单选题She didn"t hope to ______ her cold in a couple of days.

单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} There are over 6 000 different computer and online games in the world now. A segment of them are considered to be both educational and harmlessly entertaining. One such game teaches geography, and another trains pilots. Others train the player in logical thinking and problem solving. Some games may also help young people to become more computer literate, which is more important in this technology-driven era. But the dark side of the computer games has become more and more obvious. "A segment of games features anti-social themes of violence, sex and crude language," says David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and Family. "Unfortunately, it's a segment that seems particularly popular with kids aged eight to fifteen." One study showed that almost 80 percent of the computer and online games young people preferred contained violence. The investigators said "These are not just games anymore. These are learning machines. We're teaching kids in the most incredible manner what it's like to pull the trigger. What they are not learning are the real-life consequences. " They also said "The new and more sophisticated games are even worse, because they have better graphics and allow the player to participate in even more realistic violent acts." In the game Carmageddon, for example, the player will have driven over and killed up to 33 000 people by the time all levels are completed. A description of the outcome of the game says: "Your victims not only squish under your tires and splatter blood on the windshield, they also get on their knees and beg for mercy, or commit suicide. If you like, you can also {{U}}dismember{{/U}} them. " Is all this simulated violence harmful? Approximately 3 000 different studies have been conducted on this subject. Many have suggested that there is a connection between violence in games and increased aggressiveness in the players. Some specialists downplay the influence of the games, saying that other factors must be taken into consideration, such as the possibility that kids who already have violent tendencies are choosing such games. But could it be that violent games still play a contributing role? It seems unrealistic to insist that people are not influenced by what they see. If that were true, why would the commercial world spend billions of dollars annually for television advertising?

单选题Man: Penny's still going to Smith College, isn't she?Woman: No. I heard she transferred to Yale.Question: What do they say about Penny?

单选题Man: I need some advice as I have an important interview tomorrow.Woman: Why don't you go ask Nick? He has been a headhunter for 5 years and interviewed a lot of people.Question: What is the job of a headhunter according to the conversation?

单选题A (more sophisticated) analysis shows that an expansion (rather than) a boycott of wood products is (that) we really ought to (be after).

单选题(To) the (best of) my knowledge, the climate in Arizona is better all (the) (year-round) than (any) other state.A. ToB. best ofC. year-roundD. any

单选题He has been at the helm (舵)of the Securities and Exchange Commission for only three months, but William Donaldson has given individual investors reason to believe that he will prove to be an effective champion of their interests as a vigilant regulator of the nation's financial markets. The challenges ahead remain daunting, but Mr. Donaldson is steadily restoring the agency's credibility in the wake of its disastrous stewardship by Harvey Pitt. The SEC. chairman passed his first big test by persuading William McDonough, the respected president of the New York Federal Reserve, to run the new accounting oversight board created by Congress last summer. He has also opened an important inquiry into trading practices at the New York Stock Exchange. The commission has issued rules to tighten corporate boards' oversight over financial audits. Mr. Donaldson should now see that more is done to shore up shareholder democracy. A reassuring sign that there is a new sheriff(治安官)on Wall Street came in the aftermath of the recently announced landmark settlement with 10 brokerage(经纪人业务)firms over their tainted stock research. The SEC. chairman sternly rebuked Philip Purcell, the chief executive of Morgan Stanley, for trying to minimize the extent of his firm's involvement in the scandals. Mr. Donaldson, a former Wall Street banker himself, wrote a letter to Mr. Purcell describing concern over his "troubling lack of contrition" , and reminding him that Morgan could face further legal problems if it denied the settled charges. Besides being unusual, Mr. Donaldson's move was a powerful use of his office's bully pulpit (讲坛). With all the talk about whether the SEC. has enough material resources to pursue corporate malfeasance—the agency's budget is being increased significantly—it was easy in the Harvey Pitt era to forget that a strong SEC chairman can wield a great deal of moral authority. This is especially true given financial institutions absolute need to retain public trust. Mr. Donaldson should be ready to use his bully pulpit often. Wall Street is awash in a "troubling lack of contrition" for its past misdeeds.

单选题A: I noticed a copy of Scientific American on your desk. May I borrow it?B: ______

单选题Effective protection of intellectual property rights can benefit from the education on academic ______.

单选题A: The concert set a record for attendance. B: ______

单选题Woman: Why have we stopped? Man: Well, Mrs. Smith, you are not using your mirror enough. You must check in the mirror before you pull out. But after all, this is only your second lesson. You are doing fine. Question: What is the man's job?

单选题Tim is {{U}}dubious{{/U}} about diet pills which advertise quick weigh loss.

单选题Faith in medicine runs deep in America. We spend more per person on health care than any other nation. Whether we eat too much or exercise too little, whether we're turning gray or feeling blue, we look to some pill or procedure to make us better. We assume that devoting ever more dollars to medicine will bring us longer, healthier lives. But there is mounting evidence that each new dollar we devote to the current health care system brings small and diminishing returns to public health. Today the United States spends more than $4 500 per person per year on health care. Costa Rica spends less than $ 300. Yet life expectancy at birth is nearly identical in both countries. Despite the highly publicized" longevity revolution," life expectancy among the elderly in the United States is hardly improving. Yes, we are an aging society, but primarily because of falling birthrates. Younger Americans, meanwhile, are far more likely to be disabled than they were 20 years ago. Most affected are people in their thirties, whose disability rates increased by nearly 130 percent, due primarily to overweight. Why has our huge investment in health care left us so unhealthy? Partly it is because so many promised" miracle cures," from Interferon to gene therapies, have proven to be ineffective or even dangerous. Partly it's because health care dollars are so concentrated on the terminally ill and the very old that even when medical interventions "work,'" the gains to average life expectancy are small. And partly it is because of medical errors and adverse reaction to prescription drugs, which cause more deaths than motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer or AIDS. Each year roughly 200 000 seniors suffer fatal or life-threatening "adverse drug events" due to improper drug use or drug interaction. Why don't Americans live any longer than Costa Ricans? Overwhelmingly, it's because of differences in behavior. Americans exercise less, eat more, drive more, smoke more, and lead more socially isolated lives. Even at its best, modern medicine can do little to promote productive aging, because by the time most people come in contact with it their bodies are already compromised by stress, indulgent habits, environmental dangers and injuries.

单选题A: I just can't stand this class any more! B: ______ It's required, and you have to sit in it in order to graduate.

单选题Inflation is a period of rapid rises in prices. When your money buys fewer goods so that you get (56) for the same amount of money as before, inflation is the problem. Sometimes people describe inflation as a time when "a dollar is not (57) a dollar anymore". Inflation is a problem for all consumers, especially people who live on a fixed income. Retired people, for instance, cannot (58) on an increase in income as prices rise. They face serious problems in stretching their incomes to (59) their needs in time of inflation. Many retired people must cut their spending to (60) rising prices. In many cases they must stop (61) some necessary items, such as food and clothing. Even (62) working people whose incomes are going up, inflation can also be a problem. The (63) of living goes up, and they must have even more money to maintain their standard of living. When incomes do not keep (64) with rising prices, living standard goes down. People may be earning the same amount of money, but they are not living (65) because they are not able to buy as many goods and services. Government units gather information about prices in our economy and publish it as price indexes (66) the rate of price change can be determined. A price index measures changes in prices using the price for a (67) year as the base. The base price is set (68) 100, and the other prices are reported as a (69) of the base price. A price index makes (70) possible to compare current price with that in previous years.

单选题People expect that ______.

单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}} Have you ever felt your life go into slow motion as you realize something bad is happening? You might have just knocked over a wine glass or noticed a car hurtling towards you, for example. Now scientists have measured exactly how much these attention-grabbing(引人注意的)events slow down our perception of the world around us. Another example of the world appearing to slow down is when you are hanging on the phone waiting for someone to pick up at the other end. If your attention wanders while you're waiting, then suddenly switches back,you will probably hear what seems like a longer than usual silence before hearing the dialling tone again. For you, time will have momentarily slowed. To see how our perception of time changes when something new happens, Vincent Walsh and his colleagues put headphones on volunteers and played eight beeps to their right ears. The gap between each beep was exactly i second, except for the gap between the fourth and fifth beeps, which the scientists could make shorter or longer. They altered the length of this gap until the volunteers estimated it was the same length as the other gaps. The researchers found that, on average, people judge a second slightly short, at 955 milliseconds. In the second part of the experiment, the first four beeps were played to the subjects' right ear, but the other four were then played to their left. Again, the volunteers were asked to estimate when the gap between the fourth and fifth beeps was the same as the others. This time they judged a second to be even shorter at 825 milliseconds long. Perceiving a second to be much shorter than it is makes you feel as though the world has gone into slow motion, since less happens in that slice of time. Walsh thinks the effect could have evolved to give us a fraction more time to react to potentially threatening events. Last year, Kielan Yarrow, a British psychologist found a similar effect with vision. When you glance at a clock, the first second will seem longer than it really is. Yarrow's results showed that time appeared to slow down by a similar amount as Walsh found. Previous studies have shown that cooling the body slows down our perception of time while warming it up has the opposite effect.

单选题{{B}}Passage Five{{/B}} One of the most strikingly apparent instances of extrasensory perception is the precognitive experience, when a person has a compelling perception of a coming disaster, news of death of a loved one, or a communication from a long-lost friend, and the predicted event then happens. Many who have had such experiences report that the emotional intensity of the precognition and its subsequent verification provide an overpowering sense of contact with another realm of reality. I have had such an experience myself. Many years ago, I awoke in the middle of night in a cold sweat, with a certain knowledge that a close relative had suddenly died. I was so gripped with the haunting intensity of the experience that I was afraid to place a long-distance phone call, (for fear that the relative would trip over the telephone cord or something and make the experience a self-fulfilling prediction). In fact, the relative is alive and well, and whatever psychological roots the experience may have, it was not a reflection of an imminent event in the real world. However, suppose the relative had in fact died that night. You would have had a difficult time convincing me that it was merely coincidence. But it is easy to calculate that if each American has such a premonitory experience a few times in his lifetime, the actual statistics alone will produce a few apparent precognitive events somewhere in America each year. We can calculate that this must occur fairly frequently, but to the rare person who dreams of disaster, followed rapidly by its realization, it is uncanny and awesome. Such a coincidence must happen to someone every few months. But those who experience a correct precognition understandably resist its explanation by coincidence. After my experience I did not write a letter to an institute of psychology relating a compelling predictive dream that was not borne out by reality. That is not a memorable letter. But had the death I dreamt actually occurred, such a letter would have been marked down as evidence for precognition. The hits are recorded; the misses are not. Thus human nature unconsciously conspires to produce a biased reporting of the frequency of such events.

单选题Imagine a world in which there was suddenly no emotion—a world in which human beings could feel no love or happiness, no terror or hate. Try to imagine the consequences of such a transformation. People might not be able to stay alive: knowing neither joy nor pleasure, anxiety nor fear, they would be as likely to repeat acts that hurt them as acts that were beneficial. They could not learn: they could not benefit from experience because this emotional world would lack rewards and punishments. Society would soon disappear: people would be as likely to harm one another as to provide help and support. Human relationships would not exist: in a world without friends or enemies, there could be no marriage, affection among companions, or bonds among members of groups. Society's economic underpinnings (支柱) would be destroyed: since earning $10 million would be no more pleasant than earning $10, there would be no incentive to work. In fact, there would be no incentives of any kind. For as we will see, incentives imply a capacity to enjoy them. In such a world, the chances that the human species would survive are next to zero, because emotions are the basic instrument of our survival and adaptation. Emotions structure the world for us in implant (嵌入、插入 ) ways. As individuals, we categorize objects on the basis of our emotions. True, we consider the length, shape, size, or texture, but an object's physical aspects are less important than what it has done or can do to us—hurt us, surprise us, anger us or make us joyful. We also use categorizations colored by emotions in our families, communities, and overall society. Out of our emotional experiences with objects and events comes a social feeling of agreement that certain things and actions are "good" and others are "bad", and we apply these categories to every aspect of our social life—from what foods we eat and what clothes we wear to how we keep promises and which people our group will accept. In fact, society exploits our emotional reactions and attitudes, such as loyalty, morality, pride, shame, guilt, fear and greed, in order to maintain itself. It gives high rewards to individuals who perform important tasks such as surgery, makes heroes out of individuals for unusual or dangerous achievements such as flying fighter planes in a war, and uses the legal and penal (刑法的) system to make people afraid to engage in antisocial acts.