单选题People of diverse backgrounds now fly to distant places for pleasure, business or education.

单选题{{B}}Passage One{{/B}} 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 {{U}}saga{{/U}} 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To celebrate the national day, there was a ______fireworks display.

单选题The warm winter helped (dry out) (alive) trees and bushes, (as well as) the dead needles, leaves and limbs on the ground (beneath) the trees.

单选题20. Like flowers that have been waiting all winter to Ublossom/U, tourists are eager to burst forth with their cameras.

单选题John continued to defy his boss.

单选题Should either of these situations occur, wrong control actions might be taken and a potential accident sequence {{U}}initiated{{/U}}.

单选题You make it sound as if I did it Uon purpose/U.

单选题A: ______B: I've got a headache and felt dizzy.

单选题The primary objective of Basic Econometrics (计量经济学) is to provide an elementary but comprehensive introduction to the art and science of econometrics.

单选题The main purpose of the passage is to

单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} With only about 1,000 pandas left in the world, China is desperately trying to clone the animal and save the endangered species. That's a move similar to what a Texas A＆M University researcher has been undertaking for the past five years in a project called "Noah's Ark". Dr. Duane Kraemer, a professor in Texas A＆M's College of Veterinary Medicine and a pioneer in embryo (胚胎) transfer work and related procedures, said he salutes the Chinese effort and "I wish them all the best success possible. It's a worthwhile project, certainly not an easy one, and it's very much like what we're attempting here at Texas A＆M—to save animals from extinction". Noah's Ark is aimed at collecting eggs, embryos, semens (精子) and DNA of endangered animals and storing them in liquid nitrogen. If certain species should become extinct, Kraemer says there would be enough of the basic building blocks to reintroduce the species in the future. It is estimated that as many as 2,000 species of mammals, birds and reptiles will become extinct over the next 100 years. The panda, native only to China, is in danger of becoming extinct in the next 25 years. This week, Chinese scientists said they grew an embryo by introducing cells from a dead female panda into the egg cells of a Japanese white rabbit. They are now trying to implant the embryo into a host animal. The entire procedure could take from three to five years to complete. "The nuclear transfer of one species to another is not easy, and the lack of available panda eggs could be a major problem," Kraemer believes. "They will probably have to do several hundred transfers to result in one pregnancy. It takes a long time and it's difficult, but this could be groundbreaking science if it works. They are certainly not putting any live pandas at risk, so it is worth the effort," adds Kraemer, who is one of the leaders of the Missyplicity Project at Texas A＆M, the first-ever attempt at cloning a dog. "They are trying to do something that's never been done, and this is very similar to our work in Noah's Ark. We're both trying to save animals that face extinction. I certainly applaud their effort, and there's a lot we can learn from what they are attempting to do. It's a research that is very much needed."

单选题Experts suggest that speech stages are reached in fixed sequence and at a constant age, but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who ______ turns out to be of high IQ.

单选题Woman: Bill, I want to have a few words with you about your performance in class lately. Man: I know I've gone down. I just haven't been studying as much as I ought to. Question: What is Bill's problem?

单选题The children return from school confused, scared and sometimes with bruises (淤伤，青肿) on their wrists, arms or face. Many won"t talk about what happened, or simply can"t, because they are unable to communicate easily, if at all. Dr. Miller, a podiatrist (足部医生) in Allegany, N.Y. learned that Tim, who has Asperger"s syndrome, was being unusually confrontational in class, and that more than once teachers had held him down on the floor to "calm him down," according to logs teachers kept to track his behavior; on at least one occasion, adults held Tim prone for 20 minutes until he stopped struggling. The Millers are suing the district, in part for costs of therapy for their son as a result of the restraints. The district did not dispute the logs but denied that teachers behaved improperly. For more than a decade, parents of children with developmental and psychiatric problems have pushed to gain more access to mainstream schools and classrooms for their sons and daughters. One unfortunate result, some experts say, is schools" increasing use of precisely the sort of practices families hoped to avoid by steering clear of institutionalized settings- takedowns, isolation rooms, restraining chairs with straps, and worse. No one keeps careful track of how often school staff members use such methods. But last year the public system served 600,000 more special education students than it did a decade ago, many at least part time in regular classrooms. Many staff members are not adequately trained to handle severe behavior problems, researchers say. In April, a 9-year-old Montreal boy with autism (自闭症) died of suffocation when a special education teacher wrapped him in a weighted blanket to calm him, according to the coroner"s report. Two Michigan public school students with autism have died while being held on the ground in so-called prone restraint. "Behavior problems in school are way up, and there"s good reason to believe that the use of these procedures is up, too," said Reece L. Peterson, a professor of special education at the University of Nebraska. "It"s an awful combination, because many parents expect restraints to be used—as long as it"s not their kid." Federal law leaves it to states and school districts to decide when physical restraints and seclusion are appropriate, and standards vary widely. Oversight is virtually nonexistent in most states, despite the potential for harm and scant evidence of benefit, Dr. Peterson said. Psychiatric facilities and nursing homes are generally far more accountable to report on such incidents than schools, experts say.

单选题Embroidery {{U}}depicting{{/U}} scenic views became popular in the United States toward the end of the eighteenth century.

单选题The local people were joyfully surprised to find the prices of vegetables no longer ______ according to the weather.

单选题A: Have you decided what to get your wife for Christmas yet?B: ______

单选题The ship was ______ in a storm and sank; only a few of the crew members and passengers survived.