Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Inprefix = st1 /Kansas City,Missouri, a computer helps fire fighters. The computer, which works very fast, has information about all the 350,000 street addresses in the city. Within two or three seconds after a call is received, the computer provides necessary information for the fire fighters. The information is then sent to them by radio from the computer centre in the City Hall. The exact place of the burning building and its size, type and any other details are clear to them. TheKansas Citycomputer system also has a medical record of each of the city's 900 fire fighters. This kind of information is especially useful when a fire fighter is injured. With the information, doctors at hospital can treat the injured fire fighters more quickly and easily. The fire fighters themselves greatly appreciate the computer's help. They know about possible danger ahead of them and can prepare for it. Many times the computer information helps to save lives and property . Sometimes the lives are those of fire fighters themselves. Mike Horan, a fire fighter captain, says, "I feel as if the computer is watching over me to help me if I get hurt." Question: The fire fighters can get information about a burning place which is sent by - the radio - the computer - the City Hall - the centre of the city
the radio
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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Billy and Bobby were small boys. They were brothers, and they often fought each other. Last Saturday their mother said to them, "I'm going to cook our lunch now, go out and play in the garden......and be good." "Yes, Mum," the two boys answered, and they went out. They played in the garden for half an hour, and then Billy ran in. "Mum," he said, "Bobby's broken a window in Mrs Allen's house." Mrs Allen was one of their neighbours. "He's a bad boy," his mother said. "How did he break it?" "I threw a stone at him," Billy answered, "and he quickly moved down." Question: Mrs Allen was _ . - Billy's mother - their neighbour - their mother - Bobby's aunt
their neighbour
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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: As goods and services improved, people were persuaded to spend their money on changing from old to new, and found the change worth the expense. When an airline equipped itself with jets, for example, its costs (and therefore air fare) would go up, but the new planes meant such an improvement that the higher cost was justified. A new car (or wireless, washing machine, electric kettle) made life so much more comfortable than the old one that the high cost of replacement was fully repaid. Manufacturers still cry their goods as persuasively as ever, but are the improvements really worth paying for? In many fields, things have now reached such a high standard of performance that further progress is very limited and very, very expensive. Airlines, for example, go to enormous expense in buying the latest jets , in which vast research costs have been spent on ly small improvements. If we abandon these vast costs we might lose the chance of cutting minutes away from flying times; but wouldn't it be better to see airfares drop dramatically, as capital costs become ly insignificant? Again, in the context of a 70 m. p. h. Limit, with lines of cars traveling so close as to control each other's speeds, improvements in performance are actually irrelevant; improvements in handling are unnecessary, as most production cars grip the road perfectly, and comfort has now reached a very high level. Small improvements here are unlikely to be worth the thousands that anybody replacing an ordinary family car every two years may have spent on them. Let us instead have cars -- or wireless, electric kettles, washing machines, television sets -- which are made to last, and not to be replaced. Significant progress is obviously a good thing, but the insignificant progression from model-change to model-change is not. Question: According to this passage, airfares may rise because _ . - the airplane has been improved - people tend to travel by new airplanes - the change is found to be reasonable - the service on the airplane is better than before
the airplane has been improved
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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Whether it is "women and children first" or "every man for himself" in a shipwreck may depend on how long it takes the ship to sink, researchers said recently. When the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German ship in 1915, it sank in 18 minutes and the majority of the survivors were young men and women who responded immediately to their powerful survival instincts . But when the Titanic struck an iceberg in 1912, it took "three hours to go down, allowing time for more civilize behavior to take control--and the majority of the survivors were women, children and people with young children. Economist Benno Torgler of the Queensland University of Technology in Australia and his colleagues studied the two sinkings in order to explore the economic theory that people generally behave in a "rational" and selfish manner. The two tragedies provided a "natural experiment" for testing the idea, because the passengers on the two ships were quite similar in terms of gender and wealth. The major difference was how long it took the ships to sink. They suggested that when people have little time to react, instincts may rule. When more time is available, social influences play a bigger role. But psychologists noted that many factors other than following social norms could come into play in a disaster, including an evolutionary urge to save the species, attachments that are formed between individuals during the event and the leadership of authority figures. The extent of altruism and how it occurs "is a very controversial issue," said Anthony R. Mawson, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.He thinks the dominant response was attachment behavior. Psychologist Daniel Kruger of the University of Michigan, US thinks that the answer lies less in social norms and more in our evolutionary heritage. Human beings have a deep instinct to preserve our kind, he said, and that means "people are more likely to save those who have higher reproductive value, namely the young... Question: According to Benno Torgler, what led to the different results between the two shipwrecks? - The survival instinct. - The civilized behavior. - The leadership of the captain. - The length of time.
The length of time.
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