单选题There are so many new books about dying that there are now special shelves set aside for them in bookshops, along with the health-diet and home-repair paperbacks. Some of them are so 1 with detailed information and step-by-step instructions for performing the function, that you"d think this was a new sort of 2 which all of us are now required to learn. The strongest impression the casual reader gets is that proper dying has become an extraordinary, 3 an exotic experience, something only the specially trained can do. 4 , you could be led to believe that we are the only 5 capable of being aware of death, and that when the rest of nature is experiencing the life cycle and dying, one generation after 6 , it is a different kind of process, done automatically and trivially, or more "natural", as we say. An elm in our backyard 7 the blight (枯萎病) this summer and dropped stone dead, leafless, almost overnight. One weekend 8 was a normal-looking elm, maybe a little bare in spots but 9 alarming, and the next weekend it was gone, passed over, departed, taken. Taken is right, for the tree surgeon came by yesterday with his 10 of young helpers and their cherry picker, and took it down branch by branch and carted it off in the back of a red truck, everyone 11 . The dying 12 a field mouse, at the jaws of an amiable household cat, is a spectacle I have beheld many times. It 13 to make me wince. However, early in life I gave up throwing sticks 14 the cat to make him drop the mouse, 15 the dropped mouse regularly went ahead and died anyway.

单选题Man: David really has an eye for beauty. Woman: You can say that again. Question: What does the woman mean?

单选题It can be inferred from the context that the "flip side" (Line 4, Para. 2) refers to ______.

单选题The earthquake that occurred in India this year was a major calamity in which a great man was lost.

单选题What is the passage mainly talking about?

单选题Just over three years old and about four-feet tall. Methuselah is growing well. "It"s lovely." Dr. Sarah Sallon said of the date palm，whose parents may have provided food for the besieged Jews at Masada some 2 000 years ago. The little tree was sprouted in 2005 from a seed recovered from Masada, where rebelling Jews committed suicide rather than surrender to Roman attackers. Radiocarbon dating of seed fragments clinging to its root, as well as other seeds found with it that didn"t sprout, indicate they were about 2 000 years old—the oldest seed known to have been sprouted and grown. Sallon, director of the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at Hadassah Medical Organization in Israel, updates the saga of Methuselah in Friday"s edition of the journal Science. One thing they don"t know yet is whether it"s a boy or girl. Date palms differ by sex, but experts can"t tell the difference until the tree is six or seven years old, Sallon said. She hopes there"s a chance to use it to restore the extinct Judean date palm, once prized not only for its fruit but also for medicinal uses. The researchers have had a look at the plant"s DNA, however, and found it shares just over half its genes with modern date cultivars(栽培品种)． "Part of our project is to preserve ancient knowledge of how plants were used," Sallon said in a telephone interview. "To domesticate them so we have a ready source of raw material. " Her Middle Eastern Medicinal Plant Project is working to conserve and reintroduce plants to the region where they once lived. "Many species are endangered and becoming extinct. Raising the dead is very difficult, so it"s better to preserve them before they become extinct," she said. The oldest documented seed to be grown previously was a 1 300-year-old lotus, Sallon said.

单选题It was the responsibility of government to provide instruction so that the talented would be able to enter government service and thus perpetuate the moral and ethical foundation of society.

单选题A: What are you and Joe doing this weekend, Michelle? Would you be free to come over for drinks after dinner sometime? B: ______

单选题Man: Jane, do you know what the faculty members are doing among pizza boxes and soda cans? Woman: They are making time for the economic and management seminar. Question: What conclusion can we draw from this conversation?

单选题There is no denying that students should learn something about how computers work, just as we expect them at least to understand that the internal combustion engine (内燃机) has something to do with burning fuel, expanding gases and pistons (活塞) being driven. For people should have some basic idea of how the things that they use do what they do. Further, students might be helped by a course that considers the computer"s impact on society. But that is not what is meant by computer literacy. For computer literacy is not a form of literacy (读写能力) ; it is a trade skill that should not be taught as a liberal art. Learning how to use a computer and learning how to program one are two distinct activities. A case might be made that the competent citizens of tomorrow should free themselves from their fear of computers. But this is quite different from saying that all ought to know how to program one. Leave that to people who have chosen programming as a career. While programming can be lots of fun, and while our society needs some people who are experts at it, the same is true of auto repair and violin-making. Learning how to use a computer is not that difficult, and it gets easier all the time as programs become more "user-friendly". Let us assume that in the future everyone is going to have to know how to use a computer to be a competent citizen. What does the phrase "learning to use a computer" mean? It sounds like "learning to drive a car", that is, it sounds as if there is some set of definite skills that, once acquired, enable one to use a computer. In fact, "learning to use a computer" is much more like "learning to play a game", but learning the rules of one game may not help you play a second game, whose rules may not be the same. There is no such a thing as teaching someone how to use a computer. One can only teach people to use this or that program and generally that is easily accomplished.

单选题Man: It seems the restaurants here have little business these days. Woman: That"s true, But ours is a scenic resort. And this is not the busy season. When summer comes, you"ll see armies of tourists waiting in line in order to get a seat. Question: What do we learn from the conversation about the restaurants in the town?

单选题Milton Hershey was a successful entrepreneur whose open-hearted generosity continues to touch the lives of thousands.

单选题A: Excuse me. Could you show me the way to the nearest subway station? B: ______

单选题In the 1970s many of us thought working outside the home would be liberating for women, freeing them from financial dependence on men and allowing them roles beyond those of wife and mother. It hasn"t worked out that way . Women"s labor has been bought on the cheap, their working hours have become longer and their family commitments have barely diminished. The reality for most working women is a near impossible feat of working ever harder. There have been new opportunities for some women: professions once closed to them, such as law, have opened up. Women managers are commonplace, though the top boardrooms remain male preserves. Professional and managerial women have done well out of neoliberalism. Their salaries allow them to hire domestic help. But more women, such as the supermarket or call centre workers; the cooks, cleaners and hairdressers, all find themselves in low-wage, low-status jobs with no possibility of paying to have their houses cleaned by someone else. Even those in professions once-regarded as reasonably high-status, such as teaching, nursing or office work, have seen that status pushed down with longer hours, more regulation and lower pay. Women"s right to work should not mean a family life where partners rarely see each other or their children. Yet a quarter of all families with dependent children have one parent working nights or evenings, many of them because of childcare problems. The legislative changes of the 1960s and 1970s helped establish women"s legal and financial independence, but we have long come up against the limits of the law. A more radical social transformation would mean using the country"s wealth—much of it now produced by women—to create a decent family life. A 35-hour week and a national childcare service would be a start. But it is hard to imagine the major employers conceding such demands. Every gain that women have made at work has had to be fought for. Women"s lives have undergone a revolution over the past few decades that has seen married women, and mothers in particular, go from a private family role to a much more social role at work. But they haven"t left the family role behind: now they are expected to work even harder to do both.

单选题Woman: Does a half gallon of fresh milk still sell for $1.50? Man: Yes, but today if you buy two half-gallons, the second is only half price. Question: How much will the man pay for a gallon of fresh milk today?

单选题Shopping malls have some advantages in suffering from shorter periods of ______ business.

单选题It is required that during the process, great care has to be taken to protect the ______silk from damage.

单选题What"s a label worth? A lot, it seems, when it comes to towels in a New York shop. Two Harvard University researchers, Michael Hiscox and Nicholas Smyth conducted an experiment on two sets of towels. One lot carried a label with the logo "Fair and Square" and the following message: These towels have been made under fair labor conditions, in a safe and healthy working environment which is free of discrimination, and where management has committed to respecting the rights and dignity of workers. The other set had no such label. Over five months, the researchers observed the impact of making various changes such as switching the label to the other set of towels and raising prices. The results were striking: not only did sales of towels increase when they carried the Fair and Square label, they carried on increasing each time the price was raised. No wonder companies are keen to appeal to ethically minded consumers, whether on labor standards or green credentials. On greenery, British consumers are divided into four broad groups. About one in ten is passionately green and will go out of their way to shop accordingly . At the other end of the spectrum one-quarter are not interested. In-between are those who care but want green consumption to be easy, and those who are vaguely concerned but don"t see how they can make a difference. That represents an opportunity: three-quarters of British consumers are interested in the green theme in some way. But even the keenest ethical consumer faces complicated trade-offs, and sometimes the apparently obvious ethical choice turns out to be the wrong one. Surely it must be greener for Britons to buy roses from the Netherlands than ones air-freighted from Kenya? In fact, a study at Cranfield University showed the carbon footprint of the Dutch roses to be six times as large because they had to be grown in heated greenhouses. Consumers are right to be suspicious of the ethical claims made for many products. A recent study of the labels of 1 018 products in big stores in North America by TerraChoice, an environmental marketing agency, found that almost all of them were guilty of some form of "green washing". They did not tell outright lies, but nor did they tell the whole truth.

单选题A major new area of bioethics is the ethics of health policy and health-resource allocation .

单选题The way people hold to the belief that a fun-filled, painfree life equals happiness actually reduces their chances of ever attaining real happiness. If fun and pleasure are equal to happiness then pain must be equal to unhappiness. But in fact, the opposite is true: more often than not things that lead to happiness involve some pain. As a result, many people avoid the very attempts that are the source of true happiness. They fear the pain inevitably brought by such things as marriage, raising children, professional achievement, religious commitment (承担的义务), self-improvement. Ask a bachelor (单身汉) why he resists marriage even though he finds dating to be less and less satisfying. If he is honest he will tell you that he is afraid of making a commitment. For commitment is in fact quite painful. The single life is filled with fun, adventure, excitement. Marriage has such moments, but they are not its most distinguishing features. Couples with infant children are lucky to get a whole night"s sleep or a three-day vacation. I don"t know any parent who would choose the word fun to describe raising children. But couples who decide not to have children never know the joys of watching a child grow up or of playing with a grandchild. Understanding and accepting that true happiness has nothing to do with fun is one of the most liberating realizations. It liberates time: now we can devote more hours to activities that can genuinely increase our happiness. It liberates money: buying that new car or those fancy clothes that will do nothing to increase our happiness now seems pointless. And it liberates us from envy: we now understand that all those who are always having so much fun actually may not be happy at all.