单选题When a disease of epidemic proportions rips into the populace, scientists immediately get to work, trying to locate the source of the affliction and find ways to combat it. Oftentimes, success is achieved, as medical science is able to isolate the parasite, germ or cell that causes the problem and finds ways to effectively kill or contain it. In the most serious of cases, in which the entire population of a region or country may be at grave risk, it is deemed necessary to protect the entire population through vaccination, so as to safeguard lives and ensure that the disease will not spread. The process of vaccination allows the patient's body to develop immunity to the virus or disease so that, if it is encountered, one can ward it off naturally. To accomplish this, a small weak or dead strain of the disease is actually injected into the patient in a controlled environment, so that his body's immune system can learn to fight the invader properly. Information on how to penetrate the disease's defenses is transmitted to all elements of the patient's immune system in a process that occurs naturally, in which genetic information is passed from cell to cell. This makes sure that, should the patient later come into contact with the real problem, his body is well equipped and trained to deal with it, having already done so before. There are dangers inherent in the process, however. On occasion, even the weakened version of the disease contained in the vaccine proves too much for the body to handle, resulting in the immune system succumbing, and, therefore, the patient's death. Such is the case of the smallpox vaccine, designed to eradicate the smallpox epidemic that nearly wiped out the entire Native American population and killed massive numbers of settlers. Approximately 1 in 10,000 people who receives the vaccine contract the smallpox disease from the vaccine itself and dies from it. Thus, if the entire population of the United States were to receive the Smallpox Vaccine today, 3000 Americans would be left dead. Fortunately, the smallpox virus was considered eradicated in the early 1970's, ending the mandatory vaccination of all babies in America. In the event of a reintroduction of the disease, however, mandatory vaccinations may resume, resulting in more unexpected deaths from vaccination. The process, which is truly a mixed blessing, may indeed hide some hidden curses.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Despite the doubts, and despite complaints from shop owners, London's congestion charge --introduced in February 2003 -- has managed to ease the gridlock in the city centre. Traffic is down by 18%, jams by 30%. The scheme's biggest weakness is that it is crude: drivers pay ￡ 8 ($14) to enter the zone between 7am and 6:30pm, regardless of how congested the roads are, or how long they stay. So road-pricing fans are watching trials by Transport for London (TfL) of a new detection system, called tag-and-beacon, with interest. Under such a scheme (used in Singapore and on some European roads) cars are fitted with electronic tags that are read by roadside masts. If the trial is successful, TfL says that the city could switch to the system once the contract to run the congestion charge is re-let in 2009. Currently, cameras are used to read license plates and track motorists. They are not always reliable: an individual camera identifies only around 70% of cars. Most driven get photographed more than once, which boosts the system's effectiveness to over 95%, but that still leaves several thousand vehicles per day whose details must be laboriously checked by hand. Tag-and-beacon technology is much more accurate, with an identification rate of over 99%. TfL says the trial is partly designed to see whether the new system could allow drivers to pay charges by direct debit. That would be popular with motorists, who complain that the current payment system is unfriendly: the toll for a day' s travel must be paid manually -- online, by phone or in a shop -- by midnight, with steep fines levied on forgetful drivers. More precise detection also allows for more precision in policy, and road-pricing enthusiasts see radical possibilities ahead. TfL says it is considering using the new technology to charge drivers each time they cross the zone boundary (up to a daily maximum), instead of paying once for an entire day's travel. That would be cheaper for drivers who make few trips into the zone, although drivers who spend a long time trundling around without leaving (thereby causing the most congestion) would get off lightly, too. Further refinements may be possible. The current system has cut traffic most drastically in the middle of the day, when congestion is at its lowest. Demand for road space would better match supply if charges were variable -- high at the busiest times of day and low in quiet periods. Such a time-sensitive, variable-charging scheme using a tag-and-beacon system was endorsed last year by Bob Kiley, the TfL's boss, who also said that he wanted to extend the congestion charge to other parts of London. That would be controversial, and Mr. Kiley's underlings were quick to insist that his musings were not official policy. But the original scheme was controversial too, yet Ken Livingstone, London's mayor and its biggest backer, was re-elected after introducing it. It would be a shame if timidity took hold now.

单选题Some observers thought the war would be calamitous.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} House-price falls are gathering momentum and are spreading across the UK, according to a monthly poll of surveyors which on Monday delivered its gloomiest reading for nearly 12 years. Fifty-six per cent of surveyors contacted by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reported price falls in the three months to October. Only 3 per cent saw prices rise in their area, compared with 58 per cent as recently as May. There was further evidence of slowing activity in the property market as the number of sales per surveyor dived to a nine-year low. Unsold stock on agents' books has increased 10 per cent since the summer. Ian Perry, Rics' national housing spokesman, said it was now very clear that buyers were unsettled by higher interest rates. The Bank of England raised rates five times to 4. 75 per cent over the last year to cool the property boom. But he also blamed comments by Mervyn King, the Bank's governor, and misleading media headlines for "injecting additional uncertainty into the market by continued speculation over more serious price declines". "Mervyn King presumably felt that he had to be more explicit in the summer when people were still buying. His warnings of a drop in property prices then have had the desired effect. "But our concern now is that {{U}}the pendulum is swinging too far,{{/U}}" be said. Last week, the Bank's monetary policy committee predicted for the first time that "house prices may fall modestly for a period" in its November inflation report. The Nationwide and Halifax mortgage lenders both showed a modest monthly decline in house prices in their latest loan approval data. Although the majority of surveyors expect prices to fall further in the next three months, Mr. Perry stressed there were signs of stabilizing demand from buyers in London. "London tends to be ahead of the rest of the market. And agents are telling us that more people are looking to buy. It is much better than it was," Mr. Perry said. However, falling prices continued to spread from the South of England as surveyors reported the first clear decline in prices in Yorkshire and the Humber, the north and the north west. Scotland remained the only region with rising prices.

单选题Watch a baby between six and nine months old, and you will observe the basic concepts of geometry being learned. Once the baby has mastered the idea that space is three-dimensional, it reached out and begins grasping various kinds of objects. It is then, from perhaps nine to fifteen months, that the concepts of sets and numbers are formed. So far, so good. But now an ominous development takes place. The nerve fibers in the brain insulate themselves in such a way that the baby begins to hear sounds very precisely. Soon it picks up language, and it is then brought into direct communication with adults. From this point on, it is usually downhill all the way for mathematics, because the child now becomes exposed to all the nonsense words and beliefs of the community into which it has been so unfortunate as to have been born. Nature having done very well by the child to this point, having permitted it the luxury of thinking for itself for eighteen months, now abandons it to the arbitrary conventions and beliefs of society. But at least the child knows something of geometry and numbers, and it will always retain some memory of the early happy days, no matter what vicissitudes it may suffer later on. The main reservoir of mathematical talent in any society is thus possessed by children who are about two years old, children who have just learned to speak fluently.

单选题The old man needs ______ X-ray examination of the head． A．a B．the C．an D．×

单选题There is a battle going in Australia between Aborigines and archaeologists. The Aborigines say that ancient bones and other artifacts should be reburied. The archaeologists say that to do so would mean the end of archaeology. Rocky Satiny, president of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council, wants all archaeological excavation in Tasmania stopped. Sainty told The Bulletin: "Aboriginal people know how long we"ve lived here. We know how we trade. The sites that have been excavated are very significant to us. We couldn"t expect someone to go and dig up graves of the Whites at the back of Hobart, well, we have the same feelings." Last year, Sainty and the council took two La Trobe University archaeologists to court in an effort to have excavated material returned. University of Western Australia archaeologists had already returned some excavated material. The artifacts, 17,000 years old, had been dug up in the King River Valley. After the material was returned to them, the Aborigines scattered it over the lake "to heal the site". The La Trobe archaeologists, Jim Allen and Tim Murray, were shocked. They refused to hand over the artifacts they had collected until they had finished their analysis. The courts, however, ordered Allen and Murray to return the material to Tasmania. A track was needed to transport the 500,000 items. Allen is angry. "This decision means I will never again excavate on a site in Australia, because it would carry at least the potential problem we"ve encountered there. It would be unethical to take any material out of the ground knowing that it could be vandalized in this way somewhere down the track." His colleague, Tim Murray, believes the irony of the current situation is that the work of archaeologists has given Aborigines a new sense of pride. "Archaeologists provide a service both to Aboriginal people and the general Australian public," Murray says. "We found the way of making meaningful a whole history of this country before the arrival of Europeans. If that becomes more and more difficult, then the kind of silence that existed before the development of Aboriginal history will return."

单选题In the eyes of Green, United Airlines

单选题Which of the following statements is not included in the view of education as oyster?

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} This past academic year, 146 New York City kids from 4 to 14 dutifully attended Rosalyn Chao's Mandarin class at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral Academy. Many of the students were first-generation Americans; for several, Mandarin would be their third language, after English and Spanish. Get used to this picture; around the world, more adults and kids are learning Chinese. Beijing is pouring money into new Confucius Institutes (Chinese language and culture centers), and two U.S. senators recently proposed spending $1.3 billion on Chinese-language programs over the next five years. From Ulan Bator to Chicago, it sometimes seems as if everyone is trying to learn the language now spoken by a fifth of the world's population. Their reasoning is easy to understand. China is booming, and citizens around the globe want a piece of the action. Speaking Mandarin can facilitate communication with newly wealthy Chinese tourists or smooth bilateral trade relations. In a form of intense cultural diplomacy, Beijing is also promoting its films, music, art and language as never before. Front and center are the Confucius Institutes, modeled on the British Council, Germany's Goethe Institutes or the Alliance Francaise. China's Ministry of Education is sending thousands of language instructors to foreign programs and inviting foreign students from Asia, Africa and elsewhere to study in its universities. As a result, Beijing predicts that 100 million individuals will be studying Mandarin as a second language by the end of the decade. The U.S. Department of Education announced earlier this year that it hopes to have 5 percent of all elementary, secondary and college students enrolled in Mandarin studies by 2010. The Chinese boom hasn't escaped criticism, however. For one thing, the language is hard, with more than 2,500 characters generally employed in daily writing and a complex tonal speaking system. Then there's the danger that other important languages, such as Russian or Japanese, will be neglected; for example, there are now 10 times more students learning Mandarin than Japanese in the United States. And other countries fear a growing encroachment(侵蚀) of Chinese power; some Africans have complained about Beijing's "neocolonialist(新殖民主义)" attitudes, for example, and this could breed resentment against Confucius Institutes on their soil. Yet most Mandarin students, like those at St. Pat's, aren't letting such concerns dissuade them. Mandarin represents a new way of thinking. Chao says that" we must begin preparing our students for the interconnected world." Accordingly, she has encouraged her Mandarin students to correspond with pen pals in Shanghai. Chao says that" in reading the Chinese students' letters, we learned quickly that American students are far behind their Asian counterparts." If they hope to catch up to their Chinese competitors, her students--like the growing legions of Mandarin pupils around the globe -- are going to have to study hard indeed.

单选题(This) is the sportsman (whom) everyone says (will win) the first prize (at) the Winter Olympic Games. A. This B. whom C. will win D. at

单选题The small size of the components of computer chips has proved unstoppable. In each new (1) , those components are smaller and more tightly packed than they were in their predecessor. (2) has been so rapid that chip designers are (3) apparently fundamental barriers to further reductions in size and increases in density. In a small size version of the (4) to wireless communication in the macroscopic world, a group of researchers led by Alain Nogaret, think they can make chips (5) components talk to each other wirelessly. The researchers (6) to use the standard print techniques employed in chipmaking to coat a semiconductor with tiny magnets. These magnets will (7) local magnetic fields that point in opposite directions at different points (8) the chip's surface. Electrons have a (9) called spin--that is affected by magnetic fields, and the team hopes to use a/an (10) called inverse electron-spin vibration to make electrons (11) the chip emit microwaves. Dr. Nogaret imagine great advances that would stem (12) the success of his work, and these are not (13) to the possibility of packing components yet more tightly. In today's chips, the failure of a single connection can put the whole circuit out of (14) . This should not happen with a wireless system (15) it could be programmed to re-route signals. The project will not be (16) sailing. Generating microwaves powerful enough to (17) data reliably will (18) involve stacking several layers of magnets and semiconductors together and encouraging the electrons in them to move in a harmonious union. But if it (19) , a whole new wireless world will be (20) .

单选题May this book ______ to enhance the understanding and friendship between the two peoples. A. help B. helps C. will help D. should help

单选题The agent left the newspaper ______.

单选题______ is the sending and receiving of the messages by computer. It is afast, low-cost way of communicating worldwide. A．LAN B．Post office C．E-Mail D．Interface

单选题She told us that she would not come to the meeting if it______the next day.

单选题You’ll have to pay for the holiday in ______ ，Tom．A．front B．advance C．ahead D．forward

单选题With lots of trees and flowers ______ here and there, the city looks very beautiful.A. having plantedB. plantedC. have been plantedD. to be planted

单选题Sustainable management is seen as a practical and economical way of protecting species from extinction. Instead of depending on largely ineffective laws against poaching(偷猎), it gives local people a good economic reason to preserve plants and animals. In Zimbabwe, for instance, there is a sustainable management project to protect elephants. Foreign tourists pay large sums of money to kill these animals for sports. This money is then given to the inhabitants of the area where the hunting takes place. In theory, locals will be encouraged to protect elephants, instead of poaching them because of the economic benefit involved. This sounds like a sensible strategy, but it remains to be seen whether it will work. With corruption in these developing countries, some observers are skeptical(怀疑的) that the money will actually reach the people it is intended for. Others wonder how effective the locals will be at stopping poachers. There are also questions about whether sustainable management is practical when it comes to protecting forests. In theory, the principle should be the same as with elephants—allow logging companies to cut down certain number of trees, but not so many as to completely destroy the forest. Sustainable management of forests requires controls on the number of trees which are cut down, as well as investment in replacing them. Because almost all tropical forests are located in countries which desperately need revenue from logging, there are few regulations and incentive to do this. One solution might be to certify wood which comes from sustainably managed forests. In theory, consumers would buy only this wood and so force logging companies to go "green" or go out of business. Unfortunately, unrestricted logging is so much more profitable that wood prices from managed forests would cost up to five times more—an increase that consumers, no matter how "green", are unlikely to pay.