单选题A well-written biography can ______ the barriers of time and bring the hero back to life.

单选题My suggestion met with a(n) ______ refusal; I had to hold my tongue.

单选题She was slim and he liked her that way. So he called a lawyer. The result was a contract. According to the document, the fresh-faced bride agreed to pay a fine for each pound she gained in weight, the money refundable upon its loss. The paper signed, and the wedding went on. This is a prenuptial (婚前的)agreement—one more indication of the strange pass of marriage in this most transactional decade. You are welcome to marriage, contractual style, where increasingly detailed legal documents spell out everything from who's going to do the dishes to who's going to get the house when you split. This is family planning taken to extreme. Once employed solely by the rich, second-timers and the old industrialist carrying off the latest young cookie, the prenuptial agreement—a written pact between a couple outlining the financial obligations in the event of divorce—is becoming commonplace in a litigious (爱打官司的),disillusioned and materialistic age in which one in every two marriages is projected to end in divorce. The only question is: What about love? When asked whether anyone believes in Cupid (爱神)anymore, Dr. Michael Vincent Miller says, "Given a century that is full of sexual liberation, computer-dating services and so on, one feels tempted to reply,' only in a mood of desperate nostalgia (怀旧 )'. ""Pre-nups" (prenuptial agreements)do assume negativity. Founded on disillusionment, they cannot be separated from the high divorce rate in the United States. The result, argues Miller, is a kind of defending mentality. "We've gotten good at managing finiteness, failure and trouble with a sort of 'What' s yours is yours and what's mine is mine's realism'. We've seen it isn't all about love. We've seen there's power politics in there—a fight for control, and when you've got those things, you're halfway to lawyers and money." In other ways, however, the compacts embody positive, even idealistic thinking about marriage, love and relations, a law scholar Isabel Marcus believes. Marcus says , "Contracts could spell the end of romantic love as salvation. They say love exists, but that it's best accompanied by good, hard thinking about equitability (平等). By writing a contract, the couple gains control of its marriage. "What's good is it contributes to honesty; what's unfortunate is the idea that any contract can govern your emotions," says the author of the book "The Nature of Love./

单选题This work is expected to fulfill a need that lawyers have felt for many years.

单选题The other members of the Cabinet made fun of the Secretary of Interior when he purchased Alaska because ,at the time ,it was not considered valuable,

单选题Experts say distracted walking is a growing problem, as people of all ages become more dependent on electronic devices for personal and professional matters. They also note pedestrian deaths have been rising in recent years. In 2005, 11% of all US deaths involved pedestrians, but that number rose to 15% in 2014. The rise in deaths coincides with states introducing bills that target pedestrians. Some states, such as Hawaii, Arkansas, Illinois, Nevada and New York, continue to introduce legislation every year. The measure recently introduced by New Jersey assembly woman Pamela Lampitt would ban walking while texting and prohibit pedestrians on public roads from using electronic communication devices unless they are hands-free. Violators would face fines of up to $ 50, 15-day imprisonment or both, which is the same penalty as jaywalking (乱穿马路). Half of the fine would be allocated to safety education about the dangers of walking while texting, said Lampitt. Some see the proposal as an unnecessary government overreach, while others say they understand Lampitt"s reasoning. But most agree that people need to be made aware of the issue. "Distracted pedestrians, like distracted drivers, present a potential danger to themselves and drivers on the road," Lampitt said. "An individual crossing the road distracted by their smartphone presents just as much danger to motorists as someone jaywalking and should be held, at minimum, to the same penalty." The main question raised about the measure, though, is whether it can be enforced consistently by police officers who usually have more pressing matters to deal with. Some feel that rather than imposing a new law, the state should focus on distracted-walking education. Lampitt said the measure was needed to stop and penalize "risky behavior". She cited a National Safety Council report that showed distracted-walking incidents involving cellphones accounted for an estimated 11,101 injuries from 2000 to 2011. The study found a majority of those injured were female and most were 40 or younger. Talking on the phone was the most prevalent activity at the time of injury, while texting accounted for 12%. Nearly 80% of the injuries occurred as the result of a fall, while 9% occurred from the pedestrian striking a motionless object.

单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} Singletons, referring to those who live alone, are being comforted by well-meaning friends and family and told that not having a partner is not the end of the world. So, it would seem that they can say, yes, it is not. But no, in fact, it is the end. A gloomy study has just been released that says that the international trend towards living alone is putting an unprecedented strain on our ecosystem. For a number of reasons--relationship breakdown, career choice, longer life spans, smaller families—the number of individual households is growing. And this is putting intolerable pressure on natural resources, and accelerating the extinction of endangered plant and animal species. And there is worse news. Running a refrigerator, television, cooker, plumbing system just for selfish little you is a disastrous waste of resources on our over-populated planet. "The efficiency of resource consumption" is a lot higher in households of two people or more, simply because they share everything. Well imagine that. Just when you thought living alone was OK, you would find that all the time you were the enemy of mankind. Every time you put the kettle on the stove for a cup of coffee you were destroying Mother Earth. Indeed, it is not just your mother who is a bit worried by your continuing single status—you are letting down the entire human race by not having a boyfriend or girlfriend. The trouble is that society has a group instinct and people panic and hit out when they see other people quietly rebelling and straying away from the "standard" of family and coupledom. The suggestion is that singledom should be at best a temporary state. Unless you are assimilated into a larger unit, you can never be fully functional. Try "communal living." There are all these illustrations of young attractive people having a "great time," laughingly bumping into each other. It looks like an episode of the TV series "Friends. " And the message is clear: Togetherness is good, solitude is bad, and being single on your own is not allowed.

单选题In the end, both attacks and defenses of the free market and {{U}}conventional{{/U}} economics have immense philosophical implications.

单选题It can be inferred from the context that the "flip side" (Line 4, Par

单选题Woman: What did the teacher want you to do? Man: She asked me to finish doing the assignment in ten minutes. Woman: In ten minutes? That would not be a piece of cake. But did you say "yes"? Question: What does the woman mean?

单选题The manager was told when he was ______that his job was a pressure job.

单选题(Writing) in a clear and terse style, the book (describes) the (author's) childhood experiences in a small town (just before) the outbreak of the Civil War.A. WritingB. describesC. author'sD. just before

单选题The survey does not Uallow for/U the fact that some students are attending part-time.

单选题In order for a child to have a healthy self-image, it's important that his thinking be in the track ______ failure.

单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}} The average number of authors on scientific papers is sky-rocketing. That's partly because labs are bigger, problems are more complicated, and more different subspecialties are needed. But it's also because U.S. government agencies have started to promote "team science". As physics developed in the post-World War II era, federal funds built expensive national facilities, and these served as surfaces on which collaborations could crystallize naturally. Yet multiple authorship—however good it may be in other ways--presents problems for journals and for the institutions in which these authors work. For the journals, long lists of authors are hard to deal with in themselves. But those long lists give rise to more serious questions when something goes wrong with the paper. If there is research misconduct, how should the liability be allocated among the authors? If there is an honest mistake in one part of the work but not in others, how should an evaluator aim his or her review? Various practical or impractical suggestions have emerged during the long-standing debate on this issue. One is that each author should provide, and the journal should then publish, an account of that author's particular contribution to the work. But a different view of the problem, and perhaps of the solution, comes as we get to university committee on appointments and promotions, which is where the authorship rubber really meets the road. Half a lifetime of involvement with this process has taught me how much authorship matters. I have watched committees attempting to decode sequences of names, agonize over whether a much-cited paper was really the candidate's work or a coauthor's, and send back recommendations asking for more specificity about the division of responsibility. Problems of this kind change the argument, supporting the case for asking authors to define their own roles. After all, if quality judgments about individuals are to be made on the basis of their personal contributions, then the judges better know what they did. But if questions arise about the validity of the work as a whole, whether as challenges to its conduct or as evaluations of its influence in the field, a team is a team, and the members should share the credit or the blame.

单选题In his closing Uremarks/U, the chairman expressed his thanks to all those who had contributed to the success of the conference.

单选题Floods have {{U}}undermined{{/U}} the foundation of the ancient bridge.

单选题They believe that the merchants had conspired to undermine the nation's economic independence.

单选题For them, defeating this football team is a mere dream that is neither Usubstantial/U nor practical.

单选题Man: I have to phone my secretary before we leave. Woman: There is not much time. Maybe you'd better get Tom to phone for you. Question: What does the woman mean?