Two dissimilar metals
joined at their ends kept at constant temperature constitute:
First introduced in 1927, The Hardy
Boys Mystery Stories are a series of books about the adventures of brothers
Frank and Joe Hardy, teenaged detectives who solve one baffling mystery after
another. The Hardy Boys were so popular among young boys that in 1930 a similar
series was created for girls featuring a sixteen-year-old detective named Nancy
Drew. The cover of each volume of The Hardy Boys states that he author of the
series is Franklin W. Dixon; the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories are supposedly
written by Carolyn Keene. Over the years, though, many fans of both series have
been surprised to find out that Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene are not
real people. If Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene never existed, then who
wrote The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries?
The Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew
books were written through a process called ghostwriting. A ghostwriter writes
a book according to a specific formula. While ghostwriters are paid for writing
the books, their authorship is not acknowledged, and their names do not appear
on the published books. Ghostwriters can write books for children or adults,
the content of which is unspecific. Sometimes they work on book series with a
lot of individual titles, such as The Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew series.
The initial idea for both The Hardy
Boys and the Nancy Drew series was developed by a man named Edward Stratemeyer,
who owned a publishing company that specialized in children’s book.
Stratemeyer noticed the increasing
popularity of mysteries among adult, and surmised that children would enjoy
reading mysteries about younger detectives with whom they could identify.
Stratemeyer first developed each book with an outline describing the plot and
setting. Once he completed the outline, Stratemeyer then hired a ghostwriter to
convert it into a book of slightly over 200 pages. After the ghostwriter had
written a draft of a book, he or she would send it back to Stratemeyer, who
would make a list of corrections and mail it back to the ghostwriter. The
ghostwriter would revise the book according to Stratemeyer’s instructions and
then return it to him. Once Stratemeyer approved the book, it was ready for
publication.
Because each series ran for so many
years, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys both had a number of different
ghostwriters producing books; however, the first ghostwrites for each series proved
to be the most influential. The initial ghostwriter for The Hardy Boys was a
Canadian journalist named Leslie McFarlane. A few years later, Mildred A. Wirt,
a young writer from lowa, began writing the Nancy Drew books. Although they
were using prepared outlines as guides, both McFarlane and Wirt developed the
characters themselves. The personalities of Frank and Joe Hardy and Nancy arose
directly from McFarlane’s and wirt’s imaginations. For example, Mildred Wirt
had been a star college athelete and gave Nancy similar athletic abilities. The
ghostwriters were also responsible for numerous plot and setting details.
Leslie McFarlane used elements of his small C fictional hometown.
Although The Hardy Boys and Nancy
Drew books were very popular with children, not everyone approved of them.
Critics thought their plots were unrealistic and even far-fetched, since most
teenagers did not experience the adventures Frank and Joe Hardy or Nancy Drew
did. The way the books were written also attracted criticism. Many teachers and
librarians objected to the ghostwriting process, claiming it was designed to
produce books quickly rather than create quality literature. Some libraries –
including the New York Public Library – even refused to include the books in
their children’s collections. Ironically, this decision actually helped sales
of his books, because children simply purchased them when they were unavailable
in local libraries.
Regardless of the debates about
their literary merit, each series of books has exerted an undeniable influence
on American and even global culture. Most Americans have never heard of Edward
Stratemeyer, Leslie McFarlane, or Mildred wirt, but people throughout the world
are familiar with Nancy Drew and Frank and Joe Hardy.
As used in paragraph 3, which is the
best definition for surmised?
Recent advances in science and technology have made it
possible for geneticists to find out abnormalities in the unborn foetus and
take remedial action to rectify some defects which would otherwise prove to be
fatal to the child. Though genetic engineering is still at its infancy,
scientists can now predict with greater accuracy a genetic disorder. It is not
yet an exact science since they are not in a position to predict when exactly a
genetic disorder will set in. While they have not yet been able to change the
genetic order of the gene in germs, they are optimistic and are holding out
that in the near future they might be successful in achieving this feat. They
have, however, acquired the ability in manipulating tissue cells. However,
genetic mis-information can sometimes be damaging for it may adversely affect
people psychologically. Genetic information may lead to a tendency to brand
some people as inferiors. Genetic information can therefore be abused and its
application in deciding the sex of the foetus and its subsequent abortion is
now hotly debated on ethical lines. But on this issue geneticists cannot be
squarely blamed though this charge has often been leveled at them. It is mainly
a societal problem. At present genetic engineering is a costly process of
detecting disorders but scientists hope to reduce the costs when technology
becomes more advanced. This is why much progress in this area has been possible
in scientifically advanced and rich countries like the U.S.A., U.K. and Japan.
It remains to be seen if in the future this science will lead to the
development of a race of supermen or will be able to obliterate disease from
this world.
Which of the following is not true, according to the
passage?
Each nation has its own peculiar character
which distinguishes it from others. But the people of the world have more
points in which they are all like each other than points in which they are
different. One type of person that is common in every country is the one who
always tried to do as little as he possibly can and to get as much in return as
he can. His opposite, the man who is in the habit of doing more than is
strictly necessary and is ready to accept what is offered in return, is rare
everywhere.
Both these types are usually unconscious of
their character. The man who avoids effort is always talking about his ‘rights’;
he appears to think that society owes him a pleasant easy life. The man who is
always doing more than his sheer talks of ‘duties’ feels that the individual is
in debt to society, and not society to the individual. As a result of their
view, neither of these men thinks that he behaves at all strangely.
The man who talks of ‘duties’:
The public distribution system, which provides food at low
prices, is a subject of vital concern. There is a growing realization that
thought Pakistan has enough food to feed its masses three square meals a day,
the monster of starvation and food insecurity continues to haunt the poor in
our country.
Increasing the purchasing power of the poor through
providing productive employment leading to rising income, and thus good standard
of living is the ultimate objective of public policy. However, till then, there
is a need to provide assured supply of food through a restructured more
efficient and decentralized public distribution system (PDS).
Although the PDS is extensive – it is one of the largest
such systems in the world – it has yet to reach the rural poor and the far off
places. It remains an urban phenomenon, with the majority of the rural poor
still out of its reach due to lack of economic and physical access. The poorest
in the cities and the migrants are left out, for they generally do not possess
ration cards. The allocation of PDS supplies in big cities is larger than in
rural areas. In view of such deficiencies in the system, the PDS urgently needs
to be streamlined. In addition, considering the large food grains production
combined with food subsidy on one hand and the continuing slow starvation and dismal
poverty of the rural population on the other, there is a strong case for making
PDS target group oriented.
The growing salaried class is provided job security, regular
income, and percent insulation against inflation. These gains of development
have not percolated down to the vast majority of our working population. If one
compares only dearness allowance to the employees in public and private sector
and looks at its growth in the past few years, the rising food subsidy is
insignificant to the point of inequity. The food subsidy is a kind of D.A. to
the poor, the self-employed and those in the unorganized sector of the economy.
However, what is most unfortunate is that out of the large budget of the so –
called food subsidy, the major part of it is administrative cost and wastages.
A small portion of the above budget goes to the real consumer and an even
lesser portion to the poor who are in real need.
It is true that subsidies should not become a permanent feature
except for the destitute, disabled widows and the old. It is also true that
subsidies often create a psychology of dependence and hence is habit – forming,
killing the general initiative of the people. By making PDS target group
oriented, not only the poorest and neediest would be reached without additional
cost, but it will actually cut overall costs incurred on large cities and for
better off localities. When the food and food subsidy are limited the rural and
urban poor should have the priority in the PDS supplies. The PDS should be
closely linked with programs of employment generation and nutrition
improvement.
Which of the following,
according to the passage, it compared with dearness allowance?
Educational planning should aim at meeting the educational needs
of the entire population of all age group. While the traditional structure of
education as a three layer hierarchy from the primary stage to the university
represents the core, we should not overlook the periphery which is equally
important. Under modern conditions, workers need to rewind, or renew their
enthusiasm, or strike out in a new direction, or improve their skills as much
as any university professor. The retired and the age have their needs as well.
Educational planning, in their words, should take care of the needs of
everyone.
Our structures of education have been built up on the
assumption that there is a terminal point to education. This basic defect has
become all the more harmful today. A UNESCO report entitled ‘learning to Be’
prepared by Edgar Faure and others in 1973 asserts that the education of
children must prepare the future adult for various forms of self – learning. A
viable education system of the future should consist of modules with different
kinds of functions serving a diversity of constituents. And performance, not
the period of study, should be the basis for credentials. The writing is
already on the wall.
In view of the fact that the significance of a commitment of
lifelong learning and lifetime education is being discussed only in recent years
even in educationally advanced countries, the possibility of the idea becoming
an integral part of educational thinking seems to be a far cry. For, to move in
that direction means such more than some simple rearrangement of the present
organization of education. But a good beginning can be made by developing Open
University programs for older learners of different categories and introducing
extension services in the conventional colleges and schools. Also these
institutions should learn to cooperate with the numerous community
organizations such as libraries. Museums, municipal recreational programs,
health services etc.
According to the passage,
the present education structures assume which of the following?
Chocolate – there’s nothing quite like it, is there?
Chocolate is simply delicious. What is chocolate? Where does it come from?
Christopher Columbus was probably the first to take cacao
beans from the New World to Europe in around 1502. But the history of chocolate
goes back at least 4,000 years! The Aztecs, who lived in America, through that
their bitter cacao drink was a divine gift from heaven. In fact, the scientist
Carolus Linnaeus named the plant Theobroma, which means “food of the gods”
The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortex went to America in
1519. He visited the Mexican emperor Montezuma. He saw that Montezuma drank
cacao mixed with vanilla and spices. Cortez took some cacao home as a gift to the
Spanish King Charles. In Spain, people began to drink Cortez’s chocolate in
drink with chili peppers. However, the natural taste of cacao was too bitter
for most people. To sweeten the drink, Europeans added sugar to the cacao
drink. As a sweet drink, it became more popular. By the 17th
century, rich people in Europe were drinking it.
Later, people started using chocolate in pastries, like pies and cakes. In 1828, Dutch chocolate
makers started using a new process for removing the fat from cacao beans, and
getting to the center of the cacao bean. The Dutch chocolate maker Conrad J.
Van Houten made a machine that pressed the fat from the bean. The resulting powder
mixed better with water than cacao did. Now, some call van Houten’s chocolate “Dutch
chocolate.”
It was easy to mix Dutuch chocolate powder with sugar. So
other chocolate makers started trying new recipes that used powdered chocolate. People started
mixing sweetened chocolate with cocoa butter to make solid chocolate bars. In
1849, an English chocolate maker made the first chocolate bar. In the 19th
century, the Swiss started making milk chocolate by mixing powdered milk with
sweetened chocolate. Milk chocolate has not changed much since this process was
invented.
Today, two countries – Brazil and Ivory Coast – account for
almost half the world’s chocolate. The United States imports most of the
chocolate in the world, but the Swiss eat the most chocolate per person. The
most chocolate eaten today is sweet milk chocolate, but people also eat white
chocolate and dark chocolate.
Cocoa and dark chocolate are believed to help prevent heart
attacks, or help keep from happening. They are supposed to be good for the
circulatory system. On the other hand, the high fat content of chocolate can
cause weight gain, which is not good for people’s health. Other health claims
for chocolate have not been proven, but some research shows that chocolate
could be good for the brain.
Chocolate is a popular holiday gift. A popular Valentine’s
Day gift is a box of chocolate candies with a card and flowers. Chocolate is
sometimes given for Christmas and birthdays. Chocolate eggs are sometimes given
at Easter.
Chocolate is toxic to some animals. An ingredient in chocolate
is poisonous to dogs, cats, parrots, small rodents, and some livestock. Their
bodies cannot process some if the chemicals found in chocolate. Therefore, they
should never be fed chocolate.
Why did Linnaeus name the plant Theobroma?
In the early 1920's,
settlers came to Alaska looking for gold. They traveled by boat to the coastal
towns of Seward and Knik, and from there by land into the gold fields. The
trail they used to travel inland is known today as the lditarod Trail, one of the
National Historic Trails designated by the congress of the United States. The
Iditarod Trail quickly became a major thoroughfare in Alaska, as the mail and
supplies were carried across this trail. People also used it to get from place
to place, including the priests, ministers, and judges who had to travel
between villages down this trail was via god sled. Once the gold rush ended,
many gold-seekers went back to where they had come from, and suddenly there was
much less travel on the lditarod Trail. The introduction of the airplane in the
late 1920's meant dog teams were mode of transportation, of course airplane
carrying the mail and supplies, there was less need for land travel in general.
The final blow to the use of the dog teams was the appearance of snowmoniles.
By the mid 1960's most Alasknas didn't even know the lditarod Trail existed, or
that dos teens had played a crucial role in Alaska's early settlements. Dorothy
G.Page, a self-made historian, recognized how few people knew about the former
use of sled dogs as working animals and about the Iditarod Trail's role in
Alaska's colorful history. To she came up with the idea to have a god sled race
over the Iditarod Trail. She presented her idea to an enthusiastic musher, as
dog sled drivers are known, named Joe Redington, Sr. Soon the pages and the
Redintons were working together to promote the idea of the Iditarod race. Many
people worked to make the first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race a reality in 1967.
The Aurora Dog Mushers Club, along with men from the Adult Camp in Sutton,
helped clear years of overgrowth from the first nine miles of the Iditarod
Trail. To raise interest in the race, a $25,000 purse was offered, with Joe
Redington donating one acre of his land to help raise the funds. The short race,
approximately 27 miles long, was put on a second time in 1969. After these
first two successful races, the goal was to lengthen the race a little further
to the ghost town of Iditarod by 1973. However in 1972, the U.S. Army reopened
the trail as a winter exercise, and so in 1973, the decision was made to take
the race all the way to the city of Nome-over 1,000 miles. There were who
believed it could bot be done and that it wad crazy to send a bunch out into
vast, uninhabited Alaskan wilderness. But the race went! 22 mushers finished
that year, and to date over 400 people have completed it.
Based on information in
the passage, it can be inferred that all of the following contributed to the
disuse of the Iditarod Trail except
Lilly loves her town. She loves
the mall. She loves the parks. She also loves her school. Most of all, though,
Lilly loves the seasons. In her old town, it was hot all of the time.
Sometimes it is cold in Lilly’s
new town. The cold season is in winter. Once in a while it snows. Lilly has
never seen snow before. So far her, the snow is exciting as well as very
beautiful. Lilly has to wear gloves to keep her hands warm. She also wear a
scarf around her neck.
In spring, flowers bloom and the
trees turn green with new leaves. Pollen falls on the cars and windowsills and
makes Lilly sneeze. People work in their yards and mow their grass.
In summer, Lilly wears her old
shorts and sandals- the same ones she used to wear in her old town. It is hot
outside, and dogs lie in the shade. Lilly and her friends go to a pool or play
in the water sprinkler. Her father cooks hamburgers on the grill for dinner.
Lilly’s favorite season is autumn.
In autumn, the leaves on the trees turn yellow, gold, red, and orange.
Halloween comes in autumn, and this Lilly’s favorite holiday. Every Halloween,
Lilly wears a costume. Last year she wore a mouse costume. This year she will
wear a fish costume.
One evening in autumn, Lilly and
her mom are on sitting together on the porch. Mom tells Lilly that autumn is
also called “fall”. This is a good idea, Lilly thinks, because in the fall all
of the leaves fall down from the trees.
How is Lilly’s new town different from
her old town
I it snow in her new town
II Lilly wears different summer
clothes in her new town
III Lilly wears a Halloween
costume in her new town
Fleas are perfectly designed by
nature to feast on anything containing blood. Like a shark in the water or a
wolf in the woods, fleas are ideally equipped to do what they do, making them
very difficult to defeat. The bodies of these tiny parasites are extremely
hardy and well-suited for their job.
A flea has a very hard exoskeleton,
which means the body is covered by a tough, tile-like plate called a sclerite.
Because of these plates, fleas are almost impossible to squish. The
exoskeletons of fleas are also waterproof of fleas are also waterproof and shock
resistant, and therefore fleas are highly resistant to the sprays and chemicals
used to kill them.
Little spines are attached to his
plate. The spine the flea scurries through an animal’s fur in – search of
grooming pet tries to pull a flea off through the hair coat, these spines will
extend and stick to the fur like Velcro.
Fleas are some of the best jumpers
in the natural world. A flea can jump seven inches, or 150 times its own
length, either vertically or horizontally. An equivalent jump for a person
would be 555 feet, the height of the Washington Monument. Fleas can jump 30,000
times in a row without stopping, and they are able to accelerate through the
air at an incredibly high rate – a rate which is over ten times what humans can
withstand in an airplane.
Fleas have very long rear legs with
huge thigh muscles and multiple joints. When they get ready to jump. They fold their
long legs up and crouch like a runner on a staring block. Several of their
joints contain a protein called resilin, which helps catapult fleas into the
air as they jump, similar to the way a rubber band provides momentum to a
slingshot. Outward facing claws on the bottom of their legs grip anything they
touch when they land.
The adult female flea mates after
her first blood meal and begins producing eggs in just 1 to 2 days. One flea
can lay up to 50 eggs in one day and over 2,000 in her lifetime. Flea eggs can
be seen with the naked eye, but they are about the size of a grain of salt. Shortly
after being laid, the eggs begin to transform into cocoons. In the cocoon
state, fleas are fully developed adults, and will hatch immediately if
conditions are favorable. Fleas can detect warmth, movement, and carbon dioxide
in exhaled breath, and these three factors stimulate them to emerge as new
adults. If the flea does not detect appropriate conditions, it can remain
dormant in the cocoon state for extended periods. Under ideal conditions, the
entire life cycle may only take 3 weeks, so in no time at all, pets and homes
can become infested.
Because of these characteristics,
fleas are intimidating opponents. The best way to control fleas, therefore, is
to take steps to prevent an infestation from ever occurring.
It can be inferred that fleas will
emerge from eggs as adults
Chocolate – there’s nothing quite like it, is there?
Chocolate is simply delicious. What is chocolate? Where does it come from?
Christopher Columbus was probably the first to take cacao
beans from the New World to Europe in around 1502. But the history of chocolate
goes back at least 4,000 years! The Aztecs, who lived in America, through that
their bitter cacao drink was a divine gift from heaven. In fact, the scientist
Carolus Linnaeus named the plant Theobroma, which means “food of the gods”
The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortex went to America in
1519. He visited the Mexican emperor Montezuma. He saw that Montezuma drank
cacao mixed with vanilla and spices. Cortez took some cacao home as a gift to the
Spanish King Charles. In Spain, people began to drink Cortez’s chocolate in
drink with chili peppers. However, the natural taste of cacao was too bitter
for most people. To sweeten the drink, Europeans added sugar to the cacao
drink. As a sweet drink, it became more popular. By the 17th
century, rich people in Europe were drinking it.
Later, people started using chocolate in pastries, like pies and cakes. In 1828, Dutch chocolate
makers started using a new process for removing the fat from cacao beans, and
getting to the center of the cacao bean. The Dutch chocolate maker Conrad J.
Van Houten made a machine that pressed the fat from the bean. The resulting powder
mixed better with water than cacao did. Now, some call van Houten’s chocolate “Dutch
chocolate.”
It was easy to mix Dutuch chocolate powder with sugar. So
other chocolate makers started trying new recipes that used powdered chocolate. People started
mixing sweetened chocolate with cocoa butter to make solid chocolate bars. In
1849, an English chocolate maker made the first chocolate bar. In the 19th
century, the Swiss started making milk chocolate by mixing powdered milk with
sweetened chocolate. Milk chocolate has not changed much since this process was
invented.
Today, two countries – Brazil and Ivory Coast – account for
almost half the world’s chocolate. The United States imports most of the
chocolate in the world, but the Swiss eat the most chocolate per person. The
most chocolate eaten today is sweet milk chocolate, but people also eat white
chocolate and dark chocolate.
Cocoa and dark chocolate are believed to help prevent heart
attacks, or help keep from happening. They are supposed to be good for the
circulatory system. On the other hand, the high fat content of chocolate can
cause weight gain, which is not good for people’s health. Other health claims
for chocolate have not been proven, but some research shows that chocolate
could be good for the brain.
Chocolate is a popular holiday gift. A popular Valentine’s
Day gift is a box of chocolate candies with a card and flowers. Chocolate is
sometimes given for Christmas and birthdays. Chocolate eggs are sometimes given
at Easter.
Chocolate is toxic to some animals. An ingredient in chocolate
is poisonous to dogs, cats, parrots, small rodents, and some livestock. Their
bodies cannot process some if the chemicals found in chocolate. Therefore, they
should never be fed chocolate.
Pastries are
When her grandmother’s health began to deteriorate in the
fall of 1994, Mary would make the drive from Washington, DC to Winchester every
few days.
She hated highway driving, finding it ugly and monotonous. She
preferred to take meandering back roads to her grandmother’s hospital. When she
drove through the rocky town of Harpers Ferry, the beauty of the rough waters
churning at the intersection of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers always
captivated her.
Toward the end of her journey, Mary had to get on highway
81. It was here that she discovered a surprising bit of beauty during one of
her trips. Along the median of the highway, there was a long stretch of
wildflowers. They were thin and delicate and purple, and swayed in the wind as
if whispering poems to each other.
The first time she saw the flowers, Mary was seized by an uncontrollable
urge to pull over on the highway and yank a bunch from the soil. She carried
them into her grandmother’s room when she arrived at the hospital and placed
them in a water pitcher by her bed. For a moment her grandmother seemed more
lucid than usual. She thanked Mary for the flowers, commented on their beauty
and asked where she had gotten them. Mary was overjoyed by the ability of the
flowers to wake something up inside her ailing grandmother.
Afterwards, Mary began carrying scissors in the car during
her trips to visit her grandmother. She would quickly glide onto the shoulder,
jump out of the car, and clip a bunch of flowers. Each time Mary placed the
flowers in the pitcher, her grandmother’s eyes would light up and they would
have a splendid conversation.
One morning in late October, Mary got a call that her
grandmother had taken a turn for the worse. Mary was in such a hurry to get to
her grandmother that she sped past her flower spot. She decided to turn around
head several miles back, and cut a bunch. Mary arrived at the hospital to find her
grandmother very weak and unresponsive. She placed flowers in the pitcher and
sat down. She felt a squeeze on her fingers. It was the last conversation they
had.
“They were thin and delicate and purple, and swayed in the
wind as if whispering poems to each other.”
Which of the following literary techniques is used in the
above sentence?
On January 3, 1961, nine days after
Christmas, Richard Legg, John Byrnes, and Richard McKinley were killed in a
remote desert in eastern Idaho. Their deaths occurred when a nuclear reactor
exploded at a top-secret base in the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS).
Official reports state that the explosion and subsequent reactor meltdown
resulted from the improper retraction of the control rod. When questioned about
the events that occurred there, officials were very reticent. The whole affair,
in fact, was discussed much, and seemed to disappear with time.
In order to grasp the mysterious
nature of the NRTS catastrophe, it help to know a bit about how nuclear
reactors work. After all, the generation of nuclear energy may strike many as
an esoteric process. However, given its relative simplicity, the way in which
the NRTS reactor functions is widely comprehensible. In this particular kind of
reactor, a cluster of nine-ton uranium fuel rods are positioned lengthwise
around a central control rod. The reaction begins with the slow removal of the
control ro, which starts a controlled nuclear reaction and begins to heat the
water in the reactor. This heat generates steam, which builds pressure inside
the tank. As pressure builds, the steam looks for a place to escape. The only
place this steam is able to escape is through the turbine. As it passes through
the turbine on its way out of the tank, it turns the giant fan blades and
produces energy.
On the morning of January 3, after
the machine had been shut down for the holidays, the three men arrived at the
station to restart the reactor. The control rod needed to be pulled out only
four inches to be reconnected to the automated driver. However, records
indicate that Byrnes yanked it out 23 inches, over five times the distance
necessary. In milliseconds the reactor exploded. Legg was impaled on the
ceiling; he would be discovered last. It took one week and a lead-shielded
crane to remove his body. Even in full protective gear, workers were only able
to work a minute at a time. The three men are buried in lead-lined coffins
under concrete in New York, Michigan, and Arlington Cemetery, Virginia.
The investigation took nearly two
years to complete. Did Byrnes have a dark motive? Or was it simply an accident?
Did he know how precarious the procedure was? Other operators were questioned
as to whether they knew the consequences of pulling the control rod out so far.
They responded “Of course! We often talked about what we would do if we were at
a radar station and the Russians came.
“We’d yank it out.”
Official reports are oddly
ambiguous, but what they do not explain, gossip does. Rumors had it that there
was tension between the men because Byrnes suspected the other two of being
involved with his young wife. There is little doubt than he, like the other
operators, knew exactly what would happen when he yanked the control rod.
Based on information in the final
paragraph, which of the following statements would the author likely agree with?
Fleas are perfectly designed by
nature to feast on anything containing blood. Like a shark in the water or a
wolf in the woods, fleas are ideally equipped to do what they do, making them
very difficult to defeat. The bodies of these tiny parasites are extremely
hardy and well-suited for their job.
A flea has a very hard exoskeleton,
which means the body is covered by a tough, tile-like plate called a sclerite.
Because of these plates, fleas are almost impossible to squish. The
exoskeletons of fleas are also waterproof of fleas are also waterproof and shock
resistant, and therefore fleas are highly resistant to the sprays and chemicals
used to kill them.
Little spines are attached to his
plate. The spine the flea scurries through an animal’s fur in – search of
grooming pet tries to pull a flea off through the hair coat, these spines will
extend and stick to the fur like Velcro.
Fleas are some of the best jumpers
in the natural world. A flea can jump seven inches, or 150 times its own
length, either vertically or horizontally. An equivalent jump for a person
would be 555 feet, the height of the Washington Monument. Fleas can jump 30,000
times in a row without stopping, and they are able to accelerate through the
air at an incredibly high rate – a rate which is over ten times what humans can
withstand in an airplane.
Fleas have very long rear legs with
huge thigh muscles and multiple joints. When they get ready to jump. They fold their
long legs up and crouch like a runner on a staring block. Several of their
joints contain a protein called resilin, which helps catapult fleas into the
air as they jump, similar to the way a rubber band provides momentum to a
slingshot. Outward facing claws on the bottom of their legs grip anything they
touch when they land.
The adult female flea mates after
her first blood meal and begins producing eggs in just 1 to 2 days. One flea
can lay up to 50 eggs in one day and over 2,000 in her lifetime. Flea eggs can
be seen with the naked eye, but they are about the size of a grain of salt. Shortly
after being laid, the eggs begin to transform into cocoons. In the cocoon
state, fleas are fully developed adults, and will hatch immediately if
conditions are favorable. Fleas can detect warmth, movement, and carbon dioxide
in exhaled breath, and these three factors stimulate them to emerge as new
adults. If the flea does not detect appropriate conditions, it can remain
dormant in the cocoon state for extended periods. Under ideal conditions, the
entire life cycle may only take 3 weeks, so in no time at all, pets and homes
can become infested.
Because of these characteristics,
fleas are intimidating opponents. The best way to control fleas, therefore, is
to take steps to prevent an infestation from ever occurring.
Based on information in the passage,
the reader can understand that
Chocolate – there’s nothing quite like it, is there?
Chocolate is simply delicious. What is chocolate? Where does it come from?
Christopher Columbus was probably the first to take cacao
beans from the New World to Europe in around 1502. But the history of chocolate
goes back at least 4,000 years! The Aztecs, who lived in America, through that
their bitter cacao drink was a divine gift from heaven. In fact, the scientist
Carolus Linnaeus named the plant Theobroma, which means “food of the gods”
The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortex went to America in
1519. He visited the Mexican emperor Montezuma. He saw that Montezuma drank
cacao mixed with vanilla and spices. Cortez took some cacao home as a gift to the
Spanish King Charles. In Spain, people began to drink Cortez’s chocolate in
drink with chili peppers. However, the natural taste of cacao was too bitter
for most people. To sweeten the drink, Europeans added sugar to the cacao
drink. As a sweet drink, it became more popular. By the 17th
century, rich people in Europe were drinking it.
Later, people started using chocolate in pastries, like pies and cakes. In 1828, Dutch chocolate
makers started using a new process for removing the fat from cacao beans, and
getting to the center of the cacao bean. The Dutch chocolate maker Conrad J.
Van Houten made a machine that pressed the fat from the bean. The resulting powder
mixed better with water than cacao did. Now, some call van Houten’s chocolate “Dutch
chocolate.”
It was easy to mix Dutuch chocolate powder with sugar. So
other chocolate makers started trying new recipes that used powdered chocolate. People started
mixing sweetened chocolate with cocoa butter to make solid chocolate bars. In
1849, an English chocolate maker made the first chocolate bar. In the 19th
century, the Swiss started making milk chocolate by mixing powdered milk with
sweetened chocolate. Milk chocolate has not changed much since this process was
invented.
Today, two countries – Brazil and Ivory Coast – account for
almost half the world’s chocolate. The United States imports most of the
chocolate in the world, but the Swiss eat the most chocolate per person. The
most chocolate eaten today is sweet milk chocolate, but people also eat white
chocolate and dark chocolate.
Cocoa and dark chocolate are believed to help prevent heart
attacks, or help keep from happening. They are supposed to be good for the
circulatory system. On the other hand, the high fat content of chocolate can
cause weight gain, which is not good for people’s health. Other health claims
for chocolate have not been proven, but some research shows that chocolate
could be good for the brain.
Chocolate is a popular holiday gift. A popular Valentine’s
Day gift is a box of chocolate candies with a card and flowers. Chocolate is
sometimes given for Christmas and birthdays. Chocolate eggs are sometimes given
at Easter.
Chocolate is toxic to some animals. An ingredient in chocolate
is poisonous to dogs, cats, parrots, small rodents, and some livestock. Their
bodies cannot process some if the chemicals found in chocolate. Therefore, they
should never be fed chocolate.
Who made the first powdered chocolate?
Right now, I am looking at a shelf
full or relics, a collection of has-beens, old-timers, antiques, fossils. Right
now I am lolling at a shelf full of books. Yes that’s right. If you have some
spare cash (the doing rate is about $89) and are looking to enhance your reading
experience, then I highly suggest you consider purchasing an e-reader.
E-readers are replacing the books of old, and I welcome them with open arms (as
you should).
If you haven’t heard of an e-reader
and don’t know what it is, then please permit the following explanation. An
e-reader is a device that allows you to read e-books. An e-book is a
book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both,
and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other
electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book,
e-books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary or English defines the
e-book as “an electronic version of a printed book, “but e-book can and do
exist without any printed equivalent.
So now you know what an e-reader is.
But you still may be wondering why they put printed books to shame. E-readers
are superior to printed books because they save space, are environmentally friendly,
and provide helpful reading tips and tools that printed books do not.
E-readers are superior to printed
books because they save space. The average e-reader can store thousands of
digital book, providing a veritable library at your fingertips. What is more,
being the size and weight of a thin hardback, the e-reader itself is relatively
petite. It is easy to hold and can fit in a pocketbook or briefcase easily. This
makes handling ponderous behemoths such as War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and
Les Miserables a breeze. Perhaps the only drawback to the space-saving aspect
of an e-reader is that it requires you to find new things to put on your
shelves.
In addition, e-readers are superior
to books because they are environmentally friendly. The average novel is about
300 pages long. So, if a novel is printed 1000 times, it will use 300,000
pieces of paper. That’s a lot of paper! If there are about 80,000 pieces of
paper in a tree, this means it takes almost 4 trees to make these 1000 books.
Now, we know that the average bestseller sells about 20,000 copies per week.
That means that it takes over 300 trees each month to sustain this rate. And
for the super bestsellers, these figures increase dramatically. For example,
the Harry Potter book series has sold over 450 million copies. That’s about 2
million trees! Upon viewing these figures, it is not hard to grasp the severe
impact of printed books on the environment. Since e-reader use no trees, they
represent a significant amount of preservation in terms of the environment and
its resources.
Finally, e-reader are superior to
books because they provide helpful reading tips and tolls that printed books do
not. The typical e-reader allows its user to customize letter size, font, and
line spacing. It also allows highlighting and electronic bookmarking.
Furthermore, it grants users the ability to get an overview of a book and then
jump to a specific electronic bookmarking. Furthermore, it grants users the
ability to get an overview of a book and then jump to a specific location based
on that overview. While these are all nice features, perhaps the most helpful
of all is the ability to get dictionary definitions at the touch of a finger.
On even the most basic e-reader, users can conjure instant definitions without
having to hunt through a physical dictionary.
It can be seen that e-readers are
superior to printed books. They save space, are environmentally friendly, and
provide helpful reading tips and tools that printed books do not. So what good
are printed books? Well, they certainly make nice decorations.
According to the author, e-books
I were all once printed books
II may be “born digital”
III are able to display images
I am writing in response to response
to the article “Protecting our public spaces” in issue 14, published this
spring in it, the author claims that “all graffiti is public spaces.” I would
like to point out that many people believe that graffiti is an art from that
can benefit our public spaces just as much as sculpture, fountains, or other,
more accepted art forms.
People who object to graffiti
usually do so more because of where it is, not what it is. They argue, as your
author does, that posting graffiti in public places constitutes an illegal act
of property damage. But the location of such graffiti should not prevent the
images themselves from being considered genuine art.
I would argue that graffiti is the
ultimate public art form. Spray paint is a medium unlike any other. Though
graffiti, the entire world has become a canvas. No one has to pay admission or
travel to a museum to see this kind of art. The artists usually do not receive
payment for their efforts. These works of art dotting the urban landscape are
available, free of charge, to everyone who passes by.
To be clear, I do not consider
random words or names sprayed on stop signs to be art. Plenty of graffiti is
just vandalism, pure and simple. However, there is also graffiti that is
breathtaking in its intricate detail, its realism, or its creativity. It takes
great talent to create such involved designs with spray paint.
Are these creators not artists
just because they use a can of spray paint instead of a paintbrush, or because they
cover the side of a building rather than a canvas?
To declare that all graffiti is
vandalism, and nothing more, is an overly simplistic statement that I find out
of place in such a thoughtful publication as your magazine. Furthermore,
graffiti is not going anywhere, so might as well find a way to live with it and
enjoy its benefits. One option could be to make a percentage of public space,
such as walls or benches in parks, open to graffiti artists. By doing this, the
public might feel like part owners of these works of art, rather than just the
victims of a crime.
In this passage, the writer argues
that graffiti
Each nation has its own peculiar character
which distinguishes it from others. But the people of the world have more
points in which they are all like each other than points in which they are
different. One type of person that is common in every country is the one who
always tried to do as little as he possibly can and to get as much in return as
he can. His opposite, the man who is in the habit of doing more than is
strictly necessary and is ready to accept what is offered in return, is rare
everywhere.
Both these types are usually unconscious of
their character. The man who avoids effort is always talking about his ‘rights’;
he appears to think that society owes him a pleasant easy life. The man who is
always doing more than his sheer talks of ‘duties’ feels that the individual is
in debt to society, and not society to the individual. As a result of their
view, neither of these men thinks that he behaves at all strangely.
The man who talks about his ‘rights’:
When we are young, we learn that
tigers and sharks are dangerous animals. We might be scared of them because
they are big and powerful. As we get older, however, we learn that sometimes
the most dangerous animals are also the smallest animals. In fact, the animal
that kills the most people every year is one that you have probably killed
yourself many times: the mosquito.
While it may seem that all
mosquitoes are biters, this is not actually the case. Male mosquitoes eat plant
nectar. One the other hand, female mosquitoes feed on animal blood. They need
this blood to live and produce eggs. When a female mosquito bites a human
being, it transmits a small amount of saliva into the blood. The saliva may or
may not contain a deadly disease. The result of the bite can be as minor as an
itchy bump or as serious as death.
Because a mosquito can bite many
people in the course of its life, it can carry diseases from one person to
another very easily. Two of the most deadly diseases carried by mosquitoes are
malaria and yellow fever. More than 700 million people become sick from these
diseases every year. At least 2 million of these people will die from these
diseases.
Many scientists are working on
safer and better ways to kill mosquitoes, but so far, there is no sure way to
protect everyone in the world from their deadly bites. Mosquito nests can be
placed over beds to protect people against being bitten. These nets help people
stay safe at night, but they do not kill any mosquitoes. Mosquitoes have many
natural enemies like bats, birds, dragonflies, and certain kinds of fish.
Bringing more of these animals into places where mosquitoes live might help to
cut down the amount of mosquitoes in that area. This is a natural solution, but
is does not always work very well. Mosquitoes can also be killed with poisons
or sprays. Even though these sprays kill mosquitoes, they may also harm other
plants or animals.
Although mosquitoes may not seem
as scary as larger, more powerful animals, they are far more dangerous to human
beings. But things are changing. It is highly likely that one day scientists
will find a way to keep everyone safe from mosquitoes and the diseases they
carry.
It can be understood that the
introduction of dragonflies might reduce the number of flies in a given area
because dragonflies