单选题As Texas begins to recover from two weeks of devastating storms, a generally hidden truth about its economy will come to light again. Most of the builders and electricians who will have to repair the houses, remake the roads and re-establish the electrical power lines will have to take on undocumented workers in order to meet their contracts. In 1996 the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) conservatively estimated that Texas had over 600,000 undocumented immigrants doing the jobs no one else wants: hauling carcasses in packing plants, picking fruit, cleaning hotel rooms, or sorting out the unspeakable damage caused by natural disasters. Mention the issue of these workers to a Texan, and he is liable to fall uncharacteristically silent. Even state legislators avoid the issue. They know that many of their constituents employ undocumented workers. They also know that the booming Texas economy is driven in part by the ready supply of cheap, diligent, illegal labour. Dallas is one magnet for undocumented workers. The city's politicians oppose INS crackdowns fearing they will damage the local economy and bankrupt small companies. Houston is another. There a dawn drive past some of the city's 36 informal day-labour sites shows the size of the undocumented workforce. Young Mexicans wait on the pavement, ready to jump into the back of any pick-up truck that slows down to take them. Houston police estimate that over 150,000 labourers, about 85% of them undocumented, gather every day in search of a job. It is a testament to the vitality of the Texas economy that most of them get hired usually to mix cement and shift bricks. No questions are asked, no papers signed. Most workers do not even know their employer's name. They are paid in cash, around 40 dollars a day while the average American earns more than twice as much.

单选题Got milk? Be very afraid. Or, preferably, a bit skeptical. Some folks are about to try to convince you that milk is toxic. But the real question is, what"s more dangerous to your health: milk, or celebrities and activists embarked on the latest trendy crusade (改革)? This month marks the publicity-pumped debut of the Anti Dairy Coalition, a band of physicians, self-described "Holly-wood personalities" and others who decry what they call "the health and nutritional risks of consuming dairy products". The coalition, including its spokes-Jeremiah, writer George Plimpton, would have you believe that milk causes heart disease, cancer infections, asthma, allergies and tuberculosis. Robert Cohen, founder of the ADC (and author of Milk: The Deadly Poison , writes: "The Fountain of Youth and cure to illness can be obtained by giving up milk." Hyperbole aside, the ADC is spotlighting a question hotly debated by everyone from nutritionists to parents. Many patients ask doctors whether they should give up milk, like that supermodel they saw interviewed on TV. And to be sure, the ADC"s overwrought claims do have some scientific basis. Take heart disease. Foods like butter, cheese, ice cream and whole milk are packed with saturated fat (饱和脂肪), which blocks arteries (动脉) and can lead to heart attacks. That"s why most nutritionists advise switching to low-fat or skim milk and eating more yogurt and cottage cheese than Haagen-Dazs and Bric. Even skim milk, though, can trigger allergies in some people, including infants, who in any case will get more iron and other key nutrients from breast milk or formula. So must you flee from milk entirely? Yes, says Cohen, who holds that skim milk is the devil"s brew. It"s full of—are you sitting down?—protein. And here"s where the ADC starts twisting the facts to reach wild conclusions. Allergies are frequently triggered by proteins (true; asthma is an allergic condition (true; it"s been increasing dramatically (true; doctors don"t know the cause (true; therefore, the protein in milk must be the culprit (罪魁祸首)? A similar leap of illogic assumes that because women in the Netherlands. Denmark, Norway and Sweden consume lots of milk and also suffer high rates of breast cancer, the former must cause the latter. Another clunker is Cohen"s claim that widespread lactose intolerance (乳糖不耐受)—the inability to digest dairy products—means milk is of little use as a source of calcium. In fact, many cases of lactose intolerance are mild and interfere only slightly with calcium uptake. Many people intolerant of milk can easily digest yogurt. And lactase tablets (乳糖分解酵素片) can make dairy products digestible even in severe cases. If milk isn"t the perfect food, it"s still got some big things going for it. It"s an inexpensive source of calcium, protein, potassium and other vitamins and minerals. And unlike other sources of calcium, such as, say, steamed kale, milk is a food kids will eat. The ADC feels that milk is the root of most human maladies (疾病), but I can point to other single-issue obsessive who insist the villain is meat or wheat or sugar or some other substance that our species has long and happily consumed. I often learn something by examining their claims. But I keep coming back to the mainstream nutritionists, who emphasize a balanced diet and advise moderation in all things.

单选题Lack of technological progress in the ancient and medieval worlds was primarily due to the absence of ______.

单选题The original elections were declared ______by the former military ruler.(2013年北京航空大学考博试题)

单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} A recent history of the Chicago meat-packing industry and its workers examines how the industry grew from its appearance in the 1830's through the early 1890's. Meat-packers, the author argues, had good wages, working conditions, and prospects for advancement within the packinghouses, and did not cooperate with labor agitators since labor relations were so harmonious. Because the history maintains that conditions were above standard for the era, the frequency of labor disputes, especially in the mid-1880's, is not accounted for. The work ignores the fact that the 1880's were crucial years in American labor history, and that the packinghouse workers! efforts were part of the national movement for labor reform. In fact, other historical sources for the late nineteenth century record deteriorating housing and high disease and infant mortality rates in the industrial community, due to low wages and unhealthy working conditions. Additional date from the University of Chicago suggest that the packing houses were dangerous places to work. The government investigations commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt which eventually led to the adoption of the 1906 Meat Inspection Act found the packinghouses unsanitary, while observed that most of the workers were poorly paid and overworked. The history may be too optimistic because most of its data date from the 1880's at the latest, and the information provided from that decade is insufficiently analyzed. Conditions actually declined in the 1880's, and continued to decline after the 1880's, due to are organization of the packing process and a massive influx of unskilled workers. The deterioration. In worker status, partly a result of the new availability of unskilled and hence cheap labor, is not discussed. Though a detailed account of work in the packing-houses is attempted, the author fails to distinguish between the wages and conditions for skilled workers and for those unskilled laborers who comprised the majority of the industry's workers from the 1880's on. While conditions for the former were arguably tolerable due to the strategic importance of skilled workers in the complicated slaughtering, cutting and packing process (though worker complaints about the rate and conditions of work were frequefit), pay and conditions for the latter were wretched. The author's misinterpretation of the origins of the feelings the meat-packers had for their industrial neighborhood may account for the history's faulty generalizations. The pride and contentment the author remarks upon were, arguably, less the products of the industrial world of the packers--the giant yards and the intricate plants--than of the unity and vibrancy of the ethnic cultures that formed a viable community on Chicago's South Side. Indeed, the strength of this community succeeded in generating a social movement that effectively confronted the problems of the industry that provided its livelihood.

单选题You can't leave the city: all the roads are______by snow.

单选题She never ______ to read the news but turned at once to the crossword on the last page.

单选题In width of scope, Yeats far exceeds any of his contemporaries. He is the only poet since the 18th century who has been a public man in his own country and the only poet since Milton who has been a public man at a time when his country was involved in a struggle for political liberty. This may not seem an important matter, but it is a question whether the kind of life lived by poets for the last two hundred years or so has not been one great reason for the drift of poetry away from the life of the community as a whole, and the loss of touch with tradition. Once the life of contemplation has been divorced from the life of action, or from real knowledge of men of action, something is lost which it is difficult to define, but which leaves poetry enfeebled and incomplete. Yeats responded with all his heart as a young man to the reality and the romance of Ireland's struggle but he lived to be completely disillusioned about the value of the Irish rebellion. He saw his dreams of liberty blotted out in horror by "the innumerable clanging wings that have put out the moon". It brought him to the final conclusion of the futility of all discipline that is not of the wlaole being, and of "how base at moments of excitement are minds without culture". But he remained a man to whom the life of action always meant something very real.

单选题The place ______ me very much.

单选题Three 36 years ago Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit made his 37 thermometer in his home town of Danzig (Now Gdansk in Poland). The thermometer was filled with 38 and completely sealed, but it was not much use without some sort of 39 to measure the temperature. One story 40 that, during the winter of 1708-09, Fahrenheit took a measurement of 0 degrees as the coldest temperature outdoors—which would now read as minus 17.8℃. Five years 41 he used mercury instead of alcohol for his 42 , and made a top reference point by measuring his own body temperature as 90 degrees. Soon afterwards he became a glassblower, 43 allowed him to make thinly blown glass tubes that could be marked up with more points on the scale and so 44 accuracy. Eventually he took the 45 point of his temperature scale from a reading made in ice, water and salt, and a top point made from the boiling point of water. The scale was recalibrated using 180 degrees between these 46 points and Fahrenheit was able to make much more accurate and more 47 measurements of temperature. But in 1742 a rival challenged the Fahrenheit scale and 48 superseded it. Anders Celsius, in Sweden, invented a scale of 100 degrees between the freezing and boiling points of water and gradually 49 over many countries. However, the British 50 wedded to Fahrenheit until well into the 20th century.

单选题Anything that is dropped from a height falls towards the center of the earth because of the pull of______.

单选题Left in the garage where it was damp, the wooden frame had ______.

单选题Due to sluggish market conditions, the factory's workforce has ______ from over 4,000 to a few hundred. A. proclaimed B. dwindled C. repressed D. indulged

单选题The failure of the experiment to produce the expected result should alone be ______to your carelessness.

单选题Some 121 countries may be designated "developing", and of this 121, seventeen countries ______ more than four-fifths of energy consumption. A. amount to B. account for C. add up D. take away

单选题______ all our kindness to help her, Sara refused to listen.

单选题UDeceptively /Usimple in design, the sculptural works of George Norton incorporate a broad range of textures, sizes, and contours.

单选题 A veteran negotiation specialist should be skillful at manipulating touchy situation.

单选题The phrase "at a premium" (paragraph 2) might mean ______.

单选题The most frustrating periods of any diet are the inevitable ______, when weight loss ______ if not stops.