It seemed like a curse. The summer of 821 was wet, cold and yielded a poor harvest. Then winter came. Temperatures plunged. Blizzards smothered towns and villages. The Danube, the Rhine and the Seine – rivers that never froze – froze so hard that the ice covering them could be crossed not just on foot but by horse and cart. Nor did spring bring respite. Terrible hailstorms followed the snow. Plague and famine followed the storms. The next few winters were worse. Fear stalked the land. Paschasius Radbertus, a monk of Corbie, in what is now northern France, wrote that God Himself was angry. Yet it was not God that wrought this destruction, according to Ulf Büntgen of the University of Cambridge, but rather a volcano now called Katla, on what was then an unknown island, now called Iceland.

   At the moment Katla, one of Iceland’s largest volcanoes, located near the island’s southern tip, sleeps beneath 700 metres of ice. It has so slept, albeit fitfully, for almost 100 years. Its last eruption big enough to break through the ice was in 1918. A score of such ice-breaking awakenings have been recorded by Icelanders since the first Norsemen settled there in 870. In 821, however, Iceland was not on the Norsemen’s horizon. They were concentrating their activities on the lootable monasteries and villages of coastal Europe. There is thus no man-made record of what Katla was up to then. But Dr. Büntgen thinks he has found a natural one. A memorandum of an eruption that coincides with the events described by Radbertus is, he believes, written in a prehistoric forest.

   Large volcanic eruptions can affect the weather. In particular they eject sulphur dioxide, which reacts with atmospheric gases to form sulphate aerosols that reflect sunlight back into the space, cooling the air beneath. That is well known. So the suspicion that what happened in the early 820s was precipitated by such an eruption has been around for a long time.

   David knew that doctors were good men, and the adults had always told him that doctors were there to help people when they were ill. So he 36 quietly while the doctor touched him and 37 the dirt away with something from a bottle. It hurt all the time, and then the doctor put something else on his burns, and that hurt, too. But the doctor explained that 38 he did not do it, the burns would be more painful the next day.

       Fuel poverty occurs when a household is unable to afford the most basic amount of energy foradequate heating, cooking, lighting, and use of appliances in the home. According to European UniversityInstitute, in 2011, 9.8% of households in the EU27 countries and 15.8% of households in the 12 newmember states could not afford to heat their homes adequately. Thus, fuel poverty is an increasingly seriousproblem across Europe and requires the intervention of policymakers.

       In particular, corrective measures have been implemented which aim to help fuel-poor householdspay their energy bills, and preventive policies have also been introduced, which focus more on improvingresidential energy efficiency. Debates about the effectiveness of these measures have ensued for severalreasons; mainly because energy retrofit renovations have often been undertaken by wealthier households.Thus, despite these measures, given the expected increase in the cost of energy, some could find it difficultor even impossible to satisfy their energy needs. As a prerequisite to discussions about the effectivenessof different measures to fight fuel poverty, debates have often focused on the need to reliably identify fuel-poor households and create a detailed profile of such households. In fact, the multidimensionality of fuelpoverty makes it difficult to achieve this.

       Fuel poverty has traditionally been treated as a monetary poverty problem. At European Union level,there is no common definition or standardized indicator for assessing fuel poverty. While there is a largebody of literature on measuring poverty, consensus has not yet been reached on the related methodologicaland conceptual issues. However, households affected by fuel poverty are not always the same as thoseaffected by monetary problems, even if the two phenomena are inextricably linked.

       In this context, we suggest that a more careful and systematic understanding can be developedthrough a multidimensional approach to the relationship between monetary poverty, residential energyefficiency of buildings, and heating restrictions. Our objective in this paper is not to challenge existingmeasures of fuel poverty, but provide new ways to better identify those who suffer the most from fuelpoverty in order to optimize policy. We argue this is needed to better identify the connection betweenenergy use and well-being and therefore deepen understanding of energy poverty.

        Terms considered proper for a group or phenomenon seem to change every generation or so. The term crippled, forexample, sounds abusive today,__ 36__ it was once considered civil by educated, sensitive people. Crippled began asa(n) __37__ term. However, a sad reality of human society is that there are negative associations and even dismissalharbored__ 38__  those with disabilities. Crippled thus became accreted with those overtones to the pointthat handicapped was fashioned as a replacement term __39__ from such baggage. Similarly, because humans stayedhuman, handicapped, later__40__     shades of abuse, also conditioned another replacement like disabled. Such a(n)periodic semantic renewal is an inevitable and healthy process.

       Children have a lot to contend with these days, not least a tendency for their pushy parents to force-feed them omega-3 oil capsules at every opportunity. These are supposed to make children brainier, so they are being added to 11 from bread, milk and pasta to baby formula and vitamin tablets. But omega-3 is just the 12 of the nutritional iceberg; many nutrients have proven cognitive effects, and do 13 throughout a person’s life, not merelywhen he is a child. 

       Fernando Gómez-Pinilla, a fish-loving professor of neurosurgery and physiological science at the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles, believes that 14 changes to a person’s diet can enhance his cognitive abilities, protect hisbrain from damage and counteract the effects of aging. Dr. Gómez-Pinilla has been studying the effects of food on thebrain for years, and has now completed a review, just published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, that has analyzedmore than 160 cases of food’s effect on the 15 . Some foods, he concludes, are like pharmaceutical compounds;their effects are so profound that the mental health of entire countries may be linked to them.

   Music activates many regions of the brain, including auditory, motor and limbic (associated with emotions). Such widespread activation of brain explains many beneficial emotional and cognitive music effects. The idea that music makes you smarter received considerable attention from scientists and the media. Listening to music or playing an instrument can actually make you learn better. And research confirms this by showing that music has the power to enhance some kinds of higher brain function: literacy skill, spatial-temporal reasoning, mathematical abilities (even children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder could benefit in mathematics tests from listening to music beforehand), emotional intelligence, and recall of autobiographical and episodic information.

   The power of music to affect memory is quite intriguing. Earlier it has been thought that listening to classical music, particularly Mozart, enhances performance on cognitive tests. However, there are findings that show that listening to any personally enjoyable music has positive effects on cognition. Listening to music also facilitates the recall of information. Researchers have shown that certain types of music are great keys for recalling memories. Information learned while listening to a particular song can often be recalled simply by “playing” the songs mentally. Musical training has even better effect than just listening to classical music. Activities, such as playing an instrument or singing, involve both sides of the brain at the same time. The information being studied activates the left brain while the music activates the right brain. The simultaneous left and right brain action causes the brain to be more capable of processing information, hence maximizing learning and retention of information. There is clear evidence that children who take music lessons develop a better memory compared with children who have no musical training.

   Moreover, music that is easy to listen to or relaxing classics improves the duration and intensity of concentration in all age groups and ability levels. It’s not clear what type of music is better, or what kind of musical structure produces the best results, but many studies have shown significant effects.