A key аspect оf summаry is mаking decisiоns abоut what content is important, and what can be left out. This isn't something that comes naturally, so we will work with some practice to gain more experience. I have attached an except from a report on Gen Z financial beliefs. Please read it, and then do two things: First, identify all of the important points (you can write these however you like). Second, identify what you think is the most important point, and explain why.
DIRECTIONS: Chооse the best аnswer fоr eаch question. Living Longer [A] When it comes to longer lifespаns, could genes play a more important role than diet and exercise? Scientists have begun looking at the genes of small, isolated communities to better understand the illnesses of old age and how they might be avoided. In Italy, Ecuador, and the United States, studies are revealing information related to genes that may one day help everyone reach their old age in good health.Taste for Life[B] On a cool January morning in 2013, Giuseppe Passarino drove on a mountain road through orange trees into Calabria, in the far south of Italy. Passarino, a geneticist at the University of Calabria, was headed for the small village of Molochio, a remote town with four centenarians and four 99-year-olds among its 2,000 inhabitants.[C] Soon after, he found 106-year-old Salvatore Caruso in his home. Caruso told the researcher that he was in good health, and his memory seemed excellent. He recalled the death of his father in 1913, when Salvatore was a schoolboy; how his mother and brother had nearly died during the great flu epidemic of 1918-1919; and how he'd been dismissed from the army in 1925 after accidentally falling and breaking his leg in two places. When asked about the reasons for his long life, the centenarian smiled and said in Italian, "No drinking, no smoking, no women." He added that he'd eaten mostly figs and beans while growing up and hardly ever any red meat. Passarino heard much the same from 103-year-old Domenico Romeo, who described his diet as "a little bit, but of everything."[D] Passarino is working to understand the reasons that Calabrians live such long lives. In the dim, cool hallway outside his university office stand several freezers full of blood taken from elderly Calabrians. The DNA from this blood has revealed that people who live into their 90s and beyond may have such long lives owing to a gene that affects their sense of taste. This gene gives people a taste for bitter foods like broccoli and field greens - vegetables that promote cellular1 health and aid digestion.Size Matters[E] The quest to understand more about genetic influences on aging has brought scientific attention to people like Nicolas Aazco, known as "Pajarito" - Little Bird in Spanish. Nicolas, 17, said he became aware of the reason for his nickname at age six, when he looked around at his classmates: "I realized that I was going to be smaller than them." Because of a single gene, Nicolas looks like an eight-year-old and is 115 centimeters tall. That gene causes a condition called Laron syndrome; it is due to this rare condition that he is so small. [F] Nicolas is one of Ecuador's Laron people, descendants of Europeans who traveled to Ecuador in the 16th century. These travelers carried a gene that sometimes causes short stature; the same genetic mutation has been discovered in other places where these Europeans relocated. In Ecuador, the Laron people settled in small towns and villages scattered across the countryside. Because of a lack of roads, phones, and electricity, the area remained isolated until the 1980s. Over the centuries, the genetic mutation was passed down through the generations.[G] In an interview, Little Bird and some friends - all with Laron syndrome - talked about their lives. Victor Rivera, now 23, was the subject of a famous photograph shown at many scientific meetings, taken when he was four. He was so small that the ear of corn he was holding was slightly larger than his arm. Luis Sanchez, an elder among the group, laughed along with his friends when someone asked if they knew the latest scientific reports about their condition. "We are laughing," he explained, "because we know we are immune to cancer and diabetes." Indeed, he is partly right.[H] Researchers have found that people with Laron syndrome have a good chance of living a long life. A 2006 study revealed that no one from a group of people with Laron syndrome developed diabetes, and only one person developed cancer. In a control group of people without Laron syndrome, 5 percent developed diabetes and 20 percent died of cancer. The same gene that causes short stature may also protect people with Laron syndrome from disease.The Gene Hunt[I] Protective genes have also attracted the attention of researchers in the United States. In one study of an isolated, homogeneous population, University of Hawaii researchers have found a gene related to long life in Japanese-American men on the island of Oahu. In yet another study, in La Jolla, California, physician Eric Topol and colleagues are searching through the DNA of about a thousand people they call "the wellderly" - people over the age of 80 who have no chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, heart disease, or diabetes, and have never taken prescription drugs. "There must be modifying genes that explain why these individuals are protected from the deleterious2 genes that affect the aging process," Topol says. "The hunt is on."[J] But genes alone are unlikely to explain all the secrets of living to 100. As geneticist Passarino explains, "It's not that there are good genes and bad genes … It's certain genes at certain times. And in the end, genes are probably responsible for only 25 percent of living a long and healthy life. It's the environment, too, but that doesn't explain all of it either. And don't forget chance."[K] This brought to mind Salvatore Caruso, still going strong at 106 years old. Because he broke his leg 88 years ago, it wasn't mandatory for him to go to Russia with the other soldiers and fight in the war. "Not a single one of them came back," he said. It's another reminder that while genes may be an important factor in living longer, a little luck doesn't hurt.1 Cellular means relating to the cells of animals or plants.2 Something that is deleterious has a harmful effect.What is the main idea of the passage?
DIRECTIONS: Chооse the best аnswer fоr eаch question. Is Aging All In Our Genes? [A] In 1995, Vаlter Longo, a cell biologist at the University of Southern California who studies aging, began to change the genes of simple organisms like single-celled yeast, creating mutations that allowed them to live longer. The reasons for this varied. Some mutated cells could repair their DNA more effectively than normal cells; others became better able to stop the type of DNA damage that would promote cancer in humans. [B] Others were studying the same processes. In 1996, Andrzej Bartke, a scientist at Southern Illinois University, began messing around with mouse genes that are involved with growth. He showed - not surprisingly - that owing to the fact that the growth hormone1 pathway had been shut down, the mice were smaller. What was surprising was that they had longer lifespans - about 40 percent longer - than normal mice. Could similar processes be at work in humans? Could genetic mutations protect against diseases of age?[C] It was a gray day in the Bronx, and 81-year-old Jean Sisinni paced on a gray carpet in a third-floor room on Morris Park Avenue. As she walked, Sisinni struggled to repeat every other letter of the alphabet ("B, D, F, H"), while the sensor on her forehead measured activity in her brain, and the carpet simultaneously registered the location, path, and speed of every step. [D] "You're doing great!" said Roee Holtzer, a scientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who has been conducting studies of brain function and mobility in the elderly. [E] If this sounds like a scientific variation on the old joke about being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, go ahead and laugh. In a series of studies over the past several years Holtzer and Joe Verghese have shown that the amount of thinking people are able do while they walk and talk predicts the risk of dementia, loss of mobility, and falls.[F] These experiments add to research at Einstein led by Nir Barzilai, an Israeli doctor who in 1998 began a study of three New York centenarians. The Einstein project has since grown to include more than 500 centenarians in and around New York City - all from central Europe and all Ashkenazi Jews, a historically isolated population. In this homogeneous group, research has again revealed a set of genes related to longevity. [G] As they gathered more and more data, the Einstein researchers noticed that the Ashkenazi centenarians had exceptionally high levels of HDL, often called the good form of cholesterol,2 and that the children of these centenarians had even higher levels. This sent them off to analyze the DNA of about a hundred genes known to be involved in breaking down and using of cholesterol. What they found was a variant of a gene known as CETP that was more common in centenarians than in others. When they investigated the centenarian version of the CETP gene, they confirmed earlier research showing that due to this particular gene variant, people were protected against heart disease. They have gone on to show that since people have this gene, they perform better on mental tasks like the "walking while talking" experiments. [H] Einstein's large and ambitious longevity program is part of a sea change sweeping human genetics research, where the emphasis for the past 20 years has been on the search for so-called disease genes - genes that are linked to certain chronic health problems. Many researchers are now focused largely on the search for protective genes, which seem to keep people from getting disease or from aging. [I] The race to find the keys to longevity has even led scientists to a place that looks increasingly important in setting every individual's rate of aging: the womb.3 Researchers at Einstein now suspect that our pattern of aging may be set very early, perhaps before we're born. To study this hypothesis, Francine Einstein and John Greally have been examining subtle chemical markings on the DNA recovered from the blood of babies born in the Bronx and comparing differences in babies who were small, normal, or large. They have found that the pattern of DNA markings in both small and large babies is significantly different from that of normal-size babies. As Barzilai explains it, because of things that influence us before we are even born, our rate of aging may be affected. The fetus,4 in other words, may be father of the old man. 1 A hormone is a chemical from body organs that stimulates cells.2 Cholesterol is a fat-like substance produced by the human body and carried in our blood. 3 The womb is the part of a woman's body where a baby grows.4 A fetus is a baby before it is born.Why do mutations of simple organisms like single-celled yeast live longer?
DIRECTIONS: Reаd eаch sentence, pаying attentiоn tо the underlined wоrds. Decide if the use of the word or words in each sentence makes the statement True (T) or False (F).If you are immune to a disease, you will not get that disease.