单选题It is now generally assumed that the planets were formed by the {{U}}accretion{{/U}} of gas and dust in a cosmic cloud.

单选题The book made a great impact on its readers. A. force B. influence C. surprise D. power

单选题Recent studies have shown that the stature of male Americans has scarcely changed in the past two hundred years.

单选题The US income tax system will be simplified in the next few years.

单选题The Cold Places The Arctic is a polar region. It surrounds the North Pole. Like Antarctica, the Arctic is a land of ice and snow. Antarctica holds the record for a low temperature reading—125 Fahrenheit below zero. Readings of 85 degrees below zero are common in both the Arctic and Antarctica. Winter temperatures average 30 degrees below zero in the Arctic. At the South Pole the winter is about 73 degrees below zero. One thing alone makes it almost impossible for men to live in Antarctica and in parts of the Arctic. This one thing is the low temperature—the killing chill of the far North and the polar South. To survive, men must wear the warmest possible clothing. They must build windproof shelters. They must keep heaters going at all times. Not even for moment can they be unprotected against the below-zero temperature. Men have a way of providing for themselves. Polar explorers wrap themselves in warm coats and furs. The cold makes life difficult. But the explorers can stay alive. What about animals? Can they survive? Do we find plants? Do we find life in the Arctic and the Antarctica? Yes, we do. There is life in the oceans. There is life on land. Antarctica, as we have seen, is a cold place indeed. But this has not always been the case. Expedition scientists have discovered that Antarctica may have been much like our own. Explores have discovered coal in Antarctica. This leads them to believe that Antarctica at one time was a land of swamps and forests. Heat and moisture must have kept the trees in the forests alive.

单选题A Pay Rise or Not? "Unless I get a rise, I'll have a talk with the boss, Henry Manley," George Strong said to himself. George liked his job and he liked the town he lived in, but his wife kept telling him that his pay was not enough to meet the needs of the family. That was why he was thinking of taking a job in Birmingham, a nearby city about 50 miles away. He had been offered a job in a factory there, and the pay was far better. George lived in Wyeford, a medium-sized town. He really liked the place and didn't like the idea of moving somewhere else, but if he took the job in Birmingham, he would have, to move his family there. Henry Manley was the manager of a small company manufacturing electric motors. The company was in deep trouble because, among other reasons, the Japanese were selling such things at very low prices. As a result, Manley had to cut his own prices and profits as well. Otherwise he would not get any orders at all. Even then, orders were still not coming in fast enough, so that there was no money for raises (加工资) for his workers. Somehow, he had to struggle along and keep his best workers as well. He sighed. Just then the phone rang. His secretary told him that George Strong wanted to see him as soon as possible. Manley sighed again. He could guess what it was about. George Strong was a very young engineer. The company had no future unless it could attract and keep men like him. Manley rubbed his forehead (前额) ; his problems seemed endless.

单选题I think this is a deliberate insult.A. carelessB. intentionalC. humiliatingD. serious

单选题What was the weather like that night?

单选题The New Technology Application On a more mundane level, third-generation mobile telephones, despite all the delays and the billions squandered on 3G licenses by telecom firms, are still expected to offer consumers high-speed, always on mobile internet access, complete with video, in the next few years. Rapidly proliferating "Wi-Fi" networks already offer wireless access on a local basis. Tiny tracking chips called radio-frequency identification devices are being used as pet passports. Soon they will be small, powerful and cheap enough to be implanted into everything. Sensors of every kind, including video cameras, should also become much smaller and cheaper. Forrester Research, a technology consultancy, predicts that 14 billion such devices will be connected to the internet by 2005. How rapidly such new technology is introduced will depend on a number of factors the state of the economy, the supply of investment capital and the appetite of consumers for new products or services. Fortunes will be made and lost many times over. But whatever happens, the power of computing and communications look set to continue to grow, and its price to fall, at a steady rate for the next few decades. That will make it possible, at least in rich countries, to record most human interactions, wherever and whenever they take place, and to store and analyze this ocean of data at low cost. For the sake of argument, this survey will assume that we are heading towards a networked society of ubiquitous, mobile communication capable of constant monitoring. Whether this arrives in 20, 30 or 40 years does not really matter. The point is that the destination seems not merely possible, but probable, so it is not too soon to ask: What do we want this technology to do? The internet has already thrown up a host of legal and political conundrums, but, these are only a small foretaste of the dilemmas about privacy, security, intellectual property and the nature of government itself that will have to be faced over the coming decades. The debate has already begun. This survey will outline some of main issues and speculate on the way they are likely to go.

单选题Medicine Award Kicks off Nobel Prize Announcements Two scientists who have won praise for research into the growth of cancer cells could be candidates for the Nobel Prize in medicine when the 2008 winners are presented on Monday, kicking off six days of Nobel announcements. Australian-born US citizen Elizabeth Blackburn and American Carol Greider have already won a series of medical honors for their enzyme (酶) research and experts say they could be among the front-runners for a Nobel. Among the pair"s possible rivals are Frenchman Pierre Chambon and Americans Ronald Evans and Elwood Jensen, who opened up the field of studying proteins called nuclear hormone receptors (受体). As usual, the tight-lipped award committee is giving no hints about who is in the running before presenting its decision in a news conference at Stockholm"s Karolinska Institute. Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite (炸), established the prizes in his will in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. The economics prize is technically not a Nobel but a 1968 creation of Sweden"s central bank. Nobel left few instructions on how to select winners, but medicine winners are typically awarded for a specific breakthrough rather than a body of research. Hans Jornvall, secretary of the medicine prize committee, said the 10 million kronor (瑞典克朗) (US $1.3 million) prize encourages groundbreaking research but he did not think winning it was the primary, goal for scientists. "Individual researchers probably don"t look at themselves as potential Nobel Prize winners when they"re at work," Jornvall told The Associated Press. "They get their kicks from their research and their interest in how life functions." In 2006, Blackburn, of the University of California, San Francisco, and Greider, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, shared the Lasker prize for basic medical research with Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School. Their work set the stage for research suggesting that cancer cells use telomerase (端粒酶) to sustain (维持) their uncontrolled growth.

单选题He confesses that he has done it. ______

单选题New U.S. Plan for Disease Prevention Urging Americans to 1 responsibility for their health, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson 2 Tuesday launched a $15 million program to try to 3 communities to do more to prevent chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer and diabetes. The initiative highlights the cost of chronic diseases—the leading causes of death in the United States— and outlines ways that people can 4 them, including better diet and increased exercise. "In the United States today, 7 of 10 deaths and the vast majority of 5 illness, disability and health care costs are 6 by chronic diseases," the Health and Human Services Department said in a statement. The causes are often 7 —smoking, poor eating habits and a lack of exercise. "I am 8 that preventing disease by promoting better health is a smart policy choice for our future," Thompson told at a conference held to launch the initiative. "Our current health care system is not structured to 9 with the escalating costs of treating diseases that are largely preventable through changes in our lifestyle choices." Thompson said heart disease and strokes will cost the country more than $351 billion in 2003. "These leading causes of death for men and women are largely 10 , yet we as a nation are not taking the steps necessary for us to lead healthier, longer lives," he said. The $15 million is 11 to go to communities to promote prevention, pushing for changes as simple as building sidewalks to encourage people to walk more. 12 exercise such as walking can prevent and even 13 heart disease and diabetes, and prevent cancer and strokes. The money will also go to community organizations, clinics and nutritionists who are being encouraged to work together to educate people at 14 of diabetes about what they can do to prevent it and encourage more cancer screening. The American Cancer Society 15 that half of all cancers can be caught by screening, including Pap tests for cervical (子宫颈的) cancer, mammograms (乳房X射线照片) for breast cancer, colonoscopies (结肠镜检查), and prostate (前列腺的) checks. If such cancers were all caught by early screening, the group estimates that the survival rate for cancer would rise to 95 percent.

单选题Messalina's name has become a byword for notorious behavior.

单选题{{B}}第三篇{{/B}} A Debate on the English Language A measure declaring English the national language is under intense debate in the United States. The US Senate passed two declarations last week. One calls English the nation's official language and the other says it is the "common and unifying (统一的)" tongue. But Americans found themselves divided on the issue. Since people worldwide know that most Americans speak only English, many can't understand why the issue is so controversial(有争议的). "The discussion is related to fears of immigration issues. " says Dick Tucker, a social scientist at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. "It's related to a worry about the changing demography (人口统计)of the US. It's a worry about who will continue to have political and economic influence. In fact, the notion of protecting the language has been kicked around almost since the nation's founding. John Adams lobbied(游说) in 1780 for the creation of a national academy to correct and improve the English language. But his proposal died, since lawmakers saw it as a royalist(保皇主义 ) attempt to define personal behavior. Since then, the country hasn't had a national language, but the idea of recognizing the special status of English lived on. The emotions surrounding language resurface(再次浮现) not because people feel comfortable with English. It is more about the discomfort many Americans feel with the new languages, says Walt Wolfram, a professor at North Carolina State University. "Language is never about language. " he says. According to the 2000 US Census Bureau report, of 209 million Americans over 18 years old, 172 million speak only English at home. About 37 million speak languages other than English. Among them, 6.5 million speak poor English and 3.1 million don't speak English at all.

单选题It is easy to misjudge the strength of the wind.

单选题We have made an effort to boost participation in the program.

单选题A bare hill appears behind the jungle.A. baldB. humidC. immenseD. level

单选题Penguins do not suffer from the cold in Antarctica because their feathers secrete protective oil. A．hide B．warm C．produce D．absorb

单选题Search on the Computer What difference does it make if we read texts displayed on a computer screen instead of on paper printed with ink? The computer certainly does not guarantee deeper comprehension, greater subtlety of mind, or a wider range of imaginative reference. The mediation of a computer, however, put new powers at the disposal of intelligence. For one thing, the computer is itself can do simple reading—as I have noted, it can" read" an immense body of literature in search of designated words. As anyone knows who has ever spent days in libraries in search of errant(错误的) information, simply identifying relevant sources absorbs inordinate(无节制的，过度的)amounts of time in research. The objections might be raised that a search of texts by computer may block the serendipitous(偶然得到的 ) discoveries that occur while browsing in the stacks of great libraries. No member of the academy need fear that the use of computer will keep him from the stacks, but browsing is, if anything, easier if texts can be called up on a screen in the senerity of one's chosen surroundings, The great deficiency of libraries, as we know them, is that while titles are catalogued, the libraries have no master indexes of the contents of books. Individual volumes, it is true, have indexes, often of inferior quality, but even the best indexes must be examined one at a time. The great advantage of the electronic library is that a computer could search and analyze its contents without proceeding volume by volume. As work in artificial intelligence develops, computer systems may also become adept at more complex tasks, such as summarizing texts, which has been accomplished experimentally.

单选题Good Table Manners Manners play an important part in making a favorable impression at the dinner table. Here are some general rules. Nankin (餐巾) use The meal begins when the host unfolds his or her napkin. This is your signal to do the same, place your napkin on your lap. Unfold it completely if it is a small napkin, or in half, lengthwise (纵向地), if it is a large dinner napkin. If you need to leave the table during the meal, place your napkin on your chair as a signal to your server that you will be returning. Once the meal is over, place your napkin neatly on the table to the right of your dinner plate Do not refold it. Use a napkin only for your mouth. Never use it for your nose, face or forehead. Use of utensils (餐具) Start with the knife, fork or spoon furthest from your plate, and work your way in, using one utensil for each course. If soup is served, remember to spoon away from yourself. This helps stop the drips. Do not put the entire soup spoon in your mouth. Instead, fill a soup spoon about 75 per cent with soup, and sip (啜饮) it from the side noiselessly. After finishing dinner, place the knife and fork parallel to one another across the plate with the knife blade facing inward toward the plate. Using your fingers Here"s a list of finger foods, sandwiches, cookies, small fruits or berries with stems, French fries and potato chips, and hamburgers. Chew (咀嚼) with your mouth closed and don"t make noise; don"t talk with your mouth full. Bread must be broken with your hands. It is never cut with a knife. Don"t pick something out of your teeth. Instead, excuse yourself to the bathroom. If possible, try not to cough at the table. Do not put your elbows (肘) on the table. In France, it is essential to have both hands above the table at the same time. Do not put bones or anything else on the table. Things that are not eaten should be put on your plate.