Some Facts and Theories about Flu

The flu, more properly known as influenza, takes its name from the fact that it is so easily transmitted from
person to person (influenza is the Italian word for ’influence’). Usually, contamination occurs through direct
contact with secretions from an infected person. Its spread is also possible from contaminated airborne particles,
such as those that occur when someone coughs or sneezes. However, it should be made clear that the risk is
not great from simply being in the same room as an infected person, since the flu virus, unlike other respiratory
viruses, does not dissolve in the air. Within 4-6 hours of someone catching the flu, the virus multiplies in infected
cells and the cells burst, spreading the virus to other cells nearby.
The spread continues for up to 72 hours, the exact length of time depending on the body’s immune system
response and the strength of the particular strain of flu. The range of human responses to the flu virus has been
of interest to scientists for many years. This is because the effect can vary from no infection to a rapid and
deadly spread of the virus to many people. One area of study that has received particular attention is the
immune system response of the individual. Where a person’s immune system is healthy, the virus is attacked as
it enters the body, usually in the respiratory tract. This lessens the severity of the illness. In contrast, people with
compromised immune systems (typical in the young, where it is not fully developed, or in the old and the sick,
where it is not working efficiently), often suffer the worst effects.
One of the body’s responses to flu is the creation of antibodies which recognise and destroy that particular strain
of flu virus. What fascinates most researchers in the field is that the human body seems capable of storing these
antibodies over a whole lifetime in case of future attack from the same or similar strains of flu. It was while
researching these antibodies that scientists turned their attention back to what was possibly the worst ever flu
pandemic in the world. The actual number of deaths is disputed, but the outbreak in 1918 killed between 20 and
50 million people. It is also estimated that one fifth of the population of the world may have been infected.
Through tests done on some of the survivors of the 1918 outbreak, it was discovered that, 90 years later, they
still possessed the antibodies to that strain of flu, and some of them were actually still producing the antibodies.
Work is now focused on why these people survived in the first place, with one theory being that they had actually
been exposed to an earlier, similar strain, therefore developing immunity to the 1918 strain. It is hoped that, in
the near future, we might be able to isolate the antibodies and use them to vaccinate people against further
outbreaks.
Yet vaccination against the flu is an imprecise measure. At best, the vaccine protects us from the variations of flu
that doctors expect that year. If their predictions are wrong in any particular year, being vaccinated will not
prevent us from becoming infected. This is further complicated by the fact that there are two main types of flu,
known as influenza A and influenza B. Influenza B causes less concern as its effects are usually less serious.
Influenza A, however, has the power to change its genetic make-up. Although these genetic changes are rare,
they create entirely new strains of flu against which we have no protection. It has been suggested that this is
what had happened immediately prior to the 1918 outbreak, with research indicating that a genetic shift had
taken place in China.
In 2005, another genetic shift in an influenza A virus was recorded, giving rise to the H5N1 strain, otherwise
known as avian flu, or bird flu. Typical of such new strains, we have no way of fighting it and many people who
are infected with it die. Perhaps more worrying is that it is a strain only previously found in birds but which
changed its genetic make-up in a way that allowed it to be transmitted to humans. Most of the fear surrounding
this virus is that it will change again, developing the ability to pass from human to human. If that change does
happen, scientists and doctors can reasonably expect a death rate comparable to that which occurred in 1918
and, given that we can now travel more quickly and more easily between countries, infecting many more people
than was previously possible, it could be several times worse

1. [……] The one and only way to catch flu is if someone sneezes or coughs near you.
2. [……] Those who are more likely to suffer badly with the flu include very young or
very old people.
3. [……] You become aware of the symptoms of flu within 4-6 hours of infection.
4. [……] The effect of a flu infection can depend on how strong the strain is.
5. [……] Another change in the genetic make-up of the H5N1 strain could kill more
people than the 1918 epidemic.
6. [……] Although antibodies last a lifetime, scientists have found they get weaker with
age.
7. [……] Vaccination is largely ineffective against flu.

Questions 8-11
8. Influenza A viruses do not change their genetic make-up frequently. (…...)
9. One fifth of the people in the world caught the flu in 1918. (…...)
10. The H5N1 strain evolved in or before 2005. (…...)
11. Sharing a room with a flu sufferer presents a very high risk to your health. (…...)

ANSWER
1. FALSE
2. TRUE
3. NOT GIVEN
4. TRUE
5. TRUE
6. NOT GIVEN
7. FALSE
8. C
9. B
10. A
11. C
12. HUMAN TO HUMAN
13. RESPIRATORY TRACT

There has always been a sense in which America and Europe owned film
There has always been a sense in which America and Europe owned film. They invented it at the end of the
nineteenth century in unfashionable places like New Jersey, Leeds and the suburbs of Lyons. At first, they saw
their clumsy new camera-projectors merely as more profitable versions of Victorian lantern shows, mechanical
curiosities which might have a use as a sideshow at a funfair. Then the best of the pioneers looked beyond the
fairground properties of their invention. A few directors, now mostly forgotten, saw that the flickering new
medium was more than just a diversion. This crass commercial invention gradually began to evolve as an art. D
W Griffith in California glimpsed its grace, German directors used it as an analogue to the human mind and the
modernising city, Soviets emphasised its agitational and intellectual properties, and the Italians reconfigured it
on an operatic scale.
So heady were these first decades of cinema that America and Europe can be forgiven for assuming that they
were the only game in town. In less than twenty years western cinema had grown out of all recognition; its
unknowns became the most famous people in the world; it made millions. It never occurred to its financial
backers that another continent might borrow their magic box and make it its own. But film industries were
emerging in Shanghai, Bombay and Tokyo, some of which would outgrow those in the west.
Between 1930 and 1935, China produced more than 500 films, mostly conventionally made in studios in
Shanghai, without soundtracks. China's best directors - Bu Wancang and Yuan Muzhi - introduced elements of
realism to their stories. The Peach Girl (1931) and Street Angel (1937) are regularly voted among the best ever
made in the country.
India followed a different course. In the west, the arrival of talkies gave birth to a new genre - the musical - but in
India, every one of the 5000 films made between 1931 and the mid-1950s had musical interludes. The films
were stylistically more wide ranging than the western musical, encompassing realism and escapist dance within
individual sequences, and they were often three hours long rather than Hollywood's 90 minutes. The cost of
such productions resulted in a distinctive national style of cinema. They were often made in Bombay, the centre
of what is now known as 'Bollywood'. Performed in Hindi (rather than any of the numerous regional
languages), they addressed social and peasant themes in an optimistic and romantic way and found markets in
the Middle East, Africa and the Soviet Union.
In Japan, the film industry did not rival India's in size but was unusual in other ways. Whereas in Hollywood the
producer was the central figure, in Tokyo the director chose the stories and hired the producer and actors. The
model was that of an artist and his studio of apprentices. Employed by a studio as an assistant, a future director
worked with senior figures, learned his craft, gained authority, until promoted to director with the power to select
screenplays and performers. In the 1930s and 40s, this freedom of the director led to the production of some of
Asia's finest films.
The films of Kenji Mizoguchi were among the greatest of these. Mizoguchi's films were usually set in the
nineteenth century and analysed the way in which the lives of the female characters whom he chose as his
focus were constrained by the society of the time. From Osaka Elegy (1936) to Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) and
beyond, he evolved a sinuous way of moving his camera in and around a scene, advancing towards significant
details but often retreating at moments of confrontation or strong feeling. No one had used the camera with such
finesse before.
Even more important for film history, however, is the work of the great Ozu. Where Hollywood cranked up
drama, Ozu avoided it. His camera seldom moved. It nestled at seated height, framing people square on,
listening quietly to their words. Ozu rejected the conventions of editing, cutting not on action, as is usually done
in the west, but for visual balance. Even more strikingly, Ozu regularly cut away from his action to a shot of a
tree or a kettle or clouds, not to establish a new location but as a moment of repose. Many historians now
compare such 'pillow shots' to the Buddhist idea that mu - empty space or nothing - is itself an element of
composition.
As the art form most swayed by money and market, cinema would appear to be too busy to bother with
questions of philosophy. The Asian nations proved and are still proving that this is not the case. Just as deep
ideas about individual freedom have led to the aspirational cinema of Hollywood, so it is the beliefs which
underlie cultures such as those of China and Japan that explain the distinctiveness of Asian cinema at its best.
Yes, these films are visually striking, but it is their different sense of what a person is, and what space and action
are, which makes them new to western eye.

Write the correct letters in blank spaces 14 -20.

Chinese cinema
 large number of 14. ……………….. films produced in 1930s
 some early films still generally regarded as 15. ………………..

Indian cinema
 films included musical interludes
 films avoided 16. ……………….. topics
Japanese cinema
 unusual because film director was very 17. ………………..
 two important directors:
Mizoguchi - focused on the 18. ……………….. restrictions faced by women
- camera movement related to 19. ……………….. content of film
Ozu - 20. ……………….. camera movement
A. outstanding B. social C. silent D. expensive E. negative
F. emotional G. economic H. stylistic I. realistic J. powerful K. little

Questions 21
21. Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 2?
A. A different basis: how has the cinema of Asian countries been shaped by their cultures and beliefs?
B. Blind to change: how is it that the west has ignored Asian cinema for so long?
C. Two cultures: how has western cinema tried to come to terms with the challenge of the Asian market?
D. Outside Asia: how did the origins of cinema affect its development worldwide?

ANSWER
14. C. SILENT
15. A. OUTSTANDING
16. E. NEGATIVE
17. J. POWERFUL
18. B. SOCIAL
19. F. EMOTIONAL
20. K. LITTLE
21. A