单选题It would have been Uvirtually/U impossible to collect all the information needed.

单选题A small number of {{U}}firms{{/U}} have stopped trading. A. hotels B. shops C. restaurants D. companies

单选题John has made up his mind not to go to the meeting.

单选题Finding Enlightenment in Scotland In the 1740s, the famous French philosophy Voltaire said "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization." That's not a bad advertisement for any country, especially when it comes to attracting people in search of a first class education. Yet some people go even further than that. According to the American author Arthur Herman, the Scots invented the modem world itself. He argues that Scottish thinkers and intellectuals worked out many of the most important ideas on which modem life depend everything from the scientific method to market economics. Their ideas did not just spread amongst intellectuals, but to those people in business, government and the sciences who actually shaped the Western world. It all started during the period that historians call the Scottish Enlightenment, which is usually seen as taking place between the years 1740 and 1800. At this time, Scotland was home to a number of thinkers who made an important shift in the course of Western philosophy. Before that, philosophy was mainly concerned with religion. For the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, the proper study of humanity was mankind itself. Their reasoning was practical. For the philosopher David Hume, humanity was the right subject for philosophy because we can examine human behavior and so find real evidence of how people think and feel. And from that we can make judgments about the societies we live in and make concrete suggestions about how they can be improved, for universal benefit. Hume was not a scientist himself, but his enquiry into the nature of knowledge laid the foundations for the scientific method the pursuit of truth through experiment. His friend and fellow resident of Edinburgh, Adam Smith, famously applied the study of mankind to the ways in which mankind does business. Trade, he argued, was a form of information. Money is the way in which people tell each other what they want, and how much people pay is the best way we have of knowing how much somebody wants something. In pursuing our own interests through trading in markets, we all come to benefit each other. Smith's idea of "enlightened self-interest" has come to dominate modem views of economics. It also has wider applications. He was one of the first major philosophers to point out that nations can become rich, free and powerful more efficiently through peace, trade and invention than by means of war and plunder. The original Scottish Enlightenment is thought to have ended with the lives of Smith, Hume and the other thinkers who lived in Scotland at that time. But a wider Scottish Enlightenment can still be seen. It exists in the way that the ideas evolved at that time still underpin our theories. It also exists in Scotland itself in an educational tradition that combines academic excellence with practical orientation. The Institute for System Level Integration (ISLI) is a good example. Founded in 1998 by a group of four Scottish universities, ISLI draws on the academic expertise of the university departments of computer science, electronic and electrical engineering and informatics, But though it works at the cutting edge of science, ISLI's ultimate aims are rooted in the needs of the real world: to produce highly skilled design engineers and researchers to meet the needs of the rapidly changing global semiconductor industry. Though only one amongst many educational institutions in Scotland, ISLI's existence shows that the principles of the Scottish Enlightenment still live on. It's a country that's still inventing, still modernizing, and still doing its best to spread enlightenment.

单选题We"ve been through some rough times together.

单选题It was an exceptionally hot day for the time of year. A. a totally B. an unusually C. a fully D. an absolutely

单选题We consume a lot more than we are able to produce.

单选题 下面有3篇短文，每篇短文后有5道题，每题后面有4个选项。请仔细阅读短文并根据短文回答其后面的问题，从4个选项中选择1个最佳答案。{{B}}第一篇{{/B}} {{B}}An Unusual Experience at Sea{{/B}} It was early one morning in February 1972 when Mayoral and his partner Santos Luis Perez set out to fish in Laguna San lgnacio. Hundreds of gray whales were swimming in the three-mile-long, one-mile-wide inlet. This was usual between December and April, for the whales breed in the protected inlets of Baja, the final destination of their annual 6,000-mile migration from the Arctic. Mayoral and Perez stayed as for as possible from the spouting (喷涌) creatures, because the whales were said to smash boats with their powerful flukes (鲸尾的叶). Mayoral, who had 16 years' experience at sea, knew no one who had been close to a healthy gray whale and lived. As Mayoral rowed to catch the outgoing (退出去的) tide, he saw, straight ahead, a whale approaching. Heart pounding, the 31-year-old turned the little wooden boat and pulled hard for shore. Try as he might, however, he could not row over the huge beast. In moments, it overtook them. Expecting the worst, the fishermen dropped to their knees and made the sign of the cross. The whale raised its nine-foot head out of the water and looked at them. Then, remarkably, it began to rub gently against the boat. Sinking and resurfacing(重新露出水面) on opposite sides of the boat, the whale continued its gentle rubbing for almost an hour. At first the men prayed, frozen in fear. But gradually Mayoral 's terror gave way to curiosity. He was tempted to reach out and touch this oddly unthreatening monster, but a lifetime of caution kept him still. At last, having finished with whatever its purpose had been, the whale disappeared below the surface. Some time passed before either man spoke. Then they headed home. To his wife, Mayoral said only, "No fish today." But word spread through the cluster of small wooden houses near the salt-water lake. A strange thing had happened: one of the whales had tried to touch the men, and the men had returned unharmed. Why? In nights to come, by faint kerosene lamps, Mayoral and Perez told the story. They and other fishermen struggled to understand. What did the whale want?

单选题Because administering the whole company, he sometimes has to work around the clock.

单选题Among all the essays, his was {{U}}picked{{/U}} out as the best one by the professors.

单选题A man's skin is thicker than a woman's and not nearly as soft. The thickness prevents the sun's radiation from getting through, which is why men wrinkle less than women do. Women have a thin layer of fat just under the skin and there is a plus to this greater fat reserve. It acts as an invisible fur coat to keep a women warmer in the winter. Women also stay cooler in summer. The fat layer helps isolate them from heat. Men wrinkle less than women becauseA. men's skin is thicker and contains less fat.B. men's skin is thicker but contains more fat.C. men's skin is softer than women's.D. men's skin is too thick to wrinkl

单选题The chemical is deadly to rats but safe to cattle. A. fatal B. hateful C. good D. useful

单选题The phrase "wary of" in paragraph 8 could be best replaced by

单选题Take some Uspare/U clothes in case you get wet.

单选题 The Old Gate In the Middle Ages the vast majority of European cities bad walls around them. This was partly for defensive {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}but another factor was the need to keep out anyone regarded as undesirable, like people with contagious {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}. The Old City of London gates were all {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}by the end of the 18th century. The last of London's gates was removed a century ago, but by a {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}of luck, it was never destroyed. This gate is, in {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}fact, not called a gate at all; its name is Temple Bar, and it marked the {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}between the Old City of London and Westminster. In 1878 the Council of London took the Bar down, numbered the stones and put the gate in {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}because its design was {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}it was expensive to {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}and it was blocking the traffic. The Temple Bar Trust was {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}in the 1970's with the intention of returning the gate home. The aim of the trust is the {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}of the nation's architectural heritage. Transporting the gate will mean physically pulling it {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}, stone by stone, removing and rebuilding it near St Paul's Cathedral. Most of the facade of the gate will probably be {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}, though there is a good {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}that the basic structure will be sound. The hardest {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}of all, however, will be to recreate the statues of the monarchs that once stood on top of the gate.

单选题We can not {{U}}go on{{/U}} quarrelling like this.

单选题The Beginning of American Literature American has always been a land of beginnings. After Europeans‘iscovered’ America in the fifteenth century, the mysterious New World became for many people a genuine hope of a new life, an escape from poverty and persecution, a chance to start again. We can say that, as nation, America begins with that hope. When, however, does American literature begin? American literature begins with American experiences. Long before the first colonists arrived, before Christopher Columbus, before the Northmen who 'found' America about the year 1,000, Native Americans lived here. Each tribe's literature was tightly woven into the fabric of daily life and reflected the unmistakably American experience of lining with the land. Another kind of experience, one filled with fear and excitement, found its expression in the reports that Columbus and other explorers sent home in Spain, France and England. In addition, the journals of the people who lived and died in the New England wilderness tell unforgettable tales of hard and sometimes heartbreaking experiences of those early years. Experience, then, is the key to early American literature. The New World provided a great variety of experiences, and these experiences demanded a wide variety of expressions by an even wider variety of early American writers. These writers included John Smith, who spent only two-and a half years on the American continent. They included Jonathan Edwards and William Byrd, who thought of themselves as British subjects, never suspecting a revolution that would create a United States of America with a literature of its own. American Indians, explorers, Puritan ministers, frontier wives, plantation owner-they are all the creators of the first American literature.

单选题She was close to success.

单选题{{B}}第三篇{{/B}} {{B}}Light Night, Dark Stars{{/B}} Thousands of people around the globe step outside to gaze at their night sky. On a clear night, with no clouds, moonlight, or artificial lights to block the view. people can see more than 14,000 stars in the sky, says Dennis Ward. an astronomer with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder. Colo. But when people are surrounded by city lights, he says, they're lucky to see ISO stars. If you've ever driven toward a big city at night and seen its glow from a great distance, you've witnessed fight pollution. It occurs when light from streetlights, office buildings, signs, and other sources streams into space and illuminates the night sky. This haze of light makes many stars invisible to people on Earth. Even at night, big cities like New York glow from light pollution, making stargazing difficult. Dust and particles of pollution from factories and industries worsen the effects of light pollution. "If one city has a lot more light pollution than another." Ward says, "that city will suffer the effects of light pollution on a much greater scale." Hazy skies also make it far more difficult for astronomers to do their jobs. Cities are getting larger. Suburbs are growing in once dark. rural areas. Light from all this new development is increasingly obscuring the faint light given off by distant stars. And if scientists can't locate these objects, they can't learn more about them. Light pollution doesn't only affect star visibility. It can harm wildlife too. It's clear that artificial light can attract animals, making them go off course. There's increasing evidence, for example, that migrating birds use sunsets and sunrises to help find their way, says Sydney Gauthreaux Jr., a scientist at Clemson University in South Carolina. "When light occurs at night," he says, "it has a very disruptive influence." Sometimes birds fly into lighted towers, high-rises, and cables from radio and television towers. Experts estimate that millions of birds die this way every year.

单选题When does the next train depart? A. pull up B. pull down C. pull out D. pull in