单选题 Science and its practical applications in the form of technology, or the "science" of the industrial arts, as Webster defines the term, have had an enormous impact on modem society and culture. For generations it was believed that science and technology would provide the solutions to the problem of human suffering disease, famine, war, and poverty. But today these problems remain; in fact, many argue that they are expanding. Some even conclude that science and technology as presently constituted are not capable of meeting the collective needs of mankind. A more radical position is that modem scientific methods and institutions, because of their very nature and structure, thwart basic human needs and emotions; the catastrophes of today's world, and the greatest threat to its future, some claim, are the direct consequences of science and technology. A major paradox has been created: scientific rationality taken as the supreme form of the application of the rational faculties of human beings and which, along with its practical applications in the form of technological development, have liberated man from ignorance, from the whims and oppressions of a relentless nature and while having subordinated the earth to man, has become the potential instrument of the self-destruction of the human species. War, pollution, and economic oppression are seen as the inevitable results of scientific advance by large sections of the public. The atomic disaster of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are seen as the products of an uninterested scientific rationality. In recent decades in the West there has emerged a wave of anti-scientific, antirational moods, especially among the young people, which threatens a complete rejection not simply of the technological fruits of science, but of scientific rationalism as well, in favor of one or another version of mysticism, irrationalism, and primitivism-or as one philosopher of science has called it, of blood and soil philosophy. Wartovsky has described the argument of the anti-science people as one in which we are warned to "listen to the blood, get back to our roots, and cast out the evil demons of a blind and inhuman rationality, and thereby we will save ourselves". The only "reasonable thing" to do, according to the oppositionist, is to reject reason itself-at least in its scientific form. The very rejection of that reason, in "reasonable" terms, is in itself a paradox.

单选题Sustainable development is applied to just about everything from energy to clean water and economic growth, and as a result it has become difficult to question either the basic assumptions behind it or the way the concept is put to use. This is especially true in agriculture, where sustainable development is often taken as the sole measure of progress without a proper appreciation of historical and cultural perspectives. To start with, it is important to remember that the nature of agriculture has changed markedly throughout history, and will continue to do so. Medieval agriculture in northern Europe fed, clothed and sheltered a predominantly rural society with a much lower population density than it is today. It had minimal effect on biodiversity, and any pollution it caused was typically localized. In terms of energy use and the nutrients(营养成分) captured in the product it was relatively inefficient. Contrast this with farming since the start of the industrial revolution. Competition from overseas led farmers to specialize and increase yields. Throughout this period food became cheaper, safer and more reliable. However, these changes have also led to habitat (栖息地) loss and to diminishing biodiversity. What's more, demand for animal products in developing countries is growing so fast that meeting it will require an extra 300 million tons of grain a year by 2050. Yet the growth of cities and industry is reducing the amount of water available for agriculture in many regions. All this means that agriculture in the 21st century will have to be very different from how it was in the 20th. This will require radical thinking. For example, we need to move away from the idea that traditional practices are inevitably more sustainable than new ones. We also need to abandon the notion that agriculture can be "zero impact". The key will be to abandon the rather simple and static measures of sustainability, which centre on the need to maintain production without increasing damage. Instead we need a more dynamic interpretation, one that looks at the pros and cons(正反两方面) of all the various ways land is used. There are many different ways to measure agricultural performance besides food yield: energy use, environmental costs, water purity, carbon footprint and biodiversity. It is clear, for example, that the carbon of transporting tomatoes from Spain to the UK is less than that of producing them in the UK with additional heating and lighting. But we do not know whether lower carbon footprints will always be better for biodiversity. What is crucial is recognizing that sustainable agriculture is not just about sustainable food production.

单选题 More than half of all Jews married in U.S. since 1990 have wed people who aren't Jewish. Nearly 480,000 American children under the age of ten have one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent. And, if a survey compiled by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles is any indication, it's almost certain that most of these children will not identify themselves as "Jewish" when they get older. That survey asked college freshmen, who are usually around age 18, about their own and their parents' religious identities. Ninety-three percent of those with two Jewish parents said they thought of themselves as Jewish. But when the father wasn't Jewish, the number dropped to 38 percent, and when the mother wasn't Jew, just 15 percent of the students said they were Jewish, too. "I think what was surprising was just how low the Jewish identification was in these mixed marriage families." Linda Sax is a professor of education at UCLA. She directed the survey which was conducted over the course of more than a decade and wasn't actually about religious identity specifically. But Professor Sax says the answers to questions about religion were particularly striking, and deserve a more detailed study. She says it's obvious that interfaith marriage works against the development of Jewish identity among children, but says it's not clear at this point why that's the case. "This new study is necessary to get more in-depth about their feelings about their religion. That's something that the study that I completed was not able to do. We didn't have information on how they feel about their religion, whether they have any concern about their issues of identification, how comfortable they feel about their lifelong goals. I think the new study's going to cover some of that," she says. Jay Rubin is executive director of Hilel, a national organization that works with Jewish college students. Mr. Rubin says Judaism is more than a religion, it's an experience. And with that in mind, Hillel has commissioned a study of Jewish attitudes towards Judaism. Researchers will concentrate primarily on young adults, and those with two Jewish parents, and those with just one, those who see themselves as Jewish and those who do not. Jay Rubin says Hillel will then use this study to formulate a strategy for making Judaism more relevant to the next generation of American Jews.

单选题When I passed the office, I heard my name ______. A) mentioned B) mention C) be mentioned D) to mention

单选题Directions: There are 10 blanks in the following passage. For each numbered blank, there are 4 choice marked A, B, C and D. During recent years we have heard much about "race": how this race does certain things and that race believes certain things and so on. Yet, the {{U}}(51) {{/U}} phenomenon of race consists of few surface indications. We judge race usually from the coloring of the skin: a white race, a brown race, a yellow race and a black race. But {{U}}(52) {{/U}} you were to remove the skin you could not tell anything about the race to which the individual belonged. There is nothing in physical structure, the brain or the internal organs to {{U}}(53) {{/U}} a difference. There are four types of blood. All types are found in every race, and no type is distinct to any race. Human brains are the {{U}}(54) {{/U}} No scientists could examine a brain and tell you the race to which the individual belonged. Brains will {{U}}(55) {{/U}} in size, but this occurs within every race. {{U}}(56) {{/U}} does size have anything to do with intelligence. The largest brain ever examined belonged to a person of weak {{U}}(57) {{/U}}. On the other hand, some of our most distinguished people have had {{U}}(58) {{/U}} brains. Mental tests which are reasonably {{U}}(59) {{/U}} show no differences in intelligence between races. High and low test results both can be recorded by different members of any race. {{U}}(60) {{/U}} equal educational advantages, there will be no difference in average standings, either on account of race or geographical location.

单选题"Environmentally friendly" (Line 2, Para. 4) is closest in meaning to ______.

单选题John Bunyan uses the everyday world of common experience as a metaphor for the spiritual journey of the soul toward God in his____.

单选题Foreign propagandists have a strange misconception of our national character. They believe that we Americans must be hybrid, mongrel, undynamic; and we are called so by the enemies of democracy because, they say, so many races have been fused together in our national life. They believe we are disunited and defenseless because we argue with each other, because we engage in political campaigns, because we recognize the sacred right of the minority to disagree with the majority and to express that disagreement even loudly. It is the very mingling of races, dedicated to common ideals, which creates and recreates our vitality. In every representative American meeting there will be people with names like Jackson and Lincoln and Isaacs and Sehultz and Kovack and Sartori and Jones and Smith. These Americans with varied backgrounds are all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. All of them are inheritors of the same stalwart tradition of unusual enterprise, of adventurousness, of courage--courage to "pull up stakes and git moving". That has been the great compelling force in our history. Our continent, our hemisphere, has been populated by people who wanted a life better than the life they had previously known. They were willing to undergo all conceivable hardships to achieve the better life. They were animated, just as we are animated today, by this compelling force. It is what makes us Americans.

单选题The words "intelligent" and "brilliant" in the first paragraph probably mean ______ while "dull" in the second paragraph means ______.

单选题When my computer suddenly broke down, I noticed that I ______ to save the document.

单选题The first technological revolution in modem biology started when James Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of DNA half a century ago. That established the fields of molecular and cell biology, the basis of the biotechnology industry. The sequencing of the human genome nearly a decade ago set off a second revolution which has started to illuminate the origins of diseases. Now the industry is convinced that a third revolution is under way: the convergence of biology and engineering. A recent report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that physical sciences have already been transformed by their adoption of information technology, advanced materials, imaging, nanotechnology and sophisticated modeling and simulation. Phillip Sharp, a Nobel prize-winner at that university, believes that those tools are about to be brought to bear on biology too. But the chances are that this will take time, and turn out to be more of a reformation than a revolution. The conventional health-care systems of the rich world may resist new technologies even as poor countries leapfrog ahead. There is already a backlash against genomics, which has been oversold to consumers as a deterministic science. And given soaring health-care costs, insurers and health systems may not want to adopt new technologies unless inventors can show conclusively that they will produce better outcomes and offer value for money. If these obstacles can be overcome, then the biggest winner will be the patient. In the past medicine has taken a paternalistic stance, with the all-knowing physician dispensing wisdom from on high, but that is becoming increasingly untenable. Digitisation promises to connect doctors not only to everything they need to know about their patients but also to other doctors who have treated similar disorders. That essential reform will enable many other big technological changes to be introduced. Just as important, it can make that information available to the patients too, empowering them to play a bigger part in managing their own health affairs. This is controversial, and with good reason. Many doctors, and some patients, reckon they lack the knowledge to make informed decisions. But patients actually know a great deal about many diseases, especially chronic ones like diabetes and heart problems with which they often live for many years. The best way to deal with those is for individuals to take more responsibility for their own health and prevent problems before they require costly hospital visits. That means putting electronic health records directly into patients" hands.

单选题The purpose of this passage is to discuss ______.

单选题Most of the young people hold the mistaken belief that goods produced in our own country are ______ to imported ones.

单选题When he died he left ______ amounting to $50,000. A. debts B. obligations C. accounts D. payments

单选题Would you please ______ my web site just before I publish it?

单选题Passage 7 Professor Smith recently persuaded 35 people, 23 of them women, to keep a diary of all their absent-minded actions for a fortnight. When he came to analyze their embarrassing lapses(差错)in a scientific report, he was surprised to find that nearly all of them fell into a few groupings. Nor did the lapses appear to be entirely random. One of the women, for instance, on leaving her house for work one morning threw her dog her earrings and tried to fix a dog biscuit on her ear. "The explanation for this is that the brain is like a computer," explains the professor. "People program themselves to do certain activities regularly. It was the woman's custom every morning to throw her dog two biscuits and then put on her earrings. But somehow the action got reversed in the program." About one in twenty of the incidents the volunteers reported were these"program assembly failures". Altogether the volunteers logged 433 unintentional actions that they found themselves doing--an average of twelve each. There appear to be peak periods in the day when we are at our zaniest (荒谬可笑的) . These are two hours some time between eight a.m. and noon, between four and six p.m. with a smaller peak between eight and ten p.m. "Among men the peak seems to be when a changeover in brain 'programs' occurs, as for instance between going to and from work." Women on average reported slightly more lapses--12.5 compared with 10.9 for men--probably because they were more reliable reporters. A startling finding of the research is that the absent-minded activity is a hazard of doing things in which we are skilled. Normally, you would expect that skill reduces the number of errors we make. But trying to avoid silly slips by concentrating more could make things a lot worse--even dangerous.

单选题These shops normally______ in old antique items, not in modern ones.

单选题During the recession, job losses were not equitably shared; employment rates fell more for some groups than others. It is also well-known that job losses were greater among men than among women—the so-called mancession—largely because men had been more likely to work in the residential construction and manufacturing industries that were hit hardest. What I"m going to reveal is the employment rates separately for married women and unmarried women who were heads of households. Not surprisingly, the latter are somewhat more likely to work. More surprising is that employment rates fell so much more for these unmarried women who were heads of household. Employment per capita fell 4.7 percentage points among the latter, compared with 1.6 percentage points among the former. The job-loss gap associated with marital status turns out to be as large as the more widely recognized job loss gap associated with gender. Neither group of women had many members working in construction, so the decline of construction cannot explain these differences. An "added-worker effect" has been observed during a number of recessions: more married women worked during a recession than during an expansion because wives sometimes begin work to help replace the income lost by their unemployed husbands. The employment rate among nonelderly married men fell 4 percentage points, to 83 percent from 87 percent. While that is a large decline by historical standards, it still means that roughly 95 percent of wives whose husbands were employed in 2007 had husbands who continued their employment during the recession. Among the 5 percent of wives who were not so fortunate, roughly two-thirds of them had already been working before the recession and therefore could not react to their husband"s unemployment by starting work. Therefore the added-worker effect is much too small to explain the sharply different job-loss rates by marital status. What seems to be especially different between married and unmarried women is their propensity to be unemployed for long periods. The point is that married and unmarried women enter unemployment at about the same rate, but unmarried women leave it more slowly. Part of the difference in labor-market experiences has to do with the safety net. Many safety-net programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food stamps, and Medicaid, base eligibility on family income. A married woman is usually ineligible for a number of safety-net programs because her family"s income is above the poverty line regardless of her employment status. Unmarried household heads, on the other hand, are usually the sole breadwinner for the family, and when their income falls to zero, the household income essentially does, too. For this reason, more unmarried women who are heads of households can expect anti-poverty programs to help them when they are out of work than married women can. An unintended but unavoidable consequence of providing someone a cushion when they are without work is that they are provided with less incentive to get back to work.