Voters split over nuclear power

Almost half of Britons say no new nuclear power stations should be built in the UK, according to a The Guardian poll which comes as ministers consider whether to restart Britain's controversial atomic power programme to meet growing energy demand. The poll finds that neither the pro- nor anti-nuclear lobby can rely on a clear majority of public support.
A review of Britain's energy policies was announced by Tony Blair last month and a report is expected in the summer. Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser, told the Commons environmental committee last month: "I do not think that any government could proceed with nuclear new build if there was a sense in which this was unacceptable to the public. Taking the public along is absolutely essential."
The government's decision to look at nuclear energy marks a shift in position from that outlined in a white paper two years ago, which said: "Current economics make it an unattractive option for new, carbon-free generating capacity and there are also important issues of nuclear waste to be resolved."
The Guardian interviewed 1,004 adults aged 18-plus by telephone between 15 and 18 December 2005.

Addicted to her mobile - PAU 2006

>Exámenes selectividad inglés Comunidad Valenciana resueltos

A teenager is to undergo psychiatric treatment after becoming addicted to her mobile phone. Like the worst type of addicts, Caroline regularly blows all her spending money. “I know it sounds like a silly addiction but it is real to me”, she said. “When I hear my phone beeping with a text message I am all smiles and it makes me happy. When I don’t have any credit left I become depressed. I haven’t got enough money for proper food and I have to borrow it”. Her parents have become so worried that next week she is due to begin a course of treatment from a specialist. She first revealed her craving to her doctor, who advised her to switch the phone on the silent mode, put it in a cupboard and forget about it. But he has now referred her for more psychiatric care after the scale of the problem became apparent.

Caroline said: “I have become protective of the phone. I can’t let anyone take it from me and I check where it is every two minutes”. A leading psychologist has classified Caroline’s plight as “technology addition”, in which sufferers experience a “high” when they receive a message bleep from their mobile. “It is like the first flush of love when you receive an e-mail or text, you feel good”. Caroline became hooked at 12 after her parents gave her a mobile for Christmas. Since then she has spent all her pocket money on phone cards.

Team spirit - PAU inglés Andalucía

>Exámenes selectividad inglés resueltos Andalucía

Team players can tolerate twice as much pain as those who work alone, according to recent research that throws fresh light on some of the most surprising achievements in sports history.

Researchers at Oxbridge University have found that members of its rowing team had a greater ability to resist pain —or “pain threshold"— after training together than when they performed the same exercises individually. Working as a group stimulates the production of endorphins, a feel —good chemical released in the brain that is a temporary painkiller. This effect might have played a part in an extraordinary football final between Manchester City and Birmingham in 1956. The City goalkeeper broke his neck after diving for the ball, but went on to make a series of crucial saves to help his team win the game 3-1.
The Oxbridge researchers speculate that a similar sudden rise of endorphins might be the cause of the feel-good sensations people experience when they dance together, play team sports or take part in religious rituals. They made a study that involved twelve male rowers. In the first part of the experiment, two teams of six rowed continuously for 45 minutes in the gym. Their rowing machines were linked up to create a “virtual boat" that demanded that they all row in synchrony. In the next training session, the rowers performed the same exercise as individuals, unobserved by others in the team. Between five and ten minutes after each training session, the investigators measured the rowers' pain thresholds by putting a blood pressure cuff around the arm and inflating it until it became uncomfortably painful. Then they measured the release of endorphins in the blood system.

The researchers say that, compared with training alone, group training significantly increases the pain threshold: "We can eliminate the possibility that this effect might have been due to elevated work rates, because the rowers‘ power output was not significantly different". They also added: ”What this study shows us is that synchrony alone seems to increase the production of endorphins so as to strengthen the effect when we do these activities in groups.”

Town vs. country - PAU C.Valenciana inglés 2006

>Exámenes selectividad inglés Comunidad Valenciana resueltos

To those outside Britain —and many inside it— the fury that exploded last week over foxhunting, the House of Commons voted to ban, doesn't make much sense. The new law, which starting July 2006 will make it a crime to hunt wild mammals with dogs, is supported by 70% of Britons —including more than half of those living in the countryside. But some 10,000 passionate pro-hunting demonstrators came to London to denounce what they declare is an arrogant government violating their human rights as part of a cynical stratagem by Prime Minister Tony Blair to pacify left-wing MPs who are angry at him over the Iraq war. Most of the protesters were peaceful, but a few flying bottles and smoke bombs triggered bloody clashes with police protecting the House of Commons. Five men, including a polo-playing friend of Princes’ William and Harry, managed to evade security by pretending they were building contractors and rushed into the chamber during the debate —the first such invasion since 1947.

Britons love animals, but the protesters are right when they point out the illogic of the ban. Foxes will still have to be killed as agricultural pests, just by snares and shooting instead of by baying hounds pursued by red-coated riders. Other forms of hunting and fishing will remain legal. A government report estimates that 6,000 to 8,000 full- and part-time jobs depend on hunts, which involve about 1.2 million people, 50,000 horses and 70,000 dogs each year. In the rest of Europe, hunting foxes remains resolutely uncontroversial.

J.F.O. McAllister

Time, September 27, 2004

No question of whether I would do it or not - PAU inglés Andalucía

>Exámenes selectividad inglés resueltos Andalucía

In my country we have a proverb that can be translated like this: You will know the value of your father when he is dead. This was one of those sayings we had to memorise in class, as part of our moral instruction. The lesson was clear: Don't take for granted what you have. As a child, I interpreted it literally and developed a constant fear that my parents would die.

I could never say 'goodbye' to my parents as they were leaving for work without imploring them to be safe! Even today I am constantly trying to change my father's high-cholesterol diet, and I go into a state of anxiety when either of my parents does not get home before midnight. Even while studying abroad, I would become worried if either of them did not respond soon to a text message I sent.

I am not trying to moralize. I cause my parents as much pain as any other person. I won't pretend I never get annoyed either. I have the same complaints as my friends: my parents never seem to remember that I am not longer a child and they seem to have an inexhaustible capacity to irritate me. 

But I also realise that they are growing old, and already I can see signs of their ageing process, like selective hearing and memory, among other things.

There was a time when I was also helpless, probably smelled funny and had no means of ensuring my own continued existence — and yet they thought I was the best thing in the world.

We owe it to our parents to take care of them because they took care of us. Most of our parents would probably get offended at the thought of us trying to 'take care' of them. Their generation takes pride in their autonomy; and going from a state of independence to 'maintenance' is nobody's first choice. Still, there is no question of whether I would support my parents in their gold age: of course.

We can thank the human brain for keeping our race alive all these years - PAU inglés Andalucía 2012

>Exámenes selectividad inglés resueltos Andalucía

Humans are pretty amazing animals. Not only have we managed to survive in various forms for millions of years, but we have grown into a population of nearly 7 billion, distributed virtually all over the planet. And we've done it despite the fact that, compared with much of the rest of the animal kingdom, we are fairly fragile creatures. We are not particularly strong; we do not do very well without a regular supply of food and water; and we are vulnerable to a lot of infectious diseases.

We have been able to succeed, for the most part, perhaps because of our highly developed brain and its ability to develop ingenious solutions to life-threatening challenges. Modern humans have come to depend on a multitude of inventions in order to survive and one of the most important is antibiotics, a discovery of the twentieth century which has changed our lives. 

For most of human history, almost everyone on the planet ran the risk of dying in epidemics of bacterial diseases. One such disease, the "Black Death," killed an estimated 200 million people in the 14th century alone. However, in the late 1920s, a London physician named Dr. Alexander Fleming noticed that mould (a greenish microorganism that grows with humidity and heat) which had contaminated a Petri dish prevented the growth of a pathogen he was studying. One of his students, Dr. Cecil Paine, eventually became the first clinician to demonstrate the effectiveness of penicillin, a drug derived from mould, against bacterial disease in human patients. Since then, the use of penicillin and other antibiotics has dramatically reduced the number of deaths from certain once-common diseases.

On se consume à force de consommer . PAU francés 2002

Exámenes selectividad francés resueltos Andalucía

Violence, échecs scolaires, toxicomanie... La période est difficile pour tous les humains particulièrement pour les adolescents. Depuis quelques années, tout ce qui faisait la trame sociale, les grands repères de notre société, a changé: les valeurs éthiques, le civisme, l’autorité... Or, ce qui a disparu n’a pas été remplacé.

Ce qui avait été utile aux parents pour se développer ne sert plus. Ils ne savent pas vers quoi ils dirigent leurs enfants. Eux-mêmes, ils sont perdus. Or, les ados ont besoin de repères. L’adolescence, c’est l’âge de l’explosion de la vie, de la nécessité de se «remettre au monde».

Le discours sur la sexualité ainsi que ses images rentrent plus facilement qu’avant dans les foyers. La publicité utilise énormément la sexualité. Elle est survalorisée et pour les ados, cela complique la vie. Même si généralement on ne le croit pas, ils sont romantiques, soucieux d’affectivité et d’amour.

Souvent, il y a du voyeurisme. Voyez comme tout le monde raconte sa vie à la télé! ... Personne ne se choque de cette violation de l’espace intime. Cela ne leur est pas désagréable d’avoir cette vision qui les trouble et les intéresse. C’est le signe que les gens ne savent pas comment se repérer. Les ados comme les adultes.

Catherine Dolto ( Le Soir – Juillet 2001. Texte adapté )

Natural disasters - PAU inglés Andalucía 2009 resuelto

>Exámenes selectividad inglés resueltos Andalucía

First it was Katrina, which left New Orleans under water and devastated the Gulf coast of the U.S. in 2005. Then, three years later, Gustav was a major storm with winds of 110 m.p.h., strong enough to cause billions of dollars in damage in the Caribbean. Also in 2008, the Pacific area suffered the vast impact of Nargis, a tropical storm that killed 100,000 people in the Southeast of Asia.

All these hurricanes in such a short period of time raise the question of wether storms are getting stronger and, if so, what is causing them. According to a recent article in the scientific journal Nature, the answer is yes, and global warming seems to be responsible. Researchers have analysed the data of tropical storms since 1981 and have found that the maximum wind speeds of the strongest storms have increased in the last few years. They believe that rising ocean temperatures, due to global warming, are one of the main causes behind that change; they argue that warmer sea temperatures will result in stronger storms.

Not everyone agrees because the records of past hurricane strength are insufficient, so it is difficult for scientists to determine if this increase in stroms´intensity is due to global warming or if it had started before. And the weather, as we all know, is quite complicated and it is difficult to predict how future warming might affect the formation of storms.

Wether or not warming will create more superstorms, we know that hurricanes will happen and they will strike again. The question is, are we prepared for them? We know that natural disasters will undoubtedly continue happening, so we need to be prepared: Gustav caused far less damage than Katrina because it was a weaker storm, but also because people were ready this time.

Can humans control the weather? - PAU inglés Andalucía 2010

>Exámenes selectividad inglés resueltos Andalucía

The opening night of the 2008 Beijing Olympic summer games was an amazing spectacle: thousands of dancers, acrobats and singers performed in carefully choreographed unison. No detail was too big or too small to be left to chance; from the lovely child performers, to one factor that seemed uncontrollable: the weather. Chinese officials claimed that they prevented the rain by launching rockets into the rain clouds the night before. Right on schedule,the first day of the Olympics was clear, with low humidity – a notable contrast to the usual hot and wet conditions of South East Asia in August.

Does this prove that humans have learned how to control the weather? The idea of humans controlling the weather is not a new one. Back in medieval France, people would shoot cannons into the clouds to try to prevent crop-damaging storms. But it wasn’t until the 1940s that human attempts to influence the weather had any real results. A series of weather modification experiments carried out by General Electric Laboratories showed that releasing chemicals into clouds caused rain drops to turn into ice at higher than normal temperatures.

New satellites and high technological measuring equipment are helping scientists and researchers learn more about the weather patterns of the earth. By mid century you can expect more accurate weather predictions, and eventually controlling the weather itself.

Governments all over the world are researching weather modification. The obvious benefits of controlling local weather would be to increase crop production, decrease the severity of storms, reduce flooding, eliminate water shortages, etc. There are also military uses, such as making sure the weather is clear for a mission or covering the enemy with snow, fog or lightning strikes.

A far better use of weather modification would be if we could someday stop a hurricane like Katrina from ever reaching land.

Micro-credits for the poor - PAU inglés Andalucía 2010 resuelto

>Exámenes selectividad inglés resueltos Andalucía

This is not a story of rich western countries helping the developing third-world, but an idea from a banker in Bangladesh to help underprivileged people have access to credits. This idea was first created by Muhammad Yunus, who noticed the prohibitively high interest rates paid by the poor to the banks. Then, Yunus founded the ‘Grameen Bank’, a new category of banking, by giving millions of small loans or “micro-credits” to poor people with no guarantee. His aim was to develop alternative financial institutions to help economic development in areas not usually served by the big banks. The bank is built on Yunus’ conviction that poor people can be both reliable borrowers and enthusiastic entrepreneurs.

When Yunus created the Grameen Bank, he wanted to change the traditional idea of banking. One of his first moves was to focus on women as main borrowers because they are most likely to think about the family’s needs rather than their own. This was a radical step in a traditional Muslim society, and it took Yunus six years to reach his initial goal of a 50-50 gender distribution among borrowers. Today, 96% of Grameen’s borrowers are women. “If banks made large loans, he made small loans. If banks required paperwork, his loans were for the illiterate. Whatever banks did, he did the opposite,” says D. Harris, director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign. “He’s a genius.”

According to a recent report, the Grameen project has spread the idea of microcredit throughout Bangladesh, Southern Asia and the rest of the developing world with more than 3,000 microcredit institutions which reach more than 100 million clients worldwide nowadays. Almost 73% of them were living in extreme poverty at the time of their first loan. Now that giving loans to poor people has proven to be a success story, the whole world is being urged to develop small-scale lending initiatives as well. In 2006 Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his efforts to create economic and social benefit to the poorest.”

Greening the Sahara - PAU Madrid 2011

>Exámenes selectividad inglés resueltos C. Madrid

Surprisingly, the fertile fields of cauliflower and melons growing in a vast stretch of sand near Cairo’s pyramids are all too real. Tarek el-Kowmey points proudly to the banana trees he grows on what were once Sahara sands near the Development Centre where scientists experiment with high-tech techniques to make Egypt's desert green. "This used to be just sand," he said. "Now we can grow anything."

With only 5% of the country habitable, almost all of Egypt's 74 million people live along the Nile River and the Mediterranean Sea. Egypt's population is expected to double by 2050, and already crowded living conditions will likely get worse. So the government is keen to encourage people to settle in the desert by moving ahead with an expensive plan to reclaim 3.4 million acres of desert over the next 10 years. But to cultivate these areas, the government will need to irrigate the land with the scarce water resources of the Nile River because rainfall is almost non-existent.

Government authorities believe that greening the Sahara might be Egypt’s best hope of bringing prosperity to its people.

Pie in the sky - PAU inglés 2001 Andalucía resuelto

>Exámenes selectividad inglés resueltos Andalucía

It is not clear precisely why, with the whole galaxy at their disposal, extra-terrestrials should wish to visit Hereford.  But if local reports are to be believed, the town and surrounding countryside have lately become a magnet for alien visitors.  Over the past few months there have been a series of sightings of UFOs in the area, and witnesses’ reports coincide on the appearance of the flying saucers.  “It was a big ball of very bright light,” said one woman; “I thought I could see figures with big ears inside it, but to be honest it was moving so fast I couldn’t be sure.”

People have been seeing strange objects in the sky around Hereford for almost two decades now, but never as many as now. “We’re getting three or four sightings a week at the moment,” said one local UFO enthusiast.  “I’ve never known anything like it.”

Nobody knows why aliens should be interested in Hereford, although one local butcher has a theory.  “It’s our pies,” he explained.  “They have the sort of delicate crust and meat filling you just don’t get anywhere else in the universe.”

Home alone - PAU Andalucía 2005

>Exámenes selectividad inglés resueltos Andalucía

With marriage apparently in trouble, so many single-parent families and people living alone ready to dominate the country, Britain is currently going through one of the most dramatic social changes in its entire history. This is one more example of globalization, and many other countries around the world seem to be accompanying Britain in the same process.

The statistics are shocking. Since 1961, the number of UK homes occupied by one person has risen from 10 to 30 per cent, with predictions of 40 per cent for the year 2010. There are other fundamental social changes behind Britain’s single-household explosion. The increasing independence of the working woman, more orientated to her career than to personal relationships, has been essential. The prototypical Bridget Jones, thirtysomething, single, and in search of a man, is becoming a little old-fashioned.

These changing social attitudes and the higher divorce and separation figures are the causes of the growing numbers of single parents. More and more women, both in the UK and the USA, no longer think it necessary to have a man around to have a child. Such radical social changes inevitably have their side effects, which are often as interesting as the changes themselves. Obsession with work seems to have provoked a boom in online agencies for making friends.

Education helps brain against dementia changes - PAU inglés Andalucía 2011 resuelto

>Exámenes selectividad inglés resueltos Andalucía

People who stay in education for longer appear to be better able to compensate for the effects of dementia on the brain, a study suggests. A UK and Finnish team found those with more education had the same chances of showing the signs of dementia in their brains at death as those with less education. However, they were less likely to have displayed symptoms during their lifetime, the study said. Experts claimed that scientists now had to find out why the effect occurred.

Over the past decade, studies on dementia have consistently shown that the more time you spend in education, the lower the risk of dementia. Nevertheless, studies have been unable to show whether or not education - which is linked to higher socio-economic status and healthier lifestyles - protects the brain against dementia.

The researchers in this study examined the brains of 872 people whose ageing process had been monitored. Before their deaths, they had also completed questionnaires about their education. The researchers found that more education makes people better able to face changes in the brain associated with dementia. Besides, those with more education are better able to compensate for the effects of the condition. Ruth Sutherland, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society, said: "This is the largest study ever to confirm that books could help you fight the symptoms of dementia in later life”. Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, added: "This research suggests that education is not able to stop the damage of the cells in the brain but enables it to cope better and alleviate its impact."

Comprehension German School: Andalucia 2011

COMPREHENSION 

GERMAN SCHOOLS TO TEACH ONLINE PRIVACY

ARE THESE STATEMENTS TRUE OR FALSE? JUSTIFY YOUR ANSWERS WITH THE PRECISE WORDS OR PHRASES FROM THE TEXT, OR USE YOUR OWN WORDS. 

4. A good part of Facebook’s users usually post pictures of themselves in inappropriate situations.

• TRUE: "Many of Facebook's 2 million users in Germany are young people who might post pictures of themselves and their friends drunk at parties" (lines 2-3)

5. “Teachers have already been provided with everything they need to teach online privacy.

• FALSE: “...teachers "may not be equipped" with the necessary tools and resources for the new initiative.” (lines 13-14)

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