单选题Astheycan’taffordtoletthesituationgetworse,theywilltakesomenecessary_______.

单选题A travel company wants to charter a plane to the Bahamas. Chartering the plane costs $8,000. So far, 18 people have signed up for the trip. If the company charges $300 per ticket, how many more passengers must sign up for the trip before the company can make any profit on the charter? A. 7 B. 9 C. 13 D. 27 E. 45

单选题Copying Birds May Save Aircraft Fuel Both Boeing and Airbus have trumpeted the efficiency of their newest aircraft, the 787 and A350 respectively. Their clever designs and lightweight composites certainly make a difference. But a group of researchers at Stanford University, led by Ilan Kroo, has suggested that airlines could take a more naturalistic approach to cutting jet-fuel use, and it would not require them to buy new aircraft. The answer, says Dr Kroo, lies with birds. Since 1914, and a seminal paper by a German researcher called Carl Wieselsberger, scientists have known that birds flying in formation—a V-shape, echelon or otherwise—expend less energy. The air flowing over a bird"s wings curls upwards behind the wingtips, a phenomenon known as upwash. Other birds flying in the upwash experience reduced drag, and spend less energy propelling themselves. Peter Lissaman, an aeronautics expert who was formerly at Caltech and the University of Southern California, has suggested that a formation of 25 birds might enjoy a range increase of 71%. When applied to aircraft, the principles are not substantially different. Dr Kroo and his team modeled what would happen if three passenger jets departing from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas were to rendezvous over Utah, assume an inverted V-formation, occasionally swap places so all could have a turn in the most favorable positions, and proceed to London. They found that the aircraft consumed as much as 15% less fuel (coupled with a reduction in carbon-dioxide output). Nitrogen-oxide emissions during the cruising portions of the flight fell by around a quarter. There are, of course, kinks to be worked out. One consideration is safety, or at least the perception of it. Would passengers feel comfortable traveling in convoy? Dr Kroo points out that the aircraft could be separated by several nautical miles, and would not be in the intimate groupings favored by display teams like the Red Arrows. A passenger peering out of the window might not even see the other planes. Whether the separation distances involved would satisfy air-traffic-control regulations is another matter, although a working group at the International Civil Aviation Organization has included the possibility of formation flying in a blueprint for new operational guidelines. It remains to be seen how weather conditions affect the air flows that make formation flight more efficient. In zones of increased turbulence, the planes" wakes will decay more quickly and the effect will diminish. Dr Kroo says this is one of the areas his team will investigate further. It might also be hard for airlines to co-ordinate the departure times and destinations of passenger aircraft in a way that would allow them to gain from formation flight. Cargo aircraft, in contrast, might be easier to reschedule, as might routine military flights. As it happens, America"s armed forces are on the case already. Earlier this year the country"s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced plans to pay Boeing to investigate formation flight, though the program has yet to begin. There are reports that some military aircraft flew in formation when they were low on fuel during the Second World War, but Dr Lissaman says they are apocryphal. "My father was an RAF pilot and my cousin the skipper of a Lancaster lost over Berlin," he adds. So he should know.

单选题exuberance

单选题A hiker walked for 3 days. She walked 18 miles on the first day, walking 3 miles per hour. On the second day she walked for one less hour, but she walked one mile per hour faster than on the first day. On the third day she walked the same number of hours as on the first day but at the same speed as on the second day. How many miles in total did she walk? A. 24 B. 44 C. 58 D. 60 E. 62

单选题We've bought some ______ chairs for the garden so that they are easy to store away

单选题If,wherea,b,andcareeachequalto0or1,thenxcouldbeeachofthefollowingEXCEPT:

单选题Theprimarymediumoflanguageis______.

单选题Homework has never been terribly popular with students and even many parents, but in recent years it has been particularly scorned. School districts across the country, most recently Los Angeles Unified, are revising their thinking on his educational ritual. Unfortunately, L. A. Unified has produced an inflexible policy which mandates that with the exception of some advanced courses, homework may no longer count for more than 10% of a student"s academic grade. This rule is meant to address the difficulty that students from impoverished or chaotic homes might have in completing their homework. But the policy is unclear and contradictory. Certainly, no homework should be assigned that students cannot do without expensive equipment. But if the district is essentially giving a pass to students who do not do their homework because of complicated family lives, it is going riskily close to the implication that standards need to be lowered for poor children. District administrators say that homework will still be a part of schooling, teachers are allowed to assign as much of it as they want. But with homework counting for no more than 10% of their grades, students can easily skip half their homework and see vey little difference on their report cards. Some students might do well on state tests without completing their homework, but what about the students who performed well on the tests and did their homework? It is quite possible that the homework helped. Yet rather than empowering teachers to find what works best for their students, the policy imposes a flat, across-the-board rule. At the same time, the policy addresses none of the truly thorny questions about homework. If the district finds homework to be unimportant to its students" academic achievement, it should move to reduce or eliminate the assignments, not make them count for almost nothing. Conversely, if homework matters, it should account for a significant portion of the grade. Meanwhile this policy does nothing to ensure that the homework students receive is meaningful or appropriate to their age and the subject, or that teachers are not assigning more than they are willing to review and correct. The homework rules should be put on hold while the school board, which is responsible for setting educational policy, looks into the matter and conducts public hearings. It is not too late for L. A. Unified to do homework right.

单选题The price of the real estate in this area may ______ to unexpected values, so everyone should be conscious of the maximum price that he would want to pay for a particular property. A. stagger B. stink C. soar D. suspend

单选题In an effort to plan out expenses, the Roberts family is representing its annual budget as a circle graph. Each sector of the graph is proportional to the amount of the budget it represents. If "clothes and shoes" takes up 54° of the chart, how much of the Roberts's $20,000 annual budget is dedicated to clothes and shoes? A. $1,500 B. $3,000 C. $4,500 D. $5,000 E. $5,400

单选题According to D.H.Hymes, communicative competence has some components. Which is NOT of them? A. Probability B. Feasibility C. Appropriateness D. Performance

单选题In The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are (2004), Dr. Kevin Leman notes that 21 of the first 23 Americans in space were first-born males or only children. More than half of United States presidents have been first-borns or first-born boys. It"s a pretty significant finding historically, because families used to be bigger than they are today. In addition to being high achievers, older children also generally have higher IQs (智商) than younger ones. Researchers have noted that the more kids a family has, the lower each child"s individual IQ tends to be. They give a few reasons for this. Parents only have so much time, attention, and money. The more kids they have, the more these things are divided. First-borns initially get the entire parental-time pie. What"s more, the ratio of grown-ups to kids decreases with each new baby. So the younger ones are surrounded by more children"s language on average than the older kids. Some researchers think parental attention is the key to personality birth-order differences. In his book Born to Rebel , psychologist Frank Sulloway says competition for Mom and Dad"s attention is the thing that really shapes our personalities and, in fact has shaped history. He argues that we adapt our personalities as part of our strategy to seek favor from Mom and Dad. Younger siblings (兄弟姐妹) tend to become rebels. Sulloway studied political activists and found that later-born activists were more radical than their first-born peers. The conclusion of his book is that sibling competition for parental attention can affect society as a whole in times of revolution. Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, and Fidel Castro were all younger siblings, for example. As compelling as this all is, it"s also something we should probably take with caution, there are other things that happen to us in life besides the addition of siblings to our families. A parent can die; a hurricane can leave us homeless; we can catch a life-threatening disease. Any one of these things will probably have more of an effect on our personalities than the presence of siblings. A 2002 study bore this out. After interviewing 535 undergraduates, researchers concluded that personality differences related to birth order were "folklore", although IQ and achievement differences were widely supported by research.

单选题Who won the World Cup 1994 football game? What happened at the United Nations? How did the critics like the new play? 1 an event takes place, newspapers are on the streets 2 the details. Wherever anything happens in the world, reports are on the spot to 3 the news. Newspapers have one basic 4 , to get the news as quickly as possible from its source, from those who make it to those who want to 5 it. Radio, telegraph, television, and 6 inventions brought competition for newspapers. So did the development of magazines and other means of communication. 7 , this competition merely spurred the newspapers on. They quickly made use of the newer and faster means of communication to improve the 8 and thus the efficiency of their own operations. Today more newspapers are 9 and read than ever before. Competition also led newspapers to branch out to many other fields. Besides keeping readers 10 of the latest news, today"s newspapers 11 and influence readers about politics and other important and serious matters. Newspapers influence readers" economic choices 12 advertising. Most newspapers depend on advertising for their very 13 . Newspapers are sold at a price that 14 even a small fraction of the cost of production. The main 15 of income for most newspapers is commercial advertising. The 16 in selling advertising depends on a newspaper"s value to advertisers. This 17 in terms of circulation. How many people read the newspaper? Circulation depends 18 on the work of the circulation department and on the services or entertainment 19 in a newspaper"s pages. But for the most part, circulation depends on a newspaper"s value to readers as a source of information 20 the community, city, country, state, nation, and world—and even outer space.

单选题[Focus on the structure of the underlined syllables] A. aware B. ignore C. relay D. pertain

单选题 Henric Ibsen, author of the play "A Doll's House", in which a pretty, helpless housewife abandons her husband and children to seek a more serious life, would surely have approved. From January 1st, 2008, all public companies in Norway are obliged to ensure that at least 40% of their board directors are women. Most firms have obeyed the law, which was passed in 2003. But about 75 out of the 480 or so companies it affects are still too male for the government's liking. They will shortly receive a letter informing them that they have until the end of February to act, or face the legal consequences—which could include being dissolved. Before the law was proposed, about 7% of board members in Norway were female, according to the Centre for Corporate Diversity. The number has since jumped to 36%. That is far higher than the average of 9% for big companies across Europe or America's 15% for the Fortune 500. Norway's stock exchange and its main business lobby oppose the law, as do many businessmen. "I am against quotas for women or men as a matter of principle," says Sverre Munck, head of international operations at a media firm. "Board members of public companies should be chosen solely on the basis of merit and experience," he says. Several firms have even given up their public status in order to escape the new law. Companies have had to recruit about 1,000 women in four years. Many complain that it has been difficult to find experienced candidates. Because of this, some of the best women have collected as many as 25-35 directorships each, and are known in Norwegian business circles as the "golden skirts" . One reason for the scarcity is that there are fairly few women in management in Norwegian companies—they occupy around 15% of senior positions. It has been particularly hard for firms in the oil, technology and financial industries to find women with enough experience. Some people worry that their relative lack of experience may keep women quiet on boards, and that in turn could mean that boards might become less able to hold managers to account. Recent history in Norway, however, suggests that the right women can make strong directors. "Women feel more compelled than men to do their homework," says Ms Reksten Skaugen, who was voted Norway's chairman of the year for 2007, "and we can afford to ask the hard questions, because women are not always expected to know the answers."

单选题 Olympic Games are held every four years at a different site, in which athletes {{U}}(21) {{/U}} different nations compete against each other in a {{U}}(22) {{/U}} of sports. There are two types of Olympics, the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. In order to {{U}}(23) {{/U}} the Olympics, a city must submit a proposal to the International Olympic Committee (IOC). After all proposals have been {{U}}(24) {{/U}}, the IOC votes. If no city is successful in gaining a majority in the first vote, the city with the fewest votes is eliminated, and voting continues, with {{U}}(25) {{/U}} rounds, until a majority winner is determined. Typically the Games are awarded several years in advance, {{U}}(26) {{/U}} the winning city time to prepare for the Games. In selecting the {{U}}(27) {{/U}} of the Olympic Games, the IOC considers a number of factors, chief among them which city has, or promises to build, the best facilities, and which organizing committee seems most likely to {{U}}(28) {{/U}} the Games effectively. The IOC also {{U}}(29) {{/U}} which parts of the world have not yet hosted the Games. {{U}}(30) {{/U}}, Tokyo, Japan, the host of the 1964 Summer Games, and Mexico City, Mexico, the host of the 1968 Summer Games, were chosen {{U}}(31) {{/U}} to popularize the Olympic movement in Asia and in Latin America. {{U}} (32) {{/U}} the growing importance of television worldwide, the IOC in recent years has also taken into {{U}}(33) {{/U}} the host city's time zone. {{U}}(34) {{/U}} the Games take place in the United States or Canada, for example, American television networks are willing to pay {{U}}(35) {{/U}} higher amounts for television rights because they can broadcast popular events (36) , in prime viewing hours. {{U}} (37) {{/U}} the Games have been awarded, it is the responsibility of the local organizing committee to finance them. This is often done with a portion of the Olympic television {{U}}(38) {{/U}} and with corporate sponsorships, ticket sales, and other smaller revenue sources. In many {{U}}(39) {{/U}} there is also direct government support. Although many cities have achieved a financial profit by hosting the Games, the Olympics can be financially {{U}}(40) {{/U}}. When the revenues from the Games were less than expected, the city was left with large debts.

单选题Welikedtheoilpaintingbetter____________welookedatit.

单选题No step in life is more important than the choice of a vocation. The wise selection of the business, profession, trade, or occupation to which one"s life is to be devoted and the development of full efficiency in the chosen field are matters of the deepest moment to young men and to the public. These vital problems should be solved in a careful, scientific way, with due regard to each person"s aptitudes, abilities, ambitions, resources, and limitations and the relations of these elements to the conditions of success in different industries. If a boy takes up a line of work to which he is adapted, he will achieve far greater success than if he drifts into an industry for which he is not fitted. An occupation out of harmony with the worker"s aptitudes and capacities means inefficiency, unenthusiastic and perhaps distasteful labor, and low pay, while an occupation in harmony with the nature of the man means enthusiasm, love of work, and high economic values—superior product, efficient service, and good pay. If a young man chooses his vocation so that his best abilities and enthusiasms will be united with his daily work, he has laid the foundations of success and happiness. But if his best abilities and enthusiasms are separated from his daily work or do not find in it fair scope and opportunity for exercise and development; if his occupation is merely a means of making a living, and the work he loves to do is sidetracked into the evening hours or pushed out of his life altogether, he will be only a fraction of the man he ought to be. Efficiency and success are largely dependent on adaptation.

单选题Suzie's Discount Footwear sells all pairs of shoes for one price and all pairs of boots for another price. On Monday the store sold 22 pairs of shoes and 16 pairs of boots for $650. On Tuesday the store sold 8 pairs of shoes and 32 pairs of boots for $760. How much more do pairs of boots cost than pairs of shoes at Suzie's Discount Footwear? A. $2.50 B. $5.00 C. $5.50 D. $7.50 E. $15.00