单选题To the writer, the fact that women alter their old-fashioned dress if seen as ______.

单选题Questions 22～25 are based on the following conversation.

单选题What do we learn from this passage about the visiting companies?

单选题 IQuestions 11-13 are based on the following dialogue./I

单选题Changes have come into museums. They are not places that one "should" go any longer but a place to get pleasure. If you go to a science museum in Canada, when harmless electricity passes through your body you can feel your hair stand on end. At the Children's Museum in New York, you can strike an African drum. In some other museums in the USA, "Do Not Touch" signs do not exist. It is realized by more and more museum directors that when becoming a part of what they are seeing, people get the best learning effect. Many science museums encourage visitors to touch, listen, operate as well as experiment in order that they can discover scientific rules by themselves. The intention of the change is not only to provide pleasure, but make people feel easy in the scientific world. Suppose you don't understand science, you will fear it; and when you fear science, you may not make the best use of it. The rise in wealth and spare time is one of the reasons for all these changes. Another reason is the increasing number of young people in the whole population. Among them are mainly college students or college graduates, with a new and totally different way of seeing the world. They want art which they can take part in. It's also true in science and history. Ancient museums have been changing and the government is encouraging to build new, modern museums. There are more than 6,000 museums in the United States and Canada, which are almost twice as it was 25 years ago.

单选题Where is this conversation probably taking place?

单选题Even today in the modern, developed world, surveys show that parents still prefer to have a boy rather than a girl. One longstanding reason why boys have been (26) as a greater blessing has been that they are (27) to ,become better economic providers (28) their parents' old age. Yet it is time for parents to (29) again. Girls may now be a better investment. Girls get better (30) at school than boys, and in most developed countries more women than men go to (31) . Women will thus be better (32) for the new jobs of the 21st century, in which brains (33) a lot more than physical strength. In Britain far more women than men are now (34) to become doctors. And women are more (35) to provide sound advice on investing their parents' nest egg. Surveys show that women consistently (36) higher financial returns than men do. (37) , the increase in female employment in the rich world has been the main (38) force of growth in the past couple of decades. Those women have (39) more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India. Add the (40) of housework and child-rearing, and women probably account (41) just over half of the world output. It is (42) that women still get paid less and few (43) it to the top o companies, but, (44) prejudice fades over coming years, women will have great scope to (45) their productivity and incomes.

单选题With only about 1,000 pandas left in the world, China is desperately trying to clone the animal and save the endangered species. That"s a move similar to what a Texas A&M University researcher has been undertaking for the past five years in a project called "Noah"s Ark." Dr. Duane Kraemer, a professor in Texas A&M"s College of Veterinary Medicine and a pioneer in embryo (胚胎) transfer work and related procedures, says he salutes the Chinese effort and "I wish them all the best success possible. It"s a worthwhile project, certainly not an easy one, and it"s very much like what we"re attempting here at Texas A&M — to save animals from extinction." Noah"s Ark is aimed at collecting eggs, embryos, semen (精子) and DNA of endangered animals and storing them in liquid nitrogen. If certain species should be come extinct, Kraemer says there would be enough of the basic building blocks to reintroduce the species in the future. It is estimated that as many as 2,000 species of mammals, birds and reptiles will become extinct over the next 100 years. The panda, native only to China, is in danger of becoming extinct in the next 25 years. This week, Chinese scientists said they grew an embryo by introducing cells from a dead female panda into the egg cells of a Japanese white rabbit. They are now trying to implant the embryo into a host animal. The entire procedure could take from three to five years to complete. "The nuclear transfer of one species to another is not easy, and the lack of available panda eggs could be a major problem," Kraemer believes. "They will probably have to do several hundred transfers to result in one pregnancy. It takes a long time and it"s difficult, but this could be groundbreaking science if it works. They are certainly not putting any live pandas at risk, so it is worth the effort," adds Kraemer, who is one of the leaders of the Missy plicity Project at Texas A&M, the first ever attempt at cloning a dog.

单选题Withwhomisthemanspeaking?

单选题You do not usually get something for nothing. Now, a new study reveals that the evolution of an improved learning ability could come at a particularly high price: an earlier death. Past experiments have demonstrated that it is relatively easy through selective breeding to make rats, honey bees and—that great favourite of researchers—fruit flies a lot better at learning. Animals that are better learners should be competitive and, thus, over time, come to dominate a population by natural selection. But improved learning ability does not get selected amongst these animals in the wild. No one really understands why. Tadeusz Kawecki and his colleagues at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland have measured the effects of improved learning on the lives of fruit flies. The flies were given two different fruits as egg-laying sites. One of these was laced with a bitter additive that could be detected only on contact. The flies were then given the same fruit but without an additive. Flies that avoided the fruit which had been bitter were deemed to have learned from their experience. Their children were reared and the experiment was run again. After repeating the experiment for 30 generations, the children of the learned flies were compared with normal flies. The researchers report in a forthcoming edition of Evolution that although learning ability could be bred into a population of fruit flies, it shortened their lives by 15%. When the researchers compared their learned flies to colonies selectively bred to live long lives, they found even greater differences. Whereas learned flies had reduced their life spans, the long-lived flies learned less well than even average flies. The authors suggest that evolving an improved learning ability may require a greater investment in the nervous system which takes resources away from processes that delay ageing. However, Dr. Kawecki thinks the effect could also be a by-product of greater brain activity increasing the production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), which can increase oxidation in the body and damage health. No one knows whether the phenomenon holds true for other animals. So, biologists, at least, still have a lot to learn.

单选题{{I}} Questions 18 ～21 are based on the monologue about taking care of dogs.{{/I}}

单选题Whatisthisconversationabout?

单选题We have to think very carefully before we take any action, because it's a very ______ situation we are in. A. ideal B. favourable C. good D. severe

单选题In the United States, there's a widespread belief that statistics don't lie. Perhaps that's why surveys are such an important part of American life. For many years, politicians, businesspeople, and scholars have used surveys to find out more about that mysterious and complicated creature, the human being. American newspapers and magazines have been taking public opinion polls since the 1800s. In the 1930s, poll experts such as Elmo Poper and George Gallup began using scientific methods to select and interview participants in political surveys. Since the 1940s, American businesspeople have been developing, naming, packaging, and promoting products with the help of surveys. And also since the 1940s, surveys have been a major research tool among scholars in the social sciences. Psychologists and sociologists have asked people about everything from their religious beliefs to their sexual behavior. The mass media have frequently reported the results of these surveys, and the American public has always been quite interested in the responses. However, the most complete and most important survey for Americans is the national census. A census is the official count of the number of people living in a city, state, or country. The idea of a census has existed for more than two thousand years. In ancient Rome, the government counted its citizens for purposes of taxation and military service. But the first modern census began here in the United States in 1790. In that year, the population of the new nation was 3 929 214. Since 1790, the American government has taken a census every ten years, and the population has been growing steadily every decade. The 1980 census reported a population of 226 504 825. In addition to statistics on the total population, the 1980 census has given us a great deal of information about recent changes in American life. One of the many important changes concerns where people live. Americans are still a mainly urban people with about 75 percent of the population living in or near large cities. But, since 1970, the small communities have been gaining population at a faster rate than the cities or suburbs. Americans have been moving back to the small towns and the rural areas. This is a dramatic change from the trend in preceding decades. Americans have always done a great deal of moving from one part of the country to another, but, in recent years, the moves have been mostly to the South and West. States in the "Sun Belt" have been gaining population, and states in the Northeast and the Midwest have been losing population. Marriage and family life have been changing, too. Americans have been marrying later, having fewer children, getting more divorces, and living more often as singles or as unmarried couples. The actual number of married couples has risen in recent years, but the percentage of married people has declined. Similarly, the number of actual births has gone up, but the size of the average family has gone down. The average young woman of today plans to have only two children. Along with many other surveys, the national census gives Americans a statistical picture of a changing society. It allows the government and the people to see what's happening and to adjust to the new picture.