单选题The gift of being able to describe a face accurately is a rare one, as every experienced police officer knows to his cost. As the Lancet put it recently, "When we try to describe faces precisely words fail us, and we resort to identikit (拼脸型图) procedures." Yet, according to one authority on the subject, we can each probably recognize more than 1,000 faces, the majority of which differ in fine details. This, when one comes to think of it, is a tremendous feat. Though, curiously enough, relatively little attention has been devoted to the fundamental problems of how and why we acquire this gift for recognizing and remembering faces. Is it an inborn property of our brains, or an acquired one? As so often happens, the experts tend to differ. Thus, some argue that it is inborn, and that there are "special characteristics about the brain"s ability to distinguish faces". In support of this thesis they note how much better we are at recognizing a face after a single encounter than we are, for example, in recognizing an individual horse. On the other hand, there are those, and they are probably in the majority, who claim that the gift is an acquired one. The arguments in favor of this latter view, it must be confessed, are impressive. It is a habit that is acquired soon after birth. Watch, for instance, how a quite young baby recognizes his mother by sight. Granted that his mother senses help—the sound of her voice, his sense of smell, the distinctive way she handles him. But of all these, sight is predominant. Formed at the very beginning of life, the ability to recognize faces quickly becomes an established habit, and one that is essential for daily living, if not necessary for survival. How essential and valuable it is we probably do not appreciate until we encounter people who have been deprived of the faculty. This unfortunate inability to recognize familiar faces is known to all, but such people can often recognize individuals by their voices, their walking manners or their spectacles (眼镜). With typical human ingenuity many of these unfortunate people overcome their handicap by recognizing other characteristic features.

单选题{{B}}Passage 3{{/B}} 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.

单选题Some of the old______ conceived by science fiction writers about the space age are coming true.

单选题According to some psychologists, in developing a model of cognition, we must recognize that perception of the external world does not always remain independent ______ motivation.

单选题The expedition has left for the Andes and there is no ______ when it will return.

单选题It is not often realized that women held a high place in southern European societies in the 10th and 11th centuries. As a wife, the woman was protected by the setting up of a dowry or decimum. Admittedly, the purpose of this was to protect her against the risk of desertion, but in reality its function in the social and family life of the time was much more important. The decimum was the wife's right to receive a tenth of all her husband's property. The wife had the right to withhold consent, in all transactions the husband would make. And more than just a right: the documents show that she enjoyed a real power of decision, equal to that of her husband, in no case do the documents indicate any degree of difference in the legal status of husband and wife. The wife shared in the management of her husband's personal property, but the opposite was not always true. Women seemed perfectly prepared to defend their own inheritance against husbands who tried to exceed their rights, and on occasion they showed a fine fighting spirit. A case in point is that of Maria Vivas, a Catalanwoman of Barcelona. Having agreed with her husband Miro to sell a field she had inherited, for the needs of the household, she insisted on compensation. None being offered, she succeeded in dragging her husband to the scribe to have a contract duly drawn up assigning her a piece of land from Miro's personal inheritance. The unfortunate husband was obliged to agree, as the contract says, "for the sake of peace". Either through the dowry or through being hot-tempered, the Catalan wife knew how to win herself, within the context of the family, a powerful economic position.

单选题She never ______ to read the news but turned at once to the crossword on the last page. A. indulged B. troubled C. exerted D. frustrated

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单选题I used to think memory ______ were for the hopelessly disorganized, but when I hit mid- 40s it takes three trips between my home and office before I remember why I set out on the journey.

单选题The ______ of a society, club, etc, are the records of its doings, especially as published each year. A. procedures B. processes C. proceedings D. projects

单选题 Crossing Wesleyan University's campus usually requires walking over colorful messages chalked on the ground. They can be as innocent as meeting announcements, but in a growing number of cases the language is meant to shock. It's not uncommon, for instance, to see lewd reference to professors' sexual preferences scrawled across a path or the mention of the word "Nig" that African-American students say make them feel uncomfortable. In resp0nse, officials and students at schools are now debating ways to lead their communities away from forms of expression that offend or harass. In the process, they're putting up against the difficulties of regulating speech at institutions that pride themselves on fostering open debate. Mr. Bennet of Wesleyan says he had gotten used to seeing occasional chalkings filled with four-letter words. Campus tradition made any horizontal surface not attached to a building a potential billboard. But when chalkings began taking on a more threatening and obscene tone, Bennet deeided to act. "This is not acceptable in a workplace and not acceptable in an institution of higher learning," Bennet says. For now, Bennet is seeking input about what kind of message-posting policy the school should adopt. The student assembly recently passed a resolution saying the "right to speech comes with implicit responsibilities to respect community standards". Other public universities have confronted problems this year while considering various ways of regulating where students can express themselves. At Harvard Law School, the recent controversy was more linked to the academic setting. Minority students there are seeking to curb what they consider harassing speech in the wake of a series of incidents last spring. At a meeting held by the "Committee on Health Diversity" last week, the school's Black Law Students Association endorsed a policy targeting discriminatory harassment. It would trigger a review by school officials if there were charges of "severe or pervasive conduct" by students or faculty. The policy would cover harassment based on, but not limited to, factors such as race, religion, creed, sexual orientation, national origin, and ethnicity. Boston attorney Harvey Silverglate, says other schools have adopted similar harassment policies that are actually speech codes, punishing students for raising certain ideas. "Restricting students from saying anything that would be perceived ns very unpleasant by another student continues uninterrupted," says Silverglate, who attended the Harvard Law Town Meeting last week.

单选题 Extraordinary creative activity has been characterized as revolutionary, flying in the face of what is established and producing not what is acceptable but what will become accepted. According to this formulation, highly creative activity transcends the limits of an existing form and establishes a new principle of organization. However, the idea that extraordinary creativity transcends established limits is misleading when it is applied to the arts, even though it may be valid for the sciences. Differences between highly creative art and highly creative science arise in part from a difference in their goals. For the sciences, a new theory is the goal and end result of the creative act. Innovative science produces new propositions in terms of which diverse phenomena can be related to one another in more coherent ways. Such phenomena as a brilliant diamond or a nesting bird are relegated to the role of data, serving as the means for formulating or testing a new theory. The goal of highly creative art is very different: the phenomenon itself becomes the direct product of the creative act. Shakespeare' s Hamlet is not a tract about the behavior of indecisive princes or the uses of political power, nor is Picasso' s painting Guernica primarily a propositional statement about the Spanish Civil War or the evils of fascism. What highly creative artistic activity produces is not a new generalization that transcends established limits, but rather an aesthetic particular. Aesthetic particulars produced by the highly creative artist extend or exploit, in an innovative way, the limits of an existing form, rather than transcend that form. This is not to deny that a highly creative artist sometimes establishes a new principle of organization in the history of an artistic field; the composer Monteverdi, who created music of the highest aesthetic value, comes to mind. More generally, however, whether or not a composition establishes a new principle in the history of music has little bearing on its aesthetic worth. Because they embody a new principle of organization, some musical works, such as the operas of Florentine Cnmerata, are of signal historical importance, but few listeners or musicologists would include these among the great works of music. On the other hand, Mozart' s The Marriage of Figaro is surely among the masterpieces of music even though its modest innovations are confined to extending means. It bas been said of Beethoven that he toppled the rules and freed music from the stifling confines of convention. But a close study of his compositions reveals that Beethoven overturned no fundamental rules. Rather, he was an incomparable strategist who exploited limits— the rules, forms, and conventions that he inherited from predecessors such as taydn and Mozart, Handel and Bach—in strikingly original ways.

单选题略{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} In the course of my reading I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl and to provide some fresh meat for his use. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals and ate part of one of then and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the difference between all anaconda and an earl, I had seven lambs turned into the anaconda's cage. The grateful snake immediately crashed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the lambs and no inclination to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas, always with same result. The fact stood proven that the difference between and earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn't; and the earl wantonly destroyed what not descended from the earl. It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda and had lost a good deal in the transition. I was aware that many men who have accumulated more money than they can ever use have shown a hunger for more and have not hesitated to cheat ignorant and the help- less out of their poor serving in order to partially satisfy that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and domestic animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they gathered a winter's supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by trickery. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: he is greedy. In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offer, then takes revenge, The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals.

单选题If parents remain silent about offensive TV contents,______.

单选题I caught a______of(he taxi before it disappeared around the comer of the street

单选题Employers expect their employees to be ______ for work.

单选题The Coriolis force causes all moving projectiles on Earth to be ______ from a straight line. A. distracted B. deviated C. intrigued D. permeated

单选题Although the project has been approved, many companies find the cost of implementation is prohibitively expensive.