When a 13-year-old Virginal girl started sneezing, her parents thought it was merely a cold. But when the sneezes continued for hours, they called in a doctor. Nearly two months later the girl was still sneezing, thousands of times a day, and her case had attracted worldwide attention.  Hundreds of suggestions, ranging from poured in. But nothing did any good. Finally, she was taken to Dr. Leo Kanner, one of the world's top authorities on sneezing, who solved the problem with great speed.  He used neither drugs nor surgery for, curiously enough, the clue for the treatment was found in an ancient superstition  about the amazing bodily reaction we call the sneeze.It was all in her mind, he said, a view which Aristotle, some 3,000 years earlier, would have agreed with heartily. Dr. Kanner simply gave a modern psychological interpretation to the ancient belief that too much Sneezing was an indication that the spirit was troubled; and he began to treat the girl accordingly. "Less than two days in a hospital room, a plan for better scholastic and vocational  adjustment, and reassurance about her unreasonable fear of tuberculosis quickly changed her from a sneezer to an ex-sneezer," he reported. Sneezing has always been a subject of wonder, awe and puzzlement. Dr Kanner has collected thousands of superstitions concerning it. The most universal one is the custom of begging for the blessing of God when a person sneezes-- a practice Dr. Kanner traces back to the ancient belief that a sneeze was an indication that the sneezer was possessed of an evil spirit. Strangely, people over the world still continue the custom with the traditional, "God bless you" or something else. When scientists look at the sneeze, they see a remarkable mechanism which, without any conscious help from you, takes on a job that has to be done. When you need to sneeze you sneeze, this being nature's clever way of getting rid of an annoying object from the nose. The object may be just some dust in the nose which nature is trying to remove. According to scientists, people sneeze because   _  . A) they are ill B) to sneeze is human nature C) they do not need any conscious help D) there are unwanted things in their noses
B

A lot of grown-ups worry that spending too much time playing video games isn't good for a kid's health. Now some doctors have noticed that kids who bring their hand-held game players to the hospital seem less worried about being there. These patients also seem to experience less pain when they are concentrating on a superhero adventure or a car race. At the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Maryland, young patients are finding hospital visits easier to deal with, thanks to a test program called the Hospital-based On-line Pediatric Environment (HOPE). Patients in HOPE have a life-threatening condition where their kidneys no longer filter wastes from their blood. To get their blood cleaned, these kids must be hooked up to dialysis  machines at the hospital three times a week, for at least three hours each time. HOPE allows kids to play online sports, racing, and adventure games with each other. Eventually they will be able to connect with kids in other hospitals who are suffering from the same problem. "We want to use the power of the Internet to bring together kids who feel that they are separated by their illness, and let them know that they are not alone," said Arun Mathews, the doctor who heads the program. He loves video games himself and got the idea to connect kids all over the country. Many researchers elsewhere are testing video game programs that might help young patients. For example, nine-year-old Ben Duskin of San Francisco, who was struggling with cancer helped to design a video game where players get rid of cancer cells. That's all great news, because doctors already know that reducing pain and worry helps patients heal faster. What can we learn from the passage? A) Nine-year-old Ben Duskin, who has a cancer, is very brave and clever. B) Many parents want their children to play video games because it's good for their health. C) Doctors are not sure whether reducing pain and worry can help the patients recover faster. D) HOPE allows kids to play online games only with the kids in the same hospital.
A

Producing money requires both artistic and technological skills. Dollar bills are made so that they are interesting to look at but very hard to copy. In total, there are sixty-five separate steps required to make a dollar bill. The money making process begins when. a yearly order is sent by the Federal Reserve Board. That order will then be divided in half. Half will be done here in Washington, D. C.and the other half will be done in Fort Worth, Texas. Next, the Bureau orders special paper which is actually cloth since it is 75% cotton and 25% linen. This paper is made so that it can last a long time. And, it is made with details that make it hard to copy. For example, bills contain security threads. These narrow pieces of plastic are inside the paper and run along the width of the bill. This special paper is also made with very small blue and red fibers. Once the money is printed, guillotine cutters separate the sheets into two notes, then into individual notes. The notes are organized in "bricks," each of which contains forty one-hundred-note packages. The bricks then go to one of twelve Federal Reserve Districts, which then give the money to local banks. Ninety-five percent of the bills printed each year are used to replace money that is in circulation, or that has already been removed from circulation. You may know that America's first president, George Washington, is pictured on the one- dollar bill. But do you know whose face is on the two, five, ten, twenty, fifty and one hundred-dollar bills? They are, in order. President Thomas Jefferson, President Abraham Lincoln, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, President Andrew Jackson, President Ulysses Grant and statesman Benjamin Franklin. The average life span of a one-dollar bill is twenty-one months. But a ten-dollar bill lasts only about eighteen months. The one hundred-dollar bill lasts the longest, eighty-nine months. One popular question is about the two-dollar bill. This bill is not printed very often. This is because many Americans believe... We can learn from the passage that the security threads  _  . A) are narrow pieces of plastic B) are pressed outside the bills C) are longer than the width of the bills D) are actually made of cotton and linen
A

Canada is a the second largest country in the world. But it has a very small population. There are only about 29 million people there. Most Canadians are of British or French origin, and French is an official language of Canada as well as English. About 45% of the  people are of British origin, that is, they or their parents or grandparents, etc. , come from Britain. Nearly 30% are of French origin. Most of the French-Canadians live in the province of Quebec . Over the years, people have come to live in Canada from many countries in the world. They are from most European countries and also from China, besides other Asian  countries. However,   Canada was not an empty country when the Europeans began to arrive. Canadian Indians lived along the coast, by the rivers and lakes and in forests. Today there are only about 350,000 Indians in the whole country, with their own languages. In the far north live the Inuit. There are only 27,000 Canadian-Inuit. Their life is hard in such a difficult climate. The official languages of Canada are   _  . A) English and Chinese B) French and English C) Indian and English D) Chinese and Inuit

B