Choose the best answer:
Television/ a tool/ gain/ education/ information.

 

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Facebook users spend an average of more than 15 hours a month on the social  networking site. While there are plenty who caution against such intensive use — and there are a number of studies detailing the harm Facebook could potentially cause — there also are lots of reports extolling the site’s virtues. As the social media giant prepares for its upcoming initial public offering, here are some ways Facebook just might be good for you.  Spending time on Facebook can help people relax, slow down their heart rate and decrease stress levels, according to researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Milan. In a study published earlier this year, researchers studied 30 students and found that a natural high was sparked when they were on the social media network that led to the relaxed heart rates and lower levels of stress and tension. In the study, the students were monitored in three situations: looking at panoramic landscapes, performing complicated mathematical equations and using Facebook. While the first situation was the most relaxing to students and the math problems were the most stressful, the time on Facebook uncovered high levels of attractiveness and arousal. The findings support the researchers’ hypothesis that Facebook’s success, as well as that of other social media networks, correlates to the specific positive mental and physical state users experience.  While many may argue that social media networks only distract employees, research shows the opposite may be true. Research from Keas.com found that a 10-minute Facebook break makes employees happier, healthier and more productive. The study examined workers in three groups: one that was allowed no breaks, one that was allowed to do anything but use the Internet and one that was allowed 10 minutes to use the Internet and Facebook. The Facebook group was found to be 16 percent more productive than the group that was not allowed to use the Internet and nearly 40 percent more productive than the group that was allowed no breaks. “Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf on the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher net total concentration for a day’s work, and as a result, increased productivity,” said Brent Coker of the department of management and marketing at the University of Melbourne in Australia.  Facebook is also in the business of matchmaking. Research shows that nearly 60 percent of singles will friend someone new on Facebook after meeting them in person. If they like what they see, 25 percent are likely to contact their new love interest via Facebook. Once the courting is over, nearly 40 percent of those social networking adults will update their relationship status on Facebook, with just 24 percent telling their friends first. Facebook use between couples will continue through the dating process, the research shows. Throughout the day, 79 percent of couples said they send partners Facebook messages or chat on the social network. In addition, more than 60 percent would post romantic messages on their significant other’s Facebook wall. When the relationship ends, more than half of those surveyed immediately update their status to single, which automatically sends out a notification to their friend list to start the dating cycle over again
7. Which of the following is NOT correct about the impact of Facebook on users’\ relationship?

Choose the best answer:
The ____________ of Tokyo in 2019 is more than 9.200 million.

Find mistake:
These companies were accused on having released a large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the undelined part that needs correction in each of the following questions:
Clara Barton became known as “The Angel of the Battlefield” during the American Civial War. Born in Oxford, Massachusetts in 1821, Clara Barton’s interest in helping soldiers on the battlefield began when she was told army stories from her father. Another event that influenced her decision to help soldiers was an accident her brother had. His injuries were cared for by Barton for 2 years. At the time, she was only 11 years old. Barton began teaching school at the age of 15. She taught for 18 years before she moved to Washington, D.C. in 1854.
The civil war broke out 6 years later. Immediately, Barton started was service by helping the soldiers with their needs. At the battle of Bull Run, Clara Barton received permission from the government to take care of the sick and hurt. Barton did this with great empathy and kindness. She acknowledged each soldier as a person. Her endurance and courage on the

battlefield were admired by many. When the war ended in 1865, she used 4 years of her life to assist the government in searching for soldiers who were missing during the war.
The search for missing soldiers and years of hard work made her feeble physically. In 1869, her doctors recommended a trip to Europe for a rest. While she was on vacation, she became involved with the International Red Cross, an organization set up by the Geneva Convention in 1864. Clara Barton realized that the red Cross would be a big help to the United States. After she returned to the United States, she worked very hard to create an American red Cross. She talked to government leaders and let American people know about the Red Cross. In 1881, the Notional Society of the Red Cross was finally established with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Clara Barton managed its activities for 23 years.
Barton never let her age stop her from helping people. At the age of 79, she helped flood victims in Galveston, Texas. Barton finally resigned from the Red Cross in 1904. She was 92 years old and had truly earned her titled “The Angel of the Battlefield”.

The word “acknowledged” in paragraph 2 could best be replaced by

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Despite the fact that humans haven’t returned to the Moon since the cancellation of the Apollo program in 1972, there have nonetheless been incredible advances in space exploration in recent years. All across the world, human time is the most valuable commodity – particularly when it comes to solving problems. Far from stealing jobs, the majority of advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are designed to automate relatively “simple” processes and free up time for humans to do what they do best. Already we have had a taste of what AI can achieve from space, even as far back as the early 2000s with the launch of the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite, which helps analyse and inform the appropriate response in the event of a disaster, such as hurricanes and volcanic eruptions. In some cases, the systems in place on EO-1 began capturing satellite images of disaster zones before ground personnel were even aware that a disaster had occurred. More recently, AI has been used on the Mars Curiosity rover, where AEGIS software is able to identify intriguing rock or soil patches that should be targeted for analysis. This significantly expedites the process of collecting data from the surface of Mars as the robot isn’t relying solely on human commands. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic – which hopes to soon begin conducting commercial flights – charges between $200,000 to $250,000 per ticket for a flight where passengers will experience just several minutes of weightlessness beyond the Karman line where space officially begins. Therefore, previous space missions have always needed to consider very carefully which astronauts they send to space, with the ultimate decision often coming down to an astronaut’s ability to act as a ‘jack-of-all-trade’. In future, it should be possible to automate the computing and engineering tasks that historically astronauts have had to train for. This would mean sending individuals with specialised expertise in science and research in place of the all-rounder astronauts of yesteryear. For success in space exploration in the years to come, we will need to continue along the exponential curve of open source uptake and see advances in the approach to how spacecraft software, hardware and infrastructure is developed and deployed. With this baseline in place, advances in AI-driven scientific research have the potential to propel us forwards.
3. According to paragraph 2, for what purpose did the author list out various applications of AI?

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Environmentalists often fear that tourists will trample all over sensitive natural resource areas, but tourism may bring the needed and only economic incentives to help drive conservation, said Bynum Boley. Ecotourism and natural resource conservation already have a mutually beneficial relationship that is ideal for creating a sustainable partnership. “Ecotourism destinations benefit in the form of enhanced tourism competitiveness from the protection of quality natural resources,” he said. "Meanwhile, the conservation of these natural resources is increasingly valued since these pristine natural resources are the foundation of the ecotourism industry and the driver of all economic benefits associated with ecotourism." Tourism is a $7.6 trillion global industry, provides 277 million jobs and is a primary income source for 20 of the world’s 48 least-developed countries. It also subsidizes environmental protection and helps protect, conserve and value cultural resources that might otherwise be undervalued by the host community, Boley said. In the newpaper, Boley and coauthor Gary Green said that despite past tension between the tourism industry and environmentalists, the two should team up as allies to fight off increasing conversion of land away from its natural state. Ecotourists not only provide a boost to the economy in such places, they can also motivate landowners into keeping the environment in its natural state instead of converting it into something unsustainable. They could also influence the public perception of conservation, Boley explained, which does not often favor environmental protection. “The public has become increasing less prone to respond to environmental messages,” he said. “Economic messages are needed in order to attract the public’s interest.” Too often, Boley and Green said, unique natural resource areas are converted into urban, suburban and agricultural developments without considering their ecotourism potential. In addition to the lost ecotourism revenue, there are a host of negative environmental consequences such as biodiversity loss, water and food shortages and the land being unable to mitigate the effects of climate change. These areas are not valued for their unique attributes or the valuable natural resources they provide, Green said, “so we lose them.” Tourists have historically been seen as having a negative impact on the environment. Critics complain that they violate fragile and threatened natural environments while contributing to greenhouse gases from the increased number of flights to these exotic and often remote locales. While these criticisms are justified, Boley and Green said responsible programs promote education of ecological conservation and environmental sustainability, fostering a greater understanding and appreciation of these exotic areas  
1. What is the best title for the passage?

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While family relationships can bring support, joy, and other wonderful benefits into  our lives, these relationships can also bring stress, particularly when there’s unresolved conflict. Because it’s more difficult to let go of conflicted relationships with family than it would be if these relationships were mere friendships, unresolved conflicts with family members can be particularly painful.  We have certain expectations of trust and closeness toward family members, and it can be more than merely disappointing to realize that this may not be possible with all family members. Unresolved family conflicts bring additional stress at family gatherings in particular. Past unresolved conflicts can become the elephant in the room, felt by everyone, but not directly addressed in the situation. This can be stressful for everyone before and during the family gatherings, sometimes leaving a lasting sense of stress afterward as well. Without a heartfelt discussion, an apology or another form of resolution, the trust on both sides is compromised, and may not know what to expect from this person in the future. For example, that one time your mother-in-law criticized your cooking may come up in your mind every time she comes for a visit, and others may sense your tension. This leads many people to assume the worst when they interpret each other’s behavior in the present and future interactions rather than giving the benefit of the doubt as most of us do with people we trust. Also, references or reminders of past conflicts can sting and create new pain.  Once a conflict has gone on a while, even if both parties move on and remain polite, the feelings of pain and mistrust are usually lingering under the surface, and are difficult to resolve: bringing up old hurts in an effort to resolve them can often backfire, as the other party may feel attacked; avoiding the issue altogether but holding onto resentment can poison feelings in the present.  So what do you do at a family gathering when there’s someone there with whom you’ve had an unresolved conflict? Just be polite. Contrary to how many people feel, a family gathering is not the time to rehash old conflicts, as such conversations often get messy before they get resolved — if they get resolved. Again, be polite, redirect conversations that get into areas that may cause conflict, and try to avoid the person as much as you politely can. 
1. Which best serves as the title for the passage?

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Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace do not help you make more  genuine close friends, according to a survey by researchers who studied how the websites are changing the nature of friendship networks. Although social networking on the internet helps people to collect hundreds or even thousands of acquaintances, the researchers believe that face to face contact is nearly always necessary to form truly close friendships.  “Although the numbers of friends people have on these sites can be massive, the actual number of close friends is approximately the same in the face to face real world,” said psychologist Will Reader, from Sheffield Hallam University. Social networking websites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace have taken off rapidly in recent years. Facebook was launched initially in 2004 for Harvard University members but has since expanded to more than 34 million users worldwide. MySpace, which was set up in 2003, has more than 200 million users and was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2005 for $580m (£285m). Previous research has suggested that a person’s conventional friendship group consists of around 150 people, with five very close friends but larger numbers of people whom we keep in touch with less regularly. This figure is so consistent that scientists have suggested it is determined by the cognitive constraints of keeping up with large numbers of people. But Dr. Reader and his team have found that social networking sites do allow people to stretch this figure. The team asked more than 200 people to fill in questionnaires about their online networking, asking for example how many online friends they had, how many of these were close friends and how many they had met face to face. The team found that although the sites allowed contact with hundreds of acquaintances, as with conventional friendship networks, people tend to have around five close friends. Ninety per cent of contacts whom the subjects regarded as close friends were people they had met face to face. “People see face to face contact as being absolutely imperative in forming close friendships,” added Dr. Reader. He told the British Association Festival of Science in York that social networking sites allow people to broaden their list of nodding acquaintances because staying in touch online is easy. “What social network sites can do is decrease the cost of maintaining and forming these social networks because we can post information to multiple people,” he said.  But to develop a real friendship we need to see that the other person is trustworthy, said Dr. Reader. "What we need is to be absolutely sure that a person is really going to invest in us, is really going to be there for us when we need them … It’s very easy to be deceptive on the internet."
2. The following are true about online friendship, EXCEPT ________

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People have five senses. We have a sense of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Believe (1) _______ , your sense of smell is very important. Our nose tells us about our environment. When your nose smells something, it sends information to our brain. Smells tell us if there is danger nearby, or if there is something to eat. Of course, these tools were more useful in the past, but they still come (2) _______ today. The things you smell can affect your (3) _______ If you smell something nice, you are more likely to be happy. On the other hand, if you smell something unpleasant, you are more likely to be unhappy. That is (4) _______ there are so many businesses that work to create nice scents. Businesses also work on the best ways to deliver scents to people’s noses. Candles (5) _______. a whole room smell better. Oils and soaps also have health benefits.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Egypt’s 100 millionth citizen was born last week, undoubtedly a happy occasion for one family, but a moment filled with foreboding for a country struggling to contain a population explosion. In the past year the government has scrambled to stem the birth rate with a new program called “Two is Enough.” It is establishing family planning clinics throughout the country, where Egyptians can purchase heavily subsidized contraceptives. But many doctors and activists fear that this is too little, and comes too late to reverse the uptick in population growth. Doctors complain that the new “Two is Enough” program lacks in a clear strategy to bring down birthrates. The financial resources deployed thus far have been a fraction of previous efforts; some family-planning clinics have reportedly run out of contraceptives. While clinics funded by the campaign to provide some reproductive health education, sexual education remains taboo in Egyptian schools. There is also a lack of adequate services for the poor and pensioners. Many Egyptians opt to have more children in the hope they will look after them as they age, a phenomenon common in countries with high levels of poverty and inadequate safety nets. While over 30 million Egyptians live in poverty, only 9.4 million receive means-tested cash transfers from the government’s welfare programs. Economic reforms undertaken as part of a recently completed International Monetary Fund program have cut subsidies in a number of areas, contributing a spike in inflation that at one point exceeded 30%. For newborns like the 100-millionth Egyptian, the outlook is grim. A burgeoning population exacerbates many problems. Despite Egypt’s limited supply - it depends almost exclusively on the Nile - there has been a systemic failure to adequately address water waste. From wasteful megaprojects draining the Nile to literally dumping waste in the river, Egyptian officials have consistently failed to prudently protect what is perhaps the country’s most vital natural resource. In 2018, Egypt temporarily reduced the farming of rice, a water intensive crop - only to expand cultivation the following year. The New Administrative Capital that Sisi has set out to erect is projected to need 650,000 cubic meters of water per day when finished. Failure to quickly and dramatically improve water management practices in Egypt could be disastrous, and the risk is the greater for the country’s rapid population growth  
6. According to paragraph 4, what is the problem in general resulted from overpopulation?

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A group of Tri-City residents and volunteers from BC Housing gathered at a  neglected therapeutic garden on the old Riverview Hospital grounds last weekend to breathe life into a green space. First planted by psychiatric nurse Art Finnie in the 1950s after he was injured on the job, Finnie’s Garden grew into one of the first experiments in horticultural  therapy. As Lauren English, director of land development for Riverview, put it, gardening as therapy was a revolutionary practice. “He understood the value of nature and how therapeutic it was before it became the rage — to find peace and to find solace and to find comfort,” added MLA Selina Robinson, who attended last Saturday’s event.  At that time, Riverview Hospital was the largest psychiatric hospital in British Columbia, with more than 5,000 patients on site. And Finnie’s was more than a garden. Beyond the rows of corn, flowers and a fish pond, residents could lounge in a picnic area or curve bowls across their own bowling green. But while the idea of Finnie’s Garden was to have a place of gathering that residents created themselves, they weren’t the first ones to make themselves at home.  Archeologists, including one on site last weekend, have found evidence Indigenous people occupied the area for thousands of years. Today, the Kwikwetlem First Nation maintains a land claim over the Riverview lands, and in its language, the area is known as Smu’q wa ala," or “Place of the Great Blue Heron”. "They found fire-altered rocks, they found boiling rocks, they found arrowheads, they found tools," said English, under the watchful eye of the group’s archeologist. “It’s not just colonial history, it’s the precontact history that goes back thousands of years.” Today, while many of the former hospital’s buildings lay in disrepair, 184 people still call the hilltop facility home, and one day in the near future, perhaps, they’ll get to use it again on their road to recovery. The event comes in a year when Treefest was cancelled because of a lack of organizers, and while the renewed work at Finnie’s Garden isn’t meant to replace Treefest, it does offer a outlet for green-thumbs without a patch of dirt.  A final community gardening event at Finnie’s Garden will likely take place in October. By removing weeds, invasive plants and adding mulch, the group plans to have the area ready to plant next spring. 
5. According to paragraph 2 and 3, who is the people implied in the line “…they weren’t the first ones to make themselves at home.”?

Each sentence has a mistake. Find it bychosing A B C or D

: National Parks are usually located in places where have been largely undeveloped, and are often with exceptional native animals, plants, and unusual geological feature

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:
After two decades of growing student enrollments and economic prosperity, business schools in the United States have started to face harder times. Only Harvard's MBA School has shown a substantial increase in enrollment in recent years. Both Princeton and Stanford have seen decreases in their enrollments. Since 1990, the number of people receiving Masters in Business Administration (MBA) degrees, has dropped about 3 percent to 75,000, and the trend of lower enrollment rates is expected to continue.
There are two factors causing this decrease in students seeking an MBA degree. The first one is that many graduates of four-year colleges are finding that an MBA degree does not guarantee a plush job on Wall Street, or in other financial districts of major American cities. Many of the entry-level management jobs are going to students graduating with Master of Arts degrees in English and the humanities as well as those holding MBA degrees. Students have asked the question, "Is an MBA degree really what I need to be best prepared for getting a good job?" The second major factor has been the cutting of American payrolls and the lower number of entry-level jobs being offered. Business needs are changing, and MBA schools are struggling to meet the new demands.

The word "prosperity" in line 1 could be best replaced by which of the following?

A. B.     C. D. 

Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer.

Movements and gestures by the hands, arms, legs, and other parts' of the body and face are the most pervasive types of nonverbal messages and the most difficult to control. 'It is estimated that there are over 200.000 physical signs capable of stimulating meaning in another person. For example, there are 23 distinct eyebrow movements, each capable of stimulating a different meaning.

Humans express attitudes toward themselves and vividly through body movements and postures. Body movements express true messages about feelings that cannot be masked. Because such avenues of communication are visual, they travel much farther than spoken words and are unaffected by the presence of noise that interrupt, or cancels out speech.

People communicate by the way they walk, stand, and sit. We tend to be more relaxed with friends or when addressing those of lower status. Body orientation also indicates status or liking of the other individual. More direct orientation is related to a more positive attitude.

Body movements and postures alone have no exact meaning, but they can greatly support or reject the spoken word. If these two means of communication are dichotomized and contradict each other, some result will be a disordered image and most often the nonverbal will dominate.

Face gestures ________.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Trees are useful to man in three very important ways: they provide him with wood and other products; they give him shade; and they help to prevent droughts and floods.  Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, man has not realized that the third of these services is the most important. In his eagerness to draw quick profit from the trees, he has cut them down in large numbers.  Two thousand years ago, a rich and powerful country cut down its trees to build warships, with which to gain itself an empire. It gained the empire but, without its trees, its soil became bare and poor. When the empire fell to pieces, the country found itself faced by floods and starvation.  Even though government realizes the importance of a plentiful supply of trees, it is difficult sometimes to make the people realize this. They cut down the trees but are too careless to plant and look after new trees. So, unless the government has a good system of control, or can educate the people, the forests will slowly disappear.  This does not only mean that there will be fewer trees. The results are even more serious: for where there are trees, their roots break the soil up, allowing the rain to sink in, and also bind the soil. This prevents the soil from being washed away. But where there are no trees, the rain falls on hard ground and flows away on the surface, and this causes floods and the rain carries away the rich topsoil in which crops grow. When all the topsoil is gone, nothing remains but worthless desert.
5. Which title best fits the passage?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
For nearly all of human history, there haven’t been that many of us. Around the year zero, Earth’s population is estimated to have been 190 million. A thousand years later, it was probably around 250 million. Then the Industrial Revolution happened, and human population went into overdrive. It took hundreds of thousands of years for humans to hit the 1 billion mark, in 1800. We added the next billion by 1928. In 1960, we hit 3 billion. In 1975, 4 billion. That sounds like the route to an overpopulation apocalypse, right? To many midcentury demographers, futurists, and science fiction writers, it certainly predicted one. Extending the timeline, they saw a nightmarish future ahead for humanity: human civilizations constantly on the brink of starvation, desperately crowded under horrendous conditions, draconian population control laws imposed worldwide. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote in his best-selling book, “In the 1970’s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death” because of overpopulation. None of that ever came to pass. The world we live in now, despite approaching a population of nearly 8 billion, looks almost nothing like the one doomsayers were anticipating. Starting in the 19th century in Britain and reaching most of the world by the end of the 20th century, birthrates plummeted — mostly because of women’s education and access to contraception, not draconian population laws. In wealthy societies where women have opportunities outside the home, the average family size is small; in fact, it’s below replacement level. Called the demographic transition, it is one of the most important phenomena for understanding trends in global development.  There’s still significant debate among population researchers about the extent of the sea change in population trends. Researchers disagree on whether global populations are currently on track to start declining by midcentury. There’s also disagreement on what the ideal global population figure would be, or whether it’s morally acceptable to aim for such a figure. While academic research seeks to nail down these questions, it’s important to be clear what is consensus among researchers. Our projections around population are used to make global health and development policy. They’re critical for planning, especially about climate change. Fears of overpopulation sometimes turn into hostility to immigrants, those who choose to have large families, and countries in an earlier stage of their population transition. Having an informed conversation about population is crucial if we are to get humanity’s future right.  
4. The word “draconian” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to _______

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Previously, people often only considered second-hand smoke as a welfare issue, focusing on the smell and the irritation that tobacco smoke causes to eyes, nose and throat. But now the weight of evidence for much more serious risks to health from second-hand smoke has grown too great to ignore. Tobacco smoke contains around 4,000 chemicals, including arsenic, benzene, formaldehyde and ammonia. Around 60 of these chemicals are known or suspected to cause cancer. Many of the toxic chemicals are actually more concentrated in the smoke that’s given off by the burning tip of a cigarette (sidestream smoke). Around 85 per cent of the smoke in a room where people are smoking is the more toxic sidestream smoke. By breathing in it in the atmosphere, the non-smoker is exposed to many of the same health risks as the smoker. The best known risk to smokers, lung cancer, is also more common in people regularly exposed to second-hand smoke. The Government’s Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health (SCOTH) reported in 1998 that exposure to second-hand smoke increases the risk of lung cancer in non-smokers by 20-30 per cent. Even though they inhale only 1% of the smoke, non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke may suffer 25 per cent of the increased risk of heart disease associated with active smoking (one recent study suggests it might be as much as 50 per cent). Just 30 minutes of breathing second-hand smoke can reduce the coronary blood supply of a non-smoker to the same level as that of a smoker. A study in New Zealand found that exposure to second-hand smoke increases the risk of stroke by 82 per cent in non-smokers. This is a serious concern, as stroke is such a common condition. Moreover, around 3.4 million people in the UK have asthma and for most of these, tobacco smoke is a trigger for an asthma attack. For someone with asthma, just one hour of exposure to second-hand smoke can cause a 20 per cent deterioration in lung function. During pregnancy, breathing in second-hand smoke increases the risk of having a baby with a low birth weight. Small babies are at much greater risk of infections and other health problems. A recent review of international research on the immediate health impact of smokefree workplace legislation found rapid and dramatic improvements. Air quality, respiratory health and levels of heart attacks and heart disease all improved substantially within months of the legislation being introduced.
3. The highlighted word "it" in the passage refers to

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
For nearly all of human history, there haven’t been that many of us. Around the year zero, Earth’s population is estimated to have been 190 million. A thousand years later, it was probably around 250 million. Then the Industrial Revolution happened, and human population went into overdrive. It took hundreds of thousands of years for humans to hit the 1 billion mark, in 1800. We added the next billion by 1928. In 1960, we hit 3 billion. In 1975, 4 billion. That sounds like the route to an overpopulation apocalypse, right? To many midcentury demographers, futurists, and science fiction writers, it certainly predicted one. Extending the timeline, they saw a nightmarish future ahead for humanity: human civilizations constantly on the brink of starvation, desperately crowded under horrendous conditions, draconian population control laws imposed worldwide. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote in his best-selling book, “In the 1970’s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death” because of overpopulation. None of that ever came to pass. The world we live in now, despite approaching a population of nearly 8 billion, looks almost nothing like the one doomsayers were anticipating. Starting in the 19th century in Britain and reaching most of the world by the end of the 20th century, birthrates plummeted — mostly because of women’s education and access to contraception, not draconian population laws. In wealthy societies where women have opportunities outside the home, the average family size is small; in fact, it’s below replacement level. Called the demographic transition, it is one of the most important phenomena for understanding trends in global development.  There’s still significant debate among population researchers about the extent of the sea change in population trends. Researchers disagree on whether global populations are currently on track to start declining by midcentury. There’s also disagreement on what the ideal global population figure would be, or whether it’s morally acceptable to aim for such a figure. While academic research seeks to nail down these questions, it’s important to be clear what is consensus among researchers. Our projections around population are used to make global health and development policy. They’re critical for planning, especially about climate change. Fears of overpopulation sometimes turn into hostility to immigrants, those who choose to have large families, and countries in an earlier stage of their population transition. Having an informed conversation about population is crucial if we are to get humanity’s future right.  
1. What is the main topic of the passage?

Choose the best answer:
Earl was one of the first American artists ___________ landscapes.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Alzheimer's disease impairs a person's ability to recall memories, both distant and as a few hours before. Although there is no yet a cure for the illness, there may be hope for a cure with a protein called nerve growth factor. The protein is produced by nerve cells in the same region of the brain where Alzheimer's occurs. Based on this relationship, scientists from the University of Lund in Sweden and the University of California at San Diego designed an experiment to test whether doses of nerve growth factor could reverse the effects of memory loss caused by Alzheimer's. Using a group of rats with impaired memory, the scientists gave half of the rats doses of nerve growth factor while giving the other half a blood protein as a placebo, thus creating a control group. At the end of the four-week test, the rats given the nerve growth factor performed equally to rats with normal memory abilities. While the experiment do not show that nerve growth factor can stop the general process of deterioration caused by Alzheimer's, they do show potential as a means to slowing the process significantly.
10. The relationship between nerve growth factor and a protein is similar to the relationship between Alzheimer's and