单选题What particular advantage does Professor Thring's coal miner have?

单选题Questions 17～20 are based on the following talk. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17～20.

单选题{{B}}Test 3{{/B}} We enter the new millennium with more poor people than the world has ever known. Out of 6 billion now (compared with fewer than 2 billion in 1900), 1.3 billion are below the absolute poverty line, living on less than $ 1 a day, and 2.8 billion eke out survival on less than $ 2 a day. Inequality has multiplied enormously. The gap between the one-fifth of the world' s people who live in the poorest countries and the one-fifth who live in the richest countries is now 71 to 1. In 1990 it was 60 to 1 and in 1960 it was 30 to 1. Yet in Asia, the absolutely poor are now one-third of the total, compared with onehalf in 1970. Their average life expectancy is 65 years, compared with 48 years then, and 70 percent of adults are now literate, compared with 40 percent. So there has been improvement. But excruciating misery is still with us, even as part of the world flushes with prosperity never known before. For one thing, the wealthy countries have cut back severely on foreign aid since the end of the Cold War, and as income continues to rise in the richest countries, generosity continues to fall. But overwhelming poverty is no longer accepted by everybody as a fact of nature. Enough people have become convinced that something can be clone about it to organize a diverse array of projects, and most projects are no longer based on the idea of the virtue of giving bounty only to those who deserve it because "Poverty is largely manmade." This is a dramatic new concept in the sweep of history. It is by no means taken for granted, but it is no longer inconceivable, as it was just a few years ago. In fact, even the word poverty is disdained by development specialists because of its implication of inferior capacity, beyond repair. The specialists prefer to speak of exclusion, which suggests a minority that has yet to be given its chance. This chance is not merely aid. Aid can be perverted by mismanagement and bad ideas; it can support corrupt governments that exploit their people; it can be wasted in grandiose projects that fail to pay off. In today's world, economic 15rogress is no longer mainly about heavy, visible things involving iron and steel and electricity. Progress in the 21~t century will be about light, invisible things like information technology, and will therefore necessarily be focused on the education and motivation of people. Therefore this is a new concept of poverty. It not only admits the serious situation the world encounters, but also states that to fundamentally change it, we must not overlook the human factor, otherwise, theories, ideology, even balance sheets will turn out to be of no avail.

单选题Themanis______.A.aretiredpilotB.aretiredengineerC.apostofficerD.afarmer

单选题Just three weeks before Polar Lander was set to arrive at Mars, a NASA panel issued its report on the Climate Orbiter failure in September. The prime cause of that disaster, as everyone now knows, was a truly dumb mistake. The spacecraft's builder, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, provided one set of specifications in old-fashioned English units, while its operators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory were using metric. But the report also uncovered management problems that let the mistake go undiscovered,including poor communication between mission teams, poor training and inadequate staffing. Indeed, the navigation team was seriously overworked, trying to run three missions at once. Because the Polar Lander was also built by Lockheed Martin, and because it was to use Climate Orbiter as a communications relay, the panel looked into that probe too, finding the same weak management. "A recurring theme in the board's deliberations," reads the report, "was one of 'Who's in charge?' It also raised questions about the probe's landing technology, which was complex, risky and largely untested. With Polar Lander nearing its final plunge, NASA promised to respond to the concerns, and the agency did address a couple of them. But by then, the die was largely cast. Maybe the lander was done in by something unforeseeable--a badly placed boulder, perhaps, or a crevasse--hich no probe could have avoided. And given the complexities of getting a spacecraft to Mars and having it work properly, it's no surprise that something should go bad. One of the big advantages to the faster-cheaper-better approach, in fact; is that when probes inevitably do fail, the loss is relatively small. Mars Observer, which vanished without a trace just before Coldin took office, cost the nation more than $1 billion, Climate Orbiter and the Polar Lander have set taxpayers back only $319 million between them. "We launched 10 spacecraft in 10 months," said Coldin. "We used to launch two a year. We have to be prepared for failure if we're going to explore." Even NASA's critics agree that doing things faster, better and cheaper makes sense--if it's done right. Says Pike: "This should provide an opportunity for a midcourse correction. ' Some sort of correction may already be under way. Coldin has launched a new investigation to look into the Polar Lander loss, and NASA chief of space science Edward Weiler said last week the agency would rethink its ambitious schedule of sending multiple missions to Mars every 26 months through 2007. After years of tipping the other way, "better" may finally be getting the same attention as "faster" and "cheaper" in NASA's mind-set.

单选题Millions of man-hours are lost to industry through employees suffering backache or strain caused by operating poorly designed machines and vehicles or moving awkward and heavy loads. Production is also interrupted by injury from other causes, such as vibration and excessive noise. 66. ______ But help is coming from a perhaps unexpected quarter for companies prepared to plan their workshops and manufacturing lines to take account of these hazards. The necessary information is emerging from a recently formed team of Ministry of Defense scientists at the Army Personnel Research Establishment at Farnborough. They are measuring factors which limit a soldier's ability to cope with advanced technical equipment and new types of vehicles, or to carry out routine jobs under difficult working conditions. The problems of the factory and office manager may at first sight seem distant from those of the Army. 67. ______ A task force of 120 physiologists, biologists, computer scientists, technologists and soldiers is therefore looking for the point at winch human factors set the limit to the use of technology. It is the stage at which no matter how advanced the engineering, it is the man who caused the complicated equipment to fail. Dr. John Nelms, director of the establishment, says: "In an era when there is almost nothing the engineer can not build, man is the limiting factor. The research program marks a new stage in the evolution of the army in looking at how best to make the soldier and technology compatible. If we do not get the relationship fight, the next battlefield could be a shambles." To meet the vast range of occupational hazards faced by the armed forces, the research group is measuring the limits imposed by physical stress arising from heat and cold, noise and vibration, psychological pressure, and the operational stress of putting high technology system into battleground conditions. The army also has an obligation during peacetime and training exercises to ensure that its men are exposed to greater risks to, say, hearing than those encountered in a well-run industry. Trials to discover how stress cuts the efficiency of a man with a guided missile or a new tank electronic control and firing system, perhaps by reducing his "hit rate" from 100 percent to only 50, may appear to be a special requirement. But it is also relevant to the introduction in industry and commerce of new technologies with keyboard controls and visual displays. 68. ______ Different patterns of noise are measured at Farnborough because damage to hearing is produced in various ways. Impulse noise from gunfire produces high pressures on the ear of a short duration, making the effects on the ear difficult to measure. For instance, a rifle shot produces a maximum pressure of 160 decibels, lasting less than a hundredth of a second, at the ear of the marksman, whereas a typical industrial noise might reach an average level of 90 decibels over most of the working day. Some idea of those noise levels is given by what a person hears about 20 feet from a roadway—from motorcycles it is 89 decibels, cars 87 decibels, light commercial vehicles 88 and heavy lorries 92. The effect on the body of lifting, loading and carrying objects is perhaps the work that has the widest common application to industry and the Army. But the methods used today by the research team and the trials section—a group of regular soldiers seconded for two years for tins work—to measure physiological limitations imposed by physical stress and strain are far from usual. The measurements involve monitoring muscle Fatigue by analyzing the bioelectric signals produced during movement and examination of the energy being expended and the muscle strength. 69. ______ Particular tasks scrutinized at Farnborough include such things as the physiological strain in loading 120 mm ammunition within the turret workplace intended for a new tank design. The importance of this type of study was underlined by an analysis of the prototype of an advanced new armored vehicle, which the specialists in human engineering showed could only be operated by about 5 percent of the men in the Army. 70. ______ It will provide further valuable material for the scientific discipline known as ergonomics—firing the job to the workers—to which several university and polytechnic research groups have also made important contributions. A．Although these occupational hazards ale well recognized eliminating them is another matter，and they ale not problems that disappear over-night by a wave of the magic wand of new technology． 　　B．New advances in technology requires specialist research into the best way to operate sophisticated equipment． 　　C．Indeed．the military research emerged because the generals foresaw that the development of a wide range of new equipment，including mall—operated guided missiles and suits for protection against nuclear，chemical and biological dangers，had important implications for the efficiency of the soldier on the battlefield． 　　D．The psychological fear of the battlefield may be missing，but measurements of the degree to which an operator’s skill is impaired by constant noise and other stressful interruptions ale of concern to all businessmen． 　　E．An indication of the stress on the cardiovascular system is made by recording variation in heart rates during work．A tiny tape recorder attached to the individual’s clothing logs the signals． 　　F．Much of this information is being compiled as manuals that will be available to industry as well as suppliers of defense equipment to the Ministry of Defense．

单选题{{I}} Questions 14 to 26 are based on a monologue about stages of sleep. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.{{/I}}

单选题 Questions 11 to 13 are based on a news report about a tornado which hit parts of Mexico. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13.

单选题The meaning of the word "anomaly" in the second line of 4th paragraph is

单选题At dawn one morning in early May, Sean Cosgrove is stashing piles of maps, notes and photocopied documents in his gym bag before heading for West Milford High, a rural school in northernmost New Jersey. On his 30-minute commute, the young former investment banker tries to dream up new ways of lifting the monumentally forgettable Mexican War off the textbook page and into his students' imaginations. Can he invoke the storied memories of Robert E. Lee, who cut his first military exploits on the plains of Veracuz— or will he be met with thundering responses of "Who's Lee"? Should he raise James K. Polk out of the mystic chords of memory, and hope, for a nanosecond, that the kids will care about the first U. S president who stepped aside because he'd accomplished everything he wanted? Let's think some more. Well, there's always the Alamo. And hey, isn't that the teachers' parking lot up ahead? It's never an easy task. These big kids in big jeans and ball caps, come to his history classes believing that history is about as useful as Latin. Most are either unaware or unimpressed that the area's iron forges once produced artillery cannon for George Washington's army. Their sense of history orbits more narrowly around last month's adventures on "ShopRite Strip", the students' nickname for downtown West Milford, once a factory town, now a Magnet for middle-class vacationers. Cosgrove looks uncommonly glum as the thumbs through a stack of exams in the teachers' lounge. "I can't believe anyone in my class could think John Brown was the governor of Massachusetts," moans Cosgrove, 28, pointing to one student's test paper. He had to be sleeping for days on end. "The same morning, students in his college bound class could name only one U. S. Supreme Court justice—Clarence Thomas. All his wit, energy and beyond-the-textbook research can't completely reverse the students' poor preparation in history, their lack of general knowledge, their numbness to the outside world. It's the bane of history teachers at every level. When University of Vermont professor James Loewen asked his senior social-science majors who fought in the Vietnam War, 22 percent answered North and South Korea. Don't these kids even go to the movies?

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}} Read the following texts and answer the questions which accompany them by choosing A, B, C or D. {{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Text1 Today TV audiences all over the world are accustomed to the sight of American astronauts in tip-top condition, with fair hair, crew-cuts, good teeth, an uncomplicated sense of humour and a severely limited non-technical vocabulary. What marks out an astronaut from his earthbound fellow human beings is something of a difficult problem. Should you wish to interview him, you must apply beforehand, and you must be prepared for a longish wait, even if your application meets with success. It is. in any case, out of the question to interview an astronaut about his family life or personal activities, because all the astronauts have contracts with an American magazine under conditions forbidding any unauthorized disclosures about their private lives. Certain obvious qualifies are needed. Anyone who would be a spaceman must be in perfect health, must have powers of concentration(since work inside a spacecraft is exceptionally demanding)and must have considerable courage. Again, space-work calls for dedication. Courage and dedication are particularly essential. In the well-known case of the Challenger seven crew members lost their lives in space because of the faulty equipment in the shuttle. Another must be outstanding scientific expertise. It goes without saying that they all have to have professional aeronautical qualifications and experience. A striking feature of the astronauts is their ages. For the younger man, in his twenties, say, space is out. Only one of the fifty men working for NASA in 1970 was under 30. The oldest astronaut to date is Alan Shepard, America's first man in space, who, at nearly fifty, was also the man who captained Apollo 13. The average age is the late thirties. The crew members of Apollo 11 were all born well before the Second World War. In 1986 the Challenger astronauts had an average age of 39. The range was from 35 to 46. In a society where marital continuity is not always exhibited, the astronauts'record in this respect hits you in the eye. Of all the married men in NASA group, only two or three are divorced from their wives. Mind you. it is hard to tell whether something in the basic character of an astronaut encourages fidelity or whether the selection process demands that a candidate should be happily married. The NASA astronauts live in unattractive small communities dotted here and there around the base in Texas. You would expect them to find their friends from among their professional associates, but this is not the case. Rather, they prefer to make friends with the normal folk in their districts. Astronauts, like everybody else, must get fed up with talking shop all the time, and whereas they are indeed an elite, their daily life outside work should be as normal as possible, if only for the sake of their families. As for the astronauts'political leanings, they seem to be towards the right. This may be due to the fact that a large proportion of the astronauts have a military background. On the other hand, it could be just coincidence.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The fact that superior service can generate a competitive advantage for a company does not mean that every attempt at improving service will create such an advantage. Investments in service, like those in production and distribution, must be balanced against other types of investments on the basis of direct, tangible benefits such as cost reduction and increased revenues. If a company is already effectively on a par with its competitors because it provides service that avoids a damaging reputation and keeps customers from leaving at an unacceptable rate, then investment in higher service levels may be wasted, since service is a deciding factor for customers only in extreme situations. This truth was not apparent to managers of one regional bank, which failed to improve its competitive position despite its investment in reducing the time a customer had to wait for a teller. The bank managers did not recognize the level of customer inertia in the consumer banking industry that arises from the inconvenience of switching banks. Nor did they analyze their service improvement to determine whether it would attract new customers by producing a new standard of service that would excite customers or by proving difficult for competitors to copy. The 0nly merit of the improvement was that it could easily be described to customers.

单选题What does "bill on value" mean?

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} A scientist who does research in economic psychology and who wants to predict the way in which consumers will spend their money must study consumer behavior. He must obtain data both on resources of consumers and on the motives that tend to encourage or discourage money spending. If an economist was asked which of three groups borrow most--people with rising incomes, stable incomes or declining incomes--he would probably answer: those with declining incomes. Actually, in the year 1947～1950, the answer was people with rising incomes. People with declining incomes were next and people with stable incomes borrowed the least. This shows us that traditional assumptions about earning and spending are not always reliable. Another traditional assumption is that if people who have money expect prices to go up, they will hasten to buy. If they expect prices to go down, they will postpone buying. But research surveys have shown that this is not always true. The expectations of price increases may not stimulate buying. One typical attitude was expressed by the wife of a mechanic in. an interview at a time of rising prices. "In a few months, "she said, "we will have to pay more for meat and milk, we will have less to spend on other things." Her family had been planning to buy a new car but they postponed this purchase. Furthermore, the rise in prices that has already taken place may be resented and buyer's resistance may be evoked. This is shown by the following typical comment: "I just don't pay these prices, they are too high." The investigations mentioned above were carried out in America. Investigations conducted at the same time in Great Britain, however, yielded results more in agreement with traditional assumptions about saving and spending patterns. The condition most conductive to spending appears to be price stability. If prices have been stable and people consider that they are reasonable, they are likely to buy, thus, it appears that the common business policy of maintaining stable prices is based on a correct understanding of consumer psychology.

单选题 Questions 14 to 16 are based on the following talk on the colleges for the deaf in the US. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.

单选题On November 5th 1605, a band of English Catholic hotheads planned to detonate 36 barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords. The scheme would have destroyed the nation by wiping out MPs, lords, bishops and the king. For sheer terrorist ambition, the plot remains unmatched. So why has this plan, and the capture, torture and public execution of the leading conspirators, been celebrated in Britain for the past four centuries? "God"s Secret Agents" suggests one reason why: anti-Catholic paranoia. The plot was the "popish" outrage that Protestants had expected and warned about for half a century. Such fears had resulted in fines, strict laws and show trials of Jesuit missionaries. It is as though Anglicanism—a vague and ambiguous creed, even in its early days—required an enemy against which to test itself. Before 1605, the threat from Catholicism was mostly imaginary. Attempts to re-establish the old religion in England were doomed to failure. Missionaries concentrated on the nobility, reckoning they would in turn convert the rest of the population, but this was to misunderstand English society. Worst, the missionaries received little support from Rome or Spain. The Gunpowder Plot was a desperate last heave by men who had already failed. It was also a gift to the authorities. The plot had been so wide-ranging that every pillar of the state—monarchy, church, nobility and Parliament—could interpret its survival as an act of divine providence. All had an interest in keeping the memory of Catholic perfidy alive. As one preacher put it in 1636, the day was "never to be cancelled out of the calendar, but to be written in every man"s heart for ever." But then, something rather odd happened. What began as a celebration of the status quo became the opposite. By the 18th century, Bonfire Night had become an excuse for violence and barely disguised extortion. Respectable citizens who tried to suppress it were burned in effigy for their pains, alongside the pope—a tradition that survives in the Sussex town of Lewes. This peculiar transformation is the subject of Gunpowder Plots, a book of essays. It is a mixed bag, but two stand out: an elegant account of the evolution of Bonfire Night by David Cressy, a historian, and a nerdy and fascinating treatise on gunpowder and fireworks by Brenda Buchanan. The latter contains an intriguing detail. A receipt dated November 1605 from the Board of Ordnance mentions that the gunpowder recovered from Parliament was "decaied"—i. e. moist. Perhaps the plot that Britons have celebrated all this time would have been rather a damp firework.

单选题 The estimates of the numbers of home-schooled children vary widely. The U. S. Department of Education estimates there are 250,000 to 350,000 home-schooled children in the country. Home school advocates put the number much higher—at about a million. Many public school advocates take a harsh attitude toward home-schoolers, perceiving their actions as the ultimate slap in the face for public education and a damaging move for the children. Home-schoolers harbor few kind words for public schools, charging shortcomings that range from lack of religious perspective in the curriculum to a herdlike approach to teaching children. Yet, as public school officials realize they stand little to gain by remaining hostile to the home-school population, and as home-schoolers realize they can reap benefits from public schools, these hard lines seem to be softening a bit. Public schools and home-schoolers have moved closer to tolerance and, in some cases, even cooperation. Says John Marshall, an education official, "We are becoming relatively tolerant of home-schoolers. The idea is, 'Let's give the kids access to public school so they'll see it's not as terrible as they've been told, and they'll want to come back.'" Perhaps, but don't count on it, say home-school advocates. Home-schoolers oppose the system because they have strong convictions that their approach to education—whether fueled by religious enthusiasm or the individual child's interests and natural pace—is best. "The bulk of home-schoolers just want to be left alone," says Enge Cannon, associate director of the National Center For Home Education. She says home-schoolers choose that path for a variety of reasons, but religion plays a role 85% of the time. Professor Van Galen breaks home-schoolers into two groups. Some home-schoolers want their children to learn not only traditional subject matters but also "strict religious doctrine and a conservative political and social perspective. Not incidentally, they also want their children to learn—both intellectually and emotionally—that family is the most important institution in society." Other home-schoolers contend "not so much that the schools teach heresy, but that, schools teach whatever they teach inappropriately," Van Galen writes. "These parents are highly independent and strive to 'take responsibility' for their own lives within a society that they define as bureaucratic and inefficient."

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Telegrams have just passed into history in America, following the announcement by Western Union, once the colossus of the industry, that it was discontinuing its telegram service at the end of January. Yet in a sense, the technology pioneered by Samuel Morse has been reborn with a modern twist, in the form of text messages sent between mobile phones. For years, foreigners have wondered why Americans, usually at the vanguard of technological adoption, were so reluctant to embrace texting. But now they have adopted the technology with enthusiasm. What happened? America's apathy towards texting was easy to explain. Voice calls on mobile phones are cheaper than in other countries, which gives cost-conscious users less incentive to send texts instead; several different and incompatible wireless technologies are in use, which made sending messages from one network to another unreliable or impossible; and texting was often an additional service that subscribers had to sign up for. As a result, the number of messages sent per subscriber per month was just over seven in December 2002, compared with a global average of around 30. But things have since changed, with that figure rising to 13 in December 2003, 26 in December 2004, and 38 in June 2005, the most recent date for which figures are available from the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, an industry body. So America has now overtaken Germany, Italy and France in its enthusiasm for texting. There are several reasons for this. "We've had that penetration of the youth market," says Brian Modoff, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. "We didn't have that until a couple of years ago." Family calling plans and other new tariffs have put phones in the hands of more young people, who are more likely to adopt texting. There have also been technical changes: GSM, the text-friendly wireless technology used in Europe, has become far more widespread in America as operators have switched customers to it from older technologies, notes John Tysoe of The Mobile World, a consultancy. Interconnections between netwoks have improved too. But perhaps the most surprising factor is the role of reality television—and in particular, "American Idol", a talent show in which viewers phone in to vote for competing singers. In 2004, 13.5 million viewers cast votes by text messages—nearly half of them using the technology for the first time. Last year the number of votes was 41.5 million. "That upward arc is a fair indicator for the acceleration in growth of texting in general," says Mark Siegel of Cingular, America's biggest mobile operator. Even when viewers do not vote by text themselves, such programmes raise awareness of texting in general, says Mr. Modoff. Whatever you think about the music, "American Idol" has undoubtedly helped Americans to discover a valuable new talent.

单选题Which of the following works was written by Robert Browning? [A] My Last Duchess [B] David CopperfieId [C] An Ideal Husband [D] Under the Greenwood Tree