单选题Little is known of his childhood______at a factory at the early age of ten.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following four passages. Answer the questions below each passage by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Passage One{{/B}} America's economic recovery remains uncomfortably weak. The latest data show industrial production falling while the trade deficit soars to record levels. To round off a dismal week for economic statistics, the Fed (美联储) announced that industrial production fell by 0.2% in December compared with the previous month. That came as a disappointment to economists who had been expecting a small rise. Monthly data are always unreliable, of course; there is always a plausible explanation for unexpectedly bad (or good) news. But nearly all recent economic statistics point to the same conclusion--that America's recovery remains sluggish and erratic. It could put pressure on the Fed to consider cutting interest rates again when its policymaking committee meets at the end of the month. The biggest obstacle to healthier economic performance, though, is political. As the Fed's chairman, Alan Greenspan, acknowledged in the closing months of 2002, uncertainty about the future is holding both investors and consumers back. The shadowy threat of international terrorism and the much more explicit prospect of a war with Iraq have made many Americans nervous about the future. For businesses still reeling from the speed at which the late-1990s boom turned to slump, the political climate is one more reason to put off investing in new plant and equipment or hiring new staff. For consumers, for so long the mainstay of the American economy, the thrill of the shopping mall seems, finally, to be on the wane. It is hard to put a favorable interpretation on most of the data. But it is important to keep a sense of perspective. Some recent figures look disappointing partly because they fall short of over-optimistic forecasts -- a persistent weakness of those paid to predict the economic future, no matter how often they are proved wrong. The Fed will be watching carefully for further signs of weakness during the rest of the month. Mr. Greenspan is an avid, even obsessive, consumer of economic data. He has made it clear that the Fed stands ready to reduce interest rates again if it judges it necessary--even after 12 cuts in the past two years. At its last meeting, though, when it kept rates on hold, the Fed signaled that it did not expect to need to reduce rates any further. Monetary policy still offers the best short-term policy response to weak economic activity, and with inflation low the Fed still has scope for further relaxation. President Bush's much-vaunted fiscal stimulus is unlikely to provide appropriate help, and certainly not in a timely way.

单选题If you are anything like me, you left the theater after Sex and the City 2 and thought, there ought to be a law against a looks-based culture in which the only way for 40-year-old actresses to be compensated like 40-year-old actors is to have them look and dress like the teenage daughters of 40-year-old actors. Meet Deborah Rhode, a Stanford law professor who proposes a legal regime in which discrimination on the basis of looks is as serious as discrimination based on gender or race. In a provocative new book, The Beauty Bias, Rhode lays out the case for an America in which appearance discrimination is no longer allowed．That means Hooters can't fire its servers for being too heavy, as allegedly happened last month to a waitress in Michigan who says she received nothing but excellent reviews but weighed 132 pounds. Rhode is at her most persuasive when arguing that in America, discrimination against unattractive women and short men is as pernicious and widespread as bias based on race, sex, age, ethnicity, religion, and disability. Rhode cites research to prove her point: 11 percent of surveyed couples say they would abort a fetus predisposed toward obesity. College students tell surveyors they'd rather have a spouse who is an embezzler, drug user, or a shoplifter than one who is obese. And all of this is compounded by a virtually unregulated beauty and diet industry and soaring rates of elective cosmetic surgery. Rhode reminds us how Hillary Clinton and Sonia Sotomayor were savaged by the media for their looks, and says it's no surprise that Sarah Palin paid her makeup artist more than any member of her staff in her run for the vice presidency. And the problem with making appearance discrimination illegal is that Americans just really, really like hot girls. And so long as being a hot girl is deemed a bona fide occupational qualification, there will be cocktail waitresses fired for gaining three pounds. It's not just American men who like things this way. The truth is that women feel good about competing in beauty pageants. To put it another way, appearance bias is a massive societal problem with tangible economic costs that most of us—perhaps especially women—perpetuate each time we buy a diet pill or sneer at fat women. This doesn't mean we shouldn't work toward eradicating discrimination based on appearance. But it may mean recognizing that the law won't stop us from discriminating against the overweight, the aging, and the imperfect, so long as it's the quality we all hate most in ourselves.

单选题The survey showed that ______.

单选题I would like your authorization to trim the part of the tree that hangs into my yard.

单选题We have learnt a lot from the ______.

单选题The author indicates explicitly that which of the following records has been a source of information in her investigation?

单选题Whenever we are in trouble, we can ______ him for help.

单选题______ you are unable to answer, perhaps we should ask someone else. A．Since B．If C．When D．That

单选题It can be inferred that the author of the passage expects that the experience of the student mentioned as having studied Wife in the Right would have one of the following effects. That is ______.

单选题Which of the following is closest to the main idea of this article?

单选题Sometimes an Englishman is______enthusiastic, emotional, excited, etc than any other na tionality, but tends to display his feelings far less.

单选题Over the past decade, thousands of patents have been granted for what are called business methods. Amazon. com received one for its" one-click" online payment system. Merrill Lynch got legal protection for an asset allocation strategy. One inventor patented a technique for lifting a box. Now the nation's top patent court appears completely ready to scale back on business-method patents, which have been controversial ever since they were first authorized 10 years ago. In a move that has intellectual-property lawyers abuzz the U. S. court of Appeals for the federal circuit said it would use a particular case to conduct a broad review of business-method patents. In re Bilski, as the case is known ,is "a very big deal", says Dennis D. Crouch of the University of Missouri School of law. It" has the potential to eliminate an entire class of patents. " Curbs on business-method claims would be a dramatic about-face, because it was the federal circuit itself that introduced such patents with is 1998 decision in the so-called state Street Bank case, approving a patent on a way of pooling mutual-fund assets. That ruling produced an explosion in business-method patent filings, initially by emerging internet companies trying to stake out exclusive rights to specific types of online transactions. Later, move established companies raced to add such patents to their files, if only as a defensive move against rivals that might beat them to the punch. In 2005,IBM noted in a court filing that it had been issued more than 300 business-method patents despite the fact that it questioned the legal basis for granting them. Similarly, some Wall Street investment films armed themselves with patents for financial products, even as they took positions in court cases opposing the practice. The Bilski case involves a claimed patent on a method for hedging risk in the energy market. The Federal circuit issued an unusual order stating that the case would be heard by all 12 of the court's judges, rather than a typical panel of three, and that one issue it wants to evaluate is whether it should "reconsider" its state street Bank ruling. The Federal Circuit's action comes in the wake of a series of recent decisions by the supreme Court that has narrowed the scope of protections for patent holders. Last April, for example the justices signaled that too many patents were being upheld for" inventions" that are obvious. The judges on the Federal circuit are" reacting to the anti-patent trend at the Supreme Court", says Harold C. Wegner, a patent attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

单选题Wimbledon tennis tournament is held in______each summer.

单选题Planning is a very important activity in our lives yet really sophisticated. It can give pleasure, even excitement, 【C1】______cause quite severe headaches. The more significant the task【C2】______is, the more careful the planning requires. Getting to school or to work on time is a task requiring【C3】______or no planning, and it is almost a【C4】______. Meanwhile when you luckily to enjoy a month's touring holiday【C5】______, or better【C6】______, getting married, it would a different matter altogether. It' the【C7】______involves a church wedding, with fifty guests, a reception, a honeymoon in Venice, and【C8】______to a new home, this requires even more planning to make【C9】______that it is successful. Planning is our way of trying to ensure success and【C10】______avoiding costly failures we cannot afford. It is【C11】______essential and fundamental to mankind as a【C12】______, to individual nations, to families and single people; the【C13】______may vary, but the【C14】______of importance does not. In essence, a nation planning its resources and【C15】______does not differ from the【C16】______weekly shopping or monthly household budget.【C17】______are designed to ensure an adequate supply of essentials,【C18】______a rate of spending within the limits of【C19】______, and if properly carried out, will【C10】______shortages, wastage and over-expenditure.

单选题Medical doctors sometimes can make mistakes that will cost______.

单选题The Chinese have used a method called acupuncture (针灸) to perform operations for about 4,000 years without putting the patient to sleep. This involves placing flexible needles into certain parts of the body. The needles are available in a number of stores in China and anyone may buy them. To learn how to use the needles takes about one month of training. But to be skillful requires greater time. The person who performs the acupuncture knows how to put in the needles so the needles themselves are not painful. This person also knows where to place the needles so the patient feels no pain in the area where the operation is to be performed. A particular operation might require 25 or more needles placed in various parts of the body. But now this operation requires only 3 or 4 needles. Today, the Chinese doctors are trying to learn more about acupuncture. They are trying to develop a convincing theory to explain how the needles work in preventing pain, or why a needle in the wrist, for example, would prevent the pain in the area of the mouth. A patient who needs an operation is given a choice between having acupuncture or having one of the chemicals used for putting him to sleep. It has been estimated that over half of the patients choose acupuncture because there is no sickness after the operation because the chemical may make the patient sick for a few hours or a day.

单选题Everybody loves a fat pay rise. Yet pleasure at your own can vanish if you learn that a colleague has been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he has a reputation for slacking, you might even be outraged. Such behaviour is regarded as "all too human", with the underlying assumption that other animals would not be capable of this finely developed sense of grievance. But a study by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which has just been published in Nature, suggests that it all too monkey, as well The researchers studied the behaviour of female brown capuchin monkeys. They look cute. They are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they share their food tardily. Above all, like their female human counterparts, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of "goods and services" than males. Such characteristics make them perfect candidates for Dr. Brosnan's and Dr. dewaal's study. The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys to exchange tokens for food. Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for slices of eucumber. However, when two monkeys were placed in sepa rate but adjoining chambers, so that each could observe what the other was getting in return for its rock, their became markedly different. In the world of capuchins grapes are luxury goods (and much preferable to cucumbers). So when one monkey was handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was reluctant to hand hers over for a mere piece of cucumber. And if one received a grape without having to provide her token in exchange at all, the other either tossed her own token at the researcher or out of the chamber, or refused to; accept the slice of cu cumber indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other chamber (without an actual monkey to eat it) was enough to reduce resentment in a female capuchin. The researches suggest that capuchin monkeys, like humans, are guided by social emotions. In the wild, they are a co-operative, groupliving species. Such co-operation is likely to be stable only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of righteous indignation, it seems, are not the preserve of people alone. Refusing a lesser reward completely makes these feelings abundantly clear to other members of the group. However, whether such a sense of fairness evolved independently in capuchins and humans, or whether it stems form the common ancestor that the species had 35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.

单选题I feel ______ necessary ______ for her foreign languages because the job she will do connects with foreign business. A. it; learn B. it; to learn C. that; learns D. that; learn