MOST recently, my world has been shaken by the death of a teacher at my school. He was Dr Allan Woolley and he was only 52. Suddenly he took his own life, which remains a mystery. That morning, everyone sensed that something wasn't right. During our lessons, an announcement was made that an assembly was scheduled for morning break, which was only done in emergencies. Once morning break came, the entire school gathered in the main hall. As our headmaster marched out to announce the "momentous news", it felt like the air around us trembled . Many students broke down in tears, and the reaction afterward was intensely powerful and unifying . The headmaster said that students were allowed to miss lessons and have a free period to _ themselves if they found the news too distressing . Many students went outside and shared memories of Dr Woolley to control theirselves. Dr Woolley taught me chemistry two years ago, but up until his death he still taught many of my close friends. Many of my friends were so shocked that they still couldn't believe the person that they had owed some homework to was now dead. It was heart-warming to spend time with teachers that morning and get to know more about them. _ Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage? A) The real cause of Dr Woolley's death is known to us. B) Many students didn't prepare themselves for the bad news so that they felt very sad. C) It takes the whole school some time to recover from the dispressing news. D) Dr Woolley's death allows students to understand teachers better.
A
Plastics are considered one of the most serious pollutants causing environmental problems. The garbage containing plastics end up in the waterways that eventually flow into the oceans. Accumulation of plastic in the ocean endangers marine life and pollutes the water. Does a plastic continent exist? Yes, a plastic continent does exist and was discovered by Captain Charles Moore a decade ago. The plastic continent is twice the size of Britain and it is the region between the Hawaii Islands and California in the central Pacific Ocean. One of the causes of the lack of marine life in this region is due to pollution and pollutants are none other than plastics. Captain Charles Moore believes plastic waste started accumulating in the 1950s. The plastic continent is the man-made continent of floating plastic waste. The fisher men and the sailors have avoided this region for years. The reasons are: 1. There are no fish here because of the lack of nutrients. 2. The zone also lacks the wind that is essential for sailing. To do research on the ocean pollution, Captain Moore founded Algalita Marine Research Foundation. Other organizations such as Greenpeace supported his cause. The reports of The United Nations Environment Program show that millions of seabirds and marine animals are dying due to the invasion of plastics. The waste plastics can be recycled, but in fact they are being thrown into the oceans. The marine animals mistake these for food and eat them. This leads to their death that affects the marine food chain. To save the oceans from the plastic continent you need to reduce the use of plastics, reuse plastic bags and recycle plastics. It is implied that the work of plastic recycling proves to be _ . A) effective B) expensive C) a difficult task D) not good enough
D
Q: Sensing phantom phone vibrations is a strangely common experience. Around 80% of us have imagined a phone vibrating in our pockets when it's actually completely still. Almost 30% of us have also heard non-existent ringing. Are these signs of madness caused by digital culture? Not at all. In fact, phantom vibrations and ringing indicate a fundamental principle in psychology. Psychologists use a concept called Signal Detection Theory to guide their thinking about the problem of perceptual judgments. Working through the example of phone vibrations, we can see how this theory explains why they are a common and unavoidable part of healthy mental function. When your phone is in your pocket, the world is in one of two possible states: the phone is either ringing or not. You also have two possible states of mind: the judgment that the phone is ringing, or the judgment that it isn't. Obviously you'd like to match these states in the correct way. True vibrations should go with "it's ringing", and no vibrations should go with "it's not ringing". Signal detection theory calls these faithful matches a "hit" and a "correct rejection" But there are two other possible combinations: you could mismatch true vibrations with "it's not ringing" (a "miss"); or mismatch the absence of vibrations with "it's ringing" (a "false alarm"). This second kind of mismatch is what's going on when you imagine a phantom phone vibration. What does that mean in terms of your phone? We can assume that people like to notice when their phone is ringing, and that most people hate missing a call. This means their perceptual systems have adjusted their bias to a level that makes misses unlikely. The unavoidable cost is a raised likelihood of false alarms of phantom phone vibrations. The trade-off between false alarms and misses also explains why we all have to put up with fire alarms going off when there isn't a fire. It isn't that the alarms are badly designed, but rather that they are very sensible to smoke and heat and biased to avoid missing a... When we judge correctly that "it's not ringing", this is called a "_". A) hit B) miss C) false alarm D) correct rejection
A: D
Over the holidays, I took my three young children into a fancy chocolate shop to buy gifts. Halfway home, I noticed my 7-year-old son playing with a plastic noisemaker. Long story short: He had stolen the toy. I kept my cool -- even when he said, "but it was only $1.50, Mom!" --and explained why it was unacceptable to take things we didn't buy. A few hours later, I marched my son back to the store with two dollars from his piggy bank. He walked embarrassedly to the counter and told the clerk that he had taken something without paying for it, that he was sorry to break it and that he would pay for it now. I know exactly how terrible he was feeling. Returning to the scene of the crime is the same shame-causing punishment I received when I was five and stole something from a store. 1 remember my dad sending me back to return the item. It remains one of my clearest child- hood memories. After that day, I never stole again. My dad taught me such an important lesson 30 years ago and I saw an opportunity to do the same for my son. But now I wonder if it was the fight thing to do. "Returning to the store is absolutely the right thing to do," Laura Markham, Ph.D., a child psychologist and author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, says. "Many children steal -- they' re not born knowing the rules so it' s our job to teach them." And stay calm when you set them. "If you overreact or yell, you might create a fascination with the behavior and a willful child will be more likely to fight against you," she says. Having a child physically return the stolen item helps him or her grasp the situation -- and the consequence. But don't talk about it for too long. "lf you continuously bring up the incident, the child will believe they' re a thief and that they' re bad," she says. Only time will tell if this experience will have the same powerful effect on my son as it had on me, but at the same time I can rest if I haven' t dealt with the situation badly. According to Laura Markham, if parents shout at their kids' stealing behavior, the kids may _ . A) feel frightened B) steal again C) think they are bad D) remember what happened clearly
B