单选题More than a quarter of American children--and half of black children--belong to families too poor to fully qualify for the ＄1,000-a-year child tax credit, which President Bush signed four years ago and has cited in arguing that his program of sweeping tax cuts helps low-income families, a new study has found. With an annual value of $47 billion, the credit is the government's largest children's subsidy and one that has provoked sharp partisan fights. Many conservatives, viewing it solely as a tax cut, want to reserve the credit for families that owe federal income tax. Many liberals, vie-wing it as a broader children's allowance, want to extend it to poorer workers, who they say need it most. Still, the study found that the families of 19.5 million children were too poor to receive the full ＄1,000 benefit. About half get a partial benefit, and half get nothing. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker, expressed surprise at the racial gap. "That's a stunning number," he said, referring to the half of black children who fail to receive the full credit. "I'd find a way to make sure those kids get the money as part of a broader post-Hurricane Katrina plan." Framed as middle-class tax relief, the credit passed in 1997 and offered ＄500 per child to families that owed income tax. It was doubled in 2001 and made partly available to families too poor to have income tax bills. Len Burman, a co-director of the tax center and the study's author, said it might actually exaggerate the amount going to the poor since it assumed all eligible families received the credit. In practice, studies suggest that poor and minority families claim tax credits at lower rates. Told of the study, which will be published Monday, some conservatives repeated their opposition to making the credit more of an antipoverty program. Mr. Mitchell said that low-wage workers received a total of ＄39 billion a year from a similar program, the earned income tax credit. "It's not like they're not getting any redistribution from the government," he said. "We want less income redistribution, not more." Both sides in child tax credit debate have cast their arguments in moral terms. "The income gap is wide and growing," Ms. Snowe said. "We're talking about giving a helping hand to families who through no fault of their own are at or near poverty." Mr. Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation said income redistribution was morally problematic, since it punished people for economic success. He also called it economically inefficient, arguing that it discouraged work among both rich and poor.

单选题They ______ themselves ______ the politician because they hoped he would become president one day. At last he did. A. connected, with B. combined, with C. linked, up D. attached, to

单选题Some ______ good luck brought us nothing but trouble. A. seemingly B. satisfactorily C. uniformly D. universally

单选题 The current emergency in Mexico City that has taken over our lives is nothing. I could ever have imagined for me or my children. We are living in an environmental crisis, an air-pollution emergency of unprecedented severity. What it really means is that just to breathe here is to play a dangerous game with your health. As patents, what terrorizes us most are reports that children are at higher risk because they breathe more times per minute. What more can we do to protect them and ourselves? Our pediatrician's (儿科医师的) medical recommendation was simple: abandon the city permanently. We are foreigners and we are among the small minority that can afford to leave. We arc here because of my husband's work. We are fascinated by Mexico--its history and rich culture. We know that for us, this is a temporary danger. However, we cannot stand for much longer the fear we feel for our boys. We cannot stop them from breathing. But for millions, there is no choice. Their lives, their jobs, their futures depend on being here. Thousands of Mexicans arrive each day in this city, desperate for economic opportunities. Thousands more are born here each day. Entire families work in the streets and practically live there. It is a familiar sight: as parents hawk goods at stoplights, their children play in the grassy highway dividers, breathing exhaust fumes. I feel guilty complaining about my personal situation; we won't be here long enough for our children to form the impression that skies are colored only gray. And yet the government cannot do what it must to end this problem. For any country, especially a developing Third World economy like Mexico, the idea of barring from the capital city enough cars, closing enough factories and spending the necessary billions on public transportation is simply not an option. So when things get bad, as in the current emergency, Mexico takes half measures--prohibiting some more cars from circulating, stopping some factories from producing--that even its own officials concede aren't adequate. The word "emergency" implies the unusual. But when daily life itself is an emergency, the concept loses its meaning. It is human nature to try to adapt to that which we cannot change or to mislead ourselves into believing we can adapt.

单选题The biggest problem facing Chile as it promotes itself as a tourist destination to be reckoned ______, is that it is at the end of the earth. It is too far south to be a convenient way from the big tourist markets, unlike Mexico, for example.

单选题By the first decade of the 21st century, international commercial air traffic is expected ______ vastly beyond today"s levels.

单选题Do you know the fact that broad bean contain ______ that must be destroyed by cooking them at high temperature before eating them? A.flake B.aroma C.ether D.toxin

单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}} When I was a child in Sunday school, I would ask searching questions like "Angels can fly up in heaven, but how do clouds hold up pianos, and get the same puzzling response about how that was not important, what was important was that Jesus died for our sins and if we accepted him as our savior, when we died, we would go to heaven, where we'd get everything we wanted. Some children in my class wondered why anyone would hang on a cross with nails stuck through his hands to help anyone else; I wondered how Santa Claus knew what I wanted for Christmas, even though I never wrote him a letter. Maybe he had a tape recorder hidden in every chimney in the world. This literal-mindedness has stuck with me; one result of it is that I am unable to believe in God. Most of the other atheists I know seem to feel freed or proud of their unbelief, as if they have cleverly refused to be sold snake oil. My husband, who was reared in a devout Catholic family, has served as an altar boy. So other than baptizing our son to reassure our families, we've skated over the issue of faith. Some people believe faith is a gift; it's a choice, a matter of spiritual discipline. I have a friend who was reared to believe, and he does. But his faith has wavered. He has struggled to hang onto it and to pass it along to his children. Another friend of mine never goes to church because she's a single mother who doesn't have the gas money. But she once told me a day when she was washing oranges as the sun streamed onto them. As she peeled one, the smell rose to her face, and she felt she received the Holy Spirit. "He sank into my bones," she recounted. "I lifted my palms upward, feeling filled with love. " Being no theologian, and not even a believer, I am not in a position to offer up theories, but mine is this: people who receive faith directly, as a spontaneous combustion of the soul, have fewer questions. They have been sparked with a faith that is more unshakable than that of those who have been taught.

单选题 How many things can you see in the night sky? A lot! On a clear night you might see the Moon, some planets, and thousands of sparkling stars. You can see even more with a telescope. You might see stars where before you only saw dark space. You might see that many stars look larger than others. You might see that some stars that look white are really red or blue. With bigger and bigger telescopes you can see more and more objects in the sky. And you can see those objects in more and more details. But scientists believe there are some things in the sky that we will never see. We won't see them with the biggest telescope in the world, on the clearest night of the year. That's because they're Invisible. They're the mysterious dead stars called black holes. You might find it hard to imagine that stars die. After all, our Sun is a star. Year after year we see it up in the sky burning brightly, giving us heat and light. The Sun certainly doesn't seem to be getting old or weak. But stars do burn out and die after billions of years. As a star's gases burn, they give off light and heat. But when the gas runs out, the star stops burning and begins to die. As the star cools, the outer layers of the star pull in toward the center. The star squashes into a smaller and smaller ball. If the star was very small, the star ends up as a cold. dark ball called a black dwarf. If the star was very big, it keeps squashing inward until it's packed together tighter than anything in the universe. Imagine if the each were crushed until it was the size of a tiny marble. That's how tightly this dead star, a black hole is packed. What pulls the star in toward its center with such power?. It's the same force that pulls you down when you jump--the force called gravity. A black hole is so tightly packed that its gravity sucks in everything--even light. The light from black hole can never come back to your eyes. That's why you see nothing but blackness. So the next time you stare up at the night sky, remember: there's more in the sky than meets the eyes! Scattered in the silent darkness are black holes--the great mystery of space.

单选题Once the ______of the election had died down, it was back to normal for the President.

单选题In the 1998's flood in China a large number of victims suffered the loss of their homes.

单选题When traveling, you are advised to take traveler's checks, which provide a secure ______ to carrying your money in cash.(2010年厦门大学考博试题)

单选题 Watch a baby between six and nine months old, and you will observe the basic concepts of geometry being learned. Once the baby has mastered the idea that space is three-dimensional, it reaches out and begins grasping various kinds of objects. It is then, from perhaps nine to fifteen months, that the concepts of sets and numbers are formed. So far, so good. But now an ominous development takes place. The nerve fibers in the brain insulate themselves in such a way that the baby begins to hear sounds very precisely. Soon it picks up language, and it is then brought into direct communication with adults. From this point on, it is usually downhill all the way for mathematics, because the child now becomes exposed to all the nonsense words and beliefs of the community into which it has been so unfortunate as to have been born. Nature, having done very well by the child to this point, having permitted it the luxury of thinking for itself for eighteen months, now abandons it to the arbitrary conventions and beliefs of society. But at least the child knows something of geometry and numbers, and it will always retain some memory of the early halcyon days, no matter what vicissitudes it may suffer later on. The main reservoir of mathematical talent in any society is thus possessed by children who are about two years old, children who have just learned to speak fluently.

单选题Her lecture gave us a sense of how empty the universe is, in spite of ______ number of stars within it. A. varying B. enormous C. unusual D. limited

单选题As regards to the development of moral standards in the growing child, ______ is very important in parental teaching. To forbid a thing one day and excuse it the next is no foundation for morality.

单选题The music aroused an ______ feeling of homesickness in them.

单选题The environmental balance among ecological communities is exceedingly complex. (2003年电子科技大学考博试题)

单选题Deserts, dry areas with ______ no vegetation, cover more than one-third of the Earth"s land surface.

单选题We are writing to the manager ______ the repairs recently carried out at the above address. A. with the exception of B. with the purpose of C. with reference to D. with a view to