You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
In Paris, urban farmers are trying a soil-free approach to agriculture that uses less space and fewer resources. Could it help cities face the threats to our food supplies?
On top of a striking new exhibition hall in southern Paris, the world’s largest urban rooftop farm has started to bear fruit. Strawberries that are small, intensely flavoured and resplendently red sprout abundantly from large plastic tubes. Peer inside and you see the tubes are completely hollow, the roots of dozens of strawberry plants dangling down inside them. From identical vertical tubes nearby burst row upon row of lettuces; near those are aromatic herbs, such as basil, sage and peppermint. Opposite, in narrow, horizontal trays packed not with soil but with coconut fibre, grow cherry tomatoes, shiny aubergines and brightly coloured chards.
Pascal Hardy, an engineer and sustainable development consultant, began experimenting with vertical farming and aeroponic growing towers- as the soil-free plastic tubes are known – on his Paris apartment block roof five years ago. The urban rooftop space above the exhibition hall is somewhat bigger: 14,000 square metres and almost exactly the size of a couple of football pitches. Already, the team of young urban farmers who tend it have picked, in one day, 3,000 lettuces and 150 punnets of strawberries.
When the remaining two thirds of the vast open area are in production, 20 staff will harvest up to 1,000 kg of perhaps 35 different varieties of fruit and vegetables, every day. ‘We’re not ever, obviously, going to feed the whole city this way,’ cautions Hardy. ‘In the urban environment you’re working with very significant practical constraints, clearly, on what you can do and where. But if enough unused space can be developed like this, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t eventually target maybe between 5% and 10% of consumption.’
Perhaps most significantly, however, this is a real-life showcase for the work of Hardy’s flourishing urban agriculture consultancy, Agripolis, which is currently fielding enquiries from around the world to design, build and equip a new breed of soil-free inner-city farm. ‘The method’s advantages are many,’ he says. ‘First, I don’t much like the fact that most of the fruit and vegetables we eat have been treated with something like 17 different pesticides, or that the intensive farming techniques that produced them are such huge generators of greenhouse gases. I don’t much like the fact, either, that they’ve travelled an average of 2,000 refrigerated kilometres to my plate, that their quality is so poor, because the varieties are selected for their capacity to withstand such substantial journeys, or that 80% of the price I pay goes to wholesalers and transport companies, not the producers.’
Produce grown using this soil-free method, on the other hand- which relies solely on a small quantity of water, enriched with organic nutrients, pumped around a closed circuit of pipes, towers and trays- is ‘produced up here, and sold locally, just down there. It barely travels at all,’ Hardy says. ‘You can select crop varieties for their flavour, not their resistance to the transport and storage chain, and you can pick them when they’re really at their best, and not before.’ No soil is exhausted, and the water that gently showers the plants’ roots every 12 minutes is recycled, so the method uses 90% less water than a classic intensive farm for the same yield.
Urban farming is not, of course, a new phenomenon. Inner-city agriculture is booming from Shanghai to Detroit and Tokyo to Bangkok. Strawberries are being grown in disused shipping containers, mushrooms in underground carparks. Aeroponic farming, he says, is ‘virtuous’. The equipment weighs little, can be installed on almost any flat surface and is cheap to buy: roughly 100 to 150 per square metre. It is cheap to run, too, consuming a tiny fraction of the electricity used by some techniques.
Produce grown this way typically sells at prices that, while generally higher than those of classic intensive agriculture, are lower than soil-based organic growers. There are limits to what farmers can grow this way, of course, and much of the produce is suited to the summer months. ‘Root vegetables we cannot do, at least not yet,’ he says. ‘Radishes are OK, but carrots, potatoes, that kind of thing- the roots are simply too long. Fruit trees are obviously not an option. And beans tend to take up a lot of space for not much return.’ Nevertheless, urban farming of the kind being practiced in Paris is one part of a bigger and fast-changing picture that is bringing food production closer to our lives.
Complete the notes below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.
1. Vertical tubes are used to grow strawberries, 8 and herbs.
2 . There will eventually be a daily harvest of as much as 10 . they do.All rackets used to have natural strings made from the 11 . of animals. Pete Sampras had metal 12 put into the frames of his rackets. Gonçalo Oliveira changed the 13 on his racket handles
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1. People had expected Andy Murray to become the world’s top tennis player for at least five years before 2016.
2. The change that Andy Murray made to his rackets attracted a lot of attention.
3. Most of the world’s top players take a professional racket stringer on tour with them.
4. Mike and Bob Bryan use rackets that are light in comparison to the majority of rackets.
5. Werner Fischer played with a spaghetti-strung racket that he designed himself.
6. The weather can affect how professional players adjust the strings on their rackets.
7. It was believed that the change Pete Sampras made to his rackets contributed to his strong serve.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14 – 26 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
When one mentions pirates, an image springs to most people’s minds of a crew of misfits, daredevils, and adventurers in command of a tall sailing ship in the Caribbean Sea. Yet from the first to the third millennium BCE, thousands of years before these swashbucklers began spreading fear across the Caribbean, pirates prowled the Mediterranean, raiding merchant ships and threatening vital trade routes. However, despite all efforts and the might of various ancient states, piracy could not be stopped. The situation remained unchanged for thousands of years. Only when the pirates directly threatened the interests of ancient Rome did the Roman Republic organize a massive fleet to eliminate piracy. Under the command of the Roman general Pompey, Rome eradicated piracy, transforming the Mediterranean into ‘Mare Nostrum’ (Our Sea).
Although piracy in the Mediterranean is first recorded in ancient Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III (c. 1390-1353 BCE), it is reasonable to assume it predated this powerful civilization. This is partly due to the great importance the Mediterranean held at this time, and partly due to its geography. While the Mediterranean region is predominantly fertile, some parts are rugged and hilly, even mountainous. In ancient times, the inhabitants of these areas relied heavily on marine resources, including fish and salt. Most had their own boats, possessed good seafaring skills, and unsurpassed knowledge of the local coastline and sailing routes.
Thus, it is not surprising that during hardships, these men turned to piracy. Geography itself further benefited the pirates, with the numerous coves along the coast providing places for them to hide their boats and strike undetected. Before the invention of ocean-going caravels in the 15th century, ships could not easily cross long distances over open water. Thus, in the ancient world, most were restricted to a few well-known navigable routes that followed the coastline. Caught in a trap, a slow merchant ship laden with goods had no other option but to surrender. In addition, knowledge of the local area helped the pirates to avoid retaliation once a state fleet arrived.
One should also add that it was not unknown in the first and second millennia BCE for governments to resort to pirates’ services, especially during wartime, employing their skills and numbers against their opponents. A pirate fleet would serve in the first wave of attack, preparing the way for the navy. Some regions were known for providing safe harbors to pirates, who, in return, boosted the local economy.
The first known record of a named group of Mediterranean pirates, made during the rule of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten (c. 1353-1336 BCE), was in the Amarna Letters. These were extracts of diplomatic correspondence between the pharaoh and his allies, and covered many pressing issues, including piracy. It seems the pharaoh was troubled by two distinct pirate groups, the Lukka and the Sherden. Despite the Egyptian fleet’s best efforts, the pirates continued to cause substantial disruption to regional commerce. In the letters, the king of Alashiya (modern Cyprus) rejected Akhenaten’s claims of a connection with the Lukka (based in modern-day Turkey). The king assured Akhenaten he was prepared to punish any of his subjects involved in piracy.
The ancient Greek world’s experience of piracy was different from that of Egyptian rulers. While Egypt’s power was land-based, the ancient Greeks relied on the Mediterranean in almost all aspects of life, from trade to warfare. Interestingly, in his works the Iliad and the Odyssey, the ancient Greek writer Homer not only condones, but praises the lifestyle and actions of pirates. The opinion remained unchanged in the following centuries. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, for instance, glorified pirates’ daring attacks on ships or even cities.
For Greeks, piracy was a part of everyday life. Even high-ranking members of the state were not beyond engaging in such activities. According to the Greek orator Demosthenes, in 355 BCE, Athenian ambassadors made a detour from their official travel to capture a ship sailing from Egypt, taking the wealth found onboard for themselves! The Greeks’ liberal approach towards piracy does not mean they always tolerated it, but attempts to curtail piracy were hampered by the large number of pirates operating in the Mediterranean.
The rising power of ancient Rome required the Roman Republic to deal with piracy in the Mediterranean. While piracy was a serious issue for the Republic, Rome profited greatly from its existence. Pirate raids provided a steady source of slaves, essential for Rome’s agriculture and mining industries. But this arrangement could work only while the pirates left Roman interests alone. Pirate attacks on grain ships, which were essential to Roman citizens, led to angry voices in the Senate, demanding punishment of the culprits. Rome, however, did nothing, further encouraging piracy. By the 1st century BCE, emboldened pirates kidnapped prominent Roman dignitaries, asking for a large ransom to be paid. Their most famous hostage was none other than Julius Caesar, captured in 75 BCE.
By now, Rome was well aware that pirates had outlived their usefulness. The time had come for concerted action. In 67 BCE, a new law granted Pompey vast funds to combat the Mediterranean menace. Taking personal command, Pompey divided the entire Mediterranean into 13 districts, assigning a fleet and commander to each. After cleansing one district of pirates, the fleet would join another in the next district. The process continued until the entire Mediterranean was free of pirates. Although thousands of pirates died at the hands of Pompey’s troops, as a long-term solution to the problem, many more were offered land in fertile areas located far from the sea. Instead of a maritime menace, Rome got productive farmers that further boosted its economy.
Complete each sentence with the correct letter below.
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
14 A reference to a denial of involvement in piracy
15 Details of how a campaign to eradicate piracy was carried out
16 A mention of the circumstances in which states in the ancient world would make use of pirates
17 A reference to how people today commonly view pirates
18 An explanation of how some people were encouraged not to return to piracy
19 A mention of the need for many sailing vessels to stay relatively close to land
Choose TWO letters, A-E. Write the correct letters in boxes 20 and 21 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO of the following statements does the writer make about inhabitants of the Mediterranean region in the ancient world?
Choose TWO letters, A-E. Write the correct letters in boxes 22 and 23 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO of the following statements does the writer make about inhabitants of the Mediterranean region in the ancient world?
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
Ancient Rome and Piracy
Piracy was an issue ancient Rome had to deal with, but it also brought some benefits for Rome. For example, pirates supplied slaves that were important for Rome’s industries. However, attacks on vessels transporting 24 to Rome resulted in calls for 25 . for the pirates responsible. Nevertheless, piracy continued, with some pirates demanding a 26 . for the return of the Roman officials they captured.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27- 40, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
Brian Southwell looks at how human brains verify information and discusses some of the challenges of battling widespread falsehoods.
Misinformation – both deliberately promoted and accidentally shared – is perhaps an inevitable part of the world in which we live, but it is not a new problem. People likely have lied to one another for roughly as long as verbal communication has existed. Deceiving others can offer an apparent opportunity to gain strategic advantage, to motivate others to action, or even to protect interpersonal bonds. Moreover, people inadvertently have been sharing inaccurate information with one another for thousands of years.
However, we currently live in an era in which technology enables information to reach large audiences distributed across the globe, and thus the potential for immediate and widespread effects from misinformation now looms larger than in the past. Yet the means to correct misinformation might, over time, be found in those same patterns of mass communication and of the facilitated spread of information.
The main worry regarding misinformation is its potential to unduly influence attitudes and behavior, leading people to think and act differently than they would if they were correctly informed, as suggested by the research teams of Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Bristol and Elizabeth Marsh of Duke University, among others. In other words, we worry that misinformation might lead people to hold misperceptions (or false beliefs) and that these misperceptions, especially when they occur among large groups of people, may have detrimental, downstream consequences for health, social harmony, and the political climate.
At least three observations related to misinformation in the contemporary mass-media environment warrant the attention of researchers, policymakers, and really everyone who watches television, listens to the radio, or reads information online. First of all, people who encounter misinformation tend to believe it, at least initially. Secondly, electronic and print media often do not block many types of misinformation before it appears in content available to large audiences. Thirdly, countering misinformation once it has enjoyed wide exposure can be a resource-intensive effort.
Knowing what happens when people initially encounter misinformation holds tremendous importance for estimating the potential for subsequent problems. Although it is fairly routine for individuals to come across information that is false, the question of exactly how—and when—we mentally label information as true or false has garnered philosophical debate. The dilemma is neatly summarized by a contrast between how the 17th-century philosophers René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza described human information engagement, with conflicting predictions that only recently have been empirically tested in robust ways.
Descartes argued that a person only accepts or rejects information after considering its truth or falsehood; Spinoza argued that people accept all encountered information (or misinformation) by default and then subsequently verify or reject it through a separate cognitive process. In recent decades, empirical evidence from the research teams of Erik Asp of the University of Chicago and Daniel Gilbert at Harvard University, among others, has supported Spinoza’s account: people appear to encode all new information as if it were true, even if only momentarily, and later tag the information as being either true or false, a pattern that seems consistent with the observation that mental resources for skepticism physically reside in a different part of the brain than the resources used in perceiving and encoding.
What about our second observation that misinformation often can appear in electronic or print media without being preemptively blocked? In support of this, one might consider the nature of regulatory structures in the United States: regulatory agencies here tend to focus on post hoc detection of broadcast information. Organizations such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) offer considerable monitoring and notification functions, but these roles typically do not involve preemptive censoring. The FDA oversees direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising, for example, and has developed mechanisms such as the ‘Bad Ad’ program, through which people can report advertising in apparent violation of FDA guidelines on drug risks. Such programs, although laudable and useful, do not keep false advertising off the airwaves. In addition, even misinformation that is successfully corrected can continue to affect attitudes.
This leads us to our third observation: a campaign to correct misinformation, even if rhetorically compelling, requires resources and planning to accomplish necessary reach and frequency. For corrective campaigns to be persuasive, audiences need to be able to comprehend them, which requires either effort to frame messages in ways that are accessible or effort to educate and sensitize audiences to the possibility of misinformation. That some audiences might be unaware of the potential for misinformation also suggests the utility of media literacy efforts as early as elementary school. Even with journalists and scholars pointing to the phenomenon of ‘fake news’, people do not distinguish between demonstrably false stories and those based in fact when scanning and processing written information.
We live at a time when widespread misinformation is common. Yet at this time many people also are passionately developing potential solutions and remedies. The journey forward undoubtedly will be a long and arduous one. Future remedies will require not only continued theoretical consideration but also the development and maintenance of consistent monitoring tools—and a recognition among fellow members of society that claims which find prominence in the media that are insufficiently based in scientific consensus and social reality should be countered.
Misinformation arises as a result of human fallibility and human information needs. To overcome the worst effects of the phenomenon, we will need coordinated efforts over time, rather than any singular one-time panacea we could hope to offer.
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 27 – 30 on your answer sheet.
27. What point does the writer make about misinformation in the first paragraph?
28. What does the writer say about the role of technology?
29. What is the writer doing in the fourth paragraph?
30. What point does the writer make about regulation in the USA?
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-J, below.
Write the correct letter, A-J, in boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet.
What happens when people encounter misinformation?
Although people have 31 to misinformation, there is debate about precisely how and when we label something as true or untrue. The philosophers Descartes and Spinoza had 32 about how people engage with information. While Descartes believed that people accept or reject information after considering whether it is true or not, Spinoza argued that people accepted all information they encountered (and by default misinformation) and did not verify or reject it until afterwards. Moreover, Spinoza believed that a distinct 33 , yet composed of just a small number of sounds. Language appears to beis involved in these stages. Recent research has provided 34 for Spinoza’s theory and it would appear that people accept all encountered information as if it were true, even if this is for an extremely 35 and do not label the information as true or false until later. This is consistent with the fact that the resources for skepticism and the resources for perceiving and encoding are in 36 in the brain.
A constant conflict B additional evidence C different locations
D experimental subjects E short period F conflicting predictions
G frequent exposure H mental operation I dubious reason
J different ideas
Questions 37-40
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
37 Campaigns designed to correct misinformation will fail to achieve their purpose if people are unable to understand them.
38 Attempts to teach elementary school students about misinformation have been opposed.
39 It may be possible to overcome the problem of misinformation in a relatively short period.
40 The need to keep up with new information is hugely exaggerated in today’s world.
