阅读理解Questions 41 to 50 are based on the following passage

阅读理解According to the passage, one of the first expected benefits from cloning technology may be in ____________. 

阅读理解Whether the eyes are “the windows of the soul” is debatable; that they are intensely important ininterpersonal communication is a fact. During the first two months of a baby’s life, the stimulus thatproduces a smile is a pair of eyes. The eyes need not be real: a mask with two dots will produce asmile. Significantly, a real human face with eyes may not motivate a smile, nor will the sight of onlyone eye which is presented in profile. This attraction to eyes as opposed to the nose or mouthcontinues as the baby matures. In one study, when American four-year-olds were asked to drawpeople, 75 percent of them drew people with mouths, but 99 percent of them drew people with eyes.In Japan, however, where babies are carried on their mother’s back, infants do not acquire as muchattachment to eyes as they do in other cultures. As a result, Japanese adults make little use of the faceeither to encode or decode meaning. In fact, Argyle reveals that the “proper place to focus one’s gazeduring a conversation in Japan is on the neck of one’s conversation partner”.The role of eye contact in a conversational exchange between two Americans is well defined:speakers make contact with the eyes of their listener for about one second, then glance away as theytalk; in a few moments they re-establish eye contact with the listener or reassure themselves that theiraudience is still attentive, then shift their gaze away once more. Listeners, meanwhile, keep theireyes on the face of the speaker, allowing themselves to glance away only briefly. It is important thatthey be looking at the speaker at the precise moment when the speaker re-establishes eye contact: Ifthey are not looking, the speaker assumes that they are disinterested and either will pause until eyecontact is resumed or will terminate the conversation. Just how critical this eye maneuvering is to themaintenance of conversational flow becomes evident when two speakers are wearing dark glasses:there may be a sort of traffic jam of words caused by interruption, false starts, and unpredictablepauses.

阅读理解Text 2 By almost any measure, there is a boom in Internet-based instruction

阅读理解Passage 1 A growing worlds population and the discoveries of science may alter this pattern of distribution in the future

阅读理解Maggie is ________about her tea, and often carries her favourite tea with her in her handbag

阅读理解Passage 3 The gravitational pull of the Earth and moon is important to us as we attempt to conquer more and more of outer space

阅读理解 Brittany Donovan was born 13 years ago in Pennsylvania. Her biological father was sperm donor G738. Unknownst to Brittany's mother, G738 carried a genetic defect known as fragile X-a mutation that all female children born from his sperm will inherit, and which causes mental impairment, behavioral problems and atypical social development. Last week, Brittany was given the green light to sue the sperm bank, Idant Laboratories of New York, under the state's product liability laws. These laws were designed to allow consumers to seek compensation from companies whose products are defective and cause harm. Nobody expected them to be applied to donor sperm. Thousands of people in the US have purchased sperm from sperm banks on the promise that the donor's history has been carefully scrutinized and his sample rigorously tested, only for some of them to discover that they have been sold a batch of bad seed. Some parents learn about genetic anomalies after their disabled child is born and they press the sperm bank for more information. Others realize it when they contact biological half-siblings who have the same disorder. So will Donovan vs Idant laboratories open the floodgates? It seems unlikely. New York's product liability laws are highly unusual in that they consider donor sperm to be a product just like any other. Most other US states grant special status to blood products and body parts, including sperm. In these states, donor sperm is not considered a 'product' in the usual sense, despite the fact that it is tested, processed, packaged, catalogued, marketed and sold. Similarly, European Union product liability law could not be used in this way. Even if this lawsuit is an isolated case, it still raises some difficult questions. First, to what lengths should sperm banks go to ensure they are supplying defect-free sperm? As we learn more and more about human genetics, there is growing list of tests that could be performed. Nobody would deny that donor sperm carrying the fragile X mutation should be screened out—and there is a test that can do so—but what about more subtle defects, such as language impairment or susceptibility to early Alzheimer's? Donovan vs Idant Laboratories also serves as a reminder of the nature of the trade in human gametes. Sperm bank catalogues can give the impression that babies are as guaranteed as dishwashers. The Donovans are entitled to their day in court, but in allowing the product liability laws to be used in this way, the legal system is not doing much to dispel that notion.

阅读理解Passage Four Peter loved to buy used articles

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

阅读理解There is no denying that students should learn something about how computers work, just as we expect them at least to understand that the internal combustion engine (内燃机) has something to do with burning fuel, expanding gases and pistons (活塞) being driven. For people should have some basic idea of how the things that they use do what they do. Further, students might be helped by a course that considers the computer''s impact on society. But that is not what is meant by computer literacy. For computer literacy is not a form of literacy (读写能力); it is a trade skill that should not be taught as a liberal art. Learning how to use a computer and learning how to program one are two distinct activities. A case might be made that the competent citizens of tomorrow should free themselves from their fear of computers. But this is quite different from saying that all ought to know how to program one. Leave that to people who have c hosen programming as a career. While programming can be lots of fun, and while our society needs some people who are experts at it, the same is true of auto repair and violin making. Learning how to use a computer is not that difficult, and it gets easier all the time as programs become more "user friendly". Let us assume that in the future everyone is going to have to know how to use a computer to be a competent citizen. What does the phrase "learning to use a computer" mean It sounds like "learning to drive a car", that is, it sounds as if there is some set of definite skills that, once acquired, enable one to use a computer. In fact, "learning to use a computer" is much more like "learning to play a game", but learning the rules of one game may not help you play a second game, whose rules may not be the same. There is no such a thing as teaching someone how to use a computer. One can only teach people to use this or that program and generally that is easily accomplished.

阅读理解 One positive consequence of our current national crisis may be at least a temporary dent in Hollywood's culture of violence. Fearful of offending audiences in the wake of the terrorist attack, some movie-makers have postponed the release of films with terrorist themes. Television writers are shelving or delaying scripts with warlike and terrorist scenarios. It is probably good thinking. My local video store tells me nobody is checking out 'disaster' movies. Says the manager, 'Currently, people want comedy. They want an escape from stories about violence and terrorism.' Similarly, in the music business, there's a run on patriotic and inspirational tapes and CDs. According to the New York Times, the self-scrutiny among these czars of mass-entertainment taste is unprecedented in scale, sweeping aside hundreds of millions of dollars in projects that no longer seem appropriate. A reasonable concern is that this might be a short-term phenomenon. Once life returns to something more normal, will Hollywood return to its bad old ways? The Times offers a glimmer of hope. The industry's titans, it suggests, are grappling with much more difficult, long-range questions of what the public will want once the initial shock from the terrorist attacks wears off. Many in the industry admit they do not know where the boundaries of taste and consumer tolerance now lie. This is an opportunity for some of us to suggest to Hollywood where that boundary of consumer tolerance is. Especially those of us who have not yet convinced Hollywood to cease its descent into ever-lower of desensitization of our young. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Parents Television Council, which monitors the quality of TV programming, says in its latest report that today's TV shows are more laced than ever with vulgarities, sexual immorality, crudities, violence, and foul language. The traditional family hour between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., when the networks used to offer programs for the entire family, has disappeared. The problem looks like it will get worse. That certainly looked to be the case before the Sep. 11 assault. One pre-attack the New York Times story reported that TV producers were crusading for scripts that include every crude word imaginable. The struggles between network censors and producers, according to the report, were 'growing more intense'. Producers like Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing planned to keep pushing hard. He was quoted as saying, 'There's absolutely no reason why we can't use the language of adulthood in programs that are about adults.' My guess is that a lot of adults don't use the language Mr. Sorkin wants to use, and don't enjoy having their children hear it. At this moment of crisis in our nation's history, thought has become more contemplative, prayerful, and spiritual. It may be the time to tell the entertainment industry that we want not a temporary pause in the flow of tastelessness, but a long-term cleanup.

阅读理解Modern technology and science have produced a wealth of new materials and new ways of using old materials. For the artist this means wider opportunities. There is no doubt that the limitations of materials and nature of tools both restrict and shape a man''s work. Observe how the development of plastics and light metals along with new methods of welding has changed the direction of sculpture. Transparent plastic materials allow one to look through an object, to see its various sides superimposed on each other (as in Cubism or in an X-ray). Today, welding is as prevalent as casting was in the past. This new method encourages open designs, where surrounding and intervening space becomes as important as form itself. 　　More ambiguous than other scientific inventions familiar to modern artists, but no less influential, are the psychoanalytic studies of Freud and his followers, discoveries that have infiltrated recent art, especially Surrealism (超现实主义). The Surrealists, in their struggle to escape the monotony and frustrations of everyday life, claimed that dreams were the only hope. Turning to the irrational world of their unconscious, they banished all time barriers and moral judgments to combine disconnected dream experiences from the past, present and intervening psychological states. The Surrealists were concerned with overlapping emotions more than with overlapping forms. Their paintings often become segmented capsules of associative experiences. For them, obsessive and often unrelated images replaced the direct emotional messages of Expressionism. They did not need to smash paint and canvas; they went beyond this to smash the whole continuity of logical thought. 　　There is little doubt that contemporary art has taken much from contemporary life. In a period when science has made revolutionary strides, artists in their studios have not been unaware of scientists in their laboratories. But this has rarely been a one-way street. Painters and sculptors, though admittedly influenced by modern science, have also molded and changed our world. If break-up has been a vital part of their expression, it has not always been a symbol of destruction. Quite the contrary: it has been used to examine more fully, to penetrate more deeply, to analyze more thoroughly, to enlarge, isolate and make more familiar certain aspects of life that earlier we were apt to neglect. In addition, it sometimes provides rich multiple experiences so organized as not merely to reflect our world, but in fact to interpret it.

阅读理解The traditional American Thanksgiving Day ______ goes back in 1621. In that year a special ______ was prepared in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The ______ who had settled there had left England because they felt ______ of religious freedom. They came to the new land and faced difficulties in coming across the ocean. The ship which carded them was called the Mayflower. The North Atlantic was difficult to travel. There were bad storms. They were ______ in learning to live in the new land by the Indians who ______ the region. The Puritans, as they were called, had much to be thankful for. Their religious practices were no longer a ______ of criticism by the ______. ______. When they selected the fourth Thursday of November for their Thanksgiving celebration, they invited their neighbors, the Indians, to join them in dinner and a prayer of gratitude for the new life. ______. They remembered their dead who did not live to see the shores of Massachusetts. ______.

阅读理解Five ways to make conversation with anyone In choosing a new home, Camille McClains kids have a single demand: a backyard

阅读理解Passage One: Questions are based on the following passage

阅读理解 Foxes and farmers have never got on well. These small dog-like animals have long been accused of killing farm animals. They are officially classified as harmful and farmers try to keep their numbers down by shooting or poisoning them. Farmers can also call on the services of their local hunt to control the fox population. Hunting consists of pursuing a fox across the countryside, with a group of specially trained dogs, followed by men and women riding horses. When the dogs eventually catch the fox they kill it or a hunter shoots it. People who take part in hunting think of it as a sport; they wear a special uniform of red coats and white trousers, and follow strict codes of behavior. But owning a horse and hunting regularly is expensive, so most hunters are wealthy. It is estimated that up to 100,000 people watch or take part in fox hunting. But over the last couple of decades the number of people opposed to fox hunting, because they think it is brutal (残酷的), has risen sharply. Nowadays it is rare for a hunt to pass off without some kind of confrontation (冲突) between hunters and hunt saboteurs (阻拦者). Sometimes these incidents lead to violence, but mostly saboteurs interfere with the hunt by misleading riders and disturbing the trail of the fox's smell, which the dogs follow. Noisy confrontations between hunters and saboteurs have become so common that they are almost as much a part of hunting as the pursuit of foxes itself. But this year supporters of fox hunting face a much bigger threat to their sport. A Labour Party Member of the Parliament, Mike Foster, is trying to get Parliament to approve a new law which will make the hunting of wild animals with dogs illegal. If the law is passed, wild animals like foxes will be protected under the ban in Britain.

阅读理解Brazil has become one of the developing world''s great successes at reducing population growth—but more by accident than design. While countries such as India have made joint efforts to reduce birth rates, Brazil has had better result without really trying, says George Martine at Harvard. Brazil''s population growth rate has dropped from 2.99% a year between 1951 and 1960 to 1.93% a year between 1981 and 1990, and Brazilian women now have only 2.7 children on average. Martine says this figure may have fallen still further since 1990, an achievement that makes it the envy of many other Third World countries. Martine puts it down to, among other things, soap operas (通俗电视连续剧，肥皂剧) and installment (分期付款) plans introduced in the 1970s. Both played an important, although indirect, role in lowering the birth rate. Brazil is one of the world''s biggest producers of soap operas. Globo, Brazil''s most popular television network, shows three hours of soaps six nights a week, while three others show at least one hour a night. Most soaps are based on wealthy characters living the high life in big cities. "Although they have never really tried to work in a message towards the problems of reproduction, they describe middle and upper class values not many children, different attitudes towards sex, women working," says Martine. "They sent this image to all parts of Brazil and made people conscious of other patterns of behavior and other values, which were put into a very attractive package." Meanwhile, the installment plans tried to encourage the poor to become consumers. "This led to an enormous change in consumption patterns and consumption was in compatible (不相容的) with unlimited reproduction," says Martine.

阅读理解Ron was an engineer

阅读理解Task 2 Directions: This task is the same as Task 1