IELTS Cambridge 07
Reading
Passage 1
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Let’s Go Bats
A Bats have a problem: how to find their
way around in the dark. They hunt at night, and cannot use light to help them
find prey
and avoid obstacles.
You might say that this is a problem of their own making one that they could
avoid simply by changing their habits and hunting by day. But the daytime
economy is already heavily exploited by other creatures such as birds. (Q3) Given that
there is living to be made at night, and given that alternative daytime trades
are thoroughly occupied, natural selection has favoured bats that make a go of
the night-hunting trade. (Q2) It is
probable that the nocturnal trades go
way back in the ancestry of all mammals. In the time when the dinosaurs
dominated the daytime economy, our mammalian ancestors probably only managed to
survive at all because they found ways of scrapping a living at night. Only
after the mysterious
mass extinction
of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago were our ancestors able to emerge
into the daylight in any substantial numbers.
B Bats have an engineering problem: (Q1) how to find their way and find their prey in the absence of light. Bats are not only creatures to face this difficulty today.
Obviously
the night-flying insects that they
prey on must find their way about somehow. Deep-sea
fish and whales have little or no light by day or by night. Fish and
Dolphins that live in extremely muddy water cannot see because, although there is
light, it is obstructed
and scattered by
the dirt in the water. Plenty of other modern animals make their living in
conditions where seeing is difficult or impossible.
C Given the questions of how to manoeuvre
in the dark, what solutions might an engineer consider? The first one that
might occur to him is to manufacture light, to use a lantern or a searchlight.
Fireflies and some fish (usually with the help of bacteria) have the power to
manufacture their own light, but the process seems to consume a large amount of
energy. Fireflies use their light for attracting mates. This doesn’t require a prohibitive
amount of energy. a male’s tiny pinprick of light can be seen by a female from
some distance on a dark night, since her eyes exposed directly to the light
source itself. However, using light to find one’s own way around requires
vastly more energy, since the eyes have to detect the tiny fraction of the
light that bounces off each part of the scene. The light source must therefore
be immensely brighter if it is to be used as a headlight to illuminate the
path, than if it is to be used as a signal to others. In any event, whether or
not the reason is the energy expense, it seems to be the case that, with the
possible exception
of some weird deep-sea fish, no animal apart from man uses manufactured light
to find its way about.
D What else might the engineer think of? Well
blind humans sometimes seem to have an uncanny sense of obstacles in their path. It has
been given the name “facial vision” because blind people have reported
that it feels a bit like the sense of touch, on the face. One report tells of a
totally blind boy who could ride his tricycle at good speed round the block
near his home, using facial vision. Experiments showed that, in fact, facial
vision is nothing to do with touch or the front of the face, although the
sensation may be referred to the front
of the face, like the referred (Q6) pain in a
phantom limb. The sensation of facial vision, it turns
out, really goes in through the ears. Blind people, without even being aware of
the fact, are actually using (Q7) echoes of
their own footsteps and of other sounds, to sense the presence of
obstacles. Before this was discovered, (Q5) engineers
had already built instruments to exploit the
principle, for example to measure the (Q 8) depth of the sea under a ship. After this technique had been invented, it was only a
matter of time before weapons designers adapted it for the (Q 9) detection of
submarines. Both sides in the
Second World War relied heavily on these devices, under such codenames as Asdic
( British ) and Sonar ( American ) , as well as Radar ( American ) , RDF (
British ) , Which uses radio echoes rather than sound echoes.
E (Q10) The
Sonar and Radar pioneers didn’t know it then, but all the world now knows that bats,
or rather natural selection working on bats, had preferred the
system tens of millions of years earlier and their “Radar” achieves feats of
detection and navigation that would strike an engineer dumb with admiration. (Q11) It is technically incorrect to talk about bat “Radar”,
since they do not use radio wave. (Q4) (Q12) It is sonar. But the underlying mathematical theories of
radar and sonar are very similar, and
much of our scientific understanding of the
details of what bats are doing has come from applying radar theory to them.
(Q13) The American zoologist Donald Griffin, who
was largely responsible for the discovery of sonar in bats, coined
the term “echolocation” to cover both sonar and radar; whether used by animals
or by human instruments.
Questions 1-5
Reading
passage 1 has five paragraphs A-E
Which
paragraph contains the following information?
Write
the correct letter. A-E, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
NB.
You may use any letter more than once.
1
examples of wildlife other than bats which do not rely on vision to navigate by
Answer: B
2
how early mammals avoided dying out Answer:
A
3
why bats hunt in the dark Answer: A
4
how a particular discovery has helped our understanding of bats Answer: E
5
early military uses of echolocation. Answer:
D
Complete
the summary below.
Choose
ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for
each answer.
Write
your answers in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.
Blind
people report that so-called “facial vision” is comparable to the sensation of
touch on the face. In face, the sensation is more similar to the way in which pain
from a 6 Phantom arm or leg might be
felt. The ability actually comes from perceiving 7 echoes
through the ears. However, even before
this was understood, the principle had been applied in the design of
instruments which calculated the 8 depth
of the seabed. This was followed by a wartime application in devices for
finding 9 submarines
Questions
10-13
Complete
the sentences below.
Choose
NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS From the
passage for each answer.
Write
your answer in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
10
Long before the invention of radar, natural
selection had resulted in a sophisticated radar-like system in bats.
11
Radar is an inaccurate term when referring to bats because radio waves are not used in their navigation
system.
12
Radar and sonar are based on similar mathematical theories.
13
The word “echolocation” was first used by someone working as a Zoologist.
You
should spend about 20 minutes on Question 14026, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 on the flowing pages.
Questions 14-20
Reading
Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-H
Choose
the correct heading for paragraphs A and C-H from the list of headings below.
Write
the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.
|
|
15 Paragraph C , Answer : vii
16 Paragraph D Answer :v
17 Paragraph E Answer : i
18 Paragraph F Answer : ix
19 Paragraph G Answer : ii
20 Paragraph H Answer : x
MAKING EVERY DROP COUNT
B During the
industrial revolution and population explosion of the 19th and 20th centuries,
the demand for water rose dramatically. Unprecedented construction of tens of
thousands of monumental engineering projects designed to control floods, protect
clean water supplies, and provide water for irrigation and hydropower brought
great benefits to hundreds of millions of people. Food production has kept pace
with soaring populations mainly because of the expansion of artificial
irrigation systems that make possible the growth of 40 % of the world’s food.
Nearly one fifth of all the electricity generated worldwide is produced by
turbines spun by the power of falling water.
C (Q15-VII) Yet there is a dark side to this picture: despite our progress, half of the world’s population still suffers, with
water services inferior to those available to the ancient Greeks and Romans. As
the United Nations report on access to water reiterated in November 2001, more than one billion people lack access to clean drinking
water; some two and a half billion do
not have adequate sanitation services. Preventable
water-related diseases kill an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 children every day,
and the latest evidence suggests that we are falling behind in efforts to solve
these problems.
D (Q16: V) The consequences of our water policies extend
beyond jeopardizing
human health. Tens of millions of people have been forced to move from their
homes - often with little warning or compensation - to make way for the
reservoirs behind dams. More than 20% of all freshwater fish species are now threatened or endangered
because dams and water withdrawals have destroyed the free-flowing river
ecosystems where they thrive. Certain irrigation practices degrade soil quality and
reduce agricultural productivity. Groundwater
aquifers are being pumped down faster than they are naturally replenished in
parts of India, China, the USA and elsewhere. And disputes over
shared water resources have led to violence and continue to raise local,
national and even international tensions.
E (Q17:I) At
the outset of the new millennium, however, the way resource
planners think about water is beginning to change. The focus is
slowly shifting back to the provision of basic
human and environmental needs as top priority - ensuring “some for all,”
instead of “more for some”. Some water experts are now demanding
that existing infrastructure be used in smarted ways rather than building new
facilities, which is increasingly considered the option of last, nor first,
resort. This shift in philosophy has not been universally accepted, and it
comes with strong opposition from some established water organizations.
Nevertheless, it may be the only way to address successfully the pressing
problems of providing everyone with clean water to drink, adequate water to
grow food and a life free from preventable water-related illness.
F (Q18: IX) Fortunately
- and unexpectedly - the demand for water is not rising as rapidly as some
predicted. As a result, the pressure to build new water
infrastructures has diminished over the past two decades. Although
population, industrial output and economic productivity have continued to soar
in developed nations, the rate at which people withdraw water from aquifers,
rivers and lakes has showed . , And in a few parts of the world, demand has actually fallen.
G (Q19: II) What explains this remarkable turn of events? Two factors: people
have figured out how to use water more efficiently, and communities are
rethinking their priorities for water use. Throughout the first
three-quarters of the 20th Century, the quantity of freshwater consumed per
person doubled on average; in the USA, water withdrawals increased tenfold
while the population quadrupled. But since 1980, the
amount of water consumed per person has actually decreased, thanks to a range
of new technologies that help to conserve water in homes and industry.
In 1965, for instance, Japan used approximately 13 million gallons of water to
produce $1 million of commercial output; by 1989 this had dropped to 3.5
million gallons (even accounting for inflation) - almost a quadrupling of water
productivity. In the USA, water withdrawals have
fallen by more than 20% from their peak in 1980.
H (Q20: X) On the other hand, dams, aqueducts and
other kinds of infrastructure will still have to be built, particularly in
developing countries where basic human needs have not been met. But such projects must be built to higher specifications and
with more accountability to local people and their environment than in the
past. And even in regions where new projects seem warranted, we must
find ways to meet demands with fewer resources, respecting
ecological criteria and to a smaller budget.
Do the following statements agree with the
information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the
writer
NO if the
statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks
about this
21 Water use per person is higher in the industrial
world than it was in Ancient Rome. NO
22 Feeding increasing populations is possible due
primarily to improved irrigation systems. YES
23 Modern water systems imitate those of the ancient Greeks
and Romans. NOT
GIVEN
24 Industrial growth is increasing the overall
demand for water. NO
25 Modern technologies have led to a reduction in
domestic water consumption. YES
26. In the future, governments should maintain
ownership of water infrastructures. NOT GIVEN.
