Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Dozens of school districts around the country have been looking at these studies and are considering ways to adjust their class schedules. Eric Peterson is head of St. George's School, a private boarding school for grades 9-12 in the northeastern state of Rhode Island. After looking at the medical research on adolescent sleep needs and observing students in his own school, Peterson consulted with Dr. Judy Owen, a famous pediatrician and sleep expert. Armed with what he considered to be convincing data, Peterson decided to change his school's start time from 8:00 am to 8:30 am on a trial basis to see if a 30-minute change would make a difference. He was surprised by the results. "What was really astonishing was how many benefits and how significant the benefits were," he says. "In the research itself, we saw just over a 50 percent decrease in health-center admissions for fatigue, or fatigue-related illness, or rest requests. We saw almost a 35 percent decrease in first-period lateness. Students reported that they were more attentive. They were less sleepy during the day." And, according to Dr. Patricia Moss, assistant dean for Academic Affairs at St. George's School, students weren't the only ones reporting better results in the classroom. She says virtually all the teachers almost immediately noticed much more concentrated in the classroom, and there was definitely a more positive mood all around. "Kids were happier to be there at 8:30 than they were at 8:00," she says. "So our experience across the total spectrum was, universally, extremely positive and surprisingly so." Headmaster Peterson says there was another unexpected area of change when the school changed its start time. "We saw probably a greater than 30 percent increase in student attendance at breakfast, and of the food that they were eating. We ate more than doubled the amount of milk, eggs, fruit and cereal. So it was quality breakfast foods that the kids were eating. So they were better fueled as well as better rested." Ross and Peterson... Question: According to the passage, the following are the benefits of later school start time EXCLUDING _ . Options: A: increase in breakfast attendance B: increase in examination scores C: decrease in health-center admissions D: decrease in first-period lateness
B

(Question)
Read the article and select the best answer. Article: In 2006, a large number of new Internet sites became popular around the world. Some of these are for communication, others for entertainment . The blog is one form of communication that increased in popularity. Through these personal websites , people can share their lives, ideas and opinions on the Internet. People of all ages have their own blogs. For young people, they are a way to show their writing and other forms of self-expression. Blogs also connect people with other people who have the same interests. For example, teachers use blogs to share ideas with other teachers', as well as experiences and concerns about their work. YouTube is another Internet site that became more popular last year. This website lets anyone create, share and watch short videos. These include videos of people singing or dancing, or animals doing funny things. Three young men created YouTube almost two years ago as a personal video sharing service. They recently sold it to Google for more than one and a half billion dollars. Games and entertainment also became a larger part of the Internet last year. One Internet social site is called Second Life. It is an online world in which computer users create a new self and live a different life. _ get married, build homes, operate businesses, buy and sell goods, work, play and attend school. People also take part in fantasy sports leagues with the help of the Internet. A fantasy sport is a game in which each member of a group acts as the owner of a team. Each owner creates a team of real-life professional players to compete against other teams in the league. More than fifteen million American adults play fantasy sports. The industry earns more than one billion dollars each year from publications, memberships and other costs. Question: The passage is mainly about _ . Options: A: the most popular Internet technology in 2006 B: some new ways for people to communicate or have fun on the Internet C: one online game called Second Life D: the high price of playing online
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B

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Something that has always interested me about Abraham Lincoln is, not surprisingly, his sense of humor. As far as I can tell, he's the first American President to have one. That's because the term"sense of humor" really wasn't in common usage until the eighteen-sixties and seventies. In the eighteen-forties and fifties, it was called"the sense of the ridiculous," and didn't have the positive connotations that"sense of humor" has today. Back then, what was ridiculous was what invited ridicule . Funniness and cruelty went hand in hand. Of course, they still do a lot of arm-in-arm walking in our day as well. Lincoln's humor was very different because, for one thing, it was actually "humor"as what the word meant in his time. We don't make the distinction between "wit "and "humor"anymore; but in the nineteenth century people did. Wit was unpleasant and offensive while humor was pleasant and sympathetic. It's the difference we note now when we distinguish between "laughing with" and "laughing at". Lincoln was much more about "laughing with" than "laughing at". And when "laughing at, " it was often himself he was teasing. In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, when Douglas accused Lincoln of being two-faced, Lincoln replied, referencing his plain looking, "Honestly, if I were two-faced, would I be showing you this one?"And, in a way, Lincoln's face itself tells us much about his sense of humor. You can comb through thousands of photographs of politicians, soldiers, and the like from Lincoln's time and not find a single smile. True, the long exposures required for photographs of that time made smiling difficult. Yet Lincoln alone, as far as I can tell, overcame that difficulty. Interestingly, while having a sense of humor, or at least the appearance of one provided by comedy writers has become a necessary characteristic for an American President in our time, in the nineteenth century, too much humor was considered problem. And that was the case for Lincoln. A journalist covering the Lincoln-Douglas debates... Question: We rarely see people from Lincoln's time wear smile in their photos because _ . Options: A: being humorous was considered inappropriate B: they found it quite funny to smile before camera C: not smiling for photographs was the fashion D: photography technology then was not advanced
D