单选题Older persons typically exhibit greater experience-based knowledge, increased accuracy, better judgment, and generally improved ability to handle familiar tasks than younger persons. Such applied knowledge, or wisdom, may in fact be considerably more important to one's ability to accomplish most tasks of day-to-day life than were the abstract abilities tapped by intelligence tests. A. increased accuracy B. than younger persons C. or wisdom D. than were

单选题{{B}}(3){{/B}} Auctions are public sales of goods, conducted by an officially approved auctioneer. He asked the crowd to gather in the auction room to bid for various items on sale. He encourages buyers to bid higher figures and finally names the highest bidder as the buyer of the goods. This is called "knocking down" the goods, for the bidding ends when the auctioneer bangs a small hammer on a raised platform. The ancient Romans probably invented sales by auction and the English word comes from the Latin "autic", meaning "increase". The Romans usually sold in this way the spoils taken in war; these sales were called "sub hasta", meaning "under the spear", a spear being stuck in the ground as a signal for a crowd to gather. In England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries goods were often sold "by the candle"; a short candle was lit by the auctioneer and bids could be made while it was burning. Practically all goods can be sold by auction. Among these are coffee, skins, wool, tea, cocoa, furs, fruit, vegetables and wines. Auction sales are also usual for land and property, antique furniture, pictures, rare books, old china and works of art. The auction rooms at Chritie's and Sotheby's in London and New York are world famous. An auction is usually advertised beforehand with full particulars of the articles to be sold and where and when they can be viewed by the buyers. If the advertisement cannot give full details, catalogues are printed, and each group of goods to be sold together, called a "lot", is usually given a number. The auctioneer need not begin with lot one and continue the numerical order; he may wait until he notices the fact that certain buyers are in the room and then produce the lots they are likely to be interested in. The auctioneer's services are paid for in the form of a percentage of the price the goods are sold for. The auctioneer therefore has a direct interest in pushing up the bidding as high as possible. The auctioneer must know fairly accurately the current market values of the goods he is selling, and he should be acquainted with regular buyers of such goods. He will not waste time by starting the bidding too low. He will also play on the rivalries among his buyers and succeed in getting a high price by encouraging two business competitors to bid against each other. It is largely on his advice that a seller wilt fix a "reserve" price, that is, a price below which the goods cannot be sold. Even the best auctioneers, however, find it difficult to stop a "knock-out", whereby dealers illegally arrange beforehand not to bid against each other, but nominate one of themselves as the only bidder, in the hope of buying goods at extremely low prices. If such a "knockout" comes off, the real auction sale takes place privately afterwards among the dealers.

单选题Some individuals have applied "positive thinking" either to particular external circumstances or to some particular habits or character defects.

单选题Any hope of a fountain of youth to stop people from getting older is a long way off with science just beginning to understand the complex genetic, physical and hormonal causes of aging. But experts said there were interesting targets for study, including genes involved in Alzheimer'disease, the hormone DHEA and the role of exercises in keeping people young. Steven Lamberts and colleagues noted that levels of DHEA were much lower in older people. One study in adults showed taking DHEA tablets " induced a remarkable increase in perceived physical and physiological wellbeing in both men and women without having an effect on sex. " Other studies on rats showed giving them DHEA could prevent obesity and diabetes. But they said much more study was needed. Cable Finch and Rudoph Tanzi said it was conceivable that genetic engineering experiments could transfer genes from one species to another to alter life span. However, it seems unlikely that a few genes determine the 25 fold difference in life spans between rats and humans. An instructive example is the 10-fold difference in life spans of female worker bees and queens of the same genotype, which show much slower aging during life spans of many active years of egg production. The difference—what the bees were fed as juveniles. One interesting genetic candidate was the apoE gene, mutations of which are linked with Alzheimer's disease. One version of this gene does seem to be linked with long life, although many more studies are needed. For those who do not want to wait, Lamberts'team said exercise can be key to preventing the frailty that aging brings. Loss of muscle strength is an important factor in the process of frailty. One study in home for the elderly showed a sedentary lifestyle greatly contribute to this. Supervised resistance exercise training could double muscle strength and significantly increase gait velocity and stair-climbing power. This demonstrates that frailty in the elderly is not an irreversible errect of aging and disease and can be reduced and perhaps even prevented.

单选题I must ______ you farewell right now, but on some future occasion, I hope to see you again. A. relay B. bid C. send D. deliver

单选题The market for (manufactured goods) is (which) economists call "imperfect," because each company has its own style; and all of the arts of advertisement and salesmanship are devoted (to making) it (even more imperfect) by attracting buyers to particular brand names.A. manufactured goodsB. whichC. to makingD. even more imperfect

单选题According to government statistics, men of all social classes in Britain visit pubs quite regularly, (61) the kind of pub they go to may be different and their reasons for going there (62) , too. Nowadays they often take their wives or girl-friends, which (63) to be the case. The fact is that the typical English pub is changing, partly (64) the licensing laws not being so strict as they (65) , but also because publicans are trying to (66) away with the old Victorian (67) of the pub and (68) provide couples with an atmosphere where they can both enjoy themselves. Pub used not to open (69) at certain times. The result was that they were usually (70) with men who seemed to be drinking as much as possible in the time (71) . But that kind of pub is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Curiously enough, the old British licensing laws, which foreigners found so objectionable and absurd, were (72) introduced as a (73) measure to stop workers drinking in the First World War. (74) , the strong Puritanical (75) in Parliament took (76) of the law and (77) it. Opening hours are (78) limited to eight hours a day, but the publican can now choose which hours (79) him best. And these days you can even get a cup of coffee if you prefer (80) beer. But in spite of this the Puritans would never dream of admitting that a pub could become a repeatable place.

单选题Surprisingly enough, modem historians have rarely interested themselves in the history of the American South in the period before the South began to become self-consciously and distinctively "Southern"——the decades after 1815. Consequently, the cultural history of Britain's North American empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been written almost as if the Southern colonies had never existed. The American culture that emerged during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras has been depicted as having been simply an extension of New England Puritan culture. However, Professor Davis has recently argued that the South stood apart from the rest of American society during this early period, following its own unique pattern of cultural development. The case for Southern distinctiveness rests upon two related premises: first, that the cultural similarities among the five Southern colonies were far more impressive than the differences, and second, that what made those colonies alike also made them different from the other colonies. The first, for which Davis offers an enormous amount of evidence, can be accepted without major reservations; the second is far more problematic. What makes the second premise problematic is the use of the Puritan colonies as a basis for comparison. Quite properly, Davis decries the excessive influence ascribed by historians to the Puritans in the formation of American culture. Yet Davis inadvertently odds weight to such ascriptions by using the Puritans as the standard against which to assess the achievements and contributions of Southern colonials. Throughout, Davis focuses on the important, and undeniable, differences between the Southern and Puritan colonies in motives for and patterns of early settlement, in attitudes toward nature and Native Americans, and in the degree of receptivity to metropolitan cultural influences. However, recent scholarship has strongly suggested that those aspects of early New England culture that seem to have been most distinctly Puritan, such as the strong religious orientation and the communal impulse, were not even typical of New England as a whole, but were largely confined to the two colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Thus, what in contrast to the Puritan colonies appears to Davis to be peculiarly Southern——acquisitiveness, a strong interest in politics and the law, and a tendency to cultivate metropolitan cultural models——was not only more typically English than the cultural patterns exhibited by Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut, but also almost certainly characteristic of most other early modern British colonies from Barbados north to Rhode Island: and New Hampshire. Within the larger framework of American colonial life, then, not the Southern——but the Puritan colonies appear to have been distinctive, and even they seem to have been: rapidly assimilating to the dominant cultural patterns by the late Colonial period.

单选题Researchers have found that migrating animals use a variety of inner compasses to help them navigate. Some direct themselves by the position of the sun. Others navigate by the stars. Some use the sun as their guide during the day, and then switch to star navigation by night. One study shows that the homing pigeon uses the Earth"s magnetic fields as a guide in finding its way home, and there are indications that various other animals, from insects to mollusks, can also make use of magnetic compasses. It is of course very useful for a migrating bird to be able to switch to a magnetic compass when clouds cover the sun; otherwise it would just have to land and wait for the sun to come out again. Even with the sun or stars to guide by, the problems of navigation are more complicated than they might seem at first. For example, a worker honeybee that has found a rich source of nectar and pollen flies rapidly home to report. A scientist has discovered that the bee sent out to look for food delivers her report through a complicated dance to the other workers not only how far away the food is, but also what direction to fly in relation to the sun. But the sun does not stay in one place all day. As the workers start out to gather the food, the sun may already have changed its position in the sky somewhat. In later trips during the day, the sun will seem to move farther and farther toward the west. Yet the worker bees seem to have no trouble at all in finding the food source. Their inner clocks tell them just where the sun will be, and they change their course correspondingly.

单选题 Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or made illegal. But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabctism. This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet. It has long been known that a taxi firm called AAAA cars has a big advantage over Zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phone directories. Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbott has in life over Zoe Zysman. English names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of the alphabet. Yet a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between A and K. Thus the American president and vice-president have surnames starting with B and C respectively; and 26 of George Bush's predecessors ( including his father) had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. Even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged ( Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirae, Chretien and Koizumi). The world's three top central bankers ( Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami) are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanese characten;. As are the world's five richest men (Gates, Buffett, Allen, Ellison and Albrecht). Can this merely be coincidence? One theory, dreamt up in all the spare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets in early. At the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupils alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. So short-sighted Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked the improving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. At the time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. Yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly. The humiliation continues. At university graduation ceremonies, the ABCs proudly get their awards first; by the time they reach the Zysmans most people are literally having a ZZZ. Shortlists for job interviews, election ballot papers, lists of conference speakers and attendees: all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their recipients lose interest as they plough through them.

单选题A Ushift/U from native bronze to iron artifacts took place under the influence of cultural borrowings.

单选题To be continued, the passage would probably be followed by a paragraph that deals with ______.

单选题While he was not dumber than an ox, he was not any smarter; so most of his classmates were lenient and helped him along.

单选题Joy and sadness are experienced by people in all cultures around the world, but how can we tell when other people are happy or despondent? It turns out that the expression of many emotions may be universal. Smiling is apparently a universal sign of friendliness and approval. Baring the teeth in a hostile way, as noted by Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century, may be a universal sign of anger. As the originator of the theory of evolution, Darwin believed that the universal recognition of facial expressions would have survival value. For example, facial expressions could signal the approach of enemies(or friends)in the absence of language. Most investigators concur that certain facial expressions suggest the same emotions in all people. Moreover, people in diverse cultures recognize the emotions manifested by the facial expressions. In classic research Paul Ekman took photographs of people exhibiting the emotions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness. He then asked people around the world to indicate what emotions were being depicted in them. Those queried ranged from European college students to members of the Fore, a tribe that dwells in the New Guinea highlands. All groups, including the Fore, who had almost no contact with Western culture, agreed on the portrayed emotions.(43) The Fore also displayed familiar facial expressions when asked how they would respond if they were the characters in stories that called for basic emotional responses. Ekman and his colleagues more recently obtained similar results in a study of ten cultures in which participants were permitted to report that multiple emotions were shown by facial expressions. The participants generally agreed on which two emotions were being shown and which emotion was more intense. Psychological researchers generally recognize that facial expressions reflect emotional states. In fact, various emotional states give rise to certain patterns of electrical activity in the facial muscles and in the brain. The facial-feedback hypothesis argues, however, that the causal relationship between emotions and facial expressions can also—work in the opposite direction. According to this hypothesis, signals from the facial muscles("feedback")are sent back to emotion centers of the brain, and so a person's facial expression influence that person's emotional state. Consider Darwin's words: "The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it. " On the other hand, the repression, as far as possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions. Can smiling give rise to feelings of good will, for example, and frowning to anger? Psychological research has given rise to some interesting findings concerning the facial-feedback hypothesis. Causing participants in experiments to smile, for example, leads them to report more positive feelings and to rate cartoons(humorous drawings of people or situations)as being more humorous. When they are caused to frown, they rate cartoons as being more aggressive. Ekman's observation may be relevant to the British expression "keep a stiff upper lip" as a recommendation for handling stress. It might be that a " stiff" lip suppresses emotional response — as long as the lip is not quivering with fear or tension. But when the emotion that leads to stiffening the lip is more intense, and involves strong muscle tension, facial feedback may heighten emotional response.

单选题The Portuguese give a great deal of credit to one man for having promoted sea travel, that man ______ Prince Henry the navigator, who lived in the 15th century. A. was B. was called D. calling D. being

单选题Within the arid regions (in which) their culture developed, the Bedouin camel- breeding tribes have maintained a distinctive pattern and a dominant position (over) other societies and settlements through virtue of their ability to exploit grazing ranges.

单选题In this factory, suggestions often have to wait fur months before they are fully ______. A. admitted B. acknowledged C. absorbed D. considered