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When a small theatre company in Manchester announced its quarterly figures last week, the fall in net revenue left investors feeling 1      . The opening night, which had been heavily promoted across the city, attracted a 2       of well-known actors on stage, yet ticket sales never quite reached the level the board had projected. The founder, who has 3       the company from his home a thousand miles away for nearly a decade, told reporters that the dip was disappointing but far from 4      . He insisted that a fresh marketing strategy, combined with a tighter production schedule, would 5       the company back into profit before the end of the financial year.

The bond formed between a mother and her baby is a particularly close one. New research has provided some 1       into the mechanisms around this attachment. During interaction, the brain waves of mothers and their babies can coordinate, and recent findings show that the extent to 2       this connection develops is dependent on the mother's emotional state. The more positive emotions the mother expresses, the stronger a connection there seems to be between their brain and their baby's. Babies' brains are extremely adaptable in the early stages of their development, and their experiences during this phase significantly shape their progress. What this may result 3       is more efficient information-sharing between the two, which in turn can lead to higher levels of responsiveness. In other words, babies may be more receptive to learning from mothers who regularly share positive emotions with the baby, 4       enhancing their mental capacity early in life. The scientists further note that their research demonstrates the powerful effect our emotions have on our social connections, but such a connection is yet 5       in other forms of relationships, such as those between siblings, couples and in close friendships.

I am a cyclist and a motorist. I fasten my seatbelt when I drive and wear a helmet on my bike to reduce the risk of injury. I am convinced that these are 1       safety measures. I have persuaded many friends to wear helmets on the grounds that transplant surgeons call those without helmets, "donors on wheels". But a book on 'Risk' by my colleague John Adams has made me re-examine my 2      . Adams has completely 3       my confidence in these apparently sensible precautions. What he has persuasively argued, particularly in relation to seat belts, is that the evidence that they do what they are supposed to do is very suspect. This is 4       of numerous claims that seat belts save many thousands of lives every year. Between 1970 and 1978 countries in which the wearing of seat belts is 5       had on average about five percent more road accident deaths than before the introduction of the law.

Jean Piaget, the pioneering Swiss philosopher and psychologist spent much of his professional life listening to children, watching children and 1       over reports of researchers around the world who were doing the same. He found, to put most 2      , that children don't think like grownups. After thousands of interactions with young people often barely old enough to talk, Piaget began to 3       that behind their cute and seemingly illogical utterances were thought processes that had their own kind of order and their own special logic. Einstein called it a 4       "so simple that only a genius could have thought of it". Piaget's insight opened a new window into the inner workings of the mind. By the end of a wide-ranging and remarkably 5       research career that spanned nearly 75 years, Piaget had developed several new fields of science. Although not an educational reformer, he 6       a way of thinking about children that provided the foundation for today's education-reform 7      .

There were twenty-six freshmen 1       in English at Beijing Language Institute in the class of 1983, and I was assigned to Group Two with another eleven boys and girls who had come from big cities in China. I was 2       that language study required smallness so that we would get more attention from the skilful teachers. The better the school, the smaller the class. I realised that my classmates were already all 3       in English, simple sentences tossed out to each other in their red-faced introductions and carefree chatting. Their intonations were curving and dramatic and their pronunciation refined and accurate. But as I stretched to catch the drips and drops of their humming dialogue, I couldn't 4       it all, only that it was English. Those words now flying before me sounded a little familiar. I had read them and tried to speak them, but I had never heard them 5       back to me in such a speedy, fluent manner. My big plan of 6       the city folks was thawing before my eyes.

Founded after World War the second by 51 'peace-loving states' combined to oppose future aggression, the United Nations now counts 192 member nations, 1       its newest members, Nauru, Kiribati and Tonga in 1999, Tuvalu and Yugoslavia in 2000, Switzerland and East Timor in 2002, and Montenegro in 2006. United Nations Day has been 2       on October 24th since 1948 and celebrates the objectives and accomplishments of the organisation, which was established on October 24th, 1945. The UN 3       in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions and conflict 4       across the globe. Though some say its 5       has declined in recent decades, the United Nations still plays a tremendous role in world politics.

The most 1       ingredient in Indian cooking, the 2       element with which all dishes begin and, normally, the cheapest vegetable available, the pink onion is an essential item in the shopping basket of families of all classes. A popular saying holds that you will never starve because you can always afford a roti, a piece of simple flatbread, and an onion. But in recent weeks, the onion has started to seem an unaffordable 3       for India's poor. Over the past few days, another sharp 4       in prices has begun to unsettle the influential urban middle classes. The sudden spike in prices has been caused by large exports to neighbouring countries and a shortage of 5      . With its capacity for bringing down governments and scarring political careers, the onion plays an 6       role in Indian politics.

In an attempt to 1       new students, leading business schools, including Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Wharton, have moved away from the unofficial missions and 2       of four years' work experience and 3       have set their sights on recent college graduates and so-called "early career" 4       with only a couple of years of work under their belt.