单选题 Barter (易货贸易), the exchange of goods and services without the use of money, is not a new idea, but over the past decade, this type of transaction has been transformed into a sophisticated business practice. Today, the barter industry is composed of several thousand independent barter exchanges representing an estimated 100000 businesses worldwide turning over US $9 billion per annum. Through bartering, businesses in Asia, US, Australia and Europe have saved millions of dollars and were consistently able to move as much extra inventory (存货) as they want. But why is barter system back in style? There are many good reasons, but underlying them all is one fundamental business motivation: profit. Businesses can use barter to conserve cash, generate new business, and turn excess and idle inventory into useful products and services. Moreover, the rising inflation, job losses and the slowing economy have prompted an explosion of bartering where businesses as well as individuals can get what they want without spending any of their precious cash. The barter system enables traders to find new buyers of their products and services from the targeted universe of participants trading within a particular exchange. Barter exchanges are done by using a trade currency to measure the exchange of goods and services between businesses and individuals. Barter currency give people the ability to purchase a future good or service that equals the amount of barter currency they own. This method allows businesses as well as individuals to get the things they need without having to expend additional money. Instead, they can use the things they no longer need or want to get the things they do need. Bartering can also be used by businesses that are seasonal in nature such as resort hotels. A bartered hotel room is more cost effective than an empty one. Bartering thus allows businesses to capitalize on unproductive assets and spare capacity. With a large exchange, it is possible to barter pretty much anything. There are exchange markets and online auctions that allow businesses to sell or trade their inventory or to purchase items that they want such as: barterplant.com, a free online community for trading items, services, and knowledge; swaptree.com, which specializes in trading books, video games, DVDs, and music and swapstyle.com, which allows members to swap clothes, shoes, cosmetics, and accessories. Although cash still in control, barter industry experts think, there is more room for barter. They predict that the globalization of barter over the next decade will be powered by a universal barter currency. Having a barter currency, which does not go up and down depending on the stability or instability of the world markets, means that the future prospects of the barter industry look pretty bright.

单选题 Getting over Our Preference for Perfect Produce A. Lift, squeeze, sniff. It's a ritual millions of us perform every day in the produce aisle of the grocery store, rejecting the defective and irregular in search of an ideal seldom found on any farm. B. 40 percent of all food is never eaten, and this rejection of 'ugly food'—the misshapen or imperfect produce that gets thrown out before it ever hits the supermarket display—is a major contributor to food waste. Most of that waste happens on the consumer side: food rejected by shoppers or by the markets before it reaches their aisles, or rejected in restaurants before it reaches our tables. Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe's, thinks he has the answer. This summer he is opening a store in Boston, called Daily Table, that will make outdated and defective food friendly and attractive. His 'mixture of a grocery store and a restaurant'—with both fresh produce and prepared, 'speed-scratch' dishes with prechopped vegetables, cooked proteins and rice that's ready to eat, requiring just sauce and seasoning—is a pilot project attempting to recast the social norms of what's fresh, desirable and edible. C. The project grew out of a fellowship Rauch started at Harvard in 2010, following the end of his position at Trader Joe's. One in six Americans, he discovered, is not eating enough nutrients. 'They can't afford to get the food they need,' he explains, adding that what they eat is 'calorically dense, but nutritionally stripped'. The health care tsunami that follows—early-onset diabetes (糖尿病) and heart disease, even in children and teens; additional health care costs of half a trillion dollars over the next two decades due to rising obesity— makes it everyone's problem. Malnutrition, paired with the problem of food waste that he saw firsthand at Trader Joe's, got him thinking. D. At a recent conference in Washington, D.C., put on by the Partnership for a Healthier America, Rauch shared a panel called 'Feed Families Not Landfills' with Tim York of Markon, a company that distributes billions of dollars worth of produce across the U.S. 'He showed a photo of a field of romaine lettuce (长叶生菜)—10 acres of it, beautiful,' Rauch remembers. 'The photo was the field after the harvest. They'd harvested all the lettuce that was the right size for bagged lettuce, but there was a ton out there that was two inches too tall or too short, and that gets plowed under. All of the things that are not the right size, color, shape—a lot goes rotten, gets plowed under or goes to fertilizer.' E. Rauch wondered if he could open an attractive retail store, partner with grocers and producers to source the surplus food that might not be perfectly beautiful, present it well and price it competitively with junk food. A dime for an apple, say, instead of a buck? F. 'We let perfect be the enemy of the good: If we go into store and see a pumpkin that is defective or misshapen, we'll pick the one next to it,' Rauch says, 'but we make exceptions in two cases. One, we call it heirloom (传家宝). It can be ugly, and should be. And two is the farmers' market. You don't expect apples to look like they do at Whole Foods. You'd be suspicious. What's interesting is that we instinctively know that things in nature aren't supposed to look like this.' G. The idea at Daily Table is to create an atmosphere similar to a farmers market. 'In the real world, carrots will often have two legs rather than one, but you never see those in the grocery store, because they're almost always thrown out,' says Nathanael Johnson, food writer for Grist and the author of All Natural, a book that debates when 'natural' is really healthy. 'We've become so alienated from our farms that we can no longer assess the healthfulness of our food. Instead, people are attracted to external perfection.' H. Daily Table will also tackle the problem of sell-by date versus expiration date. 'When a grocer sells you a gallon of milk, if it says sell by April 2, it doesn't mean that you have to go home and drink it that night,' Rauch says. 'Generally, it will last a week after that. Most Americans don't know that. So we are disposing of perfectly good food that's healthy and wholesome.' Consumer education is part of his mission; the store will work with quality assurance food labs and manufacturers to determine conservative 'use-by' dates, giving customers information on what they mean, as well as plenty of time to use products. I. Europe is in the forefront when it comes to tackling ugly food. The EU has designated 2014 the 'European Year Against Food Waste'. After a British member of Parliament, Laura Sandys, set up a company to encourage the sale and use of odd fruits and vegetables—food should be valued for nutrition, she said, 'not whether it is fit for a catwalk'—the supermarket giant Sainsbury's changed rules governing the aesthetic appearance of its fresh produce. Last year, the rebranding of ugly food came to pass in Switzerland and Germany. The produce is cheaper, and goes fast. Recently, three German graduate students cooked up the idea for a fashionable grocery that sells only ugly fruit. J. A recent report commissioned by the U.K. global food security program shows that of a given crop of fruit or vegetables grown in the country, up to 40 percent is rejected because it doesn't meet retailer standards on size or shape. That's a sizable amount of the $31.3 billion of food that gets thrown away in Britain every year. American supermarkets lose $15 billion each year in unsold fruits and vegetables. American consumers like their apples red and their bananas unspotted, so grocery stores comply—sometimes even dyeing and cutting to fit. K. Changing mainstream culture to accept a curved cucumber has bigger implications than just cost. Given that 20 to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, food waste is a huge piece of the global climate problem. Last month, a new study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed scientists' deep concerns about dropping agricultural production—as much as 2 percent per decade for the rest of the century. The panel's researchers have also found that though minor improvements can be made to improve efficiency in agriculture, the real game changers will lie on the consumption side. L. 'The best forecasts I've seen suggest that we are going to have to double agricultural production by 2050,' says Johnson. 'Doing that without cutting down the rain forest is going to be a tremendous challenge— especially given that climate change is actually driving farm productivity down.' The single best idea for solving this problem, with the lowest costs and fewest trade-offs? Stop throwing away so much of the food we grow. M. So in the short term, the issue looks skin-deep: Ugly food is just as good as pretty food, and it's easier on the wallet. In the long term, a preference for ugly may support our global food supply. N. 'Is it possible to tell the story and have people better educated and smarter about buying food?' Ranch asks. 'The difference between that sell-by date and when the food is no longer edible can feed a huge population.' And in an environment in which healthy food is often priced at a premium, he's doing it at a price affordable to people who need it most. 'The doors,' he says, 'are open to everyone.'

单选题 Questions14-17 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题 An indigenous tribe in the Peruvian Amazon, the Mashco-Piro, has been trying to make contact with outsiders. In the past, the Mashco-Piro have always resisted interaction with strangers, avoiding—and sometimes killing—any they encounter. Most tribes have had a little, at least indirectly. 'There's always some contact with other isolated tribes, which have contact with other indigenous people, which in turn have contact with the outside world,' says Rebecca Spooner, of Survival International, a London-based organization that advocates for the rights of indigenous peoples. Many of the Amazon tribes choose to avoid contact with outsiders because they have had unpleasant encounters in the past. According to Glenn Shepard, an ethnologist at the Emilio Goeldi Museum in Belem, Brazil, this came after rubber companies massacred tribespeople at the turn of the 20th century. For this reason, some researchers refer to such tribes as 'voluntarily isolated', rather than uncontacted. More recent invasions, especially by miners, oil workers and loggers, may have reinforced the tribes' xenophobia (排外心理). A visiting New Scientist reporter was warned that any unclothed native should be regarded as uncontacted and, thus, very dangerous. In Peru, laws prohibit outsiders from initiating contact with isolated groups in most cases. They also provide protected areas where tribes can live in peace—but there are loopholes (漏洞) that allow oil and mining companies into the region. Brazil has similar laws and policies that allow contact only in life- threatening situations. Anthropologists have an ethical obligation to do no harm to their research subjects, according to the American Anthropological Association's Statement on Ethics. Often, they feel forced out by encroaching (逐渐渗透的) civilization, says Spooner. Survival International has documented some cases where settlements have been bulldozed (推倒) and tribespeople harassed—or even killed. This leaves the survivors feeling like they have no option but to give up. Others see a more benign (和善的) process at work, at least some of the time. 'Tribes may seek contact with outsiders because they begin to trust their intentions,' says Kim Hill, an anthropologist at Arizona State University. 'As soon as the tribes believe they might have some peaceful contact, all these groups want some outside interaction,' he says. 'It's a human trait to want to expand our contacts.' Modern medicine, metal tools and education can also exert a powerful pull. Often, there is a lot of disease because the tribespeople are exposed to novel germs. It is not uncommon for half the population to die of respiratory illness—unless outsiders bring sustained medical care, says Hill. Also, the newly integrated tribespeople frequently end up on the lowest rung of the society they join. Still. he says, when he interviews such people years later, 'I don't find anyone, pretty much, who would want to go back to the old situation.'

单选题For those anxious about committing to a master's degree, there is the post-baccalaureate (学士后) certificate. Usually a four- to seven-course, self-contained certificate provides 25 academic study, or job-specific skills training, with a minimum 26 of time and money, and potentially significant payback. Nearly 51000 people earned the certificate in 2010—a 46 percent increase in five years. For men, having the certificate adds an average 25 percent in earnings; for women, who tend toward less 27 fields such as teaching and health care, the 28 is an average 13 percent, according to research from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. About 3 percent of the workforce—or 4 million workers—have certificates. Certificates are market-driven. Colleges and universities, alert to evolving workplace requirements (and business opportunities in higher education), 29 gaps in education and training that appeal to adult students looking for a way to stand out or retool (重新安排) their careers. In some fields, especially health care, education, counseling, engineering and technology, certificates provide compulsory training for certain jobs or promotions, or make one 30 for higher pay scales. In other fields (arts management, interior design, public relations), the certificate shows interest and acquired knowledge in an area that is likely helpful in performing a job. Other certificates reflect 31 in areas so new, or quickly changing, that a demonstrated specialty can put a job applicant in front of the pack: homeland security, sports industry management. Some are purely 32 (African American studies), and some are training-specific (clinical research administration). If you can think of a specialty or job skill you want, there is probably a certificate, and a school-on-ground or online—that will qualify you in the subject. But it is a buyer-beware marketplace, education experts say. A certificate can run into the thousands of dollars (American University's 15-credit online digital media skills certificate costs $12000), so job 33 and schools should be researched before 34 on. A. academic B. boost C. distinguish D. eligible E. identify F. insisting G. investment H. involvement I. limitations J. prospects K. signing L. specialized M. specified N. strengths O. technical

单选题 中国长城(the Great wall)的历史可追溯到公元前5世纪。它建成于公元前5世纪到16世纪之间，目的是保护中国的北部边界。长城是中国历史的一个重要组成部分，对当今中国有着深远的影响。可以说，从某种意义上来看，长城就是历史。大多数人倾向于认为，长城是战争的产物(实际上是防御的产物)，因而其作用理应是和战争紧密相连。但是，情况并非如此。长城存在的大部分时期是和平时期而不是战争年代。大多数时候，长城与文化、外交政策和经济相关。

单选题 Honeybee populations declined by 13.6% over the winter, according to a survey of beekeepers across England. Losses were most severe in the north-east, where the survey recorded a loss rate of 17.1%. Experts worry that the declines will affect plant productivity. There are also concerns that the declines, along with drought conditions in some area, will mean less English honey this year. Martin Smith, president of the British Beekeepers Association, which carried out the survey, said: 'If this was measured against similar losses in livestock, it would be seen as disastrous and there would be great concern on the knock-on impact of food prices.' Beekeepers are puzzled by the decline because the cold winter and early spring should have favoured bees. They stay 'clustered' tightly in their hives when it is cold and dry, saving energy for spring foraging when the temperature rises about 12℃. However, there is good news that the rate of colony loss has slowed. Four years ago, one in three hives was wiped out. Beekeepers suspect that poor nutrition is a likely cause of weakness in adult bees that makes them succumb to diseases spread by a parasitic mite. 'The varroa mite is the number one reason why people lose bees, so the government needs to increase research to cure diseases caused by varroa,' said Smith. 'But a colony that has a good source of pollen and nectar will go into winter more strongly and better able to fend off disease.' The association is calling on everyone who has a garden, small, to plant bee-friendly plants this summer. 'It is really important that there are flowering nectar-rich plants around in August, September and October to provide the nutrition that's needed so the bees can top up their stores of honey in the hive to see them through winter,' said Smith. A campaign being launched next week to save all bees, spearheaded by Sam Roddick and Neal's Yard Remedies, pins the blame for the decline on pesticide. It will start a petition to hand to Downing Street in October to ban the use of a class of pesticides that has been implicated in bee deaths across the world. Roddick said, 'These neonicotinoid pesticides penetrate the plant and indiscriminately attack the nervous system of insects that feed off them, disorientating bees, impairing their foraging ability and weakening their immune system, causing bee Aids. On current evidence, Italy, Germany and Slovenia have banned some varieties. In the UK, it's up to the people to show the government that if there is any doubt that they are contributing to bee deaths, we need to ban them.' A spokesman for the government's National Bee Unit said: 'The UK has a robust system for assessing risks from pesticides and all evidence shows neonicotinoids do not pose an unacceptable risk when products are used correctly, but we will not hesitate to act if presented with any new evidence.'

单选题 Questions6-9 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题 It may seem ridiculous, but in the hunt for sources of alternative energy researchers have come up with fuel cells which are powered by cheese—or at least whey, a by-product in cheese making. Whey is rich in lactose, a sugar which Georgia Antonopoulou, a biochemical engineer at the University of Patras, Greece, says can be consumed by cultures of bacteria contained within a fuel cell to generate an electric current. Microbial fuel cells, as such devices are known, are not a new idea but they are attracting more attention. The organic contents of whey pose an environmental hazard and many governments now impose strict regulations requiring factories to pay for its treatment before disposal. Whey constitutes about 70% of the volume of the milk were used to make cheese. So, just one small feta facility will need to dispose of as such as 4,000 tonnes of whey in a single year, says Dr Antonopoulou. Microbial fuel cells could help, and not just in the cheese-making industry. Breweries, pig farms, food-processing plants and even sewage works could gain from the technology. Traditional fuel cells work by using a catalytic material to oxidize a fuel, such as hydrogen, and make an electric current flow between two electrodes. Microbial fuel cells function in much the same way except that the catalytic reactions are carried out by bacteria contained within the fuel-cell chamber. Under anaerobic conditions (where oxygen is absent), metabolising the fuel by feeding off it and in doing so produce natural chemical reactions that produce a current. In theory microbial fuel cells can run on almost any kind of organic matters, says Chris Melhuish, head of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, England. 'All you have to do is match the microbial culture with the type of stuff you want to use as fuel,' he says. Dr Melhuish has been trying to power robots on domestic waste-water, but it is tricky. Ideally you would want to use cheap raw-waste products, he says. But traditionally the fuel cells work best with a refined fuel in the form of solutions containing synthetic sugars, such as glucose. However, Dr Antonopoulou has now shown that, using a culture of bacteria obtained from her local waste-water plant, it is possible to get almost as much power from raw whey as from refined fuel, provided the whey is diluted. The trouble is the power output still only amounts to milliwatts, barely enough to trickle-charge a cellphone. And working with raw waste water also presents challenges. Initially Dr Antonopoulou and her colleagues found that the coulombic efficiency of their cells-a measure of how many electrons produced actually flow into a circuit-was particularly low, at around just 2%. This turned out to be because a second set of microbes, within the whey itself, was absorbing them. So, by sterilizing the whey first to kill these other bugs they have now boosted the coulombic efficiency to around 25%.

单选题 Now listen to the following recording and answer questions19-21.

单选题 Space exploration has always been the province of dreamers: The human imagination readily soars where human ingenuity (创造力) struggles to follow. A Voyage to the Moon, often cited as the first science fiction story, was written by Cyrano de Bergerac in 1649. Cyrano was dead and buried for a good three centuries before the first manned rockets started to fly. In 1961, when President Kennedy declared that America would send a man to the moon by the decade's end, those words, too, had a dreamlike quality. They resonated (共鸣) with optimism and ambition in much the same way as the most famous dream speech of all, delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. two years later. By the end of the decade, both visions had yielded concrete results and transformed American society. And yet in many ways the two dreams ended up at odds with each other. The fight for racial and economic equality is intensely pragmatic (讲求实用的) and immediate in its impact. The urge to explore space is just the opposite. It is figuratively and literally otherworldly in its aims. When the dust settled, the space dreamers lost out. There was no grand follow-up to the Apollo missions. The technologically compromised space shuttle program has just come to an end, with no successor. The perpetual argument is that funds are tight, that we have more pressing problems here on Earth. Amid the current concerns about the federal deficit, reaching toward the stars seems a dispensable luxury—as if saving one-thousandth of a single year's budget would solve our problems. But human ingenuity struggles on. NASA is developing a series of robotic probes that will get the most bang from a buck. They will serve as modern Magellans, mapping out the solar system for whatever explorers follow, whether man or machine. On the flip side, companies like Virgin Galactic are plotting a bottom-up assault on the space dream by making it a reality to the public. Private spaceflight could lie within reach of rich civilians in a few years. Another decade or two and it could go mainstream. The space dreamers end up benefiting all of us—not just because of the way they expand human knowledge, or because of the spin-off technologies they produce, but because the two types of dreams feed off each other. Both Martin Luther King and John Kennedy appealed to the idea that humans can transcend what were once considered inherent limitations. Today we face seeming challenges in energy, the environment, health care. Tomorrow we will transcend these as well, and the dreamers will deserve a lot of the credit. The more evidence we collect that our species is capable of greatness, the more we will actually achieve it.

单选题 Questions9-12 are bused on the passage you have just heard.

单选题When my mother's health was failing, I was the 'bad' sister who lived far away and wasn't involved. My sister helped my parents. She never asked me to do anything, and I didn't 27 . I was widowed, raising kids and working, but that wasn't really why I kept to weekly calls and short, infrequent visits. I was 28 in my adolescent role as the aloof (超脱的) achiever, defending myself from my 29 mother and other family craziness. As always, I turned a deaf ear to my sister's criticisms about my not being around more—and I didn't hear her rising desperation. It wasn't until my mom's 30 , watching my dad and sister cling to each other and weep, that I got a hint of their long painful experience—and how badly I'd behaved. My sister was so furious, she 31 spoke to me during my father's last years. To be honest, I'm not a terrible person. So how did I get it so wrong? We hear a lot about the 32 of taking care of our graying population. But the big story beneath the surface is the psychological crisis among middle-aged siblings (兄弟姐妹) who are fighting toward issues involving their aging parents. According to a new survey, an estimated 43.5 million adults in the US are looking after an older 33 or friend. Of these, 43% said they did not feel they had a 34 in this role. And although 7 in 10 said another unpaid caregiver had 35 help in the past year, only 1 in 10 said the burden was split equally. As siblings who are often separated geographically and emotionally, we are having to come together to decide such 36 issues as where Mom and Dad should live and where they should be buried. 'It's like being put down with your siblings in the center of a nuclear reactor and being told, 'Figure it out,' 'says University of Colorado psychologist Sara Honn Quails. A. stuck B. funeral C. provided D. tough E. costs F. volunteer G. relative H. judgmental I. choice J. barely K. flung L. randomly M. noisy N. adapt O. attach