Variant 1 You could have come first and won the race if you … faster

19. According to the text, all of the following statements are FALSE, EXCEPT:
A) The job of the queen ant is to reproduce. B) Soldiers are engaged in enlarging the nest.
C) Ants all over the world live in underground tunnels and chambers. D) Army ants’ job is to guard the colony.
20. The author points out in the text that carpenter ants received their name because ...
A) these ants build structures out of wood pulp and saliva. B) these ants eat trees.
C) these ants assist carpenters when they work with wood. D) these ants make tunnels in wood.
21. Which sense do ants use to follow pheromones?
A) smell B) taste C) touch D) sight
22. Ants are social insects that ...
A) use a “pheromone” to find food and lay eggs. B) can be found almost all over the world.
C) live in trees and feed on wood. D) build tunnels and set their TV antennae.


For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears: that natural resources are running out; that the population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat; that species are becoming extinct in vast numbers, and that the planet’s air and water are becoming ever more polluted. But a quick look at the facts shows a different picture. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so, since the book “The limits to growth” was published in 1972 by a group of scientists. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third, although species axe indeed becoming extinct, only about 0.7% of them are expected to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either to have been exaggerated, or are brief-associated with the early phases of industrialization and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by accelerating it.