单选题Which of the following statements in NOT true according to the second paragraph?______.

单选题For decades too many educationalists have bended to the tyranny of low expectations, at least when it comes to those at the bottom of the heap. The assumption has been that the poor, often black, children living in some of the world"s biggest and richest cities face too many challenges to learn. There was little hope that school could make any difference to their future unless the problem of poverty could first be "solved", which it couldn"t. Such attitudes consigned whole generations to the scrapheap. But 20 years ago, in St. Paul, Minnesota, the first of America"s charter schools started a revolution. There are now 5,600 of them. They are publicly funded, but largely independent of the local educational bureaucracies and the teachers" unions that live in unhealthy symbiosis with them. Charter schools are controversial, for three reasons. They represent an "experiment" or "privatisation". They largely bypass the unions. And their results are mixed. In some states, the results of charter pupils in maths and English are significantly better than those of pupils in traditional public schools. In others, they have done badly. Yet the virtue of experiments is that you can learn from them; and it is now becoming clear how and where charter schools work best. Poor pupils, those in urban environments and English-language learners fare better in charters. In states that monitor them carefully and close down failing schools quickly, they work best. And one great advantage is that partly because most are free of union control, they can be closed down more easily if they are failing. This revolution is now spreading round the world. Britain academies, also free from local-authority control, were pioneered by the last Labour government. At first they were restricted to inner-city areas where existing schools had failed. But the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has boosted their growth, and has launched "free schools", modelled on a successful Swedish experiment, which have even more independence. By the end of this year half of all British schools will be academies or free schools. Free schools are too new for their performance to be judged; in academies, though, results for GCSEs (the exams pupils take at 15 or 16) are improving twice as fast as those in the state sector as a whole. It is pretty clear now that giving schools independence—so long as it is done in the right way, with the right monitoring, regulation and safeguards from the state—works. Yet it remains politically difficult to implement. That is why it needs a strong push from national governments. Britain is giving school independence the shove it needs. In America, artificial limits on the number of charter schools must be ended, and they must get the same levels of funding as other schools.

单选题According to the text, which of the following statements is true?

单选题In order to help them through the difficult time between harvests the peasants have to______.

单选题 In the United States today, coffee is a more popular drink {{U}}(1) {{/U}} tea, but tea played {{U}}(2) {{/U}} interesting part in the history of the United States. Before they won their {{U}}(3) {{/U}} from Britain, the colonists were forced to {{U}}(4) {{/U}} taxes on many goods imported into America. The tax money was {{U}}(5) {{/U}} to support colonial governors and officials sent to the colonies by the British. In 1770 the British Prime Minister had repealed most of the taxes, but King George {{U}}(6) {{/U}} on retaining the tax {{U}}(7) {{/U}} tea. The King saw the tax as a {{U}}(8) {{/U}} of the British right to tax the colonies. American merchants {{U}}(9) {{/U}} smuggled nine-tenths of America's tea into the country and {{U}}(10) {{/U}} paying the taxes. {{U}} (11) {{/U}} the tax savings, the price of tea remained expensive due. to {{U}}(12) {{/U}} shipping costs. When the British Parliament {{U}}(13) {{/U}} a new law which would allow British companies to import tea more {{U}}(14) {{/U}} than American shipping companies, the {{U}}(15) {{/U}} were alarmed and they {{U}}(16) {{/U}} a protest. In Boston citizens and merchants, who {{U}}(17) {{/U}} disguised as Indians, boarded a British ship and {{U}}(18) {{/U}} ＄15000 worth of tea into the harbor. This protest {{U}}(19) {{/U}} Great Britain is known as the Boston Tea Party. It was one of the earliest acts of {{U}}(20) {{/U}} against British rule.

单选题According to those who oppose euthanasia, Cees Van Wendel's case______.

单选题An immediate and effective action that Sachs-led commission took is to

单选题Which of the following shows that water quality has improved?

单选题 The satisfying thump of a bass drum sounds every time Gil Weinberg strikes thin air with his iPhone. A pal nearby swings his Nokia smartphone back and forth, adding a rippling bass line. A third phone-waving friend sprinkles piano and guitar phrases on top. Weinberg's trio are using software that turns ordinary cellphones into musical instruments. "People can play on their own, but we are more excited about them jamming like a band," says Weinberg, a music technologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Commuters regularly bombarded with tinny recorded music played on other passengers' phones might not share his enthusiasm, but air guitarists and would-be drummers will probably be delighted. Weinberg claims his smart gesture-recognition software will democratize music-making as never before. "With the fight tools, everyone can be creative and expressive musically-even if they don't know anything about music theory," he says. The software, dubbed ZoozBeats and launched this week, monitors a phone's motion and plays a corresponding sound. For example, you might play a rhythm based on a snare drum by beating the air with the phone as if it's a drumstick. Or you could strum with it to play a sequence of guitar chords. The software runs on a wide range of phones because it uses many different ways to sense gestures. The obvious way is to use the accelerometers built into small devices like the Apple iPhone and Nokia N96 smartphone. But ZoozBeats can also trigger sounds when the view through a phone's camera lens changes rapidly, or generate a beat or bass line from simple taps on the mobile's microphone. Of course, people who aren't well skillful in music-making are more likely to make unpleasant noises than beautiful melodies, so ZoozBeats incorporates a system called Musical Wizard to make sure their musical decisions are harmonious. It won't do everything, though. The system has been built to ensure that practice still makes perfect: "The big challenge was not to make it sound OK whatever you do," says Weinberg. "It will fit, but not perfectly, so you can still learn to improve the music yourself." ZoozBeats comes with instruments for three types of music: rock, techno (a form of modern electronic music with a very fast beat) and hip hop. It also allows users to produce vocal effects by singing into the phone and will be downloadable in two versions. One of these will be for solo use, the other a Bluetootb networkable version that supports jamming by groups of people-using the Musical Wizard to keep everybody's input melodious.

单选题Nuclear weapons were first developed in the United States during the Second World War, to be used against Germany. However, by the time the first bombs were ready for use, the war with Germany had ended and, as a result, the decision was made to use the weapons against Japan instead. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have suffered the consequences of this decision to the present day. The real reasons why bombs were dropped on two heavily-populated cities are not altogether clear. A number of people in 1944 and early 1945 argued that the use of nuclear weapons would be unnecessary, since American Intelligence was aware that some of the most powerful and influential people in Japan had already realized that the war was lost, and wanted to negotiate a Japanese surrender. It was also argued that, since Japan has few natural resources, a blockade by the American navy would force it to surrender within a few weeks, and the use of nuclear weapons would thus prove unnecessary. If a demonstration of forcewas required to end the war, a bomb could be dropped over an unpopulated area like a deserr, in front of Japanese observers, or over an area of low population inside Japan, such as a forest. Opting for this course of action might minimize the loss of further lives on all sides, while the power of nuclear weapons would still be adequately demonstrated. All of these arguments were rejected, however, and the general consensus was that the quickest way to end the fighting would be to use nuclear weapons against canters of population inside Japan. In fact, two of the more likely reasons why this decision was reached seem quite shocking to us now. Since the beginning of the Second World War both Germany and Japan had adopted a policy of genocide (i. e. killing as many people as possible, including civilians). Later on, even the US and Britain had used the strategy of fire bombing cities (Dresden and Tokyo, for example) in order to kill, injure and intimidate as many civilians as possible. Certainly, the general public in the West had become used to hearing about the deaths of large numbers of people, so the deaths of another few thousand Japanese, who were the enemy in any case, would not seem particularly unacceptable—a bit of "justifiable" revenge for the Allies' own losses, perhaps. The second reason is not much easier to comprehend. Some of the leading scientists in the world had collaborated to develop nuclear weapons, and this development had resulted in a number of major advances in technology and scientific knowledge. As a result, a lot of nor-mal, intelligent people wanted to see nuclear weapons used; they wanted to see just how destructive this new invention could be. It no doubt turned out to be even more "effective" than they had imagined.

单选题 Many foreigners who have not visited Britain call all the inhabitants English, for they are used to thinking of the British Isles as England.{{U}} (1) {{/U}}, the British Isles contain a variety of peoples, and only the people of England call themselves English. The others{{U}} (2) {{/U}}to themselves as Welsh, Scottish, or Irish,{{U}} (3) {{/U}}the case may be; they are often slightly annoyed{{U}} (4) {{/U}}being classified as "English".Even in England there are many{{U}} (5) {{/U}}in regional character and speech. The chief{{U}} (6) {{/U}}is between southern England and northern England. South of a{{U}} (7) {{/U}}going from Bristol to London, people speak the type of English usually learnt by foreign students,{{U}} (8) {{/U}}there are local variations. Further north, regional speech is usually"{{U}} (9) {{/U}}"than that of southern Britain. Northerners are{{U}} (10) {{/U}}to claim that they work harder than Southerners, and are more{{U}} (11) {{/U}}They are openhearted and hospitable; foreigners often find that they make friends with them{{U}} (12) {{/U}}. Northerners generally have hearty{{U}} (13) {{/U}}: the visitor to Lancashire or Yorkshire, for instance, may look forward to receiving generous{{U}} (14) {{/U}}at meal times. In accent and character the people of the Midlands{{U}} (15) {{/U}}a gradual change from the southern to the northern type of Englishman. In Scotland the sound{{U}} (16) {{/U}}by the letter "R" is generally a strong sound, and "R" is often pronounced in words in which it would be{{U}} (17) {{/U}}in southern English. The Scots are said to be a serious, cautious, thrifty people,{{U}} (18) {{/U}}inventive and somewhat mystical. All the Celtic peoples of Britain (the Welsh, the Irish, the Scots) are frequently{{U}} (19) {{/U}}as being more "fiery" than the English. They are{{U}} (20) {{/U}}a race that is quite distinct from the English.

单选题St. Paul didn't like it. Moses warned his people against it. Hesiod declared it "mischievious” and "hard to get rid of it", but Oscar Wilder said, "Gossip is charming." "History is merely gossip," he wrote in one of his famous plays. "But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. ' In times past, under Jewish law, gossipmongers might be fined or flogged. The Puritans put them in stocks or ducking stools, but no punishment seemed to have the desired effect of preventing gossip, which has continued uninterrupted across the back fences of the centuries. Today, however, the much-maligned human foible is being looked at in a different light. Psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, even evolutionary biologists are concluding that gossip may not be so bad after all. Gossip is "an intrinsically valuable activity", philosophy professor Aaron Ben-Ze'ev states in a book he has edited, entitled Good Gossip. For one thing, gossip helps us acquire information that we need to know that doesn't come through ordinary channels, such as: "What was the real reason so and-so was fired from the office?" Gossip also is a form of social bonding, Dr. Ben-Ze'ev says. It is "a kind of sharing" that also "satisfies the tribal need-- namely, the need to belong to and be accepted by a unique group". What's more, the professor notes, "Gossip is enjoyable." Another gossip groupie, Dr. Ronald De Sousa, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, describes gossip basically as a form of indiscretion and a "saintly virtue", by which he means that the knowledge spread by gossip will usually end up being slightly beneficial. "It seems likely that a world in which all information were universally available would be preferable to a world where immense power resides in the control of secrets," he writes. Still, everybody knows that gossip can have its ill effects, especially on the poor wretch being gossiped about. And people should refrain from certain kinds of gossip that might be harmful, even though the ducking stool is long out of fashion. By the way, there is also an interesting strain of gossip called medical gossip, which in its best form, according to researchers Jerry M. Suls and Franklin Goodkin, can motivate people with symptoms of serious illness, but who are unaware of it, to seek medical help. So go ahead and gossip. But remember, if (as often is the case among gossipers) you should suddenly become one of the gossipees instead, it is best to employ the foolproof defense recommended by Plato, who may have learned the lesson from Socrates, who as you know was the victim of gossip spread that he was corrupting the youth of Athens: When men speak ill of thee, so live thiat nobody will believe them. Or, as Will Rogers said, "Live so that you wouldn't .be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip./

单选题My inspiration is my grandmother, who's still alive at 96. She raised me from the time I was 8 on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. In another era she could have done what I do, although I didn't know what a CEO was then. I'm a real go-getter and don't know any other way. I tell my 12-year-old daughter, if you have a test, why not try for an A? I don't believe in half doing something. In my career, the biggest shock came in my 20's. I loved my job as a field systems analyst at 3M, and wanted my first manager's job at headquarters. They even told me I was the best candidate, totally qualified. Then they told me, "It's not possible because you're a woman." I was so shocked that I quit. I had this feeling of being totally blown away as I crawled back to Atlanta. I preach to people: there are no bad bosses. You learn how not to treat people. My worst boss was full of himself and wanted to micromanage. The man didn't have a complimentary bone in his body. I still have my performance review he wrote in small anal print. It was winter in Minnesota. I didn't want to drive. I was out the door at 5 p.m. because the bus left the front door at 5: 06. He put that down in my review how fast I was out the door. It didn't matter the rest of the year I was there until 6 or 7. Later, when I switched companies. I attended an off-site strategy meeting in Florida. There was a barbecue and the meeting continued on into the evening. My boss' boss threw a towel across the room and said, "Clean up, Carol." I caught the towel, went over and scrubbed his face. Everybody in the room went "Ohhhh." The luckiest thing in my career is that I have a computer science degree. Doors opened wide at a time when it wasn't necessarily great for women. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd have every girl pass college freshman calculus.

单选题Why does the conclusion dram from Bahn's words seem contradictory?