Nenets culture affected by global warming

 

For 1,000 years the indigenous Nenets people have migrated along the 450-mile- long Yamal peninsula in northern Russia. In summer they wander northwards, taking their reindeer with them. In winter they return southwards.

But this remote region of north-west Siberia is now being affected by global warming. Traditionally the Nenets travel across the frozen River Ob in November A ______ around Nadym. These days, though, this annual winter migration is delayed. Last year the Nenets, together with many thousands of reindeer, had to wait until late December В ______.

“Our reindeer were hungry. There wasn’t enough food,” JakovJaptik, a Nenets reindeer herder, said. “The snow is melting sooner, quicker and faster than before. In spring it’s difficult for the reindeer to pull the sledges. They get tired,” Japtik said.

Herders say that the peninsula’s weather is increasingly unpredictable — with unseasonal snowstorms С ______, and milder longer autumns. In winter, temperatures used to go down to -50°C. Now they are normally around -30°C, according to Japtik. “Obviously we prefer -30°C. But the changes aren’t good for the reindeer D ______,” he said, setting off on his sledge to round up his reindeer herd.

Even here, in one of the most remote parts of the planet, E ______. Last year the Nenets arrived at a regular summer camping spot and discovered that half of their lake had disappeared. The water had drained away after a landslide. The Nenets report other curious changes — there are fewer mosquitoes and a strange increase in flies. Scientists say there is unmistakable evidence F ______.

 

1. when the ice was finally thick enough to cross

2. that the impact on Russia would be disastrous

3. the environment is under pressure

4. and in the end what is good for the reindeer is good for us

5. and set up their camps in the southern forests

6. that Yamal’s ancient permafrost is melting

7. when the reindeer give birth in May

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

14

Задание 11 № 776

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

 

Duration of life and its social implications

The world’s population is about to reach a landmark of huge social and economic importance, when the proportion of the global population over 65 outnumbers children under 5 for the first time. A new report by the US census bureau shows A ______, with enormous consequences for both rich and poor nations.

The rate of growth will shoot up in the next couple of years. The В ______ a combination of the high birth rates after the Second World War and more recent improvements in health that are bringing down death rates at older ages. Separate UN forecasts predict that the global population will be more than nine billion by 2050.

The US census bureau was the first to sound the С ______. Its latest forecasts warn governments and international bodies that this change in population structure will bring widespread challenges at every level of human organization, starting with the structure of the family, which will be transformed as people live longer. This will in turn place new burdens on careers and social services providers, D ______ for health services and pensions systems.

“People are living longer and, in some parts of the world, healthier lives,” the authors conclude. “This represents one of the greatest achievements of the last century but also a significant challenge E ______ population.”

Ageing will put pressure on societies at all levels. One way of measuring that is to look at the older dependency ratio, F ______ that must be supported by them. The ODR is the number of people aged 65 and over for every 100 people aged 20 to 64. It varies widely, from just six in Kenya to 33 in Italy and Japan. The UK has an ODR of 26, and the US has 21.

 

1. which recently replaced Italy as the world’s oldest major country

2. alarm about these changes

3. a huge shift towards an ageing population

4. change is due to

5. while patterns of work and retirement will have huge implications

6. which shows the balance between working-age people and the older

7. as proportions of older people increase in most countries

 

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

15

Задание 11 № 822

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

 

Elephants sense ‘danger’ clothes

 

St Andrews University researchers discovered that elephants could recognise the degree of danger posed by various groups of individuals. The study found that African elephants always reacted with fear A ______ previously worn by men of the Maasai tribe. They are known to demonstrate their courage by В ______.

The elephants also responded aggressively to red clothing, which defines traditional Maasai dress.

However, the elephants showed a much milder reaction to clothing previously worn by the Kamba people, С ______ and pose little threat.

The researchers first presented elephants with clean, red clothing and with red clothing that had been worn for five days by D ______.

They revealed that Maasai-smelt clothing motivated elephants to travel significantly faster in the first minute after they moved away.

They then investigated whether elephants could also use the colour of clothing as a cue to classify a potential threat and found the elephants reacted with aggression E ______. This suggested that they associated the colour red with the Maasai.

The researchers believe the distinction in the elephants’ emotional reaction to smell and colour might be explained by F ______. They might be able to distinguish among different human groups according to the level of risk they posed.

«We regard this experiment as just a start to investigating precisely how elephants ‘see the world’, and it may be that their abilities will turn out to equal or exceed those of our closer relatives, the monkeys and apes,» researchers added.

 

1. either a Maasai or a Kamba man

2. who do not hunt elephants

3. when they detected the smell of clothes

4. who carried out the research

5. the amount of risk they sense

6. spearing elephants

7. when they spotted red but not white cloth

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

16

Задание 11 № 868

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

 

Culture and customs

 

In less than twenty years, the mobile telephone has gone from being rare, expensive equipment of the business elite to a pervasive, low-cost personal item. In many countries, mobile telephones A ______; in the U.S., 50 per cent of children have mobile telephones. In many young adults’ households it has supplanted the land-line telephone. The mobile phone is В ______, such as North Korea.

Paul Levinson in his 2004 book Cellphone argues that by looking back through history we can find many precursors to the idea of people simultaneously walking and talking on a mobile phone. Mobile phones are the next extension in portable media, that now can be С ______ into one device. Levinson highlights that as the only mammal to use only two out of our four limbs to walk, we are left two hands free D ______ — like talking on a mobile phone.

Levinson writes that “Intelligence and inventiveness, applied to our need to communicate regardless of where we may be, led logically and eventually to telephones that we E ______.”

Given the high levels of societal mobile telephone service penetration, it is a key means for people F ______. The SMS feature spawned the «texting» sub-culture. In December 1993, the first person-to-person SMS text message was transmitted in Finland. Currently, texting is the most widely-used data service; 1.8 billion users generated $80 billion of revenue in 2006.

 

1. to perform other actions

2. outnumber traditional telephones

3. to communicate with each other 

4. combined with the Internet

5. to serve basic needs

6. banned in some countries

7. carry in our pockets

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

17

Задание 11 № 914

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

 

My Stage

 

My family moved to Rockaway, New Jersey in the summer of 1978. It was there that my dreams of stardom began.

I was nine years old. Heather Lambrix lived next door, and she and I became best friends. I thought she was so lucky A ______. She took tap and jazz and got to wear cool costumes with bright sequences and makeup and perform on stage. I went to all of her recitals and В ______.

My living room and sometimes the garage were my stage. I belonged to a cast of four, which consisted of Heather, my two younger sisters, Lisa and Faith, and I. Since I was the oldest and the bossiest, I was the director. Heather came with her own costumes С ______. We choreographed most of our dance numbers as we went along. Poor Faith... we would throw her around D ______. She was only about four or five... and so agile. We danced around in our bathing suits to audiocassettes and records from all the Broadway musicals. We’d put a small piece of plywood on the living room carpet, E ______. And I would imitate her in my sneakers on the linoleum in the hall. I was a dancer in the making.

My dad eventually converted a part of our basement into a small theater. He hung two “spotlights” and a sheet for a curtain. We performed dance numbers to tunes like “One” and “The Music and the Mirror” from A Chorus Line. I sang all the songs from Annie. I loved to sing, F ___________. I just loved to sing. So I belted out songs like “Tomorrow”, “Maybe” and “What I Did For Love.” I knew then, this is what I wanted to do with my life.

 

1. like she was a rag doll

2. whether I was good at it or not

3. wished I, too, could be on stage

4. and I designed the rest

5. and I was star struck

6. so Heather could do her tap routine

7. because she got to go to dance lessons

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

18

Задание 11 № 1006

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

 

Cat’s punctuality

 

Sergeant Podge, a Norwegian Forest Cat, disappears from his owner’s home in a small town in Kent, every night. But what baffles his owner, Liz Bullard, mostly is the fact that the next morning, the 12-year-old cat always pops up in exactly the same place, A ______. And every morning Ms. Bullard takes her son to school before collecting Sergeant Podge.

She said that the routine had set in earlier this year, when Sergeant Podge disappeared one day. Ms. Bullard spent hours telephoning her neighbours В ______.

An elderly woman living about one and a half miles away called back to inform Ms. Bullard that she had found a cat matching Sergeant Podge’s description. Ms. Bullard picked him up but within days he vanished from sight again. She rang the elderly woman С ______.

She said a routine has now become established, where each morning she takes her son to school before driving to collect Sergeant Podge D ______.

It is thought Sergeant Podge walks across a golf course every night to reach his destination.

Ms. Bullard said: “If it’s raining he may be in the bush but he comes running if I clap my hands.” All she has to do is open the car passenger door from the inside for Sergeant Podge to jump in.

Ms. Bullard also makes the trip at weekends and during school holidays — E ______.

She does not know why, after 12 years, Sergeant Podge has begun the routine but explained that another woman who lived nearby used to feed him sardines, and that he may be F ______.

His owner doesn’t mind his wandering off at night as long as she knows where to collect him.

 

1. on the look-out for more treats

2. from the pavement between 0800 and 0815 GMT

3. to discover Sergeant Podge was back outside her home

4. on a pavement about one and a half miles (2.4km) away

5. to identify if anyone had bumped into him

6. when her son is having a lie-in

7. collectedbycareverymorning

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

19

Задание 11 № 1190

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

 

When I arrived in England I thought I knew English. After I’d been here an hour I realized that I did not understand one word. In the first week I picked up a tolerable working knowledge of the language and the next seven years convinced me gradually but thoroughly that I A ______, let alone perfectly. This is sad. My only consolation being that nobody speaks English perfectly.

Remember that those five hundred words an average Englishman uses are B ______. You may learn another five hundred and another five thousand and yet another fifty thousand and still you may come across a further fifty thousand C ______.

If you live here long enough you will find out to your greatest amazement that the adjective nice is not the only adjective the language possesses, in spite of the fact that D ______. You can say that the weather is nice, a restaurant is nice, Mr. Soandso is nice, Mrs. Soandso’s clothes are nice, you had a nice time, E ______.

Then you have to decide on your accent. The easiest way to give the impression of having a good accent or no foreign accent at all is to hold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your teeth and finish all your sentences with the question: “isn’t it?” People will not understand much, but they are accustomed to that and they will get a F ______.

 

1. whatever it costs

2. most excellent impression

3. you have never heard of before, and nobody else either

4. in the first three years you do not need to learn or use any other adjectives

5. would never know it really well

6. far from being the whole vocabulary of the language

7. andallthis

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

20

Задание 11 № 1374

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

 

Before the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, scientists thought they knew the universe. They were wrong.

The Hubble Space Telescope has changed many scientists’ view of the universe. The telescope is named after American astronomer Edwin Hubble, A ______.

He established that many galaxies exist and developed the first system for their classifications.

In many ways, Hubble is like any other telescope. It simply gathers light. It is roughly the size of a large school bus. What makes Hubble special is not what it is, B ______.

Hubble was launched in 1990 from the “Discovery” space shuttle and it is about 350 miles above our planet, C ______.

It is far from the glare of city lights, it doesn’t have to look through the air, D ______.

And what a view it is! Hubble is so powerful it could spot a fly on the moon. Yet in an average orbit, it uses the same amount of energy as 28100-watt light bulbs. Hubble pictures require no film. The telescope takes digital images E ______.

Hubble has snapped photos of storms on Saturn and exploding stars. Hubble doesn’t just focus on our solar system. It also peers into our galaxy and beyond. Many Hubble photos show the stars that make up the Milky Way galaxy. A galaxy is a city of stars.

Hubble cannot take pictures of the sun or other very bright objects, because doing so could “fry” the telescope’s instruments, but it can detect infrared and ultra violet light F ______.

Some of the sights of our solar system that Hubble has glimpsed may even change the number of planets in it.

 

1. which is above Earth’s atmosphere.

2. which are transmitted to scientists on Earth.

3. which is invisible to the human eye.

4. who calculated the speed at which galaxies move.

5. so it has a clear view of space.

6. because many stars are in clouds of gas.

7. butwhereitis.

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

21

Задание 11 № 1466

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

 

The science of sound, or acoustics, as it is often called, has been made over radically within a comparatively short space of time. Not so long ago the lectures on sound in colleges and high schools dealt chiefly with the vibrations of such things as the air columns in organ pipes. Nowadays, however, thanks chiefly to a number of electronic instruments engineers can study sounds as effectively A ______. The result has been a new approach to research in sound. Scientists have been able to make far-reaching discoveries in many fields of acoustics B ______.

Foremost among the instruments that have revolutionized the study of acoustics are electronic sound-level meters also known as sound meters and sound-intensity meters. These are effective devices that first convert sound waves into weak electric signals, then amplify the signals through electronic means C ______. The intensity of a sound is measured in units called decibels. “Zero” sound is the faintest sound D ______. The decibel measures the ratio of the intensity of a given sound to the standard “zero” sound. The decibel scale ranges from 0 to 130. An intensity of 130 decibels is perceived not only as a sound, but also E ______. The normal range of painlessly audible sounds for the average human ear is about 120 decibels. For forms of life other than ourselves, the range can be quite different.

The ordinary sound meter measures the intensity of a given sound, rather than its actual loudness. Under most conditions, however, it is a quite good indicator of loudness. Probably the loudest known noise ever heard by human ears was that of the explosive eruption in August, 1883, of the volcano of Krakatoa in the East Indies. No electronic sound meters, of course, were in existence then, but physicists estimate that the sound at its source must have had an intensity of 190 decibels, F ______.

 

1. and finally measure them.

2. since it was heard 3,000 miles away.

3. and they have been able to put many of these discoveries to practical use.

4. that loud sound is of high intensity.

5. as they study mechanical forces.

6. as a painful sensation in the ear.

7. that the unaided human ear can detect.

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

22

Задание 11 № 1512

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

 

Chocolate

 

Chocolate is made from a number of raw and processed foods produced from the seeds of tropical cacao trees. Cacao has been cultivated in A ______ at least 3000 years. For most of this time it was made into a drink called, in translation — “bitter water”. This is because В ______ to be fermented to develop a palatable flavour. After fermentation the beans are dried and roasted and the shell is removed to produce cacao nibs. These are then ground and liquefied into chocolate liquor. The liquor is then processed into cocoa solids or cocoa butter. Pure chocolate contains primarily cocoa solids and butter in different proportions. Much of С ______ with added sugar. Milk chocolate is sweetened chocolate that additionally contains either milk powder or condensed milk. White chocolate on the other D ______ is therefore not a true chocolate. Chocolate contains theobromine and phenethylamine which have physiological effects on the body. It is similar to serotonin levels in the brain. Scientists claim E ______, can lower blood pressure. Recently, dark chocolate has also been promoted for its health benefits. But pet owners should remember that the presence of theobromine makes it toxic to cats and dogs. Chocolate is now one F ______, although 16 of the top 20 chocolate consuming countries are in Europe. Also interesting is that 66% of world chocolate is consumed between meals.

 

1. the chocolate consumed today is made

2. that chocolate, eaten in moderation

3. central and southern America for

4. of the world’s most popular flavours

5. hand contains no cocoa solids and

6. cacao seeds are intensely bitter and have

7. manycountriesworldwideat

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

23

Задание 11 № 1558

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

 

Reality TV

 

Reality TV seems to dominate broadcasting these days. But what is it, how did it emerge and why on earth is it so popular? The first question is easily answered. Reality TV A ______ presents unscripted, dramatic or humorous situations or events. It can involve celebrities В ______ of the public. Reality TV has been gradually growing in importance for over 60 years. “Candid Camera” — the show that filmed ordinary people reacting to set ups and pranks — started in 1948. Some people, however, believe it was the Japanese with their awful shows in the 1980s and 90s that brought reality TV to centre stage. Others believe С ______ that is called “Big Brother” was the show that spawned the reality TV age. But why are the shows so popular? Different theories come to life. Some believe that it is D ______ we like to watch horrible behaviour: the same instinct that once inspired the ancient Romans to go and watch gladiators destroy each other at the Coliseum. Others suggest a kind of voyeurism is involved there — an unhealthy curiosity to spy on other people’s lives.

Whatever the real reason — the trend seems to have already peaked. A lot of such shows E ______ or are expected to go in the near future. And the replacement seems to be talents shows — watching competitions in dance, singing and general entertainment. Does it mean that people are changing? It is too early to say. Most agree that these F ______.

 

1. due to basic human instinct that

2. is still early to judge

3. are simply the cycles of fashion

4. but more usually the stars are members

5. that the television phenomenon

6. is a type of programme that

7. seemtohavedisappeared

 

Пропуск	A	B	C	D	E	F
Часть предложения

24

Задание 11 № 1604

Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.