IELTS READING PRACTICE:

Practice 1:

Sunny Days For Silicon

A The old saw that "the devil is in the details" characterizes the kind of needling
obstacles that prevent an innovative concept from becoming a working technology.
It also often describes the type of problems that must be overcome to shave cost
from the resulting product so that people will buy it. Emanuel Sachs of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has struggled with many such little
devils m his career-tong endeavor to develop low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells.
In his latest effort, Sachs has found incremental ways to boost the amount of
electricity that common photovoltaics (PVs) generate from sunlight without
increasing the costs. Specifically, he has raised the conversion efficiency of test
cells made from multi-crystalline silicon from the typical 15.5 percent to nearly 20
percent—on par with pricier single-crystal silicon cells. Such improvements could
bring the cost of PV power down from the current $1.90 to $2.10 per watt to $1.65
per watt. With additional tweaks, Sachs anticipates creating within Four years solar
cells that can produce juice at a dollar per watt, a feat that would make electricity
(rum the sun competitive with that from coal-burning power plants.

B Most PV cells, such as those on home rooftops, rely on silicon to convert

sunlight into electric current. Metal interconnects then funnel the electricity out
from the silicon to power devices or to feed an electrical grid. Since solar cells
became practical and affordable three decades ago, engineers have mostly favored
using single-crystal silicon as the active material, says Michael Rogol, managing
director of Germany- based Photon Consulting. Wafers of the substance are
typically sawed from an ingot consisting of one large crystal that has been pulled
like taffy out of a vat of molten silicon. Especially at first, the high-purity ingots
were left over from integrated-circuit manufacture, but later the process was used
to make PV cells themselves, Rogol recounts. Although single-crystal cells offer
high conversion efficiencies, they are expensive to make. The alternatives- multi-
crystalline silicon cells, which factories fabricate from lower-purity, cast ingots
composed or many smaller crystals—arc cheaper to make, but unfortunately they
arc Jess efficient than single-crystal cells.
C Sachs, who has pioneered several novel ways to make silicon solar cells less
costly and more effective, recently turned his focus to the details of multi-
crystalline silicon cell manufacture. The first small improvement concerns the little
silver fingers that gather electric current from the surface of the bulk silicon," he
explains. In conventional fabrication processes, cell manufacturers use screen-
printing techniques ("like high-accuracy silk-screening of T-shirts," Sachs notes)
and inks containing, silver particles to create these bus wires. The trouble is that
standard silver wires come out wide and short, about 120 by 10 microns, and
include many nonconductive voids. As a result, they block considerable sunlight
and do not carry as much current as they should.

D At his start-up company—Lexington, Mass- based 1366 Technologies (the

number refers to the flux of sunlight that strikes the earth's outer atmosphere: 1.366
watts per square meter)—Sachs is employing "a proprietary wet process that can
produce thinner and taller" wires that are 20 by 20 microns. The slimmer bus wires
use less costly silver und can be placed closer together so they can draw more
current from the neighboring active material, through which free electrons can
travel only so far. At the same time, the wires block less incoming light than their
standard counterparts.

E The second innovation alters the wide, flat interconnect wires that collect current
from the silver bus wires and electrically link adjacent cells. Interconnect wires at
the top can shade as much as 5 percent of the area of a cell. "We place textured
mirror surfaces on the faces of these rolled wires. These little mirrors reflect
incoming light at a lower angle--around 30 degrees-—so that when the reflected
rays hit the glass layer at Lire top, they stay within the silicon wafer by way of
total internal reflection,” Sachs explains. (Divers and snorkelers commonly see this
optical effect when they view water surfaces from below.) The longer that light
remains inside, the more chance it has to be absorbed and transformed into
electricity.

F Sachs expects that new antireflection coatings will further raise multi-crystal line
cell efficiencies. One of his firm's future goals will be a switch from expensive
silver bus wires to cheaper copper ones. And he has a few ideas regarding how to
successfully make the substitution. "Unlike silver, copper poisons the performance
of silicon PVs," Sachs says, "so it will be crucial to include a low-cost diffusion
barrier that stops direct contact between copper and the silicon." In this business,
it's always the little devilish details that count.

G The cost of silicon solar cells is likely to fall as bulk silicon prices drop,
according to the U.S. Energy information Administration and the industry tracking
firm Solarbuzz. A steep rise in solar panel sales in recent years had led to a global
shortage of silicon because production capacity for the active material lagged
behind, but now new silicon manufacturing plants are coming online. The reduced
materials costs and resulting lower system prices will greatly boost demand for
solar-electric technology, according to market watcher Michael Rogol of Photon
Consulting.

Questions 1-5

Use the information in the passage to match the people or companies (listed A-C)
with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-C in boxes 1-5 on
your answer sheet.

NB you may use any letter more than once

A. Emanuel Sach

B. Michael Rogol

C. Solarbuzz

1 Gives a brief account of the history of the common practice to

manufacture silicon batteries for a long time.

2 Made a joint prediction with another national agency.

3 Established an enterprise with a meaningful name.

4 Led forward in the solar-electric field by reducing the cost while

raising the efficiency.
5 Expects to lower the cost of solar cells to a level that they could
contend with the traditional way to generate electricity.

Questions 6-9

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

In boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement is true

FALSE if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

6 The Achille’s heel of single-crystal cells is the high cost.

7 The multi-crystalline silicon cells are ideal substitutions for single-

crystal cells.

8 Emanuel Sachs has some determining dues about the way to block
the immediate contact between an alternative metal for silver and the silicon.

9 In the last few years, there is a sharp increase in the demand for
solar panels.

Questions 10-14

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 10-14 on your answer sheet.

Emanuel Sachs made two major changes to the particulars of the

manufacture 10 . One is to take a 11 in the production of
finer wires which means more current could be attracted from the 12 .
The other one is to set 13 above the interconnect silver bus wires to
keep the incoming sunlight by 14 .

Practice 2:

Crisis! freshwater

A . As in New Delhi and Phoenix, policymakers worldwide wield great power over
how water resources and managed. Wise use of such power will become
increasingly important as the years go by because the world’s demand for
freshwater is currently overtaking its ready supply in many places, and this
situation shows no sign of abating.

B . That the problem is well-known makes it no less disturbing: today one out of
six people, more than a billion, suffer inadequate access to safe freshwater. By
2025, according to data released by the United Nations, the freshwater resources of
more than half the countries across the globe will undergo either stress- for
example, when people increasingly demand more water than is available or safe for
use-or outright shortages. By mid-century, as much as three-quarters of the earth’s
population could face scarcities of freshwater.

C . Scientists expect water scarcity to become more common in large part because
the world’s population is rising and many people are getting richer (thus expanding
demand) and because global climate change is exacerbating aridity and reducing
supply in many regions. What is more, many water sources are threatened by faulty
waste disposal, releases of industrial pollutants, fertilizer runoff, and coastal
influxes of saltwater into aquifers as groundwater is depleted.

D . Because lack of access to water can lead to starvation, disease, political

instability, and even armed conflict, failure to take action can have broad and grave
consequences. Fortunately, to a great extent, the technologies and policy tools
required to conserve existing freshwater and to secure more of it are known among
which several seem particularly effective. What is needed now is action.
Governments and authorities at every level have to formulate and execute plans for
implementing the political, economic, and technological measures that can ensure
water security now and in the coming decades.

E . The world’s water problems require, as a start, an understanding of how much

freshwater each person requires, along with knowledge of the factors that impede
supply and increase demand in different parts of the world. Main Falkenmark of
the Stockholm International Water Institute and other experts estimate that, on
average, each person on the earth needs a minimum of 1000 cubic meters (m3) of
water. The minimum water each person requires for drinking, hygiene, and
growing food. The volume is equivalent to two-fifths of an Olympic-size
swimming pool.

F . Much of the Americas and northern Eurasia enjoy abundant water supplies. But
several regions are beset by greater or lesser degrees of “physical” scarcity-
whereby demand exceeds local availability. Other areas, among them Central
Africa, parts of the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia contend with
“economic” water scarcity limit access even though sufficient supplies are
available.

G. More than half of the precipitation that falls on land is never available for
capture or storage because it evaporates from the ground or transpires from plants;
this fraction is called blue-water sources-rivers, lakes, wetlands, and aquifers-that
people can tap directly. Farm irrigation from these free-flowing bodies is the
biggest single human use of freshwater resources, but the intense local demand
they create often drains the surroundings of ready supplies.

H . Lots of water, but not always where it is needed one hundred and ten thousand
cubic kilometers of precipitation, nearly 10 times the volume of Lake Superior,
falls from the sky onto the earth’s land surface every year. This huge quantity
would easily fulfill the requirements of everyone on the planet if the water arrived
where and when people needed it. But much of it cannot be captured (top), and the
rest is disturbed unevenly (bottom). Green water (61.1% of total precipitation):
absorbed by soil and plants, then released back into the air: unavailable for
withdrawal. Bluewater (38.8% of total precipitation): collected in rivers, lakes,
wetlands, and groundwater: available for withdrawal before it evaporates or
reaches the ocean. These figures may not add up to 100% because of rounding.
Only 1.5% is directly used by people.

I . Waters run away in tremendous wildfires in recent years. The economic actors
had all taken their share reasonably enough: they just did not consider the needs of
the natural environment, which suffered greatly when its inadequate supply was
reduced to critical levels by drought. The members of the Murray-Darling Basin
Commission are now frantically trying to extricate themselves from the disastrous
results of their misallocation of the total water resource. Given the difficulties of
sensibly apportioning the water supply within a single nation, imagine the
complexities of doing so for international river basins such as that of the Jordan
River, which borders on Lebanon, Syria, Israel, the Palestinian areas, and Jordan,
all of which have claims to the shared, but limited, supply in an extremely parched
region. The struggle for freshwater has contributed to civil and military disputes in
the area. Only continuing negotiations and compromises have kept this tense
situation under control.

Questions 1-5

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE If the statement is true

FALSE If the statement is false

NOT GIVEN If the information is not given in the passage

1 The prospect for the need for freshwater worldwide is obscure.

2 To some extent, the challenge for freshwater is alleviated by

common recognition.
3 Researchers arrive at the specific conclusion about the water crisis
based on persuasive consideration of several factors.

4 The fact that people do not actually cherish the usage of water
scarcity.

5 Controversy can’t be avoided for adjacent nations over the water

resource.

Questions 6-10

The readings Passage has eleven paragraphs A-I

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-I, in boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

6 The uneven distribution of water around the world.

7 other factors regarding nature bothering people who make the policies.

8 Joint efforts needed to carry out the detailed solutions combined with
various aspects.

9 No always-in-time match available between the requirements and the

actual rainfall.

10 The lower limit of the amount of fresh water for a person to survive.

Questions 11-13

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.
Many severe problems like starvation and military actions etc result from the storage of water
which sometimes for some areas seems 11 because of unavailability but other regions
suffer another kind of scarcity for insufficient support. 12 of the rainfall can’t be
achieved because of evaporation.

Some other parts form the 13 which can be used immediately. Water to irrigate the
farmland takes a considerable amount along with the use for cities and industries and the extended
need from the people involved.

Practice 3:

The History of the Invention of Plastics

{A} Natural polymers include such familiar substances as silk, rubber, and cotton.
Plastics are artificial polymers. Plastics are used on a daily basis throughout the
world. The word plastic is a common term that is used for many materials of a
synthetic or semi-synthetic nature. The term was derived from the Greek plastikos,
which means “fit for molding.” Plastics are a wide variety of combinations of
properties when viewed as a whole. They are used for shellac, cellulose, rubber,
and asphalt. We also synthetically manufacture items such as clothing, packaging,
automobiles, electronics, aircraft, medical supplies, and recreational items. The list
could go on and on and it is obvious that much of what we have today would not
be possible without plastics.

{B} In the early part of the twentieth century, a big boom occurred in polymer
chemistry when polymer materials such as nylon and Kevlar came on the scene.
Much of the work done with polymers focuses on improvement while using
existing technologies, but chemists do have opportunities ahead. There is a need
for the development of new applications for polymers, always looking for less
expensive materials that can replace what is used now. Chemists have to be more
aware of what the market yearns for, such as products with a green emphasis,
polymers that break down or are environmentally friendly. Concerns such as these
have brought new activity to the science arena and there are always new
discoveries to be made.
{C} The evolution of the chemistry behind plastics is mind-numbing, and the uses
for plastics are endless. In the Middle Ages, when scientists first started to
experiment, plastics were derived from organic natural sources, such as egg and
blood proteins. It wasn’t until the 19th and 20thcenturies that the plastics we know
today were created. Many Americans will recognize the name Goodyear, it was
Charles Goodyear who began the modern-day plastic revolution when he
vulcanized rubber in 1839, paving the way for the tire. Prior to his discovery,
products made with rubber did not hold up well in warm temperatures or climates.
Rubber is only one source of plastic, however, and three key inventors followed
Goodyear’s path and took plastic from a nearly unusable hard substance to the
invaluable man-made resource it is today.

{D} The son of a brass lock manufacturer, Alexander Parkes was born in
Birmingham, England in 1813. Parkes was raised around metal fabrication. In his
first job he worked as an apprentice at Birmingham’s brass foundry, owned by
Samuel S. Messengers and Sons. Parkes switched his attention from brass work to
electroplating when he went to work for George and Henry Elkington. It was there
Parkes developed his inventive spirit. Parkes’ first patent, awarded in 1841, dealt
with electroplating delicate items such as flowers, but throughout his career Parkes
reportedly held more than 80 patents on his works with both metals and
plastics.Parkes is credited with inventing the first man-made plastic, which he
patented as Parkesine in 1856. Parkes introduced this combination of nitrocellulose
and solvents to England in 1862 at the London International Exhibition. While
Parkesine itself did not prove to be a successful material in its original formulation,
it was too flammable, it laid the groundwork for successful derivative materials
from future inventors. One of those inventors being John Wesley Hyatt.

{E} What Alexander Parkes started, John Wesley Hyatt took to the next level.
Hyatt was born in Starkey, New York in 1837, and patented several hundred
inventions. Hyatt’s link to plastics comes in the form of the game of billiards.
Billiard balls were originally made of ivory, a commodity that was in steep decline
in the 1800s. Most likely inspired by the $10,000 reward being offered, Hyatt took
on the challenge of finding a substitute material to manufacture billiard balls.
Hyatt’s experiments began with a combination of Parkes’ Parkesine, a solid form
of nitrocellulose, and another English inventor, Frederick Scott Archer, discovery
of liquid nitrocellulose. Hyatt combined two to create celluloid, which he patented
in 1870.

{F} Celluloid was used for numerous products, including billiard balls for Hyatt’s
own company rather than his former employer. Celluloid also produced false teeth,
combs, baby rattles, and piano keys. Despite its replacement by newer synthetic
materials in today’s marketplace, Hyatt’s patented version of celluloid is still used
to produce ping-pong balls. There is no doubt that the invention of celluloid was
the next important rung in the plastic manufacturing ladder, including the use of
celluloid in film production.

{G} Much like Parkes’ invention led to Hyatt’s success, Hyatt’s celluloid
influenced Leo Baekeland. This Belgium-born chemist paved the way for George
Eastman, of Eastman Kodak, to build the photographic empire we know today.
Born in 1863, Baekeland’s first invention was Velox, a paper that allowed
photographs to be taken in artificial light. Eastman purchased the Velox process
from Baekeland for a reported $750,000 in 1899. Baekeland used that money to
fund his own in-home laboratory.

{H} Baekeland moved his experiments from photography paper to synthetic resins,
and invented Bakelite, a combination of phenol and formaldehyde in 1907.
Bakelite was officially patented in 1909. Bakelite was a hard, yet moldable, plastic,
and was considered the product that led the world into the Age of Plastics. Bakelite
was used in everything from buttons to art deco furniture to television sets. While
these items are made from different types of materials today, Bakelite is still used
in the production of items such as car brakes and materials used in the space
shuttle.

Questions 1-5

Use the information in the passage to match the inventors, chemists or companies
(listed A-F) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-F in
boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
(A) Alexander Parkes

(B) Charles Goodyear

(C) John Wesley Hyatt

(D) Frederick Scott Archer

(E) Leo Baekeland

(F) George Eastman

1 Invested a considerable amount of money in buying a technique that

had a huge impact on the success of his well-known business.

2 Invented a chemical formula that was successful only in a lab

experimental stage yet marked the beginning of an important era.

3 Had a lab sustained by his own capital.

4 In the motivation of an attractive financial incentive, successfully

created a succedaneum based on the work accomplished by chemists prior to him.

5 Established a famous business on auto parts.

Questions 6-9

Do the following statements agree with the information given in IELTS Data
Reading Passage 230 – The History of the Invention of Plastics Reading Passage?
In boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement is True

FALSE if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN If the information is not given in the passage

6 Silk, cotton as well as plastics have something in common.

7 There are sometimes conflicts between what the chemists are

trying on and what the markets are driving for.

8 The majority of Alexander Parkes’ patents lie in two major fields.

9 The importance of celluloid has completely faded out of in

commercial use because of the occurrence of other alternative products.

Questions 10-14

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 10-14 on your answer sheet.

Alexander Parkes, a well-known chemist, was brought up in an industrial city

surrounded by 10 . He began his work by learning in a 11 in
his hometown and later fostered his 12 during his time working for
other employers. He started his journey of getting over 80 patents in the field
of 13 ever since then.

Although his most important invention Parkesine, made up of 14 and

regarded as the first artificial plastic did not get a big success because of some
shortcomings, Parkes had paved the road for other coming scientists in plastic
chemistry.

Practice 4:
 Economic Evolution

{A} Living along the Orinoco River that borders Brazil and Venezuela are the
Yanomami people, hunter-gatherers whose average annual income has been
estimated at the equivalent of $90 per person per year. Living along the Hudson
River that borders New York State and New Jersey are the Manhattan people,
consumer traders whose average annual income has been estimated at $36,000 per
person per year. That dramatic difference of 400 times, however, pales in
comparison to the differences in Stock Keeping Units (SKUs, a measure of the
number of types of retail products available), which has been estimated at 300 for
the Yanomami and 10 billion for the Manhattans, a difference of 33 million times.

{B} How did this happen? According to economist Eric D. Beinhocker, who
published these calculations in his revelatory work The Origin of Wealth (Harvard
Business School Press, 2006), the explanation is to be found in complexity theory.
Evolution and economics are not just analogous to each other, but they are actually
two forms of a larger phenomenon called complex adaptive systems, in which
individual elements, parts or agents interact, then process information and adapt
their behaviour to changing conditions. Immune systems, ecosystems, language,
the law and the Internet are all examples of complex adaptive systems.

{C} In biological evolution, nature selects from the variation produced by random
genetic mutations and the mixing of parental genes. Out of that process of
cumulative selection emerges complexity and diversity. In economic evolution, our
material economy proceeds through the production and selection of numerous
permutations of countless products. Those 10 billion products in the Manhattan
village represent only those variations that made it to market, after which there is a
cumulative selection by consumers in the marketplace for those deemed most
useful: VHS over Betamax, DVDs over VHS, CDs over vinyl records, flip phones
over brick phones, computers over typewriters, Google over Altavista, SUVs over
station wagons, paper books over e-books (still), and Internet news over network
news (soon). Those that are purchased “survive” and “reproduce” into the future
through repetitive use and remanufacturing.
{D} As with living organisms and ecosystems, the economy looks designed—so
just as Humans naturally deduce the existence of a top-down intelligent designer,
humans also (understandably) infer that a top-down government designer is needed
in nearly every aspect of the economy. But just as living organisms are shaped
from the bottom up by natural selection, the economy is moulded from the bottom
up by the invisible hand. The correspondence between evolution and economics is
not perfect, because some top-down institutional rules and laws are needed to
provide a structure within which free and fair trade can occur. But too much top-
down interference into the marketplace makes trade neither free nor fair. When
such attempts have been made in the past, they have failed—because markets are
far too complex, interactive and autocatalytic to be designed from the top down. In
his 1922 book, Socialism, Ludwig Von Mises spelt out the reasons why most
notably the problem of “economic calculation” in a planned socialist economy. In
capitalism, prices are in constant and rapid flux and are determined from below by
individuals freely exchanging in the marketplace. Money is a means of exchange,
and prices are the information people use to guide their choices. Von Mises
demonstrated that socialist economies depend on capitalist economies to determine
what prices should be assigned to goods and services. And they do so
cumbersomely and inefficiently. Relatively free markets are, ultimately, the only
way to find out what buyers are willing to pay and what sellers are willing to
accept.

{E} Economics helps to explain how Yanomami-like hunter-gatherers evolved into

Manhattan-like consumer traders. In the Nineteenth century French economist
Frédéric Bastiat well captured the principle: “Where goods do not cross frontiers,
armies will.” In addition to being fierce warriors, the Yanomami are also
sophisticated traders, and the more they trade the less they fight. The reason is that
trade is a powerful social adhesive that creates political alliances. One village
cannot go to another village and announce that they are worried about being
conquered by a third, more powerful village—that would reveal weakness. Instead,
they mask the real motives for alliance through trade and reciprocal feasting. And,
as a result, not only gain military protection but also initiate a system of trade that
—in the long run—leads to an increase in both wealth and SKUs.
{F} Free and fair trade occurs in societies where most individuals interact in ways
that provide mutual benefit. The necessary rules weren’t generated by wise men in
a sacred temple or lawmakers in congress, but rather evolved over generations and
were widely accepted and practised before the law was ever written. Laws that fail
this test are ignored. If enforcement becomes too onerous, there is rebellion. Yet
the concept that human interaction must, and can be controlled by a higher force
is universal. Interestingly, there is no widespread agreement on who the “higher
force” is. Religious people ascribe good behaviour to God’s law. They cannot
conceive of an orderly society of atheists. Secular people credit the government.
They consider anarchy to be synonymous with barbarity. Everyone seems to agree
on the concept that an orderly society requires an omnipotent force. Yet,
everywhere there is evidence that this is not so. An important distinction between
spontaneous social order and social anarchy is that the former is developed by
work and investment, under the rule of law and with a set of evolved morals while
the latter is chaos. The classical liberal tradition of von Mises and Hayek never
makes the claim that the complete absence of top-down rules leads to the optimal
social order. It simply says we should be sceptical about our ability to manage
them in the name of social justice, equality, or progress.

Questions 1-5

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading
Passage? In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement is true

FALSE if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage

1 SKUs is a more precise measurement to demonstrate the economic

level of a community.
2 No concrete examples are presented when the author makes the
statement concerning economic evolution.

3 Evolution and economics show a defective homolog.

4 Martial actions might be taken to cross the borders if trades do not

work.

5 Profit is the invisible hand to guide the market.

Questions 6

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

What ought to play a vital role in each field of the economy?

A a strict rule

B a smart strategy

C a tightly managed authority

D a powerful legislation

Questions 7-8

Which TWO of the following tools are used to pretend to ask for union according
to one explanation from the perspective of economics

A an official announcement

B a diplomatic event

C the exchange of goods

D certainly written correspondence

E some enjoyable treatment in a win-win situation

Questions 9-13

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 36-40 on your answer sheet.

In response to the search for reasons for the phenomenon shown by the huge
difference in the income between two groups of people both dwelling near the
rivers, several researchers made their effort and gave certain explanations. One
attributes 9 to the interesting change claiming that it is not as simple as
it seems to be in appearance that the relationship between 10 which is a
good example of 11 , which involved in the interaction of separate
factors for the processing of information as well as the behavioural adaptation to
unstable conditions. As far as the biological transformation is concerned,
both 12 and the blend of genres from the last generation brings about
the difference. The economic counterpart shows how generating and choosing
the 13 of innumerable goods moves forward the material-oriented
economy.

Practice 5:

The hidden lives of solitary bees

There ere 275 different species of bee in Greet Britain and Ireland. Apart from the
familiar honeybee and 25 species of bumblebee, the rest are known as solitary bees

Solitary bees are unlike 'social' honeybees and bumblebees, which live in large
colonies consisting of a queen whose function is to lay the eggs, while the workers
gather pollen and nectar to feed the tiny grubs With solitary bees, there are
typically just males and females. They mate, the mate dies and the female makes a
nest.
Ian Beavis is a naturalist and blogger with a mission to raise the profile of the
many solitary bees, whose pollinating services are so important, yet so little
recognised, Solitary bees inhabit gardens, parks, woodlands, fields and cliffs. In
fact they represent 95% of the world's bee species. Leading wildlife illustrator
Richard Lewington. best known for his beautiful paintings of butterflies, says,
'Solitary bees are so useful to gardeners and commercially valuable. Yet until
recently they barely registered in the public consciousness. I wanted to help
publicise their vital role in our lives' The problem with solitary bees has long been
one of identification - with more than 240 species to choose from, and no
accessible guidebook, where do people start? So Richard Lewington has spent any
spare time over the past few years working on a new guide to the bees of Great
Britain and Ireland. This, amazingly, is the first book of its kind to be published for
over a century.

How do solitary bees live? A female solitary bee constructs a nest and then lays her
eggs in individual cells, lining or sealing them with various materials depending on
the species of bee - red mason bees use mud leafcutter bees use sections of leaf
The female leaves what naturalists call a 'parcel' of pollen and nectar for each other
little grubs to feed on When the female has laid all her eggs, she dies The emerging
grubs eat. grow and develop into adults the following year.

While some bees are plentiful and widespread, others have been designated as rare.
Or are very local in distribution. In 2013. Ian Beavis came across what has long
been known as one of Britain's rarest species, the banded mining bee. An
impressive species with white hairs on its face, the banded mining bee nests in the
ground, typically on steep banks. Ian Beavis explains that it always chooses bare
earth because it doesn't like having to eat through plant roots to make its nest
Females feed on a variety of plants, but seem particularly fond of yellow
dandelions that bloom from spring to autumn.

Another bee that has attracted naturalists' attention is the ivy bee. It was only
identified as a distinct species in 1993. It is one of a number of bees that have been
able to establish themselves in Britain due to the recent warmer winters. About the
same size as a with distinctive orange-yellow banding on its abdomen, it was
initially thought to feed on y on ivy, but has since been seen visiting other plants.
The discoveries about ivy bees show how rewarding the study of solitary bees can
be but it's not the only species whose habits are changing. Ian Beavis believes we
can see in solitary bees the beginning of social behaviour. He explains that many
species make their nests close to each other in huge groups, and there are some,
like Andrena scotica, where several bees use the same entrance without becoming
aggressive. It's not difficult to see how this behaviour, which could be seen as the
foundation of social behaviour, might evolve in future into worker bees sharing
care of the grubs. Indeed some of Britain's solitary bees, Lasioglossum
malachurum for example, are already demonstrating this type of social behaviour.
So will all solitary bees evolve into social insects? Not necessarily. According to
Ian Beavis, there are advantages to social behaviour but there are also advantages
to nesting alone. Bees that nest socially are a target for predators, diseases and
parasites.

Pesticides can also pose a threat to solitary bees. At the University of Sussex in
England. Beth Nicholls is conducting research into the effects of certain pesticides
on the red mason bee. She explains. 'We know that pesticides harm social bees, but
very little research has been done into solitary bees.’ Honeybees fly throughout the
summer, so they may be exposed to different levels of pesticides. But if the shorter
flight period of solitary bees - the red mason bee only flies from March to May -
coincides with peak pesticide levels, that might be disastrous. If the red mason bee
declines dramatically, it could affect the fruit growing industry. According to Beth
Nicholls, it is much more efficient at pollinating orchard trees. Social bees carry
pollen in ‘baskets' on their back legs, but a female red mason bee carries it on the
underside of her abdomen. This is a messier way of transporting it, and so more
pollen is transferred to other flowers. The social bees' method is much 'tidier’, so
once they have collected the pollen and tucked it away behind their legs, it won't
be dropped.

Solitary bees are all around us. We need to start paying attention to them before
it’s too late.
Questions 1-4

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

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

1. Ian Beavis and Richard Lewlngton both believe that solitary bees

A are as interesting as many butterfly species.

B have an extremely varied range of habitats,

C should be appreciated much more widely.

D are valued by many gardeners.

2. What does the writer think is surprising about the new book on bees?

A There is such a wide range of species in it.

B Some of the species in it are hard to differentiate.

C Richard Lewington chose to give up his main work to write It.

D It was so long since a guide like this had been produced.

3. Beth Nicholls explains that red mason bees

A have had more studies into their behaviour than others.

B may suffer more from pesticides than social bees,

C have an advantage because of when they fly.

D have certain similarities with honey bees.

4. Why does Beth Nicholls consider red mason bees to be valuable pollinators?

A They regularly lose some of the pollen they are carrying.

B They transport pollen with great care.

C Their pollination season is longer than that of social bees.

D The females do most of the pollen collection.

Questions 5-8

Look at the following statements (Questions 5-8) and the list of solitary bees
below.

Match each statement with the correct bee, A-E

Write the correct letter. A-E, in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet

NB: You may use any letter more than once.

5 Some members of this species have started to contribute more to the

care of the young

6 This species avoids areas covered with vegetation when selecting nest
sites.

7 This species has a favourite flower that it feeds on.

8 This species has only been found in Britain in the past few years.

List of Solitary Bees

A The banded mining

bee

B The ivy bee

C Andrena scotica

D Lasrogfossum
malachurum

E The red mason bee

Questions 9-13

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer

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

The life of the solitary bee

Female solitary bees make their nests with separate 9 where single eggs
are deposited. Females try to ensure the survival of all their 10 . They do
this by providing suitable food in what is referred to as a 11 .
Solitarybees use a range of substances to make their nests comfortable and secure,
such as plant material or 12 .

Although some solitary bees are common, certain species are thought to
be 13 .

The different solitary bees vary widely in their distribution, some being found all
over Britain while others are much more restricted geographically.
Practice 6:

Digital diet

{A} Telecommuting, Internet shopping and online meetings may save energy as
compared with in-person alternatives, but as the digital age moves on, its green
reputation is turning a lot browner. E-mailing, number crunching and Web
searches in the U.S. consumed as much as 61 billion kilowatt-hours last year, or
1.5 per cent of the nation’s electricity-half of which comes from coal. In 2005 the
computers of the world ate up 123 billion kilowatt-hours of energy, a number that
will double by 2010 if present trends continue, according to Jonathan Koomey, a
staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. As a result, the power
bill to run a computer over its lifetime will surpass the cost of buying the machine
in the first place giving Internet and computer companies a business reason to cut
energy costs, as well as an environmental one.

{B} One of the biggest energy sinks comes not from the computers themselves but
from the air-conditioning needed to keep them from overheating. For every
kilowatt-hour of energy used for computing in a data centre, another kilowatt-hour
is required to cool the furnace-like racks of servers.

{C} For Internet giant Google, this reality has driven efforts such as the installation
of a solar array that can provide 30 per cent of the peak power needs of
its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters as well as increased purchases of
renewable energy. But to deliver Web pages within seconds, the firm must
maintain hundreds of thousands of computer servers in cavernous buildings. “It’s a
good thing to worry about server energy efficiency,” remarks Google’s green
energy czar Bill Weihl. “We are actively working to maximize the efficiency of
our data centres, which account for most of the energy Google consumes
worldwide.” Google will funnel some of its profits into a new effort, dubbed RE<C
(for renewable energy cheaper than coal, as Google translates it) to make sources
such as solar-thermal, high-altitude wind and geothermal cheaper than coal “within
years, not decades, according to Weihl. .
{D} In the meantime, the industry as a whole has employed a few tricks to save
watts. Efforts include cutting down on the number of transformations the
electricity itself must undergo before achieving the correct operating voltage;
rearranging the stacks of servers and the mechanics of their cooling; and using
software to create multiple “virtual” computers, rather than having to deploy
several real ones. Such virtualization has allowed computer maker Hewlett-
Packard to consolidate 86 data centers spread throughout the world to just three,
with three backups, says Pat Tiernan, the firm’s vice president of social and
environmental responsibility.

{E} The industry is also tackling the energy issue at the computer-chip level. With
every doubling of processing power in recent years has come a doubling in power
consumption. But to save energy, chipmakers such as Intel and AMD have shifted
to so-called multicore technology, which packs multiple processors into one circuit
rather than separating them. “When we moved to multicore-away from a linear
focus on megahertz and gigahertz—and throttled down microprocessors, the
energy savings were pretty substantial,” says Allyson Klein, Intel’s marketing
manager for its Ecotech Initiative. Chipmakers continue to shrink circuits on the
nanoscale as well, which means a chip needs less electricity” to deliver the same
performance, she adds.

{F} With such chips, more personal computers will meet various efficiency
standards, such as Energy Star compliance (which mandates that a desktop
consume no more than 65 watts). The federal government, led by agencies such as
NASA and the Department of Defense may soon require all their purchases to meet
the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool standard. And Google,
Intel and others have formed the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, an effort to
cut power consumption from all computers by 50 per cent by 2010.

{G} Sleep modes and other power management tools built into most operating
systems can offer savings today. Yet about 90 per cent of computers do not have
such settings enabled, according to Klein. Properly activated, they would prevent a
computer from leading to the emission of thousands of kilograms of carbon
dioxide from power plants every year. But if powering down or unplugging the
computer (the only way it uses zero power) is not an option, then perhaps the most
environmentally friendly use of all those wasted computing cycles is in helping to
model climate change. The University of Oxford’s ClimatePrediction.net offers an
opportunity to at least predict the consequences of all that coal burning.

{H} CO2 Stats is a free tool that can be embedded into any Website to calculate
the carbon dioxide emissions associated with using it. That estimate is based on an
assumption of 300 watts of power consumed by the personal computer, network
and server involved- or 16.5 milligrams of CO2 emitted every second of use. “The
typical carbon footprint is roughly equivalent to 1.5 people breathing,” says
physicist Alexander Wissner-Gross of Harvard University, who co-created the
Web tool.

Questions 1-6

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-E) with opinions
or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-E in boxes 1-6 on your answer
sheet.

NB you may use any letter more than once

(A) Jonathan Koomey

(B) Allyson Klein

(C) Pat Tiernan

(D) Bill Weihl

(E) Alexander Wissner-Gross

1 Figuring ways to optimize the utilization of energy in certain

significant departments in the company
2 A revolutionary improvement in a tiny but quite imperative component
of the computers

3 Targeting at developing alternative sources within the near future

4 An astounding estimate on the energy to be consumed by computers in

a short period based on an unchangeable trend

5 A powerful technique developed for integration of resources

6 A failure for the vast majority of computers to activate the use of some
internal tools already available in them

Questions 7-10

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading

Passage? In boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet, write

True if the statement is true

False if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage

7 To chill the server does not take up the considerable amount of

energy needed for the computer.

8 It seems that the number of servers has a severe impact on the

speed of the internet connection.

9 Several companies from other fields have a joint effort with the
internet industry to work on ways to save energy.
10 Actions taken at a governmental level are to be expected to help
with savings in energy in the near future.

Questions 11-14

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.

The 11 has also been reached to save up energy in every possible way
and the philosophy behind it lies in the fact that there is a positive correlation
between the ability to process and the need for energy. In this context, some firms
have switched to 12 which means several processors are integrated into
one single circuit to make significant energy savings. What is more, they go on
to 13 on an even more delicate level for the chips to save more energy
while staying at the constant level in terms of the 14 .

Practice 7:

Light pollution

{A} If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would
go into darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast
number of nocturnal species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with
eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even
though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings any more than we
think of ourselves as primates or mammals, or Earthlings. Yet it’s the only way to
explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling
it with light.

{B} This kind of engineering is no different than damming a river. Its benefits
come with consequences—called light pollution—whose effects scientists are only
now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design,
which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky, where it’s
not wanted, instead of focusing it downward, where it is. Ill-designed lighting
washes out the darkness of night and radically alters the light levels and light
rhythms—to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted.

{C} Now most of humanity lives under intersecting domes of reflected, refracted
light, of scattering rays from overlit cities and suburbs, from light-flooded
highways and factories. Nearly all of nighttime Europe is a nebula of light, as is
most of the United States and all of Japan. In the south Atlantic the glow from a
single fishing fleet squid fishermen during their prey with metal halide lamps—can
be seen from space, burning brighter, in fact, than Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro.

{D} We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country when nothing could
be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species
is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and in many species, it acts as a
magnet, a process being studied by researchers such as Travis Longcore and
Catherine Rich, co-founders of the Los Angeles-based Urban Wildlands Group.
The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being
“captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil
platforms, circling and circling in the thousands until they drop. Migrating at night,
birds are apt to collide with brightly lit tall buildings; immature birds on their
first journey suffer disproportionately.

{E} Insects, of course, cluster around streetlights, and feeding at those insect
clusters is now ingrained in the lives of many bat species. In some Swiss valleys,
the European lesser horseshoe bat began to vanish after streetlights were installed,
perhaps because those valleys were suddenly filled with light-feeding pipistrelle
bats. Other nocturnal mammals—including desert rodents, fruit bats, opossums,
and badgers-forage more cautiously under the permanent full moon of light
pollution because they’ve become easier targets for predators.

{F} Some birds—blackbirds and nightingales, among others—sing at unnatural

hours in the presence of artificial light. Scientists have determined that long
artificial days— and artificially short nights induce early breeding in a wide range
of birds. And because a longer day allows for longer feeding, it can also affect
migration schedules. One population of Bewick’s swans wintering in England put
on fat more rapidly than usual, priming them to begin their Siberian migration
early. The problem, of course, is that migration, like most other aspects of bird
behaviour, is a precisely timed biological behaviour. Leaving early may mean
arriving too soon for nesting conditions to be right

{G} Nesting sea turtles, which show a natural predisposition for dark beaches, find
fewer and fewer of them to nest on. Their hatchlings, which gravitate toward the
brighter, more reflective sea horizon, find themselves confused by artificial
lighting behind the beach. In Florida alone, hatchling losses number in the
hundreds of thousands every year. Frogs and toads living near brightly lit highways
suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than
normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behaviour out of joint, including their
nighttime breeding choruses.

{H} Of all the pollution we face, light pollution is perhaps the most easily
remedied. Simple changes in lighting design and installation yield immediate
changes in the amount of light spilt into the atmosphere and, often, immediate
energy savings.

{I} It was once thought that light pollution only affected astronomers, who need to
see the night sky in all its glorious clarity. And, in fact, some of the earliest civic
efforts to control light pollution—in Flagstaff, Arizona, half a century ago—were
made to protect the view from Lowell Observatory, which sits high above that city.
Flagstaff has tightened its regulations since then, and in 2001 it was declared the
first International Dark Sky City. By now the effort to control light pollution has
spread around the globe. More and more cities and even entire countries, such as
the Czech Republic, have committed themselves to reducing unwanted glare.

{J} Unlike astronomers, most of us may not need an undiminished view of the
night sky for our work, but like most other creatures we do need darkness.
Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as
light itself. The regular oscillation of waking and sleep in our lives, one of our
circadian rhythms—is nothing less than a biological expression of the regular
oscillation of light on Earth. So fundamental are these rhythms to our being that
altering them is like altering gravity.

Questions 1-6

The reading Passage has ten paragraphs A-J.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-J, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

1 A reason that contributes to light pollution.

2 A city has lessened light pollution successfully.

3 The importance of darkness.

4 The popularity of light pollution in the world.

5 Methods to reduce light pollution.

6 The reason why we have changed the night.

Questions 7-8

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

Write your answers in boxes 7-8 on your answer sheet.

Question 7: How does light pollution influence creatures?

A by bad lighting design

B by changing the cities and suburbs creatures are used to

C by changing the directions of light

D by changing the light creatures are used to

Question 8: Some aspects of animals’ lives are affected by unwanted light,

EXCEPT:

A Migration

B Reproduction

C Natural life span

D Feeding

Questions 9-13

Light pollution has affected many forms of life. Use the information in the passage
to match the animals with the relevant information below. Write the appropriate
letters A-G in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

9 Songbirds

10 Horseshoe bat

11 Nightingales

12 Bewick’s swans

13 Sea turtles
(A) eat too much and migrate in advance.

(B) would not like to sing songs at night.

(C) is attracted by the light and then a crash happens.

(D) suffers from food shortages because of competitors.

(E) have become easier targets for predators.

(F) be active at unusual times.

(G) have trouble inbreeding.

Practice 8:

Tool for ancient writing

{A} 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.)

{B} 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.

{C} 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.

{D} 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

{E} 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
{F} 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.

{G} 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.

H 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.

{I} 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

Questions 1-2

What TWO features do record retention possess in nature?

A Easier and faster

B Capaciousness

C portable

D convenient

E Iterance

Question 3

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 4-10

The reading Passage has eleven paragraphs A-I.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-I, in boxes 4-10 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

4 the working principle of the primitive pens made of plant stems

5 a writing tool commonly implemented for the longest time

6 liquid for writing firstly devised by Chinese

7 majuscule scripts as the unique written form originally

8 the original invention of today’s correspondences

9 the mention of two basic writing instruments being invented

coordinately

10 a design to safeguard the written content

Questions 11-13

Answer the questions below.

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

passage for each answer.

11 What makes it not so convenient to use the quill pens? 11

12 When did one more breakthrough occur following the popularity of paper of
plant fibres? 12

13 What inventions were the results of human’s creative instinct of developing

writing tools? 13

Practice 9:
 Toddlers Bond With Robot

(A) Will the robot revolution begin in nursery school? Researchers introduced a
state-of-the-art social robot into a classroom of 18- to 24-month-olds for five
months as a way of studying human-robot interactions. The children not only came
to accept the robot, but treated it as they would a human buddy - hugging it and
helping it - a new study says. "The results imply that current robot technology is
surprisingly close to achieving autonomous bonding and socialization with human
toddlers," said Fumihide Tanaka, a researcher at the University of California, San
Diego

(B) The development of robots that interact socially with people has been difficult
to achieve, experts say, partly because such interactions are hard to study. "To my
knowledge, this is the first long-term study of this sort," said Ronald Arkin, a
roboticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who was not involved with the
study. "It is groundbreaking and helps to forward human-robot interaction studies
significantly," he said.

(C) The most successful robots so far have been storytellers, but they have only
been able to hold human interest for a limited time. For the new study, researchers
introduced a toddler-size humanoid robot into a classroom at a UCSD childhood
education center. Initially the researchers wanted to use a 22-inch-tall model, but
later they decided to use another robot of the QRIO series, the 23-inch-tall (58-
centimeter-tall) machine was originally developed by Sony. Children of toddler
age were chosen because they have no preconceived notions of robots, said
Tanaka, the lead researcher, who also works for Sony. The researchers sent
instructions about every two minutes to the robot to do things like giggle, dance, sit
down, or walk in a certain direction. The 45 sessions were videotaped, and
interactions between toddlers and the robot were later analyzed.

(D) The results showed that the quality of those interactions improved steadily
over 27 sessions. The tots began to increasingly interact with the robot and treat it
more like a peer than an object during the first 11 sessions. The level of social
activity increased dramatically when researchers added a new behavior to QRIO's
repertoire: If a child touched the humanoid on its head, it would make a giggling
noise. The interactions deteriorated quickly over the next 15 sessions, when the
robot was reprogrammed to behave in a more limited, predictable manner. Finally,
the human-robot relations improved in the last three sessions, after the robot had
been reprogrammed to display its full range of behaviors. "Initially the children
treated the robot very differently than the way they treated each other," Tanaka
said. "But by the end they treated the robot as a peer rather than a toy."

(E) Early in the study some children cried when QRIO fell. But a month into the
study, the toddlers helped QRIO stand up by pushing its back or pulling its hands.
“The most important aspect of interaction was touch”, Tanaka said. “At first the
toddlers would touch the robot on its face, but later on they would touch only on its
hands and arms, like they would with other humans”. Another robotlike toy named
Robby, which resembled QRIO but did not move, was used as a control toy in the
study. While hugging of QRIO increased, hugging of Robby decreased throughout
the study. Furthermore, when QRIO laid down on the floor as its batteries ran
down, a toddler would put a blanket over his silver-colored "friend" and say
"night-night."

(F) "Our work suggests that touch integrated on the time-scale of a few minutes is
a surprisingly effective index of social connectedness," Tanaka says. "Something
akin to this index may be used by the human brain to evaluate its own sense of
social well-being." He adds that social robots like QRIO could greatly enrich
classrooms and assist teachers in early learning programs. Hiroshi Ishiguro -
robotics expert at Osaka University in Japan - says, "I think this study has clearly
reported the possibilities of small, almost autonomous humanoid robots for
toddlers. Nowadays robots can perform a variety of functions that were thought to
be incident to people only - in short time we’ll have electronic baby-sitters and
peer-robots in every kindergarten," said Ishiguro, who was not involved with the
study but has collaborated with its authors on other projects.

(G) Now this study has taken a new direction - the researchers are now developing
autonomous robots for the toddler classroom. "I cannot avoid underlining how
great potential it could have in educational settings assisting teachers and enriching
the classroom environment," Tanaka said. However, some scientists don’t share his
opinion.

(H) Arkin, the Georgia Tech roboticist, said he was not surprised by the affection
showed by the toddlers toward the robot. "Humans have a tremendous propensity
to bond with artifacts with any or all sort, whether it be a car, a doll, or a robot," he
said. But he also cautioned that researchers don't yet understand the consequences
of increased human-robot interaction. "Just studying how robots and humans work
together can give us insight into whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for
society," Akrin said. "What are the consequences of introducing a robot artifact
into a cadre of children? How will that enhance, or potentially interfere with, their
social development? It might make life easier for the teacher, but we really don't
understand the long-term impact of having a robot as a childhood friend, do we?"

Questions 1-7

Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs, A-H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet. You may use any
letter more than once.

1. Changes in toddler-robot interactions quality. 1

2. Comparison of two different robots. 2

3. The fact that previous robots could maintain people’s interest only for a short
time. 3

4. The importance of touch. 4

5. The new direction of the study. 5

6. Technical parameters of the introduced robot. 6

7. The significance and novelty of the conducted study. 7

Questions 8-12

Connect each of the statements below with the name of scientist who expressed it.
Answer A, B, or C to questions 8-12.

A Fumihide Tanaka

B Ronald Arkin

C Hiroshi Ishiguro

8. Robots will perform duties of baby-sitters in the nearest future. 8

9. By the end of the study children treated the robot as a living creature rather than
a toy. 9

10. The long-term impact of having a robot as a childhood friend can be

negative. 10

11. The conducted study is the first major study of this sort. 11

12. Robots can be used in classrooms and assist teachers. 12

Questions 13-15

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 13-15 on your answer sheet.

13. the study, researchers introduced a toddler-size humanoid robot that was

A 58-inch-tall

B 22-inch-tall

C 23-inch-tall

D 45-inch-tall

14. The researchers sent instructions to the robot to perform different actions
EXCEPT

A laugh

B dance

C sit down

D crawl

15. The toddlers began to increasingly interact with the robot during

A the first 11 sessions

B the next 15 sessions

C the first 27 sessions

D the last 15 sessions