单选题 Sino-Japan Animosity Lessens Chinese and Japanese people view each other slightly more positively than last year, according to a survey released on Wednesday at a press conference in Beijing. The survey is jointly sponsored by China Daily and Genron NPO, a Japanese think tank similar to the American Council on Foreign Relations. It also found overwhelming agreement in both countries that Sino-Japanese relations were important. The survey is a part of the Beijing-Tokyo Forum, an annual gathering of senior government officials and representatives from Chinese and Japanese NGOs designed to improve communication and understanding between the two countries. Conducted every year for five years now, the survey focused on two different groups of people: ordinary citizens, and intellectuals. In China, the intellectual group was comprised mainly of university students from well-known schools like Peking University. In Japan, the "intellectual" group was mainly made up of previous members of Genron NPO. Among ordinary Chinese polled, 35.7 percent said they have "very good" or "relatively good" impressions of Japan, a 5.5-percentage-point increase compared with last year. 45.2 percent of Chinese students had a positive impression of Japan, two percentage points more than last year. Only 26.6 percent of Japanese have a positive impression of China, however. Still, an overwhelming majority of the respondents from each country said Sino-Japanese relations were "important" and wanted their leaders to deepen talks and cooperation with each other. But 51.9 percent of ordinary people and 42.4 percent of students in China said they saw no change in relations between the two countries over the last year. In Japan, 64.8 percent of those ordinary people and 53.4 percent of intellectuals surveyed shared the view that there was no improvement in bilateral ties this year. Historical issues and territorial disputes remain two major obstacles to improving bilateral relations, the survey found. What concerns the Chinese most are historical issues, visits by Japanese officials to Yasukuni Shrine, and the Nanjing Massacre. Perceptions on economic and trade relations have improved, though. About 47 percent of ordinary Japanese said China had been "helpful" this year in fighting the global economic crisis, compared with just 30 percent last year. The percent of Japanese intellectuals who said Chinese economic growth was good for Japan increased from 65.8 percent to 81.4 percent this year. Cooperation in East Asian issues, trade and investment, energy, and the environment and climate change top the list of common concerns that people in China and Japan want their leaders to talk about in bilateral meetings, the survey found. Civil exchanges were regarded by the most people from the both countries as an important way to improve relations. 90.7 percent of the students and 85.7 percent of the ordinary people in China and 95.8% of intellectuals and 74.8% of the ordinary people in Japan viewed civil exchanges as "important" or "relatively important". Chinese and Japanese both learn about each other's countries mostly through television news and newspapers, the survey found.

单选题Controlling Robots with the Mind Belle, our tiny monkey, was seated in her special chair inside a chamber at our Duke University lab. Her right hand grasped a joystick (操纵杆) as she watched a horizontal series of lights on a display panel (显示面板). She knew that if a light suddenly shone and she moved the joystick left or right to correspond to its position, she would be sent a drop of fruit juice into her mouth. Belle wore a cap glued to her head. Under it were four plastic connectors, which fed arrays of microwires—each wire finer than the finest sewing thread—into different regions of Belle"s motor cortex (脑皮层), the brain tissue that plans movements and sends instructions. Each of the 100 microwires lay beside a single motor neuron (神经元). When a neuron produced an electrical discharge, the adjacent microwire would capture the current and send it up through a small wiring bundle that ran from Belle"s cap to a box of electronics on a table next to the booth. The box, in turn, was linked to two computers, one next door and the other half a country away. After months of hard work, we were about to test the idea that we could reliably translate the raw electrical activity in a living being"s brain—Belle"s mere thoughts—into signals that could direct the actions of a robot. We had assembled a multijointed robot arm in this room, away from Belle"s view, which she would control for the first time. As soon as Belle"s brain sensed a lit spot on the panel, electronics in the box running two real-time mathematical models would rapidly analyze the tiny action potentials produced by her brain cells. Our lab computer would convert the electrical patterns into instructions that would direct the robot arm. Six hundred miles north, in Cambridge, Mass, a different computer would produce the same actions in another robot arm built by Mandayam A. Srinivasan. If we had done everything correctly, the two robot arms would behave as Belle"s arm did, at exactly the same time. Finally the moment came. We randomly switched on lights in front of Belle, and she immediately moved her joystick back and forth to correspond to them. Our robot arm moved similarly to Belle"s real arm. So did Srinivasan"s. Belle and the robots moved in synchrony (同步), like dancers choreographed (设计舞蹈动作) by the electrical impulses sparking in Belle"s mind. In the two years since that day, our labs and several others have advanced neuroscience, computer science and microelectronics to create ways for rats, monkeys and eventually humans to control mechanical and electronic machines purely by "thinking through", or imagining, the motions. Our immediate goal is to help a person who has been unable to move by a neurological (神经的) disorder or spinal cord (脊髓) injury, but whose motor cortex is spared, to operate a wheelchair or a robotic limb.

单选题Our lives are Uintimately/U bound up with theirs.

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。请仔细阅读短文引：根据短文回答其后面的问题，从4个选项中选择1个最佳答案填入题前的括号内。{{B}}第一篇{{/B}} {{B}}New Foods and the New World{{/B}} In the last 500 years, nothing about people — not their clothes, ideas, or languages — has changed as much as what they eat. The original chocolate drink was made from the seeds of the cocoa tree (可可树) by South American Indians. The Spanish introduced it to the rest of the world during the 1500's. And although it was very expensive, it quickly became fashionable. In London, shops where chocolate drinks were served became important meeting places. Some still exist today. The potato is also from the New World. Around 1600, the Spanish brought it from Peru to Europe, where it soon was widely grown. Ireland became so dependent on it that thousands of Irish people starved when the crop failed during the "Potato Famine (饥荒)" of 1845 — 1846, and thousands more were forced to leave their homeland and move to America. There are many other foods that have traveled from South America to the Old World. But some others went in the opposite direction. Brazil is now the world's largest grower of coffee, and coffee is an important crop in Colombia and other South American countries. But it is native to Ethiopia, a country in Africa. It was first made into a drink by Arabs during the 1400's. According to an Arabic legend, coffee was discovered when a person named Kaldi noticed that his goats were attracted to the red berries on a coffee bush. He tried one and experienced the "wide-awake" feeling that one-third of the world's population now starts the day with.

单选题For many people today, reading is no longer relaxation. In (51) a job or advancing in one, the ability to read and comprehend (52) can mean the difference between success and failure. Yet the unfortunate, fact is that most of us are (53) readers. Most of us develop poor reading (54) at an early age, and never get over them. The main deficiency (55) in the actual stuff of language itself-words. Taken individually, words have little meaning until they are strung together into phrased, sentences and paragraphs. (56) however, the untrained reader does not read groups of words, He laboriously reads one word at a time, often regressing to (57) words or passages. Regression, the tendency to look back over (58) you have just read, is a common bad habit in reading. Another habit which (59) down the speed of reading is vocalization-sounding each word either orally or mentally as one reads. To overcome these bad habits, some reading clinics use a device called all (60) , which moves a bar( or curtain)down the page at a predetermined speed. The accelerator forces the reader to read fast, (61) word-by-word reading, regression and sub-vocalization, practically impossible. At first comprehension is sacrificed for speed. But when you learn to read ideas and concepts, you will not only read faster (62) your comprehension will improve. Many people have found-their reading skill drastically improved after some training. (63) Charlce Au, a business manager, for instance, his reading rate was a reasonably good 172 words a minute (64) the training, now it is an excellent 1,378 words a minute. He is delighted that how he can (65) a lot more reading material in a short period of time.

单选题Department Store A mainstay of retailing in the United States is the department store, a large-scale retailing instituting that has a very broad and deep product assortment (分类), tires not to compete on the basis of price, and provides a wide array or customer services. Traditional department stores offer a greater variety of merchandise and services than does any other type of retail store. They feature both "soft goods"—such as apparel, sheets, towels, and bedding (寝具)—and "hard goods" including furniture, appliances, and consumer electronics. Department stores also attract—and satisfy consumers by offering many customer services. The combination of distinctive, appealing merchandise and numerous customer services is designed to allow the stores to maintain the manufacturers' suggested retail prices. That is, department stores strive to charge" full" or "nondiscounted" (不打折扣的) prices. Department stores face mounting problems, however, Largely due to their prime locations and customer services, their operation expenses are considerably higher than those of most other kinds of retail business. Many manufacturers 'brands that used to be available exclusively thorough department stores are now widely distributed and often carry discounted prices in other outlets. And the quality of personal service, especially knowledgeable sales help, has deteriorated in some department stores. Intense horizontal competition is also hurting department stores. Other types of retailers are aiming at consumers who have long supported department stores. Speciality stores, off-price retailers, and even some discount houses have been particularly aggressive in trying to lure shoppers sway from department stores. To varying degrees retail chains compete against department stores. Consequently, many department stores have modified their target markets or elements of their marketing mixes. The May Department Stores Company has targeted middle-income consumers, rejecting high-priced European designer lines and instead concentrating on fashionable apparel with moderate prices. Penney's dropped three lines of hard goods—home electronics, sporting goods, and photographic equipment. Penney's, Ward's, and Sears are all converting their very large stores into a collection of limited-line "superstores". Some department stores are also trying to be more price-competitive. Most notably, in 1989 Sears abandoned its practice of promoting temporarily reduced prices and adopted a strategy of "everyday low prices". With this policy, prices will always be lower than or as low as competitors.

单选题She stood there, shaking with Ufury/U.

单选题Prolonging Human Life Prolonging human life has increased the size of the human population. Many people alive today would have died of childhood diseases if they had been born 100 years ago. Because more people live longer, there are more people around at any given time. In fact, it is a decrease in death rates, not an increase in birthrates, that has led to the population explosion. Prolonging human life has also increased the dependency load. In all societies, people who are disabled or too young or too old to work are dependent on the rest of society to provide for them. In hunting and gathering cultures, old people who could not keep up might be left behind to die. In times of famine, infants might be allowed to die because they could not survive if their parents starved, whereas if the parents survived they could have another child. In most contemporary societies, people feel a moral obligation to keep people alive whether they can work or not. We have a great many people today who live past the age at which they want to work or are able to work; we also have roles which require people to retire at a certain age. Unless these people were able to save money for their retirement, somebody else must support them. In the United States many retired people live on social security checks which are so little that they must live in near poverty. Older people have more illness than young or middle-aged people; unless they have wealth or private or government insurance, they must often "go on welfare” if they have a serious illness. When older people become senile or too weak and ill to care for themselves, they create grave problems for their families. In the past and in some traditional cultures, they would be cared for at home until they died. Today, with must members of a household working or in school, there is often no one at home who can care for a sick or weak person. To meet this need, a great many nursing homes and convalescent hospitals have been built. These are often profit-making organizations, although some are sponsored by religious and other nonprofit groups. While a few of these institutions are good, most of them are simply "dumping grounds" for the dying in which "care" is given by poorly paid, overworked, and underskilled personnel.

单选题Biologists have {{U}}ascertained{{/U}} that specialized cells convert Chemical energy into mechanical energy.

单选题The game requires us to find out two simple but effective ways to solve this problem.

单选题Doctors have found that laughter

单选题We resolved the problem after group discussion. A. caused B. met C. solved D. posed

单选题The study has posed a question about this nature.A. supportedB. cancelledC. arousedD. raised

单选题Nothing would {{U}}induce{{/U}} me to vote for him again. A. teach B. help C. attract D. discourage

单选题She was {{U}}grateful{{/U}} to him for being so good to her.

单选题The boy always looks through his homework before handing it in.

单选题It is postulated that a cure for the disease will have been found by the year 2020.

单选题 New Understanding of Natural Silk's Mysteries Natural silk, as we all know, has a strength that manmade materials have long struggled to match. In a discovery that sounds more like an ancient Chinese proverb than a materials science breakthrough, MIT researchers have discovered that silk gets its strength from its weakness. Or, more specifically, its many weaknesses. Silk gets its extraordinary durability and ductility from an unusual arrangement of hydrogen bonds that are inherently very weak but that work together to create a strong, flexible" structure. Most materials—especially the ones we engineer for strength—get their toughness from brittleness. As such, natural silks like those produced by spiders have long fascinated both biologists and engineers because of their light weight, ductility and high strength (pound for pound, silk is stronger than steel and far less brittle). But on its face, it doesn't seem that silks should be as strong as they are; molecularly, they are held together by hydrogen bonds, which are far weaker than the covalent bonds found in other molecules. To get a better understanding of how silk manages to produce such strength through such weak bonds, the MIT team created a set of computer models that allowed them to observe the way silk behaves at the atomic level. They found that the arrangement of the tiny silk nanocrystals is such that the hydrogen bonds are able to work cooperatively, reinforcing one another against external forces and failing slowly when they do fail, so as not so allow a sudden fracture to spread across a silk structure. The result is natural silks that can stretch and bend while retaining a high degree of strength. But while that's all well and good for spiders, bees and the like, this understanding of silk geometry could lead to new materials that are stronger and more ductile than those we can currently manufacture. Our best and strongest materials are generally expensive and difficult to produce (requiring high temperature treatments or energy-intensive processes). By looking to silk as a model, researchers could potentially devise new manufacturing methods that rely on inexpensive materials and weak bonds to create less rigid, more forgiving materials that are nonetheless stronger than anything currently on offer. And if you thought you were going to get out of this materials science story without hearing about carbon n anotubes, think again. The MIT team is already in the lab looking into ways of synthesizing silk-like structures out of materials that are stronger than natural silk—like carbon nanotubes. Super-silks are on the horizon.

单选题It's just a petty mistake. A. major B. important C. serious D. minor

单选题How many mobile phone users will there be in Australia by the year 2000, according to the passage?