Part B
Directions:
In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into the numbered blank when there are tow extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)
At picnics, ants are pests. But they have their uses. In industries such as mining, farming and forestry, they can help gauge the health of the environment by just crawling around and being antsy.
It has been recognized for decades that ants—which are highly sensitive to ecological change—can provide a near-percent barometer of the state of an ecosystem. Only certain species, for instance, will continue to thrive at a forest site that has been cleared of trees. (41) And still others will move in and take up residence.
By looking at which species populate a deforested area, scientists can determine how "stressed" the land is. (42) Ants are used simply because they are so common and comprise so many species.
Where mine sites are being restored, for example, some ant species will recolonize the stripped land more quickly than others. (43) Australian mining company Capricorn Coal Management has been successfully using ant surveys for years to determine the rate of recovery of land that it is replanting near its German Creek mine in Queensland.
Ant surveys also have been used with mine-site recovery projects in Africa and Brazil, where warm climates encourage dense and diverse ant populations. "We found it worked extremely well there," says Jonathan Majer, a professor of environmental biology. Yet the surveys are perfectly suited to climates throughout Asia, he says, because ants are so common throughout the region. As Majer puts it: "That's the great thing about ants."
Ant surveys are so highly-regarded as ecological indicators that governments worldwide accept their results when assessing the environmental impact of mining and tree harvesting. (44)
Why not? Because many companies can't afford the expense or the laboratory time needed to sift results for a comprehensive survey. The cost stems, also, from the scarcity of ant specialists. (45)
[A] This allowed scientists to gauge the pace and progress of the ecological recovery.
[B] Yet in other businesses, such as farming and property development, ant surveys aren't used widely.
[C] Employing those people are expensive.
[D] They do this by sorting the ants, counting their numbers and comparing the results with those of earlier surveys.
[E] The evolution of ant species may have a strong impact on our ecosystem.
[F] Others will die out for lack of food.
[G] Gretaceous ants shared a couple of wasp-like traits together with modern ant-like characteristics.
Part C
Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (10 points)
(46) While much of the attention on fighting AIDS and other diseases in poor countries has focused on access to affordable drugs, concern is now shifting to the question of who, exactly, will deliver them. Unfortunately, there is a severe shortage of doctors, nurses and other health-care workers in these countries. According to a report published in this week's Lancet by the Joint Learning Initiative (JLI), an international consortium of academic centres and development agencies, sub-Saharan Africa has only one-tenth the number of nurses and doctors per head of population that Europe does, though its health-care problems are far more pressing. (47) The reasons for this are two-fold, and well known-not enough health-care workers are trained in the first place, and too many of those who are trained then leave for better-paid jobs in the rich world.What the report does is to put some numbers on these problems.
A mere 5,000 doctors, it finds, graduate in Africa each year (a third of the number that graduate in America). Only 50 of 600 doctors trained in Zambia in recent years are still in the country. There are more Malawian doctors in Manchester than Malawi. (48) And many rich countries exacerbate the problem by recruiting from poor ones to help deal with their own shortages.
To overcome all this, the JLI reckons that the world needs 4m more health-care workers, of whom 1m are required in sub-Saharan Africa alone. The question is, who will pay for them? The report floats some ideas. (49) It recommends that roughly $400m, or 4% of the overseas aid currently spent on health, be earmarked to help build up the health-care workforce in poor countries.(50) But it also suggests that better use be made of existing resources, for example by employing local volunteers rather than highly trained doctors for many routine matters.As Lincoln Chen of Harvard University, one of the report's authors, points out, a few countries, such as Brazil, Thailand and Iran, have taken steps in the right direction. Others need to follow their lead.