Choose the underlined word or phrase (A, B, C or D) that is incorrect and needs to be changed: The new computer made easier for the students to finish the project

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:
Body language is a vital form of communication. In fact, it is believed that the various forms of body language contribute about 70 percent to our comprehension. It is important to note, however, that body languages varies in different cultures. Take for example, eye movement. In the USA a child is expected to look directly at a parent or teacher who is scolding him/her. In other cultures the opposite is true. Looking directly at a teacher or parent in such a situation is considered a sign of disrespect.
Another form of body language that is used differently, depending on the culture, is distance. In North America people don’t generally stand as close to each other as in South America. Two North Americans who don’t know each other well will keep a distance of four feet between them, whereas South Americans in the same situation will stand two to three feet apart. North Americans will stand closer than two feet apart only if they are having a confidential conversation or if there is intimacy between them.
Gestures are often used to communicate. We point a finger, raise an eyebrow, wave an arm – or move any other part of the body - to show what we want to say. However, this does not mean that people all over the world use the same gestures to express the same meanings. Very often we find that the same gestures can communicate different meanings, depending on the country. An example of a gesture that could be misinterpreted is sticking out the tongue. In many cultures it is a sign of making a mistake, but in some places it communicates ridicule.
The dangers of misunderstanding one another are great. Obviously, it is not enough to learn the language of another culture. You must also learn its non-verbal signals if you want to communicate successfully.

What is the passage mainly about?

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:
Do you think you're smarter than your parents and grandparents? According to James Flynn, a professor at a New Zealand university, you are! Over the course of the last century, people who have taken IQ tests have gotten increasingly better scores-on average, three points better for every decade that has passed. This improvement is known as "the Flynn effect," and scientists want to know what is behind it.
IQ tests and other similar tests are designed to measure general intelligence rather than knowledge. Flynn knew that intelligence is partly inherited from our parents and partly the result of our environment and experiences, but the improvement in test scores was happening too quickly to be explained by heredity. So what was happening in the 20th century that was helping people achieve higher scores on intelligence tests?
Scientists have proposed several explanations for the Flynn effect. Some suggest that the improved test scores simply reflect an increased exposure to tests in general. Because we take so many tests, we learn test-taking techniques that help us perform better on any test. Others have pointed to better nutrition since it results in babies being born larger, healthier, and with more brain development than in the past. Another possible explanation is a change in educational styles, with teachers encouraging children to learn by discovering things for themselves rather than just memorizing information. This could prepare people to do the kind of problem solving that intelligence tests require.
Flynn limited the possible explanations when he looked carefully at the test data and discovered that the improvement in scores was only on certain parts of the IQ test. Test takers didn't do better on the arithmetic or vocabulary sections of the test; they did better on sections that required a special kind of reasoning and problem solving. For example, one part of the test shows a set of abstract shapes, and test-takers must look for patterns and connections between them and decide which shape should be added to the set.
According to Flynn, this visual intelligence improves as the amount of technology in our lives increases. Every time you play a computer game or figure out how to program a new cell phone, you are exercising exactly the kind of thinking and problem solving that helps you do well on one kind of intelligence test. So are you really smarter than your parents? In one very specific way, you may be.a

Why does the author mention computer games?

Choose the word or phrase among A, B, C or D that best fits the blank space in the following passage:

"In the us, colleges of pharmacy offer five-year undergraduate programs (1)….. to the degree of Bachelor of Science in the pharmaceutical Sciences. AU (2)….  students directly from high schools (3)…..  may grant advanced standing to college students or graduates. Licenses are granted by the States after the following requirements have been (4)…. : graduation from one of 72 colleges with programs (5)…..  by the American council on Pharmaceutical Education; about 1,500 hours of internship (6)……  a registered pharmacist; (7)….. completion of a State examination. Pharmacists may practise their (8)…..  in a pharmacy located in a hospital, nursing home, or special area of a drugstore. They may also be (9)……   by a pharmaceutical company in scientific research for the (10)……  and production of new pharmaceutical Products."

4. Licenses are granted by the States after the following requirements have been (4)….

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:
The ability of falling cats to right themselves in midair and land on their feet has been a source of wonder for ages. Biologists long regarded it as an example of adaptation by natural selection, but for physicists it bordered on the miraculous.
Newton's laws of motion assume that the total amount of spin of a body cannot change unless an external torque speeds it up or slows it down. If a cat has no spin when it isreleased and experiences no external torque, it ought not to be able to twist around as it falls.
In the speed of its execution, the righting of a tumbling cat resembles a magician's trick. The gyrations of the cat in midair are too fast for the human eye to follow, so the process is obscured. Either the eye must be speeded up, or the cat's fall slowed down for the phenomenon to be observed. A century ago the former was accomplished by means of high-speed photography using equipment now available in any pharmacy. But in the nineteenth century the capture on film of a falling cat constituted a scientific experiment.
The experiment was described in a paper presented to the Paris Academy in 1894. Two sequences of twenty photographs each, one from the side and one from behind, show a white cat in the act of righting itself. Grainy and quaint though they are, the photos show that the cat was dropped upside down, with no initial spin, and still landed on its feet. Careful analysis of the photos reveals the secret; as the cat rotates the front of its body clockwise, the rear and tail twist counterclockwise, so that the total spin remains zero, in perfect accord with Newton's laws. Halfway down, the cat pulls in its legs before reversing its twist and then extends them again, with the desired end result. The explanation was that while nobody can acquire spin without torque, a flexible one can readily change its orientation, or phase. Cats know this instinctively, but scientists could not be sure how it happened until they increased the speed of their perceptions a thousandfold.

Why are the photographs mentioned in line 16 referred to as an “experiment”?

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
Atypical person needs about 1,800 calories per day to stay running. They keep your organs operating (1)..... and your brain running. They also keep your body warm. A person gains weight because he or she consumes more calories per day than necessary. The only way to lose fat is to reduce the number of calories that you consume per day. This is the basic principle (2)........going on a diet.
Unfortunately, diets don’t work for most people. They do lose weight but then go off the diet and put it back. Building a sensible diet and exercise plan is the key to maintaining a consistent weight. You need to figure out how many calories you need in a day and how many you actually (3)..... . The next step is to add exercise so that you can raise the number of calories you can consume per day.
Burning 250 or 500 calories per day can make a big (4)...... . You can ride an exercise bike while you are watching television or you can take the stairs instead of the elevator. Find an exercise partner. Exercises can be a lot easier if there is someone to talk to. It’s a good idea to wear firm fitting clothes if you are (5)..... . Tight clothing acts as a reminder of what you are trying to accomplish.
(3)..................................

Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D to complete the passage. 
Some doctors think that you should drink a glass of water each morning. You should drink this water first thing before doing anything else. The (25) ______ of the water should be similar to body temperature; (26) ______ too hot nor too cold. Why should you drink this water? Water helps your body in many ways. It helps clean out your kidneys. It prepares your stomach for (27) ______, Water can also help your intestines work better. After drinking water, the intestines can more easily take out nutrients from our food. Water also helps us go to the bathroom more easily,
Scientists suggest that people (28) ______ 1,600 milliliters of water each day. But don't drink all of that water in one sitting. If you do, your kidneys will have to work much harder to eliminate it. It's better to drink some in the morning and some in the afternoon. Some people think it's better to drink between meals and not during meals. They think water dilutes the juices produced in our stomachs, (29) ______ can interfere with normal digestion. Are you drinking enough water every day? Check the color of your urine. If it is light yellow, you are probably drinking enough. If your urine is very dark yellow, you probably need to drink more water. A little more water each day could make you much healthier!

(27)..........................

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. 
      Urbanization degrades the environment, according to conventional wisdom. This view has led many developing countries to limit rural - urban migration and curb urban expansion. But this view is incorrect. There are a number of reasons urbanization can be good for the environment, if managed properly.
      First, urbanization brings higher productivity because of its positive externalities and economies of scale. Asian urban productivity is more than 5.5 times that of rural areas. The same output can be produced using fewer resources with urban agglomeration than without. In this sense, urbanization reduces the ecological footprint. The service sector requires urbanization because it needs a concentration of clients. As services generally pollute less than manufacturing, this aspect of urbanization is also beneficial to the environment.
      Second, for any given population, the high urban density is benign for the environment. The urban economics literature shows that compactness is a key determinant of energy use. High density can make public transport more viable and reduce the length of trips. Urban living encourages walking and cycling rather than driving. Third, environment-friendly infrastructure and public services such as piped water, sanitation, and waste management are much easier and more economical to construct, maintain, and operate in an urban setting. Urbanization allows more people to have access to environment-friendly facilities and services at affordable prices.
     Fourth, urbanization drives innovation, including green technologies. In the long term, environment-friendly equipment, machines, vehicles, and utilities will determine the future of the green economy. Green innovations in Asia's cities will be supported by the region's vast market as the billions of people who will be buying energy-efficient products will create opportunities and incentives for entrepreneurs to invest in developing such products. Finally, the higher standard of living associated with urbanization provides people with better food, education, housing, and health care. Urban growth generates revenues that fund infrastructure projects, reducing congestion and improving public health. Urbanization fosters a pro-environment stance among property owners and the middle class, which is crucial for the introduction and enforcement of environmental laws and regulations.
      Of course, urbanization also comes with costs. Millions of people are migrating to Asian cities and companies are locating there to employ them. Urban sprawl and industrial activities, such as power generation, transportation, construction, garbage and waste disposal, harm the environment. An assessment of the impact of urbanization on the environment must balance its benign and adverse effects.

According to paragraph 3, through which can the optimization of power be achieved?

Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D to complete the passage. 
Some doctors think that you should drink a glass of water each morning. You should drink this water first thing before doing anything else. The (25) ______ of the water should be similar to body temperature; (26) ______ too hot nor too cold. Why should you drink this water? Water helps your body in many ways. It helps clean out your kidneys. It prepares your stomach for (27) ______, Water can also help your intestines work better. After drinking water, the intestines can more easily take out nutrients from our food. Water also helps us go to the bathroom more easily,
Scientists suggest that people (28) ______ 1,600 milliliters of water each day. But don't drink all of that water in one sitting. If you do, your kidneys will have to work much harder to eliminate it. It's better to drink some in the morning and some in the afternoon. Some people think it's better to drink between meals and not during meals. They think water dilutes the juices produced in our stomachs, (29) ______ can interfere with normal digestion. Are you drinking enough water every day? Check the color of your urine. If it is light yellow, you are probably drinking enough. If your urine is very dark yellow, you probably need to drink more water. A little more water each day could make you much healthier!

(28).........................

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. 
Astronomers have for the first time definitively ID’d the birth of a specific heavy element during a neutron-star smashup. They found strontium. And it showed up in the wavelengths of light — or spectra — making up this collision’s afterglow.
Scientists had assumed that a collision by two super-dense objects, such as neutron stars, would trigger a chain of nuclear reactions. They’re known as the r-process. In such an environment, the nuclei of atoms could rapidly gobble up neutrons. Afterward, those nuclei would become transformed in a process known as radioactive decay. The r-process was seen as a way to transform old, smaller elements into newer, bigger ones. About half of all elements heavier than iron were thought to be made in the r-process. Finding strontium in the recent collision at last offered the most direct evidence yet that neutron-star collisions really do trigger the r-process.
Physicists had long predicted that silver, gold and many other elements more massive than iron formed this way. But scientists weren’t sure where those r-process reactions took place. After all, no one had directly seen the r-process underway in a celestial event. Or they didn’t until the merger of two neutron stars in 2017. Scientists quickly analyzed light given off by that cataclysm. In it, they found evidence of the birth of a hodgepodge of heavy elements. All would seem to have come from the r-process. 
The researchers were examining mostly very heavy elements — ones whose complex atomic structures can generate millions of spectral features. And all of those features were not yet fully known, Watson points out. This made it extremely difficult to tease apart which elements were present, he says.
Strontium, however, is relatively light compared to other r-process elements. And its simple atomic structure creates a few strong and well-known spectral clues. So Watson and his colleagues expanded their analysis to consider it. In doing so, they turned up the clear "fingerprint" of strontium. It emerged in light collected by the Very Large Telescope in Chile within a few days of the neutron-star collision. Seeing strontium in the afterglow wasn’t all that unexpected, says Brian Metzger. He’s an astrophysicist at Columbia University in New York City and not involved in the new work. Strontium, he notes, “does tell us something interesting” about the elements formed during the neutron-star collision.

Which of the following statements is TRUE, according to the passage?

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word for each of the blanks.
The application (1)....... for volunteers for the 15th Asian Games Doha 2006 is now closed. Organizers have been flooded with interest and have now filled all available roles. Any further (2)......... will have their details stored on file and will only be contacted in the event of any vacancies unexpectedly arising.
Over 30,000 men and women, not only from Qatar, but also from the Gulf (3)....... and even further afield, have volunteered to help out at Doha 2006 after more than two years of meetings and interviews. First of all, a big “thank you” to everyone for your enthusiasm and commitment in volunteering to give up some of your precious free time to become part of the Games of your Life. The (4)...... has been quite overwhelming and has far exceeded expectations.
“It shows that the Qatar public has embraced the (5)........ of the Games”, says Khaled Helaly, manager of the Doha 2006 Volunteers Programme

(1)............................... 

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:
Rachel Carson was bom in 1907 in Springsdale, Pennsylvania. She studied biology in college and zoology at Johns Hopkins University, where she received her master’s degree in 1933. In 1936, she was hired by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, where she worked most of her life.
Carson’s first book, Under the Sea Wind, was published in 1941. It received excellent reviews, but sales were poor until it was reissued in 1952. In that year, she published The Sea Around Us, which provided a fascinating look beneath the ocean’s surface, emphasizing human history as well as geology and marine biology. Her imagery and language had a poetic quality. Carson consulted no less than 1, 000 printed sources. She had voluminous correspondence and frequent discussions with experts in the field. However, she always realized the limitations of her non-technical readers.
In 1962, Carson published Silence Spring, a book that sparked considerable controversy. It proved how much harm was done by the uncontrolled, reckless use of insecticides. She detailed how they poison the food supply of animals, kill birds, and contaminate human food. At that time, spokesmen for the chemical industry mounted personal attacks against Carson and issued propaganda to indicate that her findings were flawed. However, her work was vindicated by a 1963 report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee.

The passage mainly discusses Rachel Carson’s work         .

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word for each of the blanks.
I had never been to Denmark before, so when I set out to catch the ferry in early May, I little suspected that by the end of the trip I'd have made such lasting friendships. Esjberg is a (1)..... port for acyclist's arrival, where tourist information can be obtained and money changed. A cycle track leads out of town an down to Ribe, where I spent my first night. The only appointment I had to (2)...... was a meeting with a friend who was flying out in June. I wanted to use my time well, so I had planned a route which would include several small islands and various parts of the countryside.
In my (3)........ , a person travelling alone sometimes meets with unexpected hospitality, and this trip was no exception. On only my second day, I got into conversation with a cheerful man who turned (4)..........to be the local baker. He insisted that I should join his family for lunch, and, while we were eating, he contacted his daughter in Odense. Within minutes, he had arranged for me to visit her and her family. Then I was sent on my way with a fresh loaf of bread to keep me (5).......... , and the feeling that this would turn out to be a wonderful holiday
(5)....................................

Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer.

“Where is the university?” is a question many visitors to Cambridge ask, but no one can give them a clear answer, for there is no wall to be found around the university. The university is the city. You can find the classroom buildings, libraries, museums and offices of the university all over the city. And most of its members are the students and teachers or professors of the thirty-one colleges. Cambridge is already a developing town long before the first students and teachers arrived 800 years ago. It grew up by the river Granta, as the Cam was once called. A bridge was built over the river as early as 875.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, more and more land was used for college buildings. The town grew faster in the nineteenth century after the opening of the railway in 1845. Cambridge became a city in 1951 and now it has the population of over 100000. Many young students want to study at Cambridge. Thousands of people from all over the world come to visit the university town. It has become a famous place all around the world.

From what we read we know that now Cambridge is _______.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, was from a wealthy well- known family. As a child, he attended private school, had private tutors, and traveled with his parents to Europe. He attended Harvard University, and afterward studied law. At age 39, Roosevelt suddenly developed polio, a disease that left him without the full use of his legs for the rest of his life. Even though the worst of his illness, however, he continued his life in politics. In 1942 he appeared at the Democratic National Convention to nominate Al Smith for president, and eight years after that he himself was nominated for the same office. Roosevelt was elected to the presidency during the Great Depression of the 1930s, at a time when more than 5,000 banks had failed and thousands of people were out of work. Roosevelt took action. First he declared a bank holiday that closed all the banks so no more could fail; then he reopened the banks little by little with government support. Roosevelt believed in using the full power of government to help what he called the “forgotten people”. And it was these workers, the wage earners, who felt the strongest affection toward Roosevelt. There were others, however, who felt that Roosevelt’s policies were destroying the American system of government, and they opposed him in the same intense way that others admired him
In 1940 the Democrats nominated Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term. No president in American history had ever served three terms, but Roosevelt felt an obligation not to quit while the United States’ entry into World War II was looming in the future. He accepted the nomination and went on to an easy victory.

Which on of the following statements is NOT mentioned in the passage?

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D indicate the correct answer to each of the questions. 
      In the near term, the goal of keeping AI’s impact on society beneficial motivates research in many areas, from economics and law to technical topics such as verification, validity, security and control. Whereas it may be little more than a minor nuisance if your laptop crashes or gets hacked, it becomes all the more important that an AI system does what you want it to do if it controls your car, your airplane, your pacemaker, your automated trading system or your power grid. Another short-term challenge is preventing a devastating arms race in lethal autonomous weapons.
       In the long term, an important question is what will happen if the quest for strong AI succeeds and an AI system becomes better than humans at all cognitive tasks. Such a system could potentially undergo recursive self-improvement, triggering an intelligence explosion leaving human intellect far behind. By inventing revolutionary new technologies, such a superintelligence might help us eradicate war, disease, and poverty, and so the creation of strong AI might be the biggest event in human history. Some experts have expressed concern, though, that it might also be the last, unless we learn to align the goals of the AI with ours before it becomes superintelligent.
      There are some who question whether strong AI will ever be achieved, and others who insist that the creation of superintelligent AI is guaranteed to be beneficial. At FLI we recognize both of these possibilities, but also recognize the potential for an artificial intelligence system to intentionally or unintentionally cause great harm. We believe research today will help us better prepare for and prevent such potentially negative consequences in the future, thus enjoying the benefits of AI while avoiding pitfalls.

According to paragraph 1, what is NOT mentioned as a potential benefit of AI?

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:
How is the news different from entertainment? Most people would answer that news is real but entertainment is fiction. However, if we think more carefully about the news, it becomes clear that the news is not always real. The news does not show us all the events of the day, but stories  from a small number of chosen events. The creation of news stories is subject to specific constraints, much like the creation of works of fiction. There are many constraints, but three of the most important ones are: commercialism, story formulas, and sources.
Newspapers, radio, and TV stations are businesses, all of which are rivals for audiences and advertising revenue. The amount of time that the average TV station spends on news broadcasts has grown steadily over the last fifty years - largely because news is relatively cheap to produce, yet sells plenty of advertising. Some news broadcasts are themselves becoming advertisements. For example, during one week in 1996 when the American CBS network was airing a movie about the sinking of the Titanic, CBS news ran nine stories about that event (which had happened 84 years before). The ABC network is owned by Disney Studios, and frequently runs news stories about Mickey Mouse. Furthermore, the profit motive drives news organizations to pay more attention to stories likely to generate a large audience, and to shy away from stories that may be important but dull. This pressure to be entertaining has produced shorter, simpler stories: more focus on celebrities than people of substance, more focus on gossip than on news, and more focus on dramatic events than on nuanced issues.
As busy people under relentless pressure to produce, journalists cannot spend days agonizing over the best way to present stories. Instead, they depend upon certain story formulas, which they can reuse again and again. One example is known as the inverted pyramid. In this formula, the journalist puts the most important information at the beginning of the story, than adds the next most important, and so on. The inverted pyramid originates from the age of the telegraph, the idea being that if the line went dead halfway through the story, the journalist would know that the most crucial information had at least been relayed. Modern journalists still value the formula for a similar reason. Their editors will cut stories if they are too long. Another formula involves reducing a complicated story into a simple conflict. The best example is "horse race" election coverage. Thorough explication of the issues and the candidates' views is forbiddingly complex. Journalists therefore concentrate more on who is winning in the opinion polls, and whether the underdog can catch up in the numbers than on politicians' campaign goals.
Sources are another constraint on what journalists cover and how they cover it. The dominant sources for news are public information officers in businesses and government offices. The majority of such officers try to establish themselves as experts who are qualified to feed information to journalists. How do journalists know who is an expert? In general, they don't. They use sources not on the basis of actual expertise, but on the appearance of expertise and the willingness to share it. All the major news organizations use some of the same sources (many of them anonymous), so the same types of stories always receive attention. Over time, the journalists may even become close friends with their sources, and they stop searching for alternative points of view. The result tends to be narrow, homogenized coverage of the same kind.

The word "them" in paragraph 4  refers to    _.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks. 
STREET PAPERS
      The problem of homelessness is an international one. In the capital cities of the world, the sight of people begging on the streets is becoming increasingly rare. But all over the world, homeless people are taking the future into their own (1) _____________. By selling "street papers" they no longer need to beg for a (2) ____________. 
       The concept of street paper is simple. It is sold by homeless and ex-homeless people (3) ________ buy it at a fixed price of 30p and sell it to the public for 70p, keeping 40p for themselves. If they have no money, then they can get the first ten copies on (4) _____________ and pay for them later. Every paper seller receives training and is given a special identity badge. 
       The paper itself contains articles of general and social interest, film and book reviews, cartoons and the occasional celebrity interview. Advertising and sales provide most of the income, and all profits go (5) ______________ into helping homeless people. 

(2).........................

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Scientists have uncovered a new threat to the world's endangered coral reefs. They have found that most are incapable of growing quickly enough to compensate for rising sea levels triggered by global warming. The study suggests that reefs - which are already suffering serious degradation because the world's seas are warming and becoming more acidic - could also become overwhelmed by rising oceans.
The research - led by scientists at Exeter University and published in Nature this week - involved studying growth rates for more than 200  tropical western Atlantic and  Indian Ocean  reefs. It was found only 9% of these reefs had the ability to keep up  with even the most optimistic rates of sea-level rises forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "For many   reefs across the Caribbean and Indian Ocean regions, where the study focused, rates of growth are slowing due to coral reef degradation," said Professor Chris Perry, of Exeter University. “Meanwhile, rates of sea-level rise are increasing - and our results suggest reefs will be unable to  keep up. As a result, water depths above most reefs will increase rapidly through this century.”
Sea levels rose by  several inches over the past century and measurements indicate the speed of this increase is now rising significantly. Two key factors are involved: climate change is making  ocean water warmer and so it expands. And as ice sheets and glaciers melt, they increase amounts of water in the oceans.
At the same time, reefs are being weakened by ocean warming and also by ocean acidification, triggered as the seas absorb more and more carbon dioxide. These effects lead to bleaching events that kill off vast stretches of coral and limits their ability to grow.
“Our predictions, even under the best case scenarios, suggest that by  2100, the inundation  of reefs will expose coastal communities to significant threats of shoreline change,” said co-author Prof Peter Mumby of Queensland University. This point was backed by US marine scientist Ilsa Ruffner writing in a separate comment piece for Nature. “The implications of the study are dire. Many island nations and territories are set to quickly lose crucial natural resources.”

What does the phrase "these effects" in paragraph 4 refer to?

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
       Early writing and Alphabets
When people first began to write, they did not use an alphabet. Instead, they drew small pictures to (1)........  the objects they were writing about. This was very slow because there was a different picture for every word.
The  Ancient  Egyptians  had a (2).......... of picture writing that was called hieroglyphics. The meaning of this writing was forgotten for a very long time but in 1799 some scientists (3)............ a stone near Alexandria, in Egypt. The stone had been there for over a thousand years. It had both Greek and hieroglyphics on it and researchers were finally able to understand what the hieroglyphics meant.
An alphabet is quite different from picture writing. It (4)............ of letters or symbols that represent a sound and each sound is just  part  of  one  word.  The  Phoenicians,  who  lived  about  3,000 years ago, developed the modern alphabets. It was later improved by the Roman's and this alphabet is now used (5)........... throughout the world.

(5)...........................
 

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each the numbered blanks. 
Despite these drawbacks, (25) ______the retirement age is still considered by policymakers as one of the key solutions to the ageing population problem in Vietnam, But these are only temporary solutions. Complementary long-term solutions such as increasing labor productivity must also be examined.
As Vietnam has specialized in manufacturing with its competitive advantage of a cheap labor force in the global supply chain, (26)______higher education should be reoriented to focus more on vocational training rather than university degrees. The Vietnamese government has already taken action by simplifying the entrance exam to university. Previously, Vietnam's national entrance exam was very difficult and only a limited number of the most talented citizens managed to enter universities.
However, as living standards in Vietnam improve and more families can afford to send their children to university, universities have become more commercialized and entering university is no longer a rare achievement. The low quality of Vietnamese universities also means the majority of graduating students are unable to find an appropriate job. By simplifying entrance exams to deemphasize university degrees, the government has encouraged students to opt for vocational training. (37)_______, 2016 saw a remarkable decrease in the number of students applying (28) ______university. 
Another supplementary policy is to have productivity-based rather than seniority-based salaries, (29) _______ are common in Asian countries. This would address public concern about aged seniors doing less work for more pay than younger employees. Companies and government agencies would employ and appreciate the young while benefiting from the experience of the old. But this issue feeds the Communist regime's dilemma between adhering to Communist principles and integrating into the capitalist culture of productivity for profits.

(25)........................