ACA FLEX Reading 28-10

In embarking on the fight for independence, America faced formidable obstacles. The Continental Congress did not have the authority to pass binding legislation or to impose taxes. The new nation had no army and no navy, and its population numbered only 2.5 million people, 20 percent of whom were slaves. Britain, by contrast, was a mighty power of 11 million people with the world's best navy and a well-disciplined army. Fifty thousand troops were in North America in 1776, and Britain hired thirty thousand German soldiers to supplement its forces during the war. However, the American Revolutionaries were not deterred.

• AAmerica's military forces were less experienced that Britain's military
• BAmerica's Continental Congress had limited authority
• CAs America was about to engage in its struggle for autonomy, it was faced with arduous barriers.
• DBritain was a great power whose population outnumbered that of America's

Emissions of sulphur hexafluoride, the strongest greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere, have increased dramatically in the past few years. This colourless greenhouse gas has multiple uses, including acting as an insulator in electrical installations. Aside from being an insulator in circuit breakers and switches, sulphur hexafluoride is utilised to inhibit fires. However, when installed, it does result in some emissions into the atmosphere. Renewable energy installations require more circuit breakers and switches in their electricity grids due to having more wind turbines and solar panels. Therefore, as renewable energy production expands, there is likely to be an associated rise in sulphur hexafluoride emissions.

• ASulphur hexafluoride has a wide variety of uses in renewable energy production.
• BProducing more renewable energy may lead to more sulphur hexafluoride emissions.
• CIt is becoming increasingly difficult and complicated to generate renewable energy.
• DGreen energy demands ultimately result in emissions of various greenhouse gases.

The real trick -- as demonstrated yesterday at the Hammerstein Ballroom on West 34th Street amid a blast of sonic and visual spectacle celebrating the 150th anniversary of the so-called safety elevator -- is ________ (3) people that they will not go down unexpectedly at bone-shattering velocity. The Otis Elevator Company, a subsidiary of the United Technologies Corporation, built its ________ (4) on the invention, which turned out to be the grandfather of the modern passenger elevator. It featured a spring device that ________ (5) into place automatically upon the severing of the hoist rope. The company's founder, Elisha Graves Otis, ________ (6) his machine, which he called the safety elevator, at P. T. Barnum's Crystal Palace Exposition in New York in 1854, a year after he sold his first three for $300 each. ''The thing that made the skyscraper possible is this: one was ________ (7) if the rope broke,'' Frank Adams, an engineer for the company, said as he waited for a re enactment of the Crystal Palace show to begin.

One of the characteristics of ‘good’ information identified earlier was that it should be ‘balanced’. In an ideal world, ‘________ (8)’ or ‘balanced’ information would present all the ________ (9) for and against, and leave you to weigh this up and draw conclusions. In the real world, however, we recognise that all information presents a position of ________ (10), although this may not necessarily be intentional. Objectivity may therefore be an unachievable ideal. This means that the onus is on you as the reader and user of the information to ________ (11) a critical awareness of the positions represented in what you read, and to take account of this when you interpret the information. In some cases, authors may explicitly express a particular viewpoint – this is perfectly valid as long as they are open about the perspective they represent. Hidden bias, whether or not it is ________ (12), can be misleading. This could be particularly important in a subject area where there is controversy.

The impacts of global warming on oceans are significant. One reason sea levels are uneven is that prevailing ________ (13) drive ocean currents, distributing water in complex patterns. Water, like land, absorbs heat unevenly, which means ________ (14) temperature also becomes uneven across regions. Sea levels of hotter waters rise more clearly because larger ________ (15) is needed when water expands with heat. In addition, melting ice from icebergs helps to ________ (16) sea levels even further, worsening the effects of climate change.

Discovered in the early 1800s and named nicotianine, the oily essence now called nicotine is the main active ingredient of tobacco. Nicotine, however, is only a small component of cigarette smoke, which contains more than 4,700 chemical compounds, including 43 cancer-causing substances. In recent times, scientific research has been providing evidence that years of cigarette smoking vastly increases the risk of developing fatal medical conditions. In addition to being responsible for more than 85 per cent of lung cancers, smoking is associated with cancers of, amongst others, the mouth, stomach and kidneys, and is thought to cause about 14 per cent of leukaemia and cervical cancers. In 1990, smoking caused more than 84,000 deaths, mainly resulting from such problems as pneumonia, bronchitis and influenza. Smoking, it is believed, is responsible for 30 per cent of all deaths from cancer and clearly represents the most important preventable cause of cancer in countries like the United States today. A recent study by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) has shown that second-hand cigarette smoke does more harm to non-smokers than to smokers. Leaving aside the philosophical question of whether anyone should have to breathe someone else’s cigarette smoke, the report suggests that the smoke experienced by many people in their daily lives is enough to produce substantial adverse effects on a person’s heart and lungs. The report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (AMA), was based on the researchers’ own earlier research but also includes a review of studies over the past few years. The American Medical Association represents about half of all US doctors and is a strong opponent of smoking. The study suggests that people who smoke cigarettes are continually damaging their cardiovascular system, which adapts in order to compensate for the effects of smoking. It further states that people who do not smoke do not have the benefit of their system adapting to the smoke inhalation. Consequently, the effects of passive smoking are far greater on non-smokers than on smokers.

• AThirty per cent of deaths in the United States are caused by smoking-related diseases.
• BLeukaemia and Pneumonia are strongly liked to cigarette smoking
• COpponents of the smoking financed the study of USCF
• DThe American Medical Association represents exactly half the doctors of the US
• EPassive smoking is equally dangerous
• FNicotine is the key elements of tobacco

Jane Goodall and her mother started their new life in Africa on July 14, 1960. They arrived on the east shore of Lake Tanganyika in the Gombe National Park. A group of men met them and carried their luggage. They didn’t have very much: a tent, a few clothes and a cup. Later on the same day, somebody said they had seen a chimpanzee. Straight away, Jane started running towards the forest, where she saw a chimpanzee for the first time. Jane had always dreamed of visiting Africa and studying chimpanzees, but she didn’t know much about them and she had no scientific qualifications. However, after she arrived in Gombe, she spent many months watching groups of these animals and learning about them. She started to write about them in her diary and after many months of difficult work, she made three important and new discoveries: chimpanzees ate meat, they used tools to get food and they also made tools. She began to publish articles in journals such as National Geographic magazine. After a while, scientists started reading her studies and Jane was offered a place at university. Finally, in 1966, she became Doctor Jane Goodall. Her work also made her famous. There was a film documentary, Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees (1963) and the first of many books, called My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees (1969). During the seventies, there was a war in the region and Gombe became a dangerous place. Many foreigners left, but Jane stayed. Eventually the war ended, but there was another problem at the start of the 1980s. As the human population increased in Gombe, more trees were cut down. With fewer trees, the chimpanzees lost their natural habitat and it became difficult for them to survive. By the end of the decade, only about a hundred chimpanzees were living in Gombe. At this time, Jane started working with local people to grow more trees in the region. After 1989, Jane left Gombe and started travelling to other parts of the world. She gave lectures about her work and she organized safe places for young chimps whose parents had died or been killed. Now in her eighties, she spends about three hundred days a year giving interviews, talks and lectures, meeting with government officials about animal conservation and raising money for the Jane Goodall Institute which continues her research. And she still spends part of every year in the forest in Gombe, watching her chimpanzees.

• AShe first went to Africa with her mother in 1960. B. C. D. E. She helped local people grow more trees after many trees were cut down. F. She stopped working with chimpanzees after becoming famous.
• BShe already had scientific qualifications before arriving in Gombe.
• CShe found that chimpanzees ate meat and used tools.
• DShe left Gombe during the war because it became too dangerous.
• EShe helped local people grow more trees after many trees were cut down.

Exposure to high levels of noise can cause permanent hearing loss. Neither surgery nor a hearing aid can help correct this type of hearing loss. Short-term exposure to loud noise can also cause a temporary change in hearing (your ears may feel stuffed up) or a ringing in your ears (tinnitus). These short-term problems may go away within a few minutes or hours after leaving the noise. However, repeated exposures to loud noise can lead to permanent tinnitus and/or hearing loss. Loud noise can create physical and psychological stress, reduce productivity, interfere with communication and concentration, and contribute to workplace accidents and injuries by making it difficult to hear warning signals. The effects of noise-induced hearing loss can be profound, limiting your ability to hear high-frequency sounds, understand speech, and seriously impairing your ability to communicate. When sound waves enter the outer ear, the vibrations impact the ear drum and are transmitted to the middle and inner ear. In the middle ear, three small bones called the malleus (or hammer), the incus (or anvil), and the stapes (or stirrup) amplify and transmit the vibrations generated by the sound to the inner ear. The inner ear contains a snail-like structure called Cochlea which is filled with fluid and lined with cells with very fine hairs. These microscopic hairs move with the vibrations and convert the sound waves into nerve impulses–the result is the sounds we hear. Exposure to loud noise can destroy these hair cells and cause hearing loss!

• AEven after long exposure, the sound is unlikely to cause hearing loss.
• BThe cochlea is responsible for the transfer of sound waves into nerve impulses.
• CExposure to noise at work can harm worker’s health.
• DThree small bones of outer ear – malleus, incus, and stapes are attached like a chain to the tympanic membrane and convert sound waves.

Primitive man was probably more concerned with fire as a source of warmth and as a means of cooking food than as a source of light. Before he discovered less laborious ways of making fire, he had to preserve it, and whenever he went on a journey he carried a firebrand with him. His discovery that the firebrand from which the torch may well have developed, could be used for illumination was probably incidental purpose of preserving a flame. Lamps, too probably developed by accident. Early man may have had his first conception of a lamp while watching a twig of fibre burning in the molten fat dropped from roasting carcass. All he had to do was to fashion a vessel to contain fat and float a lighted reed in it. Such lamps, which were made of hollowed stones or sea-shells, have persisted in identical form up to quite recent times.

• ALighting his surroundings was a major concern for the primitive man.
• BPrimitive man used to soften his food by heating it.
• CTorch was discovered more by accident than by design.
• DPreserving fire was not a major concern for the primitive man.
• ESome of the primitive lamp designs survived for long through the ages.