The elephants of Thailand used never to be short of work hauling timber. But most of the country"s forests have been cut down, and logging is now banned to save the few that are left. The number of domesticated elephants left in the country is now only 2,500 or so, down from about 100,000 a century ago. Though being the national animal of Thailand earns an elephant plenty of respect, this does not put grass on the table. Thai elephants these days take tourists on treks or perform in circuses, and are sometimes to be seen begging for bananas on the streets of Bangkok. Some of the 46 elephants living at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre, a former government logging camp near Lampang, have found a new life in music. The Thai Elephant Orchestra is the creation of two Americans, Richard Lair, who has worked with Asian elephants for 23 years, and David Soldier, a musician and neuroscientist with a taste for the avant-garde. They provided six of the center"s elephants, aged 7 to 18, with a variety of percussion and wind instruments. Those familiar with Thai instruments will recognize the slit drums, the gong, the bow bass, the xylophone-like rants, as well as the thunder sheet. The only difference is that the elephant versions are a bit stronger. The elephants are given a cue to start and then they prepare. They clearly have a strong sense of rhythm. They flap their ears to the beat, swish their tails and generally rock back and forth. Some add to the melody with their own trumpeting. Elephant mood-music could have a commercial future, Mr. Soldier believes. He has even produced a CD on the Mulatta label—it is available at www.mulatta.org—with 13 elephant tracks. It is real elephant music, he says, with only the human noises removed by sound engineers. But is it music? Bob Halliday, music critic of the Bangkok Post, says it is. He commends the elephants for being "so communicative". Anyone not knowing that it was elephant music, he says, would assume that humans were playing. Some of the elephants in the band have also tried their hand at painting, tending to favor the abstract over the representational style. Their broad-stroke acrylic paintings last year helped raise some $25,000 at a charity auction at Christie"s in New York, and a London gallery has also taken some of their work. These art sales, together with profits from the CD, are helping to keep the centre going. A second CD is on the way. It will be less classical, more pop.

The fact that blind people can "see" things using other parts of their bodies apart from their eyes may help us to understand our feelings about color. If they can (1)_____ color differences, then perhaps we, too, are affected by (2)_____ unconsciously. Manufacturers have discovered by (3)_____ that sugar sells badly in green wrappings, (4)_____ blue foods are considered unpleasant, and the cosmetics should never be packaged (5)_____ brown. These discoveries have grown (6)_____ a whole discipline of color psychology that now finds (7)_____ in everything from fashion to interior decoration. Some of our (8)_____ are clearly psychological. Dark blue is the color of the night sky and (9)_____ associated with passivity and calm, while yellow is a day color with (10)_____ of energy and incentive. For primitive man, activity during the day (11)_____ hunting and attacking, while he soon saw as red, the color of blood and rage and the heat that came (12)_____ effort. And green is associated with passive (13)_____ and self preservation. Experiments have (14)_____ that green, partly bemuse of its physiological associations, also has a direct psychological (15)_____, it is a calming color. (16)_____ its exciting connotations, red was chosen as the signal for changer, (17)_____ closer analysis shows that a vivid yellow can produce a (18)_____ basic state of alertness and (19)_____, so fire engines and ambulances in some advanced communities are now (20)_____ around in bright yellow colors that stop the traffic dead.

The standardized educational or psychological tests, that are widely used to aid in selecting, assigning, or promoting students, employees, and military personnel have been the target of recent attacks in books, magazines, the daily press, and even in Congress. The target is wrong, for in attacking the tests; critics divert attention from the fault that lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely tools, with characteristics that can be measured with reasonable precision under specified conditions. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user. All informed predictions of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevant past performance. How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount, reliability, and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and Wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error. Standardized tests should be considered in this context. They provide a quick, objective method of getting some kinds of information about what a person has learned, the skills he has developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has, qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information. Whether to use tests, other kinds of information, or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the empirical evidence concerning comparative validity, and upon such factors as cost and availability. In general, the tests work most effectively when the traits or qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined (for example, ability to do well in a particular course of training program) and least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted cannot be well defined (for example, personality or creativity). Properly used, they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previously recognized, but there are many things they do not do. For example, they don"t compensate for gross social inequality, and thus don"t tell how able an underprivileged younger might have been had he grown up under more favorable circumstances.

Kevin Hines, a manic-depressive, was 19 and in one of his weekly downswings on an overcast Monday morning in 2000. He went to the nearby Golden Gate Bridge to kill himself mostly because, with only a four-foot (1.2-metre) railing to leap, "I figured it was the easiest way". He dived over, but flipped and hit the water at 75mph with his feet first. His legs were crushed, but he somehow stayed conscious and started paddling with his upper body until the Coast Guard fished him out. Mr. Hines is one of 26 people who have survived suicide attempts at the bridge, but 1,223 are known to have succeeded (i.e., were seen jumping or found floating). People are throwing themselves off the bridge at the rate of two a month, which makes it the most popular place in the world for suicides. One book on the subject says that the Golden Gate is "to suicide what Niagara Falls is to honeymooners". Many San Franciscans think that the solution is to emulate the Empire State Building, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, St. Peter"s basilica and other such places and put up a simple barrier. This, however, is a decision for the 19 board members of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, an entity that oversees the bridge itself and the buses and ferries that operate in the area. Most of its revenues" come from tolls and fares, and the district loses money. A barrier would cost between $15 million and $25 million. So the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California, which has adopted the barrier as its cause, considers it a success that the board has merely allowed a feasibility study, for which various private and public donors have raised $2 million. Mel Blaustein, a director at the foundation, has heard several arguments against a barrier over the years—too ugly, too expensive, and so forth—but the most persistent has been that people would simply kill themselves somewhere else, so why bother? This is nonsense, he says, "Most suicides are impulsive and preventable". A bridge without a barrier, adds Pat Hines, Kevin"s father, is "like leaving a loaded gun in the psychiatric ward".

Many theories concerning the causes of juvenile delinquency (crimes committed by young people) focus either on the individual or on society as the major contributing influence. Theories【B1】______on the individual suggest that children engage in criminal behavior【B2】______they were not sufficiently penalized for previous misdeeds or that they have learned criminal behavior through【B3】______with others. Theories focusing on the role of society suggest that children commit crimes in【B4】______to their failure to rise above their socioeconomic status,【B5】______as a rejection of middle-class values. Most theories of juvenile delinquency have focused on children from disadvantaged families,【B6】______the fact that children from wealthy homes also commit crimes. The latter may commit crimes【B7】______lack of adequate parental control. All theories, however, are tentative and are【B8】______to criticism. Changes in the social structure may indirectly【B9】______juvenile crime rates. For example, changes in the economy that【B10】______to fewer job opportunities for youth and rising unemployment【B11】______make gainful employment increasingly difficult to obtain. The resulting discontent may in【B12】______lead more youths into criminal behavior. Families have also【B13】______changes these years. More families consist of one-parent households or two working parents;【B14】______, children are likely to have less supervision at home【B15】______was common in the traditional family【B16】______. This lack of parental supervision is thought to be an influence on juvenile crime rates. Other【B17】______causes of offensive acts include frustration or failure in school, the increased【B18】______of drugs and alcohol, and the growing【B19】______of child abuse and child neglect. All these conditions tend to increase the probability of a child committing a criminal act,【B20】______a direct causal relationship has not yet been established.

Music comes in many forms; most countries have a style of their own. 【B1】______ the turn of the century when jazz was born, America had no prominent 【B2】______ of its own. No one knows exactly when jazz was【B3】______, or by whom. But it began to be 【B4】______ in the early 1900s. Jazz is Americas contribution to 【B5】______ music. In contrast to classical music, which 【B6】______ formal European traditions, jazz is spontaneous and free form. It bubbles with energy, 【B7】______the moods, interests, and emotions of the people. In the 1920s jazz 【B8】______ like America, and 【B9】______ it does today. The【B10】______of this music are as interesting as the music【B11】______. American Negroes, or blacks, as they are called today, were the jazz【B12】______. They were brought to Southern States【B13】______slaves. They were sold to plantation owners and forced to work long【B14】______. When a Negro died his friend and relatives【B15】______a procession to carry the body to the cemetery. In New Orleans, a band often accompanied the【B16】______.On the way to the cemetery the band played slow, solemn music suited to the occasion.【B17】______on the way home the mood changed. Spirits lifted. Death had removed one of their【B18】______, but the living were glad to be alive. The band played【B19】______music, improvising on both the harmony and the melody of the tunes【B20】______at the funeral.This music made everyone want to dance. It was an early form of jazz.

DifferentStudents,DifferentDifficultiesA.Studythechartcarefullyandwriteanessayof160-200words.B.Youressayshouldcoverthesethreepoints:1)differentdifficultiesfacedbystudentsfromcitiesandthosefromcountryside2)possiblereasons3)yoursuggestions

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

Studythefollowingpicturescarefullyandwriteanessayto1)deducethepurposeofthepainterofthepicture,2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout160—200wordsneatly.

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

Research on animal intelligence always makes me wonder just how smart humans are. 【B1】______the fruit-fly experiments described by Carl Zimmer' s piece in the Science Times. Fruit flies who were taught to be smarter than the average fruit fly【B2】______to live shorter lives. This suggests that【B3】______bulbs burn longer, that there is an【B4】______in not being too bright. Intelligence, it【B5】______, is a high-priced option. It takes more upkeep, burns more fuel and is slow【B6】______the starting line because it depends on learning—a(n) 【B7】______process—instead of instinct. Plenty of other species are able to learn, and one of the things they've apparently learned is when to【B8】______. Is there an adaptive value to【B9】______intelligence? That' s the question behind this new research. Instead of casting a wistful glance【B10】______at all the species we've left in the dust I.Q.-wise, it implicitly asks what the real【B11】______of our own intelligence might be. This is【B12】______the mind of every animal we' ve ever met. Research on animal intelligence also makes us wonder what experiments animals would【B13】______on humans if they had the chance. Every cat with an owner,【B14】______, is running a small-scale study in operant conditioning. We believe that【B15】______animals ran the labs, they would test us to【B16】______the limits of our patience, our faithfulness, our memory for locations. They would try to decide what intelligence in humans is really【B17】______, not merely how much of it there is. 【B18】______, they would hope to study a(n)【B19】______question: Are humans actually aware of the world they live in?【B20】______the results are inconclusive.

Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle viewed laughter as "a bodily exercise precious to health." But【B1】______some claims to the contrary, laughing probably has little influence on physical fitness. Laughter does【B2】______short-term changes in the function of the heart and its blood vessels, 【B3】______heart rate and oxygen consumption. But because hard laughter is difficult to【B4】______, a good laugh is unlikely to have【B5】______benefits the way, say, walking or jogging does. 【B6】______, instead of straining muscles to build them, as exercise does, laughter apparently accomplishes the【B7】______. Studies dating back to the 1930's indicate that laughter【B8】______muscles, decreasing muscle tone for up to 45 minutes after the laugh dies down. Such bodily reaction might conceivably help【B9】______the effects of psychological stress. Anyway, the act of laughing probably does produce other types of【B10】______feedback that improve an individual' s emotional state.【B11】______one classical theory of emotion, our feelings are partially rooted【B12】______physical reactions. It was argued at the end of the 19th century that humans do not cry【B13】______they are sad but they become sad when the tears begin to flow. Although sadness also【B14】______tears, evidence suggests that emotions can flow【B15】______muscular responses. In an experiment published in 1988, social psychologist Fritz Strack of the University of Wu rzburg in Germany asked volunteers to【B16】______a pen either with their teeth—thereby creating an artificial smile—or with their lips, which would produce a (n)【B17】______expression. Those forced to exercise their smiling muscles【B18】______more enthusiastically to funny cartoons than did those whose mouths were contracted in a frown,【B19】______that expressions may influence emotions rather than just the other way around.【B20】______, the physical act of laughter could improve mood.

In the past decades, considerable progress has been made in science and technology which has revolutionized our lives.

By far the biggest hurdle to expansion of solar power is cost. Solar panels are usually made of silicon, and the world is running out of it. Yet the economics of solar may be about to change.【F1】 Aided by hefty infusions of venture capital in recent years, solar companies are on the cusp of developing new technologies that generate more power using less silicon, prompting predictions that costs for solar systems could be cut in half within the next three years. That process might be accelerated with a little more nurturing from the federal government.【F2】 This year, the Energy Department will spend $ 303 million on research and development for nuclear power and $427 million on coal, while forking out a paltry $159 million on solar. That may be because the country gets less than 0. 01% of its electricity from the sun, but it doesn"t reflect solar power"s potential. Enough solar energy hits the Earth in an hour to supply all the world"s electricity needs for a year. A 100-square-mile area of Nevada, if equipped with solar devices, could supply the U. S. with all the power it needs, according to the Energy Department. Again, such pronouncements don"t address the real-world practicalities.【F3】 But given that neither coal nor nuclear power is a practical solution to global warming, U. S. research priorities are badly skewed. If roof-mounted solar panels aren"t quite ready for prime time, concentrated solar power systems might soon become a hit.【F4】 These are usually arrays of reflectors installed in sunny areas like the Mojave Desert, where they concentrate sunlight to heat a liquid that turns to steam and powers a turbine. 【F5】 The Solar Energy Generating Systems, an installation of nine solar arrays in the Mojave that puts out 354 megawatts, has been considered the biggest such plant in the world, but it won"t be for long. Five more Mojave plants are scheduled to come on line in the next few years; together they will generate more than 1 , 000 megawatts. These projects have to jump many of the same transmission hurdles as wind farms.

WhenTechnologyDoesEverythingforUsWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingpicture.Inyourwriting,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)interpretitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)

Divorce doesn"t necessarily make adults happy. But toughing it out in an unhappy marriage until it turns around just might do, a new study says. The research identified happy and unhappy spouses, culled from a national database. Of the unhappy partners who divorced, about half were happy five years later. But unhappy spouses who stuck it out often did better. About two-thirds were happy five years later. Study results contradict what seems to be common sense, says David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values, a think-tank on the family. The institute helped sponsor the research team based at the University of Chicago. Findings will be presented in Arlington, Va., at the "Smart Marriage" conference, sponsored by the Coalition for Marriage, Families and Couples Education. The study looked at data on 5,232 married adults from the National Survey of Families and Households. It included 645 who were unhappy. The adults in the national sample were analyzed through 13 measures of psychological well-being. Within the five years, 167 of the unhappy were divorced or separated and 478 stayed married. Divorce didn"t reduce symptoms of depression, raise self-esteem or increase a sense of mastery compared with those who stayed married, the report says. Results were controlled for factors including race, age, gender and income. Staying married did not tend to trap unhappy spouses in violent relationships. What helped the unhappy married turn things around? To supplement the formal study data, the research team asked professional firms to recruit focus groups totaling 55 adults who were "marriage survivors". All had moved from unhappy to happy marriages. These 55 once-discontented married felt their unions got better via one of three routes, the report says: Marital endurance. "With time, job situations improved, children got older or better, or chronic ongoing problems got put into new perspective." Partners did not work on their marriages. Marital work. Spouses actively worked "to solve problems, change behavior or improve communication". Personal change. Partners found "alternative ways to improve their own happiness and build a good and happy life despite a mediocre marriage." In effect, the unhappy partner changed.

How does your reading proceed? Clearly, you try to comprehend, in the sense of identifying meanings for individual words and working out relationships between them, drawing on your implicit knowledge of English grammar.【C1】______You begin to infer a context for the text, for instance, by making decisions about what kind of speech event is involved. Who is making the utterance, to whom, when and where. The ways of reading indicated here are without doubt kinds of comprehension. But they show comprehension to consist not just of passive assimilation but of active engagement in inference and problem-solving. You infer information you feel the writer has invited you to grasp by presenting you with specific evidence and clues.【C2】______ Conceived in this way, comprehension will not follow exactly the same track for each reader. What is in question is not the retrieval of an absolute, fixed or "true" meaning that can be read off and checked for accuracy, or some timeless relationship of the text to the world.【C3】______ Such background material inevitably reflects who we are.【C4】______ This does not, however, make interpretation merely relative or even pointless. Precisely because readers from different historical periods, places and social experiences produce different but overlapping readings of the same words on the page—including for texts that engage with fundamental human concerns—debates about texts can play an important role in social discussion of beliefs and values. How we read a given text also depends to some extent on our particular interest in reading it.【C5】______Such dimensions of reading suggest—as others introduced later in the book will also do—that we bring an implicit(often unacknowledged)agenda to any act of reading. It does not then necessarily follow that one kind of reading is fuller, more advanced or more worthwhile than another. Ideally, different kinds of reading inform each other, and act as useful reference points for and counterbalances to one another. Together, they make up the reading component of your overall literacy, or relationship to your surrounding textual environment. [A]Are we studying that text and trying to respond in a way that fulfills the requirement of a given course? Reading it simply for pleasure? Skimming it for information? Ways of reading on a train or in bed are likely to differ considerably from reading in a seminar room. [B]Factors such as the place and period in which we are reading, our gender ethnicity, age and social class will encourage us towards certain interpretations but at the same time obscure or even close off others. [C]If you are unfamiliar with words or idioms, you guess at their meaning, using clues presented in the context. On the assumption that they will become relevant later, you make a mental note of discourse entities as well as possible links between them. [D]In effect, you try to reconstruct the likely meanings or effects that any given sentence, image or reference might have had: These might be the ones the author intended. [E]You make further inferences, for instance, about how the text may be significant to you, or about its validity—inferences that form the basis of a personal response for which the author will inevitably be far less responsible. [F]In plays, novels and narrative poems, characters speak as constructs created by the author, not necessarily as mouthpieces for the author"s own thoughts. [G]Rather, we ascribe meanings to texts on the basis of interaction between what we might call textual and contextual material: between kinds of organizations or patterning we perceive in a text"s formal structures(so especially its language structures)and various kinds of background, social knowledge, belief and attitude that we bring to the text.

Dieting, according to an old joke, may not actually make you live longer, but it sure feels that way. Nevertheless, evidence has been accumulating since the 1930s that calorie restriction—reducing an animal"s energy intake below its energy expenditure—extends lifespan and delays the onset of age-related diseases in rats, dogs, fish and monkeys. Such results have inspired thousands of people to put up with constant hunger in the hope of living longer, healthier lives. They have also led to a search for drugs that mimic the effects of calorie restriction without the pain of going on an actual diet. Amid the hype(intensive publicity), it is easy to forget that no one has until now shown that calorie restriction works in humans. That omission, however, changed this month, with the publication of the initial results of the first systematic investigation into the matter. This study, known as CALERIE(Comprehensive Assessment of Long-term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy), was sponsored by America"s National Institutes of Health. It took 48 men and women aged between 25 and 50 and assigned them randomly to either a control group or a calorie-restriction regime. Those in the second group were required to cut their calorie intake for six months to 75% of that needed to maintain their weight. The CALERIE study is a landmark in the history of the field, because its subjects were either of normal weight or only slightly overweight Previous projects have used individuals who were clinically obese, thus confusing the unquestionable benefits to health of reducing obesity with the possible advantages of calorie restriction to the otherwise healthy. At a molecular level, CALERIE suggests these advantages are real. For example, those on restricted diets had lower insulin resistance and lower levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. They showed drops in body temperature and blood-insulin levels—both phenomena that have been seen in long-lived, calorie-restricted animals. They also suffered less oxidative damage to their DNA Eric Ravussin, of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who is one of the study"s authors, says that such results provide support for the theory that calorie restriction produces a metabolic adaptation over and above that which would be expected from weight loss alone. Nevertheless, such metabolic adaptation could be the reason why calorie restriction is associated with longer lifespans in other animals—and that is certainly the hope of those who, for the past 15 years, have been searching for ways of triggering that metabolic adaptation by means other than semi-starvation.