There are, however, certain drawbacks to statins. Apart from the fact that they are expensive—about $3 per pill, and you would presumably have to take them for the rest of your life—they can cause liver damage or a breakdown of muscle tissue. Anyone taking statins needs to undergo periodic blood tests to check for signs of liver trouble. Most people on the pills report no complaints; those who do commonly list fatigue as the major side-effect.
Companies manufacturing dietary supplements became interested in statins when it was discovered that Chinese red yeast fermented on rice contains small amount of the same active ingredient found in statins. They then made a dietary supplement containing this ingredient and publicized it as a wonder drug for preventing heart attacks. The FDA banned its sale over the counter, and the two sides are still locked in a lengthy court case.
In the meantime, another intriguing possibility has convinced doctors that making statins more freely available may be a good thing. Research has shown that taking an aspirin a day can reduce a heart patient's risk of suffering a heart attack. Would combining aspirin with a statin have a powerful effect in preventing heart disease? Similarly, many cardiologists are impressed by the ability of a group of drugs called ACE inhibitors to normalize high blood pressure and reduce the strain on the heart. Do they work better alone, or would a combination of ACE inhibitors and statins enhance their efficacy?
Questions 13-19
The flow chart below outlines how statins work, as described in Reading Passage 2. Complete the flow chart. Choose your answers from the box at the bottom of the page and write your answers in boxes 13-19 on your answer sheet.
How Statins Work
Example Answer
An enzyme in the liver turns some of the food you eat into cholesterol
The body uses cholesterol to produce 13 and 14.
Excess cholesterol builds up in the 15, posing a risk of 16 disease.
Statins slow the action of 17.
The body 18 cholesterol from the blood to make up for the 19.
List of Words
FDA hormones "high-risk" cardiovascular LDL diet dying Vitamin D arteries fatigue heart HMG pills draw on doctors physicians shortfall HDL
Questions 20-23
Choose one phrase (A-H) from the list of phrases to complete each key point below. Write the appropriate letters (A-H) in boxes 20-23 on your answer sheet. The information in the completed sentences should be an accurate summary of points made by the writer.
NB there are more phrases A-H than sentences, so you will not use them all. You may use any phrase more than once.
20. Doctors are unsure whether statins can benefit...
21. Big pharmaceuticals companies want the US government to...
22. Chinese red yeast fermented on rice contains...
23. It is important for people using statins to...
List of Phrases
A. a variety of brand names
B. people with low levels of cholesterol
C. breakdown of muscle tissue
D. reduce the amount of cholesterol entering the blood stream
E. a statin ingredient
F. allow statins to be sold over the counter
G. normalize high blood pressure
H. receive regular blood tests to check for signs of liver trouble.
Questions 24-27
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 24-27 write
YES if the statement agrees with the information given
NO if the statement contradicts the information given
NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this
24 Statins have no side effects.
25 A low-fat diet optimizes the function of statins.
26 Statins work better in combination with other drugs.
27 Statins are available in the US without a doctor's prescription.
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-41 which are based on the Reading Passage 3 below.
Volunteer Vacationers
A) A growing number of Americans are using their holiday time not to laze on the beach or to frequent casinos but to restore old railways, snorkel for science and band rare birds. They are a group of individuals known as "volunteer vacationers," and many of them are professional people. "We've seen a huge increase in interest from professionals as well as others who want short-term meaningful vacations," said Christine Victorino of the International Volunteer Programs Association. Her group was formed to organize the non-profit bodies which arrange working vacations.
B) And these organizations want money as well as time: volunteers' contributions typically top US$1,500 for one week, and the air fare is extra. Altruism doesn't come cheap, but these vacations are partially tax-deductible, provided the volunteers put in five eight-hour days.
C) "If someone had told me a few years ago that I'd pay to pick weeds on a tropical island, I would have told them they were crazy," said Leonard Stone, a retired dentist from Chicago. Yet Stone and his wife each paid to go on a week-long Oceanic Society expedition to Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean. They worked on a tiny island helping ornithologists look after albatross nesting areas and counting chicks. Like most sites where volunteers work, the conditions were spartan; the volunteers lived in an army barracks dating from World War II. But Stone, who is an enthusiastic bird watcher, found it a worthwhile experience. He thoroughly enjoyed his daily access to the rare birds, and the lectures and films about wildlife arranged by the Society.
D) Some volunteers are motivated by a desire to lend a helping hand to the developing world. In the 16 years it's been in business, Global Volunteers has sent thousands of people all over the world on projects ranging from constructing a children's home in India to looking after orphans in Romania. Like other such organizations, Global Volunteers has trimmed the longer trips to accommodate professionals' busy schedules, and added less-strenuous options for retirees, who now make up one-third of its clients. Steve Rosenthal of Cross-cultural Solutions places vacationers on 21-day projects. Volunteers help women in India start small businesses or teach English to children in Ghana.
E) Rosenthal said that the number of students, professionals and retirees signing up for his trips has consistently doubled over the past five years. Many people agree that this seems to indicate a rising tide of disillusionment among Americans with their materialistic way of life. Once he explains that most of program fee funds community-based organizations in the host countries, the volunteers are quite happy to pay for a working holiday. "I'd rather be paying my vacation money to a non-profit company which is helping poor people than to a hotel corporation," said Ron Cooke, who is a veteran volunteer vacationer. He and his wife have counted birds in Costa Rica and trapped ocelots in Mexico. Cooke's last trip was an eight-day vacation helping the environmental group Earthwatch in the Caribbean. "We spent part of each day snorkeling and counting shellfish ". They also interviewed fishermen and made a survey of seashells, while camping on a Dominican Republic beach.
F) Not all the vacationers consider the vacations work; some of the programs are designed for hobbyists, or for people who want to learn a new skill. For example, each summer railway enthusiasts join in the ongoing restoration of a historic narrow-gauge railway in the southwest US. A special group of volunteer vacationers work on organic farms. In return, they learn about organic farming and get to eat a lot of healthy food.
Questions 28-32
Reading Passage 3 has six paragraphs (A-F). Choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers (i-ix) in boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet. Paragraph D has been done for you as an example.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs so you will not use all of them. You may use any heading more than once.
List of Headings
i The psychology of volunteer vacationers
ii Paying to work
iii Benefits for volunteers
iv Helping poor countries
v Environmental tourism
vi Vacations to learn
vii The cost of volunteering
viii The attraction of non-profit bodies
ix Holidays with a difference
28 Paragraph A
29 Paragraph B
30 Paragraph C
Example Answer
Paragraph D iv
31 Paragraph E
32 Paragraph F
Questions 33-37
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 33-37 write
YES if the statement agrees with the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
Example Answer
Many professional people are attracted to volunteer vacations. YES
33 All volunteers enjoy their vacations.
34 There is a trend to keep volunteer vacations short.
35 People do not save money by volunteering.
36 The only attraction of volunteering is the chance to help others.
37 Non-profit associations are undermining regular tourism companies.
Questions 38-41
Choose one phrase (A-H) from the list of phrases to complete each key point below. Write the appropriate letters (A-H) in boxes 38-41 on your answer sheet. The information in the completed sentences should be an accurate summary of points made by the writer.
NB There are more phrases A-H than sentences so you will not use them all. You may use any phrase more than once.
38 Spending one's vacation helping others...
39 Volunteers do not expect...
40 Volunteers are looking for...
41 Volunteer vacations are a sign of...
List of Phrases
A. doesn't come cheap
B. to eat a lot of healthy food
C. luxury conditions
D. growing awareness of the importance of the environment
E. to learn new skills
F. growing disillusion with America's material culture
G. to restore old railways
H. short but meaningful vacations
Academic Reading Test 2
INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE
TESTING SYSTEM
ACADEMIC READING
TEST 2
TIME ALLOWED:1 hour
NUMBER OF QUESTIONS: 42
Instructions
WRITE ALL YOUR ANSWERS ON THE ANSWER SHEET
The test is in 3 sections:
Reading Passage 1 Questions 1-14
Reading Passage 2 Questions 15-28
Reading Passage 3 Questions 29-42
Remember to answer all the questions. If you are having trouble with a question, skip it and return to it later.
READING PASSAGE 1
Read the passage below and answer Questions 1-14 that follow.
Wetland Archaeology
Excavating the Sweet Track, a Neolithic wooden road in Somerset, southwest England, archaeologists have to be suspended on planks above the remains, which have rotted so badly that they have the consistency of butter. The Sweet Track was discovered in an area of soggy peat. Wetland archaeology has one big advantage over dry-land archaeology: preservation. A whole range of materials—including most notably wood—is preserved that is not found in dry-land sites.
Over the past 20 years, the English Heritage foundation has conducted a massive Wetland Project, now coming to an end. What has come out of all this work? The work was divided into four areas: the Somerset Levels, Anglian Fenland, the North West, and Humberside.
A The Wetlands Project began in the Somerset levels, near Glastonbury. Here the valley of the River Brue (and others) is only just above sea level, and is still liable to flooding. In later prehistory, peat began to form, burying the sedges and reeds which formed the peat, and preserving the trackways that early man constructed across them. And since the water was anaerobic (did not permit air to pass through) any wooden artifacts were preserved. This was the site of the discovery in the late 19th century of the famous Iron Age "Lake Villages", first Glastonbury, then the two adjacent villages at Meare, which still remain the best preserved Iron Age villages yet discovered in this country. However, the peat that formed in the valleys was being cut away for use as garden fertiliser, so in the 1970s, John Coles, Professor of Prehistory at Cambridge University, began investigating these peat cuttings. He found that buried in the peat were numerous trackways, mostly of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages,where hurdles had been laid down leading across the rising peat from the high land on either side of the valley to the low islands in the middle of the valley.
The earliest of the trackways discovered so far is the Sweet Track. This was built in the winter or early spring of 3807 or 3806 BC—tree-ring dating enables us to give this very precise date. This makes it the earliest of all the timber trackways discovered in northern Europe—indeed it has been claimed to be the oldest road in the world. The track was discovered by the peat diggers and part of it was inevitably destroyed. However, the peat digging has now been stopped, so the rest of the trackway still remains, preserved in the peat. Nevertheless, the peat is drying out, and the trackway will crumble away unless it is kept wet. So a sprinkler system has been installed along its remaining length to keep it wet. If the drainage of our wetlands continues, it will only be by methods such as this that sites can be preserved.
B The biggest area of wetlands in England is known as the Fenland, the region around the Wash in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. Drainage began in the Roman period, and has been going on apace from the 17th century onwards, and today it is almost entirely dry land. English Heritage launched a massive field walking survey, and for six years David Hall and his team walked over 200,000 hectares of land, discovering over 2,000 sites, of which 41 were test-excavated. A big surprise was the number of Iron Age sites; the Romans were not the first to settle in the area. Among the more spectacular sites were the salterns, where salt was extracted from the sea and traded inland. These began in the Iron Age, and by the late Roman period some were on an almost industrial scale.
C The project was then extended to the northwest of England. Here the problems were very different. Instead of huge flat expanses, there were numerous smaller bog or mires. These were of two types. There were the valley mires, many of them essentially extensions of the Lake District, where peat had built up in valleys that might otherwise have held lakes; then there were the larger raised mires where the peat had grown up mainly through the nourishment of rainfall. There are a number of these both in Cumberland and in Cheshire. The most famous is Lindow Moss, in Cheshire, from which two human bodies were extracted in the 1980s (now in the British Museum). The men had been killed violently, perhaps as a part of a ritual sacrifice to the gods. More recently, the head of a cow was found in the course of commercial peat extraction in the Solway Moss in Cumbria. The head was radiocarbon dated to around 800 AD. Only the head was recovered; was this also some form of ritual sacrifice?
