单选题The forecast predicted {{U}}variable{{/U}} weather with snow, sunshine, wind and thunder and that is just what we have had.

单选题Family "Family" is of course an elastic word. But when British people say that their society is based on family life, they are thinking of "family" in its narrow, peculiarly European sense of mother, father and children living together alone in their own house as an economic and social unit. Thus, every British marriage indicates the beginning of a new and independent family, hence the tremendous importance of marriage in British life. For both the man and the woman, marriage means leaving one's parents and starting one's own life. The man's first duty will then be to his wife, and the wife's to her husband. He will be entirely responsible for her financial support, and she for the running of the new home. Their children will be their common responsibility and theirs alone. Neither the wife's parents nor the husband's, nor their brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles, have any right to interfere with them--they are their own masters. Readers of novels like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice will know that in former times marriage among wealthy families was arranged by the girl's parents, that is, it was the parents' duty to find a suitable husband for their daughter, preferably a rich one, and by skillful encouragement to lead him eventually to ask their permission to marry her. Until that time, the girl was protected and maintained in the parents' home, and the financial relief of getting rid of her could be seen in their giving the newly married pair a sum of money called a dowry (嫁妆). It is very different today. Most girls of today get a job when they leave school and become financially independent before their marriage. This has had two results: a girl chooses her own husband, and she gets no dowry.

单选题Shark Facts There are almost 400 different kinds of sharks. Each kind of shark looks different, has a unique diet, and behaves differently. There are sharks in all four oceans of the world. Some sharks are longer than a school bus, while others are so small they can live in fish tanks. Sharks come in all kinds of colors. Most of the time, their skin color helps them blend in with their surroundings. But, some'sharks that live in the deepest part of the ocean actually have parts that glow in the dark. Most sharks live in salt water, but some can live in fresh water. All sharks are unique, or have different qualities that make them so special. Sharks are actually a type of fish. There are some similarities as well as differences between sharks and typical fish. Shark skeletons are made of cartilage. Fish skeletons are made of bones. Cartilage is the bendy, tough substance in people's ears and noses. Like other fish, sharks have gills. Gills are how fish breathe. Unlike fish, people use lungs to get oxygen from the air. Fish get oxygen from the water using gills. Water needs to move over the gills so that sharks and fish get enough oxygen. To keep the water moving, most sharks need to swim in water that has a very strong current. Sharks have lots of teeth that are arranged in many rows, rather than in just one row like people. The teeth from the outside row gradually fall out, and teeth from the next row take their place. Some sharks will lose 30,000 teeth in a lifetime! Each species of shark has different kinds of teeth. This is because different sharks eat different kinds of food. Some sharks eat food as small as plankton(浮游生物) while other sharks eat animals as big as sea turtles. Most sharks do not eat very often. Some sharks will go weeks between meals. Sharks are at the top of the ocean food chain, which means that no animal is hunting them for food. This position is very important because sharks keep the other animal populations from growing out of control. This process helps ensure there is diversity, or many types, of life in the oceans.

单选题China does {{U}}a lot of{{/U}} trade with many countries.

单选题When We Are Asleep Everyone dreams, but some people never recall their dreams, or do so very rarely. Other people always wake up with vivid recollections (记忆) of their dreams, though they forget them very quickly. In an average night of eight hours" sleep, an average adult will dream for around one hundred minutes, probably having three to five dreams, each lasting from ten to thirty minutes. Scientists can detect when someone is having a dream by using an instrument which measures the electrical waves in the brain. During dreaming, these waves move more quickly. Breathing and pulse rate also in- crease, and there are rapid eye movements under the lids, just as though the dreamer were really looking at moving objects. These signs of dreaming have been detected in all mammals (哺乳动物) studied, including dogs, monkeys, cats, and elephants, and also some birds and reptiles (爬行动物). This period of sleep is called the "D" state for around 50%of their sleep; the period reduces to around 25%by the age of 10. Dreams take the form of stories, but they may be strange and with incidents not connected, which make little sense. Dreams are seldom without people in them and they are usually about people we know. One estimate says that two-thirds of the "cast" of our dream dramas are friends and relations. Vision seems an essential part of dreams, except for people blind from birth. Sound and touch are senses also often aroused, but smell and taste are not frequently involved. In "normal" dreams, the dreamer may be taking part, or be only an observer. But he or she cannot control what happens in the dream. However, the dreamer does have control over one type of dream. This type of dream is called a "lucid" (清醒的) dream. Not everyone is a lucid dreamer. Some people are occasional lucid dreamers. Others can dream lucidly more or less all the time. In a lucid dream, the dreamer knows that he is dreaming.

单选题Too Polite for Words A Japanese colleague the other day was talking about a meeting with a man whom she abruptly described using the English word "jerk". I thought she was toning down her Japanese for my benefit, so I asked her how to say "jerk" in Japanese. "There's no such word, "she answered helplessly. "We have to use 'jerk'". Heaven knows it's not as if there are no jerks in Japan. But the Japanese language is just not made for sniping at people. At first, I thought maybe my Japanese teachers had been too polite to teach me the real lingo, so I watched to see what Japanese drivers would say to each other after a car accident. It turned out that they say: "I'm sorry. "Gradually I came to realize that there is perhaps no language so ill suited to invective as Japanese. Linguistically, these guys are wimps. Take the vicious Japanese insult "kisama, "which is deeply offensive. It means: "your honorable self. "That's right. Instead of using all kinds of dirty words, the Japanese insult each other by frowning and growling: "Your honorable self. " Likewise, a nasty expression for a woman is "ama, " another term not to try with the nice woman at the sushi restaurant. But literally it means "nun". Sure, sarcasm may be intended, but still most women would probably prefer to be characterized as a nun than as a female dog. Since people are least inhibited when they are shaking their fists at each other, insults offer a window into a culture. I've been interested in such terms ever since I arrived in Cairo a dozen years ago to study Arabic and discovered that my name was a curse. "Nick" sounds very much like the imperative of an extremely vulgar verb for sex. I would introduce myself in Arabic, and my new acquaintance would flee in horror. There's no such danger in Japanese. There are explicit terms for sex and for body parts, crude as well as clinical, but they are descriptive rather than insulting. There is one exception. One of the meanest things one Japanese child can say to another is: "Omaeno kaachan debeso. "That means. "Your mom's belly button sticks out. "This has no deep Freudian meaning; it simply means that your mother is rude and ugly.

单选题Don't get upset about trivial matters.A. unexpectedB. unusualC. unimportantD. uncertain

单选题In most places, the edges of the continents slope gradually before making a sharp drop to the ocean floor.

单选题The police had to restrain the prisoners from escaping.______

单选题On behalf of everyone in this party, I wish you a very happy birthday.A. PresentingB. AssistingC. RepresentingD. Cheating

单选题A {{U}}drop{{/U}} in the overall price of goods and services may signal a period of deflation.

单选题A person"s wealth is often in inverse proportion to their happiness.

单选题Snow The two things m snow and mountains—which are needed for a ski area are the two things that cause avalanches, large mass of snow and ice crushing down the side of a mountain—often called "White Death." It was the threat of the avalanche and its record as a killer of man in the western mountains that created the snow ranger. He first started on avalanche control work in the winter of 1937—1938 at Alta, Utah, in Wasatch National Forest. This mountain valley was becoming well known to skiers. It was dangerous. In fact, more than 120 persons had lost their lives in 1936 and another 200 died in 1937 as a result of avalanches before it became a major ski area. Thus, development of Alta and other major ski resorts in the west was dependent upon controlling the avalanche. The Forest Service set out to do it, and did, with its corps of snow rangers. It takes many things to make a snow ranger. The snow ranger must be in excellent physical condition. He must be a good skier and a skilled mountain climber. He should have at least a high school education, and the more college courses in geology, physics, and related fields he has, the better. He studies snow, terrain, wind, and weather. He learns the conditions that produce avalanches. He learns to forecast avalanches and to bring them roaring on down the mountainsides to reduce their killing strength. The snow ranger learns to do this by using artillery, by blasting with TNT, and by the difficult and skillful art of skiing avalanches down. The snow ranger, dressed in a green parka which has a bright yellow shoulder patch, means safety for people on ski slopes. He pulls the trigger on a 75 mm. Recoilless fire, skis waist deep in powder testing snow stability, or talks with the ski area's operator as he goes about his work to protect the public from the hazards of deep snow on steep mountain slopes.

单选题We can infer that the author holds a attitude toward the new trend of hugging.

单选题I won't (tolerate) that kind of behavior.

单选题The house had many drawbacks, most notably its price.

单选题We"ve seen a marked shift in our approach to the social issues.

单选题John says that his present job does not provide him with enough scope for his organizing ability.

单选题Who Wants to Live Forever? If your doctor could give you a drug that would let you live a healthy life for twice as long, would you take it? The good news is that we may be drawing near to that date. Scientists have already extended the lives of flies, worms and mice in laboratories. Many now think that using genetic treatments we will soon be able to extend human life to at least 140 years. This seems a great idea. Think of how much more time we could spend chasing our dreams, spending time with our loved ones, watching our families grow and have families of their own. "Longer life would give us a chance to recover from our mistakes and promote long term thinking, "says Dr. Gregory Stock at School of Public Health of University of California. "It would also raise productivity by adding to the year we can work." Longer lives don"t just affect the people who live them. They also affect society as a whole. "We have war, poverty, all sorts of issues around, and I don"t think any of them would be at all helped by having people live longer," says US bioethicist Daniel Callahan. "The question is "What will we get as a society"? I suspect it won"t be a better society. " It would certainly be a very different society. People are already finding it more difficult to stay married. Divorce rates are rising. What would happen to marriage in a society where people lived for 140 years? And what would happen to family life if nine or 10 generations of the same family were all alive at the same time? Research into ageing may enable women to remain fertile for longer. And that raises the prospect of having 100-year-old parents, or brothers and sisters born 50 years apart. We think of an elder sibling as someone, who can protect us and offer help and advice. That would be hard to do if that sibling came from a completely different generation. Working life would also be affected, especially if the retirement age was lifted. More people would stay in work for longer. That would give us the benefits of age-skill, wisdom and good judgment. On the other hand, more people working for longer would create greater competition for jobs. It would make it more difficult for younger people to find a job. Top posts would be dominated by the same few individuals, making career progress more difficult. And how easily would a 25-year-old employee be able to communicate with a 125-year-old boss? Young people would be a smaller part of a society in which people lived to 140. It may be that such a society would place less importance on guiding and educating young people, and more on making life comfortable for the old. And society would feel very different if more of its members were older. There would be more wisdom, but less energy. Young people like to move about. Old people like to sit still. Young people tend to act without thinking. Old people tend to think without acting. Young people are curious and like to experience different things. Old people are less enthusiastic about change. In fact, they are less enthusiastic about everything. The effect of anti-aging technology is deeper than we might think. But as the science advances, we need to think about these changes now. "If this could ever happen, then we"d better ask what kind of society we want to get," says Daniel Callahan. "We had better not go anywhere near it until we have figured those problems out."

单选题She was {{U}}grateful{{/U}} to him for being so good to her. A. careful B. hateful C. beautiful D. thankful