单选题Avian influenza is an infectious disease of birds caused by type A strains of the influenza virus. The disease, which was first identified in Italy more than 100 years ago, occurs worldwide.All birds are thought to be susceptible to infection with avian influenza, though some species are more resistant to infection than others. Infection causes a wide spectrum of symptoms in birds, ranging from mild illness to a highly contagious and rapidly fatal disease resulting in severe epidemics. The latter is known as "highly pathogenic avian influenza". This form is characterized by sudden onset, severe illness, and rapid death, with a mortality that can approach 100%. Fifteen subtypes of influenza virus are known to infect birds, thus providing an extensive reservoir of influenza viruses potentially circulating in bird population. To date, all outbreaks of the highly pathogenic form have been caused by influenza A viruses of subtypes H5 and H7. Migratory waterfowl—most notably wild ducks—are the natural reservoir of avian influenza viruses, and these birds are also the most resistant to infection. Domestic poultry, including chickens and turkeys, are particularly susceptible to epidemics of rapidly fatal influenza. Direct or indirect contact of domestic flocks with wild migratory waterfowl has been implicated as a frequent cause of epidemics. Live bird markets have also played an important role in the spread of epidemics. Recent research has shown that viruses of low pathogenicity can, after circulation for sometimes short periods in a poultry population, mutate into highly pathogenic viruses. During a 1983-1984 epidemic in the United States of America, the H5N2 virus initially caused low mortality, but within six months became highly pathogenic, with a mortality approaching 90%. Control of the outbreak required destruction of more than 17 million birds at a cost of nearly US $65 million. During a 1999-2001 epidemic in Italy, the H7N1 virus, initially of low pathogenicity, mutated within 9 months to a highly pathogenic form. More than 13 million birds died or were destroyed. The quarantining of infected farms and destruction of infected or potentially exposed flocks are standard control measures aimed at preventing spread to other farms and eventual establishment of the virus in a country's poultry population. Apart from being highly contagious, avian influenza viruses are readily transmitted from farm to farm by mechanical means, such as by contaminated equipment, vehicles, feed, cages, or clothing. Highly pathogenic viruses can survive for long periods in the environment, especially when temperatures are low. Stringent sanitary measures on farms can, however, confer some degree of protection. In the absence of prompt control measures backed by good surveillance, epidemics can last for years. For example, an epidemic of H5N2 avian influenza, which began in Mexico in 1992, started with low pathogenicity, evolved to the highly fatal form, and was not controlled until 1995.

单选题Everything depends on ______ we get a raise in our salary.

单选题Professor Collins was ______ of the latest developments in physics because he had been in hospital for several months.

单选题Passage 4 It didn't happen overnight. The problem of polluted air has been festering for centuries. Suddenly the problem of air pollution is becoming critical and is erupting right before our eyes Not only do our eyes burn as they focus through murky air, but when the air clears, we see trees and vegetation dying. We must realize that this destruction can no longer be pinned to some mysterious cause. The one major culprit is air pollution. Today's air pollution is an unfortunate by-product of the growth of civilization. Civilized mall desires goods that require heavy industrialization and mass production. Machines and factories sometimes pollute and taint the air with substances that are dangerous to man and the environment. These substances include radioactive dust, salt spray, herbicide and pesticide aerosols, liquid droplets of acidic matter, gases, and sometimes soil particles. These materials can act alone to irritate objects and forms of life. More dangerously, they join together to act upon the environment. Only lately have we begun recognizing some of their dangerous consequences. Scientists have not yet been able to obtain a complete report on the effects of air pollution on trees. They do know, however, that sulfur dioxide, fluorides, and ozone destroy trees and that individual trees respond differently to the numerous particulate and gaseous pollutants. Sometimes trees growing in a single area under attack by pollutants will show symptoms of injury or will die while their neighbors remain healthy. Scientists believe this difference in response depends on the kind of tree and its genetic makeup. Other factors, such as the tree's stage of growth and nearness to the pollution source, the amount of pollutant, and the length of the pollution attack also play a part. In short, whether or not a tree dies as a result of air pollution depends on a combination of host and environmental factors. For the most part, air pollutants injure trees. To conifers, which have year-round needles, air pollution causes early balding. In this event, trees cannot maintain normal food production levels. Undernourished and weakened, they are open to attack by a host of insects, diseases, and other environmental stresses. Death often follows. Air pollution may also cause hardwoods to lose their leaves. Because their leaves are borne only for a portion of the year and are replaced the following year, air pollution injury to hardwoods may not be so severe.

单选题For the past several years, the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade has featured a column called "Ask Marilyn." People are invited to query Marilyn vos Savant, who at age 10 had tested at a mental level of someone about 23 years old; that gave her an IQ of 228-the highest score ever recorded. IQ tests ask you to complete verbal and visual analogies, to envision paper after it has been folded and cut, and to deduce numerical sequences, among other similar tasks. So it is a bit confusing when vos Savant fields such queries from the average Joe (whose IQ is 100) as, What"s the difference between love and fondness? Or what is the nature of luck and coincidence? It"s not obvious how the capacity to visualize objects and to figure out numerical patterns suits one to answer questions that have eluded some of the best poets and philosophers. Clearly, intelligence encompasses more than a score on a test. Just what does it mean to be smart? How much of intelligence can be specified, and how much can we learn about it from neurology, genetics, computer science and other fields? The defining term of intelligence in humans still seems to be the IQ score, even though IQ tests are not given as often as they used to be. The test comes primarily in two forms: the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scales (both come in adult and children"s version). Generally costing several hundred dollars, they are usually given only by psychologists, although variations of them populate bookstores and the World Wide Web. Superhigh scores like Vos Savant"s are no longer possible, because scoring is now based on a statistical population distribution among age peers, rather than simply dividing the mental age by the chronological age and multiplying by 100. Other standardized tests, such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), capture the main aspects of IQ tests. Such standardized tests may not assess all the important elements necessary to succeed in school and in life, argues Robert J. Steinberg. In his article "How Intelligent Is Intelligence Testing?" Steinberg notes that traditional test best assess analytical and verbal skills but fail to measure creativity and practical knowledge, components also critical to problem solving and life success. Moreover, IQ test do not necessarily predict so well once populations or situations change. Research has found that IQ predicted leadership skills when the tests were given under low-stress conditions, but under high-stress conditions, IQ was negatively correlated with leadership-that is, it predicted the opposite. Anyone who has toiled through SAT will testify that test-taking skill also matters, whether it knows when to guess or what questions to skip.

单选题The plate dropped on the floor and______into little pieces.

单选题{{B}}Passage 5{{/B}} Soon after Beijing graduate student Gang Dong-chun landed in Taiwan last year to research its political development, the United Daily News invited him to write a guest column. Gang quickly discovered, however, that there was a huge gap between his views and those of his Taiwanese comrades. The result: The Beijing University researcher came in for stinging criticism in the same newspaper. One critic asked how someone from the university whose students launched China's historic plutodemocracy movement of May 4, 1919, could argue that things such as national and economic development should take precedence over democracy. The episode illustrated both the problems and the promise of educational exchanges across the Taiwan Strait. Gang was nevertheless just the first of what may soon be a steady trickle of students, teachers and researchers taking part in educational exchanges. Until now, these have been limited to brief conferences and getting-to-know-you tours of each side's educational centers. But now Taipei and Beijing are allowing longer stays for study and research a significant breakthrough that could help reduce the two sides' many differences. Ironically, the exchanges are gaining momentum despite recent cross-strait tensions. In mid-January, university presidents and administrators from two dozen educational institutions in mainland China met their Taiwanese counterparts for 10 days at National Cheng Kung University in the southern city of Tainan. They discussed how to move from perfunctory to substantive exchanges. "In the past, academics were led by politics," says Wu Jin, the university's president. "This is not right. We should deal with academics and politics separately. " The conference concluded with a politically neutral statement with the bland title: To Create the 21st Century for the Chinese People Through Academic Cooperation. In it, the presidents of leading schools in Taiwan and prestigious mainland institutions agreed to open teaching posts in each others' universities, cooperate on research projects and open doors for students to study on both sides. Weng Shilie, an engineering professor who's president of Shanghai's Jiaotong University, says "Education is forever," implying that political problems are merely temporary. Temporary or not, the obstacles to cooperation remain formidable. Neither side recognizes the other's academic credentials and both governments impose paralyzing restrictions on students. In Taiwan, screening committees at two ministries must vet applications from mainland-Chinese students. Taipei allowed an estimated 6,000 Chinese residents to visit Taiwan for education and cultural exchanges last year, an increase of 50% over 1994. Most were athletes, performing artists and scholars attending conferences. Following Gang's three-month stay last year, Taiwan agreed to let 14 graduate researchers come from China to study; the first are expected to arrive in March. They will research Taiwan-related topics at nine universities. Each student will receive a monthly scholarship of NT $15,000 ($546) for his first four months, a round-trip air ticket, accommodation and health insurance. Education officials in Taipei say they hope to increase the number of scholarships to 20 next year. "We have opened the door," says Bruce Wu, who administers the scholarships from the Chinese Development Fund of the Mainland Affairs Council, a cabinet-level agency in Taipei. "Everything now depends on China's cooperation. " Given the political stalemate between Taipei and Beijing, however, skepticism abounds. In practice, says political scientist Lu Ya-li of National Taiwan University, it is very difficult for the two sides to treat education in a politically neutral way. "Cross-strait academic exchanges are very important. But so far no professors can come here for a long-term teaching assignment, and some schools are against these exchanges for political reasons. " Recent visitors to China say there are already some Taiwanese students studying on the mainland without official approval, Lu and other Taiwanese academics say there is an even stronger attraction among mainland-Chinese professors to teach in Taiwan because salaries are higher and research resources more plentiful. Says Lu. "Some schools here are trying to recruit acuity, mostly in such fields as Chinese literature and the natural sciences. " Still, that may be a pipe dream. Lu says the gap in the social sciences is far too great for such exchanges because of four decades of Marxist ideology. "In political science," sighs Lu, "we still don't speak the same language. "

单选题It is not just Indian software and "business-process outsourcing" firms that are benefiting from the rise of the internet. Indian modern art is also on an upward spiral, driven by the aspirations of newly rich Indians, especially those living abroad, who use the internet to spot paintings and track prices at hundreds of gallery and auction websites. Prices have risen around 20-fold since 2000. particularly for prized names such as Tyeb Mehta and F.N. Souza. There would have been "no chance" of that happening so fast without the internet, says Arun Vadehra, who runs a gallery in Delhi and is an adviser to Christie's, an international auction house. He expects worldwide sales of Indian art, worth $ 200million last year, to double in 2006. It is still a tiny fraction of the $ 30 billion global art market, but is sizeable for an emerging market. For newly rich--often very rich--non-resident Indians, expensive art is a badge of success in a foreign land." Who you are, and what you have, are on your walls," says Lavesh Jagasia, an art dealer in Mumbai. Indian art may also beat other forms of investment. A painting by Mr. Mehta that fetched $ 1.58 million last September would have gone for little more than $ 100 000 just four years ago. And a $ 22million art-investment fund launched in July by Osian's, a big Indian auction house, has grown by 4.1% in its first two months. Scant attention was paid to modern Indian art until the end of the 1990s. Then wealthy Indians, particularly those living abroad, began to take an interest. Dinesh Vazirani, who runs Saffronart, a leading Indian auction site, says 60% of his sales go to buyers overseas. The focus now is on six auctions this month. Two took place in India last week; work by younger artists such as Surendran Naif and Shibu Natesan beat estimates by more than 70%. Sotheby's and Christie's have auctions in New York next week, each with a Tyeb Mehta that is expected to fetch more than $ 1 million. The real question is the fate of other works, including some by Mr. Souza with estimates of up to $ 600 000. If they do well, it will demonstrate that there is strong demand and will pull up prices across the board. This looks like a market with a long way to run.

单选题The physical distribution of products has two primary aspects: transportation and storage. Both aspects are highly developed and specialized phases of marketing. The costs of both transporting and storing are built into the prices of products. Transportation can be by truck, railways, ship, or barge. For some items, such as exotic plants and flowers, or when rapid delivery is essential, air freight may be used. Storage, or warehousing, is a necessary function because production and consumption of goods rarely match: items generally are not sold as quickly as they are made. Inventories build up, both in warehouses and at retail establishments, before the foods are sold. The transportation function is involved in bringing goods to a warehouse and taking them from it to retail stores. Storage performs the service of stabilizing market price. If, for example, no agricultural product could be stored, all food would have to be put on the market immediately. This would, of course, create a glut and lower prices drastically. There would be an immediate benefit to consumers, but in the long run they would suffer. Farmers, because of low prices, would be forced off the land, and the amount of food produced would decrease. This, in turn, would raise consumer prices. Warehouses for storage are of several types. Private warehouses are owned by manufacturers. Public warehouses, in spite of their name, are privately owned facilities, but they are independent of manufacturer ownership. General-merchandise warehouses store a great variety of products. Cold-storage warehouses store perishable goods, especially food products. Grain elevators are a kind of warehouse used to keep wheat and other grains from spoiling. A bonded warehouse is one that stores foods, frequently imported, on which taxes must be paid before they are sold. Cigarettes and alcoholic beverages are common examples. The distribution center is a more recently developed kind of warehouse. Many large companies have several manufacturing plants, sometimes located outside the country. Each plant does not make every company product but specializes in one or more of them. The distribution center allows a manufacturer to bring together all product lines in one place. Its purpose is to minimize storage and to ease the flow of goods from manufacturers to retailers rather than build up extensive inventories. It reduces costs by speeding up product turnover. Very large corporations will have several distribution centers regionally or internationally based.

单选题{{B}}Passage 2{{/B}} Without proper planning, tourism can cause problems. For example, too many tourists can crowd public places' that are also enjoyed by the inhabitants of a country. If tourists create too much traffic, the inhabitants become annoyed and unhappy. They begin to dislike tourists and to treat them impolitely. They forget how much tourism can help the country's economy. It is important to think about the people of a destination and how tourism affects them. Tourism should help a country to keep the customs and beauty that attract tourists. Tourism should also advance the well-being of local inhabitants. {{U}}Too much tourism can be a problem. If tourism grows too quickly, people must leave other jobs to work in the tourism industry.{{/U}} This means that other parts of the country's economy can suffer. On the other hand, if there is not enough tourism, people can lose jobs. Businesses can also lose money. It costs a great deal of money to build large hotels, airports, air terminals, first-class roads, and other support facilities needed by tourist attractions. For example, a major international-class tourism hotel can cost as much as 50000 dollars per room to build. If this room is not used most of the time, the owners of the hotel lose money. Building a hotel is just a beginning. There must be many support facilities as well, including roads to get to the hotel, electricity, sewers to handle waste and water. All of these support facilities cost money. If they are not used because there are not enough tourists, jobs and money are lost.

单选题We are prepared to satisfy all your______ claims. A. legitimate B legible C. intimate D. legislative

单选题I don't understand why people ______such a beautiful garden with cans and bottles.(2002年武汉大学考博试题)

单选题______ the graduate's experiences that he couldn't find a good job.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} The consequences of heavy drinking are well documented: failing health, broken marriages, regrettable late-night phone calls. But according to Gregory Luzaich's calculations, there can be a downside to modest drinking, too—though one that damages the wallet, not the liver. The Pek Wine Steward prevents wine from spoiling by injecting argon, an inert gas, into the bottle before sealing it airtight with silicon. Mr. Luzaich. a mechanical engineer in Windsor, Calif.—in the Sonoma County wine country—first tallied the costs of his reasonable consumption in October 2001. "I'd like to come home in the evening and have a glass of wine with dinner," he said. "My wife doesn't drink very much. so the bottle wouldn't get consumed. And maybe I would forget about it the next day, and I'd check back a day or two later, and the wine would be spoiled." That meant he was wasting most of a $15 to $20 bottle of wine. dozens of times a year. A cheek of the wine-preservation gadgets on the market left Mr. Luzaich dissatisfied High-end wine cabinets cost thousands of dollars—a huge investment for a glass-a-day drinker. Affordable preservers, meanwhile, didn't quite perform to Mr. Luzaich's liking; be thought they allowed too much oxidation, which degrades the taste of a wine. The solution, he decided, was a better gas. Many preservers pumped nitrogen into an opened bottle to slow a wine's decline, even though oenological literature suggested that argon was more effective. So when he began designing the Pek Wine Steward. a metal cone into which a wine bottle is inserted, Mr. Luzaich found that his main challenge was to figure out how best to introduce the argon. He spent months fine-tuning a gas injection system. "We used computational fluid dynamics to model the gas flow," Mr. Luzaich said. referring to a computer-analysis technique that measures how smoothly particles are flowing. The goal was to create an injector that could swap a bottle's oxygen atoms for argon atoms; argon is an inert gas, and thus unlikely to harm a nice Chianti. Mr. Luzaich, who had previously designed medical and telecommunications products, also worked on creating an airtight seal, to secure the bottle after the argon was injected. He experimented with several substances, from neoprene to a visco-elastic polymer (which he dismissed as "too gooey"), before settling on a food-grade silicon. To save wine, a bottle is placed inside the Pek Wine Steward, the top is closed, and a trigger is pulled for 5 to 10 seconds, depending on how much wine remains. When the trigger is released, the bottle is sealed automatically, preserving the wine for a week or more. the company says. "We wanted to make it very easy for the consumer," Mr. Luzaich said. "It's basically mindless." The device, which resembles a high-tech thermos, first became available to consumers in March 2004, and 8,000 to 10.000 have been sold, primarily through catalogs like those of The Wine Enthusiast and Hammacher Schlemmer The base model sells for $99; a deluxe model, which also includes a thermoelectric cooler, is $199

单选题Was it during the Second World War ______ he died? A) that B) while C) in which D) then

单选题The elephant I saw in the zoo ate ______ all the things the visitors gave it.A. upB. atC. outD. off

单选题She cut the apple ______.