Part 1
Early Photographic Processes
Early Photographic Processes
The decades following photography’s experimental beginnings in the 1820s and the public availability of a practical photographic process from 1839 were characterized by the introduction of a wide range of photographic processes. The following are a few of the most significant.
Announced in Paris in 1839, the daguerreotype was the first publicly available photographic process. The daguerreotype image was created on a silvered metal plate exposed to iodine fumes, forming a light-sensitive surface of silver iodide. Development was achieved by exposing the plate to fumes of heated mercury and then fixing the image in a salt solution. The daguerreotype produced remarkably sharp pictures, but unlike competing processes, each daguerreotype was unique. This proved to be its major drawback, compared to other processes from which unlimited copies could be made.
One of the oldest and longest surviving photographic processes, the cyanotype or blueprint, was invented by Sir John Herschel in 1840, using a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide to produce a light-sensitive paper. As a relatively simple process to prepare and manipulate -- it required no development or fixing other than washing -- it was popular among amateurs throughout the nineteenth century and has also been widely used by engineers and architects for reproducing technical drawings (blueprints).
William Henry Fox Talbot’s calotype process, the first practical negative-positive photographic process, was patented by him in 1841. A sheet of good quality paper was first treated with light-sensitive silver compounds before exposure in the camera. This produced an image in reverse, known as a negative, which was then developed in gallo-nitrate of silver and fixed. This concept of photography, allowing the production of an unlimited number of prints from a single image, has formed the basis of photographic practice until recently, when it started being challenged by digital imagery. The calotype negative was the subject of many refinements in the 1840s and 50s, and it was common practice for photographers to apply heated wax in order to increase printing transparency and lessen the visibility of the paper fibres.
Frederick Scott Archer’s wet collodion process, announced in 1851, became the standard photographic process for both amateurs and professionals from the mid-1850s until the early 1880s. The process proved immediately popular, and within a decade had superseded both the daguerreotype and the calotype processes. To prepare the negative for exposure, a sheet of glass was coated with a solution of iodised collodion (a syrupy liquid composed of soluble gun-cotton, ether and alcohol) and then made light-sensitive by immersion in a bath of silver nitrate. Known as a wet process because the glass negative required sensitising, exposing and processing while the chemicals were still damp, it required significant skill to manipulate, but produced a negative of unsurpassed sharpness and a broad tonal range.
The albumen print, announced by the French photographer and publisher Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Évrard in 1850, was the most widespread print medium in use between the mid-1850s and the 1890s. While the printing process was chemically similar to an earlier process which was called the ‘salted paper process,’ the albumen print was generally distinguishable by the glossy sheen imparted by a preliminary sizing of the paper with albumen (egg white) and salt. After the albumen coating had been applied, the paper was made light sensitive by the addition of silver nitrate and printed in contact with the negative. The fixed print could then be toned to create a wide variety of colours, ranging from purple-black to a rich chocolate brown. Although it continued to be used well into the twentieth century, its popularity declined after the mid-1890s, in favour of a variety of manufactured papers.
The fact that all silver-based photographic images tended to fade was a source of concern from the earliest days of photography, and considerable research was carried out in attempts to produce permanent images. Perhaps the most successful of these was the carbon process. First patented by A. L. Poitevin in 1855, the process utilised the fact that gelatin mixed with an alkaline bichromate becomes insoluble when exposed to light. When printing from a negative, those parts of the image representing shadow tones were hardened by the exposure to light, while light areas, protected from exposure, remained unhardened and could be subsequently washed away. Carbon and other pigments could be used as colouring agents to obtain an almost unlimited range of tones in the final image. Because the process does not employ compounds derived from silver, the resulting image is less likely to fade and was widely used in book illustration in the 1870s and 1880s.
Questions 1--7
Complete the table below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
| Process | Advantage | Disadvantage |
|---|---|---|
| daguerreotype | images were very 1 | each image was 2 |
| cyanotype | was comparatively 3 to use | |
| calotype | first process which created an image called a 4, from which unlimited copies could be made | |
| wet collodion process | produced high-quality images | needed considerable 5 to use |
| albumen print | produced glossy images in a range of 6 | |
| carbon process | produced permanent images because it did not use any products based on 7 |
Questions 8--13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
8. The cyanotype has proved helpful in professional fields outside that of photography.
9. The calotype process was modified and improved upon a number of times in the years following its invention.
10. The wet collodion process took many years to achieve success.
11. From the mid-1850s to the 1890s, more photographers used the albumen print process than any other print medium.
12. The inventor of the carbon process solved a long-standing problem by taking advantage of a particular feature of gelatin.
13. The carbon process greatly increased the sales of illustrated books during the 1870s and 1890s.
Part 2
The Remarkable Power of Placebos
The Remarkable Power of Placebos
A It’s one of our most powerful medical treatments, and certainly our most widely effective. In recent years, it’s been found to help eliminate or lessen the symptoms associated with clinical depression, irritable bowel syndrome, panic attacks, coughing, and ADHD, among other conditions. The name of this wonderful treatment? It’s the ‘placebo effect,’ the remarkable power of the human brain to unconsciously influence the functioning and perception of the body.
B The term, which is Latin for ‘I shall please,’ was first used sometime during the 1700s, but the concept itself dates back centuries. Historically, doctors believed that one of their key duties, in addition to curing a patient, was to console him or her, providing a boost to the morale that could help them to get better faster -- sometimes in the form of a dummy medicine that had no effect beyond instilling the expectation of improvement in the patient’s brain. It’s now widely recognized that, while largely ineffective in improving objective symptoms, such as high blood pressure or an infection, for instance, placebos are genuinely effective in treating subjective, self-reported symptoms, including all sorts of pain. Placebos can take all sorts of forms: inert sugar pills, sham surgeries, and saline injections.
C The singular power of expectations has been demonstrated in a variety of studies. In one, for example, patients given a placebo pill that is referred to as a muscle relaxer will experience muscle relaxation, while those given a placebo called a muscle stimulator will experience muscle tension. The flip side of the placebo, the nocebo effect, is just as powerful -- negative expectations can cause as much harm as positive ones can do good. In other studies, it’s been shown that pills which are red, yellow, or orange in color are more likely to provide a stimulating effect, while blue and green ones are more often perceived as sedating. One study even found that bigger pills are better when it comes to placebo performance.
D The science that underlies all of these studies isn’t well understood at this point. Scientists have conducted some imaging research into the brain on placebos, and they’ve found that ingestion of a placebo billed as a painkiller leads to increased activity in several areas of the cerebral cortex, as compared to an actual painkiller. These areas are involved in so-called ‘higher’ functions like memory, attention, thought, and consciousness. A pain-killing placebo, it seems, works differently from a painkiller.
E In a recent headache study, conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School, 66 participants who suffer from chronic migraines were given six envelopes, each containing a pill to be taken after their next migraine attack. Two envelopes were labelled ‘Maxalt’ -- the brand name for the widely used migraine drug rizatriptan -- in order to generate positive expectations, while two had no label, to produce neutral expectations, and two were labelled ‘placebo,’ to generate negative expectations. But for each of the three labels, one envelope held a genuine rizatriptan pill, and one contained a placebo. This allowed the researchers to cross-compare the effectiveness of rizatriptan + positive expectations, rizatriptan alone, and rizatriptan + negative expectations, as well as positive, neutral, and negative expectations in isolation.
F When the scientists analyzed the participants’ self-reported pain reductions after taking the pills, the power of the placebo was proven yet again. People who’d taken a placebo pill labelled Maxalt got just as much pain relief as those who’d taken a Maxalt pill labelled as a placebo. Additionally, people who took a Maxalt correctly labelled as Maxalt reported about twice as much pain reduction as those who took a Maxalt pill labelled as placebo. In other words, in treating a complex, chronic form of pain like migraine, the effectiveness of pure expectations was roughly equal to the effectiveness of the pharmaceutical itself.
G For a doctor, harnessing the placebo’s power doesn’t mean intentionally mislabelling pills. Instead, a doctor could simply provide a slightly more positive message about a treatment, lending the power of expectations to that of pharmaceuticals. "When doctors set patients’ expectations high, Maxalt becomes more effective," lead author of the study Rami Burstein said in a press statement. Of course, this sort of intentional expectation-setting needs to be done carefully. Doctors have an ethical obligation not to mislead patients or withhold important information. But that doesn’t mean that making sure to provide subtle positive cues about the effectiveness of a medication -- especially when those very cues might well make it work more effectively -- is a bad idea. As Ted Kaptchuk, one of the study’s co-authors, put it, "the placebo effect is an unacknowledged partner for powerful medications."
Questions 14--17
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A--G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14. an explanation of the neurological process by which placebos work | |||||||
| 15. the origin of the word ‘placebo’ | |||||||
| 16. a recommendation as to how medical professionals can take advantage of the placebo effect | |||||||
| 17. mention of how the appearance of placebos can affect how well they work |
Questions 18--24
Complete the sentences below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
18. It appears that placebos can treat or reduce the 18 of a wide range of conditions.
19. The placebo effect happens when our 19 has an effect on how our body feels.
20. Doctors have long believed it to be their responsibility not only to treat patients’ medical conditions, but also to improve their 20.
21. An example of a situation where a placebo has little or no effect is if a patient has an 21.
22. It has been shown that patients will feel 22 in their muscles if they are given a placebo called a muscle stimulator.
23. A related phenomenon, known as the 23 effect, convinces people that a treatment will do them harm.
24. Two factors which influence the effectiveness of a placebo pill are its 24 and its size.
Questions 25 and 26
Choose TWO letters, A--E.
Which TWO findings were observed in the Harvard Medical School study?
Part 3
Planet Earth’s Blue Heart
Planet Earth’s Blue Heart
Water covers over 97 percent of the habitable ‘living space’ on our planet, yet it could be argued that we know more about distant stars than we do about the deep blue ocean. We understand why it is important to reach for the stars, to look at ourselves in perspective, and to ask big questions such as ‘where did we come from?’ And we have devoted a great amount of resources to making progress in this area, but meanwhile, we have neglected understanding how the heart of our life support system really functions.
Ocean exploration and the need to alert people to the ocean’s plight are critical to a better understanding of the planetary systems that support us. Never before has the need been so great to dive below the surface of the sea to explore and to understand the significance of our actions, or to be more precise, the significant scale of current inactions and the consequences they hold for all of us. It is like trying to understand your own body -- is it good enough to only look at the skin? Do we not have to delve in and understand how the lungs work, or do we just take that for granted?
Most people are still under the impression that the ocean is so vast and so resilient that humans do not have the capacity to harm it -- and if we do, that it does not matter. We look at the scale and how unchanging the ocean seems to be and decide it is not really something we should worry about -- it might be an issue for future generations but not for us! What has become increasingly clear, though, is our ability to really undermine the way the ocean works by what we take out and by what we put in.
People ask -- what is the biggest threat to the ocean? Overfishing, pollution, or climate change are all usually mentioned. But by far and away the biggest threat to the ocean is a lack of understanding that what we put in and take out matters -- not just to the ocean, but to other aspects of our lives. The ocean cannot be regarded as the planet’s ultimate dumpster or the ultimate place to get free food. It is our life support system, and not being aware of the importance of the ocean to every breath we take, every drop of water we drink, to a benign set of conditions that make the planet work -- that is the biggest threat.
By exploring the ocean we now understand better than ever before the consequences of what is happening and how the ocean is being damaged. In a sense, we now realize that we are sleepwalking into a nightmare. This is because changes are slow but progressive, and at some point occur to a level where we have to sit up and take notice. However, given the nature of progressive change, this point is often reached when it is no longer possible to do anything about it.
The ocean is difficult to study, much more so than dry land, but really there are no shortcuts to gaining knowledge. The advent of SCUBA diving in the 1950s provided the current generation with new tools to explore the shallowest margins of our watery world, and an explosion of knowledge quickly followed. But what of the deep ocean? Our temptation is to turn to machines as we have done in most aspects of our daily lives. But are machines good enough to take the place of humans? James Cameron -- one of only a few people alive today who have traveled to the deepest part of the ocean -- believes (as does the author) that humans lie at the center of ocean science. It is therefore unfortunate that just as we reach an era when we have the analytical powers to start to make sense of how our planet works, we see a reduction in funding of manned exploration of the ocean. It wasn’t until Florida International University stepped in that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Aquarius underwater laboratory, located off Key Largo, Florida, was saved from closure. However, the number of countries with submarine research capabilities continues to shrink. With the vast majority of the ocean yet to be explored, this is a mistake, and the hopes are that private donors will step forward to balance out the loss of government funding for underwater exploration.
The value of seeing beneath the ocean surface is immense. It helps us understand how our well-being is linked to the well-being of the ocean. We now know that since the mid-1900s about half of the world’s coral reefs have either gone or are in serious decline. Coral reefs are important ecosystems with approximately one quarter of all ocean species depending on them for food and shelter. Ninety percent of many of the big fish that we consume are gone -- down to about ten percent of what they were 50 years ago. And we are changing the very nature of the blue part of our world that sets us apart from any other planet we have so far discovered in the universe. Excessive carbon dioxide emissions from our activities are not just changing the climate, they are driving the balance of the ocean waters towards more acidic conditions with as yet unclear but likely significant consequences. The impacts of these changes will be felt by people around the world -- not just by those who live by the sea, but, with our super-efficient supply systems, people in inland areas too. It matters because we cannot be blind to the fact that we are degrading the very part of our planet that enables us to live here.
Questions 27--30
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
27. What point does the writer make in the first paragraph?
28. What does the writer say about the ocean in the second paragraph?
29. The writer suggests that the apparent lack of change in the ocean
30. Why does the writer use the phrase ‘sleepwalking into a nightmare’ in paragraph 5?
Questions 31--35
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
31. James Cameron has contributed more than any other scientist to our understanding of the ocean.
32. Ocean exploration is best carried out by unmanned machines.
33. The involvement of Florida International University prevented the closure of the Key Largo underwater laboratory.
34. Our knowledge of the oceans has grown to such an extent that international marine research capabilities can be reduced.
35. Private donors are more likely to fund underwater exploration if they have a scientific background.
Questions 36--40
Complete the summary below using the list of phrases, A--H.
Seeing the Damage Beneath the Ocean Surface
We now know that many coral reefs, which provide food and shelter for a range of 36, have disappeared or have been damaged, and that the number of big fish has fallen dramatically.
As well as the impact it is having on the 37 we experience, pollution is also altering the 38 of the ocean.
It is not only 39 that will be affected by these changes -- people living elsewhere will also be affected.
We need to realize that our world will cease to be a 40 if we do not protect our ocean.