Read the following text and see how much time you need for that.
Read carefully! If you go through the text for half a minute, but you understand and remember only one or two facts, it doesn’t mean you are a fast reader. Not with understanding. The purpose is to gain real perspective of your individual reading speed with full understanding, not trying to compete.
So, set your chronometer and…
START:
How Household Dogs Protect Against Asthma and Infection
Exposure of mice to dust from houses where canine pets are permitted both indoors and outdoors can reshape the community of microbes that live in the mouse gut -- collectively known as the gastrointestinal microbiome -- and also diminish immune system reactivity to common allergens, according to a new study by researchers led by Susan Lynch, PhD, associate professor with the Division of Gastroenterology at UC San Francisco, and Nicholas Lukacs, PhD, professor with the Department of Pathology at the U Michigan.
The scientists also identified a specific bacterial species within the gut that is critical to protecting the airways against both allergens and viral respiratory infection.
The study, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), is published online this week in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and involves a multi-disciplinary group of researchers from UCSF, the University of Michigan, Henry Ford Health System and Georgia Regents University.
The results were obtained in studies of mice challenged with allergens after earlier exposure to dust from homes with dogs, but the results also are likely to explain the reduced allergy risk among children raised with dogs from birth, according to the study leaders.
In their study the scientists exposed mice to cockroach or protein allergens. They discovered that asthma-associated inflammatory responses in the lungs were greatly reduced in mice previously exposed to dog-associated dust, in comparison to mice that were exposed to dust from homes without pets or mice not exposed to any dust.
Among the bacterial species in the gut microbiome of these protected mice, the researchers homed in on one, Lactobacillus johnsonii. When they fed it alone to mice, they found it could prevent airway inflammation due to allergens or even respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. Severe RSV infection in infancy is associated with elevated asthma risk.
The researchers showed in this experiment that protection of the lungs' airways was associated with reduced numbers and activity of asthma-associated immune cells.
The level of protection with this single species was less than that obtained with the full complement of dust microbes from dog owners' homes, indicating that other, environmentally sourced bacterial species probably are necessary for full airway protection, Lynch said.
Found in Science Daily
STOP!
Stop your chronometers and check how long it took you. The second step is to turn the minutes into seconds and put them in the following formula where “t” is time, which you needed to read the text in seconds:
Your reading speed is = (355x60) / t
Results:
Under 180 words a minute - low reading speed. You read slowly. You’d greatly benefit from fast reading education.
180-220 words a minute - middle reading speed. You have normal reading speed for an average person.
220-280 words a minute - high reading speed. You read faster than the usual.
Above 300 words a minute - very high reading speed. It is very probable that you know special techniques for fast reading or you have some education in that field.
1000-1200 words a minute with understanding – this is the speed that you can learn to read in, if you pass a fast reading course. Practice shows that during the course you’ll increase your speed for information absorption minimum three times. If your average speed is 200 words a minute for 50 pages for 2 hours, you will be able to read a minimum of 150 pages for the same time with full understanding.
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