阅读理解 During the past generation, the American middle-class family that once could count on hard work and fair play to keep itself financially secure has been transformed by economic risk and new realities. Now a pink slip, a bad diagnosis, or a disappearing spouse can reduce a family from solidly middle class to newly poor in a few months. In just one generation, millions of mothers have gone to work, transforming basic family economics. Scholars, policymakers, and critics of all stripes have debated the social implications of these changes, but few have looked at the side effect: family risk has risen as well. Today's families have budgeted to the limits of their new two-paycheck status. As a result, they have lost the parachute they once had in times of financial setback—a back-up earner (usually Mom) who could go into the workforce if the primary earner got laid off or fell sick. This 'added-worker effect' could support the safety net offered by unemployment insurance or disability insurance to help families weather bad times. But today, a disruption to family fortunes can no longer be made up with extra income from an otherwise-stay-at-home partner. During the same period, families have been asked to absorb much more risk in their retirement income. Steelworkers, airline employees, and now those in the auto industry are joining millions of families who must worry about interest rates, stock market fluctuation, and the harsh reality that they may outlive their retirement money. For much of the past year, President Bush campaigned to move Social Security to a saving-account model, with retirees trading much or all of their guaranteed payments for payments depending on investment returns. For younger families, the picture is not any better. Both the absolute cost of healthcare and the share of it borne by families have risen—and newly fashionable health-savings plans are spreading from legislative halls to Wal-Mart workers, with much higher deductibles and a large new dose of investment risk for families' future healthcare. Even demographics are working against the middle class family, as the odds of having a weak elderly parent—and all the attendant need for physical and financial assistance—have jumped eightfold in just one generation. From the middle-class family perspective, much of this, understandably, looks far less like an opportunity to exercise more financial responsibility, and a good deal more like a frightening acceleration of the wholesale shift of financial risk onto their already overburdened shoulders. The financial fallout has begun, and the political fallout may not be far behind.

阅读理解No one can teach you, but you may learn

阅读理解Directions: In this section, there are 4 passages followed by multiple-choice questions. Read the passage and thenwrite ONE best answer for each question on your ANSWER SHEET.Passage FourRicky Gervais’s new film, The Invention of Lying, is about a world where lying doesn’t exist, which means that everybody tells the truth, and everybody believes everything everybody else says. “I’ve always hated you,” a man tells a work colleague. “He seems nice, if a bit fat,” a woman says about her date. It’s all truth, all the time, at whatever the cost. Until one day, when Mark, a down-on-his-luck loser played by Gervais, discovers a thing called “lying” and what it can get him. Within days, Mark is rich, famous, and courting the girl of his dreams. And because nobody knows what “lying” is, he goes on, happily living what has become a complete and utter farce.It’s meant to be funny, but it’s also a more serious commentary on us all. As Americans, we like to think we value the truth. Time and time again, public-opinion polls show that honesty is among the top five characteristics we want in a leader, friend, or lover; the world is full of sad stories about the tragic consequences of betrayal. At the same time, deception is all around us. We are lied to by government officials and public figures to a disturbing degree; many of our social relationships are based on little white lies we tell each other. We deceive our children, only to be deceived by them in return. And the average person says psychologist Robert Feldman, the author of a new book on lying, tells at least three lies in the first 10 minutes of a conversation. “There’s always been a lot of lying,” says Feldman， whose new book, The Liar in Your Life, came out this month. “But I do think we’re seeing a kind of cultural shift where we’re lying more, it’s easier to lie, and in some ways it’s almost more acceptable.”As Paul Ekman, one of Feldman’s longtime lying colleagues and the inspiration behind the Fox IV series “Lie To Me” defines it， a liar is a person who “intends to mislead,” “deliberately,” without being asked to do so by the target of the lie. Which doesn’t mean that all lies are equally toxic: some are simply habitual—“My pleasure!”—while others might be well-meaning white lies. But each, Feldman argues, is harmful, because of the standard it creates. And the more lies we tell, even if they’re little white lies, the more deceptive we and society become.We are a culture of liars, to put it bluntly, with deceit so deeply ingrained in our mind that we hardly even notice we’re engaging in it. Junk e-mail, deceptive advertising, the everyday pleasantries we don’t really mean—“It’s so great to meet you! I love that dress”—have, as Feldman puts it, become “a white noise we’ve learned to neglect.” And Feldman also argues that cheating is more common today than ever. The Josephson Institute, a nonprofit focused on youth ethics, concluded in a 2008 survey of nearly 30,000 high school students that “cheating in school continues to be rampant, and it’s getting worse.” In that survey, 64 percent of students said they’d cheated on a test during the past year, up from 60 percent in 2006. Another recent survey, by Junior Achievement, revealed that more than a third of teens believe lying, cheating, or plagiarizing can be necessary to succeed, while a brand-new study, commissioned by the publishers of Feldman’s book, shows that 18- to 34-year-olds—those of us fully reared in this lying culture—deceive more frequently than the general population.Teaching us to lie is not the purpose of Feldman’s book. His subtitle, in fact, is “the way to truthful relationships.” But if his book teaches us anything, it’s that we should sharpen our skills—and use them with abandon.Liars get what they want. They avoid punishment, and they win others’ affection. Liars make themselves sound smart and intelligent, they attain power over those of us who believe them, and they often use their lies to rise up in the professional world. Many liars have fun doing it. And many more take pride in getting away with it.As Feldman notes, there is an evolutionary basis for deception: in the wild, animals use deception to “play dead” when threatened. But in the modem world, the motives of our lying are more selfish. Research has linked socially successful people to those who are good liars. Students who succeed academically get picked for the best colleges, despite the fact that, as one recent Duke University study found, as many as 90 percent of high-schoolers admit to cheating. Even lying adolescents are more popular among their peers.And all it takes is a quick flip of the remote to see how our public figures fare when they get caught in a lie: Clinton keeps his wife and goes on to become a national hero. Fabricating author James Frey gets a million-dollar book deal. Eliot Spitzer’s wife stands by his side, while “Appalachian hiker” Mark Sanford still gets to keep his post. If everyone else is being rewarded for lying， don’t we need to lie, too, just to keep up?But what’s funny is that even as we admit to being liars, study after study shows that most of us believe we can tell when others are lying to us. And while lying may be easy, spotting a liar is far from it. A nervous sweat or shifty eyes can certainly mean a person’s uncomfortable, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lying. Gaze aversion, meanwhile, has more to do with shyness than actual deception. Even polygraph machines are unreliable. And according to one study, by researcher Bella DePaulo, we’re only able to differentiate a lie from truth only 47 percent of the time, less than if we guessed randomly. “Basically everything we’ve heard about catching a liar is wrong,” says Feldman, who heads the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Ekman, meanwhile, has spent decades studying micro-facial expressions of liars: the split-second eyebrow arch that shows surprise when a spouse asks who was on the phone; the furrowed nose that gives away a hint of disgust when a person says “I love you.” He’s trained everyone from the Secret Service to the TSA, and believes that with close study, it’s possible to identify those tiny emotions. The hard part, of course, is proving them. “A lot of times, it’s easier to believe,” says Feldman. “It takes a lot of cognitive effort to think about whether someone is lying to us.”Which means that more often than not, we’re like the poor dumb souls of The Invention of Lying, hanging on a liar’s every word, no matter how untruthful they may be.

阅读理解 Advertising follows us everywhere. Whenever we turn on the television, listen to the radio or open a newspaper or a magazine, we are bombarded with advertisements. They invite us to try a new type of orange juice, wear X-brand jeans or watch the latest film. They beg us to notice the difference and discover the advantages. They exist to make us want what they are selling. Strangely, the more we are exposed to advertising, the less we notice it. We get so used to seeing advertisements everywhere that they become largely invisible, as if they were another part of our everyday lives. But does that mean that we are no longer affected by them? One advertising expert believes that the special power of advertising lies in the fact that we do not pay much attention to it. Dr. Krugman, who was head of research for a major advertising company for many years, says that the less we notice ads, the more we are affected by them. Dr. Krugman believes that when we stop noticing advertisements, we lower our defenses, allowing the messages of the advertisements to be taken in and stored, ready to be triggered into action at the right moment. He says that the effects of advertising on the individual are small, but over a period of time they have a powerful effect on the masses. A market analyst says that all advertising, no matter how innocent, is misleading in some way. When asked about the power of advertising in research surveys, most people agree that it works, but not on them. Almost everyone believes that they have complete control over how thousands of ads they see every day affect them.

阅读理解B The easiest and least complicated way to motivate somebody is quite simply to pay them attention

阅读理解Of the thousands of different kinds of animals that exist in the world manhas learned to make friends with an enormous number

阅读理解In the first year or so of Web business, most of the action has revolved around efforts to tap the consumer market. More recently, as the Web proved to be more than fashion, companies have started to buy and sell products and services with one another. Such business-to-business sales make sense because business people typically know what product they''re looking for. 　　Nonetheless, many companies still hesitate to use the Web because of doubts about its reliability. "Businesses need to feel they can trust the pathway between them and the supplier," says senior analyst Blane Erwin of Forrester Research. Some companies are limiting the risk by conducting online transactions only with established business partners who are given access to the company''s private internet. 　　Another major shift in the model for Internet commerce concerns the technology available for marketing. Until recently, Internet marketing activities have focused on strategies to "pull" customers into sites. In the past year, however, software companies have developed tools that allow companies to "push" information directly out to consumers, transmitting marketing messages directly to targeted customers. Most notably, the Pointcast Network uses a screen saver to deliver a continually updated stream of news and advertisements to subscribers'' computer monitors. Subscribers can customize the information they want to receive and proceed directly to a company''s Web site. Companies such as Virtual Vineyards are already starting to use similar technologies to push messages to customers about special sales, product offerings, or other events. But push technology has earned the contempt of many Web users. Online culture thinks highly of the notion that the information flowing onto the screen comes there by specific request. Once commercial promotion begins to fill the screen uninvited, the distinction between the Web and television fades. That''s a prospect that horrifies Net purists. 　　But it is hardly inevitable that companies on the Web will need to resort to push strategies to make money. The examples of Virtual Vineyards, Amazon. com, and other pioneers show that a Web site selling the right kind of products with the right mix of interactivity, hospitality, and security will attract online customers. And the cost of computing power continues to free fall, which is a good sign for any enterprise setting up shop in silicon. People looking back 5 or 10 years from now may well wonder why so few companies took the online plunge.

阅读理解In Britain, high school students can run a business! Each business runs for one year

阅读理解What the meaning of"get up steam"?

阅读理解It is strange and disturbing to watch the straight (i

阅读理解After the violent earthquake that shook Los Angeles in 1994, earthquake scientists had good news to report: the damage and death toll could have been much worse. More than 60 people died in this earthquake. By comparison, an earthquake of similar intensity that shook America in 1988 claimed 25, 000 victims. Injuries and deaths were relatively less in Los Angeles because the quake occurred at 4:31 a.m. on a holiday, when traffic was light on the city''s highways. In addition, changes made to the construction codes in Los Angeles during the last 20 years have strengthened the city''s buildings and highways, making them more resistant to quakes. Despite the good news, civil engineers aren''t resting on their successes. Pinned to their drawing boards are blueprints for improved quake-resistant buildings. The new designs should offer even greater security to cities where earthquakes often take place. In the past, making structures quake-resistant meant firm yet flexible materials, such as steel and wood, that bend without breaking. Later, people tried to lift a building off its foundation, and insert rubber and steel between the building and its foundation to reduce the impact of ground vibrations. The most recent designs give buildings brains as well as concrete and steel supports, called smart buildings. The structures respond like living organisms to an earthquake''s vibrations. When the ground shakes and the building tips forward, the computer would force the building to shift in the opposite direction. The new smart structures could be very expensive to build. However, they would save many lives and would be less likely to be damaged during earthquakes.

阅读理解Passage 1 Learning disabilities are very common

阅读理解Text 4 Todays cars are smaller, safer, cleaner, and more economical than their predecessors, but the car of the future will be far more pollution-free than those on the road today

阅读理解In recent years many countries of the world have been faced with the problem of how to make their workers more productive. Some experts claim the answer is to make jobs more varied. But do more varied jobs lead to greater productivity? The evidence shows that while variety certainly makes the worker'' s life more enjoyable, it does not actually make him work harder. As far as increasing productivity is concerned, then, variety is not an important factor. Other experts feel that giving the worker freedom to do his job in his own way is important. There is no doubt that this is true. The problem is that this kind of freedom cannot easily be given in the modern factory with its complicated machinery which must be used in a fixed way. Thus, although freedom of choice may be important, usually very little can be done to create it. Another important consideration is how much a worker contributes to the product he is making. In most factories the worker sees only one small part of the product. Some car factories are now experimenting with having many small production lines rather than a large one, so that each worker contributes more to the production of the cars on his line. It would seem that not only is degree of the worker''s contribution an important factor, therefore, but it is also one we can do something about. To what extent does more money lead to greater productivity? The workers themselves certainly think this is important. But perhaps they want more money only because the work they do is so boring. Money just lets them enjoy their spare time more. A similar argument may explain demands for shorter working hours. Perhaps if we make their jobs more interesting, they will want neither more money nor shorter working hours.

阅读理解Which of the following statements is correct according to he passage? 

阅读理解B Are you crazy? people around him shouted as Alex mien, a 33-year-old immigrant(移民), rantoward three cars in a chain accident along the highway in Miami, which were burning down

阅读理解Passage 2 Like some people who might rather not admit it, wolves faced with a scarcity of potential sexual partners are not beneath lowering their standards

阅读理解Passage 1 When Macbeth was told he had nothing to fear until the local woods started ambling up to his castle, the tyrant sighed with relief, for who can impress the forest, bid the tree unfix his earth-bound root? Macbeth obviously had never been to Barro Colorado Island in Panama

阅读理解Question 66 to 70 are based on the following passage There is nothing like the suggestion of a cancer risk to scare a parent, especially one of the over-educated, eco-conscious type

阅读理解Directions: Read the following passages and answer the questions. Choose the most appropriate answer for each question and circle the letter on the answer sheet. Remember to write the letter corresponding to the question number.Over the past decade, thousands of patents have been granted for what are called business methods. Amazon.com received one for its “one-click” online payment system. Merrill Lynch got legal protection for an asset allocation strategy. One inventor patented a technique for lifting a box.Now the nation’s top patent court appears completely ready to scale back on business-method patents, which have been controversial ever since they were first authorized 10 years ago. In a move that has intellectual-property lawyers abuzz, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said it would use a particular case to conduct a broad review of business-method patents. In re Bilski, as the case is known, is “a very big deal”, says Dennis D. Crouch of the University of Missouri School of law. It “has the potential to eliminate an entire class of patents.”Curbs on business-method claims would be a dramatic about-face, because it was the Federal Circuit itself that introduced such patents with its 1998 decision in the so-called State Street Bank case, approving a patent on a way of pooling mutual-fund assets. That ruling produced an explosion in business- method patent filings, initially by emerging Internet companies trying to stake out exclusive rights to specific types of online transactions. Later, move established companies raced to add such patents to their files, if only as a defensive move against rivals that might beat them to the punch. In 2005, IBM noted in a court filing that it had been issued more than 300 business- method patents, despite the fact that it questioned the legal basis for granting them. Similarly, some Wall Street investment films armed themselves with patents for financial products, even as they took positions in court cases opposing the practice.The Bilski case involves a claimed patent on a method for hedging risk in the energy market. The Federal Circuit issued an unusual order stating that the case would be heard by all 12 of the court’s judges, rather than a typical panel of three, and that one issue it wants to evaluate is whether it should “reconsider” its State Street Bank ruling.The Federal Circuit’s action comes in the wake of a series of recent decisions by the Supreme Court that has narrowed the scope of protections for patent holders. Last April, for example the justices signaled that too many patents were being upheld for “inventions” that are obvious. The judges on the Federal Circuit are “reacting to the anti-patent trend at the Supreme Court”, says Harold C. Wegner, a patent attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.