单选题 Sleepless at Night It was a normal summer night. Humidity (湿气) hung in the thick air. I couldn't go to sleep, partly because of my cold and partly because of my expectations for the next day. My mum had said that tomorrow was going to be a surprise. Sweat stuck to my aching body. Finally, I gathered enough strength to .sit up. I looked out of my small window into the night. There was a big bright moon hanging in the sky, giving off a magic glow. I couldn't stand the pressure anymore, so I did what I always do to make myself feel better. I went to the bathroom and picked up my toothbrush and toothpaste. I cleaned my teeth as if there was no tomorrow. Back and forth, up and down. Then I walked downstairs to look for some signs of movement, some life. Gladiator, my cat, frightened me as he meowed (喵喵地唱出) his sad song. He was on the old orange couch (长沙发), sitting up on his front legs, waiting for something to happen. He looked at me as if to say, "I'm lonely, pet me. I need a good hug (紧抱)." Even the couch begged me to sit on it. In one movement I settled down onto the soft couch. This couch represented my parents' marriage, my birth, and hundreds of other little events. As I held Gladiator, my heart started beating heavily. My mind was flooded with questions: What's life? Am I really alive? Are you listening to me? Every time I moved my hand down Gladiator's body, I had a new thought; each touch sang a different song. I forgot all about the heat and the next day's surprise. The atmosphere was so full of warmth and silence that I sank into its arms. Falling asleep with the big cat in my arms, I felt all my worries slowly move away.

单选题Search on the Computer What difference does it make if we read texts displayed on a computer screen instead of on paper printed with ink? The computer certainly does not guarantee deeper comprehension, greater subtlety of mind, or a wider range of imaginative reference. The mediation of a computer, however, put new powers at the disposal of intelligence. For one thing, the computer is itself can do simple reading—as I have noted, it can" read" an immense body of literature in search of designated words. As anyone knows who has ever spent days in libraries in search of errant(错误的) information, simply identifying relevant sources absorbs inordinate(无节制的，过度的)amounts of time in research. The objections might be raised that a search of texts by computer may block the serendipitous(偶然得到的 ) discoveries that occur while browsing in the stacks of great libraries. No member of the academy need fear that the use of computer will keep him from the stacks, but browsing is, if anything, easier if texts can be called up on a screen in the senerity of one's chosen surroundings, The great deficiency of libraries, as we know them, is that while titles are catalogued, the libraries have no master indexes of the contents of books. Individual volumes, it is true, have indexes, often of inferior quality, but even the best indexes must be examined one at a time. The great advantage of the electronic library is that a computer could search and analyze its contents without proceeding volume by volume. As work in artificial intelligence develops, computer systems may also become adept at more complex tasks, such as summarizing texts, which has been accomplished experimentally.

单选题If wool is put into hot water, it tends to shrink. A. disappear B. expand C. break D. contract

单选题Doubtful Ways to Reduce and Increase Your Weight You hear this: "No wonder you are fat. All you ever do is eat." You feel sad: "I skip my breakfast and supper. I run every morning and evening. What else can I do?" Basically you can do nothing. Your genes, not your life habits, determine your weight and your body constantly tries to maintain it. Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania found from experiments that, "80 percent of the children of two obese (肥胖的) parents become obese, as compared with no more than 14 percent of the offspring of two parents of normal weight." How can obese people become normal or even thin through dieting? Well, dieting can be effective, but the health costs are tremendous. Jules Hirsch, a research physician at Rockefeller University, did a study of eight fat people. They were given a liquid formula providing 600 calories a day. After more than 10 weeks, the subjects lost 45ka on average. But after leaving the hospital, they all regained weight. The results were surprising: by metabolic (新陈代谢的) measurement, fat people who lost large amounts of weight seemed like they were starving. They had psychiatric problems. They dreamed of food or breaking their diet. They were anxious and depressed; some were suicidal. They hid food in their rooms. Researchers warn that it is possible that weight reduction doesn"t result in normal weight, but in an abnormal state resembling that of starved nonobese people. Thin people, however, suffer from the opposite: They have to make a great effort to gain weight. Ethan Sims, of the University of Vermont, got prisoners to volunteer to gain weight. In four to six months, they ate as much as they could. They succeeded in increasing their weight by 20 to 25 percent. But months after the study ended, they were back to normal weight and stayed there. This does not mean that people are completely without hope in controlling their weight. It means that those who tend to be fat will have to constantly baffle their genetic inheritance if they want to significantly lower their weight. The findings also provide evidence for something scientists thought was true—each person has a comfortable weight range. The range might be as much as 9kg. Someone might weigh 60-69kg without too much effort. But going above or below the natural weight range is difficult. The body resists by feeling hungry or full and changing the metabolism to push the weight back to the range it seeks.

单选题下面有3篇短文，每篇短文后有5道题，每道题后面有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}} Dancing in the Streets If there is one thing certain to get Brazilians on their feet, it is the Rio Carnival (狂欢节). Held in Rio de Janeiro, the country's biggest city, the carnival began on February 20 when the mayor gave key of the city to Rei Momo-the Lord of Misrule (无序之皇) On his orders, each year people turn the city into a paradise of dance and music. The following six days are so fun of parades, street dancing, fantastic clothes and partying (聚会) that many people forget about eating and sleeping. "It was the passion of the carnival that attracted me to Brazil and made me settle down in Rio. " said Bob Nadkarni, a British man who has lived in the city for several years. For many Brazilians, the centerpiece of the carnival is samba (桑巴舞) , a typical Brazilian dance. Every year, tens of thousands of visitors and locals show off their passion and energy in the streets, following the beat (节拍) of the Latin music. The climax to this street party is the float(彩车) parade, in which floats decorated with tons of fresh flowers by various samba schools and local communities move through the city. On the top of each float stands the candidate for the Drum Queen, who is chosen at the end of the party. While most people are free to enjoy the celebrations. Rio's police officers have to keep a clear head. Following the murder of three officers in a gunfight early last week, the Brazilian Government has tightened security in Rio. The street fighting, robbery and sex crimes that accompany the carnival are very difficult to police. Carnivals began in ancient Rome as a celebration at which people fed wild wolves, in honor of the city's founder who was said to have been raised by a she-wolf. Brazil gave new life to this tradition and so despite the troubles, the carnival will remain a symbol of the country's culture.

单选题All of the tenants in the building complained about the lack of hot water. A．old people B．landlords C．superintendents D．occupants

单选题The senator agreed that his support of the measure would {{U}}jeopardize{{/U}} his chances for reelection. A. benefit B. endanger C. hinder D. disturb

单选题Too Late to Regret It When I was a junior, I met a second-year student in my department. He wasn't tall or good-looking, but he was very nice, attractive and athletic. He had something that I admired very much. He was natural, warm, and sincere. I disregarded (不顾) my parents' disapproval. We were very happy together. He picked me up from my dorm every morning, and after class we would sit alongside the stream that ran through campus, or sunbathe (晒太阳) on the lawn. At night he would walk me back to my dorm. He came from a poor family, but in order to make me happy, he borrowed money from his friend to buy presents and meals for me. Our fellow students looked up to him as a role model, and the girls envied (妒忌) me. He wasn't a local, but wanted to stay here after graduation. I thought we had a future together. However, when I got a part-time job during the summer vacation, people began giving me a lot of pressure, saying that a pretty, intelligent girl like me should find a better guy to spend time with. This was also what my family thought. He spent the summer in his hometown, so I was all by myself. When he got back, I began finding fault with him. But his big heart and warmth soon drove all unpleasant thoughts away. However, I had no idea how badly I had hurt him and that things would get worse. I had a good part-time job off campus that paid pretty well. With my good performance at school, I also got admission to graduate school at one of China's best universities. He, on the other hand, did not do so well at school or at work. I had to worry about his living expenses, job and scores. Almost all my colleagues and friends advised me to break up with him. Then we had a quarrel last June. He was in great pain, and my cold words and bad moods started turning him away. Graduation time was drawing near, and he said he wanted to go back to his hometown. He said that he couldn't put up with me anymore. I was shocked and looked at him in despair. True love happens only once, but I found it out too late.

单选题Since the Great Depression, the United States government has protected farmers from damaging drops in grain prices.A. slightB. surprisingC. suddenD. harmful

单选题 Save Pandas With the Switzerland-based World Wildlife Fund (WWF), China is making a concerted and dedicated effort to save the endangered pandas. The results, officials here in Chengdu indicate, are mixed but encouraging. A clear disappointment is the failure to breed pandas in captivity, necessary if their decreasing numbers are to be replaced. Another failure has been the incapability to find a natural, readily available food to replace the arrow bamboo. Despite these failures, success has come on two fronts. One achievement has been the physical rescue effort. Some pandas have been kept alive by salting (空投) the mountains with tons of cooked meat, which pandas will eat as a substitute for bamboo, and by the planting of new bamboo in isolated areas. Animals in some Sichuan areas have been rescued by local peasants and given emergency treatment by animal doctors. A second achievement is a massive fund-raising effort. Publicity about the pandas plight has resulted in a new $100,000 emergency allocation by the WWF and independent fund drives both in China and abroad. In spite of this support, there have been conflicts in the panda relief program. One important problem is the difficulty Peking is having balancing the recommendations of environmentalists with China's ambitious goal of agricultural and industrial modernization. Wolong is but one example of this difficulty. This 494,000-acre preserve was declared a protected area in 1975. Yet 1,800 people, mostly Tibetans, still live in the preserve, logging trucks still roll down the narrow mountain roads, and blasting work still goes on at the site of a new 160,000-kilowatt hydroelectric plant just six miles away. This all means that the pandas fight for survival will not be an easy one, even with the concerted effort of man. For in the end, even if they can survive the dangers of the wild, they must still contend with man himself.

单选题Jack eventually overtook the last truck.

单选题Studies Show U.S. Spending Doesn"t Get Best Health The United States may spend twice as much on health care as other rich countries but it is not getting results to match, according to studies released on Tuesday. But in the study of five wealthy countries, published in the journal Health Affairs , researchers found no single nation had clearly the worst or best health care system. Gerard Anderson at Johns Hopkins University"s school of public health and colleagues came up with a list of 21 health fields they could evenly compare across the five countries Australia, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and the United States. "None of the five countries is consistently the best or the worst on all 21 indicators," Anderson said during a telephone briefing for reporters. "If you are looking for the place to get the best care, there isn"t a single place. Every country has at least one indicator where it scores the best of the five countries and each country has at least one indicator where it scores the worst of the five countries." "But," he said, "the United States is not getting value for money. The United States should be particularly concerned about these results, given that we spend twice as much on health care as any other country. So spending more doesn"t necessarily result in better out comes." Anderson"s group of international health experts sponsored by The Commonwealth Fund spent five years working on the study, getting the latest possible data from the five countries on areas such as breast cancer and leukemia survival, suicide rates, death rates from asthma, vaccination rates and cancer screening.

单选题 Plants and Mankind Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. We don't know what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but from what we can observe of preindustrial societies that still exist, a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food pyramid for all living things, even for other plants. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of people, not only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungle of the Amazon recognize hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them botany has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of "knowledge" at all. Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become the farther away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next season, the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled production of a few plants, rather than getting a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away.

单选题Although a herd of African elephants may have up to one thousand members, Asiatic elephants live in bands of five to sixty animals.

单选题Of the reptile groups, the snake group was the final one to appear.A. lastB. bestC. ugliestD. longest

单选题Eat More, Weigh Less, Live Longer? Clever genetic detective work may have found out the reason why a near-starvation diet prolongs the life of many animals. Ronald Kahn at Harvard Medical School in Boston, U.S., and his colleagues have been able to extend the lifespan (寿命) of mice by 18 per cent by blocking the rodent"s (啮齿动物) increase of fat in specific cells. This suggests that thinness—and not necessarily diet—promotes long life in "calorie (热量卡) restricted" animals. "It"s very cool work," says aging researcher Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California, San Francisco. "These mice eat all they want, lose weight and live longer. It"s like heaven." Calorie restriction dramatically extends the lifespan of organisms as different as worms and rodents. Whether this works in humans is still unknown partly because few people are willing to submit to such a strict diet. But many researchers hope they will be able to trigger the same effect with a drug once they understand how less food leads to a longer life. One theory is that eating less reduces the increase of harmful things that can damage cells. But Kahn"s team wondered whether the animals simply benefit by becoming thin. To find out, they used biology tricks to disrupt the insulin (胰岛素) receptor (受体) gene in lab mice—but only in their fat cells. "Since insulin is needed to help fat cells store fat, these animals were protected against becoming fat," explains Kahn. This slight genetic change in a single tissue had dramatic effects. By three months of age, Kahn"s modified mice had up to 70 per cent less body fat than normal control mice, despite the fact that they ate 55 per cent more food per gram of body weight. In addition, their lifespan increased. The average control mouse lived 753 days, while the thin rodents averaged a lifespan of 887 days. After three years, all the control mice had died, but one-quarter of the modified rodents were still alive. "That they get these effects by just manipulating the fat cells is controversial," says Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who studies calorie restriction and aging. But Guarente says Kahn has yet to prove that the same effect is responsible for increased lifespan in calorie-restricted animals. "It might be the same effect or there might be two routes to long life," he points out, "and that would be very interesting."

单选题The river Uwidens/U considerably as it begins to turn east.

单选题It was hard to say why the man deserved such {{U}}shabby{{/U}} treatment. A. unforgettable B. unbelievable C. unfair D. unthinkable

单选题We have abundant evidence to prove his guilt.

单选题We"re happy to report that business is booming this year.