[A] If such pills catch on, they could generate significant revenues for drug companies. In Pfizer"s case, the goal is to transfer as many qualified patients as possible to the combo pill. Norvasc"s patents expire in 2007, but Pfizer could avoid losing all its revenues from the drug at once if it were part of a superpill. Sena Lund, an analyst at Cathay Financial, sees Pfizer selling ＄4.2 billion worth of Norvasc-Lipitor by 2007. That would help take up the slack for falling sales of Lipitor, which he projects will drop to ＄5 billion in 2007, down from ＄8 billion last year. [B] As usual, economics could tip the scales. Patients now taking both Lipitor and Norvasc "could cut their insurance co-pay in half" by switching to the combo drug, Gavris notes. That"s a key advantage. Controlling hypertension, for instance, can require three or more drugs, and the fi- nancial burden on patients mounts quickly. If patients also benefit—as Pfizer and other drug companies contend—making the switch to superpills could be advantageous for everyone. [C] Multifunction superpills aren"t nearly as farfetched as they may sound. And reducing such serious risks to heart health as soaring cholesterol, diabetes, and high blood pressure potentially could save many lives and be highly lucrative for drug companies. A combo pill from Pfizer (PFE) of its hypertension drug Norvasc and cholesterol-lowering agent Lipitor "could have huge potential," says Shaojing Tong, analyst at Mehta Partners. "Offering two functions in one pill itself is a huge convenience. " [D] Some other physicians are more skeptical. "If you want to change dosage on one of the new pill"s two drugs, you"re stuck," fears Dr. Irene Gavris, professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. She says she would feel most comfortable trying the combination pill on patients who "have been on the drugs for a while" and are thus unlikely to need changes in dosage. [E] Combining treatments would challenge doctors to approach heart disease differently. But better patient compliance is important enough, says Rockson, that he expects doctors to be open to trying the combined pill. [F] Doctors also may be quick to adopt Norvasc-Lipitor, Pfizer figures, because it"s made up of two well-studied drugs, which many physicians are already familiar with. But Dr. Stanley Rockson, chief of consultative cardiology at Stanford University Medical Center, says fixed-dose combination pills represent "an interesting crossroads" for physicians, who are typically trained to "approach each individual problem with care. " [G] Pfizer argues that addressing two distinct and serious cardiovascular risk factors in one pill has advantages. People with both hypertension and high LDL cholesterol (the "bad" kind) number around 27 million in the U. S. , notes Craig Hopkinson, medical director for dual therapy at Pfizer, and only 2% of that population reaches adequate treatment goals. Taking two treatments in one will increase the number of patients who take the medications properly and "assist in getting patients to goal," he says.

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about maples. Choose the most suitable heading from the list for each numbered paragraph. The first and last paragraphs of the text are not numbered. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use.A. The influence of maples on the Canadian culture.B. The token of maples in Canada.C. Contemplation of global distribution of maples.D. The triumph of Nokomis over the devils with the help of maples.E. The popularity of the maple in a favorite myth.F. The maple signals the approach of fall. The maple smoke of autumn bonfires is incense to Canadians. Bestowing perfume for the nose, color for the eye, sweetness for the spring tongue, the sugar maple prompts this sharing of a favorite myth and original etymology of the word maple. (41)______. The maple looms large in Ojibwa folk tales. The time of year for sugaring-off is "in the Maple Moon." Among Ojibwa, the primordial female figure is Nokomis, a wise grandmother. In one tale about seasonal change, cannibal wendigos—creatures of evil—chased old Nokomis through the autumn countryside. Wendigos throve in icy cold. When they entered the bodies of humans, the human heart froze solid. Here wendigos represent oncoming winter. They were hunting to kill and eat poor Nokomis, the warm embodiment of female fecundity who, like the summer, has grown old. (42)______. Knowing this was a pursuit to the death, Nokomis outsmarted the cold devils. She hid in a stand of maple trees, all red and orange and deep yellow. This maple grove grew beside a waterfall whose mist blurred the trees" outline. As they peered through the mist, slavering wendigos thought they saw a raging fire in which their prey was burning. But it was only old Nokomis being hidden by the bright red leaves of her friends, the maples. And so, drooling ice and huffing frost, the wendigos left her and sought easier preys. For their service in saving the earth mother"s life, these maples were given a special gift: their water of life would be forever sweet, and Canadians would tap it for nourishment. (43)______. Maple and its syrup row sweetly into Canadian humor. Quebeckers have the standard sirop durable for maple syrup, but add a feisty insult to label imitation syrups that are thick with glucose glop. They call this sugary imposter sirop de Poteau "telephone-pole syrup" or dead tree syrup. (44)______. The contention that maple syrup is unique to North America is suspect, I believe, China has close to 10 species of maple, more than any country in the world. Canada has 10 native species. North America does happen to be home to the sugar maple, the species that produces the sweetest sap and the most abundant flow. But are we to believe that in thousands of years of Chinese history, these inventive people never tapped a maple to taste its sap? I speculate that they did. Could Proto-Americas who crossed the Bering land bridge to populate the Americas have brought with them a knowledge of maple syrup? Is there a very old Chinese phrase for maple syrup? Is maple syrup mentioned in Chinese literature? For a non-reader of Chinese, such questions are daunting but not impossible to answer. (45)______. What is certain is the maple"s holdfast on our national imagination. Its leaf was adopted as an emblem in New France as early as 1700, and in English Canada by the mid-19th century. In the fall of 1867, a Toronto schoolteacher named Alexander Muir was traipsing a street at the city, all squelchy underfoot from the soft felt of falling leaves, when a maple leaf alighted to his coat sleeve and stuck there. At home that evening, he wrote a poem and set it to music, in celebration of Canada"s Confederation. Muir"s song, "The Maple Leaf Forever," was wildly popular and helped fasten the symbol firmly to Canada. The word "maple" is from "mapeltreow", the Old English term for maple tree, with "mapl"—as its Proto—Germanic root, a compound in which the first "m"-is, I believe, the nearly worldwide "ma", one of the first human sounds, the pursing of a baby"s lips as it prepares to suck milk from mother"s breast. The "ma" root gives rise in many world languages to thousands of words like "mama", "mammary", "maia", and "Amazon." Here it would make "mapl" mean "nourishing mother tree," that is, tree whose maple sap in nourishing. The second part of the compound, "apl", is a variant of Indo-European able "fruit of any tree" and the origin of another English fruit word, apple. So the primitive analogy com pares the liquid sap with another nourishing liquid, mother"s milk.

(46) Economic growth involves increases over time in the volume of a country"s per capita gross national product (GNP) of goads and services. Such continuing increases can raise average living standards substantially and provide a stronger base for other policy objectives. (47) It is only in the last two centuries that continued growth in living standards has been realized for a number of now—developed countries, and this process has broadened in the 20th century to include a number of developing countries. (48) However, the fairly steady expansion in the third quarter of the 20th century gave way to a period of slower and more erratic growth for both-high-and low-income countries, while some of the economically poorest countries were thus far unable to establish a serf-sustaining pattern of development. It also became increasingly evident that there were serious environmental problems associated with some types of growth in production. In examining the record of economic growth and development, economists offer some explanations for the changes involved, and the attempts by governments to plan these changes. Five major issues are involved. The first is why economic growth occurs more quickly in some countries and periods than in others. It is the increase in the size and quality of the factors of production that underlies growth, but certain forces deserve special attention. A variety of models of economic growth give expression to the understanding of these forces. Increasing attention has been paid in these models and in policy to the international aspects of growth. This trend is partly a reflection of the growing internationalization of economic activity. It also reflects a number of potentially destabilizing changes in the international economy that became evident during the 1970s. (49) A second issue is the challenges facing the low-income countries, namely, to move from subsistence levels of per capita income to a level that would generate self-sustaining growth and also to reduce the gap between themselves and the higher-income countries. A third issue, productivity, is central to changes in living standards and to-the analysis of international competitiveness. A fourth major issue is the attempt to maintain growth and increase development through economic planning. (50) Planning became a widespread phenomenon during and just after World War II and was given further emphasis in many newly independent countries that were industrializing. Beginning in the 1970s the emphasis shifted to more decentralized planning, with deregulation and privatization of industry as two aspects of this process. Underlying economic growth and planning is a fifth issue, the attempt to predict economic activity. Modern forecasting involves a variety of computer-based techniques at the level of the firm, the country, and the international economy. The accuracy of forecasting has been reduced by increased uncertainty in the global and national economies since the early 1970s.

We don"t see or hear them, but every day they quietly go about their work--filtering and cleansing our rivers and streams. And if we don"t act soon, they"ll disappear from the workforce just when we need them most. I am talking about pigtoes, monkeyface, pink heelsplitter and purple wartyback--freshwater mussels (贻贝) with funny names that belie the seriousness of their labors. (41) . One mussel alone can cleanse as much as a gallon of water per hour. Add up the work of a whole mussel community, and you get a virtual water treatment plant. According to Ethan Nedeau, an expert on the freshwater mussels of New England, even half the population of mussels at work in a one-half mile segment of New Hampshire"s Ashuelot River can help cleanse more than 11.2 million gallons of water a day--roughly the quantity of household water used by 112 000 people. (42) . Today 69 percent of US freshwater mussel species are to some degree at risk of extinction or already extinct. The most diverse assemblage of freshwater mussels ever known was located in the middle stretch of the Tennessee River in northern Alabama. Before the damming of the river in the early 1900s, 69 mussel species had been spotted in this reach; 32 of them have apparently disappeared, with no recording sightings in nearly a century. (43) . Like many freshwater mussels, the orange-nacre mucket has a fascinating life cycle and exhibits some of the most sophisticated mimicry in the animal kingdom. The females essentially use their offspring to lure fish into helping them colonize new stream bottoms. They package their larvae (幼虫) at the end of jelly--like tubes that can extend eight feet out into the water. To fish swimming by, the larvae dancing in the riffles of the river current looks like a tasty minnow. When the fish bites, the tube breaks, releasing the larvae into the stream. A few of the offspring attach to the fish"s gills and hitchhike around with their firmed host for a week or two, absorbing nutrients and growing along the way. (44) . Along with 16 other threatened or endangered mussel species in the Mobile watershed, the orange-nacre mucket is at risk of extinction--in large part due to excessive pollution and dams that have diminished the river habitat they need to survive. To me, the loss of such industrious, fascinating creatures diminishes more than our water quality-- it diminishes our natural heritage and our world. (45) . So as we celebrate World Water Day, I hope we also celebrate the freshwater mussels that help keep our waters clean and healthy--and commit to efforts to conserve them. [A] My favorite freshwater mussel is the orange-nacre mucket, found only in the rivers and streams of Alabama"s Mobile River basin. [B] The United States ranks first in the world in the number of known species of freshwater mussels 292, com- pared with just 10 in all of Europe. But we"re losing these "living filters" all too fast. [C] Only habitat improvements, in some cases combined with mussel breeding and release efforts, can save these and the other 200 freshwater mussel species at risk nationwide. [D] Because I bet we"ll miss these little creatures with the whimsical names when they"re gone. [E] They suck water in, filter out bits of algae, bacteria and other tiny particles, and then release it back to the river cleaner than before. [F] Finally, the young mussels drop off, float to the river bottom, and colonize new territory--and before long begin their vital task of water purification. [G] It is our responsibility to take actions to protect the freshwater mussels, otherwise they will disappear in the future and the water will not be refreshed.

Something big is happening to the human race—something that could be called The Great Transformation. The Transformation consists of all the changes that are occurring in human life due to advancing technology. For thousands of years such progress occurred slowly. Now, everything is changing so fast that you may find yourself wondering where all this progress is really leading. Fifty years ago, few people could even imagine things like computers and lasers. Today, a host of newly emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering are opening up all kinds of new paths for technologists. Like it or not, our advancing technology has made us masters of the earth. We not only dominate all the other animals, but are reshaping the world"s plant life and even its soil and rocks, its waters and surrounding air. Mountains are being dug up to provide minerals and stone for buildings. The very ground under our feet is washing away as we chop down the forests, plow up the fields, and excavate foundations for our buildings. Human junk is cluttering up not only the land but even the bottom of the sea. And so many chemicals are being released into the air by human activities that scientists worry that the entire globe may warm, causing the polar icecaps to melt and ocean waters to flood vast areas of the land. During the twentieth century, advancing technology has enabled man to reach thousands of feet into the ocean depths and to climb the highest mountains. Mount Everest, the highest mountain of all, resisted all climbers until the 1950"s. Now man is reaching beyond Earth to the moon, Mars, and the stars. No one knows what the Great Transformation means or where it will ultimately lead. But one thing is sure: human life 50 years from now will be very different from what it is today. It"s also worth noting that our amazing technology is posing an increasingly insistent question: When we can do so many things, how can we possibly decide what we really should do. When humans were relatively powerless, they didn"t have to make the choices they have to make today. Technology gives us the power to build a magnificent new civilization—if we can just agree on what we want it to be. But today, there is little global agreement on goals and how we should achieve them. So it remains to be seen what will happen as a result of our technology. Pessimists worry that we will use the technology eventually to blow ourselves up. But they have been saying that for decades, and so far we have escaped. Whether we will continue to do so remains unknown—but we can continue to hope.

Just how much does the Constitution protect your digital data? The Supreme Court will now consider whether police can search the contents of a mobile phone without a warrant if the phone is on or around a person during an arrest. California has asked the justices to refrain from a sweeping ruling, particularly one that upsets the old assumptions that authorities may search through the possessions of suspects at the time of their arrest. It is hard, the state argues, for judges to assess the implications of new and rapidly changing technologies. The court would be recklessly modest if it followed California's advice. Enough of the implications are discernable, even obvious, so that the justice can and should provide updated guidelines to police, lawyers and defendants. They should start by discarding California's lame argument that exploring the contents of a smartphone—a vast storehouse of digital information—is similar to, say, going through a suspect' s purse. The court has ruled that police don't violate the Fourth Amendment when they go through the wallet or pocketbook of an arrestee without a warrant. But exploring one' s smartphone is more like entering his or her home. A smartphone may contain an arrestee' s reading history, financial history, medical history and comprehensive records of recent correspondence. The development of "cloud computing", meanwhile, has made that exploration so much the easier. Americans should take steps to protect their digital privacy. But keeping sensitive information on these devices is increasingly a requirement of normal life. Citizens still have a right to expect private documents to remain private and protected by the Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches. As so often is the case, stating that principle doesn't ease the challenge of line-drawing. In many cases, it would not be overly burdensome for authorities to obtain a warrant to search through phone contents. They could still invalidate Fourth Amendment protections when facing severe, urgent circumstances, and they could take reasonable measures to ensure that phone data are not erased or altered while waiting for a warrant. The court, though, may want to allow room for police to cite situations where they are entitled to more freedom. But the justices should not swallow California's argument whole. New, disruptive technology sometimes demands novel applications of the Constitution's protections. Orin Kerr, a law professor, compares the explosion and accessibility of digital information in the 21st century with the establishment of automobile use as a virtual necessity of life in the 20th: The justices had to specify novel rules for the new personal domain of the passenger car then; they must sort out how the Fourth Amendment applies to digital information now.

Writeanessayof160—200wordsbasedonthefollowingpicture.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethepicturebriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)supportyourviewwithanexample/examplesYoushouldwriteneatly.(20points)

In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a dentist to transplant nine teeth into his jaw—having extracted them from the mouths of his slaves. That"s a far different image from the cherry-tree-chopping George most people remember from their history books. But recently, many historians have begun to focus on the roles slavery played in the lives of the founding generation. They have been spurred in part by DNA evidence made available in 1998, which almost certainly proved Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one child with his slave Sally Hemings. And only over the past 30 years have scholars examined history from the bottom up. Works of several historians reveal the moral compromises made by the nation"s early leaders and the fragile nature of the country"s infancy. More significantly, they argue that many of the Founding Fathers knew slavery was wrong—and yet most did little to fight it. More than anything, the historians say, the founders were hampered by the culture of their time. While Washington and Jefferson privately expressed distaste for slavery, they also understood that it was part of the political and economic bedrock of the country they helped to create. For one thing, the South could not afford to part with its slaves. Owning slaves was "like having a large bank account," says Wiencek, author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. The southern states would not have signed the Constitution without protections for the "peculiar institution," including a clause that counted a slave as three fifths of a man for purposes of congressional representation. And the statesmen"s political lives depended on slavery. The three-fifths formula handed Jefferson his narrow victory in the presidential election of 1800 by inflating the votes of the southern states in the Electoral College. Once in office, Jefferson extended slavery with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803; the new land was carved into 13 states, including three slave states. Still, Jefferson freed Hemings"s children—though not Hemings herself or his approximately 150 other slaves. Washington, who had begun to believe that all men were created equal after observing the bravery of the black soldiers during the Revolutionary War, overcame the strong opposition of his relatives to grant his slaves their freedom in his will. Only a decade earlier, such an act would have required legislative approval in Virginia.

It is the capacity of the computer for solving problems and making decisions that represents its greatest potential and that poses the greatest difficulties in predicting the impact on society.

Economists used to think wealth came from a combination of man-made resources(roads, factories, telephone systems), human resources(hard work and education), and technological resources(technical know how, or simply high-tech machinery).【F1】 Obviously, poor countries grew into rich countries by investing money in physical resources and by improving human and technological resources with education and technology transfer programs. Nothing is wrong with this picture as far as it goes. Education, factories, infrastructure, and technical know-how are indeed abundant in rich countries and lacking in poor ones. But the picture is incomplete, a puzzle with the most important piece missing. 【F2】 The first clue that something is amiss with the traditional story is its implication that poor countries should have been catching up with rich ones for the last century or so—and that the farther behind they are, the faster the catch-up should be. In a country that has very little in the way of infrastructure or education, new investments have the biggest rewards. In a world of diminishing returns, the poorest countries gain the most from new technology, infrastructure, and education. South Korea, for example, acquired technology by encouraging foreign companies to invest or by paying licensing fees. In addition to the fees, the investing companies sent profits back home. But the gains to Korean workers and investors, in the form of economic growth, were 50 times greater than the fees and profits that left the country. 【F3】 As for education and infrastructure, since the returns seem to be so high, there should be no shortage of investors willing to fund infrastructure projects or lend money to students(or to governments that provide education). Banks, domestic and foreign, should be lining up to lend people the money to get through school or to build a new road or a new power plant.【F4】 In turn, poor people, or poor countries, should be very happy to take out such loans, confident that investment returns are so high that the repayments will not be difficult. Even if, for some reason, that didn"t happen, the World Bank, established after World War 11 with the express aim of providing loans to countries for reconstruction and development, lends billions of dollars a year to developing countries.【F5】 Investment money is clearly not the issue; either the investments are not being made, or they are not delivering the returns the traditional model predicts.

At this time of year especially, weather is on everyone"s mind—and on everyone"s tongue.【F1】 It is the material for the conversation of board chairman and bored cleaning woman, of young and old, of the bright, the dull, the rich and the poor. As if this basic coin of conversation needed to be gilded, the average American constantly reads about the weather in his newspapers and magazines, listens to regular forecasts of it on the radio and watches while some TV prophet milks it for cuteness on the evening news. 【F2】 Since the weather is to man what the waters are to fish, his preoccupation with it serves a unique purpose, constituting a social phenomenon all its own. Far from arising merely to pass the time or bridge a silence, "weathertalk," as it might be called, is a sort of code by which people confirm and salute the sense of community they discover in the face of the weather"s implacable influence. Inspired by exceptional weather, otherwise immutable strangers suddenly find themselves in communion. 【F3】 As victims, people hate to cancel a picnic on account of rain, and yet they often cheer when the weather brings human activity to an abrupt stop. Most feel that the weather indeed affects their moods. If man sees the weather differently according to his circumstance, healthy fear works at the hub of his obsession with it. Through human history, weather has altered the march of events and caused some mighty cataclysms. Every year brings fresh reminders of the weather"s power over human life and events in the form of horrifying tornadoes, hurricanes and floods. No wonder, then, that man"s great dream has been some day to control the weather.【F4】 With computers on tap and electronic eyes in the sky, modern man has thus come far in dealing with the weather, alternately his enemy and benefactor, yet man"s difficulty today is not too far removed from that of his remote ancestors. For all the advances of scientific forecasting, in spite of the thousands of daily bulletins and advisories that get flashed about, the weather is still ultimately unstable and unpredictable. Man"s dream of controlling it is still just that—a dream. The very idea of control, in fact, raises enormous and troublesome questions.【F5】 The vision of scheduled weather also raises ambiguous feelings among the world"s billions of weather fans and poses at least one irresistible question: If weather were as predictable as holidays and eclipses, what in the world would everyone talk about?

Summer was, for a while, a child"s time, conferring an inviolate right to laziness. It was a form of education that had nothing to do with adult priorities, providing entire afternoons to watch exactly how many ants would dash out of one hill and what they would bring back. The holiness of that kind of summer was first diminished by necessity, when overcrowded classrooms brought us the year-round school calendar. Next, the battle against social promotion forced many an indifferent student into summer school—while the hard-charging students willingly packed into summer school as well, to get a leg up on the coming year. Then, as though the world of achievement had some sort of legitimate claim on summer, even schools that maintained the old-fashioned schedule began reaching their tentacles into summer. Some school districts start the traditional school year in August, the better to squeeze in a couple of more weeks of instruction before the all-important state standardized tests given in spring. Worse, what used to be recommended summer reading lists are now becoming compulsory assignments. And woe to the ambitious student who"s signed up for Advanced Placement classes, and thus a summer-load of note taking and homework. It"s not just the schools. As a society, we grow itchy at the sight of someone—even a kid-accomplishing nothing more than fun. Thus parents have become suckers for anything that lends a constructive air to summer. Summer camps used to exist for the purpose of marshmallow roasts and putting frogs in your bunkmates" beds. Those still exist, but they compete mightily with the new camps— the ones for improving a child"s writing style, building math skills, honing soccer stardom, learning a foreign language, building dance talents or finessing skills playing a musical instrument. Even many colleges and universities, such as Johns Hopkins, have climbed on board, mailing out silky brochures about their expensive summer programs for supposedly gifted, or at least financially gifted, students. None of this activity is required, of course. Unluckily, other societal changes also have pushed back at summer. Children can"t get together a pickup game of kickball when their streets are the turf of gangs. And without a shove out the door, today"s youngsters are more likely to spend a day clicking away at video games than swinging in a hammock. Still, it is a decision, however unconsciously made, to view summertime as a commodity to be prudently invested, rather than as a gift to be lavishly spent. There is only one sort of skill we are afraid to nurture in our kids—the ability to do nothing more constructive than make a blade of crabgrass, pressed between our thumbs and blown, blast a reedy note into the summer air.

[A] Use diesel-electric hybrid buses in rural areas. [B] Talk about the benefits of walking to school. [C] Talk about the prices of traditional school buses.[D] Find new ways to cut bus costs in rural areas.[E] Compare school buses with private cars in safety.[F] Discuss the disadvantage of driving to school.[G] Discuss walking to school from the perspective of parents. Until last spring, Nia Parker and the other kids in her neighborhood commuted to school on Bus 59. But as fuel costs have risen, the Columbia school district has needed to find a way to cut its transportation costs. So the school's busing company redrew its route map, eliminating Nia's bus altogether, and advocated students to walk to school. 【C1】______ Instead, Nia and her neighbors travel the half mile to school via a "walking school bus"—a group of kids, supervised by an adult or two, who make the trek together. "It's healthier for them to walk," Nia's mom, who approves of the change. Nia, a 9-year-old who's in fourth grade, sees other advantages. Since the bus used to pick up many children along a circuitous route, walking to school is actually quicker. "I like it because I get to sleep late, and I don't get as grouchy," Nia says. Like the rest of us, school districts are feeling pinched by rising fuel costs—and finding new ways to adapt. The diesel fuel that powers school buses now costs an average of $4.28 a gallon, up 34 percent in the past two years. According to a survey done by the American Association of School Administrators in July, more than one third of school administrators have eliminated bus stops or routes in order to stay within budget. 【C2】______ Many parents are delighted to see their kids walking to school, partly because many did so themselves: in 1969, according to the National Household Travel Survey, nearly half of school kids walked or biked to school, compared with only 16 percent in 2001. Modern parents have been leery of letting kids walk to school for fear of traffic, crime or simple bullying, but with organized adult supervision, those concerns have diminished. Schools and busing companies are finding other ways to save by cutting field trips and redrawing athletic schedules to reduce the distances of "away" sporting events. 【C3】______ In rural areas where busing is a must, some schools have even opted for four-day school weeks. First Student Transportation, the leading US school bus provider, is training drivers to eliminate extra stops from routes, to turn off the engine while idling and to check tire pressure every time they leave the lot. First Student is also using route-optimization software to determine the most fuel-efficient routes, which aren't always the shortest ones. A few schools now use diesel-electric hybrid buses, which achieve 12 miles per gallon (compared with 7mpg for a traditional bus). But at $180,000, hybrids cost more than twice as much as a traditional diesel bus, so few schools have switched. 【C4】______ There could be downsides, however, to the busing cutbacks. If every formerly bused student begins hoofing it to school, it's an environmental win—but if too many of their parents decide to drive them instead, the overall carbon footprint can grow. 【C5】______ "On average, one school bus replaces 36 private vehicles," says Mike Martin of the National Association for Pupil Transportation, a pro-busing advocacy group. Replacing buses with many more parent-driven minivans can also increase safety risks: Martin cites a 2002 report by the National Academy of Sciences that concluded students are 13 times safer on a school bus than in a passenger car, since buses have fewer accidents and withstand them better due to their size.

Writing for an historical series is tricky, and the outcome is not always a success. The best overall European history in English is the old Fontana History of Europe, but it was uneven in quality, and it suffered because the volumes appeared so far apart in time. The new Penguin History of Europe has only recently begun. But judging by this second volume in a projected eight-volume se-ries, it is going to be a smashing success. Tim Blanning, a Cambridge history professor brings to his period knowledge, experience, sound judgment and a colorful narrative style. His broad range is evident from the start when, in place of the usual recitation of politics and battles, he expounds on such themes as communications, transport, demography and farming. Indeed, much of what might be seen as traditional history is pushed back to the fourth and final part of the book. Not the least of Mr. Blanning"s achievements is his integrated approach to the entire continent. He jumps nimbly from Spain to the Low Countries, from Russia to Austria, from Prussia to Turkey. Many of Europe"s royal families were related, after all. The author also expertly places the history of the two greatest rivals of the day, England and France, in its wider European context. Any British Eurosceptic who thinks his country"s history is detached from continental Europe"s would realize from even the most inadequate reading of this book how bound up with the continent it has in fact always been. The 17th and 18th centuries in Europe were, above all, a period of war. Indeed, it seemed at times as if France and Austria, the leading martial powers in 1648, did little else but fight. Sometimes war helped to stimulate economic and commercial development. But it is striking that it fell to Britain, which enjoyed at least a few years of peace, to pioneer Europe"s industrialization. The book is stronger on the 18th century than on the second half of the 17th, reflecting the author"s own historical bias. Another weakness is that, though there is a reasonable bibliography, it has no footnotes citing sources, a scandalous omission in a work with serious academic pretensions. It also sometimes takes for granted a basic grounding in the history of the period, which may be problematic for students at whom it is presumably in part aimed. But overall Mr.Blanning has produced a triumphant success.

[A]Theseissuescutrightacrosstraditionalreligiousdogma.Manypeopleclingtothebeliefthattheoriginofliferequiredauniquedivineact.ButiflifeonEarthisnotunique,thecaseforamiraculousoriginwouldbeundermined.ThediscoveryofevenahumblebacteriumonMars,ifitcouldbeshowntohavearisenindependentlyfromEarthlifewouldsupporttheviewthatlifeemergesnaturally.[B]Contrarytopopularbelief,speculationthatwearenotaloneintheuniverseisasoldasphilosophyitself.TheessentialstepsinthereasoningwerebasedontheatomictheoryoftheancientGreekphilosopherDemocritus.First,thelawsofnatureareuniversal.Second,thereisnothingspecialorprivilegedaboutEarth.Finally,ifsomethingispossible,naturetendstomakeithappen.Philosophyisonething,fillinginthephysicaldetailsisanother.Althoughastronomersincreasinglysuspectthatbio-friendlyplanetsmaybeabundantintheuniverse,thechemicalstepsleadingtoliferemainlargelymysterious.[C]Thereis,however,acontraryview—onethatisgainingstrengthanddirectlychallengesorthodoxbiology.Itisthatcomplexitycanemergespontaneouslythroughaprocessofself-organization.Ifmatterandenergyhaveaninbuilttendencytoamplifyandchannelorganizedcomplexity,theoddsagainsttheformationoflifeandthesubsequentevolutionofintelligencecouldbedrasticallyshortened.Therelevanceofself-organizationtobiologyremainshotlydebated.Itsuggests,however,thatalthoughtheuniverseasawholemaybedying,anopposite,progressivetrendmayalsoexistasafundamentalpropertyofnature.Theemergenceofextraterrestriallife,particularlyintelligentlife,isakeytestfortheserivalparadigms[D]Similarreasoningappliestoevolution.Accordingtotheorthodoxview,Darwinianselectionisutterlyblind.Anyimpressionthatthetransitionfrommicrobestomanrepresentsprogressispurechauvinismofourpart.Thepathofevolutionismerelyarandomwalkthroughtherealmofpossibilities.Ifthisisright,therecanbenodirectionality,noinnatedriveforward;inparticular,nopushtowardconsciousnessandintelligence.ShouldEarthbestruckbyanasteroid,destroyingallhigherlife-forms,intelligentbeings,stilllesshumanoids,wouldalmostcertainlynotarisenexttimearound.[E]Traditionally,biologistsbelievedthatlifeisafreak—theresultofazillion-to-oneaccidentalconcatenationofmolecules.Itfollowsthatthelikelihoodofitshappeningagainelsewhereinthecosmosisinfinitesimal.Thisviewpointderivesfromthesecondlawofthermodynamics,whichpredictsthattheuniverseisdying—slowlyandinexorablydegeneratingtowardastateoftotalchaos.Lifestumblesacrossthistrendonlybecauseitisapurestatisticalluck.[F]Historically,theRomanCatholicchurchregardedanydiscussionofalienlifeasheresy.SpeculatingaboutotherinhabitedworldswasonereasonphilosopherGiordanoBrunowasburnedatthestakein1600.BeliefthatmankindhasaspecialrelationshipwithGodiscentraltothemonotheisticreligions.Theexistenceofalienbeings,especiallyiftheywerefurtheradvancedthanhumansintellectuallyandspiritually,woulddisruptthiscozyview.[G]Thediscoveryoflifebeyondearthwouldtransformnotonlyoursciencebutalsoourreligions,ourbeliefsystemsandourentireworldview.Forinasense,thesearchforextraterrestriallifeisreallyasearchforourselves—whoweareandwhatourplaceisinthegrandsweepofthecosmos.

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about the Deep Impact by NASA. Choose the most suitable heading from the list for each numbered paragraph.A. Revelation of the nature of cometsB. A perfect representative of the cometsC. Hoping for the bestD. Right time and right place for the ImpactE. What to expect of this Deep Impact?F. Mystery in the heavens On Monday at 1:52 a.m. ET, a probe deployed by a NASA spacecraft 83 million miles from home will smash at 23,000 mph into an ancient comet the size of Manhattan, blasting a hole perhaps 14 stories deep. (41)______. Launched in January, NASA"s $333 million Deep Impact mission is designed to answer questions that scientists have long had about comets, the ominous icebergs of space. This is the first time any space agency has staged such a deliberate crash. Scientists hope images transmitted by the probe and its mother ship will tell them about conditions in the early solar system, when comets and planets, including Earth, were formed. The team hopes to release photos of the impact as soon as they are received from the craft. NASA and observatories across the nation will be releasing webcasts. (42)______. At the very least, NASA says, knowing how deep the probe dives into the comet could settle the debate over whether comets are compact ice cubes or porous snow cones. "We need to dig as deep a hole as possible," says mission science Chief Michael A"Hearn of the University of Maryland. Until now, the closest scientists have come to a comet was when NASA"s Stardust mission passed within 167 miles of the comet Wild 2 last year, collecting comet dust that is bound for a return to Earth in January. The most famous date with a comet occurred when an international spacecraft flotilla greeted Halley"s Comet in 1986. But these quick looks examined only the comets" dust and surface. (43)______. To the ancients, comets were harbingers of doom, celestial intruders on the perfection of the heavens that presaged disaster. Modern astronomers have looked on them more favorably, at least since Edmond Halley"s celebrated 1705 prediction of the return of Halley"s Comet in 1758 and every 75 years thereafter. Today, scientists believe Tempel 1 (named for Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel, who first spotted it in 1867 while searching for comets in the sky over Marseilles, France) and other comets are windows to the earliest days of the solar system, 4.6 billion years ago, when planets formed from the dust disk surrounding the infant sum (44)______. Deep Impact"s copper-plated "impactor"—a 39-inch long, 820-pound beer-barrel-shaped probe—will be "run over like a penny on a train track" when it crashes, A"Hearn says. The impactor is equipped with a navigation system to make sure it smacks into the comet in the right location for the flyby craft"s cameras. On Sunday, the flyby spacecraft will release the probe. Twelve minutes later, it will beat a hasty retreat with a maneuver aimed at allowing a close flyby, from 5,348 miles away, with cameras pointed. Fourteen minutes after the impact, the flyby spacecraft will scoot to within a mere 310 miles for a close-up of the damage, (45)______. Ideally, everything will line up, and the flyby spacecraft will take images of the crater caused by the impact. It will go into a "shielded" mode as ice and dust batter the craft, then emerge to take more pictures. "The realistic worst case is hitting (the comet) but not having the flyby in the right place," A"Hearn says. "Basically, we have a bullet trying to hit a second bullet with a third bullet in the right place at the right time to watch, I"d love to have a joystick(操纵杆) to control the impactor." Planetary scientists have "no idea" what sort of crater will result, McFadden says. Predictions range from a deep but skinny shaft driven into a porous snow cone to a football- stadium-sized excavation in a hard-packed ice ball. But astronomers should have their answer shortly after impact, which should settle some questions about the comet"s crust and interior. Analysis of the chemistry of that interior, based on the light spectra given off in the impact"s aftermath, could take much longer.

You are supposed to invite Dr. King to make a speech about the future development of computer science at the annual conference of your department. Write a letter to Mr. King to 1) invite him on behalf of your department, 2) tell him the time and place of the conference, and 3) promise to give him further details later. You should write about 100 words neatly. Do not sign your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write the address.

You are required to write a memorandum on behalf of the Students" Union, encouraging all the students and teachers on your campus to make donations for people in flooded regions of our country. In your writing, you should cover the following points: 1) difficulties confronting people in flooded areas, 2) appeals to the readers, and 3) time and place to collect the donations. You should write about 100 words.

Studythefollowingpicturecarefullyandwriteanessayofabout160—200words.Youressaymustbewrittenclearly.Youressayshouldmeettherequirementsbelow:1.Describethedrawingandinterpretitsmeaning,2.Andpointoutitsimplicationsinourlife.

BPart CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese./B