Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet write YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. Australia and the Great War, 1914 — 1918 Australia’s role in the First World War, or the Great War as it was known until 1939, is central to the development of modern Australia’s vision of itself in the world. In many ways it has served to create what is in some ways a second founding of the nation in the Gallipoli campaign and on the battlefields of France and Belgium. The influence of the war experience in the First, and Second World War is evident in the way in which Australia New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) day is, perhaps even more than Australia day, the country’s national day. When the war broke out in 1914, it was a certainty that, because of longstanding economic, family and defence ties, Australia, along with New Zealand, would stand alongside Britain. The then Prime Minister Andrew Fisher was quick to pledge the country’s support to the last man, the last shilling’. This was no idle promise and Australia paid a high price for their loyalty to their colonisers. From a pre-war population of 5m, 417,000 enlisted in the armed forces, of which 324,000 served abroad. By the end of the war, Australia had lost 60,000 dead and 155,000 men had been wounded. The economic price was also high. The national debt, which had stood at ￡6m in 1914, was ￡325m by the end of the war. It is possible that the first shot of the war was fired in Australia, when a shot was fired across the bow of the German merchant ship Pfalz as it tried to escape from Port Arthur only a few hours after the declaration of war. In late 1914 the light cruiser HMAS Sydney sank the German warship Emden off the west coast of the country. Also early in the war, Australian troops captured the German radio transmitters in Rabaul and Nauru and conquered all of German New Guinea. At first the Australian forces were intended only to defend Australia, but in 1915 the Anzac departed for Europe. Their first stop was Egypt and it was because they were so close that they were chosen to take part in the campaign to capture the Gallipoli peninsula, the key to shipping into the Black Sea, from the Turks. The plan was for British, French and Anzac forces to land on the peninsular at night at weak points in the Turkish defence. However, strong winds blew the troops off course to better defended spots and the advantage was lost. What followed was months of bitter fighting in which 20,000 British and 7,000 Anzac soldiers were killed and which ended in a successful withdrawal, but no gain for the Allies. It was at this moment of history that Australia was propelled onto the world stage. From this moment onward Australia began to think of itself as a country in its own right; as being separate to Britain and no longer a colony. Most of the Anzac force was sent to Europe, but the Australian Light Horse remained to fight Turkish forces in Palestine and Syria They defended the Suez Canal and advanced through Palestine and Syria. They also took part in what was one of the world’s last great cavalry charges at Beersheba. The main Anzac force arrived in Europe in 1916. The Anzac experience was similar to that of the other participants in the war; a high death toll and little gain to be shown for it. Australian forces were present at all the major battles of the war and sustained some terrible casualties. For example, in 24 hours near Pozieres the 5th Division suffered 5,000 casualties. At the battle of Bullecort, of the 3,000 men who advanced, 2339 were killed, wounded or captured. By 1917 most of the officers were not professional soldiers. The most prominent example was General Sir John Monash, who was an engineer by training. He commanded the allied forces at the battle of Hamel so well that the general staff published the battle reports as a model. In August 1918, he commanded 200,000 troops on what was called ’Ludendorffs black day’, a turning point in the war. Monash was probably Australia’s greatest military figure. Unlike in other armies in the war, the Australian soldiers were all volunteers. They were also more individualistic and showed less respect for the rulebook than other soldiers. The relationship between ranks was more democratic and officer had to win the respect of their troops. All in all, they paid a high price for fighting in the war. Of the 324,000 soldiers who served overseas in the war 215,000 were killed or wounded. This was the highest proportion of any of the countries in the war and was probably due to the Australians fighting qualities, which meant that they were often used on the frontline of the fighting. At home, the war had a significant effect on the economy. Negative effects included the end of British investment, the closure of many shipping lanes and the stockpiling of Australia’s main export, wool. However, the isolation that resulted from the war meant that Australia had to make some things that had previously been imported. This led to the development of new industries. In addition, the BHP smelting company, which is now a major Australian company, saw a great increase in demand for iron and steel. The needs of the war were stimulus for the beginning of full industrialization in Australia. At the signing of the treaty of Versailles, which marked the end of the war, Australia signed as a separate country. This reflected the fact that, at the cost of 60,000 dead, Australia had finally emerged from the shadow of Britain. The Great War was, perhaps, the beginning of modern Australian history. Questions 15-21 Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 15-21 on your answer sheet.

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. Foot Pedal Irrigation A Until now, governments and development agencies have tried to tackle the problem through large-scale projects: gigantic dams, sprawling irrigation canals and vast new fields of high-yield crops introduced during the Green Revolution, the famous campaign to increase grain harvests in developing nations. Traditional irrigation, however, has degraded the soil in many areas, and the reservoirs behind dams can quickly fill up with silt, reducing their storage capacity and depriving downstream farmers of fertile sediments. Furthermore, although the Green Revolution has greatly expanded worldwide farm production since 1950, poverty stubbornly persists in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Continued improvements in the productivity of large farms may play the main role in boosting food supply, but local efforts to provide cheap, individual irrigation systems to small farms may offer a better way to lift people out of poverty. B The Green Revolution was designed to increase the overall food supply, not to raise the incomes of the rural poor, so it should be no surprise that it did not eradicate poverty or hunger. India, for example, has been self-sufficient in food for 15 years, and its granaries are full, but more than 200 million Indians — one fifth of the country’s population — are malnourished because they cannot afford the food they need and because the country’s safety nets are deficient. In 2000, 189 nations committed to the Millennium Development Goals, which called for cutting world poverty in half by 2015. With business as usual, however, we have little hope of achieving most of the Millennium goals, no matter how much money rich countries contribute to poor ones. C The supply-driven strategies of the Green Revolution, however, may not help subsistence farmers, who must play to their strengths to compete in the global marketplace. The average size of a family farm is less than four acres in India, 1.8 acres in Bangladesh and about half an acre in China. Combines and other modern fanning tools are too expensive to be used on such small areas. An Indian farmer selling surplus wheat grown on his one-acre plot could not possibly compete with the highly efficient and subsidised Canadian wheat farms that typically stretch over thousands of acres. Instead subsistence farmers should exploit the fact that their labour costs are the lowest in the world, giving them a comparative advantage in growing and selling high-value, intensely farmed crops. D Paul Polak saw firsthand the need for a small-scale strategy in 1981 when he met Abdul Rahman, a farmer in the Noakhali district of Bangladesh. From his three quarter-acre plots of rain-fed rice fields, Abdul could grow only 700 kilograms of rice each year — 300 kilograms less than what he needed to feed his family. During the three months before the October rice harvest came in, Abdul and his wife had to watch silently while their three children survived on one meal a day or less. As Polak walked with him through the scattered fields he had inherited from his father, Polak asked what he needed to move out of poverty. ’Control of water for my crops,’ he said, ’at a price I can afford’. E Soon Polak learned about a simple device that could help Abdul achieve his goal: the treadle pump. Developed in the late 1970s by Norwegian engineer Gunnar Barnes, the pump is operated by a person walking in place on a pair of treadles and two handle arms made of bamboo. Properly adjusted and maintained, it can be operated several hours a day without tiring the users. Each treadle pump has two cylinders which are made of engineering plastic. The diameter of a cylinder is 100.5 mm and the height is 280 mm. The pump is capable of working up to a maximum depth of 7 metres. Operation beyond 7 meters is not recommended to preserve the integrity of the rubber components. The pump mechanism has piston and foot valve assemblies. The treadle action creates alternate strokes in the two pistons that lift the water in pulses. F The human-powered pump can irrigate half an acre of vegetables and costs only $25 (including the expense of drilling a tube well down to the groundwater). Abdul heard about the treadle pump from a cousin and was one of the first farmers in Bangladesh to buy one. He borrowed the $25 from an uncle and easily repaid the loan four months later. During the five-month dry season, when Bangladeshis typically farm very little, Abdul used the treadle pump to grow a quarter-acre of chilli peppers, tomatoes, cabbage and eggplants. He also improved the yield of one of his rice plots by irrigating it. His family ate some of the vegetables and sold the rest at the village market, earning a net profit of $100. With his new income, Abdul was able to buy rice for his family to eat, keep his two sons in school until they were 16 and set aside a little money for his daughter’s dowry. When Polak visited him again in 1984, he had doubled the size of his vegetable plot and replaced the thatched roof on his house with corrugated tin. His family was raising a calf and some chickens. He told me that the treadle pump was a gift from God. G Bangladesh is particularly well suited for the treadle pump because a huge reservoir of groundwater lies just a few metres below the farmers’ feet. In the early 1980s IDE initiated a campaign to market the pump, encouraging 75 small private-sector companies to manufacture the devices and several thousand village dealers and tube-well drillers to sell and install them. Over the next 12 years one and a half million farm families purchased treadle pumps, which increased the farmers’ net income by a total of $150 million a year. The cost of IDE’s market-creation activities was only $12 million, leveraged by the investment of $37.5 million from the farmers themselves. In contrast, the expense of building a conventional dam and canal system to irrigate an equivalent area of farmland would be in the range of $2,000 per acre, or $1.5 billion. Questions 1-6 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-6 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

Which of the following is the characteristic of free radicals? They are a partial cause of certain diseases. They escape into the atmosphere when we breathe. They are present in two vitamins. They are produced by our bodies.

Label the diagram below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer. [*]

Look at the following names of people or organisations (Questions 33-36) and the list of opinions below. Match each name with the opinion which the person or organisation expressed, A-F. Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 33-36 on your answer sheet. A Increases in longevity may cause unwelcome changes in society. B People will live longer but become tired of life. C Past experience shows that people do not lose interest in life as a result of living longer. D There is no scientific proof that any drug can prolong human life expectancy. E One medicine we are developing may have a welcome benefit apart from its original purpose. F Using drugs to treat the diseases of old age is only the beginning. List of People or Organisations

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-H, below. Write the correct letters, A-H, in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet. Scientific Progress towards Extending Life Expectancy In one experiment using anti -ageing chemicals, the life of 【R37】______ was extended by half. Besides, 【R38】______ like the ones which control the ageing process in these animals have also been found in other species. Unfortunately, however, experiments on 【R39】______ have been less successful: while they live longer, the 【R40】______ controlling their growth are also affected with the result that they grow less. A chemicals B earthworms C fruit flies D genes E hormones F human beings G mice H organisms

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below. LIFE WITHOUT DEATH Until recently, the thought that there might ever be a cure for ageing seemed preposterous. Growing older and more decrepit appeared to be an inevitable and necessary part of being human. Over the last decade, however, scientists have begun to see ageing differently. Some now believe that the average life expectancy may soon be pushed up to 160 years; others think that it may be extended to 200 or 300 years. A handful even wonder whether we might one day live for a millennium or more. Behind this new excitement is the theory that the primary cause of ageing lies in highly reactive molecules called free radicals, left behind by the oxygen we breathe. Free radicals react with the molecules in our bodies, damaging DNA, proteins and other cell tissues, and are known to be implicated in diseases as diverse as cataracts, cancer and Alzheimer’s. The body does its best to protect itself against free radicals by producing its own chemicals to prevent ageing, such as vitamins E and C, but it is always fighting a losing battle. A year ago Gordon Iithgow of the University of Manchester discovered a way to help combat free radicals. Using one of these anti-ageing chemicals, he managed to increase the lifespan of one species of earthworm by 50 per cent. Despite cautionary words from the scientists, many welcomed this as the first step towards a drug which would extend life. Research involving the mutation of genes has also thrown up fascinating results: after identifying two of the genes that appear to control how long the earthworm lives, similar genes were found in organisms as various as fruit-flies, mice and human beings. When one considers the vast evolutionary distances that separate these species, it suggests that we may have discovered a key to how ageing is regulated throughout the entire animal kingdom. In June last year a small American company called Eukarion sought permission to carry out the first trials of an anti-ageing drug, SCS, on human beings. Although it will initially be used to treat diseases associated with old age, Eukarion said, that ’if the effect of treating diseases of old age is to extend life, everyone’s going to be happy.’ Some scientists, however, are quick to discourage extravagant speculation. ’There is no evidence whatsoever that swallowing any chemical would have an effect on mammals’, says Rich Miller of the University of Michigan. ’And those people who claim it might need to go out and do some experimenting’. Some research, moreover, has produced alarming results. As well as controlling ageing, these genes also partly control the hormones which regulate growth. The upshot of this is that although the lives of mutant mice can be extended by up to 80 per cent, they remain smaller than normal. Quite apart from these sorts of horrors, the ethical implications of extending human lifespan are likely to worry many people. Even if the falling birth-rates reported in the world’s developed nations were to be repeated throughout the world, would this be sufficient to compensate for massively extended life expectancy, and would we be willing to see the demographic balance of our society change out of all recognition? David Gems, the head of the Centre for Research into Ageing at University College, London, is enthusiastic about the opportunities opened up by extended life, but even he observes, ’If people live much longer, the proportion of children would, of course, be very small. It strikes me that it might feel rather claustrophobic: all those middle-aged people and very few children or young people.’ The philosopher John Polkinghorne emphasises that any discussion of the merits of life-extending therapies must take into account the quality of the life that is lived: ’One would not wish to prolong life beyond the point it had ceased to be creative and fulfilling and meaningful,’ he says. ’Presumably, there would have to come a point at which life ceased to be creative and became just repetition. Clearly, there are only so many rounds of golf one would want to play.’ But Polkinghorne, a member of the Human Genetics Commission, also observes that so far our experience of extended life expectancy has not resulted in world-weariness. Throughout the last century, life expectancy rose consistently, thanks to improved diet, better hygiene, continuous medical innovation and the provision of free or subsidised healthcare. In 1952 the Queen sent out 225 telegrams to people on their 100th birthday; in 1996 she sent out 5218. ’Consider also, the lives of our Roman and Anglo-Saxon ancestors’ he says. ’By and large, the doubling of human lifespan we have seen since then has not been a bad thing. Life has not become frustrating and boring. For example, we now live to see our children’s children, and this is good.’ Questions 27-31 Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in the Reading Passage 3? In boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet, write YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 12-14 on your answer sheet.

Overall, the British had a higher proportion of soldiers killed or injured than Australia.

Australian soldiers were never disrespectful to their superiors.

The British forces suffered a greater number of casualties than the Anzac forces during the months of fighting with the Turkish.

Australia made a great contribution to the successful outcome of the First World War.

Australia’s national debt increased greatly as a result of the Great War.