BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B
BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B
The volume of the sun is about 1, 300,000 times that of the Earth.
In the drinking study, published on December 5 in Public Health , two researchers analyzed data on 8,236 nonsmokers from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which includes direct measurement of body mass index(weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared). Current drinkers were 27 percent less likely than abstainers to be obese. That average conceals a more complicated picture: Although subjects who reported consumption of one or two drinks a day were substantially less likely to be obese than abstainers, those who said they had three drinks a day were about as likely to be obese, while those who said they had four or more drinks a day were substantially more likely to be obese. Since alcohol consumption was self-reported, the actual levels may be higher, but the trend of risk falling and then rising with the amount of drinking seems clear. As one skeptic pointed out in a Health Day story about the study, this association is counterintuitive, since "alcohol is very energy-dense", containing seven calories per gram, compared to nine for fat and four for protein and carbohydrate. Yet other studies, based on self-reported height and weight, have yielded similar results. Alcohol per se may not make people thin. But if people have after-dinner drinks instead of fat-rich desserts, the upshot might be lower calorie intake. Or it could simply be that the sort of people who consume alcohol moderately also tend to consume food moderately, unlike people who drink to excess or who abstain because they"re afraid of losing control. Fortunately for those who need an excuse to have a drink, the beneficial health effects of alcohol consumption go beyond the association with lower weight. Many studies have found that moderate drinking reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, for example, possibly through its impact on cholesterol. Although alcohol can be at least partly redeemed, it seems tobacco has been irrevocably condemned. Explaining the World Health Organization" s new policy against hiring anyone who admits to using tobacco in any form, a WHO spokesman said: "With tobacco, there is no middle ground. It is black and white. " From WHO"s perspective, then, the occasional cigar is indistinguishable from a pack-a-day cigarette habit, even though the hazards are vastly different. When you combine this blind botanical prejudice with health-above-all puritanism, you get the self-righteous intolerance displayed by the typical anti-smoking activist.
Nearly three-quarter of the Earth is covered with water. The【B1】______of the continents, especially in the temperate zones, is very much【B2】______by the oceans around them. The areas【B3】______the sea have a "【B4】______climate", with rather cool summers and warm winters. The interiors, far from the sea, have a climate with extremely hot summers and cold winters. Rain comes from the evaporation of rivers, seas and lakes.【B5】______after heavy rain, the pavements in a city do not take【B6】______to dry because the rainwater evaporates into the air. On a warm dry day it e-vaporates very rapidly, as warm air can absorb more【B7】______than cold air.【B8】______at any particular temperature, the atmosphere can hold only a certain【B9】______amount of water vapor. The air is then saturated,【B10】______a sponge that cannot hold any more water. The lower the temperature, the【B11】______water vapour is required to saturate the air. All over the surface of the Earth, millions of tons of water are evaporating every second,【B12】______in the air into drops so small that it【B13】______thousands of them to make a single raindrop. It is these【B14】______droplets that make clouds. When clouds roll in from the sea over the warmer land, they are forced to【B15】______and become cooler in the colder upper atmosphere. As the air【B16】______it may pass through its【B17】______point and then some of its water vapor turns to rain. Day in, day out, the【B18】______water circulates between the air and the land: rivers evaporate to make clouds, clouds make rain, rain makes rivers which【B19】______run into the sea. This is called the rain【B20】______.
Billed as the Silicon Valley Robot Block Party and held during National Robotics Week, the party yesterday was a celebration of human-robot interactions.【F1】
Developers, researchers, and makers shared tips and explored the very ideas of what a robot can be and do.
The people I met here are interested in robots on many levels.【F2】
There were startups pitching their businesses, home-brew builders looking to have some fun, high-school kids building competition robots, and Ph.D. students just exploring.
That high-fiving robot? It's the creation of Willow Garage, a founding member of the Silicon Valley Robotics group that hosted the block party. In 2010, Willow Garage announced it would be delivering 11 of its $400, 000 PR-2 robots free to research groups.【F3】
The program, however, which began as an opensource platform intended to encouraged roboticists to collaborate on creating a universal robot language, has quickly evolved.
After just a few years, following an announcement in February, Willow Garage says it is shifting toward becoming a profitable and self-sustaining company. What's next in the lives of robots? That's the question everyone here wants to answer.
Even after the PR-2's 2010 release, within a year the stereoscopic cameras that provided the PR-2's vision were replaced with commercially available hardware—Microsoft's Kinect, highlighting the rigorous pace of innovation.【F4】
The commercial, off-the-shelf technology available to each of us today, as NASA has discovered, is fast, smart, and constantly upgraded.
And as the evolution of robotics quickens, maybe that's what events like National Robotics Week and the Robot Block Party, are all about. There's a sense that though robots are already a great part of our lives, we are still in the early stages of robotics innovation. Things are evolving quickly. For that reason, a marketplace of ideas such as this is incredibly important. People and ideas are being connected.【F5】
Across genres, robotics hobbyists are talking to startups, educators are talking with industry, and students are envisioning a future where automation is smarter, machines are more useful, and everyone has the technical skills to live side by side with our robot friends.
If Bill Gates ever had reason to doubt that the brash young billionaires of Google were out to get him, the time for such uncertainty is now officially over. Last month"s dramatically revised version of its program Google Desktop is a glove slap across the face of Microsoft"s fabled chief software architect. Obviously Google"s update to a previous tool that searched people"s hard drives in addition to the usual lightning-quick survey of the entire World Wide Web, Google Desktop 2 turns out to be a not-so-stealthy attempt to hijack the desktop from Microsoft. And in a move that must be particularly galling to Gates, the program does it in a way that directly steals thunder from Microsoft"s upcoming Windows update, Vista. Specifically, I"m talking about Google"s feature called Sidebar, a stack of small windows that sit on the side of the screen and dynamically draw on Web and personal information to track things like weather, stock prices, your e-mail, your photos, recently opened documents and Web destinations. Several years ago, demonstrating an early version of Vista, Microsoft proudly showed a column of on-screen "tiles" that did the same kinds of things. Microsoft"s name for this upcoming feature (which it still plans to include in Vista when it ships in late 2006): Sidebar. That"s not all. Google product manager Nakhil Bhatla explains that another purpose of Desktop is to use the search box to quickly locate programs and files that you want to open—bypassing the Windows way of clicking on an icon or using the Start menu. Clearly, Google is squatting on Microsoft"s turf, asking users to live in its environment as opposed to Bill"s. Microsoft still believes that the central point of personal computing is productivity. That"s why the desktop search in Vista will limit itself to probing the user"s hard disk. Microsoft"s explanation for this approach is that mixing Web-search results with hits from your own information is just too confusing. Things go more efficiently, the theory goes, when your personal data pond is segregated from the ocean of information data located elsewhere in the world. (Microsoft offers Web search as a separate program.) In contrast, Google Desktop searches bring results from everywhere—your hard disk, your email and billions of Web sites. That"s because the Google mission is organizing and managing all the world"s information. "You shouldn"t have to think about where the information comes from," says Google VP Susan Wojcicki. Though Google-sites acknowledge difficulties in merging the personal with the public, their core belief is that the essence of 21st-century computing springs from the connectivity that allows all human knowledge, from books to instant messages, to be potentially shared. As Google tries to annex new information flows, it increasingly runs smack against issues of privacy, copyright and censorship. That"s one part of Google"s challenge. The other will be fending off Bill Gates, undoubtedly determined to prove that his vision of computing still dominates.
The Student Union of your university is going to host a New Year party. On behalf of the Student Union, write Professor George King a letter inviting him to the party, and expressing your thanks for the help he offered. Write your letter with no less than 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter; use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write the address.
This time last year three out of four 16 to 24-year-olds were wearing the white band of Make Poverty History. Whatever the campaign may or may not have achieved in Africa, it briefly inspired millions in Britain.A joy, but also a revelation, for this was the moment when I saw how ready people were to take a little bit of action for a big cause. It may also explain how the small move-ment I helped to found has become a rather large phenomenon. Don"t think changing the world can start by something as simple as shutting down your computer at night? Those marching were different crowds from 20 years ago. Make Poverty History made few formal demands. No slogans, no forms, not even meetings if you didn"t fancy them. It was activism lite—more a brand than an organization. Show solidarity wherever you go—fashionably of course—do more, if and when you can. The future of active citizenship may depend on understanding why it ignited a generation. If social engagement is a funnel (a tube or pipe that is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom) turned on its side, about a quarter of a million people in the UK are at the narrow end, serial activists, responsible for 80 per cent of our community action. Most charities are here, focusing their efforts on these committed citizens. Our organization, We Are What We Do, is at the mouth of the funnel, targeted at people who don"t recycle or think about fair trade. It is styled as a brand, inspiring people to make the small changes that will make a big difference if enough of us do the same. Our first book—Change the World for a Fiver—featured 50 simple actions, from not spitting out your gum to declining plastic bags. All began by doing something small. Some of the 800 who are buying the book every day remain usefully but lightly engaged. For our new book, Change the World 9 to5, we decided to focus on the workplace, where most of us spend most of our waking hours. Actions range from the entertaining (smile!); the symbolic (turn off your phone charger when not in use) and the serious (learn to save a life). In working with We Are What We Do I have moved from the view that the sum of individual actions can help to make a difference to the belief that ultimately it is the only thing that ever does. The smallest act has a value of its own.
It therefore becomes more and more important that, if students are not to waste their opportunities, there will have to be much more detailed information about courses and more advice.
My View on Cyber Manhunt A. Title: My View on Cyber Manhunt B. Word limit: 160-200 words (not including the given opening sentence) C. Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: "Cyber manhunt is a new phenomenon on the Internet." OUTLINE: 1. People's different views on cyber manhunt 2. My opinion 3. Making a conclusion
With the spread of inter-active electronic media a man alone in his own home will never have been so well placed to fill the inexplicable mental space between cradle and crematorium. So I suspect that books will be pushed more and more into those moments of travel or difficult defecation (1)_____ people still don"t quite know what to do with. When people do read, I think they"ll want to feel they are reading literature, or (2)_____ something serious. (3)_____ you"re going to find fewer books presenting themselves as no-nonsense and (4)_____ assuming literary pretensions and being packaged as works of art. We can expect an extraordinary variety of genre, but with an underlying (5)_____ of sentiment and vision. Translators can only (6)_____ from this desire for the presumably sophisticated. We can look forward to lots of difficult names and fantastic stories of foreign parts enthusiastically (7)_____ by the overall worship of the "global village". Much of this will be awful and some wonderful, (8)_____ don"t expect the press or the organizers of prizes to offer you much help in making the appropriate distinctions. They will be chiefly (9)_____ in creating celebrity, the greatest enemy of discrimination, but a good prop for the (10)_____ consumer. Every ethnic grouping over the world will have to be seen to have a great writer—a phenomenon that will (11)_____ a new kind of provincialism, more chronological than geographic, (12)_____ only the strictly contemporary is talked about and (13)_____ Universities, including Cambridge, will include (14)_____ their literature syllabus novels, written only last year. (15)_____ occasional exhumation for the Nobel, the achievements of ten or only five years ago will be largely forgotten. In short, you can"t go too far wrong when predicting more of the same. But there is a (16)_____ side to this—the inevitable reaction against it. The practical things I would like to see happen—publishers seeking less to (17)_____ celebrity through extravagant advertising, (18)_____ and magazines (19)_____ space to reflective pieces—are rather more improbable than the Second Coming(耶稣复临). But dullness never quite darkens the whole planet. In their own idiosyncratic fashion a few writers will (20)_____ be looking for new departures.
Career or Family: Which Is More Important?
Although numerous books have been written about American mothers, only recently has literature focused on the role of a father.
You are going to read a text about stress, followed by a list of arguments. Choose the best argument from the list for each numbered subheading. (41) Two types of stress: There are basically two types of stress placed on human beings—physical and mental. (42) Effects of stress—physical or emotional: Whether physical "or emotional in origin, stress causes the body to react in the same way. (43) Guilty—useful, though most harmful: Probably the most harmful of all the stresses is guilt. (44) Instances—no need to feel guilty: However, many of us as children learned rules that we no longer need.No one is perfect: Guilt and the worry that often accompanies this major stress are difficult to eradicate, but people subject to excessive guilt feelings should realize, as simple as it sounds, that no one is perfect. People cannot always be cheerful and helpful to every one they meet. Another good lesson is that mistakes should be forgotten, not lingered over and brought out to examine periodically. (45) Life with a little stress—significant: A life without stress, such as retirement with nothing to do, would be boring.Notes:respiration 呼吸 pupil 瞳孔 dilate 膨胀perspiration 出汗，勤奋 date 约会 sour 使别扭eradicate vt. 消除，根除 at best 充其量 linger over 细细品味meditation 深思，沉思 might as well 不妨A. Fat adults should no longer feel guilty about leaving a little food on the plate, a successful businessman need not feel guilty about spending a little too much money on a vacation, nor should he feel guilty that he can combine a business trip to the West Coast with some swimming and golf at an ocean resort. But many people do feel guilty over such apparently innocent actions. Excessive guilt can sour all of life and make life not worth living; it can also cause self-hatred as well as other fears and anxieties that cause all life"s successes to be bittersweet, at best.B. Stress from physical activity, if not carried too far, is actually beneficial. Exercise relaxes you and may help forget about mental and emotional stress. But mental stress is almost always bad for you. If mental stress is unrelieved, it can actually cause diseases such as ulcers, migraine headaches, heart problems, or mental illness.C. Just as we need a little guilt—to keep us correct and a little worry—to make us plan ahead—we need a little stress to stay interested in life. But when stress begins to bother you, you might as well change your routine. Take your mind off your worries with some physical activity; you may discover a solution you have overlooked before.D. Stress is a natural part of everyday life and there is no way to avoid it. In fact, it is not the bad thing it is often supposed to be. A certain amount of stress is vital to provide motivation and give purpose to life. It is only when the stress gets out of control that it can lead to poor performance and ill health.E. Some people are not afraid of stress, and such characters are obviously prime material for managerial responsibilities, others lose heart at the first signs of unusual difficulties.F. In the first stage, your body prepares to meet the stress. The heartbeat and respiration rates increase, and the pupils of the eyes dilate; the blood sugar level increases, and the rate of perspiration speeds up, while digestion slows down as blood and muscular activity is diverted elsewhere. In the second stage, your body returns to normal and repairs any damage caused by the stressful situation. However, if stress continues, the body cannot repair itself, and the final stage, exhaustion, then begins. If this stage continues, if for example you are frustrated by your work and continue to be frustrated for a long time, physical or emotional damage will occur. These stages of stress reaction are always the same, whether the stress is caused by a cross-country run, a first date, buying a house, or narrowly missing an automobile accident.G. This common emotion is useful to have when it helps us to realize that we have, in fact, committed some error, violated our own rules or social rules. If we did not feel guilty, we would never do anything except the things that brought us immediate pleasure—we"d never obey the law, work, exercise, or even study in school, unless we wanted to do so in the first place. As a person"s conscience develops, guilt feelings become inevitable; guilt is the sorrow we experience when we know we have done something incorrect.
Studythefollowinggraphcarefullyandwriteonessayin160—200words.Youressayshouldcoverthesetwopoints:1)problemsariseoutoftheincreaseoftheprivatecars,2)giveyourcounter-measure.Youshouldwriteabout160-200wordsneatly.
The mythology of a culture can provide some vital insights into the beliefs and values of that culture. By using fantastic and sometimes incredible stories to create an oral tradition by which to explain the wonders of the natural world and teach lessons to younger generations, a society exposes those ideas and concepts held most important. Just as important as the final lesson to be gathered from the stories, however, are the characters and the roles they play in conveying that message. Perhaps the epitome of mythology and its use as a tool to pass on cultural values can be found in Aesop"s Fables, told and retold during the era of the Greek Empire. Aesop, a slave who won the favor of the court through his imaginative and descriptive tales, almost exclusively used animals to fill the roles in his short stories. Humans, when at all present, almost always played the part of bumbling fools struggling to learn the lesson being presented. This choice of characterization allows us to see that the Greeks placed wisdom on a level slightly beyond humans, implying that deep wisdom and understanding is a universal quality sought by, rather than stealing from, human beings. Aesop"s fables illustrated the central themes of humility and self-reliance, reflecting the importance of those traits in early Greek society. The folly of humans was used to contrast against the ultimate goal of attaining a higher level of understanding and awareness of truths about nature and humanity. For example, one notable fable features a fox repeatedly trying to reach a bunch of grapes on a very high vine. After failing at several attempts, the fox gives up, making up its mind that the grapes were probably sour anyway. The fable"s lesson, that we often play down that which we can"t achieve so as to make ourselves feel better, teaches the reader or listener in an entertaining way about one of the weaknesses of the human psyche. The mythology of other cultures and societies reveal the underlying traits of their respective cultures just as Aesop"s fables did. The stories of Roman gods, Aztec ghosts and European elves all served to train ancient generations those lessons considered most important to their community, and today they offer a powerful looking glass by which to evaluate and consider the contextual environment in which those culture existed.
BSection III Writing/B
Optimists outlive pessimists, a new study shows. Of nearly 100,000 women【C1】______in the Women's Health Initiative, those who gave【C2】______answers on a personality test were 9% less likely to【C3】______heart disease within eight years—and 14% less likely to【C4】______—than women who got low optimism【C5】______on the test. TIME's Alice Park wrote about an earlier【C6】______of this study in the spring. She writes: 【C7】______studies have indeed documented the life-extending benefits of optimism,【C8】______most of that research has involved only men and has been【C9】______in small numbers. What's more, not all studies have done a good job of【C10】______out potentially confusing factors such as health【C11】______and lifestyle. That's【C12】______makes the new study different "Taking into【C13】______income, education, health behaviors like blood pressure and whether or not you are【C14】______active, whether or not you drink or smoke, we still see optimists with a decreased risk of death compared to pessimists," says Dr. Hilary Tindle, lead author of the study. "I was surprised that the relationship was【C15】______of all of these factors." The study also found an interesting and【C16】______disturbing difference in the way that attitude is related to【C17】______for black women vs. white women. Pessimistic black women in the study were 33% more likely to have died after eight years than optimistic black women, while white pessimists were only 13% more likely to have died than their optimistic【C18】______The numbers in the study weren't large enough to support any【C19】______explanations for this racial gap, but "there is definitely a suggestion that whites and blacks may be【C20】______in how optimism affects longevity," says Tindle.
Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingpicture.Inyourwriting,youshould1)describethepicture,and2)giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)