Author: theieltsbridge

THE ROCKET – FROM EAST TO WEST

A The concept of the rocket, or rather the mechanism behind the idea of propelling an object into the air, has been around for well over two thousand years. However, it wasn’t until the discovery of the reaction principle, which was the key to space travel and so represents one of the great milestones in the history of scientific thought that rocket technology was able to develop. Not only did it solve a problem that had intrigued man for ages, but, more importantly, it literally opened the door to exploration of the universe.

B An intellectual breakthrough, brilliant though it may be, does not automatically ensure that the transition is made from theory to practice. Despite the fact that rockets had been used sporadically for several hundred years, they remained a relatively minor artefact of civilisation until the twentieth century. Prodigious efforts, accelerated during two world wars, were required before the technology of primitive rocketry could be translated into the reality of sophisticated astronauts. It is strange that the rocket was generally ignored by writers of fiction to transport their heroes to mysterious realms beyond the Earth, even though it had been commonly used in fireworks displays in China since the thirteenth century. The reason is that nobody associated the reaction principle with the idea of travelling through space to a neighbouring world.

C A simple analogy can help us to understand how a rocket operates. It is much like a machine gun mounted on the rear of a boat. In reaction to the backward discharge of bullets, the gun, and hence the boat, move forwards. A rocket motor’s ‘bullets’ are minute, high-speed particles produced by burning propellants in a suitable chamber. The reaction to the ejection of these small particles causes the rocket to move forwards. There is evidence that the reaction principle was applied practically well before the rocket was invented. In his Noctes Atticae or Greek Nights, Aulus Gellius describes ‘the pigeon of Archytas’, an invention dating back to about 360 BC. Cylindrical in shape, made of wood, and hanging from string, it was moved to and fro by steam blowing out from small exhaust ports at either end. The reaction to the discharging steam provided the bird with motive power.

D The invention of rockets is linked inextricably with the invention of ‘black powder’. Most historians of technology credit the Chinese with its discovery. They base their belief on studies of Chinese writings or on the notebooks of early Europeans who settled in or made long visits to China to study its history and civilisation. It is probable that, some time in the tenth century, black powder was first compounded from its basic ingredients of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur. But this does not mean that it was immediately used to propel rockets. By the thirteenth century, powder-propelled fire arrows had become rather common. The Chinese relied on this type of technological development to produce incendiary projectiles of many sorts, explosive grenades and possibly cannons to repel their enemies. One such weapon was the ‘basket of fire’ or, as directly translated from Chinese, the ‘arrows like flying leopards’. The 0.7 metre-long arrows, each with a long tube of gunpowder attached near the point of each arrow, could be fired from a long, octagonal-shaped basket at the same time and had a range of 400 paces. Another weapon was the ‘arrow as a flying sabre’, which could be fired from crossbows. The rocket, placed in a similar position to other rocket-propelled arrows, was designed to increase the range. A small iron weight was attached to the 1.5m bamboo shaft, just below the feathers, to increase the arrow’s stability by moving the centre of gravity to a position below the rocket. At a similar time, the Arabs had developed the ‘egg which moves and burns’. This ‘egg’ was apparently full of gunpowder and stabilised by a 1.5m tail. It was fired using two rockets attached to either side of this tail.

E It was not until the eighteenth century that Europe became seriously interested in the possibilities of using the rocket itself as a weapon of war and not just to propel other weapons. Prior to this, rockets were used only in pyrotechnic displays. The incentive for the more aggressive use of rockets came not from within the European continent but from far-away India, whose leaders had built up a corps of rocketeers and used rockets successfully against the British in the late eighteenth century. The Indian rockets used against the British were described by a British Captain serving in India as ‘an iron envelope about 200 millimetres long and 40 millimetres in diameter with sharp points at the top and a 3m-long bamboo guiding stick’. In the early nineteenth century the British began to experiment with incendiary barrage rockets. The British rocket differed from the Indian version in that it was completely encased in a stout, iron cylinder, terminating in a conical head, measuring one metre in diameter and having a stick almost five metres long and constructed in such a way that it could be firmly attached to the body of the rocket. The Americans developed a rocket, complete with its own launcher, to use against the Mexicans in the mid-nineteenth century. A long cylindrical tube was propped up by two sticks and fastened to the top of the launcher, thereby allowing the rockets to be inserted and lit from the other end. However, the results were sometimes not that impressive as the behaviour of the rockets in flight was less than predictable.

F Since then, there have been huge developments in rocket technology, often with devastating results in the forum of war. Nevertheless, the modern day space programs owe their success to the humble beginnings of those in previous centuries who developed the foundations of the reaction principle. Who knows what it will be like in the future?

Questions 1-4
Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-E from the list of headings below.
Write the appropriate numbers (i-ix) in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i How the reaction principle works
ii The impact of the reaction principle
iii Writers’ theories of the reaction principle
iv Undeveloped for centuries
v The first rockets
vi The first use of steam
vii Rockets for military use
viii Developments of fire
ix What’s next?

1 Paragraph B
2 Paragraph C
3 Paragraph D
4 Paragraph E

Question 5 and 6
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 5 and 6 on your answer sheet.

5 The greatest outcome of the discovery of the reaction principle was that
A rockets could be propelled into the air
B space travel became a reality
C a major problem had been solved
D bigger rockets were able to be built

6 According to the text, the greatest progress in rocket technology was made
A from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries
B from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
C from the early nineteenth to the late nineteenth century
D from the late nineteenth century to the present day

Questions 7-10
From the information in the text, indicate who FIRST invented or used the items in the list below.

Write the appropriate letters A-E in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

7 black powder ……………….. .
8 rocket-propelled arrows for fighting ……………….. .
9 rockets as war weapons ……………….. .
10 the rocket launcher ……………….. .

FIRST invented or used by
A the Chinese
B the Indians
C the British
D the Arabs
E the Americans

Questions 11-14

Look at the drawings of different projectiles below, A-H, and the names of types of projectiles given in the Reading Passage 1, Questions 11-14.
Write the appropriate letters A-H in boxes 11-14 on your answer sheet.

11 The Chinese ‘basket of fire’ …………………
12 The Arab ‘egg which moves and burns’ …………………
13 The Indian rocket …………………
14 The British barrage rocket …………………

The Risks of Cigarette Smoke

Discovered in the early 1800s and named ‘nicotianine’, the oily essence now called nicotine is the main active ingredient of tobacco. Nicotine, however, is only a small component of cigarette smoke, which contains more than 4,700 chemical compounds, including 43 cancer-causing substances. In recent times, scientific research has been providing evidence that years of cigarette smoking vastly increases the risk of developing fatal medical conditions.

In addition to being responsible for more than 85 per cent of lung cancers, smoking is associated with cancers of, amongst others, the mouth, stomach and kidneys, and is thought to cause about 14 per cent of leukemia and cervical cancers. In 1990, smoking caused more than 84,000 deaths, mainly resulting from such problems as pneumonia, bronchitis and influenza. Smoking, it is believed, is responsible for 30 per cent of all deaths from cancer and clearly represents the most important preventable cause of cancer in countries like the United States today.

Passive smoking, the breathing in of the side-stream smoke from the burning of tobacco between puffs or of the smoke exhaled by a smoker, also causes a serious health risk. A report published in 1992 by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emphasized the health dangers, especially from side-stream smoke. This type of smoke contains more smaller particles and is therefore more likely to be deposited deep in the lungs. On the basis of this report, the EPA has classified environmental tobacco smoke in the highest risk category for causing cancer.

As an illustration of the health risks, in the case of a married couple where one partner is a smoker and one a non-smoker, the latter is believed to have a 30 per cent higher risk of death from heart disease because of passive smoking. The risk of lung cancer also increases over the years of exposure and the figure jumps to 80 per cent if the spouse has been smoking four packs a day for 20 years. It has been calculated that 17 per cent of cases of lung cancer can be attributed to high levels of exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke during childhood and adolescence.

A more recent study by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) has shown that second-hand cigarette smoke does more harm to non-smokers than to smokers. Leaving aside the philosophical question of whether anyone should have to breathe someone else’s cigarette smoke, the report suggests that the smoke experienced by many people in their daily lives is enough to produce substantial adverse effects on a person’s heart and lungs.

The report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (AMA), was based on the researchers’ own earlier research but also includes a review of studies over the past few years. The American Medical Association represents about half of all US doctors and is a strong opponent of smoking. The study suggests that people who smoke cigarettes are continually damaging their cardiovascular system, which adapts in order to compensate for the effects of smoking. It further states that people who do not smoke do not have the benefit of their system adapting to the smoke inhalation. Consequently, the effects of passive smoking are far greater on non-smokers than on smokers.

This report emphasizes that cancer is not caused by a single element in cigarette smoke; harmful effects to health are caused by many components. Carbon monoxide, for example, competes with oxygen in red blood cells and interferes with the blood’s ability to deliver life-giving oxygen to the heart. Nicotine and other toxins in cigarette smoke activate small blood cells called platelets, which increases the likelihood of blood clots, thereby affecting blood circulation throughout the body.

The researchers criticize the practice of some scientific consultants who work with the tobacco industry for assuming that cigarette smoke has the same impact on smokers as it does on non-smokers. They argue that those scientists are underestimating the damage done by passive smoking and, in support of their recent findings, cite some previous research which points to passive smoking as the cause for between 30,000 and 60,000 deaths from heart attacks each year in the United States. This means that passive smoking is the third most preventable cause of death after active smoking and alcohol-related diseases.

The study argues that the type of action needed against passive smoking should be similar to that being taken against illegal drugs and AIDS (SIDA). The UCSF researchers maintain that the simplest and most cost-effective action is to establish smoke-free work places, schools and public places.

Questions 15-17
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 15-17 on your answer sheet.

15 According to information in the text, leukaemia and pneumonia
A are responsible for 84,000 deaths each year
B are strongly linked to cigarette smoking
C are strongly linked to lung cancer
D result in 30 per cent of deaths per year

16 According to information in the text, intake of carbon monoxide
A inhibits the flow of oxygen to the heart
B increases absorption of other smoke particles
C inhibits red blood cell formation
D promotes nicotine absorption

17 According to information in the text, intake of nicotine encourages
A blood circulation through the body
B activity of other toxins in the blood
C formation of blood clots
D an increase of platelets in the blood

Questions 18-21
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2.

YES                             if the statement reflects the claims of the writer
NO                               if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN            if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

18 Thirty per cent of deaths in the United States are caused by smoking-related diseases.
19 If one partner in a marriage smokes, the other is likely to take up smoking.
20 Teenagers whose parents smoke are at risk of getting lung cancer at some time during their lives.
21 Opponents of smoking financed the UCSF study.

Questions 22-24
Choose ONE phrase from the list of phrases A-J below to complete each of the following sentences
22 Passive smoking ……………….. .
23 Compared with a non-smoker, a smoker ……………….. .
24 The American Medical Association ……………….. .

A includes reviews of studies in its reports.
B argues for stronger action against smoking in public places.
C is one of the two most preventable causes of death.
D is more likely to be at risk from passive smoking diseases.
E is more harmful to non-smokers than to smokers.
F is less likely to be at risk of contracting lung cancer.
G is more likely to be at risk of contracting various cancers.
H opposes smoking and publishes research on the subject.
I is just as harmful to smokers as it is to non-smokers.
J reduces the quantity of blood flowing around the body.

Questions 25-28
Classify the following statements as being

A a finding of the UCSF study
B an opinion of the UCSF study
C a finding of the EPA report
D an assumption of consultants to the tobacco industry

25 Smokers’ cardiovascular systems adapt to the intake of environmental smoke.
26 There is a philosophical question as to whether people should have to inhale others’ smoke.
27 Smoke-free public places offer the best solution.
28 The intake of side-stream smoke is more harmful than smoke exhaled by a smoker.

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

A ‘Hypotheses,’ said Medawar in 1964, ‘are imaginative and inspirational in character’; they are ‘adventures of the mind’. He was arguing in favour of the position taken by Karl Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1972, 3rd edition) that the nature of scientific method is hypothetico-deductive and not, as is generally believed, inductive.

B It is essential that you, as an intending researcher, understand the difference between these two interpretations of the research process so that you do not become discouraged or begin to suffer from a feeling of ‘cheating’ or not going about it the right way.

C The myth of scientific method is that it is inductive: that the formulation of scientific theory starts with the basic, raw evidence of the senses – simple, unbiased, unprejudiced observation. Out of these sensory data – commonly referred to as ‘facts’ — generalisations will form. The myth is that from a disorderly array of factual information an orderly, relevant theory will somehow emerge. However, the starting point of induction is an impossible one.

D There is no such thing as an unbiased observation. Every act of observation we make is a function of what we have seen or otherwise experienced in the past. All scientific work of an experimental or exploratory nature starts with some expectation about the outcome. This expectation is a hypothesis. Hypotheses provide the initiative and incentive for the inquiry and influence the method. It is in the light of an expectation that some observations are held to be relevant and some irrelevant, that one methodology is chosen and others discarded, that some experiments are conducted and others are not. Where is, your naive, pure and objective researcher now?

E Hypotheses arise by guesswork, or by inspiration, but having been formulated they can and must be tested rigorously, using the appropriate methodology. If the predictions you make as a result of deducing certain consequences from your hypothesis are not shown to be correct then you discard or modify your hypothesis. If the predictions turn out to be correct then your hypothesis has been supported and may be retained until such time as some further test shows it not to be correct. Once you have arrived at your hypothesis, which is a product of your imagination, you then proceed to a strictly logical and rigorous process, based upon deductive argument — hence the term ‘hypothetico-deductive’.

F So don’t worry if you have some idea of what your results will tell you before you even begin to collect data; there are no scientists in existence who really wait until they have all the evidence in front of them before they try to work out what it might possibly mean. The closest we ever get to this situation is when something happens by accident; but even then the researcher has to formulate a hypothesis to be tested before being sure that, for example, a mould might prove to be a successful antidote to bacterial infection.

G The myth of scientific method is not only that it is inductive (which we have seen is incorrect) but also that the hypothetico-deductive method proceeds in a step-by-step, inevitable fashion. The hypothetico-deductive method describes the logical approach to much research work, but it does not describe the psychological behaviour that brings it about. This is much more holistic — involving guesses, reworkings, corrections, blind alleys and above all inspiration, in the deductive as well as the hypothetic component -than is immediately apparent from reading the final thesis or published papers. These have been, quite properly, organised into a more serial, logical order so that the worth of the output may be evaluated independently of the behavioural processes by which it was obtained. It is the difference, for example between the academic papers with which Crick and Watson demonstrated the structure of the DNA molecule and the fascinating book The Double Helix in which Watson (1968) described how they did it. From this point of view, ‘scientific method’ may more usefully be thought of as a way of writing up research rather than as a way of carrying it out.

Questions 29-30
Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs A-G.
Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs C-G from the list of headings below.
Write the appropriate numbers i-x in boxes 29-33 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i The Crick and Watson approach to research
ii Antidotes to bacterial infection
iii The testing of hypotheses
iv Explaining the inductive method
v Anticipating results before data is collected
vi How research is done and how it is reported
vii The role of hypotheses in scientific research
viii Deducing the consequences of hypotheses
ix Karl Popper’s claim that the scientific method is hypothetico-deductive
x The unbiased researcher

29 Paragraph C
30 Paragraph D
31 Paragraph E
32 Paragraph F
33 Paragraph G

Questions 34 and 35
In which TWO paragraphs in Reading Passage 3 does the writer give advice directly to the reader?

Write the TWO appropriate letters (A-G) in boxes 34 and 35 on your answer sheet.

34 …………………
35 ………………

Questions 36-39
Do the following statements reflect the opinions of the writer in Reading Passage 3.
In boxes 36-39 on your answer sheet write

YES                            if the statement reflects the claims of the writer
NO                              if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN           if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

36 Popper says that the scientific method is hypothetico-deductive ……………….. .
37 If a prediction based on a hypothesis is fulfilled, then the hypothesis is confirmed as true ……………….. .
38 Many people carry out research in a mistaken way ……………….. .
39 The ‘scientific method’ is more a way of describing research than a way of doing it ……………….. .

Question 40
Choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in box 40 on your answer sheet.

Which of the following statements best describes the writer’s main purpose in Reading Passage 3?

A to advise Ph.D students not to cheat while carrying out research
B to encourage Ph.D students to work by guesswork and inspiration
C to explain to Ph.D students the logic which the scientific research paper follows
D to help Ph.D students by explaining different conceptions of the research process

Passage 1

The people of ancient Egypt emerged as one of the first Western civilisations. Sustained by the River Nile and protected by vast deserts, the Egyptians lived in comparative security, prosperity and peace for thousands of years. When such conditions exist, the civilisation and its arts usually flourish. To this day, many of the Egyptian artistic creations display the wealth, splendour and talent of this great civilisation.

Ancient Egypt has been called a land of temples and tombs. For centuries people have been filled with wonder at the ingenuity of the Egyptians, whose impressive works have withstood the ravages of time so well. Had it not been for the long-lasting nature of their monuments and carved inscriptions in the form of hieroglyphics’, much evidence of their activities would have vanished from all historical records. In about 3000 BC, Upper and Lower Egypt were united under the first pharaoh, and generally from that time until the invasion by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, Egypt prospered as a nation of skilful craftsmen and artists.

The Egyptians were an industrious, highly civilised and deeply religious people, who obediently accepted the supreme authority of their pharaohs. The people were content to serve and work for the state in return for a secure livelihood. They considered this earthly life to be a segment in a great cycle, at the end of which everything would be returned to its original form. The richer and more important the person, the more careful and elaborate would be his or her burial, and the stronger and safer the tomb in which they would be buried.

The burial of the dead in the ground was not considered sufficiently safe for kings, queens and court officials, so sunken, sealed tombs were ingeniously constructed to protect personal treasures, food and instructions for the safe conduct of the soul after death. The design of these tombs developed into the stepped pyramid, and finally into the square pyramid that we know today.

There are about 80 ancient pyramids in Egypt. The Great Pyramid at Giza, which King Cheops built as his tomb 5000 years ago, holds most interest. It stands with two other pyramids on a slight rise overlooking the River Nile. At the centre of the pyramid is the King’s Chamber and leading down from there is a long narrow area known as the Grand Gallery. The pyramid covers 13 acres and contains 2,300,000 blocks of limestone, each weighing an average of 1.5 tons. Its pyramidal form has a perfectly square base with sides of 756 feet and a height of 481 feet. Situated directly below the King’s Chamber is the Queen’s Chamber and there are two air channels leading upwards from the centre of the pyramid to the outside.

Originally the exterior was covered in highly polished limestone slabs, all of which have been stolen over the years. It is estimated that a total of 100,000 men laboured for 20 years to build this gigantic structure, and although architecturally unimportant in design, it has aroused the curiosity of millions of people because of the uncanny accuracy of its measurements and proportions. It reveals the remarkable ingenuity and the great organising ability of the ancient Egyptians.

Near these pyramids stands the Great Sphinx, the origin and purpose of which constitutes one of the world’s most famous puzzles. Shaped from an outcrop of stone in the form of a humanheaded lion, the face is possibly a portrait of King Khafra, the son of Cheops, who was buried in the second largest pyramid. The Sphinx is one of the biggest statues ever made.

The Egyptian people showed reverence towards natural objects such as the lotus flower, the scarab beetle, the falcon, the lion, the sun and the River Nile. All these subjects and many more were used symbolically and conventionally as motifs in low-relief carving and painting. It was the custom of the Egyptians to depict the various parts of the human figure, usually in the most characteristic positions. The head was shown in profile except for the eye, which was represented from the front, the shoulders and a portion of the arms were portrayed from the front, while the hips and legs were side views. Wall decoration showed little or no attempt to indicate depth or perspective, except by placing distant objects above near things. It was essentially two-dimensional, and relative size indicated the status of the person, so the pharaoh was the largest figure in the composition.

Egyptian art is characterised by a passion for permanence, a desire to impress by size, and a determination to make each item serve its function without much regard for the whole. It is obvious that art among these people reached a very high level and the strong influence of Egyptian art can be seen in the work of nearby civilisations.

The fortunate discovery and subsequent deciphering in 1822 of the Rosetta Stone, which showed the same laws inscribed both in Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Egyptian demotic, or popular version of their language, as well as the Greek language, eventually gave the key to the meaning of Egyptian inscriptions, and therefore the significance of much Egyptian art.

Questions 1-3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1.
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

1 Security and peace are two ……………….. that are necessary for a civilisation to be successful.
2 Ancient Egyptians worked as both ……………….. .
3 Ordinary Egyptians expected to receive ……………….. for their hard work.

Questions 8-12

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage 1. In boxes 8-12 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

8 The surface of the Great Pyramid is covered in polished limestone slabs.
9 King Khafra died before King Cheops.
10 Egyptian carvings were often based on things found in nature.
11 Important characters in Egyptian carvings were bigger than less important characters.
12 Egyptian art was greatly influenced by the art of neighbouring cultures.

Question 13
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in box 13 on your answer sheet.

The writer’s aim in this passage is to

A describe the construction methods of the pyramids.
B explain the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians.
C offer an interpretation of Egyptian art and sculpture.
D provide an overview of early Egyptian society.

Sticking Power

A If Kellar Autumn, an expert in Biomechanics at Clark College in Portland, Oregon, has his way, the first footprints on Mars won’t be human. They’ll belong to a gecko. Gecko toes have legendary sticking power – and the Clark College scientist would like to see the next generation of Martian robots walking about on gecko-style feet. A gecko can whiz up the smoothest wall and hang from the ceiling by one foot, with no fear of falling.

B Autumn is one of a long line of researchers who have puzzled over the gecko’s gravity-defying footwork. Earlier this year, he and his colleagues discovered that the gecko’s toes don’t just stick, they bond to the surface beneath them. Engineers are already trying to copy the gecko’s technique – but reptilian feet are not the only ones they are interested in.

C Some of the most persistent ‘hanging’ creatures are insects. They can defy not just gravity, but gusts of wind, raindrops and a predator’s attempt to prize them loose. Recent discoveries about how they achieve this could lead to the development of quick-release adhesives and miniature grippers, ideal for manipulating microscopic components or holding tiny bits of tissue together during surgery. ‘There are lots of ways to make two surfaces stick together, but there are very few which provide precise and reversible attachment,’ says Stas Gorb, a biologist in Tübingen, Germany, working on the problem.

D Geckos and insects have both perfected ways of doing this, and engineers and scientists would dearly love to know how. Friction certainly plays a part in assisting horizontal movement, but when the animal is running up a slope, climbing vertically or travelling upside down, it needs a more powerful adhesive. Just what that adhesive is has been hotly debated for years. Some people suggested that insects had micro-suckers. Some reckoned they relied on electrostatic forces. Others thought that intermolecular forces between pad and leaf might provide a firm foothold.

E Most of the evidence suggests that insects rely on ‘wet adhesion’, hanging on with the help of a thin film of fluid on the bottom of the pad. Insects often leave tiny trails of oily footprints. Some clearly secrete a fluid onto the ‘soles’ of their feet. And they tend to lose their footing when they have their feet cleaned or dried.

F This year, Walter Federle, an entomologist at the University of Würzburg, showed experimentally that an insect’s sticking power depends on a thin film of liquid under its feet. He placed an ant on a polished turntable inside the rotor of a centrifuge, and switched it on. At slow speeds, the ant carried on walking unperturbed. But as the scientist slowly increased the speed, the pulling forces grew stronger and the ant stopped dead, legs spread out and all six feet planted firmly on the ground. At higher speeds still, the ant’s feet began to slide. ‘This can only be explained by the presence of a liquid,’ says Federle. ‘If the ant relied on some form of dry adhesion, its feet would pop abruptly off the surface once the pull got too strong.’

G But the liquid isn’t the whole story. What engineers really find exciting about insect feet is the way they make almost perfect contact with the surface beneath. ‘Sticking to a perfectly smooth surface is no big deal,’ says Gorb. But in nature, even the smoothest-looking surfaces have microscopic lumps and bumps. For a footpad to make good contact, it must follow the contours of the landscape beneath it. Flies, beetles and earwigs have solved the problem with hairy footpads, with hairs that bend like the bristles of a toothbrush to accommodate the troughs below.

H Gorb has tested dozens of species with this sort of pad to see which had the best stick. Flies resist a pull of three or four times their body weight – perfectly adequate for crossing the ceiling. But beetles can do better and the champion is a small, blue beetle with oversized yellow feet, found in the south-eastern parts of the US.

I Tom Eisner, a chemical ecologist at Cornell University in New York, has been fascinated by this beetle for years. Almost 30 years ago, he suggested that the beetle clung on tight to avoid being picked off by predators – ants in particular. When Eisner measured the beetle’s sticking power earlier this year, he found that it can withstand pulling forces of around 80 times its own weight for about two minutes and an astonishing 200 times its own weight for shorter periods. ‘The ants give up because the beetle holds on longer than they can be bothered to attack it,’ he says.

J Whatever liquid insects rely on, the gecko seems able to manage without it. No one knows quite why the gecko needs so much sticking power. ‘It seems overbuilt for the job,’ says Autumn. But whatever the gecko’s needs are, its skills are in demand by humans. Autumn and his colleagues in Oregon have already helped to create a robot that walks like a gecko. Mecho-Gecko, a robot built by iRobot of Massachusetts, walks like a lizard – rolling its toes down and peeling them up again. At the moment, though, it has to make do with balls of glue to give it stick. The next step is to try to reproduce the hairs on a gecko’s toes and create a robot with the full set of gecko skills. Then we could build robots with feet that stick without glue, clean themselves and work just as well underwater as in the vacuum of space, or crawling over the dusty landscape of Mars.

Questions 14-18

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2.
Look at the following statements (Questions 14-18) and the list of scientists below.
Match each statement with the correct scientist A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter A, B, C or D in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

List of Scientists
A Kellar Autumn
B Stas Gorb
C Walter Federte
D Tom Eisher

14 Some insects use their ability to stick to surfaces as a way of defending themselves.
15 What makes sticky insect feet special is the fact that they can also detach themselves easily from a surface.
16 Gecko feet seem to be stickier than they need to be.
17 A robot with gecko-style feet would be ideal for exploring other planets.
18 Evidence shows that in order to stick, insect feet have to be wet.

Questions 19-22

Reading Passage 2 has ten paragraphs A-J.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-J in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.

19 some of the practical things a gecko-style adhesive could be used for
20 a description of a test involving an insect in motion
21 three different theories scientists have had about how insect feet stick
22 examples of remarkable gecko movements

Questions 23-26

Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-G below.
Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

A stick to surfaces in and out of water.
B curl up and down.
C are washed and dried.
D resist a pull of three times their body weight.
E start to slip across the surface.
F leave yellow footprints.
G have hairy footpads.

23 Insect feet lose their sticking power when they
24 If you put ants on a rapidly rotating object, their feet
25 Beetles can stick to uneven surfaces because they
26 The toes on robots like Mecho-Gecko

TRY IT AND SEE

A In the scientific pecking order, social scientists are usually looked down on by their peers in the natural sciences. Natural scientists do experiments to test their theories or, if they cannot, they try to look for natural phenomena that can act in lieu of experiments. Social scientists, it is widely thought, do not subject their own hypotheses to any such rigorous treatment. Worse, they peddle their untested hypotheses to governments and try to get them turned into policies.

B Governments require sellers of new medicines to demonstrate their safety and effectiveness. The accepted gold standard of evidence is a randomised control trial, in which a new drug is compared with the best existing therapy (or with a placebo, if no treatment is available). Patients are assigned to one arm or the other of such a study at random, ensuring that the only difference between the two groups is the new treatment. The best studies also ensure that neither patient nor physician knows which patient is allocated to which therapy. Drug trials must also include enough patients to make it unlikely that chance alone may determine the result.

C But few education programmes or social initiatives are evaluated in carefully conducted studies prior to their introduction. A case in point is the ‘whole-language’ approach to reading, which swept much of the English-speaking world in the 1970s and 1980s. The whole-language theory holds that children learn to read best by absorbing contextual clues from texts, not by breaking individual words into their component parts and reassembling them (a method known as phonics). Unfortunately, the educational theorists who pushed the whole-language notion so successfully did not wait for evidence from controlled randomised trials before advancing their claims. Had they done so, they might have concluded, as did an analysis of 52 randomised studies carried out by the US National Reading Panel in 2000, that effective reading instruction requires phonics.

D To avoid the widespread adoption of misguided ideas, the sensible thing is to experiment first and make policy later. This is the idea behind a trial of restorative justice which is taking place in the English courts. The experiment will include criminals who plead guilty to robbery. Those who agree to participate will be assigned randomly either to sentencing as normal or to participation in a conference in which the offender comes face-to-face with his victim and discusses how he may make emotional and material restitution. The purpose of the trial is to assess whether such restorative justice limits re-offending. If it does, it might be adopted more widely.

E The idea of experimental evidence is not quite as new to the social sciences as sneering natural scientists might believe. In fact, randomised trials and systematic reviews of evidence were introduced into the social sciences long before they became common in medicine. An apparent example of random allocation is a study carried out in 1927 of how to persuade people to vote in elections. And randomised trials in social work were begun in the 1930s and 1940s. But enthusiasm later waned. This loss of interest can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that early experiments produced little evidence of positive outcomes. Others suggest that much of the opposition to experimental evaluation stems from a common philosophical malaise among social scientists, who doubt the validity of the natural sciences, and therefore reject the potential of knowledge derived from controlled experiments. A more pragmatic factor limiting the growth of evidence-based education and social services may be limitations on the funds available for research.

F Nevertheless, some 11,000 experimental studies are known in the social sciences (compared with over 250,000 in the medical literature). Randomised trials have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of driver-education programmes, job training schemes, classroom size, psychological counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder and increased investment in public housing. And where they are carried out, they seem to have a healthy dampening effect on otherwise rosy interpretations of the observations.

G The problem for policymakers is often not too few data, but what to make of multiple and conflicting studies. This is where a body called the Campbell Collaboration comes into its own. This independent non-profit organisation is designed to evaluate existing studies, in a process known as a systematic review. This means attempting to identify every relevant trial of a given question (including studies that have never been published), choosing the best ones using clearly defined criteria for quality, and combining the results in a statistically valid way. An equivalent body, the Cochrane Collaboration, has produced more than 1,004 such reviews in medical fields. The hope is that rigorous review standards will allow Campbell, like Cochrane, to become a trusted and authoritative source of information.

Questions 27-32
Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs A-G.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-x in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Why some early social science methods lost popularity
ii The cost implications of research
iii Looking ahead to an unbiased assessment of research
iv A range of social issues that have been usefully studied
v An example of a poor decision that was made too quickly
vi What happens when the figures are wrong
vii One area of research that is rigorously carried out
viii The changing nature of medical trials
ix An investigative study that may lead to a new system
x Why some scientists’ theories are considered second-rate

Example Paragraph A                Answer: x

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

Questions 33-36
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Fighting Crime

Some criminals in England are agreeing to take part in a trial designed to help reduce their chances of (33)……………….. . The idea is that while one group of randomly selected criminals undergoes the usual (34)……………….. , the other group will discuss the possibility of making some repayment for the crime by meeting the (35) ……………….. . It is yet to be seen whether this system, known as (36) ……………….. , will work.

Questions 37-40

Classify the following characteristics as relating to

A Social Science
B Medical Science
C Both Social Science and Medical Science
D Neither Social Science nor Medical Science

Write the correct letter A, B, C or D in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

37 a tendency for negative results in early trials
38 the desire to submit results for independent assessment
39 the prioritisation of research areas to meet government needs
40 the widespread use of studies that investigate the quality of new products

ADAM’S WINE

A Water is the giver and, at the same time, the taker of life. It covers most of the surface of the planet we live on and features large in the development of the human race. On present predictions, it is an element that is set to assume even greater significance.

B Throughout history, water has had a huge impact on our lives. Humankind has always had a rather ambiguous relationship with water, on the one hand receiving enormous benefit from it, not just as a drinking source, but as a provider of food and a means whereby to travel and to trade. But forced to live close to water in order to survive and to develop, the relationship has not always been peaceful or beneficial. In fact, it has been quite the contrary. What has essentially been a necessity for survival has turned out in many instances to have a very destructive and life-threatening side.

C Through the ages, great floods alternated with long periods of drought have assaulted people and their environment, hampering their fragile fight for survival. The dramatic changes to the environment that are now a feature of our daily news are not exactly new: fields that were once lush and fertile are now barren; lakes and rivers that were once teeming with life are now long gone; savannah has been turned to desert. What perhaps is new is our naive wonder when faced with the forces of nature.

D Today, we are more aware of climatic changes around the world. Floods in far-flung places are instant hews for the whole world. Perhaps these events make us feel better as we face the destruction of our own property by floods and other natural disasters.

E In 2002, many parts of Europe suffered severe flood damage running into billions of euros. Properties across the continent collapsed into the sea as waves pounded the coastline wreaking havoc with sea defences. But it was not just the seas. Rivers swollen by heavy rains and by the effects of deforestation carried large volumes of water that wrecked many communities.

F Building stronger and more sophisticated river defences against flooding is the expensive short-term answer. There are simpler ways. Planting trees in highland areas, not just in Europe but in places like the Himalayas, to protect people living in low-lying regions like the Ganges Delta, is a cheaper and more attractive solution. Progress is already being made in convincing countries that the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is causing considerable damage to the environment. But more effort is needed in this direction.

G And the future? If we are to believe the forecasts, it is predicted that two-thirds of the world population will be without fresh water by 2025. But for a growing number of regions of the world the future is already with us. While some areas are devastated by flooding, scarcity of water in many other places is causing conflict. The state of Texas in the United States of America is suffering a shortage of water with the Rio Grande failing to reach the Gulf of Mexico for the first time in 50 years in the spring of 2002, pitting region against region as they vie for water sources. With many parts of the globe running dry through drought and increased water consumption, there is now talk of water being the new oil.

H Other doom-laden estimates suggest that, while tropical areas will become drier and uninhabitable, coastal regions and some low-lying islands will in all probability be submerged by the sea as the polar ice caps melt. Popular exotic destinations now visited by countless tourists will become no-go areas. Today’s holiday hotspots of southern Europe and elsewhere will literally become hotspots – too hot to live in or visit. With the current erratic behaviour of the weather, it is difficult not to subscribe to such despair.

I Some might say that this despondency is ill-founded, but we have had ample proof that there is something not quite right with the climate. Many parts of the world have experienced devastating flooding. As the seasons revolve, the focus of the destruction moves from one continent to another. The impact on the environment is alarming and the cost to life depressing. It is a picture to which we will need to become accustomed.

Questions 1-8
Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs labelled A-I.
Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-I from the list of headings below.

List of Headings
i Environmental change has always been with us
ii The scarcity of water
iii Rivers and seas cause damage
iv Should we be despondent? Or realistic?
v Disasters caused by the climate make us feel better
vi Water, the provider of food
vii What is water?
viii How to solve flooding
ix Far-flung flooding
x Humans’ relationship with water
xi The destructive force of water in former times
xii Flooding in the future
xiii A pessimistic view of the future

1 Paragraph B
2 Paragraph C
3 Paragraph D
4 Paragraph E
5 Paragraph F
6 Paragraph G
7 Paragraph H
8 Paragraph I

Questions 9-15
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 9-15 on your answer sheet.

9 The writer believes that water
A is gradually becoming of greater importance
B will have little impact on our lives in future
C is something we will need more than anything else
D will have even greater importance in our lives in the future

10 Humankind’s relationship with water has been
A two-sided
B one-sided
C purely one of great benefit
D fairly frightening

11 The writer suggests that
A we are in awe of the news we read and see on TV every day.
B change to the environment leaves us speechless.
C we should not be in awe of the news we read and see on TV every day.
D our surprise at the environmental change brought about by nature is something new.

12 According to the text, planting trees
A has to be co-ordinated internationally.
B is more expensive than building sea and river defences.
C is a less expensive answer to flooding than building river defences.
D is not an answer to the problem of flooding in all regions.

13 By 2025, it is projected that
A at least half the world population will have fresh water.
B the majority of the world population will have fresh water.
C one-third of the world population will have fresh water.
D fresh water will only be available to half of the world population.

14 According to the text, in the future low-lying islands
A will still be habitable
B will not be under water
C are likely to be under water
D will probably not be under water

15 According to the writer,
A people do not need to get used to environmental damage.
B people will need to get used to climate changes that cause environmental damage.
C people are now more used to environmental damage than they have been in the past.
D the general despondency about environmental changes is ill-founded.

Reading Passage 2

Is it any wonder that there are teacher shortages? Daily, the press carries reports of schools going on four-day weeks simply because they cannot recruit enough teachers. But why? There is no straightforward answer. For a start, fewer students are entering teacher-training courses when they leave school. But can you blame young people after the barracking faced by the teaching profession in the UK over the last decade? The attack, relentless in the extreme, has been on several fronts. Government inspectors, by accident or design, have been feeding the media a constant stream of negative information about the teaching establishments in this country. Teachers also come in for a lot of flak from politicians. And the government wonders why there are problems in schools.

The government’s obvious contempt for the teaching profession was recently revealed by one of the most powerful people in government when she referred to schools as ‘bog standard comprehensives’. Hardly the sort of comment to inspire parents or careers advisers seeking to direct young people’s future. Would you want to spend your working life in a dead-end profession? The government doesn’t seem to want you to either.

On the administrative side, most teachers are weighed down by an increasing flow of bureaucracy. Cynicism would have me believe that this stops teachers from fomenting dissent as they are worn out by useless administrative exercises. Most teachers must then also be cynics!

Teacher bashing has, unfortunately, spread to youngsters in schools as the recent catalogue of physical attacks on teachers will testify. If grown-ups have no respect for the teaching profession, young people can hardly be expected to think any differently. The circle is then squared when, as well as experienced, competent teachers being driven out of the profession by the increased pressure and stress; fewer students are applying for teacher-training courses.

Increased salaries are certainly welcome, but they are not the complete answer to a sector in crisis. Addressing the standing of the profession in the eyes of the public is crucial to encourage experienced teachers to remain in the classroom and to make it an attractive career option for potential teachers once again.

It might also be a good idea for the relevant ministers to go on a fact-finding mission and find out from teachers in schools, rather than relying overmuch on advisers, as to what changes could be brought about to improve the quality of the education service. Initiatives in the educational’ field surprisingly come from either politicians who know little about classroom practice or educational theorists who know even less, but are more dangerous because they work in the rarefied air of universities largely ignorant of classroom practice.

Making sure that nobody without recent classroom experience is employed as a teacher-trainer at any tertiary institution would further enhance the teaching profession. If someone does not have practical experience in the classroom, they cannot in all seriousness propound theories about it. Instead of being given sabbaticals to write books or papers, lecturers in teacher-training establishments should be made to spend a year at the blackboard or, these days, the whiteboard. This would give them practical insights into current classroom practice. Student teachers could then be given the chance to come and watch the specialists in the classroom: a much more worthwhile experience than the latter sitting thinking up ideas far removed from the classroom. Then we would have fewer initiatives like the recent government proposal to teach thinking in school. Prima facie, this is a laudable recommendation. But, as any practising teacher will tell you, this is done in every class. Perhaps someone needs to point out to the academic who thought up the scheme that the wheel has been around for some time.

In the educational field, there is surprisingly constant tension between the educational theorists and government officials on the one hand, who would like to see teachers marching in unison to some greater Utopian abstraction and, on the other, practising teachers. Any experienced classroom practitioner knows that the series of initiatives on teaching and learning that successive governments have tried to foist on schools and colleges do not work.

Questions 16-22
Complete the summary below of the first four paragraphs of Reading Passage 2.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 16-22 on your answer sheet.

Is it surprising that there is a (16) ……………….. of teachers? Schools do not have enough teachers, but what are the reasons for this? To begin with, fewer students are going into (17) ……………….. after finishing school. But this is not young people’s fault. The (18) ……………….. of teaching has been under constant attack over the last ten years. The government’s lack of respect for the profession is (19) ……………….. Moreover, administratively, the flow of bureaucracy is (20) ……………….. Even pupils in schools have no respect for those who teach them, as a (21) ……………….. series of assaults on teachers shows. The growing strain and stress means that, as well as fewer applications for teacher-training courses, teachers who have experience and are (22) ……………….. are also being driven out.

Questions 23-29
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 23-29 on your answer sheet, write

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

23 More students are entering teacher-training courses.
24 The government is right to be surprised that there are problems in schools.
25 Teachers are too weighed down by administrative duties to stir up trouble.
26 All teachers are cynics.
27 Politicians are not as dangerous as educational theorists, who know even less than the former about educational theory.
28 Any experienced classroom practitioner knows that the initiatives on teaching and learning that governments have tried to impose on schools do not work.
29 The government’s attitude with regard to teachers is of great interest to the general public.

Question 30
Choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in box 30 on your answer sheet.

30 Which one of the following is the most suitable title for the passage?
A Politicians and teachers
B A profession undervalued
C Recruitment difficulties in the teaching profession
D Teacher-training needs improvement

Three Pieces Plus…

In one corner of the room is a mass of tangled rope suspended from the ceiling with some sections dangling to the floor; the first of three encountered pieces of work that have a resounding impact on the viewing public.

It stops one in one’s tracks: how dare it be there – this mess of nothing! It is like arranged chaos: that is, the confused mixture of varying sizes of rope, dipped in latex, looks as though it might collapse in a heap on the floor at any moment. At the same time, it is held up and in place by a series of fine wires and hooks, giving it a strange sense of … order.

A deliberate challenge to the forces of gravity. It is a shambles. It makes one laugh. It is play. It is drawing in the air! Maybe it can move or dance about! Yet, it is hardly there, like something imagined.

The materials are cheap and disposable. Impermanent, like … the people looking at it. But it is very definitely present! It has a presence. You can see that people want to walk into it and become a part of it – but alas! The gallery guard is hovering nearby.

To the left of this piece, running along the wall, in two rows on top of each other, is a long series of lid-less boxes. They are mounted at average nose height and are made of fibreglass which gives them a shiny, almost moist, appearance. They are the colour of murky water, absorbing the gallery light with an opacity similar to that of mucus or tree gum.

They look as though they might be soft and malleable to touch, with their irregular edges and non-conforming sides. This gives the overall impression that they could fall in on themselves or slide down the wall. The structure is puzzlingly familiar, similar to things in the world, and yet it is not like anything in particular.

In the adjacent corner is the third piece, consisting of a collection of nine cylindrical open-ended objects, slit part way from end to end. They give the appearance of being randomly placed – some lying, some leaning on the wall or on each other-all seeming somehow to be related. Like the boxes, they are a multiple of each other. Made of fibreglass with a shiny surface they look almost like abandoned pods that had once been alive. The associations seem to jump around in one’s head, running between sensations of delight and pleasure, violence and discomfort.

One has to bend down to be with them more. Driven by the desire to physically interact, one is almost forced to stoop further so that one can touch, or indeed taste, this intriguing surface; but no, the guard is there.

The visual language apparent in these artworks is unfamiliar, as is the artist, Eva Hesse. Her work is as exciting as it is disturbing. For many, Hesse’s sculpture refers essentially to the body. This, perhaps, does not seem surprising when it is in relation to the body that women are generally assessed. Hesse died of a brain tumour in 1970 at the age of 34. It must be an inescapable inevitability, therefore, that her work was read in the context of its time where it has, until recently, been largely abandoned.

Given the influence of feminism on our cultural consciousness since that period, it seems paramount that we avoid, or at the very least attempt to avoid, those dramatic facts about her life and family history. We may then be freed from a limited and narrow translation of her art.

Hesse’s work is much more ambiguous and funny than some rather literal readings would have us believe. Perhaps it is precisely because her use of metaphor in her work is so subtle that it escapes the one-line definitions we so love to employ.

We are now, more than ever, hungry for the cult of ‘personality’. While Hesse and others before and since can more than fill that demand, we seem in danger of focusing on the life of the artist and not on the life of the art.

When looking at Hesse’s sculpture, drawings and paintings, the most interesting and challenging aspects lie just there – within the work. And this must be the starting point for any interpretation, not her complex life or untimely death.

Questions 31-36
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet, write

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

31 The first piece of Hesse’s art has little effect on visitors to the gallery.
32 The order inherent in the first piece of Hesse’s art is essential to the understanding of her work.
33 The second piece of art by Hesse is inferior in several significant ways to the first.
34 The second piece by Hesse has several design faults that attract the public.
35 The third piece of work arouses different emotions.
36 Of the three pieces of Hesse’s work described, the first is the writer’s favourite.

Question 37-40
Choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in box 30 on your answer sheet.

37 According to the writer, Eva Hesse
A is not a well-known artist
B is very familiar, as is her work
C is not a good artist
D is strongly attracted by visual language

38 The writer concludes that
A Hesse’s work is timeless
B the understanding of Hesse’s work has until recently been interpreted only in the context of its time
C Hesse’s work is a product of her time and is not relevant to the modern world
D Hesse’s work is easy to read

39 The writer thinks that it is ……………… to define Hesse’s work.
A not difficult
B essential
C not important
D not easy

40 In the present climate,
A we may lose sight of Hesse’s art and focus on her life.
B personality is very important.
C art cults are in vogue.
D we may lose sight of Hesse’s life and focus on her art.

Networking

Networking as a concept has acquired what is in all truth an unjustified air of modernity. It is considered in the corporate world as an essential tool for the modern businessperson, as they trot round the globe drumming up business for themselves or a corporation. The concept is worn like a badge of distinction, and not just in the business world.

People can be divided basically into those who keep knowledge and their personal contacts to themselves, and those who are prepared to share what they know and indeed their friends with others. A person who is insecure, for example someone who finds it difficult to share information with others and who is unable to bring people, including friends, together does not make a good networker. The classic networker is someone who is strong enough within themselves to connect different people including close friends with each other. For example, a businessman or an academic may meet someone who is likely to be a valuable contact in the future, but at the moment that person may benefit from meeting another associate or friend.

It takes quite a secure person to bring these people together and allow a relationship to develop independently of himself. From the non-networker’s point of view such a development may be intolerable, especially if it is happening outside their control. The unfortunate thing here is that the initiator of the contact, if he did but know it, would be the one to benefit most. And why?

Because all things being equal, people move within circles and that person has the potential of being sucked into ever growing spheres of new contacts. It is said that, if you know eight people, you are in touch with everyone in the world. It does not take much common sense to realize the potential for any kind of venture as one is able to draw on the experience of more and more people.

Unfortunately, making new contacts, business or otherwise, while it brings success, does cause problems. It enlarges the individual’s world. This is in truth not altogether a bad thing, but it puts more pressure on the networker through his having to maintain an ever larger circle of people. The most convenient way out is, perhaps, to cull old contacts, but this would be anathema to our networker as it would defeat the whole purpose of networking. Another problem is the reaction of friends and associates. Spreading oneself thinly gives one less time for others who were perhaps closer to one in the past. In the workplace, this can cause tension with jealous colleagues, and even with superiors who might be tempted to rein in a more successful inferior. Jealousy and envy can prove to be very detrimental if one is faced with a very insecure manager, as this person may seek to stifle someone’s career or even block it completely.

The answer here is to let one’s superiors share in the glory; to throw them a few crumbs of comfort. It is called leadership from the bottom. In the present business climate, companies and enterprises need to co-operate with each other in order to expand. As globalization grows apace, companies need to be able to span not just countries but continents. Whilst people may rail against this development it is for the moment here to stay. Without co-operation and contacts, specialist companies will not survive for long. Computer components, for example, need to be compatible with the various machines on the market and to achieve this, firms need to work in conjunction with others. No business or institution can afford to be an island in today’s environment. In the not very distant past, it was possible for companies to go it alone, but it is now more difficult to do so.

The same applies in the academic world, where ideas have been jealously guarded. The opening-up of universities and colleges to the outside world in recent years has been of enormous benefit to industry and educational institutions. The stereotypical academic is one who moves in a rarefied atmosphere living a life of sometimes splendid isolation, a prisoner of their own genius. This sort of person does not fit easily into the mould of the modern networker. Yet even this insular world is changing. The ivory towers are being left ever more frequently as educational experts forge links with other bodies; sometimes to stunning effect as in Silicon Valley in America and around Cambridge in England, which now has one of the most concentrated clusters of high tech companies in Europe.

It is the networkers, the wheeler-dealers, the movers and shakers, call them what you will, that carry the world along. The world of the Neanderthals was shaken between 35,000 and 40,000 BC; they were superseded by Homo Sapiens with the very ‘networking’ skills that separate us from other animals: understanding, thought abstraction and culture, which are inextricably linked to planning survival and productivity in humans. It is said the meek will inherit the earth. But will they?

Questions 1-5

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet, write

YES                          if the statement agrees with the writer’s claims
NO                            if the statement contradicts the writer’s claims
NOT GIVEN         if there is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1 Networking is not a modern idea.
2 Networking is worn like a badge exclusively in the business world.
3 People fall into two basic categories.
4 A person who shares knowledge and friends makes a better networker than one who does not.
5 The classic networker is physically strong and generally in good health.

Questions 6-10

Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage, complete the sentences below.

6 Making new acquaintances …………………………………. but also has its disadvantages.
7 At work, problems can be caused if the manager is …………………………………. .
8 A manager can suppress, or even totally …………………………………. the career of an employee.
9 In business today, working together is necessary in order for …………………………………. to grow.
10 Businesses that specialize will not last for long without …………………………………. .

Questions 11-15

Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage, complete the sentences below.

11 In which sphere of life have ideas been protected jealously? ………………………………….
12 Which type of individual does not easily become a modern networker? ………………………………….
13 Where is one of the greatest concentrations of high tech companies in Europe? ………………………………….
14 Who replaced the Neanderthals? ………………………………….
15 What, as well as understanding and thought abstraction, sets us apart from other animals? ………………………………….

A SILENT FORCE

A There is a legend that St Augustine in the fourth century AD was the first individual to be seen reading silently rather than aloud, or semi-aloud, as had been the practice hitherto. Reading has come a long way since Augustine’s day. There was a time when it was a menial job of scribes and priests, not the mark of civilization it became in Europe during the Renaissance when it was seen as one of the attributes of the civilized individual.

B Modern nations are now seriously affected by their levels of literacy. While the Western world has seen a noticeable decline in these areas, other less developed countries have advanced and, in some cases, overtaken the West. India, for example, now has a large pool of educated workers. So European countries can no longer rest on their laurels as they have done for far too long; otherwise, they are in danger of falling even further behind economically.

C It is difficult in the modern world to do anything other than a basic job without being able to read. Reading as a skill is the key to an educated workforce, which in turn is the bedrock of economic advancement, particularly in the present technological age. Studies have shown that by increasing the literacy and numeracy skills of primary school children in the UK, the benefit to the economy generally is in billions of pounds. The skill of reading is now no more just an intellectual or leisure activity, but rather a fully-fledged economic force.

D Part of the problem with reading is that it is a skill which is not appreciated in most developed societies. This is an attitude that has condemned large swathes of the population in most Western nations to illiteracy. It might surprise people in countries outside the West to learn that in the United Kingdom, and indeed in some other European countries, the literacy rate has fallen to below that of so-called less developed countries.

E There are also forces conspiring against reading in our modern society. It is not seen as cool among a younger generation more at home with computer screens or a Walkman. The solitude of reading is not very appealing. Students at school, college or university who read a lot are called bookworms. The term indicates the contempt in which reading and learning are held in certain circles or subcultures. It is a criticism, like all such attacks, driven by the insecurity of those who are not literate or are semi-literate. Criticism is also a means, like all bullying, of keeping peers in place so that they do not step out of line. Peer pressure among young people is so powerful that it often kills any attempts to change attitudes to habits like reading.

F But the negative connotations apart, is modern Western society standing Canute-like against an uncontrollable spiral of decline? I think not.

G How should people be encouraged to read more? It can easily be done by increasing basic reading skills at an early age and encouraging young people to borrow books from schools. Some schools have classroom libraries as well as school libraries. It is no good waiting until pupils are in their secondary school to encourage an interest in books; it needs to be pushed at an early age. Reading comics, magazines and low brow publications like Mills and Boon is frowned upon. But surely what people, whether they be adults or children, read is of little import. What is significant is the fact that they are reading. Someone who reads a comic today may have the courage to pick up a more substantial tome later on.

H But perhaps the best idea would be to stop the negative attitudes to reading from forming in the first place. Taking children to local libraries brings them into contact with an environment where they can become relaxed among books. If primary school children were also taken in groups into bookshops, this might also entice them to want their own books. A local bookshop, like some local libraries, could perhaps arrange book readings for children which, being away from the classroom, would make the reading activity more of an adventure. On a more general note, most countries have writers of national importance. By increasing the standing of national writers in the eyes of the public, through local and national writing competitions, people would be drawn more to the printed word. Catch them young and, perhaps, they just might then all become bookworms.

Questions 16-22

Reading Passage 2 has eight paragraphs labelled A-H.
Choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the appropriate numbers (i-xii) in boxes 16-22 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Reading not taken for granted
ii Taking children to libraries
iii Reading: the mark of civilization
iv Reading in St Augustine’s day
v A large pool of educated workers in India
vi Literacy rates in developed countries have declined because of people’s attitude
vii Persuading people to read
viii Literacy influences the economies of countries in today’s world
xi Reading benefits the economy by billions of pounds
x The attitude to reading amongst the young
xi Reading becomes an economic force
xii The writer’s attitude to the decline in reading

16 Paragraph A
17 Paragraph B
18 Paragraph C
19 Paragraph D
20 Paragraph E
21 Paragraph F
22 Paragraph G

Questions 23-27

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 23-27 on your answer sheet, write

YES                             if the statement agrees with the writer’s claims
NO                              if the statement contradicts the writer’s claims
NOT GIVEN            if there is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

23 European countries have been satisfied with past achievements for too long and have allowed other countries to overtake them in certain areas.
24 Reading is an economic force.
25 The literacy rate in less developed nations is considerably higher than in all European countries.
26 If you encourage children to read when they are young the negative attitude to reading that grows in some subcultures will be eliminated.
27 People should be discouraged from reading comics and magazines.

Variations on a theme: the sonnet form in English poetry

A The form of lyric poetry known as ‘the sonnet’, or ‘little song’, was introduced into the English poetic corpus by Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder and his contemporary Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, during the first half of the sixteenth century. It originated, however, in Italy three centuries earlier, with the earliest examples known being those of Giacomo da Lentini, ‘The Notary’ in the Sicilian court of the Emperor Frederick II, dating from the third decade of the thirteenth century. The Sicilian sonneteers are relatively obscure, but the form was taken up by the two most famous poets of the Italian Renaissance, Dante and Petrarch, and indeed the latter is regarded as the master of the form.

B The Petrarchan sonnet form, the first to be introduced into English poetry, is a complex poetic structure. It comprises fourteen lines written in a rhyming metrical pattern of iambic pentameter, that is to say each line is ten syllables long, divided into five ‘feet’ or pairs of syllables (hence ‘pentameter’), with a stress pattern where the first syllable of each foot is unstressed and the second stressed (an iambic foot). This can be seen if we look at the first line of one of Wordsworth’s sonnets, ‘After- Thought’: ‘I thought of thee my partner and my guide’. If we break down this line into its constituent syllabic parts, we can see the five feet and the stress pattern (in this example each stressed syllable is underlined), thus: ‘I thought/ of thee/ my part/ner and/ my guide’.

C The rhyme scheme for the Petrarchan sonnet is equally as rigid. The poem is generally divided into two parts, the octave (8 lines) and the sestet (6 lines), which is demonstrated through rhyme rather than an actual space between each section. The octave is usually rhymed abbaabba with the first, fourth, fifth and eighth lines rhyming with each other, and the second, third, sixth and seventh also rhyming. The sestet is more varied: it can follow the patterns cdecde, cdccdc,or cdedce. Perhaps the best interpretation of this division in the Petrarchan sonnet is by Charles Gayley, who wrote: ‘The octave bears the burden; a doubt, a problem, a reflection, a query, an historical statement, a cry of indignation or desire, a vision of the ideal. The sestet eases the load, resolves the problem or doubt, answers the query or doubt, solaces the yearning, realizes the vision’. Thus, we can see that the rhyme scheme demonstrates a twofold division in the poem, providing a structure for development of themes and ideas.

D Early on, however, English poets began to vary and experiment with this structure. The first major development was made by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, altogether an indifferent poet, but was taken up and perfected by William Shakespeare, and is named after him. The Shakespearean sonnet also has fourteen lines in iambic pentameter, but rather than the division into octave and sestet, the poem is divided into four parts: three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet. Each quatrain has its own internal rhyme scheme, thus a typical Shakespearean sonnet would rhyme abab cdcd efef gg. Such a structure naturally allows greater flexibility for the author and it would be hard, if not impossible, to enumerate the different ways in which it has been employed, by Shakespeare and others. For example, an idea might be introduced in the first quatrain, complicated in the second, further complicated in the third, and resolved in the final couplet – indeed, the couplet is almost always used as a resolution to the poem, though often in a surprising way.

E These, then, are the two standard forms of the sonnet in English poetry, but it should be recognized that poets rarely follow rules precisely and a number of other sonnet types have been developed, playing with the structural elements. Edmund Spenser, for example, more famous for his verse epic ‘The Faerie Queene’, invented a variation on the Shakespearean form by interlocking the rhyme schemes between the quatrains, thus: abab bcbc cdcd ee, while in the twentieth century Rupert Brooke reversed his sonnet, beginning with the couplet. John Milton, the seventeenth-century poet, was unsatisfied with the fourteen-line format and wrote a number of ‘Caudate’ sonnets, or sonnets with the regular fourteen lines (on the Petrarchan model) with a ‘coda’ or ‘tail’ of a further six lines. A similar notion informs George Meredith’s sonnet sequence ‘Modern Love’, where most sonnets in the cycle have sixteen lines.

F Perhaps the most radical of innovators, however, has been Gerard Manley Hopkins, who developed what he called the ‘Curtal’ sonnet. This form varies the length of the poem, reducing it in effect to eleven and a half lines, the rhyme scheme and the number of feet per line. Modulating the Petrarchan form, instead of two quatrains in the octave, he has two tercets rhyming abc abc, and in place of the sestet he has four and a half lines, with a rhyme scheme dcbdc. As if this is not enough, the tercets are no longer in iambic pentameter, but have six stresses instead of five, as does the final quatrain, with the exception of the last line, which has three. Many critics, however, are sceptical as to whether such a major variation can indeed be classified as a sonnet, but as verse forms and structures become freer, and poets less satisfied with convention, it is likely that even more experimental forms will out.

Questions 28-32

Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs labelled A-H.
Choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the appropriate numbers (i-xiii) in boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Octave develops sestet
ii The Faerie Queene and Modern Love
iii The origins of the sonnet
iv The Shakespearean sonnet form
v The structure of the Petrarchan sonnet form
vi A real sonnet?
vii Rhyme scheme provides structure developing themes and ideas
viii Dissatisfaction with format
xi The Sicilian sonneteers
x Howard v. Shakespeare
xi Wordsworth’s sonnet form
xii Future breaks with convention
xiii The sonnet form: variations and additions

Example      Paragraph A          iii

28 Paragraph B
29 Paragraph C
30 Paragraph D
31 Paragraph E
32 Paragraph F

Questions 33-37

Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage, complete the sentences below.

33 Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder and Henry Howard were …………………………………. .
34 It was in the third decade of the thirteenth century that the …………………………………. was introduced.
35 Among poets of the Italian Renaissance …………………………………. was considered to be the better sonneteer.
36 The Petrarchan sonnet form consists of …………………………………. .
37 In comparison with the octave, the rhyming scheme of the sestet is …………………………………. varied.

Questions 38-40
Choose the correct letters A-D and write them in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.

38 According to Charles Gayley,
A the octave is longer than the sestet.
B the octave develops themes and ideas.
C the sestet provides answers and solutions.
D the sestet demonstrates a twofold division.

39 The Shakespearean sonnet is
A an indifferent development.
B more developed than the Petrarchan sonnet.
C more flexible than the Petrarchan sonnet.
D enumerated in different ways.

40 According to the passage, whose sonnet types are similar?
A Spenser and Brooke
B Brooke and Milton
C Hopkins and Spenser
D Milton and Meredith

Reading Passage 1

Adults and children are frequently confronted with statements about the alarming rate of loss of tropical rainforests. For example, one graphic illustration to which children might readily relate is the estimate that rainforests are being destroyed at a rate equivalent to one thousand football fields every forty minutes – about the duration of a normal classroom period. In the face of the frequent and often vivid media coverage, it is likely that children will have formed ideas about rainforests – what and where they are, why they are important, what endangers them – independent of any formal tuition. It is also possible that some of these ideas will be mistaken.

Many studies have shown that children harbour misconceptions about ‘pure’, curriculum science. These misconceptions do not remain isolated but become incorporated into a multifaceted, but organised, conceptual framework, making it and the component ideas, some of which are erroneous, more robust but also accessible to modification. These ideas may be developed by children absorbing ideas through the popular media. Sometimes this information may be erroneous. It seems schools may not be providing an opportunity for children to re-express their ideas and so have them tested and refined by teachers and their peers.

Despite the extensive coverage in the popular media of the destruction of rainforests, little formal information is available about children’s ideas in this area. The aim of the present study is to start to provide such information, to help teachers design their educational strategies to build upon correct ideas and to displace misconceptions and to plan programmes in environmental studies in their schools.

The study surveys children’s scientific knowledge and attitudes to rainforests. Secondary school children were asked to complete a questionnaire containing five open-form questions. The most frequent responses to the first question were descriptions which are self-evident from the term ‘rainforest’. Some children described them as damp, wet or hot. The second question concerned the geographical location of rainforests. The commonest responses were continents or countries: Africa (given by 43% of children), South America (30%), Brazil (25%). Some children also gave more general locations, such as being near the Equator.

Responses to question three concerned the importance of rainforests. The dominant idea, raised by 64% of the pupils, was that rainforests provide animals with habitats. Fewer students responded that rainforests provide plant habitats, and even fewer mentioned the indigenous populations of rainforests. More girls (70%) than boys (60%) raised the idea of rainforest as animal habitats.

Similarly, but at a lower level, more girls (13%) than boys (5%) said that rainforests provided human habitats. These observations are generally consistent with our previous studies of pupils’ views about the use and conservation of rainforests, in which girls were shown to be more sympathetic to animals and expressed views which seem to place an intrinsic value on non-human animal life.

The fourth question concerned the causes of the destruction of rainforests. Perhaps encouragingly, more than half of the pupils (59%) identified that it is human activities which are destroying rainforests, some personalising the responsibility by the use of terms such as ‘we are’. About 18% of the pupils referred specifically to logging activity.

One misconception, expressed by some 10% of the pupils, was that acid rain is responsible for rainforest destruction; a similar proportion said that pollution is destroying rainforests. Here, children are confusing rainforest destruction with damage to the forests of Western Europe by these factors. While two fifths of the students provided the information that the rainforests provide oxygen, in some cases this response also embraced the misconception that rainforest destruction would reduce atmospheric oxygen, making the atmosphere incompatible with human life on Earth.

In answer to the final question about the importance of rainforest conservation, the majority of children simply said that we need rainforests to survive. Only a few of the pupils (6%) mentioned that rainforest destruction may contribute to global warming. This is surprising considering the high level of media coverage on this issue. Some children expressed the idea that the conservation of rainforests is not important.

The results of this study suggest that certain ideas predominate in the thinking of children about rainforests. Pupils’ responses indicate some misconceptions in basic scientific knowledge of rainforests’ ecosystems such as their ideas about rainforests as habitats for animals, plants and humans and the relationship between climatic change and destruction of rainforests.

Pupils did not volunteer ideas that suggested that they appreciated the complexity of causes of rainforest destruction. In other words, they gave no indication of an appreciation of either the range of ways in which rainforests are important or the complex social, economic and political factors which drive the activities which are destroying the rainforests. One encouragement is that the results of similar studies about other environmental issues suggest that older children seem to acquire the ability to appreciate, value and evaluate conflicting views. Environmental education offers an arena in which these skills can be developed, which is essential for these children as future decision – makers.

Questions 1-8

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1.

In boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                       if the statement is true according to the passage
FALSE                     if the statement is false according to the passage
NOT GIVEN         if the information is not given in the passage

1 The plight of the rainforests has largely been ignored by the media.
2 Children only accept opinions on rainforests that they encounter in their classrooms.
3 It has been suggested that children hold mistaken views about the ‘pure’ science that they study at school.
4 The fact that children’s ideas about science form part of a larger framework of ideas means that it is easier to change them.
5 The study involved asking children a number of yes/no questions such as ‘Are there any rainforests in Africa?’
6 Girls are more likely than boys to hold mistaken views about the rainforests’ destruction.
7 The study reported here follows on from a series of studies that have looked at children’s understanding of rainforests.
8 A second study has been planned to investigate primary school children’s ideas about rainforests.

Questions 9-13

The box below gives a list of responses A–P to the questionnaire discussed in Reading Passage 1.
Answer the following questions by choosing the correct responses A–P.
Write your answers in boxes 9–13 on your answer sheet.

List of Responses
A There is a complicated combination of reasons for the loss of the rainforests.
B The rainforests are being destroyed by the same things that are destroying the forests of Western Europe.
C Rainforests are located near the Equator.
D Brazil is home to the rainforests.
E Without rainforests some animals would have nowhere to live.
F Rainforests are important habitats for a lot of plants.
G People are responsible for the loss of the rainforests.
H The rainforests are a source of oxygen.
I Rainforests are of consequence for a number of different reasons.
J As the rainforests are destroyed, the world gets warmer.
K Without rainforests there would not be enough oxygen in the air.
L There are people for whom the rainforests are home.
M Rainforests are found in Africa.
N Rainforests are not really important to human life.
O The destruction of the rainforests is the direct result of logging activity.
P Humans depend on the rainforests for their continuing existence.

9 What was the children’s most frequent response when asked where the rainforests were?
10 What was the most common response to the question about the importance of the rainforests?
11 What did most children give as the reason for the loss of the rainforests?
12 Why did most children think it important for the rainforests to be protected?
13 Which of the responses is cited as unexpectedly uncommon, given the amount of time spent on the issue by the newspapers and television?

Question 14
Choose the best answer A, B, C, D or E.

14 Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 1?
A The development of a programme in environmental studies within a science curriculum
B Children’s ideas about the rainforests and the implications for course design
C The extent to which children have been misled by the media concerning the rainforests.
D How to collect, collate and describe the ideas of secondary school children.
E The importance of the rainforests and the reasons for their destruction.

What Do Whales Feel?

Some of the senses that we and other terrestrial mammals take for granted are either reduced or absent in cetaceans or fail to function well in water. For example, it appears from their brain structure that toothed species are unable to smell. Baleen species, on the other hand, appear to have some related brain structures but it is not known whether these are functional. It has been speculated that, as the blowholes evolved and migrated to the top of the head, the neural pathways serving sense of smell may have been nearly all sacrificed. Similarly, although at least some cetaceans have taste buds, the nerves serving these have degenerated or are rudimentary.

The sense of touch has sometimes been described as weak too, but this view is probably mistaken. Trainers of captive dolphins and small whales often remark on their animals’ responsiveness to being touched or rubbed, and both captive and freeranging cetacean individuals of all species (particularly adults and calves, or members of the same subgroup) appear to make frequent contact. This contact may help to maintain order within a group, and stroking or touching are part of the courtship ritual in most species. The area around the blowhole is also particularly sensitive and captive animals often object strongly to being touched there.

The sense of vision is developed to different degrees in different species. Baleen species studied at close quarters underwater – specifically a grey whale calf in captivity for a year, and free-ranging right whales and humpback whales studied and filmed off Argentina and Hawaii – have obviously tracked objects with vision underwater, and they can apparently see moderately well both in water and in air. However, the position of the eyes so restricts the field of vision in baleen whales that they probably do not have stereoscopic vision.

On the other hand, the position of the eyes in most dolphins and porpoises suggests that they have stereoscopic vision forward and downward. Eye position in freshwater dolphins, which often swim on their side or upside down while feeding, suggests that what vision they have is stereoscopic forward and upward. By comparison, the bottlenose dolphin has extremely keen vision in water. Judging from the way it watches and tracks airborne flying fish, it can apparently see fairly well through the air–water interface as well. And although preliminary experimental evidence suggests that their in-air vision is poor, the accuracy with which dolphins leap high to take small fish out of a trainer’s hand provides anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

Such variation can no doubt be explained with reference to the habitats in which individual species have developed. For example, vision is obviously more useful to species inhabiting clear open waters than to those living in turbid rivers and flooded plains. The South American boutu and Chinese beiji, for instance, appear to have very limited vision, and the Indian susus are blind, their eyes reduced to slits that probably allow them to sense only the direction and intensity of light.

Although the senses of taste and smell appear to have deteriorated, and vision in water appears to be uncertain, such weaknesses are more than compensated for by cetaceans’ well-developed acoustic sense. Most species are highly vocal, although they vary in the range of sounds they produce, and many forage for food using echolocation. Large baleen whales primarily use the lower frequencies and are often limited in their repertoire. Notable exceptions are the nearly song-like choruses of bowhead whales in summer and the complex, haunting utterances of the humpback whales. Toothed species in general employ more of the frequency spectrum, and produce a wider variety of sounds, than baleen species (though the sperm whale apparently produces a monotonous series of high-energy clicks and little else). Some of the more complicated sounds are clearly communicative, although what role they may play in the social life and ‘culture’ of cetaceans has been more the subject of wild speculation than of solid science.

Questions 15-21
Complete the table below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 2 for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 15–21 on your answer sheet.

Sense	Species	Ability	Comments
Taste	some types	poor	nerves linked to their (15)…………………..are underdeveloped
Vision	(16)…………….	yes	probably do not have stereoscopic vision
Vision	dolphins, porpoises	yes	probably have stereoscopic vision (17)…………………and………………….
Vision	(18)………………….	yes	probably have stereoscopic vision forward and upward
Vision	bottlenose dolphin	yes	exceptional in (19)…………………and good in air water interface
Vision	boutu and beiji	poor	have limited vision
Vision	Indian sus	no	probably only sense direction and intensity of light
Hearing	most large baleen	yes	usually are (20)…………………repertoire limited
Hearing	(21)………………whales and …………… whales	yes	song like
Hearing	toothed	yes	use more of frequency spectrum; have wider repertoire

Questions 22-26

Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 22–26 on your answer sheet.

22 Which of the senses is described here as being involved in mating?
23 Which species swims upside down while eating?
24 What can bottlenose dolphins follow from under the water?
25 Which type of habitat is related to good visual ability?
26 Which of the senses is best developed in cetaceans?

Visual Symbols And The Blind

Part 1
From a number of recent studies, it has become clear that blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space. But pictures are more than literal representations. This fact was drawn to my attention dramatically when a blind woman in one of my investigations decided on her own initiative to draw a wheel as it was spinning. To show this motion, she traced a curve inside the circle (Fig. 1). I was taken aback. Lines of motion, such as the one she used, are a very recent invention in the history of illustration. Indeed, as art scholar David Kunzle notes, Wilhelm Busch, a trend-setting nineteenth-century cartoonist, used virtually no motion lines in his popular figures until about 1877.

When I asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel, one particularly clever rendition appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel’s spokes as curved lines. When asked about these curves, they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion. Majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than, say, broken or wavy lines – or any other kind of line, for that matter? The answer was not clear. So I decided to test whether various lines of motion were apt ways of showing movement or if they were merely idiosyncratic marks. Moreover, I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.

To search out these answers, I created raised-line drawings of five different wheels, depicting spokes with lines that curved, bent, waved, dashed and extended beyond the perimeter of the wheel. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: wobbling, spinning fast, spinning steadily, jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.

All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes, they thought, suggested that the wheel was wobbling; and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. Subjects assumed that spokes extending beyond the wheel’s perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that dashed spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly.

In addition, the favoured description for the sighted was the favoured description for the blind in every instance. What is more, the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind, the task I gave them involved some problem solving. Evidently, however, the blind not only figured out meanings for each line of motion, but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.

Part 2
We have found that the blind understand other kinds of visual metaphors as well. One blind woman drew a picture of a child inside a heart – choosing that symbol, she said, to show that love surrounded the child. With Chang Hong Liu, a doctoral student from China, I have begun exploring how well blind people understand the symbolism behind shapes such as hearts that do not directly represent their meaning.

We gave a list of twenty pairs of words to sighted subjects and asked them to pick from each pair the term that best related to a circle and the term that best related to a square. For example, we asked: What goes with soft? A circle or a square? Which shape goes with hard?

All our subjects deemed the circle soft and the square hard. A full 94% ascribed happy to the circle, instead of sad. But other pairs revealed less agreement: 79% matched fast to slow and weak to strong, respectively. And only 51% linked deep to circle and shallow to square. (See Fig. 2.) When we tested four totally blind volunteers using the same list, we found that their choices closely resembled those made by the sighted subjects. One man, who had been blind since birth, scored extremely well. He made only one match differing from the consensus, assigning ‘far’ to square and ‘near’ to circle. In fact, only a small majority of sighted subjects – 53% – had paired far and near to the opposite partners. Thus, we concluded that the blind interpret abstract shapes as sighted people do.

Questions 27-29

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 27–29 on your answer sheet.

27 In the first paragraph the writer makes the point that blind people
A may be interested in studying art.
B can draw outlines of different objects and surfaces.
C can recognise conventions such as perspective.
D can draw accurately.

28 The writer was surprised because the blind woman
A drew a circle on her own initiative.
B did not understand what a wheel looked like.
C included a symbol representing movement.
D was the first person to use lines of motion.

29 From the experiment described in Part 1, the writer found that the blind subjects
A had good understanding of symbols representing movement.
B could control the movement of wheels very accurately.
C worked together well as a group in solving problems.
D got better results than the sighted undergraduates.

Questions 30-32

Look at the following diagrams (Questions 30–32), and the list of types of movement below.
Match each diagram to the type of movement A–E generally assigned to it in the experiment.
Choose the correct letter A–E and write them in boxes 30–32 on your answer sheet.

Questions 33-39
Complete the summary below using words from the box. Write your answers in boxes 33–39 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any word more than once.

In the experiment described in Part 2, a set of word (33) ……………….. was used to investigate whether blind and sighted people perceived the symbolism in abstract (34) ……………….. in the same way. Subjects were asked which word fitted best with a circle and which with a square. From the (35) ……………….. volunteers, everyone thought a circle fitted ‘soft’ while a square fitted ‘hard’. However, only 51% of the (36) ……………….. volunteers assigned a circle to (37) ………………… When the test was later repeated with (38) ……………….. volunteers, it was found that they made (39) ……………….. choices.

associations	blind	deep	hard	hundred
identical	pairs	shapes	sighted	similar
shallow	soft	words

Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answer in box 40 on your answer sheet.

Which of the following statements best summarises the writer’s general conclusion?
A The blind represent some aspects of reality differently from sighted people.
B The blind comprehend visual metaphors in similar ways to sighted people.
C The blind may create unusual and effective symbols to represent reality.
D The blind may be successful artists if given the right training.

Wildfires

A Wildfires are usually the product of human negligence. Humans start about 90% of wild fires and lightning causes the other 10%. Regular causes for wildfires include arson, camping fires, throwing away cigarettes, burning rubbish, and playing with fireworks or matches. Once begun, wildfires can spread at a rate of up to 23 kph and, as a fire spreads over a landscape, it could undertake a life of its own – doing different things to keep itself going, even creating other blazes by throwing cinders miles away.

Three components are necessary to start a fire: oxygen, fuel and heat. These three make up “the fire triangle” and fire fighters frequently talk about this when they are attempting to put out blazes. The theory is that if the fire fighters can remove one of the triangle pillars, they can take control of and eventually put out the fire.

B The speed at which wildfires spread depends on the fuel around them. Fuel is any living or dead material that will burn. Types of fuel include anything from trees, underbrush and grassland to houses. The quantity of inflammable material around a fire is known as “the fuel load” and is determined by the amount of available fuel per unit area, usually tons per acre. How dry the fuel is can also influence how fires behave. When the fuel is very dry, it burns much more quickly and forms fires that are much harder to control.

Basic fuel characteristics affecting a fire are size and shape, arrangement and moisture, but with wildfires, where fuel usually consists of the same type of material, the main factor influencing ignition time is the ratio of the fuel’s total surface area to its volume. Because the surface area of a twig is not much bigger than its volume, it ignites rapidly. However, a tree’s surface area is much smaller than its volume, so it requires more time to heat up before ignition.

C Three weather variables that affect wildfires are temperature, wind and moisture. Temperature directly influences the sparking of wildfires, as heat is one of the three pillars of the fire triangle. Sticks, trees and underbrush on the ground receive heat from the sun, which heats and dries these potential fuels. Higher temperatures allow fuels to ignite and burn more quickly and add to the speed of a wildfire’s spread. Consequently, wildfires tend to rage in the afternoon, during the hottest temperatures.

The biggest influence on a wildfire is probably wind and this is also the most unpredictable variable. Winds provide fires with extra oxygen, more dry fuel, and wind also makes wildfires spread more quickly. Fires also create winds of their own that can be up to ten times faster than the ambient wind. Winds can even spread embers that can generate additional fires, an event known as spotting. Winds also change the course of fires, and gusts can take flames into trees, starting a “crown fire”. Humidity and precipitation provide moisture that can slow fires down and reduce their intensity, as it is hard for fuel to ignite if it has high moisture levels. Higher levels of humidity mean fewer wildfires.

D Topography can also hugely influence wildfire behaviour. In contrast to fuel and weather, topography hardly changes over time and can help or hamper the spread of a wildfire. The principal topographical factor relating to wildfires is slope. As a rule, fires move uphill much faster than downhill and the steeper the slope, the quicker fires move. This is because fires move in the same direction of the ambient wind, which generally blows uphill. Moreover, the fire can preheat fuel further uphill as smoke and heat rise in that direction. On the other hand, when the fire reaches the top of a hill, it has to struggle to come back down.

E Each year thousands of fire fighters risk their lives in their jobs. Elite fire fighters come in two categories: Hotshots and Smokejumpers. Operating in 20 man units, the key task of hotshots is to construct firebreaks around fires. A firebreak is a strip of land with all potential fuel removed. As their name suggests, smokejumpers jump out of aircraft to reach smaller fires situated in inaccessible regions. They attempt to contain these smaller fires before they turn into bigger ones.

As well as constructing firebreaks and putting water and fire retardant on fires, fire fighters also use “backfires”. Backfires are created by fire fighters and burn towards the main fire incinerating any potential fuel in its path. Fire fighters on the ground also receive extensive support from the air with tankers dropping thousands of gallons of water and retardant. Dropped from planes and helicopters, retardant is a red chemical containing phosphate fertilizer, which slows and cools fires.

Questions 1-4
Reading Passage 1 has 5 paragraphs (A – E). From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B – E. Write the appropriate number (i – viii) in boxes 1 – 4 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.

Example Paragraph A            iii

List of headings

i Climate Conditions
ii Solutions from the Air
iii Fire Starters
iv Battling the Blaze
v The Lie of the Land
vi Rain – The Natural Saviour
vii Fuelling the Flames
viii Fires and Trees

1 Paragraph B
2 Paragraph C
3 Paragraph D
4 Paragraph E

Questions 5-9
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 2, answer the following questions.
Write your answers in boxes 5 – 9 on your answer sheet.

6 What is measured in tons per acre?
7 When do wildfires burn at their fiercest?
8 What can travel in the wind to create fires at some distance from the initial fire?
9 Name a method using an additional fire that fire fighters use to control wild fires.

Questions 10-13
Complete each of the following statements (Questions 10 – 13) with words taken from Reading Passage 1.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

10 The most important factor in how quickly a wildfire catches fire is the surface to volume………………….
11 The most significant weather factor to affect wildfires’ actions is………………………
12 Fires on the tops of trees are known as…………………………
13 Wildfires usually travel much faster……………………….because of the typical direction of prevailing winds.

Problems with Water

Nearly half the world’s population will experience critical water shortages by 2025, according to the United Nations (UN). Wars over access to water are a rising possibility in this century and the main conflicts in Africa during the next 25 years could be over this most precious of commodities, as countries fight for access to scarce resources. “Potential water wars are likely in areas where rivers and lakes are shared by more than one country,” says Mark Evans a UN worker. Evans predicts that “population growth and economic development will lead to nearly one in two people in Africa living in countries facing water scarcity or what is known as ‘water stress’ within 25 years.” Water scarcity is defined as less than 1,000 cubic metres of water available per person per year, while water stress means less than 1,500 cubic metres of water is available per person per year. The report says that by 2025, 12 more African countries will join the 13 that already suffer from water stress or water scarcity. What makes the water issue even more urgent is that demand for water will grow increasingly fast as larger areas are placed under crops and economic development. Evans adds that “the strong possibility that the world is experiencing climate change also adds to this urgency.”

How to deal with water shortages is in the forefront of the battle between environmental activists on the one hand and governments and construction firms on the other. At the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg activists continued their campaign to halt dam construction, while many governments were outraged about a vocal minority thwarting their plans.

One of the UN’s eight millennium development goals is to halve the proportion of people without “sustainable” access to safe drinking water by 2015. How to ensure this happens was one of the big issues of the summit. Much of the text on this was already agreed, but one of the unresolved issues in the implementation plan was whether the goal on water would be extended to cover sanitation. The risks posed by water-borne diseases in the absence of sanitation facilities means the two goals are closely related. Only US negotiators have been resisting the extension of goals to include sanitation due to the financial commitment this would entail. However, Evans says the US is about to agree to this extension. This agreement could give the UN a chance to show that in one key area the world development agenda was advanced in Johannesburg.

But the UN has said Johannesburg was not about words alone, but implementation. A number of projects and funding initiatives were unveiled at the summit. But implementation is always harder, as South Africa has experienced in its water programme. Graham Bennetts, a water official in the South African government explains: “Since the 1994 elections government has provided easy access to water to 7 million people, but extending this to a further 7 million and ensuring this progress is sustainable is one of South Africa’s foremost implementation challenges.” In South Africa, access to water is defined as 25 litres a person daily, within a distance of 200m from where they live. “Although South Africa’s feat far exceeds the UN millennium goal on water supply, severe constraints on local government capacity make a more rapid expansion difficult,” says Bennetts.

For some of those who have only recently been given ready access to water, their gains are under threat as the number of cut-offs by municipalities for non-payment rise, says Liane Greef of the Environmental Monitoring Group. Greef is programme manager for Water Justice in southern Africa. Those who have their water supply cut off also automatically forfeit their right to 6000 free litres of water for a family a month under South Africa’s “water for all” policy. In the face of continued increases in unemployment, payment for water and other utilities has the potential to fast undo government’s high profile feats in delivery since 1994.

It is also the way of ensuring sufficient water supply and its management that will increasingly become a political battleground in South Africa. Water Affairs director-general Mike Muller says South Africa is near the end of its dam-building programme. However, there are big projects proposed elsewhere in southern Africa that could possibly be halted by activists who could bring pressure on funding agencies such as the World Bank. Greef says her group will campaign during the summit against the proposed Skuifraam Dam, which would be built near Franschhoek to supply additional water to Cape Town.

Rather than rely on new dam construction, the city should ensure that water is used wisely at all times rather than only in dry spells, Greef says. Another battleground for her group is over the privatisation of water supply, she says. Water supply, she insists, is best handled in the public interest by accountable government.

There is increasing hope from advances in technology to deal with water shortages. It is agricultural production which takes up about 90% of water consumed for human purposes, says the UN. To lower agricultural demand for water the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute is researching ways of obtaining “more crop per drop” through the development of drought resistant crops, as well as through better water management techniques. One of the institute’s research sites is the Limpopo River basin. According to the institute’s director-general, Frank Rijsbereman, rice growers in China use a quarter of the water a ton of produce to those in South Africa. The institute hopes the “green revolution” in crop productivity will soon be matched by the “blue revolution” in improving water utilisation in agriculture.

Questions 14-21
Match the views (14-21) with the people listed below.

14 Water needs to be utilised more prudently by some people.
15 South Africa has almost completed its plans for building dams.
16 Local government has excluded some South African households from getting free water for not meeting their bills.
17 The World Summit in Johannesburg will soon have its aims on hygiene agreed among all participants.
18 Faster development of water supply in South Africa is limited by the facilities of community administrations.
19 Water use is more efficient than in South Africa in some foreign food production.
20 Government should be answerable for water delivery and not private companies.
21 The water question’s importance has been increased due to the risk of global weather temperature rises.

MM      Mike Muller
FR        Frank Rijsbereman
ME       Mark Evans
LG        Liane Greef
GB       Graham Bennetts

Questions 22-27
Read the passage about problems with water again and look at the statements below.
In boxes 22 – 27 on your answer sheet write:

TRUE                 if the statement is true
FALSE               if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN    if the information is not given in the passage

22 Some African countries are currently at war over water resources.
23 A recent report says by 2025 that 25 African countries will suffer from water scarcity alone.
24 Vocal environment activists were arrested at the World Summit.
25 Questions at the World Summit over including water sanitation have not yet been agreed.
26 The World Summit had many good ideas but had little contribution on how to put the ideas into practice.
27 Plants are being introduced that can flourish with little water.

The History of Papermaking in the United Kingdom

The first reference to a paper mill in the United Kingdom was in a book printed by Wynken de Worde in about 1495. This mill belonged to a certain John Tate and was near Hertford. Other early mills included one at Dartford, owned by Sir John Speilman, who was granted special privileges for the collection of rags by Queen Elizabeth and one built in Buckinghamshire before the end of the sixteenth century. During the first half of the seventeenth century, mills were established near Edinburgh, at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, and several in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey. The Bank of England has been issuing bank notes since 1694, with simple watermarks in them since at least 1697. Henri de Portal was awarded the contract in December 1724 for producing the Bank of England watermarked bank-note paper at Bere Mill in Hampshire. Portals have retained this contract ever since but production is no longer at Bere Mill.

There were two major developments at about the middle of the eighteenth century in the paper industry in the UK. The first was the introduction of the rag engine or hollander, invented in Holland sometime before 1670, which replaced the stamping mills, which had previously been used, for the disintegration of the rags and beating of the pulp. The second was in the design and construction of the mould used for forming the sheet. Early moulds had straight wires sewn down on to the wooden foundation, this produced an irregular surface showing the characteristic “laid” marks, and, when printed on, the ink did not give clear, sharp lines. Baskerville, a Birmingham printer, wanted a smoother paper. James Whatman the Elder developed a woven wire fabric, thus leading to his production of the first woven paper in 1757.

Increasing demands for more paper during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries led to shortages of the rags needed to produce the paper. Part of the problem was that no satisfactory method of bleaching pulp had yet been devised, and so only white rags could be used to produce white paper. Chlorine bleaching was being used by the end of the eighteenth century, but excessive use produced papers that were of poor quality and deteriorated quickly. By 1800 up to 24 million pounds of rags were being used annually, to produce 10,000 tons of paper in England and Wales, and 1000 tons in Scotland, the home market being supplemented by imports, mainly from the continent. Experiments in using other materials, such as sawdust, rye straw, cabbage stumps and spruce wood had been conducted in 1765 by Jacob Christian Schaffer. Similarly, Matthias Koops carried out many experiments on straw and other materials at the Neckinger Mill, Bermondsey around 1800, but it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that pulp produced using straw or wood was utilised in the production of paper.

By 1800 there were 430 (564 in 1821) paper mills in England and Wales (mostly single vat mills), under 50 (74 in 1823) in Scotland and 60 in Ireland, but all the production was by hand and the output was low. The first attempt at a paper machine to mechanise the process was patented in 1799 by Frenchman Nicholas Louis Robert, but it was not a success. However, the drawings were brought to England by John Gamble in 1801 and passed on to the brothers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, who financed the engineer Henry Donkin to build the machine. The first successful machine was installed at Frogmore, Hertfordshire, in 1803. The paper was pressed onto an endless wire cloth, transferred to a continuous felt blanket and then pressed again. Finally it was cut off the reel into sheets and loft dried in the same way as hand made paper. In 1809 John Dickinson patented a machine that that used a wire cloth covered cylinder revolving in a pulp suspension, the water being removed through the centre of the cylinder and the layer of pulp removed from the surface by a felt covered roller (later replaced by a continuous felt passing round a roller). This machine was the forerunner of the present day cylinder mould or vat machine, used mainly for the production of boards. Both these machines produced paper as a wet sheet, which require drying after removal from the machine, but in 1821 T B Crompton patented a method of drying the paper continuously, using a woven fabric to hold the sheet against steam heated drying cylinders. After it had been pressed, the paper was cut into sheets by a cutter fixed at the end of the last cylinder.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the pattern for the mechanised production of paper had been set. Subsequent developments concentrated on increasing the size and production of the machines. Similarly, developments in alternative pulps to rags, mainly wood and esparto grass, enabled production increases. Conversely, despite the increase in paper production, there was a decrease, by 1884, in the number of paper mills in England and Wales to 250 and in Ireland to 14 (Scotland increased to 60), production being concentrated into fewer, larger units. Geographical changes also took place as many of the early mills were small and had been situated in rural areas. The change was to larger mills in, or near, urban areas closer to suppliers of the raw materials (esparto mills were generally situated near a port as the raw material was brought in by ship) and the paper markets.

Questions 28-34
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer of the reading passage on The History of Papermaking in the U.K.? In Boxes 28 – 34 write:

YES                                  if the statement agrees with the writer
NO                                    if the statement doesn’t agree with the writer
NOT GIVEN                 if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

28 The printing of paper money in the UK has always been done by the same company.
29 Early paper making in Europe was at its peak in Holland in the 18th century.
30 18th Century developments in moulds led to the improvement of a flatter, more even paper.
31 Chlorine bleaching proved the answer to the need for more white paper in the 18th and 19th centuries.
32 The first mechanised process that had any success still used elements of the hand made paper-making process.
33 Modern paper making machines are still based on John Dickinson’s 1809 patent.
34 The development of bigger mills near larger towns was so that mill owners could take advantage of potential larger workforces.

Questions 35-40
Match the events (35 – 40) with the dates (A – G) listed below. Write the appropriate letters in boxes 35 – 40 on your answer sheet.

35 Invention of the rag engine.
36 A new method for drying paper patented.
37 First successful machine for making paper put into production.
38 Manufacture of the first woven paper.
39 Watermarks first used for paper money.
40 The first machine for making paper patented.

Dates
A 1803
B 1757
C 1821
D 1697
E 1799
F 1670
G 1694

Cod In Trouble

A In 1992, the devastating collapse of the cod stocks off the East coast of Newfoundland forced the Canadian government to take drastic measures and close the fishery. Over 40,000 people lost their jobs, communities are still struggling to recover and the marine ecosystem is still in a state of collapse. The disintegration of this vital fishery sounded a warning bell to governments around the world who were shocked that a relatively sophisticated, scientifically based fisheries management program, not unlike their own, could have gone so wrong. The Canadian government ignored warnings that their fleets were employing destructive fishing practices and refused to significantly reduce quotas citing the loss of jobs as too great a concern.

B In the 1950s Canadian and US east coast waters provided an annual 100,000 tons in cod catches rising to 800,000 by 1970. This over fishing led to a catch of only 300,000 tons by 1975. Canada and the US reacted by passing legislation to extend their national jurisdictions over marine living resources out to 200 nautical miles and catches naturally declined to 139,000 tons in 1980. However the Canadian fishing industry took over and restarted the over fishing and catches rose again until, from 1985, it was the Canadians who were landing more than 250,000 tons of northern cod annually. This exploitation ravaged the stocks and by 1990 the catch was so low (29,000 tons) that in 1992 (12%000 tons) Canada had to ban all fishing in east coast waters. In a fishery that had for over a century yielded a quarter-million ton catches, there remained a biomass of less than 1700 tons and the fisheries department also predicted that, even with an immediate recovery, stocks need at least 15 years before they would be healthy enough to withstand previous levels of fishing.

C The devastating fishing came from massive investment poured into constructing huge “draggers”. Draggers haul enormous nets held open by a combination of huge steel plates and heavy chains and rollers that plough the ocean bottom. They drag up anything in the way, inflicting immense damage, destroying critical habitat and contributing to the destabilization of the northern cod ecosystem. The draggers targeted huge aggregations of cod while they were spawning, a time when the fish population is highly vulnerable to capture. Excessive trawling on spawning stocks became highly disruptive to the spawning process and ecosystem. In addition, the trawling activity resulted in a physical dispersion of eggs leading to a higher fertilization failure. Physical and chemical damage to larvae caused by the trawling action also reduced their chances of survival. These draggers are now banned forever from Canadian waters.

D Canadian media often cite excessive fishing by overseas fleets, primarily driven by the capitalist ethic, as the primary cause of the fishing out of the north Atlantic cod stocks. Many nations took fish off the coast of Newfoundland and all used deep-sea trawlers, and many often blatantly exceeded established catch quotas and treaty agreements. There can be little doubt that non North American fishing was a contributing factor in the cod stock collapse, and that the capitalist dynamics that were at work in Canada were all too similar for the foreign vessels and companies. But all of the blame cannot be put there, no matter how easy it is to do, as it does not account for the management of the resources.

E Who was to blame? As the exploitation of the Newfoundland fishery was so predominantly guided by the government, we can argue that a fishery is not a private area, as the fisher lacks management rights normally associated with property and common property. The state had appropriated the property, and made all of the management decisions. Fishermen get told who can fish, what they can fish, and essentially, what to do with the fish once it is caught. In this regard then, when a resource such as the Newfoundland fishery collapses, it is more a tragedy of government negligence than a tragedy of the general public.

F Following the ‘92 ban on northern cod fishing and most other species, an estimated 30 thousand people that had already lost their jobs after the 1992 Northern Cod moratorium took effect, were joined by an additional 12,000 fishermen and plant workers. With more than forty thousand people out of jobs, Newfoundland became an economic disaster area, as processing plants shut down, and vessels from the smallest dory to the monster draggers were made idle or sold overseas at bargain prices. Several hundred Newfoundland communities were devastated.

G Europeans need only look across the North Atlantic to see what could be in store for their cod fishery. In Canada they were too busy with making plans, setting expansive goals, and then allocating fish, and lots of it, instead of making sound business plans to match fishing with the limited availability of the resource. Cod populations in European waters are now so depleted that scientists have recently warned that “all fisheries in this area that target cod should be closed.” The Canadian calamity demonstrates that we now have the technological capability to find and annihilate every commercial fish stock, in any ocean and do irreparable damage to entire ecosystems in the process. In Canada’s case, a two billion dollar recovery bill may only be a part of the total long-term costs. The costs to individuals and desperate communities now deprived of meaningful and sustainable employment is staggering.

Questions 1-6
Reading Passage 1 has 7 paragraphs (A – G). From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B – G.

Example Paragraph A        iv

List of headings
i Factory Closures
ii The Human Cost
iii The Tragedy of State Mismanagement
iv A Warning to the World
v European Techniques
vi Destructive Trawling Technology
vii Lessons to be Learned
viii The Demise of the Northern Cod
ix Canadian Fishing Limits
x The Breaking of Agreements
xi Foreign Over-fishing

1 Paragraph B
2 Paragraph C
3 Paragraph D
4 Paragraph E
5 Paragraph F
6 Paragraph G

Questions 7-10
Choose the appropriate letters A – D and write them in boxes 7 – 10 on your answer sheet.

7 The Canadian government didn’t want to reduce cod catches pre 1992 because they were worried about
A possible rising unemployment
B the ecological effects
C the marine ecosystem
D drastic measures

8 Which graph most accurately describes Canadian cod catches from 1950 to 1992?

9 According to Reading Passage 1, which of the following is now true about the Newfoundland fisheries?
A Catches of 1700 tons a year only are permitted.
B Normal fishing could start again in 2007.
C No cod fishing is allowed but some other species can be caught.
D Fishing with draggers will be allowed again in 2007.

10 Who does the writer blame for the collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery?
A The Canadian fishing industry
B The foreign fishing industry
C The Canadian government
D The US fishing industry

Questions 11-14
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer of the reading passage on Cod in Trouble?
In Boxes 11 – 14 write:

YES                              if the statement agrees with the writer
NO                                if the statement doesn’t agree with the writer
NOT GIVEN             if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

11 Disruption of cod breeding was a major factor in the Newfoundland cod disaster.
12 Foreign trawlers frequently broke the catch allowances.
13 There was often conflict between the foreign fishermen and the Canadian authorities.
14 Europe does not face the seriousness of the Canadian disaster.

The Rise of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections

A When penicillin became widely available during the Second World War, it was a medical miracle, rapidly vanquishing the biggest wartime killer – infected wounds. Discovered initially by a French medical student, Ernest Duchesne, in 1896, and then rediscovered by Scottish physician Alexander Fleming in 1928, Penicillium crippled many types of disease-causing bacteria. But just four years after drug companies began mass-producing penicillin in 1943, microbes began appearing that could resist it.

B “There was complacency in the 1980s. The perception was that we had licked the bacterial infection problem. Drug companies weren’t working on new agents. They were concentrating on other areas, such as viral infections,” says Michael Blum, M.D., medical officer in the Food and Drug Administration’s division of anti-infective drug products. “In the meantime, resistance increased to a number of commonly used antibiotics, possibly related to overuse. In the 1990s, we’ve come to a point for certain infections that we don’t have agents available.”

C The increased prevalence of antibiotic resistance is an outcome of evolution. Any population of organisms, bacteria included, naturally includes variants with unusual traits – in this case, the ability to withstand an antibiotic’s attack on a microbe. When a person takes an antibiotic, the drug kills the defenceless bacteria, leaving behind – or “selecting,” in biological terms – those that can resist it. These renegade bacteria then multiply, increasing their numbers a million fold in a day, becoming the predominant microorganism. “Whenever antibiotics are used, there is selective pressure for resistance to occur. More and more organisms develop resistance to more and more drugs,” says Joe Cranston, Ph.D., director of the department of drug policy and standards at the American Medical Association in Chicago.

D Disease-causing microbes thwart antibiotics by interfering with their mechanism of action. For example, penicillin kills bacteria by attaching to their cell walls, then destroying a key part of the wall. The wall falls apart, and the bacterium dies. Resistant microbes, however, either alter their cell walls so penicillin can’t bind or produce enzymes that dismantle the antibiotic. Antibiotic resistance results from gene action. Bacteria acquire genes conferring resistance in different ways. Bacterial DNA may mutate spontaneously. Drug-resistant tuberculosis arises this way. Another way is called transformation where one bacterium may take up DNA from another bacterium. Most frightening, however, is resistance acquired from a small circle of DNA called a plasmid, which can flit from one type of bacterium to another. A single plasmid can provide a slew of different resistances.

E Many of us have come to take antibiotics for granted. A child develops a sore throat or an ear infection, and soon a bottle of pink medicine makes everything better. Linda McCaig, a scientist at the CDC, comments that “many consumers have an expectation that when they’re ill, antibiotics are the answer. Most of the time the illness is viral, and antibiotics are not the answer. This large burden of antibiotics is certainly selecting resistant bacteria.” McCaig and Peter Killeen, a fellow scientist at the CDC, tracked antibiotic use in treating common illnesses. The report cites nearly 6 million antibiotic prescriptions for sinusitis alone in 1985, and nearly 13 million in 1992. Ironically, advances in modern medicine have made more people predisposed to infection. McCaig notes that “there are a number of immunocompromised patients who wouldn’t have survived in earlier times. Radical procedures produce patients who are in difficult shape in the hospital, and there is routine use of antibiotics to prevent infection in these patients.”

F There are measures we can take to slow the inevitable resistance. Barbara Murray, M.D., of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston writes that “simple improvements in public health measures can go a long way towards preventing infection”. Such approaches include more frequent hand washing by health-care workers, quick identification and isolation of patients with drug-resistant infections, and improving sewage systems and water purity.

Drug manufacturers are also once again becoming interested in developing new antibiotics. The FDA is doing all it can to speed development and availability of new antibiotic drugs. “We can’t identify new agents – that’s the job of the pharmaceutical industry. But once they have identified a promising new drug, what we can do is to meet with the company very early and help design the development plan and clinical trials,” says Blum. In addition, drugs in development can be used for patients with multi-drug-resistant infections on an emergency compassionate use basis for people with AIDS or cancer, for example.” Blum adds. Appropriate prescribing is important. This means that physicians use a narrow spectrum antibiotics – those that target only a few bacterial types – whenever possible, so that resistances can be restricted. “There has been a shift to using costlier, broader spectrum agents. This prescribing trend heightens the resistance problem because more diverse bacteria are being exposed to antibiotics,” writes Killeen. So, while awaiting the next wonder drug, we must appreciate, and use correctly, the ones that we already have.

Another problem with antibiotic use is that patients often stop taking the drug too soon, because symptoms improve. However, this merely encourages resistant microbes to proliferate. The infection returns a few weeks later, and this time a different drug must be used to treat it. The conclusion: resistance can be slowed if patients take medications correctly.

Questions 15-21
Match the views (15 – 21) with the people listed below.
Write the appropriate letters in boxes 15 – 21 on your answer sheet.

15 Antibiotics are sometimes used to only prevent infections.
16 Choosing the correct antibiotic for particular infections is important.
17 Today there are some bacterial infections for which we have no effective antibiotic.
18 Untested drugs can be used on terminal patients as a last resort.
19 Resistance develops every time an antibiotic is used.
20 Merely washing hands can have a positive effect.
21 Antibiotics are often impotently used against viruses.

PK        Peter Killeen
JC         Joe Cranston
LM       Linda McCaig
MB       Michael Blum
BM      Barbara Murray

Questions 22-27
Reading Passage 2 has 6 paragraphs (A – F). Which paragraphs concentrate on the following information? Write the appropriate letters (A – F) in boxes 22 – 27 on your answer sheet.

22 How antibiotic resistance happens.
23 The survival of the fittest bacteria.
24 Factors to consider in solving the antibiotic-resistant bacteria problem.
25 The impact of the discovery of the first antibiotic.
26 The misuse and overuse of antibiotics.
27 The cessation of research into combating bacterial infections.

Hydroelectric Power

Hydroelectric power is America’s leading renewable energy resource. Of all the renewable power sources, it’s the most reliable, efficient, and economical. Water is needed to run a hydroelectric generating unit. It’s held in a reservoir or lake behind a dam, and the force of the water being released from the reservoir through the dam spins the blades of a turbine. The turbine is connected to the generator that produces electricity. After passing through the turbine, the water re-enters the river on the downstream side of the dam.

Hydroelectric plants convert the kinetic energy within falling water into electricity. The energy in moving water is produced in the sun, and consequently is continually being renewed. The energy in sunlight evaporates water from the seas and deposits it on land as rain. Land elevation differences result in rainfall runoff, and permit some of the original solar energy to be harnessed as hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric power is at present the earth’s chief renewable electricity source, generating 6% of global energy and about 15% of worldwide electricity. Hydroelectric power in Canada is plentiful and provides 60% of their electrical requirements. Usually regarded as an inexpensive and clean source of electricity, most big hydroelectric projects being planned today are facing a great deal of hostility from environmental groups and local people.

The earliest recorded use of water power was a clock, constructed around 250 BC. Since then, people have used falling water to supply power for grain and saw mills, as well as a host of other uses. The earliest use of flowing water to generate electricity was a waterwheel on the Fox River in Wisconsin in 1882.

The first hydroelectric power plants were much more dependable and efficient than the plants of the day that were fired by fossil fuels. This led to a rise in number of small to medium sized hydroelectric generating plants located wherever there was an adequate supply of falling water and a need for electricity. As demand for electricity soared in the middle years of the 20th century, and the effectiveness of coal and oil power plants improved, small hydro plants became less popular. The majority of new hydroelectric developments were focused on giant megaprojects.

Hydroelectric plants harness energy by passing flowing water through a turbine. The water turbine rotation is delivered to a generator, which generates electricity. The quantity of electricity that can be produced at a hydroelectric plant relies upon two variables. These variables are (1) the vertical distance that the water falls, called the “head”, and (2) the flow rate, calculated as volume over time. The amount of electricity that is produced is thus proportional to the head product and the flow rate.

So, hydroelectric power stations can normally be separated into two kinds. The most widespread are “high head” plants and usually employ a dam to stock up water at an increased height. They also store water at times of rain and discharge it during dry times. This results in reliable and consistent electricity generation, capable of meeting demand since flow can be rapidly altered. At times of excess electrical system capacity, usually available at night, these plants can also pump water from one reservoir to another at a greater height. When there is peak electrical demand, the higher reservoir releases water through the turbines to the lower reservoir.

“Low head” hydroelectric plants usually exploit heads of just a few meters or less. These types of power station use a weir or low dam to channel water, or no dam at all and merely use the river flow. Unfortunately their electricity production capacity fluctuates with seasonal water flow in a river.

Until only recently people believed almost universally that hydroelectric power was an environmentally safe and clean means of generating electricity. Hydroelectric stations do not release any of the usual atmospheric pollutants emitted by power plants fuelled by fossil fuels so they do not add to global warming or acid rain. Nevertheless, recent studies of the larger reservoirs formed behind dams have implied that decomposing, flooded vegetation could give off greenhouse gases equal to those from other electricity sources.

The clearest result of hydroelectric dams is the flooding of huge areas of land. The reservoirs built can be exceptionally big and they have often flooded the lands of indigenous peoples and destroyed their way of life. Numerous rare ecosystems are also endangered by hydroelectric power plant development.

Damming rivers may also change the quantity and quality of water in the rivers below the dams, as well as stopping fish migrating upstream to spawn. In addition, silt, usually taken downstream to the lower parts of a river, is caught by a dam and so the river downstream loses the silt that should fertilize the river’s flood plains during high water periods.

Theoretical global hydroelectric power is approximately four times larger than the amount that has been taken advantage of today. Most of the residual hydro potential left in the world can be found in African and Asian developing countries. Exploiting this resource would involve an investment of billions of dollars, since hydroelectric plants normally have very high building costs. Low head hydro capacity facilities on small scales will probably increase in the future as low head turbine research, and the standardization of turbine production, reduce the costs of low head hydro-electric power production. New systems of control and improvements in turbines could lead in the future to more electricity created from present facilities. In addition, in the 1950’s and 60’s when oil and coal prices were very low, lots of smaller hydroelectric plants were closed down. Future increases in the prices of fuel could lead to these places being renovated.

Questions 28-32
Read the passage about Hydroelectric Power again and look at the statements below.
In boxes 28 – 32 on your answer sheet write:

TRUE                          if the statement is true
FALSE                        if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN            if the information is not given in the passage

28 Canada uses the most hydroelectric power in the world today.
29 An early use of hydroelectric power was in the timber industry.
30 The first hydroelectric power stations were more effective than those using competing energy sources.
31 People have been drowned by the flooding of their traditional territory when reservoirs are created.
32 Nowadays, agriculture below hydroelectric dams is not affected by the change in water flow.

Questions 33-36
Complete each of the following statements (Questions 33 – 36) with words taken from Reading Passage 3.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

33 The origin of hydroelectric power is the…………………………produced when water obeys the laws of gravity.
34 How far water drops to the turbines in a power station is known as…………………………….
35 A drawback to low head hydroelectric power stations is that they depend on………………….
36 Derelict hydroelectric power stations could be……………………….in the future.

Questions 37-40
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 3, answer the following questions.

37 What proportion of the world’s electricity supply is provided by hydroelectric power?
38 How is the flow rate of a hydroelectric power station quantified?
39 When do high head power plants use surplus electricity to transfer water to a second reservoir?
40 What underwater action can lead to the production of pollution similar to that produced by fossil fuel power stations?

Cleaning up The Thames

The River Thames, which was biologically “dead” as recently as the 1960s, is now the cleanest metropolitan river in the world, according to the Thames Water Company. The company says that thanks to major investment in better sewage treatment in London and the Thames Valley, the river that flows through the United Kingdom capital and the Thames Estuary into the North Sea is cleaner now than it has been for 130 years. The Fisheries Department, who are responsible for monitoring fish levels in the River Thames, has reported that the river has again become the home to 115 species of fish including sea bass, flounder, salmon, smelt, and shad. Recently, a porpoise was spotted cavorting in the river near central London.

But things were not always so rosy. In the 1950s, sewer outflows and industrial effluent had killed the river. It was starved of oxygen and could no longer support aquatic life. Until the early 1970s, if you fell into the Thames you would have had to be rushed to hospital to get your stomach pumped. A clean-up operation began in the 1960s. Several Parliamentary Committees and Royal Commissions were set up, and, over time, legislation has been introduced that put the onus on polluters – effluent- producing premises and businesses – to dispose of waste responsibly. In 1964 the Greater London Council (GLC) began work on greatly enlarged sewage works, which were completed in 1974.

The Thames clean up is not over though. It is still going on, and it involves many disparate arms of government and a wide range of non-government stakeholder groups, all representing a necessary aspect of the task. In London’s case, the urban and non-urban London boroughs that flank the river’s course each has its own reasons for keeping “their” river nice. And if their own reasons do not hold out a sufficiently attractive carrot, the government also wields a compelling stick. The 2000 Local Government Act requires each local borough to “prepare a community strategy for promoting or improving the economic, social and environmental well-being of their area.” And if your area includes a stretch of river, that means a sustainable river development strategy.

Further legislation aimed at improving and sustaining the river’s viability has been proposed. There is now legislation that protects the River Thames, either specifically or as part of a general environmental clause, in the Local Government Act, the London Acts, and the law that created the post of the mayor of London. And these are only the tip of an iceberg that includes industrial, public health and environmental protection regulations. The result is a wide range of bodies officially charged, in one way or another, with maintaining the Thames as a public amenity. For example, Transport for London – the agency responsible for transport in the capital – plays a role in regulating river use and river users. They now are responsible for controlling the effluents and rubbish coming from craft using the Thames. This is done by officers on official vessels regularly inspectiing craft and doing spot checks. Another example is how Thames Water (TW) has now been charged to reduce the amount of litter that finds its way into the tidal river and its tributaries.

TW’s environment and quality manager, Dr. Peter Spillett, said: “This project will build on our investment which has dramatically improved the water quality of the river. London should not be spoiled by litter which belongs in the bin not the river.” Thousands of tons of rubbish end up in the river each year, from badly stored waste, people throwing litter off boats, and rubbish in the street being blown or washed into the river. Once litter hits the water it becomes too heavy to be blown away again and therefore the rivers act as a sink in the system. While the Port of London already collects up to 3,000 tons of solid waste from the tideway every year, Thames Water now plans to introduce a new device to capture more rubbish floating down the river. It consists of a huge cage that sits in the flow of water and gathers the passing rubbish. Moored just offshore in front of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, south-east London, the device is expected to capture up to 20 tons of floating litter each year. If washed out to sea, this rubbish can kill marine mammals, fish and birds. This machine, known as the Rubbish Muncher, is hoped to be the first of many, as the TW is now looking for sponsors to pay for more cages elsewhere along the Thames. Monitoring of the cleanliness of the River Thames in the past was the responsibility of a welter of agencies – British Waterways, Port of London Authority, the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Commission, Thames Water – as well as academic departments and national and local environment groups. If something was not right, someone was bound to call foul and hold somebody to account, whether it was the local authority, an individual polluter or any of the many public and private sector bodies that bore a share of the responsibility for maintaining the River Thames as a public amenity. Although they will all still have their part to play, there is now a central department in the Environment Agency, which has the remit of monitoring the Thames. This centralisation of accountability will, it is hoped, lead to more efficient control and enforcement.

Questions 1 – 6
Some of the actions taken to clean up the River Thames are listed below.
The writer gives these actions as examples of things that have been done by various agencies connected with the River Thames. Match each action with the agency responsible for doing it.

Actions to clean up the river Thames

A Operating the Rubbish Muncher
B Creating Community Strategies
C Monitoring the Cleanliness of the River Thames
D Monitoring Fish Levels
E Collecting Solid Waste from the Tideway
F Creating Enlarged Sewage Works
G Controlling the River Thames’ Traffic

Example: The fisheries department                  Answer D

1 The Environment Agency
2 Transport for London
3 The Greater London Council
4 Thames Water
5 Port of London
6 Local Boroughs

Questions 7-14
Do the following statements agree with passage on Cleaning up the Thames? In Boxes 7 – 14 write:

YES                          if the statement agrees with the writer
NO                            if the statement doesn’t agree with the writer
NOT GIVEN         if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

7 The Thames is now cleaner than it was in 1900.
8 Swimming in the Thames now poses no health hazards.
9 It is now mainly the responsibility of those who pollute the Thames to clean their waste up.
10 All local London boroughs are now partly responsible for keeping the Thames clean.
11 Transport for London now employs a type of River Police to enforce control of their regulations.
12 Rubbish Munchers are now situated at various locations on the Thames.
13 Previously no one department had overall responsibility or control for monitoring the cleanliness of the Thames.
14 British Waterways will no longer have any part in keeping the Thames clean.

Reading Passage Two

If it weren’t for nicotine, people wouldn’t smoke tobacco. Why? Because of the more than 4000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, nicotine is the primary one that acts on the brain, altering people’s moods, appetites and alertness in ways they find pleasant and beneficial. Unfortunately, as it is widely known, nicotine has a dark side: it is highly addictive. Once smokers become hooked on it, they must get their fix of it regularly, sometimes several dozen times a day. Cigarette smoke contains 43 known carcinogens, which means that long-term smoking can amount to a death sentence. In the US alone, 420,000 Americans die every year from tobacco-related illnesses.

Breaking nicotine addiction is not easy. Each year, nearly 35 million people make a concerted effort to quit smoking. Sadly, less than 7 percent succeed in abstaining for more than a year; most start smoking again within days. So what is nicotine and how does it insinuate itself into the smoker’s brain and very being?

The nicotine found in tobacco is a potent drug and smokers, and even some scientists, say it offers certain benefits. One is enhance performance. One study found that non-smokers given doses of nicotine typed about 5 percent faster than they did without it. To greater or lesser degrees, users also say nicotine helps them to maintain concentration, reduce anxiety, relieve pain, and even dampen their appetites (thus helping in weight control). Unfortunately, nicotine can also produce deleterious effects beyond addiction. At high doses, as are achieved from tobacco products, it can cause high blood pressure, distress in the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems and an increase in susceptibility to seizures and hypothermia.

First isolated as a compound in 1828, in its pure form nicotine is a clear liquid that turns brown when burned and smells like tobacco when exposed to air. It is found in several species of plants, including tobacco and, perhaps surprisingly, in tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant (though in extremely low quantities that are pharmacologically insignificant for humans).

As simple as it looks, the cigarette is highly engineered nicotine delivery device. For instance, when tobacco researchers found that much of the nicotine in a cigarette wasn’t released when burned but rather remained chemically bound within the tobacco leaf, they began adding substances such as ammonia to cigarette tobacco to release more nicotine. Ammonia helps keep nicotine in its basic form, which is more readily vaporised by the intense heat of the burning cigarette than the acidic form. Most cigarettes for sale in the US today contain 10 milligrams or more of nicotine. By inhaling smoke from a lighted cigarette, the average smoker takes 1 or 2 milligrams of vaporised nicotine per cigarette. Today we know that only a miniscule amount of nicotine is needed to fuel addiction. Research shows that manufacturers would have to cut nicotine levels in a typical cigarette by 95% to forestall its power to addict. When a smoker puffs on a lighted cigarette, smoke, including vaporised nicotine, is drawn into the mouth. The skin and lining of the mouth immediately absorb some nicotine, but the remainder flows straight down into the lungs, where it easily diffuses into the blood vessels lining the lung walls. The blood vessels carry the nicotine to the heart, which then pumps it directly to the brain. While most of the effects a smoker seeks occur in the brain, the heart takes a hit as well. Studies have shown that a smoker’s first cigarette of the day can increase his or her heart rate by 10 to 20 beats a minute. Scientists have found that a smoked substance reaches the brain more quickly than one swallowed, snorted (such as cocaine powder) or even injected. Indeed, a nicotine molecule inhaled in smoke will reach the brain within 10 seconds. The nicotine travels through blood vessels, which branch out into capillaries within the brain. Capillaries normally carry nutrients but they readily accommodate nicotine molecules as well. Once inside the brain, nicotine, like most addictive drugs, triggers the release of chemicals associated with euphoria and pleasure.

Just as it moves rapidly from the lungs into the bloodstream, nicotine also easily diffuses through capillary walls. It then migrates to the spaces surrounding neurones – ganglion cells that transmit nerve impulses throughout the nervous system. These impulses are the basis for our thoughts, feelings, and moods. To transmit nerve impulses to its neighbour, a neurone releases chemical messengers known as neurotransmitters. Like nicotine molecules, the neurotransmitters drift into the so-called synaptic space between neurones, ready to latch onto the receiving neurone and thus deliver a chemical “message” that triggers an electrical impulse.

The neurotransmitters bind onto receptors on the surface of the recipient neurone. This opens channels in the cell surface through which enter ions, or charged atoms, of sodium. This generates a current across the membrane of the receiving cell, which completes delivery of the “message”. An accomplished mimic, nicotine competes with the neurotransmitters to bind to the receptors. It wins and, like the vanquished chemical, opens ion channels that let sodium ions into the cell. But there’s a lot more nicotine around than the original transmitter, so a much larger current spreads across the membrane. This bigger current causes increased electrical impulses to travel along certain neurones. With repeated smoking, the neurones adapt to this increased electrical activity, and the smoker becomes dependent on the nicotine.

Questions 15-21
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer of Reading Passage 2? In Boxes 15 – 21 write:

YES                         if the statement agrees with the writer
NO                           if the statement doesn’t agree with the writer
NOT GIVEN        if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

15 Although nicotine is probably the well-known chemical in cigarettes, it is not necessarily the one that changes the psyche of the smoker when cigarettes are smoked.
16 In spite of the difficulties, according to the text more than thirty-five million people a year give up smoking.
17 It has been shown that nicotine in cigarettes can improve people’s abilities to perform some actions more quickly.
18 Added ammonia in cigarettes allows smokers to inhale more nicotine.
19 Snorted substances reach the brain faster than injected substances.
20 Nicotine dilates the blood vessels that carry it around the body.
21 Nicotine molecules allow greater electrical charges to pass between neurones.

Questions 22-26
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER from Reading Passage 2, answer the following questions.
Write your answers in boxes 22 – 26 on your answer sheet.

22 What is the natural colour of nicotine?
23 By how much would cigarette companies have to cut the nicotine content in cigarettes to prevent them from being addictive?
24 Name ONE of 2 things that first take nicotine into a smoker’s body?
25 According to the passage, by how many beats a minute can a cigarette raise a smoker’s heart rate?
26 What type of cell in the human body encloses neurones?

Question 27
From the list below choose the most suitable title for Reading Passage 2.
A How to Quit Smoking
B The Dangers of Smoking
C Cell Biology
D Why Smoking is Addictive
E Nicotine is a Poison

Deer Farming in Australia

A Deer are not indigenous to Australia. They were introduced into the country during the nineteenth century under the acclimatization programs governing the introduction of exotic species of animals and birds into Australia. Six species of deer were released at various locations. The animals dispersed and established wild populations at various locations across Australia, mostly depending upon their points of release into the wild. These animals formed the basis for the deer industry in Australia today.

Commercial deer farming in Australia commenced in Victoria in 1971 with the authorized capture of rusa deer from the Royal National Park, NSW. Until 1985, only four species of deer, two from temperate climates (red, fallow) and two tropical species (rusa, chital) were confined for commercial farming. Late in 1985, pressure from industry to increase herd numbers saw the development of import protocols. This resulted in the introduction of large numbers of red deer hybrids from New Zealand and North American elk directly from Canada. The national farmed deer herd is now distributed throughout all states although most are in New South Wales and Victoria.

B The number of animals processed annually has continued to increase, despite the downward trend in venison prices since 1997. Of concern is the apparent increase in the number of female animals processed and the number of whole herds committed for processing. With more than 40,000 animals processed in 1998/99 and 60,000 in 1999/2000, there is justified concern that future years may see a dramatic drop in production. At least 85% of all venison produced in Australia is exported, principally to Europe. At least 90% of all velvet antler produced is exported in an unprocessed state to Asia.

Schemes to promote Australian deer products continue to have a positive effect on sales that in turn have a positive effect on prices paid to growers. The industry appears to be showing limited signs that it is emerging from a state of depression caused by both internal and external factors that include: (i) the Asian currency downturn; (ii) the industry’s lack of competitive advantage in influential markets (particularly in respect to New Zealand competition), and; (iii) within industry processing and marketing competition for limited product volumes of venison.

C From the formation of the Australian Deer Breeders Federation in 1979, the industry representative body has evolved through the Deer Farmers Federation of Australia to the Deer Industry Association of Australia Ltd (DIAA), which was registered in 1995. The industry has established two product development and marketing companies, the Australian Deer Horn and Co-Products Pty Ltd (ADH) and the Deer Industry Projects and Development Pty Ltd, which trades as the Deer Industry Company (DIC). ADH collects and markets Australian deer horn and co-products on behalf of Australian deer farmers. It promotes the harvest of velvet antler according to the strict quality assurance program promoted by the industry. The company also plans and co-ordinates regular velvet accreditation courses for Australian deer farmers.

D Estimates suggest that until the early 1990s the rate of the annual increase in the number of farmed deer was up to 25%, but after 1993 this rate of increase fell to probably less than 10%. The main reasons for the decline in the deer herd growth rate at such a critical time for the market were: (i) severe drought conditions up to 1998 affecting eastern Australia during 1993-96 and (ii) the consequent slaughter of large numbers of breeding females, at very low prices. These factors combined to decrease confidence within the industry. Lack of confidence saw a drop in new investment within the industry and a lack of willingness of established farmers to expand their herds. With the development of strong overseas markets for venison and velvet and the prospect of better seasons ahead in 1996, the trends described were seen to have been significantly reversed. However, the relatively small size of the Australian herd was seen to impose undesirable restraints on the rate at which herd numbers could be expanded to meet the demands for products.

Supply difficulties were exacerbated when the supply of products, particularly venison, was maintained by the slaughter of young breeding females. The net result was depletion of the industry’s female breeding herds.

E Industry programs are funded by statutory levies on sales of animals for venison, velvet antler sales and the sale of live animals into export markets. The industry has a 1996 – 2000 five year plan including animal nutrition, pasture quality, carcass quality, antler harvesting, promotional material and technical bulletins. All projects have generated a significant volume of information, which compliments similar work undertaken in New Zealand and other deer farming countries.

Major projects funded by levy funds include the Venison Market Project from 1992 to 1996. This initiative resulted in a dramatic increase in international demand for Australian venison and an increase in the domestic consumption of venison. In an effort to maintain existing venison markets in the short term and to increase them in the long term, in 1997 the industry’s top priority became the increase in size and production capacity of the national herd.

Questions 28-32
The reading passage on Deer Farming in Australia has 5 paragraphs (A – E).
From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs A – E.
Write the appropriate number (i – viii) in boxes 28 – 32 on your answer sheet. NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.

List of headings
i Industry Structures
ii Disease Affects Production
iii Trends in Production
iv Government Assistance
v How Deer Came to Australia
vi Research and Development
vii Asian Competition
viii Industry Development

28 Paragraph A
29 Paragraph B
30 Paragraph C
31 Paragraph D
32 Paragraph E

Questions 33-37
Read the passage about Deer Farming in Australia again and look at the statements below.
In boxes 33 – 37 on your answer sheet write:

TRUE                     if the statement is true
FALSE                   if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN        if the information is not given in Reading Passage 3

33 Until 1985 only 2 species of the originally released Australian deer were not used for farming.
34 Since 1985 many imported deer have been interbred with the established herds.
35 The drop in deer numbers since 1997 led to an increase in the price of venison.
36 Only a small amount of Australian venison production is consumed domestically.
37 Current economic conditions in Asian countries have had positive effect on the Australian deer industry.

Questions 38 – 40
Complete each of the following statements (Questions 38 – 40) with words taken from Reading Passage 3. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 38 – 40 on your answer sheet.
38 A stringent……………………….allows the Australian deer industry to maintain their excellence of product.
39 Herd stock expansion was made difficult by the killing of…………………………to continue product supply.
40 Foreign and home markets for Australian venison increased due to the……………………

The Creativity Myth

A It is a myth that creative people are born with their talents: gifts from God or nature. Creative genius is, in fact, latent within many of us, without our realising. But how far do we need to travel to find the path to creativity? For many people, a long way. In our everyday lives, we have to perform many acts out of habit to survive, like opening the door, shaving, getting dressed, walking to work, and so on. If this were not the case, we would, in all probability, become mentally unhinged. So strongly ingrained are our habits, though this varies from person to person, that sometimes, when a conscious effort is made to be creative, automatic response takes over. We may try, for example, to walk to work following a different route, but end up on our usual path. By then it is too late to go back and change our minds. Another day, perhaps. The same applies to all other areas of our lives. When we are solving problems, for example, we may seek different answers, but, often as not, find ourselves walking along the same well-trodden paths.

B So, for many people, their actions and behaviour are set in immovable blocks, their minds clogged with the cholesterol of habitual actions, preventing them from operating freely, and thereby stifling creation. Unfortunately, mankind’s very struggle for survival has become a tyranny – the obsessive desire to give order to the world is a case in point. Witness people’s attitude to time, social customs and the panoply of rules and regulations by which the human mind is now circumscribed.

C The groundwork for keeping creative ability in check begins at school. School, later university and then work, teach us to regulate our lives, imposing a continuous process of restrictions which is increasing exponentially with the advancement of technology. Is it surprising then that creative ability appears to be so rare? It is trapped in the prison that we have erected. Yet, even here in this hostile environment, the foundations for creativity are being laid; because setting off on the creative path is also partly about using rules and regulations. Such limitations are needed so that once they are learnt, they can be broken.

D The truly creative mind is often seen as totally free and unfettered. But a better image is of a mind, which can be free when it wants, and one that recognises that rules and regulations are parameters, or barriers, to be raised and dropped again at will. An example of how the human mind can be trained to be creative might help here. People’s minds are just like tense muscles that need to be freed up and the potential unlocked. One strategy is to erect artificial barriers or hurdles in solving a problem. As a form of stimulation, the participants in the task can be forbidden to use particular solutions or to follow certain lines of thought to solve a problem. In this way they are obliged to explore unfamiliar territory, which may lead to some startling discoveries. Unfortunately, the difficulty in this exercise, and with creation itself, is convincing people that creation is possible, shrouded as it is in so much myth and legend. There is also an element of fear involved, however subliminal, as deviating from the safety of one’s own thought patterns is very much akin to madness. But, open Pandora’s box, and a whole new world unfolds before your very eyes.

E Lifting barriers into place also plays a major part in helping the mind to control ideas rather than letting them collide at random. Parameters act as containers for ideas, and thus help the mind to fix on them. When the mind is thinking laterally, and two ideas from different areas of the brain come or are brought together, they form a new idea, just like atoms floating around and then forming a molecule. Once the idea has been formed, it needs to be contained or it will fly away, so fleeting is its passage. The mind needs to hold it in place for a time so that it can recognise it or call on it again. And then the parameters can act as channels along which the ideas can flow, developing and expanding. When the mind has brought the idea to fruition by thinking it through to its final conclusion, the parameters can be brought down and the idea allowed to float off and come in contact with other ideas.

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

1 the way parameters in the mind help people to be creative
2 the need to learn rules in order to break them
3 how habits restrict us and limit creativity
4 how to train the mind to be creative
5 how the mind is trapped by the desire for order

Questions 6-10
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

6 According to the writer, creative people
A are usually born with their talents
B are born with their talents
C are not born with their talents
D are geniuses

7 According to the writer, creativity is
A a gift from God or nature
B an automatic response
C difficult for many people to achieve
D a well-trodden path

8 According to the writer
A the human race’s fight to live is becoming a tyranny
B the human brain is blocked with cholesterol
C the human race is now circumscribed by talents
D the human race’s fight to survive stifles creative ability

9 Advancing technology
A holds creativity in check
B improves creativity
C enhances creativity
D is a tyranny

10 According to the author, creativity
A is common
B is increasingly common
C is becoming rarer and rarer
D is a rare commodity

Questions 11-14
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer?
In boxes 11-14 on your answer sheet write

YES                              if the statement agrees with the information in the passage
NO                                if the statement contradicts the information in the passage
NOT GIVEN             if there is no information about the statement in the passage

11 Rules and regulations are examples of parameters.
12 The truly creative mind is associated with the need for free speech and a totally free society.
13 One problem with creativity is that people think it is impossible.
14 The act of creation is linked to madness.

Locked Doors Open Access

The word, ‘security’, has both positive and negative connotations. Most of us would say that we crave security for all its positive virtues, both physical and psychological – its evocation of the safety of home, of undying love, or of freedom from need. More negatively, the word nowadays conjures up images of that huge industry which has developed to protect individuals and property from invasion by ‘outsiders’, ostensibly malicious and intent on theft or wilful damage.

Increasingly, because they are situated in urban areas of escalating crime, those buildings which used to allow free access to employees and other users (buildings such as offices, schools, colleges or hospitals) now do not. Entry areas which in another age were called ‘Reception’ are now manned by security staff. Receptionists, whose task it was to receive visitors and to make them welcome before passing them on to the person they had come to see, have been replaced by those whose task it is to bar entry to the unauthorized, the unwanted or the plain unappealing.

Inside, these buildings are divided into ‘secure zones’ which often have all the trappings of combination locks and burglar alarms. These devices bar entry to the uninitiated, hinder circulation, and create parameters of time and space for user access. Within the spaces created by these zones, individual rooms are themselves under lock and key, which is a particular problem when it means that working space becomes compartmentalized.

To combat the consequent difficulty of access to people at a physical level, we have now developed technological access. Computers sit on every desk and are linked to one another, and in many cases to an external universe of other computers, so that messages can be passed to and fro. Here too security plays a part, since we must not be allowed access to messages destined for others. And so the password was invented. Now correspondence between individuals goes from desk to desk and cannot be accessed by colleagues. Library catalogues can be searched from one’s desk. Papers can be delivered to, and received from, other people at the press of a button.

And yet it seems that, just as work is isolating individuals more and more, organizations are recognizing the advantages of ‘team-work’; perhaps in order to encourage employees to talk to one another again. Yet, how can groups work in teams if the possibilities for communication are reduced? How can they work together if e-mail provides a convenient electronic shield behind which the blurring of public and private can be exploited by the less scrupulous? If voice-mail walls up messages behind a password? If I can’t leave a message on my colleague’s desk because his office is locked?

Team-work conceals the fact that another kind of security, ‘job security’, is almost always not on offer. Just as organizations now recognize three kinds of physical resources: those they buy, those they lease long-term and those they rent short-term – so it is with their human resources. Some employees have permanent contracts, some have short-term contracts, and some are regarded simply as casual labour.

Telecommunication systems offer us the direct line, which means that individuals can be contacted without the caller having to talk to anyone else. Voice-mail and the answer-phone mean that individuals can communicate without ever actually talking to one another. If we are unfortunate enough to contact organizations with sophisticated touch-tone systems, we can buy things and pay for them without ever speaking to a human being.

To combat this closing in on ourselves we have the Internet, which opens out communication channels more widely than anyone could possibly want or need. An individual’s electronic presence on the Internet is known as a ‘Home Page’ – suggesting the safety and security of an electronic hearth. An elaborate system of 3-dimensional graphics distinguishes this very 2-dimensional medium of ‘web sites’. The nomenclature itself creates the illusion of a geographical entity, that the person sitting before the computer is travelling, when in fact the ‘site’ is coming to him. ‘Addresses’ of one kind or another move to the individual, rather than the individual moving between them, now that location is no longer geographical.

An example of this is the mobile phone. I am now not available either at home or at work, but wherever I take my mobile phone. Yet, even now, we cannot escape the security of wanting to ‘locate’ the person at the other end. It is no coincidence that almost everyone we see answering or initiating a mobile phone-call in public begins by saying where he or she is.

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

15 According to the author, one thing we long for is
A the safety of the home
B security
C open access
D positive virtues

16 Access to many buildings
A is unauthorized
B is becoming more difficult
C is a cause of crime in many urban areas
D used to be called ‘Reception’

17 Buildings used to permit access to any users
A but now they do not
B and still do now
C especially offices and schools
D especially in urban areas

18 Secure zones
A do not allow access to the user
B compartmentalise the user
C are often like traps
D are not accessible to everybody

Questions 19-24
Complete the summary below using words from the box.

The problem of physical access to buildings has now been (19)………………………………by technology. Messages are (20)………………………………with passwords not allowing (21)…………………………to read someone else’s messages. But, while individuals are becoming increasingly (22)……………………………..socially by the way they do their job, at the same time more value is being put on (23)………………………………….However, e-mail and voice-mail have led to a (24)…………………………………opportunities for person-to-person communication.

reducing of	computer	decrease in	protected
team-work	combat	similar	developed
no different from	other people	solved	cut-off
overcame	isolating	physical

Questions 25-27
Complete the sentences below with words taken from Reading Passage 2. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

25 The writer does not like……………………………….
26 An individual’s Home Page indicates their………………………………on the Internet.
27 Devices like mobile phones mean that location is…………………………..

Reading Passage 3

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 Roe 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 Boy, written to a tune once played by a tramp in the street. Limavady town 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 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 carved stonework. Ruined and forlorn its aspect may be 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 the 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 time 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
Look at the following list of places (Questions 28-32) from paragraphs A-E of reading passage 3 and their locations on the map. Match each place with its location on the map.

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

Questions 33-38
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

YES                          if the statement agrees with the information in the passage
NO                            if the statement contradicts the information in the passage
NOT GIVEN         if there is no information about the statement in the passage

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 the 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 sturdy cage added to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge has helped to increase the number of visitors to the area.

Questions 39 and 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

The Coral Reefs Of Agatti Island

A Agatti is one of the Lakshadweep Islands off the southwest coast of India. These islands are surrounded by lagoons and coral reefs which are in turn surrounded by the open ocean. Coral reefs, which are formed from the skeletons of minute sea creatures, give shelter to a variety of plants and animals, and therefore have the potential to provide a stream of diverse benefits to the inhabitants of Agatti Island.

B In the first place, the reefs provide food and other products for consumption by the islanders themselves. Foods include different types of fish, octopus and molluscs, and in the case of poorer families these constitute as much as 90% of the protein they consume. Reef resources are also used for medicinal purposes. For example, the money cowrie, a shell known locally as Vallakavadi, is commonly made into a paste and used as a home remedy to treat cysts in the eye.

C In addition, the reef contributes to income generation. According to a recent survey, 20% of the households on Agatti report lagoon fishing, or shingle, mollusc, octopus and cowrie collection as their main occupation (Hoon et al, 2002). For poor households, the direct contribution of the reef to their financial resources is significant: 12% of poor households are completely dependent on the reef for their household income, while 59% of poor households rely on the reef for 70% of their household income, and the remaining 29% for 50% of their household income.

D Bartering of reef resources also commonly takes place, both between islanders and between islands. For example, Agatti Island is known for its abundance of octopus, and this is often used to obtain products from nearby Androth Island. Locally, reef products may be given by islanders in return for favours, such as help in constructing a house or net mending, or for other products such as rice, coconuts or fish.

E The investment required to exploit the reefs is minimal. It involves simple, locally available tools and equipment, some of which can be used without a boat, such as the fishing practice known as Kat moodsal. This is carried out in the shallow eastern lagoon of Agatti by children and adults, close to shore at low tide, throughout the year. A small cast net, a leaf bag, and plastic slippers are all that are required, and the activity can yield 10–12 small fish (approximately 1 kg) for household consumption. Cast nets are not expensive, and all the households in Agatti own at least one. Even the boats, which operate in the lagoon and near-shore reef, are constructed locally and have low running costs. They are either small, non-mechanised, traditional wooden rowing boats, known as Thonis, or rafts, known as Tharappam.

F During more than 400 years of occupation and survival, the Agatti islanders have developed an intimate knowledge of the reefs. They have knowledge of numerous different types of fish and where they can be found according to the tide or lunar cycle. They have also developed a local naming system or folk taxonomy, naming fish according to their shape. Sometimes the same species is given different names depending on its size and age. For example, a full grown Emperor fish is called Metti and a juvenile is called Killokam. The abundance of each species at different fishing grounds is also well known. Along with this knowledge of reef resources, the islanders have developed a wide range of skills and techniques for exploiting them. A multitude of different fishing techniques are still used by the islanders, each targeting different areas of the reef and particular species.

G The reef plays an important role in the social lives of the islanders too, being an integral part of traditions and rituals. Most of the island’s folklore revolves around the reef and sea. There is hardly any tale or song which does not mention the traditional sailing crafts, known as Odams, the journeys of enterprising ‘heroes’, the adventures of sea fishing and encounters with sea creatures. Songs that women sing recollect women looking for returning Odams, and requesting the waves to be gentler and the breeze just right for the sails. There are stories of the benevolent sea ghost baluvam, whose coming to shore is considered a harbinger of prosperity for that year, bringing more coconuts, more fish and general well-being.

H The reef is regarded by the islanders as common property, and all the islanders are entitled to use the lagoon and reef resources. In the past, fishing groups would obtain permission from the Amin (island head person) and go fishing in the grounds allotted by him. On their return, the Amin would be given a share of the catch, normally one of the best or biggest fish. This practice no longer exists, but there is still a code of conduct or etiquette for exploiting the reef, and common respect for this is an effective way of avoiding conflict or disputes.

I Exploitation of such vast and diverse resources as the reefs and lagoon surrounding the island has encouraged collaborative efforts, mainly for purposes of safety, but also as a necessity in the operation of many fishing techniques. For example, an indigenous gear and operation known as Bala fadal involves 25–30 men. Reef gleaning for cowrie collection by groups of 6–10 women is also a common activity, and even today, although its economic significance is marginal, it continues as a recreational activity.

Questions 1-9

Reading Passage 1 has nine paragraphs A–I.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

List of Headings
i Island legends
ii Resources for exchange
iii Competition for fishing rights
iv The low cost of equipment
v Agatti’s favourable location
vi Rising income levels
vii The social nature of reef occupations
viii Resources for islanders’ own use
ix High levels of expertise
x Alternative sources of employment
xi Resources for earning money
xii Social rights and obligations

1) Paragraph A
2) Paragraph B
3) Paragraph C
4) Paragraph D
5) Paragraph E
6) Paragraph F
7) Paragraph G
8) Paragraph H
9) Paragraph I

Questions 10-13

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

10) What proportion of poor households get all their income from reef products?
A 12%
B 20%
C 29%
D 59%

11 Kat moodsal fishing
A is a seasonal activity.
B is a commercial activity.
C requires little investment.
D requires use of a rowing boat.

12 Which characteristic of present-day islanders do the writers describe?
A physical strength
B fishing expertise
C courage
D imagination

13 What do the writers say about the system for using the reef on Agatti?
A Fish catches are shared equally.
B The reef owner issues permits.
C There are frequent disputes.
D There is open access.

Urban Planning In Singapore

British merchants established a trading post in Singapore in the early nineteenth century, and for more than a century trading interests dominated. However, in 1965 the newly independent island state was cut off from its hinterland, and so it set about pursuing a survival strategy. The good international communications it already enjoyed provided a useful base, but it was decided that if Singapore was to secure its economic future, it must develop its industry. To this end, new institutional structures were needed to facilitate, develop, and control foreign investment. One of the most important of these was the Economic Development Board (EDB), an arm of government that developed strategies for attracting investment. Thus from the outset, the Singaporean government was involved in city promotion.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, the government realised that, due to limits on both the size of the country’s workforce and its land area, its labour-intensive industries were becoming increasingly uncompetitive. So an economic committee was established which concluded that Singapore should focus on developing as a service centre, and seek to attract company headquarters to serve South East Asia, and develop tourism, banking, and offshore activities. The land required for this service-sector orientation had been acquired in the early 1970s, when the government realised that it lacked the banking infrastructure for a modern economy. So a new banking and corporate district, known as the ‘Golden Shoe’, was planned, incorporating the historic commercial area. This district now houses all the major companies and various government financial agencies.

Singapore’s current economic strategy is closely linked to land use and development planning. Although it is already a major city, the current development plan seeks to ensure Singapore’s continued economic growth through restructuring, to ensure that the facilities needed by future business are planned now. These include transport and telecommunication infrastructure, land, and environmental quality. A major concern is to avoid congestion in the central area, and so the latest plan deviates from previous plans by having a strong decentralisation policy. The plan makes provision for four major regional centres, each serving 800,000 people, but this does not mean that the existing central business district will not also grow. A major extension planned around Marina Bay draws on examples of other ‘world cities’, especially those with waterside central areas such as Sydney and San Francisco. The project involves major land reclamation of 667 hectares in total. Part of this has already been developed as a conference and exhibition zone, and the rest will be used for other facilities. However the need for vitality has been recognised and a mixed zoning approach has been adopted, to include housing and entertainment.

One of the new features of the current plan is a broader conception of what contributes to economic success. It encompasses high quality residential provision, a good environment, leisure facilities and exciting city life. Thus there is more provision for low-density housing, often in waterfront communities linked to beaches and recreational facilities. However, the lower housing densities will put considerable pressure on the very limited land available for development, and this creates problems for another of the plan’s aims, which is to stress environmental quality. More and more of the remaining open area will be developed, and the only natural landscape surviving will be a small zone in the centre of the island which serves as a water catchment area. Environmental policy is therefore very much concerned with making the built environment more green by introducing more plants – what is referred to as the ‘beautification’ of Singapore. The plan focuses on green zones defining the boundaries of settlements, and running along transport corridors. The incidental green provision within housing areas is also given considerable attention.

Much of the environmental provision, for example golf courses, recreation areas, and beaches, is linked to the prime objective of attracting business. The plan places much emphasis on good leisure provision and the need to exploit Singapore’s island setting. One way of doing this is through further land reclamation, to create a whole new island devoted to leisure and luxury housing which will stretch from the central area to the airport. A current concern also appears to be how to use the planning system to create opportunities for greater spontaneity: planners have recently given much attention to the concept of the 24-hour city and the cafe society. For example, a promotion has taken place along the Singapore river to create a cafe zone. This has included the realisation, rather late in the day, of the value of retaining older buildings, and the creation of a continuous riverside promenade. Since the relaxation in 1996 of strict guidelines on outdoor eating areas, this has become an extremely popular area in the evenings. Also, in 1998 the Urban Redevelopment Authority created a new entertainment area in the centre of the city which they are promoting as ‘the city’s one-stop, dynamic entertainment scene’.

In conclusion, the economic development of Singapore has been very consciously centrally planned, and the latest strategy is very clearly oriented to establishing Singapore as a leading ‘world city’. It is well placed to succeed, for a variety of reasons. It can draw upon its historic roots as a world trading centre; it has invested heavily in telecommunications and air transport infrastructure; it is well located in relation to other Asian economies; it has developed a safe and clean environment; and it has utilised the international language of English.

Questions 14-19
Complete the summary below using words from the box.

decentralization	agriculture	tourism	hygiene
hospitals	fuel	industry	service
trade	loans	deregulation	recycling
labour	transport	entertainment	beautification

Singapore

When Singapore became an independent, self-sufficient state it decided to build up its (14) ……………….., and government organisations were created to support this policy. However, this initial plan met with limited success due to a shortage of (15) ……………….. and land. It was therefore decided to develop the (16) ……………….. sector of the economy instead.

Singapore is now a leading city, but planners are working to ensure that its economy continues to grow. In contrast to previous policies, there is emphasis on (17) ………………… In addition, land will be recovered to extend the financial district, and provide (18) ……………….. as well as housing. The government also plans to improve the quality of Singapore’s environment, but due to the shortage of natural landscapes it will concentrate instead on what it calls (19) …………………

Questions 20-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2.

In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                         if the statement is true according to the passage
FALSE                       if the statement is false according to the passage
NOT GIVEN           if the information is not given in the passage

20) After 1965, the Singaporean government switched the focus of the island’s economy.
21) The creation of Singapore’s financial centre was delayed while a suitable site was found.
22) Singapore’s four regional centres will eventually be the same size as its central business district.
23) Planners have modelled new urban developments on other coastal cities.
24) Plants and trees are amongst the current priorities for Singapore’s city planners.
25) The government has enacted new laws to protect Singapore’s old buildings.
26) Singapore will find it difficult to compete with leading cities in other parts of the world.

Reading Passage 3

A Spice plants, such as coriander, cardamom or ginger, contain compounds which, when added to food, give it a distinctive flavour. Spices have been used for centuries in the preparation of both meat dishes for consumption and meat dishes for long-term storage. However, an initial analysis of traditional meat-based recipes indicated that spices are not used equally in different countries and regions, so we set about investigating global patterns of spice use.

B We hypothesized initially that the benefit of spices might lie in their anti-microbial properties. Those compounds in spice plants which give them their distinctive flavours probably first evolved to fight enemies such as plant-eating insects, fungi, and bacteria. Many of the organisms which afflict spice plants attack humans too, in particular the bacteria and fungi that live on and in dead plant and animal matter. So if spices kill these organisms, or inhibit their production of toxins, spice use in food might reduce our own chances of contracting food poisoning.

C The results of our investigation supported this hypothesis. In common with other researchers, we found that all spices for which we could locate appropriate information have some antibacterial effects: half inhibit more than 75% of bacteria, and four (garlic, onion, allspice and oregano) inhibit 100% of those bacteria tested. In addition, many spices are powerful fungicides.

D Studies also show that when combined, spices exhibit even greater anti-bacterial properties than when each is used alone. This is interesting because the food recipes we used in our sample specify an average of four different spices. Some spices are so frequently combined that the blends have acquired special names, such as ‘chili powder’ (typically a mixture of red pepper, onion, paprika, garlic, cumin and oregano) and ‘oriental five spice’ (pepper, cinnamon, anise, fennel and cloves). One intriguing example is the French ‘quatre epices’ (pepper, cloves, ginger and nutmeg) which is often used in making sausages. Sausages are a rich medium for bacterial growth, and have frequently been implicated as the source of death from the botulism toxin, so the value of the anti-bacterial compounds in spices used for sausage preparation is obvious.

E A second hypothesis we made was that spice use would be heaviest in areas where foods spoil most quickly. Studies indicate that rates of bacterial growth increase dramatically with air temperature. Meat dishes that are prepared in advance and stored at room temperatures for more than a few hours, especially in tropical climates, typically show massive increases in bacterial counts. Of course temperatures within houses, particularly in areas where food is prepared and stored, may differ from those of the outside air, but usually it is even hotter in the kitchen.

F Our survey of recipes from around the world confirmed this hypothesis: we found that countries with higher than average temperatures used more spices. Indeed, in hot countries nearly every meat-based recipe calls for at least one spice, and most include many spices, whereas in cooler ones, substantial proportions of dishes are prepared without spices, or with just a few. In other words, there is a significant positive correlation between mean temperature and the average quantity of spices used in cooking.

G But if the main function of spices is to make food safer to eat, how did our ancestors know which ones to use in the first place? It seems likely that people who happened to add spice plants to meat during preparation, especially in hot climates, would have been less likely to suffer from food poisoning than those who did not. Spice users may also have been able to store foods for longer before they spoiled, enabling them to tolerate longer periods of scarcity. Observation and imitation of the eating habits of these healthier individuals by others could spread spice use rapidly through a society. Also, families that used appropriate spices would rear a greater number of more healthy offspring, to whom spice-use traditions had been demonstrated, and who possessed appropriate taste receptors.

H Another question which arises is why did people develop a taste for spicy foods? One possibility involves learned taste aversions. It is known that when people eat something that makes them ill, they tend to avoid that taste subsequently. The adaptive value of such learning is obvious. Adding a spice to a food that caused sickness might alter its taste enough to make it palatable again (i.e. it tastes like a different food), as well as kill the micro-organisms that caused the illness, thus rendering it safe for consumption. By this process, food aversions would more often be associated with unspiced (and therefore unsafe) foods, and food likings would be associated with spicy foods, especially in places where foods spoil rapidly. Over time people would have developed a natural preference for spicy food.

I Of course, spice use is not the only way to avoid food poisoning. Cooking, and completely consuming wild game immediately after slaughter reduces opportunities for the growth of micro-organisms. However, this is practical only where fresh meat is abundant year-round. In areas where fresh meat is not consistently available, preservation may be accomplished by thoroughly cooking, salting, smoking, drying, and spicing meats. Indeed, salt has been used worldwide for centuries to preserve food. We suggest that all these practices have been adopted for essentially the same reason: to minimize the effects of harmful, food-borne organisms.

Questions 27-33

Reading Passage 3 has nine paragraphs, labelled A–I.

Which paragraphs contain the following information?

27) an example of a food which particularly benefits from the addition of spices.
28) a range of methods for making food safer to eat.
29) a comparison between countries with different climate types.
30) an explanation of how people first learned to select appropriate spices.
31) a method of enhancing the effectiveness of individual spices.
32) the relative effectiveness of certain spices against harmful organisms.
33) the possible origins of a dislike for unspiced foods.

Questions 34-39

Answer the questions below with words taken from Reading Passage 3.

Use NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.

34) According to the writers, what might be the use of spices in cooking help people to avoid?
35) What proportion of bacteria in food do four of the spices tested destroy?
36) Which food often contains a spice known as ‘quatre epices’?
37) Which types of country use the fewest number of spices in cooking?
38) What might food aversions often be associated with?
39) Apart from spices, which substance is used in all countries to preserve food?

Question 40

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.
40) Which is the best title for Reading Passage 3?
A The function of spices in food preparation
B A history of food preservation techniques
C Traditional recipes from around the world
D An analysis of the chemical properties of spice plants