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51.Greg’s Golf Shop hires teenagers to collect lost golf balls from the city’s golf courses. The golf balls are then packaged in boxes of a dozen for reselling. This summer, the workers collected 2,244 golf balls. After repackaging, how many golf balls will be left over?
53.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also known as (1) NOAA (pronounced “Noah”), (2) descends from President Thomas Jefferson’s Survey of the Coast, which was established in the early 1800’s in efforts to promote safe (3) maritime commerce, or coastal trade. NOAA is therefore often considered the oldest scientific government (4) agency in the United States. It was officially established in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, who thought it was necessary to (5) consolidate a number of agencies into one. Today, NOAA consists of multiple offices, where scientists explore the atmosphere and oceans using tools ranging from satellites that orbit Earth, to submarines that scrape the far depths of the oceans’ floor. NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) is the organization responsible for weather forecasting and providing important storm warnings and advisories. It’s National Ocean Service (NOS) is in charge of mapping the country’s coastal waterways and promoting the conservation of the national marine sanctuaries; the marine equivalent of national parks. NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) is tasked with managing fisheries around the country. The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) is NOAA’s office that oversees the environmental satellite programs and manages the data collected from the NWS. Few people know that NOAA plays such an important role in our daily lives, yet it does none-the-less. It’s thanks to NOAA that we know when to take an umbrella with us to avoid getting soaking wet while walking to work, and to take refuge when an unexpected tornado strikes. Not only is it one of the oldest institutions, but also some will argue that it is also one of the most essential resources for the American people.
In paragraph 2, why does the author include information about the various offices of which NOAA consists?
55.The Mandarin Language Mandarin-or Putonghua (poo-tong-wah) “common language”-is the most widely spoken language in the China per capita (followed by Cantonese). It is also the (1) official language of the People’s Republic of China (mainland China), the Republic of China (Taiwan), and is one of the four official languages of Singapore. The language got its name in English from the Portuguese word, Mandarin meaning “an official of China”. It is a (2) tonal language, which means that it used different tones (pitches) to (3) distinguish between words. English, for example, has tones but it isn’t considered a tonal language since, in English, tones are used to indicate a generic yes-or-no question (rising tone on the last word of the sentence, i.e. “Did you eat (↑)?), among other uses. Mandarin has four tones, which are classified in the following manner: the first tone (1) is flat, the second tone (2) is rising, the third tone (3) is falling then rising, and the fourth tone (4) is falling. There is also a neutral tone, which is similar to the first tone, but shorter. In English, if you took the word “Ma” and gave it the different tones, it wouldn’t change the meaning of the word, it would still mean “mother.” Saying “Ma” in a different tone would change the melody of the word, but not the word itself. But in Mandarin the way tones distinguish words can be seen with the following: Ma (1) is mother, Ma (2) is a Sichuan pepper that leaves a numbing (4) sensation on the tongue, ma (3) is horse, and ma (4) is used when describing the verb (5) to scold. It is because of the tones in Mandarin that it is often erroneously considered “the most difficult language to learn.”
The word “sensation”, bolded after the (4) in the third paragraph, is closet in meaning to
