Have you taken inventory of the stress in your life? Stress can come from work. It can come from family. It can come from the places we live and the lifestyles we choose. In a recent survey, 60 percent of respondents said the city in which they live is noisier now than five years ago. The other 40 percent? They didn't hear the question. How much stress do you feel? Though not all stress should be avoided, too much pressure can cause lasting harm in practically every area of your life. The solution is to take control. Robert Reich did just that. As Secretary of Labor in the Clinton cabinet ,Robert B. Reich, told of his decision to resign from the stressful job. He said,"I have the best job I've ever had and probably ever will. No topping it."It was true. He seemed to love his job. But he added, "I also have the best family I'll ever have, and I can't get enough of them."And there was the problem --too much of a good thing. He could not give himself to his family and to this particular career at the same time. So Reich said,"I had to choose, I told the boss I'll be leaving, and explained why." His boss, of course, was the president of the United States. And the country took notice. Some people were surprised. Here was a high government official who made a decision to step out of an important and powerful position in order to spend more time at home. He took control. That is the first step to free ourselves from unnecessary stress: take control. Make the hard decision. It may be a decision for less money, a smaller home, a new location, a different job, less prestige ,or a simpler lifestyle. But one thing I believe: it will be a decision you will never regret. The best title for the passage should be_. A) Stress can do harm to our life. B) Taking control of stress. C) Robert Reich's decision to resign from the job. D) Giving more time to our family.
B
(Question)
All over the world, libraries have begun the Herculean task of making faithful digital copies of the books, images and recordings that preserve the intellectual effort of humankind. For armchair scholars, the work promises to bring such a wealth of information to the desktop that the present Internet may seem amateurish in retrospect. ... Librarians see three clear benefits to going digital. First, it helps them preserve rare and fragile objects without denying access to those who wish to study them. The British Library, for example, holds the only medieval manuscript ofBeowulfin London. Only qualified scholars were allowed to see it until Kevin S. Kiernan of the University of Kentucky scanned the manuscript with three different light sources (revealing detail not normally apparent to the naked eye) and put the images up on the Internet for anyone to peruse . Tokyo's National Diet Library is similarly creating highly detailed digital photographs of 1,236 woodblock prints, scrolls and other materials it considers national treasures so that researchers can scrutinize them without handling the originals. A second benefit is convenience. Once books are converted to digital form, patrons can retrieve them in seconds rather than minutes. Several people can simultaneously read the same book or view the same picture. Clerks are spared the chore of reshelving. And libraries could conceivably use the Internet to land their virtual collections to those who are unable to visit in person. The third advantage of electronic copies is that they occupy millimeters of space on a magnetic disk rather than meters on a shelf. Expanding library buildings is increasingly costly. The University of California at Berkeley recently spent $46 million on an underground addition to house 1.5 million books - an average cost of $30 per volume. The price of disk storage, in contrast, has fallen to about $2 per 300-page publication and continues to drop. What does the word 'scrutinize' probably mean? A) keep for a while B) reprint C) restore D) examine carefully
(Answer)
D
When scientists accidentally killed what turned out to be the world's oldest living creature, it was bad enough. Now, their mistake has been worsened after further research found it was even older - at 507 years. The ocean quahog, a type of deep-sea clam, was dredged alive from the bottom of the North Atlantic near Iceland in 2006 by researchers. They then put it in a fridge-freezer, as is normal practice, unaware of its age. It was only when it was taken to a laboratory that scientists from Bangor University studied it and concluded it was 400 years old. The discovery made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. However, by this time, it was too late for Ming the Mollusc , named after the Chinese dynasty when its life began. Unfortunately researchers who calculated Ming's age killed it instantly by opening its shell. The researchers opened the ancient clam up to judge its age by counting growth rings inside. But the rings were so close together that scientists ended up having to count the rings on the outside to be accurate, leading CBS journalists to point out that if scientists had just started there, Ming could have lived on. Now, after examining the quahog more closely, using more advanced methods, the researchers have found the animal was actually 100 years older than they first thought. Dr Paul Butler, from the University's School of Ocean Sciences, said: "We got it wrong the first time and maybe we were a bit hasty publishing our findings back then. But we are absolutely certain that we've got the right age now." The mollusc was born in 1499 - just seven years after Columbus discovered America and before Henry VIII had even married his first wife, Catherine of Aragon in 1509. A quahog's shell grows by a layer every year, in the summer when the water is warmer and food is plentiful. It means that when its shell is cut in half, scientists can count the lines in a similar way that trees can be dated by rings in their trunks. Jan Heinemeier, associate professor at the University of Denmark, who... Where does the text probably come from? A) A magazine of marine life. B) A travel brochure. C) A biography. D) A science fiction.
A