阅读理解 The biggest danger facing the global airline industry is not the effects of terrorism, war, SARS and economic downturn. It is that these blows, which have helped ground three national flag carriers and force two American airlines into bankruptcy, will divert attention from the inherent weaknesses of aviation, which they have exacerbated. As in the crisis that attended the first Gulf War, many airlines hope that traffic will soon bounce back, and a few catastrophic years will be followed by fuller planes, happier passengers and a return to profitability. Yet the industry's problems are deeper—and older—than the trauma of the past two years implies. As the centenary of the first powered flight approaches in December, the industry it launched is still remarkably primitive. The car industry, created not long after the Wright Brothers made history, is now a global industry dominated by a dozen firms, at least half of which make good profits. Yet commercial aviation consists of 267 international carriers and another 500-plus domestic ones. The world's biggest carrier, American Airlines, has barely 7% of the global market, whereas the world's biggest carmaker, General Motors, has (with its associated firms) about a quarter of the world's automobile market. Aviation has been incompletely deregulated, and in only two markets: America and Europe. Everywhere else, governments dictate who flies under what rules. These aim to preserve state-owned national flag-carriers, run for prestige rather than profit. And numerous restrictions on foreign ownership impede cross-border airline mergers. In America, the big network carriers face barriers to exit, which have kept their route networks too large. Trade unions resisting job cuts and Congressmen opposing route closures in their territory conspire to block change. In Europe, liberalization is limited by bilateral deals that prevent, for instance, British Airways (BA) flying to America from Frankfurt or Paris, or Lufthansa offering transatlantic flights from London's Heathrow. To use the car industry analogy, it is as if only Renaults were allowed to drive on French motorways. In airlines, the optimists are those who think that things are now so bad that the industry has no option but to evolve. Frederick Reid, president of Delta Air Lines, said earlier this year that events since the September llth attacks are the equivalent of a meteor strike, changing the climate, creating a sort of nuclear winter and leading to a 'compressed evolutionary cycle'. So how, looking on the bright side, might the industry look after five years of accelerated development?

阅读理解(1) It can be risky these days to suggest that there are any innate differences between men and women, other than those of anatomy

阅读理解 Archaeology can tell us plenty about how humans looked and the way they lived tens of thousands of years ago. But what about the deeper questions? Could early humans speak, were they capable of self-conscious reflection, did they believe in anything? Such questions might seem to be beyond the scope of science. Not so. Answering them is the focus of a burgeoning field that brings together archaeology and neuroscience. It aims to chart the development of human cognitive powers. This is not easy to do. A skull gives no indication of whether its owner was capable of speech, for example. The task then is to find proxies (普代物) for key traits and behaviors that have stayed intact over millennia. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this endeavor is teasing out the role of culture as a force in the evolution of our mental skills. For decades, development of the brain has been seen as exclusively biological. But increasingly, that is being challenged. Take what the Cambridge archaeologist Colin Renfrew calls 'the sapient (智人的) paradox (矛盾)' Evidence suggests that the human genome, and hence the brain, has changed little in the past 60,000 years. Yet it wasn't until about 10,000 years ago that profound changes took place in human behavior: people settled in villages and built shrines. Renfrew's paradox is why, if the hardware was in place, did it take so long for humans to start changing the world? His answer is that the software—the culture—took a long time to develop. In particular, the intervening time saw humans vest (赋予) meaning in objects and symbols. Those meanings were developed by social interaction over successive generations, passed on through teaching, and stored in the neuronal connections of children. Culture also changes biology by modifying natural selection, sometimes in surprising ways. How is it, for example, that a human gene for making essential vitamin C became blocked by junk DNA? One answer is that our ancestors started eating fruit, so the pressure to make vitamin C 'relaxed' and the gene became unnecessary. By this reasoning, early humans then became addicted to fruit, and any gene that helped them to find it was selected for. Evidence suggests that the brain is so plastic that, like genes, it can be changed by relaxing selection pressure. Our understanding of human cognitive development is still fragmented and confused, however. We have lots of proposed causes and effects, and hypotheses to explain them. Yet the potential pay-off makes answers worth searching for. If we know where the human mind came from and what changed it, perhaps we can gauge where it is going. Finding those answers will take all the ingenuity the modem human mind can muster.

阅读理解Paul: I think books will be more affordable

阅读理解Directions: In this section there are 2 passages followed by questions, each with four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer. Write your answers on your Answer Sheet.Passage ⅡAt 5:15 am of April 18, 1906, the greatest earthquake disaster in the history of the United States occurred. At that crucial moment, San Francisco and the surrounding areas were rocked by huge movements in the earth underneath, causing damages unheard of before. The loss in money, lives, and peace of mind were such that it took decades for San Francisco to recover, and still haunts the memory of that great city to this day.As the first massive quake hit the sleeping city, building tumbles and chaos suddenly reigned in the streets. Amid bursting gas mains, falling debris, and raging fires, panic held sway over the citizenry as each fled from the destruction all around them. People fled to the safety of parks, far from the toppling skyscrapers, as martial law was imposed to keep the madness in check.Fire swept across the city as the broken gas mains caught fire and occasionally exploded. Brave firemen rushed to the scenes of disaster, only to find that the central water main had also been destroyed by the quake, leaving them helpless to watch as the fires raged on and spread further and further.A second massive shock hit the crumbled city at 8:00 am, nearly three hours after the first. Although the most serious fires began in the business district, as time progressed, it was clear that the loss in life was mainly in the poorer areas of the city, under which most of the burning gas mains ran. After all was said and done, the final death tolls were horrifyingly high. In addition, nearly all the major buildings in the city were reduced to rubble, including the City Hall, the new Post Office, the Parrot Building (previously the largest department store in the West), the Chronicle and Examiner Buildings (San Francisco’s two major newspapers), and Stanford University in nearby Palo Alto.In the wake of the destruction, urban planners immediately set to work to rebuild the shattered city. They did this with gusto, designing new buildings, pipes, and streets with earthquake safety in mind. These ongoing precautions no doubt contributed to the phenomenal performance of the city’s infrastructure during the earthquake of 1989, in which, although millions of dollars in damage occurred, widespread major destruction and loss of life were avoided.

阅读理解What’s the deadline set by the seller for the buyer to make the payment? It’s _____________

阅读理解Passage C In 776 B

阅读理解In the mid-1990s, three senior female professors at M. I. T. came to suspect that their careers had been hampered by similar patterns of marginalization.【B1】______After performing the investigation and studying the data, the committee concluded that the marginalization experienced by female scientists at M. I. T. “ was often accompanied by differences in salary, space, awards, resources and response to outside offers between men and women faculty, with women receiving less despite professional accomplishments equal to those of their colleagues. “ The dean concurred with the committee’s findings. And yet, as was noted in the committee’s report, his fellow administrators “resisted the notion that there was any problem that arose from gender bias in the treatment of the women faculty. Some argued that it was the masculine culture of M. I. T. that was to blame, and little could be done to change that. “【B2】______ The committee’s most evocative finding was that the discrimination facing female scientists in the final quarter of the 20th century was qualitatively different from the more obvious forms of sexism addressed by civil rights laws and affirmative action, but no less real. Not everyone agrees that what was uncovered at M. I. T. actually qualifies as discrimination.【B3】______Even if female professors have been shortchanged or shunted aside, their marginalization might be a result of the same sorts of departmental infighting, personality conflicts and “ mistaken impressions” that cause male faculty members to feel slighted as well. “ Perceptions of discrimination are evidence of nothing but subjective feelings,” Kleinfeld scoffs. 【B4】______In February 2012, the American Institute of Physics published a survey of 15,000 male and female physicists across 130 countries.【B5】______” In fact,” the researchers concluded, “ women physicists could be the majority in some hypothetical future yet still find their careers experience problems that stem from often unconscious bias. “ A. In almost all cultures, female scientists received less financing, lab space, office support and grants for equipment and travel, even after the researchers controlled for differences other than sex. B. Judith Kleinfeld, a professor emeritus in the psychology department at the University of Alaska, argues that the M. I. T. study isn’t persuasive because the number of faculty members involved is too small and university officials refuse to release the data. C. But broader studies show that the perception of discrimination is often accompanied by a very real difference in the allotment of resources. D. Yet women pursuing tenure track must leap hurdles that are higher than those facing their male competitors, often without realizing any such disparity exists. E. In other words, women didn’t become scientists because science — and scientists — were male. F. They took the matter to the dean, who appointed a committee of six senior women and three senior men to investigate their concerns.

阅读理解A Recently, more than 2,000 high school teachers have been asked about the effect of the Interneton their students

阅读理解 If open-source software is supposed to be free, how does anyone selling it make any money? It's not that different from how other software companies make money. You'd think that a software company would make most of its money from, well, selling software. But you'd be wrong. For one thing, companies don't sell software, strictly speaking; they license it. The profit margin on a software license is nearly 100 percent, which is why Microsoft gushes billions of dollars every quarter. But what's the value of a license to a customer? A license doesn't deliver the code, provide the utilities to get a piece of software running, or answer the phone when something inevitably goes wrong. The value of software, in short, doesn't lie in the software alone. The value is in making sure the soft ware does its job. Just as a traveler should look at the overall price of a vacation package instead of obsessing over the price of the plane ticket or hotel room, a smart tech buyer won't focus on how much the license costs and ignore the support contract or the maintenance agreement. Open-source is not that different. If you want the software to work, you have to pay to ensure it will work. The open-source companies have refined the software model by selling subscriptions. They roll together support and maintenance and charge an annual fee, which is a healthy model, though not quite as wonderful as Microsoft's money-raking one. Tellingly, even Microsoft is casting an envious eye at aspects of the open-source business model. The company has been taking halting steps toward a similar subscription scheme for its software sales. Microsoft's subscription program, known as Soft ware Assurance, provides maintenance and support together with a software license. It lets you up grade to Microsoft's next version of the software for a predictable sum. But it also contains an implicit threat: If you don't switch to Software Assurance now, who knows how much Microsoft will charge you when you decide to upgrade? Chief information officers hate this kind of 'assurance', since they're often perfectly happy running older versions of software that are proven and stable. Microsoft, on the other hand, rakes in the software-licensing fees only when customers upgrade. Software Assurance is Microsoft's attempt to get those same licensing fees but wrap them together with the service and support needed to keep systems running. That's why Microsoft finds the open-source model so threatening: open-source companies have no vested interest in getting more licensing fees and don't have to pad their service contracts with that extra cost. In the end, the main difference between open-source and proprietary software companies may be the size of the check you have to write.

阅读理解Along the Mighty Thames The Thames The Thames is the longest river in England, running 352 kilometers from where it rises in the Costswold Hills in Gloucestershire to the North Sea

阅读理解How many people's ideas about music are talked about in the text?

阅读理解What measure is being taken by the UK to cut back on the use of plastics?

阅读理解Directions:In this part of the test，there will be 5 passages for you to read. Each passage is followed by 4 questions or unfinished statements, and each question or unfinished statement is followed by four choices marked A, B, C and D. You are to decide on the best choice by blackening the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET.Passage TwoWinston Churchill was one of the central statesmen of the 20th century and, almost 50 years afterhis death, remains a subject of enduring fascination. Part of the current interest in this venerable figurecan be attributed to two superb biographies written in the 1980s by historian William Manchester： TheLast Lion: Visions of Glory and The Last Lion: Alone. These two books examined the first two-thirds ofChurchill’s life.Unfortunately, after completing the second volume, Manchester’s health declined and the rest ofthe project stalled. So great was public interest in the long-delayed final volume that it was the subjectof a front page story in The New York Times.Eventually, in 2003, Manchester asked his friend Paul Reid to complete the trilogy. Now, nearly adecade later, Reid has published The Last Lion, the final piece of this monumental undertaking. Reidstarts when Churchill was appointed prime minister in May 1940 and follows him through his death in1965. While most of this volume is appropriately devoted to World War II, it also includes the vastexpansion of the British welfare state following the war, the start of the Cold War and the enormousdangers it carried, and the loss of the British Empire.Reid has written a thorough and complete analysis of these years, and it is a worthy finale to thefirst two volumes. Exhaustively researched and carefully written, it draws on a full range of primaryand secondary materials. This book will be essential reading for those who enjoyed the first two volumesand those with a deep interest in understanding this seminal figure and his place in history.Reid does a wonderful job of capturing Churchill in all his complexity. He gives Churchill greatpraise for his personal courage and inspirational leadership during the dark days when Britain stoodalone, but he is equally clear about Churchill’s poor strategic judgments, such as the efforts to defendGreece and Crete, the Allied assault on Anzio, and the decision to send the battleship Prince of Walesand battle cruiser Repulse to the South China Sea without adequate air cover where they were promptlysunk by the Japanese.He highlights Churchill’s naivete in dealing with Soviet Premier Stalin in the early years of the war,but praises his prescience in anticipating Stalin’s land grab in Eastern Europe at the end of the conflict.Reid also gives welcome attention to aspects of the war — such as ChurchilFs fear that the United Statesmight decide to put its primary emphasis on defeating Japan regardless of the 4 Germany first ”understanding he shared with Roosevelt that have received little attention in other books.

阅读理解Passage 3 During my 25 years as a marital therapist, I have seen hundreds of people disappointed over unfulfilling relationships

阅读理解Passage One Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage

阅读理解 Could the bad old days of economic decline be about to return Since OPEC agreed to supply-cuts in March, the price of crude oil has jumped to almost $ 26 a barrel, up from less than $10 last December. This near-tripling of oil prices calls up scary memories of the 1973 oil shock, when prices quadrupled, and 1979―80, when they also almost tripled. Both previous shocks resulted in double- digit inflation and global economic decline. So where are the headlines warning of gloom and doom this time? The oil price was given another push up this week when Iraq suspended oil exports. Strengthening economic growth, at the same time as winter grips the northern hemisphere, could push the price higher still in the short term. Yet there are good reasons to expect the economic consequences now to be less severe than in the 1970s. In most countries the cost of crude oil now accounts for a smaller share of the price of petrol than it did in the 1970s. In Europe, taxes account for up to four-fifths of the retail price, so even quite big changes in the price of crude have a more muted effect on pump prices than in the past. Rich economies are also less dependent on oil than they were, and so less sensitive to swings in the oil price. Energy conservation, a shift to other fuels and a decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries have reduced oil consumption. Software, consultancy and mobile telephones use far less oil than steel or car production. For each dollar of GDP ( in constant prices) rich economies now use nearly 50% less oil than in 1973. The OECD estimates in its latest Economic Outlook that, if oil prices averaged $ 22 a barrel for a full year, compared with $13 in 1998, this would increase the oil import bill in rich economies by only 0.25 - 0.5% of GDP. That is less than one-quarter of the income loss in 1974 or 1980. On the other hand, oil-importing emerging economies--to which heavy industry has shifted--have become more energy-intensive, and so could be more seriously squeezed. One more reason not to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that, unlike the rises in the 1970s, it has not occurred against the background of general commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the world is only just emerging from economic decline. The Economist''s commodity price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices jumped by 70%, and in 1979 by almost 30%.

阅读理解 Publishing in scientific journals is the most common and powerful means to disseminate new research findings. Visibility and credibility in the scientific world require publishing in journals that are included in global indexing databases such as those of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Most scientists in developing countries remain at the periphery of this critical communication process, exacerbating the low international recognition and impact of their accomplishments. For science to become maximally influential and productive across the globe, this needs to change. The economy of electronic publication, open access, and property rights fuel current academic and policy debates about scientific publishing in the industrialized world. The concerns in the developing world (with few ISI-indexed journals) focus on more fundamental questions, such as sustaining local research activity and achieving the appropriate global reach of its science activities. The essence of the African situation is captured by R.J.W. Tijssen's analysis of publications by African authors, which was based not only on data from ISI indexing databases, but also on publications not indexed in this system. Surprisingly, half of the South African citations in the indexed ISI literature are to articles in nonindexed, locally published journals. Also, several nonindexed local journals are cited in the ISI system at about the same rate as are indexed journals. The share of indexed articles with at least one author with an African address remains steady at about 1%. About half of the ISI-indexed papers with at least one author with an African address have non-African partners outside of the continent. These figures vary, country by country, sometimes in surprising ways. For example, 85% of the papers published from Mali or Gabon involve collaborations on other continents, versus 39% and 29%, respectively, for South African and Egypt, the continent's leading research producers. Thus, much of the Africa research system is now highly dependent on collaborations. How can the global reach and potential impact of scientific research in Africa and other developing countries be optimized? Of primary importance is boosting the quality and quantity of work that is locally published, through measures including review of submissions by peers research opportunities. A proliferation of journals, short-lived publications, print-only journals, and poor distribution constitutes a picture that must change. A nationally organized project can probably make the biggest difference, with investment by government and research-support agencies, as well as wide participation by local and regional scientific communities.

阅读理解The author believes that after 2015,the government may______.