Q: Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Today, we send millions of Christmas cards every year. But in fact the Christmas card is a ly modern invention. In the Middle Ages, European wood engravers produced prints with religious themes. But the first real Christmas card, as we understand the term today, was designed in London, England in 1840. It went on sale in 1843. The designer was John Callott Horsley, a well- known British painter and member of the Royal Academy. He designed the card at the suggestion of his friend Sir Henry Cole, who was the first director of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Horsley produced 1,000 cards and offered them for sale at 1s (one shilling) each. They were printed on stiff card and coloured by hand, with the greeting: "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You". The card shows three pictures: in the center, a family party; to one side the hungry receiving food; to the other side the poor being clothed. Puritans immediately _ the card, since it showed people drinking in the family party. But with most people the idea was a great success and the Christmas card quickly became very popular. Christmas cards were not the first greetings cards. Since 1796, with improvements in printing, merchants had been sending cards to their customers offering "best wishes" for the new year. In many countries, Christmas cards gradually became even more popular than New Year's cards. As Christmas is the birthday of Jesus Christ, cards often show scenes of His nativity. Others show images connected with Christmas such as wintry scenes of snow-laden pine, Father Christmas card is "Merry Christmas", but many other greetings are also used, such as "Happy Xmas" or "Happy Noel". Question: We can conclude from the text that _ . - Horsley sold his first Christmas cards for 50 pounds - Santa Claus was born on Christmas Day - now there are more greetings on New Year's cards - merchants were the first to send Christmas cards to their customers
A: Horsley sold his first Christmas cards for 50 pounds

Q: Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: School districts are turning to high-tech solutions-from fingerprint scans to electronic cards - to track kids on school buses and keep them from getting off at the wrong stops. A fingerprint scanning system, approved this month for testing at the Desert Sands district, northeast of San Diego. Students will be scanned as they get on and off the bus. "Kids get lost. It happens in every school district, every year," says John DeVries, president of Global Biometrics Security, which developed the Biometric Observation Security System (BOSS) that's being tested. It happened Oct. 13 when a Prince George's County (Md.) school employee took a 5-year-old student to the wrong bus and the student got off several blocks from home. With BOSS, students' fingerprints are scanned and sent to a database. When they get off, they provide a "check out" print. An alarm sounds if the child tries to get off at the wrong place. The fingerprints are not stored, DeVries says. They are converted into a series of numbers that cannot be used to re-create the print, he says. Margaret Gomez of Palm Springs, Calif., whose daughter, then 6, was let off a bus about a mile from her home three years ago, supports the idea. "Anything is better than what they have in place now." Other tracking systems include the ZPass from Seattle-based Zonar Systems, which uses a programmed card carried by students or tied to a backpack. It is in about 30 districts, including North Kansas City Schools and Illinois School District 128 in Palos Heights, company executive Chris Oliver says. Paul Stephens, of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego, says tracking students is reasonable, but the data could fall into unauthorized hands. "What if a child predator was able to get access to this?" he says. Question: What is the purpose of schools turning to high-tech solutions? - To make school buses safer for kids. - To prevent kids from getting lost. - To help parents locate their missing kids. - To save some time for school children.
A: To prevent kids from getting lost.

Q: Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Shanghai Xintiandi Style Mall is filled with a festive mood, featuring large-scale equipment, knit works and various activities, under the theme "kiss". "Kissing is seldom taken as the theme of artworks because in oriental culture, people restrain themselves from expressing their emotions," says Jiang Shan, who is in charge of the exhibition. "Through the exhibition, we hope to encourage people to be confident and brave in expressing their love." Inside the mall, which covers a large area from Zizhong Lu (Road) to Fuxingnan Lu (Road), dozens of color1ful decorations, including balloons, lollipops and lip-shaped decorations are hung on the walls and from the ceiling. Among the decorations, a bright-color1ed wool artwork attracts most eyeballs and brings about a feeling of warmth. The designer, Gu Yeli, says the art piece, Kiss Forest, was inspired by US artist Andy Warhol's 1963 experimental film Kiss, which featured various couples kissing for three and a half minutes each. Gu also organizes a small workshop to teach knitting to children. Artist Wang Xuejun sets up a stainless-steel mirror at the mall's gate leading to Zizhong Lu. Visitors, including men, are invited to put on lipstick and kiss the mirror, thus kissing themselves. The Beast Floral Shop, a flower shop in Shanghai, contributes two walls of flowers that are made into the shape of a book, named Kiss Book. Artifacts of bees and butterflies are fixed among the blossoms, kissing the flowers. The work represents love and harmony in nature. Architect Ma Ke creates a Kiss Bridge with transparent acrylic boards and ceramic fishbowls. Bridges are often spots for dating lovers in traditional Chinese folk stories and the goldfish in the bowls are witnesses of the lovers' kisses. In the south plaza, an18-meter-high interactive tree-shaped light equipment encourages people to kiss. Each kiss turns a certain light on, reminding audiences of their sweet childhood memories of kisses. At the side of the tree is a counter, in which each kiss is counted... Question: What can we learn from the article? - Most people are interested in Jiang Shan's art-piece, which brings about a feeling of warmth. - Most visitors will kiss each other in front of the stainless steel mirror at the gate. - All the decorations in the mall are aimed at encouraging lovers to express their love bravely. - The 18-meter-high interactive tree-shaped light equipment will be on for each kiss.
A: The 18-meter-high interactive tree-shaped light equipment will be on for each kiss.