GT IELTS Collection 1 Reading Test 16

Winter events at Northvale's Science Museum

A. Museum Event A

A world of geothermal activity comes to life in the darkened lower gallery. Find yourself in an active-volcano environment whilst walking through currents of warm air as they drift around the simulation! Come face-to-face with gigantic displays of glowing rocks, slowly cooled magma and large mineral crystals, which help tell the fascinating story of how volcanic features form beneath the surfaces of rocky planets, including Earth.

B. Museum Event B

An extraordinary astrophysical soundscape created from raw electromagnetic spacecraft data. On the half-hour throughout the day, the Halgren Dome is filled with the sound of the strange hums and rhythmic crackles of unseen cosmic phenomena that exist in the vast and distant regions of deep space.

C. Museum Event C

Come and see the fantastic indoor exhibition of rocket, space and astronomical modelling. Walk amongst colourful rockets and admire the wonderful display models – all built by children aged 14 and under from all round the city. If you are in this age category and fancy yourself as a model-maker, then you can enter for the next exhibition!

D. Museum Event D

Young explorers can step aboard our new space exploration simulator in Northvale’s science wing. Take your seat in a spacecraft cabin, prepare for launch and travel through the Solar System on an exciting virtual mission. Steer past rocky asteroids, approach distant planets and help the crew complete challenges before returning safely to Earth!

E. Museum Event E

What is gravity all about? Did you know that every object we drop, every step we take and every movement in space depends on gravity? Take a guided tour to discover what gravity means and why it matters so much, both on Earth and beyond.

F. Museum Event F

Visit our quiet and detailed exhibition of historic engineering drawings, which brings the world’s complex and innovative machines to life in works from three hundred years ago and from this century.

City Cycle Hire

City Cycle Hire is a network of docking stations distributed throughout the city, the largest scheme of its kind in the region. Running for more than a decade, it offers around 1,200 bicycles for short trips around town. The docking stations are placed beside the main roads and close to the busiest transport hubs. More than 2,000,000 hires are made each year, taking cars off the roads and helping to clean up the air in the city centre.

A bicycle may be hired by any rider aged 14 or over. Every bicycle must be brought back to a docking station rather than left at the roadside. Please note that all docking stations are located within the city zone, so you will need to return to this area to end your trip. If you experience a fault with a bicycle mid-ride, simply lock it at the nearest docking station and report the issue via the app.

Using the scheme is straightforward. Unlock a bicycle at any docking station with the app (for single-use users) or a contactless card (for membership holders), ride to your destination, then return the bicycle to a free dock. A standard pass costs £3.20, which covers unlimited short rides throughout the day. If the bicycle is not returned within 24 hours, an additional late-return fee of £5 will be charged.

Riders aged 14 to 17 can ride for free (up to two per adult member) when travelling with an adult and registered in the system. If riding alone, a discounted day pass is available for just £1.40, provided they follow all scheme rules and local cycling regulations.

Helmets are available from the staffed kiosk in the city centre for a refundable £1.40 deposit. Pick one up before starting your journey, and bring it back to the same kiosk after you have returned your bicycle to a docking station. Before lending you a helmet, staff may require confirmation that you currently have an active bicycle hire.

Membership holders benefit from reduced riding rates. Off-peak hires for members cost just £1 after 09:30 from Monday to Friday, and at any time on weekends or public holidays. During peak weekday hours (before 09:30), standard rates apply.

Amsterdam is a city of cycles

For anyone in Amsterdam for a few hours or a few days, hiring a bike is the easiest way to get the freedom of the city.

Come to Warren's Bike Hire, where a large selection of bikes are all available for hire at only €14.00 a day (cost of basket and lock inclusive). They are also fitted with lights front and rear for those wishing to retain the bike overnight.

Booking

Just email info@WBH.com to ensure that there is a bike waiting for you when you need one.

This is particularly necessary during

the school holiday period of July and August.

Cycling is for all the family

All sizes of bikes are available for hire and, for those too small to pedal themselves, there are bikes fitted with child seats.

Hire charges

1 day €14.00 2 weeks €95.00

2 days €24.00 3 weeks €120.00

3 days € 33.00 4 weeks €140.00

1 week €60.00

The hire charge must be paid in

advance.

In addition, a €50.00 deposit must be paid. This is returned to the hirer on the safe return of the bicycle.

Rates are reduced for longer periods, especially in winter.

Northbridge Community Trust — Online Job Application Procedure

To begin an application, first browse the Current Vacancies and identify a post you would like to apply for. After viewing the job description, click the Apply Now tab below it. You will then be presented with a screen asking you to create a new account. Scroll down to the section labelled First Time Applicant and enter your email address, which will be used to set up your account. Before the application form appears on screen, you must also agree to the data collection policy.

Once the form opens, you will notice a series of tabs across the top with names such as Personal Details and Education. These divide the application into smaller sections so that you can work on one part at a time, and the data is saved automatically each time you click a tab. You may also alter your application at any point, provided you click Save Changes at the bottom of the form afterwards. Bear in mind that some sections contain required information, which is indicated with an asterisk (*). When everything is finished, click the Complete tab, type your name in place of a signature, and click Submit. As a final step, you will be asked to confirm that you really do want to submit your application.

It is worth noting that the application does not need to be completed in one sitting. When you sign up for the first time, you will be sent a password for your account, which allows you to log in later and continue where you left off. Simply click the login link and select the My Applications option on the left, where you will find a list of all your applications currently in progress.

Finally, if you wish to apply for more than one vacancy at the same time, you must submit a separate application form to the recruitment office for every position you are interested in. Please do not use a single application form to apply for several different posts.

The pesticide-free village

Gerry Marten and Dona Glen Williams report on the Indian village of Punukula, so nearly destroyed by reliance on pesticides

Around 20 years ago, a handful of families migrated from the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, south-east India, into Punukula, a community of around 900 people farming plots of between two and ten acres. The outsiders from Guntur brought cotton culture with them, and this attracted resident farmers by promising to bring in more hard cash than the mixed crops they were already growing to eat and sell, such as millet, mung beans, chilli and rice. But growing cotton meant using pesticides – and fertilisers – until then a mystery to the mostly illiterate farmers of the community.

Local agrochemical dealers obligingly filled the need for information and supplies. These ‘middlemen’ sold commercial seeds, fertilisers and insecticides on credit, and guaranteed purchase of the crop. They offered technical advice provided by the companies that supplied their products. The farmers depended on the dealers. If they wanted to grow cotton – and they did – it seemed they had no choice. A quick ‘high’ of booming yields and incomes hooked growers during the early years of cotton in the region. Outlay on insecticides was fairly low because cotton pests hadn’t moved in yet. Many farmers were so impressed with the chemicals that they started using them on their other crops as well. The immediate payoffs from chemically-dependent cotton agriculture both ensured and obscured the fact that the black dirt fields had gone into a freefall of environmental degradation, dragged down by a chain of cause and effect.

Soon cotton-eaters, such as bollworms and aphids, plagued the fields. Repeated spraying killed off the most susceptible pests and left the strongest to reproduce and pass on their resistance to generations of ever-harder offspring. As the bugs grew tougher and more abundant, farmers applied ever-increasing intensity and quantity of poisons, sometimes mixing cocktails of as many as ten insecticides. At the same time, cotton was gobbling up the nutrients in the soil, leaving the growers no option but to invest in chemical fertilisers. By the time some farmers tried to break free of their chemical dependence, insecticides had already decimated the birds, wasps, beetles, and other predators that had once provided natural control of crop pests. Without their balancing presence, pests ran riot if insecticide was cut back. As outlays for fertilisers and insecticides escalated, the cost of producing cotton mounted. Eventually, the expense of chemical inputs outgrew the cash value of the crop, and farmers fell further and further into debt and poverty.

Their vicious cycle was only broken by the willingness of a prominent village elder to experiment with something different. He had been among the first villagers to grow cotton, and he would be the first to try it without chemicals, as set out by a programme in Non-Pesticide Management (NPM). This had been devised for Punukula with the help of a Non-Government Organisation called SECURE that had become aware of the hardships caused by the pesticide trap. It involved turning to neem, a fast-growing, broad-leaved evergreen tree related to mahogany. Neem protects itself against insects by producing a multitude of natural pesticides that have evolved specifically to defeat plant-eating insects. Thus, they are generally harmless to humans and other animals, including birds and insects that eat pests.

The plant is native to India and Burma, where it has been used for centuries to control pests and to promote health. To protect cotton, neem seeds are simply ground into a powder, soaked overnight in water, and sprayed onto the crop at least every 10 days. Neem cake applied to the soil kills insect pests and doubles as an organic fertilizer high in nitrogen. As neem grows locally and is easy to process, it is much less expensive than the chemical insecticides sold for profit by the dealers and their corporate suppliers. Quick, short-term gains had once pushed Punukula into chemical-dependent agriculture. Now they found that similar immediate rewards were helping to speed change in the other direction: the harvest of the next 20 NPM farmers was as good as the harvest of farmers using insecticides, and they came out ahead because they weren’t buying insecticides. Instead of investing cash (in short supply) in chemicals, they invested time and labour in NPM practices.

By 2000, all the farmers in Punukula village were using NPM rather than chemicals for cotton, and they began to use it on other crops as well. The change gathered momentum as NPM became even more effective once everyone was using it. The status and economic opportunities of women improved – neem became a source of income for some of them, as they gathered seeds from the surrounding area to sell for NPM in other villages. The improved situation meant that families could afford to put more land under cultivation. In 2004, the panchayat (village government) formally declared Punukula to be a pesticide-free village. And they have big plans for the future, such as water purification. The village now serves as a model for disseminating NPM to other communities, with around 2000 farmers visiting each year. What began as a few farmers desperate to find a way to farm without poisons has become a movement with the potential to pull an entire region back from ecological disaster.

The pesticide-free village

Gerry Marten and Dona Glen Williams report on the Indian village of Punukula, so nearly destroyed by reliance on pesticides

Around 20 years ago, a handful of families migrated from the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, south-east India, into Punukula, a community of around 900 people farming plots of between two and ten acres. The outsiders from Guntur brought cotton culture with them, and this attracted resident farmers by promising to bring in more hard cash than the mixed crops they were already growing to eat and sell, such as millet, mung beans, chilli and rice. But growing cotton meant using pesticides – and fertilisers – until then a mystery to the mostly illiterate farmers of the community.

Local agrochemical dealers obligingly filled the need for information and supplies. These ‘middlemen’ sold commercial seeds, fertilisers and insecticides on credit, and guaranteed purchase of the crop. They offered technical advice provided by the companies that supplied their products. The farmers depended on the dealers. If they wanted to grow cotton – and they did – it seemed they had no choice. A quick ‘high’ of booming yields and incomes hooked growers during the early years of cotton in the region. Outlay on insecticides was fairly low because cotton pests hadn’t moved in yet. Many farmers were so impressed with the chemicals that they started using them on their other crops as well. The immediate payoffs from chemically-dependent cotton agriculture both ensured and obscured the fact that the black dirt fields had gone into a freefall of environmental degradation, dragged down by a chain of cause and effect.

Soon cotton-eaters, such as bollworms and aphids, plagued the fields. Repeated spraying killed off the most susceptible pests and left the strongest to reproduce and pass on their resistance to generations of ever-harder offspring. As the bugs grew tougher and more abundant, farmers applied ever-increasing intensity and quantity of poisons, sometimes mixing cocktails of as many as ten insecticides. At the same time, cotton was gobbling up the nutrients in the soil, leaving the growers no option but to invest in chemical fertilisers. By the time some farmers tried to break free of their chemical dependence, insecticides had already decimated the birds, wasps, beetles, and other predators that had once provided natural control of crop pests. Without their balancing presence, pests ran riot if insecticide was cut back. As outlays for fertilisers and insecticides escalated, the cost of producing cotton mounted. Eventually, the expense of chemical inputs outgrew the cash value of the crop, and farmers fell further and further into debt and poverty.

Their vicious cycle was only broken by the willingness of a prominent village elder to experiment with something different. He had been among the first villagers to grow cotton, and he would be the first to try it without chemicals, as set out by a programme in Non-Pesticide Management (NPM). This had been devised for Punukula with the help of a Non-Government Organisation called SECURE that had become aware of the hardships caused by the pesticide trap. It involved turning to neem, a fast-growing, broad-leaved evergreen tree related to mahogany. Neem protects itself against insects by producing a multitude of natural pesticides that have evolved specifically to defeat plant-eating insects. Thus, they are generally harmless to humans and other animals, including birds and insects that eat pests.

The plant is native to India and Burma, where it has been used for centuries to control pests and to promote health. To protect cotton, neem seeds are simply ground into a powder, soaked overnight in water, and sprayed onto the crop at least every 10 days. Neem cake applied to the soil kills insect pests and doubles as an organic fertilizer high in nitrogen. As neem grows locally and is easy to process, it is much less expensive than the chemical insecticides sold for profit by the dealers and their corporate suppliers. Quick, short-term gains had once pushed Punukula into chemical-dependent agriculture. Now they found that similar immediate rewards were helping to speed change in the other direction: the harvest of the next 20 NPM farmers was as good as the harvest of farmers using insecticides, and they came out ahead because they weren’t buying insecticides. Instead of investing cash (in short supply) in chemicals, they invested time and labour in NPM practices.

By 2000, all the farmers in Punukula village were using NPM rather than chemicals for cotton, and they began to use it on other crops as well. The change gathered momentum as NPM became even more effective once everyone was using it. The status and economic opportunities of women improved – neem became a source of income for some of them, as they gathered seeds from the surrounding area to sell for NPM in other villages. The improved situation meant that families could afford to put more land under cultivation. In 2004, the panchayat (village government) formally declared Punukula to be a pesticide-free village. And they have big plans for the future, such as water purification. The village now serves as a model for disseminating NPM to other communities, with around 2000 farmers visiting each year. What began as a few farmers desperate to find a way to farm without poisons has become a movement with the potential to pull an entire region back from ecological disaster.

The pesticide-free village

Gerry Marten and Dona Glen Williams report on the Indian village of Punukula, so nearly destroyed by reliance on pesticides

Around 20 years ago, a handful of families migrated from the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, south-east India, into Punukula, a community of around 900 people farming plots of between two and ten acres. The outsiders from Guntur brought cotton culture with them, and this attracted resident farmers by promising to bring in more hard cash than the mixed crops they were already growing to eat and sell, such as millet, mung beans, chilli and rice. But growing cotton meant using pesticides – and fertilisers – until then a mystery to the mostly illiterate farmers of the community.

Local agrochemical dealers obligingly filled the need for information and supplies. These ‘middlemen’ sold commercial seeds, fertilisers and insecticides on credit, and guaranteed purchase of the crop. They offered technical advice provided by the companies that supplied their products. The farmers depended on the dealers. If they wanted to grow cotton – and they did – it seemed they had no choice. A quick ‘high’ of booming yields and incomes hooked growers during the early years of cotton in the region. Outlay on insecticides was fairly low because cotton pests hadn’t moved in yet. Many farmers were so impressed with the chemicals that they started using them on their other crops as well. The immediate payoffs from chemically-dependent cotton agriculture both ensured and obscured the fact that the black dirt fields had gone into a freefall of environmental degradation, dragged down by a chain of cause and effect.

Soon cotton-eaters, such as bollworms and aphids, plagued the fields. Repeated spraying killed off the most susceptible pests and left the strongest to reproduce and pass on their resistance to generations of ever-harder offspring. As the bugs grew tougher and more abundant, farmers applied ever-increasing intensity and quantity of poisons, sometimes mixing cocktails of as many as ten insecticides. At the same time, cotton was gobbling up the nutrients in the soil, leaving the growers no option but to invest in chemical fertilisers. By the time some farmers tried to break free of their chemical dependence, insecticides had already decimated the birds, wasps, beetles, and other predators that had once provided natural control of crop pests. Without their balancing presence, pests ran riot if insecticide was cut back. As outlays for fertilisers and insecticides escalated, the cost of producing cotton mounted. Eventually, the expense of chemical inputs outgrew the cash value of the crop, and farmers fell further and further into debt and poverty.

Their vicious cycle was only broken by the willingness of a prominent village elder to experiment with something different. He had been among the first villagers to grow cotton, and he would be the first to try it without chemicals, as set out by a programme in Non-Pesticide Management (NPM). This had been devised for Punukula with the help of a Non-Government Organisation called SECURE that had become aware of the hardships caused by the pesticide trap. It involved turning to neem, a fast-growing, broad-leaved evergreen tree related to mahogany. Neem protects itself against insects by producing a multitude of natural pesticides that have evolved specifically to defeat plant-eating insects. Thus, they are generally harmless to humans and other animals, including birds and insects that eat pests.

The plant is native to India and Burma, where it has been used for centuries to control pests and to promote health. To protect cotton, neem seeds are simply ground into a powder, soaked overnight in water, and sprayed onto the crop at least every 10 days. Neem cake applied to the soil kills insect pests and doubles as an organic fertilizer high in nitrogen. As neem grows locally and is easy to process, it is much less expensive than the chemical insecticides sold for profit by the dealers and their corporate suppliers. Quick, short-term gains had once pushed Punukula into chemical-dependent agriculture. Now they found that similar immediate rewards were helping to speed change in the other direction: the harvest of the next 20 NPM farmers was as good as the harvest of farmers using insecticides, and they came out ahead because they weren’t buying insecticides. Instead of investing cash (in short supply) in chemicals, they invested time and labour in NPM practices.

By 2000, all the farmers in Punukula village were using NPM rather than chemicals for cotton, and they began to use it on other crops as well. The change gathered momentum as NPM became even more effective once everyone was using it. The status and economic opportunities of women improved – neem became a source of income for some of them, as they gathered seeds from the surrounding area to sell for NPM in other villages. The improved situation meant that families could afford to put more land under cultivation. In 2004, the panchayat (village government) formally declared Punukula to be a pesticide-free village. And they have big plans for the future, such as water purification. The village now serves as a model for disseminating NPM to other communities, with around 2000 farmers visiting each year. What began as a few farmers desperate to find a way to farm without poisons has become a movement with the potential to pull an entire region back from ecological disaster.