单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} The Commercial Revolution was not confined, of course, to the growth of trade and banking. Included in it also were fundamental changes in methods of production. The system of manufacture developed by the craft guilds in the later Middle Ages was rapidly becoming defunct. The guilds themselves, dominated by the master craftsmen, had grown selfish and exclusive. Membership in them was commonly restricted to a few privileged families. Besides, they were so completely choked by tradition that they were unable to make adjustments to changing conditions. Moreover, new industries had sprung up entirely outside the guild system. Characteristic examples were mining and smelting and the woolen industry. The rapid development of these enterprises was stimulated by technical advances, such as the invention of the spinning wheel and the discovery of a new method of making brass, which saved about half of the fuel previously used. In the mining and smelting industries a form of organization was adopted similar to that which has prevailed ever since. But the most typical form of industrial production in the Commercial Revolution was the domestic system, developed first of all in the woolen industry. The domestic system derives its name from the fact that the work was done in the homes of industrial artisans instead of in the shop of a master craftsman. Since the various jobs in the manufacture of a product were given out on contract, the system is also known as the putting out system. Notwithstanding the petty scale of production, the organization was basically capitalistic. The raw material was purchased by an entrepreneur and assigned to individual worker, each of whom would complete his allotted task for a stipulated payment. In the case of the woolen industry the yarn would be given out first of all to the spinners, then to the weavers, fullers, and dyer in succession. When the cloth was finally finished, it would be taken by the clothier and sold in the open market for the highest price it would bring.

单选题Mars Express is mentioned because______.

单选题No woman can be too rich or too thin. This saying often attributed to the late Duchess of Windsor embodies much of the odd spirit of our times. Being thin is deemed as such virtue. The problem with such a view is that some people actually attempt to live by it. I myself have fantasies of slipping into narrow designer clothes. Consequently, I have been on a diet for the better--or worse--part of my life. Being rich wouldn't be bad either, but that won't happen unless an unknown relative dies suddenly in some distant land, leaving me millions of dollars. Where did we go off the track? When did eating butter become a sin, and a little bit of extra flesh unappealing, if not repellent? All religions have certain days when people refrain from eating, and excessive eating is one of Christianity's seven deadly sins. However until quite recently, most people had a problem getting enough to eat. In some religious groups, wealth was a symbol of probable salvation and high moral,,;, and fatness a sign of wealth and well-being. Today the opposite is true. We have shifted to thinness as our new mar of virtue. The result is that being fat--or even only somewhat overweight--is bad because it implies a lack of moral strength. Our obsession with thinness is also fueled by health concerns. It is tree that in this country we have more overweight people than ever before, and that, in many cases, being over-weight correlates with an increased risk of heart and blood vessel disease. These diseases, however, may have as much to do with our way of life and our high-fat diets as with excess weight. And the associated risk of cancer in the digestive system may be more of a dietary problem--too much fat and a lack of fiber--than a weight problem. The real concern, then, is not that we weigh too much, but that we neither exercise enough nor eat well. Exercise is necessary for strong bones and both heart and lung health. A balanced diet without a lot of fat can also help the body avoid many diseases. We should surely stop paying so much attention to weight. Simply being thin is not enough. It is actually hazardous if those who get (or already are) thin think they are automatically healthy and thus free from paying attention to their overall life-style. Thinness can be pure vainglory.

单选题Which of the following is Not one of the advantages of superpills?

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Manners nowadays in metropolitan cities like London are practically non-existent. It is nothing for a big, strong schoolboy to elbow an elderly woman aside in the dash for the last remaining seat on the tube or bus, much less stand up and offer his seat to her, as he ought. In fact, it is saddening to note that if a man does offer his seat to an older woman, it is nearly always a Continental man or one from the older generation. This question of giving up seats in public transport is much argued about by young men, who say that, since women have claimed equality, they no longer deserve to be treated with courtesy, and that those who go out to work should take their turn in the rat race like anyone else. Women have never claimed to be physically as strong as men. Even if it is not agreed, however, that young men should stand up for younger women, the fact remains that courtesy should be shown to the old. the sick and the burdened. Conditions in travel are really very hard on everyone, we know, but hardship is surely no excuse. Sometimes one wonders what would have been the behavior of these about young men in a packed refugee train or a train on its way to a prisoner-camp during the war. Would they have considered it only right and their proper due to keep the best places for themselves then? Older people, tired and irritable from a day's work, are not angels, either--far from it. Many a brisk argument or an insulting quarrel breaks out as the weary queues push and shove each other to gel on buses and tubes. One cannot commend this, of course, but one does feel there is just a little more excuse. If cities are to remain pleasant places to live in at all, however, it seems urgent, not only that communications in transport should be improved, but also that communication between human beings should be kept smooth and polite. All over cities, it seems that people are too tired and too rushed to be polite. Shop assistants won't bother to assist, taxi drivers shout at each other as they dash dangerously round corners, bus conductors pull the bell before their desperate passengers have had time to get on or off the bus. and so on and so on. It seems to us that it is up to the young and strong to do their small part to stop such deterioration. {{B}}Notes:{{/B}} much less 更不用说。Continental man 欧洲大陆上的人。rat race 激烈的竞争。be lost to 全然不顾。 all too 实在太。be hard on sh. 对...... 太严峻。due n.应该得到的东西。communications In transport 运输工具。won't bother to do sth. 不愿费心去做某事。pull the hell (售票员)拉铃(以便让司机开动车辆)。do one's part 尽某人的责任。

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Despite the general negative findings, it is important to remember that all children who live through a divorce do not behave in the same way. The specific behavior depends on the child's individual personality, characteristics, age at the time of divorce, and gender. In terms of personality, when compared to those rated as relaxed and easygoing, children described as temperamental and irritable have more difficulty coping with parental divorce, as indeed they have more difficulty adapting to life change in general. Stress, such as that found in disrupted families, seems to impair the ability of temperamental children to adapt to their surroundings, the greater the amount of stress, the less well they adapt. In contrast, a moderate amount of stress may actually help an easygoing, relaxed child learn to cope with adversity. There is some relationship between age and children's characteristic reaction to divorce. As the child grows older, the greater is the likelihood of a free expression of a variety of complex feelings, an understanding of those feelings, and a realization that the decision to divorce cannot be attributed to any one simple cause Self-blame virtually disappears after the age of 6, fear of abandonment diminishes after the age of 8, and the confusion and fear of the young child is replaced in the older child by shame, anger, and self-reflection. Gender of the child is also a factor that predicts the nature of reaction to divorce, The impact of divorce is initially greater on boys than on girls. They are more aggressive, less compliant, have greater difficulties in interpersonal relationships, and exhibit problem behaviors both at home and at school. Furthermore, the adjustment problems of boys are still noticeable even two years after the divorce. Girls' adjustment problems are usually internalized rather than acted out, and are often resolved by the second year after the divorce. However, new problems may surface for girls as they enter adolescence and adulthood. How can the relatively greater impact of divorce on boys than on girls be explained? The greater male aggression and noncompliance may reflect the fact that such behaviors are tolerated and even encouraged in males in our culture more than they are in females. Furthermore, boys may have a particular need for a strong male model of self-control, as well as for a strong disciplinarian parent. Finally, boys are more likely to be exposed to their parents' fights than girls are, and after the breakup, boys are less likely than girls to receive sympathy and support from mothers, teachers, or peers.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} If you are a tourist interested in seeing a baseball game while in New York, you can find out which of its teams are in town simply by sending a message to AskForCents. com. In a few minutes, the answer comes back, apparently supplied by a machine, but actually composed by a human. Using humans to process information in a machine-like way is not new: it was pioneered by the Mechanical Turk, a famed 18th-century chess-playing machine that was operated by a hidden chessmaster. But while computers have since surpassed the human brain at chess, many tasks still baffle even the most powerful electronic brain. For instance, computers can find you a baseball schedule, but they cannot tell you directly if the Yankees are in town. Nor can they tell you whether sitting in the bleachers is a good idea on a first date. AskForCents can, because its answers come from people. "Whatever question you can come up with, there' s a person that can provide the answer—you don't have the inflexibility of an algorithm-driven system," says Jesse Heitler, who developed AskForCents. Mr. Heitler was able to do this thanks to a new software tool developed by Amazon, the online retailer, that allows computing tasks to be farmed out to people over the internet. Aptly enough, Amazon's system is called Mechanical Turk. Amazon' s Turk is part toolkit for software developers, and part online bazaar: anyone with internet access can register as a Turk user and start performing the Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) listed on the Turk website (mturk. com). Companies can become "requesters" by setting up a separate account, tied to a bank account that will pay out fees, and then posting their HITs. Most HITs pay between one cent and $ 5. So far, people from more than 100 countries have performed HITs, though only those with American bank accounts can receive money for their work; others are paid in Amazon gift certificates. Mr. Heitler says he had previously tried to build a similar tool, but concluded that the infrastructure would be difficult to operate profitably. Amazon already has an extensive software infrastructure designed for linking buyers with sellers, however, and the Turk simply extends that existing model. Last November Amazon unveiled a prototype of the system, which it calls "artificial artificial intelligence". The premise is that humans are vastly superior to computers at tasks such as pattern recognition, says Peter Cohen, director of the project at Amazon, so why not let software take advantage of human strengths? Mr. Cohen credits Amazon' s boss, Jeff Bezos, with the concept for the Turk. Other people have had similar ideas. Eric Bonabeau of Icosystem, an American firm that builds software tools modeled on natural systems, has built what he calls the "Hunch Engine" to combine human intelligence with computer analysis. The French postal service, for example, has used it to help its workers choose the best delivery routes, and pharmaceutical researchers are using it to determine molecular structures by combining their gut instincts with known results stored in a database. And a firm called Seriosity hopes to tap the collective brainpower of the legions of obsessive players of multiplayer online games such as "World of War- craft", by getting them to perform small real-world tasks (such as sorting photographs ) while playing, and paying them in the game' s own currency.

单选题The author quotes Dr. Samuel Johnson's words to

单选题In the wake of September 11th, the construction techniques of skyscrapers are innovated so as to make them

单选题According to the passage, what matters most in letter delivery in Britain is that______

单选题In the two decades between 1910 and 1930, over ten percent of the Black population of the United States left the South, where the majority of the Black population had been located, and migrated to northern states, with the largest number moving, it is claimed, between 1916 and 1918. It has been frequently assumed, but not proved, that most of the migrants in what has come to be called the Great Migration came from rural areas and were motivated by two concurrent factors: the collapse of cotton industry following boll weevil infestation, which began in 1898, and increased demand in the North for labor following the cessation of European immigration caused by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. This assumption has led to the conclusion that the migrants" subsequent lack of economic mobility in the North is tied to rural background, a background that implies unfamiliarity with urban living and a lack of industrial skills. But the question of who actually left the South has never been investigated in detail. Although numerous investigations document a flight from rural southern areas to southern cities prior to the Great Migration, no one has considered whether the same migrants then moved on to northern cities. In 1910 over 600,000 Black workers, or ten percent of the Black work force reported themselves to be engaged in "manufacturing and mechanical pursuits", the federal census category roughly including the entire industrial sector. The Great Migration could easily have been made up entirely of this group and their families. It is perhaps surprising to argue that an employed population could be tempted to move, but an explanation lies in the labor conditions then prevalent in the South. About thirty-five percent of the urban Black population in the South was engaged in skilled trades. Some were from the old artisan class of slavery--blacksmiths, masons, carpenters--which had a monopoly of certain trades, but they were gradually being pushed out by competition, mechanization, and obsolescence. The remaining sixty-five percent, more recently urbanized, worked in newly developed industries--tobacco, lumber, coal and iron manufacture, and railroads. Wages in the South, however, were low, and Black workers were aware, through labor recruiters and the Black press, that they could earn more even as unskilled workers in the North than they could as artisans in the South. After the boll weevil infestation, urban Black workers faced competition from the continuing influx of both Black and White rural workers, who were driven to undercut the wages formerly paid for industrial jobs. Thus, a move north would be seen as advantageous to a group that was already urbanized and steadily employed, and the easy conclusion tying their subsequent economic problems in the North to their rural backgrounds comes into question.

单选题If you want to sell a car about $ 80,000, you' d better set the price at ______.

单选题Margaret Mead suggests that