Humor4u

  A recent study has proved that the intensity of exercise matters to reduce the risk of dementia and mortality caused by cancer or heart disease, according to CNBC reports . The article is suitable for B2 students, but there are links to JAMA Neurology and JAMA Internal Medicine leading to the scientific paper, Ahmadi et al, European Heart Journal, 2022 , which is more suitable for C2 students and Medicine professionals. In the CNBC article you can find some interesting words like: a step, to go about [walking], to keep up with a pace , to lower, to be committed to [a daily walk], burst , early death, to peak at [10,000 steps each day], to drop [risk of dementia], purposeful, to review the data, [to walk] briskly , [it] proved to be beneficial, a condition , a device, to monitor [phisical activity]. Time magazine also reports  on a second study by  Dempsey et al, European Heart Journal 2022 , which also studied the intensity of the effort and the time spent. Tara Law e...

Professor Wolf Reik from the Babraham Institute in Cambridge , has led a group of scientists to find a technique that rejuvenates skin cells by 30 years. BBC News recently reported about this breakthrough, a step forward in regenerative medicine research, which eventually might help in the treatment of diabetes, heart disease or neurological disorders, although there is still a great deal of work to be done, because some of the chemicals involved in the process of cell reprogramming can cause cancer, and clinical application are still "a long way off" , according to Prof. Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute in London .   The BBC News article and the video below are suitable for C1 students and above.  You will find interesting words like: to tackle, ageing, tissues, age-related disease, disorders, to build on [a technique], to clone, super [exciting], to stress that, [scientific] issues to overcome, a critical step forward, to stem from, embryo, [human emb...

Professor Genevieve Bell is a cultural anthropologist, a technologist and a futurist. She is the head of the 3A Institute (3Ai) , at the Australian National University, where she is building a new branch of engineering to explore the impact and the management of artificial intelligence, data and technology on human behaviour . She previously worked for 20 years at Silicon Valley, leading a team of 100 scientists at Intel, as The New York Times reported in 2014 .  Genevieve Bell has recently presented the line of research in the 3Ai, which brings together experts in the fields of culture, technology and the environment, with the TED Talk below, entitled " 6 Big Ethical Questions About the Future of AI" . In this 14':48" video with subtitles, professor Bell speaks with a vey clear, educated, Australian accent and she uses academic words which might be transparent to a Spanish learner, but the cultural and engineering concepts she explains make the talk suitable for C1 ...

"Food allergies have risen to an absolutely crazy extent", according to Grahan Rook, emeritus professor of medical microbiology at University College London, and hospital admissions figures in the US, Australia and Europe, are part of the data that prove that strong statement. This BBC Future article discusses two hypotheses -the hygiene hypothesis and the dual-allergen exposure theory- that try to explain this sharp increase in food allergies around the world, and the environmental factors that affect the response of our immune system to certain products. The length, technicality and textual complexity of this article, make it suitable for C2 students. The more interesting new words you will come across in this article are: on the rise, risky, a minor reaction, itching, swelling, a mild, severe [reaction], anaphylaxis, a state of shock, wheezing, dizziness, vomiting, pulse, blood preasure, to drop, airways, hospital admissions, [increased] threefold, to see [a 72%] rise in...

Scientists have carried out research to find out how different animals can be positively or negatively influenced by music:  from cheese bacteria, to sharks, mosquitoes or cows, they all have proven to show preferences for some music genres over others.  This BBC text can be read by B2 students and above. In the video below, you can watch Snowball, a cockatoo, dancing to the music of Backstreet Boys.

Angela Lee Duckworth left a high-flying job in consulting for a more demanding job as a 7th Grade Maths teacher in a New Yourk public school.  Then, she left the classroom to go to graduate school and study the best predictor for success in students, rookie teachers, West Point Military Academy cadets, competitive sales people, and she found that the best predictor for success was not social intelligence, good looks, physical health or IQ, it was grit.  Grit is "the passion and perseverance for very long-term goals", it is "having stamina". "Grit is living life like it is a marathon, not a sprint". This short TED Talk video (06:12) with subtitles can be seen by B2 learners.

Are there gender differences between men and women or are we just talking about sterotypes? Are there biological differences between men's and women's brains or are the differences social and cultural? Many English coursebooks for adults use this topic to raise debate in the classroom:  Gender or individual differences? Nature or nurture? Here you can find a selection of materials to teach a lesson about gender issues, which I have used to expand the reading " How Men and Women Argue " on p. 64 of Christina Latham-Koenig's & Clive Oxenden's, English File Upper-Intermediate, 3rd Edition , Oxford University Press: "Men & Women", a set of controversial statements which students can discuss, first in pairs and then, as a class. Some links to TED Talks videos that could be given for listening/oral homework (students are assigned one video, they watch it at home, take notes and in the first 15 minutes of the next class they share the information in...

Artificial Intelligence professor at MIT, Regina Barzilay, and Connie Lehman, the chief radiologist for breast imaging at Massachussetts General Hospital, are developing algorithms to train computers to read mammograms and prevent disease in general.  But there are also examples in the past of promising new technologies, such as CAD (Computer Aided Detection), which failed to deliver what was expected from them. This NPR story can be read as an article or heard as an audio report with a script (6':25").  The technicality of the vocabulary can make this a C2 reading or listening task.

Laughter is, basically, a social activity.  Humans laugh as a way to bond with each other -or to separate from those who belong to another social group. Other animal species also laugh, rats or apes, but the reasons why humans laugh are many and very nuanced.  This BBC article describes laughter and explains some of the reasons why we laugh. Although the vocabulary in this article is very rich, the text can be accessible to B2 learners.

Psychology professor Judith Grisel talks on Fresh Air about the neuroscience of addiction.  She compares alcohol to a sledgehammer on the brain, cocaine is like a laser -it is very specific, whereas marijuana floods the brain with one specific effect. She explains how our brain learns to react against these addictive substances when they are used regularly to bring you to a state of balance, "homeostasis", which reduces the effects of drugs in the long run. Then she discusses binge drinking, the legalization of marijuana, among other things. Professor Grisel was a marijuana and alcohol addict in her youth, but she has been clean for 30 years. She is the author of the book " Never Enough: the Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction ". This NPR interview lasts 36':03", but it has a script, so it can be classified as C1.

The Purkinje cell in the cerebellum The Weisman Art Museum in Minnesota mounted an exhibition of Santiago Ramón y Cajal's drawings, which has been touring several univeristy art museums in the USA and Canada since 2017. Here you can find a link to the exhibition calendar note. A resource kit for elementary and secondary education teachers and students was published in pdf and here you can see the reproductions of some of the original drawings by Cajal as well as lesson plans to use in the classroom (C2 Level). Cajal's drawings inspired artists like Dalí, Miró or Tanguy.  Santiago Ramón y Cajal is considered the father of neuroscience, he was awarded the Nobel prize for Medicine in 1906, and he was a fine artist too.  Here you can find a link to Cajal's Wikipedia page.