单选题 {{B}}Questions 18 to 20 are based on an interview between a reporter and a zoologist about how to clean oiled birds. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 18 to 20.{{/B}}

单选题{{B}}{{I}}Questions 11～13 are based on the following talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11～13.{{/I}}{{/B}}

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The American Academy of Pediatrics raised eyebrows recently when it released new guidelines saying that pacifiers may protect against Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The use of pacifiers for sleeping infants has always been controversial, both in families and medical circles-- the World Health Organization (WHO) says they should not be given to breast-fed infants. Yet here was an authoritative body, representing US pediatricians, suggesting pacifier use at sleep-time might actually save lives. The Washington Post's "New SIDS policy recommends pacifiers" was typical of the headlines. What wasn't reported was the fact that the announcement dismayed experts in several counties--including Canada--who have found no justification for such a recommendation. Some even worry the advice could increase the risk for certain babies. Neither was it reported that three of the doctors working on the research pulled out because they disagreed with some of the AAP's conclusions. Researchers have spent years trying to unravel the mystery of SIDS, which still causes about 150 Canadian babies to die unexpectedly in their sleep each year. Studies in several countries have revealed a number of factors that increase the risk of death, including sleeping on the stomach, maternal smoking, and a family's low socio-economical status. As for pacifiers, the AAP based its Oct. 10 recommendation on an academic paper, to be published this month in the journal Pediatrics by US pediatrician Dr. Fern Hauck. According to Hauck, four studies show that after "controlling for a variety of factors including sleeping position, usual pacifier use was associated with a significant reduced risk of SIDS." But other experts say there are too many unanswered questions. Dr. Peter Fleming, a professor of pediatrics at Bristol University and also one of the world's leading authorities on SIDS, says researchers were surprised when they began finding that pacifiers were associated with a lower risk of SIDS. "It didn't make sense" he says. "So we asked more detailed questions." What he and his team discovered was that the rate of pacifier use was similar for the group of babies who died from SIDS and matched groups of healthy babies. However, among habitual pacifier users there was an increased rate of SIDS death for babies who didn't use a pacifier for their last sleep. Fleming believes the pacifier connection with reduced SIDS death might have to do with the fact that infants sleep and breathe differently when they are sucking. Fleming and his colleagues videotaped 10 infants while they slept, and observed that while sucking, they breathed more slowly and deeply and had fewer episodes of minor obstructed breathing. All these factors could conceivably protect a child from SIDS. But the improved breathing was observed not just with pacifiers but also among babies who sucked on a finger, a thumb, or their mother's emptied breast. The potential problem with pacifiers, Fleming believes, is that babies who use them appear to "forget" how to suck. "My concern is that increased pacifier use could suppress a fundamental human behavior--finger or thumb-sucking- and we don't know what the adverse consequences might be."

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Perusing the Times in 1844, Friedrich Engels was horrified to note that, in a single day, London suffered a theft, an attack on the police, an abandonment and a poisoning. "Social war is under full headway," commented Engels, who blamed the crime wave on the growing proletariat. It is hard to imagine what the gloomy social scientist would have made of the fact that, 160 years later, London's police would be recording 2,500 crimes per day. Most striking is the rise of mugging. In 1993 there were 323,000 robberies in England and Wales, according to the British Crime Survey-the highest since the survey began in 1981. That is not so surprising: There was a recession on. But the muggers carded on during the late-1990s boom, even as their house- and car-breaking colleagues hung up their sacks. Despite a buoyant economy, close attention from police and politicians and a shrinking proletariat, there were 347,000 muggings last year. The national numbers have dropped since 1999 but London still suffers: In September, robberies in London were up 21% on the same month in 2004. Why? One reason, says Simon Pountain, who polices the London borough of Hackney, is that "there are more desirable items walking around on the street." Technology and prosperity means more mobile phones, and, recently, more MP3 players. Meanwhile, many of the things people keep in their houses and cars have become less valuable. Why break into a house to steal a DVD player when you can snatch an iPod worth two or three times as much? As a criminal enterprise, mugging has unusually low barriers to entry. It requires less skill than burglary or car theft, and fewer connections and less financial savvy than drug dealing. A recent study of the capital's robbers found that ethnic patterns depended mainly on social and environmental factors. Black men are still over-represented among muggers, but that seems to be because they are poor, and, more important, because many of them live in neighbourhoods that have gentrified. Robbery thrives where wealth and poverty mix. Today's muggers are more discerning in their choice of victims and goods. Three-quarters of their victims are men, which is novel: A large study of street robbery in 1987 found that 57% of victims were women. Young muggers look down on drug-addled practitioners, generally in their early 20s, who go after softer targets and will steal anything. Simon Holdaway, who has interviewed young robbers in Sheffield, finds that they occasionally beat up their elders. "Many of these robbers are funding a lifestyle, not a drug habit," says Mr Pountain. Although poor, they are driven not by need but by aspiration find desire--for the latest gadget, or for something that can be used to finance its purchase. Engels might have regarded that as a sign of progress.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The man behind this notion, Jack Maple, is a dandy who affects dark glasses, homburgs(翘边帽)and two-toe shoes; yet he has become something of a legend in America's police departments. For some years, starting in New York and moving on to high-crime spots such as New Orleans and Philadelphia, he and his business partner, John Lieder have marketed a two-tier system for cutting crime.First, police departments have to sort themselves out: root out corruption, streamline their bureaucracy, and make more contact with the public. Second, they have to adopt a computer system called Comstat which helps them to analyze statistics of all major crimes. These are constantly keyed into the computer, which then displays where and when they have occurred on a color-coded map, enabling the police to monitor crime trends as they happen and to spot high-crime areas. In New York, Comstat's statistical maps are analyzed each week at a meeting of the city's police chief and precinct captains. Messrs Maple and Linder ( "specialists in crime-reduction services" ) have no doubt that their system is a main contributor to the drop in crime. When they introduced it in New Orleans in January 1997, violent crime dropped by 22% in a year;when they merely started working informally with the police department in Newark,New Jersey,violent crime fell by 13%. Police departments are now lining up to pay as much as $50,000 a month for these two men to put them straight. Probably all these new policies and bits of technical wizardry, added together, have made a big difference to crime. But there remain anomalies that cannot be explained, such as the fact that crime in Washington D. C. ,has fallen as fast as anywhere, although the police department has been corrupt and hopeless and, in large stretches of the city, neither police nor residents seem disposed to fight the criminals in their midst. The more important reason for the fall in crime rates, many say, is a much less sophisticated one. It is a fact that crime rates have dropped as the imprisonment rate soared. In 1997 the national incarceration rate, at 645 per 100000 people was more than double the rate in 1985, and the number of inmates in city and county jails rose by 9.4%, almost double its annual average increase since 1990. Surely some criminologists argue, one set of figures is the cause of the other. It is precise because more people are being sent to prison, they claim that crime rates are falling. A 1993 study by the National Academy of Sciences actually concluded that the tripling of the prison population between 1975 and 1989 had lowered violent crime by 10-15%. Yet cause and effect may not be so obviously linked. To begin with, the sale and possession of drugs are not counted by the FBI in its crime index, which is limited to violent crimes and crimes against property. Yet drug offences account for more than a third of the recent increase in the number of those jailed;since 1980, the incarceration rate for drug arrests has increased by 1000%. And although about three-quarters of those going to prison for drug offences have committed other crimes as well, there is not yet a crystal-clear connection between filling the jails with drug-pushers and a decline in the rate of violent crime. Again, though national figures are suggestive, local ones diverge: the places where crime has dropped most sharply ( such as New York City) are not always the places where incarceration has risen fastest.

单选题 Questions 11 to 13 are based on a passage on plastic tax. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The man behind this notion, Jack Maple, is a dandy who affects dark glasses, homburgs(翘边帽) and two-toe shoes; yet he has become something of a legend in America's police departments. For some years, starting in New York and moving on to high-crime spots such as New Orleans and Philadelphia, he and his business partner, John Linder have marketed a two-tier system for cutting crime. First, police departments have to sort themselves out: root out corruption, streamline their bureaucracy, and make more contact with the public. Second, they have to adopt a computer system called Comstat which helps them to analyze statistics on all major crimes. These are constantly keyed into the computer, which then displays where and when they have occurred on a color-coded map, enabling the police to monitor crime trends as they happen and to spot high-crime areas. In New York, Comstat's statistical maps are analyzed each week at a meeting of the city's police chief and precinct captains. Maple and Linder ("specialists in crime-reduction services") have no doubt that their system is a main contributor to the drop in crime. When they introduced it in New Orleans in January 1997, violent crime dropped by 22% in a year; when they merely started working informally with the police department in Newark, New Jersey, violent crime fell by 13%. Police departments are now lining up to pay as much as $ 50,000 a month for these two men to put them straight. It is probable that all these new policies and bits of technical wizardry, added together, have made a big difference to crime. But there remain anomalies that cannot be explained, such as the fact that crime in Washington DC has fallen very fast, although the police department has been corrupt and hopeless and, in large stretches of the city, neither police nor residents seem disposed to fight the criminals in their midst. The larger reason for the fall in crime rates, many say, is a much less sophisticated one. It is a fact that crime rates have dropped as the imprisonment rate soared. In 1997 the national incarceration rate, at 645 per i00, 000 people, was more than double the rate in 1985, and the number of inmates in city and county jails rose by 9.4 %, almost double its annual average increase since 1990. Surely some criminologists argue, one set of figures is the cause of the other. It is precisely because more people are being sent to prison, they claim that crime rates are falling. A 1993 study by the National Academy of Sciences actually concluded that the tripling of the prison population between 1975 and 1989 had reduced violent crime by 10～15%. Yet cause and effect may not be so obviously linked. To begin with, the sale and possession of drugs are not counted by the FBI in its crime index, which is limited to violent crimes and crimes against property. Yet drug offences account for more than a third of the recent increase in the number of those jailed; since 1980, the incarceration rate for drug arrests has increased by 1000%. And although about three-quarters of those going to prison for drug offences have committed other crimes as well, there is not yet a crystal-clear connection between filling the jails with drug-pushers and a decline in the rate of violent crime. Again, though national figures are suggestive, local ones diverge: the places where crime has dropped most sharply (such as New York city) are not always the places where incarceration has risen fastest.

单选题 {{B}} Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following interview with Tom Kenney, the managing editor for multimedia at Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive about WashingtonPost. com. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to 20.{{/B}}

单选题Questions 4～6 are based on the following passage, listen and choose the best answer.

单选题The word "disinclination" in the second paragraph implies that ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} The Boston Marathon is an annual marathon sporting event hosted by the city of Boston, Massachusetts, on Patriots' Day, the third Monday of April. Begun in 1897 and inspired by the success of the first modem-day marathon competition in the 1896 Summer Olympics, the Boston Marathon is the world's oldest annual marathon and ranks as one of the world's most well-known road racing events. The marathon is one of five members of the World Marathon Majors. The event attracts an average of about 20,000 registered participants each year. In the 100th running of the Boston Marathon in 1996, the number of participants reached 38,000. While there are cash prizes awarded to the winners of the marathon, most of the runners participate for the accomplishment of having run the race at all. The Boston Marathon was originally a local event, but its fame and status have attracted runners from all over the world. For most of its history, the Boston Marathon was a free event, and the only prize awarded for winning the race was a wreath woven from olive branches. However, corporate-sponsored cash prizes began to be awarded in the 1980s, when professional athletes began to refuse to run the race without cash awards. The first cash prize for winning the marathon was awarded in 1986. Women were not allowed to enter the Boston Marathon officially until 1972. Roberta (Bobbi) Gibb is recognized as the first woman to run the entire Boston Marathon (in 1966). In 1967, Kathrine Switzer, who had registered as "K. V. Switzer", was the first woman to run with a race number. She finished, despite a celebrated incident in which race official Jock Semple tried to rip off her numbers and eject her from the race. In 1996 the B.A.A. retroactively recognized as champions the unofficial women's leaders of 1966 through 1971. In recent years, critics have pointed to the dominance of foreign-born athletes in the event (especially runners from Kenya) to back their arguments that American professional running is lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of producing quality athletes. However, foreign dominance of the race is nothing new. Between 1946 and 1967 only one American (John J. Kelley in 1957) won the marathon in an era when Finland and Japan were the distance powerhouses. The Boston marathon is open to all runners, male and female, from any nation, but they must meet certain qualifying standards. To qualify, a runner must first complete a standard marathon course certified by a national governing body affiliated with the International Association of Athletics Federations within a certain period of time before the date of the desired Boston Marathon (usually within approximately 18 months prior). Prospective runners in the age range of 18-- 34 must run a time of no more than 3:10:59 (3 hours and 10 minutes) if male, or 3:40:59 (3 hours and 40 minutes) if female; the qualifying time is adjusted upward as age increases. For example, a 40--44 year old male can still qualify with a time of 3:20:59. An exception to the qualification requirement is awarded to 1,250 runners who raise a pre-determined level of sponsorship for officially designated local charities. Besides the Olympic trials and the Olympic marathons, Boston is the only major American marathon that requires a qualifying time. Thus for many marathoners to qualify for Boston (to "BQ") is a goal and achievement in itself, making it a "people's Olympic event."

单选题{{B}}TEXT 2{{/B}} Hormone levels and hence our moods may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits, In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings' moods and performance. It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that crimes against the person' rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer. Hitting a peak around 27-30℃. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5℃ with others in water at 20℃ about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water- before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks. Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become less skeptical and more optimistic when the weather is sunny. However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasn't, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behavior and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behavior of certain animals. For example, food consumption of stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February / March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. Theses changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels.

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单选题{{B}}{{I}}Questions 11～13 are based on the following talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11～13.{{/I}}{{/B}}

单选题Text 1 Most earthquakes occur within the upper 15 miles of the earth's surface. But earthquakes can and do occur at all depths to about 460 miles. Their number decreases as the depth increases. At about 460 miles one earthquake occurs only every few years. Near the surface earthquakes may run as high as 100 in a month, but the yearly average does not vary much. In comparison with the total number of earthquakes each year, the number of disastrous earthquakes is very small. The extent of the disaster in an earthquake depends on many factors. If you carefully build a toy house with an erect set, it will still stand no matter how much you shake the table. But if you build a toy house with a pack of cards, a slight shake of the table will make it fall. An earthquake in Agadir, Morocco, was not strong enough to be recorded on distant instruments, but it completely destroyed the city. Many stronger earthquakes have done comparatively little damage. If a building is well constructed and built on solid ground, it will resist an earthquake. Most deaths in earthquakes have been due to faulty building construction or poor building sites. A third and very serious factor is panic. When people rush out into narrow streets, more deaths will result. The United Nations has played an important part in reducing the damage done by earthquakes. It has sent a team of experts to all countries known to be affected by earthquakes. Working with local geologists and engineers, the experts have studied the nature of the ground and the type of most practical building code for the local area. If followed, these suggestions will make disastrous earthquakes almost a thing of the past. There is one type of earthquake disaster that little can be done about. This is the disaster caused by seismic sea waves, or tsunamis. (These are often called tidal waves, but the name is incorrect. They have nothing to do with tides.) In certain areas, earthquakes take place beneath the sea. These submarine earthquakes sometimes give rise to seismic sea waves. The waves are not noticeable out at sea because of their long wave length. But when they roll into harbors, they pile up into walls of water 6 to 60 feet high. The Japanese call them "tsunamis", meaning "harbor waves", because they reach a sizable height only in harbors. Tsunamis travel fairly slowly, at speeds up to 500 miles an hour. An adequate warning system is in use to warn all shores likely to be reached by the waves. But this only enables people to leave the threatened shores for higher ground. There is no way to stop the oncoming wave.

单选题{{I}}Questions 14～16 are based on the following conversation. You now have 15 seconds to read Question 14～16.{{/I}}

单选题{{I}}Questions 11 ～ 13 are based on the foUowing talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 ～ 13.{{/I}}

单选题The first results have already confirmed

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