AIt's one of our most powerful medical treatments, and certainly our most widely effective. In recent years, it's been found to 18help eliminate or lessen the symptoms associated with clinical depression, irritable bowel syndrome, panic attacks, coughing, and ADHD, among other conditions. This name of this wonderful treatment? It's the 'placebo effect,' 19the remarkable power of the human brain to unconsciously influence the functioning and perception of the body.

B15The term, which is Latin for 'I shall please,' was first used sometime during the 1700s(B-paragraf), but the concept itself dates back centuries. Historically, doctors believed that one of their key duties, in addition to curing a patient, was to console him or her, 20providing a boost to the morale that could help them to get better faster — sometimes in the form of a dummy medicine that had no effect beyond instilling the expectation of improvement in the patient's brain. It's now widely recognized that, while largely ineffective in improving objective symptoms, 21such as high blood pressure or an infection, for instance, placebos are genuinely effective in treating subjective, self-reported symptoms, including all sorts of pain. Placebos can take all sorts of forms: inert sugar pills, sham surgeries, and saline injections.

CThe singular power of expectations has been demonstrated in a variety of studies. In one, for example, patients given a placebo pill that is referred to as a muscle relaxer will experience muscle relaxation, while 22those given a placebo called a muscle stimulator will experience muscle tension. 23The flip side of the placebo, the nocebo effect, is just as powerful — negative expectations can cause as much harm as positive ones can do good. In other studies, it's been shown that 24pills which are red, yellow, or orange in color are more likely to provide a stimulating effect, while blue and green ones are more often perceived as sedating. 17One study even found that bigger pills are better when it comes to placebo performance(C-paragraf — tashqi ko'rinish).

DThe science that underlies all of these studies isn't well understood at this point. 14Scientists have conducted some imaging research into the brain on placebos(D-paragraf), and they've found that ingestion of a placebo billed as a painkiller leads to increased activity in several areas of the cerebral cortex, as compared to an actual painkiller. These areas are involved in so-called 'higher' functions like memory, attention, thought, and consciousness. A pain-killing placebo, it seems, works differently from a painkiller.

EIn a recent headache study, conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School, 66 participants who suffer from chronic migraines were given six envelopes, each containing a pill to be taken after their next migraine attack. Two envelopes were labelled 'Maxalt' — the brand name for the widely used migraine drug rizatriptan — in order to generate positive expectations, while two had no label, to produce neutral expectations, and two were labelled 'placebo,' to generate negative expectations. But for each of the three labels, one envelope held a genuine rizatriptan pill, and one contained a placebo. This allowed the researchers to cross-compare the effectiveness of rizatriptan + positive expectations, rizatriptan alone, and rizatriptan + negative expectations, as well as positive, neutral, and negative expectations in isolation.

FWhen the scientists analyzed the participants' self-reported pain reductions after taking the pills, the power of the placebo was proven yet again. 25People who'd taken a placebo pill labelled Maxalt got just as much pain relief as those who'd taken a Maxalt pill labelled as a placebo(C — chalg'ituvchi yorliqda ikkisi teng). Additionally, 26people who took a Maxalt correctly labelled as Maxalt reported about twice as much pain reduction as those who took a Maxalt pill labelled as placebo(B — bilmasdan ichgan kamroq yengillik). In other words, in treating a complex, chronic form of pain like migraine, the effectiveness of pure expectations was roughly equal to the effectiveness of the pharmaceutical itself.

GFor a doctor, harnessing the placebo's power doesn't mean intentionally mislabelling pills. Instead, 16a doctor could simply provide a slightly more positive message about a treatment(G-paragraf), lending the power of expectations to that of pharmaceuticals. "When doctors set patients' expectations high, Maxalt becomes more effective," lead author of the study Rami Burstein said in a press statement. Of course, this sort of intentional expectation-setting needs to be done carefully. Doctors have an ethical obligation not to mislead patients or withhold important information. But that doesn't mean that making sure to provide subtle positive cues about the effectiveness of a medication — especially when those very cues might well make it work more effectively — is a bad idea. As Ted Kaptchuk, one of the study's co-authors, put it, "the placebo effect is an unacknowledged partner for powerful medications."

Water covers over 97 percent of the habitable 'living space' on our planet, yet it could be argued that 27we know more about distant stars than we do about the deep blue ocean(C — okean kosmosdan kam qo'llab-quvvatlanadi). We understand why it is important to reach for the stars, to look at ourselves in perspective, and to ask big questions such as 'where did we come from?' And we have devoted a great amount of resources to making progress in this area, but meanwhile, we have neglected understanding how the heart of our life support system really functions.

Ocean exploration and the need to alert people to the ocean's plight are critical to a better understanding of the planetary systems that support us. Never before has the need been so great to dive below the surface of the sea to explore and to understand the significance of our actions, or to be more precise, 28the significant scale of current inactions and the consequences they hold for all of us(A). It is like trying to understand your own body — is it good enough to only look at the skin? Do we not have to delve in and understand how the lungs work, or do we just take that for granted?

Most people are still under the impression that the ocean is so vast and so resilient that humans do not have the capacity to harm it — and if we do, that it does not matter. 29We look at the scale and how unchanging the ocean seems to be and decide it is not really something we should worry about(D) — it might be an issue for future generations but not for us! What has become increasingly clear, though, is our ability to really undermine the way the ocean works by what we take out and by what we put in.

People ask — what is the biggest threat to the ocean? Overfishing, pollution, or climate change are all usually mentioned. But by far and away the biggest threat to the ocean is a lack of understanding that what we put in and take out matters — not just to the ocean, but to other aspects of our lives. The ocean cannot be regarded as the planet's ultimate dumpster or the ultimate place to get free food. It is our life support system, and not being aware of the importance of the ocean to every breath we take, every drop of water we drink, to a benign set of conditions that make the planet work — that is the biggest threat.

By exploring the ocean we now understand better than ever before the consequences of what is happening and how the ocean is being damaged. In a sense, we now realize that we are sleepwalking into a nightmare. This is because changes are slow but progressive, and at some point occur to a level where we have to sit up and take notice. However, given the nature of progressive change, 30this point is often reached when it is no longer possible to do anything about it(C — kech bo'lib qolishi mumkin).

The ocean is difficult to study, much more so than dry land, but really there are no shortcuts to gaining knowledge. The advent of SCUBA diving in the 1950s provided the current generation with new tools to explore the shallowest margins of our watery world, and an explosion of knowledge quickly followed. But what of the deep ocean? Our temptation is to turn to machines as we have done in most aspects of our daily lives. But are machines good enough to take the place of humans? 31James Cameron — one of only a few people alive today who have traveled to the deepest part of the ocean(NOT GIVEN — hissasi haqida gap yo'q) — 32believes (as does the author), that humans lie at the center of ocean science(NO — inson markazda turadi). It is therefore unfortunate that just as we reach an era when we have the analytical powers to start to make sense of how our planet works, we see a reduction in funding of manned exploration of the ocean. 33It wasn't until Florida International University stepped in that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Aquarius underwater laboratory, located off Key Largo, Florida, was saved from closure(YES). However, 34the number of countries with submarine research capabilities continues to shrink. With the vast majority of the ocean yet to be explored, this is a mistake(NO — bu xato deb hisoblaydi), and 35the hopes are that private donors will step forward to balance out the loss of government funding(NOT GIVEN) for underwater exploration.

The value of seeing beneath the ocean surface is immense. It helps us understand how our well-being is linked to the well-being of the ocean. We now know that since the mid-1900s about half of the world's coral reefs have either gone or are in serious decline. Coral reefs are important ecosystems with 36approximately one quarter of all ocean species depending on them for food and shelter(F — marine creatures). Ninety percent of many of the big fish that we consume are gone — down to about ten percent of what they were 50 years ago. And we are changing the very nature of the blue part of our world that sets us apart from any other planet we have so far discovered in the universe. Excessive carbon dioxide emissions from our activities 37are not just changing the climate(E — weather patterns), 38they are driving the balance of the ocean waters towards more acidic conditions(H — chemical composition) with as yet unclear but likely significant consequences. The impacts of these changes will be felt by people around the world — 39not just by those who live by the sea(C — coastal communities), but, with our super-efficient supply systems, people in inland areas too. It matters because we cannot be blind to the fact that 40we are degrading the very part of our planet that enables us to live here(B — habitable place).