Latihan Pertemuan 8

Text 1
Scientists are as obsessed with the question of why the superold survive and thrive as
Ponce de Leon was to find the Fountain of Youth. They want to understand why the Japanese
islands of Okinawa are home to the world’s largest population of centenarians, with almost
600 of its 1.3 million inhabitants living into their second century – many of them active and
looking decades younger than their actual years. Like weekend visitors on the summer ferry
to Martha’s Vineyard, scientists and sociologists block the boats to Sardinia and Nova Scotia,
Canada, to see why those craggy locales hide vast clusters of the superold.
As well as studying these populations intensively to unlock their secrets, scientists

have also taken a hard look at the very old in the U.S., most notably in the New England
Centenarian Study, led by Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrician at Boston University. While the
very old are happy to offer homespun explanations for their longevity - “I never took a
drink”, “I drank a shot of whiskey every day” – experts are trying to unravel and understand
the biological factors that allow some people to reach 100 while others drop off in their 70’s
or 80s. Researchers are particularly interested in determining which factors allow up to 30%
of those who reach 100 to do so in sufficient mental and physical health: a whopping 90% of
centenarians, according to Perls, remain functionally independent up to age 92.
It is pretty obvious even to nonscientists that how you get there depends partly on the
genes you are born with and partly on lifestyle – what and how much you eat, where you live
and what types of stress and trauma you experience. How much depends on each factor,
though, was unknown until Swedish scientists tackled the problem in 1998. They did it by
looking at the only set of people who share genes but not lifestyle: identical twins who were
separated at birth and reared apart. If genes were most important, you would expect the twins
to die at about the same age, In fact, they do not, and the average difference convinced the
scientists that only about 20% to 30% of how long we live is genetically determined. The
dominant factor is lifestyle.
1. What is the topic of the text above?

A. Survival
B. Youth
C. Long-life span
D. Old age
E. Health secrets
2. Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the text?
A. The population of the elderly people is increasing.
B. Elderly people cluster in particular parts of the world.
C. Biological factors influence mental and physical health.
D. Genes and life styles are essential for a long- life span.
E. Several biological factors are at work affecting life span.
3. How is the information of the last paragraph in the text organized?

A. Each question is provided with an illustration
B. Scientific questions are followed by studies.
C. Each study is followed by research findings.
D. Scientific questions are presented from general to specific.
E. Three related questions are followed by one finding.
4. According to the information in the passage people may ______.

A. reach an old age if their parents do so
B. reach old age if they keep a healthy life style
C. reach old age if they are brought up separately from their siblings
D. not reach old age unless they live in areas where it is prevalent
E. fail to reach an old age unless they are mentally healthy
Text 2
The human criterion for perfect vision is 20/20 for reading the standard lines on a
Snellen eye chart without a hitch. The score is determined by how well you read lines of
letters of different sizes from 20 feet away. But being able to read the bottom line on the eye
chart does not approximate perfection as far as other species are concerned. Most birds
would consider us very visually handicapped. The hawk, for instance, has such sharp eyes
that it can spot a dime on the sidewalk while perched on top of the Empire State Building. It
can make fine visual distinctions because it is blessed with one million cones per square
millimetre in its retina. And in water, humans are farsighted, while the kingfisher, swooping
down to spear fish, can see well in both the air and water because it is endowed with two
foveae – areas of the eye, consisting mostly of cones that provide visual distinctions. One
foveae permits the bird, while in the air, to scan the water below with one eye at a time.
This is called monocular vision. Once it hits the water, the other fovea joins in, allowing the
kingfisher to focus both eyes, like binoculars, on its prey at the same time. A frog’s vision is
distinguished by its ability to perceive things as a constant motion picture. Known as “bug
detectors”, a highly developed set of cells in a frog’s eyes responds mainly to moving
objects. So, it is said that a frog sitting in a field of dead bugs wouldn’t see them as food and
would starve.
The bee has a “compound” eye, which is used for navigation. It has 15,000 facets
that divide what it sees into a pattern of dots, or mosaic. With this kind of vision, the bee
sees the sun only as a single dot, a constant point of reference. Thus, the eye is a superb
navigational instrument that constantly measures the angle of its line of flight in relation to
the sun. A bee’s eye also gauges flight speed. And if that is not enough to leave our 20/20
“perfect vision” paling into insignificance, the bee is capable of seeing something we can’t
– ultraviolet light. Thus, what humans consider to be “perfect vision” is in fact rather
limited when we look at other species. However, there is still much to be said for the human
eye. Of all the mammals, only humans and some primates can enjoy the pleasures of colour
vision.
5. Which of the following best describes the topic of the passage?

A. Limits of the human eye
B. Perfect vision
C. Different eyes for different uses
D. Eye variation among different species
E. Superior eyes of various animals
6. According to the passage, why might birds and other animals consider humans very
visually handicapped?
A. humans can’t see very well in either air or water
B. human eyes are not as well suited to our needs
C. the main outstanding feature of human eyes is colour vision
D. their eyes can see more colours than human’s can
E. human eyes can’t do what their eyes can
7. According to the passage, “bug detectors” are useful for _____.

A. navigation
B. seeing moving objects
C. avoiding bugs when getting food
D. avoiding starvation
E. finding prey among bugs
8. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?

A. kingfishers have monocular vision
B. bees see patterns of dots
C. hawk’s eyes consist mostly of cones that can allow it to scan with one eye at a
time
D. humans are farsighted in water
F. frogs can only see moving objects
Read the passage below.

When exploratory divers discovered the underwater Mexican cave site known as Hoyo
Negro, the conditions of the cave were so pristine and stable, but there was evidence that at
least one person had been inside the cave before the divers: A Paleoamerican girl
nicknamed Naia, who had fallen to her death while presumably collecting water from the
cave during the late Pleistocene era, between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago. The divers
found her skeleton, as well as the remains of several Ice Age animals, on the cave floor.
According to Rissolo and project co-director, James Chatters, it was like the La Brea tar pits
without the tar.
This remarkable discovery represents the first and only example of human remains found in
direct association with extinct megafauna in the Americas, says Rissolo, who is a visiting
scholar at UC San Diego from the Waitt Institute and a research associate at the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography. The remains of two gomphotheres (extinct elephant-like
creatures), two Shasta ground sloths, a pair of saber-toothed cats and numerous other
animals were also found with Naia in the underwater pit, which measures 200 feet in
diameter and is located in the far Southeast of the country, on the Yucután Peninsula.
Computer science Ph.D. student Vid Petrovic – a member of the Center’s Integrative
Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program in cultural heritage
diagnostics – is using photos taken by the scientific dive team to create 3D structure-from-
motion (SfM) models of the cave site, and he has used the same technique to recreate Naia’s
mandible.
SfM is an imaging technique that, in this case, uses two-dimensional photographs taken
underwater at the cave site. Petrovic tracks and aligns features in the photos (such as corner
points) to ‘stitch together’ and reconstruct the objects digitally in 3D.
Rissolo says that given the proper lighting, camera set-up and protocols, SfM is a relatively
straightforward and cost-effective imaging and visualization method, especially for
documenting archaeological sites that are not easily accessible or are threatened with
destruction, either natural or human-derived.
Adapted from: http://archaeologicalconservancy.org
9. According to the text, what remains are not found in Hoyo Negro? The remains of…
A. gomphotheras
B. elephants
C. Shasta ground sloths
D. saber-toothed cats
E. Paleoamerican girl
Read the passage below.

The study of songbirds has revealed a variety of fundamental properties of
biological systems. In particular, neurobiological studies carried out in songbirds have
revealed the presence of newly born neurons in the adult brain, how steroid hormones affect
brain development, the neural and mechanistic bases of vocalizations, and how experience
modifies neuronal physiology. More evidently, however, songbirds have been extensively
used as a model for imitative vocal learning, a behavior thought to be a substrate for speech
acquisition in humans. Now an international consortium has unveiled the genome of the
zebra finch (Taeniopygia Guttata).
Sequencing the zebra finch genome was initiated in 2005 under the Large Scale
Genome Sequencing Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute. The prior
work in the research community characterizing the zebra finch brain transcriptase. These
initiatives, along with new zebra finch genome sequences, have resulted in the complete
genome sequenced with 17,475 protein-coding genes identified, as well as regulatory
regions and non-coding RNAs. The annotation and sequence coverage of the zebra finch
genome will certainly be refined in the years to come, but the initial endeavor is expected to
provide a unique platform for modern genomics research in this organism. Furthermore, this
initial snapshot of the songbird genome should provide critical insights into fundamental
scientific questions, including an array of physiological and evolutionary processes.
Adapted from: link.springer.com
10. From the sentence ‘… songbirds have been extensively used as a model for imitative
vocal learning, ….’ in paragraph 1, it can be stated that…
A. Songbirds are good models of vocal learning.
B. Human can practice vocal learning through songbird.
C. Songbirds are observed intensively by the scientist.
D. Songbirds imitate human’s speech.
E. Human speech acquisition in inspired by songbird.

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Text 1

As well as studying these populations intensively to unlock their secrets, scientists

1. What is the topic of the text above?

3. How is the information of the last paragraph in the text organized?

4. According to the information in the passage people may ______.

5. Which of the following best describes the topic of the passage?

7. According to the passage, “bug detectors” are useful for _____.

8. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?

Read the passage below.

Read the passage below.

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