A.Studythefollowingcartooncarefullyandwriteanessayinnolessthan150words.B.YouressaymustbewrittenclearlyonANSWERSHEET2(15points).C.Youressayshouldmeettherequirementsbelow:1.Writeoutthemessagesconveyedbythecartoon.2.Giveyourcomments.

You may not know it to look at them, but urban planners are human and have dreams. One dream many share is that Americans will give up their love affair with suburban sprawl and will rediscover denser, more environmentally friendly, less auto-dependent ways of living. Those dreams have been aroused over the past few months. The economic crisis has devastated the fast-growing developments on the far suburban fringe. Americans now taste the bitter fruit of their overconsumption. The time has finally come, some writers are predicting, when Americans will finally repent. They" 11 move back 10 the urban core. They will ride more bicycles, have smaller homes and tinier fridges and rediscover the joys of dense community— and maybe even superior beer. America will, in short, finally begin to look a little more like Amsterdam. Well, Amsterdam is a wonderful city, but Americans never seem to want to live there. And even now, in this moment of chastening pain, they don"t seem to want the Dutch option. The Pew Research Center just finished a study about where Americans would like to live and what sort of lifestyle they would like to have. The first thing they found is that even in dark times, Americans are still looking over the next horizon. Nearly half of those surveyed said they would rather live in a different type of community from the one they are living in at present. If you jumble together the five most popular American metro areas—Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Orlando and Tampa—you get an image of the American Dream circa 2009. These are places where you can imagine yourself with a stuffed garage—filled with skis, kayaks, soccer equipment, hiking boots and boating equipment. These are places you can imagine yourself leading an active outdoor lifestyle. They offer the dream, so characteristic on this continent, of having it all: the machine and the garden. The wide-open space and the casual wardrobes. The folks at Pew asked one other interesting question: Would you rather live in a community with a McDonald"s or a Starbucks? McDonald"s won, of course, but by a surprisingly small margin: 43 percent to 35 percent. And that, too, captures the incorrigible nature of American culture, a culture slowly refining itself through espresso but still in love with the drive-thru. The results may not satisfy those who dream of Holland, but there"s one other impressive result from the Pew survey. Americans may be gloomy and afraid, but they still have a clear vision of the good life. That"s one commodity never in short supply.

You are going to read a text about studying in the United States followed by a list of examples. Choose the best example from the list A—F for each numbered subheading (41—45). There is one extra example which you do not need to use. (41) Conflicts: If you do get a place in the student dormitory, it is likely that you will have to share your living space with one other student. While having an American roommate will help you to learn more about American ways, there will probably be many times that discomfort or conflict will arise due to cultural differences. (42) Sex: With regard to sex in general, American behavior is quire different from the norms found in China. (43) Relationship Between Teachers & Students: On the campus, particularly where classes are small, I found a strange informality that characterized the relationship between students and their professors. (44) Gifts: In my interaction with American friends, I noticed that the concept of a gift is quite different here. Many things we give to each other in China are not called "gifts" but are considered to be a reflection of ordinary duties and mutual obligations. Accustomed as we are to using the word "gift" to refer to something valuable given on special occasions, it comes as a surprise to see how often the word is used in America. In the United States, "gifts", given on many different occasions, are only services. (45) Social Intercourse: When you do enter American homes, you will have an opportunity to observe different ways of greeting people. On the whole, Americans tend to be far more physical than we in their greetings.A. I was astonished, for example, when a friend told me that he was offering to care for his younger brother and sister so that his father could take a vacation for his birthday this was a gift to him. For us this would be considered duty rather than a gift. Even between friends gestures of this sort might be considered "gifts" here.B. While many students do call their professors, "Professor" so and so or "Dr" so and so. Some professors prefer to be called familiarly by their first names. And in the spirit of informality, many professors may invite students to their homes or can be seen chatting with students over a meal or a cup of coffee in the school cafeteria. A good number of instructors even request that students fill our class evaluation forms which assess the content and presentation of the course.C. My roommate was very sociable and had many boyfriends who came to visit often very late. One night, after midnight, I had to stay in the bathroom for an extra 40 minutes because I had heard a man"s voice in my room. My roommate did not realize how awkward I would feel meeting a man while I was in my nightgown. You see. American students tend to be much more casual about these matters.D. On many occasions, for instance, close friends or sometimes even casual acquaintances embrace or kiss each other on the cheeks in greeting or bidding farewell. It may even happen that where couples are close friends, the two husbands will kiss the other man"s wife!E. In the United States. for example, if a student wants to invite his teacher to a dinner party, the invitation should be sent a week or so before the party date. If the invitation is extended only three or four days before the party date, the teacher will feel he is not highly regarded.F. For example, many American students seem to like to listen to popular and sometimes loud music while studying in their rooms. Sometimes they will even leave the music on when they leave the room. For some reason, many will tell you, music helps them to relax and concentrate, an idea which other foreign students and I found very strange and disturbing. We"d like to study quietly without any disturbance.

[A] Refuse Gimmicks[B] Be Wary of Price Levels[C] Say No to Useless Things[D] Never Pay List Price[E] Stand up to Temptations[F] Switch — or Threaten to[G] Don"t Buy on Impulse In recent years the basic market principles of competition and choice have expanded into new aspects of American life. Consumers now face a bewildering array of options for air travel, phone service, medical care, even postal service. Car buyers can shop on the Internet for the best price at any dealership in their area. In some parts of the country, homeowners can purchase electricity from a menu of companies. All this choice translates into unprecedented consumer power. One of the persistent myths of capitalist culture is that business people love competition. They don"t. They spend their waking hours plotting ways to avoid it, and keep prices high. These days they use information technologies that give them intricate data on individual shoppers, and then present multiple prices to get each consumer to cough up the maximum he is willing to pay. The airlines have mastered this game, offering many levels of fares. So how can you make the most of your new power as a consumer? Here are rules to help you find your way.41. In the New Economy, competition is so strong that fewer stores and services are immune to price pressure, so sharpen your bargaining skills. Ask retailers to match prices you"ve seen on the Internet. Ask at the checkout counter if there are any coupons or discounts you can use. Ask hotel clerks if there are better rates available. You"ll be surprised how often the answer is yes.42. As competition heats up and pushes prices down, businesses scramble to boost their profits by heaping on extras: rust proofing your car, service contracts on your appliance, prepaid gasoline for your rental car. These stunts are devised to make you pay more at the last minute and probably aren"t a good deal.43. The information highway is a two-way street. As a consumer, you can get more data. But while you are roaming the Web, businesses are studying your habits and vulnerabilities. Have a weakness for chocolates? Don"t be surprised if Amazon, com offers to sell you a box while you"re browsing for books. They"re using a wrinkle on the last-minute marketing pitch perfected by McDonald"s: "Would you like fries with that?" The ploy works remarkably well.44. Versioning is a tactic used by businesses to separate status-conscious consumers from the bargain-hungry ones — since the former mean bigger profit margins. "Deluxe" and "platinum" are code words used to entice status seekers to open theif wallets. Add a third price level and the purses of even bargain-hungry shoppers can be pried open. Research shows that many consumers who might pick the lower-priced option when given just two choices will choose the medium-priced alternative if given three. "Consumers try to avoid extreme options, " write Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian in their book In formation Rules.45. Consumers in the New Economy face more demands on their time and attention than ever before, so they"re inclined to make the most familiar choice. Consider this: it had been a decade and a half since the breakup of AT &T, yet it is still by far the largest long-distance provider — even while other phone companies offer $ 50 worth of free service for switching. More than ever, it pays to change services and brands. If you don"t want the hassles of switching, remember that businesses are eager to hang on to consumers. The next time you get a tempting offer from a credit-card issuer or a phone company, call your current provider and ask them to match the deal. You"ll be pleased to find how often they"ll agree.

The world is going through the biggest wave of mergers and acquisitions ever witnessed. The process sweeps from hyperactive America to Europe and reaches the emerging countries with unsurpassed might. Many in these countries are looking at this process and worrying: "Won't the wave of business concentration turn into an uncontrollable anti-competitive force?" There's no question that the big are getting bigger and more powerful. Multinational corporations accounted for less than 20% of international trade in 1982. Today the figure is more than 25% and growing rapidly. International affiliates account for a fast-growing segment of production in economies that open up and welcome foreign investment. In Argentina, for instance, after the reforms of the early 1990s, multinationals went from 43% to almost 70% of the industrial production of the 200 largest firms. This phenomenon has created serious concerns over the role of smaller economic firms, of national businessmen and over the ultimate stability of the world economy. I believe that the most important forces behind the massive M&A wave are the same that underlie the globalization process: falling transportation and communication costs, lower trade and investment barriers and enlarged markets that require enlarged operations capable of meeting customers' demands. All these are beneficial, not detrimental, to consumers. As productivity grows, the world's wealth increases. Examples of benefits or costs of the current concentration wave are scanty. Yet it is hard to imagine that the merger of a few oil firms today could re-create the same threats to competition that were feared nearly a century ago in the US, when the Standard Oil trust was broken up. The mergers of telecom companies, such as World Com, hardly seem to bring higher prices for consumers or a reduction in the pace of technical progress. On the contrary, the price of communications is coming down fast. In cars, too, concentration is increasing—witness Daimler and Chrysler, Renault and Nissan—but it does not appear that consumers are being hurt. Yet the fact remains that the merger movement must be watched. A few weeks ago, Alan Greenspan warned against the megamergers in the banking industry. Who is going to supervise, regulate and operate as lender of last resort with the gigantic banks that are being created? Won't multinationals shift production from one place to another when a nation gets too strict about infringements to fair competition? And should one country take upon itself the role of "defending competition" on issues that affect many other nations, as in the U.S. vs. Microsoft case?

People thinking about the origin of language for the first time usually arrive at the conclusion that it developed gradually as a system of grunts, hisses and cries and 【B1】______ a very simple affair【B2】______ . 【B3】______, when we observe the language behaviour of 【B4】______ we regard as primitive cultures, we find it 【B5】______ complicated. It was believed that an Eskimo must have at the tip of his tongue a vocabulary of more than 10,000 words 【B6】______ to get along reasonably well, much larger than the【B7】______ vocabulary of an average businessman who speaks English. 【B8】______ these Eskimo words are far more highly inflected than 【B9】______ of any of the well-known European languages, for a【B10】______noun can be spoken or written in【B11】______hundred different forms, each【B12】______a precise meaning different from【B13】______of any other. The forms of the verbs are even more【B14】______. The Eskimo language is,【B15】______one of the most difficult in the world to learn,【B16】______the result that almost no traders or explorers have【B17】______tried to learn it.【B18】______, there has grown up, in communication between Eskimos and whites, a jargon【B19】______to the pidgin English used in Old China, with a vocabulary of from 300 to 600 uninflected words. Most of them are derived from Eskimo but some are derived from English, Daish, Spanish, Hawaiian and other languages. It is this jargon that is usually【B20】______by travellers as "the Eskimo language".

Studythefollowingphotocarefullyandwriteanessayinwhichyoushould1)describethephotobriefly,2)interpretthemeaningreflectedbyit,and3)offerarelevantexample.Youshouldwrite160—200words.Youshouldwriteneatly.

Royal Mail could be made to accept further controls on stamp prices as part of an inquiry announced by the communications watchdog. Ofcom said it would carry out a "fundamental review" of how it regulates Royal Mail to make sure the company maintains its obligation to deliver to all parts of the country. The regulator decided to undertake the review after Whistl, Royal Mail's only national competitor for direct delivery of letters, pulled out of the market. Whistl, formerly known as TNT and owned by Dutch private postal group PostNL, suspended deliveries last month and withdrew permanently from the market on 10 June. It had planned to expand beyond its existing network in west London, Liverpool and Manchester to deliver to a quarter of the U. K. Ofcom said it was concerned that without competition for letter delivery, Royal Mail might fail to make itself more efficient, threatening the universal postal service in the long run. One of the options is to introduce additional controls on the prices Royal Mail charges for its service. After Ofcom gave it greater commercial freedom in 2012, Royal Mail increased the price of first-and second-class stamps by 14p to 60p and 50p respectively. Prices rose to 63p for first class and 54p for second class in March. Royal Mail shares fell 1% to 500p in afternoon trading. Ofcom said: "The review will ensure regulation remains appropriate and sufficient to secure the universal postal service, given the recent withdrawal by Whistl from the 'direct delivery' letters market, which has resulted in Royal Mail no longer being subject to national competition." "Ofcom will consider...whether Royal Mail's wholesale and retail prices are both affordable and sufficient to cover the costs of the universal service and whether Royal Mail's commercial flexibility remains appropriate in the changing market. And, if not, whether wholesale or retail charge controls might be appropriate." David Kerstens, an analyst at the stockbroker Jefferies, said further curbs on Royal Mail's charges could make the company less profitable as people post fewer letters. He said: "Stamp prices in the U. K. are at the low end of the spectrum compared with other countries across Europe. A control on pricing would be negative for Royal Mail because they won't be able to offset volume pressure to the same extent that some of their peers in Europe are able to do." Dave Ward, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, accused Ofcom of interfering with its members' relations with Royal Mail. He said: "Royal Mail is efficient and postal workers are some of the most productive in the U. K. Ofcom has overstepped its remit in criticising terms and conditions and a regulator should not be using efficiency to drive down employment standards."

(46) Based on accumulated social research, there now can be little doubt that successful and well-adjusted children in modem societies are most likely to come from two-parent families consisting of the biological father and mother. Alternative family forms which are attempted, such as single parent and stepfamilies, have been demonstrated to be inferior in child outcomes. The recent movement away from the two-natural-parent family has led to considerable social malaise among the young, not to mention social decay in general. (47) It can be argued that child well-being would be enhanced if families live among care giving relatives and in supportive communities, but this has become an ever-diminishing situation. Historically, a substantial stripping down has occurred of both the extended family and the cohesive neighborhood, and this trend is probably irreversible. The state has tried to fill the vacuum, but without much success. The two-parent nuclear family there may be more important today for children, and for society in general, than ever before in history. Constituting one of the greatest dilemmas faced by modem societies, however, is the fact that nuclear family themselves are breaking apart at dramatically high rates. (48) The chances in some societies are now less than 50 to 50, thanks mainly to divorce, that a child will live continuously to adulthood with both natural parents. This is despite the fact that, unlike in times past, parents now almost always live to see their children reach maturity. One fundamental reason for the high break-up rate is that the nature of marriage has changed. Not so long ago marriage was an economic bond of mutual dependency, a social bond heavily upheld by extended families. Today, marriage is none of these. (49) The economic bond has become displaced by wealth, by female economic pursuit, and by state support; extended family pressures on marriages have all but disappeared, and modem societies have become increasingly unconcerned with religion. Marriage has become a purely individual pursuit, an implied and not very enforceable contract between two people; a relationship designed to satisfy basic needs for intimacy, dependency and sex. When these needs change, or when a presumptively better partner is discovered, marriage is easily dissolved. Moreover, more of the everyday needs, traditionally met by marriage can be met in other ways, such as through the marketplace. (50) With its surrounding and supporting social structures collapsing, can there be any hope that the nuclear family can be revived? Yes, the basis for hope lies in the fundamental biological and psychological makeup of human kind. If the evolutionary biologists are correct, human beings are a pair-bonding species.

Niagara is an Indian word which means "roaring water". Indeed, the roar of the falling water of Niagara can be heard (1)_____ a distance of 5 kms. Imagine (2)_____ of water flowing over a cliff 90 feet high and you will get an idea of that terrible noise. And (3)_____ tremendous power the Niagara River has! It moves big rocks about and throws them into the boiling water below. (4)_____ ago an old ship without single person on board was put in mid-stream. It sailed down the river (5)_____ a toy boat with great speed. Having reached the fall, the ship dropped into the boiling water, never (6)_____ again. There were some people who wanted to become famous (7)_____ swimming across the most dangerous part of the Niagara River. One of them was Captain Webb who said that he would try to swim cross the Niagara, which (8)_____ crowds of people. On the evening of July 1st, 1893, Captain Webb came up to the river and (9)_____ a plunge. His having jumped into the water (10)_____ many people with horror. Soon, he appeared in the middle of the river. A loud shout went up from the crowd, but a moment later there was (11)_____ silence. The man had disappeared under the water. Thousands of eyes (12)_____ on the river, but the man was drowned. In 1902, a certain Miss Taylor decided to go over the falls in a barrel. There were different kinds of pillows inside the barrel to prevent her from (13)_____. Having examined the barrel carefully, Miss Taylor got in. The barrel was closed and then (14)_____ into the water. Having reached the falls, it overturned and was shot down by the terrible (15)_____ of the water. When the barrel was finally caught and opened, Miss Taylor came out alive (16)_____ with a frightened look in her eyes. Once a crowd of visitors saw a rope (17)_____ over from one bank of the river to the other. Then they saw a man (18)_____ the rope. The man was an actor, Blondin (19)_____. He managed to cross Niagara Falls on a tight rope. The people on the bank were surprised at his (20)_____ it so well.

Every spring migrating salmon return to British Columbia"s rivers to spawn. And every spring new reports detail fresh disasters that befall them. This year is no different. The fisheries committee of Canada"s House of Commons and a former chief justice of British Columbia, Bryan Williams, have just examined separately why 1.3 million sockeye salmon mysteriously "disappeared" from the famed Fraser river fishery in 2004. Their conclusions point to a politically explosive conflict between the survival of salmon and the rights of First Nations, as Canadians call Indians. In 2004, only about 524,000 salmon are thought to have returned to the spawning grounds, barely more than a quarter the number who made it four years earlier. High water temperatures may have killed many. The House of Commons also lambasted the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) for poor scientific data, and for failing to enforce catch levels. Four similar reports since 1992 have called for the department"s reform. In vain: its senior officials are "in denial" about its failings, said the committee.Mr. Williams" report added a more shocking twist. He concluded that illegal fishing on the Fraser river is "rampant and out of control", with "no go" zones where fisheries officers are told not to confront Indian poachers for fear of violence. The judge complained that the DFO withheld a report by one of its investigators which detailed extensive poaching and sale of salmon by members of the Cheam First Nation, some of whom were armed. Some First Nations claim an unrestricted right to fish and sell their catch. Canada"s constitution acknowledges the aboriginal right to fish for food and for social and ceremonial needs, but not a general commercial right. On the Fraser, however, the DFO has granted Indians a special commercial fishery. To some Indians, even that is not enough. Both reports called for more funds for the DFO, to improve data collection and enforcement. They also recommended returning to a single legal regime for commercial fishing applying to all Canadians. On April 14th, Geoff Regan, the federal fisheries minister, responded to two previous reports from a year ago. One, from a First Nations group, suggested giving natives a rising share of the catch. The other proposed a new quota system for fishing licences, and the conclusion of long-standing talks on treaties, including fishing rights, with First Nations. Mr. Regan said his department would spend this year consulting "stakeholders" (natives, commercial and sport fishermen). It will also launch pilot projects aimed at improving conservation, enforcement and First Nations" access to fisheries.

When a disease of epidemic proportions rips into the populace, scientists immediately get to work, trying to locate the source of the affliction and find ways to combat it. Oftentimes, success is achieved, as medical science is able to isolate the parasite, germ or cell that causes the problem and finds ways to effectively kill or contain it. In the most serious of cases, in which the entire population of a region or country may be at grave risk, it is deemed necessary to protect the entire population through vaccination, so as to safeguard lives and ensure that the disease will not spread. The process of vaccination allows the patient"s body to develop immunity to the virus or disease so that, if it is encountered, one can fight it off naturally. To accomplish this, a small weak or dead strain of the disease is actually injected into the patient in a controlled environment, so that his body"s immune system can learn to fight the invader properly. Information on how to penetrate the disease"s defenses is transmitted to all elements of the patient"s immune system in a process that occurs naturally, in which genetic information is passed from cell to cell. This makes sure that, should the patient later come into contact with the real problem, his body is well equipped and trained to deal with it, having already done so before. There are dangers inherent in the process, however. On occasion, even the weakened version of the disease contained in the vaccine proves too much for the body to handle, resulting in the immune system succumbing, and, therefore, the patient"s death. Such is the case of the smallpox vaccine, designed to eradicate the smallpox epidemic that nearly wiped out the entire Native American population and killed massive numbers of settlers. Approximately one in 10,000 people who receives the vaccine contract the smallpox disease from the vaccine itself and dies from it. Thus, if the entire population of the United States were to receive the Smallpox Vaccine today, 3000 Americans would be left dead. Fortunately, the smallpox virus was considered eradicated in the early 1970"s, ending the mandatory vaccination of all babies in America. In the event of a re-introduction of the disease, however, mandatory vaccinations may resume, resulting in more unexpected deaths from vaccination. The process, which is truly a blessing, may indeed hide some hidden curses.

[A]However,thecultureofAtlantisbegantodecay.Platorecountsthatthepeoplechangedtheirlaw-respectingwayoflife.Theybegantodisregardtheirreligion,graduallylivingwithlessrestraintandpiety.Theybegantovalueluxuries,wealth,andidleness.Theninonedayandonenightthecontinentwascompletelydestroyed.Platoconcludesthatadecadentsocietydeservedsuchpunishment.Buttwoquestionsremainunanswered.WherewasAtlantis,andwherediditgo?[B]Thisstoryintriguespeoplesomuchthatmanyhavebeensearchingfortheexplanationofthe"lostcontinent"for23centuries.TherearethreeprobablelocationsforAtlantis:theAzores,intheAtlanticOcean:theBiminiIslands,intheCaribbeanSea:andSantorini,orKalliste,intheAegeanSea.SeveralfactsmaketheAzoresapossiblelocation.IntheAzoresandnearIcelandtherehavebeenmanyvolcanicislandsthathaverisenfromtheseaandthendisappearedlater.Also,PlatowassurethatAtlantiswasintheAtlantic,asthenameimplies.ThetheorythatAtlantiswasintheAzoreshasonlyrecentlybeenrefuted.[C]TheGreekphilosopherPlato(approximately427to347B.C.)istheprimarysourceforthelegendofAtlantis.Hisdescriptionofthe"lostcontinent"stillexcitesthemodernmind.Plato'sAtlantiswasakindofparadise—avastisland"largerthanLibyaandAsiaputtogether"—withmagnificentmountainranges,greenplainsthatwerefullofeveryvarietyofanimal,andluxuriantgardenswherethefruitwas"fairandwondrousandininfiniteabundance."Theearthwasrichwithpreciousmetals,especiallytheoneprizedmosthighlybytheancients,orichalc,analloyofcopper,perhapsbrass.[D]ThesecondcrediblepossibilityforAtlantisisintheBahamas,intheBiminis.In1958somestrangestructureswerenoticedontheseabedunderthewater.Curiousgeometricstructures—regularpolygons,circles,triangles,rectangles,andcompletelystraightlines—extendoverseveralmiles.Agiant"wall"severalhundredyardslongwasfoundsubmergedinthewatersoffthesmallislandofNorthBimini.Thewallhastwobranches,runningatrightangles,inperfectlystraightlines.Theconstruction,whichispreciselyperpendicular,ismadeofmassivestoneblocksover16feetsquare.Partofthestructureevenresemblesaharborwithadockforboats.ThegeologyoftheBahamasshows,however,thatthesubmersionoftheplateauhadbeencausedbythemeltingofthepolarglaciersthatraisedtheleveloftheworld'soceans.ThisdiminishesthepossibilitythatAtlantiswasintheCaribbeanSea.Therewerenoviolenteruptions,merelytheslowlyrisingoceanfromapproximately8,000to7,000B.C..[E]ThecapitalofAtlantiswasbeautifullyconstructedinwhite,black,andredstone.Thecitywascarefullyplannedinfivezonesbuiltinperfectconcentriccircles.Eachcircularzonewasbuiltinsidealargerone.Platosaysthatthecapital'scanalsanditsnearbyportwere"fullofvesselsandmerchantscomingfromallparts,whokeptupdinandclatternightandday."Thecitywasfulloflife,activityandculture.[F]ThelastreasonablepossibilitytodateisthatAtlantiswaslocatedintheAegean,notfarfromCrete.However,misassumptioncannotbeprovedbeyonddoubt,andthedisappearanceofAtlantisremainsalastingmystery.[G]Thirty-fivehundredyearsago,atremendousexplosionblewapartanislandandcompletelydestroyedacivilizationcalledAtlantis.WherewasAtlantis?Whatkindofpeoplelivedthere?Whyandhowwasitdestroyed?Nooneknowstheanswerstothesequestions,buttherehavebeenhundredsofguessesandtheories.Order:

TheImportanceofChoosingtheRightToolWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)supportyourviewwithanexample/examples.

Like other forms of life on this planet, human beings confront a basic task: to deal satisfactorily with their conflicts and thereby secure the advantages of community and cooperation.【F1】 Unlike other forms of life, human beings are endowed with a capacity to reflect on this task and to search for better solutions by conscious thought and deliberate choices. The task of overcoming conflicts and achieving community and cooperation arises because human beings are unable and unwilling to live in complete isolation.【F2】 The advantages of cooperation and community life are so numerous and so obvious that they must have been evident to man from earliest times. By now, our ancestors have closed off the choice; for most of us the option of total isolation from a community is, realistically speaking, no longer open. 【F3】 Nonetheless, however strongly human beings are driven to seek the company of one another, and despite thousands of years" practice they have never discovered a way in which they can live together without conflict. Conflict exists when one individual wishes to follow a line of action that would make it difficult or impossible for someone else to pursue his own desires. Conflict seems to be an inescapable aspect of the community and consequently of human being. Why conflict seems inescapable is a question that has troubled many people: philosophers, theologians, historians, social scientists, and doubtless a great many ordinary people. James Madison held that conflict was built into the very nature of men and women. Human beings have diverse abilities, he wrote in The Federalist, and these in turn produce diverse interests.【F4】 "As long as man has irrational ideas, and he is at liberty to exercise it," Madison wrote, "different opinions will be formed." Whatever the explanation for conflict may be, and Madison"s is but one of many, its experience is one of the prime facts of all community of life. Yet if this were the only fact, then human life would fit the description by the English political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, in his Leviathan(1651). Hobbes describes mankind in a state of nature—a condition without government—having little in the way of agriculture, industry, trade, knowledge, arts, letters or society.【F5】 "And which is worst of all," he concluded in a famous sentence, to exist without government would mean "continual fear, and danger of violent death and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty and short."

You have stayed with your friend Cathy in her hometown located near the coastline for a whole week. Now you are going home. Write a message to her based on the following: 1) your gratitude for her hospitality, 2) the impressiveness of her hometown, and 3) your best wishes. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

In more than a century of hand-to-hand combat in shops, supermarket aisles, restaurants and bars around the world, Coca-Cola has nearly always been in the lead and Pepsi in second place. When Warren Buffett, Coke"s long-time investor, told the board that he had visited a pizza parlour in Omaha, Nebraska, with his grandson only to discover it served nothing but Pepsi, Coke"s bosses acted swiftly to remove their arch-rival from the menu and replace it with Coke. If only the Atlanta-based company had moved as determinedly in response to changing consumer tastes, it might have avoided a humiliating reversal in fortunes. On December 12th PepsiCo overtook Coca-Cola in market capitalisation for the first time. With PepsiCo"s share price having risen by 14% this year, its stock market value reached $98.4 billion, compared with $97.9 billion for Coca-Cola, which has seen its shares decline by 1.2% in the same period. Pepsi is powered not by its traditional fizzy drinks—sales of those are flat—but such products as Gatorade, a sports drink that has seen sales grow by more than 30%. Gatorade also represents a broader diversification by PepsiCo away from a reliance on sugary colas and into other products. PepsiCo now reportedly gets around 20% of its revenue from soft drinks, unlike Coca-Cola, where they account for some 80%. Many of the brands that PepsiCo has been acquiring and promoting appeal to consumers" concerns a bout their health. PepsiCo"s latest advertising programme promotes a new "Smart Spot" symbol, which al lows people to identify healthier products. The spots are being attached to Gatorade and other PepsiCo brands such as Tropicana orange juice, Aquafina water, baked lay"s crisps and Quaker Granola Bars. Coca-Cola will now try to regain the crown. Having endured various troubles and two chief executives since the death in 1997 of Roberto Goizueta, a much-admired boss, Coke brought a veteran, Neville Isdell, out of retirement last year to reinvigorate the company. Mr. Isdell knows a thing or two about being in second place. In the 1980s he took Coke from the number two spot in the Philip pines to move ahead of Pepsi. Mr. Isdell has Coke"s own sports drink, Powerade, in his portfolio—but he could have had Gatorade. Five years ago another fizzy drink (champagne) was on ice, to celebrate Coca-Cola"s $15.8 billion takeover of Quaker Oats, then owner of Gatorade. This takeover was supposed to lead Coke into what looked to be a hot new market for health drinks. But the "Sage of Omaha", as Mr. Buffett is known, blocked the deal, in part because it would have diluted the value of Coke"s shares. Pepsi took over Quaker Oats instead—a memory that must leave Mr. Buffett and other Coke shareholders with a bitter taste in their mouths.

It is frequently assumed that the mechanization of work has a revolutionary effect on the lives of the people who operate the new machines and on the society into which the machines have been introduced. For example, it has been suggested that the employment of women in industry took them out of the household, their traditional sphere, and fundamentally altered their position in society. In the nineteenth century, when women began to enter factories, Jules Simon, a French politician, warned that by doing so, women would give up their femininity. Enedrich Engels, however, predicted that women would be liberated from the social, legal, and economic subordination of the family by technological developments that made possible the recruitment of "the whole female sex...into pubic industry." Observers thus differed concerning the social desirability of mechanization"s effects, but they agreed that it would transform women"s lives. Historians, particularly those investigating the history of women, now seriously question this assumption of transforming power. They conclude that such dramatic technological innovations as the spinning jenny, the sewing machine, the typewriter, and the vacuum cleaner have not resulted in equally dramatic social changes in women"s economic position or in the prevailing evaluation of women"s work. The employment of young women in textile mills during the Industrial Revolution was largely an extension of an older pattern of employment of young, single women as domestics. It was not the change in office technology, but rather the separation of secretarial work, previously seen as an apprenticeship for beginning manager, from administrative work that in the 1880"s created a new class of "deadened" jobs, hence forth considered "women"s work". The increase in the numbers of married women employed outside the home in the twentieth century had less to do with the mechanization of housework and an increase in leisure time for these women than it did with their own economic necessity and with high marriage rates that shrank the available pool of single women workers, previously, in many cases, the only women employers would hire. Women"s work has changed considerably in the past 200 years, moving from the household to the office or the factory, and later be coming mostly white-collar instead of blue-collar work. Fundamentally, however, the conditions under which women work have changed little since before the Industrial Revolution: the segregation of occupations by gender, lower pay for women as a group of jobs that require relatively, low levels of skill and offer women little opportunity for advancement all persist, while women"s household labor remains demanding. Recent historical investigation has led to a major revision of the notion that technology is always inherently revolutionary in its effects on society. Mechanization may even have slowed any change in the traditional position of women both in the labor market and in the home.

BSection III Writing/B

Rain forest structure is distinct from most other forest types because of its many layers of vegetation, referred to as strata. The lowest stratum is the understory, composed of palms, herbaceous plants(such as wild ginger), and tree seedlings and saplings. 【R1】______Many have deep red coloring on the underside of their leaves to capture some of the scarce light that does manage to reach the forest understory. This red coloring enables understory plants to absorb light of different wavelengths than do the plants with rich, green-foliaged canopy, the umbrella-shaped upper structure of trees. Above the forest floor but below the canopy are one or more midstory strata, made up of woody plants, such as large shrubs and midsized trees. The overstory is the canopy, in which the tree crowns form a continuous layer that captures the major part of the rainwater and sunlight hitting the forest. The height of the canopy varies from region to region and forest to forest, ranging from 20 to 50 m(65 to 165 ft). 【R2】______Researchers use hot air balloons, cables, catwalks, towers, sophisticated tree-climbing gear, and even robots to study the millions of plants and animals that make their home high up in the forest canopy. Canopy researchers also use huge cranes that are dropped into the heart of the forest by helicopters. Suspended from the crane' s long, movable arm is a large cabin that functions as a mobile treetop laboratory. Moving from tree to tree, forest researchers collect specimens, conduct experiments, and observe life in the canopy frontier. The highest stratum of the rain forest is made up of the emergent trees, those individuals that stick up above the forest canopy. Emergents, which do not form a continuous layer, are usually the giants of the forest , reaching heights of 35 to 70 m(115 to 230 ft)or more, and trunk sizes of over 2 m(6.6 ft)in diameter. 【R3】______However, these trees tend to be so large that they collectively account for the vast majority of the woody mass, or biomass, of the forest. The nicely ordered strata of the rain forest, including the continuous layer of the canopy, are regularly disturbed by naturally occurring events, such as falling trees. Trees in a rain forest canopy are often interconnected by vines, and a falling tree may pull as well as push other trees down with it, producing a domino effect of falling trees. The resulting opening in the forest canopy enables light to pour onto the forest floor. 【R4】______ Other natural disturbances create even larger openings in the forest canopies. For example, along the hurricane belt in the Caribbean and the typhoon belt along the western Pacific, some forests are substantially altered when high winds and storms blow down hundreds of trees every few decades. 【R5】______ Scientists have found that these natural disturbances and the subsequent forest regeneration are a vital process that leads to healthy and diverse forests. [A]New plants and animals then move into the area and begin to grow. [B]Just 2 percent of the sunlight goes through the many layers of leaves and branches above, so understory plant species have developed special traits to cope with low light levels. [C]On a smaller scale, large mammals, such as elephants, regularly destroy rain forest vegetation in the Congo River Basin in Africa. [D]An understory of shorter trees and a lacework of woody vines, or lianas, produce a forest of such complex internal architecture that many animals, including some sizable ones, rarely or never descend to the ground [E]Less than one percent of the trees in the forest reside in the canopy and emergent layers. [F]Because more light penetrates the canopy, however, the vegetation of the understory and forest floor is better developed than in the tropics. [G]The rich, green canopy is teeming with life, and forest researchers have developed ingenious methods for accessing this mysterious ecosystem.