单选题Questions 11—13 are based on the following talk about the famous magician Harry Houdini. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11—13.

单选题The emotional aspects of an object are more important than its physical aspects in that they ______.

单选题British cancer researchers have found that childhood leukaemia is caused by an infection and clusters of cases around industrial sites are the result of population mixing that increases exposure. The research published in the British Journal of Cancer backs up a 1988 theory that some as yet unidentified infection caused leukaemia--not the environmental factors widely blamed for the disease. "Childhood leukaemia appears to be an unusual result of a common infection," said Sir Richard Doll, an internationally-known cancer expert who first linked tobacco with lung cancer in 1950. "A virus is the most likely explanation. You would get an increased risk of it if you suddenly put a lot of people from large towns in a rural area, where you might have people who had not been exposed to the infection. " Doll was commenting on the new findings by researchers at Newcastle University, which focused on a cluster of leukaemia cases around the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria in northern England. Scientists have been frying to establish why there was more leukaemia in children around the Sellafield area, but have failed to establish a link with radiation or pollution. The Newcastle University research by Heather Dickinson and Louise Parker showed the cluster of cases could have been predicted because of the amount of population mixing going on in the area, as large numbers of construction workers and nuclear staff moved into a rural setting. "Our study shows that population mixing can account for the (Sellafield) leukaemia cluster and that all children, whether their parents are incomers or locals, are at a higher risk if they are born in an area of high population mixing," Dickinson said in a statement issued by the Cancer Research Campaign, which published the British Journal of Cancer. Their paper adds crucial weight to the 1988 theory put forward by Leo Kinlen, a cancer epidemiologist at Oxford University, who said that exposure to a common unidentified infection through population mixing resulted in the disease.

单选题　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} El Nino is the term used for the period when sea surface temperatures are above normal off the South American coast along the equatorial Pacific, sometimes called the Earth's heartbeat, and is a dramatic but mysterious climate system that periodically rages across the Pacific. El Nino means "the little boy" or "the Christ child" in Spanish, and is so called because its warm current is felt along coastal Peru and Ecuador around Christmas. But the local warming is just part of an intricate set of changes in the ocean and atmosphere across the tropical Pacific, which covers a third of the Earth's circumference. Its intensity is such that it affects temperatures, storm tracks and rainfall around the world. Droughts in Africa and Australia tropical storms in the Pacific, torrential rains along the Californian coast and the Peruvian deserts have all been ascribed to the whim of El Nino. This at least is the theory, and it has worked pretty well over the past century, with El Nino occurring about every three to five years and La Nina in between. But there have been some baffling developments in recent years. For one thing, El Nino has returned three times in the past four years. For another, since 1976 El Nino has dominated relative to the cooler phase (La Nina). There has been only one significant La Nina, but five El Ninos, including an extremely severe one in 1982—1983 that caused damage costing 8 billion dollars. Moreover a huge pool of warm water has settled down near the dateline in the central Pacific. Yet it is important to understand the changes if scientists are to be able to forecast the climatic effects of El Ninos with any degree of accuracy. This is not just an academic task— accurate forecasts can spell out feast or famine in many tropical countries around the world. Forecasting efforts have focused on El Nino, whose effects are generally more severe than those of La Nina. A worrying possibility is that the changes maybe due to greenhouse warming. If so, the recent fluctuations may be an early glimpse of worse things to come.

单选题In the early days of the old West in North America, life was difficult. People lived on farms far away from other families. And there were some big problems. For example, how did one family make a house? What did families do to build houses? They asked for help. They invited their friends and neighbors to a work party for a few days. The women cooked together. The men worked on the building. For the children it was like a holiday. Together these people built a house or a barn (谷仓). At another time the family with the new house would help their neighbors. A work party is really cooperation. To cooperate means "to work together". Many people can work together, hen the big job becomes a small job for many workers. Working together can be fun too. Today there isn't much cooperation. People don't work together very much. Some people don't know their neighbors. Why don't we work with other people? It can be fun. Life can become easier too.

单选题 Now the politics of US health reform are in a mess but the odds on a bill passing in the end are improving. It will not be a tidy thing, but if it moves the country close to universal health insurance the administration will call it a success. At this moment, that point of view may seem too optimistic. Last Friday, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives had hoped to produce a finished bill. But they failed, because the party's fiscal conservatives demanded further savings. House Democrats are also divided on revenue-raising measures. The Senate is dealing with the same problems: how to contain the cost of expanded insurance coverage, and how to pay for what remains, so that the reform adds nothing to the budget deficit over the course of 10 years. Where does the money come from remains the crucial problem. Apparently, the answer is straightforward: tax employer-provided health benefits. At present, an employer in the U.S. is free from paying tax if he pays the health insurance while an individual purchaser has to buy it with after-tax dollars. This anomaly costs nearly $250bn a year in revenue—enough to pay for universal coverage, and then some. Yet many Democrats in both the House and the Senate oppose to ending it. Will there be a breakthrough in terms of that aspect? However, to get employers out of health insurance should be an aim, not something to be feared. Many US workers have complained that if they lose their job, their health insurance will go with it and tying insurance to employment will undoubtedly worsen the insecurity. What about high-risk workers who are thrown on to the individual market? If the tax break were abolished as part of a larger reform which obliges insurers to offer affordable coverage to all people regardless of pre-existing conditions, it will not be a problem. It's true this change needs to increase tax, and many people in Congress are reluctant to contemplate in any form. But some kind of increase is inescapable. This one makes more sense than most. The president should say so. His Republican opponent John McCain called for this change during the election campaign and Mr Obama and other Democrats assailed the idea. So what? Mr. Obama has changed his ideas on other aspects of health reform. For example, it seems that he now prefer an individual mandate to buy insurance. Let us see a similar flexibility on taxing employer-provided insurance.

单选题If a student took the old SAT in January, he has to take another test if he applies for

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单选题 Most publishing is now "electronic "in the sense that books, magazines and newspapers are prepared on computers, and exist as computer files before they are printed on paper. Often there are advantages to giving readers access to the electronic versions of publications as well as - or even instead of -the printed versions. Print publications have lots of advantages. Paper is pleasant to handle, easy to read, and very portable: you can read it almost anywhere. On the other hand, print has its weaknesses. Paper is expensive, and articles are often cut to fit the space available, printing and distributing paper is expensive and takes time. Printed materials are expensive to store and almost impossible to search, Electronic publishing offers solutions to all these problems. Suppose a publisher makes the electronic copy of a newspaper or magazine available from the net, perhaps on the Internets World Wide Web. No paper is used and disc space is cheap, so internet publishing costs very little. Articles don' t have to be cut (though there is of course a limit to the amount people are willing to read on line). Internet publishing is fast, and readers can access material as soon as it becomes available: within minutes, instead of the next day, next week or nest month. Internet publishing goes beyond geographical boundaries: the humblest local pa- per can be read everywhere form New York to London to Delhi to Tokyo, Delivery costs are low because there are no newsagents to pay, and no postal charges: readers pick up the bills for their on-line sessions, also, computer- based publications are simple to store (on disc) and every word can be searched electronically. At the moment, newspapers and magazines, TV and radio stations, news agencies and book publishers are making content freely available on the Web because they are competing for "mind share". Perhaps they want to find out if they can attract and hold an audience on line, or perhaps they re afraid of missing out because “everyone else is doing it.” But don't count on things staying that way. Publishers are not in business to lose money.

单选题"British trial system is more like a game than a serious attempt to do justice." It implies that ______.

单选题It can be inferred from the passage that the author and Walzer differ in which of the following aspects?

单选题Standard English is the variety of English which is usually used in print and which is normally taught in schools and to non-native speakers learning the language. It is also the variety which is normally (21) by educated people and used in news broadcasts and other (22) situations. The difference between standard and nonstandard, it should be noted, has (23) in principle to do with differences between formal and colloquial (24) ; standard English has colloquial as well as formal variants. (25) , the standard variety of English is based on the London (26) of English that developed after the Norman Conquest resulted in the removal of the Court from Winchester to London. This dialect became the one (27) by the educated, and it was developed and promoted (28) a model, or norm, for wider and wider segments of society. It was also the (29) that was carried overseas, but not one unaffected by such export. Today, (30) English is arranged to the extent that the grammar and vocabulary of English are (31) the same everywhere in the world where English is used; (32) among local standards is realIy quite minor, (33) the Singapore, South Africa, and Irish varieties are really very (34) different from one another so far as grammar and vocabulary are (35) . Indeed, Standard English is so powerful that it exerts a tremendous (36) on all local varieties, to the extent that many of long-established dialects of England have (37) much of their vigor and there is considerable pressure on them to be (38) . This latter situation is not unique (39) English: it is also true in other countries where processes of standardization are (40) . But it sometimes creates problems for speakers who try to strike some kind of compromise between local norms and national, even supranational (跨国的) ones.

单选题Psychologists say the one factor that differentiates people who are creative from those who aren't is belief-creative people believe they are creative. To be creative, you simply have to believe and act as if you are. Once you believe you are creative, you begin to find ideas and to imagine all kinds of probable and improbable solutions. Here are a few techniques to help you get started looking for ideas you may already have in your mind. Play a different role. Suppose you want to improve your company's training program. Play the role of another person. Write, from the perspective of that role, what changes the person would make. Record any interesting thoughts or new ideas. Randomly pick something and compare it with your problem. Open a dictionary and randomly, without looking, pick a word. Force yourself to make a comparison between the problem and the word. Suppose you are having a problem with a manager and you randomly pick the word "pencil". You might list the characteristics of the pencil and determine how those characteristics are like your problem. Imagine you have a magic wand (魔杖). Consider what changes or actions you will use the wand to create, especially those that wouldn't normally be possible. After letting your imagination run, ask yourself what specific features of those wishes particularly appeal to you. Think of some feasible changes of actions that embody some of those specific features. Think outrageously. The more incredible and divergent from conventional thinking an idea is, the greater the possibilities for new twists. A frozen-fish processor used this technique. A line of his frozen fish tasted bland and boring. He tried everything to improve the taste, including keeping the fish alive in holding tanks until he put a predator (食肉动物) in the holding tank with fish. The fish kept moving to escape the predator and they retained their vitality and flavor. Challenge assumptions. Reserve the assumptions you make about problems. List the assumptions and write the opposite. Henry Ford challenged the practice of having workers to go where building materials were kept. In order to build cars, by creating a system that brought the materials to the workers instead. With this reversal, the assembly line was born. Be an artist. Write a poem about your job. Poetry helps give a voice to your wildest imagination, which may lead to new ideas. Try the above methods and test if your creativity might be somewhat improved.

单选题According to the author, what should today's parents do?