单选题From the upstairs windows in Colin MacQueen"s house there isn"t a view of the sea but he can clearly see the ships towering over the roofs of flats and houses. The view is pretty spectacular. But it"s what he cannot see that worries MacQueen. Like many cities across the UK, Southampton has poor air quality, and while the government and local authorities are looking to take action on cars, maritime fuel—the dirtiest and most polluting of all diesels—is on no one"s radar. Not only do the giant cruise liners churn out pollutants at sea, they also keep their engines running when they are docked in places like MacQueen"s home town. Britain is in the midst of something of a seafaring renaissance, with a growth in seagoing freight and an explosion in the holiday cruise market. Around the country, docks including those at Plymouth, Liverpool, Greenwich, Orkney, Edinburgh and Hull are proposing or working on expansions to accommodate more and bigger cruise and cargo ships. The number of Britons taking cruise holidays is estimated to surpass 2 million this year, double the number a decade ago. Globally, some 25 million people set sail last year, up by 10 million in a decade. "More and more places are opening up for tourists: there are now 50 ports in the UK and Ireland that people on cruises can visit, and 19 cruise ports they can drive to to start their holiday. It"s convenient and easy, and you can take all your luggage in the car right to the ship. Everything is on board for the whole family and you sail to great places. It"s a bit like the aviation industry: once everyone had to go to Heathrow or Gatwick, but then the regional airports opened up and it all became more accessible. The same thing is happening with cruises." For maritime towns, the issue is fraught, given the benefits the great ships bring. A campaign to stop the construction of a cruise terminal in Greenwich, south east London, failed last year, despite evidence of its impact on air quality. "Unlike for airports, railways and roads, the Department for Transport does not provide clear guidance on which ports should be prioritised for expansion, but generally supports growth," said Melissa Moore, policy head at the Marine Conservation Society. "This lack of strategy, and competition between ports, results in most trying to develop to attract cruise liner and shipping business." "Ever-larger ships necessitate the expansion of navigational channels, which can result in habitat removal and smothering as well as increased CO2, sulphur and nitric oxides emissions in the region. These big ships can be moored for several days as they load up, with engines idling. There is clearly a tightrope to be walked between quality of life for people and jobs and benefits to a city. "

单选题Which of the following is NOT true about the "proprietary lock-in" according to the passage?

单选题Questions 9 to 12 are based on the following talk.

单选题According to the passage, which of the following will be most harmful to the United States of America?

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单选题More than three years after moving from Australia to this remote part of England, we are still learning how things are done here. Not too long after we arrived and unpacked, we were invited for "a drink on Sunday morning" by a retired couple nearby. We got there about noon, to find the living-room crowded—lots of chat and discussions, and on all a very jolly occasion. Trouble was, there was no food—no self-respecting Australian would regard a tray of crisps as food. In Sydney, when you are invited for a drink any time after midday on a Sunday, you know you will be fed as well as watered and you plan accordingly. Meaning the hard-worked little woman makes no plans to cook lunch because you are eating out. By one-fifteen my stomach was sending up "please explain" to me. Even the crisps had gone. There was nothing we could do except wait, and wonder if the hostess was going to perform some magic and feed us fashionably late. Then, as quickly as if word had spread that there was free beer at the local pub, the room emptied. By one-forty-five there were only a few guests left, so we decided to go home. Tinned soup for lunch that day because the little woman was not really interested in real cooking for us. A few weeks ago we were invited out for "supper" and the hostess suggested 8.15. Ah, we thought greedily, "this is going to be the real thing". We dressed with some care—I putting on a dark suit—and arrived on time. My wife looked pretty good, I thought—a little black dress and so on. But when we walked in I had a terrible feeling we had got the night wrong because the hostess was dressed in a daytime kind of way and the husband was in jeans and an open-neck shirt. But no, we were greeted and shown into the sitting-room. After a drink I looked around and saw that this was indeed a superior cottage because it had a (more or less) separate dining-room. But there were no signs of a table-setting. Not again! I thought. Were we meant to eat before we came? I decided that in future my wife and I would always carry a chocolate bar. About 9.28 our hostess went out of the room, saying something about food. Ten minutes later she returned and asked us to follow. We were led out to the kitchen. There on the table were country-style plates and a huge bowl of soup, rough bread and all the makings of a simple meal. And that is what it was. In other words, we had not read the signals right when we were invited for "supper". If they want you to come to dinner, they say so, and you know that means dark suits and so on. If they mean supper, they say it, and you get fed in the kitchen. If they make such a distinction between "dinner" and "supper", does this mean we were not worth making an all out effort for? Candles, best silver and all the rest? It is enough to give a person a complex. When you think about it, it"s pretty depressing. They must use the dining-room sometimes, because they had all those high-backed chairs and candle-holders.

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单选题Directions: In this section you will read several passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose ONE best answer, A. B. C. or D. to each question. "They treat us like mules," the guy installing my washer tells me, his eyes narrowing as he wipes his hands, I had just complimented him and his partner on the speed and assurance of their work. He explains that it's rare that customers speak to him this way. I know what he's talking about. My mother was a waitress all her life, in coffee shops and fast-paced chain restaurants. It was hard work, but she liked it, liked "being among the public", as she would say. But that work had its sting, too—the customer who would treat her like a servant or, her biggest complaint, like she was not that bright. There's a lesson here for this political season: the subtle and not-so-subtle insults that blue-collar and service workers endure as part of their working lives. And those insults often have to do with intelligence. We like to think of the United States as a classless society. The belief in economic mobility is central to the American Dream, and we pride ourselves on our spirit of egalitarianism. But we also have a troubling streak of aristocratic bias in our national temperament, and one way it manifests itself is in the assumptions we make about people who work with their hands. Working people sense this bias and react to it when they vote. The common political wisdom is that hot-button social issues have driven blue-collar voters rightward. But there are other cultural dynamics at play as well. And Democrats can be as oblivious to these dynamics as Republicans—though the Grand Old Party did appeal to them in St. Paul. Let's go back to those two men installing my washer and dryer. They do a lot of heavy lifting quickly—mine was the first of 15 deliveries—and efficiently, to avoid injury. Between them there is ongoing communication, verbal and nonverbal, to coordinate the lift, negotiate the tight fit, move in rhythm with each other. And all the while, they are weighing options, making decisions and solving problems—as when my new dryer didn't match up with the gas outlet. Think about what a good waitress has to do in the busy restaurant: remember orders and monitor them, attend to a dynamic, quickly changing environment, prioritize tasks and manage the flow of work, make decisions on the fly. There's the carpenter using a number of mathematical concepts—symmetry, proportion, congruence, the properties of angles—and visualizing these concepts while building a cabinet, a flight of stairs, or a pitched roof. The hairstylist's practice is a mix of technique, knowledge about the biology of hair, aesthetic judgment, and communication skill. The mechanic, electrician, and plumber are troubleshooters and problem solvers. Even the routinized factory floor calls for working smarts. When has any of this made its way into our political speeches? From either party. Even on Labor Day. Last week, the GOP masterfully invoked some old cultural suspicions: country folk versus city and east-coast versus heartland education. But these are symbolic populist gestures, not the stuff of true engagement. Judgments about intelligence carry great weight in our society, and we have a tendency to make sweeping assessments of people's intelligence based on the kind of work they do. Political tributes to labor over the next two months will render the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps. But few will also celebrate the thought bright behind the eye, or offer an image that links hand and brain. It would be fitting in a country with an egalitarian vision of itself to have a truer, richer sense of all that is involved in the wide range of work that surrounds and sustains us. Those politicians who can communicate that sense will tap a deep reserve of neglected feeling. And those who can honor and use work in explaining and personalizing their policies will find a welcome reception.

单选题To identify planes flying overhead, the U. S. air-traffic controllers used to _____.

单选题What is the author's attitude towards President Bush's declaration about oil addiction?

单选题Henry was deported for having an expired visa. He ______ his visa renewed. A. should have had B. must have had C. might have had D. would have had

单选题Directions: In this section you will read several passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose ONE best answer, A. B. C. or D. to each question. Valentine's Day is tomorrow, and we are all thinking about true love and heart-shaped chocolate candy. Well, maybe not all of us. Some of us, actually, are considering the quantifiable aspects of divorce. In America today, some 50 percent of marriages are predicted to end in divorce. And at the University of Washington in Seattle they say they can tell you exactly—well, almost exactly—which ones those will be. A psychologist, a mathematician, and a pathologist have devised what they call a proven mathematical formula for detecting which relationships will go sour—thereby holding out hope that such couples can overcome their problems, and avoid divorce. "We have been able to predict that divorce will happen before [it does]. That's old news," says John Gottman, emeritus professor of psychology. "But what we have now is a scientific model for understanding why we can predict it with such accuracy." The work marks the first time a mathematic model is being used to understand such deep personal human interactions, adds James Murray, professor of applied mathematics. "It is totally objective. And our prediction of which couples would divorce within a four-year period was 94 percent accurate." This is how it works. Couples face each other and discuss—each speaking in turn—a subject over which they have disagreed more than once in the past. They are wired to detect various physiological data, such as pulse rates, and they're also videotaped. A session lasts a mere 15 minutes. The research team watches and analyzes the tapes and data, awarding plus or minus points depending on the type of interactions and according to a standard scoring system. Everything is then translated into equations and plotted on a graph, which the researchers have dubbed the "Dow- Jones Industrial Average for marital conversation". Once this is done, different situations are simulated and analyzed from the equations and graphs, and predictions are made. Over the past 16 years more than 700 couples (at different stages of their marriages) took part in the research. But let's go back a moment. It all starts, say, with a chat about mothers-in-law—apparently one of the hot topics of contention among couples, along with money and sex, according to Dr. Murray. "The husband might say to his wife, 'Your mother really is a pain in the neck.' Well, that's a minus two points. A shrug, that's a no-no—so minus one. And rolled eyes—very negative, that's minus two." If however, the husband were to say, "Your mother is a pain in the neck ... but she is sometimes funny," then, according to the researchers, you would take away two points and then give one back. If the husband cracked a smile, he would get another point. At the end of all the additions and subtractions, a stable marriage is indicated by having five more positive points than negative ones. Otherwise, warns the team, the marriage is in trouble. In trouble—but not doomed. The whole point of the model, says Dr. Gottman, is that it gives therapists new understanding with which they can help couples overcome patterns of interaction and prevent divorce. "What we are suggesting," says Murray, "is that couples who take this experiment then be told the prediction and realize they are going to have to both change their behavior and repair what is wrong." Not everyone buys into this model. Bonnie Jacobson, a clinical psychologist and processor at New York University, says it is "absolutely impossible" to understand the workings of a relationship via a one-size-fits-all model. "For mostly every couple I have seen, it's hard to see how they got together in the first place," she says. "So unless you really get to know the nuanced dynamics, you will never 'get it' or be able to help." Christine Fasano was married for only 14 months before getting a divorce last year. She agrees the dynamics of a relationship are nuanced and complex—but also sees merit in the University of Washington study's basic assumption that if one looks starkly at interaction between a couple, it is possible to ascertain whether the relationship is headed toward demise. "I'm not surprised the model works," she says. "It's actually not that profound. My basic observation of couples that are happily married is that they treat each other well. That is basically what they are saying, and that is hard to argue with." So, any final advice for Valentine's Day from the divorce research team out in Washington? "I would never give advice on matters of the heart," says Murray, who, incidentally, has been married 45 years. "But I suppose the bottom line is, yes, communication. And being good to one another. That is nice to quantify."

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单选题Why, if what we value from a work of art is the aesthetic pleasure to be gained from it, is a successfully deceptive fake inferior to the real thing? Conscious of this problem, some have attempted to deny the importance of authorship. The great collector and scholar Richard Payne Knight, after discovering that an antique cameo of the Roman goddess Flora might be a modem forgery, told the dealer who had sold it to him that it did not matter whether it was old or new, since its beauty was unaffected by its age. Similarly, the purchasers of a supposedly Renaissance bust of Lucrezia Donati expressed their pleasure, on discovering that it was a fake, that an artist of such talent was still alive. Indeed, in 1869 the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired the bust as an example of a forgery of exceptional quality, and at a price comparable to that paid for genuine Renaissance pieces. But it would be unwise to expect museums, dealers, or private collectors to take that attitude today. What most of us suspect—that aesthetic appreciation is not the only engine of the art market— becomes evident when a well-known work of art is revealed as a fake. The work may not change in appearance, but it loses its value as a relic. It no longer provides a direct link to an artist of genius; it ceases to promise either spiritual refreshment to its viewer or status to its owner. Even though the work in question remains physically unaltered, our response to it is profoundly changed. In 1937 the art historian Abraham Bredius wrote of a painting entitled Christ at Emmaus, which he believed to be the work of the great seventeenth-century Dutch artist Vermeer, but which was in fact a forgery by a Dutch painter named Hans van Meegeren: It is a wonderful moment in the life of a lover of art when he finds himself suddenly confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master, on the original canvas, and without any restoration, just as it left the painter"s studio! And what a picture! ... What we have here is a—I am inclined to say—the masterpiece of Jan Vermeer of Delft. After the exposure of van Meegeren, however, it became surprisingly apparent that his forgeries were grotesquely ugly and unpleasant paintings, altogether dissimilar to Vermeer"s. Van Meegeren"s success seemed incredible to the experts. As one reviewer noted, "had van Meegeren been a better artist... he might just have succeeded in producing "Vermeers" which would have fooled more people longer than the ones he created." Yet van Meegeren was exposed not because he ceased to fool people, but because he was forced to prove himself a forger in order to clear himself of the more serious charge of having sold a national treasure illegally. What is extraordinary about van Meegeren"s success is that the pattern revealed by his case is commonplace. The reaction of Bredius and his numerous distinguished colleagues, far from being exceptionally foolish, was normal; fakes are often greeted with rapture by well-informed experts and by the general public alike. It is generally true that forgers are known to us only because they have revealed themselves, overcoming considerable public and scholarly skepticism to prove the works in question are theirs, only to find that what was so admired as the work of another is now seen as trite and even maladroit. It is clear that both private and public collections must contain many works by fakers more talented and fortunate than van Meegeren. And they will continue to do so. Some will be exposed by advances in scientific techniques; but many objects cannot be scientifically dated, and even where analysis is appropriate, its conclusions must be based on a control group of "genuine" objects that may itself be contaminated. This is the main complaint against fakes. It is not that they cheat their purchasers of money, reprehensible though that is, but that they loosen our hold on reality, deform and falsify our understanding of the past. What makes them dangerous, however, also makes them valuable. The feelings of anger and shame they arouse among those who have been deceived arc understandable, but the consequent tendency to dispose of or destroy fakes, once identified, is misguided. Even if the errors of the past only provided lessons for the future, they would be worthy of retention and study. But forgeries do more than that. As keys to understanding the changing nature of our vision of the past, as motors for the development of scholarly and scientific techniques of analysis, as subverters of aesthetic certainties, they deserve our closer attention. And as the most entertaining of monuments to the wayward talents of generations of gifted rogues, they certainly claim our reluctant admiration.

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单选题 In its everyday life, Italy is very much the man's world. However, because of the Italian's understanding of foreigners, the woman tourist is able to invade many of the male places that are prohibited to Italian women. These places include the cafè and the wine shop. In the large cities the cafè is a combination of club and office. Here, for the price of a coffee, an Italian can read all the newspapers brought to him. And he can transact business, with the waiter producing pen, ink, and stamps as needed. Or if he wants, he can sit outside under a canvas covering before the door and enjoy the sight of beautiful women passing by. The wine shop, as a rule, is a more vigorous place than the caf6, and is filled almost exclusively with men. Wandering singers, generally in groups of two or three, add to the noise of these places with their songs and music. Many of the songs are of a political character and make fun of the leading statesmen of Italy, America, England, France, and Russia. But the songs are generally showing off a spirit of mischief. And when the criticism is about America, the American tourists find themselves laughing as much as anyone else. The Italian is a master at making fun of you and making you like it. The Italian men are deep-rooted gamblers. They have been brought up to it as children, but they are cautious gamblers and never go too much in it. The national lottery used to be one of the most popular forms of gambling. But later a football stake had taken away much of the interest in the lottery. But here the important thing is that gambling, the same as drinking, seldom goes to an Italian's head and his bets are not really dangerous risks. Even at cards the Italian plays for low stakes, generally for a cup of coffee or wine. In this world of the Italian male it would be careless if the romanticism of the Italian were neglected. The Italian might well be described as the world's greatest romanticist. From any boat in Venice to any member of the government in Rome, the Italian is always aware of romance, of love and of the importance of being a good lover. on the beaches of Italy, the visitor is aware that the Italian really live for romance. His manners, his compliments, his charm and his general way of behaving are those of a romanticist. Almost every Italian you meet is convinced that he is another Casanova. Romance is as much a part of Italy as its art and its history. Perhaps the feeling of romance that wells up in you when you come to Italy is one of the greatest things that Italy has to offer a world that is tired of war and political intrigue. It is the ideal place for a honeymoon because hotel managers and waiters make you conscious of your own love and stress it in such a way that you feel more in love in this country than in any other.

单选题 {{B}}Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following interview.{{/B}}