READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.
Insects and Inspired Artificial Robots
A
The creation of artificial devices with life-like characteristics has been pursued for over
2,000 years, beginning, as did so many things in our modern world, in Ancient Greece.
For example, among the inventions of Hero of Alexandria were a windmill-operated
pipe organ and a mechanical theatrical play.
B
With the raise of cybernetic approaches in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A wide
variety of electromechanical machines designed to mimic biological processes and
systems were constructed. Perhaps the best-known and most directly relevant to
biorobotics is W. Gray Walters’ robotic “tortoises” Elsie and Elmer. Walters was a
physiologist who made important early contributions to electroencephalography and
clinical neurophysiology. His tortoises were small mobile robots covered by a hard shell.
The robots were driven by steerable motorized wheels and possessed a headlight, a
light sensor, and a touch sensor that responded when the shell was hit. Their behavior
was controlled by electronic circuit analogues of neural circuits. The behavioral
repertoire of the tortoises included exploration, both positive and negative
phototropism, and obstacle avoidance. The activation of these different behaviors in
interaction with the robots’ environment could produce a variety of behavioral
sequences. Although originally designed to explore Walters’ theories of brain function,
the tortoises became objects of popular fascination in much the same way that ancient
automata did.
C
The seeds of the modern renaissance of biorobotics were sown from the mid 1980s to
mid 1990s. A key event in this resurgence was Rodney Brooks’ work on behavior-based
robots. Although not as directly based on biology as later work would be, Brooks argues
that nontrivial and flexible behavior in a robot could be generated by the interaction
between simple control machinery and its environment, demonstrating his point with
robots accomplishing such tasks as insect-like walking. Another important milestone
was Raibert’s work on hopping and legged robots, which emphasized the central role of
energetics in the dynamic balance and locomotion of animals. Based on studies of
serpentine motion, Hirose developed a number of snake-like locomotors and
manipulators. In the early 1990s, Beer, Quinn, Chiel & Ritzmann developed a series of
hexapod robots based directly on cockroach and stick insect body morphology and
neural control. Early biorobotic work on the sensory side includes Franceshini’s robotic
compound eye based on studies of insect eyes and motion-sensitive neurons in the fly,
Webb’s robotic model of cricket phonotaxis and Grasso et al’s robotic model of lobster
chemical orientation strategies. An early example of robots whose control was based
on theories of human brain function is given by the work of Edelman et al.
D
There has been an explosion of work in biorobotics in recent years, with robotic vocal
tracts, jaws, retinas, expressive faces, hands, arms, legs, etc. deployed on robotic
worms, snakes, ants, flies, crickets, cockroaches, walking stick insects, dinosaurs, bats,
lobsters, tuna, pickerel, turkeys, apes and humanoids. Thus, no brief survey could
possibly do justice to the range of work being undertaken.
E
A recent example of biologically-inspired robotics is Spenko et al’s work on a hexapedal
robotic climber called RiSE. In order to grip a vertical surface, this robot combines both
bonding mechanisms inspired by the structure of gecko feet and interlocking
mechanisms inspired by the structure of insect spines and claws. In addition, its design
is based on a set of principles that have been found to be common to many climbing
animals: a sprawled posture keeps the body close to the surface so as to reduce the
pitch-back moment; front limbs pull inward and rear limbs push outward so as to
counteract the pitch-back moment; a long body reduces the pull-in force required of the
front limbs; lateral forces act inward toward the central axis of the body; complaint legs,
ankles and toes so as to distribute contact forces. Each of the six legs of RiSE have
two degrees of freedom and the robot also possesses s static tail that presses against
the surface to reduce the pull-in forces required of the front legs. The robot uses a
wave gait in which only one leg at a time is lifted from the surface. In addition to an
open-loop gait generator, RiSE utilizes a variety of feedback controllers, including
traction force control, normal force control and gait regulation. In addition, the robot has
a pawing behavior that allows a foot that fails to grasp on initial contact to reestablish a
grip on the climbing surface. Spenko et al have demonstrated that RiSE is able to
traverse a variety of horizontal and vertical surfaces, including climbing trees and brick
or cinder block walls.
F
A powerful example of biorobotic modeling is provided by the aerodynamics of insect
flight. Although quasi-steady-state aerodynamical analyses of the sort used to
understand aircraft have been successfully applied to larger animals, they have not
been very successful for explaining the generation of lift in small flying insects due to
the tiny wingspans, relatively slow flight speeds and extremely fast wing movements
involved. However, a recent biorobotic model by Dickinson and colleagues has begun
to shed considerable light on the unsteady aerodynamics insect flight. Because of the
delicate size and high speed of insect wings, direct measurement of the forces involved
is extremely difficult. For this reason, a robotic model with a 60 cm wingspan was used
to explore the non-steady-state airflow during hovering by the fruit fly Drosophila
melanogaster. In order to reproduce the Reynolds number relevant to small insects
flying in air, their model was submerged in mineral oil and scaled both in space and
time. Force sensors at the base of one wing allowed direct measurement of the forces
produced and illumination of air bubbles in the tank allowed direct observation of the
fluid flow around the robotic wings. Dickinson and colleagues found that three major
mechanisms contributed to lift generation in the model. First, vortices formed at the
leading edge of the wing produce lift during much of the power stroke. Second,
additional lift is produced by circulation of air around the wings due to rapid rotation at
the beginning and end of each stroke. Third, further forces are produces at the start of
each upstroke and downstroke due to collisions of the wings with the swirling wake
produced by the previous stroke, a mechanism termed wake capture. Due to the
sensitivity of these latter two mechanisms to the timing of wing rotation, the model
suggests that the control of small details of wing motion can be used in steering flight.
Questions 1-6
Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs A-F from the list of heading
below.
Write appropriate number (i-x) in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.
List of Headings
i A biorobotic model exploring insect flight
ii Modern practices of artificial device usage
iii Robotic climber better than gecko
iv Insect fight inspires the applications of steering operation
v Prosperity of biorobot family
vi The revival of modern biorobotics
vii Combine machines and environment
viii The advent of robots and their effects on modern society
ix The most famous biorobot in early days
x Bionics device is not a modern conception
1 Paragraph A
2 Paragraph B
3 Paragraph C
4 Paragraph D
5 Paragraph E
6 Paragraph F
Questions 7-11
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-E) with
opinions or deeds (listed 7-11) below.
Write the appropriate letters A-E in boxes 7-11 on your answer sheet.
NB Some people may match more than one discovery.
A W. Gray Walters
B Rodney Brooks
C Michael Dickinson
D Spenko et al
E Edelman et al
7 _________ made contributions to neurophysiology.
8 _________ endowed robots with agility from the innovation of machinery
environmental fit.
9 _________ generated mechanical intelligence inspired by the way human
brain works
10 _________ modified mechanical models based on the structure of insects.
11 _________ found the mechanism of insect flight
Questions 12-13
Choose words from the passage to answer the questions 12-13, writing NO
MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each blank.
12 What plays the most critical role in Raibert’s hopping and legged robots?
13 What allowed direct measurement of the lifting forces of the biorobotic
model?
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.
Extinction of Aussie Animals
A
World Wildlife Fund Australia has revealed its list of extinct wildlife to coincide with
Australia Day. The list covers a wide range of species, from birds to reptiles,
marsupials, insects and even flowers. Top of the list is the green and gold frog
which has had its home decimated by drought.” Many Aussie spices need our help
in order to survive,” WWF threatened species program manager Kat Miller said.
“Without knowing the reason many had disappeared for, we will risk losing another
346 animal and 1249 plant species listed as threatened under federal legislation.
Australia has the one of the worst record of mammal extinction in the world”. WWF
Australia said 9 percent of birds, 7 percent of reptiles and 16 percent of
amphibians are extinct since early human settlement.
B
The conservation group said half the mammals that have become extinct globally
in the last 200 years have been Australian species. Ancient hunters and gatherers
may have triggered the failure of the annual Australian Monsoon some 12,000
years ago by burning massive tracts of the country’s interior, resulting in the
desertification that is evident today, says a new study. Researcher Gifford Miller of
the University of Colorado at Boulder said the new study builds on his research
group’s previous findings that dozens of giant animal species became extinct in
Australia 50,000 years ago due to ecosystem changes caused by human burning.
This study, appearing in Geology, indicates such burning may have altered the
flora enough to decrease the exchange of water vapor between the biosphere and
atmosphere, causing the failure of the Australian Monsoon over the interior.
C
“The question is whether localized burning 50,000 years ago could have had a
continental-scale effect,” said Miller. “The implications are that the burning
practices of early humans may have changed the climate of the Australian
continent by weakening the penetration of monsoon moisture into the interior”. A
paper on the subject by Miller appears in the January issue of Geology. Co-authors
include CU Boulder’s Jennifer Mangan, David Pollard, Starley Thompson and
Benjamin Felzer of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and
John Magee of Australian National University in Canberra.
D
Geologic evidence indicates the interior of Australia was much wetter about
125,000 years ago during the last interglacial period. Although planetary and
meteorological conditions during the most recent ice age caused Earth’s major
monsoons to waver, all except the Australian Monsoon were “reinvigorated” to full
force during the Holocene Period beginning about 12,000 years ago, he said.
Although the Australian Monsoon delivers about 39 inches of rain annually to the
north coast as it moves south from Asia, only about 13 inches of rain now falls on
the continent’s interior each year, said Miller. Lake Eyre, a deep-water lake in the
continent’s interior that was filled by regular monsoon rains about 60,000 years
ago, is now a huge salt flat that is occasionally covered by a thin layer of salty
water.
E
The earliest human colonizers are believed to have arrived in Australia by sea from
Indonesia about 50,000 years ago, using fire as a tool to hunt, clear paths, signal
each other and promote the growth of certain plants, he said. Fossil remains of
browse-dependent birds and marsupials indicate the interior was made up of trees,
shrubs and grasses rather than the desert scrub environment present today.
F
The researchers used global climate model simulations to evaluate the
atmospheric and meteorological conditions in Australia over time, as well as the
sensitivity of the monsoon to different vegetation and soil types. A climate model
simulating a forested Australia produced twice as much annual monsoon
precipitation over the continental interior as the model simulating arid scrub
conditions, he said.
G
“Systematic burning across the semiarid zone, where nutrients are the lowest of
any continental region, may have been responsible for the rapid transformation of
a drought-tolerant ecosystem high in broad-leaf species to the modern desert
scrub,” he said. “In the process, vegetation feedbacks promoting the penetration of
monsoon moisture into the continental interior would have been disrupted”. More
than 85 percent of Australia’s mega fauna weighing more than 100 pounds went
extinct roughly 50,000 years ago, including an ostrich-sized bird, 19 species of
marsupials, a 25-foot-long lizard and a Volkswagen-sized tortoise, he said.
H
Evidence for burning includes increased charcoal deposits preserved in lake
sediments at the boundary between rainforest and interior desert beginning about
50,000 years ago, Miller said. In addition, a number of rainforest gymnosperms –
plants whose seeds are not encased and protected and are therefore more
vulnerable to fire –went extinct at about that time. Natural fires resulting from
summer lightning strikes have played an integral part in the ecology of Australia’s
interior, and many plant species are adapted to regimes of frequent fires, he said.
“But the systematic burning of the interior by the earliest colonizers differed
enough from the natural fire cycle that key ecosystems may have been pushed
past a threshold from which they could not recover.”
Questions 14-16
Reading Passage 2 contains 8 paragraphs A –H.
Which paragraphs state the following information?
Write the appropriate letters A-H in boxes 14-16 on your answer sheet.
14 Why did an interior Australian lake change to a dry flat?
15 When did an ostrich-sized bird go extinct?
16 Why did the ancient settlers in Australia burn the forests?
Questions 17-20
Choose ONE phrase from the list of phrases A-G below to complete each of
the sentences 17-20 below.
Write the appropriate letters (A-G) in boxes 17-20 on your answer sheet.
17 Ancient hunters and gatherers
18 January issue of Geology
19 Fossil remains
20 A climate model
A _________ caused the failure of the annual Australian Monsoon by
burning tracts.
B _________ were responsible for the distinction of an Australian
giant animal species because of their massive hunting.
C _________ showed that in the past the interior of Australia was not
a desert.
D _________ altered the flora to decrease the exchange of water
vapor between the biosphere and atmosphere.
E _________ suggested that the changed climate of the Australian
continent was led by the weakened penetration of monsoon moisture
into the interior.
F _________ indicated that the forests facilitated more rainfall.
G _________ indicated that the extinction of an Australian species
resulted from changes in the local ecosystem.
Questions 21-26
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading
Passage 2?
On your answer sheet please write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage.
21 According to the WWF, Australia has the worst record of animal
extinction in the world.
22 In Australia, hundreds of endangered animals and plants species will
keep disappearing.
23 The distinction of Australian giant animals was a knock-on effect after
human burning ceased the monsoon.
24 Lake Eyre has always been filled with salty water.
25 It is a theoretic assumption that early humans burned massive tracts in
Australia.
26 Varieties of plants from Australia’s interior have now adapted to
recurrent fires.
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.
Amateur Naturalists
From the results of an annual Alaskan betting contest to sightings of migratory birds,
ecologists are using a wealth of unusual data to predict the impact of climate change.
A
Tim Sparks slides a small leather-bound notebook out of an envelope. The book’s
yellowing pages contain bee-keeping notes made between 1941 and 1969 by the late
Walter Coates of Kilworth, Leicestershire. He adds it to his growing pile of local journals,
birdwatchers’ lists and gardening diaries. “We’re uncovering about one major new record
each month,” he says, “I still get surprised.” Around two centuries before Coates, Robert
Marsham, a landowner from Norfolk in the east of England, began recording the life
cycles of plants and animals on his estate – when the first wood anemones flowered, the
dates on which the oaks burst into leaf and the rooks began nesting. Successive
Marshams continued compiling these notes for 211 years.
B
Today, such records are being put to uses that their authors could not possibly have
expected. These data sets, and others like them, are proving invaluable to ecologists
interested in the timing of biological events, or phenology. By combining the records with
climate data, researchers can reveal how, for example, changes in temperature affect the
arrival of spring, allowing ecologists to make improved predictions about the impact of
climate change. A small band of researchers is combing through hundreds of years of
records taken by thousands of amateur naturalists. And more systematic projects have
also started up, producing an overwhelming response. “The amount of interest is almost
frightening,” says Sparks, a climate researcher at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
in Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire.
C
Sparks first became aware of the army of “closet phenologists”, as he describes them,
when a retiring colleague gave him the Marsham records. He now spends much of his
time following leads from one historical data set to another. As news of his quest spreads,
people tip him off to other historical records, and more amateur phenologists come out of
their closets. The British devotion to recording and collecting makes his job easier – one
man from Kent sent him 30 years’ worth of kitchen calendars, on which he had noted the
date that his neighbour’s magnolia tree flowered.
D
Other researchers have unearthed data from equally odd sources. Rafe Sagarin, an
ecologist at Stanford University in California, recently studied records of a betting contest
in which participants attempt to guess the exact time at which a specially erected wooden
tripod will fall through the surface of a thawing river. The competition has taken place
annually on the Tenana River in Alaska since 1917, and analysis of the results showed
that the thaw now arrives five days earlier than it did when the contest began.
E
Overall, such records have helped to show that, compared with 20 years ago, a raft of
natural events now occur earlier across much of the northern hemisphere, from the
opening of leaves to the return of birds from migration and the emergence of butterflies
from hibernation. The data can also hint at how nature will change in the future. Together
with models of climate change, amateurs’ records could help guide conservation. Terry
Root, an ecologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has collected birdwatchers’
counts of wildfowl taken between 1955 and 1996 on seasonal ponds in the American
Midwest and combined them with climate data and models of future warming. Her
analysis shows that the increased droughts that the models predict could halve the
breeding populations at the ponds. “The number of waterfowl in North America will most
probably drop significantly with global warming,” she says.
F
But not all professionals are happy to use amateur data. “A lot of scientists won’t touch
them, they say they’re too full of problems,” says Root. Because different observers can
have different ideas of what constitutes, for example, an open snowdrop. “The biggest
concern with ad hoc observations is how carefully and systematically they were taken,”
says Mark Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, who studies the
interactions between plants and climate. “We need to know pretty precisely what a
person’s been observing – if they just say ‘I noted when the leaves came out’, it might not
be that useful.” Measuring the onset of autumn can be particularly problematic because
deciding when leaves change colour is a more subjective process than noting when they
appear.
G
Overall, most phenologists are positive about the contribution that amateurs can make.
“They get at the raw power of science: careful observation of the natural world,” says
Sagarin. But the professionals also acknowledge the need for careful quality control.
Root, for example, tries to gauge the quality of an amateur archive by interviewing its
collector. “You always have to worry – things as trivial as vacations can affect
measurement. I disregard a lot of records because they’re not rigorous enough,” she
says. Others suggest that the right statistics can iron out some of the problems with
amateur data. Together with colleagues at Wageningen University in the Netherlands,
environmental scientist Arnold van Vliet is developing statistical techniques to account for
the uncertainty in amateur phenological data. With the enthusiasm of amateur
phenologists evident from past records, professional researchers are now trying to create
standardised recording schemes for future efforts. They hope that well-designed studies
will generate a volume of observations large enough to drown out the idiosyncrasies of
individual recorders. The data are cheap to collect, and can provide breadth in space,
time and range of species. “It’s very difficult to collect data on a large geographical scale
without enlisting an army of observers,” says Root.
H
Phenology also helps to drive home messages about climate change. “Because the
public understand these records, they accept them,” says Sparks. It can also illustrate
potentially unpleasant consequences, he adds, such as the finding that more rat
infestations are reported to local councils in warmer years. And getting people involved is
great for public relations. “People are thrilled to think that the data they’ve been collecting
as a hobby can be used for something scientific – it empowers them,” says Root.
Questions 27-33
Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.
27 The definition of phenology
28 How Sparks first became aware of amateur records
29 How people reacted to their involvement in data collection
30 The necessity to encourage amateur data collection
31 A description of using amateur records to make predictions
32 Records of a competition providing clues to climate change
33 A description of a very old record compiled by generations of amateur
naturalists
Questions 34-36
Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 34-36 on your answer sheet.
34 Walter Coates’s records largely contain the information of ________.
35 Robert Marsham is famous for recording the ________ of animals and
plants on his land.
36 According to some phenologists, global warming may cause the number of
waterfowl in North America to drop significantly due to increased ________.
Questions 37-40
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.
37 Why do a lot of scientists discredit the data collected by amateurs?
A Scientific methods were not used in data collection.
B Amateur observers are not careful in recording their data.
C Amateur data is not reliable.
D Amateur data is produced by wrong candidates.
38 Mark Schwartz used the example of leaves to illustrate that
A amateur records can’t be used.
B amateur records are always unsystematic.
C the colour change of leaves is hard to observe.
D valuable information is often precise.
39 How do the scientists suggest amateur data should be used?
A Using improved methods
B Being more careful in observation
C Using raw materials
D Applying statistical techniques in data collection
40 What’s the implication of phenology for ordinary people?
A It empowers the public.
B It promotes public relations.
C It warns people of animal infestation.
D It raises awareness about climate change in the public.
