单选题Questions 11-15
The central idea of cell phones is that you should be connected to almost everyone and everything at all times. The trouble is that cell phones assault your peace of mind no matter what you do. If you turn them off, why have one? You just irritate anyone who might call. If you"re on and no one calls, you"re irrelevant, unloved or both. If everyone calls, you"re a basket case.
As with other triumphs of the mass market, cell phones reached a point when people forget what it was like before they existed. No one remembers life before cars, TVs, air conditioners, jets, credit cards, microwave ovens and ATM cards. So, too, now with cell phones. Anyone without one will soon be classified as an eccentric or member of the (deep) underclass.
Look at the numbers, In 1985 there were 340,213 cell-phone users. By year-end 2003 there were 159 million. I had once assumed that age or hearing loss would immunize most of the over-60 population against cell phones. Wrong. Among those 60 to 69, cell phone ownership (60 percent) is almost as high as among 18- to 24-year-olds (66 percent), though lower than among 30- to 49-years- olds (76 percent), according to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center. Even among those 80 and older, ownership is 32 percent.
Of course, cell phones have productive uses. For those constantly on the road, they"re a bonus. The same is true for critical workers needed at a moment"s notice. Otherwise, benefits seem gloomy.
They make driving more dangerous, though how much so is unclear. Then, there"s sheer nuisance. Private conversations have gone public. We"ve all been subjected to someone else"s sales meeting, dinner reservation, family argument and dating problem. In 2003 cell phone conversations totaled 830 billion minutes, reckons CTIA. That"s about 75 times greater than in 1991 and almost 50 hours for every man, woman and children in America. How valuable is all this chitchat? The average conversation lasts two- and-a-half to three minutes. Surely many could be postponed or forgotten.
Cell phones and, indeed, all wireless devices constitute another chapter in the ongoing breakdown between work and everything else. They pretend to increase your freedom while actually stealing it.
All this is the wave of the future or, more precisely, the present. According to another survey, two thirds of Americans 16 to 29 would choose a ceil phone over a traditional land line. Cell phones, an irresistible force, will soon pull ahead. But I vow to resist just as I"ve resisted ATM cards, laptops and digital cameras. I agree increasingly with the late poet Ogden Nash, who wrote: "Progress might have been all right once, but it"s gone on too long. "
单选题
{{B}}Extract 1{{/B}} A
stylish dining room with cream walls and curtains and black carpet as perfect
foil to an eclectic array of furniture. Many of the pieces are classics of their
particular era, and demonstrate how old and new designs can be happily mixed
together. The prototype chair in the foreground has yet to prove its staying
power and was thought up by the flat's occupant. He is pictured in his living
room which has the same decorative theme and is linked to the dining room by a
high Medieval-styled archway where was once a redundant and uninspiring
fireplace. {{B}}Extract 2{{/B}} Old bathrooms often
contain a great deal of ugly pipework in need of disguising. This can either be
done by boxing in the exposed pipes, or by fitting wood paneling over
them. As wood paneling can be secured over almost anything —
including old ceramic tiles and chipped walls — is an effective way of
disguising pipework as well as being an attractive form of decoration. The
paneling can be vertical, horizontal or diagonal. An alternative
way to approach the problem of exposed pipes is to actually make them a feature
of the room by picking the pipework out in bright strong colours.
{{B}}Extract 3{{/B}} Cooking takes second place in this
charming room which; with its deep armchairs, is more of a sitting room than a
kitchen, and the new Rayburn stove as a good Choice, as it blends in well with
the old brick and beamed fireplace. There are no fitted units or built-in
appliances, so all food preparation is done at the big farmhouse table in the
foreground; and the china, pots and pans have been deliberately left on show to
make an attractive display, What about the kitchen sink? It's hidden away behind
an archway which leads into a small scullery. Here there's a second cooker and —
in the best farmhouse tradition — a huge walk-in larder for all food
storage.
单选题Questions 27—30
单选题Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following interview.
单选题
单选题Questions 11-15
For several days I saw little of Mr. Rochester. In the morning he seemed much occupied with business, and in the afternoon gentlemen from the neighbourhood called and sometimes stayed to dine with him. When his foot was well enough, he rode out a great deal.
During this time, all my knowledge of him was limited to occasional meetings about the house, when he would sometimes pass me coldly, and sometimes bow and smile. His changes of manner did not offend me, because I saw that I had nothing to do with the cause of them.
One evening, several days later, I was invited to talk to Mr. Rochester after dinner. He was sitting in his armchair, and looked not quite so severe, and much less gloomy. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes were bright, probably with wine. As I was looking at him, he suddenly turned, and asked me, "do you think I"m handsome, Miss Eyre?"
The answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I realized it: "No, sir. "
"Ah, you really are unusual! You are a quiet, serious little person, but you can be almost rude. "
"Sir, I"m sorry. I should have said that beauty doesn"t matter, or something like that."
"No, you shouldn"t! I see, you criticize my appearance, and then you stab me in the back! You have honesty and feeling. There are not many girls like you. But perhaps I go too fast. Perhaps you have awful faults to counterbalance your few good points.
I thought to myself that he might have too. He seemed to read my mind, and said quickly, ""Yes, you"re right. I have plenty of faults. I went the wrong way when I was twenty-one, and have never found the right path again. I might have been very different. I might have been as good as you, and perhaps wiser. I am not a bad man, take my word for it, but I have done wrong. It wasn"t my character, but circumstances which were to blame. Why do I tell you all this? Because you"re the sort of person people tell their problems and secrets to, because you"re sympathetic and give them hope. "
It seemed he had quite a lot to talk to me. He didn"t seem to like to finish the talk quickly, as was the case for the first time.
"Don"t be afraid of me, Miss Eyre. " He continued. "You don"t relax or laugh very much, perhaps because of the effect Lowood School has had on you. But in time you will be more natural with me, and laugh, and speak freely. You"re like a bird in a cage. When you get out of the cage, you"ll fly very high. Good night. "
单选题The Panorama is not the first model of New York. In 1845 E. Porter Belden, a savvy local who had written the best city guide of its day, set 150 artists, craftsmen, and sculptors to work on what an advertisement in his guide described as "a perfect facsimile of New York, representing every street, lane, building, shed, park, fence, bee, and every other object in the city." This "Great w0rk of art," Belden said, distilled "over 200, 000 buildings, including Houses, Stores and Rear-Buildings" and two and a half million windows and doors into a twenty-by-twenty-four-foot miniature that encompassed the metropolis below Thirty-second Street and parts of Brooklyn and Governors Island, all basking under a nearly fifteen-foot-high Gothic canopy decorated with 0il paintings of "the leading business establishments and places of note in the city." Alas, every trace of it has vanished.
Of course Belden"s prodigy was far from the first display of model buildings. Since antiquity architects and builders have used miniatures m solve design problems and win support from patrons and public. A recent show at die National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., featured fourteen models created by Renaissance architects, including the six-ton, fifteen-foot-high model of St. Peter"s that Antonio da Sangallo the Younger built for the pope.
Beyond their uses as design tools and propaganda, models have always possessed a curious power to enchant and excite. The sculptor Teremy Lebensohn was describing architectural models but could have been characterizing all miniatures when he wrote, "The model offers us a Gulliver"s view of a Lilliputian world, its seduction of scale reinforcing the sense of our powers to control the environment, whether it be unbroken countryside, a city block or the interior of a room."
A model 0fthe 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition presented to the city in 1889 is unique in that some of the buildings and details are made of brass and that it is still on display in the basement of what was the Liberal Arts Building at the fair in Philadelphia"s Fairmont Park.
The San Francisco World"s Fair of 1915 featured another New York City model, 550 feet square and complete with a lighting system that highlighted the city"s major features. City models have also miniaturized Denver, San Diego, and San Francisco, the Denver one built during the 1930s with WPA funding. A re-creation of the city as it appeared in 1860, it includes figures of men, women, and children in period costumes, along with animals and assorted wagons, and is now on display at the Colorado History Museum in Denver.
San Diego"s model, in Old Town State Historic Park, was built by Jo Toigo and completed in the 1970s and depicts that city"s Old Town section as it looked a century earlier. Like the Denver model, it includes people, animals and vehicles.
A model of San Francisco is in the Environmental Simulation Laboratory in Berkeley, California. Not a realistic model in the true sense of the word, it represents the buildings and land contours of the city and has been used to study patterns of sunlight and shadow and the flower of wind caused by San Francisco"s many hills. The computer"s ability to simulate the same effects has diminished the model"s importance, and its future is uncertain.
New materials and techniques have now brought the craft of architectural models to an impressive level. Computer-controlled lasers and photo-etching (the process invented to create the Panorama"s bridges) allow model makers to create presentations pieces of astonishing realism.
单选题
Questions 11 to 15 are based on
the following interview.
单选题[此试题无题干]
单选题
单选题Questions 16~20
The fox really exasperated them both. As soon as they had let the fowls out, in the early summer mornings, they had to take their guns and keep guard; and then again as soon as evening began to mellow, they must go once more. And he was so sly. He slid along in the deep grass; he was difficult as a serpent to see. And he seemed to circumvent the girls deliberately. Once or twice March had caught sight of the white tip of his brush, or the ruddy shadow of him in the deep grass, and she had let fire at him. But he made no account of this.
The trees on the wood edge were a darkish, brownish green in the full light—for it was the end of August. Beyond, the naked, copper-like shafts and limbs of the pine trees shone in the air. Nearer, the rough grass, with its long, brownish stalks all agleam, was full of light. The fowls were round about—the ducks were still swimming on the pond under the pine trees. March looked at it all, saw it all, and did not see it. She heard Banford speaking to the fowls in the distance—and she did not hear. What was she thinking about? Heaven knows. Her consciousness was, as it were, held back.
She lowered her eyes, and suddenly saw the fox. He was looking up at her. His chin was pressed down, and his eyes were looking up. They met her eyes. And he knew her. She was spell- bound—she knew he knew her. So he looked into her eyes, and her soul failed her. He knew her, he has not daunted.
She struggled, confusedly she came to herself, and saw him making off, with slow leaps over some fallen boughs, slow, impudent jumps. Then he glanced over his shoulder, and ran smoothly away. She saw his brush held smooth like a feather, she saw his white buttocks twinkle. And he was gone, softly, soft as the wind.
She put her gun to her shoulder, but even then pursed her mouth, knowing it was nonsense to pretend to fire. So she began to walk slowly after him, in the direction he had gone, slowly, pertinaciously. She expected to find him. In her heart she was determined to find him. What she would do when she saw him again she did not consider. But she was determined to find him. So she walked abstractedly about on the edge of the wood, with wide, vivid dark eyes, and a faint flush in her cheeks. She did not think. In strange mindlessness she walked hither and thither.
As soon as supper was over, she rose again to go out, without saying why.
She took her gun again and went to look for the fox. For he had lifted his eyes upon her, and his knowing look seemed to have entered her brain. She did not so much think of him. she was possessed by him. She saw his dark, shrewd, unabashed eye looking into her, knowing her. She felt him invisibly master her spirit. She knew the way he lowered his chin as he looked up, she knew his muzzle, the golden brown, and the greyish white. And again she saw him glance over his shoulder at her, half inviting, half contemptuous and cunning. So she went, with her great startled eyes glowing, her gun under her arm, along the wood edge. Meanwhile the night fell, and a great moon rose above the pine trees.
单选题At the tail end of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that natural history— which he saw as a war against fear and superstition-ought to be narrated "in such a way that everyone who hears it is irresistibly inspired to strive after spiritual and bodily health and vigour," and he grumbled that artists had yet to discover the right language to do this. "None the less," Nietzsche admitted, "the English have taken admirable steps in the direction of that ideal... the reason is that they [natural history books] are written by their most distinguished scholars—whole, complete and fulfilling natures. " The English language tradition of nature writing and narrating natural history is gloriously rich, and although it may not make any bold claims to improving health and wellbeing, it does a good job—for readers and the subjects of the writing. Where the insights of field naturalists meet the legacy of poets such as Clare, Wordsworth, Hughes and Heaney, there emerges a language as vivid as any cultural achievement. That this language is still alive and kicking and read every day in a newspaper is astounding. So to hold a century's worth of country diaries is, for an interloper like me, both an inspiring and humbling experience. But is this the best way of representing nature, or is it a cultural default? Will the next century of writers want to shake loose from this tradition? What happens next? Over the years, nature writers and country diarists have developed an increasingly sophisticated ecological literacy of the world around them through the naming of things and an understanding of the relationships between them. They find ways of linking simple observations to bigger issues by remaining in the present, the particular. For writers of my generation, a nostalgia for lost wildlife and habitats and the business of bearing witness to a war of attrition in the countryside colours what we're about. The anxieties of future generations may not be the same. Articulating the "wild" as a qualitative character of nature and context for the more quantitative notion of biodiversity will, I believe, become a more dynamic cultural project. The re-wilding of lands and seas, coupled with a re-wilding of experience and language, offers fertile ground for writers. A response to the anxieties springing from climate change, and a general fear of nature answering our continued environmental injustices with violence, will need a reassessment of our feelings for the nature we like—cultural landscapes, continuity, native species-as well as the nature we don't like—rising seas, droughts, "invasive" species. Whether future writers take their sensibilities for a walk and, like a pack of wayward dogs unleashed, let them loose in hills and woods to sniff out some fugitive truth hiding in the undergrowth, or choose to honestly recount the this-is-where-I-am, this-is-what-I-see approach, they will be hitched to the values implicit in the language they use. They should challenge these. Perhaps they will see our natural history as a contributor to the commodification of nature and the obsessive managerialism of our times. Perhaps they will see our romanticism as a blanket thrown over the traumatised victim of the countryside. But maybe they will follow threads we found in the writings of others and find their own way to wonder.
单选题
单选题
Most growing plants contain much more
water than all other materials combined. C. R. Barnes has suggested that it is
as proper to term the plant a water structure as to call a house composed mainly
of brick a brick building. Certain it is that all essential processes of plant
growth and development occur in water. The mineral elements from the soil that
are usable by the plant must be dissolved in the soil solution before they can
be taken into the root. They are carried to all parts of the growing plant and
are built into essential plant materials while in a dissolved state. The carbon
dioxide from the air may enter the leaf as a gas but is dissolved in water in
the leaf before it is combined with a part of the water to form simple
sugars—the base material from which the plant body is mainly built. Actively
growing plant parts are generally 75 to 90 percent water. Structural parts of
plants, such as woody stems no longer actively growing, may have much less water
than growing tissues. The actual amount of water in the plant at
any one time, however, is only a very small part of what passes through it
during its development. The processes of photosynthesis, by which carbon dioxide
and water are combined-in the presence of chlorophyll and with energy derived
from light-to form sugars, require that carbon dioxide from the air enter the
plant. This occurs mainly in the leaves. The leaf surface is not solid but
contains great numbers of minute openings, through which the carbon dioxide
enters. The same structure that permits the one gas to enter the leaf, however,
permits another gas—water vapor—to be lost from it. Since carbon dioxide is
present in the air only in trace quantities (3 to 4 parts in 10,000 parts of
air) and water vapor is near saturation in the air spaces within the leaf (at
80°F, saturated air would contain about 186 parts of water vapor in 10,000 parts
of air), the total amount of water vapor lost is many times the carbon dioxide
intake. Actually, because of wind and other factors, the loss of water in
proportion to carbon dioxide intake may be even greater than the relative
concentrations of the two gases. Also, not all of the carbon dioxide that enters
the leaf is synthesized into carbohydrates.
单选题Which of the following does NOT show the process of evolution of leapfrog technology?
单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.
单选题
{{B}}Questions
11-14{{/B}}
单选题
Middle born children will tell you that
they usually didn't feel all that special while growing up. The first born had
his spot-carrier of the family banner and responsible for everything. The last
born had his comfy little role, but the middle born had no distinctive place to
call his own. Middle-borns just seem to be easily overlooked,
and maybe that's why there are so few pictures of them in the family photo
album. There may be hundreds, seemingly thousands, of pictures of the firstborn.
For some strange reason, however, which I have confirmed by polling middle-born
children around the world, there are seldom many pictures of the middle child,
and what photos there are have him included with the others -- squeezed again
between the older sibling and the younger sibling. Another thing
that can be said of many middle-born children is that they typically place great
importance on their peer group. The middle child is well known for going outside
the home to make friends faster than anybody else in the family. When a child
feels like a fifth wheel at home, friends become very important; as a result,
many middle children (but not all, of course) tend to be the social lions of the
family. While firstborns, typically, have fewer friends, middle children often
have many. Middle children have a {{U}}propensity{{/U}} to leave
home first and live farther away from the family than anyone else. I observed a
dramatic illustration of this tendency while I was a guest on Oprah Winfrey's
show. The subject that day was sibling rivalry. Three charming young women, all
sisters, were among the guests, and we quickly learned that the firstborn and
the last born were residents of the Eastern state where they had grown up. They
had settled down near their parents and other family members. But the middle
child had moved to the West Coast. I suppose she could have
gotten another two thousand miles farther away by moving to Hawaii, but her
point was still well made. Middle children are the ones who will most often
physically distance themselves from the rest of the family. It's not necessarily
because they're on the outs with everyone else. They simply !ike to do their own
thing, make their own friends, and live their own lives. All of
this is not to say that middle children totally ignore their siblings or the
rest of the family. one common characteristic of the middle child is that she is
a good mediator or negotiator. She comes naturally into this role because she's
often right in the middle, between big brother and little sister, whatever the
case may be. And because she can't have Mom or Dad all to herself, she learns
the fine art of compromise. Obviously, these skills are assets in adult life,
and middle children often become the best adjusted adults in the
family.
单选题The last paragraph of the passage suggests that for the majority of women scientists, the "belief in meritocracy" was ______.
单选题Questions 6~10 Gail Pasterczyk, the principal of Indian Pines Elementary in Palm Beach County, Fla. , has added two or three new teaching positions each of the past three years. She's adding two more teachers next year as well as replacing those she'll lose to maternity leave, transfers, and retirement. She doesn't know where the new teachers will come from, if the new hires will be any good, and where she'll find room for all of them. Indian Pines already has 27 portable classrooms and is waiting to break ground on a two-story, 25-classroom addition. "When you start reducing class size, you've got to find more teachers, and you run out of space," she says. "That's the reality. " Her school district, one of the nation's largest, has sent recruiters across the country, and even to Mexico and the Philippines, to fill an expected 1,700 teaching vacancies before the fall. "We are in a race to keep the schools staffed," says Robert Pinkos, a Palm Beach County recruiter who will travel to Baltimore and Madrid next month to troll for teachers. Two and a half years after Florida voters adopted a constitutional amendment to reduce class sizes, Palm Beach County—and every other school district in the state—are tripping over a major stumbling block: There just aren't enough good teachers to go around. With classes in kindergarten through third grade capped at 18 students, fourth through eighth held at 22, and high school limited to 25, the state will need to hire an estimated 29,604 new teachers by 2009—a prospect that has many people worried. "I have every reason to expect that the quality of teachers will suffer," says John Winn, the state's education commissioner. Nationwide, 33 states now have laws that restrict class size. And the politically popular educational reform has proved successful in some areas, particularly among the lowest-performing students. In Burke County, N. C. , for example, discipline problems are down and test scores are up, even for the most disadvantaged students in the district. "On paper these kids should not be succeeding, but they are," says Susan Wilson, a former teacher and now director of elementary education in the rural county. But this success comes at a price. It means hiring more teachers, building more classrooms, and retraining teachers to work with smaller groups of students. And it means, critics maintain, that states pit their own districts against one another in the race to hire. "When you mandate class-size reduction statewide, the suburban schools tend to draw the best new teachers, and the more urban schools, which already have trouble attracting teachers, can't attract the best candidates," says Steven Rivkin, an economics professor at Amherst College who has studied the effects of class-size reduction on teacher quality. Any gains from cutting class size could be undermined by hiring lower quality teachers. Resources. Proponents contend that the reform would be relatively pain-less if existing resources were managed well. "Hiring more teachers is only part of the solution," says Charles Achilles, one of the first researchers to study the effects of reducing class sizes. "The best programs for class-size reduction not only hire more teachers but reassign existing specialty teachers to get them back in the classroom. " Florida policymakers are trying to find their own way out of the class-size quandary. This month, the Legislature is considering a proposal to roll back some of the size limits in exchange for an increase in teacher pay. Gov. Jeb Bush, who opposed the constitutional amendment in 2002, argues that the compromise will attract more top-quality teachers to the state while reining in costs. Voters could see the proposed change on the ballot as early as September. In the meantime, recruiter Pinkos continues his search for new teachers, sometimes working 10-hour days. His pitch? "Palm Beach is very beautiful, but the small classes are one of the most attractive things I can tell them./
