Hundreds of great books are published in America every year. And every year, editors, critics and other readers try to choose a list of favorites. A few books showed up on list after list of the best fiction from this year. One of them was Ann Patchett's State of Wonder. Publishers Weekly described the novel as one " _ ." The story centers on a drug researcher from Minnesota named Maria Singh. She travels to Brazil to investigate the death of a co-worker. Her search takes her deep into the Amazon area and danger. But she also goes deep into her own soul for a close look at who she is, what she has lost in her life and how she wants the future to look. Ann Patchett lives in Tennesee. She told Publishers Weekly magazine that the state is dense and leafy, like the Amazon jungle. She visited that area while doing research for the novel. Chad Harbach's name was also all over the critics' best lists this year for his first book, The Art of Fielding. The New Yorker magazine praised the novel for the easy way it joins a love of baseball with a love of literature. The book is about a college baseball star. He suffers a mental crisis and begins to fail on the playing field as a result. But the book is about much more than the sport of baseball. It also is a story of love, loss, friendship and growing up. Chad Harbach says his own upbringing influenced the book. The Marriage Plot also got a lot of attention this year. It is the third book from Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides. He spent almost ten years writing it. The Marriage Plot is also a story about becoming an adult. It follows the lives of three students in their final year of college and beyond. Leonard struggles with manic depression, Mitchell, with religious belief and Madeleine struggles with her feelings for both men. What is the passage mainly about? A) People's reading preference. B) Three famous writers. C) The introduction of three well reviewed books. D) The common features of interesting books.
C
Researchers at San Diego Zoo have been studying what has been described as the "secret language" of elephants. They have been monitoring communications between animals that cannot be heard by human ears. The elephant's call will be familiar to most people, but the animals also give out growls . Their growls, however, are only partly audible ; two-thirds of the call is at frequencies that are too low to be picked up by our hearing. To learn more about the inaudible part of the growl, the team attached (......) a microphone sensitive to these low frequencies and a GPS tracking system to eight of the zoo's female elephants. The researchers could then relate the noises the animals were making to what they were doing. Matt Anderson, who led the project, told BBC News, "We're excited to learn how they interact and contact with one another." The team has already learned that pregnant females use this low frequency communication to announce to the rest of their long gestation of over two years, in the last 12 days we see the low part of the growl, which we can't hear. This we believe is to announce to the rest of the herd that the baby is upcoming," said Dr Anderson. The researchers believe that this also warns the elephants to look out for coming danger. "You may think that a baby calf of about 300 pounds would not be as open to predation as other species," he says. "But packs of hyenas are a big threat in the wild." Female elephants are only in season for around four days every four years and these calls can be heard by males more than two miles away. By using a sensitive microphone and a GPS tracking system, the researchers wanted to find out _ A) where the elephants usually go B) what the elephants' growls really mean C) how mother elephants raise baby calves D) how elephants protect their babies.
B
Q: Lucy, whose skeleton was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, died shortly after she fell out of a tree, according to a new study published Monday in the British journalNature. For their research, Kappelman and Dr. Richard Ketcham used a CT scanner to create more than 35,000 "slices" of Lucy's skeleton. Scientists named her Lucy from the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", which was played at the camp the night of her discovery. The following analysis of the slices showed sharp, clean breaks seen at the end of Lucy's right humerus are similar to bone breaks seen in victims of falls. The researchers concluded that these and other breaks in her skeleton show that Lucy, who is believed to have stood about 3 feet 6 inches and weighed about 60 pounds, fell feet first and used her arms to support herself -- but that the injury was too severe to have been survivable. The researchers estimate that Lucy was going about 35 miles an hour when she hit the ground after falling from a height of roughly 40 feet, according to the statement. That sounds _ . But other scientists are doubtful. "There are countless explanations for bone breaks," Dr, Donald C, Johanson, director of the Institute of Human Origins and one of the scientists who discovered Lucy, said, "The suggestion that she fell out of a tree is largely a just-so story and therefore unprovable." Johanson said it was more likely that Lucy's breaks occurred long after she died, saying that "elephant bones appear to have the same kind of breaks, It's unlikely they fell out of a tree. " But the new research focused on "a small number of breaks" that are consistent with "high-energy bone-to-bone influences" and which differ from the sorts of breaks commonly seen in other collected bones. Kappelman responded in an email, "These appear to have occurred at or near the time of death." Which of the following would Johanson probably agree? A) Elephants are unlikely to die from falling. B) Lucy got breaks at or near the time of death. C) Other reasons for the breaks should be considered. D) Lucy's bone breaks differ from other bone breaks.
A: C
(Question)
One day an old woman was traveling alone in the mountains. Suddenly she saw something shining in the stream. When she came close, she found it was a precious stone. She put the stone into her bag and went on with her trip. The next day the old woman met a young man, who was also a traveler in the mountains. The young man looked very hungry, so the old woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked carefully, "The stone is beautiful. Would you like to give it to me?" "Sure. Why not?" the woman said, and handed the stone to him. The young man left happily with the stone. He knew it was worth enough to give him _ for a lifetime. But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the woman. "I've been thinking," he said. "I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back and hope that you can give me something even more precious. Give me what you have within your bag." The woman opened her bag. It was almost empty. She looked at the young man and smiled, "I have nothing special in my bag, but I do have something precious -- the joy of giving!" The young man felt ashamed and left silently. Which of the following would be the best title of the passage? A) A special stone B) The joy of giving C) A woman and a young man D) An experience in the mountains
(Answer)
B