单选题{{B}}Passage 1{{/B}} The climate of Earth is changing. Climatologists are confident that over the past century, the global average surface temperature has increased by about half a degree Celsius. This warming is thought to be at least partly the result of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests for agriculture. As the global population grows and national economies expand, the global average temperature is expected to continue increasing by an additional 1.0℃ to 3.5℃ by the year 2100. Climate change is one of the most important environmental issues facing human- kind. Understanding the potential impacts of climate change for natural ecosystems is essential if we are going to manage our environment to minimize the negative consequences of climate change and maximize the opportunities that it may offer. Because natural ecosystems are complex, nonlinear systems, it follows that their responses to climate change are likely to be complex. Climate change may affect natural ecosystems m a variety of ways. In the short term. climate change can alter the mix of plant species in land ecosystems such as grasslands. In the long term, climate change has the potential to dramatically alter the geo- graphic distribution of major vegetation types savannas, forests, and climate change can also potentially alter global ecosystem processes, including the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Moreover. changes in these ecosystem processes can affect and be affected by changes in the plant species of the ecosystem and vegetation type. All of the climate change-induced alterations of natural ecosystems affect the services, that these ecosystems provide to humans. The global average surface temperature increase of half a degree Celsius observed over the past century has been in part due to differential changes in daily maximum and minimum temperatures, resulting in a narrowing of the diurnal temperature range. Decreases in the diurnal temperature range were first identified in the United States, where large-area trends showed that maximum temperatures have remained constant or increased only slightly, whereas minimum temperatures have increased at a faster rate. In this issue, Al-ward et al. report on the different sensitivities of rangeland plants to minimum temperature increases.

单选题It is said that science has become too complex to acknowledge the existence of uni versal truths.

单选题{{B}}阅读理解四{{/B}} {{B}}Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following passage.{{/B}} Religion consists of conscious ideas, hopes, enthusiasms, and objects of worship; it operates by grace and flourishes by prayer. Reason, on the other hand, is a mere principle or potential order, on which indeed we may come to reflect but which exists in us ideally only, without variation or stress of any kind. We conform or do not conform to it; it does not urge or chide us, not call for any emotions on our part other than those naturally aroused by the various objects which it unfolds in their true nature and proportion. Rationality is nothing but a form, an ideal constitution which experience may more or less embody. Religion is a part of experience itself, a mass of sentiments and ideas. The one is an inviolate principle, the other a changing and struggling force. And yet this struggling and changing force of religion seems to direct man toward something eternal. It seems to make for an ultimate harmony within the, soul and for an ultimate harmony between the soul and all that the soul depends upon. Religion, in its intent, is a more conscious and direct pursuit of the Life of Reason than is society, science, or art, for these approach and fill out the ideal life tentatively and piecemeal, hardly regarding the foal or caring for the ultimate justification of the instinctive aims. Nevertheless, we must confess that this religious pursuit of the Life of Reason has been singularly abortive. Those within the pale of each religion may prevail upon themselves, to express satisfaction with its results, thanks to a fond partiality in reading the past and generous draughts of hope for the future; but any one regarding the various religions at once and comparing their achievements with what reason requires, must feel how terrible is the disappointment which they have one and all prepared for mankind. To confuse intelligence and dislocate sentiment by gratuitous fictions is a short-sighted way of pursuing happiness. Thus religion too often debauches the morality it comes to sanction and impedes the science it ought to fulfill. Religion pursues rationality through the imagination. When it explains events or assigns causes, it is an imaginative substitute for science. When it gives precepts, insinuates ideals, or remoulds aspiration, it is an imaginative substitute for wisdom—I mean for the deliberate and impartial pursuit of all food. The condition and the aims of life are both represented in religion poetically, but this poetry tends to arrogate to itself literal truth and moral authority, neither of which it possesses. Hence the depth and importance of religion becomes intelligible no less than its contradictions and practical disasters. Its object is the same as that of reason, but its method is to proceed by intuition and by unchecked poetical conceits.

单选题The mouse on display is most significant in that ______.

单选题The tone of this passage can be described as______.

单选题He had a ______ and rushed out of the kitchen just before an explosion wrecked it. A. probity B. progenitor C. premonition D. preponderance

单选题The most interesting new cars may owe __________ the simple wisdom of hiring a few talented people and allowing them to work.

单选题How can I ever concentrate if you______continually______me with silly questions?(北京大学2008年试题)

单选题What is the writer's view in the reading passage?

单选题The survey showed that ______ numbers of 15-year-olds were already smoking twenty cigarettes a week. A. essential B. steady C. primary D. substantial

单选题The discussion was so prolonged and exhausting that ______ the speakers stopped for refreshments.

单选题4 In 1993, a mall security camera captured a shaky image of two 10-year-old boys lead ing a much smaller boy out of a Liverpool, England, shopping center. The boys lured James Bulger away from his mother, who was shopping, and led him on a long walk across town. The excursion ended at a railroad track. There, inexplicably, the older boys tortured the toddler, kicking him, smearing paint on his face and pummeling him to death with bricks before leaving him on the track to be dismembered by a train. The boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, then went off to watch cartoon. Today the boys are 18-year-old men, and after spending eight years in juvenile facili ties, they have been deemed fit for release--probably this spring. The dilemma now con fronting the English justice system is how to reintegrate the notorious duo into a society that remains horrified by their crimes and skeptical about their rehabilitation. Last week Judge Elizabeth Butler-Sloss decided the young men were in so much danger that they nee ded an unprecedented shield to protect them upon release. For the rest of their lives, Ven ables and Thompson will have a right to anonymity. All English media outlets are banned from publishing any information about their whereabouts or the new identities the govern ment will help them establish. Photos of the two or even details about their current looks are also prohibited. In the U. S. , which is harder on juvenile criminals than England, such a ruling seems inconceivable. "We're clearly the most punitive in the industrialized world," says Lau rence Steinberg, a Temple University professor who studies juvenile justice. Over the past decade, the trend in the U. S. has been to allow publication of ever more information about underage offenders. U. S. courts also give more weight to press freedom than English courts, which, for example, ban all video cameras. But even for Britain, the order is extraordinary. The victim's family is enraged, as are the ever-eager British tabloids. "What right have they got to be given special protection as adults. " asks Bulger's mother Denise Fergus. Newspaper editorials have insisted that citi zens have a right to know if Venables or Thompson move in next door. Says Conservative Member of Parliament Humfrey Malins: "It almost leaves you with the feeling that the nastier the crime, the greater the chance for a passport to a completely new life. /

单选题This dictionary is ______ intended for American learners of Chinese.

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单选题Thomas Edison, ______, seemed to be awkward in his childhood.

单选题The best students are ______ special scholarships.

单选题Success now seemed very remote and Bernard felt______about it.

单选题In a way, all of us are on a spaceship, the planet Earth. We move around the sun (36) 18 miles per second and never stop. On our spaceship we have five billion people and a limited supply of air, water, and land. The (37) have to be used carefully because we can't buy new air, water, or land from (38) else. The environment on our planet is a closed system: nothing new is ever added. Nature (39) its resources. Water, for example, evaporates and (40) as visible drops to form clouds. This same water returns to the Earth as rain or snow. The rain that falls today is actually the same water fell on the (41) 70 million years ago. Today, the Earth is in trouble. Factories (42) dirty water into our rivers. Many fish die and the water becomes unhealthy for people to drink. Cars and factories put poisons (43) the air and cause plants, animals and people to get sick. People throw bottles and paper out of their car windows, and the roadside becomes covered with all sorts of wastes. Over the years, people have changed the environment, and we have pollution. To continue to (44) we must learn how to use the Earth' s resources wisely. We have to change our (45) and stop dumping such enormous amounts of industrial waste into the water and air. We must cooperate with nature and learn better ways to use, not abuse, our environment.

单选题Concern with money, and then more money, in order to buy the conveniences and luxuries of modern life, has brought great changes to the lives of most Frenchmen. More people are working than ever before in France. In the cities the traditional leisurely midday meal is disappearing. Offices, shops and factories are discovering the greater efficiency of a short lunch hour in company lunchrooms. In almost all lines of work emphasis now falls on ever-increasing output. Thus the "typical" Frenchman produces more, earns more, and buys more consumer goods than his counterpart of only a generation ago. He gains in creature comforts and ease of life. What he loses to some extent is his sense of personal uniqueness, or individuality. Some say that France has been Americanized. This is because the United States is a world symbol of the technological society and its consumer products. The so-called Americanization of France has its critics. They fear that "assembly-line life" will lead to the disappearance of the pleasures of the more graceful and leisurely old French style. What will happen, they ask, to taste, elegance, and the cultivation of the good things in life—to joy in the smell of a freshly picked apple, a stroll by the river, or just happy hours of conversation in a local cafe? Since the late 1950's life in France has indeed taken on qualities of rush, tension, and the pursuit of material gain. Some of the strongest critics of the new way of life are the young, especially university students. They are concerned with the future, and they fear that France is threatened by the triumph of the competitive, goods-oriented culture. Occasionally, they have reacted against the trend with considerable violence. In spite of the critics, however, countless Frenchmen are committed to keeping France in the forefront of the modern economic world. They find that the present life brings more rewards, conveniences, and pleasures than that of the past. They believe that a modern, industrial France is preferable to the old.

单选题So far as I know, Miss Hannah Arendt was the first person to define the essential difference between work and labor. To be happy, a man must feel, firstly, free and, secondly, important. He cannot be really happy if he is compelled by society to do what he does not enjoy doing, or if what he enjoys doing is ignored by society as of no value or importance. In a society where slavery in the strict sense has been abolished, the sign that what a man does is of social value is that he is paid money to do it, but a laborer today can rightly be called a wage slave. A man is a laborer if the job society offers him is of no interest to himself but he is compelled to take it by the necessity of earning a living and supporting his family. The antithesis to labor is play. When we play a game, we enjoy what we are doing, otherwise we should not play it, but it is a purely private activity; society could not care less whether we play it or not. Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what from the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his own point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk, a laborer. Which a man is can be seen from his attitude toward leisure. To a worker, leisure means simply the hours he needs to relax and rest in order to work efficiently. He is therefore more likely to take too little leisure than too much; workers die of coronaries and forget their wives' birthdays. To the laborer, on the other hand, leisure means freedom from compulsion, so that it is natural for him to imagine the fewer hours he has to spend laboring, and the more hours he is free to play, the better.