Making mountaineering history

At the beginning of April, just a few weeks before his 17th birthday, George Atkinson arrived in Kathmandu in Nepal. The
schoolboy from London was about to begin the final stage of his quest to become the youngest person to climb the
highest peak on each of the world’s seven continents. (1)………… It was just Mount Everest to go – the mightiest of the
lot.
As an 11-year-old, George had been with his father on an organised trip up Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest
mountain. But George’s dad got a stomach bug before the final ascent to the peak. ‘I felt very weak and dehydrated’, he
said, and had to go back down. (2)………… And as George continued to the top with the rest of the group, his father
endured an anxious wait. ‘Seeing him coming back down again was indescribable.’
The next few years saw George build up his mountaineering skills and his fitness to prepare for his epic challenge. He
spent his weekends carrying a heavily laden 80-litre backpack and walking from the family home to Richmond Park in
London, which he’d then complete two full circuits of, making a round trip of 30 kilometres.
At 29,029 feet, Everest is over 6,500 feet higher than any of the other mountains on George’s list. He knew it would be a
challenge and was aware of the risks that being at such high altitudes carries, but he wanted to stand on top of the
world. On checking in to the Hotel Everest View, at 12,729 feet, he got a glimpse of Mount Everest, and imagined
looking back down to the hotel from the peak. He phoned his mother, Penny, and spoke to her. (3)………… And she knew
just how much this climb meant to him.
But as they got closer to the summit, the weather turned bad. There were nervous moments for George and his group as
they waited to see if the weather would improve and the wind would drop to a safer speed of below 30 miles an hour.
George didn’t know how long he might have to wait for another opportunity. (4)………… An American climber, Jordan
Romero, who was two months younger than George, only needed to scale Vinson Massif in Antarctica to complete his
set of seven.
But eventually they made it, and George achieved his dream. But there was hardly time to celebrate on the peak. (5)
………… By the time they got back down to the bottom, George and the rest of his group were all exhausted.
George intends to keep climbing and carry on with his studies. He says he is looking forward to life getting back to
normal. And he’s planning another mountaineering trip with his dad, this time up Mont Blanc in France. But the question
is, will the elder Atkinson make it all the way up to the top this time? (6)…………
A ‘I’ve seen it,’ he said, ‘and it’s huge.’
B He had already conquered all but one.
C But he knew he still needed more practice.
D ‘I hope so,’ he says, ‘George is going to carry my stuff.’
E But George knew what he wanted: he was going to carry on.
F And by then, someone else might have snatched the record.
G Almost immediately, they had to begin an exhausting, non-stop 20-hour descent.
Puffins in peril
Scientist Mike Harris explains that the puffin seems about to join the list of seabirds whose numbers are declining.
It’s a grey day in early April on the Isle of May off the east coast of Scotland. Far out to sea a small dot appears on the
horizon. It rapidly increases in size, suddenly turning into a puffin that lands with a splash on the water. This bird
probably hasn’t seen land for five months, but now it’s returning to its colony for the breeding season.
The first puffin is soon joined by others and together they bob on the sea. Newly returned birds are nervous but, as the
days pass, they gain confidence and begin reclaiming the underground nesting burrows they made the previous year by
tunnelling into the soft earth on the top of the cliffs. (1)………… They have to hurry because it takes three months to rear
a chick and all the birds must leave by early August to spend time feeding intensively before the winter.
I visit the island every April, eager to see how many of the adult puffins we have caught and attached identification rings
to have returned. (2)………… With a team of helpers I counted every occupied burrow on the island – something we
undertake every five years.
The island’s puffin population had been increasing every year for the previous 40 years, and so we anticipated at least
100,000 pairs. To our dismay we found just 42,000. (3)………… Experts from other research programmes have concluded
it must be connected to where puffins spend the winter months.
Last spring we also caught and weighed some returning adults and found they were significantly lighter than the birds
we caught 10 years ago. (4)………… Puffins are long-lived and can cope with a few poor productive seasons, but not with
such a large loss of adults.
In early August, the puffin colonies empty rather abruptly. Virtually all puffins leave within a week, though a few adults
remain to feed a late chick. (5)………… I have always believed, though, that few of them venture far from the North Sea.
Now, however, the development of instruments known as geolocators, small enough to be fitted around a puffin’s leg, is
enabling us to test this idea.
We fitted these units to some puffins two years ago and caught the birds again last year to download the data. Some did
remain within the North Sea, but others went much further. For someone who has spent years watching puffins for only
part of their lives, this new technology is providing some fascinating information. (6)………… This would still leave us with
the question of what they eat in winter and whether there are sufficient quantities of prey available.
The good news is that we now have an idea of the areas our puffins go to in winter, and we can check whether
conditions there might have altered due to climate change or overfishing. Maybe we can then take some steps to help
them. Hopefully it is just a local problem, because there are in fact still plenty of puffins to see around the Scottish coast.
A We weren’t the only ones to wonder why this might be happening.
B From this moment on, we know remarkably little about where these birds end up and what could possibly be
affecting them there.
C But we should also take into account that if a young puffin survives the winter, it will come back the following July.
D Other devices will also hopefully tell us how much time puffins spend diving for food.
E This was further evidence that something unusual is happening at sea before they return to the colony.
F Puffins are always among the earliest seabirds to lay eggs.
G Last year there was an additional task.
Has one of the mysteries of the ancient pyramids been solved?
A painting in a 3000-year-old tomb suggests how the Ancient Egyptians may have transported the heavy stones used to
build the pyramids.
Ever since the discovery of the first pyramid, scientists have wondered how ancient Egyptians built these monumental
structures that are visible even from space.
There are a number of theories about the construction techniques they used. (1)………… Egyptologists had always
wondered how workers were able to move the giant limestone blocks. These weigh as much as 2.5 tons each, and the
stone quarries from which they were cut were often located hundreds of kilometres away from the pyramid sites.
Dragging them on basic wooden sledges, similar to those people use to slide down snow-covered slopes in winter, was
the obvious answer. (2)………… It now turns out that the workers probably did have some assistance – from ordinary
water! What is even more amazing is that the answer to the Egyptologists’ puzzle has been staring them in the face for
many years, in a wall painting in the tomb of an ancient Egyptian king, or pharaoh.
The artwork, which depicts a pharaoh being pulled along by a large team of workers, has one significant detail that had
so far been misinterpreted – a man pouring water in front of the sledge the pharaoh is being dragged upon.
Egyptologists had always thought that the man was performing some kind of religious ritual. However, some scientists
now believe that the water was being poured for a totally different reason. (3)…………
This revelation was made by researchers from the University of Amsterdam and the Foundation for Fundamental
Research on Matter. The scientists arrived at this conclusion after conducting extensive testing in their laboratory, by
sliding a weighted tray across both dry sand and sand that had been mixed with varying amounts of water. In dry sand,
heaps formed in front of the tray as it was dragged along. (4)…………
However, as the researchers added water, the sand hardened, which helped reduce both the force needed to pull the
tray and the friction against it. That’s because the water helps form tiny water bridges, known as capillary bridges,
between the sand particles, causing them to stick together. (5)………… The force required to pull the sledge would have
been reduced by as much as 50% as the sand became stiffer, which meant that half as many workers were needed to
move the heavy stones.
There was a tipping point, though. After the moisture exceeded a certain amount, the stiffness started to decrease and
the capillary bridges melted away, causing the sand to clump up around the tray once again. According to the
researchers, the perfect balance appears to be when the volume of the water is between 2 – 5% of the volume of
sand. (6)………… And so another step has been taken towards understanding the incredible feat achieved by these
ancient engineers. Now if we could only find a painting that would tell us how the workers erected these impressive
structures without access to modern mechanics, that would be amazing!
A However, to do so would have required superhuman strength against the friction of the desert sand.
B This allowed them to work out exactly how much of it had been used every time.
C This slowed it down dramatically.
D One question, however, had been left unanswered.
E The pyramid builders seem to have realised that this was the correct proportion.
F The effect of this turns out to be significant.
G It was to help the sledge move more easily across the sand.
Can we control our dreams?
Strange as it seems, the answer is yes – and it could help us solve our problems.
Do we have any influence over the often strange, wandering, night-time journeys in our mind? Could we learn to dream
differently, getting rid of repeated nightmares or finding answers to the problems that we cannot solve in daylight
hours? Strange though it may seem, the answer is yes. Research suggests that, using practical and psychological
techniques, we can influence our dreams and use them to draw on the vast, largely unused resource of our unconscious
mind.
Deirdre Barrett, an assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, is convinced we all have the
power to manage our dreams. ‘If you want to dream about a particular subject,’ she says, ‘focus on it once you are in
bed. (1)………… You can also place an object or photo that represents the desired dream on your bedside table,’ Barrett
says.
Another key factor in using one’s dreams creatively is to avoid jumping out of bed the moment you wake up. (2)…………
‘If you don’t recall a dream immediately, lie still and see if a thought or image comes to mind,’ Barrett says. ‘Sometimes
a whole dream will come flooding back.’
The point of this second strategy is to make use of the information presented by our unconscious as we sleep. It’s hard
to put an exact figure on the ratio of our unconscious to conscious mind, but psychologists estimate it to be nine to one.
We may believe that thinking is our best problem-solving strategy, but the power of our conscious mind is relatively
tiny. (3)………… So letting the unconscious mind work on it may be healthier and more productive.
Barrett put this to the test in a week-long study with college students; she asked them to use dreaming as a way of
finding ways of dealing with a particular problem. (4)………… ‘If we’re stuck on a problem, it’s our waking, logical way of
thinking that’s stuck,’ Barrett says. ‘The dream’s power lies in the fact that it’s a different manner of thought – it adds to
and develops what we’ve already done while awake.’
Most of us enjoy the rich, pleasantly strange experience of dreaming (and we all dream – some people just don’t
remember it). But no one enjoys nightmares that keep coming back, or the kind of unpleasant dreams from which you
wake sweating. (5)………… ‘It’s very common for them to have nightmares about being chased by a monster,’ says Delphi
Ellis, a counsellor and dream expert. ‘This often happens as they get older and become aware of their place in the huge
world.’
‘As an adult, troubling or frightening dreams are often an indication of diff cult issues from the past,’ Ellis says. (6)…………
They and all other kinds of dream are an incredibly valuable resource, which most of us simply ignore. So learn to listen
to them, even the horrible ones – they’re always trying to tell you something.’
A It’s one in which you know you’re dreaming as the dream is occurring – the kind of ‘dream within a dream’ that film
characters sometimes have.
B Even more anxiety-causing, if you’re a parent, are the scary ones that have such an effect on your kids.
C Doing so means you’ll lose half of what your dream contained as the day’s distractions take over your thoughts.
D About half of them dreamt about it and one-quarter of them solved it.
E Since dreaming is so visual, form a picture in your mind of something related to that topic as you fall asleep.
F The more you ignore dreams like those, the more your unconscious turns up the volume – so a nightmare is that
message on full volume.
G Also, when this consists of going over and over negative or worrying issues in our minds, it is strongly linked with
stress, depression and anxiety.