Ielts Reading Tests: tháng 9 2021

IELTS Reading Practice Test 44 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Plain English Campaign

We launched Plain English Campaign in 1979 with a ritual shredding of appalling government and municipal council forms in Parliament Square, London. We had become so fed up of people visiting our advice centre in Salford, Greater Manchester, to complain about incomprehensible forms that we thought we ought to take action. At the time the shredding seemed like merely throwing sand in the eyes of the charging lion, but it briefly caught the public imagination and left an impression on government and business. Although we’re pleased with the new plain English awareness in government departments, many local councils and businesses maintain a stout resistance to change. One council began a letter to its tenants about a rent increase with two sentences averaging 95 words, full of bizarre housing finance jargon and waffle about Acts of Parliament. The London Borough of Ealing sent such an incomprehensible letter to ISO residents that 40 of them wrote or telephoned to complain and ask for clarification. Many were upset and frightened that the council was planning to imprison them if they didn’t fill in the accompanying form. In fact, the letter meant nothing of the sort, and the council had to send another letter to explain.

Plain legal English can be used as a marketing tactic. Provincial Insurance issued their plain English Home Cover policy in 1983 and sold it heavily as such. In the first 18 months, its sales rocketed, drawing in about an extra £1.5 million of business. Recently, the Eagle Star Group launched a plain English policy to a chorus of congratulatory letters from policyholders. People, it seems, prefer to buy a policy they can understand.

Two kinds of instructions give us a lot of concern – medical labels and do-it-yourself products. With medical labels, there is a serious gap between what the professionals think is clear and what is really clear to patients. A survey by pharmacists Raynor and Sillito found that 31% of patients misunderstood the instruction on eye drops ‘To be instilled’, while 33% misunderstood ‘Use sparingly’. The instruction ‘Take two tablets 4 hourly’ is so prone to misunderstanding (for example, as 8 tablets an hour) that we think it should be banned. Unclear instructions on do-it-yourself products cause expense and frustration to customers. Writing the necessary instructions for these products is usually entrusted to someone who knows the product inside out, yet the best qualification for writing instructions is ignorance. The writer is then like a first-time user, discovering how to use the product in a step-by-step way. Instructions never seem to be tested with first-time users before being issued. So vital steps are missed out or components are mislabeled or not labelled at all. For example, the instructions for assembling a sliding door gear say: ‘The pendant bolt centres are fixed and should be at an equal distance from the centre of the door.’ This neglects to explain who should do the fixing and how the bolt centres will get into the correct position. By using an imperative and an active verb the instruction becomes much clearer: ‘Make sure you fix the centres of the pendant bolts at an equal distance from the centre of the door.’

Effectively, the Plain English movement in the US began with President Jimmy Carter’s Executive Order 12044 of 23 March 1978, that required regulations to be written in plain language. There were earlier government efforts to inform consumers about their rights and obligations, such as the Truth in Lending Act (1969) and the Fair Credit Billing Act (1975), which emphasized a body of information that consumers need in simple language. But President Carter’s executive order gave the prestige and force of a president to the movement. All over the country isolated revolts or efforts against legalistic gobbledygook at the federal, state and corporate levels seemed to grow into a small revolution. These efforts and advances between the years 1978 and 1985 are described in the panel ‘The Plain English Scorecard’.

The Bastille has not fallen yet. The forces of resistance are strong, as one can see from the case of Pennsylvania as cited in the Scorecard. In addition, President Ronald Reagan’s executive order of 19 February 1981, revoking President Carter’s earlier executive order, has definitely slowed the pace of plain English legislation in the United States. There are there main objections to the idea of plain English. They are given below, with the campaign’s answer to them:

The statute would cause unending litigation and clog the courts. Simply not true in all the ten states with plain English laws for consumer contracts and the 34 states with laws or regulations for insurance policies. Since 1978 when plain English law went into effect in New York there have been only four litigations and only two decisions. Massachusetts had zero cases. The cost of compliance would be enormous. Translation of legal contracts into non-legal everyday language would be a waster of time and money. The experience of several corporations has proved that the cost of compliance is often outweighed by solid benefits and litigation savings. Citibank of New York made history in 1975 by introducing a simplified promissory note and afterwards simplified all their forms. Citibank counsel Carl Falsenfield says: ‘We have lost no money and there has been no litigation as a result of simplification.’ The cost-effectiveness of clarity is demonstrable. A satisfied customer more readily signs on the bottom line and thus contributes to the corporation’s bottom line. Some documents simply can’t be simplified. The only legal language that has been tested for centuries in the courts is precise enough to deal with a mortgage, a deed, a lease, or an insurance policy. Here, too, the experience of several corporations and insurance companies has proved that contracts and policies can be made more understandable without sacrificing legal effectiveness.

What does the future hold for the Plain English movement? Today, American consumers are buffeted by an assortment of pressures. Never before have consumers had as many choices in areas like financial services, travel, telephone services, and supermarket products. There are about 300 long-distance phone companies in the US. Not long ago, the average supermarket carried 9,000 items; today, it carries 22,000. More importantly, this expansion of options – according to a recent report – is faced by a staggering 30 million Americans lacking the reading skills to handle the minimal demands of daily living. The consumer’s need, therefore, for information expressed in plain English is more critical than ever.

What is needed today is not a brake on the movement’s momentum but another push toward plain English contracts from consumers. I still hear plain English on the TV and in the streets, and read plain English in popular magazines and best-sellers, but not yet in many functional documents. Despite some victories, the was against gobbledygook is not over yet. We do well to remember, the warning of Chrissie Maher, organizer of Plain English Campaign in the UK: ‘People are not just injured when medical labels are written in gobbledygook – they die. Drivers are not just hurt when their medicines don’t tell them they could fall asleep at the wheel – they are killed.’

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Aqua product: New Zealand’s Algae Biodiesel

The world’s first wild algae biodiesel, produced in New Zealand by Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, was successfully test-driven in Wellington by the Minister for Energy and Climate Change Issues, David Parker. In front of a crowd of invited guests, media and members of the public, the Minister filled up a diesel-powered Land Rover with Aquaflow B5 blend bio-diesel and then drove the car around the forecourt of Parliament Buildings in Central Wellington. Green Party co-leader, Jeanette Fitzsimons was also on board. Marlborough-based Aquaflow announced on May 2006 that it had produced the world’s first bio-diesel derived from wild microalgae sourced from local sewage ponds.

“We believe we are the first company in the world to test drive a car powered by wild algae-based biodiesel. This will come as a surprise to some international bio-diesel industry people who believe that this break-through is still years away,” explains Aquaflow spokesperson Barrie Leay. “A bunch of inventive Kiwis and an Aussie have developed this fuel in just over a year”, he comments. “This is a huge opportunity for New Zealand and a great credit to the team of people who saw the potential in this technology from day one.”

Bio-diesel based on algae could eventually become a sustainable, low cost, cleaner-burning fuel alternative for New Zealand, powering family cars, trucks, buses and boats. It can also be used for other purposes such as heating or distributed electricity generation. There is now a global demand for billions of litres of biodiesel per year. Algae are also readily available and produced in huge volumes in nutrient-rich waste streams such as at the settling ponds of Effluent Management Systems (EMS). It is a renewable indigenous resource ideally suited to the production of fuel and other useful by-products. The breakthrough comes after technology start-up, Aquaflow, agreed to undertake a pilot with Marlborough District Council late last year to extract algae from the settling ponds of its EMS based in Blenheim. By removing the main contaminant to use as a fuel feedstock, Aquaflow is also helping clean up the council’s water discharge – a process known as bio-remediation. Dairy farmers, and many food processors too, can benefit in similar ways by applying the harvesting technology to their nutrient-rich waste streams.

Blended with conventional mineral diesel, bio-diesel can run vehicles without the need for vehicle modifications. Fuel derived from algae can also help meet the Government B5 (5% blended) target, with the prospect of this increase over time as bio-fuel production increases. “Our next step is to increase capacity to produce one million litres of bio-diesel from the Marlborough sewerage ponds over the next year,” says Leay. Aquaflow will launch a prospectus pre-Christmas as the company has already attracted considerable interest from potential investors. The test drive bio-diesel was used successfully in a static engine test at Massey University’s Wellington campus on Monday, December 11.

Today Algae are used by humans in many ways; for example, as fertilizers, soil conditioners and livestock feed. Aquatic and microscopic species are cultured in clear tanks or ponds and are either harvested or used to treat effluents pumped through the ponds. Algaculture on a large scale is an important type of aquaculture in some places. Naturally growing seaweeds are an important source of food, especially in Asia. They provide many vitamins including A, B, B2, B6, niacin and C, and are rich in iodine, potassium, iron, magnesium and calcium. In addition, commercially cultivated microalgae, including both Algae and Cyan-bacteria, are marketed as nutritional supplements, such as Spirulina, Chlorella and the Vitamin-C supplement, Dunaliella, high in beta-carotene. Algae are national foods of many nations: China consumes more than 70 species, including fat choy, a cyanobacterium considered a vegetable; Japan, over 20 species. The natural pigments produced by algae can be used as an alternative to chemical dyes and coloring agents.

Algae are the simplest plant organisms that convert sunlight and carbon dioxide in the air around us into stored energy through the well-understood process of photosynthesis. Algae are rich in lipids and other combustible elements and Aquaflow is developing technology that will allow these elements to be extracted in a cost-effective way. The proposed process is the subject of a provisional patent. Although algae are good at taking most of the nutrients out of sewage, too many algae can taint the water and make it smell. So, councils have to find a way of cleaning up the excess algae in their sewerage outflows and then either dispose of it or find alternative uses for it. And that’s where Aquaflow comes in.

Unlike some bio-fuels which require crops to be specially grown and thereby compete for land use with food production, and use other scarce resources of fuel, chemicals and fertiliser, the source for algae-based biodiesel already exists extensively and the process produces a sustainable net energy gain by capturing free solar energy from the sun.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Designed to Last

Could better design cure our throwaway culture?

Jonathan Chapman, a senior lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK, is one of a new breed of ‘sustainable designers’. Like many of us, they are concerned about the huge waste associated with Western consumer culture and the damage this does to the environment. Some, like Chapman, aim to create objects we will want to keep rather than discard. Others are working to create more efficient or durable consumer goods or goods designed with recycling in mind. The waste entailed in our fleeting relationships with consumer durables is colossal.

Domestic power tools, such as electric drills, are a typical example of such waste. However much DIY the purchaser plans to do, the truth is that these things are thrown away having been used, on average, for just ten minutes. Most will serve ‘conscience time’ gathering dust on a shelf in the garage; people are reluctant to admit that they have wasted their money. However, the end is inevitable; thousands of years in landfill waste sites. In its design, manufacture, packaging, transportation and disposal, a power tool consumes many times its own weight in resources, all for a shorter active lifespan than that of the average small insect.

To understand why we have become so wasteful, we should look to the underlying motivation of consumers. ‘People own things to give expression to who they are, and to show what group of people they feel they belong to,’ Chapman says. In a world of mass production, however, that symbolism has lost much of its potency. For most of human history, people had an intimate relationship with objects they used or treasured. Often they made the objects themselves, or family members passed them on. For more specialist objects, people relied on expert manufacturers living close by, whom they probably knew personally. Chapman points out that all these factors gave objects a history – a narrative – and an emotional connection that today’s mass production can not match. Without these personal connections, consumerist culture instead of idolizes novelty. We know we can’t buy happiness, but the chance to remake ourselves with glossy, box-fresh products seems irresistible. When the novelty fades we simply renew the excitement by buying more new stuff: what John Thackara of Doors of Perception, a network for sharing ideas about the future of design, calls the “schlock of the new”.

As a sustainable designer, Chapman’s solution is what he calls “emotionally durable design”. Think about your favorite old jeans. They just don’t have the right feel until they have been worn and washed a hundred times, do they? It is like they are sharing your life story. You can fake that look, but it isn’t the same. Chapman says the gradual unfolding of a relationship like this transforms our interactions with objects into something richer than simple utility. Swiss industrial analyst Walter Stahel, visiting professor at the University of Surrey, calls it the “teddy-bear factor”. No matter how ragged and worn a favorite teddy becomes, we don’t rush out and buy another one. As adults, our teddy bear connects us to our childhoods, and this protects it from obsolescence. Stahel says this is what sustainable design needs to do.

It is not simply about making durable items that people want to keep. Sustainable design is a matter of properly costing the whole process of production, energy use and disposal. “It is about the design of systems, the design of culture,” says Tim Cooper from the Centre for Sustainable Consumption at Sheffield Hallam University in Britain. He thinks sustainable design has been “surprisingly slow to take off” but says looming environmental crises and resource depletion are pushing it to the top of the agenda.

Thackara agrees. For him, the roots of impending environmental collapse can be summarized in two words: weight and speed. We are making more stuff than the planet can sustain and using vast amounts of energy moving more and more of it around ever faster. The Information Age was supposed to lighten our economies and reduce our impact on the environment, but the reverse seems to be happening. We have simply added information technology to the industrial era and hastened the developed world’s metabolism, Thackara argues.

Once you grasp that, the cure is hardly rocket science: minimize waste and energy use, stop moving stuff around so much and use people more. EZIO MANZINI, PROFESSOR of industrial design at Politecnico di Milano University, Italy, describes the process of moving to a post-throwaway society as like “changing the engine of an aircraft in mid-flight”. Even so, he believes it can be done, and he is not alone.

Manzini says a crucial step would be to redesign our globalized world into what he calls the “multi-local society”. His vision is that every resource, from food to electricity generation, should as far as possible be sourced and distributed locally. These local hubs would then be connected to national and global networks to allow the most efficient use and flow of materials.

So what will post-throwaway consumerism look like? For a start, we will increasingly buy sustainably designed products. This might be as simple as installing energy-saving light bulbs, more efficient washing machines, or choosing locally produced groceries with less packaging.

We will spend less on material goods and more on services. Instead of buying a second car, for example, we might buy into a car-sharing network. We will also buy less and rent a whole lot more: why own things that you hardly use, especially things that are likely to be updated all the time? Consumer durables will be sold with plans already in place for their disposal. Electronic goods will be designed to be recyclable, with the extra cost added to the retail price as prepayment. As consumers become increasingly concerned about the environment, many big businesses are eagerly adopting sustainable design and brushing up their green credentials to please their customers and stay one step ahead of the competition.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 45 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Magnetic Therapy

Magnetic therapy, which is a $5-billion market worldwide, is a form of alternative medicine which claims that magnetic fields have healing powers. Magnetic devices that are claimed to be therapeutic include magnetic bracelets, insoles, wrist and knee bands, back and neck braces, and even pillows and mattresses. Their annual sales are estimated at $300 million in the United States and more than a billion dollars globally. They have been advertised to cure a vast array of ills, particularly pain.

The therapy works on the principle of balancing electrical energy in the body by pulsating magnetic waves through different parts of the body. The electrical currents generated by magnets increase the blood flow and oxygen which helps to heal many of the ailments. The natural effects of the Earth’s magnetic field are considered to play an essential role in the health of humans and animals. It is generally accepted that our body draws some benefit from the Earth’s magnetic field. To restore the balance within our body allows us to function at our optimum level. For example, when the first astronauts returned to earth sick, NASA concluded that their illness resulted from the lack of a planetary magnetic field in outer space. To resolve the problem, NASA placed magnets in the astronauts’ space suits and space travel vehicles, and astronauts have returned to Earth healthy ever since.

Historically it is reported that magnets have been around for an extremely long time. The therapeutic power of magnets was known to physicians in ancient Greece, Egypt and China over 4000 years ago, who used naturally magnetic rock – lodestone – to treat a variety of physical and psychological ailments. Cleopatra the beautiful Egyptian queen was probably the first celebrity to use magnets. It is documented that in order to prevent from aging, she slept on a Lodestone to keep her skin youthful. Ancient Romans also used magnet therapy to treat eye disease.

The popularity of magnet therapy in the United States began to rise during the 1800s and soared in the post – Civil War era. Sears-Roebuck advertised magnetic jewelry in its catalog for the healing of virtually any ailment. An Austrian psychoanalyst by the name of Wilhelm Reich immigrated to the United States in 1939 and researched the effects of electromagnetism on humans. Today, Germany, Japan, Israel, Russia and at least 45 other countries consider magnetic therapy to be an official medical procedure for the treatment of numerous ailments, including various inflammatory and neurological problems.

For those who practice magnetic therapy, strongly believe that certain ailments can be treated if the patient is exposed to magnetic fields while at the same time there is a strong resentment from the medical establishment and critics claim that most magnets don’t have the strength to affect the various organs and tissues within the body and it is a product of Pseudoscience and is not based on proper research and analysis. There are few reported complications of magnetic therapy and the World Health Organization says a low level of magnetic energy is not harmful. Documented side effects are not life-threatening and include pain, nausea and dizziness that disappeared when the magnets were removed. If considering magnet therapy, as with any medical treatment, it is always advisable to consult one’s regular physician first. Magnet therapy is gaining popularity; however, scientific evidence to support the success of this therapy is lacking. More scientifically sound studies are needed in order to fully understand the effects that magnets can have on the body and the possible benefits or dangers that could result from their use.

Researchers at Baylor University Medical Center recently conducted a double-blind study on the use of concentric-circle magnets to relieve chronic pain in 50 post-polio patients. A static magnetic device or a placebo device was applied to the patient’s skin for 45 minutes. The patients were asked to rate how much pain they experienced when a “trigger point was touched.” The researchers reported that the 29 patients exposed to the magnetic device achieved lower pain scores than did the 21 who were exposed to the placebo device. However, this study had significant flaws in their design. Although the groups were said to be selected randomly, the ratio of women to men in the experimental group was twice that of the control group; the age of the placebo group was four years higher than that of the control group; there were just one brief exposure and no systematic follow-up of patients.

Magnet therapy is gaining popularity; however, scientific evidence to support the success of this therapy is lacking. More scientifically sound studies are needed in order to fully understand the effects that magnets can have on the body and the possible benefits or dangers that could result from their use.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

When the Tulip Bubble Burst

Tulips are spring-blooming perennials that grow from bulbs. Depending on the species, tulip plants can grow as short as 4 inches (10 cm) or as high as 28 inches (71 cm). The tulip’s large flowers usually bloom on scapes or sub-scapose stems that lack bracts. Most tulips produce only one flower per stem, but a few species bear multiple flowers on their scapes (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica). The showy, generally cup or star-shaped tulip flower has three petals and three sepals, which are often termed tepals because they are nearly identical. These six tepals are often marked on the interior surface near the bases with darker colorings. Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colors, except pure blue (several tulips with “blue” in the name have a faint violet hue)

Long before anyone ever heard of Qualcomm, CMGI, Cisco Systems, or the other high-tech stocks that have soared during the current bull market, there was Semper Augustus. Both more prosaic and more subline than any stock or bond, it was a tulip of extraordinary beauty, its midnight-blue petals topped by a band of pure white and accented with crimson flares. To denizens of 17th century Holland, little was as desirable.

Around 1624, the Amsterdam man who owned the only dozen specimens was offered 3,000 guilders for one bulb. While there’s no accurate way to render that in today’s greenbacks, the sum was roughly equal to the annual income of a wealthy merchant. (A few years later, Rembrandt received about half that amount for painting The Night Watch.) Yet the bulb’s owner, whose name is now lost to history, nixed the offer.

Who was crazier, the tulip lover who refused to sell for a small fortune or the one who was willing to splurge. That’s a question that springs to mind after reading Tulipmania: The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused by British journalist Mike Dash. In recent years, as investors have intentionally forgotten everything they learned in Investing 101 in order to load up on unproven, unprofitable dot-com issues, tulip mania has been invoked frequently. In this concise, artfully written account, Dash tells the real history behind the buzzword and in doing so, offers a cautionary late for our times.

The Dutch were not the first to go gaga over the tulip. Long before the first tulip bloomed in Europe – in Bavaria, it turns out, in 1559 – the flower had enchanted the Persians and bewitched the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. It was in Holland, however, that the passion for tulips found its most fertile ground, for reasons that had little to do with horticulture.

Holland in the early 17th century was embarking on its Golden Age. Resources that had just a few years earlier gone toward fighting for independence from Spain now flowed into commerce. Amsterdam merchants were at the center of the lucrative East Indies trade, where a single voyage could yield profits of 400%. They displayed their success by erecting grand estates surrounded by flower gardens. The Dutch population seemed torn by two contradictory impulses: a horror of living beyond one’s means and the love of a long shot.

Enter the tulip. “It is impossible to comprehend the tulip mania without understanding just how different tulips were from every other flower known to horticulturists in the 17th century,” says Dash. “The colors they exhibited were more intense and more concentrated than those of ordinary plants.” Despite the outlandish prices commanded by rare bulbs, ordinary tulips were sold by the pound. Around 1630, however, a new type of tulip fancier appeared, lured by tales of fat profits. These “florists,” or professional tulip traders, sought out flower lovers and speculators alike. But if the supply of tulip buyers grew quickly, the supply of bulbs did not. The tulip was a conspirator in the supply squeeze: It takes seven years to grow one from seed. And while bulbs can produce two or three clones, or “offsets,” annually, the mother bulb only lasts a few years.

Bulb prices rose steadily throughout the 1630s, as ever more speculators wedged into the market. Weavers and farmers mortgaged whatever they could to raise cash to begin trading. In 1633, a farmhouse in Hoorn changed hands for three rare bulbs. By 1636 any tulip-even bulbs recently considered garbage – could be sold off, often for hundreds of guilders. A futures market for bulbs existed, and tulip traders could be found conducting their business in hundreds of Dutch taverns. Tulipmania reached its peak during the winter of 1636-37 when some bulbs were changing hands ten times in a day. The zenith came early that winter, at an auction to benefit seven orphans whose only asset was 70 fine tulips left by their father. One, a rare Violetten Admirael van Enkhuizen bulb that was about to split in two, sold for 5,200 guilders, the all-time record. All told, the flowers brought in nearly 53,000 guilders.

Soon after, the tulip market crashed utterly, spectacularly. It began in Haarlem, at a routine bulb auction when, for the first time, the greater fool refused to show up and pay. Within days, the panic had spread across the country. Despite the efforts of traders to prop up demand, the market for tulips evaporated. Flowers that had commanded 5,000 guilders a few weeks before now fetched one-hundredth that amount. Tulipmania is not without flaws. Dash dwells too long on the tulip’s migration from Asia to Holland. But he does a service with this illuminating, accessible account of incredible financial folly.

Tulipmania differed in one crucial aspect from the dot-com craze that grips our attention today: even at its height, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, well-established in 1630, wouldn’t touch tulips. “The speculation in tulip bulbs always existed at the margins of Dutch economic life,” Dash writes. After the market crashed, a compromise was brokered that let most traders settle their debts for a fraction of their liability. The overall fallout on the Dutch economy was negligible. Will we say the same when Wall Street’s current obsession finally runs its course?

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Does An IQ Test Prove Creativity?

Everyone has creativity, some a lot more than others. The development of humans, and possibly the universe, depends on it. Yet creativity is an elusive creature. What do we mean by it? What is going on in our brains when ideas form? Does it feel the same for artists and scientists? We asked writers and neuroscientists, pop stars and AI gurus to try to deconstruct the creative process – and learn how we can all ignite the spark within.

In the early 1970s, creativity was still seen as a type of intelligence. But when more subtle tests of IQ and creative skills were developed in the 1970s, particularly by the father of creativity testing, Paul Torrance, it became clear that the link was not so simple. Creative people are intelligent, in terms of IQ tests at least, but only averagely or just above. While it depends on the discipline, in general beyond a certain level IQ does not help boost creativity; it is necessary, but not sufficient to make someone creative.

Because of the difficulty of studying the actual process, most early attempts to study creativity concentrated on personality. According to creativity specialist Mark Runco of California State University, Fullerton, the “creative personality” tends to place a high value on aesthetic qualities and to have broad interests, providing lots of resources to draw on and knowledge to recombine into novel solutions. “Creatives” have an attraction to the complexity and an ability to handle conflict. They are also usually highly self-motivated, perhaps even a little obsessive. Less creative people, on the other hand, tend to become irritated if they cannot immediately fit all the pieces together. They are less tolerant of confusion. Creativity comes to those who wait, but only to those who are happy to do so in a bit of a fog.

But there may be a price to pay for having a creative personality. For centuries, a link has been made between creativity and mental illness. Psychiatrist Jamison of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, found that established artists are significantly more likely to have mood disorders. But she also suggests that a change of mood state might be the key to triggering a creative event, rather than the negative mood itself. Intelligence can help channel this thought style into great creativity, but when combined with emotional problems, lateral, divergent or open thinking can lead to mental illness instead.

Jordan Peterson, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, Canada, believes he has identified a mechanism that could help explain this. He says that the brains of creative people seem more open to incoming stimuli than less creative types. Our senses are continuously feeding a mass of information into our brains, which have to block or ignore most of it to save us from being snowed under. Peterson calls this process latent inhibition, and argues that people who have less of it, and who have a reasonably high IQ with a good working memory can juggle more of the data, and so maybe open to more possibilities and ideas. The downside of extremely low latent inhibition may be a confusing thought style that predisposes people to mental illness. So for Peterson, mental illness is not a prerequisite for creativity, but it shares some cognitive traits.

But what of the creative act itself? One of the first studies of the creative brain at work was by Colin Martindale, a psychologist from the University of Maine in Orono. Back in 1978, he used a network of scalp electrodes to record an electroencephalogram, a record of the pattern of brain waves, as people made up stories. Creativity has two stages: inspiration and elaboration, each characterised by very different states of mind. While people were dreaming up their stories, he found their brains were surprisingly quiet. The dominant activity was alpha waves, indicating a very low level of cortical arousal: a relaxed state, as though the conscious mind was quiet while the brain was making connections behind the scenes. It’s the same sort of brain activity as in some stages of sleep, dreaming or rest, which could explain why sleep and relaxation can help people be creative. However, when these quiet-minded people were asked to work on their stories, the alpha wave activity dropped off and the brain became busier, revealing increased cortical arousal, more corralling of activity and more organised thinking. Strikingly, it was the people who showed the biggest difference in brain activity between the inspiration and development stages who produced the most creative storylines. Nothing in their background brain activity marked them as creative or uncreative. “It’s as if the less creative person can’t shift gear,” says Guy Claxton, a psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK. “Creativity requires different kinds of thinking. Very creative people move between these states intuitively.” Creativity, it seems, is about mental flexibility: perhaps not a two-step process, but a toggling between two states. In a later study, Martindale found that communication between the sides of the brain is also important.

Paul Howard-Jones, who works with Claxton at Bristol, believes he has found another aspect of creativity. He asked people to make up a story based on three words and scanned their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In one trial, people were asked not to try too hard and just report the most obvious story suggested by the words. In another, they were asked to be inventive. He also varied the words so it was easier or harder to link them. As people tried harder and came up with more creative tales, there was a lot more activity in a particular prefrontal brain region on the right-hand side. These regions are probably important in monitoring for conflict, helping us to filter out many of the unhelpful ways of combining the words and allowing us to pull out just the desirable connections, Howard-Jones suggests. It shows that there is another side to creativity, he says. The story-making task, particularly when we are stretched, produces many options which we have to assess. So part of creativity is a conscious process of evaluating and analysing ideas. The test also shows that the more we try and are stretched, the more creative our minds can be.

And creativity need not always be a solitary, tortured affair, according to Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School. Though there is a slight association between solitary writing or painting and negative moods or emotional disturbances, scientific creativity and workplace creativity seem much more likely to occur when people are positive and buoyant. In a decade-long study of real businesses, to be published soon, Amabile found that positive moods relate positively to creativity in organisations and that the relationship is a simple linear one. Creative thought also improves people’s moods, her team found, so the process is circular. Time pressures, financial pressures and hard-earned bonus schemes, on the other hand, do not boost workplace creativity” internal motivation, not coercion, produces the best work.

Another often forgotten aspect of creativity is social. Vera John-Steiner of the University of New Mexico says that to be really creative you need strong social networks and trusting relationships, not just active neural networks. One vital characteristic of a highly creative person, she says, is that they have at least one other person in their life who doesn’t think they are completely nuts.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 46 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

The Innovation of Grocery Stores

At the beginning of the 20th century, grocery stores in the United States were full-service. A customer would ask a clerk behind the counter for specific items and the clerk would package the items, which were limited to dry goods. If they want to save some time, they have to ask a delivery boy or by themselves to send the note of what they want to buy to the grocery store first and then go to pay for the goods later. These grocery stores usually carried only one brand of each good. There were early chain stores, such as the A&P Stores, but these were all entirely full-service and very time-consuming.

In 1885, a Virginia boy named Clarence Saunders began working part-time as a clerk in a grocery store when he was 14 years old, and quit school when the shopkeeper offered him full-time work with room and board. Later he worked in an Alabama coke plant and in a Tennessee sawmill before he returned to the grocery business. By 1900, when he was nineteen years old, he was earning $30 a month as a salesman for a wholesale grocer. During his years working in the grocery stores, he found that it was very inconvenient and inefficient for people to buy things because more than a century ago, long before there were computers, shopping was done quite differently than it is today. Entering a store, the customer would approach the counter (or wait for a clerk to become available) and place an order, either verbally or, as was often the case for boys running errands, in the form of a note or list. While the customer waited, the clerk would more behind the counter and throughout the store, select the items on the list – some form shelves so high that long-handled grasping device had to be used – and bring them back to the counter to be tallied and bagged or boxed. The process might be expedited by the customer calling or sending in the order beforehand, or by the order being handled by a delivery boy on a bike, but otherwise, it did not vary greatly. Saunders, a flamboyant and innovative man, noticed that this method resulted in wasted time and expense, so he came up with an unheard-of solution that would revolutionize the entire grocery industry: he developed a way for shoppers to serve themselves.

So in 1902, he moved to Memphis where he developed his concept to form a grocery wholesale cooperative and a full-service grocery store. For his new “cafeteria grocery”, Saunders divided his grocery into three distinct areas: 1) A front “lobby” forming an entrance and exit and checkouts at the front. 2) A sales department, which was specially designed to allow customers to roam the aisles and select their own groceries. Removing unnecessary clerks, creating elaborate aisle displays, and rearranging the store to force customers to view all of the merchandise and over the shelving and cabinets units of sales department were “galleries” where supervisors were allowed to keep an eye on the customers while not disturbing them. 3) And another section of his store is the room only allowed for the clerks which were called the “stockroom” or “storage room” where large refrigerators were situated to keep fresh products from being perishable. The new format allowed multiple customers to shop at the same time and led to the previously unknown phenomenon of impulse shopping. Though this format of grocery market was drastically different from its competitors, the style became the standard for the modern grocery store and later supermarket.

On September 6, 1916, Saunders launched the self-service revolution in the USA by opening the first self-service Piggly Wiggly store, at 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis, Tennessee, with its characteristic turnstile at the entrance. Customers paid cash and selected their own goods from the shelves. It was unlike any other grocery store of that time. Inside a Piggly Wiggly, shoppers were not at the mercy of shop clerks. They were free to roam the store, check out the merchandise and get what they needed with their own two hands and feet. Prices on items at Piggly Wiggly were clearly marked. No one pressured customers to buy milk or pickles. And the biggest benefit at the Piggly Wiggly was that shoppers saved money. Self-service was positive all around. “It’s good for both the consumer and retailer because it cuts costs,” noted George T. Haley, a professor at the University of New Haven and director of the Center for International Industry Competitiveness. “If you looked at the way grocery stores were run previous to Piggly Wiggly and Alpha Beta, what you find is that there was a tremendous amount of labor involved, and labor is a major expense.” Piggly Wiggly cut the fat.

Piggly Wiggly and the self-service concept took off. Saunders opened nine stores in the Memphis area within the first year of business. Consumers embraced the efficiency, the simplicity and most of all the lower food prices. Saunders soon patented his self-service concept and began franchising Piggly Wiggly stores. Thanks to the benefits of self-service and franchising, Piggly Wiggly ballooned to nearly 1,300 stores by 1923. Piggly Wiggle sold $100 million – worth $1.3 billion today – in groceries, making it the third-biggest grocery retailer in the nation. The company’s stock was even listed on the New York Stock Exchange, doubling from late 1922 to march 1923. Saunders had his hands all over Piggly Wiggly. He was instrumental in the design and layout of his stores. He even invented the turnstile.

However, Saunders was forced into bankruptcy in 1923 after a dramatic spat which the New York Stock Exchange and he went on to create the “Clarence Saunders sole-owner-of-my-name” chain, which went into bankruptcy.

Until the time of his death in October 1953, Saunders was developing plans for another automatic store system called the Foodelectric. But the store, which was to be located two blocks from the first Piggly Wiggly store, never opened. But his name was well-remembered along with the name Piggly Wiggly.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Flight from reality?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Sunset for the Oil Business

The world is about to run out of oil. Or perhaps not. It depends whom you believe…

Members of the Department Analysis Centre (ODAC) recently met in London and presented technical data that support their grim forecast that the world is perilously close to running out of oil. Leading lights of this moment, including the geologists Colin Campbell, rejected rival views presented by American geological survey and the international energy agency that contradicted their findings. Dr Campbell even decried the amazing display of ignorance, denial and obfuscation by government, industry and academics on this topic.

So is the oil really running out? The answer is easy: Yes. Nobody seriously disputes the notion that oil is, for all practical purposes, a non-renewable resource that will run out someday, be that years or decades away. The harder question is determining when precisely oil will begin to get scarce. And answering that question involves scaling Hubbert’s peak.

M. King Hubbert, a Shell geologist of legendary status among depletion experts, forecast in 1956 that oil production in the United States would peak in the early 1970s and then slowly decline, in something resembling a bell-shaped curve. At the time, his forecast was controversial, and many rubbished it. After 1970, however, empirical evidence proved him correct: oil production in America did indeed peak and has been in decline ever since.

Dr Hubbert’s analysis drew on the observation that oil production in a new area typically rises quickly at first, as the easiest and cheapest reserves are tapped. Over time, reservoirs age and go into decline, and so lifting oil becomes more expensive. Oil from that area then becomes less competitive in relation to other fuels, or to oil from other areas. As a result, production slows down and usually tapers off and declines. That, he argued, made for a bell-shaped curve.

His successful prediction has emboldened a new generation of geologists to apply his methodology on a global scale. Chief among them are the experts at ODAC, who worry that the global peak in production will come in the next decade. Dr Campbell used to argue that the peak should have come already; he now thinks it is just around the corner. A heavyweight has now joined this gloomy chorus. Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton University argues in a lively new book (“The View from Hubbert’s Peak”) that global oil production could peak as soon as 2004.

That sharply contradicts mainstream thinking. America’s Geological Survey prepared an exhaustive study of oil depletion last year (in part to rebut Dr Campbell’s arguments) that put the peak of production some decades off. The IEA has just weighed in with its new “World Energy Outlook”, which foresees enough oil to comfortably meet the demand to 2020 from remaining reserves. René Dahan, one of ExxonMobil’s top managers, goes further: with an assurance characteristic of the world’s largest energy company, he insists that the world will be awash in oil for another 70 years.

Who is right? In making sense of these wildly opposing views, it is useful to look back at the pitiful history of oil forecasting. Doomsters have been predicting dry wells since the 1970s, but so far the oil is still gushing. Nearly all the predictions for 2000 made after the 1970s oil shocks were far too pessimistic. America’s Department of Energy thought that oil would reach $150 a barrel (at 2000 prices); even Exxon predicted a price of $100.

Michael Lynch of DRI-WEFA, an economic consultancy, is one of the few oil forecasters who has got things generally right. In a new paper, Dr Lynch analyses those historical forecasts. He finds evidence of both bias and recurring errors, which suggests that methodological mistakes (rather than just poor data) were the problem. In particular, he faults forecasters who used Hubbert-style analysis for relying on fixed estimates of how much “ultimately recoverable” oil there really is below ground, in the industry’s jargon: that figure, he insists, is actually a dynamic one, as improvements in infrastructure, knowledge and technology raise the amount of oil which is recoverable.

That points to what will probably determine whether the pessimists or the optimists are right: technological innovation. The first camp tends to be dismissive of claims of forthcoming technological revolutions in such areas as deep-water drilling and enhanced recovery. Dr Deffeyes captures this end-of-technology mindset well. He argues that because the industry has already spent billions on technology development, it makes it difficult to ask today for new technology, as most of the wheels have already been invented.

Yet techno-optimists argue that the technological revolution in oil has only just begun. Average recovery rates (how much of the known oil in a reservoir can actually be brought to the surface) are still only around 30-35%. Industry optimists believe that new techniques on the drawing board today could lift that figure to 50-60% within a decade.

Given the industry’s astonishing track record of innovation, it may be foolish to bet against it. That is the result of adversity: the nationalisations of the 1970s forced Big Oil to develop reserves in expensive, inaccessible places such as the North Sea and Alaska, undermining Dr Hubbert’s assumption that cheap reserves are developed first. The resulting upstream investments have driven down the cost of finding and developing wells over the last two decades from over $20 a barrel to around $6 a barrel. The cost of producing oil has fallen by half, to under $4 a barrel.

Such miracles will not come cheap, however, since much of the world’s oil is now produced in ageing fields that are rapidly declining. The IEA concludes that global oil production need not peak in the next two decades if the necessary investments are made. So how much is necessary? If oil companies are to replace the output lost at those ageing fields and meet the world’s ever-rising demand for oil, the agency reckons they must invest $1 trillion in non-OPEC countries over the next decade alone. That’s quite a figure.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 47 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

T-Rex Hunter

Jack Horner is an unlikely academic: his dyslexia is so bad that he has trouble reading a book. But he can read the imprint of life in sandstone or muddy shale across a distance of 100m years, and it is this gift that has made him curator of palaeontology at Montana State University’s Museum of the Rockies, the leader of a multi-million dollar scientific project to expose a complete slice of life 68m years ago, and a consultant to Steven Spielberg and other Hollywood figures.

His father had a sand and gravel quarry in Montana, and the young Horner was a collector of stones and bones, complete with notes about when and where he found them. “My father had owned a ranch when he was younger, in Montana,” he says. “He was enough of a geologist, is a sand and gravel man, to have a pretty good notion that they were dinosaur bones. So when I was eight years old he took me back to the area that had been his ranch, to where he had seen these big old bones. I picked up one. I am pretty sure it was the upper arm bone of a duckbilled dinosaur: it probably wasn’t a maiaosaur but closely related to that. I catalogued it, and took good care of it, and then later when I was in high school, excavated my first dinosaur skeleton. It obviously started earlier than eight and I literally have been driven ever since. I feel like I was born this way.”

Horner spent seven years at university but never graduated. “I have a learning disability, I would call it a learning difference – dyslexia, they call it – and I just had a terrible time with English and foreign languages and things like that. For a degree in geology or biology, they required two years of a foreign language. There was no way in the world I could do that. In fact, I didn’t really pass English. So I couldn’t get a degree, I just wasn’t capable of it. But I took all of the courses required and I wrote a thesis and I did all sorts of things. So I have the education, I just don’t have the piece of paper,” he says.

In Montana, in those days, everybody had the right to a college education. His grades at high school had been terrible, at university, his advisers recognised that he was having a hard time, and went on helping. The dean who kept readmitting him was to give Horner an honorary doctorate years later. As a young non-graduate, Horner wrote to every museum in the English-speaking world, asking for a job. Los Angeles County Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto made offers, but he accepted a post as a technician at Princeton University because of Princeton, New Jersey.

“We definitely know we are working on a very broad coastal plain with the streams and rivers bordered by conifers and hardwood plants, and the areas in between these rivers were probably fern-covered. There were no grasses at all: just ferns and bushes – an unusual landscape, kind of taking the south-eastern United States – Georgia, Florida – and mixing it with the moors of England and flattening it out,” he says. “Triceratops is very common: they are the cows of the Cretaceous, they are everywhere. Duckbilled dinosaurs are relatively common but not as common as triceratops and T rex, for a meat-eating dinosaur, is very common. What we would consider the predator-prey ratio seems really off the scale. What is interesting is the little dromaeosaurs, the ones we know for sure were good predators, we haven’t found any of them.”

Which is why he sees T rex, not as the lion of the Cretaceous savannah but its vulture. “Look at the wildebeest that migrate in the Serengeti of Africa, a million individuals lose about 200,000 individuals in that annual migration. There is a tremendous carrion base there. And so you have hyenas, you have tremendous numbers of vultures that are scavenging, you don’t have all that many animals that are good predators. If T rex was a top predator, especially considering how big it is, you’d expect it to be extremely rare, much rarer than the little dromaeosaurs, and yet they are everywhere, they are a dime a dozen,” he says. A 12-tonne T rex is a lot of vultures, but he doesn’t see the monster as clumsy. He insisted his theory and finding, dedicated to further research upon it, of course, he would like to reevaluate if there is any case that additional evidence found or explanation raised by others in the future.

He examined the leg bones of the T-rex, and compared the length of the thigh bone (upper leg), to the shin bone (lower leg). He found that the thigh bone was equal in length or slightly longer than the shin bone, and much thicker and heavier. Which proves that the animal was built to be a slow walker rather than fast running. On the other hand, the fossils of fast hunting dinosaurs ALWAYS showed that the shin bone was longer than the thigh bone. This same truth can be observed in many animals of today which are designed to run fast: The ostrich, cheetah, etc.

He also studied the fossil teeth of the T-rex, and compared them with the teeth of the Velociraptor, and put the nail in the coffin of the “hunter T-rex theory”. The Velociraptor’s teeth where like stake knifes: sharp, razor-edged, and capable of tearing through flesh with ease. The T-Rex’s teeth were huge, sharp at their tip, but blunt, propelled by enormous jaw muscles, which enabled them to only crush bones.

With the evidence presented in his documentary, Horner was able to prove that the idea of the T-rex as being a hunting and ruthless killing machine is probably just a myth. In light of the scientific clues he was able to unearth, the T-rex was a slow, sluggish animal which had poor vision, an extraordinary sense of smell, that often reached its “prey” after the real hunters were done feeding, and sometimes it had to scare the hunters away from a corpse. In order to do that, the T-rex had to have been ugly, nasty-looking, and stinky. This is actually true of nearly all scavenger animal. They are usually vile and nasty looking.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Detection of a meteorite Lake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Elephant communication

A postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, O’Connell-Rodwell has come to Namibia’s premiere wildlife sanctuary to explore the mysterious and complex world of elephant communication. She and her colleagues are part of a scientific revolution that began nearly two decades ago with the stunning revelation that elephants communicate over long distances using low-frequency sounds, also called infrasounds, that are too deep to be heard by most humans.

As might be expected, the African elephant’s ability to sense seismic sound may begin in the ears. The hammer bone of the elephant’s inner ear is proportionally very large for a mammal, buy typical for animals that use vibrational signals. It may, therefore, be a sign that elephants can communicate with seismic sounds. Also, the elephant and its relative the manatee are unique among mammals in having reverted to a reptilian-like cochlear structure in the inner ear. The cochlea of reptiles facilitates a keen sensitivity to vibrations and may do the same in elephants.

But other aspects of elephant anatomy also support that ability. First, their enormous bodies, which allow them to generate low-frequency sounds almost as powerful as those of a jet takeoff, provide ideal frames for receiving ground vibrations and conducting them to the inner ear. Second, the elephant’s toe bones rest on a fatty pad that might help focus vibrations from the ground into the bone. Finally, the elephant’s enormous brain lies in the cranial cavity behind the eyes in line with the auditory canal. The front of the skull is riddled with sinus cavities that may function as resonating chambers for vibrations from the ground.

How the elephants sense these vibrations is still unknown, but O’Connell-Rodwell who just earned a graduate degree in entomology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, suspects the pachyderms are “listening” with their trunks and feet. The trunk may be the most versatile appendage in nature. Its uses include drinking, bathing, smelling, feeding and scratching. Both trunk and feet contain two kinds of pressure-sensitive nerve endings – one that detects infrasonic vibrations and another that responds to vibrations with slightly higher frequencies. For O’Connell-Rodwell, the future of the research is boundless and unpredictable: “Our work is really at the interface of geophysics, neurophysiology and ecology,” she says. “We’re asking questions that no one has really dealt with before.”

Scientists have long known that seismic communication is common in small animals, including spiders, scorpions, insects and a number of vertebrate species such as white-lipped frogs, blind mole rats, kangaroo rats and golden moles. They also have found evidence of seismic sensitivity in elephant seals – 2-ton marine mammals that are not related to elephants. But O’Connell-Rodwell was the first to suggest that a large land animal also in sending and receiving seismic messages. O’Connell-Rodwell noticed something about the freezing behavior of Etosha’s six-ton bulls that reminded her of the tiny insects back in her lab. “I did my masters thesis on seismic communication in planthoppers,” she says. “I’d put a male planthopper on a stem and playback a female call, and the male would do the same thing the elephants were doing: He would freeze, then press down on his legs, go forward a little bit, then freeze again. It was just so fascinating to me, and it’s what got me to think, maybe there’s something else going on other than acoustic communication.”

Scientists have determined that an elephant’s ability to communicate over long distances is essential for its survival, particularly in a place like Etosha, where more than 2,400 savanna elephants range over an area larger than New Jersey. The difficulty of finding a mate in this vast wilderness is compounded by elephant reproductive biology. Females breed only when in estrus – a period of sexual arousal that occurs every two years and lasts just a few days. “Females in estrus make these very low, long calls that bulls home in on, because it’s such a rare event,” O’Connell-Rodwell says. These powerful estrus calls carry more than two miles in the air and maybe accompanied by long-distance seismic signals, she adds. Breeding herds also use low-frequency vocalizations to warn of predators. Adult bulls and cows have no enemies, except for humans, but young elephants are susceptible to attacks by lions and hyenas. When a predator appears, older members of the herd emit intense warning calls that prompt the rest of the herd to clump together for protection, then flee. In 1994, O’Connell-Rodwell recorded the dramatic cries of a breeding herd threatened by lions at Mushara. “The elephants got really scared, and the matriarch made these very powerful warning calls, and then the herd took off screaming and trumpeting,” she recalls. “Since then, every time we’ve played that particular call at the water hole, we get the same response – the elephants take off.”

Reacting to a warning call played in the air is one thing, but could the elephants detect calls transmitted only through the ground? To find out, the research team in 2002 devised an experiment using electronic equipment that allowed them to send signals through the ground at Mushara. The results of our 2002 study showed us that elephants do indeed detect warning calls played through the ground,” O’Connell-Rodwell observes. “We expected them to clump up into tight groups and leave the area, and that’s in fact what they did. But since we only played back one type of call, we couldn’t really say whether they were interpreting it correctly. Maybe they thought it was a vehicle or something strange instead of a predator warning.”

An experiment last year was designed to solve that problem by using three different recordings – the 1994 warning call from Mushara, an anti-predator call recorded by scientist Joyce Poole in Kenya and an artificial warble tone. Although still analyzing data from this experiment, O’Connell-Rodwell is able to make a few preliminary observations: “The data I’ve seen so far suggest that the elephants were responding as I had expected. When the ’94 warning call was played back, they tended to clump together and leave the water hole sooner. But what’s really interesting is that the unfamiliar anti-predator call from Kenya also caused them to clump up, get nervous and aggressively rumble – but they didn’t necessarily leave. I didn’t think it was going to be that clear cut.”

IELTS Reading Practice Test 48 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Animal minds: Parrot Alex

In 1977 Irene Pepperberg, a recent graduate of Harvard University did something very bold. At a time when animals still were considered automatons, she set out to find what was on another creature’s mind by talking to it. She brought a one-year-old African gray parrot she named Alex into her lab to teach him to reproduce the sounds of the English language. “I thought if he learned to communicate, I could ask him questions about how he sees the worlds.”

When Pepperberg began her dialogue with Alex, who died last September at the age of 31, many scientists believed animals were incapable of any thought. They were simply machines, robots programmed to react to stimuli but lacking the ability to think or feel. Any pet owner would disagree. We see the love in our dogs’ eyes and know that, of course, they have thoughts and emotions. But such claims remain highly controversial. Gut instinct is not science, and it is all too easy to project human thoughts and feelings onto another creature. How, then, does a scientist prove that an animal is capable of thinking – that it is able to acquire information about the world and act on it? “That’s why I started my studies with Alex,” Pepperberg said. They were seated – she at her desk, he on top of his cage – in her lab, a windowless room about the size of a boxcar, at Brandeis University. Newspapers lined the floor; baskets of bright toys were stacked on the shelves. They were clearly a team – and because of their work, the notion that animals can think is no longer so fanciful.

Certain skills are considered key signs of higher mental abilities: good memory, a grasp of grammar and symbols, self-awareness, understanding others’ motives, imitating others, and being creative. Bit by bit, in ingenious experiments, researchers have documented these talents in other species, gradually chipping away at what we thought made human beings distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities came from. Scrub jays know that other jays are thieves and that stashed food can spoil; sheep can recognize faces; chimpanzees use a variety of tools to probe termite mounds and even use weapons to hunt small mammals; dolphins can imitate human postures; the archerfish, which stuns insects with a sudden blast of water, can learn how to aim its squirt simply by watching an experienced fish perform the task. And Alex the parrot turned out to be a surprisingly good talker.

Thirty years after the Alex studies began; Pepperberg and a changing collection of assistants were still giving him English lessons. The humans, along with two younger parrots, also served as Alex’s flock, providing the social input all parrots crave. Like any flock, this one – as small as it was – had its share of drama. Alex dominated his fellow parrots, acted huffy at times around Pepperberg, tolerated the other female humans, and fell to pieces over a male assistant who dropped by for a visit. Pepperberg bought Alex in a Chicago pet store where she let the store’s assistant pick him out because she didn’t want other scientists saying later that she’d particularly chosen an especially smart bird for her work. Given that Alex’s brain was the size of a shelled walnut, most researchers thought Pepperberg’s interspecies communication study would be futile.

“Some people actually called me crazy for trying this,” she said. “Scientists thought that chimpanzees were better subjects, although, of course, chimps can’t speak.” Chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas have been taught to use sign language and symbols to communicate with us, often with impressive results. The bonobo Kanzi, for instance, carries his symbol-communication board with him so he can “talk” to his human researchers, and he has invented combinations of symbols to express his thoughts. Nevertheless, this is not the same thing as having an animal look up at you, open his mouth, and speak. Under Pepperberg’s patient tutelage, Alex learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for various foods, although he calls an apple a “banerry.” “Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, so Alex made up that word for them,” Pepperberg said.

It sounded a bit mad, the idea of a bird having lessons to practice, and willingly doing it. But after listening to and observing Alex, it was difficult to argue with Pepperberg’s explanation for his behaviors. She wasn’t handing him treats for the repetitious work or rapping him on the claws to make him say the sounds. “He has to hear the words over and over before he can correctly imitate them,” Pepperberg said, after pronouncing “seven” for Alex a good dozen times in a row. “I’m not trying to see if Alex can learn a human language,” she added. “That’s never been the point. My plan always was to use his imitative skills to get a better understanding of avian cognition.”

In other words, because Alex was able to produce a close approximation of the sounds of some English words, Pepperberg could ask him questions about a bird’s basic understanding of the world. She couldn’t ask him what he was thinking about, but she could ask him about his knowledge of numbers, shapes, and colors. To demonstrate, Pepperberg carried Alex on her arm to a tall wooden perch in the middle of the room. She then retrieved a green key and a small green cup from a basket on a shelf. She held up the two items to Alex’s eye. “What’s same?” she asked. Without hesitation, Alex’s beak opened: “Co-lor.” “What’s different?” Pepperberg asked. “Shape,” Alex said. His voice had the digitized sound of a cartoon character.

Since parrots lack lips (another reason it was difficult for Alex to pronounce some sounds, such as ba), the words seemed to come from the air around him, as if a ventriloquist were speaking. But the words – and what can only be called the thoughts – were entirely his.

For the next 20 minutes, Alex can through his tests, distinguishing colors, shapes, sizes, and materials (wool versus wood versus metal). He did some simple arithmetic, such as accounting the yellow toy blocks among a pile of mixed hues. And, then, as if to offer final proof of the mind inside his bird’s brain, Alex spoke up. “Talk clearly!” he commanded, when one of the younger birds Pepperberg was also teaching talked with wrong pronunciation. “Talk clearly!” “Don’t be a smart aleck,” Pepperberg said, shaking her head at him. “He knows all this, and he gets bored, so he interrupts the others, or he gives the wrong answer just to be obstinate. At this stage, he’s like a teenager; he’s moody, and I’m never sure what he’ll do.”

READING PASSAGE 2

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

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Stories and poems aimed at children have an exceedingly long history: lullabies, for example, were sung in Roman times, and a few nursery games and rhymes are almost as ancient. Yet so far as written-down literature is concerned, while there were stories in print before 1700 that children often seized on when they had the chance, such as translation of Aesop’s fables, fairy-stories and popular ballads and romances, these were not aimed at young people in particular. Since the only genuinely child-oriented literature at this time would have been a few instructional works to help with reading and general knowledge, plus the odd Puritanical tract as an aid to morality, the only course for keen child readers was to read adult literature. This still occurs today, especially with adult thrillers or romances that include more exciting, graphic detail than is normally found in the literature for younger readers.

By the middle of the 18th century there were enough eager child readers, and enough parents glad to cater to this interest, for publishers to specialize in children’s books whose first aim was a pleasure rather than education or morality. In Britain, a London merchant named Thomas Boreham produced Cajanus, The Swedish Giant in 1742, while the more famous John Newbery published A Little Pretty Pocket Book in 1744. Its contents – rhymes, stories, children’s games plus a free gift (‘A ball and a pincushion’) – in many ways anticipated the similar lucky-dip contents of children’s annuals this century. It is a tribute to Newbery’s flair that he hit upon a winning formula quite so quickly, to be pirated almost immediately in America.

Such pleasing levity was not to last. Influenced by Rousseau, whose Emile (1762) decreed that all books for children save Robinson Crusoe were a dangerous diversion, contemporary critics saw to it that children’s literature should be instructive and uplifting. Prominent among such voices was Mrs Sarah Trimmer, whose magazine The Guardian of Education (1802) carried the first regular reviews of children’s books. It was she who condemned fairy-tales for their violence and general absurdity; her own stories, Fabulous Histories (1786) described talking animals who were always models of sense and decorum.

So the moral story for children was always threatened from within, given the way children have of drawing out entertainment from the sternest moralist. But the greatest blow to the improving children’s book was to come from an unlikely source indeed: early 19th-century interest in folklore. Both nursery rhymes, selected by James Orchard Halliwell for a folklore society in 1842, and collection of fairy-stories by the scholarly Grimm brothers, swiftly translated into English in 1823, soon rocket to popularity with the young, quickly leading to new editions, each one more child-centered than the last. From now on younger children could expect stories written for their particular interest and with the needs of their own limited experience of life kept well to the force.

What eventually determined the reading of older children was often not the availability of special children’s literature as such but access to books that contained characters, such as young people or animals, with whom they could more easily empathize, or action, such as exploring or fighting, that made few demands on adult maturity or understanding.

The final apotheosis of literary childhood as something to be protected from unpleasant reality came with the arrival in the late 1930s of child-centered best-sellers intend on entertainment as its most escapist. In Britain novelists such as Enid Blyton and Richmal Crompton described children who were always free to have the most unlikely adventures, secure in the knowledge that nothing bad could ever happen to them in the end. The fact that war broke out again during her books’ greatest popularity fails to register at all in the self-enclosed world inhabited by Enid Blyton’s young characters. The reaction against such dream-worlds was inevitable after World War II, coinciding with the growth of paperback sales, children’s libraries and a new spirit of moral and social concern. Urged on by committed publishers and progressive librarians, writers slowly began to explore new areas of interest while also shifting the settings of their plots from the middle-class world to which their chiefly adult patrons had always previously belonged.

The critical emphasis, during this development, has been divided. For some, the most important task was to rid children’s books of social prejudice and exclusiveness no longer found acceptable. Others concentrated more on the positive achievements of contemporary children’s literature. That writers of these works are now often recommended to the attention of adult as well as child readers echo the 19th-century belief that children’s literature can be shared by the generations, rather than being a defensive barrier between childhood and the necessary growth towards adult understanding.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

The Rainmaker design

Sometimes ideas just pop up out of the blue. Or in Charlie Paton’s case, out of the rain. ‘I was on a bus in Morocco traveling through the desert,’ he remembers. ‘It had been raining and the bus was full of hot, wet people. The windows steamed up and I went to sleep with a towel against the glass. When I woke, the thing was soaking wet. I had to wring it out. And it set me thinking. Why was it so wet?

The answer, of course, was condensation. Back home in London, a physicist friend, Philip Davies, explained that the glass, chilled by the rain outside, had cooled the hot humid air inside the bus below its dew point, causing droplets of water to form on the inside of the window. Intrigued, Paton – a lighting engineer by profession – started rigging up his own equipment. ‘I made my own solar stills It occurred to me that you might be able to produce water in this way in the desert, simply by cooling the air. I wondered whether you could make enough to irrigate fields and grow crops.’

Today, a decade on, his dream has taken shape as a giant greenhouse on a desert island off Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf – the first commercially viable version of his ‘seawater greenhouse’. Local scientists, working with Paton, are watering the desert and growing vegetables in what is basically a giant dew-making machine that produces freshwater and cool air from sun and seawater. In awarding Paton first prize in a design competition two years ago, Marco Goldschmied, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, called it ‘a truly original idea which has the potential to impact on the lives of millions of people living in coastal water-starved areas around the world’.

The seawater greenhouse as developed by Paton has three main parts. They both air-condition the greenhouse and provide water for irrigation. The front of the greenhouse faces into the prevailing wind so that hot dry air blows in through a front wall. The wall is made of perforated cardboard kept moist by a constant trickle of seawater pumped up from the ocean. The purpose is to cool and moisten the incoming desert air. The cool moist air allows the plants to grow faster. And, crucially, because much less water evaporates from the leaves, the plants need much less moisture to grow than if they were being irrigated in the hot dry desert air outside the greenhouse.

The air-conditioning of the interior of the greenhouse is completed by the second feature: the roof. It has two layers: an outer layer of clear polyethylene and an inner coated layer that reflects infrared radiation. This combination ensures that visible light can stream through to the plants, maximizing the rate of plant growth through photosynthesis but at the same time heat from the infrared radiation is trapped in the space between the layers, and kept away from the plants. This helps keep the air around the plants cool.

At the back of the greenhouse sits the third elements. This is the main water production unit. Here, the air hits a second moist cardboard wall that increases its humidity as it reaches the condenser, which finally collects from the hot humid air the moisture for irrigating the plants. The condenser is a metal surface kept cool by still more seawater. It is the equivalent of the window on Paton’s Morcoccan bus. Drops of pure distilled water from on the condenser and flow into a tank for irrigating the crops.

The Abu Dhai greenhouse more or less runs itself. Sensors switch everything on when the sun rises and alter flows of air and seawater through the day in response to changes in temperature, humidity, and sunlight. On windless days, fans ensure a constant flow of air through the greenhouse. ‘Once it is turned to the local environment, you don’t need anymore there for it to work,’ says Paton. “We can run the entire operation of one 13-amp plug, and in the future, we could make it entirely independent of the grid, powered from a few solar panels.’

Critics point out that construction costs of around $4 a square foot are quite high. By illustration, however, Paton presents that it can cool as efficiently as a 500-kilowatt air conditioner while using less than 3 kilowatts of electricity. Thus the plants need only an eighth of the volume of water used by those grown conventionally. And so the effective cost of the desalinated water in the greenhouse is only a quarter that of water from a standard desalinator, which is good economics. Besides it really suggests an environmentally-friendly way of providing air conditioning on a scale large enough to cool large greenhouses where crops can be grown despite the high outside temperatures.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 49 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

The Beginning of Football!

Football as we now know it developed in Britain in the 19th century, but the game is far older than this. In fact, the term has historically been applied to games played on foot, as opposed to those played on horseback, so ‘football’ hasn’t always involved kicking a ball. It has generally been played by men, though at the end of the 17th century, games were played between married and single women in a town in Scotland. The married women regularly won.

The very earliest form of football for which we have evidence is the ‘tsu’chu’, which was played in China and may date back 3,000 years. It was performed in front of the Emperor during festivities to mark his birthday. It involved kicking a leather ball through a 30-40 cm opening into a small net fixed onto long bamboo canes – a feat that demanded great skill and excellent technique.

Another form of the game, also originating from the Far East, was the Japanese ‘kemari’ which dates from about the fifth century and is still played today. This is a type of circular football game, a more dignified and ceremonious experience requiring certain skills, but not competitive in the way the Chinese game was, nor is there the slightest sign of struggle for possession of the ball. The players had to pass the ball to each other, in a relatively small space, trying not to let it touch the ground.

The Romans had a much livelier game, ‘harpastum’. Each team member had his own specific tactical assignment took a noisy interest in the proceedings and the score. The role of the feet was so small as scarcely to be of consequence. The game remained popular for 700 or 800 years, but, although it was taken to England, it is doubtful whether it can be considered as a forerunner of contemporary football.

The game that flourished in Britain from the 8th to the 19th centuries was substantially different from all the previously known forms – more disorganised, more violent, more spontaneous and usually played by an indefinite number of players. Frequently, the games took the forms of a heated contest between whole villages. Kicking opponents were allowed, as in fact was almost everything else.

There was tremendous enthusiasm for football, even though the authorities repeatedly intervened to restrict it, as a public nuisance. In the 14th and 15th centuries, England, Scotland and France all made football punishable by law, because of the disorder that commonly accompanied it, or because the well-loved recreation prevented subjects from practicing more useful military disciplines. None of these efforts had much effect.

The English passion for football was particularly strong in the 16th century, influenced by the popularity of the rather better organised Italian game of ‘calcio’. English football was as rough as ever, but it found a prominent supporter in the school headmaster Richard Mulcaster. He pointed out that it had positive educational value and promoted health and strength. Mulcaster claimed that all that was needed was to refine it a little, limit the number of participants in each team and, more importantly, have a referee to oversee the game.

The game persisted in a disorganised form until the early 19th century, when a number of influential English schools developed their own adaptations. In some, including Rugby School, the ball could be touched with the hands or carried; opponents could be tripped up and even kicked. It was recognised in educational circles that, as a team game, football helped to develop such fine qualities as loyalty, selflessness, cooperation, subordination and deference to the team spirit. A ‘games cult’ developed in schools and some form of football became an obligatory part of the curriculum.

In 1863, developments reached a climax. At Cambridge University, an initiative began to establish some uniform standards and rules that would be accepted by everyone, but there were essentially two camps: the minority – Rugby School and some others – wished to continue with their own form of the game, in particular allowing players to carry the ball. In October of the same year, eleven London clubs and schools sent representatives to establish a set of fundamental rules to govern the matches played amongst them. This meeting marked the birth of the Football Association.

The dispute concerning kicking and tripping opponents and carrying the ball was discussed thoroughly at this and subsequent meetings, until eventually, on 8 December, the die-hard exponents of the Rugby style withdrew, marking a final split between rugby and football. Within eight years, the Football Association already had 50 member clubs, and the first football competition in the world was started – the FA Cup.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Fossil files “The Paleobiology Database”

Are we now living through the sixth extinction as our own activities destroy ecosystems and wipe out diversity? That’s the doomsday scenario painted by many ecologists, and they may well be right. The trouble is we don’t know for sure because we don’t have a clear picture of how life changes between extinction events or what has happened in previous episodes. We don’t even know how many species are alive today, let alone the rate at which they are becoming extinct. A new project aims to fill some of the gaps. The Paleobiology Database aspires to be an online repository of information about every fossil ever dug up. It is a huge undertaking that has been described as biodiversity’s equivalent of the Human Genome Project. Its organizers hope that by recording the history of biodiversity they will gain an insight into how environmental changes have shaped life on Earth in the past and how they might do so in the future. The database may even indicate whether life can rebound no matter what we throw at it, or whether a human-induced extinction could be without parallel, changing the rules that have applied throughout the rest of the planet’s history.

But already the project is attracting harsh criticism. Some experts believe it to be seriously flawed. They point out that a database is only as good as the data fed into it, and that even if all the current fossil finds were catalogued, they would provide an incomplete inventory of life because we are far from discovering every fossilised species. They say that researchers should get up from their computers and get back into the dirt to dig up new fossils. Others are more sceptical still, arguing that we can never get the full picture because the fossil record is riddled with holes and biases.

Fans of the Paleobiology Database acknowledge that the fossil record will always be incomplete. But they see value in looking for global patterns that show relative changes in biodiversity. “The fossil record is the best tool we have for understanding how diversity and extinction work in normal times,” says John Alroy from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara. “Having a background extinction estimate gives us a benchmark for understanding the mass extinction that’s currently underway. It allows us to say just how bad it is in relative terms.”

To this end, the Paleobiology Database aims to be the most thorough attempt yet to come up with good global diversity curves. Every day between 10 and 15 scientists around the world add information about fossil finds to the database. Since it got up and running in 1998, scientists have entered almost 340,000 specimens, ranging from plants to whales to insects to dinosaurs to sea urchins. Overall totals are updated hourly at www. paleodb.org. Anyone can download data from the public part of the site and play with the numbers to their heart’s content. Already, the database has thrown up some surprising results. Looking at the big picture, Alroy and his colleagues believe they have found evidence that biodiversity reached a plateau long ago, contrary to the received wisdom that species numbers have increased continuously between extinction events. “The traditional view is that diversity has gone up and up and up,” he says. “Our research is showing that diversity limits were approached many tens of millions of years before the dinosaurs evolved, much less suffered extinction.” This suggests that only a certain number of species can live on Earth at a time, filling a prescribed number of niches like spaces in a multi-storey car park. Once it’s full, no more new species can squeeze in, until extinctions free up new spaces or something rare and catastrophic adds a new floor to the car park.

Alroy has also used the database to reassess the accuracy of species names. His findings suggest that irregularities in classification inflate the overall number of species in the fossil record by between 32 and 44 per cent. Single species often end up with several names, he says, due to misidentification or poor communication between taxonomists in different countries. Repetition like this can distort diversity curves. “If you have really bad taxonomy in one short interval, it will look like a diversity spike – a big diversification followed by a big extinction – when all that has happened is a change in the quality of names,” says Alroy. For example, his statistical analysis indicated that of the 4861 North American fossil mammal species catalogued in the database, between 24 and 31 per cent will eventually prove to be duplicated.

Of course, the fossil record is undeniably patchy. Some places and times have left behind more fossil-filled rocks than others. Some have been sampled more thoroughly. And certain kinds of creatures – those with hard parts that lived in oceans, for example – are more likely to leave a record behind, while others, like jellyfish, will always remain a mystery. Alroy has also tried to account for this. He estimates, for example, that only 41 per cent of North American mammals that have ever lived are known from fossils, and he suspects that a similar proportion of fossils are missing from other groups, such as fungi and insects.

Not everyone is impressed with such mathematical wizardry. Jonathan Adrain from the University of Iowa in Iowa City points out that statistical wrangling has been known to create mass extinctions where none occurred. It is easy to misinterpret data. For example, changes in sea level or inconsistent sampling methods can mimic major changes in biodiversity. Indeed, a recent and thorough examination of the literature on marine bivalve fossils has convinced David Jablonsky from the University of Chicago and his colleagues that their diversity has increased steadily over the past 5 million years.

With an inventory of all living species, ecologists could start to put the current biodiversity crisis in historical perspective. Although creating such a list would be a task to rival even the Palaeobiology Database, it is exactly what the San Francisco-based ALL Species Foundation hopes to achieve in the next 25 years. The effort is essential, says Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, who is alarmed by current rates of extinction. “There is a crisis. We’ve begun to measure it, and it’s very high,” Wilson says. “We need this kind of information in much more detail to protect all of biodiversity, not just the ones we know well.” Let the counting continue.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

The History of building Telegraph lines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IELTS Reading Practice Test 50 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Density and Crowding

Of the great myriad of problems which man and the world face today, there are three significant trends which stand above all others in importance: the unprecedented population growth throughout the world – a net increase of 1,400,000 people per week – and all of its associations and consequences; the increasing urbanization of these people, so that more and more of them are rushing into cities and urban areas of the world; and the tremendous explosion of communication and social contact throughout the world, so that every part of the world is now aware of every other part. All of these trends are producing increased crowding and the perception of crowding.

It is important to emphasize at the outset that crowding and density are not necessarily the same. Density is the number of individuals per unit area or unit space. It is a simple physical measurement. Crowding is a product of density, communication, contact, and activity. It implies a pressure, a force, and a psychological reaction. It may occur at widely different densities. The frontiersman may have felt crowded when someone built a homestead a mile away. The suburbanite may feel relatively uncrowded in a small house on a half-acre lot if it is surrounded by trees, bushes, and a hedgerow, even though he lives under much higher physical density than did the frontiersman. Hence, crowding is very much a psychological and ecological phenomenon and not just a physical condition.

A classic crowding study was done by Calhoun (1962), who put rats into a physical environment designed to accommodate 50 rats and provided enough food, water, and nesting materials for the number of rats in the environment. The rat population peaked at 80, providing a look at cramped living conditions. Although the rats experienced no resource limitations other than space restriction, a number of negative conditions developed: the two most dominant males took harems of several female rats and occupied more than their share of space, leaving other rats even more crowded; many females stopped building nests and abandoned their infant rats; the pregnancy rate declined; infant and adult mortality rates increased; more aggressive and physical attacks occurred; sexual variation increased, including hypersexuality, inhibited sexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality.

Calhoun’s results have led to other research on crowding’s effect on human beings, and these research findings have suggested that high density is not the single cause of negative effects on humans. When crowding is defined only in terms of spatial density (the amount of space per person), the effects of crowding are variable. However, if crowding is defined in terms of social density, or the number of people who must interact, then crowding better predicts negative psychological and physical effects.

There are several reasons why crowding makes us feel uncomfortable. One reason is related to stimulus overload – there are just too many stimuli competing for our attention. We cannot notice or respond to all of them. This feeling is typical of the harried mother, who has several children competing for her attention, while she is on the phone and the doorbell is ringing. This leaves her feeling confused, fatigued and yearning to withdraw from the situation. There are strong feelings of a lack of privacy – being unable to pay attention to what you want without being repeatedly interrupted or observed by others.

Field studies done in a variety of settings illustrate that social density is associated with negative effects on human beings. In prison studies, males generally became more aggressive with increases in density. In male prison, inmates living in conditions of higher densities were more likely to suffer from the fight. Males rated themselves as more aggressive in small rooms (a situation of high spatial density), whilst the females rated themselves as more aggressive in large rooms (Stokols et al., 1973). These differences relate to the different personal space requirements of the genders. Besides, Baum and Greenberg found that high density leads to decreased attraction, both physical attraction and liking towards others and it appears to have gender differences in the impact that density has on attraction levels, with males experiencing a more extreme reaction. Also, the greater the density is, the less the helping behavior. One reason why the level of helping behavior may be reduced in crowded situations links to the concept of diffusion of responsibility. The more people that are present in a situation that requires help, the less often help is given. This may be due to the fact that people diffuse responsibility among themselves with no-one feeling that they ought to be the one to help.

Facing all these problems, what are we going to do with them? The more control a person has over the crowded environment the less negatively they experience it, thus the perceived crowding is less (Schmidt and Keating). The ability to cope with crowding is also influenced by the relationship the individual has with the other people in the situation. The high density will be interpreted less negatively if the individual experiences it with people he likes. One of the main coping strategies employed to limit the impact of high density is social withdrawal. This includes behaviors such as averting the gaze and using negative body language to attempt to block any potential intrusions.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Intelligence and Giftedness

In 1904 the French minister of education, facing limited resources for schooling, sought a way to separate the unable from the merely lazy. Alfred Binet got the job of devising selection principles and his brilliant solution put a stamp on the study of intelligence and was the forerunner of intelligence tests still used today, he developed a thirty-problem test in 1905, which tapped several abilities related to intellect, such as judgment and reasoning, the test determined a given child’s mental age’. The test previously established a norm for children of a given physical age. (for example, five-year-old on average get ten items correct), therefore, a child with a mental age of five should score 10, which would mean that he or she was functioning pretty much as others of that age. The child’s mental age was then compared to his physical age.

A large disparity in the wrong direction (e.g., a child of nine with a mental age of four) might suggest inability rather than laziness and mean he or she was earmarked for special schooling, Binet, however, denied that the test was measuring intelligence, its purpose was simply diagnostic, for selection only. This message was however lost and caused many problems and misunderstanding later.

Although Binet’s test was popular, it was a bit inconvenient to deal with a variety of physical and mental ages. So in 1912, Wilhelm Stern suggested simplifying this by reducing the two to a single number, he divided the mental age by the physical age and multiplied the result by 100. An average child, irrespective of age, would score 100. A number much lower than 100 would suggest the need for help, and one much higher would suggest a child well ahead of his peer.

This measurement is what is now termed the IQ (for intelligence quotient) score and it has evolved to be used to show how a person, adult or child, performed in relation to others. (the term IQ was coined by Lewis M. Terman, professor of psychology and education of Stanford University, in 1916. He had constructed an enormously influential revision of Binet’s test, called the Stanford-Binet test, versions of which are still given extensively.)

The field studying intelligence and developing tests eventually coalesced into a sub-field of psychology called psychometrics (psycho for ‘mind’ and metrics for ‘measurements’). The practical side of psychometrics (the development and use of tests) became widespread quite early, by 1917, when Einstein published his grand theory of relativity, mass-scale testing was already in use. Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare (which led to the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915) provoked the United States to finally enter the First World War in the same year. The military had to build up an army very quickly; it had two million inductees to sort out. Who would become officers and who enlisted men? Psychometricians developed two intelligence tests that help sort all these people out, at least to some extent, this was the first major use of testing to decide who lived and who died, as officers were a lot safer on the battlefield, the tests themselves were given under horrendously bad conditions, and the examiners seemed to lack commonsense, a lot of recruits simply had no idea what to do and in several sessions most inductees scored zero! The examiners also came up with the quite astounding conclusion from the testing that the average American adult’s intelligence was equal to that of a thirteen-year-old!

Intelligence testing enforced political and social prejudice, their results were used to argue that Jews ought to be kept out of the united states because they were so intelligently inferior that they would pollute the racial mix, and blacks ought not to be allowed to breed at all. And so abuse and test bias controversies continued to plaque psychometrics.

Measurement is fundamental to science and technology, science often advances in leaps and bounds when measurement devices improve, psychometrics has long tried to develop ways to gauge psychological qualities such as intelligence and more specific abilities, anxiety, extroversion, emotional stability, compatibility, with a marriage partner, and so on. Their scores are often given enormous weight, a single IQ measurement can take on a life of its own if teachers and parents see it as definitive, it became a major issue in the 70s, when court cases were launched to stop anyone from making important decisions based on IQ test scores, the main criticism was and still is that current tests don’t really measure intelligence, whether intelligence can be measured at all is still controversial, some say it cannot others say that IQ tests are psychology’s greatest accomplishments.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Making of Olympic Torch

Every two years, people around the world wait in anticipation as a torch-bearing runner enters the Olympic arena and lights the cauldron. The symbolic lighting of the Olympic flame marks the beginning of another historic Olympic Games. The opening ceremony is the end of a long journey for the Olympic torch. The ancient Greeks revered the power of fire. In Greek mythology, the god Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to humans. The Greeks held their first Olympic Games in 776 B.C. The Games, held every four years at Olympia, honored Zeus and other Greek gods. A constantly burning flame was a regular fixture throughout Greece. At the start of the Olympic Games, the Greeks would ignite a cauldron of flame upon the altar dedicated to Hera, goddess of birth and marriage.

The flame was reintroduced to the Olympics at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. A cauldron was lit, but there was no torch relay. The first Olympic torch relay was at the 1936 Berlin Summer Games and it was not introduced to the Winter Olympics until the 1952 Games. It was lit that year not in Olympia, Greece, but in Norway, which was chosen because it was the birthplace of skiing. But since the 1964 Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria, every Olympic Games – Winter and Summer – has begun with a torch-lighting ceremony in Olympia, Greece, followed by a torch relay to the Olympic stadium.

Designing an Olympic Torch

The torch starts out as an idea in the mind of a designer or group of designers. Several design teams submit proposals to the Olympic Committee for the opportunity to create and build the torch. The team that wins the assignment will design a torch that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional. A torch can take a year or two to design and build. And once the torch has been built, it must be tested rigorously in all kinds of weather conditions. The look of the modern Olympic torch originated with John Hench, a Disney artist who designed the torch for the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California. His design provided the basis for all future torches. Since then, designers have tried to create a torch that represents the host country and the theme for that Olympic Games.

The torch must then be replicated … and replicated. It’s not just one torch making the journey to the Olympic stadium; it’s thousands. Anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 torches are constructed to accommodate the thousands of runners who carry them through each leg of the Olympic relay. Each runner has the opportunity to purchase his torch at the end of his leg of the relay.

Olympic Torch fuel

The first torch used in the modern Olympics (the 1936 Berlin Games) was made of a thin steel rod topped with a circular piece from which the flame rose. It was inscribed with a dedication to the runners. The torch must stay lit for the entire length of its journey. It must survive wind, rain, sleet, snow, and a variety of climates (desert, mountain, and ocean). For fuel, early torches burned everything from gunpowder to olive oil. Some torches used a mixture of hexamine (a mixture of formaldehyde and ammonia) and naphthalene (the hydrogen- and carbon-based substance in mothballs) with an igniting liquid. These substances weren’t always the most efficient fuel sources, and they were sometimes dangerous. In the 1956 Games, the final torch in the relay was lit by magnesium and aluminum, burning chunks of which fell from the torch and seared the runner’s arms. The first liquid fuels were introduced at the 1972 Munich Games. Torches since that time have carried liquid fuels – they are stored under pressure as a liquid but burn as a gas to produce a flame. Liquid fuel is safe for the runner and can be stored in a lightweight canister. The torch designed for the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics has an aluminum base that houses a small fuel tank. As fuel rises through the handle, it is pushed through a brass valve with thousands of tiny openings. As the fuel squeezes through the small openings, it builds pressure. Once it makes it through the openings, the pressure drops, and the liquid fuel turns into gas for burning. The tiny holes maintain a high pressure in the fuel to keep the flame going through harsh conditions.

The 1996 torch was fueled by propylene, which produced a bright flame. But because propylene contains a high level of carbon, it also produced a lot of smoke – not a plus for the environment. In 2000, the creators of the Sydney Olympic torch came up with a more lightweight, inexpensive, and environmentally friendly design. To fuel their torch, they decided on a mixture of 35 percent propane (the gas used to heat home stoves and barbecue grills) and 65 percent butane (cigarette lighter fuel), which ignites a strong flame without making a lot of smoke. Because the propane/butane mixture can be stored as a liquid under relatively light pressure, it can be kept in a lightweight container. It then burns as a gas under normal atmospheric pressure. The liquid fuel is stored in an aluminum canister located about halfway up the torch. If flows up to the top of the torch through a pipe. Before leaving the pipe, the liquid fuel is forced through a tiny hole. Once it moves through the hole, there is a pressure drop, causing the liquid to turn into gas for burning. The torch moves the liquid fuel at a consistent rate to the burner, so the flame always burns with the same intensity. The torch can stay lit for about 15 minutes.

The engineers behind both the 1996 and 2000 torches adopted a burner system that utilized a double flame, helping them to stay lit even in erratic winds. The external flame burns slowly and at a lower temperature than the internal flame. This flame is big and bright orange, so it can be seen clearly, but it is unstable in winds. The interior flame burns hotter, producing a blue flame that is small but very stable because its internal location protects it from the wind. It would act like a pilot light, able to relight the external flame should it go out.

When the 2002 Olympic Torch, in Salt lake city, the top section was glass, and the Olympic Flame burned within the glass, echoing the 2002 Olympic theme Light the Fire Within. The glass stood for purity, winter, ice, and nature. Also inside the glass was a geometric copper structure which helped hold the flame. The two silver sections also mirrored the blue/ purple colors of the Fire and Ice theme.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 51 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Hello Happiness!

Ask 100 people what would make them happy, and a sizeable majority would say “winning the lottery.” Yet, if they won a vast fortune, within a year they would be back to their previous level of happiness. The fact is that money has many uses, but more money does not mean more happiness. Surveys carried out in recent years by leading psychologists and sociologists all confirm that while individuals may increase their material wealth during the course of their lifetime, this has no bearing on their well-being. And what is true for individuals can be applied on a larger scale to the world population. Statistically, wealthier nations do not achieve higher scores on the happiness-ometer than developing or underdeveloped nations. Once the basic criteria of adequate shelter and nutrition are satisfied, increased wealth plays no significant role. So why the obsession with getting rich? The answer, say, researchers, is simple. Call it jealousy, competitiveness, or just keeping up with the Joneses, however, well we are doing, there is always someone else who is doing better. Just as we acquire a new $25,000 car, our neighbour parks his brand spanking new $40,000 set of wheels in his drive, causing us much consternation, but fuelling us with new aspirations in the process. And so the cycle continues. Money, or material wealth, maybe a prime mover, but it is not the foundation of our well-being.

If money isn’t the key to happiness, then, what is? In all 44 countries surveyed by a prominent research centre, family life provided the greatest source of satisfaction. Married people live on average three years longer and enjoy greater physical and psychological health than the unmarried and, surprisingly, couples in a cohabitation relationship. Having a family enhances well-being, and spending more time with one’s family helps even more. Social interaction among families, neighbourhoods, workplaces, communities and religious groups correlates strongly with subjective well-being. In fact, the degree of individuals’ social connections is the best benchmark of their happiness.

Friendship is another major factor. Indeed, to return to the dollar-equals-happiness equation, in one survey, having a friend converted into $50,000 worth of happiness, and confirms the well-known phenomenon that loneliness can lead to depression. Work is another area central to well-being, and certain features correlate highly with happiness. These include autonomy over how, where, and at what pace work is done, trust between employer and employee, fair treatment, and active participation in the making of decisions. Occupationally, happiness tends to be more common among professionals and managers, that is, people who are in control of the work they do, rather than subservient to their bosses. Inequality implies less control for those who are in a weaker position, although there are more risks of losing their privileges for those in a stronger position.

Control of one’s life, in general, is also key. Happiness is clearly correlated with the presence of favourable events such as promotion or marriage, and the absence of troubles or bad luck such as accidents, being laid off or conflicts. These events on their own signal the success or failure to reach one’s goals, and therefore the control one has. On a national level, the more that governments recognise individual preferences, the happier their citizens will be. Choice, and citizens’ belief that they can affect the political process, increase subjective well-being. Furthermore, evidence exists for an association between unhappiness and poor health: people from underdeveloped countries are among the unhappiest in the world, and their life expectancy has been falling steadily. People are more satisfied in societies which minimally restrict their freedom of action, in other words, where they are in control rather than being controlled. Happy people are characterised by the belief that they are able to control their situation, whereas unhappy people tend to believe that they are a victim of fate. Happy people are also more psychologically resilient, assertive and open to the experience.

But how good is the evidence for this alternative viewpoint then – that happiness, and not financial status, contributes to good health, and long life? A study of nuns, spanning seven decades, supports this theory. Autobiographies written by the nuns in their early 1920s were scored for positive and negative emotions. Nuns expressing the most positive emotions lived on average ten years longer than those expressing the least positive emotions. Happy people, it seems, are much less likely to fall ill and die than unhappy people.

But what must we do to be happy? Experts cite the old maxim “be happy with what you’ve got.” Look around you, they say, and identify the positive factors in your life. Concentrating on the negative aspects of one’s life is a no-no, and so is worrying. Worrying is a negative thinking habit that is nearly always about something that lies in the future. It seems, apparently, from our cave-dwelling days, when we had to think on a day-to-day basis about how and where to find food and warmth, for example. But in the modern world, worrying simply undermines our ability to enjoy life in the present. More often than not, the things we worry about never come to pass anyway. Just as important is not to dwell on the past – past mistakes, bad experiences, missed opportunities and so on.

What else can we do? Well, engage in a loving relationship with another adult, and work hard to sustain it. Try to plan frequent interactions with your family, friends and neighbours (in that order). Make sure you’re not working so hard that you’ve no time left for personal relationships and leisure. If you are, leave your job voluntarily to become self-employed, but don’t get sacked – that’s more damaging to well-being than the loss of a spouse, and its effects last longer. In your spare time, join a club, volunteer for community service, or take up religion.

If none of the above works, then vote for a political party with the same agenda as the King of Bhutan, who announced that his nation’s objective is national happiness.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

One Who Hopes

Language lovers, just like music lovers, enjoy a variety. For the latter, there’s Mozart, The Rolling Stones and Beyonce. For the former, there’s English, French, Swahili, Urdu… the list is endless. But what about those poor overworked students who find learning difficult, confusing languages a drudge? Wouldn’t it put a smile on their faces if there were just one simple, the easy-to-learn tongue that would cut their study time by years? Well, of course, it exists. It’s called Esperanto, and it’s been around for more than 120 years. Esperanto is the most widely spoken artificially constructed international language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published his Unua Libro in 1887. The phrase itself means ‘one who hopes’. Zamenhof’s goal was to create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to promote peace and international understanding.

Zamenhof, after ten years of developing his brain-child from the late 1870s to the early 1880s, had the first Esperanto grammar published in Warsaw in July 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades, at first primarily in the Russian Empire and Eastern Europe, then in Western Europe and the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years, speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals, but since 1905 world congresses have been held on five continents every year except during the two World Wars. Latest estimates for the numbers of Esperanto speakers are around 2 million. Put in percentage terms, that’s about 0.03% of the world’s population – no staggering figure, comparatively speaking. One reason is that Esperanto has no official status in any country, but it is an optional subject on the curriculum of several state education systems. It is widely estimated that it can be learned in anywhere between a quarter to a twentieth of the time required for other languages.

As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to any ethnic language. Whilst it is described as ‘a language lexically predominantly Romanic’, the phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the western Indo-European languages. For those of us who are not naturally predisposed to tucking languages under our belts, it is an easy language to learn. It has 5 vowels and 23 consonants. It has one simple way of conjugating all of its verbs. Words are often made from many other roots, making the number of words which one must memorise much smaller. The language is phonetic, and the rules of pronunciation are very simple so that everyone knows how to pronounce a written word and vice-versa, and word order follows a standard, logical pattern. Through prefixing and suffixing, Esperanto makes it easy to identify words as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, direct objects and so on, by means of easy-to-spot endings. All this makes for easy language learning. What’s more, several research studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto before another foreign language speeds up and improves the learning of the other language. This is presumably because learning subsequent foreign languages is easier than learning one’s first, while the use of a grammatically simple and culturally flexible language like Esperanto softens the blow of learning one’s first foreign language. In one study, a group of European high school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for three years, and ended up with a significantly better command of French than a control group who had studied French for all four years.

Needless to say, the language has its critics. Some point to the Eastern European features of the language as being harsh and difficult to pronounce and argue that Esperanto has an artificial feel to it, without the flow of a natural tongue, and that by nature of its artificiality, it is impossible to become emotionally involved with the language. Others cite its lack of cultural history, indigenous literature – “no one has ever written a novel straight into Esperanto” – together with its minimal vocabulary and its inability to express all the necessary philosophical, emotional and psychological concepts.

The champions of Esperanto – Esperantists – disagree. They claim that it is a language in which a great body of world literature has appeared in translation: in poetry, novels, literary journals, and, to rebut the accusation that it is not a ‘real’ language, point out that it is frequently used at international meetings which draw hundreds and thousands of participants. Moreover, on an international scale, it is most useful – and fair – for neutral communication. That means that communication through Esperanto does not give advantages to the members of any particular people or culture, but provides an ethos of equality of rights, tolerance and true internationalism.

Esperantists further claim that Esperanto has the potential – was it universally taught for a year or two throughout the world – to empower ordinary people to communicate effectively worldwide on a scale that far exceeds that which is attainable today by only the most linguistically brilliant among us. It offers the opportunity to improve communication in business, diplomacy, scholarship and other fields so that those who speak many different native languages will be able to participate fluently in international conferences and chat comfortably with each other after the formal presentations are made. Nowadays that privilege is often restricted to native speakers of English and those who have special talents and opportunities for learning English as a foreign language.

What Esperanto does offer in concrete terms is the potential of saving billions of dollars which are now being spent on translators and interpreters, billions which would be freed up to serve the purposes of governments and organisations that spend so much of their resources to change words from one language into the words of others. Take, for example, the enormously costly conferences, meetings and documentation involved in the European Union parliamentary and administrative procedures – all funded, essentially, by taxpayers. And instead of the World Health Organisation, and all NGOs for that matter, devoting enormous sums to provide interpreters and translations, they would be able to devote those huge amounts of money to improve the health of stricken populations throughout the world.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

LONG-TERM FORECAST: HOT AND DRY

Melting land ice in the Arctic is set to cause a global rise in sea levels, leading to disastrous effects for both man and wildlife. Many species worldwide are threatened with extinction, and low-lying islands and landmasses will disappear entirely. But the havoc wreaked by the effect of greenhouse gases won’t be confined to just too much water, but the absence of it, as well. In other words, desertification. A decrease in the total amount of rainfall in arid and semi-arid areas could increase the total area of drylands worldwide, and thus the total amount of land potentially at risk from desertification.

Desertification is officially recognised as land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variations and human activities. This degradation of formerly productive land is a complex process. It involves multiple causes, and it proceeds at varying rates in different climates. Desertification may intensify a general climatic trend, or initiate a change in local climate, both leading towards greater aridity. The more arid conditions associated with desertification accelerate the depletion of vegetation and soils. Land degradation occurs all over the world, but it is only referred to as desertification when it takes place in drylands. This is because these areas are especially prone to more permanent damage as different areas of degraded land spread and merge together to form desert-like conditions.

Global warming brought about by increasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere is expected to increase the variability of weather conditions and extreme events. Many dryland areas face increasingly low and erratic rainfalls, coupled with soil erosion by wind and the drying-up of water resources through increased regional temperatures. Deforestation can also reduce rainfall in certain areas, increasing the threat of desertification. It is not yet possible, despite sophisticated technology, to identify with an acceptable degree of reliability those parts of the Earth where desertification will occur. Existing drylands, which cover over 40% of the total land area of the world, most significantly in Africa and Asia, will probably be most at risk from climate change. These areas already experience low rainfall, and any that falls is usually in the form of short, erratic, high-intensity storms. In addition, such areas also suffer from land degradation due to over-cultivation, overgrazing, deforestation and poor irrigation practices.

It is a misconception that droughts cause desertification. Droughts are common in arid and semi-arid lands. Well-managed lands can recover from drought when the rains return. Continued land abuse during droughts, however, increases land degradation. Nor does desertification occur in linear, easily definable patterns. Deserts advance erratically, forming patches on their borders. Areas far from natural deserts can degrade quickly to barren soil, rock, or sand through poor land management. The presence of a nearby desert has no direct relationship to desertification. Unfortunately, an area undergoing desertification is brought to public attention only after the process is well underway. Often little or no data are available to indicate the previous state of the ecosystem or the rate of degradation. Scientists still question whether desertification, as a process of global change, is permanent or how and when it can be halted or reversed.

But desertification will not be limited to the drylands of Africa and Asia. According to the environmental organisation Greenpeace, the Mediterranean will suffer substantially, too. If current trends in emissions of greenhouse gases continue, global temperatures are expected to rise faster over the next century than over any time during the last 10,000 years. Significant uncertainties surround predictions of regional climate changes, but it is likely that the Mediterranean region will also warm significantly, increasing the frequency and severity of droughts across the region. As the world warms, global sea levels will rise as oceans expand and glaciers melt. Around much of the Mediterranean basin, sea levels could rise by close to 1m by 2100. As a result, some low-lying coastal areas would be lost through flooding or erosion, while rivers and coastal aquifers would become saltier. The worst affected areas will be the Nile Delta, Venice in Italy and Thessaloniki in Greece, two major cities where local subsidence means that sea levels could rise by at least one-and-a-half times as much as elsewhere.

The consequences of all this say Greenpeace, are far-reaching, and the picture is a gloomy one. Livestock production would suffer due to a deterioration in the quality of rangeland. Yields of grains and other crops could decrease substantially across the Mediterranean region due to increased frequency of drought. Crop production would be further threatened by increases in competition for water and the prevalence of pests and diseases and land loss through desertification and sea-level rise. The combination of heat and pollution would lead to an upsurge in respiratory illness among urban populations, while extreme weather events could increase death and injury rates. Water shortages and damaged infrastructure would increase the risk of cholera and dysentery, while higher temperatures would increase the incidence of infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever. Serious social disruption could occur as millions are forced from their homelands as a result of desertification, poor harvests and sea-level rise, while international disputes over shared water resources could turn into conflict.

Future climate change could critically undermine efforts for sustainable development in the Mediterranean region through its impacts on the environment and social and economic well-being. While in many respects climate change exacerbates existing problems instead of creating new ones, the sheer magnitude of the potential problem means it cannot be ignored. There is some scope for adaptation, but the fact that many measures would be beneficial irrespective of climate change suggests that radical changes in our policies and practices will be needed. It is also vital that developed countries meet their obligations to assist adaptation in developing countries through access to know-how and financial assistance. Ultimately, however, the long-term sustainability of the Mediterranean region requires keeping climate change within tolerable bounds. Current understanding of safe limits points to the need for prompt international agreement – and action – to make the drastic cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases required to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of these gases.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 52 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

DISORDERS: AN OVERVIEW

Autistic Spectrum Disorder

Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder have difficulty understanding what other people are saying, need help to play with other children, enjoy routines and find unfamiliar situations difficult. People with Autistic Spectrum Disorder can be good at creative activities like art, music and poetry. They can concentrate on one thing for a long time so they can become very good at something that they like doing.

ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

People with ADHD have three types of problems. Overactive behaviour (hyperactivity), impulsive behaviour and difficulty paying attention. Children with ADHD are not just very active but have a wide range of problem behaviours which can make them very difficult to care for and control. Those who have ADHD often find it difficult to fit in at school. They may also have problems getting on with other children. Some children have significant problems with concentration and attention but are not necessarily overactive or impulsive. These children are sometimes described as having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) rather than ADHD. ADD can easily be missed because the child is quiet and dreamy rather than disruptive. ADHD is not related to intelligence. Children with all levels of ability can have ADHD.

Stress

Stress can be defined as the way you feel when you’re under abnormal pressure. All sorts of situations can cause stress. The most common, however, involve work, money matters and relationships with partners, children or other family members. Stress may be caused either by major upheavals and life events such as divorce, unemployment, moving house and bereavement, or by a series of minor irritations such as feeling undervalued at work or dealing with difficult children. Some stress can be positive and research has suggested that a moderate level of stress makes us perform better. It also makes us more alert and can help us in challenging situations such as job interviews or public speaking. Stressful situations can also be exhilarating and some people actually thrive on the excitement that comes with dangerous sports or other ‘high-risk’ activities.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a diagnosis given to some people who have severely disrupted beliefs and experiences. During an episode of schizophrenia, a person’s experience and interpretation of the outside world is disrupted – they may lose touch with reality, see or hear things that are not there and act in unusual ways in response to these ‘hallucinations’. An episode of schizophrenia can last for several weeks and can be very frightening. The causes are unknown but episodes of schizophrenia appear to be associated with changes in some brain chemicals. Stressful experiences and some recreational drugs are sometimes thought to trigger an episode.

Depression

Depression describes a range of moods, from the low spirits that we all experience, to a severe problem that interferes with everyday life. The latter type sometimes referred to as ‘clinical depression’, is defined as ‘a persistent exaggeration of the everyday feelings that accompany sadness’. If you have severe depression you may experience low mood, loss of interest and pleasure as well as feelings of worthlessness and guilt. You may also experience tearfulness, poor concentration, reduced energy, reduced or increased appetite, changes in weight, sleep problems and anxiety. You may even feel that life is not worth living and plan or attempt suicide.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in Adults

Imagine you are getting up in the morning. You know you will need to go to the bathroom, but the thought of accidentally touching the doorknob is frightening. There may be dangerous bacteria on it. Of course, you cleaned the entire bathroom yesterday, including the usual series of spraying disinfectant, washing and rinsing. As usual, it took a couple of hours to do it the right way. Even then you weren’t sure whether you had missed an area, so you had to re-wash the floor. Naturally, the doorknob was sprayed and rubbed three times with a bactericidal spray. Now the thought that you could have missed a spot on the doorknob makes you very nervous.

This description might give you some sense of the tormented and anxious world that people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) live in. It is a world filled with dangers from outside and from within. Often elaborate rituals and thoughts are used to ward off feared events, but no amount of mental or physical activity seems adequate, so doubt and anxiety are often present.

People who do not have OCD may perform behaviours in a ritualistic way, repeating, checking, or washing things out of habit or concern. Generally, this is done without much, if any, worry. What distinguishes OCD as a psychiatric disorder is that the experience of obsessions, and the performance of rituals, reaches such as intensity or frequency that it causes significant psychological distress and interferes in a significant way with psychosocial functioning. The guideline of at least one hour spent on symptoms per day is often used as a measure of ‘significant interference’. However, among patients who try to avoid situations that bring on anxiety and compulsions, the actual symptoms may not consume an hour. Yet the quantity of time lost from having to avoid objects or situations would clearly constitute interfering with functioning. Consider, for instance, a welfare mother who throws out more than $100 of groceries a week because of contamination fears. Although this behaviour has a major effect on her functioning, it might not consume one hour per day.

Patients with OCD describe their experience as having thoughts (obsessions) that they associate with some danger. The sufferer generally recognises that it is his or her own thoughts, rather than something imposed by someone else (as in some paranoid schizophrenic patients). However, the disturbing thoughts cannot be dismissed, and simply nag at the sufferer. Something must then be done to relieve the danger and mitigate the fear. This leads to actions and thoughts that are intended to neutralize the danger. These are the compulsions. Because these behaviours seem to give the otherwise ‘helplessly anxious’ person something to combat the danger, they are temporarily reassuring. However, since the ‘danger’ is typically irrational or imaginary, it simply returns, thereby triggering another cycle of the briefly reassuring compulsions. From the standpoint of classical conditioning, this pattern of painful obsession followed by temporarily reassuring compulsion eventually produces an intensely ingrained habit. It is rare to see obsessions without compulsions.

The two most common obsessions are fears of contamination and fear of harming oneself or others, while the two most common compulsions are checking and cleaning.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

THE DEVELOPING WORLD

THE DEVELOPING WORLD – the economically underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America – is considered as an entity with common characteristics, such as poverty, high birth rates, and economic dependence on the advanced countries. Until recently, the developing world was known as ‘the third world’. The French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the expression (in French) in 1952 by analogy with the ‘third estate’ – the commoners of France before and during the French Revolution – as opposed to priests and nobles, comprising the first and second estates respectively. ‘Like the third estate’, wrote Sauvy, ‘the third world is nothing, and it wants to be something’. The term, therefore, implies that the third world is exploited, much as the third estate was exploited and that, like the third estate, its destiny is a revolutionary one. It conveys as well a second idea, also discussed by Sauvy – that of non-alignment, for the developing world belongs neither to the industrialised capitalist world nor to the industrialised former communist bloc. The expression ‘third world’ was used at the 1955 conference of Afro-Asian countries held in Bandung, Indonesia. In 1956 a group of social scientists associated with Sauvy’s National Institute of Demographic Studies, in Paris, published a book called ‘Le Tiers-Monde’. Three years later, the French economist Francois Perroux launched a new journal, on problems of underdevelopment, with the same title. By the end of the 1950s, the term was frequently employed in the French media to refer to the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America. Present-day politicians and social commentators, however, now use the term ‘developing world’ in a politically correct effort to dispel the negative connotations of ‘third world’.

Countries in the developing world have a number of common traits: distorted and highly dependent economies devoted to producing primary products for the developed world; traditional, rural social structures; high population growth and widespread poverty. Nevertheless, the developing world is sharply differentiated, for it includes countries on various levels of economic development. And despite the poverty of the countryside and the urban shantytowns, the ruling elites of most third world countries are wealthy.

This combination of conditions in Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America is linked to the absorption of the developing world into the international capitalist economy, by way of conquest or indirect domination. The main economic consequence of Western domination was the creation, for the first time in history, of a world market. By setting up sub-economies linked to the West throughout the developing world, and by introducing other modern institutions, industrial capitalism disrupted traditional economies and, indeed, societies. This disruption led to underdevelopment.

Because the economies of underdeveloped countries have been geared to the needs of industrialised countries, they often comprise only a few modern economic activities, such as mining or the cultivation of plantation crops. Control over these activities has often remained in the hands of large foreign firms. The prices of developing world products are usually determined by large buyers in the economically dominant countries of the West, and trade with the West provides almost all the developing world’s income. Throughout the colonial period, outright exploitation severely limited the accumulation of capital within the foreign-dominated countries. Even after decolonization (in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s), the economies of the developing world grew slowly, or not at all, owing largely to the deterioration of the ‘terms of trade’ – the relationship between the cost of the goods a nation must import from abroad and its income from the exports it sends to foreign countries. Terms of trade are said to deteriorate when the cost of imports rises faster than income from exports. Since buyers in the industrialised countries determined the prices of most products involved in international trade, the worsening position of the developing world was scarcely surprising. Only the oil-producing countries – after 1973 – succeeded in escaping the effects of Western domination of the world economy.

No study of the developing world could hope to assess its future prospects without taking into account population growth. While the mortality rate from poverty-related diseases continues to cause international concern, the birth rate continues to rise at unprecedented levels. This population explosion in the developing world will surely prevent any substantial improvements in living standards, as well as threaten people in stagnant economies with worsening poverty and starvation levels.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

BIOMETRICS

The term “biometrics” is derived from the Greek words bio (life) and metric (to measure). It refers to technologies for measuring and analysing a person’s physiological or behavioural characteristics, such as fingerprints, irises, voice patterns, facial patterns and hand measurements, for identification and verification purposes. One of the earliest known examples of biometrics in practice was a form of fingerprinting used in China in the 14th century. Chinese merchants stamped children’s palm prints and footprints on paper with ink to distinguish the young children from one another. This method of biometrics is still being practised today.

Until the late 1800s, identification largely relied upon ‘photographic memory.’ In the 1890s, an anthropologist and police desk clerk in Paris named Alphonse Bertillon sought to fix the problem of identifying convicted criminals and turned biometrics into a distinct field of study. He developed a method of multiple body measurements which was named after him – Bertillonage. Bertillon based his system on the claim that the measurement of adult bones does not change after the age of 20. He also introduced a cataloguing system, which enabled the filing and checking of records quite quickly. His system was used by police authorities throughout the world, until 1903, when two identical measurements were obtained for two different persons at Fort Leavenworth prison. The prison switched to fingerprinting the following day and the rest of the world soon followed, abandoning Bertillonage forever. After the failure of Bertillonage, the police started using fingerprinting, which was developed by Richard Edward Henry of Scotland Yard, essentially reverting to the same methods used by the Chinese for years.

In the past three decades, biometrics has moved from a single method (fingerprinting) to more than ten different methods. Hundreds of companies are involved with this development and continue to improve their methods as the technology available to them advances. As the industry grows, however, so does the public concern over privacy issues. Laws and regulations continue to be drafted and standards are beginning to be developed. While no other biometric has yet reached a wide range of use of fingerprinting, some are beginning to be used in both legal and business areas.

Identification and verification have long been in practice by presenting a personal document, such as a licence, ID card or a passport. It may also require personal information such as passwords or PINs. For security reasons, often two, or all three, of these systems are combines but as times progress, we are in constant need for more secure and accurate measures. Authentication by biometric verification is becoming increasingly common in corporate and public security systems, consumer electronics and point-of-sale applications. In addition to security, the driving force behind biometric verification has been convenience. Already, many European countries are introducing a biometric passport which will carry a paper-thin computer chip to store the facial image and at least one additional biometric identifier. This will help to counter fraudulent efforts to obtain duplicate passports and will verify the identity of the holder against the document.

Identification and verification are mainly used today in the fight against crime with the methods of fingerprint and DNA analysis. It is also used in security for granting access rights by voice pattern recognition. Additionally, it is used for personal comfort by identifying a person and changing personal settings accordingly, as in setting car seats by facial recognition. Starting in early 2000, the use of biometrics in schools has become widespread, particularly in the UK and USA. A number of justifications are given for such practices, including combatting truancy and replacing library cards or meal cards with fingerprinting systems. Opponents of school biometrics have raised privacy concerns against the creation of databases that would progressively include the entire population.

Biometric devices consist of a reader or scanning device, software that converts the gathered information into digital form, and a database that stores the biometric data for comparison with previous records. When converting the biometric input, the software identifies specific points of data as match points. The match points are processed using an algorithm into a value that can be compared with biometric data in the database. There are two types of biometrics: behavioural and physical. Behavioural biometrics are generally used for verification while physical biometrics can be used for either identification or verification.

Iris-pattern and retina-pattern authentication methods are already employed in some bank automatic teller machines. Voice waveform recognition, a method of verification that has been used for many years with tape recordings in telephone wiretaps, is now being used for access to proprietary databanks in research facilities. Facial-recognition technology has been used by law enforcement to pick out individuals in large crowds with considerable reliability. Hand geometry is being used in the industry to provide physical access to buildings. Earlobe geometry has been used to disprove the identity of individuals who claim to be someone they are not (identity theft). Signature comparison is not as reliable, all be itself, as other biometric verification methods but offers an extra layer of verification when used in conjunction with one or more other methods. No matter what biometric methodology is used, the identification verification process remains the same. A record of a person’s unique characteristic is captured and kept in a database. Later on, when identification verification is required, a new record is captured and compared with the previous record in the database. If the data in the new record matches that in the database record, the person’s identity is confirmed.

As technology advances, and time goes on, more and more private companies and public utilities will use biometrics for safe, accurate identification. However, these advances will raise many concerns throughout society, where many may not be educated on the methods. Some believe this technology can cause physical harm to an individual using it, or that instruments used are unsanitary. For example, there are concerns that retina scanners might not always be clean. There are also concerns as to whether our personal information taken through biometric methods can be misused, tampered with, or sold, eg. by criminals stealing, rearranging or copying the biometric data. Also, the data obtained using biometrics can be used in unauthorised ways without the individual’s consent. Much still remains to be seen in the effectiveness of biometric verification before we can identify it as the safest system for identification.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 53 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

PROJECT: Reform Of The Prison System In The UK

Penal progress:

The UK’s large prison population is fuelled by a high level of recidivism – when criminals repeatedly relapse into crime. This project for a model prison tackles issues of architecture, management and funding in an enlightened attempt to achieve lasting rehabilitation.

Project:

The penal system is one of the most direct manifestations of the power of the state but is often also a revealing reflection of the national psyche and the public’s attitude to punishment and rehabilitation. Surprisingly, for a prosperous, progressive Western democracy, the UK has a lamentable penal record. Britain’s prison population is currently in excess of 60,000 (up 50 per cent from a decade ago) making it the second-largest in Europe. The average cost of keeping an individual prisoner incarcerated for a year is £27,000 (ten times the average expenditure on a secondary school pupil in the state sector). Despite such substantial investment, over half of British prisoners re-offend within two years of release.

Such high rates of recidivism is a serious problem. It means that the prison population is continuing to grow at an alarming rate (recently by as many as 700 a week), so overcrowding is endemic, hampering opportunities for education and rehabilitation and lowering staff and prisoner morale. To ease this pressure, the UK government is investing in the prison estate at historic levels, with 12,000 new prison places proposed within the next few years. Yet, like their nineteenth-century predecessors, Britain’s ‘new Victorian’ prisons are designed for security and control rather than for the rehabilitation and education which is increasingly recognised as what prisoners need. Most are poorly educated young men under 30 (at least 60 per cent of whom are functionally illiterate and innumerate), so without education and skills, few will be able to build meaningful lives away from crime, no matter how often they go to prison, or how long they spend there.

Any transformation of the penal system must start with the redesign of prison buildings. Prison architecture has a clearly discernible effect on behaviour, operational efficiency, interaction and morale. Last year, architects Buschow Henley were commissioned by a think tank organisation working with the Home Office Prison Service to research and develop an alternative prison model that focuses more intensely on rehabilitation through a concentrated programme of intellectual, physical and social education. The model is not intended as a blueprint but rather a series of principles that might be adapted to support the wider concept of the ‘Learning Prison’ in which other aspects such as organisation, management and funding would obviously play a part. Key to this is the introduction of a system that groups together prisoners in small communities or ‘houses’ of between 30 and 40 inmates. This has two important consequences. First, the more compact spatial organisation of the house reduces staff time spent on supervising and escorting prisoners. Second, the system places educational and other facilities at the heart of the building, within easy reach at all times of day, reinforced by a supportive social environment. This model also enables resources to be dramatically redeployed, from a current estimated ratio of 80:20 (costs of security versus rehabilitation) to a predicted reversed figure of 20:80, freeing up much-needed funds to invest in educational programmes, thereby helping to promote rehabilitation, reduce recidivism and initiate a virtuous cycle.

In Buschow Henley’s scheme, the proposed group size of 30-40 has the potential for social accountability – each prisoner being known within the community and personally accountable for his behaviour. Houses are semi-autonomous, not just dormitories, with communal, as opposed to centralized, facilities. Circulation is simplified and reduced. Buildings are arranged in a chess-board formation, as opposed to pavilions marooned in space, each with a discrete external area that can be productively used for sport, games or gardening with a minimum of supervision.

Individual cells are replanned to make them less like domestic lavatories and more conducive to learning. In an inversion of the conventional layout, the bed is placed lengthways along the external wall at a high level, freeing up space below. Storage is built-in and each inmate is provided with a moveable table equipped with electronic tools for study. Washing facilities are contained in a small adjoining space (included in the basic 8 sqm allowance) so reducing pressure on prison staff to manage inmate hygiene and ablution. Each cell is paired with a neighbouring ‘buddy’ cell linked by sliding doors controlled by individual prisoners to mitigate the risk of self-harm.

While this new type of prison appears to be somewhat liberal, the arrangement of spaces and functions both inside and out is actually tightly controlled. Paradoxically, however, this proscription enables a greater range of activities to take place and makes general supervision easier. In this environment the prisoners are judged not by their degree of conformity, but by the scope of their activities and achievements, so laying the foundations for genuine rehabilitation. As Martin Narey, Director General of the UK Prison Services observes, ‘We have got to accept that prison must be a humane and constructive place, not least because all but 23 of my population are going home someday.’

READING PASSAGE 2

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

SPECIAL OLYMPICS CONDITIONS OF PARTICIPATION

To be eligible for participation in the Special Olympics an individual with an intellectual disability must agree to observe and abide by the SOC Sports Rules. ‘Mental Retardation’ refers to substantial limitations in present functioning. It is characterised by significantly sub-average intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with related limitations in two or more of the following applicable adaptive skill areas: communication, self-care, home living, social skills, community use, self-direction, health and safety, functional academics, leisure and work. Mental retardation manifests itself before the age of 18. The following four assumptions are essential to the application of the definition:

Valid assessment considers cultural and linguistic diversity as well as differences in communication and behavioural factors.

The existence of limitations in adaptive skills occurs within the context of community environments typical of the individual’s age-peers and is indexed to the person’s individualised needs for support.

Specific adaptive limitations often co-exist with strengths in other adaptive skills or other personal capabilities.

With appropriate support over a sustained period, the life functioning of the person with mental retardation will generally improve.

The term ‘mental retardation’ is a diagnostic term used to describe the condition defined above. In keeping with the current language practised within the field, the term ‘mental retardation’ is no longer commonly used. In its place, if it is absolutely necessary to use a label, i.e. in an educational setting or in a SOC/NCCP Technical Programme, then the term that is in keeping with the current practices is a person with an intellectual disability. Special Olympics was created and developed to give individuals with an intellectual disability the opportunity to train and compete in sports activities. No person shall, on the grounds of gender, race, religion, colour, national origin or financial constraint be excluded for participation in, or be denied the benefits of, or otherwise be subjected to discrimination under any programme or activity of Special Olympics. Flexibility is left to the Local, Region/Zone, Chapter and National Special Olympics organisations for determining the eligibility of the participants because of the variety of situations and needs that exist in the many localities where Special Olympics programmes have been and will be instituted. Inclusion is preferred to exclusion when eligibility is in question. Individuals who have both an intellectual disability and multiple disabilities may participate in Special Olympics programmes and competitions.

A. Participation by individuals with Down Syndrome who have Atlantoaxial Instability

There is evidence from medical research that up to 15 percent of individuals with Down Syndrome has a defect in the cervical vertebrae C-1 and C-2 in the neck. This condition exposes Down Syndrome individuals to the heightened possibility of a neck injury if they participate in activities that hyperextend or radically flex the neck or upper spine.

B. SOC requires a temporary restriction of individuals with Down Syndrome from participation in certain activities.

1) Accredited Programmes may allow all individuals with Down Syndrome to continue in most Special Olympics sports training and competition activities. However, such individuals shall not be permitted to participate in sport training and competitions which, by their nature, result in hyperextension, radical flexion or direct pressure on the neck or upper spine. Such sports training and competition activities include: the butterfly stroke and diving start in swimming, diving, pentathlon, high jump, equestrian sports, artistic gymnastics, soccer, alpine skiing and any warm-up exercise placing undue stress on the head and neck.

2) Restriction from participation in the above-listed activities shall continue until an individual with Down Syndrome has been examined (including X-ray views of full extension and flexion of the neck) by a physician who has been briefed on the nature of the Atlantoaxial Instability condition, and the results of such an examination demonstrate that the individual does not have the Atlantoaxial Instability condition.

3) For any individual diagnosed as having Atlantoaxial Instability condition, the examining physician shall notify the athlete’s parents or guardians of the nature and extent of the individual’s condition and such athlete shall be allowed to participate in the activities listed in 1) above only if the athlete submits written certification from two physicians combined with an acknowledgment of the risks signed by the adult athlete or his/her parent or guardian if the athlete is a minor.

4) It is the responsibility of parents/guardians to monitor the individual and take appropriate action if neurological symptoms appear.

Terminology note: the term intellectual disability is used to replace the clinical term of Mental Retardation. Intellectual disability is not a disease, nor should it be confused with mental illness. People with mental disabilities have both a slower rate of learning and a limited capacity to learn. They may also have difficulty managing the ordinary activities of daily living, understanding the behaviour of others, and determining their own appropriate social responses (adaptive behaviour). Children with intellectual disabilities grow into adults with intellectual disabilities; they do not remain ‘eternal children’.

People with intellectual disabilities constitute one of the largest groups of citizens with disabilities. There are an estimated 156 million individuals in the world who have intellectual disabilities. Intellectual disability cuts across lines of race, education, and social and economic background. It can occur in anyone. Hereditary components are known to account for only a fraction of the cases of intellectual disability. There are well over 350 causes of intellectual disability and in three-quarters of the cases, the specific cause is unknown. About 87 percent of all people with intellectual disabilities are mildly afflicted and in many respects are indistinguishable from people who do not have intellectual disabilities.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Migrants and Refugees: Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia

Today, one in every 50 human being is a migrant worker, a refugee or asylum seeker, or an immigrant living in a foreign country. Current estimates by the United Nations and the International Organisation for Migration indicate that some 150 million people live temporarily or permanently outside their countries of origin (2.5% of the world population). Many of these, 80-97 million, are estimated to be migrant workers with members of their families. Another 12 million are refugees outside their country of origin. These figures do not include the estimated 20 million Internally Displaced Persons forcibly displaced with their own country, nor the tens of millions more of internal migrants, mainly rural to urban, in countries around the world.

Increasing ethnic and racial diversity of societies is the inevitable consequence of migration. Increasing migration means that a growing number of states have become or are becoming more multi-ethnic, and are confronted with the challenge of accommodating peoples of different cultures, races, religions and languages. Addressing the reality of increased diversity means finding political, legal, social and economic mechanisms to ensure mutual respect and to mediate relations across differences. But xenophobia and racism have become manifest in some societies which have received substantial numbers of immigrants, as workers or as asylum-seekers. In those countries, the migrants have become the targets in internal disputes about national identity. In the last few decades, the emergence of new nation-states has often been accompanied by ethnic exclusion.

As governments grapple with the new realities of their multi-ethnic societies, there has been a marked increase in discrimination and violence directed against migrants, refugees and other non-national by extremist groups in many parts of the world. The lack of any systematic documentation or research over time makes it unclear whether there is a real increase in the level of abuse or in the level of exposure and reporting. Unfortunately, there is more than enough anecdotal evidence to show that violations of the human rights of migrants, refugees and other non-nationals are so generalized, widespread and commonplace that they are a defining feature of international migration today.

The extent of racial discrimination and xenophobia is often played down and sometimes denied by authorities. Racial discrimination is defined in international law as being: any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

Racism and xenophobia are distinct phenomena, although they often overlap. While racism generally implies distinction based on a difference in physical characteristics, such as skin colour, hair type, facial features, etc, xenophobia denotes behaviour specifically based on the perception that ‘the other’ is foreign to or originates from outside the community or nation. By the standard dictionary definition, xenophobia is the intense dislike or fear of stranger or people from other countries. As a sociologist puts it, ‘xenophobia is an attitudinal orientation of hostility against non-natives in a given population.’

The definition of xenophobia and its differentiation from racism and racial discrimination is a still-evolving concept. One of the regional Preparatory Meetings for a recent World Conference suggested that:

– Racism is an ideological construct that assigns a certain race and/or ethnic group to a position of power over others on the basis of physical and cultural attributes, as well as economic wealth, involving hierarchical relations where the superior race exercises domination and control over others.

– Xenophobia describes attitudes, prejudices and behaviour that reject, exclude and often vilify persons, based on the perception that they are outsiders or foreigners in the community, society or with respect to national identity.

In many cases, it is difficult to distinguish between racism and xenophobia as motivations for behaviour, since differences in physical characteristics are often assumed to distinguish a person from the common identity. However, manifestations of xenophobia occur against people of identical physical characteristics, even of shared ancestry, when such people arrive, return or migrate to states or areas where occupants consider them outsiders.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 54 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES

There are many reasons why we are looking toward alternative energy sources. With many countries signing the Kyoto Treaty, efforts to reduce pollutants and greenhouse gases are a primary focus in today’s culture. Alternative, or renewable, energy sources show significant promise in helping to reduce the amount of toxins that are by-products of energy use. Not only do they protect against harmful by-products, but using alternative energy helps to preserve many of the natural resources that we currently use as sources of energy. To understand how alternative energy use can help preserve the delicate ecological balance of the planet, and help us conserve the non-renewable energy sources like fossil fuels, it is important to know what types of alternative energy are out there.

Alternative energy sources are resources that constantly replace and are usually less polluting. They are not the result of the burning of fossil fuels or the splitting of atoms. The use of renewable energy is contributing to our energy supply. Some alternative energy sources are biomass energy, geothermal energy, hydroelectric power, solar power, wind power, fuel cells, ocean thermal energy conversion, tidal energy, and wave energy.

Biomass is renewable energy that is produced from organic matter. Biomass fuels include wood, forest and mill residues, animal waste, grains, agricultural crops, and aquatic plants. These materials are used as fuel to heat water for steam or processed into liquids and gases, which can be burned to do the same thing. With more use of biomass at lower production costs and better technology, the United States could generate as much as four-and-a-half times more biopower by 2020. It is estimated that biomass will have the largest increase among renewable energy sources, rising by 80 percent and reaching 65.7 billion KW in 2020.

Geothermal energy uses heat from within the earth. Wells are drilled into geothermal reservoirs to bring the hot water or steam to the surface. The steam then drives a turbine-generator to generate electricity in geothermal plants. In some places, this heat is used directly to heat homes and greenhouses or to provide process heat for businesses or industries. Reykjavik, Iceland, is heated by geothermal energy. Most geothermal resources are concentrated in the western part of the United States. Geothermal heat pumps use shallow ground energy to heat and cool homes, and this technique can be employed almost anywhere. With technological improvements much more power could be generated from hydrothermal resources. Scientists have been experimenting by pumping water into the hot dry rock that is 3-6 miles below the earth’s surface for use in geothermal power plants.

Hydroelectric (hydropower) energy employs the force of falling water to drive turbine-generators to produce electricity. Hydropower produces more electricity than any other alternative energy source. It has been estimated that hydroelectric power will decline from 389 billion KW in the US in 1999 to 298 billion KW in 2020. This decline is expected because most of the best sites for hydropower have already been developed and because of concerns about the adverse impact that large-scale hydroelectric facilities may have on the environment.

Solar energy is generated without a turbine or electromagnet. Special panels of photovoltaic cells capture light from the sun and convert it directly into electricity. The electricity is stored in a battery. Solar energy can also be used to directly heat water for domestic use (solar thermal technology). The domestic photovoltaic (PV) industry could provide up to 15% of new US peak electricity capacity that is expected to be required in 2020.

Wind energy can be used to produce electricity. As wind passes through the blades of a windmill, the blades spin. The shaft that is attached to the blades turns and powers a pump or turns a generator to produce electricity. Electricity is then stored in batteries. The speed of the wind and the size of the blades determine how much energy can be produced. Wind energy is more efficient in windier parts of the country. Most wind power is produced from wind farms – large groups of turbines located in consistently windy locations. Wind, used as a fuel, is free and non-polluting and produces no emissions or chemical wastes. Wind-powered electricity is gaining in popularity.

Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that produce electricity through a chemical reaction. Fuel cells are rechargeable, contain no moving parts, are clean, and produce no noise. Scientists are exploring ways that they could be used as a power source for nearly exhaust-free automobiles and how they can be used as electricity-generating plants. The high cost of manufacturing fuel cells has prevented the mass use of this valuable energy source.

Ocean sources; Oceans, which cover more than 70% of the earth, contain both thermal energy from the sun’s heat and mechanical energy from the tides and waves. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) converts solar radiation to electric power. OTEC power plants use the difference in temperature between warm surface waters heated by the sun and colder waters found at ocean depths to generate electricity. The power of tides can also be harnessed to produce electricity. Tidal energy works by harnessing the power of changing tides but it needs large tidal differences. The tidal process utilizes the natural motion of the tides to fill reservoirs, which are then slowly discharged through electricity-producing turbines. Wave energy conversion extracts energy from surface waves, from pressure fluctuations below the water surface, or from the full-wave. Wave energy also uses the interaction of winds with the ocean surface. This technology is still in the exploratory phase in the United States.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Colour Blindness

Colour blindness results from an absence or malfunction of certain colour-sensitive cells in the retina. The retina is a neuro-membrane lining the inside back of the eye, behind the lens. The retina contains both rod cells (active in low light or night vision but which cannot distinguish colour) and cone cells (active in normal daylight, sensitive to colour). Cone cells, also called photoreceptors, are concentrated mostly in the central part of the retina, in an area called the macula. Cone cells provide clear, sharp colour vision. The cones contain light-sensitive pigments that are sensitive to the range of wavelengths. There are three different types of cones with one sensitive to short wavelengths, or the colour blue, one sensitive to medium wavelengths, or the colour green, and the other sensitive to higher wavelengths, or the colour red. All of these cells send information about colour to the brain via the optic nerve which connects to the retina at a point very close to the macula. Normal persons, referred to as trichromats, are able to match all colours of the spectrum by using a combination of these three fundamental colour sensitivities. Hence, the huge variety of colours we perceive stems from the cone cells’ response to different compositions of wavelengths of light.

There are many types of colour blindness. When there are deficiencies in the cones, either at birth or acquired in other ways, the cones are not able to distinguish the particular wavelengths and thus, that colour range is seen differently. Those with defective colour vision have a deficiency or absence in one or more of the pigments. People with a deficiency in one of the pigments (the most common type of colour vision problem) are called anomalous trichromats. When one of the cone pigments is absent and the colour is reduced to two dimensions, dichromacy occurs. These individuals normally know they have a colour vision problem and it can affect their lives on a daily basis. They see no perceptible difference between red, orange, yellow, and green. All these colours that seem so different to the normal viewer appear to them to be the same colour. Missing the cones responsible for green and red hues can also affect the sensitivity to brightness.

Most cases of colour blindness, about 99%, are inherited, resulting from partial or complete loss of function in one or more of the different cone systems and affect both eyes without worsening overtime. The most common are red-green hereditary (genetic) photoreceptor disorders collectively referred to as “red-green colour blindness”. It affects 8% of all males of European origin and 0.4% of all females. The gene for this is carried in the X chromosome. Since males have an X-Y pairing and females have X-X, colour blindness can occur much more easily in males and is typically passed to them by their mothers. In other words, females may be carriers of colour blindness, but males are more commonly affected. People with this disorder cannot identify red or green by itself but can if among a coloured group. Other forms of colour blindness are much rarer. They include problems in discriminating blues from yellows. Both colours are seen as white other physical disorders, such as liver disease or diabetes.

The rarest form of all is total colour blindness, monochromacy, where one can only see grey or shades of black, grey and white as in a black-and-white film or photograph. Monochromacy occurs when two or all three of the cone pigments are missing and colour and lightness vision is reduced to one dimension. Another term for total colour blindness is achromatopsia, the inability to see colour.

Inherited colour vision problems cannot be treated or corrected. Some acquired colour vision problems can be treated with surgery, such as the removal of a cataract, depending on the cause. Certain types of tinted filters and contact lenses may also help an individual to distinguish different colours better. Additionally, computer software has been developed to assist those with visual colour difficulties and those with mild colour deficiencies to learn to associate colours with certain objects and are usually able to identify colour in the same way as everyone else. One frequent problem encountered is with traffic lights, and worst of all, warning lights: colour-blind people always know the position of the colours on the traffic light – in most situations; red on top, yellow in the centre, green on the bottom. But warning lights present an entirely different problem. In this situation there is only one light; no top or bottom, no right or left, just one light that is either red or yellow.

Colour vision problems can have a significant impact on a person’s life, learning abilities and career choices. On an everyday basis, there are some annoyances and frustrations: not being able to differentiate between green or ripe tomatoes when preparing food, for example, or buying clothes that to the ‘normal’ eye seem positively garish. However, people with colour vision problems usually learn to compensate for their inability to see colours. Although there is little or no treatment for colour blindness, most colour deficient persons compensate well for their defect and may even discover instances in which they can discern details and images that would escape normal-sighted persons. At one time the US Army found the colour-blind persons can spot camouflage colours in cases where those with normal colour vision are typically fooled.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Population growth sentencing millions to hydrological poverty

At a time when drought in the United States, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan is in the news, it is easy to forget that far more serious water shortages are emerging at the demand for water in many countries simply outruns the supply. Water tables are now falling on every continent; literally, scores of countries are facing water shortages as the tables fall and wells go dry. We live in a water-challenged world, one that is becoming more so each year as 80 million additional people stake their claims to the Earth’s water resources. Unfortunately, nearly all the projected 3 billion people to be added over the next half-century will be born in countries that are already experiencing water shortages. Even now, many in these countries lack enough water to drink, to satisfy cleanliness needs, and to produce food.

By 2050, India is projected to have added 519 million people and China 211 million. Pakistan is projected to have added nearly 200 million, going from 151 million at present to 348 million. Egypt, Iran, and Mexico are slated to increase their populations by more than half by 2050. In these and other water-short countries, population growth is sentencing millions of people to hydrological poverty, a local form of poverty that is difficult to escape.

Even with today’s 6 billion people, the world has a huge water deficit. Using data on over-pumping for China, India, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, and the United States, Sandra Postel, author of Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? reports the annual depletion of the aquifer to be at 160 billion cubic meters or 160 billion tons. Using the rule of thumb that it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain, this 160-billion-ton water deficit is equal to 160 million tons of grain or one-half the US grain harvest.

Average world grain consumption is just over 300 kilograms per person per annum – one-third of a ton per person per year – and grain reserves directly or indirectly feed 480 million people globally. Stated otherwise, 480 million of the world’s 6 billion people are being fed with grain produced with the unsustainable use of water.

Over-pumping is a new phenomenon, one largely confined to the last half-century. Only since the development of powerful diesel – and electrically-driven pumps have we had the capacity to pull water out of an aquifer faster than it is replaced by precipitation. Some 70 percent of the water consumed worldwide, including both that diverted from rivers and that, pumped from underground, is used for irrigation, while some 20 percent is used by industry, and 10 percent for residential purposes. In the increasingly intense competition for water among sectors, agriculture almost always loses. The 1,000 tons of water used in India to produce 1 ton of wheat worth perhaps $200 can also be used to expand industrial output by easily $10,000 or 50 times as much. This ratio helps explain why, in the American West, the sale of irrigation water rights by farmers to cities is an almost daily occurrence.

In addition to population growth, urbanisation and industrialisation also expand the demand for water. As developing country villagers, traditionally reliant on the village well, move to urban high-rise apartment buildings with indoor plumbing, their residential water use can easily triple. Industrialisation takes even more water than urbanisation. Rising affluence in itself generates additional demand for water. As people move up the food chain, consuming more beef, pork, poultry, eggs, and dairy products, they use more grain. A US diet rich in livestock products requires 800 kilograms of grain per person a year, whereas diets in India, dominated by a starchy food staple such as rice, typically need only 200 kilograms. Using four times as much grain per person means using four times as much water.

Once a localised phenomenon, water scarcity is now crossing national borders via the international grain trade. The world’s fastest-growing grain import market is North Africa and the Middle East; an area that includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Iran. Virtually every country in this region is simultaneously experiencing water shortages and rapid population growth.

As the demand for water in the region’s cities and industries increases, it is typically satisfied by diverting water from irrigation. The loss in food production capacity is then offset by importing grain from abroad. Since 1 ton of grain represents 1,000 tons of water, this becomes the most efficient way to import water.

Last year, Iran imported 7 million tons of wheat, eclipsing Japan to become the world’s leading wheat importer. This year, Egypt is also projected to move ahead of Japan. Iran and Egypt have nearly 70 million people each. Both populations are increasing by more than a million a year and both are pressing the limits of their water supplies.

The water required to produce the grain and other foodstuffs imported into North Africa and the Middle East last year was roughly equal to the annual flow of the Nile River. Stated otherwise, the fast-growing water deficit of this region is equal to another Nile flowing into the region in the form of imported grain.

It is now often said that future wars in the region will more likely be fought over water than oil. Perhaps, but given the difficulty in winning a water war, the competition for water seems more likely to take place in world grain markets. The countries that will “win” in this competition will be those that are financially strongest, not those that are militarily strongest. The world water deficit grows larger with each year, making it potentially more difficult to manage. If we decided abruptly to stabilise water tables everywhere by simply pumping less water, the world grain harvest would fall by some 160 million tons or 8 percent, and grain prices would go off the chart. If the deficit continues to widen, the eventual adjustment will be even greater.

Unless governments in water-short countries act quickly to stabilise their populations and to raise water productivity, their water shortages may soon become food shortages. The risk is that the growing number of water-short countries, including population giants China and India, with rising grain-import needs will overwhelm the exportable supply in food surplus countries, such as the United States, Canada, and Australia. This is turn could destabilise world grain markets. Another risk of delay in dealing with the deficit is that some low-income, water-short countries will not be able to afford to import needed grain, trapping millions of their people in hydrological poverty; thirsty and hungry, unable to escape.

Although there are still some opportunities for developing new water resources, restoring the balance between water use and developing a sustainable supply will depend primarily on demand-side initiatives, such as stabilising population and raising water productivity. Governments can no longer separate population policy from the supply of water. And just as the world turned to raise land productivity a half-century ago when the frontiers of agricultural settlement disappeared, so it must now turn to raise water productivity. The first step toward this goal is to eliminate the water subsidies that foster inefficiency. The second step is to raise the price of water to reflect its cost. Shifting to more water-efficient technologies, more water-efficient crops, and more water-efficient forms of animal protein offer a huge potential for raising water productivity. These shifts will move faster if the price of water more closely reflects its real value.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 55 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

CONTROLLING DEATHWATCH BEETLES

All of the organisms that damage timber in buildings are part of the natural process that takes deadwood to the forest floor, decomposes it into humus and recycles the nutrients released back into trees. Each stage in this process requires the correct environment and if we replicate this in our buildings then the organisms belonging to that part of the cycle will invade. A poorly maintained roof is, after all, just an extension of the forest floor to a fungus.

The first fact to remember about deathwatch beetles in your building is that they have probably been there for centuries and will continue long after you have gone. Beetle damage in oak timbers is a slow process and if we make it slower by good maintenance then the beetle population may eventually decline to extinction. The second fact is that natural predation will help you. Spiders are a significant predator and will help to keep the beetle population under control. They will speed up the decline of a beetle population in a well-maintained building.

The beetles fly to light and some form of the light trap may help to deplete a population. The place in which it is used must be dark so that there is no competing light source, and the air temperature must rise above about 17^oC during the emergence season (April to June) so that the beetles will fly. Beetle holes do not disappear when the beetles have gone so it is sometimes necessary to confirm active infestation if remedial works are planned. This is generally easy with beetle damage in sapwood because the holes will look clean and have sharp edges, usually with bore dust trickling from them. Infestation deep within modified heartwood is more difficult to detect, particularly because the beetles will not necessarily bite their own emergence holes if plenty of other holes are available. This problem may be overcome by clogging the suspected holes with furniture polish or by covering a group of holes tightly with paper or card. Any emerging beetles will make a hole that should be visible so that the extent and magnitude of the problem can be assessed. Unnecessary pesticide treatments must be avoided.

Sometimes a building cannot be dried enough to eradicate the beetles or a localised population will have built up unnoticed. A few scattered beetles in a building need not cause much concern, but dozens of beetles below a beam-end might indicate the need for some form of treatment if the infested timber is accessible. Insecticides formulated as a paste can be effective – either applied to the surface or caulked into pre-drilled holes – but the formulations may only be obtainable by a remedial company.

Surface spray treatments are generally ineffective because they barely penetrate the surface of the timber and the beetles’ natural behaviour does not bring it into much contact with the insecticide. Contact insecticides might also kill natural predators.

Heat treatments for entire buildings are available and the continental experience is that they are effective. They are also likely to be expensive but they may be the only way to eradicate a heavy and widespread infestation without causing considerable structural degradation of the building.

Two other beetles are worth a mention.

The first is the House Longhorn Beetle (Hylotrupes bajulus). This is a large insect that produces oval emergence holes that are packed with litter cylindrical pellets. The beetles restrict their activities to the sapwood of 20th-century softwood, although there is now some evidence that they will attack older softwood. The beetle larvae can cause considerable damage but infestation has generally been restricted to the southwest of London, possibly because they need a high temperature before the beetles will fly. Old damage is, however, frequently found elsewhere, thus indicating a wider distribution in the past, and infested timber is sometimes imported. This is an insect that might become more widespread because of climate change.

The second is the Lyctus or powderpost beetle. There are several species that are rather difficult to tell apart. These beetles live in the sapwood of oak. The beetles breed rapidly so that many cylindrical beetles may be present and the round emergence holes resemble those of the furniture beetle. This is and has always been, a pest of newly-installed oak. Timbers with an exploded sapwood surface are frequently found in old buildings and the damage will have occurred during the first few decades after the timbers were installed. Our main interest with these beetles is that they seem to have become more common of late. Beetle infestation within a few months of a new oak construction will be Lyctus beetles in the sapwood and not furniture beetles. The problem can be avoided by using oak with minimal sapwood content. The beetle infestation will cease after a few years but spray treatment may be necessary if an infestation is heavy.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Therapeutic Jurisprudence: An Overview

Therapeutic jurisprudence is the study of the role of the law as a therapeutic agent. It examines the law’s impact on emotional life and on psychological well-being, and the therapeutic and antitherapeutic consequences of the law. It is most applicable to the fields of mental health law, criminal law, juvenile law and family law.

The general aim of therapeutic jurisprudence is the humanizing of the law and addressing the human, emotional and psychological side of the legal process. It promotes the perspective that the law is a social force that produces behaviours and consequences. Therapeutic jurisprudence strives to have laws made or applied in a more therapeutic way so long as other values, such as justice and due process, can be fully respected. It is important to recognise that therapeutic jurisprudence does not itself suggest that therapeutic goals should trump other goals. It does not support paternalism or coercion by any means. It is simply a way of looking at the law in a richer way and then bringing to the table some areas and issues that previously have gone unnoticed. Therapeutic jurisprudence simply suggests that we think about the therapeutic consequences of law and see if they can be factored into the processes of law-making, lawyering, and judging.

The law can be divided into the following categories: (1) legal rules, (2) legal procedures, such as hearings and trials and (3) the roles of legal actors – the behaviour of judges, lawyers, and of therapists acting in a legal context. Much of what legal actors do has an impact on the psychological well-being or emotional life of persons affected by the law, for example, in the dialogues that judges have with defendants or that lawyers have with clients. Therefore, therapeutic jurisprudence is especially applicable to this third category.

Therapeutic jurisprudence is a relatively new phenomenon. In the early days of the law, attitudes were very different and efforts were focused primarily on what was wrong with various sorts of testimony. While there were good reasons for that early emphasis, an exclusive focus on what is wrong, rather than also looking at what is right and how these aspects could be further developed, is seriously shortsighted. Therapeutic jurisprudence focuses attention on this previously under-appreciated aspect, encouraging us to look very hard for promising development and to borrow from the behavioural science literature, even when this literature has nothing obviously to do with the law. It encourages people to think creatively about how promising developments from other fields might be brought into the legal system.

Recently, as a result of this multidisciplinary approach, certain kinds of rehabilitative programmes have begun to emerge that looks rather promising. One type of cognitive behavioural treatment encourages offenders to prepare relapse prevention plans which require them to think through the chain of events that lead to criminality. These reasoning and rehabilitation-type programmes teach offenders cognitive self-change, to stop and think and figure out consequences, to anticipate high-risk situations, and to learn to avoid or cope with them. These programmes, so far, seem to be reasonably successful.

From a therapeutic jurisprudence standpoint, the question is how these programmes might be brought into the law. In one obvious sense, these problem-solving, reasoning and rehabilitation-type programmes can be made widely available in correctional and community settings. A way of linking them even more to the law, of course, would be to make them part of the legal process itself. The suggestion here is that if a judge or parole board becomes familiar with these techniques and is about to consider someone for probation, the judge might say. ‘I’m going to consider you but I want you to come up with a preliminary relapse prevention plan that we will use as a basis for discussion. I want you to figure out why I should grant you probation and why I should be comfortable that you’re going to succeed. In order for me to feel comfortable, I need to know what you regard to be high-risk situations and how you’re going to avoid them or cope with them.’

If that approach is followed, courts will be promoting cognitive self-change as part and parcel of the sentencing process itself. The process may operate this way; an offender would make a statement like ‘I realise I mess up on Friday nights; therefore, I propose that I will stay at home on Friday nights.’ Suddenly, it is not a judge imposing something on the offender. It’s something that the offender has come up with him or herself, so he or she should think it is fair. If a person has a voice in his rehabilitation, then he is more likely to feel a commitment to it, and with that commitment, presumably, compliance will increase dramatically.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

SLEEP - WHY WE SLEEP

As the field of sleep research is still relatively new, scientists have yet to determine exactly why people sleep. However, they do know that humans must sleep and, in fact, people can survive longer without food than without sleep. And people are not alone in this need. All mammals, reptiles and birds sleep.

Scientists have proposed the following theories on why humans require sleep:

Sleep may be a way of recharging the brain. The brain has a chance to shut down and repair neurons and to exercise important neuronal connections that might otherwise deteriorate due to lack of activity.

Sleep gives the brain an opportunity to reorganise data to help find a solution to problems, process newly-learned information and organise and archive memories.

Sleep lowers a person’s metabolic rate and energy consumption.

The cardiovascular system also gets a break during sleep. Researchers have found that people with normal or high blood pressure experience a 20 to 30% reduction in blood pressure and 10 to 20% reduction in heart rate.

During sleep, the body has a chance to replace chemicals and repair muscles, other tissues and aging or dead cells.

In children and teenagers, growth hormones are released during deep sleep.

When a person falls asleep and wakes up is largely determined by his or her circadian rhythm, a day-night cycle of about 24 hours. Circadian rhythms greatly influence the timing, amount and quality of sleep.

For many small mammals such as rodents, sleep has other particular benefits, as it provides the only real opportunity for physical rest, and confines the animal to the thermal insulation of a nest. In these respects, sleep conserves much energy in such mammals, particularly as sleep can also develop into a torpor, whereby the metabolic rate drops significantly for a few hours during the sleep period. On the other hand, humans can usually rest and relax quite adequately during wakefulness, and there is only a modest further energy saving to be gained by sleeping. We do not enter torpor, and the fall in metabolic rate for a human adult sleeping compared to lying resting but awake is only about 5-10%.

A sizeable portion of the workforce is shift workers who work and sleep against their bodies’ natural sleep-wake cycle. While a person’s circadian rhythm cannot be ignored or reprogrammed, the cycle can be altered by the timing of things such as naps, exercise, bedtime, travel to a different time zone and exposure to light. The more stable and consistent the cycle is, the better the person sleeps. Disruption of circadian rhythms has even been found to cause mania in people with bipolar disorder.

The ‘seven deadly sins’ formulated by the medieval monks included Sloth. The Bible in Proverbs 6:9 includes the line: ‘How long will you sleep, O sluggard? When will you arise out of your sleep?’ But a more nuanced understanding of sloth sees it as a disinclination to labour or work. This isn’t the same as the desire for healthy sleep. On the contrary, a person can’t do work without rest periods and no one can operate at top performance without adequate sleep. The puritan work ethic can be adhered to and respect still paid to the sleep needs of healthy humans. It is wrong to see sleep as a shameful activity.

Usually, sleepers pass through five stages: 1, 2, 3, 4 and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. These stages progress cyclically from 1 through REM then begin again. A complete sleep cycle takes an average of 90 to 110 minutes. The first sleep cycles each night have relatively short REM sleeps and long periods of deep sleep but later in the night, REM periods lengthen and deep sleep time decreases. Stage 1 is light sleep where you drift in and out of sleep and can be awakened easily. In this stage, the eyes move slowly and muscle activity slows. During this stage, many people experience sudden muscle contractions preceded by a sensation of falling. In stage 2, eye movement stops and brain waves become slower with only an occasional burst of rapid brain waves. When a person enters stage 3, extremely slow brain waves called delta waves are interspersed with smaller, faster waves. In stage 4, the brain produces delta waves almost exclusively. Stages 3 and 4 are referred to as deep sleep, and it is very difficult to wake someone from them. In deep sleep, there is no eye movement or muscle activity. This is when some children experience bedwetting, sleepwalking or night terrors.

In the REM period, breathing becomes more rapid, irregular and shallow, eyes jerk rapidly and limb muscles are temporarily paralysed. Brain waves during this stage increase to levels experienced when a person is awake. Also, heart rate increases, blood pressure rises and the body loses some of the ability to regulate its temperature. This is the time when most dreams occur, and, if awoken during REM sleep, a person can remember their dreams. Most people experience three to five intervals of REM sleep each night. Infants spend almost 50% of their time in REM sleep. Adults spend nearly half of sleep time in stage 2, about 20% in REM and the other 30% is divided between the other three stages. Older adults spend progressively less time in REM sleep.

As sleep research is still a relatively young field, scientists did not discover REM sleep until 1953, when new machines were developed to monitor brain activity. Before this discovery, it was believed that most brain activities ceased during sleep. Since then, scientists have also disproved the idea that deprivation of REM sleep can lead to insanity and have found that lack of REM sleep can alleviate clinical depression although they do not know why. Recent theories link REM sleep to learning and memory.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 56 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

GRAFFITI

The word ‘graffiti’ derives from the Greek word graphein, meaning to write. This evolved into the Latin word graffito. Graffiti is the plural form of graffito. Simply put, graffiti is a drawing, scribbling or writing on a flat surface. Today, we equate graffiti with the ‘New York’ or ‘Hip Hop’ style which emerged from New York City in the 1970s. Hip Hop was originally an inner-city concept. It evolved from the rap music made in Brooklyn and Harlem in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Donald Clarke, a music historian, has written that rap music was a reaction to the disco music of the period. Disco was centred in the rich, elitist clubs of Manhattan and rap emerged on street corners as an alternative. Using lyrical rhythms and ‘beat boxing’, the music was a way to express feelings about inner-city life. Hip Hop emerged as turntables began to be used to form part of the rhythm by ‘scratching’ (the sound created by running the stylus over the grooves of an LP). As Hip Hop music emerged so did a new outlet for artistic visibility. Keith Haring began using posters to place his uniquely drawn figures and characters in public places. Soon he began to draw directly on subway walls and transit posters. The uniqueness of his drawings eventually led to their being shown in galleries and published in books and his art became ‘legitimate’.

At about the same time as Keith Haring, a delivery messenger began writing ‘Taki 183’ whenever he delivered documents. Soon his name was all over the city. Newspapers and magazines wrote articles about him and Keith Haring, and soon both became celebrities. This claim to fame attracted many young people, especially those involved with rapping, and they began to imitate ‘Taki 183’, as a means to indicate the writer’s presence, i.e. the age-old statement of I was here. Graffiti was soon incorporated int the Hip Hop culture and became a sort of triad with rapping and breakdancing. Breakdancing has since lost much of its initial popularity, while rapping has emerged as a major style in American music. New York City was inundated with graffiti during the late seventies and early eighties, but as media coverage faded so did the graffiti. Then, in the mid-eighties, a national TV programme did a graffiti story and set off a graffiti wildfire which has since gone global.

In the past, graffiti artists usually worked alone, but the size and complexity of pieces, as well as safety concerns, motivated artists to work together in crews, which are groups of graffitists that vary in membership from 3 to 10 or more persons. A member of a crew can be ‘down with’ (affiliated with) more than one crew. To join a crew, one must have produced stylish pieces and show potential for developing one’s own, unique style. A crew is headed by a king or queen who is usually that person recognised as having the best artistic ability among the members of the crew. One early crew wrote TAG as their crew name, an acronym for Tuff Artists Group. Tag has since come to mean both graffiti writing, ‘tagging’ and graffiti, a ‘tag’. Crews often tag together, writing both the crew tag and their own personal tags. Graffiti has its own language with terms such as piece, toy, wild-style, and racking.

At first pens and markets were used, but these were limited as to what types of surfaces they worked on, so very quickly everyone started using spray paint. Spray paint could mark all types of surfaces and be quick and easy to use. However, the spray nozzles on the spray cans proved inadequate to create more colourful pieces. Caps from deodorant, insecticide, and other aerosol cans were substituted to allow for a finer or thicker stream of paint. As municipalities began passing graffiti ordinances outlawing graffiti implements, clever ways of disguising paint implements were devised. Shoe polish, deodorant roll-ons and other seemingly innocent containers were emptied and filled with paint. Markers, art pens and grease pens obtained from art supply stores were also used. In fact, nearly any object which can leave a mark on most surfaces is used by taggers, though the spray can is the medium of choice for most taggers.

As graffiti has grown, so too has its character. What began as an urban lower-income protest, graffiti now spans all racial and economic groups. While many inner-city kids are still heavily involved in the graffiti culture, taggers range from the ultra-rich to the ultra-poor. There is no general classification of graffitists. They range in age from 12-30 years old, and there are male and female artists. One tagger recently caught in Philadelphia was a 27-year-old stockbroker who drove to tagging sites in his BMW. Styles have dramatically evolved from the simple cursory style, which is still the most prevalent, to intricate interlocking letter graphic designs with multiple colours called ‘pieces’ (from master-pieces). Gang markings of territory also fit the definition of graffiti, and they mainly consist of tags and messages that provide ‘news’ of happenings in the neighbourhood.

Graffiti shops, both retail and on-line, sell a wide variety of items to taggers. Caps, markers, magazines, T-shirts, backpacks, shorts with hidden pockets, even drawing books with templates of different railroad cars can be purchased. Over 25,000 graffiti sites exist on the world wide web; the majority of these are pro-graffiti. Graffiti vandalism is a problem in nearly every urban area in the world. Pro-graffiti web sites post photos of graffiti from Europe, South America, the Philippines, Australia, South Africa, China and Japan. Billions of dollars worldwide are spent each year in an effort to curb graffiti.

While most taggers are simply interested in seeing their name is as many places as possible and as visibly as possible, some taggers are more content to find secluded warehouse walls where they can practise their pieces. Some of these taggers are able to sell twelve-foot canvases of their work for upwards of $10 – $12,000. As graffiti was introduced to the art world, two trends happened. One, the art world of collectors, dealers, curators, artists and the like helped graffitists evolve in style, presumably by sharing their artistic knowledge with the newcomers. Two, the exposure helped to expand graffiti into all parts of the world. Furthermore, more progressive cities have recognised the talent of graffitists by providing a means for them to do legal graffiti art, which has helped to foster the art form and lessen the amount of graffiti art that appears in the city as vandalism. Likewise, organisations who support graffiti artists seek out places to do legal graffiti such as abandoned buildings, businesses, or community walls in parks. What this shows is that some graffiti, particularly in the form of a spray can art, is recognised as art by the conventional art world.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

DISTANCE LEARNING

Distance learning is not a recent innovation in education, correspondence courses having been used for over 150 years, but new interactive technologies are providing new opportunities and strategies for teaching at a distance. Several studies have compared face-to-face classrooms to distance classrooms in order to evaluate differences in student performance and quality of instruction. A meta-analysis of these studies showed that distance-learning students performed equally well and some distance courses outperformed their classroom counterparts.

This result has been consistent over many studies across many disciplines; advances in communication technology and innovative methods of delivery of instruction at a distance have challenged the idea that laboratory courses can only be delivered in a face-to-face laboratory setting. In engineering, for example, virtual laboratories have been used to teach thermodynamics, electronic circuits, and other experimental courses as well. Programmes in nursing, engineering, technology and other sciences are beginning to use deliver courses via distance-learning methodology in order to reach students in different locations and boost enrolment. A survey of online distance-learning programmes revealed a large increase in student enrolment. The availability of distance courses has made it possible for some people to attend college because courses are accessible within their locality or the time of course delivery is convenient for them.

This opportunity for learning has not been without its critics who keep a close eye on the quality of instruction, and rightly so as with any form of instructional delivery. Quality issues are a major concern for those who intend to pursue degree programmes via distance learning, especially with the proliferation of distance-learning programmes. Although it is difficult for academics to agree on specific standards that constitute quality in distance learning, nonetheless, attributes such as accreditation standards for programmes, evaluating students’ experiences, teacher-student interaction, student-to-student interaction, learning resources for the learner, learner assessment and performance, instructional resources for faculty, faculty training, and learner satisfaction are valid criteria. These and many other factors can determine the quality of delivery of instruction in both distance and face-to-face classrooms.

Distance-Learning Technologies and Innovation in Laboratory Course Delivery

In a selected UK university, five departments that offered laboratory courses in Technology and Engineering via distance learning used combinations of a variety of instructional technologies. The technologies most used were Interactive Microwave TV (two-way audio and video), compressed video, the Internet, CDs, computer software (virtual software), and videotapes. At the selected university in the UK, interviews were conducted on-site with faculty and staff. A wide range of teaching materials, student portfolios, and a secure website were observed. In addition to the Internet, CDs, and video, the university used the following innovative ways to deliver laboratory courses.

Residential and Summer Schools

Residential and summer schools serve a similar purpose; the difference is the duration. The summer school is one week long and combines labs, lectures, and problem sessions. In general, these schools provide four key features, providing the opportunity for students to:

1. undertake experimental work considered too hazardous for a student working at home.

2. undertake lab work using more sophisticated equipment, or equipment too expensive to provide at home.

3. undertake assessed lab work.

4. work together with fellow students.

Some courses even arranged to take students on a study trip, perhaps to a company with special processes, or to a geographic site of interest.

Demonstration Laboratory

The demonstration laboratory introduces students to the work they are going to undertake, illustrating how to proceed, how to make particular types of measurements, etc. It also covers topics considered too dangerous for students or situations in which the equipment is not available at the residential school. Many of these demonstrations are recorded on video to control both the process taught and the quality of the teaching across numerous groups of students at different levels.

Support Services Provided to Faculty and Students Engaged in Distance Learning

All the departments that offer distance-learning courses offer support services to students and faculty. The support services include e-mail systems, graduate assistants, course websites, proctors, telephone conferencing, electronic library materials, and instructional designers to work with faculty to design and develop courses. At the selected university in the UK, interviews with instructional designers and faculty revealed the significant role played by instructional designers. Although they are not the content experts, they advise faculty, for example, on how information is presented on a website or the format in which the information is presented. The purpose is to maintain a standard format and quality in print materials, including electronic resources. The selected university in the UK also provides a support service to faculty that is unique from other institutions in this study: staff tutors who are regionally based to provide the link between the university faculty and students within the regions. The staff tutors have a key role in quality assurance, especially in facilitating effective teaching of the university faculty’s courses and are responsible for the selection, monitoring, and development of part-time Associate Lectures. They contribute to faculty research and the development and presentation of courses. The staff tutors are highly qualified in their fields and as such, bridge the distance gap between the university faculty and students at different locations.

The UK university, by using innovative strategies such as the Residential and Summer Schools, Field Trips and Demonstration Laboratories in combination with new technologies, is able to teach all its laboratory courses via distance learning to its nearly 200,000 students within and outside the UK. Distance learning is not meant to replace a face-to-face classroom, but it is one major way to make education more accessible to society. As advances in communication and digital technology continue, residential or demonstration labs may someday be replaced with comparable experiences provided through distance education.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

LATCHKEY CHILDREN

Latchkey child was a term coined to describe children who wore or carried house keys to school so that they could let themselves into their home when they returned from school. The term came into use during the Second World War, when fathers had gone off to war, and mothers had gone into industry, making the tanks, planes, uniforms and bullets the soldiers needed. The children went home with keys on chains, ribbons or a piece of string tied around their necks. Some mothers chose to work the night shift, called the “swing shift”, and tucked their children into bed, locked the door and went to the factory. The country’s response was prompt and comprehensive. Programmes were set up in factories, in schools and community centres, to gather in all the children whose parents were busy with the war effort. These programmes closed promptly when the war ended, and women resumed their roles as housewives. More than sixty years on, there are large numbers of working mothers, but unlike in wartime, the country isn’t organised to care for their children.

Sadly, finding young children at home without adult supervision has become much too commonplace. Latchkey children were once found only among the lower classes, but the situation has gradually spread to the middle and upper classes. The same is true of adolescent violence. In the past, shootings and stabbings were associated primarily with inner city, or poverty-stricken areas permeated with abusive families and neglectful schools. However, in recent times, the “teen violence” epidemic has penetrated society at every economic level. an increase in the number of working mothers, as well as single-parent families, combined with a decrease in extended families that once helped with childcare, has contributed to the growing ranks of latchkey kids.

According to one census, one-third of all school-age children in the United States are, for some part of the week, latchkey kids, that is, they go home to an empty house or apartment. The total number may be between five and seven million children between five and thirteen years old. Marian Wright Edelman, the director of the Children’s Defence Fund, thinks it’s close to 16 million children. The Census Bureau found that 15% were home alone before school, 76% after school and 9% at night. Presumably, 9% have parents who work night shifts.

One-half of all children in the country aged 12 to 14 are home alone for an average of seven hours a week. The very poor in America are less likely to leave their children alone at home or allow them to go home alone, than families who earn twice their level of income. This is probably because the very poor live in less safe neighbourhoods, and have fewer friends or family who can step in, in case of emergency. In spite of the hours spent on the job, working mothers spend an average of five-and-a-half hours a day with their children.

When latchkey children are functioning well, we don’t hear about them. But we do hear about the one-third of all complaints to child welfare agencies which involve latchkey children. We know about the 51% who are doing poorly in school. Most teachers believe that being alone at home is the number one cause of school failure. The afternoon hours are the peak time for juvenile crime. In the last 11 years, juvenile crime has increased by 48%. The Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development found that 8th graders who are alone 11 hours a week are twice as likely to abuse drugs as adolescents who are busy after school.

Unsupervised children are more likely to become depressed, smoke cigarettes and marijuana and drink alcohol. They are also more likely to be the victims of crimes. When home alone, latchkey children generally watch television, eat snacks, play with pets and fight with siblings.

Adolescents who fall under the classification of latchkey children are more likely than others of the same age group to experience feelings of range and isolation and to express those emotions in a physically aggressive manner. While there are certainly genetic and biological factors involved in the development of an adolescent’s propensity towards acting out their feelings of rage and isolation, the environment also plays a key role in this arena. Sociologists have found that many latchkey children because they are frequently raised in dysfunctional families, are taught by example to be manipulative, secretive and unpredictable. They often instinctively develop a sense of timing and management of their emotions. These are skills that can be easily and directly used to portray a false picture of themselves and their living situation.

Making the decision: When is a child ready to be home alone? Personality characteristics, skills, and maturity are useful criteria for determining a child’s readiness to be home alone. Personality doesn’t generally change much with age, although children can learn to modify some of their reactions as they learn what is expected of them. There are some children who find it very difficult to be alone, some who need time and gradual exposure to become accustomed to being by themselves, and some who adapt easily.

The personality characteristics of the child who is ready to be home alone is a child who

– is not fearful, feels at ease in the world and is self-confident

– is calm, and is not excitable when something unexpected happens

– is outgoing and talks about his or her feelings and thoughts readily with parents and others

– admits wrongdoing, even when expecting disapproval

– has courage enough to resist pressure from friends and others.

In many communities, there are activities for school-age children whose parents work and cannot be at home in the afternoon. The importance of looking into these is stressed by child development professionals. According to James Comer of Yale University, “the period between 10 and 15 years is a time when young people re-examine their attitudes and values. They are being pressured by peers. They need to be protected by responsible adults who will help them examine and counter some of these attitudes.”

The activities available vary as does the cost. Some are more popular with children than others, and some are more rewarding, but all are preferable to sitting at home in front of the television. These programmes can vary in cost or are free, depending upon the particular activity and the age of the child. All of them offer the opportunity to acquire skills and knowledge that are useful throughout life. Children who are not learning anything for hours every week are at a distinct disadvantage compared to children who are engaged in enriching activities. In the words of T. Berry Brazelton, of Harvard University: “During these all-important bridge years between childhood and adulthood, kids really do need something constructive to do, and they also still need to have their activities supervised. Most of all, they need to know that their parents care about them, are involved in their lives, and have their best interests at heart.”

IELTS Reading Practice Test 57 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

The Final Frontier for Tourism

For some reason, humankind has always looked towards the stars and dreamt of one day making the voyage into the unknown and exploring outer space. Perhaps it is our innate curiosity, perhaps the challenge presented by the seemingly impossible; whatever the lure, the quest to venture into space has become an obsession for many.

On a memorable July day in 1969, one man made a giant leap for his kind. Neil Armstrong touched down on the moon as the world watched with bated breath. Was this a beginning or the culmination of years of endeavour that pushed science to its very limits? Well, it has been a long time indeed since the last moon landing, more than 40 years, but science has not stood still in the interim, nor have our dreams become any less ambitious. According to NASA, plans are afoot for a manned mission to Mars at some point after 2020. A return to the moon has been scheduled sooner – perhaps 2018 if NASA’s new Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) is rolled out on time. It may not be Hollywood razzle-dazzle-style progress; it may even be painstakingly slow, but rest assured that plans are afoot for something very ambitious and special indeed, and NASA may be back in the headlines making waves and history again, just as it did on that faithful day in 1969, in the not-too-distant future.

That said, it is the prospect of space tourism for the masses that has captured the headlines recently, and this may not be such a distant dream as people would expect. In 2001, an American multimillionaire, Dennis Tito, became the first space tourist, spending ten days on the International Space Station along with his crew of Russian cosmonauts, and fulfilling a lifelong ambition in the process. He described the experience rather paradoxically as ‘indescribable’; everything that he thought it would be and more. A year later, South African millionaire Mark Shuttleworth followed in his footsteps. On his return to Earth, he said, ‘every second will be with me for the rest of my life’. Clearly, these men had a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but this came at a hefty price, both paying $20 million for the pleasure of their space adventures.

At present, space tourism is undoubtedly reserved for an elite and wealthy few, but what of the future? If Eric Anderson, president of Space Adventures, the company that organised Tito and Shuttleworth’s trips, is to be believed, it will be the next big thing. ‘Everyone’s looking for a new experience’, he says. Indeed, Space Adventures is planning to offer rocket trips to the public for $100,000 within the next few years, so perhaps space tourism is closer than we think. Another company, The Space Island Group, is planning to build a space hotel inspired by the spaceship in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Gene Meyers, the company’s president, predicts that in 2020 a five-day holiday at the hotel will cost less than $25,000. Imagine, he says, a five-star hotel with all the usual luxuries, except that each morning you’ll be greeted by mind-blowing views of outer space. This is certainly food for thought for adventure-seeking holiday planners. That said, unless there is a serious spike in inflation between now and 2020, $25,000 will still remain a considerable sum of money to have to part with for a recreational activity, once-in-a-lifetime or not. But that is perhaps missing the point – the prospect of affordable space travel is getting closer and closer and it is only a matter of time before it becomes a reality.

Other companies have even more ambitious plans. Bigelow Aerospace is spending close to $500 million on a project to build a 700-metre spaceship to fly tourists to the moon. The spaceship will be able to hold 100 guests, each with a private room offering truly unique views of the Earth’s sunset. Even the Hilton Hotel Group wants to get in on the act with talk of plans to build a Hilton on the moon. For the present, only millionaires can enjoy the privilege of a space journey, but in the words of one Bob Dylan, ‘The times they are a changing.’ And sooner than you’d think.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Arctic Survivors

The Arctic is an area located at the northern-most part of the Earth and includes the Arctic Ocean, Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. It consists of an ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost. The area can be defined as north of the Arctic Circle, the approximate limit of the midnight sun and the polar night. The average temperature in July, which is the warmest month, is below 10^oC. Colder summer temperatures cause the size, abundance, productivity and variety of plants to decrease. Trees cannot grow in the Arctic, but in its warmest parts, shrubs are common and can reach 2 metres in height.

A thick blanket of snow lies several feet deep all over the ground. The sun appears for only a few brief hours each day before sinking below the horizon as blackness cloaks the land. As it vanished, a bitter chill tightens its grip. The Arctic is not a place to be in the throes of winter; it is hostile to almost all animal life. Amphibians would freeze solid here. Nor can reptiles withstand the extreme cold. And yet there are animals here, animals that exhibit a remarkable tolerance of the most inhospitable conditions on the planet. Less than half a metre beneath the surface of the snow, a furry white creature, no bigger than a hamster, scurries along a tunnel. It is a collared lemming. It and other members of its family have excavated a complex home within the snowfield, but it costs the lemmings a great deal to survive here. They pay by using some of their precious and scarce food supply to generate heat within their bodies so that their biochemical processes can continue to function efficiently. But in order to keep fuel costs to a minimum, they must conserve as much energy as they can. A thick insulating coat of fine fur covering all but the lemmings’ eyes achieves this. Fur is the life preserver of the Arctic.

Only one class of animals have fur – mammals. Fur is comprised of dense layers of hair follicles. Hair is composed of a substance called keratin. It grows constantly, its roots embedded in the skin and surrounded by nerve fibres so that its owner can sense any movement of the hair. It is this precious fur that gives land mammals the edge necessary to survive the harsh Arctic winter. Without it, wolves, lemmings and arctic foxes alike would surely perish.

The insulation provided by fur comes not from the fur itself, but largely from the layer of air trapped within the fur. Air is an extremely effective insulator, which is the same as saying it is a poor conductor, i.e. it has a very limited ability to conduct heat away from a warm surface. Studies reveal that if a layer of air of about five centimetres could be held in place close to the skin, it would provide the same insulation as does the impressively dense winter coat of the arctic fox. If an arctic fox or wolf is exposed to an air temperature of about minus ten degrees, the temperature near the tips of the fur will match the air temperature, but at the surface of the skin, it will be closer to thirty degrees. This represents a temperature difference of around forty degrees. Such effective insulation is only made possible by the layer of trapped air contained within the long, fine and densely packed fur.

But Arctic mammals have more in their arsenal than just fur to protect them from the elements. Unlike amphibians, reptiles and other classes of animals, they are endotherms, meaning they can generate their own body heat. This is another of the defining characteristics of mammals. It is the mammalian ability to generate heat internally that enables the arctic fox or the lemming to remain warm and active in very cold conditions. Generating heat internally, Arctic mammals can regulate their body temperature independent of external conditions; this is known as thermoregulation. When Arctic mammals are cold, they raise their metabolic rate and produce more heat. When they are warm, the reverse happens. Together, thermoregulation and fur make Arctic mammals perfectly equipped to face the toughest conditions the Arctic can throw at them.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Bismarck: A Master of Political and Diplomatic Juggling?

Otto Von Bismarck’s rise up the political ladder was swift and relentless. Having entered parliament in 1847, he always harboured lofty ambitions, chief among them perhaps being the reunification of Germany into one strong, centrally controlled state, though his own personal thirst for power was arguably even stronger. On becoming Prussian Chancellor, he set about fulfilling his ambitions and in doing so proved himself to be a diplomat of some considerable skill. Victory in the Austro-Prussian war effectively ended Austria as a factor in German affairs. His political and military juggling was taken a step further when he orchestrated a situation where France declared war on Germany in 1870, making the French seem responsible for a conflict he had always intended to create. And following another swift military triumph, this time over the French, the German empire was proclaimed in January 1871.

In little more than nine years, Bismarck realised his lifelong ambition, steering Germany to reunification. And be defeating Austria and France in quick succession, he also created a power vacuum on mainland Europe which he was determined to fill himself. This was another opportunity for Bismarck to demonstrate his political and diplomatic cunning. He set about creating a dictatorial Germany in which he, as head of the Prussian parliament, would automatically become chancellor of the German empire. He drafted a new German constitution to suit his own purposes and, despite maintaining a veneer of democracy, the German parliament was effectively powerless to oppose him. Provinces that were slow to support him were enticed with bribes and before long the German empire was his to command.

It is a testament to his political skill that Bismarck achieved so much s quickly. At this point in his colourful political career, he did appear, for all intents and purposes, a master of political and diplomatic juggling. But challenges lay ahead and Bismarck’s next target was the Catholic church, which he deemed too powerful and a threat to his political dominance. He proceeded to enact a series of laws which seriously eroded the power of the church. However, his plans backfired and Bismarck was forced to make a political U-turn. Though here again, he somehow managed to save face. The damage to his reputation was limited and indeed by the late 1870s, he had even managed to win over the church whose support he now needed.

Bismarck viewed the growing popularity of the Socialist Democratic Party as a serious threat. He bided his time and used the attempted assassination of the Kaiser as an excuse to attack the socialists in 1878, blaming them for the attempt on the Kaiser’s life. He immediately arrested the leaders, banned party meetings and suppressed socialist newspapers. But despite his efforts to destroy the socialist movement, its popularity had trebled by 1890. Just as his interventions with the church had not gone as planned, Bismarck once again failed to achieve his objective; though, to his credit, he held on to power.

His domestic position was relatively secure after 1871 and Bismarck devoted a lot of his time to foreign policy. Having used war to unite Germany and make her great, Bismarck now believed that his ambitions were best served by peace. His plan to isolate a hostile France would require all his considerable diplomatic skills. The Dreikaiserbund agreement of 1873 between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia was a first step towards doing just that. The Balkan crisis, a conflict involving Russia and Austria-Hungary, severely tested his diplomatic credentials, but his answer was to offer himself as an ‘honest broker’ to help resolve the dispute. The subsequent Congress of Berlin which he hosted was an outstanding success and only served to reinforce Bismarck’s reputation as a shrewd diplomat. Bismarck’s foreign policy would continue in this vein throughout his reign as Chancellor. He built up strategic alliances with the big powers, Russia, Italy and Austria-Hungary, in the hope that he could keep his main threats, France and Britain, isolated.

In truth, Bismarck’s reign as chancellor of the German empire does seem to confirm him as a shrewd and wily diplomat and politician, one whose objectives were broadly achieved. Does this mean his so-called juggling was a success? Perhaps, but Bismarck left a less than perfect legacy. He created a Germany in which the Kaiser had the ultimate say in domestic affairs and enjoyed far too much power should he choose to wield it. This meant that the future of the empire largely depended on the strength and character of just one man, the Kaiser. A weak Kaiser would be disastrous for the country’s welfare, and so it would soon prove. In the final analysis, Bismarck put Germany back on the map again as a great power during his reign, but we should not forget that he created the political situation that would be the downfall of his country in the end. His political and diplomatic juggling, therefore, simply cannot be considered a total success.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 58 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

The climate of the Earth is always changing. In the past, it has altered as a result of natural causes. Nowadays, however, the term ‘climate change’ is generally used when referring to changes in our climate which have been identified since the early part of the twentieth century. The changes we’ve seen over recent years and those which are predicted to occur over the next 100 years are thought by many to be largely a result of human behaviour rather than due to natural changes in the atmosphere. And this is what is so significant about current climatic trends; never before has man played such a significant role in determining long-term weather patterns – we are entering the unknown and there is no precedent for what might happen next.

The greenhouse effect is very important when we talk about climate change as it relates to the gases which keep the Earth warm. Although the greenhouse effect is a naturally occurring phenomenon, it is believed that the effect could be intensified by human activity and the emission of gases into the atmosphere. It is the extra greenhouse gases which humans have released which are thought to pose the strongest threat. Certain researchers, such as Dr Michael Crawley, argue: ‘even though this natural phenomenon does exist it is without a doubt human activity that has worsened its effect; this is evident when comparing data regarding the earth’s temperature in the last one hundred years with the one hundred years prior to that.’ Some scientists, however, dispute this as Dr Ray Ellis suggests: ‘human activity may be contributing a small amount to climate change but this increase in temperature is an unavoidable fact based on the research data we have compiled.’

Scientists around the globe are looking at all the evidence surrounding climate change and using advanced technology have come up with predictions for our future environment and weather. The next stage of that work, which is just as important, is looking at the knock-on effects of potential changes. For example, are we likely to see an increase in precipitation and sea levels? Does this mean there will be an increase in flooding and what can we do to protect ourselves from that? How will our health be affected by climate change, how will agricultural practices change and how will wildlife cope? What will the effects on coral be? Professor Max Leonard has suggested, ‘while it may be controversial some would argue that climate change could bring with it positive effects as well as negative ones’.

There are many institutions around the world whose sole priority is to take action against these environmental problems. Green Peace is an organisation that is probably the most well-known. It is an international organisation that campaigns in favour of researching and promoting solutions to climate change, exposes the companies and governments that are blocking action, lobbies to change national and international policy, and bears witness to the impacts of unnecessary destruction and detrimental human activity.

The problem of climate change is without a doubt something that this generation and the generations to come need to deal with. Fortunately, the use of renewable energy is becoming increasingly popular, which means that less energy is consumed as renewable energy is generated from natural resources – such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat – which can be naturally replenished. Another way to help the environment, in terms of climate change, is by travelling light. Walking or riding a bike instead of driving a car uses fewer fossil fuels which release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In addition, using products that are made from recycled paper, glass, metal and plastic reduce carbon emissions because they use less energy to manufacture than products made from completely new materials. Recycling paper also saves trees and lets them continue to limit climate change naturally as they remain in the forest, where they remove carbon from the atmosphere. Professor Mark Halton, who has completed various studies in this field, has stated: ‘with all this information and the possible action that we can take, it isn’t too late to save our planet from over-heating and the even worse side-effects of our own activity’.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Most countries’ education systems have had what you might call educational disasters, but, sadly, in many areas of certain countries, these ‘disasters’ are still evident today. The English education system is unique due to the fact that there are still dozens of schools which are known as private schools and they perpetuate privilege and social division. Most countries have some private schools for the children of the wealthy; England is able to more than triple the average number globally. England has around 3,000 private schools and just under half a million children are educated at them whilst some nine million children are educated at state schools. The overwhelming majority of students at private schools also come from middle-class families.

The result of this system is evident and it has much English history embedded within it. The facts seem to speak for themselves. In the private system almost half the students go on to University, whilst in the state system, only about eight per cent make it further education. However, statistics such as these can be deceptive due to the fact the middle-class children do better at examinations than working-class ones, and most of them stay on at school after 16. Private schools, therefore, have the advantage over state schools as they are entirely ‘middle class’, and this creates an environment of success where students work harder and apply themselves more diligently to their school work.

Private schools are extortionately expensive, being as much as £18,000 a year at somewhere such as Harrow or Eton, where Princes William and Harry attended, and at least £8,000 a year almost everywhere else. There are many parents who are not wealthy or even comfortably off but are willing to sacrifice a great deal in the cause of their children’s schooling. It baffles many people as to why they need to spend such vast amounts when there are perfectly acceptable state schools that don’t cost a penny. One father gave his reasoning for sending his son to a private school, ‘If my son gets a five-percent-better chance of going to University then that may be the difference between success and failure.” It would seem to the average person that a £50,000 minimum total cost of second-level education is a lot to pay for a five-percent-better chance. Most children, given the choice, would take the money and spend it on more enjoyable things rather than shelling it out on a school that is too posh for its own good!

However, some say that the real reason that parents fork out the cash is prejudice: they don’t want their little kids mixing with the “workers”, or picking up an undesirable accent. In addition to this, it wouldn’t do it at the next dinner party all the guests were boasting about sending their kids to the same place where the son of the third cousin of Prince Charles is going, and you say your kid is going to the state school down the road, even if you could pocket the money for yourself instead, and, as a result, be able to serve the best Champagne with the smoked salmon and duck.

It is a fact, however, that at many of the best private schools, your money buys you something. One school, with 500 pupils, has 11 science laboratories; another school with 800 pupils, has 30 music practice rooms; another has 16 squash courts, and yet another has its own beach.

Private schools spend £300 per pupil a year on investment in buildings and facilities; the state system spends less than £50. On books, the ratio is 3 to 1.

One of the things that your money buys which is difficult to quantify is the appearance of the school, the way it looks. Most private schools that you will find are set in beautiful, well-kept country houses, with extensive grounds and gardens. In comparison with the state schools, they tend to look like castles, with the worst of the state schools looking like public lavatories, perhaps even tiled or covered in graffiti. Many may even have an architectural design that is just about on the level of an industrial shed.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. He had an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams King. Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. He skipped a ninth and twelfth grade and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating from high school. From the time that Martin was born, he knew that black people and white people had different rights in certain parts of America. If a black family wanted to eat at a restaurant, they had to sit in a separate section of the restaurant. They had to sit at the back of the cinema and even use separate toilets. Worse, and perhaps even more humiliating still, in many southern states, if a black man was on a bus and all the seats were taken, he would have to endure the indignity of relinquishing his own seat to a white man. King could never understand the terrible injustice of this. In 1948, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology. Later, King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy on June 5, 1955. King married Coretta Scott, on June 18, 1953, and they had four children.

Returning to the South to become pastor of a Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, King first achieved national renown when he helped mobilise the black boycott of the Montgomery bus system in 1955. This was organised after Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man – in the segregated south, black people could only sit at the back of the bus. The 382-day boycott led the bus company to change its regulations, and the Supreme Court declared such segregation unconstitutional.

In 1957 King was active in the organisation of the Southern Leadership Christian Conference (SCLC), formed to co-ordinate protests against discrimination. He advocated non-violent direct action based on the methods of Gandhi, who led protests against British rule in India culminating in India’s independence in 1947. In 1963, Kindled mass protests against discriminatory practices in Birmingham, Alabama, where the white population were violently resisting desegregation. The city was dubbed ‘Bombingham’ as attacks against civil rights protesters increased, and King was arrested and jailed for his part in the protests.

After his release, King participated in the enormous civil rights march, in Washington, on August 1963, and delivered his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech, predicting a day when the promise of freedom and equality for all would become a reality in America. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1965, he led a campaign to register blacks to vote. The same year the US Congress passed the Voting Rights Act outlawing the discriminatory practices that had barred blacks from voting in the south.

As the civil rights movement became increasingly radicalised, King found that his message of peaceful protest was not shared by many in the younger generation. King began to protest against the Vietnam War and poverty levels in the US. On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of the black sanitary public works employees who had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. In one incident, black street repairmen had received pay for two hours when they were sent home because of bad weather, but white employees had been paid for the full day. King could not bear to stand by and let such patent acts of racism go unnoticed. He moved to unite his people, and all the peoples of America on the receiving end of discriminatory practices, to protest for their rights, peacefully but steadfastly.

On his trip to Memphis, King was booked into room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, owned by Walter Bailey. King was shot at 6:01 p.m. April 4, 1968, while he was standing on the motel’s second-floor balcony. King was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors opened his chest and performed manual heart massage. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. King’s autopsy revealed that although he was only 39 years old, he had the heart of a 60-year-old man.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 59 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Taking us back to the Paradise City

Formed in 1985 by Axl Rose and then lead guitarist, Tracii Guns, and taking its name from its two founding members, the hard rock band Guns and Roses reached heights of success that few could or would have ever predicted. Having sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, 46 million in the States alone, to date, the band that came to symbolise the hedonistic rebelliousness of the 1980s and 90s punk-rock period has, after much speculation, resurrected itself for one more assault on the music charts. GNR, as the band has come to be known, has just begun a new world tour. And as it embarks on another chapter of its journey, we take a look back at the colourful and often controversial history of the band.

1985 – 1986

The band line-up underwent many changes in the early days. Founding member Tracii Gun’s failure to attend rehearsals led to him being replaced as a lead guitarist by Slash. And once Rob Gardner, the band’s original drummer quit for personal reasons, Slash brought his close friend Steven Adler into the fold. With the band members now settled and the line-up complete, Axl Rose (vocals), Izzy Stradlin (rhythm guitar), Duff McKagan (bass), Slash (lead guitar) and Steven Adler (drums) embarked on their first tour, nicknamed ‘Hell Tour’. It was here on the road that the band established its chemistry and though it only managed to release one four-track EP, Like a Suicide, during this period, the seeds of success were being sown as the band quickly earned a reputation for its impressive live performances.

1987 – 1989

On July the 21st, 1987, the band released its first album, Appetite for Destruction. But success wasn’t by any means instant; the album lingered low in the charts for almost a year before the band’s agent managed to convince MTV executives to play Welcome to the Jungle, the first single off the album, during their afternoon rotations. Rock and punk fans soon took notice and began requesting the video en masse. Sweet Child of Mine was the album’s second US single and, thanks largely to growing grassroots support, the song and its accompanying music video received regular airplay and shot to the top of the US charts. A world tour and invitations to appear at major international rock festivals followed. The band was now well on its way to achieving fame and fortune.

1990 – 1993

Band members lived life on the edge and, unfortunately, drummer Adler’s lifestyle got the better of him. The extent of his dependence on drugs was so bad that he could no longer perform with the band and was fired in July 1990, to be replaced by Matt Sorum. A sixth member of the group was also added as Dizzy Reed became the band’s keyboardist. And, having gotten rid of its old management team as well, the band now launched its most ambitious project to date, releasing two albums, Use Your Illusion 1 and Use Your Illusion 2, at the same time, the gamble paid off spectacularly with the albums shooting to numbers one and two in the charts respectively – GNR was the first band ever to achieve such a feat. But though they were riding the crest of a wave, the controversy was never far from the band members, especially vocalist Rose who was, among other things, charged with assault and accused of inciting a riot that led to several fatalities. That said, the Use Your Illusion Tour ended on a high, registering record attendances and lasting an incredible 28 months.

1994 – 2008

But just when it seemed that the band could do no wrong, things slowly began to unravel. Rose and Slash had personal issues and the band went on a hiatus, not recording or touring together for the best part of two years before Slash officially quit in 1996. Most of the other band members followed Slash out and, though Rose replaced them, it was a full nine years before a much-touted comeback gig was played in Las Vegas. The band’s promised new album, Chinese Democracy, never materialised and tour schedules were interrupted and often cancelled altogether. It wasn’t until 2008, with Rose now the only remaining member of the original band, that Chinese Democracy was finally released.

2009 – Present

A new world tour followed the release of Chinese Democracy and, although it received largely positive reviews, the band has continued to be plagued by controversy; Rose is notorious for arriving late for performances and his onstage behaviour has led to much criticism. But when all’s said and done, there’s no denying the enduring appeal of GNR. Loyal fans still line up in their thousands to get tickets for every new tour date, just as they did all those years ago at the height of the band’s success. The only difference is that today they are more hoping for than expecting a great performance, but then that’s rock and roll baby!

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Surf’s Up

There are two major subdivision of surfing: longboarding and shortboarding. Their respective names represent differences in the type of surfboard used. Longboards are, as the name suggests, much longer and require a different riding style to shortboards.

Surfboards were originally made of solid wood, and were large and cumbersome, often weighing in excess of 100 pounds. Nowadays, they are more commonly constructed out of polyurethane foam making them much lighter, which means better manoeuvrability for the boarder. This is especially beneficial for longboarders, whose boards can measure up to 3 metres in length. Successful longboarders must learn to carry out difficult walking manoeuvres up and down the board so as to set themselves in the optimal position for catching and riding the wave. The lighter the board, the easier it becomes to execute such manoeuvres. Shortboarders, whose boards are usually between 1.8 and 2 metres long, also benefit from greater manoeuvrability though and are able to turn and adjust more quickly thanks to the lighter boards.

It is claimed that surfing was first observed being enjoyed by native Tahitians in 1767 by European explorers. Later travellers also reported seeing naked locals, both men and women, amusing themselves in the surf off the coast of Hawaii. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the sport is synonymous with the South Pacific and Hawaii in particular. Today, however, the popularity of surfing is such that surf clubs have popped up almost everywhere, from the windy West Coast of Ireland to the ultrachic Californian beaches. Indeed, it is in Northern California where perhaps the most famous and glamorous surfing takes place.

The prospective surfer would be well-advised to consider the dangers associated with the sport before he takes to the waves. Like all water sports, surfing carries with it the inherent danger of drowning. Although the board itself offers buoyancy, it can also be a hindrance, and a deadly one at that if its leash becomes entangled in a reef, holding the surfer underwater. Ideal water conditions for surfing can be extremely demanding on the body, too, and require the surfer to be an extremely competent swimmer.

Collisions with sandbanks, reefs, surfboards and other surfers can also be extremely hazardous and can lead to concussion – a death sentence if the surfer is not rescued from the water quickly. Although rarer, attacks by marine animals are not uncommon, with sharks, rays, seals and jellyfish posing the greatest threats. You certainly need to be a courageous soul to brave the waves in this sport.

But for those who insist on giving it a go, the rewards can be very gratifying, and it isn’t too expensive to get up and running either. Surf schools in popular destinations offer multi-day beginner and intermediate courses that focus on the basic fundamentals. Five-day courses start from as little as £100 and there are all-inclusive camps, too, which cover accommodation, meals, lessons and equipment. Longboards, given their superior paddling speed and stability, are usually preferred by coaches for use with beginners. Typically, the courses break down the technique into separate skills: the first one being how to get into position to catch a wave, the second one being how to ride the wave and not fall off. Balance, of course, plays a crucial role, so a lot of time is dedicated to balance training exercises as well.

Difficult though it may be to master the art of surfing, it can also be extremely rewarding, and there are few feelings to compare with the exhilaration of riding out your first wave. So, for those of you daredevil adrenalin junkies who fancy having a go, details of a surf club near you can be found on the British Surfing Association’s website, britsurf.co.uk.

And try to remember as your feet are dangling over the side of the board, Jaws was just a film; it ALMOST certainly won’t happen to you!

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Making a sound Investment Decision

As investors tire of stock market instability, the idea of owning a piece of real estate is gaining in popularity. Now, not everyone has what it takes to become a landlord, but if you can make a go of it, it certainly has the potential to become a good money-earner. Here are some tips from successful real estate mogul, Janet Anderson, on how to start building up your property portfolio.

According to Janet, one of the best ways to identify a bargain is to hunt for foreclosures. Foreclosures are properties banks have repossessed because their owners were unable to meet the mortgage repayments. Banks want a quick sell on these places, Janet says. They want to cut their losses and get their money back as quickly as possible. Developing a network – making connections with city clerks and bank employees who know which properties are about to be sold – can be an excellent way to identify such bargains. And bargains they certainly can prove to be; in a recent firesale auction (‘firesale auction’ is the phrase that has been coined to describe auction-room events dedicated entirely to the disposal of repossessed assets) a house with a market value nearing $1,000,000, but with a low reserve price designed to encourage bidders and secure a quick sale, went for $450,000; that’s a whopping 55% discount.

It’s also important to be realistic though and not stretch yourself too far financially. Janet says the biggest mistake you can make is to borrow too much or over-borrow. For first-time investors, lenders usually demand bigger down payments because you haven’t got a proven track record. That’s more of your money on the table and, therefore, should anything go wrong, you’re in for a big financial hit.

Her business partner, James Nylles, is in complete agreement on this point. He also highlights the fact that mortgage payments and deposits are only part of the long-term cost of buying a rental property. There is also the cost of repairs, administration and maintenance, rental manager’s fees, insurance and so on, all of which require you to hold a significant amount of money in reserve. Failure to factor this in when calculating how much you can afford to part with in mortgage repayments can lead to disaster.

One of the biggest traps for first-time investors, according to Nylles, is the temptation to pay over the odds to get the property you desire. Buyers often get carried away, especially in the auction-room setting, which can get quite competitive and even descend into a racket of one-upmanship. They end up paying top-dollar and landing themselves in a financial situation they can ill afford to be in. Remember, you are in the property game to make money, so the more money you have to pay upfront for a property, the less likely you are to recoup your investment in the long run. The good news, however, is that the housing market is not very hot at the moment, which means the danger of overpaying is not so great. Always set emotions to one side and think from a purely business perspective. The question of your liking or disliking the property is irrelevant. As Nylles points out: “you will not be living there.” Business decisions are made in the cold hard light of day; your objective is to minimise your outlay and maximise your return. Whether you secure a huge home in pristine condition or a tiny flat with bare room to stretch in is irrelevant – if the tiny flat gets you a better return on your investment then the choice is a no-brainer.

And last of all, do your homework. You’ve got to get to know the location in which you are going to invest. Look out for areas which are earmarked for government investment. Urban renewal areas are often very attractive since house and rental prices in such places are low right now but can be expected to rise in the not too distant future. The range of local amenities, safety and the state of the local economy are all important factors to consider, too. As the old saying goes, ‘location, location, location’. Invest in a good location and you will maximise your rental income.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 60 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

The Green Revolution in China

A couple of weeks ago, China’s highest government body published their conclusions from the second research session on continental climate change over a period of twelve months. Due to China’s new global role and the number of unprecedented environmental issues in China, the Chinese prime minister was very keen to raise climate change as an important issue at the upcoming G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan.

It should be highlighted that the Chinese central government also had a similar meeting and that China is a rapidly industrializing country with new coal-fueled power plants opening every week. China is like a terrifying carbon-guzzling monster. As a result of thirty years of industrialization, China now has the highest level of carbon dioxide emissions in the world. Carbon dioxide emissions are increasing up to eight per cent a year. The EU achieved a twenty per cent reduction, but China’s emission rate was twice as much approaching the 2010 IPCC deadline for carbon dioxide emissions reduction.

However, it could be misleading to put too much emphasis on these statistics. A non-governmental organization (Climate Group) newspaper report presents a slightly different picture. According to the Clean Revolution in China, China is a nation that is more than aware of its environmental issues but also has the potential to achieve a second miracle in 30 years.

The environmental price of the first “miracle” was that Chinese people always saw their daily lives. That’s why most of the policies are related to energy efficiency, energy-saving and other alternative energy sources. Those policies have already been met with some concern.

Whilst the personal sectors are so strong and developing, they are able to aid the central government to introduce laws, like the National Renewable Energy Law in 2006. This has set hard targets, including increasing the amount of energy made from new renewable sources from eight per cent to fifteen per cent until 2020. Also, it has guaranteed at least three per cent of renewable energy sources, such as biomass, solar and wind.

Both wind and solar power are so successful, but their origins are very different. With 6 gigawatts of energy made from wind turbines, surprisingly China is now ranked behind Germany, the US, Spain and India. Also, some believe China will reach 100 GW by 2020.

Wind power successfully shows that with central government aid China is ready for new policies, subsidies and advanced technology. This situation also has a role in the domestic market. The amount of electricity produced by wind farms can be a burden to fund.

Even though western countries invented an open marketplace set to dominate in China, there were few domestic incentives for solar power. In the global solar photovoltaic cell market, it is second only to Japan and growing fast. In China, the solar market has been a small business, because the cells are so expensive. This puts pressure on the government to rapidly follow up on their policies, for example, the role of the Climate Group is important in developing domestic markets.

However, the image of new coal-fueled power stations still looms large as they are opening every week. It is hard to imagine that China has achieved a 10.5 per cent of growth rate without such stations in the last quarter. However, how many people actually know that China has been closing its small power stations over the last couple of years? Step by step China is reducing its small power stations, first the 50-megawatt ones then the 100-megawatt ones and next will be the 300-megawatt power stations.

This policy is operated by the Chinese central government and backs up the new generation of coal station using the most advanced technologies with supercritical and ultra-supercritical improved clean coal. Capture functions and plants of carbon are researched and developed, but advanced thinking for the future is based on the technology of Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) that turn coal materials into synthetic gas to make power.

These days, Chinese consumers demand better homes and vehicles. Public awareness of energy-saving is on the rise. The Chinese government introduced a standard fuel economy for vehicles in 2004 of 15.6 kilometers per litre. This is higher than the US, Canada and Australia but behind Europe and Japan. In the meantime, in spite of a high 20 per cent tax on SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles), the sale of these sorts of cars continues to increase.

Up to now, China has been the kingdom of the bicycle, importing the electric bike at 1,500 yuan ($220) per vehicle. Some of these vehicles have adopted an intelligent recovery system similar to that of hybrid cars. In 2007, the sale of electric bikes increased considerably and China is estimated to make up three-quarters of the world electric vehicle market.

China, already, is doing a lot on the bottom line. So, could it do more? The answer is yes, China should learn and open its mind through international communities. According to the Climate Group, they report the world should refine their image of China, just not fear it and, constructively, work in unison. At the same time, China’s government should develop a clean revolution and maintain internal pressure for improvements.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-28 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

The Efficacy of Hypnotherapy

In the 1840s Scottish neurosurgeon, James Braid coined ‘Hypnotherapy’. At that time, in India, British surgeon, James Esdaile, practiced hundreds of scrotal and abdominal operations, adopting hypnosis as the only anaesthetic. It was unfortunate timing that he reported his research dissertation on hypnosis to London Royal Society just as chemical anaesthetics were discovered. The technique was not agreed on by the medical establishment.

These days, whilst an increasing number of people are asking about private practitioners, the level of studies within the hypnotherapy field is meaningful enough that it remains on the fringes of medicine. In a report on alternative and complementary medicine in 2000, the Science and Technology Committee of the UK’s House of Lords has given hypnosis a bad reputation by putting it in the “poor research/regulation” category. In other words, the therapies were unlikely to enter mainstream medicine without substantial changes.

If you research the PubMed database using the term “hypnotherapy,” you find 11,518 hit-words, so there are plenty of studies out there. However, most of the researchers are not satisfied with the gold standard of a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) instead of taking the frame of reviews or case studies. Only 91 relevant RCTs conducted in the world have worked in the past four years. The researchers propose that hypnotherapy can be an effective treatment for pain control, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety disorders and smoking cessation.

There is clear evidence that hypnosis has psychological and physiological effects. That’s why Peter Whorwell at the University of Manchester has researched the efficacy of IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) surgery for gastrointestinal modulation with hypnotherapy and possible immune function support. But even though IBS is one of the best-covered areas, the action with mechanism is not clear and the Cochrane Collaboration from assessing clinical trials has criticised the size and quality of the studies.

In spite of the evidence that hypnotherapy reduces pain, anxiety and stress, there are a couple of reasons why few trials have been done. From these stages, hypnosis’s usage doesn’t aid its image. Also, it has the same problems as other “talking” therapies. Alternative funding should be built up, as the drug companies do not benefit from funding expensive studies.

But, one of the biggest obstacles to hypnosis being considered on a more scientific basis is the therapists themselves. Its effects are a result of a unique interaction between the practitioner and the patient. The expectation is similar to that of a drug and therefore should follow the same trial testing criteria. However, this argument is not helpful.

I strongly believe that whilst meeting with a living, breathing person, it is hard to decrease the process of clinical hypnosis and to receive YES or NO responses that are able to be reliably repeated in other conditions. However, for hypnosis to be considered medical, it should be measurable, replicable and vigorous. Actually, we need to model a body of clinical evidence in order to adapt to the medical profession.

With standardising protocol used, we demand quantitative measures of the effects on the patient, so studies can be compared. Ideally, researchers would have access to state-of-the-art brain scanning equipment. In reality, we are able to get simple biochemical markets of hypnosis and after-effects under suitable usage.

Coming out of such studies in England, Ursula James founded the Medical School Hypnosis Association with her colleagues. According to Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, she explains schemes to bring medical professors and students together with hypnotherapists to operate coordinated national trials and build up a large body of evidence from research replicated at multiple locations. Most of all, one of the first questions is whether clinical hypnosis is able to decrease stress. That is an important component potentially in an illness. We work towards using standardised questionnaires to calculate lifestyle, stress and depression and to measure various stress hormone levels in saliva samples taken from case applicants.

If we are able to present that there is a decrease in stress, we hope that hypnosis will be supplied to patients to treat their condition. With a wide range of usages, it could open up study into other areas including decreasing the thoughts of pain and improving recovery times.

Questions 14-16

Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 14-16 on your answer sheet.

14 According to information in the text, hypnotherapy

A was created by British surgeon James Esdaile in 1840.

B has already been used during an operation by James Braid.

C originated from the work of Scottish neurosurgeon James Braid in the 1840s.

D was created by James Esdaile and James Braid in the 1840s.

15 According to information in the text, the recent perception on hypnotherapy among private practitioners

A maintains plenty of research within alternative medicine.

B is on the fringes of mainstream medicine because there hasn’t been enough research.

C means there is a neutral attitude within alternative medicine.

D demands non-practical, but has potential.

16 According to a randomised controlled trial (RCT), hypnotherapy

A works in a variety of cases.

B supplied research and development in advance.

C works in cold.

D was found to be an antidote against irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

The Well-being Life

Going back to the 1970s, few people listened to scientists’ warnings of global warming. It got worse as nobody was interested in curbing economic growth to protect the environment. Nowadays, we are more cautious. We are hearing about the conflict between living on the earth and expanding the demands of the global market.

However, Tim Jackson reports that people and governments claim the growth agenda to ensure our future and are still in denial of the conflict. A reason for this is the presumption that support for the green campaigners will ultimately make our lives worse.

All representations of a pleasant and easy life which aspire to come from advertising do not help. Also, our happiness is dependent on consuming more and more “material.” We have never listened to ways of escaping stress, noise, congestion, and the ill-health that comes from our “high” standard of living.

Actually, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that a workaholic mentality and an affluent lifestyle does not give us a pleasant life and that switching to a more sustainable community to work could make us happier. For instance, rates of depression and occupational illness have been indicated to be relative to the number of hours we are working. Once a certain income level is reached, more wealth is not linked with growing happiness.

The unreasonableness of our situation can be explained by the way in which our economy tries to sell us happiness. For example, leisure and tourism companies sell customers “a good quality time,” catering services offer us “home cooking,” dating agencies sell relationships; the sports centre sells health and as a result of modern car culture it can be unsafe to walk outside. With the economy steadily expanding, consumer culture is becoming more and more reliant on our desire to adopt this lifestyle.

An increasing number of people are beginning to realize that there is more to life than work and money. Troubled by the effects of a stressful life, people are starting to make their lives more simple and rethinking their values and desires. If people were to switch to a less work-intensive economy, it would decrease the rate of people, products and information delivered, reducing carbon emissions and the use of resources.

There are a number of advantages to making sacrifices to our lifestyles. We would be able to have more time for ourselves and our families. We would commute less and enjoy healthier ways of travelling such as walking, cycling, and riding a boat. Large supermarket chains would be replaced by local family businesses resulting in the creation of more communal town centres. Our local areas would become more tranquil and give us more chance to reflect on things. These changed ideas for a “good life” might also motivate less developed countries to reconsider their goals, enabling them to avoid some of the less attractive aspects of the current system.

Of course, we must sacrifice some conveniences and pleasure such as regular steaks, hot tubs, luxury cosmetics and easy foreign travel. But constant comfort can blunt as well as satisfy our desires. And human ingenuity will invent a wide range of eco-friendly excitement.

Moving into a safe-state economy is an intimidating prospect. However, Herman Daly explains it is unrealistic to continue with current rates of development in production, work and material consumption over the next decades, let alone into the next century.

Under the financial disorders and broad cynicism over government commitments to global warming, more honesty would win cooperation and esteem from the voter, especially if politicians emphasise the advantages of the sustainable society.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 61 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Growing of the Aging Society

American scientists say that the elderly are now healthier, happier and more independent. The results of a study that has taken place over a 14-year period will be released at the end of the month. The research will show that common health disorders suffered by the elderly are affecting fewer people and happening after in life.

Over the last 14 years, The National Long-term Health Care Survey has gathered data from more than 20,000 males and females over the age of 65 about their health and lifestyles. The group has analysed the results of data gathered in 1994 on conditions such as arthritis, high blood pressure and poor circulation; these were the most common medical complaints for this age group. The results show that these conditions are troubling a smaller proportion of people each year and decreasing very quickly. Other diseases suffered by the elderly including dementia, emphysema and arteriosclerosis are also affecting fewer people.

According to Kenneth Manton, a demographer from Duke University in North Carolina, “the question of what should be considered normal ageing has really changed.” He also mentioned that diseases suffered by many people around the age of 65 in 1982 are now not occurring until people reach the age of 70-75.

It is clear that due to medical advances some diseases are not as prominent as they used to be. However, there was also be other factors influencing this change. For instance, improvements in childhood nutrition in the first quarter of the twentieth century gave many people a better start in life than was possible before.

The data also shows some negative changes in public health. The research suggests that the rise of respiratory conditions such as lung cancer and bronchitis may reflect changing smoking habits and an increase in air pollution. Manton says that as we have been exposed to worse and worse pollution, it is not surprising that some people over the age of 60 are suffering as a result.

Manton also found that better-educated people are likely to live longer. For instance, women of 65 with less than eight years of education are expected to live to around 82. Those who studied more could be able to live seven years longer. Whilst some of this can be attributed to better-educated people usually having a higher income, Manton believes it is mainly because they pay closer attention to their health.

Also, the survey estimated how independent people of 65 were and found a striking trend. In the 1994 survey, almost 80% of them were able to complete activities such as eating and dressing alone as well as handling difficult tasks, like cooking and managing their financial affairs. This situation indicates an important drop among disabled elderly people in the population. If 14 years ago, the apparent trends in the US had continued, researchers believe that there would be one million disabled elderly people in today’s population. Manton shows the trend saved more than $200 billion for the US’s governments Medicare system, and it has suggested the elderly American population is less of a financial burden than expected.

The growing number of independent elderly people is probably linked to the huge increase in home medical aids. For instance, the research shows the use of raising toilet seat covers and bath seats has increased by more than fifty per cent. Also, these developments about health benefits are reported by the MacArthur Foundation’s research group for successful ageing. It found the elderly who are able to take care of themselves were more likely to stay healthy in their old age.

Retaining a certain level of daily physical activity may also help brain function, according to Carl Cotman, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Irvine. He found that rats exercising on a treadmill have higher levels of a brain-derived neurotrophic factor in their brains. He believes the hormone which holds neuron functions may prevent the active human’s brain function from declining.

Teresa Seeman, a social epidemiologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, was conducting the same research. She found a line between self-esteem and stress in people over 70. The elderly who did challenging activities such as driving have more control of their mind and have a lower level of the stress hormone cortisol in their brains. Chronically high levels of this hormone can cause heart disease.

However, an independent life may have negative points. Seeman knew that the elderly people that were living alone were able to retain higher levels of stress hormones even when sleeping. The research indicates that elderly people are happier if they can live an independent life but also acknowledge when they need help.

Seeman says, “With many cases of research about ageing, these results help common sense.” Also, the situations show that we may be ignoring some of the simple factors. She mentions, “The sort of thing your grandmother always used to talk to you about seems to be exactly right.”

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Space Flight Tourism

Falcon 1’s successful launch on 28th of September was an outstanding achievement for the fledgeling space tourism industry. When a rocket made by Space X in Hawthorne, California, reached an orbit of 500 kilometres from the Earth, it became possible for privately developed rocket too.

Two days after the launch, Virgin Galactic started a business with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which will be accepted by US scientists as a way of researching climate change using a spacecraft.

No doubt the civilian space flight industry is an exciting area and this was apparent at the International Aeronautical Congress in Glasgow last month. It displayed slick promotional videos, and models of the “Nearly Ready” spacecraft in orbit to the people who would be investing money in the project.

However, in spite of increasing confidence, it is also necessary to be cautious: can a civilian spacecraft be safe like holiday airlines? Gerardine Goh, a lawyer at DLR, the German Aerospace Centre in Bonn and a member of Germany’s delegation to the UN’s Office of Outer Space Affairs reported that as it is not global, there need to be enforceable regulations in place to guarantee the safety of a civilian spacecraft. She said, “Ships should be equipped to be seaworthy, aircraft should be equipped to be airworthy but there is no legislation in place to ensure that a spacecraft is spaceworthy.”

At the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, Goh is planning to press the UN to force civilian space operators to warrant which spacecraft are designed and built to minimum safety standards. She says, “Mass commercial space flight does not currently have international safety regulations.” and “We deeply need a UN treaty which offers us this.”

One way companies are planning to transport tourists into space is with a “mother ship”, an aircraft which carries a rocket at an altitude of 16 kilometres before launching it, says Goh. “But with launching the aircraft, the ICAO’s air safety standards only apply to the mother ship and the rocket capsule until they are separated. After that, we do not have any safety standards for the capsule itself. It is a critical problem.”

From 16 kilometres to the Karman line, the point of 100 kilometres up where space is considered to start, the rocket will be travelling within a legal vacuum. Here, lawyers cannot agree on whether it is a plane or a rocket. Some insist that if you are in a well-equipped functioning rocket, more strict safety measures should try to be incorporated into the spaceship’s design.

The other aspects of the UN’s 1967 treaty for outer space exploration may be discussed again if civilian space flight turns out to be successful. For example, countries must consider how to rescue and repatriate astronauts crashing or landing in their land. Also, governments have to decide if the money generated by the space flight industry will be enough to cover the cost of rescuing space tourists.

Civilian space flight companies are very aware of the risks in this field as they have already had the experience of dealing with a tragedy. Unfortunately, three engineers were killed and another three were severely injured in 2007, when nitrous oxide rocket fuel suddenly exploded during fuel flow tests at a Scaled Composites facility in Mojave, California. The company is establishing WhiteKnightTwo, a carrier aircraft and SpaceShip Two, a six-seater rocket for Virgin Galactic. The facility was regulated by California’s health and safety regulator, and it has now modified its technology to decrease the risks.

However, space flight’s dangers are far from just fuel issues. According to Laurent Gathier of Dassault Aviation developing the VSH of a rocketpowered sub-orbital tourist space plane, other critical safety factors are with depressurization risks, passengers close to the engine and the activities of flight trajectories including cosmic ray shielding.

Civilian space companies should incorporate the safety features into their designs. For instance, the VSH will equip an ejector seat for all tourists and staff. It is a device for bailing out of the spacecraft with a default of 40,000 feet (12 kilometres).

Goh’s vision is essentially against the Federal Aviation Administration Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) and does not have any schemes to regulate civilian space flight safety until 2012. The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 mentions that George Nield as AST chief said, the civilian space flight regulation must not “stifle” the developing technologies with inconvenient rules.

Before launching, a hands-off approach to civilian space flight could be quite risky. Goh said, “A lack of safety standards and a lot of operational burdens will leave a commercial space flight in the dangerous activity categories in terms of the insurance.” It means insurance costs will be very high. Critics who are developing safety standards also insist that the “at-your-own-risk” mentality that is applied to risky sports like scuba-diving should also be applied to civilian space flight.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Doctor’s Rights and Drinks

New Yorker John Davin started his campaign for election to Congress on 26th of September 1922. Actually, he was not a politician, but a doctor who practiced in a local city for 40 years at the top of his profession. Davin and other doctors with the same opinions were faced with the task of arguing their cases in front of the people. Also, they made a new political party, the Medical Rights League, and decided that Davin should run as a candidate for the coming election. What did they want? Beer, or more precisely, a doctor who had the right to prescribe it.

The Congress had legislated the law prohibiting the sale of alcohol in January 1920. The aim was to transform a nation of drinkers and gamblers into one of hard-working, law-abiding, teetotal citizens. It was now illegal to sell or buy a drink that included more than 0.5 per cent alcohol “for beverage purpose.” Only medical alcohol was allowed, but the conditions were so strict. Doctors could prescribe “liquor” when there was a “need to afford relief from a known ailment”. Patients could not have more than a pint of liquor “within 10 days at any time”. Doctors who needed to prescribe alcohol were approved for a permit. But the current law said nothing about beer, traditional alcohol for ailments from anaemia to anthrax. So, could they prescribe beer or not?

As doctors were requesting permission to prescribe beer, someone had to make a decision. That person was Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, a staunch supporter of Prohibition. To the delight of doctors and dismay of prohibitionists, he urged “it was not the purpose of Congress to prohibit the use of liquor for non-beverage usages.” The Congress accepted medicinal alcohol for non-beverage usages. It was for “beer and other malt liquors.”

The Prohibitionists were very enraged. They had suspicions that doctors were in league with the brewers and that their intentions were more to disrupt Prohibition than for medicinal purposes. Although brandy and whisky might have some medicinal advantages, in their view, beer was not needed at pharmacies. Congressman Andrew Volstead, who drafted the National Prohibition Act, criticized the decision saying “It is not a worthy argument that beer is medicine,” “Everything in beer except the alcohol is similar to the bears that can be bought without any prescription.” He immediately set up a supplementary bill that would further restrict medicinal alcohol and ban “medical beer” altogether.

Now, it was the doctors’ turn to be infuriated. How dare politicians presume to tell doctors what sort of things they could prescribe or how much. The merits of medicinal alcohol were suddenly a topic of national debate. For a couple of decades, doctors had been divided on the issue. Many insisted it was a treatment for all manners of disease. Others removed a worthless remedy left from the past. The American Medical Association (AMA), in 1917, denied the medicinal usage of alcohol, “Its value in therapeutics as a tonic, stimulant or food has no scientific basis.”

However, as Prohibition hit home, doctors’ enthusiasm for alcohol improved. Articles admiring beer, wine and whisky spread among medical journals. One doctor suggested champagne worked wonders in cases of scarlet fever. Beer was warranted to treat sleeplessness. One of the US’s top doctors even insisted that when children with diphtheria developed secondary infections, alcohol could save them.

According to JAMA, the report said, “Impressive particularly was the sincerity of the belief of a lot of physicians in the therapeutic effect of whisky within a limited number of diseases.” “But equally impressive was the expressed belief of a limited number of physicians of necessity within a lot of diseases.” The contents ran from anaemia to uraemia, including influenza and indigestion, cancer, colds and heart disease.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 62 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Amazon Rainforest of Peru

A cement maker proudly speaks about the brief history of the road: this main road was part of an incentive programme supported by the US’s fund to help local people to find economic alternatives to harvesting coca, from which cocaine is produced. Four years later, the road is a global vacuum from which timber from the Peruvian rainforest is taken to China. Some wood will be polished into luxury parquet flooring for high-quality homes in Shanghai and Beijing. More wood will be used in Chinese factories and made into patio furniture, decking or flooring in North America and Europe.

Going down the street, muddy tracks show the old forest known as Monte Alto, where local farmers have been using the sunlight that comes through the openings in the forest canopy to grow a variety of food crops, like cassava, sweet potatoes, bananas and plantains. They are also growing a few cash crops like coffee and cacao. This also helps to fund essential services like schools and hospitals.

As a tree ecologist and student studying about the timber trade, I am here researching a kind of Dipteryx known in the region as shihuahuaco (its international trade name is cumaru) and to research its movements from the Amazonian forest to Chinese factories. Although shihuahuaco is not particularly high profile, ecologists call it a “keystone” tree, as its large seeds are an essential food source for forest herbivores in the dry season, whilst its hollow rooms are utilized as the nesting place of parrots and macaws. It is so hard that local residents use big shihuahuaco trees as a shelter when strong storms bring trees down.

My trip began in the company of a great group of people who were logging from the sawmill town in Pucallpa. A two-day trip into the forest guided us beyond the road’s end to a community called Esperanza, or “Hope.” In the middle of a flourishing Chacra – a farm typical of the area – there was a temporary logging camp. As well as their productive farming, the chacra had a family business called the Medinas which offered a refuge for birds, wild piglets and primates saved from logged areas. From there, I walked through the Monte Alto with my logging friends for 10 days, which they were soon to cut.

The adult trees were colossal, reaching heights of up to 50 metres and a width of 1.3 metres, towering above their huge buttresses which spread up to 5 metres around the main trunk. There were one or two such trees per hectare and most of them were put forward for the long voyage across the Pacific. Whilst we found approximately 250 seedlings and saplings, there were only two young trees which had reached the canopy and therefore could be expected to harvest into adults.

I don’t want to be sentimental about trees. On one of my last nights in the rainforest when speaking to the company’s chief woodsman Pedro, I felt reassured about the situation. Pedro said, “At least there are the Medias arbolitos.” “What, little trees?” I asked. The next day Pedro showed me the trees he was referring to. We walked up the hill and Pedro stopped in front of a very healthy-looking young shihuahuaco growing in the sun. “When do you expect to harvest them?” I had to ask. I hope he wasn’t planning to profile them in a few years.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

A shot for public health

Millions of elderly people in the US, Europe and elsewhere get injections for their annual flu shots this month. It is widely seen as a largely effective public health programme which halves the risk of dying over the winter among people aged 65 or over. Actually, for every 200 vaccinations, one life is saved. However, there is overwhelming evidence that this claim is too good to be true, and we must look for additional ways to prevent the flu.

According to the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), flu kills approximately 36,000 people every winter in the US. Of them, about 30,000 are aged 65 or over. This is about 5% of the 650,000 winter deaths per year in this age group. Flu itself is never recorded as a cause of death: instead, it leads to the elderly dying from other causes, like bacterial pneumonia, heart disease or a stroke.

Most rich countries are concentrated on cutting this figure by vaccinating those who are at the highest risk, but how well does this actually work? The best way to carry out research in trials that compare those who are vaccinated against those who aren’t, with applicants allocated randomly from each group. But as flu shots are known to be an advantage, it would be unethical to deny some people vaccinations. Researchers compared those who choose to be vaccinated with those who don’t. then, they use the statistical methods of control to observe the differences between the two groups. One large meta-analysis of such studies concluded that those who get flu shots are half as likely to die as their unvaccinated peers over the winter. Several other studies have come to a similar conclusion.

It sounds possibly a bit too good to be true. In 2005, Lone Simonsen, a researcher at George Washington University, and her colleagues showed that the number of flu deaths among the elderly in the US has remained at about 5% of deaths in the group during winter. Vaccination coverage has skyrocketed from about 15% in 1980 to about 70% today. So how could flu vaccination be preventing half of the deaths in winter, when the flu accounted for only 5% of those deaths back in 1980, when most people were not vaccinated?

Also, in 2006 epidemiologist Lisa Jackson and her colleagues at the Centre for Health Statistics in Seattle analysed a Seattle medical database using the same statistical methods as the previous studies. It showed that the maximum benefit of having the flu shot happened in the months before the season of flu even started.

Jackson insisted that the studies failed to give an account of ill and weak elderly people who had died but were less inclined to be vaccinated, making vaccination seem more valuable than it actually is.

But the debate was not over. Last year Kristin Nichol and her colleagues from the University of Minnesota published a dissertation using slightly different statistical methods and included records from tens of thousands of patients in three cities over 10 years. It came to the same incredible conclusion that vaccination was preventing about half of all deaths in winter. Researchers like Simonsen, Jackson and myself estimated Nichol’s methods. Also, we believe this finding is subject to the sort of bias already identified by Jackson.

Last week Simonsen and Nichol discussed the issue at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Washington DC. Nichol accepted that although there might still be some bias in her latest survey, flu deaths are estimated indirectly, especially when counting extra deaths beyond those expected in winter. Researchers may have underestimated the number of people who have died as a result of the flu.

In conclusion, we need to improve our statistical methods for measuring the effectiveness of the flu vaccine. This issue has much wider implications as similar methods are used to analyse other areas in which randomised trials are not possible. For example, the effectiveness of cholesterol-lowering statins for pneumonia patients is also analysed in this way.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

High-tech Switzerland

For a nation with a history of making sophisticated clocks, it is not surprising that Switzerland is the best place for precision and high-tech research. The country is so proud of two Federal Institutes of Technology, like the CERN of particle physics laboratory and a core of IBM research facilities. Also, there are two big pharmaceutical companies called Roche and Novartis. Also, who can forget Switzerland’s world-famous chocolate industry?

British citizens are able to work in Switzerland vise-free and the country offers salaries of up to £72,000 per year for highly-skilled experienced researchers with the option of skiing in the lunch break. It is easy to know why Switzerland appeals to so many. In what fields are these great opportunities available?

Computing Clout

IBM is one of the global companies that has established a research hub in Switzerland. The Ruschlikon lab located in the south of Zurich draws researchers from around the world, with 80% of them coming from abroad.

This lab is a leader in digital storage technology and semiconductor and optical electronics for online networks. Projects to build a top-class nanotechnology research centre in the place are going on and will be completed by 2014.

Irene Holenweger Koeb, a manager in IBM human resources, says that the lab is looking for a wide range of disciplines including physics, chemistry and mathematics. Also, it is a thriving bioscience group working on the application of nanotechnology to life sciences and other areas. Most of the positions only accept applicants with a Ph.D. but the lab also hires approximately 100 applicants with Bachelors and Masters degrees each year.

Paul Hurley, a researcher in IBM’s systems software group, in enjoying the flexible atmosphere of his work. There is a relaxed atmosphere in the office at IBM and meetings often take place over lunch or a coffee break.

As a lot of employees are not Swiss nationals, the company offers a lot of support and also has a policy of paying relocation expenses. Koeb says that it is important to gradually ease employees into their new workplace.

German lessons which are paid for by IBM are offered to new employees working in Zurich. The standard of German is different to German spoken in Zurich. Whilst Hurley has attended the classes, he says a little bit more practice is needed to notice the “Swiss-isms.”

Raising the Chocolate Bar

Switzerland is known for chocolate. Jose Rubio of Lindt’s human resources department says “Our company has 44 nationalities and 18 languages.”

Scientists are able to find jobs within quality management, research and development and in the factory working conditions. The work of R&D is to help improve new recipes and products as well as designing and building new machines for making them. You are able to hone your skills in a well-managed company and have the pleasant task of testing the products to make sure they meet the company’s high standards.

Rubio says that a foreign staff must speak at least one of the official Swiss languages. Most of the positions need a good level of German, as it is vital when working with Swiss coworkers in the production lines.

The ETH in German-speaking Zurich has a sister institution, which is the Federal Institute of Technology in French-speaking Lausanne (EPFL). With over 250 research groups and 10,000 students and faculties, it is focused on interdisciplinary scientific research. The institute’s technology transfer programmes ensure that practical tools and methods make it out of the lab and into the industry.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 63 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

THE SWINE FLU PANDEMIC

The swine flu pandemic has become more problematic. The White House will meet with state representatives on the 9th of July to talk about the preparation for the autumn flu season in the US, whilst the UK has focused their response on the H1N1 virus to cope with widespread infection.

In the meantime, the southern hemisphere is going into the middle of the winter flu season, and the swine H1N1 virus seems to be replacing the seasonal flu viruses that have been circulating until now. This is related to the seasonal flu vaccine which several companies are still producing. It could cause some problems when the northern hemisphere flu season comes at the end of this year.

The flu pandemics of 1918, 1957 and 1968 showed a high level of seasonal change and also released mild form of the H1N1 virus which circulates through the existing flu virus, H3N2. So, nobody knows how the H1N1 virus is going to behave. If it is not exchanged with the seasonal virus – the milder H1N1 and H3N2 – the world is facing the prospect of catching all three viruses at once. It would be a complicated scenario, as both seasonal and pandemic vaccines would be wanted and patients from different age groups would be affected. Although based on what is happening in the southern hemisphere, it does not seem that this will be the case.

In the northern hemisphere, swine flu has spread to the extent that over 98% of flu cases genotyped in the US towards the end of June were caused by the pandemic virus. This is to be expected. Whilst the seasonal flu viruses generally die out during the summer season, the pandemic virus can be more powerful as fewer people have built up immunity to it.

The state of Victoria in Australia reported this week that the H1N1 virus is now considered for 99% of all flu cases. There are reports of a similar situation in South America. In Chile, the H1N1 virus is also much stronger than other seasonal viruses. “98% of the flu cases we now take are caused by H1N1,” Jeanette Vega, Chile’s undersecretary of public health, said last week about a pandemic peak in Cancun, Mexico. “The seasonal vaccine is not used.”

In the Argentine capital Buenos Aires, Juan Manzur, the health minister, reported last week about the emergency situation in that 90% of the flu is a result of the H1N1 virus.

During this winter in the northern hemisphere, it is an important matter. “If the pandemic virus greatly attacks the seasonal viruses in a regular flu season, the seasonal viruses are likely to be exchanged by the new virus, like in the 1968 pandemic,” says Ab Osterhaus in the University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

In previous pandemics, the virus has changed, producing negative side effects. So far for H1N1, there have only been a few ominous signs.

The mutation of the virus’s polymerase enzyme has been replicated efficiently from a sample taken in Shanghai. Ron Fouchier at the University of Rotterdam says that this could spread if it makes the virus more contagious, but the virus may also improve pathogenicity.

Also last week, two cases of the H1N1 virus with resistance to the main antiviral drug, Tamiflu, were found in people using the drug. Another was found in a girl who had never taken the drug, suggesting Tamiflu – resistant to the H1N1 virus might already be in circulation.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-28 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Mission to Collect Materials on the Moon

Whilst the world watched in excitement as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, planetary scientists were focused on something else. For them, the value of the mission was is the cargo they brought back to earth. By the time Armstrong and Aldrin climbed into the lunar module for the last time, they had gathered 22 kilograms of moon rocks, completely filling a small suitcase. Over five Apollo crews brought back a total collection of 382 kilograms of material containing 2,200 samples.

The rocks were known at the time as a scientific treasure and they did not disappoint. Paul Spudis, a geologist of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, said, “Our ideas about planetary formation and evolution must be rewritten after the discoveries made by the Apollo crews.” Harold Urey, a Nobel prizewinner, and one of the advocates of lunar exploration had predicted that the moon was composed of primitive meteoritic material. But his conclusion was wrong. Some of the rocks looked just like the rocks on earth.

Many clues that the lunar rocks contained have taken a couple of years to effectively analyse. Also, some of the conclusions are still debated. A big surprise was the evidence that the early moon was covered by a lot of molten rock. The moon’s mountainous regions are made of anorthosite, a rare rock on earth that forms when light, aluminum-rich minerals float to the top of lave.

Nowadays, the smart money is on the idea that the moon was created as a result of something that occurred around 50 million years after the solar system was created when the Earth was in its infancy. From his hypothesis, the earliest Earth ran into a planet that was a similar size to Mars and debris from the collision went into orbit around the Earth which rapidly came together to form the moon.

The “giant impact” scenario led to a radical re-evaluation of the history of the early solar system. Before Apollo, planetary scientists watched the collection of objects orbiting the sun like a clockwork mechanism in which collisions were rare and trivial. Now, it is accepted as being a far more active environment, shuffling, colliding or ejecting. This history of all the inner planets has been shaped by collisions and nowhere is that history more visible than the moon.

Another surprise was the rocks from the moon’s largest impact craters indicate that all craters are roughly the same age, between 3.8 and 4 billion years old. It never coincided. The moon and, by extension, the Earth must have been caused by a devastating barrage half a billion years after the solar system formed. To cause this process, something big must have been going back to the outer solar system, but what? Surprisingly, this episode in the history of the solar system has come to be known as the last heavy bombardment and ended at roughly the same time as the first signs of life on earth.

These key discoveries about our planet’s history may never have been made without the samples taken from the moon for chemical analysis and isotopic dating. So, do the Apollo rocks hide any more secrets? All 2,200 samples have been researched, and Randy Korotev, a lunar geochemist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, says that it is unlikely that there will be anything groundbreaking left to find from them. However, they may yet keep some more delicate secrets. Korotev says, “We are steadily developing better tools and asking better questions.” Especially, the instruments for dating mineral samples have been more delicate, enabling researchers to study the age of ever smaller samples, like tiny mineral grains within a rock.

These techniques have stimulated a rethink of some key dates in lunar history in the past two years. A team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology dated the formation of the moon’s magma oceans. Also, by inference, the creation of the moon itself is estimated to have happened between 20 and 30 million years later than we originally thought, at approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Alexander Nemchin with five colleagues in the Cutin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia also estimated that a lunar zircon was around 4.417 billion years old when the last of the magma oceans solidified.

The Apollo rock samples are not finished answering some of the bigger picture questions. What will we discover on the opposite side of the moon’s surface that we are unable to see from the Earth? Can we put together a detailed history of the lava flows that formed the basalts of the lunar seas? Can we discover any samples from deep inside the moon? These are all seen as very good reasons for coming back to the moon. The big picture needs more samples, more data and more contexts. According to Gary Lofgren, a curator of NASA’s lunar rock collection at Johnson Space Centre in Houston, “There’s no lack of target and scientific questions. It’s not just about the moon but about the solar system’s history. This is the lesson that we have learned from Apollo.”

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Organism’s Appearance

As Darwin discovered his evolution theory, the earliest known fossils were left in rocks which he called the Silurian age. Older rocks seemed to contain no fossils. The apparently sudden appearance of subtle animals like trilobites was not inconsistent with Darwin’s thoughts of gradual evolution. “If my theory will be true, it is unquestionable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited … the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question of why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer,” Darwin wrote in the first edition of On the Origin of Species. His puzzle is known as Darwin’s dilemma.

Of course, we have discovered a lot of fossils from the earliest periods. Rocks of 3.8 billion years old have signs of life, and the first recognizable bacteria come out in rocks of 3.5 billion years old. During the Ediacaran, approximately one billion years ago, multi-cellular plants with red and green algae appeared and approximately 575 million years ago was found in the first multi-cellular animals.

Even so, there are many perplexing questions. Why did animals evolve so late in the day? And why did the ancestors of modern animals apparently evolve in a geological blink of an eye during the early Cambrian period between 542 and 520 million years ago? Recently, a series of discoveries could help to explain these long-lasting mysteries. These discoveries suggest that the earliest animals evolved much earlier than we thought, perhaps over 850 million years ago. However, the really extraordinary part is that these early animals may have completely changed the planet, paving the way for the larger and more complex animals to follow them.

Several aspects of the biggest discoveries have come from an ancient seabed in China, called the Doushantuo Formation, where unusual conditions conserved some extraordinary fossils. During the last part of the Ediacaran period, layers between 550 and 580 million years old include tiny spheres made of from one to dozens of different cells – just like animals’ first embryos. A couple of things have suggested that they are the property of giant bacteria, but a series of studies over the past decade have left little doubt that they are really animal embryos.

Leiming Yin, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China, reported discovering embryos encased inside hard, spiky shells unlike anything produced by bacteria in 2007. Furthermore, evidence of shells that apart from the deficiency of conserved embryos on the inside are identical can be seen in rocks as old as 632 million years – the appearance of the Ediacaran period – suggesting that the animal embryos themselves go back this far.

Other more tentative discoveries push the appearance of animals back even further. Roger Summons, a researcher in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his colleague Gordon Love studies brownish, oily sandstone cores drilled from 4 kilometres below the desert of Oman. The oily remains of dead organisms drifted down to the depths of ancient oceans, where they decomposed slowly because of the lack of oxygen. No visible fossils are present but within that oil are molecular fossils – chemicals taken from the ancient organisms. In layers that are 635 to 713 million years old, Summons and Love discovered 24-isopropylcholestane (24-IPC), a stable form of a kind of cholesterol that these days are only discovered in the cell membranes of certain sponges. “The sponge biomass must have been so substantial,” says Love, now at the University of California, Riverside. “They were ecologically outstanding.”

Fuel of Life

With the oceans changed, the stage was finally set for the evolution of more complicated body forms. The idea that increasing oxygen levels played a major role in the explosion of life during the Cambrian period is far from new, but most of the researchers attribute the increase in oceanic oxygen to the increase in the atmosphere. If Butterfield is right, it was basically because of animals taking over from bacteria. “These geochemical signatures [of oxygenation] are not causing the evolution of animals,” he insists. “They’re consequences of the dawn of animals.”

“He is right,” says Brasier. In fact, he thinks the link between complex life and the transformation of the planet runs even deeper. In Darwin’s Lost World, a book published earlier this year, Brasier suggests that the improved burial of carbon resulting from the rising of large cells and groups of cells – perhaps with plants like seaweed – sucked carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, setting off the series of ice ages that aided the first animals to wrestle for control of the oceans with bacteria. “Rather than being the cause of animal evolution, the ice ages may well have been the response to it,” he says.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 64 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Parasitic Worms’ Efficacy

Parasitic worms, like hookworms, whipworms, pinworms and flukes that plague humans are enough to make most of us shudder, except John Turton. In the middle of 1970s, whilst working at the UK’s Medical Research Council Laboratories in Surrey, he intentionally infected himself with hookworms in an attempt to alleviate his chronic hay fever. It worked. During two summer seasons whilst he held the parasites, his allergy diminished.

In regions where parasitic worm infections are rife, when the remedy emerged, Turton’s vital experiment came. In 1913 W. Herrick, a doctor from Columbia University in New York found a very different link between parasitic worms, or helminths, and allergies. Lab workers analysed the gut-dwelling roundworm Ascaris that often caused tenderness and swelling around the fingers and more severe asthma after longer exposure.

Researchers have been trying to make sense of these contradicting findings since the 1970s in the hope of being able to use the power of parasites to help free people of their allergies, without making things worse. They know they are playing with fire. After all, helminths are responsible for some truly horrible diseases and cause great suffering around the world. However, as the effects of helminths on the human body become clearer, it looks like their healing powers may have potential benefits.

Not surprisingly, no researchers have been willing to take the risk of deliberately infecting themselves as Turton had done. Instead, most studies are dependent on populations in countries where people are already infected. This research tends to emphasize three commonly diagnosed allergic conditions: asthma, eczema and hay fever. The results have been confusing, but now researchers are beginning to have a better understanding.

For instance, a study conducted in Taiwan showed that people infected with Enterobius vermicularis, a pinworm that is one of the most common gut parasites in the world, were less likely to have hay fever than the rest of the general population. But the results from Ecuador show a different story. Hay fever was not more common in children living in urban areas than it was in children living in rural areas. The parasite was equally common in both groups, so the researchers concluded that something else must be responsible for the prevalence of hay fever.

Knowing about eczema has proved as difficult to interpret. For instance, a study in Uganda discovered that eczema was less common among babies whose mothers had been infected with helminths whilst being pregnant. But, another study this time in Ethiopia discovered that children with Trichuris worms, and whipworms that infest the large intestine, were more likely to have eczema than uninfected children.

Regarding asthma, Herrick’s discovery that it can be started by contact with the Ascaris was confirmed in the 1970s. But, hookworms decreased the extremity of asthma in a group of Ethiopians and similar benefits have been seen in Brazilian asthma sufferers infected with the Schistosoma Mansoni, the flatworm responsible for schistosomiasis, which damages internal organs. What are we to make of all this? The outstanding link between allergies and parasites is the human immune system. Allergies are caused by an overactive immune response, and helminths have strategies to dampen down our immune response to stimulate their survival. After all, they have evolved alongside humans for several thousands of years.

In people with no allergies, foreign material entering the body stimulates the release of cytokines, molecules that sound the alarm to get the attention of other immune cells. As immune cells set to attack the intruder, another set of molecules is released to prohibit the immune response from overreacting. One of the main molecules responsible for keeping reactions in check is interleukin-10, which inhibits the release of certain cytokines. People with allergies tend to have lower than normal levels of interleukin-10, so their immune responses frequently get out of hand. In contrast, people infected with helminths have above-average levels of the molecule, and research on schistosomiasis patients indicates that this is at least partially because of the worms that set free chemicals that trigger the production of interleukin-10 in their host.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-28 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

The Nagymaros Dam

When Janos Vargha, a biologist from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, began a new career as a writer with a small monthly nature magazine called Buvar, it was 9 years after the story behind the fall of the Berlin Wall had started to unfold. During his early research, he went to a beauty spot on the river Danube outside Budapest known as the Danube Bend to interview local officials about plans to build a small park on the site of an ancient Hungarian capital.

One official mentioned that passing this tree-lined curve in the river, a popular tourism spot for Hungarians was monotonous. Also, it was to be submerged by a giant hydroelectric dam in secret by a much-feared state agency known simply as the Water Management.

Vargha investigated and learned that the Nagymaros dam (pronounced “nosh-marosh”) would cause pollution, destroy underground water reserves, dry out wetlands and wreck the unique ecosystem of central Europe’s longest river. Unfortunately, nobody objected. “Of course, I wrote an article. But there was a director of the Water Management on the magazine’s editorial board. The last time, he went to the printers and stopped the presses, the article was never published. I was frustrated and angry, but I was ultimately interested in why they cared to ban my article,” he remembers today.

He found that the Nagymaros dam was part of a joint project with neighbouring Czechoslovakia to produce hydroelectricity, irrigate farms and enhance navigation. They would build two dams and re-engineer the Danube for 200 kilometres where it created the border between them. “The Russians were working together, too. They wanted to take their big ships from the Black Sea right up the Danube to the border with Austria.”

Vargha was soon under vigorous investigation, and some of his articles got past the censors. He gathered supporters for some years, but he was one of only a few people who believed the dam should be stopped. He was hardly surprised when the Water Management refused to debate the project in public. After a public meeting, the bureaucrats had pulled out at the last minute. Vargha knew he had to take the next step. “We decided it wasn’t enough to talk and write, so we set up an organization, the Danube Circle. We announced that we didn’t agree with censorship. We would act as if we were living in a democracy.” he says.

The Danube Circle was illegal and the secret publications it produced turned out to be samizdat leaflets. In an extraordinary act of defiance, it gathered 10,000 signatures for a petition objecting to the dam and made links with environmentalists in the west, inviting them to Budapest for a press conference.

The Hungarian government enforced a news blackout on the dam, but articles about the Danube Circle began to be published and appear in the western media. In 1985, the Circle and Vargha, a public spokesman, won the Right Livelihood award known as the alternative Nobel prize. Officials told Vargha he should not take the prize but he ignored them. The following year when Austrian environmentalists joined a protest in Budapest, they were met with tear gas and batons. Then the Politburo had Vargha taken from his new job as editor of the Hungarian version of Scientific American.

The dam became a focus for opposition to the hated regime. Communists tried to hold back the waters in the Danube and resist the will of the people. Vargha says, “Opposing the state directly was still hard.” “Objecting to the dam was less of a hazard, but it was still considered a resistance to the state.”

Under increasing pressure from the anti-dam movement, the Hungarian Communist Party was divided. Vargha says, “Reformists found that the dam was not very popular and economical. It would be cheaper to generate electricity by burning coal or nuclear power.” “But hardliners were standing for Stalinist ideas of large dams which mean symbols of progress.” Environmental issues seemed to be a weak point of east European communism in its final years. During the 1970s under the support of the Young Communist Leagues, a host of environmental groups had been founded. Party officials saw them as a harmless product of youthful idealism created by Boy Scouts and natural history societies.

Green idealism steadily became a focal point for political opposition. In Czechoslovakia, the human rights of Charter 77 took up environmentalism. The green-minded people of both Poland and Estonia participated in the Friends of the Earth International to protest against air pollution. Bulgarian environmentalists built a resistance group, called Ecoglasnost, which held huge rallies in 1989. Big water engineering projects were potent symbols of the old Stalinism.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Human Guinea Pig

There are 50 million people in the world being used as guinea pigs in clinical trials testing experimental drugs. Apart from potentially risking part of their lives, applicants must pass a severe series of tests just to be able to participate in some trials. However, acceptance means more tests, negative side effects and a considerable disturbance to their daily lives. So what’s in it for them? As journalist Alex O’Meara explains in Chasing Medical Miracles, some participate out of genuine altruism, whilst some are looking for cures for their own disorders. O’Meara having diabetes himself volunteered for a risky transplant of insulin-producing cells from the liver, and his story spread through the book.

O’Meara knows people choose to participate for life’s great motivator: money. Clinical trials are a huge business, making up to $24 billion annually, and the cash they offer as compensation has become a sought-after way to make extra money. This exchange of money often involves people who are sick and vulnerable and emphasises the dark ethical waters in which current clinical trials are mired.

At intervals, the ill feel compelled to join a trial to get medical care. Some unethical researchers, desperate to recruit the large numbers needed to make their researchers statistically valid, take advantage of this. It can be difficult for ill people to take that, at best, they are taking experimental medicine and at worst they are taking nothing at all.

Desperation for money or medicine is never a basis for unbiased decision-making. How can a researcher be sure a person is giving their true consent? And if a person gets better as a result of taking an experimental drug, what happens when their drug supply finishes after the trial?

These ethical quandaries have influenced healthcare in develop countries where clinical trials are a prospering industry. According to Adriana Petryna in When Experiments Travel, in spite of the fact that drug companies are moving their trials to developing countries, only 10% of drug research addresses disorders that influence the world’s poor. Such diseases make up to 90% of the global disease burden. Establishing ethical and legal responsibilities is also becoming harder, she reports. With an increased number of subcontractors included in trials, it is clear that no one is overly concerned about patient welfare.

From this theory, international human rights frameworks such as the Nuremberg Code should ensure that participants are not taking any positive effect. In reality, largely poor and illiterate populations are being exploited. Besides, ethical regulations in poor countries are rarely strict, therefore researchers can get away with recruiting people into HIV trials knowing that they will die without the experimental drug.

O’ Meara also reports about drug company’s greed and the inability of regulators to control the rapidly increasing number of trials. The US Food and Drug Administration inspects less than 1% of the 350,000 registered trial sites. Drug firms are managing non-profit organizations that are undertaking just 30% of trials. However, in spite of their faults, clinical trials are still an essential tool of modern medicine.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 65 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Extraterrestrial National Park

The message to visitors at many beauty spots is “TAKE only pictures, leave only footprints.” Although you won’t see the actual place, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their giant leap for mankind on the moon. It will be the first extraterrestrial national park.

It may still be some years off, but the imminent reality of space tourism is already stimulating some archaeologists to begin to plan how to protect historic sites in space. With further moon missions planned, the fear is that the principal sites like Apollo 11’s landing place may be in danger. According to Beth O’Leary, a researcher in New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, “Technologically, probably the most important event in human history was to land to another celestial body,” “It’s like the discovery of fire or the first stone tools. They should be protected and conserved.”

In September 1959 since the Soviet Union’s Luna 2 crashed into the moon, a total of 40 expeditions have touched down on the moon’s surface. 22 of them were launched by the US with the six crewed Apollo missions launching between 1969 and 1972. The Apollo missions alone left behind 23 large artefacts including the descent and ascent stages of the lunar module landing equipment, the stage there Saturn rockets used to fly them there, and the lunar rovers or “moon buggies” the astronauts used to explore when they arrived.

As well as these, there are also smaller artefacts and personal items scattered around, such as Neil Armstrong’s boots and portable life-support system, scientific instruments and their power generators. Of course, the iconic US flag planted in the moon’s surface is there too. There are also the footprints and rover tread paths. In spite of the passing of the years, these remains are carved into the dust, since the moon has no wind or rain to wash them away.

P.J. Capelotti, an anthropologist at Penn State University in Abington, has mapped out five “lunar parks.” These are the areas where the majority of the artefacts are concentrated and will be used as a basis for future preservation efforts. “Although nobody’s saying that the whole moon has to be off-limits, people are starting to make plans for tourism and mineral extraction, or for putting a base there, needing to be aware of them and work around them.”

More technological developments are also on their way. NASA’s LCROSS mission plans to crash an SUV-sized rocket into one of the moon’s poles later this year with the hope of finding water there. At the same time, teams competing for the Google Lunar X Prize for the first privately funded robot to reach the moon have been offered a $5 million bonus if they take a picture of artefacts like the Apollo 11 landing equipment. Already, a question to be reported is how national governments and private companies should cooperate to ensure that artefacts are protected. There is some evidence that the US government is interested in working alongside other governments.

A space-flight company called TransOrbital, based in Palo Alto, California presented its plans for sending a commercial mission to the moon by the end of the 1990s. these plans include making detailed maps of the moon and landing a capsule containing personal items, like business cards and cremated ashes. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stipulated that TransOrbital’s rockets must crash well away from any historic US artefacts when its flight was over. Although ultimately TransOrbital was unable to fund the mission, it might try again in the near future.

According to Phil Stooke, a planetary cartographer of the University of Western Ontario in London, he agrees Luna 2 also has great significance. “It crashed, but that impact site is every bit as historic as Apollo 11.” Another one is Luna 9, the first spacecraft to land sending back pictures. “They must be preserved.”

On the remaining Apollo sites, Stooke is searching how electronics, metal and paints have degraded after years of exposure to solar radiation and extremes of temperature. Also, he suggests that another Apollo site could be turned into a biological research centre, analysing the DNA and bacteria left behind from astronauts’ life-support packs.

Once a consensus has been reached as to which sites are worthy of conservation, and guidelines have been built up to protect them from being damaged by future missions, the next question will be how future space tourists should be allowed to interact with them. Capelotti says, “Looking at grey dust is going to hold its attraction for only so long,” “People are going to make pilgrimages to these sites.”

There is a suggestion to build domes over historic sites, or perhaps even hotels, with the artefacts displayed in the “lobby.” Another idea is to build up a raised railway track over the sites, so visitors could look at them without touching them. Capelotti says, “If Walt Disney was developing it, he would put a monorail around all five ‘lunar parks,’ so you could do the entire Apollo tour.”

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-28 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Asiatic black bear

Known as a moon bear, Jasper is an Asiatic black bear with a yellow crescent on his chest. The bear came to the Animals Asia Moon Bear Rescue Centre in Chengdu, China, from a bear farm in 2000.

When Jasper arrived, rescuers had to cut Jasper out of a tiny “crush cage.” Bear bile has been used in traditional Chinese medicine and fetches a high price. The wholesale price is approximately 4,000 yuan (approximately $580) per kilogram with each bear producing up to 5 kilograms every year in China. But it comes at a high price.

Jasper normally spent 15 years in a cage. Other bears spend up to 25 years without moving in cages no bigger than their bodies. Bears are milked for bile twice a day. In China, farmers use a catheter inserted into the gall bladder or permanently open wound. In Vietnam, farmers use long hypodermic needles.

The Animals Asia has rescued 260 bears from Chinese bear farms over the past 10 years. These bears are lucky. The official number of reared bears in China is 7,000, but the Animals Asia fears the real figure is close to 10,000.

In spite of the obvious cruelty, bear farming is legal in China. Whilst the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species lists Asiatic black bears as being at the highest level of endangerment, China grants them only second-level protection, allowing them to be farmed. Although some have reported there are 15,000 bears, its figure is not a true estimate of the remaining wild population in China.

Bear farming is also practiced in Vietnam where it is illegal but remains common due to a lack of enforcement. There are approximately 4,000 bears on Vietnamese farms but even more in Laos, Cambodia and Korea.

Bear farming is justified on the grounds that it satisfies the local demand for bile in China, therefore decreasing the number of bears taken from the wild. Since 1989 farmers have been allowed to breed bears in captivity and hunting wild bears has been illegal. In spite of this, a lot of wild bears are still poached for their gall bladders or to restock the farms. Sometimes bears arrive at the rescue centre with missing ribs after being caught in the wild.

Those bears that arrived at the centre have suffered from severe physical and psychological trauma. Rescued bears can’t be set free into the wild due to the long-term damage caused by their incarceration. They all need surgery to get rid of damaged gall bladders and many need additional surgery and long-term medical care because of missing claws or paws, infected necrotic wounds along with broken and missing teeth caused by biting at bars or because farmers break them to make the bears less of a hazard. Also, many have liver cancer as a result of being continually milked for bile and suffer from a litany of other ailments including blindness, arthritis, peritonitis, weeping ulcers and ingrown claws.

On the other hand, with the horrors of bear farming, the rehabilitation process is amazing and inspiring to witness. It takes around a year to rehabilitate a bear. Although some have to be kept alone for the rest of their lives, most can eventually be housed with other bears. The transition in personality from animals which are violent and fearful to ones which are trusting, inquisitive and completely at ease with people is truly remarkable. Robinson says, “I have visited the rescue centre and it changed my life.” That is how powerful the bears’ stories are.

In spite of the rescue programme, bear bile extraction remains a cause of wanton and remorseless abuse. It is difficult to change attitudes when bear bile has been used in Chinese medicine for over 3,000 years to cope with “heat-related” ailments, such as eye conditions and liver disease. These days, it is used to treat conditions from hangovers to haemorrhoids. There is some evidence from western medicine that a synthetic version of the active ingredient in bear bile, ursodeoxycholic acid, is able to treat a range of disorders including hepatitis C. But traditional Chinese medicine still insists on using natural bear bile which is often contaminated with pus, blood, urine and faeces. Although healthy bear bile is free-flowing and orangey-green, veterinarians describe bile leaking from the diseased gall bladders of rescued bears as “black sludge.”

The half-moon bear rescue project raises a number of critical questions. For instance, why do bears show large individual differences in response to persecution and variations in recovery? Rescued bears are powerful ambassadors, but should so much time and money be invested in saving the lives of individuals who will not make any direct contributions to saving their species? How can people from outside China work to free bears whilst respecting their Chinese colleagues and remaining sensitive to cultural tradition?

Efforts to quit bear farming will continue. Soon after Robinson established the Animals Asia in 1998, she negotiated an agreement with the Chinese government to work towards the eradication of bear farming. All farmers are cruel, but the very worst are identified for closure by the government and the farmers have their licences revoked. It is bears from these farms that come to the rescue centre. The Animals Asia compensates the farmers so that they can begin another business or retire. More than 40 farms have so far been closed, and China has not issued any new licences since 1994.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Colorado Desert

Particularly in the summer, California’s lower Colorado desert is a harsh place. It’s a barren landscape of rocks and rattlesnakes that little grows in but creosote bushes and cactus. Midday temperatures can reach 43^oC and searing winds and afternoon sun combine to suck moisture from the body. This is not the place for a midday march, but that is precisely what Edward Adolph had in mind when, in the summer of 1942, he took a group of soldiers and researchers there. Adolph, a physiologist at the University of Rochester in New York state, wanted to investigate how people could live and work efficiently in the desert and how to get the best out of them.

He wasn’t the first to consider the effects of hot, dry conditions on the human body. The image of the traveler lost in the desert, crawling towards a shimmering mirage, is probably as old as desert travel itself. But earlier researchers mainly focused on survival. According to Timothy Noakes, an exercise physiologist at the University of Cape Town and master of some of the world’s toughest ultra-marathons, “They never looked at performance.” Adolph was the first to test the presumptions most of the people still have about what to do if forced to make any sort of effort in unbearable heat. What he discovered most were myths. For example, stripping to T-shirt and shorts is not the best way to treat dehydration. Although long sleeves and long trousers may feel hotter, they’ll slow the loss of water. Nor is there any point in rationing water when supplies are low. Postponing drinking it only makes you unhappier sooner. Adolph wrote, “It is better to drink the water and have it inside you than to carry it.”

The most critical of Adolph’s discoveries was the simplest: drinking during exercise enhances performance. Nowadays, we take this for granted, but generations of coaches and distance runners were taught that drinking during exercise was for wimps. Some claimed it would only make you thirstier. Others said it could even trigger a heart attack. The author of Marathon Running in 1909 advised, “Don’t buy into the habit of drinking and eating in a marathon race,” “Some outstanding runners do, but it is not helpful.” Adolph tested these old assumptions by splitting his soldiers into two groups. When the average afternoon high was up to 42^oC, both marched through the desert for 8 hours. The soldiers in one group were allowed to drink as much water as they needed and the others weren’t allowed any water. The results were obvious, the drinkers outperformed the non-drinkers, but the men in both groups backed out once they had sweated off 7 to 10% of their body weight.

To Adolph, this made perfect sense. On days when the temperature is hotter than the average person’s skin temperature – approximately 33^oC – the only way for the body to cool itself is by the evaporation of sweat, and he could estimate how much moisture that required. A brisk walk could easily need three-quarters of a litre or more of evaporative cooling each hour. Adolph’s research was launched by the North Africa campaign, and he finished in 1943. But he came back to the desert every summer and supplemented his experiments with tests in his heated lab. His discoveries stayed secret until 1947 when he published Physiology of Man in the Desert. It went almost entirely unnoticed. In the late 1960s, marathon runners were still advised not to drink water during races. Until 1977, runners in international competitions were prohibited from drinking water in the first 11 kilometres and after that were allowed water only every 5 kilometres.

However, there was a complete reversal of opinion. A study began to warn of the dangers of running a marathon without enough water and suddenly runners were told they must drink during the race – and if they didn’t feel like it, they should force themselves or risk heatstroke. In 1978, Alberto Salazar, one of America’s great distance runners, ran a 7.1-mile race in temperatures of 29^oC. At mile six, he was in second place. He said later, “The last thing I remember, and I was watching Bill Rodgers pull away from me. It was dreamlike. Bill was floating away, and I wasn’t able to follow the energy to go after him. In the next mile, I faded from second to tenth, but I do not have any memory of being passed by anyone.”

Salazar almost died. At the finish, his body temperature was 42^oC and he was saved only as a result of a quick-thinking member of the medical crew promptly dumping him into a tub of iced water. Everyone “found” what Salazar had done wrong: Salazar hadn’t drunk enough before or during the race. He, therefore, became dehydrated and nearly killed himself. Even Salazar accepted this. “Dehydration is insidious,” he would later say. At first glance, Adolph’s discoveries seem to support this. His notes about his dehydrated soldiers are a litany of sorrow. “Their only desire is to stop and to rest,” he wrote of one man, after 13.4 waterless kilometres in 40^oC heat. “He had an unsocial attitude, began to lag and finally stopped,” he wrote of another, who managed 29.8 kilometres at 34^oC.

Both 1970s and 1980s runners and coaches assumed that collapsing athletes like Salazar were simply extreme cases of the same thing. Dehydration and heat collapse were virtually synonymous in many minds. “Drink early and often,” athletes were told, “and not just when thirsty.” However, as Noakes points out, none of Adolph’s dehydrated soldiers suffered heatstroke. “They just got very angry and stopped walking.” What’s more, they recovered quickly when allowed to rest and drink. “They were able to walk almost immediately after drinking water,” Adolph wrote in one case. In another: “exhaustion relieved by water.” Salazar’s brush with death wasn’t the result of drinking too little: on a very hot day he had simply tried to run a world-class race. Under these kinds of conditions, heat is the enemy, not dehydration.

Adolph had accepted this but thought it too clear to guarantee more than a few lines in his book. He had conducted most of his tests on marches, not because he wasn’t interested in the effects of running in the heat, but because when he made his soldiers run, even at a slow jog their body temperature soared by 2.5^oC in 30 minutes. “There is no doubt that men are limited in the physical work they can do in the desert,” he wrote. The advocates of drinking-early-and-often had also overlooked Adolph’s discovery that even soldiers who were able to drink what they wanted still tended to dehydrate, and only made up their deficiencies at mealtimes. Adolph disregarded this as a “peculiarity of dehydration,” but Noakes believes he had stumbled upon a quirk of human evolution.

Humans, Noakes observed, are “delayed drinkers.” He supposes that this is a consequence of early humans hunting and chasing game for long distances under the African sun. There are good reasons for not stopping to drink during a hunt, not least the expectation of the prey escaping. There’s also the fact that we are not built like camels and other animals that are able to drink deeply and quickly. That makes us better runners – and running hunters – but means we cannot drink as much as we can sweat, so we delay our thirst until it’s comfortable to drink, says Noakes. Adolph never used the word evolution in his book but he would have understood Noakes’s point.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 66 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

The Mysteries of Water

Section A

From the nature of dark matter and the origin of the universe to the research for a theory of everything, we come across many mysteries. Whilst these are all puzzles on a grand scale, there is another not quite so grand but equally confusing mystery of the physical world that you can observe from the comfort of your own kitchen. Simply fill a tall glass with chilled water, throw in an ice cube and leave it to stand. The fact that the ice cube floats is the first oddity. And the mystery deepens if you take a thermometer and measure the temperature of the water at various depths. At the top, near the ice cube, you’ll find it to be around 0^oC, but at the bottom, it should be about 4^oC. that’s why water is denser at 4^oC than it is at any other temperature which is another strange feature that sets it apart from other liquids.

Section B

Water’s odd but essential qualities don’t stop there, for ice is less dense than water, and water is less dense at its freezing point than it is when it is slightly warmer. It freezes from the top down rather than the bottom up. So even during the ice ages, life kept going on to flourish on lake floors and in the deep ocean. Also, water has an extraordinary capacity to absorb up the heat, and this helps smooth out climatic changes that could otherwise lay waste to ecosystems. However, in spite of water’s enormous importance to life, no single theory had been able to satisfactorily explain its mysterious qualities – until now. If we can believe physicists Anders Nilsson at Stanford University, California, and Lars Pettersson of Stockholm University, Sweden, we could, at last, be getting to the bottom of many of these anomalies.

Section C

Their disputed ideas expand on a theory proposed more than a century ago. According to Wilhelm Roentgen, the man who discovered the X-ray, the molecule in liquid water packs together not in just one way, as today’s textbooks would have us believe, but in two different ways. The way its molecules are composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom and how they interact with one another is essential to the understanding of water’s mysteries. The oxygen atom has a slight negative charge whilst the hydrogen atoms share a compensating positive charge. Through this process, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms of neighbouring molecules are drawn to one another, forming a link called a hydrogen bond.

Section D

Hydrogen bonds are even weaker than the bonds that link the atoms within molecules together, so keep going to break and reform, but they are at their strongest when molecules are organized so that each hydrogen bond lines up with a molecular bond. The shaping of a water molecule is such that each H20 molecule is surrounded by four neighbours organized in the shaping of a triangular pyramid better known as a tetrahedron. At least, that’s the way the molecules organize themselves in ice. From the conventional view, liquid water has a similar, although less hard, structure, in which extra molecules are able to pack into some of the open gaps in the tetrahedral arrangement. It explains why liquid water is denser than ice – and it seems to comply with the results of various experiments that beams of X-rays, infrared light and neutrons are bounced off samples of water.

Section E

Some physicists had suggested that water placed under certain extreme conditions may separate into two different structures, but most had assumed it resumes a single structure under normal conditions. And then, 10 years ago, a change found by Pettersson and Nilsson called this idea into question. They were using X-ray absorption spectroscopy to research the amino acid glycine. The peaks in the X-ray absorption spectrum can shed light on the accurate nature of the target substance’s chemical bonds on its structure. Critically, the researchers had got hold of a new, high-power X-ray source with which they could make more sensitive and precise measurements than had ever been possible. They soon knew that the water containing their glycine sample was producing a far more interesting spectrum than the amino acids did. Nilsson recalls, “What we saw there was sensational, so we had to get to the bottom of it.”

Section F

The characteristic that sparked their interest was a peak point in the absorption spectrum that is not anticipated by the traditional model of liquid water. Actually, a paper published in 2004 concludes that at any given moment 85% of the hydrogen bonds in water must be weakened or broken. This is far more than the 10% anticipated by the textbook model. The hints of this finding are dramatic: it claims that a total rethink of the structure of water is needed. So, both Nilsson and Pettersson turned to other X-ray experiments to confirm these claims. Their first move was to enlist the aid of Shik Shin of the University of Tokyo who specialises in a technique called X-ray emission spectroscopy. The main thing about these spectra is that the shorter the wavelength of the X-ray in a substance’s emission spectrum is, the looser the hydrogen bonding must be.

The team struck gold: the two peak spectrum of discharged X-ray might correspond to two separate structures. The researchers insisted that the spike of the longer-wavelength X-ray indicates the proportion of tetrahedrally organized molecules, whilst the shorter-wavelength peak reflects the proportion of disordered molecules. Critically, the shorter-wavelength peak in the X-ray emissions was the more intense of the two, suggesting that the loosely bound molecules must be more outstanding within the sample, an assertion that fitted the team’s previous models. What’s more, they also recognised that this peak shifts to an even shorter wavelength, as if the water was heated, the other peak remains more or less fixed.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-28 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Vehicle Safety Systems

Although drivers and their passengers are encased in the event of a crash, people hit by a car have no protection. Now that could change thanks to a new system built into a vehicle that will enhance a pedestrian’s safety. Every month about 3,400 pedestrians are killed in traffic accidents of the roads in the US, and a similar number die in Europe. Some 30% of the injuries included in this group are caused by an impact with a windscreen or its frame.

A European-wide collaboration led by Roger Hardy of the Cranfield Impact Centre at Cranfield University close to Bedford in the UK has devised an experimental system for cars that aims to cut this death toll and decrease the risk of injuries. When the system registers that the car is about to hit a pedestrian, it automatically raises the rear of the bonnet (hood), releasing a giant airbag in front of the windscreen.

“The raised bonnet absorbs some of the energy of the impact, decreasing the risk of severe injury to the pedestrian,” says Hardy, whose project forms part of the European Union-funded Integrated Project on Advanced Protection Systems (APROSYS). “If it’s a large pedestrian or on a small town car, the airbag also offers a cushioning effect around the stiff peripheral regions of the windscreen,” he says. The airbag system used by Hardy was enhanced by the German company Takata Petri. To test its efficacy when combined with the raised bonnet, they cooperated into developing a prototype Fiat Stilo by engineers at the Fiat Research Centre in Turin, Italy. Then the team estimated the danger of head injuries in test collisions with a dummy pedestrian.

A standard Stilo test hitting a pedestrian at 40 kilometres per hour would have a score of around 1,000 on the Head Impact Criterion (HIC) scale. That is the equivalent of an 18% chance of a life-threatening injury. For pedestrians hitting Hardy’s bonnet, the scores were reduced to between 234 and 682, whilst the normal windscreen airbag scores ranged between 692 and 945. Hardy’s team has also introduced a design in which a windscreen mounting system cushions the impact with the edge of the windscreen. This consists of a flexible Z-shaped section of metal, that is a maximum of 15 millimetres wide, separating the windscreen from its frame so that it is able to flex inwards to absorb energy in a collision. The team says it could decrease HIC scores by over 50%.

Another APROSYS collaboration led by Jurgen Gugler at the Graz University of Technology in Austria researched how changing the shaping of the front of a truck could reduce the risk to pedestrians. Computer simulations of 20 accident scenarios indicated that a smooth sloping surface with a central bulge decreases the likelihood of a pedestrian involved in a front-end accident being run over by 80 to 90%. Gugler says, “The pedestrian is knocked to the side, rotated and pushed towards the ground. You are out of the path of the oncoming truck.”

Fiat researchers managed by Roberto Puppini have also had some success in early tests of an adaptive bumper system. Four gas springs kick in at high speeds to move the bumper forward so that it will absorb the energy of an impact. So will manufacturers actually incorporate any of these safety innovations into their cars? Over the next two years, the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) will be phasing the results of pedestrian safety tests into its essential rating system. Poor Euro NCAP test results could result in less safe car models being withdrawn from the market. This suggests that buyers and manufacturers can be persuaded to take the safety of drivers and their passengers seriously, buy it remains to be seen whether the welfare of pedestrians is as persuasive a selling point.

For now, at least, there is little else to convince car manufacturers to install these safety devices. Hardy says, “Recently, from the legislative point of view, there is not a colossal incentive for manufacturers to utilise these technologies.” Perhaps ultimately the law will have to step in so that external airbags and energy-absorbing bodywork enhance pedestrian safety as dramatically as seat belts and internal airbags have enhanced driver and passenger safety.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

The Harmony of Food and Drink

Food is not only a necessity for life but also our greatest sources of pleasure. The taste of things such as champagne, chocolate and chips offer our brain a big “pleasure hit” that keeps us coming back for more. And the preparation of food is as important as the ingredients. Recently, food, science and technology have become more closely linked than ever. Scientifically-minded chefs like Harold McGee, Heston Blumenthal and Ferran Adria sometimes utilise science to enhance startling new dishes.

Before the Agricultural Age, humans were hunter-gatherers. Sheep were probably the first animals to be farmed, followed by cattle and pigs. We are still unsure what our earliest ancestors actually ate and how much of their diet was meat. We know that Otzi the iceman had consumed ibex, deer, vegetables and possibly grains.

Controversially, it has been suggested that the invention of cooking was the main factor in human evolution (as well as our alveolar bone) – a question that partly depends on when humans discovered fire. Like us, apes also prefer cooked food to raw – possibly because cooked food offers more energy than raw food does. Recently, almost all our food comes from farming for the huge increase in human population over the last 200 years. Farming has become much more intensive and dependent on technology and the so-called Green Revolution in the 20th century was a vital boost. At the same time, technologies for conserving food have come along in leaps and bounds.

But, the grains have not been without cost. Soil quality has been damaged, and crops like bananas have become less genetically diverse, rare breeds of animals have been pushed close to extinction, and habitats have been destroyed. Also, the increasing demand for meat puts pressure on agriculture. One possible solution to food shortages is the genetic modification of crop plants to enhance yield and to make them resistant to disorder. But GM has proved unpopular with the public, in spite of efforts to grow environmentally friendly solutions. Concern for environmental damage from farming led to the development of “sustainable” techniques, like organic farming which rejects the use of artificial fertilisers, pesticides and other agricultural technologies. Organic farming produces lower yields, but there is evidence that it produces suitable amounts of food with less environmental damage.

The overfishing of the world’s oceans has also led to serious damage, causing population crashes in many species. Recently, fish farming has become more widespread. It decreases the burden on wild fish but has other problems such as escaping fish, excessive food consumption, infectious viruses and louse infestation. Unless the population recessions are stopped, we will have to turn to less appetizing species for our seafood like jellyfish.

Nowadays, many people suffer from food allergies and must avoid common foods like peanuts and wheat. A condition called food intolerance looks the same on the surface, but its effects are slower to appear and longer-lasting. Charles Darwin may have been a sufferer of this condition. The allergy epidemic has been related to modern clean living.

Today, one of the biggest health problems is obesity. Through a diet rich in fats and sugars, many people in developed countries are overweight, increasing the risk of cancer, diabetes and early death. Unfortunately, mild obesity takes two to four years off the average lifespan. The risks are particularly concerning for children and being overweight as a child makes you more obese as an adult. The causes of obesity have been a source of debate. Surprisingly, a lack of exercise may not be a critical factor. It is possible that it could be a genetic condition and may also be caused by eating lots of fructose. Some cases have been linked to a virus that causes fat cells to increase. Also, obesity is socially contagious. A huge range of possible treatments for obesity has been developed.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 67 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

THE STRESS OF RELOCATION

For some people, there is little in life more stressful than moving house; for others, there is a definite excitement in relocation since the belief that the grass is greener on the other side holds sway.

However, for Dr Jill Molveldt, a psychotherapist in Durban, South Africa, Relocation Stress Syndrome, or RSS, which she has been researching for a decade, is a matter of professional concern. Dr Molveldt began her career as a medical doctor in 1999 but turned to therapy when she doubted the efficacy of some medication. Time and again, patients presented at her surgery who – to all intents and purposes – had little physically wrong, but were not functioning optimally. Usually, such people with anxiety-related disorders are prescribed drugs, but Dr Molveldt observed that many seemed to improve just as readily through talking to her. Therefore, from 2006-2008, she underwent extensive training in the United States in a number of techniques used in therapy.

On return to South Africa, Dr Molveldt moved her family and her burgeoning practice – now devoted entirely to therapy – from Pietermaritzburg, a small city, to Durban, a larger, more cosmopolitan one. Immediately following this move, Dr Molveldt herself fell ill. Medical testing for vague symptoms like headaches, skin rashes, and insomnia brought neither relief nor diagnosis. At the time, she could not possibly have imagined that she, herself, had any psychological problems. Her only recent difficulty had been relocating to Durban due to her children’s maladjustment to their third school in three years, and to the irritation caused by a protracted renovation. All the same, she far preferred the beachside lifestyle of Durban to that of conservative inland Pietermaritzburg.

Quite by chance, in the summer of 2010, Dr Molveldt ran into a neighbour from her old city who had also moved to Durban. This woman seemed uncharacteristically depressed and had experienced mood swings and weight gain since her arrival. As the neighbour recounted her complicated tale of moving, Dr Molveldt suddenly realised that her acquaintance – like herself – was suffering from RSS.

Upon this discovery, Dr Molveldt began sifting through medical and psychological literature to learn more about her syndrome, only to find precious little written about it. Conferences she attended in Greece and Argentina in which stress featured as a topic for keynote speakers did little to enlighten her. Therefore, Dr Molveldt felt she had no option but to collect her own patient data from medical practice and Emergency Room records in Durban and Cape Town in order to ascertain the extent of the problem. Over four years, she surveyed people with nonspecific health problems as well as those who had had minor accidents.

In Durban and Cape Town, it might be expected in the general population that 1% of people have moved within a month, and 5% within six months. Yet nearly 3% of patients seen by GPs in Dr Molveldt’s study had moved within one month, and 9% within six. Minor accident patients had also moved recently, and some of them had had more than two residential addresses in one year.

Dr Molveldt then examined records of more serious accidents from a nationwide database, and, with the aid of a research grant, conducted interviews with 600 people. Admittedly, alcohol played a part in serious accident rates, but many interviewees said they had been drinking in response to circumstances – one of which was moving house. People who had had serious accidents, however, had not moved more frequently than those with non-specific ailments. So just how stressful is moving? After all, stress is part of life – think about exams, a new job, marriage, having a child, divorce, illness, or the death of a loved one. Where does RSS fit in relation to these? Dr Molveldt puts it above exams (including for medical school), and somewhere between being newly married and bearing a child. (Newlyweds and young mothers also visit doctors’ surgeries and Emergency Rooms more than they should statistically.) Interestingly, subjects in several of Dr Molveldt’s tests rated moving less highly than she did, putting it about equal to sitting a tough exam.

As a side issue, Dr Molveldt found that the number of relationships that broke down around the time of moving was elevated. She considers the link between breakdown and RSS to be tenuous, suggesting instead that couples who are already struggling move house in the hope of resuscitating their relationship. Invariably, this does not happen. Moreover, it is the children in these cases who suffer most: not only has upheaval meant the loss of their old school and friends, but it also signals adjustment to the occupation of their new home while one absent parent resides in another.

If Dr Molveldt’s research is anything to go by, next time you yearn to live elsewhere, think twice. Moving may be more stressful than you imagine, and the only papers you get to say you’ve done it are a fee from your doctor and a heap of mail from the previous inhabitants of your dwelling.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

TERRIFIC TUPPERWARE

Throw open anyone’s kitchen cupboards from Andorra to Zimbabwe, and you’ll find colourful plastic products for the preparation, serving, and storage of food. Chances are, some of these are Tupperware.

For many people in developed countries, Tupperware is redolent of the 1950s when grandma and her friends bought and sold it at ‘Tupperware parties’. Some would even say Tupperware became a cultural icon in that decade. However, these days, while parties are still popular, online sales are challenging the model. Indeed, since 2000, more Tupperware franchises have opened in China than anywhere else.

Take the Hundred Benefits shop in Hangzhou, one of China’s fastest-growing cities. Located in a chic part of town, it’s full of twenty-somethings who haven’t yet had a child but are building a nest. They’ve got plenty of expendable income, and they’re picking out items to reflect their new-found optimism. China is undergoing a home-decorating revolution after years of dull, unreliable products. Furthermore, the average size of living space for urban Chinese has almost doubled recently, so there’s room for lots of stuff. But why choose A Tupperware? It’s functional as well as fun. It’s sealable, stackable, durable, microwave-and-freezable, dishwasher-friendly, and culturally sensitive: four-layer traditional Chinese lunch-boxes, revamped in bright sexy colours, grace the shelves of the Hundred Benefits shop.

What is the Tupperware story? The special plastic used in it was invented in 1938 by an American called Earl Tupper. The famous seals, which keep the air out and freshness in, came later. Tupper’s company was established in 1946, and for more than 40 years boasted every success, but, recently, Tupperware Brands Corporation has been sold several times, and its parent company, Illinois Tool Works, has announced that declining American prospects may mean resale.

Until the 1990s, Tupperware relied totally on a pyramid sales model. In this, a person buys products from a person above him or her, rather than from a wholesale company or retail shop, and after-sale of the new product to a third party gives a small percentage of the money to the person from whom he or she originally bought. In turn, when the person on the lowest level recruits more vendors, those people return percentages to the person above. Initially, Tupperware operated like this because it was not available in shops. A more direct line between the manufacturer and the buyer results in cheaper products, and, as Tupperware is largely sold in the home, women suddenly have an independent income. A disadvantage might be that since people typically buy from and sell to friends, there are pressures at ordinary social gatherings to do deals, which some people may consider unethical. This raises the question: am I going for a pleasant dinner at Alison’s; or am I expected to buy a set of measuring cups from her as I leave? This pyramid model is prohibited in China and has lost favour in many countries like Britain, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand, where once it was all-pervasive. At present, most US sales are still on the party plan, but online and franchise sales are catching up.

Tupperware became fashionable after World War II. During the war, large numbers of women were in paid employment outside the home while their men were away fighting. When the men returned, the women mostly resumed their household duties. There are widely divergent views about Tupperware’s role at this time. Some feminists propose that the company promulgated an image of women confined to the kitchen, making the female pursuit of a career less likely. Others say that the pyramid sales model allowed women to earn, promoting autonomy and prosperity. In particular, those who were pregnant and at home could enjoy some extra cash.

Effective rebranding of Tupperware has taken place in the East, but what about in America? Well, the Tupperware website there has developed a ‘Chain of Confidence’ programme to improve sales. In this, women reinforce the notion of female solidarity by purchasing Tupperware and swapping true stories. Over a million dollars from this programme has also been donated to a girls’ charity.

What the future holds for the pretty plastic product is uncertain. Will Tupperware become a relic of the past like cane baskets and wooden tea chests, or will online social programmes and avid Chinese consumers save the company?

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

MARVELLOUS MONTICELLO

Thomas Jefferson is renowned for many accomplishments, among which he was the principal author of the American Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, during which time America grew significantly in size and stature.

Jefferson also designed his own three-storeyed, 33-roomed mansion, called Monticello, familiar to every American from the nickel, or 5-cent coin, on which can be seen a simple domed building with a four-columned portico.

Influenced by classical European design, and emulated across the land, Monticello took more than 40 years to build. Numerous labour-saving devices inside, invented by Jefferson himself, and gardens the envy of agronomists represent the scientific spirit of a new age.

Modelled on Andrea Palladio’s 16th-century Italian villas, Monticello is a tribute to the man and style that Jefferson idolised. As Palladio considered the position of a building to be of the utmost importance, Jefferson had Monticello built on a mountain with splendid views. According to Palladio, a building should be symmetrical since mathematical order bestows harmony upon its inhabitants. Thus Monticello boasts a colonnaded entrance and a central room with a dome.

But who was the man who created Monticello? Thomas Jefferson was born at Shadwell, Virginia, on the east coast of America in 1743. On his father’s death, he inherited a large property where Monticello was subsequently constructed. Jefferson, both a lawyer and politician, was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1768, and in 1775 to the Continental Congress, where he revised the laws of Virginia. Two of his famous pieces of legislation include the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom; and the Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge.

Throughout Jefferson’s early adulthood, America had been fighting Britain in the War of Independence. In 1776, Jefferson, who was never a combatant, wrote the Declaration of Independence, and although the conflict did not end until 1783, Americans consider the birth of their nation came with that declaration. As well as proclaiming America’s freedom, the declaration outlines universal human rights, stating that all men are equal regardless of birth, wealth, or status, and, furthermore, that government is the servant, not the master, of the people. Although Jefferson’s work was based on the ideas of John Locke, an Englishman, and on a body of French philosophy, it remains a uniquely American document.

After the war, Jefferson took up the post of Governor of Virginia, before returning to Congress. He then served five years in France as a US trade representative and minister. He was American Vice-President between 1797-1801 and President for the following eight years. As president, he organised the purchase of a vast tract of land from the French, who were embattled in Europe and strapped for cash. This land, called the Louisiana Territory, doubled the size of America. Jefferson was also responsible for financing Lewis and Clark – two explorers who undertook a momentous journey along the Ohio River to survey nature and appraise land for settlement.

In retirement, Jefferson remained active. His huge library, donated to the nation, and known as the Library of Congress, is still one of the world’s most reputable. He founded the University of Virginia, designed most of its early buildings, defined its curriculum, and became its first rector or chancellor. When he died, on the fourth of July 1826, America had lost a truly great man.

Monticello, his home for most of his life, is on the UNESCO World Heritage List partly because Jefferson lived there, but mainly because it brought classicism – the style of Palladio – to the New World. It was Jefferson’s belief that if America were to assume the mantle of a powerful nation, it needed to draw on the best of the European past as well as creating its own style.

Monticello is not a very large building: it is 1022 square metres (11,000 square feet) – these days, a football player or film star has a house as big.

Monticello was not all built at once since Jefferson’s finances were seldom secure. Furthermore, his ideas about building changed during his sojourn in France. In 1768, the mountaintop where Monticello would sit was leveled. Bricks were manufactured over a two-year period by Jefferson’s slaves – he owned about 200. Wood was sourced from trees on Jefferson’s land; stone and limestone were quarried on his property; and – in keeping with his concept of elegance – the window glass and furniture were imported from Europe. Jefferson moved into the South Pavilion in 1770. Around 1772, the Dining Room in the north wing was built. The first house was mostly complete in 1782, the year Jefferson’s wife died. On return from France in 1796, Jefferson had the upper storey demolished, and the whole structure remodelled, which took eleven years. In 1800, the dome was fitted. A North Pavilion was added from 1806-8. Extensive gardens – both ornamental and productive – were created since Jefferson believed in pursuing agriculture in a scientific manner.

As mentioned previously, Jefferson was an inventor. Since Virginian summers can be hot, he designed special fans and blinds. Blocks of ice were stored in the cellar all year round – a rarity at the time. For the cold winters, Monticello has numerous fireplaces and stoves. In the late 1790s, Jefferson altered the fireplaces to apply some modern fuel-saving principles. He introduced skylights – another unusual feature – and he designed tables that could be turned easily and doors that opened automatically. He even had a shaft-and-pulley system between floors for hoisting food. However, not until 1822, was the roof covered with durable material. Just four years later, Jefferson died.

Jefferson is remembered as a statesman, philosopher, educationalist, and architect. Fiercely American, he drew on European heritage. He was optimistic, far-sighted, and creative, and Monticello remains a monument to the man as much as his age.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 68 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

BEEN THERE; DONE THAT – IN ZERO GRAVITY

Section A

Until recently, only nation-states and their agencies were capable of sending satellites and astronauts into space. We’ve all heard of NASA, ESA, and the ISS (International Space Station), but now some private firms are challenging those institutions. The question is: are these companies merely chasing tourist dollars, or will their space exploration benefit humanity?

Section B

Currently, there are at least four big American and two British companies involved in the new space race – the mission to send tourists to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. There they can experience the thrills of weightlessness and the marvellous sight of our planet so far away.

One such company, Blue Origin, was founded by Jeff Bezos. The billionaire Bezos was the man behind Amazon, America’s largest online retailer. The main project of Blue Origin is a vertical take-off and landing rocket, designed exclusively for tourism.

Armadillo Aerospace was also set up by a well-known American: John Carmack. He gave the world the video games Doom and Quake. Armadillo is developing a similar spacecraft to that of Blue Origin. Fares for suborbital trips will start at around $100,000. Although the spacecraft is still in the testing stage, a travel agency, Space Adventures, has signed a deal with Armadillo to sell seats.

A cheaper alternative to Armadillo’s trip may be a ride on a Lynx spacecraft. This is the brainchild of Jeff Greason, of XCOR Aerospace. This company subcontracts for NASA and is well known for producing reliable craft. Its new tourist spacecraft can take off and land on a runway at a civilian airport. It may be able to make four daily suborbital flights but will carry only one passenger each time.

Richard Branson, a British entrepreneur, is planning to start space-tourist flights on his Virgin Galactic craft. These will carry six passengers, paying up to $200,000 for their space thrill. Once thrust upwards, the craft will head for the edge of the atmosphere. The whole journey will last just a few minutes.

Starchaser, a company headed by Briton, Steve Bennet, hopes its rockets will offer a more enduring experience – a 20-minute flight, several minutes of which will be spent in zero gravity.

But probably the most impressive private space company is SpaceX. This was set up by Elon Musk, an internet entrepreneur born in South Africa. Musk made his fortune creating PayPal, which eBay bought from him for $1.5bn. While anyone else with that kind of money may well have retired, Musk works 100 hours a week at his Los Angeles rocket factory, intent on realising his dream.

Section C

For Musk, space travel is not just about ticking things off in a Lonely Planet guidebook. He believes the future of humanity lies in its ability to colonise other planets. Since his days as a student at Penn State University, he has been passionate about the future. He is certainly living on other planets is the only way humans can prevent self-destruction or save themselves from a catastrophic event like the impact of a large meteorite.

Musk established SpaceX in 2002. Yet within only seven years, it had launched a satellite from its rocket, Falcon 1. By contrast, agencies like NASA and ESA take decades to achieve similar feats. In 2010, SpaceX sent its much larger Falcon 9 rocket into space. The next venture is to provide a taxi service to the ISS with Dragon, a small shuttle that Falcon 9 launches. This will deliver cargo and astronauts to the station. Dragon is radically different in design from the existing Shuttle, and far less costly.

Section D

In fact, before building Falcon and Dragon, Musk thoroughly researched the costs of building and launching rockets. He could not understand why government agencies spent so much money on these activities, and he concluded, quite simply, that they were inefficient. To prove his theory, SpaceX has produced the Merlin engine, which is elegantly designed, extremely powerful, and relatively cheap. It runs on highly refined kerosene that costs half the price of other rocket fuel. In most of SpaceX’s spacecraft, parts are re-usable, an innovation in the industry. There are also fewer stages in rocket transformation. That is: there are fewer times a rocket separates into smaller parts. All of this means spacecraft can be produced at a fraction of the cost of competitors while maintaining the same high safety standards.

Section E

Musk maintains that the Falcon 9, a rocket that carries astronauts, is so powerful it could already reach Mars if it were assembled in Earth’s orbit. He believes this technological advance will occur within 20 years – something most experts consider unlikely. Moreover, he firmly believes living on Mars is possible within the lifetime of his children. For him, the new space race is not only about selling tickets for a mind-blowing ride, but also about securing the future of our species.

For other private companies, however, there is no urge to invest heavily in missions to distant planets. Making a profit at the high end of the tourist market here on Earth is their only goal.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

BRAND LOYALTY RUNS DEEP

At almost any supermarket in Sydney, Australia, food from all over the world fills the shelves. Perhaps you fancy some Tick Tock Rooibos tea made in South Africa, or some Maharaja’s Choice Rogan Josh sauce from India. Alongside local Foster’s beer, Chinese Tsingtao and Indonesian Bintang are both to be found. For homesick Britons, the confectionary aisle is stocked with Mars Bars and Bountys, while for pining Poles sweets manufactured by firms like Wawel or Solidarposc are available. Restaurants in Sydney range from Afghan to Zambian, catering for different ethnic groups as well as the rest of the curious general public.

All of this variety is a result of population movement and changes in global trade, and, to a lesser extent, reduced production and transportation costs. While Australia can claim around 40% of its population as the first generation, other countries, like Switzerland, may have fewer international migrants, but still, have people who move from city to city in search of work. Even since the 1990s, taxes or tariffs on imported goods have decreased dramatically. The World Trade Organisation, for example, has promulgated the idea of zero tariffs, which has been adopted into legislation by many member states. It is estimated that within a century, agriculture worldwide has increased its efficiency five-fold. Faster and better-integrated road and rail services, containerisation, and the ubiquitous aeroplane have sped up transport immeasurably.

Even with this rise in the availability of non-local products, recent studies suggest that supermarkets should do more to increase their number to match more closely the proportion of shoppers from those countries or regions. Thus, if 10% of a supermarket’s customers originate in Vietnam, there ought to be 10% Vietnamese products in store. If Americans from southern states dominate in one northern neighbourhood, southern brands should also be conspicuous. Admittedly, there are already specialist shops that cater to minority groups, but minorities do frequent supermarkets.

Two separate studies by Americans Bart Bronnenberg and David Atkin have found that brand loyalty (choosing Maharaja’s Choice over Patak’s, or Cadbury’s over Nestlé) is not only determined by advertising, but also by a consumer’s past. If a product featured in a person’s early life in one place, then, as a migrant, he or she is likely to buy that same product even though it is more expensive than an otherwise identical locally-produced one.

In the US context, between 2006 and 2008, Bronnenberg analysed data from 38,000 families who had bought 238 different kinds of packaged goods. Although the same brands could be found across America, there were clear differences in what people purchased. In general, there were two leading brands in each kind of packaged good, but there were smaller brands that assumed a greater proportion of consumers’ purchases than was statistically likely. One explanation for this is that 16% of people surveyed came from interstate, and these people preferred products from their home states. Over time, they did buy more products from their adopted state, but, surprisingly, it took two decades for their brand loyalty to halve. Even people who had moved interstate 50 years previously maintained a preference for home-state brands. It seems the habits of food buying change more slowly than we think.

Bronnenberg’s findings were confirmed by Atkin’s in India although there was something more unexpected that Atkin discovered. Firstly, during the period of his survey, the cost of all consumables rose considerably in India. As a result, families reduced their spending on food, and their calorific intake fell accordingly. It is also worth noting that although India is one country, states impose tariffs or taxes on products from other Indian states, ensuring that locally-produced goods remain cheaper. As in the US, internal migrants bought food from their native place even when it was considerably more expensive than local alternatives, and at a time when you might expect families to be economising. This element made the brand-loyalty theory even more convincing.

There is one downside to these findings. In relatively closed economies, such as India’s, people develop tastes that they take with them wherever they go; in a more globalised economy, such as America’s, what people eat may be more varied, but still dependent on early exposure to brands. Therefore, according to both researchers, more advertising may now be directed at minors since brand loyalty is established in childhood and lasts a lifetime. In a media-driven world where children are already bombarded with information, their parents may not consider appropriate yet more advertising is hardly welcome.

For supermarkets, this means that wherever there are large communities of expatriates or immigrants, it is essential to calculate the demographics carefully in order to supply those shoppers with their favourite brands as in light of Atkin and Bronnenberg’s research, advertising and price are not the sole motivating factors for purchase as was previously thought.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Diprotodon, human, Pleistocene & modern wombat skeletons

Imagine a bird three times the size of an ostrich, or a burrowing animal as big as an elephant. How about a kangaroo three metres tall? Such creatures were all Australian megafauna, alive during the Pleistocene.1

Fifteen million years ago, 55 species of megafauna were widespread in Australia, the largest of which was the marsupial2 diprotodon, weighing around 2700 kilograms (5952 lb). Giant snakes, crocodiles, and birds were also common. Wombats and kangaroos reached more than 200 kg (440 lb), and even koalas weighed 16 kg (35 lb). Then, rather suddenly, around 46 thousand years ago (46 kyr), all these animals became extinct. Some scientists claim this was due to environmental pressures, like climate change or fire; others favour predation.3

At the end of the Pleistocene, humans reached Australia via Indonesia, and, according to the archaeological record, by 45 kyr their settlement was widespread. One hundred and sixty archaeological sites in Australia and New Guinea have been much surveyed. There is some disagreement about the dates of these sites; meantime, a forceful movement aims to push human settlement back before 45 kyr.

Dating the rare bones of megafauna was highly controversial until 20 years ago when a technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) was developed. With OSL, the age of minerals up to 200 kyr can be established with + / – 10% accuracy.

The largest OSL dating of megafauna was carried out in 2001 by Roberts, who put the extinction date for megafauna at around 46 kyr, very early on in the time of human habitation.

Megafaunal bones are rare enough, but, at archaeological sites with human habitation, they are extremely rare with fewer than 10% of the 160 sites containing them. Bones that show cutting, burning, or deliberate breaking by humans are virtually non-existent, and thus far, not one megafaunal skeleton shows conclusively an animal was killed by humans. There are no ‘kill sites’ either whereas, in New Zealand, where the giant moa bird became extinct in the 18th century due to hunting, there are sites with hundreds of slaughtered creatures. As a result, many scientists still believe that humans were not responsible for megafaunal extinction – especially as the weapons of Australian Aborigines at 45 kyr were only wooden clubs and spears.

There is, perhaps, a cultural record of megafauna in Aboriginal myths. The Adnyamathanha people of South Australia tell of the Yamuti, something like a diprotodon. An ancient rock painting in Arnhem Land shows an extinct giant echidna. But this record is small and open to interpretation.

If the Aborigines were not technologically advanced enough to kill them, what else might have destroyed megafauna? One theory has been climate change – perhaps there was a relatively hot, dry period between 60-40 kyr. Research suggests otherwise. Indeed, at 40 kyr, the climate was moderate, and Lake Eyre, in central Australia, grew. If there was desertification, scientists would expect megafauna to have moved towards the coast, looking for food and water, but instead, the fossil record details an equal distribution of the dead inland and on the coast.

In addition, changes in specific vegetation occurred after the extinction of the megafauna. Trees that relied on large animals to eat their fruit and disperse their seed covered far smaller areas of Australia post 40 kyr. These plants were not threatened by climate change; rather, they died off because their megafaunal partners had already gone.

Typically, climate change affects almost all species in an area. Yet, around 46 kyr, only the megafauna died. Previously, there had been many species of kangaroo, some as heavy as 200 kg (440 lb), but, after, the heaviest weighed only 32 kg (70 lb). This phenomenon is known as dwarfing, and it occurred with many animals in the Pleistocene.

Dwarfing has been studied extensively. In 2001, Law published research related to fish farming. Despite excellent food and no predators, farmed fish become smaller as generations continue. This adaptation may be a response to their being commercially useless at a smaller size, meaning they hope to survive the harvest.

Of the dwarf marsupials, the most notable development over the giants was their longer reproductive lives, which produced more young. They were better runners as well, or, those that were slow-moving retreated to the mountainous forest, beyond the reach of humans.

If climate change isn’t a credible factor in extinction, what about fire? Fire is caused naturally by lightning strikes as well as by humans with torches. Surprisingly, the charcoal record for many thousands of years does not show a marked increase in fire after human habitation of Australia – there is only a slow increase over time. Besides, it could be argued that forest fires aid megafauna since grass, their favoured food, invariably replaces burnt vegetation.

Johnson, an archaeologist, has proposed that the Aborigines could have wiped out all 55 megafaunal species in just a few thousand years. He believes that the 45 kyr human settlement date will be pushed back to make this extinction fit, and he also maintains that 700 years are enough to make one species extinct without large-scale hunting or sophisticated weapons. Johnson used computer modelling on a population of only 1000 animals to demonstrate this. If just 30 animals are killed a year, then the species becomes extinct after 520-700 years. Human populations in Australia were small at 45 kyr – only 150 people occupied the same 500 square kilometres as 1000 animals. However, at a rate of killing just two animals a year by each group of ten people, extinction is highly likely.

A recent study on the albatross has shown the bird has almost disappeared due to females’ occasionally being hooked on fishing lines. A large number of animals do not need to be killed to effect extinction especially if an animal breeds late and infrequently like the albatross and like megafauna.

———————-

1 A period of 2.6 million-10,000 years ago.
2 This mammal, like a kangaroo, keeps its very young baby in a pouch.
3 The killing of a group or groups of animals by another group.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 69 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

DRIVING ON AIR

No matter how costly, hazardous, or polluting they are, nor how tedious it is to be stuck in traffic jams, cars are here to stay. In fact, the global car industry is worth a massive two trillion dollars a year.

Recently, Guy Negre, a French engineer on Renault’s Formula One engines, designed and produced the Airpod – a vehicle which runs on air, is lightweight and compact and capable of reaching moderate speeds.

Since the transport sector constitutes one-seventh of all air pollution, Negre spent 15 years developing the Airpod, hoping to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Petrol-electric hybrids, already on the market, are touted as being environmentally friendly, yet he says they are barely less polluting than combustion-engine vehicles. The Airpod, on the other hand, produces just 10% of the carbon monoxide of other cars.

Major manufacturers are now considering hydrogen as a power source for vehicles, but this technology may be decades away. Meantime, according to Negre, electric vehicles remain impractical: batteries are expensive, and need replacement within five years; recharging takes several hours.

Negre’s secondary aim in creating the Airpod was to bring cars within reach of consumers in the developing world. To date, his most impressive deal has been with an Indian car manufacturer which predicts the Airpod will retail for the price of an average motorcycle.

Currently, only three-wheeled Airpods are available, but Negre has a four-wheeled, five-door family saloon, plus vans, buses, taxis, boats, and aircraft on the drawing board.

So what is an Airpod? This small vehicle resembles an ordinary car except that it is made mostly from fiberglass – ten times as strong as steel but very light – meaning an Airpod weighs just 220 kilograms (484 lb). It has glass windows and an aluminium engine. However, it uses a joystick instead of a steering wheel, and it has backward-facing passenger seats and a front-opening door.

The 180cc engine of an Airpod allows it to reach a speed of around 70 kilometres per hour (kph) (43 mph), and it can drive for about 220 kilometres (137 miles) before refilling is necessary. It takes as little as 90 seconds to pump air into an Airpod from a high-speed compressor at a gas station, with air costing a mere 50 cents for a 220-kilometre journey. An on-board pump can refill the tank at home overnight.

How does an Airpod work? Quite simply: air is released through pistons in the engine, which drive the wheels. Compressed air tanks store up to 175 litres (46 gallons) of air at about 180 times the pressure of an average car tyre. Passengers and passers-by might have concerns about explosions with such pressure, but, in the rare event of one, the thermoplastic tanks split to release air, rather than shattering and exploding. In fact, the same tanks are already installed on natural-gas buses.

For longer journeys, there is a battery-assisted hybrid Airpod, which Negre maintains is capable of reaching 80 kph (50 mph) and travelling around 1500 kilometres (930 miles) on four litres of petrol, although this version has yet to be manufactured or tested.

Still, in its infancy, the Airpod has both supporters and critics. Marcus Waardenberg, the organiser of an Airpod trial at a major Dutch airport, was impressed. ‘The Airpods went over 40 kph (25 mph), were quiet and manoeuvrable. Refilling was fast and straightforward.’ As a result, his company is replacing its fleet of electric service vehicles with Airpods.

Perhaps more significantly, AK Jagadeesh, from the Indian conglomerate, Tata, signed a $60-million deal. ‘We’re going to use Airpod technology in Tata’s Nano car,’ he said.

Ulf Bossel, a sustainable energy consultant, commented that the Airpod easily reaches speeds of over 50 kph (31 mph). ‘Initially, it could capture the second-car market. Then, there are those older people who can no longer afford conventional cars.’ Both Europe and North America have ageing populations.

Bill Robertson, a motoring journalist, noted that the Airpod would suit large numbers of people who make two or three trips a day of fewer than ten kilometers, or who live in distant suburbs of big cities where public transport is poor. If the Airpod looked a little sexier, there would be the potential for it to make inroads into the golf buggy sector, which currently uses electric vehicles.

Among the detractors of the Airpod is the former champion racer, Martella Valentina, who would prefer a vehicle with a more robust engine. ‘There are so many aggressive drivers out there,’ she said. ‘As a woman, I don’t feel safe in an Airpod.’ She added, ‘Refilling overnight is a drag.’

The automotive engineer, Hamid Khan, concurs, expressing skepticism about sufficient energy storage under reasonable pressure to drive the car any distance, let alone the alleged 220 kilometres (135 miles) before refill. He insists this is unconfirmed by independent tests. Stopping and starting in typical city conditions would also lower the range even further, and more distressingly, safety data are lacking for crash testing. ‘Negre claims fibreglass is stronger than steel, but the Airpod looks as though it would crumble under the wheels of a normal saloon,’ commented Khan.

Nevertheless, Negre has signed deals to manufacture his car in the US, Latin America, India, and several European countries. Compressed air may no longer take a back seat to other power sources, and it is even conceivable that one day we may be flying in aircraft that fly on air.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Section A

In the past, economists measured the wealth of a country and its inhabitants according to the amount of income generated annually, using a figure called the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or the Gross National Income (GNI). From GDP or GNI, an average income of individuals within a country could be extrapolated. It was also widely held that the richer a country was, the happier its citizens were. More recently, economists have started to rate countries according to additional criteria like how livable its main cities are; what access to decent education and green space its people have; how safe a country is; and, how clean – or uncorrupt – its government is.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is considered the most reliable of these new economic indicators, but an even more focused measure, the Human Happiness Index (HHI), is steadily gaining in popularity.

Section B

In 2008, Bhutan, a country surrounded by India, Nepal, and China, developed its own Gross National Happiness index to assist in its planning policies. If its inhabitants indicated one of their major concerns was rising fuel costs, then the government attempted to subsidise fuel, not only because it hoped to retain power, but also because if this anxiety were reduced, its citizens would be happier and more productive. Another apprehension of the Bhutanese may be the quality of primary education. Once alerted to this, the state can commence investment. The same year, two famous economists, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, were invited by the President of France to devise a happiness index for his country; Britain has recently followed suit.

Section C

There are two common measures of happiness: a global measure and a hedonic measure. The former appraises life in general; the latter a person’s emotional feeling just yesterday. Two measures are considered necessary because altered circumstances produce different results. As any parent can attest, having children makes people happier overall, especially as the children mature and start their own families, yet, on a day-to-day basis, when the children are young, raising them can be difficult: parents may experience stress, anger, and in some rare cases even misery. Globally, parents are glad they have a family; hedonically, they may be going through a bad patch. Likewise employment: a secure enjoyable job contributes greatly to a person’s happiness, but being temporarily unemployed can have a deleterious impact.

Section D

Using both these measures – the global and hedonic – some surprising data have come to light. Firstly, wealthier is indeed happier, but there are still some miserable rich people. Danes and Hong Kong Chinese have almost identical purchasing power, meaning although they earn different amounts of money, what they can do with it is about the same. Yet, on a scale of one to ten, Hong Kongers consistently rate their happiness as 5.5 whereas Danes give theirs as 8. Likewise, incomes in Latin America vary little from those in countries of the former Soviet Union, like Ukraine or Kazakhstan, but Latinos are far healthier, longer-living, and more cheerful.

The second significant finding is that the level of happiness increases with age. Despite the body’s decay and fewer financial resources, older people are more stable, less anxious, and most importantly, less angry. It is now universally agreed that suicide rates worldwide peak in the early forties for women and the early fifties for men. Of 72 countries in one recent poll, the average age was 46 after which life became easier. Ukrainians bucked this trend, not finding happiness until after 62, while the Swiss were fortunate for their discontent to decline from 35.

Section E

Some common beliefs have been confirmed by the happiness data, for instance, that introverted cultures produce more unhappy people. Asians all identified themselves as being unhappier than Western Europeans (with the exception of the Portuguese and Greeks). In 2010, Japan rated highly on the HDI, but near the middle of the HHI. Still, Japan has the world’s longest-living women – 83 years is their average life expectancy – so, if people are generally happier as they age, Japanese women do have longer than women elsewhere in which to get happy!

Section F

What are the reasons for happiness after middle age? Basically, people understand where they fit in the world. Their ambitions have settled to realistic levels – they accept what they can and cannot do. For example, I won’t be able to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but I could conceivably take first place in a local short-story competition.

Section G

It is good news that people get happier as they grow older because populations in most developed countries are ageing, and projections are for many developing countries to have more people over 50 after 2020. Governments have had some concern about the burden on younger taxpayers of this greying population, but perhaps they should reconsider the data: older people, being happier, are potentially more capable than younger ones. Loss of memory and poorer physical skills are balanced by their cheerfulness. Therefore, the retirement age can be extended without concern about productivity.

Personally, I would rather have a smiling competent grey-haired colleague than a pretty twentysomething who pretends to know it all but, underneath, is a seething mass of discontent.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

SPACE-BASED SOLAR POWER

In an energy-hungry world, new safe ways to generate electricity are constantly being sought.

Space-based solar power, or SBSP, is not yet up and running, but several space agencies and commercial companies are keenly pursuing it.

SBSP is a system that would harness sunlight in space, convert it into electrical energy, and beam this to receivers in the Earth’s equatorial zone. SBSP satellites would be in low orbit 1100 kilometres (684 miles) above the Earth.

Advantages

To date, solar energy has been collected on the ground, but it is estimated there is 144% more solar power available in space as the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs light. Furthermore, since our planet rotates, energy can only be collected during daylight. It is possible at the poles to collect light almost continuously in summer, but in winter such plants cannot operate due to snow, ice, and darkness. In space, however, solar power collection could occur around the clock. A further benefit may be that the energy produced could be directed to multiple locations whereas terrestrial power plants are limited to sending power one way into a grid.

Design

Most prototypes of SBSP structures look like a giant tent hanging in space. It’s light, the hollow equilateral triangular frame is 336 metres (1103 feet) long while its depth is 303 metres (994 feet). Down two sides are solar collectors, called arrays; on the floor of the ‘tent’ sit a solar converter and a transmitting antenna. The antenna sends microwaves to Earth. These waves are at a frequency of 2.45-5.8 gigahertz, or somewhere between infrared and radio signals. They pass through Earth’s atmosphere easily with only minor energy loss. On Earth, the invisible column of microwave energy – perhaps two to three kilometres (a mile or two) wide – is received by a large oval-shaped ‘rectenna’ – a new word combining ‘rectifying’ + ‘antenna’. A pilot beam, also on Earth, ensures the satellite stays in position in space.

Two major technical obstacles remain before SBSP becomes a reality. The first is launching satellites into orbit. While most scientists favour low orbit, others believe a higher orbit like 36,050 kilometres (22,400 miles), about one-tenth of the distance between Earth and the Moon, would harness more sunlight. However, no agency or company has any experience of launching and controlling a satellite in high orbit, and the cost would be exorbitant. The second problem is the wireless power transmission. While this seemed like a physicist’s fantasy a few years ago, in 2009, US and Japanese researchers successfully sent microwave energy between two islands in Hawaii which are 145 km (90 miles) apart – equidistant to Earth’s atmosphere – but it is unknown whether this can be reproduced in space.

History

SBSP is not a new idea. Dr Peter Glaser designed a system in the late 1960s and was granted a US patent in 1973. The US Department of Energy in conjunction with NASA (the American space agency) conducted feasibility studies in the 1970s, but a conservative administration in the 1980s discontinued investment. Only in 1997 did the US government reconsider the idea.

In 2009, an American commercial company Space Energy Incorporated announced it planned to provide SBSP ‘within a decade’. Subsequently, a company called Solaren stated it was likely to provide 200 megawatts of solar power from an SBSP to Pacific Gas and Electric from 2016. PowerSat Corporation has begun the process of patenting a system of interconnected satellites that will project one extremely powerful microwave beam down to Earth. It has also developed a special thruster to lift a satellite from low orbit into a higher orbit.

Small-scale scientific projects connected to SBSP have long been in operation in Europe. In 2010, several private European firms joined the space power race, and scientific conferences were held on electromagnetic wireless transmission in Italy and Germany.

Japanese initiatives

It is the Japanese, however, who have come nearest to producing a reliable system. Both Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and IHI Corporation currently fund research. Since 1998, JAXA (the Japanese space agency) has been involved in all aspects of SBSP, and it predicts its first satellite will be in orbit by 2030.

There are six broad areas that JAXA is working on. These are (1) general configuration; (2) assembly work and operation; (3) solar array; (4) transmitting antenna; (5) power transmission and reception system; and, (6) testing methods. The first of these is the most developed. The solar array and transmitting antenna are second in terms of development. Testing methods are relatively unsolved. Assembly work and operation, and power transmission and reception system remain far from being solved.

Disadvantages

SBSP has numerous detractors. There are those people who imagine the microwave beam to be something like a science-fiction death ray. Physicists reassure the public it is a non-ionising wave, like a radio wave or x-ray. It cannot displace electrons from atoms to charge particles, so it does not damage DNA. The waves may be slightly warm, but they present no danger to wildlife or humans.

Other opponents of SBSP say that while there is neither corrosion nor damage from plants or animals in space, background radiation could harm the satellite. There is the very real danger of collision with space junk as recently happened at the International Space Station, or with small meteors’ hitting it. The less likely event of an enemy nation firing rockets to destroy the equipment also causes concern. Repairing an unmanned structure so far from Earth would be extremely difficult.

Solar power via the Moon is an option which some scientists say can be in operation in ten years at a fraction of the cost.

But the majority of those against SBSP consider it expensive and unnecessary given that many other forms of renewable energy on Earth are operating successfully. Terrestrial solar power is relatively underdeveloped; the Arizona Desert in the US, and deserts across North Africa provide easily-accessible locations for new systems that would be five times more cost-effective than SBSP.

Viability

Nevertheless, as energy requirements accelerate, as unrest in oil-producing regions and nuclear accidents make alternative energy more attractive, space-based solar power may have the future after all.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 70 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

THE BATTLE OF TOWTON

March 29th, 1461, in tiny Towton was one of the bloodiest days in English history, yet only recently have a small number of soldiers’ bodies undergone exhumation and examination. Several thousand still lie buried in mass graves on the battlefield. Early analysis of the remains has led to a reassessment of medieval warfare.

Towton, a village in the north of England, between York and Leeds, is unknown to many English people. History taught at school largely ignores the mid-15th century. Towton itself has neither museum nor large memorial, merely a roadside cross to mark where the battle took place.

In 1996, a building nearby called Towton Hall was being renovated when labourers unearthed skeletons in its grounds and beneath its floor. Twenty-eight of these were complete; another 20 or so were partial. What shocked archaeologists were the violent way in which the men had met their deaths and the callous manner of their burial. We are all familiar with the gory wars of the 20th century and might assume that technology and politics have become more destructive over time. However, it could be the case that humans have long been vicious – only now is the evidence coming to light.

So what was the Battle of Towton? It was one clash of many between two powerful families –the Lancastrians and the Yorkists – who each wanted their king to rule England. The Lan castrians believed the current King of England, Henry VI, was incapable if not insane, whereas the Yorkists, led by Richard Plantagenet, supported Henry since he had chosen Richard as the next king. When Richard was killed in 1460, his son Edward, only 18, vowed to assume the throne in his father’s place. Needless to say, the Lancastrians disputed this. Effectively, the Battle of Towton would legitimate Edward’s reign.

Prior to Towton, military encounters in England had been small-scale: battles were fought with hundreds or at most a few thousand men, and no army was professional. In so-called peacetime, private armies consisted of men – ranging in age from 15 to 50 – whose levels of fitness were variable, and whose training and equipment was poor. This meant that when fighting did erupt, it seldom lasted long – perhaps just a few days. Nor were many men killed. In fact, there is evidence that more men died from their wounds or other illnesses after combat. Towton it seems was different, for here was a battle in which both sides assembled large armies, and there were terrible casualties in the field.

The number of soldiers killed at Towton is a matter of speculation as few records have come down to us, and those that do survive may have exaggerated the victory of King Edward IV, as Edward became, in order to intimidate his enemies. One estimate of the dead is 28,000 out of the 75,000 soldiers who took part. These 75,000 represent 10% of all fighting-age men in England at the time – the total population being just three million. Twenty-eight thousand dead on one day is, therefore, a staggering number.

As injuries show on the skeletons of soldiers already studied, those men were hacked to death, shot by arrows, or trampled by horses. Some of the first bullets used in England were fired that day. Lead-composite shot has been dug up on the battlefield, and one archaeologist claims to have found part of a handgun, but there are no obvious deaths from guns, and it is hard to say how they were used. The most effective weapon was the poleaxe – a long, heavy iron weapon with a sharp tip, a small axe blade on one side and, on the other, a large sharp head like a Philips-head screwdriver. It was used to kill soldiers who were running away as battle lines broke up, and it is thought this is how most of the Lancastrians buried at Towton Hall died.

It is not known why the death rate in this battle was so high, nor why the bodies of soldiers were so disfigured. Skeletal evidence indicates that often a dozen blows were given to a man who would have been killed by the initial two or three. Archaeologists are uncertain when these additional blows were made – on the battlefield or in the burial process – but such savagery suggests the emergence of a new concept of an opponent as not merely someone to kill but someone whose identity should be utterly effaced. After death, in a ritual never before seen in English warfare, soldiers were stripped of their clothes and tossed into mass graves to further dehumanise them.

It is easy to forget that in medieval England burial was sacred, and people believed ascent to Heaven only took place when the body of the dead was whole. In all Europe, there is only one other known mass grave on the scale of Towton from around the same time – that is in Sweden from 1361. There, however, soldiers from the Battle of Wisby were buried whole in their armour.

It appears that the savagery of the Yorkists did effect submission since Edward remained king for the next 22 years.

Today, at Towton, work continues on excavation and analysis of the medieval skeletons. Theories about a new kind of violent warfare and the purpose of mass graves abound. It seems that organised brutality is no recent phenomenon; it existed 550 years ago.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

HARD-PASTE PORCELAIN

Definition and origin

The term porcelain refers to ceramics made from similar materials and baked at high temperatures which are light, durable, and vitreous.* Porcelain combines the positive qualities of glass and clay – glass is smooth and translucent while clay retains its shape when moulded. However, due to the addition of a few more minerals, porcelain is stronger than either glass or clay. It is also extremely beautiful and valuable: Chinese Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD) bowls can fetch a million dollars on the international art market.

For around fifteen hundred years, porcelain has been employed as tableware and decoration, but its more recent applications include dental crowns and electrical insulators.

Porcelain was first made in China. During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), small amounts were used by the court and the very rich. High-quality porcelain, like that manufactured today, was not widely available until the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368 AD).

Chinese porcelain was traded with kingdoms in Central, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East from the seventh century. By the Middle Ages, it had reached Europe.

European obsession

Porcelain was consumed in enormous quantities by European royal families, nobles, and the church, all of whom tried desperately to discover its chemical composition. The English word, ‘porcelain’, derives from the Portuguese name for a sea creature, the nautilus, which has a spiral orange vitreous shell from which it was believed at one time that porcelain was made. Other more astute Europeans contended the ceramic contained crushed glass or bone.

Early experiments in the production of porcelain included adding ground glass to clay. The result is called ‘soft-paste’ as it is weaker than true porcelain.

So great was the frenzy for possessing Chinese porcelain, or attempting to recreate their own hard-paste, that a number of European principalities endangered themselves financially, spending as much of their budgets on pursuing porcelain as on their armies. Frederick II of Prussia (now in Germany) was one such fanatic. Fortunately, for Prussia, two scientists – Johann Böttger and Ehrenfried von Tschimhaus – in the monarch’s service, solved the porcelain puzzle. Their discovery, made in 1707, combined clay with ground feldspar – a mineral containing aluminium silicate.

Meanwhile, in England, the recipe was a little different: ash, from cattle bones, was mixed with clay, feldspar, and quartz. This became known as ‘bone china’ and is still manufactured. Although not true porcelain, it remains popular in the US and the UK because it is harder than porcelain.

Constituents

The raw materials from which porcelain is made are abundant. They are white clay (china clay or ball clay), feldspar, or perhaps flint, and silica – all of which are noted for their small articles. Feldspar and flint are used as fluxes, which reduce the temperature needed for firing and bind the glass, silica, and clay granules. Porcelain may also contain other ingredients like alumina or steatite.

Manufacture

To produce porcelain, the raw materials are selected and weighed. Then, they are crushed in a two-stage process. Jaw crushers work first; mullers or hammer mills subsequently reduce particles to 0.25cms (0.1 inch) or less in diameter. A third crushing, using ball mills, takes place for the finest porcelain. During purification, which follows, granules that are not of uniform size are screened out. Magnetic filtration then removes iron, commonly found in clay, because this prevents the porcelain from forming correctly. The fifth stage, preparatory to firing, is formation. There are several types of formation by hand or machine. After formation, the ware undergoes its initial firing in a kiln – a special oven.

A glaze is a glassy liquid similar in composition to porcelain. If a porcelain object is painted, a glaze covers the paint, or its decoration may just be the glaze. Glaze is applied by painting or dipping and takes place after the first firing. Not only are porcelain wares gorgeous, but their decoration and glazing are also of great interest.

In making porcelain, the temperature in the kiln is critical – high enough to reconstitute the elements, yet low enough to vaporise contaminants and minimise shrinkage. A typical temperature is 1454° Celsius (2650° Fahrenheit).

During the firing process, a number of chemical reactions occur. Carbon-based impurities burn out at 100-200°C (215-395°F). As the kiln is heated, carbonates and sulfates decompose. When heated to 700-1100°C (1295-2015°F), the fluxes react with the decomposing minerals to form liquid glass. After a certain density is reached, at around 1200°C (2195°F), the ware is cooled, causing the liquid glass to solidify.

Pause for thought

So, next time you dine from fine porcelain, take a moment to reflect on the complicated history and sophisticated manufacture of this exquisite product.

——————————————–

* Having a glassy appearance

READING PASSAGE 3

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

IS AID HURTING AFRICA?

Despite its population of more than one billion and its rich land and natural resources, the continent of Africa remains poor. The combined economies of its 54 states equal that of one European country: the Netherlands.

It is difficult to speak of Africa as a unit as its states differ from each other in culture, climate, size, and political system. Since mid-20th-century independence, many African states have pursued different economic policies. Yet, none of them has overcome poverty. Why might this be?

One theory says Africa is unlucky. Sparsely populated with diverse language and culture, it contains numerous landlocked countries, and it is far from international markets. Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born economist, has another theory. In her 2009 book, Dead Aid, she proposes that international aid is largely to blame for African poverty because it has encouraged dependence and corruption, and has diverted talented people from the business. One of her statistics is that from 1970-98, when aid to Africa was highest, poverty rose from eleven to 66%. If aid were cut, she believes Africans would utilise their resources more creatively.

When a state lacks the capacity to care for its people, international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), like Oxfam or the Red Cross, assume this role. While NGOs distribute food or medical supplies, Moyo argues they reduce the ability of the state to provide. Furthermore, during this process, those in government and the military siphon off aid goods and money themselves. Transparency International, an organisation that surveys corruption, rates the majority of African states poorly.

Moyo provides another example. Maybe a Hollywood star donates American-made mosquito nets. Certainly, this benefits malaria-prone areas, but it also draws business away from local African traders who supply nets. More consultation is needed between do-gooder foreigners and local communities.

Moyo also suggests African nations increase their wealth by investment in bonds, or by increased co-operation with China.

The presidents of Rwanda and Senegal are strong supporters of Moyo, but critics say her theories are simplistic. The international aid community is not responsible for geography, nor has it anything to do with the military takeover, corruption, or legislation that hampers trade. Africans have had half a century of self-government and economic control, yet, as the population of the continent doubled, its GDP has risen only 60%. In the same period, Malaysia and Vietnam threw off colonialism and surged ahead economically by investing in education, health, and infrastructure; by lowering taxes on international trade; and, by being fortunate to be surrounded by other successful nations.

The economist Paul Collier has speculated that if aid were cut, African governments would not find alternative sources of income, nor would they reduce corruption. Another economist, Jeffrey Sachs, has calculated that twice the amount of aid currently given is needed to prevent suffering on a grand scale.

In Dead Aid, Moyo presents her case through a fictitious country called ‘Dongo’, but nowhere does she provide examples of real aid organisations causing actual problems. Her approach may be entertaining, but it is hardly academic.

Other scholars point out that Africa is dominated by tribal societies with military-government elites. Joining the army, rather than doing business, was the easiest route to personal wealth and power. Unsurprisingly, military takeovers have occurred in almost every African country. In the 1960s and 70s, European colonials were replaced by African ‘colonials’ – African generals and their families. Meantime, the very small, educated bourgeoisie has moved abroad. All over Africa, strongmen leaders have ruled for a long time, or one unstable military regime has succeeded another. As a result, business, separate from the military government is rare, and international investment limited.

Post-secondary education rates are low in Africa. Communications and transportation remain basic although mobile phones are having an impact. The distances farmers must travel to market are vast due to poor roads. High cross-border taxes and long bureaucratic delays are par for the course. African rural populations exceed those elsewhere in the world. Without a decent infrastructure or an educated urbanised workforce, a business cannot prosper. Recent World Bank statistics show that in southern Africa, the number of companies using the internet for business is 20% as opposed to 40% in South America or 80% in the US. There are 37 days each year without water whereas there is less than one day in Europe. The average cost of sending one container to the US is $7600, but only $3900 from East Asia or the Pacific. All these problems are the result of poor state planning.

Great ethnic and linguistic diversity within African countries has led to tribal favouritism. Governments are often controlled by one tribe or allied tribes; civil war is usually tribal. It is estimated each civil war costs a country roughly $64 billion. Southern Africa had 34 such conflicts from 1940-2000 while South Asia, the next-affected region, had only 24 in the same period. To this day, a number of bloody conflicts continue.

Other opponents of Moyo add that her focus on market investment and more business with China is shortsighted. The 2008 financial crisis meant that countries with market investments lost money. Secondly, China’s real intentions in Africa are unknown, but everyone can see China is buying up African farmland and securing cheap oil supplies.

All over Africa, there are untapped resources, but distance, diversity, and low population density contribute to poverty. Where there is no TV, infrequent electricity, and bad roads, there still seems to be money for automatic weapons just the right size for 12-year-old boys to use. Blaming the West for assisting with aid fails to address the issues of continuous conflict, ineffective government, and little infrastructure. Nor does it prevent terrible suffering.

Has aid caused problems for Africa, or is Africa’s strife of its own making or due to geography? Whatever you think, Dambisa Moyo’s book has generated lively discussion, which is fruitful for Africa.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 71 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Gender selection-the choosing of a baby’s gender prior to birth-occurs in many parts of the world. In China and India, for example, a baby’s gender is considered to be of vital importance to the family, and male babies are often preferred over females for cultural reasons. In Western countries as well, there are many reasons why a family might want to choose a baby’s sex. Often, parents wish to have a mix of both boys and girls in the family. There are also health reasons for gender selection: many diseases affect children of only one sex, and a family that is susceptible to these diseases may wish to choose a baby’s gender to avoid having an affected child.

This demand for gender choice by parents has led scientists worldwide to investigate gender selection prior to conception. Conventional wisdom states that the father’s sperm is the main determinant of a child’s gender, but recent research has begun to reveal a number of other possible determining factors.

Elissa Cameron’s research, conducted in 2007 at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, investigated the eﬀects of diet on sex ratios at birth. In one experiment, she changed the blood sugar level of female mice prior to conception by putting a chemical in the animals’ water. Mice that received the additive saw their blood sugar levels fall from 6.47 to 5.24 millimoles/litre. A separate control group of mice received pure water, without the additive. After a few days, the two groups of mice were allowed to mate. In the control group, 41% of the mice were born female, as compared to 47% in the group that received the additive-a disparity that Dr Cameron ascribed to the differences in the mothers’ blood sugar levels.

Interestingly, the idea that blood sugar levels affect a baby’s sex follows traditional wisdom. It has long been believed that mothers should eat more red meat and salty foods-which raise blood sugar for a long period – if they want to have a boy; they are advised to eat chocolates and sweets-which raise blood sugar levels for a short time – if they want a girl.

Another researcher in this field, Fiona Matthews of the University of Exeter, England, has come up with further evidence in support of the eﬀect of diet on the sex of the unborn child. Her study followed 740 pregnant women who kept detailed records of their diets before conception. Her study found that mothers who consumed high-energy foods prior to conception were slightly more likely to have boys. The food with the greatest effect seemed to be breakfast cereals, which tend to be high in energy and often high in sodium content as well. Among women eating cereals on a daily basis, 59% had boys, compared with 43% of women who ate less than one bowl of breakfast cereal per week. These results are said to echo those seen in other animals, for example, horses and cows, which statistically bear more males when well-fed.

The eating habits of women in rich Western countries could explain the slight fall in male births that have been reported over the past several years. In the UK, male births are falling by 1 per 1,000 births per year. This decrease could be ascribed to the decline in the number of adults and adolescent girls eating breakfast on a regular basis. In addition, the popularity of low-calorie diets for females of child-bearing age could also be a factor contributing to the reduction in male births.

The recent decline in male births in Western countries appears to make sense if one looks at it from an evolutionary standpoint. Historically, more boys tend to be born in times of food plenty, while females tend to be born in times of scarcity. One explanation is that when food is scarce, it is better for the survival of the species for female children to be born-as one male can father oﬀspring by many females. Lower-calorie diets among Western women could be biologically echoing the eﬀects of scarcity-hence, the decline in male births.

So what can we conclude from this complicated picture? If you would like to have a son, it might be a good idea to eat a breakfast that includes cereal. On the other hand, if you would prefer to give birth to a daughter, then cut out breakfast and continue a weight reduction diet, at least until after conception.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

The Disease Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease in which the patient’s immune system attacks the central nervous system. This can lead to numerous physical and mental symptoms, as the disease affects the transmission of electrical signals between the body and the brain. However, the human body, being a ﬂexible, adaptable system, can compensate for some level of damage, so a person with MS can look and feel fine even though the disease is present.

MS patients can have one of two main varieties of the disease: the relapsing form and the primary progressive form. In the relapsing form, the disease progresses in a series of jumps; at times it is in remission, which means that a person’s normal functions return for a period of time before the system goes into relapse and the disease again becomes more active. This is the most common form of MS; 80-90% of people have this form of the disease when they are first diagnosed. The relapse-remission cycle can continue for many years. Eventually, however, loss of physical and cognitive function starts to take place, and the remissions become less frequent.

In the primary progressive form of MS, there are no remissions, and a continual but steady loss of physical and cognitive functions takes place. This condition affects about 10-15% of sufferers at diagnosis.

The expected course of the disease, or prognosis, depends on many variables: the subtype of the disease, the patient’s individual characteristics and the initial symptoms. Life expectancy of patients, however, is often nearly the same as that of an unaffected person-provided that a reasonable standard of care is received. In some cases, a near-normal life span is possible.

The cause of the disease is unclear; it seems that some people have a genetic susceptibility, which is triggered by some unknown environmental factor. Onset of the disease usually occurs in young adults between the ages of 20 and 40. It is more common in women than men; however, it has also been diagnosed in young children and elderly people.

Hereditary factors have been seen to have some relevance. Studies of identical twins have shown that if one twin has the disease, then it is likely that the other twin will develop it. In addition, it is important to realise that close relatives of patients have a higher chance of developing the disease than people without a relative who has MS.

Where people live can be seen to have a clear eﬀect, as MS does not occur as frequently in every country. It commonly aﬀects Caucasian people, particularly in North America, Europe and Australia. It has been recognised that MS is more common the further the country is away from the equator, and the incidence of MS is generally much higher in northern countries with temperate climates than in warmer southern countries.

Three things, which do not normally occur in healthy people, happen to people who have MS. First, tiny patches of inflammation occur in the brain or spinal cord. Second, the protective coating around the axons, or nerve fibres, in the body start to deteriorate. Third, the axons themselves become damaged or destroyed. This can lead to a wide range of symptoms in the patient, depending on where the affected axons are located.

A common symptom of MS is blurred vision caused by inflammation of the optic nerve. Another sign is loss of muscle tone in arms and legs; this is when control of muscle movement, or strength in the arms or legs, can be lost. Sense of touch can be lost so that the body is unable to feel the heat or cold or the sufferer experiences temperature inappropriately; that is, feeling heat when it is cold and vice versa. Balance can also be aﬀected; some people may eventually have to resort to a wheelchair, either on a permanent or temporary basis. The course of the disease varies from person to person.

A diagnosis of MS is often confirmed by the use of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, which can show defects in the brain and spinal cord. Once diagnosed, MS is a lifelong disease; no cure exists, although a number of medical treatments have been shown to reduce relapses and slow the progression of the disease. It is important that patients with the disease are diagnosed early so that treatment, which can slow the disease, can be started early.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Surge Protection

With more devices connecting to the world’s electrical networks, protecting electrical systems and devices from power surges-also known as distribution overcurrent-has become more important than ever. Without adequate overcurrent protection, interruptions to electrical service can have catastrophic effects on individuals, cities and entire nations.

In a normal electrical system, customers are supplied with a steady electrical current – a predetermined voltage necessary to operate safely all electrical equipment connected to that system. This steady electrical supply is subject to minimal variations-variations that are imperceptible to the consumer and do not normally harm electrical devices. An overload current is any surge that exceeds the variances of this normal operating current. The higher the overcurrent, the more potential it has to damage electrical devices. One of the most important principles of overcurrent protection, therefore, is that the higher the magnitude of the overload current, the faster the overcurrent must be disrupted.

How do overcurrents occur? Most overcurrents are temporary and harmless, caused when motors start-up or transformers are energised. Such things as defective motors, overloaded equipment or too many loads on one circuit, however, can cause harmful, sustained overcurrents, which must be shut off quickly to avoid damaging the entire distribution system. An inadequately protected system can cause damage ranging from electrical shocks to people coming in contact with electrical equipment, to fires caused by the thermal ignition of electrical materials on the overloaded circuit.

Electrical storms and lightning are among the biggest causes of major distribution overcurrent worldwide. In the United States alone, 67 people are killed every year by these types of storms (including those killed by falling trees and power lines-not only surges). The intense current of a lightning discharge creates a fleeting, but very strong, magnetic field. A single lightning strike can produce up to a billion volts of electricity. If lightning strikes a house, it can easily destroy all the electrical equipment inside and damage the distribution system to which that house is connected.

To protect people and devices adequately, overcurrent protection needs to be sensitive, selective, fast and reliable. IN the interest of conservation, most power systems generate different loads at different times of day; overcurrent protection must, therefore, be sensitive enough to operate under conditions of both minimum and maximum power generation. It also needs to be selective so that it can differentiate between conditions that require immediate action and those where limited action is required; in other words, it should shut down the minimum number of devices to avoid disrupting the rest of the electrical system. Overcurrent protection also needs to be fast; it should be able to disconnect undamaged equipment quickly from the area of overcurrent and thus prevent the spread of the fault. Of course, the most basic requirement of protective equipment is that it is reliable, performing correctly wherever and whenever it is needed.

When an overcurrent occurs at a major electricity supply point such as a power station, the resulting surge, if it is not checked, can damage the entire distribution system. Like flooding, river-which breaks its banks and floods smaller rivers, which in turn flood streets and houses-the extra voltage courses through the network of wires and devices that comprise the distribution system until it discharges its excessive energy into the earth. This is why each piece of equipment within the electricity manufacturing and distribution system must be protected by a grounding or earthing mechanism – the grounding mechanism allows the excess electricity to be discharged into the earth directly, instead of passing it further down the distribution system.

Within the distribution system, surge protection is provided by overcurrent relays. Relays are simple switches that open and close under the control of another electrical circuit; an overcurrent relay is a specific type of relay that operates only when the voltage on a power line exceeds a predetermined level. If the source of an overcurrent is nearby, the overcurrent relay shuts oﬀ instantaneously. One danger, however, is that when one electrical circuit shuts down, the electricity may be rerouted through adjacent circuits, causing them to become overloaded. At its most extreme, this can lead to the blackout of an entire electrical network. T protect against this, overcurrent relays have a time-delay response; when the source of an overcurrent is far away, the overcurrent relays delay slightly before shutting down – thereby allowing some of the currents through to the next circuit so that no single circuit becomes overloaded. An additional benefit of this system is that when power surges do occur, engineers are able to use these time delay sequences to calculate the source of the fault.

Fuses and circuit breakers are the normal overcurrent protection devices found in private homes. Both devices operate similarly: they allow the passage of normal currents but quickly trip, or interrupt, when too much current flows through. Fuses and circuit breakers are normally located in the home’s electrical switch box, which takes the main power coming into the house and distributes it to various parts of the home. Beyond this level of home protection, it is also advisable to purchase additional tripping devices for sensitive electrical devices such as computers and televisions. While many electrical devices are equipped with internal surge protection, the value of these devices usually warrants the additional protection gained from purchasing an additional protective device.

The modern world could not exist without reliable electricity generation and distribution. While overcurrents cannot be entirely avoided, it is possible to mitigate their effects by providing adequate protection at every level of the electrical system, from the main power generation stations to the individual home devices we all rely upon in our daily lives.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 72 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

What Makes Us Happy?

Do you seriously want to be happy? Of course, you do! But what does it take to be happy? Many psychologists are now using scientific methods to try to understand the nature and origins of happiness. Their results may surprise you.

Surprisingly, happiness has been shown to be a constitutional trait. The study of diﬀerent types of twins; identical and non-identical, has enabled scientists to calculate that 50-60% of self-identified happiness – and what other sort is there? – is down to genes. Of course, there is no one specific gene that determines happiness, but a great many and they tend to overlap with the genes that determine personality. People who are emotionally stable, sociable and conscientious, tend to be happier according to the research.

Now, many people believe that money makes us happy. However, there is no clear relationship between wealth and happiness. Once out of poverty, increases in wealth do not automatically turn into relative increases in happiness. For example, winning the lottery may give a rush of joy and excitement but does not ensure long-term contentment. In fact, studies have shown that lottery winners take less pleasure in everyday events following their win. It seems that they soon get habituated to their money, while at the same time they have distanced themselves from their former lives and identities by leaving jobs, friends and lifestyle.

Nor does a steady increase in income make for greater happiness. The more we have, the more we seem to want, so we are always stuck at the same level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction. The perception of wealth is a relative thing: we are discontented when those who we compare ourselves with are better off than ourselves. This goes some way to explain why, in most Western countries, average incomes have increased considerably but without any increase in the average levels of happiness.

If wealth does not bring happiness, what about spending it? There is no doubt that shopping gives us a short-lived burst of pleasure – but very little more than that. The only type of shopping that might provide longer-term happiness is when we buy things for other people.

Nor does happiness does not come in liquid or tablet form. A couple of drinks at a party may lighten our mood and be good for us medically and mentally, but alcohol abuse destroys our body, mind and relationships. Similarly, drugs like cocaine and ecstasy give brief bursts of joy but there is a massive price to be paid when the high is over.

So, what can we do to improve our sense of well-being? First, we need to realise that we are not passive victims of external events. We can and should take control of our life to make it rewarding and satisfying. We should adopt a positive attitude, and overcome feelings of worthlessness and build our own self-confidence and self-esteem.

We should try to reduce the burden of unnecessary worry. If there is something that can be done about a problem we are worrying about then we should do it, and stop worrying. And of course, there is no point in worrying about things we can’t change. A sense of humour is good protection against adversity and a strong antidote to depression. One of the key symptoms of depression is the loss of the ability to laugh.

A key feature of happy and contented people is that they have a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Rather than just drifting through life, they have a clear set of values and goals that they are trying to achieve. This could be associated with faith, humanitarianism and family values, artistic or scientific aspirations and career ambitions. All these things provide a sense of identity as well as something to work towards or look forward to.

Happiness is a positive by-product of keeping active. But not just being busy, we need to be doing things that raise self-esteem and bring us satisfaction; controlling our own schedule and prioritising activities that satisfy our own needs. And saying ‘no’ to other people if necessary. Of course, this doesn’t mean we have to be selfish. Being active members of the community or volunteering for a charity or helping your family can all create happiness – particularly for older people.

So, should we actively pursue happiness? Curiously, the happiest people seem to be those who do not actively see it – indeed the ‘pursuit of happiness’ may be counterproductive. To a large extent, happiness emerges as a by-product of who we are and what we do. Conversely, people who focus on making others happy usually make themselves happy in the process.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

The Business of Space

Up until very recently space travel and exploration were solely the preserve of governments, most notably the Russian and American. However, with the decline of government wealth and the dramatic increase in personal wealth, the whole landscape of space travel is changing.

The first tentative steps into the commercialisation of personal space travel began when billionaire Dennis Tito paid $20 million to ride on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft for a week’s holiday on a space station. Since then, there have been seven space tourists who have paid large sums of money for a space experience. Yet, collectively, their financial contribution is minute and certainly would not appear to represent a feasible business.

Richard Branson, billionaire and entrepreneur, has formed Virgin Galactic, a spaceship company with some very ambitious plans for space travel. Surprisingly, he is not alone; there are some 12 or 13 other space organizations worldwide with similar plans. Of course, there are setbacks, but Virgin Galactic plan to have to pay flights beginning in late 2017, with tickets at $250,000 each. Expensive? Yes! But there are over 20,000 people who have expressed interest, despite the tragic death of a co-pilot during a test flight accident.

It seems that people who want to take short zero gravity suborbital flights are fully aware of the dangers and are willing to take the risk. It is also worth noting that there were almost 2000 billionaires in the world in 2016, and that number is growing. So entrepreneurs like Richard Branson may represent the tip of the iceberg of young rich investors who want to make their childhood dreams of space travel come true.

Obviously, the key to the success of any business venture is to ensure that the price of the product maximises sales and to reduce the very high costs of the vehicles and rockets needed to do this. Currently, space vehicles can only be used once, so the race is on to develop reusable space vehicles. It is this reusability that will break the ‘cost-barrier’ and bring this activity into the price bracket where middle class and moderately wealthy people can aﬀord it.

So what would you pay for a zero-gravity sub-orbital space trip? A recent, unscientific study, amongst US millennials (people who became adults around the year 2000) suggested that if the price of the flights was reduced by a factor of five – a figure entirely possible given the progress being made with reusable vehicles – the yield would be about $20 billion a year of revenues for the space tourism industry.

Twenty billion dollars is an interesting figure, as it is about the same amount generated each year by the film industry in the US through ticket, DVD and other sales. So now it is possible to make an analogy between the business model of Hollywood and space travel. Which do you think is more expensive? A Hollywood blockbuster, or the cost of a space launch? Back in the 1960s and 1970s, a space launch cost hundreds of times more than a Hollywood film. But as more money came to be spent on Hollywood movies, the cost of space travel has been decreasing. One particularly illustrative example is the comparison between the film Avatar, a movie about life on an ‘exomoon,’ and the Kepler spacecraft. Both of these costs about $400 million dollars. So for about half a billion dollars, you can either get a film about life on other planets, or you can pay for a mission, which may actually find Earth-like worlds. As a scientist, which is the better deal?

So what really is in the future for space travel? Probably offers of suborbital travel by companies like Virgin Galactic will become fairly common after the initial teething phase is over. Other companies are developing space hotels, so people who can afford more than just the space trips can spend their money holidaying in space. All the technologies allowing this to happen are advancing very rapidly and most of this is happening in the private sector.

Space is going to get commercialised and this may not be a good thing. Do we really want to see massive advertising signs in space? The moon littered with commercial rubbish? If this happens it will be very hard to regulate. While there is in existence a Treaty of the Moon, to acknowledge that no one can own the Moon or Mars, not one space-faring country has signed it.

The future of space travel has never been more exciting than it is now. Young children with pictures of planets and space rockets on their bedroom have a greater chance than ever of actually going into space than ever before. But at what cost?

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Using Mathematics to Secure Our Money

Up until very recently people’s wealth, mostly coins and jewels, was kept safe under lock and key. Rich medieval families would keep a strongbox with a large key, both of which were carefully hidden in different places. later the box may have been kept in a bank. In either case, potential thieves would need to find both the box and the key. A similar principle was used for sending secret diplomatic and military messages. The messages were written in code with both the sender and the receiver having the key to the code. Thus, while the message could be discovered its meaning could only be found if the ‘key’ was also known. And so began a long-running battle between code-makers who tried to make better keys and code-breakers who sought ways of finding them.

Nowadays, cryptography is central to how our money is kept secure, even though we may not be aware of it. Our money is no longer in a tangible form, but in the form of information kept with our banks. To keep everyone involved happy, the messages initiated by our plastic cards have to be sent and received safely and the entire operation must be carried out with a high level of confidentiality and security.

On a practical level, it is clear that the work of code-makers has been introduced into our daily financial lives. Our credit cards have 16-digit numbers on the front and a 3-digit number on the back. They also contain a ‘chip’ that can do all sorts of mysterious operations with these numbers. Finally, we also have a Personal Identification Number which we all need to memorize. All these numbers form a type of cryptographic key. However, as we shall see, modern cryptosystems are very diﬀerent in the way the keys are used.

The main feature of the traditional systems was that only one key was needed by both the sender and the receiver to understand the message. However, the main problem was that the key itself needed to be communicated to both parties before they could use it. Obviously a major security risk. A very different approach was developed in the 1970s, based on a different way of using the keys. Now the main idea is that the typical user, let us call him Amir, has two keys; a ‘public key’ and a ‘private key’. The public key is used to encrypt messages that other people wish to send to Amir, and the private key is used by Amir to decrypt these messages. The security of the system is based on keeping Amir’s private key secret.

This system of public-key cryptography, known as RSA- from the names of the developers (Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman) – was developed in the late 1970s and is based on a collection of several mathematical algorithms. The first is a process that allows the user, Amir, to calculate two numerical keys: private and public, based on two prime numbers. To complete the RSA system, two more algorithms are then needed: one for encrypting messages and one for decrypting them.

The effectiveness of RSA depends on two things. It is eﬀicient, because the encryption and decryption algorithms used by participants are easy, in a technical sense they can be made precise. On the other hand, it is believed to be secure, because no one has found an easy way of decrypting the encrypted message without knowing Amir’s private key.

When the RSA system was first written about in Scientific American, the strength of the system was shown by challenging the readers to find the prime factors – the two original numbers – of a certain number with 129 digits. It took 17 years to solve this problem, using the combined efforts of over 600 people. So clearly it is a very secure system. Using mathematics in this way, scientists and technologists have enabled us to keep our money as secure as the rich medieval barons with their strong boxes and hidden keys.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 73 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Synaesthesia

Imagine a page with a square box in the middle. The box is lined with rows of the number 5, repeated over and over. All of the 5s are identical in size, font and colour, and equally distributed across the box. There is, however, a trick: among those 5s, hiding in plain sight is a single, capital letter S. Almost the same in shape, it is impossible to spot without straining your eyes for a good few minutes. Unless that is, you are a grapheme – colour synaesthete – a person who sees each letter and number in diﬀerent colours. With all the 5s painted in one colour and the rogue S painted in another, a grapheme – colour synaesthete will usually only need a split second to identify the latter.

Synaesthesia, loosely translated as “senses coming together” from the Greek words syn (“with”) and aesthesis (“sensation”), is an interesting neurological phenomenon that causes diﬀerent senses to be combined. This might mean that words have a particular taste (for example, the word “door” might taste like bacon), or that certain smells produce a particular colour. It might also mean that each letter and number has its own personality-the letter A might be perky, the letter B might be shy and self-conscious, etc. Some synaesthetes might even experience other people’s sensations, for example feeling pain in their chest when they witness a film character gets shot. The possibilities are endless: even though synaesthesia is believed to aﬀect less than 5% of the general population, at least 60 diﬀerent combinations of senses have been reported so far. What all these sensory associations have in common is that they are all involuntary and impossible to repress and that they usually remain quite stable over time.

Synaesthesia was first documented in the early 19th century by German physician Georg Sachs, who dedicated two pages of his dissertation on his own experience with the condition. It wasn’t, however, until the mid-1990s that empirical research proved its existence when Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues used fMRls on six synaesthetes and discovered that the parts of the brain associated with vision were active during auditory stimulation, even though the subjects were blindfolded.

What makes synaesthesia a particularly interesting condition is that it isn’t an illness at all. If anything, synaesthetes often report feeling sorry for the rest of the population, as they don’t have the opportunity to experience the world in a multisensory fashion like they do. Very few drawbacks have been described, usually minimal: for instance, some words might have an unpleasant taste (imagine the word “hello” tasting like spoilt milk), while some synaesthetes find it distressing when they encounter people with names which don’t reflect their personality (imagine meeting a very interesting person named “Lee”, when the letter E has a dull or hideous colour for you-or vice versa). Overall, however, synaesthesia is widely considered more of a blessing than a curse and it is often linked to intelligence and creativity, with celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Pharrell Williams claiming to have it.

Another fascinating side of synaesthesia is the way it could potentially benefit future generations. In a 2013 study, Dr Witthof and Dr Winawer discovered that grapheme-colour synaesthetes who had never met each other before experienced strikingly similar pairings between graphemes and colours-pairings which were later traced back to a popular set of Fischer-Price magnets that ten out of eleven participants distinctly remembered possessing as children. This was particularly peculiar as synaesthesia is predominantly considered to be a hereditary condition, and the findings suggested that a synaesthete’s environment might play a determining role in establishing synaesthetic associations. If that was true, researchers asked, then might it not be possible that synaesthesia can actually be taught?

As it turns out, the benefits of teaching synaesthesia would be tremendous. According to research conducted by Dr Clare Jonas at the University of East London, teaching people to create grapheme-colour associations the same way as a synaesthete may have the possibility to improve cognitive function and memory. As she put it, ‘one possibility is guarding against cognitive decline in older people-using synaesthesia in the creation of mnemonics to remember things such as shopping lists.’ To that end, researchers in the Netherlands have already begun developing a web browser plug-in that will change the colours of certain letters. Rothen and his colleagues corroborate the theory: in a paper published in 2011, they suggest that synaesthesia might be more than a hereditary condition, as the non-synaesthetic subjects of their study were able to mimic synaesthetic associations long after leaving the lab.

There is obviously still a long way to go before we can fully understand synaesthesia and what causes it. Once we do, however, it might not be too long before we find out how to teach non-synaesthetes how to imitate its symptoms in a way that induces the same benefits 4.4% of the world’s population currently enjoy.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-28 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

The Taman Shud Case

It has been more than 65 years since the Taman Shud case was first opened, but this notoriously bizarre murder mystery from Australia continues to baffle scientific investigators and crime aficionados from around the world today.

On the morning of 1st December 1948, the body of an unidentified man was discovered propped against a rock wall on Somerton beach in Adelaide, opposite the Crippled Children’s home. The man was around 40-45 years old, had an athletic figure and was dressed in a smart suit and tie. He had no form of ID on him and all the labels on his clothes had been removed. The only things found on his body were an unused 10:50 a.m. ticket from Adelaide Railway Station to Henley Beach for the 30th November, a packet of chewing gums, an aluminium comb, a packet of cigarettes, a box of Bryan & May matches, sixpence and a small piece of paper with the words “Tamám shud” printed on it which means “ended” or “finished” in Persian. To make matters more interesting, the autopsy revealed that his death had been unnatural, but determined no cause of death: although he had clearly died of heart failure, his heart had been healthy and no signs of violence or poisoning were discovered in his system.

The case garnered media attention almost immediately, with dozens of people with missing friends and relatives travelling to Adelaide to have a look at the Somerton man’s body – but none of them being able to positively identify him. The next piece of evidence came when a journalist named Frank Kennedy discovered that the piece of paper with the printed words had been ripped from the last page of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a book of collected poems by Omar Khayyám, an 11th-century Persian poet. Following pleas by the police for the public to check their copies of The Rubáiyát for any missing pages, a local man brought in the correct copy, which he reported having found in the back seat of his car six months earlier, around the time the corpse had been discovered.

This is where things get even more complicated: in the back of the book, police discovered five lines of letters that appeared to be some sort of secret code. In the back cover, they also found a phone number which led them to a 27-year-old woman known as “Jestyn” who lived on Moseley Street, a stone’s throw from the crime scene. Jestyn denied any knowledge of the man and was generally guarded and non-committal throughout the police interview. Nevertheless, the police decided not to pursue the lead. As for the code? Despite years of research by cryptology experts and students, no one has managed to crack it to this day.

It’s not just the mysterious code, however, that makes this case so popular with crime fans. It’s been more than half a century since the man’s death, but his identity is still a mystery. Although copies of the victim’s fingerprints and photograph, as well as the name “T. Keane” (which was written on some labels fund in his suitcase), were sent around the world to all Commonwealth countries, the search turned up no results. Some theories regarding the man’s origins have arisen over the years, with many believing that he was American due to the predominantly US way the stripes slanted on his tie, his aluminium comb (rare in Australia at the time) and the belief that Americans were far more likely to chew gum than Australians in the 1940s. Others also theorise that he was Jestyn’s lover, and perhaps even a Soviet spy agent-although this all still remains just speculation for now.

Interest in the case was rekindled in 2013, following an interview on the show 60 Minutes with Kate Thompson, the daughter of “Jestyn”-whose actual name was revealed to be Jo Thompson. Kate Thompson claimed that her mother had lied to the police about not knowing the Somerton Man. She also said her mother was a Soviet spy with a “dark side” and that she might’ve been responsible for the man’s murder. Also participating in the show were Roma and Rachel Egan, wife and daughter respectively of Kate Thompson’s late brother Robin, whom many believe to have been the Somerton man’s son. The two women have backed a request to get the man’s body exhumed in the interest of proving this claim, which they also believe to be correct. A similar bid had been rejected previously in 2011 by Attorney-General John Rau, citing insufficient “public interest reasons”. There is currently a petition on Change.org, as well as an lndieGoGo campaign to raise funds in support of solving the case.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Coinage in Ancient Greece

There are more than 170 official national currencies currently in circulation around the world and while they may differ greatly in value, most show a high degree of commonality when it comes to their design. Typically, a coin or banknote will feature the effigy of a notable politician, monarch or other personality from the country of origin on one side and a recognisable state symbol (e.g. a building or an animal) on the reverse. This pattern, which has been around for more than 21 centuries, originated in ancient Greece.

Prior to the invention of legal tender, most transactions in the ancient world took the form of trading a product or service for another. As sea trade grew in the Mediterranean, however, the once-popular barter system became hard to maintain for two reasons: firstly, because it was tricky to calculate the value of each item or service in relation to another, and secondly, because carrying large goods (such as animals) on boats to do trade with neighbouring cities was difficult and inconvenient. Therefore, the need soon arose for a commonly recognised unit that would represent a set value-what is known today as a currency. As Aristotle explains in Politics, metal coins naturally became the most popular option due to the fact that they were easy to carry, and didn’t run the risk of expiring. According to ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the first coins were invented in 620 BC in the town of Lydia, although some theorise that they actually originated in the city of Ionia. (Coins had already existed for nearly 400 years in China, unbeknownst to Europeans.)

Much like with every other form of ancient Greek art, the history of ancient Greek coins can be divided into three distinct chronological periods: the Archaic (600-480 BC), the Classic (480-330 BC) and the Hellenistic Period (330-1st century BC). As ancient Greece was not a united country like today, but rather comprised of many independent city-states known as poleis, each state produced its own coins. The island of Aegina was the first to mint silver coins, perhaps adopting the new system upon witnessing how successfully it had facilitated trade for the lonians. Aegina being the head of a confederation of seven states, it quickly influenced other city-states in the Mediterranean and the new method of trade soon became widespread. Up until approximately 510 BC, when Athens began producing its own coin, the Aegina coin – which featured a turtle on its surface was the most predominant in the region.

The tetradrachm, Athens’s new coin bearing the picture of an owl on its obverse as a tribute to the city’s protector, the goddess Athena, brought with it a shift in the world of coinage. Prior to the tetradrachm, Athenians had been using simple iron rods known as ‘obols’ for currency. As the average human hand could grasp about six obols, that number soon came to represent a ‘drachma’ (from the Greek verb ‘dratto’, which means ‘to grasp’)-so the new tetradrachm had the same value as 24 obols. With Athens continually growing in power, the tetradrachm soon replaced-the Aegina ‘turtle’ as the most preponderant coin in the region. It was around that time that an agreement akin to the way the EU’s euro currency functions also appeared, with different coins from all over the Mediterranean being made to the same standards as the Athenian coin (albeit with each city’s own symbols on them) and being used interchangeably among the trading city-states.

Coinage soon spread beyond those city-states. Romans abandoned the bronze bars they’d been using in favour of coins around the year 300 BC, and Alexander the Great and his father King Philip of Macedonia began to produce massive quantities of coins to fund their military escapades around the same time. It was with the death of the latter, in 336 BC, that the Hellenistic Period began. Two things characterise the Hellenistic Period: the introduction of a “type” (the design that coins were stamped with) on the reverse of the coins, and mass production, which mostly took place in kingdoms beyond the Greek city-states, such as Egypt, Syria and the far east. Another new feature, which was heavily criticised by the Greeks, was the introduction of profiles of kings and other important living figures as stamps in lieu of the traditional symbols of animals and buildings. Athens, still a powerful city at the time, eschewed these designs and continued to produce its own tetradrachm coins, even introducing-a new-style coin characterised by broad, thin flans-a design which became popular across the Aegean and lasted until the spread of Roman rule over Greece.

It’s not difficult to see why ancient Greek coins continue to fascinate coin collectors and historians today. They marked the beginning of a new era in business and introduced a model of trade in Europe that is still present nowadays; they greatly influenced the design of modern coinage, with symbols such as the owl (which can be seen on the Greek version of the euro today) and portraits of important personalities; and, since they were hand-made to high technical standards representative of ancient Greek perfectionism, many are even remarkable in their own right, as tiny metal works of art.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 74 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Recent years have seen a barrage of dystopian Young Adult novels grow in popularity almost overnight – from The Hunger Games to The Maze Runner, Divergent, and The Knife of Never Letting Go. These novels, set in post-apocalyptic, totalitarian or otherwise ruthless and dehumanising worlds, have gained such momentum that the trend has seeped into the film and TV industry as well, with multimillion-dollar movie adaptations and popular TV series gracing the big and small screen. But what is it about dystopian stories that make them so appealing to readers and audiences alike?

Dystopias are certainly nothing new. The word “dystopia” itself, meaning “bad place” (from the Greek dys and topos), has been around since at least the 19th century, and Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Orwell’s 1984 (1949), commonly regarded as the first dystopian novels that ft firmly into the genre, were published more than 75 years ago. Even the first YA dystopian novel is older than 20-Lois Lawry’s The Giver, which came out in 1993. While these are individual examples from previous decades, however, one would be hard-pressed to find a YA shelf in any bookstore nowadays. that isn’t stocked with dozens of dystopian titles.

According to film critic Dana Stevens, it is the similarities that can be drawn between dystopian settings and the daily lives of teenagers that make YA dystopian stories so captivating: the high school experience involves the same social structure as the Hunger Games arena, for example, or the faction-divided world of Divergent. Teenagers might not literally have to fight each other to the death or go through horrendous trials to join a virtue-based faction for the rest of their lives, but there’s something in each story that connects to their own backgrounds. The “cutthroat race for high school popularity” might feel like an “annual televised fight”, and the pressure to choose a clique at school bears a strong resemblance to Tris’s faction dilemma in Divergent.

Justin Scholes’s and Jon Ostenson’s 2013 study reports similar findings, identifying themes such as “inhumanity and isolation”, the struggle to establish an identity and the development of platonic and romantic relationships as alluring agents. Deconstructing a score of popular YA dystopian novels released between 2007-2011, Scholes and Ostenson argue that the topics explored by dystopian literature are appealing to teenagers because they are “an appropriate fit with the intellectual changes that occur during adolescence”; as teenagers gradually grow into adults, they develop an interest in social issues and current affairs. Dystopian novels, according to author and book critic Dave Astor, feel honest in that regard as they do not patronise their readers, nor do they attempt to sugar-coat reality.

All of this still does not explain why this upsurge in YA dystopian literature is happening now, though. Bestselling author Naomi Klein offers a diﬀerent explanation: the dystopian trend, she says, is a “worrying sign” of times to come. What all these dystopian stories have in common is that they all assume that “environmental catastrophe” is not only imminent but also completely inevitable. Moral principles burgeon through these works of fiction, particularly for young people, as they are the ones who will bear the brunt of climate change. YA author Todd Mitchell makes a similar point, suggesting that the bleak futures portrayed in modern YA literature are a response to “social anxiety” brought forth by pollution and over-consumption.

The threat of natural disasters is not the only reason YA dystopian novels are so popular today, however. As author Claudia Gray notes, what has also changed in recent years is humanity’s approach to personal identity and young people’s roles in society. Adolescents, she says, are increasingly dragooned into rigid moulds through “increased standardised testing, increased homework levels, etc.” YA dystopian novels come into play because they present protagonists who refuse to be defined by someone else, role models who battle against the status quo.

So, how long is this YA dystopian trend going to last? If The Guardian is to be believed, it’s already been replaced by a new wave of “gritty” realism as seen in the likes of The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. Profits have certainly dwindled for dystopian film franchises such as Divergent. This hasn’t stopped film companies from scheduling new releases, however, and T series such as The 100 is still on the air. Perhaps the market for dystopian novels has stagnated-only time will tell. One thing is for certain, however: the changes the trend has effected on YA literature are here to stay.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Plant Wars

Mention the words “chemical warfare” or “deployed armies” in any conversation, and your interlocutor might immediately assume you’re talking about wars between humans. In reality, however, there are other kinds of wars out there where these techniques are employed far more frequently and in a far more intricate manner: those waged in the plant kingdom.

We might not normally think of plants this way, but much like humans and animals, they too have to fight for survival on a daily basis. Nutrients, light and water are the three things any plant needs in order to grow; unfortunately, none of these is ample in supply, which means that the competition between plants can grow fierce. Some plants and trees are at an architectural advantage: taller trees have greater access to natural light, while plants with deeper roots have the ability to absorb more water and nutrients. Others, though, manage to defend their territory through “allelopathy”, or chemical warfare.

So how does this chemical warfare work exactly? As Dr Robin Andrews explains, plants convert the nutrients they absorb from the ground to energy with the aid of a type of organic compound known as metabolites. These metabolites can be divided into two categories: primary and secondary. Primary metabolites are what allows a plant to live, playing a direct role in its growth and development, and are thus present in every plant. Secondary metabolites, on the other hand, can vary from plant to plant and often play the role of a defence mechanism against neighbouring competitors.

Out of these secondary metabolites, there are two that are incredibly interesting: DIBOA and DIMBOA. These two cyclic hydroxamic acids were at the forefront of a study conducted by Sascha Venturelli and colleagues in 2015, which found that once they are released into the soil by the plants that produce them, they degenerate into toxic substances that have the power to inhibit growth in nearby plants once they soak them up. As Dr Claude Becker notes, “the phenomenon” itself “has been known for years”, but we now finally understand the “molecular mechanism” behind it-and its supreme intricacy would put to shame any chemical bombs created by humans.

But plants do not just fight wars against other plants; chemical warfare also comes into play in their defence against herbivores. As Brent Mortensen of Iowa State University describes, plants “actively resist” attacks made by herbivores through qualitative and quantitative chemical defences. What’s the diﬀerence? Qualitative defences can be lethal even in small doses, and are often employed to protect “young” or “tender leaves or seeds”. They can also be recycled when no longer necessary. Quantitative defences, in contrast, are only effective “in larger doses”, but unlike qualitative defences, can protect the plant against all herbivores. Quantitative defences are also not as immediately lethal, as they usually lead to indigestion, pain, irritation of the mouth and throat, and inflammation or swelling in the skin.

And what about the “deployed armies” I mentioned before? Well, chemical attacks are not the only way plants elect to defend themselves against herbivores. Some plants, such as the African acacia, also recruit armies to assist them in their war. As Angela White of the University of Sheffield explains, the acacia tree has “hollowed-out structures” which invite ant colonies to build a home in them by providing not just shelter, but also food in the form of special nectar. In return, ants protect them against herbivores-and this includes not just the small ones like bugs, but also the ones as big as giraﬀes.

At this point, of course, you might be wondering what all this has to do with you. The territorial nature of plants might be fascinating in its own right, but what is its application in real life? Well, Dr Venturelli of the 2015 study mentioned before has an answer for you: apparently, certain allelochemicals-the aforementioned chemical compounds that are responsible for stunting growth in the plants-have been fund to have an effect on human cancer cells, too. According to Michael Bitzer and Ulrich Lauer of the same study, “clinical trials at the University Clinics Tübingen currently assess the efficacy of these plant toxins in cancer patients”. This means that comprehending the way plants defend themselves against the enemies in their environment might not just be of interest to plant biologists alone, but to medical researchers as well.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Deafhood

At this point, you might be wondering: what does ‘deafhood’ mean? Is it a synonym for ‘deafness’? Is it a slightly more politically correct term to express the very same concept you’ve grown accustomed to-a person who lacks the power of hearing, or a person whose hearing is impaired? What’s wrong with terms like ‘hard of hearing’ or ‘deafness’? Have they not represented the deaf community just fine for the past few centuries? Who came up with the term ‘Deafhood’ anyway, and why?

The term ‘Deafhood’ was first coined in 1993 by Dr Paddy Ladd, a deaf scholar in the Deaf Studies Department at the University of Bristol in England. First explored through his doctoral dissertation in 1998, and later elaborated on in his 2003 book, ‘Understanding Deaf Culture – In Search of Deafhood‘, the idea behind Deafhood is twofold: first, it seeks to collect everything that is already known about the life, culture, politics, etc. of Sign Language Peoples (SLPs); secondly, it attempts to remove the limitations imposed on SLPs through their colonization from hearing people.

In order to understand what Deafhood represents, it’s first important to understand what is meant by colonisation. To do that, we need to examine two terms: Oralism and Audism. Oralism is a philosophy that first emerged in the late 19th century, and which suggests that reduced use of sign language would be more beneficial to SLPs, as it would allow them to integrate better to the hearing world. In that respect, sign language is dismissively regarded as a mere obstacle to listening skills and acquisition of speech-treated, in effect, in the same manner as the languages of other peoples who were oppressed and colonised, e.g. the Maori in New Zealand, or the Aborigines in Australia. Audism, however, is an even more sinister ideology: first coined in 1975 by Dr Tom Humphries of the University of California in San Diego, it describes the belief that deaf people are somehow inferior to hearing people, and that deafhood – or, in this case, we should say ‘deafness’ – is a flaw, a terrible disability that needs to be eliminated. It is the effect of these two ideologies that Deafhood seeks to counter, by presenting SLPs in a positive light, not as patients who require treatment.

But even if we understand the oppression that SLPs have suffered at the hands of hearing people since the late 1800s, and even if we acknowledge that ‘deafness’ is a medical term with negative connotations that need to be replaced, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to explain what the term Deafhood represents exactly. This is because Deafhood is, as Dr Donald Grushkin puts it, a ‘physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, cultural and linguistic’ journey that every deaf person is invited-but not obligated-to embark on.

Deafhood is essentially a search for understanding: what does being ‘Deaf’ mean? How did deaf people in the past define themselves, and what did they believe to be their reasons for existing before Audism was conceived? Why are some people born deaf? Are they biologically defective, or are there more positive reasons for their existence? What do terms like ‘Deaf Art’ or ‘Deaf Culture’ actually mean? What is ‘the Deaf Way’ or doing things? True Deafhood is achieved when a deaf person feels comfortable with who they are and connected to the rest of the deaf community through use of their natural language, but the journey there might differ.

Aside from all those questions, however, Deafhood also seeks to counter the eﬀect of what is known as ‘neo-eugenics’. Neo-eugenics, as described by Patrick Boudreault at the 2005 California Association of the Deaf Conference, is a modern manifestation of what has traditionally been defined as ‘eugenics’, i.e. an attempt to eradicate any human characteristics which are perceived as negative. Deaf people have previously been a target of eugenicists through the aforementioned ideologies of Audism and Oralism, but recent developments in science and society-such as cochlear implants or genetic engineering-mean that Deafhood is once again under threat, and needs to be protected. The only way to do this is by celebrating the community’s history, language, and countless contributions to the world, and confronting those who want to see it gone.

So, how do we go forward? We should start by decolonising SLPs-by embracing Deafhood for what it is, removing all the negative connotations that surround it and accepting that deaf people are neither broken nor incomplete. This is a task not just for hearing people, but for deaf people as well, who have for decades internalised society’s unfavourable views of them. We should also seek recognition of the deaf community’s accomplishments, as well as official recognition of sign languages around the world by their respective governments. Effectively, what we should do is ask ourselves: how would the Deaf community be like, had it never been colonised by the mainstream world? And whatever it is it would be like, we should all together-hearing and Deaf alike-strive to achieve it.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 75 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

A Brief History of London Underground

It is a staple of not just the capital of the UK, but of British culture in general. It is used by more than 1.3 billion people per year, and it is more than 400 kilometres long. It has survived fires, floods, terrorist attacks and two world wars, and it has been described as “form of mild torture”, a “twopenny tube” and a system of “padded cells”. It is the London Underground, and it has been around for more than 150 years. But how did it all start?

The idea of an intricate train network running underneath a vibrant and heavily populated city like London might not be such a novelty in contemporary society, but it certainly was one back in the early 19th century when it was first conceived. In fact, the only reason such a notion-at the time described by The Times as an “insult to common sense” – was even entertained in the first place was pure desperation: during the Victorian era, London roads were insufferably overcrowded, and a Royal Commission of 1846 meant that central London was out of bounds for railway companies, whose mainline railways all had to stop just outside the City and West End. A way to connect Paddington, Euston and King’s Cross was, therefore, a necessity to relieve the congested streets, and Charles Pearson, the man who originally envisioned a Fleet Valley rail tunnel just fifteen years after the first steam passenger service was opened in 1830, couldn’t have come up with his plan for what was to become London Underground at a better time.

And so the story begins, in 1863, with the opening of the Metropolitan Railway, which ran between Paddington (called Bishop’s Road at the time) and Farringdon, serving a total of eight stations. Five years later, in 1868, the first section of the Metropolitan District Railway (now incorporated into the District and Circle lines) followed, running from South Kensington to Westminster. Within the first fifty years, much of what is known as Zone 1 of the London Underground system today would be built, all funded by private developers. (Unfortunately for them, none would get the financial returns they had been promised.)

People nowadays might complain about the atmosphere in London Underground, particularly in the summer, but it is nothing compared to the conditions the Metropolitan Railway’s passengers had to weather during the first years of its operation. So foul was the smell in the tunnels that spread under the city that drivers were allowed to grow beards, in hopes that this would protect them from inhaling the billowing smokes. (According to the account of a civil servant from that time, the stink in the underground was comparable to that of a ‘crocodile’s breath’.) Nevertheless, the line was a smashing success from the very beginning, with more than 11 million passengers in just the first year.

The second spate of construction works arrived with the development of electric traction at the end of the 19th century, which meant that trains no longer had to run through shallow tunnels to allow room for the steam produced by the engines to escape. Instead, new tunnels could now be dug, cutting deeper into the belly of the city. The first deep-level electric railway was opened in December 1890 by the City and South London Railway, connecting King William Street to Stockwell. In the following fifty years, the existing tube lines would systematically be extended, branching into London’s various suburbs. Surprisingly, it would take until 1968 for an entirely new line to open again: the Victoria Line (provisionally named the Viking Line), which was followed by the Jubilee Line eleven years later.

As I mentioned above, London Underground’s first lines were built by private developers, meaning that each line was owned by different companies. This changed in 1933 when all of those companies were nationalised and merged to form the London Passenger Transport Board, which controlled London’s railway, tram, trolleybus, bus and coach services. (Coincidentally, 1933 was also the year the first diagram of the iconic Underground map was first presented by Harry Beck.) The London Passenger Transport Board itself was nationalised in 1948.

The next wave of changes came at the turn of the 21st century, and has continued to unfold well into its second decade: in 2003, the famous Oyster card was introduced-a wireless travel card that can be charged up with the money to be used for single fares or weekly, monthly, and yearly travel tickets. Busking was also legalised the same year. In 2007, London Underground achieved its next important milestone, reaching 1 billion passengers per year, and in 2009 it was named the best Metro system in Europe. In early 2016, a new Crossrail line named after Queen Elizabeth II was announced, which is due to open in late 2018. This will be the first new line in nearly forty years. And the story goes on.

So, there you have it. The underground system that every Londoner loves to hate, but without which London never would have become the sort of financial hub and melting pot it is today. A history spanning across three centuries, all of which contributed to the creation of not just a transport system, but a unique, daring brand, and a cultural phenomenon the likes of which the world had never seen before. Perhaps it is, as its critics contend, too busy, too hot, too pricey and too grimy. But it is also a remarkable achievement, for Londoners and non-Londoners alike, and it should be treasured regardless of its shortcomings.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-28 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

The Pioneer Anomaly

It’s been more than four decades of incessant theorising and perplexed head-scratching for scientists, engineers and astronomy fans across the globe, but thanks to a recent study published in the journal Physical Review Letter, we finally have some answers to what has been causing the deceleration of NASA’s Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft-otherwise known as the “Pioneer Anomaly”.

Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched in 1972 and 1973 respectively and were the first spacecraft to travel beyond the solar system’s main asteroid belt. Their claim to fame, however, changed the moment they skirted past Jupiter and began their journey towards Saturn, as it was at that point-by then already the early 1980sthat scientists and navigators discovered something had gone terribly awry: the two spacecraft seemed to be slowing down.

As Bruce Betts of The Planetary Society explains, the scientists involved in the project had anticipated most of the slowing down due to “the gravitational pull of the Sun and other massive objects in the solar system”. In fact, when the deceleration was first observed, it was so small that it was dismissed as an insignificant, temporary phenomenon, and attributed to the effect of dribbles of leftover propellant still in the fuel lines after controllers had cut off the propellant. It would take until 1998 for a group of scientists led by John Anderson of Jet Propulsion Laboratory 0PL) to confirm that, even at 13 kilometres from the sun, the two Pioneer spacecraft were still losing speed at a rate of approximately 300 inches per day squared (0.9 nanometres per second squared). The first theories of what might be the cause followed soon thereafter.

The late 1990s were an important time for the field of astrophysics, with the Hubble Space Telescope observations of distant supernovae having only in 1998 confirmed that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Anderson et al’s confirmation of the Pioneer Anomaly the same year seemed to offer a demonstration of the very same phenomenon of expansion within our own solar system-a theory that plenty of scientists quickly embraced. Others yet ascribed the deceleration to dark matter, while some suggested the spacecraft, as Toth and Turyshev put it, might’ve “unearthed the first evidence of extra dimensions”. The possibility that a new law of physics directly contradicting Einstein’s general theory of relativity might be to blame was also considered.

In 2004, Turyshev decided to get to the bottom of the Pioneer anomaly. Since the two spacecraft had stopped communicating with earth (Pioneer 11 first in 1995, and Pioneer 10 less than a decade later in 2003), all he could depend on were old communications and data; so, with the monetary aid of the Planetary Society and its eager, dedicated members, he began to gather the data from a number of different sources. There were two types of data that he needed to procure for his research: the “housekeeping data” engineers had used in order to monitor spacecraft operation, and Doppler data.

The data came in all sorts of forms: some were in digitised files offered by JPL navigators (a lucky find, as punch cards were still the preferred method of data storage back in the 1970s), while others were in magnetic tapes accidentally discovered under a staircase in JPL. All in all, there were more than 43 gigabytes of data-an admirable result, considering that at the time the two Pioneer spacecraft were launched there had been no formal requirement that NASA archive any of the records collected, and it had only been due to sheer luck and a former Pioneer team member’s diligence that any telemetry data had been saved at all.

Once all the data had been collected, the formidable task of going through the volumes of information began. It was neither quick nor easy, and it required the assistance of a variety of people, including JPL engineers and retired TRW engineers who had worked on the Pioneer project, who had to consult with each other in order to interpret old blueprints and reconstruct the probes’ 3D structure. In the end, however, the team’s perseverance paid off, and Turyshev’s suspicions-which had initiated the study-were confirmed: it was the electrical subsystems and the decay of plutonium in the Pioneer power sources that were to blame for the spacecraft’s bizarre trajectory-more specifically the heat they emitted. This was corroborated by the discovery that other spacecraft with different designs had not been affected in the way Pioneer 10 and 11 had.

As Turyshev said, speaking of the study, “the story is finding its conclusion because it turns out that standard physics prevail. While of course, it would’ve been exciting to discover a new kind of physics, we did solve a mystery.”

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

The Future of Food

When we think of the future, most of us imagine hoverboards and flying cars, exciting new technological advancements and developments, perhaps even scientific achievements and breakthroughs. What we spend little time contemplating, however, is what we will be eating. Nevertheless, food futurologists and organisations around the world have examined the prospects, and they might, at first glance at least, appear less than thrilling.

One thing that’s for certain, according to food futurologist Morgaine Gaye, is that meat will once again become a luxury. “In the West,” she proclaims, “many of us have grown up with cheap, abundant meat.” Unfortunately though, rising prices are spelling the doom of this long-lasting trend. “As a result, we are looking for new ways to fill the meat gap.” Professor Sheenan Harpaz of the Volgani Centre in Beit Dagan, Israel, agrees: “As the price of raising livestock goes up, we’ll eat less beef.” So, what will we eat?

According to Harpaz as well as Yoram Kapulnik, the director of the Volcani Centre, the answer to that question lies with our reliance on genetic engineering. As overpopulation and resource depletion will inevitably lead to a struggle to feed the masses, they predict, the food industry will experience a shift in focus from “form” to “function”. “Functional foods” will be genetically modified to provide additional value, and they will be targeted at each group of the population-with foods customised to meet the needs of men, women, the elderly, etc. “Once we have a complete picture of the human genome,” explains Kapulnik, “we’ll know how to create food that better meets our needs.”

But food still has to come from somewhere and leading food futurologists and other scientists are firm on their belief that the foods of the future will come from insects. “They are nutritionally excellent,” says Arnold van Huis, lead author of Edible Insects, a 2013 report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. Not only that but, according to researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, they are also full of protein, and on par with ordinary meat in terms of nutritional value. Insects are already a part of people’s diets in various cultures in Asia and Africa; however, one major hurdle that will need to be overcome with regards to Western countries is the presentation. As Gaye suggests, “things like crickets and grasshoppers will [have to] be ground down and used as an ingredient in things like burgers”. There is already such an initiative in Kenya and Cambodia (the quite successful WinFood project), and the Netherlands is already investing into research on insect-based diets and the development of insect farm legislation.

Another source of future food, according to Dr Craig Rose of the Seaweed Health Foundation, could be algae. Algae, like insects, are extremely nutritious and already popular in Asia, and could be the perfect solution for three very important reasons: first of all, they can grow both in fresh and salt water-a notable advantage, considering the shortage of land we are bound to experience in the future; secondly, they grow at an astounding pace the likes of which no other plant has ever been found to achieve before; and finally, with 10,000 different types of seaweed around the world, they can open up an exciting world of new flavours for us to discover. But that’s not all: several scientists believe that the biofuel we would extract from algae could lead to a diminished need for fossil fuels, thereby improving our carbon footprint. Algae would, much like insects, need to be refashioned to appeal to Westerners, but research such as the one conducted by scientists at Sheffield Hallam University, who replaced salt in bread and processed foods with seaweed granules with efficacious results, suggests that this is unlikely to pose a problem.

The final option brought forth by scientists is lab-grown, artificial meat. In early 2012, a group of Dutch scientists managed to produce synthetic meat using stem cells originating from cows, and there are already a few companies, such as the San Francisco start-up Impossible Foods and the Manhattan Beach-based Beyond Meat, which are dedicated to manufacturing plant-made meat. The benefits of a worldwide move towards in-vitro meat would be tremendous for the environment, which would see a reduction in energy and water waste and greenhouse gas emissions, and would significantly reduce animal suﬀering. There is one hindrance to such plans at the moment, sadly, and that’s the price: the first artificial burger, grown at Maastricht University in 2013, cost a whopping €250,000 (£190,545) to make.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 76 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

In 1979 the Chinese government introduced a policy that no other country had ever introduced before. Each couple was restricted by law to having to only one child. This one-child policy, although highly controversial, is believed to have helped prevent the rapidly growing Chinese population from becoming unsustainable.

In 2015 the one-child policy was finally relaxed, allowing couples to now have two children. According to the Communist Party of China, 400 million births have been prevented since the policy was introduced, and the Chinese population has become sustainable. Meanwhile, other developing countries like India and Nigeria, where such a policy has never been nationally enforced, continue to struggle with population explosions.

On a statistical level, it is easy to suggest that the one-child policy has been rather successful in China. It has lessened the negative environmental impact that rapid industrialisation and population growth have had on China since being implemented. However, there are plenty of grounds for criticism, especially from human rights activists, as well as advocates for freedom of choice. The main question raised by such a move is should a government be allowed to control family size, or is that too much control over individual liberty?

In the poorer rural areas of China, where life has changed very little for hundreds of years, farmers often used to rely on their children to help out on the farm. It was common for couples to have many children because infant mortality was high and the burden of work could not be handled by just a few people. It was generally considered that a girl was bad luck in this case because she would not be able to do as much manual labour. However backwards this way of thinking may seem to many people, the sad reality was that the instances of infanticide of female babies began to rise rapidly in the 1980s in China, as a result of the one-child policy.

Despite this raising other important concerns such as gender inequality in China, the growing problem of infanticide did lead to change; the government relaxed the one-child policy so that a couple could have a second child, but only if their first child was a girl. On the other hand, the government has also faced heavy criticism of its methods of trying to enforce the one-child policy in the past. In rural areas, it was very difficult for the government to enforce the policy, and so only really applied in urban areas of the country.

In extreme cases, the government in China would force pregnant women who already had one child to have an abortion. However, they were also forced to introduce laws in 2005 outlawing sex-selective abortions, which were increasingly common choices being made by couples who knew the sex of their baby to be female before birth.

Whilst true statistics are difficult to obtain from China, it is thought that there are now 60 million more men than women in China. This gender imbalance is almost certainly an indirect result of the one-child policy. Another theory suggests that there are unoﬀicially millions of more women in China who were never registered with local authorities by their parents through fear of being fined or losing their child.

The necessity of having children in some parts of China is something many in the West have trouble understanding. After all, increasing numbers of adults in the West now choose not to have children purely for environmental reasons.

Research by statisticians at Oregon State University in America fund that because of the average American’s huge carbon footprint, having a child in America increased a person’s long-term carbon output by up to 20 times. T put this into greater context, the long-term pollution output of a child born in the U.S. can be up to 160 times higher than that of a child born in Bangladesh.

One of the reasons in China for changing the one-child policy to a two-child policy in 2015 was that the original policy was almost redundant anyway. The original legislation was only aimed at a single generation. Under the ruling, any couple in China who were both sole children to their respective parents were allowed to have two children. Therefore the two-child policy was already in eﬀect for most couples already by 2015.

China has a rapidly developing economy, and with such development comes a higher average carbon output per person. This leads some authorities to worry that the already-strained environment in China will suffer even more in decades to come. Having said that, as China continues to experience such rapid economic development, Chinese people are enjoying increased personal wealth and financial stability. With that may also come the philosophy of choice, such as having the luxury to choose not to have children purely for environmental reasons, just like in the U.S.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

The Eﬀects of Deforestation

Every year it is estimated that roughly 5.2 million hectares (52,000 km2 of the forest is lost worldwide. That is a net figure, meaning it represents the area of the forest not replaced. T put this size in context, that is an area of land the size of Croatia lost every single year. There is a wide range of negative effects from deforestation that range from the smallest biological processes right up to the health of our planet as a whole. On a human level, millions of lives are affected every year by flooding and landslides that often result from deforestation.

There are 5 million people living in areas deemed at risk of flooding in England and Wales. Global warming, in part, worsened by deforestation, is responsible for higher rainfalls in Britain in recent decades. Although it can be argued that demand for cheap housing has meant more houses are being built in at-risk areas, the extent of the flooding is increasing. The presence of forests and trees along streams and rivers acts like a net. The trees catch and store water, but also hold the soil together, preventing erosion. By removing the trees, the land is more easily eroded increasing the risk of landslides and also, after precipitation, less water is intercepted when trees are absent and so more enters rivers, increasing the risk of flooding.

It is well documented that forests are essential to the atmospheric balance of our planet, and therefore our own wellbeing too. Scientists agree unequivocally that global warming is a real and serious threat to our planet. Deforestation releases 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions. One-third of the carbon dioxide emissions created by human activity comes from deforestation around the globe.

In his book Collapse, about the disappearance of various ancient civilisations, writer Jared Diamond theorises about the decline of the natives of Easter Island. European missionaries first arrived on the island in 1722. Research suggested that the island, whose population was in the region of two to three thousand at the time, had once been much higher at fifteen thousand people. This small native population survived on the island despite there being no trees at all. Archaeological digs uncovered evidence of trees once flourishing on the island. The uncontrolled deforestation not only led to the eradication of all such natural resources from the island but also greatly impacted the number of people the island could sustain. This underlines the importance of forest management, not only for useful building materials but also for food as well.

Forestry management is important to make sure that stocks are not depleted and that whatever is cut down is replaced. Without sustainable development of forests, the levels of deforestation are only going to worsen as the global population continues to rise, creating a higher demand for the products of forests. Just as important though is consumer awareness. Simple changes in consumer activity can make a huge difference. These changes in behaviour include, but are not limited to, recycling all recyclable material; buying recycled products and looking for the FSC sustainably sourced forest products logo on any wood or paper products.

Japan is often used as a model of exemplary forest management. During the Edo period between 1603 and 1868 drastic action was taken to reverse the country’s serious exploitative deforestation problem. Whilst the solution was quite complex, one key aspect of its success was the encouragement of cooperation between villagers. This process of collaboration and re-education of the population saved Japan’s forests. According to the World Bank, 68.5% of Japanese land area is covered by forest, making it one of the best performing economically developed nations in this regard.

There is, of course, a negative impact of Japan’s forest management. There is still a high demand for wood products in the country, and the majority of these resources are simply imported from other, poorer nations. Indonesia is a prime example of a country that has lost large swaths of its forest cover due to foreign demand from countries like Japan. This is in addition to other issues such as poor domestic forest management, weaker laws and local corruption. Located around the Equator, Indonesia has an ideal climate for the rainforest. Sadly much of this natural resource is lost every year. Forest cover is now down to less than 51% from 65.4% in 1990. This alone is proof that more needs to be done globally to manage forests.

China is leading the way in recent years for replenishing their forests. The Chinese government began the Three-North Shelter Forest Program in 1978, with aims to complete the planting of a green wall, measuring 2,800 miles in length by its completion in 2050. Of course, this program is in many ways forced by nature itself; the expansion of the Gobi Desert threatened to destroy thousands of square miles of grassland annually through desertification. This is a process often exacerbated by deforestation in the first place, and so represents an attempt to buck the trend. Forested land in China rose from 17% to 22% from 1990 to 2015 making China one of the few developing nations to reverse the negative trend.

Glossary

exemplary: serving as a perfect example

exacerbate: make worse

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Film Noir

After the Second World War, a curious change came over the outlook of Hollywood films. Rather than the positive, happy-ending stories that dominated the silver screen before the war, pessimism and negativity had entered American cinema. This post-war disillusionment was evident in Hollywood and the movement became known as film noir.

One would be mistaken to call film noir a genre. Unlike westerns or romantic comedies. film noir cannot be defined by conventional uses of setting or conflict in a way that is common to genre films. Film noir is more of a movement. pinned to one specific point in time in much the same way as Soviet Montage or German Expressionism was. Instead, the defining quality of film noir was linked to tone, lighting and an often a sombre mood.

True film noir refers to Hollywood films of the 1940s and early 1950s that dealt with dark themes such as crime and corruption. These films were essentially critiquing certain aspects of American society in a way film had never done before. Since that time there have occasionally been other great noir films made, such as Chinatown, but the mood and tone are often diﬀerent to the original film noir movies. One possible reason for this is the time in which the films were made. A common perception of art is that it reflects the society and time in which it is made. That makes film noir of the Forties and Fifties quite inimitable because, luckily, the world has not had to endure a war of the scale and destruction of the Second World War again.

Paul Schrader, a writer of films like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, sees film noir as one of Hollywood’s best and least-known periods. In his essay Notes on Film Nair, he admits that classifying film noir is almost impossible because many films considered as film noir vary greatly in style. He observed that there were four main traditions in film noir. First were the films specifically about war and post-war disillusionment. Schrader believes these films were not only a reflection of the war but also a delayed reaction to the great economic depression of the 1930s. The trend in Hollywood throughout this period and into the war was to produce films aimed at keeping people’s spirits up, hence the positivity. As soon as the war ended, crime fiction started to become popular, which mirrored growing disillusionment in America. Films such as The Blue Dahlia and Dead Reckoning picked up on a trend started during the war with The Maltese Falcon in 1941, which is seen as the first example of film noir.

Another film noir tradition was post-war realism. This style of the film was similar to some European films of the same era, such as Italy’s neorealist films like Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and Roberto Rossellini’s Open City. Part of this style was created by filming in real locations and away from constructed sets. The honesty of this style of film suited the post-war mood in America and is demonstrated well in Jules Dassin’s Night and the City, much of which was filmed in and around London.

The third tradition of film noir according to Paul Schrader involves what he characterises as ‘The German Influence’. Especially during the 1920s German Expressionism was one of the most unique and creative firms of cinema. Many German, Austrian and Polish directors immigrated to America before or during the rise of Hitler and in part due to the increasing control and prevention of artistic freedom. Many of them, such as Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder, would find their way into the Hollywood system and to this day remain some of the most celebrated directors of all time.

It was the lighting developed in German Expressionism, in particular, that was most influential on film noir. The interplay of light and shadow created by chiaroscuro was highly suggestive of hidden darkness and was largely responsible for creating the mood and feeling of film noir. But it was the coupling of expressionist lighting with realistic settings that really gave film noir its authenticity. It is no surprise then that two of the most popular film noir feature films, Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Hole, were both directed by Billy Wilder.

The final tradition of film noir noted by Schrader is what he dubs ‘The Hard-Boiled Tradition’. He notes how American literature of the time was the driving force behind much of this style of film noir. Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain were tough, cynical and uncompromising and their work reflects this type of attitude. If German Expressionism influenced the visual aspect of film noir, it was this hard-boiled writing style that influenced the characters, stories and scripts depicted on screen. Raymond Chandler adapted the screenplay for the film noir classic Double Indemnity from a James M. Cain story. This writing team, with Billy Wilder, again directing, was the perfect combination for one of Hollywood’s most celebrated films.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 77 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

THE VALUE OF HANDWRITING

‘When I was in school in the I 970s,’ says Tammy Chou, ‘my end-of-term report included Handwriting as a subject alongside Mathematics and Physical Education, yet, by the time my brother started, a decade later, it had been subsumed into English. I learnt two scripts: printing and cursive, *while Chris can only print.’

The 2013 Common Core, a curriculum used throughout most of the US, requires the tuition of legible writing (generally printing) only in the first two years of school; thereafter, teaching keyboard skills is a priority.

‘I work in recruitment,’ continues Chou. ‘Sure, these days, applicants submit a digital CV and cover letter, but there’s still information interviewees need to fill out by hand, and I still judge them by the neatness of their writing when they do so. Plus there’s nothing more disheartening than receiving a birthday greeting or a condolence card with a scrawled message.’

Psychologists and neuroscientists may concur with Chou for diﬀerent reasons. They believe children learn to read faster when they start to write by hand, and they generate new ideas and retain information better. Karin James conducted an experiment at Indiana University in the US in which children who had not learnt to read were shown a letter on a card and asked to reproduce it by tracing, by drawing it on another piece of paper, or by typing it on a keyboard. Then, their brains were scanned while viewing the original image again. Children who had produced the freehand letter showed increased neural activity in the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the posterior parietal cortex – areas activated when adults read or write, whereas all other children displayed significantly weaker activation of the same areas.

James speculates that in handwriting, there is variation in the production of any letter, so the brain has to learn each personal font – each variant of ‘F’, for example, that is still ‘F’. Recognition of variation may establish the eventual representation more permanently than recognising a uniform letter printed by computer.

Victoria Berninger at the University of Washington studied children in the first two grades of school to demonstrate that printing, cursive, and keyboarding are associated with separate brain patterns. Furthermore, children who wrote by hand did so much faster than the typists, who had not been taught to touch type. Not only did the typists produce fewer words but also the quality of their ideas was consistently lower. Scans from the older children’s brains exhibited enhanced neural activity when their handwriting was neater than average, and, importantly, the parts of their brains activated are those crucial to working memory.

Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer have shown in laboratories and live classrooms that tertiary students learn better when they take notes by hand rather than inputting via keyboard. As a result, some institutions ban laptops and tablets in lectures and prohibit smartphone photography of lecture notes. Mueller and Oppenheimer also believe handwriting aids contemplation as well as memory storage.

Some learners of English whose native script is not the Roman alphabet have difficulty in forming several English letters: the lower case ‘b’ and ‘d’, ‘p’ and ‘q’, ‘n’ and ‘u’, ‘m’ and ‘w’ may be confused. This condition aﬀects a tiny minority of first-language learners and suﬀerers of brain damage. Called dysgraphia, it appears less frequently when writers use cursive instead of printing, which is why cursive has been posited as a cure for dyslexia.

Berninger is of the opinion that cursive, endangered in American schools, promotes self-control, which printing may not, and which typing – especially with the ‘delete’ function – unequivocally does not. In a world saturated with texting, where many have observed that people are losing the ability to filter their thoughts, a little more restraint would be a good thing.

A rare-book and manuscript librarian, Valerie Hotchkiss, worries about the cost to our heritage as knowledge of cursive fades. Her library contains archives from the literary giants Mark Twain, Marcel Proust, HG Wells, and others. If the young generation does not lea cursive, its ability to decipher older documents may be compromised, and culture lost.

Paul Bloom, from Yale University, is less convinced about the long-term benefits of handwriting. In the 1950s – indeed in Tammy Chou’s idyllic 1970s – when children spent hours practising their copperplate, what were they doing with it? Mainly copying mindlessly. For Bloom, education, in the complex digital age, has moved on.

* A style of writing in which letters are joined, and the pen is lifted oﬀ the paper at the end of a word.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Growing up in New Zealand

It has long been known that the first one thousand days of life are the most critical in ensuring a person’s healthy future; precisely what happens during this period to any individual has been less well documented. To allocate resources appropriately, public health and education policies need to be based upon quantifiable data, so the New Zealand Ministry of Social Development began a longitudinal study of these early days, with the view to extending it for two decades. Born between March 2009 and May 20I0, the 6,846 babies recruited came from a densely populated area of New Zealand, and it is hoped they will be followed until they reach the age of 21.

By 2014, fur reports, collectively known as Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ), had been published, showing New Zealand to be a complex, changing country, with the participants and their families’ being markedly diﬀerent from those of previous generations.

Of the 6,846 babies, the majority were identified as European New Zealanders, but one quarter was Maori (indigenous New Zealanders), 20% were Pacific (originating in islands in the Pacific), and one in six were Asian. Almost 50% of the children had more than one ethnicity.

The first three reports of GUiNZ ae descriptive, portraying the cohort before birth, at nine months, and at two years of age. Already, the first report, Before we are born, has made history as it contains interviews with the children’s mothers and fathers. The fourth report, which is more analytical, explores the definition of vulnerability for children in their first one thousand days.

Before we are born, published in 2010, describes the hopes, dreams, and realities that prospective parents have. It shows that the average age of both parents having a child was 30, and around two-thirds of parents were in legally binding relationships. However, one-third of the children were born to either a mother or a father who did not grow up in New Zealand – a significant diﬀerence from previous longitudinal studies in which a vast majority of parents were New Zealanders born and bred. Around 60% of the births in the cohort were planned, and most families hoped to have two or three children. During pregnancy, some women changed their behaviour, with regard to smoking, alcohol, and exercise, but many did not. Such information will be useful for public health campaigns.

Now we are born is the second report. Fifty-two percent of its babies were male and 48% female, with nearly a quarter delivered by caesarean section. The World Health Organisation and New Zealand guidelines recommend babies be breastfed exclusively for six months, but the median age for this in the GUiNZ cohort was fur months since almost one-third of mothers had returned to full-time work. By nine months, the babies were all eating solid food. While 54% of them were living in accommodation their families owned, their parents had almost all experienced a drop in income, sometimes a steep one, mostly due to mothers’ not working. Over 90% of the babies were immunised, and almost all were in very good health. Of the mothers, however, 11% had experienced post-natal depression – an alarming statistic, perhaps, but, once again, useful for mental health campaigns. Many of the babies were put in childcare while their mothers worked or studied, and the providers varied by ethnicity: children who were Maori or Pacific were more likely to be looked after by grandparents; European New Zealanders tended to be sent to daycare.

Now we are two, the third report, provides more insights into the children’s development – physically, emotionally, behaviourally, and cognitively. Major changes in home environments are documented, like the socio-economic situation, and childcare arrangements. Information was collected both from direct observations of the children and from parental interviews. Once again, a high proportion of New Zealand two-year-olds were in very good health. Two-thirds of the children knew their gender, and used their own name or expressed independence in some way. The most common first word was a variation on ‘Mum’, and the most common favourite first food was a banana. Bilingual or multi-lingual children were in a large minority of 40%. Digital exposure was high: one in seven two-year-olds had used a laptop or a children’s computer, and 80% watched TV or DVDs daily; by contrast, 66% had books read to them each day.

The fourth report evaluates twelve environmental risk factors that increase the likelihood of poor developmental outcomes for children and draws on experiences in Western Europe, where the specific factors were collated. This, however, was the first time for their use in a New Zealand context. The factors include: being born to an adolescent mother; having one or both parents on income-tested benefits; and, living in cramped conditions.

In addition to descriptive ones, future reports will focus on children who move in and out of vulnerability to see how these transitions aﬀect their later life.

To date, GUiNZ has been highly successful with only a very small dropout rate for participants – even those living abroad, predominantly in Australia, have continued to provide information. The portrait GUiNZ paints of a country and its people are indeed revealing.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

LET THERE BE LIGHT?

‘Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st will be Jit by LED lamps.’ So stated the Nobel Prize Committee on awarding the 2014 prize for physics to the inventors of light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

Around the world, LED systems are replacing most kinds of conventional lighting since they use about half the electricity, and the US Department of Energy expects LEDs to account for 74% of US lighting sales by 2030.

However, with lower running costs, LEDs may be left on longer, or installed in places that were previously unlit. Historically, when there has been an improvement in lighting technology, far more outdoor illumination has occurred. Furthermore, many LEDs are brighter than other lights, and they produce a blue-wavelength light that animals misinterpret as the dawn.

According to the American Medical Association, there has been a noticeable rise in obesity, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease in people like shift workers exposed to too much artificial light of any kind. It is likely more pervasive LEDs will contribute to a further rise.

In some cities, a brown haze of industrial pollution prevents enjoyment of the night sky; in others, a yellow haze from lighting has the same effect, and it is thought that almost 70% of people can no longer see the Milky Way.

When a small earthquake disabled power plants in Los Angeles a few years ago, the director of the Griffith Observatory was bombarded with phone calls by locals who reported an unusual phenomenon they thought was caused by the quake – a brilliantly illuminated night sky, in which around 7,000 stars were visible. In fact, this was just an ordinary starry night, seldom seen in LA due to light pollution!

Certainly, light pollution makes professional astronomy difficult, but it also endangers humans’ age-old connection to the stars. It is conceivable that children who do not experience a truly starry night may not speculate about the universe, nor may they learn about nocturnal creatures.

Excessive illumination impacts upon the nocturnal world. Around 30% of vertebrates and over 60% of invertebrates are nocturnal; many of the remainders are crepuscular – most active at dawn and dusk. Night lighting, hundreds of thousands of times greater than its natural level, has drastically reduced insect, bird, bat, lizard, frog, turtle, and fish life, with even dairy cows producing less milk in brightly-lit sheds.

Night lighting has a vacuum-cleaner eﬀect on insects, particularly moths, drawing them from as far away as 122 metres. As insects play an important role in pollination, and in providing food for birds, their destruction is a grave concern. Using low-pressure sodium-vapour lamps or UV-filtered bulbs would reduce insect mortality, but an alternative light source does not help amphibians: fogs exposed to any night light experience altered feeding and mating behaviour, making them easy prey.

Furthermore, birds and insects use the sun, the moon, and the stars to navigate. It is estimated that around 500 million migratory birds are killed each year by collisions with brightly-lit structures, like skyscrapers or radio towers. In Toronto, Canada, the Fatal Light Awareness Program educates building owners about reducing such deaths by darkening their buildings at the peak of the migratory season. Still, over 1,500 birds may be killed within one night when this does not happen.

Non-migratory birds are also adversely aﬀected by light pollution – sleep is difficult, and waking up only occurs when the sun has overpowered artificial lighting, resulting in the birds’ being too late to catch insects.

Leatherback turtles, which have lived on Earth for over 150 million years, are now endangered as their hatchlings are meant to follow light reﬂected from the moon and stars to go from their sandy nests to the sea. Instead, they follow street lamps or hotel lights, resulting in death by dehydration, predation, or accidents, since they wander onto the road in the opposite direction from the sea.

Currently, eight percent of all energy generated in the US is dedicated to public outdoor lighting, and much evidence shows that lighting and energy use are growing at around four percent a year, exceeding population growth. In some newly-industrialised countries, lighting use is rising by 20%. Unfortunately, as the developing world urbanises, it also lights up brightly, rather than opting for sustainability.

There are several organisations devoted to restoring the night sky: one is the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), based in Arizona, US. The IDA draws attention to the hazards of light pollution and works with manufacturers, planners, legislators, and citizens to encourage lighting only what is necessary when necessary.

With 58 chapters in sixteen countries, the IDA has been the driving force behind the establishment of nine world reserves, most recently the 1,720-square-kilometre Rhon Biosphere Reserve in Germany. IDA campaigns have also reduced street lighting in several US states and changed national legislation in Italy.

Except in some parks and observatory zones, the IDA does not defend complete darkness, acknowledging that urban areas operate around the clock. For transport, lighting is particularly important. Nonetheless, there is an appreciable diﬀerence between harsh, glaring lights and those that illuminate the ground without streaming into the sky. The US Department of Transportation recently conducted research into highway safety and found that a highway lit well only at interchanges was as safe as one lit along its entire length. In addition, reflective signage and strategic white paint improved safety more than adding lights.

Research by the US Department of Justice showed that outdoor lighting may not deter crime. Its only real benefit is in citizens’ perceptions: lighting reduces the fear of crime, not crime itself. Indeed, bright lights may compromise the safety, as they make victims and property more visible.

The IDA recommends that where streetlights stay on all night, they have a lower lumen rating, or are controlled with dimmers; and, that they point downwards, or are fitted with directional metal shields. For private dwellings, low-lumen nightlights should be activated only when motion is detected.

It is not merely the firefly, the fruit bat, or the fog that suﬀers from light pollution – many human beings no longer experience filling stars or any but the brightest stars, nor consequently ponder their own place in the universe. Hopefully, prize-winning LED lights will be modified and used circumspectly to return to us all the splendour of the night sky.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 78 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

STAINLESS STEEL

Uses

In any ordinary kitchen, there are numerous items made from stainless steel, including cutlery, utensils, and appliances. ‘Inox’ or ’18/10′ may be stamped on the base of a good stainless steel pot: ‘Inox’ is short for the French inoxydable; while 18 refers to the percentage of chromium in the stainless steel, and 10 to its nickel content.

In hospitals, laboratories and factories, stainless steel is used for many instruments and pieces of equipment because it can easily be sterilised, and it remains relatively bacteria-free, thus improving hygiene. Since it is mostly rust-free, stainless steel also does not need painting, so proves cost-eﬀective.

As a decorative element, stainless steel has been incorporated into skyscrapers, like the Chrysler Building in New York, and the Jin Mao Building in Shanghai, the latter considered one of the most stunning contemporary structures in China. Bridges, monuments, and sculptures are often stainless steel; and, cars, trains, and aircraft contain stainless steel parts.

Recent alloys

As most pure metals serve little practical purpose, they are often combined or alloyed. Some examples of ancient alloys are bronze (copper + tin) and brass (copper + zinc). Carbon steel (iron + carbon), first made in small quantities in China in the sixth century AD, was produced industrially only in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. Stainless steel, which retains the strength of carbon steel with some added benefits, consists of iron, carbon, chromium, and nickel, and may contain trace elements. Stainless steel is a new invention – Austenitic stainless steel was patented by German engineers in 1912, the same year that Americans created ferritic stainless steel, while Martensitic stainless steel was patented as late as 1919.

Properties

The name, stainless steel, is misleading since, where there is very little oxygen or a great amount of salt, the alloy will, indeed, stain. In addition, stainless steel parts should not be joined together with stainless steel nuts or bolts as friction damages the elements; another alloy, like bronze, or pure aluminium or titanium must be used.

In general, stainless steel does not deteriorate as ordinary carbon steel does, which rusts in air and water. Rust is a layer of iron oxide that forms when oxygen reacts with the iron in carbon steel. Because iron oxide molecules are larger than those of iron alone, they wear down the steel, causing it to flake and eventually snap. Stainless steel, however, contains between 13-26% chromium, and, with exposure to oxygen, forms chromium oxide, which has molecules the same size as the iron ones beneath, meaning they bond strongly to form an invisible film that prevents oxygen or water from penetrating. As a result, the surface of stainless steel neither rusts nor corrodes. Furthermore, if scratched, the protective chromium-oxide layer of stainless steel repairs itself in a process known as passivation, which also occurs with aluminium, titanium, and zinc.

Varieties

There are over 150 grades of stainless steel with various properties, each distinguished by its crystalline structure. Austenitic stainless steel, comprising 70% of global production, is barely magnetic, but ferritic and Martensitic stainless steel function as magnets because they contain more nickel or manganese. Ferritic stainless steel – soft and slightly corrosive – is cheap to produce, and has many applications, while Martensitic stainless steel, with more carbon than the other types, is incredibly strong, so it is used in fighter jet bodies but is also the costliest to produce.

Recyclability

Stainless steel can be recycled completely, and these days, the average stainless steel object comprises around 60% of recycled material.

Cutting-edge application

In the last few years, 3D printers have become widespread, and stainless steel infused with bronze is the hardest material that a 3D printer can currently use.

In 3D printing, an inkjet head deposits alternate layers of stainless steel powder and organic binder into a build box. After each layer of binder is spread, overhead heaters dry the object before another layer of powder is added. Upon completion of printing, the whole object, still in its build box, is sintered in an oven, which means the object is heated to just below the melting point, so the binder evaporates. Next, the porous object is placed in a furnace so that molten bronze can replace the binder. To finish, the object is blasted with tiny beads that smooth the surface.

Appraisal

In less than a century, stainless steel has become essential due to its relatively cheap production cost, its durability, and its renewability. Used in the new manufacturing process of 3D printing, its future looks bright.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Word lists

As any language learner knows, the acquisition of vocabulary is of critical importance. Grammar is useful, yet communication occurs without it. Consider the utterance: ‘Me station.’ Certainly, ‘I’d like to go to the station’ is preferable, but a taxi driver will probably head to the right place with ‘Me station.’ If the passenger uses the word ‘airport’ instead of ‘station’, however, the journey may wel1 be fraught. Similarly, ‘What time train Glasgow?’ signals to a station clerk that a timetable is needed even though ‘What time does the train go to Glasgow?’ is correct. In both of these requests, nouns – ‘station’, ‘time’, ‘train’, and ‘Glasgow’ – carry most of the meaning; and, generally speaking, foreign-language learners, like infants in their mother tongue, acquire nouns first. Verbs also contain unequivocal meaning; for instance, ‘go’ indicates departure, not the arrival. Furthermore, ‘Go’ is a common word, appearing in both requests above, while ‘the’ and ‘to’ are the other frequent items. Thus, for a language learner, there may be two necessities: to acquire both useful and frequent words, including some that function grammatically. It is a daunting fact that English contains around half a million words, of which a graduate knows 25,000. So how does a language learner decide which ones to learn?

The General Service List (GSL), devised by the American, Michael West, in 1953, was one renowned lexical aid. Consisting of 2,000 headwords, each representing a word family, GSL words were listed alphabetically, with definitions and example sentences, while a number alongside each word showed its number of occurrences per five million words, and a percentage beside each meaning indicated how often that meaning occurred. For 50 years, particularly in the US, the GSL wielded great influence: graded readers and other materials for primary schools were written with reference to it, and American teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) relying heavily upon it.

Understandably, West’s 1953 GSL has been updated several times because, firstly, his list contained archaisms such as ‘shilling’, while lacking words that existed in 1953 but which were popularized later, like ‘drug’, ‘OK’, ‘television’, and ‘victim’. Naturally, his list did not contain neologisms such as ’email’. However, around 80% of West’s original inclusions were still considered valid, according to researchers Billuroğlu and Neufeld (2005). Secondly, what constituted a headword and a word family in the West’s GSL was not entirely logical, and rules for this were formulated by Bauer and Nation (1995). Thirdly, technological advance has meant that billions of words can now be analysed by computer for frequency, context, and regional variation. West’s frequency data was based on a 2.5-million-word corpus drawn from research by Thorndike and Lorge (1944), and some of it was unreliable. A 2013 incarnation of the GSL, called the New General Service List (NGSL), used a 273-million-word subsection of the Cambridge English Corpus (CEC), and research indicates this list provides a higher degree of coverage than West’s.

A partner to the NGSL is the 2013 New Academic Word List (NAL) with 2,818 headwords – a modification of Averill Coxhead’s 2000 AWL. The NAWL excludes NGSL words, focusing on academic language, but, nevertheless, items in it are generally serviceable – they are merely not used often enough to appear in the NGSL. An indication of the diﬀerence between the two lists can be seen in just four words: the NGSL begins with ‘a’ and ends with ‘zonings’, whereas ‘abdominal’ and ‘yeasts’ open and close the NAWL.

Over time, linguistics and EF have become more dependent upon computerized statistical analysis, and large bodies of words have been collected to aid academics, teachers, and learners. One such body, known by the Latin word for body, ‘corpus’, is the CEC, created at Cambridge University in the UK. This well-known collection has two billion words of written and spoken, formal and informal, British, American, and other Englishes. Continually updated, its sources are very wide indeed – far wider than West’s. Although the CEC is one of many English-language corpora, it is not the largest, but it was the one used by the creators of the NGSL and the NAWL.

Still, a learner cannot easily access corpora, and even though the NGSL and NAL are free online, a learner may not know how best to use them. Linguists have demonstrated that words should be learnt in a context (not singly, not alphabetically); that items in the same lexical set should be learnt together; that it takes at least six diﬀerent sightings or hearings to lea one item; that written language diﬀers significantly from spoken; and, that concrete language is easier to acquire than abstract. Admittedly, a list of a few thousand words is not so hard to learn, but language learning is not only about frequency and utility, but also about passion and poetry. Who cares if a word you like isn’t in the top 5,000? If you like it or the way it sounds, you’re likely to lea it. And, if you use it correctly, at least your IELTS examiner will be impressed.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

WORLD HERITAGE DESIGNATION

Almost all cultures raise monuments to their own achievements or beliefs, and preserve artefacts and built environments from the past.

There has been considerable interest in saving cultural sites valuable to all humanity since the 1950s. In particular, an international campaign to relocate pharaonic treasures from an area in Egypt where the Aswan Dam would be built was highly successful, with more than half the project costs bore by 50 diﬀerent countries. Later, similar projects were undertaken to save the ruins of Mohenjoh-daro in Pakistan and the Borobodur Temple complex in Indonesia.

The idea of listing world heritage sites (WHS) that are cultural or natural was proposed jointly by an American politician, Joseph Fisher, and a director of an environmental agency, Russell Train, at a White House conference in 1965. These men suggested a programme of cataloguing, naming, and conserving outstanding sites, under what became the World Heritage Convention, adopted by UNESCO* on November 1972, and eﬀective from December 1975. Today, 191 states and territories have ratified the convention, making it one of the most inclusive international agreements of all time. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of representatives from 21 UNESCO member states and international experts, administers the programme, albeit with a limited budget and few real powers, unlike other international bodies, like the World Trade Organisation or the UN Security Council.

In 2014, there were 1,007 WHS around the world: 779 of them, cultural; 197 naturals; and, 31 mixed properties. Italy, China, and Spain are the top three countries by the number of sites, followed by Germany, Mexico, and India.

Legally, each site is part of the territory of the state in which it is located and maintained by that entity, but as UNESCO hopes sites will be preserved in countries both rich and poor, it provides some financial assistance through the World Heritage Fund. Theoretically, WHS is protected by the Geneva Convention, which prohibits acts of hostility towards historic monuments, works of art, or places of worship.

Certainly, WHS have encouraged appreciation and tolerance globally, as well as proving a boon for local identity and the tourist industry. Moreover, the diversity of plant and animal life has generally been maintained, and degradations associated with mining and logging minimised.

Despite good intentions, significant threats to WHS exist, especially in the form of conﬂict. The Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo is one example, where militias kill white rhinoceros, selling their horns to purchase weapons; and, in 2014, Palmyra – a Roman site in northern Syria – was badly damaged by a road built through it, as well as by shelling and looting. In fact, theft is a common problem at WHS in under-resourced areas, while pollution, nearby construction, or natural disasters present further dangers.

But most destructive of all is mass tourism. The huge ancient city of Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, now has over one million visitors a year, and the nearby town of Siem Reap – a village 20 years ago – now boasts an international airport and 300 hotels. Machu Picchu in Peru has been inundated by tourists to the point where it may now be endangered. Commerce has altered some sites irrevocably. Walkers along the Great Wall near Beijing are hassled by vendors flogging every kind of item, many unrelated to the wall itself, and extensive renovation has given the ancient wonder a Disneyland feel.

In order for a place to be listed as a WHS, it must undergo a rigorous application process. Firstly, a state takes an inventory of its significant sites, which is called a Tentative List, from which sites are put into a Nomination File. Two independent international bodies, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, and the World Conservation Union evaluate the Nomination File and make recommendations to the World Heritage Committee. Meeting once a year, this committee determines which sites should be added to the World Heritage List by deciding that a site meets at least one criterion out of ten, of which six are cultural, and four are natural.

In 2003, a second convention, eﬀective from 2008, was added to the first. The Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage has so far been ratified by 139 states – a notable exception being the US. Aiming to protect traditions rather than places, 267 elements have already been enshrined, including Cambodia’s Royal Ballet; the French gastronomic meal; and, watertight-bulkhead technology of Chinese junks.

The World Heritage Committee hopes that the states that agree to list such elements will also promote and support them, although, once again, commercialisation is problematic. For instance, after the French gastronomic meal was listed in 2010, numerous French celebrity chef used the designation in advertising, and UNESCO debated delisting the element. The US has chosen not to sign the second convention due to implications to intellectual property rights. As things stand, with the first treaty, the US has far fewer nominated sites than its neighbour Mexico, partly because some Mexican sites are entire towns or city centres, and the US has no desire for its urban planning to be restricted by world-heritage status. St Petersburg, in Russia, which has its entire historic centre as a WHS, introduced strict planning regulations to maintain its elegant 18th-century appearance, only to discover thousands of minor infringements by owners preferring to do what they pleased with their properties. With intangible elements, changes over time, due to modernisation or globalization, may be greater than those threatening buildings. Opponents of the second convention believe traditions should not be frozen in time, and are equally unconcerned if traditions dwindle or die.

Although the 1972 World Heritage Convention lacks teeth, and many of its sites are suﬀering, and although the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage has proven less popular, it would seem that the overall performance of these two instruments has been very good.

*The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation, based in Paris, France.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 79 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

MÁRQUEZ AND MAGICAL REALISM

When Gabriel García Márquez died in 2014, he was mourned around the world, as readers recalled his 1967 novel, One hundred years of solitude, which has sold more than 25 million copies, and led to Márquez ‘s receipt of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Born in 1927, in a small town on Colombia’s Caribbean coast called Aracataca, Márquez was immersed in Spanish, black, and indigenous cultures. In such remote places, religion, myth, and superstition hold sway over logic and reason or perhaps operate as parallel belief systems. Certainly, the ghost stories told by his grandmother affected the young Gabriel profoundly, and a pivotal character in his 1967 epic is indeed a ghost.

Márquez’s family was not wealthy: there were twelve children, and his father worked as a postal clerk, a telegraph operator, and an occasional pharmacist. Márquez spent much of his childhood in the care of his grandparents, which may account for the main character in One hundred years of solitude resembling his maternal grandfather. Although Márquez left Aracataca aged eight, the town and its inhabitants never seemed to leave him, and suﬀuse his fiction.

One hundred years of solitude was the fourth of fifteen novels, but Márquez was an equally passionate and prolific journalist.

In Bogota, during his twenties and thirties, Márquez experienced La Violencia, a period of great political and social upheaval, when around 300,000 Colombians were killed. Certainly, life was never safe for journalists, and after writing an article on corruption in the Colombian navy in 1955, Márquez was forced to flee to Europe. Incidentally, in Paris, he discovered that European culture was not richer than his own, and he was disappointed by Europeans who were patronising towards Latin Americans. On return to the southern hemisphere, Márquez wrote for Venezuelan newspapers and the Cuban press agency.

In terms of politics, Márquez was leftwing. In Chile, he campaigned against the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet; in Venezuela, he financed a political party; and, in Nicaragua, he defended revolutionaries. He considered Fidel Castro, the President of Cuba, as a dear friend. Since the US was hostile towards Castro’s communist regime, which Márquez supported, the writer was banned from visiting the US until invited by President Clinton in 1995. The novels of Márquez are imbued with his politics, but this does not prevent readers from enjoying a good yarn.

Márquez maintained that in Latin America so much that is real would seem fantastic elsewhere, while so much that is magical seems real. He was an exponent of a genre known as Magical Realism.

‘If you can explain it,’ said the Mexican critic, Luis Leal, ‘then it’s not Magical Realism.’ This demonstrates the difficulty of determining what the genre encompasses and which writers belong to it.

The term Magical Realism is usually applied to literature, but its first use was probably in 1925 when a German art critic reviewed paintings similar to those of Surrealism.

Many critics define Magical Realism by what it is not. Realism describes lives that could be real; Magical Realism uses the detail and the tone of a realist work but includes the magical as though it were real. The ghosts in One hundred years of solitude and in the American Toni Morison’s Beloved are presented by their narrators as normal, so readers accept them unhesitatingly. Likewise, a character can live for 200 years in a Magical Realist novel. Surrealism explores dream states and psychological experiences; Magical Realism does not. Science Fiction describes a new or an imagined world, as in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, but Magical Realism depicts the real world. Nor is Magical Realism fantasy, like Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which an ordinary man awakens to find he has transformed into a cockroach. This is because the writer and the reader of that story cannot decide whether to ascribe natural or supernatural causes to the event. In contrast, in a work by Márquez, the world is both natural and supernatural, both rational and irrational, and this binary nature fascinates readers.

Magical Realism does share some common ground with post-modernism since the acts of writing and breading are self-reﬂexive. A narrative may not be linear, but may double back on itself, or be discontinuous, and the notion of character is more illusive than in other genres.

Naturally, some of these elements disturb a reader although the enormous success of One hundred years of solitude and the hundreds of other Magical Realist works from authors as far apart as Norway, Nigeria, and New Zealand would seem to belie it.

Latin America has had a long history of conquest, revolution, and dictatorship; of hunger, poverty, and chaos, yet, at the same time, is endowed with rich cultures, with warm, emotional people, many of whom, like Márquez, remain optimistically utopian. Gabriel Garcia Márquez has passed away, but his fiction will certainly endure.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Recent stock-market crashes

For as long as there have been financial markets, there have been financial crises. Most economists agree, however, that from 1994 to 2013 crashes were deeper and the resultant troughs longer-lasting than in the 20-year period leading up to 1994. Two notable crashes, the Nifty Fifty in the mid-l 970s and Black Monday in 1987, had an average loss of about 40% of the value of global stocks, and recovery took 240 days each, whereas the Dot-com and credit crises, post-1994, had an average loss of about 52%, and endured for 430 days. What economists do not agree upon is why recent crises have been so severe or how to prevent their recurrence.

John Coates, from the University of Cambridge in the UK and a former trader for Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, believes three separate but related phenomena explain the severity. The first is dangerous but predictable risk-taking on the part of traders. The second is a lack of any risk-taking when markets become too volatile. (Coates does not advocate risk-aversion since risk-taking may jumpstart a depressed market.) The last is a new policy of transparency by the US Federal Reserve – known as the Fed – that may have encouraged stock-exchange complacency, compounding the dangerous risk-taking.

Many people imagine a trader to have a great head for maths and a stomach for the rollercoaster ride of the market, but Coates downplays arithmetic skills, and doubts traders are made of such stern stuﬀ. Instead, he draws attention to the physiological nature of their decisions. Admittedly, there are women in the industry, but traders are overwhelmingly male, and testosterone appears to aﬀect their choices.

Another common view is that traders are greedy as well as thrill-seeking. Coates has not researched financial incentive, but blood samples taken from London traders who engaged in simulated risk-taking exercises for him in 2013 confirmed the prevalence of testosterone, cortisol, and dopamine – a neurotransmitter precursor to adrenalin associated with raised blood pressure and sudden pleasure.

Certainly anyone faced with danger has a stress response involving the body’s preparation for impending movement – for what is sometimes called ‘Fight or flight’, but, as Coates notes, any physical act at all produces a stress response: even a reader’s eye movement along words in this line requires cortisol and adrenalin. Neuroscientists now see the brain not as a computer that acts neutrally, involved in a process of pure thought, but as a mechanism to plan and carry out a movement, since every single piece of information humans absorb has an attendant pattern of physical arousal.

For muscles to work, fuel is needed, so cortisol and adrenalin employ glucose from other muscles and the liver. To burn the fuel, oxygen is required, so slightly deeper or faster breathing occurs. To deliver fuel and oxygen to the body, the heart pumps a little harder and blood pressure rises. Thus, the stress response is a normal part of life, as well as a resource in fighting or fleeing. Indeed, it is a highly pleasurable experience in watching an action movie, making love or pulling oﬀ a multi-million-dollar stock-market deal.

Cortisol production also increases during exposure to uncertainty. For example, people who live next to a train line adjust to the noise of passing trains, but visitors to their home are disturbed. The phenomenon is equally well-known of anticipation being worse than an event itself: sitting in the waiting room thinking about a procedure may be more distressing than occupying the dentist’s chair and having one. Interestingly, if a patient does not know approximately when he or she will be called for that procedure, cortisol levels are the most elevated of all. This appeared to happen with the London traders participating in some of Coates’ gambling scenarios.

When there is too much volatility in the stock market, Coates suspects adrenaline levels decrease while cortisol levels increase, explaining why traders take fewer risks at that time. In fact, typically traders freeze, becoming almost incapable of buying or selling anything but the safest bonds. In Coates’ opinion, the market needs investment as it falls and at rock bottom – at such times, greed is good.

The third matter – the behaviour of the Fed – Coates thinks could be controlled, albeit counterintuitively. Since 1994, the US Federal Reserve has adopted a policy called Forward Guidance. Under this, the public is informed at regular intervals of the Fed’s plans for short-term interest rates. Recently, rates have been raised by small but predictable increments. By contrast, in the past, the machinations of the Fed were largely secret, and its interest rates fluctuated apparently randomly. Coates hypothesises these meant traders were on guard and less likely to indulge in wild speculation. In introducing Forward Guidance, the Fed hoped to lower stock and housing prices; instead, before the crash of 2008, the market surged from further risk-taking, like an unleashed pit bull terrier.

There are many economists who disagree with Coates, but he has provided some physiological evidence for both traders’ recklessness and immobilisation and made the radical proposal of greater opacity at the Fed. Although, as others have noted, we could just let more women onto the ﬂoor.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

ANIMAL PERSONHOOD

Aristotle, a 4th-century-BC Greek philosopher, created the Great Chain of Being, in which animals, lacking reason, ranked below humans. The Frenchman, Rene Descartes, in the 17th century AD, considered animals as more complex creatures; however, without souls, they were mere automatons. One hundred years later, the German, Immanuel Kant, proposed animals are treated less cruelly, which might seem an improvement, but Kant believed this principally because he thought acts of cruelty aﬀect their human perpetrators detrimentally. The mid-19th century saw the Englishman, Jeremy Bentham, questioning not their rationality or spirituality, but whether animals could suﬀer irrespective of the damage done to their victimisers; he concluded they could; and, in 1824, the first large organisation for animal welfare, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was founded in England. In 1977, the Australian, Peter Singer, wrote the highly inﬂuential book Animal liberation, in which he debated the ethics of meat-eating and factory farming, and raised awareness about inhumane captivity and experimentation. Singer’s title deliberately evoked other liberation movements, like those for women, which had developed in the post-war period.

More recently, an interest in the cognitive abilities of animals has resurfaced. It has been known since the 1960s that chimpanzees have sophisticated tool use and social interactions, but research from the last two decades has revealed they are also capable of empathy and grief, and they possess self-awareness and self-determination. Other primates, dolphins, whales, elephants, and African grey parrots are highly intelligent too. It would seem that with each new proof of animals’ abilities, questions are being posed as to whether creatures so similar to humans should endure the physical pain or psychological trauma associated with habitat loss, captivity, or experimentation. While there may be more laws protecting animals than 30 years ago, in the eyes of the law, no matter how smart or sentient an animal may be, it still has a lesser status than a human being.

Steven Wise, an American legal academic, has been campaigning to change this. He believes animals, like those listed above, are autonomous – they can control their actions, or rather, their actions are not caused purely by reﬂex or from innateness. He wants these animals categorized legally as nonhuman persons because he believes existing animal-protection laws are weak and poorly enforced. He famously quipped that an aquarium may be fined for cruel treatment of its dolphins but, currently, the dolphins can’t sue the aquarium.

While teaching at Vermont Law School in the 1990s, Wise presented his students with a dilemma: should an anencephalic baby be treated as a legal person? (Anencephaly is a condition where a person is born with a partial brain and can breathe and digest, due to reflex, but otherwise is barely alert, and not autonomous.) Overwhelmingly, Wise’s students would say ‘Yes’. He posed another question: could the same baby be killed and eaten by humans? Overwhelmingly, his students said ‘No’. His third question, always harder to answer, was: why is an anencephalic baby legally a person yet not so a fully functioning bonobo chimp?

Wise draws another analogy: between captive animals and slaves. Under slavery in England, a human was a chattel, and if a slave were stolen or injured, the thief or violator could be convicted of a crime, and compensation paid to the slave’s owner though not to the slave. It was only in 1772 that the chief justice of the King’s Bench, Lord Mansfield, ruled that a slave could apply for habeas corpus, Latin for: ‘You must have the body’, as fee men and women had done since ancient times. Habeas corpus does not establish innocence or guilt; rather, it means a detainee can be represented in court by a proxy. Once slaves had been granted habeas corpus, they existed as more than chattels within the legal system although it was another 61 years before slavery was abolished in England. Aside from slaves, Wise has studied numerous cases in which a writ of habeas corpus had been filed on behalf of those unable to appear in court, like children, patients, prisoners, or the severely intellectually impaired. In addition, Wise notes there are entities that are not living people that have legally become non-human persons, including ships, corporations, partnerships, states, a Sikh holy book, some Hindu idols and the Wanganui River in New Zealand.

In conjunction with an organisation called the Non-human Rights Project (NhRP), Wise has been representing captive animals in US courts in an eﬀort to have their legal status reassigned. Thereafter, the NhRP plans to apply, under habeas corpus, to represent the animals in other cases. Wise and the NhRP believe a new status will discourage animal owners or nation-states from neglect or abuse, which current laws fail to do.

Richard Epstein, a professor of law at New York University, is a critic of Wise’s. His concern is that if animals are treated as independent holders of rights there would be little left of human society, in particular, in the food and agricultural industries. Epstein agrees some current legislation concerning animal protection may need overhauling, but he sees no underlying problem.

Other detractors say that the push for personhood misses the point: it focuses on animals that are similar to humans without addressing the fundamental issue that all species have an equal right to exist. Thomas Berry, of the Gaia Foundation, declares that rights do not emanate from humans but from the universe itself, and, as such, all species have the right to existence, habitat, and role (be that predator, plant, or decomposer). Dramatically changing human behaviour towards other species is necessary for their survival – and that doesn’t mean declaring animals as non-human persons.

To date, the NhRP has not succeeded in its applications to have the legal status of chimpanzees in New York State changed, but the NhRP considers it some kind of victory that the cases have been heard. Now, the NhRP can proceed to the Court of Appeals, where many emotive cases are decided, and where much common law is formulated.

Despite setbacks, Wise doggedly continues to expose brutality towards animals. Thousands of years of perceptions may have to be changed in this process. He may have lost the battle, but he doesn’t believe he’s lost the war.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 80 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

RED IN RUSSIAN ART

In Old Slavonic, a language that precedes Russian, ‘red’ has a similar root to the words ‘good’ and ‘beautiful’. Indeed, until the 20th century, Krasnaya Ploshchad, or Red Square, in central Moscow, was understood by locals as ‘Beautiful Square’. For Russians, red has great symbolic meaning, being associated with goodness, beauty, warmth, vitality, jubilation, faith, love, salvation, and power.

Because red is a long-wave colour at the end of the spectrum, its eﬀect on a viewer is striking: it appears closer than colours with shorter waves, like green, and it also intensifies colours placed alongside it, which accounts for the popularity of red and green combinations in Russian painting.

Russians love red. In the applied arts, it predominates bowls, boxes, trays, wooden spoons, and distaﬀs for spinning all feature red, as do children’s toys, decorative figurines, Easter eggs, embroidered cloths, and garments. In the fine arts, red, white, and gold form the basis of much icon painting.

In pre-Christian times, red symbolised blood. Christianity adopted the same symbolism; red represented Christ or saints in their purification or martyrdom. The colour green, meantime, signified wisdom, while white showed a person reborn as a Christian. Thus, in a famous 15th-century icon from the city of Novgorod, Saint George and the Dragon, red-dressed George sports a green cape, and rides a pure-white stallion. In many icons, Christ and the angels appear in a blaze of red, and the mother of Christ can be identified by her long red veil. In an often-reproduced icon from Yaroslavl, the Archangel Michael wears a brilliant red cloak. However, the fires of Hell that burn sinners are also red, like those in an icon from Pskov.

A red background for major figures in icons became the norm in representations of mortal beings, partly to add vibrancy to skin tones, and one fine example of this is a portrait of Nikolai Gogol, the writer, from the early 1840s. When wealthy aristocrats wished to be remembered for posterity, they were often depicted in dashing red velvet coats, emulating the cloaks of saints, as in the portraits of Jakob Turgenev in 1696, or of Admiral Ivan Talyzin in the mid-1760s. Portraits of women in Russian art are rare, but the Princess Yekaterina Golitsyna, painted in the early 1800s, wears a fabulous red shawl.

Common people do not appear frequently in Russian fine art until the 19th century when their peasant costumes are often white with red embroidery, and their elaborate headdresses and scarves are red. The women in the 1915 painting, Visiting, by Abram Arkhipov seem aflame with life: their dresses are red; their cheeks are red; and, a jug of vermillion lingonberry cordial glows on the table beside them.

Russian avant-garde painters of the early 20th century are famous beyond Russia as some of the greatest abstract artists. Principal among these are Nathan Altman, Natalia Goncharova, Wassily Kandinsky, and Kazimir Malevich, who painted the ground-breaking White on white as well as Red Square, which is all the more compelling because it isn’t quite square. Malevich used primary colours, with red prominent, in much of his mature work. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin is hailed as a genius at home, but less well-known abroad; his style is often surreal, and his palette is restricted to the many hues of red, contrasting with green or blue. The head in his 1915 Head of a youth is entirely red, while his 1925 painting, Fantasy, shows a man in blue, on a larger-than-life all-red horse, with a blue town in blue mountains behind.

Part of the enthusiasm for red in the early 20th century was due to the rise of the political movement, communism. Red had first been used as a symbol of revolution in France in the late 18th century. The Russian army from 1918-45 called itself the Red Army to continue this revolutionary tradition, and the ﬂag of the Soviet Union was the Red Flag.

Soviet poster artists and book illustrators also used swathes of red. Some Social Realist painters have been discredited for their political associations, but their art was potent, and a viewer cannot help but be moved by Nikolai Rutkovsky’s 1934 Stalin at Kirov’s coffin. Likewise, Alexander Gerasimov’s 1942 Hymn to October or Dmitry Zhilinsky’s 1965 Gymnasts of the USSR stand on their own as memorable paintings, both of which include plenty of red.

In English, red has many negative connotations – red for debt, a red card for football fouls, or a red-light district – but in Russian, red is beautiful, vivacious, spiritual, and revolutionary. And Russian art contains countless examples of its power.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Lepidoptera

Myths and Misnomers

A buttercup is a small, bright yellow flower; a butternut is a yellow-ﬂeshed squash; and, there is also a butter bean. The origin of the word ‘butterﬂy’ may be similar to these plants – a creature with wings the colour of butter – but a more fanciful notion is that ‘flutterby’ was misspelt by an early English scribe since a butterfly’s method of flight is to ﬂutter by. Etymologists may not concur, but entomologists agree with each other that butterflies belong to the order of Lepidoptera, which includes moths, and that ‘lepidoptera’ accurately describes the insects since ‘lepis’ means ‘scale’ and ‘pteron’ means ‘wing’ in Greek.

Until recently, butterflies were prized for their evanescence – people believed that adults lived for a single day; it is now known this is untrue, and some, like monarch butterﬂies, live for up to nine months.

Butterﬂies versus Moths

Butterflies and moths have some similarities: as adults, both have fur membranous wings covered in minute scales, attached to a short thorax and a longer abdomen with three pairs of legs. They have moderately large heads, long antennae, and compound eyes; tiny palps for smell; and, a curling proboscis for sucking nectar. Otherwise, their size, colouration, and lifecycles are the same.

Fewer than one percent of all insects are butterﬂies, but they hold a special place in the popular imagination as being beautiful and benign. Views of moths, however, are less kind since some live indoors and fast on cloth; others damage crops; and, most commit suicide, being nocturnal and drawn to artificial light. There are other diﬀerences between butterﬂies and moths; for example, when resting, the former fold their wings vertically above their bodies, while the latter lay theirs ﬂat. Significantly. butterﬂy antennae thicken slightly towards their tips, whereas moth antennae end in something that looks like a V-shaped TV aerial.

The Monarch Butterﬂy

Originating in North America, the black-orange-and-white monarch butterﬂy lives as far away as Australia and New Zealand, and for many children, it represents a lesson in metamorphosis, which can even be viewed in one’s living room if a pupa is brought indoors.

It is easy to identify the four stages of a monarch’s lifecycle – egg, larva, pupa, and adult – but there are really seven. This is because, unlike vertebrates, insects do not have an internal skeleton, but a tough outer covering called an exoskeleton. This is often shell-like and sometimes indigestible by predators. Muscles are hinged to its inside. As the insect grows, however, the constraining exoskeleton must be moulted, and a monarch butterfly undergoes seven moults, including fur as a larva.

Temperature dramatically aﬀects butterﬂy growth: in warm weather, a monarch may go through its seven moults in just over a month. Time spent inside the egg, for instance, may last three to four days in 25° Celsius, but in 18°, the whole process may take closer to eight weeks, with time inside the egg eight to twelve days. Naturally, longer development means lower populations due to increased predation.

A reliable food supply influences survival and the female monarch butterfly is able to sniﬀ out one particular plant its young can feed oﬀ – milkweed or swan plant. There are a few other plants larvae can eat, but they will resort to these only if the milkweed is exhausted and alternatives are very close by. Moreover, a female butterﬂy may be conscious of the size of the milkweed on which she lays her eggs since she spaces them, but another butterfly may deposit on the same plant, lessening everyone’s· chance of survival.

While many other butterﬂies are close to extinction due to pollution or dwindling habitat, the global numbers of monarchs have decreased in the past two decades, but less dramatically.

Monarch larvae absorb toxins from milkweed that renders them poisonous to most avian predators who attack them. Insect predators, like aphids, ﬂies, and wasps, seem unaﬀected by the poison and are therefore common. A recent disturbing occurrence is the death of monarch eggs and larvae from bacterial infection.

Another reason for population decline is reduced wintering conditions. Like many birds, monarch butterﬂies migrate to warmer climates in winter, often flying extremely long distances, for example, from Canada to southern California or northern Mexico, or from southern Australia to the tropical north. They also spend some time in semi-hibernation in dense colonies deep in forests. In isolated New Zealand, monarchs do not migrate, instead of finding particular trees on which to congregate. In some parts of California, wintering sites are protected, but in Mexico, much of the forest is being logged, and the insects are in grave danger.

Milkweed is native to southern Africa and North America, but it is easy to grow in suburban gardens. Its swan-shaped seedpods contain fluﬀy seeds used in the 19th century to stuﬀ mattresses, pillows, and lifejackets. After milkweed had hitched a lift on sailing ships around the Pacific, the American butterflies followed with Hawaii seeing their permanent arrival in 1840, Samoa in 1867, Australia in 1870, and New Zealand in 1873. As butterfly numbers decline sharply in the Americas, it may be these Pacific outposts that save the monarch.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

HOW FAIR IS FAIR TRADE?

The fair-trade movement began in Europe in earnest in the post-war period, but only in the last 25 years has it grown to include producers and consumers in over 60 countries.

In the 1950s and 60s, many people in the developed world felt passionately about the enormous disparities between developed and developing countries, and they believed the system of international trade shut out African, Asian, and South American producers who could not compete with multinational companies or who came from states that, for political reasons, were not trading with the West. The catchphrase ‘Trade Not Aid’ was used by church groups and trade unions – early supporters of fair trade – who also considered that international aid was either a pittance or a covert form of subjugation. These days, much fair trade does include aid: developed-world volunteers offer their services, and there is free training for producers and their workers.

Tea, coffee, cocoa, cotton, flowers, handicrafts, and gold are all major fair-trade items, with coffee being the most recognisable, fund on supermarket shelves and at café chains throughout the developed world.

Although around two million farmers and workers produce fair-trade items, this is a tiny number in relation to total global trade. Still, fair-trade advocates maintain that the system has positively impacted upon many more people worldwide, while the critics claim that if those two million returned to the mainstream trading system, they would receive higher prices for their goods or labour.

Fair trade is supposed to be a trade that is fair to producers. Its basic tenet is that developed-world consumers will pay slightly more for end products in the knowledge that developing-world producers have been equitably remunerated, and that the products have been made in decent circumstances. Additionally, the fair-trade system diﬀers from that of the open market because there is a minimum price paid for goods, which may be higher than that of the open market. Secondly, a small premium, earmarked for community development, is added in good years; for example, coﬀee co-operatives in South America frequently receive an additional 25c per kilogram. Lastly, purchasers of fair-trade products may assist with crop pre-financing or with the training of producers and workers, which could take the form of improving product quality, using environmentally friendly fertilisers, or raising literacy. Research has shown that non-fair-trade farmers copy some fair-trade farming practices, and, occasionally, encourage social progress. In exchange for ethical purchase and other assistance, fair-trade producers agree not to use child or slave labour, to adhere to the United Nations Charter on Human Rights, to provide safe workplaces, and to protect the environment despite these not being legally binding in their own countries. However, few non-fair-trade farmers have adopted these practices, viewing them as little more than rich-world conceits.

So that consumers know which products are made under fair-trade conditions, goods are labelled, and, these days, a single European and American umbrella organisation supervises labelling, standardisation, and inspection.

While fair trade is increasing, the system is far from perfect. First and foremost, there are expenses involved in becoming a fair-trade-certified producer, meaning the desperately poor rarely participate, so the very farmers fair-trade advocates originally hoped to support are excluded. Secondly, because conforming to the standards of fair-trade certification is costly, some producers deliberately mislabel their goods. The fair-trade monitoring process is patchy, and unfortunately, around 12% of fair-trade-labelled produce is nothing of the kind. Next, a crop may genuinely be produced under fair-trade conditions, but due to a lack of demand cannot be sold as fair trade, so goes onto the open market, where prices are mostly lower. It is estimated that only between 18-37% of fair-trade output is actually sold as fair trade. Sadly, there is little reliable research on the real relationship between costs incurred and revenue for fair-trade farmers, although empirical evidence suggests that many never realise a profit. Partly, reporting from producers is inadequate, and ways of determining profit may not include credit, harvesting, transport, or processing. Sometimes, the price paid to fair-trade producers is lower than that of the open market, so while a crop may be sold, elsewhere it could have earnt more, or where there are profits, they are often taken by the corporate firms that buy the goods and sell them on to retailers.

There are problems with the developed-world part of the equation too. People who volunteer to work for fair-trade concerns may do so believing they are assisting farmers and communities, whereas their labour serves to enrich middlemen and retailers. Companies involved in West African cocoa production have been criticised for this. In the developed world, the right to use a fair-trade logo is also expensive for packers and retailers, and sometimes a substantial amount of the money received from sale is ploughed back into marketing. In richer parts of the developed world, notably in London, packers and retailers charge high prices for fair-trade products. Consumers imagine they are paying so much because more money is returned to producers when profit-taking by retailers or packers is a more likely scenario. One UK café chain is known to have passed on 1.6% of the extra 18% is charged for fair-trade coﬀee to producers. However, this happens with other items at the supermarket or cafe, so perhaps consumers are naive to believe fair-traders behave otherwise. In addition, there are struggling farmers in rich countries, too, so some critics think fair-trade associations should certify them. Other critics find the entire fair-trade system ﬂawed – nothing more than a colossal marketing scam- and they would rather assist the genuinely poor in more transparent ways, but this criticism may be overblown since fair trade has endured for and been praised in the developing world itself.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 81 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

THE PLIGHT OF RICE

Rice is a tall grass with a drooping panicle that contains numerous edible grains and has been cultivated in China for more than 6,000 years. A staple throughout Asia and large parts of Africa, it is now grown in ﬂooded paddy fields from sea level to high mountains and harvested three times a year. According to the Food and Health Organisation of the United Nations, around four billion people currently receive a fifth of their calories from rice.

Recently, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have slightly reduced rice consumption due to the adoption of more western diets, but almost all other countries have raised their consumption due to population increase. Yet, since 1984, there have been diminishing rice yields around the world.

From the 1950s to the early 1960s, rice production was also suﬀering: India was on the brink of famine, and China was already experiencing one. In the late 1950s, Norman Borlaug, an American plant pathologist, began advising Punjab State in northwestern India to grow a new semi-dwarf variety of wheat. This was so successful that, in 1962, a semi-dwarf variety of rice, called IR8, developed by the Philippine ·International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), was planted throughout Southeast Asia and India. This semi-dwarf variety heralded the Green Revolution, which saved the lives of millions of people by almost doubling rice yields: from 1.9 metric tons per hectare in 1950-64, to 3.5 metric tons in 1985-98.

IR8 survived because, as a semi-dwarf, it only grows to a moderate height, and it does not thin out, keel over, and drown like traditional varieties. Furthermore, its short thick stem is able to absorb chemical fertilisers, but, as stem growth is limited, the plant expends energy on producing a large panicle of heavy seeds, ensuring a greater crop.

However, even with a massive increase in rice production, semi-dwarf varieties managed to keep up with population growth for only ten years. In Africa, where rice consumption is rising by 20% annually, and where one-third of the population now depends on the cereal, this is disturbing. At the current rate, within the next 20 years, rice will surpass maize as the major source of calories on that continent. Meantime, even in ideal circumstances, paddies worldwide are not producing what they once did, for reasons largely unknown to science. An average 0.8% fall in yields has been noted in rich rice-growing regions; in less ideal ones, flood, drought and salinity have meant yields have fallen drastically, sometimes up to 40%.

The sequencing of the rice genome took place in 2005, after which the IRRI developed genetically modified flood-resistant varieties of rice, called Sub 1, which produce up to four times more edible grain than non-modified strains. In 2010, a handful of farmers worldwide were planting IRRI Sub 1 rice; now, over five million are doing so. Currently, drought- and salt-resistant varieties are being trialled since most rice is grown in the great river basins of the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, and the Mekong that are all drying up or becoming far saltier.

With global warming, many rice-growing regions are hotter than 20 years ago. Nearly all varieties of rice; including IR8, flower in the afternoon, but the anthers – little sacs that contain male pollen – wither and die in soaring temperatures. IRRI scientists have identified one variety of rice, known as Odisha, that flowers in the early morning and they are in the process of genetically modifying IR8 so it contains Odisha-ﬂowering genes, although it may be some time before this is released.

While there is a clear need for more rice, many states and countries seem less keen to influence agricultural policy directly than they were in the past. Some believe rice demand will dip in wealthier places, as occurred in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan; others consider it more prudent to devote resources to tackling obesity or to limiting intensive farming that is environmentally destructive.

Some experts say where there is state intervention it should take the form of reducing subsidies to rice farmers to stimulate production; others propose that small landholdings should be consolidated into more economically viable ones. There is no denying that land reform is pressing, but many governments shy away from it, faring losses at the ballot box, all the while knowing that rural populations are heading for the city in droves anyway. And, as they do so, cities expand, eating up fertile land for food production.

One can only hope that the IRRI and other research institutions will spearhead half a dozen mini green revolutions, independently of uncommitted states.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

A New Perspective on Bacteria

Microbes are organisms too small to be seen by the naked eye, including bacteria, blue-green algae, yeasts, fungi, viruses, and viroids.

A large, diverse group, almost all bacteria are between one and ten µ¹ (larger ones reach 0.5 mm). Generally single-celled, with a distinctive cellular structure lacking a true nucleus, most bacterial genetic information is carried on a DNA loop in the cytoplasm² with the membrane possessing some nuclear properties.

There are three main kinds of bacteria – spherical, rod-like, and spiral – known by their Latin names of coccus, bacillus, and spirillum. Bacteria occur alone, in pairs, clusters, chains, or more complex configurations. Some live where oxygen is present; others, where it is absent.

The relationship between bacteria and their hosts is symbiotic, benefitting both organisms, or the hosts may be destroyed by parasitic or disease-causing bacteria.

In general, humans view bacteria suspiciously, yet it is now thought they partly owe their existence to microbes living long, Jong ago.

During photosynthesis, plants produce oxygen that humans need to fuel blood cells. Most geologists believe the early atmosphere on Earth contained very little oxygen until around 2½ billion years ago when microbes bloomed. Ancestral forms of cyanobacteria, for example, evolved into chloroplasts – the cells that carry out photosynthesis. Once plants inhabited the oceans, oxygen levels rose dramatically, so complex life forms could eventually be sustained.

The air humans breathe today is oxygen-rich, and the majority of airborne microbes are harmless, but the air does contain industrial pollutants, allergens, and infectious microbes or pathogens that cause illness

The fact is that scientists barely understand microbes. Bacteria have been proven to exist only in the past 350 years; viruses were discovered just over 100 years ago, but in the past three decades, the ubiquity of microbes has been established with bacteria found kilometres below the Earth’s crust and in the upper atmosphere. Surprisingly, they survive in dry deserts and the frozen reaches of Antarctica; they dwell in rain and snow clouds, as well as inside every living creature.

Air samples taken in 2006 from two cities in Texas contained at least 1,800 distinct species of bacteria, making the air as rich as the soil. These species originated both in Texas and as far away as western China. It now seems that the number of microbe species far exceeds the number of stars.

Inside every human being, there are trillions of bacteria with their weight estimated at 1.36 kg in an average adult, or about as heavy as the brain. Although tiny, 90% of cells in a human are bacterial. With around eight million genes, these bacteria outnumber genes in human cells by 300 times.

The large intestine contains the most bacteria – almost 34,000 species – but the crook of the elbow harbours over 2,000 species. Many bacteria are helpful: digesting food; aiding the immune system; creating moisturiser; and, manufacturing vitamins. Some have highly specialised functions, like Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, which breaks down plant starch, so an infant can make the transition from mother’s milk to a more varied diet.

Undeniably, some bacteria are life-threatening. One, known as golden staph, Staphylococcus aureus, plagues hospitals, where it infects instruments and devours human tissue until patients die from toxic shock. Worse, it is still resistant to antibiotics.

Antibiotics themselves are bacteria. In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered that a mould in his laboratory produced a chemical he named penicillin. In 1951, William Bouw collected soil from the jungles of Borneo that eventually became vancomycin. Pharmaceutical companies still hunt for beneficial bacteria, but Michael Fischbach from the University of California believes that the human body itself is a ready supply.

Scientific ignorance about bacteria is largely due to an inability to cultivate many of them in a laboratory, but recent DNA sequencing has meant populations can be analysed by a computer program without having to grow them.

Fischbach and his team have created and trained a computer program to identify gene clusters in microbial DNA sequences that might produce useful molecules. Having collected microbial DNA from 242 healthy human volunteers, the scientists sequenced the genomes of 2,340 diﬀerent species of microbes, most of which were completely new discoveries.

In searching the gene clusters, Fischbach et al fund 3,118 common ones that could be used in pharmaceuticals, for example, a gene cluster from the bacterium Lactobacillus gasseri, successfully reared in the lab, produced a molecule they named lactocillin. Later, they discovered the structure of this was very similar to an antibiotic, LFF571, undergoing clinical trials by a major pharmaceutical company. To date, lactocillin has killed harmful bacteria, so it may also be a reliable antibiotic.

Naturally, the path to patenting medicine is strewn with failures, but, since bacteria have been living inside humans for millions of years, they are probably safe to reintroduce in new combinations and in large amounts.

Undoubtedly, the fight against pathogens, like golden staph, must continue, but as scientists learn more about microbes, respect and excitement for them grow, and their positive applications become ever more probable.

¹A micron= 10^-6 m

²Material inside a cell

READING PASSAGE 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IELTS Reading Practice Test 82 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

With rapid urbanisation, more people now live in cities than in the countryside, and this number is set to rise. For all the benefits cities bestow, they are expensive places. In some years, Tokyo records the highest cost of living; in others, Moscow. In 2014, for expatriates, Luanda, the capital of Angola, received the dubious accolade; and, for Angolans themselves, it had also suddenly become pricey with real estate going through the roof, so to speak, and food being prohibitive – even locally sourced mangoes were $5 a kilo.

What can urbanites do to reduce the financial burden of paying for food? Diet? Grow their own? Beg for subsidies? Some economists have proposed that they buy contracts giving rights to a food stream in perpetuity, for example, a kilogram of beef would be delivered weekly from the date the contract started until the end of the owner’s life. In essence, this is what house purchase is – indefinite security of a single commodity. As is the case with buying a house, a loan from a financial institution might be necessary for the beef contract, even if it were merely for Australian blade steak and not Japanese Wagu. The contract could also be sold at the current market price if its owner moved out of delivery range or renounced beef.

In order to maintain or increase the value of their investment, it is likely some owners would support national and international policies to limit food production – a sound idea in a world where 40% of food goes to waste.

But let’s imagine, in this system, a consumer purchased a 25-year contract for beef, which, over time, doubled in value. Naturally, at sale, the owner would make a tidy profit. Conversely, if mad cow disease erupted, and no one dared eat beef, then the vendor would suﬀer. If the owner had bought ten beef contracts, he or she might even go bankrupt in this scenario.

Let’s also imagine that people bought contracts on items they had no intention of consuming: that the health-conscious purchased, yet eschewed, saturated-fat meat; that shrewd amoral vegetarians speculated in beef, as they already buy share portfolios in which multinational agri-business is represented, or they deposit money into banks that do just that on their behalf.

It is quite plausible that this speculative behaviour could lead to the overheating of the food-stream market. The state may intervene, attempting to cool things down, or it may tolerate such activity. Indeed, a government that proposed a capital gains tax or high death duties on food-stream contracts might be voted out in favour of another that believed in laissez-faire.* Besides which, an investment contract may be a way to realise wealth when there are few other possibilities either because the stock market is highly volatile, or much of the local economy generates little revenue, as is the case in Angola and many developing countries. Indeed, food-stream speculation could become a middle-class prerogative, indulged in by legislative members themselves.

I hope by now, you’ve realised this essay is a spoof. Yet, the fantastic food-stream market is reminiscent of the global housing market, where homeownership and property speculation have become the privilege of a few at great expense to the many, who either cannot participate, or sign their lives away to banks. You may also have realised that when I bring this topic up at a dinner party, for instance, I am usually shouted down, despite what I believe to be its inherent logic, because my friends consider a house as more tangible than a steak, and their identities are bound up with vague but powerful notions of property rights and independence.

I do concede that home-ownership oﬀers security (not having to move, being connected to one particular neighbourhood) and creativity (being able to modify and decorate as you please), but I would prefer people rent rather than buy in an eﬀort to lower property prices and to encourage investment in other sectors of the economy. Economists Moretti and Chang-Tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago have estimated that US output between 1999 and 2009 was 13% lower than it could have been because high housing costs forced so many people to move. Income locked up in housing could otherwise have been spent on local businesses, like restaurants or gyms, and job creation would likely have ensued.

So, next time you toss a steak on the barbecue, ponder whether we should treat food in the same way we treat housing, or whether we should treat housing as we do food.

*French for ‘allow to do’. An economic doctrine advocating that commerce should be free of state controls of any kind.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Egypt’s beautiful game

It is estimated that over a billion people watched the 2014 World Cup – the biggest TV event in human history – and that football is a trillion-dollar industry.

The fact that a handful of countries dominate the World Cup does not lessen interest in the competition or the sport by people in the remotest of regions. Take the largely inaccessible Omo Valley of southern Ethiopia, where shepherds with few possessions sport Arsenal or AC Milan T-shirts, and where women who may not know of the existence of the UK wear pendants with Wayne Rooney’s face on them. In Qiqihar, in northern China, middle-school children choose ‘English’ names for themselves, like David Beckham or Ronaldo, while in the Sinai, where temperatures soar and there are no other signs of life outdoors, adolescent boys dribble, kick, header, and feint with homemade footballs, dreaming of lifting themselves from abject poverty by playing for a famous team.

Although football generally stimulates the economy, many places grind to a halt when a big match is on – indeed the inhabitants of Cairo quip that the best time to drive across town to shop is during a final between Al Ahly and Zamalek.

As a codified game, football is a modem phenomenon, but the fifth-century-BC Greek historian, Herodotus, noted that young Egyptian males played with a ball made from straw-filled goatskin. The 1882 occupation of Egypt by the British saw the introduction of the game prescribed by the English Football Association in 1863, and almost immediately, football became the national sport and gripped the Egyptian psyche.

Psychologists propose that football appeals to fans for two main reasons: firstly, however vicariously, they participate in a triumphal world greater than their own, especially important when their lives seem mundane or troublesome; secondly, by attaching themselves to one club, they experience a powerful sense of belonging.

In the past 50 years, Egypt’s population has risen exponentially while its quality of life – but for a fortunate few – has deteriorated markedly. Injustice, corruption, and tyranny have borne down upon the average Egyptian, who, for 90 minutes once or twice a week, forgets his woes in a football match. Fans also believe that on the field, there are still some rules, though that is not to say there is no corruption or lawlessness within football: referees are not always fair, and fans, themselves, behave fanatically and dangerously.

In Egypt’s case, a fan’s loyalty to a club is interwoven with class and political allegiances. Al Ahly, for example, founded in 1907, boasted a famous anti-British revolutionary as one of its honorary presidents, and in 1956, the beloved Gamal Abdel Nasser was honorary club president as well as President of the Republic of Egypt. In some ways, Al Ahly remains the people’s club, whereas Zamalek, by contrast, established in 1911, allowed foreigners to play for it, and was associated with affluent Egyptians allied to Kings Fuad and Farouk. In fact, the club was named Farouk in the 1950s.

In more recent times, Hosni Mubarak, president until 2011, was accused of using football as a way to divert the masses from the parlous state of the nation or coerce them into outbursts against teams from other African nations, like Algeria. He, himself, seldom missed a game played by the national team, and his appearance brought on a media frenzy along with patriotic songs and the chanting of slogans. Two of his sons – fabulously wealthy playboys – were frequently photographed socializing with football stars. On the financial side, club owners and managers contributed funds to Mubarak’s campaigns. It is rumoured that, even in disgrace, he is supported by football stars and billionaires.

Egypt has been in turmoil for the last decade. During the 2011 revolution, when Mubarak was deposed, a group of Ahly fans known as the Ultras took an active role in demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. In February 2012, during a football match in Port Said, the Ultras were attacked: 74 people died in the brawl. The Ultras claim they were assaulted by both fans from the opposing team and members of the security forces as punishment for their role in Tahrir Square. Other examples of apparently unprovoked violence may signal that even football no longer serves as a fantasy for the frustrated masses. In any case, it is as thorny a game oﬀ the field as it is on.

It seems the beautiful game in Egypt may need a radical facelift. Egypt’s poor showing in the 2014 World Cup – it failed to qualify whereas its rival Algeria did – meant that more Egyptians have started following European teams. Match violence and unprecedented social upheaval had already reduced support. Still, as every fan knows, when life is sweeter in Egypt again, there will be magical moments to savour at local stadiums too.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE

High coal dependence

Renewable energy is much discussed, but coal still plays the greatest role in the generation of electricity, with recent figures from the International Energy Agency showing that China relies on it for 79% of its power, Australia for 78%, and the US for 45%. Germany has less reliance at 41%, which is also the global average. Furthermore, many countries have large, easily accessible deposits of coal, and numerous highly skilled miners, chemists, and engineers. Meanwhile, 70% of the world’s steel production requires coal, and plastic and rayon are usually coal derivatives.

Currently, coal-fired power plants fed voracious appetites, but they produce carbon dioxide (CO2) in staggering amounts. Urbanites may grumble about an average monthly electricity bill of $113, yet they steadfastly ignore the fact that they are not billed for the 6-7 million metric tons of CO2 their local plant belches out, which contribute to the 44% of global CO2 levels from fossil-fuel emissions. Yet, as skies fill with smog and temperatures soar, people crave clean air and cheap power.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that advises the United Nations has testified that the threshold of serious harm to the Earth’s temperature is a mere 2° Celsius above current levels, so it is essential to reduce carbon emissions by 80% over the next 30 years, even as demand for energy will rise by 50%, and one proposal for this is the adoption of carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Underground carbon storage

Currently, CO2 storage, or sequestration as it is known, is practised by the oil and gas industry, where CO2 is pumped into oil fields to maintain pressure and ease extraction – one metric ton dissolves out about three barrels, or separated from natural gas and pumped out of exhausted coal fields or other deep seams. The CO2 remains underground or is channelled into disused sandstone reservoirs. However, the sale of oil and natural gas is profitable, so the $17-per-ton sequestration cost is easily borne. There is also a plan for the injection of CO2 into saline aquifers, 1,000 metres beneath the seabed, to prevent its release into the atmosphere.

Carbon capture

While CO2 storage has been accomplished, its capture from power plants remains largely hypothetical, although CCS plants throughout Western Europe and North America are on the drawing board.

There are three main forms of CCS: pre-combustion, post-combustion, and oxy-firing. In a 2012 paper from the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO), post-combustion capture was viewed most favourably since existing power plants can be retrofitted with it, whereas pre-combustion and oxy-firing mean the construction of entirely new plants. However, pre-combustion and oxy-firing remove more CO2 than post-combustion and generate more electricity.

Post-combustion capture means CO2 is separated from gas after coal is burnt but before electricity is generated, while in oxy-firing, coal is combusted in pure oxygen. In pre-combustion, as in an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle system (IGCC), oxygen, coal, and water ae burnt together to produce a synthetic gas called Syngas – mainly hydrogen – which drives two sets of turbines, firstly gas-driven ones, then, as the cooling Syngas travel through water, steam-driven ones. Emissions from this process contain around ten percent of the CO2 that burning coal produces.

The pros and cons of CCS

Several countries are keen to scale up CCS as it may reduce carbon emissions quickly, and powerful lobby groups for CCS exist among professionals in mining and engineering. Foundries and refineries that produce steel and emit carbon may also benefit, and the oil and gas industry is interested because power-plant equipment consumes their products. In addition, recent clean energy acts in many countries mandate that a percentage of electricity be generated by renewables or by more energy-efficient systems, like CCS.

As with desalination, where powerful lobbies wield influence, states sometimes find it easier to engage in large projects involving a few players rather than change behaviours on a more scattered household scale. Furthermore, replacing coal with zero-emission photovoltaic (PV) cells to produce solar energy would require covering an area nearly 20,720 square kilometres, roughly twice the size of Lebanon or half of Denmark.

Still, there are many reservations about CCS. Principally, it is enormously expensive: conservative estimates put the electricity it generates at more than five times the current retail price. As consumers are unlikely to want to bear this price hike, massive state subsidies would be necessary for CCS to work.

The capital outlay of purchasing equipment for retrofitting existing power plants is high enough, but the energy needed to capture CO2 means one third more coal must be burnt, and building new CCS plants is at least 75% more expensive than retro-fitting.

Some CCS technology is untried, for example, the Syngas-driven turbines in an IGCC system have not been used on an industrial scale. Post capture, CO2 must be compressed into a supercritical liquid for transport and storage, which is also costly. The Qatar Carbonates and Carbon Storage Research Centre predicts 700 million barrels per day of this liquid would be produced if CCS were adopted modestly. It is worth noting that current oil production is around 85 million barrels per day, so CCS would produce eleven times more waste for burial than oil that was simultaneously being extracted.

Sequestration has been used successfully, but there are limited coal and oil fields where optimal conditions exist. In rock that is too brittle, earthquakes could release the CO2. Moreover, proposals to store CO2 in saline aquifers are just that – proposals: sequestration has never been attempted in aquifers.

Most problematic of all, CCS reduces carbon emissions but does not end them, rendering it a medium-term solution.

Alternatives

There are at least four reasonably-priced alternatives to CCS. Firstly, conventional pulverised coal power plants are undergoing redesign so more electricity can be produced from less coal. Before coal is phased out – as ultimately it will have to be – these plants could be more cost-eﬀective. Secondly, hybrid plants using natural gas and coal could be built. Thirdly, natural gas could be used on its own. Lastly, solar power is fast gaining credibility.

In all this, an agreed measure of cost for electricity generation must be used. This is called a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) – an average cost of producing electricity over the lifetime of a power plant, including construction, financing, and operation, although pollution is not counted. In 2012, the CBO demonstrated that a new CCS plant had an LCOE of about $0.09-0.15 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), but according to the US Energy Information Administration, the LCOE from a conventional natural gas power plant without CCS is $0.0686/kWh, making it the cheapest way to produce clean energy.

Solar power costs are falling rapidly. In 2013, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power reported that energy via a purchase agreement from a large solar plant was $0.095/kWh, and Greentech Media, a company that reviews environmental projects, found a 2014 New Mexico solar project that generates power for $0.0849/kWh.

Still, while so much coal and so many coal-fired plants exist, decommissioning them all may not be realistic. Whatever happens, the conundrum of cheap power and clean air may remain unsolved for some time.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 83 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Spider silk 2

A strong, light bio-material made by genes from spiders could transform construction and industry

Scientists have succeeded in copying the silk-producing genes of the Golden Orb Weaver spider and are using them to create a synthetic material which they believe is the model for a new generation of advanced bio-materials. The new material, biosilk, which has been spun for the first time by researchers at DuPont, has an enormous range of potential uses in construction and manufacturing.

The attraction of the silk spun by the spider is a combination of great strength and enormous elasticity, which man-made fibres have been unable to replicate. On an equal-weight basis, spider silk is far stronger than steel and it is estimated that if a single strand could be made about 10m in diameter, it would be strong enough to stop a jumbo jet in flight. A third important factor is that it is extremely light. Army scientists are already looking at the possibilities of using it for lightweight, bulletproof vests and parachutes.

For some time, biochemists have been trying to synthesise the drag-line silk of the Golden Orb Weaver. The drag-line silk, which forms the radial arms of the web, is stronger than the other parts of the web and some biochemists believe a synthetic version could prove to be as important a material as nylon, which has been around for 50 years, since the discoveries of Wallace Carothers and his team ushered in the age of polymers.

To recreate the material, scientists, including Randolph Lewis at the University of Wyoming, first examined the silk-producing gland of the spider. ‘We took out the glands that produce the silk and looked at the coding for the protein material they make, which is spun into a web. We then went looking for clones with the right DNA,’ he says.

At DuPont, researchers have used both yeast and bacteria as hosts to grow the raw material, which they have spun into fibres. Robert Dorsch, DuPont’s director of biochemical development, says the globules of protein, comparable with marbles in an egg, are harvested and processed. ‘We break open the bacteria, separate out the globules of protein and use them as the raw starting material. With yeast, the gene system can be designed so that the material excretes the protein outside the yeast for better access,’ he says.

‘The bacteria and the yeast produce the same protein, equivalent to that which the spider uses in the draglines of the web. The spider mixes the protein into a water-based solution and then spins it into a solid fibre in one go. Since we are not as clever as the spider and we are not using such sophisticated organisms, we substituted man-made approaches and dissolved the protein in chemical solvents, which are then spun to push the material through small holes to form the solid fibre.’

Researchers at DuPont say they envisage many possible uses for a new biosilk material. They say that earthquake-resistant suspension bridges hung from cables of synthetic spider silk fibres may become a reality. Stronger ropes, safer seat belts, shoe soles that do not wear out so quickly and tough new clothing are among the other applications. Biochemists such as Lewis see the potential range of uses of biosilk as almost limitless. ‘It is very strong and retains elasticity: there are no man-made materials that can mimic both these properties. It is also a biological material with all the advantages that have over petrochemicals,’ he says.

At DuPont’s laboratories, Dorsch is excited by the prospect of new super-strong materials but he warns they are many years away. ‘We are at an early stage but theoretical predictions are that we will wind up with a very strong, tough material, with an ability to absorb shock, which is stronger and tougher than the man-made materials that are conventionally available to us,’ he says.

The spider is not the only creature that has aroused the interest of material scientists. They have also become envious of the natural adhesive secreted by the sea mussel. It produces a protein adhesive to attach itself to rocks. It is tedious and expensive to extract the protein from the mussel, so researchers have already produced a synthetic gene for use in surrogate bacteria.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Novice and Expert

Becoming an Expert

Expertise is commitment coupled with creativity. Specifically, it is the commitment of time, energy, and resources to a relatively narrow field of study and the creative energy necessary to generate new knowledge in that field. It takes a considerable amount of time and regular exposure to a large number of cases to become an expert.

An individual enters a field a study as a novice. The novice needs to learn the guiding principles and rules of a given task in order to perform that task. Concurrently, the novice needs to be exposed to specific cases, or instances, that test the boundaries of such heuristics. Generally, a novice will find a mentor to guide her through the process. A fairly simple example would be someone learning to play chess. The novice chess player seeks a mentor to teach her the object of the game, the number of spaces, the names of the pieces, the function of each piece, how each piece is moved, and the necessary conditions for winning or losing the game.

In time, and with much practice, the novice begins to recognize patterns of behavior within cases and, thus, becomes a journeyman. With more practice and exposure to increasingly complex cases, the journeyman finds patterns not only with cases but also between cases. More importantly, the journeyman learns that these patterns often repeat themselves over time. The journeyman still maintains regular contact with a mentor to solve specific problems and learn more complex strategies. Returning to the example of the chess player, the individual begins to learn patterns of opening moves, offensive and defensive game-playing strategies, and patterns of victory and defeat.

When a journeyman starts to make and test hypotheses about future behavior based on past experiences, she begins the next transition. Once she creatively generates knowledge, rather than simply matching superficial patterns, she becomes an expert. At this point, she is confident in her knowledge and no longer needs a mentor as a guide – she becomes responsible for her own knowledge. In the chess example, once a journeyman begins competing against experts, makes predictions based on patterns, and tests those predictions against actual behavior, she is generating new knowledge and a deeper understanding of the game. She is creating her own cases rather than relying on the cases of others.

The Power of Expertise

An expert perceives meaningful patterns in her domain better than non-experts. Where a novice perceives random or disconnected date points, an expert connects regular patterns within and between cases. This ability to identify patterns is not an innate perceptual skill; rather it reflects the organization of knowledge after exposure to and experience with thousands of cases. Experts have a deeper understanding of their domains than novices do, and utilize higher-order principles to solve problems. A novice, for example, might group objects together by color or size, whereas an expert would group the same objects according to their function or utility. Experts comprehend the meaning of data and weigh variables with different criteria within their domains better than novices. Experts recognize variables that have the largest influence on a particular problem and focus their attention on those variables.

Experts have better domain-specific short-term and long-term memory than novices do. Moreover, experts perform tasks in their domains faster than novices and commit fewer errors while problem solving. Interestingly, experts go about solving problems differently than novices. Experts spend more time thinking about a problem to fully understand it at the beginning of a task than do novice, who immediately seek to find a solution. Experts use their knowledge of previous cases as a context for creating mental models to solve given problems.

Better at self-monitoring than novices, experts are more aware of instances where they have committed errors or failed to understand a problem. Experts check their solutions more often than novices and recognize when they are missing information necessary for solving a problem. Experts are aware of the limits of their domain knowledge and apply their domain’s heuristics to solve problems that fall outside of their experience base.

The Paradox of Expertise

The strengths of expertise can also be weakness. Although one would expect experts to be good forecasters, they are not particularly good at making predictions about the future. Since the 1930s, researchers have been testing the ability of experts to make forecasts. The performance of experts has been tested against actuarial tables to determine if they are better at making predictions than simple statistical models. Seventy years later, with more than two hundred experiments in different domains, it is clear that the answer is no. if supplied with an equal amount of data about a particular case, an actuarial table is as good, or better, than an expert at making calls about the future. Even if an expert is given more specific case information than is available to the statistical model, the expert does not tend to outperform the actuarial table.

Theorists and researchers differ when trying to explain why experts are less accurate forecasters than statistical models. Some have argued that experts, like all humans, are inconsistent when using mental models to make predictions. A number of researchers point to human biases to explain unreliable expert predictions. A number of researchers point to human biases to explain unreliable expert predictions. During the last 30 years, researchers have categorized, experimented, and theorized about the cognitive aspects of forecasting. Despite such efforts, the literature shows little consensus regarding the causes or manifestation of human bias.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Inside the mind of a fan

How watching sport affects the brain

At about the same time that the poet Homer invented the epic here, the ancient Greeks started a festival in which men competed in a single race, about 200 metres long. The winner received a branch of wild olives. The Greeks called this celebration the Olympics. Through the ancient sprint remains, today the Olympics are far more than that. Indeed, the Games seem to celebrate the dream of progress as embodied in the human form. That the Games are intoxicating to watch is beyond question. During the Athens Olympics in 2004, 3.4 billion people, half the world, watched them on television. Certainly, being a spectator is a thrilling experience: but why?

In 1996, three Italian neuroscientists, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Leonardo Forgassi and Vittorio Gallese, examined the premotor cortex of monkeys. The discovered that inside these primate brains there were groups of cells that ‘store vocabularies of motor actions’. Just as there are grammars of movement. These networks of cells are the bodily ‘sentences’ we use every day, the ones our brain has chosen to retain and refine. Think, for example, about a golf swing. To those who have only watched the Master’s Tournament on TV, golfing seems easy. To the novice, however, the skill of casting a smooth arc with a lop-side metal stick is virtually impossible. This is because most novices swing with their consciousness, using an area of brain next to the premotor cortex. To the expert, on the other hand, a perfectly balanced stroke is second nature. For him, the motor action has become memorized, and the movements are embedded in the neurons of his premotor cortex. He hits the ball with the tranquility of his perfected autopilot.

These neurons in the premotor cortex, besides explaining why certain athletes seem to possess almost unbelievable levels of skill, have an even more amazing characteristic, one that caused Rizzolatti, Fogassi and Gallese to give them the lofty title ‘mirror neurons’. They note, The main functional characteristic of mirror neurons is that they become active both when the monkey performs a particular action (for example, grasping an object or holding it) and, astonishingly, when it sees another individual performing a similar action.’ Humans have an even more elaborate mirror neuron system. These peculiar cells mirror, inside the brain, the outside world: they enable us to internalize the actions of another. In order to be activated, though, these cells require what the scientists call ‘goal-orientated movements’. If we are staring at a photograph, a fixed image of a runner mid-stride, our mirror neurons are totally silent. They only fire when the runner is active: running, moving or sprinting.

What these electrophysiological studies indicate is that when we watch a golfer or a runner in action, the mirror neurons in our own premotor cortex light up as if we were the ones competing. This phenomenon of neural mirror was first discovered in 1954, when two French physiologists, Gastaut and Berf, found that the brains of humans vibrate with two distinct wavelengths, alpha and mu. The mu system is involved in neural mirroring. It is active when your bodies are still, and disappears whenever we do something active, like playing a sport or changing the TV channel. The surprising fact is that the mu signal is also quiet when we watch someone else being active, as on TV, these results are the effect of mirror neurons.

Rizzolatti, Fogassi and Gallese call the idea for mirror neurons the ‘direct matching hypothesis’. They believe that we only understand the movement of sports stars when we ‘map the visual representation of the observed action onto our motor representation of the same action’. According to this theory, watching an Olympic athlete ‘causes the motor system of the observer to resonate. The “motor knowledge” of the observer is used to understand the observed action.’ But mirror neurons are more than just the neural basis for our attitude to sport. It turns out that watching a great golfer makes us better golfers, and watching a great sprinter actually makes us run faster. This ability to learn by watching is a crucial skill. From the acquisition of language as infants to learning facial expressions, mimesis (copying) is an essential part of being conscious. The best athletes are those with a premotor cortex capable of imagining the movements of victory, together with the physical properties to make those movements real.

But how many of us regularly watch sports in order to be a better athlete? Rather, we watch sport for the feeling, the human drama. This feeling also derives from mirror neurons. By letting spectators share in the motions of victory, they also allow us to share in its feelings. This is because they are directly connected to the amygdale, one of the main brain regions involved in emotion. During the Olympics, the mirror neurons of whole nations will be electrically identical, their athletes causing spectators to feel, just for a second or two, the same thing. Watching sports brings people together. Most of us will never run a mile in under four minutes, or hit a home run. Our consolation comes in watching, when we gather around the TV, we all feel, just for a moment, what it is to do something perfectly.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 84 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Mungo Man

Fifty thousand years ago, a lush landscape greeted the first Australians making their way towards the south-east of the continent. Temperatures were cooler than now. Megafauna – giant prehistoric animals such as marsupial lions, goannas and the rhinoceros-sized diprotodon – were abundant. The Lake Mungo remains are three prominent sets of fossils which tell the archeologists the story: Mungo Man lived around the shores of Lake Mungo with his family. When he was young Mungo Man lost his two lower canine teeth, possible knocked out in a ritual. He grew into a man nearly 1.7m in height. Over the years his molar teeth became worn and scratched, possibly from eating a gritty diet or stripping the long leaves of water reeds with his teeth to make twine. As Mungo Man grew older his bones ached with arthritis, especially his right elbow, which was so damaged that bits of bone were completely worn out or broken away. Such wear and tear are typical of people who have used a woomera to throw spears over many years. Mungo Man reached a good age for the hard life of a hunter-gatherer and died when he was about 50. His family mourned for him, and carefully buried him in the lunette, on his back with his hands crossed in his lap, and sprinkled with red ochre. Mungo Man is the oldest known example in the world of such a ritual.

This treasure-trove of history was found by the University of Melbourne geologist Professor Jim Bowler in 1969. He was searching for ancient lakes and came across the charred remains of Mungo Lady, who had been cremated. And in 1974, he found a second complete skeleton, Mungo Man, buried 300 metres away. Using carbon-dating, a technique only reliable to around 40,000 years old, the skeleton was first estimated at 28,000 to 32,000 years old. The comprehensive study of 25 different sediment layers at Mungo concludes that both graves are 40,000 years old.

This is much younger than the 62,000 years Mungo Man was attributed within 1999 by a team led by Professor Alan Thorne, of the Australian National University. The modern-day story of the science of Mungo also has its fair share of rivalry. Because Thorne is the country’s leading opponent of the Out of Africa theory – that Homo sapiens had a single place of origin. “Dr Alan Thorne supports the multi-regional explanation (that modern humans arose simultaneously in Africa, Europe and Asia from one of our predecessors, Homo erectus, who left Africa more than 1.5 million years ago.) if Mungo Man was descended from a person who had left Africa in the past 200,000 years, Thorne argues, then his mitochondrial DNA should have looked like that of the other samples.”

However, Out of Africa supporters are not about to let go of their beliefs because of the Australian research, Professor Chris Stringer, from the Natural History Museum in London, UK, said that the research community would want to see the work repeated in other labs before major conclusions were drawn from the Australian research. But even assuming the DNA sequences were correct, Professor Stringer said it could just mean that there was much more genetic diversity in the past than was previously realised. There is no evidence here that the ancestry of these Australian fossils goes back a million or two million years. It’s much more likely that modern humans came out of Africa.” For Bowler, these debates are irritating speculative distractions from the study’s main findings. At 40,000 years old, Mungo Man and Mungo Lady remain Australian’s oldest human burials and the earliest evidence on Earth of cultural sophistication, he says. Modern humans had not even reached North America by this time. In 1997, Pddbo’s research group recovered an mtDNA fingerprint from the Feldholer Neanderthal skeleton uncovered in Germany in 1865 – the first Neanderthal remains ever found.

In its 1999 study, Thorne’s team used three techniques to date Mungo Man at 62,000 years old, and it stands by its figures. It dated bone, teeth enamel and some sand. Bowler has strongly challenged the results ever since. Dating human bones is “notoriously unreliable”, he says. As well, the sand sample Thorne’s group dated was taken hundreds of metres from the burial site. “You don’t have to be a gravedigger … to realize the age of the sand is not the same as the age of the grave,” says Bowler.

Thorne counters that Bowler’s team used one dating technique, while he used three. The best practice is to have at least two methods produce the same result. A Thorne team member, Professor Rainer Grün, says the fact that the latest results were consistent between laboratories doesn’t mean they are absolutely correct. We now have two data sets that are contradictory. I do not have a plausible explanation.” Now, however, Thorne says the age of Mungo Man is irrelevant to this origins debate. Recent fossils find show modern humans were in China 110,000 years ago. “So he has got a long time to turn up in Australia. It doesn’t matter if he is 40,000 or 60,000 years old.

Dr Tim Flannery, a proponent of the controversial theory that Australia’s megafauna were wiped out 46,000 years ago in a “blitzkrieg” of hunting by the arriving people, also claims the new Mungo dates support this view. In 2001 a member of Bowler’s team, Dr Richard Roberts of Wollongong University, along with Flannery, director of the South Australian Museum, published research on their blitzkrieg theory. They dated 28 sites across the continent, arguing their analysis showed the megafauna died out suddenly 46,000 years ago. Flannery praises the Bowler team’s research on Mungo Man as “the most thorough and rigorous dating” of ancient human remains. He says the finding that humans arrived at Lake Mungo between 46,000 and 50,000 years ago was a critical time in Australia’s history. There is no evidence of a dramatic climatic change then, he says. “It’s my view that humans arrived and extinction took place in almost the same geological instant.”

Bowler, however, is skeptical of Flannery’s theory and says the Mungo study provides no definitive new evidence to support it. He argues that climate change at 40,000 years ago was more intense than had been previously realized and could have played a role in the megafauna’s demise. “To blame the earliest Australians for their complete extinction is drawing a longbow.”

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Motor car

The history of the automobile begins as early as 1769, with the creation of steam engine automobiles capable of human transport. In 1806, the first cars powered by an internal combustion engine running on fuel gas appeared, which led to the introduction in 1885 of the ubiquitous modern petrol-fueled internal combustion engine.

It is generally acknowledged that the first really practical automobiles with petrol/gasoline-powered internal combustion engines were completed almost simultaneously by several German inventors working independently: Karl Benz built his first automobile in 1885 in Mannheim. Benz was granted a patent for his automobile on 29 January 1886, and began the first production of automobiles in 1888 in a company later became the famous Mercedes-Benz.

At the beginning of the century, the automobile entered the transportation market for the rich. The drivers of the day were an adventurous lot, going out in every kind of weather, unprotected by an enclosed body, or even a convertible top. Everyone in town knew who owned what car and the cars were soon to become each individual’s token of identity. However, it became increasingly popular among the general population because it gave travelers the freedom to travel when they wanted to and where the wanted. As a result, in North America and Europe, the automobile became cheaper and more accessible to the middle class. This was facilitated by Henry Ford who did two important things. First, he priced his car to be as affordable as possible and second, he paid his workers enough to be able to purchase the cars they were manufacturing.

The assembly line style of mass production and interchangeable parts had been pioneered in the U.S. This concept was greatly expanded by Henry Ford, beginning in 1914. The large-scale, production-line manufacturing of affordable automobiles was debuted Ford’s cars came off the line in fifteen-minute intervals, much faster than previous methods, increasing productivity eightfold (requiring 12.5 man-hours before, 1 hour 33 minutes after), while using less manpower.

The original Jeep vehicle that first appeared as the prototype Bantam BRC became the primary light 4-wheel-drive vehicle of the United States Army and Allies and made a huge leap in sale during World War II, as well as the postwar period. Throughout the 1950s, engine power and vehicle speeds rose, designs became more integrated and artful, and cars spread across the world. Captive imports and badge engineering swept through the US and UK as amalgamated groups like the British Motor Corporation consolidated the market. BMC’s revolutionary space-saving Mini, which first appeared in 1959, captured large sales worldwide. Minis were marketed under the Austin and Morris names, until Mini became a marque in its own right in 1696. The trend for corporate consolidation reached Italy as niche makers like Maserati, Ferrari, and Lancia were acquired by larger companies. By the end of the decade, the number of automobile marques had been greatly reduced.

In America, performance became a prime focus of marketing, exemplified by pony cars and muscle cars. But everything changed in the 1970s as the 1973 oil crisis automobile emissions control rules, Japanese and European imports, and stagnant innovation wreaked havoc on the American industry. Though somewhat ironically, full-size sedans staged a major comeback in the years between the energy crisis, with makes such as Cadillac and Lincoln staging their best sales years ever in the late 70s. Small performance cars from BMW, Toyota, and Nissan took the place of big-engined cars from America and Italy.

On the technology front, the biggest developments in the Post-war era were the widespread use of independent suspensions, wider application of fuel injection, and an increasing focus on safety in the design of automobiles. The hottest technologies of the 1960s were NSU’s “Wankel engine”, the gas turbine, and the turbocharger. Of these, only the last, pioneered by General Motors but popularised by BMW and Saab, was to see widespread use. Mazda had much success with its “Rotary” engine which, however, acquired a reputation as a polluting gas-guzzler.

The modern era has also seen rapidly rising fuel efficiency and engine output. Once the automobile emissions concerns of the 1970s were conquered with computerised engine management systems, power began to rise rapidly. In the 1980s, a powerful sports car might have produced 200 horsepower (150 kW) – just 20 years later, average passenger cars have engines that powerful, and some performance models offer three times as much power.

Most automobiles in use today are propelled by an internal combustion engine, fueled by gasoline or diesel. Both fuels are known to cause air pollution and are also blamed for contributing to climate change and global warming. Rapidly increasing oil prices, concerns about oil dependence, tightening environmental laws and restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions are propelling work on alternative power systems for automobiles. Efforts to improve or replace existing technologies include the development of hybrid vehicles, plug-in electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles. Vehicles using alternative fuels such as ethanol flexible-fuel vehicles and natural gas vehicles are also gaining popularity in some countries.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Decision making and Happiness

Americans today choose among more options in more parts of life than has ever been possible before. To an extent, the opportunity to choose enhances our lives. It is only logical to think that if some choice is good, more is better; people who care about having infinite options will benefit from them, and those who do not can always just ignore the 273 versions of cereal they have never tried. Yet recent research strongly suggests that, psychologically, this assumption is wrong. Although some choice is undoubtedly better than none, more is not always better than less.

Recent research offers insight into why many people end up unhappy rather than pleased when their options expand. We began by making a distinction between “maximizers” (those who always aim to make the best possible choice) and “satisficers” (those who aim for “good enough,” whether or not better selections might be out there).

In particular, we composed a set of statements-the Maximization Scale-to diagnose people’s propensity to maximize. Then we had several thousand people rate themselves from 1 to 7 (from “completely disagree” to “completely agree”) on such statements as “I never settle for second best.” We also evaluated their sense of satisfaction with their decisions. We did not define a sharp cutoff to separate maximizers from satisficers, but in general, we think of individuals whose average scores are higher than 4 (the scale’s midpoint) as maximizers and those whose scores are lower than the midpoint as satisficers. People who score highest on the test – the greatest maximisers-engages in more product comparisons than the lowest scorers, both before and after they make purchasing decisions, and they take longer to decide what to buy. When satisficers find an item that meets their standards, they stop looking. But maximizers exert enormous effort to read labels, checking out consumer magazines and trying new products. They also spend more time comparing their purchasing decisions with those of others.

We found that the greatest maximizers are the least happy with the fruits of their efforts. When they compare themselves with others, they get little pleasure from finding out that they did better and substantial dissatisfaction from finding out that they did worse. They are more prone to experiencing regret after purchase, and if their acquisition disappoints them, their sense of well-being takes longer to recover. They also tend to brood or ruminate more than satisficers do.

Does it follow that maximizers are less happy in general than satisficers? We tested this by having people fill out a variety of questionnaires known to be reliable indicators of well-being. As might be expected, individuals with high maximization scores experienced less satisfaction with life and were less happy, less optimistic and more depressed than people with low maximization scores. Indeed, those with extreme maximization ratings had depression scores that placed them in the borderline clinical range.

Several factors explain why more choice is not always better than less, especially for maximizers. High among these are “opportunity costs.” The quality of any given option cannot be assessed in isolation from its alternatives. One of the “costs” of making a selection is losing the opportunities that a different option would have afforded. Thus an opportunity cost of vacationing on the beach in Cape Cod might be missing the fabulous restaurants in the Napa Valley. Early decision-making research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that people respond much more strongly to losses than gains. If we assume that opportunity costs reduce the overall desirability of the most preferred choice, then the more alternatives there are, the deeper our sense of loss will be and the less satisfaction we will derive from our ultimate decision.

The problem of opportunity costs will be worse for a maximizer than for a satisficer. The latter’s “good enough” philosophy can survive thoughts about opportunity costs. In addition, the “good enough” standard leads to much less searching and inspection of alternatives than ‘the maximizer’s “best” standard. With fewer choices under consideration, a person will have fewer opportunity costs to subtract.

Just as people feel sorrow about the opportunities they have forgone, they may also suffer regret about the option they settle on. My colleagues and I devised a scale to measure proneness to feeling regret, and we found that people with high sensitivity to regret are less happy, less satisfied with life, less optimistic and more depressed than those with low sensitivity. Not surprisingly, we also found that people with high regret sensitivity tend to be maximizers. Indeed, we think that worry over future regret is a major reason that individuals become maximizers. The only way to be sure you will not regret a decision is by making the best possible one. Unfortunately, the more options you have and the more opportunity costs you incur, the more likely you are to experience regret.

In a classic demonstration of the power of sunk costs, people were offered season subscriptions to a local theater company. Some were offered the tickets at full price and others at a discount. Then the researchers simply kept track of how often the ticket purchasers actually attended the plays over the course of the season. Full-price payers were more likely to show up at performances than discount payers. The reason for this, the investigators argued, was that the full-price payers would experience more regret if they did not use the tickets because not using the more costly tickets would constitute a bigger loss. To increase the sense of happiness, we can decide to restrict our options when the decision is not crucial. For example, make a rule to visit no more than two stores when shopping for clothing.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 85 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Bamboo, A Wonder Plant 2

Bamboo is used for a wide range of purposes, but now it seems it may be under threat.

Every year, during the rainy season, the mountain gorillas of central Africa migrate to the lower slopes of the Virunga Mountains to graze on bamboo. For the 650 or so that remain in the wild, it’s a vital food source. Without it, says Ian Redmond, chairman of the Ape Alliance, their chances of survival would be reduced significantly.

Gorillas aren’t the only local keen on bamboo. For the people who live close to the Virungas, it’s a valuable and versatile raw material. But in the past 100 years or so, resources have come under increasing pressure as populations have exploded and large areas of bamboo forest have been cleared to make way for commercial plantations. Sadly, this isn’t an isolated story. All over the world, the ranges of many bamboo species appear to be shrinking, endangering the people and animals that depend upon them.

Despite bamboo’s importance, we know surprisingly little about it. A recent report published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) has revealed just how profound our ignorance of global bamboo resources is, particularly in relation to conservation.

There are almost 1,600 recognised species of bamboo, but the report concentrated on the 1,200 or so woody varieties distinguished by the strong stems, or ‘culms’, that most people associate with this versatile plant. Of these, only 38 ‘priority species’ identified for their commercial value have been the subject of any real scientific research to date.

This problem isn’t confined to bamboo. Compared to the work carried out on animals, the science of assessing the conservation status of plants is still in its infancy. ‘People have only started looking at this during the past 10-15 years, and only now are they understanding how to go about it systematically,’ says Dr Valerie Kapos, one of the report’s authors.

Bamboo tends to grow in ‘stands’ (or groups) made up of individual plants that grow from roots known as rhizomes. It is the world’s fastest-growing woody plant and some species grow over a meter in one day. But the plant’s ecological role extends beyond providing food for wildlife. Its rhizome systems, which lie in the top layers of the soil, are crucial in preventing soil erosion. And there is growing evidence that bamboo plays an important part in determining forest structure and dynamics. ‘Bamboo’s pattern of mass flowering and mass death leaves behind large areas of dry biomass that attract wildfire/ says Kapos. ‘When these bum, they create patches of open ground far bigger than would be left by a fallen tree. Patchiness helps to preserve diversity because certain plant species do better during the early stages of regeneration when there are gaps in the canopy.’

However, bamboo’s most immediate significance lies in its economic value. Many countries, particularly in Asia, are involved in the trade of bamboo products. Modern processing techniques mean it can be used in a variety of ways, for example as flooring and laminates. Traditionally it is used in construction, but one of the fastest growing bamboo products is paper -25 per cent of paper produced in India is made from bamboo fibre.

Of course, bamboo’s main function has always been in domestic applications, and as a locally traded product, it is worth about US$4,5 billion annually. Bamboo is often the only readily available raw material for people in many developing countries, says Chris Stapleton, a research associate at the UK’s Royal Botanic Gardens. ‘Bamboo can be harvested from forest areas or grown quickly elsewhere, and then converted simply without expensive machinery or facilities,’ he says, ‘In this way, it contributes substantially to poverty alleviation.’

Keen horticulturists will spot an apparent contradiction in the worrying picture painted by the UNEP-INBAR report. Those in the West who’ve followed the recent vogue for cultivating exotic species in their gardens will point out that, if it isn’t kept in check, bamboo can cause real problems. ‘In a lot of places, the people who live with bamboo don’t perceive it as being under threat in any way,’ says Kapos. ‘In fact, a lot of bamboo species are very invasive if they’ve been introduced.’ So why are so many species endangered?

There are two separate issues here, says Ray Townsend, arboretum manager at the Royal Botanic Gardens. ‘Some plants are threatened because they can’t survive in the habitat – they aren’t strong enough or there aren’t enough of them, perhaps. But bamboo can take care of itself – it’s strong enough to survive if left alone. What is under threat is its habitat. When forest goes, it’s converted into something else: then there isn’t anywhere for forest plants such as bamboo to grow.’

Around the world, bamboo species are routinely protected as part of the forest ecosystem in national parks and reserves, but there is next to nothing that protects bamboo in the wild for its own sake. The UNEP-1NBAR report will help conservationists to establish effective measures aimed at protecting valuable wild bamboo species.

Townsend, too, sees the UNEP-INBAR report as an important step forward in promoting the cause of bamboo conservation. ‘Until now, bamboo has been perceived as a second-class plant. When you talk about places like the Amazon, everyone always thinks about hardwoods. Of course, these are significant but there’s a tendency to overlook the plants they are associated with, which are often bamboo species.’

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Coral reefs

Coral reefs are underwater structures made from calcium carbonate secreted by corals. Coral reefs are colonies of tiny living animals found in marine waters that contain few nutrients. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, which in turn consist of polyps that cluster in groups.

Coral reefs are estimated to cover 284,300 km2 just under 0.1% of the oceans‘ surface area, about half the area of France. The Indo-Pacific region accounts for 91.9% of this total area. Southeast Asia accounts for 32.3% of that figure, while the Pacific including Australia accounts for 40.8%. Atlantic and Caribbean coral reefs account for 7.6%. Yet often called ―rainforests of the sea‖, coral reefs form some of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. They provide a home for 25% of all marine species, including fish, mollusks worms, crustaceans, echinoderms, sponges, tunicates and other cnidarians. Paradoxically, coral reefs flourish even though they are surrounded by ocean waters that provide few nutrients. They are most commonly found at shallow depths in tropical waters, but deep water and cold water corals also exist on smaller scales in other areas. Although corals exist both in temperate and tropical waters, shallow-water reefs form only in a zone extending from 30°N to 30°S of the equator. Deepwater coral can exist at greater depths and colder temperatures at much higher latitudes, as far north as Norway. Coral reefs are rare along the American and African west coasts. This is due primarily to upwelling and strong cold coastal currents that reduce water temperatures in these areas (respectively the Peru, Benguela and Canary streams). Corals are seldom found along the coastline of South Asia from the eastern tip of India (Madras) to the Bangladesh and Myanmar borders. They are also rare along the coast around northeastern South America and Bangladesh due to the freshwater released from the Amazon and Ganges Rivers, respectively.

Coral reefs deliver ecosystem services to tourism, fisheries and coastline protection. The global economic value of coral reefs has been estimated at as much as $US375 billion per year. Coral reefs protect shorelines by absorbing wave energy, and many small islands would not exist without their reef to protect them.

The value of reefs in biodiverse regions can be even higher. In parts of Indonesia and the Caribbean where tourism is the main use, reefs are estimated to be worth US$1 million per square kilometer, based on the cost of maintaining sandy beaches and the value of attracting snorkelers and scuba divers. Meanwhile, a recent study of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia found that the reef is worth more to the country as an intact ecosystem than an extractive reserve for fishing. Each year more than 1.8 million tourists visit the reef, spending an estimated AU$4.3 billion (Australian dollars) on reef-related industries from diving to boat rental to posh island resort stays. In the Caribbean, says UNEP, the net annual benefits from diver tourism were US$2 billion in 2000 with US$625 million spent directly on diving on reefs. Further, reef tourism is an important source of employment, especially for some of the world‘s poorest people. UNEP says that of the estimated 30 million small-scale fishers in the developing world, most are dependent to a greater or lesser extent on coral reefs. In the Philippines, for example, more than one million small-scale fishers depend directly on coral reefs for their livelihoods. The report estimates that reef fisheries were worth between $15,000 and $150,000 per square kilometer a year, while fish caught for aquariums were worth $500 a kilogram against $6 for fish caught as food. The aquarium fish export industry supports around 50,000 people and generates some US$5.5 million a year in Sri Lanka along.

Unfortunately, coral reefs are dying around the world. In particular, coral mining, agricultural and urban runoff, pollution (organic and inorganic), disease, and the digging of canals and access into islands and bays are localized threats to coral ecosystems. Broader threats are sea temperature rise, sea-level rise and pH changes from ocean acidification, all associated with greenhouse gas emissions. Some current fishing practices are destructive and unsustainable. These include cyanide fishing, overfishing and blast fishing. Although cyanide fishing supplies live reef fish for the tropical aquarium market, most fish caught using this method are sold in restaurants, primarily in Asia, where live fish are prized for their freshness. To catch fish with cyanide, fishers dive down to the reef and squirt cyanide in coral crevices and on the fast-moving fish, to stun the fish making them easy to catch. Overfishing is another leading cause for coral reef degradation. Often, too many fish are taken from one reef to sustain a population in that area. Poor fishing practices, such as banging on the reef with sticks (muro-ami), destroy coral formations that normally function as fish habitat. In some instances, people fish with explosives (blast fishing), which blast apart the surrounding coral.

Tourist resorts that empty their sewage directly into the water surrounding coral reefs contribute to coral reef degradation. Wastes kept in poorly maintained septic tanks can also leak into surrounding groundwater, eventually seeping out to the reefs. Careless boating, diving, snorkeling and fishing can also damage coral reefs. Whenever people grab, kick, and walk on, or stir up sediment in the reefs, they contribute to coral reef destruction. Corals are also harmed or killed when people drop anchors on them or when people collect coral.

To find answers for these problems, scientists and researchers study the various factors that impact reefs. The list includes the ocean‘s role as a carbon dioxide sink, atmospheric changes, ultraviolet light, ocean acidification, viruses, impacts of dust storms carrying agents to far-flung reefs, pollutants, algal blooms and others. Reefs are threatened well beyond coastal areas. General estimates show approximately 10% of the worlds coral reefs are dead. About 60% of the world‘s reefs are at risk due to destructive, human-related activities. The threat to the health of reefs is particularly strong in Southeast Asia, where 80% of reefs are endangered.

In Australia, the Great Barrier Reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and is the subject of much legislation, including a biodiversity action plan. Inhabitants of Ahus Island, Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, have followed a generations-old practice of restricting fishing in six areas of their reef lagoon. Their cultural traditions allow line fishing, but not net or spearfishing. The result is both the biomass and individual fish sizes are significantly larger in these areas than in places where fishing is unrestricted.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Movie of Metropolis

…being the science-fiction film that is steadily becoming a fact

When German director Fritz Lang visited the United States in 1924, his first glimpse of the country was a night-time view of the New York skyline from the deck of an ocean liner. This, he later recalled, was the direct inspiration for what is still probably the most innovative and influential science-fiction film ever made – Metropolis.

Metropolis is a bleak vision of the early twenty-first century that is at once both chilling and exhilarating. This spectacular city of the future is a technological marvel of high-rise buildings connected by elevated railways and airships. It’s also a world of extreme inequality and social division. The workers live below ground and exist as machines working in an endless routine of mind-numbing 10-hour shifts while the city’s elite lead lives of luxury high above. Presiding over them all is the Master of Metropolis, John Fredersen, whose sole satisfaction seems to lie in the exercise of power.

Lang’s graphic depiction of the future is conceived in almost totally abstract terms. The function of the individual machines is never defined. Instead, this mass of dials, levers and gauges symbolically stands for all machines and all industry, with the workers as slave-live extensions of the equipment they have to operate. Lang emphasizes this idea in the famous shift-change sequence at the start of the movie when the workers walk in zombie-like geometric ranks, all dressed in the same dark overalls and all exhibiting the same bowed head and dead-eyed stare. An extraordinary fantasy sequence sees one machine transformed into a huge open-jawed statue which then literally swallows them up.

On one level the machines and the exploited workers simply provide the wealth and services which allow the elite to live their lives of leisure, but on a more profound level, the purpose of all this demented industry is to serve itself. Power, control and the continuance of the system from one 10-hour shift to the next is all that counts. The city consumes people and their labour and in the process becomes a perverse parody of a living being.

It is enlightening, I think, to relate the film to the modern global economy in which multinational corporations now routinely close their factories in one continent so that they can take advantage of cheap labour in another. Like the industry in Metropolis, these corporations’ goals of increased efficiency and profits have little to do with the welfare of the majority of their employees or that of the population at large. Instead, their aims are to sustain the momentum of their own growth and to increase the monetary rewards to a tiny elite – their executives and shareholders. Fredersen himself is the essence of the big company boss: Rupert Murdoch would probably feel perfectly at home in his huge skyscraper office with its panoramic view of the city below. And it is important that there is never any mention of government in Metropolis – the whole concept is by implication obsolete. The only people who have power are the supreme industrialist, Fredersen, and his magician/scientist cohort Rotwang.

So far so good: when the images are allowed to speak for themselves the film is impeccable both in its symbolism and in its cynicism. The problem with Metropolis is its sentimental story-line, which sees Freder, Fredersen’s son, instantly falling in love with the visionary Maria. Maria leads an underground pseudo-religious movement and preaches that the workers should not rebel but should await the arrival of a ‘Mediator’ between the ‘Head’ (capital) and the ‘Hands’ (labour). That mediator is the ‘Heart’ – love, as embodied, finally, by Freder’s love of Maria and his father’s love of him.

Lang wrote the screenplay in collaboration with his then-wife Thea von Harbou. In 1933 he fled from the Nazis (and continued a very successful career in Hollywood). She stayed in Germany and continued to make films under the Hitler regime. There is a constant tension within the film between the too-tidy platitudes of von Harbou’s script and the uncompromisingly caustic vigour of Lang’s imagery.

To my mind, both in Metropolis and in the real world, it’s not so much that the ‘Head’ and ‘Hands’ require a ‘Heart’ to mediate between them but that the ‘Hands’ need to develop their own ‘Head’, their own political consciousness, and act accordingly – through the ballot box, through buying power and through a sceptical resistance to the materialistic fantasies of the Fredersens.

All the same, Metropolis is probably more accurate now as a representation of industrial and social relations than it has been at any time since its original release. And Fredersen is certainly still the most potent movie symbol of the handful of elusive corporate figureheads who increasingly treat the world as a Metropolis-like global village.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 86 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Making Copier

At first, nobody bought Chester Carlson’s strange idea. But trillions of documents later, his invention is the biggest thing in printing since Gutenberg

Copying is the engine of civilization: culture is behavior duplicated. The oldest copier invented by people is language, by which an idea of yours becomes an idea of mine. The second great copying machine was writing. When the Sumerians transposed spoken words into stylus marks on clay tablets more than 5,000 years ago, the hugely extended the human network that language had created. Writing freed copying from the chain of living contact. It made ideas permanent, portable and endlessly reproducible.

Until Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the mid-1400s, producing a book in an edition of more than one generally meant writing it out again. Printing with moveable type was not copying, however. Gutenberg couldn’t take a document that already existed, feed it into his printing press and run off facsimiles. The first true mechanical copier was manufactured in 1780, when James Watt, who is better known as the inventor of the modern steam engine, created the copying press. Few people today know what a copying press was, but you may have seen one in an antique store, where it was perhaps called a book press. A user took a document freshly written in special ink, placed a moistened sheet of translucent paper against the inked surface and squeezed the two sheets together in the press, causing some of the ink from the original to penetrate the second sheet, which could then be read by turning it over and looking through its back. The high cost prohibits the widespread use of this copier.

Among the first modem copying machines, introduced in 1950 by 3M, was the Thermo-Fax, and it made a copy by shining infrared light through an original document and a sheet of paper that had been coated with heat-sensitive chemicals. Competing manufacturers soon introduced other copying technologies and marketed machines called Dupliton, Dial-A-Matic Autostat, Verifax, Copease and Copymation. These machines and their successors were welcomed by secretaries, who had no other means of reproducing documents in hand, but each had serious drawbacks. All required expensive chemically treated papers. And all made copies that smelled bad, were hard to read, didn’t last long and tended to curl up into tubes. The machines were displaced, beginning in the late 1800s, by a combination of two 19th century inventions: the typewriter and carbon paper. For those reasons, copying presses were standard equipment in offices for nearly a century and a half.

None of those machines is still manufactured today. They were all made obsolete by a radically different machine, which had been developed by an obscure photographic-supply company. That company had been founded in 1906 as the Haloid Company and is known today as the Xerox Corporation. In 1959, it introduced an office copier called the Haloid Xerox 914, a machine that, unlike its numerous competitors, made sharp, permanent copies on ordinary paper-a huge breakthrough. The process, which Haloid called xerography (based on Greek words meaning “dry” and “writing”), was so unusual and nonnutritive that physicists who visited the drafty warehouses where the first machines were built sometimes expressed doubt that it was even theoretically feasible.

Remarkably, xerography was conceived by one person- Chester Carlson, a shy, soft-spoken patent attorney, who grew up in almost unspeakable poverty and worked his way through junior college and the California Institute of Technology. Chester Carlson was born in Seattle in 1906. His parents-Olof Adolph Carlson and Ellen Josephine Hawkins—had grown up on neighboring farms in Grove City, Minnesota, a tiny Swedish farming community about 75 miles west of Minneapolis. Compare with competitors, Carlson was not a normal inventor in 20-century. He made his discovery in solitude in 1937 and offered it to more than 20 major corporations, among them IBM, General Electric, Eastman Kodak and RCA. All of them turned him down, expressing what he later called “an enthusiastic lack of interest” and thereby passing up the opportunity to manufacture what Fortune magazine would describe as “the most successful product ever marketed in America.”

Carlson’s invention was indeed a commercial triumph. Essentially overnight, people began making copies at a rate that was orders of magnitude higher than anyone had believed possible. And the rate is still growing. In fact, most documents handled by a typical American office worker today are produced xerographically, either on copiers manufactured by Xerox and its competitors or on laser printers, which employ the same process (and were invented, in the 1970s, by a Xerox researcher). This year, the world will produce more than three trillion xerographic copies and laser-printed pages—about 500 for every human on earth.

Xerography eventually made Carlson a very wealthy man. (His royalties amounted to something like a 16th of a cent for every Xerox copy made, worldwide, through 1965.) Nevertheless, he lived simply. He never owned a second home or a second car, and his wife had to urge him not to buy third-class train tickets when he traveled in Europe. People who knew him casually seldom suspected that he was rich or even well-to-do; when Carlson told an acquaintance he worked at Xerox, the man assumed he was a factory worker and asked if he belonged to a union. “His possessions seemed to be composed of the number of things he could easily do without,” his second wife said. He spent the last years of his life quietly giving most of his fortune to charities. When he died in 1968, among the eulogizers was the secretary-general of the United Nations.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Researcher on the Tree Crown

The forest canopy – the term given to the aggregated crowns of trees in a forest – is thought to host up to 40 per cent of all species, of which ten per cent could be unique to the forest roof. “We’re dealing with the richest, least known, most threatened habitat on Earth,” says Andrew Mitchell, the executive director of the Global Canopy Programme (GCP), a collection of groups undertaking research into this lofty world. “The problem with our understanding of forests is that nearly all the information we have has been gleaned from just two meters above the soil, and yet we’re dealing with trees that grow to heights of 60 meters, or in the case of the tallest redwood 112 meters. It’s like doctors trying to treat humans by only looking at their feet.”

Tropical rainforest comprises the richest of ecosystems, rivalled only by coral reel for its diversity and complex interrelationships. And a great deal of that diversity lives up in the canopy – an estimated 70-90 per cent of life in the rainforest exists in the trees; one in ten of all vascular plants are canopy dwellers, and about 20-25 per cent of all invertebrates are thought to be unique to the canopy.

The first Briton to actually get into the canopy may have been Sir Francis Drake who, in 1573, gained his first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean from a tall tree in Darien, Panama. However, the first serious effort to reach and study the canopy didn’t begin until 1929. The Oxford University Expedition to British Guiana, led by Major RWG Hingston, still ended up help of locals when it came to building an observation platform. It was a successful expedition all the same, despite the colony’s acting governor getting stuck high up on a winched seat during a visit. In terms of canopy access, the French have proved themselves to be excellent innovators, taking things further with the development of ‘lighter-than-air platforms -balloons and related equipment, to you and me. Francis Halle; from the Laboratoire de Botanique Tropicale at Montpellier University took to a balloon in the mid-1980s in order to approach the canopy from above. His work in French Guiana was inspired by the use in Gabon of a tethered helium balloon by Marcel and Annette Hladick. Halle went one further by using a small purpose-built airship-a cigar-shaped balloon with propellers to aid manoeuvrability. “We suddenly had a mobile system that could move around the treetops; there were no other means of doing this,” says Mitchell.

From this, two balloon-dependent features have developed: the radeau or raft, and the luge or sledge. The raft is a ‘floating’ platform, employed by French academics Dany Cleyet-Marrel and Laurent Pyot and is essentially an island in the treetops. Made of kevlar mesh netting and edged with inflated neoprene tubes, it rests on top of the canopy, allowing sampling (mostly of plants and insects) to take place at the edges of the platform, and can stay in position for several days. The luge, on the other hand, is an inflated hexagon similar to a traditional balloon basket but with a hole in the bottom covered with Kevlar mesh. Such techniques aren’t without their problems, however, “balloons can cover larger areas, especially for collection purposes, but they are extremely expensive- Jibe raft alone cost 122,000 [euro] (86,000 [pounds sterling]) in 2001], nut very effective because you can only reach the tops of the trees, and are highly dependent on the weather, ” says Dr Wilfried Morawetz, director of systematic botany at the University of Leipzig. “Balloons can usually only be used in the early morning for two to four hours. Last time, we could only fly three times during the whole week.” Given these factors, it comes as no surprise that operations involving these balloons numbered just six between 1986 and 2001.

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Smith had the idea of using a static crane to get into the treetops. Un-tethered balloons may allow widely distributed sites to be sampled, but cranes allow scientists to study an area of at least a hectare from soil to canopy throughout the year, year after year. “Cranes beat any other access mode. They are cheap, reliable and fast. In two minutes I can reach any point in our forest, which is essential for comparative measurements across species,” says Professor Christian Korner of the University of Basel. Korner is using a static crane in a unique carbon dioxide-enrichment experiment in Switzerland, in an attempt to discover how forests might respond to the global increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (see Swiss canopy-crane carbon experiment, right). For reasons of convenience, cranes are generally situated close to cities or a research center. Leipzig University has a crane not far from the town, the Location allowing scientists to study the effect of city pollutants on forests. In order to increase the amount of canopy a crane can access, some have been mounted on short rail tracks. In “1995, Dr Wilfried Morawetz was the first to use this technique, installing a crane on 150 meters of track in the Venezuelan rainforest. “In my opinion, cranes should be the core of canopy research in the future,” he says.

It appears that the rest of the scientific community has now come around to Mitchell’s way of thinking. “I think most scientists thought him mad to consider such a complex field station at first,” says internationally respected ‘canopist’ Meg Lowman, the executive director of the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. “However, we’ve all come to realize that a combination of methods, a long-term approach to ecological studies and a collaborative approach are the absolute best ways to advance canopy science. A permanent canopy field station would allow that to happen.” With A dedicated group of canopy scientists working together and a wide range of tools available for them to get into the treetops, we’re now finally on our way towards a true understanding of the least-known terrestrial habitat.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Asian Space 2

Satellite Technology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IELTS Reading Practice Test 87 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

History of timekeeping

Ever since man first noticed the regular movement of the Sun and the stars, we have wondered about the passage of time. Prehistoric people first recorded the phases of the Moon some 30,000 years ago, and recording time has been a way by which humanity has observed the heavens and represented the progress of civilization.

The earliest natural events to be recognized were in the heavens, but during the course of the year, there were many other events that indicated significant changes in the environment. Seasonal winds and rains, the flooding of rivers, the flowering of trees and plants, and the breeding cycles or migration of animals and birds, all led to natural divisions of the year, and further observation and local customs led to the recognition of the seasons.

Egyptian shadow clocks divided daytime into 12 parts with each part further divided into more precise parts. One type of shadow clock consisted of a long stem with five variable marks and an elevated crossbar which cast a shadow over those marks. It was positioned eastward in the morning and was turned west at noon. Obelisks functioned in much the same manner: the shadow cast on the markers around it allowed the Egyptians to calculate the time. The obelisk also indicated whether it was morning or afternoon, as well as the summer and winter solstices. 1500 BCE, was similar in shape to a bent T-square. It measured the passage of time by the shadow cast by its crossbar on a non-linear rule. The T was oriented eastward in the mornings and turned around at noon so that it could cast its shadow in the opposite direction. Although accurate, shadow clocks relied on the sun, and so were useless at night and in cloudy weather.

Inventions for measuring and regulating time

The early inventions were made to divide the day or the night into different periods in order to regulate work or ritual, so the lengths of the time periods varied greatly from place to place and from one culture to another.

Oil lamps

There is archaeological evidence of oil lamps about 4,000 BCE, and the Chinese were using oil for heating and lighting by 2,000 BCE. Oil lamps are still significant in religious practices, symbolic of the journey from darkness and ignorance to light and knowledge. The shape of the lamp gradually evolved into the typical pottery style shown. It was possible to devise a way of measuring the level in the oil reservoir to measure the passing of time.

Candle Clocks

Marked candles were used for telling the time in China from the sixth century CE. There is a popular story that King Alfred the Great invented the candle clock, but we know they were in use in England from the tenth century CE. However, the rate of burning is subject to draughts, and the variable quality of the wax. Life oil lamps, candles were used to mark the passage of time from one event to another, rather than tell the time of day.

Water Clocks

The water clock, or clepsydra, appears to have been invented about 1,500 BCE and was a device which relied on the steady flow of water from or into a container. Measurements could be marked on the container or on a receptacle for the water. In comparison with the candle or the oil lamp, the clepsydra was more reliable, but the water flow still depended on the variation of pressure from the head of water in the container.

Astronomical and astrological clock making was developed in China from 200 to 1300 CE. Early Chinese clepsydras drove various mechanisms illustrating astronomical phenomena. The astronomer Su Sung and his associates built an elaborate clepsydra in 1088 CE. This device incorporated a water-driven bucket system originally invented about 725 CE. Among the displays were a bronze power-driven rotating celestial globe, and manikins that rang gongs, and indicated special times of the day.

Hour Glasses or Sandglasses

As the technology of glass-blowing developed, from some time in the 14th century it became possible to make sandglasses. Originally, sandglasses were used as a measure for periods of time like the lamps or candles, but as clocks became more accurate they were used to calibrate sandglasses to measure specific periods of time, and to determine the duration of sermons, university lectures, and even periods of torture.

The Division of the Day and the Length of the ‘Hour’ An Egyptian sundial from about 1,500 BCE is the earliest evidence of the division of the day into equal parts, but the sundial was no use at night. The passage of time was extremely important for astronomers and priests who were responsible for determining the exact hour for the daily rituals and for the important religious festivals, so a water clock was invented.

The Merkhet

The Egyptians improved upon the sundial with a ‘merkhet’, one of the oldest known astronomical instruments. It was developed around 600 BCE and uses a string with a weight as a plumb line to obtain a true vertical line, as in the picture. The other object is the rib of a palm leaf, stripped of its fronds and split at one end, making a thin slit for a sight.

A pair of merkhets were used to establish a North-South direction by lining them up one behind the other with the Pole Star. Viewing the plumb lines through the sight made sure the two merkhets and the sight were in the same straight line with the Pole Star. This allowed for the measurement of night-time events with a water clock when certain stars crossed the vertical plumb line (a ‘transit line’), and these events could then be recorded by ‘night-time lines’ drawn on a sundial.

There are various theories about how the 24 hour day developed. The fact that the day was divided into 12 hours might be because 12 is a factor of 60, and both the Babylonian and Egyptian civilisations recognised a zodiac cycle of 12 constellations. On the other hand, (excuse the pun) finger-counting with base 12 was a possibility. The fingers each have 3 joints, and so counting on the joints gives one ‘full hand’ of 12.

In classical Greek and Roman times they used twelve hours from sunrise to sunset; but since summer days and winter nights are longer than winter days and summer nights, the lengths of the hours varied throughout the year.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Water Treatment 2: Reed Bed

Nowadays subsurface flow wetlands are a common alternative in Europe for the treatment of wastewater in rural areas. mainly in the last 10 to 12 years, there has been significant growth in the number and size of the systems in use. Compared to common treatment facilities, wetlands lower in cost investment, lesser to maintain, and are ideal for densely populated rural or suburban areas rather than urban areas.

The Common Read has the ability to transfer oxygen from its leaves, down through its stem and rhizomes and out via its root system. As a result of this action, a very high population of micro-organisms occurs in the root system, with zones of aerobic, anoxic, and anaerobic conditions. Therefore with the waste water moving very slowly and carefully through the mass of Reed roots, this liquid can be successfully treated.

A straightforward definition of a reed bed is if you have dirty water in your pool or water, which is heavily polluted, Read Beds will be planted to make the water clean again. This is good for ecology and living organisms and fish in the water. Reed Beds have a wide range of qualities and are acceptable for cleaning everything from secondary to tertiary treatment of mild domestic effluent, to rural waste and even heavy industrial contaminants. The reason why they’re so effective is often that within the bed’s root sector, natural biological, physical and chemical processes interact with one another to degrade or remove a good range of pollutants. Reed beds can be built in a number of variants, but mainly they are of the horizontal flow or vertical (down) flow configuration where water flows through the beds horizontally or vertically.

HORIZONTAL FLOW REED BED SYSTEMS

Horizontal-flow wetlands may be of two types: free-water surface-flow (FWF) or subsurface water-flow (SSF). In the former, the effluent flows freely above the sand/gravel bed in which the reeds etc. are planted; in the latter effluent passes through the sand/ gravel bed. In FWF-type wetlands, the effluent is treated by plant stems, leaves and rhizomes. Such FWF wetlands are densely planted and typically have water-depths of less than 0.4m. However, dense planting can limit oxygen diffusion into the water. These systems work particularly well for low strength effluents or effluents that have undergone some form of pretreatment and play an invaluable role in tertiary treatment and the polishing of effluents. The horizontal reed flow system uses a long reed bed, Where the liquid slowly flows horizontally through. The length of the reed bed is about 100 meters. The downside of the horizontal reed beds is that they use up lots of land space and they do take quite a long time to produce clean water.

VERTICAL FLOW REED BED SYSTEMS

A vertical flow reed bed is a sealed, gravel-filled trench with reeds growing in it (see the picture below). The common reed oxygenates the water, which helps to create the right environment for colonies of bacteria to break down unwanted organic matter and pollutants. The reeds also make the bed attractive to wildlife.

How does a vertical flow reed bed work?

In vertical flow (Downflow) reed beds, the wastewater is applied on top of the reed bed, flows down through a rhizome zone with sludge as substrate, then the root zone with sand as substrate and followed by a layer of gravel for drainage, and is collected in an under drainage system of large stones. The effluent flows on to the surface of the bed and percolates slowly through the different layers into an outlet pipe, which leads to a horizontal flow bed and is cleaned by millions of bacteria, algae, fungi, and microorganisms that digest the waste, including sewage. There is no standing water so there should be no unpleasant smells.

Vertical flow reed bed systems are much more effective than horizontal flow reed-beds not only in reducing biochemical oxygen demanded (BOD) and suspended solids (SS) levels but also in reducing ammonia levels and eliminating smells. Usually considerably smaller than horizontal flow beds, but they are capable of handling much stronger effluents which contain heavily polluted matters and have longer lifetime value. A vertical reed bed system works more efficiently than a horizontal reed bed system, but it requires more management, and its reed beds are often operated for a few days then rested, so several beds and a distribution system are needed.

There are several advantages of Reed Bed systems over traditional forms of water treatment: first, they have low construction and running costs; second, they are easy management; third they have an excellent reduction of biochemical oxygen demand and suspended solids; last, they have a potential for efficient removal of a wide range of pollutants.

Reed beds are natural habitats found in floodplains waterlogged depressions and estuaries. The natural bed systems are a biologically proved, and an environmentally friendly and visually unobtrusive way of treating wastewater and have the extra virtue of frequently been better than mechanical wastewater treatment systems. In the medium to long term reed bed systems are, in most cases, more cost-effective in installment than any other wastewater treatment. They are robust and require little maintenance. They are naturally environmentally sound protecting groundwater, dams, creeks, rivers, and estuaries.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Sand Dunes

One of the main problems posed by sand dunes is their encroachment on human habitats. Sand dunes move by different means, all of them aided by the wind. Sand dunes threaten buildings and crops in Africa, the Middle East, and China. Preventing sand dunes from overwhelming cities and agricultural areas has become a priority for the United Nations Environment Program. On the other hand, dune habitats provide niches for highly specialized plants and animals, including numerous rare and endangered species.

Sand is usually composed of hard minerals such as quartz that cannot be broken down into silt or clay. Yellow, brown and reddish shades of sand indicate their presence of iron compounds. Red sand is composed of quartz coated by a layer of iron oxide. White sands are nearly pure gypsum. Sand with a high percentage of silicate can be used in glassmaking. Sandstone is created by sand, mixed with lime, chalk or some other material that acts as a binding agent, that is deposited in layers at the bottom of a sea or other area and pressed together into rock by the great pressure of sediments that are deposited on top of it over thousands or millions of years.

The most common dune form on Earth and on Mars is crescentic. Crescent-shaped mounds are generally wider than they are long. The slipfaces are on the concave sides of the dunes. These dunes form under winds that blow consistently from one direction, and they also are known as barchans or transverse dunes. Some types of crescentic dunes move more quickly over desert surfaces than any other type of dune. A group of dunes moved more than 100 metres per year between 1954 and 1959 the China’s Ningxia Province, and similar speeds have been recorded in the Western Desert of Egypt. The largest crescentic dunes on Earth, with mean crest-to-crest widths of more than 3 kilometres, are in China’s Taklamakan Desert.

Radially symmetrical, star dunes are pyramidal sand mounds with slipfaces on there or more arms that radiate from the high center of the mound. They tend to accumulate in areas with multidirectional wind regimes. Star dunes grow upward rather than laterally. They dominate the Grand Erg Oriental of the Sahara. In other deserts, they occur around the margins of the sand seas, particularly near topographic barriers. In the southeast Badain Jaran Desert of China, the star dunes are up to 500 metres tall and may be the tallest dunes on Earth. Straight or slightly sinuous sand ridges typically much longer than they are wide are known as linear dunes. They may be more than 160 kilometres (99 mi) long. Some linear dunes merge to form Y-shaped compound dunes. Many forms in bidirectional wind regimes. The long axes of these dunes extend in the resultant direction of sand movement. Linear loess hills known as pahas are superficially similar.

Once sand begins to pile up, ripples and dunes can form. Wind continues to move sand up to the top of the pile until the pile is so steep that it collapses under its own weight. The collapsing sand comes to rest when it reaches just the right steepness to keep the dune stable. This angle, usually about 30-34°, is called the angle of repose. Every pile of loose particles has a unique angle of repose, depending upon the properties of the material it’s made of, such as the grain size and roundness. Ripples grow into dunes with the increase of wind and sand input.

The repeating cycle of sand inching up the windward side to the dune crest, then slipping down the dune’s slip face allows the dune to inch forward, migrating in the direction the wind blows. As you might guess, all of this climbing then slipping leaves its mark on the internal structure of the dune. The image on the right shows fossil sand dune structure preserved in the Merced Formation at Fort Funston, Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The sloping lines or laminations you see are the preserved slip faces of a migrating sand dune. This structure is called cross-bedding and can be the result of either wind or water currents. The larger the cross-bedded structure, however, the more likely it is to be formed by wind, rather than water.

Sand dunes can “sing” at a level up to 115 decibels and generate sounds in different notes. The dunes at Sand Mountain n Nevada usually sing in a low C but can also sing in B and C sharp. The La Mar de Dunas in Chile hum in F while those at the Ghord Lahmar in Morocco howl in G sharp. The sounds are produced by avalanches of sand generated by blowing winds. For a while, it was thought that the avalanches caused the entire dune to resonate like a flute or violin but if that were true then different size dunes would produce different notes. In the mid 2000s, American, French and Moroccan scientists visiting sand dunes in Morocco, Chile, China and Oman published a paper in the Physical Review Letters that determined the sounds were produced by collisions between grains of sand that caused the motions of the grains to become synchronized, causing the outer layer of a dune to vibrate like the cone of a loudspeaker, producing sound. The tone of the sounds depended primarily on the size of the grains.

Scientists performed a computer simulation on patterns and dynamics of desert dunes in laboratory. Dune patterns observed in deserts were reproduced. From the initial random state, stars and linear dunes are produced, depending on the variability of the wind direction. The efficiency in sand transport is calculated through the course of development. Scientists found that the sand transport is the most efficient in the linear transverse dune. The efficiency in sand transport always increased through the evolution, and the way it increases was stepwise. They also found that the shadow zone, the region where the sand wastes the chance to move, shrinks through the course of evolution, which greatly helps them build a model to simulate a sand move.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 88 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

History of Refrigeration

The term refrigeration refers to cooling an area or substance below the environmental temperature, the process of removing heat. Mechanical refrigeration uses the evaporation of a liquid refrigerant to absorb heat. The refrigerant goes through a cycle so that it can be reused, the main cycles are vapour-compression, absorption, steam-jet or steam-ejector, and air. Maryland farmer Thomas Moore first introduced the term Refrigerator in 1803, the appliance we know today first appeared in the 20th century.

Prior to mechanical refrigeration systems, people found different ways of preserving their food. Some people preferred to use cooling systems of ice or snow found either locally or brought down from mountains and sometimes stored in cellars. Using those techniques meant that diets would have consisted of very little fresh food or fruits and vegetables, but mostly of bread, cheese and salted meats. Milk and cheeses were difficult to keep fresh, they were usually stored in a cellar or window box, but despite those methods, they could not prevent rapid spoilage. People were more than ready for a better system of preserving food. Later on, it was discovered that adding chemicals like sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate to water caused the temperature to fall. Cooling wine with this technique was first recorded in 1550, as was the term “to refrigerate”. Cooling drinks became very popular by 1600 in Europe, especially in Spain, Italy and France. Instead of cooling water at night, people used a new technique; rotating long-necked bottles in water which held dissolved saltpeter. The solution was used to create very low temperatures and even to make ice. By the end of the 17th century, iced drinks including frozen juices and liquors were very popular in French society.

A demand for ice soon became very strong. Consumer demand for fresh food, especially produces, led to diet reform between 1830 and the Civil War, fueled by the dramatic growth of cities and the improvement in economic status of the general populace. And as cities grew, so did the distance between the consumer and the source of the food. In 1799, ice was first shipped commercially out of Canal Street in New York City to Charleston, South Carolina. The attempt was a failure as there was very little ice left when the shipment arrived. Frederick Tudor and Nathaniel Wyeth of New England saw the great potential that existed for the ice business and revolutionized the industry with their efforts in the first half of the 1800s. Tudor, who was known as the “Ice King”, was more focused on shipping ice to tropical climates. To ensure his product would arrive safely, he experimented with different insulating materials and built icehouses that decreased melting losses from 66 percent to less than 8 percent. Wyeth developed a method of cheaply and quickly cutting uniform blocks of ice that transformed the ice industry. He made speed handling techniques in storage, transportation and distribution possible, with less waste.

Eventually, it became clear that the ice being scraped was not all clean and was causing health problems. It was becoming an increasingly difficult task to find clean sources of natural ice and by the 1890s, pollution and sewage dumping had made the job seem even more impossible. The first signs were noticed in the brewing industry, and then the meatpacking and dairy industries became seriously affected. Some sort of clean, mechanical refrigeration was desperately needed.

Many inventive men were involved in the eventual creation of the refrigerator, through different discoveries that each built on the next. Dr William Cullen, a Scotsman, was the first to study the evaporation of liquids in a vacuum in 1720. He later demonstrated the first known artificial refrigeration at the University of Glasgow in 1748 by letting ethyl ether boil into a partial vacuum.

Olvier Evans, an American inventor, designed the first refrigeration machine to use vapor instead of liquid in 1805. Although he did not actually build it, an American physician named John Gorrie, produced one very similar to Evans’ in 1842 to cool the patients with yellow fever in a Florida hospital. His basic principle is still the most often used in refrigerators today. He found the best way to cool the air was by compressing a gas, then cooling it by sending it through radiating coils, and then expanding it to lower the temperature even more. Evans was granted the first U.S. patent for mechanical refrigeration in 1851 after giving up his medical practice to focus on his experimentation with ice making.

In 1820 Michael Faraday, a Londoner, first liquefied ammonia to cause cooling. Ferdinand Carre of France developed the first ammonia/water refrigeration machine in 1859. Carl von Linde was also very influential in the creation of refrigeration. In 1873 he designed the first practical and portable compressor refrigeration machine in Munich and in 1876 he began using an ammonia cycle rather than the methyl ether he used in his earlier models. Linde later developed a new method (Linde technique) for the liquefaction of large quantities of air in 1894. The meatpacking industry in Chicago was the next to adopt mechanical refrigeration nearly a decade later.

Beginning in the 1840s, refrigerated cars were used to transport milk and butter. By 1860, refrigerated transport was limited to mostly seafood and dairy products. The refrigerated railroad car was patented by J.B. Sutherland of Detroit, Michigan in 1867. He designed an insulated car with ice bunkers in each end. Air came in on the top, passed through the bunkers, and circulated through the car by gravity, controlled by the use of hanging flaps that created differences in air temperature. There were different car designs based upon the type of cargo, whether meat or fruit. The first refrigerated car to carry fresh fruit was built in 1867 by Parker Earle of Illinois, who shipped strawberries on the Illinois Central Railroad. Each chest contained 100 pounds of ice and 200 quarts of strawberries. It was until 1949 that a refrigeration system made its way into the trucking industry by way of a roof-mounted cooling device, patented by Fred Jones.

Refrigerators that were built in the late 1800s to 1929 used the toxic gases; methyl chloride, ammonia and sulphur dioxide as refrigerants. There were numerous fatal accidents that occurred in the 1920s when methyl chloride leaked out of refrigerators. After the terrible incidents, three American companies began researching less dangerous methods of refrigeration. That research leads to the discovery of chlorofluorocarbons (Freon), which quickly became the standard used in compressor refrigerators. Freon was safer for those nearby but was later discovered in 1973 by Prof. James Lovelock, to be harmful to the ozone layer. To prevent further damage, new developments were made, such as Hydrofluorocarbons which have no known effect on the ozone layer. Chlorofluorocarbons are no longer used; they are outlawed in several places, making refrigeration far safer today than it has ever been.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Renewable Energy

An insight into the progress in renewable energy research

The race is on for the ultimate goal of renewable energy: electricity production at prices that are competitive with coal-fired power stations, but without coal’s pollution. Some new technologies are aiming to be the first to push coal from its position as Australia’s chief source of electricity.

At the moment the front-runner in renewable energy is wind technology. According to Peter Bergin of Australian Hydro, one of Australia’s leading wind energy companies, there have been no dramatic changes in windmill design for many years, but the cumulative effects of numerous small improvements have had a major impact on cost. ‘We’re reaping the benefits of 30 years of research in Europe, without have to make the same mistakes that they did,’ Mr Bergin says.

Electricity can be produced from coal at around 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, but only if the environmental costs are ignored. ‘Australia has the second cheapest electricity in the world, and this makes it difficult for renewable to compete,’ says Richard Hunter of the Australian Ecogeneration Association (AEA). Nevertheless, the AEA reports: ‘The production cost of a kilowatt-hour of wind power is one-fifth of what it was 20 years ago,’ or around 7 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Australian Hydro has dozens of wind monitoring stations across Australia as part of its aim to become Australia’s pre-eminent renewable energy company. Despite all these developments, wind power remains one of the few forms of alternative energy where Australia is nowhere near the global cutting edge, mostly just replicating European designs.

While wind may currently lead the way, some consider a number of technologies under development have more potential. In several cases, Australia is at the forefront of global research in the area. Some of them are very site-specific, ensuring that they may never become dominant market players. On the other hand, these newer developments are capable of providing more reliable power, avoiding the major criticism of windmills – the need for back-up on a calm day.

One such development uses hot, dry rocks. Deep beneath South Australia, radiation from elements contained in granite heats the rocks. Layers of insulating sedimentation raise the temperatures in some location to 250° centigrade. An Australian firm, Geoenergy, is proposing to pump water 3.5 kilometres into the earth, where it will travel through tiny fissures in the granite, heating up as it goes until it escapes as steam through another drilled hole.

No greenhouse gases are produced, but the system needs some additional features if it is to be environmentally friendly. Dr Prue Chopra, a geophysicist at the Australian National University and one of the founders of Geoenergy, note that the steam will bring with it radon gas, along through a heat exchanger and then sent back underground for another cycle. Technically speaking, hot dry rocks are not a renewable source of energy. However, the Australian source is so large it could supply the entire country’s needs for thousands of years at current rates of consumption.

Two other proposals for very different ways to harness sun and wind energy have surfaced recently. Progress continues with Australian company EnviroPower’s plans for Australia’s first solar chimney near Mildura, in Victoria. Under this scheme, a tall tower will draw hot air from a greenhouse built to cover the surrounding 5 km². As the air rises, it will drive a turbine* to produce electricity. The solar tower combines three very old technologies – the chimney, the turbine and the greenhouse – to produce something quite new. It is this reliance on proven engineering principles that led Enviropower’s CEO, Richard Davies, to state: There is no doubt this technology will work, none at all.’

This year, Enviropower recognized that the quality of sunlight in the Mildura district will require a substantially larger collecting area than was previously thought. However, spokesperson kay Firth says that a new location closer to Mildura will enable Enviropower to balance the increased costs with extra revenue. Besides saving in transmission costs, the new site ‘will mean increased revenue from tourism and use of power for telecommunications. We’ll also be able to use the outer 500 metres for agribusiness.’ Wind speeds closer to the tower will be too high for farming.

Another Australian company, Wavetech, is achieving success with ways of harvesting the energy in waves. Wavetech’s invention uses a curved surface to push waves into a chamber, where the flowing water column pushes air back and forth through a turbine. Wavetech was created when Dr Tim Devine offered the idea to the world leader in wave generator manufacturers, who rather surprisingly rejected it. Dr Devine responded by establishing Wavetech and making a number of other improvements to generator design. Wavetech claims that, at appropriate sites, ‘the cost of electricity produced with our technology should be below 4 cents per kilowatt-hour.

The diversity of forms of greenhouse – friendly energy under development in Australia is remarkable. However, support on a national level is disappointing. According to Richard Hunter of the AEA, ‘Australia has huge potential for wind, sun and wave technology. We should really be at the forefront, but the reality is we are a long way behind.’

READING PASSAGE 3

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

THE GAP of INGENUITY 2

Ingenuity, as I define it here, consists not only of ideas for new technologies like a computer or drought-resistant crops but, more fundamentally, of ideas for better institutions and social arrangements, like efficient markets and competent governments.

How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society requires depends on a range of factors, including the society’s goals and the circumstances within which it must achieve those goals – – whether it has a young population or an aging one, an abundance of natural resources or a scarcity of them, an easy climate or a punishing one, whatever the case may be.

How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society supplies also depends on many factors, such as the nature of human inventiveness and understanding, the rewards an economy gives to the producers of useful knowledge, and the strength of political opposition to social and institutional reforms.

A good supply of the right kind of ingenuity is essential, but it isn’t, of course, enough by itself. We know that the creation of wealth, for example, depends not only on an adequate supply of useful ideas but also on the availability of other, more conventional factors of production, like capital and labor. Similarly, prosperity, stability and justice usually depend on the resolution, or at least the containment, of major political struggles over wealth and power. Yet within our economies ingenuity often supplants labor, and growth in the stock of physical plant is usually accompanied by growth in the stock of ingenuity. And in our political systems, we need great ingenuity to set up institutions that successfully manage struggles over wealth and power. Clearly, our economic and -political processes are intimately entangled with the production and use of ingenuity.

The past century’s countless incremental changes in our societies around the planet, in our technologies and our interactions with our surrounding natural environments, have accumulated to create a qualitatively new world. Because these changes have accumulated slowly, it’s often hard for us to recognize how profound and sweeping they’re. They include far larger and denser populations; much higher per capita consumption of natural resources; and far better and more widely available technologies for the movement of people, materials, and especially information.

In combination, these changes have sharply increased the density, intensity, and pace of our interactions with each other; they have greatly increased the burden we place on our natural environment; and they have helped shift power from national and international institutions to individuals and subgroups, such as political special interests and ethnic factions.

As a result, people in all walks of life—from our political and business leaders to all of us in our day-to-day— —must cope with much more complex, urgent, and often unpredictable circumstances. The management of our relationship with this new world requires immense and ever-increasing amounts of social and technical ingenuity. As we strive to maintain or increase our prosperity and improve the quality of our lives, we must make far more sophisticated decisions, and in less time, than ever before.

When we enhance the performance of any system, from our cars to the planers network of financial institutions, we tend to make it more complex. Many of the natural systems critical to our well-being, like the global climate and the oceans, are extraordinarily complex, to begin with. We often can’t predict or manage the behavior of complex systems with much precision, because they are often very sensitive to the smallest of changes and perturbations, and their behavior can flip from one mode to another suddenly and dramatically. In general, as the human-made and natural systems, we depend upon becoming more complex, and as our demands on them increase, the institutions and technologies we use to manage them must become more complex too, which further boosts our need for ingenuity.

The good news, though, is that the last century’s stunning changes in our societies and technologies have not just increased our need for ingenuity; they have also produced a huge increase in its supply. The growth and urbanization of human populations have combined with astonishing new communication and transportation technologies to expand interactions among people and produce larger, more integrated, and more efficient markets. These changes have, in turn, vastly accelerated the generation and delivery of useful ideas.

But—and this is the critical “but” we should not jump to the conclusion that the supply of ingenuity always Increases in lockstep with our ingenuity requirement: while it’s true that necessity is often the mother of invention, we can’t always rely on the right kind of ingenuity appearing when and where we need it. In many cases, the complexity and speed of operation of today’s vital economic, social, arid ecological systems exceed the human brain s grasp. Very few of us have more than a rudimentary understanding of how these systems work. They remain fraught with countless “unknown unknowns, which makes it hard to supply the ingenuity we need to solve problems associated with these systems.

In this book, explore a wide range of other factors that will limit our ability to supply the ingenuity required in the coming century. For example, many people believe that new communication technologies strengthen democracy and will make it easier to find solutions to our societies, collective problems, but the story is less clear than it seems. The crush of information in our everyday lives is shortening our attention span, limiting the time we have to reflect on critical matters of public policy, and making policy arguments more superficial.

Modem markets and science are an important part of the story of how we supply ingenuity. Markets are critically important because they give entrepreneurs an incentive to produce knowledge. As for science, although it seems to face no theoretical limits, at least in the foreseeable future, practical constraints often slow its progress. The cost of scientific research tends to increase as it delves deeper into nature. And science’s rate of advance depends on the characteristic of the natural phenomena it investigates, simply because some phenomena are intrinsically harder to understand than others, so the production of useful new knowledge in these areas can be very slow. Consequently, there is often a critical time lag between the recognition between a problem and the delivery of sufficient ingenuity, in the form of technologies, to solve that problem. Progress in the social sciences is especially slow, for reasons we don’t yet understand; but we desperately need better social scientific knowledge to build the sophisticated institutions today’s world demands.

IELTS Reading Practice Test 89 with Answers

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Pollution! in the Bay

Pouring water into the sea sounds harmless enough. But in Florida Bay, a large and shallow section of the Gulf of Mexico that lies between the southern end of the Everglades and the Florida Keys, it is proving highly controversial. That is because researchers are divided over whether it will help or hinder the plants and animals that live in the bay.

What is at risk is the future of the bay’s extensive beds of seagrasses. These grow on the bay’s muddy floor and act as nurseries for the larvae of shrimps, lobsters and fish – many of the important sport and commercial-fishing species. Also in danger is an impressive range of coral reefs that run the length of the Florida Keys and form the third-largest barrier reef in the world. Since the 1980s, coral cover has dropped by 40%, and a third of the coral species have gone. This has had a damaging effect on the animals that depend on the reef, such as crabs, turtles and nearly 600 species of fish.

What is causing such ecological change is a matter of much debate. And the answer is of no small consequence. This is because the American government is planning to devote $8 billion over the next 30 years to revitalise the Everglades. Seasonal freshwater flows into the Everglades are to be restored in order to improve the region’s health. But they will then run off into the bay.

Joseph Zieman, a marine ecologist at the University of Virginia, thinks this is a good idea. He believes that a lack of fresh water in the bay is its main problem. The blame, he says, lies with a century of drainage in the Everglades aimed at turning the marshes into farmland and areas for development. This has caused the flow of fresh water into Florida Bay to dwindle, making the water in the bay, overall, more saline. This, he argues, kills the seagrasses, and as these rots, nutrients are released that feed the microscopic plants and animals that live in the water. This, he says, is why the bay’s once crystal-clear waters often resemble pea soup. And in a vicious circle, these turbid blooms block out sunlight, causing more seagrasses to die and yet more turbidity.

Brian Lapointe, a marine scientist at the Harbour Branch Oceanographic Institution at Fort Pierce in Florida, disagrees. He thinks seagrasses can tolerate much higher levels of salinity than the bay actually displays. Furthermore, he notes that when freshwater flows through the Everglades were increased experimentally in the 1990s, it led to massive plankton blooms. Freshwater running off from well-fertilised farmlands, he says, caused a fivefold rise in nitrogen levels in the bay. This was like pouring fuel on a fire. The result was mass mortality of seagrasses because of increased turbidity from the plankton. Dr Lapointe adds that, because corals thrive only in waters where nutrient levels are low, restoring freshwater rich in nitrogen will do more damage to the reef.

It is a plausible theory. The water flowing off crops that are grown on the750,000 acres of heavily fertilised farmland on the northern edge of the Everglades is rich in nitrogen, half of which ends up in the bay. But Bill Kruczynski, of America’s Environmental Protection Agency, is convinced that nitrogen from farmlands is not the chief problem. Some coral reefs well away from any nitrogen pollution are dying and, curiously, a few are thriving. Dr Kruczynski thinks that increased nutrients arriving from local sewage discharges from the thousands of cesspits along the Florida Keys are part of the problem.

Such claims and counterclaims make the impact of the restoration plan difficult to predict. If increased salinity is the main problem, the bay’s ecology will benefit from the Everglades restoration project. If, however, nitrogen is the problem, increasing the flow of freshwater could mate matters much worse.

If this second hypothesis proves correct, the cure is to remove nitrogen from farmland or sewage discharges, or perhaps both. Neither will be easy. Man-made wetlands, at present, being built to reduce phosphate runoff into the bay—also from fertilisers—would need an algal culture (a sort of contained algal bloom) added to them to deal with discharges from farmlands. That would be costly. So too would be the replacement of cesspits with proper sewerage—one estimate puts the cost at $650m. Either way, it is clear that when, on December 1st, 3,000 square miles of sea around the reef are designated as a “protective zone” by the deputy secretary of commerce, Sam Bodman, this will do nothing to protect the reef from pollution.

Some argue, though, that there is a more fundamental flaw in the plans for the bay: the very idea of returning it to a Utopian ideal before man wrought his damage. Nobody knows what Florida Bay was like before the 1950s when engineers cut the largest canals in the Everglades and took most of the water away. Dr Kruczynski suspects it was more like an estuary. The bay that many people wish to re-create could have been nothing more than a changing phase in the bay’s history.

These arguments do not merely threaten to create ecological problems but economic ones as well. The economy of the Florida Keys depends on tourism—the local tourist industry has an annual turnover of $2.5 billion. People come for fishing-boat trips, for manatee watching, or for scuba diving and snorkeling to view the exotically coloured corals. If the plan to restore the Everglades makes problems in the bay and the reef worse, it could prove a very expensive mistake.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

The Impact of Environment to Children

What determines how a child develops? In reality, it would be impossible to account for each and every influence that ultimately determines who a child becomes. What we can look at are some of the most apparent influences such as genetics, parenting, experiences, friends, family relationships and school to help us understand the influences that help contribute to a child’s growth.

Think of these influences as building blocks. While roost people tend to have the same basic building blocks, these components can be put together in an infinite number of ways. Consider your own overall personality. How much of who you are today was shaped by your genetic inheritance, and how much is a result of your lifetime of experiences? This question has puzzled philosophers, psychologists and educators for hundreds of years and is frequently referred to as the nature versus nurture debate. Generally, the given rate of influence on children is 40 % to 50%. It may refer to all of siblings of a family. Are we the result of nature (our genetic background) or nurture (our environment)? Today, most researchers agree that child development involves a complex interaction of both nature and nurture, while some aspects of development may be strongly influenced by biology, environmental influences may also play a role. For example, the timing of when the onset of puberty occurs is largely the results of heredity, but environmental factors such as nutrition can also have an effect.

The From the earliest moments of life, the interaction of heredity and the environment works to shape who children are and who they will become. While the genetic instructions a child inherits from his parents may set out a road map for development, the environment can impact how these directions are expressed, shaped or event silenced. The complex interaction of nature and nurture does not just occur at certain moments or at certain periods of time; it is persistent and lifelong.

The shared environment (also called common environment) refers to environmental influences that have the effect of making siblings more similar to one another. Shared environmental influences can include shared family experiences, shared peer groups, and sharing the same school and community. In general, there has not been strong evidence for shared environmental effects on many behaviors, particularly those measured in adults. Possible reasons for this are discussed. Shared environmental effects are evident in children and adolescents, but these effects generally decrease across the life span. New developments in behavior genetic methods have made it possible to specify shared environments of importance and to tease apart familial and nonfamilial sources of shared environmental influence. It may also refer to all of siblings of a family, but the rate of influence is less than 10 per cent.

The importance of non-shared environment lay hidden within quantitative genetic studies since they began nearly a century ago. Quantitative genetic methods, such as twin and adoption methods, were designed to tease apart nature and nurture in order to explain family resemblance. For nearly all complex phenotypes, it has emerged that the answer to the question of the origins of family resemblance is nature-things run in families primarily for genetic reasons. However, the best available evidence for the importance of environmental influence comes from this same quantitative genetic research because genetic influence never explains all of the variances for complex phenotypes, and the remaining variance must be ascribed to environmental influences. Non-shared environment, it may refer to the part of siblings of a family, the rate of influence to children is 40 % to 50%.

Yet it took many decades for the full meaning of these findings to emerge. If genetics explains why siblings growing up in the same family are similar, but the environment is important, then it must be the case that the salient environmental effects do not make siblings similar. That is, they are not shared by children growing up in the same family-they must be ‘non-shared’. This implication about non-shared environmental import lay fallow in the field of quantitative genetics because the field’s attention was then firmly on the nature-nurture debate. ‘Nurture’ in the nature-nurture debate was implicitly taken to mean shared environment because, from Freud onwards, theories of socialization had assumed that children’s environments are doled out on a family-by-family basis. In contrast, the point of the non-shared environment is that environments are doled out on a child-by-child basis. Note that the phrase ‘non-shared environment’ is shorthand for a component of phenotypic variance-it refers to ‘effects’ rather than ‘events’, as discussed later. Research in recent years suggested that the impact from parents will be easy to be interrupted by the influence from the children of the same age. That also showed that variations of knowledge that children get from other culture are increasing. A number of interests between, whatever, fathers and mothers or parents and their children are conflicting.

Because siblings living in the same home share some but not all of the potential genetic and environmental factors that influence their behaviors, teasing apart the potential influences of genetic and non-genetic factors that differentiate siblings is very difficult. Turkheimer and Waldron (2000) have noted that non-shared environmental influences——which include all of the random measurement error——may not be systematic, but instead may operate idiosyncratically and in ways that cannot be ascertained. Thus, the question is whether or not quasi-experimental behavioral genetic designs can be used to actually identify systematic non-shared environmental mechanisms cross-sectionally and longitudinally. This is the impetus for the current study.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Global Warming in New Zealand 2

New Zealand is expected to warm by about 3°C over the next century. The northern polar regions will be more than 6°C warmer, while the large continents – also the largest centres of population – will be 4°C or warmer. In contrast, the Southern Ocean, which surrounds New Zealand, may warm by only 2°C. The sea will act as an air conditioner and in this aspect, New Zealand’s location is comparatively fortunate.

Any predictions are complicated by the variability of New Zealand’s climate. The annual temperature can fluctuate as much as 1°C above or below the long-term average. The early summer of 2006-7, for instance, was notably cool, thanks in part to the iceberg that drifted up the east coast. A few months later, warm water from the Tasman Sea helped make May 2007 unusually hot. These variables will continue unaffected so that, although the general pattern will be for rising temperatures, the warming trend may not be uniform.

The Ocean to the south of New Zealand will have one important effect. As the world warms, the great bank of west winds that circle Antarctica will become stronger. This has already been observed, and its impact on New Zealand is likely to be profound, stronger, more frequent west winds will bring increased, sometimes catastrophic rainfall to the west coast of the country and create drier conditions in some eastern regions that are already drought-prone. At the same time, the general warming will spread south.

Furthermore, in the drier regions, the average moisture deficit – that is, the difference between the amount of water in soils available to plants and the amount plants need for optimum growth – will increase. Soils could go into moisture deficit earlier in the growing season and the deficits could last longer into autumn that at present. What we think of today as a medium-severity drought could be an almost annual occurrence by the end of the century. One direct consequence of warmer – and shorter – winters will be a reduction in snow cover. The permanent snow line in the mountains will rise, while snow cover below this will be shorter-lived. The amount of snow that falls may actually increase, however, even in some northern centres, owing to the intensification of precipitation, Ski-field base station may eventually have to be moved upwards to be within reach of the new snow line but there could still be plenty of the white stuff up there.

There will also be a marked impact on New Zealand’s glaciers. Over the last 100 years, the glaciers have been reduced by 35%, although since 1978 increase snowfall has offset the effect of warming. The latest studies conducted by the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric. Research (NIWA), however, suggest that by the end of the century, warming over the Southern Alps could be significantly greater than over the rest of the country.

Sea levels around New Zealand have risen by 25cm since the middle of the 9th century and by 7 cm since 1990. Predictions for the coming years cover a wide range, however, partly because of unknown rises resulting from the melting of the ice in the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica. In addition, sea level at any given time is affected by many different factors, one of which is called storm surge. When a Coincides with a high tide along low lying coastal areas, this bulge raises the tide higher than normal, creating. Surge not unlike a slow-motion tsunami. Not only does a rise in sea level increase the potential for his sort damage, but it also has less immediate impacts. The one potentially grave outcome is that groundwater systems may become contaminated with saltwater, spoiling them for the irrigation of farmland, which in turn could diminish crop harvests. Similarly, over time, estuaries may be enlarged by erosion as tidal influences reach further upstream, altering the contours of whole shorelines and initiating further unforeseen consequences.

The impacts these changes will have on New Zealand are difficult to generalize. Human systems are better able to adapt to change than natural ecosystems because humans can see a problem coming and plan a response. Farmers and horticulturalists have made considerable advances, replacing crops they grow to better suit the new conditions. However, plant breeders will need to show considerable ingenuity if they can overcome the acute water shortages that are forecast.

For natural ecosystems the rate of change is crucial. If it is low, the plants and animals and fish will be able to ‘keep up’; if it is high, only the most adaptable species-those that can survive in the widest range of ecological niches-are likely to survive. Species adapted to only a narrow range of conditions or food sources will find adaptation much more difficult. Take tuatara, for instance. Their sex is determined by the temperature at which the eggs are incubated in warm (currently above 22 °C) condition become predominately male – and now males already outnumber females by nearly two to one in some island refuges. In the mountains, as the permanent snow line moves upwards, the tolerance zones of some alpine plants and animals may simply disappear. It should also be remembered that global warming is just that – a global phenomenon. ‘New Zealand’s own greenhouse emissions are tiny – around 0.5% of the global total. Even if New Zealanders were to achieve the government’s target of carbon neutrality, this would have no discernable impact on global climate change.

The changes that global warming is going to bring to New Zealand during the 21st century are going to be significant, but where the country is likely to be most vulnerable is with respect to climate change elsewhere. New Zealand may warm more slowly than most places, but if its major export markets undergo damaging change, the economic impact will be severe.

Thứ Bảy, 18 tháng 9, 2021

Ielts Readind Pratice Actual Test 44-89 IeltsTainingOnline

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