Pollution In The Bay, Can Scientists Tell Us: What Happiness Is?, The Gap Of Ingenuity 2 – IELTS Reading Answers In 2016

The Reading Module of the IELTS can be the top-scoring category, with diligent practice. To achieve the best results in this section, you must understand how to approach and answer the different Question types in the Reading Module. By solving and reviewing Sample Reading Questions from past IELTS papers, you can ensure that your Reading skills are up to the mark.

SECTION 1

Pollution in the Bay

A  Pouring water into the sea sounds harmless enough. But in Florida Bay, a large and shallow section between the southern end of the Everglades and Florida Keys, it is proving highly controversial. That is because researchers are divided over whether it will help or hinder the plants and animals that live in the bay.

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B What is at risk, is the future of the bay’s extensive beds of sea grasses. These grow on the bay’s muddy floor and act as nurseries for the larvae of shrimps, lobsters and fish—many of them important sport and commercial-fishing species. Also in danger, is an impressive range of coral reefs that run the length of the Florida Keys and form the third-largest barrier reef in the world. Since the 1980s, coral cover has dropped by 40%, and a third of the coral species have gone. This has had a damaging effect on the animals that depend on the reef, such as crabs, turtles and nearly 600 species of fish.

C What is causing such ecological change is a matter of much debate. And the answer is of no small consequence. This is because the American government is planning to devote $8 billion over the next 30 years to revitalising the Everglades. Seasonal freshwater flows into the Everglades are to be restored in order to improve the region’s health. But they will then run off into the bay.

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D Joseph Zienam, a marine ecologist at the University of Virginia, thinks this is a good idea. He believes that a lack of freshwater in the bay is its main problem. The blame, he says, lies with a century of drainage in the Everglades aimed at turning the marshes into farmland and areas for development. This has caused the flow of freshwater into Florida Bay to dwindle, making the water in the bay, overall, more saline. This, he argues, kills the sea grasses, and as these rot, nutrients are released that feed the microscopic plants and animals that live in the water. This, he says, is why the bay’s once crystal- clear waters often resemble a pea soup. And in a vicious circle, these turbid blooms block out sunlight, causing more sea grasses to die and yet more turbidity.

E Brian Lapointe, a marine scientist at the Harbour Branch Oceanographic Institution at Fort Pierce in Florida, disagrees. He thinks sea grasses can tolerate much higher levels of salinity than the bay actually displays. Furthermore, he notes that, when freshwater flows through the Everglades were increased experimentally in the 1990s, it led to massive plankton blooms. Freshwater running off from well-fertilised farmlands, he says, caused a fivefold rise in nitrogen levels in the bay. This was like pouring fuel on a fire. The result was mass mortality of sea grasses because of increased turbidity from the plankton. Dr. Lapointe adds that, because corals thrive only in waters where nutrient levels are low, restoring freshwater rich in nitrogen will do more damage to the reef.

F It is a plausible theory. The water flowing off crops that are grown on the 750,000 acres of heavily fertilised farmland on the northern edge of the Everglades is rich in nitrogen, half of which ends up in the bay. But Bill Kruczynski, of America’s Environmental Protection Agency, is convinced that nitrogen from farmlands is not the chief problem. Some coral reefs well away from any nitrogen pollution are dying and, curiously, a few are thriving. Dr Kuczynski thinks that increased nutrients arriving from local sewage discharges from the thousands of cesspits along the Florida Keys are part of the problem.

G Such claims and counterclaims make the impact of the restoration plan difficult to predict. If increased salinity is the main problem, the bay’s ecology will benefit from the Everglades restoration project If, however, nitrogen is the problem, increasing the flow of freshwater could make matters much worse.

H If this second hypothesis proves correct, the cure is to remove nitrogen from farmland or sewage discharges, or perhaps both, Neither will be easy. Man-made wetlands, at present being built to reduce phosphate run off into the bay- also from fertilisers -would need an algal culture (a sort of contained algal bloom) added to them to deal with discharges from farmlands. That would be costly. So too would be the replacement of cesspits with proper sewerage-one estimate puts the cost at $650m. Either way, it is clear that when, on December 1st, 3,000 square miles of sea around the reef are designated as a “protective zone” by the deputy secretary of commerce, Sam Bodman, this will do nothing to protect the reef from pollution.

I Some argue, though, that there is a more fundamental flaw in the plans for the bay: the very idea of returning it to a utopian ideal before man wrought his damage. Nobody knows what Florida Bay was like before the 1950s, when engineers cut the largest canals in the Everglades and took most of the water away. Dr Kruczynski suspects it was more like an estuary. The bay that many people wish to re-create could have been nothing more than a changing phase in the bay’s history.

J These arguments do not merely threaten to create ecological problems but economic ones as well. The economy of the Florida Keys depends on tourism-the local tourist industry has an annual turnover of $2.5 billion. People come for fishing-boat trips, for manatee watching, or for scuba diving and snorkeling to view the exotically coloured corals. If the plan to restore the Everglades makes problems in the bay and the reef worse, it could prove a very expensive mistake.

 Questions 1-4

1 See grass turned to be more resistant to the saline water level in the Bay.

2 Signigicance of finding a specific reason in

3 Expensive proposals raised to solve the nitrogen dilemma

4 A statistic of ecological changes in both the coral area and species

Questions 5-8

5 Drainage system in everglades actually results in high salty water in the bay.

6 Restoring water high in nitrogen level will make more ecological side effect

7 High nitrogen levels may be caused by the nearby farmland.

8 Released sewage rather than nutrients from agricultural area increases the level of Nitrogen.

Questions 9-13

9 Everyone agree with ‘’pouring water into sea is harmless enough” even in Florida Bay area.

10 Nitrogen was poured in from different types of crops as water flows through.

11 Everglades restoration project can be effective regardless the cause of the pollution.

12 Human has changed Florida Bay where old image before 1950s is unrecalled

13 Tourism contributes fundamentally to economy of the Florida Bay area.

SECTION 2

Can Scientists tell us:

 What happiness is?

A Economists accept that if people describe themselves as happy, then they are happy. However, psychologists differentiate between levels of happiness. The most immediate type involves a feeling; pleasure or joy. But sometimes happiness is a judgment that life is satisfying, and does not imply an emotional state. Esteemed psychologist Martin Seligman has spearheaded an effort to study the science of happiness. The bad news is that we’re not wired to be happy. The good news is that we can do something about it. Since its origins in a Leipzig laboratory 130 years ago, psychology has had little to say about goodness and contentment. Mostly psychologists have concerned themselves with weakness and misery. There are libraries full of theories about why we get sad, worried, and angry. It hasn’t been respectable science to study what happens when lives go well. Positive experiences, such as joy, kindness, altruism and heroism, have mainly been ignored. For every 100 psychology papers dealing with anxiety or depression, only one concerns a positive trait.

B A few pioneers in experimental psychology bucked the trend. Professor Alice Isen of Cornell University and colleagues have demonstrated how positive emotions make people think faster and more creatively. Showing how easy it is to give people an intellectual boost, Isen divided doctors making a tricky diagnosis into three groups: one received candy, one read humanistic statements about medicine, one was a control group. The doctors who had candy displayed the most creative thinking and worked more efficiently. Inspired by Isen and others, Seligman got stuck in. He raised millions of dollars of research money and funded 50 research groups involving 150 scientists across the world. Four positive psychology centres opened, decorated in cheerful colours and furnished with sofas and baby-sitters. There were get-togethers on Mexican beaches where psychologists would snorkel and eat fajitas, then form “pods” to discuss subjects such as wonder and awe. A thousand therapists were coached in the new science.

C But critics are demanding answers to big questions. What is the point of defining levels of haziness and classifying the virtues? Aren’t these concepts vague and impossible to pin down? Can you justify spending funds to research positive states when there are problems such as famine, flood and epidemic depression to be solved? Seligman knows his work can be belittled alongside trite notions such as “the power of positive thinking”. His plan to stop the new science floating “on the waves of self- improvement fashion” is to make sure it is anchored to positive philosophy above, and to positive biology below.

D And this takes us back to our evolutionary past Homo sapiens evolved during the Pleistocene era (1.8 m to 10,000 years ago)，a time of hardship and turmoil. It was the Ice Age, and our ancestors endured long freezes as glaciers formed, then ferocious floods as the ice masses melted. We shared the planet with terrifying creatures such as marnmoths, elephant-sized ground sloths and sabre-toothed cats. But by the end of the Pleistocene, all these animals were extinct. Humans, on the other hand, had evolved large brains and used their intelligence to make fire and sophisticated tools, to develop talk and social rituals. Survival in a time of adversity forged our brains into a persistent mould. Professor Seligman says: “Because our brain evolved during a time of ice, flood and famine, we have a catastrophic brain. The way the brain works is looking for what’s wrong. The problem is, that worked in the Pleistocene era. It favoured you, but it doesn’t work in the modem world”.

E Although most people rate themselves as happy, there is a wealth of evidence to show that negative thinking is deeply ingrained in the human psycho. Experiments show that we remember failures more vividly than success. We dwell on what went badly, not what went well. Of the six universal emotions, four anger, fear, disgust and sadness are negative and only one, joy, is positive. (The sixth, surprise, is neutral). According to the psychologist Daniel Nettle, author of Happiness, and one of the Royal Institution lectures, the negative emotion each tell us “something  bad has happened” and suggest a different course of action.

F What is it about the structure of the brain that underlies our bias towards negative thinking? And is there a biology of joy? At Iowa University, neuroscientist studied what happens when people are shown pleasant and unpleasant pictures. When subjects see landscapes or dolphins playing, part of the frontal lobe of the brain becomes active. But when they are shown unpleasant images a bird covered in oil, or a dead soldier with part of his face missing the response comes from more primitive parts of the brain. The ability to feel negative emotions derives from an ancient danger-recognition system formed early in the brain’s evolution. The pre-frontal cortex, which registers happiness, is the part used for higher thinking, an area that evolved later in human history.

G Our difficulty, according to Daniel Nettle, is that the brain systems for liking and wanting are separate. Wanting involves two ancient regions the amygdala and the nucleus accumbens that communicate using the chemical dopamine to form the brain’s reward system. They are involved in anticipating the pleasure of eating and in addiction to drugs. A rat will press a bar repeatedly， ignoring sexually available partners, to receive electrical stimulation of the “wanting” parts of the brain. But having received brain stimulation, the rat eats more but shows no sign of enjoying the food it craved. In humans, a drug like nicotine produces much craving but little pleasure.

H In essence, what the biology lesson tells us is that negative emotions are fundamental to the human condition and it’s no wonder they are difficult to eradicate. At the same time, by a trick of nature, our brains are designed to crave but never really achieve lasting happiness.

Questions 14-20

14 An experiment involving dividing several groups one of which received positive icon

15 Review of a poorly researched psychology area

16 Contrast being made about the brains’ action as response to positive or negative stimulus

17 The skeptical attitude toward the research seemed to be a waste of fund

18 a substance that produces much wanting instead of much liking

19 a conclusion that lasting happiness are hardly obtained because of the nature of brains

20 One description that listed the human emotional categories.

Questions 21-25

A few pioneers in experimental psychology study what happens when lives go well. Professor Alice divided doctors, making a tricky experiment, into three groups: beside the one control group, the other two either are asked to read humanistic statements about drugs, or received 21………………………The latter displayed the most creative thinking and worked more efficiently. Since critics are questioning the significance of the 22……………………… for both levels of happiness and classification for the virtues. Professor Seligman countered in an evolutional theory: survival  in a time of adversity forged our brains into the way of thinking for what’s wrong because we have a 23…………………………………….

There is bountiful of evidence to show that negative thinking is deeply built in the human psyche. Later, at Iowa University, neuroscientists studied the active parts in brains to contrast when people are shown pleasant and unpleasant pictures. When positive images like 24………………………………..are shown, part of the frontal lobe of the brain becomes active. But when they are shown unpleasant image, the response comes from 25 ……………………………… of the brain.

Questions 26

26 according to Daniel Nettle in the last two paragraphs, what is true as the scientists can tell us about happiness

A      Brain systems always mix liking and wanting together.

B     Negative emotions can be easily rid of if we think positively.

C     Happiness is like nicotine we are craving for but get little pleasure.

D   The inner mechanism of human brains does not assist us to achieve durable happiness

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SECTION 3

THE GAP of INGENUITY 2

A Ingenuity, as I define it here, consists not only of ideas for new technologies like computer or drought-resistant crops but, more fundamentally, of ideas for better institutions and social arrangements, like efficient markets and competent governments.

B How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society requires depends on a range of factors, including the society’s goals and the circumstances within which it must achieve those goals – – whether it has a young population or an aging one, an abundance of natural resources or a scarcity of them, an easy climate or a punishing one, whatever the case may be.

C How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society supplies also depends on many factors, such as the nature of human inventiveness and understanding, the rewards an economy gives to the producers of useful knowledge, and the strength of political opposition to social and institutional reforms.

D A good supply of the right kind of ingenuity is essential, but it isn’t, of course, enough by itself. We know that the creation of wealth, for example, depends not only on an adequate supply of useful ideas but also on the availability of other, more conventional factors of production, like capital and labor. Similarly, prosperity, stability and justice usually depend on the resolution, or at least the containment, of major political struggles over wealth and power. Yet within our economies ingenuity often supplants labor, and growth in the stock of physical plant is usually accompanied by growth in the stock of ingenuity. And in our political systems, we need great ingenuity to set up institutions that successfully manage struggles over wealth and power. Clearly, our economic and -political processes are intimately entangled with the production and use of ingenuity.

E The past century’s countless incremental changes in our societies around the planet, in our technologies and our interactions with our surrounding natural environments have accumulated to create a qualitatively new world. Because these changes have accumulated slowly, it’s often hard for us to recognize how profound and sweeping they’re. They include far larger and denser populations; much higher per capita consumption of natural resources; and far better and more widely available technologies for the movement of people, materials, and especially information.

F In combination, these changes have sharply increased the density, intensity, and pace of our inter actions with each other; they have greatly increased the burden we place on our natural environment; and they have helped shift power from national and international institutions to individuals and subgroups, such as political special interests and ethnic factions.

G As a result, people in all walks of life—from our political and business leaders to all of us in our day-to-day— —must cope with much more complex, urgent, and often unpredictable circumstances. The management of our relationship with this new world requires immense and ever-increasing amounts of social and technical ingenuity. As we strive to maintain or increase our prosperity and improve the quality of our lives, we must make far more sophisticated decisions, and in less time, than ever before.

H When we enhance the performance of any system, from our cars to the planers network of financial institutions, we tend to make it more complex. Many of the natural systems critical to our well-being, like the global climate and the oceans, are extraordinarily complex to begin with. We often can’t predict or manage the behavior of complex systems with much precision, because they are often very sensitive to the smallest of changes and perturbations, and their behavior can flip from one mode to another suddenly and dramatically. In general, as the human-made and natural systems we depend upon become more complex, and as our demands on them increase, the institutions and technologies we use to manage them must become more complex too, which further boosts our need for ingenuity.

I The good news, though, is that the last century’s stunning changes in our societies and technologies have not just increased our need for ingenuity; they have also produced a huge increase in its supply. The growth and urbanization of human populations have combined with astonishing new communication and transportation technologies to expand interactions among people and produce larger, more integrated, and more efficient markets. These changes have, in turn, vastly accelerated the generation and delivery of useful ideas.

J But—and this is the critical “but” we should not jump to the conclusion that the supply of ingenuity always Increases in lockstep with our ingenuity requirement: while it’s true that necessity is often the mother of invention, we can’t always rely on the right kind of ingenuity appearing when and where we need it. In many cases, the complexity and speed of operation of today’s vital economic, social, arid ecological systems exceed the human brain s grasp. Very few of us have more than a rudimentary understanding of how these systems work. They remain fraught with countless “unknown unknowns, which makes it hard to supply the ingenuity we need to solve problems associated with these systems.

K In this book, explore a wide range of other factors that will limit our ability to supply the ingenuity required in the coming century. For example, many people believe that new communication technologies strengthen democracy and will make it easier to find solutions to our societies^, collective problems, but the story is less clear than it seems. The crush of information in our everyday lives is shortening our attention span, limiting the time we have to reflect on critical matters of public policy, and making policy arguments more superficial.

L Modem markets and science are an important part of the story of how we supply ingenuity. Markets are critically important, because they give entrepreneurs an incentive to produce knowledge. As for science, although it seems to face no theoretical limits, at least in the foreseeable future, practical constraints often slow its progress. The cost of scientific research tends to increase as it delves deeper into nature. And science’s rate of advance depends on the characteristic of the natural phenomena it investigates, simply because some phenomena are intrinsically harder to understand than others, so the production of useful new knowledge in these areas can be very slow. Consequently, there is often a critical time lag between the recognition between a problem and the delivery of sufficient ingenuity,, in the form of technologies, to solve that problem. Progress in the social sciences is especially slow, for reasons we don’t yet understand; but we desperately need better social scientific knowledge to build the sophisticated institutions today’s world demands

Questions 27-30

27 Definition of ingenuity

28 The requirement for ingenuity

29 The creation of social wealth

30 The stability of society

A depends on many factors including climate.

B depends on the management and solution of disputes.

C is not only of technological advance, but more of institutional renovation.

D also depends on the availability of some traditional resources.

 Questions 31-33

31 What does the author say about the incremental change of the last 100 years?

A It has become a hot scholastic discussion among environmentalists.

B Its significance is often not noticed.

C It has reshaped the natural environments we live in.

D It benefited a much larger population than ever.

32 The combination of changes has made life:

A easier

B faster

C slower

D less sophisticated

33 What does the author say about the natural systems?

A New technologies are being developed to predict change with precision.

B Natural systems are often more sophisticated than other systems.

C Minor alterations may cause natural systems to change dramatically.

D Technological developments have rendered human being more independent of natural systems.

Questions 34-40

34 The demand for ingenuity has been growing during the past 100 years.

35 The ingenuity we have may be inappropriate for solving problems at hand

36 There are very few who can understand the complex systems of the present world

37 ore information will help us to make better decisions

38 The next generation will blame the current government for their conduct

39 Science tends to develop faster in certain areas than others

40 Social science develops especially slowly because it is not as important as natural science

Answer Key

Continue with…Test 12