Morocco, a North African kingdom, is on the south of the Mediterranean Sea and on the east of the Atlantic Ocean, between Algeria and Western Sahara. Morocco became independent from France in 1956. People in Morocco speak Arabic, which is the official language. Some people speak French and Spanish. 98.7% of the people believe in Islam. The capital city of Morocco is Rabat. Casablanca, in the north of this country, is the largest city. The famous movie Casablanca tells a story which happened in this city. It seldom rains in Morocco. The coastal cities are not cold in winter (around 16degC) and not hot in summer (around 22degC). In the inland areas, winters are colder and summers warmer. High up in the mountains the temperature can be as cold as -17.8degCin winter, and mountain tops are covered with snow most of the year. The population of Morocco is about 31,000,000. Most children in Morocco go to primary school, but only about 39% of them go to secondary school. However, this country has one of the oldest universities in the world, hundreds of years older than Oxford University. It is Al Qarawiyin University in Northern Morocco, which was founded in AD 859. We can learn from the text that   _  . A) Morocco is located on the west of the Atlantic B) Morocco was once ruled by France in1955 C) Casablanca, the capital, is the largest city of Morocco D) less than half of the children in Morocco go to primary school
B


Once in a blue moon,  there is one on New Year's Eve. Revelers ringing in 2010 will be treated to a so-called blue moon. According to popular definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a month. But don't expect it to be blue - the name has nothing to do with the color of our closest celestial  neighbor. A full moon occurred on December 2. It will appear again on Thursday in time for the New Year's countdown. The New Year's Eve blue moon will be visible in the United States, Canada, Europe, South America and Africa. For partygoers in Australia and Asia, the full moon does not show up until New Year's Day, making January a blue moon month for them. A full moon occurs every 29.5 days, and most years have 12. On average, an extra full moon in a month - a blue moon - occurs every 2.5 years. The last time there was a lunar double take was in May 2007. New Year's Eve blue moons are rarer, occurring every 19 years. The last time was in 1990; the next one won't come again until 2028. "Blue moons have no astronomical significance," said Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California. "`Blue moon' is just a name in the same sense as a `hunter's moon'(a full moon in octorber) or a `harvest moon,'" Laughlin said in an e-mail. The popular definition of blue moon came about after a writer for Sky & Telescope magazine in 1946 misinterpreted the Maine Farmer's Almanac and labeled a blue moon as the second full moon in a month. In fact, the almanac  defined a blue moon as the third full moon in a season with four full moons. Compared with the hunters moon, the blue moon   _   . A) is more beautiful B) is rarer C) is larger D) is brighter
B


Q: Have you thanked your grandma today? You might want to consider it. A recent study found that kids live longer when a grandmother takes part in their daily lives.  Most animals die soon after their childbearing years are over. Women, however, often live for many years after they stop having kids.   To try to understand why, researchers from Finland looked at birth and death records of two communities from the 18th and 19th centuries, one in Finland and one in Canada. In these communities, 537 Finnish women and 3,290 Canadian women were grandmothers who had lived past the age of 50.    For every decade they lived beyond 50, the researchers found that the women ended up with an average of two extra grandkids. It didn't matter what the differences in health or living conditions were between the two communities or from family to family.   Grandchildren were also more likely to live into adulthood if their grandmothers were alive when they were born. If their grandmothers were younger than 60 at the time, that was even better. The study also found that women had children 2 to 3 years earlier if their own mothers were still alive at that time than those whose mothers had died.    The researchers suggested that grandmothers have provided important assistance in raising their grandchildren for at least the past 200,000 years. As a result, they helped extend everyone's lifespan.    So, don't take your grandma for granted! How many women in the survey in the two communities were grandmothers who had lived past the age of 50? A) 537. B) 3,290. C) 3,827. D) 2,753.
A: C


One of the greatest sources of unhappiness, in my experience, is the difficulty we have in accepting things as they are. When we see something we don't like, we wish it could be different. We cry out for something better. That may be human nature,or perhaps it's something ingrained  in our culture. The root of the unhappiness isn't necessarily that we want things to be different.However, it's that we decided we didn't like it in the first place. We've judged it as bad,rather than saying, "It's not bad or good, and it just is it." In one of my books, I said, "You should expect people to mess up and expect things to go differently than you planned". Some readers said it's too sorrowful to expect things to go wrong.However, it's only negative if you see it as negative and judge it as bad. Instead,you could accept it as the way the world works and try to understand why that is. This can be applied to whatever you do:how other people act at work,how politics works and how depressing the news media can be.Accept these things as they are,and try to understand why they're that way.  _  will save you a lot of sadness,because you'll no longer say, "Oh, I wish bad things didn't happen!'' Does it mean you can never change things? Not at all. But change things not because you can't accept things as they are, but because you enjoy the process of changing, learning and growing. Can we make this world a better place? You can say that you'll continue to try to do things to help others, to grow as a person, to make a difference in this world. That's the correct path you choose to take,because you enjoy that path. Therefore, when you find yourself judging and wishing for difference, try a different approach: accept, and understand. It might lead to some interesting results. The author believes that we feel unhappy maybe because   _  . A) it is our natural emotion in the life B) culture asks us to be different from others C) everyone has their own opinions on things D) we dislike something in the beginning

D