After the violent earthquake that shook Los Angeles in 1994, earthquake scientists had good news to report; The damage and death toll could have been much worse. More than 60 people died in this earthquake. By comparison, an earthquake of similar intensity that shook America in 1988 claimed 25,000 victims. Injuries and deaths were relatively less in Los Angeles because the quake occurred at 4:31 a.m. on a holiday, when traffic was light on the city"s highways. In addition, changes made to the construction codes in Los Angeles during the last 20 years have strengthened the city"s buildings and highways, making them more resistant to quakes. Despite the good news, civil engineers aren"t resting on their successes. Pinned to their drawing boards are blueprints for improved quake-resistant buildings. The new designs should offer even greater security to cities where earthquakes often take place. In the past, making structures quake-resistant meant firm yet flexible materials, such as steel and wood, that bend without breaking. Later, people tried to lift a building off its foundation, and insert rubber and steel between the building and its foundation to reduce the impact of ground vibrations. The most recent designs give buildings brains as well as concrete and steel supports, called smart buildings, the structures respond like living organisms to an earthquake"s vibrations. When the ground shakes and the building tips forward, the computer would force the building to shift in the opposite direction. The new smart structures could be very expensive to build. However, they would save many lives and would be less likely to be damaged during earthquakes.

People can ______ new ideas which nobody ever considered before.

Ever won the lottery? No? But did that stop you buying another lottery ticket? If the answer is another " no, " you might call yourself an optimist. According to researchers at University College London, human beings are sanguine creatures. It is all in the brain, they say. A study suggests that human brain is very efficient at processing good news: about 80% of people have a tendency to see the glass as half-full, not half-empty, even if they don"t consider themselves to be optimists. The good news is that this brings a health benefit, having a positive outlook on life reduces anxiety. A study of nearly 100, 000 women showed a lower risk of death from heart disease among optimists. But there are problems in always having an optimistic attitude. The authors of the study point out that the 2008 financial crisis may have been caused by analysts overestimating their assets" performance even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. There are personal health risks too. Dr Tali Sharot, lead researcher, said: "Smoking Kills" messages don"t work since people think their chances of cancer are low. There"s a very fundamental tendency in the brain. " But, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. Even if seeing the world through rose-colored glasses poses a risk to our health, it"s not something that is likely to cause us to lose sleep. Let"s just keep our chins up and keep smiling!

Girl: Are you ready to order? Man: ______. Girl: Sure. I"ll be back in a moment.

Sometimes the student may be asked to write about his ______ to a certain book or article that has some bearing on the subject being studied.

How much sleep does a person need?【B1】the physiological bases of the need for sleep remain conjectural(猜想), rendering conclusive answers to this question impossible, much evidence has been gathered on how much sleep people do in fact obtain. Perhaps the most important conclusion to be【B2】from this evidence is【B3】there is great variability among individuals in total sleep time. For adults,【B4】between six and nine hours of sleep as a nightly average is not unusual, and 7.5 hours probably best expresses the norm. Such norms, of course, forms inevitably vary with the criteria of sleep employed. The most【B5】and reliable figures on sleep time, including those cited here, come from studies in sleep laboratories, where EEO criteria are employed. 【B6】consistently has been associated with the varying amount, quality, and pattern of electrophysiologically defined sleep. The newborn infant may spend an average of about 16 hours of each 24-hour period in sleep,【B7】the sleep time drops sharply; by two years of age, it may【B8】from nine to 12 hours. Decreases to approximately six hours have been observed among the elderly. 【B9】will be discussed from below, EEO sleep studies have indicated that sleep can be considered to consist of several different stages. Developmental changes in the relative proportion of sleep time【B10】in these sleep stages are as striking as age-related changes in total sleep time.

Marie: Your little boy has done a good job at school. Eva:______.

Woman: How can we get tickets for the Sunday"s movie? Man: ______.

Salesperson: Welcome to Red Rooster. Can I help you? Customer:______

Woman: Are you Mr. Brown, the hotel manager? Man: ______

Customer: ______ Clerk: Here you are. 20 dollars.

During the summer session there will be a revised schedule of services for the university community. Specific changes for intercampus bus services, summer hours for the cafeteria, the infirmary(校医院) and recreational and athletic facilities will be posted on the bulletin board outside of the cafeteria. Weekly movie and concert schedules which are in the process of being arranged will be posted each Wednesday outside of the cafeteria. Intercampus buses will leave the main hall every hour on the half hour and make all of the regular stops on their route around campus. The cafeteria will serve breakfast, lunch, and early dinner from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the week and from noon to 7 p.m. on weekends. The library will maintain regular hours during the week, but shorter hours on Saturdays and Sundays. The weekend hours are from noon to 7 p.m. All students who want to use the library borrowing services and recreational athletic, and entertainment facilities must have a valid summer identification card. This announcement will also appear in the next issue of the student newspaper.

Speaker A: Thanks to John, we"ve lost our most important client. Speaker B: I"ve told you he"s not proper for the position. Speaker A: ______.

In bringing up children, every parent watches eagerly the child"s acquisition(学会) of each new skill the first spoken words, the first independent steps, or the beginning of reading and writing. It is often tempting to hurry the child beyond his natural learning rate, but this can set up dangerous feelings of failure and states of worry in the child. This might happen at any stage. A baby might be forced to use a toilet too early, a young child might be encouraged to learn to read before he knows the meaning of the words he reads. On the other hand, though, if a child is left alone too much, or without any learning opportunities, he loses his natural enthusiasm for life and his desire to find out new things for himself. Parents vary greatly in their degree of strictness towards their children. Some may be especially strict in money matters. Others are severe over times of coming home at night or punctuality for meals. In general, the controls imposed represent the needs of the parents and the values of the community as much as the child"s own happiness. As regards the development of moral standards in the growing child, consistency is very important in parental teaching. To forbid a thing one day and excuse it the next is no foundation for morality(道德). Also, parents should realize that "example is better than precept". If they are not sincere and do not practise what they preach(说教), their children may grow confused, and emotionally insecure when they grow old enough to think for themselves, and realize they have been to some extent fooled. A sudden awareness of a marked difference between their parents" principles and their morals can be a dangerous disappointment.

阅读理解According to the passage, will the love for physical exercise last long for Americans?

阅读理解Many people believe the glare from snow causes snow blindness. Yet, dark glasses or not they find themselves suffering from headaches and watering eyes, and even snow-blindness, when exposed to several hours of "snow light". The United States Army has now determined that the glare from snow does not cause snow-blindness in troops in a snow-covered country. Rather, a man''s eyes frequently find nothing to focus on in a broad expanse of a snow-covered area. So his gaze continually shifts and jumps back and forth over the entire landscape in search of something to look at. Finding nothing, hour after hour, the eyes never stop searching and the eyeballs become sore and the eye muscle aches. Nature balances this annoyance by producing more and more liquid which covers the eyeballs. The liquid covers the eyeballs in increasing quantity until vision blurs. And the result is total, even though temporary, snow-blindness. Experiments led the Army to a simple method of overcoming this problem. Scouts ahead of a main body of troops are trained to shake snow from evergreen bushes, creating a dotted line as they cross completely snow-covered landscape. Even the scouts themselves throw lightweight, dark-colored objects ahead on which they too can focus. The men following can then see something. Their gaze is arrested. Their eyes focus on a bush and having found something to see, stop searching through the snow-blanketed landscape. By focusing their attention on one object at a time, the man can cross the snow without becoming hopelessly snow-blind or lost. In this way the problem of crossing a solid white area is overcome.

阅读理解People once widely believed that intelligent life existed on Mars. The 19th-century discovery of what appeared to be geometric designs cut across the surface was taken as evidence. The lines were thought to have been a system of canals that had been built to irrigate the surface. It is now clear that the "canals"—perhaps the most spectacular geologic features of Mars—are natural valleys where ancient rivers once flowed. Another fragmented idea concerns the planet''s seasonal changes in color. Once attributed to the rapid spread of some life-form, these shifts are now known to develop from the movement of fine dust in the atmosphere. By the close of the 20th century none of the many experiments conducted by spacecraft had ever found persuasive evidence of life. Nevertheless, speculation continued over the existence of some form of life, in either the present or past. In 1996 scientists discovered organic compounds and minerals in a meteorite (陨石), consisting of Martian rock, that collided with Earth around 11,000 B.C.. These compounds suggest that Mars may have been inhabited by organisms more than three billion years ago.

阅读理解Which of the following can we infer from the passage?

阅读理解According to a recent study, loneliness_____.