单选题Chinese poetry and philosophy have exerted great influence over ______.

单选题Theheavyrainandfloodswereresponsibleforallofthcfollowingexcept______.

单选题Which programming language is designed for the instruction of youngsters?

单选题The origin of the American party system can be traced to ______.

单选题What is the difference between larger classes and small classes?

单选题Which of the following can be inferred about the viewpoint expressed in the second paragraph of the passage?

单选题The decline of civility and good manners may be worrying people more than crime, according to Gentility Recalled, edited by Digby Anderson, which laments the breakdown of traditional codes that once regulated social conduct. It criticizes the fact that "manners" are scorned as repressive and outdated. The result, according to Mr. Anderson director of the Social Affairs Unit, an independent thing-tank -is a society characterized by rudeness: loutish behaviour on the streets, jostling in crowds, impolite shop assistants and bad-tempered drivers. Mr. Anderson says the cumulative effect of these-apparently trivial, but often offensive-is to make everyday life uneasy, unpredictable and unpleasant. As they are encountered far more often than crime, they can cause more anxiety than crime. When people lament the disintegration of law and order, he argues, what they generally mean is order, as manifested by courteous forms of social contact. Meanwhile, attempts to re-establish restraint and self-control through "politically correct" rules are artificial. The book has contributions from 12 academics in disciplines ranging from medicine to sociology and charts what it calls the "coarsening" of Britain. Old-fashioned terms such as "gentleman" and "lady" have lost all meaningful resonance and need to be re-evaluated, it says. Rachel Trickett, honorary fellow and former principal of St. Hugh's College, Oxford, says that the notion of a "lady" protects women rather than demeaning them. Feminism and demands for equality have blurred the distinctions between the sexes, creating situations where men are able to dominate women because of their more aggressive and forceful natures, she says. "Women, without some code of deference or respect, become increasingly victims." Caroline Moore, the first woman fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, points out that "gentleman" is now used only with irony or derision. "The popular view of a gentleman is poised somewhere between the imbecile parasite and the villainous one: between Woosteresque chinless wonders, and those heartless capitalist toffs who are ~.. the stock-in-trade of television." She argues that the concept is neither class-bound nor rigid; conventions of gentlemanly behaviour enable a man to act naturally as an individual within shared assumptions while taking his place in society. "Politeness is no constraint, precisely because the manners...are no 'code' but a language, rich, flexible, restrained and infinitely subtle." For Anthony O'hear, professor of philosophy at the University of Bradford, manners are closely associated with the different forms of behaviour appropriate to age and status. They curb both the impetuosity of youth and the bitterness of old age. Egalitarianism, he says, has led to people failing to act their age. "We have vice-chancellors with earrings, aristocrats as hippies...the trendy vicar on his motorbike." Dr Athena Leoussi, sociology lecturer at Reading University, bemoans the deliberate neglect by people of their sartorial appearance. Dress, she says, is the outward expression of attitudes and aspirations. The ubiquitousness of jeans "displays a utilitarian attitude" that has "led to the cultural impoverishment of everyday life". Dr Leoussi says that while cloths used to be seen as a means of concealing taboo forces of sexuality and violence, certain fashions-such as leather jackets have the opposite effect. Dr Bruce Charlton, a lecturer in public health medicine in Newcastle upon Tyne, takes issue with the excessive informality of relations between professionals such as doctors and bank managers, and their clients. He says this has eroded the distance and respect necessary in such relationships. For Tristam Engelhardt, professor of medicine in Houston, Texas, says manners are bound to morals. "Manners express a particular set of values," he says. "Good manners interpret and transform social reality. They provide social orientation./

单选题Which of the following city is regarded as the financial capital of the world?A. Washington D.C. B. Los Angeles C. New York D. London

单选题I'm Margery Hooper, your course coordinator, I'd like to welcome you all to Grange Manor Summer Music School. I hope you' 11 enjoy your life here. If you have anything unclear, don't hesitate to ask. As you know, we are running three - weekly courses currently this year: History of Music, Principle Tutor professor Hepworth; Choral Singing, conducted by Archibald Blake from the Royal Institute of Music; and, last but not least, a new departure for us, classical Guitar for Beginners, Tutor Clive Mortimer. Now you all know--at least I hope you do what course you are registered for. As soon as you've had tea, we'd like you to report to our secretary, Miss Mathews--you'll find her in the office on the first floor. She'll give you your course number and timetable and explain where the various classrooms are, what books you'll need, and whether they are available in the library. Besides, she'll give you detailed information about how you are scored. If books are not available in the library, you can try in the bookstore. Our bookstore is next to the reception in the main hall. It's open from 9 to 10 a.m. daily. Now about meals--breakfast 8:30 to 9 a. m., full evening meal 6:30 to 8:30 p. m. in the dining room. I'm afraid you have to make your own arrangements about lunch, but the cafeteria in the canteen is open from 10 to 4 for sandwiches and coffee. Classes finish at 5. If you look at the notice board in the main hall, you'll see that we have arranged a variety of evening entertainments for you, and Saturday excursions. Anyone who wants to go on an excursion should inform the secretary as soon as possible as the coach company need to know numbers. I hope you'll all have a very enjoyable time, and make a lot of new friends.

单选题 Young drivers who use cell phones at the wheel drive like the elderly — with slower reaction times and an increased risk of accidents — a new study shows. And what's more, hands-free phones are no safer than handheld ones, scientists behind the study say. "If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, their reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone," said David Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor and principal author of the study. "For five years or so we've been interested in what happens when someone picks up a cell phone and starts to drive," Strayer said. One thing that appears to happen is that phone-using drivers of all ages have significantly diminished reaction times. They are slower to hit the brakes and more likely to get into accidents. Subjects took "freeway drives" in a simulator, using a hands-free mobile phone for half of the drive. "We're seeing an 18 to 20 percent slowing of reaction times," Strayer explained. "That means if someone is talking on a phone, it takes them longer to hit the brakes. They are more likely to get into an accident, and if they do get into one, it might be more severe, because they won't be able to decelerate as much. What you've effectively done is made the reactions of a 20-year-old comparable to those of a 70-year-old." Elderly drivers saw similar declines in reaction times when they took the wheel with phones. In a bit of a surprise, however, their reactions did not deteriorate at a greater rate than those of their younger counterparts. "We see in the lab that older adults tend to have slower reaction times in general and also sometimes have difficulty multitasking relative to maybe a 20-year-old," Strayer said. But in the study the 20 older subjects (average age: 70) suffered no greater impairment than their 20 younger colleagues (average age: 20). Phone users of all ages also took 17 percent longer to return to the speed of traffic after braking. Such sluggish driving can affect the likelihood and severity of rear-end collisions and help to create gridlock, especially when many drivers display such behavior. Strayer and his group employed only hands-free phones for testing. Some states, including New York and New Jersey, have enacted safety legislation that restricts drivers to hands-free mobile phone use. But many researchers say the taws aren't enough — and may be completely useless. "We have research that concludes that the use of a phone, whether handheld or hands-free, can have the same negative impact," said Rae Tyson, spokesman for the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). In fact, NHTSA studies at the University of Iowa suggested that in some cases, hands-free devices could pose a greater risk, because tasks like dialing can be more difficult and take longer. The University of Utah team's research delivered similar results. "The distinction some laws make between hands-free and regular phones doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny," Strayer explained. "We've done studies, and other studies in Sweden and Australia have all come to the same conclusion: that it's a very similar signature of impairment." The distracting effects of cell phones are attributed largely to the conversations themselves, which draw a driver's attention away from the road. The effect is dubbed inattention blindness. "Not to say that dialing isn't a problem, but you can probably develop work-arounds where your hands are off the wheel for a limited amount of time," Strayer said. "Drivers engage in multitasks, like eating a sandwich or tuning the radio, when they perceive a lull in traffic and think it's safer. People are not too bad at judging those lulls if it's a relatively short activity." But the context of phone conversation seems too big a distraction for most motorists. "We used an eye tracker to try to see what they were looking at while talking on the phone," Strayer said. "The measurements show that they simply aren't picking up information that's right in front of them, whether it's as mundane as a street sign or even a person or child on the side of road." Interestingly subjects in earlier studies displayed no similar distractions when talking to passengers, or listening to the radio or books on tape. The NHTSA believes that driver distractions of all types are a factor in probably 25 to 30 percent of crashes, but more specific data are unavailable. "Our findings and those of others are that driving performance can be compromised by using wireless communication devices," Tyson said. "In general there is certainly the potential for deterioration of driving skills if you are talking and driving at the same time — but nobody knows precisely what the impact of cell phones has been."

单选题Noam Chomsky is a(n) ______ linguist.A. American theoreticalB. American practicalC. Russian theoreticalD. Russian practical

单选题We can learn from the passage that Blackpool used to

单选题Australia is the largest exporter of ______.A. wheatB. meatC. daily productsD. wool

单选题 Questions 8 and 9 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news.

单选题[此试题无题干]

单选题John Steinbeck was awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for his masterpiece ______.A. The Moon Is Down B. In Dubious BattleC. The Grapes of Wrath D. Cup of Gold

单选题Although the distribution of recorded music went digital with the introduction of the compact disc in the early 1980s, technology has had a large impact on the way music is made and recorded as well. At the most basic level, the invention of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), a language enabling computers and sound synthesizers to talk to each other, has given individual musicians powerful tools with which to make music. "The MIDI interface enabled basement musicians to gain power which had been available only in expensive recording studios, " One expert observed. "It enables synthesis of sounds that have never existed before, and storage and subsequent simultaneous replay and mixing of multiple sound tracks. Using a moderately powerful desktop computer running a music composition program and a '500 synthesizer, any musically literate person can write -- and play! -- a string quartet in an afternoon. " Whereas many musicians use computers as a tool in composing or producing music, Tod Machover uses computers to design the instruments and environments that produce his music. As a professor of music and media at the MIT Media Lab, Machover has pioneered hyper - instruments: hybrids of computers and musical instruments that allow users to create sounds simply by raising their hands, pointing with a "virtual baton, " or moving their entire body in a "sensor chair. " Similar work on a "virtual orchestra" is being done by Geoffrey Wright, head of the computer music program at John Hopkins University's Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland. Wright uses conductors' batons that emit infrared light beams to generate data about the speed and direction of the batons, data that can then be translated by computers into instructions for a synthesizer to produce music. In Machover's best- known musical work, Brain Opera (1996), 125 people interact with each other and a group of hyper - instruments to produce sounds that can be blended into a musical performance. The final opera is assembled from these sound fragments, material contributed by people on the Web, and Machover's own music. Machover says he is motivated to give people "an active, directly participatory relationship with music. " More recently, Machover helped design the Meteorite Museum, a remarkable underground museum that opened in June 1998 in Essen, Germany. Visitors approach the museum through a glass atrium, open an enormous door, enter a cave, and then descend by ramps into various multimedia rooms. Machover composed the music and designed many of the interactions for these rooms. In the Transflow Room, the undulating walls are covered with 100 rubber pads shaped like diamonds. "By hitting the pads you can make and shape a sound and images in the room. Brain Opera was an ensemble of individual instruments, while the Transflow Room is a single instrument played by 40 people. The room blends the reactions and images of the group. " Machover's projects at MIT include Music Toys and Toys of Tomorrow, which are creating devices that he hopes will eventually make a Toy Symphony possible. Machover describes one of the toys as an embroidered ball the size of a small pumpkin with ridges on the outside and miniature speakers inside. "We've recently figured out how to send digital information through fabric or thread, " he said. "So the basic idea is to squeeze the ball and where you squeeze and where you place your fingers will affect the sound produced. You can also change the pitch to high or low, or harmonize with other balls. " Computer music has a long way to go before it wins mass acceptance, however. Martin Goldsmith, host of National Public Radio's Performance Today, explains why: "I think that a reason a great moving piece of computer music hasn't been written yet is that -- in this instance -- the technology stands between the creator and the receptor and prevents a real human connection, " Goldsmith said. "All that would change in an instant if a very accomplished composer -- a Steve Reich or John Corigliano or Henryk Gorecki -- were to write a great piece of computer music, but so far that hasn't happened. Nobody has really stepped forward to make a wide range of listeners say, ' Wow, what a terrific instrument that computer is for making music! ' /

单选题The capital of Australia is______.

单选题Adelaide. the capital of South Australia, is internationally known for its ______. A. wine. B. beautiful scenery. C. valuable minerals. D. arts festival.

单选题{{B}}TEXT C{{/B}} Britain's east midlands were once the picture of English countryside, alive with flocks, shepherds, skylarks and buttercups—the stuff of fairytales. In 1941 George Marsh left school at the age of 14 to work as a herdsman in Nottinghamshire, the East Midlands countryside his parents and grandparents farmed. He recalls skylarks nesting in cereal fields, which when accidentally disturbed would fly singing into the sky. But in his lifetime, Marsh has seen the color and diversity of his native land fade. Farmers used to grow about a ton of wheat per acre; now they grow four tons. Pesticides have killed off the insects upon which skylarks fed, and year-round harvesting has driven the birds from their winter nests. Skylarks are now rare. "Farmers kill anything that affects production, "says Marsh." Agriculture is too efficient." Anecdotal evidence of a looming crisis in biodiversity is now being reinforced by science. In their comprehensive surveys of plants, butterflies and birds over the past 20 to 40 years in Britain, ecologists Jeremy Thomas and Carly Stevens found significant population declines in a third of all native species. Butterflies are the furthest along—71 percent of Britain's 58 species are shrinking in number, and some, like the large blue and tortoiseshell, are already extinct. In Britain's grasslands, a key habitat, 20 percent of all animal, plant and insect species are on the path to extinction. There's hardly a corner of the country's ecology that isn't affected by this downward spiral. The problem would be bad enough if it were merely local, but it's not: because Britain's temperate ecology is similar to that in so many other parts of the world, It's the best microcosm scientists have been able to study in detail. Scientists have sounded alarms about species' extinction in the past, but always specific to a particular animal or place—whales in the 1980s or the Amazonian rain forests in the 1990s. This time, though, the implications are much wider. The Amazon is a "biodiversity hot spot" with a unique ecology. But in Britain, "the main drivers of change are the same processes responsible for species' declines worldwide, "says Thomas. The findings, published in the journal Science, provide the first clear evidence that the world is in the throes of a massive extinction. Thomas and Stevens argue that we are facing a loss of 65 to 95 percent of the world's species, on the scale of an ice age or the meteorite that may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If so, this would be only the sixth time such devastation had occurred in the past 600 million years. The other five were associated with one-off events like the ice ages, a volcanic eruption or a meteor. This time, ecosystems are dying a thousand deaths from over fishing and the razing of the rain forests, but also from advances in agriculture. The British study, for instance, finds that one of the biggest problems is nitrogen pollution Nitrogen is released when fossil fuels burn in cars and power plants, but also when ecologically rich heath-lands are plowed and fertilizers are spread. Nitrogen-rich fertilizers fuel the growth of tall grasses, which in turn overshadow and kill off delicate flowers like harebells and eyebrights. Even seemingly innocuous practices are responsible for vast ecological damage. When British farmers stopped feeding horses and cattle with hay and switched to silage, a kind of preserved short grass, they eliminated a favorite nesting spot of corncrakes, birds known for their raspy nightly mating calls; corncrake populations have fallen 76 percent in the past 20 years. The depressing list goes on and on. Many of these practices are being repeated throughout the world, in one form or another, which is why scientists believe that the British study has global implications. Wildlife is getting blander. "We don't know which species are essential to the web of life so we're taking a massive risk by eliminating any of them," says David Wedin, professor of ecology at the University of Nebraska. Chances are we'll be seeing the results of this experiment before too long.