Verbal Ability ...

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

A basic truth is once again trying to break through the agony of worldwide pandemic and the enduring inhumanity of racist oppression. Healthcare workers risking their lives for others, mutual aid networks empowering neighbourhoods, farmers delivering food to quarantined customers, mothers forming lines to protect youth from police violence: we’re in this life together. We - young and old, citizen and immigrant - do best when we collaborate. Indeed, our only way to survive is to have each other’s back while safeguarding the resilience and diversity of this planet we call home.

As an insight, it’s not new, or surprising. Anthropologists have long told us that, as a species neither particularly strong nor fast, humans survived because of our unique ability to create and cooperate. ‘All our thriving is mutual’ is how the Indigenous scholar Edgar Villanueva captured the age-old wisdom in his book Decolonizing Wealth (2018). What is new is the extent to which so many civic and corporate leaders - sometimes entire cultures - have lost sight of our most precious collective quality.

This loss is rooted, in large part, in the tragedy of the private - this notion that moved, in short order, from curious idea to ideology to global economic system. It claimed selfishness, greed and private property as the real seeds of progress. Indeed, the mistaken concept many readers have likely heard under the name ‘the tragedy of the commons’ has its origins in the sophomoric assumption that private interest is the naturally predominant guide for human action. The real tragedy, however, lies not in the commons, but in the private. It is the private that produces violence, destruction and exclusion. Standing on its head thousands of years of cultural wisdom, the idea of the private variously separates, exploits and exhausts those living under its cold operating logic.

In preindustrial societies, cooperation represented naked necessity for survival. Yet the realisation that a healthy whole is larger than its parts never stopped informing cultures. It embodies the pillars of Christianity as much as the Islamic Golden Age, the Enlightenment or the New Deal. In the midst of a global depression, the US president Franklin D Roosevelt evoked an ‘industrial covenant’ - a commitment to living wages and a right to work for all. During the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr gave voice to the broader idea when he said that no one is free until we are all free. On Earth Day 1970, the US senator Edmund Muskie proclaimed that the only society to survive is one that ‘will not tolerate slums for some and decent houses for others, … clean air for some and filth for others’. We should call these ideas what they are - central civilisational insights. Social and economic prosperity depends on the wellbeing of all, not just the few.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

A basic truth is once again trying to break through the agony of worldwide pandemic and the enduring inhumanity of racist oppression. Healthcare workers risking their lives for others, mutual aid networks empowering neighbourhoods, farmers delivering food to quarantined customers, mothers forming lines to protect youth from police violence: we’re in this life together. We - young and old, citizen and immigrant - do best when we collaborate. Indeed, our only way to survive is to have each other’s back while safeguarding the resilience and diversity of this planet we call home.

As an insight, it’s not new, or surprising. Anthropologists have long told us that, as a species neither particularly strong nor fast, humans survived because of our unique ability to create and cooperate. ‘All our thriving is mutual’ is how the Indigenous scholar Edgar Villanueva captured the age-old wisdom in his book Decolonizing Wealth (2018). What is new is the extent to which so many civic and corporate leaders - sometimes entire cultures - have lost sight of our most precious collective quality.

This loss is rooted, in large part, in the tragedy of the private - this notion that moved, in short order, from curious idea to ideology to global economic system. It claimed selfishness, greed and private property as the real seeds of progress. Indeed, the mistaken concept many readers have likely heard under the name ‘the tragedy of the commons’ has its origins in the sophomoric assumption that private interest is the naturally predominant guide for human action. The real tragedy, however, lies not in the commons, but in the private. It is the private that produces violence, destruction and exclusion. Standing on its head thousands of years of cultural wisdom, the idea of the private variously separates, exploits and exhausts those living under its cold operating logic.

In preindustrial societies, cooperation represented naked necessity for survival. Yet the realisation that a healthy whole is larger than its parts never stopped informing cultures. It embodies the pillars of Christianity as much as the Islamic Golden Age, the Enlightenment or the New Deal. In the midst of a global depression, the US president Franklin D Roosevelt evoked an ‘industrial covenant’ - a commitment to living wages and a right to work for all. During the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr gave voice to the broader idea when he said that no one is free until we are all free. On Earth Day 1970, the US senator Edmund Muskie proclaimed that the only society to survive is one that ‘will not tolerate slums for some and decent houses for others, … clean air for some and filth for others’. We should call these ideas what they are - central civilisational insights. Social and economic prosperity depends on the wellbeing of all, not just the few.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

A basic truth is once again trying to break through the agony of worldwide pandemic and the enduring inhumanity of racist oppression. Healthcare workers risking their lives for others, mutual aid networks empowering neighbourhoods, farmers delivering food to quarantined customers, mothers forming lines to protect youth from police violence: we’re in this life together. We - young and old, citizen and immigrant - do best when we collaborate. Indeed, our only way to survive is to have each other’s back while safeguarding the resilience and diversity of this planet we call home.

As an insight, it’s not new, or surprising. Anthropologists have long told us that, as a species neither particularly strong nor fast, humans survived because of our unique ability to create and cooperate. ‘All our thriving is mutual’ is how the Indigenous scholar Edgar Villanueva captured the age-old wisdom in his book Decolonizing Wealth (2018). What is new is the extent to which so many civic and corporate leaders - sometimes entire cultures - have lost sight of our most precious collective quality.

This loss is rooted, in large part, in the tragedy of the private - this notion that moved, in short order, from curious idea to ideology to global economic system. It claimed selfishness, greed and private property as the real seeds of progress. Indeed, the mistaken concept many readers have likely heard under the name ‘the tragedy of the commons’ has its origins in the sophomoric assumption that private interest is the naturally predominant guide for human action. The real tragedy, however, lies not in the commons, but in the private. It is the private that produces violence, destruction and exclusion. Standing on its head thousands of years of cultural wisdom, the idea of the private variously separates, exploits and exhausts those living under its cold operating logic.

In preindustrial societies, cooperation represented naked necessity for survival. Yet the realisation that a healthy whole is larger than its parts never stopped informing cultures. It embodies the pillars of Christianity as much as the Islamic Golden Age, the Enlightenment or the New Deal. In the midst of a global depression, the US president Franklin D Roosevelt evoked an ‘industrial covenant’ - a commitment to living wages and a right to work for all. During the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr gave voice to the broader idea when he said that no one is free until we are all free. On Earth Day 1970, the US senator Edmund Muskie proclaimed that the only society to survive is one that ‘will not tolerate slums for some and decent houses for others, … clean air for some and filth for others’. We should call these ideas what they are - central civilisational insights. Social and economic prosperity depends on the wellbeing of all, not just the few.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

A basic truth is once again trying to break through the agony of worldwide pandemic and the enduring inhumanity of racist oppression. Healthcare workers risking their lives for others, mutual aid networks empowering neighbourhoods, farmers delivering food to quarantined customers, mothers forming lines to protect youth from police violence: we’re in this life together. We - young and old, citizen and immigrant - do best when we collaborate. Indeed, our only way to survive is to have each other’s back while safeguarding the resilience and diversity of this planet we call home.

As an insight, it’s not new, or surprising. Anthropologists have long told us that, as a species neither particularly strong nor fast, humans survived because of our unique ability to create and cooperate. ‘All our thriving is mutual’ is how the Indigenous scholar Edgar Villanueva captured the age-old wisdom in his book Decolonizing Wealth (2018). What is new is the extent to which so many civic and corporate leaders - sometimes entire cultures - have lost sight of our most precious collective quality.

This loss is rooted, in large part, in the tragedy of the private - this notion that moved, in short order, from curious idea to ideology to global economic system. It claimed selfishness, greed and private property as the real seeds of progress. Indeed, the mistaken concept many readers have likely heard under the name ‘the tragedy of the commons’ has its origins in the sophomoric assumption that private interest is the naturally predominant guide for human action. The real tragedy, however, lies not in the commons, but in the private. It is the private that produces violence, destruction and exclusion. Standing on its head thousands of years of cultural wisdom, the idea of the private variously separates, exploits and exhausts those living under its cold operating logic.

In preindustrial societies, cooperation represented naked necessity for survival. Yet the realisation that a healthy whole is larger than its parts never stopped informing cultures. It embodies the pillars of Christianity as much as the Islamic Golden Age, the Enlightenment or the New Deal. In the midst of a global depression, the US president Franklin D Roosevelt evoked an ‘industrial covenant’ - a commitment to living wages and a right to work for all. During the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr gave voice to the broader idea when he said that no one is free until we are all free. On Earth Day 1970, the US senator Edmund Muskie proclaimed that the only society to survive is one that ‘will not tolerate slums for some and decent houses for others, … clean air for some and filth for others’. We should call these ideas what they are - central civilisational insights. Social and economic prosperity depends on the wellbeing of all, not just the few.

Answer the given questions based on the passage given below:

The thumping of valves. The cacophonous rumbling. The powerful kick in the back as the rocket’s engines ignite. The alarmingly realistic possibility that these will be your last precious moments alive.

By all accounts, the journey into space is a thrilling ride. During the second launch of his career in 1982, the cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev sensed the rocket swaying to the right and the left, as if it were losing balance… then finally, he felt himself leave the ground. As the crew soared into space, they yelled “G-o-o-u” - it’s not entirely clear why.

But though Lebedev’s space adventure began with a hit of adrenaline, this soon wore off - and just a week into his seven-month mission aboard the space station Salyut 7, he was bored. In reality, hurtling through low-Earth orbit at around 8 km/s (17,900mph) in a small aluminium can, was not enough to absorb him. As he wrote in his diary, “the drab routine has begun”.

We tend to think of boredom as a fairly straightforward response to tedious activities. After all, it’s rare to find someone who claims to enjoy washing up or doing their taxes - and it’s deeply suspicious when you do. Except that boredom isn’t quite this clear-cut. Decades of research have revealed that it’s as mysterious as it is agonising, and there’s a surprising amount of variation in how much monotony each person can handle.

“I think everybody gets the boredom signal,” says James Danckert, who heads a boredom lab at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. “Some people are really, really good at dealing with it though.”

In 2014, a team of social psychologists from the University of Virginia discovered during a series of experiments on mind wandering that many participants - around 25% of women and 67% of men - were deliberately electrocuting themselves when they were left alone in a room for just 15 minutes, purely for something to do. One person shocked themselves nearly 200 times.

And from the man who diligently recreated a Babylonian feast from a recipe on a 3,750-year-old clay tablet to the woman who resat her school exam paper from seven years ago out of mild curiosity, the recent lockdowns have revealed that peculiar and desperate strategies for dealing with boredom are very much not limited to a lab environment.

At the other end of the spectrum, some people actively seek out situations which might normally be considered tedious. The hermit Christopher Knight, who drove to a forest in Maine in 1986 and didn’t emerge for 27 years, claims he never got bored once - though by his own admission, for the majority of his time there, he was occupied with doing absolutely nothing. 

So, why is that?

One of the earliest accounts of boredom dates back to Roman times, when the philosopher Seneca may have begun the long tradition of moaning about it. During a ponderous exchange of letters with a friend, he asked, “Quo usque eadem” - “How much longer [must we endure] the same things?”, and followed up with, “I do nothing new. I see nothing new. Eventually, there’s a nausea even of this”.

Answer the given questions based on the passage given below:

The thumping of valves. The cacophonous rumbling. The powerful kick in the back as the rocket’s engines ignite. The alarmingly realistic possibility that these will be your last precious moments alive.

By all accounts, the journey into space is a thrilling ride. During the second launch of his career in 1982, the cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev sensed the rocket swaying to the right and the left, as if it were losing balance… then finally, he felt himself leave the ground. As the crew soared into space, they yelled “G-o-o-u” - it’s not entirely clear why.

But though Lebedev’s space adventure began with a hit of adrenaline, this soon wore off - and just a week into his seven-month mission aboard the space station Salyut 7, he was bored. In reality, hurtling through low-Earth orbit at around 8 km/s (17,900mph) in a small aluminium can, was not enough to absorb him. As he wrote in his diary, “the drab routine has begun”.

We tend to think of boredom as a fairly straightforward response to tedious activities. After all, it’s rare to find someone who claims to enjoy washing up or doing their taxes - and it’s deeply suspicious when you do. Except that boredom isn’t quite this clear-cut. Decades of research have revealed that it’s as mysterious as it is agonising, and there’s a surprising amount of variation in how much monotony each person can handle.

“I think everybody gets the boredom signal,” says James Danckert, who heads a boredom lab at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. “Some people are really, really good at dealing with it though.”

In 2014, a team of social psychologists from the University of Virginia discovered during a series of experiments on mind wandering that many participants - around 25% of women and 67% of men - were deliberately electrocuting themselves when they were left alone in a room for just 15 minutes, purely for something to do. One person shocked themselves nearly 200 times.

And from the man who diligently recreated a Babylonian feast from a recipe on a 3,750-year-old clay tablet to the woman who resat her school exam paper from seven years ago out of mild curiosity, the recent lockdowns have revealed that peculiar and desperate strategies for dealing with boredom are very much not limited to a lab environment.

At the other end of the spectrum, some people actively seek out situations which might normally be considered tedious. The hermit Christopher Knight, who drove to a forest in Maine in 1986 and didn’t emerge for 27 years, claims he never got bored once - though by his own admission, for the majority of his time there, he was occupied with doing absolutely nothing. 

So, why is that?

One of the earliest accounts of boredom dates back to Roman times, when the philosopher Seneca may have begun the long tradition of moaning about it. During a ponderous exchange of letters with a friend, he asked, “Quo usque eadem” - “How much longer [must we endure] the same things?”, and followed up with, “I do nothing new. I see nothing new. Eventually, there’s a nausea even of this”.

Answer the given questions based on the passage given below:

The thumping of valves. The cacophonous rumbling. The powerful kick in the back as the rocket’s engines ignite. The alarmingly realistic possibility that these will be your last precious moments alive.

By all accounts, the journey into space is a thrilling ride. During the second launch of his career in 1982, the cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev sensed the rocket swaying to the right and the left, as if it were losing balance… then finally, he felt himself leave the ground. As the crew soared into space, they yelled “G-o-o-u” - it’s not entirely clear why.

But though Lebedev’s space adventure began with a hit of adrenaline, this soon wore off - and just a week into his seven-month mission aboard the space station Salyut 7, he was bored. In reality, hurtling through low-Earth orbit at around 8 km/s (17,900mph) in a small aluminium can, was not enough to absorb him. As he wrote in his diary, “the drab routine has begun”.

We tend to think of boredom as a fairly straightforward response to tedious activities. After all, it’s rare to find someone who claims to enjoy washing up or doing their taxes - and it’s deeply suspicious when you do. Except that boredom isn’t quite this clear-cut. Decades of research have revealed that it’s as mysterious as it is agonising, and there’s a surprising amount of variation in how much monotony each person can handle.

“I think everybody gets the boredom signal,” says James Danckert, who heads a boredom lab at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. “Some people are really, really good at dealing with it though.”

In 2014, a team of social psychologists from the University of Virginia discovered during a series of experiments on mind wandering that many participants - around 25% of women and 67% of men - were deliberately electrocuting themselves when they were left alone in a room for just 15 minutes, purely for something to do. One person shocked themselves nearly 200 times.

And from the man who diligently recreated a Babylonian feast from a recipe on a 3,750-year-old clay tablet to the woman who resat her school exam paper from seven years ago out of mild curiosity, the recent lockdowns have revealed that peculiar and desperate strategies for dealing with boredom are very much not limited to a lab environment.

At the other end of the spectrum, some people actively seek out situations which might normally be considered tedious. The hermit Christopher Knight, who drove to a forest in Maine in 1986 and didn’t emerge for 27 years, claims he never got bored once - though by his own admission, for the majority of his time there, he was occupied with doing absolutely nothing. 

So, why is that?

One of the earliest accounts of boredom dates back to Roman times, when the philosopher Seneca may have begun the long tradition of moaning about it. During a ponderous exchange of letters with a friend, he asked, “Quo usque eadem” - “How much longer [must we endure] the same things?”, and followed up with, “I do nothing new. I see nothing new. Eventually, there’s a nausea even of this”.

Answer the given questions based on the passage given below:

The thumping of valves. The cacophonous rumbling. The powerful kick in the back as the rocket’s engines ignite. The alarmingly realistic possibility that these will be your last precious moments alive.

By all accounts, the journey into space is a thrilling ride. During the second launch of his career in 1982, the cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev sensed the rocket swaying to the right and the left, as if it were losing balance… then finally, he felt himself leave the ground. As the crew soared into space, they yelled “G-o-o-u” - it’s not entirely clear why.

But though Lebedev’s space adventure began with a hit of adrenaline, this soon wore off - and just a week into his seven-month mission aboard the space station Salyut 7, he was bored. In reality, hurtling through low-Earth orbit at around 8 km/s (17,900mph) in a small aluminium can, was not enough to absorb him. As he wrote in his diary, “the drab routine has begun”.

We tend to think of boredom as a fairly straightforward response to tedious activities. After all, it’s rare to find someone who claims to enjoy washing up or doing their taxes - and it’s deeply suspicious when you do. Except that boredom isn’t quite this clear-cut. Decades of research have revealed that it’s as mysterious as it is agonising, and there’s a surprising amount of variation in how much monotony each person can handle.

“I think everybody gets the boredom signal,” says James Danckert, who heads a boredom lab at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. “Some people are really, really good at dealing with it though.”

In 2014, a team of social psychologists from the University of Virginia discovered during a series of experiments on mind wandering that many participants - around 25% of women and 67% of men - were deliberately electrocuting themselves when they were left alone in a room for just 15 minutes, purely for something to do. One person shocked themselves nearly 200 times.

And from the man who diligently recreated a Babylonian feast from a recipe on a 3,750-year-old clay tablet to the woman who resat her school exam paper from seven years ago out of mild curiosity, the recent lockdowns have revealed that peculiar and desperate strategies for dealing with boredom are very much not limited to a lab environment.

At the other end of the spectrum, some people actively seek out situations which might normally be considered tedious. The hermit Christopher Knight, who drove to a forest in Maine in 1986 and didn’t emerge for 27 years, claims he never got bored once - though by his own admission, for the majority of his time there, he was occupied with doing absolutely nothing. 

So, why is that?

One of the earliest accounts of boredom dates back to Roman times, when the philosopher Seneca may have begun the long tradition of moaning about it. During a ponderous exchange of letters with a friend, he asked, “Quo usque eadem” - “How much longer [must we endure] the same things?”, and followed up with, “I do nothing new. I see nothing new. Eventually, there’s a nausea even of this”.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

U.S. health officials are urging Americans to get their flu shots this year in the hopes of thwarting a winter “twindemic”—a situation in which both influenza and COVID-19 spread and sicken the public. But a new study suggests that there could be another key reason to get a flu jab this year: it might reduce your risk of COVID-19. The research, released as a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, indicates that a flu vaccine against the influenza virus may also trigger the body to produce broad infection-fighting molecules that combat the pandemic-causing coronavirus. The paper is in line with some other recent studies published in peer-reviewed journals that point to similar effects. But researchers caution the research is preliminary and needs to be bolstered by more rigorous experiments.

In the new study, Mihai Netea, an infectious disease immunologist at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and his colleagues combed through their hospital’s databases to see if employees who got a flu shot during the 2019-2020 season were more or less likely to get infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. Workers who received a flu vaccine, the researchers found, were 39 per cent less likely to test positive for the coronavirus as of June 1, 2020. While 2.23 per cent of nonvaccinated employees tested positive, only 1.33 per cent of vaccinated ones did. Netea and his team posted their findings on the preprint server MedRxiv on October 16.

These findings do not prove that flu vaccines prevent COVID-19, however. “This is an intriguing study, but it doesn’t provide definitive evidence,” says Ellen Foxman, an immunobiologist and clinical pathologist at the Yale School of Medicine. There could be other explanations for the association the Radboud scientists and their colleagues found. For instance, people who choose to receive a flu shot may be more health-conscious and more likely to follow COVID-19 prevention guidelines than individuals who do not get vaccinated. Netea agrees, noting that overall behaviour, rather than the shot, might have made people in the former group less likely to get sick in his study.

Studies such as these, which find correlations between behaviours and outcomes, cannot establish cause and effect. Determining whether flu shots actually prevent COVID-19 “requires big clinical trials at the level of the [general] population,” says Maziar Divangahi, a pulmonary immunologist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center. Netea acknowledges this but points out that such a clinical trial would require a randomly chosen control group of subjects to be denied flu shots. “That’s not ethical,” he says.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

U.S. health officials are urging Americans to get their flu shots this year in the hopes of thwarting a winter “twindemic”—a situation in which both influenza and COVID-19 spread and sicken the public. But a new study suggests that there could be another key reason to get a flu jab this year: it might reduce your risk of COVID-19. The research, released as a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, indicates that a flu vaccine against the influenza virus may also trigger the body to produce broad infection-fighting molecules that combat the pandemic-causing coronavirus. The paper is in line with some other recent studies published in peer-reviewed journals that point to similar effects. But researchers caution the research is preliminary and needs to be bolstered by more rigorous experiments.

In the new study, Mihai Netea, an infectious disease immunologist at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and his colleagues combed through their hospital’s databases to see if employees who got a flu shot during the 2019-2020 season were more or less likely to get infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. Workers who received a flu vaccine, the researchers found, were 39 per cent less likely to test positive for the coronavirus as of June 1, 2020. While 2.23 per cent of nonvaccinated employees tested positive, only 1.33 per cent of vaccinated ones did. Netea and his team posted their findings on the preprint server MedRxiv on October 16.

These findings do not prove that flu vaccines prevent COVID-19, however. “This is an intriguing study, but it doesn’t provide definitive evidence,” says Ellen Foxman, an immunobiologist and clinical pathologist at the Yale School of Medicine. There could be other explanations for the association the Radboud scientists and their colleagues found. For instance, people who choose to receive a flu shot may be more health-conscious and more likely to follow COVID-19 prevention guidelines than individuals who do not get vaccinated. Netea agrees, noting that overall behaviour, rather than the shot, might have made people in the former group less likely to get sick in his study.

Studies such as these, which find correlations between behaviours and outcomes, cannot establish cause and effect. Determining whether flu shots actually prevent COVID-19 “requires big clinical trials at the level of the [general] population,” says Maziar Divangahi, a pulmonary immunologist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center. Netea acknowledges this but points out that such a clinical trial would require a randomly chosen control group of subjects to be denied flu shots. “That’s not ethical,” he says.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

U.S. health officials are urging Americans to get their flu shots this year in the hopes of thwarting a winter “twindemic”—a situation in which both influenza and COVID-19 spread and sicken the public. But a new study suggests that there could be another key reason to get a flu jab this year: it might reduce your risk of COVID-19. The research, released as a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, indicates that a flu vaccine against the influenza virus may also trigger the body to produce broad infection-fighting molecules that combat the pandemic-causing coronavirus. The paper is in line with some other recent studies published in peer-reviewed journals that point to similar effects. But researchers caution the research is preliminary and needs to be bolstered by more rigorous experiments.

In the new study, Mihai Netea, an infectious disease immunologist at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and his colleagues combed through their hospital’s databases to see if employees who got a flu shot during the 2019-2020 season were more or less likely to get infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. Workers who received a flu vaccine, the researchers found, were 39 per cent less likely to test positive for the coronavirus as of June 1, 2020. While 2.23 per cent of nonvaccinated employees tested positive, only 1.33 per cent of vaccinated ones did. Netea and his team posted their findings on the preprint server MedRxiv on October 16.

These findings do not prove that flu vaccines prevent COVID-19, however. “This is an intriguing study, but it doesn’t provide definitive evidence,” says Ellen Foxman, an immunobiologist and clinical pathologist at the Yale School of Medicine. There could be other explanations for the association the Radboud scientists and their colleagues found. For instance, people who choose to receive a flu shot may be more health-conscious and more likely to follow COVID-19 prevention guidelines than individuals who do not get vaccinated. Netea agrees, noting that overall behaviour, rather than the shot, might have made people in the former group less likely to get sick in his study.

Studies such as these, which find correlations between behaviours and outcomes, cannot establish cause and effect. Determining whether flu shots actually prevent COVID-19 “requires big clinical trials at the level of the [general] population,” says Maziar Divangahi, a pulmonary immunologist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center. Netea acknowledges this but points out that such a clinical trial would require a randomly chosen control group of subjects to be denied flu shots. “That’s not ethical,” he says.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

U.S. health officials are urging Americans to get their flu shots this year in the hopes of thwarting a winter “twindemic”—a situation in which both influenza and COVID-19 spread and sicken the public. But a new study suggests that there could be another key reason to get a flu jab this year: it might reduce your risk of COVID-19. The research, released as a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, indicates that a flu vaccine against the influenza virus may also trigger the body to produce broad infection-fighting molecules that combat the pandemic-causing coronavirus. The paper is in line with some other recent studies published in peer-reviewed journals that point to similar effects. But researchers caution the research is preliminary and needs to be bolstered by more rigorous experiments.

In the new study, Mihai Netea, an infectious disease immunologist at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and his colleagues combed through their hospital’s databases to see if employees who got a flu shot during the 2019-2020 season were more or less likely to get infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. Workers who received a flu vaccine, the researchers found, were 39 per cent less likely to test positive for the coronavirus as of June 1, 2020. While 2.23 per cent of nonvaccinated employees tested positive, only 1.33 per cent of vaccinated ones did. Netea and his team posted their findings on the preprint server MedRxiv on October 16.

These findings do not prove that flu vaccines prevent COVID-19, however. “This is an intriguing study, but it doesn’t provide definitive evidence,” says Ellen Foxman, an immunobiologist and clinical pathologist at the Yale School of Medicine. There could be other explanations for the association the Radboud scientists and their colleagues found. For instance, people who choose to receive a flu shot may be more health-conscious and more likely to follow COVID-19 prevention guidelines than individuals who do not get vaccinated. Netea agrees, noting that overall behaviour, rather than the shot, might have made people in the former group less likely to get sick in his study.

Studies such as these, which find correlations between behaviours and outcomes, cannot establish cause and effect. Determining whether flu shots actually prevent COVID-19 “requires big clinical trials at the level of the [general] population,” says Maziar Divangahi, a pulmonary immunologist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center. Netea acknowledges this but points out that such a clinical trial would require a randomly chosen control group of subjects to be denied flu shots. “That’s not ethical,” he says.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions

A new paper in the journal NeuroImage has shown that synchrony can be seen in the brain activities of the audience and performer. Data for the musician, collected during a performance, was compared to those for the listener during playback. In all, there were 12 selections of familiar musical works, including “Edelweiss,” Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” “Auld Lang Syne” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The brain activities of 16 listeners were compared to that of a single violinist.

It was found that it is the right brain hemisphere that is most often associated with interpretation of musical melody—in contrast to the left hemisphere, which is specialized for the interpretation of speech. These sites involve “mirror neurons,” brain cells that are thought to enables a mirroring or internalization of others’ thoughts and actions.

Mirror neurons both control movement and respond to the sight of it, giving rise to the notion that their activity during passive observation is a silent rehearsal for when they become engaged in active movement. They were once thought to be a biological substrate for mimicry and, more importantly, empathy—the source of our understanding of the actions and intentions of others. Mirror neurons have been faddishly implicated in everything from autism to substance abuse. Nevertheless, nerves that control movement are generally involved in perception as well. And this arrangement is especially true of music, in which physical movement emphasizes melodic gesture or follows a rhythmic beat. Indeed, the auditory cortex enlists other regions of the brain that control movement, showing an innate connection between movement and our understanding of music.

Because music is a group endeavor, it is often used as the context to study coordinated brain function. Synchronized brain responses among music listeners have been measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in some studies, while others have examined the coordinated actions of performers by tracking the electrical activities of their brain using electroencephalography.

The various methods used in exploring these relationships have their advantages and shortcomings. For example, the new paper used a technique called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)—which measures the flow of oxygen-rich blood—and it cannot penetrate the brain to investigate deeper structures as well as fMRI does. The major advantage of fNIRS is that no large, expensive instrument is needed so subjects are comparatively unconstrained when they are tested: it would have been impossible for a violinist to play in an MRI machine.

It is remarkable that the observed degree of synchronization between the performer and audience was connected to enjoyment of the music. Such pleasure could provide a powerful means by which music promotes positive social behavior. The pleasantness of music has been attributed to synchronization of electrical activity in the right hemisphere of the brain. Music commands greater attention when it is pleasant, which could contribute to one’s feeling of being swept away when listening to a favorite piece. While the authors of the NeuroImage paper suggest that the audience’s enjoyment was linked to the music matching pattern expectations, other studies have shown that surprise is associated with the greatest degree of musical pleasure. Remarkably, even sad music can bring great enjoyment. For example, Mimì’s illness and death in the opera La Bohème is filled with tragic sadness, endless regrets and lost opportunities for redemption, but the music ultimately leads the audience to a bittersweet sense of transcendence.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions

A new paper in the journal NeuroImage has shown that synchrony can be seen in the brain activities of the audience and performer. Data for the musician, collected during a performance, was compared to those for the listener during playback. In all, there were 12 selections of familiar musical works, including “Edelweiss,” Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” “Auld Lang Syne” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The brain activities of 16 listeners were compared to that of a single violinist.

It was found that it is the right brain hemisphere that is most often associated with interpretation of musical melody—in contrast to the left hemisphere, which is specialized for the interpretation of speech. These sites involve “mirror neurons,” brain cells that are thought to enables a mirroring or internalization of others’ thoughts and actions.

Mirror neurons both control movement and respond to the sight of it, giving rise to the notion that their activity during passive observation is a silent rehearsal for when they become engaged in active movement. They were once thought to be a biological substrate for mimicry and, more importantly, empathy—the source of our understanding of the actions and intentions of others. Mirror neurons have been faddishly implicated in everything from autism to substance abuse. Nevertheless, nerves that control movement are generally involved in perception as well. And this arrangement is especially true of music, in which physical movement emphasizes melodic gesture or follows a rhythmic beat. Indeed, the auditory cortex enlists other regions of the brain that control movement, showing an innate connection between movement and our understanding of music.

Because music is a group endeavor, it is often used as the context to study coordinated brain function. Synchronized brain responses among music listeners have been measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in some studies, while others have examined the coordinated actions of performers by tracking the electrical activities of their brain using electroencephalography.

The various methods used in exploring these relationships have their advantages and shortcomings. For example, the new paper used a technique called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)—which measures the flow of oxygen-rich blood—and it cannot penetrate the brain to investigate deeper structures as well as fMRI does. The major advantage of fNIRS is that no large, expensive instrument is needed so subjects are comparatively unconstrained when they are tested: it would have been impossible for a violinist to play in an MRI machine.

It is remarkable that the observed degree of synchronization between the performer and audience was connected to enjoyment of the music. Such pleasure could provide a powerful means by which music promotes positive social behavior. The pleasantness of music has been attributed to synchronization of electrical activity in the right hemisphere of the brain. Music commands greater attention when it is pleasant, which could contribute to one’s feeling of being swept away when listening to a favorite piece. While the authors of the NeuroImage paper suggest that the audience’s enjoyment was linked to the music matching pattern expectations, other studies have shown that surprise is associated with the greatest degree of musical pleasure. Remarkably, even sad music can bring great enjoyment. For example, Mimì’s illness and death in the opera La Bohème is filled with tragic sadness, endless regrets and lost opportunities for redemption, but the music ultimately leads the audience to a bittersweet sense of transcendence.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions

A new paper in the journal NeuroImage has shown that synchrony can be seen in the brain activities of the audience and performer. Data for the musician, collected during a performance, was compared to those for the listener during playback. In all, there were 12 selections of familiar musical works, including “Edelweiss,” Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” “Auld Lang Syne” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The brain activities of 16 listeners were compared to that of a single violinist.

It was found that it is the right brain hemisphere that is most often associated with interpretation of musical melody—in contrast to the left hemisphere, which is specialized for the interpretation of speech. These sites involve “mirror neurons,” brain cells that are thought to enables a mirroring or internalization of others’ thoughts and actions.

Mirror neurons both control movement and respond to the sight of it, giving rise to the notion that their activity during passive observation is a silent rehearsal for when they become engaged in active movement. They were once thought to be a biological substrate for mimicry and, more importantly, empathy—the source of our understanding of the actions and intentions of others. Mirror neurons have been faddishly implicated in everything from autism to substance abuse. Nevertheless, nerves that control movement are generally involved in perception as well. And this arrangement is especially true of music, in which physical movement emphasizes melodic gesture or follows a rhythmic beat. Indeed, the auditory cortex enlists other regions of the brain that control movement, showing an innate connection between movement and our understanding of music.

Because music is a group endeavor, it is often used as the context to study coordinated brain function. Synchronized brain responses among music listeners have been measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in some studies, while others have examined the coordinated actions of performers by tracking the electrical activities of their brain using electroencephalography.

The various methods used in exploring these relationships have their advantages and shortcomings. For example, the new paper used a technique called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)—which measures the flow of oxygen-rich blood—and it cannot penetrate the brain to investigate deeper structures as well as fMRI does. The major advantage of fNIRS is that no large, expensive instrument is needed so subjects are comparatively unconstrained when they are tested: it would have been impossible for a violinist to play in an MRI machine.

It is remarkable that the observed degree of synchronization between the performer and audience was connected to enjoyment of the music. Such pleasure could provide a powerful means by which music promotes positive social behavior. The pleasantness of music has been attributed to synchronization of electrical activity in the right hemisphere of the brain. Music commands greater attention when it is pleasant, which could contribute to one’s feeling of being swept away when listening to a favorite piece. While the authors of the NeuroImage paper suggest that the audience’s enjoyment was linked to the music matching pattern expectations, other studies have shown that surprise is associated with the greatest degree of musical pleasure. Remarkably, even sad music can bring great enjoyment. For example, Mimì’s illness and death in the opera La Bohème is filled with tragic sadness, endless regrets and lost opportunities for redemption, but the music ultimately leads the audience to a bittersweet sense of transcendence.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions

A new paper in the journal NeuroImage has shown that synchrony can be seen in the brain activities of the audience and performer. Data for the musician, collected during a performance, was compared to those for the listener during playback. In all, there were 12 selections of familiar musical works, including “Edelweiss,” Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” “Auld Lang Syne” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The brain activities of 16 listeners were compared to that of a single violinist.

It was found that it is the right brain hemisphere that is most often associated with interpretation of musical melody—in contrast to the left hemisphere, which is specialized for the interpretation of speech. These sites involve “mirror neurons,” brain cells that are thought to enables a mirroring or internalization of others’ thoughts and actions.

Mirror neurons both control movement and respond to the sight of it, giving rise to the notion that their activity during passive observation is a silent rehearsal for when they become engaged in active movement. They were once thought to be a biological substrate for mimicry and, more importantly, empathy—the source of our understanding of the actions and intentions of others. Mirror neurons have been faddishly implicated in everything from autism to substance abuse. Nevertheless, nerves that control movement are generally involved in perception as well. And this arrangement is especially true of music, in which physical movement emphasizes melodic gesture or follows a rhythmic beat. Indeed, the auditory cortex enlists other regions of the brain that control movement, showing an innate connection between movement and our understanding of music.

Because music is a group endeavor, it is often used as the context to study coordinated brain function. Synchronized brain responses among music listeners have been measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in some studies, while others have examined the coordinated actions of performers by tracking the electrical activities of their brain using electroencephalography.

The various methods used in exploring these relationships have their advantages and shortcomings. For example, the new paper used a technique called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)—which measures the flow of oxygen-rich blood—and it cannot penetrate the brain to investigate deeper structures as well as fMRI does. The major advantage of fNIRS is that no large, expensive instrument is needed so subjects are comparatively unconstrained when they are tested: it would have been impossible for a violinist to play in an MRI machine.

It is remarkable that the observed degree of synchronization between the performer and audience was connected to enjoyment of the music. Such pleasure could provide a powerful means by which music promotes positive social behavior. The pleasantness of music has been attributed to synchronization of electrical activity in the right hemisphere of the brain. Music commands greater attention when it is pleasant, which could contribute to one’s feeling of being swept away when listening to a favorite piece. While the authors of the NeuroImage paper suggest that the audience’s enjoyment was linked to the music matching pattern expectations, other studies have shown that surprise is associated with the greatest degree of musical pleasure. Remarkably, even sad music can bring great enjoyment. For example, Mimì’s illness and death in the opera La Bohème is filled with tragic sadness, endless regrets and lost opportunities for redemption, but the music ultimately leads the audience to a bittersweet sense of transcendence.