Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: The Himalayas are mountains that are located in South Asia. They are a part of Nepal, India, Pakistan, China and Bhutan. The mountains are the highest in the world, reaching almost 9,000 meters sea level. The Himalayas separate the Indian subcontinent from the inner part of Asia. The word Himalaya means " home of snow". 14 mountains are over 8,000 meters high, among them the K2, Nanga Parbat and Mount Everest, at 8,848 meters, the world's highest mountain. The Himalayas extend over 1,500 miles( 2,400km ) from the Indus valley in the west to the Brahmaputra Valley in the east. Many of the mountain peaks are sacred to the people who live in the surrounding areas . Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims go there and pray to God. The Himalayas belong to the youngest mountain ranges in the world. They were formed when the Indian subcontinent, which was originally a part of the southern landmass, drifted to the north and crashed into Asia. This movement started about 70 million years ago and has been going on up to the present day. The Himalayas are still becoming taller, moving at about 7 cm per year. Earthquakes and volcanoes are evidences that the area is still very active. Glaciers and permanent snow fields cover the higher regions of the Himalayas. They are the source of streams that flow into the two big rivers of the region. The Indus flows to the west and through Pakistan into the Arabia Sea. The Ganges and Brahmaputra flow to the east and get together in Bangladesh. They form the largest delta in the world. Question: How many countries do the Himalayas belong to? - 7 - 6 - 4 - 5
5

Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Every day from the time we wake up until the time we go to bed, we are bombarded with information from all sides, from TV, radio, newspapers and books; from family, friends, and colleagues. As a new cable television subscriber, I am ly amazed at the quantity and varying levels of information quality on cable television. Including the networks, there are eight TV "news" organizations vying to provide us with all the information we can possibly absorb. Newspaper, magazines, books, radio, the Internet, email, snail mail, and the telephone all compete for our attention and our minds. At the office conversations around the water cooler and coffee maker serve to spread even more items of information. There is valuable information out there about the world we live in, on topics as varied as health, safety, traffic, nutrition, business, finance, philosophy, nature, science, weather, history and the human condition. There is also a large amount of misleading and outright false information, not just on controversial subjects such as politics and religion but on any topic one can think of, including all of the topics mentioned above. With all this information coming at us from all directions, how does one sift through it all to sort out the facts from the fiction, the truth from the lies, the more important from the less important? Should we turn off the TV, cancel our newspaper subscriptions, disconnect our phones and modems to become information "hermits"? Probably not. A better method of sifting through the information wave without being overwhelmed and confused is to become a skeptical inquirer-or skeptic-with regard to the surrounding world. By "skeptic"-I do not mean a cynic-a person who rejects new ideas simply because they are new. A skeptic is one who questions the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it. Skepticism is a method, not a position. It is a provisional approach to all factual claims. In terms of processing information, a skeptic needs to be able to grasp... Question: The writer implies that if we want to make some judgments about some information, the first thing that we should do is to . - ask for the information - cut off all channels of information - receive and go through the information - become information "hermits"
receive and go through the information

Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Lichens are difficult to see. They don't move. They often mix into the living place. You might not even recognize one if you are looking right at it. Lichens live on rocks, branches, houses, and even metal street signs. You can find these colorful organisms almost everywhere -- from deserts to rainforests, and from Antarctica to Africa. They've traveled in outer space, and some scientists think there might even be lichens on Mars. What you probably don't realize is that a lichen is more than a single thing. It includes two different types of living organisms: a fungus and an alga . Neither of these organisms is a plant, so the lichen isn't a plant either. Through photosynthesis , the alga gets the sun's energy to make food for the fungus, which is the place for the alga to live in. However, the alga cannot leave the fungus. Around the world, scientists have found tens of thousands of types of lichens. Many may not even have been discovered yet. As scientists continue to find new kinds of lichens, they are also working to understand how they are connected to one another. By putting together a lichen family tree, they hope to understand why so many different types of lichens have grown in so many places around the world. Many researchers are trying to understand basic facts about the organisms and their connections. Researchers are also using lichens to examine the health of the environment. Question: Which of the following statements is NOT the scientists' purposes of studying lichens? - To understand basic facts about them. - To creat a lichen family tree. - To understand how lichens are related to each other. - To understand why lichens can live in different places.
To creat a lichen family tree.