单选题 {{I}}Questions 17 - 20 are based on the following talk. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 - 20.{{/I}}

单选题In the advanced course students must take performance tests at monthly ______.

单选题The phrase "vocal... exponent" (Line 2, Para. 5) most probably refers to

单选题Questions 3～4 are based on the following news item, listen and choose the best answer.

单选题Shortages of flu vaccine are nothing new in America, but this year's is a whopper. Until last week, it appeared that 100 million Americans would have access to flu shots this fall Then British authorities, concerned about quality-control problems at a production plant in Liverpool, barred all further shipments by the Chiron Corp. Overnight, the U. S. vaccine supply dwindled by nearly half and federal health officials found themselves making an unusual plea. Instead of beseeching us all to get vaccinated, they're now urging most healthy people between the ages of 2 and 64 not to. "This re-emphasizes the fragility of our vaccine supply," says Dr. Martin Myers of the National Network for Immunization Information, "and the lack of redundancy in our system. " Why is such a basic health service so easily knocked out? Mainly because private companies have had little incentive to pursue it. To create a single dose of flu vaccine, a manufacturer has to grow live virus in a 2-week-old fertilized chicken egg, then crack the egg, harvest the virus and extract the proteins used to provoke an immune response. Profit margins are narrow, demand is fickle and, because each year's flu virus is different, any leftover vaccine goes to waste. As a result, the United States now has only two major suppliers (Chiron and Aventis Pasteur) —and when one of them runs into trouble, there isn't much the other can do about it. "A vaccine maker can't just call up and order 40 million more fertilized eggs," says Manon Cox, of Connecticut-based Protein Sciences Corp. "There's a whole industry that's scheduled to produce a certain number of eggs at a certain time. " Sleeker technologies are now in the works, and experts are hoping that this year's fiasco will speed the pace of innovation. The main challenge is to shift production from eggs into cell cultures—a medium already used to make most other vaccines. Flu vaccines are harder than most to produce this way, but several biotech companies are now pursuing this strategy, and one culture-based product (Solvay Pharmaceuticals' Invivac) has been cleared for marketing in Europe. For America, the immediate challenge is to make the most of a limited supply. The government estimates that 95 million people still qualify for shots under the voluntary restrictions announced last week. That's nearly twice the number of doses that clinics will have on hand, but only 60 million Americans seek out shots in a normal year. In fact, many experts are hoping the shortage will serve as an awareness campaign—encouraging the people who really need a flu shot to get one.

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} In recent years, there has been a steady assault on salt from the doctors: Salt is bad for you—regardless of your health. Politicians also got on board. "There is a direct relationship," US congressman Neal Smith noted, "Between the amount of sodium a person consumes and heart disease, circulatory disorders, stroke and even early death." Frightening, if true! But many doctors and medical researchers are now beginning to feel the salt scare has gone too far. "All this hue and cry about eating salt is unnecessary," Dr. Dnstan insists. "For most of us it probably doesn't make much difference how much salt we eat." Dustan's most recent short-term study of 150 people showed that those with normal blood pressure underwent no change at all when placed on an extremely low-salt diet, or later when salt was reintroduced. Of the hypertensive subjects, however, half of those on the low-salt diet did experience a drop in blood pressure, which returned to its previous level when salt was reintroduced. "An adequate to somewhat excessive salt intake has probably saved many more lives than it has cost in the general population," notes Dr. John H. Laragh." So a recommendation that the whole population should avoid salt makes no sense." Medical experts agree that everyone should practice reasonable "moderation" in salt consumption. For an average person, a moderate amount might run from four to ten grams a day, or roughly 1/2 to 1/3 of a teaspoon. The equivalent of one to two grams of this salt allowance would come from the natural sodium in food. The rest would be added in processing, preparation or at the table. Those with kidney, liver or heart problems may have to limit dietary salt, if their doctor advises. But even the very vocal "low salt" exponent, Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr. admits that "we do not know whether increased sodium consumption causes hypertension." In fact, there is increasing scientific evidence that other factors may be involved: deficiencies in calcium, potassium, perhaps magnesium; obesity (much more dangerous than sodium); genetic predispotition; stress. "It is not your enemy," says Dr. Laragh, "Salt is the No. 1 natural component of all human tissue, and the idea that you don't need it is wrong. Unless your doctor has proven that you have a salt-related health problem, there is no reason to give it up."

单选题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 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 diseases. That could prove to be a true "miracle cure".

单选题Officials in Tampa Florida, got a surprise recently when a local firm building the state"s first ethanol * -production factory put in a request for 400,000 gallons a day of city water. The request by US Envirofuels would make the facility one of the city"s top ten water consumers overnight, and the company plans to double its size. Florida is suffering from a prolonged drought. Rivers and lakes are at record lows and residents wonder where the extra, water will come from. They are not alone. A backlash against the federally financed biofuels boom is growing around the country, and "water could be the Achilles heel" of ethanol, said a report by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The number of ethanol factories has almost tripled in the past eight years from 50 to about 140. A further 60 or so are under construction. In 2007, President George Bush signed legislation requiting a fivefold increase in biofuels production, to 36 billion gallons by 2022. This is controversial for several reasons. There are doubts about how green ethanol really is (some say the production process uses almost as much energy as it produces). Some argue that using farmland for ethanol pushes up food prices internationally (world wheat prices rose 25% recently, perhaps as a side-effect of America"s ethanol programme). But one of the least-known but biggest worries is ethanol"s extravagant use of water. A typical ethanol factory producing 50m gallons of biofuels a year needs about 500 gallons of water a minute. Most of that goes into the boiling and cooling process, which is similar to making beer. Some water is lost through evaporation in the cooling tower and in waste discharge. All this is putting a heavy burden on aquifers in some corn-growing areas. Residents went to court in Missouri to halt a $165m facility being built by Gulfstream Bioflex Energy LLC which was projected to draw 1.3m gallons of water every day from the Ozark aquifer. Projects are being challenged in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and in central Illinois, where eight ethanol facilities are situated over the Mahomet aquifer. Demand for corn is such that more land is also being ploughed up in drier regions of the Great Plains states to the west of the corn belt, where irrigation is required, increasing water demand further. The good news is that ethanol plants are becoming more efficient. They now use about half as much water per gallon of ethanol as they did a decade ago. New technology might be able to halve the amount of water again, says Mike Fatigati, vice president of Delta-T Corp, a Virginia company which has designed a system that does not discharge any waste water. But others are sceptical. "There are things you can close loop (i. e. recycle efficiently) and things you can"t," says Paul Greene, a senior director for biofuels with Siemens Water Technologies, designers of the water-purification technology used in ethanol factories. Perhaps ethanol just isn"t as bio-friendly as it looks. * ethanol = alcohol fuel

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

单选题The reason that the Turkish ruler collected a dining tax is to pay for

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单选题Back in 2000, inspired by a desire to help those in need, Megan and Dennis Doyle of Minneapolis decided they wanted to do more than just volunteer or write a check. Instead, they took $30,000 of their own money and started a nonprofit called Hope for the City. The organization collects corporate overstock and distributes it to nonprofits in the Twin Cities, nationwide, and internationally to 26 developing countries. Today the nonprofit has a $900, 000 operating budget and a 25,000 sq.ft. warehouse to store the donated items and has distributed nearly $380 million of in-kind merchandise since its inception. "This makes us feel like we're a part of something a lot bigger than just the two of us," says Dennis, 54, who is CEO of a local commercial real estate firm. The Doyles are not alone in their desire to give back. There are more than 1 million 501 (c) (3) charities like theirs, up nearly 70% from the 614,000 that existed a decade ago, according to Tom Pollak, program director with the National Center for Charitable Statistics at the Urban Institute. Organizations dedicated to education, disaster relief, job development, the environment and AIDS are among today's "hot causes, " says Phyllis McGrath, president of Philanthropy Management, a Fairfield, Conn., consulting firm that works with nonprofits nationwide. Fueling this growth are several factors: baby boomers with a social-entrepreneurship mind-set and added time in their lives to give back to their communities, such tragic events as Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina, and greater numbers of wealthy individuals with the funds to launch their own nonprofits. But starting a nonprofit is a Herculean effort, requiring patience and determination. It may take at least six months to a year and as much as 30 to 40 hours a week to get an organization off the ground, McGrath says. Hiring an attorney experienced with nonprofits to handle statewide and federal applications is key. The 501 (c) (3) designation comes from the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), and nonprofits are expected to provide the government with such information as a mission statement, an idea of who will be assisted and by what methods, anticipated budget and board of directors, says Andrew Grumet, a lawyer representing nonprofits with the Manhattan firm Herrick, Feinstein, LLP. Accountants familiar with nonprofits can advise on how much of an investment can be made without affecting personal wealth. But even with the best of intentions, nonprofits have a high failure rate : only one-third survive beyond five years, says Stan Madden, director of the Center for Nonprofit Studies at the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University in Waeo, Texas. The best approach is to start with a business plan. Research other organizations in the field to make sure there is no other group addressing the same cause. Consult with other charities to determine that there are constituents who can really use your services. As McGrath notes, "Consider a realistic and doable niche that your organization can uniquely fill. " That is just what Beth Shaw, 41, did. The owner of a $4 million company that trains yoga fitness instructors worldwide, Shaw used her knowledge of the market to launch Visionary Women in Fitness, which provides scholarships to underprivileged women so that they can train to become instructors. With a budget of just $30,000, the nonprofit, based in Hermosa Beach, Calif., is able to help 15 to 20 women a year learn a skill that can get them an entry-level job. "I have two homes and a successful business, so many young women out there have nothing," says Shaw, who has donated $50,000 of her own money since she launched the charity in June 2004. "This was the time in my life to step up and start giving back. /

单选题WhatdothefamousgoldenOscar'statuettesrepresent?A．Thesurprisewinner.B．Thehottestfavorite.C．Thegreatesthonor.D．Thought-provokingfilms.

单选题All of the following products are expected to come out in the future EXCEPT______.

单选题Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following talk. You have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to 20.

单选题Rupert Murdoch once described them as the "rivers of gold"—the lucrative classified advertising revenues that flowed into big newspaper groups, But the golden rivers are being diverted online as the Internet breaks the grip that local and regional newspapers once held over their advertising markets. Typically, a local newspaper would expect to get some 80% of its revenue from advertising, of which around two-thirds would come from classifieds. But last year in the San Francisco Bay area, job ads worth some $ 60 million were lost from newspapers to the web, reckons Classified Intelligence, a consultancy. Emap, a British publisher, recently gave warning of a 30% decline in recruitment ads in one of its titles, Nursing Times, following the launch of a free web site for jobs in Britain's National Health Service. The Internet has become the fastest-growing advertising medium. Online ad revenues reached $ 5.8 billion in the first six months of this year in America, up 26% on the same period last year, according to a joint study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Coopers. In Britain, online ad revenues surged by 62% in the same period to almost ￡500 million ($ 870 million). Search advertising—the small text-ads that appear alongside Google and Yahoo Searches— account for 40% of the online ad market. Another 20% goes to display ads and 18% to classified advertising. But search advertising can also work like a small ad and will increasingly challenge print classifieds as websites provide localized and more elaborate services for online users. Perhaps the most significant development came on November 16th, when Google started up a prototype service called Google Base. It offers a searchable database of free listings, including small ads which can be narrowed down to postal regions. Among its first offerings were used ears. In no time, Google could challenge eBay, whose own auction listings now work much like a giant classified Web site-especially with its "buy-it-now" options. But eBay charges sellers. Even so, it sold more than 450 million items in the three months to September 30th, for almost $11 billion. In response, most print publishers are expanding online. Mr. Murdoch is buying websites including Property finder and MySpace, a social-networking site. Newspaper groups have teamed up to jointly operate websites to compete with Monster for recruitment ads. But the online operators are expanding too. eBay, for instance, is building a global network of classified sites under the Kijiji brand. It also has a stake in the popular Craigs-list which, having soaked up so many listings around its San Francisco home, is now frightening other newspapers as it expands its free ads service to other cities around the world.

单选题Questions 17～20 are based on the following talk. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17～20.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} A lot happens to your teeth. They are ground, braced, brushed, flossed, polished, drilled, filled, and if you do not take care of them, pulled. For your teeth, proper oral care is as essential as anything else you do for your body and your generally health. Fortunately, if there is any damage to your teeth modem dentistry techniques make it easier, faster and less painful to get the problem fixed. By definition, dentistry includes the study, diagnosis, treatment and the prevention of disease of the mouth, teeth, gum and jawbones. Today's dentists use sophisticated equipment and pain- preventing medicines, but these have not always been around. The earliest historical records of dentistry are from Egypt from around 3600 BC. Aesculapius, a Greek physician who lived around 1250 BC, is credited with the idea of pulling disease teeth. Hippocrates, around 400 BC, wrote of applying ointments and using branding irons to treat disease of the mouth. Through the Middle Ages wealthy people were treated by physicians and surgeons, while poor people could look to the local barber to pull painful teeth. Modem dentistry emerged with the release of Pierre Fauchard's book The Surgeon Dentist, A Treatise on Teeth. Fauchard is considered the father of modem dentistry. Later, the first school devoted to teaching dentistry opened in Baltimore in the USA in 1840. Green Vardiman Black invented a foot engine so dentists would have two free hands while using the dental drill. He also came up with the idea that gum disease was an infection caused by bacteria. This was later confirmed in 1960. An important contribution was made in 1944 when Dr. Horace Wells, a Connecticut dentist, first used nitrous oxide (laughing gas) as an oral anesthetic; today this method of administering anesthetic is employed for many dental and medical surgeries. The introduction of fluoride in toothpaste in the 1960s was a huge breakthrough; teenagers and adults today have a 50% better chance of not developing tooth decay. The 1990s saw a change in thinking when it came to fillings for cavities in teeth. Since the early 1800s silver amalgam--a combination of silver, tin and mercury--has been the standard filling compound. But modern fears about mercury poisoning have led many people to have their amalgam fillings replaced with plastic polymer fillings. Besides not having any mercury, plastic polymers have an advantage over metal fillings because the color can be matched to the surroundings tooth and the material can be chemically bonded to the tooth. Dentistry methods are sure to advance even more in the future. Things such as laser technology, which is used to eliminate diseased tissue or weld together damaged parts of teeth, will soon become a common practice in dentists' offices. And computer-assisted technology is ushering in new advances in the area of tooth restoration. The primary goal of dentists is to develop early detection methods to prevent dental conditions from turning into dental problems. Caring for your teeth properly will lessen the number of visits you make to the dentist. Brushing properly, flossing every day, getting a professionally cleaning every six months and maintaining a diet low in sugar can aid in keeping your teeth healthy. Your teeth will stay in your' mouth if you take care of them.

单选题The two books, Final Exam: A Surgeon"s Reflections on Mortality by Pauline Chen, and Better: A Surgeon"s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande, are remarkably honest and human accounts, both describing professional moments of fear, guilt, embarrassment and humor. The two authors, both Harvard-educated surgeons, admit to cases of personal failure and call on their fellow medics to reflect continuously on how they can improve the way their profession is practiced. Pauline Chen"s project is a discussion of appropriate end-of-life care. She probes into the question of why surgeons can seem unfeeling and slowly teases apart the answer that it is brought about by a doctor"s training. In her view, medical students should learn to trivialize death enough to cope but humanize it enough to help, and their formal education caters disproportionately to the former. Atul Gawande is more interested in behavioral tendencies than emotional ones. His is wider in scope and richer in fascinating detail. A staff writer for the New Yorker as well as a 2006 MacArthur "genius" grant recipient for his research, Dr. Gawande reports on the experience of other doctors as well as recounting his own. He has talked to medical men who have participated in executions and to others who have become prosecuting lawyers in malpractice suits. Dr. Gawande encourages his colleagues to observe their performance in a quantitative way. A simple example of this is that medics; including himself, wash their hands about a third as often as they should. By contrast, doctors at the World Health Organization monitor polio with such diligence that a single case in southern India leads to the rapid mobilization of a massive vaccination program. Army surgeons in Afghanistan and Iraq are, he believes, masters at working out ways to improve their performance. For example, their exhaustive spreadsheets reveal that when surgeons are faced with wounded men off the battlefield, the death count is reduced if, instead of continuing the necessary emergency treatment, they ship the anaesthetized soldiers off to other, perhaps better-equipped facilities, their wounds often still open and packed with gauze. Both authors recall professionals they respect telling them that the best doctors are those who can put themselves in their patients" shoes. This allows them to approach openly the question of when to give up on aggressive treatment and let the patient"s failing health progress peacefully. Deaths can often be made easier than they would have been if too much medical ambition had been involved. Where these books disappoint, if only slightly, is in the very occasional use of a specialized term when an everyday phrase would have done. A pity, but a small one. In general, both books succeed in being as engaging to the layman as to the practicing or studying doctor. They should be required reading for the latter.

单选题You will hear 3 conversations or talks and you must answer the questions by choosing A, B, C or D. You will hear the recording only once.