4/11/2018 Teacher Tests - Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program

Wednesday Blitz B

Question 1

There are six underlined parts in the passage. They may contain errors to be corrected, or they may
need to be changed for better wording. If a change is needed, select the correct replacement. If no
change is needed, select “No change.”

Veterinary medicine is a fascinating career choice, whether you work in the country, the city, or the
suburbs. In a single day, many different cases can be treated by veterinarians working in rural areas.
There is not always specialized animal hospitals in these areas, so the local doctor might provide more
complicated medical care than he or she would in developed areas. Also, there is a greater variety of
livestock in the country than in cities and suburbs.

One job that falls to most medical professionals is to give injections, be it vaccinations, medicines, or
something else. Some experienced farmers and herders who have done it before may give injections,
but there are many reasons that a veterinarian might get involved. The animal’s owner may be nervous
about giving a shot, or two people may be needed; one to give the shot and the other to hold the
patient.

Veterinarians also treat animal injuries. If an animal appears to favor one limb, a doctor will immediately
be called. In many cases, especially with show horses, even more minor issues must be checked out. If
an animal suddenly seems slower, more in exible, or less agile, the doctor may recommend X-rays to
check for broken bones. He or she may also perform an examination to
locate strained or torn tendons or ligaments.

Which change, if any, is needed to the underlined text?

In a single day, many different cases can be treated by veterinarians working in rural areas.

A In a single day, in rural areas, many different cases can be treated by veterinarians.

B Veterinarians working in rural areas can treat many different cases in a single day.

Many different cases can be treated by veterinarians working in rural areas in a single
C day.

D No change.

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Question 2

Which change, if any, is needed to the underlined text?

There is not always specialized animal hospitals

A There are not always specialized animal hospitals

B They're not always specialized animal hospitals

C There are not always a specialized animal hospital

D No change.

Question 3

Which change, if any, is needed to the underlined text?

Some experienced farmers and herders who have done it before

A Some experienced farmers and herders who have done injections before

B Some experienced farmers and herders

C Some experienced farmers and herders who know how to do it

D No change.

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4/11/2018 Teacher Tests - Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program

Question 4

Which change, if any, is needed to the underlined text?

two people may be needed; one to give the shot

A two people may be needed one to give the shot

B two people may be needed . . . one to give the shot

C two people may be needed, one to give the shot

D No change.

Question 5

Which change, if any, is needed to the underlined text? In

many cases, especially with show horses, even more

A In many cases especially with show horses even more

B In many cases, especially with show horses even more

C In many cases especially with show horses, even more

D No change.

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4/11/2018 Teacher Tests - Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program

Question 6

Which change, if any, is needed to the underlined text?

slower, more in exible, or less agile

A slower, being more in exible, or being less agile

B moving slower, being more in exible, or less agile

C moving slower, more in exible, or being less agile

D No change.

Question 7

Passage 1

Thanksgiving on Mars: What Astronauts Will Feast on in 2030 by

Sara Breselor

NASA has a long way to go before sending a crew to Mars, yet it’s already considering the important
details — like lunch. The agency’s Advanced Food Technology Project, working with Lockheed Martin, is
developing menus for a manned mission to the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s.
Interplanetary travel will require a more sophisticated system than ever before for preserving and
packaging meals, as well as a way to grow food during the trip. Plans even include the greatest
American meal, Thanksgiving — though pulling it o 80 million miles from Earth won’t be easy. It’s
enough to make a 20-year head start sound downright reasonable.

Snap beans

NASA agronomists have planned a Martian hydroponic greenhouse for fruits, veggies, and tubers. And
picky ’nauts can’t claim these drifted away: The galley will have a hood over the prep area to catch
oating ingredients, as well as a refrigerator so that the astronauts can enjoy a crucial Thanksgiving
tradition: leftovers.

Veggie loaf

Foods destined for Mars need a shelf life of up to ve years — longer than space chow of the past. Most
animal products can’t be stabilized for that long, so no turkey. This soy protein loaf is as close as
scientists have come to an actual bird. No ghting over the drumsticks.

Stu ng

NASA could power up the taste of space food with encapsulation technology, in which oils or granules
of concentrated avors are encased in tiny beads and coated with a substance that dissolves on
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4/11/2018 Teacher Tests - Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program
contact with saliva. Capsules could be tossed into any recipe (e.g., sausage avor in stu ng) to give
the crew a blast of taste at every meal.

Mashed sweet and white potatoes

Grown in the greenhouse, taters will be baked instead of boiled. Pressure in the Martian habitat is likely
to be kept lower than on Earth, to ease the astronauts’ transition into Mars’ atmosphere. This lowers the
boiling point of water and limits how hot it can get.

Pinto bean pie

“Like a pecan pie without the pecans,” says NASA senior research scientist Maya Cooper. But will pinto
pie taste sweet enough in space? NASA plans to nd out: Astronauts traveling to the International Space
Station will sample the ve avors (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami) so Cooper can de ne a
threshold for each. Sweetness, say, might be 30 percent less sweet in space; she could then engineer a
dessert for scienti cally precise satisfaction.

“Thanksgiving on Mars: What Astronauts Will Feast on in 2030,” by Sara Breselor, from Wired. Copyright
© 2015. Published by Condé Nast Publications, Inc.

Passage 2

This Indoor Farm Can Bring Fresh Produce to Food Deserts by

Issie Lapowsky

Almonds got the brunt of the bad press, but they hardly deserve all the blame for California’s water
woes. Sure, it’s worth considering how to minimize your water footprint, and forgoing your daily handful
of almonds in solidarity with the parched earth couldn’t hurt. But considering how widespread the water
crisis is, and the fact that agriculture is responsible for 80 percent of the country’s water consumption,
the more crucial question to be asking now — particularly on Earth Day — is what can be done to
fundamentally change the way our food gets made?

Mattias Lepp says at least part of the answer involves making it easier for anyone — even city dwellers
— to farm their own food. That’s why Lepp, founder of the Estonian startup Click & Grow, has developed
what he calls a Smart Farm, an indoor farming system that requires 95 percent less water than
traditional agriculture.

You may remember Click & Grow from their uber-successful Smart Herb Garden Kickstarter campaign a
few years back. That product let people easily grow herbs in their homes with minimal maintenance. The
Smart Farm is similar, but on a much larger scale. The system, which Lepp spent years developing in
partnership with universities across Estonia, France, and Russia, can hold 50 to 250 plants at a time,
making it a viable option for urban areas that don’t have access to fresh produce — areas the U.S.
government calls food deserts. Ideally, a shift to urban farming could drastically reduce the distance
between where food is grown and where it is consumed.

The market for these indoor farms, or so-called vertical farms, is already fast-growing, driven by the
growing realization that the current water-chugging agricultural system is unsustainable. On one end of
the spectrum, countless DIY indoor farming enthusiasts are growing small gardens in their homes. On
the other are professional out ts like Green Sense Farms out of Chicago, which grows leafy greens
indoors and sells them at local stores. Even tech giants like Panasonic and Toshiba have begun
developing gigantic de facto farms of their own in Asia, where there is a severe shortage of agricultural
land.
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4/11/2018 Teacher Tests - Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program
And yet, the majority of these larger farms use hydroponic farming, a process that involves growing
plants in mineral solutions instead of soil. They save anywhere from 70 to 80 percent of the water

required for traditional agriculture, but they’re complex and can cost tens of thousands of dollars. For
most of us, it wouldn’t be economically practical for you or me to grow a full-scale farm at home.

With the Smart Farm, which costs just $1,500, Lepp says it can be. “People all over the world have
worked intensively the last 10 or 20 years on bringing food production closer to cities and nding ways
to grow it more e ciently,” he says. “But today they all are using hydroponics, and that is unfortunately
expensive and messy. We see how we can change this.”

Rather than relying on hydroponics, the Smart Farm uses a new type of soil called Smart Soil, which
Lepp developed in partnership with academic advisors. The soil itself is spongey, allowing air and
nutrients to ow through. Meanwhile, the nutrients are covered in a special coating that responds to soil
moisture. The hardware, which looks like a glass refrigerator, consists of trays for each plant equipped
with LED lights and sensors that detect when the moisture levels are o balance. The “farmer” can use
an app to adjust the water levels in the system, which triggers more nutrients to be released.

This process cuts down on the amount of water required to grow the plants, Lepp says, because no
wastewater is produced. At the same time, the time people have to spend actually tending to the plants
is minimized.

“Click & Grow can give the plant the perfect conditions to grow, because air, water, and nutrients are
dosed perfectly without any obstacles,” says Uno Mäeorg, a professor at the University of Tartu in
Estonia, who worked with Lepp on the development of Smart Soil. “And since those conditions are
perfect for the plant, it provides us healthier plants.”

Be that as it may, the Smart Farm is still a long way from accomplishing Lepp’s eventual dream of
putting a full-scale farm in every urban neighborhood. For starters, the system only supports a limited
number of plants today, including strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, and other herbs, though Lepp says
that will change with time. Also, for now the Smart Farm is only available on a built-to- order basis.
While the company already has orders coming in and pilot projects with universities, it won’t begin full-
scale retail distribution until 2016.

Then there’s the simple fact that we’re all just plain used to buying food from a store. The dream of
distributed farming may always be limited to the number of consumers who care enough to try it out.

Still, according to Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health and microbiology at Columbia
University and author of the book The Vertical Farm, that number is growing steadily. And as more
people become willing to give indoor farming a try, he says it’s critically important that they have tools,
like the Smart Farm, to ease the e ort.

“I think it could make a dent in the commercial side of things,” Despommier says of indoor farming’s potential to
impact mainstream agriculture. “And if you look at what’s happening in California, there

may not be a commercial side of things for much longer.”

“This Indoor Farm Can Bring Fresh Produce to Food Deserts,” by Issie Lapowsky, from Wired. Copyright
© 2015. Published by Condé Nast Publications, Inc.

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4/11/2018 Teacher Tests - Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program

The following item has two parts. Answer Part A and then answer Part B.

Part A
What is the author’s primary claim in passage 1?

A Feeding astronauts on a Mars mission will present serious challenges.

B Planning for a Mars mission must begin at least 20 years in advance.

C Astronauts require a specially planned diet to stay healthy in space.

D Astronauts on a mission to Mars will have to do without holiday foods.

Part B
Select the detail from paragraph 1 that best supports the correct answer to Part A.

NASA has a long way to go before sending a crew to Mars, yet it's already considering the important
details—like lunch. The agency's Advanced Food Technology Project, working with Lockheed Martin, is
developing menus for a manned mission to the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s. Interplanetary travel
will require a more sophisticated system than ever before for preserving and packaging meals, as well as
a way to grow food during the trip. Plans even include the greatest American meal, Thanksgiving—
though pulling it o 80 million miles from Earth won't be easy. It's enough to make a 20-year head start
sound downright reasonable.

Question 8

How does the author of passage 2 develop the argument that Smart Farms are an improvement over
hydroponic farms?

The author explains how Smart Farms are more a ordable and e ective than
A hydroponics.

The author cites the opinions of experts who believe that Smart Farms are superior to
B hydroponics.

The author gives examples of Smart Farms that have succeeded and hydroponic farms
C that have failed.

The author illustrates how much easier it is to set up a Smart Farm than it is to set up a
D hydroponic farm.

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4/11/2018 Teacher Tests - Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program

Question 9

Which idea is central to both passages?

A Technology can provide food in places where traditional farming is impossible.

B American scientists have taken the lead in creating new methods for farming.

Natural foods are healthier for people, but their production is destructive to the planet.
C

D Agriculture must be changed in order to protect Earth’s environment.

Question 10

What is the meaning of the word threshold, as used in paragraph 6?

A purpose

B description

C level

D recipe

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