[A] Watching related expenses and making wise choice

[B] Paying attention to details

[C] Weighing your financial goals and expectations first

[D] Maintaining realistic expectations

[E] Narrowing the search

[F] Not too special

Eating better. Exercising. Investing. There are a lot of things you know should he doing. The problem is that getting started always seems to be the hardest part. For many investors, mutual funds are a good way to go, but trying to sort through the number of available choices—now more than 10,000— makes this important task appear overwhelming. Let’s look at some ways to cut that number down to a reasonable size, as well as other factors to consider when selecting your first fund.

【G1】______________________________

Before you begin examining potential investments, it’s important to take some time to access your own goals and risk tolerance. If you start with a clear objective in mind, as well as an understanding as to how you might react if your investment loses money, you’ll be less likely to purchase a fund that doesn’t fit your needs. And that’s what often leads to disappointment. It is important to look for funds that are appropriate for both your goals and your investment temperament.

【G2】_______________________________

One way to begin your search for a good fund is to use the Morningstar star rating. The rating is a useful tool for narrowing the field to funds that have done a good job of balancing return and risk in the past. To assign ratings, Morningstar uses a formula that compares a fund’s risk-adjusted historical performance with that of other funds within four rating groups—domestic stock funds, international stock funds, taxable bond funds, and municipal bond funds.

【G3】___________________________________

Funds that invest solely in a single market sectors, called specialty funds, often have impressive returns and may be great additions to a diversified portfolio. However, the success of such funds depends largely on the fortunes of a particular market sector. Hence, specialty funds probably aren’t the best way to start. For your first fund, look for a diversified stock fund that has exposure to different types of stocks.

【G4】_____________________________________

There’s no free lunch in fund investing: in addition to the sales fees that some fund companies charge, fund investors must also pay management fees and trading cost. Unfortunately, you don’t necessarily get what you pay for—no one has ever shown that more expensive funds provide greater returns. Look for funds with reasonable costs. The expense ratio, which expresses annual costs as a percentage amount, is probably the best number to use when comparing mutual fund costs.

【G5】_________________________________________

Whatever the market does, try to take it in stride. You’re in for the long haul, so don’t worry about the market’s day-to-day gyrations. Relax and resist the temptation to monitor your first investment daily. Check in on your mutual funds once a month, and give your portfolio a thorough exam every 6 to 12 months. And consider adding to your fund each month. An automatic investment plan makes it a relatively painless process.

Finally, remember that the ultimate measure of your success as an investor depends not on your owning the best-performing mutual fund. Only one fund will be the top performer over the next decade, and there’s no way to predict which one it will be. Meeting your own financial goals should ultimately be the yardstick by which you measure your investment success.

The first sound ever was the sound of the Big Bang. And, surprisingly, it doesn’t really sound all that bang-like. John Cramer, a researcher at the University of Washington, has created two different renditions of what the big bang might have sounded like based on data from two different satellites.

During the first 100 to 700 thousand years after the Big Bang, the universe was far denser than the air on Earth, which means that sound waves could indeed move through it. (It’s not true that sound needs air to move, it simply needs a medium dense enough to propagate the waves.)【G1】_______________

Since before the Big Bang there was no universe, it seems safe to say that this is likely the first sound in the universe. But what was the first sound ever actually heard? To figure that out, we need to figure out which organism was first able to hear.

The first organisms to be able to hear things were probably the bony fishes, which appeared on this planet about 400 million years ago.【G2】____________________

So what were these fish hearing? What sounds did these early labyrinth organs pick up? Mostly vibrations coursed through their bodies as they moved through the water or, in later cases, as they walked along muddy banks.【G3】_______________It wasn’t until the Triassic period that eardrums showed up, which made it much easier for organisms to hear sounds transmitted through the air.

Fast forward a whole lot of time, and we get to humans.【G4】_______________Phonautographs transcribe sound waves into a line that is drawn on paper or glass. The first phonautographic recording that still exists is from 1860, and it’s a French folksong called “Au Clair de la Lune.”

Once humans figured out how to record sound, they then wanted to share it. In 1875, Alexander Graham Bell transmitted the first sound vibrations between two receivers. The first radio broadcast, speech transmitted without wires, came on December 23, 1900. Reginald Aubrey Fessenden successfully transmitted his own voice between two 50-foot towers located on the Potomac River in Washington.

【G5】____________________

Today, humans make and record a whole lot of noise. So much that now, instead of trying to be the “first” to make or capture or send a sound, some are looking for a “last.” The last place on Earth without human noise.

[A] But the sound would have been such a low frequency that, had humans been around at the time, we couldn’t have heard it. For listening purposes, Cramer has increased the frequency of the sound to fall into the range that humans can actually detect.

[B] The first sound that we recorded as a species was gathered by a device called a phonautograph, invented by a man named Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville in 1857.

[C] Sound has a history, from the first sound ever, to the first sound heard by an animal, to the first recorded by a human being.

[D] This system works well when there’s water around, but as animals moved up and out of the water, vibrations in the air didn’t carry as much energy, and couldn’t wiggle the bones quite as much.

[E] There weren’t always sounds being transmitted through the air, and there weren’t always animals and humans around to make sounds. And there certainly weren’t always technologies around to record sounds, in basements and fancy studios and subway cars.

[F] The first cellphone call was made on April 3, 1973 by Martin Cooper who, used the historic moment to call a man named Joel Engel, his direct competitor who was also working on cellphone technology.

[G] These fish developed the ability to sense vibrations by adapting an organ they used to balance themselves in the water called the “balance labyrinth.” Eventually, that labyrinth got more and more complicated, developing curves and features that would, a long time later, develop into a proto-cochlea.

The nation’s 47 million uninsured are not the only reason that health care has become a big issue in the presidential campaigns.【G1】_____________Even back in 2005, the health expenditures for each U.S.

citizen exceeded the entire per capita incomes of Chile or Venezuela.

The soaring spending is rooted in the nation’s technophilia: medical technology accounts for as much as half the growth in health care spending.【G2】__________Our love affair with next-generation imaging machines, implantable devices and the like has blinded us to the reality that little evidence often exists for whether something novel works any better than existing equipment, procedures or chemicals.

The recently published book Overtreated by New America Foundation Fellow Shannon Brownlee documents how surgical operations to relieve back pain, elective angioplasties that enlarge partially blocked coronary arteries and superfluous computed tomography contribute to the $400 billion to $700 billion in medical care that does not better our health. In 2005 the state of Ohio had more magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners than did all of Canada, leading physicians in Toledo to joke about why cars passing by city hospitals don’t swerve out of control because of strong magnetic fields.【G3】________

Brownlee’s book does not even touch on some ultra-high tech, such as the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center’s $125-million proton-beam facility, filled with a physics-grade particle accelerator, that kills tumor cells.【G4】____________One solution, advocated by Brownlee and some other health policy analysts, is a renewal of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)—or the creation of an organization like it—that would compare different treatments. It would be entrusted with comparing the benefits and risks of drugs, procedures and medical devices, while assessing any benefits against costs. The same Newt Gingrich—led Congress that eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment in 1995 almost did away with the AHRQ, which barely survived with diminished funding and powers.

【G5】__________________________________________________

For a revitalized AHRQ or a clone thereof to work as it should will require that a new president follow through with adequate funding, an assurance that Medicare will consider seriously its findings and, perhaps most important, a Federal Reserve—like independence from the momentary whims of the political establishment. A watchdog that helps to ensure we pay only for what works, notwithstanding the entreaties of drug companies and equipment manufacturers to do the opposite, will provide a powerful brake on the growing costs already choking our medical system.

[A] Questions remain, however, about whether proton beams are more effective than another form of radiotherapy that M. D. Anderson already offers.

[B] Besides leaving many uncovered, the U.S. also has trouble controlling the spending habits of a health care giant that is on track to consume 20 cents of every dollar by 2015, a tripling from 1970 levels.

[C] It now serves only as an information clearinghouse, not an organization that makes recommendations on Medicare reimbursement decisions.

[D] Although this trend has benefited everyone—witness the near halving of heart attack deaths from 1980 to 2000—not all those added dollars have been as well spent as drug and device manufacturers would have us believe.

[E] Yet studies have shown that imaging techniques such as MRI have not improved diagnosis as much as doctors and patients think they have.

[F] Several Democratic candidates, including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have expressed their approval to the need for institutes that would lay the foundation for “evidence-based” medicine.

[A] Realize that it’s not too late

[B] Invest in good advice and good equipment

[C] Start slowly

[D] Start with something you enjoy

[E] Vary your routine

[F] Avoid being injured

[G] Check with your doctor first

Sure, the baby boomers, who made The Complete Book of Running a bestseller, were the first to use the Nautilus machines at the gym, and sweated in front of their VCRs to Jane Fonda. Yet not everyone was part of the revolution; after all, only about 30 percent of American adults reported getting regular exercise. But forming a workout habit in middle age—or beyond—still has a host of benefits. Here’s what you need to know about starting up a routine.

【G1】_______________________________________________

“The human body is very responsive,” says Edward Coyle, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Texas-Austin. He studied a group of male heart-attack survivors who were about 55 on average. The first six months of training were spent getting the men walking again. They progressed over the next year until they were running or biking 40 to 60 minutes a day, five days a week. The last six months were spent raising the intensity through interval training. Not only did their heart function improve, they also completed a 5-mile run and did just as well as 55-year-olds who didn’t have a history of heart attack. “They ran faster than when they were 30,” says Coyle.

【G2】______________________________________________

If you haven’t exercised regularly for six months, get your physician’s all-clear. This is boilerplate advice—but follow it. The risk of heart disease increases for men in their mid-40s and women about a decade later, and exertion can trigger heart attacks in people with no previous symptoms.

【G3】______________________________________________

Why plan to finish a 5K if you don’t like to run? If you’d rather be swimming (or walking, or ballroom dancing, or playing badminton…), do that instead. If all you do is run, say, you’ll work certain areas so hard that you risk tightening and injury (hamstrings, calves) but neglect others (abdominal muscles, upper body). So mix it up. Optimally, the routine will have at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise five times a week, and two to three days of strength training, says Miriam Nelson, director of the John Hancock Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Tufts University.

【G4】______________________________________________

Ever notice how the gym is crowded in January and quiet by March? Those New Year’s revolutionists often overdo it and burn out or get mjured within a few months. Instead, plan slower progress. Nelson likes to prescribe just 15 minutes of physical activity at the outset, three to four times a week, and building from there.

【G5】_____________________________________________

“I always encourage a good pair of shoes,” says Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon. “You can walk in running shoes, but you really shouldn’t run in walking shoes.” You may also want to pay for a session or two with an athletic trainer or a physical therapist to make sure your form is good.

[A] Over the past year, the prospective brain hypothesis has gained steady support among neuroscientists. An intriguing possibility raised by the hypothesis is that the primary role of human memory may not be to remember the past, but to imagine and prepare for the future. “Once things in the past are finished, there’s nothing you can do about them,” Levine says.

[B] Brian Levine, a neuroscientist at the University of Toronto in Canada, is convinced that the data show a real decline in personal future imaginings. “I think that methodologically they have ruled out the other possible explanations,” Levine says. He adds that the findings are consistent with other studies examining future thinking in humans. “The more interesting question is ’why?’”, he says.

[C] Old age does more than stealthily steal away our most cherished memories: it also seems to diminish our ability to imagine things. This finding, detailed in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science, supports the “prospective brain” hypothesis, the idea that imagining the future and remembering the past rely on the same neural machinery. One implication of this study is that imagining is quite closely related to, and dependent on, remembering, perhaps more so than we previously realized, Dan Schacter of Harvard University says.

[D] In the study, Schacter and his team asked groups of young and old participants, with average ages of 25 and 72, respectively, to recount a personal episode from their past or imagine a personal experience in their future in response to cue words. Details in the participants’ narratives were categorized as either “internal” or “external”. Internal memories are similar to scenes from a movie: they contain specific subjects and take place in particular settings and time periods. External memories consist mostly of general facts about the world, such as “the sky is blue”. As expected, results showed that the past accounts of the older participants’ tales contained fewer, and less detailed, internal memories than those of the younger group. This deficit also extended to their future imaginings.

[E] In contrast, an older participant’s response to the same cue word was: “The scene is I’m just driving along, in the Saab, and… not worrying about high energy costs…” It wasn’t that the older group had trouble speaking or spoke less, the researchers found. The older people scored normally on verbal tests, and they talked at length about non-personal external memories.

[F] A young participant asked to imagine a personal scene in response to the cue word “engine”, for example, might envisage themselves driving in a red convertible along California’s Pacific Coast Highway one weekend over the summer. They might describe seagulls circling overhead, the feel of the wind mussing their hair, and the smell of the salt air as they round a particular comer.

[G] The researchers speculate that personal memories are particularly susceptible to ageing because they rely heavily on “relational processing”, the ability to mentally summon and join unique pieces of information, such as where and when an experience occurred. Stitching the particulars of a scene together—be it real or imagined—gets more difficult with age.

【G1】→【G2】→【G3】→【G4】→B→【G5】→A

[A] Using a pair of charged particles, group leader Christopher Monroe and his team place each in a vacuum and keep them in position with electric fields. An ultra-fast laser pulse triggers the atoms to emit photons simultaneously. If the photons interact in just the right way, their parent atoms enter a quantum state known as entanglement, in which atom B adopts the properties of atom A even though they’re in separate chambers a meter apart. When A is measured, the information that had been previously encoded on it disappears in accordance with the rules of the quantum world. But all is not lost: because B is entangled with A, B now contains the information that was once carried on A. That information, in a very real sense, has been teleported.

[B] Physics and magic aren’t often mistaken, but increasingly, physicists themselves seem to be trying to change that. Last year, a team at the University of California announced that it had developed materials that could lead to an invisibility clothing. Last month, a team of scientists from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) has joined the fun. The current object of their research? Teleportation.

[C] Gordon Moore was rewarded for his prescience with a sort of immortality: the famed “Moore’s Law” is one of the venerable truths of the computer world. The rest of us were rewarded with ever faster and ever smaller computers. At some point soon, however, miniaturization will reach a point that’s too tiny to be practical. It’s then, many hope, that what’s known as quantum computing—based on information-sharing particles—will take over.

[D] Depending on your favorite science fiction stories, teleportation is either a very bad idea or a very cool one. For scientists, it’s just very complex, so much so that at this point, teleportation is not a matter of moving matter but one of transporting information. Already, physicists have been able to exchange information between light particles or atoms, so long as they were right next to each other. The current experiment marks the first in which information has traveled a significant distance—1 meter—between two isolated atoms.

[E] Quantum-computing technology, however, holds a lot more potential than that, if only because of its massive information-storage capacity. One of the marvelous little wrinkles of the quantum world is a condition known as superposition, in which a particle can occupy two states at the same time. Thus, the capacity of a computer can be doubled with the application of the new technology.

[F] O.K., so parents might not be inviting the JQI team to perform at their kids’ birthday parties anytime soon, but what the quantum trick lacks in showmanship, it makes up for in practical applications for future computers. In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors that could be placed on a computer chip would double every two years—which is precisely what has happened.

[G] The next step for the JQI team is to improve the photons’ precision and the rate of communication between the particles. What we won’t see soon—or ever, according to Monroe—is a device that can teleport humans from one point to another. “There’s way too many atoms,” says Monroe. “At the other end of the transporter, you need to have some blob of atoms that represents the object being teleported, which is not possible now. I mean, what would that look like?”

B→【G1】→【G2】→【G3】→【G4】→【G5】→G