单选题 Questions2-5 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题 A study of nearly 140 000 women in the US showed that regular helpings of a small portion of nuts can have a powerful protective effect against a disease that is threatening to become a global epidemic. Women who consumed a 28 gram packet of walnuts at least twice a week were 24 percent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who rarely or never ate them. Eating walnuts just two or three times a week can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes by almost a quarter. The latest findings, published in the Journal of Nutrition, are not the first to highlight the anti-diabetic effects of walnuts, with earlier research showing similar benefits. However, this is thought to be one of the largest studies to find regularly snacking on them can help prevent the condition. Although the latest research was carried out on female nurses, it's likely that the same benefits apply to men. According to the charity Diabetes UK, at the current rate of increase, the numbers affected by type 2 diabetes in the UK will rise from around 2.5 million currently to four million by 2025 and five million by 2030. Left untreated, it can raise the risk of heart attacks, blindness and amputation (截肢). Being overweight, physically inactive and having a poor diet are major risk factors for the disease. Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, US, tracked 137893 female nurses aged from 35 to 77 over a ten year period to see how many developed type 2 diabetes. Their dietary habits were closely monitored, including details on how often they ate nuts, particularly walnuts. After allowing for body fat and weight, the researchers found eating walnuts one to three times a month reduced the risk by four percent, once a week by 13 percent and at least twice a week by 24 percent. In a report on the findings the researchers said: 'These results suggest higher walnut consumption is associated with a significantly lower risk of type 2 diabetes in women.' Walnuts are rich in healthy fatty acids (脂肪酸) which have been shown to reduce inflammation (炎症) in the body and protect against heart disease, cancer and arthritis (关节炎). Last year, experts at the University of California Los Angeles also found young men in their twenties and thirties who ate walnuts every day increased their sperm count and boosted their fertility. The research comes just after a Louisiana State University study which showed that eating nuts can reduce people's risk of obesity. The study found that those who consumed varieties such as almonds and pistachios (开心果) demonstrated a lower body weight, body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference compared to non-consumers. They were also at lower risk of developing heart disease, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

单选题The continuous presentation of scary stories about global warming in the popular media makes us unnecessarily frightened. Even worse, it 25 our kids. AI Gore famously depicted how a sea-level rise of 20 feet would almost completely flood Florida, New York, Holland, and Shanghai, even though the United Nations says that such a thing will not even happen, estimating that sea levels will rise 20 times less than that. When 26 with these exaggerations, some of us say that they are for a good cause, and surely there is no harm done if the result is that we focus even more on tackling climate change. This 27 is astonishingly wrong. Such exaggerations do plenty of harm. Worrying 28 about global warming means that we worry less about other things, where we could do so much more good. We focus, for example, on 29 warming's impact on malaria (疟疾)—which will put slightly more people at risk in 100 years—instead of tackling the half a billion people suffering from malaria today with prevention and treatment policies that are much cheaper and dramatically more effective than carbon reduction would be. 30 also wears out the public's willingness to tackle global warming. If the planet is doomed, people wonder, why do anything? A record 54% of American voters now believe the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is. A 31 of people now believe incorrectly—that global warming is not even caused by humans. But the worst cost of exaggeration, I believe, is the 32 alarm that it causes—particularly among children. An article in The Washington Post cited nine-year-old Alyssa, who cries about the possibility of mass animal 33 from global warming. The newspaper also reported that parents are searching for 'productive' outlets for their eight-year-olds' obsessions (忧心忡忡) with dying polar bears. They might be better off educating them and letting them know that, contrary to common belief, the global polar bear population has 34 and perhaps even quadrupled (成为四倍) over the past half-century, to about 22 000. Despite diminishing—and eventually disappearing—summer Arctic ice, polar bears will not become extinct. A. terrifies B. excessively C. unnecessary D. argument E. extinction F. Exaggeration G. confronted H. doubled I. majority J. global K. equipped L. disgusts M. ignorantly N. suppresses O. urgent

单选题 反法西斯战争 今年是世界反法西斯战争胜利70周年，也是中国人民抗日战争胜利70周年。中国人民浴血奋战14年，最终取得了世界反法西斯战争的伟大胜利。为保护人类文明、捍卫世界和平做出巨大贡献。中国希望同广大同盟国共同回顾总结历史，展望开辟未来，坚定铭记历史、永不再战的庄严承诺，构建以合作共赢为核心的新型国际关系，让世界更加和平，更加和谐，更加美好。

单选题 The world is undergoing tremendous changes. The rise of globalization has forged new ground as we enter the 21st century. But are the effects of globalization always positive? Some say no. Michael Tenet, head of the International Institute for Foreign Relations in Atlanta, is worried about current resentment throughout the world towards the rise of globalization. 'Ever since the 1980s and the economic breakdown of the Asian Tigers in the late 1990s, there has been a reevaluation of the role of globalization as a force for good,' he said, 'Income in many countries has declined and the gap between the most rich and the most poor has been worsened. Without further interference by governments, we could see a tragedy expressed in an increased level of poverty throughout the Latin America and Asia.' Yet George Frank, an influential economist who works on Wall Street, sees no such danger. 'Economic liberalization (自由化), increased transparency and market-based reforms have positive effect in the long run, even if market mechanisms can produce short-term destabilization problems,' he said, 'What is most important is that barriers to trade continue to fall so that active competition for consumables reduces prices and in turn raises the average level of income.' Others feel that globalization's cultural impact may be more important than its economic implications. Janice Yawee, a native of Africa, feels strongly that globalization is weakening her local culture and language. 'Most of the world's dialects will become extinct under globalization. We are paving the world with McDonald's and English slang. It tears me up inside,' she said. However, ignoring the political dimensions of globalization has already had its cost. Nowhere was it made clearer than in the Southeast Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s—particularly in Indonesia. In the wake of that crisis, the Suhatro's regime was overthrown, and the entire country has been thrown into a mess. The Indonesian economy has contracted almost 50%, throwing tens of millions of people below the poverty line. Governments of different countries have had mixed responses to the wave of globalization. The United States is generally seen as an active proponent (支持者) of greater free trade, and it certainly has enormous cultural influence by virtue of its monopoly on worldwide entertainment. So the challenge faced by the Bush administration is not the challenge of the 1990s. But other countries, most notably developing countries and countries in Europe, are seeking for ways to reduce the impact that globalization has on their domestic affairs.

单选题 Now listen to the following recording and answer questions24-26.

单选题 For thousands of years man has exploited and often destroyed the riches of land. Now man covets(觊觎) the wealth of the oceans. Even the most conservative estimates of resources in the seabed stagger the imagination. In the millions of miles of ocean that touch a hundred nations live four of five of living things on earth. In the seabed, minerals and oil existed in lavish supply. Man may yet learn to use a tiny fraction of this wealth. However, this fraction alone could set off a new age of colonial war unless international law soon determines how it shall be shared. What is to be done to regulate and control exploitation of the oceans is a problem of international concern. In crowded England, serious plans have been developed to build entire cities just off the coast. Offshore airport may solve the demand for large tracts near such large coastal cities as New York and Los Angeles. Some people, quick to take advantage of the legal confusion that reigns beyond coastal waters, have planned to build independent islands at the top of reefs outside the county's territorial limit—that is indeed, a romantic notion, but one with, it is suspected, the more prosaic aim of avoiding the constrictions of domestic law concerning gambling and taxes. In another case, the United Nations were presented with an application for permission to extract minerals from the bed of Red Sea in an area 50 miles from the coastal states. The secretariat dodged this thorny question, citing lack of authority to act. Such claims are no longer isolated or meaningless. The great wealth from the oceans must be divided equitable among nations. But wealth is not the only thing at debate. We must also learn how to protect the oceans from the threat of pollution. A few years ago, 'practical' men dismissed speculations about wealth in the sea. 'That is economic foolishness,' they said. It will never be economically profitable to exploit the seabeds, no matter how great the riches to be found there. Unfortunately, they underestimated the lure of gold as the mother of invention. Yet the pessimists may be proved right. In these pioneer years of the Ocean Age, the damage done sometimes seems to exceed the benefit gained. Beaches from England to Puerto Rico to California have been soaked in oily mud. Insecticides, seeping into the rivers and then oceans, have killed fish and birds and revived fears that some chemicals may contaminate our waters when they are used as garbage dumps. Largely in ignorance, we are tinkering with our greatest source of life.

单选题 The American recovery seems to be picking up pace. The growth seems to be everywhere except the place it matters most—labour markets. Employment in America turned in a surprisingly poor performance in November, indicating that recovery still hasn't gotten the job creation machine turning steadily. The Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) reported a disappointing gain of only 39,000 jobs for the month of November. The figure came in well below expectations. In October, on Wednesday a private employment report estimated that the economy added 93,000 private sector workers. Markets had expected one of the strongest reports of the recovery so far. That's not what they received. In November, according to the BLS, private employers added just 50,000 new jobs—the worst performance since April. Within the private sector, drops in employment among goods-producing and retail trade firms were offset by new hires among professional and business services and in the health and education sectors. The unemployment rate rose to 9.8%—its highest level since April and close to the 10.1% recession peak. At 15.1 million, the number of unemployed workers rose back to its April high. Fully 6.3 million people have been out of work for more than 27 weeks. Many of these workers are now cycling off federal emergency unemployment benefits, which expired on November 30. Congress has yet to re-authorise the emergency benefits package, as it has done so many times through the recession. Some 2 million jobless workers may lose benefits by the end of 2010, and perhaps 4 million or more will lose them by April. There is little to be happy about in this report. But there are some indications that the November numbers may be an exception. September's job losses were revised down to 24,000 in this report, while October's job gains were revised upward, from 151,000 to 172,000. Through November, weekly data on initial jobless claims showed significant improvement. And of course, many other indicators have been flashing positive signs in recent weeks. It's likely that the November figures will be revised up in future months to show a better performance more in keeping with broader trends. And it's important to remember that monthly data are noisy. America's labour markets have yet to generate job growth sufficient to bring down the unemployment rate. But the pace of recovery has been improving. There is good reason to suspect that when all is said and done this report will appear as a tiny deviation from a strengthening upward employment trend. All the same, policymakers in Washington weighing whether to extend unemployment benefits and tax cuts should pay attention to the obvious weakness in labour markets.

单选题 Old stereotypes die hard. Picture a video-game player and you will likely imagine a teenage boy, by himself, compulsively hammering away at a game involving rayguns and aliens that splatter when blasted. Today a gamer is as likely to be a middle-aged commuter playing 'Angry Birds' on her smartphone. In America, the biggest market, the average game-player is 37 years old. Two-fifths are female. Even teenagers with imaginary rayguns are more likely to be playing 'Halo' with their friends than playing alone Over the past ten years the video-game industry has grown from a small niche business to a huge, mainstream one. With global sales of $56 billion in 2010, it is more than twice the size of the recorded-music industry. Despite the downturn, it is growing by almost 9% a year. Is this success due to luck or skill? The answer matters, because the rest of the entertainment industry has tended to treat gaming as being a lucky beneficiary of broader technological changes. Video gaming, unlike music, film or television, had the luck to be born digital: it never faced the struggle to convert from analogue. In fact, there is plenty for old media to learn. Video games have certainly been swept along by two forces: demography and technology. The first gaming generation—the children of the 1970s and early 1980s—is now over 30. Many still love gaming, and can afford to spend far more on it now. As gaming establishes itself as a pastime for adults, the social stigma and the worries about moral corruption that have historically greeted all new media, from novels to pop music, have dissipated. Meanwhile rapid improvements in computing power have allowed game designers to offer experiences that are now often more cinematic than the cinema. The industry has excelled in two particular areas: pricing and piracy. In an era when people are disinclined to pay for content on the web, games publishers were quick to develop 'freemium' models, where you rely on non-paying customers to build an audience and then extract cash only from a fanatical few. In China, where piracy is rampant, many games can be played online for nothing. Finns instead make money by selling in-game perks and 'virtual goods' to dedicated players. China is now the second-biggest gaming market, but does not even rank in the top 20 markets for the music business. As gaming comes to be seen as just another medium, its tech-savvy approach could provide a welcome shot in the arm for existing media groups. Time Warner and Disney have bought games firms; big-budget games, meanwhile, now have Hollywood-style launches.

单选题A treadmill (跑步机) desk may be one thing. But what about a desk with a built-in exercise bike? A new study, in the July 26 of Applied Ergonomics, found people working at a cycling workstation burned calories at 2.5 times the rate as when they simply sat and typed. Pedaling didn't affect typing performance. Using a cycling workstation for 10 minutes every hour throughout a day could help desk workers lose weight and reduce the 27 of diabetes and cardiovascular (心血管的) disease, researchers said. 28 pedaling could improve cognitive function, they said. University of Utah researchers 29 10 normal-weight undergraduates and faculty members who reported spending 6.3 hours a day, on average, at a desk. Subjects, men ages 24 to 40, spent two 10-minute sessions 30 the Gettysburg Address. In one session, subjects pedaled and typed. In the other, they sat and typed. 31 were instructed to select a resistance level they could comfortably maintain for 32 periods without interfering with typing. Subjects burned 255 calories per hour pedaling and typing and 100 calories per hour sitting and typing. The exertion level was rated as very, very light. Transcription time 33 7.7 minutes while pedaling and 7.6 minutes while sitting. Subjects made an average of 3.3 and 3.8 errors in the pedaling and non-pedaling experiments, 34 Heart rate and oxygen 35 were substantially higher while pedaling and typing. The study was small and involved young fit men. A researcher is part owner in a company that is working with the university to develop a cycling workstation called an Active Desk. A. averaged B. consumption C. evaporating D. Intermittent E. Irritating F. issue G. lure H. Participants I. prolonged J. recruited K. respectively L. risk M. Superiors N. tentatively O. transcribing

单选题 Thirst grows for living unplugged More people are taking breaks from the connected life amid the stillness and quiet of retreats like the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. A．About a year ago, I flew to Singapore to join the writer Malcolm Gladwell, the fashion designer Marc Ecko and the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister in addressing a group of advertising people on 'Marketing to the Child of Tomorrow.' Soon after I arrived, the chief executive of the agency that had invited us took me aside. What he was most interested in, he began, was stillness and quiet. B．A few months later, I read an interview with the well-known cutting-edge designer Philippe Starck. What allowed him to remain so consistently ahead of the curve? 'I never read any magazines or watch TV,' he said, perhaps with a little exaggeration. 'Nor do I go to cocktail parties, dinners or anything like that.' He lived outside conventional ideas, he implied, because 'I live alone mostly, in the middle of nowhere.' C．Around the same time, I noticed that those who part with $2285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, California, pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I'm reliably told, lies in 'black-hole resorts,' which charge high prices precisely became you can't get online in their rooms. D．Has it really come to this? The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Internet rescue camps in Korea (ROK) and China try to save kids addicted to the screen. Writer friends of mine pay good money to get the Freedom software that enables them to disable the very Internet connections that seemed so emancipating not long ago. Even Intel experimented in 2007 with conferring four uninterrupted hours of quiet time (no phone or e-mail) every Tuesday morning on 300 engineers and managers. Workers were not allowed to use the phone or send e-mail, but simply had the chance to clear their heads and to hear themselves think. E．The average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen. Nicholas Carr notes in his book The Shallows. The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, though one girl managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month. Since luxury is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow will long for nothing more than intervals of freedom from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once. F．The urgency of slowing down—to find the time and space to think—is nothing new. Of course, and wiser sods have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, 'and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.' He also famously remarked that all of man's problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. G．When telegraphs and trains brought in the idea that convenience was more important than content, Henry David Thoreau reminded us that 'the man whose horse trots (奔跑) a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.' Marshall McLuhan, who came closer than most to seeing what was coming, warned, 'When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.' We have more and more ways to communicate, but less and less to say. Partly because we are so busy communicating. And we are rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines. H．So what to do? More and more people I know seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation (沉思), or tai chi (太极); these aren't New Age fads (时尚饰物) so much as ways to connect with what could be called the wisdom of old age. Two friends of mine observe an 'Internet sabbath (安息日)' every week, turning off their online connections from Friday night to Monday morning. Other friends take walks and 'forget' their cellphones at home. I．A series of tests in recent years has shown, Mr. Carr points out, that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects 'exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.' More than that, empathy (同感，共鸣), as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are 'inherently slow.' J．I turn to eccentric measures to try to keep my mind sober and ensure that I have time to do nothing at all (which is the only time when I can see what I should be doing the rest of the time). I have yet to use a cellphone and I have never Tweeted or entered Facebook. I try not to go online till my day's writing is finished, and I moved from Manhattan to rural Japan in part so I could more easily survive for long stretches entirely on foot. None of this is a matter of asceticism (苦行主义); it is just pure selfishness. Nothing makes me feel better than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, or music. It is actually something deeper than mere happiness: it is joy, which the monk (僧侣) David Steindl-Rast describes as 'that kind of happiness that doesn't depend on what happens.' K．It is vital, of course, to stay in touch with the world. But it is only by having some distance from the world that you can see it whole, and understand what you should be doing with it. For more than 20 years, therefore, I have been going several times a year—often for no longer than three days—to a Benedictine hermitage (修道院), 40 minutes down the road, as it happens, from the Post Ranch Inn. I don't attend services when I am there, and I have never meditated, there or anywhere; I just take walks and read and lose myself in the stillness, recalling that it is only by stepping briefly away from my wife and bosses and Mends that I will have anything useful to bring to them. The last time I was in the hermitage, three months ago, I happened to meet with a youngish-looking man with a 3-year-old boy around his shoulders. L．'You're Pico, aren't you?' the man said, and introduced himself as Larry; we had met, I gathered, 19 years before, when he had been living in the hermitage as an assistant to one of the monks. 'What are you doing now?' I asked. We smiled. No words were necessary. 'I try to bring my kids here as often as I can,' he went on. The child of tomorrow, I realized, may actually be ahead of us, in terms of sensing not what is new, but what is essential.