阅读理解Aimlessness has hardly been typical of the postwar Japan whose productivity and social harmony are the envy of the United States and Europe. But increasingly the Japanese are seeing a decline of the traditional work-moral values. Ten years ago young people were hardworking and saw their jobs as their primary reason for being, but now Japan has largely fulfilled its economic needs, and young people don''t know where they should go next. 　　The coming of age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the male-dominated job market have limited the opportunities of teen-agers who are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifices involved in climbing Japan''s rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs. In a recent survey, it was found that only 24.5 percent of Japanese students were fully satisfied with school life, compared with 67.2 percent of students in the United States. In addition, far more Japanese workers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs than did their counterparts in the 10 other countries surveyed. 　　While often praised by foreigners for its emphasis on the basics, Japanese education tends to stress test taking and mechanical learning over creativity and self-expression. "Those things that do not show up in the test scores--personality, ability, courage or humanity--are completely ignored," says Toshiki Kaifu, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party''s education committee. "Frustration against this kind of thing leads kids to drop out and run wild. "Last year Japan experienced 2,125 incidents of school violence, including 929 assaults on teachers. Amid the outcry, many conservative leaders are seeking a return to the prewar emphasis on moral education. Last year Mitsuo Setoyama, who was then education minister, raised eyebrows when he argued that liberal reforms introduced by the American occupation authorities after World War Ⅱ had weakened the" Japanese morality of respect for parents." 　　But that may have more to do with Japanese life-styles. "In Japan," says educator Yoko Muro, "it''s never a question of whether you enjoy your job and your life, but only how much you can endure." With economic growth has come centralization ,fully 76 percent of Japan''s 119 million citizens live in cities where community and the extended family have been abandoned in favor of isolated, two- generation households. Urban Japanese have long endured lengthy commutes (travels to and from work) and crowded living conditions, but as the old group and family values weaken, the discomfort is beginning to tell. In the past decade, the Japanese divorce rate, while still well below that of the United States, has increased by more than 50 percent, and suicides have increased by nearly one-quarter.

阅读理解Passage Five Coconut (椰子) is an unusual food for many reasons

阅读理解Passage 4 New research is trying to find how we learn and make decisions exactly

阅读理解Questions 71 to 80 are based on the following passage

阅读理解 Less meat and dairy in our diets could help reduce agricultural greenhouse gases by as much as 80% by 2055, according to a recent study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The researchers created global land-use model to project likely outcomes given different scenarios involving consumer dietary trends and changes in agriculture production methods. The models take into consideration population growth, the world economy, and other factors. The researchers found that, if meat and dairy consumption patterns remain constant of increase, the associated global agricultural omissions will increase significantly. On the other hand, a 25% reduction over the next 40 years would help bring levels to where they were around 1995. Methane and nitrous oxide in particular could be reduced if less meat and dairy is produced and consumed. These gases are caused largely by livestock waste and synthetic fertilizers. Around two-thirds of nitrous-oxide emissions come from agriculture—and most of that as a result of either raising animals or producing the feed used to raise them. Consumers' food choices, combined with what one PIK researcher terms 'technical mitigation options on the producers side' could make an enormous impact on these emissions. While not nearly as much methane or nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, both are significantly more potent and they form substantial pieces of the greenhouse gas pie. Both of these gases trap heat and radiation in the atmosphere much more effectively than does carbon dioxide. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cites methane as being '21 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time period.' Nitrous oxide is more than 300 times more effective than CO2. While the PIK study doesn't detail exactly which consumer choices and eating habits can help reverse the trend, it seems clear that less is more when it comes to consuming meat and dairy products.

阅读理解Vietnamese people may end the sad story with a smile to_______ .

阅读理解This text mainly discusses how to

阅读理解Passage 2 The island of Great Britain being small (compare the size of Australia), the natural place for holiday relaxation and enjoyment is its extensive coastline, above all its southern and eastern coasts, though Blackpool, which is probably the best known and more crowded seaside town, and the favourite resort of the mass-population of industrial Lancashire, is on the north-west coast

阅读理解Read the following passages carefully and choose one bestanswer for each question in Passage 1 2and 3, and answerthe questions in passage 4 based on your understanding ofthe passage.(1)Scattered around the globe are more than one hundredregions of volcanic activity known as hot spots (hot spot:a place in the upper mantle of the earth at which hotmagma from the lower mantle upwells to melt through thecrust usually in the interior of a tectonic plate to forma volcanic feature; also: a place in the crust overlying ahot spot) Unlike most volcanoes, hot spots are rarelyfound along the boundaries of the continental and oceanicplates that comprise the Earth’ s crust; most hot spotslie deep in the interior of plates and are anchored deepin the layers of the Earth’ s surface. Hot spots are alsodistinguished from other volcanoes by their lavas, whichcontain greater amounts of alkali metals than do thosefrom volcanoes at plate margins.In some cases, plates moving past hot spots have lefttrails of extinct volcanoes in much the same way that windpassing over a chimney carries off puffs of smoke. Itappears that the Hawaiian Islands were created in such amanner by a single source of lava, welling up from a hotspot, over which the Pacific Ocean plate passed on acourse roughly from the east toward the northwest,carrying off a line of volcanoes of increasing age. Twoother Pacific island chains the Austral Ridge and theTuamotu Ridge parallel the configuration of the Hawaiianchain; they are also aligned from the east toward thenorthwest, with the most recent volcanic activity neartheir eastern terminuses.That the Pacific plate and the other plates are moving isnow beyond dispute; the relative motion of the plates hasbeen reconstructed in detail. However, the relative motionof the plates with respect to the Earth’s interior cannotbe determined easily. Hot spots provide the measuringinstruments for resolving the question of whether twocontinental plates are moving in opposite directions orwhether one is stationary and the other is drifting awayfrom it. The most compelling evidence that a continentalplate is stationary is that, at some hot spots, lavas ofseveral ages are superposed instead of being spread out inchronological sequence. Of course, reconstruction of platemotion from the tracks of hot-spot volcanoes assumes thathot spots are immobile, or nearly so. Several studiessupport such an assumption, including one that has shownthat prominent hot spots throughout the world seem not tohave moved during the past ten million years.Beyond acting as frames of reference, hot spots apparentlyinfluence the geophysical processes that propel the platesacross the globe. When a continental plate comes to restover a hot spot, material welling up from deeper layersforms a broad dome that, as it grows, develops deepfissures. In some instances, the continental plate mayrupture entirely along some of the fissures so that thehot spot initiates the formation of a new ocean. Thus,just as earlier theories have explained the mobility ofthe continental plates, so hot-spot activity may suggest atheory to explain their mutability.

阅读理解Text 3 It may have occurred to you, during the course of a dismal trawl round a supermarket indistinguishable from everyother supermarket you have ever been into, to wonder why they are all the same

阅读理解Text 3 There are many reasons for the sorry state of commercial aviation in America

阅读理解Passage 1 If you, like me, distrust school cafeterias, you pack homemade lunches for your children, as I did until my sons finished high school

阅读理解This cakes delicious! Did you make it yourself? ________ My sister got it from the bakery

阅读理解C Once a month,just after sunset, trucks fill an outdoor parking lot in Los Angeles, California

阅读理解Of all the components of a good night'' s sleep, dreams seem to be least within our control. In dreams, a window opens into a world where logic is suspended and dead people speak. A century ago, Freud formulated his revolutionary theory that dreams were the disguised shadows of our unconscious desires and fears; by the late 1970s, neurologists had switched to thinking of them as just "mental noise"―the random byproducts of the neural - repair work that goes on during sleep. Now researchers suspect that dreams are part of the mind'' s emotional thermostat, regulating moods while the brain is "off - line." And one leading authority says that these intensely powerful mental events can be not only harnessed but actually brought under conscious control, to help us sleep and feel better. "It'' s your dream," says Rosalind Cartwright, chair of psychology at Chicago'' s Medical Center. "If you don'' t like it, change it." Evidence from brain imaging supports this view. The brain is as active during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep―when most vivid dreams occur―as it is when fully awake, says Dr. Eric Nofzinger at the University of Pittsburgh. But not all parts of the brain are equally involved; the limbic system (the "emotional brain") is especially active, while the prefrontal cortex (the center of intellect and reasoning) is relatively quiet. "We wake up from dreams happy or depressed, and those feelings can stay with us all day," says Stanford sleep researcher Dr. William Dement. The link between dreams and emotions shows up among the patients in Cartwright'' s clinic. Most people seem to have more bad dreams early in the night, progressing toward happier ones before awakening, suggesting that they are working through negative feelings generated during the day. Because our conscious mind is occupied with daily life we don'' t always think about the emotional significance of the day'' s events―until, it appears, we begin to dream. And this process need not be left to the unconscious. Cartwright believes one can exercise conscious control over recurring bad dreams. As soon as you awaken, identify what is upsetting about the dream. Visualize how you would like it to end instead; the next time it occurs, try to wake up just enough to control its course. With much practice people can learn to, literally, do it in their sleep. At the end of the day, there'' s probably little reason to pay attention to our dreams at all unless they keep us from sleeping or "we wake up in a panic," Cartwright says. Terrorism, economic uncertainties and general feelings of insecurity have increased people'' s anxiety. Those suffering from persistent nightmares should seek help from a therapist. For the rest of us, the brain has its ways of working through bad feelings. Sleep or rather dream―on it and you''ll feel better in the morning.

阅读理解 Just because you're better educated doesn't mean that you're any more rational than everyone else, no matter how hard you may try to give that impression. Take the selection of lottery numbers. A survey in Florida described at this year's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science shows that better educated people try to use random number systems to pick their lottery numbers. Despite the apparent logic of choosing random numbers, however, their chances of winning are no better than those of ordinary folk who use birthdays, anniversaries and other 'lucky' dates. Nor are they better off than those who draw on omens and intuitions, picking numbers seen on car number-plates and in dreams. But no doubt they feel a lot more rational. That appearance of 'rationality' may be a dangerous thing. Scientists are not immune to subtle and subjective influences on their judgments. Take the data from a survey of the public and member of the British Society Of Toxicology discussed at the same meeting. The survey showed that most people agree with the view that animals can be used to help predict how human will react, to chemicals, and that if a chemical causes cancer in an animal, we can be 'reasonably sure' it will cause cancer in humans. The toxicologists, however, are more circumspect. They accept the first statement but less likely to agree that if a chemical causes cancer in an animal, it will do so in a human. Can this difference be attributed to their expertise? Perhaps. But consider the considerable variation among toxicologists, those who were young, female, working in academia rather than industry or who felt that technology is not always used for the good of all, were more likely to agree that what causes cancer in an animal will cause cancer in a human. Maybe we need to think more about how who we are affects our 'rational' decisions.

阅读理解Doctors believe that second-hand smoke may cause lung cancer in people who do not smoke

阅读理解Is a car that does not have to be refueled every few hundred miles, with the atom exploding peacefully beneath the bonnet, possible in the future? In theory it is, since already the atom has been harnessed to drive submarines, and an atomic engine is already in existence

阅读理解Passage 3 If you are a male and you are reading this, congratulations: you are a survivor

阅读理解Passage 4 One minute into annual inspection and things are already going wrong for the Globe Hotel