Passages 29

The most thoroughly studied cases of deception strategies employed by ground-nesting birds involve plovers, small birds that typically nest on beaches or in open fields, their nests merely  scrapes in the sand or earth. Plovers also have an effective repertoire of tricks for distracting potential nest predators from their exposed and defenseless eggs or chicks. The ever-watchful plover can detect a possible threat at a considerable distance. When she does, the nesting bird moves inconspicuously off the nest to a spot well away from eggs or chicks. At this point she may use one of several ploys. One technique involves first moving quietly toward an approaching animal and then setting off noisily through the grass or brush in a low, crouching run away from the nest, while emitting  rodent like squeaks. The effect mimics a scurrying mouse or vole, and the behavior rivets the attention of the type of predators that would also be interested in eggs and chicks.

Another deception begins with quiet movement to an exposed and visible location well away from the nest. Once there, the bird pretends to incubate a brood. When the predator approaches, the parent flees, leaving the false nest to be searched. The direction in which the plover “escapes” is such that if the predator chooses to follow, it will be led still further away from the true nest.

The plover’s most famous stratagem is the broken-wing display, actually a continuum of injury-mimicking behaviors spanning  the range from slight disability to near-complete helplessness. One or both wings are held in an abnormal position, suggesting injury. The bird appears to be attempting escape along an irregular route that indicates panic. In the most extreme version of the display, the bird flaps one wing in an apparent attempt to take to the air, flops over helplessly, struggles back to its feet, runs away a short distance, seemingly attempts once more to take off, flops over again as the “useless” wing fails to provide any lift, and so on. Few predators fail to pursue  such obviously vulnerable prey. Needless to say, each short run between “flight attempts” is directed away from the nest.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

2. The word “merely”  in fine 3 is closest in meaning to

3. Which of the following is mentioned in the passage about plovers?

4. The word “emitting”  in line 9 is closest in meaning to

5. In the deception technique described in paragraph 2 the plover tries to

6. The word “spanning” in line 18 is closest in meaning to

7. According to paragraph 4, which of the following aspects of the plover’s behavior gives the appearance that it is frightened?

8. The word “pursue” in line 24 is closest in meaning to

9. According to the passage, a female plover utilizes all of the following deception techniques EXCEPT

10. Which of the following best describes the organization of the passage?

Passage 30

Composers today use a wider variety of sounds than ever before, including many that were once considered undesirable noises. Composer Edgard Varese (1883-1965) called thus the “liberation of sound…the right to make music with any and all sounds.” Electronic music, for example—made with the aid of computers, synthesizers, and electronic instruments—may include sounds that in the past would not have been considered musical. Environmental sounds, such as thunder, and electronically generated hisses and blips can be recorded, manipulated, and then incorporated into a musical composition. But composers also draw novel sounds from voices and nonelectronic instruments. Singers may be asked to scream, laugh, groan, sneeze, or to sing phonetic sounds rather than words. Wind and string players may lap or scrape their instruments. A brass or woodwind player may hum while playing, to produce two pitches at once; a pianist may reach inside the piano to pluck a string and then run a metal blade along it.  In the music of the Western world, the greatest expansion and experimentation have involved percussion instruments, which outnumber strings and winds in many recent compositions. Traditional percussion instruments are struck with new types of beaters; and instruments that used to be couriered unconvennonal in Western music—tom-toms, bongos, slapsticks, maracas—are widely used.

In the search for novel sounds, increased use has been made in Western music of Microtones. Non-Western music typically divides and interval between two pitches more finely than Western music does, thereby  producing a greater number of distinct tones, or micro tones, within the same interval. Composers such as Krzysztof Pmderecki create sound that borders on electronic noise through tone clusters—closely spaced tones played together and heard as a mass, block, or band of sound. The directional aspect of sound has taken on new importance as well Loudspeakers or groups of instruments may be placed at opposite ends of the stage, in the balcony, or at the back and sides of the auditorium. Because standard music notation makes no provision for many of these innovations, recent music scores may contain graphlike diagrams, new note shapes and symbols, and novel ways of arranging notation on the page.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

2. The word “wider” in one 1 is closest in meaning to

3. The passage suggests that Edgard Varese is an example of a composer who

4. The word “it” in line 12 refers to

5. According to the passage, which of the following types of instruments has played a role in much of the innovation in Western music?

6. The word “thereby”  in line 20 is closest in meaning to

7. According to the passage, Krzysztof Penderecki is known for which of the following practices?

8. According to the passage, which of the following would be considered traditional elements of Western music?

9. In paragraph 3, the author mentions diagrams as an example of a new way to

passage 31

Glaciers are large masses of ice on land that show evidence of past or present movement. They grow by the gradual transformation of snow into glacier ice. A fresh snowfall is a fluffy mass of loosely packed snowflakes, small delicate ice constals grown in the atmosphere. As the snow ages on the ground for weeks or months, the crystals shrink and become more compact, and the whole mass becomes squeezed together into a more dense form, granular snow. As new snow falls and buries the older snow, the layers of granular snow further compact to form firm, a much denser kind of snow, usually a year or more old, which has little pore space. Further burial and slow cementation—a process by which crystals become bound together in a mosaic of intergrown ice crystals—finally produce solid glacial ice. In this process of recrystallization, the growth of new crystals at the expense of old ones, the percentage of air is reduced from about 90 percent for snowflakes to less than 20 percent for glacier ice. The whole process may take as little as a few years, but more likely ten or twenty years or longer. The snow is usually many meters deep by the time the lower layers art converted into ice.

In cold glaciers those formed in the coldest regions of the Earth, the entire mass of ice is at temperatures below the melting point and no free water exists. In temperate glaciers, the ice is at the melting point at every pressure level within the glacier, and free water is present as small drops or as larger accumulations in tunnels within or beneath the ice. Formation of a glacier is complete when ice has accumulated to a thickness (and thus weight) sufficient to make it move slowly under pressure, in much the same way that solid rock deep within the Earth can change shape without breaking. Once that point is reached, the ice flows downhill, either as a tongue of ice filling a valley or as thick ice cap that flows out in directions from the highest central area where the most snow accumulates. The up down leads to the eventual melting of ice.

1. Which of the following does the passage mainly discuss?

2. Which of the following will cause density within the glacier to increase?

3. The word “bound” in line 9 is closest in meaning to

4. Which of the following will be lost is a glacier forms?

5. According to the passage, which of the following is the LEAST amount of time necessary for glacial ice to form?

6. The word “converted” in line 14 is closest in meaning to

7. What is the purpose of the material in paragraph three (lines 16-19)

8. In temperate glaciers, where is water found?

9. The word “it”  in line 21 refers to

10. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that a glacier

      Passage 32  

Aviculturists, people who raise birds for commercial sale, have not yet learned how to simulate the natural incubation of parrot eggs in the wild. They continue to look for better ways to increase egg production and to improve chick survival rates.

When parrots incubate their eggs in the wild, the temperature and humidity of the nest are controlled naturally. Heat is transferred from the bird’s skin to the top portion of the eggshell, leaving the sides and bottom of the egg at a cooler temperature. This temperature gradient may be vital to successful hatching. Nest construction can contribute to this temperature gradient. Nests of loosely arranged sticks, rocks, or dirt are cooler in temperature at the bottom where the egg contacts the nesting material. Such nests also act as humidity regulators by allowing rain to drain into the bottom sections of the nest so that the eggs are not in direct contact with the water. As the water that collects in the bottom of the nest evaporates, the water vapor rises and is heated by the incubating bird, which adds significant humidity to the incubation environment.

In artificial incubation programs, aviculturists remove eggs from the nests of parrots and incubate them under laboratory conditions. Most commercial incubators heat the eggs fairly evenly from top to bottom, thus ignoring the bird’s method of natural incubation, and perhaps reducing the viability and survivability of the hatching chicks. When incubators are not used, aviculturists sometimes suspend wooden boxes outdoors to use as nests in which to place eggs. In areas where weather can become cold after eggs are laid, it is very important to maintain a deep foundation of nesting material to act as insulator against the cold bottom of the box. If eggs rest against the wooden bottom in extremely cold weather conditions, they can become chilled to a point where the embryo can no longer survive. Similarly, these boxes should be protected from direct sunlight to avoid high temperatures that are also fatal to the growing embryo. Nesting material should be added in sufficient amounts to avoid both extreme temperature situations mentioned above and assure that the eggs have a soft, secure place to rest.

1. What is the main idea of the passage?

2. The word “They”  in line 2 refers to

3. According to paragraph 2, when the temperature of the sides and bottom of the egg are cooler than the top, then

4. According to paragraph 2, sticks, rocks, or dirt are used to

6. All of the following are part of a parrot’s incubation method EXCEPT

7. The word “suspend”  in line 19 is closest in meaning to

8. The word “fatal”  in line 25 is closest in meaning to

9. The word “secure” in line 27 is closest in meaning to

10. According to paragraph 3, a deep foundation of nesting material provides

11. Which of the following is a problem with commercial incubators?

12. Which of the following terms is defined in the passage?