READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Magnetic Therapy

A

Magnetic therapy, which is a $5-billion market worldwide, is a form of alternative medicine which claims that magnetic fields have healing powers. Magnetic devices that are claimed to be therapeutic include magnetic bracelets, insoles, wrist and knee bands, back and neck braces, and even pillows and mattresses. Their annual sales are estimated at $300 million in the United States and more than a billion dollars globally. They have been advertised to cure a vast array of ills, particularly pain.

B

The therapy works on the principle of balancing electrical energy in the body by pulsating magnetic waves through different parts of the body. The electrical currents generated by magnets increase the blood flow and oxygen which helps to heal many of the ailments. The natural effects of the Earth’s magnetic field are considered to play an essential role in the health of humans and animals. It is generally accepted that our body draws some benefit from the Earth’s magnetic field. To restore the balance within our body allows us to function at our optimum level. For example, when the first astronauts returned to earth sick, NASA concluded that their illness resulted from the lack of a planetary magnetic field in outer space. To resolve the problem, NASA placed magnets in the astronauts’ space suits and space travel vehicles, and astronauts have returned to Earth healthy ever since.

C

Historically it is reported that magnets have been around for an extremely long time. The therapeutic power of magnets was known to physicians in ancient Greece, Egypt and China over 4000 years ago, who used naturally magnetic rock – lodestone – to treat a variety of physical and psychological ailments. Cleopatra the beautiful Egyptian queen was probably the first celebrity to use magnets. It is documented that in order to prevent from aging, she slept on a Lodestone to keep her skin youthful. Ancient Romans also used magnet therapy to treat eye disease.

D

The popularity of magnet therapy in the United States began to rise during the 1800s and soared in the post-Civil War era. Sears-Roebuck advertised magnetic jewelry in its catalog for the healing of virtually any ailment. An Austrian psychoanalyst by the name of Wilhelm Reich immigrated to the United States in 1939 and researched the effects of electromagnetism on humans. Today, Germany, Japan, Israel, Russia and at least 45 other countries consider magnetic therapy to be an official medical procedure for the treatment of numerous ailments, including various inflammatory and neurological problems.

E

For those who practice magnetic therapy, strongly believe that certain ailments can be treated if the patient is exposed to magnetic fields while at the same time there is a strong resentment from the medical establishment and critics claim that most magnets don’t have the strength to affect the various organs and tissues within the body and it is a product of Pseudoscience and is not based on proper research and analysis. There are few reported complications of magnetic therapy and the World Health Organization says a low level of magnetic energy is not harmful. Documented side effects are not life-threatening and include pain, nausea and dizziness that disappeared when the magnets were removed. If considering magnet therapy, as with any medical treatment, it is always advisable to consult one’s regular physician first. Magnet therapy is gaining popularity; however, scientific evidence to support the success of this therapy is lacking. More scientifically sound studies are needed in order to fully understand the effects that magnets can have on the body and the possible benefits or dangers that could result from their use.

F

Researchers at Baylor University Medical Center recently conducted a double-blind study on the use of concentric-circle magnets to relieve chronic pain in 50 post-polio patients. A static magnetic device or a placebo device was applied to the patient’s skin for 45 minutes. The patients were asked to rate how much pain they experienced when a “trigger point was touched.” The researchers reported that the 29 patients exposed to the magnetic device achieved lower pain scores than did the 21 who were exposed to the placebo device. However, this study had significant flaws in their design. Although the groups were said to be selected randomly, the ratio of women to men in the experimental group was twice that of the control group; the age of the placebo group was four years higher than that of the control group; there were just one brief exposure and no systematic follow-up of patients.

G

Magnet therapy is gaining popularity; however, scientific evidence to support the success of this therapy is lacking. More scientifically sound studies are needed in order to fully understand the effects that magnets can have on the body and the possible benefits or dangers that could result from their use.

Questions 1-6

Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-G from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

List of headings

i           Earth itself as the biggest magnet

ii          The commercial magnetic products

iii         Utilize the power from the natural magnetic field

iv         Early application of the magnet

v          Brief introduction of how the magnetic therapy works

vi         pain-reducing effect

vii        Arguments for and against the therapy

viii       An experiment on post-polio patients

ix         Conditions of magnet use today

1   Paragraph A

2   Paragraph B

3   Paragraph C

4   Paragraph D

5   Paragraph E

6   Paragraph F

Questions 7-8

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 7-8 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the lodestone benefits in ancient times are mentioned by the writer in the text?

A   make a facial mask

B   diminish the energy

C   improve eyesight

D   keep a younger appearance

E   remove dizziness 

Questions 9-10

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 9-10 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO weakness of the Baylor research does the writer present?

A   The number of subjects involved was not enough.

B   There was so further evidence to support.

C   The patients were at the same age.

D   The device used in the experiment did not work properly.

E   The gender ratio was not in proportion

Questions 11-13

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.

Write the correct letters, A-F, in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

11   The first NASA astronauts’ sickness

12   According to the WHO, under the physician’s instruction, a small amount of magnetic energy

13   The author holds that in order to fully understand the magnetic effects, we

A          has no negative side effect.

B          resulted from physical ailment.

C          should have more sophisticated studies

D         is exposed to the placebo device.

E          must select the subjects randomly.

F          came from the absence of a magnetic field.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. 

When the Tulip Bubble Burst

Tulips are spring-blooming perennials that grow from bulbs. Depending on the species, tulip plants can grow as short as 4 inches (10 cm) or as high as 28 inches (71 cm). The tulip’s large flowers usually bloom on scapes or sub-scapose stems that lack bracts. Most tulips produce only one flower per stem, but a few species bear multiple flowers on their scapes (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica). The showy, generally cup or star-shaped tulip flower has three petals and three sepals, which are often termed tepals because they are nearly identical. These six tepals are often marked on the interior surface near the bases with darker colorings. Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colors, except pure blue (several tulips with “blue” in the name have a faint violet hue)

A

Long before anyone ever heard of Qualcomm, CMGI, Cisco Systems, or the other high-tech stocks that have soared during the current bull market, there was Semper Augustus. Both more prosaic and more subline than any stock or bond, it was a tulip of extraordinary beauty, its midnight-blue petals topped by a band of pure white and accented with crimson flares. To denizens of 17th century Holland, little was as desirable.

B

Around 1624, the Amsterdam man who owned the only dozen specimens was offered 3,000 guilders for one bulb. While there’s no accurate way to render that in today’s greenbacks, the sum was roughly equal to the annual income of a wealthy merchant. (A few years later, Rembrandt received about half that amount for painting The Night Watch.) Yet the bulb’s owner, whose name is now lost to history, nixed the offer.

C

Who was crazier, the tulip lover who refused to sell for a small fortune or the one who was willing to splurge. That’s a question that springs to mind after reading Tulipmania: The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused by British journalist Mike Dash. In recent years, as investors have intentionally forgotten everything they learned in Investing 101 in order to load up on unproven, unprofitable dot-com issues, tulip mania has been invoked frequently. In this concise, artfully written account, Dash tells the real history behind the buzzword and in doing so, offers a cautionary late for our times.

D

The Dutch were not the first to go gaga over the tulip. Long before the first tulip bloomed in Europe – in Bavaria, it turns out, in 1559 – the flower had enchanted the Persians and bewitched the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. It was in Holland, however, that the passion for tulips found its most fertile ground, for reasons that had little to do with horticulture.

E

Holland in the early 17th century was embarking on its Golden Age. Resources that had just a few years earlier gone toward fighting for independence from Spain now flowed into commerce. Amsterdam merchants were at the center of the lucrative East Indies trade, where a single voyage could yield profits of 400%. They displayed their success by erecting grand estates surrounded by flower gardens. The Dutch population seemed torn by two contradictory impulses: a horror of living beyond one’s means and the love of a long shot.

F

Enter the tulip. “It is impossible to comprehend the tulip mania without understanding just how different tulips were from every other flower known to horticulturists in the 17th century,” says Dash. “The colors they exhibited were more intense and more concentrated than those of ordinary plants.” Despite the outlandish prices commanded by rare bulbs, ordinary tulips were sold by the pound. Around 1630, however, a new type of tulip fancier appeared, lured by tales of fat profits. These “florists,” or professional tulip traders, sought out flower lovers and speculators alike. But if the supply of tulip buyers grew quickly, the supply of bulbs did not. The tulip was a conspirator in the supply squeeze: It takes seven years to grow one from seed. And while bulbs can produce two or three clones, or “offsets,” annually, the mother bulb only lasts a few years.

G

Bulb prices rose steadily throughout the 1630s, as ever more speculators wedged into the market. Weavers and farmers mortgaged whatever they could to raise cash to begin trading. In 1633, a farmhouse in Hoorn changed hands for three rare bulbs. By 1636 any tulip-even bulbs recently considered garbage – could be sold off, often for hundreds of guilders. A futures market for bulbs existed, and tulip traders could be found conducting their business in hundreds of Dutch taverns. Tulipmania reached its peak during the winter of 1636-37 when some bulbs were changing hands ten times in a day. The zenith came early that winter, at an auction to benefit seven orphans whose only asset was 70 fine tulips left by their father. One, a rare Violetten Admirael van Enkhuizen bulb that was about to split in two, sold for 5,200 guilders, the all-time record. All told, the flowers brought in nearly 53,000 guilders.

H

Soon after, the tulip market crashed utterly, spectacularly. It began in Haarlem, at a routine bulb auction when, for the first time, the greater fool refused to show up and pay. Within days, the panic had spread across the country. Despite the efforts of traders to prop up demand, the market for tulips evaporated. Flowers that had commanded 5,000 guilders a few weeks before now fetched one-hundredth that amount. Tulipmania is not without flaws. Dash dwells too long on the tulip’s migration from Asia to Holland. But he does a service with this illuminating, accessible account of incredible financial folly.

I

Tulipmania differed in one crucial aspect from the dot-com craze that grips our attention today: even at its height, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, well-established in 1630, wouldn’t touch tulips. “The speculation in tulip bulbs always existed at the margins of Dutch economic life,” Dash writes. After the market crashed, a compromise was brokered that let most traders settle their debts for a fraction of their liability. The overall fallout on the Dutch economy was negligible. Will we say the same when Wall Street’s current obsession finally runs its course?

Questions 14-18

The Reading Passage has nine paragraphs A-I.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-I, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14   Difference between bubble burst impacts by tulip and by high-tech shares.

15   Spread of tulip before 17th century

16   Indication of money offered for the rare bulb in the 17th century

17   Tulip was treated as money in Holland

18   The comparison made between a tulip and other plants

Questions 19-23

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE               if the statement is true

FALSE              if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN     if the information is not given in the passage

19   In 1624, all the tulip collection belonged to a man in Amsterdam.

20   Tulip was first planted in Holland according to this passage.

21   The popularity of Tulip in Holland was much higher than any other countries in the 17th century.

22   Holland was the most wealthy country in the world in the 17th century.

23   From 1630, Amsterdam Stock Exchange started to regulate Tulips exchange market.

Questions 24-27

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage.

Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 24-27 on your answer sheet.

Dutch concentrated on gaining independence by 24…………………………. against Spain in the early 17th century; consequently, spare resources entered the area of 25………………………

Prosperous traders demonstrated their status by building great 26………………………. and with gardens in surroundings. Attracted by the success of profit on tulip, traders kept looking for 27…………………….. and speculator for sale.