She next examined how English speakers compared with Mandarin-English bilinguals in thinking about time. English speakers tend to talk about time in terms of horizontal dimensions: for example, the meeting was moved “forward” or “back.” In Mandarin, however, next month is “down” the calendar and last month is “up.” The bilinguals figured out if one event preceded another faster after concentrating on a vertical stimulus, and the English-only group benefited from horizontal cues. Moreover, those in the Mandarin group who learned English later in life tended to have a vertical bias, indicating that it wasn't necessarily the Mandarin convention of writing vertically that caused the effect. English speakers trained briefly to talk about time using vertical metaphors showed more Mandarin-like results on the same tests. “That's a really powerful effect of language on thought,” Boroditsky concludes, and one that shows how flexible our minds are.
Maybe language itself gives us some of this flexibility, says Derdre Gentner of Northwestern University, particularly when it comes to grasping relationships. She and a colleague tested three- to four-year-old kids with a hide-and-seek game that used two matching three-tiered shelves. On each tier was an identical plastic pig, and one of the pigs had a toy hidden inside. The child got to see where the winning pig was on one shelf. Then, to find the toy, he or she had to choose the pig in the same relative position on the other shelf-a challenging analogy for a child that age, Gentner notes. The kids often lost track of the winning position and searched randomly. When the test administrator started the game by naming the three locations—top, middle and bottom—the kids chose the correct location far more often, so the spatial terms helped them remember. So, concluded Gentner, language can help people think in more productive ways
Lila Gleitman, of the University of Pennsylvania, has argued strongly against the Whorfian revival. She and coworkers have found that speakers of languages with different ways of expressing orientation in space, as well as how people and objects move, seem to think alike if given the chance or the right cue. Gleitman adds that curious relationships between speaking and thinking exist, she says, because we devise language to express the thoughts we have about our culture, geography and so on. “People develop language that's useful given those circumstances. That's why you always find a tight relationship between language and thought.”
Ultimately, there are so many ways of thinking about things, says Gentner, that language surely won't be found to influence all aspects of cognition. That doesn't bother her at all. “I'm just glad it's become an important topic again because I think it people gave up on it way too early.”
Questions 1-5
Match the following statements or ideas with the appropriate names from the list
(A-H) below. There are more names than questions, so you will not use them all. You may use any name more than once.
Example Answer
Language shapes thought.C
1. All languages share a common structure.
2. Color perception tests were basically flawed.
3. Language may make our minds more flexible.
4. Speakers of different languages tend to think alike.
5. Language and perception are independent functions.
ASusan Goldin-Meadow
BLera Bonditsky
CBenjamin Lee Whorf
DJohn Lucy
ENoam Chomsky
FDedre Gentner
GLila Gleitman
HCognitive psychologists
Questions 6-15
The paragraph below is a summary of the reading passage. Complete the summary by choosing NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the reading passage to fill the spaces numbered 6-15. Write the words in boxes 6-15 on your answer sheet.
Example Answer
Whorf's views on language were out of favorfor a long time, but are now being studied again.
The revival of interest in Benjamin L. Whorf's theories began in the 1950s, with studies of ...6.... But since the 1970s, Noam Chomsky's theory of language as being a ...7...has been generally accepted by linguists.The 1980s saw the...8..., led by John Lucy and others. Lucy found that concepts...9... are less part of the speech of Mayan speakers than of English speakers. Another approach to testing Whorf's theories involved the testing of ...10..., who described in English objects considered masculine or feminine in their native languages. In a similar experiment, it was found that English speakers' concept of time is in...11..., whereas Mandarin speakers tend to have a...12...Dedre Gentner tested very young children, and found that language can help people think in...13.... Lila Gleitman found that the...14...can get speakers of different languages to think alike, but is skeptical about Whorf's theory that language affects all...15...
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 16-30 which are based on Reading
passage 2.
Gene Profiling for Better Treatment
Finding treatments that match individual gene profiles is the next frontier in drug research and the objective of pharmacogenomics, a new science that combines pharmacological research with the latest advances of genomic studies. Pharmacogenomics promises to have a formidable impact on health care. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that adverse reactions to drugs caused at least 100,000 deaths and two million hospitalizations in 1994 in the U.S. alone. Many such tragedies, experts say, could be avoided if doctors knew an individual's genetic makeup.
Saving lives aside, pharmaceutical companies also count on pharmacogenomics to ensure fewer adverse reactions, which often oblige them to withdraw their products from the market. They further hope that pharmacogenomics will bring about speedier clinical trials because researchers will be able to test only those patients whose genetic backgrounds makes them good “responders” to the drug. Once approved, the treatment could then be given only to people with the same characteristics. Genetic variety is the key to understanding why a drug works in some people and not in others or, worse yet, makes them sick. It's no wonder then that virtually every major pharmaceutical company is now investing millions to comb through human DNA in search of the individual variations that might affect drug response.
In February 2001, scientists announced that they had finally mapped out the human genome. That map, however, is far from being a faithful representation of our species and its diversity. Instead, the published sequence of the human genome serves only as a standard reference because it was created using the DNA from only a few anonymous donors. A few years ago, though, a handful of laboratories started to address the next challenge in genomic research: making a systematic catalogue of the most relevant individual variations in the human genome.
On average, the DNA of two individuals will differ by about one nucleotide in every thousand (nucleotides are the “letters” that make up the genome). Because human DNA contains about three billion nucleotides, researchers estimate that our genome contains at least three million “variable spots.” Scientists call these spots single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The study of SNPs is now serious business for dozens of companies, ranging from start-ups to giant pharmaceutical corporations. An SNP consortium, established in 1999, has already published a map of 1.4 million SNPs along the genome. The consortium includes 11 major pharmaceutical companies. Another project, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is mapping SNPs at the speed of about 90 every month.
Making SNP lists, however, is only the beginning. The next step is to find which of these variations account for clinically significant differences. Researchers now analyze thousands of SNPs in minutes “to find which are more frequent in people with a particular disease or that respond differently to a drug,” says Dale R. Pfost, CEO at Orchid BioSciences, a Princeton-based company that specializes in SNP analysis. To analyze DNA samples, Orchid technicians use a huge automatic system that spots all the known SNPs at the vertiginous rate of a million a day.
Such systems currently fill an entire room, but the advent of micro-arrays, or DNA chips, has led to miniaturization. DNA chips are made using photolithography, the same technology used for creating tiny computer processors. But instead of producing an array of semiconductors, DNA chipmakers use the process to fix thousands of different stretches of DNA onto a tiny silicon support. Using these chips and a computerized laser reader, it takes mere minutes to analyze thousands of SNPs in a given sample. Companies such as Affymetrix already produce thumbnail-size DNA chips that contain more than a million different DNA sequences in the space of a few millimeters.
Scientists have already listed hundreds of genetic variations that affect individual responses to drugs. Some of these variants work by changing the rate at which the drugs are eliminated from the body. A liver enzyme called CYP2C6, for example, is responsible for clearing the system of at least 30 different classes of drugs, including beta-blockers, tricyclic antidepressants, morphine derivates and antiarrhythmics, as well as many other chemicals and neurotransmitters. Variations in the gene coding for this enzyme can therefore strongly influence a person's reaction to many commonly used compounds: people with a “fast” form of the enzyme need higher doses of drugs because they tend to rid themselves of the drugs more quickly.
Another enzyme, called TPMT (Thiopurine Methyl transferase) heavily influences the outcome of chemotherapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most frequent cancer in children. The TPMT enzyme breaks down a class of chemotherapic compounds called thiopurines. Before a specific genetic test was available, children with a “lazy” form of the enzyme were at risk of dying: the thiopurines reached toxic levels because the kids eliminated the drug too slowly. Today doctors adjust the dose according to an individual's TPMT speed, which has dramatically improved the survival rate of affected children.
Hundreds of other genes affect drug response in different ways—among them, by producing enzymes such as NTP14 that facilitate the transport of drugs into the cells. Each variant of these genes may have tremendous relevance in pharmacogenomics, and that's exactly what the SNP hunters are hoping to discover.
Adapted from an article in Scientific American by Sergio Pistoi
Questions 16-19
Write A MAXIMUM OF THREE WORDS for each answer in boxes 16-19 on your answer sheet.
Questions 16 & 17
Pharmacogenomics is a combination of which two fields of expertise?
Questions 18 & 19
Name two major benefits of pharmacogenomics to pharmaceuticals companies.
Questions 20-21
Read the following statements, and say how they reflect the information in the reading passage by writing:
Tif it accurately reflects the information given;
Fif it does not reflect the information given;
NGif the information is not clearly given in the passage.
Write your answers in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet.
20 The human genome map covers the whole diversity of the human race.
21 Nucleotides are what determine personality differences.
Questions 22-26
Choose which of the endings (A-J) in the list below best completes the sentence
according to the information in the reading passage.
Write the appropriate letters in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.
List of endings
Athree million “variable spots”
Bas tiny computer processors
Cneed higher doses of drugs
Dadvent of micro-arrays
Eat the rate of a million a day
Frespond differently to a drug
Ghas 11 members
Haffected by genetic variations
I the next challenge
J30 different classes of drugs
22 A systematic catalogue of genome variations is...
23 The ISNP consortium set up in 1999...
24 Orchid technicians are identifying SNPS...
25 DNA chips are made in the same way...
26 Individual responses to drugs are...
Questions 27-30
The passage describes the functions of three types of enzymes. Match the enzymes
(A-C) with the functions (27-30). Write A,B or c on your answer sheet.
ATPMT
BNTP14
CCYP2C6
27 smooths access of drugs into cells
28 clears drugs from the system
29 has a strong effect on chemotherapy
30 disintegrates thiopurines
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 31-40 which are based on Reading
Passage 3.
Protecting the Nation's Water Supply
In the six weeks that have passed since September 11, Americans have stopped taking many things for granted. Among other worries, we no longer assume that our airports are safe from hijackers or our mail from bioterrorists. Federal agencies are moving quickly to put new, stricter security measures in place. But when it comes to protecting water reservoirs, researchers at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratory are already one step ahead. For the past few years they have worked on sophisticated means to identify vulnerabilities in the nation's water infrastructure, as well as technologies to detect in real time contamination of the water supply.
“We started exploring the possibility of working together ［with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the American Water Works Association Research Foundation (AwwaRF)］ to enhance the security of America's water infrastructure-supply, treatment and distribution-well before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,” Sandia scientist Jeffrey Danneels says. His efforts, which have taken on a new urgency since the recent terrorist attacks, have focused on establishing a program to target problem areas on-site at utilities and train the personnel to minimize any risks.
Danneels modeled his program after one Sandia initially created to support the U.S. nuclear security mission and that has since been adapted to assess the threat of terrorist attacks on government buildings, air force bases, nuclear power plants, nuclear processing facilities, prisons and federal dams. The EPA is most interested in analyzing the water distribution systems that serve the country's 340 largest cities. Because many of these systems are more than 60 years old, they have different structures and therefore different security concerns. However, Danneels says all such utilities must follow three basic steps to evaluate their own individual vulnerabilities: They must assess how well their system detects a problem, how well it can delay the spread of the problem and how well it can ultimately respond to the problem.
