单选题

单选题Questions 18 ～ 21 are based on the following talk. You now have 20 seconds to read Question 18 ～ 21.

单选题 {{I}}{{B}} Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following talk about school meals in the UK. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to 20.{{/I}}{{/B}}

单选题According to the passage, an understanding of the self can be______.

单选题The writer has the opinion that when you paint your house, you will most likely choose______.

单选题Questions 14 to 17 are based on an introduction to early movie making. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 17.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Women's minds work differently from men's. At least, that is what most men are convinced of. Psychologists view the subject either as a matter or frustration or a joke. Now the biologists have moved into this minefield, and some of them have found that there are real differences between the brains of men and women. But being different, they point out hurriedly, is not the same as being better or worse. There is, however, a definite structural variation between the male and female brain. The difference is in a part of the brain that is used in the most complex intellectual processes—the link between the two halves of the brain. The two halves are linked by a trunkline of between 200 and 300 million nerves, the corpus callosum. Scientists have found quite recently that the corpus callosum in women is always larger and probably richer in nerve fibers than it is in men. This is the first time that a structural difference has been found between the brains of women and men and it must have some significance. The question is "What?", and, if this difference exists, are there others? Re- search shows that present-day women think differently and behave differently from men. Are some of these differences biological and inborn, a result of evolution? We tend to think that is the influence of society that produces these differences. But could we be wrong? Research showed that these two halves of the brain had different functions, and that the corpus callosum enabled them to work together. For most people, the left half is used for wordhanding, analytical and logical activities; the right half works on pictures, patterns and forms. We need both halves working together. And the better the connections, the more harmoniously the two halves work. And, according to research findings, women have the better connections. But it isn't all that easy to explain the actual differences between skills of men and women on this basis. In schools throughout the world girls tend to be better than boys at "language subjects" and boys better at maths and physics. If these differences correspond with the differences in the hemispheric trunkline, there is an unalterable distinction between the sexes. We shan't know for a while, partly because we don't know of any precise relationship between abilities in school subject and the functioning of the two halves of the brain, and we cannot understand how the two halves inter-act via the corpus callosum. But this striking difference must have some effect and, because the difference is in the parts of the brain involved in intellect, we should be looking for differences in intellectual processing.

单选题Questions 5--8 Complete the following sentences with NO MORE THAN three words for each blank.

单选题 Questions 18～21 are based on the following talk. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 18～21.

单选题The use of one name for that of another associated with it is rhetorically called ______. A. synecdoche B. metonymy C. substitution D. metaphor

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?