Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is.  

     If spaceships were launched from space or from the moon, the absence of weight would permit the ships to be launched with great speed at reduced pressures. A relatively small explosion would be enough to send a ship off at a very fast rate. And, since there is no atmosphere in space as there is on earth, the spaceship would meet with no resistance. To illustrate this point, remember how strong the wind feels if we are traveling fast in a car; then imagine a car traveling through an area where there is no wind. The windless condition is comparable to the condition in outer space.
     The first astronaut to walk in space, Leonov, and his companion, Beliaiev, began making preparations for the walk as soon as their spaceship was launched. The spaceship was equipped with a double door, which was fitted with bellows between the ship and the outside. This made it possible for the astronaut, in his space suit with oxygen supply, to go first from the air-filled ship to the bellows. Then the air was let out of the bellows, and, while the man stepped outside, the air inside the ship remained at normal pressure. If the door had opened directly into space, the air in the ship would have rushed out and been lost when the door opened.
     Leonov and Beliaiev practiced testing the doors several times after they had begun revolving around the earth. When the time came for Leonov to go out, his companion helped him attach the cable that was to keep him from floating away from the ship. Then Leonov entered the bellows, and the door closed behind him. As the air was let out of the bellows, he felt his suit swell up because of the air pressure inside.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

     It’s early August and the countryside appears peaceful. Planting has long been finished and the fields are alive with strong, healthy crops. Soybeans and wheat are flourishing under the hot summer sun. And the corn, which was “keen-high by the fourth of jolly” is now well over six feet tall. Herds of dairy and beef cattle are grazing peacefully in rolling pastures which surround big, red barns and neat white farmhouses. Everything as far as the eye can see radiates a sense of prosperity. Welcome to the Midwest — one of the most fertile agricultural regions of the world.
     The tranquility of the above scene is misleading. Farmers in the Midwest put in some of the longest workdays of any profession in the United States. In addition to caring for their crops and livestock, they have to keep up with new farming techniques, such as those for combining soil erosion and increasing livestock production. It is essential that farmers adopt these advances in technology if they want to continue to meet the growing demands of a hungry world.
     Agriculture is the number one industry in the United States and agricultural products are the country’s leading export. Corn and soybean exports alone account for approximately 75 per cent of the amount sold in the world markets. This productivity, however, has its price. Intensive cultivation exposes the earth to the damaging forces of nature. Every year wind and water remove tons of rich soil from the nation’s cropland, with the result that soil erosion has become a national problem concerning everyone from the farmer to the consumer. Each field is covered by a limited amount of topsoil, the upper layer of earth which is richest in the nutrient and minerals necessary for growing crops. Ever since the first farmers arrived in the Midwest almost 200 years ago, cultivation and consequently erosion have been depleting the supply of topsoil. In the 1830s, nearly two feet of rich, black top soil covered the Midwest.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

     Most of us buy vitamins for one of three reasons. Either we believe that they are prophylactic, that is they will ward off advancing ill, or they are therapeutic and will deal with the ills we have already, or finally we may believe they are wonder drugs and will lift us into a state of super health. We are protected from some of these wild imaginings by the laws which control advertising but even without false promises we still believe that vitamins will “do us good”.
     Belief is a very potent state of mind and the power of the placebo pill is never underestimated in clinical trials used to test new drugs. A placebo is a harmless substance given to one group of patients in the trial and it is similar in taste and appearance to a new drug which is given to a second group of patients. Theoretically the drug should cure or relieve any symptoms and the placebo should have no effect. Often these trials produce surprising results and the placebo group recovers as well as the group taking the new drug.
     Vitamins B and C cannot be retained in the body, so if we take more than we need of these, they are soon excreted in the urine. Taking too much of the fat soluble vitamins can be dangerous and vitamins A and D should never be taken indiscriminately. Vitamin E has not been found to have any toxic effect in large doses, but neither do there seem to be any noticeable benefits. This is an unexplored area in vitamin research and the only known advantages of vitamin E are confined to specialized medical cases.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is.  

     1. Communication networks are arrangements of hardware and software that allow users to exchange information. This very broad definition will help you begin learning about one of the fastest-growing areas in electrical engineering and computer science. Once we examine some common communication networks, we will develop a more precise definition. We will elaborate on the importance of this field.
     2. The telephone network is the most familiar and ubiquitous communication network. It is designed for voice transmission. An office computer network is a communication network used by organizations to connect personal computers and workstations so they may share programs and data and to link those computers to printers and, possibly, to some other peripherals (e.g., file servers that provide mass storage or plotters). Computer networks also are used in manufacturing plants to connect machine tools, robots, and sensors. The Internet is a network of computer networks that covers most of the world and allows millions of users to exchange messages and computer files and some limited video and audio signals.
     3. Although all these systems are communication networks, they are quite different in the information that they transmit and in the way they are used. Nevertheless, they operate on similar principles. The unifying characteristics of all networks help us develop a definition of communication networks that describes the arrangements of hardware and software that we study in this text. Each system described is designed to exchange information, which may be voice, sounds, graphics, pictures, video, text, or data, among users. Most often the users are humans, but they also can be computer programs or devices. Before the information is transmitted, it is converted into bits (zeros or ones). Then the bits are sent to a receiver as electrical or optical signals (electromagnetic waves, to be more precise). Finally, the information is reconstructed from the received bits. This transmission method, called digital transmission, reduced the transmission errors.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is.  

     Although the actual extent of computer crime is difficult to measure, most experts agree that it is one of the fastest growing areas of illegal activity. The principal reason for both the growth and the lack of accurate measurement is the difficulty in detecting a well-executed theft. Losses per incident thus tend to be higher than in other types of theft. Once the computer criminal has compromised the system, it is just as easy to steal a great sum as it is to steal a little, and to continue stealing long after the initial theft.
     Computer criminals are, for the most part, well-educated and highly intelligent, and have the analytical skills that make them valued employees. The fact that computer criminals do not fit criminal stereotypes helps them to obtain the positions they require to carry out crimes. Being intelligent, they have fertile imaginations, and the variety of ways in which they use equipment to their advantages is constantly being extended. In addition to direct theft of funds, the theft of data for corporate espionage or extortion is being widespread, and can obviously have a substantial effect on a company’s finances. Another lucrative scheme, often difficult to detect, involves accumulating fractions pence from individual payroll accounts, with electronic transfer of the accumulated amount to the criminal’s payroll.
     Sabotage is also an increasingly common type of computer crime. Everyone in the computer business has heard of cases of a “time-bomb” being placed in a program. Typically, the programmer inserts an instruction that causes the computer to destroy an entire personnel data bank, for example, if the programmer’s employment is terminated. As soon as the termination data is fed into the system, it automatically erases the entire program. 

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

1. We inherit genes, not traits. When we say that a boy got his brown eyes from his father, we really mean that he got the genes for brown eyes from his father. Every gene must develop in an environment, and the environment influences how that gene will develop. In the case of fruit flies, the vestigial(退化的)-wing characteristic will develop if the flies are raised at room temperature. If the flies are reared at about 92°F（33°C）, however, the wings will be almost normal.
2. In the final analysis, the question, “Which is more important, heredity or environment?” has no meaning. There can be no “heredity versus environment” situation: both factors, heredity and environment, must interact for an organism to develop.
3. Still, we can get some idea of the relative contributions of heredity and environment to certain traits. To do this, we must determine the genetic mechanism for a particular trait. We must also determine how much effect the environment can have on the trait. Neither of these determinations is easy, but for a few traits they have both been made.
4. In the case of Down’s syndrome, for example, we know that the presence of an extra number 21 chromosome sets limits on the development of the intelligence and largely determines certain other abnormal characteristics of the victim. Unfortunately, no amount of environmental manipulation can cause the victim’s intelligence to exceed a certain “subnormal” level. Thus we can say that in the development of the phenotype of a person with Down’s syndrome, heredity makes a relatively great contribution— by imposing severe limits.
5. But in most situations one can study, the role of the environment is very much in evidence. Identical human twins who have been reared apart show quite noticeable phenotypic differences, in personality and even in some physical characteristics.
6. The problem of assessing the relative contributions of heredity and environment to human intelligence is notoriously difficult and controversial. On the one hand, many studies have shown high correlations between the intelligence of individuals and their degree of “relatedness”. On the other hand, the many variables encountered in studies of this type make interpretation very difficult. But some studies have found correlations suggesting environmental factors influence intelligence more than genetic factors do. So the question of intelligence and inheritance is still very much up in the air. The problems and the controversy should not, however, obscure one basic fact: intelligence, like any other trait, depends on the interaction of both genetic and environmental factors.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is.
     Camps are either temporary, that is changed from day to day, or they are permanent and may be visited year after year, or they may be used for a few weeks at a time. Temporary camps are the ones we are considering, and these can be elaborate or very, very simple. I prefer the latter, and I am sure the boys will agree with me. 
     During the autumn and when the weather is dry and the nights not too cool, the best way to camp is in the open, sleeping on beds of boughs, about a roaring fire, and with one blanket under and another over.
     Small dog tents, like the ones our soldiers carried in the Civil War, are cheap and very convenient. Each man carried a section, and two made a tent, into which two men crawled when it rained, but in dry weather they preferred to sleep in the open, even when it was freezing. 
     Shelters of boughs, arranged in an A-formed fashion from a ridge pole make good temporary shelters and are first rate as wind breaks at night. 
     A shack built of crossed logs requires some time to build and some skill to make, but it is not beyond the reach of any boy who has seen—and who has not—an old-fashioned log shanty.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is.  

     Of all the sports that America has to offer, baseball is considered the pastime of this country. Americans did not always regard baseball and other sports in such a benign manner. Rather, sports during the early colonial times were seen as pagan and devilish thing to do. Many elite and wealthy gentry who embodied the Victorian ideals regarded any type of games or sports as ill vices. It was the common people who directly related sports to their religion. On days of religious celebration, early Americans joined together to play games. These folk games were unstructured and unruly; however, the unity that these games brought, created a need for professional sporting games. Folk games provided the foundation of sports. They created a sense of companionship and unison among individuals. These unorganized folk games created the threshold for organized sports and led to the transformation of the players’ roles and the role of the audience. Amateurs became professional athletes, and the game an organized business. The game of baseball evolved from the English game of cricket and rounders. It was not until the time of the Civil War that baseball began to be played frequently. 

     However with the transformation of the nation, society and technology, folk games too began to evolve into spectator sports. After the Civil War, baseball became a popular sport and no longer an archaic folk games. Structure and organization were introduced gradually into the game and increased public participation. The sport at first excluded the public, but as economic interests infiltrated the game, the need for audiences and spectators arose. The audience of baseball was instrumental in the transformation of baseball. The battling leagues and team rivalries created a sector for the American public to participate in baseball.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

(1) George Grow Scientists say they have found two unusual amino acids in ancient rocks in Denmark. They say their findings provide support for the idea that dinosaurs died after a huge space rock hit Earth sixty-five million years ago. The idea that dinosaurs died after a space crash was proposed in 1980 by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley.
(2) Those scientists said a huge comet hit Earth at great speed. The crash created a large cloud of dust. The cloud blocked sunlight from reaching Earth. Without sunlight, Earth’s weather cooled sharply. The cold weather killed plants and other foods the dinosaurs ate. Soon, the animals were all dead.
(3) The California scientists proposed this idea after finding large amounts of the element iridium. The element was in a layer of ground formed about the time dinosaurs died. Iridium is rare on Earth. But large amounts are found in space objects such as asteroids and comets. Critics of this idea say the iridium may not have come from space. They say it could have been created by volcanoes on Earth. The latest study was headed by Jeffrey Bada and Meixun Zhao of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.
(4) The scientists examined rocks from Stevns Klint in Denmark. They found large amounts of two unusual amino acids near a lager of iridium. The amino acids were in a layer formed about the same time dinosaurs died. The scientists looked for these substances in rocks from other time periods. They found none. The scientists noted that the two amino acids are found in meteorites, but are rare on Earth. The scientists said they probably did not come from Earth’s volcanoes.
(5) Surprisingly, the two amino acids found in Denmark were not found in the same layer as iridium. They were found above and below it. The scientists say the amino acids may have leaked out of the iridium layer.
(6) A separate report said there is little question that the amino acids came from space. And it said the amino acids are dated correctly. But it said more investigation is needed to link the acids with the death of dinosaurs.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is.  

     Self esteem, self confidence and self respect are all related. Self esteem is also defined as the judgments a person makes about himself and is affected by self confidence and respect. Self confidence is believing in our ability to take action and meet our goals. Self respect is the degree to which we believe we deserve to be happy, have rewarding relationships and stand up for our rights and values. All these factors affect whether or not we will have a healthy body image.
     The images of men and women in ads today do not promote self esteem or positive self image. They’ re intended to sell products. In the U. S. billions of dollars are spent by consumers who pursue the perfect body. The message “thin is in” is sold thousands of times a day through TV, movies, magazines, billboards, newspapers and songs. Advertising conveys the message “You’re not OK. Here’s what you need to do to fix what’s wrong.”Girls and boys believe it and react to it. In a 1997 Body Image Survey, both girls and boys reported that “very thin or muscular models” made them feel insecure about themselves.
     The diet/fitness craze is mind boggling. It’s not just dieting, it’s diet foods, and diet commercials. Everybody’s counting fat grams. Listen to the conversation in the lunch room, locker room or on the bus to school. The talk centers around dieting, fat thighs or tight “abs” and how many pounds can be lost with the latest diet. This kind of intense focus on food and fat can lead to abnormal eating habits or disordered eating — a precursor to eating disorders, which is taking it to the extreme.
     Awareness of eating disorders got a big boost in 1995 when Princess Diana began talking openly about her struggles with bulimia. Actress Tracy Gold, still struggling with her eating disorder, continues to help others by discussing her eating disorder with the media. Recently many organizations have initiated an effort to expand awareness of eating disorders and promote a positive body image and self esteem.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

     Britain's most prestigious scientific institution, the Royal Society, will host a meeting for some of the world's top psychologists. Their aim is to find out why it is that some people's lives go so right. What is it that makes them happy and fulfilled, while others seem doomed to founder in misery, dissatisfaction and dejection?
     Psychologists have known for some time that optimism is a good defense against unhappiness.“ If you are optimistic and you think life is going to get better, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says Baylis. “You will involve yourself more, you will take more care of yourself. You will figure that if you do more exercise and not booze as much, life will be better.”
     Positive psychologists believe optimism can be learned, and we can teach ourselves to see a half-empty glass as half-full.“Research on depression shows that one of the biggest causes of depression is ruminating about something that went wrong in the past,” says Baylis.“What happens is you look into the past and think about some event and keep turning it over, saying, 'I messed up, I messed up,' and you let it hurt you.”
     But just as dwelling on negative events can lead to depression, dwelling on things that have gone well can help pick you up.“You have to thank your lucky stars about what goes right on a daily basis. Whenever you get the feeling of being negative about things, just take a moment out and remind yourself of the stuff that has gone well. It could be anything from a conversation to your garden looking nice, or that it didn't rain on you when you were out on your bike. It's an extremely powerful technique.”
     By reminding ourselves what went well instead of what went wrong, positive psychologists believe we can build a buffer against unhappiness, making us better able to take life's knocks when they come.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

     By far, the most vulnerable older persons are women, who are more likely than men to lack basic literacy and numerical skills, less likely to have paid work, and less likely to be eligible for pensions - where they are available. When women are eligible for pension, because of their lower pay and interrupted work histories, they are likely to receive lower pensions. Older women who have lost their partners greatly outnumber their male counterparts. In some countries, widows are often denied access to or control over resources. Also, women's inheritance rights are poorly established in many societies. For these and other reasons, women, especially in developing countries, are much more likely to sink into poverty in their older years. Security schemes to alleviate poverty must take into account that most of the older poor are women, of whom many have limited experience in the labor force.
     The demand for new skills and knowledge places older workers at a disadvantage, as their training and skills developed earlier in life become obsolete. But age discrimination compounds many of the difficulties older workers face in the labor market. Biased attitudes hamper the efforts of older workers to find new employment and discourage employers from providing them with training. However, there is evidence that prejudices against the abilities of older workers are unfounded, and that the average difference in work performance between age groups is significantly less than the differences between workers within each age group.
     Training and education are particularly important in helping older workers to adapt to changing demand and opportunities. Lifelong learning, which is increasingly recommended by social policy experts, is an important cultural and economic asset. Implicit in the concept of lifelong learning is the rejection of a society structured on the basis of age, in which education and training are one-time undertakings experienced only early in life.

Vocabulary

Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

     To renew America, we must be bold.    

     We must do what no generation has had to do before. We must invest more in our own people, in their jobs, in their future, and at the same time cut our massive debt. And we must do so in a world in which we must compete for every opportunity.
     It will not be easy; it will require sacrifice. But it can be done, and done fairly, not choosing sacrifice for its own sake, but for our own sake. We must provide for our nation the way a family provides for its children. Our Founders saw themselves in the light of posterity. We can do no less. Anyone who has ever watched a child's eyes wander into sleep knows what posterity is. Posterity is the world to come一the world for whom we hold our ideals, from whom we have borrowed our planet, and to whom we bear sacred responsibility.
     To renew America, we must revitalize our democracy.
     This beautiful capital, like every capital since the dawn of civilization, is often a place of intrigue and calculation. Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.
     Americans deserve better, and in this city today, there are people who want to do better. And so I say to all of us here, let us resolve to reform our politics, so that power and privilege no longer shout down the voice of the people. Let us put aside personal advantage so that we can feel the pain and see the promise of America.

Vocabulary

Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

        The beginning of man's conquest of space took place in 1958, seven years before Leonov's trip. The first successful launching of “Sputnik” demonstrated that it was indeed possible to send objects far enough out of range of earth's gravity so that they would not fall back to earth. Rather, such objects could be forced to revolve around the earth, just as the moon does. However, while the moon is so far from earth that it takes it a month to revolve around the earth, manmade satellites, which are closer to earth, can make a complete revolution in a few hours.
        It was three years after the first satellite launching that a spaceship containing a man made a successful flight. The flight lasted less than two hours, but it pointed the way to future developments.
        Other planets are so far away that spaceships must attain tremendous speeds to reach them in a reasonable time. If spaceships were launched from space or from the moon, the absence of weight would permit the ship to be launched with great speed at reduced pressures. A relatively small explosion would be enough to send a ship off at a very fast rate. And, since there is no atmosphere in space as there is on earth, the spaceship would meet with no resistance. To illustrate this point, remember how strong the wind feels if we are traveling fast in a car; then imagine a car traveling through an area where there is no wind. The windless condition is comparable to the condition in outer space.

Vocabulary

Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

     He backs up his pitch with facts. Numerous studies, including recent reports by the Center for the Study of Reading and the National Council of Teachers of English, confirm that reading to children builds vocabulary, stimulates imagination, stretches the attention span, nourishes emotional development, and introduces the textures and nuances of the English language. Reading aloud is, in essence, an advertisement for learning to read.
     Trelease laments that elementary-school students are too often conditioned to associate reading with work. “We have concentrated so hard on teaching children how to read that we have forgotten to teach them to want to read,” he says.
     His audience is surprised to hear that only 22 percent of eighth-graders read for fun daily, while 65 percent watch three hours or more of television each day. Research also indicates that average reading proficiency drops when TV viewing reaches about three hours a day. Their parents’ habits are no better: a recent survey shows a decline in newspaper readership among U.S. adults.
     Lest there be any doubt about the stakes involved, Trelease makes a bold claim. Reading, he says, is the single most important social factor in American life today. “The more you read, the smarter you grow. The longer you stay in school, the more money you earn. The more you earn, the better your children will do in school. So if you hook a child with reading, you influence not only his future but also that of the next generation.”
     Trelease found his calling not because it spoke to his intellect, but because it nurtured his emotions. When his two children, Elizabeth and Jamie, were young, Trelease and his wife, Susan, fed them as many books as meals. “I read to my kids because my father had read to me,” he says. “I just wanted them to have the good feelings I had had.”

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

        The number of violent teens has grown in recent years, even as the population of teenagers has contracted. But the teen population has bottomed out and is now on the upswing. If current rates of offending remain unchanged, the number of teens who commit murder and other serious violent crimes shall increase, if only because of the demographic turnaround in the population at risk. However, given the worsening conditions in which children are being raised, given the breakdown of all our institutions as well as of our cultural norms, given our wholesale disinvestment in youth, our nation faces the grim prospect of a future wave of juvenile violence that may make the coming years look like “the good old days”. 
        The hopeful news is that there is still time to stem the tide - to prevent the next wave of youth crime. But we must act now - by reinvesting in schools, recreation, job training, support for families, and mentoring. We must act now while this baby-boomerang generation is still young and impressionable, and will be impressed with what a teacher, a preacher, or some other authority figures has to say. If we wait until these children reach their teenage years and the next crime wave is upon us, it may be too late to do much about it. 
        The challenge for the future, therefore, is how best to deal with youth violence. Unfortunately, we are obsessed with quick and easy solutions that will not work, such as the wholesale transfer of juveniles to the jurisdiction of the adult court, parental responsibility laws, midnight curfews, the V-chip, boot camps, three strikes, even caning and capital punishment, at the expense of long-term and difficult solutions that will work, such as providing young children with strong, positive role models, quality schools, and recreation programs.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

        That is what the economy is all about — making choices on how to use limited resources of money, manpower, machinery and materials, whether it involves a shopper deciding what to buy in the supermarket or a manufacturer deciding what line of goods to produce. Choices made in the economy involve a continuous tug-of-war between consumers and producers over price.
        If many businesses are offering a product and there is plenty of it to satisfy the needs of all consumers, a producer will be forced to sell at a price not far above costs in order to keep from being stuck with a lot of unmarketable supplies. This is why, for example, prices for fresh fruit and vegetables drop during the summer months when such produce is in great number.
        However, a low price — especially if it falls below what it costs a seller to  make the goods — will discourage production, perhaps drive the high-cost  producers out of business or force them to make something else. Again using an example from agriculture, farmers periodically plant less wheat or raise fewer cattle if the prices for those commodities give too little return for the costs involved.
        On the other hand, if there is great demand for a product and supplies are tight, business will be able to raise prices, their profits will increase and they will invest in new equipment to increase output. Other firms may be attracted by the hopes of good profits to produce the scarce item, thus adding new competition.
        That, in the simplest form, is the way the law of supply and demand works in free-market economy. Price becomes the guidepost, telling producers what they can expect to sell at a price that more than covers their costs. At the same time, posted prices tell the consumer what he can expect to pay. 

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

     Many people believe that taking vitamin supplements is the best safeguard against the dangers of an incomplete diet, but this should be a last resort rather than a way out of a problem. Even if there is a genuine need for extra vitamins, sooner or later the question arises “which ones do I need, how much of them, and how often?” There is really no simple answer to this question. The Food Standards Committee suggest in their recent report to the government that we do not need any extra vitamins. They say that they are “not necessary for a healthy individual eating a normal diet". Whilst few of us would challenge their authority on the subject of nutrition, it is, perhaps, pertinent to ask the question “how many of us are healthy, and what is a normal diet?”
     There is an element of doubt in many minds about these two aspects and though few people are familiar with the wording of the Food Standards Report, they do wonder instinctively if they are eating the right things. The blame for faulty eating habits is often placed at the door of the ubiquitous junk and convenience foods. As we have seen, some of these are not the criminals they are made out to be. White bread is only slightly less nutritious than brown bread and frozen vegetables can be almost as “fresh” as fresh food. There are very few foods which can really be described as pure rubbish. Many pre-packed foods contain too much sugar and we would all benefit by avoiding these, but most tinned, processed and dried foods contain useful amounts of fat, protein, carbohydrate, vitamins and minerals. The addition of a small amount of fruit or a side salad to convenience foods such as pizzas or hamburgers can turn a snack into a well-balanced meal.
     “Junk” food is difficult to define. White sugar is probably the nearest contender for the title. It contains plenty of calories for energy but not much else, and is often described as an “empty calorie” food. Alcohol is also high in calories, but beer and wine contain some of the B vitamins and wine is a good source of iron, so even a teetotaler could not describe all alcohol as useless, nutritionally speaking.

Vocabulary

Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is. 

     Geophysicist Dr. Andrea Donnellan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., remembers the morning of January 17, 1994, like few others. Like millions of other Southern California residents, she was shaken from her sleep in her normally tranquil foothill community home as a large earthquake caused a mountain, located just 30 miles away, to grow nearly 15 inches higher, all in a matter of seconds.
     “Large earthquakes are always disconcerting,” she said. “Being a geophysicist I was immediately interested in how large the earthquake was and where it had occurred.”
     Within minutes, news reports confirmed that Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley had taken a direct hit from an earthquake comparable in size to the damaging 1972 San Fernando earthquake. More than 60 people were killed in each earthquake and thousands were injured. The latter event became one of the costliest natural disasters ever to strike the United States. Only the pre—dawn time of day and the fact that it was a holiday kept the death toll from being much higher.
     Less than two months before that fateful day, Donnellan and colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had published a landmark paper in the journal Nature on ground distortion north of LA’s San Fernando Valley. Six years of relatively sparse data from a fledgling network of Global Positioning System (GPS) deformation monitors, that had been developed and installed around Southern California by scientists at JPL and other organizations, had detected that Earth’s crust was being squeezed closed across the Ventura Basin. The data showed the area’s faults were accumulating strain, and they gave the scientists clear indications of the style and relative size of an earthquake that might strike there, even though the faults there do not all break the surface. They placed no time frame on when such a temblor might occur, however.

Vocabulary
Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the same meanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refers to the number of paragraph in which the target word is.  

     Research in industrialized countries has shown the subtle method used to encourage girls to smoke. The impact of such method is likely to be even greater in developing countries, where young people are generally less knowledgeable about smoking hazards and may be more attracted by glamorous, affluent, desirable images of the female smoker. This is why WHO, together with other national and international health agencies, has repeatedly called for national legislation banning all forms of tobacco promotion, and for an appropriate “high price” policy which would slow down the “enthusiasm” of young women for tobacco consumption.
     Young girls and women have a right to be informed about the damage that smoking can do to their health. They also need to acquire skills to resist pressure to start smoking or to give it up. Several countries have developed integrated school and preschool health education programs which have successfully reduced girls’ smoking rates; but this education should not be restricted to what happens in school. There are many other examples of effective cessation programs in the workplace and primary health centers. Unfortunately, many women do not have the opportunity to be involved in such programs, and programs have generally been less successful with women than men.
     In order for women to become, and remain, non-smokers they need support. Support over these difficult days when the addiction cycle is broken. Support to help them deal in other less damaging ways with the reasons that caused them to smoke. Environments need to be created which enable them to break free of this health damaging behavior, to make the healthy choices the best choices. Smoking amongst women has already reached epidemic proportions and will continue to escalate unless action is taken now. Delays can only cause further suffering and deaths of women; this is why WHO’s new program on tobacco or health is giving high priority to action to protect women and children.