prefix = st1 /Mauritius, with its full name the Republic of Mauritius, an island country, lies 1,200 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa, and just east of Madagascar, another African island country, which is larger by far thanMauritius. It covers 788 square miles and has a population of 1,00,000, about 750.000 Indians, 300,000 Chinese and 20,000 Whites included. They are living together peacefully, although they share such different beliefs as Hindu, Roman Catholic, Muslim and so on. The country can be divided into many parts with different climate all because of its peculiar terrains  . In the center there are volcanoes several thousand feet high, and 90% of its arable land is covered with sugarcane. There are no people living on the island before the Dutch landed on it in 1638. The Dutch  _ it in 1710, and five years later, the French came and succeeded in planting sugarcane there. It was conquered byBritainin 1818. As a result, its official language is English. The main big cities are Beau - Bassin and Mahebourg, withPort Louisas its capital. Mauritius has many rare and unique animals, such as the snakes, parrots and lizards. The giraffe is a type of animal with a very long neck and legs and yellow skin with dark spots. It is the tallest of all living animals. Mauritius was extremely poor when it declared its independence in 1968. In the past ten years, obvious economic prosperity has shown itself in this island country. Nowadays its business, culture and tourism are developing rapidly. Every year, thousands of millions of people rush there to enjoy the silver sand beach and song and dance performances with native national characters. According to the passage all of the following statements are true EXCEPT_. A) Arable land covers 90% of the country's total area B) It was the rule of foreigners that made the Mauritiuspeople live in poverty C) More than half of Mauritiuspopulation are Indians D) Britain ruled the island longer than French and Dutch
A

A recent study shows that young people in the UK aged between 11 and 15 spend, on average,52 hours a week in front of a screen.Dr.Aric Sigman, a researcher from the British Psychological Society,believes watching too much TV can cause health problems for children,including attention deficit disorder and obesity .He said children under three shouldn't watch TV at all. Children aged between three and seven should watch no more than 30 minutes to an hour of TV a day; 7 to 12-year-olds should be limited to an hour,and 12 to 15-year-olds should watch one and a half hours at most. Both adults and children believe that it can be difficult to cut down on screen time."It needs a bit of effort,but small steps can make a difference,"says Dr. Aric Sigman.He also offered some tips to change the family's TV habits. TVs and computers should be placed out of children's bedrooms.Watching TV before going to sleep doesn't help children to settle  . Having the TV and computer in a family room also means that parents can know what they are watching and who they are talking to online.Parents can tell children how much time they can spend watching TV or playing computer games.Parents can tell children to do something different,such as playing games or going out for a bike ride.Dr. Aric Sigman says:"We went into lots of schools and the children told us they wished their parents would take them to the park and play with them." Where is this text probably from? A) A student's diary. B) A novel. C) A health magazine. D) A TV advertisement.
C

Now comes word from the University of California, Berkeley, a new study has confirmed that the richer you are the less compassionate you are In a study just published in the journal Emotion, psychologist Jennifer Stellar sought to determine the empathic  capacities of a group of 300 college students, who had been hand-selected for maximum economic diversity. As a rule, college students have just one income level: poor. Stellar thus chose her subjects based on the income of the people who respond to the requests and write the checks: the parents. In the first of three experiments, she had 148 of her subjects fill out reports how often they experience emotions such as joy, love, compassion and horror. She also had them agree or disagree with statements like "I often notice people who need help." When the numbers on these lists were processed, Stellar found no meaningful personality differences among the students that could be attributable to income except one: across the board, the lower the subjects' family income, the higher their score on compassion. The second study involved 64 subjects who watched two videos -- an emotionally neutral instructional video on construction techniques, and a far more charged one that involved real families coping with a cancer-stricken child. Again, the subjects filled out emotional lists and again they scored similarly. But the lower-income volunteers continued to come out higher on the compassion-and-empathy scale. During this study, Stellar also used heartbeat monitors to determine their physical reactions to the two videos. There was, not surprisingly, no difference in heart rate when the instructional video was playing, but when the cancer stories began, the heartbeats of the lower-income volunteers slowed noticeably -- a counterintuitive  sign of caring. An immediate threat to ourselves or another causes heart rate to jump, the better to snap into action to respond to the danger. An emotional crisis can have the opposite physical effect on observers -- helping them settle... In Stella's opinion, the lower-income volunteers' heart rate lowers when   _  . A) When they are having their first lesson in a new school. B) They are talking to someone they admire so much. C) They are trapped in a building suddenly on fire. D) They find someone is injured in an accident on the road.
D

Harvard student Julie Zauzmer turned 20 on January 22, and her birthday couldn't have been better: She got to working the overnight shift at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter. That might seem an extraordinary act of selflessness for someone turning 20. But there's increasing evidence that commitment to community service is becoming much more ordinary to today's young adults. "Young adults are doing more volunteer service than in any point in history,'' said Scott Seider, an assistant professor of education at Boston University who studies the civic development of young adults. At Harvard, the Winthrop Street Homeless Shelter is one of 86 social service programs associated with the Phillips Brooks House Association, which is a student-run nonprofit organization. Students can work with deaf children, bring pets to nursing homes, and prepare Chinese students to become US citizens, and so on. Volunteerism develops well outside of colleges, too. Applications to AmeriCorps have risen to a very high level, jumping from 91,399 in 2008 to 258,829 in 2010. City Year, which puts young people in high-poverty schools as tutors and mentors for at-risk students, has had a 140 percent increase in applications since its 2007-2008 service year. Citizen Schools, which uses volunteers to work with students in middle schools, has had a 28 percent jump in applicants between 2008 and 2009. "Most of my friends know it's their duty to give back before they settle down,'' said Samantha Wolf, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate serving with City Year in a Mattapan school. City Year corps member Antonio Gutierrez, 22, graduated last year from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., and is applying for admission to law schools, but this year he is tutoring and mentoring students at the Blackstone Elementary School in the South End. "I grew up in similar circumstances,'' said Gutierrez, who said he was a weak student until enrichment programs changed his academic trajectory  . Raised by a single mother in low-income housing across the... We learn from what Scott Seider says in Paragraph 3 that young people today    _    . A) study harder than before B) do more volunteering than ever before C) don't care much about others D) like to find jobs in their communities

B