单选题Simon's letter was in such a casual scrawl, and in such pale ink, that it was ______. A. vague B. ambiguous C. illegible D. obscure

单选题Distance education is different from self-study in that it ______.

单选题Language, like food, is a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life might be______ and damaged. (2004年武汉大学考博试题)

单选题The department store guards were nearly ______ by the crowds of shoppers waiting for the sale to begin. A. overflowed B. overthrown C. overturned D. overwhelmed

单选题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 arc 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Opinion poll surveys show that the public see scientists in a rather unflattering light. They are seen as cold, humorless, remote and unwilling (or unable) to communicate their specialized knowledge to ordinary people. Commonly, the scientist is also seen as being male: the characteristics listed above are popularly associated with "maleness". It is true that most scientists are male, but the picture of science as male activity may be a major reason why fewer girls than boys opt for science, except when it comes to biology, which is seen as "female". The image most people have of science and scientists comes from their own experience of school science, and from the mass media. Science teachers themselves see it as a problem that so many school pupils find school science and unsatisfying experience, though over the last few years more and more pupils, including girls, have opted for science subjects. In spite of excellent documentaries, and some good popular science magazines, scientific stories in the media still usually alternate between miracle and scientific threat. The popular stereotype of science is like the magic of fairy tales: it has potential for enormous good or awful hen. Popular fiction is full of "good" scientists saving the world, and "mad" scientists trying to destroy it. From all the many scientific stories which might be given media treatment, those which are chosen are usually those which can be framed in terms of the usual news angles: novelty, threat, conflict or the bizarre. The routine and often tedious work of the scientist slips from view, to be replaced with a picture of scientists forever offending public moral sensibilities (as in embryo research), threatening public health (as in weapons research), or fighting it out with each other (in giving evidence at public enquiries such as those held on the issues connected with nuclear power). The mass media also tend to over-personalize scientific work, depicting it as the product of individual genius, while neglecting the social organization which makes scientific work possible. A further effect of this is that science comes to be seen as a thing in itself: a kind of unpredictable force; a tide of scientific progress. It is no such thing, of course. Science is what scientists do; what they do is what a particular kind of society facilitates, and what is done with their work depends very much on who has the power to turn their discoveries into technology, and what their interests are.

单选题The author wants to tell us that America ______.

单选题He believed that the greatest of his ______ was that he'd never had a college education.

单选题By the mid-nineteenth century, the term "ice-box" had entered the American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States: The ice trade grew with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and hospitals, and by some forward-looking city dealers in fresh meat, fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1861-1865), as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880, half the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston and Chicago, went to families for their own use. This had become possible because a new household convenience, the icebox, a precursor of the modem refrigerator, had been invented. Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now suppose: In the early nineteenth century, the knowledge of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration, was rudimentary. The commonsense notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course mistaken, for it was the melting of ice that performed the cooling. Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the ice in blankets, which kept the ice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors achieve the delicate balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox. But as early as 1803, an ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the right track. He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the village of Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found that customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of his competitors to pay a premium price for his butter, still fresh and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage of his icebox, Moore explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel to market at night in order to keep their produce cool.

单选题From the last paragraph we can see that ______.

单选题The editorial described drug abuse as the greatest calamity of our age.

单选题The passage uses the term "vegetative forms" to refer to ______.

单选题Can a novelist remain______to the problems of the world in which he lives?

单选题For the cast of this mighty epic, Vidal ______ his brilliant family and social connections, which included Mary Pick ford, Marion Davies and throngs for the political world.

单选题The mental patient fluctuates between great excitement and deep depression.

单选题Psychologists clearly have their own marketplace and, ______, have a hold on the major portion of the outpatient services rendered to the public.

单选题They eat a lot of meats and dairy foods, along with a lot of ______ items that don't fall into any Nutrigroup, such as sugar, fat, and condiments. A. redundant B. miscellaneous C. versatile D. trivial

单选题A visitor to a museum today would notice______changes in the way museums are operated.