问答题One of the biggest decisions Andy Blevins has ever made, and one of the few he now regrets, never seemed like much of a decision at all. It just felt like the natural thing to do. In the summer of 1995, he was moving boxes of soup cans, paper towels and dog food across the floor of a supermarket warehouse, one of the biggest buildings here in southwest Virginia. The heat was brutal. The job had sounded impossible when he arrived fresh off his first year of college, looking to make some summer money, still a skinny teenager with sandy blond hair and a narrow, freckled face. But hard work done well was something he understood, even if he was the first college boy in his family. Soon he was making bonuses on top of his $6.75 an hour, more money than either of his parents made. His girlfriend was around, and so were his hometown buddies. Andy acted more outgoing with them, more relaxed. People in Chilhowie noticed that. It was just about the perfect summer. So the thought crossed his mind: maybe it did not have to end. Maybe he would take a break from college and keep working. He had been getting C's and D's, and college never felt like home, anyway. "I enjoyed working hard, getting the job done, getting a paycheck," Mr. Blevins recalled. "I just knew I didn't want to quit." So he quit college instead, and with that, Andy Blevins joined one of the largest and fastest-growing groups of young adults in America. He became a college dropout, though nongraduate may be the more precise term. Many people like him plan to return to get their degrees, even if few actually do. Almost one in three Americans in their mid-20's now fall into this group, up from one in five in the late 1960's, when the Census Bureau began keeping such data. Most come from poor and working-class families. That gap had grown over recent years. "We need to recognize that the most serious domestic problem in the United States today is the widening gap between the children of the rich and the children of the poor," Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, said last year when announcing that Harvard would give full scholarships to all its lowest-income students. "And education is the most powerful weapon we have to address that problem." Andy Blevins says that he too knows the importance of a degree. Ten years after trading college for the warehouse, Mr. Blevins, 29, spends his days at the same supermarket company. He has worked his way up to produce buyer, earning $35,000 a year with health benefits and a 401(k) plan. He is on a path typical for someone who attended college without getting a four-year degree. Men in their early 40's in this category made an average of $42,000 in 2000. Those with a four-year degree made $65,000. Mr. Blevins says he has many reasons to be happy. He lives with his wife, Karla, and their year-old son, Lucas, in a small blue-and-yellow house in the middle of a stunningly picturesque Appalachian valley. "Looking back, I wish I had gotten that degree," Mr. Blevins said in his soft-spoken lilt. "Four years seemed like a thousand years then. But I wish I would have just put in my four years." Why so many low-income students fall from the college ranks is a question without a simple answer. Many high schools do a poor job of preparing teenagers for college. Tuition bills scare some students from even applying and leave others with years of debt. To Mr. Blevins, like many other students of limited means, every week of going to classes seemed like another week of losing money. "The system makes a false promise to students," said John T. Casteen Ⅲ, the president of the University of Virginia, himself the son of a Virginia shipyard worker.

问答题The government has finally grown sick of claims that GCSEs and A-levels are being dumbed down, it seems. In his speech to the Labour Party conference on September 26th, Ed Balls, the schools secretary, said he would create a new watchdog to oversee exams. The current regulator is to be broken in two, with one bit continuing to develop new syllabuses and qualifications and reporting to ministers. The other bit, independent of government and reporting directly to Parliament, is to guard against grade inflation. Mr. Balls draws parallels with Gordon Brown"s first big step when he became chancellor in 1997. Relinquishing the Treasury"s power to set interest rates to an independent body is still, ten years later, regarded as his finest hour. Mr. Balls, as his chief economic adviser at the time, was one of the architects of that decision. Both men hope that the new exams watchdog will lead to similar plaudits. Britain"s secondary-school exam results have every reason to be upwardly mobile. The government wants voters to believe their children are getting a good education, so it is keen on high grades. Schools respond by shopping around among exam boards for the easiest syllabuses and tests, and directing pupils towards the softest subjects. Exam boards navigate between losing the trust of universities and losing the patronage of schools. And the individuals setting and marking exams know that harshness may mean fewer candidates in future. The new arrangements may ensure that, in schools at least, bad exams do not drive out good. But they will have no effect on universities, where grade inflation is also rife. Three-fifths of all students now get at least an upper second, and between 2002 and 2006 the proportion of first-class honours degrees crept up from 9.7% to 11%. There are also signs that the value of English degrees is being eroded on the international market. On September 25th the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), a think-tank, published the results of a survey of 15,000 English undergraduates. It turns out that they spend much less time studying than those elsewhere in Europe. The average English student puts in 26 hours a week: 14 taught hours and the rest on independent study, compared with 29 hours in Spain and 41 in Portugal. Nor is it that English students are skimping on their studies to run to paid jobs; students in other countries work harder outside university, too. HEPI"s director, Bahram Bekhradnia, cautions against a simplistic interpretation. Hours taught do not equal hours spent learning, he says, pointing out that tailored tutorials for small groups are likely to transmit more knowledge than the lectures in enormous amphitheatres that are routine at some continental universities. But neither can the results be brushed away, he says. Foreign students may go elsewhere if they think an English undergraduate degree is content-light and poor value for money. This would spell financial disaster for many cash-strapped English universities. In 2004-05, the last year for which figures are available, they received? 1.7 billion in foreign students" fees. At first sight the results of the third National Student Survey, published on September 12th, make more cheerful reading. That found that four-fifths of all English students considered their university experience satisfactory. But Graham Gibbs of Oxford University puts a gloomy spin on even this. What these students may be satisfied with, he says, "is an education that makes comparatively low demands on them". That is perhaps understandable: most undergraduates are not known for their work ethic. But it is short-sighted, both for them and their universities. After all, a currency can only trade for so long on its reputation.

问答题人们一直将儿童肥胖和过激行为的日益增多归咎为看电视太多，但是，关于看电视对儿童学习的影响到底有多大，目前还没有定论。

问答题江苏省地势低平坦荡，河湖水面广阔，土壤富饶肥沃。

问答题企业家之所以成为企业家，靠的是开创事业的强烈欲望，这种欲望同画家和作家的创作欲望并无二致。企业家的欲望是让事情发生，让从前未曾有的事情发生。他所选择的途径是行动，或者说是经营。他的乐趣在于看到事情办得有成效，决定做得正确。使他的乐趣变得实实在在的是金钱。金钱是成功的标志，但未必是动力。检验这一点很简单：如果一个企业家突然得到他想要得的那么多钱，他会停止营业呢，还是会用这笔钱去发展经营?历史表明，企业家多半会去开拓新的经营活动。

问答题Already he had discovered that his brain went beyond Ruth's, just as it went beyond the brains of her brothers, or the brain of her father.

问答题我以一种既着迷又恐惧的心情看着这一切。

问答题Students who want to enter the University of Montreal"s Athletic Complex need more man just a conventional ID card—their identities must be proved genuine by an electronic hand scanner. In some California housing estates, a key alone is insufficient to get someone in the door; his or her voiceprint must also be verified. And soon, customers at some Japanese banks will have to present their faces for scanning before they can enter the building and withdraw their money. All of these are applications of biometrics, a fast-growing technology that involves the use of physical or biological characteristic to identify individuals. In use for more than a decade at some high security government institutions in the United States and Canada, biometrics is rapidly popping up in the everyday world. Biometric security systems operate by storing a digitized record of some unique human feature. When a user wishes to enter or use the facility, the system scans the person"s corresponding characteristics and attempts to match them against those on record. Systems using fingerprints, hands, voices, eyes, and faces are already on the market. Others using typing patterns and even body smells are in various stages of development. Fingerprints scanners are currently the most widely used type of biometric application, thanks to their growing use over the last 20 years by law-enforcement agencies. Sixteen American states now use biometric fingerprint verification systems to check that people claiming welfare payments are genuine. Politicians in Toronto have voted to do the same, with a testing project beginning next year. Not surprisingly, biometrics raises difficult questions about privacy and the potential for abuse. Some worry that governments and industry will be tempted to use the technology to monitor individual behavior. "If someone used your fingerprints to match your health-insurance records with credit-card record showing that you regularly bought lots of cigarettes and fatty foods, "says one policy analyst, "you would see your insurance payments go through the roof. "In Toronto, critics of the welfare fingerprint plan complained that it would force people to submit to a procedure widely identified with criminals. Nevertheless, support for biometrics is growing in Toronto as it is in many other communities. In all increasingly crowded and complicated world, biometrics may well be a technology whose time has come.

问答题由于药粉不易被儿童吞服，因此专为儿童设计的药物通常是药水。

问答题我一定努力学习，决不辜负父母的期望。

问答题今年随着总统选举活动的不断升温，“中国”二字将会越来越频繁地出现在新闻报道中。

问答题We are soberly aware that China remains the world's largest developing country, with a large population, weak economic foundation, uneven development, and challenges of unparalleled magnitude and complexity.

问答题他默默地点了头，然后转身离去。

问答题It"s a typical Snoopy card: cheerful message, bright colors, though a little yellow and faded now. Though I"ve received fancier, more expensive card over the years, this is the only one I"ve saved. One summer, it spoke volumes to me. I received it during the first June I faced as a widow to raise two teenage daughters alone. In all the emotional confusion of this sudden single parenthood, I was overwhelmed with, of all things, the simplest housework: leaky taps, oil changes, even barbeques(烧烤). Those had always been my husband"s jobs. I was embarrassed every time I hit my thumb with a hammer or couldn"t get the lawnmower(割草机) started. My uncertain attempts only fueled the fear inside me: How could I be both a father and mother to my girls? Clearly, I lacked the tools and skills. On this particular morning, my girls pushed me into the living room to see something. (I prayed it wasn"t another repair job.) The "something" turned out to be an envelope and several wrapped bundles on the carpet. My puzzlement must have been plain as I gazed from the colorful packages to my daughters" bright faces. "Go ahead! Open them!" They urged. As I unwrapped the packages, I discovered a small barbecue grill(烧烤架) and all the necessary objects including a green kitchen glove with a frog pattern on it. "But why?" I asked. "Happy Father"s Day!" they shouted together. "Morns don"t get presents on Father"s Day." I protested. "You forgot to open the card." Jane reminded. I pulled it from the envelope. There sat Snoopy, on top of his dog house, merrily wishing me a Happy Father"s Day. "Because," the girls said, "you"ve been a father and mother to us. Why shouldn"t you be remembered on Father"s Day?" As I fought back tears, I realized they were right, I wanted to be a "professional" dad, who had the latest tools and knew all the tricks of the trade. The girls only wanted a parent they could count on to be there, day after day, performing repeatedly the maintenance tasks of basic care and love. The girls are grown now, and they still send me Father"s Day cards, but none of those cards means as: much to me as that first one. Its simple message told me being a great parent didn"t require any special tools at all—just a willing worker.

问答题It took nine years from the time the Danish and Swedish governments agreed to build a fixed link between their countries to the time the first car, train, truck and bicyclists crossed the Oresund Bridge. Construction of the bridge, including design and cornerstone, began in March 1991 and was completed in July 2000. Today, it is the longest stone-stayed road and rail bridge in the world. At approximately 10 miles (16 kilometers), including the tunnel, it is an engineering and architectural marvel. But as time has proven, the bridge is a cultural and economic boon as well. The sleek span of concrete whose design typifies Scandinavian minimalism has contributed greatly to the development of the Oresund region: the eastern part of Denmark, including Copenhagen, and the southwestern part of Sweden, including Maim? and Lund. The level of commuting between Maim? and Copenhagen has quadrupled since the opening of the bridge in 2000, and the number of Danes moving to the south of Sweden has increased sixfold. The Oresund region has become a cultural and economic powerhouse, considered a model region by the European Union. Work on the bridge began in 1995, and was undertaken by a team of international consulting and construction companies. From the beginning, construction of the bridge complied with some of the world's toughest environmental regulations, as well as many advanced design and construction details. The Mexico-based CEMEX, one of the world's largest producers of Cement and ready-mix concrete, was awarded a contract to deliver tons of high-quality cement to help build the main part of the bridge, the two approach bridges and the tunnel. When it opened in July 2000, the Oresund Bridge consisted of a 3.5-kilometer immersed tunnel, the largest of its kind in the world, a 4-kilometer long artificial island (made from mud dug out from the bottom of strait to make space for the tunnel) and a 7.8-kilometer cable-stayed bridge, the world's longest bridge including both a highway and a railroad. Though just half of the total construction, the actual bridge span, is visible above water, the overall architecture was designed to please the eye from both the Danish and Swedish sides of the strait. The four 204-meter (670 feet) tall pillars carrying the bridge have a simple Scandinavian design. To drivers and passengers crossing the bridge, the pillars provide a visual, as well as actual, impression of stability and calm. The two-level structure is made of steel and concrete. Along the two approach bridges, tracks are placed in concrete troughs that turn into steel decks on the bridge. The bridge's upper deck carries cars and trucks, while the lower deck accommodates the railroad. The four pillars are grounded in giant cement boxes placed at the bottom of the strait, about 18 meters below sea level. Last year, an average of 13,600 vehicles and 17,000 passengers crossed the bridge every day, and traffic continues to increase by 10-20 percent every year. Throughout the construction process, the Danish and Swedish environmental agencies have surveyed but found no changes in the wildlife, birds, fish and vegetation surrounding the bridge. In addition, the chemicals used in construction and the percentage of waste materials have been kept to a minimum, as required by both Danish and Swedish laws. In 2003, the Oresund Bridge won the IABSE (International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering) Outstanding Structural Award for its innovative design, planning and construction management, as well as its strict compliance with the time schedule, budget and environmental requirements.

问答题We believe ourselves to be unique among nations in our generosity of spirit and our readiness to put up with all kinds of people.

问答题An invisible border divides those arguing for computers in the classroom on the behalf of students" career prospects and those arguing for computers in the classroom for broader reasons of radical educational reform. Very few writers on the subject have explored this distinction-in-deed, contradiction, which goes to the heart of what is wrong with the campaign to put computers in the classroom. An education that aims at getting a student a certain kind of job is a technical education, justified for reasons radically different from why education is universally required by law. It is not simply to raise everyone"s job prospects that all children are legally required to attend school into their teens. Rather, we have a certain conception of the American citizen, a character who is incomplete if he cannot competently assess how his livelihood and happiness are affected by things outside of himself. But this was not always the case, before it was legally required for all children to attend school until a certain age, it was widely accepted that some were just not equipped by nature to pursue this kind of education. With optimism characteristic of all industrialized countries, we came to accept that everyone is fit to be educated. Computer-education advocates forsake this optimistic notion for a pessimism that betrays their otherwise cheery outlook. Banking on the confusion between educational and vocational reasons for bringing computers into schools, computer-education advocates often emphasize the job prospects of graduates over their educational achievement. There are some good arguments for a technical education given the right kind of student. Many European schools introduce the concept of professional training early on in order to make sure children are properly equipped for the professions they want to join. It is, however, presumptuous to insist that there will only be so many jobs for so many scientists, so many businessmen, so many accountants. Besides, this is unlikely to produce the needed number of every kind of professional in a country as large as ours and where the economy is spread over so many states and involves so many international corporations. But, for a small group of students, professional training might be the way to go since well-developed skills, all other factors being equal, can be the difference between having a job and not of course, the basics of using any computer these days are very simple. It does not take a lifelong acquaintance to pick up various software programs. If one wanted to become a computer engineer, that is, of course, an entirely different story. Basic computer skills take—at the very longest—a couple of months to learn. In any case, basic computer skills are only complementary to the host of real skills that are necessary, to becoming any kind of professional. It should be observed, of course, that no school, vocational or not, is helped by a confusion over its purpose.

问答题由于大家都很努力地工作，这个项目提前完成了。

问答题教师给孩子们上的课，节奏要快，内容要有趣，因为这些孩子们是在看电视和玩电脑游戏的环境中长大的。

问答题另外一些人可以在工厂农村住几个月，在那里做调查，交朋友。