Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word(s) OPPOSITE in meaning to the underlined word(s) in each of the following questions.

Polluted water and increased water temperatures have driven many species to the verge of extinction.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 23 to 27. Fill in the appropriate word in question 23

  We are all too well aware that the extinction of animal and plant species is one of the biggest and most horrifying threats (23) _____________ our planet these days. Having said that, there has recently

been some good news out of Russia regarding something called regeneration - a(n) (24) _____________ solution to this ever-growing problem.

  Regeneration involves (25) _____________ tissue from a plant or animal that has become extinct and ‘bringing it back to life’. In recent Russian experiments, scientists took fruit and seeds from the underground burrow of a long-dead Siberian squirrel and process to regenerate a beautiful flower called the Silene stenophylla. To date, it is the oldest plant to be produced from the innovative regeneration (26)____________  

  Understandably, experts are over the moon about their success as it shows once and for all that tissue can survive ice conservation for thousands of years. Those who participated in the regeneration of the flower are pleased and are now hoping to find prehistoric squirrel tissue or perhaps even (27) _____________ tissue from the great woolly mammoth, which could lead to the resurrection of those two species.

[From: STARLIGHT 8, Workbook, Express Publishing. 2010]

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 23 to 27. Fill in the appropriate word in question 23

  We are all too well aware that the extinction of animal and plant species is one of the biggest and most horrifying threats (23) _____________ our planet these days. Having said that, there has recently

been some good news out of Russia regarding something called regeneration - a(n) (24) _____________ solution to this ever-growing problem.

  Regeneration involves (25) _____________ tissue from a plant or animal that has become extinct and ‘bringing it back to life’. In recent Russian experiments, scientists took fruit and seeds from the underground burrow of a long-dead Siberian squirrel and process to regenerate a beautiful flower called the Silene stenophylla. To date, it is the oldest plant to be produced from the innovative regeneration (26)____________  

  Understandably, experts are over the moon about their success as it shows once and for all that tissue can survive ice conservation for thousands of years. Those who participated in the regeneration of the flower are pleased and are now hoping to find prehistoric squirrel tissue or perhaps even (27) _____________ tissue from the great woolly mammoth, which could lead to the resurrection of those two species.

[From: STARLIGHT 8, Workbook, Express Publishing. 2010]

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 35 to 42.

  The idea of preserving biological diversity gives most people a warm feeling inside. But what, exactly, is diversity? And which kind is most worth preserving? It may be anathema to save-the-lot environmentalists who hate setting such priorities, but academics are starting to cook up answers.

  Andrew Solow, a mathematician at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and his colleagues argue that in the eyes of conservation, all species should not be equal. Even more controversially, they suggest that preserving the rarest is not always the best approach. Their measure of diversity is the amount of evolutionary distance between species. They reckon that if choices must be made, then the number of times that cousins are removed from one another should be one of the criteria.

  This makes sense from both a practical and an aesthetic point of view. Close relatives have many genes in common. If those genes might be medically or agriculturally valuable, saving one is nearly as good as saving both. And different forms are more interesting to admire and study than lots of things that look the same. Dr Solow’s group illustrates its thesis with an example. Six species of crane are at some risk of extinction. Breeding in captivity might save them. But suppose there were only enough money to protect three. Which ones should be picked?

  The genetic distances between 14 species of cranes, including the six at risk, have already been established using a technique known as DNA hybridisation. The group estimated how likely it was that each of these 14 species would become extinct in the next 50 years. Unendangered species were assigned a 10% chance of meeting the Darwinian reaper-man; the most vulnerable, a 90% chance. Captive breeding was assumed to reduce an otherwise endangered species’ risk to the 10% level of the safest. Dr Solow’s computer permed all possible combinations of three from six and came to the conclusion that protecting the Siberian, white-naped and black-necked cranes gave the smallest likely loss of biological diversity over the next five decades. The other three had close relatives in little need of protection. Even if they became extinct, most of their genes would be saved.

  Building on the work of this group, Martin Weitzman, of Harvard University, argues that conservation policy needs to take account not only of some firm measure of the genetic relationships of species to each other and their likelihood of survival, but also the costs of preserving them. Where species are equally important in genetic terms, and - an important and improbable precondition - where the protection of one species can be assured at the expense of another, he argues for making safe species safer, rather than endangered species less endangered.

  In practice, it is difficult to choose between species. Most of those at risk - especially plants, the group most likely to yield useful medicines - are under threat because their habitats are in trouble, not because they are being shot, or plucked, to extinction. Nor can conservationists choose among the millions of species that theory predicts must exist, but that have not yet been classified by the biologists assigned to that tedious task.

  This is not necessarily cause for despair. At the moment, the usual way to save the genes in these creatures is to find the bits of the world with the largest number of species and try to protect them from the bulldozers. What economists require from biologists are more sophisticated ways to estimate the diversity of groups of organisms that happen to live together, as well as those which are related to each other. With clearer goals established, economic theory can then tell environmentalists where to go.

[from The Economist]

Most species are endangered because _____________.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 28 to 34.

  Soichiro Honda was bom in 1906 in a small village in Japan. It was so small that it didn’t even have electricity. His family was poor. Soichiro had eight brothers and sisters. Sadly, five of them died when they were young because they did not have good medical care. When Soichiro was eight years old, he saw his first automobile. He was amazed by it. For the next 50 years, he loved machines on wheels. When he was 15 years old, Soichiro left his village to work at an auto repair shop in Tokyo. It was then that Honda discovered motorcycles. He spent all of his free time fixing and riding motorcycles. He returned to his village six years later to open his own garage. Soon he owned several shops and had over 50 employees.

  At the same time, he began to build and race motorcycles and cars. Honda loved to race, and he became one of Japan’s most competitive drivers. In 1936, his race car crashed while he was driving 100 miles per hour. Half of Honda’s face was crushed, and he had other serious injuries. It took him a year and a half to recover. After this, his family begged him to give up racing. He looked for a less dangerous job and finally decided to become a manufacturer.

  At first, he manufactured engine parts. The Japanese navy used a lot of his engine parts in World War II. In 1948, after the war, he started the Honda Motor Company. He started the company with only $3,300. He made his first machines from engine parts that the military did not need after the war. These machines were not real motorcycles; they were bicycles with motors. People bought them because they needed a reliable form of transportation. As Honda’s business grew, he began to make different types of motorcycles. By 1950, his motorcycles were selling all over Japan. But there were 50 other motorcycle makers in Japan at the time. In 1958, Honda designed a lightweight motorcycle called the Super Cub. It was a huge success and Honda made a lot of money. Two years later, Honda built the world’s biggest motorcycle factory in Japan.

  By the 1960s, the Super Cub was popular all over Asia. But Honda wanted the motorcycle to be popular all over the world. In Europe, he put his motorcycles in difficult races to show how good they were. In the United States, he tried a different method. He used a magazine ad with the words “You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda." It showed ordinary Americans such as students, businessmen, and older people all riding happily on the Honda Super Cub. The ad appeared in many popular magazines.

  Readers who had never ridden a motorcycle saw the ad. The ad showed that motorcycles were not just for crazy young people who wore black leather jackets. They were good for other people too. The company sold thousands of motorcycles to new riders. Honda then started to put the ads on television. This was also very successful. For example, he put an ad for his motorcycle on during the Academy Awards program. Millions of people watched that program, and on the next day, sales of the motorcycle went up tremendously. By 1968, Honda had sold 1 million motorcycles in the United States.

  In 1963, his company started to make cars. In 1972, it produced the Civic-, the next year, the Accord; and then in 1978, the Prelude. Soon, the company was one of the world’s biggest automobile makers. Honda was also famous for his business style. He believed that workers and bosses should have a close relationship. He also thought it was important to encourage workers to do their best.

  In 1973, Soichiro Honda retired as president of his company. He died in 1991. Honda was very important to Japan’s recent history. He and many other business leaders helped make Japan into a leading industrial nation.

Honda’s business was _____________.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions.

_____________ advised on what and how to prepare for the interview, he might have got the job.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 35 to 42.

  The idea of preserving biological diversity gives most people a warm feeling inside. But what, exactly, is diversity? And which kind is most worth preserving? It may be anathema to save-the-lot environmentalists who hate setting such priorities, but academics are starting to cook up answers.

  Andrew Solow, a mathematician at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and his colleagues argue that in the eyes of conservation, all species should not be equal. Even more controversially, they suggest that preserving the rarest is not always the best approach. Their measure of diversity is the amount of evolutionary distance between species. They reckon that if choices must be made, then the number of times that cousins are removed from one another should be one of the criteria.

  This makes sense from both a practical and an aesthetic point of view. Close relatives have many genes in common. If those genes might be medically or agriculturally valuable, saving one is nearly as good as saving both. And different forms are more interesting to admire and study than lots of things that look the same. Dr Solow’s group illustrates its thesis with an example. Six species of crane are at some risk of extinction. Breeding in captivity might save them. But suppose there were only enough money to protect three. Which ones should be picked?

  The genetic distances between 14 species of cranes, including the six at risk, have already been established using a technique known as DNA hybridisation. The group estimated how likely it was that each of these 14 species would become extinct in the next 50 years. Unendangered species were assigned a 10% chance of meeting the Darwinian reaper-man; the most vulnerable, a 90% chance. Captive breeding was assumed to reduce an otherwise endangered species’ risk to the 10% level of the safest. Dr Solow’s computer permed all possible combinations of three from six and came to the conclusion that protecting the Siberian, white-naped and black-necked cranes gave the smallest likely loss of biological diversity over the next five decades. The other three had close relatives in little need of protection. Even if they became extinct, most of their genes would be saved.

  Building on the work of this group, Martin Weitzman, of Harvard University, argues that conservation policy needs to take account not only of some firm measure of the genetic relationships of species to each other and their likelihood of survival, but also the costs of preserving them. Where species are equally important in genetic terms, and - an important and improbable precondition - where the protection of one species can be assured at the expense of another, he argues for making safe species safer, rather than endangered species less endangered.

  In practice, it is difficult to choose between species. Most of those at risk - especially plants, the group most likely to yield useful medicines - are under threat because their habitats are in trouble, not because they are being shot, or plucked, to extinction. Nor can conservationists choose among the millions of species that theory predicts must exist, but that have not yet been classified by the biologists assigned to that tedious task.

  This is not necessarily cause for despair. At the moment, the usual way to save the genes in these creatures is to find the bits of the world with the largest number of species and try to protect them from the bulldozers. What economists require from biologists are more sophisticated ways to estimate the diversity of groups of organisms that happen to live together, as well as those which are related to each other. With clearer goals established, economic theory can then tell environmentalists where to go.

[from The Economist]

Endangered species of cranes can be saved by _____________

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 28 to 34.

  Soichiro Honda was bom in 1906 in a small village in Japan. It was so small that it didn’t even have electricity. His family was poor. Soichiro had eight brothers and sisters. Sadly, five of them died when they were young because they did not have good medical care. When Soichiro was eight years old, he saw his first automobile. He was amazed by it. For the next 50 years, he loved machines on wheels. When he was 15 years old, Soichiro left his village to work at an auto repair shop in Tokyo. It was then that Honda discovered motorcycles. He spent all of his free time fixing and riding motorcycles. He returned to his village six years later to open his own garage. Soon he owned several shops and had over 50 employees.

  At the same time, he began to build and race motorcycles and cars. Honda loved to race, and he became one of Japan’s most competitive drivers. In 1936, his race car crashed while he was driving 100 miles per hour. Half of Honda’s face was crushed, and he had other serious injuries. It took him a year and a half to recover. After this, his family begged him to give up racing. He looked for a less dangerous job and finally decided to become a manufacturer.

  At first, he manufactured engine parts. The Japanese navy used a lot of his engine parts in World War II. In 1948, after the war, he started the Honda Motor Company. He started the company with only $3,300. He made his first machines from engine parts that the military did not need after the war. These machines were not real motorcycles; they were bicycles with motors. People bought them because they needed a reliable form of transportation. As Honda’s business grew, he began to make different types of motorcycles. By 1950, his motorcycles were selling all over Japan. But there were 50 other motorcycle makers in Japan at the time. In 1958, Honda designed a lightweight motorcycle called the Super Cub. It was a huge success and Honda made a lot of money. Two years later, Honda built the world’s biggest motorcycle factory in Japan.

  By the 1960s, the Super Cub was popular all over Asia. But Honda wanted the motorcycle to be popular all over the world. In Europe, he put his motorcycles in difficult races to show how good they were. In the United States, he tried a different method. He used a magazine ad with the words “You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda." It showed ordinary Americans such as students, businessmen, and older people all riding happily on the Honda Super Cub. The ad appeared in many popular magazines.

  Readers who had never ridden a motorcycle saw the ad. The ad showed that motorcycles were not just for crazy young people who wore black leather jackets. They were good for other people too. The company sold thousands of motorcycles to new riders. Honda then started to put the ads on television. This was also very successful. For example, he put an ad for his motorcycle on during the Academy Awards program. Millions of people watched that program, and on the next day, sales of the motorcycle went up tremendously. By 1968, Honda had sold 1 million motorcycles in the United States.

  In 1963, his company started to make cars. In 1972, it produced the Civic-, the next year, the Accord; and then in 1978, the Prelude. Soon, the company was one of the world’s biggest automobile makers. Honda was also famous for his business style. He believed that workers and bosses should have a close relationship. He also thought it was important to encourage workers to do their best.

  In 1973, Soichiro Honda retired as president of his company. He died in 1991. Honda was very important to Japan’s recent history. He and many other business leaders helped make Japan into a leading industrial nation.

Soichiro Honda _____________.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 28 to 34.

  Soichiro Honda was bom in 1906 in a small village in Japan. It was so small that it didn’t even have electricity. His family was poor. Soichiro had eight brothers and sisters. Sadly, five of them died when they were young because they did not have good medical care. When Soichiro was eight years old, he saw his first automobile. He was amazed by it. For the next 50 years, he loved machines on wheels. When he was 15 years old, Soichiro left his village to work at an auto repair shop in Tokyo. It was then that Honda discovered motorcycles. He spent all of his free time fixing and riding motorcycles. He returned to his village six years later to open his own garage. Soon he owned several shops and had over 50 employees.

  At the same time, he began to build and race motorcycles and cars. Honda loved to race, and he became one of Japan’s most competitive drivers. In 1936, his race car crashed while he was driving 100 miles per hour. Half of Honda’s face was crushed, and he had other serious injuries. It took him a year and a half to recover. After this, his family begged him to give up racing. He looked for a less dangerous job and finally decided to become a manufacturer.

  At first, he manufactured engine parts. The Japanese navy used a lot of his engine parts in World War II. In 1948, after the war, he started the Honda Motor Company. He started the company with only $3,300. He made his first machines from engine parts that the military did not need after the war. These machines were not real motorcycles; they were bicycles with motors. People bought them because they needed a reliable form of transportation. As Honda’s business grew, he began to make different types of motorcycles. By 1950, his motorcycles were selling all over Japan. But there were 50 other motorcycle makers in Japan at the time. In 1958, Honda designed a lightweight motorcycle called the Super Cub. It was a huge success and Honda made a lot of money. Two years later, Honda built the world’s biggest motorcycle factory in Japan.

  By the 1960s, the Super Cub was popular all over Asia. But Honda wanted the motorcycle to be popular all over the world. In Europe, he put his motorcycles in difficult races to show how good they were. In the United States, he tried a different method. He used a magazine ad with the words “You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda." It showed ordinary Americans such as students, businessmen, and older people all riding happily on the Honda Super Cub. The ad appeared in many popular magazines.

  Readers who had never ridden a motorcycle saw the ad. The ad showed that motorcycles were not just for crazy young people who wore black leather jackets. They were good for other people too. The company sold thousands of motorcycles to new riders. Honda then started to put the ads on television. This was also very successful. For example, he put an ad for his motorcycle on during the Academy Awards program. Millions of people watched that program, and on the next day, sales of the motorcycle went up tremendously. By 1968, Honda had sold 1 million motorcycles in the United States.

  In 1963, his company started to make cars. In 1972, it produced the Civic-, the next year, the Accord; and then in 1978, the Prelude. Soon, the company was one of the world’s biggest automobile makers. Honda was also famous for his business style. He believed that workers and bosses should have a close relationship. He also thought it was important to encourage workers to do their best.

  In 1973, Soichiro Honda retired as president of his company. He died in 1991. Honda was very important to Japan’s recent history. He and many other business leaders helped make Japan into a leading industrial nation.

What happened to Honda’s race car in 1936?

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 35 to 42.

  The idea of preserving biological diversity gives most people a warm feeling inside. But what, exactly, is diversity? And which kind is most worth preserving? It may be anathema to save-the-lot environmentalists who hate setting such priorities, but academics are starting to cook up answers.

  Andrew Solow, a mathematician at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and his colleagues argue that in the eyes of conservation, all species should not be equal. Even more controversially, they suggest that preserving the rarest is not always the best approach. Their measure of diversity is the amount of evolutionary distance between species. They reckon that if choices must be made, then the number of times that cousins are removed from one another should be one of the criteria.

  This makes sense from both a practical and an aesthetic point of view. Close relatives have many genes in common. If those genes might be medically or agriculturally valuable, saving one is nearly as good as saving both. And different forms are more interesting to admire and study than lots of things that look the same. Dr Solow’s group illustrates its thesis with an example. Six species of crane are at some risk of extinction. Breeding in captivity might save them. But suppose there were only enough money to protect three. Which ones should be picked?

  The genetic distances between 14 species of cranes, including the six at risk, have already been established using a technique known as DNA hybridisation. The group estimated how likely it was that each of these 14 species would become extinct in the next 50 years. Unendangered species were assigned a 10% chance of meeting the Darwinian reaper-man; the most vulnerable, a 90% chance. Captive breeding was assumed to reduce an otherwise endangered species’ risk to the 10% level of the safest. Dr Solow’s computer permed all possible combinations of three from six and came to the conclusion that protecting the Siberian, white-naped and black-necked cranes gave the smallest likely loss of biological diversity over the next five decades. The other three had close relatives in little need of protection. Even if they became extinct, most of their genes would be saved.

  Building on the work of this group, Martin Weitzman, of Harvard University, argues that conservation policy needs to take account not only of some firm measure of the genetic relationships of species to each other and their likelihood of survival, but also the costs of preserving them. Where species are equally important in genetic terms, and - an important and improbable precondition - where the protection of one species can be assured at the expense of another, he argues for making safe species safer, rather than endangered species less endangered.

  In practice, it is difficult to choose between species. Most of those at risk - especially plants, the group most likely to yield useful medicines - are under threat because their habitats are in trouble, not because they are being shot, or plucked, to extinction. Nor can conservationists choose among the millions of species that theory predicts must exist, but that have not yet been classified by the biologists assigned to that tedious task.

  This is not necessarily cause for despair. At the moment, the usual way to save the genes in these creatures is to find the bits of the world with the largest number of species and try to protect them from the bulldozers. What economists require from biologists are more sophisticated ways to estimate the diversity of groups of organisms that happen to live together, as well as those which are related to each other. With clearer goals established, economic theory can then tell environmentalists where to go.

[from The Economist]

Dr Solow believes that _____________.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 35 to 42.

  The idea of preserving biological diversity gives most people a warm feeling inside. But what, exactly, is diversity? And which kind is most worth preserving? It may be anathema to save-the-lot environmentalists who hate setting such priorities, but academics are starting to cook up answers.

  Andrew Solow, a mathematician at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and his colleagues argue that in the eyes of conservation, all species should not be equal. Even more controversially, they suggest that preserving the rarest is not always the best approach. Their measure of diversity is the amount of evolutionary distance between species. They reckon that if choices must be made, then the number of times that cousins are removed from one another should be one of the criteria.

  This makes sense from both a practical and an aesthetic point of view. Close relatives have many genes in common. If those genes might be medically or agriculturally valuable, saving one is nearly as good as saving both. And different forms are more interesting to admire and study than lots of things that look the same. Dr Solow’s group illustrates its thesis with an example. Six species of crane are at some risk of extinction. Breeding in captivity might save them. But suppose there were only enough money to protect three. Which ones should be picked?

  The genetic distances between 14 species of cranes, including the six at risk, have already been established using a technique known as DNA hybridisation. The group estimated how likely it was that each of these 14 species would become extinct in the next 50 years. Unendangered species were assigned a 10% chance of meeting the Darwinian reaper-man; the most vulnerable, a 90% chance. Captive breeding was assumed to reduce an otherwise endangered species’ risk to the 10% level of the safest. Dr Solow’s computer permed all possible combinations of three from six and came to the conclusion that protecting the Siberian, white-naped and black-necked cranes gave the smallest likely loss of biological diversity over the next five decades. The other three had close relatives in little need of protection. Even if they became extinct, most of their genes would be saved.

  Building on the work of this group, Martin Weitzman, of Harvard University, argues that conservation policy needs to take account not only of some firm measure of the genetic relationships of species to each other and their likelihood of survival, but also the costs of preserving them. Where species are equally important in genetic terms, and - an important and improbable precondition - where the protection of one species can be assured at the expense of another, he argues for making safe species safer, rather than endangered species less endangered.

  In practice, it is difficult to choose between species. Most of those at risk - especially plants, the group most likely to yield useful medicines - are under threat because their habitats are in trouble, not because they are being shot, or plucked, to extinction. Nor can conservationists choose among the millions of species that theory predicts must exist, but that have not yet been classified by the biologists assigned to that tedious task.

  This is not necessarily cause for despair. At the moment, the usual way to save the genes in these creatures is to find the bits of the world with the largest number of species and try to protect them from the bulldozers. What economists require from biologists are more sophisticated ways to estimate the diversity of groups of organisms that happen to live together, as well as those which are related to each other. With clearer goals established, economic theory can then tell environmentalists where to go.

[from The Economist]

According to the writer what has to be done first is for _____________.

Mark the letter A, Bf C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the sentence that best completes each of the following exchanges.

Peter is telling Alex about his father’s health condition.

Peter: “My father’s much better now.” - Alex: “_____________”

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word that differs from the other three in the position of primary stress in each of the following questions

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 35 to 42.

  The idea of preserving biological diversity gives most people a warm feeling inside. But what, exactly, is diversity? And which kind is most worth preserving? It may be anathema to save-the-lot environmentalists who hate setting such priorities, but academics are starting to cook up answers.

  Andrew Solow, a mathematician at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and his colleagues argue that in the eyes of conservation, all species should not be equal. Even more controversially, they suggest that preserving the rarest is not always the best approach. Their measure of diversity is the amount of evolutionary distance between species. They reckon that if choices must be made, then the number of times that cousins are removed from one another should be one of the criteria.

  This makes sense from both a practical and an aesthetic point of view. Close relatives have many genes in common. If those genes might be medically or agriculturally valuable, saving one is nearly as good as saving both. And different forms are more interesting to admire and study than lots of things that look the same. Dr Solow’s group illustrates its thesis with an example. Six species of crane are at some risk of extinction. Breeding in captivity might save them. But suppose there were only enough money to protect three. Which ones should be picked?

  The genetic distances between 14 species of cranes, including the six at risk, have already been established using a technique known as DNA hybridisation. The group estimated how likely it was that each of these 14 species would become extinct in the next 50 years. Unendangered species were assigned a 10% chance of meeting the Darwinian reaper-man; the most vulnerable, a 90% chance. Captive breeding was assumed to reduce an otherwise endangered species’ risk to the 10% level of the safest. Dr Solow’s computer permed all possible combinations of three from six and came to the conclusion that protecting the Siberian, white-naped and black-necked cranes gave the smallest likely loss of biological diversity over the next five decades. The other three had close relatives in little need of protection. Even if they became extinct, most of their genes would be saved.

  Building on the work of this group, Martin Weitzman, of Harvard University, argues that conservation policy needs to take account not only of some firm measure of the genetic relationships of species to each other and their likelihood of survival, but also the costs of preserving them. Where species are equally important in genetic terms, and - an important and improbable precondition - where the protection of one species can be assured at the expense of another, he argues for making safe species safer, rather than endangered species less endangered.

  In practice, it is difficult to choose between species. Most of those at risk - especially plants, the group most likely to yield useful medicines - are under threat because their habitats are in trouble, not because they are being shot, or plucked, to extinction. Nor can conservationists choose among the millions of species that theory predicts must exist, but that have not yet been classified by the biologists assigned to that tedious task.

  This is not necessarily cause for despair. At the moment, the usual way to save the genes in these creatures is to find the bits of the world with the largest number of species and try to protect them from the bulldozers. What economists require from biologists are more sophisticated ways to estimate the diversity of groups of organisms that happen to live together, as well as those which are related to each other. With clearer goals established, economic theory can then tell environmentalists where to go.

[from The Economist]

Dr Weitzman believes that if two species are equally important genetically we should protect _____________.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions.

As a student, you envied your friends who were working and earning their own money, _____________?

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the underlined part that needs correction in each of the following questions.

The improvement (A) for water standards (B) over (C) the last 50 years has been (D) very great.