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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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10 million/ten million
monitored
extinct
cats and foxes/foxes and cats
fire
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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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5 months/five months
strong medicinal powers/ medicinal powers
15 weeks/fifteen weeks
skills and knowledge/knowledge and skills
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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
History of Fire Fighting and Prevention More than two thousand years ago, Roman emperor Augustus organized a group of watchmen whose job was mainly to look out for fires and sound an alarm in the event of one. For many centuries that followed, fire equipment was limited to buckets of water that got passed from person to person. The ax was later found to be a useful tool both for removing fuel in large fires and for opening holes to allow smoke and flames to escape from burning buildings. Watchmen also learned to create firebreaks with long hooked poles and ropes in order to pull down structures that provided fuel for a fire. In 1066, in order to reduce the risk of fire in thatched-roof houses, King William the Conqueror made a ruling: Citizens had to extinguish their cooking fires at night. His term couvre-feu, meaning “cover fire,” is the origin of the modern day term curfew, which no longer carries a literal translation. The event that had the largest influence in the history of fire fighting was the Great Fire of London in 1666. The devastating blaze originated at the King’s Bakery near the London Bridge. At the onset, Lord Mayor Bludworth showed little concern for the fire, assuming it would extinguish itself before he could organize a group of men to attend to it. However, the summer of 1666 had been uncharacteristically hot and dry, and the wooden houses nearby caught fire quickly. Within a short time, the wind had carried the fire across the city, burning down over 300 houses in its path. Although the procedure of pulling down buildings to prevent a fire from spreading was standard in Britain, the mayor grew concerned over the cost it would involve to rebuild the city and ordered that the surrounding structures be left intact. By the time the king ordered the destruction of buildings in the fire’s path, the fire was too large to control. It was not until the Duke of York ordered the Paper House to be destroyed in order to create a crucial firebreak that the London fire finally began to lose its fuel. When it became clear that four-fifths of the city had been destroyed by the fire, drastic measures were taken in London to create a system of organized fire prevention. At the hands of architects such as Christopher Wren, most of London was rebuilt using stone and brick, materials that were far less flammable than wood and straw. Because of the long history of fires in London, those who could afford to build new homes and businesses began to seek insurance for their properties. As insurance became a profitable business, companies soon realized the monetary benefits of hiring men to extinguish fires. In the early years of insurance companies, all insured properties were marked with an insurance company’s name or logo. If a fire broke out and a building did not contain the insurancemark, the fire brigades were called away and the building was left to burn. The British insurance companies were largely responsible for employing people to develop new technology for extinguishing fires. The first fire engines were simple tubs on wheels that were pulled to the location of the fire, with water being supplied by a bucket brigade. Eventually, a hand pump was designed to push the water out of the tub into a hose with a nozzle. The pump allowed for a steady stream of water to shoot through a hose directly at the fire source. Before long, companies began to utilize water pipes made from hollowed tree trunks that were built under the roadway. By digging down into the road, firemen could insert a hole into the tree-trunk pipe and access the water to feed into the pump. Fire fighting became a competitive business, as companies fought to be the first to arrive at a scene to access the water pipes. After a series of fires destroyed parts of London, fire-fighting companies were forced to reconsider their intentions. By the eighteenth century, fire brigades began to join forces, and in 1833 the Sun Insurance Company along with ten other London companies created the London Fire Engine Establishment. In 1865, the government became involved, bringing standards to both fire prevention and fire fighting and establishing London’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade. Though the firemen were well paid, they were constantly on duty and thus obliged to call their fire station home for both themselves and their families. New technology for fighting fires continued to develop in both Europe and the New World. Leather hoses with couplings that joined the lengths together were hand-sewn in the Netherlands and used until the latel800s, when rubber hoses became available. The technology for steam engine fire trucks was available in Britain and America in 1829, but most brigades were hesitant to use them until the 1850s. It was the public that eventually forced the brigades into putting the more efficient equipment to use. In the early 1900s, when the internal-combustion engine was developed, the trucks became motorized. This was a timely advancement in fire-fighting history, as World War I put added pressure on brigades throughout the world.
Complete the chart below. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each answer. Cause | Effect | Men used poles and ropes to pull down buildings near a fire. | The fire did not have (1)……….. | Thatched-roof houses burn down easily | The King ordered people to (2)………. their fires nightly. | At the time of the Great Fire of London, the weather was (3)………… | The fire spread quickly. | The Mayor of London thought it would be too expensive to (4)……. | He told people not to pull down buildings in the fire’s path. | The Great Fire destroyed most of London. | People built new buildings out of (5)……. | There had been many (6)……… in London over time. | People started to buy insurance to protect their homes. | Insurance companies did not want to pay for rebuilding clients’ houses destroyed by fire. | Insurance companies hired men to (7)……….. |
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fires
stone and brick
extinguish fires
hot and dry
put out
rebuild the city
fuel
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Choose the correct answer.
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1. The first fire engines
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Explain:
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3. Firemen who worked for the Metropolitan Fire Brigade
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Explain:
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Do the following statements agree with the information in the reading passage? YES if the statement agrees with the information NO if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage
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1. Leather hoses for fire fighting were made by machine.
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Explain:
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2. Steam engine fire trucks were used until the early 1900s.
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Explain:
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3. Fires caused a great deal of damage in London during World War I.
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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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5,000 rpm / five thousand rpm /5,000 revolutions per minute / five revolutions per minute
glass tube
sensitive balance / balance
liquid nitrogen
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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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| No. | Date | Right Score | Total Score |
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