PASSAGE 3 QUESTIONS 21 - 30
Animals and higher-order plants depend on nitrogen that is present in soil as they cannot utilize free nitrogen from the atmosphere. To enter living systems, nitrogen must be combined with oxygen or hydrogen to form compounds such as ammonia or nitrates that plants are able to use. Nitrogen gas is converted to ammonia fertilizer by a chemical process involving high pressure and high temperature. This process is called nitrogen fixation. Martinus Willem Beijerinck discovered nitrogen fixation.
The nitrogen molecule is quite inert and breaking it apart requires a considerable amount of energy. There are three processes that are responsible for most of the nitrogen fixation in the biosphere. They are atmospheric fixation, biological fixation, and industrial fixation. Atmospheric fixation occurs through lightning, forest fires, or even hot lava flows where energy breaks down nitrogen molecules and enables their atoms to combine with oxygen in the air, thus forming nitrogen oxides. These liquefy in rain, forming nitrates, that are then carried to earth.
In biological nitrogen fixation, the nitrogen is available to some species of microorganisms. Atmospheric nitrogen is converted to ammonia by bacterial enzymes called nitrogenase. More than 90% of all nitrogen fixation is affected by them. There are two kinds of nitrogen-fixing microorganisms: free-living (non-symbiotic) bacteria and symbiotic bacteria. Microorganisms that fix nitrogen are called diazotrophs. These need a chemical energy source if they are non-photosynthetic. However, if they are photosynthetic, they can utilize light energy. The free-living diazotrophs supply little fixed nitrogen to agricultural crops, whereas the symbiotic, nitrogen-fixing bacteria live close to plant roots and can obtain energy materials from the plants.
The symbiotic, nitrogen-fixing bacteria invade the root hair of plants. Here they multiply the formation of root nodules, and enlargements of plant cells and bacteria in close proximity. Within the nodules, the bacteria convert the free nitrogen to nitrates, which the plant makes use of for its development.
To make certain of sufficient nodule formation and the best possible growth of legumes (beans, clover, peas, soybeans), seeds are usually inoculated, particularly in poor soils where bacteria is lacking. This system is most important for agriculture as many legumes are then able to grow vigorously under nitrogen deficient conditions, contributing nitrogen to the farming system or as green manure included in the soil. Legumes are also a significant source of protein primarily for the developing world.
Industrial fixation takes place at a temperature of 600 degrees Celsius. In this method, atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen can be combined to form ammonia, which in turn can be used directly as a fertilizer. It was during the early 19th century that the importance of fixed nitrogen to growing plants was understood. Where people practiced intensive agriculture, demand arose for nitrogen compounds to augment the natural supply present in the soil.
Around the same time, Chilean saltpeter was increasingly used to make gunpowder. This led to a global search for natural deposits of this nitrogen compound. Toward the end of the 19th century, it was realized that Chilean imports would not meet future demands, and, in the event of a major war, without the Chilean supply, manufacturing sufficient weapons would not be possible.
[A] Several processes were then developed: directly combining oxygen with nitrogen, the reaction of nitrogen with calcium carbide, and the direct combination of nitrogen with hydrogen. [B] Combining oxygen and nitrogen was inefficient in its use of energy. Both were costly and the process was abandoned. [C] It is named after Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who determined that nitrogen from the air could be combined with nitrogen under enormously high pressures and fairly high temperatures in the presence of an active mechanism to produce an extremely high quantity of ammonia. [D]
Germany heavily relied on this process during World War I, which led to a rapid expansion of the construction of nitrogen plants in many other countries. This method is now one of the leading processes of the chemical industry throughout the world.
Câu 1: According to paragraph 1, how must nitrogen molecules enter living organisms?
- A. They must be converted to ammonia or nitrates.
- B. They must be combined with oxygen in the form of nitrate.
- C. They must be absorbed by the plant to furnish its nitrogen.
- D. They must be mixed with oxygen or hydrogen.
- A. destroys
- B. discontinues
- C. ceases
- D. decomposes
- A. Nature cannot make it occur by itself.
- B. It is a process that does not necessarily require the influence of man.
- C. The process needs perfect circumstances to happen.
- D. Nitrogen is essential to all life on Earth.
- A. a light source
- B. the presence of ammonia
- C. 90% rainfall for a week
- D. a chemical energy source
- A. driven
- B. influenced
- C. stopped
- D. changed
- A. To explain the industrial process of nitrogen fixation
- B. To show how a plants roots are important for this process
- C. To give an example of a living organism capable of fixing nitrogen
- D. To explain the impact of nitrogen on a microorganism
- A. attack
- B. defend
- C. occupy
- D. dominate
- A. The ability to grow legumes with little nitrogen is highly valuable.
- B. Legumes do not need much nitrogen to develop and grow strong.
- C. The farming system makes huge demands on the nitrogen level in the ground.
- D. Agriculture creates a great need for legumes and their produce.
- A. Producing low amount of ammonia
- B. Using extremely high pressures
- C. Reducing the supply of nitrogen compounds
- D. Leading to widespread use during World War I
- A. [A]
- B. [B]
- C. [C]
- D. [D]
PASSAGE 4 QUESTIONS 31 - 40
Throughout Western civilization, women's suffrage and the progression of these rights have played a pivotal role in its history. The best example of how these rights have progressed is in two nations that share a common history, Great Britain and the United States of America. [A] In England, the suffrage movement began in 1866 when prominent women's rights reformers gathered over 1,500 signatures on a petition to Parliament appealing for the right to vote. [B] However, significant headway has not been made yet. Women's rights activists soon grew combative and thus made certain that suffrage was a central issue. [C] In America, due to the Civil War, women's suffrage was temporarily halted. However, from 1876, campaigns, referendums, and gatherings were organized and carried out. [D]
The influence of Great Britain on the United States cannot be understated, yet there are both significant differences and similarities in how suffrage rights have progressed and evolved within each of these nations. In both countries, suffrage was based on class, race, nation, and gender. The suffragists were outside of the political establishment, campaigning alone and without support. They were predominately white and middle class in both countries, and their arguments reflected their class. In the first phase of the two countries, the arguments for suffrage focused on equality, and then turned to women's contribution to nation building after World War I.
Feudalism and hereditary rule predated the establishment of limited suffrage in Great Britain. Aspects of this system remained for a significant period of time with only the wealthy and land-owning males allowed to vote. This system was based on the principles that the wealthy would vote in the interests of the nation, just as the monarchy of Britain would rule in the interest of all its subjects. This distributive system of power played an important role in the history of the United States.
English landowners asserted their right to vote based on their personal wealth. Aspects of this trend are clearly evident in America. In 1776, a clause that guaranteed voting rights for white, male landowners was included in the United States Declaration of Independence. This was identical to the suffrage rights in Great Britain at that time in history. Voting was generally perceived not as a right, but as a privilege that only those who owned land could exercise.
By 1786, the United States Constitution had been amended to give individual states the power to establish their own suffrage rights. As a result of this, in 1791, Vermont passed a law declaring that all white males, regardless of whether they possessed property or not, could vote. In contrast, it was not until the Chartist movement in Great Britain in the 1840s that a popular movement had demanded wider suffrage rights. The eventual failure of the Chartist movement in 1850 ensured that only one in every five adult males in England was entitled to vote. While popular suffrage reform stalled in Great Britain, it accelerated in America during this period. In the wake of the American Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution granted African-American men the right to vote throughout the country. However, just as in England, women remained excluded by law from voting.
In the aftermath of the first World War, suffrage rights were extended to include women. This change took place first in America in 1920 with the 1991 amendment to the Constitution. It was not until 1928 that voting rights between men and women in Great Britain were equalized. As suffrage rights have extended to include groups formerly excluded, this trend continues in the West. In 1971, a further amendment lowered the age of voting from 20 to 18 in America. Today, in Great Britain and the majority of Western nations, the voting age is 18.
Initially, the progression of suffrage rights in America mirrored Great Britain's. The wealthy male landowners dominated voting and, therefore, political power, and voted only in their interests. In the wake of the American Civil War and the first World War, suffrage rights were extended to African-Americans, women, and individuals possessing no property, which boosted their status from lower class citizens to a higher level. Today, suffrage, in its universal form, plays a key role in democracies worldwide.
Câu 11: According to paragraph 1, why were 1,500 signatures gathered on a petition?
- A. Women sought the right to peaceful demonstrations.
- B. Women and men urged for the right to vote and own property.
- C. Women were requesting the right to vote.
- D. Collaboration was needed to facilitate women's right to vote.
- A. withheld
- B. withstood
- C. advanced
- D. contained
- A. Suffragists had a chance to change their position in society.
- B. Women achieved their goal of winning full voting rights.
- C. It was primarily run by working class women.
- D. Most suffragists were moderate in their tactics.
- A. that African Americans could vote
- B. that all 21-year olds could vote
- C. that women could vote and hold political office
- D. that only white, male landowners were allowed to vote
- A. Englishmen
- B. British royalty
- C. English landowners
- D. American landowners
- A. To argue that the right to vote only was exercised by the wealthy and elite
- B. To provide evidence that voting was not a right only for those who owned land
- C. To show that the right to voting privileges only was granted to wealthy male property holders
- D. To support the claim that the right to vote was an attribute of U.S. citizenship
- A. prevented
- B. profited
- C. contributed
- D. halted
- A. Suffrage rights became the standard and expanded to include people of middle Eastern descent after the Chartist movement failed.
- B. The Chartist movement was quashed by a group of hostile forces who were opposed to progression.
- C. The Chartist movement helped ensure that only women could vote.
- D. The progression of suffrage rights started to slow after the Chartist movement failed.
- A. In the period following the Civil War and World War I, voting rights were extended to most minorities.
- B. No one could vote in Great Britain unless they owned land, were white, and could read.
- C. War in Europe and America led many countries to disallow people of color the right to vote.
- D. Voting has always been considered a privilege in most Western countries.
- A. [A]
- B. [B]
- C. [C]
- D. [D]
