单选题Grooming and personal hygiene have been around for ages. It's hard to imagine a time when people weren't concerned with taking care of their appearance and their bodies. Perhaps these practices started when Adam first took a bath and combed his hair before going on a date with Eve. Or maybe they began when Eve put on some herbal makeup to make herself more beautiful. No matter where they started, grooming and personal hygiene have become an important part of everyone's daily routine. You might think that all modern societies would have the same grooming and personal hygiene practices. After all, doesn't everybody take baths? Most people do recognize the need for hygiene, which is the basis for cleanliness and health--and a good way to keep one's friends. Grooming practices include all the little things people do to make themselves look their best, such as combing their hair and putting on makeup. However, while most modern people agree that these things are important, people in different cultures take care of themselves in different ways. There used to be an old joke in America that people should take a bath once a week, whether they need one or not. In fact, though, Americans generally take a bath--or more commonly, a shower--every day. But in contrast to some cultures, most Americans get their shower in the morning, so they can start the day fresh. And instead of going to a beauty parlor for a shampoo, many Americans prefer to wash and style their own hair. So if Americans have a "bad hair day", they have no one to blame but themselves. But most people in America do head for the beauty parlor or barber shop occasionally for a haircut, a perm or just some friendly conversation. Americans are known for having very sensitive noses. In America, "B. O." (body odor) is socially unacceptable. For that reason, Americans consider the use of deodorant or anti-perspiration a must. Ladies often add a touch of perfume for an extra fresh scent. Men may splash on after-shave lotion or manly-smelling cologne. Another cultural no--no in America is bad breath. Americans don't like to smell what other people ate for lunch--especially onions or garlic. Their solution? Mouthwash, breath mints and even brushing their teeth after meals. Some of the cultural variations in grooming practices result from physical differences between races. Whereas many Asian men have little facial hair, Westerners have a lot. As a result, most American men spend some time each day shaving or grooming their facial hair. Beards and mustaches are common sights in America, although their popularity changes from generation to generation. Most American men who wear facial hair try to keep it nicely trimmed. American women, on the other hand, generally prefer not to be hairy at all. Many of them regularly shave their legs and armpits. Americans put great value on both grooming and personal hygiene. For some people taking care of themselves has become almost a religion. As the old saying goes, "Cleanliness is next to godliness." Whether or not being clean and well-groomed brings one closer to God, it certainly brings one closer to others. Americans look down on people who don't take care of themselves, or who "let themselves go". To Americans, even if we don't have much to work with, we have to make the best of what we've got.

单选题Dogs are similar to human beings in ______.

单选题You slip the key into the ignition and crank the engine to life. But before you put the ear into gear, you tap a key on the keyboard mounted by the steering wheel, and your newest e-mail flashes up on the windscreen. This seductive satyr is what you get when you cross a ear and a eomputer. Dubbed the "network vehiele", or net-mobile, it may soon come to a driveway near you ( probably the one belonging to your rich neighbor). In a net-mobile, a motorist could tap into a regional road system but also to map out a route around rush-hour traffic snags. Drivers and passengers will be able to send and receive e-mail, track the latest sports scores or stock quotes, surf the Web, and even play video games. Or so, at least, say a number of computer-industry firms such as Microsoft, Sun, IBM and Netseape. The modern car is already an electronic showcase on wheels . On-board microcomputers improve fuel economy and reduce emissions. They operate anti-lock brake systems, and on some ears even regulate the firmness of the shock absorbers. But much of the technology needed to add extra is available now. A prototype network vehicle, produced by a consortium of Netseape, Sun, IBM and Delco (an automotive electronics firm based in Michigan), was introduced at the recent annual computer industry show in Las Vegas. It not only offered such desktop-eomputer-like services as e-mail, but allowed a driver to use them without looking away from the road. It was operated by voice commands and projected its data on to the windscreen, using the same sort of head-up display system found in modern fighter jets. Members of the consortium think a real-world network vehicle could be in production in as little as four years. Car-makers have already begun rolling out some of the features found on these prototype net mobiles. If the driver of a General Motors car equipped with its On-Star system locks his key in the car, for example, an emergency centre can transmit a digital signal to unlock the doors. On-star also calls automatically for help if an accident triggers the airbags. Toyota and General Motors are among a growing list of firms offering such in-ear navigation systems. And in Europe, BMW and Mercedes-Benz recently introduced navigation hardware that can not only plot out a route, but alert a driver to traffic jams.

单选题It was a ______ night for him and he is very sleepy right now. A. white B. wildly C. wise D. bright

单选题A: Would you cash these traveler"s checks, please? B: ______

单选题All living organisms, regardless of their unique identity, have certain biological, chemical, and physical characteristics in common.

单选题In the end, a degree of sanity prevailed. The militant Hindus who had vowed to breach a police cordon and start the work of building a temple to the god Ram at the disputed site of Ayodhya decided to respect a Supreme Court decision barring them from the area. So charged have Hindu-Muslim relations in India become in recent weeks, as the declared deadline of March 15th neared, that a clash at Ram's supposed birthplace might well have provoked bloodshed on an appalling scale across the nation. It has, unfortunately, happened often enough before. But the threat has not vanished. The court's decision is only an interim one, and the main Hindu groups have not given up on their quest to build their temple. Extreme religious violence, which seemed in recent years to have faded after the Ayodhya-related explosion of 1992--1993, is again a feature of the political landscape. Though faults lie on both sides (it was a Muslim attack on Hindus in a train in Gujarat that started the recent slaughter), the great bulk of victims were, as always, Muslims. Once again, educated Hindus are.to be heard inveighing against the "appeasing" of Muslims through such concessions as separate constitutional status for Kashmir or the right to practice Islamic civil law. Once again, the police are being accused of doing little or nothing to help Muslim victims of rampaging Hindu mobs. Once again, India's 130m Muslims feel unequal and unsafe in their own country. Far too many Hindus would refuse to accept that it is “their own country" at all. The wonder of it, perhaps, is that things are not worse. While the world applauds Pakistan for at last locking up the leaders of its extreme religious groups, in India the zealots still support, sustain and to a degree constitute the government. The BJP, which leads the ruling coalition, was founded as a political front for the Hindu movement. It is simply one, and by no means the dominant, member of what is called the Sangh Pariwar, the "family of organizations". Other members of the family are much less savoury. There is the VHP, the World Hindu Organization, which led the movement to build the Ram temple. There is the Bajrang Dal, the brutalist "youth wing" of the VHP. There is substantial evidence that members of the VHP and the Bajrang Dal helped to organize the slaughter of hundreds of Muslims in Gujarat after 58 Hindus were killed on a train as they returned from Ayodhya.

单选题It would be a(n)______ thing to find a cat and a dog playing together.

单选题The range in frequencies of musical sounds is approximately 20- 20,000 cycles per second (cy/sec), Some people can hear higher frequencies than others. Longitudinal waves whose frequencies are higher than those within the audible range are called ultrasonic frequencies. Ultrasonic frequencies are used in sonar for such purposes as submarine detection and depth finding. Ultrasonic frequencies are also being tried for sterilizing food since these frequencies kill some bacteria. Sound waves of all frequencies in the audible range travel at the same speed in the same medium. In the audible range, the higher the frequency of the sound the higher is the pitch. The term supersonic refers to speed greater than sound. An airplane traveling at supersonic speed is moving at a speed greater than the speed of sound in air at that temperature. Mach 1 means a speed equal to that of sound. Mach 2 means a speed equal to twice that of sound, etc. Musical sounds have three basic characteristics; pitch, loudness, and quality or timbre. As was indicated above, pitch is determined largely by the frequency of the wave reaching the ear. The higher the frequency the higher is the pitch. Loudness depends on the amplitude of the wave reaching the ear. For a given frequency, the greater the amplitude of the wave the louder the sound. To discuss quality of sound we need to clarify the concept of overtones. Sounds are produced by vibrating objects. If these objects are given a gentle push, they usually vibrate at one definite frequency producing a pure tone. This is the way a tuning fork is usually used. When objects vibrate freely after a force is momentarily applied, they are said to produce their natural frequency. Some objects, like strings and air columns, can vibrate naturally at more than one frequency at a time. The lowest frequency which an object can produce when vibrating freely is known as the object's fundamental frequency. Other frequencies that the object can produce are known as its overtones. The quality of a sound depends on the number and relative amplitude of the overtones present in the wave reaching the ear.

单选题 Making good coffee is not a simple business. Coffee bushes must be grown in shade. A hillside is best--but it mustn't be too {{U}}(1) {{/U}}. After three years, the bushes will start to {{U}}(2) {{/U}} bright-red coffee "cherries", which are picked, processed to {{U}}(3) {{/U}} the inner part, and spread out to dry for days, {{U}}(4) {{/U}} on concrete. They are {{U}}(5) {{/U}} again to separate the bean, which needs to rest, preferably for a few months. Only then can it be roasted, ground and brewed {{U}}(6) {{/U}} the stuff that dreams are suppressed with. In Mexico and parts of Central America, {{U}}(7) {{/U}} in Colombia, most coffee farmers are smallholders. They found it especially hard to {{U}}(8) {{/U}} the recent fall in the coffee price. The {{U}}(9) {{/U}} of their income makes it hard for farmers to invest to {{U}}(10) {{/U}} their crop, says Fernando Celis. The fall forced many small farmers to {{U}}(11) {{/U}} other crops, or migrate to cities. For farmers, one way out of this {{U}}(12) {{/U}} is to separate the price they are paid {{U}}(13) {{/U}} the international commodities markets. This is the {{U}}(14) {{/U}} of Fair-trade, an organization which certifies products as "responsibly" sourced. Fair-trade determines at what price farmers make what it considers a {{U}}(15) {{/U}} profit. Its current {{U}}(16) {{/U}} is that the appropriate figure is 10% above the market price. {{U}} (17) {{/U}}, sales of Fair-trade-certified coffee have increased from $ 22. 5m per year to $ 87m per year since 1998. This is still a tiny fraction of the overall world coffee trade, worth $10 billion {{U}}(18) {{/U}} But there are plenty of other markets for high-quality coffee. Some small producers can {{U}}(19) {{/U}} more by marketing their coffee as organic or "bird-friendly" because, unlike large, mechanized plantations, they have {{U}}(20) {{/U}} shade trees.

单选题It's never easy for a mighty military to tread lightly on foreign soil. In the case of American forces in South Korea, protectors of the nation's sovereignty since the Korean War, the job is made doubly difficult by local sensitivities arising from a history of foreign domination. So when a few GIs commit particularly brutal crimes against the local populace, it's easy for some South Koreans to ask: Who will guard us from our guardians? That kind of questioning grew more insistent on January 20, when police found the body of a 30-year-old Korean woman, Kang Un-gyong, in the apartment she shared with her American boyfriend. An autopsy showed Kang, who had bruises over most of her face and chest, died after being hit on the back of her head with a blunt object. Her boyfriend, Henry Kevin McKinley, 36, an electrician at the United States military base in Seoul, admitted beating her. McKinley said he pushed Kang, who then struck her head on a radiator, but denied that he tried to murder her. On January 21 McKinley was arrested on charges similar to involuntary manslaughter under Korean law. As a civilian employee of the U. S. military in Korea, he comes under the purview of the Status-of-Forces Agreement between Washington and Seoul. This grants the South Korean government criminal jurisdiction—but not pre-trial custody—over members of American forces in Korea. Because of the gravity of the charges against McKinley, however, the Americans waived their rights to keep him in their custody before trial. The Kang case was only the latest in a series of crimes involving members of U. S. forces and Koreans. Just a few days earlier, a U. S. army sergeant was sentenced to six months in jail for assaulting a local in a subway brawl last May—even though some reports said it was a Korean who instigated the fray. The murder also followed two separate incidents in which American soldiers were indicted on charges of attempted rape. With the spotlight already on the behaviour of American servicemen abroad because of the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa, allegedly by a group of U. S. soldiers, the Kang murder burst the lid on many Koreans' resentment of the presence of 37,000 American troops in their midst. Official relations between Seoul and Washington remain on an even keel, and most Koreans don't blame the entire U. S. military for the crimes of individual servicemen. But the incidents have played into the hands of those who are questioning the very basis of the American presence in South Korea. Some observers believe the seeds of Koreans' estrangement from the U. S. military were first sown in 1980, when troops under the control of former President Chun Doo Hwan massacred some 200 pro-democracy protesters in the southern city of Kwangju. Many left-wing students—usually at the forefront of anti-government protests— still insist that the U. S. military command acquiesced in the crackdown. But public alienation against U. S. troops really took off after the brutal 1992 murder of a Korean prostitute by an American soldier. Pictures taken at the time—not released publicly but seen by the REVIEW—showed the dead woman's mouth stuffed with matches and a bottle stuck in her vagina. The man convicted of the murder, Pvt. Kenneth Markle of the U. S. army's 2nd Division, received a life sentence, later reduced to 15 years. Cultural misunderstandings haven't helped matters any. Many Koreans believe all GIs are racist young men with little education from rural areas of the U. S. "I've been hit and called names by Koreans, but I didn't respond," says a soldier at Camp Hmnphreys in Pyongtaek. He says the U. S. forces' command "drills it into your head every day: don't fight with a Korean. You can't win. " Other factors are also at play, not least the swelling self-confidence of the younger generation of South Koreans, bolstered by their nation's growing economic and political clout. "Once upon a time we needed help from the U. S. , and American economic and military aid was very important to Korea," says Nam Chan Soon, a journalist at the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, "But now times have changed. " While the U. S. command recognizes the need to respect Korean sensitivities, it's hard for the Americans to keep a low profile. One reason: The main U. S. military base in Korea is in the Itaewon district—in the very heart of Seoul. Plans to move the base to another location have been put off because of budget constraints.

单选题Cara Lang is 13. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, in the US Last Thursday, she didn't go to school. She went to work with her father instead. Every year, on the fourth Thursday in April, millions of young girls go to work. This is Take Our Daughters to Work Day. The girls are between the ages of 9 and 15. They spend the day at work with an adult, usually a mother, father, aunt, or uncle. They go to offices, police stations, laboratories, and other places where their parents or other family members work. Next year, the day will include sons, too. The Ms. Foundation, an organization for women, started the program about ten years ago. In the US, many women work outside the home. The Ms. Foundation wanted girls to find out about many different kinds of jobs. Then, when the girls grow up, they can choose a job they like. Cara's father is a film director. Cara says," It was very exciting for me to go to the studio with my dad. I saw a lot of people doing different jobs. " Many businesses have special activities for girls on this day. Last year, Cara went to work with her aunt at the University of Massachusetts. In the engineering department, the girls learned to build a bridge with toothpicks and candy. In the chemistry department, they learned to use scales. They learned about many other kinds of jobs, too. Right now, Cara does not know what job she will have when she grows up. But because of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, she knows she has many choices.

单选题This robot is supposed to save a lot of labor, but it remains a problem if it ______. A. is B. saves C. does D. has

单选题Euthanasia has been a topic of controversy in Europe since at least 1936. On an average of six times a day, a doctor in Holland practices "active" euthanasia: 1 administering a lethal drug to a 2 ill patient who has asked to be relieved 3 suffering. Twenty times a day, life prolonging treatment is withheld or withdrawn 4 there is no hope that it can 5 an ultimate cure. "Active" euthanasia remains a crime on the Dutch statute books, punishable 6 12 years in prison. But a series of court cases over the past 15 years has made it clear that a competent physician who 7 it out will not be prosecuted. Euthanasia, often called "mercy killing", is a crime everywhere in Western Europe. 8 more and more doctors and nurses in Britain, Germany, Holland and elsewhere readily 9 to practicing it, most often in the "passive" form of withholding or withdrawing 10 The long simmering euthanasia issue has lately 11 into a sometimes fierce public debate, 12 both sides claiming the mantle of ultimate righteousness. Those 13 to the practice see themselves 14 sacred principles of respect for life, 15 those in favor raise the banner of humane treatment. After years 16 the defensive, the advocates now seem to be 17 ground. Recent polls in Britain show that 72 percent of British 18 favor euthanasia in some circumstances. An astonishing 76 percent of 19 to a poll taken late last year in France said they would like the law changed to 20 mercy killings. Obviously, pressure groups favoring euthanasia and "assisted suicide" have grown steadily in Europe over the years.

单选题In the last paragraph, the author suggested that

单选题After 1989, the external______vanished. But the danger to American civilization remained.

单选题The Mayor asked the city council to recommend potential programs for the benefit of the Uindigent/U.