单选题The number of city schools put on a list for strict scrutiny by the state for poor academic performance went up slightly this year. and the number of city schools taken off the list by showing improvement dropped, the state's commissioner of education announced yesterday. Ten city schools—now at risk of being shut down—were added to the list of Schools Under Registration Review, known as SURR, bringing the total in the city m 40. Statewide. 61 schools are under review, said the commissioner, Richard Mills. The addition of 10 city schools reverses what had been a trend in the past few years: the number of schools on the list had been falling. There were 55 schools in 2003, 46 in 2004 and 35 last year, an all-time low. But this year a new factor was at work: The state raised the level of performance required to pass its standards. In addition, 6 of the 10 newly named schools are middle schools--and those schools have for years confounded educators by resisting the improvements that have worked in lower grades and even in high schools. Three city schools were removed from the list this year for improvement in academic performance, but that number was significantly lower than the number removed in each of the past several years. For instance, 16 schools were taken off the list last year. Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein observed that the number of endangered schools still remains at a near-record low. "Nevertheless. we cannot accept failing performance by any of our schools for any reason," he said. "If a school proves incapable of providing a high-quality education m our students despite efforts to improve it, it will be closed." He said 8 of the 40 schools that have been on the list were scheduled m be closed this year and 5 more will be closed next year. The state also expanded its review process for the first time this year m District 75, which covers special education schools, and one District 75 school, Public School 12 in the Bronx, was put on the list. Despite the additions, Mr. Mills said he was pleased. "I think it's impressive since we have been rinsing the bar," he said. "The city has essentially been staying ahead of a moving locomotive." Elsewhere in the state, three schools in Buffalo and two in Syracuse were added to the list. The 10 New York City schools on the list are Legacy School for Integrated Studies in Manhattan; P.S. 220, P.S. 12, Junior High School 123 and Middle School 302 in the Bronx; J.H.S. 265. J.H.S. 57, M.S. 143, Intermediate School 291 and P.S. 12 in Brooklyn. The three schools removed from the list are P.S. 140 in the Bronx. Repertory Company High School in Manhattan and EBC/ENY High School for Public Safety and Law in Brooklyn.

单选题The author implies that the cause of the agrarian discontent was

单选题The author's attitude towards superpills can best be described as one of______.

单选题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 lush greening of Peruvian deserts have all been ascribed to the whim of EI Nino. Until recently it has been returning about every three to five years. But recently it has become more frequent--for the first time on record it has returned for a fourth consecutive year--and at the same time a giant pool of unusually warm water has settled down in the middle of the Pacific and is showing no signs of moving. Climatologists don't yet know why, though some are saying these aberrations may signal a worldwide change in climate. The problem is that nobody really seems sure what causes the El Nin o to start up, and what makes some stronger than others. And this makes it particularly hard to explain why it has suddenly started behaving so differently. In the absence of EI Nino and its cold counterpart, La Nina, conditions in the tropical eastern Pacific are the opposite of those in the west. the east is cool and dry, while the west is hot and wet. In the east, it's the winds and currents that keep things cool. It works like this. Strong, steady winds, called trade winds, blowing west across the Pacific drag the surface water along with them. The varying influence of the Earth's rotation at different latitudes, known as the Coriolis effect, causes these surface winds and water to veer towards the poles, north in the northern hemisphere and south in the southern hemisphere. The surface water is replaced by colder water from deeper in the ocean in a process known as upwelling. The cold surface water in turn chills the air above it. This cold dense air cannot rise high enough for water vapor to condense into clouds. The dense air creates an area of high pressure so that the atmosphere over the equatorial eastern Pacific is essentially devoid of rainfall.

单选题What does the author mean by "... has become its flip-flopper" (Para. 1)?

单选题The use of mobile-phone signals in monitoring traffic is

单选题The US population in the 1970s is ______ largest of the world.

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}} Something extraordinary is happening in London this week: in Lambeth, one of the city's poorest boroughs(区), 180 children are starting their secondary education in a brand new school. The state- funded school was set up by parents who were fed up with the quality of local education. In countries with more enlightened education systems, this would be unremarkable. In Britain, it is an amazing achievement by a bunch of desperate and determined people after years of struggle. Britain's schools are in a mess. Average standards are not improving despite billions in extra spending, and a stubbornly long tail of underachievers straggles(拖后腿) behind. A couple of years ago, a consensus emerged among reformers that councils had too much control and parents too little. One might have expected more from the Conservatives, who stood for election on a pledge to bring in school vouchers. Yet the Tory policy group charged with thinking deep thoughts about public services paid only lip service to parent power in its report. Where schools are failing, it said, parents or charities should get taxpayers 'money to open new ones. But only 2.9% are actually failing, on official definitions. And another proposal, that children in failing schools get extra funding if they go elsewhere, was so lacking in detail as to be meaningless. Worry about underperforming schools is hardly confined to Britain: in America, in Italy, in Germany, even in once-proud France education is a hot-button topic. Yet a number of countries seem to have cracked it. Although specific problems differ in different societies, parental choice is at the heart of most successful solutions. What are the lessons? The first is that if a critical mass of parents wants a new school and there is a willing provider, local government should be required to finance it as generously as it does existing state schools. The second is that if a charity wants to open a school in the hope that children will come, then taxpayers' money should follow any that do. Third, rules about what, where and how schools teach should be relaxed to avoid stifling innovation and discouraging newcomers with big ideas. In any event, public-examination results would give parents the information they needed to enforce high standards. These proposals may seem radical, yet parents in the Netherlands have had the right to demand new schools since 1917, and those in Sweden have been free since 1992 to take their government money to any school that satisfies basic government rules. In the Netherlands 70% of children are educated in private schools at the taxpayers' expense; in Sweden 10% already are. In both countries state spending on education is lower per head than in Britain, and results are better. It doesn't take a genius IQ -- just a little political courage -- to draw the correct conclusion.

单选题The word "outsource" (Line 3, Paragraph 1) may be best replaced by

单选题the author thinks that the trend towards a rapid rise in consumption was "undesirable" because ______.

单选题"Since USAID began its first HIV/AIDS prevention efforts eight years ago, the epidemic has changed dramatically" this statement______.

单选题What can be said about the experiments at Rocky Mountain Arsenal?

单选题 Africa's elephants are divided between the savannahs of eastern and southern Africa and the forests of central Africa. Some biologists reckon the forest ones-smaller, with shorter, straighter tusks-may even constitute a distinct species. But not for long, at the latest rate of poaching. The high price of ivory is increasing the incentive to kill elephants everywhere in Africa, and especially in places where there is virtually no law. The latest reports suggest that the forest elephant population is collapsing on the back of rising Chinese demand for ivory. Some conservationists argue that a recent decision by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to auction 108 tonnes of stockpiled ivory from southern Africa may be prompting more poaching in central and eastern Africa, as criminals seek to mix illicit ivory in with the legitimate kind. But some economists maintain that the legitimate sale of ivory lowers prices, thus decreasing the incentive to poach. A study of a previous sale of ivory suggested it did not lead to more intensive poaching. Either way, the Congo basin is " hemorrhaging elephants ", says TRAFFIC, which monitors trade in wildlife. The head of the 790,000-hectare (1,952,000-acre) Virunga National Park in eastern Congo, Emmanuel de Merode, reports that 24 elephants have been poached in his park so far this year. The situation is dire: 2,900 elephants roamed Virunga when Congo became independent in 1964,400 in 2006, and fewer than 200 today. Most have been poached by militias, particularly Hutu rebels from Rwanda who hack off the ivory and sell it to middlemen in Kinshasa, Congo's capital, who then smuggle it to China. Once ivory has left its country of origin, and if it is not seized by customs officials, it can be hard to identify its source and those responsible for acquiring it. But forensic help may be at hand. Scientists from the University of Washington are using genetic markers in elephant dung to identify exactly where ivory has been poached. This should help governments in countries such as Tanzania and Zambia, which are capable of catching poachers, but not in anarchic eastern Congo, where 120-odd rangers have been killed in Virunga in recent years trying to protect elephants and gorillas. With an influx of businessmen and other officials from China engaged in infrastructure projects such as road building and logging, the slaughter is expected to accelerate. Forest elephants may survive in large numbers only in remote protected pockets of the Congo basin, such as the Odzala-Koukoua National Park in Congo-Brazzaville and Minkebe National Park in northeast Gabon.