单选题Do you ever feel angry about someone who stands too close, talks too loudly or makes eye contact for too long? Why do we feel uncomfortable with those" close talkers"? Or with strangers who stand very near to us in a line? Scholars began to study personal space decades ago. They found that humans tend to avoid eye contact if they feel someone is standing too close. They put a distance between themselves and strangers. According to scientists, personal space involves not only an imaginary space around the body, but around all the senses. People may feel their space is being violated when they encounter an unwelcome sound, scent or stare: the woman on the bus shouting into her mobile phone or the coworker sitting next to you putting on some perfume you don't like. What is the author's attitude towards people shouting on the bus?A. HostileB. FriendlyC. CriticalD. Indifferent

单选题The team's spirit was at the lowest point in the season.

单选题She will be {{U}}pleased {{/U}}to meet you．

单选题Theories of teaching have not been as fully developed as have theories of learning.

单选题They are endeavoring to change society as a whole.

单选题I am {{U}}not willing{{/U}} to concede that I have hurt her, because that's not my real intention.

单选题The Drive for the Future Driverless ears Professor Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, wants to cut the number of ears on planet earth by 50%. He said: "It's a huge waste of money and resources to do so—we use ears about 3% of the time. " Professor Thrun is a leader in the field of driverless Cars and has built two robotic vehiclescalled Stanley and Junior. The cars have no human driver and no remote control system—everything from sensors to navigation is handled by an onboard computer. They were both entered into the DARPA Grand Challenge—a race for autonomous vehicles. Stanley won in 2004 and Junior took second place in 2007. But the ultimate goal is to create a world where self - aware vehicles can drive passengers around without hitting pedestrians or bumping into other vehicles. "To be able to understand the environment as deep as humans do is the holy grail of artificial intelligence. " "It's a huge amount of work to make computers understand what is the behaviour of the two people on the right, both waiting at an intersection—will they walk or not? It is a really hard question. " Perfect missions Researchers at Stanford are trying to program helicopters to fly perfect missions every time including loops. Imagine, for example, a search and rescue chopper that can descend into a narrow canyon countless times without its rotors ever touching the edges. Andrew Ng, an associate professor in the Computer Science Department, said it would be very difficult to write software to make a helicopter early out stunts in the air. Instead, researchers asked a expert human pilot to demonstrate the stunts. The computer learned from the demonstrations how to fly by itself. It is called apprenticeship learning—the computer figures out what the human pilot is trying to do and then uses algorithms to correct or perfect the operations. Professor Ng said:" The accelerometers of the helicopter will feel the force of the wind pushing the helicopter aside and what the helicopter has learned to do is how to adjust the controls to move itself back onto the desired flight path. /

单选题The White House We got up early this morning and (1) a long walk after breakfast. We walked through the business section of the city. I told you yesterday that the city was larger (2) I thought it would be. (3) the business section is smaller than I thought it would be. I suppose that's (4) Washington is a special kind of city. (5) the people in Washington work for the government. About 9:30 we went to the White House. It's (6) to the public from 10 till 12, and there was a long line of people waiting to get in. We didn't have to wait very long, because the line moved (7) quickly. The White House is really white. It is painted every year. And it seems very white, because it's got beautiful lawns ail around it, (8) many trees and shrubs. The grounds (9) about four square blocks. I mean, they're about two blocks long (10) each side. The part (11) the President lives and works is not open to the public. But the part we saw was beautiful. We went through five of the main rooms. One of them was the library, on the ground floor. On the next floor, there are three rooms named (12) the colors that are used in them: the Red Room, the Blue Room and the Green Room. The walls are covered with silk (13) .There are (14) old furniture, from the time (15) the White House was first built. And everywhere there are paintings and statues of former presidents and other famous people from history.

单选题The weather is a constant subject of conversation in Britain.

单选题His boss {{U}}took him to task{{/U}} for his habitual lack of punctuality.

单选题At the age of 12, the author got a job at a restaurant and often worked till late at night because

单选题Our correspondent Carl from South Africa will give us a brief introduction of their presidential election.A. reporterB. representativeC. writerD. interpreter

单选题Don't Count on Dung (粪) Conservationists (自然保护主义者) may be miscalculating the numbers of the threatened animals such as elephants, say African and American researchers. The error occurs because of a flaw in the way they estimate animal numbers from the piles of dung the creatures leave behind. The mistake could lead researchers to think that there are twice as many elephants as there really are in some regions according to Andrew Plumptre of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in New York. Biologist Katy Payne of Comell University in Ithaca, New York, agrees, "We really need to know elephant numbers and the evidence that we have is quite indirect, " says Payne, who electronically tracks elephants. Counting elephants from planes is impossible in the vast rainforests of Central Africa. So researchers often estimate elephant numbers by counting dung piles in a given area. They also need to know the rate at which dung decays because it's extremely difficult to determine these rates. However, researchers counting elephants in one region tend to rely on standard decay rates established elsewhere. But researchers at the WCS have found that this decay rate varies from region to region depending on the climate and environment. Using the wrong values can lead the census astray (离开正道), says Plumptre. He and his colleague Anthony Chifu Nchanji studied decaying elephant dung in the forests of Cameroon. They found that the dung decayed between 55 and 65 per cent more slowly than the dung in the rainforests of neighboring Gabon. If researchers use decay rates from Gabon to count elephants in Cameroon, they would probably find more elephants than are actually around. This could mean estimates in Cameroon are at least twice as high as those derived from decay rates calculated locally, Plumptre says, "However accurate your dung density estimate might be, the decay rate can severely affect the result". Plumptre also says that the dung-pile census should be carried out over a region similar in size to an elephant's natural range. The usual technique of monitoring only small, protected areas distorts numbers because elephants move in and out of these regions, he says, "If the elephant population increases within the protected area, you can not determine whether. It is a real increase or whether it is due to elephants moving in because they are being poached (入侵偷猎) outside." Plumptre says that similar problems may also affect other animal census studies that rely on indirect evidence such as nests, tracks or burrows (地洞).

单选题It is absurd to go out in such terrible weather.A. ridiculousB. funnyC. oddD. interesting

单选题She read a poem which depicts the splendor of the sunset.

单选题"Salty" Rice Plant Boosts Harvests British scientists are breeding a new generation of rice plants that will be able to grow in soil containing salt water. Their work may enable abandoned farms to become productive once more. Tim Flowers and Tony Yeo, from Sussex University"s School of Biological Sciences, have spent several years researching how crops, such as rice, could be made to grow in water that has become salty. The pair have recently begun a three-year programme, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, to establish which genes enable some plants to survive salty conditions. The aim is to breed this capability into crops, starting with rice. It is estimated that each year more than 10m hectares (公顷)of agricultural land are lost because salt gets into the soil and stunts (妨碍生长)plants. The problem is caused by several factors. In the tropics, mangroves (红树林)that create swamps (沼泽)and traditionally formed barriers to sea water have been cut down. In the Mediterranean, a series of droughts have caused the water table to drop, allowing sea water to seep (渗透)in. In Latin America, irrigation often causes problems when water is evaporated (蒸发)by the heat, leaving salt deposits behind. Excess salt then enters the plants and prevents them functioning normally. Heavy concentrations of minerals in the plants stop them drawing up the water they need to survive. To overcome these problems, Flowers and Yeo decided to breed rice plants that take in very little salt and store what they do absorb in cells that do not affect the plants" growth. They have started to breed these characteristics into a new rice crop, but it will take about eight harvests before the resulting seeds are ready to be considered for commercial use. Once the characteristics for surviving salty soil are known, Flowers and Yeo will try to breed the appropriate genes into all manners of crops and plants. Land that has been abandoned to nature will then be able to bloom again, providing much needed food in the poorer countries of the world.

单选题In Sports, Red is the Winning Color When opponents of a game are equally matched, the team dressed in red is more likely to win, according to a new study. British anthropologists Russell Hill and Robert Barton of the University of Durham reached that conclusion by studying the outcomes of one-on-one boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman-wresting, and freestyle-wrestling matches at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. In each event Olympic staff randomly assigned red or blue clothing or body protection to competitors. When otherwise equally matched with their opponent in fitness and skill, athletes wearing red were more likely to win the bout. "Where there was a large point difference—presumably because one contestant was far superior to the other—color had no effect on the outcome," Barton said. "Where there was a small point difference, the effect of color was sufficient to tip the balance." In equally matched bouts, the preponderance of red wins was great enough that it could not be attributed to chance, the anthropologists say. Hill and Barton found similar results in a review of the colors worn at the Euro 2004 international soccer tournament. Their report will be published in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature. Joanna Setchell, a primate researcher at the University of Cambridge in England, has found similar results in nature. Her work with the large African monkeys known as mandrills shows that red coloration gives males an advantage when it comes to mating. The finding that red also has an advantage in human sporting events does not surprise her, adding that "the idea of the study is very clever." Hill and Barton got the idea for their study out of a mutual interest in the evolution of sexual signals in primates—"red seems to be the color, across species, that signals male dominance and testosterone levels," Barton said. For example, studies by Setchell, the Cambridge primate researcher, show that dominant male mandrills have increased red coloration in their faces and rumps. Another study by other scientists shows that red plastic rings experimentally placed on the legs of male zebra finches increase the birds' dominance. Barton said he and Hill speculated some speculated that "there might be a similar effect in humans. And if so, it could be apparent in sporting contests." The pair say their results indicate that sexual selection may have influenced the evolution of humans' response to color. Setchell, the primatologist, agrees. "As Hill and Barton say, humans redden when we are angry and pale when we're scared. These are very important signals to other individuals," she said. The advantage of red may be intuitively known, judging from the prevalence of red uniforms in sports—"though it is clearly not very widely appreciated, on a conscious level at least," Barton said. He adds that the finding of red's advantage might have implications for regulations that govern sporting attire. In the Olympic matches he surveyed for the new study, for example, it is possible some medal winners may have reached the pedestal with an unintended advantage. "That is the implication, though we cannot say that it made the difference in any one specific case," Barton said. Meanwhile, Setchell noted—tongue-in-cheek—that a red advantage may not be limited to sports. "Going by the recent [U.S.] election results, red is indeed quite successful," she said.

单选题The national foreclosure average is now 3%, but the average for subprime loans (不良贷款)—a disproportionate share of mortgages in high - stress markets—is 13.9%. That number could rise even after the recession ends because solid economic growth can't bring back housing prices that fell so tar 80 fast after the boom. "We had a housing decline in Massachusetts in the 1990s with no recession, "says Mark Fleming, chief economist of real estate analytics firm First American CoreLogic, "and a recession in 2001 within the middle of the housing boom. " In other words, home prices and lending rates rising right along with the economy was never good for borrowers. What does the author what to convey to the reader by quoting Mark Fleming's remarks?A. The general economy cannot have immediate impact on housing market.B. Homes prices may start to decline at any time without warning.C. Even housing boom can lead to economic recession.D. People shouldn't borrow money even when economy is in boom.

单选题His stomach felt Uhollow/U with fear.

单选题We have to ask them to {{U}}quit{{/U}} talking in order that all people present could hear us dearly.