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Why/ lot of/ people/ watch television/ every day?

 

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A scientist said robots will be more (1) ____ than humans by 2029. The scientist’s  name is Ray Kurzweil. He works for Google as Director of Engineering. He is one of the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence (A.I.). Mr Kurzweil believes computers will be able to learn from experiences, just like humans. He also thinks they will be able to (2) ____ jokes and stories, and even flirt. Kurzweil’s 2029 prediction is a lot sooner than many people thought. The scientist said that in 1999, many A.I. experts said it would be hundreds of years before a computer was more intelligent than a human. He said that it would not be (3) ____ before computer intelligence is one billion times more powerful than the human brain.  Mr Kurzweil joked that many years ago, people thought he was a little crazy for predicting computers would be as intelligent as humans. His thinking has stayed the same but everyone else has changed the way they think. He said: “My views are not radical any more. I’ve actually stayed consistent. It’s the rest of the world that’s changing its view.” He highlighted examples of (4) ____ -tech things we use, see or read about every day. These things make us believe that computers have intelligence. He said people think (5) ____ now: “Because the public has seen things like Siri (the iPhone’s voice recognition technology) where you talk to a computer, they’ve seen the Google self-driving cars

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Language preservation is the effort to prevent languages from becoming unknown. A language is at (1)______ of being lost when it no longer is taught to younger generations, while fluent speakers of the language (usually the elderly) die. Language is an important part of any society, because it enables people to communicate and express themselves. When a language dies (2)_______, future generations lose a vital part of the culture that is necessary to completely understand it. This makes language a vulnerable aspect of cultural heritage, and it becomes especially important to (3) __________ it. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), from facts published in their “Atlas of Languages in Danger of Disappearing,” there are an estimated 6,000 languages spoken worldwide today, and half of the world’s population speaks the eight most common. More than 3,000 languages are reportedly spoken by fewer than 10,000 people each. Ethnologue, a reference work published by SIL International, has cataloged the world’s known (4)_______ languages, and it estimates that 417 languages are on the verge of extinction. There are different factors that can (5)________ a language in danger of becoming extinct. One is when a language is no longer being taught to the children of the community, or at least to a large number of the children. In these cases, the remaining fluent speakers of the language are generally the older members of the community, and when they pass away, the language dies out with them

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All the different plants and animals in a natural community are in a state of balance. This balance is achieved by the plants and animals interacting (1) _______ each other and with their non-living surroundings. An example of a natural community is a woodland, and a woodland is usually dominated by a particular species of plant, such as the oak tree in an oak wood. The oak tree in this example is therefore called the dominant species but there are also many other types of plants, from brambles, bushes, and small trees to mosses, lichens and algae (2) __________ on tree trunks and rocks. The plants of a community are the producers: they use carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen to build up their tissues using energy in the form of sunlight. The plant tissues form food for the plant-eating animals (herbivores) (3) _______ are in turn eaten by flesh-eating animals (carnivores). Thus, plants produce the basic food supply for all the animals of a community. The animals themselves are the consumers, and are either herbivores or carnivores. Examples of herbivores in a woodland community are rabbits, deer, mice and snails, and insects such as aphids and caterpillars. The herbivores are sometimes eaten by the carnivores. Woodland carnivores are of all sizes, from insects such as beetles and lacewings to animals such as owls, shrews and foxes. Some carnivores feed on herbivores, some feed on the smaller carnivores, (4) _______ some feed on both: a tawny owl will eat beetles and shrews as well as voles and mice. These food relationships between the different members of the community are known as food chains or food (5) ______. All food chains start with plants. The links of the chain are formed by the herbivores that eat the plants and the carnivores that feed on the herbivores. There are more organisms at the base of the food chain than at the top; for example, there are many more green plants than carnivores in a community

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A massage is relaxing, and makes you feel great, but did you know that it's also good for you? That's what doctors are now saying. Massage relieves pain and anxiety, eases depression and speeds up recovery from medical problems.
Research has shown that people of all ages benefit from touch. Premature infants who are held develop faster than those left alone, and healthy babies who get a lot of physical contact cry less and sleep better. Researchers are not sure why this occurs but they have also found out that touch can slow heart rate, lower blood pressure and increase levels of seratonin, the brain chemical that is linked to well-being. It also decreases levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and this in turn increases your resistance to illness.
Massage also speeds up healing. Bone-marrow transplant patients who were given massages had better neurological function than those who weren't. Furthermore, massage reduced pain by 37% in patients with chronic muscle aches.
Giving someone a massage may be as good as getting one. A study conducted by the university of Miami found that mothers suffering from depression felt better after massaging their infants. In that same study, elderly volunteers who massaged infants reported feeling less anxious and depressed.
It even works when you do it yourself; 43% of headache sufferers reported getting relief after massaging their temples and neck and smokers who were taught self-massage while trying to quit felt less anxiety and smoked less.

What did the study conducted in Miami show?

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The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually and the first woman to win this prize was Baroness Bertha Felicie Sophie von Suttner in 1905. In fact, her work inspired creation of the Prize. The first American woman to win the prize was Jane Addams, in 1931. However, Addams is best known as the founder of Hull House.
Jane Addams was born in 1860, into a wealthy family. She was one of a small number of women in her generation to graduate from college. Her commitment to improving the lives of those around her led her to work for social reform and world peace. In the 1880s Jane Addams travelled to Europe. While she was in London, she visited a “settlement house” called Toynbee Hall. Inspired by Toynbee Hall, Addams and her friends, Ellen Gates Starr, opened Hull House in a neighborhood of slums in Chicago in 1899. Hull House provided a day care center for children of working mothers, a community kitchen, and visiting nurses. Addams and her staff gave classes in English literacy, art and other subjects. Hull House also became a meeting place for clubs and labor unions. Most of the people who worked with Addams in Hull House were well educated, middle-class women. Hull House gave them an opportunity to use their education and it provided a training ground for careers in social work.
Before World War I, Addams was probably the most beloved woman in America. In a newspaper poll that asked, “Who among our contemporaries are of the most value to the community?” Jane Addams was rated second, after Thomas Edison. When she opposed America’s involvement in World War I, however, newspaper editors called her a traitor and a fool, but she never changed her mind. Jane Addams was a strong champion of several other causes. Until 1920, American women could not vote. Addams joined in the movement for women’s suffrage and was a 7 vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and was president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Her reputation was gradually restored during the last years of her life. She died of cancer in 1935.

Jane Addams was inspired to open Hull House because     .

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Scientists believe that something very serious is happening to the Earth. It is becoming warmer. Scientists predict that there will be major changes in the climate during the 21st century. Coastal waters will have higher temperatures. This will have a serious effect on agriculture. Farmers will have trouble producing good crops. In warm regions, the weather will be too dry. The amount of water could decrease by 50 per cent. This would cause a large decrease in agricultural production. World temperatures could increase from 1.5 to 5.6 degrees Celsius by the middle of the 21st century. And the increase in temperature could be even greater in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. A rise in temperature could cause the great ice sheets to melt, which, in turn would raise the level of oceans by one to two meters. Many coastal cities would be underwater. Why is all this happening? The Earth and its atmosphere are kept warm by the Sun. The atmosphere lets most of the light from the Sun pass through to warm the Earth. The Earth is warmer by the sunlight and sends heat energy back into the atmosphere. Much of this energy escapes from the Earth’s atmosphere. However, some of it remains. Gases such as carbon dioxide, ozone and water vapor absorb this energy and create more heat. Then, this heat is sent back down to Earth, and the Earth becomes warmer. Recently, however, an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing serious problems. Too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere prevents heat energy from escaping. Too much heat is sent back down to the Earth, and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to increase. When oil, gas, and coal burn, they create large amounts of carbon dioxide. The destruction of rain forests that absorb carbon dioxide also helps to increase the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Some scientists believe that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air will double by the late 2000s. Scientists call this warming of the Earth and its atmosphere “the greenhouse effect”. A greenhouse, made of glass and plastic, is a special place where plants are grown. The sunlight passes through the glass or plastic and warms the air inside. The heat inside escapes very slowly, so the greenhouse remains very warm. This is exactly what is happening on the Earth. Another reason why the Earth is growing warmer is because of the amount of ozone in our atmosphere. Ozone is a form of oxygen. In the upper atmosphere, very far from the Earth, a layer of ozone helps to protect the Earth from 95 percent of the harmful light that comes from the sun. If your skin receives too much of this light, you would develop skin cancer. We need the ozone layer to protect ourselves. But the ozone layer is in trouble. Scientists have observed that the ozone layer is becoming thin, and above Antarctica there is a hole. This allows too much of the sun’s dangerous light into our atmosphere and makes the Earth warmer. Scientists say we must start making changes and planning now. We need to continue to do research, so we can predict what will happen in the future. We must burn less coal, oil, and gas. Other scientists believe that the problem is not so serious. They think that the Earth is growing warmer naturally, that we don’t need to worry about it now, and that we should just get ready for life in the warmer climate. Most scientists agree that the causes of the world’s climate are very complicated. They say that we must continue to measure the amount of carbon dioxide and ozone in the atmosphere. Scientists also encourage people to learn about the changes that are occurring in the world and how we can all help protect our atmosphere  
8. Which is the best title for the passage?

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There are a number of initiatives, some already introduced and some in the pipeline,  that are specifically designed to ensure that the economic value of nature is recognised. One example is reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, under  which forest owners are paid not to cut down trees. A number of governments across the world have committed hundreds of millions of dollars to these projects. Another is habitat banking, the market for which currently stands at around $3bn in the US, where companies that degrade natural areas are forced to restore nature elsewhere. Trade in forest conservation obligations in Brazil and ground-water salinity credits in Australia have also proved successful. Alongside these schemes and those like them, there are various compensation arrangements that make those causing environmental damage pay for it, just like carbon credits that currently exist. Exemptions from these various taxes, charges and fees, as well as subsidies, are also used to encourage environmentally responsible behaviour.  There is also growing pressure for companies to begin incorporating the costs of the damage that they do to the Earth’s natural resources into their profit and loss accounts. Only by incorporating these costs into their accounts, many argue, will companies be forced to reduce their impact on the natural world. "Directors’ bonuses don’t have to be included in company accounts from a pure profit and loss point of view, but they are. Environmental externalities should be the same," says Pavan Sukhdev, a career banker and team leader of the United Nations’ The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study.  “This is not a straightforward process and needs standard methodologies accepted by everyone, but it could be achieved within 10 years.” The next step would be to incorporate environmental assets into national accounts. 
5. According to paragraph 3, why do companies have to include green fee in their financial records?

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A massage is relaxing, and makes you feel great, but did you know that it's also good for you? That's what doctors are now saying. Massage relieves pain and anxiety, eases depression and speeds up recovery from medical problems.
Research has shown that people of all ages benefit from touch. Premature infants who are held develop faster than those left alone, and healthy babies who get a lot of physical contact cry less and sleep better. Researchers are not sure why this occurs but they have also found out that touch can slow heart rate, lower blood pressure and increase levels of seratonin, the brain chemical that is linked to well-being. It also decreases levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and this in turn increases your resistance to illness.
Massage also speeds up healing. Bone-marrow transplant patients who were given massages had better neurological function than those who weren't. Furthermore, massage reduced pain by 37% in patients with chronic muscle aches.
Giving someone a massage may be as good as getting one. A study conducted by the university of Miami found that mothers suffering from depression felt better after massaging their infants. In that same study, elderly volunteers who massaged infants reported feeling less anxious and depressed.
It even works when you do it yourself; 43% of headache sufferers reported getting relief after massaging their temples and neck and smokers who were taught self-massage while trying to quit felt less anxiety and smoked less.

What has recently been said about getting a massage?

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The British are particular about timings and being late is frowned upon, but being on  time is a complicated matter because in some situations, being a few minutes early on others means being exactly on time and in some instances, it is completely acceptable to arrive 10 minutes to a few hours later than the stated time. This can be a minefield for someone who is new to the UK, so here are some basics rules that will help you get your timings right whatever the situation.  In formal meetings, such as job interviews, you should arrive at least five minutes before your meeting. This will give you time to compose yourself before your big meeting. In the UK, arriving late for a formal meeting is seen as unprofessional and will reflect badly on you. If you are running late, ring your host to let them know you will be late. On arrival, apologize sincerely and offer a reason for your lateness, such as you got lost or the train was delayed. It will help you redeem yourself. However, if you are late because you set off later than you should have, it’s wise to keep that to yourself! With appointments such as visits to the doctor or dentist, the time you are given for your appointment isn’t necessarily the time you will be seen. It is not uncommon you may have to wait between 15-30 minutes before you are seen by a doctor and that can be much longer if it is a hospital appointment. Nevertheless, you should arrive at least five minutes before your appointment and it is recommended you take a drink and something to read.  When you start a new job, you are given your typical working hours. For example, if you are expected to start at 9am, it is not acceptable to arrive after this time. Most employers make an exception if you are late once in a while. If you have an appointment, you need to seek permission from your employer to arrive later on that day. Being late consistently will land you in trouble and you can be sacked from your job if after three warnings you are still late.  There is an unsaid rule that you can be a few minutes late for a lecture or seminar once in a while. When you are late, you should enter quietly and find a seat at the back of the room. At the end of lecture or seminar, you should offer your apology to the lecturer. If you have been invited to a dinner party, you should arrive exactly on time as the host will have planned when they will serve the food. You will find that your host will serve their guests a pre-dinner drink, so that gives you a bit of wiggle room, but if you are running later than 10 minutes, you should ring your host and let them know how late you might be. That way they can decide whether to go ahead and serve the other guests. When you arrive you should offer the host and the other guests your apology for being late. 
2. The word “compose” in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to _____________

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In addition to improved physical health, sport plays a primarily positive role in youth  development, including improved academic achievement, higher self-esteem, fewer behavioral problems, and better psychosocial development. Many studies focus on the effects of sport on the five “C’s” - competence, confidence, connections, character, and caring. The many facets of playing sport - the discipline of training, learning teamwork, following the leadership of coaches and captains, learning to lose - provide lifelong skills for athletes.  The literature on youth sport stresses the positive effects of participation in learning the important life skills of goal setting and time management combined with enjoyment; the development of a strong sense of morality; and the development of an appreciation of diversity. Studies have shown that children and youth participating in sport, when compared to peers who do not play sport, exhibit higher grades, expectations, and attainment; greater personal confidence and self-esteem; greater connections with school – that is, greater attachment and support from adults; stronger peer relationships, more academically oriented friends, greater family attachment and more frequent interactions with parents; more restraint in avoiding risky behavior; and greater involvement in volunteer work.  Sport provides opportunities for children and youth to engage in valuable and positive relationships with adults. Thus, it is a missed opportunity for children who are "gated" - or not included in sport - during early stages of childhood because they are less well behaved than other children. These children are being prevented from participating in the very thing that could help them learn to control and regulate their behavior. Sport provides an opportunity for children to safely navigate and negotiate between right and wrong as they learn to interact with peers and adults. Research by Taliaferro et al. suggests that playing sport can even protect against suicide risk in youth. Compared to non-athletes, male athletes exhibit lower levels of hopelessness and suicidal ideation. Young males involved in multiple sports seem to garner even more protection in this regard. Similar results were found for girls. Research on the role of exercise in adults confirms that it improves mood and alleviates many forms of depression. Bartko and Eccles les found that youth who are highly involved in sport are more “psychologically resilient,” that is, better able to recover from problems. Eccles et al. found that sport participation protects young athletes against social isolation
6. Which of the followings is NOT prevented as a result of playing sports?

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Go is a game that has been around for 3000 years. It is widely accepted as the most challenging strategy game that exists. It takes years of playing for several hours every day to master the game. In other words, even though it has simple rules, it is not a simple game to excel at. Surprise! Deep Mind managed to create a machine that could master the game, without being programmed with explicit rules and without being taught by a professional Go player. AlphaGo mainly played against itself and learned from this self-play. At its core, it learned like a human learns, by looking at the board, evaluating the options, making moves, and learning from mistakes - it just did it a lot faster than any human can. This is extremely exciting because, at its core, what it means is that computer scientists have had all the tools they needed to do this for years. Neural networks have been known about and discussed since the middle of the last century. All it really took was simply getting creative with them, applying them in new ways. AlphaGo beating the world’s best Go player proves that AI has the potential to do anything. It can learn anything and understand anything, and from that learning and understanding it can accomplish what humans can accomplish in a much shorter period of time. You’re probably wondering what this all means. We’re much closer to the dream of an AI best friend than most of us would have dared to imagine a few years ago. AlphaGo can learn the most complex, intuition and creativity based logic game known to man and it didn’t do so through a finite database or search trees alone. It learned from practice and experience, just like we do, and the ability to create amazing new solutions to ancient puzzles suggests a realm of digital creativity never before fathomed. AlphaGo is not like other game playing AIs that have come before it. It is the future of intelligent and intuitive machines, one that we plan to turn toward more than just board games. From practical applications to that friend you’ve been hoping for, AlphaGo is sure to be the first of a new generation of self-learning intuitive AIs that go above and beyond the limited calculating capacities of its older siblings and contemporaries. The AI winter is over.
2. The word “It” in paragraph 1 refers to _____

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There are many types of family systems around the world. In North America and  northern Europe, the nuclear family (with two generations - a father, a mother and one or more children) is often seen as the most typical. In contrast, in most other parts of the world, extended families, which include other family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, are seen as the norm.  The common view is that the nuclear family has become the norm in many Western societies as a result of industrialization and urbanization. This trend began in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when people were forced to move to cities to find work in the factories that sprang up during the Industrial Revolution. In the twentieth century, greater industrialization resulted in even more people leaving their large extended families. Urbanization also meant that people lived in much smaller houses, which were not big enough for an extended family.  The trend towards nuclear families meant that many of the duties and responsibilities of a family, such as providing food and shelter, cleaning the home, preparing the food, caring for children and their education, and caring for the sick and elderly are no longer shared among the members of the extended family. The parents (or parent) now have to do this, with some help from the state. However, this is the price that people pay for the higher standard of living that may come from living in a city.  We may think we know what we mean by a ‘nuclear’ family and an extended family, but reality is more complicated than most people believe. Most nuclear families are part of extended families: children have grandparents and, in many cases, aunts, uncles and cousins as well. Part of what makes them ‘nuclear’ is that they live in their own separate household, but it is not the whole story. In Greece or Italy, for example, a nuclear family may live in its own flat, but the extended family may live in the same apartment block or in the same street and family members see each other and even eat together every day. There is at least one more factor to consider. Family members may be separated from each other by geographical distance, but they may have close emotional ties. Even in North America and northern Europe, grandparents usually have close bonds with their grandchildren, and families often travel long distances so that they can see each other. Grandparents often help their adult children, for example, by cooking and looking after their children in emergencies. In the same way, when their parents become too old to live on their own, adult children may take them into their own homes. As a result, they turn their nuclear family into an extended family.  The structure of families changes over time. The effects of urbanization and industrialization are enormous, but they are not the only reasons for the changes. People marry, have children, become widowed, divorce and die. Children grow up and adults grow old. Nuclear families become extended families and extended families become nuclear families. Family ties stay strong or become weak. One thing is certain: in a changing world, the family will continue to change, but ultimately, it is likely to continue to be the basic unit of society
8. Which of the following best serves as the title for the passage?

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Desertification is creating additional challenges to the survival of endangered animal species in India, according to a senior wildlife official who attended the 14th Conference of Parties (COP14) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in New Delhi. A few days earlier, at COP14 in New Delhi, Dr Chandra had said that the statistics on species extinction have been derived from a database of more than 5.6 million specimens, which have lived across India and the neighbouring countries since before independence. The deteriorating pattern in the species’ distribution in geo-special platforms over the past 100 years clearly highlights the concerning impact of deforestation and desertification. Land degradation threatens species like the Great Indian Bustard, which is classified as “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The Weather Channel India got in touch with Dr Chandra, who said that less than 150 Great Indian Bustards are alive today. “Desertification and land degradation are among the 20-30 risk factors to the survival of Great Indian Bustards,” Dr Chandra told Weather.com. In simple terms, desertification is a process wherein fertile land becomes unusable, typically as a result of a long drought, deforestation, salinisation, intensive agricultural practices, and the excessive usage of insecticides, pesticides and chemicals. Desertification leads to hazardous effects on not just animals, but also on the food chain and the overall biodiversity—right from microscopic organisms to human beings. Deforestation has affected over 30% of the land in India due to over-cultivation, soil erosion and depletion of wetlands. Along with India, the planet as a whole currently stares at the fast-growing threat of land degradation  
1. The passage mainly discuss_______

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From their inception, most rural neighborhoods in colonial North America included at least one carpenter, joiner, sawyer, and cooper in woodworking; a weaver and a tailor for clothing production; a tanner, currier, and cordwainer (shoemaker) for fabricating leather objects; and a blacksmith for metalwork. Where stone was the local building material, a mason was sure to appear on the list of people who paid taxes. With only an apprentice as an assistant, the rural artisan provided the neighborhood with common goods from furniture to shoes to farm equipment in exchange for cash or for “goods in kind” from the customer’s field, pasture, or dairy. Sometimes artisans transformed material provided by the customer wove cloth of yam spun at the farm from the wool of the family sheep; made chairs or tables from wood cut in the customer’s own woodlot; produced shoes or leather breeches from cow, deer, or sheepskin tanned on the farm.  Like their farming neighbors, rural artisans were part of an economy seen, by one historian, as “an orchestra conducted by nature.” Some tasks could not be done in the winter, others had to be put off during harvest time, and still others waited on raw materials that were only produced seasonally. As the days grew shorter, shop hours kept pace, since few artisans could afford enough artificial light to continue work when the sun went down.  To the best of their ability, colonial artisans tried to keep their shops as efficient as possible and to regularize their schedules and methods of production for the best return on their investment in time, tools, and materials. While it is pleasant to imagine a woodworker, for example, carefully matching lumber, joining a chest together without resort to nails or glue, and applying all thought and energy to carving beautiful designs on the finished piece, the time required was not justified unless the customer was willing to pay extra for the quality - and few in rural areas were. Artisans, therefore, often found it necessary to employ as many shortcuts and economics as possible while still producing satisfactory products.
7. The word "few" in the passage refers to ____

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The local government suggested ……. a road through the Nam Cat Tien National Park.

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We live in a world of tired, sleep deprived people. In his book Counting Sheep, Paul Martin - a behavioral biologist - describes a society which is just too busy to sleep and which does not give sleeping the importance it deserves. Modern society has invented reasons not to sleep. We are now a 24/7 society where shops and services must be available all hours. We spend longer hours at work than we used to, and more time getting to work. Mobile phones and email allow us to stay in touch round the clock and late-night TV and the Internet tempt us away from our beds. When we need more time for work or pleasure, the easy solution is to sleep less. The average adult sleeps only 6.2 hours a night during the week, whereas research shows that most people need eight or even eight and a half hours’ sleep to feel at their best. Nowadays, many people have got used to sleeping less than they need and they live in an almost permanent state of “sleep debt”.  Until the invention of the electric light in 1879 our daily cycle of sleep used to depend on the hours of daylight. People would get up with the sun and go to bed at nightfall. But nowadays our hours of sleep are mainly determined by our working hours (or our social life) and most people are woken up artificially by an alarm clock. During the day caffeine, the world’s most popular drug, helps to keep us awake. 75% of the world’s population habitually consume caffeine, which up to a point masks the symptoms of sleep deprivation. What does a chronic lack of sleep do to us? As well as making us irritable and unhappy as humans, it also reduces our motivation and ability to work. This has serious implications for society in general. Doctors, for example, are often chronically sleep deprived, especially when they are on “night call”, and may get less than three hours’ sleep. Lack of sleep can seriously impair their mood, judgment, and ability to take decisions. Tired engineers, in the early hours of the morning, made a series of mistakes with catastrophic results. On our roads and motorways lack of sleep kills thousands of people every year. Tests show that a tired driver can be just as dangerous as a drunken driver. However, driving when drunk is against the law but driving when exhausted isn’t. As Paul Martin says, it is very ironic that we admire people who function on very little sleep instead of criticizing them for being irresponsible. Our world would be a much safer, happier place if everyone, whatever their job, slept eight hours a night  
4. The word “which” in the third paragraph refers to ______

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Paul Watson is an environmental activist. He is a man who believes that he must do something, not just talk about doing something. Paul believes in protecting endangered animals, and he protects them in controversial ways. Some people think that Watson is a hero and admire him very much. Other people think that he is a criminal. On July 16th, 1979, Paul Watson and his crew were on his ship, which is called the Sea Shepherd. Watson and the people who work on the Sea Shepherd were hunting on the Atlantic Ocean near Portugal. However, they had a strange prey, instead of hunting for animals, their prey was a ship, the Sierra. The Sea Shepherd found the Sierra, ran into it and sank it. As a result, the Sierra never returned to the sea. The Sea Shepherd, on the other hand, returned to its home in Canada. Paul Watson and his worked thought that they had been successful. The Sierra had been a whaling ship, which had operated illegally. The captain and the crew of the Sierra did not obey any of the international laws that restrict whaling. Instead, they killed as many whales as they could, quickly cut off the meat, and froze it. Later, they sold the whale meat in countries where it is eaten. Paul Watson tried to persuade the international whaling commission to stop the Sierra. However, the commission did very little, and Paul became impatient. He decided to stop the Sierra and whaling ships in any way that he could. He offered to pay $25,000 to an one who sank any illegal whaling ship, and he sank the Sierra. He acted because he believed that the whales must be protected. Still, he acted without the approval of the government; therefore, his action controversial. Paul Watson is not the only environmental activist. Other men and women are also fighting to protect the Earth. Like Paul Watson, they do not always have the approval of their governments, and like Watson, they have become impatient. Yet, because of their concern for the environment, they will act to protect it.
3. The members of a ship's crew are: 

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She noticed a marked _______ in the children on her second visit.

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Andrew Jackson Beard lived an extraordinary life for a black American inventor. Unlike the vast majority of inventors who never profit from their patents, he profited from his inventions. Andrew Beard was born a slave on a plantation in Woodland, Alabama, in 1849, shortly before slavery ended. He received emancipation at age 15 and he married at age 16. Andrew Beard was a farmer, carpenter, blacksmith, a railroad worker, a businessman and finally an inventor. He grew apples as a farmer near Birmingham, Alabama for five years before he built and operated a flour mill in Hardwicks, Alabama. His work in agriculture led to tinkering with improvement for plows. In 1881, he patented his first invention, an improvement to the double plow, and sold the patent rights for $4,000 in 1884. His design allowed for the distance between the plow plates to be adjusted. That amount of money would be the equivalent of almost $100,000 today. In 1887, Andrew Beard patented a second plow and sold it for $5,200. This patent was for a design that allowed the pitch of the blades of plows or cultivators to be adjusted. The amount he received would be the equivalent of about $130,000 today. In 1897, Andrew Beard patented an improvement to railroad car couplers. His improvement came to be called the Jenny Coupler. It was one of many that aimed to improve the knuckle coupler patented by Eli Janney in 1873 (patent US138405). The knuckle coupler did the dangerous job of hooking railroad cars together, which formerly was done by manually placing a pin in a link between the two cars. Beard, himself had lost a leg in a car coupling accident. As an ex-railroad worker, Andrew Beard had the right idea that probably saved countless lives and limbs. Beard received three patents for automatic car couplers. These are US594059 granted November 23, 1897, US624901 granted May 16, 1899, and US807430 granted on May 16, 1904. While there were thousands of patents filed at the time for car couplers, Andrew Beard received $50,000 for the patent rights to his Jenny coupler. This would be just shy of 1.5 million dollars today. Congress enacted the Federal Safety Appliance Act at that time to enforce using automatic couplers. Andrew Jackson Beard was inducted into the National
Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006 in recognition of his revolutionary Jenny coupler
1. Which best serves as the title for the passage?

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Mr O’Connor, a volunteer firefighter with the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (RFS), has used all seven weeks of his holiday leave, plus his three weeks of allotted sick leave, to fight fires across the state. Mr O’Connor is among the more than 72,000 members of the RFS, a volunteer force that is the largest firefighting service in the world. These volunteer services have been at the front line of the battle against ferocious bush fires across Australia that have already destroyed more than 10.7 million hectares, an area larger than South Korea. The RFS, which began 120 years ago, not only attends to bush fires and home and building fires but also assists in storms, search and rescue operations and car accidents. In 2018, it attended 26,903 incidents, including 10,036 bush fires and 1,283 building fires. Mr Mick Holton, president of the NSW Volunteer Fire Fighters Association, an organisation which represents volunteers, said people step up for various reasons, including altruism, social factors, a sense of adventure, or a desire to protect their own farms or houses. “People are happy to be part of a group that benefits the community. That is a large part of it for most volunteers. People have a sense that they want to help,” he told The Straits Times. But Australia’s bush fires are becoming more severe and more frequent. This year, many, like Mr O’Connor, have made large sacrifices to protect people and homes. Controversially, Prime Minister Scott Morrison agreed in late December to compensate some of the firefighters after coming under heavy pressure to provide them with support. The compensation scheme allows volunteers who are self-employed or work for small businesses to claim A$300 (S$277) per day if they have served more than 10 days this fire season. The maximum payment is A$6,000. But the move had been opposed by some senior firefighters, including the RFS Commissioner, Mr Shane Fitzsimmons, who has said that “For goodness sake, let’s not take away from the extraordinary spirit that is volunteerism.” But Mr Morrison insisted that: “While I know RFS volunteers don’t seek payment for their service, I don’t want to see volunteers or their families unable to pay bills or struggle financially as a result of the selfless contribution they are making.
8. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?