Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 25 to 29.  
In many countries of Northern Europe, including Scandinavia, Finland, Northern Russia, and the Baltic states, ice swimming is closely connected with the tradition of sauna, (25)______ has led to the creation of a new activity where stays in the sauna are (26)______ with quick 'pauses' in ice water. In Russia, ice swimmers are called what can be literally translated as 'walruses '. The north of Europe, (27) ______, is not the only place where winter swimming is practised regularly. A large ice swimming movement exists in the UK, based in a famous location: the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park in London. In Harbin, Northern China, about 200,000 people ice-swim in the Songhua River every winter. The oldest ice swimming club in the United States, the Coney Island Polar Bear Club of New York, organises an annual (28) ______ on New Year's Day. In Canada, 'Polar Bear Swims; 'Plunges' or 'Dips' are a New Year's Day tradition in (29)______ communities as well, the biggest one taking place in Vancouver since 1920.
(28) 
A.plunge
B.drainage
C.withdrawal
D.bathing

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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions.
It’s a sound you will probably never hear, a sickened tree sending out a distress signal. But a group of scientists has heard the cries, and they think some insects also hear the trees and are drawn to them like vulture to a dying animal. Researchers with the US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service fastened sensors to the bark of drought-stricken trees clearly heard distress calls. According to one of the scientists, most parched trees transmit their plight in the 50-hertz to 50-kilohertz range. (The unaided human ear can detect no more than 20 kilohertz). Red oak, maple, white pine, and birch all make slightly different sounds in the form of vibrations at the surface of the wood.
The scientists think that the vibrations are created when the water columns inside tubes that run along the length of the tree break, a result of too little water following through them. These fractured columns send out distinctive vibration pattems. Because some insects communicate at ultrasonic frequencies, they may pick up the trees' vibration and attack the weakened trees. Researchers are now running tests with potted trees that have been deprived of water to see if the sound is what attracts the insects. “Water-stressed trees also smell differently from other trees, and they experience thermal changes, so insects could be responding to something other than sound”, one scientist said.
All the following are mentioned as possible factors in drawing insects to weakened trees EXCEPT ________ .
A.sounds                                                 
B.changes in colours
C.smells                                                  
D. thermal changes

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 35 to 42.
What unusual or unique biological train led to the remarkable diversification and unchallenged success of the ants for over 50 million years? The answer appears to be that they were the first group of predatory eusocial insects that both lived and foraged primarily in the soil and in rotting vegetation on the ground. Eusocial refers to a form of insect society characterized by specialization of tasks and cooperative care of the young; it is rare among insects. Richly organized colonies of the land made possible by eusociality enjoy several key advantages over solitary individuals.
Under most circumstances groups of workers are better able to forage for food and defend the nest, because they can switch from individual to group response and back again swiftly and according to need. When a food object or nest intruder is too large for one individual to handle, nestmates can be quickly assembled by alarm or recruitment signals. Equally important is the fact that the execution of multiple-step tasks is accomplished in a series-parallel sequence. That is, individual ants can specialize in particular steps, moving from one object (such as a larva to be fed) to another (a second larva to be fed). They do not need to carry each task to completion from start to finish - for example, to check the larva first, then collect the food, then feed the larva. Hence, if each link in the chain has many workers in attendance, a sense directed at any particular object is less likely to fail. Moreover, ants specializing in particular labor categories typically constitute a caste specialized by age or body form or both. There has been some documentation of the superiority in performance and net energetic yield of various castes for their modal tasks, although careful experimental studies are still relatively few.
What makes ants unusual in the company of eusocial insects is the fact that they are the only eusocial predators (predators are animals that capture and feed on other animals) occupying the soil and ground litter. The eusocial termites live in the same places as ants and also have wingless workers, but they feed almost exclusively on dead vegetation.
(Source: TOEFL Reading)
The word "they" in bold in the last paragraph refers to ______.
A.termites
B.places
C.ants
D.predators