READING PASSAGE 1

Answer Questions 1 - 13, which are based on the text below.

Early Photographic Processes

The decades following photography’s experimental beginnings in the 1820s and the public
availability of a practical photographic process from 1839 were characterized by the
introduction of a wide number of photographic processes. The following are a few of the most
significant.
Announced in Paris in 1839, the daguerreotype was the first publicly available photographic
process. The daguerreotype image was created on a silvered metal plate exposed to iodine
fumes, forming a light-sensitive surface of silver iodide. Development was achieved by
exposing the plate to fumes of heated mercury and then fixing the image in a salt solution.
The daguerreotype produced remarkably sharp pictures, but unlike competing processes, each
daguerreotype was unique. This proved to be its major drawback, compared to other
processes from which unlimited copies could be made.
One of the oldest and longest surviving photographic processes, the cyanotype or blue- print,
was invented by Sir John Herschel in 1840, using a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate and
potassium ferricyanide to produce a light sensitive paper. As a relatively simple process to
prepare and manipulate – it required no development or fixing other than washing – it was
popular among amateurs throughout the nineteenth century and has also been widely used by
engineers and architects for reproducing technical drawings (blueprints).
William Henry Fox Talbot’s calotype process, the first practical negative-positive
photographic process, was patented by him in 1841. A sheet of good quality paper was first
treated with light-sensitive silver compounds before exposure in the camera. This produced
an image in reverse, known as a negative, which was then developed in gallo- nitrate of silver
and fixed. This concept of photography, allowing the production of an unlimited number of
prints from a single image, has formed the basis of photographic practice until recently, when
it started being challenged by digital imagery. The calotype negative was the subject of many
refinements in the 1840s and 50s, and it was common practice for photographers to apply
heated wax in order to increase printing transparency and lessen the visibility of the paper
fibres.
Frederick Scott Archer’s wet collodion process, announced in 1851, became the standard
photographic process for both amateurs and professionals from the mid-1850s until the early
1880s. The process proved immediately popular, and within a decade had superseded both
the daguerreotype and the calotype processes. To prepare the negative for exposure, a sheet
of glass was coated with a solution of iodised collodion (a syrupy liquid composed of soluble
gun-cotton, ether and alcohol) and then made light-sensitive by immersion in a bath of silver
nitrate. Known as a wet process because the glass negative required sensitising, exposing and
processing while the chemicals were still damp, it required significant skill to manipulate, but
produced a negative of unsurpassed sharpness and a broad tonal range.
The albumen print, announced by the French photographer and publisher Louis-Désiré
Blanquart-Évrard in 1850, was the most widespread print medium in use between the mid-
1850s and the 1890s. While the printing process was chemically similar to an earlier process
which was called the ‘salted paper process’, the albumen print was generally distinguishable
by the glossy sheen imparted by a preliminary sizing of the paper with albumen (egg white)
and salt. After the albumen coating had been applied, the paper was made light sensitive by
the addition of silver nitrate, and printed in contact with the negative. The fixed print could
then be toned to create a wide variety of colours, ranging from purple-black to a rich chocolate
brown. Although it continued to be used well into the twentieth century, its popularity
declined after the mid-1890s, in favour of a variety of manufactured papers.
The fact that all silver-based photographic images tended to fade was a source of concern
from the earliest days of photography, and considerable research was carried out in attempts
to produce permanent images. Perhaps the most successful of these was the carbon process.
First patented by A L Poitevin in 1855, the process utilised the fact that gelatin mixed with
an alkaline bichromate becomes insoluble when exposed to light. When printing from a
negative, those parts of the image representing shadow tones were hardened by the exposure
to light, while light areas, protected from exposure, remained unhardened and could be
subsequently washed away. Carbon and other pigments could be used as colouring agents to
obtain an almost unlimited range of tones in the final image. Because the process does not
employ compounds derived from silver, the resulting image is less likely to fade and was
widely used in book illustration in the 1870s and 1880s.

Questions 1 – 7
Complete the table below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1 - 7 below.

Process Advantage Disadvantage

each image was

daguerreotype images were very 1 ………
2 ……….

cyanotype was comparatively 3 ………. to use

first process which created an image

called
calotype
4 ………. , from which unlimited copies
could be made

needed considerable
wet collodion process produced high-quality images
5 ……… to use

produced glossy images in a range of

albumen print
6 ……….

produced permanent images because it

carbon process did not use any products based
on 7 ……….
Questions 8 – 13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text?
In boxes 8 - 13 below, write.

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

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

8 The cyanotype has proved helpful in professional fields outside that of photography.
9 The calotype process was modified and improved upon a number of times in the years
following its invention.
10 The wet collodion process took many years to achieve success.
11 From the mid 1850s to the 1890s, more photographers used the albumen print process
than any other print medium.
12 The inventor of the carbon process solved a long-standing problem by taking advantage
of a particular feature of gelatin.
13 The carbon process greatly increased the sales of illustrated books during the 1870s and
1890s.
READING PASSAGE 2
Answer Questions 14 - 26, which are based on the text below

The Remarkable Power of Placebos

A It’s one of our most powerful medical treatments, and certainly our most widely
effective. In recent years, it’s been found to help eliminate or lessen the symptoms
associated with clinical depression, irritable bowel syndrome, panic attacks, coughing
and ADHD, among other conditions. This name of this wonderful treatment? It’s the
‘placebo effect’, the remarkable power of the human brain to unconsciously influence
the functioning and perception of the body.

B The term, which is Latin for ‘I shall please’, was first used some time during the 1700s,
but the concept itself dates back centuries. Historically, doctors believed that one of
their key duties, in addition to curing a patient, was to console him or her, providing
a boost to the morale that could help them to get better faster – sometimes in the form
of a dummy medicine that had no effect beyond instilling the expectation of
improvement in the patient’s brain. It’s now widely recognised that, while largely
ineffective in improving objective symptoms, such as high blood pressure or an
infection, for instance, placebos are genuinely effective in treating subjective, self-
reported symptoms, including all sorts of pain. Placebos can take all sorts of forms:
inert sugar pills, sham surgeries and saline injections.

C The singular power of expectations has been demonstrated in a variety of studies. In

one, for example, patients given a placebo pill that is referred to as a muscle relaxer
will experience muscle relaxation, while those given a placebo called a muscle
stimulator will experience muscle tension. The flip side of the placebo, the nocebo
effect, is just as powerful – negative expectations can cause as much harm as positive
ones can do good. In other studies, it’s been shown that pills which are red, yellow or
orange in colour are more likely to provide a stimulating effect, while blue and green
ones are more often perceived as sedating. One study even found that bigger pills are
better when it comes to placebo performance.

D The science that underlies all of these studies isn’t well understood at this point.
Scientists have conducted some imaging research into the brain on placebos, and
they’ve found that ingestion of a placebo billed as a painkiller leads to increased
activity in several areas of the cerebral cortex, as compared to an actual painkiller.
These areas are involved in so-called ‘higher’ functions like memory, attention,
thought and consciousness. A pain-killing placebo, it seems, works differently from a
painkiller.
 E In a recent headache study, conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School, 66
participants who suffer from chronic migraines were given six envelopes, each
containing a pill to be taken after their next migraine attack. Two envelopes were
labelled ‘Maxalt’ – the brand name for the widely-used migraine drug rizatriptan – in
order to generate positive expectations, while two had no label, to produce neutral
expectations, and two were labelled ‘placebo,’ to generate negative expectations. But
for each of the three labels, one envelope held a genuine rizatriptan pill, and one
contained a placebo. This allowed the researchers to cross-compare the effectiveness
of rizatriptan + positive expectations, rizatriptan alone, and rizatriptan + negative
expectations, as well as positive, neutral and negative expectations in isolation.

F When the scientists analysed the participants’ self-reported pain reductions after
taking the pills, the power of the placebo was proven yet again. People who’d taken a
placebo pill labelled Maxalt got just as much pain relief as those who’d taken a Maxalt
pill labelled as a placebo. Additionally, people who took a Maxalt correctly labelled
as Maxalt reported about twice as much pain reduction as those who took a Maxalt
pill labelled as placebo. In other words, in treating a complex, chronic form of pain
like migraine, the effectiveness of pure expectations was roughly equal to the
effectiveness of the pharmaceutical itself.

G For a doctor, harnessing the placebo’s power doesn’t mean intentionally mislabelling
pills. Instead, a doctor could simply provide a slightly more positive message about a
treatment, lending the power of expectations to that of pharmaceuticals. ‘When
doctors set patients’ expectations high, Maxalt becomes more effective,’ lead author
of the study Rami Burstein said in a press statement. Of course, this sort of intentional
expectation-setting needs to be done carefully. Doctors have an ethical obligation not
to mislead patients or withhold important information. But that doesn’t mean that
making sure to provide subtle positive cues about the effectiveness of a medication–
especially when those very cues might well make it work more effectively – is a bad
idea. As Ted Kaptchuk, one of the study’s co-authors, put it, ‘the placebo effect is an
unacknowledged partner for powerful medications.’

Questions 14 – 17
The text has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A - G, in boxes 14 - 17 below.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 an explanation of the neurological process by which placebos work

15 the origin of the word ‘placebo’
16 a recommendation as to how medical professionals can take advantage of the placebo
effect
17 mention of how the appearance of placebos can affect how well they work
Questions 18 – 24
Complete the sentences below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 18 - 24 below.

18 It appears that placebos can treat or reduce the ……… of a wide range of conditions.
19 The placebo effect happens when our ……… has an effect on how our body feels.
20 Doctors have long believed it to be their responsibility not only to treat patients’
medical conditions, but also to improve their …….. .
21 An example of a situation where a placebo has little or no effect is if a patient has an
……….. .
22 It has been shown that patients will feel ……… in their muscles if they are given a
placebo called a muscle stimulator.
23 A related phenomenon, known as the ………… effect, convinces people that a
treatment will do them harm.
24 Two factors which influence the effectiveness of a placebo pill are its ………. and its
size.
Questions 25 – 26
Choose TWO letters, A - E.
Which TWO findings were observed in the Harvard Medical School study?
A Placebos taken with the patient’s knowledge were reported as less effective than those
taken without their knowledge.
B People who took Maxalt without realizing it reported less pain relief than those who were
aware of taking it.
C Where pills had misleading labels, the placebo and the genuine drug appeared to produce
a similar level of pain relief.
D Maxalt without a label and Maxalt labelled as a placebo appeared to be equally effective.
E People who were given no indication of what they were taking reported the lowest levels
of pain relief.
READING PASSAGE 3
Answer Questions 27 - 40, which are based on the text below.

Planet Earth’s blue heart

Water covers over 97 percent of the habitable ‘living space’ on our planet, yet it could be
argued that we know more about distant stars than we do about the deep blue ocean. We
understand why it is important to reach for the stars, to look at ourselves in perspective, and
to ask big questions such as ‘where did we come from?’ And we have devoted a great amount
of resources to making progress in this area, but meanwhile we have neglected understanding
how the heart of our life support system really functions.
Ocean exploration and the need to alert people to the ocean’s plight are critical to a better
understanding of the planetary systems that support us. Never before has the need been so
great to dive below the surface of the sea to explore and to understand the significance of our
actions, or to be more precise, the significant scale of current inactions and the consequences
they hold for all of us. It is like trying to understand your own body – is it good enough to
only look at the skin? Do we not have to delve in and understand how the lungs work, or do
we just take that for granted?
Most people are still under the impression that the ocean is so vast and so resilient that humans
do not have the capacity to harm it – and if we do, that it does not matter. We look at the scale
and how unchanging the ocean seems to be and decide it is not really something we should
worry about – it might be an issue for future generations but not for us! What has become
increasingly clear, though, is our ability to really undermine the way the ocean works by what
we take out and by what we put in.
People ask – what is the biggest threat to the ocean? Overfishing, pollution, or climate change
are all usually mentioned. But by far and away the biggest threat to the ocean is a lack of
understanding that what we put in and take out matters – not just to the ocean, but to other
aspects of our lives. The ocean cannot be regarded as the planet’s ultimate dumpster or the
ultimate place to get free food. It is our life support system, and not being aware of the
importance of the ocean to every breath we take, every drop of water we drink, to a benign
set of conditions that make the planet work – that is the biggest threat.
By exploring the ocean we now understand better than ever before the consequences of what
is happening and how the ocean is being damaged. In a sense we now realise that we are
sleepwalking into a nightmare. This is because changes are slow but progressive, and at some
point occur to a level where we have to sit up and take notice. However, given the nature of
progressive change, this point is often reached when it is no longer possible to do anything
about it.
The ocean is difficult to study, much more so than dry land, but really there are no shortcuts
to gaining knowledge. The advent of SCUBA diving in the 1950s provided the current
generation with new tools to explore the shallowest margins of our watery world, and an
explosion of knowledge quickly followed. But what of the deep ocean? Our temptation is to
turn to machines as we have done in most aspects of our daily lives. But are machines good
enough to take the place of humans? James Cameron – one of only a few people alive today
who have travelled to the deepest part of the ocean – believes (as does the author), that
humans lie at the centre of ocean science. It is therefore unfortunate that just as we reach an
era when we have the analytical powers to start to make sense of how our planet works we
see a reduction in funding of manned exploration of the ocean. It wasn’t until Florida
International University stepped in that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s Aquarius underwater laboratory, located off Key Largo, Florida, was saved
from closure. However, the number of countries with submarine research capabilities
continues to shrink. With the vast majority of the ocean yet to be explored this is a mistake,
and the hopes are that private donors will step forward to balance out the loss of government
funding for underwater exploration.
The value of seeing beneath the ocean surface is immense. It helps us understand how our
wellbeing is linked to the wellbeing of the ocean. We now know that since the mid-1900s
about half of the world’s coral reefs have either gone or are in serious decline. Coral reefs are
important ecosystems with approximately one quarter of all ocean species depending on them
for food and shelter. Ninety percent of many of the big fish that we consume are gone – down
to about ten percent of what they were 50 years ago. And we are changing the very nature of
the blue part of our world that sets us apart from any other planet we have so far discovered
in the universe. Excessive carbon dioxide emissions from our activities are not just changing
the climate, they are driving the balance of the ocean waters towards more acidic conditions
with as yet unclear but likely significant consequences. The impacts of these changes will be
felt by people around the world – not just by those who live by the sea but, with our super-
efficient supply systems, people in inland areas too. It matters because we cannot be blind to
the fact that we are degrading the very part of our planet that enables us to live here.

Questions 27 – 30
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
27 What point does the writer make in the first paragraph?
A People fail to agree on the purpose of ocean exploration.
B The ocean reduces the amount of habitable space on our planet.
C Ocean exploration receives less support than exploration of space.
D It is likely that progress will be made in important areas of marine research.

28 What does the writer say about the ocean in the second paragraph?
A We need to find out what impact our neglect of the ocean has had.
B The ocean has a more important role than any organ in humans.
C Ocean exploration has produced a range of contrasting findings.
D Problems facing the ocean have been receiving increasing publicity.
29 The writer suggests that the apparent lack of change in the ocean
A has been disputed by some scientists.
B is a sign that pollution levels are relatively low.
C is linked to recent developments in ocean conservation.
D encourages people to assume the ocean cannot easily be damaged.

30 Why does the writer use the phrase ‘sleepwalking into a nightmare’ (paragraph 5)?
A to describe how the ocean has become degraded
B to imply that the pace of ocean damage has been slow
C to suggest that it may soon be too late to protect the oceans
D to illustrate how little ocean exploration has taken place

Questions 31 – 35
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the text?
In boxes 31 - 35 below, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

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

31 James Cameron has contributed more than any other scientist to our understanding of
the ocean.
32 Ocean exploration is best carried out by unmanned machines.
33 The involvement of Florida International University prevented the closure of the Key
Largo underwater laboratory.
34 Our knowledge of the oceans has grown to such an extent that international marine
research capabilities can be reduced.
35 Private donors are more likely to fund underwater exploration if they have a scientific
background.
Questions 36 – 40
Complete the summary below using the list of phrases, A - H, below.
Write the correct letter, A - H, in boxes 36 - 40 below.

Seeing the damage beneath the ocean surface

We now know that many coral reefs, which provide food and shelter for a range
of 36 …….., have disappeared or have been damaged, and that the number of big fish has
fallen dramatically. As well as the impact it is having on the 37 ……… we experience,
pollution is also altering the 38 …….. of the ocean.

It is not only 39 ……… that will be affected by these changes – people living elsewhere will
also be affected. We need to realise that our world will cease to be a 40 ………. if we do
not protect our ocean.

A fishing vessels B habitable place C coastal communities

D distant stars E weather patterns F marine creatures

G extinct species H chemical composition