IELTS ACADEMIC READING 5

SECTION 1

NEW AGRICULTURE IN OREGON, US

Onion growers in eastern Oregon are adopting a system that saves water and keeps topsoil in place, while producing the highest quality “super colossal” onions. Pear growers in southern Oregon have reduced their use of some of the most toxic pesticides by up to two-thirds and are still producing top-quality pears. Range managers throughout the state have controlled the poisonous weed tansy ragwort with insect predators and saved the Oregon livestock industry up to $4.8 million a year.

These are some of the results Oregon growers have achieved in collaboration with Oregon State University (OSU) researchers as they test new farming methods including integrated pest management (IPM). Nationwide, however, IPM has not delivered results comparable to those in Oregon. A recent U.S General Accounting Office (GAO) report indicates that while integrated pest management can result in dramatically reduced pesticide use, the federal government has been lacking in effectively promoting that goal and implementing IPM. Farmers also blame the government for not making the new options of pest management attractive. “Wholesale changes in the way that farmers control the pests on their farms is an expensive business.” Tony Brown, of the National Farmers Association says. “If the farmers are given tax breaks to offset the expenditure, then they would willingly accept the new practices.” The report goes on to note that even though the use of the riskiest pesticides has declined nationwide, they still make up more than 40 percent of all pesticides used today; and national pesticide use has risen by 40 million kilograms since 1992. “Our food supply remains the safest and highest quality on Earth but we continue to overdose our farmland with powerful and toxic pesticides and to under-use the safe and effective alternatives,” charged Patrick Leahy, who commissioned the report. Green action groups disagree about the safety issue. “There is no way that habitual consumption of foodstuffs grown using toxic chemicals of the nature found on today’s farms can be healthy for consumers,” noted Bill Bowler, spokesman for Green Action, one of many lobbyists interested in this issue.

The GAO report singles out Oregon’s apple and pear producers who have used the new IPM techniques with growing success. Although Oregon is clearly ahead of the nation, scientists at OSU are taking the Government Accounting Office criticisms seriously. “We must continue to develop effective alternative practices that will reduce environmental hazards and produce high quality products,” said Paul Jepson, a professor of entomology at OSU and new director of OSU’s Integrated Plant Protection Centre (IPPC).

The IPPC brings together scientists from OSU’s Agricultural Experiment Station, OSU Extension service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Oregon farmers to help develop agricultural systems that will save water and soil and reduce pesticides. In response to the GAO report, the Centre is putting even more emphasis on integrating research and farming practices to improve Oregon agriculture environmentally and economically.

“The GAO report criticizes agencies for not clearly communicating the goals of IPM,” said Jepson. “Our challenge is to greatly improve the communication to and from growers, to learn what works and what doesn’t. The work coming from OSU researchers must be adopted in the field and not simply languish in scientific journals.”

In Oregon, growers and scientists are working together to instigate new practices. For example, a few years ago scientists at OSU’s Malheur Experiment Station began testing a new drip irrigation system to replace old ditches that wasted water and washed soil and fertilizer into streams. The new system cut water and fertilizer use by half, kept topsoil in place and protected water quality.

In addition, the new system produced crops of very large onions, rated “super colossal” and highly valued by the restaurant industry and food processors. Art Pimms, one of the researchers at Malheur comments: “Growers are finding that when they adopt more environmentally benign practices, they can have excellent results. The new practices benefit the environment and give the growers their success.”

OSU researchers in Malheur next tested straw mulch and found that it successfully held soil in place and kept the ground moist with less irrigation. In addition, and unexpectedly, the scientists found that the mulched soil created a home for beneficial beetles and spiders that prey on onion thrips – a notorious pest in commercial onion fields – a discovery that could reduce the need for pesticides. “I would never have believed that we could replace the artificial pest controls that we had before and still keep our good results,” commented Steve Black, a commercial onion farmer in Oregon, “but instead we have actually surpassed expectations.”

OSU researchers throughout the state have been working to reduce dependence on broad spectrum chemical sprays that are toxic to many kind of organisms, including humans. “Consumers are rightly putting more and more pressure on the industry to change its reliance on chemical pesticides, but they still want a picture-perfect product,” said Rick Hilton, entomologist at OSU’s Southern Oregon Research and Extension Centre, where researchers help pear growers reduce the need for highly toxic pesticides. Picture perfect pears are an important product in Oregon and traditionally they have required lots of chemicals. In recent years, the industry has faced stiff competition from overseas producers, so any new methods that growers adopt must make sense economically as well as environmentally. Hilton is testing a growth regulator that interferes with the molting of codling moth larvae. Another study used pheromone dispensers to disrupt codling moth mating. These and other methods of integrated pest management have allowed pear growers to reduce their use of organophosphates by two-thirds and reduce all other synthetic pesticides by even more and still produce top-quality pears. These and other studies around the state are part of the effort of the IPPC to find alternative farming practices that benefit both the economy and the environment.

Questions 1-8

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-G) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet. NB you may use any letter more than once

A Tony Brown

B Patrick Leahy

C Bill Bowler

D Paul Jepson

E Art Pimms

F Steve Black

G Rick Hilton

There is a double advantage to the new techniques.
The work on developing these alternative techniques is not finished.
Eating food that has had chemicals used in its production is dangerous to our health.
Changing current farming methods into a new one is not a cheap process.
Results have exceeded the anticipated goal.
The research done should be translated into practical projects.
The U.S. produces the best food in the world nowadays.
Expectations of end users of agricultural products affect the products.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement is true

NO if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

Integrated Pest Management has generally been regarded as a success across the US.
Oregon farmers of apples and pears have been promoted as successful examples of Integrated Pest Management.
The IPPC uses scientists from different organisations globally
Straw mulch experiments produced unplanned benefits.
The apple industry is now facing a lot of competition from abroad.

SECTION 2

INTELLIGENCE AND GIFTEDNESS

A.) In 1904 the French minister of education, facing limited resources for schooling, sought a way to separate the unable from the merely lazy. Alfred Binet got the job of devising selection principles and his brilliant solution put a stamp on the study of intelligence and was the forerunner of intelligence tests still used today, he developed a thirty-problem test in 1905, which tapped several abilities related to intellect, such as judgment and reasoning, the test determined a given child’s mental age’, the test previously established a norm for children of a given physical age. (for example, five-year-olds on average get ten items correct), therefore, a child with a mental age of five should score 10, which would mean that he or she was functioning pretty much as others of that age. The child’s mental age was then compared to his physical age.

B.) A large disparity in the wrong direction (e.g., a child of nine with a mental age of four) might suggest inability rather than laziness and mean he or she was earmarked for special schooling, Binet, however, denied that the test was measuring intelligence, its purpose was simply diagnostic, for selection only. This message was however lost and caused many problems and misunderstanding later.

C Although Binet’s test was popular, it was a bit inconvenient to deal with a variety of physical and mental ages. So, in 1912 Wilhelm Stem suggested simplifying this by reducing the two to a single number, he divided the mental age by the physical age, and multiplied the result by 100. An average child, irrespective of age, would score 100. a number much lower than 100 would suggest the need for help, and one much higher would suggest a child well ahead of his peer.

D This measurement is what is now termed the IQ (for intelligence quotient) score and it has evolved to be used to show how a person, adult or child, performed in relation to others, (the term IQ was coined by Lewis M. Terman, professor of psychology and education of Stanford University, in 1916. He had constructed an enormously influential revision of Binet’s test, called the Stanford-Binet test, versions of which are still given extensively.

E The field studying intelligence and developing tests eventually coalesced into a sub-field of psychology called psychometrics (psycho for ‘mind’ and metrics for ‘measurements’). The practical side of psychometrics (the development and use of tests) became widespread quite early, by 1917, when Einstein published his grand theory of relativity, mass-scale testing was already in use. Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare (which led to the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915) provoked the United States to finally enter the First World War in the same year. The military had to build up an army very quickly; it had two million inductees to sort out. Who would become officers ? Psychometricians developed two intelligence tests that helped sort all these people out, at least to some extent, this was the first major use of testing to decide who lived and who died, as officers were a lot safer on the battlefield, the tests themselves were given under horrendously bad conditions, and the examiners seemed to lack commonsense, a lot of recruits simply had no idea what to do and in several sessions most inductees scored zero! The examiners also came up with the quite astounding conclusion from the testing that the average American adult’s intelligence was equal to that of a thirteen-year-old!

F Intelligence testing enforced political and social prejudice, their results were used to argue that Jews ought to be kept out of the United States because they were so intelligently inferior that they would pollute the racial mix; and blacks ought not to be allowed to breed at all. And so abuse and test bias controversies continued to plague psychometrics.

G Measurement is fundamental to science and technology, science often advances in leaps and bounds when measurement devices improve, psychometrics has long tried to develop ways to gauge psychological qualities such as intelligence and more specific abilities, anxiety, extroversion, emotional stability, compatibility, with marriage partner, and so on. Their scores are often given enormous weight A single IQ measurement can take on a life of its own if teachers and parents see it as definitive. It became a major issue in the 70s, when court cases were launched to stop anyone from making important decisions based on IQ test scores, the main criticism was and still is that current tests don’t really measure intelligence, whether intelligence can be measured at all is still controversial, some say it cannot others say that IQ tests are psychology’s greatest accomplishments

Questions 14-17

The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 14-17on your answer sheet. NB You may use an option more than once.

IQ is just one single factor of human characteristics.
Discussion of methodology behind the Professor Stern’s test.
Inadequacy of IQ test from Binet.
The word IQ was first used by a professor.

Questions 18-21

Choose the correct letter, A, B, c or D. Write your answers in boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet.

18. Professor Binet devised the test to_____

A Choose those who do not perform satisfactorily

B Find the best one

C Measure the intelligence

DEstablish the standard of intelligence

19. The test is designed according to_______

A Math

B Age

C Reading skill

D Gender

20. US Army used Intelligence tests to select______

A Officers

B Normal Soldiers

C Examiners

D Submarine drivers.

21. the purpose of the text is to______

A Give credit to the contribution of Binet in IQ test

B Prove someone’s theory is feasible,

C Discuss the validity and limitation of test

D Outline the history of the test

Questions 22-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 22-26 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

The intention in designing the test by professor Binet was misunderstood.
Age as a factor is completely overlooked in the simplified tests by Wilhelm Stem
Einstein was a counter example of IQ test conclusion.
IQ test lead to racial discrimination as a negative effect.
The author regards measuring intelligent test as a goal hardly meaningful

SECTION 3

EXTINCT: THE GIANT DEER

Toothed cats, mastodons, giant sloths, woolly rhinos, and many other big, shaggy mammals are widely thought to have died out around the end of the last ice age, some 10,500 years ago.

The Irish elk is also known as the giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus). Analysis of ancient bones and teeth by scientists based in Britain and Russia show the huge herbivore survived until about 5,000 B.C.—more than three millennia later than previously believed. The research team says this suggests additional factors, besides climate change, probably hastened the giant deer’s eventual extinction. The factors could include hunting or habitat destruction by humans.

The Irish elk, so-called because its well-preserved remains are often found in lake sediments under peat bogs in Ireland, first appeared about 400,000 years ago in Europe and central Asia. Through a combination of radiocarbon dating of skeletal remains and the mapping of locations where the remains were unearthed, the team shows the Irish elk was widespread across Europe before the last “big freeze.” The deer’s range later contracted to the Ural Mountains, in modern-day Russia, which separate Europe from Asia.

The giant deer made its last stand in western Siberia, some 3,000 years after the ice sheets receded, said the study’s co-author, Adrian Lister, professor of palaeobiology at University College London, England. “The eastern foothills of the Urals became very densely forested about 8,000 years ago, which could have pushed them on to the plain,” he said. He added that pollen analysis indicates the region then became very dry in response to further climactic change, leading to the loss of important food plants. “In combination with human pressures, this could have finally snuffed them out,” Lister said.

Hunting by humans has often been put forward as a contributory cause of extinctions of the Pleistocene mega fauna. The team, though, said their new date for the Irish elk’s extinction hints at an additional human-made problem—habitat destruction. Lister said, “We haven’t got just hunting 7,000 years ago—this was also about the time the first Neolithic people settled in the region. They were farmers who would have cleared the land.” The presence of humans may help explain why the Irish elk was unable to tough out the latest of many climatic fluctuations—periods it had survived in the past.

Meanwhile, Lister cast doubt on another possible explanation for the deer’s demise—the male’s huge antlers. Some scientists have suggested this exaggerated feature—the result of females preferring stags with the largest antlers, possibly because they advertised a male’s fitness —contributed to the mammal’s downfall. They say such antlers would have been a serious inconvenience in the dense forests that spread northward after the last ice age. But, Lister said, “That’s a hard argument to make, because the deer previously survived perfectly well through wooded interglacials [warmer periods between ice ages].” Some research has suggested that a lack of sufficient high-quality forage caused the extinction of the elk. High amounts of calcium and phosphate compounds are required to form antlers, and therefore large quantities of these minerals are required for the massive structures of the Irish Elk. The males (and male deer in general) met this requirement partly from their bones, replenishing them from food plants after the antlers were grown or reclaiming the nutrients from discarded antlers (as has been observed in extant deer). In the antler growth phase. Giant Deer were suffering from a condition similar to osteoporosis. When the climate changed at the end of the last glacial period, the vegetation in the animal’s habitat also changed towards species that presumably could not deliver sufficient amounts of the required minerals, at least in the western part of its range.

The extinction of megafauna around the world was almost completed by the end of the last ice age. It is believed that megafauna initially came into existence in response to glacial conditions and became extinct with the onset of warmer climates. Tropical and subtropical areas have experienced less radical climatic change. The most dramatic of these changes was the transformation of a vast area of north Africa into the world’s largest desert. Significantly, Africa escaped major faunal extinction as did tropical and sub-tropical Asia. The human exodus from Africa and our entrance into the Americas and Australia were also accompanied by climate change. Australia’s climate changed from cold-dry to warm-dry. As a result, surface water became scarce. Most inland lakes became completely dry or dry in the warmer seasons. Most large, predominantly browsing animals lost their habitat and retreated to a narrow band in eastern Australia, where there was permanent water and better vegetation. Some animals may have survived until about 7000 years ago. If people have been in Australia for up to 60 000 years, then megafauna must have co-existed with humans for at least 30 000 years. Regularly hunted modern kangaroos survived not only 10 000 years of aboriginal hunting, but also an onslaught of commercial shooters.

The group of scientists led by A.J. Stuart focused on northern Eurasia, which he was taking as Europe, plus Siberia, essentially, where they ‘ve got the best data that animals became extinct in Europe during the Late Pleistocene. Some cold-adapted animals, go through into the last part of the cold stage, and then become extinct up there. So, you’ve actually got two phases of extinction. Now, neither of these coincide — these are Neanderthals here being replaced by modern humans. There’s no obvious coincidence between the arrival of humans or climatic change alone and these extinctions. There’s a climatic change here, so there’s a double effect here. Again, as animals come through to the last part of the cold stage, here there’s a fundamental change in the climate, reorganization of vegetation, and the combination of the climatic change and the presence of humans — of advanced Paleolithic humans — causes this wave of extinction. There’s a profound difference between the North American data and that of Europe, which summarize that the extinctions in northern Eurasia, in Europe, are moderate and staggered, and in North America severe and sudden. And these things relate to the differences in the timing of human arrival. The extinctions follow from human predation, but only at times of fundamental changes in the environment.

Questions 27-31

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 27-31 on your answer sheet.

Generally, it is well-known that, at the last maximum ice age, mammals become extinct about 27)………………… . Having been preserved well in Europe and central Asia, the remains of the Irish elk was initially found to be approximately 28)……………….. . Around 29)…………… they were driven to live in the plain after being restricted to the Ural Mountains. Hunting was considered as one of the important factors of Irish elk’s extinction. People had not started hunting until 30)……………. when Irish elk used to get through under a variety of climatic fluctuations. The huge antlers may possibly contribute to the reason why Irish elk became extinct, which was highly controversial as they live pleasantly during 31)…………..

Questions 32-34

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

What kind of physical characteristics eventually contributed to the extinction of Irish elk?
What kind of nutrients were needed in maintaining the huge size of Irish elk?
What man-made evidence suggested the advent of human resulted in the extinction of Irish elk?

Questions35-38

Matching choose the letter A-D and fill in box 35-38

A. Eurasia

B. Australia

C. Asia

D. Africa