单选题—I have just had my watch repaired. —How much did they ______ you for that? A. cost B. Charge C. spend D. take

单选题 There is no ______ in the world for her children.

单选题The price of beer ______ from 40 cents to $4 per liter during the summer season.

单选题 The poor old consumer! We'd have to pay a great deal more if advertising didn't create mass markets for products. It is precisely because of the heavy advertising that consumer goods are so cheap. But we get the wrong idea if we think the only purpose of advertising is to sell goods. Another equally important function is to inform. A great deal of the knowledge we have about household goods derives largely from the advertisements we read. Advertisements introduce us to new products or remind us of the existence of ones we already know about. Supposing you wanted to buy a washing machine, it is more than likely you would obtain details regarding performance, price, etc., from an advertisement. Lots of people pretend that they never read advertisements, but this claim may be seriously doubted. It is hardly possible not to read advertisements these days. And what fun they often are, too! Just think what a railway station or a newspaper would be like without advertisements. Would you enjoy gazing at a blank wall or reading railway bylaws while waiting for a train? Would you like to read only closely-printed columns of news in your daily paper? A cheerful, witty advertisement makes such a difference to a dull wall or a newspaper full of the daily ration of calamities. We must not forget, either, that advertising makes a positive contribution to our pockets. Newspapers, commercial radio station and television companies could not survive without this source of revenue. The fact that we pay so little for our daily paper, or can enjoy so many broadcast programs is due entirely to the money spent by advertisers. Just think what a newspaper would cost if we had to pay its full price! Another thing we mustn't forget is the 'small ads', which are in virtually every newspaper and magazine. What a tremendously useful service they perform for the community! Just about anything can be accomplished through these columns. For instance, you can find a job, buy or sell a house, announce a birth, marriage or death in what used to be called the 'hatch, match and dispatch' column but by far the most fascinating section is the personal or 'agony' column. No other item in a newspaper provides such entertaining reading or offers such a deep insight into human nature. It's the best advertisement for advertising there is!

单选题 Trust Me, I'm a Robot [A] With robots now emerging from their industrial cages and moving into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. Inspired by the Pugwash Conferences—an international group of scientists, academics and activists founded in 1957 to campaign for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons—the new group of roboethicists met earlier this year in Genoa, Italy, and announced their initial findings in March at the European Robotics Symposium in Palermo, Sicily. [B] 'Security and safety are the big concerns,' says Henrik Christensen, chairman of the European Robotics Network at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Should robots that are strong enough or heavy enough to crush people be allowed into homes? Is 'system malfunction' a justifiable defence for a robotic fighter plane that contravenes (违反) the Geneva Convention and mistakenly fires on innocent civilians? [C] 'These questions may seem hard to understand but in the next few years they will become increasingly relevant,' says Dr. Christensen. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's World Robotics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly surpassing their industrial counterparts. By the end of 2003 there were more than 600000 robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers—a figure predicted to rise to more than 4m by the end of next year. Japanese industrial firms are racing to build humanoid robots to act as domestic helpers for the elderly, and South Korea has set a goal that 100% of households should have domestic robots by 2020. In light of all this, it is crucial that we start to think about safety guidelines now, says Dr. Christensen. Stop right there [D] So what exactly is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces? 'Not enough,' says Blay Whitby. This is hardly surprising given that the field of 'safety-critical computing' is barely a decade old, he says. But things are changing, and researchers are increasingly taking an interest in trying to make robots safer. One approach, which sounds simple enough, is try to program them to avoid contact with people altogether. But this is much harder than it sounds. Getting a robot to navigate across a cluttered room is difficult enough without having to take into account what its various limbs or appendages might bump into along the way. [E] 'Regulating the behaviour of robots is going to become more difficult in the future, since they will increasingly have self-learning mechanisms built into them,' says Gianmarco Veruggio. 'As a result, their behaviour will become impossible to predict fully,' he says, 'since they will not be behaving in predefined ways but will learn new behaviour as they go.' [F] Then there is the question of unpredictable failures. What happens if a robot's motors stop working, or it suffers a system failure just as it is performing heart surgery or handing you a cup of hot coffee? You can, of course, build in redundancy by adding backup systems, says Hirochika Inoue. But this guarantees nothing, he says. 'One hundred per cent safety is impossible through technology,' says Dr. Inoue. This is because ultimately no matter how thorough you are, you cannot anticipate the unpredictable nature of human behaviour, he says. Or to put it another way, no matter how sophisticated your robot is at avoiding people, people might not always manage to avoid it, and could end up tripping over it and falling down the stairs. Legal problems [G] In any case, says Dr. Inoue, the laws really just summarize commonsense principles that are already applied to the design of most modern appliances, both domestic and industrial. Every toaster, lawn mower and mobile phone is designed to minimize the risk of causing injury—yet people still manage to electrocute (电死) themselves, lose fingers or fall out of windows in an effort to get a better signal. At the very least, robots must meet the rigorous safety standards that cover existing products. The question is whether new, robot-specific rules are needed—and, if so, what they should say. [H] 'Making sure robots are safe will be critical,' says Colin Angle of iRobot, which has sold over 2m 'Roomba' household-vacuuming robots. But he argues that his firm's robots are, in fact, much safer than some popular toys. 'A radio-controlled car controlled by a six-year old is far more dangerous than a Roomba,' he says. If you tread on a Roomba, it will not cause you to slip over; instead, a rubber pad on its base grips the floor and prevents it from moving. 'Existing regulations will address much of the challenge,' says Mr. Angle. 'I'm not yet convinced that robots are sufficiently different that they deserve special treatment.' [I] Robot safety is likely to surface in the civil coups as a matter of product liability. 'When the first robot carpet-sweeper sucks up a baby, who will be to blame?' asks John Hallam, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. If a robot is autonomous and capable of learning, can its designer be held responsible for all its actions? Today the answer to these questions is generally 'yes'. But as robots grow in complexity it will become a lot less clear cut, he says. [J] 'Right now, no insurance company is prepared to insure robots,' says Dr. Inoue. But that will have to change, he says. Last month, Japan's Ministry of Trade and Industry announced a set of safety guidelines for home and office robots. They will be required to have sensors to help them avoid collisions with humans; to be made from soft and light materials to minimize harm if a collision does occur; and to have an emergency shut-off button. This was largely prompted by a big robot exhibition held last summer, which made the authorities realize that there are safety implications when thousands of people are not just looking at robots, but mingling with them, says Dr. Inoue. [K] However, the idea that general-purpose robots, capable of learning, will become widespread is wrong, suggests Mr. Angle. It is more likely, he believes, that robots will be relatively dumb machines designed for particular tasks. Rather than a humanoid robot maid, 'it's going to be a heterogeneous (不同种类的) swarm of robots that will take care of the house,' he says.

单选题A long time ago, at a national conference on biology, he cautiously ______ his new theory on life.

单选题Edie: I think Professor Holt is smart and sha's really a good teacher. Rosa: OK. FI1 try to get into her class. Edie:______!

单选题Every modern government, liberal or otherwise, has a specific position in the field of ideas; its stability is vulnerable to critics in proportion to their ability and persuasiveness.

单选题—Have you seen the new film?—No, but I wish I _____.

单选题Stephen: I want to send this package parcel post, registered.Clerk: ______?Stephen: Yes, please, for sixty dollars.

单选题We should bear in mind that" It's easier ______ than to do."

单选题The cost of living in Liberia, West Africa, has ______ in the past five years because of the internal conflicts.

单选题Flying foxes have fights ______. ( )

单选题When families gather for Christmas dinner, some will stick to formal traditions dating back to Grandma"s generation. Their tables will be set with the good dishes and silver, and the dress code will be Sunday-best. But in many other homes, this china-and-silver elegance has given way to a stoneware (粗陶) -and-stainless informality, with dresses assuming an equally casual-Friday look. For hosts and guests, the change means greater simplicity and comfort. For makers of fine china in Britain, it spells economic hard times. Last week Royal Doulton, the largest employer in Stoke-on-Trent, announced that it is eliminating 1,000 jobs—one-fifth of its total workforce. That brings to more than 4,000 the number of positions lost in 18 months in the pottery (陶瓷) region. Wedgwood and other pottery factories made cuts earlier. Although a strong pound and weak markets in Asia play a role in the downsizing, the layoffs in Stoke have their roots in earthshaking social shifts. A spokesman for Royal Doulton admitted that the company "has been somewhat slow in catching up with the trend" toward casual dining. Families eat together less often, he explained, and more people eat alone, either because they are single or they eat in front of television. Even dinner parties, if they happen at all, have gone casual. In a time of long work hours and demanding family schedules, busy hosts insist, rightly, that it"s better to share a takeout pizza on paper plates in the family room than to wait for the perfect moment or a "real" dinner party. Too often, the perfect moment never comes. Iron a fine-patterned tablecloth? Forget it. Polish the silver? Who has time? Yet the loss of formality has its down side. The fine points of etiquette (礼节) that children might once have learned at the table by observation or instruction from parents and grandparents ("Chew with your mouth closed. " "Keep your elbows off the table. ") must be picked up elsewhere. Some companies now offer etiquette seminars for employees who may be competent professionally but clueless socially. (347 words)

单选题According to a paper to be published in Psychological Science this has an interesting psychological effect. A group of researchers, led by Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago, found that people judge the distance of events 24 , depending on whether they are in the past or future. The paper calls this the 'Temporal Doppler Effect'. In physics, the Doppler effect describes the way that waves change frequency depending on whether their 25 is traveling towards or away from you. Mr. Caruso argues that something similar happens with people's perception of time. Because future events are associated with diminishing distance, while those in the past are thought of as 26 , something happening in one month feels psychologically 27 than something that happened a month ago. This idea was tested in a series of experiments. In one, researchers asked 323 28 and divided them into two groups. A week before Valentine's day, members of the first were asked how they planned to celebrate it. A week after February 14th the second group reported how they had celebrated it. Both groups also had to describe how near the day felt on a 29 of one to seven. Those describing forthcoming plans were more likely to report it as feeling 'a short time from now', while those who had already 30 it tended to cluster at the 'a long time from now' end of the scale. To account for the risk that recalling actual events requires different cognitive functions than imagining ones that have not yet happened, they also asked participants to 31 the distance of hypothetical events a month in the past or future. The asymmetry (不对称) remained. Mr. Caruso speculates that his research has 32 for psychological well-being. He suspects that people who do not show this bias—those who feel the past as being closer—might be more 33 to rumination (沉思) or depression, because they are more likely to dwell on past events. A. advancing B. apparently C. available D. closer E. differently F. evaluate G. experienced H. implications I. prospect J. rate K. receding L. scale M. source N. subject O. volunteers

单选题There is no necessary intrinsic connection between a word and the thing it refers to. The relationship is purely ______.

单选题Films could be taken all the year round in Hollywood because ______.

单选题I suggest transforming our social system from a (bureaucratically management) industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in (themselves)(in the Soviet Union as well as in the capitalist countries) into a humanist industrialism (in which) man and full development of his potentialities——those of love and of reason——(are the aims) of all social arrangements.

单选题①John Roebling planned to build the Brooklyn Bridge before 1867. But he never really gotstarted. In 1869 , he died of an accident. The job fell to his son Washington , a master of construction.In 1872

单选题It is still not clear what ______ a series of argument between them. A. contributed B. marked C. ignited D. triggered