阅读理解Questions 41 to 50 are based on the following passage

阅读理解What attitude does the writer hold toward the people who died in the War of 1812?

阅读理解Text 1 It s a time when school, homework, active social lives and part-time jobs keep teenagers (少年 ) busy from early in the morning until late at night

阅读理解CHundreds of scientists，writers and academics sounded a warning to humanity in an open letter published last December：Policymakers and the rest of us must engage openly with the risk of global collapse．Researchers in many areas have projected the widespread collapse as“a credible scenario（情景） this century”．A survey of scientists found that extreme weather events，food insecurity，and freshwater shortages might create global collapse．Of course，if you are a non-human species，collapse is well underway．The call for public engagement with the unthinkable is especially germane in this moment of still-uncontrolled pandemic and economic crises in the world's most technologically advanced nations．Not very long ago，it was also unthinkable that a virus would shut down nations and that safety nets would be proven so disastrously lacking in flexibility．The international scholars' warning letter doesn't say exactly what collapse will look like or when it might happen．Collapseology，the study of collapse，is more concerned with identifying trends and with them the dangers of everyday civilization．Among the signatories（签署者）of the warning was Bob Johnson，the originator of the“ecological footprint”concept，which measures the total amount of environmental input needed to maintain a given lifestyle．With the current footprint of humanity，“it seems that global collapse is certain to happen in some form，possibly within a decade，certainly within this century，”Johnson said in an email．Only if we discuss the consequences of our biophysical limits, the December warning letter says，can we have the hope to reduce their“speed，severity and harm”．And yet messengers of the coming disturbance are likely to be ignored．We all want to hope things will turn out fine．As a poet wrote，Man is a victim of dope （麻醉品）In the incurable form of hope．The hundreds of scholars who signed the letter are intent（执着） on quieting hope that ignores preparedness．“Let's look directly into the issue of collapse，”hey say，“and deal with the terrible possibilities of what we see there to make the best of a troubling future．” What does the underlined word“germane”in Paragraph 3 probably mean？

阅读理解Passage Three A new low carbon home in Hawkhurst, in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, built with the latest green technologies is expected to slash energy bills by around three quarters

阅读理解Passage 3 Ask motorcyclists why they love to ride two-wheelers, and they often wax poetic

阅读理解Much of the language used to describe monetary policy, such as" steering the economy to a soft landing" or" a touch on the brakes", makes it sound Like a precise science. Nothing could be further from the truth. The link between interest rates and inflation is uncertain. And there are long, variable lags before policy changes have any effect on the economy. Hence the analogy that likens the conduct of monetary policy to driving a car with a blackened windscreen, a cracked rear-view mirror and a faulty steering wheel. 　　Given all these disadvantages, central bankers seem to have had much to boast about of late. Average inflation in the big seven industrial economies fell to a mere 2.3% last year, close to its lowest level in 30 years, before rising slightly to 2.5% this July. This is a long way below the double-digit rates which many countries experienced in the 1970s and early 1980s. 　　It is also less than most forecasters had predicted. In late 1994 the panel of economists which The Economist polls each month said that America''s inflation rate would average 3.5% in 1995. In fact, it fell to 2.6% in August, and is expected to average only about 3% for the year as a whole. In Britain and Japan inflation is running half a percentage point below the rate predicted at the end of last year. This is no flash in the pan, over the past couple of years, inflation has been consistently lower than expected in Britain and America. 　　Economists have been particularly surprised by favourable inflation figures in Britain and the United States, since conventional measures suggest that both economies, and especially America''s ,have little productive slack. America''s capacity utilisation, for example, hit historically high levels earlier this year, and its jobless rate (5.6% in August) has fallen below most estimates of the natural rate of unemployment―the rate below which inflation has taken off in the past. 　　Why has inflation proved so mild? The most thrilling explanation is, unfortunately, a little defective. Some economists argue that powerful structural changes in the world have up-ended the old economic models that were based upon the historical link between growth and inflation.

阅读理解Believe it or not, optical illusion（错觉）can cut highway crashes

阅读理解In the early days of nuclear power, the United States make money on it. But today opponents have resisted its development that no nuclear plants have been ordered or built here in 12 years.The greatest fear of nuclear power opponents has always been a reactor “meltdown”. Today, the chances ofa meltdown that would threaten U. S. public health are very little. But to even further reduce the possibility, engineers are testing new reactors that rely not on human judgment to shut them down but on the laws ofnature. Now General Electric is already building two advanced reactors in Japan. But don’t expect them even on U. S. shores unless things change in Washington.The procedure for licensing nuclear power plants is a bad dream. Any time during or even after construction, an objection by any group or individual can bring everything to a halt while the matter is investigated or taken to court. Meanwhile, the builder must add nice-but-not-necessary improvements, some of which force him to knock down walls and start over. In every case when a plant has been opposed, the Nuclear Regulation Commission has ultimately granted a license to construct or operate. But the victory often costs so much that the utility ends up abandoning the plant anyway.A case in point is the Shoreham plant on New York’s Long Island. Shoreham was a virtual twin to the Millstone plant in Connecticut, both ordered in the mid-60’s. Millstone, completed for $101 million, has been generating electricity for two decades. Shoreham, however, was singled out by antinuclear activists who, by sending in endless protests, drove the cost over $5 billion and delayed its use for many years.Shoreham finally won its operation license. But the plant has never produced a watt power. Governor Mario Cuomo, an opponent of a Shoreham startup, used his power to force New York’s public-utilities commission to accept the following settlement: the power company could pass the cost of Shoreham along to its consumers only if it agreed not to operate the plant. Today, a perfectly good facility, capable of servicing hundreds of thousands of homes, sits rusting.

阅读理解Global warming may be the most harmful environmental problem (1) have created, and the most difficult to solve. Our society is largely (2) by the fossil fuels that cause global warming. Its growing consequences — ecological disruption, floods, disease — are convincing more and more people that we must cut down (3) pollution. Many people view global warming as a problem too large and too (4) for anything they can do to (5) . However, in reality, there are lots of things we can do to stop, or at least to reduce it. Plant a tree. Trees (6) carbon dioxide, but only as long as theyre living. Install low-flow shower heads and faucets. Youll use less than half the water without (7) . Buy energy-efficient electronics and appliances. Then, turn them off when theyre not in use. Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Recycling a stack of newspapers only (8) will save a good sized tree. Mount a local (9) against global warming Educate your community about how to cut greenhouse gas pollution. Support measures at the national and local levels that increase energy efficiency, and that (10) the use of clean, renewable solar and wind technology.

阅读理解Passage 4 The biggest safety threat facing airlines today may not be a terrorist with a gun,but the man with the portable computer in business class

阅读理解 Forget Iraq and budget deficits. The most serious political problem on both sides of the Atlantic is none of these. It is a difficulty that has dogged the ruling classes for millennia. It is the servant problem. In Britain David Blunkett, the home secretary, has resigned over an embarrassment ( or one of many embarrassments, in a story involving his ex-girlfriend, her husband, two pregnancies and some DNA) concerning a visa for a Filipina nanny employed by his mistress. His office speeded it through for reasons unconnected to the national shortage of un skilled labour. Mr Blunkett resigned ahead of a report by Sir Alan Budd, an economist who is investigating the matter at the government' s request. In America Bernard Kerik, the president' s nominee for the Department of Homeland Security, withdrew last week because he had carelessly employed a Mexican nanny whose Play-Doh skills were in better order than her paperwork. Mr Kerik also remembered that he hadn' t paid her taxes. The nominee has one or two other 'issues' ( an arrest warrant in 1998, and allegations of dodgy business dealings and extra-marital affairs). But employing an illegal nanny would probably have been enough to undo him, as it has several other cabinet and judicial appointees in recent years. There is an easy answer to the servant problem--obvious to economists, if not to the less clear-sighted. Perhaps Sir Alan, a dismal scientist of impeccable rationality, will be thoughtful enough to point it out in his report. Parents are not the only people who have difficulty getting visas for workers. All employers face restrictive immigration policies which raise labour costs. Some may respond by trying to fiddle the immigration system, but most deal with the matter by exporting jobs. In the age of the global economy, the solution to the servant problem is simple: rather than importing the nanny, offshore the children.

阅读理解When TV news programs report wars or disasters, the editors rarely use the most horrifying pictures of dead or wounded victims because they don''t want to upset their viewers. Even so, viewers are usually warned in advance that they "may find some of these scenes disturbing", so they can look away if they choose. But the men and women whose job it is to record those scenes—the TV cameramen—have no such choice. It is their duty to witness the horrors of the world and record them no matter how gruesome (可怕的) and unpleasant they may be. Consequently, it is one of the most dangerous, exposed and emotionally taxing jobs the world has to offer. Today, the demand for their work is rising, the explosion of satellite broadcasting and 24-hour news in recent years has created an almost insatiable (贪得无厌的) demand for TV information. But major broadcasters and TV news agencies—such as Reuters and WTN—have never had enough staff to meet the worldwide demand for up-to-date pictures, so increasingly they turn to "freelance" TV cameramen. These freelance cameramen are independent operators tied to no particular organization. They will work for any company which hires them, be it for just a few hours or for several weeks in a war zone. But if the freelance cameraman is injured, in the course of the job, the TV company is not responsible for him. The freelancer must survive on his own. "TV will always need hard, vivid moving pictures which are fresh, but these companies feel uncomfortable with large numbers of employees on their books," explains Nik Gowing, once foreign editor for Britain''s Channel 4 News and now a BBC news presenter. "By hiring freelancers, they can buy in the skills they need only when they need them. It also enables them to contract out the risk," he says.

阅读理解This week, the governor of Connecticut proposed a statewide tax on sugarsweetened drinks

阅读理解By saying “you have done your homework”, the writer means _____.

阅读理解which of the following statement is INCORRECT? 

阅读理解Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A., B., C. and D.. You should deicide the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center.Passage OneFor years there have been endless articles stating that scientists are on the verge of achieving artificial intelligence and that it is just around the corner. The truth is that it may be just around the corner but they haven’t yet found the right block.Artificial intelligence aims to build machines that can think. One immediate problem is to define thought, which is harder than you might think. The specialists in the field of artificial intelligence complain, with some justification, that anything that their machines do is dismissed as not being thought. For example, computers can now play very, very good chess. They can’t beat the greatest players in the world, but they can beat just about anybody else. If a human being played chess at this level, he or she would certainly be considered smart. Why not a machine? The answer is that the machine doesn’t do anything clever in playing chess. It uses its blinding speed to do a brute-force search of all possible moves for several moves ahead, evaluates the outcomes and picks the best. Humans don’t play chess that way. They see patterns, which computers don’t.This wooden approach to thought characterizes machine intelligence. Computers have no judgment, no flexibility, no common sense. So-called expert systems, one of the hottest areas in artificial intelligence, aim to mimic the reasoning processes of human experts in a limited field, such as medical diagnosis or weather forecasting. There may be limited commercial applications for this sort of thing, but there is no way to make a machine think about anything under the sun, which a teenager can do. The hallmark of artificial intelligence to date is that if a problem is severely restricted, a machine can achieve limited success. But when the problem is expanded to a realistic one, computers fall flat on their display screens. For example, machines can understand a few words spoken individually by a speaker that they have been trained to hear. They cannot understand continuous speech using an unlimited vocabulary spoken by just any speaker.

阅读理解Recent research has claimed that an excess of positive ions in the air can have an ill effect on people’s physical or psychological health. What are positive ions? Well, the air is full of ions, electrically charged particles, and generally there is a rough balance between the positive and the negative charged. But sometimes this balance becomes disturbed and a larger proportion of positive ions are found. This happens naturally before thunderstorm, earthquakes when winds such as the Mistral, Hamsin or Sharav are blowing in certain countries. Or it can be caused by a build-up of static electricity indoors from carpets or clothing made of man-made fibers, or from TV sets duplicators or computer display screens.When a large number of positive ions are present in the air many people experience unpleasant effects such as headaches, fatigue, irritability, and some particularly sensitive people suffer nausea or even mental disturbance. Animals are also affected, particularly before earthquakes, snakes have been observed to come out of hibernation, rats to flee from their burrows, dogs howl and cats jump about unaccountably. This has led the US Geographical Survey to fund a network of volunteers to watch animals in an effort to foresee such disasters before they hit vulnerable areas such as California.Conversely, when large numbers of negative ions are present, then people have a feeling of well-being. Natural conditions that produce these large amounts are near the sea, close to waterfalls or fountains, or in any place where water is sprayed, or forms a spray. This probably accounts for the beneficial effect of a holiday by the sea, or in the mountains with tumbling streams or waterfalls.To increase the supply of negative ions indoors, some scientists recommend the use of ionisers: small portable machines, which generate negative ions. They claim that ionisers not only clean and refresh the air but also improve the health of people sensitive to excess positive ions. Of course, there are the detractors, other scientists, who dismiss such claims and are skeptical about negative/positive ion research. Therefore people can only make up their own minds by observing the effects on themselves, or on others, of a negative rich or poor environment. After all it is debatable whether depending on seismic readings to anticipate earthquakes is more effective than watching the cat.

阅读理解TEXT 3 Incidents like this are happening every day

阅读理解A report consistently brought back by visitors to the US is how friendly, courteous, and helpful most Americans were to them. To be fair, this observation is also frequently made of Canada and Canadians ,and should best be considered North American. There are, of course, exceptions. Small- minded officials, rude waiters, and ill-mannered taxi drivers are hardly unknown in the US. Yet it is an observation made so frequently that it deserves comment. 　　For a long period of time and in many parts of the country, a traveler was a welcome break in an otherwise dull existence. Dullness and loneliness were common problems of the families who generally lived distant from one another. Strangers and travelers were welcome sources of diversion, and brought news of the outside world. 　　The harsh realities of the frontier also shaped this tradition of hospitality. Someone travelling alone, if hungry, injured, or ill, often had nowhere to turn except to the nearest cabin or settlement. It was not a matter of choice for the traveler or merely a charitable impulse on the part of the settlers. It reflected the harshness of daily life: if you didn''t take in the stranger and take care of him, there was no one else who would. And someday, remember, you might be in the same situation. 　　Today there are many charitable organizations which specialize in helping the weary traveler. Yet, the old tradition of hospitality to strangers is still very strong in the US, especially in the smaller cities and towns away from the busy tourist trails. "I was just traveling through, got talking with this American, and pretty soon he invited me home for dinner―amazing. "Such observations reported by visitors to the US are not uncommon, but are not always understood properly. The casual friendliness of many Americans should be interpreted neither as superficial nor as artificial, but as the result of a historically developed cultural tradition. 　　As is true of any developed society, in America a complex set of cultural signals, assumptions, and conventions underlies all social interrelationships. And, of course, speaking a language does not necessarily mean that someone understands social and cultural patterns. Visitors who fail to" translate" cultural meanings properly often draw wrong conclusions. For example, when an American uses the word "friend", the cultural implications of the word may be quite different from those it has in the visitor''s language and culture. It takes more than a brief encounter on a bus to distinguish between courteous convention and individual interest. Yet, being friendly is a virtue that many Americans value highly and expect from both neighbors and strangers.