单选题We have got to abide by the rules.

单选题Artificial Intelligence For years there have been endless articles stating that scientists are on the verge of achieving artificial intelligence and that it is just around the comer. The truth is that it may be just around the corner, but they haven"t yet found the right block. Artificial intelligence alms to build machines that can think. One immediate problem is to define thought, which is harder than you might think. The specialists in the field of artificial intelligence complain, with some justification, that anything that their machines do is dismissed as not being thought. For example, computer now plays very, very good chess. They can"t beat the greatest players in the world, but they can beat just about anybody else. If a human being played chess at this level, he or she would certainly be considered smart. Why not a machine? The answer is that the machine doesn"t do anything clever in playing chess. It uses its blinding speed to do a brute force search of all possible moves for several moves ahead, evaluates the outcomes and picks the best. Human don"t play chess that way. They see patterns, while computers don"t. This wooden approach to thought characterizes machine intelligence. Computers have no judgment, no common sense. So-called expert systems, one of the hottest areas in artificial intelligence aims to mimic the reasoning processes of human experts in a limited field, such as medical diagnosis or weather forecasting. There may be limited commercial applications for this sort of thing, but there is no way to make a machine that can think about anything under the sun, which a teenager can do. The hallmark of artificial intelligence to date is that if a problem is severely restricted, a machine can achieve limited success. But when the problem is expanded to a realistic one computers fall flat on their display screens. For example, machines can understand a few words spoken individually by a speaker that they have been trained to hear. They cannot understand continuous speech using an unlimited vocabulary spoken by just any speaker.

单选题They will cut back expenditure on unnecessary items. A. stop B. continue C. shorten D. reduce

单选题She is under the {{U}}delusion{{/U}} that I'm going to give her a lot of money.

单选题By the time he was ten years old, Beniamin Oliver Davis Jr. had already decided his career would be in the air force.

单选题Sex Change Surgery Guidelines Drafted China is set to (51) its first clinical guideline on sex-change surgery, according to a notice put on the website of the Ministry of Health yesterday. The ministry is now soliciting (请求) public and professional opinions on the draft guideline. The coming guideline aims to regulate and standardize sex reassignment surgery, part of a treatment for gender identity disorder in transsexuals (变性者). Experts (52) nearly 2,000 Chinese have undergone sex-change surgery while 100,000 to 400,000 are still considering it. However, no official number is available. In the draft, the MOH sets (53) criteria for both surgical candidates and medical institutions. Candidates for the surgery must be older than 20 and single, the draft guideline said. They are also required to prove a persistent desire for a sex change, to live for at least five consecutive years full-time in the new gender role, and to engage (54) mental therapy for at least one year. Before surgery can take place, a candidate must receive a recommendation for the operation from a (55) after an appropriate series of therapy sessions. Also, several legal requirements (56) be met before the procedure. The candidate must provide proof from police that he or she has does not have any criminal offenses in the past. Police must also agree to change the sex status on the identity card of the (57) receiver before the operation can, take (58) . The advent of such a guideline (59) to show that the government is concerned (60) the needs of a relatively small (61) of people who want to change sex. But doctors also warn that all stakeholders (利益相关者) , including the hospital and prospective receivers, should be highly cautious about this surgery. The operation is more than a medical procedure due (62) its huge social and legal consequences. Doctors should make it clear to those (63) sex-change surgeries that the option always remains to continue to live in the original role. The guideline requires surgeons to tell patients about other options (64) hormone therapy. They are also required to explain the risks involved, and underlying social barriers including discrimination, and administrative recognition and approval. For the candidates, the surgery itself is not the big issue (65) the long run. The real issue is the kind of life he or she will have to lead afterward.

单选题At first the man demanded one thousand dollars for the used car but eventually he had to {{U}}settle for{{/U}} half that amount.

单选题By providing legal representation, the American Civil Liberties Union works to defend citizens against {{U}}breaches{{/U}} of their civil rights.

单选题阅读下面的短文，文中有15处空白，每处空白给出4个选项，请根据短文的内容从4个选项中选择1个最佳答案。 The Greatest Mystery of Whales The whale is a mammal(哺乳动物) warm-blooded, air-breathing, giving birth to its young alive, sucking them—and, like all mammals, originated on land. There are many signs of this. {{U}} (51) {{/U}} front flippers (鳍肢), used for steering and stability, are traces of feet. Immense strength is built into the great body of the big whales, and in fact most of a whale's body is one gigantic muscle. The blue whale's pulling {{U}}(52) {{/U}} has been estimated at 400 horsepower. One specimen was reported to have {{U}}(53) {{/U}} a whaling vessel for seven hours at the {{U}}(54) {{/U}} of eight knots. An enraged whale will attack a ship. A famous {{U}}(55) {{/U}} of this was the fate of whaler Essex, which was sunk {{U}}(56) {{/U}} the coast of South America early in the last century. More recently, steel ships have had their plates buckled (扭曲变形) in the same way. Sperm whales were known to {{U}}(57) {{/U}} the old-time whaleboats in their jaws and crush them. The greatest mystery of whales is their diving ability. The sperm whale can {{U}}(58) {{/U}} the bottom for his favorite food, the octopus (章鱼). {{U}}(59) {{/U}} that search he is known to go as far down as 3,200 feet, where the pressure is 1,400 pounds, to the square inch. Doing {{U}}(60) {{/U}} he will remain submerged (水下的) as long as one hour. Two feats (绝技) are involved in this: storing up enough {{U}}(61) {{/U}} (all whales are air-breathed) and withstanding the great change in pressure. Just {{U}}(62) {{/U}} he does it scientists have not determined. It is believed that some of the oxygen is stored in a special system of blood vessels, rather than just held in the lungs. And {{U}}(63) {{/U}} is believed that a special kind of oil in his head is some sort of compensating mechanism that automatically adjusts the internal pressure of his body. But {{U}}(64) {{/U}} you can't bring a live whale into the laboratory for study, no one {{U}}(65) {{/U}} just how these things work.

单选题Spielberg says he makes movies for

单选题If I made a mistake, I will try to remedy it. A. clarify B. diagnose C. evaporate D. correct

单选题It was so dark that I could hardly see.

单选题Changes in Children About six years ago I was eating lunch in a restaurant in New York City when a woman and a young boy sat down at the next table. I couldn"t help overhearing parts of their conversation. At one point the woman asked: "So, how have you been?" And the boy—who could not have been more than seven or eight years old—replied: "Frankly, I"ve been feeling a little depressed lately. " This incident stuck in my mind because it confirmed my growing belief that children are changing. As far as I can remember, my friends and I didn"t find out we were "depressed" until we were in high school. The evidence of a change in children has increased steadily in recent years. Children don"t seem childlike anymore. Children speak more like adults, dress more like adults and behave more like adults than they used to. Whether this is good or bad is difficult to say, but it certainly is different. Childhood as it once was no longer exists, why? Human development is based not only on innate (天生的) biological states, but also on patterns of access to social knowledge. Movement from one social role to another usually involves learning the secrets of the new status. Children have always been taught adult secrets, but slowly and in stages: traditionally, we tell sixth graders things we keep hidden from fifth graders. In the last 30 years, however, a secret-revelation (揭示) machine has been installed in 98 percent of American homes. It is called television. Television passes information, and indiscriminately (不加区分地) , to all viewers alike, be they children or adults. Unable to resist the temptation, many children turn their attention from printed texts to the less challenging, more vivid moving pictures. Communication through print, as a matter of fact, allows for a great deal of control over the social information to which children have access. Reading and writing involve a complex code of symbols that must be memorized and practiced. Children must read simple books before they can read complex materials.

单选题Older Volcanic Eruptions Volcanoes were more destructive in ancient history, not because they were bigger, but because the carbon dioxide they released wiped out life with greater ease. Paul Wignall from the University of Leeds was investigating the link between volcanic eruptions and mass extinctions. Not all volcanic eruptions killed off large numbers of animals, but all the mass extinctions over the past 300 million years coincided with huge formations of volcanic rock. To his surprise, the older the massive volcanic eruptions were, the more damage they seemed to do. He calculated the "killing efficiency" for these volcanoes by comparing the proportion of life they killed off with the volume of lava (熔岩) that they produced. He found that size for size, older eruptions were at least 10 times as effective at wiping out life as their more recent rivals. The Permian (二叠纪) extinction, for example, which happened 250 million years ago, is marked by floods of volcanic rock in Siberia that cover an area roughly the size of western Europe. Those volcanoes are thought to have pumped out about 10 gigatonnes of carbon as carbon dioxide. The global warming that followed wiped out 80 percent of all marine genera (种类) at the time, and it took 5 million years for the planet to recover. Yet 60 million years ago, there was another huge amount of volcanic activity and global warming but no mass extinction. Some animals did disappear but things returned to normal within ten thousand of years. "The most recent ones hardly have an effect at all," Wignall says. He ignored the extinction which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, because many scientists believe it was primarily caused by the impact of an asteroid (小行星). He thinks that older volcanoes had more killing power because more recent life forms were better adapted to dealing with increased levels of CO 2 . Vincent Courtillot, director of the Paris Geophysical Institute in France, says that Wignall"s idea is provocative. But he says it is incredibly hard to do these sorts of calculations. He points out that the killing power of volcanic eruptions depends on how long they lasted. And it is impossible to tell whether the huge blasts lasted for thousands or millions of years. He also adds that it is difficult to estimate how much lava prehistoric volcanoes produced, and that lava volume may not necessarily correspond to carbon dioxide emissions.

单选题The "fact" in Paragraph 2 refers to

单选题Kobe Bryant After 10 seasons wearing the No. 8 on his back, Kobe Bryant will become No. 24 next season. The reason for the surprising decision by the Los Angeles Lakers super guard last week has become a hot topic for debate. Bryant wore No. 24 when he was in early high school, but he changed to No. 33 in his senior year. He switched to No. 8 when he was selected by the Lakers in 1996, and has not been changed since. Bryant has refused to explain the decision until the end of the play-offs (季后赛). So guessing Bryant's motive has become a popular game among NBA fans and newspaper columnists(专栏作家). There are all kinds of speculations. Many say that Bryant wants to leave the past behind and have a fresh start. He has often been criticized for playing to benefit himself and not the team as a whole. Others say that he may be trying to compare himself to Michael Jordan. Jordan was famous for his No. 23 jersey(运动衫). Some, such as NBA Sport columnist Michael Venter, argue that it is "all about money". Bryant will make more money by selling new jerseys to his fans. Some speculations are more about fun. For example, there is an opinion that Kobe is actually just a diehard(非常执著的) fan of the popular TV drama"24". All this talk has turned the number change into a major issue. It seems that there is a lot of fuss (大惊小怪) over something that should be pretty simple. Jersey numbers have their own special significance in American sports, especially basketball. Players choose their number when they join a team and they usually stick with that number for the rest of their career. When a great player retires, his team will honor him by retiring his number. To some extent, the jersey is the player, and the player is the jersey. Thus, when you see the famous No. 23 for the Chicago Bulls, you immediately think about Michael Jordan. A No. 32 Miami Heats jersey recalls the image of Shaquille O'Neal, and the Houston Rockets No. 11 belongs only to Yao Ming. Lots of stories are behind players' jersey number selections. Jordan said that he chose No. 23 because it was roughly half of 45．Jordan's elder brother wore the No. 45 in college. Yao Ming once revealed that the No. 11 stands for two people in love—meaning him and his girlfriend Ye Li.

单选题Biologists have ascertained that specialized cells convert chemical energy into mechanical energy.

单选题She has been the subject of massive media coverage.A. extensiveB. negativeC. expensiveD. active

单选题The new technological revolution in American newspapers has brought increased {{U}}issue volume{{/U}}, a wider range of publications and an expansion of newspaper jobs. A. manipulation B. reproduction C. circulation D. penetration

单选题Pronouncing a Language Pronouncing a language is a skill. Every normal person is an expert in the skill of pronouncing his own language; but few people are even fairly proficient at pronouncing foreign languages. Now there are many reasons for this, some obvious, some perhaps not so obvious. But I suggest that the basic reason why people in general do not speak foreign languages very much better than they do native language is that they fail to understand the true nature of the problem of learning to pronounce. Far too many people fail to realize that pronouncing a foreign language is a skill--one that needs careful training of a special kind, and one that cannot be gained by just leaving it to take care of itself. I think even teachers of language, while realizing the importance of a good accent, often neglect, in their practical teaching, the branch of study concerned with speaking the language. So the first point I want to make is that English pronunciation must be taught; the teacher should be prepared to devote some of the lesson time to this, and get the student to feel that here is a matter worthy of receiving his close attention. So, there should be occasions when other aspects of English, such as grammar or spelling, are allowed for the moment to take second place. Besides this question of the time given to pronunciation, there are two other requirements for the teacher: the first, knowledge; the second, technique. It is also possible to get a clear mental picture of the relationship between the sounds of different languages, between the speech habits of English people and those, say, of your students. Unless the teacher has such a picture, any comments he may make on his students' pronunciation are unlikely to be of much use, and lesson time spent on pronunciation may well be time wasted.