helping hand can allow executives to focus on the more important tasks and objectives, allowing them to save time, effort and improve efficiency.

Hypothesis: Personal assistants are expensive.


Hypothesis: Personal assistants are glorified receptionists.


Hypothesis: Personal assistants are efficient.


Hypothesis: Personal assistants are privy to sensitive information.


Premise: With more than 32 million smart phones in the United Kingdom alone, the number of mobile phone applications or apps is rapidly increasing. These apps are used for gaming, travel, shopping, and banking and soon the department of health will be encouraging the development of medical apps to help manage medical conditions. Potentially popular apps could include blood pressure monitors, blood sugar monitors and contraceptive choice apps. These apps could make managing disease far more convenient and efficient, improving the quality of life for millions in the UK.

Hypothesis: Heart rate monitor is listed as a potential popular app


Hypothesis: Blood sugar monitor is listed as a potential popular app


Premise: With over half a billion citizens in the European Union, the stability of its food market is important. The Common Agricultural Policy (also known as CAP) is an EU initiative designed to provide farmers with the economic support to help them withstand the outcomes of unexpected natural events like heavy rains, floods, cold temperatures, and fires. For the CAP to improve, information regarding the current economic situation of farms across the EU is needed. As of January 4th 2010, each farm in the EU should provide a document called "Farm Return", containing two types of data: income assessment and a description of the farm's business operation. The EU then uses these data to predict the implications of changes made to the CAP on the farmers, as well as to understand the current situation better. The Farm Return's route from the farm to the EU begins with a local agency called the Liaison Agency. This agency then passes the report on to a National Committee, which hands it over to the EU.

Hypothesis: The EU has been collecting data on farms since before January 4th 2010.


Hypothesis: The Farm Return would be submitted by the farm to the National Committee, a local agency, which would then hand it over to the EU.


Hypothesis: The EU could use the data collected via the Farm Return to simulate potential consequences of different CAP policy scenarios.