单选题 Mathematical ability and musical ability may not seem on the surface to be connected, but people who have researched the subject and studied the brain say that they are. Three quarters of the bright but speech-delayed children in the group I studied had a close relative who was an engineer, mathematician or scientist, and four fifths had a close relative who played a musical instrument. The children themselves usually took readily to math and other analytical subjects and to music. Black, white and Asian children in this group show the same patterns. However, it is clear that blacks have been greatly overrepresented in the development of American popular music and greatly underrepresented in such fields as mathematics, science and engineering. If the abilities required in analytical fields and in music are so closely related, how can there be this great discrepancy? One reason is that the development of mathematical and other such abilities requires years of formal schooling, while certain musical talents can be developed with little or no formal training, as has happened with a number of well-known black musicians. It is precisely in those kinds of music where one can acquire great skill without formal training that blacks have excelled popular music rather than classical music, piano rather than violin, blues rather than opera. This is readily understandable, given that most blacks, for most of American history, have not had either the money or the leisure for long years of formal study in music. Blacks have not merely held their own in American popular music. They have played a disproportionately large role in the development of jazz, both traditional and modern. A long string of names comes to mind—Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin, W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker...and so on. None of this indicates any special innate ability of blacks in music. On the contrary, it is perfectly consistent with blacks having no more such inborn ability than anyone else, but being limited to being able to express such ability in narrower channels than others who have had the money, the time and the formal education to spread out over a wider range of music, as well as into mathematics, science and engineering.

单选题Did Sarah Josepha Hale write 'Mary's Little Lamb,' the eternal nursery rhyme (儿歌) about a girl named Mary with a stubborn lamb? This is still disputed, but it's clear that the woman 27 for writing it was one of America's most fascinating 28 . In honor of the poem's publication on May 24, 1830, here's more about the 29 author's life. Hale wasn't just a writer, she was also a 30 social advocate, and she was particularly 31 with an ideal New England, which she associated with abundant Thanksgiving meals that she claimed had 'a deep moral influence.' She began a nationwide 32 to have a national holiday declared that would bring families together while celebrating the 33 festivals. In 1863, after 17 years of advocacy including letters to five presidents, Hale got it. President Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War, issued a 34 setting aside the last Thursday in November for the holiday. The true authorship of 'Mary's Little Lamb' is disputed. According to the New England Historical Society, Hale wrote only part of the poem, but claimed authorship. Regardless of the author, it seems that the poem was 35 by a real event. When young Mary Sawyer was followed to school by a lamb in 1816, it caused some problems. A bystander named John Roulstone wrote a poem about the event, then, at some point, Hale herself seems to have helped write it. However, if a 1916 piece by her great-niece is to be trusted, Hale claimed for the 36 of her life that 'some other people pretended that someone else wrote the poem'. A. campaign B. career C. characters D. features E. fierce F. inspired G. latter H. obsessed I. proclamation J. rectified K. reputed L. rest M. supposed N. traditional O. versatile

单选题Money can buy happiness, but only if you spend it on someone else, researchers reported. Spending as little as $5 a day on someone else could significantly 26 happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School found. Their experiments on more than 630 Americans showed they were 27 happier when they spent money on others—even if they thought spending the money on themselves would make them 28 . 'We wanted to test our theory that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they 29 ,' said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. They asked their 600 volunteers first to 30 their general happiness, report their annual income and detail their monthly spending including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity. ' 31 of how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not,' Dunn said in a statement. Dunn's team also surveyed 16 employees at a company in Boston before and after they received an annual profit-sharing 32 of between $3,000 and $8,000. 'Employees who 33 more of their bonus to pro-social spending experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a more important 34 of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself,' they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science. They gave their volunteers $5 or $20 and half got clear 35 on how to spend it. Those who spent the money on someone or something else reported feeling happier about it. A. wealthier B. boost C. rate D. actually E. focused F. earn G. devoted H. bonus I. regardless J. discuss K. predictor L. instruction M. happier N. In spite O. improve

单选题 Before 1965 many scientists pictured the circulation of the ocean's water mass as consisting of large, slow-moving currents, such as the Gulf Stream. That view, based on 100 years of observations made around the globe, produced only a rough approximation of the true circulation. But in the 1950's and the 1960's, researchers began to employ newly developed techniques and equipment, including subsurface floats that move with ocean currents and emit identification signals, and ocean current meters that record data for months at fixed locations in the ocean. These instruments disclosed an unexpected level of variability in the deep ocean. Rather than being characterized by smooth, large-scale currents that change seasonally (if at all), the seas are dominated by what oceanographers call mesoscale fields: fluctuating, energetic flows whose velocity can reach ten times the mean velocity of the major currents. Mesoscale phenomena—the oceanic analogue of weather systems—often extend to distances of 100 kilometers and persist for 100 days (weather systems generally extend about 1,000 kilometers and last 3 to 5 days in any given area). More than 90 percent of the kinetic energy of the entire ocean may be accounted for by mesoscale variability rather than by large scale currents. Mesoscale phenomena may, in fact, play a significant role in oceanic mixing, air-sea interactions, and occasional—but far-reaching—climatic events such as El Nino, the atmospheric-oceanic disturbance in the equatorial Pacific that affects global weather patterns. Unfortunately, it is not feasible to use conventional techniques to measure mesoscale fields. To measure them properly, monitoring equipment would have to be laid out on a grid at intervals of at most 50 kilometers, with sensors at each grid point lowered deep in the ocean and kept there for many months. Because using these techniques would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming, it was proposed in 1979 that tomography be adapted to measuring the physical properties of the ocean. In medical tomography X-rays map the human body's density variations (and hence internal organs); the information from the X-rays, transmitted through the body along many different paths, is recombined to form three-dimensional images of the body's interior. It is primarily that this multiplicative increase in data obtained from the multipath transmission of signals that accounts for oceanographers' attraction to tomography: it allows the measurement of vast areas with relatively few instruments. Researchers reasoned that low-frequency sound waves, because they are so well described mathematically and because even small perturbations in emitted sound waves can be detected, could be transmitted through the ocean over many different paths and that the properties of the ocean's interior—its temperature, salinity, density, and speed of currents—could be deduced on the basis of how the ocean altered the signals. Their initial trials were highly successful, and ocean acoustic tomography was born.

单选题 农历五月初五是端午节，这个节日在中国已有两千多年的历史。端午节起源于对伟大爱国诗人屈原的纪念(commemorate)活动。千百年来，人们用吃粽子和赛龙舟这两种形式来庆祝这个节日。粽子是端午节最受欢迎的食物。如今，粽子有各种各样的形状和馅料。赛龙舟是这个节日必不可少的一部分，在河流湖泊众多的南方更是如此。更重要的是，端午节也是一个爱国节日，会提醒人们忠于国家和为国奉献的重要意义。现在，龙舟比赛已经在世界各地流行开来。

单选题Directions:Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteanessaybasedonthepicturebelow.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepictureandthendiscusstheimportanceofpositiveattitude.Youshouldgivesoundargumentstosupportyourviewsandwriteatleast150wordsbutnomorethan200words.

单选题 The Dodge Brothers A. It was 100 years ago this week that the Dodge brothers founded the powerful car brand that still bears their name. But few have heard the tale of how the two-fisted brothers started their business in Canada. John and Horace Dodge spent nearly eight years working in Windsor as machinists, founding their first company here, and learning how to massively produce manufactured goods. B. The Evans Dodge Bicycle Company is nearly forgotten now. But it taught the brothers how to run a leading-edge technology business—which it was in those days, says Windsor automotive historian Mickey Moulder. After selling out to CCM in 1900, the brothers took $7,500 in capital out of the little Windsor Company back to Detroit and founded Dodge Brothers. So laid the foundation of the gigantic fortune they managed to produce before both dying in 1920. C. What a pair the quarrelling Dodge brothers were, with their red hair, their barrel chests and tendency for heavy boozing and bar fighting. Horace was the quieter mechanical brain, doggedly working out problems on his work bench with a micrometer until midnight. John was the play boy, the salesman, the spokesman for the both of them. Although born four years apart, John in 1864 Horace in 1868, they were inseparable. Which is what brought them to Windsor. They had moved to Detroit from rural Niles, Mich., in 1886 at ages 22 and 18, taking jobs in the same factory, Murphy's Boiler Works. If they needed any toughening up, which is doubtful, they learned it there and the nearby waterfront taverns. D. But a fit of tuberculosis eventually made the heavy work impossible for John, so in 1892 he came to Windsor looking for lighter duties at the Dominion Typograph Company on Sandwich Street (now Riverside Drive). E. According to family legend, the owners of the company, located in the Medbury Block just west of Ouellette Avenue, wanted to hire only one machinist. But John announced both he and Horace would be hired as a team or neither of them would work in Canada. The two leading technologies of the day were typesetting machines and bicycles. And Dominion happened to make both. That especially suited Horace. F. Moulder, a car collector and former Ford of Canada executive, has been a lifelong student of automotive history. He's also co-chairman of the Canadian Transportation Museum in Essex, and he tells the Dodge story with enthusiasm. 'Bicycles were the high-tech mechanical device of the 1880s and 1890s. Everybody and the two brothers (literally) were fascinated by them,' Moulder says, 'The Dodge brothers, the Leland brothers (Cadillac, Lincoln) and the Wright brothers all built bicycles before their gasoline machines'. G. John became foreman at Dominion Typograph, Horace a 'skilled machinist,' according to the Windsor City Directory of 1894. Within five years its owner, Fred Evans, had taken in the brothers as full partners and they devoted themselves to building bicycles exclusively. H. Their products were known for being extremely smooth, reliable and robust, just as their cars would be a few years later. By November, 1897, Evans Dodge employed 100 people in Windsor. I. But the overpopulated bicycle industry began consolidating, and Evans and Dodge decided to sell. Although John had married a Canadian from Walkerton, Ont, and Horace was married on his lunch-break at a church in Walkerville, the Dodges had never lived in Windsor. So they took their little nest egg back to Detroit and rented a new shop. They started taking orders for difficult-to-machine parts. Business took off due to high quality work and respect for deadlines. J. Their first big customer: Ransom Olds, father of the first mass produced American automobile. They built engines and transmissions for him, quickly making big money. 'The Dodge brothers got a reputation for being really, really good suppliers,' Moulder says. K. Henry Ford came knocking next, and they were soon supplying him with nearly complete cars. Ford was broke, was a poor machinist and couldn't make much himself. 'The Dodge brothers essentially provided the heart and soul of the first Ford cars built in 1903 and 1904,' Moulder says. 'The running chassis (底盘) was made by Dodge Brothers. Ford just put on the fenders, the windshield, the headlights, the seats, dressed it up. Ford didn't make its own first car. Dodge Brothers did. And that's why Ford became so well known, because the car was so welt built'. L. 'They were geniuses. They were tough bastards, too,' says Moulder. 'They were big guys, and you didn't cross either of them or badmouth them because they'd hear about it. And if they happened to see you in a bar at the wrong time—even if you were a lawyer—after they had a few drinks in them ... The Dodges would either drag the offending party out into the street for their punishment or break up the whole bar. Then next morning they'd come back and pay for all the damages. They were tough birds, which is why they took on Henry Ford. Everybody else was afraid of him, but they took him on and won.' M. Ford's defeat in a dispute over stocks the Dodges owned in his company came in the form of a lawsuit which netted the Dodges $25 million—more than enough to launch their own car brand in 1914. They started by incorporating all the ideas Henry Ford had rejected. Technologically, they were well ahead of the pack. N. 'We've got a beautiful Dodge Brothers car, a 1920 four door sedan,' Moulder says. It's on permanent display at the Transportation Museum on the Arner Town Line. 'It's full of advances that you would never find on any other car at the time.' For instance: the first metal weather stripping to keep rain out of the passenger compartment, the first one-piece roof stampings, the first silent starters, and the first 12-volt electrical systems. A Dodge always started in the cold due to those 12-volt systems, which is why the rest of the world eventually followed suit, Moulder says. O. The brothers got to enjoy quite a bit of their vast wealth, building castle-like mansions outside Detroit and commissioning giant yachts. But their premature deaths at ages 55 and 52 shocked the world at the time. John sat for days on end at Horace's bedside when his younger brother was stricken by the Spanish flu, leaving only when he himself collapsed from it, dying a few days later. Horace rallied and lived a few more months before following his beloved older brother into a crypt in the family's huge tomb in Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery. John's Canadian wife ran Dodge Brothers the company until 1925, selling out for $147 million to a Wall Street investment firm, which flipped it three years later to Walter P. Chrysler for $175 million.

单选题 Looking in from abroad, much of the world has historically been baffled by America's gun laws. In no other country can a mentally unstable person access a Glock pistol as easily as suspected Arizona shooter Jared Loughner did. And in no other country is the number of people who own guns as high as in the United States, where there are 90 guns for every 100 people. The Second Amendment that guarantees the right to bear arms is part of America's founding fabric. So is senseless violence brought about by guns also American? That was the question posed at today's White House press briefing by Russian journalist Andrei Sitov, the Washington Bureau chief for Moscow-based Itar-Tass. Predictably, the question irked (惹恼) many in the room, including White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. 'I think there's agreement on all sides of the political spectrum that violence is never, ever acceptable,' Gibbs said from the podium. What happened in Tucson 'was not in keeping with the important bedrock (基础的) values on which this country was founded,' he said. Several other reporters scoffed (嘲笑) at the suggestion as well. But much more scoffing over the last week came from overseas, where foreign news agencies reacted to the Tucson tragedy with an element of saying 'we could have predicted this'. 'The Tucson shooting, in which Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head, is another tragic commentary on the poisonous political climate that has developed in the United States, allied to the country's pervasive gun culture,' read an editorial published in New Zealand. In The Sydney Morning Herald, journalist Rod Tiffen stated what seems like an obvious point missed over the past week: 'There is a strong correlation between the number of guns in a society and deaths resulting from them.' Ed Pilkington, a writer for the UK's Guardian asked it more simply, 'What is it with guns and America? Why does the most advanced democracy, which prides itself on being a bastion of reason and civilisation in a brutal and ugly world, put up with this carnage in its own backyard?' Is Sitov right? Is occasional violent tragedy an unpleasant byproduct of a free society? I walked out of the briefing room with Sitov, who appeared to realise the impact that his question had on the roomful of Americans. 'It's an obvious question and nobody asks that question,' he told me through his thick Russian accent. 'This is a cost that your country pays for freedom.'

单选题 'Does my smile look big in this?' Future fitting-room mirrors in clothing stores could subtly adjust your reflection to make you look—and hence feel—happier, encouraging you to like what you see. That's the idea behind the Emotion Evoking System developed by Shigeo Yoshida and colleagues at the University of Tokyo in Japan. The system can manipulate your emotions and personal preferences by presenting you with an image of your own smiling or frowning face. The principle that physiological (生理的) changes can drive emotional ones—that laughter comes before happiness, rather than the other way around—is a well-established idea. The researchers wanted to see if this idea could be used to build a computer system that manipulates how you feel. The system works by presenting the user with a webcam (网络摄像头) image of his or her face—as if they were looking in a mirror. The image is then subtly altered with software, turning the comers of the mouth up or down and changing the area around the eyes, so that the person appears to smile or frown. Without telling them the aim of the study, the team recruited 21 volunteers and asked them to sit in front of the screen while performing an unrelated task. When the task was complete the participants rated how they felt. When the faces on screen appeared to smile, people reported that they felt happier. Conversely, when the image was given a sad expression, they reported feeling less happy. Yoshida and his colleagues tested whether manipulating the volunteers' emotional state would influence their preferences. Each person was given a scarf to wear and again presented with the altered webcam image. The volunteers that saw themselves smiling while wearing the scarf were more likely to report that they liked it, and those that saw themselves not smiling were less likely. The system could be used to manipulate consumers' impressions of products, say the researchers. For example, mirrors in clothing-store fitting rooms could be replaced with screens showing altered reflections. They also suggest people may be more likely to find clothes attractive if they see themselves looking happy while trying them on. 'It's certainly an interesting area,' says Chris Creed at the University of Birmingham, UK. But he notes that using such technology in a shop would be harder than in the lab, because people will use a wide range of expressions. 'Attempting to make slight differences to these and ensuring that the reflected image looks believable would be much more challenging,' he says. Of course, there are also important ethical questions surrounding such subtly manipulative technology. 'You could argue that if it makes people happy what harm is it doing?' says Creed. 'But I can imagine that many people may feel manipulated, uncomfortable and cheated if they found out.'

单选题Women in 2011 made no significant in winning more top US business jobs, according to study, but the head of the study said women are poised to make 31 in the year ahead. The number of women who were board directors, corporate officers or top earners at Fortune 500 companies remained 32 unchanged, said the study by Catalyst, a nonprofit group that 33 opportunities for women in business. The percentage of companies with women on the board of directors was 15.1 percent this year, compared with 14.8 percent in 2010, Catalyst said. Also, the percentage of corporate officer positions 34 by women was 15.7 percent in 2011 and 15.4 percent in 2011, it said. The percentage of top earners in 2011who were women was 6.2 percent, compared to 6.7 percent in 2010, it said. The research on the Fortune 500 companies was 35 on data as March 31, 2011. The slight changes in the numbers are not considered 36 significant, Catalyst said. Nevertheless, given the changes in U.S. politics, the future for women in business looks more 37 , said Ilene Lang, president and chief executive 38 of Catalyst. “Overall we're 39 to see change next year,” Lang said. “When we look at shareholders, decision makers, the general public, they're looking for change.” “What they're basically saying is, ‘Don't give us 40 of the status quo(现状). Get new ideas in there., get some fresh faces,'” she said. A. officer B. changes C. based D. positions E. more F. promising G. businesslike H. surveying I. essentially J. strides K. promotes L. statistically M. confused N. held O. expecting