Read the following passage and do the tasks.
AUSTRALIA'S PLATYPUS
Of all the creatures on the earth, the Australian platypus, Omithorbynchusparadoxus, is perhaps one of the most mysterious and reclusive. Derived from the Latin platys meaning ‘flat and broad’ and pous meaning ‘foot’, the platypus has long been an iconic symbol of Australia. Upon being discovered in Australia in the 1700s, sketches of this unusual creature were made and sent back to England whereupon they were considered by experts to be a hoax. Indeed, the incredible collection of its body parts – broad, flat tail, rubbery snout, webbed feet and short dense fur – make it one of the world’s most unusual animals.
Officially classified as a mammal, the egg-laying platypus is mostly active during the night, a nocturnal animal. As if this combination of characteristics and behaviors were not unusual enough, the platypus is the only Australian mammal known to be venomous. The male platypus has a sharply pointed, moveable spur on its hind foot which delivers a poison capable of killing smaller animals and causing severe pain to humans. The spur – about 2 centimeters in length – is quite similar to the fang of a snake and, if provoked, is used as a means of defense. Those who have been stung by a platypus's spur report an immediate swelling around the wound followed by increased swelling throughout the affected limb. Excruciating, almost paralyzing pain in the affected area accompanies the sting which, in some victims has been known to last for a period of months. One report from a victim who was stung in the palm of the hand states that “…the spur could not be pulled out of the hand until the platypus was killed.” During the breeding season, the amount of venom in the male platypus increases. This has led some zoologists to theorize that the poisonous spur is primarily for asserting dominance amongst fellow males. To be stung by a male platypus is a rare event with only a very small number of people being on the receiving end of this most reclusive creature.
In the same area of the hind foot where the male has the poisonous spur, the female platypus only develops two buds which drop off in their first year of life never to appear again. The female platypus produces a clutch of one to three eggs in late winter or spring, incubating them in an underground burrow. The eggs are 15-18 millimeters long and have a whitish, papery shell like those of lizards and snakes. The mother is believed to keep the eggs warm by placing them between her lower belly and curled-up tail for a period of about 10 or 11 days as she rests in an underground nest made of leaves or other vegetation collected from the water. The baby platypus drinks a rich milk which is secreted from two round patches of skin midway along the mother’s belly. It is believed that a baby platypus feeds by slurping up milk with rhythmic sweeps of its stubby bill. When the juveniles first enter the water at the age of about four months, they are nearly (80-90%) as long as an adult. Male platypus do not help to raise the young.
In Australia, the platypus is officially classified as ‘Common but Vulnerable’. As a species, it is not currently considered to be endangered. However, platypus populations are believed to have declined or disappeared in many catchments1, particularly in urban and agricultural landscapes. In most cases, the specific underlying reasons for the reduction in numbers remain unknown. Platypus surveys have only been carried out in a few catchments in eastern Australia. It is therefore impossible to provide an accurate estimate of the total number of platypus remaining in the wild. Based on recent studies, the average platypus population density along relatively good quality streams in the foothills of Victoria’s Great Dividing Range is only around one to two animals per kilometer of channel. Because platypus are predators near the top of the food chain and require large amounts of food to survive (up to about 30% of a given animal’s body weight each day), it is believed that their numbers are most often limited by the availability of food, mainly in the form of bottom-dwelling aquatic invertebrates such as shrimps, worms, yabbies, pea-shell mussels, and immature and adult aquatic insects. Small frogs and fish eggs are also eaten occasionally, along with some terrestrial insects that fall into the water from overhanging vegetation.
Until the early twentieth century, platypus were widely killed for their fur. The species is now protected by law throughout Australia. Platypus are wild animals with specialized living requirements. It is illegal for members of the public to keep them in captivity. A platypus which has been accidentally captured along a stream or found wandering in an unusual place should never be taken home and treated as a pet, even for a brief time. The animal will not survive the experience. Only a small number of Australian zoos and universities hold a permit to maintain platypus in captivity for legitimate display or research purposes. Current Australian government policy does not allow’ this species to be taken overseas for any reason.
1: Catchments are an area of land drained by a creek or river system, or a place set aside for collecting water which runs off the surface of the land.
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer?
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NOT GIVEN - if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
The appearance of the platypus caused experts to doubt it was real.
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer?
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The amount of venom in a male platypus changes during the year.
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NO - if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN - if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
Most platypus live in Eastern Australia.
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer?
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Snake venom and platypus venom are very similar.
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer?
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NOT GIVEN - if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
Because their environment is specialized, platypus cannot be kept as pets.
Complete the summary. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Male and Female Platypus
Platypus are unique Australian animals. Although all platypus share many similarities, the male and female are somewhat different from each other. For example, on the hind feet, the male has a while the young female has .
In the , the mother keeps her eggs warm and, once born, supplies her . On the other hand, the male platypus does not help raise the young at all.
Complete the sentences below with words taken from the passage. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Even though the platypus is not endangered, it is considered ''.
Platypus numbers in areas have declined in many catchments.
Platypus numbers are low which is probably due to a lack of .
Platypus captivity for research and study purposes requires a .
Read the following passage and do the tasks.
The Brains Business
A. For those of a certain age and educational background, it is hard to think of higher education without thinking of ancient institutions. Some universities are of a venerable age - the University of Bologna was founded in 1088, the University of Oxford in 1096 - and many of them have a strong sense of tradition. The truly old ones make the most of their pedigrees, and those of a more recent vintage work hard to create an aura of antiquity. Yet these tradition-loving (or -creating) institutions are currently enduring a thunderstorm of changes so fundamental that some say the very idea of the university is being challenged. Universities are experimenting with new ways of funding (most notably through student fees), forging partnerships with private companies and engaging in mergers and acquisitions. Such changes are tugging at the ivy's roots.
B. This is happening for four reasons. The first is the democratisation of higher education - “massification", in the language of the educational profession. In the rich world, massification has been going on for some time. The proportion of adults with higher educational qualifications in developed countries almost doubled between 1975 and 2000. From 22% to 41%. Most of the rich countries are still struggling to digest this huge growth in numbers. Now massification is spreading to the developing world. China doubled its student population in the late 1990s, and India is trying to follow suit.
C. The second reason is the rise of the knowledge economy. The world is in the grips of a “soft revolution” in which knowledge is replacing physical resources as the main driver of economic growth. Between 1985 and 1997, the contribution of knowledge-based industries to total value added increased from 51% to 59% in Germany and from 45% to 51% in Britain. The best companies are now devoting at least a third of their investment to knowledge-intensive intangibles such as R&D, licensing, and marketing. Universities are among the most important engines of the knowledge economy. Not only do they produce the brain workers who man it, but they also provide much of its backbone, from laboratories to libraries to computer networks.
D. The third factor is globalisation. The death of distance is transforming academia just as radically as it is transforming business. The number of people from developed countries studying abroad has doubled over the past twenty years, to 1.9 million; universities are opening campuses all around the world; and a growing number of countries are trying to turn higher education into an export industry. The fourth is competition. Traditional universities are being forced to compete for students and research grants, and private companies are trying to break into a sector which they regard as “the new health care”. The World Bank calculates that global spending on higher education amounts to $300 billion a year, or 1 % of global economic output. There are more than 80 million students worldwide, and 3.5 million people are employed to teach them or look after them.
E. All this sounds as though a golden age for universities has arrived. However, inside academia, particularly in Europe, it does not feel like it. Academics complain and administrators are locked in bad-tempered exchanges with the politicians who fund them. What has gone wrong? The biggest problem is the role of the state. If more and more governments are embracing massification, few of them are willing to draw the appropriate conclusion from their enthusiasm: that they should either provide the requisite funds (as the Scandinavian countries do) or allow universities to charge realistic fees. Many governments have tried to square the circle through lighter management, but management cannot make up for the lack of resources.
F. What, if anything, can be done? Techno-utopians believe that higher education is ripe for revolution. The university, they say, is a hopelessly antiquated institution, wedded in outdated practices such as tenure and lectures, and incapable of serving a new world of mass audiences and just-in-time information. “Thirty wars from now the big university campuses will be relics," says Peter Drucker, a veteran management guru. "I consider the American research university of the past 40 years to be a failure." Fortunately, in his view, help is on the way in the form of Internet tuition and for-profit universities. Cultural conservatives, on the other hand, believe that the best way forward is backward. They think it is foolish to waste higher education on people who would rather study "Seinfeld" than Socrates, and disingenuous to confuse the pursuit of truth with the pursuit of profit.
Which paragraph does each of the following headings best fit?
Education for the masses
Future possibilities
Globalisation and competition
Funding problem
According to the text, which FIVE of the following statements are true?
Universities are responding to changes by _____
The knowledge economy is _____
Current problems at universities, especially in Europe, include _____.
Possible solutions put forward by reformists and conservatives include _____.
Read the following passage and complete the tasks.
A LIBRARY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
A few years ago, at the height of the dotcom boom, it was widely assumed that a publishing revolution, in which the printed word would be supplanted by the computer screen, was just around the corner. It wasn’t: for many, there is still little to match the joy of cracking the spine of a good book and settling down for an hour or two of reading. A recent flurry of activity by big technology companies – including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo! – suggests that the dream of bringing books online is still very much alive.
The digitizing of thousands of volumes of print is not without controversy. On Thursday, November 3, Google, the world’s most popular search engine, posted a first installment of books on Google Print, an initiative first mooted a year ago. This collaborative effort between Google and several of the world’s leading research libraries aims to make many thousands of books available to be searched and read online free of charge. Although the books included so far are not covered by copyright, the plan has attracted the ire of publishers.
Five large book firms are suing Google for violating copyright on material that it has scanned and, although out of print, is still protected by law. Google has said that it will only publish short extracts from material under copyright unless given express permission to publish more, but publishers are unconvinced. Ironically, many publishers are collaborating with Google on a separate venture, Google Print Publisher, which aims to give readers an online taste of books that are commercially available. The searchable collection of extracts and book information is intended to tempt readers to buy the complete books online or in print form.
Not to be outdone, Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has unveiled plans for its own foray into the mass e-book market. The firm, which began ten years ago as an online book retailer, now sells a vast array of goods. No doubt piqued that Google, a relative newcomer, should impinge upon its central territory, Amazon revealed on Thursday that it would introduce two new services. Amazon Pages will allow customers to search for key terms in selected books and then buy and read online whatever part they wish, from individual pages to chapters or complete works. Amazon Upgrade will give customers online access to books they have already purchased as hard copies. Customers are likely to have to pay around five cents a page, with the bulk going to the publisher.
Microsoft, too, has joined the online-book bandwagon. At the end of October, the software giant said it would spend around $200 million to digitize texts, starting with 150,000 that are in the public domain, to avoid legal problems. It will do so in collaboration with the Open Content Alliance, a consortium of libraries and universities. (Yahoo! has pledged to make 18,000 books available online in conjunction with the same organization.) On Thursday, coincidentally the same day as Google and Amazon announced their initiatives, Microsoft released details of a deal with the British Library, the country’s main reference library, to digitize some 25 million pages; these will be made available through MSN Book Search, which will be launched next year.
These companies are hoping for a return to the levels of interest in e-books seen when Stephen King, a best-selling horror writer, published “Riding the Bullet” exclusively on the Internet in 2000. Half a million copies were downloaded in the first 48 hours after publication. This proved to be a high-water mark rather than a taste of things to come. While buyers were reluctant to sit in front of a computer screen to read the latest novels, dedicated e-book reading gadgets failed to catch on. Barnes and Noble, a leading American bookshop chain, began selling e-books with fanfare in 2000 but quietly pulled the plug in 2003 as interest faded.
The market for e-books is growing again, though from a tiny base. According to the International Digital Publishing Forum, which collates figures from many of the world’s top publishers, in the third quarter of 2004, worldwide sales were 25% higher than the year before. Unfortunately, this only amounted to a paltry $3.2 million split between 23 publishers in an industry that made sales worth over $100 billion that year.
Both retailers and publishers reckon they will eventually be able to persuade consumers to do a lot more of their reading on the web. Some even hope they can become to online books what Apple’s iTunes is to online music. There are crucial differences between downloading fiction and downloading funk. Online music was driven from the bottom up: illegal file sharing services became wildly popular, and legal firms later took over when the pirates were forced (by a wave of lawsuits) to retreat; the legal providers are confident that more and more consumers will pay small sums for music rather than remain beyond the law. The iPod music player and its like have proved a fashionable and popular new way to listen to songs. The book world has no equivalent.
So the commercial prospects for sellers of online books do not yet look very bright. They may get a lift from some novel innovations. The ability to download mere parts of books could help, for instance: sections of manuals, textbooks or cookery books may tempt some customers; students may wish to download the relevant sections of course books; or readers may want a taste of a book that they subsequently buy in hard copy. The ability to download reading matter onto increasingly ubiquitous hand-held electronic devices and 3G phones may further encourage uptake. In Japan, the value of e-books (mainly manga comic books) delivered to mobile phones has jumped, though it will be worth only around ¥6 billion ($51 million) in 2005, according to estimates.
A few years ago, it was widely thought that _____.
Publishers are unhappy with Google because _____.
Amazon will _____.
It is clear that most readers, if given the choice, prefer _____.
Complete the following sentences using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each gap.
If companies publish books online that are not covered by copyright, they avoid .
The is very small but getting larger.
The expect that they will be able to convince more people to read online.
The has nothing similar to an iPod.
In Japan, most of the publications sent to mobile phones are .
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Books that are out of print are not covered by copyright law.
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Amazon began by selling books online.
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Microsoft cancelled a deal with the British Library on the same day as Google and Amazon made their announcements.
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Barnes and Noble published Riding the Bullet online.
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The ability to sample a book online before buying it might help sales.