Academic Skills : Getting More out of Lectures

This is an interesting part of the text. It reveals that not only a lecture can be interesting but also what is behind it. Attending lectures could give students clues on how the instructor thinks, what are his or her expectations. Therefore, it allows you to perform in a specific course.
One way to be more effective in learning out of lectures is "clever" note taking. The text gives some suggestions in order to have an "active listening". That means that after a lecture, a student should be able to give mains arguments and some supporting ideas. I think that note taking will allow students to remember arguments for a certain period of time, to review them anytime and thus to perform in a course. A passive listening is not recommended because students would rarely remember more than 5% of a lecture if they don't have any notes.
I also agree that students should not act as "human tape recorders", writing the lecturer's speech word by word. In order to remember the main points of a lecture, students would better paraphrase them and combine non verbal signals that could be very useful to understand the instructor's point of view.
If anything is not understood, students should not feel embarassed. They should ask questions to clarify it.

Some thoughts about World Population increase

I believe China has a key role to play in this issue. The country is the most populated in the planet: 1.3 billion inhabitants, a fifth of the world population.
Lately, we noticed a '' rebound” of China population because of the new rich people, who do not respect the laws on demographic control.

Set up at the end of the Seventies, the Chinese family planning policy allows urban couples to have only one child, while the rural couples are limited to 2 children. The goal of such a policy is to control the population growth while preserving natural resources in the country. Couples who exceed the limited number of children have to pay taxes.
However, the increase in the incomes implies that the new rich generation can disregard these rules by paying penalties envisaged by the law. The official agency Xinhua indicates that the number of rich person and celebrities who have more than one child is dramatically rising, and nearly 10% of them have even three children and more. (La Chine s’inquiète d’un rebond de sa population, 7 May 2007. Le Monde).

Another factor of increase in the population seems critical: the return to early marriages in the countryside. It is encouraged by the traditional wish of the families to have male heirs. The Chinese Constitution indicates that men can marry starting from 22 years-old while women can at 20 years-old. Late marriages are encouraged in order to slow down the demographic growth.
China committed to limit its population lower than 1,36 billion people in 2010, and 1,45 billion in 2020. Could government keep its promise?