At present, in the most civilized countries, freedom of speech is taken as a matter of course and seems a perfectly simple thing. We are so accustomed to it that we look on it as a natural right. But this right has been acquired only in quite recent times, and the way to its attainment has lain through lakes of blood. 

  Nanoscientists ① have found that, when ② reducing to their smallest size, certain elements (like silver, gold, and pencil lead) take on superpowers: super-efficient conductivity, super-sensitive poison detection, total odor eradication, ③ slaying the DNA of bacteria, and making electricity from any wavelength of light. If you add a super-material ④ that detects poisons to an ordinary material, let’s say plastic wrap, you’ve created a new material ― “smart plastic wrap,” ⑤ capable of identifying spoiled food and providing an alert with a change in the labels’ color.

  When we start to lift weights, our muscles do not strengthen and change at first, but our nervous systems ① do, according to a fascinating new study in animals of the cellular effects of resistance training. The study, ② that involved monkeys performing the equivalent of multiple one-armed pull-ups, suggests ③ that strength training is more physiologically intricate than most of us might have imagined and ④ that our conception of ⑤ what constitutes strength might be too narrow.

  Frank McCourt’s childhood was filled with misery. There was never enough food. Their house was small, dirty, and very cold in the winter. When it rained, the floor would flood with water. Frank and his brothers yearned for a better life. Frank did, however, have ways to escape from his tormented childhood. He loved to read, and because his                 house had no electricity, he would read under the street lamp outside his home. 

  Prospective studies of lifetimes have often shown that some theories of alcoholism were incorrect because they confused cause with                . For example, on the basis of current evidence, alcoholism is seen to be associated with but not caused by growing up in a household with alcoholic parents. Likewise, alcoholism is associated with but not usually caused (in men, at least) by depression, and alcoholism is associated with but not caused by self-indulgence, poverty, or neglect in childhood. Rather, alcoholism in individuals often leads to depression and anxiety; indeed, self-medication with alcohol makes depression worse, not better. 

  When important events are happening around the world, most people                 traditional media sources, such as CNN and BBC, for their news. However, during the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies in early 2003, a significant number of people followed the war from the point of view of an anonymous Iraqi citizen who called himself “Salam Pax.” 

  More and more people and communities are changing their habits in order to protect the environment. One reason for this change is that space in landfills is running out and the disposal of waste has become difficult.     (A)      , the practices of recycling, reusing, and reducing waste are becoming more commonplace. In some countries the technology for disposing of, or getting rid of, waste has actually become big business. Individuals have also taken actions to reduce landfill waste; for example, people are recycling newspapers and donating clothes to charities.      (B)      , some people take leftover food and turn it into rich garden compost, an excellent fertilizer for vegetable and flower gardens. 

  The American Founders preferred the term “republic” to “democracy” because it described a system they generally preferred: the interests of the peoples were represented by more knowledgeable or wealthier citizens who were responsible to those that elected them. Today we tend to use the terms “republic” and “democracy” interchangeably. A widespread criticism of representative democracy is that the representatives become the “elites” that seldom consult ordinary citizens, so even though they are elected, a truly                 government doesn't really exist. 

  This new fad is actually very old; for hundreds of years in India, a woman’s friends have painted her to celebrate her wedding day.

  A popular fad for many teenagers is tattooing. ① Parents are usually horrified by these permanent designs on their children’s skin, but the young people see them as a fashion statement. ② In the new millennium, some parents are greatly relieved when their teenage children turn to a new fad, a temporary form of decorating the hands, feet, neck, or legs―a method of painting beautiful designs that last only about three weeks. ③ Another fad from India, however, causes parents more worry―bidis. Children and young teens are attracted to these thin cigarettes in candy flavors such as orange, chocolate, mango, and raspberry. The problem? Bidis contain more nicotine than regular cigarettes. ④ Unfortunately, many children think these are “cool”― fashionable. ⑤ So until a new fad comes along, “Indian style is hot,” as one radio commentator observed.

  We need to think harder about narrowing the gap between those at the bottom and the top. If most people, especially lower-income individuals and minorities, keep the bulk of their wealth in housing, we should rethink lending practices and allow for a broader range of credit metrics (which tend to be biased toward whites) and lower down payments for good borrowers. Rethinking our retirement policies is crucial too. Retirement incentives work mainly for whites and the rich. Minority and poor households are less likely to have access to workplace retirement plans, in part because many work in less formal sectors like restaurants and child care. Another overdue fix: we should expand Social Security by lifting the cap on payroll taxes so the rich can contribute the same share of their income as everyone else. Doing      (A)      would be a good first step. But going forward, economic and racial fairness can no longer be thought of as      (B)      issues. 

  Not all people ① who have heart attacks have the same symptoms or have the same severity of symptoms. Some people have mild pain; ② others have more severe pain. Some people have no symptoms. For others, the first sign may be sudden cardiac arrest. However, the more signs and symptoms you have, ③ the great the chance you are having a heart attack. Some heart attacks strike suddenly, but many people have warning signs and symptoms hours, days or weeks in advance. ④ The earliest warning might be recurrent chest pain or pressure (angina) ⑤ triggered by activity and relieved by rest. Angina is caused by a temporary decrease in blood flow to the heart.

  If the police had asked for a safety licence for their new flying camera, it      (A)      a major crime-fighting success. Unfortunately they didn’t, and as a result the young man they filmed stealing a car might go free. “As long as you have a licence, there is no problem using these machines,” said a lawyer. “      (B)      a properly licensed camera, it would have been fine.” 

  Beyond that, my fellow citizens, the future is up to us. Our Founders taught us that the                 of our liberty and our union depends upon responsible citizenship. And we need a new sense of responsibility for a new century. There is work to do, work that government alone cannot do: teaching children to read; hiring people off welfare rolls. 

  A team at Cornell University in New York has developed software aimed at detecting lies in emails and text messages. Traditional lie detectors work by measuring a person’s heartbeat. They rely on the fact that a person’s pulse gets faster when they are nervous or stressed ― a strong indicator that they are not telling the truth. The new software is much more subtle. It scans electronic messages and looks for various clues which indicate lies are being told. Researchers have identified a number of these clues, or ‘falsehood indicators’, ranging from overuse of the third person to frequent use of negative adjectives and verbs. A team of volunteers provided the researchers with both truthful and dishonest emails. By comparing them they came across a number of characteristics. They noticed, for instance, that truthful emails were usually short and written in the first person, with lots of use of ‘I’ to start sentences. Dishonest emails were on average 28 percent longer than honest ones because people worry about not sounding convincing, so tend to give more detail when lying. And because liars want people to fall for their stories, they tend to use more sense verbs such as ‘see’ and ‘feel’, perhaps in an attempt to gain the reader’s sympathy. 

  William Tell’s home was among the mountains, and he was a famous hunter. No one in all the land could shoot with bow and arrow so well as he. Gessler knew this, and so he thought of a cruel plan to make the hunter’s own skill      (A)      him to grief. He ordered that Tell’s little boy should be made      (B)      up in the public square with an apple on his head; and then he suggested Tell       (C)      the apple with one of his arrows. 

  Gorkha was a sitting target. Most of the houses in this mountainous district northwest of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, were made of little more than stone or bricks bonded together with mud. ① That meant they were easily destroyed when tremors from a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rippled across the country just before noon on April 25, killing more than 8,000 people. ② By May 5, when TIME photographer James Nachtwey arrived in the remote village of Barpak, in the northern part of Gorkha, near the epicenter of the quake, “there wasn’t much left” standing, he says. ③ The tremors “basically shook the structures apart,” leaving irregular piles of stone and twisted wooden frames where there were once homes. ④ How do you rebuild when the ground beneath your feet could shift at any moment? ⑤ Worst of all, there was more to come. After Nachtwey left Nepal, as relief and rescue teams finally spread out across the impoverished Himalayan nation, there was a second seismic blow. On May 12, a 7.3-magnitude quake erupted at the eastern end of the same section of the geological fault that had caused the earlier temblor.

  In addition, defensive pessimism has proven to be a useful cognitive strategy for some people.

① Pessimists sometimes make better leaders, particularly where there is a need to ignite social change. ② Their skepticism may make them more resistant to propaganda and false advertising. ③ The degree of pessimism felt by an individual or group can often be linked to political and economic conditions in their personal lives and their society. ④ They set their expectations low and then outperform them by preparing thoroughly for a wide range of negative outcomes in advance. ⑤

  Throughout Earth’s history, several extinction events have taken place. The largest one happened about 250 million years ago and is called the Great Dying. Scientists theorize that a single devastating event killed off most life-forms on Earth. It could have been a series of large asteroid strikes, a massive emission from the seafloor of the greenhouse gas methane, or increased volcanic activity, such as the eruptions that created the Siberian Traps that now cover some 770,000 square miles of Russia. When the mass extinction ended, 57 percent of all animal families and 83 percent of all genera had disappeared from the planet, and it took some 10 million years for life to recover. 

  Reports of the demise of the world’s most popular reserve currency were greatly exaggerated.

(A) But here we are, six years after the crisis, and the dollar is showing just how almighty it actually is. The dollar index, which measures its value against other currencies, recently reached a four-year high. And the policymakers who bitterly criticized the dollar show little real interest in dumping it. The amount of U.S. Treasury securities held by China, for instance, stands at $1.27 trillion, 75% more than in 2008.
(B) Ever since the 2008–09 financial crisis, predictions of the dollar’s demise have come hand over fist. As the U.S. economy sank into recession, so too did confidence that the greenback could maintain its long-held position as the world’s premier reserve currency.
(C) In Beijing, Moscow and elsewhere, policymakers railed against the dollar-dominated global financial system as detrimental to world stability and vowed to find a replacement. Central bankers in the emerging world complained that the primacy of the dollar allowed American economic activity to send shock waves through the global economy, roiling their own markets and currencies. 

  The smartphone, through its small size, ease of use, proliferation of free or cheap apps, and constant connectivity, changes our relationship with computers in a way that goes well beyond what we experienced with laptops.