单选题[1] Golden sunlight danced in the treetops, and children's laughter filled the park. The smell of popcorn played on the breeze, and life seemed good. It was one of the happiest Saturday mornings I had spent with my little daughter, Gigi. [2] That is, until two strangers threw her into their car and sped away. It seemed like a bad dream. I could barely whisper when the police questioned me. For hours we waited, but there was no word on the whereabouts of the car. Tears would start to come. Then nothing. I was numb with fear. [3] "Go home, Ma'am, " the sergeant said. "I'll have an officer drive you. We'll also want to monitor your telephone. The kidnappers might call, and we'll want to get a trace. Trust me, these guys can't get far." After what had just happened, it was hard for me to trust anything. [4] My friend Gloria came over that afternoon. "I heard about Gigi on the radio, " she said. "Everyone is looking for the car. The interstates are all blocked." She took my hand. [5] "Look here, " Gloria said. "I want you to have this picture, and I want you to pray with me." [6] It was a picture of a little girl sound asleep in her bed. Standing by the bed was a tall, blond angel. His hand was touching the girl's shoulder as he smiled down at her. [7] My nerves were frazzled. "You know I don't believe in that kind of thing!" I snapped. "I'm too exhausted for any hocus-pocus right now, Gloria! I want my daughter home!" I started to shake, and then I began sobbing. [8] Gloria placed the photo on our mantle and knelt down beside me. "Just pray with me, " she said, holding my hand. [9] I had no strength left, so we prayed and awaited what seemed an eternity. Together, we waited by the phone until sundown. The phone never rang. [10] Suddenly, the front door swung open. I looked up and screamed. [11] There stood Gigi. "Gigi! Thank God!" I cried, throwing my arms around her. "Where did those men take you? How did you get home? Did the police find you?" [12] "No Mommy! "said Gigi. "I was really scared because those men said they were taking me far away. We were going really fast on an old rock road I'd never seen before. But then a tall man walked out in front of the car, and they ran off the road and hit a tree. [13] Then the tall man ran up and opened the car door and pulled me out. He was really nice, and said I would be okay now, and that those men couldn't hurt me. I must have gone to sleep, because then I woke up here in front of our house. He must have brought me home." [14] "But who... how did he know... where to bring you?" My voice broke and trailed to a whisper. [15] "I don't know, Mommy, " Gigi said. "But he was really friendly, and I wasn't scared of him at all." [16] Just then Gigi noticed Gloria's picture on the mantle. "That's him!" She squealed, pointing at the picture. "Mommy, the tall blond man dressed like an angel. That's the man that pulled me out of the car!" [17] I felt chill-bumps across my neck and arms. Gloria turned pale. "Are you sure that's the man?" Gloria asked. [18] "Yeah, that's him. Except he didn't have wings, and he was wearing blue jeans and a tee shirt. But that's him exactly, I'd remember him anywhere!" [19] Later that night, the police found the injured kidnappers in their wrecked car fifty miles from our home. When questioned, the driver remembered swerving to avoid hitting a tall blond man and the backseat door that Gigi sat by had been completely torn off its hinges. [20] Twenty years have gone by. We have never heard from anyone claiming to have rescued Gigi and there have been no logical explanations for Gigi's miraculous escape and return home from a wreck so far away. [21] There have always been things that people can't explain. But, from that day forward, I've never doubted that many of those things are divine miracles. I believe that all experiences, positive and negative, are given to us for our strengthening and learning. [22] Gigi now takes her little girl to the park on Saturdays. They enjoy the sunlight as it dances in the treetops, the smell of popcorn, and the laughter of children. She keeps Gloria's picture on her mantle, and she remembers her angelic friend. And, like my daughter, I have a faith that has carried me through many trials since that day many years ago.

单选题Which of the following statements about early American hotels is NOT mentioned in the passage?

单选题Which of the following statements is INCORRECT? [A] The British constitution includes the Magna Carta of 1215. [B] The British constitution includes Parliamentary acts. [C] The British constitution includes decisions made by courts of law. [D] The British constitution includes one single written constitution.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Three out of four British Bangladeshi children live below the poverty line. That was the biggest jolt in a series of sad reports on April 30th from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Their focus was the link between ethnicity and poverty, which they found to be pretty robust. Some 40% of those from ethnic minorities live in poverty, it said, if poverty is defined as receiving 60% or less of the median income. This is double the proportion of whites. Even Indians and Chinese were much likelier than whites to be poor, despite trouncing them at school. The struggle to escape poverty begins with a big decision: whether to seek paid employment or work for oneself. Historically there has been a strong ethnic divide. South Asian and Chinese immigrants have been quick to set up businesses, whereas black Africans and Caribbeans have worked for others. Yet this pattern now appears to be breaking up. Chinese and Indian men seem to be ditching the takeaways and newsagents, but black Caribbeans and Pakistanis are keener than ever to go into business for themselves. Ken Clark and Stephen Drinkwater, the authors of the Rowntree report, identify various characteristics that incline workers to self-employment. Those who are born abroad or poorly qualified find it harder to get other jobs. Starting a business usually takes financial and human capital, so older people who own their own home and have families are more likely to set up shop. Educational achievement makes an especially big difference in Britain, where graduates snootily consider sell-employment a last resort for dimwits—unlike in America, where plenty of big brains make big bucks starting their own firms. If this is true, it is not surprising that Indians and Chinese are beginning to turn away from self-employment. Whizzes at exams, young and increasingly likely to have been born in Britain, the latest generation is more apt to become doctors and lawyers than restaurateurs. Black Africans and Caribbeans, meanwhile, still lag behind at school and as a group are slightly older, which may explain their swerve into business. A boom in the construction industry—in which much black self- employment is based—may also have contributed, along with government efforts to boost black entrepreneurship. The puzzle is Pakistanis. Though they share some characteristics with Indians and Chinese—including improved education levels and a youthful profile--they are moving the other way. "Relative to their qualifications, they seem to get lower returns on paid employment than other groups," says Mr Drinkwater. That they persist in self-employment may be due to a lack of more rewarding alternatives. Why don't they find well-paid jobs as easily as others? "Discrimination is the thing we assume is left," says Mr Clark. But there are other factors: The concentration of Pakistanis in depressed textile towns makes it harder to find employment, and unwillingness to move away compounds this. Religion may also play its part. Interestingly, white Muslims seem to experience the same labour-market disadvantages as black and Asian ones.

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

单选题The metaphor "It is the cat of the musical world" in the last paragraph means

单选题Which university offers courses through one of the B.B.C's television channel? A. Open University B. Cambridge University C. Oxford University D. Buckingham University

单选题Kimiyuki Suda should be a perfect customer for Japan's car makers. He's a young (34) , successful executive at an internet-services company in Tokyo and has plenty of disposable income. He used to own Toyota's Hilux Surf, a sport utility vehicle. But now he uses mostly subways and trains. "It's not inconvenient at all," he says. Besides, "having a car is so 20th century. " Suda reflects a worrisome trend in Japan; the automobile is losing its emotional appeal, particularly among the young, who prefer to spend their money on the latest electronic gadgets. While minicars and luxury foreign brands are still popular, everything in between is slipping. Last year sales fell 6.7 percent—7.6 percent if you don't count the minicar market. There have been larger one-year drops in other nations: sales in Germany fell 9 percent in 2007 thanks to a tax hike. But analysts say Japan is unique in that sales have been eroding steadily over time. Since 1990, yearly new-car sales have fallen from 7.8 million to 5.4 million units in 2007. Alarmed by this state of decay, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association launched a comprehensive study of the market in 2006. It found a widening wealth gap, demographic changes—fewer households with children, a growing urban population—and general lack of interest in cars led Japanese to hold their vehieles longer, replace their cars with smaller ones or give up car ownership altogether. "Japan's automobile society stands at a crossroads," says Ryuichi Kitamura, a transport expert and professor at Kyoto University. He says he does not expect the trend to be reversed, as studies show that the younger Japanese consumers are, the less interested they are in having a car. JAMA predicts a further sales decline of 1.2 percent in 2008. Some analysts believe that if the trend continues for much longer, further consolidation in the automotive sector (already under competitive pressure) is likely. Japanese demographics have something to do with the problem. The country's urban population has grown by nearly 20 percent since 1990, and most city dwellers use mass transit (the country's system is one of the best developed in the world) on a daily basis, making it less essential to own a car. Experts say Europe, where the car market is also quite mature, may" be in for a similar shift. But in Japan, the "demotorization"process, or kuruma banare, is also driven by cost factors. Owning and driving a car can cost up to $500 per month in Japan, including parking fees, car insurance, toll roads and various taxes. Taxes on a $17, 000 ear in Japan are 4.1 times higher than in the United States, 1.7 times higher than in Germany and 1.25 times higher than in the U. K. , according to JAMA. "'Automobiles used to represent a symbol of our status, a Western, modern lifestyle that we aspired for," says Kitamura. For today's young people, he argues, "such thinking is completely gone. " Cars are increasingly just a mobile utility; the real consumer time and effort goes into picking the coolest mobile phones and personal computers, not the hippest hatchback. The rental-car industry has grown by more than 30 percent in the past eight years, as urbanites book weekend wheels over the Internet. Meanwhile, government surveys show that spending on cars per household per year fell by 14 percent, to $600, between 2000 and 2005, while spending on Net and mobile-phone subscriptions rose by 39 percent, to $1,500, during the same period. For Japanese car companies, the implications are enormous. "Japan is the world's second largest market, with a 17 to 18 percent share of our global sales. It's important," says Takao Katagiri, corporate vice president at Nissan Motor Co. The domestic market is where Japanese carmakers develop technology and build their know-how, and if it falters, it could gut an industry that employs 7.8 percent of the Japanese work force. While surging exports, particularly to emerging markets, have more than offset the decline in domestic sales so far, companies are looking for ways to turn the tide. Nissan, for example, is trying to appeal to the digital generation with promotional blogs and even a videogame. A racing game for Sony's PlayStation, for example, offers players the chance to virtually drive the company's latest sporty model, the GT-R—a new marketing approach to create buzz and tempt them into buying cars. Toyota Motors has opened an auto mall as part of a suburban shopping complex near Tokyo, hoping to attract the kinds of shoppers who have long since stopped thinking about dropping by a car dealership. It's a bit akin to the Apple strategy of moving electronics out of the soulless superstore, and into more appealing and well-trafficked retail spaces. It worked for Apple, but then Apple is so 21st century.

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单选题Not too many decades ago it seemed "obvious" both to the general public and to sociologists that modern society has changed people''s natural relations, loosened their responsibilities to kin and neighbors, and substituted in their place superficial relationships with passing acquaintances. However, in recent years a growing body of research has revealed that the "obvious" is not true. It seems that if you are a city resident, you typically know a smaller proportion of your neighbors than you do if you are a resident of a smaller community. But, for the most part, this fact has few significant consequences. It does not necessarily follow that if you know few of your neighbors you will know no one else. Even in very large cities, people maintain close social ties within small, private social worlds. Indeed, the number and quality of meaningful relationships do not differ between more and less urban people. Small-town residents are more involved with kin than are big-city residents. Yet city dwellers compensate by developing friendships with people who share similar interests and activities. Urbanism may produce a different style of life, but the quality of life does not differ between town and city. Nor are residents of large communities any likelier to display psychological symptoms of stress or alienation, a feeling of not belonging, than are residents of smaller communities. However, city dwellers do worry more about crime, and this leads them to a distrust of strangers. These findings do not imply that urbanism makes little or no difference. If neighbors are strangers to one another, they are less likely to sweep the sidewalk of an elderly couple living next door or keep an eye out for young trouble makers. Moreover, as Wirth suggested, there may be a link between a community''s population size and its social heterogeneity. For instance, sociologists have found much evidence that the size of a community is associated with bad behavior including gambling, drugs, etc. Large-city urbanites are, also more likely than their small-town counterparts to have a cosmopolitan outlook, to display less responsibility to traditional kinship roles, to vote for leftist political candidates, and to be tolerant of nontraditional religious groups, unpopular political groups, and so-called undesirables. Everything considered, heterogeneity and unusual behavior seem to be outcomes of large population size.

单选题While it's true that just about every cell in the body has the instructions to make a complete human, most of those instructions are inactivated, and with good reason. The last thing you want is for your brain cells to start producing stomach acid or your nose to turn into a kidney. The only time ceils truly have the potential to turn into any and all body parts is very early in a pregnancy, when so-called stem cells haven't begun to specialize. Yet this untapped potential could be a terrific boon to medicine. Most diseases involve the death of healthy cells--brain cells in Alzheimer's, cardiac cells in heart disease, pancreatic cells in diabetes, to name a few. If doctors could isolate stem cells, then direct their growth, they might be able to furnish patients with healthy replacement tissue. It was incredibly difficult, but last fall scientists at the University of Wisconsin managed to isolate stem cells and get them to grow into neural, muscle and bone cells. The process still can't be controlled, and may have unforeseen limitations. But if efforts to understand and master stem-cell development prove successful, doctors will have a therapeutic tool of incredible power. The same applies to cloning, which is really just the other side of the coin. True cloning, as first shown with Dolly the sheep two years ago, involves taking a developed cell and reactivating the genome within, resetting its developmental instructions to a pristine state. Once that happens, the rejuvenated cell can develop into a full-fledged animal, genetically identical to its parent. For agriculture, in which purely physical characteristics like milk production in a cow or low fat in a hog have real market value, biological carbon copies could become routine within a few years. This past year scientists have done for mice and cows what Ian Wilmut did for Dolly, and other creatures are bound to join the cloned menagerie in the coming year. Human cloning, on the other hand, may be technically feasible but legally and emotionally more difficult. Still, one day it will happen. The ability to reset body cells to a pristine, undeveloped state could give doctors exactly the same advantages they would get from stem cells: the potential to make healthy body tissues of all sorts, and thus to cure disease. That could prove to be a tree "miracle cure".

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Gene therapy and gene-based drugs are two ways we could benefit from our growing mastery of genetic science. But there will be others as well. Here is one of tile remarkable therapies on the cutting edge of genetic research that could make their way into mainstream medicine in the coming years. While it's true that just about every cell in the body has the instructions to make a complete human, most of those instructions are inactivated, and with good reason: the last thing you want for your brain cells is to start churning out stomach acid or your nose to turn into a kidney. The only time cells truly have the potential to turn into any and all body parts is very early in a pregnancy, when so called stem cells haven't begun to specialize. Yet this untapped potential could be a terrific boon to medicine. Most diseases involve the death of healthy cells -- brain cells in Alzheimer's, cardiac cells in heart disease, pancreatic cells in diabetes, to name a few; if doctors could isolate stem cells, then direct their growth, they might be able to furnish patients with healthy replacement tissues. It was incredibly difficult, but last fall scientists at the University of Wisconsin managed to isolate stem cells and get them to grow into neural, gut, muscle and bone cells. The process still can't be controlled, and may have unforeseen limitations; but if efforts to understand and master stem-cell development prove successful, doctors will have a therapeutic tool of incredible power. The same applies to cloning, which is really just the other side of the coin; true cloning, as first shown with the sheep Dolly several years ago, involves taking a developed cell and reactivating the genome within, resetting its developmental instructions to a pristine state. Once that happens, the {{U}}rejuvenated{{/U}} cell can develop into a full fledged animal, genetically identical to its parent. For agriculture, in which purely physical characteristics like milk production in a cow or low fat in a hog have real market value, biological carbon copies could become routine within a few years. This past year scientists have done for mice and cows what Ian Wilmut did for Dolly, and other creatures are bound to join the cloned menagerie in the coming year. Human cloning, on the other hand, may be technically feasible but legally and emotionally more difficult. Still, one day it will happen. The ability to reset body cells to a pristine, undeveloped state could give doctors exactly the same advantages they would get from stem cells: the potential to make healthy body tissues of all sorts, and thus to Cure diseases. That could prove to be a true "miracle cure".

单选题Accordingtothespeaker,whatareconveniencegoods?A.Commoditiesthatpeopleareinconstantneedof.B.Goodsthatareconvenienttouseorpurchase.C.Itemsthatpeopletendtobuyunderimpulse.D.Itemsthathavetobeboughtonceaweek.

单选题{{I}} Questions 14 to 16 are based on a talk about robots. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.{{/I}}

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单选题Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following interview with Lawrence Lessig, a law professor and director of Public Library of Science (PLoS, an open-access journal publisher) about intellectual property issues. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to 20.

单选题Part C You will hear a radio program. As you listen, you must answer questions 21—30 by writing NO MORE THAN THREE words in the space provided on the right. You will hear the program TWICE.

单选题Questions 1～3 are based on the following talk, listen and choose the best answer.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Recent research has claimed that an excess of positive ions in the air have an ill-effect on people's physical or psychological health. What are positive ions? Well, the air is full of ions, electrically charged particles. But sometimes this balance becomes disturbed and a larger proportion of positive ions are found. This happens naturally before thunderstorms, earthquakes or when winds such as the Mistral, Foehn, Hamsin or Sharav are blowing in certain countries. Or it can be caused by a build-up of static electricity indoors from carpets or clothing made of man-made fibres, or from TV sets, duplicators or computer display screens. When a large number of positive ions are present in the air many people experience unpleasant effects such as headaches, fatigue, irritability, and some particularly sensitive people suffer nausea or even mental disturbance. Animals are also found to be affected, particularly before earthquakes; snakes have been observed to come out of hibernation, rats to flee from their burrows, dogs howl and cats jump about unaccountably. This has led the US Geographical Survey to fund a network of volunteers to watch animals in an effort to foresee such disasters before they hit vulnerable areas such as California. Conversely, when large numbers of negative ions are present, then people have a feeling of wellbeing. Natural conditions that produce these large amounts are near the sea, close to waterfalls or fountains, or in any place where water is sprayed, or forms a spray. This probably accounts for the beneficial effect of a holiday by the sea, or in the mountains with tumbling streams or waterfalls. To increase the supply of negative ions indoors, some scientists recommend the use of ionizes: small portable machines which generate negative ions. They claim that ionizes not only clean and refresh the air but also improve the health of people sensitive to excess positive ions. Of course, there are the detractors, other scientists, who dismiss such claims and are skeptical 'about negative/positive ion research. Therefore people can only make up their own minds by observing the effects on themselves, or on others, of a negative rich or poor environment. After all, it is debatable whether depending on seismic readings to anticipate earthquake is more effective than watching the cat.