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Many scientists believe our love of sugar may actually be an addiction. When we eat or drink sugary foods, the sugar enters our blood and affects parts of our brain that make us feel good. Then the good feeling goes away, leaving us wanting more. All tasty foods do this, but sugar has a particularly strong effect. In this way, it is in fact an addictive drug, one that doctors recommend we all cut down on.
"It seems like every time I study an illness and trace a path to the first cause, I find my way back to sugar," says scientist Richard Johnson. One- third of adults worldwide have high blood pressure, and up to 347 million have diabetes. Why? "Sugar, we believe, is one of the culprits, if not the major culprit," says Johnson.
Our bodies are designed to survive on very little sugar. Early humans often had very little food, so our bodies learned to be very efficient in storing sugar as fat. In this way, we had energy stored for when there was no food. But today, most people have more than enough. So the very thing that once saved us may now be killing us.
So what is the solution? It's obvious that we need to eat less sugar. The trouble is, in today's world, it's extremely difficult to avoid. From breakfast cereals to after-dinner desserts, our foods are increasingly filled with it. Some manufacturers even use sugar to replace taste in foods that are advertised as low in fat.
But there are those who are fighting back against sugar. Many schools are replacing sugary desserts with healthier options like fruit. Other schools are growing their own food in gardens, or building facilities like walking tracks so students and others in the community can exercise. The battle has not yet been lost.

According to the passage, why is it so hard to avoid sugar?

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

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In the past, the process of choosing a career was a much simpler matter than it is today. Aboy often followed in his father’s footsteps. His sister learned the household skills that (1)..... her to become a wife and mother. Nowadays young people grow up in a much freer society (2)........they enjoy almost unlimited career opportunities. In recent years, there (3)..... an enormous increase in the kinds of vocations from which it is possible to choose. In addition, many of the barriers to career opportunity that existed only a few decades ago, such as (4).......... based on sex or religion or ethnic origins, are (5)............... disappearing.
(5)..................

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The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York city. For a long time, it has been the newspaper of record in the United States and one of the world’s great newspapers. Its strength is in its editorial excellence; it has never been the largest newspaper in terms of circulation.
The Times was established in 1851 as a penny paper whose editors wanted to report the news in a
restrained and objective fashion. It enjoyed early success as its editors set a pattern for the future by appealing to a cultured, intellectual readership instead of a mass audience. However, in the late nineteenth century, it came into competition with more popular, colorful, if not lurid, newspapers in New York City. Despite price increases, the Times was losing $1,000 a week when Adolph Simon Ochs bought it in 1896. Ochs built the Times into an internationally respected daily. He hired Carr Van Anda as editor. Van  Anda placed greater stress than ever on full reporting of the news of the day, and his reporters maintained and emphasized existing good coverage of international news. The management of the paper decided to eliminate fiction from the paper, added a Sunday magazine section, and reduced the paper’s price back to a penny. In April 1912, the paper took many risks to report every aspect of the sinking of the Titanic. This greatly enhanced its prestige, and in its coverage of two world wars, the Times continued to enhance its
reputation for excellence in world news.
In 1971, the Times was given a copy of the so–called “Pentagon Papers,” a secret government study of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. When it published the report, it became involved in several awsuits. The U.S. Supreme Court found that the publication was protected by the freedom–of–thepress clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Later in the 1970s, the paper, under Adolph Ochs’s grandson, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, introduced sweeping changes in the organization of the newspaper and its staff and brought out a national edition transmitted by satellite to regional printing plants.

What word or phrase does the word “his” as used in paragraph 3 refer to?

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            Finding Beauty in the City
Cities are known to have lives of their own, and photographers are able to (1).............. some of it. Whether taking shots of people walking on a crowded street or time-lapse shots of cars driving at night, the (2).......photos can be breathtaking. Because many of the shots taken are of man-made objects like architecture, many emotions that come into (3)........ wouldn’t be found in nature photography. Photos can show the wonder of a child staring at a fountain as water shoots upward in the sunlight. They can also show the sadder side, such as a camp of homeless people living in terrible poverty. (4)............ of what they show, there is always beauty to be found, even if it is beauty in something that is showing an ugly truth. Depending on the time of the day, photos taken in an urban environment can change drastically. To see the (5)............ of a building as its shadow is cast on the lawn of a park is always amazing to see.
(5).........................

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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 modem 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 modem 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 2016-2020 acknowledges the slow progress of the reform priorities of the SEDP 2011-2015.
With agriculture still accounting for almost half the labour force, and with significantly lower labour 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.

What is likely to be over-controlled by the government?

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Vitamins, taken in tiny doses, are a major group of organic compounds that regulate the mechanisms by which the body converts food into energy. They should not be confused with minerals, which are inorganic in their makeup. Although in general the naming of vitamins followed the alphabetical order of their identification, the nomenclature of individual substances may appear to be somewhat random and disorganized. Among the 13 vitamins known today, five are produced in the body. Because the body produces sufficient quantities of some but not all vitamins, they must be supplemented in the daily diet. Although each vitamin has its specific designation and cannot be replaced by another compound, a lack of one vitamin can interfere with the processing of another. When a lack of even one vitamin in a diet is continual, a vitamin deficiency may result.
The best way for an individual to ensure a necessary supply of vitamins is to maintain a balanced diet that includes a variety of foods and provides adequate quantities of all the compounds. Some people take vitamin supplements, predominantly in the form of tablets. The vitamins in such supplements are equivalent to those in food, but an adult who maintains a balanced diet does not need a daily supplement. The ingestion of supplements is recommended only to correct an existing deficiency due to unbalanced diet, to provide vitamins known to be lacking in a restricted diet, or to act as a therapeutic measure in medical treatment. Specifically, caution must be exercised with fat-soluble substances, such as vitamins A and D, because, taken in gigantic doses, they may present a serious health hazard over a period of time.

According to the passage, vitamins are

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William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), who wrote under the pseudonym of O. Henry, was born in North Carolina. His only formal education was to attend his Aunt Lina’s school until the age of fifteen, where he developed his lifelong love of books. By 1881 he was a licensed pharmacist. However, within a year, on the recommendation of a medical colleague of his Father’s, Porter moved to La Salle County in Texas for two years herding sheep. During this time, Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary was his constant companion, and Porter gained a knowledge of ranch life that he later incorporated into many of his short stories. He then moved to Austin for three years, and during this time the first recorded use of his pseudonym appeared, allegedly derived from his habit of calling “Oh, Henry” to a family cat. In 1887, Porter married Athol Estes. He worked as a draftsman, then as a bank teller for the First National Bank.
In 1894 Porter founded his own humor weekly, the “Rolling Stone”, a venture that failed within a year, and later wrote a column for the Houston Daily Post. In the meantime, the First National Bank was examined, and the subsequent indictment of 1886 stated that Porter had embezzled funds. Porter then fled to New Orleans, and later to Honduras, leaving his wife and child in Austin. He returned in 1897 because of his wife’s continued ill-health, however she died six months later. Then, in 1898 Porter was found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment in Ohio. At the age of thirty five, he entered prison as a defeated man; he had lost his job, his home, his wife, and finally his freedom. He emerged from prison three years later, reborn as O. Henry, the pseudonym he now used to hide his true identity. He wrote at least twelve stories in jail, and after re-gaining his freedom, went to New York City, where he published more than 300 stories and gained fame as America’s favorite short Story writer. Porter married again in 1907, but after months of poor health, he died in New York City at the age of forty-eight in 1910. O. Henry’s stories have been translated all over the world.

What is the passage primarily about?

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On the tiny island of Flores, east of Bali and midway between Asia and Australia, the scientists have discovered the remains of a small, hobbit-like species of humans. These people grew no larger than the modern three-year-old child. They lived about 18,000 years ago and are completely different species of human.
This discovery has taught scientists a lot about the human species. This remarkable discovery shows that the human species is more varied and flexible in its ability to adapt than previously thought. These hobbit-like people join a short list of other type of humans that lived with modern humans.
The researchers believe that these hobbits evolved from a normal size, human population that reached Flores around 840,000 years ago. One likely explanation is that, over thousands of years, the species became smaller because the environmental conditions favored a smaller body size. The dwarfing of mammals on islands occurs frequently. Islands limit food supply and predators and species compete for the same environmental space. Survival would depend on minimizing energy requirements.a

According to the passage, all of the following can dwarf a species of animal or human except     .

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A term 'megalopolis' (or megacity) was first used by French geographer Jean Gottman to describe the north-eastern United States in 1961. The term is used more widely now and is defined as an urban area of more than 10 million inhabitants dominated by a low-density housing. In 1995 there were 14 megacities. By 2020 there could be 30.
Megacities are the result of the process of urbanization. After cities grew into crowded urban centres, people who could afford to move into suburbs at the edge of the city. When the suburbs in turn became crowded, people moved into villages and dormitory towns outside the city, but within commuting distance. In this way, for the first time since industrialisation, the countryside began to gain population, whereas cities lost their inhabitants. In the 1980s St Louis and Detroit in the America lost between 35 and 47 per cent of their populations and London lost 15 per cent in the 20 years to 1971.
However, this movement away from cities does not mean that the city is dying. In fact it is spreading. From the old city develops a metropolitan area with many low-level urban developments. When these metropolitan areas merge together, they form megacities which contain over 10 million people. The largest of these is in America, called Boswash - a region over 300 miles long from Boston in the north to Washington, DC in the south with more than 44 million people. There are emerging megalopolises in Britain centred around London and the south-east, in Germany in the industrial region of the Ruhr and Japan in the Tokyo-Osaka-Kyoto region.

Which is the best title for paragraph 3?

Choose the word or phrase that best fits each space in the following passage

THE FIRST WOMAN SCIENTIST

Hypatia was born in Alexandria, in Egypt, in 370 A.D. For many centuries, she was the only woman (1) ___________ to have a place in the history books. Hypatia's father was the director of Alexandria University, and he (2) ______________ sure his daughter had the best education available. This was unusual, as most women then had few opportunities to study.

After studying in Athens and Rome, Hypatia returned to Alexandria (3)_______ she began teaching  mathematics. She soon became famous for her knowledge of new ideas.

There are no copies of her books, but it is said that she wrote several important mathematical works. Hypatia was also interested in technology and (4)___________ several scientific tools to help with her work.

At the time, many rulers were afraid of science, and something connected with it was (5)_________ danger. One day in March 415, Hypatia was attacked in the street and killed.

During the 20th century, Hypatia was seen as a symbol of the women's rights movement, a precursor to the feminist movement. Since the late 20th century, Hypatia's death has at times been associated with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, although historically the library ceased to exist in Hypati.

(5) _________

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          Keeping the World in Our Pockets
Faster processors and advances in memory technology have made today’s smartphones much more powerful than a lot of computers from just a decade ago. With wireless technology, people can surf the Internet, play online games, send e-mail, and do (1)............ all the things they once could only do on a computer. (2)......... , they have the power to do things constantly at their fingertips.
Many people (3)....... that while smartphones are powerful tools, they are making people reliant on them. Why would a person need to learn to read a map when he can get directions to anywhere by simply asking his phone a question? Who needs to learn maths when you have immense calculating power in your pocket at all times? What (4).........is there to memorise facts about history, art, or geography when that information is readily available from a portable Internet interface?
There are just some of the questions being asked and answered as smartphone usage continues to spread. Like any technology, smartphones have their advantages, but they do have disadvantages as well that we must (5).......... an eye on.
(2)............................

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

What is the best title of the passage?

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Geothermal energy is natural heat from the interior of the Earth that is converted to heat buildings and generate electricity. The idea of harnessing Earth’s internal heat is not new. As early as 1904 , geothermal power was used in Italy . Today, Earth’s natural internal heat is being used to generate electricity in 21 countries , including Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Iceland, Mexico, Ethiopia, Guatemala, EI Salvador, the Philippines, and the United States .Total worldwide production is approaching 9,000 MW (equivalent to nine large modern coal-burning or nuclear power plants)-double the amount in 1980 .Some 40 million people today receive their electricity from geothermal energy at a cost competitive with that of other energy sources. In EI Salvador , geothermal energy is supplying 30% of the total electric energy used.
However, at the global level, geothermal energy supplies less than 0,15%of the total energy supply.
Geothermal energy may be considered a nonrenewable energy source when rates of extraction are greater than rates of natural replenishment. However, geothermal energy has its origin in the natural heat production within Earth , and only a small fraction of the vast total resource base is being utilized today. Although most geothermal energy production involves the tapping of high heat sources, people are also using the low-temperature geothermal energy of groundwater in some applications.

Geothermal Systems
The average heat flow from the interior of the Earth is very low, about 0,06% W/m2.This amount is trivial compared with the 177 W/m2from solar heat at the surface in the United States. However, in some areas, heat flow is sufficiently high to be useful for producing energy . For the most part, areas of high heat flow are associated with plate tectonic boundaries. Oceanic ridge systems (divergent plate boundaries) and areas where mountains are being uplifted and volcanic island arcs are forming (convergent plate boundaries) are areas where this natural heat flow is anomalously high. One such region is located in the western, United States, where recent tectonic and volcanic activity has occurred.
On the basis of geological criteria, several types of hot geothermal systems (with temperatures greater than about 800C , or 1760F)have been defined, and the resource base is larger than that of fossil fuels and nuclear energy combined. A common system for energy development is hydrothermal convection, characterized by the circulation of steam and / or hot water that transfers heat from depths to the surface.

It was the first photograph that I had ever seen, and it fascinated me. I can remember holding it at every angle in order to catch the flickering light from the oil lamp on the dresser. The man in the photograph was unsmiling, but his eyes were kind. I had never met him, but I felt that I knew him. One evening when I was looking at the photograph, as I always did before I went to sleep, I noticed a shadow across the man’s thin face. I moved the photograph so that the shadow lay perfectly around his hollow cheecks. How different he looked!
That night I could not sleep, thinking about the letter that I would write. First, I would tell him that I was eleven years old, and that if he had a little girl my age, she could write to me instead of him. I knew that he was a very busy man. Then I would explain to him the real purpose of my letter. I would tell him how wonderful he looked with the shadow that I had seen across his photograph, and I would most carefully suggest that he grow whiskers.
Four months later when I met him at the train station near my home in Westfield, New York, he was wearing a full beard. He was so much taller than I had imagined from my tiny photograph.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I have no speech to make and no time to make it in. I appear before you that I may see you and that you may see me.” Then he picked me right up and kissed me on both cheeks. The whiskers scratched. “Do you think I look better, my little friend?” he asked me.
My name is Grace Bedell, and the man in the photograph was Abraham Lincoln.

What did Grace Bedell do every night before she went to sleep?

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Every year about two million people visit Mount Rushmore, were the faces of four U.S presidents were carved in granite by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his son, the late Lincoln Borglum. The creation of the Mount Rushmore monument Line took 14 years – from 1927 to 1941 – and nearly a million dollars. There were times when money was difficult to come by and many people were jobless. To move more than 400,000 tons of rock, Borglum hired laid-off workers from the closed-down mines in the Black Hills area. He taught these men to dynamite, drill, carve, and finish the granite as they were hanging in midair in his specially devised chairs, which had many safety features. Borglum was proud of the fact that no workers were killed or severely injured during the years of blasting and carving.
During the carving, many changes in original design had to be made to keep the carved heads free of large fissures that were uncovered. However, not all the cracks could be avoided, so Borglum concocted a mixture of granite dust, white lead, and linseed oil to fill them.
Every winter, water from melting snows gets into the fissures and expands as it freezes, making the fissures bigger. Consequently, every autumn maintenance work is done to refill the cracks. The repairers swing out in space over a 500-foot drop and fix the monument with the same mixture that Borglum used to preserve this national monument for future generations.

The men who Borglum hired were      

Read the passage below and decide whether the statements are TRUE or FALSE?

   Autonomous weapons are artificial intelligence systems that are programmed to kill. In the hands of the wrong person, these weapons could easily cause mass casualties. Moreover, an AI arms race could inadvertently lead to an AI war that also results in mass casualties. To avoid being thwarted by the enemy, these weapons would be designed to be extremely difficult to simply “turn off,” so humans could plausibly lose control of such a situation. This risk is one that’s present even with narrow AI, but grows as levels of AI intelligence and autonomy increase.

Autonomous weapons are natural intelligence systems that are programmed to kill

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Welcome to the Netherlands, a tiny country that only extends, at its broadest, 312 km north to  south, and 264 km east to west - (1) ......... the land area increases slightly each year as a result of continuous land reclamation and drainage. With a lot of heart and much to offer, ‘Holland,’ as it is (2).......known to most of us abroad - a name stemming from its once most prominent provinces - has more  going  on  per  kilometer  than  most  countries,  and  more  English-speaking  natives.  You’ll  be impressed by its (3).....cities and charmed by its countryside and villages, full of contrasts. From the exciting variety on offer, you could choose a romantic canal boat tour in Amsterdam, a Royal Tour by coach in The Hague, or a hydrofoil tour around the biggest harbour in the world - Rotterdam. In season you could visit the dazzling bulb fields, enjoy a full day on a boat, or take a bike tour through the pancake-flat countryside spiced with windmills. The possibilities are countless and the nationwide tourist office is on hand to give you information and help you (4)...... reservations.  You’ll  have (5)........language problems here, as the Dutch are true linguists and English is spoken here almost universally.
(4)...........................

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Satoru Iwata is not a household name, but he should be. Most people, however, would recognize his brain children, the Nintendo DS and the Wii. These two game systems completely changed the world of gaming. It’s hard to imagine gaming without them, but amazingly, the DS and Wii almost didn’t happen! It is only thanks to the innovative ideas of Iwata that we have these systems today.
Satoru Iwata was made the CEO of Nintendo in 2002. At that time, the video game market was suffering, and Nintendo was having trouble with its sales. Iwata thought that a change in strategy was  due. Previously, the strategy in the game industry was to keep making the same kinds of games and consoles but just improve their power and complexity. However, Iwata didn’t just want to attract dedicated gamers. He wanted to bring in new kinds of players to video gaming. How was he going to do that? He decided to change the very concept of video games.
Iwata wanted to make video games easier to pick up and more relevant to people’s lives. Out of this idea came the Nintendo DS. People interacted more directly with the game by using a touch screen instead of just a set of buttons. Iwata took this idea to the extreme with the motion-based Wii. Now, just by using natural body movements, players can enjoy playing all sorts of games.
The kinds of games produced changed as well. Along with the regular role-playing game (RPG), action, and sport games, new kinds of “games” were designed. Some of these new games, like Brain Age, improved thinking abilities. Others, like Wii Fit, improved fitness. This has brought in a new age of gaming. Everyone from grandparents to their grandchildren seems to be playing Nintendo products. With all that we have seen so far, we can only wonder what is next for Iwata. Surely it will be something groundbreaking.

What did Iwata change about the world of gaming?