EXERCISE 1:

Endangered languages
Nevermind whales, save the languages’, says Peter Monaghan, a graduate of the
Australian National University
Worried about the loss of rain forests and the ozone layer? Well, neither of those is
doing any worse than a large majority of the 6,000 to 7,000 languages that remain in
use on Earth. One half of the survivors will almost certainly be gone by 2050, while
40% more will probably be well on their way out. In their place, almost all humans will
speak one of a handful of megalanguages – Mandarin, English, Spanish.

Austin and Co. are in no doubt that because languages are unique, even if they do tend
to have common underlying features, creating dictionaries and grammars requires
prolonged and dedicated work. This requires that documentary linguists observe not
only languages’ structural subtleties, but also related social, historical and political
factors. Such work calls for persistent funding of field scientists who may sometimes
have to venture into harsh and even hazardous places. Once there, they may face
difficulties such as community suspicion. As Nick Evans says, a community who speak
an endangered language may have reasons to doubt or even oppose efforts to preserve
it. They may have seen support and funding for such work come and go. They may
have given up using the language with their children, believing they will benefit from
speaking a more widely understood one.

Plenty of students continue to be drawn to the intellectual thrill of linguistics field work.
That’s all the more reason to clear away barriers, contend Evans, Austin and others.
The highest barrier, they  agree, is that the linguistics profession’s emphasis on theory
gradually wears down the enthusiasm of linguists who work in communities. Chomsky
disagrees. He has recently begun to speak in support of language preservation. But his
linguistic, as opposed to humanitarian, argument is, let’s say, unsentimental: the loss of
a language, he states, ‘is much more of a tragedy for linguists whose interests are
mostly theoretical, like me, than for linguists who focus on describing specific
languages, since it means the permanent loss of the most relevant data for general
theoretical work’. At the moment, few institutions award doctorates for such work, and
that’s the way it should be, he reasons. In linguistics, as in every other discipline, he
believes that good descriptive work requires thorough theoretical understanding and
should also contribute to building new theory. But that’s precisely what documentation
does, objects Evans. The process of immersion in a language, to extract, analyse and
sum it up, deserves a PhD because it is ‘the most demanding intellectual task a linguist
can engage in’.
Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-O below. 
Write the correct letter A-O in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

A even though it is in danger of disappearing.

B provided that it has a strong basis in theory.
C although it may share certain universal characteristics
D because there is a practical advantage to it
E so long as the drawbacks are clearly understood.
F in spite of the prevalence of theoretical linguistics.
G until they realize what is involved

1. Linguists like Peter Austin believe that every language is unique

2. Nick Evans suggests a community may resist attempts to save its language
3. Many young researchers are interested in doing practical research
4. Chomsky supports work in descriptive linguistics
EXERCISE 2:
Have teenagers always existed?
Our ancestor, Homo erectus, may not have had culture or even language, but did they
have teenagers? That question has been contested in the past few years, with some
anthropologists claiming evidence of an adolescent phase in human fossil. This is not
merely an academic debate. Humans today are the only animals on Earth to have a
teenage phase, yet we have very little idea why. Establishing exactly when adolescence
first evolved and finding out what sorts of changes in our bodies and lifestyles it was
associated with could help us understand its purpose. Why do we, uniquely, have a
growth spurt so late in life?
Until recently, the dominant explanation was that physical growth is delayed by our
need to grow large brains and to learn all the behaviour patterns associated with
humanity – speaking, social interaction and so on. While such behaviour is still
developing, humans cannot easily fend for themselves, so it is best to stay small and
look youthful. That way your parents and other members of the social group are
motivated to continue looking after you. What’s more, studies of mammals show a
strong relationship between brain size and the rate of development, with larger-brained
animals taking longer to reach adulthood. Humans are at the far end of this spectrum.
If this theory is correct, and the development of large brains accounts for the teenage
growth spurt, the origin of adolescence should have been with the evolution of our own
species (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals, starting almost 200,000 years ago. The
trouble is, some of the fossil evidence seems to tell a different story.
You need as many developmental markers as possible to get an estimate of age. The
Turkana boy’s teeth made him 10 or 11 years old. The features of his skeleton put him
at 13, but he was as tall as a modern 15-year-old. Susan Anton of New York University
points to research by Margaret Clegg who studied a collection of 18th- and 19th-
century skeletons whose ages at death were known. When she tried to age the
skeletons without checking the records, she found similar discrepancies to those of the
Turkana boy. One 10-year-old boy, for example, had a dental age of 9, the skeleton of
a 6-year-old but was tall enough to be 11. The Turkana kid still has a rounded skull,
and needs more growth to reach the adult shape,’ Anton adds. She thinks that Homo
erectus had already developed modern human patterns of growth, with a late, if not
quite so extreme, adolescent spurt. She believes Turkana boy was just about to enter
it.
Anthropologist Steven Leigh from the University of Illinois goes further. He believes the
idea of adolescence as catch-up growth does not explain why the growth rate increases
so dramatically. He says that many apes have growth spurts in particular body regions
that are associated with reaching maturity, and this makes sense because by timing the
short but crucial spells of maturation to coincide with the seasons when food is
plentiful, they minimise the risk of being without adequate food supplies while growing.
What makes humans unique is that the whole skeleton is involved. For Leigh, this is the
key.
According to his theory, adolescence evolved as an integral part of efficient upright
locomotion, as well as to accommodate more complex brains. Fossil evidence suggests
that our ancestors first walked on two legs six million years ago. If proficient walking
was important for survival, perhaps the teenage growth spurt has very ancient origins.
While many anthropologists will consider Leigh’s theory a step too far, he is not the
only one with new ideas about the evolution of teenagers.
A more decisive piece of evidence came last year when researchers in France and Spain
published their findings from a study of Neanderthal teeth. Neanderthals had much-
festered tooth growth than Homo erectus who went before them, and hence, possibly,
a shorter childhood. Lead researcher Fernando Ramirez-Rozzi thinks Neanderthals died
young – about 25 years old — primarily because of the cold, harsh environment they
had to endure in glacial Europe. They evolved to grow up quicker than their immediate
ancestors. Neanderthals and Homo erectus probably had to reach adulthood fairly
quickly, without delaying for an adolescent growth spurt. So it still looks as though we
are the original teenagers.
Write the correct letter, A-G, in blank spaces 1-4 on your answer sheet.
A inconsistencies between height, skeleton and dental evidence.
B the fact that human beings walk on two legs.
C the way teeth grew.
D a need to be dependent on others for survival.
E difficult climatic conditions.
F increased quantities of food.
G the existence of much larger brains than previously.
1. Until recently, delayed growth in humans until adolescence was felt to be due to
2. In her research, Margaret Clegg discovered
3. Steven Leigh thought the existence of adolescence is connected to
4. Research on Neanderthals suggests that they had short lives because of
EXERCISE 3
What cookbooks really teach us?
A.  The first Western cookbook appeared just over 1,600 years ago.  De re couquinara
(it means ‘concerning cookery’) is attributed to Roman gourmet named Apicius. It is
probably a compilation of Roman and Greek recipes, some or all of them drawn from
manuscripts that were later loss. The editor was sloppy, allowing several duplicated
recipes to sneak in. Yet Apicius’s book set the tone of cookery advice in Europe for
more than a thousand years. As a cookbook, it is unsatisfactory with very basic
instructions. Joseph Vehling, a chef who translated Apicius in the 1930s, suggested the
author had been obscure on purpose, in ease his secrets leaked out.

B.  But a more likely reason is that Apicius’s recipes were written by and for
professional cooks, who could follow their shorthand. This situation continued for
hundreds of years. There was no order to cookbooks: a cake recipe might be followed
by a mutton one. But then, they were not written for careful study. Before the 19*
century few educated people cooked for themselves. The wealthiest employed literate
chefs; others presumably read recipes to their servants. Such cooks would have been
capable of creating dishes from the vaguest of instructions.

C.  The invention of printing might have been expected to lead to greater clarity but at
first, the reverse was true. As words acquired commercial value, plagiarism exploded.
Recipes were distorted through reproduction. A recipe for boiled capon in Vk Good
Huswives Jewell, printed in 1596, advised the cook to add three or four dates. By 1653.
when the recipe was given by a different author in A Book of Fruits & Flowers, the cook
was told to see the dish aside for three or four days.

D.  The dominant theme in 16th  and 17th-century cookbooks was ordered. Books

combined recipes and household advice, on the assumption that a well-made dish, a
well-ordered larder and well-disciplined children were equally important. Cookbooks
thus became a symbol of dependability in chaotic times. They hardly seem to have
been affected by the English civil war or the revolutions in America and France.

E.  In the 1850s, Isabella Becton published the Book of Household /Management. Like

earlier cookery writers she plagiarized freely, lifting not just recipes bur philosophical
observations from other books. If Becton’s recipes were not wholly new. though, the
way in which she presented them certainly was. She explains when the chief
ingredients arc most likely to be in season, how long the dish will take to prepare and
even how much it is likely to cost. Bee ton’s recipes were well suited to her times. Two
centuries earlier, an understanding of rural ways had been so widespread that one
writer could advise cooks to heat water until it was a little hotter than milk comes from
a cow. By the 1850s Britain was industrializing. The growing urban middle class needed
details, and Becton provided them in the hill.

F.  In France, cookbooks were fast becoming even more systematic. Compare with
Britain, France had produced few books written for the ordinary householder by the end
of the 19th century. The most celebrated French cookbooks were written by superstar
chefs who had a clear sense of codifying a unified approach to sophisticated French
cooking. The 5.000 recipes in Auguste Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire (The Culinary
Guide), published in 1902, might as well have been written in stone, given the book’s
reparation among French chefs, many of whom still consider it the definitive reference
book.

G.  What Escoffier did for French cooking. Fannie Farmer did for American home
cooking. She not only synthesized American cuisine; she elevated it to the status of
science. ‘Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery,’ she
breezily announced in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, before launching into a
collection of recipes that sometimes resembles a book of chemistry experiments. She
was occasionally over-fussy. She explained that currants should be picked between
June 28th and July 3rd, but not when it is raining. But in the main, her book is
reassuringly authoritative. Its recipes arc short, with no unnecessary chat and no
unnecessary spices.

H.  In 1950, Mediterranean Food by Elizabeth David launched a revolution in cooking

advice in Britain. In some ways, Mediterranean Food recalled even older cookbooks but
the smells and noises that filled Davids books were not mere decoration for her recipes.
They were the point of her books. When she began to write, many ingredients were not
widely available or affordable. She understood this, acknowledging in a later edition of
one of her books that ‘even if people could not very often make the dishes here
described, it was stimulating to think about them.’ Davids books were not so much
cooking manuals as guides to the kind of food people might well wish to eat.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet. NB  You may use 
any letter more than once .
1. cookery books providing a sense of stability during periods of unrest
2. details in recipes being altered as they were passed on
3. knowledge which was in danger of disappearing
4. the negative effect on cookery books of a new development
5. a period when there was no need for cookery books to be precise
Match each statement with the correct book A-E.
Write the correct letter A-E. In boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet.

List of cookery books

A De re couquinara
B The Book of Household Management
C Le Guide Culinaire
D The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
E Mediterranean Food

6. Its recipes were easy to follow despite the writer’s attention to detail.
7. Its writer may have deliberately avoided passing on details.
8. It appealed to ambitious ideas people have about cooking.
9. Its writer used ideas from other books but added additional related information.
10. It put into print ideas which are still respected today.
EXERCISE 4
Is it time to halt the rising tide of plastic packaging?
Close up, plastic packaging can be a marvellous thing. Those who make a living from it
call it a forgotten infrastructure that allows modem urban life to exist. Plastics have
helped society defy natural limits such as the seasons, the rotting of food and the
distance most of us live from where our food is produced. And yet we do not like it.
Partly we do not like waste, but plastic waste, with its hydrocarbon roots and industrial
manufacture, is especially galling. Supermarkets and brands, which are under pressure
to reduce the quantity of packaging of all types that they use, are finding good
environmental reasons to turn to plastic: it is lighter, so requires less energy for
transportation than glass, for example; it requires relatively little energy to produce,
and it is often re-usable. An Austrian study found that if plastic packaging were
removed from the tire supply chain, another packaging would have to increase fourfold
to make up for it.

So are we just wrong about plastic packaging? Is it time to stop worrying and learn to
love the disposable plastic wrapping around sandwiches? Certainly, there are bigger
targets for environmental savings suc h as improving household insulation and energy
emissions. Naturally, the tire plastics industry is keen to point them out. What’s more,
concern over plastic packaging has produced a squall of conflicting initiatives from
retailers, manufacturers, and local authorities. It’s a squall that dies down and then
blows harder from one month to the next. ‘It is being left to the individual conscience
and supermarkets playing the market,’ says Tim Lang, a professor specializing in food
polio’. ‘It’s a mess.’

Dick Searle of the Packaging Federation points out that societies without sophisticated
packaging lose hall their food before it reaches consumers and that in the UK, waste in
supply chains is about 3 per cent. In India, it is more titan 50 per cent. The difference
comes later: the British throw out 30 per cent of the food they buy – an environmental
cost in terms of emissions equivalent to a fifth of the cars on their roads. Packagers
agree that cardboard, metals, and glass all have their good points, but there’s nothing
quite like plastic. With more than 20 families of polymers to choose from and then
sometimes blend, packaging designers and manufacturers have a limitless variety of
qualities to play with.

One store commissioned a study to find precise data on which had a less environmental
impact: selling apples lose or ready-wrapped. Helene Roberts, head of packaging,
explains that in fact, they found apples in fours on a tray covered by plastic film needed
27 per cent less packaging in transportation than those sold loose. Sieve Kelsey, a
packaging designer, finds die debate frustrating. He argues that the hunger to do
something quickly is diverting effort away from more complicated questions about how
you truly alter supply chains. Rather than further reducing the weight of a plastic bottle,
more thought should be given to how packaging can be recycled. Helene Roberts
explains that their greatest packaging reduction came when the company switched to
reusable plastic crates and stopped consuming 62,000 tonnes of cardboard boxes every
year. Plastic packaging is important, and it might provide a way of thinking about
broader questions of sustainability. To target plastic on its own is to evade the
complexity’ of the issues. There seems to be a universal eagerness to condemn plastic.
Is this due to an inability to make the general changes in society that are really
required? ‘Plastic as a lightweight food wrapper is now built-in as the logical thing,’
Lang says. ‘Does that make it an environmentally sound system of packaging? It only
makes sense if you have a structure such as exists now. An environmentally-driven
packaging system would look completely different’ Dick Searle put the challenge
another way. “The amount of packaging used today is a reflection of modern life.”

Match each statement to the correct person A-D. 

Write the correct letter, A-D in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
NB  You may use  any letter more than once .

People
A. Tim Lang
B. Dick Searle
C. Helene Roberts
D. Steve Kelsey

1. A comparison of two approaches to packaging revealed an interesting result.

2. People are expected to do the right thing.
3. Most food roaches UK shops in good condition.
4. Complex issues are ignored in the search for speedy solutions.
5. It is merely because of the way societies operate that using plastic seems valid.
EXERCISE 5:
Can we prevent the poles from melting?
A growing number of scientists are looking to increasingly ambitious technological fixes
to halt the tide of global warming.  Mark Rowe  reports.
A.  Such is our dependence on fossil fuels, and such is the volume of carbon dioxide we
have already released into the atmosphere, that most climate scientists agree that
significant global warming is now inevitable – the best we can hope to do is keep it at a
reasonable level, and even that is going to be an uphill task. At present, the only
serious option on the table for doing this is cutting back on our carbon emissions, but
while a few countries are making major strides in this regard, the majority are having
great difficulty even stemming the rate of increase, let alone reversing it. Consequently,
an increasing number of scientists are beginning to explore the alternatives. They all fall
under the banner of geoengineering – generally defined as the intentional large-scale
manipulation of the environment.

B.  Geoengineering has been shown to work, at least on a small, localized scale, for
decades. May Day parades in Moscow have taken place under clear blue skies, aircraft
having deposited dry ice, silver iodide and cement powder to disperse clouds. Many of
the schemes now suggested to do the opposite, and reduce the amount of sunlight
reaching the planet. One scheme focuses on achieving a general cooling of the Earth
and involves the concept of releasing aerosol sprays into the stratosphere above the
Arctic to create clouds of sulphur dioxide, which would, in turn, lead to global dimming.
The idea is modelled on historical volcanic explosions, such as that of Mount Pinatubo in
the Philippines in 1991, which led to a short term cooling of global temperatures by
0.5“C. The aerosols could be delivered by artillery, highflying aircraft or balloons.

C.  Instead of concentrating on global cooling, other schemes look specifically at

reversing the melting at the poles. One idea is to bolster an ice cap by spraying it with
water. Using pumps to carry water from below the sea ice, the spray would come out
as snow or ice particles, producing thicker sea ice with a higher albedo (the ratio of
sunlight reflected from a surface) to reflect summer radiation. Scientists have also
scrutinized whether it is possible to block ice fjords in Greenland with cables that have
been reinforced, preventing icebergs from moving into the sea. Veli Albert Kallio, a
Finnish scientist, says that such an idea is impractical because the force of the ice
would ultimately snap the cables and rapidly release a large quantity of ice into the sea.
However, Kallio believes that the sort of cables used in suspension bridges could
potentially be used to divert, rather than halt, the southward movement of ice from
Spitsbergen. ‘It would stop the ice moving south, and local currents would see them
float northwards,’ he says.
D.  A number of geoengineering ideas are currently being examined in the Russian
Arctic. These include planting millions of birch trees: the thinking, according to Kallio, is
that their white bark would increase the amount of reflected sunlight. The loss of their
leaves in winter would also enable the snow to reflect radiation. In contrast, the native
evergreen pines tend to shade the snow and absorb radiation. Using ice-breaking
vessels to deliberately break up and scatter coastal sea ice in both Arctic and Antarctic
waters in their respective autumns, and diverting Russian rivers to increase cold-water
(low to ice-forming areas, could also be used to slow down warming, Kallio says. ‘You
would need the wind to blow the right way, but in the right conditions, by letting ice
float free and head north, you would enhance ice growth.’

E.  But will such ideas ever be implemented? The major counter-arguments to

geoengineering schemes are, first, that they are a ‘cop-out’ that allow us to continue
living the way we do, rather than reducing carbon emissions; and, second, even if they
do work, would the side-effects outweigh the advantages? Then there’s the daunting
prospect of upkeep and repair of any scheme as well as the consequences of a
technical failure. ’I think all of us agree that if we were to end geoengineering on a
given day, then the planet would return to its pre-engineered condition very rapidly,
and probably within 10 to 20 years,’ says Dr. Phil Rasch, chief scientist for climate
change at the US-based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. ‘That’s certainly
something to worry about. I would consider geoengineering as a strategy to employ
only while we manage the conversion to a non-fossil- fuel economy.’ ‘The risk with
geoengineering projects is that you can “overshoot”,’ says Dr. Dan Lunt, from the
University of Bristol. ‘You may bring global temperatures back to pre-industrial levels,
but the risk is that the poles will still be warmer than they should be and the tropics will
be cooler than before industrialization.’

F.  The main reason why geoengineering is countenanced by the mainstream scientific

community is that most researchers have little faith in the ability of politicians to agree
– and then bring in – the necessary carbon cuts. Even leading conservation
organizations believe the subject is worth exploring. As Dr. Mortin Sommerkorn, a
climate change advisor says. ‘But human-induced climate change has brought humanity
to a position where it is important not to exclude thinking thoroughly about this topic
and its possibilities despite the potential drawbacks. If, over the coming years, the
science tells us about an ever-increased climate sensitivity of the planet – and this isn’t
unrealistic – they may be best served by not having to start our thinking from scratch.’

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs A-F. 

Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB   You may use  any letter more than once.

1. the existence of geoengineering projects distracting from the real task of changing
the way we live
2. circumstances in which geoengineering has demonstrated success
3. maintenance problems associated with geoengineering projects
4. support for geoengineering being due to a lack of confidence in governments
5. more success in fighting climate change in some parts of the world than others

Look at the following people and the list of opinions below. 

Write the correct letter, A-E in boxes 6-8 on your answer sheet.

List of opinions
A The problems of geoengineering shouldn’t mean that ideas are not seriously
considered.
B Some geoengineering projects are more likely to succeed than others.
C Geoengineering only offers a short-term solution.
D A positive outcome of geoengineering may have a negative consequence elsewhere.
E Most geoengineering projects aren’t clear in what they are aiming at.

6. Phil Rasch
7. Dan Lunt
8. Martin Sommerkorn
EXERCISE 6:

America’s oldest art?

Set within treacherously steep cliffs, and hidden away valleys of northeast Brazil, is
some of Southeast America’s most significant and spectacular rock-art. Most of the art
so far discovered from the ongoing excavations comes from the archaeologically –
important National Park of the Serra da Capivara in the state of Piaui, and it is causing
quite a controversy.

Due to the favourable climatic conditions. the imagery on many panels is in a

remarkable state of preservation. Despite this, however, there are serious conservation
issues that affect their long term survival. The chemical and mineral quantities of the
rock on which the imagery is panted are fragile and on several panels it is unstable. As
well as the secretion of sodium carbonate on the rock surface, complete panel sections
have, over the ancient and recent past, broken away from the main rock surface. These
have then become buried and sealed into sometimes-ancient floor deposits. Perversely,
this form of natural erosion and subsequent deposition has assisted archaeologists in
dating several major rock-art sites. Of course, dating the art is extremely difficult oven
the non-existence of plant and animal remains that might be scientifically dated.
However, there am a small number of sites in the Serra da Capivara that are giving up
their secrets through good systematic excavation. Thus, at Toca do Roqi.omo da Pedra
Furada. rock-art researcher Nide Guidon managed to obtain a number of dates. At
different levels of excavation, she located fallen painted rock fragments, which she was
able to dale to at least 36,000 years ago. Along with toe painted fragments, crude stone
tools were found. Also discovered were a series of scientifically datable sites of
fireplaces, or hearths, the earliest dated to 46,000 BC. arguably the oldest dates for
human habitation in America.

However, these conclusions are not without controversy. Critics, mainly from North
America, have suggested that the hearths may, in fact, be a natural phenomenon, the
result of seasonal brushwood fires. Several North American researchers have gone
further and suggested that the rock art from this site dates from no earlier than about
3,730 years ago, based on the results of limited radiocarbon dating. Adding further fool
to the general debate is the fact that the artists in the area of the National Hark tended
not to draw over old motifs (as often occurs with rock-art), which makes it hard to work
out the relative chronology of the images or styles. However, the diversity of imagery
and the narrative the paintings created from each of the many sites within the National
Park suggests different artists were probably making their art at different times and
potentially using each site over many thousands of years.

With fierce debates thus raging over to dating, where these artists originate from is also
still very much open to speculation. The traditional view ignores the early dating
evidence from the South American rock-art sites. In a revised scenario, some
anthropologists are now suggesting that modern humans may’ have migrated from
Africa using the strong currents of the Atlantic Ocean some 63.000 years or more ago,
while others suggest more improbable colonization coming from the Pacific Ocean. Yet,
while the ether hypothesis is plausible, there is still no supporting archaeological
evidence between the South American coastline and the interior. Rather, it seems
possible that there were a number of waves of human colonization of the Americas
occurring possibly over a 60,000-100,000 year period, probably using the Bering Straits
as a land bridge to cross into the Americas.

Despite the compelling evidence from South America, it stands alone: the earliest
secure human evidence yet found in die state of Oregon in North America only dates to
12,300 years BC. So this is a fierce debate that is likely to go on for many more years.
However, the splendid rock art and its allied anthropology of northeast of Brazil,
described here, is playing a huge and significant role in the discussion.

Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-F below.

Write the correct letter A-F in blank spaces 1-4 on your answer sheet.

A giving rise to a great deal of debate among anthropologists.

B do not support the earliest dates suggested for the arrival of people in America.
C  are absent from rock-art sites In the Serra da Capivara.
D  have not been accepted by academics outside America.
E  center on whether or not they are actually man-made.
F  reflect the advances in scientific dating methods.

1. Materials derived from plants or animals

2. The discussions about the ancient hearths
3. Theories about where the first South Americans originated from
4. The finds of archaeologists in Oregon
EXERCISE 7:
The Pursuit Of Happiness
A.  In late 1990, psychologist Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania urged
colleagues to observe optimal moods with the same kind of focus with which they had
for so long studied illnesses: we would never learn about the full range of human
functions unless we knew as much about mental wellness as we do about mental
illness. A new generation of psychologists built up a respectable body of research on
positive character traits and happiness-boosting practices. At the same time,
developments in neuroscience provided new clues to what makes us happy and what
that looks like In the brain. Self-appointed experts took advantage of the trend with
guarantees to eliminate worry, stress, dejection and even boredom. This happiness
movement has provoked a great deal of opposition among psychologists who observe
that the preoccupation with happiness has come at the cost of sadness, an important
feeling that people have tried to . Allan Horwitz of Rutgers laments that young people
who are naturally weepy after breakups are often urged to medicate themselves instead
of working through their sadness. Wake Forest University’s Eric Wilson fumes that the
obsession with happiness amounts to a ‘craven disregard” for the melancholic
perspective that has given rise to the greatest works of art. “The happy man,” he
writes, ‘is a hollow man.’

B.  After all, people are remarkably adaptable. Following a variable period of

adjustment, we bounce back to our previous level of happiness, no matter what
happens to us. (There are some scientifically proven exceptions, notably suffering the
unexpected loss of a job or a partner. The events tend to permanently knock people
back a step.) Our adaptability works in two directions. Because we are so adaptable,
points out Professor Sonja J.yubomirsky of the University of California, we quickly get
used to many of the accomplishments we strive for in life, such as landing the big job
or getting married. Soon after we reach a milestone, we start to feel that something is
missing. We begin coveting another worldly possession or eyeing a social advancement.
But such an approach keeps us tethered to a treadmill where happiness is always just
out of reach, one toy or one step away. It’s possible to get off the treadmill entirely by
focusing on activities that are, surprising, and thus less likely to bore us than, say,
acquiring shiny new toys.

C.  Moreover, happiness is not a reward tor escaping pain. Russ Harris, the author
of The Happiness Trap, calls popular conceptions of happiness dangerous because they
set people up for a ‘struggle against reality’. They don’t acknowledge that real life is full
of disappointments, loss, and inconveniences.”If you’re going to live a rich and
meaningful life.* Harris says, “you’re going to feel a full range of emotions.” Action
toward goals other than happiness makes people happy. It is not crossing the most
rewarding finish line, it is anticipating achieving the goal. University of Wisconsin
neuroscientist Richard Davidson has found that working hard toward a goal, and
making progress to the point of expecting a goal to be realized, activates not only
positive feelings but also suppresses negative emotions such as fear and depression.

D.  We are constantly making decisions, ranging from what clothes to put on to whom
we should marry, not to mention all those flavours of ice cream. We base many of our
decisions on whether we think a particular preference will increase our well-being.
Intuitively, we seem convinced that the more choices we have, the better off we will
ultimately be. But our world of unlimited opportunity imprisons us more than it makes
us happy. In what Swarthmore psychologist Barrs-Schwartz calls “the paradox of
choice.” lacing many possibilities leaves us stressed out – and less satisfied with
whatever we do decide. Having too many choices keeps us wondering about all the
opportunities missed.

E.  By contrast, an individual who is not living according to their values, will not be
happy, no matter how much they achieve. Some people, however, are not sure what
their values are. In that case, Harris has a great question: ‘Imagine I could wave a
magic wand to ensure that you would have the approval and admiration of everyone on
the planet, forever. What, in that case, would you choose to do with your life?” Once
this has been answered honestly, you can start taking steps toward your ideal vision of
yourself. The actual answer is unimportant, as long as you’re living consciously. The
state of happiness is not really a state at all. It’s an ongoing personal experiment.

Reading Passage has five paragraphs A-E.

Which paragraph mentions the following?
Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
NB  You may use  any letter more than once.

1. the need for individuals to understand what really matters to them

2. tension resulting from a wide variety of alternatives
3. the hope of success as a means of overcoming unhappy feelings
4. people who call themselves specialists
5. human beings’ capacity for coping with change
6. doing things which are interesting in themselves
EXERCISE 8:
In Praise of Amateurs
Despite the specialization of scientific research, amateurs still have an important role to
play.

During the scientific revolution of the 17th century, scientists were largely men of
private means who pursued their interest in natural philosophy for their own edification.
Only in the past century or two has it become possible to make a living from
investigating the workings of nature. Modern science was, in other words, built on the
work of amateurs. Today, science is an increasingly specialized and compartmentalized
subject, the domain of experts who know more and more about less and less. Perhaps
surprisingly, however, amateurs – even those without private means – are still
important.

Admittedly, some fields are more open to amateurs than others. Anything that requires
expensive equipment is clearly a no-go area. And some kinds of research can be
dangerous; most amateur chemists, jokes Dr Fienberg, are either locked up or have
blown themselves to bits. But amateurs can make valuable contributions in fields from
rocketry to palaeontology and the rise of the Internet has made it easier than before to
collect data and distribute results.

Exactly which field of study has benefited most from the contributions of amateurs is a
matter of some dispute.Another field in which amateurs have traditionally played an
important role is palaeontology. Adrian Hunt, a palaeontologist at Mesa Technical
College in New Mexico, insists that his is the field in which amateurs have made the
biggest contribution. Despite the development of high-tech equipment, he says, the
best sensors for finding fossils are human eyes – lots of them. Finding volunteers to
look for fossils is not difficult, he says, because of the near universal interest in
anything to do with dinosaurs. As well as helping with this research, volunteers learn
about science, a process he calls ‘recreational education’.

Despite the successes and whatever the field of study, collaboration between amateurs
and professionals is not without its difficulties. Not everyone, for example is happy with
the term ‘amateur’. Mr Bonney has coined the term ‘citizen scientist’ because he felt
that other words, such as ‘volunteer’ sounded disparaging. A more serious problem is
the question of how professionals can best acknowledge the contributions made by
amateurs. Dr Fienberg says that some amateur astronomers are happy to provide their
observations but grumble about not being reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses.
Others feel let down when their observations are used in scientific papers, but they are
not listed as co-authors. Dr Hunt says some amateur palaeontologists are disappointed
when told that they cannot take finds home with them.

These are legitimate concerns but none seems insurmountable. Provided amateurs and
professionals agree the terms on which they will work together beforehand, there is no
reason why co-operation between the two groups should not flourish. Last year Dr S.
Carlson, founder of the Society for Amateur Scientists won an award worth $290,000
for his work in promoting such co-operation. He says that one of the main benefits of
the prize is the endorsement it has given to the contributions of amateur scientists,
which has done much to silence critics among those professionals who believe science
should remain their exclusive preserve.

Reading Passage contains a number of opinions provided by four different scientists.

Match each opinion (Questions 1-5) with the scientists A-D.
NB You may use any of the scientists A-D  more than once.

Name of scientists
A Dr Fienberg
B Adrian Hunt
C Rick Bonney
D Dr Carlson

1. Amateur involvement can also be an instructive pastime.

2. Amateur scientists are prone to accidents.
3. Science does not belong to professional scientists alone.
4. In certain areas of my work, people are a more valuable resource than technology.
5. It is important to give amateurs a name which reflects the value of their work.
EXERCISE 9:
Wheel of Fortune
Emma Duncan discusses the potential effects on the entertainment industry of the
digital revolution
A Since moving pictures were invented a century ago, a new way of distributing
entertainment to consumers has emerged about once every generation. Each such
innovation has changed the industry irreversibly; each has been accompanied by a
period of fear mixed with exhilaration. The arrival of digital technology, which translates
music, pictures and text into the zeros and ones of computer language, marks one of
those periods.

B This may sound familiar, because the digital revolution, and the explosion of choice
that would go with it, has been heralded for some time. In 1992, John Malone, chief
executive of TCI, an American cable giant, welcomed the '500-channel universe'. Digital
television was about to deliver everything except pizzas to people's living rooms. When
the entertainment companies tried out the technology, it worked fine - but not at a
price that people were prepared to pay.

C Those 500 channels eventually arrived but via the Internet and the PC rather than
through television. The digital revolution was starting to affect the entertainment
business in unexpected ways. Eventually it will change every aspect of it, from the way
cartoons are made to the way films are screened to the way people buy music. That
much is clear. What nobody is sure of is how it will affect the economics of the
business.

D New technologies always contain within them both threats and opportunities. They
have the potential both to make the companies in the business a great deal richer, and
to sweep them away. Old companies always fear new technology. Hollywood was
hostile to television, television terrified by the VCR. Go back far enough, points out Hal
Varian, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, and you find publishers
complaining that 'circulating libraries' would cannibalise their sales. Yet whenever a new
technology has come in, it has made more money for existing entertainment
companies. The proliferation of the means of distribution results, gratifyingly, in the
proliferation of dollars, pounds, pesetas and the rest to pay for it.

E All the same, there is something in the old companies' fears. New technologies may
not threaten their lives, but they usually change their role. Once television became
widespread, film and radio stopped being the staple form of entertainment. Cable
television has undermined the power of the broadcasters. And as power has shifted the
movie studios, the radio companies and the television broadcasters have been
swallowed up. These days, the grand old names of entertainment have more resonance
than power. Paramount is part of Viacom, a cable company; Universal, part of Seagram,
a drinks-and-entertainment company; MGM, once the roaring lion of Hollywood, has
been reduced to a whisper because it is not part of one of the giants. And RCA, once
the most important broadcasting company in the world, is now a recording label
belonging to Bertelsmann, a large German entertainment company.

F Part of the reason why incumbents got pushed aside was that they did not see what
was coming. But they also faced a tighter regulatory environment than the present one.
In America, laws preventing television broadcasters from owning programme companies
were repealed earlier this decade, allowing the creation of vertically integrated
businesses. Greater freedom, combined with a sense of history, prompted the smarter
companies in the entertainment business to re-invent themselves. They saw what
happened to those of their predecessors who were stuck with one form of distribution.
So, these days, the powers in the entertainment business are no longer movie studios,
or television broadcasters, or publishers; all those businesses have become part of
bigger businesses still, companies that can both create content and distribute it in a
range of different ways.

G Out of all this, seven huge entertainment companies have emerged - Time Warner,
Walt Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom, News Corp, Seagram and Sony. They cover pretty
well every bit of the entertainment business except pornography. Three are American,
one is Australian, one Canadian, one German and one Japanese. 'What you are seeing',
says Christopher Dixon, managing director of media research at PaineWebber, a
stockbroker, 'is the creation of a global oligopoly.
It happened to the oil and automotive businesses earlier this century; now it is
happening to the entertainment business.' It remains to be seen whether the latest
technology will weaken those great companies, or make them stronger than ever.
Which paragraph mentions the following (Questions 1-8 )?
Write the appropriate letters (A-G) in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.
NB Some of the paragraphs will be used more than once.

1. the contrasting effects that new technology can have on existing business
2. the fact that a total transformation is going to take place in the future in the delivery
of all forms of entertainment
3. the confused feelings that people are known to have experienced in response to
technological innovation
4. the fact that some companies have learnt from the mistakes of others
5. the high cost to the consumer of new ways of distributing entertainment
6. uncertainty regarding the financial impact of wider media access
7. the fact that some companies were the victims of strict government policy
8. the fact that the digital revolution could undermine the giant entertainment
companies

Match the people or companies ( A-E ) with the points made in Questions 9-12 about
the introduction of new technology.

A John Malone
B Hal Valarian
C MGM
D Walt Disney
E Christopher Dixon

9. Historically, new forms of distributing entertainment have alarmed those well-

established in the business.
10. The merger of entertainment companies follows a pattern evident in other
industries.
11. Major entertainment bodies that have remained independent have lost their
influence.
12. News of the most recent technological development was published some years
ago.
EXERCISE 10:

Indoor Pollution
Since the early eighties we have been only too aware of the devastating effects of
large-scale environmental pollution. Such pollution is generally the result of poor
government planning in many developing nations or the short-sighted, selfish policies of
the already industrialised countries which encourage a minority of the world’s
population to squander the majority of its natural resources.

While events such as the deforestation of the Amazon jungle or the nuclear disaster in
Chernobyl continue to receive high media exposure, as do acts of environmental
sabotage, it must be remembered that not all pollution is on this grand scale. A large
proportion of the world’s pollution has its source much closer to home. The recent
spillage of crude oil from an oil tanker accidentally discharging its cargo straight into
Sydney Harbour not only caused serious damage to the harbour foreshores but also
created severely toxic fumes which hung over the suburbs for days and left the angry
residents wondering how such a disaster could have been allowed to happen.

The latest study, conducted by two environmental engineers, Richard Corsi and Cynthia
Howard-Reed, of the University of Texas in Austin, and published in Environmental
Science and Technology, suggests that it is the process of keeping clean that may be
making indoor pollution worse. The researchers found that baths, showers, dishwashers
and washing machines can all be significant sources of indoor pollution, because they
extract trace amounts of chemicals from the water that they use and transfer them to
the air.

The degree to which the most volatile elements could be removed from the water, a
process known as chemical stripping, depended on a wide range of factors, including
the volatility of the chemical, the temperature of the water and the surface area
available for transfer. Dishwashers were found to be particularly effective: the high-
temperature spray, splashing against the crockery and cutlery, results in a nasty plume
of toxic chemicals that escapes when the door is opened at the end of the cycle.

In fact, in many cases, the degree of exposure to toxic chemicals in tap water by
inhalation is comparable to the exposure that would result from drinking the stuff. This
is significant because many people are so concerned about water-borne pollutants that
they drink only bottled water, worldwide sales of which are forecast to reach $72 billion
by next year. D. Corsi’s results suggest that they are being exposed to such pollutants
anyway simply by breathing at home.
The aim of such research is not, however, to encourage the use of gas masks when
unloading the washing. Instead, it is to bring a sense of perspective to the debate
about pollution. According to Dr Corsi, disproportionate effort is wasted campaigning
against certain forms of outdoor pollution, when there is as much or more cause for
concern indoors, right under people’s noses.

Using gas cookers or burning candles, for example, both result in indoor levels of
carbon monoxide and particulate matter that are just as high as those to be found
outside, amid heavy traffic. Overcrowded classrooms whose ventilation systems were
designed for smaller numbers of children frequently contain levels of carbon dioxide
that would be regarded as unacceptable on board a submarine. ‘New car smell’ is the
result of high levels of toxic chemicals, not cleanliness. Laser printers, computers,
carpets and paints all contribute to the noxious indoor mix.

List B: EFFECTS
A The focus of pollution moves to the home.
B The levels of carbon monoxide rise.
C The world’s natural resources are unequally shared.
D People demand an explanation.
E Environmentalists look elsewhere for an explanation.
F Chemicals are effectively stripped from the water.
G A clean odour is produced.
H Sales of bottled water increase.
I The levels of carbon dioxide rise.
J The chlorine content of drinking water increased.
List A: CAUSES
1. Industrialised nations use a lot of energy.
2. Oil spills into the sea.
3. The researchers publish their findings.
4. Water is brought to a high temperature.
5. People fear pollutants in tap water.
6. Air conditioning systems are inadequate.
7. Toxic chemicals are abundant in new cars.
EXERCISE 11:
Striking the right note
Is perfect pitch a rare talent possessed solely by the likes of Beethoven? Kathryn Brown
discusses this much sought-after musical ability.
The uncanny, if sometimes distracting, ability to name a solitary note out of the blue,
without any other notes for reference, is a prized musical talent - and a scientific
mystery. Musicians with perfect pitch - or, as many researchers prefer to call it,
absolute pitch - can often play pieces by ear, and many can transcribe music brilliantly.
That’s because they perceive the position of a note in the musical stave - its pitch - as
clearly as the fact that they heard it. Hearing and naming the pitch go hand in hand.

For centuries, absolute pitch has been thought of as the preserve of the musical elite.
Some estimates suggest that maybe fewer than 1 in 2,000 people possess it. But a
growing number of studies, from speech experiments to brain scans, are now
suggesting that a knack for absolute pitch may be far more common, and more varied,
than previously thought. ‘Absolute pitch is not an all or nothing feature,’ says Marvin, a
music theorist at the University of Rochester in New York state. Some researchers even
claim that we could all develop the skill, regardless of our musical talent. And their work
may finally settle a decades-old debate about whether absolute pitch depends on
melodious genes - or early music lessons.

Music psychologist Diana Deutsch at the University of California in San Diego is the
leading voice. Last month at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in Columbus,
Ohio, Deutsch reported a study that suggests we all have the potential to acquire
absolute pitch - and that speakers of tone languages use it every day. A third of the
world’s population - chiefly people in Asia and Africa - speak tone languages, in which a
word’s meaning can vary depending on the pitch a speaker uses.

Deutsch and her colleagues asked seven native Vietnamese speakers and 15 native
Mandarin speakers to read out lists of words on different days. The chosen words
spanned a range of pitches, to force the speakers to raise and lower their voices
considerably. By recording these recited lists and taking the average pitch for each
whole word, the researchers compared the pitches used by each person to say each
word on different days.

Both groups showed strikingly consistent pitch for any given word - often less than a
quarter-tone difference between days. ‘The similarity,’ Deutsch says, ‘is mind-boggling.’
It’s also, she says, a real example of absolute pitch. As babies, the speakers learnt to
associate certain pitches with meaningful words - just as a musician labels one tone A
and another B - and they demonstrate this precise use of pitch regardless of whether or
not they have had any musical training, she adds.

Deutsch isn’t the only researcher turning up everyday evidence of absolute pitch. At
least three other experiments have found that people can launch into familiar songs at
or very near the correct pitches. Some researchers have nicknamed this ability ‘absolute
memory’, and they say it pops up on other senses, too. Given studies like these, the
real mystery is why we don’t all have absolute pitch, says cognitive psychologist Daniel
Levitin of McGill University in Montreal.

Over the past decade, researchers have confirmed that absolute pitch often runs in
families. Nelson Freimer of the University of California in San Francisco, for example, is
just completing a study that he says strongly suggests the right genes help create this
brand of musical genius. Freimer gave tone tests to people with absolute pitch and to
their relatives. He also tested several hundred other people who had taken early music
lessons. He found that relatives of people with absolute pitch were far more likely to
develop the skill than people who simply had the music lessons. There is clearly a
familial aggregation of absolute pitch,’ Freimer says.

For one thing, those with absolute pitch started lessons, on average, when they were
five years old, while those without absolute pitch started around the age of eight.
Moreover, adds Gregersen, the type of music lessons favoured in Asia, and by many of
the Asian families in his study, such as the Suzuki method, often focus on playing by
ear and learning the names of musical notes, while those more commonly used in the
US tend to emphasise learning scales in a relative pitch way. In Japanese pre-school
music programmes, he says, children often have to listen to notes played on a piano
and hold up a coloured flag to signal the pitch. ‘There’s a distinct cultural difference,’ he
says.
Match each opinion (Questions 1-5 ) with one of the scientists ( A-E ).
A Levitin
B Deutsch
C Gregersen
D Marvin
E Freimer
You may use any of the people A-E more than once .

1. Absolute pitch is not a clear-cut issue.

2. Anyone can learn how to acquire perfect pitch.
3. It’s actually surprising that not everyone has absolute pitch.
4. The perfect pitch ability is genetic.
5. The important thing is the age at which music lessons are started.
EXERCISE 12:

Twist in the Tale

Fears that television and computers would kill children’s desire to read couldn’t have
been more wrong. With sales roaring, a new generation of authors are publishing’s
newest and unlikeliest literary stars
A Less than three years ago, doom merchants were predicting that the growth in video
games and the rise of the Internet would sound the death knell for children’s literature.
But contrary to popular myth, children are reading more books than ever. A recent
survey by Books Marketing found that children up to the age of 11 read on average for
four hours a week, particularly girls.

B Moreover, the children’s book market, which traditionally was seen as a poor cousin
to the more lucrative and successful adult market, has come into its own. Publishing
houses are now making considerable profits on the back of new children’s books and
children’s authors can now command significant advances. ‘Children’s books are going
through an incredibly fertile period,’ says Wendy Cooling, a children’s literature
consultant. ‘There’s a real buzz around them. Book clubs are happening, sales are good,
and people are much more willing to listen to children’s authors.’

C The main growth area has been the market for eight to fourteen-year-olds, and there
is little doubt that the boom has been fuelled by the bespectacled apprentice, Harry
Potter. So influential has J. K. Rowling’s series of books been that they have helped to
make reading fashionable for pre-teens. ‘Harry made it OK to be seen on a bus reading
a book,’ says Cooling. ‘To a child, that is important.’ The current buzz around the
publication of the fourth Harry Potter beats anything in the world of adult literature.

D ‘People still tell me, “Children don’t read nowadays”,’ says David Almond, the award-
winning author of children’s books such as Skellig. The truth is that they are skilled,
creative readers. When I do classroom visits, they ask me very sophisticated questions
about use of language, story structure, chapters and dialogue.’ No one is denying that
books are competing with other forms of entertainment for children’s attention but it
seems as though children find a special kind of mental nourishment within the printed
page.
E ‘A few years ago, publishers lost confidence and wanted to make books more like
television, the medium that frightened them most,’ says children’s book critic Julia
Eccleshare. ‘But books aren’t TV, and you will find that children always say that the
good thing about books is that you can see them in your head. Children are demanding
readers,’ she says. ‘If they don’t get it in two pages, they’ll drop it.’

F No more are children’s authors considered mere sentimentalists or failed adult

writers. 'Some feted adult writers would kill for the sales,’ says Almond, who sold
42,392 copies of Skellig in 1999 alone. And advances seem to be growing too: UK
publishing outfit Orion recently negotiated a six-figure sum from US company Scholastic
for The Seeing Stone, a children's novel by Kevin Crossley-Holland, the majority of
which will go to the author.
G It helps that once smitten, children are loyal and even fanatical consumers. Author
Jacqueline Wilson says that children spread news of her books like a bushfire. 'My
average reader is a girl of ten,’ she explains. ‘They’re sociable and acquisitive. They
collect, they have parties - where books are a good present. If they like something,
they have to pass it on.’ After Rowling, Wilson is currently the best-selling children’s
writer, and her sales have boomed over the past three years. She has sold more than
three million books, but remains virtually invisible to adults, although most ten- year-old
girls know about her.

H Children’s books are surprisingly relevant to contemporary life. Provided they are
handled with care, few topics are considered off-limits for children. One senses that
children’s writers relish the chance to discuss the whole area of topics and language.
But Anne Fine, author of many awardwinning children’s books is concerned that the
British literati still ignore children’s culture. ‘It’s considered worthy but boring,’ she says.

Look at the following list of people A-E and the list of statements (Questions 1-7).
Match each statement with one of the people listed.
A Wendy Cooling
B David Almond
C Julia Eccleshare
D Jacqueline Wilson
E Anne Fine
Write the appropriate letters A-E in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.
1. Children take pleasure in giving books to each other.
2. Reading in public is an activity that children have not always felt comfortable about
doing.
3. Some well-known writers of adult literature regret that they earn less than popular
children’s writers.
4. Children are quick to decide whether they like or dislike a book.
5. Children will read many books by an author that they like.
6. The public do not realise how much children read today.
7. We are experiencing a rise in the popularity of children’s literature.

Which paragraph mentions the following (Questions 8-11 )?

Write the appropriate letters A-H in boxes 8-11 on your answer sheet.

8. the fact that children are able to identify and discuss the important elements of
fiction
9. the undervaluing of children’s society
10. the impact of a particular fictional character on the sales of children’s books
11. an inaccurate forecast regarding the reading habits of children
EXERCISE 13:
Keep taking the tablets
The history of aspirin is a product of a rollercoaster ride through time, of accidental
discoveries, intuitive reasoning and intense corporate rivalry.
In the opening pages of Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug, Diarmuid
Jeffreys describes this little white pill as ‘one of the most amazing creations in medical
history, a drug so astonishingly versatile that it can relieve headache, ease your aching
limbs, lower your temperature and treat some of the deadliest human diseases’.

Its properties have been known for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian physicians
used extracts from the willow tree as an analgesic, or pain killer. Centuries later the
Greek physician Hippocrates recommended the bark of the willow tree as a remedy for
the pains of childbirth and as a fever reducer. But it wasn't until the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries that salicylates the chemical found in the willow tree became the
subject of serious scientific investigation. The race was on to identify the active
ingredient and to replicate it synthetically. At the end of the nineteenth century a
German company, Friedrich Bayer & Co. succeeded in creating a relatively safe and very
effective chemical compound, acetylsalicylic acid, which was renamed aspirin.

The late nineteenth century was a fertile period for experimentation, partly because of
the hunger among scientists to answer some of the great scientific questions, but also
because those questions were within their means to answer. One scientist in a
laboratory with some chemicals and a test tube could make significant breakthroughs
whereas today, in order to map the human genome for instance, one needs ‘an army of
researchers, a bank of computers and millions and millions of dollars’.

But an understanding of the nature of science and scientific inquiry is not enough on its
own to explain how society innovates. In the nineteenth century, scientific advance was
closely linked to the industrial revolution. This was a period when people frequently had
the means, motive and determination to take an idea and turn it into reality. In the case
of aspirin that happened piecemeal - a series of minor, often unrelated advances,
fertilised by the century’s broader economic, medical and scientific developments, that
led to one big final breakthrough.

The link between big money and pharmaceutical innovation is also a significant one.
Aspirin is continued shelf life was ensured because for the first 70 years of its life, huge
amounts of money were put into promoting it as an ordinary everyday analgesic. In the
1070s other analgesics, such as ibuprofen and paracetamol, were entering the market,
and the pharmaceutical companies then focused on publicising these new drugs. But
just at the same time, discoveries were made regarding the beneficial role of aspirin in
preventing heart attacks, strokes and other afflictions. Had it not been for these
findings, this pharmaceutical marvel may well have disappeared.

So the relationship between big money and drugs is an odd one. Commercial markets
are necessary for developing new products and ensuring that they remain around long
enough for scientists to carry out research on them. But the commercial markets are
just as likely to kill off' certain products when something more attractive comes along.
In the case of aspirin, a potential ‘wonder drug' was around for over 70 years without
anybody investigating the way in which it achieved its effects, because they were
making more than enough money out of it as it was. If ibuprofen or paracetamol had
entered the market just a decade earlier, aspirin might then not be here today. It would
be just another forgotten drug that people hadn't bothered to explore.

Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-H from the box below.
A the discovery of new medical applications.
B the negative effects of publicity.
C the large pharmaceutical companies.
D the industrial revolution.
E the medical uses of a particular tree
F the limited availability of new drugs.
G the chemical found in the willow tree.
H commercial advertising campaigns.

1. Ancient Egyptian and Greek doctors were aware of

2. Frederick Bayer & Co were able to reproduce
3. The development of aspirin was partly due to the effects of
4. The creation of a market for aspirin as a painkiller was achieved through
5. Aspirin might have become unavailable without
6. The way in which aspirin actually worked was not investigated by
EXERCISE 14:

Space: The Final Archaeological Frontier

Space travel may still have a long way to go, but the notion of archaeological research
and heritage management in space is already concerning scientists and
environmentalists.
In 1993, University of Hawaii’s anthropologist Ben Finney, who for much of his career
has studied the technology once used by Polynesians to colonize islands in the Pacific,
suggested that it would not be premature to begin thinking about the archaeology of
Russian and American aerospace sites on the Moon and Mars. Finney pointed out that
just as todays scholars use archaeological records to investigate how Polynesians
diverged culturally as they explored the Pacific, archaeologists will someday study off-
Earth sites to trace the development of humans in space. He realized that it was
unlikely anyone would be able to conduct fieldwork in the near future, but he was
convinced that one day such work would be done.

There is a growing awareness, however, that it won’t be long before both corporate
adventurers and space tourists reach the Moon and Mars. There is a wealth of
important archaeological sites from the history of space exploration on the Moon and
Mars and measures need to be taken to protect these sites. In addition to the threat
from profit- seeking corporations, scholars cite other potentially destructive forces such
as souvenir hunting and unmonitored scientific sampling, as has already occurred in
explorations of remote polar regions. Already in 1999 one company was proposing a
robotic lunar rover mission beginning at the site of Tranquility Base and rumbling across
the Moon from one archaeological site to another, from the wreck of the Ranger S
probe to Apollo 17 s landing site. The mission, which would leave vehicle tyre- marks all
over some of the most famous sites on the Moon, was promoted as a form of theme-
park entertainment.

According to the vaguely worded United Motions Outer Space Treaty of 1967. what it
terms ‘space junk’ remains the property of the country that sent the craft or probe into
space. But the treaty doesn’t explicitly address protection of sites like Tranquility Base,
and equating the remains of human exploration of the heavens with ‘space junk’ leaves
them vulnerable to scavengers. Another problem arises through other international
treaties proclaiming that land in space cannot be owned by any country or individual.
This presents some interesting dilemmas for the aspiring manager of extraterrestrial
cultural resources. Does the US own Neil Armstrong's famous first footprints on the
Moon but not the lunar dust in which they were recorded? Surely those footprints are
as important in the story of human development as those left by hominids at Laetoli,
Tanzania. But unlike the Laetoli prints, which have survived for 3.5 million years
encased in cement-like ash. those at Tranquility Base could be swept away with a
casual brush of a space tourist’s hand. To deal with problems like these, it may be time
to look to innovative international administrative structures for the preservation of
historic remains on the new frontier.

Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-H from the box below.
Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

A activities of tourists and scientists have harmed the environment.

B some sites in space could be important in the history of space exploration.
C vehicles used for tourism have polluted the environment.
D it may be unclear who has responsibility for historic human footprints.
E past explorers used technology in order to find new places to live.
F man-made objects left in space are regarded as rubbish.
G astronauts may need to work more closely with archaeologists.
H important sites on the Moon may be under threat.

1. Ben Finney's main academic work investigates the way that

2. Ben Finney thought that in the long term
3. Commercial pressures mean that in the immediate future
4. Academics are concerned by the fact that in isolated regions on Earth.
5. One problem with the 1967 UN treaty is that
6. The wording of legal agreements over ownership of land in space means that
EXERCISE 15:

Green virtues of green sand

Revolution in gloss recycling could help keep water clean
A
For the past 100 years special high grade white sand dug from the ground at Leighton
Buzzard in the UK. has been used to filter tap water to remove bacteria and impurities
but this may no longer be necessary. A new factory that turns used wine bottles into
green sand could revolutionise the recycling industry and help to filter Britain’s drinking
water. Backed by $1.6m from the European Union and the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), a company based in Scotland is building
the factory, which will turn beverage bottles back into the sand from which they were
made in the first place. The green sand has already been successfully tested by water
companies and is being used in 50 swimming pools in Scotland to keep the water clean.

B
The idea is not only to avoid using up an increasingly scarce natural resource, sand but
also to solve a crisis in the recycling industry. Britain uses 5.5m tonnes of glass a year,
but recycles only 750,000 tonnes of it. The problem is that half the green bottle glass in
Britain is originally from imported wine and beer bottles. Because there is so much of it,
and it is used less in domestic production than other types, green glass is worth only
$25 a tonne. Clear glass, which is melted down and used for whisky bottles, mainly for
export, is worth double that amount.

C
Howard Drvden. a scientist and managing director of the company. Drvden Aqua, of
Bonnyrigg, near Edinburgh, has spent six years working on the product he calls Active
Filtration Media, or AFM. He concedes that he has given what is basically recycled glass
a ‘fancy name' to remove the stigma of what most people would regard as an inferior
product. He says he needs bottles that have already contained drinkable liquids to be
sure that drinking water filtered through the AFM would not be contaminated. Crushed
down beverage glass has fewer impurities than real sand and it performed better in
trials. *The fact is that tests show that AFM does the job better than sand, it is easier to
clean and reuse and has all sorts of properties that make it ideal for other applications.'
he claimed.

D
The factory is designed to produce 100 tonnes of AFM a day, although Mr Dryden
regards this as a large-scale pilot project rather than full production. Current estimates
of the UK market for this glass for filtering drinking water, sewage, industrial water,
swimming pools and fish farming are between 175.000 to 217.000 tonnes a year, which
w ill use up most of the glass available near the factory. So he intends to build five or
six factories in cities where there are large quantities of bottles, in order to cut down on
transport costs.

E
The current factory will be completed this month and is expected to go into full
production on January 14th next year. Once it is providing a ‘regular’ product, the
government’s drinking water inspectorate will be asked to perform tests and approve it
for widespread use by water companies. A Defra spokesman said it was hoped that
AFM could meet approval within six months. The only problem that they could foresee
was possible contamination if some glass came from sources other than beverage
bottles.

F
Among those who have tested the glass already is Caroline Fitzpatrick of the civil and
environmental engineering department of University College London. ‘We have looked
at a number of batches and it appears to do the job.' she said. ‘Basically, sand is made
of glass and Mr Dryden is turning bottles back into sand. It seems a straightforward
idea and there is no reason we can think of why it would not work. Since glass from
wine bottles and other beverages has no impurities and clearly did not leach any
substances into the contents of the bottles, there was no reason to believe there would
be a problem,’ Dr Fitzpatrick added.

G
Mr Dryden has set up a network of agents round the world to sell AFM. It is already in
use in central America to filter water on banana plantations where the fruit has to he
washed before being despatched to European markets. It is also in use in sewage
works to filter water before it is returned to rivers, something which is becoming legally
necessary across the European Union because of tighter regulations on sewage works.
So there are a great number of applications involving cleaning up water. Currently,
however, AFM costs $670 a tonne, about four times as much as good quality sand. ‘Hut
that is because we haven't got large-scale production. Obviously, when we get going it
will cost a lot less, and be competitive with sand in price as well.’ Mr Dryden said. ‘I
believe it performs better and lasts longer than sand, so it is going to be better value
too.'

Reading Passage has 7 paragraphs labelled A-G. Which paragraph contains the
following information?
Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 1-10 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

1 a description of plans to expand production of AFM

2 the identification of a potential danger in the raw material for AFM
3 an example of AFM use in the export market
4 a comparison of the value of green glass and other types of glass
5 a list of potential applications of AFM in the domestic market
6 the conclusions drawn from laboratory checks on the process of AFM production
7 identification of current funding for the production of green sand
8 an explanation of the chosen brand name for crushed green glass
9 a description of plans for exporting AFM
10 a description of what has to happen before AFM is accepted for general use
EXERCISE 16:

NATURAL CHOICE Coffee and chocolate

What's the connection between your morning coffee, wintering North American birds
and the cool shade of a tree? Actually, unite a lot, says Simon Birch.
When scientists from London’s Natural History Museum descended on the coffee farms
of the tiny Central American republic of El Salvador, they were astonished to find such
diversity of insect and plant species. During 18 months' work on 12 farms, they found a
third more species of parasitic wasp than are known to exist in the whole country of
Costa Rica. They described four new species and are aware of a fifth. On 24 farms, they
found nearly 300 species of tree when they had expected to find about 100.

It's the same the world over. Species diversity is much higher where coffee is grown in
shade conditions. In addition, coffee (and chocolate) is usually grown in tropical
rainforest - regions that are biodiversity hotspots. ‘These habitats support up to 70% of
the planets plant and animal species, and so the production methods of cocoa and
coffee can have a hugely significant impact,' explains Dr Paul Donald of the Royal
Society for the. Protection of Birds.

So what does ‘shade-grown’ mean, and why is it good for wildlife? Most of the world's
coffee is produced by poor farmers in the developing world. Traditionally they have
grown coffee (and cocoa) under the shade of selectively thinned tracts of rain forest in
a genuinely sustainable form of farming. Leaf fall from the canopy provides a supply of
nutrients and acts as a mulch that suppresses weeds. The insects that live in the
canopy pollinate the cocoa and coffee and prey on pests. The trees also provide
farmers with fruit and wood for fuel.

Bird diversity in shade-grown coffee plantations rivals that found in natural forests in
the same region.’ says Robert Rice from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. In
Ghana, West Africa - one of the world's biggest producers of cocoa - 90% of the cocoa
is grown under shade, and these forest plantations are a vital habitat for wintering
European migrant birds. In the same way, the coffee forests of Central and South
America are a refuge for wintering North American migrants.

More recently, a combination of the collapse in the world market for coffee and cocoa
and a drive to increase yields by producer countries has led to huge swathes of shade-
grown coffee and cocoa being cleared to make way for a highly intensive, monoculture
pattern of production known as ‘full sun’. But this system not only reduces the diversity
of flora and fauna, it also requires huge amounts of pesticides and fertilisers. In Cote
d’Ivoire, which produces more than half the world's cocoa, more than a third of the
crop is now grown in full-sun conditions.
In El Salvador, Alex Munro says shade-coffee farms have a cultural as well as ecological
significance and people are not happy to see them go. But the financial pressures are
great, and few of these coffee farms make much money. ‘One farm we studied, a
cooperative of 100 families, made just $10,000 a year, $100 per family and that's not
taking labour costs into account.’

The loss of shade-coffee forests has so alarmed a number of North American wildlife
organisations that they are now harnessing consumer power to help save these
threatened habitats. They are promoting a ‘certification' system that can indicate to
consumers that the beans have been grown on shade plantations. Bird-friendly coffee,
for instance, is marketed by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. The idea is that the
small extra cost is passed directly on to the coffee farmers as a financial incentive to
maintain their shade-coffee farms.

Not all conservationists agree with such measures, however. Some say certification
could be leading to the loss not preservation of natural forests. John Rappole of the
Smithsonian Conservation and Research Center, for example, argues that shade-grown
marketing provides ‘an incentive to convert existing areas of primary forest that are too
remote or steep to be converted profitably to other forms of cultivation into shade-
coffee plantations’.

Other conservationists, such as Stacey Philpott and colleagues, argue the case for
shade coffee. But there are different types of shade growing. Those used by
subsistence farmers are virtually identical to natural forest (and have a corresponding
diversity), while systems that use coffee plants as the understorey and cacao or citrus
trees as the overstorey may be no more diverse than full-sun farms. Certification
procedures need to distinguish between the two. and Ms.Philpott argues that as long as
the process is rigorous and offers financial gains to the producers, shade growing does
benefit the environment.

Look at the following opinions (Questions 1-4) and the list of people below.
Match each opinion to the person credited with it.
Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
NB You can write any letter more than once.

1 Encouraging shade growing may lead to farmers using the natural forest for their
plantations.
2 If shade-coffee farms match the right criteria, they can be good for wildlife.
3 There may be as many species of bird found on shade farms in a particular area, as
in natural habitats there.
4 Currently, many shade-coffee farmers earn very little.

A Alex Munroe
B Paul Donald
C Robert Rice
D John Rappole
E Stacey Philpott

Classify the features described below as applying to

Write the correct letter A-C in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.

5 can be used on either coffee or cocoa plantations

6 is expected to produce bigger crops
7 documentation may be used to encourage sales
8 can reduce wildlife diversity

A the shade-grown method

B the full-sun method
C both shade-grown and full-sun methods
EXERCISE 17:

The accidental rainforest

According to ecological theory, rainforests are supposed to develop slowly over millions
of years. But now ecologists are being forced to reconsider their ideas
When PeterOsbeck. a Swedish priest, stopped off at the mid-Atlantic island of Ascension
in 1752 on his way home from China, he wrote of ‘a heap of ruinous rocks’ with a bare,
white mountain in the middle. All it boasted was a couple of dozen sp In 1845, a naval
transport ship from Argentina delivered a batch of seedlings. In the following years,
more than 200 species of plant arrived from South Africa, from England came 700
packets of seeds, including those of two species that especially liked the place: bamboo
and prickly pear. With sailors planting several thousand trees a year, the bare white
mountain was soon cloaked in green and renamed Green Mountain, and by the early
twentieth century the mountain's slopes were covered with a variety of trees and
shrubs from all over the world.

Modern ecologists throw up their hands in horror at what they see as Hookers
environmental anarchy. The exotic species wrecked the indigenous ecosystem,
squeezing out the islands endemic plants. In fact. Hooker knew well enough what might
happen. However, he saw greater benefit in improving rainfall and encouraging more
prolific vegetation on the island.

But there is a much deeper issue here than the relative benefits of sparse endemic
species versus luxuriant imported ones. And as botanist David Wilkinson of Liverpool
John Moores University in the UK pointed out after a recent visit to the island, it goes to
the heart of some of the most dearly held tenets of ecology. Conservationists'
understandable concern for the fate of Ascension’s handful of unique species has, he
says, blinded them to something quite astonishing the fact that the introduced species
have been a roaring success.

Today's Green Mountain, says Wilkinson, is ‘a fully functioning man-made tropical cloud
forest' that has grown from scratch from a ragbag of species collected more or less at
random from all over the planet. But how could it have happened? Conventional
ecological theory says that complex ecosystems such as cloud forests can emerge only
through evolutionary processes in which each organism develops in concert with others
to fill particular niches. Plants eo-evolve with their pollinators and seed dispersers, while
microbes in the soil evolve to deal with the leaf litter.

But that’s not what happened on Green Mountain. And the experience suggests that
perhaps natural rainforests are constructed far more by chance than by evolution.
Species, say some ecologists, don’t so much evolve to create ecosystems as make the
best of what they have. ‘The Green Mountain system is a man-made system that has
produced a tropical rainforest without any co-evolution between its constituent species,’
says Wilkinson.

Not everyone agrees. Alan Gray, an ecologist at the University of Edinburgh in the UK.
argues that the surviving endemic species on Green Mountain, though small in number,
may still form the framework of the new' ecosystem. The new arrivals may just be an
adornment, with little structural importance for the ecosystem.

But to Wilkinson this sounds like clutching at straws. And the idea of the instant
formation of rainforests sounds increasingly plausible as research reveals that
supposedly pristine tropical rainforests from the Amazon to south-east Asia may in
places be little more titan the overgrown gardens of past rainforest civilisations.ecies of
plant, most of them ferns and some of them unique to the island.

The most surprising thing of all is that no ecologists have thought to conduct proper
research into this human-made rainforest ecosystem. A survey of the island’s flora
conducted six years ago by the University of Edinburgh was concerned only with
endemic species. They characterised everything else as a threat. And the Ascension
authorities are currently turning Green Mountain into a national park where introduced
species, at least the invasive ones, are earmarked for culling rather than conservation.
The Green Mountain forest holds many secrets. And the irony is that the most artificial
rainforest in the world could tell us more about rainforest ecology than any number of
natural forests.

Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-G from the box below.
Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

A other rainforests may have originally been planted by man.

B many of the island's original species were threatened with destruction.
C the species in the original rainforest were more successful than the newer
arrivals.
D rainforests can only develop through a process of slow and complex evolution.
E steps should be taken to prevent the destruction of the original ecosystem.
F randomly introduced species can coexist together.
G the introduced species may have less ecological significance than the original
ones.

1 The reason for modern conservationists’ concern over Hooker's tree planting
programme is that
2 David Wilkinson says the creation of the rainforest in Ascension is important
because it shows that
3 Wilkinson says the existence of Ascension’s rainforest challenges the theory that
4 Alan Gray questions Wilkinson’s theory, claiming that
5 Additional support for Wilkinson's theory comes from findings that
EXERCISE 18:

Running on empty
A revolutionary new theory in sports physiology.
For almost a century, scientists have presumed, not unreasonably, that fatigue - or
exhaustion in athletes originates in the muscles. Precise explanations have varied but all
have been based on the ‘limitations theory’. In other words, muscles tire because they
hit a physical limit: they either run out of fuel or oxygen or they drown in toxic by-
products.

A recent discovery that Noakes calls the ‘lactic acid paradox' made him start researching
this area seriously. Lactic acid is a by-product of exercise, and its accumulation is often
cited as a cause of fatigue. But when research subjects exercise in conditions simulating
high altitude, they become fatigued even though lactic acid levels remain low. Nor has
the oxygen content of their blood fallen too low for them to keep going. Obviously,
Noakes deduced, something else was making them tire before they hit either of these
physiological limits.

Noakes reasoned that if the limitations theory was correct and fatigue was due to
muscle fibres hitting some limit, the number of fibres used for each pedal stroke should
increase as the fibres tired and the cyclist’s body attempted to compensate by recruiting
an ever-larger proportion of the total. But his team found exactly the opposite. As
fatigue set in, the electrical activity in the cyclists' legs declined - even during sprinting,
when they were striving to cycle as fast as they could.

To Noakes, this was strong evidence that the old theory was wrong. ‘The cyclists may
have felt completely exhausted,’ he says, ‘but their bodies actually had considerable
reserves that they could theoretically tap by using a greater proportion of the resting
fibres.’ This, he believes, is proof that the brain is regulating the pace of the workout to
hold the cyclists well back from the point of catastrophic exhaustion.

Further support for the central regulator comes from the fact that top athletes usually
manage to go their fastest at the end of a race, even though, theoretically, that's when
their muscles should be closest to exhaustion. But Noakes believes the end spurt makes
no sense if fatigue is caused by muscles poisoning themselves with lactic acid as this
would cause racers to slow down rather than enable them to sprint for the finish line. In
the new theory, the explanation is obvious. Knowing the end is near, the brain slightly
relaxes its vigil, allowing the athlete to tap some of the body’s carefully hoarded
reserves.
But the central governor theory does not mean that what's happening in the muscles is
irrelevant. The governor constantly monitors physiological signals from the muscles,
along with other information, to set the level of fatigue. A large number of signals are
probably involved but, unlike the limitations theory, the central governor theory
suggests that these physiological factors are not the direct determinants of fatigue, but
simply information to take into account.

Conscious factors can also intervene. Noakes believes that the central regulator
evaluates the planned workout, and sets a pacing strategy accordingly. Experienced
runners know that if they set out on a 10-kilometre run. the first kilometre feels easier
than the first kilometre of a 5-kilometre run, even though there should be no difference.
That, Noakes says, is because the central governor knows you have farther to go in the
longer run and has programmed itself to dole out fatigue symptoms accordingly.

St Clair Gibson believes there is a good reason why our bodies arc designed to keep
something back. That way, there's always something left in the tank for an emergency.
In ancient times, and still today, life would be too dangerous if our bodies allowed us to
become so tired that we couldn't move quickly when faced with an unexpected need.

Write the correct letter A, B or C in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.
A the Limitations Theory
B the Central Governor Theory
C both the Limitations Theory and the Central Governor Theory

1 Lactic acid is produced in muscles during exercise.

2 Athletes can keep going until they use up all their available resources.
3 Mental processes control the symptoms of tiredness.
4 The physiological signals from an athlete's muscles are linked to fatigue.
5 The brain plans and regulates muscle performance in advance of a run.
6 Athletes' performance during a race may be affected by lactic acid build-up.
7 Humans are genetically programmed to keep some energy reserves.
EXERCISE 19:
The Triune* Brain

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

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

Only human capabilities extend far beyond the scope of these two cortexes. Humans
eat, sleep and play, but we also speak, plot, rationalise and debate finer points of
morality. Our unique abilities are the result of an expansive third brain – the neocortex
– which engages with logic, reason and ideas. The power of the neocortex comes from
its ability to think beyond the present, concrete moment. While other mammals are
mainly restricted to impulsive actions (although some, such as apes, can learn and
remember simple lessons), humans can think about the “big picture”. We can string
together simple lessons (for example, an apple drops downwards from a tree; hurting
others causes unhappiness) to develop complex theories of physical or social
phenomena (such as the laws of gravity and a concern for human rights).
The neocortex is also responsible for the process by which we decide on and commit to
particular courses of action. Strung together over time, these choices can accumulate
into feats of progress unknown to other animals. Anticipating a better grade on the
following morning’s exam, a student can ignore the limbic urge to socialise and go to
sleep early instead. Over three years, this ongoing sacrifice translates into a first class
degree and a scholarship to graduate school; over a lifetime, it can mean ground-
breaking contributions to human knowledge and development. The ability to sacrifice
our drive for immediate satisfaction in order to benefit later is a product of the
neocortex.
-----------------------------------
*
Triune = three-in-one
Classify the following as typical of
A The reptilian cortex
B The limbic cortex
C The neocortex

Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 1-9 on your answer sheet.

1 Giving up short-term happiness for future gains
2 Maintaining the bodily functions necessary for life
3 Experiencing the pain of losing another
4 Forming communities and social groups
5 Making a decision and carrying it out
6 Guarding areas of land
7 Developing explanations for things
8 Looking after one’s young
9 Responding quickly to sudden movement and noise
EXERCISE 20:
HELIUM’S FUTURE UP IN THE AIR
A
In recent years we have all been exposed to dire media reports concerning the
impending demise of global coal and oil reserves, but the depletion of another key
non-renewable resource continues without receiving much press at all. Helium – an
inert, odourless, monatomic element known to lay people as the substance that makes
balloons float and voices squeak when inhaled – could be gone from this planet within a
generation.

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

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

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

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

Reading Passage has five paragraphs, A–E.

Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A–5, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

1 A use for helium which makes an activity safer

2 The possibility of creating an alternative to helium
3 A term which describes the process of how helium is taken out of the ground
4 A reason why users of helium do not make efforts to conserve it
5 A contrast between helium’s chemical properties and how non-scientists think
about it
EXERCISE 21:
Environmental medicine
– also called conservation medicine, ecological medicine, or medical geology –
A
In simple terms, environmental medicine deals with the interaction between human and
animal health and the environment. It concerns the adverse reactions that people have
on contact with or exposure to an environmental excitant1. Ecological health is its
primary concern, especially emerging infectious diseases and pathogens from insects,
plants and vertebrate animals.

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

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

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

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

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

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A–F, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

1 an explanation of how population expansion exposes humans to disease

2 the idea that each person can react differently to the same risk factors
3 types of disease-causing agents that move between species
4 examples of professionals working in the sphere of environmental medicine
5 a definition of environmental medicine
6 how ill health results from an accumulation of environmental stressors