IELTS_2014_HIGHER_Practice_Test_08_Listening

IELTS HIGHER

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IELTS HIGHER

©2004 - 2013 IELTS HIGHER, A member of COTTON ON TO Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

The contents are for your own individual study only. Non compliance could result in legal action against you.

©2004 - 2013 IELTS HIGHER, A member of COTTON ON TO Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

The contents are for your own individual study only. Non compliance could result in legal action against you.

IELTS HIGHER

©2004 - 2013 IELTS HIGHER, A member of COTTON ON TO Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

The contents are for your own individual study only. Non compliance could result in legal action against you.

SECTION 2

RADIO PRESENTER: On Radio Ashton today we have Liz Freeman who is the Marketing Manager

IELTSlifestyle. HIGHER

RADIO PRESENTER: OK, and you say in your publicity that you’ve spent over £140,000 on doing the centre up. Could you tell us where that money has been spent?

GU ST: Yes, of course, well as you say, we’ve spent over £140,000 and our aim at the beginning of the project was to convert what was basically a small sports

IELTSenormously ... we’veHIGHERinstalled an air conditioning system which keeps the whole area much cooler ... we’ve also got twice the number of both bikes and

running machines. The weight training area ... which many customers felt was rather outdated ... that’s all gone and we’ve got a full range of state-of-the-art free weights.

RADIO PRESENTER: Sounds great.

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RADIO PRESENTER: Just coming back to the new swimming pool, you’re having a swimming event to help promote the new pool, I understand.

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RADIO PRESENTER: That’s excellent. Well, Liz ....

IELTS HIGHER

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IELTSSTUD NT 1: So, sorry, you mean online HIGHERgames can be good for us?

TUTOR: Depending on which games, and how we use them, yes ... but let’s look first at probably the main health benefit of playing online games ... potential memory improvement and potential cognitive skills development. My first point is that these benefits can be different depending on the group of people ... here I’m referring to

IELTSin moderation. There is strongHIGHERscientific evidence now which seems to confirm the beneficial effects of the ... so to say, ‘high quality’ games. aving said that nobody is

advocating putting a child in front of a computer for 8 hours a day ... nor even 4 hours for that matter. Online time needs to be balanced with time spent doing physical exercise ... this physical exercise is as important, if not more so, than any online game is likely to ever be.

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©2004 - 2013 IELTS HIGHER, A member of COTTON ON TO Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

The contents are for your own individual study only. Non compliance could result in legal action against you.

negotiation skills come into play, so to speak, and can be developed. Also chatting or discussing something online, meeting new people and having something to talk about ... in this case the game ... can be very enjoyable ... they can relieve stress and have, overall, a very positive impact on someone’s health.

STUDENT 1: So are there any games specifically designed to help people with stress, or personal

IELTStheir children. These are HIGHERvery interesting and very clever actually. They require cooperation and understanding, and the good ones really can build the parent-child

relationship and really help bonding.

STUD NT 1: I see, and ...

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SECTION 4

... So while some people who become centenarians, people who live for 100 years or more, do so by delaying illness or disability, others, it seems, are able to withstand damage that would significantly harm perhaps less robust individuals. This second group, it seems, are simply able to soldier on. So we find both these profiles in centenarians today. What then, according to leading researchers, are the secrets of longevity?

IELTSWell, most of the researchers point us to fourHIGHERkey factors. ’m sure they won’t come as any surprise to you. They are: diet, exercise, social ... and by that we mean the amount and quality of social

interaction, and fourthly, psycho-spiritual ... and just to be clear about that ... we mean the level of psychological and spiritual awareness someone has and manages to maintain. So clearly then, anyone aiming for one hundred should not underestimate the influence of ‘lifestyle’.

Researchers however are now pointing to a fifth factor. It seems that if we look at a close relative of a centenarian, we could bet money on them living a long life! A recent study suggests that brothers of centenarians are 17 times more likely to reach a hundred than their peers! And sisters are 8 times more likely to reach a hundred than their peers. So, we’re talking about the brothers and sisters, of centenarians. Now the study also indicates that the children of centenarians are one third as likely to die of cancer as the general population, and less than one sixth as likely to die of heart disease. So here we talking about the children of centenarians, who, it seems, are far less likely to die of these common diseases than other people are.

There is also further evidence of a genetic link ... evidence which comes from, what have become known as ‘longevity hotspots’. Okinawa in Japan is the front runner of these hotspots. It boasts 58 centenarians per 100,000 people, and the number is on the rise! Now, like other hotspots, including

for example Sardinia and Iceland, Okinawa is a relatively isolated island community, and, in these IELTSkinds of communities, we often find highHIGHERlevels of inbreeding, and a clustering of ‘genetic variants’.

And, as we know, such genetic similarities, often have detrimental effects on a person’s health ... but in these hotspots, the effect seems to be the opposite ... it seems to have a positive effect ... and it seems to have united the genetic variants in a way that increases a person’s lifespan.

Of course, some people have argued that what many of the so called hotspots have in common is an environment which is conducive with a healthy lifestyle: mild weather, low levels of stress etc. And that the people who can afford to retire to these places are often the wealthiest people in society. The latest research however suggests that these types of environmental factors do not have a long lasting impact on longevity. In fact, their effect seems to fade over time, whereas the effect of genes only starts to exert a strong influence on our lifespan after the age of 60.

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Now, you’ll find a reference for the next item in the handout. This research was carried out in Scandinavia, and involved over 10,000 pairs of twins. And basically, what the researchers found was that, prior to reaching 60, both identical and non-identical twins, have independent odds on reaching a certain age. But beyond 60, the odds on one twin reaching a given age are greatly increased if their co-twin also does so.

Let’s take a short break here ...

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So it seems that this link between longevity and certain genes could take us into very interesting areas. The scientific community are already talking about a ‘longevity gene’ and even a ‘centenarian gene’! The search is on for genes that contribute to a longer life!

And many candidate genes have been put forward but the problem has always been that very few indeed have produced consistent results during testing, and no verification of their role has therefore been possible ... until quite recently.

At the University of Hawaii, last year, researchers had a bit of a breakthrough. They found that people who carried two copies of a particular form of a gene were almost three times more likely to make it to 100 than those without. So they found a huge difference here ... the people with two copies of the variant were three times more likely to make it to 100 ... that’s quite a find!

So what is this variant that they uncovered? I’m sure you’d all like to know! Well, it’s known as FOXO

– 3A, and of course, it’s causing a good deal of excitement! Not only because of the possible link with longevity, but also, quite interestingly, due to its possible link to basic good health. It seems that people carrying this variant were found to have lower levels of strokes, heart disease and cancer than

those of us without the variant ... so very, very interesting indeed. IELTSThe search continues! So far it has been farHIGHERfrom easy to find genes which can be linked to longevity

but now the future seems slightly brighter. Not only because of the promise FOXO-3A holds, but also because of advances in genomic technology and in addition because of a gradual increase in the number of centenarians alive who can be studied.

Although the days when people will expect to live to 100 and beyond are nowhere in sight, this research could provide medical advances which could help all of us to remain healthy and independent for far longer than we normally do now.

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The contents are for your own individual study only. Non compliance could result in legal action against you.