Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate to correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 27 to 31.

Urban development is having a direct impact on the weather in many cities worldwide. It has bee noticed that the difference (27) _______ temperature is usually greater at night and the phenomenon occur in both winter and summer. Experts agree that this is due to urban development, when open green space are replaced with asphalt roads and tall brick or concrete buildings. These materials retain heat generated by the Sun and release it through the night. In Atlanta, in the US, this has even led to thunderstorms (28) _______ occur in the morning rather than, as is more common, in the afternoon.

Large cities around the world are adopting strategies to combat this issue (29) _______ it is not uncommon to find plants growing on top of roofs or down walls of large buildings. In Singapore, the government has (30)_______ to transform it into a "city within a garden" and, in 2006, they held an international competition calling for entries to develop a master plan to help bring this about. One outcome was the creation of 18 "Supertrees"-metal constructions resembling very tall trees. Each one is a vertical freestanding garden and is (31) _______ to exotic plants and ferns. They also contain solar panels used  to light the trees at night and also containers to collect rainwater, making them truly self-sufficient.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 44 to 48.

Sylvia Earle is an underwater explorer and marine biologist, who was born in the USA in 1935. She became interested in the world's oceans from an early age. As a child, she liked to stand on the beach for hours and look at the sea, wondering that it must be like under the surface. When she was 16, she finally got a chance to make her first dive. It was this dive that inspired her to become an underwater explorer. Since then, she has spent more than 6,500 hours under water, and has led more than seventy expeditions worldwide. She has also made the deepest dive ever, reaching a record-breaking depth of 381 meters.

In 1970, she became famous around the world when she became the captain of the first all-female team to live under water. The team spent two weeks in an underwater "house". The research they carried out showed the damage that pollution was causing to marine life, and specially to coral reefs. Since then she has written several books and magazine articles in which she suggests ways of reducing the damage that is being done to the world's oceans. One way, she believes, is to rely on fish farms for seafood, and reduce the amount of fishing that is done the out at sea.

(Adapted from Complete IELTS by Rawdon Wyatt)

By then, the elite performers had all totaled 10000 hours of practice over the (43) ________of their lives, the merely good students 8000 hours and the future music teachers just over 4000 hours.