单选题 There is nothing like the suggestion of a cancer risk to scare a parent, especially one of the over-educated, eco-conscious type. So you can imagine the reaction when a recent USA Today investigation of air quality around the nation's schools singled out those in the smugly green village of Berkeley, Calif, as being among the worst in the country. The city's public high school, as well as a number of daycare centers, preschools, elementary and middle schools, fell in the lowest 10%. Industrial pollution in our town had supposedly turned students into living science experiments breathing in a laboratory's worth of heavy metals like manganese (锰), chromium (铬) and nickel (镍) each day. This in a city that requires school cafeterias to serve organic meals. Great, I thought, organic lunch, toxic campus. Since December, when the report came out, the mayor, neighborhood activists and various parent-teacher associations have engaged in a fierce battle over its validity: over the guilt of the steel-casting factor5, on the western edge of town, over union jobs versus children's health and over what, if anything, ought to be done. With all sides presenting their own experts armed with conflicting scientific studies, whom should parents believe? Is there truly a threat here, we asked one another as we dropped off our kids, and if so, how great is it? And how does it compare with the other, seemingly perpetual health scares we confront, like panic over lead in synthetic athletic fields? Rather than just another weird episode in the town that brought you protesting environmentalists, this latest drama is a trial for how today's parents perceive risk, how we try to keep our kids safe—whether it's possible to keep them safe—in what feels like an increasingly threatening world. It raises the question of what, in our time, 'safe' could even mean. 'There's no way around the uncertainty,' says Kimberly Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit group that studies children's health. 'That means your choices can matter, but it also means you aren't going to know if they do.' A 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics explained that nervous parents have more to fear from fire, car accidents and drowning than from toxic chemical exposure. To which I say: Well, obviously. But such concrete hazards are beside the point. It's the dangers parents can't—and may never—quantify that occur all of sudden. That's why I've rid my cupboard of microwave food packed in bags coated with a potential cancer-causing substance, but although I've lived blocks from a major fault line (地质断层) for more than 12 years, I still haven't bolted our bookcases to the living room wall.

单选题 SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS In this section there are several passages followed by ten multiple-choice questions. For each question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO. PASSAGE ONE 'There is very little in my life that is more personal and more important to me than comets.' The amateur astronomer David H. Levy told Terence Dickinson in an interview. 'Not just discovering them but watching them, learning about them, writing about them, understanding what they do. It makes observing the sky intensely personal. I feel when I find a new comet that a door has been opened and I have seen a slightly new aspect of nature. There is this object in the solar system that—for a few minutes or a few hours—only I know about. It is like trying to pry a secret out of nature. It is a very special feeling.' Ever since he was a child, David Levy has been fascinated by the night sky and the wonders it reveals to devoted watchman. He developed a special feeling for comets before he reached his teens, though it was not until 1984—after nineteen years and more than nine hundred hours of combing the sky in search of them—that he discovered his first one, from a small observatory that he had built in his backyard. Since then, he has discovered or co-discovered twenty more, making him one of the world's most important comet hunters. His most celebrated find is periodic comet Shoemaker Levy 9, which he made with the husband-and-wife comet and asteroid hunting team Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker. The comet's dramatic collision with Jupiter in July 1994, which constituted 'the greatest planetary show in recorded history', to quote Malcolm W. Browne of the New York Times, captivated not only professional astronomers, but many amateurs. Although he is 'only' an amateur astronomer, he earns his living by lecturing and writing books and by working with project artists. They're projects devoted to introducing astronomy to elementary school children. He has won tremendous respect from his professional colleagues for his success in tracking comets. 'David Levy is one of those rare individuals blessed with the gift of discovery,' David Hartsel, who serves on the board of directors of the Richland Astronomical Society, in Ohio, has said. 'Even rarer is his ability to let others share in the excitement and wonder of those discoveries through his writing and lectures.' PASSAGE TWO Being a man has always been dangerous. There are about 105 males born for every 100 females, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70-year-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, boy babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when they are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of a baby (particularly a boy baby) surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost certain death. Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes, one more agent of evolution has gone. There is another way to commit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. Few people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious communities, very few women have 15 children. Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has become average. Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminished. India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today—everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring—means that natural selection has lost 80 percent of its power in upper-middle-class India compared to the tribes. For us, this means that evolution is over; the biological Utopia has arrived. Strangely, it has involved little physical change. No other species fills so many places in nature. But in the past 100,000 years—even the past 100 years—our lives have been transformed but our bodies have not. We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us. Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution: They 'look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension'. No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from Utopia we were, they will look just like us. PASSAGE THREE By far the most common difficulty in study is simple failure to get down to regular concentrated work. This difficulty is much greater for those who do not work for a plan and have no regular routine of study. Many students muddle along, doing a bit of this subject or that, as the mood takes them, or letting their set work pile up until the last possible moment. Few students work to a set timetable. They say that if they did construct a timetable for themselves they would not keep to it, or would have to alter it constantly, since they can never predict from one day to the next what their activities will be. No doubt some temperaments take much more kindly to a regular routine than others. There are many who shy away from the self-regimentation of a weekly timetable, and dislike being tied down to a definite program of work. Many able students claim that they work in cycles. When they become interested in a topic they work on it intensively for three or four days at a time. On other days, they avoid work completely. It has to be confessed that we do not fully understand the complexities of the motivation to work. Most people over 25 years of age have become conditioned to a work routine, and the majority of really productive workers set aside regular hours for the more important aspects of their work. The 'tough-minded' school of workers is usually very contemptuous of the idea that good work can only be done spontaneously, under the influence of inspiration. Those who believe that they need only work and study as the fit takes them have a mistaken belief either in their own talent or in the value of 'freedom'. Freedom from restraint and discipline leads to unhappiness rather than to 'self-expression' or 'personality development'. Our society insists on regular habits, time keeping and punctuality, and whether we like it or not, if we mean to make our way in society we have to comply with its demands. PASSAGE FOUR Even just a degree or two of greenhouse warming will have a dramatic impact on water resources across western North America. Teams who have modeled the climate in the area are warning of greatly reduced snow packs and more intense flooding as temperatures inch up during the 21st century. It's the first time that global climate modelers have worked so closely with teams running detailed regional models of snowfall, rain and stream flows to predict exactly what warming will do to the area. The researchers, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and elsewhere, were surprised by the size of the effect generated by only a small rise in temperature. Assuming business as usual emissions, greenhouse gases will warm the west coast of North America by just one or two degrees Celsius over the next century, and average precipitation won't change much. But in the model, warmer winters raised the snowline, drastically reducing the crucial mountain snow pack, the researchers told the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. 'We realized that huge areas of the snow pack in the Sierra went down to 15 percent of today's values,' says Michael Dettinger, a research hydrologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. That caught everyone's attention. The researchers also predict that by the middle of the century, melting snow will cause streams to reach their annual peak flow up to a month earlier. And with warm rains melting snow or drenching already saturated ground, the risk of extreme floods will rise dramatically. We have to believe in these very warm, very wet storms, says Andrew Wood, a water resources modeler at the University of Washington, Seattle. 'Since dams can't be filled until the risk of flooding is past, the models predict they will trap just 70 to 85 percent as much run-off as they do now. This is a particular problem for California, where agriculture, industry, a burgeoning population and environmental needs already clash over limited water supplies. We are taking this extremely seriously,' says Jonas Minton, deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources. And observations certainly back up the models. Minton points out that an increasing percentage of California's precipitation over recent decades is falling as rain rather than snow. And Iris Stewart, a climate researcher at the University of California, San Diego, has found that in the last 50 years, run-off peaks in the western US and Canada have been happening earlier and earlier. The cause seems to be a region-wide trend towards warmer winters and springs. Dettinger has little doubt that the models point to a real and immediate problem. 'It's upon us,' he says, 'and it's not clear what the fix is.'

单选题If______, he promises that he will spare no effort in promoting public welfare.

单选题The author ______ us as consistently fair and accurate about the issues.

单选题It is very ______ of you to let us know you were going to be late. Otherwise, we______ on time.

单选题The word "tolerated" in paragraph 4 could best be replaced by ______ .

单选题Plastic bags are useful for holding many kinds of food, ______ their cleanness, toughness and low cost.

单选题According to the international regulation, the playing of the national anthem ______ all sports events.

单选题Many network members had expressed an interest in the merger, as it will not only strengthen the network but also help to______ efforts.

单选题It is known to every one that the film is ______ a real event.

单选题The advertisement says that most thieves______.

单选题 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Online Shopping. You should write at least 120 words following the outline given below. 1. 现在网上购物已成为一种时尚 2. 网上购物有很多好处，但也有不少问题 3. 我的建议

单选题The War of ______ Against Japan lasted eight years from 1937 to 1945.

单选题______their luggage, the tourists hurried to the airport. A. Packed B. After packed C. Having packed D. Packing

单选题 吃年夜饭是春节期间家家户户最热闹的时刻。除夕夜，丰盛的年夜菜摆满一大桌，一家人团聚在一起，围坐桌旁，欢声笑语，共享美餐。年夜饭可谓一年里最为丰盛的一顿大餐，为准备年夜饭，人们往往要提前忙上好几天，配备各种各样的食材。年夜饭上的菜肴各式各样，五花八门。一些地方一般少不了两样东西：一是火锅，二是鱼。火锅沸煮，热气腾腾，说明红红火火；“鱼”和“余”谐音，象征“吉庆有余”，也喻示“年年有余”。

单选题Jennifer has never really ______ her son's death. It's very hard to accept the fact that she'll never have a child.

单选题I'd ______ you didn't touch that, if you don' t mind.A. ratherB. betterC. happierD. further

单选题 South Africa has 11 official languages. If you want to say hello, it's 'sawubona' in Zulu, and 'hallo' in Afrikaans. Now, South Africa's school children may start using 'ni hao' to say hello. The country's education minister says, the nation is adding the Mandarin language teaching in some schools. Mandarin is the official spoken language of China. That country is a major trading power for South Africa. A recent agreement between the two nations centres on five areas of cooperation. They include development in basic education, school books and lessons, mathematics and science, teacher training and career education and research. South Africa officials have not said how much they teaching Mandarin will cost. Troy Martens is an official with South Africa's Ministry of Basic Education. She says the new partnership is extremely valuable. 'So it is very exciting and both countries have indicated that for them education is a high priority, and that is why education is high on the agenda of collaboration between the two countries,' said Martens. The part of the plan that has garnered the most attention is the inclusion of the Mandarin language in schools. A public opinion study last year found that South Africans have mixed feelings about China. The survey showed 46 percent of South Africans do not like the spread of Chinese ideas and customs in their country, the results also showed that 60 percent dislike Chinese music, movies and television. But Ms Martens said Chinese trade is more important than those feelings. She said it is extremely helpful to learners in South Africa to study Mandarin as well as Chinese culture. And she said not every school will offer Mandarin. 'Now this will not be compulsory, it will not be for every school, and it will not be for every child. But for schools that feel they have the capacity to offer Mandarin as a subject, we think it is a great opportunity for South African learners to be exposed to this international type of language,' said Martens. South Africa's population studies do not say how many native Chinese speakers are among its nearly 51 million people. Lisette Noonan heads the 80-year-old Pretoria Chinese School in South Africa's capital. The school serves about 500 students from kindergarten to grade 12. Every student studies Mandarin. Ms Noonan says the school welcomes the new cooperation between South Africa and China. She said it is in the best interests of children to study Mandarin. She said that especially true with China becoming what she called 'a huge economic power in the world'.