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Extract: “Archaeologists working on a northern Scottish coast long assumed that a Neolithic settlement there was abandoned because of rising sea levels. Recent analysis of soil cores, however, points to a different explanation. Layers of wind-blown sand found above the final floor surfaces indicate that a series of severe storms buried the surrounding farmland and made cultivation impossible within a single generation. The inhabitants, the researchers argue, did not leave gradually as the shoreline crept inland; they departed relatively quickly once their fields could no longer feed them.”According to the recent analysis, why did the inhabitants leave the settlement?

Extract: “When a regional rail company replaced paper tickets with a smartphone app, its managers expected the strongest objections from passengers over sixty-five, who were thought to be uncomfortable with new technology. In practice, the opposite occurred. A survey carried out a year later found that older passengers were the group most satisfied with the change, citing the end of queues at ticket offices and the large, clear text on the screen. Station staff, by contrast, were more likely to report difficulties, particularly in helping travellers whose phones had run out of battery.”What did the survey show about older passengers?

Extract: “Lichens — partnerships between a fungus and an alga — take in water and nutrients directly from the air rather than through roots. Because they have no way of filtering what they absorb, many species die back quickly when the air contains even modest levels of sulphur dioxide. Ecologists therefore use them as living monitors: a tree trunk covered in leafy, branching lichens usually indicates clean air, while bare bark near a busy road suggests the opposite. A few species, however, tolerate the nitrogen pollution produced by traffic and farming, and these have spread in recent decades.”Why are many lichen species easily harmed by sulphur dioxide?

Extract: “Although eighteenth-century naval voyages are often remembered for shipwrecks and sea battles, historians increasingly argue that the greatest threat to sailors' lives came from their food. Scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C, spread through crews on long voyages once fresh fruit and vegetables had run out, and it killed far more seamen than enemy guns did. Wrecks and battles, though widely reported in newspapers of the period, accounted for a much smaller share of deaths than this slow decline in health. Ships' logs, which recorded storms and engagements in detail, often mentioned the illness only in passing.”According to historians, what was the main danger to sailors' lives?

Extract: “Many tree species in European forests now come into leaf earlier in spring than they did fifty years ago. Botanists attribute this shift largely to milder spring temperatures, which allow buds to open sooner. However, not all species have adjusted at the same rate. Beech has changed its timing far less than oak or birch, apparently because its buds respond mainly to day length rather than to warmth, so an unusually mild March does little to bring its leaves out early.”Why has beech changed its leafing date less than other species?

Extract: “Europe obtained almost all of its sugar from tropical cane for centuries. In 1747 the German chemist Andreas Marggraf showed that the sweet crystals in beet were chemically identical to cane sugar, yet his discovery had little practical effect for several decades. Although a small factory was operating in Silesia by 1801, beet sugar became a large industry only after wartime blockades cut continental Europe off from Caribbean cane and Napoleon offered generous support to anyone who could produce sugar at home.”

Statement: Beet sugar was manufactured in large quantities only after supplies of imported cane had been interrupted.Does the statement agree with the information in the extract?

Extract: “Contrary to popular belief, the first commercially successful typewriter did not arrange its keys in the QWERTY layout in order to slow typists down. Early machines did jam when neighbouring type bars were struck in quick succession, and the designers responded by separating letter pairs that commonly occur together in English. The aim, however, was to allow faster typing without jams, not to reduce speed; the layout was later retained largely because typists trained on it were unwilling to relearn. Rival layouts introduced in the twentieth century, though arguably more efficient, never gained a significant share of the market.”

Statement: The QWERTY layout was designed so that typists would work more slowly and therefore avoid jams.Does the statement agree with the information in the extract?

Extract: “Common toads travel to their breeding ponds on mild, damp nights in early spring. Air temperature determines the week in which this migration begins, typically once night-time temperatures stay above about five degrees, while the busiest nights within that period are linked to rainfall. Many toads return to the same pond each year, sometimes crossing busy roads to reach it. Researchers are still uncertain why some ponds attract thousands of toads while others nearby attract very few.”

Statement: Toads produce more eggs in years when spring is warmer than usual.Does the statement agree with the information in the extract?

Extract: “The first crewed flight in a hot-air balloon took place over Paris in November 1783. The balloon had been built by the Montgolfier brothers, who were paper manufacturers rather than trained scientists, and who at first believed that the smoke from burning damp straw, rather than heated air itself, was what lifted their balloons. Only ten days later, the physicist Jacques Charles flew a balloon filled with hydrogen, which was costlier and more dangerous to produce but could keep a balloon in the air for far longer.”

Statement: Despite their background in science, the Montgolfier brothers were mistaken about what made their balloons rise.Does the statement agree with the information in the extract?

Extract: “Although the bicycle is often remembered as a plaything of the wealthy, its most lasting social effect arguably came only once it became practical for everyone. The high-wheeled machines of the 1870s were expensive, difficult to mount and ridden mainly by young men with money to spare. It was not until the ‘safety bicycle’, with two wheels of similar size and a chain drive, spread in the late 1880s that cycling became a mass activity among clerks, factory workers and, notably, women, for whom it offered a new degree of independent travel. Some historians therefore describe the first decade of cycling as a craze rather than a revolution.”

Statement: Ordinary working people took up cycling in large numbers only after the design of the bicycle had changed.Does the statement agree with the information in the extract?

Extract: “A survey of 2,400 commuters in three British cities found that 62 per cent would consider cycling to work if separated cycle lanes were available. Yet only 9 per cent currently cycle at least once a week. The researchers caution against reading the larger figure as a forecast: stated intentions in transport surveys are notoriously poor predictors of behaviour, and the proportion who actually switch after new infrastructure is built is typically a fraction of those who say they would.”What point do the researchers make about the 62 per cent figure?

Extract: “The Dutch practice of building on reclaimed land dates back to at least the thirteenth century, when communities began constructing dykes to protect farmland from the sea. Early reclamation was slow and small in scale, depending on wind-powered pumps to drain water from enclosed areas known as polders. It was the introduction of steam-driven pumping in the nineteenth century that made large-scale projects possible, including the draining of the Haarlemmermeer, a lake of some 180 square kilometres, which was completed in just three years.”What made the largest land-reclamation schemes achievable?

Extract: “Sleep researchers have long known that teenagers' internal body clocks shift later during puberty, so that many adolescents do not feel tired until close to midnight. A study of schools that moved their start time from 8.10 to 9.00 a.m. found that students gained, on average, 38 minutes of sleep per night. Contrary to some predictions, they did not simply go to bed later to compensate. Attendance improved modestly, but the researchers found no measurable change in exam results during the two years of the study.”What did the study find after the later start time was introduced?

Extract: “Iceland generates almost all of its electricity from renewable sources: roughly 70 per cent from hydropower and the remainder largely from geothermal plants. Its total energy use, however, tells a less tidy story. Because road transport and fishing fleets still run mainly on imported oil, fossil fuels supply around 15 per cent of the country's primary energy. Geothermal water, meanwhile, heats about 90 per cent of homes directly — a use that does not appear in electricity statistics at all, and is therefore easily overlooked in international comparisons.”Which statement is correct according to the extract?

Extract: “The Victorian engineer Joseph Bazalgette is remembered for London's sewer system, built after the 'Great Stink' of 1858, when the smell from the polluted Thames became so severe that Parliament considered moving elsewhere. It is often said that the sewers were built to stop cholera. In fact, most officials at the time believed the disease spread through bad air, and the system was designed to remove the smell. Its success in reducing cholera was, in this sense, an unintended benefit of a project planned for a different reason.”According to the writer, what was the original purpose of the sewer system?

Extract: “Volcanic eruptions can cool the global climate, but only under particular conditions. Large explosive eruptions that inject sulphur gases into the stratosphere form tiny droplets that reflect sunlight, and the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo lowered average global temperatures by around half a degree for roughly two years. Most eruptions, however, release their gases into the lower atmosphere, where they are washed out by rain within weeks and have little measurable effect on climate. Smaller eruptions, even frequent ones, therefore rarely leave a trace in temperature records.”

Statement: Volcanic eruptions usually lead to a noticeable fall in global temperatures.Does the statement agree with the information in the extract?

Extract: “Bilingual children were once thought to be at a disadvantage, and parents were sometimes advised to use only one language at home. Research since the 1960s has largely overturned this view. Bilingual children may initially know fewer words in each individual language, but their combined vocabulary is typically similar to that of monolingual peers, and some studies report advantages in tasks requiring attention control, although these findings have proved difficult to replicate consistently. Most specialists now advise parents to use whichever languages they speak most comfortably.”

Statement: Bilingual children always learn to read later than children who speak only one language.Does the statement agree with the information in the extract?

Extract: “Glass is often described as a slow-moving liquid, a claim supposedly supported by medieval church windows that are thicker at the bottom than at the top. Measurements show, however, that at room temperature glass would take far longer than the age of the universe to flow noticeably. The uneven thickness is better explained by medieval production methods, which rarely produced panes of uniform thickness; glaziers apparently tended to install the heavier edge at the bottom, although some windows have been found the other way up.”

Statement: Medieval glaziers generally, but not in every case, placed the thicker part of a pane at the bottom.Does the statement agree with the information in the extract?

Extract: “Antibiotic resistance is frequently blamed on patients who stop taking their medicine early. Current evidence, however, suggests that the bigger driver is the overall volume of antibiotics used, in human medicine and, especially, in livestock farming, where in some countries the drugs are routinely given to healthy animals to promote growth. Several health authorities have accordingly changed their advice and no longer insist, in every case, that patients complete a full course once they feel better. The change remains controversial, and some doctors continue to give the traditional advice.”

Statement: Health authorities now advise all patients to finish their antibiotics even after they recover.Does the statement agree with the information in the extract?

Extract: “The Mediterranean diet, rich in vegetables, olive oil, fish and whole grains, has been associated in numerous studies with lower rates of heart disease. Most of this evidence, however, comes from observational studies, which can show a link but not prove cause; people who follow the diet also tend to be wealthier and more physically active. A small number of controlled trials have produced broadly supportive results, though one major trial had to be corrected after errors were found in how participants were assigned to groups.”

Statement: The diet has been shown to be equally effective for people of all ages.Does the statement agree with the information in the extract?

Extract: “For much of the twentieth century, it was widely accepted that adult brains could not produce new neurons. Studies in the 1990s, however, identified the formation of new cells in the hippocampus, a region associated with memory, in several mammal species. Nevertheless, the extent to which this process occurs in humans remains disputed: some recent studies of human tissue have found abundant new neurons well into old age, while others have found almost none after childhood. Differences in how tissue samples are preserved may explain part of the disagreement.”What is the writer's position on new neuron formation in adult humans?

Extract: “Advocates of standing desks cite studies in which office workers who stood for part of the day burned more energy and reported less back pain. Critics respond that most of these studies were small and short, often lasting only a few weeks, and that the extra energy used by standing is modest — roughly equivalent to a short walk. Furthermore, standing still for long periods carries risks of its own, including pain in the legs and feet. Taken together, then, the evidence suggests that standing desks may offer some benefit, but not that they are the cure for inactivity their marketing implies.”What does the writer conclude about standing desks?

Extract: “Much of Venice stands on wooden piles driven into the mud of its lagoon centuries ago. For a long time, their survival was attributed simply to the quality of the timber, much of it oak and larch brought from mainland forests. Recent research, by contrast, points to the conditions underground: because the piles are buried in waterlogged, oxygen-poor sediment, the fungi that normally rot wood cannot survive there, so decay proceeds extremely slowly. Engineers now warn that falling water levels, which would expose the wood to air, could pose a greater threat to the foundations than age itself.”What does recent research suggest about the piles beneath Venice?

Extract: “The decline of house sparrows in many European cities since the 1990s initially puzzled ecologists, since the birds had thrived alongside humans for centuries. Early explanations focused on predation by domestic cats and competition from other species. Yet neither factor had changed enough to account for the scale of the losses. Attention has therefore shifted to the chicks' diet: young sparrows depend on insects in their first days, and the replacement of gardens with paving and ornamental plants appears to have sharply reduced the insects available.”Why do researchers now focus on the chicks' food supply?

Extract: “Critics of speed cameras argue that they exist mainly to raise money for local authorities. This concern is not without foundation; in some areas, income from fines has risen sharply while few new cameras have been placed on the roads with the worst accident records. Even so, the researcher argues that removing cameras altogether would discard one of the few measures shown to reduce serious collisions at known danger spots, and proposes locating them according to accident data rather than abandoning them.”What is the researcher's view of speed cameras?

Extract: “The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is among the driest places on Earth; some weather stations there have never recorded rain. Its extreme aridity results from a combination of factors. The cold Humboldt Current offshore cools the air and prevents the formation of rain clouds, while the Andes to the east block moist air arriving from the Amazon basin. The region's high altitude and clear skies have, in addition, made it one of the world's leading locations for astronomical observatories.”According to the extract, what is one reason for the Atacama's dryness?

Extract: “Food sealed in airtight containers was not first developed for household kitchens. In the 1790s the French government offered a prize for a reliable way of preserving food for its armies, and the confectioner Nicolas Appert eventually won it with a method of heating food in sealed glass jars. Tin cans, lighter and less fragile than glass, soon followed in Britain, where early factories supplied the navy. These cans were so thick that soldiers often opened them with knives or bayonets; a dedicated can opener did not appear until several decades later.”According to the writer, what first led to the development of sealed food containers?

Extract: “Bangladesh has achieved one of the steepest falls in child mortality of any low-income country since 1990. Rising incomes have played a part, but economists point out that several neighbouring countries grew faster without matching this progress. Researchers instead highlight low-cost public-health measures: widespread use of oral rehydration solution for diarrhoea, community health workers visiting villages, and high rates of childhood vaccination. The country's large garment industry, which employs millions of women, is sometimes cited as a factor, although its effect on child health is harder to measure.”According to researchers, what mainly explains the fall in child deaths?

Extract: “The kākāpō, a large flightless parrot found only in New Zealand, came close to extinction in the twentieth century. It is active mainly at night, can live for several decades and breeds only in years when certain trees produce a heavy crop of fruit, which may happen just once every two to four years. Its decline, however, was caused chiefly by animals introduced by humans — cats, rats and stoats — against which a bird that freezes when threatened had little defence. Today the surviving birds are kept almost entirely in predator-free sanctuaries, most of them on offshore islands.”What was the main cause of the kākāpō's decline?

Extract: “Octopuses are often described as highly intelligent: they can open jars, escape from tanks and recognise individual human keepers. Most of their neurons, however, are located not in the brain but in the arms, which can respond to touch and taste with little central control. Some biologists argue that this makes comparisons with mammal intelligence misleading, since the octopus appears to solve problems through a distributed system rather than a single controlling organ. Others reply that the distinction matters less than the behaviour itself, which in many tasks matches that of some mammals.”Why do some biologists think comparisons with mammal intelligence are misleading?

Extract: “Before the 1840s, each British town kept its own local time, set by the position of the sun, so that noon in Bristol arrived roughly ten minutes after noon in London. For travellers on horseback this hardly mattered, but the spread of the railways made the differences a constant source of confusion, and missed connections were common. In 1840 the Great Western Railway began using London time across its whole network, and other companies gradually followed. By 1855 the great majority of public clocks in Britain displayed what became known as ‘railway time’, although it was not until 1880 that Parliament made a single standard time legal throughout the country.”Statement: “A single national time became law in Britain at around the same time as most public clocks switched to railway time.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Forager honeybees that discover a rich source of nectar return to the hive and perform a ‘waggle dance’ on the vertical surface of the comb. The angle of the dance relative to straight up indicates the direction of the food in relation to the sun, while the length of the waggling run signals its distance. Experiments in which hives were moved to unfamiliar landscapes have shown that recruits still find the food, suggesting that the dance carries genuine spatial information rather than simply exciting other bees. How the dance first evolved, however, remains a matter of debate among researchers.”Statement: “Bees that have watched a waggle dance reach the food more quickly than bees searching without this information.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Until the early nineteenth century, lighthouses relied on mirrors or simple glass lenses, which wasted much of the light produced by their lamps. In 1822 the French physicist Augustin Fresnel demonstrated a lens built from concentric rings of glass prisms. Because it was far thinner than a conventional lens of the same power, it could be made very large without becoming impossibly heavy, and it bent the light from the lamp into a narrow, intense beam. Within a few decades, Fresnel lenses had been installed in lighthouses along most of the coastlines of Europe and North America.”Statement: “Thanks to its slim design, Fresnel’s lens could be built on a large scale while remaining a practical weight.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Red foxes began to colonise British cities in the 1930s, when new low-density suburbs offered large gardens, quiet railway embankments and a reliable supply of food scraps. Today, urban foxes generally occupy smaller territories than their rural relatives, and some tracking studies suggest that a city fox may cover less than a square kilometre in a night. Surveys of residents reveal sharply divided attitudes: many people enjoy seeing foxes in their gardens, while others regard them as pests that dig up lawns and scatter rubbish.”Statement: “Foxes living in cities tend to survive for more years than foxes in the countryside.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Glass can in principle be recycled indefinitely without any loss of quality, yet recycling rates vary enormously between countries. In Switzerland more than 90 per cent of glass containers are collected and reprocessed, whereas in some other European countries the figure is below half. One obstacle is colour: clear glass is the most valuable to manufacturers because it can be turned into containers of any shade, while mixed-colour fragments are usually suitable only for low-value uses such as road surfacing or insulation.”Statement: “Container makers place the highest value on glass fragments of mixed colours.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, cut into a mountainside on a Norwegian island well inside the Arctic Circle, opened in 2008 to store duplicate samples of the world’s crop seeds. The site was chosen partly because the surrounding permafrost was expected to keep the vault cold even if its cooling system failed. In late 2016, however, unusually high temperatures and heavy rain caused meltwater to flow into the entrance tunnel. None of the seeds was damaged, but the incident prompted a major programme of waterproofing work.”Statement: “The waterproofing work was finished within twelve months of the flooding.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Alexander Fleming noticed in 1928 that a mould contaminating one of his bacterial cultures had killed the surrounding bacteria. He named the active substance penicillin and published his findings the following year, but he was unable to purify it in useful quantities and turned his attention to other research. It was a team at the University of Oxford, led by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who in the early 1940s developed methods of producing enough penicillin to treat patients. Fleming, Florey and Chain shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945.”Statement: “Fleming himself developed a way of producing penicillin in amounts sufficient for medical use.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “The Great Exhibition of 1851 was housed in the Crystal Palace, a vast structure of iron and glass erected in London’s Hyde Park. Its designer, Joseph Paxton, had begun his career as a gardener and based the building on the glasshouses he had built for plants. Because it was assembled from thousands of identical prefabricated parts, it was completed in a matter of months. Between May and October the exhibition attracted more than six million visitors, many of whom reached London on cheap railway excursions, and it closed with a substantial financial surplus. The Crystal Palace was later taken down and rebuilt in south London, where it was destroyed by fire in 1936.”Statement: “Money left over from the exhibition was used to establish museums in South Kensington.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Mangrove forests grow along tropical coastlines in water that is too salty for most trees. Some species cope by filtering salt out at their roots, while others absorb it and then excrete it through special glands on their leaves, where it can sometimes be seen as white crystals. Their dense, tangled roots slow incoming waves, and coastal villages behind healthy mangrove belts have been shown to suffer less damage during storms than villages on exposed shores. Despite this, large areas of mangrove have been cleared for shrimp farms and coastal development.”Statement: “Certain kinds of mangrove remove salt from their bodies through their foliage.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “When the Metropolitan Railway opened in London in 1863, it became the world’s first underground passenger railway. Its trains were pulled by steam locomotives, and although the tunnels were ventilated through openings to the street above, passengers frequently complained about the smoke-filled air. Electric trains, which solved the problem, were not introduced on the deep-level lines until the 1890s, and electric trains did not replace steam on the Metropolitan’s central London section until 1905. Even so, the line was popular from its first day, carrying tens of thousands of passengers in its opening week.”Statement: “The Metropolitan Railway ran electric trains from the start in order to keep its tunnels free of smoke.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Hummingbirds are found only in the Americas; reports of wild hummingbirds in Europe, Africa or Asia invariably turn out to be insects such as the hummingbird hawk-moth. They range from Alaska to the southern tip of South America, but the greatest diversity occurs in the Andes, where more than a hundred species may share a single mountain range. Their rapid wingbeats, which allow them to hover in front of flowers while feeding, demand an extraordinarily high metabolic rate, and many species must feed every few minutes during the day.”Statement: “Every wild hummingbird species is native to the Americas.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Many Australian eucalyptus trees are remarkably well adapted to fire. Dormant buds protected beneath their thick bark can sprout new shoots once the flames have passed, and some species also store reserves in a swollen woody base below the ground. A eucalyptus that has been badly burnt is therefore not necessarily dead, and many produce fresh green growth within weeks. Not every species responds in this way, however: mountain ash is usually killed by intense fire and must regenerate from seed. After the bushfires of 2019–20, which burned millions of hectares in south-eastern Australia, large stands of mountain ash had died, while many other eucalypts were soon covered in new leaves.”Statement: “Once a eucalyptus tree has been burnt, it will inevitably die.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “In many medieval European towns, craftsmen belonged to guilds that controlled who could practise a trade. A young person usually began as an apprentice, living in the master’s household for several years, before becoming a journeyman paid by the day. Records from guilds in several German cities show that a journeyman there had to produce a ‘masterpiece’ — a piece of work judged by senior members — before he was allowed to open a workshop of his own. In return for these restrictions, guild members were protected from outside competition and could expect help if they fell ill.”Statement: “All European guilds required a masterpiece before a journeyman could set up his own workshop.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Camels are famous for surviving long periods without drinking, but the popular belief that they store water in their humps is mistaken: the hump consists mainly of fat, which can be broken down for energy when food is scarce. Their real defences against dehydration lie elsewhere. A camel can tolerate the loss of around a quarter of its body water, far more than most mammals, and it allows its body temperature to rise by several degrees during the day rather than using water to keep cool. When water is available, it can drink more than 100 litres in a matter of minutes.”Statement: “A camel’s hump serves solely as a store of water.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “When the architectural competition for the new national library was announced in 1994, the organisers insisted on complete anonymity, and every one of the 230 designs received was submitted without the architect’s name, so that the judges could not be influenced by reputation. Of these entries, only six were shortlisted, and the winning design, by a little-known practice from Porto, was revealed to the public only after the judges’ decision had been made final. The building took a further nine years to complete, partly because of disputes over the choice of site, and it finally opened to readers in 2005.”Statement: “None of the designs entered for the competition identified the architect who had produced it.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “The Øresund Bridge, which links Copenhagen in Denmark with Malmö in Sweden, opened to traffic in July 2000. Its design is unusual: travellers from Sweden cross a bridge for almost eight kilometres before descending to an artificial island and then entering a tunnel for the final four kilometres to the Danish coast. The tunnel section was chosen so that the crossing would neither interfere with aircraft using Copenhagen Airport nor block the shipping lanes. Today the crossing carries both road and rail traffic, and it has helped to turn the two cities into a single labour market.”Statement: “The Øresund crossing, which opened in 2000, was completed for less money than originally budgeted.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “The Rosetta Stone, discovered by French soldiers in Egypt in 1799, carries the same decree written in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs, a later Egyptian script known as Demotic, and ancient Greek. Because scholars could already read Greek, the stone offered a key to the hieroglyphs, but progress was slow. It was not until 1822 that Jean-François Champollion announced that he had worked out how the hieroglyphic system functioned, combining signs that stood for sounds with signs that represented whole ideas.”Statement: “Found in 1799, the stone presents one official text in three different forms of writing.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Emperor penguins breed during the Antarctic winter on sea ice, sometimes more than 100 kilometres from open water. After laying a single egg, the female passes it to her partner and walks back to the sea to feed. For around two months the male balances the egg on his feet beneath a fold of skin, eating nothing and huddling with other males to survive temperatures that can fall below minus 40 degrees Celsius. The female returns at about the time the chick hatches.”Statement: “Male emperor penguins keep the egg warm for roughly two months, making short trips to the sea to feed.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Built as the entrance arch for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, the Eiffel Tower was intended to stand for only twenty years. Shortly after construction began, many leading artists signed a letter of protest against it, describing it as useless and monstrous. The tower survived mainly because it proved valuable as a platform for radio aerials, and by the time its original permit expired in 1909 it had become an important part of France’s military communications. Its permit was then extended, and the structure has stood ever since.”Statement: “Although it was meant to be temporary, the tower was kept chiefly because of its usefulness for radio.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “In May 1953 the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. They were members of a large British expedition led by John Hunt, which had established a chain of camps up the mountain over several weeks. Three days before their success, two other members of the team had come within about 100 metres of the top but were forced to turn back. News of the success reached London on the morning of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.”Statement: “Hillary and Tenzing reached the summit in 1953 using oxygen equipment provided by Hunt’s expedition.” — TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN?

Extract: “Bamboo is often promoted as an environmentally friendly building material because some species can grow by close to a metre a day and reach full height within a few months. Its strength is also remarkable: weight for weight, certain types compare favourably with steel in tension. Engineers, however, point to a serious weakness. Unless it is treated, bamboo is quickly attacked by insects and fungi, and in humid climates untreated poles may need replacing within a few years. Chemical treatments can extend its life considerably, but they add to the cost.”Complete the sentence with the correct ending: “Engineers warn that bamboo used without treatment …”

Extract: “In clinical trials, patients who receive a dummy pill often report real improvements in their symptoms — the so-called placebo effect. Researchers once assumed that this response depended entirely on patients being deceived. Recent studies have challenged that view: in several trials, patients with long-term back pain who were told openly that their pills contained no active ingredient still reported less pain than patients who received no pills at all. Why this happens is still unclear, although some researchers believe the ritual of taking a pill may itself influence how pain is experienced.”Complete the sentence with the correct ending: “Recent research suggests that the placebo effect …”

Extract: “When farmers digging a well near Xi’an in 1974 uncovered fragments of clay figures, they had found part of the tomb complex of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Excavations have since revealed thousands of life-sized soldiers, each with individually modelled features. The figures were originally painted in bright colours, but much of the pigment flaked away within minutes of being exposed to dry air — one reason archaeologists have chosen to leave large parts of the site unexcavated until better conservation methods exist.”Complete the sentence with the correct ending: “Archaeologists have left parts of the site undisturbed because …”

Extract: “In the 1790s the English doctor Edward Jenner tested a popular belief that milkmaids who had caught cowpox, a mild disease, did not later catch smallpox. He infected a boy with material from a cowpox sore and, weeks later, exposed him to smallpox; the boy did not become ill. Jenner was not the first to observe the connection, but his careful record-keeping and his willingness to publish his results helped persuade other doctors to adopt the technique. The word “vaccine” itself comes from vacca, the Latin for cow.”Complete the sentence with the correct ending: “One reason Jenner’s work influenced other doctors was that he …”

Extract: “Satellite images have transformed the monitoring of tropical forests, allowing researchers to measure the loss of tree cover across entire countries almost as it happens. Yet the images have limits. Clouds frequently hide the ground in the wettest regions, and while a satellite can show that the canopy is intact, it cannot easily reveal whether the forest beneath has been degraded by selective logging or hunting. For this reason, many projects still combine satellite data with surveys carried out on foot.”Complete the sentence with the correct ending: “Ground surveys are still needed because satellite images …”

To test whether background music genuinely changes how diners behave, a team of researchers recorded more than a thousand customer visits to a single restaurant over several weeks. On evenings when slow music was played, groups stayed, on average, around ten minutes longer than on evenings with fast music, and they spent noticeably more at the bar. Surprisingly, the amount spent on food itself barely changed, suggesting that the music affected how long people lingered rather than how hungry they felt.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Not all psychologists are persuaded that brain-training games make people generally smarter. Many of the studies most often quoted were run or paid for by the companies selling the games, and participants who knew they were being trained may simply have tried harder on the final tests. Critics also point out that players usually improve on the particular puzzles they practise, but that when volunteers have been randomly assigned to train or not, gains on unrelated tasks such as memory at work or reasoning have usually been small, leaving open the question of which groups, if any, truly benefit.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

One way to reduce the amount of food thrown away by households would be to change how products are dated. At present, many items carry both a ‘best before’ and a ‘use by’ date, and shoppers frequently discard food that is perfectly safe because they confuse the two. Retailers in several countries have begun removing ‘best before’ dates from fresh fruit and vegetables altogether, leaving customers to judge quality by sight and smell, while clearer wording on packaged goods is being trialled.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Whether driverless lorries will ever dominate long-distance freight remains uncertain. The technology may well mature within a decade, but insurers, regulators and drivers’ unions all have the power to slow its arrival, and public confidence could collapse after a single serious accident. What seems more likely, in the medium term, is a mixed model in which automated vehicles handle long motorway stretches while human drivers take over for complex deliveries in towns. Such an arrangement would cut costs on the busiest routes while leaving the most demanding work to people.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

The idea of paying landowners to protect nature is no longer purely theoretical. Costa Rica has compensated owners for conserving forest since the late 1990s, and the country’s forest cover has recovered substantially in that period. In the United Kingdom, farmers can receive payments for planting hedgerows and leaving field margins uncultivated, while in parts of China, rural households have been paid to convert steep cropland back into woodland in order to reduce soil erosion. Similar programmes now operate in countries such as Mexico, Kenya and Vietnam, although they differ considerably in scale and in how payments are calculated.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Across much of Europe, the number of people travelling by night train fell sharply after budget airlines expanded in the 1990s, and many routes were withdrawn. Over the last few years, however, operators have reintroduced sleeper services between major cities, encouraged by passengers who wish to avoid flying for environmental reasons. Austria’s national railway, for instance, has invested in new sleeper carriages, and has launched overnight connections from Vienna to cities such as Amsterdam and Paris. Several other operators have announced plans to follow, although a shortage of suitable carriages has delayed some launches.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Peatlands cover only about three per cent of the world's land surface, yet they store more carbon than all the world's forests combined. Their waterlogged soils slow the decay of dead plants, which build up, layer by layer, over thousands of years. Peatlands also regulate the flow of water, reducing the risk of flooding downstream, and they provide habitats for specialised plants and birds. In addition, in some regions peat is still cut and dried for use as a household fuel.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Handwriting is disappearing from many classrooms as pupils spend more time typing, and some educational psychologists believe the trend carries hidden costs. In one experiment, students who took lecture notes by hand understood the key concepts better than those who typed, apparently because writing slowly forced them to summarise rather than copy word for word. Other studies have linked regular handwriting practice in young children to faster progress in learning to read. Researchers caution, however, that much of this evidence comes from small studies, and that any benefit may depend on how pupils are taught.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

The growth of online grocery shopping has forced retailers to rethink their premises. Instead of large stores that customers walk around, many companies now operate so-called ‘dark stores’ – outlets closed to the public – where staff or machines pick orders for delivery. In one highly automated warehouse, thousands of robots move across a grid and can assemble a typical fifty-item order within a few minutes. Such sites are expensive to build but can process far more orders per worker than a conventional shop.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

On the mountain, the most badly eroded stretches of the main path have been rebuilt with stone steps, and low fences now keep walkers off slopes where plants are slowly recovering. A park-and-ride bus brings visitors from the nearest town, reducing the number of cars at the foot of the mountain, and teams of volunteers repair the drainage channels along the route every spring. Rangers nonetheless warn that the sheer number of visitors on summer weekends, rather than the state of the path itself, remains the real test of the mountain's recovery.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

1. a requirement designed to keep track of how many colonies there are

2. a concern that one type of insect may be depriving others of food

3. a motive for keeping bees that has little to do with producing food

4. a recommendation about plants that flower over a long period

5. a comparison between produce from urban and rural areas

For much of the twentieth century, doctors assumed that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and spicy food, and patients were advised to rest and change their diets. In the early 1980s, however, two Australian researchers, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, proposed that a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, was responsible. Their claim was initially dismissed by many specialists, but within little more than a decade antibiotics had become a standard treatment, and in 2005 the pair were awarded the Nobel Prize.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Consider a single delivery driver in a busy city centre who spends nearly an hour each day searching for somewhere to stop. Multiplied across thousands of vans, such delays add significantly to congestion and emissions. This is why a number of cities are now experimenting with micro-hubs: small depots in central districts where parcels are transferred from lorries to electric cargo bikes for the last part of their journey. Early results suggest that, in the most crowded streets, a single cargo bike can replace several van journeys a day.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

It is often said that the Industrial Revolution began with the steam engine. Yet economic historians increasingly point to changes that came earlier and were far less dramatic: improved farming methods that released workers from the land, the spread of banks willing to lend to small manufacturers, and a growing network of canals that cut the cost of moving coal. Steam power, in this view, accelerated a transformation that was already well under way. Some historians go further, suggesting that the engine’s importance has been exaggerated simply because it was such a visible symbol of the age.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

A visitor to Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre in central Australia usually finds nothing but a vast, dry crust of salt. After exceptional rains far to the north, however, floodwater travels for weeks down normally empty river channels and spreads across parts of the lake bed, and huge numbers of waterbirds, pelicans among them, arrive to breed. Ecologists study these rare events closely to understand how the birds detect water hundreds of kilometres away. The lake seldom holds water for more than a year or two before evaporation leaves the salt exposed once again.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Goldfish are widely believed to have a memory span of only a few seconds. In reality, laboratory studies show that they can retain information for months. Fish trained to push a lever for food at a particular time of day have continued to do so weeks later, and others have learned to respond to specific sounds or colours. Researchers suggest that the myth may persist simply because goldfish are often kept in small, unchanging bowls, where they have little to remember or display.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

1. Putting work off can be a way of avoiding negative emotions.

2. Dividing an assignment into stages with their own dates reduces delay.

3. Delay does not always lead to poorer outcomes.

4. People give too little weight to benefits that lie far in the future.

5. Another researcher’s explanation is partly correct but incomplete.

Although shared electric scooters were introduced as a cleaner alternative to short car journeys, surveys in several European cities suggest that most scooter trips actually replace walking or public transport rather than driving. Once the energy used to manufacture the scooters, and to collect and recharge them each night using vans, is taken into account, their environmental benefit shrinks considerably and in some cases disappears altogether. Early models also lasted only a few months on the street before being scrapped, which made the problem considerably worse.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

The word ‘algorithm’ now appears in almost every discussion of social media, yet the idea behind it is centuries old. The term derives from the name of al-Khwarizmi, a ninth-century Persian mathematician working in Baghdad, whose writings on arithmetic later introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals to European scholars through Latin translations. For most of its history, an algorithm simply meant a fixed sequence of steps for carrying out a calculation. Only with the arrival of electronic computers in the twentieth century did the word come to describe the instructions followed by machines.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Bottled water is often marketed as purer and healthier than tap water, but its convenience conceals costs that are paid elsewhere. Manufacturing the plastic bottles consumes oil, and transporting heavy cases by lorry adds further emissions. In many countries, moreover, independent tests have found that tap water meets safety standards at least as strict, and some well-known brands are simply filtered municipal supplies. Only a minority of the bottles are recycled; many of the rest end up in landfill or the sea.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Many people assume that a larger brain means greater intelligence, but comparisons across species do not support this belief. Sperm whales have the largest brains of any animal, yet crows, whose brains weigh only a few grams, can make tools and solve puzzles that require several steps. Researchers now believe that the density of nerve cells and the way they are connected matter far more than the overall size of the organ. Elephants, too, have brains several times heavier than a human’s, yet people remain far ahead on most tests of reasoning.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Public libraries were once expected to disappear as reading moved online. Loans of printed books did fall in many countries during the 2000s, and in some places they have continued to decline. Rather than closing their branches, however, many local authorities have reduced shelf space and redesigned what remains, replacing rows of bookcases with study areas, computer suites and rooms for community groups. In some towns, libraries now also host job-advice sessions or health clinics, and librarians increasingly describe the building less as a store of books than as a public meeting place.Choose the most suitable heading for this paragraph.

Extract: “Before mechanical refrigeration, many large country houses in Britain kept ice in an ice house: a brick-lined chamber, partly sunk into the ground and insulated with straw, which was filled each winter with ice cut from nearby lakes and ponds. A well-built ice house could keep its contents frozen well into the following summer. From the 1870s, mechanical ice-making plants began to take over the trade, and today electric refrigerators keep food cold in almost every kitchen, although many old ice houses survive as garden features.”Complete the sentence. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS.
From the late nineteenth century, ice houses gradually lost their role to .

Extract: “Traditional sourdough bread is raised not by commercial yeast but by a ‘starter’, a mixture of flour and water that has been left to ferment by wild yeasts and bacteria naturally present in the flour and the air. Bakers keep a starter alive by regularly discarding part of it and adding fresh flour and water, a process known as feeding. Some bakeries claim their starters are more than a century old, although the microbial population of a starter changes considerably over time.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
To maintain a starter, bakers throw some of it away and add new ingredients in a routine called .

Extract: “Ice cores drilled from the Antarctic ice sheet provide one of the most detailed records of past climate. As snow is compressed into ice, it traps tiny bubbles of air, so that each layer preserves a sample of the atmosphere at the time it formed. By measuring the carbon dioxide in these bubbles, scientists have reconstructed atmospheric conditions stretching back around 800,000 years, while the ratio of different forms of oxygen in the ice itself reveals past temperatures. The deepest cores are more than three kilometres long.”Complete the sentence. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.
Gas trapped in the ice allows researchers to measure the amount of in the ancient atmosphere.

Extract: “The first public bicycle scheme was launched in Amsterdam in 1965, when activists painted fifty bicycles white and left them unlocked for anyone to use. Within weeks most had disappeared — some stolen or thrown into canals, others removed by the police because unlocked bicycles broke city rules. Modern schemes avoid such losses with docking stations that release a bicycle only when a user has paid by card or smartphone, and many now track each bicycle by GPS. Some cities have gone further, introducing ‘dockless’ bicycles that can be left anywhere and unlocked through an app.”Complete the sentence. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.
Today’s schemes cut down on losses by means of , which free a bicycle only after payment.

Extract: “Hunted to extinction in Britain several centuries ago, the Eurasian beaver has been returned to a number of rivers since 2009. By building dams of branches and mud, beavers create chains of ponds that slow the flow of water after heavy rain, so that towns downstream are less likely to flood. Ecologists compare the ponds to sponges, because they hold water in wet weather and release it slowly during dry spells, and the dams also trap mud that would otherwise cloud the river.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Scientists liken the beavers' pools to , as they soak up water and let it out gradually.

Extract: “Volcanic eruptions are destructive, yet the land around many volcanoes is among the most productive farmland in the world. Ash from eruptions breaks down over time into soils rich in potassium and phosphorus, nutrients that plants need in large quantities. On the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily, farmers have grown vines and citrus fruit for centuries, accepting the risk of future eruptions in exchange for the fertility of the ground. Similar patterns can be seen in Indonesia, where some of the most densely populated farming areas lie close to active volcanoes.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Farmers on Mount Etna put up with the danger of eruptions because of the soil’s .

Extract: “The stethoscope was invented in 1816 by the French doctor René Laennec, who felt uncomfortable pressing his ear directly against a young patient's chest. He rolled a sheet of paper into a tube and found that he could hear her heartbeat more clearly than before. Later models with two earpieces, which became common in the second half of the nineteenth century, were quickly adopted by busy hospital physicians, who listened to dozens of chests every day. Some older doctors in private practice, however, continued to rely on their unaided ears for years.”Complete the sentence. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.
Two-earpiece versions soon became standard equipment for , who examined large numbers of people daily.

Extract: “Many deep-sea animals produce their own light, a phenomenon called bioluminescence. The light is generated by a chemical reaction in which an enzyme causes a compound to react with oxygen. Some fish use glowing lures to attract prey towards their mouths, while certain shrimps release clouds of luminous fluid to confuse predators as they escape. Because sunlight cannot penetrate below about 1,000 metres, bioluminescence is the main source of light in most of the ocean. Scientists estimate that the majority of animals living in the open ocean at these depths can produce light.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Some shrimps their attackers by giving off a glowing liquid.

Extract: “Before printed field guides, people who needed to identify plants relied on herbals — books that combined pictures with notes on each plant's medical uses. Many early herbals copied their woodcuts from older books, so mistakes passed from one edition to the next. In 1542 the German botanist Leonhart Fuchs broke with this habit by employing artists to draw every plant from a living specimen, and his book was admired for the clarity with which it showed leaves, flowers and roots. Because it was large and expensive, however, few country doctors could afford a copy.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Readers praised Fuchs's book for the with which it presented the parts of each plant.

Extract: “Researchers studying birds in cities have found that several species now sing at a higher pitch than members of the same species in the countryside. Low-frequency traffic noise tends to mask deeper notes, so birds that sing higher are more likely to be heard by potential mates. Some urban robins have also begun singing at night, when roads are quieter, although this may come at a cost, since time spent singing is time not spent resting. Similar changes have now been recorded in cities on several continents.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
In cities, the sound of traffic can the lower notes in bird song.

Extract: “The Channel Tunnel between England and France opened in 1994 after six years of construction. It consists of three parallel tunnels: two rail tunnels, each about 7.6 metres in diameter, and a smaller service tunnel between them, 4.8 metres across, which provides access for maintenance teams and an escape route in emergencies. At about 50 kilometres in length, it has the longest undersea section of any tunnel in the world, roughly 38 kilometres. Passengers and vehicles can travel between the two countries in around 35 minutes.”Complete the sentence. Write A NUMBER.
The tunnel used by repair and maintenance staff is metres wide.

Extract: “Sweden’s first national population count took place in 1749, making it one of the earliest in Europe. Parish priests had been required to keep registers of births, deaths and marriages since 1686, and these records allowed officials to calculate a population of almost 1.8 million. The figures alarmed the government, which had expected a larger population, and led to policies aimed at reducing emigration and improving public health. Sweden has continued to publish population statistics ever since, giving it one of the longest unbroken records in the world.”Complete the sentence. Write A NUMBER.
Clergy had been obliged to record births, deaths and marriages from onwards.

Extract: “The idea of a periodic table was developed by several chemists in the 1860s, but the version published by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869 became the most influential. What set him apart from the German chemist Lothar Meyer, who produced a similar table at about the same time, was that Mendeleev left gaps for elements that had not yet been discovered and predicted their properties in detail. When gallium was isolated in 1875, its properties closely matched one of his predictions, which greatly strengthened his reputation. Further discoveries over the following decade filled other gaps he had left.”Answer the question. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Which element, first obtained in the 1870s, supported one of Mendeleev’s forecasts?

Extract: “In 2019 the island introduced a landing fee for day visitors arriving by ferry in summer. Before the scheme, an average of 62,000 day visitors came ashore each week; within a year this had fallen to 47,000, slightly short of the target of 45,000 set by the island council. Queues at the harbour became around 12 per cent shorter, and the revenue was used to repair eroded coastal footpaths. Local café owners, who had feared a loss of trade, reported little change in their takings.”Complete the sentence. Write A NUMBER.
Twelve months after the fee began, the weekly number of day-trippers stepping off the ferries was about .

Extract: “In 1911 two rival expeditions set out to be the first to reach the South Pole. The Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen relied on dog sledges and arrived on 14 December. The British party under Robert Falcon Scott depended largely on ponies, which struggled in the deep snow, and on motor sledges, whose engines failed in the extreme cold; in the end its members pulled their sledges themselves. They reached the Pole on 17 January 1912, only to discover that Amundsen had beaten them by just over a month.”Complete the sentence. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.
The engines of the British team’s could not cope with the low temperatures.

Extract: “Although early aircraft were built largely of wood and fabric, by the 1930s most manufacturers had switched to aluminium. The metal’s lightness made it ideal for aviation, but pure aluminium is relatively soft, so it was combined with small amounts of copper and other elements to form alloys with much greater strength. More recently, composite materials made from carbon fibre have begun to replace aluminium in some parts of large passenger aircraft, reducing weight still further. Lower weight means lower fuel consumption, which is why manufacturers continue to search for lighter materials.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Aircraft makers were attracted to aluminium mainly because of its .

Extract: “The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed more than 13,000 houses. Afterwards, new building regulations required houses to be built of brick or stone rather than timber, and streets to be widened to slow the spread of any future fire. The architect Christopher Wren produced an ambitious plan to redesign the city with broad avenues, but it was never adopted, largely because property owners insisted on rebuilding on their original plots. Wren did, however, design St Paul’s Cathedral and more than fifty new churches.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Wider streets were intended to limit the of fires in the future.

Extract: “When Henry Ford launched the Model T in 1908, most cars were hand-built luxuries. Ford’s aim was a vehicle that ordinary families could afford, and the moving assembly line he introduced in 1913 cut the time needed to assemble a chassis from more than twelve hours to about an hour and a half. As output rose, the price fell steadily, and by 1927 more than fifteen million had been sold. Its simple design meant that owners could carry out most repairs themselves, while its reliability on the rough, unpaved roads of the countryside made it especially popular with farmers.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Rural buyers favoured the Model T because of its on poorly surfaced roads.

Extract: “Robotic surgery is often imagined as machines operating on their own, but in almost all current systems every movement is controlled by a human surgeon sitting at a nearby console. The surgeon’s hand movements are reduced in size through a technique called motion scaling and filtered to remove any tremor, so the robot’s slender instruments can work through cuts only a centimetre or two wide. This allows surgeons to operate in very confined spaces with remarkable precision, and many patients recover faster than after open surgery. However, the equipment is expensive, and studies have not shown a clear advantage for every type of operation.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Surgeons using robotic systems can work in very tight spaces with great .

Extract: “When the first practical sewing machines appeared in the 1850s, they cost far more than most households could afford, and buyers were mainly clothing workshops. The Singer company changed this by offering machines on an instalment plan: a family could pay a small sum at the start and the rest in regular payments while already using the machine. At the same time, cheaper and lighter models designed for the home were introduced. The number of machines Singer sold each year rose steeply, and home sewing quickly grew in popularity among ordinary working families.”Complete the sentence. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Paying in instalments was followed by a fast rise in the of home sewing among working people.

Extract: “To make tofu, dried soya beans are first soaked in water overnight until they have roughly doubled in size. They are then ground with fresh water into a thick slurry, which is boiled for several minutes. Next, the hot slurry is strained through a cloth: the liquid that passes through is soy milk, while the solid pulp left behind, known as okara, is often used as animal feed. Finally, a coagulant such as gypsum is stirred into the milk, and the curds that form are pressed in moulds into blocks.”Complete the flow-chart. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Beans soaked overnight → ground with water and boiled → strained, separating the liquid from a solid residue called → a setting agent added → curds shaped into blocks

Extract: “After harvesting, cocoa beans are removed from their pods and left in heaps under banana leaves for several days to ferment, which develops the flavour compounds that will later become chocolate. The beans are then spread out in the sun to dry, reducing their moisture content to about seven per cent, before being packed into sacks for export. At the factory they are roasted, and their shells are cracked and blown away, leaving pieces of bean called nibs, which are ground into a thick paste.”Complete the flow-chart. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Beans taken from pods → fermented under leaves → dried in the sun and exported → roasted → outer layer removed → remaining crushed into paste

Extract: “Traditional clay bricks begin as raw clay dug from pits, which is crushed and mixed with water until it can be shaped easily. The wet clay is then pressed into moulds or forced through a machine that cuts it into uniform blocks. Before firing, the shaped bricks must be left to dry slowly for several days; if they are heated while still wet, steam forms inside them and they may crack. They are then fired in a kiln at temperatures of around 1,000 degrees Celsius.”Complete the flow-chart. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Clay dug and crushed → mixed with water → shaped in moulds or cut by machine → dried slowly (heating too early may cause the bricks to ) → fired in a kiln

Extract: “Producing maple syrup requires patience. The final stage, boiling, is the one most visitors to a sugar shack see, but it comes only after weeks of preparation. In late winter, when nights are still freezing but days are above zero, producers drill small holes into the trunks of sugar maples and insert taps. The sap that drips out is collected through networks of plastic tubing and stored in tanks. It is then boiled for hours until most of its water has evaporated: roughly 40 litres of sap are needed to make a single litre of syrup.”Complete the flow-chart. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Holes made in tree trunks and put in → sap carried away by tubes → sap kept in tanks → sap boiled

Extract: “Industrial composting turns food and garden waste into fertiliser in a few weeks. Incoming waste is first shredded to increase its surface area, then piled into long rows called windrows. Microorganisms break the material down, generating heat that can raise the temperature inside a row to 60 degrees Celsius or more, high enough to kill most weed seeds and harmful bacteria. The rows are turned regularly by machine to supply oxygen, and after several weeks the compost is screened to remove any remaining large pieces.”Complete the flow-chart. Write ONE WORD ONLY.
Waste cut into small pieces → heaped into lines known as → material heats up as it breaks down → heaps turned to add air → large pieces sieved out

Extract: “Until its instruments were fully automated in 2019, the weather station on the remote island was run by teams of four observers, who released a weather balloon twice a day and recorded wind, temperature and cloud cover every three hours. Observers typically spent six weeks on the island followed by three weeks on the mainland. Today the station sends its readings to the national forecasting service by satellite.”Answer the question. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER.
How long did observers usually spend away from the island between periods of work?

Extract: “In December 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first controlled, powered flights in a heavier-than-air machine near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The longest of the four flights that day, piloted by Wilbur, covered 260 metres in 59 seconds. The brothers had chosen the site for its steady winds and soft sand, which made landings safer, rather than for its convenience: it was hundreds of kilometres from their bicycle business in Dayton, Ohio. Only a handful of local people witnessed the flights, and few newspapers reported them accurately at the time.”Answer the question. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.
Apart from its reliable winds, what feature of the site reduced the danger of landing?

Extract: “A study of 400 office workers compared three types of break: a short walk outdoors, a period of quiet sitting, and time spent on a smartphone. Workers who walked outside reported the greatest improvement in concentration afterwards, while those who used their phones reported almost no benefit. Interestingly, the quiet-sitting group showed the largest reduction in measured heart rate, even though its members did not feel any more focused. The researchers suggest that employers should encourage outdoor breaks wherever possible.”Answer the question. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.
Which kind of break led to the biggest drop in heart rate?

Extract: “The project’s first phase, completed in 2015, restored the river’s natural bends along a four-kilometre stretch that had been straightened in the 1960s. The second phase, which began in 2018, concentrates on reconnecting the river to its floodplain so that winter floodwater can spread across fields rather than threatening the town downstream. Local farmers are compensated for any land that floods, and early monitoring suggests that fish and wading birds have already returned in greater numbers. A third phase, planning new woodland along the banks, is still under discussion.”Answer the question. Write A NUMBER.
In which year did work start on linking the river back to its floodplain?

Extract: “To apply for the research grant, candidates must submit a project proposal of no more than 3,000 words, a detailed budget and two letters of recommendation, one of which must come from a current or former supervisor. Applications that arrive after the closing date of 30 April will not be considered, and incomplete applications will be returned without review. Successful applicants are usually informed within eight weeks of the closing date. Grants are awarded for a maximum of two years and cannot be renewed.”Answer the question. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.
Besides the proposal and the references, what document must applicants send?

Extract: “Builders choosing loft insulation usually consider three materials. Mineral wool, made from spun rock or glass, is the least expensive and is also non-combustible, which makes it popular in older houses; its main disadvantage is that loose fibres can irritate the skin and lungs during installation, so protective clothing is essential. Sheep's wool insulates almost as effectively and absorbs moisture without losing performance, but it costs roughly three times as much and must be treated to deter moths. Rigid foam boards provide the highest insulation value per centimetre, allowing a thinner layer where space is limited; however, they are difficult to fit around pipes and beams, and most types are made from petroleum-based chemicals.”

Material | Main advantage | Main drawback — write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the extract for each answer.Mineral wool — Main drawback: installers need to wear

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Sheep's wool — Main advantage: still works well when it takes in

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Sheep's wool — Main drawback: needs a treatment to keep away

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Rigid foam boards — Main advantage: a good choice when is restricted

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Rigid foam boards — Main drawback: awkward to fit around beams and

Extract: “The free library at Hallbridge, opened in 1852, was paid for entirely by a local tax approved by the town's ratepayers; it began with just 3,000 volumes, most of them donated by residents. At Wexcombe, the library was the gift of a mill owner, Edmund Carrow, who financed the building in 1861 and stocked it with 8,500 books from his own collection, though the council took over responsibility for running costs after his death in 1874. The third, at Ashford Vale, was established in 1868 by a workers' cooperative whose members contributed a penny a week; by 1880 its collection had grown to 12,000 volumes, making it larger than either of the others.”

Library | Year founded | Founder / funding | Books at opening — write ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the extract for each answer.Hallbridge — Founder / funding: money raised through a local

Use the same extract as question 1 (ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER).Hallbridge — Books at opening:

Use the same extract as question 1 (ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER).Wexcombe — Year founded:

Use the same extract as question 1 (ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER).Wexcombe — Founder / funding: a gift from Edmund

Use the same extract as question 1 (ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER).Ashford Vale — Founder / funding: weekly payments from members of a workers'

Extract: “In a thermosiphon solar water heater, no pump is needed. The collector, a flat glass-covered panel, is mounted on the roof facing the sun, and beneath its glass cover lies a dark absorber plate that converts sunlight into heat. Narrow copper tubes are bonded to the underside of this plate. The storage tank must be positioned higher than the collector, usually on a frame at the top of the roof, because heated water rises naturally from the tubes into the tank, while colder water sinks from the base of the tank down a return pipe to the bottom of the collector. A pressure valve fitted on the side of the tank releases steam if the water overheats, and an electric element inside the tank provides backup heating on cloudy days.”

Diagram: a solar water heater on a roof, numbered pointers 1–5 — write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the extract for each answer.Label 1 points to the layer lying immediately under the glass:

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Label 2 points to the parts fixed to the back of the plate:

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Label 3 points to the large container on a frame above the collector:

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Label 4 points to the pipe running from the bottom of the tank down to the lower end of the collector:

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Label 5 points to the fitting on the outside wall of the tank:

Extract: “In a traditional tower windmill, the sails are fixed to a horizontal shaft known as the windshaft, which passes through the cap at the top of the tower. Because the wind changes direction, the cap can rotate; on later mills this was done automatically by a small fan-like wheel called the fantail, mounted at the back of the cap. Inside, a large gear wheel on the windshaft, the brake wheel, turns a vertical main shaft that runs down through the floors. Near the bottom, this drives the millstones, where grain fed from a wooden hopper above is crushed into flour, which then falls down a chute into sacks on the floor below.”

Diagram: cross-section of a tower windmill, labels 1–5 — write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the extract for each answer.Label 1 — the device behind the cap that turns it into the wind:

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Label 2 — the horizontal axle that carries the sails:

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Label 3 — the large toothed wheel mounted on that axle:

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Label 4 — the container above the millstones that holds the grain:

Use the same extract as question 1 (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS).Label 5 — the channel that takes the flour down into the sacks: