Paragraph 1
It is safe to predict that fifty years from now, people will look back and wonder how Man ever managed his affairs on his limited planetary abode without the tools provided by the space programme. That there could ever have been a world without spacecraft will be just as difficult for them to imagine as one without telephones and airlines is for us.
From paragraph 1:
1. Write down the single word which tells us that Man faces constraints in managing his world affairs [1m]
2. What seems to be indispensable in Man’s world? [1m]
Paragraph 2
In 2025 mankind will be faced with many problems that can only be tackled successfully by a global approach. Successful solutions to these problems will require continuous monitoring and surveying of the entire Earth supported by an effective communications system capable of transmitting the large quantities of collected data and pictorial information in real time to a multitude of users in almost a hundred nations. Unmanned Earth survey and communications satellites and orbiting manned observations will form the backbone of this system.
Paragraph 3
The dominating problems of humanity during the next fifty years that will require such aid from space will arise from the collision between Man’s unrestrained and unlimited growth – both in numbers of people and their material expectations – and the grim limitations of resources the Earth can provide and of wastes it can absorb.
Paragraph 4
Some of these problems are already upon us today. The sudden shortage in fuel oil and gasoline made us shockingly aware of our dependence on resources that for too long we have taken for granted. We would be tragically mistaken if we took our present energy crisis as an isolated incident, brought about by profit-hungry oil moghuls, or as a problem of a temporary nature that will soon be resolved. We should reather accept it as a timely and deadly serious storm warning. Not only is our automotive joy ride over (a ride made possible only by a hitherto unlimited supply of cheap energy from oil), but also we will have to learn to utilize more intelligently for planet’s scarce resources in metal ores and its limited ability to produce food for its exploding population.
From paragraph 2 to 4:
3. “In 2025 mankind will be faced with many problems that can only be tackled successfully by a global approach.”
(a) In your own words, explain what “global approach” means in this context. [1m]
(b) List two of the “many problems” mankind will face. [2m]
(c) How should Man see these problems? [1m]
Paragraph 5
During the 90s, a world-wide satellite search was initiated for additional deposits of metal ores, coal, oil, shale and natural gas. Using multispectral scanners and other sophisticated optical devices, the orbital prospectors will collect picture material that, by comparison with known ore for fossil-fuel deposits, can point out promising sites for closer scrutiny by ground crews.
Paragraph 6
By the turn of the century, resource satellites will be collecting, as a matter of routine, precise global data on the local and world-wide yield of such food crops as corn, wheat, rye, barley, rice and soya-beans and of fibre crops like cotton and sisal. As a fleet of these satellites circle the Earth in their low, near-polar orbits, they will enable the data centres on the ground continually to update their crop predictions. For instance, wherever the sensors of a satellite detect a region where previously unspoiled fields had suffered from flood, drought, hailstorm or insect infestation, the “up-date” will enable the data centre to correct its previous estimate.
Paragraph 7
The same satellites will also produce a continuing record of the pattern of world-wide human habitation. Built-up urban areas, characteristically lacking the chlorophyll-signature of vegetation, will stand out like sore thumbs on the satellite-produced Earth pictures. All this quantitative information are required for a badly needed world-wide food-supply management system.
From paragraphs 5 to 7:
4. Using your own words, explain how prospecting for minerals has become more scientific. [2m]
5. What do you think world-wide food-supply management system involve? [2m]
Paragraph 8
The Earth-looking satellites have also provided Man with a deeper understanding of many of the long-term implications of his industrial civilization. For instance, they can settle the old controversy as to whether the Earth as a planet is gradually getting warmer because of the “green-house” effect created by the great amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere through Man’s massive burning of fossil fuels or whether the opposite is true, that it is actually getting colder because those same offensive smokestacks and exhaust pipes increase the average cloudiness and thus reduce the percentage of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface.
Paragraph 9
The concern is well-founded. In the former case even a few degree’s rise in the Earth’s average temperature would suffice to melt, with a few hundred years, the ice caps and glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. As a result, the ocean level would rise about 1.5 metres, inundating all of the world’s coastal cities. In the latter case, our industrial activities might trigger another Ice Age, with equally disastrous consequences.
From paragraphs 8 and 9:
6. “The concern is well-founded.”
(a) What is “the concern” referring to? [1m]
(b) Give a phrase to replace “well-founded”. [1m]
Paragraph 10
Even open oceans can be held under continuous scrutiny. Whenever a tanker captain in 2025 thinks that he can get away with cleaning his bilges or bunker spaces on the high seas under protection of night, the satellites, detecting both the tell-tale oil slick and the ship steaming wasy from the scene, would quickly report the misdeed to the UN pollution-control branch, and the shipping company could expect to be fined for violation of world-wide treaties on environmental protection.
Paragraph 11
Atmospheric pollution could also be a subject of continuous monitoring by the ever-watchful eyes in the sky. The world-wide machinery of environmental protection would be promptly notified whenever pollution levels dangerous to human health were approached.
From paragraphs 10 and 11:
7. In your own words, explain the advantage of having satellites over open oceans. [1m]
8. Give one word or phrase to replace the adjective in the phrase “atmospheric pollution” [1m]
9(a) From both paragraphs, pick the same one word that tells us how frequent watchful eyes are kept on the oceans and the sky. [1m]
9(b) From each paragraph, pick one word that tells u s what these watchful eyes are doing. [2m]
Paragraph 12
In the communications field, satellites will bring about another revolution. The intelsat communications satellites have established a global telephone network interconnecting nearly a hundred nations. Satellites will take over a major share of domestic communication as well. In addition to telephone conversations, they can carry television programmes and facsimile service and provide direct ties between computers in different locations in support of such operations as banking or ticket reservations.
Paragraph 13
It is also safe to predict that some degree of weather control will be achieved. Think of the implications of having rainfall occur only at night or, more important in terms of meeting the world’s need for food, of being able to bring rainfall at will to areas now parched and wrecked by drought.
Paragraph 14
Many of the space operations in 2025 will become familiar events throught the advent of the reusable space shuttle, which saw its first use in 1979. The shuttle has not only drastically reduced the cost of space transportation but also opened up space for the non-astronaut. Surely, there will still be astronauts on the flight deck of the advanced space shuttle of 2025, but their role can be compared with that of the flight crew in an airliner. The passengers will be astronomers, meteorologists, environmentalists, climatologists, geologists, oil prospectors, and other Earth-resources experts. For them space flight will become the old airline routine of “coffee, tea or milk”.
Paragraph 15
By 2025, Man will also have sat foot on the planet Mars. Will he find life? Here again my crystal ball gets clouded. (There would be no fun in science and exploration if everything could be predicted. We can only speculate that we might find at least some lower forms of life there.)
From paragraphs 12 to 15:
10. In the sentence, “In the communications field, satellites will bring about another revolution”, explain why the word “revolution” is used here. [1m]
11. In your own words, explain two differences between the astronauts and non-astronauts, making clear what their roles are. [2m]
12. For each of the following words, give one word or short phrase (of not more than seven words) which has the same meaning that the word has in the passage. [5m]
(a) abode
(b) sophisticated
(c) smokestacks
(d) suffice
(e) drastically
13. Using your own words as far as possible, summarise the ways in which satellites help or will help Man solve the dominating problems of humanity and aid in communications.
USE THE MATERIAL FROM PARAGRAPHS 5 TO 12.
Your summary, which must be in continuous writing (not note form), must not be longer than 150 words (not counting the words given to help you begin).
Begin your summary as follows: As early as the 90s, satellites were used to… [25m]
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
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.
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.
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]
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...
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Finally - 4 September 2010...Minutes away from dismantling our fruit of labour
being its last moment of standing glory.
The Fruit of Our Labour
Mrs Grace Toh giving a maternal touch to the Rock Castle.
damages caused to the pillar during transportation.
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!
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)