单选题He isn't legally responsible for his nephew, but he feels he has a moral ______ to help him.

单选题A major incentive (动力) for college attendance is the belief that it will prepare you for a career. Chances are that the career you want, whether in nursing, counseling, law, or management, requires a college education. Even if the return of your education isn't as great as it used to be, you would probably rather be a relatively poorly paid lawyer than a secretary or a construction worker: you would probably rather be a manager than a managee. In the sense that a degree is increasingly required for even middle-level jobs, your investment in a college education will still pay off. It can pay off in other ways too. It is a value judgement to say that a college education will make you a better person, but it is a value judgement that the vast majority of college graduates are willing to make survey after survey to demonstrate that people feel very positive about their college education, believing that it has made them better and more tolerant people. Whether it makes you a better person or not, a college education is likely to have a lasting effect on your knowledge and values. If you finish college, you will sit through 30 to 45 different courses. Even the least dedicated student is bound to learn something from these courses. In addition, students learn informally. Whether you go to college in you hometown or across the country, college will introduce you to a greater diversity of people than you ' re likely to have experienced before. This diversity will challenge your mind and broaden your horizons. As a result of formal and informal learning, college graduates are more knowledgeable about the world around them, more tolerant and less prejudiced, more active in public and community affairs, and, more open to new ideas.

单选题There are some that would argue that hospitals are no place for dogs, while they are wrong. At least according to new research reported at the American Heart Association"s Scientific Sessions 2005. For people hospitalized with advanced heart disease , it is better to have visitors than to lie quietly alone. But one type of visitor seems to be especially beneficial, researchers reported on Tuesday. That visitor is a dog. In the first controlled study of the effects of pet therapy in a random sample of acute and critically ill heart patients, anxiety as measured on a standard rating scale dropped 24 percent for those visited by a dog and a human volunteer, by 10 percent for those visited by a volunteer alone and not at all for those with no visitors. Similar results were found in measures of heart and lung function. The senior author of the Pet Therapy Study, Kathie M. Cole, said 76 patients with heart failure, a condition that affects an estimated five million Americans, were randomly assigned one of the three visit types. The dogs, from 12 breeds, were screened for behavior and disease before participating in the study. "Some patients in the first group," Ms. Cole said, "began to smile and immediately engaged in conversation with dog and volunteer." "Their worries seemed to vanish from their faces," she said. The researchers examined the patients three times: right before the 12-minute visit, eight minutes into it and four minutes after it was over. Besides the anxiety measurement, researchers found, patients" levels of epinephrine, a hormone the body makes when under stress, dropped 17 percent when visited by a person and a dog, and 2 percent when visited by only a person. Epinephrine levels rose an average of 7 percent in the unvisited group in the study, which was financed by the Pet Care Trust Foundation, a nonprofit group. Pressure in the heart"s top left chamber dropped 10 percent after a visit by volunteer and dog. The same pressure rose 3 percent for those visited by a volunteer and 5 percent for the unvisited group. Pressure in the pulmonary artery dropped 5 percent during and after a visit by volunteer and dog, but rose in the other two groups. Ms. Cole recommended further studies to determine how long the benefits lasted. "Dogs are a great comfort," she said. "They make people happier, calmer and feel more loved. That is huge when you are scared and not feeling well."

单选题 Since we are social beings, the quality of our lives depends in large measure on our in- terpersonal relationships. One strength of the human condition is our tendency to give and receive support from one another under stressful circumstances. Social support consists of the exchange of resources among people based on their interpersonal ties. Those of us with strong support systems appear better able to cope with major life changes and daily hassles (困难). People with strong social ties live longer and have bet- ter health than those without such ties. Studies over a range of illnesses, from depression to heart disease, reveal that the presence of social support helps people fend off (挡开) illness, and the absence of such support makes poor health more likely. Social support cushions stress in a number of ways. First, friends, relatives, and co-workers may let us know that they value us. Our self-respect is strengthened when we feel accepted by others despite our faults and difficulties. Second, other people often pro- vide us with informational support. They help us to define and understand our prob- lems and find solutions to them. Third, we typically find social companionship sup- portive. Engaging in leisure-time activities with others helps us to meet our social needs while at the same time distracting (转移……注意力) us from our worries and troubles. Finally, other people may give us instrumental support--a financial aid, material resources, and needed services--that reduces stress by helping us resolve and cope with our problems.

单选题Every artist knows in his heart that he is saying something to the public. Not only does he want to say it well, but he wants it to be something which has not been said before. He hopes the public will listen and understand—he wants to teach them, and he wants them to learn from him. What visual artists like painters want to teach is easy to make out but difficult to explain, because painters translate their experiences into shapes and colors, not words. They seem to feel that a certain selection of shapes and colors, out of the countless billions possible, is exceptionally interesting for them and worth showing to us. Without their work we should never have noticed these particular shapes and colors, or have felt the delight which they brought to the artist. Most artists take their shapes and colors from the world of nature and from human bodies in motion and repose (安息); their choices indicate that these aspects of the world are worth looking at, that they contain beautiful sights. Contemporary artists might say that they merely choose subjects that provide an interesting pattern, that there is nothing more in it. Yet even they do not choose entirely without reference to the character of their subjects. If one painter chooses to paint a gangrenous (坏疽) leg and another a lake in moonlight, each of them is directing our attention to a certain aspect of the world. Each painter is telling us something, showing us something, emphasizing something—all of which means that, consciously or unconsciously, he is trying to teach us.

单选题"You are not here to tell me what to do. You are here to tell me why I have done what I have already decided to do," Montagu Norman, the Bank of England' s longest- serving governor (1920 -1944), is reputed to have once told his economic adviser. To- day, thankfully, central banks aim to be more transparent in their decision making, as well as more rational. But achieving either of these things is not always easy. With the most laudable of intentions, the Federal Reserve, America's central bank, may be about to take a step that could backfire. Unlike the Fed, many other central banks have long declared explicit inflation tar- gels and then set interest rates to try to meet these. Some economists have argued that the Fed should do the same. With Alan Greenspan, the Fed' s much-respected chairman, due to retire next year—after a mere 18 years in the job—some Fed officials want to adopt a target, presumably to maintain the central bank' s credibility in the scary new post-Greenspan era. The Fed discussed such a target at its February meeting, according to minutes published this week. This sounds encouraging. However, the Fed is considering the idea just when some other central banks are beginning to question whether strict inflation targeting really works. At present central banks focus almost exclusively on consumer-price indices. On this measure Mr. Greenspan can boast that inflation remains under control. But some central bankers now argue that the prices of assets, such as houses and shares, should also some- how be taken into account. A broad price index for America which includes house prices is currently running at 5.5% , its fastest pace since 1982. Inflation has simply taken a different form. Should central banks also try to curb increases in such asset prices? Mr. Greenspan continues to insist that monetary policy should not be used to prick asset-price bubbles. Identifying bubbles is difficult, except in retrospect, he says, and interest rates are a blunt weapon: an increase big enough to halt rising prices could trigger a recession. It is better, he says, to wait for a housing or stockmarket bubble to burst and then to cushion the economy by cutting interest rates—as he did in 2001-2002. And yet the risk is not just that asset prices can go swiftly into reverse. As with traditional inflation, surging asset prices also distort price signals and so can cause a misallocation of resources—encouraging too little saving, for example, or ,too much investment in housing. Surging house prices may therefore argue for higher interest rates than conventional inflation would demand. In other words, strict inflation targeting—the fad of the 1990s—is too crude.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} What an elegant party! The Press Complaints Commission's glittering bash this week m celebrate its tenth anniversary was the nearest London gets to high society. In a gathering too close m imitate for comfort, the PCC succeeded in bringing together Prince William, the heir to the throne, his father, Prince Charles, the royal mistress. Camilla Parker-Bowles. as well as pop stars, super-models, cabinet ministers, senior civil servants and other admirers. The one thing this different group had in common was that most of them had sought the protection of the PCC over the past decade. Their principal tormentors, the editors of the nation's tabloid newspapers, were there in force to greet their victims, so it was not surprising that a certain tremble swirled around the party. That so many prominent upper circles turned up to devour the PCC's canape5 and rub shoulders with the royals is. no doubt, a triumph for its chairman. Lord Wakeham. He can fairly claim to have restored confidence in self-regulation and saved the press from privacy legislation. A skilled political fixer, he has used his chairmanship m pressure the press barons such as Rupert Murdoch into enclosing their editors. The PCC's code of conduct, drawn up by a panel of editors, is generally observed. Press standards have improved and complaints have fallen by nearly a third over the past five years. The industry, which not so long ago was said to be "{{U}}drinking in the last-chance saloon{{/U}}", with self-regulation in terminal disrepute, is grateful. The party was meant m celebrate this success. The soap stars and the models, judging by the amount of drink going down their throats, certainly 9njoyed themselves, as did the editors. But whether Prince Charles and Prince William were wise to associate themselves with this lot is doubtful. "Never sup with the enemy" is a good motto. At least the royals could tell who to avoid because all the guests had name tabs. Lord Wakeham, who helped get rid of Lady Thatcher without her even knowing, is a skilled operator. But this luxury party has given an opening to those critics who claim he is too close to the industry and too protective of the powerful. "We're here to protect the vulnerable" was the slogan of a big banner that greeted the guests. That was not the main impression the evening made on the minds of those who staggered out of the grandeur of Somerset House, high on champagne and celebrity. The truly vulnerable were nowhere to be seen.

单选题For years, smokers have been exhorted to take the initiative and quit: use a nicotine patch, chew nicotine gum, take a prescription medication that can help, call a help line, just say no. But a new study finds that stopping is seldom an individual decision. Smokers tend to quit in groups, the study finds, which means smoking cessation programs should work best if they focus on groups rather than individuals. It also means that people may help many more than just themselves by quitting: quitting can have a ripple effect prompting an entire social network to break the habit. The study, by Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School and James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, followed thousands of smokers and nonsmokers for 32 years, from 1971 until 2003, studying them as part of a large network of relatives, co-workers, neighbors, friends and friends of friends. It was a time when the percentage of adult smokers in the United States fell to 21 percent from 45 percent. As the investigators watched the smokers and their social networks, they saw what they said was a striking effect—smokers had formed little social clusters and, as the years went by, entire clusters of smokers were stopping en masse. So were clusters of clusters that were only loosely connected. Dr. Christakis described watching the vanishing clusters as like lying on your back in a field, looking up at stars that were burning out. "It's not like one little star turning off at a time," he said,"Whole constellations are blinking off at once. " As cluster after cluster of smokers disappeared, those that remained were pushed to the margins of society, isolated, with fewer friends, fewer social connections. "Smokers used to be the center of the party," Dr. Fowler said, "but now they've become wallflowers." "We've known smoking was bad for your physical health," he said,"But this shows it also is bad for your social health. Smokers are likely to drive friends away. " "There is an essential public health message," said Richard Suzman, director of the office of behavioral and social research at the National Institute on Aging, which financed the study. "Obviously, people have to take responsibility for their behavior," Mr. Suzman said. "But a social environment," he added, "can just overpower free will. " With smoking, that can be a good thing, researchers noted. But there also is a sad side. As Dr. Steven Sehroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, pointed out in an editorial accompanying the paper, "a risk of the marginalization of smoking is that it further isolates the group of people with the highest rate of smoking—persons with mental illness, problems with substance abuse, or both. /

单选题__________ in thought while driving, he almost ran into the car coming in the opposite direction.

单选题He never hesitates to make such criticisms ______ are considered helpful to others.

单选题Without rules, people would live in a state of______.

单选题 An "{{U}}epidemic{{/U}}of poverty" in Britain is having a dramatic impact on the survival rates and health chances of children from poor families, an influential coalition will warn this week in a major report that casts doubt on government efforts to close the inequality gap. End Child Poverty, a network of children's charities, church groups, unions and think-tanks, claims that the gap between rich and poor represents a "huge injustice" in British society and has become one of the major factors affecting child mortality rates. Its report, based on a wide-ranging analysis of government data, finds that children from poor families are at 10 times the risk of sudden infant death as children from better-off homes. And it reveals how babies from disadvantaged families are more likely to be born underweight less than children from the richest families. Poorer children are two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer chronic illness when toddlers and twice as likely to have cerebral palsy, according to the report, "Health Consequences of Poverty for Children". "Poverty is now one of the greatest dangers faced by our children, " said Nick Spencer, one of the report's authors and professor of child health at the University of Warwick. "If poverty were an infection, we would be in the midst of a full-scale epidemic." The report is likely to revive the debate on child poverty and focus attention on Labor's record when it comes to tackling social inequalities. In March 1999, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, promised to eradicate child poverty "within a generation". This was later defined as a commitment to end child poverty by 2020, with a target of halving the number of children living in poverty by 2010/11. But while the current row over social inequality has tended to focus on education and benefits, the implications for health have been largely ignored. Now, however, the End Child Poverty report highlights how socio-economic factors affect the entire life of children born into poverty, from fontal development and early infancy through to teenage years and adulthood. The government claims it is closing the gap between rich and poor, but accepts that more needs to be done. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said in June: "Although we have already lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty with new tax credits, more people in work and better public services, the latest figures show we have not made enough progress."

单选题The guilty Uverdict/U was widely expected, although harsher than many had predicted.

单选题As the plane circled over the airport, everyone sensed that something was wrong. The plane was moving unsteadily through the air, and (31) the passengers had fastened their seat belts, they were suddenly thrown forward. At that moment, the air-hostess (32) . She looked very pale, but was quite (33) . Speaking quickly but almost in a whisper, she (34) everyone that the pilot had fainted and asked if any of the passengers knew anything about machines or at least how to drive a car. After a moment's (35) , a man got up and followed the hostess into the pilot's cabin. Moving the pilot aside, the man took his seat and listened carefully to the urgent instructions that were being sent by radio from the airport below. The plane was now dangerously close (36) the ground, but to everyone's relief, it soon began to climb. The man had to (37) the airport several limes in order to become (38) with the controls. Therefore the danger had not yet passed. The terrible (39) came when he had to land. Following information, the man guided the plane toward the airfield. It shook violently (40) it touched the ground and then moved rapidly along the runway and after a long run it stopped safely.

单选题Although Lucy was slimming, she found cakes quite ______.

单选题The passage mentions all of the following as uses for copper in colonial America EXCEPT ______.

单选题They are confronting tremendous and more complicated problems.

单选题The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,The lowing herd wind slowly o" er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.The following selection is from______.