VSTEP Reading Mock Test 03

Narcolepsy is a disease characterized by malfunctioning sleep mechanics. It can consist of a sudden and uncontrollable bout of sleep during daylight hours and disturbed sleep during nighttime hours. It occurs more often in men than in women, and it commonly makes its appearance during adolescence or young adulthood. At least a half million Americans are believed to be affected by narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy can take a number of forms during daylight hours. One common symptom of the disease during daytime hours is a sudden attack of REM (rapid-eye movement) sleep during normal waking hours. This occurs in some people hundreds of times in a single day, while others only have rare occurrences. During a sleep attack, narcoleptics may experience automatic behavior; even though asleep, they may continue automatically performing the activity they were involved in prior to falling asleep. They may, for example, continue walking, or driving, or stirring a pot until the activity is interrupted by external forces. Others experience cataplexy during daytime hours; cataplexy involves a sudden loss of muscle tone that may cause the head to droop or the knees to wobble in minor attacks or a total collapse in more serious attacks. Cataplexy seems to occur most often in conjunction with intense emotion or excitement.

During sleep hours, narcolepsy can also manifest itself in a variety of ways. During the transitional phase that precedes the onset of sleep, it is common for hallucinations to occur. These hallucinations, known as hypnagogic phenomena, consist of realistic perceptions of sights and sounds during the semi-conscious state between wakefulness and sleep. Narcoleptics may also suffer from night wakening during sleep, resulting in extremely fragmented and restless sleep. Then, upon waking, a narcoleptic may experience sleep paralysis, the inability to move, perhaps for several minutes, immediately after waking.Narcolepsy is a disease characterized by malfunctioning sleep mechanics. It can consist of a sudden and uncontrollable bout of sleep during daylight hours and disturbed sleep during nighttime hours. It occurs more often in men than in women, and it commonly makes its appearance during adolescence or young adulthood. At least a half million Americans are believed to be affected by narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy can take a number of forms during daylight hours. One common symptom of the disease during daytime hours is a sudden attack of REM (rapid-eye movement) sleep during normal waking hours. This occurs in some people hundreds of times in a single day, while others only have rare occurrences. During a sleep attack, narcoleptics may experience automatic behavior; even though asleep, they may continue automatically performing the activity they were involved in prior to falling asleep. They may, for example, continue walking, or driving, or stirring a pot until the activity is interrupted by external forces. Others experience cataplexy during daytime hours; cataplexy involves a sudden loss of muscle tone that may cause the head to droop or the knees to wobble in minor attacks or a total collapse in more serious attacks. Cataplexy seems to occur most often in conjunction with intense emotion or excitement.

During sleep hours, narcolepsy can also manifest itself in a variety of ways. During the transitional phase that precedes the onset of sleep, it is common for hallucinations to occur. These hallucinations, known as hypnagogic phenomena, consist of realistic perceptions of sights and sounds during the semi-conscious state between wakefulness and sleep. Narcoleptics may also suffer from night wakening during sleep, resulting in extremely fragmented and restless sleep. Then, upon waking, a narcoleptic may experience sleep paralysis, the inability to move, perhaps for several minutes, immediately after waking.

The cinema did not emerge as a form of mass consumption until its technology evolved from the initial “peepshow” format to the point where images were projected on a screen in a darkened theater. In the peepshow format, a film was viewed through a small opening in a machine that was created for that purpose. Thomas Edison’s peepshow device, the Kinetoscope, was introduced to the public in 1894. It was designed for use in Kinetoscope parlors, or arcades, which contained only a few individual machines and permitted only one customer to view a short, 50-foot film at any one time. The first Kinetoscope parlors contained five machines. For the price of 25 cents (or 5 cents per machine), customers moved from machine to machine to watch five different films (or, in the case of famous prizefights, successive rounds of a single fight).

These Kinetoscope arcades were modeled on phonograph parlors, which had proven successful for Edison several years earlier. In the phonograph parlors, customers listened to recordings through individual ear tubes, moving from one machine to the next to hear different recorded speeches or pieces of music. The Kinetoscope parlors functioned in a similar way. Edison was more interested in the sale of Kinetoscopes (for roughly $1,000 a piece) to these parlors than in the films that would be run in them (which cost approximately $10 to $15 each). He refused to develop projection technology, reasoning that if he made and sold projectors, then exhibitors would purchase only one machine - a projector - from him instead of several.

[A] Exhibitors, however, wanted to maximize their profits, which they could do more readily by projecting a handful of films to hundreds of customers at a time (rather than one at a time) and by charging 25 to 50 cents admission. [B] About a year after the opening of the first Kinetoscope parlor in 1894, showmen such as Louis and Auguste Lumière, Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins, and Orville and Woodville Latham (with the assistance of Edison’s former assistant, William Dickson) perfected projection devices. [C] These early projection devices were used in vaudeville theaters, legitimate theaters, local town halls, makeshift storefront theaters, fairgrounds, and amusement parks to show films to a mass audience. [D]

With the advent of projection in 1895-1896, motion pictures became the ultimate form of mass consumption. Previously, large audiences had viewed spectacles at the theater, where vaudeville, popular dramas, musical and minstrel shows, classical plays, lectures, and slide-and-lantern shows had been presented to several hundred spectators at a time. But the movies differed significantly from other forms of entertainment, which depended on either live performance or (in the case of the slide-and-lantern shows) the active involvement of a master of ceremonies who assembled the final program.

Although early exhibitors regularly accompanied movies with live acts, the substance of the movies themselves is mass-produced, pre-recorded material that can easily be reproduced by theaters with little or no active participation by the exhibitor. Even though early exhibitors shaped their film programs by mixing films and other entertainments together in whichever way they thought would be most attractive to audiences or by accompanying them with lectures, their creative control remained limited. What audiences came to see was the technological marvel of the movies; the lifelike reproduction of the commonplace motion of trains, of waves striking the shore, and of people walking in the street; and the magic made possible by trick photography and the manipulation of the camera.

With the advent of projection, the viewer's relationship with the image was no longer private, as it had been with earlier peepshow devices such as the Kinetoscope and the Mutoscope, which was a similar machine that reproduced motion by means of successive images on individual photographic cards instead of on strips of celluloid. It suddenly became public - an experience that the viewer shared with dozens, scores, and even hundreds of others. At the same time, the image that the spectator looked at expanded from the minuscule peepshow dimensions of 1 or 2 inches (in height) to the life-size proportions of 6 or 9 feet.

The deserts, which already occupy approximately a fourth of the Earth’s land surface, have in recent decades been increasing at an alarming pace. The expansion of desert-like conditions into areas where they did not previously exist is called desertification. It has been estimated that an additional one-fourth of the Earth’s land surface is threatened by this process.

Desertification is accomplished primarily through the loss of stabilizing natural vegetation and the subsequent accelerated erosion of the soil by wind and water. In some cases, the loose soil is blown completely away, leaving a stony surface. In other cases, the finer particles may be removed, while the sand-sized particles are accumulated to form mobile hills or ridges of sand.

Even in the areas that retain a soil cover, the reduction of vegetation typically results in the loss of the soil’s ability to absorb substantial quantities of water. The impact of raindrops on the loose soil tends to transfer fine clay particles into the tiniest soil spaces, sealing them and producing a surface that allows very little water penetration. Water absorption is greatly reduced, consequently runoff is increased, resulting in accelerated erosion rates. The gradual drying of the soil caused by its diminished ability to absorb water results in the further loss of vegetation, so that a cycle of progressive surface deterioration is established.

In some regions, the increase in desert areas is occurring largely as the result of a trend toward drier climatic conditions. Continued gradual global warming has produced an increase in aridity for some areas over the past few thousand years. The process may be accelerated in subsequent decades if global warming resulting from air pollution seriously increases.

There is little doubt, however, that desertification in most areas results primarily from human activities rather than natural processes. The semiarid lands bordering the deserts exist in a delicate ecological balance and are limited in their potential to adjust to increased environmental pressures. Expanding populations are subjecting the land to increasing pressures to provide them with food and fuel. In wet periods, the land may be able to respond to these stresses. During the dry periods that are common phenomena along the desert margins, though, the pressure on the land is often far in excess of its diminished capacity, and desertification results.

Four specific activities have been identified as major contributors to the desertification processes: over-cultivation, overgrazing, firewood gathering, and over-irrigation. The cultivation of crops has expanded into progressively drier regions as population densities have grown. These regions are especially likely to have periods of severe dryness, so that crop failures are common. Since the raising of most crops necessitates the prior removal of the natural vegetation, crop failures leave extensive tracts of land devoid of a plant cover and susceptible to wind and water erosion.

The raising of livestock is a major economic activity in semiarid lands, where grasses are generally the dominant type of natural vegetation. The consequences of an excessive number of livestock grazing in an area are the reduction of the vegetation cover and the trampling and pulverization of the soil. This is usually followed by the drying of the soil and accelerated erosion.

Firewood is the chief fuel used for cooking and heating in many countries. The increased pressures of expanding populations have led to the removal of woody plants so that many cities and towns are surrounded by large areas completely lacking in trees and shrubs. The increasing use of dried animal waste as a substitute fuel has also hurt the soil because this valuable soil conditioner and source of plant nutrients is no longer being returned to the land.

The final major human cause of desertification is soil salinization resulting from over-irrigation. Excess water from irrigation sinks down into the water table. If no drainage system exists, the water table rises, bringing dissolved salts to the surface. The water evaporates and the salts are left behind, creating a white crustal layer that prevents air and water from reaching the underlying soil.

The extreme seriousness of desertification results from the vast areas of land and the tremendous numbers of people affected, as well as from the great difficulty of reversing or even slowing the process. Once the soil has been removed by erosion, only the passage of centuries or millennia will enable new soil to form. In areas where considerable soil still remains, though, a rigorously enforced program of land protection and cover-crop planting may make it possible to reverse the present deterioration of the surface.