How does a whale keep itself warm? How does a whale keep itself warm?

What is the most fundamental difference between plants and animals? What is the most fundamental difference between plants and animals?

Read the following text(s) and write an essay to 1) summarize the main points of the text(s), 2)make clear your own viewpoints, and 3) justify your stand. In your essay, make full use of the information provided in the text(s). If you use more than three consecutive words from the text(s), use quotation marks(" "). You should write 160 -200 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Plastic, it seems, is no longer fantastic. Even Hollywood, that factory of artifice, is demanding a return to reality when it comes to women's bodies. Disney Studio' s recent casting call for female extras for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film included a surprise announcement; "Must have real breasts. Do not submit if you have implants. " Surgically enhanced breasts might still be considered sexy or essential by airhead starlets and models, but the new buzzword in America is "authenticity". That' s why, for women in the public eye, having fake breasts is looking increasingly less like a career move and more like career suicide. Another indication that fake breasts are going bust is the fact that television shows such as Extreme Makeover and The Swan (TV which promised to nip and tuck ordinary women into goddesses) have been cancelled, while statistics from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery show that the number of breast enlargements in America fell from 365,000 to 312,000 last year. In many surveys, research has shown that the larger the breasts, the more stupid a woman is considered to be. Other women, meanwhile, consider women with large breasts as a threat—so having a surgical enhancement is a lose-lose situation. Chantelle Houghton (from Big Brother remember her?) almost immediately regretted getting implants to boost her chest and admits that they were "taking over her life" , and she had to resort to physiotherapy to deal with the back pain they caused. Even Sharon Osborne, voted the queen of nip and tuck, said recently: "I wish I'd never had my breasts done. It's like having a waterbed on your chest. I hate them. I want to have the bags taken out—then I'll put them on eBay. " The more stories we hear like this the better, because then perhaps young women will realize that large breasts aren' t the assets they thinkthey are—or Hollywood has made them out to be.

More than 30,000 drivers and passengers who sit in the front of the vehicles are killed or seriously injured each year. At a speed of only 30 miles per hour it is the same as falling from a third-floor building. Wearing a seat belt saves lives: it reduces your chance of death or serious injury by more than a half. Therefore drivers or front seat passengers over 14 in most vehicles must wear a seat belt. If you do not, you will be fined up to ￡ 50. It will not be up to the drivers to make sure you wear your belt. But it will be the driver's responsibility to make sure that children under 14 do not ride in the front unless they are wearing a seat belt of some kind. However, when you're reversing your car, you do not have to wear a seat belt; or when you are making a local delivery or collection using a special vehicle; or if you have a valid medical certificate which excuses you from wearing it. Make sure these circumstances apply to you before you decide not to wear your seat belt. Remember that you may be taken to court for not doing so, and you may be fined if you cannot prove that you have been excused from wearing it.

In the 1960s the West Coast became an important center for rock music. Los Angeles and Southern California are famous for sunshine and surfing. There, a quieter kind of rock called surf rock became famous. The Beach Boys sang songs like "Surfin' U. S. A. " , "California Girls" and "Fun, Fun, Fun". These songs made people dream about the good life in California. San Francisco was a center for young people and rock music in the late 1960s. This was the time of the Vietnam War, student protest, hippies, and drugs. Hippies talked about love and peace. They wore brightly colored clothes and had long hair. They listened to rock and folk-rock music. Drugs were a serious problem during that time. The deaths of three young rock stars, Janis Jo-pling, Jim Morrison and the great guitar player Jimi Hendrix were all related to drugs. Not all of the rock musicians came from California or the U. S. A. . That was the time of the great British rock groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. British rock musicians had a very important place in the rock music of the 1960s in America. Another kind of softer rock music was created by the singers. Singers like Joni Mitchell and James Taylor wrote their own lyrics and their own music. Their songs were about love and friendship, good and bad times. In the 1960s big rock concerts were very welcomed by everyone. The most famous concert was Woodstock. In 1969 in New York State, a million young people came together to hear the rock stars. This peaceful Woodstock concert was the most important musical event of the 1960s. After World War II a great number of black people moved from the South to the big industrial cities like New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia. Many black people lived in poor parts of the city such as Harlem in New York. Musicians wrote and sang about life in the big cities. Life was difficult but music and dancing made it a little easier. Popular black music had a strong beat for dancing. At first this music was called rhythm and blues. The 1960s called it soul. In Detroit, a black musician named Berry Gordy set up an all black record company. It was called Motown. Motown or motor town is another name for Detroit, where cars are made. Most of the famous soul musicians like the Supremes, the Temptations, and the Jackson Five recorded with Motown.

"Intelligence"at best is an assumptive construct — the word' s meaning has never been clear. 【T1】There is more agreement on the kinds of behavior referred to by the term than there is on how to interpret or classify them. But it is generally agreed that a person who has high intelligence is one who can grasp ideas readily, make distinctions, reason logically, and use verbal and mathematical symbols in solving problems. An intelligence test is a rough measure of a child's capacity for learning, particularly for learning the kinds of things required in school. It does not measure character, social adjustment, physical endurance, manual skills, or artistic abilities. It is not supposed to — it was not designed for such purposes. 【T2】To criticize it for such failure is roughly comparable to criticizing a thermometer for not measuring wind velocity. The other thing we should notice is that the assessment of the intelligence of any subject is essentially a comparative affair. 【T3】Now since the assessment of intelligence is a comparative matter we must be sure that the scale with which we are comparing our subjects provides a "valid" or "fair" comparison. It is here that some of the difficulties which interest us begin. Any test performed involves at least three factors: the intention to do one's best, the knowledge required for understanding what you must do, and the intellectual ability to do it. 【T4】The first two must be equal for all who are being compared, if any comparison in terms of intelligence is to be made. In school populations in our culture these assumptions can be made fair and reasonable, and the value of intelligence testing has been proved thoroughly. Its value lies, of course, in its providing a satisfactory basis for prediction. Nobody is in the least interested in the marks a little child gets on his test; what we are interested in is whether we can conclude from his mark on the test that the child will do better or worse than other children of his age at tasks which we think require"general intelligence". 【T5】On the whole, such a conclusion can be drawn with a certain degree of confidence, but only if the child can be assumed to have had the same attitude towards the test as the other with whom he is being compared, and only if he was not punished by lack of relevant information which they possessed.

阅读理解Many publications made private inquiries before presidential election, generally by means of questionnaires sent to subscribers and by telephone surveys. The principle common to all these inquiries was that they depended on quantity rather than quality; little effort was made to reach representatives of all segments of the population. Still, the erroneous belief persisted that the greater the number of questionnaires, the more accurate the results would be. The record was held by the American monthly Literary Digest, which sent out millions of postcards with short and pointed questions before each election, and received many hundreds of thousands of replies. In fact, in 1932, the Literary Digest''s forecast was off by only 1%. In view of such striking achievements, it seemed rather improper for the young American journalist, George Gallup, to claim that large numbers were irrelevant, and that equally accurate or better predictions could be made with a small but carefully selected sample of the population and a small team of skilled interviewers. In 1936, Gallup convinced thirty-five newspaper editors that his system was much cheaper than the customary mass inquiries and that it could provide surprisingly accurate predictions. The editors finally agreed. On condition that if Gallup''s predictions were less accurate than those obtained by the tried method of the Literary Digest, he would have to refund the entire cost of the investigation. Although the Literary Digest broke its own record by obtaining two million replies to its electoral postcards that year, its prediction was wrong by 19% , whereas Gallup''s was off by less than 1 % . Suddenly Gallup''s name was on everyone''s lips. Not only was he the prophet of the moment, but it was generally conceded that he had founded a new and most important scientific method of prediction. He was showered with money and commissions, and the Gallup Poll becomes a common term for public opinion polls. Gallup usually samples his subjects according to six factors: state, size of community, age, sex, income, and political affiliation. From time to time, other factors may be considered, during time of war, for instance, the national origins of electors may be taken into account. Only when the composition of the electorate has been accurately determined can the purely arithmetical question — how many people in each bracket must be interviewed — be solved. Once this is done, laws of probability take over, and the more people interviewed, the more exact the estimates will be. However, above a certain maximum number of interviews, the accuracy increases by no more than a fractional percentage — and where errors of up to 2% are permissible, a few thousand questionnaires will accurately reflect the opinions of the total United States electorate. Gallup''s method of sampling the electorate was successful. Before Gallup, political predictions were no more than shots in the dark, and it is as a result of his achievement that today we can make truly scientific forecasts in this difficult field.

阅读理解A smart man once said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. So, as a policeman , I have some urgent things to say to good people. Days after days my men and I struggle to stop a tidal wave of crime. Something has gone terribly wrong with our once-proud American way of life. It has happened in the area of values. A principle ingredient is disappearing, and I think I know what it is: accountability. Accountability isn''t hard to define. It means that every person is responsible for his or her actions and liable for their consequences. Of the many values that hold civilization together ― honesty, kindness, and so on ― accountability may be the most important of all. Without it, there can be no respect, no trust, no law ― and, ultimately, no society. My job as a policeman is to impose accountability on people who refuse, or have never learned, to impose it on themselves. But as every policeman knows, external controls on people'' s behavior are far less effective than internal restraints such as guilt, shame and embarrassment. Lucky there are still communities ― smaller towns, usually ― where schools keep discipline and where parents hold up standards that proclaim: "In this family certain things are not tolerated ― they simply are not done!" Yet more and more, especially in our larger cities and suburbs, these inner restraints are loosening. Your typical robber has none. He considers your property his property; he takes what he wants, including your life if you make him very angry. The main cause of this breakdown is a radical shift in attitudes. Thirty years ago, if a crime was committed, society was considered the victim. Now, in a shocking reversal, it''s the criminal who is considered victimized: by his underprivileged upbringing, by the school that didn''t teach him to read, by the church that failed to teach him with moral guidance, by the parents who didn''t provide a stable home. I don''t believe it. Many others in equally disadvantaged circumstances choose not to engage in criminal activities. If we free the criminal, even partly, from accountability, we become a society of endless excuses where no one accepts responsibility for anything. We desperately need more people who believe that the person who commits a crime is the one responsible for it.

阅读理解What difference does it make if we read texts displayed on a computer screen instead of on paper printed with ink? The computer certainly does not secure deeper comprehension, greater subtlety of mind, or a wider range of imaginative reference. The mediation of a computer, however, put new powers at the disposal of intelligence. On the one hand, the computer itself can do simple reading ― as I have noted, it can "read'' an immense body of literature in search of designated words. As anyone knows who has ever spent days in libraries in search of errant information, simply identifying relevant sources absorbs inordinate amounts of time in research. The objection may be raised that a search of texts by computer may block the discoveries that occur while browsing in the stacks of great libraries. No member of the academy need fear that the use of a computer will keep him from the stacks, but browsing is , if anything, easier if texts can be called up on a screen in the serenity of one''s chosen surroundings. The great deficiency of libraries, as we know them, is that while titles are catalogued, the libraries have no master indexes of the contents of books. Individual volumes, it is true, have indexes, often of inferior quality, but even the best indexes must be examined one at a time. The great advantage of the electronic library is that a computer could search and analyze its contents without proceeding volume by volume. As work in artificial intelligence develops, computer systems may also become adept at more complex tasks, such as summarizing texts, which has been finished experimentally.

阅读理解The demoralizing environment, decrepit (老朽的)building and minimal materials make the high school experience for these children an uphill baffle. Merely graduating from such a high school is difficult, much less becoming a high-caliber science or engineering student. Schools with students from a higher socioeconomic level would not tolerate the obstacles I encountered daily. Improvements need to be made efficiently and made soon, or the divisions among people in this country will only become more extreme. Of course, there are things that concerned citizens can do to help. Get involved with a school, especially one in a poor area. Volunteer to give a presentation or just to spend time with the children. My students were excited to talk to an insurance salesperson who came to give a career exploration lecture. They not only were genuinely interested in the opportunities he described but also were amazed that such a man would donate an afternoon to them. Although those measures can help, they are not enough. For teaching to be effective, the entire environment of the inner city needs to be changed. Teaching someone the difference between velocity and acceleration is irrelevant if the person is hungry and scared. Programs that educate parents in child-rearing, organize low-income groups into cooperative units, fight drug trafficking and help to clean up the ghettos physically will improve the life in the community. The small alterations and " new" proposals currently filling the newspapers are certainly not strong enough to transform a decaying and demoralized school structure that has been disintegrating for decades. Inner-city schools need so much more, and the children deserve so much more than our society is willing to give. Like many other people, I entered the teaching profession eager to investigate change and found many institutionalized obstacles in my way. It should not be so difficult to make a difference.

阅读理解Davison knelt down close to the bottom of the basement stairs. He was saved for the moment by the thick fog which covered the street. Could the policemen be sure that he hadn''t turned round and run back into the main street? But they weren''t taking chances. Davison slowly went down the street as they searched all the doorways. There wasn''t a light on in the basement flat behind him. That alone was dangerous. The policemen were coming close but they wouldn''t expect to find him in an occupied flat. There was a notice on the door which said "No milk till Monday", he tore it down. He tried the door and found it was double locked. The footsteps came nearer very slowly. They must be searching thoroughly. He knew there was one chance because people were often careless, so he took out a knife, slipped it under the catch of the window and pushed upward until the window slid up. He climbed through quickly and fell on to a bed. He closed the window and turned on the light at once. He heard steps coming towards the front door. On no account must the place seem empty. He looked for an electric point, and quickly connected the radio and turned it on. Then he opened the door opposite and found himself in the bathroom. Somebody ― it could only be a policeman ― rang the doorbell. Luckily he found what he wanted in the bathroom cupboard straightaway ― a razor, a stick of shaving soap and a towel. He tied the towel over his collar and managed to soap over his neat beard and the ugly scar on his chin fairly thickened before the bell rang again. Davison moved slowly to the front door and opened it. Two policemen stood outside and one of them had a dirty piece of paper in one hand. "We''ve just found this note, "he said. "As it says'' No milk till Monday'', I thought the flat might be empty and the light left on by mistake. "He looked at Davison carefully.

阅读理解The fridge is considered necessary. It has been so since the 1960s when packaged food list appeared with the label: "Store in the refrigerator." In my fridgeless fifties childhood, I was fed well and healthy. The milkman came every day, the grocer, the butcher (肉商), the baker, and the ice-cream man delivered two or three times each week. The Sunday meat would last until Wednesday and surplus(剩余)bread and milk became all kinds of cakes. Nothing was wasted, and we were never troubled by rotten food. Thirty years on food deliveries have ceased, fresh vegetables are almost unobtainable in the country. The invention of the fridge contributed comparatively little to the art of food preservation. Many well-tried techniques already existed ― natural cooling, drying, smoking, salting, sugaring, bottling... What refrigeration did promote was marketing ― marketing hardware and electricity, marketing soft drinks, marketing dead bodies of animals around the world in search of a good price. So most of the world''s fridges are to be found, not in the tropics where they might prove useful, but in the rich countries with mild temperatures where they are climatically almost unnecessary. Every winter, millions of fridges hum away continuously, and at vast expense, busily maintaining an artificially-cooled space inside an artificially-heated house ― while outside, nature provides the desired temperature free of charge. The fridge''s effect upon the environment has been evident, while its contribution to human happiness has been not important. If you don''t believe me, try it yourself, invest in a food cabinet and turn off your fridge next winter. You may not eat the hamburgers, but at least you''ll get rid of that terrible hum.

阅读理解The author advises us to buy

阅读理解He landed in this country when he was 4 years old without a word of English, and there he has recently graduated with honors from Loyola Academy. An immigrant kid whose family rents an apartment in a city two-flat, he attended the North Shore school with full scholarship. All the aunts and uncles were so proud that they made their way from the old country or from various comers of this country to celebrate his graduation. A debate is raging about whether immigrant children first should be taught English, then their other subjects; or whether they should be taught other subjects in their native tongue as they are more gradually introduced to English over two to three years. California voters recently banished the gradual approach ― bilingual education ― in favor of immersion in the English language. The Chicago Public Schools in February put a three-year deadline on moving into all English classes in most cases. But that was never an issue for this graduate, and it never came up for discussion at his party. Relatives and friends laughed and reminisced in their native tongue, inside and outside, on sofas and lawn chairs. Before long, the instruments came out, old world music filled the air and the traditional dancing began. Like many immigrant children, the graduate listens to his parents in the old language and responds to them in English. During a year after arriving here and enrolling in a Chicago Public School he was speaking fluent English with an American accent so strong that his parents would roll their eyes. But fluency had not come easily; it required a year of total immersion in English, including a teacher who never could seem to learn how to pronounce his name correctly. "He''d come home crying," his mother said. Now, you can''t hear a trace of his original language in his voice. The switch, at least for him, has been complete; a matter of personal preference early on, he says, but now to the point where he has trouble remembering how to speak his first language at ail. But he still understands. At the graduation party, his father asked for a beer in the native tongue, and the young man tossed him a can without missing a beat.

阅读理解Although there had been various small cameras developed, it was not until George Eastman introduced the Kodak in 1888 that the mass appeal of photography attracted America and Europe and thereafter spread quickly to the far corners of the earth. Eastman called his new famous camera the Kodak for no particular reason except that he liked the word. It was easy to remember and could be pronounced in any language. An immediate consequence of Eastman'' s invention was a blizzard of amateur photographs that soon became known as snapshots. The word came from hunters'' jargon. When a hunter fired a gun from the hip, without taking careful aim, it was described as a snapshot. Photographers referred to the process of taking pictures as shooting, and they would take pride in a good day''s shoot the way country gentlemen would boast about the number of birds brought down in an afternoon. Photography became not only easy but fun because of the Kodak. Almost overnight photography became one of the world''s most popular hobbies. A new and universal folk art was born; the showing of one''s latest pictures and the creation of family albums became popular social pastimes. Camera clubs and associations numbered their members in the millions. One ardent amateur was the French novelist Emile Zola, who took a lot of photographs of his family, friends, and travels. Interviewed about his favorite hobby in 1900, he observed, "I think you cannot say you have thoroughly seen anything until you have got a photograph of it." "The little black box," as the Kodak was affectionately dubbed, revolutionized the way people communicated. "A picture is worth a thousand words" was the claim and there were literally billions of pictures. In one year alone― 1988, the centenary of the invention of the Kodak ― it is estimated that almost thirty billion were taken in America alone. The impact of the sale of photographic equipment on the economy is equally mind-boggling. Photography has played an essential role in the media revolution. It has greatly enhanced our ability to convey information, so that the concept of the global village has become a commonplace. Photographs have greatly extended our understanding of and compassion for our fellow human beings. Did Mr. Eastman have the faintest idea of the power residing in his "little black box" ?

阅读理解In Britain, strictly speaking, there are three elements in Parliament ― the Crown, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The House of Commons is by far the most powerful and important of the three elements in Parliament and the Prime Ministers is the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons. After a general election in Britain, the Crown appoints tile Prime Minister who must be the leader of the party that has won the majority seats in the House of Commons. It is the Prime Minister who organizes the Cabinet and presides over its meetings. He or she actually decides on who will be the other ministers and so on. The work of each minister is always kept under observation by an unofficial "Shadow Cabinet" organized by the Opposition. The Prime Minister is the head of the government. He or she has the duty to report the government''s work to the King or Queen, has the right to direct all the departments, solves the issues between them and approves the decisions of departments, which do not need to be discussed in the Cabinet. He has the last word in deciding government policy. The Prime Minister not only has the power of appointment but also has the right to reorganize the government, speak for the government in the House of Commons on important decisions and answer the questions of the members of the House of Commons. As he or she is the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons, he or she can control parliament and influence other parties. He or she is the most influential person in Great Britain and in recent years, strong Prime Ministers have shown a tendency to make policy decisions on their own, in the style of American Presidents. The Prime Minister works and lives in his or her famous residence, No. 10 Downing Street. h is named after George Downing, a British diplomat in the 17th century and has a history of over two hundred years as the British Prime Minister''s residence. The inside of "No. 10" has been reconstructed to suit its purposes. In it there are the Cabinet meeting hall, the Prime Minister'' s office and so on. It is here that the Cabinet meets; the Prime Minister receives foreign guests, meets delegations sometimes and does other work. There is an oil painting gallery in which the portraits of all the Prime Ministers, from Robert Walpole to James Callaghan, are placed.

阅读理解How does the author feel about the prospects of the RI's getting out of financial trouble?

阅读理解A finding in recent years shows that men cannot manufacture blood as efficiently as women can. This makes surgery riskier for men. Because they do not breathe as often as women, men also need more oxygen. But men breathe more deeply and this exposes them to another risk. They draw more of the air when it is polluted. Men''s bones are larger than women''s and they are arranged somewhat differently. The feminine walk that evokes so many whistles is a matter of bone structure. Men have broader shoulders and a narrower pelvis, which makes them to stride out with no waste motion. A woman''s wider pelvis, designed for childbearing, forces her to put more movement into each step she takes with the result that she displays a bit of a jiggle and sway as she walks. If you think a man is brave because he can climb a ladder to clean out the roof gutters, don''t forget it is easier for him than for a woman. The angle at which a woman''s thigh is joined to her knees makes climbing difficult for her, no matter whether it is a ladder or stairs or a mountain that she is tackling. A man''s skin is thicker than a woman''s and not nearly as soft. This prevents the sun''s radiation from getting through, which is why men wrinkle less than women do. Women have a thin layer of fat just under the skin and there is a plus to this greater fat reserve. It acts as an invisible fur coat to keep a woman warmer in the winter. Women also stay cooler in summer. Because the fat layer helps insulate them against heat. Men''s fat is distributed differently. And they do not have that layer of it underneath their skin. In fact, they have considerably less fat than women and more lean mass. 41 percent of a man''s body is muscle compared to thirty-five percent for women, which means that men have more muscle power. When we mention strength, almost 90 percent of a man''s weight is strength compared to about 50 percent of a woman''s weight. The higher proportion of muscle to fat makes it easier for men to lose weight. Muscle bums up five more calories a pound than fat does just to maintain itself. So when a man wants to loss weight, the pounds roll off much faster. For all men''s muscularity they do not have the energy reserves women do. They have more start-up energy, but the fat tucked away in women''s nooks and crannies provides a rich energy reserve that men lack. Cardiologists at the University of Alabama who tested healthy women on treadmills discovered that over the years the female capacity for exercise far exceeds the male capacity. A woman of sixty who is in good health can exercise up to 90 percent of what she could do when she was twenty. A man of sixty has only 60 percent left of his capacity as a twenty-year-old.

阅读理解No company likes to be told it is contributing to the moral decline of a nation. "Is this what you like to accomplish with your careers?" an American senator asked Time Warner executives recently. "You have sold your souls, but must you corrupt our nation and threaten our children as well?" At Time Warner, however, such questions are simply the latest manifestation of the soul-searching that has involved the company ever since the company was born in 1990. It''s a self-examination that has, at different times, involved issues of responsibility ,creative freedom and the corporate bottom line. At the core of this debate is chairman Gerald Levin, 56, who took over from the late Steve Ross in the early 1990s. On the financial front, Levin is under pressure to raise the stock price and reduce the company''s mountainous debt, which will increase to ＄17.3 billion after two new cable deals close. He has promised to sell off some of the property and restructure the company, but investors are waiting impatiently. The flap over rap is not making life any easier for him. Levin has consistently defended the company''s rap music on the grounds of expression. In 1992, when Time Warner was under fire for releasing Ice-T''s violent rap song Cop Killer, Levin described rap as a lawful expression of street culture, which deserves an outlet. "The test of any democratic society," he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column, "lies not in how well it can control expression but in whether it gives freedom of thought and expression the widest possible latitude, however disputable or irritating the results may sometimes be. We won''t retreat when we face any threats." Levin would not comment on the debate last week, but there were signs that the chairman was backing off his hard-line stand, at least to some extent. During the discussion of rock singing verses at last month''s stockholders'' meeting, Levin asserted that "music is not the cause of society''s ills'' and even cited his son, a teacher in the Bronx, New York, who uses rap to communicate with students. But he talked as well about the "balanced struggle" between creative freedom and social responsibility, and he proclaimed that the company would launch a drive to develop standards for distribution and labeling of potentially objectionable music. The 15-member Time Warner board is generally supportive of Levin and his corporate strategy. But insiders say some of them have shown their concerns in this matter. "Some of us have known for many, many years that the freedoms under the First Amendment are not totally unlimited," says Luce. "I think it is perhaps the case that some people associated with the company have only recently come to realize this."