单选题In the last paragraph, Roman expansion was described vividly, what is the base of the expasion?

单选题When a customer claimed to have found a severed finger in a bowl of chilli served at a Wendy's fast-food franchise in California, the chain's sales fell by half in the San José area where the incident was reported. Wendy's brand and reputation were at risk, until the claim was exposed as a hoax in late April and the company, operator of America's third-biggest hamburger chain, was vindicated. Yet the share price of Wendy's International, the parent company, rose steadily through March and April, despite the finger furore and downgrades from analysts. One reason was heavy buying by hedge funds, led by Pershing Square Capital. This week Pershing made its intentions public, saying that it was worried by market rumours that Wendy's might soon buy more fast-food brands, and arguing that the firm should be selling assets instead. Pershing's approach indicates rising pressure on American restaurant companies to perform, at a time when the industry's growth prospects look increasingly tough. The hit on customers' wallets from higher petrol prices and rising interest rates will probably mean that year-on-year sales growth across the American restaurant industry slows to just 1% by the fourth quarter of 2005, down from a five-year historic average of 5.6%, say UBS, an investment bank, and Global Insight, a forecasting group. Looking further ahead, says UBS's David Palmer, the industry may have to stop relying on most of the long-term trends that were behind much of its recent growth. Three-quarters of Americans already live within three miles of a McDonald's restaurant, leaving little scope for green-field growth. [Obesity is a growing issue in America, and with it come the threat of liability lawsuits against big restaurant chains and, perhaps, legal limits on advertising.] This week America's biggest food trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers' Association, was said to be preparing tougher guidelines on the marketing of food to children, in the hope of staving off statutory controls. Home cooking may also be making a comeback, helped by two factors. The percentage of women joining America's workforce may have peaked, and supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart have been forcing down retail food prices. Expansion overseas is one option for American restaurant chains. Burger King, the privately owned number two hamburger chain, opened its first outlet in China last month, apparently aiming to maintain strong growth ahead of an initial public offering next year. McDonald's has 600 outlets in China and plans 400 more. But at home, the future seems to hold only an ever more competitive and cost-conscious restaurant industry. Fast-food chains are trying to poach customers from "casual dining" chains (such as Applebee's Neighborhood Grill), while those chains are squeezing out independent restaurants unable to compete on cost or in marketing clout. Business conditions, not severed fingers, are the real threat to the weaker firms in the restaurant business.

单选题Manners nowadays in metropolitan cities like London are practically non-existent. It is nothing for a big, strong schoolboy to elbow an elderly woman aside in the dash for the last remaining seat on the tube or bus, much less stand up and offer his seat to her, as he ought. In fact, it is saddening to note that if a man does offer his seat to an older woman, it is nearly always a Continental man or one from the older generation. This question of giving up seats in public transport is much argued about by young men, who say that, since women have claimed equality, they no longer deserve to be treated with courtesy, and that those who go out to work should take their turn in the rat race like anyone else. Women have never claimed to be physically as strong as men. Even if it is not agreed, however, that young men should stand up for younger women, the fact remains that courtesy should be shown to the old, the sick and the burdened. Conditions in travel are really very hard on everyone, we know, but hardship is surely no excuse. Sometimes one wonders what would have been the behavior of these stout young men in a packed refugee train or a train on its way to a prisoner-camp during the war. Would they have considered it only right and their proper due to keep the best places for themselves then? Older people, tired and irritable from a day"s work, are not angels, either--far from it. Many a brisk argument or an insulting quarrel breaks out as the weary queues push and shove each other to get on buses and tubes. One cannot commend this, of course, but one does feel there is just a little more excuse. If cities are to remain pleasant places to live in at all, however, it seems urgent, not only that communications in transport should be improved, but also that communication between human beings should be kept smooth and polite. All over cities, it seems that people are too tired and too rushed to be polite. Shop assistants won"t bother to assist, taxi drivers shout at each other as they dash dangerously round corners, bus conductors pull the bell before their desperate passengers have had time to get on or off the bus, and so on and so on. It seems to us that it is up to the young and strong to do their small part to stop such deterioration.

单选题In the first paragraph, why does the author give the-definitions of some terms?_____

单选题Nightmares are mentioned in paragraph 1 in order to______.

单选题Whether to teach young children a second language is disputed among teachers, researchers and pushy parents. On the one hand, acquiring a new tongue is said to be far easier when young. On the other, teachers complain that children whose parents speak a language at home that is different from the one used in the classroom sometimes struggle in their lessons and are slower to reach linguistic milestones. Would a 15-month-old child, they wonder, not be better off going to music classes? A study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences may help resolve this question by getting to the point of what is going on in a bilingual child"s brain, how a second language affects the way he thinks, and thus in what circumstances being bilingual may be helpful. Agnes Kovacs and Jacques Mehler at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste say that some aspects of the cognitive development of infants raised in a bilingual household must be undergoing acceleration in order to manage which of the two languages they are dealing with. The aspect of cognition in question is part of what is termed the brain"s "executive function". This allows people to organise, plan, prioritise activity, shift their attention from one thing to another and suppress habitual responses. Bilingualism is common in Trieste which, though Italian, is almost surrounded by Slovenia. So Dr. Kovacs and Dr. Mehler looked at 40 "preverbal" seven-month-olds, half raised in monolingual and half in bilingual households, and compared their performances in a task that needs control of executive function. First, the babies were trained to expect the appearance of a puppet on a screen after they had heard a set of meaningless words invented by the researchers. Then the words, and the location of the puppet, were changed. When this was done, the babies who speak only one language had difficulty overcoming their learnt response, even when the researchers gave them further clues that a switch had taken place. The bilingual babies, however, found it far easier to switch their attention—counteracting the previously learnt, but no longer useful response. Monitoring languages and keeping them separate is part of the brain"s executive function, so these findings suggest that even before a child can speak, a bilingual environment may speed up that function"s development. Before rushing your offspring into bilingual kindergartens, though, there are a few cautions. For one thing, these extraordinary cognitive benefits have been demonstrated so far only in "crib" bilinguals—those living in households where two languages are spoken routinely. The researchers speculate that it might be the fact of having to learn two languages in the same setting that requires greater use of executive function. So whether those benefits apply to children who learn one language at home, and one at school, remains unclear.

单选题However important we may regard school life to be, there is no denying the fact that children spend more time at home than in the classroom. Therefore, the great influence of parents cannot be ignored or discounted by the teacher. They can become strong allies of the school personnel or they can consciously or unconsciously hinder and frustrate curricular objectives. Administrators have been aware of the need to keep parents informed of the newer methods used in schools. Many principals have conducted workshops explaining such matters as the reading readiness program, manuscript writing and developmental mathematics. Moreover, the classroom teacher, with the permission of the supervisors, can also play an important role in enlightening parents. The informal tea and the many interviews carried on during the year, as well as new ways of reporting pupils' progress, can significantly aid in achieving a harmonious interplay between school and home. To illustrate, suppose that a father has been drilling Junior in arithmetic processes night after night. In a friendly interview, the teacher can help the parent sublimate his natural paternal interest into productive channels. He might be persuaded to let Junior participate in discussing the family budget, buying the food, using a yardstick or measuring cup at home, setting the clock, calculating mileage on a trip and engaging in scores of other activities that have a mathematical basis. If the father follows the advice, it is reasonable to assume that he will soon realize his son is making satisfactory progress in mathematics, and at the same time, enjoying the work. Too often, however, teachers' conferences with parents are devoted to petty accounts of children's misdemeanors, complaints about laziness and poor work habits, and suggestion for penalties and rewards at home. What is needed is a more creative approach in which the teacher, as a professional adviser, plants ideas in parents' minds for the best utilization of the many hours that the child spends out of the classroom. In this way, the school and the home join forces in fostering the fullest development of youngsters' capacities.

单选题The United States has historically had higher rates of marriage than those of other industrialized countries. The current annual marriage (1) in the United States-about 9 new marriages for every 1, 000 people-is (2) higher than it is in other industrialized countries. However, marriage is (3) as widespread as it was several decades ago. (4) of American adults who are married (5) from 72 percent in 1970 to 60 percent in 2002. This does not mean that large numbers of people will remain unmarried (6) their lives. Throughout the 20th century, about 90 percent of Americans married at some (7) in their lives. Experts (8) that about the same proportion of today's young adults will eventually marry. The timing of marriage has varied (9) over the past century. In 1995 the average age of women in the United States at the (10) of their first marriage was 25. The average age of men was about 27. Men and women in the United States marry (11) the first time at an average of five years later than people (12) in the 1950s. (13) , young adults of the 1950s married younger than did any previous (14) in U. S. history. Today's later age of marriage is (15) the age of marriage between 1890 and 1940. (16) , a greater proportion of the population was married (95 percent) during the 1950s than at any time before (17) . Experts do not agree on (18) the "marriage rush" of the late 1940s and 1950s occurred, but most social scientists believe it represented a (19) to the return of peaceful life and prosperity after 15 years of severe economic (20) and war.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} SoBig. F was the more visible of the two recent waves of infection because it propagated itself by e-mail, meaning that victims noticed what was going on. SoBig. F was so effective that it caused substantial disruption even to those protected by anti-virus software. That was because so many copies of the virus spread (some 500,000 computers were infected) that many machines were overwhelmed by messages from their own anti-virus software. On top of that, one common counter-measure backfired, increasing traffic still further. Anti-virus software often bounces a warning back to the sender of an infected e-mail, saying that the e-mail in question cannot be delivered because it contains a virus, soBig. F was able to spoof this system by "harvesting" e-mail addresses from the hard disks of infected computers. Some of these addresses were then sent infected e-mails that had been doctored to look as though they had come from other harvested addresses. The latter were thus sent warnings, even though their machines may not have been infected. Kevin Haley of Symantec, a firm that makes anti-virus software, thinks that one reason SoBig. F was so much more effective than other viruses that work this way is because it was better at searching hard-drives for addresses. Brian King, of CERT, an internet-security centre at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, notes that, unlike its precursors, SoBig. F was capable of "multi-threading", it could send multiple e-mails simultaneously, allowing it to dispatch thousands in minutes. Blaster worked by creating a "buffer overrun in the remote procedure call". In English, that means it attacked a piece of software used by Microsoft's Windows operating system to allow one computer to control another. It did so by causing that software to use too much memory. Most worms work by exploiting weaknesses in an operating system, but whoever wrote Blaster had a particularly refined sense of humour, since the website under attack was the one from which users could obtain a program to fix the very weakness in Windows that the worm itself was exploiting. One way to deal with a wicked worm like Blaster is to design a fairy godmother worm that goes around repairing vulnerable machines automatically. In the case of Blaster some-one seems to have tried exactly that with a program called Welch. However. according to Mr, Haley, Welch has caused almost as many problems as Blaster itself, by overwhelming networks with "pings" --signals that checked for the presence of other computers. Though both of these programs fell short of the apparent objectives of their authors, they still caused damage. For instance, they forced the shutdown of a number of computer networks, including the one used by the New York Times newsroom, and the one organizing trains operated by CSX, a freight company on America's east coast. Computer scientists expect that it is only a matter of time before a truly devastating virus is unleashed.

单选题"What a difference a word makes." The issue of semantics has been an ongoing complain against the media, which has been characterized by an increasing level of sensationalism and irresponsible reporting over the years, fostered by increasingly fierce competition and struggle for wider distributions and readerships. A focal point for the criticism is the coverage of high-profile criminal cases. With such headlines as "Mr. X Arrest for First-Degree Murder" prominently displayed across the front page, it has been argued that such provocative language influences public opinion, causing premature assumptions of guilt before the matter can be properly and legally decided in a court of law. The power of the media to influence public opinion and, by extension, legal and political perceptions, has long been established and recognized, spurring outcries when inaccurate or overly embellished stories result in unwarranted destruction of public image or intrusion into privacy of unwilling individuals. Reporters and editors take the utmost care in their choice of words for use in their articles, but with constant pressure to create provocative headlines in order to sell their papers, the distinction between respectable periodicals and trashy tabloids is becoming thinner every day. The dilemma is exacerbated by the public's seeming short attention span, putting the papers under pressure to make their stories as attention-grabbing as they are accurate. Further obfuscating the situation is the fact that the same phrase can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways depending on who reads it, making it hard for one to judge whether a line is excessive or not. Whatever the causes and effects, however, the freedom of pres laws in the United States mean that any change to the style employed by the media must be self-imposed. In that respect, it appears that nothing will be changing in the near future, since the public's insatiable hunger for controversy and scandal continues to dominate and set the pace for marketable reporting. As the sensationalism and its related effects continue into the longer term, however, there will no doubt be more outcry as the trend continues. This will possibly result in an upheaval of the system; favoring more accurate, unembellished reporting, consisting of hard facts with a minimum of supposition or commentary and devoid of rumors and other questionable sources of information. If and when that occurs, we can truly state with pride that our media industry is only a free one, bat a responsible and reliable one.

单选题The term "high-margin business" (Line 2, Paragraph 7) probably means

单选题It is broadly accepted that by the First Amendment, cloning experiments should be

单选题 Capital City and Smithsville are two fairly large towns in the midwest near Chicago. Neither is as well known as Chicago. {{U}}(1) {{/U}} the inhabitants of both are equally proud of their {{U}}(2) {{/U}} hometown. People in Capital City love its quiet narrow {{U}}(3) {{/U}} streets and its many small neighborhood parks, the boast {{U}}(4) {{/U}} their hometown has no ugly slums, a low rate {{U}}(5) {{/U}} crime, and very little heavy traffic. Because it is the seat of the state legislature, Capital City has many stately old buildings— {{U}}(6) {{/U}} the lawyer's club in the park by the lake, and the country museum {{U}}(7) {{/U}} its pioneer farm exhibits. Smithsville, {{U}}(8) {{/U}},is a bustling, thriving, industrial center. It too has a lake, but {{U}}(9) {{/U}} that of Capital City, its lake is the center of the city's industrial development. {{U}}(10) {{/U}} trees and park benches, Smithsville's lake is surrounded by factories and smoking chimneys. Smithsville is also {{U}}(11) {{/U}} its quieter neighbour in its style of {{U}}(12) {{/U}}. The tall modern office buildings downtown, the new shopping center in the suburbs, and the wide crowded streets seem {{U}}(13) {{/U}} to Smithsville's residents than the old-fashioned neighbourhoods {{U}}(14) {{/U}}. When people from the more rural city {{U}}(15) {{/U}} from a visit to Smithsville, they always say, "I'm glad to be home again. That lake makes me {{U}}(16) {{/U}}. It's a fine place to visit, {{U}}(17) {{/U}} I wouldn't want to live {{U}}(18) {{/U}}." {{U}}(19) {{/U}} a visit to Capital City, citizens of Smithsville say {{U}}(20) {{/U}} the same.

单选题Henry Kissinger may be the most successful, certainly the most flamboyant, Secretary of State to hold that office in modern times. When he was appointed in the late 1960"s, there were no American ties with Communist China, Vietnam and Berlin seemed ready to draw the United States into a third world war, and Russia was seen as "the enemy". But all this has changed, and Henry Kissinger caused much of the change; in 1971, he made his first trip to China, a trip that was the beginning of the current ties between the United States and China. He brought the United States and Russia closer together on major issues by the policy he called "detente", literally meaning a relaxation. His philosophy was always to talk and to bring together. With these two policies, Kissinger did much to draw attention away from any possible Russia-American friction. In 1973 he made his first visit to Egypt. Here he was able to begin U.S. relations with Egypt. He used his contact later to begin the sort of talks that the American press called "shuttle diplomacy". For ninety-nine days, he "shuttled" back and forth on flights between Cairo and Jerusalem to work out a step-by-step withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Sinai desert. His wit, his careful approach to detail, and his presence made "shuttle diplomacy" work. It was the only successful approach to Mid-east peace in the thirty years since the state of Israel was founded. Another major work was the Strategic Arms Limitation Talk. Though his term in office passed with the treaty unsigned, Kissinger left a draft of the treaty to which the Russians had already agreed. The SALT treaty spelled out a one-tenth reduction in nuclear arms, a major accomplishment by any standard, even if one does not consider all the other conditions and limitations included in the treaty. Even though he successfully helped bring an end to the Vietnam War, Kissinger"s final days in office were affected, as was the entire executive branch in one way or another, by the scandals of the Nixon White House. Kissinger"s critics point to his role in placing wiretaps on the phones of reporters and officials and to what they consider his "high-handed" approach to setting foreign policy. But Kissinger, during the last few months of the Nixon presidency, limited the effects of American domestic problems on our foreign policy. He continued talks in the Middle East. He continued close contact with the Soviet Union. History will decide in the final view, as Kissinger--and many presidents--often said, on the value of his service. Whatever they decide, whether his actions are finally to be considered wise or foolish, he had a personal vision that will he difficult to match.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Increasingly, historians are blaming diseases imported from the Old World for the great disparity between the native population of America in 1492--new estimates of which jump as high as 100 million, or approximately one-sixth of the human race at that time--and the few million full-blooded Native Americans alive at the end of the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that chronic disease was an important factor in the sharp decline, and it is highly probable that the greatest killer was epidemic disease, especially as manifested in virgin-soil epidemics. Virgin-soil epidemics are those in which the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically almost defenseless. That virgin-soil epidemics were important in American history is strongly indicated by evidence that a number of dangerous maladies--smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, and undoubtedly several more--were unknown in the pre-Columbian New World. The effects of their sudden introduction are demonstrated in the early chronicles of America, which contain reports of horrible epidemics and steep population declines, confirmed in many cases by quantitative analyzes of Spanish tribute records and other sources. The evidence provided by the documents of British and French colonies is not as definitive because the conquerors of those areas did not establish permanent settlements and began to keep continuous records until the seventeenth century, by which time the worst epidemics had probably already taken place. Furthermore, the British tended to drive the native populations away, rather than to enslave them as the Spaniards did; so that the epidemics of British America occurred beyond the range of colonists' direct observation. Even so, the surviving records of North America do contain references to deadly epidemics among the native population. In 1616--1619 an epidemic, possibly of pneumonic plague, swept coastal New England, killing as many as nine out of ten. During the 1630's smallpox, the disease most fatal to the Native American people, eliminated half the population of the Huron and Iroquois confederations. In the 1820's fever ruined the people of the Columbia River area, killing eight out of ten of them. Unfortunately, the documentation of these and other epidemics is slight and frequently unreliable, and it is necessary to supplement what little we de know with evidence from recent epidemics among Native Americans. For example, in 1952 an outbreak of measles among the Native American inhabitants of Ungava Bay, Quebec, affected 99 percent of the population and killed 7 percent, even though some had the benefit of modern medicine. Cases such as this demonstrate that even diseases that are not normally fatal can have destroying consequences when they strike an immunologically defenseless community.{{B}}Notes:{{/B}} disparity 差距。 virgin-soil处女地。 malady 疾病 chronicle 编年史。 tribute 贡品。 pneumonic plague肺鼠疫。confederation 同盟。 smallpox 天花。measles 麻疹。