单选题In country after country, talk of nonsmoker's right is in the air. While a majority of countries have taken little (51) no action yet, some 30 nations have introduced legislated steps to control smoking. Many laws have been introduced in other countries to (52) clear the air for nonsmokers, or to cut cigarette consumption. Smoking is harmful (53) the health of people. World governments should conduct serious campaigns against it. (54) on cigarette advertisements, plus health warnings on packages and ban on public smoking in certain places, (55) as theaters, cinemas and restaurants, are the most popular tools used by nations in (56) of nonsmokers or in controlling smoking. But world attention is also focusing on another step (57) will make the smoker increasingly self-conscious and uncomfortable about his habit. Great efforts should be made to (58) young people especially of the dreadful consequences of taking up the habit. And cigarette price should be raised. In the long run, (59) is no doubt that everybody would be much better-off if smoking were banned altogether but many people are not (60) for such drastic action.

单选题About how many more whales have been sighted in the San Francisco Bay this year compared to last year?

单选题As if they didn't have their hands full with Iraq and terrorism, U. S. intelligence agencies are being drawn into the debate over whether the United States is imminently threatened by a deadly outbreak of bird influenza and whether the Bush administration has adequately prepared for such an epidemic. Over the last two weeks, the administration has held bird flu briefings classified "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information" for members of both houses of Congress. A counterterrorism official indicated that the intelligence community is also studying whether it would be possible for terrorists to somehow exploit the avian flu virus and use it against the United States, though there is no evidence that terrorists have in any way tried to do so. The World Health Organization is warning that if a pandemic (a disease for which there is no certain treatment and to which humans have no natural immunity.) outbreak occurs, "at least 30 million people worldwide could require hospitalization, and at least 2 million people could die." The alarming figures like these in recent weeks caught the attention of President George W. Bush and other White House aides. An intelligence official said, "The briefings did contain classified information. The reason the information is classified is because some of it was acquired through clan-destine means." A leading public-health expert, Dr. Irwin Redlener, said, "This is old-fashioned cold war secrecy being applied to a public-health issue-a very bad idea." Redlener has criticized President Bush and other administration officials for hinting recently that in the event of a pandemic bird flu outbreak, the federal government might rely heavily on the military to establish quarantine zones and restrict public movement to limit the possible spread of disease. Despite HSN1 (a bird flu strain) is reported mortality rate of 50 percent or more, Dr. Redlener says that by the time such a virus did arrive in the United States, its strength might be significantly degraded. But he notes that in the case of the 1918 Spanish flu, the eventual mortality rate of the virus turned out to be around 2 percent, yet millions still died. What is vexing the Bush administration and other public-health professionals is the fact that the United States is not particularly well prepared in the event a bird flu pandemic does strike in the near future. HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) Secretary Mike Leavitt is currently on a trip to several countries in Asia to get a firsthand look at measures some countries are taking to contain the spread of known bird flu cases. The best defense against a deadly flu pandemic would be stopping it where it starts.

单选题Speaker A. I'm sorry. The brand of camera you want is not available now. Speaker B：______ A. No use sayings sorry. That's a real let down. B. I'm truly grateful for your help. C. That's a pity. Thank you anyway. D. It's just as I've expected.

单选题His ______ handwriting resulted from haste and carelessness rather than from the inability to form the letters correctly. A. careful B. unreadable C. beautiful D. silent

单选题It was 38 degrees and the air conditioning barely cooled the room.

单选题In 1999 when MiShel and Carl Meissner decided to have children, they tackled the next big issue: Should they try to have a girl? It was no small matter. MiShel's brother had become blind from a hereditary condition in his early 20s, and the Meissners had learned that the condition is a disorder passed from mothers to sons. If they had a boy, he would have a 50 per cent chance of having the condition. A girl would be unaffected. The British couple's inquiries about sex selection led them to Virginia, US, where a new sperm-separation technique, called MicroSort, was experimental at the time. When MiShel became pregnant she gave birth to a daughter. Now they will try to have a second daughter using the same technique. The technique separates sperm into two groups—those that carry the X-chromosome (染色体) producing a female baby and those that carry the Y-chromosome producing a male baby. The technology was developed in 1990s, but the opening of a laboratory in January 2003 in California marked the company's first expansion. "We believe the number of people who want this technology is greater than those who have access to it," said Keith L. Blauer, the company's clinical director. This is not only a seemingly effective way to select a child's gender. It also brings a host of ethical (伦理的) and practical considerations—especially for the majority of families who use the technique for nonmedical reasons. The clinic offers sex selection for two purposes: to help couples avoid passing on a sex-linked genetic disease and to allow those who already have a child to "balance" their family by having a baby of the opposite sex. Blauer said the company has had an impressive success rate: 91 per cent of the women who become pregnant after sorting for a girl are successful, while 76 per cent who sort for a boy and get pregnant are successful. The technique separates sperm based on the fact that the X chromosome is larger than the Y chromosome. A machine is used to distinguish the size differences and sort the sperm accordingly.

单选题In recent years, Microsoft has focused on three big tasks: building robust security into its software, resolving numerous antitrust complaints against it and upgrading its Windows operating system. These three tasks are now starting to collide. On August 27th the firm said that the successor to its Windows XP operating system, code-named Longhorn, will go on sale in 2007 without one of its most impressive features, a technique to integrate elaborate search capabilities into nearly all desktop applications. (On the bright side, Longhorn will contain advances in rendering images and enabling different computing platforms to exchange data directly between applications. ) It is a big setback for Microsoft, which considers search technology a pillar of its future growth -not least as it competes against Google. The firm's focus on security championed by Bill Gates himself--took resources away from Longhorn, admits Greg Sullivan, a lead product manager in the Windows client division. Programmers have been fixing Windows XP rather than working on Longhorn. In mid- August, Microsoft released Service Pack 2, a huge set of free software patches and enhancements to make Windows XP more secure. Though some of the fixes turned out to have vulnerabilities of their own, the patches have mostly been welcomed. Microsoft's decision to forgo new features in return for better security is one that most computer users will probably applaud. Yet ironically, as Microsoft slowly improves the security of its products---by, for instance, incorporating firewall technology, anti-virus systems and spam filters its actions increasingly start to resemble those that, in the past, have got the firm into trouble with regulators. Is security software an "adjacent software market", in which case Microsoft may be leveraging its dominance of the operating system into it? Integrating security products into Windows might be considered "bundling" which, with regard to web browsing, so excited America's trustbusters in the 1990s. And building security directly into the operating system seems a lot like "commingling" software code, on which basis the European Commission ruled earlier this year that Microsoft abused its market power through the Windows Media Player. Microsoft is appealing against that decision, and on September 30th it will argue for a suspension of the commission's remedies, such as the requirement that it license its code to rivals. Just last month, the European Union's competition directorate began an investigation into Microsoft and Time Warner, a large media firm, on the grounds that their proposed joint acquisition of ContentGuard, a software firm whose products protect digital media files, might provide Microsoft with, undue market power over digital media standards. The commission will rule by January 2005. Microsoft, it seems, in security as elsewhere, is going to have to get used to being punished for its success. Its Windows monopoly lets it enjoy excessive profits but the resulting monoculture makes it an obvious target for viruses and regulators alike.

单选题The Supreme Court's decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering. Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of "double effect, "a centuries-old moral principle holding that an action having two effects—a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen—is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect. Doctors have used that principle in recent years to justify using high doses of morphine to control terminally iii patients' pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient. Nancy Dubler, director of Montefiore Medical Center, contends that the principle will shield doctors who "until now have very, very strongly insisted that they could not give patients sufficient mediation to control their pain if that might hasten death." George Annas, chair of the health law department at Boston University, maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. "It's like surgery," he says. "We don't call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn't intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you're a physician, you can risk your patient's suicide as long as you don't intend their suicide." On another level, many in the medical community acknowledge that the assisted-suicide debate has been fueled in part by the despair of patients for whom modern medicine has prolonged the physical agony of dying. Just three weeks before the Court's ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the under treatment of pain and the aggressive use of "ineffectual an forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying" as the twi problems of end-of-life care. The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a medicare billing code for hospital-base care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life. Annas says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiative translate into better care. "Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering", to the extent that it constitutes "systematic patient abuse". He says medical licensing boards "must make it clear.., that painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension".

单选题Man: Gosh! There seems to be no end to the work I have to do. Woman: I'm glad I'm not in your shoes. Question: What does the woman mean? A. She is unable to help the man. B. She is busier than the man. C. She is lucky not to work with the man. D. She is not as busy as the man.

单选题When will the new driving laws come into ______? A. use B. effect C. service D. existence

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