Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
With 13,000 floral species and over 15,000 faunal species, three newly discovered big animal species, and a ratio of country/world species of 6.3%. Vietnam has enormous tourismparticularly ecotourism-potential. In fact, since 1986, when Renovation Reforms began the shift from a centrally planned to a socialist-oriented market, or multi-sectoral, economy, tourism has been an sector of primary concern to the government. In May 1995, the prime minister of Vietnam approved a master plan of tourism development for the period 1995- 2010. In February 1999, the state decree on tourism was part of the socio-economic development strategy for the period 2001-2010 approved at the IX National Congress of the Party: “Tourism development has become a spearhead economic industry indeed. It is necessary to improve the quality and effectiveness of tourism activities, bringing into full play the natural conditions, and cultural and historical tradition to meet the domestic and international demand for tourism and to catch up with tourism development in the region” (Document of the IX National Congress 2001). Tourism has so far brought great benefits to the economy, but it has also contributed to environmental degradation, especially biodiversity deterioration. Thus, the concept of “sustainable development”-development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs - must be factored into tourism development. This consideration is reflected in the term “ecotourism,” which is referred to variously as ecological or environmental tourism, nature or green tourism, sustainable or responsible tourism. Ecotourism involves travel to relatively undisturbed natural areas with the specific object of studying, admiring, and enjoying scenery, plants, and animals, as well as any cultural features found in these areas. It is distinguished from mass or resort tourism by its lower impact on the environment, lower infrastructure requirements, and its role in educating tourists about natural environments and cultural values. Fully aware of its significance, the government of Vietnam has prioritized ecotourism in its strategy for tourism development to ensure both sustainability and economic benefits. Though ecotourism in Vietnam is at a beginning stage of development, it is expected to grow strongly through support from government and international organizations.  
7. What does the word "It" in Paragraph 3 refer to?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Hidden beneath the waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea near southwestern Italy lies a newfound volcanic mosaic dotted with geothermal chimneys and flat-topped seamounts. This complex is new to both science and the planet, geologically speaking; it’s only about 780,000 years old. Scientists aren’t particularly surprised to find volcanism in the region, which is home to active volcanoes like Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna. But the new complex is unusual because it was created by a rare kind of fault, said study leader Fabrizio Pepe. The western Mediterranean is seismically restless because of the collision of three tectonic plates: the African, the Eurasian and the Anatolian. Making matters more complex is a small chunk of crust called the Adriatic-Ionian microplate, which broke off of the African Plate more than 65 million years ago and is now being pushed under the larger Eurasian Plate in a process called subduction. Previously, scientists discovered a series of undersea volcanic arcs created by this tectonic unrest, starting near the Sardinian coast, with increasingly younger arcs southward and eastward. These arcs were like an arrow pointing ever farther eastward, prompting Pepe and his colleagues to search for an even younger arc about 9 miles off the coast of Calabria. There, based on seafloor mapping, seismic data and magnetic anomalies, the researchers found a 772-square-mile region of lava flows, volcanic mountains and hydrothermal chimneys; vents in the seafloor allow hot minerals to spew out and form chimney-like structures. They dubbed the new area the Diamante‐Enotrio‐Ovidio Volcanic‐Intrusive Complex, after three flat-topped seamounts that dominate the seafloor. Those fractures are what allowed magma to rise to the surface at the Diamonte-EnotrioOvidio complex, creating an undersea landscape of lava flows and mountainous volcanoes. These volcanic seamounts are now plateaus because they protruded from the ocean when the sea level was lower, and they eroded into their present, flat-topped shape, Pepe said. The volcanic complex is inactive, but there are small intrusions of lava in some parts of the seafloor there. However, the area could become active in the future, Pepe said, and active volcanism is ongoing on the eastern side of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The researchers are working to build a volcanic risk map of the complex to better understand if it could endanger human life or property. They are also investigating the possibility of tapping the complex to produce geothermal energy.  
4. According to paragraph 2, what does NOT contribute to the seismic disturbance in the Mediterranean region?

Choose the best answer:
There are many stores in the .................... area of the city.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
An important point to remember if you like spending time out in the open air is that the human head doesn’t work very well outdoors if it becomes too hot, cold or wet. That’s why a hat is a good investment, whenever you are planning to go out and about. Surprisingly, a single waterproof hat with a brim will do the (34)______ adequately in most conditions. In cold climates, the problem is that the head is (35)______ heat all the time. As much as fifty to sixty per cent of your body’s heat is lost through the head and neck, (36)______ on which scientist you believe. Clearly this heat loss needs to be prevented, but it’s important to remember that hats don’t actually keep you warm, they simply stop heat escaping. Just as important is the need to protect your neck from the effects of bright sunlight, and the brim of your hat will do this. If you prefer a baseball cap, (37)______ buying one that has a drop down ‘tail’ at the back to stop your neck getting sunburnt. And in wet weather (38)______, hats are often more practical than pooling up the hood of your waterproof coat because when you turn your head, the hat goes with you, whereas the hood usually does not.

Choose the best answer:
I/ can/ send/ you/ references/ the Director of the Happy Mind Charity Centre.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D)
Men have always played critical roles in the women’s movement. But there is still a long way to go because despite all the progress made, men still dominate positions of power. And, as a string of recent harassment scandals has shown, the behaviour of some men has had profound effects on women’s careers, their success and their lives. The good news, as we mark International Women’s Day, is that many men are acknowledging the importance of playing their part to make gender equality a reality. A new study by Ipsos Mori has found that while a third of British men think they are being expected to do too much to support women’s equality, far more – half – do not. In fact, three in five men in Britain agree that gender equality won’t be achieved unless they also take action to support women’s rights. Despite attempts in some quarters to paint gender equality as a zero-sum game, there are plenty of win-win propositions for these men to advocate. Better parental leave for fathers would be a good start. Government policy needs to catch up with this new reality, and the evidence is clear that, unless paternity leave is non-transferable and well paid, uptake will be low. Sweden and Norway show us that the introduction of the “daddy quota” – the period of parental leave reserved specifically for fathers – has a positive effect on male take-up of parental leave, and then on men’s long-term involvement in household work and childcare. This reaps economic dividends, as women’s talents are no longer lost to the labour force, and having an involved father has a positive effect on children’s wellbeing. Globally, three-quarters (72%) agree that employers should make it easier for men to combine childcare with work. Businesses need not fear: research links flexible working to increased productivity, as better work-life balance leads to happier, more effective workers. Women gain from having flexible partners, too. A study of German couples found that having a partner who works flexibly boosted the wages of men and women, with the effect most pronounced for mothers. Conversely, women whose partners work very long hours are significantly more likely to quit the labour force – taking their talent and experience with them
8. What does the writer want to imply?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Many of us experience multiple queues on an average day. If the move quickly,  they’re soon forgotten. But a slow line can be extremely annoying. What separated a good queuing experience from a bad one, however, is not just the speed of the line. In fact, how the wait makes us feel can have a greater impact on our perception of a queues than how much time we spend in it.  To understand how, consider the story of an airport getting complaints for the long waits at the baggage carousel. After trying fruitlessly to make baggage delivery faster, the airport simple moved the arrival gates outside of the main terminal, making people walk six times longer. Time was spent walking instead of waiting around and complaints dropped to almost zero as a result. A similar example can be observed during the postwar boom in high rise buildings in many elevator halls, where mirrors are installed to give people a chance to adjust their clothes and make sure that they look great, which distracts them from the long wait for their elevator.
For many people, the golden standard of line design and management can be found in theme parks, where waiting lines are such as integral part that companies are not afraid to invest. Some of the tricks theme parks use to make waits more bearable are hiding the line behind corners or walls to make it appear shorter and inflating the waiting times announced at each attraction. If the sign says the wait is an hour, often it will actually be more like 45 minutes, which will make people feel like they’re 15 minutes ahead of schedule. At Disneyland, designers and engineers also add games and other activities in order to give guests plenty to do, which keeps them from measuring the passage of time. According to Larson, Disney lines are so entertaining that on rainy days, when attendance is low, rides in the parks may fill up too slowly because families linger in the queue for too long.  Clever line design can also be found in supermarkets. Multiple parallel lines, each in front of a checkout, can be great if you’re in a fast one, but can feel very unfair if you’re stuck in a slow one. That’s why businesses are increasingly switching to the serpentine line, in which all customers are funneled into a single queue and then sent to the first available checkout. Compared to parallel lines, the serpentine triumphs in the key department of fairness: it’s strictly first come, first served, so no one arriving after you can be served before you
4. According to the passage, all of the following are mentioned as strategies used at theme parks to make line waits less unpleasant EXCEPT ____________________

Each sentence has a mistake. Find it bychosing A B C or D

 Modern airplanes are able to fly very highly because they have pressurized cabins

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

Researchers in communication show that more feelings and intentions are (1) _______ and received nonverbally than verbally. Mehrabian and Wienerfollowing have stated that only 7% (2) _______ message is sent through words, with remaining 93% sent nonverbal (3) _______.

Humans use nonverbal communication because:

1. Words have limitations: There are (4) _______ areas where nonverbal communication is more (5) _______ than verbal, especially when we explain the shape, directions, personalities which are expressed nonverbally.

2. Nonverbal signal are powerful: Nonverbal cues primarily express inner (6) _______ while verbal messages deal basically with outside world.

3. Nonverbal message are likely (7) _______ more genuine: because nonverbal behaviors cannot be controlled as easily as spoken words.

4. Nonverbal signals can express feelings inappropriate to state: Social etiquette limits (8) _______ can be said, but nonverbal cues can communicate thoughts.

5. A separate communication channel is necessary to (9) _______ send complex messages: A speaker can add enormously to the complexity of the verbal message through simple nonverbal (10) _______

(6) _______

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 is a threat to many species on Earth, but sometimes it can cause species to thrive. Such is the case with Pfiesteria piscicida. A one-celled creature called a dinoflagellate, Pfiesteria inhabits warm coastal areas and river mouths, especially along the eastern United States. Although scientists have found evidence of Pfiesteria in 3,000-year-old sea floor sediments and dinoflagellates are thought to be one of the oldest life forms on earth, few people took notice of Pfiesteria.
Lately, however, blooms – or huge, dense populations – of Pfiesteria are appearing in coastal waters, and in such large concentrations the dinoflagellates become ruthless killers. The blooms emit powerful toxins that weaken and entrap fish that swim into the area. The toxins eventually cause the fish to develop large bleeding sores through which the tiny creatures attack, feasting on blood and flesh. Often the damage is astounding. During a 1991 fish kill, which was blamed on Pfiesteria on North Carolina’s Neuse River, nearly one billion fish died and bulldozers had to be brought in to clear the remains from the river. Of course, such events can have a devastating effect on commercially important fish, but that is just one way that Pfiesteria causes problems. The toxins it emits affect human skin in much the same way as they affect fish skin. Additionally, fisherman and others who have spent time near Pfiesteria blooms report that the toxins seem to get into the air, where once inhaled they affect the nervous system, causing severe headaches, blurred vision, nausea, breathing difficulty, short-term memory loss and even cognitive impairment.
For a while, it seemed that deadly Pfiesteria blooms were a threat only to North Carolina waters, but the problem seems to be spreading. More and more, conditions along the east coast seem to be favorable for Pfiesteria. Researchers suspect that pollutants such as animal waste from livestock operations, fertilizers washed from farmlands and waste water from mining operations have probably all combined to promote the growth of Pfiesteria in coastal waters.

The word “astounding” in the passage is closest in meaning to    .

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
The fresh data released by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)  showed that unemployment rate in the month of October jumped to 8.5 per cent, which is the highest in over three years. A new academic research paper released by the Centre of Sustainable Employment also concluded that there has been a marked decline in total employment in India between 2011-12 and 2017-18, reported The Indian Express.  The research paper by Santosh Mehrotra and Jaiati K Parida stated as, "However, due to sharp increases in enrollment at every level of education over the noughties, it was expected that post -2012 total employment would increase, particularly in the non-farm sectors. But unfortunately, total employment during 2011-12 and 2017-18 declined by 9 million. The research further states that this happened for the first time in India’s history.  It is really ironical noting that Coimbatore Municipal Corporation posted a vacancy for 549 sanitary workers. What followed was that 7000 highly qualified applicants even some of them with engineering and graduate degrees applied for the job. The Corporation witnessed the overwhelming turnout of 7000 candidates. Similarly, few month back, Chennai witnessed an unusual event when around 4600 of youth sent their application for 14 posts like sweepers and sanitary workers. The applicants had professional qualification like B.Tech, M.Tech, Master of Business Administration.  Though the government constantly has been refuting the grim of job data but the facts and figures can’t be avoided any more. Therefore, now the government should take an initiative to overcome the high prevalence of unemployment and figure out the derivers of the job crisis. In this regard, it is worth to mention a book titled ‘Job crisis in India’ written by business journalist Raghavan Jagnnathan. The author in his book pointed out factors and reasons behind this decline of employment. He attributed that the absence of skills required in the highly technical nature of jobs is big factor. Another aspect of this is that in the majority of cases the skills or training acquired by the youths do not match or suit the core demand of the job. So at first the government must step up for reformation, innovation and renovation of the standard of the education in universities and colleges. 
4. What does the phrase “the noughties” in paragraph 2 most likely mean?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
In an educational context, the term “learner independence” has gained increasing importance in recent years. It is of particular (25) ________ to language learning and commonly refers to the way students confidently control and organize their own language learning process. While some people seem to have an almost (26) ________ flair for languages, others have rely on strategies to maximize their skills and learn a foreign language more effectively. The main thing to remember is that becoming a truly independent learner ultimately depends above all on taking responsibility for your own learning and being prepared to take every opportunity available to you to learn. You also increase your chances of (27) ________ by learning according to your own needs and interests, using all available resources. Research shows that learners (28) ________ adopt this approach will undoubtedly manage to broaden their language abilities considerably and, (29) ________, are more likely to achieve their objectives in the longer term

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
The concept of exotic holidays is not new. Cruises and other travel packages to tropical locations have long been popular and are more (1) ____ now than ever. The wealthy have gone on trips to exotic places since the 19th century, but now ordinary people have enough money for this kind of holiday. Holidaymakers are increasingly interested in doing something different and want more exciting (2) ____. A number of tour companies have responded with a new range of options, including African safaris. Going on a safari is a totally (3) ____ form of holiday. Accompanied by a safari guide, groups travel into the African wilderness to experience close up the thrill of the wild. Being so close to the animals is an once-in-a-lifetime experience. (4) ____ species, which are rarely seen outside the zoo, provide a great (5) ____

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Although the “lie detectors” are being used by governments, police departments, and businesses that all want guaranteed ways of detecting the truth, the results are not always accurate. Lie detectors are properly called emotion detectors, for their aim is to measure bodily changes that contradict what a person says. The polygraph machine records changes in heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, and the electrical activity of the skin (galvanic skin response, or GSR). In the first part of the polygraph test, you are electronically connected to the machine and asked a few neutral questions (“What is your name?”, “Where do you live?”). Your physical reactions serve as the standard (baseline) for evaluating what comes next. Then you are asked a few critical questions among the neutral ones (“When did you rob the bank?”). The assumption is that if you are guilty, your body will reveal the truth, even if you try to deny it. Your heart rate, respiration, and GSR will change abruptly as you respond to the incriminating questions. That is the theory; but psychologists have found that lie detectors are simply not reliable. Since most physical changes are the same across all emotions, machines cannot tell whether you are feeling guilty, angry, nervous, thrilled, or revved up form an exciting day. Innocent people may be tense and nervous about the whole procedure. They may react physiologically to a certain word (“bank”) not because they robbed it, but because they recently bounced a check. In either case the machine will record a “lie”. The reverse mistake is also common. Some practiced liars can lie without flinching, and others learn to beat the machine by tensing muscles or thinking about an exciting experience during neutral questions
1. What is the main idea of this passage?

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. 
3. Which best expresses the main idea of the third paragraph?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
All families face challenges and hurdles as a normal part of life and getting through these times requires respectful communication and care for each other. However, some families face significant (1) _______ like not having a place to live, a parent going to court, a parent having a long-term illness, or parents having to work (2) ________ from home or for long hours.  Some families seem to fight and argue a lot, which can be really scary and stressful. Sometimes, family relationships can be so stressful that you feel unsafe and scared. These types of things make relationships (3) _________ and negative and it can make it difficult to feel like talking things through.  As a teenager you are going through a lot of changes within yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and socially. Often these changes (4) _________ at different rates and at different times. It is important for you to be aware of what is going on and how this may affect you at school, home and/or around family and friends having an understanding of adolescent development can be very (5) _____

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
The popular sport of golf is now widely considered an activity of rich people. Have you ever thought what makes golf so attractive to businessmen and politicians? (1) _________ they are mostly in their 50s and 60s, and with such safe and undemanding sport as golf, they still can improve their results. Golf is challenging. Among (2) ________ wealthy people, golf is exceptionally popular. Rich people really do not like to lose, and with golf, that won’t be too much of a problem because one can compete (3) _______ oneself. During a golf game, businessmen can concentrate on improving their own results while no one is trying to prevent their actions. Another thing about the challenge of golf being so charming for rich people is (4) _______ they have accomplished the impossible to reach their heights. Golf would bring new experience to their lives and make it more interesting. Maybe that’s why golf is particularly popular among older businessmen, who have already done all they wanted in life and now are looking for some new feelings. Playing golf is convenient. With rich people having very little of free time, golf is highly convenient as they can easily find golf courses open at nighttime. Besides, they wouldn’t have to drive too far to play golf. They don’t even necessarily need to have (5)_______ to play a nice round! As we already mentioned, one can play against himself to perfect the result

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
A group of Tri-City residents and volunteers from BC Housing gathered at a  neglected therapeutic garden on the old Riverview Hospital grounds last weekend to breathe life into a green space. First planted by psychiatric nurse Art Finnie in the 1950s after he was injured on the job, Finnie’s Garden grew into one of the first experiments in horticultural  therapy. As Lauren English, director of land development for Riverview, put it, gardening as therapy was a revolutionary practice. “He understood the value of nature and how therapeutic it was before it became the rage — to find peace and to find solace and to find comfort,” added MLA Selina Robinson, who attended last Saturday’s event.  At that time, Riverview Hospital was the largest psychiatric hospital in British Columbia, with more than 5,000 patients on site. And Finnie’s was more than a garden. Beyond the rows of corn, flowers and a fish pond, residents could lounge in a picnic area or curve bowls across their own bowling green. But while the idea of Finnie’s Garden was to have a place of gathering that residents created themselves, they weren’t the first ones to make themselves at home.  Archeologists, including one on site last weekend, have found evidence Indigenous people occupied the area for thousands of years. Today, the Kwikwetlem First Nation maintains a land claim over the Riverview lands, and in its language, the area is known as Smu’q wa ala," or “Place of the Great Blue Heron”. "They found fire-altered rocks, they found boiling rocks, they found arrowheads, they found tools," said English, under the watchful eye of the group’s archeologist. “It’s not just colonial history, it’s the precontact history that goes back thousands of years.” Today, while many of the former hospital’s buildings lay in disrepair, 184 people still call the hilltop facility home, and one day in the near future, perhaps, they’ll get to use it again on their road to recovery. The event comes in a year when Treefest was cancelled because of a lack of organizers, and while the renewed work at Finnie’s Garden isn’t meant to replace Treefest, it does offer a outlet for green-thumbs without a patch of dirt.  A final community gardening event at Finnie’s Garden will likely take place in October. By removing weeds, invasive plants and adding mulch, the group plans to have the area ready to plant next spring. 
4. The word “they” in paragraph 3 refers to _____

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Stage and film acting both involve performances in front of an audience. There are fundamental differences between the two. When you act for the stage, you are performing in front of a live audience. That means that your voice and your body movements must be clear even to those seated at the back row. Film acting, on the other hand, requires no voice projection. This is because you are performing in front of the camera. Although a film actor still needs to put the right expression to pull off a role realistically, overdoing movement or being overly expressive actually works against him in film acting because this can be construed as overacting. Controlled and small gestures are the requirements when acting for film. Another difference between stage acting and film acting is the material that is used. Theater involves doing well-known plays time and time again. As such, directors, producers and even avid theater-goers know the plays by heart. Some would even know every line and have developed expectations on how it should be delivered. When a line is not correctly said or the action delivered is not what is expected, an actor can be criticized severely. This is not an issue with film acting because the script is freshly-written. There are basically no expectations on how a role is supposed to be played. Putting the character to life becomes your responsibility and casting directors often choose talents based on their ability to give an authentic and believable performance. The fact that stage acting is done in real time also differentiates it from film acting. The scenes are done in sequence, often building up to a climax. This means that stage actors can’t afford to make mistakes. They have to memorize their lines well or risk forgetting in the middle of the performance. Stage actors must also exhibit quick thinking in case something unexpected happens on stage. Film acting is not done in front of a live audience. Although actors are encouraged to perform the scene perfectly on the first take because of budgetary considerations, a scene can always be redone in case the director is not satisfied with it. When an actor forgets his lines, there is always a script that can be referred back to without causing any damage to the outcome of the movie.
7. Which of the following statements is TRUE, according to the passage?

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:
Under certain circumstances, the human body must cope with gases at greater-than-normal atmospheric pressure. For example, gas pressures increase rapidly during a drive made with scuba gear because the breathing equipment allows divers to stay underwater longer and dive deeper. The pressure exerted on the human body increases by 1 atmosphere for every 10 meters of depth in seawater, so that at 39 meters in seawater a diver is exposed to pressure of about 4 atmospheres. The pressure of the gases being breathed must equal the external pressure applied to the body,

otherwise breathing is very difficult. Therefore all of the gases in the air breathed by a scuba diver at 40 meter are present at five times their usual pressure. Nitrogen, which composes 80 percent of the air we breathe, usually causes a balmy feeling of well-being at this pressure. At a depth of 5 atmospheres, nitrogen causes symptoms resembling alcohol intoxication, known as nitrogen narcosis. Nitrogen narcosis apparently results from a direct effect on the brain of the large amounts of nitrogen dissolved in the blood. Deep dives are less dangerous if helium is substituted for nitrogen, because under these pressures helium does not exert a similar narcotic effect.
As a scuba diver descends, the pressure of nitrogen on the lungs increases. Nitrogen then diffuses from the lungs to the blood, and from the blood to body tissues. Nitrogen then diffuses from the lungs to the blood, and from the blood to body tissues The reverse occurs when the diver surfaces, the nitrogen pressure in the lungs falls and the nitrogen diffuses from the tissues into the blood, and from the blood into the lungs. If the return to the surface is too rapid, nitrogen in the tissues and blood cannot diffuse out rapidly enough and nitrogen bubbles are formed. They can cause severe pains, particularly around the joints.
Another complication may result if the breath is held during ascent. During ascent from a depth of 10 meters, the volume of air in the lungs will double because the air pressure at the surface is only half of what it was at 10 meters. This change in volume may cause the lungs to distend and even rupture. This condition is called air embolism.
To avoid this event, a diver must ascend slowly, never at a rate exceeding the rise of the exhaled air bubbles, and must exhale during ascent.

The word “rupture” in bold in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to     .