Find synonym:
Land erosion is mainly caused by widespread deforestation.
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Lời giải:
Báo saiGiải thích:
Deforestation = logging (sự khai khẩn rừng núi)
Dịch:Xói mòn đất chủ yếu do nạn phá rừng trên diện rộng.
Câu hỏi liên quan
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Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Japan’s Mount Fuji will become a World Heritage Site in June. The United Nations (U.N.) decided on April the 30th to give the famous mountain UNESCO World Heritage (1)__________. The U.N. team (2)__________ made the decision said Fuji was very important to Japanese religion and art. They also said that the 3,776-meter-high volcano was important outside of Japan too. Fuji-san (as Japanese people call it) has been a mountain for more than 1,000 years. Priests say that when you climb it, you move from the “everyday world” at the bottom, to the “world of gods, Buddha and death” at the top. They believe people can (3)________ their sins by climbing to the top and coming back down again. (4)_________, Mount Fuji is a major tourist destination. It is very popular with hikers, who want to see the rising sun from its peak. More than 318,000 hikers visited the mountain last summer, with up to 15,000 people climbing each day. Local residents are now worried the World Heritage status will mean more visitors. That means there will be more litter and environmental problems. The local government may ask people to pay to climb the mountain to help preserve its (5) __________. Governor Shomei Yokouchi said: “It’s likely we’ll ask mountain climbers to help financially with keeping the mountain clean.” Another idea being talked about is to limit the daily number of hikers allowed to the top -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
In 1959 Xerox created the first plain paper copy machine. It was one of the most successful products ever. The company name Xerox grew into a verb that means “to copy,” as in “Bob, can you Xerox this for me?” Around 50 years later, the same thing happened to Google. Their company name grew into a verb that means “to do an internet search.” Now everyone and their grandma knows what it means to Google it. Unlike Xerox, Google wasn’t the first company to invent their product, not by a long shot. Lycos released their search engine in 1993. Yahoo! came out in 1994. AltaVista began serving results in 1995. Google did not come out until years later, in 1998. Though a few years difference may not seem like much, this is a major head start in the fast moving world of tech. So how did Google do it? How did they overtake their competitors who had such huge leads in time and money? Maybe one good idea made all the difference. There are millions and millions of sites on the internet. How does a search engine know which ones are relevant to your search? This is a question that great minds have been working on for decades. To understand how Google changed the game, you need to know how search engines worked in 1998. Back then most websites looked at the words in your query. They counted how many times those words appeared on each page. Then they might return pages where the words in your query appeared the most. This system did not work well and people often had to click through pages and pages of results to find what they wanted. Google was the first search engine that began considering links. Links are those blue underlined words that take you to other pages when you click on them. Larry Page, cofounder of Google, believed that meaningful data could be drawn from how those links connect. Page figured that websites with many links pointing at them were more important than those that had few. He was right. Google’s search results were much better than their rivals. They would soon become the world’s most used search engine. It wasn’t just the great search results that led to Google becoming so wellliked. It also had to do with the way that they presented their product. Most of the other search engines were cluttered. Their home pages were filled with everything from news stories to stock quotes. But Google’s homepage was, and still is, clean. There’s nothing on it but the logo, the search box, and a few links. It almost appears empty. In fact, when they were first testing it, users would wait at the home page and not do anything. When asked why, they said that they were, “waiting for the rest of the page to load.” People couldn’t imagine such a clean and open page as being complete. But the fresh design grew on people once they got used to it.
4. Which statement would the author most likely agree with? -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
In 1959 Xerox created the first plain paper copy machine. It was one of the most successful products ever. The company name Xerox grew into a verb that means “to copy,” as in “Bob, can you Xerox this for me?” Around 50 years later, the same thing happened to Google. Their company name grew into a verb that means “to do an internet search.” Now everyone and their grandma knows what it means to Google it. Unlike Xerox, Google wasn’t the first company to invent their product, not by a long shot. Lycos released their search engine in 1993. Yahoo! came out in 1994. AltaVista began serving results in 1995. Google did not come out until years later, in 1998. Though a few years difference may not seem like much, this is a major head start in the fast moving world of tech. So how did Google do it? How did they overtake their competitors who had such huge leads in time and money? Maybe one good idea made all the difference. There are millions and millions of sites on the internet. How does a search engine know which ones are relevant to your search? This is a question that great minds have been working on for decades. To understand how Google changed the game, you need to know how search engines worked in 1998. Back then most websites looked at the words in your query. They counted how many times those words appeared on each page. Then they might return pages where the words in your query appeared the most. This system did not work well and people often had to click through pages and pages of results to find what they wanted. Google was the first search engine that began considering links. Links are those blue underlined words that take you to other pages when you click on them. Larry Page, cofounder of Google, believed that meaningful data could be drawn from how those links connect. Page figured that websites with many links pointing at them were more important than those that had few. He was right. Google’s search results were much better than their rivals. They would soon become the world’s most used search engine. It wasn’t just the great search results that led to Google becoming so wellliked. It also had to do with the way that they presented their product. Most of the other search engines were cluttered. Their home pages were filled with everything from news stories to stock quotes. But Google’s homepage was, and still is, clean. There’s nothing on it but the logo, the search box, and a few links. It almost appears empty. In fact, when they were first testing it, users would wait at the home page and not do anything. When asked why, they said that they were, “waiting for the rest of the page to load.” People couldn’t imagine such a clean and open page as being complete. But the fresh design grew on people once they got used to it.
5. Which best explains why the author discusses Xerox in this text? -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Most of the viewers imagine that the presenter does little (1)______arrive at the studio a few minutes before the broadcast, read the weather, and then go home. In fact, this image is far from the truth. The two-minute (2) ____ which we all rely on when we need to know tomorrow’s weather is the result of a hard day’s work by the presenter, who is actually a highly-qualified (3)_______. Every morning, after a weather forecaster arrives at the TV studios, his/her first task of the day is to collect the latest data from the National Meteorological Office. The information is very detailed and includes predictions, satellite and radar pictures, as well as more technical data. After gathering all the relevant material from this office, the forecaster has to (4)________ the scientific terminology and maps into images and words which viewers can easily understand. The final broadcast is then carefully planned. The presenter decides what to say and in what order to say it. Next a “story board” is drawn up which lays out the script word for word. The time allocated for each broadcast can also alter. This is because the weather report is screened after the news, (5)__________ can vary in length. The weather forecaster doesn’t always know how much time is available, which means that he/she has to be thoroughly prepared so that the material can be adapted to the time available -
Each sentence has a mistake. Find it bychosing A B C or D
A good teacher must possess a wide various of skills
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Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
The relationship between Britain and the US has always been a close one. Like all close relationship it has had difficult times. The US was first a British colony, but between 1775 and 1783 the US fought a war to become independent. The US fought the British again in the War of 1812. In general, however, the two countries have felt closer to each other than to any other country, and their foreign policies have shown this. During World War I and World War II, Britain and the US supported each other. When the US looks for foreign support, Britain is usually the first country to come forward and it is sometimes called “the 51st state of union”. But the special relationship that developed after 1945 is not explained only by shared political interests. An important reason for the friendship is that the people of the two countries are very similar. They share the same language and enjoy each other’s literature, films and television. Many Americans have British ancestors, or relatives still living in Britain. The US government and political system is based on Britain’s, and there are many Anglo-American businesses operating on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain some people are worried about the extent of US influence, and there is some jealousy of its current power. The special relationship was strong in the early 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister in Britain and Ronald Reagan was President of the US.
3. The word “they” in paragraph 3 refers to ______ -
Choose the best answer:
These are all-star, professional teams __________ of 22 players each. -
Find mistake:
These companies were accused on having released a large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
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.
6. According to paragraph 4, what feeling does the performance of Ben Platt bring to the audience? -
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:
There has been much debate over the past few decades concerning fears that automation 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. At 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.What do optimists predict technology will allow?
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Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Generation gap refers to a vast difference in cultural norms between a younger generation and their elders. It’s a distressing thing for the phenomenon (1) ____ occurs around the world. The (2) ____ of communication, different views on certain problems and different attitudes towards life may cause the generation gap or even widen it. First, one of the major factors for this misunderstanding between two generations is that parents and children lack communication. Young people (3) ____ reveal their feelings to their parents, and often complain that their parents are out of (4) ____ with modern days, that they are dominant, that they do not trust their children to deal with crises, and that they talk too much about certain problems. So when young people meet some problems, they would rather (5) ____ to their classmates or their friends for help. The lack of communication widens the generation gap Another factor is that parents and their children see almost everything from different (6) ____. Take choosing career as an example. Parents generally believe it is their responsibility to plan the career for their children. Some hope their children will (7) ____ professions that will bring them greatest prestige and economic benefits. Some hope children will have a stable job with a regular income. But the youth may think they should be free to (8) ____ their own decisions as to their future career. Young people explain that true success is not a matter of money or position, instead, it is a matter of self-fulfillment. Finally, with the change of the world over decades, the attitude of the young has altered too. There are differences in (9) ____ matters as musical tastes, fashions, drug use, sex and politics between the young people and their elders. Nowadays long hair on young males is viewed as fashion by the young, but it is frequently considered a shocking act of rebellion against (10) ____ norms by parents -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Most of the viewers imagine that the presenter does little (1)______arrive at the studio a few minutes before the broadcast, read the weather, and then go home. In fact, this image is far from the truth. The two-minute (2) ____ which we all rely on when we need to know tomorrow’s weather is the result of a hard day’s work by the presenter, who is actually a highly-qualified (3)_______. Every morning, after a weather forecaster arrives at the TV studios, his/her first task of the day is to collect the latest data from the National Meteorological Office. The information is very detailed and includes predictions, satellite and radar pictures, as well as more technical data. After gathering all the relevant material from this office, the forecaster has to (4)________ the scientific terminology and maps into images and words which viewers can easily understand. The final broadcast is then carefully planned. The presenter decides what to say and in what order to say it. Next a “story board” is drawn up which lays out the script word for word. The time allocated for each broadcast can also alter. This is because the weather report is screened after the news, (5)__________ can vary in length. The weather forecaster doesn’t always know how much time is available, which means that he/she has to be thoroughly prepared so that the material can be adapted to the time available. -
Choose the best answer:
Every day, he _________ his buffalo to his plot of land. -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Rome is the capital of Italy. This sprawling modern city has many ancient monuments. Rome’s history goes back more than 2,500 years. Because of its age, Rome is often called the Eternal City. Rome’s many art treasures and historic buildings make the city an important center of European culture. In ancient times, Rome was the center of a mighty Roman empire. The empire lasted nearly 500 years, into the ad 400s. Roman armies conquered the lands that are now Italy, Greece, Great Britain, France, and Egypt. The Romans built many roads from Rome to distant parts of their empire. This network of roads led to a saying that “All roads lead to Rome.” The Roman Empire’s influence is still present. The Romans spread their language, Latin, throughout Europe. Latin is the basis for Italian, French, Spanish, and other European languages. The ancient Romans were great builders. Several of their buildings still stand today. They are among Rome’s famous landmarks.The Pantheon is a temple dedicated to the many Roman gods of mythology. The Roman Colosseum is a four-story amphitheater. An amphitheater is like a football stadium. The Colosseum is where Roman citizens once watched gladiators fight to the death. The Roman Forum was the political center of ancient Rome. The senate building and law courts were there, along with shops and religious buildings. Many artists painted in Rome. The most famous of them is Michelangelo. He lived 500 years ago. Thousands of people visit Rome each year to see his art. Visitors to the Vatican stare in wonder at the beautiful murals that Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The murals show scenes from the first book of the Bible, the Book of Genesis. Vatican City is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church. The pope lives at the Vatican. He is the head of the Catholic Church. There are more than a billion Catholics worldwide, making Roman Catholicism the largest Christian religion. Vatican City is an independent country within Rome. It is the smallest country in the world.
3. The word “mighty” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to ______ -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Herman Melville, an American author best known today for his novel Moby Dick, was actually more popular during his lifetime for some of his other works. He traveled extensively and used the knowledge gained during his travels as the basis for his early novels. In 1837, at the age of eighteen, Melville signed as a cabin boy on a merchant ship that was to sail from his Massachusetts home to Liverpool, England. His experiences on this trip served as a basis for the novel Redburn (1849). In 1841, Melville set out on a whaling ship headed for the South Seas. After jumping ship in Tahiti, he wandered around the islands of Tahiti and Moorea.This South Sea island sojourn was a backdrop to the novel Omoo (1847). After three years awayfrom home, Melville joined up with a U.S. naval frigate that was returning to the eastern United States around Cape Horn. The novel White Jacket (1850) describes this lengthy voyage as a navy seaman. With the publication of these early adventure novels, Melville developed a strong and loyal following among readers eager for his tales of exotic places and situations. However, in 1851, with the publication of Moby Dick, Melville's popularity started to diminish. Moby Dick, on one level the saga of the hunt for the great white whale, was also a heavily symbolic allegory of the heroic struggle of humanity against the universe. The public was not ready for Melville's literary metamorphosis from romantic adventure to philosophical symbolism. It is ironic that the novel that served to diminish Melville's popularity during his lifetime is the one for which he is best known today.
2. According to the passage, Melville's early novels were:....... -
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:
There has been much debate over the past few decades concerning fears that automation 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. At 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.What is the main concern associated with technological advances in the workplace?
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Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Far from being barren wastelands, deserts are biologically rich habitats with a vast array of animals and plants that have adapted to the harsh conditions there. Some deserts are among the planet’s last remaining areas of total wilderness. Yet more than one billion people, one-sixth of the Earth’s population, actually live in desert regions. Deserts cover more than one fifth of the Earth’s land, and they are found on every continent. A place that receives less than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain per year is considered a desert. Deserts are part of a wider classification of regions called “dry lands.” These areas exist under a moisture deficit, which means they can frequently lose more moisture through evaporation than they receive from annual precipitation. And despite the common conceptions of deserts as dry and hot, there are cold deserts as well. The largest hot desert in the world, northern Africa’s Sahara, reaches temperatures of up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) during the day. But some deserts are always cold, like the Gobi desert in Asia and the desert on the continent of Antarctica. Others are mountainous. Only about 10 percent of deserts are covered by sand dunes. The driest deserts get less than half an inch (one centimeter) of precipitation each year, and that is from condensed fog not rain. Desert animals have adapted ways to help them keep cool and use less water. Camels, for example, can go for days without food and water. Many desert animals are nocturnal, coming out only when the brutal sun has descended to hunt. Some animals, like the desert tortoise in the south-western United States, spend much of their time underground. Most desert birds are nomadic, crisscrossing the skies in search of food. Because of their very special adaptations, desert animals are extremely vulnerable to introduced predators and changes to their habitat. Some of the world’s semi-arid regions are turning into desert at an alarming rate. This process, known as “desertification,” is not caused by drought, but usually arises from the demands of human populations that settle on the semi-arid lands to grow crops and graze animals. The pounding of the soil by the hooves of livestock may degrade the soil and encourage erosion by wind and water.
7. What subject is this text probably found in? -
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:
Pollution emitted in industrial areas represents a threat to human health and the surrounding natural resources. We have a tendency to believe that the production processes are the only source of environmental damage, and often forget about the possible long-term effects of harmful production practices. We may think that the closure of these huge industrial areas would improve the quality of the environment. Unfortunately, this ignores the threat of the remaining waste, which is abandoned and poorly stored. It represents an even bigger danger because it stands neglected as it degrades and leaks into the earth without any control at all.
Changes in the water chemistry due to surface water contamination can affect all levels of an ecosystem. It can affect the health of lower food chain organisms and, consequently, the availability of food up through the food chain. It can damage the health of wetlands and damage their ability to support healthy ecosystems, control flooding, and filter pollutants from storm water runoff. The health of animals and humans are affected when they drink or bathe in contaminated water. In addition water-based organisms, like fish and shellfish, can pile up and concentrate contaminants in their bodies. When other animals or humans eat these organisms, they receive a much higher dose of contaminant than they would have if they had been directly exposed to the original contamination.
Contaminated groundwater can badly affect animals, plants and humans if it is removed from the ground by manmade or natural processes. Depending on the study of rocks of the area, groundwater may rise to the surface through springs or seeps, flow sideways into nearby rivers, streams, or ponds, or sink deeper into the earth. In many parts of fhe world, groundwater is pumped out of the ground to be used for drinking, bathing, other household uses, agriculture, and industry.
Contaminants in the soil can harm plants when they take up the contamination through their roots. Eating, breathing in, or touching contaminated soil, as well as eating plants or animals that have piled up soil contaminants can badly affect the health of humans and animals.
Air pollution can cause breathing-related problems and other bad health effects as contaminants are absorbed from the lungs into other parts of the body. Certain air contaminants can also harm animals and humans when they contact the skin. Plants rely on breathing for their growth and can also be affected by exposure to contaminants moved in the air.Which of the followings has the closest meaning to the word “absorbed” in the last paragraph?
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The National Automobile Show in New York has been one of the top auto shows in the United States since 1900. On November 3 of that year, about 8,000 people looked over the "horseless carriages." It was the opening day and the first opportunity for the automobile industry to show off its wares to a large crowd; however, the black-tie audience treated the occasion more as a social affair than as a sales extravaganza. It was also on the first day of this show that William McKinley became the first U.S. president to ride in a car.
The automobile was not invented in the United States. That distinction belongs to Germany. Nikolaus Otto built the first practical internal-combustion engine there in 1876. Then, German engineer Karl Benz built what are regarded as the first modern automobiles in the mid-1880s. But the United States pioneered the merchandising of the automobile. The auto show proved to be an effective means of getting the public excited about automotive products.By happenstance, the number of people at the first New York show equaled the entire car population of the United States at that time. In 1900,10 million bicycles and an unknown number of horse-drawn carriages provided the prime means of personal transportation. Only about 4,000 cars were assembled in the United States in 1900, and only a quarter of those were gasoline powered. The rest ran on steam or electricity.
After viewing the cars made by forty car makers, the show's audience favored electric cars because they were quiet. The risk of a boiler explosion turned people away from steamers, and the gasoline-powered cars produced smelly fumes. The Duryea Motor Wagon Company, which launched the American auto industry in 1895, offered a fragrant additive designed to mask the smells of the naphtha that it burned. Many of the 1900 models were cumbersome—the Gasmobile, the Franklin, and the Orient, for example, steered with a tiller like a boat instead of with a steering wheel. None of them was equipped with an automatic starter.
These early model cars were practically handmade and were not very dependable. They were basically toys of the well-to-do. In fact, Woodrow Wilson, then a professor at Princeton University and later President of the United States, predicted that automobiles would cause conflict between the wealthy and the poor. However, among the exhibitors at the 1900 show was a young engineer named Henry Ford. But before the end of the decade, he would revolutionize the automobile industry with his Model T Ford. The Model T, first produced in 1909, featured a standardized design and a streamlined method of production—the assembly line. Its lower costs made it available to the mass market.
Cars at the 1900 show ranged in price from $1,000 to $1,500, or roughly $14,000 to $21,000 in today's prices. By 1913, the Model T was selling for less than $300, and soon the price would drop even further. "I will build cars for the multitudes," Ford said, and he kept his promise
Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage as steering with a tiller rather than with a steering wheel?
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Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Facebook users spend an average of more than 15 hours a month on the social networking site. While there are plenty who caution against such intensive use — and there are a number of studies detailing the harm Facebook could potentially cause — there also are lots of reports extolling the site’s virtues. As the social media giant prepares for its upcoming initial public offering, here are some ways Facebook just might be good for you. Spending time on Facebook can help people relax, slow down their heart rate and decrease stress levels, according to researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Milan. In a study published earlier this year, researchers studied 30 students and found that a natural high was sparked when they were on the social media network that led to the relaxed heart rates and lower levels of stress and tension. In the study, the students were monitored in three situations: looking at panoramic landscapes, performing complicated mathematical equations and using Facebook. While the first situation was the most relaxing to students and the math problems were the most stressful, the time on Facebook uncovered high levels of attractiveness and arousal. The findings support the researchers’ hypothesis that Facebook’s success, as well as that of other social media networks, correlates to the specific positive mental and physical state users experience. While many may argue that social media networks only distract employees, research shows the opposite may be true. Research from Keas.com found that a 10-minute Facebook break makes employees happier, healthier and more productive. The study examined workers in three groups: one that was allowed no breaks, one that was allowed to do anything but use the Internet and one that was allowed 10 minutes to use the Internet and Facebook. The Facebook group was found to be 16 percent more productive than the group that was not allowed to use the Internet and nearly 40 percent more productive than the group that was allowed no breaks. “Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf on the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher net total concentration for a day’s work, and as a result, increased productivity,” said Brent Coker of the department of management and marketing at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Facebook is also in the business of matchmaking. Research shows that nearly 60 percent of singles will friend someone new on Facebook after meeting them in person. If they like what they see, 25 percent are likely to contact their new love interest via Facebook. Once the courting is over, nearly 40 percent of those social networking adults will update their relationship status on Facebook, with just 24 percent telling their friends first. Facebook use between couples will continue through the dating process, the research shows. Throughout the day, 79 percent of couples said they send partners Facebook messages or chat on the social network. In addition, more than 60 percent would post romantic messages on their significant other’s Facebook wall. When the relationship ends, more than half of those surveyed immediately update their status to single, which automatically sends out a notification to their friend list to start the dating cycle over again
2. The word “sparked” in the second paragraph probably means ____________