With cloning technology now available, we will need to consider if cloning is ethically acceptable. For example, is there any way to prevent the abuses of cloning without blocking beneficial medical and scientific progress? Human cloning research could bring about substantial health benefits, including the creation of animals with human-compatible organs for transplantation. Cloning could also be used to help scientists understand how genes are turned on and off, which could provide important information about the causes of cancer and the mechanism of aging.

      Another issue is the use of cloning to treat infertility. Reproductive technology, once considered controversial, is now accepted by the public. Why not allow a woman who is unable to conceive naturally to clone a child by placing her own DNA inside of a donor egg?

      Yet, what about our sense of identity and ancestry? Imagine giving birth to a clone of yourself—or your mother, father, or grandfather. Familial relationships could become increasingly complex. How can we prevent sinister applications of cloning, such as the creation of clones that would serve as slaves or a source of body parts? What effect will cloning have on theology? Is each human life unique? Would a clone have a soul? Finally, what will happen to clones that are failed experiments? Will they be disposed of like other experiments that have gone awry? These are just some of the issues that should be considered before a national policy on cloning is formulated.

       In a recent study, professional male dancers trained in either ballet or capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, were asked to watch videos of both dance styles. Their brains were scanned during the process and two areas  41  movement were focused – the pre-motor cortex and the visual-motor integration cortex. Both of the areas showed more activity when a skilled dancer saw movements he had been trained to perform, compared with watching movements he hadn’ t been trained to perform. The study also scanned the brains of those who were not dancers. It was found that there was no difference in their brain activity whether they watched ballet or capoeira.   42   , their brains did not discriminate. 

       The result shows that by lying still and simply watching others move, you can activate movement areas of the brain   43   you were moving yourself! These areas contain mirror neurons, which are believed to be vitally important to human behaviour – to interpret other people’s actions and intentions. They have probably been fundamental to our   44   , allowing us to imitate our parents and quickly transfer skills and culture to the next generation. Perhaps greater knowledge of this mirror system could help injured athletes and dancers. They can continue to train without moving a muscle – by simply watching someone else do the movements   45   their bodily injury recovers. There is also an appealing though completely untested idea that maybe disorders such as autism have something to do with disruption of these mirror neuron systems.

      All animals must rest, but do other animals sleep as human beings do? Observations of animal behavioralone cannot fully answer the question. For example, some fish and snakes never close their eyes whether they areawake or asleep. Elephants may sleep standing up, with their trunks resting in the fork of a tree. 

      The answers may come from experiments in laboratories using a machine called the electroencephalograph(EEG). The machine is connected to animals and measures their brain signals, breathing, heartbeats, and muscleactivities. Using the EEG, scientists have confirmed that all birds and mammals studied in the laboratories dosleep. There is some evidence that reptiles, such as snakes and turtles, do not truly sleep, although they do haveperiods of rest each day, in which they are quiet and unmoving. They have also discovered that some animals, likechimpanzees, cats, and moles, are good sleepers while others, like sheep, goats, and donkeys, are poor sleepers.Interestingly, the good sleepers are nearly all hunters with resting places that are safe from their enemies. Nearlyall the poor sleepers are animals hunted by other animals; they must be watching for enemies, even when they areresting.

     Marianne Moore (1887-1972) once said that her writing could be called poetry only because there was no other name for it. Indeed her poems appear to be extremely compressed essays that happen to be printed in jagged lines on the page. Her subjects were varied: animals, laborers, artists, and the craft of poetry. From her general reading came quotations that she found striking or insightful. She included these in her poems, scrupulously enclosed in quotation marks and sometimes identified in footnotes. Of this practice, she wrote, “‘Why the many quotation marks?’ I am asked. . . when a thing has been said so well that it could not be said better, why paraphrase it? Hence my writing is, if not a cabinet of fossils, a kind of collection of flies in amber.” Close observation and consentration on detail are the methods of her poetry. 

    Marianne Moore grew up in Kirkwood, Missouri, near St. Louis. After graduation from Bryn Mawr College in 1909, she taught commercial subjects at the Indian school in Carlisle, Pennsylvannia. Later, she became a librarian in New York City. During the 1920’s, she was editor of The Dial, an important literary magazine of the period. She lived quietly all her life, mostly in Brooklyn, New York. She spent a lot of time at the Bronx Zoo, fascinated by animals. 

    Her admiration of the Brooklyn Dodgers—before the team moved to Los Angeles—was widely known. Her first book of poems was published in London in 1921 by a group of friends associated with the imagist movement. From that time on, her poetry has been read with interest by succeeding generations of poets and readers. In 1952, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her Collected Poems. She wrote that she did not write poetry “for money or fame. To earn a living is needful, but it can be done in routine ways. One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what is indispensable to one’s happiness to express....”

As Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, a global audience of 500 million people were watching and listening. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” they heard him say as he dropped from the ladder of his spacecraft to make the first human footprint on the lunar surface. It was the perfect quote for such a 36 occasion. But from the moment he said it, people have argued about whether the NASA astronaut got his lines wrong. In the tense six hours and forty minutes between landing on the moon and stepping out of the capsule, Armstrong wrote what he knew would become some of the most 37 words in history. He has always insisted that he wrote “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” which would have been a more meaningful and 38 correct sentence. Without the missing “a,” the intended meaning of the sentence is lost. In effect, the line means, “That is one small step for mankind (i.e., humanity), one giant leap for mankind.” But did he really say the sentence incorrectly? Until now Armstrong himself had never been sure if he actually said what he wrote. In his biography First Man he told the author James Hansen, “I must admit that it doesn’t sound like the word ‘a’ is there. On the other hand, certainly the ‘a’ was intended, because that’s the only way it makes sense.” But now, after almost four decades, the space explorer has been 39 . Using high-tech sound analysis techniques, Peter Shann Ford, an Australian computer expert, has discovered that the “a” was spoken by Armstrong, but he said it so quickly that it was 40 on the recording that was broadcast to the world.