Even before the opening ceremony, a record had been broken at Sochi; 12 new events, the most for any Olympics, were scheduled to make their debut . Since the first winter Olympics in 1924, the total has swelled from 16 to 98. Some of the latest batch, such as the women's ski jump, are variations on existing events. Others will be less familiar to the mainly middle-aged audience. This is as the organisers intended. More than half of all Americans who watched the 2010 winter Olympics on NBC were over 50. Teenagers hardly tuned in. For the main sponsors, which included Coca-Cola and McDonald's, as well as for broadcasters and advertisers, this was bad news. Teenagers, in particular, have a big influence on their families' spending habits. In 1948 the BBC offered 1,000 guineas ($47,000 in today's money) for the right to broadcast that year's London summer games. The organisers, fearing this would be too much of a financial strain for the broadcaster, turned it down. That amateur spirit has long since gone the way of the tug-of-war event; global broadcasting rights have been the games' biggest revenue stream for the past 30 years. In London 2012 they hit $2.6 billion. When planning the Olympics, says Ian Henry of Loughborough University, organisers only recently started to think about how well a sport plays on television and with young people. They added snowboarding in 1998 and last year considered dropping one of the oldest summer Olympic sports, wrestling. It won a reprieve by cutting the number of rounds, making scoring snazzier and adding more women's events. This year's additions to a tournament were chosen partly because they attract lots of YouTube views and Twitter followers. They include the ski half-pipe; snowboard slope style and the luge team relay. It is all a far cry from curling, in which the team sweep the ice in front of a slowly moving stone—the thrill of which is nicely captured by the sport's nickname; "chess on ice".

Modern technology may not have improved the world all that much, but it certainly has made life noisier. Un-muffled motorcycles, blaring car alarms, and roving boom boxes come first, second, and third on my list of most obnoxious noise offenders, but everyone could come up with his own version of aural hell—if he could just find a quiet spot to ponder the matter. Yet what technology has done, other technology is now starting to undo, using computer power to zap those ear-splitting noises into silence. Previously silence seekers had little recourse except to stay inside, close the windows, and plug their ears. Remedies like these are quaintly termed "passive" systems, because they place physical barriers against the unwanted sound. Now computer technology is producing a far more effective "active" system, which doesn"t just contain, deflect, or mask the noise but annihilates it electronically. The system works by countering the offending noise with "anti-noise", a some what sinister sounding term that calls to mind antimatter, black holes, and other Popular Science mindbenders but that actually refers to something quite simple. Just as a wave on a pond is flattened when it merges with a trough that is its exact opposite (or mirror image), so can a sound wave by meeting its opposite. This general theory of sound cancellation has been around since the 1930s. In the fifties and sixties it made or a kind of magic trick among laboratory acousticians playing around with the first clunky mainframe computers. The advent of low-cost, high-power microprocessors has made active noise-cancellation systems a commercial possibility, and a handful of small electronics firms in the United States and abroad are bringing the first ones onto the silence market. Silence buffs might be hoping that the noise-canceling apparatus will take the shape of the 44 Magnum wielded by Dirty Harry, but in fact active sound control is not quite that active. The system might more properly he described as reactive in that it responds to sound waves already headed toward human ears. In the configuration that is usual for such systems microphones detect the noise signal and send it to the system"s microprocessor, which almost instantly models it and creates its inverse for loudspeakers to fire at the original. Because the two sounds occupy" the same range of frequencies and tones, the inverse sounds exactly tike the noise it is meant to eliminate: the anti-noise canceling Beethoven"s Fifth Symphony is heard as Beethoven"s Fifth. The only difference is that every positive pressure produced on the air by the orchestra is matched by a negative pressure produced by the computer, and thereby silencing the sound. The system is most effective as a kind of muffler, in which microphones, microprocessor, and loudspeaker are all in a unit encasing the device, that produces the sound, stifling it at its source. But it can work as a headset, too, negating the sound at the last moment before it disturbs one"s peace of mind.

Although numerous books have been written about American mothers, only recently has literature focused on the role of a father.

You ordered some ball pens yesterday. But they didn"t meet your requirement. You are asked to write a letter of complaint about it, proposing your solution. Your letter should be no less than 100 words, write it neatly and don"t sign your own name or address at the end of the letter, use "Li Ming" instead.

Over the past two decades America's broken immigration system has confounded one Congress after another, because it never seemed possible to create a law that satisfied the right balance of interests. But some Republicans changed their minds after the 2012 presidential election, when Mitt Romney took just 27% of the Latino vote. It did not take a brilliant strategist to understand the threat; Latinos were growing in number, were increasingly likely to vote, and were turning away from Republicans in droves. Last June, 14 Republicans in the Senate joined the majority Democrats to pass a comprehensive immigration-reform bill. The effort stalled when the Republican-led House of Representatives said it would not take up the measure. But last week it roared back to life when John Boehner, the House Speaker, issued a brief memo to his caucus outlining principles for reform. Although short on specifics, in most respects Mr. Boehner's note echoes the Senate bill. It calls for a secure border, biometrics to track comers and goers, and a digitized system for employers to check the immigration status of workers. It urges the allocation of visas to suit the demands of American firms. It says that most of the 1.5m "Dreamers" (illegal immigrants brought to America as children) should be allowed to become citizens. How the ground has shifted: only three years ago Senate Republicans put a Dream Act to death. These provisions are not universally loved—many think America already spends too much money keeping people out—but they can command support from both parties in Congress. That may not apply to the knottiest part of reform: what to do about America's 11m-12m illegal immigrants, two-thirds of whom have lived in the country for over a decade. The Senate bill would allow most undocumented immigrants to apply for citizenship after paying back-taxes, displaying English proficiency, passing a background check and so forth. That, though, was too much for House Republicans to stomach, so Mr. Boehner proposes merely to remove the threat of deportation from those who can satisfy a similar laundry list; there will, he says, be "no special path to citizenship".

The Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn is notoriously toxic. Since 1869, the mile-long waterway has been a dumping ground for garbage, industrial waste, guns and body parts—its waters once too dirty to search. Today you can still stand on a bridge over the canal and see underwear floating on the water. The odor, once almost unbearable, has softened into an occasional summer stink, thanks to a flushing tunnel installed 10 years ago. A growing number of artists and young people have moved into the industrial lofts and row houses nearby. Some of the most oblivious have been spotted on the canal in canoes, their paddles stirring 140 years worth of detritus(small pieces of rubbish)from leather factories, chemical plants and more. Now, these Gowanus pioneers want somebody to finally detoxify their hazardous neighborhood. They imagine it as Brooklyn"s little Venice, although a bit cleaner. The Environmental Protection Agency(EPA)is considering naming the Gowanus an official Superfund site. That would bring in a slow but steady federal cleanup with money and the legal influence to force polluters to help pay. The present Mayor of the New York City also wants a cleaner Gowanus, but he wants to do it his way. At a community board meeting Tuesday night, about 200 people listened as the mayor"s experts argued against a Superfund listing. It was a hard crowd to move. Many wore a button that said it all: "Gowanus Canal: Superfund Me." The mayor and his team are particularly worried about how a Superfund site would affect the real estate market, especially a few possibilities for larger developments in the area. Instead of being "stigmatized" by the Superfund label, as they put it, they favor the "Superfund Alternative" plan. Although there are few details at this point, that effort would be run by the city and overseen by the EPA. Every year, the city would rush to collect funds from the Corps of Engineers and other agencies to help clean up the area to the EPA"s satisfaction. The city could only plead with polluters to help pay. With so many pollutants and so many polluters, this looks like a job for Superfund. Brooklyn can handle the label. Residents already enjoy boasting about their survival or joking about living near the canal"s dark humors. Why else have a popular bar called the Gowanus Yacht Club? They just want the cleanup done and done right.

Science Fiction can provide students interested in the future with a basic introduction to the concept of thinking about possible futures in a serious way, a sense of the emotional forces in their own cultures that are affecting the shape the future may take, and a multitude of predictions regarding the results of present trends. Although SF seems to take as its future social settings nothing more ambiguous than the current status quo or its totally evil variant, SF is actually a more important vehicle for speculative visions about macroscopic social change. At this level, it is hard to deal with any precision as to when general value changes or evolving social institutions might appear, but it is most important to think about the kinds of societies that could result from the rise of new forms of interaction, even if one cannot predict exactly when they might occur. In performing this "what if..." function, SF can act as a social laboratory as authors ruminate upon the forms social relationships could take if key variables in their own societies were different, and upon what new belief systems or mythologies could arise in the future to provide the basic rationalizations for human activities. If it is true that most people find it difficult to conceive of the ways in which their society, or human nature itself, could undergo fundamental changes, then SF of this type may provoke one"s imagination—to consider the diversity of paths potentially open to society. Moreover, if SF is the laboratory of the imagination, its experiments are often of the kind that may significantly alter the subject matter even as they are being carried out. That is, SF has always had a certain cybernetic effect on society, as its visions emotionally engage the future consciousness of the mass public regarding especially desirable and undesirable possibilities. The shape a society takes in the present is in part influenced by its image of the future; in this way particularly powerful SF images may become self-fulfilling or self-avoiding prophecies for society. For that matter, some individuals in recent years have even shaped their own life styles after appealing models provided by SF stories. The reincarnation and diffusion of SF futuristic images of alternative societies through the media of movies and television may have speeded up and augmented SF"s social feedback effects. Thus SF is not only change speculator but change agent, send an echo from the future that is becoming into the present that is sculpting it. This fact alone makes imperative in any education system the study of the kinds of works discussed in this section.

Globalization can somehow be defined【C1】______harmonization, homogenization or integration of the countries and【C2】______. Functionally, it can be seen as a process of gradually【C3】______interaction and integration of economies and societies around the world. The growing economic interdependence is the most crucial【C4】______ force of globalization. In the first【C5】______, it is the economic dimension of globalization which 6 both scholars" and【C7】______ attention. Transnational corporations(TNCs) and large financial institutions in the mature and developed industrial economies【C8】______a proactive role【C9】______devising and creating global networks in economic and financial areas. However, sociologist, anthropologist and historian state that the non-economic dimension is【C10】______equally important. For example, Alexander the Great did not only militarily conquer Persia【C11】______introduced western【C12】______, philosophy and scientific technology【C13】______the east.【C14】______he noticed that what he thought the barbarian east had a more complex governing system even than his own. Today, though most popular definitions of globalization are still focusing more【C15】______the economic dimension; the non-economic dimension gets more and more attention in almost every society of the world. There are tons of studies【C16】______this topic. Yet, globalization as a phenomenon, in reality, is still in its【C17】______. According to Harvey, a well-known scholar, globalization is the manifestation of the changing experience of time and space, in which【C18】______economic and social processes has experientially【C19】______the globe, so that distance and time no longer appear【C20】______major constraints on the organization of human activities. Giddens, another scholar argues that "Globalization is the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa."

For all these reasons, reading newspapers efficiently, which means getting what you want from them without missing things you need but without wasting time, demands skill and selfawareness as you modify and apply the techniques of reading.

Title: EXAMINATIONSWord limit: 160-200 wordsTime limit: 40 minutesYou are required to develop your essay according to the given topic sentence of each paragraph.1. Testing students by examinations has always been regarded as the only reliable method to measure students" level.2. Teachers always rely on the results of examinations.3. Whether this method is fair or not to the students needs to be studied further.4. However, it is not easy to abolish examinations and it is even more difficult to improve them.

Scientists are supposed to change their minds. 【F1】 Having adopted their views on scientific questions based on an objective evaluation of empirical evidence, they are expected to willingly, even eagerly, abandon cherished beliefs when new evidence undercuts them. So it is remarkable that so few of the essays in a new book in which scientists answer the question in the title, "What Have You Changed Your Mind About?" express anything like this ideal. Many of the changes of mind are just changes of opinion or an evolution of values. One contributor, a past supporter of manned spaceflight, now thinks it's pointless, while another no longer has moral objections to cognitive enhancement through drugs. Other changes of mind have to do with busted predictions, such as that computer intelligence would soon rival humans'. 【F2】 Rare, however, are changes of mind by scientists identified with either side of a controversial issue. There is no one who rose to fame arguing that a disease is caused by sticky brain plaques and who has now been convinced by evidence that the plaques are mostly innocent bystanders, not culprits. But really, we shouldn' t be surprised.【F3】 Supporters of a particular viewpoint especially if their reputation is based on the accuracy of that viewpoint, cling to it like a shipwrecked man to floats. Studies that undermine that position, they say, are fatally flawed. In truth, no study is perfect, so it would be crazy to abandon an elegant, well-supported theory because one new finding undercuts it. 【F4】 But it's fascinating how scientists with an intellectual stake in a particular side of a debate tend to see flaws in studies that undercut their dearly held views, and to interpret and even ignore "facts" to fit their views. No wonder the historian Thomas Kuhn concluded almost 50 years ago that a scientific paradigm falls down only when the last of its powerful adherents dies. The few essays in which scientists do admit they were wrong—and about something central to their reputation—therefore stand out.【F5】 Physicist Marcelo Gleiser of Dartmouth breaks ranks with almost every physicist since Einstein, and with his Own younger self, in now doubting that the laws of nature can be unified in a single elegant formulation. Gleiser has written dozens of papers proposing routes to the unification of gravity and quantum mechanics through everything from superstrings to extra dimensions, but now concedes that "all attempts so far have failed." Unification may be esthetically appealing, but it's not how nature works.

On Making Friends A. Title: On Making Friends B. Time limit: 40 minutes C. Word limit: 160-200 words (not including the given opening sentence) D. Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: "As a human being, one can hardly do without a friend". OUTLINE: 1. The need for friends 2. True friendship 3. My principle in making friends

King Juan Carlos of Spain once insisted "kings don't abdicate, they die in their sleep." But embarrassing scandals and the popularity of the republican left in the recent Euro-elections have forced him to eat his words and stand down. So, does the Spanish crisis suggest that monarchy is seeing its last days? Does that mean the writing is on the wall for all European royals, with their magnificent uniforms and majestic lifestyles? The Spanish case provides arguments both for and against monarchy. When public opinion is particularly polarised, as it was following the end of the Franco regime, monarchs can rise above "mere" politics and "embody" a spirit of national unity. It is this apparent transcendence of politics that explains monarchs, continuing popularity as heads of state. And so, the Middle East excepted, Europe is the most monarch-infested region in the world, with 10 kingdoms(not counting Vatican City and Andorra). But unlike their absolutist counterparts in the Gulf and Asia, most royal families have survived because they allow voters to avoid the difficult search for a non-controversial but respected public figure. Even so, kings and queens undoubtedly have a downside. Symbolic of national unity as they claim to be, their very history—and sometimes the way they behave today—embodies outdated and indefensible privileges and inequalities. At a time when Thomes Piketty and other economists are warning of rising inequality and the increasing power of inherited wealth, it is bizarre that wealthy aristocratic families should still be the symbolic heart of modern democratic states. The most successful monarchies strive to abandon or hide their old aristocratic ways. Prince and princesses have day-jobs and ride bicycles, not horses(or helicopters). Even so, these are wealthy families who party with the international 1 %, and media intrusiveness makes it increasingly difficult to maintain the right image. While Europe' s monarchies will no doubt be smart enough to survive for some time to come, it is the British royals who have most to fear from the Spanish example. It is only the Queen who has preserved the monarchy's reputation with her rather ordinary(if well-heeled)granny style. The danger will come with Charles, who has both an expensive taste of lifestyle and a pretty hierarchical view of the world. He has failed to understand that monarchies have largely survived because they provide a service—as non-controversial and non-political heads of state. Charles ought to know that as English history shows, it is kings, not republicans, who are the monarchy' s worst enemies.

Health implies more than physical fitness. It also implies mental and emotional well-being. An angry, frustrated, emotionally【B1】______person in good physical condition is not【B2】______healthy. Mental health, therefore, has much to do 【B3】______ how a person copes with the world as she / he exists. Many of the factors that【B4】______physical health also affect mental and emotional well-being. Having a good self-image means that people have positive 【B5】______ pictures and good, positive feelings about themselves, about what they are capable 【B6】______, and about the roles they play. People with good self-images like themselves, and they are【B7】______like others. Having a good self-image is based【B8】______a realistic【B9】______of one' s own worth and value and capabilities. Stress is an unavoidable, necessary, and potentially healthful【B10】______of our society. People of all ages【B11】______stress. Children begin to【B12】______stress during prenatal development and during childbirth. Examples of stress inducing【B13】______in the life of a young person are death of a pet, pressure to【B14】______academically, the divorce of parents, or joining a new youth group. The different ways in which individuals【B15】______to stress may bring healthful or unhealthy results. One person experiencing a great deal of stress may function exceptionally well【B16】______another may be unable to function at all. If stressful situations are continually encountered, the individual' s physical, social, and mental health are eventually affected. Satisfying social relations are vital to【B17】______mental and emotional health. It is believed that in order to【B18】______, develop, and maintain effective and fulfilling social relationships people must【B19】______the ability to know and trust each other, understand each other, influence, and help each other. They must also be capable of【B20】______conflicts in a constructive way.

Defenders of special protective labor legislation for women often maintain that eliminating such laws would destroy the fruits of a century long struggle for the protection of women workers. Even a brief examination of the historic practice of courts and employers would show that the fruit of such laws has been bitter: they are, in practice, more of a curse than a blessing. Sex-defined protective laws have often been based on stereotypical assumptions concerning women"s needs and abilities and employers have frequently used them as legal excuses for discriminating against women. After the Second World War, for example, businesses and government sought to persuade women to vacate jobs in factories, thus making room in the labor force for returning veterans. The revival or passage of state laws limiting the daily or weekly work hours of women conveniently accomplished this. Employers had only to declare that overtime hours were a necessary condition of employment or promotion in their factory, and women could be quite legally fired, re-fused jobs, or kept at low wage levels, all in the name of "protecting" their health. By validating such laws when they are challenged by lawsuits, the courts have conspired over the years in establishing different, less advantageous employment terms for women"s competitiveness on the job market. At the same time even the most well-intentioned lawmakers, courts, and employers have of-ten been blind to the real needs of women. The lawmakers and the courts continue to permit employers to offer employee health insurance plans that cover all known human medical disabilities except those relating to pregnancy and childbirth. Finally, labor laws protecting only special groups are often ineffective at protecting the workers who are actually in the workplace. Some chemicals, for example, pose reproductive risks for women of childbearing years; manufacturers using the chemicals comply with laws protecting women against these hazards by refusing to hire them. Thus the sex-defined legislation protects the hypothetical female worker, but has no effect whatever on the safety of any actual employee. The health risks to male employees in such industries cannot be negligible, since chemicals toxic enough to cause birth defects in fetuses in women are presumably harmful to the human metabolism. Protective laws aimed at changing production materials or techniques in order to reduce such hazards would benefit all employees without discriminating against any. In sum, protective labor laws for women are discriminatory and do not meet their intended purpose. Legislators should recognize that women are in the work force to stay and that their needs—good health care, a decent wage, and a safe workplace—are the needs of all workers. Laws that ignore these facts violate women"s rights for equal protection in employment.

Write a letter to your friend Li Xu, and thank him for his help in your physics study for the final exam. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing,Inyouressay,youshouldfirstdescribethedrawing,theninterpretitsmeaning,andgiveyourcommentonit.

No one really likes help. It is a great deal more satisfactory to be given the opportunity to earn one"s daily bread; and if, by doing so, one can create a continuing means of livelihood, more jobs, and better living conditions for one"s community, that is more satisfactory still. It is on this premise that the World Food Program bases most of its operations. But how can a man born of unemployed, undernourished parents, in, the depths of poverty that spreads the solidarity towns near Latin American cities, or displaced people"s camps in Africa and Asia, begin to make some improvement? Someone must help someone who under stands that both food and employment are fundamental to his need. Most thinking people must have remarked at some time or other that it doesn"t make sense for half the population of the world to be in need of better food while governments and farmers elsewhere are worried by surpluses. For a number of years, until recently, North America and Australia had too much wheat. Japan had too much rice. Similarly, the EEC rapidly built a butter "mountain"; in its short history. It was an awareness of the cruel paradox of a world with surpluses and starvation that prompted the setting up of the World Food Pro grain by the United Nations and also by the Food and Agricultural Organization. Its organizers realized that it could be useful both to developed and developing countries. It could remove surpluses in such a way that did not upset normal trading or threaten, the livelihood of farmers in contributor countries, and then use these foods to feed people and aid development in poor-privileged areas. So how does the World Food Program (WFP) work and what has it achieved? Logically, the story starts with a pledging session. The contributor countries, of which there have been a hundred and four over the years, pledge themselves to give a certain value during the succeeding two years. Most of these pledges are honored by gifts of food, but court tries which do not produce food surplus to their own needs pledge money to finance the administration and shipping of the food given by others., Meanwhile, the WFP staff in Rome get requests from countries which would like to receive, this food aid. Some of these are emergency requests when earthquake, hurricane, flood, drought or pestilence strikes, or political disorder causes a new wave of refuges. Of course, WFP responds to these, but they represent no more than a quarter of its aid in any one year. The real objective is to aid constructive development, and so to make full preparation against the everyday disaster of having little food to eat, no work to go to, no dignity to have. So the WFP staff are responsive to requests from governments who want initial help to develop new lands for farming, to build roads, to provide irrigation, and so on. The government of the would-be recipient country has to put forward what is considered to be a worthwhile and workable scheme, and if this is accepted, WFP agrees to supply food to a certain value for a specified period of years (usually three to five). Usually the food is for the people; sometimes it is their farm livestock.

In 1915 Einstein made a trip to Gottingen to give some lectures at the invitation of the mathematical physicist David Hilbert. He was particularly eager—too eager, it would turn【C1】______to explain all the intricacies of relativity to him. The visit was a triumph, and he said to a friend excitedly: "I was able to【C2】______Hilbert of the general theory of relativity." 【C3】______all of Einstein" s personal turmoil at the time, a new scientific anxiety was about to 【C4】______. He was struggling to find the right equations that would【C5】______ his new concept of gravity, 【C6】______ that would define how objects move 【C7】______space and how space is curved by objects. By the end of the summer, he【C8】______ the mathematical approach he had been【C9】______for almost three years was flawed. And now there was a【C10】______pressure. Einstein discovered to his【C11】______ that Hilbert had taken what he had lectures and was racing to come up【C12】______ the correct equations first. It was an enormously complex task. Although Einstein was the better physicist. Hilbert was the better mathematician. So in October 1915 Einstein【C13】______himself into a month-long-frantic endeavor in【C14】______he returned to an earlier mathematical strategy and wrestled with equations, proofs, corrections and updates that he【C15】______to give as lectures to Berlin" s Prussian Academy of Sciences on four【C16】______Thursdays. His first lecture was delivered on Nov. 4,1915, and it explained his new approach, 【C17】______ he admitted he did not yet have the precise mathematical formulation of it. Einstein also took time off from【C18】______ revising his equations to engage in an awkward fandango with his competitor Hilbert. Worried【C19】______ being scooped, he sent Hilbert a copy of his Nov. 4 lecture. "I am 【C20】______to know whether you will take kindly to this new solution," Einstein noted with a touch of defensiveness.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B