You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–14, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
Moon base
On 16 July 1969, two American astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, made the first landing on the Moon when the Eagle lunar module touched down in the Sea of Tranquility and Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface. At that time, it seemed almost impossible that humans would not colonise the Moon in the near future but the cost of sending people to live there was just too great. Instead, individual national space agencies have been sending robots called orbiters and rovers in place of humans. These are able to bring back and transmit a huge amount of data to help us understand the Moon better and then colonise it.
Although it is difficult to take people back to the Moon, it is not impossible. We can transport people but the logistical challenge of keeping them there is a very different thing. However, we have two of the components necessary to make this work: power from the Sun and minerals on the Moon itself. Scientists and researchers are already busy in laboratories and simulation facilities on Earth, testing their ideas for a lunar base.
The most fundamental requirement for keeping people on the Moon is oxygen, a component of the air we breathe. Fortunately, the surface of the Moon is covered with rocks and lunar soil known as regolith, which is 42-45% oxygen. Harvesting the oxygen from the regolith will be very energy intensive, but the American space agency NASA has developed and tested robots capable of doing this. Oxygen is, of course, one of the components needed to produce water, the next vital requirement for sustaining life. The other component of water is hydrogen, but because hydrogen is not present on the Moon as a free chemical, there are two options. Either we take it to the Moon in liquid form or we extract it from water. In 2018 NASA confirmed that water is indeed present on the Moon in the form of ice at the lunar poles. It is estimated that there could be 10 billion tons of water there. Some of the water would be used to sustain life, but most of it would be converted into fuel by electrolysing it into its constituent parts: oxygen and hydrogen. Electrolysis, however, requires a great deal of energy and this will need to be sourced from the Sun.
A town in Norway, Rjukan, has given scientists a lead on how to do this. Rjukan used to lack sunlight for long periods of time until giant solar mirrors were positioned on high points above the town in order to reflect sunlight down into it. On the Moon, water could be obtained by reflecting sunlight onto ice within the craters from giant reflectors positioned at high points or mountains near the craters. The melted water could then be moved to a processing plant, where it would be split into hydrogen and oxygen using solar electricity. The hydrogen could then be used to fuel vehicles or fed to fuel cells to supply energy to the lunar base, and the oxygen could be used in the air supply. As well as being used to obtain water, the Sun's energy could also be used to provide power to the base. Lunar soil contains almost all the minerals necessary to build solar panels and in theory, the potential to harvest solar electricity is unlimited. However, because the lunar night lasts for 354 hours, it is important to place solar panels in regions of the Moon that receive the most sunlight. Fortunately, the Moon's poles get sunlight 75-80% of the time and this is also where ice is located, making the poles ideal places to establish the base station.
What will the Moon base be constructed from? The Moon's surface is constantly bombarded by cosmic radiation and small asteroids because it has no protecting atmosphere or magnetic field. This makes it a dangerous place to live so shelter is vital. There are three options. One would be to build a Moon base on Earth and transport it to the Moon via a spaceship in lunar orbit, but the costs of doing this would be prohibitive. A better solution would be to make bricks from the lunar soil. Architects in Vienna have already shown that such bricks can be used to form walls and domes, and it is thought that they would be strong enough to stand up to moonquakes. A third option would be to use caves and geographical features such as crater walls as shelters. Researchers in the Canary Islands are currently practising how to explore lunar caves by driving rovers into caves and tubes formed by volcanic lava.
Humans have not been on the Moon for decades, but preparations to establish a base there are now well under way, and lessons learned from a future Moon base will help us to explore even further: Mars, Europa and beyond.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
Peer to peer banking
In 1994 Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates, said that although banking is necessary, banks are not. At a time when many traditional institutions and ways of doing things are changing, banking is changing too. There are now new ways of accessing loans and lending money. Thanks to the rise of alternative finance, people can raise and invest money outside the traditional banking system and the regulations and rules that banks have to follow. This has taken many forms, such as crowdfunding, revenue-based finance and peer to peer finance. Crowdfunding is when specific projects raise money by asking a large number of people to invest a small amount of money in return for shares. In revenue-based finance, investors provide money to a company in return for a fixed percentage of the earnings. Peer to peer (P2P) banking also bypasses traditional banks by helping individuals give direct loans to other individuals. Prior to these financial vehicles, it was difficult to invest in new companies without having a considerable amount of money.
In traditional banking, an institution usually works as a financial middleman, regulating the transactions between lenders and borrowers. The banks check the financial status and credit rating of the lender and offer security to the borrower. A credit rating is a score given to an individual that measures how risky it is to lend to that person, based on a prediction of their ability to pay back their loan. P2P banking, on the other hand, works without the traditional checks offered by the banking system. The process is relatively simple. If someone is interested in borrowing money, they complete an online application form on a P2P lending company platform. The online P2P organisation assesses _the application and the credit rating of the person making the application. At this point, an interest rate at which the applicant can borrow money is assigned to them. When the application is approved, the applicant is given various options for borrowing and paying back the money and can choose among them. The interesting development here is that, depending on the platform, the investor and the lender are able to select their preferred client depending on the conditions that are on offer. The borrower then makes monthly repayments that include the added interest on the loan. The company that owns the online platform charges a fee to both borrowers and lenders for the services it provides and this is how it generates its profit - almost like a dating agency matching the suitability of the people involved.
Because P2P banks are online, they do not have to pay for a physical high street presence, which can be expensive. Nor do they need to have large teams of staff because lenders and borrowers are matched using a computer algorithm that assesses the credit status of each party. Consequently, the savings made can then be passed to their customers through better interest rates or reduced fees for their services.
Two indicators of the success of P2P banks are their wide customer base and the accuracy of their credit rating processes. P2P companies assess credit worthiness through their own artificial intelligence software, which takes hundreds or thousands of factors into account when someone applies for a loan. This process is done though analysing big data - the process of examining huge amounts of information to make decisions. The good news for P2P lenders is that so far, the number of bad debts has been relatively low. This is a key point in a process that relies on trust or the knowledge that if you lend money, you will get it back, plus more, after a period of time. This is significant because P2P banks do not have the same financial guarantees that governments require traditional banks to offer. They also do not have the same capital reserves that allow savers or investors to get their money back if the P2P bank fails.
The loan/investment model developed by P2P banks enables them to reach people who would not normally qualify for a loan from a traditional bank or who would not normally consider themselves to be an investor. For example, if a small business does not meet the narrow rules for borrowing from a traditional bank, they may be able to get a loan through P2P; and potential investors are finding the higher rates of interest attractive. Because of this, consumers now have more choice about where they invest and borrow, and traditional banks face a threat to their business.
So, what is the future for banking and P2P financial platforms? Possibly a lot will depend on the question of trust mentioned before. Big banks still have the advantages of large cash reserves, legal backing and government guarantees - all the safeguards not available to people putting their money into P2P banks. But for people with limited access to money and small businesses struggling to find financing, P2P lending is already changing the way people bank. Traditional banks will have to think about their response to competition from P2P banking, but for P2P companies the future looks full of opportunities in financial sectors such as insurance, house purchasing, loans for students, and so on.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below
The long-distance navigators
A Every year between late July and October, the Arctic tern leaves its breeding grounds in the Arctic and flies over 19,000 kilometres to the Antarctic. The bird therefore sees two summers a year, once in the northern hemisphere and then again in the southern hemisphere. The Arctic tern is by no means the only bird to undertake long journeys. It is estimated that one in five bird species migrates, a feat that requires great endurance, stamina and strength. The migration patterns of birds are not random. They are very precise and follow flight routes called flyways, which connect a bird's breeding grounds with its wintering grounds, and they include stopovers for food and rest. The Americas Flyway, for example, is the route that birds take from their North American breeding grounds to wintering places in the Caribbean and South America, and the African-Eurasian Flyway connects breeding grounds in Europe and northern Asia with wintering grounds in Africa. Migration is largely driven by the weather and the availability of food. Birds in the southern hemisphere fly north, and birds in the northern hemisphere go south, seeking food and places to mate and rear their young.
B Birds have a variety of methods by which they are able to find their way across these flyways year in, year out. It seems that birds employ different geopositioning strategies according to the conditions encountered during migration. They seem able to use the position of the sun and stars, the Earth's magnetic field, smells and even landmarks to find their way, depending on which is available to them during the journey.
C When the chicks of migrating birds are born, they imprint, or intuitively learn, the map of the sky and stars as they grow in order to orientate themselves. In one famous experiment, Stephen Emlen placed Indigo buntings in a planetarium, where patterns of stars and planets are projected onto the ceiling. When the stars were projected in different positions, the birds changed position according to the new sky map, thus showing their awareness of the position of the stars.
D Obviously, birds cannot use a sky map when the weather is overcast so they must have other means to guide them on their journey. One possibility is that they use the Earth's magnetic field. How they do this is a mystery because the field is so weak. However, experiments have pointed to evidence that birds use the magnetic field in two ways. Researchers have discovered receptors, or chemicals, in their retinas and it is thought that these enable birds to sense the direction of the magnetic north. When these chemicals are exposed to light, they generate electrons that are sensitive to magnetism. If this is the case, north and south could look different to migratory birds, in effect allowing them to 'see' the magnetic field. Other researchers suggest that that birds can also sense magnetism using a molecule called magnetite. Magnetite contains iron and orientates to the north like the needle on a compass. Scientists have found magnetite on the beak of some birds and nerves that carry information about the magnetic field to their brain so that the birds can in effect 'feel' the magnetism. It seems that birds are able to sense the strength of the magnetic field, which is stronger at the poles and weaker at the equator. Traces of magnetite have also been found in humans but our ability to sense magnetic currents is far less developed than in other animals.
E There is also some evidence that birds use their sense of smell to find their way across long distances. Researchers in the UK, Spain and Italy experimented on seabirds by temporarily blocking their sense of smell using chemicals and then tracking their paths home. The birds could find their way normally when they approached land where aromas and odours are present but were less efficient at finding their direction over the sea, suggesting that smell is very important for them in piloting their routes.
F Visual clues have long been thought to be a navigational tool for birds. 'Previewing' experiments, where birds were allowed or denied visual access to a familiar site before releasing them, indicated that they use a 'familiar area map'. It seems that birds may build up a visual memory of landmarks that allows them to successfully navigate around places they have already visited. Birds that migrate in daylight often follow natural features like mountains, rivers and lakes. It has even been suggested that they follow man-made features such as roads.