单选题{{B}}Passage 2{{/B}} When Jules Verne wrote Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864, there were many conflicting theories about the nature of the Earth' s interior. Some geologists thought that it contained a highly compressed ball of incandescent gas, while others suspected that it consisted of separate shells, each made of different materials. Today well over a century later, there is little direct evidence of what lies beneath our feet. Most of our knowledge of the Earth' s interior comes not from mines or boreholes, but from the study of seismic waves--powerful pulses of energy released by earthquakes. The way that seismic waves travel shows that the Earth' s interior is far from uniform. The continents and the seabed are formed by the crust--a thin sphere of relatively light, solid rock. Beneath the crust lies the mantle, a different layer that extends approximately halfway to the Earth' s center. There the rock is the subject of a battle between increasing heat and growing pressure. In its high levels, the mantle is relatively cool; at greater depths, high temperatures make the rock behave more like a liquid than a solid. Deeper still, the pressure is even more intense, preventing the rock from melting in spite of a higher temperature. Beyond a depth of around 2,900 kilometers, a great change takes place and the mantle gives way to the core. Some seismic waves cannot pass through the core and others are bent by it. From this and other evidence, geologists conclude that the outer core is probably liquid, with a solid center. It is almost certainly made of iron, mixed with smaller amounts of other elements such as nickel. The conditions in the Earth' s core make it a far more alien world than space. Its solid iron heart is subjected to unimaginable pressure and has a temperature of about 9,000°F. Although scientists can speculate about its nature, neither humans nor machines will ever be able to visit it.

单选题For many years, any discussion of reparations to compensate the descendants of African slaves for 246 years of bondage and another century of legalized discrimination was dismissed. Many whites and blacks alike scoffed at the idea, reasoning that slavery is part of the past that would only unleash new demons if it were resurrected. Opponents contend that the fledgling reparations movement overlooks many important facts. First, they assert, reparations usually are paid to direct victims, as was the case when the US government apologized and paid compensation to Japanese-Americans interned during World War Ⅱ. Similarly, Holocaust survivors have received payments from the Germans. In addition, not all blacks were slaves, and an estimated 3, 000 were slave owners. Also, many immigrants not only came to the United States after slavery ended, but they also faced discrimination. Should they be paid reparations, too? Or should they receive them? And regardless of how much slave labor contributed to the United States" wealth, opponents contend, blacks benefit from that wealth today. As a group, Afro-Americans are the best-educated, wealthiest blacks on the planet. But that attitude is slowly changing. At least 10 cities, including Chicago, Detroit and Washington, have passed resolutions in the past two years urging federal hearings into the impact of slavery. Mainstream civil rights groups such as National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference regularly raise the issue. The surging interest in reparations parallels a heightened sensitivity to the horrors of slavery, in which as many as 6 million Africans perished in the journey to the Americas alone. There also is growing attention being paid to the huge economic bounty that slavery created for private companies and the country as a whole. Earliest this year, Aetna Inc. apologized for selling insurance policies that compensated slave owners for financial losses when their slaves died. Last summer, the Hartford Courant in Connecticut printed a front-page apology for the profits it made from running ads for the sale of slaves and the capture of runaways. Next month, a new California law will require insurance companies to disclose any slave insurance policies they may have issued. The state also is requiring University of Californian officials to assemble a team of scholars to research the history of slavery and report how current California businesses benefited. Proponents of reparations argue that, even for nearly a century after emancipation in 1865, blacks legally were still excluded from the opportunities that became the cornerstones for the white middle-class.

单选题Which of the following helps track down the criminals.

单选题 Queuing is nothing special in Japan. Every day, television programs show long lines of people queuing for up to one hour even in front of regular noodle shops, only to finish their food within less than ten minutes. Why Japanese people queue so often? Do they love it? Probably they do. According to Japanese people, just like an excessively high price can evoke an image of equally high quality, long waiting lines act as an indicator for popularity, reduce availability and increase the subjective value of a good. Thus, for many Japanese customers, waiting lines are probably the most effective advertisement. For example, in an article published in The Japan Times in summer 2007, a Japanese woman confessed that she enjoyed queuing outside shops and restaurants and that she usually joined the line before asking the person in front of her what kind of product was sold. Standing in line also increases and extends anticipation until—yatto! (finally!)—patience is rewarded with the desired product. But when taken to an extreme level, the product one is actually queuing for ceases to be of any importance at all. There are also some customers who are unable to queue or who are unwilling to wait, thinking it's a waste of time queuing in a line. What could they do? They can rent a queuer who will stand in line and purchase the desired product for them. Obviously, this service is not free of charge. Some service companies who offer all kinds of unusual service provide rentable "queuers" What's more, in addition to providing queuers to individuals, the service companies also provide queuers to some shops to increase the image of a hard-to-get product and make customers want to join the line by forming or extending lines. Therefore, waiting lines have become a marketing tool and it would not be surprising to find professional queuers in a line. Some people view it a pure speculation, but they can't deny that it really works and the wage of a few professional queuers to keep the line in shape would be a minor investment compared with what would happen if the queue suddenly disappeared. However, success is not always guaranteed because the attractiveness of waiting in line can easily backfire if the desired product does not meet expectations.

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单选题______ approach the same linguistic unit from different perspectives. A. Syntax and semantics B. Phonology and pragmatics C. Phonetics and morphology D. Semantics and pragmatics

单选题Questions 14-16 are based on the radio program. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14-16.

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单选题______ I had time, I would have run round that lake again. A. If B. Unless C. Had D. When

单选题I was telling my boy Sonny the story of the hare and the tortoise. At the end I said, "Son, remember: slow and steady wins the race. Don't you think there is something to learn from the tortoise?" He opened his eyes wide. "Do you mean next time when I'm entering for the 60 meter race I should wish that Billy and Tony and Sandy would all fall asleep half way?" I was shocked. "But the tortoise didn't wish the hare would fall asleep!" "He must have wished that," Sonny said. "Otherwise how could he be so stupid as to race with the hare? He knew quite well that the hare ran a hundred times faster than he himself did." "He didn't have such a wish," I insisted. "He won the race by perseverance(毅力), by pushing on steadily." Sonny thought for a while. "That's a lie," he said. "He won because he was lucky. If the hare didn't fall asleep, the tortoise would never have won the race. That' s for sure." I gave up. Today' s children are not like what we used to be. They are just hopeless.

单选题What is the author's attitude toward a financial planner?

单选题 When he died in April of 1983, Dr. Joel Hildebrand was 101 years old, who had been married for seventy-five years, and had taught freshman chemistry to over 40,000 college students. For his life, he had published a popular chemistry textbook and dozens of articles, managed the U. S. Olympic ski team, and discovered a way to allow deep-sea divers to stay underwater longer. In his own way, Dr. Hildebrand was certainly a genius. Dr. Hildebrand's interest in chemistry began at an early age. In an interview, he once said that his interest had been formed because he was fortunate enough to be born before there was television, so he had to make his own decisions about what to pay attention to. Even as a student in high school. Dr. Hildebrand had the reputation as the one who learned more chemistry than his teacher knew. As a result he was given the keys to the high school chemistry lab. And there he discovered that the correct formula for a certain chemical compound was not the one given in his chemistry book but a totally different one. Dr. Hildebrand went on to teach at the University of California at Berkeley and remained there for almost forty years. During that time, Dr. Hildebrand discovered that the gas helium could be combined with oxygen for use as diving gas to allow divers to dive deeper and take the great pressure of the water without the physical discomforts that had been experienced when they used another gas, nitrogen. The use of helium for deep-sea diving is now standard practice. Dr. Hildebrand was also valuable to his country during both world wars. In World War I he analyzed the poisonous gases used on the battlefield and helped develop a truck that could clean and treat soldiers' clothes which had been contaminated by poisonous gases during fighting. In World War Ⅱ he helped develop a type of snowmobile, a vehicle used to carry soldiers through the snow in northern countries. Dr. Hildebrand's retirement from teaching at the age of seventy was required by state law in California. He objected to this, joking that he thought a teacher's time of retirement ought to be determined not by age but by how many of that teacher's students were still awake after the first fifteen minutes of class! Dr. Hildebrand's writing career continued, however, and was still feeling strong at the age of 100, when he published an article on the theory of chemical solutions. Dr. Hildebrand's love of life and his interest in it were an inspiration to all who knew him. When asked once how he could have such ageless energy and vigor, he said, "I chose my ancestors carefully."