单选题{{B}}第二篇{{/B}} Benefit Payments to American Workers German Chancellor (首相)Otto Von Bismarck may be most famous for his military and diplomatic talent, but his legacy (遗产) includes many of today's social insurance programs. During the middle of the 19th century, Germany, along with other European nations, experienced an unprecedented rash of workplace deaths and accidents as a result of growing industrialization. Motivated in part by Christian compassion (怜悯)for the helpless as well as a practical political impulse to undercut the support of the socialist labor movement.' Chancellor Bismarck created the world's first workers' compensation law in 1884. By 1908, the United States was the only industrial nation in the world that lacked workers' compensation insurance. America's injured workers could sue for damages in a court of law, but they still faced a number of tough legal barriers. For example, employees had to prove that their injuries directly resulted from employer negligence and that they themselves were ignorant about potential hazards in the workplace. The first state workers' compensation law in the country passed in 1911, and the program soon spread throughout the nation. After World War Ⅱ, benefit payments to American workers did not keep up with the cost of living. In fact, real benefit levels were lower in the 1970s than they were in the 1940s, and in most states the maximum benefit was below the poverty level for a family of four. In 1970, President Richard Nixon set up a national commission to study the problems of workers' compensation. Two years later, the commission issued 19 key recommendations, including one that called for increasing compensation benefit levels to 100 percent of the states' average weekly wages. In fact, the average compensation benefit in America has climbed from 55 percent of the states' average weekly wages in 1972 to 97 percent today. But, as most studies show, every 10 percent increase in compensation benefits results in a 5 percent increase in the numbers of workers who file for claims. And with so much more money floating in the workers' compensation system, it's not surprising that doctors and lawyers have helped themselves to a large slice of the growing pie.

单选题Pushbike Danger Low speed bicycle crashes can badly injure—or even kill—children if they fall onto the ends of the handlebars (车把). So a team of engineers is redesigning it to make it safer. Kristy Arbogast, a bioengineer at the Children"s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, began the project with her colleagues. The cases they reviewed about serious abdominal (腹部的) injuries in children in the past 30 years showed that more than a third were caused by bicycle accidents. "The task was to identify how the injuries occurred and came up with some countermeasures," she says. By interviewing the children and their parents, Arbogast and her team were able to reconstruct many of the accidents and identified a common cause for serious injuries. They discovered that most cases occur when children hit an obstacle at slow speed, causing them to topple (摇摆) over. To maintain their balance the children turn the handlebars through 90 degrees—but their momentum (冲力) forces them into the end of the handlebars. The bike then falls over and the other end of the handlebars hits the ground, pushing it into their abdomen (腹部). The solution the group came up with is a handgrip (握柄) fitted with a spring and damping (减速) system. The spring absorbs up to 50 per cent of the forces transmitted (传递) through the handlebars in an impact. The group hopes to commercialize the device, which should add only a few dollars to the cost of a bike. "But our task has been one of education because up until now, bicycle manufacturers were unaware of the problem," says Arbogast.

单选题Their interpretation was faulty.A. wrongB. ambiguousC. unclearD. unbelievable

单选题UAs a matter of fact/U, I love soft music more than popular music.

单选题I was amazed at the beauty of the mountain when I reached to the top.A. excitedB. astonishedC. happyD. unpleasant

单选题The Case of the Disappearing Fingerprints One useful anti-cancer drug can effectively erase the whorls and other characteristic marks that give people their distinctive fingerprints. Losing (51) become troublesome. A case released online in a letter by Annals of Oncology indicates how big a (52) of losing fingerprints is. Eng-Huat Tan, a Singapore-based medical doctor describes a 62-year old man who has used capecitabine to (53) his nasopharyngeal cancer. After three years on the (54) , the patient decided to visit U.S. relatives last December. But he was stopped by U.S customs officials (55) 4 hours after entering the country when those officials couldn't get fingerprints from the man. There were no distinctive swirly (56) appearing from his index finger. U.S. customs has been fingerprinting incoming foreign visitors for years, Tan says. Their index fingers are (57) and screened against digital files of the fingerprints of bad guys—terrorists and potential criminals that our federal guardians have been tasked with keeping out of the country. Unfortunately, for the Singapore travelers, one potential (58) effect of his drug treatment is a smoothing of the tissue on the finger pads. (59) , no fingerprints. "It is uncertain when fingerprint loss will (60) to take place in patients who are taking capecitabine," Tan points out. So he cautions any physicians who (61) the drug to provide their patients with a doctor's note pointing out that their medicine may cause fingerprints to disappear. Eventually, the Singapore traveler made it into the United States. I guess the name on his passport didn't raise any red flags. But he's also now got the explanatory doctor's note-and won't leave home (62) it. By the way, maybe the Food and Drug Administration, (63) approved use of the drug years ago, should consider (64) its list of side effects associated with this medicine. The current list does note that patients may experience vomiting, stomach pain and some other side effects. But no where (65) it mention the potential for loss of fingerprints.

单选题TapeStore: A New Tape Storage System TapeStore is a new kind of tape storage system which can store up to 6,000 computer tapes. No other tape storage system can hold as many computer tapes as TapeStore. The tapes look exactly like video cassettes. Many hundreds of data files can be stored on each tape, up to a maximum Of 500 million bytes (字节) of data. If you stored the same amount of information on paper, you would need nearly 4.5 billion printed pages. The machine is a tall black box with a mechanical arm. The machine is 2.5 meters high and 3.0 meters wide. This is how it works. Each tape has a code printed on it. You iced the code number into TapeStore, which then looks for the code. As soon as TapeStore locates the code, the arm reaches in and pulls out the tape. The system is very fast. It takes the mechanical arm about 10 seconds to find the tape it is looking for. The machine then searches the tape to extract (提取) the required file, and this takes less than a minute. A human technician would have to locate and remove the tape by hand, and could take at least an hour to find the right file on the tape. Some of the world"s biggest companies, including banks, insurance companies, airlines, telephone companies, utilities and computer centers, have bought the system. They like it particularly because the system guarantees the security of their data. TapeStore was originally developed in Canada and is now being marketed worldwide. In Europe alone, 750 Tape Stores have already been installed at a cost of 480,000 dollars each.

单选题The police will need to keep a {{U}}wary{{/U}} eye on this area of town. A. naked B. blind C. cautious D. private

单选题He called on me last week and I was happy to see him after 15 years.A. phonedB. visitedC. hitD. appeared

单选题Ford"s Assembly Line When it comes to singling out those who have made a difference in all our lives, you cannot overlook Henry Ford. A historian a century from now might well conclude that it was Ford who most influenced all manufacturing, everywhere, even to this day, by introducing a new way to make cars—one, strange to say, that originated in slaughterhouses (屠宰场). Back in the early 1900"s, slaughterhouses used what could have been called a "disassembly line". Ford reversed this process to see if it would speed up production of a part of an automobile engine called a magneto. Rather than have each worker completely assemble a magneto, one of its elements was placed on a conveyer, and each worker, as it passed, added another component to it, the same one each time. Professor David Hounshell of the University of Delaware, an expert on industrial development, tells what happened. "The previous day, workers carrying out the entire process had averaged one assembly every 20 minutes. But on that day, on the line, the assemble team averaged one every 13 minutes and 10 seconds per person." Within a year, the time had been reduced to five minutes. In 1913, Ford went all the way. Hooked together by ropes, partially assembled vehicles were towed (拖, 拉) past workers who completed them one piece at a time. It hasn"t long before Ford was turning out several hundred thousand cars a year, a remarkable achievement then. And so efficient and economical was this new system that he cut the price of his cars in half, to $260, putting them within reach of all those who, up until that time, could not afford them. Soon, auto makers the world over copied him. In fact, he encouraged them to do so by writing a book about all of his innovations, entitled Today and Tomorrow. The Age of the Automobile has arrived. Today, aided by robots and other forms of automation (自动化), everything from toasters to perfumes is made on assembly lines.

单选题The plan is put off because of the lack of money.A. heldB. delayedC. spreadD. cancelled

单选题The police believe the {{U}}motive{{/U}} for the murder was jealousy. A. choice B. idea C. decision D. reason

单选题{{B}}第二篇{{/B}} {{B}} Saving Money{{/B}} Where you save your money often depends on what you are saving for. If you are saving to buy a CD (光盘) or to go to a concert, then probably you would keep your money somewhere in your room. If you are saving for a big purchase like a mountain bike or a school trip, where would you save your money? One place to save money is the bank. Putting your money in a savings account will help your money earn more money. If you put your money in a piggy bank (猪形储蓄罐), one year later you'll still have the same amount of money you put in. If you put your money in a savings account, one year later, you'll have more money than you put in. Why? When you keep your money in a bank, your money earns interest. Interest is an amount of money a bank pays you to use your money. The bank uses your money (and the money of other people, too) to loan money to people and businesses. The bank will send you a statement several times a year. A bank statement tells you how much money you have in your account. It also tells you how much interest you have earned. If you leave your money in the bank, you can watch it growl Another way you can save money is to buy a certificate of deposit or CD. If you have some money that you don't need to use for a long time, this is a good way to make your money grow. You can buy a CD at a bank. You agree not to use the money for a certain period of time. That period might be from six months to five years. You can't touch your money during that time. If you do, you must pay a penalty, or fee.

单选题She felt frustrated when nobody understood what she was trying to say.

单选题He is determined to {{U}}consolidate{{/U}} his power. A.strengthen B.control C.abandon D.exercise

单选题The Smog For over a month, Indonesia was in crisis. Forest fires raged out of control as the country suffered its worst drought for 50 years. Smoke from the fires mixed with sunlight and hot dry air to form a cloud of smog. This pollution quickly spread and within days it was hanging over neighboring countries including Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. When the smoke combined with pollution from factories and cars, it soon became poisonous. Dangerous amounts of CO became trapped under the smog and pollution levels rose. People wheezed (喘息) and coughed as they left the house and their eyes watered immediately. The smog made it impossible to see across streets and whole cities disappeared as grey soot (烟灰) covered everything. In some areas, water was hosed (用胶管浇) from high-rise city buildings to try and break up the smog. Finally, heavy rains, which came in November. Put out the fires and clear the air. But the environmental costs and health problems will remain. Many people from South-Eastern Asian cities already suffer from breathing huge amounts of car exhaust fumes and factory pollution Breathing problems could well increase and many non-sufferers may have difficulties for the first time. Wildlife has suffered too. In lowland forests, elephants, deer, and tigers have been driven out of their homes by smog. But smog is not just an Asian problem. In fact .was world was first used in London in 1905 to describe the mixture of smoke and thick fog. Fog often hung over the capital. Sometimes the smog was so thick and poisonous that people were killed by breathing problems or in accidents. About 4,000 Londoners died within five days as a result of thick smog in 1952.

单选题{{B}}第三篇{{/B}} Babies' Response For some time in the past it has been widely accepted that babies, and other creatures learn to do things because certain acts lead to "rewards": and there is no reason to doubt that this is true. But it also used to be widely believed that effective rewards, at least in the early stages, had to be directly related to such basic physiological(生理的) "drives" as thirst or hunger. In other words, a baby would learn if he got food or drink or some sort of physical comfort, not otherwise. It is now clear that this is not so. Babies will learn to behave in ways that produce results in the world with no reward except the successful outcome. Papousek began his studies by using milk in the normal way to "reward" the babies and so teach them to carry out some simple movements, such as turning the head to one side or the other. Then he noticed that a baby who had had enough to drink would refuse the milk but would still go on making the learned response with clear signs of pleasure. So he began to study the children's responses in situations where no milk was provided. He quickly found that children as young as four months old would learn to turn their heads to right or left if the movement "switched on" a display of lights, and indeed that they were capable of learning quite complex turns to bring about this result, for instance, two left or two right, or even to make three turns to one side. Papousek's light display was placed directly in front of the babies and he made the interesting observation that sometimes they would not turn back to watch the lights close, although they would "smile and bubble" when the display came on. Papousek concluded that it was not primarily the sight of the lights that pleased them, it was the success they were achieving in solving the problem, in mastering the skill, and that there existed a fundamental human urge to make sense of the world and brought it under intentional control.

单选题The Group of Seven, a clique of Canadian artists painting at the turn of the century, has been credited with arousing a widespread awareness of Canada's rugged landscape.

单选题It is not certain whether there will be enough advertising Urevenues/U to go round.

单选题The old man Ulodged/U an official complaint about his neighbours' behaviour.