PR-IX END OF MODULE TEST READING

A The potato was first cultivated in South America between three and seven thousand years ago, though scientists believe they may have grown wild in the region as long as 13,000 years ago. The genetic patterns of potato distribution indicate that the potato probably originated in the mountainous west-central region of the continent.

B Early Spanish chroniclers who misused the Indian word batata (sweet potato) as the name for the potato noted the importance of the tuber to the Incan Empire. The Incas had learned to preserve the potato for storage by dehydrating and mashing potatoes into a substance called Chuchu could be stored in a room for up to 10 years, providing excellent insurance against possible crop failures. As well as using the food as a staple crop, the Incas thought potatoes made childbirth easier and used it to treat injuries.

C The Spanish conquistadors first encountered the potato when they arrived in Peru in 1532 in search of gold, and noted Inca miners eating chuchu. At the time the Spaniards failed to realize that the potato represented a far more important treasure than either silver or gold, but they did gradually begin to use potatoes as basic rations aboard their ships. After the arrival of the potato in Spain in 1570，a few Spanish farmers began to cultivate them on a small scale, mostly as food for livestock.

D Throughout Europe, potatoes were regarded with suspicion, distaste and fear. Generally considered to be unfit for human consumption, they were used only as animal fodder and sustenance for the starving. In northern Europe, potatoes were primarily grown in botanical gardens as an exotic novelty. Even peasants refused to eat from a plant that produced ugly, misshapen tubers and that had come from a heathen civilization. Some felt that the potato plant’s resemblance to plants in the nightshade family hinted that it was the creation of witches or devils.

E In meat-loving England, farmers and urban workers regarded potatoes with extreme distaste. In 1662, the Royal Society recommended the cultivation of the tuber to the English government and the nation, but this recommendation had little impact. Potatoes did not become a staple until, during the food shortages associated with the Revolutionary Wars, the English government began to officially encourage potato cultivation. In 1795, the Board of Agriculture issued a pamphlet entitled “Hints Respecting the Culture and Use of Potatoes”； this was followed shortly by pro-potato editorials and potato recipes in The Times. Gradually, the lower classes began to follow the lead of the upper classes.

F A similar pattern emerged across the English Channel in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. While the potato slowly gained ground in eastern France (where it was often the only crop remaining after marauding soldiers plundered wheat fields and vineyards), it did not achieve widespread acceptance until the late 1700s. The peasants remained suspicious, in spite of a 1771 paper from the Facult de Paris testifying that the potato was not harmful but beneficial. The people began to overcome their distaste when the plant received the royal seal of approval: Louis XVI began to sport a potato flower in his buttonhole, and Marie-Antoinette wore the purple potato blossom in her hair.

G Frederick the Great of Prussia saw the potato’s potential to help feed his nation and lower the price of bread, but faced the challenge of overcoming the people’s prejudice against the plant. When he issued a 1774 order for his subjects to grow potatoes as protection against famine, the town of Kolberg replied: “The things have neither smell nor taste, not even the dogs will eat them, so what use are they to us?” Trying a less direct approach to encourage his subjects to begin planting potatoes, Frederick used a bit of reverse psychology: he planted a royal field of potato plants and stationed a heavy guard to protect this field from thieves. Nearby peasants naturally assumed that anything worth guarding was worth stealing, and so snuck into the field and snatched the plants for their home gardens. Of course, this was entirely in line with Frederick’s wishes.

H Historians debate whether the potato was primarily a cause or an effect of the huge population boom in industrial-era England and Wales. Prior to 1800，the English diet had consisted primarily of meat, supplemented by bread, butter and cheese. Few vegetables were consumed, most vegetables being regarded as nutritionally worthless and potentially harmful. This view began to change gradually in the late 1700s. The Industrial Revolution was drawing an ever increasing percentage of the populace into crowded cities, where only the richest could afford homes with ovens or coal storage rooms, and people were working 12-16 hour days which left them with little time or energy to prepare food. High yielding, easily prepared potato crops were the obvious solution to England’s food problems.

I Whereas most of their neighbors regarded the potato with suspicion and had to be persuaded to use it by the upper classes, the Irish peasantry embraced the tuber more passionately than anyone since the Incas. The potato was well suited to the Irish the soil and climate, and its high yield suited the most important concern of most Irish farmers: to feed their families.

J The most dramatic example of the potato’s potential to alter population patterns occurred in Ireland, where the potato had become a staple by 1800. The Irish population doubled to eight million between 1780 and 1841，this without any significant expansion of industry or reform of agricultural techniques beyond the widespread cultivation of the potato. Though Irish landholding practices were primitive in comparison with those of England, the potato’s high yields allowed even the poorest farmers to produce more healthy food than they needed with scarcely any investment or hard labor. Even children could easily plant, harvest and cook potatoes, which of course required no threshing, curing or grinding. The abundance provided by potatoes greatly decreased infant mortality and encouraged early marriage.

Collecting must be one of the most varied of human activities, and it’s one that many of us psychologists find fascinating. Many forms of collecting have been dignified with a technical name: an archtophilist collects teddy bears, a philatelist collects postage stamps, and a deltiologist collects postcards. Amassing hundreds or even thousands of postcards, chocolate wrappers or whatever, takes time, energy and money that could surely be put to much more productive use. And yet there are millions of collectors around the world. Why do they do it?

There are the people who collect because they want to make money – this could be called an instrumental reason for collecting; that is, collecting as a means to an end. They’ll look for, say, antiques that they can buy cheaply and expect to be able to sell at a profit. But there may well be a psychological element, too – buying cheap and selling dear can give the collector a sense of triumph. And as selling online is so easy, more and more people are joining in.

Many collectors collect to develop their social life, attending meetings of a group of collectors and exchanging information on items. This is a variant on joining a bridge club or a gym, and similarly brings them into contact with like-minded people.

Another motive for collecting is the desire to find something special, or a particular example of the collected item, such as a rare early recording by a particular singer. Some may spend their whole lives in a hunt for this. Psychologically, this can give a purpose to a life that otherwise feels aimless. There is a danger, though, that if the individual is ever lucky enough to find what they’re looking for, rather than celebrating their success, they may feel empty, now that the goal that drove them on has gone.

If you think about collecting postage stamps, another potential reason for it – or, perhaps, a result of collecting – is its educational value. Stamp collecting opens a window to other countries, and to the plants, animals, or famous people shown on their stamps. Similarly, in the 19th century, many collectors amassed fossils, animals and plants from around the globe, and their collections provided a vast amount of information about the natural world. Without those collections, our understanding would be greatly inferior to what it is.

In the past – and nowadays, too, though to a lesser extent – a popular form of collecting, particularly among boys and men, was trainspotting. This might involve trying to see every locomotive of a particular type, using published data that identifies each one, and ticking off each engine as it is seen. Trainspotters exchange information, these days often by mobile phone, so they can work out where to go to, to see a particular engine. As a by-product, many practitioners of the hobby become very knowledgeable about railway operations, or the technical specifications of different engine types.

Similarly, people who collect dolls may go beyond simply enlarging their collection, and develop an interest in the way that dolls are made, or the materials that are used. These have changed over the centuries from the wood that was standard in 16th century Europe, through the wax and porcelain of later centuries, to the plastics of today’s dolls. Or collectors might be inspired to study how dolls reflect notions of what children like, or ought to like.

Not all collectors are interested in learning from their hobby, though, so what we might call a psychological reason for collecting is the need for a sense of control, perhaps as a way of dealing with insecurity. Stamps collectors, for instance, arrange their stamps in albums, usually very neatly, organising their collection according to certain commonplace principles – perhaps by country in alphabetical order, or grouping stamps by what they depict – people, birds, maps, and so on.

One reason, conscious or not, for what someone chooses to collect is to show the collector’s individualism. Someone who decides to collect something as unexpected as dos collars, for instance, may be conveying their belief that they must be interesting themselves. And believe it or not, there is at least one dog collar museum in existence, and it grew out of a personal collection.

Of course, all hobbies give pleasure, but the common factor in collecting is usually passion: pleasure is putting it far too mildly. More than most other hobbies, collecting can be totally engrossing, and can give a strong sense of personal fulfilment. To non-collectors it may appear an eccentric, if harmless, way of spending time, but potentially, collecting has a lot going for it.

Looking across the Bund towards Pudong across the Huangpu River in Shanghai. you will see an array of modem worldbeating skyscrapers. In contrast, behind you are the magnificent buildings from the nineteenth century. Standing on the high tourist promenade that runs the length of the waterfront, you may also notice that the level of the river is quite a bit higher than that of the buildings on the Bund. It isn't because the river has risen higher than usual due to rainfall: no - Shanghai is sinking. It is an unfortunate problem that Shanghai shares with several other major financial and industrial centres and it is caused by factors most of the cities have in common. Included in the list are New York, Bangkok Houston and Mexico City, all cither built on shaky foundations or low-lying land that is now threatened by rising sea levels.

New York and Bangkok are victims of bad luck. The effect of global warming on the sea levels means that these cities may drown in the oceans that brought them such importance and prosperity. Scientists believe that sea levels in the New York area are expected to rise about twice as quickly as in the rest of the world. The position of the city situated where the Hudson River flows into the Atlantic Ocean - already puts America's most densely populated city at a higher risk of flooding. But the impact of tropical storms and rising tides poses more dangers than just flooding. Beaches in the area will be swept away followed by the surrounding wetlands eventually becoming part of the sea, surrounding river estuaries will see an increase in the salt levels in the freshwater. All of this will affect the ecosystems in New York's immediate area and damage developments along the coast.

Bangkok too will fall victim to rising sea levels. Also situated on swamplands next to a river, the Chao Phraya, the city is about 50 kilometres north of the Gulf of Thailand. The city is likely to face increasingly severe tropical storms crossing from the Bay as well as threats from coastal erosion and shifting clay soil. It seems unlikely that Bangkok will save itself from drowning under the waters of the Pacific, which are predicted to rise by between 19 and 29 cm by 2050.

Other cities are sinking due to bad planning rather than bad luck. The fourth largest city in America is Houston but it has been built on shaky foundations and these are now giving way. Houston was literally built on a foundation of sand up to several kilometres deep and loosely packed clay from river deposits formed from the erosion of the Rocky Mountains. In addition to poor foundation materials, Houston has an estimated 300 fault lines running through it. Using GPS data from 24 measuring points throughout the country between 1995 to 2005 a research team were able to monitor the area of subsidence and found an area of Houston measuring 30 kilometres squared was sinking very fast-up to 5 centimetres per year. The reason for the subsidence is quite straightforward: the withdrawal of water from deep beneath the surface. Areas of Houston where water extraction has been stopped have stopped sinking.

Similarly, parts of Mexico City are subsiding rapidly due to poor foundations - some areas of the city are sinking up to 20 centimetres a year. The city is built on a dry lake bed in the valley of Mexico, and the council has condemned fifty structures since 2006 because of leaning, and approximately 5,000 homes and buildings are unstable. Some of the heaviest buildings, like the Palace of Fine Arts have sunk more than three metres over the past one hundred years and its original ground floor is now the basement. Again the reason is the depletion of the water reserve lying under the city. But in this case there is a complicating factor: a vast complex of drains was built under the city to protect it from flooding by water running from the surrounding mountains. As the city sinks, so do the drains and the wastewater they were supposed to carry away is finding its way back to the city. And it's not only water mains and drains that have been affected, as the city sinks the subway network is subsiding with it.

Back in Shanghai, the same problem is causing the city of 13 million people and ultra-modern skyline to sink beneath the waterline of the Huang Pu River. Originally a small fishing village built on swamplands surrounding the mouth of the Yangtze River, Shanghai's population has swollen to around 13 million people. The expansion has been sustained by taking water from wells drilled into the aquifer under the city and by constructing massive skyscrapers According to China Central Television, Shanghai has sunk up to three metres since the early 1990s mainly due to depletion of underground water but also because of the weight of high-rise buildings situated on areas with soft soil. As a partial solution to the problem, Shanghai is trying to reverse the sinking by pumping 5.2 billion gallons of water a year into the water table with some success - so far the city has risen by almost 11.5 cm.

City

Situated

Cause of sinking

Effect

New York

where the Hudson meets the Atlantic

the effect of 27. and rising tides

increased chance of 28.

Bangkok

on swamps near the Gulf of Thailand

increasingly damaging storms, 29. and moving soil

a rise in the level of the Pacific of up to 30. by 2050

Mexico City

on a 31. that has dried out

Using up the 32. beneath the city

waste water drains and subway affected

Shanghai

on wetlands arounds the 33. of the Yangtze River 

Wells drilled into aquifer and building 34.

sunk up to 35. metres due to decline of underground water and the weight of tall buildings