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:
In Viet Nam festivals often take place during the three months in spring and in autumn when people have a lot of leisure time. In addition, the climate in spring and autumn is especially suitable for holding festivals and for festivals goers to enjoy. Traditional festivals constitute a form of cultural activities, a spiritual product which the people have created and developed during the course of history. From generation to generation, the Vietnamese people preserve the fine tradition of “remembering the source while drinking water.” Festivals are events which represent this tradition of the community as well as honour the holy figures named as “gods” -the real persons in national history or legendary persons. The images of gods converge the noble characteristics of mankind. They are national heroes who fought against foreign invaders, reclaimed new lands, treated people, fought against natural calamities, or those legendary characters who affect the earthly life.
Accordingly, first and foremost, festivals are events when people pay tribute to divinities that rendered merits to the community and the nation. These are occasions when people come back to either their natural or national roots, which form a sacred part in their mind. Furthermore, testivals represent the strength of the commune or village, the local region or even the whole nation. Worshipping the same god, the people unite in solidarity to overcome difficulties, striving for a happy and wealthy life.
Moreover, festivals display the demand for creativity and enjoyment of spiritual and material cultural values of all social strata. They become a form of education under which fine traditional moral values can be handed from one generation to the next in a unique way of combining spiritual characters with competition and entertainment games. Festivals are also the time people can express their sadness and worries in a wish that gods might bestow favour on them to help them strive for a better life.

What does the word “they” in the second paragraph refer to?

No educational medium better as means of spatial communication than the atlas. Atlases deal with such invaluable information as population distribution and density. One of the best, Pennycooke's World Atlas, has been widely accepted as a standard owing to the quality of its maps and photographs, which not only show various settlements but also portray them in a variety of scales. In fact, the very first map in the atlas is a cleverly designed population cartogram that projects the size of each country if geographical size were proportional to population. Following the proportional layout, a sequence of smaller maps shows the world’s population density, each country’s birth and death rates, population increase or decrease, industrialization, urbanization, gross national product in terms of per capita income, the quality of medical care, literacy, and language. To give readers a perspective on how their own country fits in with the global view, additional projections depict the world's patterns in nutrition, calorie and protein consumption, health care, number of physicians per unit of population, and life expectancy by region. Population density maps on a subcontinental scale, as well as political maps. Convey the diverse demographic phenomena of the world in a broad array of scales.

According to the passage, the first map in Pennycooke's World Atlas shows .........

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 of the numbered blanks.
 The story of gold is an adventure involving kings, queens, pirates, explorers, conquerors, and the native peoples they conquered. Throughout history, gold has woven a magic spell over those it touched. Gold is beautiful and rare; a soft shiny metal that can be moulded into many (1)...... . It has been used for money, jewelry, and to decorate special buildings such as palaces and places of worship. (2)......the precious metal was discovered, prospectors rushed to mine it, starting new cities and countries as they went. Gold and the people who love it have helped shape the world we live (3).........today. Gold is one of many elements, or substances that cannot be changed by normal chemical means, that are found in the Earth's crust. Gold has a warm, sunny colour and (4)......... it does not react with air, water, and most chemicals, its shine never fades. In its natural (5)........... , gold is soft and easily shaped. When heated to 1,062 Celsius it melts and can be poured into moulds to form coins, gold bars, and other objects. Stories have been told, movies made and legends bom about the discovery of the world’s great gold deposits. It is a saga of dreams, greed, ambition and exploration.
(4)...................................

Before the 1500’s, the Western plains of North America were dominated by farmers. One group, the Mandans, lived in the upper Missouri River country, primarily in present-day North Dakota. They had large villages of houses built close together. The tight arrangement enabled the Mandans to protect themselves more easily from the attacks of others who might seek to obtain some of the food these highly capable farmers stored from one year to the next.
The women had primary responsibility for the fields. They had to exercise considerable skill to produce the desired results, for their northern location meant fleeting growing seasons. Winter often lingered; autumn could be ushered in by severe frost. During the spring and summer, drought, heat, hail, grasshoppers, and other frustrations might await the wary grower.
Under such conditions, Mandan women had to grow maize capable of weathering adversity. They began as early as it appeared feasible to do so in the spring, clearing the land, using fire to clear stubble from the fields and then planting. From this point until the first green corn could be harvested, the crop required labor and vigilance. Harvesting proceeded in two stages. In August the Mandans picked a smaller amount of the crop before it had matured fully. This green corn was boiled, dried, and shelled, with some of the maize slated for immediate consumption and the rest stored in animal-skin bags. Later in the fall, the people picked the rest of the corn. They saved the best of the harvest for seeds or for trade, with the remainder eaten right away or stored for later use in underground reserves. With appropriate banking of the extra food, the Mandans protected themselves against the disaster of crop failure and accompanying hunger.
The women planted another staple, squash, about the first of June, and harvested it near the time of the green corn harvest. After they picked it, they sliced it, dried it, and strung the slices before they stored them. Once again, they saved the seed from the best of the year`s crop. The Mandans also grew sunflowers and tobacco; the latter was the particular task of the older men.

Throughout the passage, the author implies that the Mandans  ............

Being aware of one's own emotions - recognizing and acknowledging feelings as they happen - is at the very heart of Emotional Intelligence. And this awareness encompasses not only moods but also thoughts about those moods. People who are able to monitor their feelings as they arise are less likely to be ruled by them and are thus better able to manage their emotions.
Managing emotions does not mean suppressing them; nor does it mean giving free rein to every feeling. Psychologist Daniel Goleman, one of several authors who have popularized the notion of Emotional Intelligence, insisted that the goal is balance and that every feeling has value and significance. As Goleman said, "A life without passion would be a dull wasteland of neutrality, cut off and isolated from the richness of life itself." Thus, we manage our emotions by expressing them in an appropriate manner. Emotions can also be managed by engaging in activities that cheer us up, soothe our hurts, or reassure us when we feel anxious.
Clearly, awareness and management of emotions are not independent. For instance, you might think that individuals who seem to experience their feelings more intensely than others would be less able to manage them. However, a critical component of awareness of emotions is the ability to assign meaning to them - to know why we are experiencing a particular feeling or mood. Psychologists have found that, among individuals who experience intense emotions, individual differences in the ability to assign meaning to those feelings predict differences in the ability to manage them. In other words, if two individuals are intensely angry, the one who is better able to understand why he or she is angry will also be better able to manage the anger.
Self-motivation refers to strong emotional self-control, which enables a person to get moving and pursue worthy goals, persist at tasks even when frustrated, and resist the temptation to act on impulse. Resisting impulsive behavior is, according to Goleman, "the root of all emotional self- control."
Of all the attributes of Emotional Intelligence, the ability to postpone immediate gratification and to persist in working toward some greater future gain is most closely related to success - whether one is trying to build a business, get a college degree, or even stay on a diet. One researcher examined whether this trait can predict a child's success in school. The study showed that 4-year-old children who can delay instant gratification in order to advance toward some future goal will be "far superior as students" when they graduate from high school than will 4-year-olds who are not able to resist the impulse to satisfy their immediate wishes.

According to paragraphs 1 to 3, people should be aware of their emotions so that they can  .........

Choose the item among A, B, C or D that best answers the question about the passage:

"In recent years many countries of the world have been with the problem of how to make their workers more productive. Some experts claim the answer is to make jobs more varied. But do more various jobs lead to greater productivity? There is evidence to suggest that while variety certainly makes the workers’ life more enjoyable, it does not actually make him work harder. As far as increasing productivity is concerned, then variety is not an important factor.
 Other experts feel that giving the worker freedom to do his job in his own way is important, and there is no doubt that this is true. The problem is that this kind of freedom cannot easily be given in the modern factory with its complicated machinery which must be used very little that can be done to create it.
 Another very important consideration is how each worker contributes to the product he is making. In most factories the worker sees only one part of the product. Some car factories are now experimenting with having many small production lines rather than one large one, so that each worker contributes more to the production of the cars on his line, it would seem that not only is degree of the worker contribution an important factor, therefore, but it is also one we can do something about.
 To what extent does more money lead to greater productivity? The workers themselves certainly think this is important. But perhaps they want more money only because the work they do is boring. Money just lets them enjoy their spare time more. A similar argument may explain demands for shorter working hours. Perhaps if we succeed in making their jobs more interesting, they will neither want more money, nor will shorter working hours be so important to them."

3. For a worker on an assembly line in a car factory, the job is not enjoyable because ………

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

"Quite apart from the economic similarity between present-day automation and the mechanization which has been proceeding for centuries, it must also be stressed that even in the United States automation is by no means the only factor (1)….. people from existing jobs.
 The increasing number of unneeded workers in (2)…. years has been the result of much more simple and old-fashioned influences: farm labourers have been (3)…. out of work by bigger tractors, miners by the cheapness of oil, and railwaymen by better roads.
 It is quite wrong, therefore, to think of automation as some new monster whose arrival (4)…. the existence of employment in the same way that the arrival of myxomatosis threatened the existence of the rabbit. Automation is one (5)….. of technological change, which itself is only one of the several changes (changes in tastes, changes in social patterns, changes in organization) which (6)…. in certain jobs disappearing and certain skills ceasing to be required. And even in America, which has a level of technology and output per (7)…. much in (8)….. of Britain’s, there is no (9)…. that the (10)….  of change is actually speeding up.
 Nevertheless changes in the amount of labour needed to produce a certain output are proceeding fairly rapidly in America - and in other countries - and my proceed more rapidly in future. Indeed it is one of the main objects of economic policy."

2. The increasing number of unneeded workers in (2)…. years has been the result of much more simple and old-fashioned influences: 

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:
Thirty years ago, Lake Ponkapog in Hartwell, New Jersey, was full of life. Many birds and animals lived beside the water, which was full of fish. Now there are few birds, animals, and fish. The lake water is polluted. It is a dirty brown colour, and it is filled with strange plants.
How did this happen? First, we must think about how water gets into Lake Ponkapog. When it rains, water comes into the lake from all around. In the past, there were woods all around Lake Ponkapog, so  the rainwater was clean.
Now there are many homes on the lake hore. People often use the chemicals in their gardens. They use other chemicals inside their houses for cleaning and killing insects. There are also many businesses. Businesses use chemicals in their machines or stores. Other chemicals fall onto the ground from cars or trucks. When it rains, the rainwater flows by these homes and businesses. It picks up all the chemicals and then pours them into the lake. They pollute the water and kill the animal life.
There is still another problem at the lake: exotic plants. These plants come from other countries. They have no natural enemies here, and they grow very quickly. In a short time, they can fill up a lake. Then there is no room for other plants. The plants that normally grow there die. These plants gave many animals and fish their foods or their homes. So now those animals and fish die, too.
People in Hartwell are worried. They love their lake and want to save it. Will it be possible? A clean lake must have clean rainwater going into it. Clean rainwater is possible only if people are more careful about chemicals at home and at work. They must also be more careful about gas and oil and other chemicals on the ground.

Exotic plants grow quickly because they     .

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 of the numbered blanks.
              THE FUTURE OF WATER
Many of us often wonder what the future holds; some believe major advances in technology will occur which will result in improvements to our everyday lives. Scientists have predicted shortages in fossil fuels and changes in the weather patterns of the world. (1).......... , one significant change that will have an alarming impact on all of us is the global water shortage. Analysts have forecast that some of the consequences of this will be mass migration from Africa to Europe and wars between countries over clean water. The main causes of this disturbing water shortage are global warming, climate change and the increasing world population. The supply of fresh water (2)....... comes from mountain glaciers and  flows  into  lakes  and  rivers  is  diminishing,  and  this also (3).......... to the shortage. Water analysts and government leaders need to start making radical changes to the way water use is managed and they need to find new sources that will be able to meet the demands of an ever-growing population.  In addition, more things need to be done to control global warming as this will help to reduce water shortages.   People   should   be made  (4)......... of the situation and warned not to waste water. Multinational companies should invest in developing better water management systems. In summary, if we start (5) ............. action now, we might be able to prevent a world disaster.
(1).................................

Fill in each numbered blank with one suitable word or phrase.

In 1986 Vietnam (1)_____ a political and economic innovation campaign (Doi Moi) that introduced reforms intended to facilitate the transition from a centralized economy to a “socialist-oriented market economy”. Doi Moi combined government planning with free-market incentives. The program abolished agricultural (2) _____, removed price controls on agricultural goods, and enabled farmers to sell their goods in the marketplace. It encouraged the establishment of private businesses and foreign investment, including foreign-owned (3) _____.

By the late 1990s, the success of the business and agricultural (4) _____ ushered in under Doi Moi was evident. More than 30,000 private businesses had been (5) _____, and the economy was growing at an annual rate of more than 7 percent. From the early 1990s to 2005, poverty (6) _____ from about 50 percent to 29 percent of the population. However, progress varied geographically, with most prosperity concentrated in urban areas, (7) _____ in and around Ho Chi Minh City. In general, rural areas also made progress, as rural households (8) _____ in poverty declined from 66 percent of the total in 1993 to 36 percent in 2002. (9) _____ contrast, concentrations of poverty remained in (10) _____ rural areas, particularly the northwest, north-central coast, and central highlands. Government control of the economy and a nonconvertible currency have protected Vietnam from what could have been a more severe impact resulting from the East Asian financial crisis in 1997.

(6)_____

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Edward Patrick Francis “Eddie” Eagan (April 26, 1897-June 14, 1967), was an amateur boxing star of the early 1920s. He was born into a poor family in Denver, Colorado. His father died in a railroad accident when Eagan was only a year old. He and his four brothers were raised by his mother, who earned a small income from teaching foreign languages.
Inspired by Frank Merriwell, the hero of a series of popular novels for boys, Eagan pursued an education for himself as well as an interest in boxing. He attended the University of Denver for a year before serving in the U.S. Army as an artillery lieutenant during World War I. After the war, he entered Yale University and, while studying there, won the U.S. national amateur heavyweight boxing title. He graduated from Yale in 1921, attended Harvard Law School, and received a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford where he received his Master’s Degree in 1928.
While studying at Oxford, Eagan became the first American to win the British amateur boxing championship. Eagan won his first Olympic gold medal as a light heavyweight boxer at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium. Eagan also fought at the 1924 Olympics in Paris as a heavyweight but failed to get a medal.
Though he had taken up the sport just three weeks before the competition, he managed to win a second gold medal as a member of the four-man bobsled team at the 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Thus he became the only athlete to win gold medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
Eagan was a member of the first group of athletes inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983. Eagan became a respected attorney, serving as an assistant district attorney for southern New York and as chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission (1945-51). He married soap heiress. Margaret Colgate and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel during World War II. He died at the age of 70, in Rye, New York.

What is the main idea of the passage?

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“ Calcite- containing dust particles blow into the air and combine with nitric acid in polluted air from factories to form an entirely new particle – calcium nitrate , ” said Alexander Laskin, a senior research scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington .These nitrates have optical and chemical properties that are completely different from those of the originally dry dust particles . Due to this, climate models need to be updated to reflect this chemistry. Calcite dust is common in arid areas such as Israel, where scientists collected particles for analysis.
Working from a mountaintop, the team collected dust that had blown in from the northern shores of Egypt, Sinai,and southern Israel. The particles had combined with air containing pollutants that came from Cairo.They analyzed nearly 2,00 individual particles and observed the physical and chemical changes at the W.R Wiley Environmental Sciences Laboratory.
A key change in the properties of the newly formed nitrate particles is that they begin to absorb water and retain the moisture .These wet particles can scatter and absorb sunlight-presenting climate modelers, who need to know where the energy is going , a new wild card to deal with . Companion studies of dust samples from the Sahara and the Saudi coast and loess from China show that the higher the calcium in the mineral , the more reactive they are in with nitric acid .And once the particle is changed , it stays that way.
“When dust storms kick up these particles and they enter polluted areas , the particles change ,” Laskin said . “To what extent this is happening globally, as more of the world becomes industrialized , we don’t know . But now we have the laboratory and field evidence that shows it is definitely happening . The story is much more complicated than anybody thought .”

Do the particles react with nitric acid ?

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Working on the computer is very tough on your body, which is not used to this modem type of work. Sitting has long been known to cause back pain and negatively influence circulation, which can promote cardiovascular disease. Extensive use of the keyboard and mouse can lead to stiffening of the muscles in your hands, arms, and neck. Staring at a bright screen for too long can cause dry eyes and headaches. So, computer work can be as unhealthy a job as you can imagine.
First and foremost, sitting for long stretches of time is a very serious health risk! Sitting affects your blood circulation, your back experiences a steady stress, you are more likely to drink and eat stuff that isn’t good for you, and you bum very little calories, making it more likely that you overeat. As a result, sitting contributes to a host of conditions, most notably gaining weight, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and consequently a shortened life span.
Second, bad posture causes pain. You can develop bad posture from anything you do habitually, whether it’s sitting, standing, or walking. The typical consequences associated with bad posture while working on the computer are pain in the back, shoulder, and neck, often resulting in tension headaches.
Third, staring at the screen causes eve strain. Staring at a bright screen for hours can lead to eye fatigue or eye strain, headaches, blurred vision, burning, itching or tearing eyes, and temporary vision disorders. Fortunately, eye strain rarely results in a permanent condition and symptoms can be prevented or cured rather easily.
Last, but not least, emotional pressure and isolation cause anxiety and depression. Computers are very efficient tools in that they help us with getting more work done in less time. At the same time, you spend less face-to-face time with your colleagues, family, or friends. This can lead to isolation, anxiety, and depression, i.e. both physical and mental health issues. The symptoms are manifold and can include tense muscles, back pain, headaches, poor sleep (insomnia), increased or flat breathing, quickened pulse, and generally signs of stress, depression, or anxiety.

What is NOT mentioned as a cause of health issues related to working on the computer?

Read the following passage and choose among A, B, C or D the correct answer to each of the questions.

There has been much debate over the past few decades concerning fears that nation will

lead to robots replacing human workers on a massive scale.

The increasing use of robotics, computers and artificial intelligence is a reality, but its full

implications are far from cut and dried. Some forecasts present the future in a utopian way,

claiming that robots will take over the tedious heavy work thus freeing up human time and

potential, allowing for more creativity and innovation,  the other end of spectrum are those who

foresee an employment apocalypse, predicting that almost fifty percent of all American jobs

could vanish within the next few decades. Former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates states that in 20

years robots could be in place in a number of job categories, particularly those at lower end of

the scale in terms of skills. The bottom line is that while the future is always uncertain, robots are a fixture of our society, which is not going to disappear. As with the Industrial Revolution, where machines were utilized in many tasks in place of manual laborers and social upheaval followed, the Digital Revolution is likely to place robots in various jobs. In spite of that, many of today's jobs were not in existence before the Industrial Revolution, such as those of programmers, engineers and data scientists. This leads other experts to criticize this alarmist approach of robot scare-mongering, which is invariably compared to the 19th -century "Luddites". This group was textile workers who feared being displaced by machines and resorted to violence, burning down factories and destroying industrial equipment - their rejection of inevitable progress has come to symbolize mindless ignorance.

Needless to say, exactly what new kinds of jobs might exist in the future is difficult to envision at present. Therefore, the crux of the issue is not whether jobs will be lost, but whether the creation of new vacancies will outpace the ever-increasing number of losses and what skills will be required in the future.

It is clearly not all doom and gloom, as demand for employees with skills in data analysis, coding, computer science, artificial intelligence and human-machine interface is rising and will continue to do so. Furthermore, the demand for skills in Jobs where humans surpass computers, such as those involving care, creativity and innovative craftmanship, are likely to increase considerably. Ultimately, the key lies in the adaptation of the workforces, through appropriate education and training, to keep pace with our world's technological progress.

According to the article, which quality will technology never be able to replace?

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   Before the mid-nineteenth century, people in the United States ate most foods only in season. Drying, smoking and salting could preserve meat for a short time, but the availability of fresh meat, like that of fresh milk, was very limited; there was no way to prevent spoilage. But in 1810, a French inventor named Nicolas Appert developed the cooking-and-sealing process of canning. And in the 1850’s an American named Gail Borden developed a means of condensing and preserving milk. Canned goods and condensed milk became more common during the 1860’s, but supplies remained low because cans had to be made by hand. By 1880, however, inventors had fashioned stamping and soldering machines that massproduced cans from tinplate. Suddenly all kinds of food could be preserved and bought at all times of the year.

   Other trends and inventions had also helped make it possible for Americans to vary their daily diets. Growing urban population created demand that encouraged fruit and vegetable farmers to raise more produce. Railroad refrigerator cars enabled growers and meat packers to ship perishables great distances and to preserve them for longer periods. Thus, by the 1890’s, northern city dwellers could enjoy southern and western strawberries, grapes, and tomatoes, previously available for a month at most, for up to six months of the year. In addition, increased use of iceboxes enabled families to store perishables. As easy means of producing ice commercially had been invented in the 1870’s, and by 1900 the nation had more than two thousand commercial ice plants, most of which made home deliveries. The icebox became afixture in most homes and remained so until the mechanized refrigerator replaced it in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

   Almost everyone now had a more diversified diet. Some people continued to eat mainly foods that were heavily in starches or carbohydrates, and not everyone could afford meat. Nevertheless, many families could take advantage of previously unavailable fruits, vegetables, and dairy products to achieve more varied fare.

The word ”fixture” in line 16 is closest in meaning to _________ .

All mammals feed their young. Beluga whale mothers, for example, nurse their calves for some twenty months, until they are about to give birth again and their young are able to find their own food. The behavior of feeding of the young is built into the reproductive system. It is a nonselective part of parental care and the defining feature of a mammal, the most important thing that mammals-- whether marsupials, platypuses, spiny anteaters, or placental mammals -- have in common.
But not all animal parents, even those that tend their offspring to the point of hatching or birth, feed their young. Most egg-guarding fish do not, for the simple reason that their young are so much smaller than the parents and eat food that is also much smaller than the food eaten by adults. In reptiles, the crocodile mother protects her young after they have hatched and takes them down to the water, where they will find food, but she does not actually feed them. Few insects feed their young after hatching, but some make other arrangement, provisioning their cells and nests with caterpillars and spiders that they have paralyzed with their venom and stored in a state of suspended animation so that their larvae might have a supply of fresh food when they hatch.
For animals other than mammals, then, feeding is not intrinsic to parental care. Animals add it to their reproductive strategies to give them an edge in their lifelong quest for descendants. The most vulnerable moment in any animal's life is when it first finds itself completely on its own, when it must forage and fend for itself. Feeding postpones that moment until a young animal has grown to such a size that it is better able to cope. Young that are fed by their parents become nutritionally independent at a much greater fraction of their full adult size. And in the meantime those young are shielded against the vagaries of fluctuating of difficult-to-find supplies. Once a species does take the step of feeding its young, the young become totally dependent on the extra effort. If both parents are removed, the young generally do not survive.

The author lists various animals to  ...............

Read the following passage and choose among A, B, C or D the correct answer to each of the questions.

FIRST TIME IN THE AIR

When John Mills was going to fly in an aero plane for the first time, he was frightened.

He did not like the idea of being thousands of feet up in the air. "I also didn't like the fact that I wouldn't be in control," says John.

"I'm a terrible passenger in the car. When somebody else is driving, I tell them what to so. It drives everybody crazy."

However John couldn't avoid flying any longer. It was the only way he could visit his grandchildren in Canada.

"I had made up my mind that I was going to do it, I couldn't let my son, his wife and their three children travel all the way here to visit me. It would be so expensive for them and I know Tom's business isn't doing so well at the moment - it would also be tiring for the children - it's a nine-hour flight!" he says.

To get ready for the flight John did lots of reading about aero planes. When he booked his seat, he was told that he would be flying on a Boeing 747, which is better known as a jumbo jet. "I needed to know as much as possible before getting in that plane. I suppose it was a way of making myself feel better. The Boeing 747 is the largest passenger aircraft in the world at the moment. The first one flew on February 9th 1969 in the USA. It can carry up to 524 passengers and 3.400 pieces of luggage. The fuel for aero planes is kept in the wings and the 747 is wings are so big that they can carry enough fuel for an average car to be able to travel 16,000 kilometers a year for 70 years. Isn't that unbelievable? Even though I had discovered all this very interesting information about the jumbo, when I saw it for the first time, just before I was going to travel to Canada, I still couldn't believe that something so enormous was going to get up in the air and fly. I was even more impressed when I saw how big it was inside with hundreds of people!"

The biggest surprise of all for John was the flight itself. "The take-off itself was much smoother than I expected although I was still quite scared until we were in the air. In the end, I managed to relax, enjoy the food and watch one of the movies and the view from the window was spectacular. I even managed to sleep for a while! Of course," continues John, "the best reward of all was when I arrived in Canada and saw my son and his family, particularly my beautiful grandchildren. Suddenly, I felt so silly about all the years when I couldn't even think of getting on a plane. I had let my fear of living stop me from seeing the people I love most in the world. I can visit my son and family as often as I like now!"

Why did John read about aero plane?

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You might be surprised to know that bicycles have existed for less than two hundred years. Though the earliest comes from a sketch said to be from 1534 and attributed to Gian Giacomo, there are several early but unverified claims for the invention of the modem bicycle. No one is sure who invented this popular two- wheeled machine, but it was probably either the German Karl von Drais, in 1817, or the American W K Clarkson, in 1819. The early models didn't look much like the bicycles of today. The front wheel was much bigger than the back one, and also there weren't any pedals - riders had to move themselves forward by pushing their feet against the ground. Pedals finally arrived in the 1840s, and in 1879 an Englishman named Henry Lawson had the idea of connecting them to the back wheel with a chain. Gears, which made things much easier for those cycling uphill, first appeared in the 1890s.
There are now approximately one billion bicycles in the world - more than twice the total number of cars - and they are the main form of transport in some developing countries. They have to compete with cars on the streets of all the world’s cities, and the two forms of transport don't always mix well. In London in 2005, for example, over 300 cyclists were either killed or seriously injured in accidents involving cars. Even though bicycles are much more environmentally friendly than cars, most governments don't do much to encourage people to ride rather than drive. In China, which is famous for having a huge number of bicycles (about 200 million), the authorities in the city of Shanghai even banned cycling for a while in 2003.
Cycling is on the rise is the United Kingdom, and the number of annual journeys made by bike in London has increased 50% over the last five years. Experts say there is a mixture of reasons for this boom: concerns about the environment, the desire to keep fit, and also the fact that cycling is often not only cheaper but also quicker than travelling by car.
However, although one in three British adults owns a bicycle, they still don't use them nearly as much as they could. Bikes are used for a mere 2% of journeys in the UK, while the figure for the Netherlands is an impressive 27%.
Cycling is becoming more popular as a competitive sport, and the most famous race is of course the three-week Tour de France, which takes place every July. American Lance Armstrong won it every year from 1999 to 2005 - one of the greatest individual sporting achievements of all time.

What was Lance Armstrong’s amazing achievement?

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The ocean bottom - a region nearly 2.5 times greater than the total land area of Earth - is a vast frontier that even today is largely unexplored and uncharted. Until about a century ago, the deep-ocean floor was completely inaccessible, hidden beneath waters averaging over 3,600 meters deep. Totally without light and subjected to intense pressures hundreds of times greater than at the Earth's surface, the deep-ocean bottom is a hostile environment to humans, in some ways as forbidding and remote as the void of outer space.
Although researchers have taken samples of deep-ocean rocks and sediments for over a century, the first detailed global investigation of the ocean bottom did not actually start until 1968, with the beginning ofthe National Science Foundation's Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP). Using techniques first developed for the offshore oil and gas industry, the DSDP's drill ship, the Glomar Challenger, was able to maintain a steady position on the ocean's surface and drill in very deep waters, extracting samples of sediments and rock from the ocean floor.
The Glomar Challenger completed 96 voyages in a 15-year research program that ended in November 1983. During this time, the vessel logged 600,000 kilometers and took almost 20,000 core samples of seabed sediments and rocks at 624 drilling sites around the world. The Glomar Challenger's core samples have allowed geologists to reconstruct what the planet looked like hundreds of millions of years ago and to calculate what it will probably look like millions of years in the future. Today, largely on the strength of evidence gathered during the Glomar Challenger's voyages, nearly all earth scientists agree on the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift that explain many of the geological processes that shape the Earth.
The cores of sediment drilled by the Glomar Challenger have also yielded information critical to understanding the world's past climates. Deep-ocean sediments provide a climatic record stretching back hundreds of millions of years, because they are largely isolated from the mechanical erosion and the intense chemical and biological activity that rapidly destroy much land-based evidence of past climates. This record has already provided insights into the patterns and causes of past climatic change - information that may be used to predict future climates.

Which of the following is true of the Glomar Challenger?

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It is often the case with folktales that they develop from actual happenings but in their development lose much of their factual base; the story of Pocahontas quite possibly fits into this category of folktale. This princess of the Powhatan tribe was firmly established in the lore of early America and has been made even more famous by the Disney film based on the folktale that arose from her life. She was a real-life person, but the actual story of her life most probably different considerably from the folktale and the movie based on the folktale. Powhatan, the chief of a confederacy of tribes in Virginia, had several daughters, none of whom was actually named Pocahontas. The nickname means “playful one,” and several of Powhatan’s daughters were called Pocahontas. The daughter of Powhatan who became the subject of the folktale was named Matoaka. What has been verified about Matoaka, or Pocahontas as she has come to be known, is that she did marry an Englishman and that she did spend time in England before she died there at a young age. In the spring of 1613, a young Pocahontas was captured by the English and taken into Jamestown. There she was treated with courtesy as the daughter of chief Powhatan. While Pocahontas was at Jamestown, English gentlemen John Rolfe fell in love with her and asked her to marry. Both the governor of the Jamestown colony and Pocahontas’s father Powhatan approved the marriage as a means of securing peace between Powhatan’s tribe and the English at Jamestown. In 1616, Pocahontas accompanied her new husband to England, where she was royally received. Shortly before her planned return to Virginia in 1617, she contracted an illness and died rather suddenly.
A major part of the folktale of Pocahontas that is unverified concerns her love for English Captain John Smith is the period of time before her capture by the British and her rescue of him from almost certain death. Captain John Smith was indeed at the colony of Jamestown and was acquainted with Powhatan and his daughters, he even described meeting them in 1612 journal. However, the story of his rescue by the young maiden did not appear in his writing until 1624, well after Pocahontas had aroused widespread interest in England by her marriage to an English gentlemen and her visit to England. It is the discrepancy in dates that has caused some historians to doubt the veracity of the tale. However, other historians do argue quite persuasively that this incident did truly take place.aa

Why are some historians doubtful about the portion of the Pocahontas folktale dealing with John Smith?

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Nearly 200 of the 1500 native plant species in Hawaii are at risk of going extinct in the near future because they have been (1)........  to such low numbers. Approximately 90 percent of Hawaii's plants are   found nowhere else in the world but they are (2)........ by alien invasive species such as feral goats, pigs, rodents and non-native plants.
The Hawaii Rare Plant Restoration Group is striving to (3)........ the extinction of the 182 rare  Hawaiian plants with fewer than 50 individuals remaining in the wild. Since 1990, (4).......  a result of     their "Plant Extinction Prevention Program", sixteen species have been brought into cultivation and three species have been reintroduced. Invasive weeds have been removed in key areas and fencing put up in order to protect plants in the wild.
In the future, the Hawaii Rare Plant Restoration Program aims at collecting genetic material from the remaining plants in the wild for storage as a safety net for the future. They also aim to manage wild populations and where possible reintroduce species into (5 )........ .
(5)................................