Question: How can you hear your friends' voices when they are far away and you can't make a long--distance call? Besides the web camera system with your computer, we have a new high-tech way to solve the problem and ease your pain of missing them. The Japanese company Combiwith created a system-- . It makes people in pictures speak! The "talking picture" has a special pen. It is actually a pen-shaped scanner. It can scan information in special--made pictures. A connected player will then play the information out loud. First, you need to take a picture and record what you want to say with the company. The company will then make special barcodes  onto your picture(you can't see those codes). Those codes are your voice and your words. When you hold up the pen to scan your picture with barcodes, a player connected to the pen will start to play. It plays things you've recorded. That way the invention makes the "you" in the picture speak! Do you want your friends and families talking out of pictures? Have them make pictures like that, and you can hear them whenever you want, only with the "talking picture" system. The system can play messages for up to 12 minutes. "The pictures would be useful for those who hope to hear the voice of someone living far away," said Mayumi Fuji, a spokeswoman for the company. "Grandparents, for example, longing to know about their grandchildren, would be happy to hear their voice when they see the picture," Fuji said. But it is troublesome to go to the company for taking a special picture first. And, it is much more expensive than using a telephone. The photo with barcodes costs between 17,040 and 17,990 yen (160 and 169 dollars). The larger picture you want, the more you pay. Now, just raise a finger, lonely people can have their loved ones speak out of pictures. But, whether the "talking picture" is practical or not, let's wait and see. If you want to make a talking picture, you need to    _   . A) take a picture and record what you want to say with the company B) make special barcodes onto your picture C) a pen--shaped scanner to go with the picture D) All of the above
Answer: D

Question: The universe looks like a pretty quiet place to live. But the universe is filled with dangerous things, all struggling to be the one to wipe us off the planet. Happily for us, they're all pretty unlikely, but if you wait long enough, one of them is certain to get us. But which one? 1. Death by Asteroid   Of all the ways we might meet our untimely death, getting wiped out by an asteroid is the most likely. Why? Because we sit in a universal shooting gallery, with 100 tons of material hitting us every day. The problem, though, occurs every few centuries when something big this way comes. If you could ask a dinosaur, I'd imagine they would tell you to take _ seriously. 2. Death by Exploding Star When a huge star ends its life, it does so with a bang, which sends death spreading across space in the form of high-energy radiation. Many studies show that the bang would have to be closer than about 75 light years to do us any harm. The good news: no stars so close are able to do the deed. 3. Death by Dying Sun The sun is important to us; without it, we'd freeze. But the sun is also middle-aged, already halfway to running out of fuel, expanding into a red giant, and cooking us to a fine crisp. Even long before then, it'll warm up enough to raise our average temperature and cause a runaway greenhouse effect, boiling our oceans. Happily, that's a long time from now. 4. Death by Black Hole Black holes are misunderstood. They don't wander the galaxy looking for tasty snacks in the form of planets and stars; they turn around the Milky Way just like the hundreds of billions of other stars do. But it's possible that one could wander too close to us. If it did, planetary paths would be disturbed, causing the Earth to drop into the sun or be thrown out into deep space. Given that it could be trillions of years or more before even that happens, we don't have to worry too much about black holes. My advice? Go outside, look up, enjoy the sun, the moon, and the stars. They may be there forever as far as any one of us is... While the author is introducing the ways the universe could wipe out humankind, he is   _   us. A) warning B) comforting C) entertaining D) ignoring
Answer: C

Question: An 18-year-old high school student who had just learned to swim in the last summer vacation saved the life of a drowning Ohio boy on Friday afternoon. Tom Erickson was credited with (......)saving the life of Jason Pryor,10, in Mill Creek   Park. Young Jason Pryor, from Chillicothe, was visiting  s from Anchor Point when he fell into the Mill Creek. The Pryor boy had no business playing nea k*s5&u r the edge of the river, but he had no idea of the danger. The Creek, with much more water than usual for the recent spring rains, flowed fast and carried the boy around a bend and out of sight from his parents, who took Jason out there and said they had not even witnessed the incident. Luckily for Jason, one of the most unselfish students from Brentwood's Central High School was taking a walk alone through the park. As soon as he found the boy struggling in the water, Erickson jumped into the Creek and managed to pull the drowning boy out of the water. And it was reported that Erickson had never received any life-saving instruction before. "I wasn't sure I could do it," Erickson said. "I didn't know if I could swim through the river by myself, not to mention getting another person out with me." This incident should be a lesson to young children who do not know how to swim. Stay away from dangerous bodies of water. Which of the following sentences is true according to the passage? A) Life-saving instruction helped a lot in the incident. B) Jason's parents saw him fall into the creek but couldn't help. C) The creek flowed fast because it was very straight without any bends. D) Erickson was not sure if he could save the boy when jumping into the Creek.
Answer:
D