Ques: I'm Evan Ducker. I'm just like every other 15-year-old boy, except I was born with a red birthmark . Some birthmarks are signs of serious medical conditions. I'm very fortunate--mine isn't. I pretty much live a regular life, except for people asking me about it all the time, which can get annoying  sometimes. When I was about 4 years old, I asked my mom why there weren't any characters with birthmarks in the books she would read to me. When we went to the library, we realized there weren't any available for little kids. Worse than that, the books available to older kids and adults described characters with birthmarks as unattractive. So I decided to write my own. I based the story on all the real things that happened in my life. But instead of people, the characters in the book are real animals from the Galapagos Islands, including red-footed booby birds  . I picked a booby bird as the main character because the birds have red feet due to a vascular   condition, similar to a human birthmark! It was really tough to get my book published. It took a long time because a lot of publishers refused to publish it. They would say there wasn't a big enough market for a book about birthmarks. But my mom never gave up trying to help make my dream come true. And in 2005, she finally took her own money and self-published "Buddy Booby's Birthmark". After it was published, I got letters from readers all over the world. They all shared their stories and thanked me for sharing mine. Teachers wrote to tell me that my book changed the way classmates treated each other and that my book was helping kids to accept and appreciate their differences. Then, as more teachers started reading my book, I created a free global reading event, the "International Buddy Booby's Birthmark Read--Along for Tolerance and Awareness." What did the publishers think of the author's book? A) It wouldn't sell well. B) It was rather uninteresting. C) It was poorly written. D) It wasn't fit for kids to read.
Ans: A

Ques: You might not know it, but there is something wonderful at your fingertips. You can make people happier, healthier and more hard-working just by touching their arms or holding their hands. Doctors say that body contact is a kind of medicine that can work wonders. When people are touched, the quantity of hemoglobin  -a type of matter that produces the red color in blood increases greatly. This results in more oxygen reaching every part of the body and the whole body benefits. In experiments, bottle-fed baby monkeys were separated from their mothers for the first ten days of life. They became sad and negative. Studies showed the monkeys were more probable to become ill than other babies that were allowed to stay with their mothers. Human babies react in much the same way. Some years ago, a scientist noticed that some well-fed babies in a clean nursery became weak. Yet babies in another nursery were growing healthily, even though they ate less well and were not kept as clean. The reason, he concluded, was that they often had touches from nurses. Experiments show that most people like being touched. And nearly all doctors believe touch helps to reduce patients' fear of treatment. Of course there is time when a touch is not welcome. But even if we don't like being touched, a smile can make us feel better. Smiling increases blood flow and starts the production of "happy brain" chemicals. So let's have a big smile and don't forget to keep in touch. According to the passage   _  . A) human brains need oxygen and blood supply now and then B) touches from doctors and nurses have nothing to do with treatment C) new-born baby monkeys should stay away from their mothers D) not all the people like being touched
Ans: D

Ques: Many years ago, Norman Cousins was seriously ill. He was given six months to live. His chance for recovery was 1 in 500.  He could see the worry, depression and anger in his life contributed to his disease. He wondered, "If illness can be caused by negativity  , can health be created by positivity  ?" He decided to make an experiment of himself.  Laughing was one of the most positive activities he knew. He watched all the funny movies he could find. He read funny stories. He asked his friends to call him whenever they said, heard or did something interesting.  His pain was so great that he could not sleep. Laughing for 10 solid minutes, he found, relieved the pain for several hours so he could sleep. He fully recovered from his illness and lived another 20 happy and healthy years.  Laughing is necessary to our health. If we're not well, laughing helps us get well; if we are well, laughing helps us stay that way. So, if you like laughing, do it as often as you can.  Use whatever makes you laugh--movies, books, jokes or friends. The people around you may think you're strange, but sooner or later they'll join in even if they don't know what you're laughing about. Cousins decided to try to laugh a lot   _  . A) in order to be happy B) in order to cure his disease C) because he could not live for long D) because his disease couldn't be cured
Ans: B

Ques: Half of the world's population is affected by Asian monsoons , but monsoons are difficult to predict. American researchers have put together a 700-year record of the rainy seasons, which is expected to provide guidance for experts making weather predictions. Every year, damp air masses,known as monsoon,produce large amounts of rainfall in India, East Asia, Northern Australia and East Africa. All this wet air is pulled in by a high pressure area over the Indian Ocean and a low pressure area to the south. According to Edward Cook , a weather expert at Columbia University in New York., the complex nature of the climate systems across Asia makes monsoons hard to predict. In addition, climate records for the area are too recent and not detailed enough to be of much use. Therefore, he and a team of researchers spent more than fifteen years traveling across Asia, looking for trees old enough to provide long-term records. They measured the rings, or circles, inside thousands of ancient trees in more than 300 places. Rainfall has a direct link to the growth and width of rings on some kinds of trees. The researchers developed a document they are calling a Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas. It shows the effect of monsoons over seven centuries, beginning in the 1300s. Professor Cook says the tree-ring records show periods of wet and dry weather. "If the monsoon basically fails or is a very weak one, the trees affected by monsoons at that location might put on a very narrow ring. But if the monsoon is very strong, the trees affected by that monsoon might put on a wide ring for that year. So, the wide and narrow ring widths of the chronology that we developed in Asia provide us with a measure of monsoon variability." With all this information, researchers say they can begin to improve computer climate models for predicting the behavior of monsoons. "There has been widespread famine and starvation and human dying in the past in large droughts. And on the other hand, if the monsoon is particularly heavy, it can cause extensive... What's the passage mainly about? A) The effects of Asian monsoons. B) The necessity of weather forecast. C) The achievements of Edward cook. D) A breakthrough in monsoon prediction.
Ans:
D