Choose the best answer:
Yuri Gagarin became the first person to eat and drink in …………
Suy nghĩ và trả lời câu hỏi trước khi xem đáp án
Lời giải:
Báo saiGiải thích:
Weightless(adj): Không trọng lượng
Gravity(n): Chân không
Dịch: Yuri Gagarin trở thành người đầu tiên ăn và uống trong môi trường không trọng lượng.
Câu hỏi liên quan
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Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
In Africa, people celebrate with joy the birth of a new baby. The Pygmies would sing a birth-song to the child. In Kenya, the mother takes the baby strapped to her back into the thorn enclosure where the cattle is kept. There, her husband and the village elders wait to give the child his or her name. In West Africa, after the baby is eight days old, the mother takes the baby for it’s first walk in the big, wide world, and friends and family are invited to meet the new baby. In various African nations, they hold initiation ceremonies for groups of children instead of birthdays. When children reach a certain designated age, they learn the laws, beliefs, customs, songs and dances of their tribes. Some African tribes consider that children from nine to twelve are ready to be initiated into the grown up world. They may have to carry out several tests. Masai boys around thirteen years old to seventeen undergo a two stage initiation. The first stage lasts about three months. The boys leave their parents’ homes, paint their bodies white, and are taught how to become young warriors. At the end of this stage, they have their heads shaved and they are also circumcised. The second stage, the young warriors grow their hair long and live in a camp called a manyatta where they practice hunting the wild animals that might attack the Masai herds. This stage may last a few years. When they are ready, they will marry and become owners of large cattle herds like their fathers. The girls are initiated when they are fourteen or fifteen. They are taught by the older women about the duties of marriage and how to care for babies. Soon after that they are married and lead a life similar to that of their mothers
7. What do the girls have to learn in their initiation? -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D)
It was not until 1920 when women finally got the right to vote. This was 50 years after the male ex-slaves of the United States were gaining the right to vote. Though women had already right to vote, the stereotypes made women be restricted in their actions. Would you believe that women who were doing the same job as men were getting paid only the 60% of what man wear to paint? In fact, they were getting paid differently for doing exactly the same work. In the 1930s there was not a huge choice of workplace for women. They could still work as secretaries, nurses, teachers and social workers. These kinds of professions were considered typically female professions and were paid much less than other professions. That kind of restrictions themed unbearable for some women. They rejected to go on with this rules anymore. They changed their hair color, style appearance and started to fight against the existing stereotypes. Those women were named in history as “flappers”. The first time in history they started wearing short skirts which were something shocking to the society. They also started driving cars, drinking alcohol, which raised a huge boom. Those kinds of things were considered “Non-feminine”. Actions of flappers were accepted as radical, though they had their influence on the society finally. The heavy restrictions started disappearing every year and today we have what we have. For a very long time, women were considered inferior to men. However, the role of a woman in society has significantly changed during recent decades. Today the importance of women in the society is beyond any suspicion. In today’s world, women with their ambitions, intelligence and strength have proved that the word “inferior” has nothing in common with their gender.
5. What is the general tone of the whole passage? -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Learning shouldn’t end when you reach a certain point in your career; it should be something you continuously pursue across your lifetime. As you mature, your areas of interest may change. Perhaps your personal and career goals may morph into something altogether different than what you originally intended. In some cases, life happens and you might find it necessary to take a break from your career or your education. But for people with a strong desire for lifelong learning, this pause is only temporary. Even though you may have begun an educational program and needed to take a pause later, it’s never too late to go back and finish what you started. People in modern age have more options to gain the knowledge they want and need. From a higher education standpoint, universities and colleges are working hard to transform themselves in different ways. For example, there has been a transition from traditional Ph.D.-style doctorates to applied doctorates like the Doctorate in Strategic Intelligence or Doctorate in Global Security. These academic programs have their students work to address real-world problems of practice. In this manner, they take the education they receive in their classes and work to apply it within the fields in which they are currently employed or hope to work in. In addition, some universities now offer dual degree programs, such as the dual master’s degree in emergency and disaster management and homeland security. Some institutions are also starting to provide accelerated degrees to allow their students to rapidly advance from a B.A. to an M.A., saving those students time and money on their educational pursuits. However, lifelong learning doesn’t just encompass full degree programs. With employers focusing on skillset development, there is an increasing desire for short program offerings as well. “Short programming” includes sets of courses that lead to a specific credential or badge. For instance, ASIS International offers a series of certifications, related to security and global studies, which can be used to add value to your professional portfolio. Another relevant certification is the Certified Threat Manager (CTM) certification offered by the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals. Short programming involves learning tracks, competency-based micro-credentials or stackable credentials. In some cases, certificates are perceived to be more valuable as they signal that their owner has current knowledge of a particular area; however, this perception differs from field to field
6. According to paragraph 4, what does the writer want to imply when mentioning short programs? -
Rewrite the sentence:
The polluted water results in the death of many aquatic animals and plants. -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Electronic devices are becoming increasingly common in educational environments. The term most commonly used for such devices is “educational technology”. This is not actually a new idea, as the rewritable wax tablets, often with lined surfaces to guide novice writers used in antiquity or the blackboard itself are both instances of technological innovations to support pedagogy. There are many different ways in which electronic devices are used in education. For example, students in STEM (science, technology, engineering medicine) fields have been making extensive use of sophisticated calculators for many years (the abacus and slide rule were non-electronic predecessors to calculators). In humanities as well as sciences, students use computers or equivalent devices to do research and write papers. In all fields, courses are now likely to have websites, and many instructors use course management software such as Blackboard, to post information for students, record grades, set up online discussions, and check for plagiarism. In lecture classes, many instructors project slides or notes on a screen and may even upload lecture notes so that students can review them. Some courses are hybrid, meaning that they have a strong online component, or offered entirely online. Many courses taught in conventional lecture halls are streamed online, and may use devices such as clickers to become more interactive. Any device (including tablets or cell phones) that instructors incorporate into a learning environment functions as educational technology.
5. According to the passage, which of the following does NOT function as educational technology? -
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In the early twentieth century, an American woman named Emily Post wrote a book on etiquette. This book explained the proper behavior Americans should follow in many different social (1)______, from birthday parties to funerals. But in modern society, it is not simply to know the proper rules for behavior in your own country. It is necessary for people (2)______ work or travel abroad to understand the rules of etiquette in other cultures as well. Cultural (3)______ can be found in such simple processes as giving or receiving a gift. In Western cultures, a gift can be given to the receiver with relatively little ceremony. When a gift is offered, the receiver usually takes the gift and expresses his or her thanks. (4)______, in some Asian countries, the act of gift–giving may appear confusing to Westerners. In Chinese culture, both the giver and receiver understand that the receiver will typically refuse to take the gift several times before he or she finally accepts it. In addition, to (5)______ respect for the receiver, it is common in several Asian cultures to use both hands when offering a gift to another person. -
Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the undelined part that needs correction in each of the following questions:
These days, most people in Britain and the US do not wear very formal clothes. But sometimes it is important to wear the right thing.
Many British people don't think about clothes very much. They just like to be comfortable. When they go out to enjoy themselves, they can wear almost anything. At theatres, cinemas and concerts you can put on what you like from elegant suits and dresses to jeans and sweaters. Anything goes, as long as you look clean and tidy.
But in Britain, as well as in the US, men in offices usually wear suits and ties, and women wear dresses or skirts (not trousers). Doctors, lawyers and business people wear quite formal clothes. And in some hotels and restaurants men have to wear ties and women wear smart dresses.
In many years, Americans are more relaxed than British people, but they are more careful with their clothes. At home, or on holiday, most Americans wear informal or sporty clothes. But whenthey go out in the evening, they like to look elegant. In good hotels and restaurants, men have to wear jackets and ties, and women wear pretty clothes and smart hairstyles.
It is difficult to say exactly what people wear informal or formal in Britain and the US, because everyone is different. If you are not sure what to wear, watch what other people do and then do the same. You'll feel more relaxed if you don't look too different from everyone else.If you are in a foreign country, the best way the writer suggests to you is to wear .
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Can a performance go viral? Ben Platt’s should. As the title character in Dear Evan Hansen, the new musical from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, he offers acting so precise yet so painfully lucid that it should overwhelm the operating systems by which most contemporary musicals operate. Platt’s gestures, his expressions, his phrasing, even his vocal range – which is impressive but tends to thin out toward the top notes – all combine to communicate the fretfulness, uncertainty and timorous goodness that define his character. He plays Evan, a friendless high school senior terrified of life, the universe, everything. His harried single mother, Heidi, (Rachel Bay Jones) tells him, “You can’t succeed if you never try.” Evan nods, but you can that he believes more strongly in the corollary: “If you don’t try, you can’t fail.” A therapist has instructed him to write pep-talk letters to himself. On the first day of school, one of them falls into the hands of Connor Murphy (Mike Faist), another outcast with drug problems and a look a peer describes as “school shooter chic”. When Connor kills himself, his parents find the letter and mistakenly believe that Evan was a friend to their son. At first this attention panics Evan, but he soon accepts the role and even briefly becomes an internet sensation. Often he is tempted to tell Connor’s family the truth, but he fears disappointing them and sacrificing his newfound confidence Watching Dear Evan Hansen, one often thinks of Next to Normal, another Second Stage show about a mentally distressed protagonist. But with its tuneful pop score and teenage protagonist, Dear Evan Hansen is a gentler affair, even as it takes occasional pains not to oversentimentalize the material. When Evan presents a surprisingly rosy picture of her brother, his sister Zoe (Laura Dreyfuss) sings, “Don’t say it wasn’t true/ That you were not the monster/ That I knew.” Near the play’s end, Platt positively glistens with sweat and spit and tears. Yet one never has the sense of an actor deliberately winding himself up to deliver a visceral performance. There’s obvious care taken in the way he offers Evan’s cringing smile, his swallowed laugh, his habit of pulling at his clothes as though searching for someone to hold onto. But all of these details feel lived, organic, unrehearsed. And Platt’s ability to convey emotion through song is simply superb and often deeply heartrending.
7. The following statements are true, EXCEPT ________ -
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Seeing the glass as half full may mean a longer life, according to research suggesting that optimists not only live longer in general, but have a better chance of reaching 85 or older. People of an upbeat disposition have previously been found to have a lower risk of heart conditions and premature death. Researchers now say it could also play a role in living a long life. “A lot of evidence suggests that exceptional longevity is usually accompanied by a longer span of good health and living without disability, so our findings raise an exciting possibility that we may be able to promote healthy and resilient ageing by cultivating psychosocial assets such as optimism,” said Lewina Lee, the lead author of the study at Boston University School of Medicine. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lee and colleagues report how they analysed data from two previous long-term research projects, one involving female nurses and the other focused on a cohort of men. The former team compared lifespan for the most optimistic with the least, taking into account factors including age, sex, race, education, depression and other health conditions present at the outset. The results show the most optimistic group of women had a lifespan almost 15% longer than the least. As for the other project, when the team compared the fifth of men boasting the highest optimism scores with the least optimistic, they found the most positive men had lifespans almost 11% longer. But being optimistic was not only linked to a longer lifespan. For men and women it was also linked more specifically to living to 85 or older when health behaviours were taken into account, with the most optimistic group of women having 20% better odds of reaching age 85 than the least. Lee said it was not yet clear why optimism is linked to longevity. “In our study, healthier behaviours, fewer depressive symptoms, and more social ties only partially accounted for the association from optimism to exceptional longevity,” Lee said, adding there are likely to be other mechanisms at play, such as optimistic people coping better with stress. Dr Catherine Hurt, an expert in health psychology at City, University of London, said the study highlighted the importance of psychological wellbeing alongside physical wellbeing for living a long and healthy life.
2. The word “assets” in paragraph 1 can be replaced by _______ -
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Zoos used to be primarily a place for people to see wild animals they had never seen. Now, however, zoos serve a new purpose – to be captive-breeding programs for endangered animals. There are less than a hundred Sumatran rhinos worldwide, and three were born in Cincinnati Zoo. When old enough, one of the males was sent to Way Kamabas National Park in Sumatra and this helped to start the process of re-populating his species in the wild and saving it from the extinction. Other zoos have started captive-breeding programs as well. Zoos have saved the Arabian onyx, the black-footed ferret, the red wolf, the Guam rail, and the California condor. But the cost of the programs for saving the threatened animals is not cheap. The condor program alone costs up to $2 million a year. While it is mostly large-city zoos involved in captive breeding, smaller zoos do their part. The Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington, Illinois, is working on breeding the endangered, and small. Mount Graham red squirrel. Zoos have always been involved in animal conservation to some degree, but the question of which animals to save is a big one. Endangered animals may not be the most exciting to see in a zoo, and to di conservation work the zoos must survive financially. Space is a problem as well. A zoo might be able to save a small number of large animals or a large number of small ones. Currently, the most threatened group of animals is amphibians. Zoos realize that visitors may not want to see frogs, salamanders, or other small animals and may only pay to see rhinos, lions, and tigers. Some scientists believe zoos should be less tourist attractions and more conservation sanctuaries. Thus, although zoos continue to do good work, they still confront tricky questions. There are a limited number of animals that can be cared for in zoos, and that means many species on the edge of extinction may not survive. The Sumatran orangutan and a thousand other threatened species have not made it into a captive-breeding program, but the species will continue to exist. How? In the Frozen Zoo. Cells from these animals are stored in the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research in liquid nitrogen. Only one animal in the Frozen Zoo is presently extinct, but many others are at dire risk. In the Frozen Zoo, however, the cells of animals will be preserved for study through their genetic material.
6. What prompts zoos today to question whether they should save big or small animals? -
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Herb Hamrol, 103, is among a handful of survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Today marks the 100th anniversary of San Francisco’s great earthquake and fire. As the local newspaper Contra Costa Times observes, San Francisco has been “struggling with the difference between commemoration and celebration” leading up to the centennial. The city’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, has acknowledged that the 1906 earthquake was an “awkward” event to mark. Perhaps curiously, along with various exhibitions and lectures, more than one attempt has been made to capture the spirit of the anniversary in dance. The Walnut Creek Diablo Ballet company has produced “Earthquake”, which its creators stress is not just about death and falling buildings, but also the rebuilding of the city. Earlier this month, the San Francisco Ballet held a one-off solo dance performance to the beat of seismic data broadcast live from the Hayward fault. The information triggered sounds such as thunder claps and crashing waves while principal dancer Muriel Maffre improvised. It was “well conceived and beautiful”, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, although not quite as “leading edge” as claimed. At one stage there was a “haunted-house cacophony of screams and clinking chains and running water”, the paper’s critic said. There is a small, dwindling group of survivors from the quake, many of whom were just babies when it struck. A group of five of them - the oldest is 108 - recently met in San Francisco and happily gave interviews to journalists. They will attend a special commemoration breakfast today. One survivor, Della Bacchini, 101, who was one year old in 1906, told the San Francisco Examiner that it was important for the city’s residents to keep the history of the quake alive. "San Franciscans have a lot of guts," she said. “We’ve gone through earthquakes and fires, and the people have stuck together. Certainly, the city’s regeneration after 1906 was remarkable, with three-quarters of the lost buildings replaced within three years. A reinvented San Francisco was unveiled in 1915 with its Panama-Pacific International Exposition. In a commemorative lecture, Kenneth Starr, professor of history at the University of California, compared the compulsion to rebuild in 1906 with the plans to rebuild New Orleans after last year’s disaster: “Once they’re dreamed, once they’ve been there … they never disappear.
8. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage? -
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If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea. At various points in evolutionary history, enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto the land, sometimes even to the most parched deserts, taking their own private seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids. In addition to the reptiles, birds, mammals and insects which we see all around us, other groups that have succeeded out of water include scorpions, snails, crustaceans such as woodlice and land crabs, millipedes and centipedes, spiders and various worms. And we mustn’t forget the plants, without whose prior invasion of the land, none of the other migrations could have happened. Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thoroughgoing land animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and returned to the water again. Seals have only gone part way back. They show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their close cousins, the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the full marine habits of their remote ancestors. They don’t even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air. However, they are, in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still lay their eggs on beaches. There is evidence that all modern turtles are descended from a terrestrial ancestor which lived before most of the dinosaurs. There are two key fossils called Proganochelys quenstedti and Palaeochersis talampayensis dating from early dinosaur times, which appear to be close to the ancestry of all modern turtles and tortoise. You might wonder how we can tell whether fossil animals lived in land or in water, especially if only fragments are found. Sometimes it’s obvious. Ichthyosaurs were reptilian contemporaries of he dinosaurs, with
fins and streamlined bodies. The fossils look like dolphins and they surely lived like dolphins, in the water. With turtles it is a little less obvious. One way to tell is by measuring the bones of their forelimbs.
4. The word “ceased” in paragraph 2 mostly means ______________ -
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Political and economic reforms launched in 1986 have transformed the country from one of the poorest in the world, with per capita income around US $100, to lower middle income status within a quarter of a century with per capita income of around US$ 2,100 by the end of 2015. Vietnam’s per capita GDP growth since 1990 has been among the fastest in the world, averaging 5.5 percent a year since 1990, and 6.4 percent per year in the 2000s. Vietnam’s economy continued to strengthen in 2015, with estimated GDP growth rate of 6.7 percent for the whole year. The Vietnamese population is also better educated and has a higher life expectancy than most countries with a similar per capita income. The maternal mortality ratio has dropped below the upper-middle-income country average, while under-five mortality rate has fallen by half, to a rate slightly above that average. Access to basic infrastructure has also improved substantially. Electricity is now available to almost all households, up from less than half in 1993. Access to clean water and modern sanitation has risen from less than 50 percent of all households to more than 75 percent. Vietnam’s Socio-Economic Development Strategy (SEDS) 2011-2020 gives attention to structural reforms, environmental sustainability, social equity, and emerging issues of macroeconomic stability. It defines three “breakthrough areas”: promoting human resources/skills development (particularly skills for modern industry and innovation), improving market institutions, and infrastructure development. In addition, the five-year Socio-Economic Development Plan 2011-2015 focused on three critical restructuring areas - the, banking sector, state-owned enterprises and public investment that are needed to achieve these objectives. The recent draft of the SEDP 20162020 acknowledges the slow progress of the reform priorities of the SEDP 2011-2015. With agriculture still accounting for almost half the labor force, and with significantly lower labor productivity than in the industry and services sectors, future gains from structural transformation could be substantial. The transformation from state to private ownership of the economy is even less advanced. The state also wields too much influence in allocating land and capital, giving rise to heavy economy wide inefficiencies. So, adjusting the role of the state to support a competitive private sector-led market economy remains a major opportunity. This will be important for enhancing productivity growth which has been stagnating for a long time.
4. According to the passage, nearly _________ of the households did NOT get access to clean water in 2015. -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea. At various points in evolutionary history, enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto the land, sometimes even to the most parched deserts, taking their own private seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids. In addition to the reptiles, birds, mammals and insects which we see all around us, other groups that have succeeded out of water include scorpions, snails, crustaceans such as woodlice and land crabs, millipedes and centipedes, spiders and various worms. And we mustn’t forget the plants, without whose prior invasion of the land, none of the other migrations could have happened. Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thoroughgoing land animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and returned to the water again. Seals have only gone part way back. They show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their close cousins, the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the full marine habits of their remote ancestors. They don’t even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air. However, they are, in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still lay their eggs on beaches. There is evidence that all modern turtles are descended from a terrestrial ancestor which lived before most of the dinosaurs. There are two key fossils called Proganochelys quenstedti and Palaeochersis talampayensis dating from early dinosaur times, which appear to be close to the ancestry of all modern turtles and tortoise. You might wonder how we can tell whether fossil animals lived in land or in water, especially if only fragments are found. Sometimes it’s obvious. Ichthyosaurs were reptilian contemporaries of he dinosaurs, with
fins and streamlined bodies. The fossils look like dolphins and they surely lived like dolphins, in the water. With turtles it is a little less obvious. One way to tell is by measuring the bones of their forelimbs.
6. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true? -
Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the undelined part that needs correction in each of the following questions:
The difference between the nuclear family and the extended family is that a nuclear family refers to a single basic family unit of parents and their children, whereas the extended family refers to their relatives such as grandparents, in-laws, aunts and uncles, etc. In many cultures, and particularly indigenous societies, the latter is the most common basic form of social organization. A nuclear family is limited, according to Kristy Jackson of Colorado State University, to one or two parents (e.g. a father and mother) and their own child, or children, living together in a single house or other dwellings. In anthropology, they only must be related in this fashion; there is no upper or lower limit on the number of children in a nuclear family.
The extended family is a much more nebulous term, but in essence refers to kin or relations not covered by the above definition. In historical Europe and Asia as well as in Middle Eastern, African, and South American Aboriginal cultures, extended family groups were typically the most basic unit of social organization. The term can differ in specific cultural settings, but generally includes people related in age or by lineage. Anthropologically, the term “extended family” refers to such a group living together in a household, often with three generations living together (grandparents, parents, and children) and headed in patriarchal societies by the eldest man or by some other chosen leadership figure. However, in common parlance, the term “extended family” is often used by people simply to refer to their cousins, aunts, uncles, and so on, even though they are not living together in a single group.
Historically, most people in the world have lived in extended family groupings rather than in nuclear families. This was even true in Europe and in the early United States, where multiple generations often lived together for economic reasons. During the 20th century, average income rose high enough that living apart as nuclear families became a viable option for the vast majority of the American population. In contrast, many indigenous societies and residents of developing countries continue to have multiple generations living in the same household. The rise of the nuclear family in the modern West does not necessarily mean that family arrangements have stabilized, either. The rapid growth in single-parent households, for instance, also represents a substantial change in the traditional nuclear family. More couples are also choosing not to have children at all.What is the passage mainly about?
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Choose the best answer:
Ba said he ............... some good marks the semester before. -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Saving the planet is very much in vogue. It’s also in Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Mademoiselle. It’s the message on fashion runways, in marketing strategies, in jewelry and accessory designs, on shopping bags and totes, in advertisements and on price tags. A naked fashion model wearing a hat of birch branches and lichen, as shown in Vogue this month, may not be everyone’s idea of environmental awareness. But the pervasiveness of ecological themes in the images and marketing of fashion is undeniable. It is also somewhat paradoxical. The fashion industry, whose driving philosophy involves encouraging consumers to discard the old and embrace the new, is now trying to push itself to the forefront of efforts to conserve and preserve. The environmental theme in fashion began as wispy touches and graphic exhortations in designer collections, not as some well-thought-out strategy of “green” marketing in which the environmental advantages of a product become part of the sales approach. Tendrils of ivy dangled from the ceiling at a Paris fashion show; a carpet of grass covered a runway in New York; models marched along in T-shirts or carrying signs all bearing slogans like “Clean Up or Die,” “Save the Sphere,” and “Environmental Protection Agents”. The environmental spin on fashion has now moved into the mass market, where ‘’clothes with conscience’‘ make an extra tug at the buyer’s self-image. Bonjour, a jeans and sportswear company based in New York, has embarked on a program to ’‘change the individual’s outlook toward saving the environment’’ through educational tags. This summer, the first wave of what Bonjour executives said would be 50 million fashion items a year are to arrive in stores carrying tags with environmental tips from how to save water to how to reduce pollutants. Whether these tributes to nature will benefit the environment or even raise environmental awareness, with concomitant changes in individual behavior, is not clear. There is some skepticism. Professor Ewen says the new environmental symbolism should be viewed as part of an overall change in America’s economy, from one built on industrial production of hard goods to one based on “pure representation”. “Going back to fashion, the environment has become a commercial cliche separated from real concerns. What can be attached to this year’s fashion is merely the symbolism of environmental sanity.”
7. The word “one” in paragraph 5 refers to _____ -
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Last week, China declared “mission accomplished” after landing a spacecraft, Chang’e-4, on the far side of the Moon. It was a remarkable endeavour. As the far side of the Moon never faces the Earth, mission control cannot communicate directly with the spacecraft, but only via an orbiting satellite. The terrain is more broken and cratered than the near side, so landing a craft is that much more difficult. Even Nasa was impressed: “a first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment!”. Yet mixed with admiration was trepidation. China, a latecomer to the space race, is now beginning to threaten the supremacy of America and Russia. But then Russia and America have long played their space exploration programmes for propaganda purposes. From the beginning, the space race was intimately bound up with the needs of the cold war. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first human craft to orbit the Earth. Four years later, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Eight years later, on 21 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to tread on the Moon. Their journey may have been fuelled in part by cold war desperation, but it was also an extraordinary triumph of knowledge and will, an act of the technological sublime. Once America was satisfied that the Soviet Union had been put in its place, space exploration became politically less important. As America downgraded its space ambitions, Chinese aspirations took flight. In 1992, the Chinese government approved the Shenzhou manned spaceflight programme. Eleven years later, Yang Liwei became the first Chinese astronaut in space. Fears about Chinese ambitions have been heightened by the changing context of the space race. During the cold war, America feared the Soviet Union, but was determined to thwart Moscow’s aims. Today, American apprehension stems from the worry that China’s emergence as the dominant global force cannot be checked, nor Beijing’s brutal despotism challenged. As liberal democracy frays in the west and authoritarian capitalism becomes entrenched in the east, self-doubt shapes US attitudes to China. Space exploration has long been fuelled by a mixture of humanistic dreams, technological leaps and tawdry politics. The Chang’e-4 mission is no different. How the space race will play out over the next decade, and what role China will adopt in global politics, remains uncertain. In the meantime, let us celebrate our new perspective of the dark side of the Moon.
5. According to paragraph 4, what is the current attitude of America concerning space conquest? -
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Stabilisation work means the Leaning Tower of Pisa is leaning slightly less than it used to, experts have said. The tower, which has leaned to one side ever since it began to take shape in 1173, has lost 4cm of its tilt over the past two decades, according to a report from the surveillance group that meets every three months to give updates on the monument’s condition “Since restorative work began, the tower is leaning about half a degree less,” said Nunziante Squeglia, a geotechnics professor at the University of Pisa who works with the group. “But what counts is the stability of the tower, which is better than initially predicted.” The structure, which was badly damaged during the second world war, was closed to the public in 1990 over safety fears and did not reopen for 11 years. The surveillance group was set up in 2001 ago after Michele Jamiolkowski, an engineer of Polish origin, coordinated an international committee to save the landmark. The bell tower, a symbol of the power of the maritime republic of Pisa in the Middle Ages, was defective from the beginning due to the porous clay soil beneath its foundations. After three floors were completed, construction stopped and did not resume until 90 years later when workers started building additional floors on a diagonal to offset the lean. But work was again disrupted before finally being completed in 1372. The tower, located behind Pisa’s cathedral, attracts more than 5 million visitors a year. Reaching the top requires climbing 269 steps. The surveillance group’s work, which is funded by the non-profit Opera della Primaziale Pisana, includes improving the quality of the structure’s conservation and promoting research.
1. Which best serves as the title for the passage? -
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There are many thoughts on the origins of civilization. One of the major factors involved was the increase in population. The development of techniques, primarily irrigation and food control, which permitted agriculture in special areas such as the flood plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, made possible the support of large population. Once populations reach a certain number, the older pattern of social organization breaks down and new ones develop. Specifically the older system whereby each individual participated in food production and maintained a similar standard of living, and whereby kinship served as the basic method of social organization, was replaced by the occupational division of labor, political and religious hierarchies, public works such as road and public building construction, class systems, codes of law, markets, new forms of warfare, and urban centres. Allied with these important sociological traits are material traits, such as monumental architecture and development of science and, in many cases, metallurgy and writing systems. The earliest civilization, Sumer, developed in the Middle East. This was the Bronze Age of the Old World, during which people first developed the art of metallurgy, civilization also arose in other parts of the Old World first in Egypt, China and India, and later in Europe and Africa. At this time, civilization also developed independently in the New World, in the Mexican area and in Peru and its neighboring areas. In the Old World the Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age, which saw the rise and fall of great empires and the shift of power from the Middle East to Greece and Rome and then to Western Europe. In the 1700s the Industrial Age began, leading directly to the modern civilization of today.
3. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?