Read the article and select the best answer. Article: New research shows that overweight or even mildly obese people have a lower risk of early death than people considered to be normal weight. Researchers examined the results of 97 studies. Most of the studies were less than 10 years old. They included almost three million adults from around the world, including the United States, Canada, China, Taiwan, Brazil, India and Mexico. The researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics found that people who are considered overweight or slightly obese were five to six percent less likely to die from all causes than people of normal weight. People with higher obesity ratings, however, had almost a 30 percent greater risk of death compared to normal-weight individuals. Katherine Flegal was the lead author of the study. She says she was not surprised that overweight people would not have a higher risk of death. "Because we'd actually already read a lot of this literature and realized it was likely that mortality rates for overweight would be at least not higher than normal weight. I guess I was a little bit surprised that it was definitely lower. And I was also surprised that the lower rates of obesity also didn't seem to differ from normal weight." But she says the difference in death rates appears to be small between normal-weight people and those who are overweight or mildly obese. The study has raised new questions about "body mass index," or BMI. This is a measurement of body fat as a ratio of height to weight. In recent years, many public health experts have promoted body mass index as a way to predict the risk of health problems. Bu t a person's BMI can be misleading in some cases. Steven Heymsfield ,the executive director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, says people can be physically fit and in good health, but might weigh more because they are more muscular. Still, Dr. Heymsfield says people should not think gaining extra weight is OK just because of the new findings. He says being at a healthy weight lowers the risk for heart disease... Question: Which of the following statements is not true according to the passage? Options: A: BMI is commonly used to measure body fat as a ratio of height to weight. B: Not all people with a little higher BMI are fat . C: Many public health experts encourage more people to use BMI as a way to predict the risk of health problem D: Because of the ne w findings, people should think about gaining extra weight.
D

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: A New Zealand volcano _ for more than a century has erupted,sending up ash clouds,disturbing flights and closing roads. Mount Tongariro, one of three volcanoes in the centre of the North Island, became active just before midnight local time, with reports of loud explosions,pouting rocks and steam. The 1, 978m peak is in a national park popular with hikers. No damages have been reported after the eruption. Witnesses described a dramatic scene as the volcano erupted. "I saw this beautiful. big cloud and I thought: 'Gee that looks like a volcanic plume'. Just as I thought that there was a great big orange flash," truck driver Bryn Rodda told New Zealand National Radio. "It was quite impressive." Mount Tongariro last erupted 115 years ago. And scientists said they did not yet know if this eruption was a single event. Experts said they were caught by surprise--they had recorded some activity like an earthquake in recent weeks but were not expecting an eruption. "This might just be a quiet period and we should expect it to start again at any time. So we are watching things Very closely," volcanologist Michael Rosenberg told TVNZ. Eruption activity has currently reduced, New Zealand media said.Meteorologists said the ash was blowing east towards the Pacific Ocean. A number of inland flights from the North Island to the South Island had been affected by the volcanic activity, Air New Zealand said. Police said highways that had been closed because visibility was affected after the eruption are now open. Some residents in the nearby areas had temporarily left their homes. Officials have not ordered an evacuation , but advised those affected by the ash cloud to stay indoors and close their doors and windows. Question: What effect did the eruption cause? Options: A: Flood. B: Road block. C: Strong wind. D: Air crash.
B

Q: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Argentina in the late nineteenth century was an exciting place.Around 1870,it was experiencing an economic boom,and the capital,Buenos Aires,attracted many people.Farmers,as well as a flood of foreigners from Spain and Italy,came to Buenos Aires seeking jobs.These jobs didn't pay well,and the people felt lonely and disappointed with their new life in the city.As the unhappy newcomers mixed together in the poor parts of the city,the dance known as the tango came into being. At the beginning the tango was a dance of the lower classes.It was danced in the bars and streets.At that time there were many fewer women than men,so if a man didn't want to be left out,his only choice was to dance with another man so that he could attract the attention of the few available women.Gradually,the dance spread into the upper classes of Argentinean society and became more respectable. In Europe at this time,strong interest in dance from around the world was beginning.This interest in international dance was especially evident in Paris.Every kind of dance from ballet to belly dancing could be found on the stages of the Paris theaters.After tango dancers from Argentina arrived in Europe,they began to draw the interest of the public as they performed their exciting dance in cafes.Though not everyone approved of the new dance,saying it was a little too shocking,the dance did find enough supporters to make it popular. The popularity of the tango continued to grow in many other parts of the world.Soldiers who returned to the United States from World War I brought the tango to North America.It reached Japan in 1926,and in 2003 the Argentinean embassy in Seoul hired a local tango dancer to act as a kind of dance ambassador,and promote tango dancing throughout South Korea. Question: Before World War I,the tango spread to _ . Options: A: America B: Japan C: France D: South Korea
A: C

*Question*
Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Reading to oneself is modern activity which was almost unknown to the learned in the early days of the history, while during the fifteenth century the term "reading" undoubtedly meant reading aloud. Only during the nineteenth century did silent reading become popular. One should be careful, however, of supposing that silent reading came about simply because reading aloud is distraction to others. Examination of reasons connected with the historical development of silent reading shows that it became the usual mode of reading for most adult reading tasks mainly because the tasks themselves changed in character. The last century saw a gradual increase in literacy and thus in the number of readers. As readers increased, so the number of listeners dropped, and thus there was some reduction in the need to read aloud. As reading for the benefit of listeners grew less common, so came the popularity of reading as a private activity in such public places as libraries, trains and offices, where reading aloud would disturb other readers in a way. Towards the end of the century there was still heated argument over whether books should be used for information or treated respectfully, and over whether the reading of material such as newspapers was in some way mentally weakening. Indeed this argument remains with us still in education. However, whatever its advantages, the old shared literacy culture had gone and was replaced by the printed mass media on the one hand and by books and magazines for a specialized readership on the other. By the end of the century students were being advised to have some new ideas of books and to use skill in reading them which were not proper, if not impossible, for the oral reader. The social, cultural, and technological developments in the century had greatly changed what the term "reading" referred to. Question: Why was reading aloud common before the nineteenth century? Options: A: Because silent reading had not been discovered. B: Because few people could read for themselves. C: Because there were few places for private reading. D: Because people depended on reading for enjoyment.
**Answer**
B