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SECTION TEST - ACADEMIC READING
(Time: 60 minutes)
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Passage 1
Ocean Acidification Caspar Henderson reports on some new concerns. A few years ago, biologist, Victoria Fabry, saw the future of the world’s oceans in ajar. She was aboard a research ship in the North Pacific, carrying out experiments on a species of pteropod - small molluscs with shells up to a centimetre long, which swim in a way that resembles butterfly flight, propelled by small flaps. Something strange was happening in Fabry’s jars. ‘The pteropods were still swimming, but their shells were visibly dissolving,’ says Fabry. She realised that the animals’ respiration had increased the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the jars, which had been sealed for 48 hours, changing the water’s chemistry to a point where the calcium carbonate in the pteropods’ shells had started to dissolve. What Fabry had stumbled on was a hint of ‘the other CO2 problem’. It has taken several decades for climate change to be recognised as a serious threat. But another result of our fossil-fuel habit - ocean acidification - has only begun to be researched in the last few years. Its impact could be momentous, says Joanie Kleypas of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. CO2 forms carbonic acid when it dissolves in water, and the oceans are soaking up more and more of it. Recent studies show that the seas have absorbed about a third of all the fossil-fuel carbon released into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the mid-eighteenth century, and they will soak up much more over the next century. Yet until quite recently many people dismissed the idea that humanity could alter the acidity of the oceans, which cover 71% of the planet’s surface to an average depth of about four kilometres. The ocean’s natural buffering capacity was assumed to be capable of preventing any changes in acidity even with a massive increase in CO2 levels. And it is - but only if the increase happens slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years. Over this timescale, the release of carbonates from rocks on land and from ocean sediments can neutralise the dissolved CO2, just like dropping chalk in an acid. Levels of CO2 are now rising so fast that they are overwhelming the oceans’ buffering capacity. In 2003 Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, and Michael Wickett at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, calculated that the absorption of fossil CO2 could make the oceans more acidic over the next few centuries than they have been for 300 million years, with the possible exception of rare catastrophic events. The potential seriousness of the effect was underlined in 2005 by the work of James Zachos of the University of California and his colleagues, who studied one of those rare catastrophic events. They showed that the mass extinction of huge numbers of deep-sea creatures around 55 million years ago was caused by ocean acidification after the release of around 4500 gigatonnes of carbon. It took over 100,000 years for the oceans to return to their normal state. Around the same time as the Zachos paper, the UK’s Royal Society published the first comprehensive report on ocean acidification. It makes grim reading, concluding that ocean acidification is inevitable without drastic cuts in emissions. Marine ecosystems, especially coral reefs, are likely to be affected, with fishing and tourism based around reefs losing billions of dollars each year. Yet the report also stressed that there is huge uncertainty about the effects on marine life. The sea creatures most likely to be affected are those that make their shells or skeletons from calcium carbonate, including tiny plankton and huge corals. Their shells and skeletons do not dissolve only because the upper layers of the oceans are supersaturated with calcium carbonate. Acidification reduces carbonate ion concentrations, making it harder for organisms to build their shells or skeletons. When the water drops below the saturation point, these structures will start to dissolve. Calcium carbonate comes in two different forms, aragonite and calcite, aragonite being more soluble. So organisms with aragonite structures, such as corals, will be hardest hit. So far the picture looks relentlessly gloomy, but could there actually be some positive results from adding so much CO2 to the seas? One intriguing finding, says Ulf Riebesell of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, concerns gases that influence climate. A few experiments suggest that in more acidic conditions, microbes will produce more volatile organic compounds such as dimethyl sulphide, some of which escapes to the atmosphere and causes clouds to develop. More clouds would mean cooler conditions, which could potentially slow global warming. Calculating the effect of ocean acidification on people and economies is virtually impossible, but it could be enormous. Take the impact on tropical corals, assuming that warming and other pressures such as pollution do not decimate them first. Reefs protect the shorelines of many countries. Acidification could start eating away at reefs just when they are needed more than ever because of rising sea levels. ‘No serious scientist believes the oceans will be devoid of life,’ says Caldeira. ‘Wherever there is light and nutrients something will live. A likely outcome will be a radical simplification of the ecosystem.’ Taking this and other scientists’ views into account, it seems clear that acidification will mean the loss of many species, so our children will not see the amazingly beautiful things that we can. It is important to tell them to go and see the corals now before it is too late.
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
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fishing and tourism / tourism and fishing
small flaps / flaps
their shells / the shells / shells
coral / corals
over 100,000 years / 100,000 years
about 1/3 / about a third / 1/3 / a third
rocks / rocks on land
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Complete the flow-chart below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
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the atmosphere / atmosphere
global warming
microbes
cooler
clouds
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Choose the correct answer choice.
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1. Which of the following best summarises the writer′s view in the passage?
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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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skin/ skin samples
sperm/ sperm wales/ sperm whale
around Tasmania/ Tasmania
noise/ noise pollution
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Label the diagram below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
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blood
nutrients
microbubbles
sound waves
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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 BIRTH OF SCIENTIFIC ENGLISH World science is dominated today by a small number of languages, including Japanese, German and French, but it is English which is probably the most popular global language of science. This is not just because of the importance of English-speaking countries such as the USA in scientific research; the scientists of many non-English-speaking countries find that they need to write their research papers in English to reach a wide international audience. Given the prominence of scientific English today, it may seem surprising that no one really knew how to write science in English before the 17th century. Before that, Latin was regarded as the lingua franca for European intellectuals. The European Renaissance (c. 14th-16th century) is sometimes called the 'revival of learning', a time of renewed interest in the 'lost knowledge' of classical times. At the same time, however, scholars also began to test and extend this knowledge. The emergent nation states of Europe developed competitive interests in world exploration and the development of trade. Such expansion, which was to take the English language west to America and east to India, was supported by scientific developments such as the discovery of magnetism (and hence the invention of the compass), improvements in cartography and - perhaps the most important scientific revolution of them all - the new theories of astronomy and the movement of the Earth in relation to the planets and stars, developed by Copernicus (1473-1543). England was one of the first countries where scientists adopted and publicised Copernican ideas with enthusiasm. Some of these scholars, including two with interests in language - John Wallis and John Wilkins - helped found the Royal Society in 1660 in order to promote empirical scientific research. Across Europe similar academies and societies arose, creating new national traditions of science. In the initial stages of the scientific revolution, most publications in the national languages were popular works, encyclopaedias, educational textbooks and translations. Original science was not done in English until the second half of the 17th century. For example, Newton published his mathematical treatise, known as the Principia, in Latin, but published his later work on the properties of light - Opticks - in English. There were several reasons why original science continued to be written in Latin. The first was simply a matter of audience. Latin was suitable for an international audience of scholars, whereas English reached a socially wider, but more local, audience. Hence, popular science was written in English. A second reason for writing in Latin may, perversely, have been a concern for secrecy. Open publication had dangers in putting into the public domain preliminary ideas which had not yet been fully exploited by their 'author'. This growing concern about intellectual property rights was a feature of the period - it reflected both the humanist notion of the individual, rational scientist who invents and discovers through private intellectual labour, and the growing connection between original science and commercial exploitation. There was something of a social distinction between 'scholars and gentlemen' who understood Latin, and men of trade who lacked a classical education. And in the mid-17th century it was common practice for mathematicians to keep their discoveries and proofs secret, by writing them in cipher, in obscure languages, or in private messages deposited in a sealed ox with the Royal Society. Some scientists might have felt more comfortable with Latin precisely because its audience, though international, was socially restricted. Doctors clung the most keenly to Latin as an 'insider language'. A third reason why the writing of original science in English was delayed may have been to do with the linguistic inadequacy of English in the early modern period. English was not well equipped to deal with scientific argument. First, it lacked the necessary technical vocabulary. Second, it lacked the grammatical resources required to represent the world in an objective and impersonal way, and to discuss the relations, such as cause and effect, that might hold between complex and hypothetical entities. Fortunately, several members of the Royal Society possessed an interest in language and became engaged in various linguistic projects. Although a proposal in 1664 to establish a committee for improving the English language came to little, the society's members did a great deal to foster the publication of science in English and to encourage the development of a suitable writing style. Many members of the Royal Society also published monographs in English. One of the first was by Robert Hooke, the society's first curator of experiments, who described his experiments with microscopes in Micrographia (1665). This work is largely narrative in style, based on a transcript of oral demonstrations and lectures. In 1665 a new scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions, was inaugurated. Perhaps the first international English-language scientific journal, it encouraged a new genre of scientific writing, that of short, focused accounts of particular experiments. The 17th century was thus a formative period in the establishment of scientific English. In the following century much of this momentum was lost as German established itself as the leading European language of science. If is estimated that by the end of the 18th century 401 German scientific journals had been established as opposed to 96 in France and 50 in England. However, in the 19th century scientific English again enjoyed substantial lexical growth as the industrial revolution created the need for new technical vocabulary, and new, specialised, professional societies were instituted to promote and publish in the new disciplines.
Complete the summary. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. In Europe, modern science emerged at the same time as the nation state. At first, the scientific language of choice remained (1)………. It allowed scientists to communicate with other socially privileged thinkers while protecting their work from unwanted exploitation. Sometimes the desire to protect ideas seems to have been stronger than the desire to communicate them, particularly in the case of mathematicians and (2)……….
In Britain, moreover, scientists worried that English had neither the (3)............ nor the grammatical resources to express their ideas. This situation only changed after 1660 when scientists associated with the (4)………… set about developing English. An early scientific journal fostered a new kind of writing based on short descriptions of specific experiments. Although English was then overtaken by (5) ……………,it developed again in the 19th century as a direct result of the (6)……………
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German
technical vocabulary
industrial revolution
Latin
doctors
Royal Society
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Complete the table. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Science written in the first half of the 17th century | Language used | Latin | English | Type of science | Original | (1)……… | Examples | (2)……… | Encyclopaedias | Target audience | International scholars | (3)………, but socially wider |
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popular
local / more local / local audience
Principia / the Principia / Newton's Principia / mathematical treatise
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Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage? YES if the statement agrees with the writers claims NO if the statement contradicts the writer's claims NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
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1. There was strong competition between scientists in Renaissance Europe.
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Explain:
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2. The most important scientific development of the Renaissance period was the discovery of magnetism.
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Explain:
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3. In 17th-century Britain, leading thinkers combined their interest in science with an interest in how to express ideas.
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Explain:
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NEWS |
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