单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Until men invented ways of staying underwater for more than a few minutes, the wonders of the world below the surface of the sea were almost unknown. The main problem, of course, lies in air. How could air be supplied to swimmers below the surface of the sea? Pictures made about 2,900 years ago in Asia show men swimming under the surface with air bags tied to their bodies. A pipe from the bag carried air into the swimmer's mouth. But little progress was achieved in the invention of diving devices until about 1490, when the famous Italian painter, Leonardo da Vinci, designed a complete diving suit. In 1680, an Italian professor invented a large air bag with a glass window to be worn over the diver's head. To "clean" the air a breathing pipe went from the air bag, through another bag to remove moisture, and then again to the large air bag. The plan did not work, but it gave later inventors the idea of moving air around in diving devices. In 1819, a German, Augustus Siebe, developed a way of forcing air into the head-covering by a machine operated above the water. Finally, in 1837, he invented the "hard-hat suit" which was to be used for nearly a century. It had a metal covering for the head and an air pipe attached to a machine above the water. It also had small openings to remove unwanted air. But there were two dangers to the diver inside the "hard-hat suit". One was the sudden rise to the surface, caused by a too great supply of air. The other was the crushing of the body, caused by a sudden diving into deep water. The sudden rise to the surface could kill the diver; a sudden dive could force his body up into the helmet, which could also result in death. Gradually the "hard-hat suit" was improved so that the diver could be given a constant supply of air. The diver could then move around under the ocean without worrying about the air supply. During the 1940s diving underwater without a special suit became popular. Instead, divers used a breathing device and a small covering made of rubber and glass over parts of the face. To improve the swimmer's speed another new invention was used: a piece of rubber shaped like a giant foot, which was attached to each of the diver's own feet. The manufacture of rubber breathing pipes made it possible for divers to float on the surface of the water, observing the marine life underneath them. A special rubber suit enabled them to stay in cold water for long periods, collecting specimens of animal and vegetable life that had never been obtained in the past. The most important advance, however, was the invention of a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, which is called a "scuba". Invented by two Frenchmen, Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan, the scuba consists of a mouthpiece joined to one or two tanks of compressed air which are attached to the diver's back. The scuba makes it possible for a diver-scientist to work 200 feet underwater or even deeper for several hours. As a result, scientists can now move around freely at great depths, learning about the wonders of the sea.

单选题Questions 15 to 17 are based on a talk on student housing. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 15 to 17.

单选题Archaeopteryx had a pretty decent wingspan for a half-pound bird, more than 20 inches. That should have been ample to keep the crow-sized bird flying, or at least gliding, through the Jurassic skies. But as anyone who's ever watched a space shot knows, the toughest part of flying is the takeoff. And the first birds and their dinosaur ancestors just didn't have the specialized muscle power for liftoff that their modern counterparts do. It's a question scientists have been arguing about for more than 200 years: how did the first fliers generate the lift to conquer gravity and take to the air? A new study in the journal Nature shows how it could have been done. Fly-of-die? According to this popular theory a tree-dwelling ancestral bird could have launched itself or fallen from its perch and managed to stay aloft with the panicked flapping of feathered forelimbs. That solves the gravity issue, but Luis Chiappe, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, poins out a problem. "We don't know of any bird ancestors that lived in trees." A running start? This could have helped a bird like Archaeopteryx into the air, but its estimated top ground speed wasn't anywhere near fast enough for liftoff. Chiappe teamed with industrial aerodynamicist Phillip Burgers, who spends his days designing fans and blowers, and just happens to have earned a Ph. D. studying avian flight. The two used aerodynamic theory and biomechanics to re-create the takeoff run of Archaeopteryx. During a run, the researchers found, the bird's wings were able to rotate by 45 degrees at the shoulder, angled forward like two large oars beating the air. That may have provided the extra burst of speed Archaeopteryx needed to outrun hungry predator or snap up a quick-running lizard. And, the new calculations show, it would also have generated sufficient velocity for takeoff. During the early phase of a run, Burgers explains, Archaeopteryx's wings acted more like an airplane's engines than its wings, providing more thrust than lift. Then, once in the air, Archaeopteryx would have rotated its wings back to horizontal, to maintain altitude. Burgers holds that modern birds do exactly the same thing. Why did no one notice until now? "We're infatuated with lift," says Burgers, "because we can't generate it ourselves. "Chiappe and Burgers have shown that Archaeopteryx could have taken off from the ground, but whether or not it actually did may never be known. "I don't really care if Archaeopteryx flew or not," says Burgers. After all, people still ask the same question about chickens. "Does a chicken fly? Maybe, maybe not. 'But its wings help it get where it needs to go. Flying, it turns out, is just the continuation of running by other means.

单选题Stressed out by modern life? Try a visit to the defiantly anachronistic fiefdom of Sark, a four-square-mile cluster of rock out-crops in the English Channel. People here have lived at their own pace since 1565, when Elizabeth I gave the islanders virtual independence in return for a promise to fend off invaders. The hereditary overlord, the seigneur, still rents his fiefdom from the crown for a token sum of￡1.79 a year. Cars are banned. So is divorce. No one but the seigneur is allowed to keep pigeons or a female dog. Not all of Sark"s ways are so charming. A man can legally thrash his wife with a cane if it"s no thicker than his little finger. Still, most of Sark"s 600 or so inhabitants live placidly, reveling in their time-warped (an tax-free) seclusion. "We have no crime and no unemployment, "says Werner Rang, 79, a member of the island"s 40-member Parliament, Chief Pleas. "Sark is the envy of many people who like our quality of life." Even so, the place is changing. Last month the queen formally approved a radical update of the islands" ancient property laws. As of next week--for the first time in history--landowners will be free to leave property to their daughters, Until now, the womenfolk could inherit only if there were no sons. But that was before a wealthy pair of mainland-born brothers, David and Frederick Barclay, waged a bitter three-year,￡1.75 million legal battle to revise the law so their children--three sons and a daughter--could share the family estate, an outlying 160-acre island purchased in 1993. The brothers won--sort of late last year, under threat of action at the European Court of Human Rights, Chief Pleas voted to reform Sark"s law of primogeniture. The inheritance laws now ignore gender. But land still can"t be parceled out among multiple heirs. And the dispute has hardly endeared the Barclays to the locals. "I think they (the brothers) are a pain in the butt," says Mary Collins, a 59-year-old resident. Not that the Barclays were ever too popular here. The brothers, whose financial empire includes London"s Bitz Hotel and a Scottish newspaper group, hardly ever visit Sark"s main island. On Brecqhou, their private islet, they spent some ￡60 million to erect a castle known locally as the Cabuncle. The brothers don"t live there, they prefer Monte Carlo. And they have made no secret of their scorn for Sark"s institutions. Writing in the family"s flagship newspaper, the Scotsman, David Barclay castigated Chief Pleas as "undemocratic and intimidatory" and pilloried Sark itself as "a haven for international tax evasion an fraud." The islanders can only shake their heads. Michael Beaumont, the 71-year-old seigneur, scoffs at the Barclays" insults. He says Sark"s freebooting days are long gone. Like many islanders, the seigneur says he"s irked more by the Barclays" attitude than by their aim. "The change was inevitable, "he says. "but it didn"t have to happen this way". But the jousting continues. Sark"s law still prohibits the Barclays from dividing up the islet. The brothers are planning to fight on against the traditionalists.

单选题What hinders the extensive use of renewable energy sources?

单选题Accordingtothewoman,whatgovernstheclotheswewear?A.Adesiretoexpressoneselfandshowone'swealth.B.Individualtasteandloveforbeauty.C.Loveforbeautyandadesiretoimpressotherpeople.D.Individualtasteandadesiretoexpressoneself.

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Opinion polls are now beginning to show that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably hero to stay. This means we shall have to make ways of sharing the available employment more widely. But we need to go further. We must ask some primary questions about the future of work. Would we continue to treat employment as the norm? Would we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centers of production and work? The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coaling to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could provide the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom. Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes. Later, as transportation improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and the place in which they lived. Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial time, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to be paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm today and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes. It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded—a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives. All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the idealist goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full time jobs.

单选题As long as her parents can remember, 13-year-old Katie Hart has been talking about going to college. Her mother, Tally, a financial-aid officer at a California University, knows all too well the daunting thing of paying for a college education. Last year the average yearly tuition at a private, four-year school climbed 5.5 percent to more than $17,000. The Harts have started saving, and figure they can afford a public university without a problem. But what if Katie applies to Princeton (she's threatening), where one year's tuition, room and board—almost $34,000 in 2007—will cost more than some luxury cars? Even a number cruncher like Tally admits it's a little scary, especially since she'll retire and Katie will go to college at around the same time. Paying for college has always been a hard endeavor. The good news: last year students collected $74 billion in financial aid, the most ever. Most families pay less than full freight. Sixty percent of public-university students and three quarters of those at private colleges receive some form of financial aid—mostly, these days, in the form of loans. But those numbers are not as encouraging as they appear for lower-income families, because schools are changing their formulas for distributing aid. Eager to boost their magazine rankings, which are based in part on the test scores of entering freshmen, they're throwing more aid at smarter kids—whether they need it or not. The best way to prepare is to start saving early. A new law passed last year makes that easier for some families. So-called 529 plans allow parents to sock away funds in federal-tax-free-investment accounts, as long as the money is used for "qualified education expenses" like tuition, room and board. The plans aren't for everyone. For tax reasons, some lower and middle income families may be better off choosing other investments. But saving is vital. When's the best time to start? "Sometime," says Jack Joyce of the College Board, "between the maternity ward and middle school." Aid packages usually come in some combination of grants, loans and jobs. These days 60 percent of all aid comes in the form of low-interest loans. All students are eligible for "unsubsidized" federal Stafford loans, which let them defer interest payments until after graduation. Students who can demonstrate need can also qualify for federal Perkins loans or "subsidized" Staffords, where the government pays the interest during school. Fortunately, this is a borrower's market. "Interest rates are at their lowest level in the history of student loans," says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Finaid. Kantrowitz expects rates to fall even further when they're reviewed this summer. Traditional scholarships, academic or athletic, are still a part of many families' planning. Mack Reiter, a 17-year-old national wrestling champion, gets so many recruiting letters he throws most away. He'll almost certainly get a free ride. Without it, "we would really be in a bind," says his mother, Janet. For everyone else, it's worth the effort to pick through local and national scholarship offerings, which can be found on Web sites like collegeboard.com.

单选题What is the main reason that some terrorists chose to kill a lot of people?

单选题What did Helen have to be careful to hide?

单选题Visitors to St Paul's Cathedral are sometimes astonished as they walk round the space under the dome to come upon a statue which would appear to be that of a retired gladiator meditating upon a wasted life. They are still more astonished when they see under it an inscription indicating that it represents the English writer, Samuel Johnson. The statue is by Bacon, but it is not one of his best works. The figure is, as often in eighteenth-century sculpture, clothed only in a loose robe which leaves arms, legs and one shoulder bare. But the strangeness for us is not one of costume only. If we know anything of Johnson, we know that he was constantly iii all through his life; and whether we know anything of him or not we are apt to think of a literary man as a delicate, weak, nervous sort of person. Nothing can be further from that than the muscular statue. And in this matter the statue is perfectly right. And the fact which it reports is far from being unimportant. The body and the mind are inextricably interwoven in all of us, and certainly on Johnson's case the influence of the body was obvious and conspicuous. His melancholy, his constantly repeated conviction of the general unhappiness of human life, was certainly the result of his constitutional infirmities. On the other hand, his courage, and his entire indifference to pain, were partly due to his great bodily strength. Perhaps the vein of rudeness, almost of fierceness, which sometimes showed itself in his conversation, was the natural temper of an invalid and suffering giant. That at any rate is what he was. He was the victim from childhood of a disease which resembled St Vitus's Dance. He never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs; when be walked it was like the struggling walk of one in irons. All accounts agree that his strange gesticulations and contortations were painful for his friends to witness and attracted crowds of starers in the streets. But Reynolds says that he could sit still for his portrait to be taken, and that when his mind was engaged by a conversation the convulsions ceased. In any case, it is certain that neither this perpetual misery, nor his constant feat of losing his reason, nor his many grave attacks of illness, ever induced him to surrender the privileges that belonged to his physical strength. He justly thought no character so disagreeable as that of a chronic invalid, and was determined not to be one himself. He had known what it was to live on fourpence a day and scorned the life of sofa cushions and tea into which well-attended old gentlemen so easily slip.

单选题"Thank you" means that you recognize that someone has done something for you. Thus we thank people all day 1 even for the smallest, most 2 things. If a waitress brings you a 3 of coffee, you say "Thank you". When you 4 your food and get your 5 , you say "Thank you" to the 6 . If someone gives you 7 in the street, you say "Thank you". If someone 8 you to dinner, you say "Yes, thank you, I"d 9 to come." However, that"s more than 10 . Excessive expressions of gratitude 11 . Westerners extremely 12 and gives a sense of 13 thanks, a sense of formal or required Kowtowing (叩头) which does not 14 gratitude but insincerity. For example, if your advisor spends a half-hour of his time 15 you edit some letter you"ve just written, you will 16 to say "Thank you, I really 17 your time." But one or two phrases of that 18 is enough. If you go on and on 19 statements about his kindness, the person will feel not thanked but 20 and will not be anxious to help you again.

单选题There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that our brain processes information in at least two major systems. The image system appears to be associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. This hemisphere seems to be specialized to process visual and auditory imagery, spatial representation, pure melodic thought, fantasy, and the emotional components of consciousness. Imagery allows us to continue to process information when we are not actively looking at or listening to new stimuli. It reproduces the sounds or sights of the past, enriching our thoughts, dreams, or fantasies with a sense of "actuality" or context. As a coding system, imagery operates by what is called "parallel" processing, e. g. , we imagine the face of a friend in one instantaneous configuration. The lexical system is largely coordinated through the left hemisphere of the brain, and its chief functions include language and grammatical organization, abstract conceptualization and reasoning. This verbal or linguistic system functions sequentially; it takes time for a sentence to run its course so it can be understood. The lexical dimension is especially efficient for integrating diverse phenomena under one label or formula that allows extremely rapid retrieval of stored information (memories) later. Both imagery and lexical systems seem essential for the highest levels of thought. It is possible, however, that the immediacy of television precludes our more active integration of images and words. We need time to replay mentally material just witnessed and also to link pictures and sounds to word labels that make for the most efficient kind of storage and retrieval So rapidly does television material come at us that it defies the capacities of our brain to store much of it unless we actively turn our attention from the set and engage in some kind of mental rehearsal. Only in the instant "replay" of sports programming does the medium itself consciously abet the human requirement for reduplication. Contrast this with the situation of reading. You are in control of the pace. You can reread a sentence, turn back to an earlier page and take the time to piece together combinations of images and words. As you read you are also likely on occasion to drift away into more extended private images and thoughts about the material. In effect, you are engaging in a more creative act of imagination and perhaps also in the forming of new combinations of words and images. Reading seems, therefore, harder work than watching television but ultimately more rewarding because it enhances your own imaginative capacities. We're not so naive as to believe that television can be eliminated from the household, as some suggest. Rather, we see the necessity for encouraging producers to free themselves from the assumption that the rapid-paced, quick-cut format, whether directed at children or adults, is a necessity.

单选题Statistically, each of these new changes in law-enforcement has made some difference to the picture. Yet it seems probably that the factors that have really brought the crime rates down have little to do with policemen or politicians, and more to do with cycles that are beyond their control. The first of these is demographic. The fall in the crime rate has coincided with fall in the number of young men between the ages of 15 and 21, the peak age for criminal activity in any society, including America. In the same way, the rise in the crime rate that started in the early 1960s coincided with the teenage years of the baby-boomers. As the boomer generation matured, married, found jobs and shoulder mortgages, so the crime rate fell. This encouraging trend was quickly overshadowed, starting in the mid-1980s, by a new swarm of teenagers caught up in a new sort of depravity: the craze for crack cocaine. Crack brought with it much higher levels of violence and, in particular, soaring rates of handgun murders by people less than 25 years old. Yet the terror became too much, and the young began to leave crack alone. Within a few years, at least in most big cities, the drug market had stabilized and settled, even moving indoors; the tuff-wars were over, and crack itself had become passe. Studies of Brooklyn by Richard Curtis, of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, show the clear connection; around 1992, many young bloods decided to drop the dangerous life of the street in favor of steady jobs. In direct consequence, the local crime rate fell. Murder rates among Americans older than 25 had already been declining since 1980. Here, according to Alfred Blumstein, a professor of criminology at Carnegie-Mellon University, there may be even longer term social factors involved. In an age of easy divorce and more casual relationships, men and women are less likely to murder their partners: between 1976 and 1996, such murders fell by 40%. The decline in alcohol consumption, too, means that fewer bar-room brawls leave a litter of corpses on a Friday night. It seems that changing social trends also sometimes lie behind the fall in property crime. Burglars tend not to steal television sets now because almost everyone has one; their value on the street has plummeted, At the same time, the fact that people stay in watching their sets, rather than going out, deters would-be burglars. Extra garages are standard in the suburbs, to safeguard extra cars; credit cards mean that shoppers carry less cash in their pockets; people working from home, by means of computers, can keep a closer watch over their streets. Lastly, people are going to greater lengths to protect themselves and their property than they did in the past. This is partly because of the huge fear of crime that preceded the present decline, and partly because even with recent increases in the number of policemen--the ratio of police to violent crimes reported is still way below what it was in the 1960s.

单选题According to the passage, the expansion of popular journalism was linked to______ .

单选题______ is defined as the study of the relationship between language and mind. [A] Semantics [B] Pragmatics [C] Cognitive linguistics [D] Sociolinguistics

单选题How do we measure the economic return to higher education? Typically it is calculated as the difference between average wages of college graduates and those who have not graduated from college. In 1997, for example, college graduates earned an average of ＄ 40, 508 versus just ＄ 23, 970 for non-college graduates. Based on these income levels, the economic return to a college education is approximately 69 percent, the difference between the two income levels. But this simple calculation ignores the fact that college graduates tend to come from higher socioeconomic levels, are more highly motivated, and probably have higher IQs than non graduations. Although these factors influence inc0mes, they are not the result of college attendance. Therefore the result of the study is an overstatement of the returns to higher education. More sophisticated analyses adjust for these extraneous influences. For instance economists Orley Ashenfelter and Alan Krueger, estimate that each year of post-high school education results in a wage premium of between 15 and 16 percent. Their study is particularly relevant because they examined the earnings differences for identical twins with different education levels, allowing them to control for genetic and socioeconomic factors. Other research puts the wage premium for college graduates at nearly 50 per cent. Unfortunately, you can't spend a college wage premium. Income levels for the average college graduate have stagnated. After adjusting for inflation, the average income of college graduates holding full-time jobs rose by only 4. 4 per cent between 1979 and 1997, or at a minuscule annual rate of 0.2 percent. At the same time, workers with only high-school degrees saw their real income plummet by 15 percent. Bottom line: the much-ballyhooed college wage "premium" is due primarily to the fall in inflation-adjusted salaries of workers who haven't been to college. In fact, if you don't go on to graduate school or are not among the top graduates at one of the nation's elite colleges, chances are your sky-high tuition is buying you no economic advantage whatsoever. In recent decades the flood of graduates has been so great that an increasing proportion have found themselves, within a few years, working as sales clerks, cab drivers, and in other jobs that do not, require a college degree. In 1995, approximately 40 percent of people with some college education--and 10 percent of those with a college degree—worked at jobs requiring only high-school skills. That's up from 30 percent and 6 percent, respectively, in 1971.

单选题In 1967, in response to widespread public concern aroused by medical reports of asbestos-related (与石棉有关的) deaths, the National Medical Research Council organized committee of inquiry to investigate the health threats associated with the use of asbestos in the building industry. After examining evidences provided by medical researchers and building workers and management, the Council published a report which included advice for dealing with asbestosis. The report confirmed the findings of similar research in the United States and Canada. Exposure to relatively small quantities of asbestos fibers, they concluded, was directly responsible for the development of cancers, asbestosis and related diseases. Taking into account evidence provided by economists and building industry management, however, the report assumed that despite the availability of other materials, asbestos would continue to play a major role in the British building industry for many years to come because of its availability and low cost. As a result, the council gave a series of recommendations which were intended to reduce the risks to those who might be exposed to asbestos in working environment. They recommended that, where possible, asbestos-free materials should be employed. In cases where asbestos was employed it was recommended that it should be used in such a way that loose fibers were less likely to enter the air. The report recommended that special care should be taken during work in environment which contain asbestos. Workers should wear protective equipment and take special care to remove dust from the environment and clothing with the use of vacuum cleaner. The report identified five factors which determine the level of risk involved. The state and type of asbestos is critical in determining the risk factors. In addition, dust formation was found to be limited where the asbestos was used when wet rather than dry. The choice of tools was also found to affect the quantities of asbestos particles that enter the air. Machine tools produce greater quantities of dust than hand tools and, where possible, the use of the latter was recommended. A critical factor takes place in risk reduction is the adequate ventilation in the working environment. When work takes place in an enclosed space, more asbestos particles circulate and it was therefore recommended that natural or machine ventilation should be used. By closely following these advices, it was claimed that exposure can be reduced to a reasonably practical minimum.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} World leaders met recently at United Nations headquarters in New York City to discuss the environmental issues raised at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The heads of state were supposed to decide what further steps should be taken to halt the decline of Earth's life-support systems. In fact, this meeting had much the flavour of the original Earth Summit. To wit: empty promises, hollow rhetoric, bickering between rich and poor, and irrelevant initiatives. Think U. S. Congress in slow motion. Almost obscured by this torpor is the fact that there has been some remarkable progress over the past five years--real changes in the attitude of ordinary people in the Third World toward family size and a dawning realization that environmental degradation and their own well-being are intimately, and inversely, linked. Almost none of this, however, has anything to do with what the bureaucrats accomplished in Rio. Or didn't accomplish. One item on the agenda at Rio, for example, was a renewed effort to save tropical forests. (A previous UN-sponsored initiative had fallen apart when it became clear that it actually hastened deforestation.) After Rio, a UN working group came up with more than 100 recommendations that have so far gone nowhere. One proposed forestry pact would do little more than immunise wood-exporting nations against trade sanctions. An effort to draft an agreement on what to do about the climate changes caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases has fared even worse. Blocked by the Bush Administration from setting mandatory limits, the UN in 1992 called on nations to voluntarily reduce emissions to 1990 levels. Several years later, it's as if Rio had never happened. A new climate treaty is scheduled to be signed this December in Kyoto, Japan, but governments still cannot agree on limits. Meanwhile, the U.S. produces 7% more CO2 than it did in 1990, and emissions in the developing world have risen even more sharply. No one would confuse the "Rio process" with progress. While governments have dithered at a pace that could make drifting continents impatient, people have acted. Birth-rates are dropping faster than expected, not because of Rio but because poor people are deciding on their own to limit family size. Another positive development has been a growing environmental consciousness among the poor. From slum dwellers in Karachi, Pakistan, to colonists in Rondonia, Brazil, urban poor and rural peasants alike seem to realise that they pay the biggest price for pollution and deforestation. There is cause for hope as well in the growing recognition among business people that it is not in their long-term interest to fight environmental reforms. John Browne, chief executive of British Petroleum, boldly asserted in a major speech in May that the threat of climate change could no longer be ignored.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} A little Central Victorian town grabbed the headlines in Australia recently when Hollywood movie star Eric Bana premiered his latest film them. Romulus, My Father is the true story of a troubled migrant, couple bringing up their boy in a tiny dot on the map called Baringhup, just down the road from Castlemaine, in the early 1960s. Visiting the shire, you can see why it made sense to shoot a film set in the past them: Things are run down in the most attractive ways. Most of the towns were built with gold-rush money in the mid-1800s, when civic buildings reflected the newfound wealth; but most of the booms turned out to be flash-in-the-pan. A little gold-rush town like Dunolly, with less than a thousand residents, has a magnificent Victorian town hall and post office. Maryborough's huge redbrick-and-stucco train station is the most ornate thing in town (on his 1895 tour of Australia, Mark Twain described Maryborough as "a railway station with a town attached"). Passenger trains don't use this line anymore, but the building has been converted into an antiques emporium with a cafe in file old waiting room. It's not the only creative repurposing of gorgeous old buildings going on in Central Victoria. More than one old church has been turned into a B you might meet someone who's convinced that UFOs are buzzing over the fields.