IELTS Academic Reading (ARFD)

Round Pound Coins

British households have got rid of £60m-worth of the old “round pound” coins over the past week – but
there are still more than £400m-worth that are still in circulation – and down the backs of sofas – with just
this weekend to spend them.

From midnight on Sunday the round pound will no longer be legal tender. Many retailers have made it
clear that they won’t take them anymore, including Sainsbury’s, M&S and Lidl. But there’s no need to
panic as Tesco, Aldi, Iceland and Poundland, plus lots of small retailers, say they will continue accepting
them for a short period, while the big banks will let you deposit them into an account for months yet.

The UK’s largest retailer, Tesco, says it will allow shoppers to pay with the coins at tills and self-service
machines for an extra week. Aldi and Iceland will take them for two weeks, and Poundland will accept
them until 31 October.
However, you are likely to find that the coin will be useless in most coin-operated machines, so that stack
in the car won’t help at the station or hospital car park. Already, some supermarket self-checkouts, such as
those at Lidl, are no longer taking the old-style coins.

How do you make sure you don’t get short-changed in the great coin changeover? Hopefully, this guide
will help.

Can I take them to the bank and change them there – and if so for how long?

Most High-Street banks will take old £1 coins as deposits into bank accounts, but they have different
policies on how long and whether they will exchange old coins for new. It is entirely up to individual
banks, says the Royal Mint.

Lloyds told Money it has not set a final deadline for accepting the coins, although traders wanting to
deposit them must separate them from the new £1 coins. “Lloyds Banking Group [which includes Lloyds,
Bank of Scotland and Halifax] has no plans to stop accepting old £1 coins. Customers can either use old
£1 coins to deposit into their bank accounts or we can swap them for new ones

What about the Post Office?

The Post Office will not be exchanging old £1 coins for new ones, but it has an agreement that allows
anyone to deposit old coins into their High-Street bank account at their local Post Office branch after 15
October until further notice.
It will also be taking part in Pudsey’s Round Pound Countdown for the BBC Children In Need charity
ahead of its appeal day on 17 November.
Can I give old £1 coins to charity?
Yes, you can continue to donate them to any charity for the foreseeable future, says the Royal Mint.
Together with HM Treasury, the Royal Mint has officially partnered with Pudsey’s Round Pound
Countdown campaign mentioned above, which aims to collect as many as possible before 17 November to
help disadvantaged children and young people across the UK.
What shops will still accept them?
A lot of small shops will continue to accept your old £1 coins. The Federation of Small Businesses, a trade
association representing 170,000 small shops, has advised its members to continue taking them after 15
October to provide a “useful community service” to customers.

Shopkeepers will not want to let their loyal customers down by saying they cannot pay with a round
pound if they do not have any other change.

Poundland managing director Barry Williams has said that the move to accept old pounds for a few weeks
longer was a “no-brainer”.

Providing an extra convenience for shoppers to lighten their pockets while doing the weekly shop rather
than making a separate trip to the bank or Post Office will come as good news

Will I still be able to use them in trolleys, slot machines and so on?

Probably not. Vending machines, slot machines, parking meters, toilet turnstiles and supermarket trolleys
should all have been adapted by 15 October.
Industry has had a number of years to prepare for the upgrade. Many businesses have made the
preparations to be ready to accept payments using the new £1 coin. However, this is a significant task and
not every machine will be ready on the day of introduction.
Contrary to recent reports, both Tesco and Sainsbury’s say their trolleys will all be updated and ready by
Monday.
“We’ve already updated the vast majority of our trolleys and are on track to update the remainder over the
coming days [before the deadline],” a Tesco spokesperson said.

But it appears that machines belonging to some rail companies have not been updated. Companies
including Govia Thameslink, which operates Southern, Great Northern, Gatwick Express and Thameslink,
said some of their ticket machines would not be ready in time.

Will my £1 trolley fob be useless?

If you have a key ring fob the same size as an old, round £1 coin that fits into supermarket trolleys, then
probably so. But you can now buy keyring trolley fobs the same size as the new 12-sided coin to use in
future at, for example, Amazon and Ebay.

Complete the following table using NO MORE THAN THREE words/numbers from the passage
1

Collect as many as possible

Before

Allowed at tills and

Either deposit old £1 coins or for new ones

No final

7
8

Will not exchange old £1 coins for new ones . Deposit old coins into High-Street
bank account at local

10

After

Question 11 - 13

Choose THREE of the following options

11

Which of the following places will not accept old coins?

Lidl
Poundland
Aldi
Sainsbury
M&S
Tesco

IELTS Academic Reading (ARFD)

Common Cold
The common cold has the twin distinction of being both the world’s most widespread infectious disease
and one of the most elusive. The name is a problem, for starters. In almost every Indo-European language,
one of the words for the disease relates to low temperature, yet experiments have shown that low
temperature neither increases the likelihood of catching a cold, nor the severity of symptoms. Then there
is the “common” part, which seems to imply that there is a single, indiscriminate pathogen at large. In
reality, more than 200 viruses provoke cold-like illness, each one deploying its own peculiar chemical and
genetic strategy to evade the body’s defences.

It is hard to think of another disease that inspires the same level of collective resignation. The common
cold slinks through homes and schools, towns and cities, making people miserable for a few days without
warranting much afterthought. Adults suffer an average of between two and four colds each year, and
children up to 10, and we have come to accept this as an inevitable part of life.

The most common beliefs about how to treat the disease have turned out to be false. Dubious efficacy has
done little to deter humankind from formulating remedies. The Ebers Papyrus, a medical document from
ancient Egypt dated to 1550 BC, advises a cold sufferer to recite an incantation, “in association with the
administration of milk of one who has borne a male child, and fragrant gum”. In 1924, US President
Calvin Coolidge sat down in an airtight chlorine chamber and inhaled the pungent, noxious gas for almost
an hour on the advice of his physicians, who were certain that his cold would be cured quickly. (It wasn’t.)

Today, “winter remedy” sales in the UK reach £300m each year, though most over-the-counter products
have not actually been proven to work. Some contain paracetamol, an effective analgesic, but the dosage
is often sub-optimal. Taking vitamin C in regular doses does little to ward off disease. Hot toddies,
medicated tissues and immune system “boosts” of echinacea or ginger are ineffective. Antibiotics do
nothing for colds. The only failsafe means of avoiding a cold is to live in complete isolation from the rest
of humanity.

Although modern science has changed the way medicine is practised in almost every field, it has so far
failed to produce any radically new treatments for colds. The difficulty is that while all colds feel much
the same, from a biological perspective the only common feature of the various viruses that cause colds is
that they have adapted to enter and damage the cells that line the respiratory tract. Otherwise, they belong
to quite different categories of organisms, each with a distinct way of infecting our cells. This makes a
catch-all treatment extremely tricky to formulate.

Scientists today identify seven virus families that cause the majority of colds: rhinovirus, coronavirus,
influenza and parainfluenza virus, adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and, finally,
metapneumovirus, which was first isolated in 2001. Each has a branch of sub-viruses, known as serotypes,
of which there are about 200. Rhinovirus, the smallest cold pathogen by size, is by far the most prevalent,
causing up to three-quarters of colds in adults. To vanquish the cold we will need to tackle all of these
different families of the virus at some stage. But, for now, rhinovirus is the biggest player.

Scientists first attempted to make a rhinovirus vaccine in the 1950s. They used a reliable method,
pioneered by French biologist Louis Pasteur in the 1880s, in which a small amount of virus is introduced
to a host in order to provoke a defensive immunological reaction that then protects the body from
subsequent infection. Even so, those who had been vaccinated caught colds just as easily as those who had
not.

Over the next decade, as the techniques for isolating cold viruses were refined, it became clear that there
were many more rhinoviruses than first predicted. Researchers realised it would not be possible to make a
vaccine in the traditional way. Producing dozens of single-serotype vaccines, each one targeting a
different strain, would be impractical. The consensus that a rhinovirus vaccine was not possible deepened.
The last human clinical trial took place in 1975.

Then, in January last year, an editorial appeared in the Expert Review of Vaccines that once again raised
the prospect of a vaccine. The article was co-authored by a group of the world’s leading respiratory
disease specialists based at Imperial College London. It was worded cautiously, yet the claim it made was
striking. “Perhaps the quest for an RV [rhinovirus] vaccine has been dismissed as too difficult or even
impossible,” it said, “but new developments suggest that it may be feasible to generate a significant
breadth of immune protection.”

The first scientist to try and fail to make a rhinovirus vaccine was also the first scientist to distinguish it
from the jumble of other cold viruses. In 1953, an epidemiologist called Winston Price was working at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore when a group of nurses in his department came down with a mild
fever, a cough, sore throat and runny nose – symptoms that suggested the flu. Price took nasal washings
from the nurses and grew their virus in a cell culture. What he found was too small to be an influenza
virus. In a 1957 paper, “The isolation of a new virus associated with respiratory clinical disease in
humans”, Price initially named his discovery “JH virus”, after his employer.

Price decided to try to develop a vaccine using a bit of dead rhinovirus. When the immune system
encounters an invading virus – even a dead or weakened virus – it sets out to expel it. One defence is the
production of antibodies, small proteins that hang around in the blood system long after the virus is gone.
If the virus is encountered a second time, the antibodies will swiftly recognise it and raise the alarm,
giving the immune system the upper hand.

At first, Price was encouraged. In a trial that involved several hundred people, those vaccinated with JH
virus had eight times fewer colds than the unvaccinated. Newspapers across the US wanted to know: had
the common cold been cured? “The telephone by my bed kept ringing until 3 o’clock in the morning,”
Price told the New York Times in November 1957. The celebration would be short-lived. Though Price’s
vaccine was effective against his particular “JH” rhinovirus strain, in subsequent experiments it did
nothing. This indicated that more than one rhinovirus was out there.

By the late 1960s, dozens of rhinoviruses had been discovered. Even in the alien menagerie of respiratory
disease, this level of variation in one species was unusual; there are just three or four influenza viruses
circulating at any one time. Scientists at the University of Virginia decided to try a different tactic. Instead
of inoculating patients with a single strain of rhinovirus, they combined 10 different serotypes in one
injection. But after this, too, failed to shield participants from infection, they were out of ideas.

Choose the correct option

14 It is not possible to treat common cold because

It affects a large number of people

It is infectious
There are too many viruses that can cause common cold
None of the above

15 Which pathogen is mostly responsible for colds in adults?

Adenovirus
Parainfluenza virus
Coronavirus
Rhinovirus
16
The article by Imperial college claimed that

colds could Be treated effectively

Vaccination could ensure complete prevention from rhinovirus
New developements could provide some immunity from rhinovirus
It is impossible to kill rhinovirus

17
________made a vaccination combining 10 different serotypes of Rhinovirus.

The physicians of president Calvin.

Scientists at the University of Virginia
Winston Price
Louis Pasture

Read the following sentences and see if they match the information in the passage. Mark TRUE if the
statement agrees with the information given, mark FALSE if the statement contradicts the information and
mark NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this statement.

18 UK has the highest number of winter remedy sales.

True
False
Not Given

19 Over the counter products like Paracetamol are effective in treating colds

True
False
Not given

20
Rhinovirus is the only virus that causes common cold

True
False
Not given

21 Rhinovirus was initially named JH virus.

True
False
 Not given

22 Price was disappointed with his failure to develop an effective vaccination.

True
False
Not given

23
Antibiotics are effective in treating common cold.

True
False
Not given

Fill in the blanks using NO MORE THAN THREE words/numbers from the passage.

24

What did ancient egyptians do to cure cold?

25

How many virus families are known to cause cold?

26

Which part of the human body do all the common cold viruses attack?

IELTS Academic Reading (ARFD)

Knut Christianson
A: Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is so remote that only 28 human beings have ever set foot on it.

B: Knut Christianson, a 33-year-old glaciologist at the University of Washington, has been there twice. A
few years ago, Christianson and a team of seven scientists travelled more than 1,000 miles from McMurdo
Station, the main research base in Antarctica, to spend six weeks on Thwaites, traversing along the flat,
featureless prairie of snow and ice in six snowmobiles and two Tucker Snow-Cats. "You feel very alone
out there," Christianson says. He and his colleagues set up camp at a new spot every few days and drilled
holes 300 feet or so into the ice. Then they dropped tubes of nitroglycerin dynamite into these holes and
triggered a blast. Sensors tracked vibrations as they shot through the ice and ricocheted off the ground
below. By measuring the shape and frequency of these vibrations, Christianson could see the lumps and
ridges and even the texture of a crushed continent deeply buried beneath the ice.

C: But Christianson and his colleagues were not just ice geeks mapping the hidden topography of the
planet. They were mapping a future global disaster. As the world warms, determining exactly how quickly
ice melts and seas rise may be one of the most important questions of our time. Half the world's
population lives within 50 miles of a coastline. Trillions of dollars of real estate are perched on beaches
and clustered in low-lying cities like Miami and New York. A long, slow rise of the waters in the coming
decades may be manageable. A more abrupt rise would not be. "If there is going to be a climate
catastrophe," says Ohio State glaciologist Ian Howat, "It's probably going to start at Thwaites." The
trouble with Thwaites, which is one of the largest glaciers on the planet, is that it's also what scientists call
"a threshold system." That means instead of melting slowly like an ice cube on a summer day, it is more
like a house of cards: It's stable until it is pushed too far, then it collapses. When a chunk of ice the size of
Pennsylvania falls apart, that's a big problem. It won't happen overnight, but if we don't slow the warming
of the planet, it could happen within decades. And its loss will destabilize the rest of the West Antarctic
ice, and that will go too. Seas will rise about 10 feet in many parts of the world; in New York and Boston,
because of the way gravity pushes water around the planet, the waters will rise even higher, as much as 13
feet. "West Antarctica could do to the coastlines of the world what Hurricane Sandy did in a few hours to
New York City," explains Richard Alley, a geologist at Penn State University and arguably the most
respected ice scientist in the world. "Except when the water comes in, it doesn't go away in a few hours –
it stays."

D: With 10 to 13 feet of sea-level rise, most of South Florida is an underwater theme park, including
Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Mar-a-Lago, President Trump's winter White House in West Palm
Beach. In downtown Boston, about the only thing that's not underwater are those nice old houses up on
Beacon Hill. In the Bay Area, everything below Highway 101 is gone, including the Googleplex; the
Oakland and San Francisco airports are submerged, as is much of downtown below Montgomery Street
and the Marina District. Even places that don't seem like they would be in trouble, such as Sacramento,
smack in the middle of California, will be partially flooded by the Pacific Ocean swelling up into the
Sacramento River. Galveston, Texas; Norfolk, Virginia; and New Orleans will be lost. In Washington,
D.C., the shoreline will be just a few hundred yards from the White House.

E: And that's just the picture in the U.S. The rest of the world will be in as much trouble. Large parts of
Shanghai, Bangkok, Jakarta, Lagos and London will be submerged. Egypt's Nile River Delta and much of
southern Bangladesh will be underwater. The Marshall Islands and the Maldives will be coral reefs.

F: Christianson, of course, understands all this as well as anyone. That's why he and others spent many
weeks on Thwaites. To understand how fast the ice might slide into the sea, they need to know, among
other things, the character of the ground beneath it: Is it slippery bedrock? Is it soft sediment? Are there
any hills or mountains beneath the ice, anything that the glacier could cling to in order to slow the retreat?
At night, they gathered in the mess tent and ate cookies they had baked in their solar oven and talked
about being so far from civilization, and yet in a place where civilization has so much at stake. "We like to
think that change happens slowly, especially in a landscape like Antarctica," Christianson tells me. "But
we now know that is wrong."
G: Antarctica is the size of the United States and Mexico combined, with a permanent population of zero.
It is not the territory of any nation, and it has no government, in the conventional sense. Ever since British
explorer Robert Falcon Scott and Norwegian Roald Amundson captivated the world with their race to the
South Pole in 1911, it has been a playground for scientists and adventurers (and penguins). Seventy per
cent of the Earth's fresh water is frozen here in ice sheets that can be nearly three miles thick. The
continent is roughly divided by the Transantarctic Mountains; East Antarctica is bigger and colder than
West Antarctica, which is far more vulnerable to melting, in part because the bases of many glaciers in
West Antarctica lie below sea level, making them susceptible to small changes in ocean temperatures.

Question 27-36
The reading passage has paragraphs labelled (A-G). Match the following information with the paragraph it
appears in.

ABCDEFG
Large number of cities are being affected by the glacier.
Scientists visiting the South Pole.
Properties of the ground beneath the glacier.
Most of West Antarctica's glaciers bases lie below sea level.
Calamity being more destructive than hurricane.
Christianson traveling to Thwaites.
Other nations being affected by the melting of Thwaites.
The destruction in store for America.
Natural calamity might kick off at Thwaites.
Explosion setoff to trace vibrations.

Complete the flowchart using the options given below.

37

Research process followed by Christian son & his team:

Step 1 :

38

Step 2 :

39

Step 3 :

40
Step 4 :

Send vibrations down the hole

Detonate the dynamite
Drop nitroglycerin dynamite
Dig the ice
Map the topography
Study the vibrations
Drill deep holes