Reading. (A) Read the text below and answer the questions. (30)

Transcription

1 120 : 2... :... : Reading (A) Read the text below and answer the questions. (30) Vocabulary outbreak sudden occurrence contract get illness glitch small problem heal cure a disease or injury, be repaired naturally incident even, violent occurrence pandemic having widespread effect (طاعون (Per. plague an epidemic disease 5 In the year 2005 a video game glitch in the World of Warcraft caused a plague which soon spread across the virtual world. By both accident and intent, a pandemic appeared that quickly killed lower-level characters and annoyed higherleveled ones. Despite the initial measures taken by players and programmers, the epidemic was finally controlled with a combination of patches and resets of the virtual world. The conditions and reactions of the event have since attracted the attention of epidemiologists and anti-terrorism officials on modeling and analysis of population behavior in critical conditions. 10 World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), created by Blizzard Entertainment Inc. The game was released in November 2004, and included many new features and detailed design of a virtual world, including cities, streets and fairy lands. The game also included missions called quests, 1

2 which had End Boss characters. Any player trying to accomplish a quest had to defeat its end boss in order to claim the reward The epidemic began on September 13, 2005, when Blizzard introduced a new end boss, Hakkar, as part of a new update. Hakkar could affect players by using Corrupted Blood, a disease that significantly damaged players over time. The disease could be passed on between any nearby characters, and would kill characters with lower levels in a few seconds while higher level characters could keep themselves alive. It would disappear as time passed or when the character died. However, due to a programming error, many animals in the virtual world were also infected, and could transmit the disease to other players. In a short time, three of the game's servers were affected and normal gameplay was disrupted. Posters on the Discussion forum described seeing "hundreds of bodies" lying in the streets of the towns and cities. Player responses varied but resembled real-world behaviors. Some characters with healing abilities volunteered their services; some lower-level characters who could not help would direct people away from infected areas, while some attempted to spread the disease to others. All in all, players in the game reacted to the disease as if there was real risk to their health. The major towns and cities were abandoned by the population as panic set in and players rushed to the relative safety of the countryside, leaving urban areas "filled to the brim with corpses", and the "city streets literally white with the bones of the dead". World of Warcraft, at the time, had more than two million players all over the world. After the incident began, Blizzard received calls from angry customers complaining about how they just died and if this was intentional. Some players abandoned the game altogether until the problem was fixed. In the end, Blizzard was forced to fix the problem by hard resets of the servers and applying "quick fixes". 2

3 1- The word brim in line 33 is closest in meaning to: a) middle b) full c) top edge d) coffin 2- In the year 1340 a new wave of plague struck Middle-East. Based on the Corrupted Blood analogy, probably the main reason for its fast spread was that.... a) It could be transmitted by close contact b) It also infected animals c) The cure was not yet known back then d) People did not carefully wash their hands 3- According to the text, which of the following statements is definitely not true? a) In case of emergency people will move away from crowded areas b) Humans tend to care for the well-being of their virtual characters c) World of Warcraft is still a very popular game d) The incident was described as normal by most players 4- Hakkar intentionally infected players because... a) He enjoyed seeing them in pain b) He wanted to defend himself c) The disease was highly contagious d) The programmers made a mistake 3

4 5- Summarize the text in two paragraphs (at most 100 words), expressing the topic and major ideas. (B) Read the text below and answer the questions (30) 5 10 In March 2007, Ran D Balicer, an epidemiologist, published an article in the journal Epidemiology describing the Corrupted Blood incident as an intersting case and noted the similarities between this outbreak and the recent SARS outbreaks. She compared it to a real-life epidemic, in that it originated in a remote, uninhabited region and was carried by travelers to larger regions; hosts were both human and animal; and it was passed through close contact; and there were people, in this case non-playable characters, who could contract it but were without symptoms. Dr Balicer suggested role-playing games could serve as an advanced platform for modeling the spread of diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contacted Blizzard Entertainment and requested statistics on this event for research on epidemics, but was told that it was a glitch. In August 2007, Nina Fefferman a Tufts University assistant research professor called for research on this incident, citing the similarities with biological plagues. She thought that this was the only way to accomplish such a study, as 4

5 epidemiologists were limited to unrealistic studies, because it would be immoral to release an infectious disease into human populations. She spoke at the 2008 Games for Health conference in Baltimore, Maryland and the 2011 Game Developers Conference about the incident and how massively multiplayer online populations could solve the problems existing in traditional models of epidemics. The people who spread the disease out of evil intent were described by Security Expert Robert Lemos as terrorists of World of Warcraft. In an analysis of the Corrupted Blood incident, Charles Blair, deputy director of the Center of Terrorism Studies, said that World of Warcraft could provide a powerful new way to study how terrorist groups form and operate. While his organization already uses computer models to study terrorists' tactics, Blair explained that because World of Warcraft involves real people making real decisions in a world with controllable bounds, which could provide more realistic models for analysts. For example, one self-confessed virtual bioterrorist in World of Warcraft commented about how quickly people learned about doing the most damage to the largest number of people. While Blizzard was initially excited about these propositions, it became less outwardly excited over time, though it has never rejected it. Fefferman has been in contact with other developers, hoping to conduct the simulation in similar games to World of Warcraft. Recently, Blizzard has maintained a position that World of Warcraft is first and foremost a game, and that it was never designed to mirror reality or anything in the real world. 6- Why did all the scientists suddenly start speaking about games? a) Because a game showed potential to model real world incidents b) Because of the excessive terrorism in games c) Because simulations proved to be ineffective d) Because games can collect statistics on human decision making patterns 5

6 7- What is probably the actual reason why blizzard declined to provide statistics on the incident? Was it out of embarrassment, data security and privacy or the inability to retrieve relevant data? Defend your case. (Give an answer in at most 3-4 Sentences) 8- About the SARS disease, the following information are given. Provide sentences from the passage in agreement with the typical patterns you can see in the spread of this disease around the world: a) The epidemic first appeared in Guangdong, China. b) Australian officials took measures to shoot birds believed to be coming from China. c) Within months an American businessman flying from Singapore showed symptoms of what he believed to be flu. 9- In the last paragraph, how is the future of this research depicted: a) World of Warcraft will have a central role in the research b) If Blizzard was to release a new version of the game, the research goals would always come second when making architectural decisions c) Games similar to World of Warcraft need to be found d) Blizzard has shown no interest in collaborating with researchers 6

7 Collocations and Compounds (C) Match words that best accompany their counterpart: (20) 1- -oriented a- full 2- web b- menu 3- capacity c- self 4- address d- access 5- space e- service 6- -test f- saving 7- -driven g- ignition 8- -activated h- portal 9- mail i- merge 10- computer j- compatible 11- real k- voice 12- media l- bus 13- data m- theft 14- backward n- hotspot 7

8 15- Electronic o- time 16- network p- streaming 17- engine q- hiding 18- wireless r- connection 19- information s- commerce 20- identity t- consultant 8

9 Defining and Classifying (D) The following is the taxonomy of programming languages. Describe the underlined words according to their position in the tree. (15) Programming Languages imperative declarative procedural e.g. FORTRAN, C object oriented e.g. C++, Java logic e.g. Prolog functional e.g. Haskell, Lisp 9

10 Translation (E) Translate the following passages into Persian: (10) 1- Nanobots, robots formed from molecules or molecular components, will be used in medicine to control and diagnose diseases. For example, they will be injected and will move through blood vessels destroying cholesterol molecules or cancer. 2- Androids are anthropomorphic robots designed to look and behave like a human being. Most androids can walk, talk and understand human speech. Some react to gestures and voice inflection. Some learn from the environment: they store information and adapt their behavior according to previous experience. 10