The author implies which of the following is true?

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.

William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), who wrote under the pseudonym of O. Henry, was born in North Carolina. His only formal education was to attend his Aunt Lina‟s school until the age of fifteen, where he developed his lifelong love of books. By 1881 he was a licensed pharmacist. However, within a year, on the recommendation of a medical colleague of his Father‟s, Porter moved to La Salle County in Texas for two years herding sheep. During this time, Webster‟s Unabridged Dictionary was his constant companion, and Porter gained a knowledge of ranch life that he later incorporated into many of his short stories. He then moved to Austin for three years, and during this time the first recorded use of his pseudonym appeared, allegedly derived from his habit of calling “Oh, Henry” to a family cat. In 1887, Porter married Athol Estes. He worked as a draftsman, then as a bank teller for the First National Bank.

In 1894 Porter founded his own humor weekly, the “Rolling Stone”, a venture that failed within a year, and later wrote a column for the Houston Daily Post. In the meantime, the First National Bank was examined, and the subsequent indictment of 1886 stated that Porter had embezzled funds. Porter then fled to New Orleans, and later to Honduras, leaving his wife and child in Austin. He returned in 1897 because of his wife‟s continued ill-health, however she died six months later. Then, in 1898 Porter was found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment in Ohio. At the age of thirty five, he entered prison as a defeated man; he had lost his job, his home, his wife, and finally his freedom. He emerged from prison three years later, reborn as O. Henry, the pseudonym he now used to hide his true identity. He wrote at least twelve stories in jail, and after re-gaining his freedom, went to New York City, where he published more than 300 stories and gained fame as America‟s favorite short Story writer. Porter married again in 1907, but after months of poor health, he died in New York City at the age of forty-eight in 1910. O. Henry‟s stories have been translated all over the world.

The word "it" refers to

Which phrase is closest in meaning to the word 'unparalleled' as used in paragraph 3?

From the passage, it is implied that the main entrance area to the Forbidden City is

The phrase "balked at" in the first paragraph could best be replaced by

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.

Biological diversity has become widely recognized as a critical conservation issue only in the past two decades. The rapid destruction of the tropical rain forests, which are the ecosystems with the highest known species diversity on Earth, has awakened people to the importance and fragility of biological diversity. The high rate of species extinctions in these environments is jolting, but it is important to recognize the significance of biological diversity in all ecosystems. As the human population continues to expand, it will negatively affect one after another of Earth‟s ecosystems. In terrestrial ecosystems and in fringe marine ecosystems (such as wetlands), the most common problem is habitat destruction. In most situations, the result is irreversible. Now humans are beginning to destroy marine ecosystems through other types of activities, such as disposal and runoff of poisonous waste; in less than two centuries, by significantly reducing the variety of species on Earth, they have irrevocably redirected the course of evolution.

Certainly, there have been periods in Earth‟s history when mass extinctions have occurred. The extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by some physical event, either climatic or cosmic. There have also been less dramatic extinctions, as when natural competition between species reached an extreme conclusion. Only 0.01 percent of the species that have lived on Earth have survived to the present, and it was largely chance that determined which species survived and which died out.

However, nothing has ever equaled the magnitude and speed with which the human species is altering the physical and chemical world and demolishing the environment. In fact, there is wide agreement that it is the rate of change humans are inflicting, even more than the changes themselves, that will lead to biological devastation. Life on Earth has continually been in flux as slow physical and chemical changes have occurred on Earth, but life needs time to adapt-time for migration and genetic adaptation within existing species and time for the proliferation of new genetic material and new species that may be able to survive in new environments.