AMost people encounter cork without giving it a second thought — as the stopper in a wine bottle, the surface of a noticeboard, or a layer of flooring underfoot. Few realise that this lightweight, springy material is the bark of a particular species of tree, the cork oak (Quercus suber), and that it is harvested in a way unlike almost any other natural product. The cork oak is an evergreen tree native to the western Mediterranean, where it grows in the warm, dry climates of Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Morocco and Algeria. Portugal alone accounts for roughly half of the world's cork production.
BWhat makes the cork oak unusual is its thick, insulating outer bark, which the tree produces as a natural defence against the heat, drought and occasional fires of its environment. This bark can be removed without harming the tree — a feature that is extremely rare in the plant world. After the bark is stripped away, the tree simply grows a new layer, allowing it to be harvested repeatedly over a long lifespan. A healthy cork oak may live for two hundred years or more, and can be harvested many times during that period.
CHarvesting cork is a skilled manual task that has changed little over the centuries. It is carried out in summer, when the bark separates most easily from the trunk. Workers use a specially shaped axe to cut into the outer bark, taking care not to damage the living tissue beneath. The bark is then peeled off in large curved sections called planks. A tree is not harvested for the first time until it is about twenty-five years old, and after that the bark can only be removed once every nine years. This slow cycle means that a single tree produces relatively little cork in a human lifetime, and the work cannot be rushed.
DThe properties that make cork so useful come from its unusual cellular structure. Cork is made up of millions of tiny cells, each filled with air and sealed by a waxy substance called suberin. Because so much of the material is air, cork is exceptionally light and able to float. The same structure makes it an excellent insulator against heat and sound, and gives it the ability to be compressed and then return to its original shape. Cork is also resistant to liquids and does not easily rot or burn. Together, these qualities explain why the material has been valued since ancient times.
EThe best-known use of cork is, of course, as a bottle stopper. Cork was used to seal containers in the ancient world, and from the seventeenth century onwards it became the standard way of closing wine bottles, because it forms a tight seal while still allowing tiny amounts of air to pass through. But cork has countless other applications. It is used in flooring and wall tiles, in the soles of shoes, in the handles of fishing rods, and as insulation in buildings. It even has a role in technology: cork has been used in the heat shields of spacecraft, where its resistance to extreme temperatures is valuable.
FCork production also brings important environmental benefits. The cork oak forests of the Mediterranean, known in Portugal as montado, are among the most biodiverse habitats in Europe, providing a home for rare birds, the Iberian lynx and many other species. Because the trees are not cut down when the bark is harvested, the forests remain standing and continue to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A harvested cork oak is even thought to absorb more carbon than an unharvested one, because it works harder to regenerate its bark. For this reason, the cork industry is often held up as a model of sustainable production.
GIn recent decades, however, the industry has faced a challenge. The growing use of plastic stoppers and metal screw caps, which are cheaper and avoid the risk of "cork taint" that can spoil wine, has reduced demand for traditional cork stoppers. Some feared this would threaten the cork oak forests, since landowners might abandon them if cork became unprofitable. Yet cork producers have responded by improving quality and by promoting cork as an environmentally friendly choice, and new uses for the material continue to be found. For now at least, the ancient relationship between this extraordinary tree and the people who harvest it endures.
AFew sensations are as universally disliked as boredom. It is the restless, dissatisfied state we feel when we are unable to engage with what is in front of us, and our instinct is almost always to escape it as quickly as possible. In the past, escape was not always easy: a long train journey, a wait at the doctor's surgery or a dull afternoon left a person with little to do but stare out of the window. Today, the smartphone has all but abolished such empty moments. At the first flicker of tedium, we reach for a screen and are instantly supplied with entertainment, news or conversation. It seems a clear improvement. Yet a growing number of psychologists argue that in eliminating boredom so thoroughly, we may be losing something of real value.
BTo understand why, it helps to be precise about what boredom actually is. The psychologist John Eastwood has defined it not as simple inactivity but as the frustrating experience of wanting to be engaged in a satisfying activity yet being unable to do so. On this view, boredom is fundamentally a problem of attention: the bored mind is searching for something to occupy it and failing to find it. This distinguishes boredom from related states such as relaxation or apathy.
CFar from being merely unpleasant, this discomfort appears to serve a purpose. Several researchers have come to see boredom as a kind of signal, comparable to hunger or pain, that alerts us when our current situation is failing to meet our needs and prompts us to seek something better. Seen in this light, boredom is not a malfunction but a motivational tool.
DPerhaps the most intriguing claims concern the link between boredom and creativity. The researcher Sandi Mann has conducted experiments in which participants were first given a deliberately tedious task — such as copying numbers from a telephone directory — and then asked to think of as many uses as possible for an everyday object. Those who had endured the boring task consistently produced more inventive answers than those who had not. Mann's interpretation is that when the mind is starved of external stimulation, it turns inward, daydreaming and making unexpected connections. Boredom, in other words, may be the uncomfortable doorway through which original ideas arrive.
EConcern about the consequences of never being bored has been voiced particularly in relation to children. The educational researcher Teresa Belton has argued that unstructured, empty time is essential for the development of imagination, and that children who are constantly entertained are denied the opportunity to discover their own interests and resources.
FIt would be a mistake, however, to romanticise boredom or to treat it as uniformly beneficial. The same feeling that can spur creativity in moderation is, when chronic and inescapable, associated with a range of negative outcomes. People who are persistently bored — perhaps because their work is monotonous or their lives lack purpose — have been found to be more prone to overeating, to reckless behaviour and to low mood.
GWhat emerges from this research is not a call to seek out tedium for its own sake, but a more measured suggestion: that we should be wary of the impulse to banish every dull moment the instant it arrives. The capacity to sit with a little boredom, rather than reaching reflexively for distraction, may be a skill worth preserving — one that allows the mind to wander, to reflect and occasionally to surprise us.
AOf all the by-products of industrial civilisation, artificial light is among the most seductive and the least scrutinised. Where chemical effluent and greenhouse gases provoke alarm, the glow of a brightly lit city is more often read as a symbol of progress, safety and prosperity than as a contaminant. Yet over the past two decades a growing number of scientists have come to regard the unchecked spread of artificial light at night — technically termed "light pollution" — as a genuine environmental disturbance.
BQuantifying the problem has only recently become feasible. Using calibrated satellite imagery, the physicist Dr Anneke Brandt and her colleagues estimate that the area of the planet exposed to artificial skyglow is expanding by roughly two per cent each year. What makes Brandt's findings particularly counter-intuitive is that they have worsened even as lighting technology has grown dramatically more efficient. "The intuitive assumption," she notes, "is that efficient lighting should reduce emissions of light, but in practice cheaper illumination has simply encouraged us to light more, for longer, and more brightly."
CThe biological case against excessive nocturnal lighting is now substantial. Professor Tomás Reyes, an ecologist specialising in nocturnal animals, argues that artificial light disrupts behaviours that evolved in reliance on the natural alternation of day and night. Reyes is careful not to claim that lighting is the sole driver of the much-discussed decline in insect numbers, but he maintains that it is an underestimated contributor, long overshadowed by more familiar culprits such as pesticides and habitat loss.
DHumans, too, appear to be affected, though here the evidence is more contested. The chronobiologist Dr Eleanor Vance observes that the human body regulates sleep, hormone production and metabolism according to an internal clock calibrated by the cycle of light and dark. Vance is cautious about the bolder claims linking nocturnal light to serious illness, noting that such studies are correlational and hard to disentangle from other features of modern living.
EFor others, the loss is harder to measure yet no less real. The astronomer Hiroshi Tanaka laments what he describes as a collective severing of humanity from the night sky. This argument is sometimes dismissed as nostalgic, but its proponents insist that the worth of a resource cannot be reduced to its commercial utility.
FPerhaps the most provocative line of reasoning concerns the justification usually advanced for nocturnal lighting in the first place. The evidence for brighter streets being safer is, according to the lighting designer Marcus Feld, surprisingly equivocal. Feld does not advocate plunging cities into darkness; he argues instead that the objective should be to light the right things, at the right times, to the right intensity — directing illumination downwards where it is needed and shielding it from the sky.
GIt is this final point that lends the issue an unexpected note of optimism. Unlike carbon dioxide, which lingers in the atmosphere for centuries, or plastics, which persist for generations, light pollution is almost uniquely reversible: when a poorly designed lamp is switched off or redirected, its contribution disappears instantaneously. The remedies — shielding fixtures, dimming or extinguishing superfluous lights, and adopting warmer hues — are comparatively inexpensive and often save energy besides. The obstacle, then, is not technological but a matter of awareness and resolve.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
1860s: In France, were fixed to the front wheel; the rough ride led to the nickname 'boneshaker'.
1870s: The high-wheeler had an enormous front wheel and could reach high , but it was dangerous to ride.
1885: John Kemp Starley's 'safety bicycle' used a to turn the rear wheel.
1888: John Boyd Dunlop added the tyre, which made the ride more comfortable.
1890s: Cycling became popular and is thought to have helped increase the of women.
Write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
Write the correct number, i–x.
Write YES, NO, or NOT GIVEN.
Write YES, NO, or NOT GIVEN.