单选题British Government When British voters go to the polls during General Elections to decide (51) will govern them they usually have a choice of at least three candidates who will each (52) one of the three main political parties in Britain today. The Labour Party is the party of (53) , while the Tory Conservative Party the right and (54) the two, with policies and opinions of its own, is the smaller Liberal Party. Britain is divided into over 600 political units called "constituencies", each with (55) own candidates who stand for Parliament hoping to be elected (or re-elected) with large majorities. The cities and large towns are themselves divided into constituencies and they also choose the Members of parliament (MPs) who will represent their (56) in the houses of Parliament at Westminster. Here, in the "House", the government (57) the day led by its Prime minister and his Cabinet—a team of specially selected ministers— (58) its duties of governing the country. Various proposals are put forward for debate and discussion and these may, (59) become part of the law of the land. The government (60) has to face the criticism of the other parties which are in opposition. This. is the sort of democratic process that the majority of British people seem to (61) Her Majesty's Government is watched over by Her Majesty's Opposition, and (62) a certain balance of power is maintained. Decisions are made by a majority vote and this, of course, is (63) the other parties, the liberals, the national and Regional parties and other independent parties can (64) their influence. Some issues may be decided on a (65) handful of votes.

单选题Canada does not have a state religion, and the separation of church and" state has been firmly upheld.

单选题The word "thrift" in paragraph 1 could be best replaced by

单选题I remember{{U}} lots of{{/U}} things

单选题Foxes Foxes and farmers have never got on well. These small dog-like animals have long been accused of killing farm animals. They are officially classified as harmful and farmers try to keep their numbers clown by shooting or poisoning them. Farmers can also call on the services of their local hunt to control the fox population. Hunting consists of pursuing a fox across the countryside, with a group of specially trained dogs, followed by men and women riding horses. When the dogs eventually catch the fox they kill it or a hunter shoots it. People who take part in hunting think of it as a sport; they wear a special uniform of red coats and white trousers, and follow strict codes of behavior. But owning a horse and hunting regularly is expensive, so most hunters are wealthy. It is estimated that up to 100,000 people watch or take part in fox hunting. But over the last couple of decades the number of people opposed to fox hunting, because they think it is brutal, has risen sharply. Nowadays it is rare for a hunt to pass off without some kind of confrontation between hunters and hunt saboteurs (阻拦者). Sometimes these incidents lead to violence, but mostly saboteurs interfere with the hunt by misleading riders and disturbing the trail of the fox's smell, which the dogs follow. Noisy confrontations between hunters and saboteurs have become so common that they are almost as much a part of hunting as the pursuit of foxes itself. But this year supporters of fox hunting face a much bigger threat to their sport. A Labor Party Member of the Parliament, Mike Foster, is trying to get Parliament to approve a new law which will make the hunting of wild animals with dogs illegal. If the law is passed, wild animals like foxes will be protected under the ban in Britain.

单选题The oldest preserved manuscripts are those written on papyrus, which were {{U}}found{{/U}} in Egyptian tombs.

单选题People fishing on a lake must wait calmly so as not to scare the fish away.

单选题Although it is not our normal practice to give credit, this time I think we should consider the matter more closely.

单选题The main characters of Horatio Alger's books always rise from poverty to {{U}}riches{{/U}}

单选题 Home Heating Central heating became popular only after the Civil War. Typically, coal-burning furnaces (火炉) fueled the early systems. Natural gas had developed into the leading fuel by 1960. Its acceptance resulted in part from its wide uses. Because it comes primarily from U.S. and Canadian fields, natural gas is also less vulnerable (脆弱的) than oil is to war. Oil remains the most important fuel in a few areas, such as New England. Electric heating dominates most areas with mild winters and cheap electricity, including the South and the Northwest. It was made popular at least in the South by the Iow cost of adding electric heating to new houses built with air-conditioning. Bottled gas, which is somewhat more expensive than utility gas, is the fuel of choice in rural areas not served by utility pipelines. Wood is the leading heating fuel in just a few rural counties. Home heating, which accounts for less than 7 percent of all energy consumed in the U.S., has had a commendable (值得赞扬的) efficiency record: from 1978 to 1997, the amount of fuel consumed for this purpose declined 44 percent despite a 33 percent increase in the number of housing units and an increase in house size. The U. S. Department of Energy, however, forecasts that energy used in home heating will rise by 14 percent over the next two decades. That rise is small considering an expected 21 percent increase in the number of houses and the trend toward larger houses. Natural gas and electricity will probably dominate the home heating market for the next two decades. Solar (太阳的) heating never became popular because of cost and limited winter sunlight in most areas; in 2000 only 47, 000 homes relied on it.

单选题It's almost 5 o'clock; time to {{U}}quit{{/U}}.

单选题He kept in constant contact with his family while he was in Australia

单选题After Emily Dickinson retreated from the world at the age of twenty-six, she wrote more than one thousand poems.

单选题{{B}}第二篇{{/B}} {{B}}Can Buildings Be Designed to Resist Terrorist Attack?{{/B}} In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, structural engineers are trying hard to solve a question that a month ago would have been completely unthinkable: Can building be designed to withstand catastrophic blasts inflicted by terrorists? Ten days after the terrorist attacks on the twin towers, structural engineers from the University at Buffalo and the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) headquartered at UB traveled to ground zero as part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation. Visiting the site as part of an MCEER reconnaissance visit. They spent two days beginning the task of formulating ideas about how to design such structures and to search for clues on how to do so in buildings that were damaged, but still are standing. "Our objective in visiting ground zero was to go and look at the buildings surrounding the World Trade Center, those buildings that are still standing, but that sustained damage," said M. Bruneau. Ph. D. "Our immediate hope is that we can develop a better understanding as to why those buildings remain standing, while our long-term goal is to see whether earthquake engineering technologies can be married to existing technologies to achieve enhanced performance of buildings in the event of terrorist attacks," he added. Photographs taken by the investigators demonstrate in startling detail the monumental damage inflicted on the Workd Trade Center towers and buildings in the vicinity. One building a block away from the towers remains standing, but was badly damaged. "This building is many meters away from the World Trade Center and yet we see a column there that used to be part of that building," explained A. Whittaker. Ph. D. "The column became a missile that shot across the road through the window and through the floor." The visit to the area also revealed some surprises, according to the engineers. For example, the floor flaming system in one of the adjacent buildings was quite rugged, allowing floors that were pierced by tons of fairing debris to remain intact. "Highly redundant ductile framing systems may provide a simple, but robust strategy for blast resistance," he added. Other strategies may include providing alternate paths for gravity loads in the event that a load-beating column fails. "We also need a better understanding of the mechanism of collapse." said A. Whitaker. "We need to find out what causes a building to collapse and how you can predict it." A. Reinhorn, Ph. D. noted that "earthquake shaking has led to the collapse of many buildings in the past. It induces dynamic response and extremely high stresses and deformations in structural components. Solutions developed for earthquake resistant design may be directly applicable to blast engineering and terrorist resistant design. Part of our mission now at UB is to transfer these solutions and to develop new ones where none exist at present." aftermath n. 后果，结 in the vicinity 附近 debris n. 碎片 reconnaissance n. 勘察 ductile adj. 可伸展的，易变形的

单选题According to Krom, the Egypt's Old Kingdom fell

单选题 阅读下面这篇短文，短文后列出7个句子，请根据短文的内容对每个句子做出判断。 {{B}}Basic Research Vs. Applied Research{{/B}} Why does the Foundation concentrate its support on basic rather than applied research? Basic research is the very heart of science, and its cumulative product is the capital of scientific progress, a capital that must be constantly increased as the demands upon its rise. The goal of basic research is understanding for its own sake. Understanding of the structure of the atom or the nerve cell, the explosion of a spiral nebula (螺旋星) or the distribution of cosmic dust, the causes of earthquakes and droughts, or of man as a behaving creature and of the social forces that are created whenever two of more human beings come into contact with one another—the scope is staggering, but the commitment to truth is the same. If the commitment were to a particular result, conflicting evidence might be overlooked or, with the best will in the world, simply not appreciated. Moreover, the practical applications of basic research frequently cannot be anticipated. When Roentgen, the physicist, discovered X-rays, he had no idea of their usefulness to medicine. Applied research, undertaken to solve specific practical problems, has an immediate attractiveness because the results can be seen and enjoyed. For practical reasons, the sums spent on applied research in any country always far exceed those for basic research, and the proportions are more unequal in the less developed countries. Leaving aside the funds devoted to research by industry—which is naturally far more concerned with applied aspects because these profits quickly—the funds the U.S. Government allots to basic research currently amount to about seven percent of its overall research and developments funds. Unless adequate safeguards are provided, applied research invariably tends to drive out basic. Then, so Dr. Waterman has pointed out, development will inevitably be undertaken prematurely(过早的), career incentives will gravitate strongly toward applied science, and the opportunities for making major scientific discoveries will be lost. Unfortunately, pressures to emphasize new developments, without corresponding emphasis upon pure science. Tend to degrade the quality of the nation's technology in the long run, rather than to improve it.

单选题Weed killers must be chosen and applied with great care to avoid damage to adjacent trees and shrubs.

单选题 {{B}}Development of chemistry{{/B}} Chemistry did not emerge as a science until after the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century and then only rather slowly and laboriously. But chemical knowledge is as old as history, being almost entirely concerned with the practical arts of living. Cooking is essentially a chemical process; so is the melting of metals and the administration of drugs. This basic chemical knowledge, which was applied in most cases as a rule of thumb (单凭经验来做的方法), was nevertheless dependent on previous experiment. It also served to stimulate a fundamental curiosity about the processes themselves. New in formation was always being gained as artisans improved techniques to gain better results. The development of a scientific approach to chemistry was, however, hampered by several factors. The most serious problem was the vast range of material available and the consequent difficulty of organizing it into some system. In addition, there were social and intellectual difficulties. Chemistry is nothing if not practical; those who practice it must use their hands, they must have a certain practical flair (鉴别力). Yet in many ancient civilizations, practical tasks were primarily the province of a slave population. The thinker or philosopher stood apart from this world, where the practical arts appeared to lack any intellectual content of interest. The final problem for early chemical science was the element of secrecy. Experts in specific trades had developed their own techniques and guarded their knowledge to pre vent others from stealing their livelihood. Another factor that contributed to secrecy way the esoteric (深奥的) nature of the knowledge of alchemists (炼金术士). In one sense, the second of these was the more serious impediment (阻碍) because the records of the chemical processes that early alchemists had discovered were often written down in symbolic language understandable to very few or in symbols that were purposely obscure.

单选题To absorb a younger work force, many companies offered retirement plans as incentives for older workers to retire and make way for the younger ones who earned lower salaries.

单选题The picture, even to his trained eye, seemed priceless.A. valuelessB. invaluableC. uselessD. cheap