IELTS READING TEST WITH ANSWERS

In Australia, the University of Sydney's Professor Ian Caterson says while major genetic defects may be rare, many people probably have minor genetic variations that combine to dictate w

IELTS READING TEST WITH ANSWER

Tackling Obesity in the Western World

A. Obesity is a huge problem in many Western countries and one which now attracts considerable medical interest as researchers take up the challenge to find a 'cure' for the common condition of being seriously overweight However, rather than take

responsibility for their weight, obese people have often sought solace in the excuse that they have a slow metabolism, a genetic hiccup which sentences more than half the Australian population (63% of men and 47% of women) to a life of battling with their weight The argument goes like this: it doesn't matter how little they eat, they gain weight because their bodies break down food and turn it into energy more slowly than those with a so-called normal metabolic rate

B. 'This is nonsense,' says Dr Susan Jebb from the Dunn Nutrition Unit at Cambridge

in England Despite the persistence of this metabolism myth, science has known for several years that the exact opposite is in fact true Fat people have faster metabolisms than thin people 'What is very clear,' says Dr Jebb, 'is that overweight people actually burn off more energy They have more cells, bigger hearts, bigger lungs and they all need more energy just to keep going.'

C. It took only one night, spent in a sealed room at the Dunn Unit to disabuse one of their patients of the beliefs of a lifetime: her metabolism was fast, not slow By sealing the room and measuring the exact amount of oxygen she used, researchers were able

to show her that her metabolism was not the culprit It wasn't the answer she expected and probably not the one she wanted but she took the news philosophically

D. Although the metabolism myth has been completely disproved, science has far from discounted our genes as responsible for making us whatever weight we are, fat or thin One of the world's leading obesity researchers, geneticist Professor Stephen O'Rahilly, goes so far as to say we are on the threshold of a complete change in the way we view not only morbid obesity, but also everyday overweight Prof O'Rahilly's groundbreaking work in Cambridge has proven that obesity can be caused by our genes 'These people are not weak- willed, slothful or lazy,' says Prof O'Rahilly, 'They have a medical

condition due to a genetic defect and that causes them to be obese.'

E. In Australia, the University of Sydney's Professor Ian Caterson says while major genetic defects may be rare, many people probably have minor genetic variations that combine to dictate weight and are responsible for things such as how much we eat, the amount of exercise we do and the amount of energy we need When you add up all these little variations, the result is that some people are genetically predisposed to putting on weight He says while the fast/slow metabolism debate may have been

settled, that doesn't mean some other subtle change in the metabolism gene won't be found in overweight people He is confident that science will, eventually, be able to 'cure' some forms of obesity but the only effective way for the vast majority of overweight and obese people to lose weight is a change of diet and an increase in exercise

F. Despite the $500 million a year Australians spend trying to lose weight and the $830 million it costs the community in health care, obesity is at epidemic proportions here, as

it is in all Western nations Until recently, research and treatment for obesity had

concentrated on behaviour modification, drugs to decrease appetite and surgery How the drugs worked was often not understood and many caused severe side effects and even death in some patients Surgery for obesity has also claimed many lives

G. It has long been known that a part of the brain called the hypothalamus is

responsible for regulating hunger, among other things But it wasn't until 1994 that

Professor Jeffery Friedman from Rockerfeller University in the US sent science in a new direction by studying an obese mouse Prof Friedman found that unlike its thin brothers, the fat mouse did not produce a hitherto unknown hormone called leptin Manufactured

by the fat cells, leptin acts as a messenger, sending signals to the hypothalamus to turn off the appetite Previously, the fat cells were thought to be responsible simply for storing fat Prof Friedman gave the fat mouse leptin and it lost 30% of its body weight in two weeks

H. On the other side of the Atlantic, Prof O'Rahilly read about this research with great excitement For many months two blood samples had lain in the bottom of his freezer, taken from two extremely obese young cousins He hired a doctor to develop a test for leptin in human blood, which eventually resulted in the discovery that neither of the children's blood contained the hormone When one cousin was given leptin, she lost a stone in weight and Prof O'Rahilly made medical history Here was the first proof that a genetic defect could cause obesity in humans But leptin deficiency turned out to be an extremely rare condition and there is a lot more research to be done before the 'magic' cure for obesity is ever found

Questions 1-8

The Reading Passage has six paragraphs A-H

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below

Write your answers in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet

List of Headings iObesity in animals

iiHidden dangers

iiiProof of the truth

ivNew perspective on the horizon

vNo known treatment

viRodent research leads the way

viiExpert explains energy requirements of obese people

viiiA very uncommon complaint

ixNature or nurture

xShifting the blame

xiLifestyle change required despite new findings

1Paragraph A

2Paragraph B

3Paragraph C

4Paragraph D

5Paragraph E

6Paragraph F

7Paragraph G

8Paragraph H

Questions 9-13

Complete the summary below using ONE WORD ONLY from the box for each answer Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet

weight

exercise

sleep

mind

body

genetic less behaviour more physical

use metal consume metabolism

They do this by seeking to blame their (9) for the fact that they are overweight and erroneously believe that they use (10) energy than thin people to stay alive However, recent research has shown that a (11) problem can be responsible for obesity as some people seem programmed to (12) more than others The new research points to a shift from trying to change people's (13) to seeking an answer to the problem in the

laboratory

ANSWERS:

1 x

2 vii

3 iii

4 iv

5 xi

6 ii

7 vi

8 viii

9 metabolism

10 less

11 genetic

12 consume

13 behaviour

Sea monsters are the stuff of legend - lurking not just in the depths of the oceans, but also the darker corners of our minds What is it that draws us to these creatures?

"This inhuman place makes human monsters," wrote Stephen King in his novel The Shining Many academics agree that monsters lurk in the deepest recesses, they prowl through our ancestral minds appearing in the half-light, under the bed - or at the bottom of the sea

"They don't really exist, but they play a huge role in our mindscapes, in our dreams, stories, nightmares, myths and so on," says Matthias Classen, assistant professor of

literature and media at Aarhus University in Denmark, who studies monsters in literature

"Monsters say something about human psychology, not the world."

One Norse legend talks of the Kraken, a deep sea creature that was the curse of

fishermen If sailors found a place with many fish, most likely it was the monster that was driving them to the surface If it saw the ship it would pluck the hapless sailors from the boat and drag them to a watery grave

This terrifying legend occupied the mind and pen of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson too In his short 1830 poem The Kraken he wrote: "Below the thunders of the upper deep, / Far far beneath in the abysmal sea, / His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep / The Kraken

sleepeth."

The deeper we travel into the ocean, the deeper we delve into our own psyche And when

we can go no further - there lurks the Kraken

Most likely the Kraken is based on a real creature - the giant squid The huge mollusc takes pride of place as the personification of the terrors of the deep sea Sailors would have encountered it at the surface, dying, and probably thrashing about It would have made a weird sight, "about the most alien thing you can imagine," says Edith Widder, CEO at the Ocean Research and Conservation Association

"It has eight lashing arms and two slashing tentacles growing straight out of its head and it's got serrated suckers that can latch on to the slimiest of prey and it's got a parrot beak that can rip flesh It's got an eye the size of your head, it's got a jet propulsion system and three hearts that pump blue blood."

The giant squid continued to dominate stories of sea monsters with the famous 1870 novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne Verne's submarine

fantasy is a classic story of puny man against a gigantic squid

The monster needed no embellishment - this creature was scary enough, and Verne incorporated as much fact as possible into the story, says Emily Alder from Edinburgh

Napier University "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and another

contemporaneous book, Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, both tried to represent the giant squid as they might have been actual zoological animals, much more taking the squid as a biological creature than a mythical creature." It was a given that the squid was vicious and would readily attack humans given the chance

That myth wasn't busted until 2012, when Edith Widder and her colleagues were the first people to successfully film giant squid under water and see first-hand the true character of the monster of the deep They realised previous attempts to film squid had failed because the bright lights and noisy thrusters on submersibles had frightened them away

By quietening down the engines and using bioluminescence to attract it, they managed to see this most extraordinary animal in its natural habitat It serenely glided into view, its body rippled with metallic colours of bronze and silver Its huge, intelligent eye watched the

submarine warily as it delicately picked at the bait with its beak It was balletic and

mesmeric It could not have been further from the gnashing, human-destroying creature of myth and literature In reality this is a gentle giant that is easily scared and pecks at its food Another giant squid lies peacefully in the Natural History Museum in London, in the Spirit Room, where it is preserved in a huge glass case In 2004 it was caught in a fishing net off the Falkland Islands and died at the surface The crew immediately froze its body and it was sent to be preserved in the museum by the Curator of Molluscs, Jon Ablett It is called

Archie, an affectionate short version of its Latin name Architeuthis dux It is the longest preserved specimen of a giant squid in the world

"It really has brought science to life for many people," says Ablett "Sometimes I feel a bit overshadowed by Archie, most of my work is on slugs and snails but unfortunately most people don't want to talk about that!"

And so today we can watch Archie's graceful relative on film and stare Archie herself (she

is a female) eye-to-eye in a museum But have we finally slain the monster of the deep? Now we know there is nothing to be afraid of, can the Kraken finally be laid to rest? Probably not says Classen "We humans are afraid of the strangest things They don't need to be realistic There's no indication that enlightenment and scientific progress has banished the monsters from the shadows of our imaginations We will continue to be afraid of very strange things, including probably sea monsters."

Indeed we are The Kraken made a fearsome appearance in the blockbuster series Pirates of the Caribbean It forced Captain Jack Sparrow to face his demons in a terrifying face-to-face encounter Pirates needed the monstrous Kraken, nothing else would do Or, as the German film director Werner Herzog put it, "What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams."

Questions 1–7

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

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 Matthias Classen is unsure about the possibility of monster's existence

2 Kraken is probably based on an imaginary animal

3 Previous attempts on filming the squid had failed due to the fact that the creature was scared

4 Giant squid was caught alive in 2004 and brought to the museum

5 Jon Ablett admits that he likes Archie

6 According to Classen, people can be scared both by imaginary and real monsters

7 Werner Herzog suggests that Kraken is essential to the ocean

Questions 8–12

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D

Write the correct letter in boxes 8–12 on your answer sheet

8 Who wrote a novel about a giant squid?

A Emily Alder

B Stephen King

C Alfred Lord Tennyson

D Jules Verne

9 What, of the featuring body parts, mollusc DOESN'T have?

A two tentacles

B serrated suckers

C beak

D smooth suckers

10 Which of the following applies to the bookish Kraken?

A notorious

B scary

C weird

D harmless

11 Where can we see a giant squid?

A at the museum

B at a seaside

C on TV

D in supermarkets

12 The main purpose of the text is to:

A help us to understand more about both mythical and biological creatures of the deep<strong< li=""></strong<>

B illustrate the difference between Kraken and squid

C shed the light on the mythical creatures of the ocean

D compare Kraken to its real relative

Questions 13–16

Complete the sentences below

Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer

Write your answers in boxes 13–16 on your answer sheet

13 According to the Victor Hugo's novel, the squid would if he had such opportunity

14 The real squid appeared to be and

15 Archie must be the of its kind on Earth

16 We are able to encounter the Kraken's in a movie franchise

ANSWERS:

1 False

2 False

3 True

4 False

5 Not Given

6 True

7 Not Given

8 D

9 D

10 B

11 A

12 A

13 readily attack (humans)

14 balletic, mesmeric

15 longest preserved specimen

16 fearsome appearance

A neuroscientist reveals how to think differently

In the last decade a revolution has occurred in the way that scientists think about the brain We now know that the decisions humans make can be traced to the firing patterns

of neurons in specific parts of the brain These discoveries have led to the field known

as neuroeconomics, which studies the brain's secrets to success in an economic

environment that demands innovation and being able to do things differently from

competitors A brain that can do this is an iconoclastic one Briefly, an iconoclast is a person who does something that others say can't be done

This definition implies that iconoclasts are different from other people, but more

precisely, it is their brains that are different in three distinct ways: perception, fear

response, and social intelligence Each of these three functions utilizes a different circuit

in the brain Naysayers might suggest that the brain is irrelevant, that thinking in an original, even revolutionary, way is more a matter of personality than brain function But the field of neuroeconomics was born out of the realization that the physical workings of the brain place limitations on the way we make decisions By understanding these

constraints, we begin to understand why some people march to a different drumbeat The first thing to realize is that the brain suffers from limited resources It has a fixed energy budget, about the same as a 40 watt light bulb, so it has evolved to work as efficiently as possible This is where most people are impeded from being an iconoclast For example, when confronted with information streaming from the eyes, the brain will interpret this information in the quickest way possible Thus it will draw on both past experience and any other source of information, such as what other people say, to make sense of what it is seeing This happens all the time The brain takes shortcuts that work

so well we are hardly ever aware of them We think our perceptions of the world are real, but they are only biological and electrical rumblings Perception is not simply a product

of what your eyes or ears transmit to your brain More than the physical reality of

photons or sound waves, perception is a product of the brain

Perception is central to iconoclasm Iconoclasts see things differently to other people Their brains do not fall into efficiency pitfalls as much as the average person's brain Iconoclasts, either because they were born that way or through learning, have found ways to work around the perceptual shortcuts that plague most people Perception is not something that is hardwired into the brain It is a learned process, which is both a curse and an opportunity for change The brain faces the fundamental problem of interpreting physical stimuli from the senses Everything the brain sees, hears, or touches has

multiple interpretations The one that is ultimately chosen is simply the brain's best theory In technical terms, these conjectures have their basis in the statistical likelihood

of one interpretation over another and are heavily influenced by past experience and, importantly for potential iconoclasts, what other people say

The best way to see things differently to other people is to bombard the brain with things

it has never encountered before Novelty releases the perceptual process from the chains of past experience and forces the brain to make new judgments Successful

iconoclasts have an extraordinary willingness to be exposed to what is fresh and

different Observation of iconoclasts shows that they embrace novelty while most people avoid things that are different

The problem with novelty, however, is that it tends to trigger the brain's fear system Fear is a major impediment to thinking like an iconoclast and stops the average person

in his tracks There are many types of fear, but the two that inhibit iconoclastic thinking and people generally find difficult to deal with are fear of uncertainty and fear of public ridicule These may seem like trivial phobias But fear of public speaking, which

everyone must do from time to time, afflicts one-third of the population This makes it too common to be considered a mental disorder It is simply a common variant of human nature, one which iconoclasts do not let inhibit their reactions

Finally, to be successful iconoclasts, individuals must sell their ideas to other people This is where social intelligence comes in Social intelligence is the ability to understand and manage people in a business setting In the last decade there has been an

explosion of knowledge about the social brain and how the brain works when groups coordinate decision making Neuroscience has revealed which brain circuits are

responsible for functions like understanding what other people think, empathy, fairness, and social identity These brain regions play key roles in whether people convince others

of their ideas Perception is important in social cognition too The perception of

someone's enthusiasm, or reputation, can make or break a deal Understanding how perception becomes intertwined with social decision making shows why successful iconoclasts are so rare

Iconoclasts create new opportunities in every area from artistic expression to technology

to business They supply creativity and innovation not easily accomplished by

committees Rules aren't important to them Iconoclasts face alienation and failure, but can also be a major asset to any organization It is crucial for success in any field to understand how the iconoclastic mind works

Questions 1-5

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D

1Neuroeconomics is a field of study which seeks to

Acause a change in how scientists understand brain chemistry

Bunderstand how good decisions are made in the brain

Cunderstand how the brain is linked to achievement in competitive fields

Dtrace the specific firing patterns of neurons in different areas of the brain

2According to the writer, iconoclasts are distinctive because

Athey create unusual brain circuits

Btheir brains function differently

Ctheir personalities are distinctive

Dthey make decisions easily

3According to the writer, the brain works efficiently because

Ait uses the eyes quickly

Bit interprets data logically

Cit generates its own energy

Dit relies on previous events

4The writer says that perception is

Aa combination of photons and sound waves

Ba reliable product of what your senses transmit

Ca result of brain processes

Da process we are usually conscious of

5According to the writer, an iconoclastic thinker

Acentralises perceptual thinking in one part of the brain

Bavoids cognitive traps

Chas a brain that is hardwired for learning

Dhas more opportunities than the average person

Questions 6-11

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?

In boxes 6-11 on your answer sheet, write

YESif the statement agrees with the writer's claims

NOif the statement contradicts the writer's claims

NOT GIVENif there is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

6Exposure to different events forces the brain to think differently

7Iconoclasts are unusually receptive to new experiences