Month: May 2024

Environmentally-Friendly! Vehicles

A In the early 1990s, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the government of California’s “clean air agency”, began a push for more fuel-efficient, lower-emissions vehicles, with the ultimate goal being a move to zero-emissions vehicles such as electric vehicles. In response, automakers developed electric models, including the Chrysler TEVan, Ford Ranger EV pickup truck, GM EV1 and S10 EV pickup, Honda EV Plus hatchback, Nissan lithium-battery Altra EV miniwagon and Toyota RAV4 EV. Ford Fusion is manufactured at Ford’s Hermosillo Stamping & Assembly plant, located in Sonora Mexico. I thought going green was supposed to provide the U.S. with more jobs.

B The automakers were accused of pandering to the wishes of CARB in order to continue to be allowed to sell cars in the lucrative Californian market, while failing to adequately promote their electric vehicles in order to create the impression that the consumers were not interested in the cars, all the while joining oil industry lobbyists in vigorously protesting CARB’s mandate. GM’s program came under particular scrutiny; in an unusual move, consumers were not allowed to purchase EV1s, but were instead asked to sign closed-end leases, meaning that the cars had to be returned to GM at the end of the lease period, with no option to purchase, despite lesser interest in continuing to own the cars. Chrysler, Toyota, and a group of GM dealers sued CARB in Federal court, leading to the eventual neutering of CARB’s ZEV Mandate.

C After public protests by EV drivers’ groups upset by the repossession of their cars, Toyota offered the last 328 RAV4-EVs for sale to the general public during six months, up until November 22, 2002. Almost all other production electric cars were withdrawn from the market and were in some cases seen to have been destroyed by their manufactures. Toyota continues to support the several hundred Toyota RAV4-EV in the hands of the general public and in fleet usage. GM famously de-activated the few EV1s that were donated to engineering schools and museums.

D Throughout the 1990s, the appeal of fuel-efficient or environmentally friendly cars declined among Americans, who instead favored sport utility vehicles, which were affordable to operate despite their poor fuel efficiency thanks to lower gasoline prices. American automakers chose to focus their product lines around the truck-based vehicles, which enjoyed larger profit margins than the smaller cars which were preferred in places like Europe or Japan. In 1999, the Honda Insight hybrid car became the first hybrid to be sold in North America since the little-known Woods hybrid of 1917.

E In 1995, Toyota debuted a hybrid concept car at the Tokyo Motor Show, with testing following a year later. The first Prius, model NHW10, went on sale on December 10, 1997. It was available only in Japan, though it has been imported privately to at least the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The first-generation Prius, at its launch, became the world’s first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid car. The NHW10 Prius styling originated from California designers, who were selected over competing designs from other Toyota design studios.

F In the United States, the NHW11 was the first Prius to be sold. The Prius was marketed between the smaller Corolla and the larger Camry. The published retail price of the car was US$19,995. The NHW11 Prius became more powerful partly to satisfy the higher speeds and longer distances that Americans drive. Air conditioning and electric power steering were standard equipment. The vehicle was the second mass-produced hybrid on the American market, after the two-seat Honda Insight. While the larger Prius could seat five, its battery pack restricted cargo space.

G Hybrids, which featured a combined gasoline and electric powertrain, were seen as a balance, offering an environmentally friendly image and improved fuel economy, without being hindered by the low range of electric vehicles, albeit at an increased price over comparable gasoline cars. Sales were poor, the lack of interest attributed to the car’s small size and the lack of necessity for a fuel-efficient car at the time. The 2000s energy crisis brought renewed interest in hybrid and electric cars. In America, sales of the Toyota Prius jumped, and a variety of automakers followed suit, releasing hybrid models of their own. Several began to produce new electric car prototypes, as consumers called for cars that would free them from the fluctuations of oil prices.

H In 2000, Hybrid Technologies, later renamed Li-ion Motors, started manufacturing electric cars in Mooresville, North Carolina. There has been increasing controversy with Li-ion Motors though due to the ongoing ‘Lemon issues’ regarding their product. And their attempt to cover it up. California electric-car maker Tesla Motors began development in 2004 on the Tesla Roadster, which was first delivered to customers in 2008. The Roadster remained the only highway-capable EV in serial production and available for sale until 2010. Senior leaders at several large automakers, including Nissan and General Motors, have stated that the Roadster was a catalyst which demonstrated that there is pent-up consumer demand for more efficient vehicles. GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said in 2007 that the Tesla Roadster inspired him to push GM to develop the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid sedan prototype that aims to reverse years of dwindling market share and massive financial losses for America’s largest automaker. In an August 2009 edition of The New Yorker, Lutz was quoted as saying, “All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is 10 years away, and Toyota agreed with us – and boom, along comes Tesla. So I said, ‘How come some tiny little California startup, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this, and we can’t?’ That was the crowbar that helped break up the log jam.”

Questions 1-4
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

1. What does the author think of the factory in Sonora in Mexico where the ford fusion is manufactured?
A the factory should be helpful in the US soil business
B Employment of US will be created as consumers change their awareness
C More competitive cars will be introduced into the market
D this issue is hard to give a predict

2. In the 1990s, what dropped in America for environmentally friendly vehicles?
A production
B Attractiveness
C Announcement
D Expectation

3. What did GM notably send to engineering schools and museums?
A EV 1
B CARB
C RAV4
D MINI E

4. Nissan and GM high-level leaders declared the real reason for the popularity of Roaster is its
A legendary concert
B huge population in the market
C bursting demand
D engine quality

Questions 5-9
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet, write

YES                     if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO                      if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN        if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

5. Some automakers mislead and suppressed the real demand for electric cars of keeping profit in a certain market by luring the want of CARB.
6. Toyota started to sell 328 RAV4-EVs for taking up the market share
7. In some countries, American auto-makers would like to grab the opportunity to earn money in the vehicle of bigger litre engine cars rather than smaller ones
8. Hybrids cars are superior vehicles that combine the impression of an environmental friend electric power engine and a lower price in the unit sale.
9. an inspiration to make an effort to produce hybrid cars is to cope with economic difficulties result from a declining market for General Motors.

Questions 10-14
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-L below. Write the correct letter, A-L in boxes 10-14 on your answer sheet.

A electric car
B United Kingdom
C Market
D concept car
E longer distances
F Emissions
G battery
H Consumers
I gasoline-electricity
J inspiration
K cargo space
L orientation

A (10)…………………. was firstly introduced by Car maker Toyota in 1995. Then it started for sale in 1997 with a new first-generation model. Not only in Japan but included other countries such as (11)…………….. and Oceania in which the Prius was imported to. The first-generation Prius was the first car in mass production which is powered by (12)……………… The model NHW10 was designed by a winning Californian designer. The innovated NHW 11 Prius has considerably higher running velocity and (13)……………….. than American counterparts. Still, the load capacity of current Prius version was limited in its (14)……………….

Hunting Perfume in Madagascar

A Ever since the unguentari plied their trade in ancient Rome, perfumers have to keep abreast of changing fashions. These days they have several thousand ingredients to choose from when creating new scents, but there is always demand for new combinations. The bigger the “palette7 of smells, the better the perfumer’s chance of creating something fresh and appealing. Even with everyday products such as shampoo and soap, kitchen cleaners and washing powders, consumers are becoming increasingly fussy. And many of today’s fragrances have to survive tougher treatment than ever before, resisting the destructive power of bleach or a high temperature wash cycle. Chemists can create new smells from synthetic molecules, and a growing number of the odours on the perfumer’s palette are artificial. But nature has been in the business far longer.

B The island of Madagascar is an evolutionary hot spot; 85% of its plants are unique, making it an ideal source for novel fragrances. Last October, Quest International, a company that develops fragrances for everything from the most delicate perfumes to cleaning products, sent an expedition to Madagascar in pursuit of some of nature’s most novel fragrances. With some simple technology, borrowed from the pollution monitoring industry, and a fair amount of ingenuity, the perfume hunters bagged 20 promising new aromas in the Madagascan rainforest. Each day the team set out from their “hotel”—a wooden hut lit by kerosene lamps, and trailed up and down paths and animal tracks, exploring the thick vegetation up to 10 meters on either side of the trail. Some smells came from obvious places, often big showy flowers within easy reach- Others were harder to pin down. “Often it was the very small flowers that were much more interesting, says Clery. After the luxuriance of the rainforest, the little-known island of Nosy Hara was a stark, dry place geologically and biologically very different from the mainland, “Apart from two beaches, the rest of the Island Is impenetrable, except by hacking through the bush, says Clery. One of the biggest prizes here was a sweet- smelling sap weeping from the gnarled branches of some ancient shrubby trees in the parched Interior. So far no one has been able to identify the plant.

C With most flowers or fruits, the hunters used a technique originally designed to trap and identify air pollutants. The technique itself is relatively simple. A glass bell jar or flask Ỉ S fitted over the flower. The fragrance molecules are trapped in this “headspace” and can be extracted by pumping the air out over a series of filters which absorb different types of volatile molecules. Back home in the laboratory, the molecules are flushed out of the filters and injected into a gas chromatograph for analysis. If it Is Impossible to attach the headspace gear, hunters fix an absorbent probe close to the source of the smell. The probe looks something like a hypodermic syringe, except that the ‘needle’ is made of silicone rubber which soaks up molecules from the air. After a few hours, the hunters retract the rubber needle and seal the tube, keeping the odour molecules inside until they can.be injected into the gas chromatograph in the laboratory.

D Some of the most promising fragrances were those given, off by resins that oozed from the bark of trees. Resins are the source of many traditional perfumes, including frankincense and myrrh. The most exciting resin came from a Calophyllum tree, which produces a strongly scented medicinal oil. The sap of this Calophyllum smelt rich and aromatic, a little like church incense. But It also smelt of something the fragrance industry has learnt to live without castoreum a substance extracted from the musk glands of beavers and once a key ingredient in many perfumes. The company does not use animal products any longer, but à was wonderful to find a tree with an animal smell.

E The group also set out from the island to capture the smell of coral reefs. Odors that conjure up sun kissed seas are highly sought after by the perfume industry. “From the ocean, the only thing we have is seaweed, and that has a dark and heavy aroma. We hope to find something unique among the corals,” says Dir. The challenge for the hunters was to extract a smell from water rather than air. This was an opportunity to try Clery’s new “aquaspace” apparatus a set of filters that work underwater. On Nosy Hara, jars were fixed over knobs of coral about 2 meters down and water pumped out over the absorbent filters. So what does coral smell like? “It’s a bit like lobster and crab,” says Clery. The team’s task now is to recreate the best of then captured smells. First they must identify the molecules that make up each fragrance. Some ingredients may be quite common chemicals. But some may be completely novel, or they may be too complex or expensive to make in the lab. The challenge then is to conjure up the fragrances with more readily available materials. “We can avoid the need to import plants from the rainforest by creating the smell with a different set of chemicals from those in the original material,” says Clery. “If we get it right, you can sniff the sample and it will transport you straight back to the moment you smelt it in the rainforest.”

Questions 15-19
The reading passage has seven paragraphs A-E. Which paragraphs contains the following details. Write the correct number, A-E, in boxes 15-19 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

15. One currently preferred spot to pick up plants for novel finding
16. A new task seems to be promising yet producing limited finding in fragrance source
17. The demanding conditions for fragrance to endure
18. A substitute for substance no longer available to the perfume manufacture
19. Description of an outdoor expedition on land chasing new fragrances

Questions 20-24
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 20-24 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                    if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                   if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN         if there is no information on this

20. Manufacturers can choose to use synthetic odors for the perfume nowadays
21. Madagascar is chosen to be a place for hunting plants which are rare in other parts of the world
22. Capturing the smell is one of the most important things for creating new aromas
23. The technique the hunters used to trap fragrance molecules is totally out of their ; ingenuity
24. Most customers prefer the perfume made of substance extracted from the musk I glands of animals

Questions 25-27
Filling the blanks and answer the questions below with only ONE word.

25. ……………
26. …………..
27. …………..

Bondi Beach

A Bondi Beach, Australia’s most famous beach, is located in the suburb of Bondi, in the Local Government Area of Waverley, seven kilometers from the centre of Sydney. “Bondi” or “Boondi” is an Aboriginal word meaning water breaking over rocks or the sound of breaking waves. The Australian Museum records that Bondi means a place where a flight of nullas took place. There are Aboriginal Rock carving on the northern end of the beach at Ben Buckler and south of Bondi Beach near McKenzies Beach on the coastal walk.

B The indigenous people of the area at the time of European settlement have generally been welcomed to as the Sydney people or the Eora (Eora means “the people”). One theory describes the Eora as a sub-group of the Darug language group which occupied the Cumberland Plain west to the Blue Mountains. However, another theory suggests that they were a distinct language group of their own. There is no clear evidence for the name or names of the particular band(s) of the Eora that roamed what is now the Waverley area. A number of place names within Waverley, most famously Bondi, have been based on words derived from Aboriginal languages of the Sydney region.

C From the mid-1800s Bondi Beach was a favourite location for family outings and picnics. The beginnings of the suburb go back to 1809, when the early road builder, William Roberts, received from Governor Bligh a grant of 81 hectares of what is now most of the business and residential area of Bondi Beach. In 1851, Edward Smith Hall and Francis O’Brien purchased 200 acres of the Bondi area that embraced almost the whole frontage of Bondi Beach, and it was named the “The Bondi Estate.” Between 1855 and 1877 O’Brien purchased Hall’s share of the land, renamed the land the “O’Brien Estate,” and made the beach and the surrounding land available to the public as a picnic ground and amusement resort. As the beach became increasingly popular, O’Brien threatened to stop public beach access. However, the Municipal Council believed that the Government needed to intervene to make the beach a public reserve.

D During the 1900s beach became associated with health, leisure and democracy – a playground everyone could enjoy equally. Bondi Beach was a working-class suburb throughout most of the twentieth century with migrant people from New Zealand comprising the majority of the local population. The first tramway reached the beach in 1884. Following this, tram became the first public transportation in Bondi. As an alternative, this action changed the rule that only rich people can enjoy the beach. By the 1930s Bondi was drawing not only local visitors but also people from elsewhere in Australia and overseas. Advertising at the time referred to Bondi Beach as the “Playground of the Pacific”.

E There is a growing trend that people prefer having to relax near seaside instead of living unhealthily in cities. The increasing popularity of sea bathing during the late 1800s and early 1900s raised concerns about public safety and how to prevent people from drowning. In response, the world’s first formally documented surf lifesaving club, the Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club, was formed in 1907. This was powerfully reinforced by the dramatic events of “Black Sunday” at Bondi in 1938. Some 35,000 people were on the beach and a large group of lifesavers were about to start a surf race when three freak waves hit the beach, sweeping hundreds of people out to sea. Lifesavers rescued 300 people. The largest mass rescue in the history of surf bathing, it confirmed the place of the lifesaver in the national imagination.

F Bondi Beach is the endpoint of the City to Surf Fun Run which is held each year in August. Australian surf carnivals further instilled this image. A Royal Surf Carnival was held at Bondi Beach for Queen Elizabeth II during her first visited in Australia in 1954. Since 1867, there have been over fifty visits by a member of the British Royal Family to Australia. In addition to many activities, the Bondi Beach Markets is open every Sunday. Many wealthy people spend Christmas Day at the beach. However, the shortage of houses occurs when lots of people crushed to the seaside. Manly is the seashore town which solved this problem. However, people still choose Bondi as the satisfied destination rather than Manly.

G Bondi Beach has a commercial area along Campbell Parade and adjacent side streets, featuring many popular cafes, restaurants, and hotels, with views of the contemporary beach. It is depicted as wholly modern and European. In the last decade, Bondi Beaches’ unique position has seen a dramatic rise in svelte houses and apartments to take advantage of the views and scent of the sea. The valley running down to the beach is the famous world over for its view of distinctive red-tiled roofs. Those architectures are deeply influenced by British coastal town.

H Bondi Beach hosted the beach volleyball competition at the 2000 Summer Olympics. A temporary 10,000-seat stadium, a much smaller stadium, 2 warm-up courts, and 3 training courts were set up to host the tournament. The Bondi Beach Volleyball Stadium was constructed for it and stood for just six weeks. Campaigners oppose both the social and environmental consequences of the development. The stadium will divide the beach in two and seriously restrict public access for swimming, walking, and other forms of outdoor recreation. People protest for their human rights of having a pure seaside and argue for health life in Bondi.

I “They’re prepared to risk lives and risk the Bondi beach environment for the sake of eight days of volleyball”, said Stephen Uniacke, a construction lawyer involved in the campaign. Other environmental concerns include the possibility that soil dredged up from below the sand will acidify when brought to the surface.

Questions 28-32
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                     if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                    if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN           if there is no information on this

28. The name of the Bondi beach is first called by the British settlers.
29. The aboriginal culture in Australia is different when compared with European culture.
30. Bondi beach area holds many 5 star hotels
31. The seaside town in Bondi is affected by British culture for its characteristic red color
32. Living near Bondi seashore is not beneficial for health.

Questions 33-36
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR NUMBERS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 33-36 on your answer sheet

33. At the end of the 19th century, which public transport did people use to go to Bondi?
34. When did the British Royalty first visit Bondi?
35. Which Olympic event did Bondi hold in the 2000 Sydney Olympic games?
36. What would be damaged if the stadium was built for that Olympic event?

Questions 37-40
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of reading passage, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Bondi beach holds the feature sports activities every year, which attracts lot of (37)………….. Choosing to live at this place during the holidays. But local accommodation cannot meet with the expanding population, a nearby town of (38)………………….. is the first suburb site to support the solution, yet people prefer (39)……………. as their best choice. Its seaside buildings are well-known in the world for the special scenic colored (40)………………. on buildings and the joyful smell from the sea.

Satellite Technology

The space-age began with the launch of the Russian artificial satellite Sputnik in 1957 and developed further with the race to the moon between the United States and Russia. This rivalry was characterized by advanced technology and huge budgets. In this process, there were spectacular successes, some failures, but also many spin-offs.

Europe, Japan, China, and India quickly joined this space club of the superpowers. With the advent of relatively low-cost high-performance mini-satellites and launchers, the acquisition of indigenous space capabilities by smaller nations in Asia has become possible. How, in what manner, and for what purpose will these capabilities be realized?

A Rocket technology has progressed considerably since the days of ‘fire arrows’ (bamboo poles filled with gunpowder) first used in China around 500 BC, and, during the Sung Dynasty, to repel Mongol invaders at the battle of Kaifeng (Kai-fung fu) in AD 1232. These ancient rockets stand in stark contrast to the present-day Chinese rocket launch vehicles, called the ‘Long March’, intended to place a Chinese astronaut in space by 2005 and, perhaps, to achieve a Chinese moon-landing by the end of the decade.

B In the last decade, there has been a dramatic growth in space activities in Asia both in the utilization of space-based services and the production of satellites and launchers. This rapid expansion has led many commentators and analysts to predict that Asia will become a world space power. The space-age has had dramatic effects worldwide with direct developments in space technology influencing telecommunications, meteorological forecasting, earth resource and environmental monitoring, and disaster mitigation (flood, forest fires, and oil spills). Asian nations have been particularly eager to embrace these developments.

C New and innovative uses for satellites are constantly being explored with potential revolutionary effects, such as in the field of health and telemedicine, distance education, crime prevention (piracy on the high seas), food and agricultural planning and production (rice crop monitoring). Space in Asia is very much influenced by the competitive commercial space sector, the emergence of low-cost mini-satellites, and the globalization of industrial and financial markets. It is not evident how Asian space will develop in the coming decades in the face of these trends. It is, however, important to understand and assess the factors and forces that shape Asian space activities and development in determining its possible consequences for the region.

D At present, three Asian nations, Japan, China, and India, have comprehensive end-to-end space capabilities and possess a complete space infrastructure: space technology, satellite manufacturing, rockets, and spaceports. Already self-sufficient in terms of satellite design and manufacturing, South Korea is currently attempting to join their ranks with its plans to develop a launch site and spaceport. Additionally, nations in Southeast Asia as well as those bordering the Indian subcontinent (Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), have, or are starting to develop indigenous space programmes. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has, in varying degrees, embraced space applications using foreign technology and over the past five years or so its space activities have been expanding. Southeast Asia is predicted to become the largest and fastest-growing market for commercial space products and applications, driven by telecommunications (mobile and fixed services), the Internet, and remote sensing applications. In the development of this technology, many non-technical factors, such as economics, politics, culture, and history, interact and play important roles, which in turn affect Asian technology.

E Asia and Southeast Asia, in particular, suffers from a long list of recurrent large-scale environmental problems including storms and flooding, forest fires and deforestation, and crop failures. Thus the space application that has attracted the most attention in this region is remote sensing. Remote sensing satellites equipped with instruments to take photographs of the ground at different wavelengths provide essential information for natural resource accounting, environmental management, disaster prevention and monitoring, land-use mapping, and sustainable development planning. Progress in these applications has been rapid and impressive. ASEAN members, unlike Japan, China, and India, do not have their own remote sensing satellites, however, most of its member nations have facilities to receive, process, and interpret such data from American and European satellites. In particular, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore have world-class remote sensing processing facilities and research programmes. ASEAN has plans to develop (and launch) its own satellites and in particular remote sensing satellites. Japan is regarded as the dominant space power in Asia and its record of successes and quality of technologies are equal to those of the West. In view of the technological challenges and high risks involved in space activities, a very long, and expensive, the learning curve has been followed to obtain those successes achieved. Japan, s satellite manufacturing was based on the old and traditional defense and military procurement methodologies as practiced in the US and Europe.

F In recent years there have been fundamental changes in the way satellites are designed and built to drastically reduce costs. The emergence of ‘small satellites’ and their quick adoption by Asian countries as a way to develop low-cost satellite technology and rapidly establish a space capability has given these countries the possibility to shorten their learning curve by a decade or more. The global increase of technology transfer mechanisms and use of readily available commercial technology to replace costly space and military-standard components may very well result in a highly competitive Asian satellite manufacturing industry.

G The laws of physics are the same in Tokyo as in Toulouse, and the principles of electronics and mechanics know no political or cultural boundaries. However, no such immutability applies to engineer practices and management; they are very much influenced by education, culture, and history. These factors, in turn, have an effect on costs, lead times, product designs and, eventually, international sales. Many Asian nations are sending their engineers to be trained in the West. Highly experienced, they return to work in the growing Asian space industry. Will this acquisition of technical expertise, coupled perhaps with the world-renowned Japanese manufacturing and management techniques, be applied to build world-class satellites and reduce costs?

Questions 1-5
The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-G from the list below. Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Western countries provide essential assistance
ii Unbalanced development for an essential space technology
iii Innovative application compelled by competition
iv An ancient invention which is related to the future
v Military purpose of the satellite
vi Rockets for application in ancient China
vii Space development in Asia in the past
viii Non-technology factors counts
ix competitive edge gained by more economically feasible satellite

1. Paragraph A
2. Paragraph B
3. Paragraph C
4. Paragraph E
5. Paragraph F

Questions 6-9
Match the following reasons for each question according to the information given in the passage. Write the correct letter A-F, in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.

A Because it helps administrate the crops.
B Because there are some unapproachable areas.
C Because the economic level in that area is low.
D Because there are influences from some other social factors.
E Because it can be used in non-peaceful purpose.
F Because disasters such as bush fire happened in Southeast Asia.

6. Why remote-photographic technology is used to resolve environmental problems?
7. Why satellites technology is used in the medicine area?
8. Why Asian countries satellite technology is limited for development?
9. Why satellites technology is deployed in an agricultural area?

Questions 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                        if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                       if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN              if there is no information on this

10. Ancient China had already deployed rockets as a military purpose as early as 500 years ago.
11. Space technology has enhanced the literacy of Asia.
12. photos taken by satellites with certain technology help predict some natural catastrophes prevention and surveillance.
13. commercial competition constitutes a boosting factor to Asian technology development.

Koalas

A Koalas are just too nice for their own good. And except for the occasional baby taken by birds of prey, koalas have no natural enemies. In an ideal world, the life of an arboreal couch potato would be perfectly safe and acceptable.

B Just two hundred years ago, koalas flourished across Australia. Now they seem to be in decline, but exact numbers are not available as the species would not seem to be ‘under threat’. Their problem, however, has been man, more specifically, the white man. Koala and aborigine had co-existed peacefully for centuries.

C Today koalas are found only in scattered pockets of southeast Australia, where they seem to be at risk on several fronts. The koala’s only food source, the eucalyptus tree has declined. In the past 200 years, a third of Australia’s eucalyptus forests have disappeared. Koalas have been killed by parasites, chlamydia epidemics and a tumour-causing retro-virus. And every year 11000 are killed by cars, ironically most of them in wildlife sanctuaries, and thousands are killed by poachers. Some are also taken illegally as pets. The animals usually soon die, but they are easily replaced.

D Bush fires pose another threat. The horrific ones that raged in New South Wales recently killed between 100 and 1000 koalas. Many that were taken into sanctuaries and shelters were found to have burnt their paws on the glowing embers. But zoologists say that the species should recover. The koalas will be aided by the eucalyptus, which grows quickly and is already burgeoning forth after the fires. So the main problem to their survival is their slow reproductive rate – they produce only one baby a year over a reproductive lifespan of about nine years.

E The latest problem for the species is perhaps more insidious. With plush, grey fur, dark amber eyes and button nose, koalas are cuddliness incarnate. Australian zoos and wildlife parks have taken advantage of their uncomplaining attitudes, and charge visitors to be photographed hugging the furry bundles. But people may not realise how cruel this is, but because of the koala’s delicate disposition, constant handling can push an already precariously balanced physiology over the edge.

F Koalas only eat the foliage of certain species of eucalyptus trees, between 600 and 1250 grams a day. The tough leaves are packed with cellulose, tannins, aromatic oils and precursors of toxic cyanides. To handle this cocktail, koalas have a specialised digestive system. Cellulose- digesting bacteria in the break down fibre, while a specially adapted gut and liver process the toxins. To digest their food properly, koalas must sit still for 21 hours every day.

G Koalas are the epitome of innocence and inoffensiveness. Although they are capable of ripping open a man’s arm with their needle-sharp claws, or giving a nasty nip, they simply wouldn’t. If you upset a koala, it may blink or swallow, or hiccup. But attack? No way! Koalas are just not aggressive. They use their claws to grip the hard smooth bark of eucalyptus trees.

H They are also very sensitive, and the slightest upset can prevent them from breeding, cause them to go off their food, and succumb to gut infections. Koalas are stoic creatures and put on a brave face until they are at death’s door. One day they may appear healthy, the next they could be dead. Captive koalas have to be weighed daily to check that they are feeding properly. A sudden loss of weight is usually the only warning keepers have that their charge is ill. Only two keepers plus a vet were allowed to handle London Zoo’s koalas, as these creatures are only comfortable with people they know. A request for the koala to be taken to meet the Queen was refused because of the distress this would have caused the marsupial. Sadly, London’s Zoo no longer has a koala. Two years ago the female koala died of a cancer caused by a retrovirus. When they come into heat, female koalas become more active, and start losing weight, but after about sixteen days, heat ends and the weight piles back on. London’s koala did not. Surgery revealed hundreds of pea-sized tumours.

Almost every zoo in Australia has koalas – the marsupial has become the Animal Ambassador of the nation, but nowhere outside Australia would handling by the public be allowed. Koala cuddling screams in the face of every rule of good care. First, some zoos allow koalas to be passed from stranger to stranger, many children who love to squeeze. Secondly, most people have no idea of how to handle the animals; they like to cling on to their handler, all in their own good time and use his or her arm as a tree. For such reasons, the Association of Fauna and Marine parks, an Australian conservation society is campaigning to ban koala cuddling. Policy on koala handling is determined by state government authorities. “And the largest of the numbers in the Australian Nature Conservation Agency, with the aim of instituting national guidelines. Following a wave of publicity, some zoos and wildlife parks have stopped turning their koalas into photo.

Questions 14-18
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

14. The main reason why koala declined is that they are killed EXCEPT FOR
A by poachers
B by diseases they got
C giving too many birth yet survived little!
D accidents on the road

15. What can help koalas folly digest their food?
A toxic substance in the leaves
B organs that dissolve the fibres
C remaining inactive for a period to digest
D eating eucalyptus trees

16. What would koalas do when facing the dangerous situation?
A show signs of being offended
B counter attack furiously
C use sharp claws to rip the man
D use claws to grip the bark of trees.

17. In what ways Australian zoos exploit koalas?
A encourage people to breed koalas as pets
B allow tourists to hug the koalas
C put them on the trees as a symbol
D establish a koala campaign

18. What would the government do to protect koalas from being endangered?
A introduce koala protection guidelines
B close some of the zoos
C encourage people to resist visiting the zoos
D persuade the public to learn more knowledge

Questions 19-25
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 19-25 on your answer sheet, write

YES                   if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO                    if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN       if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

19. New coming human settlers caused danger to koalas.
20. Koalas can still be seen in most of the places in Australia.
21. It takes decade for the eucalyptus trees to recover after the fire.
22. Koalas will fight each other when food becomes scarce.
23. It is not easy to notice that koalas are ill.
24. Koalas are easily infected with human contagious disease via cuddling
25. Koalas like to hold a person’s arm when they are embraced.

Question 26
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

26. From your opinion this article written by
A a journalist who write for magazine
B a zoo keeper in London Zoo.
C a tourist who traveling back from Australia
D a government official who studies koalas to establish a law

Detection of a meteorite Lake

A As the sun rose over picturesque Lake Bosumtwi, a team of Syracuse University researchers prepared for another day of using state-of-the-art equipment to help bottom. Nestled in the heart of Ghana, the lake holds an untapped reservoir of information that could help scientists predict future climate changes by looking at evidence from the past. This information will also improve the scientists’ understanding of the changes that occur in a region struck by a massive meteorite.

B The project, led by earth sciences professor Christopher Scholz of the College of Arts and Sciences and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is the first large-scale effort to study Lake Bosumtwi, which formed 1.1 million years ago when a giant meteor crashed into the Earth’s surface. The resulting crater is one of the largest and most well-preserved geologically young craters in the world, says Scholz, who is collaborating on the project with researchers from the University of Arizona, the University of South Carolina, the University of Rhode Island, and several Ghanaian institutions. “Our data should provide information about what happens when an impact hits hard, pre-Cambrian, crystalline rocks that are a billion years old,” he says.

C Equally important is the fact that the lake, which is about 8 kilometers in diameter, has no natural outlet. The rim of the crater rises about 250 meters above the water’s surface. Streams flow into the lake, Scholz says, but the water leaves only by evaporation, or by seeping through the lake sediments. For the past million years, the lake has acted as a tropical rain gauge, filling and drying with changes in precipitation and the tropical climate. The record of those changes is hidden in the sediment below the lake bottom. “The lake is one of the best sites in the world for the study of tropical climate changes,” Scholz says. “The tropics are the heat engine for the Earth’s climate. To understand the global climate, we need to have records of climate changes from many sites around the world, including the tropics.”

D Before the researchers could explore the lake’s subsurface, they needed a boat with a large, working deck area that could carry eight tons of scientific equipment. The boat – dubbed R/V Kilindi – was built in Florida last year. It was constructed in modules that were dismantled, packed inside a shipping container, and reassembled over a 10-day period in late November and early December 1999 in the rural village of Abono, Ghana. The research team then spent the next two weeks testing the boat and equipment before returning to the United States for the holidays.

E In mid-January, five members of the team – Keely Brooks, an earth sciences graduate student; Peter Cattaneo, a research analyst; and Kiram Lezzar, a postdoctoral scholar, all from SU; James McGill, a geophysical field engineer; and Nick Peters, a Ph.D. student in geophysics from the University of Miami – returned to Abono to begin collecting data about the lake’s subsurface using a technique called seismic reflection profiling. In this process, a high-pressure air gun is used to create small, pneumatic explosions in the water. The sound energy penetrates about 1,000 to 2,000 meters into the lake’s subsurface before bouncing back to the surface of the water.

F The reflected sound energy is detected by underwater microphones – called hydrophones – embedded in a 50-meter-long cable that is towed behind the boat as it crosses the lake in a carefully designed grid pattern. On-board computers record the signals, and the resulting data are then processed and analyzed in the laboratory. “The results will give us a good idea of the shape of the basin, how thick the layers of sediment are, and when and where there were major changes in sediment accumulation,” Scholz says. “We are now developing a three-dimensional perspective of the lake’s subsurface and the layers of sediment that have been laid down.”

G Team members spent about four weeks in Ghana collecting the data. They worked seven days a week, arriving at the lake just after sunrise. On a good day, when everything went as planned, the team could collect data and be back at the dock by early afternoon. Except for a few relatively minor adjustments, the equipment and the boat worked well. Problems that arose were primarily non-scientific – tree stumps, fishing nets, cultural barriers, and occasional misunderstandings with local villagers.

H Lake Bosumtwi, the largest natural freshwater lake in the country, is sacred to the Ashanti people, who believe their souls come to the lake to bid farewell to their god. The lake is also the primary source of fish for the 26 surrounding villages. Conventional canoes and boats are forbidden. Fishermen travel on the lake by floating on traditional planks they propel with small paddles. Before the research project could begin, Scholz and his Ghanaian counterparts had to secure special permission from tribal chiefs to put the R/V Kilindi on the lake.

I When the team began gathering data, rumors flew around the lake as to why the researchers were there. “Some thought we were dredging the lake for gold, others thought we were going to drain the lake or that we had bought the lake,” Cattaneo says. “But once the local people understood why we were there, they were very helpful.”

Questions 27-31
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                     if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                    if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN          if there is no information on this

27. With the investigation of the lake, the scientist may predict the climate changes in the future.
28. The crater resulted from a meteorite impact is the largest and most preserved one in the world.
29. The water stored in lake Bosumtwi was gone only by seeping through the lake sediments.
30. Historical climate changes can be detected by the analysis of the sediment in the lake.
31. The greatest obstacle to the research of scientists had been the interference by the locals due to their indigenous

Questions 32-35
There are three steps of collecting data from the lake as followings, please fill the blanks in the Flow Chart below:

32. ……………
33. ………….
34. ………….
35. ………….

Questions 36-40
Complete the following summary of the paragraph of reading passage using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

The boat-double R/V Kilindi crossed the lake was dismantled and stored in a (36)………………. The technology they used called (37)………………..; They created sound energy into 1000-2000 metres into the bottom of the lake and used separate equipment to collect the returned waves. Then the data had been analyzed and processed in the (38)……………… Scholz also added that they were now building (39)…………….. View of the sediment or sub-image in the bottom of the lake. The whole set of equipment works well yet the ship should avoid physical barrier including tree stumps or (40)……………….. Floating on the surface of the lake.

The success of cellulose

A Not too long ago many investors made the bet that renewable fuels from bio-mass would be the next big thing in energy. Converting corn, sugarcane, and soybeans into ethanol or diesel-type fuels lessens our nation’s dependence on oil imports while cutting carbon dioxide emissions. But already the nascent industry faces challenges. Escalating demand is hiking food prices while farmers clear rainforest habitats to grow fuel crops. And several recent studies say that certain biofuel-production processes either fail to yield net energy gains or release more carbon dioxide than they use.

B A successor tier of start-up ventures aims to avoid those problems. Rather than focusing on the starches, sugars, and fats of food crops, many of the prototype bioethanol processes work with lignocellulose, the “woody” tissue that strengthens the cell walls of plants, says University of Massachusetts Amherst chemical engineer George W. Huber. Although cellulose breaks down less easily than sugars and starches and thus requires a complex series of enzyme-driven chemical reactions, its use opens the industry to nonfood plant feedstocks such as agricultural wastes, wood chips, and switchgrass. But no company has yet demonstrated a cost-competitive industrial process for making cellulosic biofuels.

C So scientists and engineers are working on dozens of possible biofuel-processing routes, reports Charles Wyman, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Riverside, who is a founder of Mascoma Corporation in Cambridge, Mass., a leading developer of cellulosic ethanol processing.” There’s no miracle process out there,” he remarks. And fine-tuning a process involves considerable money and time. “The oil companies say that it takes 10 years to fully commercialize an industrial processing route,” warns Huber, who has contributed some thermochemical techniques to another biomass start-up, Virent Energy Systems in Madison, Wis.

D One promising biofuel procedure that avoids the complex enzymatic chemistry to break down cellulose is now being explored by Coskata in Warrenville, Ill., a firm launched in 2006 by high-profile investors and entrepreneurs (General Motors recently took a minority stake in it as well). In the Coskata operation, a conventional gasification system will use heat to turn various feedstocks into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called syngas, says Richard Tobey, vice president of Engineering and R&D. The ability to handle multiple plant feedstocks would boost the flexibility of the overall process because each region in the country has access to certain feedstocks but not others.

E Instead of using thermochemical methods to convert the syngas to fuel- a process that can be significantly more costly because of the added expense of pressurizing gases, according to Tobey – the Coskata group chose a biochemical route. The group focused on five promising strains of ethanol-excreting bacteria that Ralph Tanner, a microbiologist at the University of Oklahoma, had discovered years before in the oxygen-free sediments of a swamp. These anaerobic bugs make ethanol by voraciously consuming syngas.

F The “heart and soul of the Coskata process,” as Tobey puts it, is the bioreactor in which the bacteria live. “Rather than searching for food in the fermentation mash in a large tank, our bacteria wait for the gas to be delivered to them,” he explains. The firm relies on plastic tubes, the filter-fabric straws as thin as human hair. The syngas flows through the straws, and water is pumped across their exteriors. The gases diffuse across the selective membrane to the bacteria embedded in the outer surface of the tubes, which permits no water inside. “We get an efficient mass transfer with the tubes, which is not easy,” Tobey says. “Our data suggest that in an optimal setting we could get 90 percent of the energy value of the gases into our fuel.” After the bugs eat the gases, they release ethanol into the surrounding water. Standard distillation or filtration techniques could extract the alcohol from the water.

G Coskata researchers estimate that their commercialized process could deliver ethanol at under $1 per gallon-less than half of today’s $2-per-gallon wholesale price, Tobey claims. Outside evaluators of Argonne National Laboratory measured the input-output “energy balance” of the Coskata process and found that, optimally, it can produce 7.7 times as much energy in the end product as it takes to make it.

H The company plans to construct a 40,000-gallon-a-year pilot plant near the GM test track in Milford, Mich., by the end of this year and hopes to build a full-scale, 100-million-gallon-a-year plant by 2011. Coskata may have some company by then; Bioengineering Resources in Fayetteville, Ark., is already developing what seems to be a similar three-step pathway in which syngas is consumed by bacteria isolated by James Gaddy, a retired chemical engineer at the University of Arkansas. Considering the advances in these and other methods, plant cellulose could provide the greener ethanol everyone wants.

Questions 1-6
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet. NB you may use any letter more than once

A George W. Huber
B James Gaddy
C Richard Tobey
D Charles Wyman

1. A key component to gain success lies in the place where the organisms survive.
2. Engaged in separating fixed procedures to produce ethanol in the homologous biochemical way.
3. Assists to develop certain skills.
4. It needs arduous efforts to achieve highly efficient transfer.
5. There is no shortcut to expedite the production process.
6. A combination of chemistry and biology can considerably lower the cost needed for the production company.

Questions 7-10
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                   if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                  if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN         if there is no information on this

7. A shift from conventionally targeted areas of the vegetation to get ethanol takes place.
8. It takes a considerably long way before a completely mature process is reached.
9. The Coskata group sees no bright future for the cost advantage available in the production of greener ethanol.
10. Some enterprises are trying to buy the shares of Coskata group.

Questions 11-13
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

Tobey has noticed that the Coskata process can achieve huge success because it utilizes (11)………………. as the bioreactor on whose exterior surface the bacteria take the syngas going through the coated (12)…………….. To produce the ethanol into the water outside which researchers will later (13)………………….by certain techniques. The figures show a pretty high percentage of energy can be transferred into fuel which is actually very difficult to achieve.

Life code: unlocked!

A On an airport shuttle bus to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif., Chris Wiggins took a colleague’s advice and opened a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. It had nothing to do with the talk on biopolymer physics he was invited to give. Rather the columns and rows of numbers that stared back at him referred to the genetic activity of budding yeast. Specifically, the numbers represented the amount of messenger RNA (MRNA) expressed by all 6,200 genes of the yeast over the course of its reproductive cycle. “It was the first time I ever saw anything like this,” Wiggins recalls of that spring day in 2002. “How to make sense of all this data?”

B Instead of shirking from this question, the 36-year-old applied mathematician and physicist at Columbia University embraced it-and now six years later he thinks he has an answer. By foraying into fields outside his own, Wiggins has drudged up tools from a branch of artificial intelligence called machine learning to model the collective protein-making activity of genes from real-world biological data. Engineers originally designed these tools in the late 1950s to predict output from input. Wiggins and his colleagues have now brought machine learning to the natural sciences and tweaked it so that it can also tell a story-one not only about input and output but also about what happens inside a model of gene regulation, the black box in between.

C The impetus for this work began in the late 1990s, when high-throughput techniques generated more mRNA expression profiles and DNA sequences than ever before, “opening up a completely different way of thinking about biological phenomena,” Wiggins says. Key among these techniques were DNA microarrays, chips that provide a panoramic view of the activity of genes and their expression levels in any cell type, simultaneously and under myriad conditions. As noisy and incomplete as the data were, biologists could now query which genes turn on or off in different cells and determine the collection of proteins that give rise to a cell’s characteristic features, healthy or diseased.

D Yet predicting such gene activity requires uncovering the fundamental rules that govern it. “Over time, these rules have been locked in by cells,” says theoretical physicist Harmen Bussemaker, now an associate professor of biology at Columbia. “Evolution has kept the good stuff.” To find these rules, scientists needed statistics to infer the interaction between genes and the proteins that regulate them and to then mathematically describe this network’s underlying structure-the dynamic pattern of gene and protein activity over time. But physicists who did not work with particles (or planets, for that matter) viewed statistics as nothing short of an anathema. “If your experiment requires statistics,” British physicist Ernest Rutherford once said, “you ought to have done a better experiment.”

E But in working with microarrays, “the experiment has been done without you,” Wiggins explains. “And biology doesn’t hand you a model to make sense of the data.” Even more challenging, the building blocks that makeup DNA, RNA, and proteins are assembled in myriad ways; moreover, subtly different rules of interaction govern their activity, making it difficult, if not impossible, to reduce their patterns of interaction to fundamental laws. Some genes and proteins are not even known. “You are trying to find something compelling about the natural world in a context where you don’t know very much,” says William Bialek, a biophysicist at Princeton University. “You’re forced to be agnostic.” Wiggins believes that many machine-learning algorithms perform well under precisely these conditions. When working with so many unknown variables, “machine learning lets the data decide what’s worth looking at,” he says.

F At the Kavli Institute, Wiggins began building a model of a gene regulatory network in a yeast-the set of rules by which genes selectively orchestrate how vigorously DNA is transcribed into mRNA. As he worked with different algorithms, he started to attend discussions on gene regulation led by Christina Leslie, who ran the computational biology group at Columbia at the time. Leslie suggested using a specific machine-learning tool called a classifier. Say the algorithm must discriminate between pictures that have bicycles in them and pictures that do not. A classifier sifts through labeled examples and measures everything it can about them, gradually learning the decision rules that govern the grouping. From these rules, the algorithm generates a model that can determine whether or not new pictures have bikes in them. In gene regulatory networks, the learning task becomes the problem of predicting whether genes increase or decrease their protein-making activity.

G The algorithm that Wiggins and Leslie began building in the fall of 2002 was trained on the DNA sequences and mRNA levels of regulators expressed during a range of conditions in yeast-when the yeast was cold, hot, starved, and so on. Specifically, this algorithm-MEDUSA (for motif element discrimination using sequence agglomeration) -scans every possible pairing between a set of DNA promoter sequences, called motifs, and regulators. Then, much like a child might match a list of words with their definitions by drawing a line between the two, MEDUSA finds the pairing that best improves the fit between the model and the data it tries to emulate. (Wiggins refers to these pairings as edges.) Each time MEDUSA finds a pairing, it updates the model by adding a new rule to guide its search for the next pairing. It then determines the strength of each pairing by how well the rule improves the existing model. The hierarchy of numbers enables Wiggins and his colleagues to determine which pairings are more important than others and how they can collectively influence the activity of each of the yeast’s 6,200 genes. By adding one pairing at a time, MEDUSA can predict which genes ratchet up their RNA production or clamp that production down, as well as reveal the collective mechanisms that orchestrate an organism’s transcriptional logic.

Questions 14-19
The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-G from the list below. Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i The search for the better-fit matching between the model and the gained figures to foresee the activities of the genes
ii The definition of MEDUSA
iii A flashback of commencement for a far-reaching breakthrough
iv A drawing of the gene map
v An algorithm used to construct a specific model to discern the appearance of something new by the joint effort of Wiggins and another scientist
vi An introduction of a background tracing back to the availability of mature techniques for detailed research on genes
vii A way out to face the challenge confronting the scientist on the deciding of researchable data.
viii A failure to find out some specific genes controlling the production of certain proteins
ix The use of a means from another domain for reference
x A tough hurdle on the way to find the law governing the activities of the genes

Example: Paragraph A iii

14. Paragraph B
15. Paragraph C
16. Paragraph D
17. Paragraph E
18. Paragraph F
19. Paragraph G

Questions 20-22
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 20-22 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                  if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                 if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN        if there is no information on this

20. Wiggins is the first man to use DNA microarrays for the research on genes.
21. There is almost no possibility for the effort to decrease the patterns of interaction between DNA, RNA, and proteins.
22. Wiggins holds a very positive attitude on the future of genetic research.

Questions 23-26
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

Wiggins states that the astoundingly rapid development of techniques concerning the components of genes aroused the researchers to look at (23)…………………. from a totally new way. (24)……………….. is the heart and soul of these techniques and no matter what the (25)………………. were, at the same time they can offer a whole picture of the genes’ activities as well as (26)………………. in all types of cells. With these techniques, scientists could locate the exact gene which was on or off to manipulate the production of the proteins.

THE MPEMBA EFFECT

In 300 BC, the famous philosopher Aristotle wrote about a strange phenomenon that he had observed: “Many people, when they want to cool water quickly, begin by putting it in the sun.” Other philosophers over the ages noted the same result, but were unable to explain it.

In 1963, a young Tanzanian student named Erasto Mpemba noticed that the ice cream he was making froze faster if the mix was placed in the freezer while warm than if it were at room temperature. He persisted in questioning why this occurred, and eventually physicist Denis Osborne began a serious investigation into what is now known as the Mpemba Effect. He and Mpemba co-authored a paper in New Scientist in 1969, which produced scientific descriptions of some of the many factors at work in freezing water.

It was initially hypothesised that the warm bowl melted itself a place in the ice on the freezer shelf, thus embedding its base in a ‘nest’ of ice, which would accelerate freezing. The hypothesis was tested by comparing the result when bowls of warm water were placed on ice and on a dry wire shelf; this demonstrated that the ice nest actually had little effect. A second suggestion was that the warmer water would be evaporating at its surface, thus reducing the volume needing to be frozen, but this idea was also shown to be insignificant.

Thermometers placed in the water showed that the cooler water dropped to freezing temperature well before the warmer bowlful, and yet the latter always froze solid first. Experiments at different temperatures showed that water at 50C took longest to freeze in a conventional freezer, while water initially at 350C was quickest. On further examination, an explanation for this paradox began to emerge. Losing heat from the water occurs at the points where it is in touch with the colder atmosphere of the freezer, namely the sides of the bowl and the water surface.

A warm surface will lose heat faster than a cold one because of the contrast between the temperatures; but of course there is more heat to be lost from one bowl than the other! If the surface can be kept at a higher temperature, the higher rate of heat loss will continue. As long as the water remains liquid, the cooling portion on top will sink to the bottom of the bowl as the warmer water below rises to take its place. The early freezing that may occur on the sides and base of the container will amplify the effect.

The bowl that is more uniformly cold will have far less temperature difference so the water flow will be minimal. Another inhibiting factor for this container is that ice will also form quite quickly on the surface. This not only acts as insulation, but will virtually stop the helpful effects of the water circulating inside the bowl.

Ultimately, the rate of cooling the core of this body of water becomes so slow that the other warmer one is always fully frozen first. While there are limitations to this comparison (for example, we would not see such a result if one quantity were at 10C and another at 990C) this counter-intuitive result does hold true within the 5–350C range of temperatures indicated previously.

Since this paper was published, the validity of the research findings has been questioned by a number of reviewers. They point out that the initial experimental question was not clearly defined; for example, the researchers needed to decide on exactly what constituted freezing the water. They also state that the rate at which water freezes depends on a large number of variables.

Container size is one of these; for the Mpemba Effect to be noticed, the container must be large enough to allow a free circulation of water to take place, yet small enough for the freezing areas of the side and base to be effective at extracting heat too. Secondly, research at a University in St Louis, Missouri, suggests that the Mpemba Effect may be affected by water purity, or by dissolved gas in the water.

Distilled water is totally free of the particles that are common in normal drinking water or mineral water. When suspended in water, these particles may have a small effect on the speed of cooling, especially as ice molecules tend to expel them into the surrounding water, where they become more concentrated. Just as salt dissolved in water will raise the boiling point and lower the temperature at which it freezes, the researchers found that the final portion of ordinary water needed extra cooling, below zero, before all was frozen solid.

One more factor that can distort the effect is observed if the bowls are not placed simultaneously into the same freezer. In this case, the freezer thermostat is more likely to register the presence of a hotter bowl than a colder one, and therefore the change in internal temperature causes a boost of freezing power as the motor is activated.

The Mpemba Effect is still not fully understood, and researchers continue to delve into its underlying physics. Physicists cannot reach consensus. Some suggest that supercooling1 is involved; others that the molecular bonds in the water molecules affect the rate of cooling and freezing of water. A 2013 competition to explain the phenomenon run by the Royal Society of Chemistry attracted more than 22,000 entries, with the winning one suggesting supercooling as an important factor so it seems the question and its underlying explanation continue to fascinate.

Questions 27-33
Write the correct letter, A–P, in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.

For more than 2000 years people have wondered why raising the (27)……………..of cold water before cooling it results in more rapid cooling. At first researchers thought that a warm container created its own icy (28)………………. which made the water freeze faster, but comparisons with containers resting on a dry (29)…………………indicated that this was inaccurate. Evaporation of water proved not to be a (30)…………….
Temperature measurements showed that, although the water in the cooler container reached 00C before the warmer one, it took longer to actually solidify. The water temperature drops the most at the top and sides of the container. Provided there is a temperature (31)…………………., the water will continue to circulate and to cool down. Cooler water will have less water (32)…………………. and thus a slower rate of freezing. If ice forms on the top of the water, this will further slow the (33)……………………of freezing, but if it forms on the bottom and the sides of the container, this will increase the rate of cooling.

A melt
B element
C process
D centre
E acceleration
F surface
G factor
H hollow
I matter
J circulation
K limit
L significance
M theory
N difference
O result
P temperature

Questions 34-39
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE               if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN     if there is no information on this

34. The Mpemba Effect cannot be seen when comparing liquids with an extreme temperature difference.
35. Osborne and Mpemba’s results are still widely accepted today.
36. The size of the container does not alter the Mpemba Effect.
37. Osborne and Mpemba experimented on both pure and impure water.
38. One variable is the timing of containers in a freezer.
39. Physicists now agree that supercooling accounts for the Mpemba Effect.

Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

40.The Mpemba Effect is best summed up as the observation that
A ice cream freezes at different temperatures.
B different sources of heat result in water cooling at different rates.
C salt water freezes at a lower temperature than ordinary water.
D warmer water can freeze faster than colder water.

Paul Nash

A Paul Nash, the elder son of William Nash and his first wife, Caroline Jackson, was born in London on 11th May 1889. His father was a successful lawyer who became the Recorder of Abingdon. According to Ronald Blythe: “In 1901 the family returned to its native Buckinghamshire, where the garden of Wood Lane House at Iver Heath, and the countryside of the Chiltern Hills, with its sculptural beeches and chalky contours, were early influences on the development of the three children. Their lives were overshadowed by their mother’s mental illness and Nash himself was greatly helped by his nurse who, with some elderly neighbors, introduced him to the universe of plants.”

B Nash was educated at St. Paul’s School and the Slade School of Art, where he met Dora Carrington. Unlike some of his contemporaries at the Slade School, Nash remained untouched by the two post-impressionist exhibitions organized by Roger Fry in 1910 and 1912. Instead, he was influenced by the work of William Blake. He also became a close friend of Gordon Bottomley, who took a keen interest in his career.

C Nash had his first one-man show, of ink and wash drawings, at the Carfax Gallery in 1912. The following year he shared an exhibition at the Dorian Leigh Gallery with his brother, John Nash. Myfanwy Piper has added: “Nash had a noteworthy sense of order and of the niceties of presentation; his pictures were beautifully framed, drawings mounted, his studio precisely and decoratively tidy, and oddments which he collected were worked up into compositions.”

D Paul Nash was strongly attracted to Dora Carrington: He later recalled: “Carrington… was the dominating personality, I got an introduction to her and eventually won her regard by lending her my braces for a fancy-dress party. We were on the top of a bus and she wanted them then and there.”

E On the outbreak Nash considered the possibility of joining the British Army. He told a friend: “I am not keen to rush off and be a soldier. The whole damnable war is too horrible of course and I am all against killing anybody, speaking off-hand, but besides all that I believe both Jack and I might be more useful as ambulance and red cross men, and to that end we are training. Nash enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles. He told Gordon Bottomley: “I have joined the Artists’ London Regiment of Territorials, the old Corps which started with Rossetti, Leighton, and Millais as members in 1860. Every man must do his bit in this horrible business so I have given up painting. There are many nice creatures in my company and I enjoy the burst of exercise – marching, drilling all day in the open air about the pleasant parts of Regents Park and Hampstead Heath.”

F In March 1917 he was sent to the Western Front Nash, who took part in the offensive at Ypres, had reached the rank of lieutenant in the Hampshire Regiment by 1916. Whenever possible, Nash made sketches of life in the trenches. In May 1917 he was invalided home after a non-military accident. While recuperating in London, Nash worked from his sketches to produce a series of war paintings. This work was well-received when exhibited later that year. As a result of this exhibition, Charles Masterman, head of the government’s War Propaganda Bureau (WPB), and the advice of Edward Marsh and William Rothenstein, it was decided to recruit Nash as a war artist. In November 1917 in the immediate aftermath of the battle of Passchendaele Nash returned to France.

G Nash was unhappy with his work as a member of the War Propaganda Bureau. He wrote at the time: “I am no longer an artist. I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on forever. Feeble, inarticulate will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may burn their lousy souls.” However, as Myfanwy Piper has pointed out: “The drawings he made then, of shorn trees in ruined and flooded landscapes, were the works that made Nash’s reputation. They were shown at the Leicester Galleries in 1918 together with his first efforts at oil painting, in which he was self-taught and quickly successful, though his drawings made in the field had a more immediate public impact.

H In 1919 Nash moved to Dymchurch in Kent, beginning his well-known series of pictures of the sea, the breakwaters, and the long wall that prevents the sea from flooding Romney Marsh. This included the Winter Sea and Dymchurch Steps. Nash also painted the landscapes of the Chiltern Hills. In 1924 and 1928 he had successful exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries. Despite this popular acclaim in 1929, his work became more abstract. In 1933 Nash founded Unit One, the group of experimental painters, sculptors, and architects.

I During the Second World War Nash was employed by the Ministry of Information and the Air Ministry and paintings produced by him during this period include the Battle of Britain and Totes Meer. His biographer, Myfanwy Piper, has argued: “This war disturbed Nash but did not change his art as the last one had. His style and his habits were formed, and in the new war, he treated his new subjects as he had treated those he had been thinking about for so long. His late paintings, both oils, and watercolors are alternately brilliant and somber in color with the light of setting suns and rising moons spreading over wooded and hilly landscapes. “Paul Nash died at 35 Boscombe Spa Road, Bournemouth, on 11th July 1946.

Questions 1-4
Choose the correct letter, A-G? Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet. What four statements are correct concerning Nash’s story?

A He did not make an effort after becoming a high ranking official in the army
B He had a dream since his childhood
C He once temporarily ceased his painting career for some reason
D He was not affected by certain shows attractive to his other peers
E He had cooperation in art with his relative
F Some of his paintings were presented in a chaotic way
G His achievement after being enlisted in the army did not gather as much attention as his previous works

Questions 5-10
The reading Passage has eleven paragraphs A-I. Write the correct letter A-I, in boxes 5-10 on your answer sheet. Which paragraph contains the following information? NB You may use any letter more than once.

5. a charming lady in Nash’s eyes
6. Nash’s passion for following particularly appreciated artists
7. Nash’s works with contrast elements
8. the true cause for Nash to join the military service
9. the noticeable impact on Nash’s growth exerted from the rearing environment
10. high praise for Nash’s unique taste of presenting his works

Questions 11-13
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

11. Because of a popular display of Nash’s works created in the army, what did his leader designate him as?
12. How did Nash learn oil painting?
13. What change took place for Nash’s painting style in the late second decade of the twentieth century?

Tool for ancient writing

A With time, the record-keepers developed systematized symbols from their drawings. These symbols represented words and sentences but were easier and faster to draw and universally recognized for meaning. The discovery of clay made portable records possible (you can’t carry a cave wall around with you). Early merchants used clay tokens with pictographs to record the quantities of materials traded or shipped. These tokens date back to about 8,500 B.C. With the high volume and the repetition inherent in record keeping, pictographs evolved and slowly lost their picture detail. They became abstract figures representing sounds in spoken communication. The alphabet replaced pictographs between 1700 and 1500 B.C. in the Sinaitic world. The current Hebrew alphabet and writing became popular around 600 B.C. About 400 B.C. the Greek alphabet was developed. Greek was the first script written from left to right. From Greek followed the Byzantine and the Roman (later Latin) writings. In the beginning, all writing systems had only uppercase letters, when the writing instruments were refined enough for detailed faces, lowercase was used as well (around 600 A.D.)

B The earliest means of writing that approached pen and paper as we know them today was developed by the Greeks. They employed a writing stylus, made of metal, bone, or ivory, to placemarks upon wax-coated tablets. The tablets are made in hinged pairs, closed to protect the scribe’s notes. The first examples of handwriting (purely text messages made by hand) originated in Greece. The Grecian scholar, Cadmus invented the written letter – text messages on paper sent from one individual to another.

C Writing was advancing beyond chiselling pictures into stone or wedging pictographs into wet clay. The Chinese invented and perfected ‘Indian Ink’. Originally designed for blacking the surfaces of raised stone-carved hieroglyphics, the ink was a mixture of soot from pine smoke and lamp oil mixed with the gelatin of donkey skin and musk. The ink invented by the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu (2697 B.C.), became common by the year 1200 B.C. Other cultures developed inks using natural dyes and colours derived from berries, plants, and minerals. In early writings, different coloured inks had ritual meanings attached to each colour.

D The invention of inks paralleled the introduction of the paper. The early Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, and Hebrews, used papyrus and parchment papers. One of the oldest pieces of writing on papyrus known to us today is the Egyptian “Prisse Papyrus” which dates back to 2000 B.C. The Romans created a reed-pen perfect for parchment and ink, from the hollow tubular stems of marsh grasses, especially from the jointed bamboo plant. They converted bamboo stems into a primitive form of a fountain pen. They cut one end into the form of a pen nib or point. A writing fluid or ink filled the stem, squeezing the reed forced fluid to the nib

E By 400 A.D. a stable form of ink developed, a composite of iron salts, nutgalls, and gum, the basic formula, which was to remain in use for centuries. Its colour when first applied to paper was a bluish-black, rapidly turning into a darker black and then over the years fading to the familiar dull brown colour commonly seen in old documents. Wood-fiber paper was invented in China in 105 A.D. but it only became known about (due to Chinese secrecy) in Japan around 700 A.D. and was brought to Spain by the Arabs in 711 A.D. Paper was not widely used throughout Europe until paper mills were built in the late 14th century

F The writing instrument that dominated for the longest period in history (over one thousand years) was the quill pen. Introduced around 700 A.D., the quill is a pen made from a bird feather. The strongest quills were those taken from living birds in the spring from the five outer left wing feathers. The left wing was favoured because the feathers curved outward and away when used by a right-handed writer. Goose feathers were most common; swan feathers were of a premium grade being scarcer and more expensive. For making fine lines, crow feathers were the best, and then came the feathers of the eagle, owl, hawk, and turkey.

G There were also disadvantages associated with the use of quill pens, including a lengthy preparation time. The early European writing parchments made from animal skins required much scraping and cleaning. A lead and a ruler made margins. To sharpen the quill, the writer needed a special knife (origins of the term “pen-knife”.) Beneath the writer’s high-top desk was a coal stove, used to dry the ink as fast as possible.

H Plant-fiber paper became the primary medium for writing after another dramatic invention took place: Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with replaceable wooden or metal letters in 1436. Simpler kinds of printing e.g. stamps with names used much earlier in China, did not find their way to Europe. During the centuries, many newer printing technologies were developed based on Gutenberg’s printing machine e.g. offset printing.

I Articles written by hand had resembled printed letters until scholars began to change the form of writing, using capitals and small letters, writing with more of a slant and connecting letters. Gradually writing became more suitable to the speed the new writing instruments permitted. The credit of inventing Italian ‘running hand’ or cursive handwriting with its Roman capitals and small letters, goes to Aldus Manutius of Venice, who departed from the old set forms in 1495 A.D. By the end of the 16th century, the old Roman capitals and Greek letterforms transformed into the twenty-six alphabet letters we know today, both for upper and lower-case letters. When writers had both better inks and paper, and handwriting had developed into both an art form and an everyday occurrence, man’s inventive nature once again turned to improving the writing instrument, leading to the development of the modern fountain pens.

Questions 14-15
What two features do record retention possess in nature?

A Easier and faster
B Capaciousness
C Portable
D Convenient
E Iterance

Question 16
16. What hurts the technique of producing wooden paper from popularity for a long time?

A Scarcity
B Complexity
C Confidentiality by the inventors
D High cost

Questions 17-23
The reading Passage has eleven paragraphs A-I. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-I, in boxes 17-23 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

17. the working principle of the primitive pens made of plant stems
18. a writing tool commonly implemented for the longest time
19. liquid for writing firstly devised by Chinese
20. majuscule scripts as the unique written form originally
21. the original invention of today’s correspondences
22. the mention of two basic writing instruments being invented coordinately
23. a design to safeguard the written content

Questions 24-26
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

24. What makes it not so convenient to use the quill pens?
25. When did one more breakthrough occur following the popularity of paper of plant fibres?
26. What inventions were the results of human’s creative instinct of developing writing tools?

The Bite That Heat

A Michael decided to go for a swim. He was on vacation with his family in Guerrero, Mexico, and it was hotter than blazes. He grabbed his swimming trunks from where they’d been drying on a chair, slid them on, and jumped into the pool. Instead of cool relief, a burning pain ripped through the back of his thigh. Tearing off his trunks, he leaped naked from the pool, his leg on fire. Behind him a small, ugly, yellow creature was treading water. He scooped it into a Tupperware container, and the caretaker of the house rushed him to the local Red Cross facility, where doctors immediately identified his attacker: a bark scorpion, Centruroides sculpturatus, one of the most venomous species in North America. The fierce pain from a sting is typically followed by what feels like electric shocks racking the body. Occasionally victims die.

B Luckily for Michael (who asked me not to give his Ml name), the bark scorpion is common in the area, and antivenom was readily available. He had an injection and was released a few hours later. In about 30 hours the pain was gone. What happened next could not have been predicted. For eight years Michael had endured a condition called ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic autoimmune disease of the skeleton, a sort of spinal arthritis. No one knows what triggers it. In the worst cases the spine may fuse, leaving the patient forever stooped and in anguish. “My back hurt every morning, and during bad flare-ups it was so horrible I couldn’t even walk,” he says.

C But days after the the scorpion sting, the pain went away, and now, two years later, he remains essentially pain free and off most of his medications. As a doctor himself, Michael is cautious about overstating the role of the scorpion’s venom in his remission. Still, he says, “if my pain came back, I’d let that scorpion sting me again.” Venom-the stuff that drips from the fangs and stingers of creatures lurking on the hiking trail or hiding in the cellar or under the woodpile—is nature’s most efficient killer. Venom is exquisitely honed to stop a body in its tracks. The complex soup swirls with toxic proteins and peptides——short strings of amino acids similar to proteins. The molecules may have different targets and effects, but they work synergistically for the mightiest punch. Some go for the nervous system, paralyzing by blocking messages between nerves and muscle. Some eat away at molecules so that cells and tissues collapse. Venom can kill by clotting blood and stopping the heart or by preventing clotting and triggering a killer bleed.

D All venom is multifaceted and multitasking. (The difference between venom and poison is that venom is injected, or dibbled, into victims by way of specialized body parts, and poison is ingested.) Dozens, even hundreds, of toxins can be delivered in a single bite, some with redundant jobs and others with unique ones. In the evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, weapons and defenses are constantly tweaked. Drastically potent concoctions can result: Imagine administering poison to an adversary, then jabbing him with a knife, then finishing him off with a bullet to the head. That’s venom at work.

E Ironically, the properties that make venom deadly are also what make it so valuable for medicine. Many venom toxins target the same molecules that need to be controlled to treat diseases. Venom works fast and is highly specific. Its active components—those peptides and proteins, working as toxins diabetes have been derived from venom. New treatments for autoimmune diseases, cancer, and pain could be available within a decade.

F “We aren’t talking just a few novel drugs but entire classes of drugs,” says National Geographic Society Emerging Explorer Zoltan Takacs, a toxinologist and herpetologist. So far, fewer than a thousand toxins have been scrutinized for medicinal value, and a dozen or so major drugs have made it to market. “There could be upwards of 20 million venom toxins out there waiting to be screened,” Takacs says. “It’s huge. Venom has opened up whole new avenues of pharmacology.” Toxins from venom and poison sources are also giving us a clearer picture of how proteins that control many of the body’s crucial cellular functions work. Studies of the deadly poison tetrodotoxin (TTX) from puffer fish, for instance, have revealed intricate details about the way nerve cells communicate.

G “We ’re motivated to look for new compounds to lessen human suffering,” Angel Yanagihara of the University of Hawaii told me. “But while doing that, you may uncover things you don’t expect.” Driven in part out of revenge for a box jellyfish sting she endured 15 years ago, Yanagihara discovered a potential wound-healing agent within the tubules that contain jellyfish venom. “It had nothing to do with the venom itself,” she said. “By getting intimate with a noxious animal, I’ve been informed way beyond my expectations.”

H More than 100,000 animals have evolved to produce venom, along with the glands to house it and the apparatuses to expel it: snakes, scorpions, spiders, a few lizards, bees, sea creatures such as octopuses, numerous species of fish, and cone snails. The male duck-billed platypus, which carries venom inside ankle spurs, is one of the few venomous mammals. Venom and its components emerged independently, again and again, in different animal groups. The composition of the venom of a single snake species varies from place to place and between adults and their young. An individual snake’s venom may even change with its diet.

I Although evolution has been fine-tuning these compounds for more than a hundred million years, venom’s molecular architecture has been in place much longer. Nature repurposes key molecules from around the body—the blood, brain, digestive tract, and elsewhere—to serve animals for predation or protection. “It makes sense for nature to steal the scaffolds already in place,” Takacs says. “To make a toxin to wreck the nervous system, it’s most efficient to take a template from the brain that already works in that system, make some tiny changes, and there you have it: Now it’s a toxin.” Not all venom kills, of course—bees have it as a nonlethal defense, and the male platypus uses it to show rival males who’s boss during mating season. But mostly it’s for killing, or at least immobilizing, an animal’s next meal. Humans are often accidental victims. The World Health Organization estimates that every year some five million bites kill 100,000 people, although the actual number is presumed to be much higher. In rural areas of developing countries, where most bites occur, victims may not be able to get treatment or may instead choose traditional therapies and are therefore not counted.

Questions 27-35
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 27-35 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                 if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN       if there is no information on this

27. Michael was unluckily hit by electric shocks and nearly lost his life during his vacation.
28. The disease Michael had suffered from for eight years was caused by an accident
29. Michael is grateful for the bark scorpion bite because it helped him recover from the ankylosing spondylitis.
30. No venom is just responsible for one job.
31. There is no difference between venom and poison.
32. Venom can kill while it can also be used as medicine to save.
33. New treatments for cancer are now available in the market.
34. So far 20 million venom toxins have been checked for medical use.
35. The majority of mammals carry venom inside their bodies.

Questions 36-40
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

36. The way how venom works can be utilised to create………..
37. A venom source such as has helped to present complex facts about how nerve cells convey information to each other………
38. Tens of thousands of animals have developed and which are respectively responsible for storing and letting out venom………….
39. The makeup of venom of a snake may change with places, ages and ……………
40. Some animal uses venom to warn of its exclusive power during the mating season…………….

Finches On Islands

A Today, the quest continues. On Daphne Major-one of the most desolate of the Galápagos Islands, an uninhabited volcanic cone where cacti and shrubs seldom grow higher than a researcher’s knee-Peter and Rosemary Grant have spent more than three decades watching Darwin’s finch respond to the challenges of storms, drought and competition for food Biologists at Princeton University, the Grants know and recognize many of the individual birds on the island and can trace the birds’ lineages hack through time. They have witnessed Darwin’s principle in action again and again, over many generations of finches.

B The Grants’ most dramatic insights have come from watching the evolving bill of the medium ground finch. The plumage of this sparrow-sized bird ranges from dull brown to jet black. At first glance, it may not seem particularly striking, but among scientists who study evolutionary biology, the medium ground finch is a superstar. Its bill is a middling example in the array of shapes and sizes found among Galápagos finches: heftier than that of the small ground finch, which specializes in eating small, soft seeds, but petite compared to that of the large ground finch, an expert at cracking and devouring big, hard seeds.

C When the Grants began their study in the 1970s, only two species of finch lived on Daphne Major, the medium ground finch and the cactus finch. The island is so small that the researchers were able to count and catalogue every bird. When a severe drought hit in 1977, the birds soon devoured the last of the small, easily eaten seeds. Smaller members of the medium ground finch population, lacking the bill strength to crack large seeds, died out.

D Bill and body size are inherited traits, and the next generation had a high proportion of big-billed individuals. The Grants had documented natural selection at work-the same process that, over many millennia, directed the evolution of the Galápagos’ 14 unique finch species, all descended from a common ancestor that reached the islands a few million years ago.

E Eight years later, heavy rains brought by an El Nino transformed the normally meager vegetation on Daphne Major. Vines and other plants that in most years struggle for survival suddenly flourished, choking out the plants that provide large seeds to the finches. Small seeds came to dominate the food supply, and big birds with big bills died out at a higher rate than smaller ones. ‘Natural selection is observable,’ Rosemary Grant says. ‘It happens when the environment changes. When local conditions reverse themselves, so does the direction of adaptation.

F Recently, the Grants witnessed another form of natural selection acting on the medium ground finch: competition from bigger, stronger cousins. In 1982, a third finch, the large ground finch, came to live on Daphne Major. The stout bills of these birds resemble the business end of a crescent wrench. Their arrival was the first such colonization recorded on the Galápagos in nearly a century of scientific observation. ‘We realized,’ Peter Grant says, ‘we had a very unusual and potentially important event to follow.’ For 20 years, the large ground finch coexisted with the medium ground finch, which shared the supply of large seeds with its bigger-billed relative. Then, in 2002 and 2003, another drought struck. None of the birds nested that year, and many died out. Medium ground finches with large bills, crowded out of feeding areas by the more powerful large ground finches, were hit particularly hard.

G When wetter weather returned in 2004, and the finches nested again, the new generation of the medium ground finch was dominated by smaller birds with smaller bills, able to survive on smaller seeds. This situation, says Peter Grant, marked the first time that biologists have been able to follow the complete process of an evolutionary change due to competition between species and the strongest response to natural selection that he had seen in 33 years of tracking Galápagos finches.

H On the inhabited island of Santa Cruz, just south of Daphne Major, Andrew Hendry of McGill University and Jeffrey Podos of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have discovered a new, man-made twist in finch evolution. Their study focused on birds living near the Academy Bay research station, on the fringe of the town of Puerto Ayora. The human population of the area has been growing fast-from 900 people in 1974 to 9,582 in 2001. Today Puerto Ayora is full of hotels and mai tai bars,’ Hendry says. ‘People have taken this extremely arid place and tried to turn it into a Caribbean resort.’

I Academy Bay records dating back to the early 1960s show that medium ground finches captured there had either small or large bills. Very few of the birds had mid-size bills. The finches appeared to be in the early stages of a new adaptive radiation: If the trend continued, the medium ground finch on Santa Cruz could split into two distinct subspecies, specializing in different types of seeds. But in the late 1960s and early 70s, medium ground finches with medium-sized bills began to thrive at Academy Bay along with small and large-billed birds. The booming human population had introduced new food sources, including exotic plants and bird feeding stations stocked with rice. Billsize, once critical to the finches’ survival, no longer made any difference. ‘Now an intermediate bill can do fine,’ Hendry says.

J At a control site distant from Puerto Ayora, and relatively untouched by humans, the medium ground finch population remains split between large- and small-billed birds. On undisturbed parts of Santa Cruz, there is no ecological niche for a middling medium ground finch, and the birds continue to diversify. In town, though there are still many finches, once-distinct populations are merging.

K The finches of Santa Cruz demonstrate a subtle process in which human meddling can stop evolution in its tracks, ending the formation of new species. In a time when global biodiversity continues its downhill slide, Darwin’s finches have yet another unexpected lesson to teach. ‘If we hope to regain some of the diversity that’s already been lost/ Hendry says, ‘we need to protect not just existing creatures, but also the processes that drive the origin of new species.

Questions 1-4
Complete the table now. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from Reading Passage 1 for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

Year	Climate	Finch’s condition
1977	(1)……………..	small-beak birds failing to survive, without the power to open (2)………………
1985	(3)…………………brought by El Nino	big-beak birds dying out, with (4)……………. as the main food resource

Questions 5-8
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage. Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.

On the remote island of Santa Cruz, Andrew Hendry and Jeffrey Podos conducted a study on reversal (5)……………… due to human activity. In the early 1960s medium ground finches were found to have a larger or smaller beak. But in the late 1960s and early 70s, finches with (6)……………… flourished. The study speculates that it is due to the growing (7)…………………who brought in alien plants with intermediate-size seeds into the area and the birds ate (8)……………….. sometimes.

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE                   if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                  if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN         if there is no information on this

9. Grants’ discovery has questioned Darwin’s theory.
10. The cactus finches are less affected by food than the medium ground finch.
11. In 2002 and 2003, all the birds were affected by the drought.
12. The discovery of Andrew Hendry and Jeffrey Podos was the same as that of the previous studies.
13. It is shown that the revolution in finches on Santa Cruz is likely a response to human intervention.

Flight From Reality

Mobiles are barred, but passengers can lap away on their laptops to their hearts’ content. Is one really safer than the other? In the US, a Congressional subcommittee grilled airline representatives and regulators about the issue last month. But the committee heard that using cellphones in planes may indeed pose a risk albeit a slight one. This would seem to vindicate the treatment of Manchester oil worker Neil Whitehouse, who was sentenced last summer to a year in jail by a British court for refusing to turn off his mobile phone on a flight home from Madrid. Although he was only typing a message to be sent on landing not actually making a call, the court decided that hems putting the flight at risk.

A The potential for problems is certainly there. Modern airliners are packed with electronic devices that control the plane and handle navigation and communications. Each has to meet stringent safeguards to make sure it doesn’t emit radiation that would interfere with other devices in the plane-standards that passengers’ personal electronic devices don’t necessarily meet. Emissions from inside the plane could also interfere with sensitive antennae on the fixed exterior.

B But despite running a number of studies, Boeing, Airbus and various government agencies haven’t been able to find clear evidence of problems caused by personal electronic devices, including mobile phones. “We’ve done our own studies. We’ve found cellphones actually have no impact on the navigation system,” says Maryanne Greczyn, a spokeswoman for Airbus Industries of North America in Herndon, Virginia, Not do they affect other critical systems, she says The only impact Airbus found? “Sometimes when a passenger is starting or finishing a phone call, the pilot hears a wry slight beep in the headset,” she says.

C The best evidence yet of a problem comes from a report released this year by Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority. Its researchers generated simulated cellphone transmissions inside two Boeing aircraft. They concluded that the transmissions could create signals at a power and frequency that would not affect the latest equipment, but exceeded the safety threshold established in 1984 and might, therefore, affect some of the older equipment on board. This doesn’t mean “mission critical” equipment such as the navigation system and flight controls. But the devices that could be affected, such as smoke detectors and fuel level indicators, could still create serious problems for the flight crew if they malfunction.

D Many planes still use equipment certified to the older standards, says Dan Hawkes, head of avionics at the CAA’s Safely Regulation Croup. The CAA study doesn’t prove the equipment will actually fail when subjected to the signals but does show there’s a danger. “We’ve taken some of the uncertainty out of these beliefs,” he says Another study later this year will see if the cellphone signals actually cause devices to fail.

E In 1996, RTCA, a consultant hired by the Federal Aviation Administration in the US to conduct tests, determined that potential problems from personal electronic devices were “low”. Nevertheless, it recommended a ban on their use during “critical” periods of flight, such as take-off and landing. RTCA didn’t actually test cellphones, but nevertheless recommended their wholesale ban on flights, But if “better safe than sorry” is the current policy, it’s applied inconsistently, according to Marshall Cross, the chairman of Mega Wave Corporation, based in Boylston, Massachusetts. Why are cellphones outlawed when no one considers a ban on laptops? “It’s like most things in life. The reason is a little bit technical, a little bit economic and a little bit political,” says Cross.

F The company wrote a report for the FAA in 1998 saying it is possible to build an on-board system that can detect dangerous signals from electronic devices. But Cross’s personal conclusion is that mobile phones aren’t the real threat. “You’d have to stretch things pretty far to figure out how a cellphone could interfere with a plane’s systems,” he says. Cellphones transmit in ranges of around 400, 800 or 1800 megahertz. Since no important piece of aircraft equipment operates at those frequencies, the possibility of interference is very low, Cross says. The use of Computers and electronic game systems is much more worrying, lie says. They can generate very strong signals at frequencies that could interfere with plane electronics, especially if a mouse is attached {the wire operates as an antenna or if their built-in shielding is somehow damaged. Some airlines are even planning to put sockets for laptops in seatbacks.

G There’s fairly convincing anecdotal evidence that some personal electronic devices have interfered with systems. Aircrew on one flight found that the autopilot was being disconnected, and narrowed the problem down to a passenger’s portable computer. They could actually watch the autopilot disconnect when they switched the computer on. Boeing bought the computer, took it to the airline’s labs and even tested it on an empty flight. But as with every other reported instance of interference, technicians were unable to replicate the problem.

H Some engineers, however, such as Bruce Donham of Boeing, say that common sense suggests phones are more risky than laptops. “A device capable of producing a strong emission is not as safe as a device which does not have any intentional emission,” lie says. Nevertheless, many experts think it’s illogical that cellphones are prohibited when computers aren’t. Besides, the problem is more complicated than simply looking at power and frequency. In the air, the plane operates in a soup of electronic emissions, created by its own electronics and by ground-based radiation. Electronic devices in the cabin-especially those emitting a strong signal-can behave unpredictably, reinforcing other signals, for instance, or creating unforeseen harmonics that disrupt systems.

I Despite the Congressional subcommittee hearings last month, no one seems to be working seriously on a technical solution that would allow passengers to use their phones. That’s mostly because no one -besides cellphone users themselves-stands to gain a lot if the phones are allowed in the air. Even the cellphone companies don’t want it. They are concerned that airborne signals could cause problems by flooding a number of the networks’ base stations at once with the same signal This effect, called bigfooting, happens because airborne cellphone signals tend to go to many base stations at once, unlike land calls which usually go to just one or two stations. In the US, even if FAA regulations didn’t prohibit cellphones in the air, Federal Communications Commission regulations would.

J Possible solutions might be to enhance airliners’ electronic insulation or to fit detectors which warned flight staff when passenger devices were emitting dangerous signals. But Cross complains that neither the FAA, the airlines nor the manufacturers are showing much interest in developing these. So despite Congressional suspicions and the occasional irritated (or jailed) mobile user, the industry’s “better safe than sorry” policy on mobile phones seems likely to continue. In the absence of firm evidence that the international airline industry is engaged in a vast conspiracy to overcharge its customers, a delayed phone call seems a small price to pay for even the tiniest reduction in the chances of a Plane Crash. But you’ll still be allowed to use your personal computer during a flight. And while that remains the case, airlines can hardly claim that logic has prevailed.

Questions 14-17
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

The would-be risk surely exists, since the avionic systems on modern aircraft are used to manage flight and deal with (14)………………. Those devices are designed to meet the safety criteria which should be free from interrupting (15)………………… or interior emission. The personal use of a mobile phone may cause the sophisticated (16)…………………. outside of the plane to dysfunction. Though definite interference in piloting devices has not been scientifically testified, the devices such as those which detect (17)……………….. or indicate fuel load could be affected.

Questions 18-22
Use the information in the passage to match the Organization (listed A-E) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-E in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.

A British Civil Aviation Authority
B Maryanne Greczyn
C RTCA
D Marshall Cross
E Boeing company

18. Mobile usages should be forbidden in specific fame.
19. Computers are more dangerous than cell phones.
20. Finding that the mobile phones pose little risk on flight’s navigation devices.
21. The disruption of laptops is not as dangerous as cellphones.
22. The mobile signal may have an impact on earlier devices.

Questions 23-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE                   if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                  if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN         if there is no information on this

23. Almost all scientists accept that cellphones have higher emission than that of personal computers.
24. Some people believe that radio emission will interrupt the equipment on the plane.
25. The signal interference-detecting device has not yet been developed because they are in priority for neither administrative department nor offer an economic incentive.
26. FAA initialed open debate with Federal Communications Commission.

Human Remain In Green Sahara

A On October 13,2,000, a small team of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago clambered out of three battered Land Rovers, filled their water bottles, and scattered on foot across the toffee-colored sands of the Tenere desert in northern Niger. The Tenere , on the southern flank of the Sahara, easily ranks among the most desolate landscapes on Earth. The Tuareg , turbaned nomads who for centuries have ruled this barren realm, refer to it as a “desert within a desert”-a California-size ocean of sand and rock, where a single massive dune might stretch a hundred miles, and the combination of 120-degree heat and inexorable winds can wick the water from a human body in less than a day. The harsh conditions, combined with intermittent conflict between the Tuareg and the Niger government, have kept the region largely unexplored.

B Mike Hettwer, a photographer accompanying the team, headed off by himself toward a trio of small dunes. He crested the first slope and stared in amazement. The dunes were spilling over with bones. He took a few shots with his digital camera and hurried back to the Land Rovers. “I found some bones:’ Hettwer said, when the team had regrouped. “But they’re not dinosaurs. They’re human.”

C In the spring of 2005 Sereno contacted Elena Garcea, an archaeologist at the University of Cassino, in Italy, inviting her to accompany him on a return to the site. Garcea had spent three decades working digs along the Nile in Sudan and in the mountains of the Libyan Desert, and was well acquainted with the ancient peoples of the Sahara. But she had never heard of Paul Sereno. His claim to have found so many skeletons in one place seemed far fetched, given that no other Neolithic cemetery contained more than a dozen or so. Some archaeologists would later be skeptical; one sniped that he was just a “moonlighting paleontologist.” But Garcea was too intrigued to dismiss him as an interloper. She agreed to join him.

D Garcea explained that the Kiffian were a fishing-based culture and lived during the earliest wet period, between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago. She held a Kiffian sherd next to a Tenerian one. “What is so amazing is that the people who made these two pots lived more than a thousand years apart.”

E Over the next three weeks, Sereno and Garcea-along with five American excavators, five Tuareg guides, and five soldiers from Nigeria’s army, sent to protect the camp from bandits—made a detailed map of the site, which they dubbed Gobero, after the Tuareg name for the area. They exhumed eight burials and collected scores of artifacts from both cultures. In a dry lake bed adjacent to the dunes, they found dozens of fishhooks and harpoons carved from animal bone Apparently the Kiffian fishermen weren’t just going after small fry: Scattered near the dunes were the remains of Nile perch, a beast of a fish that can weigh nearly 300 pounds, as well as crocodile and hippo bones.

F Sereno flew home with the most important skeletons and artifacts and immediately began planning for the next field season. In the meantime, he carefully removed one tooth from each of four skulls and sent them to a lab for radiocarbon dating. The results pegged the age of the tightly bundled burials at roughly 9,000 years old, the heart of the Kiffian era. The smaller “sleeping” skeletons turned out to be about 6,000 years old, well within the Tenerian period. At least now the scientists knew who was who.

G In the fall of 2006 they returned to Gobero, accompanied by a larger dig crew and six additional scientists. Garcea hoped to excavate some 80 burials, and the team began digging. As the skeletons began to emerge from the dunes, each presented a fresh riddle, especially the Tenerian. A male skeleton had been buried with a finger in his mouth.

H Even at the site, Arizona State University bio archaeologist Chris Stojanowski could begin to piece together some clues. Judging by the bones, the Kiffian appeared to be a peaceful, hard working people. “The lack of head and forearm injuries suggests they weren’t doing much fighting,” he told me. “And these guys were strong.” He pointed to a long, narrow ridge running along a femur. “That’s the muscle attachment,” he said. “This individual had huge leg muscles, which means he was eating a lot of protein and had a strenuous lifestyle — both consistent with a fishing way of life.” For contrast, he showed me the femur of a Tenerian male. The ridge was barely perceptible. “This guy had a much less strenuous lifestyle,” he said, “which you might expect of a herder.”

I Stojanowski’s assessment that the Tenerian were herders fits the prevailing view among scholars of life in the Sahara 6,000 years ago, when drier conditions favored herding over hunting. But if the Tenerian were herders, Sereno pointed out, where were the herds? Among the hundreds of animal bones that had turned up at the site, none belonged to goats or sheep, and only three came from a cow species. “It’s not unusual for a herding culture not to slaughter their cattle, particularly in a cemetery, M Garcea responded, noting that even modern pastoralists, such as Niger’s Wodaabe, are loath to butcher even one animal in their herd. Perhaps, Sereno reasoned, the Tenerian at Gobero were a transitional group that had not fully adopted herding and still relied heavily on hunting and fishing.

J Back in Arizona, Stojanowski continues to analyze the Gobero bones for clues to the Green Saharans’ health and diet. Other scientists are trying to derive DNA from the teeth, which could reveal the genetic origins of the Kiffian and Tenerian- and possibly link them to descendants living today. Sereno and Garcea estimate a hundred burials remain to be excavated. But as the harsh Tenere winds continue to erode the dunes, time is running out. “Every archaeological site has a life cycle,” Garcea said. “It begins when people begin to use the place, followed by disuse, then nature takes over, and finally it is gone. Gobero is at the end of its life.”

Questions 27-29
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage? In boxes 27-29 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE                 if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN       if there is no information on this

27. Hettwer accidentally found human remains in the desert.
28. Sereno and Garcea have cooperated in some archaeological activities before.
29. The pictures of rock engravings found in Green Sahara is similar to other places.

Questions 30-33
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

30. What did Sereno and Garcea produce in the initial weeks before digging work?
31. For what purpose did Sereno send one tooth from each of four skulls to the laboratory?
32. How old are the bigger tightly bundled burials being identified?
33. What part of the body remains did the scientists send for inspection to find out the genetic origins of the Kiffian and Tenerian?

Questions 34-40
Summary Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet.

On the basis of bone judgment, kiffican seemed to be (34)…………………hardworking people, because we did not find (35)…………………..on head and forearm.

Through observation of the huge leg muscles, it can be inferred that their diet had plenty of (36)……………….and their lifestyle was (37)…………….. All evidence pointed to compliance with a fishing way of life.

On the other hand, Stojanowski presumed that Tenerian preferred to live on herding over (38)……………..,but only some animal bones such as (39)………………….were found, which Sereno supposed that Tenerian at Gobero lived in a (40)…………………..group at that time.

The Vikings Wayfaring Way

In the last century, Vikings have been perceived in numerous different ways – vilified as conquerors and romanticised as adventurers. How Vikings have been employed in nation-building is a topic of some interest.

In English, Vikings are also known as Norse or Norsemen. Their language greatly influenced English, with the nouns, ‘Hell’, ‘husband’, ‘law’, and ‘window’, and the verbs, ‘blunder’, ‘snub’, ‘take’, and ‘want’, all coming from Old Norse. However, the origins of the word ‘Viking’, itself, are obscure: it may mean ‘a Scandinavian pirate’, or it may refer to ‘an inlet’, or a place called Vik, in modem-day Norway, from where the pirates came. These various names – Vikings, Norse, or Norsemen, and doubts about the very word ‘Viking’ suggest historical confusion.

Loosely speaking, the Viking Age endured from the late eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries. Vikings sailed to England in AD 793 to storm coastal monasteries, and subsequently, large swathes of England fell under Viking rule – indeed several Viking kings sat on the English throne. It is generally agreed that the Battle of Hastings, in 1066, when the Norman French invaded, marks the end of the English Viking Age, but the Irish Viking age ended earlier, while Viking colonies in Iceland and Greenland did not dissolve until around AD 1500.

How much territory Vikings controlled is also in dispute – Scandinavia and Western Europe certainly, but their reach east and south is uncertain. They plundered and settled down the Volga and Dnieper rivers, and traded with modem-day Istanbul, but the archaeological record has yet to verify that Vikings raided as far away as Northwest Africa, as some writers claim.

The issue of control and extent is complex because many Vikings did not return to Scandinavia after raiding but assimilated into local populations, often becoming Christian. To some degree, the Viking Age is defined by religion. Initially, Vikings were polytheists, believing in many gods, but by the end of the age, they had permanently accepted a new monotheistic religious system – Christianity.

This transition from so-called pagan plunderers to civilised Christians is significant and is the view promulgated throughout much of recent history. In the UK, in the 1970s for example, schoolchildren were taught that until the Vikings accepted Christianity they were nasty heathens who rampaged throughout Britain. By contrast, today’s children can visit museums where Vikings are celebrated as merchants, pastoralists, and artists with a unique worldview as well as conquerors.

What are some other interpretations of Vikings? In the nineteenth century, historians in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden constructed their own Viking ages for nationalistic reasons. At that time, all three countries were in crisis. Denmark had been beaten in war and ceded territory to what is now Germany. Norway had become independent from Sweden in 1905 but was economically vulnerable, so Norwegians sought to create a separate identity for themselves in the past as well as the present. The Norwegian historian, Gustav Storm, was adamant it was his forebears and not the Swedes’ or Danes’ who had colonised Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland, in what is now Canada. Sweden, meanwhile, had relinquished Norway to the Norwegians and Finland to the Russians; thus, in the late nineteenth century, Sweden was keen to boost its image with rich archaeological finds to show the glory of its Viking past.

In addition to augmenting nationalism, nineteenth-century thinkers were influenced by an Englishman, Herbert Spencer, who described peoples and cultures in evolutionary terms similar to those of Charles Darwin. Spencer coined the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’, which includes the notion that, over time, there is not only technological but also moral progress. Therefore, Viking heathens’ adoption of Christianity was considered an advantageous move. These days, historians do not compare cultures in the same way, especially since, in this case, the archaeological record seems to show that heathen Vikings and Christian Europeans were equally brutal.

Views of Vikings change according to not only to forces affecting historians at the time of their research but also according to the materials they read. Since much knowledge of Vikings comes from literature composed up to 300 years after the events they chronicle, some Danish historians cal1 these sources ‘mere legends’.

Vikings did have a written language carved on large stones, but as few of these survive today, the most reliable contemporary sources on Vikings come from writers from other cultures, like the ninth-century Persian geographer, Ibn Khordadbeh.

In the last four decades, there have been wildly varying interpretations of the Viking influence in Russia. Most non-Russian scholars believe the Vikings created a kingdom in western Russia and modern-day Ukraine led by a man called Rurik. After AD 862, Rurik’s descendants continued to rule. There is considerable evidence of this colonisation: in Sweden, carved stones, still standing, describe the conquerors’ journeys; both Russian and Ukrainian have loan words from Old Norse; and, Scandinavian first names, like Igor and Olga, are still popular. However, during the Soviet period, there was an emphasis on the Slavic origins of most Russians. (Appearing in the historical record around the sixth century AD, the Slavs are thought to have originated in Eastern Europe.) This Slavic identity was promoted to contrast with that of the neighbouring Viking Swedes, who were enemies during the Cold War.

These days, many Russians consider themselves hybrids. Indeed recent genetic studies support a Norse-colonisation theory: western Russian DNA is consistent with that of the inhabitants of a region north of Stockholm in Sweden.

The tools available to modern historians are many and varied, and their findings may seem less open to debate. There are linguistics, numismatics, dendrochronology, archaeozoology, palaeobotany, ice crystallography, climate and DNA analysis to add to the translation of runes and the raising of mighty warships. Despite these, historians remain children of their times.

Questions 1-5
Complete the notes below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

Origins:	– word ‘Viking’ is (1)…………….. – Vikings came from Scandinavia
Dates of the Viking Age	– in Britain: AD (2)……………. – 1066 – Length varies elsewhere
Territorial extent:	– in doubt – but most of Europe – Possibly raided as far away as (3)……………….
End of the Viking Age:	– Vikings had assimilated into (4)…………….., & adopted a new (5)…………….. system

Questions 6-13
Look at the following statements and the list of times and places below. Match each statement with the correct place or time: A-H. Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 6-13 on your answer sheet.

6. A geographer documents Viking culture as it happens.
7. A philosopher classifies cultures hierarchically.
8. Historians assert that Viking history is based more on legends than facts.
9. Young people learn about Viking cultural and economic activities.
10. People see themselves as unrelated to Vikings.
11. An historian claims Viking colonists to modem-day Canada came from his land.
12. Viking conquests are exaggerated to bolster the country’s ego after a territorial loss.
13. DNA tests show locals are closely related to Swedes.

List of times & places

A In the UK today
B In 19th-century Norway
C In 19th-century Sweden
D In 19th-century England
E In Denmark today
F In 9th-century Persia
G In mid-20th century Soviet Union
H In Russia today

Question 14
Choose the correct letter A-E. Write the correct letter in box 14 on your answer sheet.

14. Which might be a suitable title for passage?
A A brief history of Vikings
B Recent Viking discoveries
C A modem fascination with Vikings
D Interpretations of Viking history
E Viking history and nationalism

The Future Never Dies?

The prospects for humanity and for the world as a whole are somewhere between glorious and dire. It is hard to be much more precise.

A By ‘glorious’, I mean that our descendants – all who are born on to this Earth – could live very comfortably and securely, and could continue to do so for as long as the Earth can support life, which should be for a very long time indeed. We should at least be thinking in terms of the next million years. Furthermore, our descendants could continue to enjoy the company of other species – establishing a much better relationship with them than we have now. Other animals need not live in constant fear of us. Many of those fellow species now seem bound to become extinct, but a significant proportion could and should continue to live alongside us. Such a future may seem ideal, and so it is. Yet I do not believe it is fanciful. There is nothing in the physical fabric of the Earth or in our own biology to suggest that this is not possible.

B ‘Dire’ means that we human beings could be in deep trouble within the next few centuries, living but also dying in large numbers in political terror and from starvation, while huge numbers of our fellow creatures would simply disappear, leaving only the ones that we find convenient – chickens, cattle – or that we can’t shake off, like flies and mice. I’m taking it to be self-evident that glory is preferable.

C Our future is not entirely in our own hands because the Earth has its own rules, is part of the solar system and is neither stable nor innately safe. Other planets in the solar system are quite beyond habitation, because their temperature is far too high or too low to be endured, and ours, too, in principle could tip either way. Even relatively unspectacular changes in the atmosphere could do the trick. The core of the Earth is hot, which in many ways is good for living creatures, but every now and again, the molten rock bursts through volcanoes on the surface. Among the biggest volcanic eruptions in recent memory was Mount St Helens, in the USA, which threw out a cubic kilometre of ash – fortunately, in an area where very few people live. In 1815, Tambora (in present-day Indonesia) expelled so much ash into the upper atmosphere that climatic effects seriously harmed food production around the world for the season after season. Entire civilisations have been destroyed by volcanoes.

D Yet nothing we have so far experienced shows what volcanoes can really do. Yellowstone National Park in the USA occupies the caldera (the crater formed when a volcano collapses) of an exceedingly ancient volcano of extraordinary magnitude. Modem surveys show that its centre is now rising. Sometime in the next 200 million years, Yellowstone could erupt again, and when it does, the whole world will be transformed. Yellowstone could erupt tomorrow. But there’s a very good chance that it will give us another million years, and that surely is enough to be going on with. It seems sensible to assume that this will be the case.

E The universe at large is dangerous, too: in particular, we share the sky with vast numbers of asteroids, and now and again, the come into our planet’s atmosphere. An asteroid the size of a small island, hitting the Earth at 15,000 kilometres an hour (a relatively modest speed by the standards of heavenly bodies), would strike the ocean bed like a rock in a puddle, send a tidal wave around the world as high as a small mountain and as fast as a jumbo jet, and propel us into an ice age that could last for centuries. There are plans to head off such disasters (including rockets to push approaching asteroids into new trajectories), but in truth, it’s down to luck.

F On the other hand, the archaeological and the fossil evidence shows that no truly devastating asteroid has struck since the one that seems to have accounted for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. So again, there seems no immediate reason for despair. The Earth is indeed an uncertain place, in an uncertain universe, but with average luck, it should do us well enough. If the world does become inhospitable in the next few thousand or million years, then it will probably be our own fault. In short, despite the underlying uncertainty, our own future and that of our fellow creatures are very much in our own hands.

G Given average luck on the geological and the cosmic scale, the difference between glory and disaster will be made and is being made, by politics. Certain kinds of political systems and strategies would predispose us to long-term survival (and indeed to comfort and security and pleasure of being alive), while others would take us more and more frenetically towards collapse. The broad point is, though, that we need to look at ourselves – humanity – and at the world in general in a quite new light. Our material problems are fundamentally those of biology. We need to think, and we need our politicians to think, biologically. Do that, and take the ideas seriously, and we are in with a chance. Ignore biology and we and our fellow creatures haven’t a hope.

Questions 15-20
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 15-20 on your answer sheet write:

YES                      if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO                       if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN          if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

15. It seems predictable that some species will disappear.
16. The nature of the Earth and human biology make it impossible for human beings to survive another million years.
17. An eruption by Yellowstone is likely to be more destructive than previous volcanic eruptions.
18. There is a greater chance of the Earth being hit by small asteroids than large ones.
19. If the world becomes uninhabitable, it is most likely to be as a result of a natural disaster.
20. Politicians currently in power seem unlikely to change their way of thinking.

Questions 21-26
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet.

The Earth could become uninhabitable, like other planets, through a major change in the (21)……………….Volcanic eruptions of (22)………………. can lead to shortages of (23)……………. in a wide area. An asteroid hitting the Earth could create a (24)………………… that would result in a new (25)…………….. . Plans are being made to use (26)………………….. to deflect asteroids heading for the Earth.

Question 27
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D. Write your answer in box 26 on your answer sheet.

27. What is the writer’s purpose in Reading Passage 2?
A to propose a new theory about the causes of natural disasters
B to prove that generally held beliefs about the future are all mistaken
C to present a range of opinions currently held by scientists
D to argue the need for a general change in behavior

Cosmetics In Ancient Past

A Since cosmetics and perfumes are still in wide use today, it is interesting to compare the attitudes, customs and beliefs related to them in ancient times to those of our own day and age. Cosmetics and perfumes have been popular since the dawn of civilization; it is shown by the discovery of a great deal of pertinent archaeological material, dating from the third millennium BC. Mosaics, glass perfume flasks, stone vessels, ovens, cooking-pots, clay jars, etc., some inscribed by the hand of the artisan. Evidence also appears in the Bible and other classical writings, where it is written that spices and perfumes were prestigious products known throughout the ancient world and coveted by kings and princes. The written and pictorial descriptions, as well as archaeological findings, all show how important body care and aesthetic appearance were in the lives of the ancient people. The chain of evidence spans many centuries, detailing the usage of cosmetics in various cultures from the earliest period of recorded history.

B In antiquity, however, at least in the onset, cosmetics served in religious ceremonies and for healing purposes. Cosmetics were also connected with cultic worship and witchcraft: to appease the various gods, fragrant ointments were applied to the statuary images and even to their attendants. From this, in the course of time, developed the custom of personal use, to enhance the beauty of the face and the body, and to conceal defects.

C Perfumes and fragrant spices were precious commodities in antiquity, very much in demand, and at times even exceeded silver and gold in value. Therefore they were luxury products, used mainly in the temples and in the homes of the noble and wealthy. The Judean kings kept them in treasure houses (2 Kings 20:13). And the Queen of Sheba brought to Solomon “camels laden with spices, gold in great quantity and precious stones.” (1 Kings 10:2, 10). However, within time, the use of cosmetics became the custom of that period. The use of cosmetics became widespread among the lower classes as well as among the wealthy; in the same way, they washed the body, so they used to care for the body with substances that softened the skin and anoint it with fragrant oils and ointments.

D Facial treatment was highly developed and women devoted many hours to it. They used to spread various scented creams on the face and to apply makeup in vivid and contrasting colors. An Egyptian papyrus from the 16th century BC contains detailed recipes to remove blemishes, wrinkles, and other signs of age. Greek and Roman women would cover their faces in the evening with a “beauty mask” to remove blemishes, which consisted mainly of flour mixed with fragrant spices, leaving it on their face all night. The next morning they would wash it off with asses’ milk. The very common creams used by women in the ancient Far East, particularly important in the hot climate and prevalent in that area of the globe, were made up of oils and aromatic scents. Sometimes the oil in these creams was extracted from olives, almonds, gourds, sesame, or from trees and plants; but, for those of limited means, scented animal and fish fats were commonly used.

E Women in the ancient past commonly put colors around their eyes. Besides beautification, its purpose was also medicinal as covering the sensitive skin of the lids with colored ointments that prevented dryness and eye diseases: the eye-paint repelled the little flies that transmitted eye inflammations. Egyptian women colored the upper eyelid black and the lower one green and painted the space between the upper lid and the eyebrow gray and blue. The women of Mesopotamia favored yellows and reds. The use of kohl for painting the eyes is mentioned three times in the Bible, always with disapproval by the sages (2 Kings, 9:30; Jeremiah 4:30; Ezekiel 23:40). In contrast, Job named one of his daughters “Keren Happukh”- “horn of eye paint” (Job 42:14)

F Great importance was attached to the care for hair in ancient times. Long hair was always considered a symbol of beauty, and kings, nobles and dignitaries grew their hair long and kept it well-groomed and cared for. Women devoted much time to the style of the hair; while no cutting, they would apply much care to it by arranging it skillfully in plaits and “building it up” sometimes with the help of wigs. Egyptian women generally wore their hair flowing down to their shoulders or even longer. In Mesopotamia, women cherished long hair as a part of their beauty, and hair flowing down their backs in a thick plait and tied with a ribbon is seen in art. Assyrian women wore their hair shorter, braiding and binding it in a bun at the back. In Ancient Israel, brides would wear their hair long on the wedding day as a sign of their virginity. Ordinary people and slaves, however, usually wore their hair short, mainly for hygienic reasons, since they could not afford to invest in the kind of treatment that long hair required.

G From the Bible and Egyptian and Assyrian sources, as well as the words of classical authors, it appears that the centers of the trade-in aromatic resins and incense were located in the kingdoms of southern Arabia, and even as far as India, where some of these precious aromatic plants were grown. “Dealers from Sheba and Rammah dealt with you, offering the choicest spices…” (Ezekiel 27:22). The Nabateans functioned as the important middlemen in this trade; Palestine also served as a very important component, as the trade routes crisscrossed the country. It is known that the Egyptian Queen Hatsheput (15th century BC) sent a royal expedition to the Land of Punt (Somalia) in order to bring back myrrh seedlings to plant in her temple. In Assyrian records of tribute and spoils of war, perfumes and resins are mentioned; the text from the time of Tukulti-Ninurta II (890-884 BC) refers to balls of myrrh as a part of the tribute brought to the Assyrian king by the Aramaean kings. The trade-in spices and perfumes are also mentioned in the Bible as written in Genesis (37:25-26), “Camels carrying gum tragacanth and balm and myrrh”.

Questions 28-34
Reading Passage has 7 paragraphs A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write your answers in boxes 28-34 on your answer sheet.

28. recipes to conceal facial defects caused by aging
29. perfumes were presented to conquerors in war
30. long hair of girls had special meanings in marriage
31. evidence exists in abundance showing cosmetics use in ancient times
32. protecting eyes from fly-transmitted diseases
33. from witchcraft to beautification
34. more expensive than gold

Questions 35-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE                       if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                      if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN             if there is no information on this

35. The written record for cosmetics and perfumes dates back to the third millennium BC.
36. Since perfumes and spices were luxury products, their use was exclusive to the noble and the wealthy.
37. In the ancient Far East, fish fats were used as a cream by a woman from poor households.
38. The teachings in the Bible were repeatedly against the use of kohl for painting the eyes.
39. Long hair as a symbol of beauty was worn solely by women of ancient cultures
40. The Egyptian Queen Hatsheput sent a royal expedition to Punt to establish a trade route for myrrh

The role of accidents in business

In 1894 Dr John Kellogg and his brother. Will, were supervising a hospital and health spa in Michigan. The patients were on a restricted diet. One day, the brothers left cooked wheat untended for more than 24 hours. When they returned, they saw what they had done. It was no good to eat, but they decided to run the stale wheat through rollers, just to see how it would turn out. Normally, the process produced long sheets, but they were surprised to discover that this time the rollers created flat flakes. They baked them, and then tried the same thing with corn. From this accidental discovery came the cornflakes that generations have now been eating for breakfast.

Accidents happen; there is nothing predictable and orderly about innovation. Nobel laureate Sir Alan Hodgkin, who discovered how nerve cells transmit electrical impulses between the skin and the brain, commented: ‘I believe that the record of my published papers conveys an impression of directedness and planning which does not at all coincide with the actual sequence of events.’

The same rule applies in business. The mistake that gave US cornflakes keeps repeating itself in the history of disruptive innovation, the kind that transforms markets. Louis Daguerre, for, instance, discovered the technique that gave US photography in the 1830s, when drops of mercury from a shattered thermometer produced a photographic image. The microwave was discovered when Peroy Spender, a scientist with Raytheon, was testing a new vacuum tube and discovered that the sweet in his pocket had melted. The artificial sweetener, saccharin, was the unintentional result of a medical scientist’s work on a chemical treatment for gastric ulcers. While working for the firm 3M, researcher Art Fry had no idea he was taking the first steps towards Post- It Notes when he used bits of adhesive office paper that could be easily lifted off the page to replace the scrap paper bookmarks that kept falling out of his hymn book.

Breakthrough and disruptive innovation are rarely driven by orderly process. Usually they come out of a chaotic, haphazard mess, which is why big companies, full of managers schooled in business programmes designed to eliminate random variation and mistakes, struggle with them. In these sorts of environments, accidents are called failures and are discouraged.

It is no surprise then that research from the late British economist Paul Geroski and London Business School’s Constantinos Markides found that companies that were skilled at innovation were usually not that skilled when it came to commercialisation, and vice versa. Their book, Fast Second, divides businesses into ‘colonists’ and ‘consolidators’. Small and nimble, colonists are adept at creating market niches but are terrible institution builders. Consolidators, with their strong cultures of discipline and cost control, know how to take clever ideas from other firms and turn them into mass­market items. Microsoft is a prime instance of this.

With companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars on research and development, US academics Robert Austin and Lee Devin examined how managers can encourage productive slip-ups. In their article Accident, Intention and Expectation in the Innovation Process, they argue that business processes actually prevent helpful mis-steps from occurring. According to their catalogue of accidents, not all false steps and mishaps are equal. Accidents, they say, come from unlikely mental associations such as memories and vague connections, looking for something and finding it in an unexpected way, looking for one thing and finding something else, and not looking for anything but finding something valuable.

Accident-prone innovation, they say, requires companies to get outside the ‘cone of expectation’. It means throwing together groups from diverse backgrounds, and combining ideas in unpredictable ways, other strategies also include having systems that watch out for accidents and examine them for value, generating them when they do not happen often enough, seizing oil the useful ones, capturing their valuable features, and building on them to add value and give potential for useful accidents.

All this, however, requires thinking that is often counter-intuitive to the way businesses operate. In other words, it is the kind of thinking that goes against the beliefs of most business managers. It runs counter to the notion frequently pushes by consultants that you can ‘harness’ creativity and direct it to line up with intention. ‘The cost of accidents business, people tend to call such efforts failure.’

There are tentative signs that more companies are starting to realise that failure can lead to commercial gain, and that this is part or the risk-talking that underpins innovation. Australia’s largest brewing company, for example, made a bad error when it launched a new beer called Empire Lager, pitched at younger consumers. Having spent a fortune creating a beer with a sweeter taste, designing a great-looking bottle and a television campaign, Foster’s was left with a drink that no-one wanted to buy. The target market was more interested in brands built up by word of mouth.

Instead of wiping the unsuccessful product launch, Fosters used this lesson learned to go on and develop other brands instead. One of them, Pure Blonde, is now ranked as Australia’s fifth-largest beer brand. Unlike Empire Lager, there has been almost no promotion and its sales are generated more by word of mouth.

Other companies are taking similar steps to study their own slip-ups. Intuit, the company behind financial tools such as Quicken, holds regular ‘When Learning Hurts’ sessions. But this sort of transformation is never easy. In a market that focuses on the short-term, convincing employees and shareholders to tolerate failure and not play it safe is a big thing to ask.

Questions 1-5
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write

YES                              if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO                               if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN             if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1. The delay in the process used by the Kellogg brothers affected the final product.
2. Sir Alan Hodgkin is an example of someone whose work proceeded in a logical and systematic way.
3. Daguerre is an exception to the general rule of innovation.
4. The discovery of saccharin occurred by accident during drug research.
5. The company 3M should have supported Art Fry by funding his idea of Post-It Notes.

Questions 6-9
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-H, below. Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.

6. The usual business environment
7. Geroki and Markides’s book
8. Microsoft is an example of a company which
9. The origin of useful accidents

A can be found in unusual thoughts and chance events.
B can be taught in business schools.
C has made a success from someone else’s invention.
D is designed to nurture differences.
E is unlikely to lead to creative innovation
F says that all mistakes are the same.
G shows that businesses are good at either inventing of selling.
H suggests ways of increasing the number of mistakes

Questions 10-14
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

10. How do Austin and Devin advise companies to get out of the ‘cone of expectation’?
A by decreasing the number of company systems
B by forming teams of different types of people
C by hiring new and creative people
D by holding regular brainstorming meetings

11. In recommending ‘counter-intuitive’ thinking, what do Austin and Devin imply?
A that failing at business is bad for staff morale
B that innovation cannot be planned for
C that most businesses should be devoted to avoiding mistakes
D that the cost of mistakes is an important consideration

12. The writer describes the Empire Lager disaster in order to show that
A success can come out of a business failure
B the majority of companies now value risk-talking.
C TV advertising works better on older people
D young beer drinkers do not like a sweet taste

13. Pure Blonde has been more successful than Empire Lager because
A digital media other than TV were used.
B it was advertised under a different brand name.
C it was launched with very little advertising.
D the advertising budget was larger

14. The writer concludes that creating a culture that learns from mistakes
A brings short-term financial gains.
B can be very difficult for some companies.
C holds no risk for workers.
D is a popular move with shareholders.

Olive Oil Production

Olive oil has been one of the staples of the Mediterranean diet for thousands of years and its popularity is growing rapidly in other parts of the world. It is one of the most versatile oils for cooking and it enhances the taste of many foods. Olive oil is the only type of vegetable/fruit oil that can be obtained from just pressing. Most other types of popular oils (corn, canola, etc.) must be processed in other ways to obtain the oil. Another important bonus is that olive oil has proven health benefits. Three basic grades of olive oil are most often available to the consumer: extra Virgin, Virgin and Olive Oil. In addition to the basic grades, olive oil differs from one country or region to another because of the types of olives that are grown, the harvesting methods, the time of the harvest, and the pressing techniques. These factors all contribute to the individual characteristics of the olive oil.

Olive trees must be properly cared for in order to achieve good economic yields. Care includes regular irrigation, pruning, fertilizing, and killing pests. Olives will survive on very poor sites with shallow soils but will grow very slowly and yield poorly. Deep soils tend to produce excessively vigorous trees, also with lower yields. The ideal site for olive oil production is a clay loam soil with good internal and surface drainage. Irrigation is necessary to produce heavy crops and avoid alternate bearing. The site must be free of hard winter frosts because wood damage will occur at temperatures below 15°F and a lengthy spell of freezing weather can ruin any chances for a decent crop. The growing season also must be warm enough so fruits mature before even light fall frosts (usually by early November) because of potential damage to the fruit and oil quality. Fortunately, olive trees are very hardy in hot summer temperatures and they are drought tolerant.

The best olive oils hold a certificate by an independent organization that authenticates the stone ground and cold pressed extraction process. In this process, olives are first harvested by hand at the proper stage of ripeness and maturity. Experts feel that hand harvesting, as opposed to mechanical harvesting, eliminates bruising of the fruit which causes tartness and oil acidity. The olives harvested are transferred daily to the mill. This is very important because this daily transfer minimizes the time spent between picking and pressing. Some extra virgin olive oil producers are known to transfer the olives by multi-ton trucks over long distances that expose the fragile fruit to crushing weight and the hot sun, which causes the olives to begin oxidizing and thus becoming acidic. In addition to the time lapse between harvesting and pressing, olive oil must be obtained using mechanical processes only to be considered virgin or extra virgin. If heat and/or chemical processes are used to produce the olive oil or if the time lapse is too long, it cannot be called virgin or extra virgin.

Once at the mill, the leaves are sucked away with air fans and the olives are washed with circulating potable water to remove all impurities. The first step of extraction is mashing the olives to create a paste. The oil, comprising 20% to 30% of the olive, is nestled in pockets within the fruit’s cells. The olives are crushed in a mill with two granite millstones rolling within a metal basin. Crushing and mixing the olives releases the oil from the cells of the olive without heating the paste. A side shutter on the mill’s basin allows the mixed olive paste to be discharged and applied to round mats. The mats are stacked and placed under the head of a hydraulic press frame that applies downward pressure and extracts the oil. The first pressing yields the superior quality oil, and the second and third pressings produce inferior quality oil. Some single estate producers collect the oil that results from just the initial crushing while many other producers use an additional step to extract more oil. The olive pulp is placed on mats constructed with hemp or polypropylene that are stacked and then pressed to squeeze the pulp. Oil and water filter through the mats to a collection tank below. The water and oil are then separated in a centrifuge.

Regardless of the method used for the first pressing, the temperature of the oil during production is extremely important in order to maintain the distinct characteristics of the oil. If the temperature of the oil climbs above 86ºF, it will be damaged and cannot be considered cold-pressed.

The first pressing oil contains the most “polyphenols”, substances that have been found to be powerful antioxidants capable of protecting against certain types of disease. The polyphenols are not the only substances in the olive with health-promoting effects, but they are quite unique when compared to other commonly used culinary oils such as sunflower and soy. It is these polyphenols that really set extra virgin olive oils apart from any other oil and any other form of olive oil. The more refined the olive oil is, the smaller the quantity of polyphenols.

The result of the producers’ efforts is a cold pressed extra virgin olive oil with high quality standards and organoleptic characteristics, which give the oil its health-protective and aromatic properties.

Questions 15-18
Choose the correct letters A, B, C or D.

15. According to the text, which of the following does NOT affect the individual features of olive oils from different regions?
A Olive varieties
B Access to water
C The date of the picking
D Picking techniques

16. According to the text, which of the following is NOT part of olive tree management?
A Feeding
B Careful watering
C Replanting
D Killing parasites

17. According to the text, what is the main danger of frost?
A The olives produced will be small in size
B It kills the olive trees
C The fruit won’t mature
D Not enough fruit will be produced

18. According to the text, which of the following does NOT affect the “extra virgin” olive oil certification?
A Using water in the extraction process
B Which pressing the oil is taken from
C The time gap between tree and bottle
D The temperature of the extraction process

Questions 19-21
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 32-34 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                        if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                      if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN           if there is no information on this

19. Olive trees don’t need a regular supply of water to survive.
20. No other cooking oils apart from olive oil contain polyphenols.
21. Damage to olives before they are pressed can affect the taste of the oil.

Questions 22-27
Complete the flow chart below. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Passage for each answer.

The Olive Oil Production Process

Stage 1: Olive trees should be planted in (22) ……………. earth with good drainage in a year round warm climate.

Stage 2: Trees must be carefully irrigated and fertilized and (23) ……………….. must be controlled if you want to get (24) …………….. that will make you profit.

Stage 3: Olives are crushed to form a (25) ……………..

Stage 4: The paste is put on round mats inside a (26) ……………….. Water is blended in with the paste as it’s pressed and a water/oil mixture escapes.

Stage 5: Water is removed by a (27) ……………….. process. The Oil is then bottled and distributed.

UNDOING OUR EMOTIONS

A. Three generations ago, 180 young women wrote essays describing why they wanted to join a convent (a religious community of nuns). Years later, a team of psychological researchers came across these autobiographies in the convent’s archives. The researchers were seeking material to confirm earlier studies hinting at a link between having a good vocabulary in youth and a low risk of Alzheimer’s disease in old age. What they found was even more amazing. The researchers found that, although the young women were in their early twenties when they wrote their essays, the emotions expressed in these writings were predictive of how long they would live: those with upbeat autobiographies lived more than ten years longer than those whose language was more neutral. Deborah Danner, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky who spearheaded the study, noted that the results were particularly striking because all members of the convent lived similar lifestyles, eliminating many variables that normally make it difficult to interpret longevity studies. It was a phenomenal finding’, she says. ‘A researcher gets a finding like that maybe once in a lifetime.’ However, she points out that no one has been able to determine why positive emotions might have such life-extending effects.

B. Barbara Fredrickson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, believes that part of the answer is the ‘undo effect’. According to this theory, positive emotions help you live longer by shutting down the effects of negative ones. Fredrickson’s theory begins with the observation that negative emotions, like fear and stress, enhance our flight-or-fight response to very real threats. However, even when the emergency is gone, negative emotions produce lingering effects. Brooks Gump, a stress researcher at the State University of New York, explains that one of these effects is excessive cardiovascular reactivity. Behaviourally, Gump says, this reactivity is related to excessive vigilance: the state of being constantly on guard for potential dangers. Not only is it physically draining to live in a perpetual state of high vigilance, but high cardiovascular reactivity could be linked to increased chances of a heart attack.

C. Fredrickson believes positive emotions work their magic by producing a rapid unwinding of pent-up tension, restoring the system to normal. People who quickly bounce back from stress often speed the process by harnessing such emotions as amusement, interest, excitement, and happiness, she says. To test her theory, Fredrickson told a group of student volunteers that they had only a few minutes to prepare a speech that would be critiqued by experts. After letting the students get nervous about that, Fredrickson then told them they wouldn’t actually have to deliver their speeches. She monitored heart rates and blood pressure. Not surprisingly, all students got nervous about their speeches, but those who viewed the experiment with good-humored excitement saw their heart rates return to normal much more quickly than those who were angry about being fooled. In a second experiment, Fredrickson reported that even those who normally were slow to bounce back could be coached to recover more quickly by being told to view the experiment as a challenge, rather than a threat.

D. Fredrickson believes that positive emotions make people more flexible and creative. Negative emotions, she says, give a heightened sense of detail that makes us hypersensitive to minute clues related to the source of a threat. But that also produces ‘tunnel vision’ in which we ignore anything unrelated to the danger. Fredrickson speculated that just as positive emotions can undo the cardiovascular effects of negative ones, they may also reverse the attention-narrowing effects of negative feelings: broadening our perspectives.

E. To verify her theory, Fredrickson showed a group of students some film clips- some saw frightening clips, some saw humorous ones or peaceful ones. They then did a matching test in which they were shown a simple drawing and asked which of two other drawings it most resembled. The drawings were designed so that people would tend to give one answer if they focused on details, and another answer if they focused on the big picture. The results confirmed Fredrickson’s suspicion that positive emotions affect our perceptions. Students who had seen the humorous or peaceful clips were more likely to match objects according to broad impressions.

F. This fits with the role that positive emotions might have played in early human tribes, Fredrickson says. Negative emotions provided focus, which was important for surviving in life-or-death situations, but the ability to feel positive emotions was of long-term value because it opened the mind to new ideas. Humour is a good example of this. She says: ‘The emotions are transient, but the resources are durable. If you building a friendship through being playful, that friendship is a lasting resource.’ So while the good feelings may pass, the friendship remains. On an individual level, Fredrickson’s theory also says that taking time to do things that make you feel happy isn’t simply self-indulgent. Not only are these emotions good for the individual, but they are also good for society.

G. Other researchers are intrigued by Fredrickson’s findings. Susan Folkman, of the University of California, has spent two decades studying how people cope with long-term stresses such as bereavement, or caring for a chronically ill child. Contrary to what one might expect, she says, these people frequently experience positive emotions. ‘These emotions aren’t there by accident’, she adds. ‘Mother Nature doesn’t work that way, I think that they give a person time out from the intense stress to restore their resources and keep going. This is very consistent with Fredrickson’s work.’

Questions 28-33
Reading Passage has seven sections, A-G. Which section contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

28. a conclusion that it is possible to train people to deal with anxiety conclusive evidence that lifespan can be influenced by emotions.
29. an explanation of the way negative emotions affect what people concentrate on
30. an experiment that showed how a positive outlook can help people adjust to
31. a stressful situation faster than others
32. a discovery beyond what researchers were investigating
33. an experiment where the nature of a material seen by participants affected the way they performed a task

Questions 34-37
Look at the following statements (Questions 7-10) and the list of researchers below. Match each statement with the correct researcher, A-D. Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

List of Researchers
A Deborah Danner
B Barbara Fredrickson
C Brooks Gump
D Susan Folkman

34. People whose daily lives are stressful often have surprisingly positive emotions.
35. The body’s reaction to a crisis may trigger a life-threatening event.
36. It is unusual to have a study group whose circumstances were very alike.
37. The reasons for a link between positive emotions and a longer life have not been established.

Questions 38-40
Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

In early tribes, negative emotions gave humans the (38) ……………… that they needed to deal with emergencies. Fredrickson believes that a passing positive emotion can lead to an enduring asset such as a (39) ……………….. which is useful in times to come. Fredrickson also believes that both individuals and (40) ……………….. benefit from positive emotions.

Twin Study: Two of a kind

A. THE scientific study of twins goes back to the late 19th century, when Francis Galton, an early geneticist, realised that they came in two varieties: identical twins born from one egg and non-identical twins that had come from two. That insight turned out to be key, although it was not until 1924 that it was used to formulate what is known as the twin rule of pathology, and twin studies really got going.

B The twin rule of pathology states that any heritable disease will be more concordant (that is, more likely to be jointly present or absent) in identical twins than in non-identical twins – and, in turn, will be more concordant in non-identical twins than in non-siblings. Early work, for example, showed that the statistical correlation of skin-mole counts between identical twins was 0.4, while non-identical twins had a correlation of only 0.2. (A score of 1.0 implies a perfect correlation, while a score of zero implies no correlation.) This result suggests that moles are heritable, but it also implies that there is an environmental component to the development of moles, otherwise, the correlation in identical twins would be close to 1.0.

C Twin research has shown that whether or not someone takes up smoking is determined mainly by environmental factors, but once he does so, how much he smokes is largely down to his genes. And while a person’s religion is clearly a cultural attribute, there is a strong genetic component to religious fundamentalism. Twin studies are also unraveling the heritability of various aspects of human personality. Traits from neuroticism and anxiety to thrill – and novelty-seeking all have large genetic components. Parenting matters, but it does not determine personality in the way that some had thought.

D More importantly, perhaps, twin studies are helping the understanding of diseases such as cancer, asthma, osteoporosis, arthritis and immune disorders. And twins can be used, within ethical, for medical experiments. A study that administered vitamin C to one twin and a placebo to the other found that it had no effect on the common cold. The lesson from all of today’s twin studies is that most human traits are at least partially influenced by genes. However, for the most part, the age-old dichotomy between nature and nurture is not very useful. Many genetic programs are open to input from the environment, and genes are frequently switched on or off by environmental signals. It is also possible that genes themselves influence their environment. Some humans have an innate preference for participation in sports. Others are drawn to novelty. Might people also be drawn to certain kinds of friends and types of experience? In this way, a person’s genes might shape the environment they act in as much as the environment shapes the actions of the genes.

E In the past, such research has been controversial. Josef Mengele, a Nazi doctor working at the Auschwitz extermination camp during the second world war, was fascinated by twins. He sought them out among arrivals at the camp and preserved them from the gas-chambers for a series of brutal experiments. After the war, Cyril Burt, a British psychologist who worked on the heredity of intelligence, tainted twin research with results that appear, in retrospect, to have been rather too good. Some of his data on identical twins who had been reared apart were probably faked. In any case, the prevailing ideology in the social sciences after the war was Marxist and disliked suggestions that differences in human potential might have underlying genetic causes. Twin studies were thus viewed with suspicion.

F The ideological pendulum has swung back; however, as the human genome project and its aftermath have turned genes for abstract concepts to real pieces of DNA. The role of genes in sensitive areas such as intelligence is acknowledged by all but a few die-hards. The interesting questions now concern how nature and nurture interact to produce particular bits of biology, rather than which of the two is more important. Twin studies, which are a good way to ask these questions, are back in fashion, and many twins are enthusiastic participants in this research.

G Research at the Twinsburg festival began in a small way, with a single stand in 1979. Gradually, news spread and more scientists began turning up. This year, half a dozen groups of researchers were lodged in a specially pitched research tent. In one corner of this tent, Paul Breslin, who works at the Monell Institute in Philadelphia, watched over several tables where twins sat sipping clear liquids from cups and making notes. It was the team’s third year at Twinsburg. Dr Breslin and his colleagues want to find out how genes influence human perception, particularly the senses of smell and taste and those (warmth, cold, pain, tingle, itch and so on) that result from stimulation of the skin. Perception is an example of something that is probably influenced by both genes and experience. Even before birth, people are exposed to flavours such as chocolate, garlic, mint and vanilla that pass intact into the bloodstream, and thus to the fetus. Though it is not yet clear whether such pre-natal exposure shapes taste-perception, there is evidence that it shapes preferences for foods encountered later in life.

H However, there are clearly genetic influences at work, as well – for example in the ability to taste quinine. Some people experience this as intensely bitter, even when it is present at very low levels. Others, whose genetic endowment is different, are less bothered by it. Twin studies make this extremely clear. Within a pair of identical twins, either both, or neither, will find quinine hard to swallow. Non-identical twins will agree less frequently.

I On the other side of the tent Dennis Drayna, from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, in Maryland, was studying hearing. He wants to know what happens to sounds after they reach the ear. It is not clear, he says, whether the sound is processed into sensation mostly in the ear or in the brain. Dr Drayna has already been involved in a twin study which revealed that the perception of musical pitch is highly heritable. At Twinsburg, he is playing different words, or parts of words, into the left and right ears of his twinned volunteers. The composite of the two sounds that an individual reports hearing depends on how he processes this diverse information and that, Dr Drayna believes, may well be influenced by genetics.

J Elsewhere in the marquee, Peter Miraldi, of Kent State University in Ohio, was trying to find out whether genes affect an individual’s motivation to communicate with others. A number of twin studies have shown that personality and sociability are heritable, so he thinks this is fertile ground. And next to Mr Miraldi was a team of dermatologists from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. They are looking at the development of skin disease and male-pattern baldness. The goal of the latter piece of research is to find the genes responsible for making men’s hair fall out.

K The busiest part of the tent, however, was the queue for forensic-science research into fingerprints. The origins of this study are shrouded in mystery. For many months, the festival’s organisers have been convinced that the Secret Service – the American government agency responsible for, among other things, the safety of the president – is behind it. When The Economist contacted the Secret Service for more information, we were referred to Steve Nash, who is chairman of the International Association for Identification (IAI) and is also a detective in the scientific investigations section of the Marin Country Sheriff’s Office in California. The IAI, based in Minnesota, is an organisation of forensic scientists from around the world. Among other things, it publishes the Journal of Forensic Identification.

Questions 1-5
The Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-K. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-K, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. Mentioned research conducted in Ohio
2. Medical contribution to the researches for twins.
3. Research situation under life-threatening conditions
4. Data of similarities of identical twins
5. Reasons that make one study unconvincing

Questions 6-7
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage. Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

The first one that conducted research on twins is called (6) …………….. He separated twins into two categories: non-identical and identical twins. The twin research was used in a medical application in as early as the year of (7) ………………….

Questions 8-10
Choose the correct letters in the following options. Write your answers in boxes 8-10 on your answer sheet.

Please choose THREE research fields that had been carried out in Ohio, Maryland and Twinburgh?

A Sense
B Cancer
C Be allergic to vitamin D
D Mole heredity
E Sound
F Boldness of men

Questions 11-13
Choose the correct letters in the following options. Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

Please choose THREE results that had been verified in this passage.

A Non-identical twins come from different eggs
B Genetic relation between identical twins is closer than non-identical ones
C Vitamin C has an evident effect on cold
D Genetic influence of smoking is superior to the environment’s
E If a pregnant woman eats too much sweet would lead to skin disease
F Hair loss has been found to be connected with skin problem

Facial Expression

A A facial expression is one or more motions or positions of the muscles in the skin. These movements convey the emotional state of the individual to observers. Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information among aliens, but also occur in most other mammals and some other animal species. Facial expressions and their significance in the perceiver can, to some extent, vary between cultures with evidence from descriptions in the works of Charles Darwin.

B Humans can adopt a facial expression to read as a voluntary action. However, because expressions are closely tied to emotion, they are more often involuntary. It can be nearly impossible to avoid expressions for certain emotions, even when it would be strongly desirable to do so; a person who is trying to avoid insulting an individual he or she finds highly unattractive might, nevertheless, show a brief expression of disgust before being able to reassume a neutral expression. Microexpressions are one example of this phenomenon. The close link between emotion and expression can also work in the order direction; it has been observed that voluntarily assuming an expression can actually cause the associated emotion.

C Some expressions can be accurately interpreted even between members of different species – anger and extreme contentment being the primary examples. Others, however, are difficult to interpret even in familiar individuals. For instance, disgust and fear can be tough to tell apart. Because faces have only a limited range of movement, expressions rely upon fairly minuscule differences in the proportion and relative position of facial features, and reading them requires considerable sensitivity to the same. Some faces are often falsely read as expressing some emotion, even when they are neutral because their proportions naturally resemble those another face would temporarily assume when emoting.

D Also, a person’s eyes reveal much about hos they are feeling, or what they are thinking. Blink rate can reveal how nervous or at ease a person maybe. Research by Boston College professor Joe Tecce suggests that stress levels are revealed by blink rates. He supports his data with statistics on the relation between the blink rates of presidential candidates and their success in their races. Tecce claims that the faster blinker in the presidential debates has lost every election since 1980. Though Tecce’s data is interesting, it is important to recognize that non-verbal communication is multi-channelled, and focusing on only one aspect is reckless. Nervousness can also be measured by examining each candidates’ perspiration, eye contact and stiffness.

E As Charles Darwin noted in his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals: the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements. Still, up to the mid-20th century, most anthropologists believed that facial expressions were entirely learned and could, therefore, differ among cultures. Studies conducted in the 1960s by Paul Ekman eventually supported Darwin’s belief to a large degree.

F Ekman’s work on facial expressions had its starting point in the work of psychologist Silvan Tomkins. Ekman showed that contrary to the belief of some anthropologists including Margaret Mead, facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined, but universal across human cultures. The South Fore people of New Guinea were chosen as subjects for one such survey. The study consisted of 189 adults and 130 children from among a very isolated population, as well as twenty-three members of the culture who lived a less isolated lifestyle as a control group. Participants were told a story that described one particular emotion; they were then shown three pictures (two for children) of facial expressions and asked to match the picture which expressed the story’s emotion.

G While the isolated South Fore people could identify emotions with the same accuracy as the non-isolated control group, problems associated with the study include the fact that both fear and surprise were constantly misidentified. The study concluded that certain facial expressions correspond to particular emotions and can not be covered, regardless of cultural background, and regardless of whether or not the culture has been isolated or exposed to the mainstream.

H Expressions Ekman found to be universally included those indicating anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise (not that none of these emotions has a definitive social component, such as shame, pride, or schadenfreude). Findings on contempt (which is social) are less clear, though there is at least some preliminary evidence that this emotion and its expression are universally recognized. This may suggest that the facial expressions are largely related to the mind and each part on the face can express specific emotion.

Questions 14-18
Complete the Summary paragraph below. In boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet, write the correct answer with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.

The result of Ekman’s study demonstrates that fear and surprise are persistently (14) ……………. and made a conclusion that some facial expressions have something to do with certain (15) ……………….. Which is impossible covered, despite of (16) …………………. and whether the culture has been (17) ………………….. or (18) ………………… to the mainstream.

Questions 19-24
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-H. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 19-24 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

19. the difficulty identifying the actual meaning of facial expressions
20. the importance of culture on facial expressions is initially described
21. collected data for the research on the relation between blink and the success in elections
22. the features on the sociality of several facial expressions
23. an indicator to reflect one’s extent of nervousness
24. the relation between emotion and facial expressions

Questions 25-26
Choose two letters from the A-E. Write your answers in boxes 25-26 on your answer sheet

Which TWO of the following statements are true according to Ekman’s theory?

A No evidence shows animals have their own facial expressions
B The potential relationship between facial expression and state of mind exists
C Facial expression are concerning different cultures
D Different areas on face conveys a certain state of mind
E Mind controls men’s facial expressions more obvious than women’s

The Can – A Brief History Lesson

A. The story of the can begins in 1795 when Nicholas Appert, a Parisian, had an idea: why not pack food in bottles like wine? Fifteen years later, after researching and testing his idea, he published his theory: if food is sufficiently heated and sealed in an airtight container, it will not spoil. In 1810 Peter Durand, an Englishman, wanted to surpass Appert’s invention, so he elected to try tin instead of glass. Like glass, tin could be sealed airtight but tin was not breakable and was much easier to handle. Durand himself did no canning, but two other Englishmen, Bryan Donkin and John Hall, used Durand’s patent. After experimenting for more than a year, they set up a commercial canning factory and by 1813 they were sending tins of food to British army and navy authorities for trial.

B. Perhaps the greatest encouragement to the newborn canning industry was the explosion in the number of new colonial territories. As people and goods were being transported to all parts of the world, the can industry itself was growing in new territories. Englishmen who emigrated to America brought their newfound knowledge with them. One of these was Thomas Kensett, who might fairly be called the father of the can manufacturing industry in the United States. In 1812 he set up a small plant on the New York waterfront to can the first hermetically sealed products in the United States.

C. Just before the Civil War, a technical advance by canners enabled them to speed up production. Adding calcium chloride to the water in which cans were cooked raised the water temperature, speeding up the canning process. Also for almost 100 years, tin cans were made by artisans by hand. It was a laborious process, requiring considerable skill and muscle. As the industrial revolution took hold in the United States, the demand for cans increased and machines began to replace the artisans’ handiwork. A good artisan could make only 10 cans a day. True production progress in can-making began in 1922, when American engineers perfected the body-making process. New methods soon increased production of cans to as many as 250 a minute.

D. As early as 1940, can manufacturers began to explore the possibility of adapting cans to package carbonated soft drinks. The can had to be strengthened to accommodate higher internal can pressures created by carbonation (especially during warm summer months), which meant increasing the thickness of the metal used in the can ends. Another concern for the new beverage can was its shelf life. Even small amounts of dissolved tin or iron from the can could impair the drinking quality of drinks. Also the food acids, including carbonic, citric and phosphoric, in soft drinks presented a risk for the rapid corrosion of exposed tin and iron in the can. At this point the can was upgraded by improving the organic coatings used to line the inside. The can manufacturers then embarked on a program of material and cost savings by reducing both the amount of steel and the amount of coating used in can making. These efforts were in part inspired by a new competitor – aluminum.

E. Beverage cans made from aluminum were first introduced in 1965. This was an exciting innovation for the packaging industry because the aluminum can was made with only two pieces – a body and an end. This made production easier. Some of the reasons for the aluminum can’s acceptance were its ductility, its support of carbonation pressure, its lighter weight and the fact that aluminum does not rust. Both steel and aluminum cans used an easy-open end tab but the aluminum tab was much easier to make. Perhaps the most critical element in the aluminum can’s market success was its recycling value. Aluminum can recycling excelled economically in the competition with steel because of the efficiencies aluminum cans realized in making new cans from recycled materials compared with 100 percent virgin aluminum. Steel did not realize similar economies in the recycling process.

F. Prior to 1970, can makers, customers and consumers alike were unaware of the impact that the mining and manufacturing of steel or aluminum had on the environment. The concept of natural resource preservation was not an issue of great importance and the low growth of population during these early years further de-emphasized concerns for resource depletion. Both industries, however, came to realize the importance of reducing their impact on the environment in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a new environmentally conscious generation emerged. Manufacturers began to recognize the economics of recycling, namely lower manufacturing costs from using less material and less energy. By the 1980s and 1990s, recycling had become a way of life. Aluminum can recycling has become a billion-dollar business and one of the world’s most successful environmental enterprises. Over the years, the aluminum can has come to be known as America’s most recyclable package, with over 60 percent of cans being recycled annually.

G. Advances in can manufacturing technology have also brought us lighter aluminum cans. In 1972, one pound of aluminum yielded only 21.75 cans. Today, by using less material to make each can, one pound of aluminum makes approximately 32 cans – a 47 percent improvement. Just the lightening of can ends makes a huge difference. When you multiply the savings by the 100 billion cans that are made each year, the weight and savings are phenomenal – over 200 million pounds of aluminum!

Questions 27-32
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A – G. From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B – G. Write the appropriate number (i – xi) in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet. NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.

List of headings
i The Invention of the Aluminium Can
ii Technological Breakthroughs
iii Canning and the Beer Industry
iv The Invention
v Canning and War
vi Further Manufacturing Advances
vii Problems with Spoiled Contents
viii Expansion of the Industry
ix Today’s Uses for Canning
x Drinks Canning
xi Cans and The Environment

27. Paragraph B
28. Paragraph C
29. Paragraph D
30. Paragraph E
31. Paragraph F
32. Paragraph G

Questions 33-38
The first list (questions 33-38) is a list of dates of events in Reading Passage. The second list (A – G) is a list of the events. Match the year with the correct event in the history of the can.

List of events
A Mass production techniques revolutionized the canning process.
B Tinned food was tested by military authorities.
C Today’s canning material was first introduced.
D The first American canning factory was opened.
E Tin was used in the canning process for the first time.
F The canning of fizzy drinks began.
G The first business canning plant was opened.

List of dates

33. 1922
34. 1812
35. 1813
36. 1965
37. 1813
38. 1940

Questions 39-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                    if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                  if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN       if there is no information on this

39. Recycling has helped reduce manufacturing overheads.
40. Aluminium can production costs have fallen by nearly 50% since 1972.

Biology of Bitterness

A. There is a reason why grapefruit juice is served in little glasses: most people don’t want to drink more than a few ounces at a time. aringin, a natural chemical compound found in grapefruit, tastes bitter. Some people like that bitterness in small doses and believe it enhances the general flavor, but others would rather avoid it altogether. So juice packagers often select grapefruit with low naringin though the compound has antioxidant properties that some nutritionists contend may help prevent cancer and arteriosclerosis.

B. It is possible, however, to get the goodness of grapefruit juice without the bitter taste. I found that out by participating in a test conducted at the Linguagen Corporation, a biotechnology company in Cranbury, New Jersey. Sets of two miniature white paper cups, labeled 304and 305, were placed before five people seated around a conference table. Each of us drank from one cup and then the other, cleansing our palates between tastes with water and a soda cracker. Even the smallest sip of 304 had grapefruit ‘s unmistakable bitter bite. But 305 was smoother; there was the sour taste of citrus but none of the bitterness of naringin. This juice had been treated with adenosine monophosphate, or AMP, a compound that blocks the bitterness in foods without making them less nutritious.

C. Taste research is a booming business these days, with scientists delving into all five basics-sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and umami, the savory taste of protein. Bitterness is of special interest to industry because of its untapped potential in food. There are thousands of bitter -tasting compounds in nature. They defend plants by warning animals away and protect animals by letting them know when a plant may be poisonous. But the system isn’t foolproof. Grapefruit and cruciferous vegetable like Brussels sprouts and kale are nutritious despite-and sometimes because of-their bitter-tasting components. Over time, many people have learned to love them, at least in small doses. “Humans are the only species that enjoys bitter taste,” says Charles Zuker, a neuroscientist at the University of California School of Medicine at San Diego. “Every other species is averse to bitter because it means bad news. But we have learned to enjoy it. We drink coffee, which is bitter, and quinine [in tonic water] too. We enjoy having that spice in our lives.” Because bitterness can be pleasing in small quantities but repellent when intense, bitter blockers like AMP could make a whole range of foods, drinks, and medicines more palatable-and therefore more profitable.

D. People have varying capacities for tasting bitterness, and the differences appear to be genetic. About 75 percent of people are sensitive to the taste of the bitter compounds phenylthiocarbamide and 6-n-propylthiouracil. and 25 percent are insensitive. Those who are sensitive to phenylthiocarbamide seem to be less likely than others to eat cruciferous vegetables, according to Stephen Wooding, a geneticist at the University of Utah. Some people, known as supertasters, are especially sensitive to 6-n-propylthiouraci because they have an unusually high number of taste buds. Supertasters tend to shun all kinds of bitter-tasting things, including vegetable, coffee, and dark chocolate. Perhaps as a result, they tend to be thin. They’re also less fond of alcoholic drinks, which are often slightly bitter. Dewar’s scotch, for instance, tastes somewhat sweet to most people. ” But a supertaster tastes no sweetness at all, only bitterness,” says Valerie Duffy, an associate professor of dietetics at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

E. In one recent study, Duffy found that supertasters consume alcoholic beverages, on average, only two to three times a week, compared with five or six times for the average nontasters. Each taste bud, which looks like an onion, consists of 50 to 100 elongated cells running from the top of the bud to the bottom. At the top is a little clump of receptors that capture the taste molecules, known as tastants, in food and drink. The receptors function much like those for sight and smell. Once a bitter signal has been received, it is relayed via proteins known as G proteins. The G protein involved in the perception of bitterness, sweetness, and umami was identified in the early 1990s by Linguagen’s founder, Robert Margolskee, at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Known as gustducin, the protein triggers a cascade of chemical reactions that lead to changes in ion concentrations within the cell. Ultimately, this delivers a signal to the brain that registers as bitter. “The signaling system is like a bucket brigade,” Margolskee says. “It goes from the G protein to other proteins.”

F. In 2000 Zuker and others found some 30 different kinds of genes that code for bitter-taste receptors. “We knew the number would have to be large because there is such a large universe of bitter tastants,” Zuker says. Yet no matter which tastant enters the mouth or which receptor it attaches to, bitter always tastes the same to us. The only variation derives from its intensity and the ways in which it can be flavored by the sense of smell. “Taste cells are like a light switch,” Zuker says. “They are either on or off.”

G. Once they figured put the taste mechanism, scientists began to think of ways to interfere with it. They tried AMP, an organic compound found in breast milk and other substances, which is created as cells break down food. Amp has no bitterness of its own, but when put it in foods, Margolskee and his colleagues discovered, it attaches to bitter-taste receptors. As effective as it is, AMP may not be able to dampen every type pf bitter taste, because it probably doesn’t attach to all 30 bitter-taste receptors. So Linguagen has scaled up the hunt for other bitter blockers with a technology called high-throughput screening. Researchers start by coaxing cells in culture to activate bitter-taste receptors. Then candidate substances, culled from chemical compound libraries, are dropped onto the receptors, and scientists look for evidence of a reaction.

H. Tin time, some taste researchers believe, compounds like AMP will help make processed foods less unhealthy. Consider, for example, that a single cup of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup contains 850 milligrams of sodium chloride, or table salt-more than a third of the recommended daily allowance. The salt masks the bitterness created by the high temperatures used in the canning process, which cause sugars and amino acids to react. Part of the salt could be replaced by another salt, potassium chloride, which tends to be scarce in some people’s diets. Potassium chloride has a bitter aftertaste, but that could be eliminated with a dose of AMP. Bitter blockers could also be used in place of cherry or grape flavoring to take the harshness out of children’s cough syrup, and they could dampen the bitterness of antihistamines, antibiotics, certain HIV drugs, and other medications.

I. A number of foodmakers have already begun to experiment with AMP in their products, and other bitter blockers are being developed by rival firms such as Senomyx in La Jolla, California. In a few years, perhaps, after food companies have taken the bitterness from canned soup and TV dinners, they can set their sights on something more useful: a bitter blocker in a bottle that any of us can sprinkle on our brussels sprouts or stir into our grapefruit juice.

Questions 1-8
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-I. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-I, in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

1. Experiment on bitterness conducted
2. Look into the future application
3. Bitterness means different information for human and animals
4. Spread process of bitterness inside of body
5. How AMP blocks bitterness
6. Some bitterness blocker may help lower unhealthy impact
7. Bitterness introduced from a fruit
8. Genetic feature determines sensitivity

Question 9-12
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

The reason why grapefruit tastes bitter is because a substance called (9) …………….. contained in it. However, bitterness plays a significant role for plants. It gives a signal that certain plant is (10) …………….. For human beings, different person carries various genetic abilities of tasting bitterness. According to a scientist at the University of Utah, (11) ……………… have exceptionally plenty of (12) ………………… which allows them to perceive bitter compounds.

Questions 13-14
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

13. What is the main feature of AMP according to this passage?
A offset bitter flavour in food
B only exist in 304 cup
C tastes like citrus
D chemical reaction when meets biscuit

14. What is the main function of G protein?
A collecting taste molecule
B identifying different flavors elements
C resolving large molecules
D transmitting bitter signals to the brain

The Dinosaurs Footprints and Extinction

A EVERYBODY knows that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid. Something big hit the earth 65 million years ago and, when the dust had fallen, so had the great reptiles. There is thus a nice if ironic, symmetry in the idea that a similar impact brought about the dinosaurs’ rise. That is the thesis proposed by Paul Olsen, of Columbia University, and his colleagues in this week’s Science.

B Dinosaurs first appeared in the fossil record 230m years ago, during the Triassic period. But they were mostly small, and they shared the earth with lots of other sorts of reptile. It was in the subsequent Jurassic, which began 202 million years ago, that they overran the planet and turned into the monsters depicted in the book and movie “Jurassic Park”. (Actually, though, the dinosaurs that appeared on screen were from the still more recent Cretaceous period.) Dr Olsen and his colleagues are not the first to suggest that the dinosaurs inherited the earth as the result of an asteroid strike. But they are the first to show that the takeover did, indeed, happen in a geological eyeblink.

C Dinosaur skeletons are rare. Dinosaur footprints are, however, surprisingly abundant. And the sizes of the prints are as good an indication of the sizes of the beasts as are the skeletons themselves. Dr Olsen and his colleagues, therefore, concentrated on prints, not bones.

D The prints in question were made in eastern North America, a part of the world the full of rift valleys to those in East Africa today. Like the modern African rift valleys, the Triassic/Jurassic American ones contained lakes, and these lakes grew and shrank at regular intervals because of climatic changes caused by periodic shifts in the earth’s orbit. (A similar phenomenon is responsible for modern ice ages.) That regularity, combined with reversals in the earth’s magnetic field, which are detectable in the tiny fields of certain magnetic minerals, means that rocks from this place and period can be dated to within a few thousand years. As a bonus, squishy lake-edge sediments are just the things for recording the tracks of passing animals. By dividing the labour between themselves, the ten authors of the paper were able to study such tracks at 80 sites.

E The researchers looked at 18 so-called ichnotaxa. These are recognizable types of the footprint that cannot be matched precisely with the species of animal that left them. But they can be matched with a general sort of animal, and thus act as an indicator of the fate of that group, even when there are no bones to tell the story. Five of the ichnotaxa disappear before the end of the Triassic, and four march confidently across the boundary into the Jurassic. Six, however, vanish at the boundary, or only just splutter across it; and there appear from nowhere, almost as soon as the Jurassic begins.

F That boundary itself is suggestive. The first geological indication of the impact that killed the dinosaurs was an unusually high level of iridium in rocks at the end of the Cretaceous when the beasts disappear from the fossil record. Iridium is normally rare at the earth’s surface, but it is more abundant in meteorites. When people began to believe the impact theory, they started looking for other Cretaceous-and anomalies. One that turned up was a surprising abundance of fern spores in rocks just above the boundary layer – a phenomenon known as a “fern spike”.

G That matched the theory nicely. Many modern ferns are opportunists. They cannot compete against plants with leaves, but if a piece of land is cleared by, say, a volcanic eruption, they are often the first things to set up shop there. An asteroid strike would have scoured much of the earth of its vegetable cover, and provided a paradise for ferns. A fern spike in the rocks is thus a good indication that something terrible has happened.

H Both an iridium anomaly and a fern spike appear in rocks at the end of the Triassic, too. That accounts for the disappearing ichnotaxa: the creatures that made them did not survive the holocaust. The surprise is how rapidly the new ichnotaxa appear.

I Dr Olsen and his colleagues suggest that the explanation for this rapid increase in size may be a phenomenon called ecological release. This is seen today when reptiles (which, in modern times, tend to be small creatures) reach islands where they face no competitors. The most spectacular example is on the Indonesian island of Komodo, where local lizards have grown so large that they are often referred to as dragons. The dinosaurs, in other words, could flourish only when the competition had been knocked out.

J That leaves the question of where the impact happened. No large hole in the earth’s crust seems to be 202m years old. It may, of course, have been overlooked. Old craters are eroded and buried, and not always easy to find. Alternatively, it may have vanished. Although the continental crust is more or less permanent, the ocean floor is constantly recycled by the tectonic processes that bring about continental drift. There is no ocean floor left that is more than 200m years old, so a crater that formed in the ocean would have been swallowed up by now.

K There is a third possibility, however. This is that the crater is known, but has been misdated. The Manicouagan “structure”, a crater in Quebec, is thought to be 214m years old. It is huge – some 100km across – and seems to be the largest of between three and five craters that formed within a few hours of each other as the lumps of a disintegrated comet hit the earth one by one.

Questions 15-20
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 15-20 on your answer sheet, write

YES                            if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO                              if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN  if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

15. Dr Paul Olsen and his colleagues believe that asteroid knock may also lead to dinosaurs’ boom.
16. Books and movie like Jurassic Park often exaggerate the size of the dinosaurs.
17. Dinosaur footprints are more adequate than dinosaur skeletons.
18. The prints were chosen by Dr Olsen to study because they are more detectable than the earth magnetic field to track the date of geological precise within thousands of years.
19. Ichnotaxa showed that footprints of dinosaurs offer exact information of the trace left by an individual species.
20. We can find more Iridium in the earth’s surface than in meteorites.

Questions 21-27
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage. Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Dr Olsen and his colleagues applied a phenomenon named (21) …………….. to explain the large size of the Eubrontes, which is a similar case to that nowadays reptiles invade a place where there are no (22) ………………….. for example, on an island called Komodo, indigenous huge lizards grow so big that people even regarding them as (23) …………………. However, there were no old impact trace being found? The answer may be that we have (24) ………………….. the evidence. Old craters are difficult to spot or it probably (25) …………………. Due to the effect of the earth moving. Even a crater formed in Ocean had been (26) …………………. under the impact of crust movement. Besides, the third hypothesis is that the potential evidence – some craters maybe (27) ………………..

A leap into history

A. Between the Inishowen peninsula, north west of Derry, and the Glens of Antrim, in the east beyond the Sperrin Mountains, is found some of Western Europe’s most captivating and alluring landscape.

B. The Roe Valley Park, some 15 miles east of Derry is a prime example. The Park, like so many Celtic places, is steeped in history and legend. As the Roc trickles down through heather bogs in the Sperrin Mountains to the South, it is a river by the time it cuts through what was once called the ‘garden of the soul’ – in Celtic ‘Gortenanima’.

C. The castle of O’Cahan once stood here and a number of houses which made up the town of Limavady. The town takes its name from the legend of a dog leaping into the river Roe carrying a message, or perhaps chasing a stag. This is a wonderful place, where the water traces its way through rock and woodland; at times, lingering in brooding pools of dark cool water under the shade of summer trees, and, at others, forming weirs and leads for water mills now long gone.

D. The Roe, like all rivers, is witness to history and change. To Mullagh Hill, on the west bank of the River Roe just outside the present day town of Limavady, St Columba came in 575 AD for the Convention of Drumceatt. The world is probably unaware that it knows something of Limavady; but the town is, in fact, renowned for Jane Ross’s song Danny Roy, written to a tune once played by a tramp in the street. Limavady tow n itself and many of the surrounding villages have Celtic roots but no one knows for sure just how old the original settlement of Limavady is.

E. Some 30 miles along the coast road from Limavady, one comes upon the forlorn, but imposing ruin of Dunluce Castle, which stands on a soft basalt outcrop, in defiance of the turbulent Atlantic lashing it on all sides. The jagged­-toothed ruins sit proud on their rock top commanding the coastline to east and west. The only connection to the mainland is by a narrow bridge. Until the kitchen court fell into the sea in 1639 killing several servants, the castle was fully inhabited. In the next hundred years or so, the structure gradually fell into its present dramatic state of disrepair, stripped of its roofs by wind and weather and robbed by man of its caned stonework. Ruined and forlorn its aspect may­be yet, in the haunting Celtic twilight of the long summer evenings, it is redolent of another age, another dream.

F. A mile or so to the east of the castle lies Port na Spaniagh, where the Neapolitan Galleas, Girona, from the Spanish Armada went down one dark October night in 1588 on its way to Scotland, of the 1500-odd men on board, nine survived.

G. Even further to the east, is the Giant’s Causeway stunning coastline with strangely symmetrical columns of dark basalt – a beautiful geological wonder. Someone once said of the Causeway that it was worth seeing, but not worth going to see. That was in thê days of horses and carriages, when travelling was difficult. But it is certainly well worth a visit. The last lingering moments of the twilight hours are the best lime to savour the full power of the coastline s magic; the time when the place comes into its own. The tourists are gone and if you are very lucky you will be alone. A fine circular walk will take you down to the Grand Causeway, past amphitheatres of stone columns and formations. It is not frightening, but there is a power in the place – tangible, yet inexplicable. The blackness of some nights conjure up feelings of eeriness and unease. The visitor realises his place in the scheme of the magnificent spectacle. Once experienced, it is impossible to forget the grandeur of the landscape.

H. Beyond the Causeway, connecting the mainland with an outcrop of rock jutting out of the turbulent Atlantic, is the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, when first constructed, the bridge was a simple rope handrail with widely spaced slats which was used mainly by salmon fishermen needing to travel from the island to the mainland. In time, the single handrail was replaced with a more sturdy caged bridge, however, it is still not a crossing for the faint- hearted. The Bridge swings above a chasm of rushing, foaming water that seems to drag the unwary- down, and away. Many visitors who make the walk one way are unable to return resulting in them being taken off the island by boat.

Questions 28-32
Looking at the following list of places (Questions 28–32) from the paragraphs A-E of reading passage 3 and their locations on the map. Match each place with its location on the map.

Write your answers m boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet.

28. The Sperrin Mountains
29. Dunluce Castle
30. Inishowen
31. The Glens of Antrim
32. Limavady

Questions 33-38
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 33-38 on your answer sheet write

YES                         if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO                           if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN       if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

33. After 1639, the castle of Dunluce was not completely uninhabited.
34. For the author, Dunluce Castle evokes another period of history.
35. There were more than 1500 men on die Girona when it went down.
36. The writer believes that the Giant’s Causeway is worth going to visit.
37. The author recommends twilight as the best time to visit the Giant’s Causeway.
38. The more study cage added to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge has helped to increase the number of visitors to the area.

Questions 39-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

39. The writer feels that the Giant’s Causeway is
A an unsettling place.
B a relaxing place.
C a boring place.
D an exciting place.

40. Which of the following would be a good title for the passage?
A The Roe Valley Park.
B The Giant’s Causeway.
C Going East to West.
D A leap into history.

TV Addiction

A The amount of time people spend watching television is astonishing. On average, individuals in the industrialized world devote three hours a day to the pursuit – fully half of their leisure time, and more than on any single activity save work and sleep. At this rate, someone who lives to 75 would spend nine years in front of the tube. To some commentators, this devotion means simply that people enjoy TV and make a conscious decision to watch it. But if that is the whole story, why do so many people experience misgivings about how much they view? In Gallup polls in 1992 and 1999, two out of five adult respondents and seven out of 10 teenagers said they spent too much time watching TV. Other surveys have consistently shown that roughly 10 percent of adults calls themselves TV addicts.

B To study people’s reactions to TV, researches have undertaken laboratory experiments in which they have monitored the brain waves (using an electroencephalograph, or EEG) to track behavior and emotion in the normal course of life, as opposed to the artificial conditions of the lab. Participants carried a beeper, and we signaled them six to eight times a day, at random, over the period of a week; whenever they heard the beep, they wrote down what they were doing and how they were feeling using a standardized scorecard.

C As one might expect, people who were watching TV when we beeped them reported feeling relaxed and passive. The EEG studies similarly show less mental stimulation, as measured by alpha brain-wave production, during viewing than during reading. What is more surprising is that the sense of relaxation ends when the set is turned off, but the feelings of passivity and lowered alertness continue. Survey participants say they have more difficulty concentrating after viewing than before. In contrast, they rarely indicate such difficulty after reading. After playing sports or engaging in hobbies, people report improvements in mood. After watching TV, people’s moods are about the same or worse than before. That may be because of viewers’ vague learned sense that they will feel less relaxed if they stop viewing. So they tend not to turn the set-off. Viewing begets more viewing which is the same as the experience of habit-forming drugs. Thus, the irony of TV: people watch a great deal longer than they plan to, even though prolonged viewing is less rewarding. In our ESM studies the longer people sat in front of the set, the less satisfaction they said they derived from it. For some, a twinge of unease or guilt that they aren’t doing something more productive may also accompany and depreciate the enjoyment of prolonged viewing. Researchers in Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. have found that this guilt occurs much more among middle-class viewers than among less affluent ones.

D What is it about TV that has such a hold on us? In part, the attraction seems to spring from our biological ‘orienting response.’ First described by Ivan Pavlov in 1927, the orienting response is our instinctive visual or auditory reaction to any sudden or novel stimulus. It is part of our evolutionary heritage, a built-in sensitivity to movement and potential predatory threats. In 1986 Byron Reeves of Stanford University, Esther Thorson of the University of Missouri and their colleagues began to study whether the simple formal features of television – cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises – activate the orienting response, thereby keeping attention on the screen. By watching how brain waves were affected by formal features, the researchers concluded that these stylistic tricks can indeed trigger involuntary responses and ‘derive their attentional value through the evolutionary significance of detecting movement… It is the form, not the content, of television that is unique.’

E The natural attraction to television’s sound and the light starts very early in life. Dafna Lemish of Tel Aviv University has described babies at six to eight weeks attending to television. We have observed slightly older infants who, when lying on their backs on the floor, crane their necks around 180 degrees to catch what light through yonder window breaks. This inclination suggests how deeply rooted the orienting response is.

F The Experience Sampling Method permitted us to look closely at most every domain of everyday life: working, eating, reading, talking to friends, playing a sport, and so on. We found that heavy viewers report feeling significantly more anxious and less happy than light viewers do in unstructured situations, such as doing nothing, daydreaming or waiting in line. The difference widens when the viewer is alone. Subsequently, Robert D. McIlwraith of the University of Manitoba extensively studies those who called themselves TV addicts on surveys. On a measure called the Short Imaginal Processes Inventory (SIPI), he found that the self-described addicts are more easily bored and distracted and have poorer attentional control than the non-addicts. The addicts said they used TV to distract themselves from unpleasant thoughts and to fill time. Other studies over the years have shown that heavy viewers are less likely to participate in community activities and sports and are more likely to be obese than moderate viewers or non-viewers.

G More than 25 years ago psychologist Tannis M. MacBeth Williams of the University of British Columbia studied a mountain community that had no television until cable finally arrived. Over time, both adults and children in the town became less creative in problem-solving, less able to persevere at tasks, and less tolerant of unstructured time.

H Nearly 40 years ago Gary A. Steiner of the University of Chicago collected fascinating individual accounts of families whose set had broken. In experiments, families have volunteered or been paid to stop viewing, typically for a week or a month. Some fought, verbally and physically. In a review of these could-turkey studies, Charles Winick of the City University of New York concluded: ‘The first three or four days for most persons were the worst, even in many homes where the viewing was minimal and where there were other ongoing activities. In over half of all the households, during these first few days of loss, the regular routines were disrupted, family members had difficulties in dealing with the newly available time, anxiety and aggressions were expressed…. By the second week, a move toward adaptation to the situation was common.’ Unfortunately, researchers have yet to flesh out these anecdotes; no one has systematically gathered statistics on the prevalence of these withdrawal symptoms.

I Even though TV does seem to meet the criteria for substance dependence, not all researchers would go so far as to call TV addictive. McIlwraith said in 1988 that ‘displacement of other activities by television may be socially significant but still fall short of the clinical requirement of significant impairment.’ He argued that a new category of ‘TV addiction’ may not be necessary if heavy viewing stems from conditions such as depression and social phobia. Nevertheless, whether or not we formally diagnose someone as TV-dependent, millions of people sense that they cannot readily control the amount of television they watch.

Questions 1-5
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                           if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                         if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN             if there is no information on this

1. Study shows that males are more likely to be addicted to TV than females.
2. Greater improvements in mood are experienced after watching TV than playing sports.
3. TV addiction works in similar ways as drugs.
4. It is reported that people’s satisfaction is in proportion to the time they spend watching TV.
5. Middle-class viewers are more likely to feel guilty about watching TV than the poor.

Questions 6-10
Look at the following researchers (Questions 6-10) and the list of statements below. Match each researcher with the correct statements. Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 6-10 on your answer sheets.

6. Byron Reeves and Esther Thorson
7. Dafna Lemish
8. Robert D. McIlwraith
9. Tannis M. MacBeth Williams
10. Charles Winick

A Audiences would get hypnotized from viewing too much television.
B People have been sensitive to the TV signals since a younger age.
C People are less likely to accomplish their work with television.
D A handful of studies have attempted to study other types of media addiction.
E The addictive power of television could probably minimize the problems.
F Various media formal characters stimulate people’s reaction on the screen.
G People who believe themselves to be TV addicts are less likely to join in the group activities.
H It is hard for people to accept life without a TV at the beginning.

Questions 11-13
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

11. People in the industrialized world
A devote ten hours watching TV on average
B spend more time on TV than other entertainment
C call themselves TV addicts.
D enjoy working best.

12. When compared with light viewers, heavy viewers
A like playing sport more than reading.
B feel relaxed after watching TV.
C spend more time in daydreaming.
D are more easily bored while waiting in line.

13. Which of the following statements is true about the family experiment?
A Not all subjects participate in the experiment for free.
B There has been complete gathered data.
C People are prevented from other activities during the experiment.
D People can not adapt to the situation until the end.

Organic Farming and Chemical Fertilisers

A The world’s population continues to climb. And despite the rise of high-tech agriculture, 800 million people don’t get enough to eat. Clearly, it’s time to rethink the food we eat and where it comes from. Feeding 9 billion people will take more than the same old farming practices, especially if we want to do it without felling rainforests and planting every last scrap of prairie. Finding food for all those people will tax farmers’ – and researchers’ – ingenuity to the limit. Yet already, precious aquifers that provide irrigation water for some of the world’s most productive farmlands are drying up or filling with seawater, and arable land in China is eroding to create vast dust storms that redden sunsets as far away as North America. “Agriculture must become the solution to environmental problems in 50 years. If we don’t have systems that make the environment better – not just hold the fort-then we’re in trouble,” says Kenneth Cassman, an agronomist at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. That view was echoed in January by the Curry report, a government panel that surveyed the future of farming and food in Britain.

B It’s easy to say agriculture has to do better, but what should this friendly farming of the future look like? Concerned consumers come up short at this point, facing what appears to be an ever-widening ideological divide. In one corner are the techno-optimists who put their faith in genetically modified crops, improved agrochemicals and computer-enhanced machinery; in the other are advocates of organic farming, who reject artificial chemicals and embrace back-to-nature techniques such as composting. Both sides cite plausible science to back their claims to the moral high ground, and both bring enough passion to the debate for many people to come away thinking we’re faced with a stark choice between two mutually incompatible options.

C Not so. If you take off the ideological blinkers and simply ask how the world can produce the food it needs with the least environmental cost, a new middle way opens. The key is sustainability: whatever we do must not destroy the capital of soil and water we need to keep on producing. Like today’s organic farming, the intelligent farming of the future should pay much more attention to the health of its soil and the ecosystem it’s part of. But intelligent farming should also make shrewd and locally appropriate use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. The most crucial ingredient in this new style of agriculture is not chemicals but information about what’s happening in each field and how to respond. Yet ironically, this key element may be the most neglected today.

D Clearly, organic farming has all the warm, fuzzy sentiment on its side. An approach that eschews synthetic chemicals surely runs no risk of poisoning land and water. And its emphasis on building up natural ecosystems seems to be good for everyone. Perhaps these easy assumptions explain why sales of organic food across Europe are increasing by at least 50 per cent per year.

E Going organic sounds idyllic – but it’s native, too. Organic agriculture has its own suite of environmental costs, which can be worse than those of conventional farming, especially if it were to become the world norm. But more fundamentally, the organic versus-chemical debate focuses on the wrong question. The issue isn’t what you put into a farm, but what you get out of it, both in terms of crop yields and pollutants, and what condition the farm is in when you’re done.

F Take chemical fertilisers, which deliver nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient, to crops along with some phosphorus and potassium. It is a mantra of organic farming that these fertilisers are unwholesome, and plant nutrients must come from natural sources. But in fact, the main environmental damage done by chemical fertilisers as opposed to any other kind is through greenhouse gases-carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels used in their synthesis and nitrogen oxides released by their degradation. Excess nitrogen from chemical fertilisers can pollute groundwater, but so can excess nitrogen from organic manures.

G On the other hand, relying solely on chemical fertilisers to provide soil nutrients without doing other things to build healthy soil is damaging. Organic farmers don’t use chemical fertilisers, so they are very good at building soil fertility by working crop residues and manure into the soil, rotating grain with legumes that fix atmospheric nitrogen, and other techniques.

H This generates vital soil nutrients and also creates a soil that is richer in organic matter, so it retains better and is hospitable to the crop’s roots and creatures such as earthworms that help maintain soil fertility. Such soil also holds water better and therefore make more efficient use of both rainfall and irrigation water. And organic matter ties up CO2 in the soil, helping to offset emissions from burning fossil fuels and reduce global warming.

I Advocates of organic farming like to point out that fields managed in this way can produce yields just as high as fields juiced up with synthetic fertilisers. For example, Bill Liebhardt, research manager at the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, recently compiled the results of such comparisons for corn, wheat, soybeans and tomatoes in the US and found that the organic fields averaged between 94 and 100 per cent of the yields of nearby conventional crops.

J But this optimistic picture tells only half the story. Farmers can’t grow such crops every year if they want to maintain or build soil nutrients without synthetic fertilisers. They need to alternate with soil-building crops such as pasture grasses and legumes such as alfalfa. So in the long term, the yield of staple grains such as wheat, rice and corn must go down. This is the biggest cost of organic farming. Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, estimates that if farmers worldwide gave up the 80 million tonnes of synthetic fertiliser they now use each year, total grain production would fall by at least half. Either farmers would have to double the amount of land they cultivate – at catastrophic cost to natural habitats – or billions of people would starve.

K That doesn’t mean farmers couldn’t get by with less fertiliser. Technologically advanced farmers in wealthy countries, for instance, can now monitor their yields hectare by hectare, or even more finely, throughout a huge field. They can then target their fertiliser to the parts of the field where it will do the most good, instead of responding to average conditions. This increases yield and decreases fertiliser use. Eventually, farmers may incorporate long-term weather forecasts into their planning as well, so that they can cut back on fertiliser use when the weather is likely to make harvests poor anyway, says Ron Olson, an agronomist with Cargill Fertilizer in Tampa, Florida.

L Organic techniques certainly have their benefits, especially for poor farmers. But strict “organic agriculture”, which prohibits certain technologies and allows others, isn’t always better for the environment. Take herbicides, for example. These can leach into waterways and poison both wildlife and people. Just last month, researchers led by Tyrone Hayes at the University of California at Berkeley found that even low concentrations of atrazine, the most commonly used weedkiller in the US, can prevent frog tadpoles from developing properly.

Questions 14-17
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

A Vaclav Smil
B Bill Liebhardt
C Kenneth Cassman
D Ron Olson

14. Use of chemical fertilizer can be optimised by combining weather information.
15. Organic framing yield is nearly equal to traditional ones.
16. Better agricultural setting is a significant key to solve environmental tough nut.
17. Substantial production loss would happen in case all farmers shifted from using synthetic fertiliser.

Questions 18-22
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet, write

YES                         if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO                           if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN        if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

18. Increasing population, draining irrigation, eroding farmland push agricultural industry to extremity.
19. There are only two options for farmers; they use chemical fertiliser or natural approach.
20. Chemical fertilizer currently is more expensive than the natural fertilisers.
21. In order to keep nutrients in the soil, organic farmers need to rotate planting method.
22. “organic agriculture” is the way that environment-damaging technologies are all strictly forbidden.

Questions 23-26
Complete the following summary of the paragraph of Reading Passage. Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Several (23) ………………… approaches need to be applied in order that global population wouldn’t go starved. A team called (24) …………….. repeated the viewpoint of a scholar by a survey in British farming. More and more European farmers believe in (25) ……………….. farming these years. The argument of organic against (26) ……………… seems in an inaccurate direction.

The History of Building Telegraph Lines

A The idea of electrical communication seems to have begun as long ago as 1746 when about 200 monks at a monastery in Paris arranged themselves in a line over a mile long, each holding ends of 25 ft iron wires. The abbot, also a scientist, discharged a primitive electrical battery into the wire, giving all the monks a simultaneous electrical shock. “This all sounds very silly, but is in fact extremely important because, firstly, they all said ‘ow’ which showed that you were sending a signal right along the line; and, secondly, they all said ‘ow’ at the same time, and that meant that you were sending the signal very quickly, “explains Tom Standage, author of the Victorian Internet and technology editor at the Economist. Given a more humane detection system, this could be a way of signaling over long distances.

B With wars in Europe and colonies beyond, such a signaling system was urgently needed. All sorts of electrical possibilities were proposed, some of them quite ridiculous. Two Englishmen, William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone came up with a system in which dials were made to point at different letters, but that involved five wires and would have been expensive to construct.

C Much simpler was that of an American, Samuel Morse, whose system only required a single wire to send a code of dots and dashes. At first, it was imagined that only a few highly skilled encoders would be able to use it but it soon became clear that many people could become proficient in Morse code. A system of lines strung on telegraph poles began to spread in Europe and America.

D The next problem was to cross the sea. Britain, as an island with an empire, led the way. Any such cable to be insulated and the first breakthrough came with the discovery that a rubber-like latex from a tropical tree on the Malay peninsula could do the trick. It was called gutta-percha. The first attempt at a cross channel cable came in 1850. With thin wire and thick installation, it floated and had to be weighed down with a lead pipe.

E It never worked well as the effect of water on its electrical properties was not understood, and it is reputed that a French fisherman hooked out a section and took it home as a strange new form of seaweed. The cable was too big for a single boat so two had to start in the middle of the Atlantic, join their cables and sail in opposite directions. Amazingly, they succeeded in 1858, and this enabled Queen Victoria to send a telegraph message to President Buchanan. However, the 98-word message took more than 19 hours to send and a misguided attempt to increase the speed by increasing the voltage resulted in the failure of the line a week later.

F By 1870, a submarine cable was heading towards Australia. It seemed likely that it would come ashore at the northern port of Darwin from where it might connect around the coast to Queensland and New South Wales. It was an undertaking more ambitious than spanning an ocean. Flocks of sheep had to be driven with the 400 workers to provide food. They needed horses and bullock carts and, for the parched interior, camels. In the north, tropical rains left the teams flooded. In the centre, it seemed that they would die of thirst. One critical section in the red heart of Australia involved finding a route through the McDonnell mountain range and the finding water on the other side.

G The water was not only essential for the construction team. There had to be telegraph repeater stations every few hundred miles to boost the signal and the staff obviously had to have a supply of water. Just as one mapping team was about to give up and resort to drinking brackish water, some aboriginals took pity on them. Altogether, 40,000 telegraph poles were used in the Australian overland wire. Some were cut from trees. Where there were no trees, or where termites ate the wood, steel poles were imported.

H On Thursday, August 22, 1872, the overland line was completed and the first messages could be sent across the continent; and within a few months, Australia was at last in direct contact with England via the submarine cable, too. The line remained in service to bring news of the Japanese attack on Darwin in 1942. It could cost several pounds to send a message and it might take several hours for it to reach its destination on the other side of the globe, but the world would never be the same again. Governments could be in touch with their colonies. Traders could send cargoes based on demand and the latest prices. Newspapers could publish news that had just happened and was not many months old.

Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                     if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE                   if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN       if there is no information on this

27. In the research of French scientists, the metal lines were used to send a message.
28. Abbots gave the monks an electrical shock at the same time, which constitutes the exploration of the long-distance signaling.
29. Using Morse Code to send message need to simplify the message firstly.
30. Morse was a famous inventor before he invented the code
31. The water is significant to early telegraph repeater on the continent.
32. US Government offered fund to the 1st overland line across the continent.

Questions 33-40
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/ OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

33. Why is the disadvantage for Charles Wheatstone’s telegraph system to fail in the beginning?
34. What material was used for insulating cable across the sea?
35. What was used by British pioneers to increase the weight of the cable in the sea?
36. What dis Fisherman mistakenly take the cable as?
37. Who was the message firstly sent to across the Atlantic by the Queen?
38. What giant animals were used to carry the cable through the desert?
39. What weather condition did it delay the construction in north Australia?’
40. How long did it take to send a telegraph message from Australia to England?