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Part 1
Read the text and answer questions 1–13.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1—13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
A In the deserts, as elsewhere, rocks at the earth surface are changed by weathering, which may be defined as the disintegration of rocks where they lie. Weathering processes are other chemical, when alteration of the constituent particles is involved, or mechanical, when there is merely the physical breaking apart and fragmentation of rocks. Which process will dominate depends primarily on the mineralogy and texture of the rock and the local climate, but several individual processes usually work together to the common end of rock disintegration.
B The great daily changes in temperature of deserts have long been supposed to be responsible for the disintegration of rocks, either by the differential heating or the various rock-forming minerals or by differential heating between the outer and inner parts of rock masses. However, both field observations and laboratory experiments have led to a reassessment of the importance of exposure to the sun’s rays in desert weathering. Almost half a century ago Barton remarked that the buried parts of some of the ancient monuments in Egypt were more weathered than were those parts fully exposed to the sun’s rays and attributed this to the effects of water absorption below the ground surface. Laboratory experiments have shown that rocks subjected to many cycles of large temperature oscillations (larger than those experienced in nature) display no evidence of fissuring or fragmentation as a result. However, when marked fluctuations of temperature occur in moist conditions small rock fragments quickly form.
C The expansive action of crystallising salts is often alleged to exert sufficient force to disintegrate rocks. Few would dispute that this mechanism is capable of disrupting fissile or well-cleaved rocks or rocks already weakened by other weathering agencies; wood is splintered, terracotta tiles disintegrated and clays disturbed by the mechanism, but its importance when acting upon fresh and cohesive crystalline rocks remains uncertain.
D Weathering achieves more than the disintegration of rocks, though this is its most important geomorphic effect. It causes specific landforms to develop. Many boulders possess a superficial hard layer of iron oxide and/or silica, substances which have migrated in solution from the inside of the block towards the surface. Not only is the exterior thus case-hardened but the depleted interior disintegrates easily. When weathering penetrates the shell the inside is rapidly attacked and only the hard outer layer remains to give hollowed or ‘tortoiseshell’ rocks.
E Another superficial layer, the precise nature of which is little understood, is the well-known desert varnish or patina, a shiny coat on the surface of rocks and pebbles and characteristic of arid environments. Some varnishes are colourless, others tight brown, yet others so dark a brown as to be virtually black. Its origin is unknown but is significant, for it has been suggested that the varnish grows darker with the passage of time; obviously before such a criterion could be used with confidence as a chronological tool its origin must be known with precision. Its formation is so slow that in Egypt, for example, it has been estimated that a light brown coating requires between 2,000 and 5,000 years to develop, a fully formed blackish veneer between 20,000 and 50,000 years.
F The development of relatively impermeable soil horizons that are subsequently exposed at the surface because of erosion of once overlying, easily eroded materials, and which thus become surface crusts, is widespread in arid regions, although it is also known outside the deserts, and indeed many of the examples in arid lands probably originated in former periods of humid climate. The crusts prevent the waters of occasional torrential downpours from penetrating deeply into the soil, and thus they contribute to the rapid run-off associated with desert storms. Also, after erosion has cut through the crust and exposed underlying soil layers, the hard layer forms a resistant capping (duricrust) on plateaux and mesas, such as are common in many parts of arid and semi-arid Australia.
G Some duricrust layers have been used as time markers for landforms and geological formations. The necessary conditions for this are that the crust forms fairly rapidly, and that it is sufficiently distinct in appearance to preclude the possibility of confusion with other crusts formed at other times. The Barrilacocalcrete of Mexico for instance is believed to date from about 7,000 B.C. The main silcrete of the northern districts of South Australia is believed to date from the Lower Miocene, the laterite of northern Australia to be of the Lower or Middle Miocene age.
Part 2
Read the text and answer questions 14–26.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14—26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
A Video-conferencing (or Video teleconferencing—VTC) as a means of communication between intra- and inter-business has essentially been possible since the dawn of television. But the early systems, first demonstrated in 1968, were in fact so prohibitively expensive and of such poor picture quality that they were not viable applications for general public use.
B However, in the 1980s, digital telephone networks like ISDN began to proliferate, so that by the 1990s the decrease in cost brought the equipment necessary for video-conferencing within the reach of the masses. The 1990 also saw the arrival of IP (internet Protocol) based video-conferencing with more efficient video compression technologies being introduced, thus permitting desktop or personal computer (PC)-based videoconferencing. VTC had come on the scene in a big way as free services, web plugins and software, such as NetMeeting, and MSN Messenger, Skype and others brought cheap, albeit low quality, VTC to the public at large.
C Video-conferencing has been disparaged for the lack of eye-contact that can affect the efficacy of the medium and for the fact that participant can be camera conscious. But these obstacles are not insurmountable. The size of modern televisions along with the vast improvement in picture quality as a result of the arrival of the digital age has enhanced the potential of the latest video-conferencing equipment, going somewhat towards solving the former problem. Early studies by Alphonse Chapanis found that the addition of video hindered rather than improved communication. However, as with video and sound recording of meetings, interviews etc. awareness of the presence of the technology diminishes with time to the point that its presence is not felt. A further drawback common to all technology is the ever present possibilities of technical hitches. But in the end video-conferencing is no different from any electronic device like a PC or a telephone and so in time, any problems will be ironed out.
D Conferencing by video has enhanced the performance of different organizations through its efficiency and effectiveness, saving both time and money for businesses and, in this carbon-conscious age, by the reduction in the environmental cost of business travel from one corner of the world to another. These apart, video-conferencing has an immediacy that is difficult to challenge. It is now essential in any work situation where organizations with employees on different sites or in different parts of the globe can contact each other rapidly. Like a telephone line permanently connected it is easy to dial up a colleague in seconds anywhere in the world.
E And what about the equipment? The equipment for video-conferencing is relatively straightforward to use. It has, in fact, been commonplace in the news media for a number of years as corporations have broadcast live from the back of a truck or van in news hotspots around the world. Two ISDN lines are needed at each location; one for video output and the other for video input; a high quality camera with omnidirectional microphones or microphones which can be hand-held, clipped on or central are required; and for data transfer a LAN is also needed. And, of course, a television screen at each end is essential.
F The potential use of video-conferencing in the educational field has yet to be fully exploited. In this day and age when academic institutions are supposed to be more revenue conscious and much more flexible, video-conferencing could be employed to bring business into the educational field and vice versa. The system can also be used to take expertise anywhere in the world. It is no longer necessary for experts to travel vast distances for conferences or to teach. In certain areas, say remote islands like the Outer Hebrides in Scotland or the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa, where it may be difficult to find teachers in specialist subjects like languages, videoconferencing is a perfect way to bring education within the reach of everyone. Video-conferencing is certainly not a panacea for every problem, not an end in itself, but a useful tool that can complement rather than supplant existing teaching methods.
G Like the electronic or smart whiteboard, whose introduction in the classroom has met with resistance, video-conferencing may take some time to become main stream, if ever. But, perhaps with the mounting concern about our carbon footprint, the environment will ultimately be the biggest spur. A sobering thought is whether classrooms and offices of the future will consist solely of TV screens.
Part 3
Read the text and answer questions 27–40.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27—40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
The last few decades have been turbulent for the global employment market, particularly in post- industrialcountries. Around one third of the OFCD labor force is unemployed, and global unemployment figures reached a historical peak of 185.9 million workers in 2003. Beyond this, a phenomenon known as ‘underemployment’ is becoming the normative practice in many industries.
Once considered a passing aberration, underemployment is now an entrenched and seemingly intractable feature of the economy that involves people scraping by in precarious and temporary forms of work—typically casual, seasonal, or fixed-term work and often on part-time contracts.
Many scholars have offered their own theorizations of the employment crisis and put forward some possible solutions. Certainly, almost all of these understandings differ over the finer analytical details, but more significantly there is almost no consensus around what anchors the disruptive changes to employment patterns. A majority of theorists stick to traditional models of unemployment, and argue that policy-makers in the West should now focus on finding salvation in the ‘knowledge economy’, but others find this to be a mythical possibility. Broadly, it is too soon to say who is the closest to being correct, but history is sure to pick a winner.
One common denominator amongst nearly every scholar is an unwillingness to reflect adequately upon work as an existing social practice, and as such solutions are put forward that are overly derived from possibilities (that may not even be feasible) further down the track. Andre Gorz, for example, emphasizes the need for governments to shift the focus of work away from the abstracted labor that characterizes private employment and towards social labor that involves more public activities such as communal childcare, artistic exploration, community work, charities and so on. This, he suggests, strengthens and integrates human relationships while supporting people in finding outlets for their own creative and personal needs. Similarly, Ulrich Beck suggests that global employment markets are now riddled with risk and a precariousness that demands alleviation. The solution, he suggests, is activating paid civil labor within national voluntary sectors while activating this labor internationally as well. Both of these sound like good ideas, but are they plausible given the present constraints upon governments and people? Neither Gorz nor Beck says.
Another problem with analyses of the crisis tends to be a narrow sect oral focus that fails to problematic existing notions of work and employment. Jeremy Rifkin, for example, argues that the employment crisis is a result of accelerated technological growth that in turn displaces the labor Insensitivity of some work practices. This process is not itself unprecedented, he suggests—in the early 20th century, for example, more efficient technologies in agriculture displaced farm labor in the south of the United States. At that time, however, new opportunities in the industrializing north of the country were able to absorb these surpluses. Rifkin’s thesis posits that this is no longer happening— technological growth is making labor redundant without new opportunities emerging.
Gorz builds on this theorization to advocate policies, not of generating ‘new’ employment, but rather of distributing employment so that everyone can access a job. In doing so, he suggests, we can use the labor-saving gains of technology to free up time for other more socially meaningful pursuits. The problem with Rifkin’s and Gorz’s approaches, however, is that they assume the divisions between employment and non-employment are still pertinent and ultimately determinative of working practices. As Hasmet M. Uluorta indicates, however, the employment crisis may not be so much a crisis of jobs (or the number of jobs), technologies or tensions between paid and unpaid work, but rather a crisis of social reproduction—that is, the ways in which we sustain or perpetuate our social structure.
Whereas most scholars look to a renewed labor market for answers, or suggest that we need to bolster the voluntary sector as a supportive mechanism,Uluorta implores us to return to the drawing board and think about what really constitutes ‘ work’ .It is not, he argues, solely the domain of employment geared towards production and consumption, but is characterized by production in a broader sense for the purposes of social reproduction as well. We should no longer be asking ‘How is it possible to generate employment?’ but rather ‘How is it possible to (re)produce our social existence.’?’ The answers to the crisis, Uluorta argues, are already being constituted as people renegotiate work even in the absence of labor market employment, but legal and institutional mechanisms have yet to respond to these changes.
We are ultimately left with a situation in which almost everyone agrees that there is a global crisis of employment, but there is widespread divergence of opinions over its nature. For some, the solution requires simply encouraging new forms of employment in the knowledge economy. Others believe that we need to balance employment with increased emphasis on voluntary and civil sector projects. Yet others believe that the crisis has in part come about because of a valorization of employment over other forms of work, namely the work of social reproduction.
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