单选题 The American Family In the American family the husband and wife usually share important decision making. When the children are old enough, they take part {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}. Foreigners are often surprised by the permissiveness of American parents. The old rule that "children should be seen and not heard" is rarely {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}, and children are often allowed to do what they wish without strict parental {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}. The father seldom expects his children to obey him {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}question, and children are encouraged to be independent {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}an early age. Some people believe that American parents carry this freedom {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}far. Others think that a strong father image would not {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}the American values of equality and independence. Because Americans emphasize the importance of independence, young people are expected to break {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}their parental families by the time they have {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}their late teens or early twenties. {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}, not to do so is often regarded as a failure, a kind of weak dependence. This pattern of independence often results in serious {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}for the aging parents of a small family. The average American is expected to live {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}the age of 70. The job-retirement age is {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}65. The children have left home, married, and {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}their own households. At least 20 percent of all people over 65 do not have enough retirement incomes. {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}the major problem of many elderly couples is not economic. They feel useless and lonely with neither an occupation nor a close family group.

单选题The performance was （pretty） impressive.

单选题A Success Story At 19, Ben Way is already a millionaire, and one of a growing number of teenagers who have 1 their fortune through the Internet. 2 makes Ben"s story all the more remarkable is that he is dyslexic, and was 3 by teachers at his junior school that he would never be able to read or write 4 "I wanted to prove them 5 ", says Ben, creator and director of Way search, a net search engine which can be used to find goods in online shopping malls. When he was eight, his local authorities 6 him with a PC to help with school work. Although he was 7 to read the manuals, he had a natural ability with the computer, and 8 by his father, he soon began 9 people $10 an hour for his knowledge and skills. At the age of 15 he 10 up his own computer consultancy, Quad Computer, which he ran from his bedroom, and two years later he left school to 11 all his time to business. "By this time the company had grown and I needed to take on a 12 of employees to help me", says Ben. "That enabled me to start 13 business with bigger companies." It was his ability to consistently 14 difficult challenges that led him to win the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in the same year that he formed Waysearch, and he has recently signed a deal 15 $25 million with a private investment company, which will finance his search engine.

单选题Her behavior is extremely Uchildish/U.

单选题Who is Dr. Seuss? While many children and adults have enjoyed books by Dr. Seuss, very few actually know anything about Dr. Seuss himself. Dr. Seuss was born in 1904 and was given the name Theodor Seuss Geisel. He grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts and left town as a young man to attend Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. In college, he wrote for the school newspaper. Geisel created the name Dr. Seuss, a penname he would continue to write under for the rest of his life. Seuss first entered college with the idea that he would become a professor, but a classmate who saw him sketching thought he should become an artist. He soon pursued his passion for drawing. After college, he got a job working as a cartoonist for a newspaper. However. once the United States became involved in World War II, Seuss wanted to use his talent to help in the war effort. He worked for the Army making different types of war movies and animated films that were used to train soldiers. Publishers who saw his work during the war wanted Seuss to illustrate a children's book. The war experience, along with his experience as a journalist, led to his desire to write and illustrate his own children books. Dr. Seuss had a slow and difficult start as an author. His first book almost did not get published. However, after many months of being turned down his persistence paid off. Seuss soon signed with a new publisher. This small success was enough to keep Dr. Seuss writing and illustrating. While writing, he often put on silly hats to help to reduce the stress of finishing a story. Shoaly after his first work was published, Dr. Seuss wrote and published The Cat in the Hat, the book that made him famous. For years afterwards, Dr. Seuss continued to write and illustrate many books in his own unique style, which was very different than other authors. He won many awards for his books throughout his writing career, and many were adapted for television and movies. The name, Dr. Seuss, became very popular in children's literature. Though Theodor Seuss Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss, passed away at the age of 87 in 1991 ,his books and illustrations continue to live on.

单选题He"s spent years cultivating a knowledge of art.

单选题Financial consultants acknowledge that the value of common stock is {{U}}inherently{{/U}} changeable.

单选题The new job will provide you with invaluable experience. A. simply useless B. really practical C. very little D. extremely useful

单选题In the latter case the outcome can be serious indeed.

单选题下面有3篇短文，每篇短文后有5道题，每道题后面有4个选项。请仔细阅读短文并根据短文回答其后面的问题，从4个选项中选择1个最佳答案。{{B}}第一篇{{/B}} "Salty" Rice Plant Boosts Harvests British scientists are breeding a new generation of rice plants that will be able to grow in soil containing salt water. Their work may enable abandoned farms to become productive once more. Tim Flowers and Tony Yeo, from Sussex University's School of Biological Sciences, have spent several years researching how crops, such as rice, could be made to grow in water that has become salty. The pair have recently begun a three-year programme, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, to establish which genes enable some plants to survive salty conditions. The aim is to breed this capability into crops, starting with rice. It is estimated that each year more than 10m hectares(公顷) of agricultural land are lost because salt gets into the soil and stunts(妨碍生长) plants. The problem is caused by several factors. In the tropics, mangroves(红树林) that create swamps(沼泽) and traditionally formed barriers to sea water have been cut down. In the Mediterranean, a series of droughts have caused the water table to drop, allowing sea water to seep(渗透) in. In Latin America, irrigation often causes problems when water is evaporated(蒸发) by the heat, leaving salt deposits behind. Excess salt then enters the plants and prevents them functioning normally. Heavy concentrations of minerals in the plants stop them drawing up the water they need to survive. To overcome these problems, Flowers and Yeo decided to breed rice plants that take in very little slat and store what they do absorb in cells that do not affect the plants' growth. They have started to breed these characteristics into a new rice crop, but it will take about eight harvests before the resulting seeds are ready to be considered for commercial use. Once the characteristics for surviving salty soil are known, Flowers and Yeo will try to breed the appropriate genes into all manners of crops and plants. Land that has been abandoned to nature will then be able to bloom again, providing much needed food in the poorer countries of the world.

单选题There are only five minutes left, but the outcome of the match is still in doubt.

单选题 The Population Situation in India With 950 million people, India ranks second to China among the most populous countries. But since China {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}a family planning program in 1971, India has been closing the gap. Indians have reduced their birth rate but not nearly {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}the Chinese have. If current growth rates continue, India's population will {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}China's around the year 2028 at about 1.7 billion. Should that happen, it won't be the {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}of the enlightened women of Kerala, a state in southern India. While India as a whole adds almost 20 million people a year, Kerala's population is virtually {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}. The reason is no mystery: nearly two-thirds of Kerala women practice birth control, {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}about 40% in the entire nation. The difference {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}the emphasis put on health programs, including birth control, by the state authorities, {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}in 1957 became India's first elected Communist government. And an educational tradition and matrilineal (母系的) customs in parts of Kerala help girls and boys get {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}good schooling. While one in three Indian women is {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}, 90% of those in Kerala can read and write. Higher literacy rates {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}family planning. "Unlike our parents, we know that we can do more for our children if we have {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}of them," says Laial Cherian, 33, who lives in the village of Kudamaloor. She has limited herself {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}three children-one below the national {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}of four. That kind of restraint (抑制，克制) will keep Kerala from putting added {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}on world food supplies.

单选题Their parents once lived under very severe conditions.

单选题The first step in planning a marketing strategy for a new product is to analyze the breakdown of sales figures for competitive products.

单选题He believes that Europe must change or it will {{U}}perish{{/U}}. A. survive B. last C. die D. move

单选题Communication satellites generally use solar cells as their source of electric power, although some test satellites have used thermoelectric generators.

单选题Dennis Muren started his schooling at a very early age.

单选题Why So Many Children In many of the developing countries in Africa and Asia, the population is growing fast. The reason for this is simple: Women in these countries have a high birth rate—from 3.0 to 7.0 children per woman. The majority of these women are poor, without the food or resources to care for their families. Why do they have so many children? Why don"t they limit the size of their families? The answer may be that they often have no choice. There are several reasons for this. One reason is economic. In a traditional agricultural economy, large families are helpful. Having more children means having more workers in the fields and someone to take care of the parents in old age. In an industrial economy, the situation is different. Many children do not help a family; instead, they are an expense. Thus, industrialization has generally brought down the birth rate. This was the case in Italy, which was industrialized quite recently and rapidly. In the early part of the twentieth century, Italy was a poor, largely agricultural country with a high birth rate. After World War Ⅱ, Italy"s economy was rapidly modernized and industrialized. By the end of the century, the birth rate had dropped to 1.3 children per woman, the world"s lowest. However, the economy is not the only important factor that influences birth rate. Saudi Arabia, for example, does not have an agriculture-based economy, and it has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Nevertheless, it also has a very high birth rate (7.0). Mexico and Indonesia, on the other hand, are poor countries, with largely agricultural economies, but they have recently reduced their population growth. Clearly, other factors are involved. The most important of these is the condition of women. A high birth rate almost always goes together with lack of education and low status for women. This would explain the high birth rate of Saudi Arabia. There, the traditional culture gives women little education or independence and few possibilities outside the home. On the other hand, the improved condition of women in Mexico, Thailand, and Indonesia explains the decline in birth rates in these countries. Their governments have taken measures to provide more education and opportunities for women. Another key factor in the birth rate is birth control. Women may want to limit their families but have no way to do so. In countries where governments have made birth control easily available and inexpensive, birth rates have gone down. This is the case in Singapore, Sri Lanka, and India, as well as in Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico, and Brazil. In these countries, women have also been provided with health care and help in planning their families. These trends show that an effective program to reduce population growth does not have to depend on better economic conditions. It can be effective if it aims to help women and meet their needs. Only then, in fact, does it have any real chance of success.

单选题Human Ingenuity Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty. That compulsion has resulted in robotics—the science of conferring various human capabilities on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close. As a result, the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms. Our banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robo-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics, there are already robot systems that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracy—far greater precision that highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone. But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility, they will have to operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves—goals that pose a real challenge. "While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error," says Dave Lavery, manager of a robotics program at NASA, "we can"t yet give a robot enough "common sense" to reliably interact with a dynamic world." Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries. What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain"s roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented—and human perception far more complicated-than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer systems on Earth can"t approach that kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don"t know quite how we do it.

单选题There are only five minutes left, but the {{U}}outcome{{/U}} of the match is still in doubt. A. result B. judgement C. estimation D. event