#58passages
Part C. Advanced Level
Lesson 11. Arts
Passage 1. Anime
Anime is a special style of Japanese animation. You can immediately see the difference between anime and other styles of animation. This is because of the high quality of the artwork and the style of anime; such as characters with large childlike eyes. In addition, you will see that anime is strongly influenced by Asian and especially Japanese religious and cultural traditions.
Specifically, in anime, you can see the influences of Shinto (a Japanese religion), Zen Buddhism (another religious tradition that is practiced throughout Asia), and the martial arts, such as karate and judo, that have been an important part of Japanese culture for a very long time. You could say that anime provides a window into Japanese culture.
Anime is closely related to Japanese-style comic books, which are called manga. Many anime television shows and videos got their start as popular manga. Just as anime is different from American animated films and television shows, manga are quite different from American comic books.
Manga usually include fewer words but more complex drawings than American comic books. Such complex drawings can tell the stories themselves without very many words. Manga are also much more popular among adults in Japan than comic books are in the United States. In fact, manga is a multi-billion dollar business in Japan and more than one half of all printed materials sold there is manga.
Like manga, anime is popular with Japanese of all ages. In fact, a large percentage of manga and anime is made for adults only. Their popularity helps explain why the quality of anime is so high. Anime and manga are big business.
A recent anime film reportedly cost 45 million dollars to make. Some of Japan’s most talented artists and musicians are involved in creating manga and anime.
But it is not just the quality of the artwork that makes anime so popular. Many anime stories deal with complex subjects and characters that change as the stories develop.
The bad guy of Disney cartoons, completely evil and not very believable, is not common in anime. Rather, in anime, it is not always clear who the good guys and bad guys are.
Also, death is shown as a natural part of life much more often in anime than in Disney movies and cartoons. If your only experience with animation is Disney, anime might surprise or even shock you at first. However, many people soon become fascinated by this Japanese form of animation.
Some of the most interesting anime deal with modern technology. In this type of anime, the differences between machines and people, males and females, and good and evil are not always clear.
Anime often looks at the challenges of life and culture in a world of rapid technological change. The characters in this type of anime deal with deep moral questions, such as the possible negative effects of technology on human relationships. This is very different from the simple way that Hollywood films and cartoons usually deal with the same subjects.
With the beauty of the artwork and the complexity and originality of the stories and characters, it should not be surprising that the popularity of anime is growing rapidly all over the world.
Anime has also had an influence on Hollywood. Some animated films made in the United States today are more complex than they were in the past and are fascinating not only to children, but also adults.
Passage 2. Secrets of the Stradivarius Puzzle
When Regina Buenaventura walks onto the stage, all eyes are on her violin. In the fifth row, Joseph Nagyvary closes his eyes and listens.
He has spent years in a laboratory studying the sound of the most famous instrument of all time. Nagyvary believes that he has finally solved the centuries-old mystery behind the remarkable sound of the Stradivarius violin.
This young musician holds the result of Nagyvary’s scientific efforts under her chin, the Nagyvaryus. She begins playing and the violin makes a clear, brilliant, heavenly sound. Creator Nagyvary opens his eyes. Could this be the magical Stradivarius sound?
For 150 years, violin makers, musicians, and scientists have tried to solve the mystery of the Stradivarius. Antonio Stradivari lived in Cremona, a small northern Italian city. Before his death in 1737, he had made over 1,000 violins, violas, cellos, and guitars. Two sons followed him into the business, but they died soon after. The details of how their father and other violin makers from Cremona made their remarkable instruments died with them.
How could an illiterate man with no education produce instruments with such a heavenly sound? Did Stradivari and the other violin makers from Cremona have a secret?
Joseph Nagyvary’s laboratory in the United States at Texas A&M University is a world away from Cremona. Nagyvary began teaching biochemistry at the university in the late 1960s.
A number of years ago, he began making violins. Using his knowledge of chemistry, Nagyvary believes that he has found the answer to the Stradivarius puzzle.
In 1977, Nagyvary provided the Violin Society of America with the results of his research. He claimed that the high quality of Stradivari’s instruments was not due to his artistic talent. Rather, the remarkable sound was a result of the materials Stradivari used, specifically the chemical properties of the wood and varnish.
Stradivari himself probably did not understand the importance of these materials. In other words, Stradivari was certainly talented, but he probably owed much of his success to luck.
Nagyvary’s announcement shocked violin makers and dealers. His theory was a direct challenge to the way that violins had been made for years. It also challenged violin makers’ belief in the importance of their artistic talent.
Nagyvary stands by his theory. “The pieces of the puzzle have been around, and I have not invented anything new. But I put the pieces, well, together, while the others could not. I am the first chemist of good international standing, who obviously has a much better understanding of the effects of these natural chemicals.”
The best proof of Nagyvary’s theory may be the instruments he makes. By using what he has learned from his research, Nagyvary claims to produce violins with a sound quality very similar to that of a Stradivarius.
This is demonstrated in “The Stradivarius Puzzle,” a 13-song CD recorded by well-known professional violinist Zina Schiff. On it, Schiff plays both a Nagyvaryus and her 1697 Stradivarius, reportedly worth $3,000,000.
Schiff says, “I sent the Stradivarius Puzzle to a friend of mine, who is a conductor, and he had no idea. He just could not tell. The truth is, I would rather be playing on one of Dr. Nagyvary’s instruments.”
Isaac Stern, one of the most respected violinists of the 20th century, is quoted as saying, “Dr. Nagyvary’s knowledge makes his work of special value to us all today.” So why do violin makers and dealers refuse to even discuss Nagyvary’s theory?
Nagyvary’s website suggests that because many violin makers consider themselves artists, they have a personal interest in focusing on the art, not the science, of violin production.
And Schiff believes that violin makers and dealers feel threatened by the fairly low cost ($10,000 to $25,000) of a Nagyvary instrument.
Schiff came from a poor family, so she feels very strongly that people who cannot afford Stradivari violins should still be able to have high-quality instruments. According to Schiff, Dr. Nagyvary’s violins have made this possible without having a negative effect on the beauty and value of a Stradivarius.
Passage 3. Rapping
Rap is a spoken form of musical expression. It involves words spoken in rhyme with a recorded or live rhythm section.
Many people use the terms “hip-hop” and “rap” to mean the same thing. In fact, hip-hop is the culture that modern rap grew out of. Hip-hop is a culture with its own language, clothing styles, music, and ways of thinking, and it is constantly growing and changing. It includes several different art forms, including visual art, dance, and music. Rap is just one part of hip-hop culture.
Although there is a lot of disagreement about exactly where and how rap began. Most people agree that it got its start in the mostly African-American neighborhoods of the Bronx in New York City in the 1960s.
At that time, large outdoor street parties called block parties were becoming popular. Young people who could not afford expensive musical instruments or equipment took simple turntables and microphones out onto the streets.
But instead of just playing the music, they moved the spinning or turning records with their hands. At the same time, they scratched them with the needles of the turntables.
The changes in the sound of the music became known as cutting or scratching. The young people who played the music were called disc jockeys. These disc jockeys, or DJs, used their turntables as instruments to create a new musical form.
Other performers working with the DJ interacted with the crowd by talking louder than the music, often in rhyme. These performers were called MCs or emcees, and their interaction with the crowd became known as rapping.
Later, the MCs became known as rappers. Interaction between the performers and the crowd is an important characteristic of rap. Among the many people who contributed to the development of rap, artist Grandmaster Flash stands out. The techniques or methods that he invented have become an important part of hip-hop culture.
Flash was one of the first DJs to begin using a turntable as a musical instrument, rather than just a piece of equipment that played records.
First, he would find a short section of a song that he liked. This was called the break. Then, he would use two copies of the same record and two turntables to invent creative ways to play the break over and over without stopping.
In the 1970s and 1980s, rap’s popularity grew, and the rhymes became more complex and clever as the performers competed with each other.
The music that they rapped to included recordings of famous African-American musicians and breaks from popular disco and rock music of the time. Many rappers also performed with live musicians.
Today, hip-hop culture is popular all over the world, and young people everywhere listen to rap.
There are many reasons for rap’s popularity. It offers young people the chance to express themselves freely. It is an art form that can be performed without a lot of money, training, or equipment.
Rapping involves verbal skills that many people already have or can develop. You can rap slowly or you can rap fast. All of this allows rappers with very different personalities or ideas to express themselves.
This does not mean that rapping is easy, however. It calls for a quick mind, an ability to use language well, originality, and an excellent sense of rhythm.
It presents the performer with many challenges but only two rules: rhyme to the beat of the music and be original.
Lesson 12. The Youth
Passage 1. Gifted Child
At the age of 18, Canadian teen chess player Pascal Charbonneau had all the qualities of a child prodigy. He was smart, knew a lot about a variety of subjects, had achieved a lot at a young age, and was confident in his abilities.
But Charbonneau did not like to be called a prodigy. “Winning a championship at this age is considered special, but I don’t like thinking of myself as someone who is very different from other people,” he said at the time.
Like many 18-year-olds, Charbonneau was trying to decide where to go to college. School had always been easy for him, as it is for most gifted students.
Many gifted students choose to finish school early to avoid getting bored, but Charbonneau decided to cruise through his classes so he could concentrate on chess and some of his other interests, such as sports and French literature.
In general, gifted students tend to have an insatiable appetite for information. They are also perfectionists. In addition, most are independent and sensitive to injustice.
Other characteristics include specific ability in one area along with the ability to concentrate on it for a long time, excellent reading ability, a large vocabulary, originality, rapid mastery of new skills, and an ability to see connections between ideas.
Having these characteristics can be challenging, even depressing, said 18-year-old Charbonneau. He was critical of even his best performances. “I’m rarely ever happy with what I do.” Charbonneau knew that the pressure on him would soon begin to grow as every young chess player tried to become the next champion. That pressure has destroyed a lot of talented young people. For example, many young musical prodigies have walked away from their careers after discovering they will not become the star of their dreams, says François Gagné. Gagné is an expert on gifted children who worked at the University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada for many years researching the topic.
“When you are a prodigy, your goal is to become an international master musician,” he said. “If you cannot become someone at the very top, you are not interested in becoming a musician in an orchestra.”
World-famous violinist Itzhak Perlman has seen many talented young musicians simply burn out. “Rarely do you see people survive, and that’s the goal, to survive your gift,” he once told the New York Times.
Charbonneau did survive his gift. He became a Grandmaster of Chess in 2006 and has represented Canada and the United States in a number of major team events over the years. He studied mathematics and finance at the University of Maryland in the United States, graduating in 2006. He then went on to work as a financial analyst in New York City.
Between 2 and 5 percent of young people are gifted, two to three years beyond their peers. But extremely gifted prodigies, the Beethovens and Mozarts, are much less common, perhaps one in a million, said Gagné.
Here are some facts about several well-known child prodigies:
- Probably the most famous child prodigy of all, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 to 1791) began writing music before he was five. By age six, he had written a remarkable amount of music and performed throughout Europe.
- Some of Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770 to 1827) music was published when he was only twelve. Despite losing his hearing as an adult, he continued to write music until his death.
- It is often said that the great scientist Albert Einstein (1879 to 1955) failed at school. In fact, he did well and could be described as a prodigy. Einstein was always a high achiever, although his best work was done when he was in his twenties.
Passage 2. Bullying in Schools
A middle school student is regularly threatened and beaten by his classmates. A 15-year-old girl drops out of school after she receives hundreds of text messages telling her that she is stupid. These are just two examples of an ugly side of school life, bullying.
Dr. Dan Olweus, an expert in bullying from Norway, studies aggression in schools. On his website, bullying is defined as “aggressive behavior that is intentional and that involves an imbalance in power. Most often, it is repeated over time.”
Notice that the definition includes the word “aggressive” rather than “violent.” That is because not all bullying is physical, often it is emotional. In a recent report on bullying in the United Kingdom, 44% of students from 13 to 20 years old reported that they had been bullied at least once a week. In studies conducted in the United States, 25% of students reported that they had been bullied.
Who are the bullies?
They can be male or female, and they are often popular among their peers; they do not have low self-esteem or anxiety. Instead, they have a strong need for power and domination.
According to Dr. Olweus, too little love and care in childhood and too much freedom are conditions that strongly contribute to the development of bullies. Bullying is not affected by a family’s economic situation. Bullies come from both rich and poor backgrounds.
And the victims?
Based on his research, Dr. Olweus claims that “the typical victim tends to be more anxious and less secure than his classmates and usually has a negative attitude toward violence.”
In surveys, parents of male victims report that their sons are often cautious and sensitive at an early age. In addition, often they are not physically strong. This makes it easier for bullies to pick on them.
There are several types of bullying. First, there is physical bullying. Physical bullying involves violence. There is direct contact between the victim and the bully, such as hitting, kicking, and scratching. Both girls and boys can be victims and aggressors, but physical bullying more often involves boys.
Second, there is verbal bullying. Verbal bullying involves face-to-face insults. The bully often says he is just joking, but his goal is humiliation. Both girls and boys are involved in verbal bullying, but some research shows that it is more harmful to girls.
Third, there is social bullying. Social bullies do not interact with their victims face-to-face. Instead, they talk about them behind their backs and do not include them in social activities.
Girls are often the victims. This is probably because, according to research, girls are more sensitive to their social position. If we examine the data, we see that social bullying and physical bullying are equally harmful to the victim’s emotional health.
Finally, there is cyberbullying, which is the newest form of bullying. It involves the use of social and electronic media such as text messages, instant messaging, and gaming websites. Cyberbullying is indirect, and the bullies are often anonymous.
Because cyberbullying is new, there is not much data on its long-term effects. There are several differences between cyberbullying and traditional bullying.
- First, cyberbullying is usually anonymous.
- Second, it is not limited to a particular place, such as school. This means that the victim has no safe place. The cyberbully can always find him or her.
- Third, the messages that the cyberbully sends are almost impossible to remove from the Internet.
- Fourth, the number of people who can see those messages is unlimited.
- Fifth, victims are unlikely to ask for help. There is a lot of interest in cyberbullying.
Studies show that the effects of cyberbullying are similar to other forms of bullying. Victims tend to have low self-esteem and higher rates of depression and anxiety than those who have not experienced bullying. Interestingly, cyberbullying does not appear to have created a new type of victim.
Victims of cyberbullies share the same characteristics as victims of more traditional bullying. On the other hand, some studies show that cyberbullying has created more bullies. This is probably because cyberbullying is indirect and anonymous. It is easier to hurt someone who you do not see and who does not see you.
Passage 3. Sleepy Teens
When school superintendent Russell Dever enters the local coffee shop at around 7:20 a.m., it is crowded with students. “The line is out the door because our high school kids are getting coffee,” he said. “And they are not standing in line for the decaf.” They need the caffeine to stay awake in class. Talk to American high school students and you hear the complaints about how late they stay up, how little they sleep, and how early they must be in class.
These days, there is increasing concern in schools across the United States about students who are not completely awake in morning classes. School officials in some states have even changed start times so teenagers can sleep later.
According to sleep expert Mary Karskadian, the fact that many teenagers work long hours outside of school and have computers and televisions in their bedrooms contributes to a serious lack of sleep.
But, she said, the problem is also due to biology. As the bodies of teenagers develop, their brains also change. These changes make teens more likely than adults to have trouble sleeping at night.
Teenagers need at least eight to nine hours of sleep a night, but the average teen gets a lot less. Karskadian’s study, completed in the fall of 2001 with researcher Amy Wolfson, showed that nearly 30 percent of students in the 10th grade slept less than six hours on school nights. Less than 15 percent got more than eight hours of sleep each night. Eighth graders averaged eight hours of sleep a night, although that age group, she said, needs at least nine hours a night. Even more remarkable are the results of a 1997–1998 school year study. In that study, 12 out of 24 U.S. high school students who were part of an experiment at a sleep laboratory had brainwave patterns similar to those of someone with narcolepsy, a serious condition that affects sleep.
“What’s going on is that at 8:30 in the morning, these kids would normally be in school sitting in a classroom, but their brain is still in the middle of the night,” said Karskadian. Parent Dawn Dow says her son just cannot go to bed before 10 p.m. “Last year, he was trying to put himself to bed at 8:30 and was coming in at 9:30 and 10 o’clock in tears, saying, ‘I just can’t go to sleep.’ It is not a case of children wanting to be up late. It is a change in his chemistry.”
So, would letting teenagers wake up later make a difference? Kyla Wahlstrom of the University of Minnesota in the United States studies the effects of changing school start times.
She has looked at students in Edina and Minneapolis, two cities in Minnesota where public school officials have moved high school starting times past 8:30 a.m. In Minneapolis, the middle school begins at 9:30 a.m. She said the later starting times have reduced student absences. They have also lowered dropout rates by 8 percent over four years. In addition, she said, teachers report that students are not sleeping at their desks during the first two hours of class anymore. She said 92 percent of parents from Edina reported that their teenagers were easier to live with. The students reported that they were feeling less depressed and were getting better grades.
Big changes in school start times may not be possible in some areas. However, Wahlstrom said her research shows that even small changes can contribute to a solution to this serious problem.
Lesson 13. Genetics
Passage 1. Genetics Science
Who are we? Where did we come from? How are we related to each other and to other living things? The written record of the search for the answers to these questions goes back at least 2,500 years.
At that time, Pythagoras, the famous Greek mathematician, believed that children got all of their physical traits from their fathers. Later, Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, realized that children inherit characteristics from both of their parents. However, he incorrectly believed that a child was the product of the mixing of the mother’s and father’s blood.
Modern genetics, the science that helps us to understand how and why we get traits from our parents, was not born until the 19th century. The father of modern genetics was Gregor Mendel, an Austrian scientist.
Through eight years of experiments on pea plants, Mendel proved that characteristics from the mother plant and characteristics from the father plant are not mixed together when the two plants cross-pollinate and produce the next generation of plants.
Rather, the characteristics that are dominant, stronger, will come out in the first generation. The characteristics that are recessive, weaker, will only appear in the second generation.
For example, if you take a very short pea plant and cross-pollinate it with a very tall pea plant, you might expect the new pea plant to be of average height.
But in fact, the first generation of plants will all be very tall because that characteristic is dominant. Short plants will not appear until the second generation because that characteristic is recessive.
The theories that Mendel developed using plants were later applied to all living things, including human beings. Future research that would explain how parents pass traits on to their children through their genes grew out of Mendel’s work.
What is a gene? Explained very simply, a gene is a set of instructions that you get from your parents before you are born. Your genes are similar to an instruction book for a computer. When you open the book, you see a list of all of the parts of the computer. Then you see instructions telling you how to make the computer work.
Your genes, like the instruction book, contain a complete list of all of the parts that make a human being. They also contain instructions on how to put the parts together to make one special individual—you.
Today, scientists are learning more and more about genes and their effect on what we look like, how we behave, and what kinds of sicknesses we have or are likely to get in the future.
They are using this information in two areas, genetic engineering and genetic testing. Through genetic engineering, scientists change how genes work. They sometimes replace one gene in a cell with another gene that works better in some way.
Because all living things, not only humans, have genes, scientists use genetic engineering to produce plants and animals that are healthy, grow rapidly, or are useful to us in some other way.
Gene therapy is a type of genetic engineering that is sometimes used in humans who have very serious health problems. It involves using genes to try to cure an illness in someone who is already sick or to prevent someone with the genes for a genetic disease from getting sick. At this time, gene therapy is experimental. It is only used on patients who have diseases that cannot be treated or cured in any other way.
When doctors do genetic testing, they take DNA from a person or other living thing and examine it carefully. One important use of genetic testing in humans is to discover if someone has or might get a genetic illness. Then the doctors might put him or her in a scientific study and use gene therapy to treat or prevent the disease. Genetic testing can also be used to determine the gender of a fetus, although doctors often use other simpler techniques to get this information.
If experimental gene therapy is successful, someday genetic testing and engineering might be used to allow parents to choose desirable traits or get rid of undesirable ones before their child is even born.
Passage 2. A Terrible Inheritance
If you had a risk of developing a genetic disease, would you want to be tested for it? What factors would affect your decision? If there were no way to prevent, treat, or cure the disease, would you still want to be tested?
As gene research progresses, these are questions that a growing number of people are facing. As many are discovering, there are no easy answers.
Meet Catherine Moser. Moser is an occupational therapist at Terrence Cardinal Cooke Healthcare Center, a nursing home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. In 2002, Moser’s maternal grandfather died at Cook. He had Huntington’s disease, a severe genetic illness that attacks the brain.
Victims of the disease usually begin to show symptoms when they are 40 to 50 years old, early symptoms can include emotional changes such as depression, and behavioral changes such as aggression. As the disease progresses, victims suffer from a loss of control over their movements, difficulty in thinking and talking, and severe emotional complications. After 10 to 20 years of suffering, victims lose all ability to move and finally die.
There is no special diet that you can follow to prevent Huntington’s. There is no medicine that doctors can prescribe to treat it, and there is no operation they can perform to fix it. If one parent suffers from Huntington’s, his or her children have a 50% chance of inheriting the gene that causes the disease. And if you have the gene, you will definitely develop the illness.
There is no effective treatment. All of its victims get worse and then die. No one has ever recovered from it. At the age of 23, Moser made the decision to be tested for Huntington’s. Her decision was unusual. Since there is no treatment or cure, most people at risk for Huntington’s do not see any benefit to being tested. And knowing that you will one day get the disease can be harmful to your mental health and your relationships. In fact, Moser’s own mother did not agree with her daughter’s decision. If her daughter had the harmful gene, it would mean that she had it too. And Moser’s mother did not want to know because, as she said, “you don’t want to know stuff like that. You want to enjoy life.”
Nancy Wexler, like Catherine Moser, comes from a family with a history of Huntington’s. Her mother, grandfather, and three of her uncles died of the disease. And like Moser, Wexler works closely with victims of the disease. She is a neuropsychologist at Columbia University and is in charge of the Hereditary Disease Foundation. She is an expert in Huntington’s. In fact, she was involved in the discovery of the gene for the disease in 1993. That discovery led to the development of a genetic test for the disease. It is the same test that Moser decided to take years later.
Wexler, like Moser, had always intended to have the test when it became available. But when she was actually faced with the decision of whether or not to be tested, she realized that she did not want to know. If the test were positive for the gene, she felt that her life would be “poisoned by the knowledge.” “If you take the test,” she said, “you have to be prepared to be really depressed. I’ve been depressed. I don’t like it.”
Moser had the test in 2005. It was positive for the deadly gene. However, she says that she is not sorry that she was tested. “I’m the same person I’ve always been. It’s been in me from the beginning.”
At first, it was difficult for her to be around the Huntington’s patients at work. However, she now finds strength and purpose in working with them.
She is also involved in raising money for research on Huntington’s disease. Mostly, she is busy living her life. “I have a lot to do, and I don’t have a lot of time.”
Sadly, Moser’s mother has not spoken to her daughter since she found out the results of the test. In an interview, her mother said, “It’s a horrible illness. Now he, my husband, has a wife who has it. Did she think of him? Did she think of me? Who is going to marry her?”
Wexler has never been tested, but it seems that she has been more fortunate than Moser. She is now in her 60s, past the age when symptoms of the disease usually appear.
As Wexler continues her research, Moser goes on with her life. She is working, playing tennis, going to church, learning to ride a unicycle, spending time with her best friend, traveling, and hoping that the work of Wexler and others will lead to a cure soon, before it is too late for her and thousands of others.
Passage 3. Designing the Future
A young couple has decided that it is time to have a baby. So, what is the first thing they do? They go shopping. But not for clothes or furniture. That will come later.
Before anything else, they must decide whether they want a girl or a boy. Next, it is time to consider their future child’s intelligence. Do they want a gifted child, or would a child with an average level of intelligence be acceptable? And what about personality? Do they care if their child is shy? Is kindness important to them? Finally, it is time to consider physical traits. What eye color would they prefer? What about height and weight? Do they want an athletic child so that he or she can play tennis with mom? There are so many features to choose from.
Actually, the situation described above does not happen today. But a recently developed technique in genetic engineering has led many scientists to believe that changing a human embryo’s DNA, and thus its traits, is scientifically possible.
If this sounds more like science fiction than science, think again. The technique is called CRISPR. According to experts, using CRISPR to cut out and replace a piece of human DNA would be remarkably easy.
Jennifer Doudna, a respected biologist and the co-developer of the technique, recently said, “Any scientist with molecular biology skills and knowledge of how to work with embryos is going to be able to do this.” Already, genetic testing can be used to identify gender very early in the embryo’s development. The genes that mark for a number of genetic diseases can also be identified.
Some scientists are convinced that they will soon find the genes for a wide variety of traits—physical appearance, artistic talent, a tendency toward depression—just about anything you can imagine. And if scientists know the gene or genes that control a specific trait, it is at least theoretically possible that CRISPR could be used to replace an undesirable trait with a more desirable one.
But just because scientists can do it, does it mean they will do it? Guo-Ping Feng, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), thinks so. In the future, he hopes to use CRISPR to replace human genes that cause disease with healthy ones. He believes it will take about 10 to 20 years for the technology to be safe enough to use in humans.
“It’s hard to predict the future,” Feng said, “but correcting disease risks is definitely a possibility and should be supported. I think it will be a reality.”
Not everyone shares Feng’s positive attitude, however. Doudna, the scientist who co-developed CRISPR, organized a meeting to restrict the use of the technique on human embryos. At the end of the meeting, Doudna and a group of experts in genetics, ethics, and law called for scientists to agree not to use CRISPR to produce children with genetic changes. However, the group supports basic research using CRISPR, including experiments on embryos.
What do non-experts think about all of this? It is difficult to know, but a recent survey conducted in the United States found that 46% of adults approved of using genetic engineering to reduce the risk of serious diseases. However, 83% said that changes to make a baby more intelligent would not be acceptable. Of course, this is only one survey from one country.
Perhaps it is more instructive to remember that historically, whenever the once unimaginable has become possible—cars, airplanes, and the internet, for example—it soon becomes common. If the technology exists, how can we prevent trait-shopping by parents who want a perfect baby?
Scientists do not agree on the morality of producing children with genetic changes, or the exact day when it will happen. But most do agree that day is approaching.
This brings up very difficult social and moral questions. What are the long-term health risks of introducing genetic changes that will be passed on to future generations? Will too many parents choose to have children of the same gender, leading to a shortage of boys or girls? What will happen to children whose parents cannot afford to give them the advantages enjoyed by their genetically designed peers? How will society treat imperfect children? In short, will changing human genes change humanity itself?
Lesson 14. Emotions
Passage 1. Expression of Emotion
In the northwest of Canada, there is a group of people called the Utkuhikhalingmiut, or Utku. According to anthropologist Jean L. Briggs, author of the book Never in Anger, the Utku have no real word in their language for anger. And even more remarkable, adults rarely seem to get angry. The word that they use to describe the angry behavior of foreigners translates not as anger, but rather as childishness.
Similarly, the Ifaluk people of Micronesia seem to rarely get angry. However, in contrast to the Utku, they talk about anger all the time and have many words to describe it. They consider anger to be evil, a demon in fact, and fear it.
The expression of grief and gratitude is central to the Kaululi culture of Papua New Guinea. In contrast, people from the United States generally spend very little time talking about grief or gratitude. Research on American males shows that they are particularly uncomfortable expressing these emotions.
What is going on here? Aren’t we all human beings? Don’t we all feel the same basic emotions?
This is a topic that philosophers, scientists, religious leaders, and anthropologists, among others, have been arguing about for centuries.
Most researchers today believe that a limited number of emotions are universal. However, there is not complete agreement on which emotions humans indeed share. Fear and anger are almost always included. Guilt, joy, shame, disgust, and surprise are also considered by many to be universal. But then, how can we explain the Utku and the Ifaluk? Dr. Robert C. Solomon, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, has argued that emotions are, at least in part, culture-specific.
In one essay, he says that even among people from the same culture, it is difficult to get agreement on what an emotion is. For example, most anthropologists would not consider love to be an emotion. But if it is not an emotion, then what is it?
Another challenge is how to determine that two people are indeed feeling the same emotion. You can observe people’s behavior and ask them to describe their emotions, but it is impossible to directly observe what they are feeling. This becomes even more complex when you are trying to compare emotions across cultures.
We tend to associate certain behaviors with specific emotions. But of course, our associations are based on what those behaviors mean in our own culture. For example, imagine you are a teacher in the United States with a student from another country. Your student has failed the class. You learn that his behavior has changed. Suddenly, he is avoiding his friends and spending all of his time alone.
If you are from the United States, you will probably describe his emotional state as depressed. Why? In U.S. culture, there is a belief that people who suddenly change their behavior and avoid other people are often depressed. However, if you have some knowledge of the student’s culture, you might recognize his behavior as an expression of deep shame at disgracing his family.
Of course, this example is very simple. It does not mean that people from your student’s culture do not ever experience depression, or that people from the United States do not feel shame.
However, can someone from a culture that does not place the same value on family honor really understand this deep feeling of disgrace? In other words, is shame really the same emotion in all cultures?
Another reason to believe that not all emotions are universal is the fact that different languages characterize emotions in different ways. For instance, in the ancient Indian languages of Sanskrit and Bengali, emotions are described as being either sattva (lightness), rajas (movement), or tamas (heaviness).
Interestingly, two of the examples of sattva, cheerfulness and nobility, are not generally considered to be emotions in English. Is this just a language difference? Or does it reveal that people across cultures do not share a similar emotional experience?
The mystery of whether emotions are universal or culturally specific is one that most likely will never be solved. That probably contributes to our fascination with the subject.
Passage 2. Catching Other People’s Emotions
You wake up one day with a fever and a bad cough. Should you go to work?
In the past, many employers would likely have said yes. Going to work even when you were sick showed your commitment to your job and was considered a virtue. Missing work for any reason was frowned upon.
Nowadays, however, employers would probably agree that the proper decision in this case would be to stay at home. After all, it is better for one sick employee to miss a day or two than to pass the illness on to everyone in the office.
But now imagine this situation. You wake up in a bad mood. Should you be concerned about passing your mood on to your co-workers? According to psychologist and writer Daniel Goleman, the answer is yes.
In his recent book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Relationships, Goleman explains that our brains are social tools. That is, the human brain was designed for social interaction.
Research shows that the human brain contains cells called mirror neurons. According to Goleman, these neurons allow us to “sense both the move another person is about to make and their feelings, and instantaneously prepare us to imitate that movement and feel with them.”
Goleman goes on to say that “mirror neurons link brain to brain…if you put a person in a meeting who is either purposely upbeat or downbeat, it changes the whole group’s collective mood for better or worse."
One example of passing one’s emotions on to others is through laughter. One person starts laughing out loud, and even though we have no idea what the person is laughing at, we begin to laugh as well. When people are alone, on the other hand, they rarely laugh out loud, even when they read or hear a very humorous joke. This suggests that laughter is meant to be shared.
When someone laughs out loud, it is easy to recognize his or her emotional state. But most emotions are not expressed in such an obvious way. How are we able to recognize them? Brain research has shown that our ability to sense others’ emotions is in our genes. We may not be conscious of it, but we are particularly good at reading others’ facial expressions.
Even the most reserved people reveal some emotion on their faces. For example, a movement as small as a raised eyebrow can communicate a world of information.
Psychologist Paul Ekman is considered the world’s leading expert on facial expressions. He has spent years identifying the muscle movements that make up the thousands of facial expressions that we use to communicate our emotions. Interestingly, Ekman’s research has revealed that our facial expressions are not only a mirror of what we are feeling. Sometimes, just making a facial expression can cause us to experience a particular emotion.
For example, if you are in a bad mood but put on an artificial smile, you will start to feel better faster. In other words, sometimes the facial expression actually starts the emotional process rather than the other way around. So if you greet someone with a cheerful expression on your face, both of you will be more likely to feel cheerful.
Now let’s return to our worker who wakes up in a bad mood. What should he do? The decision might depend on the workplace.
If the atmosphere is generally positive, he should get up and go to work. It is more likely that he will catch the positive mood of others than that he will pass on his negative mood. And if he smiles despite his bad mood, he will have an even greater chance of recovery.
On the other hand, if the workplace atmosphere is negative, it might mean that he’s already caught the negative feelings of his co-workers. In that case, it might be a good idea for him to start looking for another job. And now that he understands how emotions are passed from one person to another, he should be more choosy about where he works.
He should look for a healthy workplace where he is unlikely to catch negative feelings from his co-workers. At the same time, he should be more conscious of the effect that his own emotional state has on his co-workers.
As Goleman says, “mirror neurons make us far more neurally connected than we ever knew. This creates a pathway for emotional contagion. If you really care about people, it gives a new spin to the term ‘social responsibility.’ What emotional states are you creating in the people you’re with?”
Passage 3. Micro-expressions
Dr. Paul Ekman has been named one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. He is an expert in nonverbal communication, including gestures and facial expressions. One of his many achievements was the discovery of micro-expressions.
Micro-expressions are facial expressions that flash across the face and then disappear in less than a second. Micro-expressions cannot be consciously controlled, and they happen so fast that most people do not even see them.
Dr. Ekman was also involved in developing a tool for identifying the range of human facial expressions, the Facial Action Coding System, FACS. While all of Dr. Ekman’s work is fascinating, one area has received a lot of attention, using facial expressions to detect lies.
Many of us believe that we can tell when someone is lying. However, research shows the opposite. Most of us are very bad at it. According to Ekman and other experts, only a very small percentage of the population, less than 1%, is gifted at identifying liars. Researchers working with Dr. Ekman have developed three tests to determine a person’s lie detection abilities—an opinion test, a crime test, and an emotion test. For each test, the researchers made short videotapes of people either lying or telling the truth.
The test taker then watches the recordings to see if he can identify the liars. In the opinion test, half of the people were lying about their opinions. In the crime test, half were lying about stealing $50. In the emotion test, half were lying about their feelings.
To be considered gifted or a “wizard,” the term used by Ekman and other researchers, the test taker must score at least 90% on the opinion test and at least 80% on the other two tests. After testing approximately 20,000 individuals over more than 30 years, researchers have only identified about 50 wizards.
And what about the other people who took the tests? Most people scored 50% or lower—almost the same result they would get if they were guessing. However, a small percentage of individuals scored 80% or higher on at least one of the tests while doing poorly on the others.
The test that they scored highly on was almost always related to their profession. For example, more police officers scored well on the crime test, while a higher percentage of therapists did well on the emotion test. This is understandable. After all, experience in a profession should lead to the development of skills related to that field, shouldn’t it? Surprisingly, however, most people did not even score well on the test related to their profession.
So how do the wizards do it?
According to Dr. Ekman, when people are hiding the truth, their faces leak information. That is, their facial muscles move in ways that a wizard or someone with special training can detect. For example, anger is an emotion with a characteristic feature—a tightening of the lips.
However, the micro-expression for anger flashes so quickly across the face that you can easily miss it. Also, people often smile when they attempt to hide anger. This makes it even harder to catch that brief tightening of the lips before the smile.
Wizards, however, are able to identify and interpret these micro-expressions immediately. That is how they can tell when someone is lying.
Imagine how useful this information could be to the police. Police officers often have only a few seconds to calculate the danger of a situation. Sometimes a simple incident, such as stopping a speeding vehicle, can become violent if the police officer misreads the driver’s intentions. During this type of incident, an officer’s ability to recognize the difference between a real smile and one that hides rage is extremely valuable. It can help prevent tragedies, including serious injury and even death. Or imagine that you are falsely accused of a crime. Wouldn’t you want to be able to call in a wizard to read the truth on your face and stand by you during the legal process?
Although less than 1% of us are natural wizards, Dr. Ekman believes that with enough motivation and practice, almost anyone can be trained to see and correctly interpret micro-expressions. To prove his point, Ekman developed a training tape with 40 examples of facial expressions.
The first time most people watch the tape, they cannot see any of the micro-expressions. However, after just 30 minutes of practice and instruction, they can see all of them. And after several days of training, most people are able to not only see but also interpret micro-expressions successfully.
However, identifying and successfully interpreting micro-expressions does not tell you what someone is lying about. It only tells you that the person is lying about something. To find out exactly what happened during a crime, for example, interpreting micro-expressions is only one tool among many that can be used.
In 2004, Dr. Ekman retired from his position as Professor of Psychology at the University of California (UCSF) Medical School and started his own company, the Paul Ekman Group (PEG). PEG conducts trainings all over the world and also develops online interactive training tools. PEG’s clients have included police departments, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), healthcare professionals, security organizations, and business leaders. Interestingly, there are also many individuals who take the training to improve their personal relationships.
Lesson 15. Animals
Passage 1. Animal Music
It has long been said that music is universal, but now science is proving just how deeply true that statement really is. Like most people, scientists cannot define exactly what music is, but they know it when they hear it.
One group of scientists has shown that human appreciation of music may be shared by whales, birds, and even rats, that it is remarkably ancient, and that studying why animals and humans appreciate music may help us better understand how the brain works.
In research published in the journal Science, several scientists have shown that in very basic ways, other species share music appreciation, and that this appreciation may be one of humanity’s oldest activities.
Through such research, scientists hope they may come to understand the human mind better. Perhaps they will even learn key information about how to deal with damage to the auditory system.
Jelle Atema is a biologist and co-author of one of the Science papers. Like several of the researchers involved in the Science papers, Atema is both a scientist and a musician.
In addition to his work in biology, he plays the flute. He has carefully made exact copies of ancient bone flutes in order to play them. He wants to determine the kinds of sounds that early humans may have made.
“Do musical sounds in nature reveal a profound bond between all living things?” asks one of the papers. There is a lot of evidence that perhaps it does.
For example, the general structure of whale music is remarkably similar to that of human music. Indeed, the songs of one type of whale follow many of the same precise rules that are nearly universal in human music. The two species share a similar tonal scale, and their songs involve the introduction and variation of a central theme.
Many species of birds sing in ways that also follow the rules of human song. They use note scales similar to those used by humans, even though an endless variety of such scales is possible.
Among some species, songs are passed from one generation to another or are shared by a group of peers. And some birds even intentionally look for objects that can be used as instruments and then play them. For example, one type of bird uses a hollow log as a drum. Beating on it with a small stick, it breaks off from a tree.
There is also evidence that music played an important part in early human history. For example, 40,000-year-old flutes have been found in northern Europe. Referring to early humans, Atema says, ”to see that they spent so much time making instruments means music was important to them.” The ability to make music, some scientists believe, may even be older than language.
Mark Jude Tramo, a neurologist, says he is fascinated by the complexity of the human brain’s reaction to music. “There is no music center in the brain,” he wrote. “Almost every thinking part of the brain is involved in listening to music, and when we move to the music, many of the areas controlling movement are involved too. Imagine how much of the brain lights up when we dance.”
Tramo sees the research on music as a process that will lead to a better understanding of how the brain works. By learning exactly how the brain processes and understands the specific features that music is made of, a more complete understanding of how the brain makes sense of the world around us may develop.
Other scientists are conducting similar research on how the brain reacts to visual arts. One of their motivations is to understand how the human visual system works.
Tramo believes that that understanding is going to help scientists in their efforts to help the deaf to hear and help the blind to see.
Passage 2. Human’s Best Friend
Most of us are familiar with the saying, “Dogs are man’s best friend.” But is the feeling mutual? Do dogs consider humans their best friends? Recent research could provide an answer.
The latest scientific evidence shows that dogs likely evolved from wolves much earlier than was thought before, perhaps as many as 35,000 years ago. This gives support to the theory that humans and dogs evolved together.
According to the theory, humans were involved in the evolution of dogs, and dogs were involved in the evolution of humans. This is called co-evolution.
A key piece of evidence for co-evolution is the fact that humans and dogs share a surprising number of genes. And some of those genes are involved in behavior.
One similarity between human and dog behavior is the frequency and purpose of eye contact. Researchers noticed that dogs spend a lot of time looking at their owner’s eyes. From a scientific point of view, this was very surprising. Why? Direct, sustained eye contact signals aggression in most animals, including wolves, dogs’ ancestors.
For dogs, in contrast, gazing into their owner’s eyes does not lead to aggression. Rather, it appears to signal a close, trusting bond with their human companions. But why would dogs’ behavior be so different from that of other species?
Researchers thought that it might be related to the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin is often called the “love hormone.” Why? It is released when people hug or gaze deeply into each other’s eyes, and it produces pleasurable feelings.
The connection between sustained eye contact and the production of oxytocin is particularly important to the establishment of a strong bond between human parents and their newborn babies.
To test this idea, scientists measured the levels of oxytocin in dogs and their human companions before and after they gazed at one another. They found an increase in oxytocin in both the dogs and the humans. And the longer the dogs and humans looked at each other, the more oxytocin was produced in both.
Scientists then performed this same experiment with wolves that were raised by and lived with humans from birth. Interestingly, they found that the wolves did not gaze back at human parents who had raised them, and there was no increase in oxytocin production.
This difference between wolves and dogs was striking. For a long time, researchers believed that dog behavior resembled the behavior of their genetic ancestors, wolves. Is it possible that due to co-evolution, dog behavior is actually closer to human behavior?
To answer this question, researchers turned to another area of study, the ability to read body language, including facial expressions. In an experiment at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, scientists taught dogs to distinguish between happy and angry faces. After training, the dogs could very easily tell the difference between pictures of happy and angry people that they had never seen before. This is evidence of another similarity in human and dog ability and behavior.
Yet another experiment shows how similar dogs are to human children. Researchers found that dogs perform tasks better when their owners are in the room with them. This is similar to the way that human children behave. In the experiment, dogs played with toys under three conditions:
1) when their owners were present and talking to them,
2) when their owners were present but silent, and
3) when their owners were not present.
The dogs played with their toys much more when their owners were present, regardless of whether the owners spoke or not. However, when their owners were not present, the dogs were much less likely to play with their toys. They did not seem to be interested in performing for strangers.
The conclusion? Similar to human children, dogs are much more likely to perform tasks successfully for their human parents (their owners) than for strangers.
What can we conclude from all of this research? The fact that humans commonly refer to dogs as “man’s best friend” reveals the human point of view. However, is the feeling mutual? Based on the evidence available at the moment, the answer appears to be yes.
Passage 3. The Mind of the Chimpanzee
In the middle of the 1960s, Beatrice and Alan Gardner started a project that, along with other similar research, taught us a lot about the chimpanzee mind.
They bought an infant chimpanzee and began to teach her the signs of ASL, the American Sign Language used by many of the deaf in Canada and the United States.
The Gardners achieved remarkable success with their student, Washoe. Not only did she learn signs easily, but she quickly began to put them together in meaningful ways.
It was clear that when she saw or used a sign, she formed a picture in her mind of the object it represented. If, for example, she was asked in sign language to get an apple, she would go and find an apple that was out of sight in another room. When news of Washoe’s achievements were first announced to the scientific community, there was a lot of protest.
The results of the research implied that chimpanzees had the ability to learn a human language and suggested that chimps might possess intellectual skills similar to those of humans. Although many were fascinated and excited by the Gardners’ discoveries, many more bitterly criticized the whole project. The controversy led to many other language projects, and the resulting research provided additional information about the chimpanzee’s mind.
The fact that chimpanzees have excellent memories surprised no one. So it was not particularly remarkable when Washoe gave the name sign of Beatrice Gardner, her surrogate mother, after a separation of eleven years. Actually, it was no greater an achievement than the memory of dogs who recognize their owners after separations of almost as long.
Chimpanzees also possess pre-mathematical skills. They can, for example, easily tell the difference between more and less. They can put things into specific categories according to a particular characteristic.
Therefore, they have no difficulty in separating a pile of food into fruits and vegetables at one time and at another, dividing the same pile of food into large and small, even though this calls for putting some vegetables with some fruits.
Chimpanzees who have been taught a human language can combine signs creatively in order to describe objects for which they have no sign. Washoe, for example, puzzled the people taking care of her by asking many times for a “rockberry.” Eventually, they discovered that she was referring to a sweet type of nut that she had been given for the first time a short time before. Another language-trained chimp described a cucumber as a “green banana” and another referred to an Alka-Seltzer as a “listen drink.”
They can even invent signs. One chimp had to be put on a leash when she went outside. One day, ready to go outside but having no sign for “leash,” she showed what she wanted by holding a bent finger to the ring on her collar. This sign became part of her vocabulary.
Some chimpanzees love to draw and especially paint. Those who have learned sign language sometimes give a name to their artwork. This apple or sweet corn or bird or whatever.
The fact that the paintings often look to our eyes remarkably different from the objects themselves either means that the chimpanzees are not very good artists or that we have a lot to learn about chimpanzee art！
People sometimes ask why such complex intellectual powers have evolved in chimpanzees when their lives in the wild are so simple. The answer is, of course, that their lives in the wild are not so simple.
They use and need all their mental skills during normal everyday life in their complex society. Chimpanzees always have to make choices—where to go or with whom to travel. They need highly developed social skills, particularly males who want to become leaders. And low-ranking chimpanzees must learn to hide their intentions or do things in secret if they want to survive.
Indeed, the study of chimpanzees in the wild suggests that their intellectual abilities evolved over thousands of years to help them deal with daily life. It is easier to study intellectual skill in the lab where, through carefully designed tests and the proper use of rewards, chimpanzees can be encouraged to stretch their minds to the limit.
It is more meaningful to study the subject in the wild but much harder. It is more meaningful because we can better understand the environmental pressures that led to the evolution of intellectual skills in chimpanzee societies.
It is harder because in the wild almost all behaviors are complicated by endless variables. Years of observing, recording, and analyzing replace planned testing. The number of research subjects can often be counted on the fingers of one hand. The only experiments are nature’s own and only time eventually may lead to their being repeated.
Lesson 16. Scientists
Passage 1. The Life of a Scientist
The attractive, well-dressed woman holds up a pair of gloves. There seems to be nothing remarkable about them. But there is a story behind these gloves.
It involves a war, a little girl who wanted to be a housewife, a determined mother, a talented student, three prestigious universities, and a unique ability to see the big picture.
Jeong-Wha Choi was born in 1946 in Seoul, Korea. The only girl in a family of four children, Choi lost her father in the Korean War. Her mother went to work as a nurse to support her family. In Korea at that time, it was unusual for a woman to work outside the home, and as a child, Choi was very sensitive to her mother’s absence. Although an excellent student, she resisted her mother’s attempts to interest her in a career in medicine. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life, and it did not involve medical school. Choi’s dream was to be a stay-at-home wife and mother.
Choi’s mother, however, was determined that her children attend university. Choi agreed, but with one condition. She would not study medicine. She would study home economics.
Choi entered prestigious Seoul National University and did very well in her studies. Her professors encouraged her to go on to graduate school, but with no intention of having a career, Choi was not interested. Fate, however, had different plans.
While Choi waited for a suitable husband to appear, she took a job with the government as a child welfare worker. But after she had been at her job for only six months, one of her former professors offered her a job as an assistant in the Department of Home Economics. It was an interesting opportunity, and she accepted.
Choi spent almost five years in the department. While she was there, she learned a lot about clothing and textiles. Reading through international publications, she became fascinated by a field that did not even exist in South Korea at that time—clothing physiology.
Clothing physiology is the study of the biological function or work of clothing, specifically, how clothing can contribute to or interfere with the healthy functioning of the human body. Although she had always dreamed of being a wife and mother, Choi accepted the fact that perhaps it was not her fate to marry. She therefore began to look for a graduate program where she could study clothing physiology.
Japan seemed to be the best choice. She taught herself as much Japanese as she could by reading textbooks and looking through Japanese fashion magazines, and in January 1973, left South Korea for Japan. Choi expected that it would be at least a year before she would be ready to take the demanding Japanese university entrance exam. To her surprise, however, she passed after only two months of study.
In March 1975, just two short years after her arrival in Japan, Choi graduated with a degree in clothing physiology from prestigious Nara Women’s University. She then went on to get a Ph.D. from the School of Medicine at Kobe University in Kobe, Japan.
As her research topic, Choi examined how Korean traditional clothing compares to Western clothing in two ways：thermal adaptability (how well the clothing allows the body to control temperature) and mobility (how well the clothing suits the wearer’s movement). Choi’s research confirmed that Korean traditional clothing, while beautiful, did not perform very well on a physiological level.
In September 1979, Choi returned to Seoul National University, this time as an assistant professor in the same department where she had studied and worked years before.
She has since done important research on the effects of clothing on the wearer’s quality of life. She and her research team conduct scientifically controlled experiments to precisely measure the ways in which clothing affects mental, physical, and occupational health and well-being. And that’s what brings us back to those gloves.
As a scientist, one of Choi’s strengths is her ability to notice problems that others do not and then come up with solutions.
On a visit to the South Korean countryside, Choi noticed the green stains and painful cracks on the farmers’ hands. After analyzing the farmers’ work habits and needs, she returned to her laboratory to design a glove suitable for their work.
In coming up with the final design, Choi considered a range of factors, from the rate of sweating to worker productivity. The gloves that she and her research team invented are made of a thin, light material that breathes, making it comfortable enough for all-day wear. The fingers of the glove are covered in a material that stops the fingers from slipping. At the same time, the material is thin enough for the farmers to feel what they are doing.
Choi and her research group have since patented their invention, and their gloves are worn today by agricultural workers all over South Korea. The gloves have also attracted the attention of those in other professions, including pharmacists who find that the gloves are perfectly suited to their work.
Eventually, Choi did marry and have two children, but she has hardly been a stay-at-home wife and mother. She has worked as a professor at Seoul National University, published many papers in her field, and has patented a number of inventions.
Passage 2. The Father of Vaccination
In a small town in England in the middle of the 18th century, an eight-year-old boy named Edward Jenner was intentionally infected with a deadly disease.
He was then locked in a barn with other children who had been similarly infected. There they remained until they either died or recovered. Fortunately for humanity, Jenner survived.
Child abuse? No, variolation. A common practice in the 18th century, variolation involved deliberately infecting a healthy person with the variola virus that causes a terrible illness, smallpox. To infect the healthy person, doctors would take the pus from a person sick with smallpox and intentionally inject it into the healthy person.
Why would a doctor do this? Variolation was the only effective means of fighting smallpox, a deadly disease that was regularly killing between 10 to 20 percent of the population of Europe at that time. Among children, the death rate was even higher.
One in three infants and children who caught smallpox died. Although almost everyone who was variolated caught the disease, the death rate among variolated children was only about 10 percent as compared to more than 30 percent in children who caught the highly contagious disease directly from another person. And most importantly, almost everyone who survived variolation never caught the disease again.
It is possible that variolation saved Jenner’s life, but he would never forget his terrible days in the barn. Perhaps that is what led him to choose a career in medicine. In 1761, at just 13, Jenner began his medical studies.
By 1770, he was studying anatomy and surgery under John Hunter at St. George’s Hospital in London. With Hunter, Jenner was trained in the scientific method, which his instructor described simply as, “Why think; Why not try the experiment?”
After two years in London, Jenner returned to his hometown. He was a popular doctor due to his gentle personality and surgical skill. One common request from his patients was for variolation.
Jenner performed the procedure many times, although he used a more humane method than the one that he had suffered through as a child. In his medical practice, Jenner observed something unexpected. A small number of his variolated patients never developed smallpox.
Because of his training in the scientific method, he wanted to understand why these particular individuals were able to resist the disease while all others, as expected, contracted a mild to severe case of the deadly disease. He discovered that the variolated patients who did not develop smallpox worked closely with cows and had all previously had cowpox. Cowpox is an illness passed from cows to humans.
Jenner observed that some of the symptoms of cowpox and smallpox were similar. However, while cowpox was a mild illness that did not lead to death, smallpox was a severe, life-threatening disease. He was also aware of a common belief that people who had had cowpox never got smallpox.
Based on his observations, Jenner came up with a theory. He believed that cowpox not only protected against smallpox but could be passed from one human being to another as a deliberate means of protection from the disease. In May 1796, Jenner got the chance to test his theory.
He learned that a young woman from a local farm, Sarah Nelms, had cowpox. Jenner asked the parents of an eight-year-old boy named James Phipps for permission to conduct an experiment on their son. Jenner chose James because he had never had cowpox or smallpox.
Jenner removed pus from Sarah’s hand and spread it on scratches he had made on the boy’s arms. As expected, the boy developed cowpox but recovered rapidly. Jenner was now ready for the second, riskier stage of his experiment.
On July 1, 1796, Jenner variolated Phipps with pus from a smallpox patient. Jenner and other scientists and physicians waited anxiously for the results.
In fact, James Phipps never caught smallpox. This was clear evidence to support Jenner’s theory, but more data were needed.
Jenner experimented successfully on 13 more patients and, at the end of 1796, wrote a report describing his work for the Royal Society.
However, it was turned down for publication. According to those who reviewed it, Jenner’s theory was too much of a challenge to the accepted medical beliefs of the time. Jenner ignored the criticism and continued experimenting. In 1798, he published his own book based on 23 cases in which vaccination—named for the vaccinia virus of cowpox—resulted in lasting protection against, or immunity to, smallpox.
Although many people continued to criticize Jenner, some well-known London physicians were starting to vaccinate their patients. By the beginning of the 19th century, the practice of vaccination had spread throughout the world.
Eventually, Jenner’s contributions to science were formally recognized. However, he never made an attempt to get rich through his discovery. Instead, he spent much of his time working without pay to spread the good news about vaccination.
In 1977, the last known victim of smallpox recovered. No new cases appeared, and in 1980, the World Health Assembly announced that the world and its peoples were free of smallpox.
Passage 3. A Nose for Science
In 1791, Marie Antoinette escaped Paris with her husband, Louis XVI. Dressed as simple travelers, they left for Austria. But before they arrived, they were caught. How?
The legend says that when the queen stepped down from her carriage in a cloud of expensive perfume, everyone knew she must be royalty. No ordinary person could afford to wear anything that smelled so heavenly. The queen eventually paid for the mistake with her life.
This is just one of the many perfume tales that scientist Luca Turin enjoys telling. Turin is a biophysicist with an unusual hobby, collecting perfume.
Turin has been obsessed by smell since he was a boy, and he used to entertain himself by analyzing the scents of wild plants. He has an unusually sensitive nose and is very good at identifying different scents.
Turin describes his excellent sense of smell in this way, “Every perfume I’ve ever smelled has been to me like a movie, sound and vision. To me, smell is just as real as they are.”
When he was a young scientific researcher in Nice, France, Turin frequently visited local perfume shops, collecting rare fragrances. He was well known for his ability to smell a perfume and analyze it, immediately identifying the individual scents that it contained.
As he added to his perfume collection, Turin was also progressing in his scientific career. Although trained as a biologist, he considered the division of science into separate fields—biology, chemistry, and physics—to be artificial.
He moved freely from one field to another, following a path determined only by his interest and intellect. In that way, he gained a wider range of knowledge than most scientists possess. At the same time, Turin’s fascination with perfume grew. One day, he and some friends visited a large discount perfume store, where Turin bought almost everything on the shelves.
On the way home, he entertained his friends by describing the fragrances in language that was so poetic that they told him he should write a book. He decided to do exactly that. In 1992, Turin’s book was published as Parfum, Le Guide (Perfume, The Guide). In it, Turin skillfully critiques some of the world’s most famous fragrances. For example, this is how he describes “Rush” by Gucci: “It smells like an infant’s breath, mixed with his mother’s hairspray. What Rush can do, as all great art does, is create a yearning, then fill it with false memories of an invented past.”
Turin’s book was extremely popular among the secretive “Big Boys”—the seven large companies that control the world’s scent market. Turin’s talent at translating smell into words won him a rare invitation to visit their laboratories.
There, Turin discovered that the widely accepted theory about how we are able to identify particular smells by the shape of their molecules did not seem to work.
Under this theory, it should be fairly easy for a chemist to build new molecules and accurately predict what they will smell like. But in fact, this is not the case.
Each new smell the Big Boys create involves an investment of millions of dollars. That is because only a very small percentage of the new molecules possess the desired fragrance.
Now Turin had a new obsession, solving the mystery of smell. As a scientist with an extremely sensitive nose, an obsession with perfume, access to the Big Boys’ laboratories, and a wide range of scientific knowledge, he was particularly well-suited to the challenge.
Within just three years, Turin believed that he had the answer. The key was not the shape of the molecules, but rather their vibrations. Turin sent a paper presenting his theory to a prestigious science journal and waited anxiously for a response.
However, a few scientific reviewers recommended that the journal turn the paper down. Scientists who had based their careers on the old theory of smell also reacted negatively, and he was even accused of fraud, an accusation that turned out to be false.
What is Turin’s explanation for this negative reaction from some in the scientific community?
First of all, he is sharply critical of the standards for publication in science journals. He argues that the reviewers turned his paper down due to their narrow focus on just one field of science. Therefore, they couldn’t make sense out of a complex theory involving biology, chemistry, and physics.
He also believes that scientists do not have enough time to write scientific reviews. In an interview in 2013, Turin said, “These days, people have 900 emails per day. How much time is there to read, to think, to review a paper? Reviewing papers? Honestly, all of us have better things to do. But of course, you have to do it, so the standard of review now is really, really low.”
However, Turin has not given up on his theory, nor have many in the scientific community. Although his ideas remain controversial, he has continued to research and publish scientific papers.
For nine years, he used his theory to create scent molecules to sell to companies that use scent in their products. He has also worked as a visiting professor at prestigious American and international universities and research institutes.
He has conducted research for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a U.S. government agency, on an artificial nose that would be much more sensitive than the human nose. Such a nose could be used in a wide range of fields, including medicine, where it could be used to identify cancer cells.
Turin’s interest in the art of scent also remains strong. In 2006, he published a book about his work, The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell.
In 2008, he and his wife, Tanya Sanchez, wrote another guide to perfume titled Perfumes: the A to Z Guide, which received excellent critical reviews in prestigious American and British publications.
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