British Council IELTS Reading Test 01

READING PASSAGE 1 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

MAKING TIME FOR SCIENCE

Chronobiology might sound a little futuristic – like something from a science fiction novel, perhaps – but it’s actually a field of study that concerns one of the oldest processes life on this planet has ever known: short-term rhythms of time and their effect on flora and fauna.

This can take many forms. Marine life, for example, is influenced by tidal patterns. Animals tend to be active or inactive depending on the position of the sun or moon. Numerous creatures, humans included, are largely diurnal – that is, they like to come out during the hours of sunlight. Nocturnal animals, such as bats and possums, prefer to forage by night. A third group are known as crepuscular: they thrive in the lowlight of dawn and dusk and remain inactive at other hours.

When it comes to humans, chronobiologists are interested in what is known as the circadian rhythm. This is the complete cycle our bodies are naturally geared to undergo within the passage of a twenty-four-hour day. Aside from sleeping at night and waking during the day, each cycle involves many other factors such as changes in blood pressure and body temperature. Not everyone has an identical circadian rhythm. ‘Night people’, for example, often describe how they find it very hard to operate during the morning, but become alert and focused by evening. This is a benign variation within circadian rhythms known as a chronotype.

Scientists have limited abilities to create durable modifications of chronobiological demands. Recent therapeutic developments for humans such as artificial light machines and melatonin administration can reset our circadian rhythms, for example, but our bodies can tell the difference and health suffers when we breach these natural rhythms for extended periods of time. Plants appear no more malleable in this respect; studies demonstrate that vegetables grown in season and ripened on the tree are far higher in essential nutrients than those grown in greenhouses and ripened by laser.

Knowledge of chronobiological patterns can have many pragmatic implications for our day-to-day lives. While contemporary living can sometimes appear to subjugate biology – after all, who needs circadian rhythms when we have caffeine pills, energy drinks, shift work and cities that never sleep? – keeping in synch with our body clock is important.

The average urban resident, for example, rouses at the eye-blearing time of 6.04 a.m., which researchers believe to be far too early. One study found that even rising at 7.00 a.m. has deleterious effects on health unless exercise is performed for 30 minutes afterwards. The optimum moment has been whittled down to 7.22 a.m.; muscle aches, headaches and moodiness were reported to be lowest by participants in the study who awoke then.

Once you’re up and ready to go, what then? If you’re trying to shed some extra pounds, dieticians are adamant: never skip breakfast. This disorients your circadian rhythm and puts your body in starvation mode. The recommended course of action is to follow an intense workout with a carbohydrate-rich breakfast; the other way round and weight loss results are not as pronounced.

Morning is also great for breaking out the vitamins. Supplement absorption by the body is not temporal-dependent, but naturopath Pam Stone notes that the extra boost at breakfast helps us get energised for the day ahead. For improved absorption, Stone suggests pairing supplements with a food in which they are soluble and steering clear of caffeinated beverages. Finally, Stone warns to take care with storage; high potency is best for absorption, and warmth and humidity are known to deplete the potency of a supplement.

After-dinner espressos are becoming more of a tradition – we have the Italians to thank for that – but to prepare for a good night’s sleep we are better off putting the brakes on caffeine consumption as early as 3 p.m. With a seven-hour half-life, a cup of coffee containing 90 mg of caffeine taken at this hour could still leave 45 mg of caffeine in your nervous system at ten o’clock that evening. It is essential that, by the time you are ready to sleep, your body is rid of all traces.

Evenings are important for winding down before sleep; however, dietician Geraldine Georgeou warns that an after-five carbohydrate-fast is more cultural myth than chronobiological demand. This will deprive your body of vital energy needs. Overloading your gut could lead to indigestion, though. Our digestive tracts do not shut down for the night entirely, but their work slows to a crawl as our bodies prepare for sleep. Consuming a modest snack should be entirely sufficient.

READING PASSAGE 2 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

The Triune Brain

The first of our three brains to evolve is what scientists call the reptilian cortex. This brain sustains the elementary activities of animal survival such as respiration, adequate rest and a beating heart. We are not required to consciously “think” about these activities. The reptilian cortex also houses the “startle centre”, a mechanism that facilitates swift reactions to unexpected occurrences in our surroundings. That panicked lurch you experience when a door slams shut somewhere in the house, or the heightened awareness you feel when a twig cracks in a nearby bush while out on an evening stroll are both examples of the reptilian cortex at work. When it comes to our interaction with others, the reptilian brain offers up only the most basic impulses: aggression, mating, and territorial defence. There is no great difference, in this sense, between a crocodile defending its spot along the river and a turf war between two urban gangs.

Although the lizard may stake a claim to its habitat, it exerts total indifference toward the well-being of its young. Listen to the anguished squeal of a dolphin separated from its pod or witness the sight of elephants mourning their dead, however, and it is clear that new development is at play. Scientists have identified this as the limbic cortex. Unique to mammals, the limbic cortex impels creatures to nurture their offspring by delivering feelings of tenderness and warmth to the parent when children are nearby. These same sensations also cause mammals to develop various types of social relations and kinship networks. When we are with others of “our kind” – be it at soccer practice, church, school or a nightclub – we experience positive sensations of togetherness, solidarity and comfort. If we spend too long away from these networks, then loneliness sets in and encourages us to seek companionship.

Only human capabilities extend far beyond the scope of these two cortexes. Humans eat, sleep and play, but we also speak, plot, rationalise and debate finer points of morality. Our unique abilities are the result of an expansive third brain – the neocortex – which engages with logic, reason and ideas. The power of the neocortex comes from its ability to think beyond the present, concrete moment. While other mammals are mainly restricted to impulsive actions (although some, such as apes, can learn and remember simple lessons), humans can think about the “big picture”. We can string together simple lessons (for example, an apple drops downwards from a tree; hurting others causes unhappiness) to develop complex theories of physical or social phenomena (such as the laws of gravity and a concern for human rights).

The neocortex is also responsible for the process by which we decide on and commit to particular courses of action. Strung together over time, these choices can accumulate into feats of progress unknown to other animals. Anticipating a better grade on the following morning’s exam, a student can ignore the limbic urge to socialise and go to sleep early instead. Over three years, this ongoing sacrifice translates into a first-class degree and a scholarship to graduate school; over a lifetime, it can mean groundbreaking contributions to human knowledge and development. The ability to sacrifice our drive for immediate satisfaction in order to benefit later is a product of the neocortex.

Understanding the triune brain can help us appreciate the different natures of brain damage and psychological disorders. The most devastating form of brain damage, for example, is a condition in which someone is understood to be brain dead. In this state a person appears merely unconscious – sleeping, perhaps – but this is illusory. Here, the reptilian brain is functioning on autopilot despite the permanent loss of other cortexes.

Disturbances to the limbic cortex are registered in a different manner. Pups with limbic damage can move around and feed themselves well enough but do not register the presence of their littermates. Scientists have observed how, after a limbic lobotomy², “one impaired monkey stepped on his outraged peers as if treading on a log or a rock”. In our own species, limbic damage is closely related to sociopathic behaviour. Sociopaths in possession of fully-functioning neocortexes are often shrewd and emotionally intelligent people but lack any ability to relate to, empathise with or express concern for others.

One of the neurological wonders of history occurred when a railway worker named Phineas Gage survived an incident during which a metal rod skewered his skull, taking a considerable amount of his neocortex with it. Though Gage continued to live and work as before, his fellow employees observed a shift in the equilibrium of his personality. Gage’s animal propensities were now sharply pronounced while his intellectual abilities suffered; garrulous or obscene jokes replaced his once quick wit. New findings suggest, however, that Gage managed to soften these abrupt changes over time and rediscover an appropriate social manner. This would indicate that reparative therapy has the potential to help patients with advanced brain trauma to gain an improved quality of life.

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¹ Triune = three-in-one ² Lobotomy = surgical cutting of brain nerves

READING PASSAGE 3 *

HELIUM’S FUTURE UP IN THE AIR

A. In recent years we have all been exposed to dire media reports concerning the impending demise of global coal and oil reserves, but the depletion of another key nonrenewable resource continues without receiving much press at all. Helium – an inert, odourless, monatomic element known to lay people as the substance that makes balloons float and voices squeak when inhaled – could be gone from this planet within a generation.

B. Helium itself is not rare; there is actually a plentiful supply of it in the cosmos. In fact, 24 per cent of our galaxy’s elemental mass consists of helium, which makes it the second most abundant element in our universe. Because of its lightness, however, most helium vanished from our own planet many years ago. Consequently, only a miniscule proportion – 0.00052%, to be exact – remains in the earth’s atmosphere. Helium is the byproduct of millennia of radioactive decay from the elements thorium and uranium. The helium is mostly trapped in subterranean natural gas bunkers and commercially extracted through a method known as fractional distillation.

C. The loss of helium on Earth would affect society greatly. Defying the perception of it as a novelty substance for parties and gimmicks, the element actually has many vital applications in society. Probably the most well known commercial usage is in airships and blimps (non-flammable helium replaced hydrogen as the lifting gas du jour after the Hindenburg catastrophe in 1932, during which an airship burst into flames and crashed to the ground killing some passengers and crew). But helium is also instrumental in deep-sea diving, where it is blended with nitrogen to mitigate the dangers of inhaling ordinary air under high pressure; as a cleaning agent for rocket engines; and, in its most prevalent use, as a coolant for superconducting magnets in hospital MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanners.

D. The possibility of losing helium forever poses the threat of a real crisis because its unique qualities are extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible to duplicate (certainly, no biosynthetic ersatz product is close to approaching the point of feasibility for helium, even as similar developments continue apace for oil and coal). Helium is even cheerfully derided as a “loner” element since it does not adhere to other molecules like its cousin, hydrogen. According to Dr Lee Sobotka, helium is the “most noble of gases, meaning it’s very stable and non-reactive for the most part … it has a closed electronic configuration, a very tightly bound atom. It is this coveting of its own electrons that prevents combination with other elements’. Another important attribute is helium’s unique boiling point, which is lower than that for any other element. The worsening global shortage could render millions of dollars of high-value, life-saving equipment totally useless. The dwindling supplies have already resulted in the postponement of research and development projects in physics laboratories and manufacturing plants around the world. There are an enormous supply and demand imbalance partly brought about by the expansion of high-tech manufacturing in Asia.

E. The source of the problem is the Helium Privatisation Act (HPA), an American law passed in 1996 that requires the U.S. National Helium Reserve to liquidate its helium assets by 2015 regardless of the market price. Although intended to settle the original cost of the reserve by a U.S. Congress ignorant of its ramifications, the result of this fire sale is that global helium prices are so artificially deflated that few can be bothered recycling the substance or using it judiciously. Deflated values also mean that natural gas extractors see no reason to capture helium. Much is lost in the process of extraction. As Sobotka notes: “[t]he government had the good vision to store helium, and the question now is: Will the corporations have the vision to capture it when extracting natural gas, and consumers the wisdom to recycle? This takes long-term vision because present market forces are not sufficient to compel prudent practice”. For Nobel-prize laureate Robert Richardson, the U.S. government must be prevailed upon to repeal its privatisation policy as the country supplies over 80 per cent of global helium, mostly from the National Helium Reserve. For Richardson, a twenty- to fifty-fold increase in prices would provide incentives to recycle.

F. A number of steps need to be taken in order to avert a costly predicament in the coming decades. Firstly, all existing supplies of helium ought to be conserved and released only by permit, with medical uses receiving precedence over other commercial or recreational demands. Secondly, conservation should be obligatory and enforced by a regulatory agency. At the moment some users, such as hospitals, tend to recycle diligently while others, such as NASA, squander massive amounts of helium. Lastly, research into alternatives to helium must begin in earnest.

British Council IELTS Reading Test 02

READING PASSAGE 1 *

The MAGIC of KEFIR

The shepherds of the North Caucasus region of Europe were only trying to transport milk the best way they knew how – in leather pouches strapped to the side of donkeys – when they made a significant discovery. A fermentation process would sometimes inadvertently occur en route, and when the pouches were opened upon arrival they would no longer contain milk but rather a pungent, effervescent, low alcoholic substance instead. This unexpected development was a blessing in disguise. The new drink – which acquired the name kefir – turned out to be a health tonic, a naturally-preserved dairy product and tasty addition to our culinary repertoire.

Although their exact origin remains a mystery, we do know that yeast-based kefir grains have always been at the root of the kefir phenomenon. These grains are capable of a remarkable feat: in contradistinction to most other items you might find in a grocery store, they actually expand and propagate with use. This is because the grains, which are granular to the touch and bear a slight resemblance to cauliflower rosettes, house active cultures that feed on lactose when added to milk. Consequently, a bigger problem for most kefir drinkers is not where to source new kefir grains, but what to do with the ones they already have!

The great thing about kefir is that it does not require a manufacturing line in order to be produced. Grains can be simply thrown in with a batch of milk for ripening to begin. The mixture then requires a cool, dark place to live and grow, with periodic unsettling to prevent clumping (Caucasus inhabitants began storing the concoction in animal-skin satchels on the back of doors – every time someone entered the room the mixture would get lightly shaken). After about 24 hours the yeast cultures in the grains have multiplied and devoured most of the milk sugars, and the final product is then ready for human consumption.

Nothing compares to a person’s first encounter with kefir. The smooth, uniform consistency rolls over the tongue in a manner akin to liquefied yogurt. The sharp, tart pungency of unsweetened yogurt is there too, but there is also a slight hint of effervescence, something most users will have previously associated only with mineral waters, soda or beer. Kefir also comes with a subtle aroma of yeast, and depending on the type of milk and ripening conditions, ethanol content can reach up to two or three percent – about on par with a decent lager – although you can expect around 0.8 to one per cent for a typical day-old preparation. This can bring out a tiny edge of alcohol in the kefir’s flavour.

Although it has prevailed largely as a fermented milk drink, over the years kefir has acquired a number of other uses. Many bakers use it instead of starter yeast in the preparation of sourdough, and the tangy flavour also makes kefir an ideal buttermilk substitute in pancakes. Kefir also accompanies sour cream as one of the main ingredients in cold beetroot soup and can be used in lieu of regular cow’s milk on granola or cereal. As a way to keep their digestive systems fine-tuned, athletes sometimes combine kefir with yoghurt in protein shakes.

Associated for centuries with pictures of Slavic babushkas clutching a shawl in one hand and a cup of kefir in the other, the unassuming beverage has become a minor celebrity of the nascent health food movement in the contemporary West. Every day, more studies pour out supporting the benefits of a diet high in probiotics¹. This trend toward consuming probiotics has engulfed the leisure classes in these countries to the point that it is poised to become, according to some commentators, “the next multivitamin”. These days the word kefir is consequently more likely to bring to mind glamorous, yoga mat-toting women from Los Angeles than austere visions of blustery Eastern Europe.

Kefir’s rise in popularity has encouraged producers to take short cuts or alter the production process. Some home users have omitted the ripening and culturation process while commercial dealers often add thickeners, stabilisers and sweeteners. But the beauty of kefir is that, at its healthiest and tastiest, it is a remarkably affordable, uncluttered process, as any accidental invention is bound to be. All that is necessary are some grains, milk and a little bit of patience. A return to the unadulterated kefir-making of old is in everyone’s interest.

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¹ Probiotic = substance containing beneficial and intestine-friendly microorganisms

READING PASSAGE 2 *

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Why not eat insects? So asked British entomologist Vincent M. Holt in the title of his 1885 treatise on the benefits of what he named entomophagy – the consumption of insects (and similar creatures) as a food source. The prospect of eating dishes such as “wireworm sauce” and “slug soup” failed to garner favour amongst those in the stuffy, proper, Victorian social milieu of his time, however, and Holt’s visionary ideas were considered at best eccentric, at worst an offense to every refined palate. Anticipating such a reaction, Holt acknowledged the difficulty in unseating deep-rooted prejudices against insect cuisine, but quietly asserted his confidence that “we shall some day quite gladly cook and eat them”.

It has taken nearly 150 years but an eclectic Western-driven movement has finally mounted around the entomophagic cause. In Los Angeles and other cosmopolitan Western cities, insects have been caught up in the endless pursuit of novel and authentic delicacies. “Eating grasshoppers is a thing you do here”, bug-supplier Bricia Lopez has explained. “There’s more of a ‘cool’ factor involved.” Meanwhile, the Food and Agricultural Organization has considered a policy paper on the subject, initiated farming projects in Laos, and set down plans for a world congress on insect farming in 2013.

Eating insects is not a new phenomenon. In fact, insects and other such creatures are already eaten in 80 per cent of the world’s countries, prepared in customary dishes ranging from deep-fried tarantula in Cambodia to bowls of baby bees in China. With the specialist knowledge that Western companies and organisations can bring to the table, however, these hand-prepared delicacies have the potential to be produced on a scale large enough to lower costs and open up mass markets. A new American company, for example, is attempting to develop pressurisation machines that would de-shell insects and make them available in the form of cutlets. According to the entrepreneur behind the company, Matthew Krisiloff, this will be the key to pleasing the uninitiated palate.

Insects certainly possess some key advantages over traditional Western meat sources. According to research findings from Professor Arnold van Huis, a Dutch entomologist, breeding insects results in far fewer noxious by-products. Insects produce less ammonia than pig and poultry farming, ten times less methane than livestock, and 300 times less nitrous oxide. Huis also notes that insects – being cold-blooded creatures – can convert food to protein at a rate far superior to that of cows, since the latter exhaust much of their energy just keeping themselves warm.

Although insects are sometimes perceived by Westerners as unhygienic or disease-ridden, they are a reliable option in light of recent global epidemics (as Holt pointed out many years ago, insects are “decidedly more particular in their feeding than ourselves”). Because bugs are genetically distant from humans, species-hopping diseases such as swine flu or mad cow disease are much less likely to start or spread amongst grasshoppers or slugs than in poultry and cattle. Furthermore, the squalid, cramped quarters that encourage diseases to propagate among many animal populations are actually the residence of choice for insects, which thrive in such conditions.

Then, of course, there are the commercial gains. As FAO Forestry Manager Patrick Durst notes, in developing countries many rural people and traditional forest dwellers have remarkable knowledge about managing insect populations to produce food. Until now, they have only used this knowledge to meet their own subsistence needs, but Durst believes that, with the adoption of modern technology and improved promotional methods, opportunities to expand the market to new consumers will flourish. This could provide a crucial step into the global economic arena for those primarily rural, impoverished populations who have been excluded from the rise of manufacturing and large-scale agriculture.

Nevertheless, much stands in the way of the entomophagic movement. One problem is the damage that has been caused and continues to be caused, by Western organisations prepared to kill off grasshoppers and locusts – complete food proteins – in favour of preserving the incomplete protein crops of millet, wheat, barley and maize. Entomologist Florence Dunkel has described the consequences of such interventions. While examining children’s diets as a part of her field work in Mali, Dunkel discovered that a protein deficiency syndrome called kwashiorkor was increasing in incidence. Children in the area were once protected against kwashiorkor by a diet high in grasshoppers, but these had become unsafe to eat after pesticide use in the area increased.

A further issue is the persistent fear many Westerners still have about eating insects. “The problem is the ick factor—the eyes, the wings, the legs,” Krisiloff has said. “It’s not as simple as hiding it in a bug nugget. People won’t accept it beyond the novelty. When you think of a chicken, you think of a chicken breast, not the eyes, wings, and beak.” For Marcel Dicke, the key lies in camouflaging the fact that people are eating insects at all. Insect flour is one of his propositions, as is changing the language of insect cuisine. “If you say it’s mealworms, it makes people think of ringworm”, he notes. “So stop saying ‘worm’. If we use Latin names, say it’s a Tenebrio quiche, it sounds much more fancy”. For Krisiloff, Dicke and others, keeping quiet about the gritty reality of our food is often the best approach.

It is yet to be seen if history will truly redeem Vincent Holt and his suggestion that British families should gather around their dining tables for a breakfast of “moths on toast”. It is clear, however, that entomophagy, far from being a kooky sideshow to the real business of food production, has much to offer in meeting the challenges that global societies in the 21st century will face.

READING PASSAGE 3 *

Love stories

“Love stories” are often associated – at least in the popular imagination – with fairy tales, adolescent day dreams, Disney movies and other frivolous pastimes. For psychologists developing taxonomies² of affection and attachment, however, this is an area of rigorous academic pursuit. Beginning in the early 1970s with the groundbreaking contributions of John Alan Lee, researchers have developed classifications that they believe better characterise our romantic predispositions. This involves examining not a single, universal, emotional expression (“love”), but rather a series of divergent behaviours and narratives that each has an individualised purpose, desired outcome and state of mind. Lee’s gritty methodology painstakingly involved participants matching 170 typical romantic encounters (e.g., “The night after I met X…”) with nearly 1500 possible reactions (“I could hardly get to sleep” or “I wrote X a letter”). The patterns unknowingly expressed by respondents culminated in a taxonomy of six distinct love “styles” that continue to inform research in the area forty years later.

The first of these styles – eros – is closely tied in with images of romantic love that are promulgated in Western popular culture. Characteristic of this style is a passionate emotional intensity, a strong physical magnetism – as if the two partners were literally being “pulled” together – and a sense of inevitability about the relationship. A related but more frantic style of love called mania involves an obsessive, compulsive attitude toward one’s partner. Vast swings in mood from ecstasy to agony – dependent on the level of attention a person is receiving from his or her partner – are typical of manic love.

Two styles were much more subdued, however. Storge is a quiet, companionate type of loving – “love by evolution” rather than “love by revolution”, according to some theorists. Relationships built on a foundation of platonic affection and caring are archetypal of storge. When care is extended to a sacrificial level of doting, however, it becomes another style – agape. In an agape relationship one partner becomes a “caretaker”, exalting the welfare of the other above his or her own needs.

The final two styles of love seem to lack aspects of emotion and reciprocity altogether. The ludus style envisions relationships primarily as a game in which it is best to “play the field” or experience a diverse set of partners over time. Mutually-gratifying outcomes in relationships are not considered necessary, and deception of a partner and lack of disclosure about one’s activities are also typical. While Lee found that college students in his study overwhelmingly disagreed with the tenets of this style, substantial numbers of them acted in a typically ludic style while dating, a finding that proves correct the deceit inherent in ludus. Pragma lovers also downplayed emotive aspects of relationships but favoured practical, sensible connections. Successful arranged marriages are a great example of pragma, in that the couple decides to make the relationship work; but anyone who seeks an ideal partner with a shopping list of necessary attributes (high salary, same religion, etc.) fits the classification.

Robert J. Sternberg’s contemporary research on love stories has elaborated on how these narratives determine the shape of our relationships and our lives. Sternberg and others have proposed and tested the theory of love as a story, “whereby the interaction of our personal attributes with the environment – which we in part create – leads to the development of stories about love that we then seek to fulfil, to the extent possible, in our lives.” Sternberg’s taxonomy of love stories numbers far more, at twenty-six, than Lee’s taxonomy of love styles, but as Sternberg himself admits there is plenty of overlap. The seventh story, Game, coincides with ludus, for example, while the nineteenth story, Sacrifice, fits neatly on top of agape.

Sternberg’s research demonstrates that we may have predilections toward multiple love stories, each represented in a mental hierarchy and varying in weight in terms of their personal significance. This explains the frustration many of us experience when comparing potential partners. One person often fulfils some expected narratives – such as a need for mystery and fantasy – while lacking the ability to meet the demands of others (which may lie in direct contradiction). It is also the case that stories have varying abilities to adapt to a given cultural milieu and its respective demands. Love stories are, therefore, interactive and adaptive phenomena in our lives rather than rigid prescriptions.

Steinberg also explores how our love stories interact with the love stories of our partners. What happens when someone who sees love as art collides with someone who sees love as a business? Can a Sewing story (love is what you make it) co-exist with a Theatre story (love is a script with predictable acts, scenes and lines)? Certainly, it is clear that we look for partners with love stories that complement and are compatible with our own narratives. But they do not have to be an identical match. Someone who sees love as mystery and art, for example, might locate that mystery better in a partner who views love through a lens of business and humour. Not all love stories, however, are equally well predisposed to relationship longevity; stories that view love as a game, as a kind of surveillance or as addiction are all unlikely to prove durable.

Research on love stories continues apace. Defying the myth that rigorous science and the romantic persuasions of ordinary people are incompatible, this research demonstrates that good psychology can clarify and comment on the way we give affection and form attachments.

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² Taxonomy = the science of classifying and categorising data.

British Council IELTS Reading Test 03

READING PASSAGE 1 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

ELECTRORECEPTION

Open your eyes in sea water and it is difficult to see much more than a murky, bleary green colour. Sounds, too, are garbled and difficult to comprehend. Without specialised equipment humans would be lost in these deep sea habitats, so how do fish make it seem so easy? Much of this is due to a biological phenomenon known as electroreception – the ability to perceive and act upon electrical stimuli as part of the overall senses. This ability is only found in aquatic or amphibious species because water is an efficient conductor of electricity.

Electroreception comes in two variants. While all animals (including humans) generate electric signals, because they are emitted by the nervous system, some animals have the ability – known as passive electroreception – to receive and decode electric signals generated by other animals in order to sense their location.

Other creatures can go further still, however. Animals with active electroreception possess bodily organs that generate special electric signals on cue. These can be used for mating signals and territorial displays as well as locating objects in the water. Active electroreceptors can differentiate between the various resistances that their electrical currents encounter. This can help them identify whether another creature is prey, predator or something that is best left alone. Active electroreception has a range of about one body length – usually just enough to give its host time to get out of the way or go in for the kill.

One fascinating use of active electroreception – known as the Jamming Avoidance Response mechanism – has been observed between members of some species known as the weakly electric fish. When two such electric fish meet in the ocean using the same frequency, each fish will then shift the frequency of its discharge so that they are transmitting on different frequencies. Doing so prevents their electroreception faculties from becoming jammed. Long before citizens’ band radio users first had to yell “Get off my frequency!” at hapless novices cluttering the air waves, at least one species had found a way to peacefully and quickly resolve this type of dispute.

Electroreception can also play an important role in animal defences. Rays are one such example. Young ray embryos develop inside egg cases that are attached to the sea bed. The embryos keep their tails in constant motion so as to pump water and allow them to breathe through the egg’s casing. If the embryo’s electroreceptors detect the presence of a predatory fish in the vicinity, however, the embryo stops moving (and in so doing ceases transmitting electric currents) until the fish has moved on. Because marine life of various types is often travelling past, the embryo has evolved only to react to signals that are characteristic of the respiratory movements of potential predators such as sharks.

Many people fear swimming in the ocean because of sharks. In some respects, this concern is well grounded – humans are poorly equipped when it comes to electroreceptive defence mechanisms. Sharks, meanwhile, hunt with extraordinary precision. They initially lock onto their prey through a keen sense of smell (two thirds of a shark’s brain is devoted entirely to its olfactory organs). As the shark reaches proximity to its prey, it tunes into electric signals that ensure a precise strike on its target; this sense is so strong that the shark even attacks blind by letting its eyes recede for protection.

Normally, when humans are attacked it is purely by accident. Since sharks cannot detect from electroreception whether or not something will satisfy their tastes, they tend to “try before they buy”, taking one or two bites and then assessing the results (our sinewy muscle does not compare well with plumper, softer prey such as seals). Repeat attacks are highly likely once a human is bleeding, however; the force of the electric field is heightened by salt in the blood which creates the perfect setting for a feeding frenzy. In areas where shark attacks on humans are likely to occur, scientists are exploring ways to create artificial electroreceptors that would disorient the sharks and repel them from swimming beaches.

There is much that we do not yet know concerning how electroreception functions. Although researchers have documented how electroreception alters hunting, defence and communication systems through observation, the exact neurological processes that encode and decode this information are unclear. Scientists are also exploring the role electroreception plays in navigation. Some have proposed that salt water and magnetic fields from the Earth’s core may interact to form electrical currents that sharks use for migratory purposes.

READING PASSAGE 2 *

FAIR GAMES?

For seventeen days every four years the world is briefly arrested by the captivating, dizzying spectacle of athleticism, ambition, pride and celebration on display at the Summer Olympic Games. After the last weary spectators and competitors have returned home, however, host cities are often left awash in high debts and costly infrastructure maintenance. The staggering expenses involved in a successful Olympic bid are often assumed to be easily mitigated by tourist revenues and an increase in local employment, but more often than not host cities are short changed and their taxpayers for generations to come are left settling the debt.

Olympic extravagances begin with the application process. Bidding alone will set most cities back about $20 million, and while officially bidding only takes two years (for cities that make the shortlist), most cities can expect to exhaust a decade working on their bid from the moment it is initiated to the announcement of voting results from International Olympic Committee members. Aside from the financial costs of the bid alone, the process ties up real estate in prized urban locations until the outcome is known. This can cost local economies millions of dollars of lost revenue from private developers who could have made use of the land, and can also mean that particular urban quarters lose their vitality due to the vacant lots. All of this can be for nothing if a bidding city does not appease the whims of IOC members – private connections and opinions on government conduct often hold sway (Chicago’s 2012 bid is thought to have been undercut by tensions over U.S. foreign policy).

Bidding costs do not compare, however, to the exorbitant bills that come with hosting the Olympic Games themselves. As is typical with large-scale, one-off projects, budgeting for the Olympics is a notoriously formidable task. Los Angelinos have only recently finished paying off their budget-breaking 1984 Olympics; Montreal is still in debt for its 1976 Games (to add insult to injury, Canada is the only host country to have failed to win a single gold medal during its own Olympics). The tradition of runaway expenses has persisted in recent years. London Olympics managers have admitted that their 2012 costs may increase ten times over their initial projections, leaving tax payers 20 billion pounds in the red.

Hosting the Olympics is often understood to be an excellent way to update a city’s sporting infrastructure. The extensive demands of Olympic sports include aquatic complexes, equestrian circuits, shooting ranges, beach volleyball courts, and, of course, an 80,000 seat athletic stadium. Yet these demands are typically only necessary to accommodate a brief influx of athletes from around the world. Despite the enthusiasm many populations initially have for the development of world-class sporting complexes in their home towns, these complexes typically fall into disuse after the Olympic fervour has waned. Even Australia, home to one of the world’s most sportive populations, has left its taxpayers footing a $32 million-a-year bill for the maintenance of vacant facilities.

Another major concern is that when civic infrastructure developments are undertaken in preparation for hosting the Olympics, these benefits accrue to a single metropolitan centre (with the exception of some outlying areas that may get some revamped sports facilities). In countries with an expansive land mass, this means vast swathes of the population miss out entirely. Furthermore, since the International Olympic Committee favours prosperous “global” centres (the United Kingdom was told, after three failed bids from its provincial cities, that only London stood any real chance at winning), the improvement of public transport, roads and communication links tends to concentrate in places already well-equipped with world-class infrastructures. Perpetually by-passing minor cities create a cycle of disenfranchisement: these cities never get an injection of capital, they fail to become first-rate candidates, and they are constantly passed over in favour of more secure choices.

Finally, there is no guarantee that the Olympics will be a popular success. The “feel good” factor that most proponents of Olympic bids extol (and that was no doubt driving the 90 to 100 per cent approval rates of Parisians and Londoners for their cities’ respective 2012 bids) can be an elusive phenomenon, and one that is tied to that nation’s standing on the medal tables. This ephemeral thrill cannot compare to the years of disruptive construction projects and security fears that go into preparing for an Olympic Games, nor the decades of debt repayment that follow (Greece’s preparation for Athens 2004 famously deterred tourists from visiting the country due to widespread unease about congestion and disruption).

There are feasible alternatives to the bloat, extravagance and wasteful spending that comes with a modern Olympic Games. One option is to designate a permanent host city that would be re-designed or built from scratch especially for the task. Another is to extend the duration of the Olympics so that it becomes a festival of several months. Local businesses would enjoy the extra spending and congestion would ease substantially as competitors and spectators come and go according to their specific interests. Neither the “Olympic City” nor the extended length options really get to the heart of the issue, however. Stripping away ritual and decorum in favour of concentrating on athletic rivalry would be preferable.

Failing that, the Olympics could simply be scrapped altogether. International competition could still be maintained through world championships in each discipline. Most of these events are already held on non-Olympic years anyway – the International Association of Athletics Federations, for example, has run a biennial World Athletics Championship since 1983 after members decided that using the Olympics for their championship was no longer sufficient. Events of this nature keep world-class competition alive without requiring Olympic-sized expenses.

READING PASSAGE 3 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Time Travel

Time travel took a small step away from science fiction and toward science recently when physicists discovered that sub-atomic particles known as neutrinos – progeny of the sun’s radioactive debris – can exceed the speed of light. The unassuming particle – it is electrically neutral, small but with a “non-zero mass” and able to penetrate the human form undetected – is on its way to becoming a rock star of the scientific world.

Researchers from the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva sent the neutrinos hurtling through an underground corridor toward their colleagues at the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracing Apparatus (OPERA) team 730 kilometres away in Gran Sasso, Italy. The neutrinos arrived promptly – so promptly, in fact, that they triggered what scientists are calling the unthinkable – that everything they have learnt, known or taught stemming from the last one hundred years of the physics discipline may need to be reconsidered.

The issue at stake is a tiny segment of time – precisely sixty nanoseconds (which is sixty billionths of a second). This is how much faster than the speed of light the neutrinos managed to go in their underground travels and at a consistent rate (15,000 neutrinos were sent over three years). Even allowing for a margin of error of ten billionths of a second, this stands as proof that it is possible to race against light and win. The duration of the experiment also accounted for and ruled out any possible lunar effects or tidal bulges in the earth’s crust.

Nevertheless, there’s plenty of reason to remain sceptical. According to Harvard University science historian Peter Galison, Einstein’s relativity theory has been “pushed harder than any theory in the history of the physical sciences”. Yet each prior challenge has come to no avail, and relativity has so far refused to buckle.

So is time travel just around the corner? The prospect has certainly been wrenched much closer to the realm of possibility now that a major physical hurdle – the speed of light – has been cleared. If particles can travel faster than light, in theory travelling back in time is possible. How anyone harnesses that to some kind of helpful end is far beyond the scope of any modern technologies, however, and will be left to future generations to explore.

Certainly, any prospective time travellers may have to overcome more physical and logical hurdles than merely overtaking the speed of light. One such problem, posited by René Barjavel in his 1943 text Le Voyageur Imprudent is the so-called grandfather paradox. Barjavel theorised that, if it were possible to go back in time, a time traveller could potentially kill his own grandfather. If this were to happen, however, the time traveller himself would not be born, which is already known to be true. In other words, there is a paradox in circumventing an already known future; time travel is able to facilitate past actions that mean time travel itself cannot occur.

Other possible routes have been offered, though. For Igor Novikov, astrophysicist behind the 1980s’ theorem known as the self-consistency principle, time travel is possible within certain boundaries. Novikov argued that any event causing a paradox would have zero probability. It would be possible, however, to “affect” rather than “change” historical outcomes if travellers avoided all inconsistencies. Averting the sinking of the Titanic, for example, would revoke any future imperative to stop it from sinking – it would be impossible. Saving selected passengers from the water and replacing them with realistic corpses would not be impossible, however, as the historical record would not be altered in any way.

A further possibility is that of parallel universes. Popularised by Bryce Seligman DeWitt in the 1960s (from the seminal formulation of Hugh Everett), the many-worlds interpretation holds that an alternative pathway for every conceivable occurrence actually exists. If we were to send someone back in time, we might therefore expect never to see him again – any alterations would divert that person down a new historical trajectory.

A final hypothesis, one of unidentified provenance, reroutes itself quite efficiently around the grandfather paradox. Non-existence theory suggests exactly that – a person would quite simply never exist if they altered their ancestry in ways that obstructed their own birth. They would still exist in person upon returning to the present, but any chain reactions associated with their actions would not be registered. Their “historical identity” would be gone.

So, will humans one day step across the same boundary that the neutrinos have? World-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking believes that once spaceships can exceed the speed of light, humans could feasibly travel millions of years into the future in order to repopulate earth in the event of a forthcoming apocalypse. This is because, as the spaceships accelerate into the future, time would slow down around them (Hawking concedes that bygone eras are off limits – this would violate the fundamental rule that cause comes before effect).

Hawking is therefore reserved yet optimistic. “Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a crank. These days I’m not so cautious.”

British Council IELTS Reading Test 04

READING PASSAGE 1 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

“For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.”

– Rudyard Kipling, The Law for the Wolves

A wolf pack is an extremely well-organised family group with a well-defined social structure and a clear-cut code of conduct. Every wolf has a certain place and function within the pack and every member has to do its fair share of the work. The supreme leader is a very experienced wolf – the alpha – who has dominance over the whole pack. It is the protector and decision-maker and directs the others as to where, when and what to hunt. However, it does not lead the pack into the hunt, for it is far too valuable to risk being injured or killed. That is the responsibility of the beta wolf, who assumes second place in the hierarchy of the pack. The beta takes on the role of enforcer – fighter or ‘tough guy’– big, strong and very aggressive. It is both the disciplinarian of the pack and the alpha’s bodyguard.

The tester, a watchful and distrustful character, will alert the alpha if it encounters anything suspicious while it is scouting around looking for signs of trouble. It is also the quality controller, ensuring that the others are deserving of their place in the pack. It does this by creating a situation that tests their bravery and courage, by starting a fight, for instance. At the bottom of the social ladder is the omega wolf, subordinate and submissive to all the others, but often playing the role of peacemaker by intervening in an intra-pack squabble and defusing the situation by clowning around. Whereas the tester may create conflict, the omega is more likely to resolve it.

The rest of the pack is made up of mid- to low-ranking non-breeding adults and the immature offspring of the alpha and its mate. The size of the group varies from around six to ten members or more, depending on the abundance of food and numbers of the wolf population in general.

Wolves have earned themselves an undeserved reputation for being ruthless predators and a danger to humans and livestock. The wolf has been portrayed in fairy tales and folklore as a very bad creature, killing any people and other animals it encounters. However, the truth is that wolves only kill to eat, never kill more than they need, and rarely attack humans unless their safety is threatened in some way. It has been suggested that hybrid wolf-dogs or wolves suffering from rabies are actually responsible for many of the historical offences as well as more recent incidents.

Wolves hunt mainly at night. They usually seek out large herbivores, such as deer, although they also eat smaller animals, such as beavers, hares and rodents, if these are obtainable. Some wolves in western Canada are known to fish for salmon. The alpha wolf picks out a specific animal in a large herd by the scent it leaves behind. The prey is often a very young, old or injured animal in poor condition. The alpha signals to its hunters which animal to take down and when to strike by using tail movements and the scent from a gland at the tip of its spine above the tail.

Wolves kill to survive. Obviously, they need to eat to maintain strength and health but the way they feast on the prey also reinforces social order. Every member of the family has a designated spot at the carcass and the alpha directs them to their places through various ear postures: moving an ear forward, flattening it back against the head or swivelling it around. The alpha wolf eats the prized internal organs while the beta is entitled to the muscle-meat of the rump and thigh, and the omega and other low ranks are assigned the intestinal contents and less desirable parts such as the backbone and ribs.

The rigid class structure in a wolf pack entails frequent displays of supremacy and respect. When a higher-ranking wolf approaches, a lesser-ranking wolf must slow down, lower itself, and pass to the side with head averted to show deference; or, in an extreme act of passive submission, it may roll onto its back, exposing its throat and belly. The dominant wolf stands over it, stiff-legged and tall, asserting its superiority and its authority in the pack.

READING PASSAGE 2 *

Environmental medicine

– also called conservation medicine, ecological medicine, or medical geology –

A. In simple terms, environmental medicine deals with the interaction between human and animal health and the environment. It concerns the adverse reactions that people have on contact with or exposure to an environmental excitant¹. Ecological health is its primary concern, especially emerging infectious diseases and pathogens from insects, plants and vertebrate animals.

B. Practitioners of environmental medicine work in teams involving many other specialists. As well as doctors, clinicians and medical researchers, there may be marine and climate biologists, toxicologists, veterinarians, geospatial and landscape analysts, even political scientists and economists. This is a very broad approach to the rather simple concept that there are causes for all illnesses, and that what we eat and drink or encounter in our surroundings has a direct impact on our health.

C. Central to environmental medicine is the total load theory developed by the clinical ecologist Theron Randolph, who postulated that illness occurs when the body’s ability to detoxify environmental excitants has reached its capacity. His wide-ranging perception of what makes up those stimuli includes chemical, physical, biological and psychosocial factors. If a person with numerous and/or chronic exposures to environmental chemicals suffers a psychological upset, for example, this could overburden his immune system and result in actual physical illness. In other words, disease is the product of multiple factors.

D. Another Randolph concept is that of individual susceptibility or the variability in the response of individuals to toxic agents. Individuals may be susceptible to any number of excitants but those exposed to the same risk factors do not necessarily develop the same disease, due in large part to genetic predisposition; however, age, gender, nutrition, emotional or physical stress, as well as the particular infectious agents or chemicals and intensity of exposure, all contribute.

E. Adaptation is defined as the ability of an organism to adjust to gradually changing circumstances of its existence, to survive and be successful in a particular environment. Dr Randolph suggested that our bodies, designed for the Stone Age, have not quite caught up with the modern age and consequently, many people suffer diseases from maladaptation, or an inability to deal with some of the new substances that are now part of our environment. He asserted that this could cause exhaustion, irritability, depression, confusion and behavioural problems in children. Numerous traditional medical practitioners, however, are very sceptical of these assertions.

F. Looking at the environment and health together is a way of making distant and nebulous notions, such as global warming, more immediate and important. Even a slight rise in temperature, which the world is already experiencing, has immediate effects. Mosquitoes can expand their range and feed on different migratory birds than usual, resulting in these birds transferring a disease into other countries. Suburban sprawl is seen as more than a socioeconomic problem for it brings an immediate imbalance to the rural ecosystem, increasing population density so people come into closer contact with disease-carrying rodents or other animals. Deforestation also displaces feral animals that may then infect domesticated animals, which enter the food chain and transmit the disease to people. These kinds of connections are fundamental to environmental medicine and the threat of zoonotic disease looms larger.

G. Zoonoses, diseases of animals transmissible to humans, are a huge concern. Different types of pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites, cause zoonoses. Every year, millions of people worldwide get sick because of foodborne bacteria such as salmonella and campylobacter, which cause fever, diarrhoea and abdominal pain. Tens of thousands of people die from the rabies virus after being bitten by rabid animals like dogs and bats. Viral zoonoses like avian influenza (bird flu), swine flu (H1N1 virus) and Ebola are on the increase with more frequent, often uncontainable, outbreaks. Some animals (particularly domestic pets) pass on fungal infections to humans. Parasitic infection usually occurs when people come into contact with food or water contaminated by animals that are infected with parasites like cryptosporidium, trichinella, or worms.

H. As the human population of the planet increases, encroaching further on animal domains and causing ecological change, inter-professional cooperation is crucial to meet the challenges of dealing with the effects of climate change, emergent cross-species pathogens, rising toxicity in air, water and soil, and uncontrolled development and urbanisation. This can only happen if additional government funds are channelled into the study and practice of environmental medicine.

¹an excitant is a substance which causes a physiological or behavioural response in a person

READING PASSAGE 3 *

Television and Sport

when the medium becomes the stadium

A. The relationship between television and sports is not widely thought of as problematic. For many people, television is a simple medium through which sports can be played, replayed, slowed down, and of course conveniently transmitted live to homes across the planet. What is often overlooked, however, is how television networks have reshaped the very foundations of an industry that they claim only to document. Major television stations immediately seized the revenue-generating prospects of televising sports and this has changed everything, from how they are played to who has a chance to watch them.

B. Before television, for example, live matches could only be viewed in person. For the majority of fans, who were unable to afford tickets to the top-flight matches, or to travel the long distances required to see them, the only option was to attend a local game instead, where the stakes were much lower. As a result, thriving social networks and sporting communities formed around the efforts of teams in the third and fourth divisions and below. With the advent of live TV, however, premier matches suddenly became affordable and accessible to hundreds of millions of new viewers. This shift in viewing patterns vacuumed out the support base of local clubs, many of which ultimately folded.

C. For those on the more prosperous side of this shift in viewing behaviour, however, the financial rewards are substantial. Television assisted in derailing long-held concerns in many sports about whether athletes should remain amateurs or ‘go pro’, and replaced this system with a new paradigm where nearly all athletes are free to pursue stardom and to make money from their sporting prowess. For the last few decades, top-level sports men and women have signed lucrative endorsement deals and sponsorship contracts, turning many into multi-millionaires and also allowing them to focus full-time on what really drives them. That they can do all this without harming their prospects at the Olympic Games and other major competitions is a significant benefit for these athletes.

D. The effects of television extend further, however, and in many instances have led to changes in sporting codes themselves. Prior to televised coverage of the Winter Olympics, for example, figure skating involved a component in which skaters drew ‘figures’ in the ice, which were later evaluated for the precision of their shapes. This component translated poorly to the small screen, as viewers found the whole procedure, including the judging of minute scratches on ice, to be monotonous and dull. Ultimately, figures were scrapped in favour of a short programme featuring more telegenic twists and jumps. Other sports are awash with similar regulatory shifts – passing the ball back to the goalkeeper was banned in football after gameplay at the 1990 World Cup was deemed overly defensive by television viewers.

E. In addition to insinuating changes into sporting regulation, television also tends to favour some individual sports over others. Some events, such as the Tour de France, appear to benefit: on television it can be viewed in its entirety, whereas on-site enthusiasts will only witness a tiny part of the spectacle. Wrestling, perhaps due to an image problem that repelled younger (and highly prized) television viewers, was scheduled for removal from the 2020 Olympic Games despite being a founding sport and a fixture of the Olympics since 708 BC. Only after a fervent outcry from supporters was that decision overturned.

F. Another change in the sporting landscape that television has triggered is the framing of sports not merely in terms of the level of skill and athleticism involved, but as personal narratives of triumph, shame and redemption on the part of individual competitors. This is made easier and more convincing through the power of close-up camera shots, profiles and commentary shown during extended build-ups to live events. It also attracts television audiences – particularly women – who may be less interested in the intricacies of the sport than they are in broader ‘human interest’ stories. As a result, many viewers are now more familiar with the private agonies of famous athletes than with their record scores or matchday tactics.

G. And what about the effects of male television viewership? Certainly, men have always been willing to watch male athletes at the top of their game, but female athletes participating in the same sports have typically attracted far less interest and, as a result, have suffered greatly reduced exposure on television. Those sports where women can draw the crowds – beach volleyball, for example – are often those where female participants are encouraged to dress and behave in ways oriented specifically toward a male demographic.

H. Does all this suggest the influence of television on sports has been overwhelmingly negative? The answer will almost certainly depend on who among the various stakeholders is asked. For all those who have lost out – lower-league teams, athletes whose sports lack a certain visual appeal – there are numerous others who have benefitted enormously from the partnership between television and sports, and whose livelihoods now depend on it.

British Council IELTS Reading Test 05

READING PASSAGE 1 *

The Discovery of Penicillin

The Scottish bacteriologist Dr Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) is credited with the discovery of penicillin in London in 1928. He had been working at St Mary’s Hospital on the bacteriology of septic wounds. As a medic during World War I, he had witnessed the deaths of many wounded soldiers from infection and he had observed that the use of harsh antiseptics, rather than healing the body, actually harmed the blood corpuscles that destroy bacteria.

In his search for effective antimicrobial agents, Fleming was cultivating staphylococcus bacteria in Petri dishes containing agar¹. Before going on holiday in the summer of 1928, he piled up the agar plates to make room for someone else to use his workbench in his absence and left the windows open. When he returned to work two weeks later, Fleming noticed mould growing on those culture plates that had not been fully immersed in sterilising agent. This was not an unusual phenomenon, except in this case the particular mould seemed to have killed the staphylococcus aureus immediately surrounding it. He realised that this mould had potential.

Fleming consulted a mycologist called C J La Touche, who occupied a laboratory downstairs containing many mould specimens (possibly the source of the original contamination), and they concluded it was the Penicillium genus of ascomycetous fungi. Fleming continued to experiment with the mould on other pathogenic bacteria, finding that it successfully killed a large number of them. Importantly, it was also non-toxic, so here was a bacteria-destroying agent that could be used as an antiseptic in wounds without damaging the human body. However, he was unsuccessful in his attempts to isolate the active antibacterial element, which he called penicillin. In 1929, he wrote a paper on his findings, published in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, but it failed to kindle any interest at the time.

In 1938, Dr Howard Florey, a professor of pathology at Oxford University, came across Fleming’s paper. In collaboration with his colleague Dr Ernst Chain, and other skilled chemists, he worked on producing a usable drug. They experimented on mice infected with streptococcus. Those untreated died, while those injected with penicillin survived. It was time to test the drug on humans but they could not produce enough – it took 2,000 litres of mould culture fluid to acquire enough penicillin to treat a single patient. Their first case in 1940, an Oxford police officer who was near death as a result of infection by both staphylococci and streptococci, rallied after five days of treatment but, when the supply of penicillin ran out, he eventually died.

In 1941, Florey and biochemist Dr Norman Heatley went to the United States to team up with American scientists with a view to finding a way of making large quantities of the drug. It became obvious that Penicillium notatum would never generate enough penicillin for effective treatments so they began to look for a more productive species. One day a laboratory assistant turned up with a melon covered in mould. This fungus was Penicillium chrysogeum, which produced 200 times more penicillin than Fleming’s original species but, with further enhancement and filtration, it was induced to yield 1,000 times as much as Penicillium notatum. Manufacture could begin in earnest.

The standardisation and large-scale production of the penicillin drug during World War II and its availability for treating wounded soldiers undoubtedly saved many lives. Penicillin proved to be very effective in the treatment of pneumococcal pneumonia – the death rate in WWII was 1% compared to 18% in WWI. It has since proved its worth in the treatment of many life-threatening infections such as tuberculosis, meningitis, diphtheria and several sexually-transmitted diseases.

Fleming has always been acknowledged as the discoverer of penicillin. However, the development of a commercial penicillin drug was due to the skill of chemical scientists Florey, Chain and others who overcame the difficulties of converting it into a usable form. Fleming and Florey received knighthoods in 1944 and they, together with Chain, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945. Heatley’s contribution seems to have been overlooked until, in 1990, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of medicine by Oxford University – the first in its 800-year history.

Fleming was mindful of the dangers of resistance to penicillin early on and he expressly warned on many occasions against overuse of the drug, because this would lead to bacterial resistance. Ironically, the occurrence of resistance is pushing the drive today to find new, more powerful antibiotics.

—————–

¹agar is a culture medium based on a seaweed extract – used for growing microorganisms in laboratories

READING PASSAGE 2 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2

Daylight Saving Time

Each year in many countries around the world, clocks are set forward in spring and then back again in autumn in an effort to ‘save’ daylight hours. Like many modern practices, Daylight Savings Time (DST) dates back to ancient civilisations. The Romans would adjust their routines to the sun’s schedule by using different scales in their water clocks for different months of the year.

This practice fell out of favour, however, and the concept was renewed only when, in 1784, the American inventor Benjamin Franklin wrote a jocular article for The Journal of Paris exhorting the city’s residents to make more use of daylight hours in order to reduce candle use. In 1895, in a more serious effort, New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson proposed a biannual two-hour shift closely resembling current forms of DST. His cause was not taken up, however, until Germany first pushed their clocks forward in April 1916 as part of a drive to save fuel in World War I.

Over the next several decades, global use of DST was sporadic and inconsistent. Countries such as the UK and USA adopted DST in World Wars I and II, but reverted to standard time after the wars ended. In the USA, the decision to use DST was determined by states and municipalities between 1945 and 1966, causing widespread confusion for transport and broadcasting schedules until Congress implemented the Uniform Time Act in 1966.

Today, DST is used in some form by over 70 countries worldwide, affecting around one sixth of the world’s population. There is still no uniform standard, however. Countries such as Egypt and Russia have adjusted their policies on multiple occasions in recent years, in some instances leading to considerable turmoil. Muslim countries often suspend DST for the month of Ramadan. The European Union finally standardised DST in 2000, while the USA’s most recent adjustments were introduced with the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

In general, the benefits of DST are considerable and well documented. Perhaps the most significant factor in terms of popular support is the chance to make better use of daylight in the evening. With extended daylight hours, office workers coming off a 9 to 5 shift can often take part in outdoor recreational activities for an hour or two. This has other positive effects, such as reducing domestic electricity consumption as more opportunities become available to use sunlight instead of artificial lighting. A further benefit is a reduction in the overall rate of automobile accidents, as DST ensures that streets are well lit at peak hours.

Many industries are supportive of DST due to the opportunities it provides for increased revenue. Extended daylight hours mean people are more likely to stay out later in the evening and spend more money in bars and restaurants, for example, so tourism and hospitality are two sectors that stand to gain a lot from more daylight. In Queensland, Australia, which elected not to implement DST due to complaints from dairy farmers over disruption to milking schedules, the annual drain on the state’s economy is estimated to be as high as $4 billion.

Some research casts doubt on the advantages of DST, however. Although the overall incidence of traffic accidents is lower, for pedestrians the risk of being hit by a car in the evening increases by as much as 186 per cent in the weeks after clocks are set back in autumn, possibly because drivers have not yet adjusted to earlier sunsets. Although this shift does in turn make streets safer in early mornings, the risk to pedestrians is not offset simply because fewer pedestrians use the streets at that time.

A further health concern involves the disruption of our body clock. Setting clocks one hour forward at night can cause many people to lose sleep, resulting in tiredness and all its well-documented effects, such as mood swings, reduced productivity and problems with overall physical well-being. In 2008, a Swedish study found that heart attack rates spike in the few days following the switch to DST for summer. Tiredness may also be a factor behind the increase in road accidents in the week after DST begins.

Finally, safety issues have arisen in parts of Latin America relating to a suspected relationship between DST and higher incidences of street crime. In 2008, Guatemala chose not to use DST because it forced office workers to leave their homes while it was still dark outside in the morning. This natural cover for criminals was thought to increase incidents of crime at this hour.

READING PASSAGE 3 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

WILLPOWER

Although willpower does not shape our decisions, it determines whether and how long we can follow through on them. It almost single-handedly determines life outcomes. Interestingly, research suggests the general population is indeed aware of how essential willpower is to their wellbeing; survey participants routinely identify a ‘lack of willpower’ as the major impediment to making beneficial life changes. There are, however, misunderstandings surrounding the nature of willpower and how we can acquire more of it. There is a widespread misperception, for example, that increased leisure time would lead to subsequent increases in willpower.

Although the concept of willpower is often explained through single-word terms, such as ‘resolve’ or ‘drive’, it refers in fact to a variety of behaviours and situations. There is a common perception that willpower entails resisting some kind of a ‘treat’, such as a sugary drink or a lazy morning in bed, in favour of decisions that we know are better for us, such as drinking water or going to the gym. Of course this is a familiar phenomenon for all. Yet willpower also involves elements such as overriding negative thought processes, biting your tongue in social situations, or persevering through a difficult activity. At the heart of any exercise of willpower, however, is the notion of ‘delayed gratification’, which involves resisting immediate satisfaction for a course that will yield greater or more permanent satisfaction in the long run.

Scientists are making general investigations into why some individuals are better able than others to delay gratification and thus employ their willpower, but the genetic or environmental origins of this ability remain a mystery for now. Some groups who are particularly vulnerable to reduced willpower capacity, such as those with addictive personalities, may claim a biological origin for their problems. What is clear is that levels of willpower typically remain consistent over time (studies tracking individuals from early childhood to their adult years demonstrate a remarkable consistency in willpower abilities). In the short term, however, our ability to draw on willpower can fluctuate dramatically due to factors such as fatigue, diet and stress. Indeed, research by Matthew Gailliot suggests that willpower, even in the absence of physical activity, both requires and drains blood glucose levels, suggesting that willpower operates more or less like a ‘muscle’, and, like a muscle, requires fuel for optimum functioning.

These observations lead to an important question: if the strength of our willpower at the age of thirty-five is somehow pegged to our ability at the age of four, are all efforts to improve our willpower certain to prove futile? According to newer research, this is not necessarily the case. Gregory M. Walton, for example, found that a single verbal cue – telling research participants how strenuous mental tasks could ‘energise’ them for further challenging activities – made a profound difference in terms of how much willpower participants could draw upon to complete the activity. Just as our willpower is easily drained by negative influences, it appears that willpower can also be boosted by other prompts, such as encouragement or optimistic self-talk.

Strengthening willpower thus relies on a two-pronged approach: reducing negative influences and improving positive ones. One of the most popular and effective methods simply involves avoiding willpower depletion triggers, and is based on the old adage, ‘out of sight, out of mind’. In one study, workers who kept a bowl of enticing candy on their desks were far more likely to indulge than those who placed it in a desk drawer. It also appears that finding sources of motivation from within us may be important. In another study, Mark Muraven found that those who felt compelled by an external authority to exert self-control experienced far greater rates of willpower depletion than those who identified their own reasons for taking a particular course of action. This idea that our mental convictions can influence willpower was borne out by Veronika Job. Her research indicates that those who think that willpower is a finite resource exhaust their supplies of this commodity long before those who do not hold this opinion.

Willpower is clearly fundamental to our ability to follow through on our decisions but, as psychologist Roy Baumeister has discovered, a lack of willpower may not be the sole impediment every time our good intentions fail to manifest themselves. A critical precursor, he suggests, is motivation – if we are only mildly invested in the change we are trying to make, our efforts are bound to fall short. This may be why so many of us abandon our New Year’s Resolutions – if these were actions we really wanted to take, rather than things we felt we ought to be doing, we would probably be doing them already. In addition, Muraven emphasises the value of monitoring progress towards a desired result, such as by using a fitness journal, or keeping a record of savings toward a new purchase. The importance of motivation and monitoring cannot be overstated. Indeed, it appears that, even when our willpower reserves are entirely depleted, motivation alone may be sufficient to keep us on the course we originally chose.

British Council IELTS Reading Test 06

READING PASSAGE 1 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Sending money home

the economics of migrant remittances

A. Every year millions of migrants travel vast distances using borrowed money for their airfares and taking little or no cash with them. They seek a decent job to support themselves with money left over that they can send home to their families in developing countries. These remittances exceeded $400 billion last year. It is true that the actual rate per person is only about $200 per month but it all adds up to about triple the amount officially spent on development aid.

B. In some of the poorer, unstable or conflict-torn countries, these sums of money are a lifeline – the only salvation for those left behind. The decision to send money home is often inspired by altruism – an unselfish desire to help others. Then again, the cash might simply be an exchange for earlier services rendered by the recipients or it could be intended for investment by the recipients. Often it will be repayment of a loan used to finance the migrant’s travel and resettlement.

C. At the first sign of trouble, political or financial upheaval, these personal sources of support do not suddenly dry up like official investment monies. Actually, they increase in order to ease the hardship and suffering of the migrants’ families and, unlike development aid, which is channelled through government or other official agencies, remittances go straight to those in need. Thus, they serve an insurance role, responding in a countercyclical way to political and economic crises.

D. This flow of migrant money has a huge economic and social impact on the receiving countries. It provides cash for food, housing and necessities. It funds education and healthcare and contributes towards the upkeep of the elderly. Extra money is sent for special events such as weddings, funerals or urgent medical procedures and other emergencies. Occasionally it becomes the capital for starting up a small enterprise.

E. Unfortunately, recipients hardly ever receive the full value of the money sent back home because of exorbitant transfer fees. Many money transfer companies and banks operate on a fixed fee, which is unduly harsh for those sending small sums at a time. Others charge a percentage, which varies from around 8% to 20% or more dependent on the recipient country. There are some countries where there is a low fixed charge per transaction; however, these cheaper fees are not applied internationally because of widespread concern over money laundering. Whether this is a genuine fear or just an excuse is hard to say. If the recipients live in a small village somewhere, usually the only option is to obtain their money through the local post office. Regrettably, many governments allow post offices to have an exclusive affiliation with one particular money transfer operator so there is no alternative but to pay the extortionate charge.

F. The sums of money being discussed here might seem negligible on an individual basis but they are substantial in totality. If the transfer cost could be reduced to no more than one per cent, that would release another $30 billion dollars annually – approximately the total aid budget of the USA, the largest donor worldwide – directly into the hands of the world’s poorest. If this is not practicable, governments could at least acknowledge that small remittances do not come from organised crime networks, and ease regulations accordingly. They should put an end to restrictive alliances between post offices and money transfer operators or at least open up the system to competition. Alternately, a non-government humanitarian organisation, which would have the expertise to navigate the elaborate red tape, could set up a non-profit remittance platform for migrants to send money home for little or no cost.

G. Whilst contemplating the best system for transmission of migrant earnings to the home country, one should consider the fact that migrants often manage to save reasonable amounts of money in their adopted country. More often than not, that money is in the form of bank deposits earning a tiny percentage of interest, none at all or even a negative rate of interest.

H. If a developing country or a large charitable society could sell bonds with a guaranteed return of three or four per cent on the premise that the invested money would be used to build infrastructure in that country, there would be a twofold benefit. Migrants would make a financial gain and see their savings put to work in the development of their country of origin. The ideal point of sale for these bonds would be the channel used for money transfers so that, when migrants show up to make their monthly remittance, they could buy bonds as well. Advancing the idea one step further, why not make this transmission hub the conduit for affluent migrants to donate to worthy causes in their homeland so they may share their prosperity with their compatriots on a larger scale?

READING PASSAGE 2 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Angelo Mosso’s Pioneering Work in the Study of Human Physiology

A. Scientists in the late nineteenth century were beginning to investigate the functions of blood circulation, trying to tease out the reasons for variations in pulse and pressure and to understand the delivery of energy to the functioning parts of our bodies. Angelo Mosso (1846–1910) was one such pioneer, an Italian physiologist who progressed to become a professor of both pharmacology and physiology at the University of Turin. As was true of many of his enlightened, well-educated contemporaries, Mosso was concerned about the effect of the industrial revolution on the poorer working classes. Hard physical labour and an excessively long working day shortened lives, created conditions conducive to accidents, and crippled the children who were forced into such work at a very early age. One of his most influential contributions to society came from his work and writings on fatigue.

B. Early experimenters in any field find themselves having to construct previously unknown equipment to investigate fields of study as yet unexplored. Mosso had reviewed the work of fellow scientists who had worked on isolated muscles, such as those extracted from frogs, and who had observed movement and fatigue when these were stimulated electrically. He found two major issues with their methodolgy: there was a lack of evidence both that the findings would be relevant to the human body, and that the dynamometers used to measure the strength of movement could give accurate results. He therefore became determined to construct an instrument to measure human muscular effort and record the effects of fatigue with greater precision.

C. His device was named an ergograph, meaning “work recorder”. To modern eyes it seems remarkably simple, but such is true of many inventions when viewed with hindsight. It allowed the measurement of the work done by a finger as it was repetitively curled up and straightened. There were basically two parts. One held the hand in position, palm up, by strapping down the arm to a wooden base; this was important to prevent any unintentional movement of the hand while the experiment was taking place. The other part was a recording device that drew the movements of the finger vertically on a paper cylinder which revolved by tiny increments as the experiment proceeded. The index and ring fingers of the hand were each inserted into a brass tube to hold them still. The middle finger was encircled with a leather ring tied to a wire which was connected to a weight after passing through a pulley. The finger had to raise and lower the weight, with the length and speed of these flexions recorded on the paper by a stylus. In this way, he not only learned the fatigue profiles of his subjects but could observe a relationship between performance, tiredness and the emotional state of his subjects.

D. Mosso’s interest in the interaction between psychology and physiology led to another machine and further groundbreaking research. He was intrigued to observe the pulsing of circulating blood in patients who had suffered traumatic damage to the skull, or cranium. In these patients, a lack of bone covering the brain allowed the strength of the heart’s pumping to be seen beneath the skin. He carried out experiments to see whether certain intellectual activities, such as reading or solving a problem, or emotional responses, such as to a sudden noise, would affect the supply of blood to the brain. He detected some changes in blood supply, and then wanted to find out if the same would be true of individuals with no cranial damage.

E. His solution was to design another instrument to measure brain activity in uninjured subjects. He designed a wooden table-top for the human subject to lie on, which was placed over another table, balanced on a fulcrum (rather like a seesaw) that would allow the subject to tilt, with head a little higher than feet, or vice versa. Heavy weights beneath the table maintained the stability of the whole unit as the intention was to measure very tiny variations in the balance of the person. Once the upper table was adjusted to be perfectly horizontal, only the breathing created a slight regular oscillation. This breathing and pulses measured in the hands and feet were also recorded.

F. Once all was in equilibrium, Mosso would ring a bell, while out of sight of the subject. His hypothesis was that this aural stimulus would have to be interpreted by the brain, and that an increased blood flow would result in a slight head-down tilt of the table. Mosso followed the bell-ringing with a wide range of intellectual stimuli, such as reading from a newspaper, a novel, or a university text. He was no doubt well satisfied to observe that the tilting of the table increased proportionately to the difficulty of the subject matter and the intellectual requirements of the task. Mosso’s experiments indicated a direct link between mental effort and an increased volume of blood in the brain. This research was one of the first attempts to ‘image’ the brain, which is now performed by technology such as MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), commonly used in making medical diagnoses today.

READING PASSAGE 3 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Who Wrote Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare is the Western world’s most famous playwright – but did he really write the plays and poems that are attributed to him?

There has been controversy over the authorship of the works of Shakespeare since the nineteenth century. The initial impetus for this debate came from the fact that nineteenth century critics, poets and readers were puzzled and displeased when they were presented with the few remaining scraps of evidence about the life of “Shakspere”, as his name was most commonly spelled. The author they admired and loved must have been scholarly and intellectual, linguistically gifted, knowledgeable about the lifestyle of those who lived in royal courts, and he appeared to have travelled in Europe.

These critics felt that the son of a Stratford glove-maker, whose only definite recorded dealings concerned buying property, some minor legal action over a debt, tax records, and the usual entries for birth, marriage and death, could not possibly have written poetry based on Classical models. Nor could he have been responsible for the wide-ranging intellectually and emotionally challenging plays for which he is so famous, because, in the nineteenth century world-view, writers inevitably called upon their own experiences for the content of their work.

By compiling the various bits and pieces of surviving evidence, most Shakespearian scholars have satisfied themselves that the man from Stratford is indeed the legitimate author of all the works published under his name. A man called William Shakespeare did become a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the dramatic company that owned the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres, and he enjoyed exclusive rights to the publication and performance of the dramatic works. There are 23 extant contemporary documents that indicate that he was a well-known poet or playwright. Publication and even production of plays had to be approved by government officials, who are recorded as having met with Shakespeare to discuss authorship and licensing of some of the plays, for example, ‘King Lear’.

However, two Elizabethans who are still strongly defended as the true Shakespeare are Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere, both of whom would have benefited from writing under the secrecy of an assumed name.

Marlowe’s writing is acknowledged by all as the precursor of Shakespeare’s dramatic verse style: declamatory blank verse that lifted and ennobled the content of the plays. The records indicate that he was accused of being an atheist: denying the existence of God would have been punishable by the death penalty. He is recorded as having ‘died’ in a street fight before Shakespeare’s greatest works were written, and therefore it is suggested that he may have continued producing literary works while in hiding from the authorities.

De Vere was Earl of Oxford and an outstanding Classical scholar as a child. He was a strong supporter of the arts, including literature, music and acting. He is also recorded as being a playwright, although no works bearing his name still exist. However, in 16th century England it was not acceptable for an aristocrat to publish verse for ordinary people, nor to have any personal dealings with the low-class denizens of popular theatre.

To strengthen the case for their respective alternatives, literary detectives have looked for relationships between the biographies of their chosen authors and the published works of Shakespeare. However, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there was no tradition of basing plays on the author’s own life experiences, and therefore, the focus of this part of the debate has shifted to the sonnets. These individual poems of sixteen lines are sincerely felt reactions to emotionally charged situations such as love and death, a goldmine for the biographically inclined researcher.

The largest group of these poems express love and admiration and, interestingly, they are written to a “Mr W.H.” This person is clearly a nobleman, yet he is sometimes given forthright advice by the poet, suggesting that the writing comes from a mature father figure. How can de Vere or Marlowe be established as the author of the sonnets?

As the son of a tradesman, Marlowe had no aristocratic status; unlike Shakespeare, however, he did attend and excel at Cambridge University where he mingled with the wealthy. Any low-born artist needed a rich patron, and such is the argument for his authorship of the sonnets. The possible recipient of these sonnets is Will Hatfield, a minor noble who was wealthy and could afford to contribute to the arts; this young man’s friendship would have assisted a budding poet and playwright. Marlowe’s defenders contend that expressions of love between men were common at this time and had none of the homosexual connotations that Westerners of the twenty-first century may ascribe to them.

The Earl of Oxford had no need of a wealthy patron. The object of De Vere’s sonnets, it is suggested, is Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, whose name only fits the situation if one accepts that it is not uncommon to reverse the first and surnames on formal occasions. De Vere was a rash and careless man and, because of his foolish behaviour, he fell out of favour with Queen Elizabeth herself. He needed, not an artistic patron, but someone like Henry to put in a good word for him in the complex world of the royal court. This, coupled with a genuine affection for the young man, may have inspired the continuing creation of poems addressed to him. Some even postulate that the mix of love and stern advice may stem from the fact that Henry was de Vere’s illegitimate son, though there is no convincing evidence of this fact.

British Council IELTS Reading Test 07

READING PASSAGE 1 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Cathy Freeman – Australian’s track queen

A. Runner Cathy Freeman is the first Aborigine, the name given to indigenous Australians, ever to compete in the Olympics, and the first to wave the Aboriginal flag at a sporting event. Freeman lit the Olympic flame at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, and won a gold medal in the 400 meters at those Games.

B. Freeman’s grandmother was part of the “stolen generation” of Aboriginal people in Australia—from the early 20th century until the 1970s; many Aboriginal children were taken from their parents to be raised in state-run institutions. This practice was intended to remove the children from the poverty, disease, and addiction that plagued many aboriginal people, but it also resulted in tragically broken family ties and loss of ancient cultural traditions. Although Freeman was not taken from her family, she had a difficult childhood. Both her younger sister and her father died when she was young.

C. When Freeman was still a girl; her talent in running was obvious. Her mother, Cecilia, encouraged her to pursue her interest in athletics, and when she was ten, her stepfather told her she could win a gold medal at the Olympics if she trained properly. However, although she had the talent, she was also a member of a minority group that historically had not had access to the same resources that other athletes had. Freeman was one of only a few Aborigines who won a scholarship to a boarding school where she could learn and train.

D. At the age of 15, she competed at the National School Championships, and did well enough to be encouraged to try out for the 1990 Commonwealth Games team. She made the team as a sprinter, and was a member of the 4 X 100-meter relay team, which won gold at the Commonwealth Games. In 1990, she competed in the Australian National Championships, winning the 200 meters, and then ran in the 100, 200, and 4 X 100-meter races at the World Junior Games. During this time, she met Nick Bideau, an Australian track official who would later become her coach, manager, and boyfriend.

E. In 1992, she competed in the 400-meter relay at the Barcelona Olympics, making it to the second qualifying round. She was also a member of the 4 X 100 meter team, which ran in the final but did not win a medal. At the World Junior Championships in 1992, she won a silver medal in the 200 meters. In 1993, she made it to the semifinals in the 200 meters in the World Championships.

F. In 1994, Freeman won the 200 meters and the 400 meters at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. After winning the 400 meters, Freeman ran her victory lap, carrying not the Australian national flag, but the red, black, and yellow Aboriginal flag. She was criticised in the press, and Australian team leader Arthur Tunstall told her she should not display the flag again. Freeman used the publicity she got to publicly discuss what the flag meant to Aboriginal people, explaining its symbolism: red for earth, yellow for sun, and black for skin. Defying Tunstall’s orders, she ran with the flag again after winning the 200 meters.

G. At the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, Freeman won a silver medal in the 400 meters. After those Games, she broke off her romantic relationship with Bideau, although he continued as her manager. Freeman won the World Championships in the 400 meters in 1997 and 1998, even though she suffered a heel injury in 1998.

H. In 1999, Freeman met Alexander Bodecker, an American executive for the Nike shoe company, and the two fell in love. As a result, her relationship with Bideau became strained, and she eventually fired him. Freeman and Bodecker were married on September 19, 1999, in San Francisco. Bideau subsequently claimed that she owed him over $2 million in assets from deals he negotiated while he represented her, leading to a long court battle.

I. Freeman was, of course, Australia’s favourite to win a gold medal in the 400 meters at the 2000 Olympics, held in Sydney. Like any athlete, Freeman wanted to win in order to meet her own goals, but she also knew that she was viewed as a representative of the Aboriginal people, and she wanted to win for them. “I could feel the crowd all over me,” she told Mark Shimabukuro in the Sporting News. “I felt the emotion being absorbed into every part of my body.” When she won, with a time of 49.11 seconds, she was so relieved that she dropped to her knees on the track after completing the race.

J. Freeman’s shoes were yellow, black, and red, traditional Aboriginal colours, but after she won, she took them off and ran her victory lap, in traditional Aboriginal style, carrying both the Australian and Aboriginal flags around the track as the crowd cheered. This time, instead of being criticised for carrying the Aboriginal flag around the track; she was widely celebrated by the Australian media and public.

READING PASSAGE 2 * (Questions 15-26)

The world’s desire for plastic is dangerous

A. A million plastic bottles are purchased around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change. The demand, equivalent to about 20,000 bottles being bought every second, is driven by an apparently insatiable desire for bottled water and the spread of a western, urbanised culture to China and the Asia Pacific region.

B. More than 480 billion plastic drinking bottles were sold in 2016 across the world, up from about 300 billion a decade ago. If placed end to end, they would extend more than halfway to the sun. By 2021 this will increase to 583.3 billion, according to the most up-to-date estimates.

C. Most plastic bottles, which are used for soft drinks and water, are made from Pet plastic, which is highly recyclable. But as their use grows rapidly across the globe, efforts to collect and recycle the bottles to keep them from polluting the oceans, are failing to keep up. For instance, fewer than half of the bottles bought in 2016 were collected for recycling and just 7% of those collected were turned into new bottles. Instead most plastic bottles produced end up in rubbish dumps or in the ocean.

D. Whilst the production of single use plastics has grown dramatically over the last 20 years, the systems to contain, control, reuse and recycle them just haven’t kept pace. In the UK 38.5 million plastic bottles are used every day – only just over half make it to recycling, while more than 16 million are put into rubbish dumps, burnt or leak into the environment and oceans each day. “Plastic production is set to double in the next 20 years and grow by 4 times that by 2050 so the time to act is now,” according to environmentalist. There has been growing concern about the impact of plastics pollution in oceans around the world. Last month scientists found nearly 18 tonnes of plastic on one of the world’s most remote islands, an uninhabited place in the South Pacific.

E. The majority of plastic bottles used across the globe are for drinking water, according to Rosemary Downey, head of packaging at Euromonitor and one of the world’s experts in plastic bottle production. China is responsible for most of the increase in demand. The Chinese public’s consumption of bottled water accounted for nearly a quarter of global demand, she said. “It is a critical country to understand when examining global sales of plastic Pet bottles, and China’s requirement for plastic bottles continues to expand,” said Downey. In 2015, consumers in China purchased 68.4 billion bottles of water and in 2016 this increased to 73.8 billion bottles, up 5.4 billion. “This increase is being driven by increased urbanisation,” said Downey. “There is a desire for healthy living and there are ongoing concerns about contamination of water and the quality of tap water, which all contribute to the increase in bottle water use,” she said. India and Southeast Asia are also witnessing strong growth, which is bound to cause problems in the future for the planet.

F. Major drinks brands produce the greatest numbers of plastic bottles. Coca-Cola produces more than 100 billion single use plastic bottles every year – or 3,400 a second, according to analysis carried out by Greenpeace after the company refused to publicly disclose its global plastic usage. The top six drinks companies in the world use a combined average of just 6.6% of recycled Pet in their products, according to Greenpeace. A third have no targets to increase their use of recycled plastic and none are aiming to use 100% across their global production.

G. Plastic drinking bottles could be made out of 100% recycled plastic, known as RPet – and campaigners are pressing big drinks companies to radically increase the amount of recycled plastic in their bottles. But brands are hostile to using RPet for cosmetic reasons because they want their products in shiny, clear plastic. The industry is also resisting any taxes or charges to reduce demand for single-use plastic bottles – like the 5p charge on plastic bags that is credited with reducing plastic bag use by 80%.

H. Coca Cola said it was still considering requests from Greenpeace to publish its global plastics usage. The company said: “Globally, we continue to increase the use of recycled plastic in countries where it is feasible and permitted. We continue to increase the use of RPet in markets where it is feasible and approved for regulatory food-grade use – 44 countries of the more than 200 we operate in.” Coca Cola agreed plastic bottles could be made out of 100 per cent recycled plastic but there was nowhere near enough high quality food grade plastic available on the scale that was needed to increase the quantity of RPet to that level. “So if we are to increase the amount of recycled plastic in our bottles even further then a new approach is needed to create a circular economy for plastic bottles,” Coca Cola said.

I. Greenpeace said the big six drinks companies had to do more to increase the recycled content of their plastic bottles. “During Greenpeace’s recent exploration of plastic pollution on remote Scottish coast, we found plastic bottles nearly everywhere we went,” said Louisa Casson, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace. “It’s clear that the soft drinks industry needs to reduce its plastic waste.”

READING PASSAGE 3 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

On the trail of Africa’s wild dogs

Just before dawn at a National Park in North Eastern South Africa, Micaela Szykman stands on a hill with a radio transmitter held in the air, listening for signals from the radio collars of African wild dogs. If the dogs are within range, Szykman jumps back into her four-wheel drive to catch up with them before they awake. Szykman, a researcher at the Smithsonian National Animal Park in Washington, D.C., is tracking the dogs for a park project.

The African wild dog, officially named Lycaon pictus, and also called the painted wolf or the Cape hunting dog is the victim mainly of human hunting. The dog is listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union. Lycaon pictus once roamed most of sub-Saharan Africa. Now only about 5,000 dogs can be found in isolated pockets of the continent.

In 1997, 2000, and 2003, wildlife managers reintroduced several packs of wild dogs from elsewhere in South Africa to this park in the hope of rebuilding the species. Wildlife officials and scientists like Szykman are watching and studying the reintroduction because such programs are integral to Lycaon’s survival.

Adult wild dogs, with round saucer-like ears and a “painted” black, white, brown, and yellow coat, weigh up to 25 kilograms and stand about 60 centimetres with a delicate build. “This is one of the most intensely social animals out there,” said Szykman, a behavioural scientist. “The entire pack, sometimes up to 20 dogs, always hunts, plays, walks, and feeds together. They never leave an animal behind and are always strengthening social bonds.” Each pack has only one breeding pair, and the rest of the pack helps raise the annual litter, up to 20 pups, one of the largest litter sizes of all African animals. Lycaon pictus hunts in packs and Szykman’s job is particularly difficult because wild dogs are tough to track. They travel up to 30 kilometres daily, with vast home ranges, 600 to 800 square kilometres on average.

“As a discipline, the science of reintroduction has been poorly studied,” said Steven Monfort, a research veterinarian at the Conservation and Research Centre in Front Royal, Virginia. “Reintroduction is not easy. Governments set aside land, and other people dump animals in there, which makes them feel good. If the animals increase, the reintroduction is a big success. If numbers fall nobody knows what went wrong,” Monfort said. The dogs’ radio collars provide only limited contact. Monfort has proposed the development of a satellite-tagging system so that Szykman and Monfort can track the animals year-round and mark their range, including how close they come to humans and other threats.

The researchers also hope to expand the use of satellite collars to hyenas and lions to understand how competition with these animals affects the dogs’ reproduction and survival. These two species also play a role in reducing African wild dog numbers. “If you fence in a reserve or surround a wild area with human settlement then you need to adjust the species levels to maintain healthy populations of dogs, hyenas, and lions which are all interacting on overlapping areas of land,” said Monfort.

To Scott Creel, a behavioural scientist at Montana State University in Bozeman, reintroduction is the right approach for South Africa. “Reintroduction is exciting because it beats caged management in zoos. But in the long term, it is useless unless it results in larger, well-protected reserves or changes patterns of land use. These wild dog populations won’t be self sustaining unless the land area is large enough” said Creel, co-author of The African Wild Dog: Behaviour, Ecology and Conservation. “There’s a long history of reintroduction there. They have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.”

Hunting drastically reduced the wild dog population in South Africa except for Kruger National Park where there are approximately 300 to 500 dogs. Though Creel is also not convinced that the reintroduced wild dog population will thrive without hands-on management, he supports the effort because reintroduction of these animals at smaller satellite parks and private reserves raises the national wild dog population and is an insurance policy if disease hits. Already the luck of African wild dogs is changing. In the past, farmers often just shot the dogs on sight. Now when somebody sees the dogs outside the reserve, Szykman gets a call about their location.

British Council IELTS Reading Test 08

READING PASSAGE 1 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-12 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

How we manage the land on Earth

Overpopulation, climate change, mass migration, farming issues and the use of natural resources are all affecting our relationship with terra firma, and it has never been more complicated. It is increasingly looking like Earth’s land is being overlooked rather than valued as precious resource.

For those living in Malé, the overcrowded capital of the Maldives, there is no choice but to build upwards. Caged by the sea, they have no more land to spread onto, yet the city’s population has soared by nearly 52% since 2006. The last census in 2014 counted 158,000 people crammed into the city’s 5.7 sq km of space, and officials say the figure has since grown further.

Space is such a premium in Malé that pavements are often less than one metre wide, forcing pedestrians to walk in single file, while many streets have no sidewalk at all.

Malé, capital of the Maldives, is emblematic of modern-day land issues: A small, increasingly urbanising space with a skyrocketing population. Rents have risen exorbitantly and, in some of the poorest areas, up to 40 people can be squeezed into buildings with just 23.2 sq metres of space – about the same size as a small studio flat.

With so many people living under each other’s feet, crime, drugs and domestic violence have risen alarmingly while the city frequently runs out of water. An entirely new island has risen next door out of the sea itself simply from the city’s garbage.

In the early 1990s the tallest buildings in the city were only two storeys high, whereas now the average height is eight storeys and some are as high as 25 storeys high. People are coming here because this is where the health, education and jobs are, but overpopulation is leading to many socioeconomic problems.

Although extreme, Malé is an example in miniature of something that is happening on a far larger scale around the world. With 83 million more people appearing on the planet every year, rising populations are placing increasing pressure on the land.

The UN’s latest estimates state that there are 7.6 billion people jostling for space on Earth at present and that number will rise to 9.8 billion by 2050. By the end of the century, their projections say there could be 11.2 billion people on our planet.

With 83 million more people appearing on the planet every year, rising populations are placing increasing pressure on the land. Each of those people will need somewhere to live, a place to work and fertile land to provide them with food. They will need water and energy to stay warm or to light their way at night. They will want roads to drive on and places to park. For the lucky ones, there will be space for their pastimes and leisure activities.

At first, it can be easy to dismiss fears that mankind may one day run out of space as ridiculous. Physically, the land can easily accommodate 11 billion people – there are around 51.7million sq miles of ice-free land on the planet.

But large tracts of land remain virtually uninhabitable due to their climate or their remote location: Enormous tracts of Siberia are too inhospitable to be lived upon, and the huge landmass at the centre of Australia is too arid to support many people, meaning the majority of its population is clustered along its coastline.

The cities and towns we live in account for less than 3% of the Earth’s total land area, but between 35% and 40% is used for agriculture. As populations grow, many fear that more h land will be used up to grow more food. And land management has a lot to do with resource management – what eat, how we grow it, and how we eat it.

To feed the world’s growing population, a study by researchers at Stanford University estimated that between 10,400-18,900 sq miles of additional land will be required, and that there is a reserve of 1.7 million sq miles thought to be suitable for growing crops left in the world.

The researchers predicted that increasing demand for food, biofuels, industrial forestry and the spread of urbanisation will result in this reserve of land being completely used up by 2050.

The bad news is that the demand for new cropland and pastures for animals is already thought to have caused 80% of the deforestation taking place around the world today, wiping out large areas of rich biodiversity and trees that act as natural sinks for greenhouse gases.

The way we use land right now is extremely inefficient, so much of our land is being used to grow food for livestock – 75% of the world’s agricultural land is used for feeding animals that we then eat ourselves. About 40% of the food grown in the world is also never eaten by anybody – it is thrown away.

READING PASSAGE 2 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 13-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

The monster ships that changed how we travel

When the world’s then-largest ocean liner embarked on its first transatlantic voyage in September 1907, thousands of spectators gathered at the docks of Liverpool to watch. Cunard’s RMS Lusitania had been outfitted with a new type of engine that differed from that of its rivals – and it would go on to break the speed record for the fastest ocean crossing not once, but twice.

Between 1850 and 1900, three British passenger lines – Cunard, Inman and White Star -dominated transatlantic travel. Toward the end of the century, as increasing numbers of emigrants sought passage to the US and a growing class of Gilded Age travellers demanded speed and luxury, corporate rivalry intensified. Pressure from other European lines forced the British companies to add amenities like swimming pools and restaurants.

Not unlike today’s rivalries between, say, aircraft manufacturers like Airbus and Boeing, each raced to make its ocean liners the largest, fastest and most opulent. In the process, they launched the modern age of leisure cruising – and developed innovations and technologies that continue to be used on cruise ships today.

In the mid-19th Century, there were two main players. Inman’s inaugural steamship, launched in 1850, made it the first major British line to replace traditional side-mounted paddlewheels with a screw propeller – an apparatus with fixed blades turning on a central axis. With the added speed and fuel efficiency this brought, plus a sleek iron hull that was more durable than wood, Inman established itself as a company unafraid to try new technology for faster crossings.

Inman’s main rival, Cunard, focused on safety instead. The Cunard way was to let competitors introduce new-fangled technology and let them deal with the setbacks, once that technology had proved itself, only then would Cunard consider using it.

But Cunard risked being left behind both by Inman and by a new rival which burst onto the scene in 1870 – the White Star line’s splashy debut included five huge ocean liners, dubbed floating hotels. Their flagship, RMS Oceanic, launched in 1871 and the contrast with Cunard was stark, for example where Oceanic had bathtubs, Cunard offered a sink.

In 1888, Inman introduced ships which no longer required auxiliary sails, giving ocean liners a similar look to the one they have today.

Cunard, meanwhile, ventured into the new world of telecommunications by installing the first Marconi wireless stations, which allowed radio operators to transmit messages at sea, on its sister ships RMS Lucania and RMS Campania. First-class passengers could even book European hotels by wireless before reaching port.

In 1897, Germany entered the fray with the SS Amerika, wowed its well-heeled guests by introducing the first à la carte restaurant at sea: the Ritz-Carlton, brainchild of Paris hotelier Cesar Ritz and renowned chef Auguste Escoffier. It allowed guests to order meals at their leisure and dine with their friends rather than attend rigidly scheduled seatings – a forerunner of the kind of freestyle dining seen on today’s cruise ships.

To complicate matters, American banking tycoon JP Morgan was buying up smaller companies to create a US-based shipping-and-railroad monopoly. In 1901, White Star became his biggest acquisition. Suddenly, the battles weren’t only in the boardrooms: building the world’s top ocean liners was now a point of national pride.

With the help of a £2.6 million government loan (equivalent to more than £261 million today), Britain’s Cunard line launched the massive twins RMS Lusitania and RMS Mauretania. Both had the first steam turbine engines of any superliner.

White Star fought back with RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic that would feature double hulls and watertight bulkheads. With standard reciprocating engines, they were slower than the Cunarders, but surpassed them in size and elegance, even debuted the first indoor swimming pools at sea.

History changed course when Titanic hit an iceberg on 14 April 1912 and sank on her first transatlantic voyage. As a result of the tragedy, safety regulations were updated to require lifeboat berths for every passenger and 24-hour radio surveillance (rules which are still in place).

But there were more challenges to come. World War One broke out in 1914 and European governments requisitioned liners for war service. Despite a post-war liner-building boom, US anti-immigration laws reduced the number of transatlantic emigrants – the liners’ bread and butter – in the 1920s.

In 1957, more people crossed the Atlantic by ship than ever before, but by the following year, jet passengers outnumbered them. Cunard said flying was a just fad, and that it was not a genuine concern.

Despite Cunard’s best efforts, by the late 1950s more people were flying than taking ships to their destinations. Air travel and high operating costs doomed most transatlantic liners by the 1970s – only Cunard’s RMS Queen Mary 2 makes regular transatlantic crossings now.

READING PASSAGE 3 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3

A. When you get tired of typical sight-seeing, when you have had enough of monuments, statues, and cathedrals, then think outside the box. Read the four paragraphs below about the innovative types of tourism emerging around the globe and discover ways to spice up your itinerary.

B. One could eat your way through your travels if one wished. A comparatively new kind of tourism is gaining popularity across the world. In this, food and beverages are the main factors that motivate a person to travel to a particular destination. Combining food, drink and culture, this type of travel provides for an authentic experience, the food and restaurants reflecting the local and unique flavors of a particular region or country. Studies conducted into this travel phenomenon have shown that food plays, consciously or unconsciously, an important part in the vacations of a good number of travelers. Those trying this are looking for a more participatory style of holiday experience. Analysts have noticed a shift from ‘passive observation’ to ‘interaction and involvement’ in tourists, whereby the visitor comes into close contact with locals and their way of life rather than remaining a mere spectator.

C. This is a novel approach to tourism in which visitors do not visit the ordinary tourist attractions in traditional fashion. Rather, they let their whims be their guides! Destinations are chosen not on their standard touristic merit but on the basis of an idea or concept often involving elements of humor, serendipity, and chance. One example is known as Monopoly-travel. Participants armed with the local version of a Monopoly game board explore a city at the whim of a dice roll, shuttling between elegant shopping areas and the local water plant – with the occasional visit to jail.

Another example is Counter-travel, which requires you to take snapshots with your back turned to landmarks like the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben. Joël Henry, the French founder of Latourex, has developed dozens of ideas since coming up with the concept in 1990. The traveler must increase his or her receptiveness, in this way, no trip is ever planned or predictable. Henry’s most unusual invention is known as “Erotravel”, where a couple heads to the same town but travels there separately. The challenge is to find one another abroad. He and his wife have engaged in the pursuit in five cities and have managed to meet up every time.

D. This involves any crop-based or animal based operation or activity that brings visitors to a farm or ranch. It has recently become widespread in America, and participants can choose from a wide range of activities that include picking fruits and vegetables, riding horses, tasting honey, learning about wine and cheese making, or shopping in farm gift shops for local and regional products or handicrafts. For rural economies struggling to stay afloat in this age of industrial farming, it has become an important and marketable opportunity for improving the incomes and potential economic viability of small farms and rural communities. In western North Carolina, the organization ‘HandMade in America’ is using this method to develop their local economy and craft trades, and to educate visitors about farming practices. On their website, it is described as a niche market. As people are becoming more interested in the ecological importance of local food production, related projects reinforce the need to support local growers and allow visitors to experience the relationship between food and our natural environment.

E. This is the trend of traveling to destinations that are first seen in movies, for instance, touring London in a high-speed boat like James Bond or visiting the stately homes that are seen in Jane Austin films. The term was first coined in the US press in the New York Post by journalist Gretchen Kelly, who wrote a 2007 article entitled “The sexiest film locations from 2007 to visit now.” Currently, summer blockbuster movies are being used as themed marketing tools by companies like Expedia and Fandango, who are promoting trips to where the Steven Spielberg film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was made. Corporations as well as convention and tourism boards are exploiting the trend, creating their own location based travel maps, like the Elizabeth: The Golden Age movie map published by VisitBritain, Britain’s official travel and tourism guide. Other travel itineraries have been created by tourism boards for movies including The Da Vinci Code (France), In Bruges (Belgium), and P.S. I Love You (Ireland). Although a new concept, it’s fast becoming a major factor in the choices travelers make in an increasingly tight economic climate. If a traveler has seen a site in a major motion picture, its media exposure makes it a compelling choice for a family vacation or honeymoon.

British Council IELTS Reading Test 09

READING PASSAGE 1 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

The Life of Sir Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643, in Lincolnshire, England. The son of a farmer, who died three months before he was born, Newton spent most of his early years with his maternal grandmother after his mother remarried. Following an education interrupted by a failed attempt to turn him into a farmer, he attended the King’s School in Grantham before enrolling at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College in 1661, where he soon became fascinated by the works of modern philosophers such as René Descartes. When the Great Plague shut Cambridge off from the rest of England in 1665, Newton returned home and began formulating his theories on calculus, light and color, his farm the setting for the supposed falling apple that inspired his work on gravity.

Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667. He constructed the first reflecting telescope in 1668, and the following year he received his Master of Arts degree and took over as Cambridge’s Professor of Mathematics. In 1671 he was asked to give a demonstration of his telescope to the Royal Society of London in 1671, the same year he was elected to the prestigious Society. The following year, fascinated with the study of light, he published his notes on optics for his peers. Through his experiments, Newton determined that white light was a composite of all the colors on the spectrum, and he asserted that light was composed of particles instead of waves. His methods were heavily criticized by established Society member Robert Hooke, who was also unwilling to compromise again with Newton’s follow-up paper in 1675. Known for his temperamental defense of his work, Newton engaged in heated correspondence with Hooke before suffering a nervous breakdown and withdrawing from the public eye in 1678. In the following years, he returned to his earlier studies on the forces governing gravity.

In 1684, English astronomer Edmund Halley paid a visit to the reclusive Newton. Upon learning that Newton had mathematically worked out the elliptical paths of celestial bodies, such as the movement of the planets around the sun, Halley urged him to organize his notes. The result was the 1687 publication of “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica” (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), which established the three laws of motion and the law of universal gravity. Principia made Newton a star in intellectual circles, eventually earning him widespread acclaim as one of the most important figures in modern science.

As a now influential figure, Newton opposed King James II’s attempts to reinstate Catholic teachings at English Universities, and was elected to represent Cambridge in Parliament in 1689. He moved to London permanently after being named warden of the Royal Mint in 1696, earning a promotion to master of the Mint three years later. Determined to prove his position wasn’t merely symbolic, Newton moved the pound sterling from the silver to the gold standard and sought to punish forgers.

The death of Hooke in 1703 allowed Newton to take over as president of the Royal Society, and the following year he published his second major work, “Opticks.” Composed largely from his earlier notes on the subject, the book detailed Newton’s experiments with refraction and the color spectrum, and also contained his conclusions on such matters as energy and electricity. In 1705, he was knighted by Queen Anne of England.

Around this time, the debate over Newton’s claims to originating the field of calculus, the mathematical study of change, exploded into a nasty dispute. Newton had developed his mathematical concept of ‘fluxions’ (differentials) in the mid-1660s to account for celestial orbits, though there was no public record of his work. In the meantime, German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz formulated his own theories and published them in 1684. As president of the Royal Society, Newton oversaw an investigation that ruled his work to be the founding basis of the field, but the debate continued even after Leibniz’s death in 1716. Researchers later concluded that both men likely arrived at their conclusions independent of one another.

Newton was also obsessed with history and religious doctrines, and his writings on those subjects were collected into multiple books that were published after his death. Having never married, Newton spent his later years living with his niece at Cranbury Park, near Winchester, England. He died on March 31, 1727, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. A giant even among the brilliant minds that drove the Scientific Revolution, Newton is remembered as an extraordinary scholar, inventor and writer. His theories about the movement of bodies in the solar system transformed our understanding of the universe and his precise methodology helped to give birth to what is known as the scientific method. Although his theories of space-time and gravity were eventually superseded by those of Einstein his work remains the foundation stone of modern physics was built.

READING PASSAGE 2 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

The Geography of Antarctica

The continent of Antarctica makes up most of the Antarctic region. The Antarctic is a cold, remote area in the Southern Hemisphere encompassed by the Antarctic Convergence, an uneven line of latitude where cold, northward-flowing Antarctic waters meet the warmer waters of the world’s oceans. The whole Antarctic region covers approximately 20 percent of the Southern Hemisphere. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent in terms of total area, larger than both Oceania and Europe. It is unique in that it does not have a native population. There are no countries in Antarctica, although seven nations claim different parts of it: New Zealand, Australia, France, Norway, the United Kingdom, Chile, and Argentina.

The Antarctic Ice Sheet dominates the region. It is the single piece of ice on Earth covering the greatest area. This ice sheet even extends beyond the continent when snow and ice are at their most extreme. The ice surface dramatically expands from about 3 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) at the end of summer to about 19 million square kilometers (7.3 million square miles) by winter. Ice sheet growth mainly occurs at the coastal ice shelves, primarily the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ronne Ice Shelf. Ice shelves are floating sheets of ice that are connected to the continent. Glacial ice moves from the continent’s interior to these lower-elevation ice shelves at rates of 10 to 1,000 meters (33-32,808 feet) per year.

Antarctica has numerous mountain summits, including the Transantarctic Mountains, which divide the continent into eastern and western regions. A few of these summits reach altitudes of more than 4,500 meters (14,764 feet). The elevation of the Antarctic Ice Sheet itself is about 2,000 meters (6,562 feet) and reaches 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) above sea level near the center of the continent.

Without any ice, the continent would emerge as two distinct areas: a giant peninsula and archipelago of mountainous islands, known as Lesser Antarctica, and a single large landmass about the size of Australia, known as Greater Antarctica. These regions have different geologies; Greater Antarctica, or East Antarctica, is composed of older, igneous rocks whereas Lesser Antarctica, or West Antarctica, is made up of younger, volcanic rock. Lesser Antarctica, in fact, is part of the “Ring of Fire,” a tectonically active area around the Pacific Ocean. Tectonic activity is the interaction of plates on Earth’s crust, often resulting in earthquakes and volcanoes. Mount Erebus, located on Antarctica’s Ross Island, is the southernmost active volcano on Earth.

Antarctica has an extremely cold, dry climate. Winter temperatures along Antarctica’s coast generally range from -10° Celsius to -30° Celsius (14° Fahrenheit to -22° Fahrenheit). During the summer, coastal areas hover around 0°C (32°F) but can reach temperatures as high as 9°C (48°F). In the mountainous, interior regions, temperatures are much colder, dropping below -60°C (-76°F) in winter and -20°C (-4°F) in summer. In 1983, Russia’s Vostok Research Station measured the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth: -89.2°C (-128.6°F). An even lower temperature was measured using satellite data taken in 2010: -93.2°C (-135.8°F)

Precipitation in the Antarctic is hard to measure. It always falls as snow. Antarctica’s interior is believed to receive only 50 to 100 millimeters (2-4 inches) of water (in the form of snow) every year. The Antarctic desert is one of the driest deserts in the world. The oceans surrounding Antarctica provide an important physical component of the Antarctic region. The waters surrounding Antarctica are relatively deep, reaching 4,000 to 5,000 meters (13,123 to 16,404 feet) in depth.

The Antarctic region has an important role in global climate processes. It is an integral part of the Earth’s heat balance. This balance, also called the energy balance, is the relationship between the amount of solar heat absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere and the amount deflected back into space. Antarctica has a larger role than most continents in maintaining Earth’s heat balance and ice is more reflective than land or water surfaces. As a result, the massive Antarctic Ice Sheet reflects a large amount of solar radiation away from Earth’s surface. As global ice cover (ice sheets and glaciers) decreases, the reflectivity of Earth’s surface also diminishes. This allows more incoming solar radiation to be absorbed by the Earth’s surface, causing an unequal heat balance linked to global warming, the current period of climate change.

Interestingly, NASA scientists have found that climate change has caused more ice to form in some parts of Antarctica. They say this is happening because of new climate patterns caused by this change, which in turn create a strong wind pattern called the ‘polar vortex.’ These kinds of polar winds lower temperatures in the Antarctic and have been building in strength in recent decades—as much as 15 percent since 1980. This effect is not seen throughout the Antarctic, however, and some parts are experiencing ice melt.

READING PASSAGE 3 *

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3

Thinking, Fast and Slow

The idea that we are ignorant of our true selves surged in the 20th century and became common. It’s still a commonplace, but it’s changing shape. These days, the bulk of the explanation is done by something else: the ‘dual-process’ model of the brain. We now know that we apprehend the world in two radically opposed ways, employing two fundamentally different modes of thought: ‘System 1’ and ‘System 2’. System 1 is fast; it’s intuitive, associative and automatic and it can’t be switched off. Its operations involve no sense of intentional control, but it’s the “secret author of many of the choices and judgments you make” and it’s the hero of Daniel Kahneman’s alarming, intellectually stimulating book Thinking, Fast and Slow.

System 2 is slow, deliberate and effortful. Its operations require attention. (To set it going now, ask yourself the question “What is 13 x 27?”). System 2 takes over, rather unwillingly, when things get tricky. It’s “the conscious being you call ‘I'”, and one of Kahneman’s main points is that this is a mistake. You’re wrong to identify with System 2, for you are also and equally and profoundly System 1. Kahneman compares System 2 to a supporting character who believes herself to be the lead actor and often has little idea of what’s going on.

System 2 is slothful, and tires easily (a process called ‘ego depletion’) – so it usually accepts what System 1 tells it. It’s often right to do so, because System 1 is for the most part pretty good at what it does; it’s highly sensitive to subtle environmental cues, signs of danger, and so on. It does, however, pay a high price for speed. It loves to simplify, to assume WYSIATI (‘what you see is all there is’). It’s hopelessly bad at the kind of statistical thinking often required for good decisions, it jumps wildly to conclusions and it’s subject to a fantastic range of irrational cognitive biases and interference effects, such as confirmation bias and hindsight bias, to name but two.

The general point about our self-ignorance extends beyond the details of Systems 1 and 2. We’re astonishingly susceptible to being influenced by features of our surroundings. One famous (pre-mobile phone) experiment centred on a New York City phone booth. Each time a person came out of the booth after having made a call, an accident was staged – someone dropped all her papers on the pavement. Sometimes a dime had been placed in the phone booth, sometimes not (a dime was then enough to make a call). If there was no dime in the phone booth, only 4% of the exiting callers helped to pick up the papers. If there was a dime, no fewer than 88% helped.

Since then, thousands of other experiments have been conducted, all to the same general effect. We don’t know who we are or what we’re like, we don’t know what we’re really doing and we don’t know why we’re doing it. For example, Judges think they make considered decisions about parole based strictly on the facts of the case. It turns out (to simplify only slightly) that it is their blood-sugar levels really sitting in judgment. If you hold a pencil between your teeth, forcing your mouth into the shape of a smile, you’ll find a cartoon funnier than if you hold the pencil pointing forward, by pursing your lips round it in a frown-inducing way.

In an experiment designed to test the ‘anchoring effect’, highly experienced judges were given a description of a shoplifting offence. They were then ‘anchored’ to different numbers by being asked to roll a pair of dice that had been secretly loaded to produce only two totals – three or nine. Finally, they were asked whether the prison sentence for the shoplifting offence should be greater or fewer, in months, than the total showing on the dice. Normally the judges would have made extremely similar judgments, but those who had just rolled nine proposed an average of eight months while those who had rolled three proposed an average of only five months. All were unaware of the anchoring effect.

The same goes for all of us, almost all the time. We think we’re smart; we’re confident we won’t be unconsciously swayed by the high list price of a house. We’re wrong. (Kahneman admits his own inability to counter some of these effects.) For example, another systematic error involves ‘duration neglect’ and the ‘peak-end rule’. Looking back on our experience of pain, we prefer a larger, longer amount to a shorter, smaller amount, just so long as the closing stages of the greater pain were easier to bear than the closing stages of the lesser one.

Thứ Ba, 10 tháng 8, 2021

British Reading Test 01-09

British Council IELTS Reading Test 01

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British Council IELTS Reading Test 02

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British Council IELTS Reading Test 07

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British Council IELTS Reading Test 08

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British Council IELTS Reading Test 09

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