Reading forecast 20 5 kho tài liệu học tiếng anh

India, forexample, has been self-sufficient in food for 15 years, and its granaries are full, but more than 200million Indians - one fifth of the country's population - are malnourished

Foot Pedal Irrigation

A Until now, governments and development agencies have tried to tackle the problem throughlarge-scale projects: gigantic dams, sprawling, irrigation canals and vast new fields of high-yieldcrops introduced during the Green Revolution, the famous campaign to increase grain harvests indeveloping nations Traditional irrigation, however, has degraded the soil in many areas, and thereservoirs behind dams can quickly fill up with silt, reducing their storage capacity and deprivingdownstream farmers of fertile sediments Furthermore, although the Green Revolution has greatlyexpanded worldwide farm production since 1950, poverty stubbornly persists in Africa, Asia and LatinAmerica Continued improvements in the productivity of large farms may play the main role inboosting food supply, but local efforts to provide cheap, individual irrigation systems to small farmsmay offer a better way to lift people out of poverty

BThe Green Revolution was designed to increase the overall food supply, not to raise the incomes ofthe rural poor, so it should be no surprise that it did not eradicate poverty or hunger India, forexample, has been self-sufficient in food for 15 years, and its granaries are full, but more than 200million Indians - one fifth of the country's population - are malnourished because they cannot afford

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S1 脚踏泵灌溉（科技类）

the food they need and because the country's safety nets are deficient In 2000, 189 nationscommitted to the Millennium Development Goals, which called for cutting world poverty in half by

2015 With business as usual, however, we have little hope of achieving most of the Millennium goals,

no matter how much money rich countries contribute to poor ones

C The supply-driven strategies of the Green Revolution, however, may not help subsistence farmers,who must play to their strengths to compete in the global marketplace The average size of a familyfarm is less than four acres in India, 1.8 acres in Bangladesh and about half an acre in China.Combines and other modern farming tools are too expensive to be used on such small areas AnIndian farmer selling surplus wheat grown on his one-acre plot could not possibly compete with thehighly efficient and subsidized Canadian wheat farms that typically stretch over thousands of acres.Instead subsistence farmers should exploit the fact that their labor costs are the lowest in the world,giving them a comparative advantage in growing and selling high-value, intensely farmed crops

DPaul Polak saw firsthand the need for a small-scale strategy in 1981 when he met Abdul Rahman, afarmer in the Noakhali district of Bangladesh From his three quarter-acre plots of rain-fed rice fields,Abdul could grow only 700 kilograms of rice each year - 300 kilograms less than what he needed tofeed his family During the three months before the October rice harvest came in, Abdul and his wifehad to watch silently while their three children survived on one meal a day or less As Polak walkedwith him through the scattered fields he had inherited from his father, Polak asked what he needed tomove out of poverty "Control of water for my crops," he said, "at a price I can afford."

ESoon Polak learned about a simple device that could help Abdul achieve his goal: the treadle pump.Developed in the late 1970s by Norwegian engineer Gunnar Barnes, the pump is operated by a personwalking in place on a pair of treadles and two handle arms made of bamboo Properly adjusted andmaintained, it can be operated several hours a day without tiring the users Each treadle pump hastwo cylinders which are made of engineering plastic The diameter of a cylinder is 100.5mm and theheight is 280mm The pump is capable of working up to a maximum depth of 7 meters Operation

beyond 7 meters is not recommended to preserve the integrity of the rubber components The pumpmechanism has piston and foot valve assemblies The treadle action creates alternate strokes in thetwo pistons that lift the water in pulses.

FThe human-powered pump can irrigate half an acre of vegetables and costs only $25 (including theexpense of drilling a tube well down to the groundwater) Abdul heard about the treadle pump from acousin and was one of the first farmers in Bangladesh to buy one He borrowed the $25 from an uncleand easily repaid the loan four months later During the five-month dry season, when Bangladeshistypically farm very little, Abdul used the treadle pump to grow a quarter-acre of chili peppers,tomatoes, cabbage and eggplants He also improved the yield of one of his rice plots by irrigating it.His family ate some of the vegetables and sold the rest at the village market, earning a net profit of

$100 With his new income, Abdul was able to buy rice for his family to eat, keep his two sons inschool until they were 16 and set aside a little money for his daughter's dowry When Polak visited himagain in 1984, he had doubled the size of his vegetable plot and replaced the thatched roof on hishouse with corrugated tin His family was raising a calf and some chickens He told me that the treadlepump was a gift from God

GBangladesh is particularly well suited for the treadle pump because a huge reservoir of groundwaterlies just a few meters below the farmers' feet In the early 1980s IDE initiated a campaign to marketthe pump, encouraging 75 small private-sector companies to manufacture the devices and severalthousand village dealers and tube-well drillers to sell and install them Over the next 12 years one and

a half million farm families purchased treadle pumps, which increased the farmers' net income by atotal of $150 million a year The cost of IDE's market-creation activities was only $12 million,leveraged by the investment of $37.5 million from the farmers themselves In contrast, the expense ofbuilding a conventional dam and canal system to irrigate an equivalent area of farmland would be inthe range of $2,000 per acre, or $1.5 billion

Questions 1 - 6

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

In boxes 1 - 6 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the view of the writer

FALSE if the statement contradicts the view of the writer

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

1 It is more effective to resolve poverty or food problem in large scale rather than in small scale

2 Construction of gigantic dams costs more time in developing countries

3 Green revolution foiled to increase global crop production from the mid of 20th century

4 Agricultural production in Bangladesh declined in last decade

5 Farmer Abdul Rahman knew how to increase production himself

6 Small pump spread into big project in Bangladesh in the past decade

Questions 7 - 10

Filling the blanks in diagram of treadle pump's each parts

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

PULLLEYS

Handles of pump'smaterials is7

Foot valves and

9 whichconnects pumpmechanism cangenerate water pulse.VALVE BOX

Questions 11 - 13

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

11 How large area can a treadle pump irrigate the field at a low level of expense?

12 What is Abdul's new roof made of?

13 How much did Bangladesh farmers invest by IDE's stimulation?

S1297109 & Related Question Answers

1 FALSE 2 NOT GIVEN 3 FALSE 4 NOT GIVEN

5 TRUE 6 TRUE 7 bamboo 8 cylinders

9 Piston 10 7 11 half an acre 12 corrugated tin

13 $37.5 million/37.5 million dollars

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A 600 years ago, roller coaster pioneers never would have imagined the advancements that have beenmade to create the roller coasters of today The tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world is the Kingda

Ka, a coaster in New Jersey that launches its passengers from zero to 128 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds(most sports cars take over four seconds to get to just 60 miles per hour) It then heaves its riders skyward

at a 90-degree angle (straight up) until it reaches a height of 456 feet, over one and a half football fields,above the ground, before dropping another 418 feet (Coaster Grotto "Kingda Ka") With that said, rollercoasters are about more than just speed and height, they are about the creativity of the designers that buildthem, each coaster having its own unique way of producing intense thrills at a lesser risk than the averagecar ride Roller coasters have evolved drastically over the years, from their primitive beginnings asRussian ice slides, to the metal monsters of today Their combination of creativity and structural elementsmake them one of the purest forms of architecture

B At first glance, a roller coaster is something like a passenger train It consists of a series of connectedcars that move on tracks But unlike a passenger train, a roller coaster has no engine or power source of its

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Passage Backgrounds

S1 过山车（历史类）

own For most of the ride, the train is moved by gravity and momentum To build up this momentum, youneed to get the train to the top of the first hill or give it a powerful launch The traditional liftingmechanism is a long length of chain running up the hill under the track The chain is fastened in a loop,which is wound around a gear at the top of the hill and another one at the bottom of the hill The gear atthe bottom of the hill is turned by a simple motor This turns the chain loop so that it continually moves upthe hill like a long conveyer belt The coaster cars grip onto the chain with several chain dogs, sturdyhinged hooks When the train rolls to the bottom of the hill, the dogs catches onto the chain links Once thechain dog is hooked, the chain simply pulls the train to the top of the hill At the summit, the chain dog isreleased and the train starts its descent down the hill.

CRoller coasters have a long, fascinating history The direct ancestors of roller coasters were monumentalice slides - long, steep wooden-slides covered in ice, some as high as 70 feet - that were popular in Russia

in the 16th and 17th centuries Riders shot down the slope in sleds made out of wood or blocks of ice,crash-landing in a sand pile Coaster historians diverge on the exact evolution of these ice slides into actualrolling carts The most widespread account is that a few entrepreneurial Frenchmen imported the ice slideidea to France The warmer climate of France tended to melt the ice, so the French started building waxedslides instead, eventually adding wheels to the sleds In 1817, the Russes a Belleville (Russian Mountains

of Belleville) became the first roller coaster where the train was attached to the track (in this case, the trainaxle fit into a carved groove) The French continued to expand on this idea, coming up with more complextrack layouts, with multiple cars and all sorts of twists and turns

D In comparison to the world's first roller coaster, there is perhaps an even greater debate over what wasAmerica's first true coaster Many will say that it is Pennsylvania's own Maunch Chunk-Summit Hill andSwitch Back Railroad The Maunch Chunk-Summit Hill and Switch Back Railroad was originallyAmerica's second railroad, and considered my many to be the greatest coaster of all time Located in theLehigh valley, it was originally used to transport coal from the top of Mount Pisgah to the bottom ofMount Jefferson, until Josiah White, a mining entrepreneur, had the idea of turning it into a part-time thrill

ride Because of its immediate popularity, it soon became strictly a passenger train A steam engine wouldhaul passengers to the top of the mountain, before letting them coast back down, with speeds rumored toreach 100 miles per hour! The reason that it was called a switch back railroad, a switch back track waslocated at the top - where the steam engine would let the riders coast back down This type of trackfeatured a dead end where the steam engine would detach its cars, allowing riders to coast downbackwards The railway went through a couple of minor track changes and name changes over the years,but managed to last from 1829 to 1937, over 100 years.

EThe coaster craze in America was just starting to build The creation of the Switch Back Railway, by LaMarcus Thompson, gave roller coasters national attention Originally built at New York's Coney Island in

1884, Switch Back Railways began popping up all over the country The popularity of these rides maypuzzle the modern-day thrill seeker, due to the mild ride they gave in comparison to the modern-day rollercoaster Guests would pay a nickel to wait in line up to five hours just to go down a pair of side-by-sidetracks with gradual hills that vehicles coasted down at a top speed around six miles per hour Regardless,Switchback Railways were very popular, and sparked many people, including Thompson, to designcoasters that were bigger and better

FThe 1910s and 1920s were probably the best decade that the roller coaster has ever seen The new wave

of technology, such as the "unstop wheels", an arrangement that kept a coaster's wheels to its tracks byresisted high gravitational forces, showed coasters a realm of possibilities that has never been seen before

In 1919, North America alone had about 1,500 roller coasters, a number that was rising rampantly Then,the Great Depression gave a crushing blow to amusement parks all over America As bad as it was,amusement parks had an optimistic look on the future in the late 1930s But, in 1942 roller coasters couldalready feel the effects of World War Two, as they were forced into a shadow of neglect Most, nearly all

of America's roller coasters were shut down To this very day, the number of roller coaster in America isjust a very tiny fraction of the amount of roller coasters in the 1920s

Questions 1 - 4

Answer the questions below.

A diagram that explains the mechanism and working principles of roller coaster

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Traditional lifting mechanism

Traditional roller coasters'lifting force depends on a longline of1 for climbing

up, which is connected firmly to

a2 shape track

There are both3 on thetop and underneath the hill and it ispowered by a4 when ittakes a turn

Questions 5 - 10

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 5 - 10 on your answer sheet.

The first roller coaster was perhaps originated from Russia which is wrapped up by 5 , whichwas introduced into France, and it was modified to 6 , because temperature there would

7 the ice This time 8 were installed on the board In America, the first rollercoaster was said to appear in Pennsylvania, it was actually a railroad which was designed to send

9 between two mountains Josiah White turned it into a thrill ride, it was also called switchback track and a10 there allowed riders to slide downward back again

Questions 11 - 14

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

In boxes 11 - 14 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the view of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the view of the writer

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

11 The most exiting roller coaster in the world is in New Jersey

12 French added more innovation on Russian ice slide including both cars and tracks

13 Switch Back Railways began to gain popularity since its first construction in New York

14 The Great Depression affected amusement parks yet did not shake the significant role of US roller

coasters in the world

S1294106 & Related Question Answers

1 chain 2 loop 3 gear 4 (simple) moter

5 ice 6 waxed slides 7 melt 8 wheels

9 coal 10 steam engine 11 NOT GIVEN 12 YES

13 YES 14 NO

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Learning By Examples

ALearning theory is rooted in the work of Ivan Pavlov, the famous scientist who discover and documented theprinciples governing how animals (humans included) learn in the 1900s Two basic kinds of learning orconditioning occur, one of which is famously known as the classical condition Classical conditioning happenswhen an animal learns to associate a neutral stimulus (signal) with a stimulus that has intrinsic meaning based

on how closely in time the two stimuli are presented The classic example of classical conditioning is a dog'sability to associate the sound of a bell (something that originally has no meaning to the dog) with thepresentation of food (something that has a lot of meaning for the dog) a few moments later Dogs are able tolearn the association between bell and food, and will salivate immediately after hearing the bell once thisconnection has been made Years of learning research have led to the creation of a highly precise learningtheory that can be used to understand and predict how and under what circumstances most any animal willlearn, including human beings, and eventually help people figure out how to change their behaviors

B Role models are a popular notion for guiding child development, but in recent years very interestingresearch has been done on learning by example in other animals If the subject of animal learning is taughtvery much in terms of classical or operant conditioning, it places too much emphasis on how we allow animals

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S1 研究动物行为（动物类）

to learn and not enough on how they are equipped to learn To teach a course of mine I have been dippingprofitably into a very interesting and accessible compilation of papers on social learning in mammals,including chimps and human children, edited by Heyes and Galef.

CThe research reported in one paper started with a school field trip to Israel to a pine forest where many pinecones were discovered, stripped to the central core So the investigation started with no weighty theoreticalintent, but was directed at finding out what was eating the nutritious pine seeds and how they managed to getthem out of the cones The culprit proved to be the versatile and athletic black rat (Rattus) and the techniquewas to bite each cone scale off at its base, in sequence from base to tip following the spiral growth pattern ofthe cone

DUrban black rats were found to lack the skill and were unable to learn it even if housed with experiencescone strippers However, infants of urban mothers cross fostered to stripper mothers acquired the skill,whereas infants of stripper mothers fostered by an urban mother could not Clearly the skill had to be learnedfrom the mother Further elegant experiments showed that naive adults could develop the skill if they wereprovided with cones from which the first complete spiral of scales had been removed, rather like our newphotocopier which you can word out how to use once someone has shown you how to switch it on In case ofrats, the youngsters take cones away from the mother when she is still feeding on them, allowing them toacquire the complete stripping skill

EA good example of adaptive bearing we might conclude, but let's see the economies This was determined bymeasuring oxygen uptake of a rat stripping a cone in a metabolic chamber to calculate energetic cost andcomparing it with the benefit of the pine seeds measured by calorimeter The cost proved to be less than 10%

of the energetic value of the cone An acceptable profit margin

FA paper in 1996 Animal Behavior by Bednekoff and Balda provides a different view of the adaptiveness ofsocial learning It concerns the seed catching behavior of Clark's nutcracker (Nucifraga Columbiana) and the

Mexican jay (Aphelocoma ultramarine) The former is a specialist, catching 30,000 or so seeds in scatteredlocations that it will recover over the months of winter, the Mexican jay will also cache food but is much lessdependent upon this than the nutcracker The two species also differ in their social structure, the nutcrackerbeing rather solitary while the jay forages in social groups.

G The experiment is to discover not just whether a bird can remember where it hid a seed but also if it canremember where it saw another bird hide a seed The design is slightly comical with a cacher bird wanderingabout a room with lots of holes in the floor hiding food in some of the holes, while watched by an observerbird perched in a cage Two days later cachers and observers are tested for their discovery rate against anestimated random performance In the role of cacher, not only nutcracker but also the less specialized jayperformed above chance; more surprisingly, however, jay observers were as successful as jay cachers whereasnutcracker observers did no better than chance It seems that, whereas the nutcracker is highly adapted atremembering where it hid its own seeds, the social living Mexican jay is more adept at remembering, and soexploiting, the caches of others

Questions 1 - 4

Reading Passage has seven paragraphs,A-G

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A - G, in boxes 1 - 4 on your answer sheet.

1 a comparison between rats，learning and human learning

2 a reference to the earliest study in animal learning

3 the discovery of who stripped the pine cone

4 a description of a cost-effectiveness experiment

Questions 5 - 8

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

In boxes 5 - 8 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

5 The field trip to Israel was to investigate how black rats learn to strip pine cones

6 The pine cones were stripped from bottom to top by black rats

7 It can be learned from other relevant experiences to use a photocopier

8 Stripping the pine cones is an instinct of the black rats

Questions 9 - 13

Complete the summary below using words from the box.

Write your answers in boxes 9 - 13 on your answer sheet.

While the Nutcracker is more able to cache see, the Jay relies9 on caching food and is thus lessspecialized in this ability, but more10 To study their behavior of caching and finding their caches,

an experiment was designed and carried out to test these two birds for their ability to remember where they hidthe seeds

In the experiment, the cacher bird hid seeds in the ground while the other11 As a result, theNutcracker and the Mexican Jay showed different performance in the role of12 at finding theseeds -the observing13 didn't do as well as its counterpart

E cacher F observer G remembered H watched

I Jay J Nutcracker

S1296108 & Related Question Answers

1 D 2 A 3 C 4 E

5 FALSE 6 TRUE 7 TRUE 8 FALSE

9 less 10 social 11 watched 12 observer

13 Nutcracker

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Keep a Watchful Eye on the Bridges

A Most road and rail bridges are only inspected visually, if at all Every few months, engineers have toclamber over the structure in an attempt to find problems before the bridge shows obvious signs ofdamage Technologies developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and Texas A&MUniversity may replace these surveys with microwave sensors that constantly monitor the condition ofbridges

B "The device uses microwaves to measure the distance between the sensor and the bridge, much likeradar does," says Albert Migliori, a Los Alamos physicist "Any load on the bridge - such as traffic -induces displacements, which change that distance as the bridge moves up and down." By monitoringthese movements over several minutes, the researchers can find out how the bridge resonates Changes inits behaviour can give an early warning of damage

C The Interstate 40 bridge over the Rio Grande river in Albuquerque provided the researchers with arare opportunity to text their ideas Chuck Farrar, an engineer at Los Alamos, explains: "The NewMexico authorities decided to raze this bridge and replace it We were able to mount instruments on it,

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S1 桥梁检测（科技类）

test it under various load conditions and even inflict damage just before it was demolished." In the 1960sand 1970s, 2500 similar bridges were built in the US They have two steel girders supporting the load ineach section Highway experts know that this design is "fracture critical" because a failure in eithergirder would cause the bridge to fail.

D After setting up the microwave dish on the ground below the bridge, the Los Alamos team installedconventional accelerometers at several points along the span to measure its motion They then tested thebridge while traffic roared across it and while subjecting it to pounding from a "shaker", which deliveredprecise punches to a specific point on the road

E "We then created damage that we hoped would simulate fatigue cracks that can occur in steel girders,"says Farrar They first cut a slot about 60 centimetres long in the middle of one girder They thenextended the cut until it reached the bottom of the girder and finally they cut across the flange - thebottom of the girder's "I" shape

F The initial, crude analysis of the bridge's behaviour, based on the frequency at which the bridgeresonates, did not indicate that anything was wrong until the flange was damaged But later the data werereanalysed with algorithms that took into account changes in the mode shapes of the structure - shapesthat the structure takes on when excited at a particular frequency These more sophisticated algorithms,which were developed by Norris Stubbs at Texas A&M University, successfully identified and located thedamage caused by the initial cut

G "When any structure vibrates, the energy is distributed throughout with some points not moving,while others vibrate strongly at various frequencies," says Stubbs "My algorithms use patternrecognition to detect changes in the distribution of this energy." NASA already uses Stubbs' method tocheck the behaviour of the body flap that slows space shuttles down after they land

H A commercial system based on the Los Alamos hardware is now available, complete with the Stubbsalgorithms, from the Quatro Corporation in Albuquerque for about $100,000 Tim Darling, another LosAlamos physicist working on the microwave interferometer with Migliori, says that as the electronicsbecome cheaper, a microwave inspection system will eventually be applied to most large bridges in the

US "In a decade I would like to see a battery or solar-powered package mounted under each bridge,scanning it every day to detect changes," he says

Questions 1-4

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

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

1 How did the traditional way to prevent damage of the bridges before the invention of new monitoringsystem

A Bridges has to be tested in every movement on two points

B Bridges has to be closely monitored by microwave devices

C Bridges has already been monitored by sensors

D Bridges has to be frequently inspected by professional workers with naked eyes

2 How does the new microwave monitors find out the problems of bridges

A by changeling the distance between the positions of devices

B by controlling the traffic flow on the bridges

C by monitoring the distance caused by traffic between two points

D by displacement of the several critical parts in the bridges

3 Why did the expert believe there is a problem for the design called "fracture critical"

A Engineers failed to apply the newly developed construction materials

B There was not enough finance to repair the bridges

C The supporting parts of the bridges may crack and cause the bridge to fail

D There was bigger traffic load conditions than the designers had anticipated

4 Defect was not recognized by a basic method in the beginning

A until the mid of faces of bridges has fractures

B until the damage appears along and down to the flanges

C until the points on the road have been punched

D until the frequency of resonates appears disordered

Questions 5-8

Filling the blanks in the diagram labels.

Write the correct answer in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.

Questions 9-13

The reading Passage has eight paragraphs,A-H

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

9 how is the pressure that they have many a great chance to test bridges

10 a ten-year positive change for microwave device

11 the chance they get a honorable contract

12 explanation of the mechanism for the new microwave monitoring to work

13 how is the damage deliberately created by the researchers

Book Review on Musicophilia

Norman M Weinberger reviews the latest work of Oliver Sacks on music

AMusic and the brain are both endlessly fascinating subjects, and as a neuroscientist specializing in auditorylearning and memory, I find them especially intriguing So I had high expectations of Musicophilia, the latestoffering from neurologist and prolific author Oliver Sacks And I confess to feeling a little guilty reporting that

my reactions to the book are mixed

B Sacks himself is the best part of Musicophilia He richly documents his own life in the book and revealshighly personal experiences The photograph of him on the cover of the book - which shows him wearingheadphones, eyes closed, clearly enchanted as he listens to Alfred Brendel perform Beethoven's PathétiqueSonata - makes a positive impression that is borne out by the contents of the book Sacks's voice throughout issteady and erudite but never pontifical He is neither self-conscious nor self-promoting

CThe preface gives a good idea of what the book will deliver In it Sacks explains that he wants to convey theinsights gleaned from the "enormous and rapidly growing body of work on the neural underpinnings of musical

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S3.关于音乐的作品的评论（文学类）

perception and imagery, and the complex and often bizarre disorders to which these are prone." He also stressesthe importance of "the simple art of observation" and "the richness of the human context." He wants to combine

"observation and description with the latest in technology," he says, and to imaginatively enter into theexperience of his patients and subjects The reader can see that Sacks, who has been practicing neurology for 40years, is torn between the "old-fashioned" path of observation and the newfangled, high-tech approach: Heknows that he needs to take heed of the latter, but his heart lies with the former

DThe book consists mainly of detailed descriptions of cases, most of them involving patients whom Sacks hasseen in his practice Brief discussions of contemporary neuroscientific reports are sprinkled liberally throughoutthe text The book's 29 chapters are divided into four main sections by topic Part I, "Haunted by Music," beginswith the strange case of Tony Cicoria, a nonmusical, middle-aged surgeon who was consumed by a love ofmusic after being hit by lightning He suddenly began to crave listening to piano music, which he had nevercared for in the past He started to play the piano and then to compose music, which arose spontaneously in hismind in a "torrent" of notes How could this happen? Was the cause psychological? (He had had a near-deathexperience when the lightning struck him.) Or was it the direct result of a change in the auditory regions of hiscerebral cortex? Electroencephalography (EEG) showed his brain waves to be normal in the mid-1990s, justafter his trauma and subsequent "conversion" to music There are now more sensitive tests, but Cicoria hasdeclined to undergo them; he does not want to delve into the causes of his musicality What a shame!

E Part II, "A Range of Musicality," covers a wider variety of topics, but unfortunately, some of the chaptersoffer little or nothing that is new For example, chapter 13, which is five pages long, merely notes that the blindoften have better hearing than the sighted The most interesting chapters are those that present the strangestcases Chapter 8 is about "amusia," an inability to hear sounds as music, and "dysharmonia," a highly specificimpairment of the ability to hear harmony, with the ability to understand melody left intact Such specific

"dissociations" are found throughout the cases Sacks recounts

F To Sacks's credit, part III, "Memory, Movement and Music," brings us into the underappreciated realm ofmusic therapy Chapter 16 explains how "melodic intonation therapy" is being used to help expressive aphasicpatients (those unable to express their thoughts verbally following a stroke or other cerebral incident) once

again become capable of fluent speech In chapter 20, Sacks demonstrates the near-miraculous power of music

to animate Parkinson's patients and other people with severe movement disorders, even those who are frozeninto odd postures Scientists cannot yet explain how music achieves this effect

G To readers who are unfamiliar with neuroscience and music behavior, Musicophilia may be something of arevelation But the book will not satisfy those seeking the causes and implications of the phenomena Sacksdescribes For one thing, Sacks appears to be more at ease discussing patients than discussing experiments And

he tends to be rather uncritical in accepting scientific findings and theories

HIt's true that the causes of music-brain oddities remain poorly understood However, Sacks could have donemore to draw out some of the implications of the careful observations that he and other neurologists have madeand of the treatments that have been successful For example, he might have noted that the many specificdissociations among components of music comprehension, such as loss of the ability to perceive harmony butnot melody, indicate that there is no music center in the brain Because many people who read the book arelikely to believe in the brain localization of all mental functions, this was a missed educational opportunity

I Another conclusion one could draw is that there seem to be no "cures" for neurological problems involvingmusic A drug can alleviate a symptom in one patient and aggravate it in another, or can have both positive andnegative effects in the same patient Treatments mentioned seem to be almost exclusively antiepilepticmedications, which "damp down" the excitability of the brain in general; their effectiveness varies widely

J Finally, in many of the cases described here the patient with music-brain symptoms is reported to have

"normal" EEG results Although Sacks recognizes the existence of new technologies, among them far moresensitive ways to analyze brain waves than the standard neurological EEG test, he does not call for their use Infact, although he exhibits the greatest compassion for patients, he conveys no sense of urgency about the pursuit

of new avenues in the diagnosis and treatment of music-brain disorders This absence echoes the book's preface,

in which Sacks expresses fear that "the simple art of observation may be lost" if we rely too much on newtechnologies He does call for both approaches, though, and we can only hope that the neurological communitywill respond

Questions 27-30

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 Why does the writer have a mixed feeling about the book

A The guilty feeling made him so

B The writer expected it to be better than it was

C Sacks failed to include his personal stories in the book

D This is the only book written by Sacks

28 What is the best part of the book

A the photo of Sacks listening to music

B the tone of voice of the book

C the autobiographical description in the book

D the description of Sacks's wealth

29 In the preface, what did Sacks try to achieve

A make a herald introduction of the research work and technique applied

B give detailed description of various musical disorders

C explain how people understand music

D explain why he needs to do away with simple observation

30 What is disappointing about Tony Cicona's case

A He refuses to have further tests

B He can't determine the cause of his sudden musicality

C He nearly died because of the lightening

D His brain waves were too normal to show anything

Questions 31-36

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

In boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts with the views of the writer

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

31 It is difficult to give a well-reputable writer a less than totally favorable review

32 Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata is a good treatment for musical disorders

33 Sacks believes technological methods is of little importance compared with traditional observation whenstudying his patients

34 It is difficult to understand why music therapy is undervalued

35 Sacks held little skepticism when borrowing other theories and findings in describing reasons and notionfor phenomena he depicts in the book

36 Sacks is in a rush to use new testing methods to do treatment for patients

Questions 37-40

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.

Write correct letter, A-F, in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

37 The content covered dissociations in understanding between harmony and melody

38 The study of treating musical disorders

39 The EEG scans of Sacks's patients

40 Sacks believes testing based on new technologies

A show no music-brain disorders

B indicates that medication can have varied results

C is key for the neurological community to unravel the mysteries

D should not be used in isolation

E indicate that not everyone can receive good education

F show a misconception that there is function centre localized in the brain

Mammoth kill 2

A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, proboscideans commonly equipped withlong, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair They lived from the Pliocene epoch(from around 5 million years ago) into the Holocene at about 4,500 years ago, and were members of thefamily Elephantidae, which contains, along with mammoths, the two genera of modern elephants andtheir ancestors

A Like their modern relatives, mammoths were quite large The largest known species reached heights inthe region of 4 m at the shoulder and weights of up to 8 tonnes, while exceptionally large males may haveexceeded 12 tonnes However, most species of mammoth were only about as large as a modern Asianelephant Both sexes bore tusks A first, small set appeared at about the age of six months, and these werereplaced at about 18 months by the permanent set Growth of the permanent set was at a rate of about 2.5

to 15.2 cm per year Based on studies of their close relatives, the modern elephants, mammoths probablyhad a gestation period of 22 months, resulting in a single calf being born Their social structure wasprobably the same as that of African and Asian elephants, with females living in herds headed by amatriarch, whilst bulls lived solitary lives or formed loose groups after sexual maturity

S2277912

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S2.猛犸象灭绝 2（动物类）

B MEXICO CITY - Although it's hard to imagine in this age of urban sprawl and automobiles, NorthAmerica once belonged to mammoths, camels, ground sloths as large as cows, bear-size beavers and otherformidable beasts Some 11,000 years ago, however, these large-bodied mammals and others - about 70species in all - disappeared Their demise coincided roughly with the arrival of humans in the New Worldand dramatic climatic change - factors that have inspired several theories about the die-off Yet despitedecades of scientific investigation, the exact cause remains a mystery Now new findings offer support toone of these controversial hypotheses: that human hunting drove this megafaunal menagerie to extinction.The overkill model emerged in the 1960s, when it was put forth by Paul S Martin of the University ofArizona Since then, critics have charged that no evidence exists to support the idea that the firstAmericans hunted to the extent necessary to cause these extinctions But at the annual meeting of theSociety of Vertebrate Paleontology in Mexico City last October, paleoecologist John Alroy of the University

of California at Santa Barbara argued that, in fact, hunting-driven extinction is not only plausible, it wasunavoidable He has determined, using a computer simulation, that even a very modest amount of huntingwould have wiped these animals out

CAssuming an initial human population of 100 people that grew no more than 2 percent annually, Alroydetermined that if each band of, say, 50 people killed 15 to 20 large mammals a year, humans could haveeliminated the animal populations within 1,000 years Large mammals in particular would have beenvulnerable to the pressure because they have longer gestation periods than smaller mammals and theiryoung require extended care

D Not everyone agrees with Alroy's assessment For one, the results depend in part on population-sizeestimates for the extinct animals - figures that are not necessarily reliable But a more specific criticismcomes from mammalogist Ross D E MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History in New YorkCity, who points out that the relevant archaeological record contains barely a dozen examples of stonepoints embedded in mammoth bones (and none, it should be noted, are known from other megafaunalremains) - hardly what one might expect if hunting drove these animals to extinction Furthermore, some

of these species had huge ranges - the giant Jefferson's ground sloth, for example, lived as far north as the

Yukon and as far south as Mexico - which would have made slaughtering them in numbers sufficient tocause their extinction rather implausible, he says.

EMacPhee agrees that humans most likely brought about these extinctions (as well as others around theworld that coincided with human arrival), but not directly Rather he suggests that people may haveintroduced hyperlethal disease, perhaps through their dogs or hitchhiking vermin, which then spreadwildly among the immunologically naive species of the New World As in the overkill model, populations

of large mammals would have a harder time recovering Repeated outbreaks of a hyperdisease could thusquickly drive them to the point of no return So far MacPhee does not have empirical evidence for thehyperdisease hypothesis, and it won't be easy to come by: hyperlethal disease would kill far too quickly toleave its signature on the bones themselves But he hopes that analyses of tissue and DNA from the lastmammoths to perish will eventually reveal murderous microbes

F The third explanation for what brought on this North American extinction does not involve humanbeings Instead its proponents blame the loss on the weather The Pleistocene epoch witnessed considerableclimatic instability, explains paleontologist Russell W Graham of the Denver Museum of Nature andScience As a result, certain habitats disappeared, and species that had once formed communities splitapart For some animals, this change brought opportunity For much of the megafauna, however, theincreasingly homogeneous environment left them with shrinking geographical ranges - a death sentencefor large animals, which need large ranges Although these creatures managed to maintain viablepopulations through most of the Pleistocene, the final major fluctuation - the so-called Younger Dryasevent - pushed them over the edge, Graham says For his part, Alroy is convinced that human huntersdemolished the titans of the Ice Age The overkill model explains everything the disease and climatescenarios explain, he asserts, and makes accurate predictions about which species would eventually goextinct "Personally, I'm a vegetarian," he remarks, "and I find all of this kind of gross - but believable."

Questions 14-20

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 14-20 on your answer sheet.

The reason why had big size mammals become extinct 11,000 years ago is under hot debate Firstexplanation is that 14 of human made it happen This so called 15 began from1960s suggested by an expert, who however received criticism of lack of further information Anotherassumption promoted by MacPhee is that deadly16 from human causes their demises Howeverhis hypothesis required more 17 to testify its validity Graham proposed a third hypothesis that

18 in Pleistocene epoch drove some species disappear, reduced 19 posed adangerous signal to these giants, and20 finally wiped them out

Questions 21-26

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

Write the appropriate letters A-C in boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet.

NB you may use any letter more than once.

21 Human hunting well explained which species would finally disappear

22 Further grounded proof needed to explain human's indirect impact on mammals

23 Over hunting situation has caused die-out of large mammals

24 Illness rather than hunting caused extensive extinction

25 Doubt raised through the study of several fossil records

26 Climate shift is the main reason of extinction

A John Alroy

B Ross D.E MacPhee

C Russell W Graham

S2277912 & Related Question Answers

14 hunting 15 overkill model 16 disease/hyper disease 17 empirical evidence

18 climatic instability 19 geographical ranges 20 Younger Dryas event 21 A

22 B 23 A 24 B 25 B

26 C

APPLYING FOR THE IELTS TESTS ON

2015 年大范围预测文档

Stress of Workplace

AHow busy is too busy? For some it means having to miss the occasional long lunch; for others

it means missing lunch altogether For a few, it is not being able to take a "sickie" once a month.Then there is a group of people for whom working every evening and weekend is normal, andfrantic is the tempo of their lives For most senior executives, workloads swing betweenextremely busy and frenzied The vice-president of the management consultancy AT Kearneyand its head of telecommunications for the Asia-Pacific region, Neil Plumridge, says his workweeks vary from a "manageable" 45 hours to 80 hours, but average 60 hours

B Three warning signs alert Plumridge about his workload: sleep, scheduling and family Heknows he has too much on when he gets less than six hours of sleep for three consecutivenights; when he is constantly having to reschedule appointments; "and the third one is on thefamily side", says Plumridge, the father of a three-year-old daughter, and expecting a secondchild in October "If I happen to miss a birthday or anniversary, I know things are out of control."Being "too busy" is highly subjective But for any individual, the perception of being too busyover a prolonged period can start showing up as stress: disturbed sleep, and declining mentaland physical health National workers' compensation figures show stress causes the most lost

S2276113

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S2.工作中的压力（社会类）