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

"Around the age of eighteen, you must make one of the biggest decisions of your life. “Do I stay on at school and hopefully go on to university (1)….. ? Do I leave and start work or beginning a training (2)…… ?”
 The decision is yours, but it may be (3)…… remembering two things: there is more unemployment (4)….. people who haven’t been to university, and people who have the right (5)….. will have a big advantage in the competition for jobs. If you decide to go (6)…. into a job, there are many opportunities for training.
Getting qualifications will (7)…… you to get on more quickly in many careers, and evening classes allow you to learn (8)…. you earn. Starting work and taking a break to study when you are older is (9)…. possibility. This way, you can save up money for your student days, as well as (10)…. practical work experience."

7. Getting qualifications will (7)…… you to get on more quickly in many careers,

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Peru’s Inca Indians first grew potatoes in the Andes Mountains in about 200 BC. Spanish conquistadors brought potatoes to Europe, and colonists brought them to America. Potatoes are fourth on the list of the world’s food staples – after wheat, corn, and rice. Today, Americans consume about 140 pounds of potatoes per person every year, while Europeans eat twice as many.
One of our favourite ways to eat potatoes is in the form of potato chips. While Benjamin Franklin was the American ambassador to France, he went to a banquet where potatoes were prepared in 20 different ways. Thomas Jefferson, who succeeded Franklin as our French ambassador, brought the recipe for thick–cut, French fried potatoes to America. He served French fries to guests at the White House in 1802 and at his home, Monticello.
A native American chef named George Crum created the first potato chips on August 24, 1853, at Moon Lake Lodge in Saratoga, New York. He became angry when a diner complained that his French fries were too thick, so he sliced the potatoes as thinly as possible, making them too thin and crisp to eat with a fork. The diner loved them, and potato chips were born. In 1860, Chef Crum opened his own restaurant and offered a basket of potato chips on every table.
Joe “Spud” Murphy and Seamus Burke produced the world’s first seasoned crisps, cheese & onion and salt & vinegar chips, in the 1950s in Ireland. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, crisps are what we, in the United States, call potato chips, while their chips refer to our French fries. Ketchup–flavored chips are popular in the Middle East and Canada. Seaweed–flavored chips are popular in Asia, and chicken– flavored chips are popular in Mexico. Other flavors from around the world include: paprika, pickled onions, béarnaise, meat pie, chili crab, salmon teriyaki, borscht, Caesar salad, roasted sausage, firecracker lobster, roast ox, haggis and black pepper, olive, and spaghetti.

What happened in the 1950s?

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There are many mistakes that people make when writing their resume (CV) or completing a job application. Here are some of the most common and most serious.
The biggest problem is perhaps listing the duties for which you were responsible in a past position: all this tells your potential employers is what you were supposed to do. They do not necessarily know the specific skills you used in executing them, nor do they know what results you achieved - both of which are essential. In short, they won’t know if you were the best, the worst or just average in your position.
The more concrete information you can include, the better. As far as possible, provide measurements of what you accomplished. If any innovations you introduced saved the organization money, how much did they save? If you found a way of increasing productivity, by what percentage did you increase it?
Writing what you are trying to achieve in life - your objective - is a waste of space. It tells the employer what you are interested in. Do you really think that employers care what you want? No, they are interested in what they want! Instead, use that space for a career summary. A good one is brief - three to four sentences long. A good one will make the person reviewing your application want to read further.
Many resumes list ‘hard' job-specific skills, almost to the exclusion of transferable, or ‘soft’, skills. However, your ability to negotiate effectively, for example, can be just as important as your technical skills.
All information you give should be relevant, so carefully consider the job for which you are applying. If you are applying for a job that is somewhat different than your current job, it is up to you to draw a connection for the resume reviewer, so that they will understand how your skills will fit in their organization. The person who reviews your paperwork will not be a mind reader.
If you are modest about the skills you can offer, or the results you have achieved, a resume reader may take what you write literally, and be left with a low opinion of your ability: you need to say exactly how good you are. On the other hand, of course, never stretch the truth or lie.

What does the word “it” in paragraph 3 refer to     ?

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Most of the fastening devices used in clothing today, like the shoelace, the button, and the safely pin. have existed in some form in various cultures for thousands of years. But the zipper was the brainchild of one American inventor, namely Whitcomb Judson of Chicago. At the end of the 19th century. Judson was already a successful inventor, with a dozen patents to his credit for mechanical items such as improvements to motors and railroad braking system.
He then turned his mind to create a replacement for the lengthy shoelaces which were then used in both men’s and women's boots. On August 29th 1893, he won another patent, for what he called the case “locker”. Though the model was somewhat clumsy, and frequently jammed, it did work: in fact, Judson and his business associate Lewis Walker had sewn the device into their own boots. Although Judson displayed his clasp–locker at the World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893, the public largely ignored it. The company founded by Judson and Walker, Universal Fastener, despite further refinements, never really succeeded in marketing the device.
The earliest zip fasteners were being used in the clothing industry by 1905, but it was only in 1913, after a Swedish–American engineer, Gideon Sundbach, had remodeled Judson's fastener into a more streamlined and reliable form, that the zipper was a success. The US Army applied zippers to the clothing and equipment of the troops of World War I. By the late 1920s, zippers could be found in all kinds of clothing, footwear, and carrying cases; by the mid–1930s, zippers had even been embraced by the fashion industry.
The term “zipper" was coined as onomatopoeia (resembling the sound it makes) by B.F. Goodrich whose company started marketing rubber shoes featuring the fastener in 1923. Regrettably. Whitcomb Judson died in 1909, and never heard the term, or saw the success by which his invention would become popular.

According to the passage, zippers did not really become a success until     .

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Today, there are 600 million cars in the world. They may seem like a lot. However, there are over 7 million people on our planet. Most of the world’s population uses public transportation to get around. The number of people using public transportation continues to rise. Subway systems worldwide carry 155 million passengers each day. That’s more than 30 times the number carried by all the world’s airplanes. Every day in Tokyo passengers take more than 40 million rides on public transportation.
Yet many people see public transportation as ‘a depressing experience’, says author Taras Gresco. They say it is slow, crowded, or too expensive. In fact, Gresco says, it is actually ‘faster, more comfortable and cheaper’ than driving a car.Like millions of people, Taras Gresco is a ‘straphanger’ - a person who rides public transportation. In his book straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, Gresco describe the benefits of public transportation. Firstly, it is better for the environment. When people use public transportation, they use less fuel. Twenty people on one bus use much less fuel than 20 people in 20 cars. Fewer cars mean less pollution and cleaner air.
Using public transportation can be good for your health in other ways. It can even help you lose weight. In one study, a group of people took public transportation every day for six months. Each day they walked to a bus stop or train station. In six months, each person lost an average of six pounds - almost three kilograms. Taking public transportation has another benefit, says Gresco. It helps people become part of their community. When you are alone in your car, you don’t talk to anyone. One Tokyo straphanger told Gresco, “To use public transport is to know how to cooperate with other people,’ It teaches you ‘how to behave in a public space’. So, public transportation is more than a way to get to work or school. It can help lead to cleaner cities. It may also lead to a healthier and more cooperative world population.

According to the passage, the number of people travelling by planes each day is about

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Expanding the planet's protected natural areas to safeguard vanishing forests and other ecosystems, and the species they protect, is unlikely to be effective on its own as human encroachment into reserves grows, scientists warned Tuesday. A study by Cambridge University researchers, which looked at thousands of conservation areas in more than 150 countries, found that, on average, protected designation is not reducing human encroachment in vulnerable areas. Both chronic underfunding of efforts to protect the land, and a lack of engagement with local communities that live there are hurting conservation efforts, they found.
Creating protected areas is "a type of intervention that we know can work, we know is absolutely essential for conserving biodiversity, at a time in this world's history where it has never been under higher pressure," said lead author Jonas Geldmann. "But despite that we are seeing that some of our protected areas are not managing to mitigate or stop that increasing pressure," said Geldmann, of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute.
One-sixth of the globe now falls within protected areas, the study noted. Those include national parks, nature reserves and wilderness areas, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's World Database on Protected Areas. Such protected areas are vital for preserving diverse ecosystems, and helping to curb climate change by conserving carbon-sequestering forests and other vegetation. The United Nations Environment Program estimates protected areas hold 15% of the carbon stored on land.
"Protected areas are one of the most important things that we can do to stem the loss of biodiversity and to help solve the climate crisis," said Andrew Wetzler, managing director of the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council's nature program. "The destruction of natural habitat is the single biggest driver of extinction."

The word “stem” in paragraph 4 refers to _______.

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It weighed about 10,000 tons, entered the atmosphere at a speed of 64,000 km/h and exploded over a city with a blast of 500 kilotons. But on 15 February 2013, we were lucky. The meteorite that showered pieces of rock over Chelyabinsk, Russia, was relatively small, at only about 17 metres wide. Although many people were injured by falling glass, the damage was nothing compared to what had happened in Siberia nearly one hundred years ago. Another relatively small object (approximately 50 metres in diameter) exploded in mid–air over a forest region, flattening about 80 million trees. If it had exploded over a city such as Moscow or London, millions of people would have been killed.
By a strange coincidence, the same day that the meteorite terrified the people of Chelyabinsk, another 50m–wide asteroid passed relatively close to Earth. Scientists were expecting that visit and know that the asteroid will return to fly close by us in 2046, but the Russian meteorite earlier in the day had been too small for anyone to spot.
Most scientists agree that comets and asteroids pose the biggest natural threat to human existence. It was probably a large asteroid or comet colliding with Earth which wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. An enormous object, 10 to 16 km in diameter, struck the Yucatan region of Mexico with the force of 100 megatons. That is the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb for every person alive on Earth today.
Many scientists, including the late Stephen Hawking, say that any comet or asteroid greater than 20 km in diameter that hits Earth will result in the complete destruction of complex life, including all animals and most plants. As we have seen, even a much smaller asteroid can cause great damage.
The Earth has been kept fairly safe for the last 65 million years by good fortune and the massive gravitational field of the planet Jupiter. Our cosmic guardian, with its stable circular orbit far from the sun, sweeps up and scatters away most of the dangerous comets and asteroids which might cross Earth’s orbit. After the Chelyabinsk meteorite, scientists are now monitoring potential hazards even more carefully but, as far as they know, there is no danger in the foreseeable future.

According to the last paragraph, scientists say that     .

Carnegie Hall, the famous concert hall in New York City, has again undergone a restoration. While this is not the first, it is certainly the most extensive in the building’s history. As a result of this new restoration, Carnegie Hall once again has the quality of sound that it had when it was first built.
Carnegie Hall owes its existence to Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy owner of a steel company in the late 1800s. The hall was finished in 1891 and quickly gained a reputation as an excellent performing arts hall where accomplished musicians gained fame. Despite its reputation, however, the concert hall suffered from several detrimental renovations over the years. During the Great Depression, when fewer people could afford to attend performances, the directors sold part of the building to commercial businesses. As a result, a coffee shop was opened in one corner of the building, for which the builders replaced the brick and terra cotta walls with windowpanes. A renovation in 1946 seriously damaged the acoustical quality of the hall when the makers of the film Carnegie Hall cut a gaping hole in the dome of the ceiling to allow for lights and air vents. The hole was later covered with short curtains and a fake ceiling, but the hall never sounded the same afterwards.
In 1960, the violinist Isaac Stern became involved in restoring the hall after a group of real estate developers unveiled plans to demolish Carnegie Hall and build a high-rise office building on the site. This threat spurred Stern to rally public support for Carnegie Hall and encourage the City of New York to buy the property. The movement was successful, and the concert hall is now owned by the city. In the current restoration, builders tested each new material for its sound qualities, and they replaced the hole in the ceiling with a dome. The builders also restored the outer walls to their original appearance and closed the coffee shop. Carnegie has never sounded better, and its prospects for the future have never looked more promising.

Which of the following is closest in meaning to the word “unveiled” in paragraph 3?

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Homeopathy, the alternative therapy created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann, and now widely used all over the world, is based on the belief that the body can be stimulated to heal itself. A central principle of the “treatment” is that “like cures like”, meaning a subtance that causes certain symptoms can also help to remove those symptoms. Medicines used in homeopathy are created by heavily diluting in water the subtance in question and subsequently shaking the liquid vigorously. They can then be made into tablets and pills. Practitioners believe that the more a subtance is diluted in this way, the greater its power to treat symptoms.
However, in a new study, a working committee of medical experts at Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has claimed that homeopathic medicines are only as effective as placebos at treating illness. Their research, involving the analysis of numerous reports from homeopathy interest groups and the public, concluded that there is no reliable evidence that homeopathy works.
Moreover, researchers uncovered no fewer than 68 ailments that homeopathic remedies had failed to treat, including asthma, sleep disturbances, cold and flu, and arthritis.
As a result of the findings, the NHMRC is urging health workers to inform their patients to be wary of anecdotal evidence that appears to support the effectiveness of homeopathic medicine. “It  isn’t possible to tell whether a health treatment is effective or not simply by considering the experience of one individual or the beliefs of a health practitioner,” says the report. Experts believe that most illnesses said to have been cured by homeopathy would be cured by the body on its own without taking the medicine. Apparently, many illnesses are short-lived by their very nature which often leads to people believing that it is the homeopathy that cures them.
A more serious matter is highlighted by Professor John Dwyer of the University of New South Wales. As an immunologist, he is concerned about homeopathic vaccinations on offer for diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, none of which he considers effective. According to Professor John Dwyer, the concept that homeopathic vaccinations are just as good as traditional vaccinations in delusion, and those who believe it are failing to protect themselves and their children.

What is the word ‘wary’ in paragraph 3 closest in meaning to?

In many ways, the increasingly rapid pace of climate change is a direct result of the growth of the human population. In the last 100 years, the world population has more than tripled, from just under 2 billion at the beginning of the century to nearly 7 billion today. In addition, the average person uses more energy and natural resources than the average person one hundred years ago, meaning that the rates of consumption are actually much higher than just the increase in population would imply. For example, it took the world 125 years to use the first one trillion barrels of oil. The next trillion barrels will be used in less than 30 years, which is almost 5 times as fast, not three.
All of these activities: food production, energy usage, and the use of natural resources, contribute to climate change in some way. The greater amounts of oil and other fuels burned to create energy release chemicals which add to global warming. In order to produce more food, farmers cut down trees to gain more land for their fields. In addition, we cut down trees to build the houses needed for a larger population. Those trees are an essential part of controlling global warming; others are too numerous to mention.
In addition to a growing population, the world also has a population that desires a higher standard of living than in the past, and a higher standard of living requires the use of even more natural resources. A look at one country will provide a clear example of this fact. China is the world’s most populous nation, with 1.3 billion people. Currently, the standard of living for most of those people is far below that of people in first world nations. Therefore, the average Chinese citizen uses far fewer natural resources and less energy than the average citizen of the US or Japan. But China is growing in power, and more of its citizens are beginning to expect a first world lifestyle. If every Chinese person attains a first world lifestyle, the amount of energy and natural resources needed in the world will double, even if the standard of living in every other nation on Earth remains the same as it is today.

According to the passage, how does the standard of living affect global warming?

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Though Edmund Halley was most famous because of his achievements as an astronomer, he was a scientist of diverse interests and great skill. In addition to studying the skies, Halley was also deeply interested exploring the unknown depths of the oceans. One of his lesser-known accomplishments that was quite remarkable was his design for a diving bell that facilitated exploration of the watery depths.
The diving bell that Halley designed had a major advantage over the diving bells that were in use prior to his. Earlier diving bells could only make use of the air contained within the bell itself, so divers had to surface when the air inside the bell ran low.
Halley's bell was an improvement in that its design allowed for an additional supply of fresh air that enabled a crew of divers to remain underwater for several hours.
The diving contraption that Halley designed was in the shape of a bell that measured three feet across the top and five feet across the bottom and could hold several divers comfortably; it was open at the bottom so that divers could swim in and out at will. The bell was built of wood, which was first heavily tarred to make it water repellent and was then covered with a half-ton sheet of lead to make the bell heavy enough to sink in water. The bell shape held air inside for the divers to breathe as the bell sank to the bottom.
The air inside the bell was not the only source of air for the divers to breathe, and it was this improvement that made Halley's bell superior to its predecessors. In addition to the air already in the bell, air was also supplied to the divers from a lead barrel that was lowered to the ocean floor close to the bell itself. Air flowed through a leather pipe from the lead barrel on the ocean floor to the bell. The diver could breath the air from a position inside the bell, or he could move around outside the bell wearing a diving suit that consisted of a lead bell-shaped helmet with a glass viewing window and a leather body suit, with a leather pipe carrying fresh air from the diving bell to the helmet.

How long could divers stay underwater in Halley's bell?

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The changing profile of a city in the United States is apparent in the shifting definitions used by the United States Bureau of the Census. In 1870 the census officially distinguished the nation's “urban” from its “rural” population for the first time. “Urban population” was defined as persons living in towns of 8,000 inhabitants or more. But after 1900 it meant persons living in incorporated places having 2,500 or more inhabitants. Then, in 1950 the Census Bureau radically changed its definition of “urban” to take account of the new vagueness of city boundaries. In addition to persons living in incorporated units of 2,500 or more, the census now included those who lived in unincorporated units of that size, and also all persons living in the densely settled urban fringe, including both incorporated and unincorporated areas located around cities of 50,000 inhabitants or more. Each such unit, conceived as an integrated economic and social unit with a large population nucleus, was named a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA).
Each SMSA would contain at least (a) one central city with 50,000 inhabitants or more or
two cities having shared boundaries and constituting, for general economic and social purposes, a single community with a combined population of at least 50,000, the smaller of which must have a population of at least 15,000. Such an area included the county in which the central city is located, and adjacent counties that are found to be metropolitan in character and economically and socially integrated with the county of the central city. By 1970, about two-thirds of the population of the United States was living in these urbanized areas, and of that figure more than half were living outside the central cities.
While the Census Bureau and the United States government used the term SMSA (by 1969 there were 233 of them), social scientists were also using new terms to describe the elusive, vaguely defined areas reaching out from what used to be simple “towns” and “cities”. A host of terms came into use: “metropolitan regions,” “polynucleated population groups”, “conurbations,” “metropolitan clusters,” “megalopolises,” and so on.

Which of the following is NOT true of an SMSA?

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The hard, rigid plates that form the outermost portion of the Earth are about 100 kilometers thick. These plates include both the Earth's crust and the upper mantle. The rocks of the crust are composed mostly of minerals with light elements, like aluminum and sodium, while the mantle contains some heavier elements, like iron and magnesium. Together, the crust and upper mantle that form the surface plates are called the lithosphere. This rigid layer floats on the denser material of the lower mantle the way a wooden raft floats on a pond. The plates are supported by a weak, plastic layer of the lower mantle called the asthenosphere. Also like a raft on a pond, the lithospheric plates are carried along by slow currents in this more fluid layer beneath them.
With an understanding of plate tectonics, geologists have put together a new history for the Earth's surface. About 200 million years ago, the plates at the Earth's surface formed a “supercontinent” called Pangaea. When this supercontinent started to tear apart because of plate movement, Pangaea first broke into two large continental masses with a newly formed sea that grew between the land areas as the depression filled with water. The southern one — which included the modern continents of South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica — is called Gondwanaland. The northern one — with North America, Europe, and Asia — is called Laurasia. North America tore away from Europe about 180 million years ago, forming the northern Atlantic Ocean. Some of the lithospheric plates carry ocean floor and others carry land masses or a combination of the two types. The movement of the lithospheric plates is responsible for earthquakes, volcanoes, and the Earth's largest mountain ranges. Current understanding of the interaction between different plates explains why these occur where they do. For example, the edge of the Pacific Ocean has been called the “Ring of Fire” because so many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes happen there. Before the 1960's, geologists could not explain why active volcanoes and strong earthquakes were concentrated in that region. The theory of plate tectonics gave them an answer.

According to the passage, the lithospheric plates are given support by the

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Alaska is disappearing slowly, but surely. It is estimated that since the 19505, as much as fifteen percent of Alaska's land area has disappeared. How can a whole state be disappearing? The problem is that Alaska’s glaciers are melting. The state has more than 100,000 glaciers. These glaciers account for about 75,000 square kilometers, or five percent, of the state’s area. That is an area of land larger than Ireland!
According to a recent report by the US Geological Survey, ninety-nine percent of Alaska's glaciers are either retreating or diminishing. This diminishing seems mainly due to the increase in global temperatures. Since the 19605, the average year-round temperature has increased by almost 3°C. Additionally, the average winter temperature has increased by over 6°C. Presently, an estimated 100 cubic kilometers of ice is disappearing from Alaskan glaciers every year. It may be even more in the near future, as some scientists predict that the average world temperature could go up 4 to 7°C by the year 2100.
Another problem facing Alaska is its thawing permafrost. Much of the land in Alaska used to be permanently frozen or frozen for most of the year. Now, the thawing permafrost is causing a number of problems for people living in Alaska. Roads and utility poles are collapsing as the ground around and under them warms and soften. Also, the hard permafrost that originally prevented beaches from eroding during violent storms is now melting. People who live along Alaska's coasts are being forced to relocate. For villages on small low islands, one terrible storm could wipe out the entire community.
The melting permafrost and increasing temperatures are both affecting the forests of Alaska. As the permafrost under the forests melts, insects that normally do not turn up until the warmer seasons are appearing sooner. The spruce-bark beetle, for example, is increasing in numbers as a result of warmer winter temperatures. It usually takes about two years for these beetles to grow and reproduce in. very cold weather. However, due to the increase in temperatures, spruce-bark beetles are reproducing faster and damaging as many trees in one year as they previously damaged in two. If something cannot be done to change things, Alaska's forests will not survive the turn of the century.

Some scientists believe that human activity is linked to a global increase in weather temperature.
Whatever the cause of rising temperatures may be, the fact remains that temperatures are warming, affecting Alaska for the worse. Horribly, this could be a preview of what will happen to the rest of the world in the next century.

According to the report by the US Geological Survey, which of the following is NOT true about Alaska?

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In such a costly  and (1).......society and world, no one of us can live without money. We need money to fulfil our basic needs of the life such as buying food, and other many basic necessities of life which are almost impossible to buy without money. People in the society (2).......are  rich  and have property are looked as honourable and respectful person of the society however a poor person is seen as hatred without any good impression.
Money increases the position of the person in the society and (3).... a good impression to him. All of us want to be rich by earning more money through good job or business in order to fulfil all the increasing demands of the modern age. (4)...... , only few people get this chance of completing their dreams of being a millionaire.
So, money is the thing of great importance all through the life. Money is required by everyone whether he/she is rich or poor and living in urban areas or rural areas. People in the urban areas are earning more money than the people living in backward or rural areas as the people of the urban areas have more (5)............ to the technologies and get more opportunity because of the easy sources.
(4)..........................

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In the American colonies there was little money. England did not supply the colonies with coins and did not allow the colonies to make their own coins, except for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which received permission for a short period in 1652 to make several kinds of silver coins. England wanted to keep money out of America as a means of controlling trade: America was forced to trade only with England if it did not have the money to buy products from other countries. The result during this pre-revolutionary period was that the colonists used various goods in place of money: beaver pelts, Indian wampum, and tobacco leaves were all commonly used substitutes for money. The colonists also made use of any foreign coins they could obtain. Dutch, Spanish, French, and English coins were all in use in the American colonies.
During the Revolutionary War, funds were needed to finance the world, so each of the individual states and the Continental Congress issued paper money. So much of this paper money was printed that by the end of the war, almost no one would accept it. As a result, trade in goods and the use of foreign coins still flourished during this period.
By the time the Revolutionary War had been won by the American colonists, the monetary system was in a state of total disarray. To remedy this situation, the new Constitution of the United States, approved in 1789, allowed Congress to issue money. The individual states could no longer have their own money supply. A few years later, the Coinage Act of 1792 made the dollar the official currency of the United States and put the country on a bimetallic standard. In this bimetallic system, both gold and silver were legal money, and the rate of exchange of silver to gold was fixed by the government at sixteen to one.

According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true about the bimetallic monetary system?

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The hard, rigid plates that form the outermost portion of the Earth are about 100 kilometers thick. These plates include both the Earth's crust and the upper mantle. The rocks of the crust are composed mostly of minerals with light elements, like aluminum and sodium, while the mantle contains some heavier elements, like iron and magnesium. Together, the crust and upper mantle that form the surface plates are called the lithosphere. This rigid layer floats on the denser material of the lower mantle the way a wooden raft floats on a pond. The plates are supported by a weak, plastic layer of the lower mantle called the asthenosphere. Also like a raft on a pond, the lithospheric plates are carried along by slow currents in this more fluid layer beneath them.
With an understanding of plate tectonics, geologists have put together a new history for the Earth's surface. About 200 million years ago, the plates at the Earth's surface formed a “supercontinent” called Pangaea. When this supercontinent started to tear apart because of plate movement, Pangaea first broke into two large continental masses with a newly formed sea that grew between the land areas as the depression filled with water. The southern one — which included the modern continents of South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica — is called Gondwanaland. The northern one — with North America, Europe, and Asia — is called Laurasia. North America tore away from Europe about 180 million years ago, forming the northern Atlantic Ocean. Some of the lithospheric plates carry ocean floor and others carry land masses or a combination of the two types. The movement of the lithospheric plates is responsible for earthquakes, volcanoes, and the Earth's largest mountain ranges. Current understanding of the interaction between different plates explains why these occur where they do. For example, the edge of the Pacific Ocean has been called the “Ring of Fire” because so many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes happen there. Before the 1960's, geologists could not explain why active volcanoes and strong earthquakes were concentrated in that region. The theory of plate tectonics gave them an answer.

The word “one” in line 14 refers to

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In the American colonies there was little money. England did not supply the colonies with coins and did not allow the colonies to make their own coins, except for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which received permission for a short period in 1652 to make several kinds of silver coins. England wanted to keep money out of America as a means of controlling trade: America was forced to trade only with England if it did not have the money to buy products from other countries. The result during this pre-revolutionary period was that the colonists used various goods in place of money: beaver pelts, Indian wampum, and tobacco leaves were all commonly used substitutes for money. The colonists also made use of any foreign coins they could obtain. Dutch, Spanish, French, and English coins were all in use in the American colonies.
During the Revolutionary War, funds were needed to finance the world, so each of the individual states and the Continental Congress issued paper money. So much of this paper money was printed that by the end of the war, almost no one would accept it. As a result, trade in goods and the use of foreign coins still flourished during this period.
By the time the Revolutionary War had been won by the American colonists, the monetary system was in a state of total disarray. To remedy this situation, the new Constitution of the United States, approved in 1789, allowed Congress to issue money. The individual states could no longer have their own money supply. A few years later, the Coinage Act of 1792 made the dollar the official currency of the United States and put the country on a bimetallic standard. In this bimetallic system, both gold and silver were legal money, and the rate of exchange of silver to gold was fixed by the government at sixteen to one.

The pronoun “it” in paragraph 2 refers to which of the following

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 from 34 to 38

Thanks to our modern lifestyle, with more and more time spent sitting down in front of computers than ever before, the (34)___of overweight people is at a new high. As people frantically search for a solution to this problem, they often try some of the popular fad diets being offered. Many people see fad diets as harmless ways of losing weight, and they are grateful to have them. Unfortunately, not only don‘t fad diets usually (35)_____ the trick, they can actually be dangerous for your health.

Although permanent weight loss is the goal, few are able to achieve it. Experts estimate that 95 percent of dieters return to their starting weight, or even gain weight. While the reckless use of fad diets can bring (36)_____ initial results, long-term results are very rare.

(37)_____, people who are fed up with the difficulties of changing their eating habits often turn to fad diets. Rather than being moderate, fad diets involve extreme dietary changes. They advise eating only one type of food, or they prohibit other types of foods entirely. This results in a situation where a person‘s body doesn‘t get all the vitamins and other things (38)______it needs to stay healthy.

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 concept of being environmentally conscious, or “green”, has become more prevalent in twenty first-century U.S culture. It has begun to affect the manufacturing of everything from non-toxic household cleaning products to motor vehicles powered by alternative sources of energy. However, one way of being “green” that is perhaps not as apparent to the viewer but of equal importance in being environmentally conscious, is the construction of buildings that are considered “sustainable”. Sustainable buildings are those that do not impose on the environment or rely on the over-utilization of energy or natural resources. There are four main principles of sustainability, which includes consideration of the health and stability of all living things and their environmental diversity, as well as the economic opportunities of humanity.
Sustainable architecture consists of environmentally conscious design techniques. In the past, the demolition of an old building meant that all or most of the debris of the building would end up in a landfill or a waste disposal site. Today, architects can plan and design a building that uses recycled materials, such as wood, concrete, stone, or metal. These materials are salvaged from the demolition of an older building and can be appropriately incorporated into a new construction. Architects and construction supervisors may also choose to recycle more organic parts of demolished buildings, such as wooden doors, windows and other glass, ceramics, paper, and textiles.
A problem that has often arisen has been with how a site crew-whether it is demolition or construction crew determines and sorts what is “waste” and what is recyclable. Architects and environmental scientists have to decide whether or not a material is appropriate for use in new construction and how it will impact the environment. They must evaluate the materials from the demolition and determine what those materials contain, and if they meet the standards set by the U.S, government’s Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA). If the debris from the demolition contains hazardous materials that are harmful to the environment or to the consumer, such as asbestos, then the material is not salvageable. Use of the asbestos for insulation and as a form of fire retardation in buildings and fabrics was common in the nineteenth century. Asbestos was once used in shingles on the sides of buildings, as well as in the insulation in the interior walls of homes or other construction. In new “green” construction, insulation that once asbestos- based can be replaced with recycled denim or constructed with cellulose-a fibrous material found in paper products. The same-assessment applies to wood or wallboard painted with toxic lead-based paints. In addition, gas-flow regulators and meters on both water and gas heating systems constructed prior to 1961 must be carefully evaluated to determine that they do not contain dangerous substances such as mercury. Mercury can be harmful to humans and the environment if it is spilled during the removal of these devices.

The word “prevalent” in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to     .

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:
Certainly no creature in the sea is odder than the common sea cucumber. All living creature, especially human beings, have their peculiarities, but everything about the little sea cucumber seems unusual. What else can be said about a bizarre animal that, among other eccentricities, eats mud, feeds almost continuously day and night but can live without eating for long periods, and can be poisonous but is considered supremely edible by gourmets?
For some fifty million years, despite all its eccentricities, the sea cucumber has subsisted on its diet of mud. It is adaptable enough to live attached to rocks by its tube feet, under rocks in shallow water, or on the surface of mud flats. Common in cool water on both Atlantic and Pacific shores, it has the ability to suck up mud or sand and digest whatever nutrients are present.
Sea cucumbers come in a variety of colors, ranging from black to reddish – brown to sand – color and nearly white. One form even has vivid purple tentacles. Usually the creatures are cucumber – shaped – hence their name – and because they are typically rock inhabitants, this shape, combined with flexibility, enables them to squeeze into crevices where they are safe from predators and ocean currents.
Although they have voracious appetites, eating day and night, sea cucumbers have the capacity to become quiescent and live at a low metabolic rate-feeding sparingly or not at all for long periods so that the marine organisms that provide their food have a chance to multiply. If it were not for this faculty, they would devour all the food available in a short time and would probably starve themselves out of existence.
But the most spectacular thing about the sea cucumber is the way it defends itself. It major enemies are fish and crabs, when attacked; it squirts all its internal organs into the water. It also casts off attached structures such as tentacles. The sea cucumber will eviscerate and regenerate itself if it is attacked or even touched; it will do the same if surrounding water temperature is too high or if the water becomes too polluted.

Which of the following would NOT cause a sea cucumber to release its internal organs into the water?