Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, corresponding to Reading Passage 1
given below.

Why we need to protect polar bears

Polar bears are being increasingly threatened by the effects of climate change, but their
disappearance could have far-reaching consequences. They are uniquely adapted to the
extreme conditions of the Arctic Circle, where temperatures can reach —40°C. One reason
for this is that they have up to 11 centimetres of fat underneath their skin. Humans with
comparative levels of adipose tissue would be considered obese and would be likely to
suffer from diabetes and heart disease. Yet the polar bear experiences no such
consequences.

A 2014 study by Shi Ping Liu and colleagues sheds light on this mystery. They compared the
genetic structure of polar bears with that of their closest relatives from a warmer climate,
the brown bears. This allowed them to determine the genes that have allowed polar bears to
survive in one of the toughest environments on Earth. Liu and his colleagues found the polar
bears had a gene known as APoB, which reduces levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) —
a form of ‘bad’ cholesterol. In humans, mutations of this gene are associated with increased
risk of heart disease. Polar bears may therefore be an important study model to understand
heart disease in humans.

The genome of the polar bear may also provide the solution for another condition, one that
particularly affects our older generation: osteoporosis. This is a disease where bones show
reduced density, usually caused by insufficient exercise, reduced calcium intake or food
starvation. Bone tissue is constantly being remodelled, meaning that bone is added or
removed, depending on nutrient availability and the stress that the bone is under. Female
polar bears, however, undergo extreme conditions during every pregnancy. Once autumn
comes around, these females will dig maternity dens in the snow and will remain there
throughout the winter, both before and after the birth of their cubs. This process results in
about six months of fasting, where the female bears have to keep themselves and their cubs
alive, depleting their own calcium and calorie reserves. Despite this, their bones remain
strong and dense.

Physiologists Alanda Lennox and Allen Goodship found an explanation for this paradox in
2008. They discovered that pregnant bears were able to increase the density of their bones
before they started to build their dens. In addition, six months later, when they finally
emerged from the den with their cubs, there was no evidence of significant loss of bone
density. Hibernating brown bears do not have this capacity and must therefore resort to
major bone reformation in the following spring. If the mechanism of bone remodelling in
polar bears can be understood, many bedridden humans, and even astronauts, could
potentially benefit.

The medical benefits of the polar bear for humanity certainly have their importance in our
conservation efforts, but these should not be the only factors taken into consideration. We
tend to want to protect animals we think are intelligent and possess emotions, such as
elephants and primates. Bears, on the other hand, seem to be perceived as stupid and in
many cases violent. And yet anecdotal evidence from the field challenges those
assumptions, suggesting for example that polar bears have good problem-solving abilities. A
male bear called GoGo in Tennoji Zoo, Osaka, has even been observed making use of a tool
to manipulate his environment. The bear used a tree branch on multiple occasions to
dislodge a piece of meat hung out of his reach. Problem-solving ability has also been
witnessed in wild polar bears, although not as obviously as with GoGo. A calculated move by
a male bear involved running and jumping onto barrels in an attempt to get to a
photographer standing on a platform four metres high.

In other studies, such as one by Alison Annes in 2008, polar bears showed deliberate and
focussed manipulation. For example, Annes observed bears putting objects in piles and then
knocking them over in what appeared to be a game. The study demonstrates that bears are
capable of agile and thought-out behaviours. These examples suggest bears have greater
creativity and problem-solving abilities than previously thought.

As for emotions, while the evidence is once again anecdotal, many bears have been seen to
hit out at ice and snow — seemingly out of frustration — when they have just missed out on a
kill. Moreover, polar bears can form unusual relationships with other species, including
playing with the dogs used to pull sleds in the Arctic. Remarkably, one hand-raised polar
bear called Agee has formed a close relationship with her owner Mark Dumas to the point
where they even swim together. This is even more astonishing since polar bears are known
to actively hunt humans in the wild.

If climate change were to lead to their extinction, this would mean not only the loss of
potential breakthroughs in human medicine, but more importantly, the disappearance of an
intelligent, majestic animal.
Questions 1 – 7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. Polar bears suffer from various health problems due to the build-up of fat under their
skin.
2. The study done by Liu and his colleagues compared different groups of polar bears.
3. Liu and colleagues were the first researchers to compare polar bears and brown bears
genetically.
4. Polar bears are able to control their levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol by genetic means.
5. Female polar bears are able to survive for about six months without food.
6. It was found that the bones of female polar bears were very weak when they came out of
their dens in spring.
7. The polar bear’s mechanism for increasing bone density could also be used by people
one day.

Questions 8 – 13
Complete the table below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

Reasons why polar bears should be protected

People think of bears as unintelligent and 8 ........................... .

However, this may not be correct. For example:
● In Tennoji Zoo, a bear has been seen using a branch as a 9 ........................... .
This allowed him to knock down some 10 ............................
● A wild polar bear worked out a method of reaching a platform where a 11 .........................
was located.
● Polar bears have displayed behaviour such as conscious manipulation of objects and
activity similar to a 12 ........................... .

Bears may also display emotions. For example:

● They may make movements suggesting 13 ......................... if disappointed when
hunting.
● They may form relationships with other species.
Passage 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on the reading
passage below.

Stadiums: past, present and future

A
Stadiums are among the oldest forms of urban architecture: vast stadiums where the public
could watch sporting events were at the centre of western city life as far back as the ancient
Greek and Roman Empires, well before the construction of the great medieval cathedrals
and the grand 19th- and 20th-century railway stations which dominated urban skylines in
later eras.
Today, however, stadiums are regarded with growing skepticism. Construction costs can
soar above £1 billion, and stadiums finished for major events such as the Olympic Games or
the FIFA World Cup have notably fallen into disuse and disrepair.
But this need not be the case. History shows that stadiums can drive urban development
and adapt to the culture of every age. Even today, architects and planners are finding new
ways to adapt the mono-functional sports arenas which became emblematic of
modernisation during the 20th century.

B
The amphitheatre* of Arles in southwest France, with a capacity of 25,000 spectators, is
perhaps the best example of just how versatile stadiums can be. Built by the Romans in 90
AD, it became a fortress with four towers after the fifth century, and was then transformed
into a village containing more than 200 houses. With the growing interest in conservation
during the 19th century, it was converted back into an arena for the staging of bullfights,
thereby returning the structure to its original use as a venue for public spectacles.
Another example is the imposing arena of Verona in northern Italy, with space for 30,000
spectators, which was built 60 years before the Arles amphitheatre and 40 years before
Rome’s famous Colosseum. It has endured the centuries and is currently considered one of
the world’s prime sites for opera, thanks to its outstanding acoustics.

C
The area in the centre of the Italian town of Lucca, known as the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro, is yet
another impressive example of an amphitheatre becoming absorbed into the fabric of the
city. The site evolved in a similar way to Arles and was progressively filled with buildings
from the Middle Ages until the 19th century, variously used as houses, a salt depot and a
prison. But rather than reverting to an arena, it became a market square, designed by
Romanticist architect Lorenzo Nottolini. Today, the ruins of the amphitheatre remain
embedded in the various shops and residences surrounding the public square.

D
There are many similarities between modern stadiums and the ancient amphitheatres
intended for games. But some of the flexibility was lost at the beginning of the 20th century,
as stadiums were developed using new products such as steel and reinforced concrete, and
made use of bright lights for night-time matches.
Many such stadiums are situated in suburban areas, designed for sporting use only and
surrounded by parking lots. These factors mean that they may not be as accessible to the
general public, require more energy to run and contribute to urban heat.

E
But many of today’s most innovative architects see scope for the stadium to help improve
the city. Among the current strategies, two seem to be having particular success: the
stadium as an urban hub, and as a power plant.
There’s a growing trend for stadiums to be equipped with public spaces and services that
serve a function beyond sport, such as hotels, retail outlets, conference centres, restaurants
and bars, children’s playgrounds and green space. Creating mixed-use developments such
as this reinforces compactness and multi-functionality, making more efficient use of land
and helping to regenerate urban spaces.
This opens the space up to families and a wider cross-section of society, instead of catering
only to sportspeople and supporters. There have been many examples of this in the UK: the
mixed-use facilities at Wembley and Old Trafford have become a blueprint for many other
stadiums in the world.

F
The phenomenon of stadiums as power stations has arisen from the idea that energy
problems can be overcome by integrating interconnected buildings by means of a smart
grid, which is an electricity supply network that uses digital communications technology to
detect and react to local changes in usage, without significant energy losses. Stadiums are
ideal for these purposes, because their canopies have a large surface area for fitting
photovoltaic panels and rise high enough (more than 40 metres) to make use of micro wind
turbines.
Freiburg Mage Solar Stadium in Germany is the first of a new wave of stadiums as power
plants, which also includes the Amsterdam Arena and the Kaohsiung Stadium. The latter,
inaugurated in 2009, has 8,844 photovoltaic panels producing up to 1.14 GWh of electricity
annually. This reduces the annual output of carbon dioxide by 660 tons and supplies up to
80 percent of the surrounding area when the stadium is not in use. This is proof that a
stadium can serve its city, and have a decidedly positive impact in terms of reduction of CO2
emissions.

G
Sporting arenas have always been central to the life and culture of cities. In every era, the
stadium has acquired new value and uses: from military fortress to residential village, public
space to theatre and most recently a field for experimentation in advanced engineering. The
stadium of today now brings together multiple functions, thus helping cities to create a
sustainable future.
*amphitheatre: (especially in Greek and Roman architecture) an open circular or oval
building with a central space surrounded by tiers of seats for spectators, for the presentation
of dramatic or sporting events
Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which section contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

14. a mention of negative attitudes towards stadium building projects

15. figures demonstrating the environmental benefits of a certain stadium
16. examples of the wide range of facilities available at some new stadiums
17. reference to the disadvantages of the stadiums built during a certain era

Questions 18-22

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.

Roman amphitheatres

The Roman stadium of Europe have proved very versatile. The amphitheatre of Arles, for
example, was converted first into a 18 ___________, then into a residential area and finally into
an arena where spectators could watch 19 ____________ . Meanwhile, the arena in Verona,
one of the oldest Roman amphitheatres, is famous today as a venue where 20 _____________
is performed. The site of Lucca’s amphitheatre has also been used for many purposes over
the centuries, including the storage of 21 ___________ . It is now a market square with
22____________ and homes incorporated into the remains of the Roman amphitheatre.

Questions 23-24

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 23 and 24 on your answer sheet.

When comparing twentieth-century stadiums to ancient amphitheatres in Section D, which

TWO negative features does the writer mention?

A. They are less imaginatively designed.

B. They are less spacious.
C. They are in less convenient locations.
D. They are less versatile.
E. They are made of less durable materials

Questions 25-26
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO advantages of modern stadium design does the writer mention?

A. offering improved amenities for the enjoyment of sports events

B. bringing community life back into the city environment
C. facilitating research into solar and wind energy solutions
D. enabling local residents to reduce their consumption of electricity
E. providing a suitable site for the installation of renewable power generators
Passage 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage
3 below.

How Bad Is Ocean Garbage, Really?

Chelsea Rochman, an ecologist at the University of California, Davis, has been trying to
answer a dismal question: Is everything terrible, or are things just very, very bad?

Rochman is a member of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis’s
marine-debris working group, a collection of scientists who study, among other things, the
growing problem of marine debris, also known as ocean trash. Plenty of studies have
sounded alarm bells about the state of marine debris; in a recent paper published in the
journal Ecology, Rochman and her colleagues set out to determine how many of those
perceived risks are real.

Often, Rochman says, scientists will end a paper by speculating about the broader impacts
of what they’ve found. For example, a study could show that certain seabirds eat plastic
bags, and go on to warn that whole bird populations are at risk of dying out. ‘But the truth
was that nobody had yet tested those perceived threats,’ Rochman says. ‘There wasn’t a lot
of information.’

Rochman and her colleagues examined more than a hundred papers on the impacts of
marine debris that were published through 2013. Within each paper, they asked what threats
scientists had studied – 366 perceived threats in all – and what they’d actually found.

In 83 percent of cases, the perceived dangers of ocean trash were proven true. In the
remaining cases, the working group found the studies had weaknesses in design and
content which affected the validity of their conclusions – they lacked a control group, for
example, or used faulty statistics.

Strikingly, Rochman says, only one well-designed study failed to find the effect it was looking
for, an investigation of mussels ingesting microscopic bits. The plastic moved from the
mussels’ stomachs to their bloodstreams, scientists found, and stayed there for weeks – but
didn’t seem to stress out the shellfish.

While mussels may be fine eating trash, though, the analysis also gave a clearer picture of
the many ways that ocean debris is bothersome.

Within the studies they looked at, most of the proven threats came from plastic debris,
rather than other materials like metal or wood. Most of the dangers also involved large
pieces of debris – animals getting entangled in trash, for example, or eating it and severely
injuring themselves.

But a lot of ocean debris is ‘microplastic’, or pieces smaller than five millimeters. These may
be ingredients used in cosmetics and toiletries, fibers shed by synthetic clothing in the wash,
or eroded remnants of larger debris. Compared to the number of studies investigating large-
scale debris, Rochman’s group found little research on the effects of these tiny bits. ‘There
are a lot of open questions still for microplastic,’ Rochman says, though she notes that more
papers on the subject have been published since 2013, the cutoff point for the group’s
analysis.

There are also, she adds, a lot of open questions about the ways that ocean debris can lead
to sea-creature death. Many studies have looked at how plastic affects an individual animal,
or that animal’s tissues or cells, rather than whole populations. And in the lab, scientists
often use higher concentrations of plastic than what’s really in the ocean. None of that tells
us how many birds or fish or sea turtles could die from plastic pollution – or how deaths in
one species could affect that animal’s predators, or the rest of the ecosystem.

‘We need to be asking more ecologically relevant questions,’ Rochman says. Usually,
scientists don’t know exactly how disasters such as a tanker accidentally spilling its whole
cargo of oil and polluting huge areas of the ocean will affect the environment until after
they’ve happened. ‘We don’t ask the right questions early enough,’ she says. But if ecologists
can understand how the slow-moving effect of ocean trash is damaging ecosystems, they
might be able to prevent things from getting worse.

Asking the right questions can help policy makers, and the public, figure out where to focus
their attention. The problems that look or sound most dramatic may not be the best places
to start. For example, the name of the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ – a collection of marine
debris in the northern Pacific Ocean – might conjure up a vast, floating trash island. In reality
though, much of the debris is tiny or below the surface; a person could sail through the area
without seeing any trash at all. A Dutch group called ‘The Ocean Cleanup’ is currently
working on plans to put mechanical devices in the Pacific Garbage Patch and similar areas
to suck up plastic. But a recent paper used simulations to show that strategically positioning
the cleanup devices closer to shore would more effectively reduce pollution over the long
term.

‘I think clearing up some of these misperceptions is really important,’ Rochman says. Among
scientists as well as in the media, she says, ‘A lot of the images about strandings and
entanglement and all of that cause the perception that plastic debris is killing everything in
the ocean.’ Interrogating the existing scientific literature can help ecologists figure out which
problems really need addressing, and which ones they’d be better off – like the mussels –
absorbing and ignoring.
Questions 27-33
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 27-33 on you answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

27. Rochman and her colleagues were the first people to research the problem of marine
debris.
28. The creatures most in danger from ocean trash are certain seabirds.
29. The studies Rochman has reviewed have already proved that populations of some birds
will soon become extinct.
30. Rochman analysed papers on the different kinds of danger caused by ocean trash.
31. Most of the research analysed by Rochman and her colleagues was badly designed.
32. One study examined by Rochman was expecting to find that mussels were harmed by
eating plastic.
33. Some mussels choose to eat plastic in preference to their natural diet.

Questions 34-39
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet.

Findings related to marine debris

Studies of marine debris found the biggest threats were
• plastic (not metal or wood)
• bits of debris that were 34 _____________ (harmful to animals)
There was little research into 35 ______________ e.g. from synthetic fibres.

Drawbacks of the studies examined

• most of them focused on individual animals, not entire 36 _____________
• the 37 _______________ of plastic used in the lab did not always reflect those in the ocean
• there was insufficient information on
– numbers of animals which could be affected
– the impact of a reduction in numbers on the 38……………………….. of that species
– the impact on the ecosystem
Rochman says more information is needed on the possible impact of future
39………………………… (e.g. involving oil).

Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

40. What would be the best title for this passage?

A. Assessing the threat of marine debris
B. Marine debris: who is to blame?
C. A new solution to the problem of marine debris
D. Marine debris: the need for international action