EXERCISE 1:

The robots are coming

What is the current state of play in Artificial Intelligence?
A.

Can robots advance so far that they become the ultimate threat to our existence? Some
scientists say no, and dismiss the very idea of Artificial Intelligence. The human brain,
they argue, is the most complicated system ever created, and any machine designed to
reproduce human thought is bound to fail. Physicist Roger Penrose of Oxford University
and others believe that machines are physically incapable of human thought. Colin
McGinn of Rutgers University backs this up when he says that Artificial Intelligence ‘is
like sheep trying to do complicated psychoanalysis. They just don’t have the conceptual
equipment they need in their limited brains’.

B.

Artificial Intelligence, or Al, is different from most technologies in that scientists still
understand very little about how intelligence works. Physicists have a good
understanding of Newtonian mechanics and the quantum theory of atoms and
molecules, whereas the basic laws of intelligence remain a mystery. But a sizable
number of mathematicians and computer scientists, who are specialists in the area, are
optimistic about the possibilities. To them, it is only a matter of time before a thinking
machine walks out of the laboratory. Over the years, various problems have impeded all
efforts to create robots. To attack these difficulties, researchers tried to use the ‘top-
down approach’, using a computer in an attempt to program all the essential rules onto
a single disc. By inserting this into a machine, it would then become self-aware and
attain human-like intelligence.

C.

In the 1950s and 1960s, great progress was made, but the shortcomings of these
prototype robots soon became clear. They were huge and took hours to navigate across
a room. Meanwhile, a fruit fly, with a brain containing only a fraction of the computing
power, can effortlessly navigate in three dimensions. Our brains, like the fruit fly’s,
unconsciously recognize what we see by performing countless calculations. This
unconscious awareness of patterns is exactly what computers are missing. The second
problem is the robots’ lack of common sense. Humans know that water is wet and that
mothers are older than their daughters. But there is no mathematics that can express
these truths. Children learn the intuitive laws of biology and physics by interacting with
the real world. Robots know only what has been programmed into them.
D.

Because of the limitations of the top-down approach to Artificial Intelligence, attempts

have been made to use a ‘bottom-up’ approach instead – that is, to try to imitate
evolution and the way a baby learns. Rodney Brooks was the director of MIT’s Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory, famous for its lumbering ‘top-down’ walking robots. He
changed the course of research when he explored the unorthodox idea of tiny
‘insectoid’ robots that learned to walk by bumping into things instead of computing
mathematically the precise position of their feet. Today many of the descendants of
Brooks’ insectoid robots are on Mars gathering data for NASA (The National Aeronautics
and Space Administration), running across the dusty landscape of the planet. For all
their successes in mimicking the behaviour of insects, however, robots using neural
networks have performed miserably when their programmers have tried to duplicate in
them the behaviour of higher organisms such as mammals. MIT’s Marvin Minsky
summarises the problems of Al: ‘The history of Al is sort of funny because the first real
accomplishments were beautiful things, like a machine that could do well in a maths
course. But then we started to try to make machines that could answer questions about
simple children’s stories. There’s no machine today that can do that.’

E.

There is no universal consensus as to whether machines can be conscious, or even, in

human terms, what consciousness means. Minsky suggests the thinking process in our
brain is not localised but spread out, with different centres competing with one another
at any given time. Consciousness may then be viewed as a sequence of thoughts and
images issuing from these different, smaller ‘minds’, each one competing for our
attention. Robots might eventually attain a ‘silicon consciousness’. Robots, in fact, might
one day embody an architecture for thinking and processing information that is
different from ours-but also indistinguishable. If that happens, the question of whether
they really ‘understand’ becomes largely irrelevant. A robot that has perfect mastery of
syntax, for all practical purposes, understands what is being said.

Reading Passage 2 has five paragraphs A-E.  

Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.  Which paragraph
contains the following information?
NB  You may use  any letter more than once.

1. An insect that proves the superiority of natural intelligence over Artificial Intelligence
2. Robots being able to benefit from their mistakes
3. Many researchers not being put off believing that Artificial Intelligence will eventually
be developed
4. An innovative approach that is having limited success
5. The possibility of creating Artificial Intelligence being doubted by some academics
6. No generally accepted agreement of what our brains do
7. Robots not being able to extend the intelligence in the same way as humans
EXERCISE 2:
Is there a psychologist in the building?
—  CHRISTIAN JARRETT reports on psychology’s place in new architectural
development.  —

A. 
The space around us affects us profoundly – rebuilding of one south London school as a
striking emotionally, behaviorally, cognitively. In Britain, that example of how building
design can affect human space is changing at a pace not seen for a generation. But is
anyone listening? ‘This is a hugely recognised country’s psychology research that is not
only relevant but improved schools. At the moment we’re talking to ourselves,’ says
Chris Spencer, professor of environmental psychology at the University of Sheffield.
Spencer recalls a recent talk he gave in which he called on fellow researchers to make a
greater effort to communicate their findings to architects and planners. ‘I was amazed
at the response of many of the senior researchers, who would say: “I’m doing my
research for pure science, the industry can take it or leave it”. But there are models of
how to apply environmental psychology to real problems if you know where to look
Professor Frances Kuo is an example.

B. 
Kuo’s website provides pictures and plain English ” The collaborative project currently
summaries of the research conducted by her Human stands as a one-off experiment. ”
Among these is trainee architects will now go away with some a study using police
records that found inner-city surrounded by more vegetation suffered 52 per cent fewer
crimes than apartment blocks with little or no greenery. Frances Kuo and her co-
researcher William Sullivan believe that greenery reduces crime – so long as visibility is
preserved – because it reduces aggression, brings local residents together outdoors,
and the conspicuous presence of people deters criminals.

C. 
‘Environmental psychologists are increasingly in demand,’ says David Uzzell, professor
of environmental psychology. ‘We’re asked to contribute to the planning, design and
management of many different environments, ranging from neighbourhoods, offices,
schools, health, transport, traffic and leisure environments for the purpose of improving
quality of life and creating a better people-environment fit.’ Uzzell points to the
rebuilding of one south London school as a striking example of how building design can
affect human behaviour positively. Before its redesign, it was ranked as the worst
school in the area – now it is recognised as one of the country’s twenty most improved
schools.
D.  
Uzzell has been involved in a pioneering project between M.Sc students in England and
Scotland. Architecture students in Scotland acted as designers while environmental
psychology students in England acted as consultants, as together they worked on a
community project in a run-down area of Glasgow. The psychology students
encouraged the architecture students to think about who their client group was, to
consider issues of crowding and social cohesion, and they introduced them to
psychological methodologies, for example, observation and interviewing local residents
about their needs.’ The collaborative project currently stands as a one-off experiment.
‘Hopefully, these trainee architects will now go away with some understanding of the
psychological issues involved in the design and will take into account people’s needs,’
says Uzzell.

E. 
Hilary Barker, a recent graduate in psychology, now works for a design consultancy.
She’s part of a four-person research team that contributes to the overall work of the
company in helping clients use their office space more productively. Her team all have
backgrounds in psychology or social science, but the rest of the firm consists mainly of
architects and interior designers. ‘What I do is pretty rare, to be honest,’ Barker says. ‘I
feel very privileged to be able to use my degree in such a way.’ Barker explains that the
team carries out observational studies on behalf of companies, to identify exactly how
occupants are using their building. The companies are often surprised by the findings,
for example, that staff use meeting rooms for quiet, individual work.

F. 
One area where the findings from the environment- behaviour research have certainly
influenced building is in hospital design. The government has a checklist of criteria that
must be met in the design of new hospitals, and these are derived largely from the
work of the behavioural scientist Professor Roger Ulrich,’ Chris Spencer says. Ulrich’s
work has shown, for example, how the view from a patient’s window can affect their
recovery. Even a hospital’s layout can impact on people’s health, according to Dr John
Zeisel. ‘If people get lost in hospitals, they get stressed, which lowers their immune
system and means their medication works less well. You might think that way-finding
around the hospital is the responsibility of the person who puts all the signs up, but the
truth is that the basic layout of a building is what helps people find their way around,’
he says.

G. 
Zeisel also points to the need for a better balance between private and shared rooms in
hospitals. ‘Falls are reduced and fewer medication errors occur’ in private rooms, he
says. There’s also research showing how important it is that patients have access to the
outdoors and that gardens in hospitals are a major contributor to well-being. However,
more generally, Zeisel shares Chris Spencer’s concerns that the lessons from
environmental psychology research are not getting through. ’There is certainly a gap
between what we in social science knowledge and the world of designers and
architects,’ says Zeisel. He believes that most industries, from sports to film- making,
have now recognised the importance of an evidence-based approach and that the
building trade needs to formulate itself more in that vein and to recognise that there is
relevant research out there. ‘It would be outrageous, silly, to go ahead with huge
building projects without learning the lessons from the new towns established between
30 and 40 years ago,’ he warns.

List of Headings
i A comparison between similar buildings
ii The negative reaction of local residents
iii An unusual job for a psychologist
iv A type of building benefiting from prescribed guidelines
v The need for government action
vi A failure to use available information in practical ways
vii Academics with an unhelpful attitude
viii A refusal by architects to accept criticism
ix A unique co-operative scheme
x The expanding scope of environmental psychology

Paragraph A Paragraph D Paragraph G

Paragraph B Paragraph E

Paragraph C Paragraph F
EXERCISE 3:

Is it time to halt the rising tide of plastic packaging?

A.  Close up, plastic packaging can be a marvellous thing. Those who make a living
from it call it a forgotten infrastructure that allows modem urban life to exist. Plastics
have helped society defy natural limits such as the seasons, the rotting of food and the
distance most of us live from where our food is produced. And yet we do not like it.
Partly we do not like waste, but plastic waste, with its hydrocarbon roots and industrial
manufacture, is especially galling. In 2008, the UK, for example, produced around two
million tonnes of plastic waste, twice as much as in tire the early 1990s. The very
qualities of plastic – its cheapness, its indestructible aura – make it a reproachful
symbol of an unsustainable way of life. The facts, however, do not justify our unease.
All plastics are, at least theoretically, recyclable. Plastic packaging makes up just 6 to 7
per cent of the contents of British dustbins by weight and less than 3 per cent of
landfills. Supermarkets and brands, which are under pressure to reduce the quantity of
packaging of all types that they use, are finding good environmental reasons to turn to
plastic: it is lighter, so requires less energy for transportation than glass, for example; it
requires relatively little energy to produce, and it is often re-usable. An Austrian study
found that if plastic packaging were removed from the tire supply chain, another
packaging would have to increase fourfold to make up for it.

B. So are we just wrong about plastic packaging? Is it time to stop worrying and learn
to love the disposable plastic wrapping around sandwiches? Certainly, there are bigger
targets for environmental savings suc h as improving household insulation and energy
emissions. Naturally, the tire plastics industry is keen to point them out. What’s more,
concern over plastic packaging has produced a squall of conflicting initiatives from
retailers, manufacturers, and local authorities. It’s a squall that dies down and then
blows harder from one month to the next. ‘It is being left to the individual conscience
and supermarkets playing the market,’ says Tim Lang, a professor specializing in food
polio’. ‘It’s a mess.’

C.  Dick Searle of the Packaging Federation points out that societies without
sophisticated packaging lose hall their food before it reaches consumers and that in the
UK, waste in supply chains is about 3 per cent. In India, it is more titan 50 per cent.
The difference comes later: the British throw out 30 per cent of the food they buy – an
environmental cost in terms of emissions equivalent to a fifth of the cars on their roads.
Packagers agree that cardboard, metals, and glass all have their good points, but
there’s nothing quite like plastic. With more than 20 families of polymers to choose
from and then sometimes blend, packaging designers and manufacturers have a
limitless variety of qualities to play with.

D.  But if there is one law of plastic that, in environmental terms at least, prevails over
all others, it is this: a little goes a long way. This means, first, that plastic is relatively
cheap to use – it represents just over one-third of the UK packaging market by value
but it wraps more than half the total number of items bought. Second, it means that
even though plastic encases about 53 per cent of products bought, it only makes up 20
per cent by weight of the packaging consumed. And in the packaging equation, weight
is the main issue because the heavier something is, the more energy you expend
moving it around. Because of this, righteous indignation against plastic can look foolish.

E.  One store commissioned a study to find precise data on which had a less
environmental impact: selling apples lose or ready-wrapped. Helene Roberts, head of
packaging, explains that in fact, they found apples in fours on a tray covered by plastic
film needed 27 per cent less packaging in transportation than those sold loose. Sieve
Kelsey, a packaging designer, finds die debate frustrating. He argues that the hunger to
do something quickly is diverting effort away from more complicated questions about
how you truly alter supply chains. Rather than further reducing the weight of a plastic
bottle, more thought should be given to how packaging can be recycled. Helene
Roberts explains that their greatest packaging reduction came when the company
switched to reusable plastic crates and stopped consuming 62,000 tonnes of cardboard
boxes every year. Plastic packaging is important, and it might provide a way of thinking
about broader questions of sustainability. To target plastic on its own is to evade the
complexity’ of the issues. There seems to be a universal eagerness to condemn plastic.
Is this due to an inability to make the general changes in society that are really
required? ‘Plastic as a lightweight food wrapper is now built-in as the logical thing,’
Lang says. ‘Does that make it an environmentally sound system of packaging? It only
makes sense if you have a structure such as exists now. An environmentally-driven
packaging system would look completely different’ Dick Searle put the challenge
another way. “The amount of packaging used today is a reflection of modern life.”

Reading Passage has five paragraphs A-E.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph, A-E from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-viii in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i. A lack of consistent policy
ii. Learning from experience
iii. The greatest advantage
 iv. The role of research
v. A unique material
vi. An irrational anxiety
vii. Avoiding the real challenges
viii. A sign of things to come

1. Paragraph A
2. Paragraph B
3. Paragraph C
4. Paragraph D
5. Paragraph E
EXERCISE 4:

The Revolutionary Bridges of Robert Maillart

Swiss engineer Robert Maillart built some of the greatest bridges of the 20th century.
His designs elegantly solved a basic engineering problem: how to support enormous
weights using a slender arch.
A Just as railway bridges were the great structural symbols of the 19th century,
highway bridges became the engineering emblems of the 20th century. The invention
of the automobile created an irresistible demand for paved roads and vehicular bridges
throughout the developed world. The type of bridge needed for cars and trucks,
however, is fundamentally different from that needed for locomotives. Most highway
bridges carry lighter loads than railway bridges do, and their roadways can be sharply
curved or steeply sloping. To meet these needs, many turn-of-the-century bridge
designers began working with a new building material: reinforced concrete, which has
steel bars embedded in it. And the master of this new material was Swiss structural
engineer, Robert Maillart.

B Early in his career, Maillart developed a unique method for designing bridges,
buildings and other concrete structures. He rejected the complex mathematical analysis
of loads and stresses that was being enthusiastically adopted by most of his
contemporaries. At the same time, he also eschewed the decorative approach taken by
many bridge builders of his time. He resisted imitating architectural styles and adding
design elements solely for ornamentation. Maillart’s method was a form of creative
intuition. He had a knack for conceiving new shapes to solve classic engineering
problems] And because he worked in a highly competitive field, one of his goals was
economy - he won design and construction contracts because his structures were
reasonably priced, often less costly than all his rivals’ proposals.

C Maillart’s first important bridge was built in the small Swiss town of Zuoz. The local
officials had initially wanted a steel bridge to span the 30-metre wide Inn River, but
Maillart argued that he could build a more elegant bridge made of reinforced concrete
for about the same cost. His crucial innovation was incorporating the bridge’s arch and
roadway into a form called the hollow-box arch, which would substantially reduce the
bridge’s expense by minimising the amount of concrete needed. In a conventional arch
bridge the weight of the roadway is transferred by columns to the arch, which must be
relatively thick. In Maillart’s design, though, the roadway and arch were connected by
three vertical walls, forming two hollow boxes running under the roadway (see
diagram). The big advantage of this design was that because the arch would not have
to bear the load alone, it could be much thinner - as little as one-third as thick as the
arch in the conventional bridge.

D His first masterpiece, however, was the 1905 Tavanasa Bridge over the Rhine river
in the Swiss Alps. In this design, Maillart removed the parts of the vertical walls which
were not essential because they carried no load. This produced a slender, lighter-
looking form, which perfectly met the bridge’s structural requirements. But the
Tavanasa Bridge gained little favourable publicity in Switzerland; on the contrary, it
aroused strong aesthetic objections from public officials who were more comfortable
with old-fashioned stone-faced bridges. Maillart, who had founded his own construction
firm in 1902, was unable to win any more bridge projects, so he shifted his focus to
designing buildings, water tanks and other structures made of reinforced concrete and
did not resume his work on concrete bridges until the early 1920s.

E His most important breakthrough during this period was the development of the
deck-stiffened arch, the first example of which was the Flienglibach Bridge, built in
1923. An arch bridge is somewhat like an inverted cable. A cable curves downward
when a weight is hung from it, an arch bridge curves upward to support the roadway
and the compression in the arch balances the dead load of the traffic. For aesthetic
reasons, Maillart wanted a thinner arch and his solution was to connect the arch to the
roadway with transverse walls. In this way, Maillart justified making the arch as thin as
he could reasonably build it. His analysis accurately predicted the behaviour of the
bridge but the leading authorities of Swiss engineering would argue against his
methods for the next quarter of a century.

F Over the next 10 years, Maillart concentrated on refining the visual appearance of
the deck-stiffened arch. His best-known structure is the Salginatobel Bridge, completed
in 1930. He won the competition for the contract because his design was the least
expensive of the 19 submitted - the bridge and road were built for only 700,000 Swiss
francs, equivalent to some $3.5 million today. Salginatobel was also Maillart’s longest
span, at 90 metres and it had the most dramatic setting of all his structures, vaulting 80
metres above the ravine of the Salgina brook. In 1991 it became the first concrete
bridge to be designated an international historic landmark.

G Before his death in 1940, Maillart completed other remarkable bridges and continued
to refine his designs. However, architects often recognised the high quality of Maillart’s
structures before his fellow engineers did and in 1947 the architectural section of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York City devoted a major exhibition entirely to his
works. In contrast, very few American structural engineers at that time had even heard
of Maillart. In the following years, however, engineers realised that Maillart’s bridges
were more than just aesthetically pleasing - they were technically unsurpassed.
Maillart’s hollow-box arch became the dominant design form for medium and long- span
concrete bridges in the US. In Switzerland, professors finally began to teach Maillart’s
ideas, which then influenced a new generation of designers.

Write the appropriate numbers (i—x) in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.
List of headings
i The long-term impact
ii A celebrated achievement
iii Early brilliance passes unrecognised
iv Outdated methods retain popularity
v The basis of a new design is born
vi Frustration at never getting the design right
vii Further refinements meet persistent objections
viii Different in all respects
ix Bridge-makers look elsewhere
x Transport developments spark a major change

1. Paragraph A
2. Paragraph B
3. Paragraph C
4. Paragraph D
5. Paragraph E
6. Paragraph F
7. Paragraph G
EXERCISE 5:
Tackling Obesity in the Western World
A Obesity is a huge problem in many Western countries and one which now attracts
considerable medical interest as researchers take up the challenge to find a 'cure' for
the common condition of being seriously overweight. However, rather than take
responsibility for their weight, obese people have often sought solace in the excuse that
they have a slow metabolism, a genetic hiccup which sentences more than half the
Australian population (63% of men and 47% of women) to a life of battling with their
weight. The argument goes like this: it doesn't matter how little they eat, they gain
weight because their bodies break down food and turn it into energy more slowly than
those with a so-called normal metabolic rate.
B 'This is nonsense,' says Dr Susan Jebb from the Dunn Nutrition Unit at Cambridge in
England. Despite the persistence of this metabolism myth, science has known for
several years that the exact opposite is in fact true. Fat people have faster metabolisms
than thin people. 'What is very clear,' says Dr Jebb, 'is that overweight people actually
burn off more energy. They have more cells, bigger hearts, bigger lungs and they all
need more energy just to keep going.'
C It took only one night, spent in a sealed room at the Dunn Unit to disabuse one of
their patients of the beliefs of a lifetime: her metabolism was fast, not slow. By sealing
the room and measuring the exact amount of oxygen she used, researchers were able
to show her that her metabolism was not the culprit. It wasn't the answer she expected
and probably not the one she wanted but she took the news philosophically.

D Although the metabolism myth has been completely disproved, science has far from
discounted our genes as responsible for making us whatever weight we are, fat or thin.
One of the world's leading obesity researchers, geneticist Professor Stephen O'Rahilly,
goes so far as to say we are on the threshold of a complete change in the way we view
not only morbid obesity, but also everyday overweight. Prof. O'Rahilly's groundbreaking
work in Cambridge has proven that obesity can be caused by our genes. 'These people
are not weak- willed, slothful or lazy,' says Prof. O'Rahilly, 'They have a medical
condition due to a genetic defect and that causes them to be obese.'

E In Australia, the University of Sydney's Professor Ian Caterson says while major
genetic defects may be rare, many people probably have minor genetic variations that
combine to dictate weight and are responsible for things such as how much we eat, the
amount of exercise we do and the amount of energy we need. When you add up all
these little variations, the result is that some people are genetically predisposed to
putting on weight. He says while the fast/slow metabolism debate may have been
settled, that doesn't mean some other subtle change in the metabolism gene won't be
found in overweight people. He is confident that science will, eventually, be able to
'cure' some forms of obesity but the only effective way for the vast majority of
overweight and obese people to lose weight is a change of diet and an increase in
exercise.

F Despite the $500 million a year Australians spend trying to lose weight and the $830
million it costs the community in health care, obesity is at epidemic proportions here, as
it is in all Western nations. Until recently, research and treatment for obesity had
concentrated on behaviour modification, drugs to decrease appetite and surgery. How
the drugs worked was often not understood and many caused severe side effects and
even death in some patients. Surgery for obesity has also claimed many lives.

G It has long been known that a part of the brain called the hypothalamus is
responsible for regulating hunger, among other things. But it wasn't until 1994 that
Professor Jeffery Friedman from Rockerfeller University in the US sent science in a new
direction by studying an obese mouse. Prof. Friedman found that unlike its thin
brothers, the fat mouse did not produce a hitherto unknown hormone called leptin.
Manufactured by the fat cells, leptin acts as a messenger, sending signals to the
hypothalamus to turn off the appetite. Previously, the fat cells were thought to be
responsible simply for storing fat. Prof. Friedman gave the fat mouse leptin and it lost
30% of its body weight in two weeks.

H On the other side of the Atlantic, Prof. O'Rahilly read about this research with great
excitement. For many months two blood samples had lain in the bottom of his freezer,
taken from two extremely obese young cousins. He hired a doctor to develop a test for
leptin in human blood, which eventually resulted in the discovery that neither of the
children's blood contained the hormone. When one cousin was given leptin, she lost a
stone in weight and Prof. O'Rahilly made medical history. Here was the first proof that a
genetic defect could cause obesity in humans. But leptin deficiency turned out to be an
extremely rare condition and there is a lot more research to be done before the 'magic'
cure for obesity is ever found.

Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-H .

From the list of headings below choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph.
Write the appropriate numbers (i-xi) in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Obesity in animals
ii Hidden dangers
iii Proof of the truth
iv New perspective on the horizon
v No known treatment
vi Rodent research leads the way
vii Expert explains energy requirements of obese people
viii A very uncommon complaint
ix Nature or nurture
x Shifting the blame
xi Lifestyle change required despite new findings

1. Paragraph A
2. Paragraph B
3. Paragraph C
4. Paragraph D
5. Paragraph E
6. Paragraph F
7. Paragraph G
8. Paragraph H
EXERCISE 6:

ROBOTS
Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to
cope with work that is dangerous, boring, onerous, or just plain nasty. That compulsion
has culminated in robotics - the science of conferring various human capabilities on
machines.
A The modern world is increasingly populated by quasi-intelligent gizmos whose
presence we barely notice but whose creeping ubiquity has removed much human
drudgery. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms. Our banking is
done at automated teller terminals that thank us with rote politeness for the
transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robo- drivers. Our mine shafts
are dug by automated moles, and our nuclear accidents - such as those at Three Mile
Island and Chernobyl - are cleaned up by robotic muckers fit to withstand radiation.
Such is the scope of uses envisioned by Karel Capek, the Czech playwright who coined
the term ‘robot’ in 1920 (the word ‘robota’ means ‘forced labor’ in Czech). As progress
accelerates, the experimental becomes the exploitable at record pace.

B Other innovations promise to extend the abilities of human operators. Thanks to the
incessant miniaturisation of electronics and micromechanics, there are already robot
systems that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter
accuracy - far greater precision than highly skilled physicians can achieve with their
hands alone. At the same time, techniques of long-distance control will keep people
even farther from hazard. In 1994 a ten- foot-tall NASA robotic explorer called Dante,
with video-camera eyes and with spiderlike legs, scrambled over the menacing rim of
an Alaskan volcano while technicians 2,000 miles away in California watched the scene
by satellite and controlled Dante’s descent.

C But if robots are to reach the next stage of labour-saving utility, they will have to
operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for
themselves - goals that pose a formidable challenge. ‘While we know how to tell a robot
to handle a specific error,’ says one expert, ‘we can’t yet give a robot enough common
sense to reliably interact with a dynamic world.’ Indeed the quest for true artificial
intelligence (Al) has produced very mixed results. Despite a spasm of initial optimism in
the 1960s and 1970s, when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors
might be able to perform in the same way as the human brain by the 21st century,
researchers lately have extended their forecasts by decades if not centuries.

D What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain’s roughly
one hundred billion neurons are much more talented - and human perception far more
complicated - than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognise the
misalignment of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter in a controlled factory
environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and
immediately disregard the 98 per cent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the
woodchuck at the side of a winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a
tumultuous crowd. The most advanced computer systems on Earth can’t approach that
kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don’t know quite how we do it.

E Nonetheless, as information theorists, neuroscientists, and computer experts pool

their talents, they are finding ways to get some lifelike intelligence from robots. One
method renounces the linear, logical structure of conventional electronic circuits in
favour of the messy, ad hoc arrangement of a real brain’s neurons. These ‘neural
networks’ do not have to be programmed. They can ‘teach’ themselves by a system of
feedback signals that reinforce electrical pathways that produced correct responses
and, conversely, wipe out connections that produced errors. Eventually the net wires
itself into a system that can pronounce certain words or distinguish certain shapes.

F In other areas researchers are struggling to fashion a more natural relationship

between people and robots in the expectation that some day machines will take on
some tasks now done by humans in, say, nursing homes. This is particularly important
in Japan, where the percentage of elderly citizens is rapidly increasing. So experiments
at the Science University of Tokyo have created a ‘face robot’ - a life-size, soft plastic
model of a female head with a video camera imbedded in the left eye - as a prototype.
The researchers’ goal is to create robots that people feel comfortable around. They are
concentrating on the face because they believe facial expressions are the most
important way to transfer emotional messages. We read those messages by
interpreting expressions to decide whether a person is happy, frightened, angry, or
nervous. Thus the Japanese robot is designed to detect emotions in the person it is
‘looking at’ by sensing changes in the spatial arrangement of the person’s eyes, nose,
eyebrows, and mouth. It compares those configurations with a database of standard
facial expressions and guesses the emotion. The robot then uses an ensemble of tiny
pressure pads to adjust its plastic face into an appropriate emotional response.

Write the appropriate numbers (i-x) in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Some success has resulted from observing how the brain functions.
ii Are we expecting too much from one robot?
iii Scientists are examining the humanistic possibilities.
iv There are judgements that robots cannot make.
v Has the power of robots become too great?
vi Human skills have been heightened with the help of robotics.
vii There are some things we prefer the brain to control.
viii Robots have quietly infiltrated our lives.
ix Original predictions have been revised.
x Another approach meets the same result.

1. Paragraph A
2. Paragraph B
3. Paragraph C
4. Paragraph D
5. Paragraph E
6. Paragraph F
EXERCISE 7 :
Fun for the Masses
Americans worry that the distribution of income is increasingly unequal. Examining
leisure spending, changes that picture
A
Are you better off than you used to be? Even after six years of sustained economic
growth, Americans worry about that question. Economists who plumb government
income statistics agree that Americans’ incomes, as measured in inflation-adjusted
dollars, have risen more slowly in the past two decades than in earlier times, and that
some workers’ real incomes have actually fallen. They also agree that by almost any
measure, income is distributed less equally than it used to be. Neither of those claims,
however, sheds much light on whether living standards are rising or falling. This is
because ‘living standard’ is a highly amorphous concept. Measuring how much people
earn is relatively easy, at least compared with measuring how well they live.

B
A recent paper by Dora Costa, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, looks at the living-standards debate from an unusual direction. Rather than
worrying about cash incomes, Ms Costa investigates Americans’ recreational habits over
the past century. She finds that people of all income levels have steadily increased the
amount of time and money they devote to having fun. The distribution of dollar
incomes may have become more skewed in recent years, but leisure is more evenly
spread than ever.

C
Ms Costa bases her research on consumption surveys dating back as far as 1888. The
industrial workers surveyed in that year spent, on average, three-quarters of their
incomes on food, shelter and clothing. Less than 2% of the average family’s income
was spent on leisure but that average hid large disparities. The share of a family’s
budget that was spent on having fun rose sharply with its income: the lowest-income
families in this working-class sample spent barely 1% of their budgets on recreation,
while higher earners spent more than 3%. Only the latter group could afford such
extravagances as theatre and concert performances, which were relatively much more
expensive than they are today.

D
Since those days, leisure has steadily become less of a luxury. By 1991, the average
household needed to devote only 38% of its income to the basic necessities, and was
able to spend 6% on recreation. Moreover, Ms Costa finds that the share of the family
budget spent on leisure now rises much less sharply with income than it used to. At the
beginning of this century a family’s recreational spending tended to rise by 20% for
every 10% rise in income. By 1972-73, a 10% income gain led to roughly a 15% rise in
recreational spending, and the increase fell to only 13% in 1991. What this implies is
that Americans of all income levels are now able to spend much more of their money on
having fun.

E
One obvious cause is that real income overall has risen. If Americans in general are
richer, their consumption of entertainment goods is less likely to be affected by changes
in their income. But Ms Costa reckons that rising incomes are responsible for, at most,
half of the changing structure of leisure spending. Much of the rest may be due to the
fact that poorer Americans have more time off than they used to. In earlier years, low-
wage workers faced extremely long hours and enjoyed few days off. But since the
1940s, the less skilled (and lower paid) have worked ever-fewer hours, giving them
more time to enjoy leisure pursuits.

F
Conveniently, Americans have had an increasing number of recreational possibilities to
choose from. Public investment in sports complexes, parks and golf courses has made
leisure cheaper and more accessible. So too has technological innovation. Where
listening to music used to imply paying for concert tickets or owning a piano, the
invention of the radio made music accessible to everyone and virtually free. Compact
discs, videos and other paraphernalia have widened the choice even further.

G
At a time when many economists are pointing accusing fingers at technology for
causing a widening inequality in the wages of skilled and unskilled workers, Ms Costa’s
research gives it a much more egalitarian face. High earners have always been able to
afford amusement. By lowering the price of entertainment, technology has improved
the standard of living of those in the lower end of the income distribution. The
implication of her results is that once recreation is taken into account, the differences in
Americans’ living standards may not have widened so much after all.

H
These findings are not water-tight. Ms Costa’s results depend heavily upon what exactly
is classed as a recreational expenditure. Reading is an example. This was the most
popular leisure activity for working men in 1888, accounting for one-quarter of all
recreational spending. In 1991, reading took only 16% of the entertainment dollar. But
the American Department of Labour’s expenditure surveys do not distinguish between
the purchase of a mathematics tome and that of a best-selling novel. Both are classified
as recreational expenses. If more money is being spent on textbooks and professional
books now than in earlier years, this could make ‘recreational’ spending appear stronger
than it really is.

From the list of headings below choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph.
Write the appropriate numbers (i-xi) in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

Example
Answer Paragraph E iii
List of Headings
i Wide differences in leisure activities according to income
ii Possible inconsistencies in Ms Costa’s data
iii More personal income and time influence leisure activities
iv Investigating the lifestyle problem from a new angle
v Increased incomes fail to benefit everyone
vi A controversial development offers cheaper leisure activities
vii Technology heightens differences in living standards
viii The gap between income and leisure spending closes
ix Two factors have led to a broader range of options for all
x Have people’s lifestyles improved?
xi High earners spend less on leisure

1. Paragraph A 5. Paragraph F
2. Paragraph B 6. Paragraph G
3. Paragraph C 7. Paragraph H
4. Paragraph D
EXERCISE 8 :

Snow-makers
Skiing is big business nowadays. But what can ski resort owners do if the snow doesn't
come?
A
In the early to mid twentieth century, with the growing popularity of skiing, ski slopes
became extremely profitable businesses. But ski resort owners were completely
dependent on the weather: if it didn't snow, or didn’t snow enough, they had to close
everything down. Fortunately, a device called the snow gun can now provide snow
whenever it is needed. These days such machines are standard equipment in the vast
majority of ski resorts around the world, making it possible for many resorts to stay
open for months or more a year.
B
Snow formed by natural weather systems comes from water vapour in the atmosphere.
The water vapour condenses into droplets, forming clouds. If the temperature is
sufficiently low, the water droplets freeze into tiny ice crystals. More water particles
then condense onto the crystal and join with it to form a snowflake. As the snow flake
grows heavier, it falls towards the Earth.

C
The snow gun works very differently from a natural weather system, but it
accomplishes exactly the same thing. The device basically works by combining water
and air. Two different hoses are attached to the gun. one leading from a water
pumping station which pumps water up from a lake or reservoir, and the other leading
from an air compressor. When the compressed air passes through the hose into the
gun. it atomises the water - that is, it disrupts the stream so that the water splits up
into tiny droplets. The droplets are then blown out of the gun and if the outside
temperature is below 0°C, ice crystals will form, and will then make snowflakes in the
same way as natural snow.

D
Snow-makers often talk about dry snow and wet snow. Dry snow has a relatively low
amount of water, so it is very light and powdery. This type of snow is excellent for
skiing because skis glide over it easily without getting stuck in wet slush. One of the
advantages of using a snow-maker is that this powdery snow can be produced to give
the ski slopes a level surface. However, on slopes which receive heavy use, resort
owners also use denser, wet snow underneath the dry snow. Many resorts build up the
snow depth this way once or twice a year, and then regularly coat the trails with a layer
of dry snow throughout the winter.

E
The wetness of snow is dependent on the temperature and humidity outside, as well as
the size of the water droplets launched by the gun. Snow-makers have to adjust the
proportions of water and air in their snow guns to get the perfect snow consistency for
the outdoor weather conditions. Many ski slopes now do this with a central computer
system that is connected to weather-reading stations all over the slope.

F
But man-made snow makes heavy demands on the environment. It takes about
275,000 litres of water to create a blanket of snow covering a 60x60 metre area. Most
resorts pump water from one or more reservoirs located in low-lying areas. The run-off
water from the slopes feeds back into these reservoirs, so the resort can actually use
the same water over and over again. However, considerable amounts of energy are
needed to run the large air-compressing pumps, and the diesel engines which run them
also cause air pollution.

G
Because of the expense of making snow, ski resorts have to balance the cost of running
the machines with the benefits of extending the ski season, making sure they only
make snow when it is really needed and when it will bring the maximum amount of
profit in return for the investment. But man-made snow has a number of other uses as
well. A layer of snow keeps a lot of the Earth’s heat from escaping into the atmosphere,
so farmers often use man-made snow to provide insulation for winter crops. Snow-
making machines have played a big part in many movie productions. Movie producers
often take several months to shoot scenes that cover just a few days. If the movie
takes place in a snowy setting, the set decorators have to get the right amount of snow
for each day of shooting either by adding man-made snow or melting natural snow.
And another important application of man-made snow is its use in the tests that aircraft
must undergo in order to ensure that they can function safely in extreme conditions.

Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs A-G.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write
the correct number (i-x) in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i Considering ecological costs
ii Modifications to the design of the snow gun
iii The need for different varieties of snow
iv Local concern over environmental issues
v A problem and a solution
vi Applications beyond the ski slopes
vii Converting wet snow to dry snow
viii New method for calculating modifications
ix Artificial process, natural product
x Snow formation in nature

Example Answer
Paragraph A v
Paragraph B x

1. Paragraph C
2. Paragraph D
3. Paragraph E
4. Paragraph F
5. Paragraph G
EXERCISE 9:
Why Risks Can Go Wrong
Human intuition is a bad guide to handling risk
A.
People make terrible decisions about the future. The evidence is all around, from their
investments in the stock markets to the way they run their businesses. In fact, people
are consistently bad at dealing with uncertainty, underestimating some kinds of risk and
overestimating others. Surely there must be a better way than using intuition?

B.
In the 1960s a young American research psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, became
interested in people's inability to make logical decisions. That launched him on a career
to show just how irrationally people behave in practice. When Kahneman and his
colleagues first started work, the idea of applying psychological insights to economics
and business decisions was seen as rather bizarre. But in the past decade the fields of
behavioural finance and behavioural economics have blossomed, and in 2002
Kahneman shared a Nobel prize in economics for his work. Today he is in demand by
business organizations and international banking companies. But, he says, there are
plenty of institutions that still fail to understand the roots of their poor decisions. He
claims that, far from being random, these mistakes are systematic and predictable.

C.
One common cause of problems in decision-making is over-optimism. Ask most people
about the future, and they will see too much blue sky ahead, even if past experience
suggests otherwise. Surveys have shown that people's forecasts of future stock market
movements are far more optimistic than past long-term returns would justify. The same
goes for their hopes of ever-rising prices for their homes or doing well in games of
chance. Such optimism can be useful for managers or sportsmen, and sometimes turns
into a self-fulfilling prophecy. But most of the time it results in wasted effort and dashed
hopes. Kahneman's work points to three types of over-confidence. First, people tend to
exaggerate their own skill and prowess; in polls, far fewer than half the respondents
admit to having below-average skills in, say, driving. Second, they overestimate the
amount of control they have over the future, forgetting about luck and chalking up
success solely to skill. And third, in competitive pursuits such as dealing on shares, they
forget that they have to judge their skills against those of the competition.

D.
Another source of wrong decisions is related to the decisive effect of the initial meeting,
particularly in negotiations over money. This is referred to as the 'anchor effect'. Once a
figure has been mentioned, it takes a strange hold over the human mind. The asking
price quoted in a house sale, for example, tends to become accepted by all parties as
the 'anchor' around which negotiations take place. Much the same goes for salary
negotiations or mergers and acquisitions. If nobody has much information to go on, a
figure can provide comfort - even though it may lead to a terrible mistake.

E.
In addition, mistakes may arise due to stubbornness. No one likes to abandon a
cherished belief, and the earlier a decision has been taken, the harder it is to abandon
it. Drug companies must decide early to cancel a failing research project to avoid
wasting money, but may find it difficult to admit they have made a mistake. In the
same way, analysts may have become wedded early to a single explanation that
coloured their perception. A fresh eye always helps.

F.
People also tend to put a lot of emphasis on things they have seen and experienced
themselves, which may not be the best guide to decision-making. For example,
somebody may buy an overvalued share because a relative has made thousands on it,
only to get his fingers burned. In finance, too much emphasis on information close at
hand helps to explain the tendency by most investors to invest only within the country
they live in. Even though they know that diversification is good for their portfolio, a
large majority of both Americans and Europeans invest far too heavily in the shares of
their home countries. They would be much better off spreading their risks more widely.

G.
More information is helpful in making any decision but, says Kahneman, people spend
proportionally too much time on small decisions and not enough on big ones. They
need to adjust the balance. During the boom years, some companies put as much effort
into planning their office party as into considering strategic mergers.

H.
Finally, crying over spilled milk is not just a waste of time; it also often colours people's
perceptions of the future. Some stock market investors trade far too frequently because
they are chasing the returns on shares they wish they had bought earlier.

Choose the correct heading for B-H from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-xi in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

List of headings
i Not identifying the correct priorities
ii A solution for the long term
iii The difficulty of changing your mind
iv Why looking back is unhelpful
v Strengthening inner resources
vi A successful approach to the study of decision-making
vii The danger of trusting a global market
viii Reluctance to go beyond the familiar
ix The power of the first number
x The need for more effective risk assessment
xi Underestimating the difficulties ahead

1. Paragraph B
2. Paragraph D
3. Paragraph E
4. Paragraph F
5. Paragraph G
6. Paragraph H
EXERCISE 10:

Painters of time
A.
The works of Aboriginal artists are now much in demand throughout the world, and not
just in Australia, where they are already fully recognised: the National Museum of
Australia, which opened in Canberra in 2001, designated 40% of its exhibition space to
works by Aborigines. In Europe their art is being exhibited at a museum in Lyon,
France, while the future Quai Branly museum in Paris, which will be devoted to arts and
civilisations of Africa. Asia, Oceania and the Americas, plans to commission frescoes by
artists from Australia.

B.
Their artistic movement began about 30 years ago. but its roots go back to time
immemorial. All the works refer to the founding myth of the Aboriginal culture, ‘the
Dreaming’. That internal geography, which is rendered with a brush and colours, is also
the expression of the Aborigines' long quest to regain the land which was stolen from
them when Europeans arrived in the nineteenth century. ‘Painting is nothing without
history.' says one such artist. Michael Nelson Tjakamarra.

C.
There arc now fewer than 400.000 Aborigines living in Australia. They have been
swamped by the country's 17.5 million immigrants. These original ‘natives' have been
living in Australia for 50.000 years, but they were undoubtedly maltreated by the
newcomers. Driven back to the most barren lands or crammed into slums on the
outskirts of cities, the Aborigines were subjected to a policy of ‘assimilation’, which
involved kidnapping children to make them better ‘integrated' into European society,
and herding the nomadic Aborigines by force into settled communities.

D.
It was in one such community, Papunya, near Alice Springs, in the central desert, that
Aboriginal painting first came into its own. In 1971, a white schoolteacher. Geoffrey
Bardon, suggested to a group of Aborigines that they should decorate the school walls
with ritual motifs. so as to pass on to the younger generation the myths that were
starting to fade from their collective memory, the gave them brushes. colours and
surfaces to paint on cardboard and canvases. He was astounded by the result. But their
art did not come like a bolt from the blue: for thousands of years Aborigines had been
‘painting' on the ground using sands of different colours, and on rock faces. They had
also been decorating their bodies for ceremonial purposes. So there existed a formal
vocabulary.
E.
This had already been noted by Europeans. In the early twentieth century. Aboriginal
communities brought together by missionaries in northern Australia had been
encouraged to reproduce on tree bark the motifs found on rock faces. Artists turned out
a steady stream of works, supported by the churches, which helped to sell them to the
public, and between 1950 and I960 Aboriginal paintings began to reach overseas
museums. Painting on bark persisted in the north, whereas the communities in the
central desert increasingly used acrylic paint, and elsewhere in Western Australia
women explored the possibilities of wax painting and dyeing processes, known as
‘batik’.

F.
What Aborigines depict are always elements of the Dreaming, the collective history that
each community is both part of and guardian of. The Dreaming is the story of their
origins, of their ‘Great Ancestors’, who passed on their knowledge, their art and their
skills (hunting, medicine, painting, music and dance) to man. ‘The Dreaming is not
synonymous with the moment when the world was created.’ says Stephane Jacob, one
of the organisers of the Lyon exhibition. ‘For Aborigines, that moment has never ceased
to exist. It is perpetuated by the cycle of the seasons and the religious ceremonies
which the Aborigines organise. Indeed the aim of those ceremonies is also to ensure
the permanence of that golden age. The central function of Aboriginal painting, even in
its contemporary manifestations, is to guarantee the survival of this world. The
Dreaming is both past, present and future.'

Reading Passage 3 has 7 paragraphs A-F.

Choose the most suitable heading for paragraphs A-F from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-viii in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Amazing results from a project
ii New religious ceremonies
iii Community art centres
iv Early painting techniques and marketing systems
v Mythology and history combined
vi The increasing acclaim for Aboriginal art
vii Belief in continuity
viii Oppression of a minority people

1 Paragraph A
2 Paragraph B
3 Paragraph C
4 Paragraph D
5 Paragraph E
6 Paragraph F
EXERCISE 11:

Inside the mind of the consumer

Could brain-scanning technology provide an accurate way to assess the appeal of new
products and the effectiveness of advertising?
A.
MARKETING people are no longer prepared to take your word for it that you favour one
product over another. They want to scan your brain to see which one you really prefer.
Using the tools of neuroscientists, such as electroencephalogram (EEG) mapping and
functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI), they are trying to learn more about the
mental processes behind purchasing decisions. The resulting fusion of neuroscience and
marketing is inevitably, being called 'neuromarketing’.

B.
The first person to apply brain-imaging technology in this way was Gerry Zaltman of
Harvard University, in the late 1990s. The idea remained in obscurity until 2001, when
BrightHouse, a marketing consultancy based in Atlanta, Georgia, set up a dedicated
neuromarketing arm, BrightHouse Neurostrategies Group. (BrightHouse lists Coca-Cola,
Delta Airlines and Home Depot among its clients.) But the company's name may itself
simply be an example of clever marketing. BrightHouse does not scan people while
showing them specific products or campaign ideas, but bases its work on the results of
more general fMRI-based research into consumer preferences and decision-making
carried out at Emory University in Atlanta.

C.
Can brain scanning really be applied to marketing? The basic principle is not that
different from focus groups and other traditional forms of market research. A volunteer
lies in an fMRI machine and is shown images or video clips. In place of an interview or
questionnaire, the subject's response is evaluated by monitoring brain activity. fMRI
provides real-time images of brain activity, in which different areas “light up” depending
on the level of blood flow. This provides clues to the subject's subconscious thought
patterns. Neuroscientists know, for example, that the sense of self is associated with an
area of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex. A flow of blood to that area
while the subject is looking at a particular logo suggests that he or she identifies with
that brand.

D.
At first, it seemed that only companies in Europe were prepared to admit that they used
neuromarketing. Two carmakers, DaimlerChrysler in Germany and Ford's European
arm, ran pilot studies in 2003. But more recently, American companies have become
more open about their use of neuromarketing. Lieberman Research Worldwide, a
marketing firm based in Los Angeles, is collaborating with the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech) to enable movie studios to market-test film trailers. More
controversially, the New York Times recently reported that a political consultancy, FKF
Research, has been studying the effectiveness of campaign commercials using
neuromarketing techniques.

E.
Whether all this is any more than a modern-day version of phrenology, the Victorian
obsession with linking lumps and bumps in the skull to personality traits, is unclear.
There have been no large-scale studies, so scans of a handful of subjects may not be a
reliable guide to consumer behaviour in general. Of course, focus groups and surveys
are flawed too: strong personalities can steer the outcomes of focus groups, and people
do not always tell opinion pollsters the truth. And even honest people cannot always
explain their preferences.

F.
That is perhaps where neuromarketing has the most potential. When asked about cola
drinks, most people claim to have a favourite brand, but cannot say why they prefer
that brand’s taste. An unpublished study of attitudes towards two well- known cola
drinks. Brand A and Brand 13. carried out last year in a college of medicine in the US
found that most subjects preferred Brand B in a blind tasting fMRI scanning showed
that drinking Brand B lit up a region called the ventral putamen, which is one of the
brain s ‘reward centres’, far more brightly than Brand A. But when told which drink was
which, most subjects said they preferred Brand A, which suggests that its stronger
brand outweighs the more pleasant taste of the other drink.

G.
“People form many unconscious attitudes that are obviously beyond traditional methods
that utilise introspection,” says Steven Quartz, a neuroscientist at Caltech who is
collaborating with Lieberman Research. With over $100 billion spent each year on
marketing in America alone, any firm that can more accurately analyse how customers
respond to products, brands and advertising could make a fortune.

Questions 1-6
Reading Passage 2 has 7 paragraphs A-F
Choose the correct heading for Paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-x in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i A description of the procedure
ii An international research project
iii An experiment to investigate consumer responses
iv Marketing an alternative name
v A misleading name
vi A potentially profitable line of research
vii Medical dangers of the technique
viii Drawbacks to marketing tools
ix Broadening applications
x What is neuromarketing?

1 Paragraph B
2 Paragraph C
3 Paragraph D
4 Paragraph E
5 Paragraph F
6 Paragraph G
EXERCISE 12:

Running on empty
A revolutionary new theory in sports physiology.
A
For almost a century, scientists have presumed, not unreasonably, that fatigue - or
exhaustion in athletes originates in the muscles. Precise explanations have varied but all
have been based on the ‘limitations theory’. In other words, muscles tire because they
hit a physical limit: they either run out of fuel or oxygen or they drown in toxic by-
products.

B
In the past few years, however, Timothy Noakes and Alan St Clair Gibson from the
University of Cape Town, South Africa, have examined this standard theory. The deeper
they dig, the more convinced they have become that physical fatigue simply isn't the
same as a car running out of petrol. Fatigue, they argue, is caused not by distress
signals springing from overtaxed muscles, but is an emotional response which begins in
the brain. The essence of their new theory is that the brain, using a mix of
physiological, subconscious and conscious cues, paces the muscles to keep them well
back from the brink of exhaustion. When the brain decides its time to quit, it creates
the distressing sensations we interpret as unbearable muscle fatigue. This ‘central
governor* theory remains controversial, but it does explain many puzzling aspects of
athletic performance.

C
A recent discovery that Noakes calls the ‘lactic acid paradox' made him start researching
this area seriously. Lactic acid is a by-product of exercise, and its accumulation is often
cited as a cause of fatigue. But when research subjects exercise in conditions simulating
high altitude, they become fatigued even though lactic acid levels remain low. Nor has
the oxygen content of their blood fallen too low for them to keep going. Obviously,
Noakes deduced, something else was making them tire before they hit either of these
physiological limits.

D
Probing further, Noakes conducted an experiment with seven cyclists who had sensors
taped to their legs to measure the nerve impulses travelling through their muscles. It
has long been known that during exercise, the body never uses 100% of the available
muscle fibres in a single contraction. The amount used varies, but in endurance tasks
such as this cycling test the body calls on about 30%.

E
Noakes reasoned that if the limitations theory was correct and fatigue was due to
muscle fibres hitting some limit, the number of fibres used for each pedal stroke should
increase as the fibres tired and the cyclist’s body attempted to compensate by recruiting
an ever-larger proportion of the total. But his team found exactly the opposite. As
fatigue set in, the electrical activity in the cyclists' legs declined - even during sprinting,
when they were striving to cycle as fast as they could.

F
To Noakes, this was strong evidence that the old theory was wrong. ‘The cyclists may
have felt completely exhausted,’ he says, ‘but their bodies actually had considerable
reserves that they could theoretically tap by using a greater proportion of the resting
fibres.’ This, he believes, is proof that the brain is regulating the pace of the workout to
hold the cyclists well back from the point of catastrophic exhaustion.

Choose the correct heading for Paragraphs A-F from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-viii in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

i Avoiding tiredness in athletes

ii Puzzling evidence raises a question
iii Traditional explanations
iv Interpreting the findings
v Developing muscle fibres
vi A new hypothesis
vii Description of a new test
viii Surprising results in an endurance test

1 Paragraph A
2 Paragraph B
3 Paragraph C
4 Paragraph D
5 Paragraph E
6 Paragraph F
EXERCISE 13:

FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOOD FOR THOUGHT

A
Why not eat insects? So asked British entomologist Vincent M. Holt in the title of his
1885 treatise on the benefits of what he named entomophagy – the consumption of
insects (and similar creatures) as a food source. The prospect of eating dishes such as
“wireworm sauce” and “slug soup” failed to garner favour amongst those in the stuffy,
proper, Victorian social milieu of his time, however, and Holt’s visionary ideas were
considered at best eccentric, at worst an offense to every refined palate. Anticipating
such a reaction, Holt acknowledged the difficulty in unseating deep-rooted prejudices
against insect cuisine, but quietly asserted his confidence that “we shall some day quite
gladly cook and eat them”.
B
It has taken nearly 150 years but an eclectic Western-driven movement has finally
mounted around the entomophagic cause. In Los Angeles and other cosmopolitan
Western cities, insects have been caught up in the endless pursuit of novel and
authentic delicacies. “Eating grasshoppers is a thing you do here”, bug-supplier Bricia
Lopez has explained. “There’s more of a ‘cool’ factor involved.” Meanwhile, the Food
and Agricultural Organization has considered a policy paper on the subject, initiated
farming projects in Laos, and set down plans for a world congress on insect farming in
2013.
C
Eating insects is not a new phenomenon. In fact, insects and other such creatures are
already eaten in 80 per cent of the world’s countries, prepared in customary dishes
ranging from deep-fried tarantula in Cambodia to bowls of baby
bees in China. With the specialist knowledge that Western companies and organisations
can bring to the table, however, these hand-prepared delicacies have the potential to
be produced on a scale large enough to lower costs and open up mass markets. A new
American company, for example, is attempting to develop
pressurisation machines that would de-shell insects and make them available in the
form of cutlets. According to the entrepreneur behind the company, Matthew Krisiloff,
this will be the key to pleasing the uninitiated palate.
D
Insects certainly possess some key advantages over traditional Western meat sources.
According to research findings from Professor Arnold van Huis, a Dutch entomologist,
breeding insects results in far fewer noxious by-products. Insects produce less ammonia
than pig and poultry farming, ten times less methane than livestock, and 300 times less
nitrous oxide. Huis also notes that insects – being cold-blooded creatures – can convert
food to protein at a rate far superior to that of cows, since the latter exhaust much of
their energy just keeping themselves warm.
E
Although insects are sometimes perceived by Westerners as unhygienic or disease-
ridden, they are a reliable option in light of recent global epidemics (as Holt pointed out
many years ago, insects are “decidedly more particular in their feeding than
ourselves”). Because bugs are genetically distant from humans, species-hopping
diseases such as swine flu or mad cow disease are much less likely to start or spread
amongst grasshoppers or slugs than in poultry and cattle. Furthermore, the squalid,
cramped quarters that encourage diseases to propagate among many animal
populations are actually the residence of choice for insects, which thrive in such
conditions.
F
Then, of course, there are the commercial gains. As FAO Forestry Manager Patrick
Durst notes, in developing countries many rural people and traditional forest dwellers
have remarkable knowledge about managing insect populations to produce food. Until
now, they have only used this knowledge to meet their own subsistence needs, but
Durst believes that, with the adoption of modern technology and improved promotional
methods, opportunities to expand the market to new consumers will flourish. This could
provide a crucial step into the global economic arena for those primarily rural,
impoverished populations who have been excluded from the rise of manufacturing and
large-scale agriculture.
G
Nevertheless, much stands in the way of the entomophagic movement. One problem is
the damage that has been caused, and continues to be caused, by Western
organisations prepared to kill off grasshoppers and locusts – complete food proteins –
in favour of preserving the incomplete protein crops of millet, wheat, barley and maize.
Entomologist Florence Dunkel has described the consequences of such interventions.
While examining children’s diets as a part of her field work in Mali, Dunkel discovered
that a protein deficiency syndrome called kwashiorkor was increasing in incidence.
Children in the area were once protected against kwashiorkor by a diet high in
grasshoppers, but these had become unsafe to eat after pesticide use in the area
increased.
H
A further issue is the persistent fear many Westerners still have about eating insects.
“The problem is the ick factor—the eyes, the wings, the legs,” Krisiloff has
said. “It’s not as simple as hiding it in a bug nugget. People won’t accept it beyond
the novelty. When you think of a chicken, you think of a chicken breast, not the eyes,
wings, and beak.” For Marcel Dicke, the key lies in camouflaging the fact that people
are eating insects at all. Insect flour is one of his propositions, as is changing the
language of insect cuisine. “If you say it’s mealworms, it makes people think of
ringworm”, he notes. “So stop saying ‘worm’. If we use Latin names, say it’s a Tenebrio
quiche, it sounds much more fancy”. For Krisiloff, Dicke and others, keeping quiet about
the gritty reality of our food is often the best approach.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A–H from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i–xi, in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i A historical delicacy
ii The poor may benefit
iii Presentation is key to changing attitudes
iv Environmentally friendly production
v Tradition meets technology
vi A cultural pioneer
vii Western practices harm locals
viii Good source of nutrients
ix Growing popularity
x A healthy choice
xi A safety risk

1 Section A 5 Section E
2 Section B 6 Section F
3 Section C 7 Section G
4 Section D 8 Section H
EXERCISE 14:

Television and Sport

when the medium becomes the stadium
A
The relationship between television and sports is not widely thought of as problematic.
For many people, television is a simple medium through which sports can be played,
replayed, slowed down, and of course conveniently transmitted live to homes across the
planet. What is often overlooked, however, is how television networks have reshaped
the very foundations of an industry that they claim only to document. Major television
stations immediately seized the revenue-generating prospects of televising sports and
this has changed everything, from how they are played to who has a chance to watch
them.

B
Before television, for example, live matches could only be viewed in person. For the
majority of fans, who were unable to afford tickets to the top-flight matches, or to
travel the long distances required to see them, the only option was to attend a local
game instead, where the stakes were much lower. As a result, thriving social networks
and sporting communities formed around the efforts of teams in the third and fourth
divisions and below. With the advent of live TV, however, premier matches suddenly
became affordable and accessible to hundreds of millions of new viewers. This shift in
viewing patterns vacuumed out the support base of local clubs, many of which
ultimately folded.

C
For those on the more prosperous side of this shift in viewing behaviour, however, the
financial rewards are substantial. Television assisted in derailing long-held concerns in
many sports about whether athletes should remain amateurs or ‘go pro’, and replaced
this system with a new paradigm where nearly all athletes are free to pursue stardom
and to make money from their sporting prowess. For the last few decades, top-level
sports men and women have signed lucrative endorsement deals and sponsorship
contracts, turning many into multi-millionaires and also allowing them to focus full-time
on what really drives them. That they can do all this without harming their prospects at
the Olympic Games and other major competitions is a significant benefit for these
athletes.

D
The effects of television extend further, however, and in many instances have led to
changes in sporting codes themselves. Prior to televised coverage of the Winter
Olympics, for example, figure skating involved a component in which skaters drew
‘figures’ in the ice, which were later evaluated for the precision of their shapes. This
component translated poorly to the small screen, as viewers found the whole
procedure, including the judging of minute scratches on ice, to be monotonous and
dull. Ultimately, figures were scrapped in favour of a short programme featuring more
telegenic twists and jumps. Other sports are awash with similar regulatory shifts –
passing the ball back to the goalkeeper was banned in football after gameplay at the
1990 World Cup was deemed overly defensive by television viewers.

E
In addition to insinuating changes into sporting regulation, television also tends to
favour some individual sports over others. Some events, such as the Tour de France,
appear to benefit: on television it can be viewed in its entirety, whereas on-site
enthusiasts will only witness a tiny part of the spectacle. Wrestling, perhaps due to an
image problem that repelled younger (and highly prized) television viewers, was
scheduled for removal from the 2020 Olympic Games despite being a founding sport
and a fixture of the Olympics since 708 BC. Only after a fervent outcry from supporters
was that decision overturned.

F
Another change in the sporting landscape that television has triggered is the framing of
sports not merely in terms of the level of skill and athleticism involved, but as personal
narratives of triumph, shame and redemption on the part of individual competitors. This
is made easier and more convincing through the power of close-up camera shots,
profiles and commentary shown during extended build-ups to live events. It also
attracts television audiences – particularly women – who may be less interested in the
intricacies of the sport than they are in broader ‘human interest’ stories. As a result,
many viewers are now more familiar with the private agonies of famous athletes than
with their record scores or match day tactics.

G
And what about the effects of male television viewership? Certainly, men have

always been willing to watch male athletes at the top of their game, but female athletes
participating in the same sports have typically attracted far less interest and, as a
result, have suffered greatly reduced exposure on television. Those sports where
women can draw the crowds – beach volleyball, for example – are often those where
female participants are encouraged to dress and behave in ways oriented specifically
toward a male demographic.

H
Does all this suggest the influence of television on sports has been overwhelmingly
negative? The answer will almost certainly depend on who among the various
stakeholders is asked. For all those who have lost out – lower-league teams, athletes
whose sports lack a certain visual appeal – there are numerous others who have
benefitted enormously from the partnership between television and sports, and whose
livelihoods now depend on it.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A–H from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i–xi, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Gender bias in televised sport

ii More money-making opportunities
iii Mixed views on TV’s role in sports
iv Tickets to top matches too expensive
v A common misperception
vi Personal stories become the focus
vii Sports people become stars
viii Rules changed to please viewers
ix Lower-level teams lose out
x Skill levels improve
xi TV appeal influences sports’ success

Example Answer Paragraph A v

1 Paragraph B 6 Paragraph G
2 Paragraph C 7 Paragraph H
3 Paragraph D
4 Paragraph E
5 Paragraph F