单选题New Product Will Save Lives Drinking water that looks clean may still contain bugs(虫子), which can cause illness. A small company called Genera Technologies has produced a testing method in three stages, which shows whether water is safe. The new test shows if water needs chemicals added to it, to destroy anything harmful. It was invented by scientist Dr. Adrian Parton, who started Genera five years ago. He and his employees have developed the test together with a British water company. Andy Headland, Genera"s marketing director, recently presented the test at a conference in the USA and forecast good American sales for it. Genera has already sold 11 of its tests at $ 42,500 a time in the UK and has a further four on order. It expects to sell another 25 tests before the end of March. The company says it is the only test in the UK to be approved by the government. Genera was formed five years ago and until October last year had only five employees; it now employs 14. Mr. Headland believes that the company should make around $19 million by the end of the year in the UK alone.

单选题Plants and Mankind Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. We don"t know what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but from what we can observe of preindustrial societies that still exist, a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food pyramid for all living things, even for other plants. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of people, not only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungle of the Amazon recognize hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them botany has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of "knowledge" at all. Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become the farther away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next season, the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled production of a few plants, rather than getting a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away.

单选题Mary Ugets up/U at six o'clock every morning.

单选题Henry Manley was already deeply in debt.

单选题When they moved to California, where there were more job opportunities, they decided to {{U}}discard{{/U}} most of their old furniture.

单选题We have never seen such (gorgeous) hills.

单选题She has been the subject of {{U}}massive{{/U}} media coverage. A. extensive B. negative C. responsive D. explosive

单选题Three ways to Become More Creative Most people believe they don"t have much imagination. They are wrong. Everyone has imagination, but most of us, once we become adults, forget how to access it. Creativity isn"t always connected with great works of art or ideas. People at work and in their free time routinely think of creative ways to solve problems. Maybe you have a goal to achieve, a tricky question to answer or you just want to expand your mind! Here are three techniques to help you. This technique involves taking unrelated ideas and trying to find links between them. First, think about the problem you have to solve or the job you need to do. Then find an image, word, idea or object, for example, a candle. Write down all the ideas/words associated with candies: light, fire, matches, wax, night, silence, etc. Think of as many as you can. The next stage is to relate the ideas to the job you have to do. So imagine you want to buy a friend an original present; you could buy him tickets to a match or take him out for the night. Imagine that normal limitations don"t exist. You have as much time/space/money, etc. as you want. Think about your goal and the new possibilities. If, for example, your goal is to learn to ski, you can now practice skiing every day of your lift (because you have the time and the money). Now adapt this to reality. Maybe you can practice skiing every day in December, or every Monday in January. Look at the situation from a different point of view. Good negotiators (谈判者) use this technique in business, and so do writers. Fiction writers often imagine they are the characters in their books. They ask questions: what does this character want? Why can"t she get it? What changes must she make to get what she wants? What does she dream about? If your goal involves other people, put yourself "in their shoes". The best, fishermen think like fish!

单选题"I am not meddling." Mary said mildly , "I"m just curious."

单选题When climbing the hill, John was knocked unconscious by an unexpected rolling stone.

单选题8 It seems that only Mary is {{U}}eligible{{/U}} for the job.

单选题The Decline of Formal English Americans no longer expect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the English language with skill and gift. Nor do they aspire to such command themselves. In his latest book, Doing Our Own Thing : The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care , John McWhorter, a linguist and controversialist of mixed liberal and conservative views, sees the triumph of 1960s counter-culture as responsible for the decline of formal English. Blaming the permissive 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yet another criticism against the decline in education. Mr. McWhorter"s academic specialty is language history and change, and he sees the gradual disappearance of "whom," for example, to be natural and no more regrettable than the loss of the case-endings of Old English. But the cult of the authentic and the personal, "doing our own thing," has spelt the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music. While even the modestly educated sought an elevated tone when they put pen to paper before the 1960s, even the most well regarded writing since then has sought to capture spoken English on the page. Equally, in poetry, the highly personal, performative genre is the only form that could claim real liveliness. In both oral and written English, talking is triumphing over speaking, spontaneity over craft. Illustrated with an entertaining array of examples from both high and low culture, the trend that Mr. McWhorter documents is unmistakable. But it is less clear, to take the question of his subtitle, why we should, like, care. As a linguist, he acknowledges that all varieties of human language, including non-standard ones like Black English, can be powerfully expressive there exists no language or dialect in the world that cannot convey complex ideas. He is not arguing, as many do, that we can no longer think straight because we do not talk proper. Russians have a deep love for their own language and carry large chunks of memorized poetry in their heads, while Italian politicians tend to elaborate speech that would seem old-fashioned to most English-speakers. Mr. McWhorter acknowledges that formal language is not strictly necessary, and proposes no radical education reforms he is really grieving over the loss of something beautiful more than useful. We now take our English "on paper plates instead of china." A shame, perhaps, but probably an inevitable one.

单选题It's a gorgeous day anyway. A. lovely B. cold C. normal D. rainy

单选题What were the effects of the decision she made?

单选题Everybody was glad to see Mary back. A. sorry B. sad C. angry D. happy

单选题The White House We got up early this morning and (51) a long walk after breakfast. We walked through the business section of the city. I told you yesterday that the city was larger (52) I thought It would be. (53) the business section is smaller than I thought it would be. I suppose that's (54) Washington is a special kind of city. (55) the people in Washington work for the government. About 9:30 we went to the White House. It's (56) to the public from 10 till 12, and there was a long line of people waiting to get in. We didn't have to wait very long, because the line moved (57) quickly. The White House is really white. It is painted every year. And it seems very white, because it's got beautiful lawns all around it, (58) many trees and shrubs. The grounds (59) about four square blocks. I mean, they're about two blocks long (60) each side. The part (61) the President lives and works is not open to the public. But the part we saw was beautiful. We went through five of the main rooms. One of them was the library, on the ground floor. On the next floor, there are three rooms named (62) the colors that are used in them: the Red Room, the Blue Room and the Green Room. The walls are covered with silk (63) . There are (64) old furniture, from the time (65) the White House was first built. And everywhere there are paintings and statues of former presidents and other famous people from history.

单选题It is difficult to get young people to plan for their old age, which seems very distant to them.A. impossibleB. farawayC. observableD. fearful

单选题Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb On Sept. 24,President Barack Obama will bring together 14 world leaders for a special U. N. Security Council meeting in New York. On the agenda: how to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The summit is the latest step in the administration's campaign to eliminate nukes. The efforts to eliminate nukesare all grounded in the same proposition: that nuclear weapons represent the" gravest threat" to U. S. security. This argument has a lot going for it. It's also popular; U.S. presidents have been making similar noises since the Eisenhower administration, and halting the spread of nukes( if not eliminating them altogether) is one of the few things Obama, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu can all agree on. There's just one problem with the reasoning : it may well be wrong. A growing and compelling body of research suggests that nuclear weapons may not, in fact, make the World more dangerous. The bomb may actually make us safer. This argument rests on two deceptively simple observations. First, nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. Second, there's never been a nuclear war, or even a nonnuclear war between two states that possess them. Just stop for a second and think about that : it's hard to overstate how remarkable it is. especially given the singular viciousness of the 20th century. As Kenneth Waltz, the leading" nuclear optimist" and a professor of political science at UC Berkeley puts it," We now have 64 years of experience since Hiroshi- ma. It's striking and against all historical precedent that for that substantial period, there has not been any war among nuclear states. " To understand why the next 64 years are likely to play out the same way—Iyou need to start by recognizing that all states are rational on some basic level. Their leaders may be stupid, petty even evil, but they tend to do things only when they're pretty sure they can get away with them. Take war: a country will start a fight only when it'almost certain it can get what it wants at an acceptable price. Not even Hider or Saddam waged wars they didn't think they could win. The problem historically has been that leaders often make the wrong gamble and underestimate the other side—millions of innocents pay the price.

单选题It might be more prudent to get a second opinion before going ahead.

单选题I reserve the fight to disagree.A. deserveB. keepC. perceiveD. notice