Question: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Owls are some of the world's greatest hunters. From head to feet, owls' bodies are built to hunt. Scientists are studying all the things that make owls such great hunters. Most owls hunt at night. The birds have excellent hearing, which helps them find their next meal in the dark. Owls have one ear that is larger and set higher than the other. When an owl hears a sound, it listens closely. Is the sound lounder in its right ear or left ear? Does the upper or lower ear detect the sound first? The information helps the owl find the location of its prey without ever seeing it. Owls don't depend just on their hearing to hunt. After a sound draws an owl's attention, it zeroes in with sight. Many birds have eyes on either side of their heads. But an owl's eyes face forward, like a person's. Images from each eye combine to form a 3-D picture, similar to how we see. That helps owls better judge a prey's size, distance, and speed. An owl's eyes are so large that they can gather lots of light. That helps the owl see better when hunting at night. An owl's eyes are also fixed in their sockets . It can't roll them like we can. Instead, an owl keeps prey in its sight by turning its head. Owls can move their beads nearly upside down and turn them 270 degrees around. Their necks have 14 vertebrae . That's twice as many neck bones as a person has. The blood vessels thread through holes in an owl's vertebrae. The researchers found that these holes are very large so that the extra space provides an air cushion that protects the vessels. Detecting prey is only the first step for owls. Next they must catch their meals. An owl can fly inches over your head and you can't hear anything. The secret to owls' silent flight is their feathers. Fine "hairs" cover the surface of an owl's wing feathers. And the feathers' edges have soft barbs . Together, they make the sound of air rushing over the owl's wings quieter and less clear. Question: While hunting at night, owls first get a prey's information by _ . Options: A: seeing the shape B: hearing the sound C: detecting the smell D: feeling the air move
Answer: B

Question: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: In the Harry Potter films, Hermione Granger is better than her male friends and is considered the brightest pupil in her grade. Isn't it often the same in schools of our real world? A great many boys fall behind their female classmates. "It's surprising but true that most of the top students have been girls since primary school. Girls are class leaders, club presidents and the top ones in exams," said Wang Feixuan, 15, who studies at a Chengdu school. By any measure, Wang herself is a high-achiever. She is a top student, a team leader in her school's sports club and a winner in national English and IT competitions. But why do so many girls _ their male peers ? In Sun Yunxiao's latest book Save Our Boys, he points out that the education system is "more suited to girls, who are good at memorizing and like to sit quietly and read." Yet he also says that girls have to do so much more when they compete with males for honors, top universities and later good jobs. They can feel great pressure nearly every day. This seems to be the same in most countries in the world. Young women in the United States are also reported to feel the same pressure to be perfect. "Let's look at what we ask of our teenage girls," says an American professor Stephen Hinshaw in an interview. He thinks that it's no longer enough that a girl does well in school and is a caring friend. On the TV, on the Internet, and everywhere, girls see images of impossible perfection . Today's young women must be good learners, good athletes, and fill their after-school lives with other activities. But they're also asked to have the styles and looks of popular stars. "Be pretty, sweet and nice. Be athletic, competitive and get straight. Be impossibly perfect." Stephen Hinshaw sums up. Question: The passage suggests that _ . Options: A: our society asks far too much of teenage girls B: teenage girls shouldn't be so perfect at school C: boys are always lazy ones rather than girls D: American girls have less pressure than Chinese girls
Answer: A

Question: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Educating girls quite possibly outputs a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world. Women's education may be an unusual field for economists, but raising women's contribution to development is actually as much an economic as a social problem. And economics, with its emphasis on motivation, provides an explanation for why so many girls can't receive education. Parents in low-income countries fail to invest in their daughters because they do not expect them to make an economic contribution to the family: girls grow up only to marry into somebody else's family and bear children. Girls are thus seen as less valuable than boys and are kept at home to do housework while their brothers are sent to school-- _ , trapping women in a vicious circle of neglect. An educated mother, on the other hand, has greater earning abilities outside the home and faces an entirely different set of choices. She is likely to have fewer but healthier children and can insist on the development of all her children, ensuring that her daughters are given a fair chance. The education of her daughters then makes it much more likely that the next generation of girls, as well as of boys, will be educated and healthy. The vicious circle is thus transformed into a good circle. Few will disagree with it that educating women has great social benefits. But it has enormous economic advantages as well. Most obviously, there is the direct effect of education on the wages of female workers. Wages rise by 10 to 20 per cent for each additional year of schooling. Such big returns are impressive by the standard of other available investments, but they are just the beginning. Educating women also has a significant influence on health practices, including family planning. Question: The passage mainly discusses _ . Options: A: unequal treatment of boys and girls in developing countries B: the potential earning power of well-educated women C: the major contributions of educated women to society D: the economic and social benefits of educating women
Answer:
D