单选题It is not too late, but ______ action is needed. A. right B. urgent C. hurry D. prompt

单选题During the oil crisis of the 1970s, many states ______ speed limits to reduce gasoline use.

单选题When I decided to quit my full time employment it never occurred to me that I might become a part of a new international trend. A lateral move that hurt my pride and blocked my professional progress prompted me to abandon my relatively high profile career although, in the manner of a disgraced government minister, I covered my exit by claiming "I wanted to spend more time with my family". Curiously, some two-and-a-half years and two novels later, my experiment in what the Americans term "downshifting" has turned my tired excuse into an absolute reality. I have been transformed from a passionate advocate of the philosophy of "having it all", preached by Linda Kelsey for the past seven years in the page of She magazine, into a woman who is happy to settle for a bit of everything. I have discovered, as perhaps Kelsey will after her much-publicized resignation from the editorship of She after a build up of stress, that abandoning the doctrine of "juggling your life", and making the alternative move into "downshifting" brings with it far greater rewards than financial success and social status. Nothing could persuade me to return to the kind of life Kelsey used to advocate and I once enjoyed: 12 hour working days, pressured deadlines, the fearful strain of office politics and the limitations of being a parent on "quality time". In America, the move away from juggling to a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle is a well-established trend. Downshifting—also known in America as "voluntary simplicity"—has, ironically, even bred a new area of what might be termed anticonsumerism. There are a number of best-selling downshifting self-help books for people who want to simplify their lives; there are newsletters, such as The Tightwad Gazette , that give hundreds of thousands of Americans useful tips on anything from recycling their cling-film to making their own soap; there are even support groups for those who want to achieve the mid-"90s equivalent of dropping out. While in America the trend started as a reaction to the economic decline—after the mass redundancies caused by downsizing in the late "80s—and is still linked to the politics of thrift, in Britain, at least among the middle-class down-shifters of my acquaintance, we have different reasons for seeking to simplify our lives. For the women of my generation who were urged to keep juggling through the"80s, downshifting in the mid-"90s is not so much a search for the mythical good life—growing your own organic vegetables, and risking turning into one—as a personal recognition of your limitations.

单选题Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to designate things or processes which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in nomenclature. Such special dialects, or jargons, are necessary in technical discussion of any kind. Thousands of these technical terms are very properly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a whole, they are rather on the outskirts of the English language than actually within its borders. Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts, and other vocations, like farming and fishery, that have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary, is very old. Hence, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are mole familiar in sound, and more generally understood, than most other technicalities. The special dialects of law, medicine, divinity, and philosophy have also, in their older strata, become pretty familiar to cultivated persons, and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary. Yet every vocation still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion has been much increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic arts. Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom and abandoned with indifference when they have served their turn. Most of the new coinages are confined to special discussions, and seldom get into general literature or conversation. Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close guild. The lawyer, the physician, the man of science, the divine, associates freely with his fellow-creatures, and does not meet them in a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called "popular science" makes everybody acquainted with modem views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported in the newspapers, and everybody is soon talking about it. Thus our common speech is always taking up new technical terms and making them commonplace.

单选题Kepler reconciled astronomy with physics, and substituted for fictitious clockwork a universe of material bodies not unlike the earth, freely floating and turning in space, moved by forces______ A. acted on them B. being acted on it C. acting on them D. having acted on it

单选题The two astronauts have splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, only five miles from the aircraft carrier that was______ for the recovery mission. A. detach B. dispatched C. devote D. dismantled

单选题A product is to be regarded as being ______ when introduced into the another country at less than its normal value. A. discharged B. discarded C. disposed D. dumped

单选题He ______ between life and death for a few days but then he pulled through.

单选题School integration plans that involve busing between suburban and central-city areas have contributed, according to a recent study, to any future need for busing.

单选题The lady in this strange tale very obviously suffers from a serious mental illness. Her plot against a completely innocent old man is a clear sign of ______.

单选题In recent speeches at Republican fundraisers, President Bush has taken to criticizing the press for baring government secrets. The outgoing secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, in what may have been his last official act, wrote to The New York Times that in exposing the monitoring of bank transfers, it had undermined a successful counterterrorism program. A house resolution, passed by a party line vote, called on the media to safeguard classified programs. The government has discovered what governments have discovered before, that an undercurrent of hostility towards the news media runs through the country and that there could be political advantage in campaigning against the press in general. The champion press hater, of course, was President Nixon, who told his staff that the press is the enemy, and he proceeded to declare his own private war against the media. In 1969, he had a speech written by speechwriter Pat Buchanan denouncing the media as a "tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men". And he gave it to Vice President Spiro Agnew to deliver. That speech is best remembered today for the line contributed by another speechwriter, William Safire, about "nattering nabobs of negativism". It is not clear that the public hates the press as much as officialdom would like to think. A recent Pew Research report found that public attitudes towards the press have been on a downward track for years. Growing numbers of people questioned the news media's patriotism and fairness. And yet most Americans continue to say they like mainstream news outlets. And so, as The Christian Science Monitor headlined the other day: "Amid war on terror, a war with the press." You would not expect that I, as a journalist, would exhibit total neutrality in such a war. And so let me quote Justice Potter Stewart in his opinion in the Pentagon Papers ease in 1971: "In the absence of governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the area of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry... Without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people;" That remains true, even when Mr. Bush proclaims a state of war with the terrorists.

单选题The newly designed zoom has overcome distortion previously ______ in a zoom of this range.

单选题He had a reputation for being a bit slow-witted but it didn't ______ him in the least.

单选题He doesn't seem to be able to______any interest in his studies. A. make up B. work up C. turn up D. use up

单选题The company has been forced to ______ 200 employees due to financial problems.

单选题We most look beyond ______ and assumption and try to discover what is missing.

单选题We’ve just installed central heating, ________ should make a tremendous difference to the house next winter.

单选题It can be inferred that "a passbook savings account" ______.