Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Experiments aboard the spaceship Columbia have disproved a theory on the human nervous system which won an Austrian professor a Nobel prize 79 years ago. West German astronaut Ulf Merbold disproved the theory during tests aboard the spaceship yesterday. His discovery is connected with the workings of the inner ear, the body's balance mechanism . In l914 Professor Robert Barany won the Nobel prize for Physiology  and Medicine when he announced that temperature differences affected the inner ear and caused the eyes to blink . His theory was accepted by scientists. But Merbold carried out tests to find if the theory was correct and shocked himself and space officials when he proved it wrong. According to Barany's theory the eyes would blink when cold air was blown into one ear and hot air blown into the other. But if this theory was correct such a movement would be impossible in zero gravity . Both Merbold's eyes continually blinked when the test was carried out. Question: Tests were carried out in outer space in order to   _  . - find what causes the eyes to blink - shock the world - win the prize - prove the theory
prove the theory
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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Greenwich  is on the River, five miles from the middle of London, and its history is two thousand years old. The first English people were fishermen there, and they named the place Greenwich, meaning "green village". Later the English kings and queens lived at Greenwich in their beautiful places. The name of the earliest palace was Placentia. Henry VIII lived there. He knew that England must be strong at sea. So he started two big ship-yards  at Greenwich. But trouble was coming to Greenwich. In 1649, a war started in England and for eleven years there was no king. The men who had worked for him at Placentia decided to live the place themselves. They sold all its beautiful things. Finally, the war ended and King Charles II came back. But Placentia was falling down. So King Charles built a new and bigger palace, which is now open to the public. At this time, Charles was worried about losing so many of its ships at sea: their sailors did not know how to tell exactly where they were. So in 1675, Charles made John Flamsteed, the first astronomer  in England, try to find the answer. Flamsteed worked in a new building on the high ground in Greenwich Park. From it with a telescope which he made himself, Flamsteed could look all round the sky. And he did, night after night, for twenty years. Carrying on Flamsteed's work a hundred years later, an astronomer called Harrison finally made a clock which told the time at sea, and helped sailors to know where they were. You can see Harrison's clock, still working, in Greenwich's museum of the sea. Because of Flamsteed's work, every country in the world now tells its time by Greenwich Time. Question: Charles made John Flamsteed try to find   _  . - how to build strong ships - how to tell sailors' positions at sea - how to tell the exact time - a place to set up a telescope
how to tell sailors' positions at sea
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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Some of the world's most significant problems never hit headlines. One example comes from agriculture. Food riots  and hunger make news, but the trend lying behind these matters is rarely talked about. This is the decline in the growth in yields of some of the world's major crops. A new study by the University of Minnesota and McGill University in Montreal looks at where, and how far, this decline is occurring. The authors take a vast number of data pointing for the four most important crops; rice, wheat, corn and soybeans. They find that on between 24 and 39% of all harvested areas, the improvement in yields that took place before the 1980s slowed down in the 1990s and 2000s. There are two worrying features of the slowdown. One is that it has been particularly sharp in the world's most populous  countries,India and China. Their ability to feed themselves has been an important source of relative stability both within the countries and on world food markets. That self-sufficiency cannot be taken for granted if yields continue to slow down or reverse. Second, yield growth has been lower in wheat and rice than in corn and soybeans. This is problematic because wheat and rice are more important as foods' accounting for around half of all calories consumed. Corn and soybeans are more important as feed grains. The authors note that we have preferentially focused our crop improvement efforts on feeding animals and cars rather than on crops that feed people and are the basis of food security in much of the world. The report qualifies the more optimistic findings of another new paper which suggests that the world will not have to dig up a lot more land for farming in order to feed 9 billion people in 2050, as the Food and Agriculture Organization has argued. Instead, it says, thanks to slowing population growth, land currently ploughed  up for crops might be able to _ to forest or wilderness. This could happen. The trouble is that the forecast assumes continued improvements in yields, which may not actually happen. Question: Why does the author mention India and China in particular? - Their self-sufficiency is vital to the stability of world food markets. - Their food yields have begun to decrease sharply in recent years. - Their big populations are causing worldwide concerns. - Their food self-sufficiency has been taken for granted.
Their self-sufficiency is vital to the stability of world food markets.
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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: By the age of almost four,  Elijah Edney has never had a haircut in his life.  But now he can ' t wait to visit the barber's  -  for two reasons: losing his two - foot - long golden hair will mean   that strangers stop mistaking him for a girl; the hair will be donated to charity to provide a wig     for a child with cancer. Mrs.  Edney, who works in a restaurant, says, "Elijah has always had beautiful hair, so I let him grow it as he w8nted.  It' s like silk.  But now it is at a stage where people mistake him for a  girl and he wants it cut into a boy's haircut. " Mrs.  Edney and her husband want to collect enough money-PS350-to process Elijah's hair  for a sick child.  She says,  "I couldn't bear to see all Elijah's beautiful hair go to waste and my  mum mentioned charities that have human hair made into wigs. " Mrs. Edney says, "If we can raise the amount we want, it will mean a family will not have   to pay for the wig and can receive it for free.  When you've got children yourself, you hope that if  they lost their hair someone would do the same for them by donating their hair. " The two-foot-long hair will be donated to the Little Princess Trust    to  make a wig for children suffering cancer. Elijah keeps telling people he is giving his hair to poor  princesses and he is so excited about it. A spokesman for the Little Princess Trust says, "We're very grateful to anyone who decides   to have their hair cut to donate it to the Little Princess Trust. As a result of hair donations like  this, the charity receives real-hair wigs for free to pass on to families whose children have sadly  lost their own hair through cancer treatment. " Question: Who first thought of charities that use human hair? - Elijah's father. - Elijah's mother. - Elijah himself. - Elijah's grandmother.

Elijah's grandmother.
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