单选题What's Samaranch's attitude towards drug use in Olympic Games?

单选题When, in the age of automation, man searches for a worker to do the tedious, unpleasant jobs that are more or less impossible to mechanize, he may very profitably consider the ape. If we tackled the problem of breeding for brains with as much enthusiasm as we devote to breeding dogs of surrealistic shapes, we could eventually produce assorted models of useful primates, ranging in size from the gorilla down to the baboon, each adapted to a special kind of work. It is not putting too much strain on the imagination to assume that geneticists could produce a super-ape, which is able to understand some scores of words and capable of being trained for such jobs as picking fruit, cleaning up the litter in parks, shining shoes, collecting garbage, doing household chores and even baby-sitting, although I have known some babies I would not care to trust with a valuable ape. Apes could do many jobs, such as cleaning streets and the more repetitive types of agricultural work, without supervision, though they might need protection from those egregious specimens of Home sapiens who think it amusing to tease or bully anything they consider lower on the evolutionary ladder. For other tasks, such as delivering papers and laboring on the docks, our man-ape would have to work under human overseers; and, incidentally, I would love to see the finale of the twenty-first century version of On the Waterfront in which the honest but hairy hero will drum on his chest after literally--taking the wicked labor leader apart. Once a supply of nonhuman workers becomes available, a whole range of low IQ jobs could be thankfully given up by mankind, to its great mental and physical advantage. What is more, one of the problems which has annoyed so many fictional Utopias would be avoided: There would be none of the degradingly subhuman Epsilons of Huxley"s Brave Nero World to act as a permanent reproach to society, for there is a profound moral difference between breeding sub-men and super-apes, though the end products are much the same. The first would introduce a form of slavery, but the second would be a biological triumph which could benefit both men and animals.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Prolonged and excessive use of alcohol can seriously undermine an individual's health. Physical deterioration occurs. Large quantities of alcohol can directly damage body tissue and indirectly cause malnutrition. Nutritional deficiencies can result for several reasons. Alcohol contains empty calories, which have no significant nutritive value. When consumed in substantial amounts, alcohol curbs one' s appetite for more wholesome foods. Excessive alcohol intake can interfere with the proper digestion and absorption of food. Therefore, even the heavy drinker who does eat a well-balanced diet is deprived of me essential nutrients. Maintenance of a drinking habit can deplete economic resources otherwise available for buying good, wholesome food. Malnutrition itself further reduces the body' s ability to utilize the nutrients consumed. The result of damaged tissue and malnutrition can be brain injury, heart disease, diabetes, or cancer of the liver, and weakened muscle tissue. Untreated alcoholism can reduce one's life span by ten to twelve years. Heavy alcohol consumption also affects the body's usage of other drugs and medications. The dosages required by excessive drinkers may differ from those required by normal or non-drinkers. Serious consequences can be incurred unless the prescribing physician is aware of the patient's drinking habits. Sudden death may result from excessive drinking. It might occur when the individual has ingested such a large amount of alcohol that the brain center controlling breathing and heart action is adversely affected, or when taking some other drugs, particularly sleep preparations along with alcohol. Death, as a result of excessive drinking, can come during an automobile accident since half of all fatal traffic accidents involve the use of alcohol. Many self-inflicted deaths, as well as homicides, involve the use of alcohol. It is important to remember that alcohol is a drug that is potentially addictive. Once the user is hooked on alcohol, withdrawal symptoms occur when it is not sufficiently available to body cells. At the onset of developing alcohol addiction, these symptoms may be relatively mild and include hand tremors, anxiety, nausea, and sweating. As dependency increases, so does the severity of the withdrawal syndrome and the need for medical assistance to cope with it. In 1956 the American Medical Association supported the growing acceptance of alcoholism as an illness, falling under the treatment jurisdiction of the medical profession. Since then, the medical resources for problems of acute and chronic intoxication have increased and improved.

单选题Which of the following is the closest in meaning to ' norm' ( Par

单选题 School shootings like the one that devastated the small German town of Winnenden on 11 March may not just be random acts of violence. A review of similar killings in the US, and of general school aggression, indicates that some schools are more likely than others to be breeding grounds for killers. Schools can't be blamed for an individual's actions, but they may be able to reduce the chance of a killer emerging from their gates. The rare nature of school shootings makes them tough to study in a systematic way. But between July 1999 and June 2006 there were eight school shootings in which more than one person was killed in the US alone. Such case studies allow researchers to start drawing some parallels. Traci Wike and Mark Fraser at the Uuiversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, reviewed studies of shooting incidents, such as those at Columbine High School, Colorado, in 1999 and at Virginia Tech in 2007, and of general school aggression. They identified shared characteristics that might have helped to shape the killers. "Shootings appear more likely in schools characterized by a high degree of social status and low bonding and attachment between teachers and students," Wike says. "They provide rewards and recognition for only an elite few, and create social dynamics that promote disrespectful behavior, bullying, and peer harassment." Large, academically competitive schools with an obvious "ingroup" are at greatest risk, she adds. The level of attachment that pupils feel towards a school may also affect displays of violence. "No shooting has involved a student who was attached and committed to school," Wike says. Of course, personal factors can't be ignored-and may be more important than environmental ones. Tim Kretschmer, who killed 15 people last week at Winnenden before turning the gun on himself, displayed many of the characteristics associated with other school shooters, such as anger at a girl, a fascination with Violent video games and access to guns. But that doesn't mean schools can't play a role in reducing the alienation and hostility that seem to push such individuals over the edge. Tackling feelings of isolation in schools might work better than trying to pick out "the tiny handful of kids who are going to take a gun and massacre their peers", says Catherine Bradshaw of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health in Baltimore, Maryland. In the US at least, school shootings seem to be declining. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of school associated murders fell between 1992 and 2006, while multiple-victim homicides by students have been stable since 1992, with a small peak in the late 1990s.

单选题According to the passage, incomplete combustion is more likely to occur with gasoline because______.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} To understand the roughly 100,000 genes in the human genome, researchers say they must investigate an even more complicated set of molecules-proteins. Genes are the blueprints for making proteins, and the "sequence" of a gene—its structural pattern— determines the kind of protein it makes. Some proteins become building blocks for structural parts of the cell. Other proteins become molecular "machines" enzymes, hormones, antibodies that carry out the myriad activities necessary to keep the cell and the body working properly. With an understanding of human proteins (or the proteome), scientists will be able to fight disease on many fronts. For example, scientists at the Center for Proteome Analysis in Odense, Denmark, have isolated a protein, galectin, that may fight diabetes. Diabetes seems to be caused when insulin-producing cells in the pancreas are inadvertently killed by the body's immune system. The Danish scientists spent years analyzing the proteins present in diabetes-prone and diabetes-resistant cells, and they tentatively concluded that galectin protects diabetes-prone cells from being attacked by the immune system. Preliminary animal tests, in which the galectin gene has been inserted into diabetes-prone cells, seem to confirm the hypothesis. Effective cancer drugs may also arise from a deeper understanding of genes and proteins, says Ken Carter, president of Therapeutic Genomics, one of the many biotech companies working to devise new drugs based on genetic knowledge. Soon, scientists will be able to quickly and accurately compare cancer tissue with normal tissue to see which genes are "switched on" and making proteins and which genes are not, he says. "If you found a gene that was highly expressed in prostate cancer cells but not other tissues, you could deduce that gene was involved in prostate cancer," according to Carter. "We would try to develop in the lab a way to block the expression of that gene." One possibility would be a "small molecule" drug that would attach to and inactivate that gene's protein. Finally, drugs themselves will likely become safer and more effective because they will be tailored to an individual's genetic ability to process medicines, predicts Robert Waterston, director of the Human Genome Project sequencing center at Washington University in St.Louis. In the future, a blood test could show how much of a particular drug-processing enzyme a person has, Waterston explains. The doctor would then adjust the dose accordingly or prescribe a drug custom designed for that person's genetic makeup. This new field, called pharmacogenomics, should eliminate many of the drug side effects that result from our current, cruder methods of determining dosage.

单选题Jim Boon is a hybrid kind of guy. He drives a Toyota hybrid to work, a Honda hybrid on weekends and, as a manager for Seattle public transit he recently placed the world's largest order for hybrid electric buses. Now, with the biggest hybrid-bus fleet in the world, Seattle has become the main testing ground for a technology that claims it can drastically cut air pollution and fuel consumption. In the 1990s, demo fleets of 35 buses or fewer started cropping up in cities such as Tempe, Ariz. Sixteen of these early hybrids still service Genoa, Italy, where drivers switch from diesel to electric power when passing the city's downtown architectural treasures. But no city has gone as far as Seattle, which last year bought 235 GM hybrid buses at $ 645,000 a pop. When the final one rolls out this December, the region's bus system will be 15 percent hybrid. But why Seattle, and why now? The Pacific Northwest has long been a hotbed of both Green politics and cutting-edge technology. Fourteen years ago the Seattle area bought 236 Italian-made Breda buses to service a mile-long downtown tunnel. They were supposed to operate as clean electric trolleys underground, but the switching mechanism often failed and "the bus drove through the tunnel as a diesel," says Boon. "It was pretty loud and smoky. " When the Bredas hit retirement age in 2002, Boon went shopping. He chose the GM buses because they use an automatic transmission and diesel boosters that provide power to scale inclines without strain. In hilly Seattle, the prospect of a hybrid that could climb like a diesel but accelerate without belching black fumes helped justify a price $ 200,000 higher than that of a regular bus. "The days of seeing a diesel pull away and pour out smoke are over," says Boon. "After we drove these hybrid buses across the country, I wiped a handkerchief inside the tailpipe. It came out spotless. " Experts say buses are critical to realizing the hybrid dream of greater efficiency and cleaner air. It would take thousands of hybrid cars to save as many gallons of gas (750,000) as Boon expects his buses to save Seattle each year. GM claims that compared with conventional diesels, its new buses also churn out 90 percent less particulate matter—a known carcinogen. "Buses are a major source of pollution in any city," says Dave Kircher of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. "They operate where people are breathing this exhaust, so this is a major step forward in terms of emissions. " And a major step forward in the marketplace: Philadelphia, Honolulu, Long Beach, Calif., and Albuquerque, N. M. , have all bought the GM buses in recent months. GM is now touting itself in ads as the top hybrid-bus innovator, but Siemens is among the global giants dueling GM for new business, and New York plans to deploy 325 BAE Systems hybrids by 2006. "There's room for competition," says James Cannon, editor of Hybrid Vehicles newsletter. Seems Seattle isn't the only city trying to leave grunge behind.

单选题Last November, engineers in the healthcare division of GE unveiled something called the "Light- Speed VCT", a scanner that can create a startlingly good three-dimensional image of a beating heart. This spring Staples, an American office-supplies retailer, will stock its shelves with a gadget called a "wordlock", a padlock that uses words instead of numbers. The connection? In each case, the firm's customers have played a big part in designing the product. How does innovation happen? The familiar story involves scientist in academic institutes and R&D labs. But lately, corporate practice has begun to challenge this old-fashioned notion. Open-source software development is already well-known. Less so is the fact that Bell, an American bicycle-helmet maker, has collected hundreds of ideas for new products from its customers, and is putting several of them into production. Not only is the customer king: now he is market-research head, R&D chief and product-development manager, too. This is not all new. Researchers have demonstrated the importance of past user contributions to the evolution of everything from sporting equipment to construction materials and scientific instruments. But the rise of online communities, together with the development of powerful and easy-to-use design tools, seems to be boosting the phenomenon, as well as bringing it to the attention of a wider audience, says Eric Von Hippel of MIT. "User innovation has always been around," he says. "The difference is that people can no longer deny that it is happening." Harnessing customer innovation requires different methods, says Mr. Von Hippel. Instead of taking the temperature of a representative sample of customers, firms must identify the few special customers who innovate. GE's healthcare division calls them "luminaries". They tend to be well-published doctors and research scientists from leading medical institutions, says GE, which brings up to 25 luminaries together at regular medical advisory board sessions to discuss the evolution of GE's technology. GE's products then emerge from collaboration with these groups. At the heart of most thinking about innovation is the belief that people expect to be paid for their creative work: hence the need to protect and reward the creation of intellectual property. One really exciting thing about user-led innovation is that customers seem willing to donate their creativity freely, says Mr. Von Hippel. This may be because it is their only practical option: patents are costly to get and often provide only weak protection. Some people may value the enhanced reputation and network effects of freely revealing their work more than any money they could make by patenting it. Either way, some firms are starting to believe that there really is such a thing as a free lunch.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had traveled widely as a journalist, I had never managed to pick up more than a smattering of phrases in any tongue other than French, and even my French, was laborious for want of lengthy practice. The prospect of tackling one of the notoriously difficult languages at the age of forty, and trying to speak it well, both deterred and excited me. It was perhaps expecting a little too much of a curiously unreceptive part of myself, yet the possibility that I might gain access to a completely alien culture and tradition by this means was enormously pleasing. I enrolled as a pupil in a small school in the center of the city. It was run by a Mr Beheit, of dapper appearance and explosive temperament, who assured me that after three months of his special treatment I would speak Arabic fluently. Whereupon he drew from his desk a postcard which an old pupil had sent him from somewhere in the Middle East, expressing great gratitude and reporting the astonishment of local Arabs that he could converse with them like a native. It was written in English. Mr Beheit himself spent most of his time coaching businessmen in French, and through the thin, partitioned walls of his school one could hear him bellowing in exasperation at some confused entrepreneur: "Non, M. Jones. Jane suis pas francais. Pas, Pas, Pas!" (No Mr. Jones, I'm NOT French, I'm not, not, NOT!). I was gratified that my own tutor, whose name was Ahmed, was infinitely softer and less public in approach. For a couple of hours every morning we would face each other across a small table, while we discussed in meticulous detail the colour scheme of the tiny cubicle, the events in the street below and, once a week, the hair-raising progress of a window-cleaner across the wall of the building opposite. In between, hearing in mind the particular interest I had in acquiring Arabic, I would inquire the way to some imaginary oasis, anxiously demand fodder and water for my camels, wonder politely whether the sheikh was prepared to grant me audience now. It was all hard going. I frequently despaired of ever becoming anything like a fluent speaker, though Ahmed assured me that my pronunciation was above average for a Westemer. This, I suspected, was partly flattery, for there are a couple of Arabic sounds which not even a gift for mimicry allowed me to grasp for ages. There were, moreover, vast distinctions of meaning conveyed by subtle sound shifts rarely employed in English. And for me the problem was increased by the need to assimilate a vocabulary, that would vary from place to place across five essentially Arabic-speaking countries that practiced vernaculars of their own: so that the word for "people", for instance, might be nais, sah 'ab or sooken. Each day I was mentally exhausted by the strain of a morning in school, followed by an afternoon struggling at home with a tape recorder. Yet there was relief in the most elementary forms of understanding and progress. When merely got the drift of a torrent which Ahmed had just released, I was childishly elated. When I managed to roll a complete sentence off my tongue without apparently thinking what I was saying, and it came out right, I beamed like an idiot. And the enjoyment of reading and writing the flowing Arabic script was something that did not leave me once I had mastered it. By the end of June, no-one could have described me as anything like a fluent speaker of Arabic. I was approximately in the position of a fifteen-year old who, equipped with a modicum of schoolroom French, nervously awaits his first trip to Paris. But this was something I could reprove upon in my own time. I bade farewell to Mr Beheit, still struggling to drive the French negative into the still confused mind of Mr Jones.

单选题If the technological revolution continues to have its effects, there will be fewer and fewer jobs available, particularly to school-leavers and those over the age of fifty. (1) there are only half the number of jobs in the future, men and women will have to share them. Two people will (2) work only twenty hours each (3) the forty they are currently (4) to. It is a well-known fact that those who suffer from stress at work are often not high-powered executives but (5) workers doing boring, (6) jobs, especially those on production lines. Unemployment often has a (7) effect on its victims. If we wish to prevent this type of stress and the depression that frequently follows long periods of it, we will have to find ways of educating people to (8) this sudden increase in leisure time. Many have already (9) pills and tablets to (10) sleeplessness and anxiety, two of the symptoms of long-term stress and depression. In America, we (11) $ 650 million a year on different kinds of medicines. We (12) an astonishing three million sleeping tablets every night. (14) these "drugs of the mind" can be extremely useful in cases of crisis, the majority of patients would be (14) without them. The boredom and frustration of unemployment are not the only (15) of stress: poor housing, family problems, overcrowding and financial worry are all significant factors. (16) , doctors believe that if people learnt to breathe properly, took more exercise, used their leisure time more (17) and expressed their anger instead of (18) it up, they would not depend so much on drugs, (19) treat only the (20) and not the cause of the stress.

单选题The relentless march of technology into everyday life has always given rise to debate about whether it is a good or a bad thing. Some believe that the Internet and computer software are making humans more stupid or shallow. But others argue that computer programs in the form of video games can make people smarter or improve specific skills, such as spatial awareness. Shawn Green and Alexandre Pouget, from the University of Rochester, in New York state, set out to find an answer. Their study, reported in Current Biology, involved a number of experiments. In one, the participants had to watch 12 dots moving randomly on a screen and quickly assess their aggregate direction of movement. Another test asked participants to work out the direction of specific sounds embedded within stereo white noise. In both tests the video-garners did better. However, the scientists were aware that gamers could have been born with improved abilities to perform such tasks, which were possibly what attracted them to gaming in the first place. Consequently, a third test was necessary to see if these abilities could have been learnt. The non-gaming volunteers were put through 50 hours of video-game training. For some this involved playing fast-action shoot-em-up games such as "Call of Duty 2" and "Unreal Tournament", but others were given a slow-moving life-strategy game, " The Sims 2". The researchers found that those trained with action games raised their performance to the level of the experienced garners. Moreover, they were more efficient in their use of visual or auditory evidence than those playing with the Sims. The researchers conclude that fast action video-games players develop an enhanced sensitivity to what is going on around them and that this may help with activities such as multitasking, driving, reading small print, navigation and keeping track of friends or children in a crowd. The precise neural mechanism for this effect, however, is still unknown. What is known is that people make decisions based on probabilities that are constantly being calculated and refined in their heads—something called "probabilistic inference". The brain collects small pieces of information, eventually gathering enough to make an accurate decision. When driving a car, for example, many probabilities will be collated to make decisions such as whether or not to brake. The more efficient someone is at collecting visual and auditory information, the faster he can reach the threshold needed to make a decision. Shawn Green, Alexandre Pouget suggest that reaction times in the population will probably improve with the rise of fast-action video-games. There are a lot of players : last year a report estimated that 67% of American households contained at least one video-gamer. And if video-gamers are really better equipped to make quick decisions, they might also turn out to be better drivers and end up in fewer accidents. However, the notion that gamers acquire some minor physical skills may not pacify concerned parents. What, after all, of the skills they are not acquiring when shooting virtual cops instead of reading or talking?