JANUARY

TEST 1

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

The vikings wayfaring way

In the last century, Vikings have been perceived in numerous di fferent ways – vilified
as conquerors and romanticised as adventurers. How Vikings have been employed in
nation-building is a topic of some interest.

In English, Vikings are also known as Norse or Norsemen. Their language greatly
influenced English, with the nouns, ‘Hell’, ‘husband’, ‘law’, and ‘window’, and the
verbs, ‘blunder’, ‘snub’, ‘take’, and ‘want’, all coming from Old Norse. However, the
origins of the word ‘Viking’, itself, are obscure: it may mean ‘a Scandinavian pirate’,
or it may refer to ‘an inlet’, or a place called Vik, in modem-day Norway, from where
the pirates came. These various names – Vikings, Norse, or Norsemen, and doubts
about the very word ‘Viking’ suggest historical confusion.

Loosely speaking, the Viking Age endured from the late eighth to the mid-eleventh
centuries. Vikings sailed to England in AD 793 to storm coastal monasteries, and
subsequently, large swathes of England fell under Viking rule – indeed several Viking
kings sat on the English throne. It is generally agreed that the Battle of Hastings, in
1066, when the Norman French invaded, marks the end of the English Viking Age, but
the Irish Viking age ended earlier, while Viking colonies in Iceland and Greenland did
not dissolve until around AD 1500.

How much territory Vikings controlled is also in dispute – Scandinavia and Western
Europe certainly, but their reach east and south is uncertain. They plundered and
settled down the Volga and Dnieper rivers, and traded with modem-day Istanbul, but
the archaeological record has yet to verify that Vikings raided as far away as
Northwest Africa, as some writers claim.

The issue of control and extent is complex because many Vikings did not return to
Scandinavia after raiding but assimilated into local populations, often becoming
Christian. To some degree, the Viking Age is defined by religion. Initially, Vikings
were polytheists, believing in many gods, but by the end of the age, they had
permanently accepted a new monotheistic religious system – Christianity.

This transition from so-called pagan plunderers to civilised Christians is significant

and is the view promulgated throughout much of recent history. In the UK, in the
1970s for example, schoolchildren were taught that until the Vikings accepted
Christianity they were nasty heathens who rampaged throughout Britain. By contrast,
today’s children can visit museums where Vikings are celebrated as merchants,
pastoralists, and artists with a unique worldview as well as conquerors.

What are some other interpretations of Vikings? In the nineteenth century, historians
in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden constructed their own Viking ages for nationalistic
reasons. At that time, all three countries were in crisis. Denmark had been beaten in
war and ceded territory to what is now Germany. Norway had become independent
from Sweden in 1905 but was economically vulnerable, so Norwegians sought to
create a separate identity for themselves in the past as well as the present. The
Norwegian historian, Gustav Storm, was adamant it was his forebears and not the
Swedes’ or Danes’ who had colonised Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland, in what is
now Canada. Sweden, meanwhile, had relinquished Norway to the Norwegians and
Finland to the Russians; thus, in the late nineteenth century, Sweden was keen to boost
its image with rich archaeological finds to show the glory of its Viking past.

In addition to augmenting nationalism, nineteenth-century thinkers were influenced by

an Englishman, Herbert Spencer, who described peoples and cultures in evolutionary
terms similar to those of Charles Darwin. Spencer coined the phrase ‘survival of the
fittest’, which includes the notion that, over time, there is not only technological but
also moral progress. Therefore, Viking heathens’ adoption of Christianity was
considered an advantageous move. These days, historians do not compare cultures in
the same way, especially since, in this case, the archaeological record seems to show
that heathen Vikings and Christian Europeans were equally brutal.

Views of Vikings change according to not only to forces affecting historians at the
time of their research but also according to the materials they read. Since much
knowledge of Vikings comes from literature composed up to 300 years after the events
they chronicle, some Danish historians cal1 these sources ‘mere legends’.

Vikings did have a written language carved on large stones, but as few of these survive
today, the most reliable contemporary sources on Vikings come from writers from
other cultures, like the ninth-century Persian geographer, Ibn Khordadbeh.

In the last four decades, there have been wildly varying interpretations of the Viking
influence in Russia. Most non-Russian scholars believe the Vikings created a kingdom
in western Russia and modern-day Ukraine led by a man called Rurik. After AD 862,
Rurik’s descendants continued to rule. There is considerable evidence of this
colonisation: in Sweden, carved stones, still standing, describe the conquerors’
journeys; both Russian and Ukrainian have loan words from Old Norse; and,
Scandinavian first names, like Igor and Olga, are still popular. However, during the
Soviet period, there was an emphasis on the Slavic origins of most Russians.
(Appearing in the historical record around the sixth century AD, the Slavs are thought
to have originated in Eastern Europe.) This Slavic identity was promoted to contrast
with that of the neighbouring Viking Swedes, who were enemies during the Cold War.

These days, many Russians consider themselves hybrids. Indeed recent genetic studies
support a Norse-colonisation theory: western Russian DNA is consistent with that of
the inhabitants of a region north of Stockholm in Sweden.
The tools available to modern historians are many and varied, and their findings may
seem less open to debate. There are linguistics, numismatics, dendrochronology,
archaeozoology, palaeobotany, ice crystallography, climate and DNA analysis to add
to the translation of runes and the raising of mighty warships. Despite these, historians
remain children of their times.
SECTION 1: QUESTIONS 1-14
Questions 1-5
Complete the notes below.

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer

Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

Origins: Word ‘Viking’ is 1 

Vikings came from Scandinavia.

Dates of the In Britain: AD 2   -1066

Viking Age Length varies elsewhere

In doubt – but most of Europe

Territorial extent:
Possibly raided as far away as 3 

Vikings had assimilated into 4   , & adopted a

End of the Viking
Age:
new 5   system.

Questions 6-13
Look at the following statements and the list of times and places below.

Match each statement with the correct place or time: A-H.

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 6-13 on your answer sheet.

6   A geographer documents Viking culture as it happens.
7   A philosopher classifies cultures hierarchically.
8   Historians assert that Viking history is based more on legends than facts.
9   Young people learn about Viking cultural and economic activities.
10   People see themselves as unrelated to Vikings.
 11   An historian claims Viking colonists to modem-day Canada came from
his land.
12   Viking conquests are exaggerated to bolster the country’s ego after a
territorial loss.
13   DNA tests show locals are closely related to Swedes.
List of times & places

A In the UK today

B In 19th-century Norway

C In 19th-century Sweden

D In 19th-century England

E In Denmark today

F In 9th-century Persia

G In mid-20th century Soviet Union

H In Russia today

Question 14

Choose the correct letter A-E.

Write the correct letter in box 14 on your answer sheet.

14
Which might be a suitable title for passage?

 A  A brief history of Vikings

 B  Recent Viking discoveries
 C  A modem fascination with Vikings
 D  Interpretations of Viking history
 E  Viking history and nationalism

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-27, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.
The future never dies?

The prospects for humanity and for the world as a whole are somewhere between
glorious and dire. It is hard to be much more precise.

By ‘glorious’, I mean that our descendants – all who are born on to this Earth – could
live very comfortably and securely, and could continue to do so for as long as the
Earth can support life, which should be for a very long time indeed. We should at least
be thinking in terms of the next million years. Furthermore, our descendants could
continue to enjoy the company of other species – establishing a much better
relationship with them than we have now. Other animals need not live in constant fear
of us. Many of those fellow species now seem bound to become extinct, but a
significant proportion could and should continue to live alongside us. Such a future
may seem ideal, and so it is. Yet I do not believe it is fanciful. There is nothing in the
physical fabric of the Earth or in our own biology to suggest that this is not possible.

‘Dire’ means that we human beings could be in deep trouble within the next few
centuries, living but also dying in large numbers in political terror and from starvation,
while huge numbers of our fellow creatures would simply disappear, leaving only the
ones that we find convenient – chickens, cattle – or that we can’t shake off, like flies
and mice. I’m taking it to be self-evident that glory is preferable.

Our future is not entirely in our own hands because the Earth has its own rules, is part
of the solar system and is neither stable nor innately safe. Other planets in the solar
system are quite beyond habitation, because their temperature is far too high or too
low to be endured, and ours, too, in principle could tip either way. Even relatively
unspectacular changes in the atmosphere could do the trick. The core of the Earth is
hot, which in many ways is good for living creatures, but every now and again, the
molten rock bursts through volcanoes on the surface. Among the biggest volcanic
eruptions in recent memory was Mount St Helens, in the USA, which threw out a
cubic kilometre of ash – fortunately, in an area where very few people live. In 1815,
Tambora (in present-day Indonesia) expelled so much ash into the upper atmosphere
that climatic effects seriously harmed food production around the world for the season
after season. Entire civilisations have been destroyed by volcanoes.

Yet nothing we have so far experienced shows what volcanoes can really do.
Yellowstone National Park in the USA occupies the caldera (the crater formed when a
volcano collapses) of an exceedingly ancient volcano of extraordinary magnitude.
Modem surveys show that its centre is now rising. Sometime in the next 200 million
years, Yellowstone could erupt again, and when it does, the whole world will be
transformed. Yellowstone could erupt tomorrow. But there’s a very good chance that it
will give us another million years, and that surely is enough to be going on with. It
seems sensible to assume that this will be the case.

The universe at large is dangerous, too: in particular, we share the sky with vast
numbers of asteroids, and now and again, the come into our planet’s atmosphere. An
asteroid the size of a small island, hitting the Earth at 15,000 kilometres an hour (a
relatively modest speed by the standards of heavenly bodies), would strike the ocean
bed like a rock in a puddle, send a tidal wave around the world as high as a small
mountain and as fast as a jumbo jet, and propel us into an ice age that could last for
centuries. There are plans to head off such disasters (including rockets to push
approaching asteroids into new trajectories), but in truth, it’s down to luck.

On the other hand, the archaeological and the fossil evidence shows that no truly
devastating asteroid has struck since the one that seems to have accounted for the
extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. So again, there seems no immediate
reason for despair. The Earth is indeed an uncertain place, in an uncertain universe, but
with average luck, it should do us well enough. If the world does become inhospitable
in the next few thousand or million years, then it will probably be our own fault. In
short, despite the underlying uncertainty, our own future and that of our fellow
creatures are very much in our own hands.

Given average luck on the geological and the cosmic scale, the difference between
glory and disaster will be made and is being made, by politics. Certain kinds of
political systems and strategies would predispose us to long-term survival (and indeed
to comfort and security and pleasure of being alive), while others would take us more
and more frenetically towards collapse. The broad point is, though, that we need to
look at ourselves – humanity – and at the world in general in a quite new light. Our
material problems are fundamentally those of biology. We need to think, and we need
our politicians to think, biologically. Do that, and take the ideas seriously, and we are
in with a chance. Ignore biology and we and our fellow creatures haven’t a hope.
SECTION 2: QUESTIONS 15-27
Questions 15-20
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?

In boxes 15-20 on your answer sheet write:

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

 NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

15   It seems predictable that some species will disappear.

16   The nature of the Earth and human biology make it impossible for
human beings to survive another million years.
17   An eruption by Yellowstone is likely to be more destructive than
previous volcanic eruptions.
18   There is a greater chance of the Earth being hit by small asteroids
than large ones.
19   If the world becomes uninhabitable, it is most likely to be as a
result of a natural disaster.
20   Politicians currently in power seem unlikely to change their way
of thinking.
Questions 21-26
Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet.

The Earth could become uninhabitable, like other planets, through a major change in
the 21   . Volcanic eruptions of 22   can lead to shortages
of 23   in a wide area. An asteroid hitting the Earth could create
a 24   that would result in a new 25   . Plans are being made
to use 26   to deflect asteroids heading for the Earth.
Question 27

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.

Write your answer in box 26 on your answer sheet.

27
What is the writer’s purpose in Reading Passage 2?

 A  to propose a new theory about the causes of natural disasters

 B  to prove that generally held beliefs about the future are all mistaken
 C  to present a range of opinions currently held by scientists
 D  to argue the need for a general change in behavior

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.
Cosmetics in Ancient Past

Since cosmetics and perfumes are still in wide use today, it is interesting to compare
the attitudes, customs and beliefs related to them in ancient times to those of our own
day and age. Cosmetics and perfumes have been popular since the dawn of
civilization; it is shown by the discovery of a great deal of pertinent archaeological
material, dating from the third millennium BC. Mosaics, glass perfume flasks, stone
vessels, ovens, cooking-pots, clay jars, etc., some inscribed by the hand of the artisan.
Evidence also appears in the Bible and other classical writings, where it is written that
spices and perfumes were prestigious products known throughout the ancient world
and coveted by kings and princes. The written and pictorial descriptions, as well as
archaeological findings, all show how important body care and aesthetic appearance
were in the lives of the ancient people. The chain of evidence spans many centuries,
detailing the usage of cosmetics in various cultures from the earliest period of recorded
history.

In antiquity, however, at least in the onset, cosmetics served in religious ceremonies

and for healing purposes. Cosmetics were also connected with cultic worship and
witchcraft: to appease the various gods, fragrant ointments were applied to the statuary
images and even to their attendants. From this, in the course of time, developed the
custom of personal use, to enhance the beauty of the face and the body, and to conceal
defects.

Perfumes and fragrant spices were precious commodities in antiquity, very much in
demand, and at times even exceeded silver and gold in value. Therefore they were
luxury products, used mainly in the temples and in the homes of the noble and
wealthy. The Judean kings kept them in treasure houses (2 Kings 20:13). And the
Queen of Sheba brought to Solomon “camels laden with spices, gold in great quantity
and precious stones.” (1 Kings 10:2, 10). However, within time, the use of cosmetics
became the custom of that period. The use of cosmetics became widespread among the
lower classes as well as among the wealthy; in the same way, they washed the body, so
they used to care for the body with substances that softened the skin and anoint it with
fragrant oils and ointments.

Facial treatment was highly developed and women devoted many hours to it. They
used to spread various scented creams on the face and to apply makeup in vivid and
contrasting colors. An Egyptian papyrus from the 16th century BC contains detailed
recipes to remove blemishes, wrinkles, and other signs of age. Greek and Roman
women would cover their faces in the evening with a “beauty mask” to remove
blemishes, which consisted mainly of flour mixed with fragrant spices, leaving it on
their face all night. The next morning they would wash it off with asses’ milk. The
very common creams used by women in the ancient Far East, particularly important in
the hot climate and prevalent in that area of the globe, were made up of oils and
aromatic scents. Sometimes the oil in these creams was extracted from olives,
almonds, gourds, sesame, or from trees and plants; but, for those of limited means,
scented animal and fish fats were commonly used.

Women in the ancient past commonly put colors around their eyes. Besides
beautification, its purpose was also medicinal as covering the sensitive skin of the lids
with colored ointments that prevented dryness and eye diseases: the eye-paint repelled
the little flies that transmitted eye inflammations. Egyptian women colored the upper
eyelid black and the lower one green and painted the space between the upper lid and
the eyebrow gray and blue. The women of Mesopotamia favored yellows and reds.
The use of kohl for painting the eyes is mentioned three times in the Bible, always
with disapproval by the sages (2 Kings, 9:30; Jeremiah 4:30; Ezekiel 23:40). In
contrast, Job named one of his daughters “Keren Happukh”- “horn of eye paint” (Job
42:14)

Great importance was attached to the care for hair in ancient times. Long hair was
always considered a symbol of beauty, and kings, nobles and dignitaries grew their
hair long and kept it well-groomed and cared for. Women devoted much time to the
style of the hair; while no cutting, they would apply much care to it by arranging it
skillfully in plaits and “building it up” sometimes with the help of wigs. Egyptian
women generally wore their hair flowing down to their shoulders or even longer. In
Mesopotamia, women cherished long hair as a part of their beauty, and hair flowing
down their backs in a thick plait and tied with a ribbon is seen in art. Assyrian women
wore their hair shorter, braiding and binding it in a bun at the back. In Ancient Israel,
brides would wear their hair long on the wedding day as a sign of their virginity.
Ordinary people and slaves, however, usually wore their hair short, mainly for
hygienic reasons, since they could not afford to invest in the kind of treatment that
long hair required.

From the Bible and Egyptian and Assyrian sources, as well as the words of classical
authors, it appears that the centers of the trade-in aromatic resins and incense were
located in the kingdoms of southern Arabia, and even as far as India, where some of
these precious aromatic plants were grown. “Dealers from Sheba and Rammah dealt
with you, offering the choicest spices…” (Ezekiel 27:22). The Nabateans functioned
as the important middlemen in this trade; Palestine also served as a very important
component, as the trade routes crisscrossed the country. It is known that the Egyptian
Queen Hatsheput (15th century BC) sent a royal expedition to the Land of Punt
(Somalia) in order to bring back myrrh seedlings to plant in her temple. In Assyrian
records of tribute and spoils of war, perfumes and resins are mentioned; the text from
the time of Tukulti-Ninurta II (890-884 BC) refers to balls of myrrh as a part of the
tribute brought to the Assyrian king by the Aramaean kings. The trade-in spices and
perfumes are also mentioned in the Bible as written in Genesis (37:25-26), “Camels
carrying gum tragacanth and balm and myrrh”.
SECTION 3: QUESTIONS 28-40
Questions 28-34

Reading Passage has 7 paragraphs A-G

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write your answers in boxes 28-34 on your answer sheet.

28   recipes to conceal facial defects caused by aging
29   perfumes were presented to conquerors in war
30   long hair of girls had special meanings in marriage
31   evidence exists in abundance showing cosmetics use in ancient times
32   protecting eyes from fly-transmitted diseases
33   from witchcraft to beautification
34   more expensive than gold
Questions 35-40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?

In boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet, 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

35   The written record for cosmetics and perfumes dates back to the
third millennium BC.
36   Since perfumes and spices were luxury products, their use was
exclusive to the noble and the wealthy.
37   In the ancient Far East, fish fats were used as a cream by a woman
from poor households.
38   The teachings in the Bible were repeatedly against the use of kohl
for painting the eyes.
39   Long hair as a symbol of beauty was worn solely by women of
ancient cultures
40   The Egyptian Queen Hatsheput sent a royal expedition to Punt to
establish a trade route for myrrh
TEST 2

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

Finches on Islands

Today, the quest continues. On Daphne Major-one of the most desolate of the
Galápagos Islands, an uninhabited volcanic cone where cacti and shrubs seldom grow
higher than a researcher’s knee-Peter and Rosemary Grant have spent more than three
decades watching Darwin’s finch respond to the challenges of storms, drought and
competition for food Biologists at Princeton University, the Grants know and
recognize many of the individual birds on the island and can trace the birds’ lineages
hack through time. They have witnessed Darwin’s principle in action again and again,
over many generations of finches.

The Grants’ most dramatic insights have come from watching the evolving bill of the
medium ground finch. The plumage of this sparrow-sized bird ranges from dull brown
to jet black. At first glance, it may not seem particularly striking, but among scientists
who study evolutionary biology, the medium ground finch is a superstar. Its bill is a
middling example in the array of shapes and sizes found among Galápagos finches:
heftier than that of the small ground finch, which specializes in eating small, soft
seeds, but petite compared to that of the large ground finch, an expert at cracking and
devouring big, hard seeds.

When the Grants began their study in the 1970s, only two species of finch lived on
Daphne Major, the medium ground finch and the cactus finch. The island is so small
that the researchers were able to count and catalogue every bird. When a severe
drought hit in 1977, the birds soon devoured the last of the small, easily eaten seeds.
Smaller members of the medium ground finch population, lacking the bill strength to
crack large seeds, died out.

Bill and body size are inherited traits, and the next generation had a high proportion of
big-billed individuals. The Grants had documented natural selection at work-the same
process that, over many millennia, directed the evolution of the Galápagos’ 14 unique
finch species, all descended from a common ancestor that reached the islands a few
million years ago.

Eight years later, heavy rains brought by an El Nino transformed the normally meager
vegetation on Daphne Major. Vines and other plants that in most years struggle for
survival suddenly flourished, choking out the plants that provide large seeds to the
finches. Small seeds came to dominate the food supply, and big birds with big bills
died out at a higher rate than smaller ones. ‘Natural selection is observable,’ Rosemary
Grant says. ‘It happens when the environment changes. When local conditions reverse
themselves, so does the direction of adaptation.

Recently, the Grants witnessed another form of natural selection acting on the medium
ground finch: competition from bigger, stronger cousins. In 1982, a third finch, the
large ground finch, came to live on Daphne Major. The stout bills of these birds
resemble the business end of a crescent wrench. Their arrival was the first such
colonization recorded on the Galápagos in nearly a century of scientific observation.
‘We realized,’ Peter Grant says, ‘we had a very unusual and potentially important
event to follow.’ For 20 years, the large ground finch coexisted with the medium
ground finch, which shared the supply of large seeds with its bigger-billed relative.
Then, in 2002 and 2003, another drought struck. None of the birds nested that year,
and many died out. Medium ground finches with large bills, crowded out of feeding
areas by the more powerful large ground finches, were hit particularly hard.

When wetter weather returned in 2004, and the finches nested again, the new
generation of the medium ground finch was dominated by smaller birds with smaller
bills, able to survive on smaller seeds. This situation, says Peter Grant, marked the first
time that biologists have been able to follow the complete process of an evolutionary
change due to competition between species and the strongest response to natural
selection that he had seen in 33 years of tracking Galápagos finches.

On the inhabited island of Santa Cruz, just south of Daphne Major, Andrew Hendry of
McGill University and Jeffrey Podos of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst
have discovered a new, man-made twist in finch evolution. Their study focused on
birds living near the Academy Bay research station, on the fringe of the town of Puerto
Ayora. The human population of the area has been growing fast-from 900 people in
1974 to 9,582 in 2001. Today Puerto Ayora is full of hotels and mai tai bars,’ Hendry
says. ‘People have taken this extremely arid place and tried to turn it into a Caribbean
resort.’

I
Academy Bay records dating back to the early 1960s show that medium ground
finches captured there had either small or large bills. Very few of the birds had mid-
size bills. The finches appeared to be in the early stages of a new adaptive radiation: If
the trend continued, the medium ground finch on Santa Cruz could split into two
distinct subspecies, specializing in different types of seeds. But in the late 1960s and
early 70s, medium ground finches with medium-sized bills began to thrive at Academy
Bay along with small and large-billed birds. The booming human population had
introduced new food sources, including exotic plants and bird feeding stations stocked
with rice. Billsize, once critical to the finches’ survival, no longer made any
difference. ‘Now an intermediate bill can do fine,’ Hendry says.

At a control site distant from Puerto Ayora, and relatively untouched by humans, the
medium ground finch population remains split between large- and small-billed birds.
On undisturbed parts of Santa Cruz, there is no ecological niche for a middling
medium ground finch, and the birds continue to diversify. In town, though there are
still many finches, once-distinct populations are merging.

The finches of Santa Cruz demonstrate a subtle process in which human meddling can
stop evolution in its tracks, ending the formation of new species. In a time when global
biodiversity continues its downhill slide, Darwin’s finches have yet another
unexpected lesson to teach. ‘If we hope to regain some of the diversity that’s already
been lost/ Hendry says, ‘we need to protect not just existing creatures, but also the
processes that drive the origin of new species.
SECTION 1: QUESTIONS 1-13
Questions 1-4

Complete the table now.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from Reading Passage 1 for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

Year Climate Finch’s condition

1977 small-beak birds failing to survive, without the

1  power to open 2 

1985 3   brought by big-beak birds dying out, with 4   

El Nino as the main food resource
Questions 5-8

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage 1

Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.

On the remote island of Santa Cruz, Andrew Hendry and Jeffrey Podos conducted a
study on reversal 5   due to human activity. In the early 1960s medium
ground finches were found to have a larger or smaller beak. But in the late 1960s and
early 70s, finches with 6   flourished. The study speculates that it is due
to the growing 7   who brought in alien plants with intermediate-size
seeds into the area and the birds ate 8   sometimes.
Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, 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

9   Grants’ discovery has questioned Darwin’s theory.

10   The cactus finches are less affected by food than the medium
ground finch.
11   In 2002 and 2003, all the birds were affected by the drought.
12   The discovery of Andrew Hendry and Jeffrey Podos was the same
as that of the previous studies.
13   It is shown that the revolution in finches on Santa Cruz is likely a
response to human intervention.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.

Flight from reality

Mobiles are barred, but passengers can lap away on their laptops to their hearts’
content. Is one really safer than the other? In the US, a Congressional subcommittee
grilled airline representatives and regulators about the issue last month. But the
committee heard that using cellphones in planes may indeed pose a risk albeit a slight
one. This would seem to vindicate the treatment of Manchester oil worker Neil
Whitehouse, who was sentenced last summer to a year in jail by a British court for
refusing to turn off his mobile phone on a flight home from Madrid. Although he was
only typing a message to be sent on landing not actually making a call, the court
decided that hems putting the flight at risk.

The potential for problems is certainly there. Modern airliners are packed with
electronic devices that control the plane and handle navigation and communications.
Each has to meet stringent safeguards to make sure it doesn’t emit radiation that would
interfere with other devices in the plane-standards that passengers’ personal electronic
devices don’t necessarily meet. Emissions from inside the plane could also interfere
with sensitive antennae on the fixed exterior.

But despite running a number of studies, Boeing, Airbus and various government
agencies haven’t been able to find clear evidence of problems caused by personal
electronic devices, including mobile phones. “We’ve done our own studies. We’ve
found cellphones actually have no impact on the navigation system,” says Maryanne
Greczyn, a spokeswoman for Airbus Industries of North America in Herndon,
Virginia, Not do they affect other critical systems, she says The only impact Airbus
found? “Sometimes when a passenger is starting or finishing a phone call, the pilot
hears a wry slight beep in the headset,” she says.

The best evidence yet of a problem comes from a report released this year by Britain’s
Civil Aviation Authority. Its researchers generated simulated cellphone transmissions
inside two Boeing aircraft. They concluded that the transmissions could create signals
at a power and frequency that would not affect the latest equipment, but exceeded the
safety threshold established in 1984 and might, therefore, affect some of the older
equipment on board. This doesn’t mean “mission critical” equipment such as the
navigation system and flight controls. But the devices that could be affected, such as
smoke detectors and fuel level indicators, could still create serious problems for the
flight crew if they malfunction.

Many planes still use equipment certified to the older standards, says Dan Hawkes,
head of avionics at the CAA’s Safely Regulation Croup. The CAA study doesn’t prove
the equipment will actually fail when subjected to the signals but does show there’s a
danger. “We’ve taken some of the uncertainty out of these beliefs,” he says Another
study later this year will see if the cellphone signals actually cause devices to fail.
E

In 1996, RTCA, a consultant hired by the Federal Aviation Administration in the US

to conduct tests, determined that potential problems from personal electronic devices
were “low”. Nevertheless, it recommended a ban on their use during “critical” periods
of flight, such as take-off and landing. RTCA didn’t actually test cellphones, but
nevertheless recommended their wholesale ban on flights, But if “better safe than
sorry” is the current policy, it’s applied inconsistently, according to Marshall Cross,
the chairman of Mega Wave Corporation, based in Boylston, Massachusetts. Why are
cellphones outlawed when no one considers a ban on laptops? “It’s like most things in
life. The reason is a little bit technical, a little bit economic and a little bit political,”
says Cross.

The company wrote a report for the FAA in 1998 saying it is possible to build an on-
board system that can detect dangerous signals from electronic devices. But Cross’s
personal conclusion is that mobile phones aren’t the real threat. “You’d have to stretch
things pretty far to figure out how a cellphone could interfere with a plane’s systems,”
he says. Cellphones transmit in ranges of around 400, 800 or 1800 megahertz. Since
no important piece of aircraft equipment operates at those frequencies, the possibility
of interference is very low, Cross says. The use of Computers and electronic game
systems is much more worrying, lie says. They can generate very strong signals at
frequencies that could interfere with plane electronics, especially if a mouse is attached
{the wire operates as an antenna or if their built-in shielding is somehow damaged.
Some airlines are even planning to put sockets for laptops in seatbacks.

There’s fairly convincing anecdotal evidence that some personal electronic devices
have interfered with systems. Aircrew on one flight found that the autopilot was being
disconnected, and narrowed the problem down to a passenger’s portable computer.
They could actually watch the autopilot disconnect when they switched the computer
on. Boeing bought the computer, took it to the airline’s labs and even tested it on an
empty flight. But as with every other reported instance of interference, technicians
were unable to replicate the problem.

Some engineers, however, such as Bruce Donham of Boeing, say that common sense
suggests phones are more risky than laptops. “A device capable of producing a strong
emission is not as safe as a device which does not have any intentional emission,” lie
says. Nevertheless, many experts think it’s illogical that cellphones are prohibited
when computers aren’t. Besides, the problem is more complicated than simply looking
at power and frequency. In the air, the plane operates in a soup of electronic emissions,
created by its own electronics and by ground-based radiation. Electronic devices in the
cabin-especially those emitting a strong signal-can behave unpredictably, reinforcing
other signals, for instance, or creating unforeseen harmonics that disrupt systems.
I

Despite the Congressional subcommittee hearings last month, no one seems to be

working seriously on a technical solution that would allow passengers to use their
phones. That’s mostly because no one -besides cellphone users themselves-stands to
gain a lot if the phones are allowed in the air. Even the cellphone companies don’t
want it. They are concerned that airborne signals could cause problems by flooding a
number of the networks’ base stations at once with the same signal This effect, called
bigfooting, happens because airborne cellphone signals tend to go to many base
stations at once, unlike land calls which usually go to just one or two stations. In the
US, even if FAA regulations didn’t prohibit cellphones in the air, Federal
Communications Commission regulations would.

Possible solutions might be to enhance airliners’ electronic insulation or to fit detectors

which warned flight staff when passenger devices were emitting dangerous signals.
But Cross complains that neither the FAA, the airlines nor the manufacturers are
showing much interest in developing these. So despite Congressional suspicions and
the occasional irritated (or jailed) mobile user, the industry’s “better safe than sorry”
policy on mobile phones seems likely to continue. In the absence of firm evidence that
the international airline industry is engaged in a vast conspiracy to overcharge its
customers, a delayed phone call seems a small price to pay for even the tiniest
reduction in the chances of a Plane Crash. But you’ll still be allowed to use your
personal computer during a flight. And while that remains the case, airlines can hardly
claim that logic has prevailed.
SECTION 2: QUESTIONS 14-26
Questions 14-17

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage.

Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each
answer.

Write your answers in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

The would-be risk surely exists, since the avionic systems on modern aircraft are used
to manage flight and deal with 14   Those devices are designed to meet
the safety criteria which should be free from interrupting 15   or interior
emission. The personal use of a mobile phone may cause the
sophisticated 16   outside of the plane to dysfunction. Though definite
interference in piloting devices has not been scientifically testified, the devices such as
those which detect 17   or indicate fuel load could be affected.
Questions 18-22

Use the information in the passage to match the Organization (listed A-E) with
opinions or deeds below.

Write the appropriate letters A-E in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.

A British Civil Aviation Authority

B Maryanne Greczyn

C RTCA

D Marshall Cross

E Boeing company

18   Mobile usages should be forbidden in specific fame.

19   Computers are more dangerous than cell phones.
20   Finding that the mobile phones pose little risk on flight’s navigation
devices.
21   The disruption of laptops is not as dangerous as cellphones.
22   The mobile signal may have an impact on earlier devices.
Questions 23-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?

In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, 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

23   Almost all scientists accept that cellphones have higher emission
than that of personal computers.
24   Some people believe that radio emission will interrupt the
equipment on the plane.
25   The signal interference-detecting device has not yet been
developed because they are in priority for neither administrative department nor offer
an economic incentive.
26   FAA initialed open debate with Federal Communications
Commission.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.

Human remain in Green Sahara

{A} On October 13,2,000, a small team of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno of the
University of Chicago clambered out of three battered Land Rovers, filled their water
bottles, and scattered on foot across the toffee-colored sands of the Tenere desert in
northern Niger. The Tenere , on the southern flank of the Sahara, easily ranks among
the most desolate landscapes on Earth. The Tuareg , turbaned nomads who for
centuries have ruled this barren realm, refer to it as a “desert within a desert”-a
California-size ocean of sand and rock, where a single massive dune might stretch a
hundred miles, and the combination of 120-degree heat and inexorable winds can wick
the water from a human body in less than a day. The harsh conditions, combined with
intermittent conflict between the Tuareg and the Niger government, have kept the
region largely unexplored.

{B} Mike Hettwer, a photographer accompanying the team, headed off by himself

toward a trio of small dunes. He crested the first slope and stared in amazement. The
dunes were spilling over with bones. He took a few shots with his digital camera and
hurried back to the Land Rovers. “I found some bones:’ Hettwer said, when the team
had regrouped. “But they’re not dinosaurs. They’re human.”

{C} In the spring of 2005 Sereno contacted Elena Garcea, an archaeologist at the
University of Cassino, in Italy, inviting her to accompany him on a return to the site.
Garcea had spent three decades working digs along the Nile in Sudan and in the
mountains of the Libyan Desert, and was well acquainted with the ancient peoples of
the Sahara. But she had never heard of Paul Sereno. His claim to have found so many
skeletons in one place seemed far fetched, given that no other Neolithic cemetery
contained more than a dozen or so. Some archaeologists would later be skeptical; one
sniped that he was just a “moonlighting paleontologist.” But Garcea was too intrigued
to dismiss him as an interloper. She agreed to join him.

{D} Garcea explained that the Kiffian were a fishing-based culture and lived during
the earliest wet period, between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago. She held a Kiffian sherd
next to a Tenerian one. “What is so amazing is that the people who made these two
pots lived more than a thousand years apart.”

{E} Over the next three weeks, Sereno and Garcea-along with five American
excavators, five Tuareg guides, and five soldiers from Nigeria’s army, sent to protect
the camp from bandits—made a detailed map of the site, which they dubbed Gobero,
after the Tuareg name for the area. They exhumed eight burials and collected scores of
artifacts from both cultures. In a dry lake bed adjacent to the dunes, they found dozens
of fishhooks and harpoons carved from animal bone Apparently the Kiffian fishermen
weren’t just going after small fry: Scattered near the dunes were the remains of Nile
perch, a beast of a fish that can weigh nearly 300 pounds, as well as crocodile and
hippo bones.

{F} Sereno flew home with the most important skeletons and artifacts and immediately
began planning for the next field season. In the meantime, he carefully removed one
tooth from each of four skulls and sent them to a lab for radiocarbon dating. The
results pegged the age of the tightly bundled burials at roughly 9,000 years old, the
heart of the Kiffian era. The smaller “sleeping” skeletons turned out to be about 6,000
years old, well within the Tenerian period. At least now the scientists knew who was
who.

{G} In the fall of 2006 they returned to Gobero, accompanied by a larger dig crew and
six additional scientists. Garcea hoped to excavate some 80 burials, and the team
began digging. As the skeletons began to emerge from the dunes, each presented a
fresh riddle, especially the Tenerian. A male skeleton had been buried with a finger in
his mouth.

{H} Even at the site, Arizona State University bio archaeologist Chris Stojanowski
could begin to piece together some clues. Judging by the bones, the Kiffian appeared
to be a peaceful, hard working people. “The lack of head and forearm injuries suggests
they weren’t doing much fighting,” he told me. “And these guys were strong.” He
pointed to a long, narrow ridge running along a femur. “That’s the muscle
attachment,” he said. “This individual had huge leg muscles, which means he was
eating a lot of protein and had a strenuous lifestyle — both consistent with a fishing
way of life.” For contrast, he showed me the femur of a Tenerian male. The ridge was
barely perceptible. “This guy had a much less strenuous lifestyle,” he said, “which you
might expect of a herder.”

{I} Stojanowski’s assessment that the Tenerian were herders fits the prevailing view
among scholars of life in the Sahara 6,000 years ago, when drier conditions favored
herding over hunting. But if the Tenerian were herders, Sereno pointed out, where
were the herds? Among the hundreds of animal bones that had turned up at the site,
none belonged to goats or sheep, and only three came from a cow species. “It’s not
unusual for a herding culture not to slaughter their cattle, particularly in a cemetery, M
Garcea responded, noting that even modern pastoralists, such as Niger’s Wodaabe, are
loath to butcher even one animal in their herd. Perhaps, Sereno reasoned, the Tenerian
at Gobero were a transitional group that had not fully adopted herding and still relied
heavily on hunting and fishing.

{J} Back in Arizona, Stojanowski continues to analyze the Gobero bones for clues to
the Green Saharans’ health and diet. Other scientists are trying to derive DNA from
the teeth, which could reveal the genetic origins of the Kiffian and Tenerian- and
possibly link them to descendants living today. Sereno and Garcea estimate a hundred
burials remain to be excavated. But as the harsh Tenere winds continue to erode the
dunes, time is running out. “Every archaeological site has a life cycle,” Garcea said. “It
begins when people begin to use the place, followed by disuse, then nature takes over,
and finally it is gone. Gobero is at the end of its life.”
SECTION 3: QUESTIONS 27-40
Questions 27-29

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?

In boxes 27-29 on your answer sheet, 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

27   Hettwer accidentally found human remains in the desert.

28   Sereno and Garcea have cooperated in some archaeological
activities before.
29   The pictures of rock engravings found in Green Sahara is similar
to other places.
Questions 30-33

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the

passage for each answer.

What did Sereno and Garcea produce in the initial weeks before digging work?
30 

For what purpose did Sereno send one tooth from each of four skulls to the laboratory?
31 

How old are the bigger tightly bundled burials being identified?
32 

What part of the body remains did the scientists send for inspection to find out the
genetic origins of the Kiffian and Tenerian?
33 
Questions 34-40

Summary Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage,

using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet.
On the basis of bone judgment, kiffican seemed to be 34   hardworking
people, because we did not find 35   on head and forearm.
Through observation of the huge leg muscles, it can be inferred that their diet had
plenty of 36   and their lifestyle was 37   . All evidence
pointed to compliance with a fishing way of life.
On the other hand, Stojanowski presumed that Tenerian preferred to live on herding
over 38   ,but only some animal bones such as 39   were
found, which Sereno supposed that Tenerian at Gobero lived in a 40   
group at that time.
TEST 3

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading
Passage 1.

Paul Nash

Paul Nash, the elder son of William Nash and his first wife, Caroline Jackson, was
born in London on 11th May 1889. His father was a successful lawyer who became the
Recorder of Abingdon. According to Ronald Blythe: “In 1901 the family returned to
its native Buckinghamshire, where the garden of Wood Lane House at Iver Heath, and
the countryside of the Chiltern Hills, with its sculptural beeches and chalky contours,
were early influences on the development of the three children. Their lives were
overshadowed by their mother’s mental illness and Nash himself was greatly helped
by his nurse who, with some elderly neighbors, introduced him to the universe of
plants.”

Nash was educated at St. Paul’s School and the Slade School of Art, where he met
Dora Carrington. Unlike some of his contemporaries at the Slade School, Nash
remained untouched by the two post-impressionist exhibitions organized by Roger Fry
in 1910 and 1912. Instead, he was influenced by the work of William Blake. He also
became a close friend of Gordon Bottomley, who took a keen interest in his career.

Nash had his first one-man show, of ink and wash drawings, at the Carfax Gallery in
1912. The following year he shared an exhibition at the Dorian Leigh Gallery with his
brother, John Nash. Myfanwy Piper has added: “Nash had a noteworthy sense of order
and of the niceties of presentation; his pictures were beautifully framed, drawings
mounted, his studio precisely and decoratively tidy, and oddments which he collected
were worked up into compositions.”

Paul Nash was strongly attracted to Dora Carrington: He later recalled: “Carrington…
was the dominating personality, I got an introduction to her and eventually won her
regard by lending her my braces for a fancy-dress party. We were on the top of a bus
and she wanted them then and there.”

On the outbreak Nash considered the possibility of joining the British Army. He told a
friend: “I am not keen to rush off and be a soldier. The whole damnable war is too
horrible of course and I am all against killing anybody, speaking off-hand, but besides
all that I believe both Jack and I might be more useful as ambulance and red cross
men, and to that end we are training. Nash enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles. He told
Gordon Bottomley: “I have joined the Artists’ London Regiment of Territorials, the
old Corps which started with Rossetti, Leighton, and Millais as members in 1860.
Every man must do his bit in this horrible business so I have given up painting. There
are many nice creatures in my company and I enjoy the burst of exercise – marching,
drilling all day in the open air about the pleasant parts of Regents Park and Hampstead
Heath.”

In March 1917 he was sent to the Western Front Nash, who took part in the offensive
at Ypres, had reached the rank of lieutenant in the Hampshire Regiment by 1916.
Whenever possible, Nash made sketches of life in the trenches. In May 1917 he was
invalided home after a non-military accident. While recuperating in London, Nash
worked from his sketches to produce a series of war paintings. This work was well-
received when exhibited later that year. As a result of this exhibition, Charles
Masterman, head of the government’s War Propaganda Bureau (WPB), and the advice
of Edward Marsh and William Rothenstein, it was decided to recruit Nash as a war
artist. In November 1917 in the immediate aftermath of the battle of Passchendaele
Nash returned to France.

Nash was unhappy with his work as a member of the War Propaganda Bureau. He
wrote at the time: “I am no longer an artist. I am a messenger who will bring back
word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on forever.
Feeble, inarticulate will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may burn
their lousy souls.” However, as Myfanwy Piper has pointed out: “The drawings he
made then, of shorn trees in ruined and flooded landscapes, were the works that made
Nash’s reputation. They were shown at the Leicester Galleries in 1918 together with
his first efforts at oil painting, in which he was self-taught and quickly successful,
though his drawings made in the field had a more immediate public impact.
 H

In 1919 Nash moved to Dymchurch in Kent, beginning his well-known series of

pictures of the sea, the breakwaters, and the long wall that prevents the sea from
flooding Romney Marsh. This included the Winter Sea and Dymchurch Steps. Nash
also painted the landscapes of the Chiltern Hills. In 1924 and 1928 he had successful
exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries. Despite this popular acclaim in 1929, his work
became more abstract. In 1933 Nash founded Unit One, the group of experimental
painters, sculptors, and architects.

During the Second World War Nash was employed by the Ministry of Information and
the Air Ministry and paintings produced by him during this period include the Battle of
Britain and Totes Meer. His biographer, Myfanwy Piper, has argued: “This war
disturbed Nash but did not change his art as the last one had. His style and his habits
were formed, and in the new war, he treated his new subjects as he had treated those
he had been thinking about for so long. His late paintings, both oils, and watercolors
are alternately brilliant and somber in color with the light of setting suns and rising
moons spreading over wooded and hilly landscapes. “Paul Nash died at 35 Boscombe
Spa Road, Bournemouth, on 11th July 1946.
SECTION 1: QUESTIONS 1-13
Questions 1-4

Choose the correct letter, A-G?

Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

What four statements are correct concerning Nash’s story?

 A  He did not make an effort after becoming a high-ranking official in the army.
 B  He had a dream since his childhood.
 C  He once temporarily ceased his painting career for some reason.
 D  He was not affected by certain shows attractive to his other peers.
 E  He had cooperation in art with his relative.
 F  Some of his paintings were presented in a chaotic way.
 G  His achievement after being enlisted in the army did not as much attention as his
previous works.
Questions 5-10

The reading Passage has eleven paragraphs A-I.

Write the correct letter A-I, in boxes 5-10 on your answer sheet.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

NB You may use any letter more than once.

5   a charming lady in Nash’s eyes
6   Nash’s passion for following particularly appreciated artists
7   Nash’s works with contrast elements
8   the true cause for Nash to join the military service
9   the noticeable impact on Nash’s growth exerted from the rearing
environment
10   high praise for Nash’s unique taste of presenting his works
Questions 11-13

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the

passage for each answer.

Because of a popular display of Nash’s works created in the army, what did his leader
designate him as?
11 

How did Nash learn oil painting?

12 

What change took place for Nash’s painting style in the late second decade of the
twentieth century?
13 

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2.

Tool for ancient writing

With time, the record-keepers developed systematized symbols from their drawings.
These symbols represented words and sentences but were easier and faster to draw and
universally recognized for meaning. The discovery of clay made portable records
possible (you can’t carry a cave wall around with you). Early merchants used clay
tokens with pictographs to record the quantities of materials traded or shipped. These
tokens date back to about 8,500 B.C. With the high volume and the repetition inherent
in record keeping, pictographs evolved and slowly lost their picture detail. They
became abstract figures representing sounds in spoken communication. The alphabet
replaced pictographs between 1700 and 1500 B.C. in the Sinaitic world. The current
Hebrew alphabet and writing became popular around 600 B.C. About 400 B.C. the
Greek alphabet was developed. Greek was the first script written from left to right.
From Greek followed the Byzantine and the Roman (later Latin) writings. In the
beginning, all writing systems had only uppercase letters, when the writing
instruments were refined enough for detailed faces, lowercase was used as well
(around 600 A.D.)

The earliest means of writing that approached pen and paper as we know them today
was developed by the Greeks. They employed a writing stylus, made of metal, bone, or
ivory, to placemarks upon wax-coated tablets. The tablets are made in hinged pairs,
closed to protect the scribe’s notes. The first examples of handwriting (purely text
messages made by hand) originated in Greece. The Grecian scholar, Cadmus invented
the written letter – text messages on paper sent from one individual to another.

Writing was advancing beyond chiselling pictures into stone or wedging pictographs
into wet clay. The Chinese invented and perfected ‘Indian Ink’. Originally designed
for blacking the surfaces of raised stone-carved hieroglyphics, the ink was a mixture of
soot from pine smoke and lamp oil mixed with the gelatin of donkey skin and musk.
The ink invented by the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu (2697 B.C.), became
common by the year 1200 B.C. Other cultures developed inks using natural dyes and
colours derived from berries, plants, and minerals. In early writings, different coloured
inks had ritual meanings attached to each colour.

The invention of inks paralleled the introduction of the paper. The early Egyptians,
Romans, Greeks, and Hebrews, used papyrus and parchment papers. One of the oldest
pieces of writing on papyrus known to us today is the Egyptian “Prisse Papyrus”
which dates back to 2000 B.C. The Romans created a reed-pen perfect for parchment
and ink, from the hollow tubular stems of marsh grasses, especially from the jointed
bamboo plant. They converted bamboo stems into a primitive form of a fountain pen.
They cut one end into the form of a pen nib or point. A writing fluid or ink filled the
stem, squeezing the reed forced fluid to the nib

By 400 A.D. a stable form of ink developed, a composite of iron salts, nutgalls, and
gum, the basic formula, which was to remain in use for centuries. Its colour when first
applied to paper was a bluish-black, rapidly turning into a darker black and then over
the years fading to the familiar dull brown colour commonly seen in old documents.
Wood-fiber paper was invented in China in 105 A.D. but it only became known about
(due to Chinese secrecy) in Japan around 700 A.D. and was brought to Spain by the
Arabs in 711 A.D. Paper was not widely used throughout Europe until paper mills
were built in the late 14th century

The writing instrument that dominated for the longest period in history (over one
thousand years) was the quill pen. Introduced around 700 A.D., the quill is a pen made
from a bird feather. The strongest quills were those taken from living birds in the
spring from the five outer left wing feathers. The left wing was favoured because the
feathers curved outward and away when used by a right-handed writer. Goose feathers
were most common; swan feathers were of a premium grade being scarcer and more
expensive. For making fine lines, crow feathers were the best, and then came the
feathers of the eagle, owl, hawk, and turkey.

There were also disadvantages associated with the use of quill pens, including a
lengthy preparation time. The early European writing parchments made from animal
skins required much scraping and cleaning. A lead and a ruler made margins. To
sharpen the quill, the writer needed a special knife (origins of the term “pen-knife”.)
Beneath the writer’s high-top desk was a coal stove, used to dry the ink as fast as
possible.

Plant-fiber paper became the primary medium for writing after another dramatic
invention took place: Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with replaceable
wooden or metal letters in 1436. Simpler kinds of printing e.g. stamps with names
used much earlier in China, did not find their way to Europe. During the centuries,
many newer printing technologies were developed based on Gutenberg’s printing
machine e.g. offset printing.

Articles written by hand had resembled printed letters until scholars began to change
the form of writing, using capitals and small letters, writing with more of a slant and
connecting letters. Gradually writing became more suitable to the speed the new
writing instruments permitted. The credit of inventing Italian ‘running hand’ or cursive
handwriting with its Roman capitals and small letters, goes to Aldus Manutius of
Venice, who departed from the old set forms in 1495 A.D. By the end of the 16th
century, the old Roman capitals and Greek letterforms transformed into the twenty-six
alphabet letters we know today, both for upper and lower-case letters. When writers
had both better inks and paper, and handwriting had developed into both an art form
and an everyday occurrence, man’s inventive nature once again turned to improving
the writing instrument, leading to the development of the modern fountain pens
SECTION 2: QUESTIONS 14-26
 Questions 14-15

What two features do record retention possess in nature?

 A  Easier and faster
 B  Capaciousness
 C  portable
 D  convenient
 E  Iterance
Question 16
16
What hurts the technique of producing wooden paper from popularity for a long time?
 A  Scarcity
 B  Complexity
 C  Confidentiality by the inventors
 D  High cost
Questions 17-23

The reading Passage has eleven paragraphs A-I.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-I, in boxes 17-23 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

17   the working principle of the primitive pens made of plant stems
18   a writing tool commonly implemented for the longest time
19   liquid for writing firstly devised by Chinese
20   majuscule scripts as the unique written form originally
21   the original invention of today’s correspondences
22   the mention of two basic writing instruments being invented
coordinately
23   a design to safeguard the written content
Questions 24-26

Answer the s below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the

passage for each answer.
What makes it not so convenient to use the quill pens?
24 

When did one more breakthrough occur following the popularity of paper of plant
fibres?
25 

What inventions were the results of human’s creative instinct of developing writing
tools?
26 

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3.

The Bite That Heat

Scientists are unlocking the medical potential of venom.

Michael decided to go for a swim. He was on vacation with his family in Guerrero,
Mexico, and it was hotter than blazes. He grabbed his swimming trunks from where
they’d been drying on a chair, slid them on, and jumped into the pool. Instead of cool
relief, a burning pain ripped through the back of his thigh. Tearing off his trunks, he
leaped naked from the pool, his leg on fire. Behind him a small, ugly, yellow creature
was treading water. He scooped it into a Tupperware container, and the caretaker of
the house rushed him to the local Red Cross facility, where doctors immediately
identified his attacker: a bark scorpion, Centruroides sculpturatus, one of the most
venomous species in North America. The fierce pain from a sting is typically followed
by what feels like electric shocks racking the body. Occasionally victims die.

Luckily for Michael (who asked me not to give his Ml name), the bark scorpion is
common in the area, and antivenom was readily available. He had an injection and was
released a few hours later. In about 30 hours the pain was gone. What happened next
could not have been predicted. For eight years Michael had endured a condition called
ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic autoimmune disease of the skeleton, a sort of spinal
arthritis. No one knows what triggers it. In the worst cases the spine may fuse, leaving
the patient forever stooped and in anguish. “My back hurt every morning, and during
bad flare-ups it was so horrible I couldn’t even walk,” he says.

C
But days after the the scorpion sting, the pain went away, and now, two years later, he
remains essentially pain free and off most of his medications. As a doctor himself,
Michael is cautious about overstating the role of the scorpion’s venom in his
remission. Still, he says, “if my pain came back, I’d let that scorpion sting me again.”
Venom-the stuff that drips from the fangs and stingers of creatures lurking on the
hiking trail or hiding in the cellar or under the woodpile—is nature’s most efficient
killer. Venom is exquisitely honed to stop a body in its tracks. The complex soup
swirls with toxic proteins and peptides——short strings of amino acids similar to
proteins. The molecules may have different targets and effects, but they work
synergistically for the mightiest punch. Some go for the nervous system, paralyzing by
blocking messages between nerves and muscle. Some eat away at molecules so that
cells and tissues collapse. Venom can kill by clotting blood and stopping the heart or
by preventing clotting and triggering a killer bleed.

All venom is multifaceted and multitasking. (The difference between venom and
poison is that venom is injected, or dibbled, into victims by way of specialized body
parts, and poison is ingested.) Dozens, even hundreds, of toxins can be delivered in a
single bite, some with redundant jobs and others with unique ones. In the evolutionary
arms race between predator and prey, weapons and defenses are constantly tweaked.
Drastically potent concoctions can result: Imagine administering poison to an
adversary, then jabbing him with a knife, then finishing him off with a bullet to the
head. That’s venom at work.

Ironically, the properties that make venom deadly are also what make it so valuable for
medicine. Many venom toxins target the same molecules that need to be controlled to
treat diseases. Venom works fast and is highly specific. Its active components—those
peptides and proteins, working as toxins diabetes have been derived from venom. New
treatments for autoimmune diseases, cancer, and pain could be available within a
decade.

“We aren’t talking just a few novel drugs but entire classes of drugs,” says National
Geographic Society Emerging Explorer Zoltan Takacs, a toxinologist and
herpetologist. So far, fewer than a thousand toxins have been scrutinized for medicinal
value, and a dozen or so major drugs have made it to market. “There could be upwards
of 20 million venom toxins out there waiting to be screened,” Takacs says. “It’s huge.
Venom has opened up whole new avenues of pharmacology.” Toxins from venom and
poison sources are also giving us a clearer picture of how proteins that control many of
the body’s crucial cellular functions work. Studies of the deadly poison tetrodotoxin
(TTX) from puffer fish, for instance, have revealed intricate details about the way
nerve cells communicate.

G
“We ’re motivated to look for new compounds to lessen human suffering,” Angel
Yanagihara of the University of Hawaii told me. “But while doing that, you may
uncover things you don’t expect.” Driven in part out of revenge for a box jellyfish
sting she endured 15 years ago, Yanagihara discovered a potential wound-healing
agent within the tubules that contain jellyfish venom. “It had nothing to do with the
venom itself,” she said. “By getting intimate with a noxious animal, I’ve been
informed way beyond my expectations.”

More than 100,000 animals have evolved to produce venom, along with the glands to
house it and the apparatuses to expel it: snakes, scorpions, spiders, a few lizards, bees,
sea creatures such as octopuses, numerous species of fish, and cone snails. The male
duck-billed platypus, which carries venom inside ankle spurs, is one of the few
venomous mammals. Venom and its components emerged independently, again and
again, in different animal groups. The composition of the venom of a single snake
species varies from place to place and between adults and their young. An individual
snake’s venom may even change with its diet.

Although evolution has been fine-tuning these compounds for more than a hundred
million years, venom’s molecular architecture has been in place much longer. Nature
repurposes key molecules from around the body—the blood, brain, digestive tract, and
elsewhere—to serve animals for predation or protection. “It makes sense for nature to
steal the scaffolds already in place,” Takacs says. “To make a toxin to wreck the
nervous system, it’s most efficient to take a template from the brain that already works
in that system, make some tiny changes, and there you have it: Now it’s a toxin.” Not
all venom kills, of course—bees have it as a nonlethal defense, and the male platypus
uses it to show rival males who’s boss during mating season. But mostly it’s for
killing, or at least immobilizing, an animal’s next meal. Humans are often accidental
victims. The World Health Organization estimates that every year some five million
bites kill 100,000 people, although the actual number is presumed to be much higher.
In rural areas of developing countries, where most bites occur, victims may not be able
to get treatment or may instead choose traditional therapies and are therefore not
counted.
SECTION 3: QUESTIONS 27-40
Questions 27-35

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage？

In boxes 27-35 on your answer sheet, 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

27   Michael was unluckily hit by electric shocks and nearly lost his
life during his vacation.
28   The disease Michael had suffered from for eight years was caused
by an accident
29   Michael is grateful for the bark scorpion bite because it helped
him recover from the ankylosing spondylitis.
30   No venom is just responsible for one job.
31   There is no difference between venom and poison.
32   Venom can kill while it can also be used as medicine to save.
33   New treatments for cancer are now available in the market.
34   So far 20 million venom toxins have been checked for medical
use.
35   The majority of mammals carry venom inside their bodies.
Questions 36-40

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each
answer.

Write your answers in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

the way how venom works can be utilised to create...

36 

A venom source such as has helped to present complex facts about how nerve cells
convey information to each other.
37 

Tens of thousands of animals have developed and which are respectively responsible
for storing and letting out venom.
38 

The makeup of venom of a snake may change with places, ages and .
39 

Some animal uses venom to warn of its exclusive power during the mating season.
40 
TEST 4
READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading
Passage 1.

The success of cellulose

Not too long ago many investors made the bet that renewable fuels from bio-mass
would be the next big thing in energy. Converting corn, sugarcane, and soybeans into
ethanol or diesel-type fuels lessens our nation’s dependence on oil imports while
cutting carbon dioxide emissions. But already the nascent industry faces challenges.
Escalating demand is hiking food prices while farmers clear rainforest habitats to grow
fuel crops. And several recent studies say that certain biofuel-production processes
either fail to yield net energy gains or release more carbon dioxide than they use.

A successor tier of start-up ventures aims to avoid those problems. Rather than
focusing on the starches, sugars, and fats of food crops, many of the prototype
bioethanol processes work with lignocellulose, the “woody” tissue that strengthens the
cell walls of plants, says University of Massachusetts Amherst chemical engineer
George W. Huber. Although cellulose breaks down less easily than sugars and starches
and thus requires a complex series of enzyme-driven chemical reactions, its use opens
the industry to nonfood plant feedstocks such as agricultural wastes, wood chips, and
switchgrass. But no company has yet demonstrated a cost-competitive industrial
process for making cellulosic biofuels.

So scientists and engineers are working on dozens of possible biofuel-processing

routes, reports Charles Wyman, a chemical engineer at the University of California,
Riverside, who is a founder of Mascoma Corporation in Cambridge, Mass., a leading
developer of cellulosic ethanol processing.” There’s no miracle process out there,” he
remarks. And fine-tuning a process involves considerable money and time. “The oil
companies say that it takes 10 years to fully commercialize an industrial processing
route,” warns Huber, who has contributed some thermochemical techniques to another
biomass start-up, Virent Energy Systems in Madison, Wis.

One promising biofuel procedure that avoids the complex enzymatic chemistry to
break down cellulose is now being explored by Coskata in Warrenville, Ill., a firm
launched in 2006 by high-profile investors and entrepreneurs (General Motors recently
took a minority stake in it as well). In the Coskata operation, a conventional
gasification system will use heat to turn various feedstocks into a mixture of carbon
monoxide and hydrogen called syngas, says Richard Tobey, vice president of
Engineering and R&D. The ability to handle multiple plant feedstocks would boost the
flexibility of the overall process because each region in the country has access to
certain feedstocks but not others.

Instead of using thermochemical methods to convert the syngas to fuel- a process that
can be significantly more costly because of the added expense of pressurizing gases,
according to Tobey – the Coskata group chose a biochemical route. The group focused
on five promising strains of ethanol-excreting bacteria that Ralph Tanner, a
microbiologist at the University of Oklahoma, had discovered years before in the
oxygen-free sediments of a swamp. These anaerobic bugs make ethanol by voraciously
consuming syngas.

The “heart and soul of the Coskata process,” as Tobey puts it, is the bioreactor in
which the bacteria live. “Rather than searching for food in the fermentation mash in a
large tank, our bacteria wait for the gas to be delivered to them,” he explains. The firm
relies on plastic tubes, the filter-fabric straws as thin as human hair. The syngas flows
through the straws, and water is pumped across their exteriors. The gases diffuse
across the selective membrane to the bacteria embedded in the outer surface of the
tubes, which permits no water inside. “We get an efficient mass transfer with the
tubes, which is not easy,” Tobey says. “Our data suggest that in an optimal setting we
could get 90 percent of the energy value of the gases into our fuel.” After the bugs eat
the gases, they release ethanol into the surrounding water. Standard distillation or
filtration techniques could extract the alcohol from the water.

Coskata researchers estimate that their commercialized process could deliver ethanol
at under $1 per gallon-less than half of today’s $2-per-gallon wholesale price, Tobey
claims. Outside evaluators of Argonne National Laboratory measured the input-output
“energy balance” of the Coskata process and found that, optimally, it can produce 7.7
times as much energy in the end product as it takes to make it.

The company plans to construct a 40,000-gallon-a-year pilot plant near the GM test
track in Milford, Mich., by the end of this year and hopes to build a full-scale, 100-
million-gallon-a-year plant by 2011. Coskata may have some company by then;
Bioengineering Resources in Fayetteville, Ark., is already developing what seems to
be a similar three-step pathway in which syngas is consumed by bacteria isolated by
James Gaddy, a retired chemical engineer at the University of Arkansas. Considering
the advances in these and other methods, plant cellulose could provide the greener
ethanol everyone wants.
SECTION 1: QUESTIONS 1-13
Questions 1-6

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or
deeds below.

Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

NB you may use any letter more than once

A George W. Huber

B James Gaddy

C Richard Tobey

D Charles Wyman

1   A key component to gain success lies in the place where the organisms
survive.
2   Engaged in separating fixed procedures to produce ethanol in the
homologous biochemical way.
3   Assists to develop certain skills.
4   It needs arduous efforts to achieve highly efficient transfer.
5   There is no shortcut to expedite the production process.
6   A combination of chemistry and biology can considerably lower the cost
needed for the production company.
Questions 7-10

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet, 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

7   A shift from conventionally targeted areas of the vegetation to get

ethanol takes place.
8   It takes a considerably long way before a completely mature
process is reached.
9   The Coskata group sees no bright future for the cost advantage
available in the production of greener ethanol.
10   Some enterprises are trying to buy the shares of Coskata group.
Questions 11-13

Summary

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO

MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

Tobey has noticed that the Coskata process can achieve huge success because it
utilizes 11   as the bioreactor on whose exterior surface the bacteria take
the syngas going through the coated 12   To produce the ethanol into the
water outside which researchers will later 13   by certain techniques. The
figures show a pretty high percentage of energy can be transferred into fuel which is
actually very difficult to achieve.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2.

Life code: unlocked!

On an airport shuttle bus to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa
Barbara, Calif., Chris Wiggins took a colleague’s advice and opened a Microsoft Excel
spreadsheet. It had nothing to do with the talk on biopolymer physics he was invited to
give. Rather the columns and rows of numbers that stared back at him referred to the
genetic activity of budding yeast. Specifically, the numbers represented the amount of
messenger RNA (MRNA) expressed by all 6,200 genes of the yeast over the course of
its reproductive cycle. “It was the first time I ever saw anything like this,” Wiggins
recalls of that spring day in 2002. “How to make sense of all this data?”

Instead of shirking from this question, the 36-year-old applied mathematician and
physicist at Columbia University embraced it-and now six years later he thinks he has
an answer. By foraying into fields outside his own, Wiggins has drudged up tools from
a branch of artificial intelligence called machine learning to model the collective
protein-making activity of genes from real-world biological data. Engineers originally
designed these tools in the late 1950s to predict output from input. Wiggins and his
colleagues have now brought machine learning to the natural sciences and tweaked it
so that it can also tell a story-one not only about input and output but also about what
happens inside a model of gene regulation, the black box in between.

The impetus for this work began in the late 1990s, when high-throughput techniques
generated more mRNA expression profiles and DNA sequences than ever before,
“opening up a completely different way of thinking about biological phenomena,”
Wiggins says. Key among these techniques were DNA microarrays, chips that provide
a panoramic view of the activity of genes and their expression levels in any cell type,
simultaneously and under myriad conditions. As noisy and incomplete as the data
were, biologists could now query which genes turn on or off in different cells and
determine the collection of proteins that give rise to a cell’s characteristic features,
healthy or diseased.

Yet predicting such gene activity requires uncovering the fundamental rules that
govern it. “Over time, these rules have been locked in by cells,” says theoretical
physicist Harmen Bussemaker, now an associate professor of biology at Columbia.
“Evolution has kept the good stuff.” To find these rules, scientists needed statistics to
infer the interaction between genes and the proteins that regulate them and to then
mathematically describe this network’s underlying structure-the dynamic pattern of
gene and protein activity over time. But physicists who did not work with particles (or
planets, for that matter) viewed statistics as nothing short of an anathema. “If your
experiment requires statistics,” British physicist Ernest Rutherford once said, “you
ought to have done a better experiment.”

But in working with microarrays, “the experiment has been done without you,”
Wiggins explains. “And biology doesn’t hand you a model to make sense of the data.”
Even more challenging, the building blocks that makeup DNA, RNA, and proteins are
assembled in myriad ways; moreover, subtly different rules of interaction govern their
activity, making it difficult, if not impossible, to reduce their patterns of interaction to
fundamental laws. Some genes and proteins are not even known. “You are trying to
find something compelling about the natural world in a context where you don’t know
very much,” says William Bialek, a biophysicist at Princeton University. “You’re
forced to be agnostic.” Wiggins believes that many machine-learning algorithms
perform well under precisely these conditions. When working with so many unknown
variables, “machine learning lets the data decide what’s worth looking at,” he says.

At the Kavli Institute, Wiggins began building a model of a gene regulatory network in
a yeast-the set of rules by which genes selectively orchestrate how vigorously DNA is
transcribed into mRNA. As he worked with different algorithms, he started to attend
discussions on gene regulation led by Christina Leslie, who ran the computational
biology group at Columbia at the time. Leslie suggested using a specific machine-
learning tool called a classifier. Say the algorithm must discriminate between pictures
that have bicycles in them and pictures that do not. A classifier sifts through labeled
examples and measures everything it can about them, gradually learning the decision
rules that govern the grouping. From these rules, the algorithm generates a model that
can determine whether or not new pictures have bikes in them. In gene regulatory
networks, the learning task becomes the problem of predicting whether genes increase
or decrease their protein-making activity.

The algorithm that Wiggins and Leslie began building in the fall of 2002 was trained
on the DNA sequences and mRNA levels of regulators expressed during a range of
conditions in yeast-when the yeast was cold, hot, starved, and so on. Specifically, this
algorithm-MEDUSA (for motif element discrimination using sequence agglomeration)
-scans every possible pairing between a set of DNA promoter sequences, called motifs,
and regulators. Then, much like a child might match a list of words with their
definitions by drawing a line between the two, MEDUSA finds the pairing that best
improves the fit between the model and the data it tries to emulate. (Wiggins refers to
these pairings as edges.) Each time MEDUSA finds a pairing, it updates the model by
adding a new rule to guide its search for the next pairing. It then determines the
strength of each pairing by how well the rule improves the existing model. The
hierarchy of numbers enables Wiggins and his colleagues to determine which pairings
are more important than others and how they can collectively influence the activity of
each of the yeast’s 6,200 genes. By adding one pairing at a time, MEDUSA can
predict which genes ratchet up their RNA production or clamp that production down,
as well as reveal the collective mechanisms that orchestrate an organism’s
transcriptional logic.
SECTION 2: QUESTIONS 14-26
Questions 14-19

The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-G from the list below.

Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i The search for the better-fit matching between the model and the gained figures to
foresee the activities of the genes

ii The definition of MEDUSA

iii A flashback of commencement for a far-reaching breakthrough

iv A drawing of the gene map

v An algorithm used to construct a specific model to discern the appearance of

something new by the joint effort of Wiggins and another scientist

vi An introduction of a background tracing back to the availability of mature

techniques for detailed research on genes

vii A way out to face the challenge confronting the scientist on the deciding of
researchable data.

viii A failure to find out some specific genes controlling the production of certain
proteins

ix The use of a means from another domain for reference

x A tough hurdle on the way to find the law governing the activities of the genes

Example: Paragraph A iii

14   Paragraph B
15   Paragraph C
16   Paragraph D
17   Paragraph E
18   Paragraph F
19   Paragraph G
Questions 20-22

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 20-22 on your answer sheet, 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

20   Wiggins is the first man to use DNA microarrays for the research
on genes.
21   There is almost no possibility for the effort to decrease the
patterns of interaction between DNA, RNA, and proteins.
22   Wiggins holds a very positive attitude on the future of genetic
research.
Questions 23-26

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO

MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

Wiggins states that the astoundingly rapid development of techniques concerning the
components of genes aroused the researchers to look at 23   from a totally
new way. 24   is the heart and soul of these techniques and no matter
what the 25   were, at the same time they can offer a whole picture of the
genes’ activities as well as 26   in all types of cells. With these
techniques, scientists could locate the exact gene which was on or off to manipulate
the production of the proteins.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3.

THE MPEMBA EFFECT

In 300 BC, the famous philosopher Aristotle wrote about a strange phenomenon that
he had observed: “Many people, when they want to cool water quickly, begin by
putting it in the sun.” Other philosophers over the ages noted the same result, but were
unable to explain it.

In 1963, a young Tanzanian student named Erasto Mpemba noticed that the ice cream
he was making froze faster if the mix was placed in the freezer while warm than if it
were at room temperature. He persisted in questioning why this occurred, and
eventually physicist Denis Osborne began a serious investigation into what is now
known as the Mpemba Effect. He and Mpemba co-authored a paper in New Scientist
in 1969, which produced scientific descriptions of some of the many factors at work in
freezing water.

It was initially hypothesised that the warm bowl melted itself a place in the ice on the
freezer shelf, thus embedding its base in a ‘nest’ of ice, which would accelerate
freezing. The hypothesis was tested by comparing the result when bowls of warm
water were placed on ice and on a dry wire shelf; this demonstrated that the ice nest
actually had little effect. A second suggestion was that the warmer water would be
evaporating at its surface, thus reducing the volume needing to be frozen, but this idea
was also shown to be insignificant.

Thermometers placed in the water showed that the cooler water dropped to freezing
temperature well before the warmer bowlful, and yet the latter always froze solid first.
Experiments at different temperatures showed that water at 50C took longest to freeze
in a conventional freezer, while water initially at 350C was quickest. On further
examination, an explanation for this paradox began to emerge. Losing heat from the
water occurs at the points where it is in touch with the colder atmosphere of the
freezer, namely the sides of the bowl and the water surface.

A warm surface will lose heat faster than a cold one because of the contrast between
the temperatures; but of course there is more heat to be lost from one bowl than the
other! If the surface can be kept at a higher temperature, the higher rate of heat loss
will continue. As long as the water remains liquid, the cooling portion on top will sink
to the bottom of the bowl as the warmer water below rises to take its place. The early
freezing that may occur on the sides and base of the container will amplify the effect.

The bowl that is more uniformly cold will have far less temperature difference so the
water flow will be minimal. Another inhibiting factor for this container is that ice will
also form quite quickly on the surface. This not only acts as insulation, but will
virtually stop the helpful effects of the water circulating inside the bowl.

Ultimately, the rate of cooling the core of this body of water becomes so slow that the
other warmer one is always fully frozen first. While there are limitations to this
comparison (for example, we would not see such a result if one quantity were at 10C
and another at 990C) this counter-intuitive result does hold true within the 5–350C
range of temperatures indicated previously.

Since this paper was published, the validity of the research findings has been
questioned by a number of reviewers. They point out that the initial experimental
question was not clearly defined; for example, the researchers needed to decide on
exactly what constituted freezing the water. They also state that the rate at which water
freezes depends on a large number of variables.

Container size is one of these; for the Mpemba Effect to be noticed, the container must
be large enough to allow a free circulation of water to take place, yet small enough for
the freezing areas of the side and base to be effective at extracting heat too. Secondly,
research at a University in St Louis, Missouri, suggests that the Mpemba Effect may
be affected by water purity, or by dissolved gas in the water.

Distilled water is totally free of the particles that are common in normal drinking water
or mineral water. When suspended in water, these particles may have a small effect on
the speed of cooling, especially as ice molecules tend to expel them into the
surrounding water, where they become more concentrated. Just as salt dissolved in
water will raise the boiling point and lower the temperature at which it freezes, the
researchers found that the final portion of ordinary water needed extra cooling, below
zero, before all was frozen solid.
One more factor that can distort the effect is observed if the bowls are not placed
simultaneously into the same freezer. In this case, the freezer thermostat is more likely
to register the presence of a hotter bowl than a colder one, and therefore the change in
internal temperature causes a boost of freezing power as the motor is activated.

The Mpemba Effect is still not fully understood, and researchers continue to delve into
its underlying physics. Physicists cannot reach consensus. Some suggest that
supercooling1 is involved; others that the molecular bonds in the water molecules
affect the rate of cooling and freezing of water. A 2013 competition to explain the
phenomenon run by the Royal Society of Chemistry attracted more than 22,000
entries, with the winning one suggesting supercooling as an important factor so it
seems the question and its underlying explanation continue to fascinate.
SECTION 3: QUESTIONS 27-40
Questions 27-33

Write the correct letter, A–O, in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.
For more than 2000 years people have wondered why raising the 27   of
cold water before cooling it results in more rapid cooling. At first researchers thought
that a warm container created its own icy 28   which made the water freeze
faster, but comparisons with containers resting on a dry 29   indicated that
this was inaccurate. Evaporation of water proved not to be a 30  .
Temperature measurements showed that, although the water in the cooler container
reached 00C before the warmer one, it took longer to actually solidify. The water
temperature drops the most at the top and sides of the container. Provided there is a
temperature 31   , the water will continue to circulate and to cool down.
Cooler water will have less wate 32  , and thus a slower rate of freezing. If
ice forms on the top of the water, this will further slow the 33   of freezing,
but if it forms on the bottom and the sides of the container, this will increase the rate of
cooling.
A melt

B element

C process

D centre

E acceleration

F surface
G factor

H hollow

I matter

J circulation

K limit

L significance

M theory

N difference

O result

P temperature

Questions 34-39

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading

Passage ? In boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet, 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

34   The Mpemba Effect cannot be seen when comparing liquids with
an extreme temperature difference.
35   Osborne and Mpemba’s results are still widely accepted today.
36   The size of the container does not alter the Mpemba Effect.
37   Osborne and Mpemba experimented on both pure and impure
water.
38   One variable is the timing of containers in a freezer.
 39   Physicists now agree that supercooling accounts for the Mpemba
Effect.
Question 40

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

40
The Mpemba Effect is best summed up as the observation that
 A  ice cream freezes at different temperatures.
 B  different sources of heat result in water cooling at different rates.
 C  salt water freezes at a lower temperature than ordinary water.
 D  warmer water can freeze faster than colder water.