单选题Some readers, especially children, find his works among the most______books they have ever read.
单选题New data has______that the damage to the ozone layer is not confined to the southern hemisphere.(2002年武汉大学考博试题)
单选题
Aids in South Africa is threatening to
become a problem. At the end of 1993, 4.25% of South African adults were HIV
positive. By the end of 1994, the figure was 7.57%. This
increase in a year is the largest for the spread of the virus in Africa and
possibly the world, and it seems certain that 12% or more of the population will
be HIV positive by Christmas. In the worst hit area, the HIV
positive rate now tops 20%. It seems South Africa is moving rapidly towards the
catastrophic 35% levels of infection in East Africa. This will be the first time
that the virus will have become so widespread in a sophisticated, industrialized
country. Both the present and preceding governments should bear
responsibility; each was aware of the crisis and did almost nothing. There is no
public campaign to promote safe sex, for example. The apartheid regime was too
conscious of religious sensitivities to organize an explicit anti-Aids campaign,
and the African National Congress is far too nervous about traditional African
attitudes to sex. A survey of black women in Johannesburg
revealed that 75% were willing to accept condoms if they could persuade their
partners to use them, but that in practice only 2% had managed to doso.
Women are the chief victims with the highest HIV-positive rates among nurses and
teachers. Many African men have responded to the epidemic by
choosing younger and younger partners. There is even a myth that sex with a
young enough girl can cure an Aids-stricken male. Inevitably young women are the
hardest hit, a phenomenon compounded by the high incidence of rape. More than
100 rapes are reported to the authorities every day, although this figure is
believed to represent a minority of actual cases. Despite the
spread of the virus, the statistics manage to struggle on to only about page six
of most South African newspapers because the crisis is still in "phoney war"
stage —although there are more than 1.8 million HIV-positive South Africans,
relatively few of them have developed Aids. Doctors say the virus seems to be
taking longer to move through its cycle here, perhaps because South Africans
with their higher standards of living, are healthier and therefore more
resistant than people further north in Africa. Without doubt,
the present air of complacency will vanish as soon as high profile members of
the elite begin to be affected and the implications for the economy sink in.
Moreover, the spread of the virus may greatly damage the present racial
reconciliation in South Africa, since Aids is now overwhelmingly a disease of
blacks, and many whites are beginning to see almost every African as an Aids
risk.
单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}}
After a run of several thousand years,
it is entirely fitting that 2000 will be marked as the year the tide turned
against taxation. Clay tablets recall the taxes of Hammurabi in the Babylon of
2000BC, but the practice is certainly older. People in power have always tried
to divert some of the proceeds of economic activity in their own direction.
Lords took feudal dues from their vassals; landowners took tolls from merchants;
gangsters took protection money from small businesses; governments took taxes
from their citizens. Despite the different names, the principle has remained
constant: those who do not produce take resources from those who do, and spend
it on altogether different things. The tide is turning because
of the convergence of several factors, in the first place, taxes are becoming
harder to collect. Capital is more mobile than ever, and inclined to fly from
places that tax to places that do not. Governments do not move their boundaries
and jurisdictions as rapidly as companies can change locations. Attempts to
establish trans-national tax powers are almost certainly, ably doomed by
international competition to attract economic activity. Many businesses
will choose to stay out of reach. The global economy and the
Internet mean that purchases can now cross frontiers. People buy books, clothes,
and cars from abroad, and any finance minister who likes to tax these items find
his tax base diminishing. It is not only capital and goods which are harder to
pin down. Even wages are crossing frontiers. The rise of the service sector
means that many income-generating activities can take place across frontiers,
causing yet more headaches for overstretched public treasuries. Furthermore, the
pace of electronic, hard-to-trace activity is accelerating. No
less important has been the rise of political resistance. The past
quarter-century has been marked by a movement led in Britain and America itself
in California's famous tax-cutting referendum Proposition 13, but saw its
fullest expression in the Thatcher and Reagan tax cuts of the 1980's. Britain's
Tories entered office in 1979 with the top rate of income tax at 98%, and left
office 18 years later with a top rate of 40%. Indeed, their Labour opponents
became electable only after a firm promise not to raise it again. The plain fact
is that electorates these days will not stand for it. They recognize, correctly,
that governments spend their money less carefully and less efficiently than they
can spend it themselves. One of the greatest uses of tax money
is to provide pensions. And here a revolution--as important and pervasive as
privatization--is sweeping the world. Fully-funded personal pension plans, based
on individual savings, are sweeping away the poorly funded public pensions
promised by governments. The latter take taxes from the young to support the
old. The former invest savings from the young to support themselves when
old.
单选题If the world is to remain peaceful the utmost effort must be made by nations to limit local ______.(2011年四川大学考博试题)
单选题She ______ her vacation so much that she didn't want it to end.(2003年复旦大学考博试题)
单选题The two countries signed an agreement to reduce their nuclear______.
单选题More than two hundred years ago the United States ______ from the British Empire and became all independent country.
单选题
单选题The staff of Normandy Crossing Elementary School outside Houston eagerly awaited the results of state achievement tests this spring. For the principal and assistant principal, high scores could buoy their careers at a time when success is increasingly measured by such tests. For fifth-grade math and science teachers, the rewards were more tangible: a bonus of $2,850.
But when the results came back, some seemed too good to be true. Indeed, after an investigation by the Galena Park Independent School District, the principal and three teachers resigned May 24 in a scandal over test tampering.
The district said the educators had distributed a detailed study guide after stealing a look at the state science test by "tubing" it—squeezing a test booklet, without breaking its paper seal, to form an open tube so that questions inside could be seen and used in the guide. The district invalidated students" scores.
Of all the forms of academic cheating, none may be as startling as educators tampering with children"s standardized tests. But investigations in many states this year have pointed to cheating by educators. Experts say the phenomenon is increasing as the stakes over standardized testing become higher—including, most recently, taking students progress on tests into consideration in teachers" performance reviews.
Many school districts already link teachers" bonuses to student improvement on state assessments. Houston decided this year to use the data to identify experienced teachers for dismissal, and New York City will use it to make tenure decisions on novice teachers.
The federal No Child Left Behind law is a further source of pressure. Like a high jump bar set intentionally low in the beginning, the law—which mandates that public schools bring all students up to grade level in reading and math by 2014—was easy to satisfy early on. But the bar is notched higher annually, and the penalties for schools that fail to get over it also rise: teachers and administrators can lose jobs and see their school taken over.
No national data is collected on educator cheating. Experts who consult with school systems estimated that 1 percent to 3 percent of teachers—thousands annually—cross the line between accepted was of boosting scores, like using old tests to prepare students, and actual cheating.
"Educators feel that their schools" reputation, their livelihoods, their psychic meaning in life is at stake," said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest.
单选题The monstrous system was______ by statesmen in the name of individual liberty.
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 reached
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 happy 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
单选题Efforts to reach the injured men have been ______ because of a sudden deterioration in weather conditions.
单选题The author's attitude toward Bachofen' s treatise is best described as one of ______.
单选题With the severe shortage of energy supply, we are facing the ______ of a very hard winter.
单选题4 It didn't happen overnight. The problem of polluted air has been festering for centu ries. Suddenly the problem of air pollution is becoming critical and is erupting right before our eyes. Not only do our eyes burn as they focus through murky air, but when the air clears, we see trees and vegetation dying. We must realize that this destruction can no lon ger be pinned to some mysterious cause. The one major culprit is air pollution. Today's air pollution is an unfortunate by-product of the growth of civiliza tion. Civilized mall desires goods that require heavy industrialization and mass produc tion. Machines and factories sometimes pollute and taint the air with substances that are dangerous to man and the environment. These substances include radioactive dust, salt spray, herbicide and pesticide aerosols, liquid droplets of acidic matter, gases, and sometimes soil particles. These materials can act alone to irritate objects and forms of life. More dangerously, they join together to act upon the environment. Only lately have we begun recognizing some of their dangerous consequences. Scientists have not yet been able to obtain a complete report on the effects of air pollu tion on trees. They do know, however, that sulfur dioxide, fluorides, and ozone destroy trees and that individual trees respond differently to the numerous particulate and gaseous pollutants. Sometimes trees growing in a single area under attack by pollutants will show symptoms of iniury or will die while their neighbors remain healthy. Scientists believe this difference in response depends on the kind of tree and its genetic makeup. Other factors, such as the tree's stage of growth and nearness to the pollution source, the amount of pol lutant, and the length of the pollution attack also play a part. In short, whether or not a tree dies as a result of air pollution depends on a combination of host and environmental factors. For the most part, air pollutants injure trees. To conifers, which have year-round needles, air pollution causes early balding. In this event, trees cannot maintain normal food production levels. Undemourished and weakened, they are open to attack by a host of insects, diseases, and other environmental stresses. Death often follows. Air pollution may also cause hardwoods to lose their leaves. Because their leaves are borne only for a partion of the year and are replaced the following year, air pollution injury to hardwoods may not be so severe.
单选题
Elderly people respond best to a calm
and unhurried environment. This is not always easy to provide as their behavior
can sometimes be irritating, ff they got excited or upset then they may become
more confused and more difficult to look after. Although sometimes it can be
extremely difficult, it is best to be patient and not get upset yourself. You
should always encourage old people to do as much as possible for themselves but
be ready to lend a helping hand when necessary. Failing memory
makes it difficult for the person to recall all the basic kinds of information
we take for granted. The obvious way to help in this situation is to supply the
information that is missing and help them make sense of what is going on. You
must use every opportunity to provide information but remember to keep it simple
and straightforward. "Good morning, Mum. This is Fiona, your
daughter. It is eight o'clock, so if you get up now, we can have breakfast
downstairs." When the elderly person makes confused statements
e.g. about going out to his or her old employment or visiting a dead relative,
correct in a calm matter-of-fact fashion: "You don't work in the office any
more. You are retired now. Will you come and help me with the dishes?"
We rely heavily on the information provided by signposts, clocks,
calendars and newspapers. These assist us to organize and direct our behavior.
Confused old people need these aids all the time to compensate for their poor
memory. Encourage them to use reminder beards or diaries for important coming
events and label the contents of different cupboards and drawers. Many other
aids such as information cards, old photos, scrapbooks, addresses or shopping
lists could help in individual case.
单选题In______, it is now clear that this battle was turning point in the war.(2004年湖北省考博试题)
单选题You ought to______that rude boy for his bad behavior.
