单选题{{B}}Passage Six{{/B}} The last decade has seen a tremendous expansion of scientific knowledge in human genetics. Our understanding of human genes and of the genetic basis of disease has grown dramatically. Currently, more than 4, 000 diseases are known to be genetic and are passed on in families. Moreover, it is now known that alterations in our genes play a role in such common conditions as heart disease, diabetes, and many types of cancer. The identification of disease-related genes has led to an increase in the number of available genetic tests that detect disease or an individual's risk of disease. New tests are being developed to detect colon cancer, breast cancer, and other conditions. Scientists are concerned not only that gene tests offered are reliable, but also that patients and health care professionals understand the limitations of such testing. The disclosure of test results could inflict psychological harm to a patient if safe and effective interventions are not also available. Gene testing involves examining a person's DNA-taken from cells in a sample of blood or, occasionally, from other body fluids or tissues--for some anomaly that flags a disease or disorder. In addition to studying genes, genetic testing in a broader sense includes biochemical tests for the presence or absence of key proteins that signal aberrant genes. The most widespread type of genetic testing is newborn screening. Each year in the United States, four million newborn infants have blood samples tested for abnormal or missing gene products. Some tests look for abnormal arrangements of the chemical bases in the gene itself, while other tests detect inborn errors by verifying the absence of a protein that the cell needs to function normally. Carrier testing can be used to help couples to learn if they carry--and thus risk passing to their children. Genetic tests-biochemical and DNA-based--also are widely available for the prenatal diagnosis of conditions such as Down syndrome. Much of the current excitement in gene testing centers on predictive gene testing: tests that identify people who are at risk of getting a disease, before any symptoms appear. Tests are already available in research programs for some two dozen diseases, and as more disease genes are discovered, more gene tests can be expected. Tests for a few rare cancers are already in clinical use. Predictive gene tests for more common types of cancer are still primarily a research tool, difficult to execute and available only through research programs to small numbers of people who have a strong family history of disease. But the field of gene testing is evolving rapidly, with new genes being discovered almost daily and innovations in testing arriving almost as quickly.

单选题The wood was so rotten that, when we pulled, it ______ into fragments. A. broke away B. broke off C. broke up D. broke through

单选题Discoveries in science and technology are thought by " untaught minds" to come in blinding flashes or as the result of dramatic accidents. Sir Alexander Fleming did not, as legend would have it, look at the mold(霉)on a piece of cheese and get the idea for penicillin there and then. He experimented with antibacterial substances for nine years before he made his discovery. Inventions and innovations almost always come out of laborious trial and error. Innovation is like soccer; even the best players miss the goal and have their shots blocked much more frequently than they score. The point is that the players who score most are the ones who take most shots at the goal — and so it goes with innovation in any field of activity. The prime difference between innovation and others is one of approach. Everybody gets ideas, but innovators work consciously on theirs and they follow them through until they prove practicable or otherwise. What ordinary people see as fanciful abstractions, professional innovators see as solid possibilities. "Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there's no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done, " wrote Rudolph Flesch, a language authority. This accounts for our reaction to seemingly simple innovations like plastic garbage bags and suitcases on wheels that make life more convenient: "How come nobody thought of that before?" The creative approach begins with the proposition that nothing is as it appears. Innovators will not accept that there is only one way to do anything. Faced with getting from A to B, the average person will automatically set out on the best-known and apparently simplest route. The innovator will search for alternate courses, which may prove easier in the long run and are bound to be more interesting and challenging even if they lead to dead ends. Highly creative individuals really do march to a different drummer.

单选题The ex-president had been ______ in the country to refresh his mind before he passed away. A. given to walking B. given a walk C. given for a walk D. giving a walk

单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}} Is Wal-Mart going wobbly? Over the past couple of weeks, America's largest company--linchpin of the low-wage, no-benefit economy that is increasingly the norm in America--has announced some surprising reversals of course. In a series of speeches and interviews, chief executive H. Lee Scott unveiled four initiatives that he clearly hopes will polish the company's increasingly tarnished image. Wal-Mart, he said, will shift to more environmentally responsible practices--demanding better packaging of its products. It will offer more affordable health insurance to its employees, cutting the monthly premium in some cases to just ＄11. It will monitor the environmental and health and safety practices of its foreign suppliers. And it will lobby for a higher federal minimum wage. Scott's timing is anything but accidental. The sweatshop conditions in which thou-sands of employees of Wal-Mart's suppliers routinely work, and the depressive effect that Wal-Mart has on working-class living standards here in the United States, are receiving increasing scrutiny--enough to impede the company's growth. Wal-Mart's at-tempts to open stores in the major cities of the Northeast and West Coast have been largely checked by a coalition of fearful and irate unions, smaller retailers, churches and liberal activists. Wal-Mart's stock is down 13 percent this year. And worse is still to come. So the leopard realized it was time to change its spots-up to a point. Only 44 percent of Wal-Mart's nearly 1. 3 million U.S. employees are covered under its health insurance plan. Now the company says it will make its insurance more affordable. Of all Scott's commitments, the one that does merit belief is his out-of-the-blue declaration of support for a higher minimum wage. For Wal-Mart is bumping up against a serious problem at least partly of its own making: Because it pitches its products to a disproportionately low-income client, its revenue rises and falls with the fortunes of the lower end of the American working class. And those fortunes these days are anything but bright. The coming crunch in heating oil prices, the decimation of American manufacturing, the steady decline of median family incomes over the past several years, the failure to raise the federal minimum wage since 1997--all these are combining to limit the ability of Wal-Mart shoppers to buy as much as they used to. Wal-Mart, could, of course, raise its workers' wages, but Scott has dismissed that out of hand. So now it's the feds' responsibility to rescue Wal-Mart from the consequences of the low-wage, low-consumption economy that Wal-Mart, with such fanatical devotion, has created. For, in Wal-Mart's America, it's not clear that even Wal-Mart can thrive.

单选题At the meeting, Smith argued ______ in favor of the proposal.

单选题The pilot made an unexpected ______ because of engine trouble. A. conclusion B. crash C. victory D. landing

单选题Only when faced with overwhelming evidence of being treated differently than the men who surrounded me______, briefly, with the notion that I was different in gender-related ways from my male colleagues.

单选题My brother said he ______ told his examination results by the time I next saw him.

单选题The army's brave fighting ______ in total victory.

单选题We must recognize difficulties, analyse them and______them.

单选题The author agrees with the ALA that ______.

单选题According to the passage, high-risk persons exclude which of the following kinds of people?

单选题Why do teens drink? Reasons vary from ______ pressure to family patterns to social conditioning.

单选题The goals and desires______ widely between men and women, between the rich and the poor.(2002年上海交通大学考博试题)