问答题Indian and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

问答题他英语很流利，可还是要用译员——有时还挑译员的毛病——这样他就有时间考虑如何回答提问了。

问答题Although it symbolises a bright idea, the traditional incandescent light bulb is a dud. It wastes huge amounts of electricity, radiating 95 % of the energy it consumes as heat rather than light. Its life is also relatively short, culminating in a dull pop as its filament fractures. Now a team of researchers has devised a light bulb that is not only much more energy-efficient—it is also expécted to last longer than the devices into which it is inserted. Moreover, the lamp could be used for rear-projection televisions as well as general illumination. The trick to a longer life, for light bulbs at least, is to ensure that the lamp has no electrodes. Although electrodes are undeniably convenient for plugging bulbs directly into the lighting system, they are also the main reason why lamps fail. The electrodes wear out. They can react chemically with the gas inside the light bulb, making it grow dimmer. They are also difficult to seal into the structure of the bulb, making the rupture of these seals another potential source of failure. Scientists working for Ceravision, a company based in Milton Keynes, in Britain, have designed a new form of lamp that eliminates the need for electrodes. Their device uses microwaves to transform electricity into light. It consists of a relatively small lump of aluminium oxide into which a hole has been bored. When the aluminium oxide is bombarded with microwaves generated from the same sort of device that powers a microwave oven, a concentrated electric field is created inside the void. If a cylindrical capsule containing a suitable gas is inserted into the hole, the atoms of the gas become ionised. As electrons accelerate in the electric field, they gain energy that they pass on to the atoms and molecules of the gas as they collide with them, creating a glowing plasma. The resulting light is bright, and the process is energy-efficient. Indeed, whereas traditional light bulbs emit just 5% of their energy as light, and fluorescent tubes about 15%, the Ceravision lamp has an efficiency greater than 50%. Because the lamp has no filament, the scientists who developed it think it will last for thousands of hours of use—in other words, for decades. Moreover, the light it generates comes from what is almost a single point, which means that the bulbs can be used in projectors and televisions. Because of this, the light is much more directional and the lamp could thus prove more efficient than bulbs that scatter light in all directions. Its long life would make the new light ideal for buildings in which the architecture makes changing light bulbs complicated and expensive. The lamps' small size makes them comparable to light-emitting diodes but the new lamp generates much brighter light than those semiconductor devices do. A single microwave generator can be used to power several lamps. Another environmental advantage of the new design is that it does not need mercury, a highly toxic metal found in most of the bulbs used today, including energy-saving fluorescent bulbs, fluo-rescent tubes and the high-pressure bulbs used in projectors. And Ceravision also reckons it should be cheap to make. With lighting accounting for some 20% of electricity use worldwide, switching to a more efficient system could both save energy and reduce emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

问答题Destruction of the world's rain forests, global warming, and the depletion of the ozone layer are just some of the problems that will endanger mankind in the coming decades.

问答题1292年，马可波罗{{U}}携{{/U}}弟弟和儿子，{{U}}随{{/U}}十四条大船组成的船队和六百名船员从中国南方一个港口出发，离开中国，{{U}}前往{{/U}}威尼斯。

问答题科学与文化的其他方面关系长期紧张。想一想，17世纪的伽利略因其信念离经叛道，遭到天主教会的审判；诗人威廉·布莱克尖税地批评了艾萨克·牛顿的机械论世界观。在本世纪如果说有区别的话，那就是科学与人文科学间的裂痕更深了。 前些年，科学界势力强大，对批评者可以置之不理——但现在不同了。由于科研经费减少，科学家推出几本书来抨击“反科学”的倾向。其中，值得注意的有弗吉尼亚大学生物学家保罗·R·格罗斯与拉特格斯大学教学家诺曼·莱维持合著的《高级迷信》以及康奈尔大学的卡尔·萨根著的《鬼怪世界》。科学捍卫者还在集会上表达他们的忧虑，比如，1995年在纽约城举行的“飞越科学与理性”大会和去年6月在巴法罗附近召开的“信息(迷信)时代的科学”大会。 很明显，反科学对不同的人有着不同的含义。格罗斯和莱维特针对那些质疑科学客观性的社会学家、哲学家及其他学者，主要挑他们的毛病。萨根更关注那些相信鬼怪、上帝造物以及信奉其他与科学世界观相左的人。

问答题The manager sat in his office amid his morning mail.

问答题我劝你别管闲事。

问答题有观察家指出，自从美国发动反恐战争以及朝核危机爆发以来，中美之间过去最具争议的问题，如人权和西藏问题等，在双边关系中已经降到次要位置。

问答题{{B}}Delta{{/B}} The large river best known to the ancient Greeks was the Nile of Egypt. They spoke of the river with admiration and called Egypt "the gift of the Nile". The mason for this was, first, that the Nile brought water to a rainless desert and, second, that once a year, the river overflowed its banks, leaving, as the water went back, a new layer of fertile soil. The flood waters carry in them soil (called silt) from the upper parts of the river valley to the lower parts, and so to the sea. But as the river meets the sea, the sea acts as a barrier and forces the river to drop the silt it is carrying. There are no tides in the Mediterranean to carry the silt away, so year after year it collects at the mouth of the Nile, and the river must find its way around islands of silt to the always more distant Mediterranean. In this way, a vast area of fertile soil has been built up at the mouth of the Nile and out into the sea. The river water splits up to form small branches winding across the area. To the ancient Greeks, the mouth of the Nile looked like the drawing. Now we sometimes name things after the letters of the alphabet they resemble: a U-turn, an 1-beam a T-square, an S-bend, and so on. The Greeks did the same. The triangular area of land built up at the mouth of the Nile looked like the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet delta (△) and so this was the name they gave it. The word is now used for all areas of land formed at the mouth of rivers which flow into tideless seas, even when they are nor triangular in shape. The Mississippi delta, for example, is not shaped at all like the Greek delta, as you will see if you look at a map.

问答题不管是单人跳还是双人跳，跳绳时，男孩女孩都经常一边跳一边唱着歌谣。

问答题一项最新的调查表明，埃及妇女在经济平等方面与本国男性差距最大。

问答题大自然在这个季节显得特别纯洁，令人赏心悦目的纯洁。

问答题那好看的苹果、桃子和石榴把自己的果子悬在枝上，鲜红嫩绿的颜色，令人一望而发羡慕的心。

问答题提起东盟国家，我就想起去年在东盟会议上，马哈蒂尔先生和吴作栋先生曾经形象地把中国比喻成一个友好的大象。 他们说，中国的崛起不会对他们存在任何威胁。中国有5000年的文明史，有过辉煌的过去，也有过屈辱的往事。中国的崛起是多少代中国人的梦想。中国和平崛起的要义在什么地方? 第一，中国和平崛起就是要充分利用世界和平的大好时机，努力发展和壮大自己。同时又以自己的发展，维护世界和平。 第二，中国的崛起应把基点主要放在自己的力量上，独立自主、自力更生，艰苦奋斗，依靠广阔的国内市场、充足的劳动力资源和雄厚的资金储备，以及改革带来的机制创新。 第三，中国的崛起离不开世界。中国必须坚持开放的政策，在平等互利的原则上，同世界一切友好国家发展经贸往来。 第四，中国的崛起需要很长的时间，恐怕要多少代人的努力奋斗。 第五，中国的崛起不会妨碍任何人，也不会威胁任何人，也不会牺牲任何人。中国现在不称霸，将来即使强大了也永远不会称霸。

问答题{{B}}Tourism and Environment in the Mediterranean{{/B}} The Mediterranean Countries as a whole account for one third of the world international tourism. In 1990, 72 million international tourists and 62 million domestic tourists visited the Mediterranean coastal region. Although the highest concentration has traditionally been on the northern shores, the trend is towards a more even distribution around the entire basin. At the same time, the Mediterranean Region -- characterised by its particular climate -- is considered as a terrestrial biodiversity "hotspot", this being defined as an area of exceptional endemism, having more than 1,500 vascular plants, and where over 70% of the natural habitat has been lost. In fact, the Mediterranean region largely meets these criteria, since it has about 13,000 endemic plants with only very little habitat left. Favourite tourist areas and biodiversity hotspots largely coincide in the Mediterranean coastal regions. This constitutes both an asset and a liability. The occupation of coastal areas by tourist infrastructures, including associated urbanisation, roads, marinas, golf courses, secondary homes, etc, leads to destruction of vulnerable terrestrial ecosystems and wetlands. Tourists demand water supply per capita at a higher rate than local inhabitants and at a time of water scarcity, in summer, thus leading to oversized facilities for both supply and treatment. Marine ecosystems suffer from water sports, anchoring, and waste disposal. Forest flies are multiplied by negligence and sometimes by criminal acts. These liabilities are however compensated by a major consideration, namely that all Mediterranean countries are heavily dependent on tourism to improve their balance of payments. Hence, the continued destruction of their coastal environments and natural amenities would jeopardise this much coveted tourism development. By 2025, in the case of a weak traditional development scenario, the number of domestic tourists in the Mediterranean region would reach 140 million and the number of international tourists 93 million, whereas in the case of a strong and sustainable development scenario, these figures could reach 220 million and 143 million respectively. The challenge is to make such tourism development sustainable. In this respect, a greater attention to biodiversity can be most significant. More coastal ecosystems -- terrestrial and marine -- should be protected and existing protected areas should be strengthened. Management of these areas should include improved facilities for "interpretation" for visitors, including in marine, mountaineering and skiing resorts. More should be made of local biodiversity as a tourist attraction. Combination of cultural and natural elements, for instance in biosphere reserves, should be provided to tourists in the form of properly managed "ecotourism". Traditional agricultural products and crafts of quality should be promoted. If properly established the link between tourism and biodiversity in the Mediterranean constitutes a major asset for the region.

问答题{{B}}The Environment in Perspective: Is Everything Getting Steadily Worse?{{/B}} Much of the discussion of environmental problems in the popular press leaves the reader with the impression that matters have been growing steadily worse, and that pollution is largely a product of the profit system and modern industrialization. There are environmental problems today that are both enormous and pressing, but in fact pollution is nothing new. Medieval cities were pestholes—the streets and rivers were littered with garbage and the air stank of rotting wastes. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a German traveler reported that to get a view of London from the tower of St. Paul's, one had to get there very early in the morning "before the air was full of coal smoke." Since 1960 there has been progress in solving some pollution problems, much of it the result of concerted efforts to protect the environment. The quality of the air in most Canadian cities has improved. In Toronto, for example, the concentration of suspended particulates, or soot, in the air has fallen dramatically since 1962. To put this figure in perspective, it should be noted that the current health advisory level for the index is 32. At a level of 58, people with chronic respiratory diseases may be affected. At 100, even healthy people may be affected by prolonged conditions, and those with cardiac and respiratory diseases could suffer severe effects Recently in Toronto, the index has exceeded 32 on fewer than half a dozen days annually. Similar improvements have occurred elsewhere in Canada and in other industrialized countries. Even the famous, or rather infamous, "fogs" of London are almost a thing of the past. There have been two high readings of particular note in the British capital in 1959 (when the index rose to 275 and there was a 10 percent increase over the normal number of deaths) and in 1962 (when the index rose to 575 and there was a 20 percent increase in mortality ). But more recently, London's, cleaner air has resulted in an astounding 50 percent increase in the number of hours of winter sunshine. In short, pollution problems are not a uniquely modem phenomenon, nor is every part of the environment deteriorating relentlessly. Environmental problems do not occur exclusively in capitalist economies. For example, in the People's Republic of China, coal soot from factory smokestacks in Beijing envelops the city in a thick black haze. Similarly, smoke from brown-coal furnaces pollutes the air almost everywhere in Eastern Europe. It has been estimated that a third of Poland's citizens live in areas of "ecological disaster". The citizens of Leipzig, a major industrial city in what was formerly East Germany, have a life expectancy a full six years shorter than the national average. However, we do not mean to suggest that all is well with the environment in market-oriented economies or that there is nothing more to do. While there have been some improvements, serious problems remain. Our world is now subject to a number of new pollutants, most of which are far more dangerous than those we have reduced, even though they may be less visible and less malodorous While environmental problems are neither new nor confined only to capitalist, industrialized economies, these facts are not legitimate grounds for complacency. The potential damage that we are inflicting on ourselves and on our surroundings is very real and very substantial.

问答题{{B}}Passage 1{{/B}} {{B}}Why Is it So Difficult to Swat a Fly?{{/B}} The brains of flies are wired to avoid the swatter, US researchers said on Thursday. At the mere hint of a threat, the insects adjust their preflight stance to flee in the opposite direction, ensuring a clean getaway, they said in a finding that helps explain why flies can so easily evade swipes from their human foes. "These movements are made very rapidly, within about 200 milliseconds, but within that time the animal determines where the threat is coming and activates a set of movements to position its legs and wings," Michael Dickinson of the California Institute of Technology said in a statement. "This illustrates how rapidly the fly's brain can process sensory information into an appropriate motor response," said Dickinson, whose research appears in the journal {{I}}Current Biology{{/I}}. Dickinson's team studies this process in fruit flies using high-speed digital imaging equipment and a fancy fly swatter. In response to a threat from the front, the fly moves its middle legs forward, leans back and raises its back legs for a backward takeoff. If the threat is from the side, the fly leans the other way before takeoff. The findings offer new insight into the nervous system of the fly, and lends a few clues on how to outsmart them. Dickinson, a bioengineer, has devoted his life's work to the study of insect flight. He has built a tiny robotic fly called Robofly and a 3-D visual flight simulator called Fly-O-Vision.

问答题经过仔细研究，他们发现这个设计{{U}}落后{{/U}}了。

问答题你要当合格的导游，就必须熟悉这个国家的历史和文化。