XIII Всероссийская олимпиада школьников по английскому языку
2011г.муниципальный этап9-11 классы
Reading
Time: 45 minutes
Part 1
Questions 1-6 are based on Text 1. Decide which of the following statements 1-6 are True (T) or False (F).
All you need is a wormhole
Hello. My name is Stephen Hawking. Physicist, cosmologist and something of a dreamer. Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free. Free to explore the universe and ask the big questions, such as: is time travel possible? Can we open a portal to the past or find a shortcut to the future? Can we ultimately use the laws of nature to become masters of time itself?
Time travel was once considered scientific heresy. I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a crank. But these days I'm not so cautious. In fact, I’m more like the people who built Stonehenge. I'm obsessed by time. If I had a time machine I'd visit Marilyn Monroe or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens. Perhaps I’d even travel to the end of the universe to find out how our whole cosmic story ends.
To see how this might be possible, we need to look at time as physicists do - at the fourth dimension. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Every attentive schoolchild knows that all physical objects, even me in my chair, exist in three dimensions. Everything has a width and a height and a length.
But there is another kind of length, a length in time. While a human may survive for 80 years, the stones at Stonehenge, for instance, have stood around for thousands of years. And the solar system will last for billions of years. Everything has a length in time as well as space. Travelling in time means travelling through this fourth dimension.
To see what that means, let’s imagine we're doing a bit of normal, everyday car travel. Drive in a straight line and you’re travelling in one dimension. Turn right or left and you add the second dimension. Drive up or down a twisty mountain road and that adds height, so that’s travelling in all three dimensions. But how on Earth do we travel in time? How do we find a path through the fourth dimension?
Let’s indulge in a little science fiction for a moment. Time travel movies often feature a vast, energy-hungry machine. The machine creates a path through the fourth dimension, a tunnel through time. A time traveller, a brave, perhaps foolhardy individual, prepared for who knows what, steps into the time tunnel and emerges who knows when. The concept may be far-fetched, and the reality may be very different from this, but the idea itself is not so crazy.
Physicists have been thinking about tunnels in time too, but we come at it from a different angle. We wonder if portals to the past or the future could ever be possible within the laws of nature. As it turns out, we think they are. What’s more, we’ve even given them a name: wormholes. The truth is that wormholes are all around us, only they’re too small to see. Wormholes are very tiny. They occur in nooks and crannies in space and time. You might find it a tough concept, but stay with me.
1. T FAccording to the author a list of the so-called ‘big questions’ doesn’t include time
travel
2. T FScientists have always treated time travel as a plausible phenomenon
3. T F Modern physicists take all four dimensions into consideration
4. T FAccording to the author the solar system is not likely to last for long
5. TFIn films time travel devices usually consume a lot of energy
6. TFAccording to the author space tunnels are rare and hard to find
Part 2
Questions 7-12 are based on Text 2. Six sentences have been removed from the story. Choose from the sentences A-G the one which fits in each gap. There is one extra sentence you do not need to use.
Drinking too much water ‘can be bad for your health’: benefits are a myth
It is said to help us prevent kidney damage, lose weight and increase concentration levels.7. ______.
They say that scientific claims behind long-standing government guidelines are worse than ‘nonsense’.8. ______.
Glasgow-based GP Margaret McCartney says the advice that people should drink six to eight glasses a day is ‘not only nonsense, but thoroughly debunked nonsense’.9. ______. Writing in the British Medical Journal, Dr. McCartney also points out that research shows drinking when not thirsty can impair concentration, rather than boost it. 10.______. Drinking excessive amounts can also lead to loss of sleep as people have to get up in the night to go to the toilet, and other studies show it can even cause kidney damage, instead of preventing it.11.______. It is a disease which sees the body’s salt levels drop and can lead to swelling of the brain.
12.______. Professor Stanley Goldfarb, a metabolism expert from the University of Pennsylvania in the U.S., says: ‘The current evidence is that there really is no evidence.If children drank more water rather than getting extra calories from soda, that’s good, but there is no evidence that drinking water before meals reduces appetite during a meal.’
A. Another doctor quoted in the article adds there is no basis for claims that water helps
people to lose weight by suppressing their appetite.
B.About 2.06billion litres of bottled water was drunk in Britain last year, compared with
1.42billion litres in 2000.
C.But experts now warn that drinking eight glasses of water a day is not good for you after
all – and could be harmful
D.Also separate evidence suggests that chemicals used for disinfection found in bottled
water could be bad for your health.
E. She adds that the benefits of the drink are often exaggerated by ‘organizations with
vested interests’ such as bottled water brands.
F. Worryingly, Dr. McCartney also warns that taking on too much water can lead to a rare
but potentially fatal condition called hyponatraemia.
G. A report describes the danger of dehydration as a ‘myth’ and says there is no evidence
behind claims that water prevents multiple health problems.
Part 3
Questions 13-20 are based on Text 3. Choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.
The sacred junk food
The food of the gods in Ancient Egypt was more likely to guarantee an early grave than immortality, scientists have discovered.Delicious banquets offered to the deities and eaten by Egyptian priests and their families, were laden with artery-clogging saturated fat, a research published in ‘The Lancet’ has shown.
The evidence comes from inscriptions on temple walls and from computer X-rays of the priests' mummified remains - which show signs of damaged arteries and heart disease.Fresh translations of hieroglyphics, the picture language of ancient Egypt, revealed sumptuous meals of beef, wild fowl, bread, fruit, vegetables, cake, wine and beer were given up to the gods three times a day, before being taken home and eaten.
Much of what the priests ate was rich in saturated fat and would be classified today as junk food. They ate a type of bread fortified with fat, while cakes were typically made with animal fat or oil.Goose, which was commonly consumed, provided 63 per cent of its energy from fat, 20 per cent of it saturated.Doctors today say our daily intake should contain no more than 30 per cent fat, with just seven per cent of it saturated.
This incredibly unhealthy diet inevitably took its toll on the ruling classes.Recent scans of 16 priest mummies, whose hearts or arteries could be identified, showed nine suffered from vascular calcification.This is the stiffening of the muscles that line the blood vessels, which means the heart must pump harder and increases the risk of heart disease.
Professor Rosalie David, from the University of Manchester's Faculty of Life Sciences, who led the study, said the evidence showed ‘that blocked arteries caused by rich diets are not just a modern malaise’.
However, it is likely that poorer Egyptians did not suffer to the same extent, because their diet was mainly vegetarian. Unfortunately mummification was reserved for the elite and the remains of the lower classes are far less well preserved.
13. According to the text, ancient mummies were
A.severely damaged during the investigation
B.found in an underground tomb
C. X-rayedduring the investigation
D.accidentally dismembered
14.Offerings of food were made to the
A.Egyptian priests
B. Egyptian people
C.Egyptian families
D. Egyptian gods
15.Heart disease was a mass-spread illness among Egyptian priests due to
A.excessive amount of food eaten
B.unhealthy diet
C.lack of vitamins
D.digestion problems
16.According to the text modern doctors consider saturated fat as
A.fattening substance
B.complicated chemicalsubstance
C.artery-blocking substance
D.rarechemicalsubstance
17.In Ancient Egypt geese
A.were typically raised
B.were extremely expensive
C.were available seasonally
D.were given only to gods
18.Modern doctors say that there
A.are both healthy and unhealthy kinds of fat
B.are eitherhealthy or unhealthy kinds of fat
C.is no such thing as healthy fat
D.is only unhealthy kind of fat
19.According to the text poorer Egyptians
A.had no access to meat products
B.suffered from digestion problems
C.experienced starvation
D.didn’t suffer from heart disease that much
20.Egyptian mummiesavailable now are
A.all very well preserved
B.yet to be studied
C.mainly the remains of the rich
D.all male
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