单选题 {{I}}Questions 11 to 13 are based on the following dialogue in a wedding anniversary. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13.{{/I}}

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单选题What'sthemainpurposeofthetalk7A.Tointroducetheconceptofinflation.B.Todiscussthecausesofinflation.C.Toreviewyesterday'slectureoninflation.D.Toargueinfavorofinflation.

单选题Which of the following is the topic of the passage?

单选题Biotechnologists have developed genetically modified rice that is fortified with beta-carotene which the body converts into vitamin A and additional iron, and they are working on three kinds of nutritionally improved crops. Biotech can also improve farming productivity in places where food shortages are caused by crop damage attributable to pests, drought, poor soil and crop viruses, bacteria or fungi. Damage caused by pests is incredible. In trials of pest-resistant cotton in Africa yields have increased significantly. So far, fears that genetically modified, pest-resistant crops might kill good insects as well as bad appear unfounded. Viruses often cause massive failure in staple crops in developing countries. Two years ago Africa lost more than half its cassava crop — a key source of calories — to the mosaic virus. Genetically modified, virus-resistant crops can reduce that damage, as can drought-tolerant seeds in regions where water shortage limits the amount of land under cultivation. Biotech can also help solve the problem of soil that contains excess aluminum, which can damage roots and cause many staple-crop failures. A gene that helps neutralize aluminum toxicity in rice has been identified. Many scientists believe biotech could raise overall crop productivity in developing countries as much as 25% and help prevent the loss of those crops after they are harvested. Yet for all that promise, biotech is far from being the whole answer. In developing countries, lost crops are only one cause of hunger. Poverty plays the largest role. Making genetically modified crops available will not reduce hunger if farmers cannot afford to grow them or if the local population cannot afford to buy the food those farmers produce. Nor can biotech overcome the challenge of distributing food in developing countries. Taken as a whole, the world produces enough food to feed everyone but much of it is simply in the wrong place. Especially in countries with undeveloped transport infrastructures, geography restricts food availability as dramatically as genetics promises to improve it. Biotech has its own "distribution" problems. Private-sector biotech companies in the rich countries carry out much of the leading-edge research on genetically modified crops. Their products are often too costly for poor farmers in the developing world, and many of those products won't even reach the regions where they are most needed. Biotech firms have a strong financial incentive to target rich markets first in order to help them rapidly recoup the high costs of product development. But some of these companies are responding to the needs of poor countries. To increase the impact of genetic research on the food production of those countries, there is a need for better collaboration between government agencies — both local and in developed countries — and private biotech firms. Biotech is not a panacea, but it does promise to transform agriculture in many developing countries. If that promise is not fulfilled, the real losers will be their people, who could suffer for years to come.

单选题Question 1--4 Choose the best answer.

单选题 Questions 14 to 16 are based on the following talk about the biggest movie event, Oscars. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}} Read the following texts answer the questions accompany them by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Since the late 1970's, in the face of a severe loss of market share in dozens of industries, manufacturers in the United States have been trying to improve productivity—and therefore enhance their international competitiveness—through cost-cutting programs. (Cost-cutting here is defined as raising labor output while holding the amount of labor constant. ) However, from 1978 through 1982, productivity-the value of goods manufactured divided by .the amount of labor input did not improve; and while the results were better in the business upturn of the three years following, they ran 25 percent lower than productivity improvements during earlier, post 1945 upturns. At the same time, it became clear that the harder manufactures worked to implement cost-cutting, the more they lost their competitive edge. With this paradox in mind, I recently visited 25 companies; it became clear to me that the cost-cutting approach to increasing productivity is fundamentally flawed. Manufacturing regularly observes a "40,40,20" rule. Roughly 40 percent of any manufacturing-based competitive advantage derives from long-term changes in manufacturing structure (decisions about the number, size, location, and capacity of facilities) and in approaches to materials. Another 40 percent comes from major changes in equipment and process technology. The final 20 percent rests on implementing conventional cost-cutting. This rule does not imply that cost-cutting should not be tried. The well-known tools of this approach including simplifying jobs and retraining employees to work smarter, not harder do produce results. But the tools quickly reach the limits of what they can contribute. Another problem is that the cost-cutting approach hinders innovation and discourages creative people. As Abernathy's study of automobile manufacturers has shown, an industry can easily become prisoner of its own investments in cost-cutting techniques, reducing its ability to develop new products. And managers under pressure to maximize cost-cutting will resist innovation because they know that more fundamental changes in processes or systems will wreak havoc with the results on which they are measured. Production managers have always seen their job as one of minimizing costs and maximizing output. This dimension of performance has until recently sufficed as a basis of evaluation, but it has created a penny-pinching, mechanistic culture in most factories that has kept away creative managers. Every company I know that has freed itself from the paradox has done so, in part, by developing and implementing a manufacturing strategy. Such a strategy focuses on the manufacturing structure and on equipment and process technology. In one company a manufacturing strategy that allowed different areas of the factory to specialize in different markets replaced the conventional cost-cutting approach; within three years the company regained its competitive advantage. Together with such strategies, successful companies are also encouraging managers to focus on a wider set of objectives besides cutting costs. There is hope for manufacturing, but it clearly rests on a different way of managing:

单选题I was taken by a friend one afternoon to a theatre. When the curtain was raised, the stage was perfectly empty save for tall grey curtains which enclosed it on all sides, and presently through the thick folds of those curtains children came dancing in, singly, or in pairs, till a whole troop of ten or twelve were assembled. They were all girls; none, I think, more than fourteen years old, one or two certainly not more than eight. They wore but little clothing, their legs, feet and arms being quite bare. Their hair, too, was unbound; and their fates, grave and smiling, were so utterly dear and joyful, that in looking on them one felt transported to some Garden of Hesperides, a where self was not, and the spirit floated in pure ether. Some of these children were fair and rounded, others dark and elf-like; but one and all looked entirely happy, and quite unself-conscious, giving no impression of artifice, though they had evidently had the highest and most careful training. Each flight and whirling movement seemed conceived there and then out of the joy of being—dancing had surely never been a labour to them, either in rehearsal or performance. There was no tiptoeing and posturing, no hopeless muscular achievement; all was rhythm, music, light, air, and above all things, happiness. Smiles and love had gone to the fashioning of their performance; and smiles and love shone from every one of their faces and from the clever white turnings of their limbs. Amongst them—though all were delightful—there were two who especially riveted my attention. The first of these two was the tallest of all the children, a dark thin girl, in whose every expression and movement there was a kind of grave, fiery love. During one of the many dances, it fell to her to be the pursuer of a fair child, whose movements had a very strange soft charm; and this chase, which was like the hovering of a dragonfly round some water lily, or the wooing of a moonbeam by the June night, had in it a most magical sweet passion. That dark, tender huntress, so full of fire and yearning, had the queerest power of symbolising all longing, and moving one's heart. In her, pursuing her white love with such wistful fervour, and ever arrested at the very moment of conquest, one seemed to see the great secret force that hunts through the world, on and on, tragically unresting, immortally sweet. The other child who particularly enhanced me was the smallest but one, a brown-haired fairy crowned with a half moon of white flowers, who wore a scanty little rose-petal-coloured shift that floated about her in the most delightful fashion. She danced as never child danced. Every inch of her small head and body was full of the sacred fire of motion; and in her little pas seul she seemed to be the very spirit of movement. One felt that Joy had flown down, and was inhabiting there; one heard the rippling of Joy's laughter. And, indeed, through all the theatre had risen a rustling and whispering; and sudden bursts of laughing rapture. I looked at my friend; he was trying stealthily to remove something from his eyes with a finger. And to myself the stage seemed very misty, and all things in the world lovable; as though that dancing fairy had touched them with tender fire, and made them golden. God knows where she got that power of bringing joy to our dry hearts: God knows how long she will keep it! But that little flying Love had in her the quality that lie deep in colour, in music, in the wind, and the sun, and in certain great works of art—the power to see the heart free from every barrier, and flood it with delight.

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 Dustan 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 experienced 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 the 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 growing scientific evidence that other factors may be involved: deficiencies in calcium, potassium, perhaps magnesium; obesity (much more dangerous than sodium); genetic predisposition; 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 mason to give it up.

单选题A wind tunnel can be used to find out ______.

单选题Questions 14 to 16 are based on an interview about a police officer talking about her work. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.

单选题By saying "With Mars the scientific stakes are arguably higher than they have ever been" in the fourth paragraph, the author means that ______.

单选题The Tories were the forerunners of______, which still bears this nickname today. [A] the Labour Party [B] the Conservative Party [C] the Liberal Democrats [D] the Democratic Party

单选题What is essential to equality in the labour market according to feminists?

单选题Why does the author say high consumption is a mixed blessing?

单选题Whatwasthecauseofthetragedy?A.Badweather.B.Humanerror.C.Breakdownoftheengines.D.Communicationssystemfailure.

单选题 Questions 17—20 are based on the following conversation.

单选题Whatisthemainproblemcausedbytheusualwayofplowing?A.Thecrop'sbloomingperiodisdelayed.B.Therootsofcropsarecutoff.C.Thetopsoilisseriouslydamaged.D.Thegrowthofweedsisaccelerated.