单选题We are happy ______ we are not very rich.

单选题In primitive times, poetry was written to be heard. Today, we frequently overlook the ______ of the poet's work.

单选题Linda could not refuse, ______ she foresaw little pleasure in the visit.

单选题Communication is the sending of information or news from one person to another. If human beings could not communicate with one another, each person would have to learn everything for himself. Although animals as well as men can communicate, so far as we know, they can express only the simple emotions like pain, joy, fear, hunger, anger and love. Some animals have a more advanced form of language using sounds, and others use a wide range of sounds and face movements, but we still have much to learn about these animal languages. Speech is the most important means of communication between people. But it is not the only one. Nor is it the oldest. We use facial expressions, gestures and hand movements to express our feelings and to send signals to other people. Animals use this "body language" a great deal. The sign language used by deaf people is an example of communication without speech,while blind people communicate largely through touch and hearing.

单选题The semantic ______ of ancient documents is not unique. Even in our own time, many documents are difficult to decipher.

单选题She moved away from her parents, and missed them ______ enjoy the exciting life in New York.

单选题 The government ______ that all who wanted to live and work in this country should hold the passport.

单选题 How the Shutdown Hammered the U.S. Economy A. How much have the government shutdown and the default threat cost us? Before the latest congressional fierce debate over government spending, the U.S. federal deficit was shrinking and seemed to shrivel even more in the near future. As a percentage of the nation's gross domestic product, the cash shortfall had dropped by half in the past two years, according to StandardPoor's senior credit analyst Marie Cavanaugh, who heads the ratings team in charge of assessing the U.S. credit rating. B .In other words, the United States was on track to slash its deficit and enjoy the spoils of its growing financial recovery— until the shutdown, which has socked (重击) the economy in the nose and soured investors' confidence everywhere. 'Earlier this year, we raised our outlook for the U.S. from negative to stable based on the ability of Congress to negotiate its way out of the fiscal cliff, the nation's strengthening economic recovery and the fact that the nation's deficit had fallen by half of the 2011 level,' Cavanaugh told Newsweek just before Congress cobbled together (胡乱拼凑) a last-minute deal. C. Now the same ratings agency estimates that the government shutdown knocked $24 billion out of the U.S. economy in just two weeks. That is more than $1.5 billion a day. Essentially, the fighting over spending leaves America with less to spend. 'The bottom line is the government shutdown hurt the U.S. economy,' stated SP's chief economist Beth Ann Bovino, on the heels of an eleventh-hour budget compromise that effectively delays key fiscal decisions until next year. D. 'In September, we expected 3 percent annualized growth in the fourth quarter, because we thought politicians would have learned from 2011 and taken steps to avoid things like a government shutdown and the possibility of a sovereign default.' (In 2011, consumer confidence hit a 31-year low; just this week a Gallup poll similarly showed investor confidence dropping to its lowest level in almost two years. This is probably not a coincidence, as both polls took place during congressional standoffs.) E. SP, which has been the only ratings agency to slash the nation's top-flight credit rating (also in 2011), now expects this year's fourth quarter GDP to be closer to 2 percent. That is, if the U.S. is lucky. 'With full expectations that consumer confidence will continue to decline suddenly amid the 'short turnaround for politicians to negotiate some sort of lasting deal',' Bovino predicts, 'if people are afraid that the government policy brinkmanship (边缘政策) will resurface and, with it, the risk of another shutdown or worse, they'll remain afraid to open up their checkbooks.' F. Cavanaugh says the agency estimates that for every week the government was shut down, roughly 0.3 percent of the nation's GDP was destroyed. Not really a good thing for a country that, until recently, 'was running one of the highest deficits the world has seen since World War Ⅱ,' according to Nikola Swann, Cavanaugh's predecessor and the credit analyst who led the team that voted the U.S. credit rating down in 2011. G. Swarm, who tracked U.S. fiscal health for some time, traces much of the trouble back to 2001, when the September 11 attacks led to a downturn in the nation's economic growth and soaring spending in the lead-up to the war on terror. 'The U.S. did begin to recover by 2007', he says, 'but then it was hit by the financial crisis. By 2009, the nation's cash deficit—the annual gap between spending and revenue as a percentage of its GDP—had swelled to 11 percent.' H. 'Compare that to a surplus of 3 percent of GDP in 2000, at present, the cash deficit has eased to under 5 percent,' Cavanaugh says, 'but remains at the high end.' 'Remember, the Clinton administration benefitted from very high rates of economic growth, real rates that were around 3 percent to 5 percent of GDP,' Swarm says. 'We increased spending but never got back to the high growth rates.' I. Bovino warns the U.S. still has much to lose if its fiscal game of chicken doesn't end. As the debt ceiling deadline neared, SP was minutes away from automatically demoting (使降级) America's credit rating and tipping it into 'selective default'. (The only other country to have 'SD' status is Grenada.) Fitch, a ratings-agency competitor of SP, already announced it was putting the U.S. on 'credit rating watch negative', citing a lack of'timely' action by Congress to pass a budget. J. Like a troubled teenager, America is repeatedly self-harming. 'It is simply not a characteristic of the most highly rated sovereigns that you have to worry about them not paying their debts,' said John Chambers, global head of SP's sovereign ratings committee and a member of the team that marked down America's debt rating in 2011, from AAA to AA+. He notes that no nation has ever defaulted for such a ridiculous reason—political games of mutually assured destruction. 'It is unheard of in a cohesive civil society, making it all the more puzzling and pathetic that we have these tricks over spending that has already been approved by Congress.' K. When StandardPoor's, which monitors and ranks the credit of 127 countries, slashed the sovereign debt rating of the United States during the 2011 debt-ceiling war, cries of 'unpatriotic' and 'anti-American' echoed up Wall Street. 'We knew what we were doing, that it was a historic decision,' says Swarm. 'The volume of calls coming in was more than we could sort through on our own. We were there until late Friday, doing interviews, investor calls, and teleconferences, all through the weekend and the rest of the following week.' L. The hue and cry was no surprise. After all, nothing less than the world's global reserve currency was at stake. The U.S. rating—alongside that of France, Austria and the Isle of Man—put it behind Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada. By losing its gold-star rating, the world's superpower became and remains second best. M. 'The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective and less predictable than what we previously believed,' SP stated to justify its lone decision in 2011. 'The statutory (法定的) debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.' N. Now there are three months for Congress to complete its bargaining, pass a budget, and lift the debt ceiling again. If it fails—and everything suggests a return to the deadlock we just escaped from—America will be back in default territory. Politicians in Washington will put on the motley (小丑装束) , the default circus will resume and the damage to America's economy will start over. O. Whatever was said on either side in the latest showdown about reneging (违约) on the national debts, defaulting will not be pretty. According to Bovino, if America defaulted it 'would be devastating for markets and the economy and worse than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008' and 'put the economy in a recession and wipe out much of the economic progress made by the recovery from the Great Recession.'

单选题The lost car was found______ in the woods off the highway.

单选题I decided to go to the party as soon as I ______.

单选题 What enables some people to get big creative breakthroughs while others only get small and non-creative breakdowns, blaming themselves and society? Are some people gifted? Are there other factors 21

单选题______ that saw the trade between the two countries reach its highest point.

单选题______ the claim about German economic might, it is somewhat surprising how relatively small the German economy actually is. A. To give B. Given C. Giving D. Having given

单选题This type of chair, easily ______ or folded away, is ideal for use in the garden.

单选题Birth, marriage and death: these are the greatest events in human life. Many things, good and bad, can happen to us in our lives. (79)Yet there are three days which are usually marked by some kind of special ceremony: the day we are born; the day we get married and the day we die. These are the three main events in life. We only have a choice in the second of these: we can choose whether or not to marry. But we have no choice in birth and death. All human beings— from the most primitive to the most sophisticated—are affected by these three events. The only thing that differs in each society is the way these events are celebrated. Yet all societies share common characteristics. Birth is a time of joy. The proud parents receive congratulations and presents on behalf of the new-born. Marriage is also a time of joy. The young couple go through a special wedding ceremony and receive presents to help them set up their home. (80) Death is a time of sorrow and is marked by a special ceremony and mourning. The dates of ail three events arc usually remembered.

单选题________ breaks the law will be punished sooner or later.________ breaks the law will be punished sooner or later.

单选题 Researchers for Cornell University and Intel produced a chip called Loihi that reportedly makes computers think like biological brains, according to Daily Mail. The researchers created the circuit on the chip, mirroring organic circuits found in the olfactory bulbs (嗅球) of a dog's brain, which is how they process their sense of smell. The Loihi chip can identify a specific odor on the first try and even tell other background smells, said Intel, according to Daily Mail. The chip can even detect smells humans emit when sick with a disease—which vary depending on the illness—and smells linked to environmental gases and drugs. The key to sniffer dogs isn't their olfactory system alone, but their incredible ability to remember—this is why they're trained. Similarly, the artificial intelligence of the chip is trained to identify different smells and remember them, so that next time, it knows. The chip processes information just like mammal brains by using electrical signals to process smells. When a person smells something, the air molecules interact with nasal receptors that forward signals to the olfactory bulb in the brain. Then the brain translates the signals to identify which smell it's experiencing, based on memories of previous experiences with the specific smell. 'We are developing a method for Loihi to mimic (模仿) what happens in your brain when you smell something,' said Senior Research Scientist in Intel's Lab, Nabil Imam, in a statement, according to Daily Mail. Imam added that the work 'demonstrates Loihi's potential to provide important sensing capabilities that could benefit various industries.' So far, the researchers have trained it on ten harmful smells. It can be installed on robots in airports to help identify hazardous objects, or integrated with sensors in power plants or hospitals to detect dangerous gases. Similar biotechnology has seen the implementation in grasshoppers recently outfitted with computer chips to sniff-out bombs. However, this negatively affects their lifespan, limiting their use. While sniffer dogs might one day be out of a job, the circuits using AI to mimic the process of smell bring us one step closer to recreating the human sensory system in artificial intelligence.

单选题 Listen to the following passage. Altogether the passage will be read to you four times. During the first reading, which will be done at normal speed, listen and try to understand the meaning. For the second and third readings, the passage will be read sentence by sentence, or phrase by phrase, with intervals of 15 seconds. The last reading will be done at normal speed again and during this time you should check your work. You will then be given 2 minutes to check through your work once more. Effects of Education Studies going back over half a century seem to show that attending college in the US affects political attitudes, usually in a liberal direction.

单选题Physical activity through sports can enhance your child’s physical health.Sports can also have a positive effect on his mental health.Sports participation helps children ____21____life skills such as