Author: theieltsbridge

Diabetes

Here are some facts that you probably didn’t know about diabetes. It is the world’s fastest growing disease. It is Australia’s 6th leading cause of death. Over 1 million Australians have it though 50% of those are as yet unaware. Every 10 minutes someone is diagnosed with diabetes. So much for the facts but what exactly is diabetes?

Diabetes is the name given to a group of different conditions in which there is too much glucose in the blood. Here’s what happens: the body needs glucose as its main source of fuel or energy. The body makes glucose from foods containing carbohydrate such as vegetables containing carbohydrate (like potatoes or corn) and cereal foods (like bread, pasta and rice) as well as fruit and milk. Glucose is carried around the body in the blood and the glucose level is called glycaemia. Glycaemia (blood sugar levels) in humans and animals must be neither too high nor too low, but just right. The glucose running around in the blood stream now has to get out of the blood and into the body tissues. This is where insulin enters the story. Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas, a gland sitting just below the stomach. Insulin opens the doors that let glucose go from the blood to the body cells where energy is made. This process is called glucose metabolism. In diabetes, the pancreas either cannot make insulin or the insulin it does make is not enough and cannot work properly. Without insulin doing its job, the glucose channels are shut. Glucose builds up in the blood leading to high blood glucose levels, which causes the health problems linked to diabetes.

People refer to the disease as diabetes but there are actually two distinctive types of the disease. Type 1 diabetes is a condition characterized by high blood glucose levels caused by a total lack of insulin. It occurs when the body’s immune system attacks the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas and destroys them. The pancreas then produces little or no insulin. Type 1 diabetes develops most often in young people but can appear in adults. Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, either the body does not produce enough insulin or the cells ignore the insulin. Insulin is necessary for the body to be able to use sugar. Sugar is the basic fuel for the cells in the body, and insulin takes the sugar from the blood into the cells.

The diagnosis of diabetes often depends on what type the patient is suffering from. In Type 1 diabetes, symptoms are usually sudden and sometimes even life threatening – hyperglycaemia (high blood sugar levels) can lead to comas – and therefore it is mostly diagnosed quite quickly. In Type 2 diabetes, many people have no symptoms at all, while other signs can go unnoticed, being seen as part of ‘getting older’.

Therefore, by the time symptoms are noticed, the blood glucose level for many people can be very high. Common symptoms include: being more thirsty than usual, passing more urine, feeling lethargic, always feeling hungry, having cuts that heal slowly, itching, skin infections, bad breath, blurred vision, unexplained weight change, mood swings, headaches, feeling dizzy and leg cramps.

At present there is no cure for diabetes, but there is a huge amount of research looking for a cure and to provide superior management techniques and products until a cure is found. Whether it’s Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, the aim of any diabetes treatment is to get your blood glucose levels as close to the non-diabetic range as often as possible. For people with Type 1 diabetes, this will mean insulin injections every day plus leading a healthy lifestyle. For people with Type 2 diabetes, healthy eating and regular physical activity may be all that is required at first:

Sometimes tablets and/or insulin may be needed later on. Ideally blood glucose levels are kept as close to the non-diabetic range as possible so frequent self-testing is a good idea. This will help prevent the short-term effects of very low or very high blood glucose levels as well as the possible long-term problems. If someone is dependent on insulin, it has to be injected into the body. Insulin cannot be taken as a pill. The insulin would be broken down during digestion just like the protein in food. Insulin must be injected into the fat under your skin for it to get into your blood. Diabetes can cause serious complications for patients. When glucose builds up in the blood instead of going into cells, it can cause problems. Short term problems are similar to the symptoms but long term high blood sugar levels can lead to heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, amputations and blindness. Having your blood pressure and cholesterol outside recommended ranges can also lead to problems like heart attack and stroke and in fact 2 out of 3 people with diabetes eventually die of these complications. Young adults age 18 – 44 who get type 2 diabetes are 14 times more likely to suffer a heart attack, and are up to 30 times more likely to have a stroke than their peers without diabetes. Young women account for almost all the increase in heart attack risk, while young men are twice as likely to suffer a stroke as young women. This means that huge numbers of people are going to get heart disease, heart attacks and strokes years, sometimes even decades, before they should.

Questions 1 – 7
Do the following statements reflect the views of the writer in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1 – 7 on your answer sheet write:

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

1 Carbohydrate foods are the body’s source of glucose.
2 Diabetics cannot produce insulin.
3 Some patients develop diabetes due to faults in their own immune systems
4 Hyperglycaemia leads to type 1 diabetes being diagnosed quite quickly.
5 Artificial insulin is the most effective treatment for those patients requiring insulin.
6 Frequent check ups at the doctor can drastically reduce the chances of suffering from problems related to diabetes.
7 The majority of diabetics develop heart problems or suffer strokes.

Questions 8-11
Complete the following statements with the best ending from the box below.
Write the appropriate letters A – H in boxes 8 – 11 on your answer sheet.

8 Bizarre as it may seem, many people with diabetes…
9 Insulin is a hormone that allows glucose to be absorbed by…
10 Non severe type 2 diabetes can be solely treated by…
11 Increases in diabetes related heart problems are mainly seen in…

A a healthy lifestyle	B never suffer any ill effects	C women	D people also suffering strokes
E body cells	F the pancreas	G do not realise the fact	H injections

Questions 12-14
According to the text which of the following are symptoms of diabetes?
Choose THREE letters (A – G) and write them in boxes 12 – 14 on your answer sheet.

A hot flushes
B muscle pains
C nausea
D losing consciousness
E tiredness
F bleeding gums
G dilation of the eyes

Contaminating The Arctic

Our perception of the Arctic region is that its distance from industrial centers keeps it pristine and clear from the impact of pollution. However, through a process known as transboundary pollution, the Arctic is the recipient of contaminants whose sources are thousands of miles away. Large quantities of pollutants pour into our atmosphere, as well as our lakes, rivers, and oceans on a daily basis. In the last 20 years, scientists have detected an increasing variety of toxic contaminants in the North, including pesticides from agriculture, chemicals and heavy metals from industry, and even radioactive fall-out from Chernobyl. These are substances that have invaded ecosystems virtually worldwide, but they are especially worrisome in the Arctic.

Originally, Arctic contamination was largely blamed on chemical leaks, and these leaks were thought to be “small and localized.” The consensus now is that pollutants from around the world are being carried north by rivers, ocean currents, and atmospheric circulation. Due to extreme conditions in the Arctic, including reduced sunlight, extensive ice cover and cold temperatures, contaminants break down much more slowly than in warmer climates. Contaminants can also become highly concentrated due to their significantly lengthened life span in the Arctic.

Problems of spring run-off into coastal waters during the growth period of marine life are of critical concern. Spring algae blooms easily, absorbing the concentrated contaminants released by spring melting. These algae are in turn eaten by zooplankton and a wide variety of marine life. The accumulation of these contaminants increases with each step of the food chain or web and can potentially affect northerners who eat marine mammals near the top of the food chain. Pollutants respect no borders; transboundary pollution is the movement of contaminants across political borders, whether by air, rivers, or ocean currents. The eight circumpolar nations, led by the Finnish Initiative of 1989, established the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) in which participants have agreed to develop an Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP). AMAP establishes an international scientific network to monitor the current condition of the Arctic with respect to specific contaminants. This monitoring program is extremely important because it will give a scientific basis for understanding the scope of the problem.

In the 1950’s, pilots traveling on weather reconnaissance flights in the Canadian high Arctic reported seeing bands of haze in the springtime in the Arctic region. It was during this time that the term “Arctic haze” was first used, referring to this smog of unknown origin. But it was not until 1972, that Dr. Glenn Shaw of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska first put forth ideas of the nature and long-range origin of Arctic haze. The idea that the source was long range was very difficult for many to support. Each winter, cold, dense air settles over the Arctic. In the darkness, the Arctic seems to become more and more polluted by a buildup of mid-latitude emissions from fossil fuel combustion, smelting and other industrial processes. By late winter, the Arctic is covered by a layer of this haze the size of the continent of Africa. When the spring light arrives in the Arctic, there is a smog-like haze, which makes the region, at times, looks like pollution over such cities as Los Angeles.

This polluted air is a well-known and well-characterized feature of the late winter Arctic environment. In the North American Arctic, episodes of brown or black snow have been traced to continental storm tracks that deliver gaseous and particulate-associated contaminants from Asian deserts and agricultural areas. It is now known that the contaminants originate largely from Europe and Asia.

Arctic haze has been studied most extensively in Point Barrow, Alaska, across the Canadian Arctic and in Svalbard (Norway). Evidence from ice cores drilled from the ice sheet of Greenland indicates that these haze particles were not always present in the Arctic, but began to appear only in the last century. The Arctic haze particles appear to be similar to smog particles observed in industrial areas farther south, consisting mostly of sulfates mixed with particles of carbon. It is believed the particles are formed when gaseous sulfur dioxide produced by burning sulfur-bearing coal is irradiated by sunlight and oxidized to sulfate, a process catalyzed by trace elements in the air. These sulfate particles or droplets of sulfuric acid quickly capture the carbon particles, which are also floating in the air. Pure sulfate particles or droplets are colourless, so it is believed the darkness of the haze is caused by the mixed-in carbon particles.

The impact of the haze on Arctic ecosystems, as well as the global environment, has not been adequately researched. The pollutants have only been studied in their aerosol form over the Arctic. However, little is known about what eventually happens to them. It is known that they are removed somehow. There is a good degree of likelihood that the contaminants end up in the ocean, likely into the North Atlantic, the Norwegian Sea and possibly the Bering Sea — all three very important fisheries.

Currently, the major issue among researchers is to understand the impact of Arctic haze on global climate change. The contaminants absorb sunlight and, in turn, heat up the atmosphere. The global impact of this is currently unknown but the implications are quite powerful.

Questions 15-21
Read passage 2and look at the statements below. In boxes 15 – 21 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

15 Industry in the Arctic has increased over the last 20 years.
16 Arctic conditions mean that the break down of pollutants is much accelerated
17 Pollution absorbed by arctic algae can eventually affect humans.
18 The AEPS has set up scientific stations in the Arctic to monitor pollution.
19 Arctic pollution can sometimes resemble US urban pollution.
20 Evidence that this smog has only occurred in the 20th Century has been found in the ice on the polar ice cap.
21 Research has shown that aerosol arctic pollutants remain the air indefinitely.

Questions 22-27
Complete the summary relating to Arctic Haze below.
Choose your answers from the box below the summary and write them in boxes 22 – 27 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more words than spaces, so you will not use them at all.

Theories that the origins of spring, arctic haze, first seen over the ice cap in the 1950s, came from far away were at first not (22)………………………… This haze is a smog formed in the dark, arctic winter by pollution delivered to the Arctic by storms (23)……………………………in Europe and Asia. It is known to be a recent phenomenon as proof from (24)………………………….shows it only starting to occur in the 20th Century. The smog consists of sulphates and carbon, the latter creating the (25)…………………………….of the haze. Due to lack of research, the final destination of the pollution is unknown but it probably ends up in the (26)………………………………. and therefore into the food chain. Scientists are presently more worried about the (27)…………………………effect it has on climate change.

burning	terrible	ice cores	valid	certain
originating	sea	destroying	theories	unknown
agriculture	decided	bird life	dissipating	accepted
gases	darkness	air	density

The Story Of Coffee

A Coffee was first discovered in Eastern Africa in an area we know today as Ethiopia. A popular legend refers to a goat herder by the name of Kaldi, who observed his goats acting unusually friskily after eating berries from a bush. Curious about this phenomenon, Kaldi tried eating the berries himself. He found that these berries gave him renewed energy.

B The news of this energy laden fruit quickly moved throughout the region. Coffee berries were transported from Ethiopia to the Arabian Peninsula, and were first cultivated in what today is the country of Yemen. Coffee remained a secret in Arabia before spreading to Turkey and then to the European continent by means of Venetian trade merchants.

C Coffee was first eaten as a food though later people in Arabia would make a drink out of boiling the beans for its narcotic effects and medicinal value. Coffee for a time was known as Arabian wine to Muslims who were banned from alcohol by Islam. It was not until after coffee had been eaten as a food product, a wine and a medicine that it was discovered, probably by complete accident in Turkey, that by roasting the beans a delicious drink could be made. The roasted beans were first crushed, and then boiled in water, creating a crude version of the beverage we enjoy today. The first coffee houses were opened in Europe in the 17th Century and in 1675, the Viennese established the habit of refining the brew by filtering out the grounds, sweetening it, and adding a dash of milk.

D If you were to explore the planet for coffee, you would find about 60 species of coffee plants growing wild in Africa, Malaysia, and other regions. But only about ten of them are actually cultivated. Of these ten, two species are responsible for almost all the coffee produced in the world: Coffea Arabica and Coffea Canephora (usually known as Robusta). Because of ecological differences existing among the various coffee producing countries, both types have undergone many mutations and now exist in many sub species.

E Although wild plants can reach 10 – 12 metres in height, the plantation one reaches a height of around four metres. This makes the harvest and flowering easier, and cultivation more economical. The flowers are white and sweet-scented like the Spanish jasmine. Flowers give way to a red, darkish berry. At first sight, the fruit is like a big cherry both in size and in colour. The berry is coated with a thin, red film (epicarp) containing a white, sugary mucilaginous flesh (mesocarp). Inside the pulp there are the seeds in the form of two beans coupled at their flat surface. Beans are in turn coated with a kind of resistant, golden yellow parchment, (called endocarp). When peeled, the real bean appears with another very thin silvery film. The bean is bluish green verging on bronze, and is at the most 11 millimetres long and 8 millimetres wide.

F Coffee plants need special conditions to give a satisfactory crop. The climate needs to be hot-wet or hot temperate, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, with frequent rains and temperatures varying from 15 to 25 Degrees C. The soil should be deep, hard, permeable, well irrigated, with well-drained subsoil. The best lands are the hilly ones or from just-tilled woods. The perfect altitude is between 600 and 1200 metres, though some varieties thrive at 2000-2200 metres. Cultivation aimed at protecting the plants at every stage of growth is needed. Sowing should be in sheltered nurseries from which, after about six months, the seedlings should be moved to plantations in the rainy season where they are usually alternated with other plants to shield them from wind and excessive sunlight. Only when the plant is five years old can it be counted upon to give a regular yield. This is between 400 grams and two kilos of arabica beans for each plant, and 600 grams and two kilos for robusta beans.

G Harvesting time depends on the geographic situation and it can vary greatly therefore according to the various producing countries. First the ripe beans are picked from the branches. Pickers can selectively pick approximately 250 to 300 pounds of coffee cherry a day. At the end of the day, the pickers bring their heavy burlap bags to pulping mills where the cherry coffee can be pulped (or wet milled). The pulped beans then rest, covered in pure rainwater to ferment overnight. The next day the wet beans are hand-distributed upon the drying floor to be sun dried. This drying process takes from one to two weeks depending on the amount of sunny days available. To make sure they dry evenly, the beans need to be raked many times during this drying time. Two weeks later the sun dried beans, now called parchment, are scooped up, bagged and taken to be milled. Huge milling machines then remove the parchment and silver skin, which renders a green bean suitable for roasting. The green beans are roasted according to the customers’ specifications and, after cooling, the beans are then packaged and mailed to customers.

Questions 28-33
The reading passage on The Story of Coffee has 7 paragraphs A – G.
From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B – G.

List of headings
i Growing Coffee
ii Problems with Manufacture
iii Processing the Bean
iv First Contact
v Arabian Coffee
vi Coffee Varieties
vii Modern Coffee
viii The Spread of Coffee
ix Consuming Coffee
x Climates for Coffee
xi The Coffee Plant

Example: Paragraph A              iv

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

Questions 34-36
Complete the labels on the diagram of a coffee bean below.
Choose your answers from the text and write them in boxes 34 – 36 on your answer sheet.

Questions 37-40
Using the information in the passage, complete the flow chart below. Write your answers in boxes 37 – 40 on your answer sheet. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

THE COFFEE PRODUCTION PROCESS

The coffee (e.g.)………………………is picked by hand and delivered to mills. Answer: Cherry

The coffee cherry is pulped or (37)…………………….

The pulped beans are left (38)…………………..to ferment in pure water.

The wet beans are sun dried for 1 or 2 weeks to make parchment – they are (39)……………….often to ensure an even drying experience

The parchment is then bagged and taken to be milled to make the green beans

The green beans are then roasted to (40)…………………..

The roasted beans are cooled

The Big Cats At The Sharjah Breeding Centre

It is one of the few places where you will be able to spot them all at the same time… the Arabian wolf, an African cheetah, an Arabian leopard, an oryx, a gazelle. These are just some of the animals, which, on the brink of extinction, are now getting a new lease of life thanks to the exemplary work being done at the Breeding Centre for Endangered Arabian Wildlife in Sharjah.

Sharjah is one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. The Breeding Centre’s expertise and facilities have made it a prime destination for illegally imported animals confiscated by UAE and Sharjah authorities. In the last four years, more than 900 mammals and reptiles and 969 birds have arrived at the centre, including 25 North African cheetahs, Houbara bustard and falcons, lions, a baby Nile crocodile and a Burmese python that was left in a rental car at the airport.

The 25 cheetahs were all imported illegally into the UAE and were intercepted at the UAE harbour and airport entry points. They nearly all arrived malnourished, dehydrated and highly stressed after long voyages stuffed into boxes, crates and suitcases. Now they are bright and full of energy. The Centre’s efforts have also been rewarded when the first cheetah mating took place at the end of 2002. Playing matchmaker with these beautiful creatures is no easy task – successful breeding requires considerable patience and intimate knowledge of each animal’s personality, and it is the result of intensive and expert management of each animal within the group as well as of the group as a whole.

Because this group was still young and inexperienced in courtship matters, the keepers had to make the introductions only after careful planning and management, much like the lead role in a Jane Austen novel. The female cheetahs were initially intimidated by the presence of the male; however, as they advance to oestrus, the roles are reversed and the male cheetah becomes too wary to approach during the female’s most receptive phase of the cycle. It is the responsibility of the keeper therefore to monitor each individual and to be able to respond to any indication from the cheetahs that the time is right for introducing a pair. The close bond that invariably develops between the keeper and the cheetahs enables the keeper to spot even the most subtle signs from the animals in their care. The trust between keeper and animal has also allowed the opportunity to study cellular changes in the sexual organs of the females during the hormonal cycles that occur prior to reproduction.

The Breeding Centre’s cheetahs are also participants in the European breeding programme, which aims to ensure that the genetic diversity of this endangered species is maintained and expanded by breeding as many founder animals as possible to introduce new bloodlines into the captive population. In this way, the group held at the centre plays a very important role in the future health of the international captive population, as they are potentially all new founders. Also very important for the Sharjah Breeding Centre is the leopard-breeding programme.

The Arabian leopard, Panthera pardus nimr, is critically endangered around the world and particularly in the Arabian peninsula, where it was once found throughout the coastal mountain ranges. Activities like hunting, trapping and habitat destruction has reduced their range to a few isolated and fragmented populations in Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

In the 1980s, a captive breeding programme was established near Muscat with the capture of three leopards in southwestern Oman. The breeding programme in the UAE was initiated by the Arabian Leopard Trust and started with the arrival of two mature specimens: a male Arabian leopard from Yemen and a female on breeding loan from Oman in 1995. The arrival of these two animals led to the construction of the Breeding Centre in which the leopard has played the role of flagship species.

Today there are twelve leopards at the Breeding centre, eight of which have been born at the centre since the first cub in 1998. Once more, the secret to the centre’s success is the close relationship between animal and keeper. The leopard is usually shy and secretive with people around, but here they react positively to the presence of their keepers, approaching the fence so they can be talked to or scratched behind an ear.

The bond is particularly important during breeding season, when keepers decide to introduce pairs to each other. Male leopards are known to have killed their partners on introduction, so it is essential for the keeper to understand the leopards’ behaviour to decide when it is safe to do so. The trust is also important if keepers need to enter dens to check on and monitor the cub’s growth. Leopard females have been known to kill their cubs if the dens have been disturbed, but the centre’s leopards are quite comfortable with the staff handling the new generation of cubs.

Questions 1-8
Use the information in the text to match the statements (1 – 8) with the animals (A – D). Write the appropriate letter (A – D) in boxes 1 – 8 on your answer sheet. Write:
A if the statement refers to cheetahs at the Breeding Centre.
B if the statement refers to leopards at the Breeding Centre.
C if the statement refers to both cheetahs and leopards at the Breeding Centre.
D If the statement refers to neither cheetahs nor leopards at the Breeding Centre.

Example
These animals are endangered          C

1 These animals were smuggled into the UAE.
2 At first these animals did not adapt to life at the Sharjah Breeding Centre
3 These animals are regarded as the most important animal at the Centre.
4 Half of these animals were born at the Breeding centre.
5 These animals can be dangerous to one another.
6 The role of the keeper is vital in the breeding programme of these animals.
7 The first of these animals at the Breeding Centre were relatively young.
8 It is normally difficult for humans to approach these animals.

Questions 9-13
Complete the summary below. Choose your answers from the box below the summary and write them in boxes 9- 12 on your answer sheet. NB There are more words than spaces, so you will not use them at all.

SUMMARY
The Sharjah Breeding Centre now has a variety of animals including birds, mammals and (9)………………………. As its name suggests, the Centre is primarily involved in breeding and (10)……………………….. the numbers of the species housed there whilst still maintaining the (11)……………………… of bloodlines in order to retain genetic health. In spite of problems involving the complex (12)……………………………… of the animals, a fair amount of (13)…………………………. has been achieved with North African cheetahs and Arabian leopards.

reptiles	variety	behavior	success	creating
expanding	difficulty	diversity	action	habitat
season	fish	change	working	programme

Insomnia – The Enemy Of Sleep

A It is not unusual to have sleep troubles from time to time. But, if you feel you do not get enough sleep or satisfying sleep, you may have insomnia, a sleep disorder. People with insomnia have one or more of the following: difficulty falling asleep, waking up often during the night and having trouble going back to sleep, waking up too early in the morning and unrefreshing sleep. Insomnia is not defined by the number of hours you sleep every night. The amount of sleep a person needs varies. While most people need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a night, some people do well with less, and some need more.

B Insomnia occurs most frequently in people over age 60, in people with a history of depression, and in women, especially after menopause. Severe emotional trauma can also cause insomnia with divorced, widowed and separated people being the most likely to suffer from this sleep disorder. Stress, anxiety, illness and other sleep disorders such as restless legs syndrome are the most common causes of insomnia. An irregular work schedule, jet lag or brain damage from a stroke or Alzeimer’s disease can also cause insomnia as well as excessive use of alcohol or illicit drugs. It can also accompany a variety of mental illnesses.

C The mechanism that induces sleep is not known. When it becomes dark, the pineal gland in the brain secretes a hormone called melatonin, which is thought to induce sleep. Exactly why sleep is necessary for good health and efficient mental functioning is unknown. We do know that sleep consists of two very different states: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep. In REM sleep, dreams occur, the eyes move under the closed lids and there is an increase in oxygen consumption, blood flow and neural activity. REM sleep occurs four or five times during a night. Beginning periods last about ten to fifteen minutes but the periods get longer as the night goes on. The periods of REM sleep alternate with longer periods of non-REM sleep, when body functions slow. Non-REM sleep has four stages. During the deepest stages (3 and 4) it is hard to rouse a sleeper. As the night goes on, the periods of non-REM sleep become progressively lighter. Sleep in stages 1 and 2 are felt to be restorative as during this time the body repairs itself utilising a hormone called somatostatin. Lack of stage 4 sleep is believed to be important in chronically painful conditions such as fibromyalgia.

D Healthcare providers diagnose insomnia in several ways. One way is to categorize insomnia by how often it occurs. Another way is to identify the insomnia by what is causing the sleep deprivation. The two main types of insomnia have been described as Primary Insomnia and Secondary Insomnia. Primary Insomnia is a chronic condition with little apparent association with stress or a medical problem. The most common form of primary insomnia is psychophysiological insomnia. Secondary insomnia is caused by symptoms that accompany a medical condition such as anxiety, depression or pain.

E Improving one’s sleep hygiene helps improve insomnia in all patients. Relaxing during the hour before you go to sleep and creating a comfortable environment suited for sleep can be helpful. Older people who wake up earlier than normal or have trouble falling asleep may need less sleep than they used to. Changing one’s sleep pattern, either by going to bed later or waking up earlier, can be effective in dealing with insomnia in older people. Therapy also depends on the cause and severity of the insomnia. Transient and intermittent insomnia may not require any direct action since these conditions last only a few days at a time. However, if insomnia interferes with a person’s daily activities, something should be done. Usually the best method of dealing with insomnia is by attacking the underlying cause. For example, people who are depressed often have insomnia and looking at this problem may eliminate it.

F Not getting enough sleep can make you less productive, irritable and unable to concentrate. Lack of sleep can make it seem as if you “got up out of the wrong side of the bed.” Early morning headaches and waking up feeling as if you never went to sleep can result in frustration. Stress can cause insomnia but insomnia also increases stress. Insomnia can make driving unsafe as well. Insomnia can result in missed work, which can cause you to become less productive and miss promotions. It can leave you feeling as if you just can’t get enough done. Insomnia can also mask serious mental disorders. People with insomnia may think that not getting enough sleep is their only problem, but the insomnia may actually be one symptom of a larger disorder, such as depression. Studies show that people with insomnia are four times more likely to be depressed than people with a healthy sleeping pattern. In addition, lack of sleep can tax the heart and lead to serious conditions like heart disease. All of these are important problems that can affect every part of your life.

G Establishing certain set routines can help insomniacs get better sleep. Examples of these routines include: going to bed and getting up at the same time every day, avoiding napping, avoiding caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and eating heavily late in the day, exercising regularly and making your bedroom comfortable in terms of the bed, noise and temperature. Insomniacs should also only use their bedroom for sleep so that their bodies associate the room with sleep. Finally, if you can’t get to sleep, don’t toss and turn all night. Get up and read or do something that is not overly stimulating until you feel really sleepy again.

Questions 14-19
The reading passage on Insomnia has 7 paragraphs (A – G). From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B – G. Write the appropriate number (i – xi) in boxes 14 – 19 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.

Example: Paragraph A             iv

List of headings
i. The Role of Sleep
ii. Insomnia Medication
iii. Habits to Promote a Good Night’s Sleep
iv. What is Insomnia
v. Complications for Insomniacs
vi. Government Action
vii. Available Treatment for Insomnia
viii. The Causes of Insomnia
ix. Therapy Solutions
x. Types of Insomnia
xi. Current Research

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

Questions 20-27
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer of the reading passage on Insomnia?
In Boxes 20 – 27 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

20 Someone who only gets four hours of sleep a night must be suffering from insomnia.
21 Travelling can cause insomnia.
22 REM sleep is felt to be the most important for the body’s rest.
23 Secondary insomnia is far more common than primary insomnia.
24 Sufferers of insomnia can attend specialist sleep clinics.
25 Many people suffering from insomnia don’t realise that they suffer from it.
26 There is no actual correlation linking insomnia and depression.
27 Sleeping during the day can make insomnia worse.

Alternative Farming Methods In Oregon

Onion growers in eastern Oregon are adopting a system that saves water and keeps topsoil in place, while producing the highest quality “super colossal” onions. Pear growers in southern Oregon have reduced their use of some of the most toxic pesticides by up to two-thirds, and are still producing top-quality pears. Range managers throughout the state have controlled the poisonous weed tansy ragwort with insect predators and saved the Oregon livestock industry up to $4.8 million a year.

These are some of the results Oregon growers have achieved in collaboration with Oregon State University (OSU) researchers as they test new farming methods including integrated pest management (IPM). Nationwide, however, IPM has not delivered results comparable to those in Oregon. A recent U.S General Accounting Office (GAO) report indicates that while integrated pest management can result in dramatically reduced pesticide use, the federal government has been lacking in effectively promoting that goal and implementing IPM. Farmers also blame the government for not making the new options of pest management attractive. “Wholesale changes in the way that farmers control the pests on their farms is an expensive business.” Tony Brown, of the National Farmers Association says. “If the farmers are given tax breaks to offset the expenditure, then they would willingly accept the new practices.” The report goes on to note that even though the use of the riskiest pesticides has declined nationwide, they still make up more than 40 percent of all pesticides used today; and national pesticide use has risen by 40 million kilograms since 1992. “Our food supply remains the safest and highest quality on Earth but we continue to overdose our farmland with powerful and toxic pesticides and to under-use the safe and effective alternatives,” charged Patrick Leahy, who commissioned the report. Green action groups disagree about the safety issue. “There is no way that habitual consumption of foodstuffs grown using toxic chemicals of the nature found on today’s farms can be healthy for consumers,” noted Bill Bowler, spokesman for Green Action, one of many lobbyists interested in this issue.

The GAO report singles out Oregon’s apple and pear producers who have used the new IPM techniques with growing success. Although Oregon is clearly ahead of the nation, scientists at OSU are taking the Government Accounting Office criticisms seriously. “We must continue to develop effective alternative practices that will reduce environmental hazards and produce high quality products,” said Paul Jepson, a professor of entomology at OSU and new director of OSU’s Integrated Plant Protection Centre (IPPC). The IPPC brings together scientists from OSU’s Agricultural Experiment Station, OSU Extension service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Oregon farmers to help develop agricultural systems that will save water and soil, and reduce pesticides. In response to the GAO report, the Centre is putting even more emphasis on integrating research and farming practices to improve Oregon agriculture environmentally and economically.

“The GAO report criticizes agencies for not clearly communicating the goals of IPM,” said Jepson. “Our challenge is to greatly improve the communication to and from growers, to learn what works and what doesn’t. The work coming from OSU researchers must be adopted in the field and not simply languish in scientific journals.”

In Oregon, growers and scientists are working together to instigate new practices. For example, a few years ago scientists at OSU’s Malheur Experiment Station began testing a new drip irrigation system to replace old ditches that wasted water and washed soil and fertilizer into streams. The new system cut water and fertilizer use by half, kept topsoil in place and protected water quality. In addition, the new system produced crops of very large onions, rated “super colossal” and highly valued by the restaurant industry and food processors. Art Pimms, one of the researchers at Malheur comments: “Growers are finding that when they adopt more environmentally benign practices, they can have excellent results. The new practices benefit the environment and give the growers their success.”

OSU researchers in Malheur next tested straw mulch and found that it successfully held soil in place and kept the ground moist with less irrigation. In addition, and unexpectedly, the scientists found that the mulched soil created a home for beneficial beetles and spiders that prey on onion thrips – a notorious pest in commercial onion fields – a discovery that could reduce the need for pesticides. “I would never have believed that we could replace the artificial pest controls that we had before and still keep our good results,” commented Steve Black, a commercial onion farmer in Oregon, “but instead we have actually surpassed expectations.”

OSU researchers throughout the state have been working to reduce dependence on broad- spectrum chemical sprays that are toxic to many kind of organisms, including humans. “Consumers are rightly putting more and more pressure on the industry to change its reliance on chemical pesticides, but they still want a picture-perfect product,” said Rick Hilton, entomologist at OSU’s Southern Oregon Research and Extension Centre, where researchers help pear growers reduce the need for highly toxic pesticides. Picture perfect pears are an important product in Oregon and traditionally they have required lots of chemicals. In recent years, the industry has faced stiff competition from overseas producers, so any new methods that growers adopt must make sense economically as well as environmentally. Hilton is testing a growth regulator that interferes with the molting of codling moth larvae. Another study used pheromone dispensers to disrupt codling moth mating. These and other methods of integrated pest management have allowed pear growers to reduce their use of organophosphates by two-thirds and reduce all other synthetic pesticides by even more and still produce top-quality pears. These and other studies around the state are part of the effort of the IPPC to find alternative farming practices that benefit both the economy and the environment.

Questions 28-35
Match the views (28 – 35) with the people listed below.

28 There is a double advantage to the new techniques.
29 Expectations of end users of agricultural products affect the products.
30 The work on developing these alternative techniques is not finished.
31 Eating food that has had chemicals used in its production is dangerous to our health.
32 Changing current farming methods is not a cheap process.
33 Results have exceeded anticipations.
34 The research done should be translated into practical projects.
35 The U.S. produces the best food in the world.

TB Tony Brown	PL Patrick Leahy	BB Bill Bowler	PJ Paul Jepson
AP Art Pimms	SB Steve Black	RH Rick Hilton

Questions 36-40
Read the passage about alternative farming methods in Oregon again and look at the statements below.
In boxes 36 – 40 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 advertisement

36 Integrated Pest Management has generally been regarded as a success in the US.
37 Oregon farmers of apples and pears have been promoted as successful examples of Integrated Pest Management.
38 The IPPC uses scientists from different organisations.
39 Straw mulch experiments produced unplanned benefits.
40 The apple industry is now facing a lot of competition from abroad.

Ocean Acidification

A few years ago, biologist, Victoria Fabry, saw the future of the world’s oceans in ajar. She was aboard a research ship in the North Pacific, carrying out experiments on a species of pteropod – small molluscs with shells up to a centimetre long, which swim in a way that resembles butterfly flight, propelled by small flaps. Something strange was happening in Fabry’s jars. ‘The pteropods were still swimming, but their shells were visibly dissolving,’ says Fabry. She realised that the animals’ respiration had increased the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the jars, which had been sealed for 48 hours, changing the water’s chemistry to a point where the calcium carbonate in the pteropods’ shells had started to dissolve. What Fabry had stumbled on was a hint of ‘the other CO2 problem’.

It has taken several decades for climate change to be recognised as a serious threat. But another result of our fossil-fuel habit – ocean acidification – has only begun to be researched in the last few years. Its impact could be momentous, says Joanie Kleypas of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

CO2 forms carbonic acid when it dissolves in water, and the oceans are soaking up more and more of it. Recent studies show that the seas have absorbed about a third of all the fossil-fuel carbon released into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the mid-eighteenth century, and they will soak up much more over the next century. Yet until quite recently many people dismissed the idea that humanity could alter the acidity of the oceans, which cover 71% of the planet’s surface to an average depth of about four kilometres. The ocean’s natural buffering capacity was assumed to be capable of preventing any changes in acidity even with a massive increase in CO2 levels.

And it is – but only if the increase happens slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years. Over this timescale, the release of carbonates from rocks on land and from ocean sediments can neutralise the dissolved CO2, just like dropping chalk in an acid. Levels of CO2 are now rising so fast that they are overwhelming the oceans’ buffering capacity.

In 2003 Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, and Michael Wickett at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, calculated that the absorption of fossil CO2 could make the oceans more acidic over the next few centuries than they have been for 300 million years, with the possible exception of rare catastrophic events. The potential seriousness of the effect was underlined in 2005 by the work of James Zachos of the University of California and his colleagues, who studied one of those rare catastrophic events. They showed that the mass extinction of huge numbers of deep-sea creatures around 55 million years ago was caused by ocean acidification after the release of around 4500 gigatonnes of carbon. It took over 100,000 years for the oceans to return to their normal state.

Around the same time as the Zachos paper, the UK’s Royal Society published the first comprehensive report on ocean acidification. It makes grim reading, concluding that ocean acidification is inevitable without drastic cuts in emissions. Marine ecosystems, especially coral reefs, are likely to be affected, with fishing and tourism based around reefs losing billions of dollars each year. Yet the report also stressed that there is huge uncertainty about the effects on marine life.

The sea creatures most likely to be affected are those that make their shells or skeletons from calcium carbonate, including tiny plankton and huge corals. Their shells and skeletons do not dissolve only because the upper layers of the oceans are supersaturated with calcium carbonate. Acidification reduces carbonate ion concentrations, making it harder for organisms to build their shells or skeletons. When the water drops below the saturation point, these structures will start to dissolve. Calcium carbonate comes in two different forms, aragonite and calcite, aragonite being more soluble. So organisms with aragonite structures, such as corals, will be hardest hit.

So far the picture looks relentlessly gloomy, but could there actually be some positive results from adding so much CO2 to the seas? One intriguing finding, says Ulf Riebesell of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, concerns gases that influence climate. A few experiments suggest that in more acidic conditions, microbes will produce more volatile organic compounds such as dimethyl sulphide, some of which escapes to the atmosphere and causes clouds to develop. More clouds would mean cooler conditions, which could potentially slow global warming.

Calculating the effect of ocean acidification on people and economies is virtually impossible, but it could be enormous. Take the impact on tropical corals, assuming that warming and other pressures such as pollution do not decimate them first. Reefs protect the shorelines of many countries. Acidification could start eating away at reefs just when they are needed more than ever because of rising sea levels.

‘No serious scientist believes the oceans will be devoid of life,’ says Caldeira. ‘Wherever there is light and nutrients something will live. A likely outcome will be a radical simplification of the ecosystem.’ Taking this and other scientists’ views into account, it seems clear that acidification will mean the loss of many species, so our children will not see the amazingly beautiful things that we can. It is important to tell them to go and see the corals now before it is too late.

Questions 1-7
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

1 What does the pteropod use to move itself through the water?
2 Which part of the pteropods was being damaged by increased acidification?
3 What proportion of the carbon released over the last 200 years has been taken in by the oceans?
4 Where do carbonates enter the oceans from?
5 How long did the oceans need to recover after the destruction of marine life by acidification 55 million years ago?
6 Which businesses will suffer if reefs are damaged?
7 What type of creatures make their skeletons out of aragonite?

Questions 8-12
Complete the flow chart below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

A POSSIBLE BENEFIT FROM INCREASED CO2 LEVELS IN THE SEA

Increased ocean acidification

Large quantities of organic compounds made by (8)…………………..

Transfer to (9)……………………..

(10)……………………..are formed

(11)………………………..temperatures

Reduction in rate of (12)…………………..

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

13 Which of the following best summarises the writer’s view in the passage?
A We will have to wait and see if acidification has serious effects.
B It is clear that acidification will cause huge damage to marine life.
C It is likely that increased CO2 will change marine ecosystems considerably.
D The theory that increased CO2 could have positive results is believable.

A New Fair Trade Organisation

Trade has, so far, proved ineffective in solving the major problems faced by most nations. However, the answer to the injustices of the existing trade regime is not no trade, but fair trade.

The existing regime forbids poor nations from following the path taken by the rich. With the exceptions of Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, all the nations that have become independently wealthy did so with the help of a mechanism economists call ‘infant industry protection’: defending new sectors from foreign competition until they are big enough to compete on equal terms. The textile industry in Britain, for example, on which the Industrial Revolution was built in the nineteenth century, was nurtured and promoted by means of tariffs (or trade taxes) and the outright prohibition of competing goods. Between 1864 and 1913, the US was the most heavily protected nation on earth. Only when these countries had established technological and commercial superiority did they suddenly discover the virtues of unimpeded competition.

For nations to develop in direct competition with countries with established industries is like learning to swim in a fast-flowing river: you are likely to be swept away and drowned long before you acquire the necessary expertise. Your competitors have experience, legal rights and established marketing networks on their side; your infant industries have none of these. It is all but impossible, in other words, for poor nations to extract money from the rich unless they can safeguard some key parts of their economies.

Clearly, nations that are currently poor should be permitted to defend certain industries from foreign competition with the help of tariff barriers and subsidies. Rich nations, on the other hand, should be permitted neither to subsidise their industries nor to impose tariffs on imports. Nations should be forced gradually to lift their protections as they develop. So, the first function of what we might call the Fair Trade Organisation (FTO) would be to lay down the rules governing the protections and privileges permitted at different stages of development.

A fair-trade system should, or so we should hope, slowly push the world towards genuine free trade, which is likely to be the most equitable means of governing nations’ relationships with each other. This system could provide a potent means by which the world could begin to move towards the economic equality that is an essential precondition for political equality. It would not, however, directly address some of the other critical problems that the people of poor nations confront – such as inadequate working conditions, environmental devastation and the inordinate power of the multinational corporations.

Many campaigners in the rich world have suggested that the best way to raise standards is to discriminate, through tariffs or other measures, against imports from countries where workers or the environment are mistreated. This approach has also been advocated by trades unions seeking to protect members’ jobs from foreigners. Unsurprisingly, it is deeply resented by the very people it is supposed to help: the workers of the poor world.

If our purpose is to regulate international trade, then it surely makes sense to address the behaviour, not of nation states, but of the multinational corporations operating between them. So a second function of the FTO could be to set the standards to which those corporations must conform. A corporation would not be permitted to trade between nations unless it could demonstrate that, at every stage of manufacture and distribution, its own operations and those of its suppliers met the necessary standards.

If, for example, a food-processing corporation based in Europe wished to import cocoa from an African country, it would need to demonstrate that the plantation owners it bought from were not using banned pesticides, expanding into protected forests or failing to conform to whatever other standards the FTO set. The company’s performance would be assessed, at its own expense, by monitors accredited to the organisation.

One other precondition of justice is that producers and consumers should carry their own costs, rather than dumping them on other people. The monitors deployed by the FTO could determine whether or not companies are paying a fair price for the resources they use. Companies would, among other costs, have to buy enough of a nation’s carbon quota to cover the fossil fuel they consume.

One of the many beneficial impacts of such full-cost accounting would be that everything that could be processed in the country of origin would be. No multinational company would export logs, coffee beans or cotton, as it requires far more (costly) energy to transport these bulky resources from one place to another than would be involved in exporting the finished products – furniture, instant coffee and T-shirts (all currently manufactured on the other side of the world). Those nations which are currently locked into the export of raw materials would become the most favoured locations for manufacturing.

Under this scheme, export growth comes to measure something quite different. At present it represents a mixture of gains and losses, which are misleadingly compounded into a single figure. The loss of natural resources is ‘added’ to the genuine addition of value provided by the application of labour. The FTO system would effectively separate these measures. The extraction and export of natural resources would in most cases be accounted as a loss. The application of human labour would be measured as a gain. Nations would be able to see immediately whether they were being enriched or impoverished through trade. To introduce these measures in the face of the resistance of the world’s most powerful governments and companies would require severe and unusual methods. But the goal of universal fair trade would permit the global economic levelling without which there can be no justice.

Questions 14-19
Choose the correct letter; A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 14 – 19 on your answer sheet.

14 The writer refers to textile production in Britain in order to
A point out how differently industries were financed in the past.
B show how unnecessary tariff barriers are for countries today.
C help the reader understand how infant industry protection works.
D compare European trade development with that of the United States.

15 What is the writer’s main point in the third paragraph?
A Businesses will succeed if they learn from established companies.
B Detailed market research is often neglected in developing countries.
C You have to be prepared to adapt your products quickly to follow fashion.
D New industries in poor countries will probably fail without protection.

16 According to the writer, a fair trade system could have the effect of
A improving safety in the majority of workplaces around the world.
B preventing the continued destruction of endangered wildlife habitats.
C encouraging states to work together in a more even-handed way.
D making politicians agree to more representative systems of government.

17 What point is the writer making in the sixth paragraph?
A The trades unions’ aim is to help foreign workers gain better conditions.
B The trades unions are concerned about the effects of imports on local jobs.
C Workers in poor countries are grateful for the trades unions’ support.
D Campaigners are right to suggest imposing tariffs against bad treatment.

18 According to the writer, what is one of the benefits of full-cost accounting?
A Factories would be set up and jobs created in the country of origin.
B Multinational companies would consume fewer natural resources.
C The export of finished products around the world would decrease.
D Countries would be able to keep their resources for the domestic market.

19 What conclusion does the writer come to about the FTO system?
A It would help to combat injustice in its many different forms.
B It would be difficult to introduce but would be worth the effort.
C States all over the world would earn more through trade as a result of it.
D Multinationals would accept it because it measures exports more precisely.

Questions 20-26
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

A Proposal for Regulating Multinational Corporations

The FTO would determine the (20)………………………for the multinational corporations to follow. In this way, a multinational corporation would have to prove that all aspects of the way it produced its goods and the systems for their (21)……………………………to customers was in line with FTO requirements. Similarly it would need to satisfy the FTO that the processes employed by any (22)…………………………that it used were also acceptable. As an illustration, in order to source cocoa from Africa, a corporation would have to ensure that no illegal (23)…………………………were being used by the (24)………………………….during cultivation and that they had not taken over land from (25)………………………..It would not be sufficient for multinational corporations to say that these points had been checked. Their conduct would have to be inspected by (26)……………………………..appointed by the FTO.

The First Antigravity Machine

It was one of the biggest science stories of the 1990s. Even now, the facts behind it remain hotly disputed. And small wonder, for if the claims made for the small disc, the focus of the controversy, are true, it may be possible to break through one of the great barriers in the scientific world and control the most potent of cosmic forces: gravity. Huge innovations in flight and space travel could arise from that.

The first gravity-blocking system to be taken seriously by scientists appeared in a laboratory in Tampere University of Technology, Finland. A Russian scientist named Dr Evgeny Podkletnov created a disc 275mm across, made from a substance which combined copper, barium and the ‘rare Earth metal’ called yttrium, which is known to be a high-temperature superconductor (a substance that conducts electricity without resistance). When chilled with liquid nitrogen at -196° C (a high temperature compared with other superconductors), this material loses all its electrical resistance, and can levitate (lift) in a magnetic field. That may seem amazing for a ceramic-like material – and it won a Nobel Prize for the scientists, Karl Muller and Johannes Bednorz, who first demonstrated it in the 1980s. But according to Podkletnov, the disc had another far more astounding property.

In 1992, while experimenting with rotating superconductors, Podkletnov noticed that pipe-smoke from a nearby researcher was drifting into a vertical column above the spinning disc. Intrigued by this phenomenon, he decided to devise an experiment to investigate further. A superconductive disc, surrounded by liquid nitrogen was magnetically levitated and rotated at high speed – up to 5,000 revolutions per minute (rpm) in a magnetic field. An object was suspended from a sensitive balance above the disc. It was enclosed in a glass tube to shield it from any effects of air currents. During the course of a series of tests, Podkletnov was able to observe that the object lost a variable amount of weight from less than 0.5 percent to 2 percent of its total weight. This effect was noted with a range of materials from ceramics to wood. The effect was slight, yet the implications were revolutionary: the disc appeared to be partly shielding the object from the gravitational pull of the Earth.

This was just the start, claimed Podkletnov. While far short of the 100 percent reduction in weight needed to send astronauts into space, for example, it was infinitely greater than the amount predicted by the best theory of gravity currently in existence: Einstein’s theory of general relativity (GR), published in 1905. According to Einstein, gravity is not some kind of ‘force field’, like magnetism, which can – in principle at least – be screened out. Instead, GR views gravity as a distortion in the very fabric of space and time, that permeates the whole cosmos. As such, any claim to have shielded objects from gravity is to defy Einstein himself.

Podkletnov’s claims were subjected to intense scrutiny when he submitted them for publication. The UK Institute of Physics had Podkletnov’s paper checked by three independent referees, but none could find a fatal flaw. His research was set to appear in the respected Journal of Physics when events took an unexpected turn. The claims were leaked to the media, sparking world-wide coverage of his apparent breakthrough. Then Podkletnov suddenly withdrew the paper from publication and refused to talk to the press.

Rumours began to circulate of unknown backers demanding silence until the device had been fully patented. But for many scientists the strange events were all too familiar. Podkletnov was just the latest in a long line of people to have made claims about defying gravity. Most of these have come from madcap inventors, with bizarre devices – often with some kind of spinning disc. But occasionally, respectable academics have made such claims as well.

One instance of this occurred in the late 1980s when scientists at Tohoku University, Japan, made headlines with research suggesting that apparatus, known as a gyroscope, lost 0.01 percent of its weight when spinning at up to 13,000 rpm. Oddly the effect only appeared if the gyroscope was spinning anticlockwise – raising suspicions that some mechanical peculiarity was to blame. Attempts by scientists at the University of Colorado to replicate the effect failed.

Then Professor Giovanni Modanese, an Italian theoretical physicist, became interested. He had read an earlier paper by Podkletnov, hinting at a connection between superconductivity and gravity shielding. Modanese wondered if the magnetic fields surrounding the superconductive disc might somehow assimilate part of the gravitational field under it. He published some calculations based on his idea in 1995 – and soon discovered that taking ‘antigravity’ seriously was a career-limiting move.

The revelations about Podkletnov’s antigravity research led to reports of major corporations setting up their own studies. In 2000, the UK defence contractor BAE Systems was said to have launched ‘Project Greenglow’ to investigate Podkletnov’s gravity shield effect. Then it emerged that the US aircraft builder Boeing was also investigating, suggesting it too had an interest in the effect. Groups in other countries were also rumoured to be carrying out studies. Yet not one of the teams has reported confirmation of the original findings. Some projects have been wound up without producing results either way. So for the time being, it seems that the dream of controlling gravity will remain precisely that.

Questions 27-30
Label the diagram below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER from the passage.

Questions 31-35
Classify the following findings as belonging to

A Podkletnov
B Tohoku University
C Modanese

Write the correct letter, A, B or C in boxes 31-35 on your answer sheet.
31 The experiment only works if the equipment moves in a particular direction.
32 Varying amounts of weight are lost as a result of the test.
33 Gravity could be absorbed by a magnetic field.
34 Superconductive material seems to screen an object from gravity.
35 Weight loss occurs when the equipment rotates at speeds reaching 13,000 rpm.

Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with information given in Reading Passage 3?

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

36 Podkletnov won a prize for his initial work on superconductive substances.
37 A chance observation led Podkletnov to experiment with gravity blocking.
38 Einstein challenged earlier experiments on antigravity.
39 Modanese suffered professionally after following up Podkletnov’s findings.
40 An aircraft company announced that it had replicated Podkletnov’s results.

Jargon

A Jargon is a loaded word. One dictionary defines it, neatly and neutrally, as ‘the technical vocabulary or idiom of a special activity or group’, but this sense is almost completely overshadowed by another: ‘obscure and often pretentious language marked by a roundabout way of expression and use of long words’. For most people, it is this second sense which is at the front of their minds when they think about jargon. Jargon is said to be a bad use of language, something to be avoided at all costs. No one ever describes it in positive terms (‘that was a delightful piece of rousing jargon’). Nor does one usually admit to using it oneself: the myth is that jargon is something only other people employ.

B The reality, however, is that everyone uses jargon. It is an essential part of the network of occupations and pursuits that make up society. All jobs present an element of jargon, which workers learn as they develop their expertise. All hobbies require mastery of a jargon. Each society grouping has its jargon. The phenomenon turns out to be universal – and valuable. It is the jargon element which, in a job, can promote economy and precision of expression, and thus help make life easier for the workers. It is also the chief linguistic element which shows professional awareness (‘know-how’) and social togetherness (‘shop-talk’).

C When we have learned to command it, jargon is something we readily take pleasure in, whether the subject area is motorcycles, knitting, cricket, baseball or computers. It can add pace, variety and humour to speech – as when, with an important event approaching, we might slip into NASA-speak, and talk about countdown, all systems go, and lift-off. We enjoy the mutual showing-off which stems from a fluent use of terminology, and we enjoy the in-jokes which shared linguistic experience permits. Moreover, we are jealous of this knowledge. We are quick to demean anyone who tries to be part of our group without being prepared to take on its jargon.

D If jargon is so essential a part of our lives, why then has it had such a bad press? The most important reason stems from the way jargon can exclude as well as include. We may not be too concerned if we find ourselves faced with an impenetrable wall of jargon when the subject matter has little perceived relevance to our everyday lives, as in the case of hydrology, say, or linguistics. But when the subject matter is one where we feel implicated, and think we have a right to know, and the speaker uses words which make it hard for us to understand, then we start to complain; and if we suspect that the obfuscation is deliberate policy, we unreservedly condemn, labelling it gobbledegook and calling down public derision upon it.

E No area is exempt, but the fields of advertising, politics and defence have been especially criticised in recent years by the various campaigns for Plain English. In these domains, the extent to which people are prepared to use jargon to hide realities is a ready source of amusement, disbelief and horror. A lie is a lie, which can be only temporarily hidden by calling it an ‘inoperative statement’ or ‘an instance of plausible deniability’. Nor can a nuclear plant explosion be suppressed for long behind such phrases as ‘energetic disassembly’, ‘abnormal evolution’ or ‘plant transient’.

F While condemning unnecessary or obscuring jargon in others, we should not forget to look out for it in ourselves. It is so easy to ‘slip into’ jargon, without realizing that our own listeners/readers do not understand. It is also temptingly easy to slip some jargon into our expression, to ensure that others do not understand. And it is just as easy to begin using jargon which we ourselves do not understand. The motivation to do such apparently perverse things is not difficult to grasp. People like to be ‘in’, to be part of an intellectual or technical elite; and the use of jargon, whether understood or not, is a badge of membership. Jargon, also, can provide a lazy way into a group or an easy way of hiding uncertainties and inadequacies: when terminology slips plausibly from the tongue, it is not essential for the brain to keep up. Indeed some people have developed this skill to professional levels. And certainly, faced with a telling or awkward question, and the need to say something acceptable in public, slipping into jargon becomes a simple way out, and can soon become a bad habit.

Questions 1-6
Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs, A – F. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct number i – ix in boxes 1 – 6 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i The benefits of simple language
ii A necessary tool
iii A lasting way of concealing disasters
iv The worst offenders
v A deceptively attractive option
vi Differing interpretations
vii Publicising new words
viii Feeling shut out
ix Playing with words

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

Questions 7-12
Complete the summary using the list of words A-L below. Write the correct letter A- L in boxes 7 – 12 on your answer sheet.

The Up Side of Jargon
Jargon plays a useful part in many aspects of life including leisure. For example, when people take up pastimes they need to develop a good (7)……………………………of the relevant jargon. During discussion of these or other areas of interest, conversation can become more exciting and an element of (8)……………………….can be introduced by the use of shared jargon. Jargon is particularly helpful in the workplace. It leads to more (9)……………………….in the way colleagues communicate during work hours. Taking part in (10)……………………….during moments of relaxation can also help them to bond better. It is interesting that members of a group, whether social or professional, often demonstrate a certain (11)……………………….. towards the particular linguistic characteristics of their subject area and tend to regard new people who do not wish to learn the jargon with (12)…………………..

A judgement	B jokes	C shop-talk
D efficiency	E know-how	F command
G contempt	H feeling	I possessiveness
J pleasure	K fear	L humour

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

13 Which of the following statements would the writer agree with?
A Jargon thoroughly deserves the bad reputation it has gained.
B Jargon should not be encouraged except in the workplace.
C Jargon should not be used if the intention is to exclude others.
D Everyday life would be very much better without jargon.

Healthy Intentions

A One hundred years ago, the leading causes of death in the industrial world were infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza and pneumonia. Since then, the emergence of antibiotics, vaccines and public health controls has reduced the impact of infectious disease. Today, the top killers are non-infectious illnesses related essentially to lifestyle (diet, smoking and lack of exercise). The main causes of death in the United States in 1997 were heart disease, cancer and stroke. Chronic health problems, such as obesity, noninsulin-dependent diabetes and osteoporosis, which are not necessarily lethal but nonetheless debilitating, are steadily increasing. It is clear that economic and technical progress is no assurance of good health.

B Humans are qualitatively different from other animals because we manipulate the flow of energy and resources through the ecosystem to our advantage, and consequently to the detriment of other organisms. That is why we compete so successfully with other species. But with this success come some inherent failings, particularly in terms of our health.

C According to physician Boyd Eaton and his anthropologist colleagues, despite all our technological wizardry and intellectual advances, modern humans are seriously malnourished. The human body evolved to eat a very different diet from that which most of us consume today. Before the advent of agriculture, about ten thousand years ago, people were hunter-gatherers, the food varying with the seasons and climate and all obtained from local sources. Our ancestors rarely, if ever, ate grains or drank the milk of other animals.

D Although ten thousand years seems a long time ago, 99.99 percent of our genetic material was already formed. Thus we are not well adapted to an agriculturally based diet of cereals and dairy products. At least 100,000 generations of people were hunter-gatherers, only 500 generations have depended on agriculture, only ten generations have lived since the onset of the industrial age and only two generations have grown up with highly processed fast foods. Physicians Randolph Nesse and George Williams write: ‘Our bodies were designed over the course of millions of years for lives spent in small groups hunting and gathering on the plains of Africa. Natural selection has not had time to revise our bodies for coping with fatty diets, automobiles, drugs, artificial lights and central heating. From this mismatch between our design and our environment arises much, perhaps most, preventable modern disease.’

E Do we really want to eat like prehistoric humans? Surely ‘cavemen’ were not healthy? Surely their life was hard and short? Apparently not. Archaeological evidence indicates that these hunter-gatherer ancestors were robust, strong and lean with no sign of osteoporosis or arthritis – even at more advanced ages. Paleolithic humans ate a diet similar to that of wild chimpanzees and gorillas today: raw fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetation, fresh untreated water, insects and wild- game meat low in saturated fats. Much of their food was hard and bitter. Most important, like chimpanzees and gorillas, prehistoric humans ate a wide variety of plants – an estimated 100 to 300 different types in one year. Nowadays, even health-conscious, rich westerners seldom consume more than twenty to thirty different species of plants.

F The early human diet is estimated to have included more than 100 grams of fiber a day. Today the recommended level of 30 grams is rarely achieved by most of us. Humans and lowland gorillas share similar digestive tracts – in particular, the colon – but, while gorillas derive up to 60 percent of their total energy from fiber fermentation in the colon, modern humans get only about 4 percent. When gorillas are brought into captivity and fed on lower-fiber diets containing meat and eggs, they suffer from many common human disorders: cardiovascular disease, ulcerative colitis and high cholesterol levels. Their natural diet, rich in antioxidants and fiber, apparently prevents these diseases in the wild, suggesting that such a diet may have serious implications for our own health.

G Not all agricultural societies have taken the same road. Many traditional agriculturalists maintain the diversity of their diet by eating a variety of herbs and other plant compounds along with meat and grains. The Huasa people of northern Nigeria, for example, traditionally include up to twenty wild medicinal plants in their grain-based soups, and peoples who have become heavily reliant on animal products have found ways of countering the negative effects of such a diet. While the Masai of Africa eat meat and drink blood, milk and animal fat as their only sources of protein, they suffer less heart trouble than Westerners. One reason is that they always combine their animal products with strong, bitter antioxidant herbs. In other words, the Masai have balanced the intake of oxidising and antioxidising compounds. According to Timothy Johns, it is not the high intake of animal fat or the low intake of antioxidants, that creates so many health problems in industrial countries; it is the lack of balance between the two.

H Eating the right foods and natural medicines requires a sensitivity to subtle changes in appetite. Do I fancy something sweet, sour, salty, stimulating or sedating? What sort of hunger is it? And after consumption, has the ‘need’ been satisfied? Such subtleties are easily overridden by artificially created superstimuli in processed foods that leave us unable to select a healthy diet. We need to listen more carefully to our bodies’ cravings and take an intentional role in maintaining our health before disease sets in.

Questions 14-20
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A – G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 a reference to systems for neutralizing some harmful features of modern diets
15 a suggestion as to why mankind has prospered
16 an example of what happens if a balanced, plant-based diet is abandoned
17 a chronological outline of the different types of diet mankind has lived on
18 details of which main factors now threaten human life
19 a reference to one person’s theory about the cause of some of today’s illnesses
20 details of the varied intake of early humans

Questions 21 – 26
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading passage 2? In boxes 21 -26 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

21 An increase in material resources leads to improved physical health.
22 Cereals were unknown to our hunter-gathering ancestors.
23 In the future, human bodies will adapt to take account of changes in diet.
24 Many people in developed countries have a less balanced diet than early humans.
25 Gorillas that live in the wild avoid most infectious diseases.
26 Food additives can prevent people from eating what their bodies need.

Educational And Professional Opportunities For Women In New Technologies

The principle that you don’t have to be a mechanic to drive a car can also be applied to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Gone are the days when a computer user needed knowledge of a programming language. On one hand, this is good news for women. It is because women can now use computers without needing computer science qualifications that gives ICTs the potential to enhance women’s education. But, our lack of ICT skills is not praiseworthy. Feminist writers for many years have argued that if more women were engineers and scientists, we might live in a very different world. (Rothschild 1982)

In a review of five countries, Millar and Jagger examined women’s employment in ICT occupations. They found a pattern of a low proportion of female entrants, a significant ‘leaking’ (Alper 1993) of those who enter to other areas of employment, and a ghetto of women in lower paid jobs. How did a new area of economic activity become gendered so quickly? An obvious answer could be that men have seen it as a desirable area and women have not. It is often said that new industries are both ‘gender blind’ (i.e. if you are good at your work you’ll succeed whatever your gender) and that they value ‘feminine’ communication and ‘people’ skills. But recent research does not bear this out. A study of a new high-tech ICT company (Woodfield 2000) employing highly qualified graduates showed that men were given management responsibility despite an acknowledgement by the company that they had poor management skills. And there was an unwillingness to give responsibilities to women who had these skills. It seems that jobs acquire gender quite quickly in some sectors.

In the 1980s and 1990s, interesting studies were done into the ways in which men and women think about the world. They argued for the validation of diverse ways of thinking, rather than a hierarchy with a particular kind of male intellectual tradition at the apex. Turkle (1984; 1996) has done similar work on the ways people interact with computers. She sees computers as tools used as an extension of our identities, with significant variations in the ways that men and women use them to explore and perform their gendered identities. This subtle way of understanding our relationship with this technology, however, must go in parallel with a materialist view, which is that an underlying motivation for most ICT-based initiatives in work, education, leisure, citizenship is economic force.

We must also differentiate between the opportunities for employment offered by ICTs, and the tools they provide for education. We must beware of the inappropriate application of ICTs to a problem that would be better addressed in another way. Research into the effectiveness of ICTs as measured by student performance in Maths, suggests that for young children there is a negative relationship between classroom computer use and Maths performance. One researcher, Angrist, from MIT found when examining ICTs in the classroom that the set-up costs were obvious and the benefits much less so (Economist 2002). It could be more effective to have more teacher involvement and lower class sizes.

In 1963 Clark Kerr, the President of the University of California, coined the term ‘multiversity’, to suggest that universities were no longer based on a body of universal knowledge or a heterogeneous body of students. Higher education, professional education and life skills education are now being delivered by a variety of different universities, colleges and commercial companies. The distinctions between these are breaking down. Just when women are getting equal access to higher education and professional education, what constitutes higher level education and valid scholarly activity has been called into question through the creation of virtual universities. On the other hand, women are often claimed to have the most to gain from these new flexible and distributed kinds of education.

Although online education provides new opportunities for women it is also the source of new pressures. The term ‘Second Shift’ was invented to identify the work/life balance of employed women. Women in paid employment did not substitute this for their domestic work; they struggled to carry out both obligations. Kramarae sees education in the new century as the ‘Third Shift’: ‘As lifelong learning and knowledge become ever more important, women and men find they juggle not only the demands of work and family, but also the demands of further education throughout their lives. ’ (2001)

ICTs – the Internet in particular – are seen as providing global access to key educational resources. However, access to information is a useless resource if you don’t have the skills to evaluate and use it. Shade (2002) distinguishes between the feminisation of the Internet, where women are targeted as consumers rather than citizens or learners; and feminist uses of the Internet where women develop content that creates opportunities for women.

Digital media may also produce inflexibility for women engaged in learning. A survey of open and distance learning students (Kirkup and Priimmer 1997; Kirkup 2001) demonstrated differences in the preferred learning styles of women and men. Women were uncomfortable with isolation and stated a desire for connection with others. Engagement in creating and maintaining networks and relationships is often cited as a reason why computer-mediated communication will be a ‘female’ technology. Unfortunately, however, empirical work challenges this. Li (2002), in a study of university students in the UK and China, found that male students used e-mail more frequently, spent more time online, and engaged in more varied activities than women students. There is now a wealth of research on the gender differences of male and female online activity, all of which demonstrate the online environment creating a gendered world operating in similar ways to the material world.

Questions 27-34
Look at the following people (Questions 27 – 34) and the list of reported findings below. Match each person with the correct finding, A-K. Write the correct letter A – K in boxes 27 – 34 on your answer sheet.

27 Rothschild
28 Alper
29 Woodfield
30 Turkle
31 Angrist
32 Shade
33 Kirkup
34 Li

List of Reported Findings
A Men and women perceive their environment differently.
B The advantages of ICTs in schools are difficult to specify.
C Men see ICT as an exciting new area of employment.
D Female students find working on their own unappealing.
E A greater female representation in scientific and technical posts would have enormous benefits.
F Women can be seen as both passive and active users of ICTs.
G Female students can benefit most from ICTs and distance learning.
H In Higher Education, men use a wider range of ICT skills than women.
I A considerable number of women give up ICT posts to work in different fields.
J The way the two genders regard computers reflects the differences in the way they develop their sense of self.
K Certain new employment sectors are soon colonized by workers of one sex.

Questions 35-40
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

35 The term ‘…………………………’ refers to a company that is equally happy to promote workers of either sex.
36 It is clear that ICT developments in most fields are driven by…………………..
37 The range of institutions providing high level instruction today is known as a…………………..
38 Women who are working find it hard to get their………………………..right.
39 The way workers of both sexes now face having to fit children, work and continued learning into their lives is called the………………….
40 Women are thought to be suited to computer work as it involves developing………………………and………………….

Unlikely Boomtowns: The World’s Hottest Cities

Megacities like London, New York and Tokyo loom large in our imaginations. They are still associated with fortune, fame and the future. They can dominate national economies and politics. The last fifty years has been their era, as the number of cities with more than ten million people grew from two to twenty. But with all respect to the science-fiction novelists who have envisioned a future of urban giants, their day is over. The typical growth rate of the population within a megacity has slowed from more than eight per cent in the 1980s to less than half that over the last five years, and numbers are expected to be static in the next quarter century. Instead, the coming years will belong to a smaller, far humbler relation – the Second City.

Within a few years, more people will live in cities than in the countryside for the first time in human history. But increasingly, the urban core itself is downsizing. Already, half the city dwellers in the world live in metropolises with fewer than half-a-million residents. Second Cities – from exurbs, residential areas outside the suburbs of a town, to regional centres – are booming. Between 2000 and 2015, the world’s smallest cities (with under 500,000 people) will grow by 23 per cent, while the next smallest (one million to five million people) will grow by 27 per cent. This trend is the result of dramatic shifts, including the global real-estate bubble; increasing international migration; cheaper transport; new technologies, and the fact that the baby-boom generation is reaching retirement age.

The emergence of Second Cities has flowed naturally (if unexpectedly) from the earlier success of the megacities. In the 1990s, megacities boomed as global markets did. This was particularly true in areas with high-tech or ‘knowledge-based’ industries like finance. Bonuses got bigger, bankers got richer and real-estate prices in the world’s most sought-after cities soared. The result has been the creation of what demographer William Frey of the Washington-based Brookings Institute calls ‘gated regions’ in which both the city and many of the surrounding suburbs have become unaffordable for all but the very wealthy. ‘Economically, after a city reaches a certain size its productivity starts to fall,’ notes Mario Pezzini, head of the regional-competitiveness division of the OECD. He puts the tipping point at about six million people, after which costs, travel times and the occasional chaos ‘create a situation in which the centre of the city may be a great place, but only for the rich, and the outlying areas become harder to live and work in’.

One reaction to this phenomenon is further sprawl – high prices in the urban core and traditional suburbs drive people to distant exurbs with extreme commutes into big cities. As Frey notes, in the major US metropolitan areas, average commuting times have doubled over the last fifteen years. Why does one town become a booming Second City while another fails? The answer hinges on whether a community has the wherewithal to exploit the forces pushing people and businesses out of the megacities. One key is excellent transport links, especially to the biggest commercial centres. Though barely a decade old, Goyang is South Korea’s fastest-growing city in part because it is 30 minutes by subway from Seoul.

Another growth driver for Second Cities is the decentralization of work, driven in large part by new technologies. While more financial deals are done now in big capitals like New York and London than ever before, it is also clear that plenty of booming service industries are leaving for ‘Rising Urban Stars’ like Dubai, Montpellier and Cape Town. These places have not only improved their Internet backbones, but often have technical institutes and universities that turn out the kinds of talent that populate growth industries.

Consider Montpellier, France, a case study in urban decentralization. Until the 1980s, it was like a big Mediterranean village, but one with a strong university, many lovely villas and an IBM manufacturing base. Once the high-speed train lines were built, Parisians began pouring in for weekend breaks. Some bought houses, creating a critical mass of middle-class professionals who began taking advantage of flexible working systems to do three days in Paris, and two down South, where things seemed less pressured. Soon, big companies began looking at the area; a number of medical-technology and electronics firms came to town, and IBM put more investment into service businesses there. To cater to the incoming professionals, the city began building amenities: an opera house, a tram line to discourage cars in the city centre. The result, says French urban-planning expert Nacima Baron, is that ‘the city is now full of cosmopolitan business people. It’s a new society’.

All this means that Second Cities won’t stay small. Indeed some countries are actively promoting their growth. Italy, for example, is trying to create tourist hubs of towns close to each other with distinctive buildings and offering different yet complementary cultural activities. Devolution of policymaking power is leaving many lesser cities more free than ever to shape their destinies. To them all: this is your era. Don’t blow it.

Questions 1-3
Choose THREE letters, A-G. Write your answers in boxes 1 – 3 on your answer sheet.

Which THREE of the following statements are true of megacities, according to the text?
A They tend to lead the way in terms of fashion.
B Their population has ceased to expand.
C They reached their peak in the second half of the twentieth century.
D 50 per cent of the world’s inhabitants now live in them.
E They grew rich on the profits from manufacturing industry.
F Their success begins to work against them at a certain stage.
G It is no longer automatically advantageous to base a company there.

Questions 4-6
Choose THREE letters, A-G. Write your answers in boxes 4 — 6 on your answer sheet.
The list below gives some possible reasons why small towns can turn into successful Second Cities.

Which THREE of these reasons are mentioned by the writer of the text?

A the existence of support services for foreign workers
B the provision of cheap housing for older people
C the creation of efficient access routes
D the ability to attract financial companies
E the expertise to keep up with electronic developments
F the maintenance of a special local atmosphere
G the willingness to imitate international-style architecture

Questions 7-13
Complete the summary using the list of words A-R below. Write the correct letter, A- R, in boxes 7 – 13 on your answer sheet.

Urban Decentralisation
It is becoming increasingly obvious that large numbers of (7)………………………are giving up their expensive premises in the megacities and relocating to smaller cities like Montpellier. One of the attractions of Montpellier is the presence of a good (8)…………………………that can provide them with the necessary skilled workforce.
Another important factor for Montpellier was the arrival of visitors from the (9)………………………….The introduction of the (10)………………………meant that increasing numbers were able to come for short stays. Of these, a significant proportion decided to get a base in the city. The city council soon realised that they needed to provide appropriate (11)…………………………..for their new inhabitants. In fact, the (12)………………………..among them liked the more relaxed lifestyle so much that they took advantage of any (13)…………………………..arrangements offered by their firms to spend more of the week in Montpellier.

A urban centres	B finance companies	C flexible	D tram line
E cosmopolitan	F service industries	G capital	H high speed train
I infrastructures	J unskilled workers	K jobs	L medical technology
M professionals	N European Union	O amenities	P middle age
Q overtime	R university

Psychological Value Of Space

A What would a building space look and feel like if it were designed to promote psychological and social well-being? How would it affect the senses, the emotions, and the mind? How would it affect behavioral patterns? For insights, it is useful to look not at buildings, but at zoos. Zoo design has gone through a radical transformation in the past several decades. Cages have been replaced by natural habitats and geographic clustering of animals. In some places, the animals are free-ranging and the visitors are enclosed in buses or trains moving through the habitat. Animals now exist in mixed species exhibits more like their natural landscapes. And, as in nature, the animals have much greater control over their behavior. They can be on view if they want, or out of sight. They forage, play, rest, mate and act like normal animals.

B What brought about this transformation in philosophy and design? A key factor was concern over the animals’ psychological and social well-being. Zoos could keep animals alive, but they couldn’t make them flourish. Caged animals often exhibit neurotic behaviors—pacing, repetitive motions, aggression, and withdrawal. In one famous example, an animal psychologist was hired by the Central Park Zoo to study a polar bear that spent the day swimming in endless figure eights in its small pool. This was not normal polar bear behavior and the zoo was concerned about it. After several days of observation, the animal psychologist offered a diagnosis. The bear was bored. To compensate for this unfortunate situation, the zoo added amenities and toys to the bear’s enclosure to encourage exploration and play.

C Are there lessons that we can apply to building design? Some experts believe so: for example, biologist Stephen Boyden (1971) defines the optimum healthy environment as ‘the conditions which tend to promote or permit an animal optimal physiological, mental, and social performance in its natural or “evolutionary” environment.’ Because humans evolved in a natural landscape, it is reasonable to turn to the natural environment for clues about preference patterns that may be applicable to building design. Drawing on habitat selection theory, ecologist Gordon Orians argues that humans are psychologically adapted to and prefer landscape features that characterized the African plain or savannah, the presumed site of human evolution. Although humans now live in many different habitats, Orians argues that our species’ long history as mobile hunters and gatherers on the African savannahs should have left its mark on our psyche. If the ‘savannah hypothesis’ is true, we would expect to find that humans intrinsically like and find pleasurable environments that contain the key features of the savannah most likely to have aided our ancestors’ survival and well-being.

D Although Boyden distinguishes between survival and well-being needs, they often overlap. For example, people clearly need food for survival and health. However, food often serves as the basis for bonding and relationship development. The ritual of sitting around a fire on the savannah or in a cave telling stories of the day’s events and planning for tomorrow may be an ancient carryover from Homo sapiens’ hunting and gathering days. According to anthropologist Melvin Konner, the sense of safety and intimacy associated with the campfire may have been a factor in the evolution of intellectual progression as well as social bonds. Today’s hearth is the family kitchen at home, and the community places, such as cafes and coffee bars, where people increasingly congregate to eat, talk, read and work.

E A growing body of research shows that building environments that connect people to nature are more supportive of human emotional well-being and cognitive performance than environments lacking these features. For instance, research by Roger Ulrich consistently shows that passive viewing of nature through windows promotes positive moods. Similarly, research by Rachel Kaplan found that workers with window views of trees had a more positive outlook on life than those doing similar work but whose window looked out onto a parking lot. Connection to nature also provides mini mental breaks that may aid the ability to concentrate, according to research by Stephen Kaplan. Terry Hartig and colleagues report similar results in a field experiment. People in their study who went for a walk in a predominantly natural setting achieved better on several office tasks requiring concentration than those who walked in a predominantly built setting or who quietly read a magazine indoors.

F Studies of outdoor landscapes are providing evidence that the effects of nature on human health and well-being extend beyond emotional and cognitive functioning to social behavior and crime reduction. For instance, Francis Kuo found that outdoor nature buffers aggression in urban high- rise settings and enhances ability to deal with demanding circumstances. He also reported that planting trees in urban areas increases sociability by providing comfortable places for residents to talk with one another and develop friendships that promote mutual support.

G A natural perspective also contributes important insights into comfort maintenance. Because people differ from one another in many ways (genetics, cultures, lifestyles) their ambient preferences vary. Furthermore, a given person varies over time depending upon his or her state of health, activities, clothing levels, and so forth. For most of human history, people have actively managed their surroundings as well as their behaviors to achieve comfort. Yet buildings continue to be designed with a “one size fits all” approach. Very few buildings or workstations enable occupants to control lighting, temperature, ventilation rates, or noise conditions. Although the technology is largely available to do this, the personal comfort systems have not sold well in the market place, even though research by Walter Kroner and colleagues at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows that personal control leads to significant increases in comfort and morale.

Questions 14-20
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A – G.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct number i-x in boxes 14 -20 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i The influence of the seasons on productivity
ii A natural way to anger management
iii Natural building materials promote health
iv Learning from experience in another field
v Stimulating the brain through internal design features
vi Current effects on the species of ancient experiences
vii Uniformity is not the answer
viii The negative effects of restricted spaces
ix Improving occupational performance
x The modern continuation of ancient customs

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

Questions 21-26
Look at the following people (Questions 21 – 26) and the list of theories below.
Match each person with the correct theory, A —I. Write the correct letter A-1 in boxes 21 -26 on your answer sheet.

21 Gordon Orians
22 Melvin Konner
23 Roger Ulrich
24 Stephen Kaplan
25 Francis Kuo
26 Walter Kroner

List of Theories
A Creating a green area can stimulate a sense of community.
B People need adequate living space in order to be healthy.
C Natural landscape can both relax and sharpen the mind.
D Cooking together is an important element in human bonding.
E People feel more at ease if they can adjust their environment.
F Looking at a green environment improves people’s spirits.
G Physical exercise improves creative thinking at work.
H Man’s brain developed partly through regular association with peers.
I We are drawn to places similar to the area where our species originated.

Ditching That Saintly Image

Charities, it is still widely believed, are separate from government, staffed entirely by volunteers and spend every penny donated on the cause they support. Noble stuff, but in most cases entirely wrong. Yet these misapprehensions underpin much of the trust and goodwill behind giving. And there is concern that such outdated perceptions could blow up in charities’ faces as people begin to discover what the voluntary sector is really about.

High-profile international programmes of awareness-raising activities, such as Make Poverty History, have dragged the voluntary sector into the spotlight and shown charity workers to be as much business entrepreneurs as they are angels of mercy. But with the spotlight comes scrutiny, and unless charities present compelling cases for political campaigning, six-figure salaries and paying the expenses of celebrities who go on demanding trips to refugee camps for nothing, they may get bitten. ‘If people become more sceptical about how charities use their donations, they will be less inclined to give money,’ says Nick Aldridge, director of strategy at the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO).

A wide range of initiatives have been undertaken to secure long-term trust in the sector by explaining what charities do and publishing the figures. But it’s still difficult to give donors a complete picture because, unlike profit-driven businesses, charities can’t measure achievement purely by the bottom line.

The report Funding Success suggests this might explain some of the communication difficulties charities face. Nevertheless, it suggests there are sound reasons for trying. Many funders, it claims, regard high overheads on, for example, premises, publicity and so on, that are properly accounted for, as a sign of an efficiently run organisation, rather than a waste of resources. Detailed reporting can be an important element in efforts to increase transparency. Better information might also unlock more money by highlighting social problems, and explaining what might be done to address them.

Some charities are already taking steps in this direction. The Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID) introduced annual impact reporting, to tell people about the effects of its work in a broader sense than an annual report would usually allow.

Each impact report looks back at what has been achieved over the previous 12 months and also states the charity’s aims for the year ahead. Brian Lamb, director of communications at the RNID, says the sector has been complacent about transparency because of the high level of trust it enjoys. ‘We have not been good at educating the public on issues such as why we do a lot of campaigning,’ he says. ‘But the more high-profile the sector becomes, the more people will ask questions.’

Baroness Onora O’Neill, chair of the Nuffield Foundation, says building trust goes deeper than providing information. She points out that the additional reporting and accounting requirements imposed on institutions across all sectors in recent years may have made them more transparent, but it has not made them more trusted. ‘… If we are to judge for ourselves, we need genuine communication in which we can question and observe, check and even challenge the evidence that others present.’ Laying out the evidence of what has been done, with all its shortcomings, may provide a rather better basis for placing – or refusing – trust than any number of glossy publications that trumpet unending success.

Not everyone thinks the public needs to be spoon-fed reams of information to maintain confidence. ‘There isn’t any evidence that there is a crisis of confidence in charities,’ says Cathy Pharoah, research director at the Charities Aid Foundation. The facts support her claim. In a Charity Commission report published in November last year, the public awarded charities 6.3 out of 10 on trust. Pharoah believes key donors are savvier than they are portrayed. ‘There is heavy dependence on middle-class donors for charity income, and I would be amazed if they didn’t realise charities had to pay to get professional staff,’ she says.

She believes the biggest threats to trust are the kind of scandals that blighted the Scottish voluntary sector in 2003. Two high-profile charities, Breast Cancer Research (Scotland) and Moonbeams, were exposed for spending a fraction of their profits on their causes. The revelations created intensely damaging media coverage. Even charity stalwarts were shocked by how quickly the coverage snowballed as two bad stories turned into a sector-wide crisis. ‘Those two incidents caused a media frenzy as journalists took every opportunity to undermine the sector,’ says Fiona Duncan, director of external affairs at Capability Scotland. After suffering a media grilling herself, Duncan launched Giving Scotland to redress the balance. Fourteen charities, plus the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Institute of Fundraising Scotland, joined together to put out communications restoring confidence in charities. The Scottish Executive pledged £30,000 and, with donations from corporate supporters, the campaign was able to secure advertising worth £300,000 for a lightning two- week campaign over Christmas 2003.

Two months before the campaign was launched, The Herald newspaper published a poll revealing that 52 per cent of people were less likely to give because of the scandals. Giving Scotland did a similar poll in February 2004 and this time more than half of the population said they were more likely to consider giving because of the campaign. ‘We learned about strength in numbers and the importance of timing – because it was Christmas, we were able to get good coverage,’ says Duncan.

It was an effective rearguard campaign. The numerous proactive initiatives now underway across the UK give charities the chance to prevent the situation ever getting that bad again – but their success will depend on whether they are prepared to shed their saintly image and rally to the cause of creating a newer, bolder one.

Questions 27-33
Choose the correct letter; A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.

27 What do we learn about charities in the first paragraph?
A People trust charities because they are approved by government.
B Not all the funds a charity receives go on practical aid for people.
C Charities do not disclose their systems for fear of losing official status.
D People who work for charities without pay are not fit for the job.

28 Why, in the writer’s view, is it hard for charities to inform the public properly?
A They calculate success differently from other businesses.
B They are unable to publish a true financial report.
C The amount of resources needed changes radically year by year.
D Donors may be disappointed if they see large profits in the accounts.

29 One of the conclusions of the report ‘Funding Success’ is that
A charities must cut down on any unnecessary expenditure.
B raising more money for their cause should be a charity’s main aim.
C charities should give the public an assessment of the results of their work.
D clarifying the reasons for administration costs would not dissuade donors.

30 Baroness O’Neill’s main recommendation is that charities should
A follow the current government requirements on reporting.
B encourage the public to examine and discuss the facts.
C publicise any areas in which they have been effective.
D make sure the figures are laid out as clearly as possible.

31 What is Cathy Pharoah most concerned about?
A the public’s adverse reaction to the money spent on charity personnel
B the effect on general donations if any charity misuses their funds
C the reliance of many charities on a single sector of the population
D the findings of a Charity Commission report on public confidence

32 Why does Fiona Duncan think the ‘Giving Scotland’ campaign succeeded?
A The message came over strongly because so many organisations united.
B People did not believe the critical stories that appeared in newspapers.
C Private donors paid for some advertising in the national press.
D People forgot about the scandals over the Christmas holidays.

33 The writer suggests that in the future, charities
A may well have to face a number of further scandals.
B will need to think up some new promotional campaigns.
C may find it hard to change the public’s perception of them.
D will lose the public’s confidence if they modernise their image.

Questions 34 – 40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 34 – 40 on your answer sheet, write

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

34 Charity involvement in some prominent campaigns has meant that they are undergoing more careful examination by the public.
35 Famous people insist on a large fee if they appear for a charity.
36 The new RNID documents outline expected progress as well as detailing past achievements.
37 People have been challenging the RNID on their promotional activities.
38 The two charities involved in a scandal have altered their funding programmes.
39 Following the scandal, the media attacked the charity sector as a whole.
40 Charity donations in Scotland are now back to their pre-scandal level.

Trans Fatty Acids

A recent editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), written by researchers from the University of Oxford, has called for food labels to list trans fats as well as cholesterol and saturated fat.

Trans fats (or trans fatty acids) are a type of unsaturated fatty acid. They occur naturally in small amounts in foods produced from ruminant animals e.g. milk, beef and lamb. However, most of the trans fatty acids in the diet are produced during the process of partial hydrogenation (hardening) of vegetable oils into semi-solid fats. They are therefore found in hard margarines, partially hydrogenated cooking oils, and in some bakery products, fried foods, and other processed foods that are made using these.

Trans fatty acids have an adverse effect on certain chemicals, known as lipids, which are found in the blood and have been shown to increase the risk of heart disease. They also increase LDL-cholesterol (the ‘bad cholesterol’) and decrease HDL-cholesterol (the ‘good cholesterol’). They may also have adverse effects on cardiovascular disease risk that are independent of an effect on blood lipids (Mozaffarian et al. 2006).

In a recent review of prospective studies investigating the effects of trans fatty acids, a 2% increase in energy intake from trans fatty acids was associated with a 23% increase in the incidence of heart disease. The authors also reported that the adverse effects of trans fatty acids were observed even at very low intakes (3% of total daily energy intake, or about 2-7g per day) (Mozaffarian et al. 2006).

However, in this recent review it is only trans fatty acids produced during the hardening of vegetable oils that are found to be harmful to health. The public health implications of consuming trans fatty acids from ruminant products are considered to be relatively limited.

Over the last decade, population intakes of trans fatty acids in the UK fell and are now, on average, well below the recommended 2% of total energy set by the Department of Health in 1991, at 1.2% of energy (Henderson et al. 2003). This is not to say that intakes of trans fatty acids are not still a problem, and dietary advice states that those individuals who are in the top end of the distribution of intake should still make efforts to reduce their intakes.

Currently, trans fatty acids in foods are labelled in the USA, but not in the UK and Europe. The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) is in favour of the revision of the European directive that governs the content and format of food labels so that trans fatty acids are labelled. This should enable consumers to make better food choices with regard to heart health (Clarke & Lewington 2006).

Recognising the adverse health effects of trans fatty acids, many food manufacturers and retailers have been systematically removing them from their products in recent years. For example, they have been absent for some time from major brands of margarine and other fat spreads, which are now manufactured using a different technique. Also, many companies now have guidelines in place that are resulting in reformulation and reduction or elimination of trans fatty acids in products where they have in the past been found, such as snack products, fried products and baked goods. Consequently, the vast majority of savoury biscuits and crisps produced in the UK do not contain partially hydrogenated oils. Similarly, changes are being made to the way bakery products are manufactured. For example, a leading European manufacturer of major brands of biscuits, cakes and snacks has recently announced that these are now made without partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, a transition that began in 2004. Alongside these changes, the manufacturer has also reported a cut in the amount of saturates. It is clear that a major technical challenge in achieving such changes is to avoid simply exchanging trans fatty acids for saturated fatty acids, which also have damaging health effects.

Foods that are labelled as containing partially-hydrogenated oils or fats are a source of trans fatty acids (sometimes ‘partially-hydrogenated’ fats are just labelled as ‘hydrogenated’ fats). These foods include hard margarines, some fried products and some manufactured bakery products e.g. biscuits, pastries and cakes.

It is important to note that intake may have changed in the light of reformulation of foods that has taken place over the past six years in the UK, as referred to earlier. Furthermore, the average intake of trans fatty acids is lower in the UK than in the USA (where legislation has now been introduced). However, this does not mean there is room for complacency, as the intake in some sectors of the population is known to be higher than recommended.

Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage? In boxes 1-7 write

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

1 Trans fatty acids are found in all types of meat.
2 Health problems can be caused by the consumption of small amounts of trans fatty acids.
3 Experts consider that the trans fatty acids contained in animal products are unlikely to be a serious health risk.
4 In Britain, the intake of trans fatty acids is continuing to decline.
5 The amount of saturated fats in processed meats is being reduced by some major producers.
6 It is proving difficult to find a safe substitute for trans fatty acids.
7 Some people are still consuming larger quantities of trans fatty acids than the experts consider safe.

Questions 8-13
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage.

8 Scientists at Oxford University propose that information about trans fatty acids should be included on………………
9 In food manufacture, the majority of trans fatty acids are created when……………………….are solidified.
10 The likelihood of a person developing……………………………is increased by trans fatty acid consumption.
11 In the UK, the……………………………established a limit for the safe daily consumption of trans fatty acids.
12 Partially hydrogenated oils are no longer found in most UK manufactured salty………………………….
13 Consumption of trans fatty acids in…………………………….is now higher than in the UK.

Biofuels

A Soon, we’re told, corn crops will be as valuable as oil. This is because corn and a few other crops are being promoted as the ‘biofuels’ of the future. Biofuel is an umbrella term used to describe all fuels derived from organic matter. The two most common biofuels are bioethanol, which is a substitute for gasoline, and biodiesel. Not only have soaring oil prices made biofuels economically viable for the first time in years, but they could also help countries reduce their dependency on fossil fuel imports. However, the real plus point in the minds of many is their eco-friendly image.

B Supporters claim they will cut our net greenhouse gas inputs dramatically, because the crops soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. Given this fact, it’s no surprise that politicians and environmentalists the world over are backing the idea, hoping we will soon be using this green alternative to power our cars, buses and trains. Other scientists, however, have begun to question the environmental and social arguments for biofuels. Far from solving our problems they believe biofuels will destroy rainforests, suck water reserves dry, kill off species and raise food prices. Worst of all, they claim that many biofuels will barely slow global warming at all if the technology behind them does not improve. Biofuel supporters counter that it’s still early days, and we should give this technology the time and investment to deliver on its promise. So who’s right?

C The controversy may be brand new, but the biofuels themselves are an old idea. The Model T Ford, first produced in 1908, was designed to run on ethanol, and Rudolf Diesel, who invented the diesel engine in 1892, ran his demonstration model on peanut oil. Biofuels fell out of favour as petroleum-based fuels appeared and became cheaper to produce, but, after the oil crisis of the early 1970s, some countries returned to biofuels. For example, Brazil has been producing large quantities of ethanol from sugar cane for over 30 years. Brazilian law now requires that 20 per cent of fuel be blended with bioethanol, which all gasoline-powered cars can tolerate. Over 15 per cent of Brazil’s cars can even run on pure bioethanol.

D According to a recent study by the Worldwatch Institute, for Brazil to produce ten per cent of its entire fuel consumption requires just three per cent of its agricultural land, so it’s not surprising that other places want to emulate Brazil’s approach. The problem is that in most other countries, the numbers don’t add up. The same study estimated that to meet that ten per cent target, the US would require 30 per cent of its agricultural land, and Europe a staggering 72 per cent. It’s no secret why things stack up so differently. Not only do Brazilians drive far less than Europeans and Americans, their fertile land and favourable climate mean their crop yields are higher, and their population density is lower.

E Several research groups have tried to compare fossil fuel emissions with those of corn bioethanol at every stage of production from seed sowing to fuel production. The studies have been beset by scientific uncertainties, such as how much of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide is produced by the nitrogen fertiliser used in growing corn. Opinions are divided as to what should and should not be included in the calculations, which means the results vary widely, but a study by David Pimentel at Cornell University in New York concluded that corn ethanol creates more greenhouse gases than burning fossil fuels.

F Another reason a growing number of people oppose biofuels is that growing corn for ethanol uses up land that is currently supplying food to the world. According to Lester Brown, veteran commentator and activist on food politics, the corn required to fill a 4×4 tank with bioethanol just once could feed one person for a year. He predicts that a boom in bioethanol would lead to a competition between the 800 million people in the world who own automobiles and the three billion people who live on less than $2 a day, many of whom are already spending over half their income on food.

G So are we utterly mistaken to think that bioethanol could usher in an era of greener energy? The way things are developing, it certainly looks that way, but it needn’t be so. Scientists want to perfect a way to make biofuels from non-food crops and waste biomass, saving the corn and other food crops for food use, and to do it without wrecking natural ecosystems. Already researchers are discovering ways to convert cellulose-rich organic matter into ethanol. Cellulose is the main structural component of all green plants. Its molecules comprise chains of sugars strong enough to make plant cell walls. If you could break down those molecules to release the sugars they contain, you could ferment them until ethanol is created. Developing such a process could open the door to many non-food materials such as switchgrass – a wild grass that thrives in the eastern states and Midwest of the US – straw, crop residues like stalks and hardwood chips. Its supporters say these cellulose materials could deliver twice as much ethanol per hectare as corn, and do it using land that is today neither economically productive nor environmentally precious. Some even think municipal waste such as paper, cardboard and waste food could also be used. If the numbers add up this could be the development that may yet deliver us from our dependence on oil, without costing us the Earth in the process.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information?

14 reasons for the success of bioethanol production in one region
15 an individual’s prediction of the consequences of increasing production of corn ethanol
16 a reference to why biofuels might help to slow down global warming
17 a definition of biofuel
18 a reference to research that found one type of bioethanol to be less ecofriendly than oil
19 examples of how ethanol was used as a fuel before petroleum

Questions 20-25
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

Using Non-Food Crops to Make Biofuels
A major constituent of green plants is cellulose. The (20)…………………………..of cellulose are made up of sugars. These form the (21)……………………of plants. Ethanol could be produced by extracting the sugars and allowing them to (22)……………………. One common North American plant that could be used in this method is (23)………………………….. Some scientists believe that this would be a more productive source of ethanol than (24)………………………………. Additionally, the source plant materials could be grown in ground which is not currently being used for agriculture and is not (25)…………………….valuable.

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

What conclusion does the writer of the text come to?
A Bioethanol made from sugar cane will be the cheapest fuel worldwide.
B The US could become self-sufficient in biofuel made from corn.
C A biofuel may be made in time which does not damage the environment.
D Scientists agree that some form of bioethanol is the future for fuel.

A Comparative Study of Innovative Practices in Business

Results of interviews with corporate executives and senior innovation officers in four of the largest publicly-traded companies and one government agency in the Chicago-area, provide some insights into how businesses approach innovation.

The dictionary defines innovation as ‘the introduction of something new’. Regardless of the type of innovation – whether it be product, process, or service – it results in significant change. This change could be as simple as ‘changing the way we do something routine,’ a breakthrough which provides a substantial benefit to the customer, or one that dramatically increases the revenue or profitability of the company.

Participants interested in breakthrough innovation believe ‘if innovation doesn’t deliver bottom-line results, it is just creativity’. Indeed, the very definition of innovation for Afuah (2003) is ‘invention plus commercialization.’ The relationship of innovation to financial performance was well demonstrated by Kirn and Mauborgne (1997). In manufacturing environments, they found that while 86% of product launches involved some small improvements to existing models – that is, incremental changes – they accounted for only 62% of total revenues and 39% of total profits. The remaining 14% of launches – the real breakthrough innovations – generated 38% of total revenues and a huge 61% of total profits.

Innovation may offer one significant way that companies can gain advantage. Utterback’s (1994) concept of ‘dominant design’ provides insight into how an innovation can create a temporary monopoly situation that will weaken competitive forces; however, when an innovative product or service is launched, rivals typically begin to copy it (once patents run out). Hence, it is necessary for the company to continuously seek further ways to innovate.

Every innovation process has its strengths and weaknesses, but it seems that when a company sets up a systematized innovation process it communicates the importance of innovation to the entire organization. In these companies, more resources are devoted to development. The best companies have learned to systematize the process (Hargadorn & Sutton, 2000).

The primary disadvantage to having a structured innovation process is speed to market – the more structure, the longer the lead time is from idea to product. The only company that described its process as ‘quick’ did not have such a process. Employees were empowered to solve problems and create new products for the customer by responding to demand. While this benefits customers, the company stated it lacks systems to share learning with other segments of the organization. A potential disadvantage of this approach, according to Utterback, is that evolutionary change can be missed when companies are too focused on pleasing customers.

The most challenging aspect of any innovation is determining marketability. No company said it lacked creative ideas or creative people, but many ideas require significant resources to test, develop, and launch. Millions of dollars are at stake, so an element of risk-taking is required.

Taking risks is generally defined as being able to drive new ideas forward in the face of adversity. Publicly-traded companies have a major dilemma. To guarantee a leadership position, they have to stay on the leading-edge of innovation. This requires a long-term approach and a high tolerance for risk. Investors, especially in a down economy, want short-term results. As investors’ tolerance for risk decreases, so does the company’s ability to take the significant financial risk necessary to create breakthrough change; however, most recognize that investing in innovation is the ‘right thing to do’.

One company actively pursues a rather unusual strategy of ‘acquiring’ innovation by purchasing other smaller companies or partnering with specialized companies. This enables the acquiring company to bring a product to market more quickly and gives the smaller company access to funds it might not otherwise have.

How can a company involve all its employees in the innovation process? It may be as simple as requesting new ideas. A brainstorming session during a staff meeting need only take 30 minutes. Another system is to use existing ‘suggestion box’ processes. Involving employees in idea-generation can reap some large benefits at a very low cost. Only modest monetary rewards are necessary for successful innovation ideas, especially since many companies have found that employees place high value on recognition.

In most organizations, teams are extensively used to evaluate ideas, but rarely to generate them. Companies need to learn how to construct teams for the purpose of innovation. A team member should be selected based on their tendency to be more creative or more risk-taking. This could markedly increase innovation output. According to Hargadorn and Sutton, using teams to capture and share ideas is one method of keeping ideas alive – a key step in the innovation process. Good ideas need to be nurtured by teams and incorporated into the information and communication systems of the company.

In conclusion, innovation can be difficult to structure. It is the authors’ perception that even the most innovative companies in the sample underinvest in market research during the concept refining phase.

Risk could be reduced considerably by adoption of this strategy, but, of course, it could not be eliminated.

Most of the ‘problems’ cited by participants were due to a low tolerance for risk – by employees (what they would or would not say), and by committees (being afraid to invest money without knowing the return on investment). Raising the risk tolerance would reduce the amount of analysis required to bring a new idea to market, thus shortening the cycle time of new product/service development. According to psychologists Kahn and Hirshorn, people come alive when they feel safe. It is threat and anxiety that inhibit them. It would follow that in order for people in organizations to take risks, lack of success must be tolerated. The organizations that manage risk most effectively transform those risks into challenges and opportunities.

Questions 27-33
Look at the following theories (Questions 27 – 33) and the list of experts below. Match each theory with the correct expert A – E. Write the correct letter A – E in boxes 27 — 33 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

27 A business cannot rely on the success of one good innovation.
28 A group approach is an effective way of generating innovation.
29 Employees are more creative in a culture that accepts failure.
30 Radical innovations will provide greater income than minor changes.
31 Businesses with a structured approach to innovation are more likely to succeed.
32 Innovation consists of a new idea combined with business potential.
33 A business that concentrates on responding to clients’ needs may overlook the need for wider development.

List of Experts
A Afuah
B Kirn and Mauborgne
C Utterback
D Hargardorn and Sutton
E Kahn and Hirshorn

Questions 34-40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-I below.

34 Unfortunately the development of an organised innovation process……………
35 One of the most difficult issues in innovation…………
36 A company wanting to maintain a leading position in business…………
37 A different approach to achieving innovation…………..
38 Getting staff to come up with new ideas…………….
39 A recommendation for companies already committed to innovation…………….
40 Problems experienced by companies participating in the study……………..

A can be to develop a sympathetic manufacturing environment.
B must put time and money into innovation.
C can be a very cost-effective way of achieving innovation.
D may require a more sophisticated communication system.
E may give rise to a lengthy period between initial concept and launch.
F could be attributed to an unwillingness to accept risk.
G can be to work out the saleability of a future product.
H would be to put more money into the analysis of customer demand.
I might involve collaboration with another company with particular expertise.

One Hundred Days of Reform

Since the early 1800s, the term one hundred days has represented a political phrase, referring to a short period of concentrated political reform. In most cases, this period comes immediately after a new leader takes over a nation. The original Hundred Days took place between March and June of 1815, when Napoleon escaped from Elba, and King Louis XVIII reclaimed his throne. This was one of the results of the Battle of Waterloo. The Hundred Days of Reform in China (also known as the Wuxu Reform) was inspired by a similar event. After losing the Sino-Japanese war, the Emperor Guwangxu found his country to be in a major crisis. Desperate for change, the emperor hired the help of a young political activist named K’ang Yu-wei. At the age of only 27, K’ang had graduated with the highest degree (chin-shih), written two books on reform, and initiated several of his own political reform movements. K’ang impressed the court and convinced the emperor that China, like Japan, should form a constitutional government and do away with its monarchy.

On June 11, 1898, Emperor Guwangxu entrusted the reform movement to K’ang and put the progressive scholar-reformer in control of the government. Immediately, K’ang, with the help of a few other reformers, began work on changing China into a more modern society. Within days, the imperial court issued a number of statutes related to the social and political structure of the nation. First, K’ang planned to reform China’s education system. The edicts called for a universal school system with an emphasis on practical and Western studies rather than Neo-Confucian orthodoxy.

The new government also wanted to modernize the country’s examination systems and send more students abroad to gain firsthand knowledge of how technology was developing in other countries. K’ang also called for the establishment of a national parliamentary government, including popularly elected members and ministries. Military reform and the establishment of a new defense system as well as the modernization of agriculture and medicine were also on the agenda.

These edicts were threatening to Chinese ideologies and institutions, especially the army, which at the time was controlled by a few governor-generals. There was intense opposition to the reform at all levels of society, and only one in fifteen provinces made attempts to implement the edicts. The Manchus, who considered the reform a radical and unrealistic idea, suggested that more gradual changes needed to be made. Just three months after the reform had begun, a coup d’etat was organized by Yuan Shikai and Empress Dowager Cbd to force Guangxu and the young reformers out of power and into seclusion. A few of the reformer’s chief advocates who refused to leave were executed. After September 21st, the new edicts were abolished, and the conservatives regained their power.

Many Chinese civilians felt that the aftermath of the One Hundred Days of Reform was more detrimental to China than the short-lived failed attempt at reform. Immediately following the conservative takeover, anti-foreign and anti-Christian secret societies tore through northern China, targeting foreign concessions and missionary facilities. The violence of these “Boxer bands” provoked retaliation from the offended nations, and the government was forced to declare war on the invaders. By August, an Allied force made up of armies from nine European nations as well as the United States and Japan entered Peking. With little effort, north China was occupied, and foreign troops had stationed themselves inside the border. The court was ordered to either execute or punish many of its high officials under the Protocol of 1901. Rather than dividing up the occupied territory among the powers, the Allies settled on an “open door” trade policy. Within a decade, the court ordered many of the original reform measures, including the modernization of the education and military systems.

The traditional view of the One Hundred Days of Reform depicted Emperor Guwangxu and K’ang Yu-wei as heroes and Empress Dowager Cixi as the villain who refused to reform even though the change was inevitable. However, since the One Hundred Days has turned into a cliche related to political failures, historians in the 20th century often portray the Wuxu Reform as an irrational dream. The fact that the reforms were implemented in a matter of decades, rather than months, suggests that the conservative elites may have been more opposed to the immediacy of the proposed edicts rather than the changes themselves.

Questions 1-4
What were some of the reforms planned during the One Hundred Days of Reform in China?
Choose four answers from the list below, and write the correct letters, A-G, in boxes 1-4 on your Answer Sheet.

A Modernization of the school system
B Establishment of a parliament
C Focus on the study of Confucianism
D Reorganization of the military
E Abolition of elections
F Improvement of farming
G Initiation of foreign trade

Questions 5-13

Complete the sentences below about the reading passage. Choose your answers from the option given below.

5. China……………..with Japan.

6. Emperor Guwangxu put K’ang Yu-wei………………

7. After June 11, 1898 the reforms……………

8. People throughout China…………….

9. Yuan Shikai and Empress Dowager Cixi……………

10. The reforms…………..after September 21st.

11. Secret societies attacked…………

12. European, the US and Japanese troops……………

13. Eventually the reforms……………..

A overthrew the government after reforms were introduced               B in charge of the reform movement

C were voted in                      D in prison                     E were abolished                  F lost a war

G began trade                        H foreigners in China     I were executed                    J reform supporters

K occupied China                    L were initiated              M opposed the reforms       N were established

Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea is a common sleeping disorder. It affects a number of adults comparable to the percentage of the population that suffers from diabetes. The term apnea is of Greek origin and means “without breath.” Sufferers of sleep apnea stop breathing repeatedly while they sleep. This can happen hundreds of times during the night, each gasp lasting from 10 to 30 seconds. In extreme cases, people stop breathing for more than a minute at a time.

There are three different types of sleep apnea, with obstructive sleep apnea being the most common. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which affects 90 percent of sleep apnea sufferers, occurs because of an upper airway obstruction. A person’s breathing stops when air is somehow prevented from entering the trachea. The most common sites for air to get trapped include the nasal passage, the tongue, the tonsils, and the uvula. Fatty tissue or tightened muscles at the back of a throat can also cause the obstruction. Central sleep apnea has a different root cause, though the consequences are the same. In central sleep apnea, the brain forgets to send the signal that tells the muscles that it’s time to breathe. The term central is used because this type of apnea is related to the central nervous system rather than the blocked airflow. The third type of sleep apnea, known as mixed apnea, is a combination of the two and is the most rare form. Fortunately, in all types of apnea, the brain eventually signals for a person to wake up so that breathing can resume. However, this continuous pattern of interrupted sleep is hard on the body and results in very little rest.

Sleep apnea is associated with a number of risk factors, including being overweight, male, and over the age of forty. However, like many disorders, sleep apnea can affect children and in many cases is found to be the result of a person’s genetic makeup. Despite being so widespread, this disorder often goes undiagnosed. Many people experience symptoms for their whole lives without realizing they have a serious sleep disorder. Oftentimes, it is not the person suffering from sleep apnea who notices the repetitive episodes of sleep interruption, but a partner or family member sleeping nearby. The air cessation is generally accompanied by heavy snoring, loud enough to rouse others from sleep. Those who live alone are less likely to receive early diagnosis, though other symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, irritability, and exhaustion may cause a person to seek medical advice. If left untreated, sleep apnea, which is a progressive disorder, can cause cardiovascular problems, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke. Sleep apnea is also blamed for many cases of impaired driving and poor job performance.

In order to diagnose sleep apnea, patients are generally sent to a sleep center for a polysomnography test. This test monitors brain waves, muscle tension, breathing, eye movement, and oxygen in the blood. Audio monitoring for snoring, gasping, and episodic waking is also done during a polysomnogram. Nonintrusive solutions for treating sleep apnea involve simple lifestyle changes. In many cases, symptoms of sleep apnea can be eliminated when patients try losing weight or abstaining from alcohol. People who sleep on their backs or stomachs often find that their symptoms disappear if they try sleeping on their sides. Sleep specialists also claim that sleeping pills interfere with the natural performance of the throat and mouth muscles and suggest patients do away with all sleep medication for a trial period. When these treatments prove unsuccessful, sleep apnea sufferers can be fitted with a CPAP mask, which is worn at night over the mouth and nose, similar to an oxygen mask. CPAP stands for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure.

In extreme cases, especially when facial deformities are the cause of the sleep apnea, surgery is needed to make a clear passage for the air. Many different types of surgeries are available. The most common form of surgery used to combat sleep apnea is uvulo-palato-pharyngoplasty (UPPP). This procedure involves removing the uvula and the excess tissue around it. UPPP helps about 50 percent of patients who undergo the procedure, while the other half continue to rely on the CPAP machine even after the surgery. Another type of surgery called mandibular myotomy involves removing a piece of the jaw, and adjusting the tongue. By reattaching1 the tongue to a position about ten millimeters forward, air is able to flow more freely during sleep. This delicate procedure is performed only by surgeons with expertise in facial surgery and is almost always successful in eliminating the air obstruction. The latest surgical procedures use radio frequencies to shrink the tissue around the tongue, throat, and soft palate.

Questions 14-18
The passage describes three different types of sleep apnea. Which of the characteristics below belongs to which type of sleep apnea? In boxes 14-18 on your Answer Sheet, write

A if it is a characteristic of obstructive sleep apnea.
B if it is a characteristic of central sleep apnea.
C if it is a characteristic of mixed apnea.

14 Its root cause is a blockage at the trachea.
15 It is connected exclusively with the nervous system.
16 It involves blocked airflow and a brain malfunction.
17 It is the most unusual type of sleep apnea.
18 It is the most common form of sleep apnea.

Questions 19-23
Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage 2? Inboxes 19-23 on your Answer Sheet, write

TRUE                        if the statement is true according to the passage.
FALSE                      if the statement contradicts the passage.
NOT GIVEN          if there is no information about this in the passage.

19 Sleep apnea only affects men over 40.
20 Most people with sleep apnea have the problem diagnosed.
21 Often a relative of the sleep apnea sufferer is the first to notice the problem.
22 Sleep apnea is more common in Greece than in other countries.
23 Sleep apnea can cause problems at work.

Questions 24-27
Which treatments for sleep apnea are mentioned in the passage?
Choose four answers from the list below, and write the correct letters, A-G, in boxes 1-4 on your Answer Sheet.

A getting surgery
B wearing a mask
C taking sleeping pills
D reducing one’s weight
E massaging the throat muscles
F sleeping on one’s side
G drinking moderate amounts of alcohol

Adult Intelligence

Over 90 years ago, Binet and Simon delineated two different methods of assessing intelligence. These were the psychological method (which concentrates mostly on intellectual processes, such as memory and abstract reasoning) and the pedagogical method (which concentrates on assessing what an individual knows). The main concern of Binet and Simon was to predict elementary school performance independently from the social and economic background of the individual student. As a result, they settled on the psychological method, and they spawned an intelligence assessment paradigm, which has been substantially unchanged from their original tests.

With few exceptions, the development of adult intelligence assessment instruments proceeded along the same lines of the Binet-Simon tests. Nevertheless, the difficulty of items was increased for older examinees. Thus, extant adult intelligence tests were created as little more than upward extensions of the original Binet-Simon scales. The Binet-Simon tests are quite effective in predicting school success in both primary and secondary educational environments. However, they have been found to be much less predictive of success in post-secondary academic and occupational domains. Such a discrepancy provokes fundamental questions about intelligence. One highly debated question asks whether college success is actually dependent on currently used forms of measured intelligence, or if present measures of intelligence are inadequately sampling the wider domain of adult intellect. One possible answer to this question lies in questioning the preference of the psychological method over the pedagogical method for assessing adult intellect. Recent research across the fields of education, cognitive science, and adult development suggests that much of adult intellect is indeed not adequately sampled by extant intelligence measures and might be better assessed through the pedagogical method (Ackerman, 1996; Gregory, 1994).

Several lines of research have also converged on a redefinition of adult intellect that places a greater emphasis on content (knowledge) over process. Substantial strides have been made in delineating knowledge aspects of intellectual performance which are divergent from traditional measures of intelligence (e.g., Wagner, 1987) and in demonstrating that adult performance is greatly influenced by prior topic and domain knowledge (e.g., Alexander et al., 1994). Even some older testing literature seems to indicate that the knowledge measured by the Graduate Records Examination (GRE) is a comparable or better indicator of future graduate school success and post-graduate performance than traditional aptitude measures (Willingham, 1974).

Knowledge and Intelligence
When an adult is presented with a completely novel problem (e.g., memorizing a random set of numbers or letters), the basic intellectual processes are typically implicated in predicting which individuals will be successful in solving problems. The dilemma for adult intellectual assessment is that the adult is rarely presented with a completely novel problem in the real world of academic or occupational endeavors. Rather, the problems that an adult is asked to solve almost inevitably draw greatly on his/her accumulated knowledge and skills—one does not build a house by only memorizing physics formulae. For an adult, intellect is better conceptualized by the tasks that the person can accomplish and the skills that he/she has developed rather than the number of digits that can be stored in working memory or the number of syllogistic reasoning items that can be correctly evaluated. Thus, the content of the intellect is at least as important as the processes of intellect in determining an adult’s real-world problem-solving efficacy.

From the artificial intelligence field, researchers have discarded the idea of a useful general problem solver in favor of knowledge-based expert systems. This is because no amount of processing power can achieve real-world problem-solving proficiency without an extensive set of domain-relevant knowledge structures. Gregory (1994) describes the difference between such concepts as “potential intelligence” (knowledge) and “kinetic intelligence” (process). Similarly, Schank and Birnbaum (1994) say that “what makes someone intelligent is what he [/she] knows.”

One line of relevant educational research is from the examination of expert- novice differences which indicates that the typical expert is found to mainly differ from the novice in terms of experience and the knowledge structures that are developed through that experience rather than in terms of intellectual processes (e.g., Glaser, 1991). Additional research from developmental and gerontological perspectives has also shown that various aspects of adult intellectual functioning are greatly determined by knowledge structures and less influenced by the kinds of process measures, which have been shown to decline with age over adult development (e.g., Schooler, 1987; Willis & Tosti-Vasey, 1990).

Shifting Paradigms
By bringing together a variety of sources of research evidence, it is clear that our current methods of assessing adult intellect are insufficient. When we are confronted with situations in which the intellectual performance of adults must be predicted (e.g., continuing education or adult learning programs), we must begin to take account of what they know in addition to the traditional assessment of intellectual processes. Because adults are quite diverse in their knowledge structures (e.g., a physicist may know many different things than a carpenter), the challenge for educational assessment researchers in the future will be to develop batteries of tests that can be used to assess different sources of intellectual knowledge for different individuals. When adult knowledge structures are broadly examined with tests such as the Advanced Placement [AP] -and College Level Exam Program [CLEP], it may be possible to improve such things as the prediction of adult performance in specific educational endeavors, the placement of individuals, and adult educational counseling.

Questions 28-34
Complete the sentences below about the reading passage. Choose your answers from the options given below, and write them in boxes 28-34 on your Answer Sheet. There are more choices than sentences so you will not use them all.

A tests                                                              B psychological issues                     C new

D potential for achievement in school             E knowledge-based                         F knowledge

G Binet and Simon                                            H thought processes                      I Ackerman and Gregory  J social class                                                      K recent research                            L future job performance

M problem solving

The psychological method of intelligence assessment measures (28)………………………..
Binet and Simon wanted to develop an assessment method that was not influenced by the child’s (29)……………………
The Binet-Simon tests have been successfully used to predict (30)………………….
The Binet-Simon tests are not good predictors of (31)…………………….
According to (32)………………………, the pedagogical method is the best way to assess adult intelligence.
The pedagogical method is a better measure of adult intelligence because most problems that adults encounter in real life are not completely (33)…………………………..
In the area of artificial intelligence, (34)…………………….. systems are preferred.

Questions 35-39
Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 35-39 on your Answer Sheet, write

TRUE                       if the statement is true according to the passage.
FALSE                     if the statement contradicts the passage.
NOT GIVEN         if there is no information about this in the passage.

35 The Binet-Simon tests have not changed significantly over the years.
36 Success in elementary school is a predictor of success in college.
37 Research suggests that experts generally have more developed intellectual processes than novices.
38 Knowledge structures in adults decrease with age.
39 Better methods of measuring adult intelligence need to be developed.

Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A-C, and write it in box 40 on your Answer Sheet.

40 The Advanced Placement and College Level Exam Program tests measure
A thought processes
B job skills
C knowledge

Allergy Testing

Allergic reactions are triggered by the contact, inhalation, or ingestion of a number of different allergens. Some of the most common allergens are made up of proteins found in plants, mold, food, venom, animal skin, and medication. Symptoms of allergic reactions range from mild irritation such as itching, wheezing, and coughing to life-threatening conditions related to the respiratory and gastrointestinal organs. Serious allergic reactions are more likely to result from food, drugs, and stinging insects. A person does not become allergic to a particular substance until after the first exposure. However, in some cases, even trace amounts of a substance, such as peanuts or seafood in a mother’s breast milk, can cause an allergic reaction in a subsequent exposure.

A variety of allergy tests are available for determining specific substances that trigger allergic reactions in individuals. Allergists, also known as immunologists, are trained in selecting the types of tests that are both safe and appropriate, depending on the suspected allergies. By using allergen extracts, tiny amounts of commonly bothersome allergens (usually in the form of purified liquid drops), immunologists are often able to isolate which substances cause reactions in allergy sufferers.

One of the most common types of environmental allergy tests is the skin- prick test. This technique involves placing small drops of potential allergen onto the skin of the forearm about one to two inches apart. After the drops are placed on the arm, a needle is used to puncture the skin at the site of each drop. (Though the procedure is virtually painless, this test is often done on the upper back of children to prevent them from seeing the needle.) If an allergy is present, an allergic antibody called immunoglobulin E (IgE) will activate a special cell called a mast cell. Mast cells release chemicals (also known as mediators) that cause itching and swelling. The most common mediator is histamine. Histamine is what causes the controlled hive known as a wheal and flare. The white wheal is the small raised surface, while the flare is the redness that spreads out from it. In an uncontrolled allergic reaction, wheals and flares can get much bigger and spread all over a person’s body. Results from a skin test can usually be obtained within 20 to 30 minutes, while the reaction usually fades within a few hours.

Another test that is very similar to the skin-prick test is the intradermal allergy test. This involves placing the allergen sample under the skin with a syringe. The intradermal test involves more risk and is usually saved for use if the allergy persists even after a skin-prick test comes back negative. People who have experienced serious allergic reactions called anaphylactic reactions are not advised to have these types of tests. These allergy sufferers may be hypersensitive to even trace amounts of the allergens when they are introduced into the blood. Anaphylaxis is an allergic reaction that affects the whole body and is potentially life-threatening. Hives on the lips and throat can become severe enough to block air passage. Anaphylactic shock occurs when enough histamine is released to cause the blood vessels to dilate and release fluid into the tissues. This lowers blood volume and can result in heart failure.

A blood test can be performed to safely isolate over 400 different allergies, including dangerous food and environmental allergens. The Radio Allergo Sorbant Test (RAST) measures specific IgE antibodies using a blood sample. IgE is normally found in very small amounts in the blood; it is created as a defense mechanism when it senses an intruder. Separate tests are done for each potential allergen, and IgE results are graded from 0 to 6. For example, canine serum IgE will be high if a person has an allergy to dogs. The RAST is used if patients have pre-existing skin conditions or if patients cannot stop taking certain medications such as antidepressants or antihistamines for even a short period of time. (People must stop taking antihistamines several days prior to taking a skin allergy test because the medication can interfere with the results.) The RAST is a more expensive test that does not provide immediate results.

A number of other allergy tests are available, though many are considered unreliable according to The Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. Applied kinesiology is a test that analyzes the loss of muscle strength in the presence of potential allergens. Provocation and neutralization testing involves injecting food allergens into the skin in different quantities, with the goal of determining the smallest dose needed to neutralize the symptoms. Sublingual provocation and neutralization is a similar test, except that the allergens are injected underneath the tongue. Cytotoxity testing involves watching for the reaction of blood cells after placing allergens on a slide next to a person’s blood samples.

After using a reliable testing method, the cause of an allergic reaction is often identified, and a physician is able to help a patient develop a treatment plan with the goal of controlling or eliminating the allergic symptoms. Those who are allergic to furry pets, pollen, and plants are prescribed mild medication or taught how to control their reactions with simple lifestyle changes, while those with food allergies learn to safely remove certain foods from their diets. Allergy sufferers who are prone to anaphylactic reactions are educated about life-saving techniques such as carrying the drug epinephrine and wearing medical alert bracelets. As soon as people understand their allergies, they can begin to experience an improved quality of life.

Questions 1-7
The passage describes three different types of allergy tests. Which of the characteristics below belongs to which type of test? In boxes 1-7 on your Answer Sheet, write

A if it is a characteristic of the skin-prick test.
B if it is a characteristic of the intradermal test.
C if it is a characteristic of the blood test.

1 A substance is inserted beneath the skin with a needle.
2 It is often done on a patient’s back.
3 It is advisable for patients who have skin problems.
4 It is not advisable for patients who have had serious allergic reactions in the past.
5 It shows results within half an hour.
6 It can cause red and white bumps on the patient’s skin.
7 It has a higher cost than other tests.

Questions 8-14
Complete the summary of the reading passage below. Choose your answers from the box below, and write them in boxes 8-14 on your Answer Sheet. There are more words than spaces so you will not use them all.

mold	smelling	identify	allegens
avoiding	medicines	eating	treat
antihistamine	anaphylaxis	causes	signs

Allergic reactions result from touching, breathing, or (8)……………………..certain substances called (9) ………………… Coughing or itching are two possible (10)………………….of an allergic reaction. More serious allergic reactions may result from certain insect bites, foods, or (11)………………………..A severe allergic reaction is known as (12)……………………….It can result in loss of blood volume and heart failure. Doctors can use a variety of tests to (13)……………………the source of an allergy. Treatment may include taking medication or (14)…………………………the substances that cause the allergic reaction.

The Sacred Pipe

The sacred pipe was one of the most important artifacts of the indigenous people of North America. In almost every culture, the sacred pipe was considered a gift from The Great Spirit. The Cree believed that the pipe, the tobacco, and the fire were given as parting gifts from the Creator, while the Iowa Black Bear clan believed that the pipe bowl and later the pipe stem emerged from the earth as gifts to the earth’s first bears. In most cases, the sacred pipe was considered a medium through which humans could pray to The Great Spirit, asking for guidance, health, and the necessities of life. In order for the prayers to reach the Great Spirit, they had to travel in the plumes of smoke from the sacred pipe. Because of its connection to the spiritual world, the pipe was treated with more respect than any human being, especially when the pipe bowl was joined to the stem.

Unlike the common pipe, which was used by average tribesmen for casual smoking purposes, the sacred pipe was built with precise craftsmanship. Before a pipe was carved, the catlinite (pipestone) was blessed and prayed over. The bowl of the traditional sacred pipe was made of red pipestone to represent the Earth. The wooden stem represented ail that grew upon the Earth. In the Lakota Society, as in many Native American tribes, the people believed that the pipe bowl also represented a woman while the pipe stem represented a man. Joined together, the pipe symbolized the circle of love between a man and woman. The sacred pipe was the only object that was built by both genders; men carved the bowl and stem while women decorated the pipe with porcupine quills. In many tribes the man and woman held onto the sacred pipe during the marriage ceremony.

Cultivating the tobacco was the responsibility of certain members of the tribe. Generally, tobacco was mixed with herbs, bark, and roots, such as bay- berry, mugwort, and wild cherry bark. These mixtures varied depending on the plants that were indigenous to the tribal area. Ceremonial tobacco was much stronger than the type that was used for everyday smoking. Rather than being inhaled, the smoke from the sacred pipe was puffed out the mouth in four directions.

In a typical pipe ceremony, the pipe holder stood up and held the pipe bowl in his left hand, with the stem held toward the East in his right hand. Before adding the first pinch of tobacco to the pipe bowl, he sprinkled some on the ground as an offering to both Mother Earth and the East. The East was acknowledged as the place where the morning star rose. Tribes believed that peace would evolve from wisdom if they prayed to the morning star.

Before offering a prayer to the South, the pipe holder again offered Mother Earth a sprinkling of tobacco and added another pinch into the bowl. The South was believed to bring strength, growth, and healing. While facing west the pipe holder acknowledged Mother Earth and prepared to thank the area where the sun sets. West was where the tribe believed the Spirit Helpers lived. At this time, they prayed for guidance from the spiritual world. The ceremony then proceeded to the North, which was thanked for blanketing Mother Earth with white snow, and for providing health and endurance.

After these four prayers, the pipe holder held the stem to the ground again and the tribe promised to respect and protect Mother Earth. Next, the stem was held up at an angle so that Father Sky could be thanked for the energy and heat he gave to the human body. Finally, the stem was held straight up and the tribe acknowledged The Great Spirit, thanking him for being the creator of Mother Earth, Father Sky, and the four directions.

After the pipe holder had worked his way around the four directions, he lit the pipe and passed it around the sacred circle in the same direction as the ceremonial prayers, starting from the East. Each member took a puff of smoke and offered another prayer. When the pipe had made a full circle, it was capped with bark, and the stem was removed. It was important for the stem and bowl to be stored in separate pockets in a pipe pouch. These pieces were not allowed to touch each other, except during a sacred pipe ceremony.

Pipestone, Minnesota, is considered hallowed ground for North American tribes. Regardless of their conflicts, tribes put their weapons down and gathered in peace in these quarries. According to the Dakota tribe, The Great Spirit once called all Indian nations to this location. Here the Spirit stood on the red pipestone and broke a piece away from the rock to make a giant pipe. He told his people that the red stone was their flesh and that it should be used to make a sacred pipe. He also said that the pipestone belonged to all native tribesmen and that the quarries must be considered a sacred place. Thus, people who had sacred pipes in their possession were considered caretakers, not owners.

Questions 15-19
Choose the correct letters, A-C, and write them in boxes 15-19 on your Answer Sheet

15 The sacred pipe was important in native American cultures because
A it was part of their spiritual practice
B it was used in gift exchanges between tribes
C it represented traditional handicrafts

16 The pipe was made of
A stone and wood
B bark and roots
C red clay from the Earth

17 The pipe was sometimes used at
A funerals
B births
C weddings

18 During the pipe ceremony, tribe members smoked
A plain tobacco
B a combination of plants
C only bark

19 Pipestone, Minnesota, is an important place because it is
A the site of a major battle
B the origin of the Dakota tribe
C source of stone for pipes

Questions 20-27
Complete the flowchart about the pipe ceremony. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

The pipe holder takes the (20)………………..in his left hand and the (21)…………….in his other hand

The pipe holder offers tobacco to Mother Earth and (22)…………………the place where the morning star rises and then puts some in the pipe

The pipe holder prays to (23)………………..to bring strength, growth and healing and then prays to the remaining directions

The pipe holder points the pipe stem down and then up and prays to The Great Spirit, in appreciation for (24)……………., Father Sky and (25)……………..

The pipe holder passes the pipe around the sacred circle, and all members of the circle (26)………………..and pray

The bowl and stem are (27)………………..because they can only touch each other during the ceremony

Bathymetry

The ocean floor is often considered the last frontier on earth, as it is a domain that remains greatly unexplored. Bathymetry, also known as sea-floor topography, involves measuring and mapping the depths of the underwater world. Today much of the ocean floor still remains unmapped because collecting bathymetry data in waters of great depth is a time consuming and complex endeavor.

Two hundred years ago most people assumed that the ocean floor was similar to the beaches and coastlines. During the nineteenth century, attempts to produce maps of the seafloor involved lowering weighted lines from a boat and waiting for the tension of the line to change. When the handline hit the ocean floor, the depth of the water was determined by measuring the amount of slack. Each of these measurements was called a sounding, and thousands of soundings had to be done just to get a rough measurement of a small portion of the ocean floor. Besides estimating the depth, these surveys helped in identifying large shipping hazards, especially near the shoreline. A naval officer published the first evidence of underwater mountains in a bathymetric chart in 1855.

During World War I, scientists developed the technology for measuring sound waves in the ocean. Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee (ASDICs) was the original name for these underwater sound projectors, but by World War II the term sonar was adopted in the United States and many other nations. Sonar, which stands for Sound, Navigation, and Ranging, was first used to detect submarines and icebergs. By calculating the amount of time it took for a sound signal to reflect back to its original source, sonar could measure the depth of the ocean as well as the depth of any objects found within it. The first sonar devices were passive systems that could only receive sound waves. By the 1930s, single-beam sonar was being used to transmit sound waves in a vertical line from a ship to the seafloor. The sound waves were recorded as they returned from the surface to the ship. However, this type of sonar was more useful in detecting submerged objects than mapping the seafloor. Throughout World War II, technology improved, and active sonar systems that both received and produced sound waves were being used. It was the invention of the acoustic transducer and the acoustic projector that made way for this modem sonar. The newer systems made it possible to identify certain material, such as rock or mud. Since mud absorbed a good portion of a sound signal, it provided a much weaker echo than rocks, which reflected much of the sound wave.

The multi-beam sonar, which could be attached to a ship’s hull, was developed in the 1960s. With this type of sonar, multiple beams could be adjusted to a number of different positions, and a larger area of the ocean could be surveyed. Maps created with the aid of multi-beam sonar helped to explain the formation of ridges and trenches, including the Ring of Fire and the Mid-Ocean Ridge. The Ring of Fire is a zone that circles the Pacific Ocean and is famous for its seismic activity. This area, which extends from the coast of New Zealand to the coast of North and South America, also accounts for more than 75 percent of the world’s active and dormant volcanoes. The Mid-Ocean Ridge is a section of undersea mountains that extends over 12,000 feet high and 1,200 miles wide. These mountains, which zigzag around the continents, are generally considered the most outstanding topographical features on earth.

The invention of the side-scan sonar was another modem breakthrough for the field of bathymetry. This type of sonar is towed on cables, making it possible to send and receive sound waves over a broad section of the seafloor at much lower angles than the multi-beam sonar. The benefit of the side-scan sonar system is that it can detect very specific features over a large area. The most modem form of bathymetry, which is also the least accurate, is done with data collected by satellite altimetry. This method began to be used in the 1970s. This type of mapping relies on radar altimeters that receive echoes from the sea surface. These signals measure the distance between the satellite and the ocean floor. Unfortunately, due to water vapor1 and ionization, electromagnetic waves are often decelerated as they move through the atmosphere; therefore, the satellite receives inaccurate measurements. The benefit of using satellites to map the ocean is that it can take pictures of the entire globe, including areas that have not yet been measured by sonar. At this time, satellite altimetry is mainly used to locate areas where detailed sonar measurements need to be conducted.

Due to a constant flux of plate activity, the topography of the seafloor is ever-changing. Scientists expect bathymetry to become one of the most important sciences as humans search for new energy sources and seek alternate routes for telecommunication. Preserving the ocean’s biosphere for the future will also rely on an accurate mapping of the seafloor.

Questions 28-33
Complete the table below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS.

MAPPING THE OCEAN FLOOR

Method	First Used	Used For	How it Works
Weighted line	(28)………………..	determining (29)………………..	drop a line until it hits the bottom
(30)………………..	1930s	detecting objects underwater	send (31)………………to ocean floor
Multi-beam solar	(32)……………	mapping larger areas of the different directions	send multiple sound waves in
Satellite altimetry	1970s	taking pictures of (33)……………………	send signals from satellite

Questions 34-37
Match each description below with the ocean region that it describes. In boxes 34-37 on your Answer Sheet, write

A if it describes the Ring of Fire
B if it describes the Mid-Ocean Ridge

34 It is known for the earthquakes that occur there.
35 It is over one thousand miles wide.
36 It is a mountain range.
37 It contains the majority of the earth’s volcanoes.

Questions 38-40
The list below gives some possible reasons for mapping the ocean floor.

Which THREE of these reasons are mentioned in the reading passage?

Write the appropriate Roman numerals i-vi in boxes 38-40 on your Answer Sheet.

i Predicting earthquakes
ii Finding new fuel resources
iii Protecting ocean life
iv Understanding weather patterns
v Improving communications systems
vi Improving the fishing industry

Glaciers

A Besides the earth’s oceans, glacier ice is the largest source of water on earth. A glacier is a massive stream or sheet of ice that moves underneath itself under the influence of gravity. Some glaciers travel down mountains or valleys, while others spread across a large expanse of land. Heavily glaciated regions such as Greenland and Antarctica are called continental glaciers. These two ice sheets encompass more than 95 percent of the earth’s glacial ice. The Greenland ice sheet is almost 10,000 feet thick in some areas, and the weight of this glacier is so heavy that much of the region has been depressed below sea level. Smaller glaciers that occur at higher elevations are called alpine or valley glaciers. Another way of classifying glaciers is in terms of their internal temperature. In temperate glaciers, the ice within the glacier is near its melting point. Polar glaciers, in contrast, always maintain temperatures far below melting.

B The majority of the earth’s glaciers are located near the poles, though glaciers exist on all continents, including Africa and Oceania. The reason glaciers are generally formed in high alpine regions is that they require cold temperatures throughout the year. In these areas where there is little opportunity for summer ablation (loss of mass), snow changes to compacted fin and then crystallized ice. During periods in which melting and evaporation exceed the amount of snowfall, glaciers will retreat rather than progress. While glaciers rely heavily on snowfall, other climactic conditions including freezing rain, avalanches, and wind, contribute to their growth. One year of below average precipitation can stunt the growth of a glacier tremendously. With the rare exception of surging glaciers, a common glacier flows about 10 inches per day in the summer and 5 inches per day in the winter. The fastest glacial surge on record occurred in 1953, when the Kutiah Glacier in Pakistan grew more than 12 kilometers in three months.

C The weight and pressure of ice accumulation causes glacier movement. Glaciers move out from under themselves, via plastic deformation and basal slippage. First, the internal flow of ice crystals begins to spread outward and downward from the thickened snow pack also known as the zone of accumulation. Next, the ice along the ground surface begins to slip in the same direction. Seasonal thawing at the base of the glacier helps to facilitate this slippage. The middle of a glacier moves faster than the sides and bottom because there is no rock to cause friction. The upper part of a glacier rides on the ice below. As a glacier moves it carves out a U-shaped valley similar to a riverbed, but with much steeper walls and a flatter bottom.

D Besides the extraordinary rivers of ice, glacial erosion creates other unique physical features in the landscape such as horns, fjords, hanging valleys, and cirques. Most of these landforms do not become visible until after a glacier has receded. Many are created by moraines, which occur at the sides and front of a glacier. Moraines are formed when material is picked up along the way and deposited in a new location. When many alpine glaciers occur on the same mountain, these moraines can create a horn. The Matterhorn, in the Swiss Alps, is one of the most famous horns. Fjords, which are very common in Norway, are coastal valleys that fill with ocean water during a glacial retreat. Hanging valleys occur when two or more glacial valleys intersect at varying elevations. It is common for waterfalls to connect the higher and lower hanging valleys, such as in Yosemite National Park. A cirque is a large bowl-shaped valley that forms at the front of a glacier. Cirques often have a lip on their down slope that is deep enough to hold small lakes when the ice melts away.

E Glacier movement and shape shifting typically occur over hundreds of years. While presently about 10 percent of the earth’s land is covered with glaciers, it is believed that during the last Ice Age glaciers covered approximately 32 percent of the earth’s surface. In the past century, most glaciers have been retreating rather than flowing forward. It is unknown whether this glacial activity is due to human impact or natural causes, but by studying glacier movement, and comparing climate and agricultural profiles over hundreds of years, glaciologists can begin to understand environmental issues such as global warming.

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has five paragraphs, A-E. Choose the most suitable heading for each para-graph from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers (i-viii) on your Answer Sheet. There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.

List of Headings
i Glacial Continents
ii Formation and Growth of Glaciers
iii Glacial Movement
iv Glaciers in the Last Ice Age
v Glaciers Through the Years
vi Types of Glaciers
vii Glacial Effects on Landscape
viii Glaciers in National Parks

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

Questions 6-10
Do the following statements agree with the information in the passage? In boxes 6-10 on your Answer Sheet, write

TRUE                      if the statement is true according to the passage.
FALSE                    if the statement contradicts the passage.
NOT GIVEN         if there is no information about this in the passage.

6 Glaciers exist only near the north and south poles.
7 Glaciers are formed by a combination of snow and other weather conditions.
8 Glaciers normally move at a rate of about 5 to 10 inches a day.
9 All parts of the glacier move at the same speed.
10 During the last Ice Age, average temperatures were much lower than they were during previous Ice Ages.

Questions 11-15
Match each definition below with the term it defines. Write the letter of the term, A-H, on your Answer Sheet. There are more terms than definitions, so you will not use them all.

11 a glacier formed on a mountain
12 a glacier with temperatures well below freezing
13 a glacier that moves very quickly
14 a glacial valley formed near the ocean
15 a glacial valley that looks like a bowl

Terms
A fjord
B alpine glacier
C horn
D polar glacier
E temperate glacier
F hanging valley
G cirque
H surging glacier

Irish Potato Famine

A In the ten years following the Irish potato famine of 1845, over 750,000 Irish people died, including many of those who attempted to immigrate to countries such as the United States and Canada. Prior to the potato blight, one of the main concerns in Ireland was overpopulation. In the early 1500s, the country’s population was estimated at less than three million, but by 1840 this number had nearly tripled. The bountiful potato crop, which contains almost all of the nutrients that a person needs for survival, was largely to blame for the population growth. However, within five years of the failed crop of 1845, the population of Ireland was reduced by a quarter. A number of factors contributed to the plummet of the Irish population, namely the Irish dependency on the potato crop, the British tenure system, and the inadequate relief efforts of the English.

B It is not known exactly how or when the potato was first introduced to Europe; however, the general assumption is that it arrived on a Spanish ship sometime in the 1600s. For more than one hundred years, Europeans believed that potatoes belonged to a botanical family of a poisonous breed. It was not until Marie Antoinette wore potato blossoms in her hair in the mid-eighteenth century that potatoes became a novelty. By the late 1700s, the dietary value of the potato had been discovered, and the monarchs of Europe ordered the vegetable to be widely planted.

C By 1800, the vast majority of the Irish population had become dependent on the potato as its primary staple. It wasn’t uncommon for an Irish potato farmer to consume more than six pounds of potatoes a day. Families stored potatoes for the winter and even fed potatoes to their livestock. Because of this dependency, the unexpected potato blight of 1845 devastated the Irish. Investigators at first suggested that the blight was caused by static energy, smoke from railroad trains, or vapors from underground volcanoes; however, the root cause was later discovered as an airborne fungus that traveled from Mexico. Not only did the disease destroy the potato crops, it also infected all of the potatoes in storage at the time. Their families were dying from famine, but weakened farmers had retained little of their agricultural skills to harvest other crops. Those who did manage to grow things such as oats, wheat, and barley relied on earnings from these exported crops to keep their rented homes.

D While the potato blight generated mass starvation among the Irish, the people were held captive to their poverty by the British tenure system. Following the Napoleonic Wars of 1815, the English had turned their focus to their colonial land holdings. British landowners realized that the best way to profit from these holdings was to extract the resources and exports and charge expensive rents and taxes for people to live on the land. Under the tenure system, Protestant landlords owned 95 percent of the Irish land, which was divided up into five-acre plots for the people to live and farm on. As the population of Ireland grew, however, the plots were continuously subdivided into smaller parcels. Living conditions declined dramatically, and families were forced to move to less fertile land where almost nothing but the potato would grow.

E During this same period of colonization, the Penal Laws were also instituted as a means of weakening the Irish spirit. Under the Penal Laws, Irish peasants were denied basic human rights, such as the right to speak their own native language, seek certain kinds of employment, practice their faith, receive education, and own land. Despite the famine that was devastating Ireland, the landlords had little compassion or sympathy for tenants unable to pay their rent. Approximately 500,000 Irish tenants were evicted by their landlords between 1845 and 1847. Many of these people also had their homes burned down and were put in jail for overdue rent.

F The majority of the British officials in the 1840s adopted the laissez-faire philosophy, which supported a policy of nonintervention in the Irish plight. Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel was an exception. He showed compassion toward the Irish by making a move to repeal the Corn Laws, which had been put in place to protect British grain producers from the competition of foreign markets. For this hasty decision, Peel quickly lost the support of the British people and was forced to resign. The new Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, allowed assistant Charles Trevelyan to take complete control over all of the relief efforts in Ireland. Trevelyan believed that the Irish situation should be left to Providence. Claiming that it would be dangerous to let the Irish become dependent on other countries, he even took steps to close food depots that were selling corn and to redirect shipments of com that were already on their way to Ireland. A few relief programs were eventually implemented, such as soup kitchens and workhouses; however, these were poorly run institutions that facilitated the spread of disease, tore apart families, and offered inadequate food supplies considering the extent of Ireland’s shortages.

G Many of the effects of the Irish potato famine are still evident today. Descendants of those who fled Ireland during the 1840s are dispersed all over the world. Some of the homes that were evacuated by absentee land-lords still sit abandoned in the Irish hills. A number of Irish descendants still carry animosity toward the British for not putting people before politics. The potato blight itself still plagues the Irish people during certain growing seasons when weather conditions are favorable for the fungus to thrive.

Questions 16-20
The passage has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraphs contain the following information?

16 the position of the British government toward the potato famine
17 a description of the system of land ownership in Ireland
18 early European attitudes toward the potato
19 explanation of the lack of legal protection for Irish peasants
20 the importance of the potato in Irish society

Questions 21-28
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-L, from the box below. Write the correct letter in boxes 21-28 on your Answer Sheet. There are more endings than sentences, so you won’t use them all.

Sentence Endings
A because they couldn’t pay the rent on their farms.
B because railroad trains caused air pollution.
C because potatoes were their main source of food.
D because Charles Trevelyan took over relief efforts.
E because they needed the profits to pay the rent.
F because they weren’t well-managed.
G because there wasn’t enough land for the increasing population.
H because his efforts to help the Irish were unpopular among the British.
I because they believed that potatoes were poisonous.
J because the British instituted penal laws.
K because it was discovered that potatoes are full of nutrients.
L because Marie Antoinette used potato blossoms as decoration.

21 At first Europeans didn’t eat potatoes
22 European monarchs encouraged potato growing
23 The potato blight was devastating to the Irish
24 Farmers who grew oats, wheat, and barley didn’t eat these crops
25 Many Irish farmers lived on infertile plots
26 Many Irish farmers were arrested
27 Sir Robert Peel lost his position as prime minister
28 Soup kitchens and workhouses didn’t relieve the suffering

Anesthesiology

Since the beginning of time, man has sought natural remedies for pain. Between 40 and 60 A.D., Greek physician, Dioscorides traveled with the Roman armies, studying the medicinal properties of plants and minerals. His book, De materia medico, written in five volumes and translated into at least seven languages, was the primary reference source for physicians for over sixteen centuries. The field of anesthesiology which was once nothing more than a list of medicinal plants and makeshift remedies, has grown into one of the most important fields in medicine.

Many of the early pain relievers were based on myth and did little to relieve the suffering of an ill or injured person. The mandragora (now known as the mandrake plant) was one of the first plants to be used as an anesthetic. Due to the apparent screaming that the plant made as it was pulled from the ground, people in the Middle Ages believed that the person who removed the mandrake from the earth would either die or go insane. This superstition may have resulted because the split root of the mandrake resembled the human form. In order to pull the root from the ground, the plant collector would loosen it and tie the stem to an animal. It was believed that the safest time to uproot a mandrake was in the moonlight, and the best animal to use was a black dog. In his manual, Dioscorides suggested boiling the root with wine and having a man drink the potion to remove sensation before cutting his flesh or burning his skin. Opium and Indian hemp were later used to induce sleep before a painful procedure or to relieve the pain of an illness. Other remedies such as cocaine did more harm to the patient than good as people died from their addictions. President Ulysses S. Grant became addicted to cocaine before he died of throat cancer in 1885.

The modern field of anesthetics dates to the incident when nitrous oxide (more commonly known as laughing gas) was accidentally discovered. Humphrey Davy, the inventor of the miner’s lamp, discovered that inhaling the toxic compound caused a strange euphoria, followed by fits of laughter, tears, and sometimes unconsciousness. U.S. dentist, Horace Wells, was the first on record to experiment with laughing gas, which he used in 1844 to relieve pain during a tooth extraction. Two years later, Dr. William Morton created the first anesthetic machine. This apparatus was a simple glass globe containing an ether-soaked sponge. Morton considered ether a good alternative to nitrous oxide because the numbing effect lasted considerably longer. His apparatus allowed the patient to inhale vapors whenever the pain became unbearable. In 1846, during a trial experiment in Boston, a tumor was successfully removed from a man’s jaw area while he was anesthetized with Morton’s machine.

The first use of anesthesia in the obstetric field occurred in Scotland by Dr. James Simpson. Instead of ether, which he considered irritating to the eyes, Simpson administered chloroform to reduce the pain of childbirth. Simpson sprinkled chloroform on a handkerchief and allowed laboring women to inhale the fumes at their own discretion. In 1853, Queen Victoria agreed to use chloroform during the birth of her eighth child. Soon the use of chloroform during childbirth was both acceptable and fashionable. However, as chloroform became a more popular anesthetic, knowledge of its toxicity surfaced, and it was soon obsolete.

After World War II, numerous developments were made in the field of anesthetics. Surgical procedures that had been unthinkable were being per-formed with little or no pain felt by the patient. Rather than physicians or nurses who administered pain relief as part of their profession, anesthesiologists became specialists in suppressing consciousness and alleviating pain. Anesthesiologists today are classified as perioperative physicians, meaning they take care of a patient before, during, and after surgical procedures. It takes over eight years of schooling and four years of residency until an anesthesiologist is prepared to practice in the United States. These experts are trained to administer three different types of anesthetics: general, local, and regional. General anesthetic is used to put a patient into a temporary state of unconsciousness. Local anesthetic is used only at the affected site and causes a loss of sensation. Regional anesthetic is used to block the sensation and possibly the movement of a larger portion of the body. As well as controlling the levels of pain for the patient before and throughout an operation, anesthesiologists are responsible for monitoring and controlling the patient’s vital functions during the procedure and assessing the medical needs in the post-operative room.

The number of anesthesiologists in the United States has more than doubled since the 1970s, as has the improvement and success of operative care. In addition, complications from anesthesiology have declined dramatically. Over 40 million anesthetics are administered in the United States each year, with only 1 in 250,000 causing death.

Questions 29-34
Do the following statements agree with the information in Passage 3? In boxes 29-34 on your Answer Sheet, write

TRUE                        if the statement is true according to the passage.
FALSE                      if the statement contradicts the passage.
NOT GIVEN           if there is no information about this in the passage.

29 Dioscorides’ book, De materia medica, fell out of use after 60 A.D.
30 Mandragora was used as an anesthetic during the Middle Ages.
31 Nitrous oxide can cause the user to both laugh and cry.
32 During the second half of the 19th century, most dentists used anesthesia.
33 Anesthesiologists in the United States are required to have 12 years of education and training.
34 There are fewer anesthesiologists in the United States now than there were 40 years ago.

Questions 35-40
Match each fact about anesthesia with the type of anesthetic that it refers to. There are more types of anesthetics listed than facts, so you won’t use them all. Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 35-40 on your Answer Sheet.

Types of Anesthetic
A general anesthetic
B local anesthetic
C regional anesthetic
D chloroform
E ether
F nitrous oxide
G opium H mandrake

35 used by sprinkling on a handkerchief
36 used on only one specific part of the body
37 used by boiling with wine
38 used first during a dental procedure
39 used to stop feeling over a larger area of the body
40 used in the first anesthetic machine

Alternative Transportation

Transportation is a major issue in urban areas around the world. Rising fuel costs, environmental problems, and traffic-clogged roads are some of the concerns that have led people to consider alternative forms of transportation.

Fuel-efficient cars and cars that run on alternative sources of energy are receiving increasing interest as people become more concerned about the costs of using gasoline. These costs include not only the ever increasing price of filling up a car’s fuel tank but also the environmental costs of emitting huge amounts of car exhaust into the atmosphere. Climate change is an issue of global concern. Closer to home, cities have to consider the effects on the health of their citizens. Car emissions have been linked to a range of health problems, particularly respiratory problems. For example, studies have linked childhood asthma and stunted lung growth to exposure to car exhaust in the air. Research has also made connections between car emissions and heart disease, certain cancers, and immune system problems.

The popularity of smaller, more fuel efficient cars is on the rise. Hybrid vehicles are also becoming more common. These cars have two engines— one that is battery powered and one that is gasoline powered. The battery- powered engine gets the car moving from a standstill. Once the car reaches a certain speed, the gasoline engine, which is more efficient at higher speeds, takes over to keep the car moving. There is also a growing interest in cars that are completely battery powered. These are cars that would be plugged into an electric outlet to recharge when not in use. Many consider such vehicles to be the car of the future. However, as long as the electricity is generated by coal-burning plants, as is often the case, these cars cannot be considered as using clean energy. Solar cars and hydrogen cars are other “clean” technologies that are receiving attention and hopes for the future.

Car emissions are the most serious source of concern, but the sheer number of vehicles on the road—over 250 million in the United States alone and over one billion worldwide—has other repercussions, as well. The roads and highways that are built to accommodate the growing number of cars in use are a source of pollution themselves. Ground that is covered with pavement cannot absorb rainwater, thus motor oil and other pollutants are washed off the roads and into lakes, rivers, and the ocean. Chemicals, herbicides, concrete, asphalt, paint, and other materials that are used during road construction also contribute to environmental pollution.

Personal convenience and health are also affected. While private cars are seen as a convenient way to get from place to place, crowded roads mean traffic moves much more slowly, making it difficult to travel, especially during “rush hour” periods. And people who spend hours each day sitting in cars stuck in traffic are not standing up, moving around, or getting any sort of exercise, a situation that can lead to a variety of health problems.

Thus, in addition to developing passenger cars that run on alternative sources of fuel, we also need to look at alternative forms of transportation. These would include walking, bicycle riding, carpooling, and various types of public transportation. The benefits of walking and cycling are obvious. They cause no pollution and improve physical health. Car pools—several people sharing a ride in a private car—mean fewer cars on the road and allow the riders to share the expenses involved. Public transportation— buses, subways, commuter trains—has many benefits, as well. For one, it may provide users with opportunities for physical exercise as people have to get from their homes to the bus stops and train stations, and this is often done on foot. There are also mental health benefits, as relaxing on a train or bus while reading the newspaper or listening to music is a good deal less stressful than driving one’s own car through rush hour traffic. All of these forms of transportation decrease the number of cars on the roads and greatly reduce emissions. Looking toward the future, cities need to pay as much attention, or more, to public transportation and to accommodating walkers and cyclists as they do to building roads and accommodating drivers of passenger cars.

Questions 1-5
The list below shows some problems that are associated with the use of private cars. Which FIVE of these problems are mentioned in the article?

A Social isolation
B High maintenance costs
C Air pollution
D Noise pollution
E Traffic congestion
F Stress
G Lack of parking space
H Rising price of gasoline
I Reduced opportunities for physical exercise

Questions 6-13
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in the passage? In boxes 6-13 on your answer sheet write

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

6 Car emissions can contribute to illnesses of the respiratory system.
7 Cars are the largest source of environmental pollution in the modern world.
8 People are becoming more interested in hybrid cars.
9 Electric cars don’t pollute the environment.
10 Solar-powered cars are currently too expensive for the average person to own.
11 Roads and highways contribute to water pollution.
12 Bicycle riding has health benefits.
13 Car pools can reduce individuals’ transportation costs.

Less Television, Less Violence And Aggression

Cutting back on television, videos, and video games reduces acts of aggression among schoolchildren, according to a study by Dr. Thomas Robinson and others from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The study, published in the January 2001 issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, found that third- and fourth-grade students who took part in a curriculum to reduce their TV video, and video game use engaged in fewer acts of verbal and physical aggression than their peers. The study took place in two similar San Jose, California, elementary schools. Students in one school underwent an 18-lesson, 6-month program designed to limit their media usage, while the others did not. Both groups of students had similar reports of aggressive behavior at the beginning of the study. After the six-month program, however, the two groups had very real differences.

The students who cut back on their TV time engaged in six fewer acts of verbal aggression per hour and rated 2.4 percent fewer of their classmates as aggressive after the program. Physical acts of violence, parental reports of aggressive behavior, and perceptions of a mean and scary world also decreased, but the authors suggest further study to solidify these results. Although many studies have shown that children who watch a lot of TV are more likely to act violently, this report further verifies that television, videos, and video games actually cause the violent behavior, and it is among the first to evaluate a solution to the problem.

Teachers at the intervention school included the program in their existing curriculum. Early lessons encouraged students to keep track of and report on the time they spent watching TV or videos, or playing video games, to motivate them to limit those activities on their own. The initial lessons were followed by TV-Turn off, an organization that encourages less TV viewing. For ten days, students were challenged to go without television, videos, or video games. After that, teachers encouraged the students to stay within a media allowance of seven hours per week. Almost all students participated in the Turnoff, and most stayed under their budget for the following weeks.

Additional lessons encouraged children to use their time more selectively, and many of the final lessons had students themselves advocate reducing screen activities. This study is by no means the first to find a link between television and violence. Virtually all of 3,500 research studies on the subject in the past 40 years have shown the same relationship, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Among the most noteworthy studies is Dr. Leonard D. Eron’s, which found that exposure to television violence in childhood is the strongest predictor of aggressive behavior later in life—stronger even than violent behavior as children.

The more violent television the subjects watched at age eight, the more serious was their aggressive behavior even 22 years later. Another study by Dr. Brandon S. Centerwall found that murder rates climb after the introduction of television. In the United States and Canada, murder rates doubled 10 to 15 years after the introduction of television, after the first TV generation grew up. Centerwall tested this pattern in South Africa, where television broadcasts were banned until 1975.

Murder rates in South Africa remained relatively steady from the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s. By 1987, however, the murder rate had increased 130 percent from its 1974 level. The murder rates in the United States and Canada had leveled1 off in the meantime. Centerwall’s study implies that the medium of television, not just the con-tent, promotes violence, and the current study by Dr Robinson supports that conclusion.

The Turnoff did not specifically target violent television, nor did the following allowance period. Reducing television in general reduces aggressive behavior. Even television that is not “violent” is more violent than real life and may lead viewers to believe that violence is funny, inconsequential, and a viable solution to problems. Also, watching television of any content robs us of the time to interact with real people. Watching too much TV may inhibit the skills and patience we need to get along with others without resorting to aggression. TV, as a medium, pro-motes aggression and violence. The best solution is to turn it off.

Questions 14-20
Complete the summary using words from the box below.

A study that was published in January 2001 found that when children (14)………………………….less, they behaved less (15)……………………..Students in a California elementary school participated in the study, which lasted (16)……………………….By the end of the study, title children’s behavior had changed. For example, the children’s (17)…………………………reported that the children were acting less violently than before. During the study, the children kept a record of the (18)…………………….they watched TV. Then, for ten days, they (19)……………………….Near the end of the study, the students began to suggest watching (20)………………

parents	scared	time of day	teachers	less TV
number of hours	six months	eighteen days	avoided TV	violently
classmates	favorite programmes	watched TV	nonviolent programmes

Questions 21-24
Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 21-24 write

TRUE                     if the statement is true according to the passage.
FALSE                   if the statement contradicts the passage.
NOT GIVEN        if there is no information about this in the passage.

21 Only one study has found a connection between TV and violent behavior.
22 There were more murders in Canada after people began watching TV.
23 The United States has more violence on TV than other countries.
24 TV was introduced in South Africa in the 1940s.

Questions 25 and 26
For each question, choose the correct letter A-D and write it in boxes 25 and 26 on your Answer Sheet.

25 According to the passage,
A only children are affected by violence on TV
B only violent TV programs cause violent behavior
C children who watch too much TV get poor grades in school
D watching a lot of TV may keep us from learning important social skills

26 The authors of this passage believe that
A some violent TV programs are funny
B the best plan is to stop watching TV completely
C it’s better to watch TV with other people than on your own
D seven hours a week of TV watching is acceptable

Issues Affecting The Southern Resident Orcas

A Orcas, also known as killer whales, are opportunistic feeders, which means they will take a variety of different prey species. J, K, and L pods (specific groups of orcas found in the region) are almost exclusively fish eaters. Some studies show that up to 90 percent of their diet is salmon, with Chinook salmon being far and away their favorite. During the last 50 years, hundreds of wild runs of salmon have become extinct due to habitat loss and overfishing of wild stocks. Many of the extinct salmon stocks are the winter runs of Chinook and coho. Although the surviving stocks have probably been sufficient to sustain the resident pods, many of the runs that have been lost were undoubtedly traditional resources favored by the resident orcas. This may be affecting the whales’ nutrition in the winter and may require them to change their patterns of movement in order to search for food.

Other studies with tagged whales have shown that they regularly dive up to 800 feet in this area. Researchers tend to think that during these deep dives the whales may be feeding on bottomfish. Bottomfish species in this area would include halibut, rockfish, lingcod, and greenling. Scientists estimate that today’s lingcod population in northern Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia is only 2 percent of what it was in 1950. The average size of rockfish in the recreational catch has also declined by several inches since the 1970s, which is indicative of overfishing. In some locations, certain rockfish species have disappeared entirely. So even if bottomfish are not a major food resource for the whales, the present low numbers of available fish increases the pressure on orcas and all marine animals to find food. (For more information on bottomfish see the San Juan County Bottomfish Recovery Program.)

B Toxic substances accumulate in higher concentrations as they move up the food chain. Because orcas are the top predator in the ocean and are at the top of several different food chains in the environment, they tend to be more affected by pollutants than other sea creatures. Examinations of stranded killer whales have shown some extremely high levels of lead, mercury, and polychlorinated hydrocarbons. Abandoned marine toxic waste dumps and present levels of industrial and human refuse pollution of the inland waters probably presents the most serious threat to the continued existence of this orca population. Unfortunately, the total remedy to this huge problem would be broad societal changes on many fronts. But because of the fact that orcas are so popular, they may be the best species to use as a focal point in bringing about the many changes that need to be made in order to protect the marine environment as a whole from further toxic poisoning.

C The waters around the San Juan Islands are extremely busy due to international commercial shipping, fishing, whale watching, and pleasure boating. On a busy weekend day in the summer, it is not uncommon to see numerous boats in the vicinity of the whales as they travel through the area. The potential impacts from all this vessel traffic with regard to the whales and other marine animals in the area could be tremendous.

The surfacing and breathing space of marine birds and mammals is a critical aspect of their habitat, which the animals must consciously deal with on a moment-to-moment basis throughout their lifetimes. With all the boating activity in the vicinity, there are three ways in which surface impacts are most likely to affect marine animals: (a) collision, (b) collision avoidance, and (c) exhaust emissions in breathing pockets.

The first two impacts are very obvious and don’t just apply to vessels with motors. Kayakers even present a problem here because they’re so quiet. Marine animals, busy hunting and feeding under the surface of the water, may not be aware that there is a kayak above them and actually hit the bot-tom of it as they surface to breathe. The third impact is one most people don’t even think of. When there are numerous boats in the area, especially idling boats, there are a lot of exhaust fumes being spewed out on the surface of the water. When the whale comes up to take a nice big breath of “fresh” air, it instead gets a nice big breath of exhaust fumes. It’s hard to say how greatly this affects the animals, but think how breathing polluted air affects us (i.e., smog in large cities like Los Angeles, breathing the foul air while sitting in traffic jams, etc.).

D Similar to surface impacts, a primary source of acoustic pollution for this population of orcas would also be derived from the cumulative underwater noise of vessel traffic. For cetaceans, the underwater sound environment is perhaps the most critical component of their sensory and behavioral lives. Orcas communicate with each other over short and long distances with a variety of clicks, chirps, squeaks, and whistles, along with using echolocation to locate prey and to navigate. They may also rely on passive listening as a primary sensory source. The long-term impacts from noise pollution would not likely show up as noticeable behavioral changes in habitat use, but rather as sensory damage or gradual reduction in population health. A new study at The Whale Museum called the SeaSound Remote Sensing Network has begun studying underwater acoustics and its relationship to orca communication.

Questions 27-30
Reading Passage 3 has four sections (A-D). Choose the most suitable heading for each section from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers (i-vii) in boxes 27-30 on your Answer Sheet. There are more headings than sections, so you will not use all of them.

List of headings
i Top Ocean Predators
ii Toxic Exposure
iii Declining Fish Populations
iv Pleasure Boating in the San Juan Islands
v Underwater Noise
vi Smog in Large Cities
vii Impact of Boat Traffic

27 Section A
28 Section B
29 Section C
30 Section D

Questions 31-32
For each question, choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in boxes 31 and 32 on your Answer Sheet.

31 Killer whales (orcas) in the J, K, and L pods prefer to eat
A halibut
B a type of salmon
C a variety of animals
D fish living at the bottom of the sea

32 Some groups of salmon have become extinct because
A they have lost places to live
B whales have eaten them
C they don’t get good nutrition
D the winters in the area are too cold

Questions 33-40
Complete the chart below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS.

Cause	Effect
Scientists believe some whales feed (33)…………….	these whales dive very deep
Scientists believe that the area is being over fished	rockfish caught today is (34)………………..than rockfish caught in the past
Orcas are at the top of the ocean food chain	(35)…………………affects orcas more than it does other sea animals
Orcas are a (36)……………….species	we can use orcas to make society aware of the problem in marine pollution
People enjoy boating, fishing and whale watching in the San Juan Islands	on weekends there are (37)………………near the whales
Kayaks are (38)………………..	marine animals hit them when they come up the air
A lot of boats keep their motors running	whales breathe (39)……………….
Boats are noisy	whales have difficulty hearing and (40)…………………..