In this exercise, you will read a passage and answer the questions that precede the passage. ‘The suggested time for reading the passage and answering the questions is 10 minutes. Questions 1-6 ‘The following reading passage has seven paragraphs A-C. Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers (i-ix) in the spaces provided. ‘NB There are more headings than paragraphs so you will not use all of them. You may use any of the headings more than once. List of Headings ‘The spreading tea The history of tea growing ‘Changes of tastes for drinks Reducing cancer risks ‘The plant Camellia sinensis ‘A woman’s opinion of tea ‘Where to find it Japanese tea ‘More varieties to choose from Paragraph GMore Than Sympathy Tea naw brews up health henefits and gourmet appeal A Americans are far mote sophisticated about beverages than they were 20 years ago. Witness the Starbucks revolution and you'll know where the trend goes. Now, spurred on by recent studies suggesting that it can cut the risk of cancer and heart disease and retard the aging process, tea is enjoying a similar jolt. Enough chic tea salons are springing up to make even die-hard coffee drinkers consider switching beverages. B Tea is available in more places than ever. “Tea was one of the most prolific beverage categories in 1999,” with 24 per cent more products offered over the previous year, reports ‘Tom Vierhile of Marketing Intelligence Service, which tracks food and beverage trends. And the Tea Association of the United States reports that from 1990 to 1999, annual sales of the drink grew to $4.6 billion from $1.8 billion. “Green tea is seen by consumers as a ‘functional food’ — delivering health benefits beyond sustenance,” says Vierhile. C Recently published studies point out that not all brews are created equal. Only teas that come from the leaves of the plant Camellia sinensis — which, in their raw state are brewed to make green tea, and, with curing, can be tured into oolong and black tea leaves — have been shown to contain health benefits. Other herbal teas and infusions may taste ‘good, yet they do little more than warm up the drinker. But for Camellia sinensis, the evi- dence is powerful. In a 1998 study, Harvard University researchers found that drinking one ‘cup of black tea a day lowered the risk of heart attack by as much as 44 per cent compared with non-tea drinkers, and other studies have suggested that the antioxidants in these so-called real teas can also prevent cancer. D__ One such antioxidant in green tea is ECGC, a compound 20 times as powerful as vitamin E and 200 times as powerful as vitamin C. “When people ask me for something good and cheap they can do to reduce their cancer risk, I tell them drink real tea,” says Mitchell Gaynor, director of medical oncology at New York City’s Strang-Cornell Cancer Prevention Center. E Among those inspired to become a green-tea drinker is Tess Ghilaga, a New York writer who took it up after consulting a nutritionist six years ago. “I've never been a coffee drinker,” says Ghilaga, 33. “She told me to start drinking green tea for the antioxidant properties.” Now Ghilaga and her husband routinely brew tea — they order theirs from InPursuitofTea.com, an Internet tea company. And although tea contains about half the amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee, “you still et a nice buzz from it,” says Ghilage. ONIAVayF Restaurants and coffee bars are also getting in on the act. “In restaurants nowadays, you're a lot less likely to be offered a pitcher of hot water and a tea bag if you order tea after a meal,” says Sebastian Beckwith of InPursuitofTea.com. At a Los Angeles coffee bar Urth Cafié, customers can select from 65 varieties of tea, coming from countries as diverse as China, Japan, India, and Iran, and enjoy a pot of tea for about the price of a gourmet coffee — $2.50 for a small pot and $3.50 for a large. “The tea experience is the exact opposite of the coffee experience,” says Urth Caffé co-founder Shallom Berkman, explaining the Deverage’s newfound popularity. “Coffee jars you with its caffeine; tea is more nurturing and soothing, and people seem to be looking for that now.” That could add up to lots of green for those who make their living in tea. G _wwwalitea.com. Along with green, black, and oolong teas, this company sells a wide variety of herbal teas — and offers a “Tea of the Month” club. ‘www.teasofgreen.com. This site sells higher-end green, black, and oolong teas and has .g00d tips on proper storage and preparation of tea. ‘www.tea.com. Tea drinkers can find links to sites offering tea lore, such as articles, about tea ceremonies in foreign lands. An exhaustive “frequently asked questions” file rounds out the site, ( SEES In this exercise, you will read a passage and answer the questions that accompany the pas- sage. Some of the questions will come before the passage; others will come ofter the passage. The suggested time for reading the passage and answering the questions is 20 minutes. Questions 1-8 ‘The following reading passage has nine paragraphs A-I. Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-I from the list of headings below, Write the appropriate numbers (-x) in the spaces provided. NB There are more headings than paragraphs so you will not use all of them. You may use any of the headings more than once.List of Headings | | @ Fuels from biological sources | | Gi)” Research and development into biomass systems | Gil) Solar energy and its utilization | Gv) The energy crisis and photosynthetic systems | @The second energy crisis | @i) Plant power | Gil) Bfficiency of the solar conversion process (iti). ‘Tree biomass [> A88.SOde fn of renewable enegy Liquid and gaseous fuels from biomass Paragraph B 2. Paragraph C 3. Paragraph D 4 Paragraph E Paragraph F 7 Paragraph G Paragraph H_ Paragraph I Energy from Biological Sources ‘A Radiation from the sun is the earth's primary source of energy. More than 99 per cent of the processes that are happening on earth are energized by the sun either directly or indirectly. As solar radiation is a permanent and renewable source of energy, why, then, do we have an “energy crisis"? The problem, of course, lies in how to utilize this energy. It is diffuse and intermittent on a daily and seasonal basis, thus collection and storage costs can be high. But we already have at our disposal a means of capturing and storing a proportion of this energy, and we have always had such a means. It is plant life — the “biomass”. The prucess invulved is photosynthesis. B This capture of solar energy and conversion into a stored product occurs, with only a low overall efficiency of about 0.1 per cent on a world-wide basis but because of the adaptability of plants, it takes place and can be used over most af the earth. ONIGVAYC We should remember two things about this energy source. First, the world’s present and precarious dependence on fossil fuels — first coal, and then oil — is only about two hundred years old. Before that, most of the energy required by human beings for heating, cooking and industrial purpose was supplied from biological sources. By this, we mean mainly wood, or its derivative, charcoal. Secondly, wood still accounts for one sixth of the ‘world’s fuel supply. In the non-OPEC developing countries, which contain 40 per cent of the ‘world's population, non-commercial fuel often comprises up to 90 per cent of their total energy use. With the increasingly doubtful future of fossil fuel supplies, fuel from biological sources may have to become even more important. D Traditional fuels of biological origin include wood, charcoal, agricultural residues such as. straw and dried animal dung. With the growth in world population, there has been increasing ressure on these resources, leading to what is sometimes called the “second energy crisis". ‘This is more drastic for mankind than the “first”, or oil crisis, It takes the form of deforest- ation, with loss of green cover in hot lands, leading to desiccation and the loss of fertile land to desert. 4 E The threat from both energy crises can be partly met by utilizing the enormous supply of energy built up annually in green plants. The question is, how should this be done? In the past, photosynthesis has given us food, fuel wood, fibre and chemicals. It has also, ultimately, ssiven us the fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas, but these are not renewable while the other products are. Recently, however, with abundant oil, the products of present-day photo- synthesis are mainly evident to the developed world as food. We should re-examine and, if possible, re-employ the previous systems; but, with today’s increased population and standard of living, we cannot revert to old technology and must instead develop new means of using present-day photosynthetic systems more efficiently. F Fortunately for us, plants are very adaptable and exist in great diversity — they could ‘thus continue indefinitely to supply us with renewable quantities of food, fibre, fuel and chem- icals. If the impending fuel problem which is predicted within the next ten to fifteen years ‘comes about, we may turn to plant products sooner than we expect. Let us be prepared! G Some basic research can be done centrally, without reference to the conditions in any ‘one country. For example, all plant energy storage depends ultimately on the process of photosynthesis. Experiments are being made to see whether this process can either be speeded up, or even reproduced artificially, in order to produce a highér efficiency in energy extraction, Most research should be done locally, however, because of climatic and vegeta- tion differences, and also because of the difference in needs and emphasis in varying coun- tries. Such research and development is an excellent opportunity to encourage local scientists, engineers and administrators in one field of energy supply. Even if biomass sys- tems do not become significant suppliers of energy in a specific country in the future, the spin-off in terms of benefits to agriculture, forestry, land use patterns and bioconversion technology is certain to be valuable.H_ What are the methods currently in use or under tral for deriving energy from biomass? ‘The first is the traditional use outlined in paragraph C, witich may be termed the “non-com- mercial” use of biomass energy. The second also has a long traditional history: the use of ‘woodfuel under boilers to generate steam. This has now been revised on an intensive scale. Ina study from the Philippines, it has been estimated that a 9,100 hectare fuel wood planta- tion “would supply the needs of a 75 megawatt steam power station if it were not more than fifty kilometres distant”. Such a plantation would use a species of fast-growing tree — Jeucaena leucocephala, or the giant The investment requirements and cost of power Produced looks favourable and competitive with oil-fired power stations of similar capacity. In addition, residues from cropland after harvest and from sawmills could be used as steam- producing fuel. The steam could then be used to generate electricity 1 There are also bioconversion processes to produce liquid fuels such as oil and alcohol. Some fuel oils can be pressed directly from certain crops. Alcohols, on the other hand, can bbe produced by converting plant material by fermentation, Ethanol (ethyl alcohol) can be extracted from growing plants such as sugar cane, from waste plant,material, or from whole grain. Methanol (methyl alcohol) can he produced from coal, wood, sewage and various waste products. These alcohols have several industrial uses and can also be used as fuels in the internal combustion engines of vehicles. Technology is already advanced, and the main problem is devising ways of collecting enough organic material to make the installations commercially viable. Some crops can be grown specifically for this purpose. In other cases, the installations can make use of the residue, or “trash” produced in the large-scale plantation farming of such crops as sugar cane and pineapple. Another fuel product produced by @ fermentation process is fel gas of varions kinds, including a biogss called methane. Several of these pro- cesses can be applied to household or municipal wastes and refuse — a large and concen- trated source in all big towns and cities. Questions 9-15 Decide if each of the following statements is true or false according to the information provided (a the pussuge. If statement is true, write T; if i is false, wrtte 9. Practically all the plant biomass produced by farmers around the world is a poten- tial source of energy, whether the crop is grown for food, fuel or fibre 10. Sugar cane is an important crop that can be used to produce ethanol for motor fuel. ONIGvay11. Only developing countries that have large areas of agricultural or forest land can benefit from biomass sources of energy. 12. The use of charcoal for cooking has been a common practice for hundreds of years. 13. Systematic deforestation to supply steam-producing fuel serves to improve the fertil- ity of the land and reduce desiccation. 14, OPEC countries use more fuel from non-fossil ing world in general. iological sources than the develop- 15. Traditional use of biomass material for fuel caused no serious problems when popu lation levels were low. In this exercise, you will read a passage and answer the questions that accompany the pas- sage. The suggested time for reading the passage and answering the questions is 15 minutes, Questions 1-11 ‘The reading passage has twelve paragraphs A-L. Choose the most suitable headings for para- graphs B-L. from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers (-xiv) in the spaces pro- vided. NB There are more headings than paragiaphs so you will not use all of them. You may use any of the headings more than. once. List of Headings () Proteins might play a part in anaesthesia (ii) A hypothesis held before the 1980s (wv) Findings made by Dr. Eckenhoff \¢ Se [:>Qyi Sipinceeatstrancy Sr usta io eee | | The proteins have albumin-like qualities Shapes of proteins How anaesthesia works — still a puzzle(Gx) The two evidences showing the proteins’ albumin-like quality |G) Efe ofthe two variables on proteins | | Gd) Anaesthetics and insomnia | (xii) Two conflicting theories i | xiii) Dr. Eckenhoff’s theory | - | iv) Il effects of anaesthesia Example: Anower: Paragraph A vii Paragraph B Paragraph C Paragraph D Paragraph E Paragraph F Paragraph G Paragraph H_ Paragraph I Paragraph J Paragraph K Paragraph L Sleeping Secrets A. In 1846, 2 Bostonian dentist called William Morton removed a tumour from the neck of a newspaper printer to whom he had administered ether. The printer felt no pain. Ever since then, doctors have been trying to fathom exactly what causes the curious state of uncon- sciousness, now known as anaesthesia, into which he lapsed. B Fora long time, researchers in the field believed that anaesthetics worked by dissolving in the fatty sheaths that insulate nerves. This, it was theorized, caused them to interfere with the electrical signals that pass along those nerves. Since one of the few things that anaesthetic chemicals seemed to have in common was a tendency to dissolve in fats, and their solubility was related to their effectiveness, that hypothesis looked good until the suggested electrical effects were measured in the 1980s and discovered to he too small. ONIGVAYC At around that time, however, another idea was becoming popular. This was that anaes- thetics combine with critical proteins in the central nervous system and bring them — and consciousness — grinding to a halt. Subsequent research has shown that anaesthetics can, indeed, bind to protein molecules, and can sometimes affect their function as a result. But nobody has yet identified the elusive proteins involved in anaesthesia. In October, however, Roderic Eckenhoti, an anaesthesiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, will publish a paper that may bring that identification closer. Though he has not found the guilty proteins, he thinks he knows something important about their characteristics, and thus how anaesthetics per- form their trick. D__ Proteins consist of long chains of chemical links known as amino acids. These chains, however, are usually folded up into more or less globular shapes which are held steady by ‘weak chemical bonds between adjacent parts of the chain, E__ Since the shape of a protein is critical to its function (particularly if it has a precisely sculpted docking port for other molecules to enter), Dr. Eckenboff suspected that anaesthetics work by changing the stability of the folding of a particular protein, thus affecting how well that protein does its job. Anaesthetics might achieve this either by making the shape of a protein so stable that it cannot flex in response to docking and undocking molecules, oF so unstable that the docking port loses its shape. The test of this theory, to be published in October's Molecular Pharmacology, looked at two proteins (albumin and myoglobin) which have nothing directly to do with anaesthesia, but which are easy to extract in large quantities for experiments. F __ Dr. Eckenhoff' previons work has shown that when an anaesthetic molecule such as isoflurane binds to albumin (a component of blood), the protein becomes more settled in its folded pattern. This means that anaesthetics are less likely to stick to it if itis destabilized. By contrast he showed that myoglobin’ (a component of muscle) opens up and becomes less stable when it hosts a molecule of isoflurane — which means that anaesthetics are more likely to stick to it iit is destabilized. G Since it is one of the characteristics of anaesthesia that its effectiveness weakens with lemperature and pressure, Dr. Eckenhoff wanted to examine the effects of these two vari- ables on the proteins in question. Raising the temperature destabilized both proteins (no great ‘surprise, given that molecules, shake more when they are hotter). So did increasing the pres- sure, But Dr. Eckenhoff was able to measure the precise amount of destabilization by carrying the experiments out in water containing a radioactive form of hydrogen called tritium, H__ In the normal course of events, a protein molecule will swap hydrogen atoms with the surrounding water from time to time — and if that molecule hae been partially unfolded, there will be more hydrogen available to swap, since atoms on the inside as well as the out. side of the globule will be available for exchange. The extent to which a protein has been destabilized can, therefore, be measured by how radioactive it becomes in a given period of time.I The stability curves for an albumin at different temperatures and pressures turn out to have the same sort of shape as the curves for the effectiveness of anaesthetics (those of myoglobin do not match at all). And two other lines of evidence from the paper also indicate that the proteins involved in anaesthesia have albumin-like qualities. J. One is that only albumin responds to changes in the concentration of isoflurane in the way that would be predicted if it were acting like a protein responding to anaesthesia. The other is the response of albumin to different forms of isoflurane. K The isoflurane molecule comes in two varieties, which are mirror images of each other. For most chemical purposes the varieties are identical, but anaesthesia can tell the difference — and one is more potent than the other. Dr. Eckenhoff has found that the more potent variety binds more strongly to albumin, but not to myoglobin. L Anaesthesia, therefore, seems to work by stabilizing rather than destabilizing critical proteins. But which ones? The most likely candidates are the protein receptors of the small chemical messengers (known as neurotransmitters) which carry signals from one nerve cell to another at special sites called synapses. Work on glutamate receptors, which are responsible for simulating the brain, suggests that these are, indeed, inhibited by anaesthetics. But in contrast to this, John Mihic of the University of Colorado and his colleagues have recently made a case for anaesthetics working by increasing rather than decreasing the effects of receptor molecules — in this case the receptors for GABA and glycine, two neurotransmitters that calm down excited synapses. How that fits in with the Eckenhoff model remains to be seen, Clearly, however, anaesthesia has not given up al of its secrets yet. In this exercise, you will read a passage and answer the questions that accompany the pas- sage, The suggested time for reading the passage and answering the questions is 15 minutes. Questions 1-10 ‘The reading passage has eleven paragraphs A-K. Choose the most suifable headings for para ‘graphs B-K from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers (-xiv) in the spaces pro- vided, NB There are more headings than paragraphs so you will not use all of them. You may use any of the headings more than onee.