Tiếng Anh (L) phần đọc hiểu đoạn văn - Đại học Y Dược Đại học Thái Nguyên

Ever wondered what it feels like to have a different job? Here, four people with very different careers reveal the trade secrets of their working day.
Luc
My day typically starts with a business person going to the airport, and nearly always ends with a drunk. I don't mind drunk people. Sometimes I think they're the better version of themselves: more relaxed, happier, honest. Only once have I feared for my life. A guy ran out at a traffic light and so I sped up before his brother could run, too. He seemed embarrassed and made me drop him at a car park. When we arrived, the first guy was waiting with a boulder, which went through the windscreen, narrowly missing my head. But the worst people are the ones who call me “Driver!”
Harry
I not only provide appearance for my client, I also do damage control. We've had clients involved in lawsuits, divorces or drugs. One mistakenly took a gun to an airport. On the red carpet – at the Academy Awards or the Golden Globes – I'm the person making my client look good. The other day at an Oprah Winfrey event, the carpet wasn't put down properly and my clients almost went flying – I had to catch them. They can make some strange requests, too. At a black-tie gala at the White House, two clients hated the dinner and insisted that we circle around Washington DC to find a KFC open at 1a.m. I had to go in wearing a gown and order so they could eat it in the car.
Jennifer
I could teach you to do a basic brain operation in two weeks. But what takes time and experience is doing it without wrecking the brain of the patients - learning your limitations takes years.
I ended up working as a pediatric neurosurgeon because children make better recoveries from brain damage than adults. So, it's more rewarding in terms of outcome and I find their resilience really inspiring. It's taken me a decade to become comfortable discussing an operation with children, but they have to be able to ask questions. You have to show them respect. Sometimes their perspective is funny; most teenage girls just want to know how much hair you'll shave off.
I don't get upset by my job. These children are dying when they come in and I do whatever I can to make them better.
Solange
When you become a judge after years of being a barrister and trying to make points that win cases, you have to remember that a huge part of what you do is listening - to advocates, to witnesses, to defendants. Behind closed doors, most judges, even very experienced ones, are much more anxious about their work than most people might think. We agonize over what we do and the decisions we have to make. It would be bizarre to say that as a judge, we learn to be less judgmental. But as you see the complex and difficult lives of the people who end up in front of you, you realize that your job is not so much to judge them as to ensure that everyone receives justice.

In certain parts of the world, particularly India and China, air pollution is an ever-growing public health concern. This may be especially true for India, which reportedly surpassed China earlier this year in the overall amount of fine particulate matter pollution its citizens are exposed to. A new paper has added to the growing body of research indicating that India’s air pollution has become a matter of life and death. The increase in people dying in India from air pollution will outpace the rate of such deaths in China, as India drags its heels over environmental rules while opening more coal mines, the head of a U.S. research group said on Thursday.
"India's situation is getting worse at a much faster speed than China," Dan Greenbaum, president of Boston-based Health Effects Institute (HEI), told Reuters in Beijing. "It is definitely the case because India has not taken as much action on air pollution."
HEI and a group of Chinese and Indian universities recently said that over half of world's air pollution-related deaths were in China and India. In China, coal-fired plants have been the worst source of pollution. But India has lagged behind in implementing stringent environment policies for coal emission.
From now until 2020, China aims to cut coal output by 500 million tons, or about 19 percent of its current annual output, and reduce emission of major pollutants in the power sector by 60 percent. By contrast, India has just only launched an emission standard for coal-fired power plants this year.
India is also ramping up coal production as Prime Minister Narendra Modi races to meet election promises to provide electricity to a population of 1.3 billion. "Chinese actions to control emissions from coal power plants and from industries are considerably stronger than the ones in India," Greenbaum said.
Indian Coal Secretary Anil Swarup did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has previously said India is setting a higher target for renewable energy and growing more trees than are being uprooted by coal mining. He has also said coal can't be wished away because it is the cheapest form of energy in a country where millions of people still go without electricity.

Drought, severe heat and water shortages are disrupting schools, killing animals and ravaging rice crops in Southeast Asia. Thailand, Laos and Cambodia have recorded temperatures up to 44.6oC (112.4oF), beating all time national highs, according to data from the Weather Underground, a commercial weather service. Singapore too, has seen abnormally high temperatures, while in Malaysia, lakes have dried up and vegetable output has withered.
In Cambodia, schoolchildren have vastly diminished water supplies. “It’s very difficult to get water for the latrines,” says Srey Norn, a 13-year-old girl from Tboung Khmum Province. “Because some wells have dried up… and I have many friends who don’t come to school because it’s too hot.”

Phillis Wheatley was born in Gambia (in Africa) on May 8, 1753 and died in Boston on December 5, 1784. When she was 7 or 8, she was sold as a slave to John and Susanna Wheatley of Boston. She was named after the ship that brought her to America, The Phillis.
The Poetry Foundation describes her sale:
In August 1761, “in want of a domestic,” Susanna Wheatley, … purchased “a slender, frail female child … for a trifle”… The captain of the slave ship believed that the waif was terminally ill, and he wanted … at least a small profit before she died. … The family surmised the girl—who was “of slender frame and evidently suffering from a change of climate,” nearly naked, with “no other covering than a quantity of dirty carpet about her” - to be “about seven years old … from the circumstances of shedding her front teeth.”
(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/phillis-wheatley)
Phillis was very intelligent. The Wheatley family taught her to read and write, and encouraged her to write poetry. Her first poem “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin” was published when she was only twelve. In 1770, "An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield" made her famous. It was published in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia.
When she was eighteen, Phillis and Mrs. Wheatley tried to sell a collection containing twenty-eight of her poems. Colonists did not want to buy poetry written by an African. Mrs. Wheatley wrote to England to ask Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, for help. The countess was a wealthy supporter of evangelical and abolitionist (anti-slavery) causes. She had Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral published in England in 1773. This book made Phillis famous in England and the thirteen colonies. She wrote a poem for George Washington in 1775, and he praised her work. They met in 1776. Phillis supported independence for the colonies during the Revolutionary War.
After her master died, Phillis was emancipated. She married John Peters, a free black man, in 1778. She and her husband lost two children as infants. John would be imprisoned for debt in 1784. Phillis and her remaining child died in December of 1784 and were buried in an unmarked grave. Nevertheless, the legacy of Phillis Wheatly lives on. She became the first African American and the first slave in the United States to publish a book. She proved that slaves or former slaves had a valuable voice in the Revolutionary era.

Social Networks
Do the names MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, etc. ring a bell? They probably do because they are some of the most popular sites on the internet today. These sites are all called 'social networking' sites because they help people meet and discuss things online.
Each of these social networking sites has its own strengths: MySpace is especially popular among teenagers, Facebook is popular with college age people, Orkut is especially loved in Brazil, and CyWorld is the site to visit in South Korea. The common thread between all of these social networks is that they provide a place for people to interact, rather than a place to go to read or listen to 'content'.
Web 2.0
Social networks are considered to be web 2.0. What does this mean? To understand this, it's important to understand what the original web did (often called web 1.0). Back in the nineties, the internet - or web - was a place to go to read articles, listen to music, get information, etc.
Most people didn't contribute to the sites. They just 'browsed' the sites and took advantage of the information or resources provided. Of course, some people did create their own sites. However, creating a site was difficult. You needed to know basic HTML coding (the original language the internet uses to 'code' pages). It certainly wasn't something most people wanted to do as it could take hours to get a basic page just right.
Things began to get easier when blogs (from web log) were introduced. With blogs, many more people began writing 'posts', as well as commenting on other people's blogs.
My Space Surprises Everybody
In 2003 a site named MySpace took the internet by storm. It was trying to mimic the most popular features of Friendster, the first social networking site. It quickly became popular among young users and the rest was history. Soon everyone was trying to develop a social networking site. The sites didn't provide 'content' for people to enjoy, they helped people create, communicate and share what they loved including music, images and videos.
Key to Success
Relying on users to create content is the key to the success of web 2.0 companies. Besides the social networking sites discussed here, other huge success stories include: Wikipedia, Digg.com and the latest success - Twitter. All of these companies rely on the desire of users to communicate with each other, thereby creating the 'content' that others want to consume.

TV REVIEW
Lucy Chang tells you what’s new (and not so new!) on your screens this summer.
I always look forward to this time of year, and I’m always disappointed! It’s the time of year when the TV channels tell us their plans for the summer and every year I tell myself that it might be different. It never is. Take SuperTV, for example. This channel, on our screens for five years now, broadcasts a depressing mix of game shows and music videos. So what do we find in the new schedule? I’m The One, a game show with holidays as prizes, and VJ-TV, yet another music video programme with brainless presenters. They’re also planning to repeat the dreadful chat show Star Quality, which is about as entertaining as watching grass grow. Why can’t they come up with new ideas?
Channel 9 does a little better. Now that Train Driver has finished, they’ve decided to replace it with Staff Room, a reality show that follows teachers around all day. It should be the hit of the summer, giving us an idea of what really goes on when the lesson is over. Who doesn’t want to see and hear what teachers say about their students at the end of the school day? Great stuff! Together with Life in Aylesford Street, the soap opera that everyone’s talking about, it looks like Channel 9 could be the channel to watch this summer. Over on BTV1, Max Read is back with Joke-a-Cola, the comedy show. The first series was slightly amusing, the second hilarious. Let’s wait and see what the third series is like. Comedy is difficult to get right, but it ought to be great. I wish I could say the same about the sitcom, Oh! Those Kids! It’s enough to look at the expressions on the faces of the cast! It’s obvious they know it’s rubbish and the script is just so badly written! Oh! Those writers!
The programme makers must think we’ll watch anything. That’s just not true. People might have hundreds of channels on their TV or might live near a cinema with a dozen screens. There is so much choice of entertainment these days - TV, the cinema, the theatre, even the internet that they have to work hard to keep their audience. What they should be doing is making new, exciting programmes. Where are the programmes that make people think they must stay in to watch them?
We have to ask ourselves what entertainment is. We have to think about what people do with their leisure time. Television has been popular for about 50-60 years but it might not be popular forever. More people are going to the cinema and theatre than ever before. More people are surfing the internet or playing computer games than ever before. If Oh! Those Kids! is all that the TV can offer, why should we watch it? With one or two exceptions, this summer’s programmes will make more people turn off than turn on.

A tour under Paris
The great avenues are quiet, the shops are closed. There’s the smell of fresh bread from a bakery somewhere. It would be hard to say which time of the day in Paris I prefer but this is probably it. Soon the streets will be full of people and traffic. As with most other cities, you see the real Paris when the city wakes up.
There is, however, another part of Paris which is silent and free from people 24 hours a day. Under the city are hundreds of kilometres of tunnels. There are sewers and old subways but there are also spaces of all kinds: canals and catacombs, wine cellars which have been made into nightclubs and galleries. During the 19th century, the Parisians needed more stone for buildings above the ground so they dug tunnels beneath the city. After that, many farmers grew mushrooms in them. During World War II, the French Resistance fighters also used them. Since the 1970s, many groups of young people spend days and nights below the city in these tunnels. It’s a place for parties, theatre performances, art galleries – anything goes here!
Everywhere you go under Paris, there is history and legend. Historians and novelists often refer to them in their books. For example, Victor Hugo mentions the tunnels in his famous novel Les Miserables and in the story and musical The Phantom of the Opera there is a pond beneath the old opera house. Most people think this is myth but in fact there is an underground pond here with fish. A ‘normal’ tourist can visit parts of Paris beneath the ground. For example, there are the catacombs beneath the Montparnasse district. Here you can see the bones and skeletons of about six millions Parisians. The bodies came from cemeteries above the ground two centuries ago when the city needed more space.
However, it’s illegal to enter other parts of the tunnels and police often search the area. It’s also very dangerous because some of the tunnels might collapse. Nevertheless, there are people who will take you to visit them. I have found two ‘unofficial’ tour guides – Dominique and Yopie(not their real names). They take me through many tunnels and after a couple of hours we arrive at a room which isn’t on any map. Yopie and some of his friends built it. The room is comfortable and clean with a table and chairs and a bed. Yopie tells me there are many other places like this. ‘Many people come down here to party, some people to paint … We do what we want here.’

Bioluminescence, or “living light”, is produced by a number of organisms. It is most common among marine creatures, especially deep – sea fish. In fact, 90% of deep – sea marine life is estimated to produce bioluminescence in one form or another. Among land animals, the most familiar light – emitting organisms are certain adult insects known as fireflies and their larval forms, known as glowworms. Bacteria, protozoa, crustaceans, fungi, and mollusks all have species that emit light. The only groups that do not display bioluminescence are freshwater fish, mammals, birds, amphibians, and leafy plants.
Bioluminescence is produced when a pigment called luciferin is combined with oxygen in the presence of an enzyme called lucifrase. When other chemicals take part in the reaction, the color of the light changes, ranging from yellow – green to blue, blue – green, green, violet, and red. Bioluminescence is often called “cold light” because almost no energy is lost as heat. It compares favorably in efficiency with fluorescent lighting.
Some organisms, such as fungi, emit as steady glow. Others, such as fireflies, blink on and off. Certain types of bacteria that grow on decomposing plants produce a shimmering luminescence. The popular name for this eerie light is “foxfire.” Some organisms, such as dinoflagellates, emit light only when disturbed. When a ship plows through tropical water at night (particularly in the Indian Ocean), millions of these single – cell algae light up, producing the “milky sea” phenomenon, s softly glowing streak in the wake of the ship.
In some species, the role of bioluminescence is obvious. Fireflies and marine fire-worms use their light to attract mates. The anglerfish uses a dangling luminous organ to attract prey to come within striking distance. The cookie cutter shark utilizes a bioluminescence patch on its underbelly to appear as a small fish to lure large predatory fish such as tuna and mackerel, and when these fish try to consume the “small fish”, they are attacked by the shark. The bobtail squid uses its bioluminescence as nighttime camouflage. When viewed from below, its spots of light blend in with the light of the stars and the moon. Some squids use luminous fluids to confuse and escape from predators in the same way that live in the dark depths of the ocean developed the ability to produce light simply as a way to see around them. Most of deep – sea creatures produce blue and green light, and unsurprisingly, the light of those colors has the most powerful penetrating power in water. The only cave – dwelling creature capable of generating light is a New Zealand glowworm.
The reasons why fungi, bacteria, and protozoa are able to glow are more obscure. Perhaps, at one time, it was a way to use up oxygen. Millions of years ago, before green plants created oxygen, there was little of that gas in the atmosphere, and living creatures could not use it. Indeed, it may have been poisonous to some creatures. As more oxygen was created by green plants, new types of life developed that could breathe it. Some species died off, while other species developed techniques such as bioluminescence to reduce the amount of oxygen in their immediate environment and thus survive in the richer atmosphere. These organisms have since adapted and are no longer poisoned by oxygen, so their bioluminescence is no longer functional.

Floods are second only to fire as the most common of all natural disasters. They occur almost everywhere in the world, resulting in widespread damage and even death. Consequently, scientists have long tried to perfect their ability to predict floods. So far, the best that scientists can do is to recognize the potential for flooding in certain conditions. There are at least a number of conditions, from deep snow on the ground to human error, that cause flooding.
The first cause of flooding is deep snow on the ground. When deep snow melts, it creates a large amount of water. Although deep snow alone rarely causes floods, when it occurs together with heavy rain and sudden warmer weather, it can lead to serious flooding. If there is a fast snow melt on top of frozen or very wet ground, flooding is more likely to occur than when the ground is not frozen. Frozen ground or ground that is very wet and already saturated with water cannot absorb the additional water created by the melting snow. Melting snow also contributes to high water levels in rivers and streams. Whenever rivers are already at their full capacity of water, heavy rains will result in the rivers overflowing and flooding the surrounding land.
Secondly, rivers that are covered in ice can also lead to flooding. When ice begins to melt, the surface of the ice cracks and breaks into large pieces. These pieces of ice move and float down the river. They can form a dam in the river, causing the water behind the dam to rise and flood the land upstream. If the dam breaks suddenly, then the large amount of water held behind the dam can flood the areas downstream too.
Broken ice dams are not the only dam problems that can cause flooding. Those carelessly constructed by humans can also result in floods. When a large human-made dam breaks or fails to hold the water collected behind it, the results can be devastating. Dams contain such huge amounts of water behind them that when sudden breaks occur, the destructive force of the water is like a great tidal wave. Unleashed dam waters can travel tens of kilometres, cover the ground in metres of mud and debris, and drown and crush every thing and creature in their path.
Although scientists cannot always predict exactly when floods will occur, they do know a great deal about when floods are likely, or probably, going to occur. Deep snow, ice-covered rivers, and weak dams are all strong conditions for potential flooding. Hopefully, this knowledge of why floods happen can help us reduce the damage they cause.

Based on fossils retrieved from South Africa’s Rising Star cave, two teams of researchers reconstructed the moving habits of Homo naledi – the mysterious human ancestor. With funding from National Geographic, one took a close look at 107 foot bones, the other at 26 bones from a nearly complete right hand.
In most respects, the H. naledi foot looks surprisingly like a modern human’s. Its ankle joint, parallel big toe and wide heel bone belong to a striding biped, a creature fully adapted to efficiently walking upright on two legs. But, its lower arch and curved toe bones are more ape-like. The hand, with its curved fingers, indicates that H. naledi were strong climbers—and yet the long, strong thumb and shock-absorbing wrist could also have been capable of manipulating tools (though no tools have been found yet). It’s a mix of features scientists hadn't seen clearly yet in the genus Homo, to which modern humans belong.
“H. naledi had a unique form of movement for a member of the genus Homo,” says study author William Harcourt-Smith of CUNY’s Lehman College. When, in the course of human evolution, did our ancestors climb down from the trees and begin striding across the land? It’s hard to say. Lucy and other very early human ancestors, known as australopithecines, walked upright at least four million years ago, yet were certainly climbers and may have also been using stone tools. But, evidence for tree-climbing within the Homo lineage is rare. Scientists suspect that Homo habilis, the "handy man," may have retained climbing abilities around two million years ago, but that view is based on just a few fragmentary fossils. Now, the hands of H. naledi tell us that despite its incredibly modern foot and striding steps, the species also retained ape-like tree-climbing abilities.
For most of human evolution, our ancestors mixed walking and climbing skill, and this was part of what made them so successful at adapting to change, says Stony Brook University’s Bill Jungers. H. naledi is no exception. Because the bones from Rising Star have yet to be dated, it’s still not clear where H. naledi fits into the bigger picture of human evolution. Based on its morphology alone, it appears to be near the base of the Homo genus. If H. naledi is that old—around 2 or 2.5 million years—this would mean some features in the hand facilitating tool-use appeared earlier than scientists thought, says study author Tracy Kivell of the University of Kent. If, on the other hand, H. naledi ends up being relatively perhaps 100,000 years old—then characteristics, like curved fingers, were retained (or developed independently) in a hominin that co-existed with modern humans. “Both scenarios are very interesting,” Kivell says.

Spring is the season when newly minted college graduates flock to New York City to start their careers. They begin the search for their dream apartment, brokers say, with the same single minded determination that earned them their degrees and landed them their jobs in the first place. But that determination only goes so far when it comes to Manhattan real estate. [A]
“Almost every single person I’ve worked with thinks there’s a golden nugget of an apartment waiting right for them,” said Paul Hunt, an agent at Citi Habitats who specializes in rentals. “They all want to be in the Village, and they all want the ‘Sex and the City’ apartment.”
The first shock for a first-time renter will probably be the prices. Consider that the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom in the Village is more than $3,100 and that the average for a studio is over $2,200. Or that the average rent for a one-bedroom in a doorman building anywhere in Manhattan is close to $3,500. [B]
Mr. Hunt said that when he shows prospective renters what their budget really can buy, they are sometimes so appalled that “they think I’m trying to fool them or something, and they run away and I don’t hear from them again.”
Alternatively, the renter checks his or her expectations and grudgingly decides to raise the price limit, or look in other neighborhoods or get a roommate. “When expectations are very high, the process can be very frustrating,” Mr. Hunt said.
The thousands of new graduates who will be driving the engine of the city’s rental market from now until September will quickly learn that renting in New York is not like renting anywhere else. [C]
The second shock is likely to be how small a Manhattan apartment can be. It is not uncommon in New York, for example, to shop for a junior one-bedroom only to find out it is really a studio that already has or can have a wall put up to create a bedroom.
[D] To start with, landlords want only tenants who earn at least 40 times the monthly rent, which means an $80,000 annual salary for a $2,000 apartment. According to census data, more than 25,000 graduates aged 22 to 28 moved to the city in 2006, and their median salary was about $35,600.
Those who don’t make 40 times their monthly rent need a guarantor, usually a parent, who must make at least 80 times the monthly rent. In addition to a security deposit, some landlords also want the first and last month’s rent. Tack on a broker’s fee and a prospective renter for that $2,000 apartment is out of pocket nearly $10,000 just to get the keys to the place.

Sustainable development?
Kai Kensavaong will never again walk along the muddy lanes of Sop On, the village in southern Laos where she was born. Her old home now lies at the bottom of a reservoir of brown water created to feed a hydroelectric power plant, the first to be funded by the World Bank for over twenty years. ‘I’ll never forget that place,’ says the 41-year-old villager. ‘It was my home. I picked my first bamboo stalks there.’
The World Bank stopped financing hydroelectric dam projects in developing countries twenty years ago because of criticism that such projects were harming local communities and the environment. But Nam Theun 2 – a 39-metre high dam on the Mekong River that generates over 1,000 megawatts of electricity – is the showpiece for the bank’s new policy of supporting sustainable hydropower projects. For Laos it is part of a longer-term strategy to revitalise the economy and become the battery of South-East Asia.
In 2010 the dam brought $5.6 million in sales of electricity and it is estimated that during the next 25 years Nam Theun 2 will generate around $2 billion in revenue to Laos, one of Asia’s poorest countries, since most of the electricity will be exported to its power-hungry neighbour, Thailand. The government has promised that this money will be spent on reducing poverty and both renewing and improving the country’s infrastructure.
Seventeen villages in the flooded area have now been rebuilt and the 6,200 people – mostly farmers – who lived in them have been retrained to make a living from the reservoir. The power company has promised to double their living standards within five years. According to the World Bank, 87 per cent of those resettled believe life is much better than before as they now have electricity, sanitation, clean water, new roads and greater access to schools and health care.
But the old criticisms have not gone away. Environmental and human rights groups warn that the dam will have a negative impact on water quality and fish and that the local people who were relocated after the area was flooded may not be able to support themselves economically in future.
As well as the 6,200 villagers already re-housed, activists also point out that there are over 110,000 people in riverside villages downstream from the dam whose lives will have to change because of the new river ecosystem. They claim that these people will have to deal with issues like flooding, decline of the fish population and poor water quality. How quickly they will pick up new skills is uncertain.
But the World Bank says it is responsive to these problems. A 4,100-square kilometre protected area has been established around the dam to safeguard flora and fauna. It admits though that rebuilding the lives of the villagers is not a short-term process and everyone is trying to learn and readjust as they go along.

Constellations are patterns of stars in the sky. Over many thousands of years, human beings living on the Earth have looked up and seen the shapes of people, animals and everyday objects - they 'joined the dots' of the stars to form patterns in the sky. They gave these shapes names, some of which we still use today. But why did they bother with constellations at all? One reason is that having constellations makes it easier to find your way around the sky. This is useful for finding north, or working out the date or the time. When there were no compasses, clocks or watches, this was all very important.
There is another reason why constellations were so important. Imagine going back to a time before paper and pencil had been invented. Life was sparse. If you wanted to draw a picture, you had to scratch it out on a dark cave wall or write it in sand that could blow away. But at night an amazing pattern of bright specks of light would appear above your head. By joining the dots you could see almost any picture you wanted. You could imagine seeing your favourite shapes in the sky. You might tell others about the constellations you have made up. They might tell others, and your constellation could be passed down from generation to generation for hundreds or even thousands of years. This is how many of the constellations got the names we use.
You don't see exactly the same part of the sky every night, though between one night and the next you won't see much of a difference. Over a few weeks you'll definitely notice that you can see some constellations that you couldn't see before and some constellations that you could see aren't there any more. This is because the Earth is moving around the Sun. As the Earth moves round in its orbit, the night side of the Earth (the side facing away from the Sun) faces out to different parts of space, where there are different constellations.
This means that you see different constellations in different seasons. Orion and Taurus are (Northern Hemisphere) winter constellations, because you can see them on winter evenings. Cygnus and Scorpius are (Northern Hemisphere) summer constellations, because you can see them on summer evenings.
So who made up the constellations and their names? The earliest people on the Earth were hunters and gatherers. They looked up into the sky and saw shapes that were important to them - like Orion the
Hunter. Much later in human history, English farmers looked up into the sky and saw the shape of a Plough. Russian peasants, looking at the same group of stars, called it Ursa Major or The Great Bear. People in France called it Le Casserole meaning the Saucepan. People in the USA called it The Big Dipper meaning a soup ladle. All of these different names are used today. The only people who have decided on one set of names for the constellations are the astronomers. For example, they always call the Plough 'Ursa Major', and never any of the other names. They had to do this so that they all knew what other astronomers across the world were talking about.
The stars in a constellation have nothing to do with each other; they can be very, very far apart, even if they appear to be right next to each other in the sky. Imagine looking up while standing in a street. You might see your hand next to a street light, which is next to the Moon, which is next to a planet, which is next to a star. All of these things are far away from each other, yet they can be next to each other when you look at them.
If you like, you can look up into the sky, join the dots and make up your own constellations. Tell other people about your constellations. Maybe one day people all around the world will be using one of your constellation names!