Reading Comprehension Test 32

Passage 1

      The origins of life on Earth are shrouded in mystery. Scientists agree that life arose almost 4 billion years ago from non-living chemicals, a process called abiogenesis. However, many competing hypotheses exist to explain how this might have happened. Because Earth is the only planet in the universe known to harbor life, studying the unique chemical environment of early Earth can allow us to develop a deeper understanding of the causes of abiogenesis.

     During the earliest phase of Earths existence, the Hadean eon, conditions on the newly formed planet were very different from those found today. The young Earth was intensely hot, with highly active volcanoes and frequent meteorite impacts. Unlike today's atmosphere, which is predominantly made of nitrogen and oxygen, the Hadean atmosphere is thought to have consisted mainly of carbon dioxide, hydrogen, water vapor, and volcanic gases. Thanks to the intense pressure of this thick atmosphere, liquid water oceans probably existed despite the boiling temperatures on Earths surface.

      Although these conditions would be totally inhospitable to modern life, this unique environment could have produced many of the building blocks of life. Scientists have discovered this by replicating the conditions of the Hadean eon in laboratories. The earliest and most famous of these experiments, conducted by Stanley Miller in the 1950s, involved passing electricity through the particular mixture of gases in the early Earths atmosphere. Miller found that electricity, such as that delivered by lightning strikes, could have triggered chemical reactions in the Hadean atmosphere producing amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, as well as the nitrogenous bases and sugars that make up nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA. More recent experiments using ultraviolet light, a major component of sunlight, have found that it too could have caused organic compounds to form on Earth during the Hadean eon. 

        This has led to speculation on the part of many scientists that these molecules, once synthesized in the early Earths oceans, could have become organized into self-replicating structures that developed into life as we know it. Nucleic acids, for instance, can both carry genetic information and catalyze chemical reactions; simple nucleic acids thus could have replicated themselves and even created proteins from amino acids, like modern life forms do. Indeed, many scientists now believe that today's life descends from an "RNA world" that formed in this way.

Passage 2

        It turns out that the conditions for life to arise may actually be quite common throughout the universe. At the very least, the building blocks of life as we know it as amino acids, simple sugars, and other organic compounds seem to show up wherever we point our telescopes.

        For instance, organic molecules form quite readily in the clouds of dust and gas that hang between and around stars. A number of studies have found that certain organic molecules, called PAHs, may be present in nebulae and star systems all over the universe. These molecules, made up of rings of carbon and hydrogen, have structures that might allow them to help RNA strands self-assemble in the oceans of planets; NASA scientists estimate that these molecules contain as much as 20% of the universe's carbon and may have formed shortly after the universe began.

        Scientists have also found organic molecules closer to home, within our own galaxy and solar system. In the massive nursery of new star systems at the heart of the Milky Way, a simple form of sugar has been detected. The 65 formation of this sugar is a key step in the creation of the more complex sugars in nucleic acids. This suggests that the raw materials for nucleic acids, and perhaps other key components of life, might be commonly incorporated into forming star systems. This certainly seems to have happened around our Sun. A number of Solar System bodies, such as the Murchison meteorite, have crashed to Earth bearing nitrogenous bases and amino acids that were formed in space, and comets currently orbiting our Sun have been found to carry amino acids as well. If the early Earth was seeded with organic molecules, either during its formation or by meteorite and comet impacts, it is plausible that this could have paved the way for abiogenesis to take place soon thereafter.

       Taken together, this evidence suggests that the building blocks of life appear throughout the Milky Way galaxy and elsewhere in the universe. Earths status as the cradle of life may not be so special after all.

[passage-header][/passage-header]   No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my residence in X - I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself - the work of copying and translating business-letters - was a dry and tedious task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, 99180I should have endured in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony, and joyless tumult of Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes;45994 72168I should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my small bedroom at Mrs. Kings lodgings,14199 and they two should have been my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret, Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; 76432the antipathy which had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and spreading denser shade daily excluded me from every glimpse of the sunshine of life31659; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid darkness out of the slimy walls of a well.[passage-footer](This passage is from Charlotte Bronte, The Professor, originally published in 1857.)[/passage-footer]

[passage-header][/passage-header]   No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my residence in X - I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself - the work of copying and translating business-letters - was a dry and tedious task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, 99180I should have endured in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony, and joyless tumult of Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes;45994 72168I should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my small bedroom at Mrs. Kings lodgings,14199 and they two should have been my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret, Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; 76432the antipathy which had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and spreading denser shade daily excluded me from every glimpse of the sunshine of life31659; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid darkness out of the slimy walls of a well.[passage-footer](This passage is from Charlotte Bronte, The Professor, originally published in 1857.)[/passage-footer]

        In general, democracies organize and carry out their elections in one of two ways. In first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections, voters choose individual candidates for office, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Elections in this kind of system are also called winner-take-all. In a democracy with proportional representation (PR), parties, not individuals, win seats in a legislature according to the percent of votes they receive in an election. Parties then form coalitions with each other to gain control of the government. Which system a country uses tends to greatly affect its politics; each has its merits and disadvantages.

      These two types of election tend to foster very different styles of political debate. First-past-the-post elections tend to lead to more moderate political discussions at the national level. In elections for the presidency of the United States, for example, candidates need support from every part of the country. They cannot alienate large groups by expressing extreme views, so they must be moderate in order to have broad appeal. This moderation has its downsides, however. For one, uncommon opinions tend to be left out of the public discussion. This can result in an elected government that may not fully represent citizens views. Extreme parties are also reduced to the role of spoilers in national elections: unable to win, but able to hurt larger parties with similar, but more moderate, viewpoints. During the US election for president in 1992, a far-right candidate, Ross Perot, drew votes from the sitting president, the center-right George H.W. Bush. This may have allowed the center-left candidate, Bill Clinton, to win the presidency. 

        Proportional representation, for better or worse, allows more extreme viewpoints to be represented at the national level. This can be a good thing, allowing minority groups and small, single-issue parties to have a voice in government. However, these small parties can cause problems when they join the ruling coalitions. They can force the government to focus on niche agendas by threatening to leave the coalition if ignored. In some cases, radical parties that actively oppose or threaten democracy, like fascist or communist parties, can gain seats in PR elections. This occurred most famously in Germany's Weimar Republic in the 1930s, when democratic elections gave the Nazi Party the opportunity to take power.         Each electoral system also results in different levels of voter participation. First-past-the-post systems generally result in lower overall voter participation. This could be because the rules of FPTP elections discourage voters who support candidates or parties who are not likely to win.

Because votes for a losing candidate count for nothing in an FPTP election, votes for opposition parties are effectively wasted. In elections for US Senate seats and the US presidency, for instance, many states are consistently won by candidates from one party. Opposition voters in these states have little reason to show up at the polls. However, some political scientists argue that because voters vote for specific candidates in FPTP elections, those elected officials are more personally accountable to the citizens that voted for them. This sense of accountability could lead to more citizen engagement between elections.

         Proportional representation, on the whole, encourages higher levels of participation. Because voters will be represented even if they are in the minority, there are far fewer wasted votes in PR elections. Perhaps, for this reason, voter turnout is much higher, on average, in countries that use a PR system. On the other hand, voters in PR elections generally vote for parties rather than individuals. Because the parties appoint legislators to their seats, politicians may feel more accountable to their parties than to voters. This can lead officials to focus on within-party politics rather than the wishes of the people.

[passage-header][/passage-header]   No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my residence in X - I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself - the work of copying and translating business-letters - was a dry and tedious task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, 99180I should have endured in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony, and joyless tumult of Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes;45994 72168I should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my small bedroom at Mrs. Kings lodgings,14199 and they two should have been my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret, Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; 76432the antipathy which had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and spreading denser shade daily excluded me from every glimpse of the sunshine of life31659; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid darkness out of the slimy walls of a well.[passage-footer](This passage is from Charlotte Bronte, The Professor, originally published in 1857.)[/passage-footer]

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Iain King, "Can Economics Be Ethical?" 2013 by Prospect Publishing.[/passage-header]   Recent debates about the economy have rediscovered the question, "is that right?", where "right" means more than just profits or efficiency. 

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Elizabeth Cady Stanton's address to the 1869 Woman Suffrage Convention in Washington, DC.[/passage-header]   I urge the sixteenth amendment, because "manhood suffrage," or a man's government, is civil, religious, and social disorganization. 84802The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike, discord, disorder, disease, and death68517. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery, slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity have struggled for the centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope!
   87655The male element has held 52444high carnival thus far; it has fairly run riot from the beginning, overpowering the feminine element everywhere, crushing out all the diviner qualities in human nature, until we know but little of true manhood and womanhood, of the latter comparatively nothing, for it has scarce been recognized as a power until within the last century83966. 30665Society is but the reflection of the man himself, untempered by woman's thought; the hard iron 72553rule we feel alike in the church, the state, and the home43964. 15530No one need wonder at the disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being, with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the absolute control of all sublunary matters69243.
   People object to the demands of those whom they choose to call 85227the strong-minded because they say "the right of suffrage will make the women masculine." That is just the difficulty in which we are involved today. Though disfranchised, we have few women in the 77578best sense; we have simply so many reflections, varieties, and dilutions of the masculine gender. The strong, natural characteristics of womanhood are repressed and ignored in dependence, for so long as man feeds woman she will try to please the giver and adapt herself to his condition. To keep a foothold in society, a woman must be as near like man as possible, reflect his ideas, opinions, virtues, motives, prejudices, and vices. She must respect his statutes, though they strip her of every inalienable right, and conflict with that higher law written by the finger of God on her own soul...

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Saki, The Schartz-Metterklume Method. Originally published in 1911.[/passage-header]Lady Carlotta stepped out on to the platform of the small wayside station and took a 83290turn or two up and down its uninteresting length, to kill time till the train should be pleased to proceed on its way. Then, in the roadway beyond, she saw a horse struggling with a more than ample load, and a carter of the sort that seems to bear a sullen hatred against the animal that helps him to earn a living. Lady Carlotta promptly betook her to the roadway, and put rather a different complexion on the struggle. 74396Certain of her acquaintances were wont to give her plentiful admonition as to the undesirability of interfering on behalf of a distressed animal, such interference being none of her business.82306Only once had she put the doctrine of non-interference into practice, when one of its most eloquent exponents had been besieged for nearly three hours in a small and extremely uncomfortable maytree by an angry boar-pig, while Lady Carlotta, on the other side of the fence, had proceeded with the water-colour sketch she was engaged on, and refused to interfere between the boar and his prisoner. 38315It is to be feared that she lost the friendship of the ultimately rescued lady.24597

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Taras Grescoe, Straphanger:
Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile. 2012 by Taras Grescoe.[/passage-header]Though there are 600 million cars on the planet, and counting, there are also seven billion people, which means that for the vast majority of us getting around involves taking buses, ferryboats, commuter trains, streetcars, and subways.37478 In other words, traveling to work, school, or the market means being a straphanger: somebody who, by choice or necessity, relies on public transport, rather than a privately owned automobile. 38548

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Iain King, "Can Economics Be Ethical?" 2013 by Prospect Publishing.[/passage-header]   Recent debates about the economy have rediscovered the question, "is that right?", where "right" means more than just profits or efficiency.