AIRPORT INFORMATION 

There are two airports in London; Heathrow and Gatwick. These are the facilities which make passage through the airport easier and more enjoyable 

At Heathrow, there are information desks at each terminal where you can get advice in several languages. Ring 759 7702 for Terminal 1, 759 7115 for Terminal 2 and 759 7107 for Terminal 3. Desks are open from 7: 00-22: 00 hrs. At Gatwick, the desk is open 24 hrs. a day. Ring 28822 Ext e55 for general information and 31299 for flight times. 

There are short-term car parks at all terminals at both airports. Long-term car parks are a better bet for most travelers. A free courtesy coach runs you from the car park to the terminals and back. 

MOO OWE, DSO •SMI 

At Heathrow, there are duty-free supermarkets at each terminal. At Gatwick, there's a new supermarket in the International Departure Lounge after passport control. You'll find that prices are up to 50% lower than in the High Street. 

There are emergency medical/ nursing services at Heathrow and Gatwick. At Heathrow, they're in the Queen's Building. At Gatwick, they're in the International Arrivals Hall. Both are staffed 24 hours a day by nursing sisters. There are nurseries at all terminals at both Heathrow and Gatwick where young children can be fed or changed in comfort. Trained children's nurses are available to help if needed, except in Terminal 3 at Heathrow. 

You should ask your airline if you need special help. All terminals at Heathrow and Gatwick are fitted with lifts, ramps, and special toilets. An airport information desk will help you in an emergency. Porters will carry your bags free of charge on request. Or you can use one of the self-help trolleys distributed throughout the airports. 

There are coffee shops, buffets, grills, and restaurants at both airports. You can have anything from a snack to a la carte. The bars are open 24 hours a day and can be enjoyed after you've passed passport control.

Jackson Language School Summer/ 2001 

Opening and Closing Times the Jackson Language School is open each day except Sunday. There is an English Corner also available from 6:00pm — 9:00pm at the Bellevue Hall across from the school. 

Class Size Classes have a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 16 in one class. Classes are equipped with earphones and an electronically controlled listening. Withdrawals Students may withdraw and be refunded if they inform the office within 24 hours after the 1st class.

Teachers I Teachers are all experienced and have a minimum of 2 years’ experience and at least a certificate in teaching English as a Second Language. They are all available for tutoring if you need it. 

Location The school is located 15 minutes from central London at 34 Inver Leith Row, next to the Marks and Spencer shopping Centre. It is near a bus stop and only a 5 minutes’ walk from the Tube. Language Laboratory The language laboratory is open Monday to Friday from 2:00pm to 6:00 pm for all full time students. Computer software and CD ROMS are available as well as the Jackson's own language learning website which is available by password. One can also borrow listening comprehension cassettes designed to help you with your TOEFL test and they can be borrowed for up to 2 days. 

Extracurricular Activities there are a variety of activities organized for the students so that he or she is able to enjoy the entertaining side of London. Excursions, outings, theatre visits, films, parties and sports events are all part of the program. Pick up a time table at the Administration office (room 301). 

Attendance Students on student visas are expected to attend regularly. Students who are absent more than 60% of the time will be reported to the OSS. Moreover, if students attend less than 80%, they will not be eligible for a certificate from Jackson School. It is also required by OSS for visa extension. Homestay You are able to stay with a British family if you request so. Jackson has a homestay program that matches students and families according to their own requirements and needs. While generally no problems occur, students may withdraw or move from a homestay household if he or she gives a 2-week written notice to the homestay family or school. Language Policy As the course is an immersion program, students are expected to speak English the entire time they are at the school If they speak any language other than English at the school, they may be asked to leave the school for a day.

BOARDING at Stanford College 

A. Many students opt to live at Stanford's boarding residences, as they are usually more convenient. In fact, twenty-five percent of the college students are residents. Students need to devote less time to issues related to living independently. The fee may seem expensive at first, but not when you add up the expenses involved in living outside. Most students come out ahead financially compared with those who rent accommodation outside the college. 

B. Those who live at Stanford are not all from one segment of society. In fact, about 40% are overseas students. Even the British students are from various parts of the country. Thus, much emphasis is placed on helping students to adapt to a new environment. 

C. Students live in four similar houses on campus, each designed to hold between 75 and 85 students. Each house has three storeys. The ground floor consists of public rooms, while the first and second floors are made up of large airy dormitories accommodating either four or eight students. 

D. I) Senior students (Years 6 and 7) and Juniors (Years I and 2) live in mixed accommodation, boys and girls occupying different floors, while the Middle School students (Years 3, 4 and 5) occupy separate houses. Each house is supervised by a team of six members of staff; a resident housemaster, an assistant, three non-resident assistants and a matron. 

E. There are two types of boarding--Full Boarding and Self Cooking. Boarding fees pay for all amenities; a daily choice of three menus (European, Chinese and Muslim), adequate laundry provision, the services of a group of doctors, sanatorium facilities and all furniture and bed linen. Self-cooking means that you do your own cooking in a communal kitchen. 

F. During weekdays, the house programmes provide compulsory study periods as well as free activity times. Recreation facilities available to the residents include a swimming pool, tennis courts, a gymnasium and games fields. Individual houses provide their own indoor games. 

G. Within the boarding house, nurses are there for general medical advice and the treatment of illnesses or injuries. There are also advisors on hand for students who suffer from stress or emotional problems while away from home.

MARS: Are We Close To Finding Life? 

A 

No planet has teased the imagination as much as Mars. In ancient Greece and Rome, the planet's fiery red hue made sky watchers think of their god of war. In the 19th century, astronomer Percival Lowell thought he saw canals on Mars; his observations triggered a flood of novels and science fiction stories about strange and wonderful beings thought to inhabit the Red Planet. Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, has often been called a sister planet to our own Earth. A "day" on Mars lasts 24-and-a-half hours, just 30 minutes longer than here on Earth. The planet is tilted on its axis by 25 degrees, just two degrees more than the Earth's tilt. Because of its greater distance from the sun, however, Mars takes substantially longer to complete each orbit, a "year" on Mars lasts 668 earth days, nearly twice as long as a year here on Earth. Mars has two small, irregularly shaped moons, Photos and Deimos, each less than 30 km across. Because of its small size, the pull of gravity on the planet's surface is just 38 per cent as strong as on Earth (a 200 pound man would weigh just 76 lbs. On Mars). And because of its weak gravity, Mars has retained only a thin atmosphere-about 100 times thinner than Earth's. Its main component (95 per cent) is carbon dioxide. It can be windy, though with giant dust storms sometimes engulfing the entire planet. Because of its thin atmosphere and its distance from the sun, Mars is a very cold world. Although midsummer temperatures can reach 26, it can also drop to a numbing -111. 

B

 Besides its vast, rocky deserts, Mars also has enormous canyons such as the 5000-kilometre Valleys Marineris, as well as giant extinct volcanoes like 27-km-high Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system. The planet also has intriguing channels that look as though they were carved by flowing water--suggesting that Mars may once have been both wetter and warmer than it is today. Two distinct polar ice caps can be seen even through small telescopes. The north cap--the larger of the two--is mainly normal ice (frozen water), while the southern cap seems to be mostly frozen carbon dioxide. Why the two caps arc so different is a mystery. 

C 

The question of life on Mars--either past or present--remains a great motivator in the exploration of the Red Planet. True, no signs of life have been discovered on Mars, but scientists can't rule out the possibility that microbial life did, at one time, evolve there. With its giant volcanoes, gaping canyons. And vast deserts, Mars remains as intriguing as ever, but the lack of water makes many scientists pessimistic including Dr. Jane {[Renfrew, although she believes that it's still possible that microbial life has survived below the surface][33]}. A number of scientists, including Sam Watson from MIT, have also raised the intriguing possibility that life on Earth may have originated on Mars. Material from Mars has reached Earth in the form of meteorites; if there were microbes embedded in those rocks, it's possible that they could have eventually "taken root" on Earth. Of course, one could argue that it evolved on Earth first, and arrived on Mars via a wayward meteorite, as Dr Bill Verten another MIT scientist has proposed. 

D 

There's evidence suggesting that water once flowed across the Red Planet. An ocean may have once covered the planet's northern hemisphere; as well, images from Surveyor and other spacecraft show channels that may well have been carved by flowing water billions of years ago. Why would the ocean be in the north? Maps of Mars highlight the contrast between the planet's hemispheres. The north is very low and smooth, while the south is rough, mountainous, and heavily centered. The northern hemisphere. On average, is five kilometres lower than the southern hemisphere? That difference in elevation would have affected the flow of water, thought to have been present on the Martian surface billions of years ago. Any water that was present, Paige says, would have tended to flow northward--perhaps creating a vast ocean in the planet's northern hemisphere. He cautions that there is no direct evidence for this, but says "we can't rule out the possibility of a large amount of water there."

E

 So where did all the water go? Scientists have come up with a number of models, but none of them is quite satisfactory. Because of the planet's cold temperature and thin atmosphere, liquid water is not stable on the Martian surface. Any water would either evaporate into the atmosphere, or freeze and be absorbed into the soil. It's possible that most of the water evaporated, and then the water molecules--continuously bombarded by solar radiation—may have broken down into their components, hydrogen and oxygen. These gases may then have been lost into space. But current models suggest that this should have taken many billions of years -- in other words, there hasn't been enough time to lose so much water. The water mystery is one of the most puzzling that scientists hope the current crop of Mars missions will solve those rocks, it's possible that they could have eventually "taken root" on Earth. Of course, one could argue that it evolved on Earth first, and arrived on Mars via a wayward meteorite, as Dr Bill Verten another MIT scientist has proposed. 

F 

Launched in January 1999, the lander was the latest in a series of low-budget NASA space missions, designed to "do more with less." The price tag for the Mars Polar Lander was about $330 million US—a tiny fraction of the cost of the billion-dollar Viking probes of the 1970s. Still, an independent inquiry headed by Erich Svenson blamed the trouble on inadequate software systems testing, a result of underfunding. On December 3, 1999, the Mars Polar Lander, which failed in its mission, was supposed to have touched down at the edge of the planet's south polar ice cap. Why such a southerly location? Scientists believe the layers of dust and ice close to the poles contain a kind of layered record of the planet's climate history (just as a tree's rings tell the story of the plant's growth history); for the first time, they would be able to study those layers. "We're landing on a completely different part of the planet than we've explored in the past, and we know very little about the terrain," says David Paige of UC1.A, one of the project scientists with the Mars Polar Lander. "It has a real exploratory flavour to it."  

G 

It may be several decades before the first humans set foot on Mars, but some scientists believe they've got the next best thing--and the perfect rehearsal space--here in Canada. A group called The Mars Society is planning a US 51.2-million simulated Mars station on Devon Island, high in the Canadian Arctic. The island is extremely cold and dry; the landscape is covered with rocky ridges, valleys, and meteorite-impact craters. And, scientists believe, it likely witnessed the same kinds of geological processes that shaped the surface of Mars. The Mars Arctic Research Station may be complete by the summer of 2000. The Mars Society is trying to raise money for the station• through private and corporate donations; it has also been negotiating with NASA in the hope of sharing resources. The facility will let scientists and engineers test everything from water-recycling methods to land rovers and drilling equipment—the soft of machinery that will be crucial if a manned mission to Mars is given the go-ahead. And, perhaps most importantly, it will simulate the kind of self-contained, isolated environment that anyone living on Mars will have to get used to 

H

Scientists hope to send a sample-return mission to the Red Planet in the early years of the next decade (possibly as early as 2005), and there's speculation that a manned mission--almost certainly an international collaboration—could be underway within about 20 years. Many scientists, including Dr. Zuber at MIT, see a manned mission as inevitable. Now that we've explored the moon, the Red Planet seems to be the next logical step in our species' exploration of the solar system. "It's going to require the political will for it to happen," she says, "but when that occurs, there will be plenty of people lined up willing to help."