Tổng hợp topic Environment (Biology, Agriculture,...) IELTS READING (PDF)(Phần 2)

The Truth about the Environment

For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears: that natural resources are running out, that the population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat, that species are becoming extinct in vast numbers, and that the planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.

But a quick look at the facts shows a different picture. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so, since the book 'The Limits to Growth' was published in 1972 by a group of scientists. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world's population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third, although species are indeed becoming extinct, only about 0.7% of them are expelled to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been exaggerated, or are transient - associated with the early phases of industrialisation and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by accelerating it. One form of pollution - the release of greenhouse gases that causes global warming - does appear to be a phenomenon that is going to extend well into our future, but its total impact is unlikely to pose a devastating problem. A bigger problem may well turn out to be an inappropriate response to it.

Yet opinion polls suggest that many people nurture the belief that environmental standards are declining and four factors seem to cause this disjunction between perception and reality.

One is the lopsidedness built into scientific research. Scientific funding goes mainly to areas with many problems. That may be wise policy but it will also create an impression that many more potential problems exist than is the case.

Secondly, environmental groups need to be noticed by the mass media. They also need to keep the money rolling in. Understandably, perhaps, they sometimes overstate their arguments. In 1997, for example, the World Wide Fund for Nature issued a press release entitled: 'Two-thirds of the world's forests lost forever'. The truth turns out to be nearer 20%.

Though these groups are run overwhelmingly by selfless folk, they nevertheless share many of the characteristics of other lobby groups. That would matter less if people applied the same degree of skepticism to environmental lobbying as they do to lobby groups in other fields. A trade organisation arguing for, say, weaker pollution control is instantly seen as self-interested. Yet a green organisation opposing such a weakening is seen as altruistic, even if an impartial view of the controls in question might suggest they are doing more harm than good.

A third source of confusion is the attitude of the media. People are dearly more curious about bad news than good. Newspapers and broadcasters are there to provide what the public wants: That, however, can lead to significant distortions of perception. An example was America's encounter with EI Nino in 1997 and 1998. This climatic phenomenon was accused of wrecking tourism, causing allergies, melting the ski-slopes, and causing 22 deaths. However, according to an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the damage it did was estimated at US$4 billion but the benefits amounted to some US$19 billion. These came from higher winter temperatures (which saved an estimated 850 lives, reduced heating costs and diminished spring floods caused by melt waters).

The fourth factor is poor individual perception. People worry that the endless rise in the amount of stuff everyone throws away will cause the world to run out of places to dispose of waste. Yet, even if America's trash output continues to rise as it has done in the past, and even if the American population doubles by 2100, all the rubbish America produces through the entire 21st century will still take up only one-12,000th of the area of the entire United States.

So what of global warming? As we know, carbon dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm. The best estimates are that the temperatures will rise by 2-3°C in this century, causing considerable problems, at a total cost of US$5,000 billion.

Despite the intuition that something drastic needs to be done about such a costly problem, economic analyses dearly show it will be far more expensive to cut carbon dioxide emissions radically than to pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures. A model by one of the main authors of the United Nations Climate Change Panel shows how an expected temperature increase of 2.1 degrees in 2100 would only be diminished to an increase of 1.9 degrees. Or to put it another way, the temperature increase that the planet would have experienced in 2094 would be postponed to 2100.

So this does not prevent global warming, but merely buys the world six years. Yet the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, for the United States alone, will be higher than the cost of solving the world's single, most pressing health problem: providing universal access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Such measures would avoid 2 million deaths every year, and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill.

It is crucial that we look at the facts if we want to make the best possible decisions for the future. It may be costly to be overly optimistic - but more costly still to be too pessimistic.

Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet, write:
YES if the statement agrees with the writer's claims
NO if the statement contradicts the writer's claims
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

27. Environmentalists take a pessimistic view of the world for a number of reasons.
28. Data on the Earth's natural resources has only been collected since 1972.
29. The number of starving people in the world has increased in recent years.
30. Extinct species are being replaced by new species.
31. Some pollution problems have been correctly linked to industrialisation.
32. It would be best to attempt to slow down economic growth.

Questions 33-37
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 33-37 on your answer sheet.

33. What aspect of scientific research does the writer express concern about in paragraph 4?
A. A the need to produce results
B. the lack of financial support
C. the selection of areas to research
D. the desire to solve every research problem

34. The writer quotes from the Worldwide Fund for Nature to illustrate how
A. influential the mass media can be.
B. effective environmental groups can be.
C. the mass media can help groups raise funds.
D. environmental groups can exaggerate their claims.

35. What is the writer's main point about lobby groups in paragraph 6?
A. Some are more active than others.
B. Some are better organised than others.
C. Some receive more criticism than others.
D. Some support more important issues than others.

36. The writer suggests that newspapers print items that are intended to
A. educate readers.
B. meet their readers' expectations.
C. encourage feedback from readers.
D. mislead readers.

37. What does the writer say about America's waste problem?
A. It will increase in line with population growth.
B. It is not as important as we have been led to believe.
C. It has been reduced through public awareness of the issues.
D. It is only significant in certain areas of the country.

Questions 38-40
Complete the summary with the list of words A-I below. Write the correct letter A-I in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.

GLOBAL WARMING

The writer admits that global warming is a 38 ....................... challenge, but says that it will not have a catastrophic impact on our future if we deal with it in the 39 ....................... way. If we try to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases, he believes that it would only have a minimal impact on rising temperatures. He feels it would be better to spend money on the more 40 ....................... health problem of providing the world's population with clean drinking water.

A. unrealistic

B. agreed

C. expensive

D. right
E. long-term

F. usual

G. surprising

H. personal
I. urgent

Questions 14-17
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B and D-F from the list of headings below. Write the correct number i-viii in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i. Effects of irrigation on sedimentation

ii. The danger of flooding the Cairo area

iii. Causing pollution in the Mediterranean

iv. Interrupting a natural process

v. The threat to food production

vi. Less valuable sediment than before

vii. Egypt's disappearing coastline

viii. Looking at the long-term impact
Example: Paragraph A. Answer: vii

14. Paragraph B

Example: Paragraph C. Answer: vi

15. Paragraph D
16. Paragraph E
17. Paragraph F

Disappearing Delta

A. The fertile land of the Nile delta is being eroded along Egypt's Mediterranean coast at an astounding rate, in some parts estimated at 100 metres per year. In the past, land scoured away from the coastline by the currents of the Mediterranean Sea used to be replaced by sediment brought down to the delta by the River Nile, but this is no longer happening.

B. Up to now, people have blamed this loss of delta land on the two large dams at Aswan in the south of Egypt, which hold back virtually all of the sediment that used to flow down the river. Before the dams were built, the Nile flowed freely, carrying huge quantities of sediment north from Africa's interior to be deposited on the Nile delta. This continued for 7,000 years, eventually covering a region of over 22,000 square kilometres with layers of fertile silt. Annual flooding brought in new, nutrient-rich soil to the delta region, replacing what had been washed away by the sea, and dispensing with the need for fertilizers in Egypt's richest food-growing area. But when the Aswan dams were constructed in the 20th century to provide electricity and irrigation, and to protect the huge population centre of Cairo and its surrounding areas from annual flooding and drought, most of the sediment with its natural fertilizer accumulated up above the dam in the southern, upstream half of Lake Nasser, instead of passing down to the delta.

C. Now, however, there turns out to be more to the story. IF appears that the sediment-free water emerging from the Aswan dams picks up silt and sand as it erodes the river bed and banks on the 800-kilometre trip to Cairo. Daniel Jean Stanley of the Smithsonian Institute noticed that water samples taken in Cairo, just before the river enters the delta, indicated that the river sometimes carries more than 850 grams of sediment per cubic metre of water - almost half of what it carried before the dams were built. 'I'm ashamed to say that the significance of this didn't strike me until after I had read 50 or 60 studies,' says Stanley in Marine Geology. There is still a lot of sediment coming into the delta, but virtually no sediment comes out into the Mediterranean to replenish the Coastline. So this sediment must be trapped on the delta itself.'

D. Once north of Cairo, most of the Nile water is diverted into more than 10,000 kilometres of irrigation canals and only a small proportion reaches the sea directly through the rivers in the delta. The water in the irrigation canals is still or very slow-moving and thus cannot carry sediment, Stanley explains. The sediment sinks to the bottom of the canals and then is added to fields by farmers or pumped with the water into the four large freshwater lagoons that are located near the outer edges of the delta. So very little of it actually reaches the coastline to replace what is being washed away by the Mediterranean currents.

E. The farms on the delta plains and fishing and aquaculture in the lagoons account for much of Egypt's food supply. But by the time the sediment has come to rest in the fields and lagoons, it is laden with municipal, industrial and agricultural waste from the Cairo region, which is home to more than 40 million people. 'Pollutants are building up faster and faster' says Stanley.

Based on his investigations of sediment from the delta lagoons, Frederic Siegel of George Washington University concurs. 'In Manzalah Lagoon, for example, the increase in mercury, lead, copper and zinc coincided with the building of the High Dam at Aswan, the availability of cheap electricity, and the development of major power-based industries he says. Since that time the concentration of mercury has increased significantly. Lead from engines that use leaded fuels and from other industrial sources has also increased dramatically. These poisons can easily enter the food chain, affecting the productivity of Fishing and Farming. Another problem is that agricultural wastes include fertilizers which stimulate increases in plant growth in the lagoons and upset the ecology of the area, with serious effects on the fishing industry.

F. According to Siegel, international environmental organisations are beginning to pay closer attention to the region, partly because of the problems of erosion and pollution of the Nile delta, but principally because they fear the impact this situation could have on the whole Mediterranean coastal ecosystem. But there are no easy solutions. In the immediate Future, Stanley believes that one solution would be to make artificial floods to flush out the delta waterways, in the same way, that natural floods did before the construction of the dams. He says, however, that in the long term an alternative process such as desalination may have to be used to increase the amount of water available, 'In my view, Egypt must devise a way to have more water running through the river and the delta' says Stanley. Easier said than done in a desert region with a rapidly growing population.

Questions 18-23
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 18-23 on your answer sheet, write:

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

18. Coastal erosion occurred along Egypt's Mediterranean coast before the building of the Aswan dams.
19. Some people predicted that the Aswan dams would cause land loss before they were built.
20. The Aswan dams were built to increase the fertility of the Nile delta.
21. Stanley found that the levels of sediment in the river water in Cairo were relatively high.
22. Sediment in the irrigation canals on the Nile delta causes flooding.
23. Water is pumped from the irrigation canals into the lagoons.

Questions 24-26
Complete the summary of paragraphs E and F with the list of words A-H below. Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

In addition to the problem of coastal erosion, there has been a marked increase in the level of 24 ........................ contained in the silt deposited in the NileDeltaa. To deal with this, Stanley suggests the use of 25 ....................... in the short term, and increasing the amount of water available through 26 ........................ in the longer term.

A. artificial floods

B. desalination

C. delta waterways

D. natural floods

E. nutrients

F. pollutants

G. population control

H. sediment

The effects of light on plant and animal species

Light is important to organisms for two different reasons. Firstly, it is used as a cue for the timing of daily and seasonal rhythms in both plant and animals, and secondly, it is used to assist growth in plants.

Breeding in most organisms occurs during a part of the year only, and so a reliable cue is needed to trigger breeding behaviour. Day length is an excellent cue because it provides a perfectly predictable pattern of change within the year. In the temperate zone in spring, temperatures fluctuate greatly from day to day, but day length increases steadily by a predictable amount. The seasonal impact of day length on physiological responses is called photoperiodism, and the amount of experimental evidence for this phenomenon is considerable. For example, some species of birds' breeding can be induced even in midwinter simply by increasing day length artificially (Wolfson 1964). Other examples of photoperiodism occur in plants. A short day plant flowers when the day is less than a certain critical length. A long day plant flowers after a certain critical day length is exceeded. In both cases, the critical day length differs from species to species. Plants which flower after a period of vegetative growth, regardless of photoperiod, are known as day-neutral plants.

Breeding seasons in animals such as birds have evolved to occupy the part of the year in which offspring have the greatest chances of survival. Before the breeding season begins, food reserves must be built up to support the energy cost of reproduction, and to provide for young birds both when they are in the nest and after fledging. Thus many temperate-zone birds use the increasing day lengths in spring as a cue to begin the nesting cycle, because this is a point when adequate food resources will be assured.

The adaptive significance of photoperiodism in plants is also clear. Short-day plants that flower in spring in the temperate zone are adapted to maximising seedling growth during the growing season. Long-day plants are adapted for situations that require fertilization by insects, or a long period of seed ripening. Short-day plant that flower in the autumn in the temperate zone are able to build up food reserves over the growing season and over winter as seeds. Day-neutral plants have an evolutionary advantage when the connection between the favourable period for reproduction and day length is much less certain. For example, desert annuals germinate, flower and seed whenever suitable rainfall occurs, regardless of the day length.

The breeding season of some plants can be delayed to extraordinary lengths. Bamboos are perennial grasses that remain in a vegetative state for many years and then suddenly flower, fruit and die (Evans 1976). Every bamboo of the species Chusquea abietifolio on the island of Jamaica flowered, set seed and died during 1884. The next generation of bamboo flowered and died between 1916 and 1918, which suggests a vegetative cycle of about 31 years. The climatic trigger for this flowering cycle is not-yet-known, but the adaptive significance is clear. The simultaneous production of masses of bamboo seeds (in some cases lying I2 to I5 centimetres deep on the ground) is more than all the seed-eating animals can cope with at the time, so that some seeds escape being eaten and grow up to form the next generation (Evans 1976).

The second reason light is important to organisms is that it is essential for photosynthesis. This is the process by which plants use energy from the sun to convert carbon from soil or water into organic material for growth. The rate of photosynthesis in a plant can be measured by calculating the rate of its uptake of carbon. There is a wide range of photosynthetic responses of plants to variations in light intensity. Some plants reach maximal photosynthesis at one-quarter full sunlight, and others, like sugarcane, never reach a maximum, but continue to increase photosynthesis rate as the light intensity rises.

Plants, in general, can be divided into two groups: shade-tolerant species and shade-intolerant species. This classification is commonly used in forestry and horticulture. Shade-tolerant planes have lower photosynthetic rates and hence have lower growth rates than those of shade-intolerant species. Plant species become adapted to living in a certain kind of habitat, and in the process evolve a series of characteristics that prevent them from occupying other habitats. Grime (1966) suggests that light may be one of the major components directing these adaptations. For example, eastern hemlock seedlings are shade-tolerant. They can survive in the forest understorey under very low light levels because they have a low photosynthetic rate.

Questions 27-33
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet, write:

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

27. There is plenty of scientific evidence to support photoperiodism.
28. Some types of bird can be encouraged to breed out of season.
29. Photoperiodism is restricted to certain geographic areas.
30. Desert annuals are examples of long-day plants.
31. Bamboos flower several times during their life cycle.
32. Scientists have yet to determine the cue for Chusquea abietifolia's seasonal rhythm.
33. Eastern hemlock is a fast-growing plant.

Questions 34-40
Complete the sentences. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet.
34. Day length is a useful cue for breeding in areas where ........................................... are unpredictable.
35. Plants which do not respond to light levels are referred to as ............................................
36. Birds in temperate climates associate longer days with nesting and the availability of .............................................
37. Plants that Bower when days are long often depend on ........................................... to help them reproduce.
38. Desert annuals respond to ........................................... as a signal for reproduction.
39. There is no limit to the photosynthetic rate in plants such as ............................................
40. Tolerance to shade is one criterion for the ........................................... of plants in forestry and horticulture.

GLOW-WORMS

A. The glow-worm belongs to a family of beetles known as the Lampyridae or fireflies. The fireflies are a huge group containing over 2000 species, with new ones being discovered all the time. The feature which makes fireflies and glow-worms so appealing is their ability to produce an often dazzling display of light. The light is used by the adult fireflies as a signal to attract a mate, and each species must develop its own 'call-sign' to avoid being confused with other species glowing nearby. So within any one area each species will differ from its neighbours in some way, for example in the colour or pattern of its light, how long the pulses of light last, the interval between pulses and whether it displays in flight or from the ground.

B. The firefly’s almost magical light has attracted human attention for generations. It is described in an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia written over 2000 years ago by a pupil of Confucius. Fireflies often featured in Japanese and Arabian folk medicine. All over the world they have been the inspiration for countless poems, paintings and stories. In Britain, for example, there are plenty of anecdotes describing how glow-worms have been used to read by or used as emergency bicycle lamps when a cyclist's batteries have failed without warning. Early travellers in the New World came back with similar stories, of how the native people of Central America would collect a type of click beetle and release them indoors to light up their huts. Girls threaded them around their feet to illuminate the forest paths at night.

Fireflies very similar to those we see today have been found fossilised in rocks which were formed about 30 million years ago, and their ancestors were probably glowing long before then. It is impossible to be sure exactly when and where the first firefly appeared. The highest concentrations of firefly species today are to be found in the tropics of South America, which may mean either that this is where they first evolved, or simply that they prefer the conditions there.

Wherever they first arose, fireflies have since spread to almost every part of the globe. Today members of the firefly family can be found almost anywhere outside the Arctic and Antarctic circles.

C. As with many insects, the glow-worm's life is divided into four distinct stages: the egg, the larva (equivalent to the caterpillar of a butterfly), the pupa (or chrysalis) and the adult. The glow-worm begins its life in the autumn as a pale yellow egg. The freshly laid egg is extremely fragile but within a day its surface has hardened into a shell. The egg usually takes about 35 days to hatch, but the exact time varies according to the temperature, from about 27 days in hot weather to more than 45 days in cold weather. By the time it is due to hatch, the glow-worm's light organ is fully developed, and its glow signals that the egg will soon hatch.

After it has left the egg, the larva slowly grows from a few millimetres into the size and shape of a matchstick. The larval stage is the only time the insect can feed. The larva devotes much of its life to feeding and building up its food reserves so that as an adult it will be free to concentrate all its efforts on the task of finding a mate and reproducing. Throughout its time as a larva, approximately 15 months, the glow-worm emits a bright light. The larva's light is much fainter than the adult female's but it can still be seen more than five metres away.

In the final stage of a glow-worm's life, the larva encases itself in a pupa) skin while it changes from the simple larva to the more complex adult fly. When the adult fly emerges from the pupa the male seeks a female with whom it can mate. After mating, the female lays about 120 eggs. The adult flies have no mouth parts, cannot eat and therefore only live a few days. When people talk of seeing a glow-worm they normally mean the brightly glowing adult female.

D. In some countries the numbers of glow-worms have been falling. Evidence suggests that there has been a steady decrease in the British glow-worm population since the 1950s and possibly before that. Possible causes for the decline include habitat destruction, pollution and changes in climate. Thousands of acres of grassland have been built upon and glow-worm sites have become increasingly isolated from each other. The widespread use of pesticides and fertilisers may also have endangered the glow-worm. Being at the top of a food chain it is likely to absorb any pollutants eaten by the snails on which it feeds. The effect of global warming on rainfall and other weather patterns may also be playing a part in the disappearance of glow-worms. A lot more research will be needed, however, before the causes of the glow-worm's gradual decline are clear.

E. Although glow-worms are found wherever conditions are damp, food is in good supply and there is an over-hanging wall, they are most spectacular in caves. For more than 100 years the glow-worm caves in New Zealand have attracted millions of people from all over the world. The caves were first explored in 1887 by a local Maori chief, Tane Tinorau, and an English surveyor, Fred Mace. They built a raft and, with candles as their only light, they floated into the cave where the stream goes underground. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness they saw myriad lights reflecting off the water. Looking up they discovered that the ceiling was dotted with the lights of thousands of glow-worms. They returned many times to explore further, and on an independent trip Tane discovered the upper level of the cave and an easier access. The authorities were advised and government surveyors mapped the caves. By 1888 Tane Tinorau had opened the cave to tourists.

Questions 28-33
Reading Passage 3 has five paragraphs, A-E. Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 28-33 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

Which paragraphs contains the following information?

28. threats to the glow-worm

29. ways in which glow-worms have been used

30. variations in type of glow-worm

31. glow-worm distribution

32. glow-worms becoming an attraction

33. the life-cycle of a glow-worm

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

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

34. Scientists have only recently been able to list the exact number of glow-worm species. ..........

35. The first fireflies appeared 30 million years ago. ..........

36. Glow-worm populations are decreasing faster in some countries than in others. ..........

37. Heat affects the production of glow-worm larvae. ..........

38. Adulthood is the longest stage of a glow-worm's life. ..........

39. The exact reason why glow-worm numbers are decreasing is unknown. ..........

40. Glow-worms are usually found in wet areas. ..........

Let’s Go Bats

A. Bats have a problem: how to find their way around in the dark they hunt at flight, and cannot use light to help them find prey and avoid obstacles. You might say that this is a problem of their own making one that they could avoid simply by changing their habits and hunting by day. But the daytime economy is already heavily exploited by other creatures such as birds. Given that there is a living to be made at night, and given that alternative daytime trades are thoroughly occupied, natural selection has favored bats that make a go of the night-hunting trade. It is probable that the nocturnal trades go way back in the ancestry of all mammals. In the time when the dinosaurs dominated the daytime economy, our mammalian ancestors probably only managed to survive at all because they found ways of scraping a living at night. Only after the mysterious mass extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago were our ancestors able to emerge into the daylight in any substantial numbers.

B. Bats have an engineering problem: how to find their way and find their prey in the absence of light Bats are not the only creatures to face this difficulty today. Obviously, the night-flying insects that they prey on must find their way about somehow. Deep-sea fish and whales have little or no light by day or by night. Fish and dolphins that live in extremely muddy water cannot see because, although there is light, it is obstructed and scattered by the dirt in the water Plenty" of other modern animals make their living in conditions where seeing is difficult or impossible.

C. Given the questions of how to manoeuvre in the dark, what solutions might an engineer consider? The first one that might occur to him is to manufacture light, to use a lantern or a searchlight Fireflies and some fish (usually with the help of bacteria) have the power to - manufacture their own light but the process seems to consume a large amount of energy. Fireflies use their light for attracting mates. This doesn't require a prohibitive amount of energy: a male's tiny pinprick of light can be seen by a female from some distance on a dark night since her eyes are exposed directly to the light source itself. However, using light to find one's own way around requires vastly more energy, since the eyes have to detect the tiny fraction of the light that bounces off each part of the scene. The light source must, therefore, be immensely brighter if it is to be used as a headlight to illuminate the path, than if it is to be used as a signal to others. In any event, whether or not the reason is the energy expense, it seems to be the case that with the possible exception of some weird deep-sea fish, no animal apart from man uses manufactured light to find its way about

D. What else might the engineer think off Well, blind humans sometimes seem to have an uncanny sense of obstacles in their path, ft has been given the name’ facial vision', because blind people have reported that Ft feels a bit like the sense of touch, on the face. One report tells of a totally blind boy who could and his tricycle at good speed round the block near his home, using facial vision. Experiments showed that, in fact, facial vision is nothing to do with touch or the front of the face, although the sensation may be referred to the front of the face, like the referred pain in a phantom limb The sensation of facial vision, it turns out really goes in through the ears. Blind people, without even being aware of the fact are actually using echoes of their own footsteps and of other sounds, to sense the presence of obstacles. Before this was discovered, engineers had already built instruments to exploit the principle, for example, to measure the depth of the sea under a ship. After this technique had been invented, it was only a matter of time before weapons designers adapted it for the detection of submarines. Both sides in the Second World War relied heavily on these devices, under such code names as Asdic (British) and Sonar (American), as well as Radar (American) or RDF (British), which uses radio echoes rather than sound echoes.

E. The Sonar and Radar pioneers didn’t know it then, but all the world now knows that bats, or rather natural selection working on bats, had perfected the system tens of millions of years earlier, and their radar'" achieves feats of detection and navigation that would strike an engineer dumb with admiration It is technically incorrect to talk about bat'radar1, since they do not use radio waves. It is sonar. But the underlying mathematical the ones of radar and sonar are very similar, and much of our scientific understanding of the details of what bats are doing has’ come from applying radar theory to them. The American zoologist Donald Griffin, who was largely responsible for the discovery of sonar in bats, coined the term 'echolocation' to cover both sonar and radar, whether used’ by animals or by human instruments.

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has five paragraphs, A-E. Write the correct letter. A-E, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

1. examples of wildlife other than bats which do not rely on vision to navigate by
2. how early mammals avoided dying out
3. why bats hunt in the dark
4. how a particular discovery has helped our understanding of bats
5. early military uses of echolocation

Questions 6-9
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.

Facial Vision

Blind people report that so-called 'facial vision' is comparable to the sensation of touch on the face. In fact, the sensation is more similar to the way in which pain from a 6…………… arm or leg might be felt. The ability actually comes from perceiving 7………….. through the ears. However, even before this was understood, the principle had been applied in the design of instruments which calculated the 8 ………….. of the seabed. This was followed by a wartime application in devices for finding 9……………….. .

Question 10-13
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

10. Long before the invention of radar, …………… had resulted in a sophisticated radar-like system in bats.
11. Radar is an inaccurate term when referring to bats because …………… are not used in their navigation system.
12. Radar and sonar are based on similar……………
13. The word 'echolocation' was first used by someone working as a ……………

Questions 14-20
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-H. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A and C-H from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i. Scientists’ call for a revision of policy

ii. An explanation for reduced water use

iii. How a global challenge was met

iv. Irrigation systems fall into disuse

v. Environmental effects

vi. The financial cost of recent technological improvements

vii. The relevance to health

viii. Addressing the concern over increasing populations

ix. A surprising downward trend in demand for water

x. The need to raise standards

xi. A description of ancient water supplies

14. Paragraph A

Example: Paragraph B. Answer: iii

15. Paragraph C

16. Paragraph D

17. Paragraph E

18. Paragraph F

19. Paragraph G

20. Paragraph H

Making Every Drop Count

A. The history of human civilization is entwined with the history of ways we have learned to manipulate water resources. As towns gradually expanded, water was brought from increasingly remote sources, leading to sophisticated engineering efforts such as dams and aqueducts. At the height of the Roman Empire, nine major systems, with an innovative layout of pipes and well-built sewers, supplied the occupants of Rome with as much water per person as is provided in many parts of the industrial world today.

B. During the industrial revolution and population explosion of the 19th and 20th centuries, the demand for water rose dramatically. Unprecedented construction of tens of thousands of monumental engineering projects designed to control floods, protect clean water supplies, and provide water for irrigation and hydropower brought great benefits to hundreds of millions of people. Food production has kept pace with soaring populations mainly because of the expansion of artificial irrigation system that makes possible the growth of 40% of the world's food. Nearly one-fifth of all the electricity generated worldwide is produced by turbines spun by the power of falling water.

C. Yet there is a dark side to this picture: despite our progress, half of the world's population till suffers, with water services inferior to those available to the ancient Greeks and Romans. As the United Nations report on access to water reiterated in November 2001, more than one billion people lack access to clean drinking water: some two and half billion do not have adequate sanitation services. Preventable water-related diseases kill an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 children every day, and the latest evidence suggests that we are falling behind in efforts to solve their problems.

D. The consequences of our water policies extend beyond jeopardizing human health. Tens of millions of people have been forced to move from their homes - often with little warning or compensation - to make way for the reservoirs behind dams. More than 20% of all freshwater fish species are now threatened or endangered because dams and water withdrawals have destroyed the free-flowing river ecosystems where they thrive. Certain irrigation practices degrade soil quality and reduce agricultural productivity. Groundwater aquifers* are being pumped down faster than they are naturally replenished in part of India, China, the USA and elsewhere. And disputes over shared water resources have led to violence and continue to raise local, national and even international tensions.

E. At the outset of the new millennium, however, the way resource planners think about water is beginning to change. The focus is slowly shifting back to the provision of basic human and environmental needs as a top priority - ensuring 'some for all,' instead of 'more for some'. Some water experts are now demanding that existing infrastructure be used in smarter ways rather than building new facilities, which is increasingly considered the option of last, not first, resort. This shift in philosophy has not been universally accepted, and it comes with strong opposition from some established water organizations. Nevertheless, it may be the only way to address successfully the pressing problems of providing everyone with clean water to drink, adequate water to grow food and a life free from preventable water-related illness.

F. Fortunately - and unexpectedly - the demand for water is not rising as rapidly as some predicted. As a result, the pressure to build now water infrastructures has diminished over the past two decades. Although population, industrial output and economic productivity have continued to soar in developed nations, the rate at which people withdraw water from aquifers, rivers and lacks has slowed. And in a few parts of the world, demand has actually fallen.

G. What explains this remarkable turn of events? Two factors: people have figured out how to use water more efficiently, and communities are rethinking their priorities for water use. Throughout the first three-quarters of the 20th century, the quantity of freshwater consumed per person doubled on average; in the USA, water withdrawals increased tenfold while the population quadrupled. But since 1980, the amount of water consumed per person has actually decreased, thanks to a range of new technologies that help to conserve water in homes and industry. In 1965, for instance, Japan used approximately 13 million gallons* of water to produce $1 million of commercial output; by 1989 this had dropped to 3.5 million gallons (even accounting for inflation) - almost a quadrupling of water productivity. In the USA, water withdrawals have fallen by more than 20% from their peak in 1980.

H. On the other hand, dams, aqueducts and other kinds of infrastructure will still have to be built, particularly in developing countries where basic human needs have not been met. But such projects must be built to higher specifications and with more accountability to local people and their environment than in the past. And even in regions where new projects seem warranted, we must find ways to meet demands with fewer resources, respecting ecological criteria and to smaller budget.

Question 21-26
Do the following statement agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet, write:
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

21. Water use per person is higher in the industrial world than it was in Ancient Rome.
22. Feeding increasing populations is possible due primarily to improved irrigation systems
23. Modern water systems imitate those of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
24. Industrial growth is increasing the overall demand for water.
25. Modern technologies have led to reduction in the domestic water consumption.
26. In the future, governments should maintain ownership of water infrastructures.

The True Cost of Food

A. For more than forty years the cost of food has been rising. It has now reached a point where a growing number of people believe that it is far too high and that bringing it down will be one of the great challenges of the twenty-first century. That cost, however, is not in immediate cash. In the West at least, most food is now far cheaper to buy in relative terms than it was in 1960. The cost is in the collateral damage of the very methods of food production that have made the food cheaper: in the pollution of water, the enervation of soil, the destruction of wildlife, the harm to animal welfare and the threat to human health caused by modern industrial agriculture.

B. First mechanisation, then mass use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, then monocultures, then battery rearing of livestock, and now genetic engineering– the onward march of intensive farming has seemed unstoppable in the last half-century, as the yields of produce have soared. But the damage it has caused has been colossal. In Britain, for example, many of our best-loved farmland birds, such as the skylark, the grey partridge, the lapwing and the corn bunting, have vanished from huge stretches of countryside, as have even more wild-flowers and insects. This is a direct result of the way we have produced our food in the last four decades. Thousands of miles of hedgerows, thousands of ponds have disappeared from the landscape. The faecal filth of salmon farming has driven wild salmon from many of the sea lochs and rivers of Scotland. Natural soil fertility is dropping in many areas because of continuous industrial fertiliser and pesticide use, while the growth of algae is increasing in lakes because of the fertiliser run-off.

C. Put it all together and it looks like a battlefield, but consumers rarely make the connection at the dinner table. That is mainly because the costs of all this damage are what economists refer to as externalities: they are outside the main transaction, which is for example producing and selling a field of wheat, and are borne directly by neither producers nor consumers. To many, the costs may not even appear to be financial at all, but merely aesthetic -a terrible shame, but nothing to do with money. And anyway they, as consumers of food, certainly aren't paying for it, are they?

D. But the costs to society can actually be quantified and, when added up, can amount to staggering sums. A remarkable exercise in doing this has been carried out by one of the world's leading thinkers on the future of agriculture, Professor Jules Pretty, Director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex. Professor Pretty and his colleagues calculated the externalities of British agriculture for one particular year. They added up the costs of repairing the damage it caused and came up with a total figure of £2,343m. This is equivalent to £208 for every hectare of arable land and permanent pasture, almost as much again as the total government and EU spends on British farming in that year. And according to Professor Pretty, it was a conservative estimate.

E. The costs included: £120m for removal of pesticides; £16m for removal of nitrates; £55m for removal of phosphates and soil; £23m for the removal of the bug cryptosporidium from drinking water by water companies; £125m for damage to wildlife habitats, hedgerows and dry stone walls; £1,113m from emissions of gases likely to contribute to climate change; £106m from soil erosion and organic carbon losses; £169m from food poisoning; and £607m from cattle disease. Professor Pretty draws a simple but memorable conclusion from all this: our food bills are actually threefold. We are paying for our supposedly cheaper food in three separate ways: once over the counter, secondly through our taxes, which provide the enormous subsidies propping up modern intensive farming, and thirdly to clean up the mess that modern farming leaves behind.

F. So can the true cost of food be brought down? Breaking away from industrial agriculture as the solution to hunger may be very hard for some countries, but in Britain, where the immediate need to supply food is less urgent, and the costs and the damage of intensive farming have been clearly seen, it may be more feasible. The government needs to create sustainable, competitive and diverse farming and food sectors, which will contribute to a thriving and sustainable rural economy, and advance environmental, economic, health, and animal welfare goals.

G. But if industrial agriculture is to be replaced, what is a viable alternative? Professor Pretty feels that organic farming would be too big a jump in thinking and in practices for many farmers. Furthermore, the price premium would put the product out of reach of many poorer consumers. He is recommending the immediate introduction of a 'Greener Food Standard', which would push the market towards more sustainable environmental practices than the current norm, while not requiring the full commitment to organic production. Such a standard would comprise agreed practices for different kinds of farming, covering agrochemical use, soil health, land management, water and energy use, food safety and animal health. It could go a long way, he says, to shifting consumers as well as farmers towards a more sustainable system of agriculture.

Questions 14-17
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A-G. Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet. You may use any letter more than once.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

14. a cost involved in purifying domestic water
15. the stages in the development of the farming industry
16. the term used to describe hidden costs
17. one effect of chemicals on water sources

Questions 18-21
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet, write:

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

18. Several species of wildlife in the British countryside are declining.
19. The taste of food has deteriorated in recent years.
20. The financial costs of environmental damage are widely recognised.
21. One of the costs calculated by Professor Pretty was illness caused by food.

Questions 22- 26
Complete the summary below. Choose no more than three words from the passage for each answer. Write your answer in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.

Professor Pretty concludes that our 22 ................. are higher than most people realise, because we make three different types of payment. He feels it is realistic to suggest that Britain should reduce its reliance on 23 ........................ . Although most farmers would be unable to adapt to 24 ........................, Professor Pretty wants the government to initiate change by establishing what he refers to as a 25 ........................... He feels this would help to change the attitudes of both 26 ........................ and ..................... .

Ant Intelligence

When we think of intelligent members of the animal kingdom, the creatures that spring immediately to mind are apes and monkeys. But in fact, the social lives of some members of the insect kingdom are sufficiently complex to suggest more than a hint of intelligence. Among these, the world of the ant has come in for considerable scrutiny lately, and the idea that ants demonstrate sparks of cognition has certainly not been rejected by those involved in these investigations.

Ants store food, repel attackers and use chemical signals to contact one another in case of attack. Such chemical communication can be compared to the human use of visual and auditory channels (as in religious chants, advertising images and jingles, political slogans and martial music) to arouse and propagate moods and attitudes. The biologist Lewis Thomas wrote Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies to war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

However, in ants there is no cultural transmission - everything must be encoded in the genes - whereas In humans the opposite is true. Only basic instincts are carried in the genes of a newborn baby, other skills being learned from others in the community as the child grows up. It may seem that this cultural continuity gives us a huge advantage over ants. They have never mastered fire nor progressed. Their fungus farming and aphid herding crafts are sophisticated when compared to the agricultural skills of humans five thousand years ago but have been totally overtaken by modem human agribusiness.

Or have they? The farming methods of ants are at least sustainable. They do not ruin environments or use enormous amounts of energy. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the crop farming of ants may be more sophisticated and adaptable than was thought.

Ants were farmers fifty million years before humans were. Ants can't digest the cellulose in leaves - but some fungi can. The ants, therefore, cultivate these fungi in their nests, bringing them leaves to feed on, and then use them as a source of food. Farmer ants secrete antibiotics to control other fungi that might act as 'weeds', and spread waste to fertilise the crop.
It was once thought that the fungus that ants cultivate was a single type that they had propagated, essentially unchanged from the distant past. Not so. Ulrich Mueller of Maryland and his colleagues genetically screened 862 different types of fungi taken from ants' nests. These turned out to be highly diverse: it seems that ants are continually domesticating new species. Even more impressively, DNA analysis of the fungi suggests that the ants improve or modify the fungi by regularly swapping and sharing strains with neighboring ant colonies.

Whereas prehistoric man had no exposure to urban lifestyles - the forcing house, of intelligence - the evidence suggests that ants have lived in urban settings for close on a hundred million years, developing and maintaining underground cities of specialised chambers and tunnels.

When we survey Mexico City, Tokyo, Los Angeles, we are amazed at what has been accomplished by humans. Yet Hoelldobler and Wilson's magnificent work for ant lovers, the Ants, describes a supercolony of the ant Formica yessensis on the Ishikari Coast of Hokkaido. This 'megalopolis' was reported to be composed of 360 million workers and a million queens living in 4,500 interconnected nests across a territory of 2.7 square kilometers.

Such enduring and intricately meshed levels of technical achievement outstrip by far anything achieved by our distant ancestors. We hail as masterpieces the cave paintings in southern France and elsewhere, dating back some 20,000 years. Ant societies existed in something like their present form more than seventy million years ago. Beside this, prehistoric man looks technologically primitive. Is this then some kind of intelligence, albeit of a different kind?

Research conducted at Oxford, Sussex and Zurich Universities has shown that when; desert ants return from a foraging trip, they navigate by integrating bearings and distances, which they continuously update their heads. They combine the evidence of visual landmarks with a mental library of local directions, all within a framework which is consulted and updated. So ants can learn too.

And in a twelve-year programme of work, Ryabko and Reznikova have found evidence that ants can transmit very complex messages. Scouts who had located food in a maze returned to mobilise their foraging teams. They engaged in contact sessions, at the end of which the scout was removed in order to observe what her team might do. Often the foragers proceeded to the exact spot in the maze where the food had been Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent the foraging team using odour clues. Discussion now centers on whether the route through the maze is communicated as a 'left- right sequence of turns or as a 'compass bearing and distance' message.

During the course of this exhaustive study, Reznikova has grown so attached to her laboratory ants that she feels she knows them as individuals - even without the paint spots used to mark them. It's no surprise that Edward Wilson, in his essay, 'In the company of ants', advises readers who ask what to do with the ants in their kitchen to: 'Watch where you step. Be careful of little lives.'

* aphids: small insects of a different species from ants

Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write:

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

1. Ants use the same channels of communication as humans do.
2. City life is one factor that encourages the development of intelligence.
3. Ants can build large cities more quickly than humans do.
4. Some ants can find their way by making calculations based on distance and position.
5. In one experiment, foraging teams were able to use their sense of smell to find food.

6. The essay. 'In the company of ants' explores ant communication.

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

Ants as farmers

Ants have sophisticated methods of farming, including herding livestock and growing crops, which are in many ways similar to those used in human agriculture. The ants cultivate a large number of different species. of edible fungi which convert 7………………… into a form which they can digest. They use their own natall 8………………… as weed-killers and also use unwanted materials as 9…………………… Genetic analysis shows they constantly upgrade these fungi by developing new species and by 10………………… species with neighboring ant colonies. In fact, the farming methods of ants could be said to be more advanced than human agribusiness, since they use 11………………… methods, they do not affect the 12……………… and do not waste.

A. aphids

B. agricultural

C. cellulose

D. exchanging

E. energy

F. fertilizers

G. food

H. Fungi

I. growing

J. interbreeding

K. natural

L. other species

M. secretions

N. sustainable

O. environment

Forests are one of the main elements of our natural heritage. The decline of Europe's forests over the last decade and a half has led to an increasing awareness and understanding of the serious imbalances which threaten them. European countries are becoming increasingly concerned by major threats to European forests, threats which know no frontiers other than those of geography or climate: air pollution, soil deterioration, the increasing number of forest fires and sometimes even the mismanagement of our woodland and forest heritage. There has been a growing awareness of the need for countries to get together to coordinate their policies. In December 1990, Strasbourg hosted the first Ministerial Conference on the protection of Europe's forests. The conference brought together 31 countries from both Western and Eastern Europe. The topics discussed included the coordinate study of the destruction of forests, as well as how to combat forest fires and the extension of European research programs on the forest ecosystem. The preparatory work for the conference had been undertaken at two meetings of experts. Their initial task was to decide which of the many forest problems of concern to Europe involved the largest number of countries and might be the subject of joint action. Those confined to particular geographical areas, such as countries bordering the Mediterranean or the Nordic countries, therefore, had to be discarded. However, this does not mean that in future they will be ignored.

As a whole, European countries see forests as performing a triple function: biological, economic and recreational. The first is to act as a 'green lung' for our planet; by means of photosynthesis, forests produce oxygen through the transformation of solar energy, thus fulfilling what for humans is the essential role of an immense, non-polluting power plant. At the same time, forests provide raw materials for human activities through their constantly renewed production of wood. Finally, they offer those condemned to spend five days a week in an urban environment an unrivalled area of freedom to unwind and take part in a range of leisure activities, such as hunting, riding and hiking. The economic importance of forests has been understood since the dawn of man - wood was the first fuel. The other aspects have been recognised only for a few centuries but they are becoming more and more important. Hence, there is a real concern throughout Europe about the damage to the forest environment which threatens these three basic roles.

The myth of the 'natural' forest has survived, yet there are effectively no remaining 'primary' forests in Europe. All European forests are artificial, having been adapted and exploited by man for thousands of years. This means that a forest policy is vital, that it must transcend national frontiers and generations of people, and that it must allow for the inevitable changes that take place in the forests, in needs, and hence in policy. The Strasbourg conference was one of the first events on such a scale to reach this conclusion. A general declaration was made that 'a central place in any ecologically coherent forest policy must be given to continuity over time and to the possible effects of unforeseen events, to ensure that the full potential of these forests is maintained'.

That general declaration was accompanied by six detailed resolutions to assist national policy­making. The first proposes the extension and systematic sitter of surveillance sites to monitor forest decline. Forest decline is still poorly understood but leads to the loss of a high proportion of a tree's needles or leaves. The entire continent and the majority of species are now affected: between 30% and 50% of the tree population. The condition appears to result from the cumulative effect of a number of factors, with atmospheric pollutants the principal culprits. Compounds of nitrogen and sulphur dioxide should be particularly closely watched. However, their effects are probably accentuated by climatic factors, such as drought and hard winters, or soil imbalances such as soil acidification, which damages to roots. The second resolution concentrates on the need to preserve the genetic diversity of European forests. The aim is to reverse the decline in the number of tree species or at least to preserve the 'genetic material' of all of them. Although forest fires do not affect all of Europe to the same extent the amount of damage caused the experts to propose as the third resolution that the Strasbourg conference considers the establishment of a European databank on the subject. All information used in the development of national preventative policies would become generally available. The subject of the fourth resolution discussed by the ministers was mountain forests.

In Europe, it is undoubtedly the mountain ecosystem which has changed most rapidly and is most at risk. A thinly scattered permanent population and development of. leisure activities, particularly skiing, have resulted in significant long-term changes to the local ecosystems. Proposed developments include a preferential research program on mountain forests. The fifth resolution relented the European research network on the physiology of trees, called Euro Silva should support joint European research on tree diseases and their physiological and biochemical aspects. Each country concerned could increase "the number of scholarships and other financial support for doctoral theses and research projects in this area, finally, the conference established the framework for a European research network on forest ecosystems. This would also involve harmonizing activities in individual countries as well as identifying a number of priority research topics relating to the protection of forests The Strasbourg conference's main concern was to provide for the future. This was the initial motivation, one now shared by all 31 participants representing 31 European countries. Their final text commits them to on-going discussion between government representatives with responsibility for forests.

Questions 27-33
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet, write:

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

27. Forest problems of Mediterranean countries are to be discussed at the next meeting of experts.
28. Problems in Nordic countries were excluded because they are outside the European - Economic Community.
29. Forests are a renewable source of raw material.
30. The biological functions of forests were recognised only in the twentieth century.
31. Natural forests still exist in parts of Europe.
32. Forest policy should be limited by national boundaries.
33. The Strasbourg conference decided that a forest policy must allow for the possibility of change.

Questions 34-39
Look at the following statements issued by the conference.
Which six of the following statements. A-J, refer to the resolutions that were issued?

Match the statements with the appropriate resolutions (Questions 34-39). Write the correct letter, A-J, in boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet.

A. All kinds of species of trees should be preserved.
B. Fragile mountain forests should be given priority in research programs.
C. The surviving natural forests of Europe do not need priority treatment.
D. Research is to be better co-ordinate throughout Europe
E. Information on forest fires should be collected and shared.
F. Loss Of leaves from trees should be more extensively and carefully monitored
G. Resources should be allocated to research into tree diseases.
H. Skiing should be encouraged in thinly populated areas.
I. Soil imbalances such as acidification should be treated with compounds of nitrogen and sulphur.
J. Information is to be systematically gathered on any decline in the condition of forests.

34. Resolution 1
35. Resolution 2
36. Resolution 3
37. Resolution 4
38. Resolution 5
39. Resolution 6

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

40. What is the best title for Reading Passage 157?
A. The biological, economic and recreational role of forests
B. Plans to protect the forests of Europe
C. The priority of European research into ecosystems
D. Proposals for a worldwide policy on forest management

Endless Harvest

More than two hundred years ago, Russian explorers and fur hunters landed on the Aleutian Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the North Pacific, and learned of a land mass that lay farther to the north. 'The islands’ native inhabitants called this land mass Aleyska, the ‘Great Land’; today, we know it as Alaska.

The forty-ninth state to join the United States of America (in 1959), Alaska is fully one-fifth the size of the mainland 48 states combined. It shares, with Canada, the second longest river system in North America and has over half the coastline of the United States. The rivers feed into the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska - cold, nutrient-rich waters which support tens of millions of seabirds, and over 400 species of fish, shellfish, crustaceans, and molluscs. Taking advantage of this rich bounty, Alaska’s commercial fisheries have developed into some of the largest in the world.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), Alaska’s commercial fisheries landed hundreds of thousands of tonnes of shellfish and herring, and well over a million tonnes of groundfish (cod, sole, perch and pollock) in 2000. The true cultural heart and soul of Alaska’s fisheries, however, is salmon. ‘Salmon,’ notes writer Susan Ewing in The Great Alaska Nature Factbook, ‘pump through Alaska like blood through a heart, bringing rhythmic, circulating nourishment to land, animals and people.’ The ‘predictable abundance of salmon allowed some native cultures to flourish,’ and ‘dying spawners* feed bears, eagles, other animals, and ultimately the soil itself.’ All five species of Pacific salmon - chinook, or king; chum, or dog; coho, or silver; sockeye, or red; and pink, or humpback - spawn** in Alaskan waters, and 90% of all Pacific salmon commercially caught in North America are produced there. Indeed, if Alaska was an independent nation, it would be die largest producer of wild salmon in the world. During 2000, commercial catches of Pacific salmon in Alaska exceeded 320,000 tonnes, with an ex-vessel value of over $US 260 million.

Catches have not always been so healthy. Between 1940 and 1959, overfishing led to crashes in salmon populations so severe that in 1953 Alaska was declared a federal disaster area. With the onset of statehood, however, the State of Alaska took over management of its own fisheries, guided by a state constitution which mandates that Alaska’s natural resources be managed on a sustainable basis. At that time, statewide harvests totalled around 25 million salmon. Over the next few decades average catches steadily increased as a result of this policy of sustainable management, until, during the 1990s, annual harvests were well in excess of 100 million, and on several occasions over 200 million fish.

The primary reason for such increases is what is known as ‘In-Season Abundance-Based Management’. There are biologists throughout the state constantly monitoring adult fish as they show up to spawn. The biologists sit in streamside counting towers, study sonar, watch from aeroplanes, and talk to fishermen. The salmon season in Alaska is not pre-set. The fishermen know the approximate time of year when they will be allowed to fish, but on any given day, one or more field biologists in a particular area can put a halt to fishing. Even sport fishing can be brought to a halt. It is this management mechanism that has allowed Alaska salmon stocks - and, accordingly, Alaska salmon fisheries — to prosper, even as salmon populations in the rest of the United States are increasingly considered threatened or even endangered.

In 1999, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)*** commissioned a review of the Alaska salmon fishery. The Council, which was founded in 1996, certifies fisheries that meet high environmental standards, enabling them to use a label that recognises their environmental responsibility. The MSC has established a set of criteria by which commercial fisheries can be judged. Recognising the potential benefits of being identified as environmentally responsible, fisheries approach the Council requesting to undergo the certification process. The MSC then appoints a certification committee, composed of a panel of fisheries experts, which gathers information and opinions from fishermen, biologists, government officials, industry representatives, non-governmental organisations and others.

Some observers thought the Alaska salmon fisheries would not have any chance of certification when, in the months leading up to MSC’s final decision, salmon runs throughout western Alaska completely collapsed. In the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, chinook and chum runs were probably the poorest since statehood; subsistence communities throughout the region, who normally have priority over commercial fishing, were devastated.

The crisis was completely unexpected, but researchers believe it had nothing to do with impacts of fisheries. Rather, they contend, it was almost certainly the result of climatic shifts, prompted in part by cumulative effects of the el niño/la niña phenomenon on Pacific Ocean temperatures, culminating in a harsh winter in which huge numbers of salmon eggs were frozen. It could have meant the end as far as the certification process was concerned. However, the state reacted quickly, closing down all fisheries, even those necessary for subsistence purposes.

In September 2000, MSC announced that the Alaska salmon fisheries qualified for certification. Seven companies producing Alaska salmon were immediately granted permission to display the MSC logo on their products. Certification is for an initial period of five years, with an annual review to ensure that the fishery is continuing to meet the required standards.

* spawners: fish that have released eggs

** spawn: release eggs

*** MSC: a joint venture between WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and Unilever, a Dutch-based multi-national

Questions 14-20
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet, write:

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

14. The inhabitants of the Aleutian islands renamed their islands 'Aleyska'.
15. Alaska's fisheries are owned by some of the world's largest companies.
16. Life in Alaska is dependent on salmon.
17. Ninety per cent of all Pacific salmon caught are sockeye or pink salmon.
18. More than 320,000 tonnes of salmon were caught in Alaska in 2000.
19. Between 1940 and 1959, there was a sharp decrease in Alaska's salmon population.
20. During the 1990s, the average number of salmon caught each year was 100 million.

Questions 21-26
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-K. below. Write the correct letter, A-K. in boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet.

21. In Alaska, biologists keep a check on adult fish
22. Biologists have the authority
23. In-Season Abundance-Based Management has allowed the Alaska salmon fisheries
24. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) was established
25. As a result of the collapse of the salmon runs in 1999, the state decided
26. In September 2000, the MSC allowed seven Alaska salmon companies
A. to recognise fisheries that care for the environment.
B. to be successful.
C. to stop fish from spawning
D. to set up environmental protection laws.
E. to stop people fishing for sport.
F. to label their products using the MSC logo.
G. to ensure that fish numbers are sufficient to permit fishing.
H. to assist the subsistence communities in the region.
I. to freeze a huge number of salmon eggs.
J. to deny certification to the Alaska fisheries.
K. to close down all-fisheries.

Questions 14-17
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B and D-F from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i. Predicting climatic changes

ii. The relevance of the Little Ice Age today

iii. How cities contribute to climate change

iv. Human impact on the climate

v. How past climatic conditions can be determined

vi. A growing need for weather records

vii. A study covering a thousand years

viii. People have always responded to climate change

ix. Enough food at last

Example: Paragraph A. Answer: viii
14. Paragraph B

Example: Paragraph C. Answer: v
15. Paragraph D

16. Paragraph E

17. Paragraph F

The Little Ice Age

A. This book will provide a detailed examination of the Little Ice Age and other climatic shifts, but, before I embark on that, let me provide a historical context. We tend to think of climate - as opposed to weather - as something unchanging, yet humanity has been at the mercy of climate change for its entire existence, with at least eight glacial episodes in the past 730,000 years. Our ancestors adapted to the universal but irregular global warming since the end of the last great Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, with dazzling opportunism. They developed strategies for surviving harsh drought cycles, decades of heavy rainfall or unaccustomed cold; adopted agriculture and stock-raising, which revolutionised human life; and founded the world's first pre-industrial civilisations in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Americas. But the price of sudden climate change, in famine, disease and suffering, was often high.

B. The Little Ice Age lasted from roughly 1300 until the middle of the nineteenth century. Only two centuries ago, Europe experienced a cycle of bitterly cold winters; mountain glaciers in the Swiss Alps were the lowest in recorded memory, and pack ice surrounded Iceland for much of the year. The climatic events of the Little Ice Age did more than help shape the modern world. They are the deeply important context for the current unprecedented global warming. The Little Ice Age was far from a deep freeze, however; rather an irregular seesaw of rapid climatic shifts, few lasting more than a quarter-century, driven by complex and still little understood interactions between the atmosphere and the ocean. The seesaw brought cycles of intensely cold winters and easterly winds, then switched abruptly to years of heavy spring and early summer rains, mild winters, and frequent Atlantic storms, or to periods of droughts, light northeasterly winds, and summer heat waves.

C. Reconstructing the climate changes of the past is extremely difficult, because systematic weather observations began only a few centuries ago, in Europe and North America. Records from India and tropical Africa are even more recent. For the time before records began, we have only 'proxy records' reconstructed largely from tree rings and ice cores, supplemented by a few incomplete written accounts. We now have hundreds of tree-ring records from throughout the northern hemisphere, and many from south of the equator, too, amplified with a growing body of temperature data from ice cores drilled in Antarctica, Greenland, the Peruvian Andes, and other locations. We are close to a knowledge of annual summer and winter temperature variations over much of the northern hemisphere going back 600 years.

D. This book is a narrative history of climatic shifts during the past ten centuries, and some of the ways in which people in Europe adapted to them. Part One describes the Medieval Warm Period, roughly 900 to 1200. During these three centuries, Norse voyagers from Northern Europe explored northern seas, settled Greenland, and visited North America. It was not a time of uniform warmth, for then, as always since the Great Ice Age, there were constant shifts in rainfall and temperature. Mean European temperatures were about the same as today, perhaps slightly cooler.

E. It is known that the Little Ice Age cooling began in Greenland and the Arctic in about 1200. As the Arctic ice pack spread southward, Norse voyages to the west were rerouted into the open Atlantic, then ended altogether. Storminess increased in the North Atlantic and the North Sea. Colder, much wetter weather descended on Europe between 1315 and 1319, when thousands perished in a continent-wide famine. By 1400, the weather had become decidedly more unpredictable and stormier, with sudden shifts and lower temperatures that culminated in the cold decades of the late sixteenth century. Fish were a vital commodity in growing towns and cities, where food supplies were a constant concern. Dried cod and herring were already the staples of the European fish trade, but changes in water temperatures forced fishing fleets to work further offshore. The Basques, Dutch, and English developed the first offshore fishing boats adapted to a colder and stormier Atlantic. A gradual agricultural revolution in northern Europe stemmed from concerns over food supplies at a time of rising populations. The revolution involved intensive commercial farming and the growing of animal fodder on land not previously used for crops. The increased productivity from farmland made some countries self-sufficient in grain and livestock and offered effective protection against famine.
F. Global temperatures began to rise slowly after 1850, with the beginning of the Modern Warm Period. There was a vast migration from Europe by land-hungry farmers and others, to which the famine caused by the Irish potato blight contributed, to North America, Australia, New Zealand, and southern Africa. Millions of hectares of forest and woodland fell before the newcomers' axes between 1850 and 1890, as intensive European farming methods expanded across the world. The unprecedented land clearance released vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, triggering for the first time humanly caused global warming. Temperatures climbed more rapidly in the twentieth century as the use of fossil fuels proliferated and greenhouse gas levels continued to soar. The rise has been even steeper since the early 1980s. The Little Ice Age has given way to a new climatic regime, marked by prolonged and steady warming. At the same time, extreme weather events like Category 5 hurricanes are becoming more frequent.

Questions 18-22
Complete the summary using the list of words, A—1, below. Write the correct letter, A—I, in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.

Weather during the Little Ice Age

Documentation of past weather condition is limited: our main sources of knowledge of conditions in the distant past are 18................... and 19..................... . We can deduce that the Little Ice Age was a time of 20............... , rather than of consistent freezing. Within it there were some periods of very cold winters, others of 21............. and heavy rain, and yet others that saw 22............. with no rain at all.

A. climatic shifts

B. ice cores

C. tree rings
D. glaciers

E. interactions

F. weather observations
G. heat waves

H. storms

I. written accounts

Questions 23-26
Classify the following events as occurring during the

A. Medieval Warm Period
B. Little Ice Age
C. Modem Warm Period

Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

23. Many Europeans started farming abroad.
24. The cutting down of trees began to affect the climate.
25. Europeans discovered other lands.
26. Changes took place in fishing patterns.

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

List of Headings

i. The biological clock
ii. Why dying is beneficial
iii. The ageing process of men and women
iv. Prolonging your life
v. Limitations of life span
vi. Modes of development of different species
vii. A stable lifespan despite improvements
viii. Energy consumption
ix. Fundamental differences in ageing of objects and organisms
x. Repair of genetic material
Example: Paragraph A. Answer: v

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

How Does The Biological Clock Tick?

A. Our life span is restricted. Everyone accepts this as 'biologically' obvious. 'Nothing lives forever!' However, in this statement, we think of artificially produced, technical objects, products which are subjected to natural wear and tear during use. This leads to the result that at some time or other the object stops working and is unusable ('death' in the biological sense). But are the wear and tear and loss of function of technical objects and the death of living organisms really similar or comparable

B. Our 'dead' products are 'static', closed systems. It is always the basic material which constitutes the object and which, in the natural course of things, is worn down and becomes 'older'. Age, in this case, must occur according to the laws of physical chemistry and of thermodynamics. Although the same law holds for a living organism, the result of this law is not inexorable in the same way. At least as long as a biological system has the ability to renew itself it could actually become older without ageing; an organism is an open, dynamic system through which new material continuously flows. Destruction of old material and formation of new material are thus in permanent dynamic equilibrium. The material of which the organism is formed changes continuously. Thus our bodies continuously exchange old substance for new, just like a spring which more or less maintains its form and movement, but in which the water molecules are always different.
C. Thus ageing and death should not be seen as inevitable, particularly as the organism possesses many mechanisms for repair. It is not, in principle, necessary for a biological system to age and die. Nevertheless, a restricted life span, ageing, and then death are basic characteristics of life. The reason for this is easy to recognise: in nature, the existent organisms either adapt or are regularly replaced by new types. Because of changes in the genetic material (mutations), these have new characteristics and in the course of their individual lives, they are tested for optimal or better adaptation to the environmental conditions. Immortality would disturb this system — it needs room for new and better life. This is the basic problem of evolution.

D. Every organism has a life span which is highly characteristic. There are striking differences in life span between different species, but within one species the parameter is relatively constant. For example, the average duration of human life has hardly changed in thousands of years. Although more and more people attain an advanced age as a result of developments in medical care and better nutrition, the characteristic upper limit for most remains 80 years. A further argument against the simple wear and tear theory is the observation that the time within which organisms age lies between a few days (even a few hours for unicellular organisms) and several thousand years, as with mammoth trees.

E. If a life span is a genetically determined biological characteristic, it is logically necessary to propose the existence of an internal clock, which in some way measures and controls the ageing process and which finally determines death as the last step in a fixed programme. Like the life span, the metabolic rate has for different organisms a fixed mathematical relationship to the body mass. In comparison to the life span this relationship is 'inverted': the larger the organism the lower its metabolic rate. Again this relationship is valid not only for birds, but also, similarly on average within the systematic unit, for all other organisms (plants, animals, unicellular organisms).

F. Animals which behave 'frugally' with energy become particularly old, for example, crocodiles and tortoises. Parrots and birds of prey are often held chained up. Thus they are not able to 'experience life' and so they attain a high life pan in captivity. Animals which save energy by hibernation or lethargy (e.g. bats or hedgehogs) live much longer than those which are always active. The metabolic rate of mice can be reduced by a very low consumption of food (hunger diet). They then may live twice as long as their well-fed comrades. Women become distinctly (about 10 per cent) older than men. If you examine the metabolic rates of the two sexes you establish that the higher male metabolic rate roughly accounts for the lower male life span. That means that they live life 'energetically' — more intensively, but not for as long.

G. It follows from the above that sparing use of energy reserves should tend to extend life. Extreme high-performance sports may lead to optimal cardiovascular performance, but they quite certainly do not prolong life. Relaxation lowers metabolic rate, as does adequate sleep and in general an equable and balanced personality. Each of us can develop his or her own 'energy saving programme' with a little self-observation, critical self-control and, above all, logical consistency. Experience will show that to live in this way not only increases the lifespan but is also very healthy. This final aspect should not be forgotten.

Questions 33-36
Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 33-36 on your answer sheet.

• Objects age in accordance with principles of 33 ....................... and of 34 ...................................
• Through mutations, organisms can 35 ...................... better to the environment
• 36 ..................... would pose a serious problem for the theory of evolution

Questions 37-40
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet, write:

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

37. The wear and tear theory applies to both artificial objects and biological systems.
38. In principle, it is possible for a biological system to become older without ageing.
39. Within seven years, about 90 per cent of a human body is replaced as new.
40. Conserving energy may help to extend a human's life.

Biological Control of Pests

The continuous and reckless use of synthetic chemicals for the control of pests which pose a threat to agricultural crops and human health is proving to be counter-productive. Apart from engendering widespread ecological disorders, pesticides have contributed to the emergence of a new breed of chemical-resistant, highly lethal superbugs.

According to a recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), more than 300 species of agricultural pests have developed resistance to a wide range of potent chemicals. Not to be left behind are the disease-spreading pests, about 100 species of which have become immune to a variety of insecticides now in use.

One glaring disadvantage of pesticides' application is that, while destroying harmful pests, they also wipe out many useful non-targeted organisms, which keep the growth of the pest population in check. This results in what agro-ecologists call the 'treadmill syndrome'. Became of their tremendous breeding potential and genetic diversity, many pests are known to withstand synthetic chemicals and bear offspring with a built-in resistance to pesticides.

The havoc that the `treadmill syndrome' can bring about is well illustrated by what happened to cotton farmers in Central America. In the early 1940s, basking in the glory of chemical based intensive agriculture, the farmers avidly took to pesticides as a sure measure to boost crop yield. The insecticide was applied eight times a year in the mid-1940s, rising to 28 in a season in the mid-1950s, following the sudden proliferation of three new varieties of chemical-resistant pests.

By the mid-1960s, the situation took an alarming turn with the outbreak of four more new pests, necessitating pesticide spraying to such an extent that 50% of the financial outlay on cotton production was accounted for by pesticides. In the early 1970s, the spraying frequently reached 70 times a season as the farmers were pushed to the wall by the invasion of genetically stronger insect species.

Most of the pesticides in the market today remain inadequately tested for properties that cause cancer and mutations as well as for other adverse effects on health, says a study by United States environmental agencies. The United States National Resource Defense Council has found that DDT was the most popular of a long list of dangerous chemicals in use.

In the face of the escalating perils from indiscriminate applications of pesticides, a more effective and ecologically sound strategy of biological control, involving the selective use of natural enemies of the pest population, is fast gaining popularity — though, as yet, it is a new field with limited potential. The advantage of biological control in contrast to other methods is that it provides a relatively low-cost, perpetual control system with a minimum of detrimental side-effects. When handled by experts, bio-control is safe, non-polluting and self-dispersing.

The Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control (CIBC) in Bangalore, with its global network of research laboratories and field stations, is one of the most active, non-commercial research agencies engaged in pest control by setting natural predators against parasites. CIBC also serves as a clearing-house for the export and import of biological agents for pest control worldwide.

CIBC successfully used a seed-feeding weevil, native to Mexico, to control the obnoxious parthenium weed, known to exert devious influence on agriculture and human health in both India and Australia. Similarly, the Hyderabad-based Regional Research Laboratory (RRL), supported by CIBC, is now trying out an Argentinian weevil for the eradication of water hyacinth, another dangerous weed, which has become a nuisance in many parts of the world. According to Mrs Kaiser Jamil of RRL, `The Argentinian weevil does not attack any other plant and a pair of adult bugs could destroy the weed in 4-5 days.' CIBC is also perfecting the technique for breeding parasites that prey on 'disapene scale' insects — notorious defoliants of fruit trees in the US and India.

How effectively biological control can be pressed into service is proved by the following examples. In the late 1960s, when Sri Lanka's flourishing coconut groves were plagued by leaf-miaing hispides, a larval parasite imported from Singapore brought the pest under control. A natural predator indigenous to India, Neodumetia sangawani, was found useful in controlling the Rhodes grass-scale insect that was devouring forage grass in many parts of the US. By using Neochetina bruci, a beetle native to Brazil, scientists at Kerala Agricultural University freed a 12-kilometre long canal from the clutches of the weed Salvinia molesta, popularly called `African Payal' in Kerala. About 30,000 hectares of rice fields in Kerala are infested by this weed.

Questions 14-17
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

14. The use of pesticides has contributed to
A. a change in the way ecologies are classified by agroecologists.
B. an imbalance in many ecologies around the world.
C. the prevention of ecological disasters in some parts of the world.
D. an increase in the range of ecologies which can be usefully farmed.

15. The Food and Agriculture Organisation has counted more than 300 agricultural pests which
A. are no longer responding to most pesticides in use
B. can be easily controlled through the use of pesticides.
C. continue to spread disease in a wide range of crops.
D. may be used as part of bio-control's replacement of pesticides.

16. Cotton farmers in Central America began to use pesticides
A. because of an intensive government advertising campaign.
B. in response to the appearance of new varieties of pest.
C. as a result of changes in the seasons and the climate.
D. to ensure more cotton was harvested from each crop.

17. By the mid-1960s, cotton farmers in Central America found that pesticides
A. were wiping out 50% of the pests plaguing the crops.
B. were destroying 50% of the crops they were meant to protect.
C. were causing a 50% increase in the number of new pests reported.
D. were costing 50% of the total amount they spent on their crops.

Questions 18-21
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet, write:

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

18. Disease-spreading pests respond more quickly to pesticides than agricultural pests do.
19. A number of pests are now born with an innate immunity to some pesticides.
20. Biological control entails using synthetic chemicals to try and change the genetic make-up of the pests' offspring.
21. Bio-control is free from danger under certain circumstances.

Questions 22-26
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A—I, below. Write the correct letter, A—I, in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.

22. Disapene scale insects feed on
23. Neodumetia sangawani ate
24. Leaf-mining hispides blighted
25. An Argentinian weevil may be successful in wiping out
26. Salvinia molesta plagues

A. forage grass.
B. rice fields.
C. coconut trees.
D. fruit trees.
E. water hyacinth.
F. parthenium weed.
G. Brazilian beetles.
H. grass-scale insects.
I. larval parasites.