单选题This is ______ the latest example of government interference.
单选题Whether mobile phones can cause cancer remains an open question. But they are also accused by some of causing pain. A growing number of people around the world claim to be "electrosensitive", in other words physically responsive to the electromagnetic fields that surround phones and the other electronic devices that clutter the modern world. Indeed, at least one country, Sweden, has recognized such sensitivity as a disability, and will pay for the dwellings of sufferers to be screened from the world"s electronic smog.
The problem is that, time and again, studies of those claiming to be electrosensitive show their ability to determine whether they are being exposed to a real electric field or a sham one is no better than chance. So, unless they are lying about their symptoms, the cause of those symptoms needs to be sought elsewhere.
Michael Landgrebe and Ulrich Frick, of the University of Regensburg, in Germany, think that the "elsewhere" in question is in the brain and, in a paper presented recently to the Royal Society in London, they describe an experiment which, they think, proves their point.
Dr. Landgrebe and Dr. Frick used a body scanner called a functional magnetic-resonance imager to see how people"s brains react to two different kinds of stimulus. Thirty participants, half of whom described themselves as electrosensitive, were put in the imager and told that they would undergo a series of trials in which they would be exposed either to an active mobile phone or to a heating device called a thermode, whose temperature would be varied between the trials. The thermode was real. The mobile phone, however, was a dummy.
The type of stimulus, be it the authentic heat source or the sham electromagnetic radiation, was announced before each exposure and the volunteers were asked to rate its unpleasantness on a five-point scale. In the case of heat, the two groups" descriptions of their experiences were comparable. So, too, was their brain activity. However, when it came to the sham-phone exposure, only the electrosensitive described any sensations—which ranged from prickling to pain. Moreover, they showed neural activity to match.
This suggests that electrosensitivity, rather than being a response to electromagnetic stimulus, is similar to well-known psychosomatic disorders such as some sorts of tinnitus and chronic pain. A psychosomatic disorder is one in which the symptoms are real, but are induced by cognitive functions such as attitudes, beliefs and expectations rather than by direct external stimuli.
The paradoxical point of Dr. Landgrebe"s and Dr. Frick"s experiment is that mobile phones do indeed inflict real suffering on some unfortunate individuals. It is just that the electromagnetic radiation they emit has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
单选题When he arrived in America, he was surprised to learn that the mayor
of the city was Chinese by ______.
A. nature
B. resource
C. origin
D. source
单选题For months Gina Cruz, a Manila grandmother, played Pepsi Cola' s "Numbers Fever" promotion lottery, buying several bottles a day and saving the caps, in the hope that one of the magic number, imprinted inside them would win her a 1 million peso($40,000)prize. When the magic number, 349 was announced in May 1992, Cruz was overjoyed to find she had not one, but two caps bearing the winning digits. She promptly fainted. " My blood pressure shot up," she explained later, "probably from drinking too much Pepsi. " Then she learned that her son also had a 349 cap—and she nearly collapsed again. Cruz' s indignation after discovering the next day that she was not, after all, a double millionaire , is shared by thousands of contestants who feel equally cheated. Instead of marking out 18 winning numbers, on which Pepsi had planned, a computer had wrongly generated 800,000. The company explained that it simply did not have the $ 32 billion it would take to pay all claimants. The real winners, it said, would be identified by a security code that had been placed on caps; the losers were offered apologies. When Pepsi' s explanation was not accepted, a promotion that initially boosted the company' s market share by 5% turned into a nightmare. The winners felt like losers of a second, surprise lottery; the security code had been publicized as an authentication tool, not as a necessary second winning number. Feeling hoodwinked, the players have banded together in protest groups, fanning anti-Pepsi flames at frequent demonstrations and marches. More than 22,000 people holding the 349 number have filed 689 civil suits seeking damages, as well as 5,200 criminal complaints alleging fraud and deception. Some Pepsi employees have received death threats and now change their daily routines to avoid being attacked. Explosives have been thrown at Pepsi plants and offices, and 37 of the company' s delivery trucks have been stoned, overturned or set on fire. In the worst incident , a school-teacher and a five-year-old girl were killed last. February when a grenade pitched at a Pepsi truck bounced off and exploded in front of a store.
单选题I was so scared that I didn"t know ______.
单选题Man: I don't know why Professor Cline's phone number isn't listed in the directory. Woman: But it is. Questions: What does the woman say about Professor Cline's number?
单选题The idea sounds very gooD.But will it work in ______?
单选题The linguistic relativity principle is back in fashion. This principle, often known informally as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, states
1
that the way in which different languages encode various grammatical properties determines the way their speakers
2
the world. In laymen"s terms, if a language has no word for a given concept, then its speakers will not be able to
3
the concept.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was eventually discredited on the strength of obvious
4
evidence.
5
English, unlike most modern European languages, does not
6
grammatical gender to nouns (as, for example, determining that an inanimate object like a bridge be masculine or feminine), most English speakers have no trouble
7
the notion of
8
gender when it is explained to them.
9
, some linguists are reconsidering that, at least in some conceptual domains, the grammars and lexicons of languages may indeed
10
the conceptual universes of their speaker communities. As the eminent linguist Roman Jacobson
11
it, "languages differ
12
in what they must convey and not in what they may convey." That is to say, whereas in English the word "neighbor" is gender neutral, it is not in either French or German.
13
, if an English speaker talks about spending time with his neighbor, he is not
14
by the grammar to reveal whether the neighbor was male or female. But in French or German he will
15
supply this information, since the pairs voisin/ voisine and Nachbar/Nachbarin reveal whether the neighbor was masculine or feminine, respectively.
But can the limitations of grammar also
16
limitations on the ability to conceptualize? The fact that languages constantly
17
their grammar and invent new words while
18
old ones is
19
enough that human thought is in
20
degree limited by language.
单选题Recent research has claimed that an excess of positive ions in the air can have an ill effect on people"s physical or psychological health. What are positive ions? Well, the air is full of ions, electrically charged particles, and generally there is a rough balance between the positive and the negative charged. But sometimes this balance becomes disturbed and a larger proportion of positive ions are found. This happens naturally before thunderstorm, earthquakes when winds such as the Mistral, Hamsin or Sharav are blowing in certain countries. Or it can be caused by a build-up of static electricity indoors from carpets or clothing made of man-made fibers, or from TV sets, duplicators or computer display screens.
When a large number of positive ions are present, in the air many people experience unpleasant effects such as headaches, fatigue, irritability, and some particularly sensitive people suffer nausea or even mental disturbance. Animals are also affected, particularly before earthquakes, snakes have been observed to come out of hibernation, rats to flee from their burrows, dogs howl and cats jump about unaccountably. This has led the U.S. Geographical Survey to fund a network, of volunteers to watch animals in an effort to foresee such disasters before they hit vulnerable areas such as California.
Conversely, when large numbers of negative ions are present, then people have a feeling of well-being. Natural conditions that produce these large amounts are near the sea, close to waterfalls or fountains, or in any place where water is sprayed, or forms a spray. This probably accounts for the beneficial effect of a holiday by the sea, or in the mountains with tumbling streams or waterfalls.
To increase the supply of negative ions indoors, some scientists recommend the use of ionisers: small portable machines, which generate negative ions. They claim that ionisers not only clean and refresh the air but also improve the health of people sensitive to excess positive ions. Of course, there are the detractors, other scientists, who dismiss such claims and are skeptical about negative / positive ion research. Therefore people can only make up their own minds by observing the effects on themselves, or on others, of a negative rich or poor environment. After all it is debatable whether depending on seismic readings to anticipate earthquakes is more effective than watching the cat.
单选题A computer is a machine designed to perform work mathematically and to store and select information that has been fed into it. It is run by either mechanical or electronic means. These machines can do a great deal of complicated work in a very short time. A large computer, for example, can add or subtract nine thousand times a second, multiply a thousand times a second, or divide five hundred times a second. Its percentage of error is about one in a billion digits(数学). It has been estimated that human beings making calculations average about one mistake per two hundred digits.
The heart of an electronic computer lies in its vacuum tubes, or transistors. Its electronic circuits(电路) work a thousand times faster than the nerve cells in the human brain. A problem that might take a human being two years to solve can be solved by a computer in one minute, but in order to work properly, a computer must be given instructions—it must be programmed.
Computers can be designed for many specialized purposes—they can be used to prepare payrolls, guide airplane flights, direct traffic, even play chess. Computers play an essential role in modern automation in many plants and factories throughout the world.
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单选题His company empowered the young engineer to negotiate the contract to be signed with the American Microsoft.
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单选题In the United States the per capita costs of schooling have risen almost as fast as the cost of medical treatment. But increased treatment by both doctors and teachers has shown steadily declining results. Medical expenses concentrated on those above forty-five have doubled several times over a period of forty years with a resulting 3 percent increase in the life expectancy of men. The increase in educational expenditures has produced even stranger results; otherwise President Nixon could not have been moved this spring to promise that every child shall soon have the "Right to Read" before leaving school. In the United States it would take eighty billion dollars per year to provide what educators regard as equal treatment for all in grammar and high school. This is well over twice the $36 billion now being spent. Independent cost projections prepared at HEW and at the University of Florida indicate that by 1974 the comparable figures will be $107 billion as against the $45 billion now projected, and these figures wholly omit the enormous costs of what is called "higher education", for which demand is growing even faster. The United States, which spent nearly eighty billion dollars in 1969 for "defense", including its deployment in Vietnam, is obviously too poor to provide equal schooling. The President"s committee for the study of school finance should ask not how to support or how to trim such increasing costs, but how they can be avoided. Equal obligatory schooling must be recognized as at least economically unfeasible. In Latin America the amount of public money spent on each graduate student is between 350 and 1, 500 times the amount spent on the median citizen(that is, the citizen who holds the middle ground between the poorest and the richest). In the United States the discrepancy is smaller, but the discrimination is keener. The richest parents, some 10 percent, can afford private education for their children and help them to benefit from foundation grants. But in addition they obtain ten times the per capita amount of public funds if this is compared with the per capita expenditure made on the children of the 10 percent who are poorest. The principal reasons for this are that rich children stay longer in school, that a year in a university is disproportionately more expensive than a year in high school, and that most private universities depend—at least indirectly—on tax-derived finances. Obligatory schooling inevitably polarizes a society; it also grades the nations of the world according to an international caste system. Countries are rated like castes whose educational dignities determined by the average years of schooling of its citizens, a rating which is closely related to per capita gross national product, and much more painful.
单选题Many people think a telephone is essential. But I think it is a pest and a time waster. Very often you find it impossible to escape from some idle or inquisitive chatter-box, or from somebody who wants something for nothing. If you have a telephone in your own house, you will admit that it tends to ring when you least want it to ring; when you are asleep, or in the middle of a meal or a conversation, or when you are just going out, or when you are in your bath. Are you strong-minded enough to ignore it, to say to yourself, "Ah, well it will all be the same in a hundred year's time?" You are not. You think there may be some important news or message for you. I can assure you that if a message is really important it will reach you sooner or later. Have you never rushed dripping from the bath, or chewing from the table, or dazed from the bed, only to be told that you are a wrong number? But you will say, you need not have your name printed in the telephone directory, and you can have a telephone which is only usable for outgoing calls. Besides, you will say, isn't it important to have a telephone in case of sudden emergency—illness, accident, or fire? Of course, you are right, but here in a thickly populated country like England one is seldom far from a telephone in case of dreadful necessity. I think perhaps I had better try to justify myself by trying to prove that what I like is good. I admit that in different circumstances—if I were a tycoon (实业界巨头), for instance, or bedridden I might find a telephone essential. But then if I were a taxi-driver I should find a car essential. Let me put it another way: there are two things for which the English seem to show particular aptitude: one is mechanical invention, the other is literature. My own business happens to be with the use of words but I see I must now stop using them. For have just been handed a slip of paper to say that somebody is waiting to speak to me on the telephone. I think I had better answer it. After all, one never knows, it may be something important.
单选题(2005)The student doesn't work_____he used to.
单选题Of the two kinds of minimization as categorized by Levinson, the one that has nothing to do with I-p is______.
单选题{{B}}Questions 21-25 are based on the following passage:{{/B}}
Do we need laws that prevent us from
running risks with our lives? If so, then perhaps laws are needed prohibiting
the sale of alcoholic drinks. We've already tried that. For 13
years, between 1920 and 1933, there were no liquor stores anywhere in the United
States. They were shut down--abolished by an amendment(修正案). After January 20,
1920, there was supposed to be no more manufacturing, selling, or transporting
of "intoxication liquors." Without any more liquor, people could not drink it.
And if they did not drink it, how could they get drunk? There would be no more
dangers to the public welfare from drunkenness and alcoholism. It was all very
logical. And yet prohibition of liquor, beer, and wine did not work.
Why? Because, law or no law, millions of people still liked to
drink alcohol. And they were willing to take risks to get it. They were not
about to change their tastes and habits just because of a change in the law. And
gangs of liquor smugglers made it easy to buy an illegal drink—or two or three.
They smuggled millions of gallons of the illegal beverages (饮料) across the
Canadian and Mexican Borders. Drinkers were lucky to know of an illegal bar that
served Mexican or Canadian liquor. Crime and drunkenness were both supposed to
decline as a result of prohibition. Instead people drank more alcohol than
ever—often poisoned alcohol. On December 5, 1933, they removed
prohibition by approving the 21st Amendment to the
Constitution.
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