QTSS 4E5N MYE 2010 1127 Paper 2 for BTT and NSP practice at SHSS

Passage A
Paragraph 1
On 14 September 1930, a windstorm kicked up dust out of southwest Kansas and tumbled towards Oklahoma.  By the time the storm cut a swath through the Texas Panhandle, it looked unlike anything ever seen before on the High Plains.  People called the government to find out what was up with this dirty swirling thing in the sky.  The weather bureau people in Lubbock did not know what to make of ut or how to define it.  It was not a sandstorm.  Sandstorms were beige, off-white, and not thick like this thing.  It was not a hailstorm, though it certainly brought with it a dark, threatening sky, the kind of formation you would get just before a roof buster.  The strange thing about it, the weather bureau observers siad, was that it rolled, like a mobile hill of crude, and it was black.  When it tumbled through, it carried static electricity, enough to short out a car.  It hurt, like a swipe of coarse sandpaper on the face.  The first black duster was a curiosity, nothing else.  The weather bureau observers wrote it up and put it in a drawer. 

The Texas Panhandle is a region of the U.S. state of Texas consisting of the northernmost 26 counties in the state. The panhandle is a rectangular area bordered by New Mexico to the west and Oklahoma to the north and east.


From PASSAGE A
From Paragraph 1
1.  Pick out the word which indicates the windstorm was moving quickly. [1m]
2.  Why could the approaching windstorm be mistaken for a hailstorm? [1m]


Paragraph 2
Around noon on 21 January 1932, a cloud ten thousand feet high from ground to top appeared just outside Amarillo.  The winds had been fierce all day, clocked at sixty miles an hour when the curtain dropped over the Panhandle.  The sky lost its customary white, and turned brownish, then grey as the thing lumbered around the edge of Amarillo, a city of 43000 people.  Nobody knew waht to call it.  It was not a rain cloud.  Nor was it a cloud holding ice pellets.  It was not a twister.  It was thick like coarse animal hair;  it was alive.  People close to it described a feeling of being in a blizzard - a black blizzard, they called it - with an edge like steel wool.  THe weather bureau people in Amarillo were fascinated by the cloud precisely because it defied explanation.  They wrote in their logs that it was "most spectacular".  After hovering near Amarillo, the cloud moved north, up the Texas Panhandle, towards Oklahoma, Colarado and Kansas.  


From Paragraph 2
3.  "The curtain dropped over the Panhandle."  What does the author mean by this?  [1m]
4.  What does the word "alive" tell you about the dust cloud? [1m]


Paragraph 3
Barn White sawa htis black monstrosity approaching from the south, and he thought at first he was looking at a range of mountains on the move, nearly two miles hight.  But the Llano Estacado was one of the flattest places on Earth, and there was no mountain of ten thousand feet, moving or stationary, anywhere on the horizon.  He told his boys to run for protection and hide deep under their little house.  The cloud passed over Dalhart quickly, briefly blocking the sun so that it looked like dusk outside.  It dumped its load and disappeared, its departure as swift as its arrival.  The storm left the streets full of coal-coloured dust and covered the tops of cars and sidewalks on Denrock.  Folks had it in their hair, their eyes, down their throat.  You blew your nose and there it was - black snot.  You hacked up  the same thing.  It burned in the eyes and made people cough.  It was the damnest thing and a mystery. 


From Paragraph 3
5.  Explain in your own words why the author described the duststorm as "the damnest thing, and a mystery".  [2m]


Paragraph 4
What is it?  Melt White asked his daddy. 
It is the earth itself, Barn said.  The earth is on the move. 
Why?
Look at what they have done to the grass, he said.  Look at the land: wrong side up. 


By 1934, the soil was like finely-sifted flour, and the heat made it a danger to go outside in many ways.  In Vinita, Oklahoma, the temperature soared above 100 degrees for thirty-five consecutive days.  On the thirty-sixth day, it reached 117.  It was a time without air-conditioning, of course, a time without even electricity for most farmers in the southern plains. 


From Paragraph 4
6.  What did the duststorm do to the land? [1m]


Paragraph 5
On the skin, the dust was like a nail file, a grit strong enough to hurt.  People rubbed Vaseline in their noses as a filter.  The Red Cross handed out respiratory masks to schools.  Families put wet towels beneath their doors and covered their windows with bed sheets, fresh-dampened nightly.  The sheets turned a muddy brown.  At shcool, Jeanne Clark, a New York dancer's daughter, went through dust drills.  When the storms hit, they usually came without warning.  Weather forecasting, with no pictures from high above, relied on changes in atmospheric pressure, but such measures rarely picked up galloping earth.  Dusters went undetected until they rolled into a neighbouring town and a phone link was set in motion. 

From Paragraph 5
7.  Explain in your own words how people were alerted about impending duststorms in the past.  [2m]

Paragraph 6
A Sunday in mid-April 1935 dawned quiet, windless and bright, in the afternoon, the sky went purple - as if it were sick - and the temperature plunged.  People looked northwest and saw a ragged-top formation on the move, covering the horizon.  The air crackled with electricity.  Snap, snap, snap.  Waves of sand, like ocean water rising over a ship's prow, swept over roads.  Cars went into ditches.  A train derailed.  That was Black Sunday, 14 April 1935, day o fthe worst duster of them all.  The storm carried twice as much dirt as was dug out of the earth to create the Panama Canal.  The canal took seven years to dig;  the storm lasted a single afternoon.  More than 300000 tons of Great Plains topsoil was airborne that day. 


From Paragraph 6
8.  Why was the duststorm that happened on 14 April 1935 considered as "the worst duster of them all"?  [1m]

Paragraph 7
The narrative of those times is not just buried among fence posts and mummified homesteads.  People who lived through the whole thing - the great town-building, farm-fattening, family establishing prosperity of hte 1920s, followed by the back hand of nature in the next decade, when all of life played out as if filmed grainy black-and-white - are with us still, shelters of living memory. 

From Paragraph 7
9.  Explain fully what the author means when he says that life in the decade after the 1920s "played out as if filmed in grainy black-and-white".  [2m]

Passage B
Paragraph 1
We live in precarious times, climate-wise.  Judging from past climate swings preserved in ancient ice, the glaciers should soon be creeping southward.  Instead, the mercury seems to be chugging upwards, and the ice is still melting.  We have already seen how nature's own dusts must push the mercury this way or that.  But what are the deeds of humanity's dusts?  The Earth's climate system was a baffling and erratic machine before we ever lumbered onto the scene, and now we have emptied Pandora's box into those mysterious gears:  a staggering load of sulphur beads and nitrogen-rich bits, boatloads of soot, and a smattering of everything else that we build or burn.  We have even added to the desert dust. 

From Paragraph 1
10.  Why does teh author think we live in precarious times? [1m]
11.  In your own words, describe whtat the earth's natural climatic system is like. [2m]

From Paragraph 2
12.  Explain fully what it is about desert dust that has gotten climatologists confused. [2m]

From Paragraph 3
13.  Why are sulphur particles able to lower the temperature of hte Northern hemisphere? [1m]

From Paragraph 4
14.  Why do sulphur beads have a limited cooling effect? [2m]

From Passage A and Passage B
15.  For each of the following words, give one word or phrase (of not more than seven words) which has the same meaning that the word has in the passage.  [5m]

From Passage A
[a] spectacular
[b] picked up

From Passage B
[c] creeping
[d] cancel out
[e] industriousness

From Passage B
16.  Using your own words as far as possible, summarise how dust of various types affect the world's climate and weather patterns. 

USE MATERIALS IN PASSAGE B

Your summary, which must be in continuous writing (not note form), must not be more then 150 words (not counting the words to help you begin).

Begin your summary as follows:

Highly reflective sulphur particles found in the atmosphere can cool... [25m]

                                                                    Work In Progress
                                                                    After 8 September, we work hard to do well at the O.

AES Sec 4E5N MYE 2007 1127 Paper 2

                                                                      Quite challenging reading. 
                                                                      But do it for your own good.

Passage A
Paragraph 1
The mosquito has long, filament-thin legs and dappled wings;  she is of the genus Anopheles, the only insect capable of harbouring the human malaria parasite.  She is definitely a she:  Male mosquitoes have no interest in blood, while females depend on protein-rich haemoglobin to nourish their eggs.  A mosquito's proboscis appears spike-solid, but it is actually a sheath of separate tools - cutting blades and a feeding tube powered by two tiny pumps.  It begins with a bite, a painless bite.  The mosquito comes in the night, alights on an exposed patch of flesh, and assumes the hunched, head-lowered posture of a sprinter in the starting blocks.  Then she plunges her stiletto mouthparts into the skin.  She drills through the epidermis, then through a thin layer of fat, then into the network of blood-filled micro-capillaries.  She starts to drink. 

From Paragraph 1
1.  How do we know that all Anopheles mosquitoes are females?  [1m]
2.  Quote a word that has the same meaning as "sting". [1m]
3.  Why is it ironic that the author compares a mosquito about to sting its prey to that of a sprinter starting his race?  [2m]

Paragraph 2
To inhibit the blood from coagulating, the mosquito oils the the bite area with a spray of saliva.  This is how it happens.  Carried in the mosquito's salivary glands - and entering the body with the lubricating squirt - are minute, wormlike creatures.  These are the one-celled malaria parasites, known as plasmodia.  Fifty thousand of them could swim in a pool the size of the full-stop at the end of this sentence.  Typically, a couple of dozen slip into the bloodstream.  But it takes just one.  A single plasmodium is enough to kill a person. 

Paragraph 3
The parasites remain in the bloodstream for only a few minutes.  They ride the flume of the circulatory system to the liver.  There they stop.  Each plasmodium burrows into a different liver cell.  Almost certainly, the person who has been bitten harldy stirs from sleep.  For the next week or two, there is no overt sign that something in the body has just gone horribly wrong. 

Paragraph 4
From the mosquito's salivary glands to the host's liver cell: a quiet trip.  Everything seems fine.  Even the liver itself, that reddish sack of blood-filtering cells, shows no sign of trouble.  It is only in those few rooms whose locks have been picked by falciparum where all is pandemonium.  Inside these cells, the malaria parasites eat and multiply.  They do this nonstop for about a week, until the cell's original contents have been entirely digested and it is bulging with parasites like a soup can gone bad.  Each falciparum that entered the body has now replicated itself 40,000 times.

From Paragraph 4
4.  How long is the incubation period of malaria? [1m]

Paragraph 5
The cells explode.  A riot of parasites is set loose in the bloodstream.  Within thirty seconds, though, the parasites have again entered the safe houses of cells - this time, each has drilled into a red blood cell, flowing thourgh the circulatory system.  Over the next two days, the parasites continue to devour and proliferate stealthily.  After they have consumed the invaded cells, they burst out again, and once more there is bedlam in the blood.  

Paragraph 6 
For the first time, the body realises it has been ambushed.  Headache and muscle pains are a sign that the immune system has been triggered.  But if this is the victim's first bout of malaria, the immune response is mostly ineffective.  The alarm has sounded, but the thieves are already under the bed.  The parasites swiftly invade a new set of blood cells, and the sequence of reproduction and release continues. 

Paragraph 7
Now the internal temperature begins to rise as the body attempts to cook away the invaders.  Shivering sets in - muscle vibrations generate warmth.  This is followed by severe fever, then drenching sweat.  Cold, hot, wet;  the symptoms are a ahllmark of the disease.  But the parasites' exponential growth continues, and after a few more cycles there are billions of them tumbling about the blood.   

From paragraph 7
5.  Explain in your own words, what the author means by the phrase, "the thieves are already under the bed"?  [2m]

Paragraph 8
By this point, the fever has reached maximum intensity.  The body is practically boiling itself to death - anything to halt the attack - but to no avail.  The parasites can even commandeer blood cells to help aid their survival.  In some cases of falciparum, infected cells sprout Velcro-like knobs on their surfaces, and as these cells pass through the capillaries of the brain, they latch to the sides.  The adhesion keeps them from washing into the spleen, which cleans the blood by shredding damaged cells.  Somehow - no one is quite sure how - the adhesion also causes the brain to swell.  The infection has turned into cerebral malaria, the most feared manifestation of the disease. 

Paragraph 9
This is when the body starts to break down.  The parasites have destroyed so many oxygen-carrying red cells that too few are left to sustain vital functions.  The lungs fight for breath, and the heart struggles to pump.  The blood acidifies.  Brain cells die.  The child struggles and convulses and finally falls into a coma. 

Passage B
Paragraph 1
Doctors have long suspected that the malaria problem was getting worse, but the most searing proof has come to light in just the past year.  Researchers believe the average number of cases of malaria per year in Africa has quadrupled since the 1980s.  A study in the journal Lancet last June reported that the death rate due to malaria has at least doubled among children in eastern and southern Africa;  some rural areas have seen a heartbreaking 11-fold jump in mortality.  "The death rates from malaria are as high as those from HIV," says Dr. Christa Hook, co-ordinator of the malaria working group for Doctors Without Borders.  "In many ways, it's a kind of silent Holocaust." 

From Paragraph 1
6.  What is the author's purpose of comparing malaria to HIV?  [2m]
7.  What type of organisation do you think "Doctors Without Borders" refers to?  [2m]
8.  Why does the author liken the malaria epidemic to be similar to the "Holocaust"? [1m]

Paragraph 2
Recognition of malaria's toll on the global economy is growing.  Economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, estimates that countries hit hardest by the most severe form of malaria have annual economic growth rates 1.3 percentage points lower than those in which malaria is not a serious problem.  Sachs points out that the economies of Greece, Portugal and Spain expanded rapidly only after malaria was eradicated in those countries in the 1950s.  In other words, fighting malaria is good for business- as many companies with overseas operations have long understood.  By the end of this year, Exxon Mobil, which plans to expand activities in the sub-Saharan countries of Chad, Cameroon, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria, hopes to triple its funding for anti-malaria projects and research, from $2 million to $6 million.  But the malaria problem is bigger than Exxon Mobil or even Bill and Melinda Gates.  Government action is needed. 

From Paragraph 2
9.  Explain in your own words what the author means by "malaria's toll on the global economy"? [2m]

Paragraph 3
For decades, the best treatment for malaria was an inexpensive medication called chloroquine, first discovered in Germany in 1934 by a researcher working for Bayer.  Chloroquine was so effective that it seemed it might vanquish malaria forever.  But by the 1970s, the drug had been used so widely to treat all kinds of fevers, not just those caused by malaria, that the malaria parasites became resistant and doctors had to turn to a second medication, called sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, or SP.  But within five years, the parasites started to develop resistance to SP as well.  Today resistance to both drugs is rampant in many parts of Africa, where resistant malaria parasites are the leading cause of death. 

From Paragraph 3
10.  Give two reasons why the medication for malaria became ineffective in the 1970s.  [2m]
11.  Quote a word that has the same meaning as "widely". [1m]

Paragraph 4
At the same time, efforts to control anopheles mosquitoes have been more or less abandoned.  Part of the problem was the realisation taht malaria could never be completely eradicated from tropical regions the way it had been in the U.S. and other countries in temperate zones.  There was also a growing backlash against DDT, a pesticide that is highly effective at attacking mosquitoes but whose indiscriminate use in agriculture killed many fish, beneficial insects and birds.  Although only small amounts of DDT are needed to control malaria - usually in indoor-spraying campaigns - its toxic reputation made cash-strapped governments in Africa, which often must rely heavily on international donors, hesitant to use it. 

From Paragraph 4
12.  Why do the governments in Africa fear using DDT when it can help them to control malaria?  [2m]

Paragraph 5
To be successful, any anti-malaria campaign must do two things:  treat the illness and prevent the transmission of parasites.  Several pilot studies conducted in Africa have proved that combination therapy, in which at least one of the medications is derived from a plant called Artemisia annua, or sweet wormwood, easily destroys drug-resistant malarial parasites in the bloodstream.  Using several drugs at once, often in the same pill, greatly decreases the risk that the parasites will become resistant.  As an added bonus, artemisnin, the active ingredient in Artemisia annua, acts very quickly, further decreasing the chances of drug resistance. 

Paragraph 6
The full three-day course of treatment with artemisinin-based combination therapy costs from $1 to $10 a person, depending on whether it is purchased in the public or private sector.  Unfortunately, that is at least ten times the price of current, albeit ineffective, treatment programmes.  Most impoverished African governments simply cannot afford to foot the entire bill for combination therapy and the training required to give it, and the same holds true for the majority of their private citizens, many of whom already spend a third of their income on malaria treatment. 

From Paragraph 6
13.  Use another word from paragraph 4 to replace "impoverished". [1m]

From Passages A and B
14.  For each of the following words or phrases, give ONE word or short phrase (of not more than seven words) which has the same meaning the word or phrase has in the passage. [5m]

From Passage A
[a] epidermis
[b] proliferate

From Passage B
[c]  eradicated
[d] vanquish
[e]  indiscriminate

15.  In Passage A, the writer describes a mosquito's journey in taking the life of a child.  [25m] 

Using your own words as far as possible, summarise how a bite from a malaria-carrying mosquito affects the internal functions of a human body. 

USE THE MATERIAL IN PASSAGE A FROM PARAGRAPH 3 ONWARDS.

Your summary, which must be in continuous writing (not note form), must not be more than 150 words (excluding the words given to help you begin). 

Begin your summary as follows: 

After feeding on human blood, the Anopheles mosquito oils the bite area with her saliva which contains...

Finally - 4 September 2010...Minutes away from dismantling our fruit of labour

    Where are your visitors and admirers? 

                      When the last visitor reenters the Black Box, the display will be dismantled.  This
                      being its last moment of standing glory.

    OK,  before the light is being put out.

The Fruit of Our Labour

                      Mrs Grace Toh giving a maternal touch to the Rock Castle. 

    A learning journey about giving our best to visitors. Hafi and Louis systematically checking and repairing
    damages caused to the pillar during transportation. 

    Who says we have short attention spans?  Gerald and Shi Jing spent close to an hour repairing this pillar.

    As the clock ticks away...

                      Gerald...before the taming of the MONSTER.

    The Quality Control checks continue the next afternoon before the first visitors touch down at the Reception Area of the Black Box. 

    It's all worth our efforts. 

Acknowledgements

Kuroneko wishes to thank the following students of S.H.S.S. for chipping in to help out in the making of all kinds of items leading to the successful completion and exhibition of the rock castle and pillars for the ISLAND display: 

Siew Hui      Boaz                   Fiona         Hafi
Sze Yan       Glene                  Gerald       Shi Jing
Jeshere        Clarissa John       Louis         The literature students of 5B and 5A
Jia Jun         Trisha Banshee    Eunice        The literatuer students of 4Express (elective)

For without you, the island could not have been conceivable...doomo arigatoo!

Lord of the Flies Display Board - Nearing Completion Term 3 Week 9.2010

    Siew Hui and Jia Chun adding a coloured layer to the newspaper rock buns.  Term 3 Week 10.2010

    Glen Koh and Boaz of 5A doing QC checks to make sure that all areas of the rock castle is covered with a layer of "TAR". 

    A lot of work in such a short time for both. 

    What did I tell you?  Reuse...recycle...reduce.

SHSS 1189 PRELIMINARY EXAMINATIONS 2 - Online Reading and Bottled Water passages-2010 by Ms. Norhani

SECONDARY 4NA - 4C and 4D.2010
PASSAGE A
1.   Bottled water is a drain on the environment: The U.S. public goes through about 50 billion water bottles a year, and most of those plastic containers are not recycled, according to Elizabeth Royte’s 2008 book, Bottlemania: How Water Went On Sale and Why We Bought It. Transporting the bottles and keeping them cold also burns fossil fuels, which give off greenhouse gases. And groundwater pumping by bottled-water companies draws heavily on underground aquifers and harms watersheds, according to the Sierra Club, an environmental non-profit organization.

2.  Yet more than USD100 billion is spent every year on bottled water globally. In many developing countries where there is not a safe source of tap water, bottled water is the only option. But in the U.S., where tap water is federally regulated and often screened for dangerous pollulants, the public still drinks 21 gallons (79 litres) of bottled water per capita per year on average, according to the Columbia Water Centre at Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York. The bottled-water industry is so successful, it has outpaced milk, coffee, and juice in number of gallons of drinks sold – putting it behind only beer and soda.

3.  Though the sale and consumption of bottled water is still on the rise, certain policymakers and activists have taken steps to reduce it and encourage people to drink tap water. In September 2009, the Australian city of Bundanoon became the first city in the world to completely ban bottled water from its store’s shelves, installing water fountains instead. Among U.S. cities that have taken action are San Francisco and Seattle, which on longer buy water for city use, and Chicago, which added a five-cent tax on each bottle. Several restaurants in those cities have also given up bottled for filtered tap. Other cities are also considering taking action, especially aluminium and stainless steel varieties. Many reusable bottles are made of polycarbonate plastic, but those often contain bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical linked to reproductive problems and heart disease. In response, some polycarbonate-bottle makers have phased out BPA and advertise “BPA-free” products.

4.  Not only does bottled water contribute to excessive waste, it costs us a thousand times more than water from our faucet at home, and it is likely no safer or cleaner, experts say. A 2008 investigation by the non-profit Environmental Working Group found some bottled water is sullied with untested industrial chemicals and may not necessarily be cleaner than tap water. Water aside, the plastic used in single-use bottles can pose more of a contamination threat than the water. However, when the bottles are reused, as they commonly are, they can leach chemicals such as DEHA, a possible human carcinogen, and benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), a potential hormone disruptor. And because the plastic is porous, you will likely get a swill of harmful bacteria with each gulp if you reuse the bottles.

5.  Another major problem with bottled water is that a traditionally public good has been privatized. Bottled water companies gain high profits by drawing water from public water sources, putting it in plastic containers, and reselling it at 2,900 times the price of regular tap water. Some experts argue that the profits from bottled water companies could go towards improving public water supplies and infrastructure – making better water for everyone.

PASSAGE B 
1.  Books are not Nadia Konyk’s thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows an interest. Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer here in this suburb southwest of Cleveland, America.

2.  Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. Some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading – diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write. Some literacy experts say that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.

3.  Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends. Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the equivalent of taking in empty calories. Many youths also spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending instant messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.

4.  Some scientists also worry that the fractured experience typical of the Internet could rob developing readers of crucial skills. “Reading a book, and taking the time to think over and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing, is more enriching, without doubt, than the short little bits that you might get if you’re into the 30-second digital mode,” said Ken Pugh, a neuroscientist at Yale who has studied brain scans of children reading.

5.  Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald J. Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site about a mythical species known as the “Pacific Northwest tree octopus”. Nearly 90 percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source. However, Web junkies can occasionally be swept up in a book. After Nadia read Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, “Night”, in her freshman English class, Ms. Konyk brought home another book, “Silverboy”, a fantasy novel, hoping to keep up the momentum. Nadia made it through one chapter before she got engrossed in the Internet fan fiction again.