单选题"Refrigerator production in China jumped from 1.4 million units in 1985 to 10.6 million in 1998," according to David Fridley, a researcher in the Department of Energy"s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA. The Global Environmental Facility, through the United Nations Development Program, has decided to fund 9.3 million of the $40 million program to help the government of China transform its market for refrigerators. The refrigerator project began in 1989 when the EPA signed an agreement with the government of China to assist in the elimination of CFCs from refrigerators. Berkeley Lab has been involved in the project since 1995 through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, developing the market transformation program based on the success of the first phase of the project, which involved designing and testing CFC (chlorofluorocarbon) free, energy-efficient refrigerators. Fridley says that beyond his technical supervisory role, the Laboratory will be involved in training and working with the State Bureau of Technical Supervision as the new efficiency standards are developed. "Market transformation," Fridley explains, "is the process of shifting consumer demand for a product, in this case to a more energy-efficient, environmentally favorable product through voluntary, market based means such as technical assistance and training for manufacturers, consumer education, and financial incentives to manufacture and sell the more efficient produce." "Collectively, we developed a technical training program for Chinese refrigerator manufactures interested in developing CFC-free, efficient refrigerators; a financial incentive program to motivate manufacturers to build the most efficient refrigerator possible; and a mass purchasing program for Chinese government agencies that acquire refrigerators in bulk," Fridley says. In 1998, the refrigerator project was awarded an International Climate Protection Award by the EPA. "It is not widely known in the United States, but China has had an energy efficiency policy in place since the early 1980s," says Mark Levine, Environmental Energy Technologies Division director and an advisor to the Chinese government on energy efficiency. "The government of China is committed to using energy more efficiently, and this has allowed the economy to grow at nearly twice the rate of energy consumption." "The Energy-Efficient Refrigerator Project will have a significant, direct effect on reducing greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions. We at Berkeley Lab are grateful to have the chance to work with the people and government of China on this project, as well as on our other refrigerator production projects in energy data analysis, appliance efficiency standards, and technical advice on cogeneration plants," adds Levine.

单选题Woman: John says that he is confident that he can win the game. Man: He"ll succeed when pigs fly. Question: What does the man mean?

单选题A report published recently brings bad news about air pollution. It suggests that it could be as damaging to our health as exposure to the radiation from the 1986 Ukraine nuclear power disaster. The report was published by the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. But what can city people do to reduce exposure to air pollution? Quite a lot, it turns out. Avoid walking in busy streets. Choose side streets and parks instead. Pollution levels can fall a considerable amount just by moving a few meters away from the main pollution source—exhaust fumes (烟气). Also don"t walk behind smokers. Walk on the windward side of the street where exposure to pollutants can be 50 percent less than on the downwind side. Sitting on the driver"s side of a bus can increase your exposure by 10 percent, compared with sitting on the side nearest the pavement. Sitting upstairs on a double-decker can reduce exposure. It is difficult to say whether traveling on an underground train is better or worse than taking the bus. Air pollution on underground trains tends to be less toxic than that at street level, because underground pollution is mostly made up of tiny iron particles thrown up by wheels hitting the rails. But diesel and petrol fumes have a mixture of pollutants. When you are crossing a road, stand well back from the curb while you wait for the light to change. Every meter really does count when you are close to traffic. As the traffic begins to move, fumes can be reduced in just a few seconds. So holding your breath for just a moment can make a difference, even though it might sound silly. There are large sudden pollution increases during rush hours. Pollution levels fall during nighttime. The time of year also makes a big difference. Pollution levels tend to be at their lowest during spring and autumn when winds are freshest. Extreme cold or hot weather has a trapping effect and tends to cause a build-up of pollutants.

单选题This month Singapore passed a bill that would give legal teeth to the moral obligation to support one"s parents. Called the Maintenance of Parents Bill, it received the backing of the Singapore government. That does not mean it hasn"t generated discussion. Several members of the Parliament opposed the measure as un-Asian. Other who acknowledged the problem of the elderly poor believed it a disproportionate response. Still others believe it will subvert relations within the family; cynics dubbed it the "Sue Your Son" law. Those who say that the bill does not promote filial responsibility, of course, are right. It has nothing to do with filial responsibility. It kicks in where filial responsibility fails. The law cannot legislate filial responsibility any more than it can legislate love. All the law can do is to provide a safety net where this morality provide is insufficient. Singapore needs this bill not to replace morality, but to provide incentives to shore it up. Like many other developed nations, Singapore faces the problems of an increasing proportion of people over 60 years of age. Demography is inexorable. In 1980, 7.2% of the population was in this bracket. At the turn of the century, that figure grew to 11%. By 2030, the proportion is projected to be 26%. The problem is not old age perse. It is that the ratio of economically active people to economically inactive people will decline. But no amount of government exhortation or paternalism will completely eliminate the problem of old people who have insufficient means to make ends meet. Some people will fall through the holes in any safety net. Traditionally, a person"s insurance against poverty in his old age was his family. This is not a revolutionary concept, nor is it uniquely Asian. Care and support for one"s parents is a universal value shared by all civilized societies. The problem in Singapore is that the moral obligation to look after one"s parents is unenforceable. A father can be compelled by law to maintain his children. A husband can be forced to support his wife. But, until now, a son or daughter had no legal obligation to support his or her parents. In 1989, an Advisory Council was set up to look into ten problems of the aged. Its report stated with a tinge of complacency that 95% of those who did not have their own income were receiving cash contributions from relations. But what about the 5% who aren"t getting relatives" support? They have several options: (a) get a job that work until they die; (b) apply for public assistance (you have to be destitute to apply); or (c) starve quietly. None of these options is socially acceptable. And what if this 5% figure grows, as it is likely to do, as society ages? The Maintenance of Parents Bill was put forth to encourage the traditional virtues that have to far kept Asian nations from some of the breakdowns encountered in other affluent societies. This legislation will allow a person to apply to the court for maintenance from any or all of his children. The court would have the discretion to refuse to make an order it is unjust. Those who deride the proposal for opening up the courts to family lawsuits miss the point. Only in extreme cases would any parent take his child to court. If it does indeed become law, the bill"s effect would be far more subtle. First, it will reaffirm the notion that it is each individual"s—not society"s—responsibility to look after his parents. Singapore is still conservative enough that most people will not object to this idea. It reinforces the traditional values and it doesn"t hurt a society now and then to remind itself of its core values. Second, and more important, it will make those who are inclined to shirk their responsibilities think twice. Until now, if a person asked family elders, clergymen or the Ministry of Community Development to help get financial support from his children, the most they could do was to mediate. But mediators have no teeth, and a child could simply ignore their pleas. But to be sued by one"s parents would be a massive loss of face. It would be a public disgrace. Few people would be so thick-skinned as to say, "Sue and be damned". The hand of the conciliator would be immeasurably strengthened. It is far more likely that some sort of amicable settlement would be reached if the recalcitrant son or daughter knows that the alternative is a public trial. It would be nice to think that Singapore doesn"t need this kind of law. But that belief ignores the clear demographic trends and the effect of affluence itself on traditional bonds. Those of us who pushed for the bill will consider ourselves most successful it acts as an incentive not to have it invoked in the first place.

单选题Can exercise be a bad thing? Sudden death during or soon after strenuous exertion on the squash court or on the army training grounds, is not unheard of. 1 trained marathon runners are not immune to fatal heart attacks. But no one knows just 2 common these sudden deaths linked to exercise are. The registration and investigation of such cases is very patchy; only a national survey could determine the true 3 of sudden deaths in sports. But the climate of medical opinion is shifting in favor of exercise, for the person recovering from a heart attack as 4 as the average lazy individual. Training can help the victim of a heart attack by lowering the 5 of oxygen the heart needs at any given level of work so the patient can do more before reaching the point where chest pains indicate a heart starved of oxygen. The question is, should middle-aged people, 6 particular, be screened for signs of heart disease before taking up vigorous exercise? Most cases of sudden death in sport are caused by lethal arrhythmias in the beating of the heart, often in people 7 undiagnosed coronary heart disease. In North America anyone over 35 is advised to have a physical check-up and even an exercise electrocardiogram. The British, on the whole, think all this testing is unnecessary. Not many people die from exercise, 8 , and ECGs (心电图) are notoriously inaccurate. However, two medical cardiologists at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, advocate screening by exercise ECG for people over 40, or younger people 9 at risk of developing coronary heart disease. Individuals showing a particular abnormality in their ECGs 10 , they say, a 10 to 20 times greater risk of subsequently developing signs of coronary heart disease, or of sudden death.

单选题"It"s that time of the year again-back to school! With the new school year just around the corner I decide it might be a good idea to collect tricks on how to wake up early for school. Whether you are a student or a happy parent, I hope your advice will work for me. Welcome you to share your own tricks on how you wake up (or help your kids wake up) early for school!" Advice 1: One of the rules I put into place for my experiment was the rule that I could not use the snooze button, ever! When you hit the snooze on your alarm you are allowing your mind to wake up gradually. This may slow down your productivity and energy... Advice 2: This smart simple tip was found in the list of 52 Proven Stress Reducers. What this tip means is that first of all you need at least two alarm clocks. You will be using one alarm clock in a usual way—for waking yourself up in the morning. But you will set another alarm clock for the time when you have to go to bed. Advice 3: There is another great self-improvement tip which some people often neglect and which you can use to advance in any area and not just to learn how to wake yourself up early in the morning. And the tip is simple: get a dog, it will help you to wake up early. Advice 4: How to wake yourself up in the morning? Get a pet to do it? Okay, getting a pet BECAUSE you want to wake up early is a wrong thing. Do not do it. Never ever get a pet unless you love pets and unless you know you can take care of them. Pets are like kids—if you get one, you will have full responsibility for its health and life. Advice 5: We continue our quest to find the best ways on how to wake up early in the morning and do it consistently. If you search the web for "how to wake up early" or "alarm clocks" keywords combination you will definitely find Vincent Cheung"s article Alarm clocks are bad and how to wake up and feel better. This article has got almost 3,000 tips and a number of links for a reason. It includes the trick on how to wake up early that Vincent has successfully used for years and now shares with the readers of his blog.

单选题As to the precise value of this scientific knowledge, it depends to a great extent on how it has been acquired and on who has been imparting it.

单选题After the violent earthquake that shook Los Angeles in 1994, earthquake scientists had good news to report. The damage and death toll could have been much worse. More than 60 people died in this earthquake. By comparison, an earthquake of similar. intensity that shook America in 1988 claimed 25,000 victims. Injuries and deaths were relatively less in Los Angeles because the quake occurred at 4:31 a. m. on a holiday, when traffic was light on the city"s highways. In addition, changes made to the construction codes in Los Angeles during the last 20 years have strengthened the city"s buildings and highways, making them more resistant to quakes. Despite the good news, civil engineers aren"t resting on their successes. Pinned to their drawing boards are blueprints for improved quake-resistant buildings. The new designs should offer even greater security to cities where earthquakes often take place. In the past, making structures quake-resistant meant firm yet flexible materials, such as steel and wood, that bend without breaking. Later, people tried to lift a building off its foundation, and insert rubber and steel between the building and its foundation to reduce the impact of ground vibrations. The most recent designs give buildings brains as well as concrete and steel supports, called smart buildings, the structures respond like living organisms to an earthquake"s vibrations. When the ground shakes and the building tips forward, the computer would force the building to shift in the opposite direction. The new smart structures could be very expensive to build. However, they would save many lives and would be less likely to be damaged during earthquakes.

单选题Woman: I can"t get over the way you treated me at the dinner party the other day. Man: I was irritated at something else. I said I was sorry. Do we have to go through all that again? Question: What happened to the woman the other day?

单选题In 1902, Georges Méliès made and released a movie called A Trip to the Moon . In this movie, the spaceship was a small capsule, shaped like a bullet, that was loaded into a giant cannon and aimed at the moon. This movie was based on a book that came out many years earlier by an author named Jules Verne. One of the fans of the book was a Russian man, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The book made him think. Could one really shoot people out of a cannon and have them get safely to the moon? He decided one couldn"t, but it got him thinking of other ways one could get people to the moon. He spent his life considering this problem and came up with many solutions. Some of Tsiolkovsky"s solutions gave scientists in America and Russia ideas when they began to think about space travel. They also thought about airplanes they and other people had made, and even big bombs that could fly themselves very long distances. Many scientists spent years working together to solve the problem. They drew and discussed different designs until they agreed on the ones that were the best. Then, they built small models of those designs, and tested and tested them until they felt ready to build even bigger models. They made full-scale rockets, which they launched without any people inside, to test for safety. Often the rockets weren"t safe, and they exploded fight there on the launch pad, or shot off in crazy directions like a balloon that you blow up and release without tying it first. After many, many tests, they started to send small animals into space. Only after a long time did they ever put a person inside a rocket and shoot him into space. Even after they began sending people into space, scientists were still trying to improve the shape of the rockets. The design changed many times, and eventually ended up looking like a half-rocket and half-airplane. The machine called space shuttle was used for many years. Now, the government lets private companies try their own designs for spaceships, and they have come up with many different, crazy-looking machines.

单选题We all know that it is very hard to______him to give his plan up.

单选题A: I"m granted a full scholarship for this semester. B: ______

单选题On the journey to the lake I began to wonder how time had marred this unique, this holy spot—the coves and streams, the hills, the camps and paths behind the camps.

单选题For decades, researchers have grappled with the problem of creating a machine that can tell, definitively, whether a person is lying. Until recently, their work has been far from successful. The past generation of lie-detection technologies has been put under scientific scrutiny and found wanting . But science, ever resourceful, is coming up with new ideas. The problem with past lie detectors is that it relies on second-hand signs of lying, such as a person"s breathing rate, pulse, blood pressure which a good actor can suppress. Furthermore, someone who is telling the truth might exhibit just these signals, because the very act of being questioned by the authorities is stressful. Instead, current research is looking directly at the source of lies, the brain itself. Daniel Langleben uses a brain-scanning technique called functional magnetic-resonance imaging to probe his subjects" honesty. The lie which those subjects are asked to tell is a small one: they have to persuade Dr. Langleben that they are holding a particular playing card when often they are actually holding a different one. Each successful deception earns a subject $20. The researchers have not had to hand out much cash, though. The brains of lying subjects light up in particular places in ways that they do not in the honest. Another brain-probing lie-detection technique, based on electroencephalography (EEG), has actually made it out of the laboratory and into the courtroom. Lawrence Farwell calls it MERMER (memory and encoding related multifaceted electroencephalographic response). MERMER works by hooking someone up to an EEG machine and asking him about specific details of, for example, a crime scene. Lack of a brainwave called P300 denotes lack of familiarity with the details in question, suggesting any denial should he taken at face value. The technique has already stood up to legal scrutiny twice. It will soon be used again, in the appeal by Jimmy Slaughter against his conviction for murdering his ex-girlfriend, Melody Wuertz. MERMER suggests that Mr. Slaughter had no recollection of important facts about the murder, such as which rooms the victim" body was located in. Although not yet foolproof, these methods do offer possible alternatives to the antiquated techniques of the polygraph. The truth is out there. It is just a question of finding it.

单选题Singletons, referring to those who live alone, are being comforted by well-meaning friends and family and told that not having a partner is not the end of the world. So, it would seem that they can say, yes, it is not. But no, in fact, it is the end. A gloomy study has just been released that says that the international trend towards living alone is putting an unprecedented strain on our ecosystem. For a number of reasons--relationship breakdown, career choice, longer life spans, smaller families—the number of individual households is growing. And this is putting intolerable pressure on natural resources, and accelerating the extinction of endangered plant and animal species. And there is worse news. Running a refrigerator, television, cooker, plumbing system just for selfish little you is a disastrous waste of resources on our over-populated planet. "The efficiency of resource consumption" is a lot higher in households of two people or more, simply because they share everything. Well imagine that. Just when you thought living alone was OK, you would find that all the time you were the enemy of mankind. Every time you put the kettle on the stove for a cup of coffee you were destroying Mother Earth. Indeed, it is not just your mother who is a bit worried by your continuing single status—you are letting down the entire human race by not having a boyfriend or girlfriend. The trouble is that society has a group instinct and people panic and hit out when they see other people quietly rebelling and straying away from the "standard" of family and coupledom. The suggestion is that singledom should be at best a temporary state. Unless you are assimilated into a larger unit, you can never be fully functional. Try "communal living." There are all these illustrations of young attractive people having a "great time," laughingly bumping into each other. It looks like an episode of the TV series "Friends. " And the message is clear: Togetherness is good, solitude is bad, and being single on your own is not allowed.

单选题Carson McCullers had the brilliant and early success that has come to be almost a tradition of the Southern School. She was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1917 to a family that was poorly off, but which sympathized with her early passion for music and writing. She started writing plays in her early teens under the influence of Eugene O" Neill. At seventeen she went to New York to study music at Juilliard with the idea of becoming a concert pianist, but she lost her tuition money in the subway and thereafter supported herself in a variety of jobs, from guarding the door for a near-bankrupt comic-book publisher to playing the piano for dancing lessons in a settlement house. Returning from music to literature, at nineteen she sold two stories to story magazine. Then she went back to the south to marry Reeves McCullers (he died in 1953) and lived for two years at Fort Bragg where he was stationed. It was in this period that she wrote The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), whose publication made her immediately famous. It is extraordinary enough for a first novel, but is prodigious for an author of twenty-two. Mrs. McCullers, understandably, had not yet learned the tight control of her art that was to make her next book so memorable, but The Heart is a Lonely Hunter embraces all the themes that she was later to deal with more particularly.

单选题A: I"d like to place a person-to-person call to Chicago. The number is 932-8647, but I don"t know the area code. B: ______

单选题A: Tom, why didn"t you come to the class yesterday? B: ______

单选题The word "compliment" in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to " ______ "

单选题A: I think cartoons on TV are not good for kids to watch. There"s too much violence in them. B: ______