Night was falling. All was darkness ______ an occasional glimmer in the distance.

He ______ of the first truly portable computer in 1968.

Small wonder that many voters hold their politicians in ______.

The plan was ______ when it was discovered just how much the scheme would cost.

According to the international regulation, the playing of the national anthem ______ all sports events.

We lost our way in that small village, otherwise we ______ more places of interest yesterday.

There are many different kinds of runners, from casual joggers to 41 race-runners to marathoners. Each runner should have a specific training schedule 42 to the individual's goals and abilities. A good schedule for a beginner is to run 20 minutes at a time, every other day. Occasionally, additional time off is needed because of illness or 43 . Depending on the length of the break, it is often advisable to work back into a regular workout 44 , rather than jumping back into the normal routine immediately. The biggest factors in becoming a better runner are 45 injuries and working to build a solid training base. A base is a runner's collection of workouts over time. The more solid and consistent the runner is in training, the stronger the base. Like the base of a pyramid, only a solid foundation will provide the 46 necessary for a runner to reach his or her peak. In the short term, there are techniques that can help a runner 47 better. Mixing in higher speed workouts is one 48 , but this can lead to injury unless the individual builds up to them gradually. Hill and trail running builds strength, and weightlifting can also help. Many runners will at some point want to 49 a race, to push themselves and to perhaps see how they 50 with other runners at their age and experience level. (A) support (B) regular (C) enter (D) gradually (E) immediately (F) adopted (G) trying (H) perform (I) damage (J) come (K) injury (L) compare (M) strategy (N) action (O) avoiding

The drivers' strike has ______ the region's public transport system.

The American economic system is organized around a basically private-enterprise, market-oriented economy in which consumers largely determine what shall be produced by spending their money in the marketplace for those goods and services that they want most. Private businessmen, striving to make profits, produce these goods and services in competition with other businessmen; and the profit motive, operating under competitive pressures, largely determines how these goods and services are produced. Thus, in the American economic system it is the demand of individual consumers, coupled with the desire of businessmen to maximize profits and the desire of individuals to maximize their incomes, that together determine what shall be produced and how resources are used to produce it. An important factor in a market-oriented economy is the mechanism by which consumer demands can be expressed and responded to by producers. In the American economy, this mechanism is provided by a price system, a process in which prices rise and fall — producers, which in turn will lower the price and permit more consumers to buy the product. Thus, price is the regulating mechanism in the American economic system. The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individuals are allowed to own productive resources(private property), and they are permitted to hire labor, gain control over natural resources, and produce goods and services for sale at a profit. In the American economy, the concept of private property embraces not only the ownership of productive resources but also certain rights, including the right to determine the price of a product or to make a free contract with another private individual.

Look at the terrible situation I am in! If only I ______.

The past ages of man have all been carefully labeled by anthropologists. Descriptions like 'Palaeolithic Man', 'Neolithic Man', etc., neatly sum up whole periods. When the time comes for anthropologists to turn their attention to the twentieth century, they will surely choose the label 'Legless Man'. Histories of the time will go something like this: 'In the twentieth century, people forgot how to use their legs. Men and women moved about in cars, buses and trains from a very early age. There were lifts and escalators in all large buildings to prevent people from walking. This situation was forced upon earth dwellers of that time because of their extraordinary way of life. In those days, people thought nothing of travelling hundreds of miles each day. But the surprising thing is that they didn't use their legs even when they went on holiday. They built cable railways, ski-lifts and roads to the top of every huge mountain. All the beauty spots on earth were marred by the presence of large car parks.' 'The future history books might also record that we were deprived of the use of our eyes. In our hurry to get from one place to another, we failed to see anything on the way. Air travel gives you a bird's-eye view of the world—or even less if the wing of the aircraft happens to get in your way. When you travel by car or train a blurred image of the countryside constantly smears the windows. Car drivers, in particular, are forever obsessed with the urge to go on and on: they never want to stop. Is it the lure of the great motorways, or what? And as for sea travel, it hardly deserves mention. It is perfectly summed up in the words of the old song: 'I joined the navy to see the world, and what did I see? I saw the sea.' The typical twentieth-century traveler is the man who always says 'I've been there.' You mention the remotest, most evocative place—names in the world like El Dorado, Kabul, Irkutsk and someone is bound to say 'I've been there'—meaning, 'I drove through it at 100 miles an hour on the way to somewhere else.' When you travel at high speeds, the present means nothing: you live mainly in the future because you spend most of your time looking forward to arriving at some other place. But actual arrival, when it is achieved, is meaningless. You want to move on again. By traveling like this, you suspend all experience; the present ceases to be a reality: you might just as well be dead. The traveler on foot, on the other hand, lives constantly in the present. For him traveling and arriving are one and the same thing: he arrives somewhere with every step he makes. He experiences the present moment with his eyes, his ears and the whole of his body. At the end of his journey he feels a delicious physical weariness. He knows that sound. Satisfying sleep will be his: the just reward of all true travelers.

Everyone in the village is very friendly. It doesn't matter ______ you have lived there for a short or a long time.

Suddenly he burst into ______ and we all were astonished.

There are times when people are so tired that they fall asleep almost anywhere. We can see there is a lot of sleeping on the bus or train on the 21 home from work in the evenings. A man will be 22 the newspaper, and seconds later it 23 as if he is trying to 24 it. Or he will fall asleep on the shoulder of the stranger 25 next to him. 26 place where unplanned short sleep 27 is in the lecture hall where a student will start snoring (打鼾) so 28 that the professor has to ask another student to 29 the sleeper awake. A more embarrassing (尴尬) situation occurs when a student starts falling into sleep and the 30 of the head pushes the arm off the 31 , and the movement carries the 32 of the body along. The student wakes up on the floor with no 33 of getting there. The worst time to fall asleep is when 34 . Police reports are full of 35 that occur when people fall into sleep and go 36 the road. If the drivers are 37 , they are not seriously hurt. One woman's car, 38 , went into the river. She woke up in four feet of 39 and thought it was raining. When people are really 40 , nothing will stop them from falling asleep — no matter where they are.

He prefers ______ the fruit at half price rather than ______ them to go bad.

I grew up in a house where the TV was seldom turned on and with one wall in my bedroom entirely lined with bookshelves, most of my childhood was spent on books I could get hold of. In fact, I grew up thinking of reading as natural as breathing and books unbelievably powerful in shaping perspectives (观点) by creating worlds we could step into, take part in and live in. With this unshakable belief, I, at fourteen, decided to become a writer. Here too, reading became useful. Every writer starts off knowing that he has something to say, but being unable to find the right ways to say it. He has to find his own voice by reading widely and discovering which parts of the writers he agrees or disagrees with, or agrees with so strongly that it reshapes his own world. He cannot write without loving to read, because only through reading other people's writing can one discover what works, what doesn't and, in the end, together with lots of practice, what voice he has. Now I am in college, and have come to realize how important it is to read fiction (文学作品). As a law student, my reading is in fact limited to subject matter—the volume (量) of what I have to read for classes every week means there is little time to read anything else. Such reading made it all the clearer to me that I live in a very small part in this great place called life. Reading fiction reminds me that there is life beyond my own. It allows me to travel across the high seas and along the Silk Road, all from the comfort of my own armchair, to experience, though secondhand, exciting experiences that I wouldn't necessarily be able to have in my lifetime.

It is the ______ of events which makes television so popular.(immediate)

Cars account for half the oil consumed in the U.S., about half the urban pollution and one fourth the greenhouse gases. They take a similar toll (损耗) of resources in other industrial nations and in the cities of the developing world. As vehicle use continues to increase in the coming decade, the U.S. and other countries will have to deal with these issues or else face unacceptable economic, health-related and political costs. It is unlikely that oil prices will remain at their current low level or that other nations will accept a large and growing U.S. contribution to global climatic change. Policymakers and industry have four options: reduce vehicle use, increase the efficiency and reduce the emissions of conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, switch to less harmful fuels, or find less polluting driving systems. The last of these—in particular the introduction of vehicles powered by electricity—is ultimately the only sustainable option. The other alternatives are attractive in theory but in practice are either impractical or offer only marginal improvements. For example, reduced vehicle use could solve traffic problems and a host of social and environmental problems, but evidence from around the world suggests that it is very difficult to make people give up their cars to any significant extent. In the U.S., mass-transit ridership and carpooling have declined since World War II. Even in Western Europe, with fuel prices averaging more than $1 a liter (about $4 a gallon) and with easily accessible mass transit and dense populations, cars still account for 80 percent of all passenger travel. Improved energy efficiency is also appealing, but automotive fuel economy has barely made any progress in 10 years. Alternative fuels such as natural gas, burned in internal-combustion engines, could be introduced at relatively low cost, but they would lead to only marginal reductions in pollution and greenhouse emissions (especially because oil companies are already spending billions of dollars every year to develop less polluting types of gasoline).

The deal will set the pace for the company's ______ over the next decade.(expand)