ACA FLEX Reading 25-9

Just by looking at images of Earth from space, it's clear that the ocean is a significant piece of the Earth's story. In fact, the ocean represents over 70% of the Earth's surface and contains 97% of all water on Earth. The ocean stores heat like a "fly wheel" for climate. Its huge capacity as a heat and water reservoir moderates the climate of Earth. Within this Earth system, both the physical and biological processes of the ocean play a key role in the water cycle, the carbon cycle, and climate variability. Even if you live nowhere near the ocean, you will still experience the ocean's influence in our Earth system.

• AThe ocean plays a vital role in life on earth.
• BThe ocean is only a minor part of the life cycle on earth.
• CThe ocean only influences the lives of people living near it.
• DThe ocean plays no part in the earth's climate.

Most children have an interest in learning to play a musical instrument at one point or another during their growing- up years. Parents need to take advantage of that urge to play when it appears. Some very small children become intrigued with music because they see their parents or their older siblings play. The Suzuki method of instruction capitalizes on that early willingness to learn by involving the parent and the child in the child's instructions. Elementary-aged youngsters often are exposed to stringed instruments or band instruments in their school music classes. Because kids like to do what other kids do, parents who are not musicians themselves can take advantage of both instruction and enthusiasm. It is at the middle school level, however, that peer pressure can really work to the benefit of parents who want to hear the sound of music around the house.

• AMost children have an interest in learning to play a musical instrument during their growing-up years.
• BSome very small children become intrigued with music because they see their parents or siblings play.
• CAt various points, parents can take advantage of their children's desire to play a musical instrument.
• DMiddle-school children take delight at selecting and learning to play an instrument along with their friends

You've probably seen dogs working ________ (3) at airports, sniffing for drugs, bombs and contraband food. Now our best-friend biosensors might have a new task: ferretting out the scent of bird flu. And they may not be alone on the job. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Monell Chemical Senses Center trained mice to identify duck droppings from animals infected with bird flu. The work was presented at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston. The ________ (4) trained six mice to run a maze in search of infected feces. Every time they found the right feces, they got a drink of water. The mice learned to choose infected over noninfected duck feces about 90 percent of the time. The researchers believe the ________ (5) could be twofold. First, bird flu apparently leaves an odor imprint on bird feces, and so dogs—and even mice—could be trained to ________ (6) it. Second, scientists might be able to isolate the cocktail of compounds that gives off the odor to develop lab instruments or automated field detectors. Until then, we may find four-legged sensors, large and small, sniffing away to protect us from a ________ (7) epidemic.

Umami was first identified in Japan, in 1908, when Dr. Kikunae Ikeda concluded that Kombu, a type of edible seaweed, had a different taste than most foods. He conducted ________ (8) that found that the high concentration of glutamate in Kombu was what made it so tasty. From there, he crystallized monosodium glutamate (MSG), the seasoning that would become ________ (9) the world over. Decades later Umami became scientifically defined as one of the five individual tastes sensed by receptors on the ________ (10) . Then in 1996, a team of University of Miami researchers studying taste perception made another breakthrough. They discovered separate taste receptor cells in the tongue for detecting Umami. Before then, the concept was uncharted. 'Up until our research, the ________ (11) wisdom in the scientific community was that Umami was not a separate sense. It was just a combination of the other four qualities (salty, sweet, bitter, sour)', explained Dr. Stephen Roper, the University of Miami physiology and biophysics professor who helped zero in on the taste along with Nirupa Chaudhari, the team‘s lead researcher.

How did the zebra get its stripes? One theory holds that stripes help confuse predators. But stripes might be ________ (12) to protect zebras from ferocious…insects. That's ________ (13) to a study in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Horseflies are abundant in Africa. They deliver painful bites that spread disease and distract animals from grazing. The flies use polarized light hitting water as a guide to places to mate and lay eggs. And they read such light hitting dark mammal hides as a sign of a blood meal. Zebra embryos start out dark and develop their white stripes before birth. Could the stripes confuse flies? The researchers went to a farm infested with horseflies, where they set up models of black and white stripes of varying angles and widths, thus ________ (14) the direction of the reflected polarized light. They tracked how the patterns affected the flies' interest. They then tested models of horses colored black, brown, white or ________ (15). And again tracked the effect on flies. Turns out that the black and white stripes on a zebra are optimal for ________ (16) a horsefly 's attention . Meaning that zebras may have evolved stripes to ward off disease-carrying insects, and to dine in peace.

There is a place forty kilometres north-east of Portland, Victoria, which makes for an unusual visit. It is Lake Condah. Here are to be found remains of aboriginal settlements: the circular stone bases of several hundred huts, rock-lined water channels, and stone tools chipped from rock not normally found in the area. One of the attractions of Lake Condah long ago was its fish and the most startling evidence of aboriginal technology and engineering to be found there are the systems built to trap fish. Water courses had been constructed by redirecting streams, building stone sides, and even scraping out new channels. At strategic spots, they piled rocks across the water courses to create weirs and build funnels to channel eels and fish into conical baskets. This is an eel-fishing technique which has hardly changed to the present day. Beside some of the larger traps, there are the outlines of rectangular, stone-lined ponds, to hold fish and keep them fresh. On the bluffs overlooking the lake, stone circles are all that remain of ancient dwellings. Not all of the stones were quarried locally. The huts vary in size, but all have gaps for doorways located on the lee side, away from the prevailing wind. One theory is that the stone walls were only waist to shoulder high, with the top roofed by branches and possibly packed with mud. The site presents a picture of a semi-settled people quite different from the stereotype of nomadic hunter-gatherers of the desert.

• AOval shaped ponds were used to keep fish alive.
• BThe aboriginal eel fishing technique has not changed over time.
• CConical baskets were used to channel eel fish only.
• DFish was the only food source of the aboriginal people.
• EThere were some large traps to hold fish.

The first English attempts to colonize North America were controlled by individuals rather than companies. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was the first Englishman to send colonists to the New World. His initial expedition, which sailed in 1578 with a patent granted by Queen Elizabeth was defeated by the Spanish. A second attempt ended in disaster in 1583 when Gilbert and his ship were lost in a storm. In the following year, Gilbert’s half brother, Sir Water Raleigh, having obtained a renewal of the patent, sponsored an expedition that explored the coast of the region that he named “Virginia.” Under Raleigh’s direction efforts were then made to establish a colony on Roanoke Island in 1585 and 1587. The survivors of the first settlement on Roanoke returned to England in 1586, but the second group of colonists disappeared without leaving a trace. The failure of the Gilbert and Raleigh ventures made it clear that the tasks they had undertaken were too big for any one colonizer. Within a short time, the trading company had supplanted the individual promoter of colonization.

• AThe first English settlement on Roanoke Island was established in 1587.
• BSir Humphrey Gilbert never settled in North America.
• CMembers of the first Roanoke settlement explored the entire coastal region.
• DSir Walter Raleigh’s initial expedition set out for North America in 1584.
• EThe first English people established colonies in North America because they were requested to do so by Queen Elizabeth.

It is in the university that leaders of the country are trained. The university education is calculated to produce and is producing, men who will be able to play worthy part in public life. It is true that legislative and administrative capacities are developed by experience and by practical knowledge of affairs. Foundations need to be laid at a much earlier stage. It is from this university teaching that a young man should learn to examine critically the material before him, to arrive at a balanced judgment; and not to be carried away by mere catchwords. But in public affairs something more is needed than the power of criticism and intellectual judgment. It is mainly outside the classroom that the boy learns the lesson of corporate life, how to understand the views of others and to work with them, how to sacrifice cheerfully his private inclination for the common good, and how to lead others by influence rather than by authority. He learns these lessons daily by contacts in clubs and societies, in playing fields and common rooms and also not the least by the guidance of wise teachers from whom a timely word may mean so much.

• AThe classroom teaching lays the true foundation stone of a student’s future public life.
• BPlatforms for personal and group interaction are provided by the university.
• CPublic affairs demand personal sacrifices.
• DPublic life demands theoretical as well as practical knowledge.
• ETrue leaders sway rather than dictate.

Books of travel are of all kinds, from the dry records of laborious statisticians to the trivial diaries of globe-trotters. Explorers, seamen, archaeologists, naturalists, dreamers, what type of man or woman has not written a book of travel? They are read, they are forgotten and ninety-nine out of every hundred passes away into oblivion. Yet there are others. Alas! There aren’t many. Great books are rare, same as the people of genius and character are. To write a book of travel appeals irresistibly to large numbers of persons who have no creative power, whose books are the mere reflection of a shallow curiosity and of a foolish egotism. These mediocre works, though they spread a sort of suburban light upon the beautiful and wild places of earth, pale into trivialities on comparison with the achievement of the true travellers who by reason of their fortitude, their imagination, their insight and their ability to evoke the atmosphere and colour of the world, have produced books that rank as literature and last for centuries.

• AThe urge to write demands creativity on part of the writer.
• BClassics on travel and exploration have survived for centuries and will do so in future.
• CCourage is needed for travel and exploration, not so much for recounting the experiences.
• DEven the books that are not so imaginative could have nuggets of important information about people and places.
• EBooks may exhibit writer’s self-centeredness