单选题下面的短文有15处空白，请根据短文内容为每处空白确定1个最佳选项。 The Development of Rubber Here is the story of rubber. From the earliest time it was common knowledge {{U}}(51) {{/U}} the Peruvians that when a cut was made in the outside skin of a rubber tree, a white liquid {{U}}(52) {{/U}} milk came out, and that {{U}}(53) {{/U}} this a sticky (粘的) mass of rubber might be made. This rubber is soft when warm, so that it is possible to give it any {{U}}(54) {{/U}}. The Peruvians made the {{U}}(55) {{/U}} that it was very good for keeping out the wet. Then in the early 1800's, the Americans made use of it for the first time. First they made overshoes to {{U}}(56) {{/U}} their feet dry. Then came a certain Mr. Mackintosh, who made coats of cloth covered with natural rubber. From that day to this we have been coating cloth with rubber as Mr. Mackintosh {{U}}(57) {{/U}}, and our raincoats are still named after him. But these first rubber overshoes and raincoats were all soft and sticky in summer, and {{U}}(58) {{/U}} and inelastic (无弹性的) in the winter when it was col D. But the rubber we have today is soft and elastic (有弹性的), {{U}}(59) {{/U}} very strong m even in the warmest summer and the coldest winter. This was made {{U}}(60) {{/U}} by a man called Goodyear. After many {{U}}(61) {{/U}}, he found that nitric acid (硝酸) made the rubber much better, but it is not hard and strong enough. Then a strange thing took {{U}} (62) {{/U}}. A friend of his, Nicholas Hayward, had the idea in his sleep that rubber might be made hard and strong if mixed with sulfur (硫磺) and put in the sun. Goodyear put this idea {{U}}(63) {{/U}} the test, and saw that it did have more or less the desired effect though somewhat less than more. The only effect it had was on the outside of the rubber. It is common knowledge now that the {{U}}(64) {{/U}} to make rubber hard and strong is by heating it with sulfur. It took Goodyear four more years to find this metho D. When at last he did it, he had {{U}}(65) {{/U}} at all. Everything of the smallest value had been used to get money, even his sons' school-books.

单选题Do You Live in a Happy Country? Do you live in a happy country? Chances are strong that you do. Results of a recent study have shown that many people around the world are happier now than in the past. The study is called the World Values Survey. Researchers responsible for the study are based at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research in the United States. The researchers gathered information from opinion studies done in more than ninety countries or territories. Those studies were completed between nineteen eighty-one and two thousand seven. University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart directed the World Values Survey. Mister Inglehart says the results surprised him. He said it is widely believed that it is nearly impossible for happiness levels for a whole country to improve. He said many earlier studies have suggested that happiness levels do not really change. Denmark was found to be the world's happiest country. Mister Inglehart notes that Denmark's health care is good and few Danes are hungry. Zimbabwe was rated as the least happy country. Zimbabweans have suffered from political and social unrest. Other nations in the top ten for happiness include Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada and Colombia. Colombia suffers from violence in some areas. But Mister Inglehart says Colombians share strong family, friendship and religious ties. He says those qualities are common in areas along the Caribbean Sea. And he says they help balance economic and political weakness. The researchers compared the most recent World Values Survey with information from a study completed in nineteen forty-six. Several areas showed rising happiness levels. They include India, Mexico, Northern Ireland, Puerto Rico and South Korea. Over the years, India's economy has grown. An improved financial situation is an important sign of happiness, the political scientist says. But living in a country that is becoming more democratic may be more important. So may acceptance of minorities. Mister Inglehart says the study shows a strong link between happiness and freedom to choose how life is lived. It shows that equality between men anti women is another reason. Mister Inglehart says Northern Ireland is doing well financially and moving toward sexual equality. He also says the area has the traditional bases of friendship, family ties and religion. Northern Ireland has suffered violence in the past. But he says most people there live a normal life today. Some places showed less happiness than in the past. They were Austria, Belgium, Britain and the former West Germany. However, Mister Inglehart says these areas were still in the top twenty-five percent for happiness last year. And, he says that rating still shows a good level of satisfaction.

单选题The term “composition” refers to the way the components of a drawing are {{U}}arranged{{/U}} by the artist.

单选题Why is the Native Language Learnt So Well? How does it happen that children learn their mother tongue so well? When we compare them with adults learning a foreign language, we often find this interesting fact. A little child without knowledge or experience often succeeds in a complete mastery of the language. A grown-up person with fully developed mental powers, in most cases, may end up with a faulty and inexact command. What accounts for this difference? Despite other explanations, the real answer in my opinion lies partly in the child himself, partly in the behaviour of the people around him. In the first place, the time of learning the mother tongue is the most favourable of all, namely, the first years of life. A child hears it spoken from morning till night and, what is more important, always in its genuine form, with the right pronunciation, right intonation, right use of words and right structure. He drinks in all the words and expressions which come to him in a fresh ever-bubbling spring. There is no resistance: there is perfect assimilation. Then the child has, as it were, private lessons all the year round, while an adult language-student had each week a limited number of hours which he generally shares with others. The child has another advantage: he hears the language in all possible situations, always accompanied by the right kind of gestures and facial expressions. Here there is nothing unnatural, such as is often found in language lessons in schools, when one talks about ice and snow in June or scorching heat in January. And what a child hears is generally what immediately interests him. Again and again, when his attempts at speech are successful, his desires are understood and fulfilled. Finally, though a child's "teachers" may not have been trained in language teaching, their relations with him are always close and personal. They take great pains to make their lessons easy.

单选题There is no risk to public health.

单选题Motoring Technology 1.2 million road deaths worldwide occur each year, plus a further 50 million injuries. To reduce car crash rate, much research now is focused on safety and new fuels though some electric vehicle and biofuel research aims at going faster. Travelling at speed has always been risky. One cutting edge area of research in motoring safety is the use of digital in-car assistants. They can ensure you don't miss crucial road signs or fall asleep. The use of artificial intelligence software allows these assistants to monitor your driving and makes sure your phone or radio doesn't distract you at a vital moment. Most crashes result from human and not mechanical faults. Some safety developments aim to improve your vision. Radar can spot obstacles in fog, while other technology "sees through" high-sided vehicles blocking your view. And improvements to seat belts, pedal controls and tyres are making driving smoother and safer. The color of a car has been found to be linked with safety, as have less surprisingly size and shape. And alternatives to fossil-fuel based petrol, such as plant oils, are a hot area of research. Fuel cells based on hydrogen burn cleanly, and are the subject of a serious research effort. But whatever is in the fuel tank, you don't want a thief in the driving seat and there have been many innovations, some using satellite tracking and remote communications, to fight against car theft. These communication systems can also come into play if you crash, automatically calling for help. Accidents cause many traffic jams, but there are more subtle interplays between vehicles that can cause jams even on a clear but busy road. Such jams can be analyzed using statistical tools. Robotic drivers could be programmed to make traffic flow smoothly and will perhaps one day be everyone's personal chauffeur, but their latest efforts suggest that won't be soon.

单选题The father was unwilling to give his son the keys to his car.

单选题Unless checked, rabbits can generate rapidly when conditions are in their favor. A. injured B. controlled C. marked D. examined

单选题A salesman’s {{U}}cardinal{{/U}} rule is to satisfy customers.

单选题The most famous Shoshone Indian was Sacagawea—the woman who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their exploration of the upper Missouri River.

单选题A lot of people could fall ill after drinking contaminated water.

单选题Sleepless at Night It was a normal summer night. Humidity (湿气)hung in the thick air. I couldn't go to sleep, partly because of my cold and partly because of my expectations for the next day. My mum had said that tomorrow- was going to be a surprise. Sweat stuck to my aching body. Finally, I gathered enough strength to sit up. I looked out of my small window into the night. There was a big bright moon hanging in the sky, giving off a magic light. I couldn't stand the pressure anymore, So I did what I always do to make myself feel better. I went to the bathroom and picked up my toothbrush and toothpaste. I cleaned my teeth as if there was no tomorrow-. Back and forth, up and down. Then I walked downstairs to look for some signs of movement, some life. Gladiator, my cat frightened me as he meowed(喵喵地唱出)his sad song. He was on the Old orange couch(长沙发), sitting up on his front legs, waiting for something to happen. He looked at me as if to s "I'm lonely, pet me. I need a good hug(紧抱). " Even the couch begged me to sit on it. In one movement I settled down onto the soft couch. This couch represented my parents' marriage, my birth, and hundreds of other little events. As I held Gladiator, my heart started beating heavily. My mind was flooded with questions: What's life? Am I really alive? Are you listening to me? Every time I moved my hand down Gladiator's body, I had a new- thought; each touch sang a different song. I forget all about the heat and the next day's surprise. The atmosphere was so full of warmth and silence that I sank into its alms. Falling asleep with the big cat in my arms. I felt all my worries slowly move away.

单选题 下面的短文有15处空白，请根据短文内容为每处空白确定1个最佳选项。 {{B}}Biological Identification Technologies{{/B}} When a person walks, the movement of his head, trunk, and limbs (肢体) are all reflected in Changes in his body. A computer stores these {{U}}(51) {{/U}} into a database (数据库). Later, the computer can accurately {{U}}(52) {{/U}} him according to these changes. This is a new biological identification {{U}}(53) {{/U}} and it can quickly identify an examinee without disturbing him. Everybody's voice is {{U}}(54) {{/U}}. When a person's voice is recorded by an instrument, his voice frequency spectrum (频谱) is called sound print. {{U}}(55) {{/U}} a fingerprint, everybody's sound print is different. How can a computer {{U}}(56) {{/U}} his sound? First, his voice is recorded, {{U}}(57) {{/U}} allows the computer to become familiar with his voice. It will then turn his sound characteristics into a series of digits (数字). These are the {{U}}(58) {{/U}} on which the computer can distinguish his voice from another's. We often bring ID cards, work cards, or driving licenses with us to {{U}}(59) {{/U}} our identify. If all these cards are forgotten or lost, how can we prove whom we are? In {{U}}(60) {{/U}} , it's not difficult to prove whom you are, {{U}}(61) {{/U}} your body itself has identifying markers. Some are physiological (生理的) features, such as fingerprints, sounds, facial (面部的) types and eye color. The computer can {{U}}(62) {{/U}} to identify you. Suppose your features have already been {{U}}(63) {{/U}} in the database. To identify you, we have to take your picture with a camera and send it to a computer for {{U}}(64) {{/U}}. First, the computer needs to reposition this picture according to the position of your eyes, and then starts to read the {{U}}(65) {{/U}} of your physiological features such as the ratio of your pupil to the whites of your eyes and the shape of your nose. Next, it seeks matching records from the database. Finally, it makes a decision.

单选题{{B}}第二篇{{/B}} The First Navigational Lights In the New World the first navigational lights were probably lanterns hung at harbor entrances. The first lighthouse was put up by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1716 on little Brewster Island at the entrance to Boston Harbor. Paid for and maintained by "light dues" levied on ships, the original beacon was blown up in 1776. By then there were only a dozen of so true lighthouses in the colonies. Little over a century later, there were 700 lighthouses. The first eight lighthouses erected on the west coast in the 1850's featured the same basic new England design: a Cape Cod dwelling with the tower rising from the center or standing close by. In New England and elsewhere, though, lighthouses reflected a variety of architectural styles. Since most stations in the Northeast were built on rocky eminences, enormous towers were not the rule. Some were made of stone and brick, others of wood or metal. Some stood on pilings or stilts; Some were fastened to rock with iron rods. Farther south, from Maryland through the Florida Keys, the coast was low and sandy, it was often necessary to build tall towers there, massive structures like the majestic Cape Hatteras, North Carolina lighthouse, which was lit in 1870. At 190 feet, is the tallest brick lighthouse in the country. Notwithstanding differences in appearance and construction, most American lighthouses shared several features: a light, living quarters and sometimes a bell (later, a foghorn). They also had something else in common, a keeper and usually, the keeper's family. The keeper's essential task was trimming the lantern wick in order to maintain a steady, bright flame. The earliest keepers came from every walk of life ; they were seamen, farmers, mechanics, rough mill hands and appointments were often handed out by local customs commissioners as political plums. After the administration of lighthouses was taken over in 1852 by the United States Lighthouse Board, an agency of the Treasury Department, the keeper gradually became highly professional.

单选题Anderson left the table, remarking that he had some work to do.A. doubtingB. thinkingC. sayingD. knowing

单选题Will Quality Eat up the US Lead in Software? If US software companies don't pay more attention to quality, they could kiss their business good-bye. Both India and Brazil are developing a world-class software industry. Their weapon is quality and one of their jobs is to attract the top US quality specialists whose voices are not listened to in their country. AIready, of the world's 12 software houses that have earned the highest rating in the world, seven are in India. That's largely because they have used new methodologies rejected by American software specialists. For example, for decades, quality specialists, W. Edwards Deming and J. M. Juran had urged US software companies to change their attitudes to quality. But their quality call mainly fell on deaf ears in the US — but not in Japan. By the 1970s and 1980s, Japan was grabbing market share with better, cheaper products. They used Deming's and Juran's ideas to bring down the cost of good quality to as little as 5% of total production costs. In US factories, the cost of quality then was 10 times as high: 50%. In software, it still is. Watts S. Humphrey spent 27 years at IBM heading up software production and then quality assurance. But his advice was seldom paid attention to. He retired from IBM in 1986. In 1987, he worked out a system for assessing and improving software quality. It has proved its value time and again. For example, in 1990 the cost of quality at Raytheon Electronics Systems was almost 60% of total software production costs. It tell to 15% in 1996 and has since further dropped to below 10%. Like Deming and Juran, Humphrey seems to be winning more praises overseas than at home. The Indian government and several companies have just founded the Watts Humphrey Software Quality Institute at the Software Technology Park in Chennai, India. Let's hope that US lead in software will not be eaten up by its quality problems.

单选题A Sense of Fairness Everybody loves a fat pay rise. Yet pleasure at your own can vanish if you learn that a colleague has been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he has a reputation for slacking, you might even be outraged. Such behaviour is regarded as "all too human," with the underlying assumption that other animals would not be capable of this finely developed sense of grievance. But a study by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which has just been published in Nature , suggests that it is all too monkey, as well. The researchers studied the behaviour of female brown capuchin monkeys. They look cute. They are good-natured, cooperative creatures, and they share their food readily. Above all, like their female human counterparts, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of "goods and services" than males. Such characteristics make them perfect candidates for Dr. Brosnan"s and Dr. de Waal"s study. The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys to exchange tokens for food. Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for slices of cucumber. However, when two monkeys were placed in separate but adjoining chambers, so that each could observe what the other was getting in return for its rock, their behaviour became markedly different. In the world of capuchins, grapes are luxury goods (and much preferable to cucumbers). So when one monkey was handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was reluctant to hand hers over for a mere piece of cucumber. And if one received a grape without having to provide her token in exchange at all, the other either tossed her own token at the researcher or out of the chamber, or refused to accept the slice of cucumber. Indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other chamber (without an actual monkey to eat it) was enough to induce resentment in a female capuchin. The researchers suggest that capuchin monkeys, like humans, are guided by social emotions. In the wild, they are a cooperative, group-living species. Such cooperation is likely to be stable only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of righteous indignation, it seems, are not the preserve of people alone. Refusing a lesser reward completely makes these feelings abundantly clear to other members of the group. However, whether such a sense of fairness evolved independently in capuchins and humans, or whether it stems from the common ancestor that the species had 35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.

单选题There was no alternative but to close the road. A. way B. means C. choice D. reason

单选题American Firms The annual review of American company board practices by Korn/Ferry, a firm of headhunters, is a useful indicator of the health of corporate governance. This year's review, published on November 12th, shows that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 to try to prevent a repeat of corporate collapses such as Enron's and WorldCom's, has had an impact on the boardroom—albeit at an average implementation cost that Korn/Ferry estimates at $5.1 m per firm. Two years ago, only 41% of American firms said they regularly held meetings of directors without their chief executive present; this year the figure was 93%. But some things have been surprisingly unaffected by the backlash against corporate scandals. For example, despite a growing feeling that former chief executives should not sit on their company's board, the percentage of American firms where they do has actually edged up, from 23% in 2003 to 25% in 2004. Also, disappointingly few firms have split the jobs of chairman and chief executive. Another survey of American boards published this week, by A.T. Kearney, a firm of consultants, found that in 2002 14% of the boards of S&P 500 firms had separated the roles, and a further 16% said they planned to do so. But by 2004 only 23% overall had taken the plunge. A survey earlier in the year by consultants at McKinsey found that 70% of American directors and investors supported the idea of splitting the jobs, which is standard practice in Europe. Another disappointment is the slow progress in abolishing "staggered" boards—ones where only one-third of the directors are up for re-election each year, to three-year terms. Invented as a defence against takeover, such boards, according to a new Harvard Law School study by Lucian Bebchuk and Alma Cohen, are unambiguously "associated with an economically significant reduction in firm value". Despite this, the percentage of S&P 500 firms with staggered boards has fallen only slightly—from 63% in 2001 to 60% in 2003, according to the Investor Responsibility Research Centre. And many of those firms that have been forced by shareholders to abolish the system are doing so only slowly. Merck, a pharmaceutical company in trouble over the possible side-effects of its arthritis drug Vioxx, is allowing its directors to run their full term before introducing a system in which they are all re-elected (or otherwise) annually. Other companies' staggered boards are entrenched in their corporate charters, which cannot be amended by a shareholders' vote. Anyone who expected the scandals of 2001 to bring about rapid change in the balance of power between managers and owners was, at best, naive.

单选题The role of the body clock is to