*Question*
Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Dieters' who eat meals high in protein might lose a bit more weight than those who get less protein and more carbohydrates all other things being equal, a new analysis of past studies suggests. Researchers found that over an average of 12 weeks, people having a highprotein diet lost about 1.8 extra pounds, and more body fat, than those having a standard-protein diet. Wycherley from the University of South" Australia in Adelaide, the lead author on the study says it's possible that the body may spend more energy and bum more calories while dealing with protein, compared to carbohydrates. Another explanation for the link his team observed is that eating protein helps preserve muscle mass and muscle mass bums more calories, even when the body is resting, than other types of mass. He says people in the studies tend to get protein from a variety of animal and vegetable sources. Vegetable sources of protein include beans. It is not obvious why a higher protein-to-carbohydrate ratio might help people lose more pounds----and one obesity researcher not involved in the new analysis questioned whether the trials were strong enough to make that conclusion. "The studies are generally far too short to tell effect," Dr. James Levine from the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, told Reuters Health in an e-mail. But given the limitations of the present evidence, Levine said, "It makes no real difference which of the weight-loss ways one chooses." Question: What is Levine's attitude towards the conclusion of the studies? Options: A: Doubtful. B: Supportive. C: Curious. D: Agreeable.
**Answer**
A

*Question*
Read the article and select the best answer. Article: A research found that people shown silent videos of piano competitions could pick out the winners more often than those who could also hear the music. It underlines the importance of our sense of vision, say scientists. Their study concludes that the best predictor of a winner's musical performance was the visible passion they displayed, followed closely by their uniqueness and creativity. Chia-Jung Tsay, from University College London, UK, is the study's author and herself a concert pianist. She was interested in how music was judged and found that even professional musicians were unaware of how much they were using visual information over sound. "For the last two decades, I've taken part in various competitions. Through this experience, I found that depending on what type of evaluations were used, the results might vary widely. This led me to wonder about how much visual information really affects these important decisions," she explained. More than 1,000 participants in the study were given samples of either audio, silent video or video with sound, and asked to rate the top three finalists from 10 international classical music competitions. The actual competition winners were only correctly identified by those who were randomly assigned the silent videos. Dr Tasy said the findings were quite surprising, especially because both trained musicians and those without training had stated that sound was most important for their evaluation. "Regardless of levels of expertise, we still seem to be led primarily by visual information, even in this field of music," she said. "Classical music training is often focused on improving the quality of the sound, but this research is about getting to the bottom of what is really being evaluated at the highest levels of competitive performance. She added, "We must be more mindful of our inclination to depend on visual information at the expense of the content that we actually value as more relevant to our decisions." Question: Where does this text probably come from? Options: A: A text book. B: A sports magazine. C: A story book. D: A science website.
**Answer**
D

*Question*
Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Today, several of the world's nearly 7,000 languages face a serious risk of extinction. "For example, Ainu, a language in Japan, is now seriously threatened, with only 10 native speakers left," said lead study author Tatsuya Amano at the University of Cambridge in England. The scientists found that 25 percent of the world's languages are threatened. After identifying where the endangered languages were, they looked for any environmental and social or economic factors those languages might have in common, such as rugged terrain or rapid population growth. "We found that at the global scale, language speaker declines are strongly linked to economic growth-that is, declines are particularly occurring in economically developed regions," Amano said. One important implication of this new study "is that languages in the tropics and Himalayan region are likely to be increasingly threatened in the near future, because these regions still have many local indigenous languages with a small number of speakers, and at the same time are experiencing rapid economic growth," Amano said. Economic growth may endanger languages for a variety of reasons. For instance, speakers of endangered languages may view another more dominant language as offering economic opportunities, and thus forego their own languages. There are other important factors that might endanger languages, the researchers said. For instance, policies regarding how languages are used and taught in schools can be very different among countries and even within each country, and these factors may explain more detailed patterns in language endangerment. Amano suggested it could be possible to forecast future threats to linguistic diversity. "There exists detailed information on projected future changes in the environment, economies and climates," Amano said. "Using such information, together with the findings of this study and further analysis, we would like to understand what will happen to the world's languages, where it will happen and which languages will be... Question: The writer shows us the reasons that languages are endangered by _ . Options: A: offering some examples B: performing some experiments . C: telling some interesting stories D: making a list of important facts .
**Answer**
A

*Question*
Read the article and select the best answer. Article: After helping Barack Obama sweep to victory in the US election, the president-elects motto of "change" was Friday declared character of the year by a monk at one of Japan's most respected temples. Using a calligraphy brush to write the single character on a wooden platform as tourists looked on, Seihan Mori, chief monk at Kiyomizu temple in the ancient capital of Kyoto, declared "change" to be Japan's character of the year. The event was hosted by a Kyoto-based group that promotes the use of "kanji," the Chinese characters used in the Japanese language. The public sent in 111,200 nominations for the kanji of the year. Of those, a majority 5.42 percent approved of "change," followed by "gold," suggesting the Beijing Olympics, and "fall" to show the global market decre.ase. "I think it is an expression of the Japanese peoples wishes to see political, economic and societal changes, as they were impressed by Mr. Obama's message of change," Mori said. He added that climate change also drew people attention to the significance of "change". The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation(JKATF) has been conducting a poll on the year's kanii each year since 1995. Last year's top choice was 'Nise' (fake). Question: Which of the following is true according to the passage? Options: A: The chief monk at Kiyomizu temple decided the kanji of 2008. B: 3 kanjis are nominated for this year's poll. C: "gold" is also selected the kanji of the year. D: The kanji event has been hosted by JKATF for more than 10 years.
**Answer**
D