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SECTION TEST - ACADEMIC READING
(Time: 60 minutes)
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Passage 1
The Rufous Hare-Wallaby The Rufous Hare-Wallaby is a species of Australian kangaroo, usually known by its Aboriginal name, ‘mala’. At one time, they may have been as many as ten million of these little animals across the arid and an semi-arid landscape of Australia, but their populations, like those of so many other small endemic species, were devastated when cats and foxes were introduced – indeed during the 1950s it was thought that the mala was extinct. But in 1964, a small colony was found 450 miles northwest of Alice Springs in the Tanami Desert. And 12 years later, a second small colony was found nearby. Very extensive surveys were made throughout historical mala range - but no other traces were found. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, scientists from the Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory monitored these two populations. At first it seemed that they were holding their own. Then in late 1987, every one of the individuals of the second and smaller of the wild colonies was killed. From examination of the tracks in the sand, it seems that just one single fox had been responsible. And then, in October 1991, a wild-fire destroyed the entire area occupied by the remaining colony Thus the mala was finally pronounced extinct in the wild. Fortunately, ten years earlier, seven individuals had been captured, and had become the founders of a captive breeding programme at the Arid Zone Research Institute in Alice Springs; and that group had thrived. Part of this success is due to the fact that the female can breed when she is just five months old and can produce up to three young a year. Like other kangaroo species, the mother carries her young – known as a joey – in het pouch for about 15 weeks, and she can have more than one joey at the same time. In the early 1980s, there were enough mala in the captive population to make it feasible to start a réintroduction programme. But first it was necessary to discuss this with the leaders of the Yapa people Traditionally, the mala had been an important animal in their culture, with strong medicinal powers for old people. It had also been an important food source, and there were concerns that any mala returned to the wild would be killed for the pot. And so, in 1980, a group of key Yapa men was invited to*S the proposed réintroduction area. The skills and knowledge of the Yapa would play a significant and enduring role in this and all other mala projects. With the help of the local Yapa an electric fence was erected around 250 acres of suitable habitat about 300 miles northwest of Alice Springs so that the mala could adapt while protected from predators By 1992, there were about 150 mala in their enclosure, which became known as the Mala Paddock However all attempts to reintroduce mala from the paddocks into the unfenced wild were unsuccessful so in the end the reintroduction programme was abandoned. The team now faced a situation where mala could be bred, but not released into the wild again. Thus, in 1993, a Mala Recover Team was established to boost mala numbers, and goals for a new programme were set: the team concentrated on finding suitable predator-free or predator-controllcd conservation sites within the malas known range. Finally, in March 1999, twelve adult females, eight adult males, and eight joeys were transferred from the Mala Paddock to Dryandra Woodland in Western Australia. Then, a few months later, a second group was transferred to Trimouille, an island off the coast of western Australia. First, it had been necessary to rid the island of rats and cats - a task that had taken two years of hard work. Six weeks after their release into this conservation site, a team returned to the island to find out how things were going. Each of the malas had been fitted with a radio collar that transmits for about 14 months, after which it falls off. The team was able to locate 29 out of the 30 transmitters - only one came from the collar of a mala that had died of unknown causes. So far the recovery programme had gone even better than expected. Today there are many signs suggesting that the mala population on the island is continuing to do well.
Complete the flow chart below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer. THE WILD AUSTRALIAN MALA
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fire
10 million/ten million
cats and foxes/foxes and cats
monitored
extinct
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Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
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strong medicinal powers/ medicinal powers
skills and knowledge/knowledge and skills
5 months/five months
15 weeks/fifteen weeks
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Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage? TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
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1. Natural defences were sufficient to protect the area called Mala Paddock.
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Explain:
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2. Scientists eventually gave up their efforts to release captive mala into the unprotected wild.
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Explain:
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3. The mala population which was transferred to Dryandra Woodland quickly increased in size.
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Explain:
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4. Scientists were satisfied with the initial results of the recovery programme.
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Explain:
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Passage 2
WHALE STRANDINGS Why do whales leave the ocean and become stuck on beaches? When the last stranded whale of a group eventually dies, the story does not end there. A team of researchers begins to investigate, collecting skin samples for instance, recording anything that could help them answer the crucial question: why? Theories abound, some more convincing than others. In recent years, navy sonar has been accused of causing certain whales to strand. It is known that noise pollution from offshore industry, shipping and sonar can impair underwater communication, but can it really drive whales onto our beaches? In 1998, researchers at the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, a Greek non-profit scientific group, linked whale strandings with low- frequency sonar tests being carried out by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). They recorded the stranding of 12 Cuvier’s beaked whales over 38.2 kilometres of coastline. NATO later admitted it had been testing new sonar technology in the same area at the time as the strandings had occurred. ‘Mass’ whale strandings involve four or more animals. Typically they all wash ashore together, but in mass atypical strandings (such as the one in Greece), the whales don't strand as a group; they are scattered over a larger area. For humans, hearing a sudden loud noise might prove frightening, but it does not induce mass fatality. For whales, on the other hand, there is a theory on how sonar can kill. The noise can surprise the animal, causing it to swim too quickly to the surface. The result is decompression sickness, a hazard human divers know all too well. If a diver ascends too quickly from a high-pressure underwater environment to a lower-pressure one, gases dissolved in blood and tissue expand and form bubbles. The bubbles block the flow of blood to vital organs, and can ultimately lead to death. Plausible as this seems, it is still a theory and based on our more comprehensive knowledge of land-based animals. For this reason, some scientists are wary. Whale expert Karen Evans is one such scientist. Another is Rosemary Gales, a leading expert on whale strandings. She says sonar technology cannot always be blamed for mass strandings. "It’s a case-by-case situation. Whales have been stranding for a very long time - pre-sonar.” And when 80% of all Australian whale strandings occur around Tasmania, Gales and her team must continue in the search for answers. When animals beach next to each other at the same time, the most common cause has nothing to do with humans at all. "They're highly social creatures,” says Gales. "When they mass strand - it’s complete panic and chaos. If one of the group strands and sounds the alarm, others will try to swim to its aid, and become stuck themselves.” Activities such as sonar testing can hint at when a stranding may occur, but if conservationists are to reduce the number of strandings, or improve rescue operations, they need information on where strandings are likely to occur as well. With this in mind, Ralph James, physicist at the University of Western Australia in Perth, thinks he may have discovered why whales turn up only on some beaches. In 1986 he went to Augusta, Western Australia, where more than 100 false killer whales had beached. “I found out from chatting to the locals that whales had been stranding there for decades. So I asked myself, what is it about this beach?” From this question that James pondered over 20 years ago, grew the university's Whale Stranding Analysis Project. Data has since revealed that all mass strandings around Australia occur on gently sloping sandy beaches, some with inclines of less than 0.5%. For whale species that depend on an echolocation system to navigate, this kind of beach spells disaster. Usually, as they swim, they make clicking noises, and the resulting sound waves are reflected in an echo and travel back to them. Flowever, these just fade out on shallow beaches, so the whale doesn’t hear an echo and it crashes onto the shore. But that is not all. Physics, it appears, can help with the when as well as the where. The ocean is full of bubbles. Larger ones rise quickly to the surface and disappear, whilst smaller ones - called microbubbles - can last for days. It is these that absorb whale 'clicks! "Rough weather generates more bubbles than usual,” James adds. So, during and after a storm, echolocating whales are essentially swimming blind. Last year was a bad one for strandings in Australia. Can we predict if this - or any other year - will be any better? Some scientists believe we can. They have found trends which could be used to forecast ‘bad years’ for strandings in the future. In 2005, a survey by Klaus Vanselow and Klaus Ricklefs of sperm whale strandings in the North Sea even found a correlation between these and the sunspot cycle, and suggested that changes in the Earth’s magnetic field might be involved. But others are sceptical. “Their study was interesting ... but the analyses they used were flawed on a number of levels,” says Evans. In the same year, she co-authored a study on. Australian strandings that uncovered a completely different trend. “We analysed data from 1920 to 2002 ... and observed a clear periodicity in the number of whales stranded each year that coincides with a major climatic cycle.” To put it more simply, she says, in the years when strong westerly and southerly winds bring cool water rich in nutrients closer to the Australia coast, there is an increase in the number of fish. The whales follow. So what causes mass strandings? “It's probably many different components,” says James. And he is probably right. But the point is we now know what many of those components are.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
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noise/ noise pollution
skin/ skin samples
sperm/ sperm wales/ sperm whale
around Tasmania/ Tasmania
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Label the diagram below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
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sound waves
microbubbles
blood
nutrients
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Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage? True if the statement agrees with the information False if the statement contradicts the information Not given if there is no information on this
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1. The aim of the research by the Pelagos Institute in 1998 was to prove that navy sonar was responsible for whale strandings.
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Explain:
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2. The whales stranded in Greece were found at different points along the coast.
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Explain:
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3. Rosemary Gales has questioned the research techniques used by the Greek scientists.
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Explain:
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4. According to Gales, whales are likely to try to help another whale in trouble.
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Explain:
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5. There is now agreement amongst scientists that changes in the Earth′s magnetic fields contribute to whale strandings.
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Explain:
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Passage 3
The First Antigravity Machine? It was one of the biggest science stories of the 1990s. Even now, the facts behind it remain hotly disputed. And small wonder, for if the claims made for the small disc, the focus of the controversy, are true, it may be possible to break through one of the great barriers in the scientific world and control the most potent of cosmic forces: gravity. Huge innovations in flight and space travel could arise from that. The first gravity-blocking system to be taken seriously by scientists appeared in a laboratory in Tampere University of Technology, Finland. A Russian scientist named Dr Evgeny Podkletnov created a disc 275mm across, made from a substance which combined copper, barium and the ‘rare Earth metal’ called yttrium, which is known to be a high-temperature superconductor (a substance that conducts electricity without resistance). When chilled with liquid nitrogen at -196° C (a high temperature compared with other superconductors), this material loses all its electrical resistance, and can levitate (lift) in a magnetic field. That may seem amazing for a ceramic-like material - and it won a Nobel Prize for the scientists, Karl Muller and Johannes Bednorz, who first demonstrated it in the 1980s. But according to Podkletnov, the disc had another far more astounding property. In 1992, while experimenting with rotating superconductors, Podkletnov noticed that pipe-smoke from a nearby researcher was drifting into a vertical column above the spinning disc. Intrigued by this phenomenon, he decided to devise an experiment to investigate further. A superconductive disc, surrounded by liquid nitrogen was magnetically levitated and rotated at high speed - up to 5,000 revolutions per minute (rpm) in a magnetic field. An object was suspended from a sensitive balance above the disc. It was enclosed in a glass tube to shield it from any effects of air currents. During the course of a series of tests, Podkletnov was able to observe that the object lost a variable amount of weight from less than 0.5 percent to 2 percent of its total weight. This effect was noted with a range of materials from ceramics to wood. The effect was slight, yet the implications were revolutionary: the disc appeared to be partly shielding the object from the gravitational pull of the Earth. This was just the start, claimed Podkletnov. While far short of the 100 percent reduction in weight needed to send astronauts into space, for example, it was infinitely greater than the amount predicted by the best theory of gravity currently in existence: Einstein’s theory of general relativity (GR), published in 1905. According to Einstein, gravity is not some kind of ‘force field’, like magnetism, which can - in principle at least - be screened out. Instead, GR views gravity as a distortion in the very fabric of space and time, that permeates the whole cosmos. As such, any claim to have shielded objects from gravity is to defy Einstein himself. Podkletnov’s claims were subjected to intense scrutiny when he submitted them for publication. The UK Institute of Physics had Podkletnov’s paper checked by three independent referees, but none could find a fatal flaw. His research was set to appear in the respected Journal of Physics D when events took an unexpected turn. The claims were leaked to the media, sparking world-wide coverage of his apparent breakthrough. Then Podkletnov suddenly withdrew the paper from publication and refused to talk to the press. Rumours began to circulate of unknown backers demanding silence until the device had been fully patented. But for many scientists the strange events were all too familiar. Podkletnov was just the latest in a long line of people to have made claims about defying gravity. Most of these have come from madcap inventors, with bizarre devices - often with some kind of spinning disc. But occasionally, respectable academics have made such claims as well. One instance of this occurred in the late 1980s when scientists at Tohoku University, Japan, made headlines with research suggesting that apparatus, known as a gyroscope, lost 0.01 percent of its weight when spinning at up to 13,000 rpm. Oddly the effect only appeared if the gyroscope was spinning anticlockwise - raising suspicions that some mechanical peculiarity was to blame. Attempts by scientists at the University of Colorado to replicate the effect failed. Then Professor Giovanni Modanese, an Italian theoretical physicist, became interested. He had read an earlier paper by Podkletnov, hinting at a connection between superconductivity and gravity shielding. Modanese wondered if the magnetic fields surrounding the superconductive disc might somehow assimilate part of the gravitational field under it. He published some calculations based on his idea in 1995 - and soon discovered that taking ‘antigravity’ seriously was a career-limiting move. The revelations about Podkletnov’s antigravity research led to reports of major corporations setting up their own studies. In 2000, the UK defence contractor BAE Systems was said to have launched ‘Project Greenglow’ to investigate Podkletnov’s gravity shield effect. Then it emerged that the US aircraft builder Boeing was also investigating, suggesting it too had an interest in the effect. Groups in other countries were also rumoured to be carrying out studies. Yet not one of the teams has reported confirmation of the original findings. Some projects have been wound up without producing results either way. So for the time being, it seems that the dream of controlling gravity will remain precisely that.
Label the diagram below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
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sensitive balance / balance
liquid nitrogen
5,000 rpm / five thousand rpm /5,000 revolutions per minute / five revolutions per minute
glass tube
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Classify the following findings as belonging to Podkletnov, Tohoku University, or Modanese.
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1. The experiment only works if the equipment moves in a particular direction.
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Explain:
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2. Varying amounts of weight are lost as a result of the test.
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Explain:
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3. Gravity could be absorbed by a magnetic field.
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Explain:
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4. Superconductive material seems to screen an object from gravity.
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Explain:
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5. Weight loss occurs when the equipment rotates at speeds reaching 13,000 rpm.
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Explain:
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Do the following statements agree with information given in the reading passage?TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.
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1. Podkletnov won a prize for his initial work on superconductive substances.
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Explain:
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2. A chance observation led Podkletnov to experiment with gravity blocking.
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Explain:
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3. Einstein challenged earlier experiments on antigravity.
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Explain:
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4. Modanese suffered professionally after following up Podkletnov′s findings.
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Explain:
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5. An aircraft company announced that it had replicated Podkletnov′s results.
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Explain:
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