单选题______, I wrote a letter to Henry Ford Ⅱ and told him what happened.

单选题 The night is not what it was. Once, the Earth was cast half in shadow. Then came fire, candle, and light bulb, gradually drawing back the curtain of darkness. But a brighter world has its drawbacks. An estimated 30 percent of outdoor lighting--plus even some indoor lighting--is wasted. Inefficient lighting costs U. S. about ＄10.4 billion a year, according to Bob Gent of the International Dark-Sky Association, a nonprofit that aims to control light pollution. Last year in Sydney, an estimated 2.2 million Australians switched off their lights during "Earth Hour", briefly reducing that city's energy use by more than 10 percent. Motivated by such trends, more than two dozen cities worldwide went dim on March 29 this year in an hour-long demonstration. A number of groups are trying to measure light pollution and assess its effects on the environment in the hope that people will reduce their own contribution to the problem. Scientists aye trying to report how many stars we can see. In dark rural areas, about 2,000 stars are typically visible at night, compared with "maybe five" in a bright city square--and about 5,000 in centuries past. People who are working while others are star-gazing may face the greatest risks. Nighttime exposure to white light can cause the growth of tumors (肿瘤), experiments show. Two decades of research indicate that women who work night shifts have unusually high rates of breast cancer.

单选题Children don"t ______ understand what are reciting, but gradually it will have an impact on thinking.

单选题Paul: Peter, why don't you come to Mary's birthday party with us? Peter: ______.

单选题I promised to look ______ the matter as soon as I got there.

单选题Why does cream go bad faster than butter? Some researchers think they have the answer, and it comes down to the structure of the food, not its chemical composition—a finding that could help rid some processed foods of chemical preservatives. Cream and butter contain pretty much the same substances, so why cream should sour much faster has been a mystery. Both are emulsions—tiny globules (小球体) of one liquid evenly distributed throughout another. The difference lies in what"s in the globules and what"s in the surrounding liquid, says Brocklehurst, who led the investigation. In cream, fatty globules drift about in a sea of water. In butter, globules of a watery solution are locked away in a sea of fat. The bacteria which make the food go bad prefer to live in the watery regions of the mixture. "This means that in cream, the bacteria are free to grow throughout the mixture," he says. When the situation is reversed, the bacteria are locked away in compartments (隔仓 室) buried deep in the sea of fat. Trapped in this way, individual colonies cannot spread and rapidly run out of nutrients (养料). They also slowly poison themselves with their waste products. "In butter, you get a self-limiting system which stops the bacteria growing," says Brocklehurst. The researchers are already working with food companies keen to see if their products can be made resistant to bacterial attack through alterations to the food"s structure. Brocklehurst believes it will be possible to make the emulsions used in salad cream, for instance, more like that in butter. The key will be to do this while keeping the salad cream liquid and not turning it into a solid lump. (292 words)

单选题Women are entitled to ______ status with men in private and professional life. A. identical B. equal C. same D. alike

单选题There is something profoundly disturbing about the national craze to blame the oil companies for higher gasoline prices. It"s not disturbing that people are upset about having to pay hugely more for gasoline and oil products. It"s not disturbing that they are looking for someone to blame. The disturbing part is that we as a nation and as a government are blaming entities that have absolutely nothing or next to nothing to do with causing the high oil prices. It is as if we just arbitrarily decided that all left-handed people were to blame for the oil prices. That"s how crazy it is. Oil companies do not set oil prices. Oil prices are set on gigantic world markets by young millionaire hedge fund traders, by university endowments speculating in commodities, by foreign importers seeking new sources of oil for their economy, by us Americans needing cars to make us feel big and tough. The American oil companies pay these high prices by and large, add in the costs of refining and transporting, tack on the taxes we need to build our roads, and then sell us our gasoline. We in turn suck it down our throats and zoom around in our big huge cars as if gasoline were still $ 1.50 a gallon. Yes, some of the oil the oil companies sell is in fields they bought years ago and paid a lot less per barrel for than today"s prices. When the price of oil skyrockets , the oil companies make money, lots of money. But this is how corporations are supposed to work: when prices for things they already own go up, they make money. They"re not charities and we wouldn"t be able to drive for long if they were. And the money the companies make goes to the shareholders, which is basically everyone in the nation with a pension plan, and most of the rest goes to find new oil for us to guzzle down in our 500-horsepower chariots of the future. Where"s the harm? There"s no price fixing. There"s no stealing. There are just a lot of traders getting very rich driving up the price of oil and a lot of legitimate forces making buyers willing to pay it. You may not like it and I certainly hate paying four bucks a gallon at my local station in Malibu. But blaming the oil companies is pure scapegoat (找替罪羊). Immense world- wide forces are at work. Immense markets are at work. The oil companies are corks in the ocean compared with those forces.

单选题The light in this lab is too ______to be used for close work.

单选题Once they had fame, fortune, and secure futures; ______ is utter poverty. A. now that all is left B. now all that is left C. now all which is left D. now all what is left

单选题He is a man of respectable ______.

单选题The bus broke down, so all the passengers were ______ to another bus.

单选题Social etiquette in the United States allows people to ______.

单选题His wife has been ______ a lot of pressure on him to change his job. A. taking B. exerting C. giving D. pushing

单选题Julie wanted to become a friend of ______ shares her interests. A. anyone B. whomever C. whoever D. no matter who

单选题Opinion polls are now beginning to show an unwilling general agreement that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment widely. But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm? Should we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office as centers of production and work? The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a discouraging thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows has not meant economic freedom. Employment became widespread when the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people traveled longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they lived. Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. It became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the impractical goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs.

单选题A Poster Just as the sun is starting to shine and the days are getting longer, the examination period begins! I'd like to wish all students the very best luck in your exams and with your dissertations. For those of you who will be leaving us this summer, I hope that you will take with you fond memories of Birmingham and that you keep in touch. If you are staying in Birmingham over the summer, do try to come along to our summer garden party on 18 June. Spouses and children are very welcome to join us too. Summer Garden Party Wednesday 18, June 2007 From 2 p. m.—5 p. m. Celebrate the end of exams and the end of term with a summer garden party in the beautiful grounds of Westmere on Edgbaston Park Road. All international students, their spouses and children are welcome to join us. We'll have lots of party games as well as food and drink. What better way to mark the end of the academic year? If you would like to come along, please contact Mal Graham, international Student Assistant: 0121 414 2894 M. M. Graham@bham. ac. uk. We look forward to seeing many of you there. Have a great summer.

单选题The economy in the United States is heavily dependent on aluminum, a material widely used in the construction of buildings and in making such diverse things as cars, airplanes, and food containers. In 1979 Americans used over five million tons of new aluminum, and one and a half million tons of recycled aluminum. Some ninety percent of the bauxite (矾土) ore from which new aluminum is normally derived had to be imported, to meet the demand. Poorer ores are abundant in the United States, however, and researchers at Purdue University may recently have found a way to obtain aluminum magnetically from these. Although aluminum is not attracted by ordinary magnets, under special conditions it becomes temporarily "paramagnetic", or very weakly responsive to a magnetic field. This is achieved by immersing ore particles in water to which certain salts have been added and then filtering the ore through steel wool in the presence of a strong magnetic field. It is hoped that this technique will reduce the amount of high-grade aluminum the United States must import.

单选题New technology links the world as never before. Our planet has shrunk. It"s now a "global village" where countries are only seconds away by fax or phone or satellite link. And, of course, our ability to benefit from this high-tech communications equipment is greatly enhanced by foreign language skills. Deeply involved with this new technology is a breed of modern businesspeople who have a growing respect for the economic value of doing business abroad. In modern markets, success overseas often helps support domestic business efforts. Overseas assignments are becoming increasingly important to advancement within executive ranks. The executive stationed in another country no longer need fear being "out of sight and out of mind". He or she can be sure that the overseas effort is central to the company"s plan for success, and that promotions often follow or accompany an assignment abroad. If an employee can succeed in a difficult assignment overseas, superiors will have greater confidence in his or her ability to cope back in the United States where cross-cultural considerations and foreign language issues are becoming more and more prevalent (普遍的). Thanks to a variety of relatively inexpensive communications devices with business applications, even small businesses in the United States are able to get into international markets. English is still the international language of business. But there is an ever-growing need for people who can speak another language. A second language isn"t generally required to get a job in business, but having language skills gives a candidate the edge when other qualifications appear to be equal. The employee posted abroad who speaks the country"s principal language has an opportunity to fast-forward certain negotiations, and can have the cultural insight to know when it is better to move more slowly. The employee at the home office who can communicate well with foreign clients over the telephone or by fax machine is an obvious asset to the firm. (322 words)