Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingpiecharts.Inyouressay,youshouldfirstdescribethepiecharts,theninterpretitsmeaning,andgiveyourcommentonit.

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed the hungry. Now, in much of the world, the rich are thin, the poor are fat, and right-thinking people are worrying about obesity. Evolution is mostly to blame. It has designed mankind to cope with deprivation, not plenty. People are perfectly tuned to store energy in good years to see them through lean ones. But when bad times never come, they are stuck with that energy, stored around their expanding bellies. Thanks to rising agricultural productivity, lean years are rarer all over the globe. Modern-day Malthusians, who used to draw graphs proving that the world was shortly going to run out of food, have gone rather quiet lately. According to the UN, the number of people short of food fell from 920m in 1980 to 799m 20 years later, even though the world"s population increased by 1. 6 billion over the period. This is mostly a cause for celebration. Mankind has won what was, for most of his time on this planet, his biggest battle: to ensure that he and his offspring had enough to eat. But every silver lining has a cloud, and the consequence of prosperity is a new plague that brings with it a host of interesting policy dilemmas. As a scourge of the modern world, obesity has an image problem. It is easier to associate with Father Christmas than with the four horses of the Apocalypse. But it has a good claim to lumber along beside them, for it is the world"s biggest public-health issue today — the main cause of heart disease, which kills more people these days than AIDS, malaria, war; the principal risk factor in diabetes; heavily implicated in cancer and other diseases. Since the World Health Organisation labeled obesity an "epidemic" in 2000, reports on its fearful consequences have come thick and fast. Will public-health warnings, combined with media pressure, persuade people to get thinner, just as they finally put them off tobacco? Possibly. In the rich world, sales of healthier foods are booming and new figures suggest that over the past year Americans got very slightly thinner for the first time in recorded history. But even if Americans are losing a few ounces, it will be many years before the country solves the health problems caused by half a century"s dining to excess. And, everywhere else in the world, people are still piling on the pounds. That"s why there is now a consensus among doctors that governments should do something to stop them.

In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. Today no one has ever doubted about television"s charm. Since 1920s Britain invented the first television, people have begun to live in a world crowded with soap operas, news magazines and TV advertisements. 41．______However, have we ever tried to find out the magic here? Why did the television win the competition with paper media and radio in such a short period? By what kind of contention did TV finally control most of the audiences? And why does TV become the means the industrial circles scramble for? It is argued that television may not be a form of art, but fifteen thousand years before the primitive people had left urus drawings on Altamira Cave in Spain, which proved that pictures are human ever-lasting pursuit much earlier than letters. 42．______The coming of the 19th century foretold a mass media times and also the break-through in arts because of the rapid development in technology. First by the invention of photography photos showed up before people in a way more substantiated and frequent than ever before; then radio enabled common people to enjoy arts by ears; and finally television integrated advantages of both photos and sounds into a new creation in continuously moving streams. 43．______ But television advertisements win people"s favor not only because it is an art, but also because it knows people"s heart. From the usual mental activity people accept a thing- perception, understanding, recollection, attitude and action, we can find out how a TV ad moves people. 44．______There is only a slowly turning fist on the screen with a voice- over: what has it grasped? And the fist opened, nothing inside. What it grasps is just your attention. When the targeted audience is willing to watch the ad, the first step is finished and then they should love it. How to gain their identification? The ad circles have summed up many effective experiences. They often make their ads entertaining and humorous, or exhibit their goods in a smart and artful way, or find out a crafty and clear proposition which sometimes may be: Dawn Detergent-wraps the grease which will not stain your hands (God! All detergent could do this although the audience may not realize. ). As for the links of memorizing, attitude and action, since TV is the most compulsive, penetrating and influential medium, TV ads are still the most efficient. 45．______From cpp to cpm, and from the well-known TV ratings to audience share, TV ads are a stage where every interest groups and individuals rack their brains to keep moving, and it is also one of the business areas with fiercest competition. TV ads, still the main form of today"s advertising, will never be a circle short of creation and advance. [A] First, TV ad always spares no effort to grasp audience"s attention, as shown in an ad made by the ad-department of a TV studio to promote itself. [B] Particularly, with its unparalleled power of product promotion, television has served as the advertiser"s beloved son for all these years. [C] In the later centuries, although great progresses were also made in sculptures, architectures and music, drawing was always the synonym for art. [D] TV ads, still the main form of today" s advertising, will never be a circle short of creation and advance. [E] Television, originated from art, ultimately surpassed it. [F] Today TV ads have become one of the representatives of modern business operation. [G] Television, of the same blood with movie, has also borrowed much from this comparatively mature art form in creating advertisements.

Human males living with their moms may not expect to have much luck hooking up this Valentine"s Day.【C1】______among the northern Muriqui monkeys, males that spend the most time around their mothers seem to get a(n) 【C2】______boost when mating time rolls around. The findings,【C3】______in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, suggest that females in some【C4】______may have evolved to play a critical role in their sons" reproductive【C5】______. Karen Strier, the paper"s lead author and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the paper "【C6】______" the socalled grandmother hypothesis, a【C7】______in which human females evolved to live past their prime reproductive years to spend more time【C8】______offspring. The research team observed and【C9】______genetic data from a group of 67 wild monkeys living in a protected reserve in Brazil"s Atlantic Forest: infants, mothers and possible fathers. They found that six out of the thirteen【C10】______males they studied spent more time around their mothers than would be expected by chance. These same six monkeys, on【C11】______, reproduced the greatest number of【C12】______. The investigators are still trying to【C13】______why. "It"s not until we see moms intervening and helping their sons out," Strier says. "Maybe【C14】______sitting near their moms, they get to see when females are【C15】______active, or maybe they just get more familiar with other【C16】______." The findings can【C17】______with future conservation efforts for the critically【C18】______animals. Strier says, "the【C19】______thing we would want to do is【C20】______a male out of the group where it was born."

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 m 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. Nobody knows what all these changes really will mean in the long run. But this mysterious Transformation is the biggest story of all time. It is the story of the human race itself. Some people worry about what will happen when the deposits of petroleum are gone, but already researchers are finding all kinds of new ways to obtain energy. Someday, solar power collected by satellites circling the earth of fission power manufactured by mankind may give us all the energy we need for an expanding civilization. Space exploration promises to open up many new territories for human settlement, as well as leading to the harvest of mineral resources like the asteroids. Scientific research continues to open up previously undreamed-of possibilities. Fifty years ago, few people could even imagine things like computers, lasers, and holography. 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 we 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 wondrous 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.

It's 2:45 p.m. on a Wednesday, and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is in the backseat of a black Chevy Tahoe that's inching its way to city hall along the 101 freeway. This stretch of the often clogged road is eight lanes, but there are so many cars on it that everyone is moving at about 30 km/h, a single mass of steel and glass lurching toward downtown. Just a few hours earlier, Garcetti was traveling a lot faster. To get to an event in University City, about 16 km from his office, Garcetti took the city's Red Line subway, which can reach speed of up to 110 km/h—a pace L.A.'s rush-hour drivers can only dream about. Persuading more Angelenos to take the train could go a long way toward solving one of L.A.'s most intractable problems. "We don't need people to completely give up their cars," he says while holding onto a pole on the Red Line. "But right now, we average 1.1 people per car. If we could get that to 1.6, the traffic problem would go away." In L.A., cars are a source of smog, billions of dollars in lost productivity every year and endless frustration for residents. "Every working person plans their life around traffic in this town," say Zev Yaroslavsky, a Los Angeles County supervisor and longtime friend of Garcetti's. "Building a transportation infrastructure is something that needs to be focused on, and Eric gets that." Should Garcetti, 43—who was elected in May as the youngest mayor of L.A. in more than a century—ever manage to get the freeways flowing, it would be a triumph. And it would only begin to cure what ails L.A. Los Angeles' structural problems are daunting. The city has fewer jobs now than it did in 1990, with a regional unemployment rate that is more than 2 points higher than the national average. L.A. is also buckling under health care and pension costs and is scaling back public services to compensate. The 2014-2015 budget is projected to be $242 million in the red. As the Los Angeles 2020 Commission, a group of business, labor and public-sector leaders charged by the city council with diagnosing the region's ills, put it in a December report, "Los Angeles is barely treading water while the rest of the world is moving forward."

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、D、E、F、G……) to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are several extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. (10 points) Japanese students seem to be losing patience with work, unlike their counterparts in the United States and Korea. In a 1993 survey of college students in the three countries, only 10% of the Japanese regarded work as a primary value, compared with 47 % of their Korean counterparts and 27% of American students. (41)______. (42)______. Data collected by the Japanese government in 1993 shows that only 23% of Japanese youth are thinking about supporting their aged parents, in contrast to 63% of young Americans. It appears that many younger-generation Japanese are losing both respect for their parents and a sense of responsibility to the family. (43)______. The shift toward individualism among Japanese is most pronounced among the very young. According to 1991 data from the Seimei Hoken Bunka Center of Japan, 50% of Japanese youth aged 16 to 19 can be labeled "self-centered", compared with 33% among those aged 25 to 29. (44)______. Diminishing social responsibility, according to Yoshizaki, is tied to the growing interest in pleasure and personal satisfaction. A study comparing society-conscious youth from 1977 to 1990 found that the Japanese had slipped far behind American and Australian students. (45)______. Yoshizaki concludes that the entire value system of Japanese youth is undergoing major transformation, but the younger generation has not yet found a new organized value system to replace the old.A. To earn the self-centered label, the young people responded positively to such ideas as "I would like to make decisions without considering traditional values" and "I don"t want to do anything I can"t enjoy doing."B. Compare with the old generation, the young Japanese seems more to enjoy life rather than work hard.C. Japanese youth is vigorous and fresh, but lacks experience in work and life.D. Author Yoshizaki attributes the change to Japanese parents" overindulgence of their children, material affluence, and growing concern for private matters.E. Concern for family values is waning(减弱) among younger Japanese as they pursue an inner world of private satisfaction.F. Only 11% of Japanese aged 18 to 24 said they get personal satisfaction in doing something on behalf of society, according to 1993 data from the Japanese government, while four times as many Americans said so.G. A greater proportion of Japanese aged 18 to 24 also preferred easy jobs without heavy responsibility.

BPart B/B

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G. Some of the paragraphs have been placed for you. (10 points)A. A millionaire may describe his "just-right" wife as charming, beautiful, sexy, intelligent, and well developed. On the other hand, a poor man may define his "just-right" wife as pleasing, attractive, desirable, knowledgeable, and shapely. Both men describe their just-right wife with the game physical qualities, but use different words. The millionaire"s definition of the just-right wife is more elegant, whereas the poor man"s definition is a more common, everyday description.B. Men from all nationalities also have their definition of the just-right wife. For example; the Italian man describes his wife as a woman who stands six feet one-inch tall with blonde hair and blue eyes, and who is well developed in the upper portion of her body. On the other band, the French man may describe his ideal wife as a woman who stands only five feet three inches with brown hair and green eyes, and who is moderately built.C. On the other hand, the fat man defines his just-right wife as a woman who gets up at eight o"clock in the morning, takes the children to McDonald"s for breakfast, and drops them off at school. Then she comes back home and lies on the couch watching soap operas all day, children "have to walk home from school in the afternoon. When they arrive at home, she instructs them to clean the house, do the laundry, and fix some hotdogs for dinner. Both men define their just-right wife with qualities that they admire by themselves.D. Although some men define the just, fight wife by her physical qualities, other men describe their just-right wife as a woman who loves to fish, to camp, to hunt, and to water ski, whereas the inside sportsman may define his just-fight wife as a woman who enjoys watching football, basketball, baseball, and wrestling. Both of these men define their just-right wife by her sports qualities but in two different atmospheres.E. Still, there are other men who have their own definitions of the just-right wife. For instance, consider the fit man and the fat man. The fit man may describe his just-right wife as a woman who gets up every workday morning at six o"clock and runs two or three miles. After running, she prepares breakfast, washes the dishes, takes the children to school, and then goes to work. After work, she arrives at home, washes a couple loads of laundry, goes to exercise class, picks up the children from school on her way home, and then cooks dinner. After dinner, she deans the kitchen, bathes the children, and puts them to bed.F. In addition to these men"s definitions of the just-right wife, the bachelor also has a definition. He says that the just-fight wife is someone else"s wife. He picks her up in a bar, takes her to his house, and takes her name in the morning. The bachelor has no real definition of the just-fight wife. That is why he is still a bachelor.G. For years men and women have been getting married. They say their wedding vows which bring them together as one. They promise to love and cherish each other until death do them part. When a man and a woman get married, it is one of the biggest decisions they will make in life. A man may select a woman because he, in his own eyes, sees her as the just-right wife for him. Every man has his own definition of what the "just-right" wife is. For instance, the millionaire man and the poor man both may define their just-right wife according to her physical qualities.Order: G is the 1st paragraph and F is the last.

The kids who grew up on "Star Trek" can"t find (1)_____ way around Earth. Americans can (2)_____ direct to England, but only half can find (3)_____ on a map of Europe. They can fly almost (4)_____ in the United States for a few hundred dollars, but they put New York State in 37 places on both coasts. When they look for the United States (5)_____, they (6)_____ it in China, Australia, Brazil, Russia, India and Botswana. For people who are supposed to be leaders of the (7)_____ world, Americans are (8)_____ dumb, according to a survey conducted for the National Geographic Society. In many school (9)_____, geography has been mixed with history (10)_____ melted down into social studies. Social studies has been processed into" teacher resource packages "and (11)_____ of good writing, excitement, color and any ideas that aren"t simplistic; too (12)_____ and too deadening to hold students" attention. In the last few years, evidence of America s educational (13)_____ has prompted hundreds of studies, generated baskets (14)_____ legislation and moved parents into advocacy groups. But there"s (15)_____ to show that the trend has been (16)_____. NO matter (17)_____ you try, you can"t make it seem (18)_____ that many Americans say pandas come from Panama, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Vietnam or (19)_____ Iraq, and Columbus was trying to get to Europe when he bumped into (20)_____.

The overwhelming support on Capitol Hill for legislation that will dramatically increase the fines for broadcasting "indecent" programming suggests there"s broad agreement that the federal government should get serious about cleaning up TV. But the more closely you examine the justifications for this crackdown, the clearer it becomes that the ban on broadcast indecency either goes too far or does not go far enough. Sen. Sam Brownback says businesses that use " the nation" s public airwaves" have special obligations. "Broadcast spectrum is a very valuable and scarce national resource," he says. "In return for a license, each broadcaster must not air indecent content between the hours of 6 a. m.[and]10 p. m. " Broadcast spectrum is a "national resource" only because the government insisted on nationalizing it. There"s no reason in principle why the right to transmit at a certain frequency in a certain area could not be treated the same way as the right to graze cattle or build a skyscraper on a particular piece of land. Broadcast licenses already are de facto property, bought and sold along with stations, except that the Federal Communications Commission occasionally clobbers broadcasters with fines if it does not like what they air. Nor is it clear why using a public resource to send a message should affect the speaker" s First Amendment rights, making him subject to government content regulation. Newspapers are delivered via "the public roads", and Web site information travels on wires across public property(sometimes even through "the public airwaves"), but that doesn"t mean forcing journalists and bloggers to be "decent" is constitutionally permissible. In any case, for the politicians and activists who want to protect children from the shows their parents let them watch, the "public airwaves" argument does not go far enough. Nearly nine out of 10 American households get TV via cable or satellite, modes of transmission that are not subject to indecency rules. As Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens has pointed out, that distinction makes little sense. "Most viewers don"t differentiate between over the air and cable," he told the National Association of Broadcasters last year, and "cable is a greater violator in the indecency arena. " When it upheld the FCC s content rules back in 1978, the Supreme Court said "indecent material presented over the airwaves confronts the citizen ... in the privacy of the home", as if TV were a robber or a rapist. But TV is not a criminal invading our homes; it"s an invited guest. If we think he might misbehave, it"s up to us to keep an eye on him.

Shortly after dawn on February 17th 2003, the world"s most ambitious road-pricing experiment will start in London. Though cordon toll schemes have been operating in Nor-way for years, and Singapore has an electronic system, no one has ever tried to charge motorists in a city of the size and complexity of London. For decades, transport planners have been demanding that motorists should pay directly for the use of roads. According to the professionals, it is the only way of civilizing cities and restraining the growth of inter-urban traffic. Politicians have mostly turned a deaf ear, fearing that charging for something what was previously free was a quick route to electoral suicide. But London"s initiative suggests that the point where road pricing he-comes generally accepted as the most efficient way to restrain traffic is much nearer than most drivers realize. The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has pinned his political reputation on the scheme"s success. If it works, cities around the world will rush to copy it. If it fails, he will be jeered from office when he seeks reelection in 2004. But how will success be judged? The mayor claims that congestion charging will produce ￡130m in net annual revenues, reduce traffic in central London by 15% and reduce traffic delays by about a quarter. Unfortunately these ambitious targets are unlikely to be met. For a start, the low level at which the charge has been set owes more to politics than traffic planning. Its impact, modest in comparison with the already high ￡4 an hour on-street parking charges in the area, may be less than anticipated. But most transport experts are cautiously optimistic that it will help improve the capital"s chaotic transport system. As for the mayor, his political prospects look good. Those who drive cars in the center of London during the day are a tiny fraction of the millions who walk or use public transport to get to work. London"s willingness to take the plunge has moved congestion charging from the realm of transport planners into mainstream politics. Yet the low-tech solution it has adopted has been overtaken by modern microwave radio systems allowing cars to communicate with roadside charging units. The next generation of technology will use global positioning satellites (GPS) to track the position of vehicles wherever they are, on a second-to-second basis. The brave new world of paying as you go is not far away. For those who drive in rural areas, the cost will come down. But for motorists who spend most of their time in congested urban areas, travel is rightly going to become much more expensive.

Studythefollowingchartcarefullyandwriteanessayinwhichyoushould1)interpretthechart,and2)giveyourcomments.Yourshouldwritenolessthan200wordsneatly.

Parents and students are now relying less on taking out loans and more on grants, scholarships and their own income and savings, according to a new report from Sallie Mae. "Over the last few years they"re considering cost more.【C1】______applying for bank loans, they"re making【C2】______decisions to save on their college【C3】______," says Sarah Ducich, an author of the report. The large private lender, in conjunction with Ipsos Public Affairs,【C4】______in its seventh annual report that more than half of the cost of college is【C5】______by grants and scholarships, as well as parent income and savings. The average family also【C6】______less on parent and student loans, which【C7】______for 7 percent and 15 percent of the cost,【C8】______. "But one of the most【C9】______findings of the report," Ducich says, "is that【C10】______soaring tuition and fees, families"【C11】______in the value of college has remained strong." Nearly all of the 1,600 parents and students【C12】______said they believed that college is an【C13】______in the future, nearly 90 percent said it"s needed for a(n) 【C14】______occupation and about 86 percent said they would be【C15】______to stretch financially to pay for college. And although more than two-thirds of families said they planned on borrowing, at least as a last【C16】______. many are increasingly looking for【C17】______to cut costs. Nearly all families reported taking at least one step to make college more【C18】______and on average families took five steps. Seven in 10 said they chose a(n) 【C19】______college to pay in-state tuition and more than half said they lived at home or with【C20】______.

Write a memorandum to the student service department and ask them to 1) fix a telephone for each dormitory, 2) explain your reasons. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Wang Ling" instead. You do not need write the address.

The federal entity created by the Constitution is by far the dominant feature of the American governmental system. (1)_____ the system itself is in reality a mosaic, (2)_____ of thousands of smaller units—building blocks which together (3)_____ the whole. There are 50 state governments (4)_____ the government of the District of Columbia, and further down the ladder are still smaller units, (5)_____ counties, cities, towns and villages. This (6)_____ of governmental units is best understood (7)_____ the evolution of the United States. The federal system, it has been seen, was the last step in the (8)_____ process. Prior to its creation, there were the governments of the (9)_____ colonies (later states) and prior to (10)_____, the governments of counties and smaller units. One of the first tasks (11)_____ by the early English settlers was the creation of governmental units for the tiny (12)_____ they established along the Atlantic coast. Even before the Pilgrims disembarked (13)_____ their ship in 1620, they (14)_____ the Mayflower Compact, the first written American constitution. And as the new nation pushed (15)_____ each frontier outpost created its own government to manage its affairs. The drafters of the U.S. Constitution left this multilayered governmental system (16)_____. While they made the national structure supreme, they wisely (17)_____ the need for a series of governments more directly in (18)_____ with the people and more keenly attuned(合拍) to their needs. Thus, certain (19)_____ such as defense, currency regulation and foreign relations—could only be managed by a strong centralized government. But (20)_____ such as sanitation, education and local transportation—belong mainly to local jurisdictions(管辖权).

Studythefollowingsetofpicturescarefullyandwriteanessayinwhichyoushould1)describethepicturesbriefly,2)interprettheirintendedmeanings,and3)pointouttheirimplicationsinourlife.Youshouldwriteabout160—200wordsneatly.

[A]DrDanielStanley,anoceanographer,hasfoundvolcanicshardsinEgyptthathebelievesarelinkedtotheexplosion.ComputersimulationsbyMikeRampino,aclimatemodelerfromNewYorkUniversity,showthattheresultingashcloudcouldhaveplungedtheareaintodarkness,aswellasgeneratinglightningandhail,twoofthe10plagues.[B]Thecloudcouldhavealsoreducedtherainfall,causingadrought.IftheNilehadthenbeenpoisonedbytheeffectsoftheeruption,pollutioncouldhaveturneditred,ashappenedinarecentenvironmentaldisasterinAmerica.Thesamepollutioncouldhavedrivenmillionsoffrogsontotheland,thesecondplague.Onlandthefrogswoulddie,removingtheonlyobstacletoanexplosionoffliesandlice—thethirdandfourthplagues.Thefliescouldhavetransmittedfataldiseasestocattle(thefifthplague)andboilsandblisterstohumans(thesixthplague).[C]Moses,whichwillbebroadcastinDecember2002,willsuggestthatmuchoftheBiblestorycanbeexplainedbyasinglenaturaldisaster,ahugevolcaniceruptionontheGreekislandofSantoriniinthe16thcenturyBC.[D]Thehour-longdocumentaryarguesthateventhestoryofthepartingoftheRedSea,whichallowedMosestoleadtheHebrewstosafetywhilethepursuingEgyptianarmywasdrowned,mayhaveitsoriginsintheeruption.Itrepeatsthetheorythat"RedSea"isamistranslationoftheSeaofReeds,amuchshallowerswamp.[E]TheprogrammetellsthestoryofhowMosesledtheHebrewsoutofEgyptafteraseriesofplagueshaddevastatedthecountry.Butitalsousesnewscientificresearchtoarguethatmanyoftheeventssurroundingtheexoduscouldhavebeentriggeredbytheeruption,whichwouldhavebeenathousandtimesmorepowerfulthananuclearbomb.[F]ComputersimulationsshowthattheSantorinieruptioncouldhavetriggereda600ft-hightidalwave,travelingatabout400milesanhour,whichwouldhavebeen6fthighandahundredmileslongwhenitreachedtheEgyptiandelta.Suchaneventwouldhavebeenrememberedforgenerations,andmayhaveprovidedtheinspirationforthestory.[G]FreshevidencethattheBiblicalplaguesandthepartingoftheRedSeawerenaturaleventsratherthanmythsormiraclesistobepresentedinanewBBCdocumentary.Order:

In 1957 a doctor in Singapore noticed that hospitals were treating an unusual number of influenza-like cases. Influenza is sometimes called "flu" or a "bad cold". He took samples from the throats of patients in his hospital and was able to find the virus of this influenza. There are three main types of the influenza virus. The most important of these are types A and B, each of them having several sub-groups. With the instruments at the hospital the doctor recognized that the outbreak was due to a virus group A, but he did not know the sub-group. He reported the outbreak to the World Health Organization in Geneva. W. H. O. published the important news alongside reports of a similar outbreak in Hong Kong, where about 15%~20% of the population had become ill. As soon as the London doctors received the package of throat samples, they began the standard tests. They found that by reproducing itself at very high speed, the virus had multiplied more than a million times within two days. Continuing their careful tests, the doctors checked the effect of drugs used against all the known sub-groups of virus type A. None of them gave any protection. This then, was something new: a new influenza virus against which the people of the world had no ready help whatsoever. Having isolated the virus they were working with, the two doctors now dropped it into the noses of some specially selected animals, which contact influenza in the same way as human beings do. In a short time the usual signs of the disease appeared. These experiments revealed that the new virus spread easily, but that it was not a killer. Scientists, like the general public, called it simply "Asian" flu. The first discovery of the virus, however, was made in China before the disease had appeared in other countries. Various reports showed that the influenza outbreak started in China, probably in February of 1957. By the middle of March it had spread all over China. The virus was found by Chinese doctors early in March. But China was not a member of the World Health Organization and therefore did not report outbreaks of disease to it. Not until two months later, when travelers carried the virus into Hong Kong, from where it spread to Singapore, did the news of the outbreak reach the rest of the world. By this time it was started on its way around the world. Thereafter, WHO"s Weekly Reports described the steady spread of this virus outbreak, which within four months swept through every continent.